oh, no particular reason

English suites and others no. 42

The outstanding 20th century German retelling of older music is a work by Paul Hindemith which rejoices in the unwieldy name of Symphonic Metamorphosis of Themes by Carl Maria von Weber. Weber was an early 19th century German composer now best known for his operas, but these themes mostly come from obscure piano pieces. The scherzo is from incidental music to the play Turandot (the title will be familiar from Puccini's opera based on it), so its Persian setting is responsible for some pentatonic and exotic-percussion flavor.

Hindemith's music could be as unwieldy as his titles, but this suite is one of the great delights of modern music. And the performance, by the San Francisco Symphony under Herbert Blomstedt, captures my home-town band at its absolute best. The last movement is a gloriously brassy barn-burner.



Movements: Allegro (0.00), Scherzo (3.54), Andantino (11.15), March (15.30).

Pygmalion a 4

Our online Zoom play-reading group, having gotten through Rosencrantz and Guildenstern Are Dead, has advanced to another play, Bernard Shaw's Pygmalion.

I find there are parts of Pygmalion which are hard to read aloud without bursting into Lerner and Loewe's songs.

Another challenge is that there are scenes in Pygmalion with numerous characters, hard to read for a group of only four people. I undertook in advance to analyze these scenes: how many characters are there, how many lines does each have, and which other characters do the lesser figures interact with? The idea is to assign the parts in such a way as each reader will have close to an equal amount of reading, with a minimum of talking to yourself between different characters.

I came up with this.

1. Liza
Also: Act 3, Clara, Parlor Maid; Act 3 ball scene, Hostess; Act 5, Mrs Higgins up until Liza's entrance

2. Higgins
Also: Act 1, Freddy; Act 3 ball scene, Footmen; Act 4 street scene, Taximan

3. Pickering
Also: Act 1, Clara, A Bystander; Act 2, Mrs Pearce after Doolittle's entrance; Act 3, Freddy, Mrs Eynsford-Hill; Act 3 ball scene, Host; Act 4 street scene, Freddy; Act 5, Mrs Higgins after Liza's entrance

4. Doolittle
Also: Act 1, Mrs Eynsford-Hill, A Sarcastic Bystander, Taximan; Act 2, Mrs Pearce up until Doolittle's entrance; Act 3, Mrs Higgins; Act 3 ball scene, Nepommuck; Act 4 street scene, Constables; Act 5, Parlor Maid

This does shunt some of the characters around; Mrs Higgins is read by three different people, but better her, the 5th most important character, than one of the principal four.

anti-Semitism

Here's an article contrasting two formal definitions of anti-Semitism. The first definition strikes me as too broad, the second too narrow. We need a third one that's just right.

Here are some things that I hold about anti-Semitism:

1. "Anti-Semitism" like "racism" is a broad term. It applies to everything from genocide down to polite genteel shunning and microaggressions. (See Gentleman's Agreement for some classic examples.) We need more specific terminology, but in the meantime, people called "anti-Semitic" are not necessarily genocidal even as people called "racist" are not necessarily lynchers. Just as if you're more offended by being called a racist than you are by being one, you are one, if you're more offended by being called an anti-Semite than you are by being one, you are one.

1a. I've had enough of people getting all huffy when it's pointed out that something they said is anti-Semitic. You do that, you will be permanently crossed off my list. You'd never get away with that if the word were "racist." But it doesn't matter because you'd probably crossed me off your list first. When I said people get all huffy over it, I mean huffy.

2. It is emphatically true that criticisms of the policies of the Israeli government are sometimes falsely labeled as anti-Semitic. It is, however, equally true that anti-Semitic statements sometimes disguise themselves as criticisms of the Israeli government.

3. The difference is, does the criticism address current or past governments of Israel and their policies? That's not anti-Semitic, even if it's about the occupied territories and the wall and everything. But if it descends into criticism of Israel's right to exist or to defend itself (not the same thing as criticism of specific defense policies), or of the Jews' right to be there, then it's probably anti-Semitic. Underneath such criticisms usually lie grotesque misapprehensions of the history.

3a. This difference shouldn't be difficult for an American liberal to understand. We felt the same way about our own country during the Bush and Trump administrations: hated the government and its policies but still loved our country and thought its existence was a good thing, whatever its flaws. Same applies here: I don't like Netanyahu either.

