Tautological Aphorism II

This one is not actually a tautology...

Man cannot make a crap sandwich without squishing shit.

Teresa Stratas at 70

One of the great actresses of the operatic stage turns 70 in a couple of weeks.

Of course, CBC is going to pump the hell out of this milestone, as they should, bumping live opera to play, on the radio, the Salome film recording she did with Böhm. Wouldn't it be nice to broadcast it on CBC TV too?

One can dream...

Anyway, in a cheap attempt to divert attention away from all the bad news Austria is getting in the papers these days, I should note that ORF1, the Austrian public radio station has beaten we canucks to the punch with an entire program devoted to Teresa Stratas on their Apropos Oper program.

I would have loved to tell you this before it came on, but unfortunately, I'm liveblogging this one. So tune in if you can, right now, and if not, listen to CBC on the 24th.

Legerdemain

Over the past couple of years, I have begun to practice coin and card tricks to amaze my friends and thwart my enemies. Alas, like Dunstan Ramsay in Robertson Davies' Deptford Trilogy, it is slow and clumsy going for me, and I daresay that at this stage I don't know how far I will ever get.

Like many, I enjoyed magic as a child, and actually knowing how many tricks work hasn't diminished my admiration. Indeed, the difficulty and work it takes to be a bad magician is now so apparent to me that watching a simple card or coin trick is a source of genuine pleasure, a kind of pleasure that vastly more exotic looking things, like CGI animated movies, never achieve.

I take my enjoyment of magic, as a sign, a sign of maturity, when one can embrace the artifice and the con for what they are - a glimpse into mystery. Now we all know that modern stage magic is very much a science, indeed a virtually positivist affair, but is there anything so rigorous so devoting to hiding it's trial and error origins?

I like the following card trick for a few reasons. It's relatively simple and it's all out in the open, there's no automata here, it's just legerdemain.

The Problem With Possibility and Evidence

So much for posting once a day this year! However, I would at least beg your indulgence for this most recent drought - my home computer has crashed, and with it, a lot of the posts in preparation!

I must admit that I have been pretty lucky over the years with digital storage, but you only need one crash, and 8 years of thoughts and memories - poof!

Anyway, I had mentioned in a comment on the Varieties of Unreligious Experience the following:

In reading your post, I couldn’t help but think of the “anybody but Shakespeare” movement – Christ, even Derek Jabobi doesn’t think Shakespeare wrote his plays! So your point about intelligent people falling for these kinds of things is both well-taken and well-founded.

But when it comes down to it, doesn’t this all revolve around the fact that one can say, without contradiction, that the 2nd Earl of Essex really wrote Shakespeare’s plays, despite his 1601 beheading, that the evidence is there, you just have to look at it so, with a little charity in your thoughts as you read my outlandish thoughts? That nothing rules out the possibility of this logically?

I had prepared a post on this, but it's gone, so I am instead going to present something that, in what I hope is a nice Wittgensteinian vein, shows what I mean here instead of argue for it!

A Break in the Garden

Two philosophers (A and B) have just finished a conversation about a nearby tree. Two non-philosophers (A and B), walking nearby, decide to join the philosophers.

Instead of continuing their discussion about the tree the philosophers had been so interested in, the pairs embark on a conversation about the possibility of rain tomorrow.

Each conversation begins with a sentence A, “It is possible that it will rain tomorrow,” and is answered with a reply B, “How do you know?”

So Non-philosopher A’s reply is likely something along the lines of “I checked the weather,” or, “I saw a forecast on television.” One could also expect talk using folk knowledge, like the appearance of a clear sky at dusk. Possibility here is founded in some kind of sensual evidence.

Moreover, Non-philosopher B would likely accept this explanation, and perhaps try to remember not to leave home without an umbrella tomorrow. In other words, Non-philosopher B would probably act on philosopher A’s knowledge of tomorrow’s weather conditions.

Now contrast this with what happens when the philosophers and non-philosophers next meet.

The following day, the philosophers are again sitting near the same tree, and the non-philosophers again sit down next to them. This time, Non-philosopher B turns to philosopher A, and smiles. Philosopher A says , “It is possible that it will rain tomorrow.” Non-philosopher B says “How do you know?” Philosopher A replies, “because it is possible for it to rain tomorrow.”

Non-philosopher B is somewhat perplexed here. He says “what do you mean?” The philosopher replies, “you accept that it rains here, right? Then rain is possible tomorrow, isn't it? On cannot rule out it raining tomorrow.” Non-philosopher B, feeling perhaps a bit misunderstood, nevertheless accepts the philosopher’s answer.

