Neue Bahnen

It is conventional wisdom these days that serious music making is in trouble.  The public doesn’t support it.  The orchestras are going broke.  Everyone listens to music on their iPods while real musicians starve.  This is mostly rubbish, and it is only more apparent to me as I think about two events I attended this weekend.

Friday night saw the return of the Lars Halle Jazz Orchestra to Chris’s on Sansom St. in Philadelphia.  I knew Lars Halle way back when I had hair and hadn’t yet gotten off the trumpet. (Eleven years clean now, with only one relapse in June 2005.)  I was only too glad to reconnect with him and his ensemble when I moved to Philadelphia a few years ago. Lars drives the band from the drum set and surrounds himself with some of the best talent in the area.

They say that imitation is the sincerest form of flattery, and if this is true, then classical musicians are a loyal lot, performing Bach and Mozart in as correct—and sometimes even inspirational—a way as possible.  There is value in breathing life into the dry bones of long-dead geniuses.  I do my best at it most days of the week.  But the jazz musician has what is arguably a higher calling:  making music on the spot.   A basic rhythm and chord progression holds the structure of the music together while a soloist improvises.  The virtuosity of the musicians may be the most obvious thing to the casual observer, but the musical inspiration is what I pay the most attention to.  It takes brains to do this, and also a capacity to yawp about the mysteries of the universe.  The greatest danger about historicism in art is that the artist will cease to have something to say, but as long as there are musicians who improvise, this is less likely.

I improvise a lot on the organ these days, but my initial instruction in this skill actually came from a jazz musician from Boston while I was a trumpet player.  He once brought down a house filled with hippies and atheists with a little tune called Everybody Ought to Know Who Jesus Is, played on his white baby grand piano.  I went into his studio one day and said I was tired of not being able to improvise.  He wrote out a blues scale, sat down at the piano, and turned me loose.  I remember two things he said from that lesson: 1) “Nothing’s worse than somebody who talks all the time but never says anything.” (I now save such blabbering for this blog.) 2) “I don’t care if you’re playin’ Johann Sebastian BACH! It’s got to groooooove!” From that day, I have never felt like I’m fully a musician unless I’m improvising.

There are musicians who can improvise so well that it sounds like a finished piece, except for the fact that the blood courses through the veins of the listener with more vigor, a sharing in the ecstasy of the performer.  They say that Bach could do this.  So could many French organists.  And no one beats these jazz musicians.  The student of music can always figure on a shot of new energy from hanging out with them.

The Lars Halle Jazz Orchestra is just as good as a major symphony orchestra, except that if you sit at the bar at Chris’s you’ll only have to pay five bucks to hear them.  If you want dinner the cover will cost you fifteen, but you’ve got a seat for the whole three hour performance.  The availability of spirits makes it even more enjoyable.  It’s not as crowded in the summer, since so many people are at the beach, but if you want a decent vantage point for one of these performances during the rest of the year, you better get there early.  Usually it’s standing room only.  This isn’t exactly the sign of a dying art form.  Some would take issue with my lumping jazz in with “serious music,” but they probably need to come out from behind their late 19th century fortress.  Even Richard Weaver thought that jazz was bad music and contrasted it mercilessly with Mozart, showing his ignorance of both styles.  Oh well.  We can’t all be right about everything.

Saturday night brought an experience even more contemporary and no less thrilling.  The Crossing, a choir that performs music of the 21st century, is in the middle of its Month of Moderns, which this year features a number of settings of text by and about Seneca, the Stoic philosopher of yore.  (Do all philosophers have names that begin with an S?)  This particular concert featured works by Kile Smith, a composer from Philadelphia, Kamran Ince, who spends much time in Instanbul, and Gabriel Jackson, resident composer for the BBC.  A review of the concert can be read here.

Kile Smith’s new work commissioned by The Crossing, The Waking Sun, comprised the first half of the concert.  Written for chorus and the baroque ensemble Tempesta di Mare, the third (on a text about Cupid), fourth (on a text about Tantalus), and sixth movements (a beautiful love poem) seem to me to be of particular beauty.  ”I am usually a grudging participant in standing ovations,” I told Kile after the performance, “but tonight I only wished that I were a foot taller.”  (Full disclosure: I am friends with most of the people involved in this performance.  This is not an “objective” review, but what review is?)  In the second half, Kamran Ince’s Theystes featured a gruesome text about cannibalism, and Gabriel Jackson’s Not No Faceless Angel featured a poem about death that was mature beyond the years of the writer.

