Culture – Page 37 – Into the Woods

Two takes on Handel’s Largo

Earlier this evening I had an email from a friend asking if I ever played the Largo from Handel’s opera Xerxes on the abbey organ. “Ha!” I replied. “I haven’t played the Largo since I was a first-year organ student.”

My friend caught my offhandedly rude dismissal of the Largo. He’s a trained musician and former music reviewer. The Largo is considered a bit of a cliché. But if you return to the Largo with fresh ears, it’s actually a stunning piece of music that deserves its eternal fame. After my friend mentioned it, I went to YouTube looking for interesting performances on the organ. I ended up — naturally — with Diane Bish.

Diane Bish is so flamboyant and Liberace-like an organist that one is prejudiced against her on sight. But after listening to some of her superb playing, one realizes that she is one of the greatest of living organists. I only wish that I could adequately point out some of the details in her playing of this well-known piece. For one, she uses the organ’s crescendo pedal, which is considered a no-no for most sorts of music, as a matter of musical taste. The crescendo pedal pours on the stops as you press down on it, all the way up to everything the organ’s got. When she looks down to her right at 1:09, she’s looking to make sure that her foot is on the crescendo pedal, because she’s about to let loose with the organ’s power (she starts pulling back on the pedal at about 1:29). At the dynamic peaks of the piece (around 2:35 and 3:40) she has arrived at ff approaching full organ courtesy of the crescendo pedal. Pulling back on the pedal, of course, permits the smooth and rapid fading. The crescendo pedal is one of the pedals that looks like the accelerator on a Mac truck.

The next thing to notice is her use of rubato. Rubato playing is a violation of strict, metronomic tempo. At 2:08, notice how she delays the notes and is a tiny fraction of a beat behind the beat on some of the key notes of the melody. Rubato playing is quite usual for later romantic-era music, such as Chopin. Or even Brahms. To play rubato for a composer who was born in 1685 is dangerously heretical. But Bish flawlessly pulls it off.

Xerxes is an early opera. The Largo, though literally about a tree and its shade, is a love song about displaced and hopeless love. It ought to be sung by a castrato male. Sometimes it is sung today by a female soprano. But probably a more historically accurate sound can be gotten by a countertenor, as in the performance below.

Ironies in the evolution of tyranny

Revolutionaries: A New History of the Invention of America. By Jack Rakove, Houghton Mifflin Harcourt, 2010. 488 pages.

My reading at present is focused on the American colonial era, the revolution, and the development of the American Constitution. I took a lot of notes while reading this book by Jack Rakove. But one passage in particular flashes at me as though it was written in bright red neon. Rakove is talking about James Madison:

“Yet this reactionary fear of the threat to property also converged with his youthful commitment to freedom of conscience to produce one powerful insight about the protection of rights in republican America. These two concerns enabled Madison to perceive a truth that the political theory of the age did not yet properly recognize. In a republic, unlike a monarchy, the problem of rights would not be to guard the people as a whole against the arbitrary power of government, but rather to secure individuals and minorities against the legal authority of popular majorities.”

This brings us to the so-called Tea Party, the contemporary right-wing movement by angry white losers, financed by billionaires. Though the Tea Party has taken a wrecking bar to the American democracy wherever it can gerrymander itself into a stronghold, I am thinking in particular about the state of North Carolina, where the Tea Party legislature actually called a special emergency session, ostensibly to shoot down a local ordinance in Charlotte that was meant to afford transgendered people some dignity in the use of public bathrooms.

But, in truth, the bathroom issue was just a smokescreen in this legislation, called HB2. The transgender part of HB2 was meant to appeal to the fears and hatreds of mouth-breathing voters in rural North Carolina while also distracting the media. The real and even more slimy intent of HB2, as is always the case with the Republican Party, is the billionaire agenda. HB2 prevents local governments from setting a minimum wage that is higher than the minimum wage set by federal or state law. HB2 also prevents local governments from passing ordinances that grant civil rights protections. But the biggest piece of slime is that HB2 prevents workers from suing for workplace discrimination in state courts. This part of HB2 is pretty technical and has sneaked under the radar, but it was a big item on the wish list of the billionaire Republican donor class, and now the billionaires’ servants in the North Carolina legislature have checked it off their list. Here’s an article on that.