I hope the distinction between the two conversations is clear, as it is very hard to express this difference in any way except by reminding oneself of the times one has said or was confronted with this kind of use of the word “possible”, and perhaps imagining the philosopher probably stressing the word "possible" as he says it.

For the non-philosophers, “because it is possible for it to rain tomorrow” expresses a kind of empirical possibility, whereas the philosopher is concerned with something I would call conceptual possibility.

The philosopher has no need to check the weather, and there is nothing that lends credence to this assertion except that one can say that rain is possible tomorrow, because it rains on earth, which is an empirical fact, but there's no empiricism in the philosopher's observation, is there?

The big problem, howevr, is that what the philosopher is saying isn't nonsense. This is a perfectly reasonable way to use “It is possible that it will rain tomorrow.”, isn't it?

Many people, smart people, speak of things in this conceptual way all the time when speculating about how things might have been or might be. Worse yet, in the instance of the Shakespeare-as-Bacon camp, they appear to have evidence for their arguments!

But isn't what makes the arguments possible in these kinds of cases, not the evidence, but the possibility of evidence, the possibility of being wrong, the possibility of there being no certain knowledge, the possibility that the Templars never disbanded, etc?

See how I have to use that philosophical possibility here to try to dispel the conceptual possibility both cranks and fine scholars use to justify their claims?

Eugene Onegin at the COC

Went to see Eugene Onegin at the Canadian Opera Company last Friday, and I do not know if I've ever come away from a performance more confused about how I felt about it.

There were some wonderful things - the singing, for example. Giselle Allen as Tatyana and Brett Polegato as Onegin were superb. Allen handled the letter scene beautifully, although the letter scene's staging, as well some real balance problems with the orchestra, completely undermined the work.

My main issue with the staging was its central premise. This production opens with Onegin meeting Tatyana as the Princess. In other words, the opera is staged as Onegin's reminiscences of what happened.

Now this isn't a bad premise. However, its execution in this production ruined the letter scene. Why? Onegin is on stage, presumably imagining Tatyana's feverish writing, turning the scene into something about him, and not her. But the scene is all about her, isn't it?

Making this his memory of something he couldn't have been privy to renders their reunion in the Third Act problematic though, doesn't it? We only know what Onegin's been thinking, so what do we make of with Tatyana's feelings at the end?

Worse, during Lensky's famous aria, Kuda, kuda vï udalilis, Onegin isn't there! Why? Why do we leave Lensky to his own devices here? Moreover, the duel itself is staged as Lensky committing suicide, not being shot by Onegin, again downplaying the tragedy of the entire opera.

By turning Onegin into a kind of crypto-Werther, where it all becomes about Onegin, the opera loses its tragic element. Onegin is indeed a cautionary tale, but doesn't come out much more clearly when we are exposed to his actions as an objective feature of the work, and not a subjective outcome of his own, perhaps deluded mind?

What about the rest of it? The set was beautiful, and the staging, beyond this, was quite beautiful. That's the word that keeps coming to mind - beautiful. Except for the orchestra, which played worse than I have ever heard them. And I saw something I haven't seen in the new opera house - the orchestra and chorus came completely apart in the Act II, Scene I finale.

It was scary - it almost looked like it was going to fall apart. It didn't, but I hate to say it - the rapturous applause the audience gave the orchestra at the end was undeserved. Toronto, do you actually listen to the opera? Or is applause like tipping here, where you do it out of obligation and not as a sign of the quality of the performance?

The orchestra is so much better than they were last Friday, and I fear that the darkest consequence of Bradshaw's passing is that the COC orchestra is beginning to lose its way. Let's hope I am wrong.

I should also mention that one of the interesting aspects of the production was how it brought out Onegin's boredom. In this production, Onegin becomes a thoroughly Romantic figure stuck in an aristocratic past, an interesting line of inquiry which got somewhat lost in the other strangeness of the production.

So was Onegin good, or was it bad? Friends, that is no kind of question. This production is well worth seeing, precisely because of the problems it poses. Check it out if you can.

Sign of the Times

Have we been reduced to taking pictures and building posts around them here at the Transcontinental?

While playing with my son at a park, I came across this sign:



As the sign says, the park has been "designed" for 2 to 5 year olds, so one can be assured that a phalanx of experts were consulted to ensure the everyone's child develops while they play. For that is what all the kids are doing these days - developing isn't just for teenage girls anymore!

