TARUSKIN ON POSTPOSTMODERN POMPOSITY

Still reading the first volume of Taruskin's Oxford History of Music. 

He brings up a nifty little 14th century motet entitled Musicalis Sciencia/Sciencie Laudabili, a sort of satirical piece which takes the form of a dialogue between Music and Rhetoric, who enumerate various stylistic faults musicians and composers are prone to, even as the motet commits each one.

Thus Taruskin:

"Such a satire requires an attitude of ironic detachment, a consciousness of art as artifice, and a wish to make that artifice the principle focus of attention. These are traits we normally (and perhaps self-importantly ) ascribe to the 'modern' temperament, not the 'medieval' one. Only we (we tend to think), with our modern notions of psychology and our modern sense of "self," are capable of self-reflection. Only we, in short, can be 'artists' as opposed to 'craftsmen.' Not so."

(270).

Ditto.

JOHN JACOB OPPENHEIMER SANSKRIT

Oppenheimer's a bit of a pop history star for uttering the words "now I am become death, the destroyer of worlds" on the 1965 documentary The Decision to Drop the Bomb. Not to mention the brooding supervillain persona he seems to have naturally exuded (see e.g. clip of same quotation).

What I had not realized is he (supposedly) recalled the line (which, btw, hails from the Bhagavad Gita) from memory from the Sanskrit.

This revelation lead to the immediate discovery and half-amused perusal of James A. Hijiya's paper The Gita of J. Robert Oppenheimer in the Proceedings of the American Philosophical Society. Unfortunately Hijiya mostly indulges in rampant character-building and has little time for discussions of Oppenheimer's sanskrit study per se (not that he should've). Scholarly merits or demerits notwithstanding, Hijiya at least bothers to inform me that Oppenheimer studied Sanskrit under Arthur W. Ryder.

So take-away: The director of Los Alamos read Sanskrit classics in the original.

(Choplogic's razor: Other things being equal, more off-the-wall research is superior to namby pamby usefulness.)

ARKANGEL PUSH PIN GRAPHIC

I listened to the Complete Arkangel Shakespeare's Love's Labor's Lost this morning, which features a glorious rendition of the whole let's-dress-as-Russians-in-front-of-the-Queen-of-France episode -- complete with outrageously fake Russian accents.

In other words, I discovered this morning that the only thing better than Shakespeare is Shakespeare performed in a Russian accent.

DON HERTZFELDT: IT HAD A DYING KEYFRAME

I've somehow managed to survive the internet age without having seen anything by Don Hertzfeldt.

At least until the day before yesterday, when el Bolsillo Grande let me watch The World of Tomorrow on his Vimeo. Intrigued, last night I watched the 12-ish minute long Meaning of Life, which, inter alia, contains one of the single funniest animation sequences I've ever seen. It lasts all of six seconds and is basically just a string of still images, but it depicts the evolution of man set to the hyper-bombastic opening notes of Tchaikovsky's hyper-bombastic Piano Concerto No. 1. In other words: it's awesome.

So anyway, going to watch some more Hertzfeldt. And work on some shorts of mah own.

p.s. Animation is essentially just music extrapolated to an additional (spatial dimension). Both are perfectly coordinated collections of singular thingies (an (aural) note, a (visual) point) pieced together and altered over time to give the illusion of motion. Like seeing. And hearing. Our brains are stop-motion.

HOW TO PRONOUNCE "WI-FI" IN FRENCH

Link courtesy, as so often, Languagehat. Fun little article from William Alexander. Of particular note: "Wee-fee."

A FRANKLY ELIDED 'ELEISON'

Kyrie IX (Cum Jubilo) performed by the Choral-Schola der Wiener Hofburgkapelle.

Melody which Taruskin dates to "around 1100." Apparently the Franks liked "formal rounding and regularity" as he puts it. Figured I'd share it on the merits of a). that crazymule elision b). the melisma on the final kyrie eleison.  

Melody's in the Liber usualis if Wikipedia can be believed.

As you'll hear, the text isn't terribly difficult: Kyrie eleison x 3, Christe eleison x 3, kyrie eleison x 3. Keep it simple stupid.

ONLINE NEWSPAPER LANGUAGE CIRCUIT

In addition to my dabbling with Duolingo, I've been faithfully (on weekends at least) reading through the headline stories on Der Spiegel, Le Monde and El País in the hopes that it'll help me retain a bit of their respective lingos.

I may be ditching Der Spiegel in favor of the Süddeutsche Zeitung sometime soon, though. The Espejo seems a bit over the top at times, and the Zeitung seems to have a bit better-balanced coverage. Although Der Spiegel'd probs give me a more "authentic" German-centric perspective.

