tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-34105426715103473312024-03-13T20:59:43.611-07:00SacrificeLittleMurphyDoghttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08114822440826912349noreply@blogger.comBlogger148125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3410542671510347331.post-58921812380394385962021-05-14T17:26:00.001-07:002021-05-14T17:28:17.290-07:00Lies<p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Calibri, sans-serif; margin: 0in 0in 0.0001pt;"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman", serif; font-size: 14pt;">The truth shall set us free.<o:p></o:p></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Calibri, sans-serif; margin: 0in 0in 0.0001pt;"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman", serif; font-size: 14pt;">Okay, fine, except what happens when the truth is obscured in lies? That now seems to be the situation in the United States. I despair for my country and for the future. Since the country’s earliest beginnings, we have been trained by our history to accept lies. We have been trained by our history to blindly accept any information that puts the country in a good light. We have been trained by our history believe the stupidest possible lies.<o:p></o:p></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Calibri, sans-serif; margin: 0in 0in 0.0001pt;"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman", serif; font-size: 14pt;"> </span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Calibri, sans-serif; margin: 0in 0in 0.0001pt;"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman", serif; font-size: 14pt;">We have been told that America was a refuge for the oppressed, and in some cases, it was. The glorious Pilgrims now represent the longing for religious freedom. Never mind that they were the equivalent of the modern-day Taliban and were essentially expelled from Britain. The first colony (not the one established by Sir Walter Raleigh), Jamestown, was not founded to provide opportunity; in other words, it was founded out of greed. The colonists believed that gold could be collected from the landscape. Eventually, when the colonists realized that they would actually have to work for a living just as they had to in the old country, the institution of slavery was introduced to North America. This occurred in 1619, a year before the Pilgrims stumbled into</span><span style="font-size: 14pt;"> </span><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman", serif;"><a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Massachusetts"><span style="background-color: white; background-position: initial initial; background-repeat: initial initial; color: black; font-size: 14pt; text-decoration: none;">Massachusetts. Of course, as soon as the Pilgrim’s colony became established, slavery became a part of the way of life there also—so much for freedom. Of course, this is a symptom of the time-honored lie that one group of people is superior to another; hence, the superior group may make slaves out of the “inferior.” After all, the Romans had to invent Aeneas and the bravery and virtue of the Roman forefathers, the Trojans, in order to justify enslaving Greeks. This lie of one people being superior to another has infiltrated Western Culture almost from its beginning. This concept was aided and abetted by another great lie—religion. Anything that must be accepted on faith without reasonable proof already smells of falsehood. David Strauss and Ludwig Feuerbach provided the logical response and Darwin provided the practical one. </span><span style="color: windowtext; font-size: 14pt; text-decoration: none;"><o:p></o:p></span></a></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Calibri, sans-serif; margin: 0in 0in 0.0001pt;"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman", serif;"> </span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Calibri, sans-serif; margin: 0in 0in 0.0001pt;"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman", serif; font-size: 14pt;">More to the point, the United States has had a schizophrenic history. Historians have accentuated the positives and hidden the negatives. Yes, the country broke from England over the 23 charges listed by Jefferson in the Declaration of Independence. Yes, the founding fathers were primarily Deists who put rational thinking ahead of superstition. Yes, the words of the Declaration of Independence and the Constitution have strong connotative as well as denotative associations for humanity’s better nature. These are the things that historians stress, but there is a darker side. While Pennsylvania Quakers opposed slavery, neither the Declaration of Independence nor the Constitution consider the contradiction it imposed on their ideas. In fact, Jefferson, a slave owner with a tiny conscience, was forced to remove any reference to slavery from the documents he was responsible for. In 1765 when Granville Sharp began legal challenges to the British slave trade, the southern American colonies began to worry that their source of free labor might disappear. In 1772 when John Woolman, an American Quaker, went to England seeking support for the abolitionist cause, Georgia, North and South Carolina, and Virginia were suddenly ready to join the fight for Independence a year later. Thus, while the documents of Independence might contain ennobling ideas, not all the reasons for the American Revolution were so pure.