faheyfein

11:08 pm: Adam Smith and Chex Mix
I recently discovered that Capitalism is a crock of shit. Yep, that's right, the whole thing. This free market, laissez-fair, Wealth of Nation hoax has been going on long enough and I seem to be the only one to stop it. That's because I figured it out all by myself. I didn't need any Marxist theories or mathematical permutations. I found the flaw in the argument just by sitting down with one of my favorite snacking experiences, and this is some lynchpin of an argument, let me tell you.
The problem with Capitalism is rye chips. Yeah, those little dark chips you get in every bag of chex mix or ghardetto mix or whatever your variety of snack mix maybe. Well if you are like me, and I know you are because everyone agrees with me, rye chips are above and beyond the best part of any snack mix, they are reason you put up with those stupid pretzel rejects that get stuck in your teeth and whatever else is in the bag. Frankly I CAN'T remeber what else is in the bag and I have eaten thousands of bags of chex mix. I only remember the ptretzels which I hate and the rye chips which I love. What I am getting at is that you eat Chex Mix to get to the rye chips. That's the only reason. The only.
So my question to you is this, since I love rye chips so much but basically hate everything else in that goddamn bag of oversalted preservatives and everyone I have ever spoken to feels the same way, then WHY CAN'T I BUY A FUCKING BAG JUST THE FUCKING RYE CHIPS???? They are nowhere to be found. NOWHERE! And believe me I have looked. It's practically a pilgrimage for me at this point. Everytime I find myself in a gas station, that's what I am looking for. And it is never there. People have claimed to have found them and I don't believe them. Honestly, I think they are captialist agents simply there to satiate me. I wonder if they are out there sometimes these chips have sort of become my sasquatch. Whether they exist in some limited quantity is beyond the point. I can't find them is the point. they are not readily avaialble on the open market.
What does this have to do with Capitalism you may ask. Well, when I argue with conservative economists (or at least students of conservative economists) they always try to calm me (I usually get a little upset) with phrases like "free market" and supply-and-demand" and all I want to know is, where is it now? I mean when I really need it, where is it? Everyone, EVERYONE wants these rye chips and yet I don't see the market providing any product. In fact, the rye chip is the what they have the least of in those fucking bags. Now, I understand that maybe rye chips are the most expensive ingredient in the mix but I would be willing to pay a little more for this hypothetical bag of delicious. What's worse is that they have even less rye chips then before. Now they put in half rye chips and half white chips. WHAT THE FUCK? I mean like we aren't going to notice? Does General Mills have some consumer data to show most of their customer base is color blind? or that we all eat this shit while wearing our sunglasses? I mean...I can tell them apart so don't act like nothing fucking happened. I know a white chip when I see it and it sucks! I mean, its basically a cruton. I don't want a fucking cruton. IT'S NOT A SALAD!
Why would they cut down on the rye chips even further? Has the market for Rye bread skyrocketed lately so that it can no longer be purchased in such quantities as it was before. Was there some sort of a rush of the stock? what would the economists tell me "oh you know, Brian, everyone's buying rye these days" I don't pay much attention to stock tickers so I must have missed the trading symbol for rye bread.
Did you know that I can pay to have my hair rubbed with caviar? It's a service more spas are offering these days. Caviar. Not even the cheap domestic stuff, the imported stuff the UN wants to ban. So as I understand Adam Smith, there must be more people out there who want to rub unborn sturgeon through their hair to get that shine only the russian mob can give you then there are people who want some friggin' rye chips. I mean maybe rye chips are expensive but beluga? they're practically exitinct.
How about this. You go out and spend the day asking people if they want some caviar in their hair and I will ask people if they want some rye chips. By sundown, you'll be in jail.
Now granted, I don't have any survey data that says more people want rye chips then they want fish egg shampoo but I am pretty confident. so rather then collect a bunch of data as I learned to do in a poli sci course, I am just going to let this entry speak for itself. I think the people will flock.