Turnout for concerts by The Crossing is consistently solid, but Saturday brought a standing room only crowd, perhaps the best showing ever.  Unlike  some concert patrons, however, those who come to Crossing concerts are there not to be seen to but hear, to listen to the music.  They are intelligent listeners: Usually, in any crowd, there is one wiseacre who insists on applauding the millisecond a piece ends, even if it ruins the atmosphere of a performance.  These people want everyone else to know that they know when something is over.  This is one of the reasons that the classical music milieu annoys normal people. This doesn’t happen at Crossing concerts; the whole room is still until conductor Donald Nally has relaxed his posture.  What’s more is the constructive conversation that takes place at the post concert receptions—about the composer, the text, the sound of the choir, whatever.  Just as there are “C and E” Christians, there are “Messiah and Beethoven 5″ audiences; but the Crossing audiences are true believers.

As an audience member I find each of these concerts to be challenging, and usually I find myself wishing I could hear most of the pieces twice.  For awhile I thought I wasn’t paying careful enough attention, but I’m beginning to wonder if this just isn’t a factor of The Crossing and the works that they sing breaking new ground.  We are in a moment of musical transition.  The old forms are passing away, but new ways of writing are not yet settled.  If you pull out a Mass composed in the Renaissance era, there are certain technical and formal aspects of the writing that you can expect to see—a smaller ensemble for the Benedictus, repetition of Kyrie material in the Agnus Dei, etc.  The same kind of thing holds true for Operas, Oratorios and art songs.

But what The Crossing is doing doesn’t really seem to fit any of these molds.  Many of the texts are personally chosen by Donald Nally, who is a voracious reader.  And how should a composer tackle the poetry of Paul Celan or the selections of Seneca?  There is no canon for such a thing, and thanks be to God.  Many aficionados of music pride themselves on their understanding of harmony and of forms, but as I mentioned before, I’m more concerned about whether the musicians have something to say.  As long as this is true, music has a future, even with symphony orchestras.

But will we have the courage to cast off old habits that no longer work?

The Art of Throwing Away an Evening

You’ve likely been in this situation before.  Some friends or family invite you over for dinner, and when the eating is finished, they invite you into the living room to sit down and relax.  Then some jackass turns on the television. God help you if you’re with some people I know and the news is on; they’d rather listen to the government propaganda coming out of the boob tube than allow conversation to flow naturally between the several visitors.  I’m not saying they’re bad people; it’s a habit that they acquired probably beginning with those big loud speakers in elementary school.  But it does make for a dreadful way to spend an evening.

I have been in houses where the television is on all evening.  I’m sure in many places it’s never turned off, ever.  How can the people who live there know each other?  Love and affection cannot be created through osmosis, so when people sit silently watching something together, they don’t engage in the dialogue that is necessary to friendship.  Call me old fashioned, but I want to know something about the person sitting next to me.  I don’t mean the simple booboisie questions like “Where do you work?” or “How many kids do you have and what colleges did they get into?”  I want to know what winds someone’s clock, what gets him out of bed in the morning, what he wonders about when he’s got a whole five minutes to himself.  I want to know if philosophical questions annoy, confuse, or delight him.  It says a lot about a man.  Most people don’t have any patience for these things.  Maybe that’s why the television is on so much.  We are the people with nothing to talk about.  After all, the conversation about soccer practice, Harvard, and GPA’s only lasts so long.

It’s all a waste, really.  Hours of our lives get spent on having our brains distilled into a mucousy pulp.  Down the black hole of the technological dark ages we go.  People who spend their free time half asleep on bar stools make better use of their time.  Hangovers go away; televisions seemingly do not.

Do you recognize something of your own routine in what I’ve just described?  Does your husband spend every waking hour that he’s not at work obsessively watching sports analysis shows, or, more irrelevant still, news and politics?  I don’t intend to insult sports—in fact I myself enjoy them—but there is only so much staring at an idiot box before one becomes stupid.  Fret not, for I bring glad tidings of great joy:  you don’t have to spend your evenings trapped in front of the TV while letting the good stuff of life ooze out your left ear.  You can turn the television off, and live.  I have developed a number of ways to while away an evening so that the “waste” of time is actually constructive.

