Category: Music
Parenthetical sentences to ponder
(The longest doctoral program in the nation is the music program at Washington University in St. Louis, with a median length of 16.3 years, according to the Chronicle of Higher Education.)
The link is here.
*Listen to This*
She [Mitsuko Uchida] tells of how she once tried to get [Radu] Lupu to visit Marlboro. "I got every excited, describing how people do nothing but play music all day long. But he said no. His explanation was very funny. "Mitsuko," he said, "I don't like music as much as you."
That's from the new book on music by Alex Ross. It's not a comprehensive tour de force like The Rest is Noise was, but it is smart and well-written on every page and if you liked the first book you should buy and read the second. The portraits cover, among others, Radiohead, Bjork, John Luther Adams, Marian Anderson, Lorraine Hunt Lieberson, and Uchida. The chapter on Bob Dylan is especially good and it eclipses Sean Wilentz's entire recent book on Dylan.
Emmanuel Saez wins a MacArthur Award
In 2009 he won the Clark Award for his work on income inequality. Now he has won a MacArthur and he was cited for his work on the value of a kindergarten teacher, summarized here by David Leonhardt.
The full list of winners, which includes the jazz pianist Jason Moran, is here.
Markets in everything
Music lovers can now be immortalised when they die by having their ashes baked into vinyl records to leave behind for loved ones.
A UK company called And Vinyly is offering people the chance to press their ashes in a vinyl recording of their own voice, their favourite tunes or their last will and testament. Minimalist audiophiles might want to go for the simple option of having no tunes or voiceover, and simply pressing the ashes into the vinyl to result in pops and crackles.
The full link is here and I thank VaughanBell and also Allison Kasic for the pointer. Occasionally I've wondered whether my funeral ought not to consist of playing a recording of Brahms's Ein Deutsches Requiem (loudly) and then asking everyone to leave. This innovation puts a new slant on that idea.
Sentences to ponder
Where I live [Los Angeles] is culturally neutral. If I lived in New Orleans I would have to embrace the local culture because it's so good. In California you can be your own person.
That is from the musician Richard Thompson and here is the longer article.
Assorted Links
1. Jazz is (was?) the best word to play in Hangman.
2. 3-D print your own designs.
3. Cool incentives.
4. Steve Eisman, who called the subprime debacle, on the (nominally) private-education scam (pdf, another link here). (Of course, some public education isn't much better it's just harder to short.)
Marking the Fourth of July
Have the ironies and agonies of war and patriotism on the fourth of July ever been better expressed?
Thwarted markets in everything?
In a too-good-to-check item, the Daily Mirror reports that rapper Snoop Dogg recently attempted to rent the entire nation of Liechtenstein for a music video…
Since it's too good to check, I won't check it. Caveat emptor.
For the pointer I thank David Brinh and also Milena Thomas.
Are there hidden codes in Plato?
Take this one with a grain of salt, but here is the latest:
Kennedy's breakthrough, published in the journal Apeiron this week, is based on stichometry: the measure of ancient texts by standard line lengths. Kennedy used a computer to restore the most accurate contemporary versions of Plato's manuscripts to their original form, which would consist of lines of 35 characters, with no spaces or punctuation. What he found was that within a margin of error of just one or two percent, many of Plato's dialogues had line lengths based on round multiples of twelve hundred.
The Apology has 1,200 lines; the Protagoras, Cratylus, Philebus and Symposium each have 2,400 lines; the Gorgias 3,600; the Republic 12,200; and the Laws 14,400.
Kennedy argues that this is no accident. "We know that scribes were paid by the number of lines, library catalogues had the total number of lines, so everyone was counting lines," he said. He believes that Plato was organising his texts according to a 12-note musical scale, attributed to Pythagoras, which he certainly knew about.
Do note this:
Kennedy believes his findings restore what was the standard, mainstream view which held for 2,000 years "from the first generation of Plato's followers, up through the renaissance". This held that "he wrote symbolically and that if you worked hard and became wise you could understand the symbols and penetrate his text to his underlying philosophy." Only in the last few hundred years has an emphasis on the literal meanings of texts led to a neglect of their figurative meanings.
It also explains why it is that Aristotle, Plato's pupil, emphatically claimed that Plato was a follower of Pythagoras, to the bafflement of most contemporary scholars.