Am I suspicious of the idea of childhood development? Well, yes. And, it seems, so is the Toronto District School Board - note the rules immediately below, which are the real reason I decided to snap and share this sign with you.

I suppose the Rules here are really meant for the parents. Perhaps we are meant to read them to our 2 to 5 year olds before they begin playing, and they are to sign a little form letting parents and the School Board know that they understand the rules.

However, it was rule 4 that really got me - "Think before you act". Ah yes, this is little bit of wisdom is well understood by the toddler set. Indeed, most children think before they act, which is why they tend to contravene the first three rules!

I can imagine many the small child thinking "walking won't get me to the slide soon enough, so I'll run", causing them to act.

Do you see how the oh so clever aphorism of the bureaucratic scribe who penned this edict slips away?

"But Daddy, I did think about it before I punched little Natalie!"

"Son, that's true. You upheld rule 4 of the playground despite breaking rule 1."

Two wrongs don't make a right, but what do a wrong and a right make?

Brachvogel's Freidemann Bach

Last year, I suggested that I would try to get at the heart of why J.S. Bach's eldest son, W.F. Bach, didn't get much respect these days despite his being acknowledged as the finest composer of the sons of Bach.

Well, it seems there's more to this than Bach fils wrapping fish in ol' Vater's cantatas! Turns out Albert Emil Brachvogel wrote a book entitled Friedemann Bach that traces the travails, and yes, my friends, the loves, of our dashing organist and Kapellmeister!

Now I have to say, it's a bit of a potboiler, but I would say that this little novel has had more to do with Bach's problems than just about anything else.

Don't take my word for it though- read it yourself. What's that? You dont read German? Well, that's OK, because I'm going to translate the thing and serialize it, right here on the Transcontintental!

One caveat - It will get done, but it will take me some time. Here's to hoping it is enjoyed, and that in getting it out in English, we can begin to examine the like of W.F. Bach in a new light.

Larval Subjects on Bureaucracies

Larval Subjects, a site I have only recently discovered, has an excellent post on bureaucracy - here!

The rant is anything but incoherent.

It seems to me that, over the past decade, public sector bureaucracies have left their traditional vocation as a group of professionals charged with doing the public good to become a part of the service sector. Broader public sector workers are no longer there to provide advice in a dialectical relationship with those in power, rather, they are there to provide value-added services to their diverse set of clients (my god, that all rolls off the keyboard so easily...).

The evidence for this is everywhere. Isn't this what the CBC is doing to Radio Two?

The chilling thing is that I do not doubt the sincerity of the bureaucrats responsible for dismantling an orchestra and attempting to make CBC Radio Two more "inviting". Indeed, I suspect many of them believe they're fighting the good fight, the good fight being whatever it is they've been told to fight for. They are serving their client. That is all that matters.

In the comments, Larval Subjects makes another important point, this time about writing. These words should be given to each and every bureaucrat instead of the rules foisted upon everyone by plain/clear language industry:

...teaching writing is not simply a matter of transmitting information that the student can then replicate and reproduce as in the case of an assembly line. Rather, it is an art where the student learns an entirely new way of relating to language, thought, arguments, etc. As such, it is not the sort of thing that can be mechanized or easily standardized, though there are certainly techniques for developing these skills and improving them.

Why is this so difficult to grasp in an institutional setting? Because it's so difficult to quantify, it's labour intensive, and it's slow and painful. A rule about avoiding the passive voice is much simpler to enforce than teaching people how to use it best, to give people a feel for their own language.

It requires institutions to make a committment to better writing on an individual level, instead of a corporate communications strategy to demonstrate what "proven steps" bureaucracies are taking to communicate to the people.

The grand irony of all this "quality control" is that most participants in the system know that there is little actual quality, indeed, that it is a virtual quality, a quality on paper instead of a quality in practice.

Serve your client, show your superiors that they've been served in a quantifiable way, and you are good.

But this is not good, is it?

Uh

The Toronto Symphony Orchestra musician who left his violin at a streetcar stop will be getting it today. The Toronto Star has the full story here.

Is it just me, or does anyone else get a bit of an awkward feeling about the circumstances while reading it?

I'm not going to anything except this: wouldn't it have been more
honourable to point out to the homeless woman that she had in her posession a valuable violin, and that there was a reward attached? $1000 would have paid for a lot of coffee and smokes, or perhaps failing that, rent.

Anyway...a least it's a happy story for the TSO violinist.