I did something recently that I hadn’t done in a long time:  the aimless road trip.  It doesn’t have to be long, but it does help to get far enough away from home to get lost and have to find your way back.  That is a glorious feeling, one that many seem unaware of.  When I lived in Lancaster County I used to take such trips in the golden glow of the evening summer sun.  It was a spiritual event.  You haven’t seen anything until you’ve seen a red barn in a valley bathed in the sunset.  I used to pass a number of tobacco farms in that part, and I would wonder how long it would be before the government turned these hard workers into criminals.

These road trips can be taken alone, or with a friend.  Two is the maximum number, I think.  Just the other night I called up a friend of mine, and we drove around the countryside for an hour or more, spewing forth on any number of subjects, most of which were highly personal.  Road trips are good for that.  It is ultimate privacy, and there is no one to interrupt the conversation as often happens in urban areas where everyone knows everyone.  There is something about road noise that soothes the soul and greases the wheels of the brain.  Many conundrums have been solved on windy, hilly roads to nowhere.  No widgets were made on this safari, but I think we are both better men for having taken it.

Maybe you don’t have a car, or don’t like to drive.  In that case I hope you’re not a teetotaler.  (I hold that hope for you in any case.)  One can then always engage in people watching.  Go to a restaurant—it doesn’t even need to be a good one, it just needs to serve alcohol—and get an outside table.  Sitting outside in the spring and summer makes up for any bad food one might eat.  Sit.  Eat.  Drink.  Breathe.  Watch.  You can learn a lot from watching the world go by.  I have pissed away entire evenings like this, the table conversation drifting between energetic banter and quiet contemplation.  The colorful characters come up and down the street, and the entertainment is free, with the price of your meal.  Do not invite any Christian Fundamentalist or Modern Liberal friends; they will ruin the evening by being serious about something.  By all means, discuss serious subjects, but don’t do so in a serious manner.  It tends to hide the truth of a thing.

Finally, there is always the evening dinner party.  I have a friend—let’s call him Thomas Mann—who occasionally invites me out to the Mann estate for an evening of eating, drinking, and discussing whatever’s on our minds.  His downstairs neighbor comes up and usually asks me what I’ve been reading, or what I think of some development in the current events department.  If a television is involved it is only to watch one to two short little things, and there are no TV aficionados there to hush us if we decide that the conversation in the room is more interesting than the pixels on the screen.  No holds barred.  All opinions listened to with respect (but be prepared to be respectfully, though possibly mercilessly, refuted).  Sounds bytes are highly discouraged.  The most wonderful thing about the chit chat at the Mann estate is that no one seems to be too eager to pack things into nifty little boxes; lingering questions are not a threat.  I’m a little less dogmatic, and therefore less of a jackass, than I used  to be, thanks to these delightful visits.  Throw in a little sherry and you have yourself one heavenly experience.

So there you have it, three ideas to use the next time you don’t feel like spending an evening hypnotized by technology. I think you’ll find that if you try these ideas, your partners in the crime of not being “good productive citizens” will become your true friends.  Note that conversation plays an important role in all these activities, and this is the glue that holds humanity together.  People who share ideas find common ground and ways to peacefully, and even respectfully, coexist.  People who do not have open discussions self-righteously shoot each other.  Oh hell, who am I kidding?  Most people would rather own a gun than a book.  Well, for the small minority of you who do try this out, enjoy, and may life be yours to the fullest.

Re-thinking Thomas Day

I try to keep my work and my politics separated for the most part.  There are a number of reasons for this, most of which are obvious and not worth mentioning.  Every now and then, however, I break the rule.  This is one of those times.  Those who come to this blog for the political and more general commentary might well have no interest in this whatsoever, although I do take some potshots at certain kinds of political organizations which you might enjoy.  The topic of conversation, however, is church music, which I try to spruce up with what a friend of mine calls an “incisive” writing style.  That’s putting it nicely, I think.

In any case, I just finished re-reading Thomas Day’s famous book Why Catholics Can’t Sing, and I have documented a metanoia which I underwent here.