12:27 am: BASICALLY BORING REGURGITATION OF GROUT; DON'T READ
There seems to be a clear and consistent termoniological division among Christian philosophers, really Christians in general, I suppose, between the song and the sung with regards to church music. The idea that the musical tones which compose the melody of the chant and the text of the chant are very separate and distinct ideas. This division has been articulated by Christian philosophers almost back to the infancy of the chruch, which tells me there is an apparent discomfort on a basic level with any type of music in the Christian church as conceived by many of it's "fathers." Augustine writes on his concern, his FEAR with the idea that the beauty of a melody of chant may excell beyond the beauty of the text so that he may not pay attention to the text but simply enjoy the music aesthetically, which to him is a grave sin. Now that is quite a level of discomfort, in fact, it seems that all music to Augustine is suspect. Rather than a source of beauty it is a source of temptation and I wonder why he neevr suggested it not be present at all in the church. Certainly it seems to make him less likely to understand the text.
So where did this idea of music and text as two separate entities come from? If my Grout tells me right then Gregorian chant was derived from less uniform types of chant, which were a continuation of the Judaic tradition of chanting scripture and singing psalms (along with some Greek musical theory as foundation). As I understand, Psalms cannot exist in any form other than a musical one. They were created and preserved as such. Removing their music simply leaves them as sacred poetry. In my mind, Psalms are not the text nor the music and they are expecially not a uncomfortable falliable balance between these. Psalms are actually the intersection of text and tune in time (yay alliteration!). They are preserved in the Bible but they exist in their singing (I would say their recitation is also simple preservation rather than performance). We don't know if there existed any Agustinian complaints regarding Pslams at their genesis but it seems fair to say that Augustine didn't get this idea the dangers of music from the Jews.
It seems clear the Augustine is perceiving the Greek concept of music as an pleasure to his own restrictive Christianity. To him, the text is always sacred, seemingly sensible since it is the word of G-d. However the music is a profane element allowed in the church for reasons he never elaborates (I suppose I haven't read enough Agustine to say never but no one has brought it up). This troubles me and I think my trouble goes all the way back to Plato. To the both of them, music was an worldly beauty that existed to remind of divine beauty (that is straight out of Grout BTW's, just so this entry isn't total plagiarism) but with Augustine this particular music juxtaposed with divine scripture. Within one chant you have the central struggle of every Christian, the temptation and pleasure of the sinful world intertwined with the perfect piety of the ever-world, always there at every turn to tempt the faithful away with food and drink and sex.
Not a terribly healthy or logical view of music if you asked me. Why is the music inherently profane but the text inherently perfect. The text as ordered is scripture but it is still expressed linguistically just as is the music. Maybe Augustine overlook the linguistic reality of music, which is easy to do if you don't understand it.
Taking music as language into considerations, it is clear that chanted scripture isn't the word of G-d tainted by earthly pleasure but it is the word of G-d spoken in two interwoven languages which exist as both separate and singular. Chanting isn't the sacred and profane of christian preoccupation but the eternal dichotomy of sameness and separateness which defines our Universe and all of human existence.Talk about Divine!
And sadly, Philosophers seems to keep missing the point. Maybe they should get in touch with a composer. Bach got it, the whole oneness and twoness thing, he wrote the Brandenburg concertos about it. And the whole time he was trying to calm his superiors concerned that his elaborate cantatas were too distracting from the sacredness of the service. Plato lives on and Augustine couldn't be happier.

11:45 am: Bloggle July 19
Sara and I played a couple late night rounds of some post-swim Boggle last night. The three rounds were fast paced with Sara winning two. The word of the night was R-E-A-S-O-N and it goes to Sara. YAY BOGGLE!