I used to consider allegiance to this idea (Montaigne, also, for symbolic codes) as one of my absurd beliefs, but maybe now it is looking better. I will have to look elsewhere.
German price deflation
Deutsche Gramophone, 18 CDs, first-rate recordings of Mahler with Karajan, Solti, Bernstein, Quasthoff, others.
How much? 30,98 euros.
The overall price inflation rate is now 0.9 percent, positive.
I thank John Nye for the pointer.
Bob Dylan *Radio Hour*
Also known as German markets in everything, or alternatively why oh why can't we have a better U.S. copyright law?
Remember when Bob Dylan was DJ for those XM satellite radio shows, spinning a melange of blues, folk songs, vaudeville, gospel, and general bizarreness, with generally American themes, in the process proving himself one of the world's great musical infovres? Some of those shows are collected on CD, in Germany, vol. I, II, and III, four discs a box, twelve discs in total. The Amazon.de listings are here (they will ship to the US), or in German stores for about six dollars a disc, thank you Greece.
I own thousands of CDs, but these are among the very best and the song selection compares favorably to other collections of American music. The sound quality and transfers are first-rate.
Here is a Bach box, his major choral works and some of the major cantatas, MP3, and CD, 42 euros, 22 discs, John Eliot Gardiner conducting, these are some of the best recordings of the chosen pieces and even with shipping costs this is an extremely favorable purchase.
Have I mentioned there are many outrageous bargains in Berlin, not just my apartment?
For five or six euros, you can buy an excellent spaghetti bolognese, better than almost anything in WDC or Virginia. Apartments are cheaper, you don't need a car, mineral water and good bread is cheaper, gelato is cheaper, and in most social circles you're not expected to dress extraordinarily well. I'm not sure books are cheaper but they're not outrageously priced either, even many English-language editions. It's a strange feeling to come to Europe and have most things be cheaper, which still is not the case in Paris.
Here Angus recommends five CDs for Germany, good picks but the Dylan and the Bach round out some Alvin Curran and some gospel in my living room.
Markets in everything
Legendary rocker Lou Reed and artist wife Laurie Anderson will next month bring one of the most bizarre performances to Sydney's Opera House — a recital for dogs, largely inaudible to human ears.
At a press conference on Friday the pair said their programme for Sydney's Vivid LIVE arts festival includes an eclectic mix of heavy guitar music, martial arts and music for dogs.
Multimedia artist Anderson said the inspiration for the canine performance came while she was backstage before an event and thought: "Wouldn't it be great, if you were playing a concert and you look out and you see all dogs?
There is more information here. Elsewhere, there is chatter of permanently closing the Sydney Opera House; perhaps it is just a strategic plea for aid.
Mick Jagger on the economics of music
…people only made money out of records for a very, very small time. When The Rolling Stones started out, we didn’t make any money out of records because record companies wouldn’t pay you! They didn’t pay anyone!
Then, there was a small period from 1970 to 1997, where people did get paid, and they got paid very handsomely and everyone made money. But now that period has gone.
So if you look at the history of recorded music from 1900 to now, there was a 25 year period where artists did very well, but the rest of the time they didn’t.
Jagger, of course, studied economics at LSE and is known to be a fan of Hayek. Hat tip goes to Jerry Brito.
The best paragraph I read yesterday (the culture that is Japan)
The daughter of a policeman and a dance instructor, Rebecca is thought to be popular because she has big eyes, a small face and slender limbs – similar to the cartoon characters.
There is much more at the link, including videos. The upshot is this:
Rebecca, from the Isle of Man, first came to attention on YouTube where millions watched her dance to J-Pop (Japanese pop music) and the theme tunes of anime cartoons.
She appears in hundreds of clips dressed as Japanese cartoon characters.
Her new album is expected to go straight to number one in Japan. For the pointer I thank LongTermGuy.
Favorite songs about technology
Michael Weintraub asks:
What are your favorite songs about technology? In my own thinking I have limited the universe of cases to those whose lyrics deal explicitly with technological innovations and their cultural effects, along the lines of Paul Simon's "Boy in the Bubble" or the Talking Heads' "(Nothing But) Flowers."
Those are good picks. For me, what comes to mind immediately is XTC's "Factory Brides," "Roads Girdle the Globe" (there should be more songs about infrastructure, no?), Kraftwerk's "Computer World" (and many others), and a number of Byrds songs, including "CTA-102" and "Space Odyssey." What do you choose?