An ongoing debate on Serge’s Blog

I have been batting the breeze with some folks who might most accurately be described as paleo-cons over at A Conservative Site for Peace.

The Young Fogey posted some remarks about the pope’s latest here, and the comments are here.  Unlike some others, I comment under my full, actual name, so you will be able to find me easily.  I note the tendency of some to conflate “duty” with law and force.  I submit that if we do not feel an interior impulse to fulfill our duties, then no law can help us, and our culture is dead.  If, in fact, our culture is dead—and on this point a wide array of thinkers are coming to agreement—then sooner or later it must be faced.  What then?

Fragmented Friday Obsessions

I woke up this morning thinking pensive thoughts.  We are simply in a time right now in which economic interventionism (what is often sloppily called “socialism,” even when that term does not really obtain) rules the sentiments of the overwhelming majority of people.  Since sentiment is anterior to logic, I’m not sure what can be done about it.  I get tired of saying the same stuff over and over again.  Certain kinds of circumscription of mind can prevent people from seeing the truth of a given matter, so it’s often a waste of time to issue homilies on the gold standard, the subjective theory of value, etc.

Another thing that has been on my mind is the certain kind of school teacher mentality that seems to come along with being a Statist.  ”What’s with this phase of Catholic libertarians?” someone asked on Facebook, to which I replied that said “phase” is a solid 500 years old, going back to the School of Salamanca.  Of course, people who act so self-righteously don’t care much for facts, so I doubt that this made much of an impression.  What matters most to these people is that everyone sit up straight, raise their hand, and wait to be called on like good little boys.  When the teacher calls on me, I will not have a question, just an observation:  The emperor has no clothes.

Statists love the idea of power being exercised.  It doesn’t matter if it works.  After all, when classical liberalism has been employed throughout history, peace and prosperity have reigned.  But over and over again humanity opts for a violent form of government:  dictatorship, monarchy, or democracy.  To their credit, monarchists understand the pitfalls of democracy.  But their own theory is lacking.  One need only consider the Tudors, the Hohenzollerns, and the Hapsburgs to understand this.  The closest we should ever get to monarchy again is toy castles and drawbridges.

Catholics everywhere who think that they have to cheer every time the pope farts are dutifully defending his encyclical Caritas in veritate.  This document is full of economic falsehoods, and still I’ve only read to paragraph 36.  At least the pope criticizes intellectual property and tariffs.  One of the central, if not the central, error of this letter so far is the false opposition that is set up between the individual and society.  All one needs to do is read Mises’ Human Action, pp. 145-157.

Bartok’s Concerto for Orchestra

Sometime in the early 1940′s, Bela Bartok emigrated to the United States.  He was broke, and, what is worse, sick.  Serge Koussevitsky, conductor of the Boston Symphony Orchestra, commissioned him to write  a piece, which he composed while lying sick.  The result was his concerto for orchestra, a magnificent piece human ingenuity.  In it is all the angst and hope that one would think a suffering man might have.  Sometimes the worst circumstances in life produce the most amazing and surprising things.  That’s comforting when times are tough.  When times are good, it’s a frightening thought.

Here’s the first movement:

On Fathers

Young curmudgeons like me often get wound up about certain pop icons in such a fashion that it would seem that we think that people like Britney Spears portend the end of the world.  In reality, at least in my case, it’s just that her music sucks, and I’m always looking for a chance to say so.  If there is a person who is popular that represents the disintegration of society, then my vote would actually go for someone that does not attract attention for being “bad,” which in America always has something to do with drugs or sex—or, in some cases, working hard and earning a living.  For the dubious honor of Icon of Western Disintegration my vote goes to…….Ray Romano.

Yes, him.  It’s not because of his whiny voice (not so much, anyway), but rather because he portrays a character that represents the complete absence of leadership.  The show “Everybody Loves Raymond” did a great job of portraying fathers as dumb, indecisive, weak, and utterly lacking in leadership.  It is not the only show that does this or has done this, but it would seem to be one of the more popular, and certainly the first that comes to my mind when I think about these things.