11:07 am: "nor should we try"
Well, I know I am big dork so I doubt anyone will be terribly interested in this posting but it has been on my mind of late. If you read this whole entry, I am sorry.
I really don't understand the phrase "We cannot perform music historically accurately nor should we try." I mean, to me this statement is wrong on both counts and is terrilbly antagonistic to the entire study of music hitory or really the study of music at all.
In the first place, I don't quite understand what the speaker of this phrase (and I am talking to you Helmuth Rilling and John Butt) means by "Performances cannot be historically accurate" I suppose in one sense you can't have a hstorically accurate performance of Bach's music since I am pretty sure most of his musicians are dead. So obviously we draw a line. Any performance is an approximation obviously. To me, HIP isn't at all about recreating the first performance of a piece or never allowing a period peice to be played on a modern instrument. To me, HIP is about a framework...
Recognizing that all composers had a particular framework envisioned for how their music would be performed and that this framework governed how they composed each piece. Maybe they wanted a different framework (Bach's agenda behind writing the Entwurrf, in my mind) but they wrote the music for the forces they had, not for some idealized hypothetical ensemble the desired. If Bach had lived fifty years later, he would have written for more than one voice to a part but if he had lived fifty years later and been writitng for more than one voice he WOULD HAVE WRITTEN DIFFERENT MUSIC. To me, Rilling's (and Schulze's) argument that he is performing with the forces that Bach would have used is convenient conjecture. No one can ever have any idea what hypothetical forces Bach would have wanted. Determining the forces Bach had has proven nearly impossible.
Once we recognize this envisioned framework as best we can through historical scholarship, I don't understand why people would have no desire to hear how this framework would have sounded. If Rilling had his way, we wouldn't know a Bach sound any different than the one given to us by Mendelssohn when he re-premiered the St. Matthew Passion with a chorus of 200 (as opposed to the original 8). And have you ever noticed when you listen to Rilling perform Bach, it sounds like Mendelssohn. Huge Brass, huger choirs, blastissimo dynamics and all under the auspices of a romantically emotive interpretation. Now I think their is value in hearing Bach that way but it certainly isn't what I listen to most of the time. Why wouldn't you want to listen to Bach so that it sounds like Bach? If it were up to Rilling, this unique Bach sound, considerably more intimate and personal, would have been forgotten entirely. And why? All this would have done would be to limit the number of people who could have found inspiration in such music becausde you limit the interpretaions and styles in which it can be heard.
The anti-HIP argument is also unsound to me because while HIP offers a guideline for performance that is based in historical study, the forces of modernity offer no alterntive. They simply say DO NOT perform HIP. In this sense of the argument, any interpretaion of Bach is alright so long as it is not as Bach would have performed it. To follow this idea to the letter, we as performers should pay careful attention to how music was performed in Bach's time so that we avoid it.
Apart from people who think HIP should not be attempted are those who think it is simply trivial. Despite its reasonable differences from the outright anti-HIP argument, John Butt is guilty of employing both arguments simultaneously.
Let's take Butt's argument that Bach didn't care about how many voices he had to a part. Under this argument, one of histories most meticulous composers would had to have assumed an extremely care-free perspectve on the execution of his vocal music (though, inexplicably, not his instrumental music). Butt's evidence stems froms Bach setting of the St. John Passion for ripienists to sing along for most of the work. I am not sure how someone as smart as Butt draws a conclusion from this fact. I mean, it is pretty clear that Bach went through some determined effort throughout the Leipzig cantatas to indicate where he wanted concertists alone and where they could be joined by ripienists. What's more, the sections with ripieno parts are of a much different character (usually requiring less fleixbility) than those written for concertist alone. So why Butt attempts to employs a single composition as evidence to overrule the bulk of Bach's cretive output escapes me. It hardly seems like scholarship at all. As much as I disagree with Ton Koopman, I can better understand his argument that Bach DID care about how many singers he had but that it was in fact three singers to a part.
Ok, so I admit the vehemence of the argument of three versus one can sem trivial to many people but when you listen to the astounding differences between Parrot's Mass in B Minor or McCreesh's Gabrieli Consort versus any of Koopman's cantatas, the sheer difference in character is startling significant (that was reason 1 for significance). (reason 2) I secondly find it significant because most Bach performed in the US today is done with five to ten to a part (the size of most professional American choirs). I think Bach can work with choirs this large (not my preference but it conveys the music) but their is a much larger bridge to gap from 1 to a part to 5 than 3 to a part to 5. I believe that any American choir should be mindful of that bridge and the challeges it poses in performance. As Robert Shaw said in preparing Cleveland for the Mass in b minor "we must remember that our large choir is exaclty the wrong instrument for performing Bach." This leads into my third reason (3) of significance. If Bach wrote for one to a part, it takes his vocal music out of the choral realm and basically redefines his music as soloistic. If we begin to think of it as music for soloists, we look at it in a whole new perspective: embellishments, tempo, articulation all change. This explains the vehemence with which people resist the Rifkin argument. I think it has to do with territory. Choral directors want Bach in their territory and they don't want to have to borrow his music from the repertoire of soloists. Petty but significant. (ok so reason two and three were basically the same but I am too lazy to edit).
Now, let me say in closing. I like Rilling's performances, they are pristinely accurate and wonderfully articulated. I just don't think that Rilling should ever be the only way to perform Bach. Just like I don't think HIP should be the only way to perform anything. This music does need to new interpretations and approaches. All of the old masters need to breathe. Handel needs steel strings and Palestrina needs vibrato. Classical music must be open to all interpretations because this provides more perspectives for people to discover and be inspired by this music. I mean if the HIP school had never been, i wouldn't be a tenth as interested in classical music as I am just I am sure many people wouldn't be as interested in classical music with Rilling or even Butt. Butt's work with "new horizons" in Bach is wonderfully fascinating and can only serve to bring Bach to more people, so I would never argue that it shouldn't happen (just don't expect me to be rushing for his CD's). I disagree with the "purists" of the HIP school that think Bach should only be done with period instruments (though all music students should be exposed to it).
And I suppose that is what really irks me about the opening statement of this entry. "Nor SHOULD we try" We SHOUDLN'T do anything. I think as soon as we start taking the "Should" out of our musicological perspectives, we will all be better off. We will be more open to new interpretations and maybe even a few old ones.