And, by the way, HB2 shows that the Republican Party doesn’t give a fig for any principle, if power is involved. HB2 also tramples on the principle of local rule and local government. North Carolina’s cities tend to be liberal and to vote Democratic. But the Republicans in Raleigh never hesitate to use state law to keep counties and municipalities from doing anything remotely liberal. Even property rights are not sacred to these radical Republicans. If your neighbors want to frack for gas but you don’t, then the state will use its power to frack you whether you want it or not. Or, if you’ve got a nice water system, as Asheville does, or a nice airport, as Charlotte does, then the state will just take it from you if it can.

This brings us back to James Madison. Madison foresaw even in the mid-1780s how kings (or even “big government”) were not the only potential tyrant under the new American Constitution. Rather, it was the tyranny of the majority that Madison was concerned about.

Not until 1868 did we get a remedy — the 14th Amendment. The Southern states were trampling on the rights of former slaves during Reconstruction, and the federal government stepped in to try to stop it. Many of the ugliest parts of American history touch on the 14th Amendment. White Southerners fought back with Jim Crow laws and legalized segregation, which stood until the Civil Rights Act of 1964 and the Voting Rights Act of 1965. Why it took so long is a political mystery that I may never understand.

Today’s so-called Tea Party derives its methods and inspiration not from the Boston Tea Party of 1773, when colonists protested against a despotic king and a Parliament who gave them no representation in the government. Rather, the so-called Tea Party is shockingly similar in its methods with the Jim Crow racists, who with violence against blacks, the activities of “militias,” gerrymandering, and rigged elections used the government to allow the white majority to hold the black minority down.

The current era is the most shameful period in North Carolina’s history in a hundred years. We will eventually throw the right-wing radicals out of power in Raleigh — hopefully starting with the governor this year. Cleaning up the legislature will take more time. It is highly fitting that the de factor leader of this movement to restore justice in North Carolina is a black man, the Rev. William Barber of the NAACP, who started the Moral Monday movement. I may have some comments on Barber’s new book soon.

Ken’s new book

In a recent comment here, Jo asked whether Ken Ilgunas was involved in the upkeep of the abbey’s orchard. Yes he has been, actually, very much so.

Though the first trees were planted before Ken first came to the abbey, he has slaved in the orchard for many hours — planting new trees and replacements for casualties, feeding the trees, pruning them, straightening them, weeding around them, and mourning for the fatalities that always seem to overtake the figs.

Ken’s second book, Trespassing Across America, will be released April 19, 2016. It’s available for sale (or for pre-order, if you’re reading this before April 19) at Amazon.

Ken’s first book, in 2013, was Walden on Wheels.

Watching the development of Ken’s literary career is like watching his generation finding its way. Ken, however, insisted on blazing his own trail. Student debt? Down with that. Cubicle job? No way. A career-oriented education? Nope — English and history.

I will never forget a critical moment in Ken’s career on the abbey’s side porch. The year was probably 2011. Ken was sitting in one of the rockers in his dirty work clothes, in a quandary, looking off into space, as he often does. He had been offered a desk job at a salary that anyone else his age would have had to jump at. Ken was teetering: What kind of career did he want to have? Should he take the desk job, or did he want to take the risks of making a go of it as a writer?

He asked me what I thought he should do. I evaded the question, because I was pretty sure I knew what he’d do. I believe my words were, “Whatever you decide, I totally trust your judgment.”

Having published two beautiful books by the age of 32, I’d say that Ken made a pretty good career choice.

Patrick: the ruin of Ireland

Dingle harbor, County Kerry. The Dingle Peninsula is my favorite place in Ireland.

Today is St. Patrick’s day. I’m not celebrating. Not everyone holds the view that Patrick was the best thing that ever happened to Ireland.

