Dum vixi tacui, mortua dulce cano

A long time ago, I had this whole crazy plan to do a multi-part series around tuning, and weigh in on the debates around equal vs. just temperament and the whole debate that took place a few years ago about how some squiggles on the title page of the Bach's Well-Tempered Clavier were in fact Bach's tuning system.

Like all my other crazy plans, I never got to it.

However, this music review got me thinking about it again. I would love to hear what these tunings sound like...wait! Bradley Lehman, the discoverer of this tuning system has a myspace page (who doesn't these days!).

You can listen to the F# Minor Fugue from the 1st Book! Or at his home page, you can hear streaming audio of a whole selection of his performances.

To be honest, I don't know what to say. The NY Times reviewer seems to hear things as everyone else does, although, to be honest, I don't really believe him.

To me, it's more like citrus in water than some kind of massive revolutionary transformation of everything we've ever thought and understood about Bach.

But what really got me was the painting and on the inside of the lid of the harpsichord. I just love the idea of the instrument, to be fondled, is also an object of aural and visual beauty as well. It also reminds me that I must learn Latin.

And I just found the papers I was going to use to write those old tungin posts....the eternal return returns. What's next? A Heimito von Doderer post? A chapter of Friedemann Bach? More narcissistic overly self-conscious self-referential musings?

Actually, what's really missing are more train references. That's something I really need to work on.

Blogging the Bach Cantatas: Advent I

One of my formative experiences as a musician was heading to the Calgary Public Library in the summer of 1990 and taking out the Karl Richter cycle of the Bach Cantatas. I listened to them all that summer, back when I had the kind of time a teenager passionate about, uh, Bach, has.

So when I started blogging, I wondered how to recapture that magic of 18 years ago, except in blog form.

So here's what I'm going to do, beyond hoping that doing this will qualify me for all the classical music blog rankings - I'm going to write a blog post on every Bach cantata in the cycle. I can't listen to them all in the space of 2 months, but over a year?

Do I know what form these posts will take? Nope. I guess we will see what happens. So here goes. I also know this post is a few days late, but better a few days than using it as an excuse to stall for another year...I also hope they get better. I suspect you will too.

***

The Richter cycle begins with BWV 61. Advent does not begin with heads bowed, nor in quiet contemplation. From his Weimar years, the opening movement instead proclaims the arrival

der Heiden Heiland

Der Jungfrauen Kind erkannt

Des sich wundert alle Welt

Gott solch Geburt ihm bestellt.

The beauty of the tenor aria is only matched by the banality of its text

Komm, Jesu, komm zu deiner

Und gib ein selig neues Jahr!

Befördre deines Namens Ehre

Erhalte die gesunde Lehre

Und segne Kanzel und Altar!

There's nothing like the German imperative...Jesus, get in here! How many times have I heard that before?

The soprano aria, however, although also beautiful, also fails to really get us anywhere. The final chorus, however, well, it just kicks, well, you know (these are church cantatas....)

Anyway, I know this probably isn't what you were expecting, but, it's my blog, and I can assure you that this series will rise above the usual banalities, unlike this cantata, which just bookends them.

I hope.

Kein Mampf

So I was at the World's Biggest Bookstore a few weeks ago, and I noticed this:



So just to be clear- you can't buy Mein Kampf at Indigo or the World's Biggest Bookstore or Chapters, but you can buy a book on how to read it.

I almost feel bad pointing this out, actually. Perhaps it's a sobering reflection on staff turnover in the warehouse bookstore industry. Or, and I'd put my money on this, perhaps someone is playing a dark joke on their boss, Heather Reisman.

I mean, look who they've stuck next to Hitler! His old school chum! And right below him lurks Heidegger!

Anyway, if it was a joke, here's to you, anonymous Indigo book buyer!

And if it wasn't, well, God help us all.

Not Consuming

About a week ago, a thought occurred to me - what does it mean to stop consuming?

We are asked, as citizens, to keep spending to keep everything afloat, even though we also know that it is this very drive, the drive to keep everything afloat, which is the cause of all pretty much all our problems.

So how do we get off this treadmill? I understand the Adbusters mentality of culture jamming, but I also understand that they are pretty much an established brand who would really like you to consume their magazine and t-shirts, and so on and so forth. In other words, they are not even hypocrites, but the G.E. Moore of the sustainability set, who think that by raising their hands in the air that they can prove they are more virtuous than bad producers.

But what is a more righteous path? What constitutes a reduction in consumption? Is it where every individual, er produces more than they take? But produces more what? If say, I wanted to try to stop consuming next year, what would that look like? How would that take shape?

I am not just talking about frugality here. And perhaps this is the stupidest blog post in the history of blogdom, but I am asking these questions in as naive a way as possible because I honestly have very little idea as to what being a non-consumer would look like.

Being a non-consumer. That's sounds really stupid, does it not? I have to eat, find shelter, but beyond that, what? What about consuming second hand things? Does that count?