10:58 pm: the problematic debate
It occurred to me today that the worst debates or at least the most controversial and seemingly endless debates all share a particular commonality. For a debate to be of such severity and I believe abortion stands as a prime example, the disagreement does not abide in the morality or opinion of the arguers (though they are certainly pertinent) but in the structure of the debate. The reason debates like abortion or the performance practices of Bach's vocal music (a favorite of mine) is that no one can agree on what is being debated. Maybe it seems silly to discuss both apparently incomparable issues in the same post but I participated in both debates today and was struck by their similar conditions.
In terms of Bach it seems that one side is asking the question " how would Bach was his music performed today" while the other side says "how did Bach perform his music" these questions are very important to their respective sides but to the opposition they seem of little importance. In the debate on abortion, one side usually asks "what is constitutional or what is practical (within a moral framework) while the other side asks does life begin prior to conception.
I believe that in both debates one sides asks questions that are irrelevant, unanswerable, or illogical and that is why i take the position I do but rather than looking to new persuasive arguments or scientific/historical evidence, I think we must aim at changing the strucutre, right down to the very vocabulary of how we argue these issues and as much as I hate to admit I think abortion is the more pressing one here. I doubt I have said anything of particular philosophical consequence but the thought did occur to me.

09:04 pm: death and the like
I don't think there is ever a time i feel more of kid then when someone i know dies. When you are grown-up, you grieve for the loss of a parents and friends but on some level, you have a responsibility to carry-on, for your children or family in general. As a child, you sink into the grief and it paints the world around you and it's usually a world that has sprung into action to carry out the ceremonies and the all that must be done when someone dies. It's a horribly lonely and helpless time for a child not to mention boring, which I mean less frivolously than it sounds.
Evevlyn is one of the happiest, kindest, and giving persons I know. I think she might be a little crazy but then again, she never would have gotten along with the Gryva/Callones if she wasn't. She has a way of reminding you that expressing kindness to those around is a worthy enough to be done energetically and sincerely. It's a terrible sadness to think about what happened to her and a more materialistic Brian is cynically wondering how it could have happened to her after all her years of kindness. But I am trying to remember that such a view misses the point of what Evelyn was teaching me all those years. Kindness is its own reward and the inspiring someone to smile bestows a deeper diginity in that person than most of us would ever suspect.
There hasn't been a death and Evelyn is still alive but I grieve as a child. I feel like the five year old running around her basement I used to be. I think I always felt like that child when I visited her house. Life moves so quickly and Friday to Sunday might feel like a flash but right now it seems unimaginably long. And it also makes me think abotu how I spent those days. So unseriously. I think on how i let them slip by without much meaning at all. All I did was think abotu how i wanted those days to end, how i wanted school ot be over and how i was dreasing doing my work. THose were three days when I had the health and the freedom to do anything I wanted and I all did was get through them as fast as possible. I should and I hope I will rememebr that each day that i have the ability to enjoy life, I should be doing that. Evelyn sure seemed too and she and I will continue.

01:15 am: Brahms Requiem
Well, I thought I would give this another shot. I went to Brahm's Requiem tonight and it was quite moving. Norrington was a good conductor though he seemed more in his element for the Haydn (no podium or baton, small orchestra) than the Brahms (podium, baton,full orchestra/ choir of two hundred). I liked how he could get oout of the way and let the orchestra do its work. HE would come back in and show a change of tempo or mood and then stop conducting again all together.
The Brahms was wonderful to hear though Wie Lieblich was off. He actually didn't doso well there becuase I think he was disatissfied with the tempo so he started giving the beat to speec things up and woodwinds followed him but the choir didn't. The natural horns weren'tso good either. That was a little frustrating for me because i think that people can really do a disservice to the HIP school when they use natural horns without the players to support them. I think natural horns can be great and I always prefer Bach on natural horns than with valves (it sounds..."bombastic" to quote John Eliot Gardiner). But if you dont have the players for it then a natural horn will always sound worse than an in-tune natural horn.

10:43 am: Teasedale
Ok so here is my second entry on random thoughts. It's about Sara Teasedale's poem "There will be rest" I was thinking about it the other day and why composers seem so fond of setting the work. I am not sure my thoughts about it are terribly coherent but here goes.

There will be rest, and sure starts shining
Over the rooftops crowned with snow
A reign of rest ,serene, forgetting
The music of stillness, holy and low

I will make this world of my devising
Out of a dream in my lonely mind
I shall find the crystal of peace; and above me
Stars I shall find.