It is not uncommon for critics and commentators to wax eloquent about the eclipse of the Occident.  Everyone proposes a diagnosis and solution to this problem, and variety is not lacking in this.  Some people, like Pat Buchanan, see a role for the State in mending these problems, but even the most skeptical Statists believe that the apparatus of government is an outgrowth of society, which means that there must be a bona fide culture before a good order can be established.  Others say that it is all about religion, that the world will be intolerably flawed until everyone joins the one true religion of x, whether that be Methodism, Catholicism, or Mothers Against Drunk Driving.  Then, they say, everything will be okay.  Return the Hohenzollerns to power, and then the world will spontaneously sing, “Ecce quam bonum, et jucundum, habitare fratres in unum!”   I have known too many well-adjusted people of varying religions, and even of no religion at all, to fall for this claptrap.  Yes, it is necessary to have a grand discourse to function well in life.  But no, it is not necessary that everyone have the same grand discourse.  To insist on this is to beg for ceaseless warfare.

What is it that is missing that has our society in such a shambles in the early morning of the 21st century?  It seems to me that it is the disappearance of fatherhood.  I really think this is true.  Permit yourself to be a bit proud for a moment.  What are the things you know that you wish other people knew?  It doesn’t have to be anything complicated.  For me, I wish people knew not to stand in doorways, not to be late for work (or anything else), and not to poke around while other people are waiting.  The list could go on, but these things I learned from my father, and I suspect that most people who had good fathers feel the same way.  I think this applies to larger problems in life, too:  impulse control, generosity, service, and working with honesty and diligence are all things that fathers teach their children.

But our culture is presently lacking in these things.  An entitlement mindset has crept in, and I’m sorry to suppose that I think most of us have succumbed to it at one time or another.  We have embraced the opposite of what our fathers have taught us.  It is not, as some have opined, that our fathers have abandoned us; rather, we have divorced ourselves from our fathers.  ”Be gone!” we say.  ”We want nothing to do with your wisdom, which hampers our ability to live like spoiled brats.”  Isn’t it sick the way we treat them?  Every Mothers Day, people sweetly swoon over everything their mothers have done for them, and then when Fathers Day comes along, people say ridiculous things such as, “Some fathers are abusive and alcoholics, but not all.”  Some tribute!  (As a side note, would anyone dare to replace the word “father” in that sentence with any other category of people, say, for instance, a racial minority?)

There will be no doubt in the minds of my readership that I take some Schadenfreude in pointing out that the government has done more than its fair share in rewarding the existence of fatherless homes through welfare, which went a long way in destroying the urban family.   But this is not the only thing.  Our present “culture” is youth-obsessed, to the point of ignoring the wisdom of the old.  It is not that there is nothing to be admired in youth; rather the energy and beauty of youth must be balanced with the gray hairs and hard-won experience of those who’ve been here longer than we have.  I have a friend who constantly says things like “…..this is what my religion and my ancestors have taught me.”  I like to kid him about it, but there is a great reverence in his approach that is missing in too many of us today.

I suppose that for the more thoughtful people among us, they value the contributions of their fathers increasingly as they age.  Even a jackass like me has had some experience with this.  In my own mind, my father got a lot smarter when I turned 30, although this was not an immediate epiphany but rather a gradual process.  Like many fathers, mine did not cram his wisdom down my throat.  ”Ok you want to be a fool?  So be it.”  And then he’d leave me alone to learn from my mistakes what I had refused to learn from him.  There is an admirable quiet resolution in all of this.  I don’t even think it’s expected that I admit that he was right all along.  My father would seem to be content with simply knowing that I’m less of a nincompoop today than I was yesterday.

Until we start listening to our fathers again, all our efforts will be in vain; we will be searching for the living among the dead.  The State will never be able to replace them, and religions will never be able to thrive without their leadership.  Only from our fathers can we learn the vir-tue that chooses eggs over scorpions, competence over egoism, reverence instead of contempt, and quiet strength over empty chatter.

Inspiration and Perspiration

I’ve had occasion lately to think about the gift (and the problem) of inspiration.  As a musician, this is central to my life.

One of my middle school art teachers once said that the artist needs to be inspired before he perspires, that one cannot set about an artistic task without a driving force behind it.  I have been of two minds on this issue, but the more of life I get through, the more I think that he was right.  All the self-motivation in the world cannot make up for any lack of inspiration, and the lifeless, or even trite, results of forced artistic work bear this out.