4. Criticizing Israel while failing to apply equally emphatic criticism to the peoples and countries it's in conflict with is not anti-Semitic. However, excusing these others' misbehavior while denouncing Israel's is anti-Semitic. For instance, I've read polemics brushing off the rockets fired from the Palestinian territories across the Green Line into Israel proper as no big deal.

5. This specifically applies to things like boycotts. Why are you boycotting Israel? If you're protesting brutality in the occupied territories, go ahead. If you don't think Israel has any right to exist amidst what should be unbroken Palestinian territory, you're anti-Semitic.

6. Supporting a Palestinian state (the "two-state solution") is not itself anti-Semitic. It is possible, however, for anti-Semitic statements to creep into this. It depends again, mostly, on why you think Israel is there in the first place.

6a. And here's one that may get controversial: the "one-state solution" is anti-Semitic. The one-state solution is a disguise of a democratic veneer over a plan to drown the Jews demographically among the Palestinian Arabs and destroy the Jewish state that way. We already know what happens when Jews are a minority in Arabic (or a lot of other) countries.

7. If you say that Arabs can't be anti-Semitic because they're Semites, you've confused the word with the thing. This is a really stupid thing to do.

music in the studio

The people who did this have now done some more. Some of these are remarkably silly.

(Also, you like Avengers or Harry Potter? They're on it.)

notes

1. New York Times article saying "The Best Bagels Are in California" has caused chaos in the California bakeries as orders pour in. They don't even include my favorite local bagel vendor, which is in Palo Alto. Their choices are in San Francisco/Berkeley, which I might drop into if I were there (I haven't been to either city since before the pandemic), or in LA, which is rather too far away, but which the Times treats as interchangeable with SF. It's 350 miles away! Would you treat NYC as interchangeable with Lynchburg, Virginia?

2. B. got caught in the feud between the county and the state over vaccine distribution. She was one of the Kaiser patients who'd signed up with the county because it was taking them before Kaiser would, but had their second shots canceled due to their low supplies, and redirected to Kaiser. Kaiser was mighty annoyed about that. But B. got an earlier appointment from them for her second shot than she would have had from the county, so it all worked out OK at least for her. Meanwhile I've had my first, the only challenging part of which was getting out of the high-seated but back-slung chair they'd put me in for the shot.

3. Conservative columnist Marc Thiessen says that terms like "B.1.1.7 variant" are confusing and technical, and we should use the geographic terms of their origin. He says that while terms like "the kung flu" are racist, "China virus" is not. It wouldn't be. It wouldn't be, except that association of the virus with China seems to be what's causing racists to punch anyone of East Asian ancestry, including Koreans and Thais, in the face or even murdering them. Which has to be the stupidest form of racism yet invented, against strong competition.

4. Meanwhile, there's stuff like what's described here. It is both unfortunate and deplorable. It is also casual thoughtless stereotyping and quite distinguishable from a punch in the face. We need more precise and distinctive terminology than "racism" here.

5. Much sorrow locally at the announcement of closure of at least undergraduate education at Mills College. We held two Mythcons there in the 1980s, because our chair, Diana Paxson, was an alumna. Much mention too of the music instruction that's gone on there, though much of that is at the graduate level. My harmony instructor had been a pupil of Darius Milhaud, who taught there for many years.

6. As for the Boulder shootings, what else can I say besides, "Oh no, not again"?

three books on Tolkien

Three major research books on Tolkien that have been published recently (one each from this year and the two preceding) have recently crossed my desk and my eyetracks. All are products of deep and meticulous research, for which the authors deserve all honor. The conclusions they reach, however, may be another thing.