<o:p></o:p></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Calibri, sans-serif; margin: 0in 0in 0.0001pt;"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman", serif; font-size: 14pt;"> </span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Calibri, sans-serif; margin: 0in 0in 0.0001pt;"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman", serif; font-size: 14pt;">This theme becomes a common thread in American history, but it is covered up by lies. All Americans need to read two autobiographies: Frederick Douglass’s and U.S. Grant’s. These two works expose some of the lies we have been nurtured on. Douglass describes the life of a slave, not in the deep South, but in Maryland, originally a colony settled for Catholics to avoid persecution in England. It is a sobering expose of cruelty. Grant, on the other hand, directly exposes one of the great American lies. We have been led to believe that the battle for the Independence of Texas from Mexico was a glorious thing with great heroes and noble ides. Sam Houston, Stephen Austin, and Davey Crocket are often cited as great heroes fighting for liberty. Grant in his chapter on the Mexican-American war tells his readers the truth. Mexico had outlawed slavery. The settlers in Texas were dependent on slavery for free labor; hence, they rebelled. The fight was to ensure the continuation of slavery in Texas.<o:p></o:p></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Calibri, sans-serif; margin: 0in 0in 0.0001pt;"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman", serif; font-size: 14pt;"> </span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Calibri, sans-serif; margin: 0in 0in 0.0001pt;"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman", serif; font-size: 14pt;">Lies have always been part of American history. To this day, we are told that the South fought for the noble cause of States’ Rights, and the idea of the glorious Lost Cause has been perpetuated to rewrite history. The only reason States’ Rights played a part is because the Southern states thought they had the right to keep people in bondage and they started a revolt to ensure the institution. This lie made a hero out of Robert E. Lee, a blatant racist and slave owner. It glorified the Confederate military personnel like Nathan Bedford Forrest, the eventual founder of the KKK. There are still schools in the South named for Forrest, which shows how deeply the lie took hold.<o:p></o:p></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Calibri, sans-serif; margin: 0in 0in 0.0001pt;"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman", serif; font-size: 14pt;"> </span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Calibri, sans-serif; margin: 0in 0in 0.0001pt;"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman", serif; font-size: 14pt;">However, race is not the only cause for lies in American History. In more recent times Lyndon Johnson took the country into a war it could not win by telling a lie about the Tonkin Gulf. President Kennedy issued National Security Action Memorandum 263, which laid out the plan for the removal of all American CIA forces from Vietnam, the only American troops there at the time. The day after Kennedy’s death, Lyndon Johnson reversed the policy, and then used the made up Tonkin Gulf incident to get Congress to approve sending troops and equipment to Vietnam. This lie was exposed, but the war dragged on and on, and those who tried to expose further the lie were persecuted and threatened. The publishing of the Pentagon Papers by Daniel Ellsburg nearly ended with his imprisonment. Lies, Lies, Lies.<o:p></o:p></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Calibri, sans-serif; margin: 0in 0in 0.0001pt;"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman", serif; font-size: 14pt;"> </span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Calibri, sans-serif; margin: 0in 0in 0.0001pt;"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman", serif; font-size: 14pt;">Now America is threatened with the most bald-faced of lies. We witnessed the 2020 election. We watched the votes being counted. We watched them being recounted in states where the margins of victory were narrow. We watched them being audited for fraud. We watched court room challenges to the results, all of which found nothing but that the winner was the winner. Sadly, based on the “Big Lie” people are trying to convince us that the election was fraudulent. That the winner was not the winner. In an attempt to rewrite history, the “Big Lie” is promulgated over and over. As in the past, it is gaining acceptance, so much so that those who believe it attempted a revolution by attacking the U.S. Capitol and attempting to stop the certification of the vote. To further rewrite history, we are now being told that these insurrectionists were nothing more than typical visitors to the Capitol. Thank goodness the videos exist showing the attack and its aftermath. If it wouldn’t prejudice the trial of these individuals, these videos should be shown every day to reinforce that the lie is a lie.<o:p></o:p></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Calibri, sans-serif; margin: 0in 0in 0.0001pt;"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman", serif; font-size: 14pt;"> </span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Calibri, sans-serif; margin: 0in 0in 0.0001pt;"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman", serif; font-size: 14pt;">Republicans just forced out one of their Congressional leaders for telling the truth. They said that she could not represent their party since she was spouting Democratic talking points. How can the truth be “talking points?” Clearly our country is in danger as never before because of a lie. I fear for my country. I fear for our future. I fear for the truth.