The bigger problem, however, is what to do when one finds himself in the midst of a dry spell.  As a professional musician, I don’t have the luxury of saying, “Well, sorry, not feeling inspired today.  Maybe sometime later?  I usually peak around midnight or 2am.”  That’s not feasible, obviously, and the artist, particularly live performers such as musicians, actors, and dancers, need to find ways of dealing with this.  Failure to do so leads to burnout, and burnout can be fatal to the artistic career, and at astoundingly young ages, at that.

To be sure, anyone who’s thought through this will have their own ways of dealing with the problem of inspiration.  Only recently, I found a way of looking at this situation which has the advantage being re-energizing without being contrived.  It is this:  whatever composition one is studying, take the time just to imagine what sort of inspirational experience and/or state of being was required for the composer to come up with such a thing.  Forget compositional technique or theoretical prowess.  Rather, focus on the question of what the driving force behind a given piece of art is.

I must say that this has transformed the way I look at music.  (I should also say that this exercise only works with great music.  Throw away anything that is not spectacular, for it has nothing to say.)  Take, for instance, what Bach did in his Fugue in D Major, BWV 532.  There is in this piece an almost Beethovenian refusal to bring it all to a conclusion, as one joyous exclamation supercedes another.  Without much reflection such repetitiveness can perhaps become annoying, until one asks the question:  What possessed Bach to do this?  We don’t need to know the exact answer to this question, really, but we can surmise to our benefit that, whatever inspired such shouts of exultation must surely have been a grand and glorious thing, and sometimes that is all it takes to renew the artistic soul.

Here’s a recording of the Bach, played by Felix Hell.  (Note, the filmer is a different Michael Lawrence!)

“Neither a lofty degree of intelligence nor imagination nor both together go to the making of genius. Love, love, love, that is the soul of genius.”
–Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart

Happy Holidays

Blogging has been slow lately, but I seriously doubt that at this time of year too many people are glued to the computer screen.  At any rate, I just wanted to wish all of you happy holidays—Christmas, Hanukkah, etc.

Much fuss has been made about the supposed “War on Christmas,” but on my visit home to see my family, I overheard something once or twice that jogged my memory and got me to thinking.  I heard people–real people exercising their own discretion–say to one another, “Have a nice holiday.”  What is more, I can remember hearing this phrase throughout my entire life in the area in which I was raised.   So if real people use this phrase, why can’t store employees?  What then makes it an assault on Christmas?

Of course, I think sometimes that people can be too p.c. about the appropriate holiday greeting.  A few years ago, I slipped up and accidentally wished a friend of mine “Merry Christmas.”  I immediately realized my mistake, given that he is Muslim, and the look on my face surely showed this.  His response?  “Merry Christmas to you, too.”  That kind of graciousness is instructive.

Jeff Tucker has made quick work of all this nonsense on Inside Catholic.

And remember, Christmas has twelve days, culminating in the Feast of the Epiphany on January 6, so let the celebration continue.  I leave my decorations up until February 2, the Feast of the Presentation in the Temple.

Traditional Roman Liturgy and Christmas Pudding

Here is a nice, short article on the so-called Stir-up Sunday. I would only argue that this tradition is not only Anglican but is also Roman.  I always thought this was sometime in Advent, but, alas, it is the last Sunday before Advent, which this year was November 30—as I jokingly called it, the “Sunday within the Octave of Thanksgiving.”

Incidentally, from the last Sunday before Advent through the Fourth Sunday of Advent, all but one of the Collects begins with excita, the Latin word which is translated “stir up.” Consequently, I was never sure which one was Stir-Up Sunday; I always figured it to be closer to Christmas.

In any case, the age-old tradition is that people would go to church and hear “excita” and know that it was time to stir up the Christmas pudding. It is, in truth, a quaint and innocuous custom—hardly the red meat that built the Medieval cathedrals or wrote the polyphony of Leonin and Perotin–but it is nonetheless an example of the mutual discourse between religion and culture which is presently absent. In this subject area, contemporary Christianity of all types (well, maybe not Eastern Orthodoxy…) has chosen various swords of stupidity on which to fall. Some insist on a “dialogue” with culture which ultimately co-opts the most vapid aspects of peasant taste. Others pride themselves on not being of the world and therefore eschew anything that is less than a century old. Both approaches are suicidal.

A solution for this? I’ll have to think about that.