Hypotheses Part 3

The professional desk jockeys among my readers have probably all considered the toll that lifestyle takes on their bodies. Standing desks are growing as a solution to the slouching and inactivity. This often works great, but does introduce fatiguing stress to one's joints. Others take to sitting on exercise balls. Studies indicate that these ball chairs don't actually improve posture or provide extra exercise. My personal experience corroborates this. I think I've hit on a good compromise, and it's a pretty old idea.

Guido

Let me tell you about a great guy named Guido. He invented a language that greatly lowered the barrier for new students to enter into his art. It was very difficult to learn a script in the old languages either because the syntax was so arcane or because you really needed someone to fill in missing details every time. Guido's language was intuitive and readable, and it made it possible to reproduce results with minimal training. And now, around a millennium later, it's hard to imagine music without the ubiquitous staff that Guido d'Arezzo first invented.

Does Not Compute

Let's talk about language. How amazing is it that using sounds or symbols, we can implant in another person's mind an entirely new state? We can describe a place that person has never seen, we can construct a belief that person has never considered, we can convey an emotion that person has never felt.

But not without errors in transmission. Remember the game, "telephone"? Why can't language be more precise? Let me try to explain this in an unconventional way and see what it means for programming languages.

Nobels

You know what's cooler than winning a Nobel Prize? Winning two Nobel Prizes. How many people have done this since the first award in 1901? Four. Would you believe that the first was a woman?

Hypotheses Part 2

Fancy bars these days like to serve their cocktails with a single big chunk of ice. Less surface area means slower cooling means less dilution of your expensive elixir over time. I don't buy it.

Hypotheses Part 1

I'm going to try again to focus on short-form publishing here. I'm starting yet another series of posts called "Hypotheses". I am well known as having random ideas float through my head. Some of these are ideas about how some part of existence works. I'll share some with you in this series.

Preconceptions Part 2

It's over. Four trips to Lincoln Center over the space of a week, and more hours of serious drama and music than I can count with my fingers and toes. (My toes aren't very nimble, so for the purposes of counting, I effectively have four toes.) The live experience is definitely more rewarding than even the Live in HD shows where the connection is asymmetric. In the opera house, the performers give me their best, and I return my undivided attention and gratitude (in the form of applause). They certainly earned it these four evenings. After viewing it in person, I can say that this is a wonderful production. It is not perfect. No production of Wagner is ever close to perfect. But the embattled Lepage is actually the least of the production's problems.

Preconceptions Part 1

Tonight begins my first Ring cycle at the opera house. I've seen the Otto Schenk production on DVD, and the Live in HD performances of the Robert Lepage production in the theaters. I thought them both fantastic productions. The former was much beloved by New York's operavores. The latter has been universally panned. It is that latter production that I will be seeing live.

Criticisms mostly center around the set, dubbed "the machine". Robert Lepage is responsible for the Cirque du Soleil show, Kà, in Las Vegas, and he brings his high-tech artistry here. The machine is a dynamic backdrop consisting of 24 independently rotatable planks that can turn from a simple flat screen to stair steps to the trees of the forest and more. The machine has been called loud, distracting, alienating, shallow. My impressions from the theaters were rather opposite. I found the use of the machine highly creative and visually stunning. I thought it in keeping with Wagner's ideal of the unified gesamtkunstwerk.

But I am well aware that the experience at the hall can differ significantly, so I won't yet criticize the critics. For now, my opinions are as follows:

The Otto Schenk production is about as traditional a staging as you'll find. This is not a bad thing. Compare to productions out of LA, SF, Valencia, or the Mecca for ring-heads: Bayreuth (pronounced bye-royt). There are so many subtexts that one could project onto the Ring that many argue the most enduring productions are the ones that do not confine the interpretation in any way. A post-industrial American setting is novel, but it restricts the message. By keeping the setting in an ambiguous time and allowing the gods godliness, the opera is free to communicate in whatever ways the viewer/listener is receptive. Schenk's sets and costumes are stirring, the music and singing superb. I love this production as well as anyone else.

My viewing of the Gelb production seemed just as traditional. We are still talking about gods and heroes. In some ways I gather that it is even truer to the text. Some of Wagner's stage directions have been ignored for technical reasons, but Gelb manages to adhere (sometimes to ironic complaints of adding unnecessary details). The costumes and singing are just as breathtaking. For my non-opera-going friends, the Lepage production is the one I would introduce first.

I am being intentionally vague since I'm trying to keep an open mind. The rest of my impressions will have to come later. For now, my feelings toward the new production are very positive. I will let you know in a couple weeks whether the criticisms deserve merit or are merely meretricious.

Amazing Engineering - Episode 1

As an experimental physicist, I spent more time engineering than doing science. As a result, I've come to greatly appreciate sophisticated or clever works of engineering. Sometimes you read about accomplishments that don't seem possible. I'm starting a series on these sorts of feats.

A Little Night-Food Music

For the unaware, the title is a reference to Mozart's Eine Kleine Nachtmusik. Everyone knows the tune. Also for the unaware, "night-food" refers to the food you eat at dinner. So you see, the title is clever and not at all contrived because this post is about music to go along with dinner.

Concert Etiquette

The concert hall is a unique place. I can think of no other place in which the attention of so many people is so singularly focused. Be it the opera, ballet, symphony, or chamber recital, the attention points to the stage. And because the rests, the silence, in music is as important as the notes (just ask John Cage), that attention remains unbroken through the performance. This leads to what may seem a stifling atmosphere to many -- full of obscure and antiquated rules and traditions. In actuality, there is only one rule, and it exists for good reason. That rule is: do not disturb.

