Mysteries Abysmal

Van Vechten's manifesto

The point is that I have determined to be a writer, not a journalist or a scribbler but a writer.  This does not as a rule make money; it usually takes it.  The kind of writing I do requires time for reflection, it requires going about and meeting a great many people, it requires travel, and buying books and other expenses...If I were younger I might be able to work on a newspaper and write books too.  But I am just beginning to get over the bad effects of newspaper work, i.e. the hurry produced by the demand for copy makes one fall into routine expressions which eventually spoil a style.  My stocks serve to pay rent and that is about all.    - Carl Van Vechten, NY Times music critic, writing his brother in 1919. 

Seven years later, the bastard inherited a million dollars (!) 

New music & MLK

Salonen, Knussen, and Wallin

Chicago Sun-Times.  January 30, 2008.

Sinfonietta/Freeman

Chicagon Sun-Times. January 23, 2008

We love Bern. Here's to Bern!

AC Douglas and Portland's SMB (via an email) point out a recent review from the NYT's Bernard Holland.  Evidently the charges leveled by some are that Mr. Holland spends too few words on the performance itself and thus bloviates extensively with historical background "filler" along with other entertaining displays of erudition.  The problem is Holland may give his readers too much credit with lines like "anyone familiar with the reputations of these three singers can imagine the quality of the performances." On the other hand, that can be seen as the worst kind of critical laziness.  I like Holland too much to decide which is the case. 

I remember an office hours discussion I had with my literary theory professor in grad school.  I asked him why Derrida and Lacan wrote such intentionally difficult prose to convey their ideas.  He replied in earnest: "They can do anything they want.  They have jobs."   

Wilder & Chandler

This line chills if you watch it at the right hour:

"Suddenly it came over me that everything would go wrong. It sounds crazy, Keyes, but it's true, so help me. I couldn't hear my own footsteps. It was the walk of a dead man."  - Walter Neff thinking to himself after he commits the "perfect" murder (Double Indemnity, 1944)

180 hours

We were in a 20th c kinda mood for show #60, so we brought it hard.  The Branca sounded like it had been hijacked by Korn; the Ligeti by Cage.  And the Pärt was a liberal departure from the max 'n' relax sound we identify with him.  The York Bowen evoked a Brahms composing in 1945. 

Glenn Branca.  Symphony No. 8 (first movement)
The Glenn Branca Ensemble, con. G. Branca (Blast First)

György Ligeti. Trois Bagatelles for David Tudor.
Fredrik Ullén, piano.  (BIS)

Anton Arensky.  Symphony No. 1 in B Minor, Op. 4.
USSR Symphony Orchestra; Yevgeny Svetlanov, con. 
(VOX)

Arvo Part. Cello Concerto "Pro et contra."
Bamberg Sym; Neeme Jarvi, con.  (BIS)

York Bowen. Sonata in E minor for Violin & Piano, op. 112
Endymion Ensemble (Epoch)

Henry Cowell.  Symphony No. 15 (Thesis)
The Louisville Orchestra (Robert S. Whitney
& Jorge Mester, conductors) (first edition)

Debussy.  Preludes, Book II. 
Jorge Federico Osorio, piano. (Cedille)

Philip Glass.  Symphony No. 5 (Selections)
Vienna Radio Symphony Orchestra; Dennis Russell Davies, con.
(Nonesuch)

Stravinsky, Milstein and mother

Brief love letter

It took 27 years but I finally ventured west of the Missouri River.  I wandered Los Angeles for three sun-soaked days and the city surpassed all expectations--which were very high to begin with.  I didn't notice the smog and the legendary traffic jams were no worse than Chicago's.  The endless streetscapes didn't feel like mundane suburbia either, but rather long, quickly changing and strangely unique avenues.  There was a comforting feeling to be in the city of Mulholland Drive, Chinatown, Boogie Nights and so on. The best places are always the places you feel a strong connection to its past, even when you've never been there.  On a tour through Universal studios (yes, I know), you get an unbelievable glimpse of the valley with mountains encircling the city as far as the eye can see.  The grass is as green as any cartoon and it all reminded me of when the young woman on the left called it some sort of "dream place."  The whole time I could not (and still cannot) forget maestro Lynch's words I cited from just a few days ago: It fills me with the feeling that all possibilities are available. 

Rosenbaum

Jonathan Rosenbaum, the great longtime film critic and author, is retiring in February from the Chicago Reader.  If you want to get a glimpse of his appeal, the Coen bros' No Country for Old Men was uniformly praised by every critic across the land, but Rosenbaum alone gave it one star. (But in a way that makes you think hard about what you just saw). His personal 1,000 film "film canon" only confirms he really has seen almost everything.  How one city produced a generation of movie critics like Roger Ebert, Jonathan Rosenbaum, and Gene Siskel is a rarity that surely will not be equaled again.  I am dying to read Dead Man. 

The humanities save

Via Luminous, Stanley Fish has a what-is-it-all-for moment in a NY Times Op Ed.  In short, are the humanities useful?  He says, "if they don’t bring about effects in the world they cannot be justified except in relation to the pleasure they give to those who enjoy them."  Is he implying that reading books and listening to records are selfish pursuits?  You don't say.  He goes on: "you can talk about “well rounded citizens,” but that ideal belongs to an earlier period, when the ability to refer knowledgeably to Shakespeare or Gibbon or the Thirty Years War had some cash value (the sociologists call it cultural capital). Nowadays, larding your conversations with small bits of erudition is more likely to irritate than to win friends and influence people." Ok, now he's really stripping us of our laurels. 

Fisher king

My radio co-conspirator Gerry Fisher is back to blogging again and kicked off his return with a post for the ages:

We start a new year; thoughts of the death of our show are far behind us lost in the swirling waters of our wake. We're like a transatlantic liner turned ghost ship, still plying the old route, even though we've been superceded, outmoded, and unnoticed for 2 years. Not many passengers on board, and they are all hollow-eyed and wraithlike, older than Eld, fixed on the past with relentless intensity.

And yet...
The vital pulse of the music brings a flush to pallid cheeks; how can this beauty not be young forever?