A seventh-century biography of Patrick by a Christian monk, Muirchú moccu Machtheni, records a Druid prophesy about the man who will start the destruction of the native culture of Ireland:

Across the sea will come Adze-head,
crazed in the head,
his cloak with hole for the head,
his stick bent in the head.

He will chant impiety
from a table in the front of his house;
all his people will answer:
‘Amen, Amen.’

The people of Ireland did not welcome Patrick and the new religion with flowers in the streets. Mostly they disliked the new religion, but they did not yet see the danger. Their tolerance weakened their resistance.

Here are some excerpts on this period in history from Early Medieval Ireland: 400-1200 by Daibhi O Croinin, published by Routledge in 1995:

There is no reason to doubt that in Ireland, as in every other country where Christianity was introduced, zealots took to the high-roads and criss-crossed the countryside smashing the symbols of the rival religion and looting its temples. ‘There is no such thing as robbery for those who truly possess Christ’. … Much of what once existed as the outward and visible expression of pre-Christian religious beliefs in Ireland has doubtless been disfigured or completely destroyed, perhaps on occasion absorbed so successfully into the triumphant religion as to be unrecognizable to us now. …

The stark reality of the new religion, with its single god who destroyed all others, given to outbursts of divine wrath and prone to vengeance and punishment, may very well have seemed impious to a people more used to a variety of deities and to the toleration of many cults.

It may well have been [their] tolerance of the new Christian religion, rather than any inherent weakness, that brought about the destruction of the pre-Christian Irish cults. Patrick, after all, reported how the brehons allowed him to carry his Christian message wherever he wished. …

There is no evidence to suggest (and no particular reason to believe) that Christianity offered a richer spiritual experience than the native cults. … Quite the contrary, the frequency with which Christian writers condemn the druids and their ways suggests that Christianity had still to establish complete control even in the seventh century and beyond. … We have no satisfactory way of knowing when Christianity became respectable; we only know that in Patrick’s time it clearly still was not.

The Brehons, by the way, were the gatekeepers of the old Irish system of law, the Brehon law, which was so popular with the people that it persisted for hundreds of years after Patrick, into the 17th Century.

As for the open-minded tolerance of the old religions vs. the violent intolerance of Rome’s religion, this is a story that we hear over and over in the history of the old cultures. Tolerant cultures appear to be extremely vulnerable to intolerant ones.

I don’t celebrate St. Patrick’s Day. I mourn.

Clara Rockmore — and a wee music lesson

Today’s Google Doodle (you know — the little piece of artwork on Google pages) honors Clara Rockmore, a Theremin artist who lived from 1911 to 1998. A Theremin, of course, is an electronic musical instrument that was invented just over a hundred years ago and that was refined in the decades that followed. Most people recognize Theremin music as providing the eerie warbling music used in early science fiction films.

Clara Rockmore was trained as a violinist. She had perfect pitch. She also had a very refined and sensitive musicality. If you haven’t listened to the YouTube performance above, do that now, and then let’s talk about her Theremin technique, which was much more highly developed than other Theremin players.

First, about the Theremin itself. If you look closely, you’ll see that Rockmore’s right hand is near a vertical metal shaft. That’s called an antenna, but actually it’s the plate of a capacitor. The nearness (or distance) of the hand from the antenna varies the pitch of the Theremin. (The circuit is an oscillator circuit, or LC circuit, in which the varying value of the capacitance against the inductance varies the rate of oscillation.) You’ll see that Rockmore’s right hand is near a horizontal metal loop. That, too, is an antenna. The nearness (or distance) of the left hand varies the volume of the Theremin. So you can see how the Theremin is played and how it is oddly analogous to playing the violin. The rapid wavering of the right hand produces vibrato, with a hand motion similar to what a violinist uses for vibrato.

We need another musical term — portamento. To play (or sing) portamento is to glide from note to note like a slide whistle. Here’s a YouTube video of a slide whistle gliding portamento down in pitch and back up again:

Not all instruments can be played portamento. A piano, obviously, moves precisely from pitch to according to which key is struck. Portamento playing is possible on the violin by just sliding the finger along the fingerboard. Singers can move portamento from note to note, but they’d better watch out, because portamento singing can be in very bad taste. As for the Theremin, most Theremin players always play portamento, because that’s the easy way to play the Theremin.