In some strange way, I feel as though no one I know or have encountered has ever asked these questions. We all seem preoccupied with how corporations and governments ask us to consume, yet there's also lots of public pressure not to consume, but how does one actually not consume?

There doesn't seem to be much of a grey area here.

Because here's the thing, if I'm not consuming, I am still producing, right? And if people are taking my "produce", so to speak, am I not obliging someone to consume what it is that I produce?

It seems as though the only solution is to become a Buddhist subsistence farmer-hermit.

Economic Possibilities

There is a lot of talk about how the financial crisis is awakening the possibility of "alternative" modes of economic organization (look how timid that is when you write it out like that).

One of the easier points to score off Karl Marx is to note that his observation that capitalism carried within its bosom the seeds of its own destruction is flat-out wrong.

I mean, we still laugh at this conjecture, don't we? Even now, when the structure of capitalism appears to be collapsing as he predicted, ideology steps in and keeps it going until we've all forgotten that it had collapsed in the first place, and we can again point mockingly at the "socialists" whose experiments went disastrously wrong?

Could it be that what Marx failed to account for was the robustness of capitalist ideology? Its normative flavour?

Is this why even stauch, incessant critics of capital all over the media and the blogosphere can only muster "possibilities", because they too cannot really see the alternatives they themselves so deeply desire?

The current solution to the financial crisis does not point to 1917, or to the future, but 1944. We appear to be resetting the clock. Perhaps this is the true secret to capitalism's endurance - its timelessness.

and if many of us seem conceptually comfortable with abandonning even the idea of progress in order to save capitalism from its own destruction, what hope is there for any other "possibility"?

Just some thoughts.

AGO

My son and I take the Dundas streetcar regularly.

We had grown accustomed to the construction site that was the Art Gallery of Ontario. The gallery closed late last year to finish the Frank Gehry designed renovations.

We would pass by it on the way in and out of town, watching them install the canopy at the front, watching the glass front get installed, watching the rain drench what is now the sculpture gallery. As we passed by, I told my son we would visit the gallery when it re-opened.

To be honest, I would have preferred check out the new space during the member preview earlier this week, but I couldn't, and as I told my son that the gallery was open, and he insisted we go this weekend.

This is where the lineup started.



The entrance is on Dundas street, right in the middle of the block. This is what the back of the lineup looked like:



Oh, also, it was raining, heavily. Like in Salzburg. It took us about 40 minutes to get inside.

The inside? It's really very beautiful, but it was waaaay too busy to look at much with a three year old, who, once inside, wanted to leave. I spent most of my time looking to see if the gallery had installed any Rodney Graham, to no avail...

***

The AGO refurbishment represents the ironic end of the Mike Harris legacy to Toronto's arts community - we now have all these great buildings, but guess what? No one in Canada appears to be interested in subsidizing these galleries and museums and opera companies so they can a) charge lower admission fees and b) ensure public institutions like the AGO and the ROM remain exactly that.

Instead we have these institutions which are elitist in part because there is no public will to fund them so they they aren't elitist. More on this later.

***

I did snap a few shots inside the AGO. I got a few of my son in the gallery, and only stopped because a guard, who was obviously talking to me but felt the need to extend his authority to the entire gallery, yelled, "there is no photography allowed in the AGO. No one is allowed to take photographs inside the AGO"

No one, that is, except every major and minor media organization in the city.
One thing I had forgotten about since the gallery closed last year was the militaristic security mindset at the AGO.

Thank you, faceless, angry security guard, for reminding me how the staff vibe at the AGO is closest to security at the Vienna State Opera (those who have been there know what I mean) than anything else.

And yes, AGO, this is a shout out to say that your no photographs policy has nothing to do with protecting the art and everything to do with protecting property, which is why your security is so dedicated to enforcing it.

The modern art gallery is a sacred secular space - you cannot touch anything, you must be reverent, and there are lots of people to police your behaviour while you are there.

It is a deeply paradoxical experience. On the fourth floor, I stumbled upon the AGO's (lone?) painting by Mark Rothko. It was a surprise I felt elated and suddenly the world slowed down and the work began to absorb me. Out of the corner of my eye, I see a security guard watching me, or more accurately, my son, for fear that he might stab at the Rothko - that was that. This was the only moment I actually had in the gallery - my only moment of Erfahrung and it dissolved into anger.

This one photo rather sums up today's experience. I look forward to going back when things die down a bit, and I can stand in front of that Rothko, and all the other works waiting to be rediscovered by my eyes.

Alas, there will be no pictures...well, we'll see, I mean, I've done it before....

First Lines - Der Rabbi von Bacherach by Heinrich Heine

In the Rhineland’s downstream, where the laughing face of the riverbank disappears, mountains and cliffs, with their adventuresome castle ruins, gaze defiantly and ascend with a grave and serious grandeur – there lies, like an eerie myth of antiquity, the gloomy, ancient city of Bacherach.