Renaissance

I don't think I have to remind my readers what renaissance means, but that is what is going on here.

The People's House

Considering that one's social graph is not uniformly distributed among the general population, but rather concentrated around a small number of highly-connected nodes, I think it is fairly safe to say that 100% of my readers fall in the lower 99%.  Recent posts on NPR's Deceptive Cadence blog discuss the widespread perception of opera as exclusive to the 1%, the super-rich.  And yet here you've come, my commoners, to where I like to share my thoughts on that very topic.  Responses to the posts ranged from accusations of opera being outdated and out of touch to those blaming Hollywood for the false stereotypes.  Many people pointed to their personally penurious positions and penchants for opera as evidence against the stereotype.  I'll take the argument a step further.  You will find few institutions more egalitarian than the opera house.

ToreAmix

I write a blog post on remixes, and in less than a week I discover a perfect example of a high-concept remix album being released by Tori Amos.  I confess I am not familiar with her discography, but I gather that her latest album, Night of Hunters, is an exceptional one.  You can listen to it in its entirety for free at the link, presumably until the release date of September 20.

Remix

To my readers:  Apologies for the extended hiatus.  As it turns out, finishing and defending a dissertation drains one's energy for composition more than I anticipated.  After my momentum was lost, it was hard to pick up the pencil, as it were, through travels, moves, job searching and so on.  But I can only go so long without exercising my creative muscle, and so I am back.  And today my topic is the remix.

Quicklink 4

Just a single link for you today.  Life has been incredibly busy since my last post.  It will continue to be very busy for the next month.  But I can at least squeeze in posts like this one.  I came across this fun piece in the blog I've mentioned before.  I don't really agree with a couple of his examples as being "metal," but certainly you can imagine a heavy metal cover of any of these pieces.  In fact, you can imagine heavy metal covers to a lot of classical pieces.  Compare the opening to Rachmaninoff's Piano Concerto no. 2 and Muse's Space Dementia, and you'll hear clear similarities.  Or check out Epica's album, "The Classical Conspiracy" for several cool rocked out versions of classical music.  What classical pieces would you like to hear remixed into heavy metal or sound metal to you in their own right?

Grad School Allegory

Some friends of mine and I recently watched a DVD of a production of the opera, "Dialogues of the Carmelites" (1957) by Francis Poulenc based on the Martyrs of Compiègne.  It's somewhat modernist, being almost completely in recitative with occasional ensembles.  Unfortunately, the DVD forewent subtitles since the production used the English libretto, but can anyone ever understand a soprano in any language?  I understand the libretto is deep and thoughtful ("Dialogues..."), so I'm sorry we missed out on that.  Still, it ends with a most heartbreaking scene.  I could not stop thinking about it, so I looked up a few different productions of that scene on YouTube and decided I liked this one.  Watch it once and tell me it doesn't move you.  Yes, that is the sound of a guillotine that repeats 16 times for these 16 nuns.  Listen to the texture of the music thin down from chorus to quartet, trio, duet, solo.  It's tragic!

And then I realized it works as an allegory for our sad lives as PhD students.  Read on for my translation.  And excuse the sacrilege.  It's just satire.

Quicklink 3

This is somewhat old news now.  Anthony Tommasini, classical music critic for the NYT, started the year posing the question, "Who are the 10 greatest composers in history?"  The subsequent articles and videos are thoughtful and present something of a quick tour through music history.  The rest of the articles are listed here in reverse chronological order.  The final list is announced here.  It's just for fun.

Here's a story that demonstrates why one must be thoughtful if one is to command an international audience without inadvertently insulting people.

Virtuosity

A belated post....

Today, I will explore the notion of virtuosity and what it means to me.  Let's start with the Oxford Dictionary Online's (ODO) definition of a virtuoso: "a person highly skilled in music or another artistic pursuit."  Seems simple enough, but when talking about new words or ideas, I find it instructive to consider the edges.  No one would argue against applying the appellation to Yehudi Menuhin, Arthur Rubinstein, or Jacqueline du Pré, so heaping more praise on them does little to clarify anything.  But what about soloists less celebrated?  Do they deserve the designation?  Is skill all that matters or does depth of expression make a difference?  What about dancers, authors, or painters?  Why are we more likely to proclaim a poet a genius than a virtuoso?

Quicklink 2

I haven't given you a real post since before Christmas, and all I have to offer today is a couple of fun links.  My apologies.  I'm working on a couple of posts, but they're taking more research to complete than I expected.  I haven't been feeling particularly inspired to write about simpler topics.  See, I have this other writing project that has to take priority for some reason....

So today, here is a cartoon that proves I'm not alone in a sentiment to which I've twice referred before.

Second is a lovely video of the winner of an online competition for young musicians.  She'll get to perform in Carnegie Hall and feature in NPR's "From The Top" program which features pre-collegiate musicians from around the country.  I share this in part because of a joke I recently heard: What do you call a person who hangs around musicians?  A percussionist.  That's what's so great about this.  How often does anyone, let alone a kid, get to demonstrate this level of proficiency in a percussion instrument?  How many professional female percussionists do you ever see in orchestras or as soloists?  (I can only think of Evelyn Glennie who also happens to be deaf.)  And how often does anyone look at a percussionist alongside a slew of violinists, pianists, cellists, etc. and decide that the percussionist is more talented?  Brava!

Keep this young lady in mind as we'll be considering her in my next post.  I'll try to get it up in the next week or two.  But really, I need to be making better progress on my other endeavor....