John M. Bowers, Tolkien's Lost Chaucer (Oxford UP, 2019)
Tolkien spent years working on the language notes and glossary for an edition of Chaucer selections that never got finished or published, partly (though only partly) because Tolkien was a perfectionist who wrote about four times as much as OUP, the publisher, wanted for a book aimed at undergraduates. This matter was an obscure footnote in Tolkien studies until Bowers revealed the sheer extent of the project by going through all the surviving correspondence to write a history of the 30 years this dragged on, plus uncovering a large box of surviving galleys and drafts in the OUP basement and quoting from them liberally.
That's the first half of this book, and it's brilliant and valuable. For the second half, Bowers has gone through The Lord of the Rings (he has little interest in the rest of Tolkien's creative writing) looking for things that remind him of something in Chaucer, and blithely assuming that Tolkien copied Chaucer like an amanuensis. It doesn't work that way. The connections he finds range from the trivial to the nonsensical, and his assurance that nobody would have known how important Chaucer was to Tolkien without unearthing the scale of this project is absurd. It's always been well-known that Tolkien was a Chaucer expert, and there's plenty of articles on Chaucer's influence on Tolkien, not all of which find their way into Bowers' extensive bibliography. What I conspicuously miss is anything connecting Tolkien's scholarly method in his Chaucer philology with the nature of the detail he put into creating his fiction: this could have been a rich source of study, but it wasn't.

Holly Ordway, Tolkien's Modern Reading: Middle-earth Beyond the Middle Ages (Word on Fire, 2021)
Tolkien has a reputation of being only interested in medieval literature. Ordway is out to prove that he was also well-read in modern literature and had a lot to say about it. This book goes systematically through Tolkien's known encounters with post-1850 English-language literature (because there have to be some limits), discussing its character and what Tolkien would have gotten out of it, on which topic Ordway is a solid analyst.
This, too, is brilliant and valuable, and the extent of Ordway's research is impressive. The thoughtfulness with which she proceeds makes her book much more valuable, for its area of coverage, than Oronzo Cilli's mechanically-compiled and rather sloppy Tolkien's Library. The problem - the first problem with this book - is that Ordway writes as if she's made a great discovery, but most of what she writes about is well-known in Tolkien scholarship. What she has written is a great work of synthesis, and the revelation is of how much there is put here in one place for the first time. The second problem is her attribution of Tolkien's standard reputation to Humphrey Carpenter's biography. This leads to an epic bout of Carpenter-bashing, far beyond his deserts. The third problem is Ordway's tendency distinctly to underplay the extent to which Tolkien disliked a lot of this modern literature that he read. She doesn't omit this, but there's a notable lack of emphasis. The standard reputation is actually less that Tolkien didn't read anything after Chaucer but that he didn't like anything after Chaucer. There turns out to be a lot more truth in this than one would think from the pitch Ordway is trying to sell.
Ordway has no religious agenda, but the publisher is a Catholic ministry, and if you order the book directly from them you'll start getting in your e-mail daily homilies from some bishop until you send an unsubscribe message at least twice.

John Garth, The Worlds of J.R.R. Tolkien: The Places that Inspired Middle-earth (Princeton UP, 2020)
Previous books on the inspirations of Tolkien's geography have followed the John Bowers method, actually well-known to all cheap-rent source-hunters, of touring around England looking for places that remind the tourist of something in Tolkien and blithely assuming that Tolkien just copied them. Garth doesn't do that. Despite its sub-title, this is not a guide to places that inspired Tolkien, and it can't even be conveniently used for that purpose. It's actually a guide to the inside of Tolkien's mind, in its geographic, landscape, and geological facets. The coverage is thematic - there are chapters on mountains, waterscapes, forests, archaeology, towers (yes, towers), and battlefields - and the focus is always on Tolkien's invented places and what he was trying to accomplish by creating them. Real places (with generous photographs) are brought in only insofar as there's a documented connection in Tolkien's mind; or, if there's widespread speculation by reputable scholars, Garth labels it as such. Garth even goes to the trouble of debunking several popular but fanciful theories of Tolkien's geographical inspirations. There is no guesswork or blithe assumption in this book. As with Ordway, little of what Garth describes is new to scholarship. This is a well-researched work of synthesis, reinforced by Garth's sharp and clear understanding of how Tolkien's mind worked. That overall viewpoint, together with the systematic coverage, is what Garth really brings to the table.
All three of these books are greatly useful for the worthwhile things they accomplish, but this one is the best, and one of the most valuable books out there for understanding Tolkien.

plays or things

I've had success at watching movies and watching/listening to live or prerecorded concerts on my computer. Stage plays, though, seem more problematic. Actors have to raise their voices and make expansive gestures on stage, and somehow that doesn't transfer to the tiny medium so well. A staged Amadeus I saw early on in the pandemic worked well, but its successors have lacked something.