Back In Your Cage, Classical Monkey!

So how is the media greeting the outrage of classical music lovers after the one-two combo of losing classical music programming on CBC Radio 2 as well as the CBC Radio Orchestra?

Mockery.

One shouldn't be surprised. The stuffy strawman that is the skinny white-haired man in his cardigan comparing his twelve recordings of Beethoven's Fifth is as entrenched as the dumb blonde in the pantheon of pop culture derision.

The tale of the tape? Let's take a look at three, count em', three separate columns, whose message can be distilled to the following:

CALM DOWN.

They are like parents calming an errant child, and their patronizing tone is ironic given that it is the classical music listener who is the premier patronizor in our civic space, merely by virtue of his tastes in music.

Ken Rockburn in the Calgary Herald:

It has long been known among CBC types that Radio 2, with its unrelenting focus on classical music, has been a dusty corner of the broadcast world with audience numbers that, even in the imaginary world of public broadcasting where such things are not supposed to matter, are laughably tiny. When the semi-annual ratings come out, Radio 2 suffers from what private broadcasters refer to as "dash disease." That means that for each quarter-hour average audience number there is no number, only a dash. In other words, no measurable audience.

CBC types, like him, I guess.

But what about the facts? Well, you, like Ken here, could have looked at the ratings over at BBM. But then you'd see that Radio 2 not only doesn't appear to suffer from "dash disease", it seems that there are a whole bunch of private broadcasters who lose to CBC Radio 2 on a regular basis. Here, look!

But let's not let data get in the way of setting that straw man ablaze, eh Ken?

And then there's our John Doyle, Canada's Flann O'Brien, writing in yesterday's Globe, cleverly entitled "Note to classical music fans: Get over yourselves":

To be perfectly honest with you, I'm not all that worried about CBC Radio 2 reducing the amount of classical music it airs.

No, he's really worried about TV. But John, why do you feel the need to dismiss the loss of an entire orchestra to make your point? A smart, funny man like you? Who cares if you don't care for classical music? If the classical music people are bothering you with e-mails, and you don't care, just ignore them.

Finally, John Terauds last week. It starts out by infantilizing classical music listeners (note, Terauds is the Classical Music critic of the Toronto Star):

Don't mess with what we know and love – especially if it's our music.

We treat our radio stations like an infant who has grown attached to her first teddy bear.

CBC Radio 2 has for years been the favourite plush toy for the country's classical music listeners.

Like many a teddy, our radio network has lost its eyes somewhere along the way. The fur is stained and matted. The ripped fabric around the neck has let some stuffing spill out.

It's not pretty. But no matter. Radio 2 is ours and we're not letting go.

Wow. According to John, classical music fans need a course in change management.

Yes, but I wonder when the Star decides it doesn't need a classical music reviewer Mr. Terauds will embrace "change" when they reassign him to the faith desk to cover the latest church bake sale.

So what do we make of all this? Is it just payback for that snooty Russell Smith for always being so snobby, with his cultivation of tastes in food, clothes and the arts, a veritable scourge?

As anyone who reads me knows, my feelings about the changes at CBC are ambivalent at best. I no longer consider the CBC a classical music station, and I haven't for a while.

My sense is that, pace Ken Rockburn, is that the best thing for classical music listeners to do would be let the CBC succumb to dash disease and let them reconsider their actions through of the humiliation of broadcasting Feist only to have no one listen to her, because no one goes to the CBC to listen to Feist!

What bothers me, however, isn't the content, it's their tone. What's the the source of that nastiness, that patronizing?

As many lovers of classical music know, telling someone you listen to Beethoven is a throw down to a lot of people. People get defensive, or angry, or feel a need to defend their music from my "elitist" tastes.

What's interesting is that this reaction often comes not from the utterance itself (I listen to Beethoven), but the context in which most people think about classical music lovers (pompous jerks who hate rock, also known as the music of the people).

Classical music listeners usually have to go to great lengths to reassure people that they do not in fact hate popular music, or that they are also just ordinary people, usually by talking about Radiohead or Sarah Harmer, or perhaps by drinking cheap domestic beer in front of people suspicious of their classical music listening tendencies.

So what do we have here? Could it be that when it comes to classical music, the ghost of the French Revolution hangs over our collective thoughts? Could it be simply that we still see classical music as an aristocratic pursuit, and that this offends our egalitarian sensibilities? Could it really be something as ridiculous as that?

Could this be the very source of all our problems as classical music listener? Any thoughts?