Unterhalb des Rheingaus, wo die Ufer des Stromes ihre lachende Miene verlieren, Berg und Felsen, mit ihren abenteuerlichen Burgruinen, sich trotziger gebärden, und eine wildere, ernstere Herrlichkeit emporsteigt, dort liegt, wie eine schaurige Sage der Vorzeit, die finstre, uralte Stadt Bacherach.

The translation is mine.

TVO and Progressive Conservatism vs. the Market as Bildung

Watching CBC transform itself from a public broadcaster into just another platform devoted solely to mass entertainment (yes, I did just go there), one forgets just how lucky we are to have at least two other public broadcasters here in Ontario - PBS and TVO(actually, 3 if you count TFO, TVO's Gallic sister station) - that don't condescend "to give the people what they want", as in the worst of Hollywood, but with beavers.

Although PBS is American, they have an affiliate here in Toronto because Canadians are huge supporters. We canucks love to mock our hillbilly neighbours, but the reality is that you stand a far better chance of catching an opera on PBS than you do on CBC.

The great thing about American culture is its catholicity. Canadians still haven't really left the 1960's in this regard.

In fact, PBS would completely shame public broadcasting here in Canada if it weren't for TVO and TFO. What's even more fascinating is that TVO and TFO were created by a Conservative government. The minister at the time was Bill Davis, who went on to become Premier, and he was feted yesterday by TVO for his contribution. We who would never vote conservative should applaud him for his pragmatism and vision.

I suspect the only reason that they have survived all these years is that they have been framed as educational stations - they are, in some sense, useful. Putting an opera on TFO, or a lecture series on TVO has a pedagogical value, if not an economic one, and this somehow insulates TVO from the criticisms CBC receives about its value vs. the ever sacred "taxpayer dollar" (I am not being facetious, tax money in Canada is culturally sacred here).

Anyway, however it has worked out, I'm just glad they are there.

Honestly though, can anyone imagine Conservatives making a positive contribution like this to Canadian cultural life anymore? I can't, and to wit, the federal Conservative government's cancellation of the National Portrait Gallery yseterday.

But the establishment of TVO back in the 1960's does point to another way of looking at culture, education, and government, where governments of all stripes believed that they had a role in ensuring that everyone had access to all the meats of our cultural stew (pace Homer Simpson).

The government of the day saw where the market was lacking, and sought to fill it. We assume now that the market satisfies all our needs, and anything that gets government money isn't valuable.

We are almost 180 degrees from the 1960's. How things have changed...

Brian Leiter on the US election

Brian Leiter has a really great analysis of the US election results over here. It was really this kind of stuff, and not his philosophy side, that kept me going back to his blog.

Not that I disagree with his philosophical views...it's more that his willingness to go on the offensive, and to be offensive when it came to politics, was always a breath of fresh air. He hasn't been doing as much of that lately, and I suspect an Obama presidency will further reduce these kinds of posts from him.

I suppose the loss of cheeky blog posts is rather outweighed by the massive increase in sanity in US politics, however....ah well, the give and tike of life...

Class Resentment is Alive and Well

The Toronto Star, which I pretty much despise now, has an article today on Toronto's Auditor General's report around civil servants and sick days.

As always, one is subjected to the predictable troll reaction to this - Outrage! Anger! Hatred for civil servants and their good working conditions and living wages! Curse those unions for delivering on their promise to improve the lives of workers!

By the way, who are these hard-working people who have nothing else to do but sit in their cubicle and post comments at the Star? Aren't they all being whipped by the man while the bureaucrat sips his latte on their dime?

It's strange that everyone is quick to talk of abuse, but no one appears to look at the actual data in the article, such as the "outrageous" difference between public and private sector workers being a mere 3 days.

The entire reaction is premised on the idea that private sector workers aren't allowed to abuse the system as much as their public sector counterparts. Bravo trolls for revealing your implicit assumptions.

But the strangest thing is that the article is premised on the idea of abuse, but the City's own statistics place absenteeism below the national average, and a 1/2 day above the morally pure "private sector worker".

So this is really a tempest in a teapot, premised on a false "public/private" dichotomy, which, if the fincianial crisis should have taught us anything, it's that governments and the private sphere are pretty tightly bound up.

The recipe for this brew is as follows - take an extreme example, find all the people who are outraged about it, and add the statistics at the bottom that invalidate the narrative just so when someone says "where's the balance" you can point out that all the facts are there, even though your aim has been to reinforce prejudice.

If only facts were all that ever mattered. There is so much resentment buried in here, and this is perhaps the most remarkable and depressing legacy of the right over the years - why is it that people with shitty jobs complain about and rail against those with less shitty jobs before they ask why they themselves can't have a less shitty job?

I really don't get it. But if workers ever want to get it, they might want to stop smacking around their fellow workers and realise that maybe organized labour could do the same for them, as in, ensure they can be sick 3 extra days a year.

Oh boy.