One recent attempt was a production of Lillian Hellman's rarely-seen Days to Come. In this case the problem wasn't the production so much as the script's way of loading the stage with a large number of characters without explaining who they are or how they relate to each other. I quickly felt lost and gave up.

A local group called the Tabard Theatre, which performs in an old warehouse space in downtown San Jose, up a rickety set of stairs or an even more alarming old freight elevator, offered the option of neither of these for a production of a one-woman play about Erma Bombeck. A ubiquitous newspaper feature columnist up to her death in 1996, Bombeck spun tales of life as a suburban wife and mother in Ohio (she'd actually moved to Arizona, but didn't reveal this) that I always enjoyed as passingly amusing if not actually, you know, funny. Nostalgia is independent of how well you really liked the thing you're nostalgic for, and I didn't mind a return visit to old Erma, so I bought a ticket to opening night: apparently they were going to do the thing live for the entire run. There was a small audience of production staff, I guess, who laughed occasionally and kept it from being totally dead. Like many Tabard actors early in the run, Carolyn Ford Compton froze up on her lines occasionally, but did pretty well. It wasn't awful, but I'm sure I'd have enjoyed it a lot more if it could have been in person.

How about Shakespeare? I really liked the National Theatre's strange and spooky Midsummer Night's Dream (a bootleg copy of which is up: see it while you can; it's fabulous), but I wasn't much more impressed with the American Shakespeare Center's Twelfth Night than I'd been when I saw their R&J in person a few years ago.

Latest was the Oregon Shakespeare Festival's 2017 production of Julius Caesar. I didn't see this live for some reason, though I went that year. Maybe I was just tired of ridiculous stagings of Julius Caesar: one OSF production, years ago, set it in a banana republic. This one seems to have been set in the bargain basement department of Mad Max. No leather (that's what made it bargain basement), but very grungy. Lots of plastic buckets. Brutus gave his big soliloquy working up the courage for the assassination while dressed in a muscle shirt and barefoot. The battle scenes were strange stylized things in which all the actors playing both armies, all facing front and not interacting, moved their arms around in unison choreographed patterns, while deafening noises pounded out of the speakers.

OSF stalwart Danforth Comins was Brutus, giving off an imperturbable air even while being highly perturbed. Cassius (Rodney Gardiner) was wily and eccentric, faintly reminiscent of Don Rickles: I don't know where I get these ideas. Mark Antony (Jordan Barbour) yelled out his funeral oration, in fact he yelled out most of his part throughout the play. The best piece of acting actually came from Barret O'Brien as Decius, making funny his lines convincing Caesar (a weary Armando Duran) that the omens are actually good and he should come to the Capitol. As I've noted before, it's all in the lines already; you just have to say them properly. Like this:

DECIUS: This by Calpurnia's dream is signified.
CAESAR: And this way have you well expounded it.
DECIUS [confidently and a bit smugly]: I have!

English suites and others no. 41

Logically, the next suite on my list ought to be Richard Strauss's Dance Suite made of music by Couperin. But, unlike the similar suites by Italian composers I've already offered, I don't think this one is very good. (Here, you can listen to it if you want.)

Instead, I'm going either to go back considerably farther or forward more than a bit, and offer you a hearty wind band arrangement by contemporary American composer Patrick Dunnigan, of the most excellent Renaissance dance tunes, compiled by the 16th century Antwerpian publisher Tielman Susato in his book The Danserye.

I like Susato's music in any arrangement, but this one is the real sharp cheese. After buying the CD on which this is the first piece, I never went on to listen to the rest of the album: just kept repeating this.



Ingredients: La Morisque (0:00); Bergerette (2:08); Les Quartre Branles (4:35​); Faggott (7:19​); Den Hoboecken Dans (8:12​); Ronde & Salterelle (10:12​); Ronde & Aliud (11:51​); Basse Danse: Mon Desir (13:41); Pavane: La Battaille (15:52).

James Levine

The once-esteemed conductor died last week. Since most of the obits I've seen concentrate on the greatness of his conducting, I feel the best response is to link to my previous posts about this character.

The case of James Levine.

The case of James Levine cont'd.