The piano accompaniment here, by the way, is playing arpeggios — chords in which the notes are not sounded all at once, but rather in a sequence.

What was remarkable about Blackmore’s playing is that she developed those complex movements of the right hand that enabled her to move precisely from pitch to pitch and note to note, the way a violinist changes notes by changing fingers rather than by sliding a single finger. She does “bend” some notes, but it’s always in good taste. I doubt that there will ever be another Theremin player like her.

Double-bump glassware

I guess I’m just sentimental about how food was served when I was much younger — back before the days in which everything became plastic, disposable, and super-sized. While browsing in a salvage store earlier this week (I love salvage stores — you never know what you might find) I came across a box of new old-stock glasses. The label on the box called them “double bump” glasses, a term that I had never heard.

You’ll remember glasses of this type very well unless, perhaps, you’re of the millennial generation. As I recall, these glasses were used up through the 1970s and even 1980s. You might get a glass of ice water in a glass like this as soon as you sat down in a diner. If you ordered a glass of milk, it might come in a glass like this. I also think I recall that, if you ordered a small Coke at a place like a drug store fountain or the Woolworth’s lunch counter, it might come in a glass like this.

Part of what I like about institutional relics of that era is that, back then, eight ounces was considered a normal serving.

But just look at the classic design of this glass! The bumps, of course, help keep you from dropping it.

I bought only two of these glasses on the grounds that I don’t have cabinet space for more. But something tells me that I’ll probably stop and buy a few more next time I pass that salvage store.

Tearing the horn off an anvil?

When I was a young’un, a saying I frequently heard (it was particularly said of children) was that a person who was prone to breaking things could “tear the horn off an anvil.”

Over the years, I have occasionally used this saying. Often I have been met with a blank look. This caused me to realize that many people are not clear on what an anvil is, or why an anvil has a horn.

At the lawn mower shop last week, I noticed a particularly photogenic anvil. I took a picture of it in case I ever needed to illustrate the saying.

An anvil, of course, is used by smiths and other metal workers for hammering a piece of metal into a particular shape.

As for the machine below, which I also photographed because it was photogenic, I’m not exactly sure what it is. My guess, though, is that it’s for crimping metal. Notice the crimped length of stovepipe behind the machine. If my theory is correct, then this machine would let you make a stovepipe out of a piece of sheet metal.

Dumplings

When I was a young’un, I was as intrigued with the word dumpling as I was with dumplings. There was something funny, archaic, and magical about dumplings — both the food and the word. I would have guessed that dumpling is of Germanic origin, but the Oxford English dictionary throws up its hands and says that the origin of the word dumpling is obscure, though the word was first detected in Norfolk around 1600. The word dump — which may or may not be related to dumpling — has cognates in Danish and Norwegian.

In any case, most cuisines probably have the concept of dumplings. Filled dumplings are particularly intriguing. Whether you call them pierogi or pot stickers, or one of the 453 words that Italian has for filled pasta (I’m joking), it’s only dumplings that I’d particularly care to make, because I tend to be pretty bad at imitating exotic cuisines, and I always do best with stuff that is pretty traditional and old-fashioned. I do exotic cuisines only by fusing them with Southern or California cuisine.

It was the sauce that led me to dumplings for supper. The abbey stocks many types of vinegar, but one type of vinegar that I had never previously stocked is malt vinegar. I bought some English malt vinegar yesterday at Whole Foods, and I started Googling for ideas about what — other than fried potatoes — might go well with a sauce based on malt vinegar. I used to love eating pot stickers at Asian restaurants in San Francisco. Pot stickers go nicely with strong sauces. So I ended up making dumplings just to go with the dipping sauce I had in mind. I made a dipping sauce of garlic, harissa sauce (an African pepper sauce that I have learned to always keep on hand), soy sauce, honey, and malt vinegar.

