Beat Your Swords Into Timeshares

Time shared

This short fanfare for MW Morse’s jazz ensemble is a musical sign for life; the good power of music, and the ideal of people living in peace and joy together. However, the witty title Beat Your Swords Into Timeshares suddenly reminds me – not of the Bible, not of holiday cottages – but of the unfortunate events with a sacred sword in The Transposed Heads, a funny and horrible story by Thomas Mann, after a legend from India:

“How in thy breast must generosity and despair have gone hand in hand, in sacrificial dance, ere thou couldst slay thyself! Oh woe, Oh woe! Severed the fine head from the fine body!”

And I guess it is snowing in Southern Ontario today. Also a good sign. Even if Mike had to fire the bassist in his band, employ a new musician, and find a new job for the old bassist. That’s like what happened in the story: the head severed from the body…

Have a happy Holocaust holiday

Norman Lebrecht writes in a recent column, about some moral and artistic problems with books and films about Holocaust:

“There must be a credible justification, a reason that can be given before the courts of conscience, before an author sits down and makes a fine living out of other people’s suffering.”

One of the books mentioned, that also has become a film, is Everything is Illuminated, by Jonathan Safran Foer. I bought that book years ago, but for some reason never read it. My son started to read it, and I thought it could be “fun” for him as illustration of both history and the hilarious use of English language by one of the characters. Well, I have to try to read it. I am not sure I want to see the film, or, Schindler’s List.

Musicals without musicians

Reading in Svenska Dagbladet today about the tendency for small or non-existant orchestras in musical theatre productions.

Next February a musical – “Sweet Charity” – with only pre-recorded music is scheduled for premiere in Stockholm. Already many productions have reduced bands and are using click-track solutions instead of live musicians for some instruments. Comments from the producers are along the lines that “ordinary people can’t hear the difference between live music and recorded”:

“Men publiken märker ingen skillnad om det är inspelat, det är ingen som protesterar, säger Hasse Wallman som producerar Sweet Charity.
Staffan Götestam, producenten bakom Skönheten och odjuret och Jesus Christ superstar, är inne på samma linje.
– Ingen vanlig människa kan höra skillnaden eftersom tekniken är så utvecklad.”

Respect!

Photo Credit: Nick Galifianakis For The Washington Post Photo

And here we have a little something about misunderstood “liberal” liberal arts education (from Kyle Gann’s blog). So – what has freedom to write poor essays to do with today’s theme in Carolyn Hax’ advice column? Am I suggesting that students who don’t want to learn anything should be forced to eat their words? Or, that it is not disrespectful to give a vegetarian a beef course against her will?

Music blogs to explore later

Did a little first search for other blogs that could contain interesting views. Will look at these sometime again and read bits of them. Just bookmarking the findings for now.

Kyle Gann
Michael Kaulkin
Alex Ross
Sequenza 21
Sequenza 21 “Composer Forum” (=blog)
Anne-Carolyn Bird (singer)
The Fredösphere
Helen Radice (harpist)
Jessica Duchen
Prima la Musica (Sarah Noble)
Of Music and Men
Musical Perception
Renewable Music

Musicians with blogs or diary sites I have found and read earlier, for various reasons:

Laurence A Hughes
Ursus Demens (aka Edo S Bear)

A composer blog I found some days after I wrote the above:

Norfolk calling!

First snow

Frost and snow. Nothing to write about. Last night I finished and published two pages of a piano piece I had planned to do something more than my usual miniature style of. But it just wanted to end there:

Lady M pays a visit to a painter

After finishing that (the first inspired composing period for months) I have still a dozen books to read, cd’s to listen to, other people’s music to comment on, a diary and a novel to write, some “commisioned” music I have no idea how to start on (or if it matter at all to spend time on), and a house to clean and shirts to iron, and sewing projects, and more music to write and revise and prepare parts for, and I just sit here…

Another view about gender-inclusive language

I am old enough to have been taught that the masculine third person singular was a gender-inclusive form. The issue was raised, and unambiguously answered. There are problems with it, to put it mildly, chief among them that masculine-only is not “gender neutral,” and therefore fails in its manifest purpose. That this was its manifest purpose, however, whatever its degrading latencies, is undeniable.