It seems that both settings of Teasedale's poem There will be Rest stir great emotion in the composers. This may simply be the incidental effect of setting such a beautiful text with such an emotional history (Teasedale wrote it as an expression of her effort to understand life in eternity. She eventually would take her own life but the ending phrase of the piece "stars I shall find" is about the comfort she would draw from looking at the stars and their seeming eternity). I think the reason Mr. Ticheli and Dr. Dickau find such passion in this text is that they feel a kinship with Teasedale. Her struggle to understand a place in the Universe for her. To exist in the finite while conceiving of the infinite, the seeminlgy impossible that is the inescapable human. To be an artist is to struggle to pain to wander to answer this question of how. to produce art is to give answer. Every work of art is the answer to question for art is that infinite in the finite. Art is the nothing and the everything.
Taken in this context, "There will be Rest" by Ticheli is no longer just a requiem for Teasedale but the resounding call from abyss of space in which she searched so desperately for a reason to stay alive. This song and every song is life, is the eternity of the stars, the crystal of peace, it is the reason for reason, the gaze of God, and the only and the perfect reason to live.

03:08 pm: why not
So I know it has been about eleven months since I updated and I am not sure anyone will actually read this but I decided that it might be worth trying to begin using LJ again. I don't think I will use it so much as a journal becuase I really don't like the idea of recording everything that goes on in my life but I will periodically post thoughts or ideas that come to mind. So to start here are some observation on the text of Sing Me to HEaven which is a choral piece I just love. I used to think the text was really intruiging in what is says about the role of music in our lives. However, when I started thinking abotu it a little further, I descided that it wasnt' talking about song in life but song AS life. ISo here is the full text of the poem and then the poem with my thoguhts written in between the stanzas. Each little thought (or lesson as I call them) are independent of each other and though some work together and all eseentially teach the same idea, they don't really build one into the other.

Sing Me to Heaven

In my heart's sequestered chambers
lie truths stripped of poets' gloss
words alone are vain and vacant
and my heart is mute

in response to aching silence
memory summons half-heard voices
and my soul finds primal eloquence
and wraps me in song

if you would comfort me
sing me a lullaby
if you would win my heart
sing me a love song

if you would mourn me
and bring me to God
sing me a Requiem
sing me to Heaven

touch in me
all love and passion
pain and pleasure
grief and comfort

sing me a lullaby,
a love song
a requiem

love me, comfort me
bring me to God
sing me a love song
sing me to Heaven

the poem again with my thoughts

In my heart's sequestered chambers
lie truths stripped of poets' gloss
words alone are vain and vacant
and my heart is mute

truth isn't in the wording, perspective or even meaning
truth rather exists in the thought, the feeling and emotion
reality is simply the vehicle for conveying emotion
without the heart there is no reality.

in response to aching silence
memory summons half-heard voices
and my soul finds primal eloquence
and wraps me in song

it is only when we feel alone that we can know what we miss
our world today lends itself to noise and sense
in our haste, we mistake the noise for song
but often the senseless (the preexistent song) is the best and only and every path to God


if you would comfort me
sing me a lullaby
if you would win my heart
sing me a love song

whatever we lack in our world, it may be only through song(singing)
that we find fulfillment
at such a basic and relevant level, song becomes everything
journey and end, love and lover, verb and noun, act and actor
for only in singing does the song exist
only in loving(existing) can we have love(beyond existing, eternity)

if you would mourn me
and bring me to God
sing me a Requiem
sing me to Heaven

when our finite-self overwhelms us
we must remember that infinity runs through the finite
it is a river carried by memory, propelled by love(singingsong)
as we succumb to its current
perhaps it is only by the beauty of love that we can find our way

touch in me
all love and passion
pain and pleasure
grief and comfort

out of infinity is finite, out of eternity is now, out of past married to future is present
it is a true miracle and the only and forever miracle that out of the instant between memory and expectation
should come to us all the world is.
Only upon our return from silence(preexistent song) may we fully embrace sense
life is the sense, that flashes before us in an instant and if we miss some then we miss all
if we numb ourselves if we forget our regret and our hope than we kill not our body but our soul

sing me a lullaby,
a love song
a requiem

sing,
the lesson is to sing
for in the singing, not our idea of the song, does love abide and flourish
when wisdom, logic, and chance fail, the voice remains
sing

love me, comfort me
bring me to God

love and comfort all for it is the very essence of God the perfection

sing me a love song
sing me to Heaven

02:02 am: slightly bitter
I fucking hate our sham of a state government...except for Gwen and Bourne. I would walk the Earth for those two right now. I passionately hope that someday Raikes will realize what a truly worthless and incompetent suit of a statesman he is and how much he has hurt the children of Nebraska.