The dumplings were filled with mashed rutabaga, chopped onions, and grated Havarti cheese. The dough was made only with bread flour and water. The dumplings went nicely with seared cabbage (seared cabbage is frequently served at the abbey, especially in winter). I ate the dumplings with my hands and dipped each bite in the dipping sauce.

Two random reviews: San Andreas, and The History Boys

San Andreas, Warner Bros., 2015

Readers of this blog know that I don’t make any systematic effort to review movies. Rather, my movie reviews are pretty random and occasional and reflect only what I happen to have been watching — stuff that left me thinking. San Andreas and The History Boys are about as different from each other as two movies could be.

When I saw the trailer for San Andreas, in which the front wave of an enormous tsunami is bearing down on San Francisco just west of the Golden Gate Bridge, I knew that I’d have to watch it. I’m a sucker for San Francisco movies, and San Andreas is a good one, even if an earthquake and tsunami wipe the city out.

When combined with a decent story, Hollywood special effects can be thrilling. But much of the appeal of San Andreas is in the script — though the disaster scenes and helicopter rescues are great fun. Hollywood well knows that if the plot for a screenplay involves a massive earthquake that wipes out Los Angeles and San Francisco, then you need to wrap that plot around some personal stories that get some emotion into it. Carlton Cuse’s fast-moving screenplay does this with six main characters: An earthquake scientist who figured out that the Big One was about to happen; a married couple in the process of getting a divorce; their daughter and the young man she meets in San Francisco; and the young man’s younger brother.

But oh how I love Hollywood panoramas shot over San Francisco. I haven’t been back to San Francisco since I left in 2008, so all those scenes from familiar places make me a little homesick. You can’t even visit San Francisco — let alone live there for 17 years as I did — without forming a permanent emotional bond with the place.

San Andreas is worth watching just as entertainment. It’s also a good script, with Hollywood special effects effectively used.

The History Boys, Fox Searchlight, 2006

The History Boys got so-so reviews in places like Rotten Tomatoes. I think that’s because the film goes way over the heads of most people. It’s based on a play by Alan Bennett that opened in London in 2004. I have watched this film three times, and I still can’t pick up on everything. Then I bought a copy of the script of the play and read that, too.

Probably only the English can truly follow all the snappy language and nuance. The dialogue teeters on a sharp edge between irony and sincerity, bravado and vulnerability. There is keen commentary not only on history, but culture in general and English culture in particular. The dialogue includes page after page of untranslated French. That’s a very bold thing to do — to an American audience, especially. This is a script that refuses to dumb itself down. The History Boys — both the play and the film — is unapologetically aimed at the few who have done enough reading in their lives to follow the dialogue and who can find jokes about, say, the subjunctive (whether in English or in French) funny.

I rarely use the word masterpiece, but I see The History Boys as a masterpiece of writing. Alan Bennett, in only a hundred pages of screenplay, manages to exhaust us with intellectual exercise, dazzle us with meaningful erudition, jerk us back and forth between pure silliness and profundity, and finally to break our hearts with his characters, who represent a broad range of the human condition.

I bought the film on DVD. Watching it should be an annual tradition, like the annual watching of Love Actually, at Christmas.

Lunch on the road …

Probably many of the people who eat at Jim’s Grill in Yadkinville remember when it was a hot spot in the 1950s — curb service, window trays, juke box, the works. It’s on U.S. 601, which runs north to south across most of North and South Carolina and which used to be part of a major route from points north to Florida.

I’ve had a sentimental weakness for roadside eateries for as long as I can remember. Some of them still remain along the old secondary roads. The sad thing, though, is that every time I’m in Jim’s Grill (I make pretty regular trips to Yadkin County), I never see any young people there. Younger people, I suppose, are sentimental about MacDonald’s rather than the old roadside restaurants.

One of the great things about old-fashioned fast food is that there is no waste paper, cardboard, or plastic to throw away. It’s a pity, though, that (as far as I know) they’re all using plastic dinnerware rather than the heavy diner china that they used to use.

Baltimore Road, about 10 miles east of Yadkinville