Anyway, today this involves Spanish and German stories on the Obama-Castro playdate in Panama, and a French article called "Le congrès du PS* en cinq questions." So allons-y.

Parti socialiste.

HURRYIN' TO THE MOON: AKKADIAN MUSIC 101

Clear as mud.

Still thoroughly enjoying Richard Taruskin's Oxford History of Western Music (Vol. I): Music from the Earliest Notations to the Sixteenth Century. Today, just a bit about the Hurrian "hymn to Nikkal" (= wife of the (Ugaritic) moon god Yarikh, cf. Sumerian Ningal/Nanna couple), also known as Hurrian Hymn 6.

This nice little chunk of over-cooked mud is the oldest substantially complete work of notated music we can lay claim to. It theoretically dates from as early as 1400 B.C. Some sunburned European archeologists discovered the tablet at the site of the Royal Palace at Ugarit.

Of course, there are about one hundred thousand competing interpretations of how the thing actually sounds. This link seems (not exactly an expert judge here) to do a decent job presenting some of the problems and some of the would-be problem-solvers.

LYDIA DAVIS AT THE END OF THE WORLD

Googly eyes. There, I said it.

El Bolsillo Grande kindly shared this splendid link with yours truly this afternoon. It's an interview with Lydia Davis, whom I have not had the pleasure of reading, speaking to or exactly knowing anything about before I read same link. I very much liked her take on learning languages. Sounds like she's trying to dissect Norwegian from the inside out solely by going through a single book.

Interesting concept at least. Bit different method from my own, but in the same spirit, je crois.

Not quite as taken by her talk about fiction/writing, buy hey, ain't nobody perfect but me and monkey.

A quick skim of her oeuvre's got me curious. May put her on the short list.

GOOD DAY SUNSHINE: VIVE LE ROI-SOLEIL

A revery.

Choplogic: Where Mesopotamian mythology, French foppery and the Fab Four come together in one furious farrago. A hymn to the sun. Who is the solar plexus of the universe? Chakra, chakra make me a smock.

1.1 I spent an entire spring semester waking up to Good Day Sunshine. Presumably this had some affect on my psyche.

2.1 Today was the first sunshiney day in approximately four months.
 2.2 Ergo today's a good day.

3.1 Winged sun's are cool.
 3.2 Ergo Zoroastrianism is cool. Reminds me I really need to read Mary Boyce's History of Zoroastrianism.

4.1 Clearly, the sun has gone to my head.
 4.2 Ergo shmergo

TARUSKIN: SNARK, MUSIC AND NOTKER BALBULUS

What manner of smarm is this?

Just started volume uno of Richard Taruskin's well-recieved Oxford History of Western Music (2010 re-/"2nd" editon).

The man's got snark, which immediately wins me over (example uno: "By critical study I mean a study that does not take literacy for granted, or simply tout it as unique Western achievement, but rather "interrogates" it (as our hermeneutics of suspicion now demands) for its consequences," (xiv-xv).

The bulk of his intro is dedicated to lambasting the self-destructively rarefied trend in musicology (read: academia in toto): "this sort of writing gives everybody an alibi ... Because nobody is doing anything, the authors never have to deal with motives or values, with choices or responsibilities, and that is their alibi," (xviii). Not brain-shattering, no, but at least he doesn't let it slide.

His writing's excellent imho, but I'm only a few pages in. A bit of pithiness goes a long way.

Another point in Taruskin's favor is his prompt namedrop of one of my personal medieval favorites: Notker Balbulus ("The Stammerer"). Poor guy wrote De Carolo Magno, a collection of anecdotes about Charlemagne. But really all you need to know is his name: Notker Balbulus.

More to come.

ANTS

This is a thing.

LINKS TO DROOL FOR

Cool. Blog that goes through Latin-based English-Spanish cognate patterns.

ADDENDUM:

Script of Kubrick's never-saw-the-light-of-cannon Napoleon. May have to read that.

CHOPLOGIC PRIZE FOR CREEPIEST OP-ED

Heartburn. It kills.

Can you say frustratedcreativewriterwaytooclosetodeadline anyone? I'd say so.

Someone's afraid of flying.

I was going to write a counter-piece using her own method of inventing a nightmare scenario and riffing off of it ad nauseaum for no particularly good reason. Something about her being late on a deadline, just dumped, well on the way to being inebriated and with a thirty-sixth newly-received rejection letter for her novel in a grungy inter-city hotel room. But I've lost the motivation. On to greater and better things.

But really. In the tragic, pathetic context, what is this:

"Squished in seats too small for the petite, passengers try to retract their fleshy edifices into cocoons of personal space, praying for an uneventful journey and a slender seatmate. To such discomforts, we’ve now added the possibility that the pilot might have had a bad day."

Ah mean COME ON.

But, hey, Twilight Zone reference.