I had a brace of women’s studies students one year, however, who were deliberately taught that the masculine-only third person pronoun was intentionally not gender-inclusive. These students therefore refused to read an article from the 60s – on music at college parties, for heaven’s sake. I explained the custom of the time, admitted its undeniable irritation, and asked that they make the appropriate allowances, holding their nose if need be. Again they refused, telling me that this was a clear case of intentionally sexist, gender exclusive usage.

I asked where they got this idea. They told me their WS teacher said that the masculine third person singular was never considered gender neutral. I asked if this instructor was old enough to remember this first-hand? No, but she, quote, “just knew.”

At this I exploded, and called her a goddamn liar. They ran to her, and petitioned the chair not to have to read the article (on the basis that it was insulting to them as women). I prepared a simple affidavit, to be distributed and signed by all faculty over 50: “I was taught that third person masculine usage is not gender inclusive.” I said that if a single faculty member signed it, I would resign, and return my salary for the year. That was the end of that.

[and this was written by MW, in a discussion in another forum]

Swedish crisis in the humanities

Har just upptäckt att det pågår en intressant debattartikelserie i Dagens Nyheter, som kallas Humaniorans framtid? Idag var det en bitsk artikel av Ebba Witt-Brattström:

J’accuse! Jag anklagar statsministern för att han som skolminister 1989 i hård och ohederlig kamp med lärarfacken och en rasande opinion genomdrev beslutet att kommunalisera skolan och därigenom avskaffa den enhetliga skolan, likvärdig för alla. Till följd av denna ödesdigra omstrukturalisering av svensk skola har dagens vilsna studenter och doktorander, framtidens forskare, sämre förkunskaper än tidigare generationer och måste ägna en stor del av sin doktorandtid åt att komma i nivå med såväl tidigare svensk som internationell forskning. Som om inte detta dubbelarbete är tillräckligt uppmanas de nu av utbildningsministern att publicera sina avhandlingar direkt på engelska trots att forskningen entydigt visar att man förstår och tänker sämre om man inte skriver på sitt modersmål. Här ansluter jag mig till Janken Myrdal (DN 25/10) som föreslår att forskaren skriver en artikel på engelska som sammanfattar resultaten av den forskning hon/han utfört på god svenska. En förklaring till att den svenska forskningen inte har det inflytande i världen den förtjänar är att forskarna allt oftare skriver direkt på svengelska.

Så därför skriver jag på svenska idag.

Totally aestethic and healthy

What is art? Is it an attitude or a life-style? Or, is it a necessary expression of human experience? Something that can hurt as much as it can heal? How much is personal in artistical expression – and to which limits can an artist’s control over his soul, body and environment be extended? Does the art need to be centered around the artist’s ego, and reflected in the things surrounding her in her life world?

My questions were provoked by a recent visit to a local artist’s studio and home, after I had decided to become more involved in the visual arts, and in the things going on in my neighbourhood, and learn more about painting – something I haven’t tried since school. Maybe that decision was a reaction after I heard some weeks ago about the death of a distant relative – a great painter and wonderful person. I suddenly realized that I had missed the chance to discuss art, life and music (he was also a jazz pianist) with him on the occasions when we have met through the years. It was just the usual social talk, and I always let others ask their naive questions about his pictures, and be content with the obvious answers. There must have been so much more things I could have learned from him. Now I have to learn it on my own (as we all have to, more or less).

So, now I wonder a lot about the mentality of artists, and what they are doing to stay healthy and/or creative. Some work in chaos; others in order. Some live in a mess; other live in a totally aesthetic perfection. My relative was much for order in his studio (and in his entomological collection), but the home decoration (mostly by his artistic wife) was never over-whelmingly perfect; and their focus was not on the methods to get a long and healthy life.

Success can be dangerous, so it takes some modesty and maturity to handle…