<o:p></o:p></span></p>LittleMurphyDoghttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08114822440826912349noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3410542671510347331.post-59445064823503794902021-02-12T06:26:00.000-08:002021-02-12T06:26:01.234-08:00Still Trying to Walk Home<<span style="font-family: helvetica; font-size: medium;">Before the November election, I wrote about my walks that grew longer and longer taking me further and further from home as the distractions of the political situation forced me to wander aimlessly. When the election occurred and the Orange Villain was defeated, I assumed that I would be able to find my way back home. Oh how wrong I was!</span><div><span style="font-family: helvetica; font-size: medium;"><span> </span><br /></span></div><div><span style="font-family: helvetica; font-size: medium;"><span>Trying to return home, I ran into one roadblock after another. Many of them are too horrible to recount now. The disaster of January 6, 2021, was the worst of these roadblocks. The road nearly disappeared; I was almost stranded without a path. I didn't realize that I had walked all the way to Crazytown. Now I find myself in a place where one's word has no merit, no weight, no moral compass. Sworn oaths are disregarded. The history and tradition of a country are no longer honored. The lie is as important as the truth and is as fully accepted and believed. The lie as an abstract concept is valued as a means to an end. Repeat the lie often enough that it replaces the truth--that seems now to be the common practice in Crazytown.</span></span></div><div><span style="font-family: helvetica; font-size: medium;"><span><br /></span></span></div><div><span style="font-family: helvetica; font-size: medium;"><span>The Mayor of Crazytown, the person who blocks the path home, believes and </span>propagates all the lies: the election was a fraud, the mass shootings of the last decade were faked, the western American wildfires were caused by Jewish space lasers used to clear land for rapid transit trains and to spare the power companies from guilt for poorly maintaining the land through which the power lines run. Government officials representing Crazytown include individuals who urge through lies and deception the dupes to attempt to overthrow the legitimate elections of the whole country. Officials who through their duplicity prevent an impeachment trial before the election, then say someone who loses the election cannot be tried for crimes committed while that person was in office. Officials who will not consider a judge for the Supreme Court before an election and spout euphemisms such as "throw my words back at me if I ever betray this," and then when it suits them, ram a judge onto the Court three weeks before the next election. The roads through Crazytown are twisted and crooked. The way through Crazytown is difficult and confusing. I search desperately for a way out.</span></div><div><span style="font-family: helvetica; font-size: medium;"><br /></span></div><div><span style="font-family: helvetica; font-size: medium;">It is still a long walk home.</span></div><div><span style="font-family: helvetica; font-size: medium;"><span> </span><br /></span></div><div><span style="font-family: helvetica; font-size: medium;"><span><br /></span></span></div>LittleMurphyDoghttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08114822440826912349noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3410542671510347331.post-13416551945738848592021-01-01T08:00:00.001-08:002021-01-01T08:01:27.541-08:00New Year"s Reflections on Wagner in My Lifetime<p> As a land-locked American growing up in the heart of the North American Continent, my earliest exposures to Wagner came form the radio. Programs like The Voice of Firestone, The Bell Telephone Hour, and the Saturday Metropolitan Opera broadcasts provided the entrance to what I now realize were the performances of stars the rest of my life never discovered again. I'm not sure I appreciated them fully at the time, but in retrospect I envy my younger self. </p><p>Freda Leider left the Met and America before I was born, but her cruel treatment and retirement from the stage as a result of what she received from the Nazis became legend. When I was old enough to listen with concentration and emotional enthusiasm, I was enthralled by the voices of Kirsten Flagstad, Marjorie Lawrence, Helen Traubel, Lottie Lehman, Friedrich Schorr, and Lauritz Melchior. Starting with this group could have ruined my later experiences; fortunately, I was not mature enough truly to realize the greatness to which I was being exposed. </p><p>I was never exposed to many of the great Wagnerians performing in Europe during this time. Covent Garden and the German Opera Houses were almost mythological places for me. Not until after World War II when travel and other restrictions disappeared and these singers began to take roles in America did they come to my attention. Thus, it was not until 1950 and Hans Hotter's debut at the Metropolitan that he became more than just a rumor to me. Max Lorenz had appeared at the Metropolitan, again before my time, and his connections with the Third Reich allowed Americans to dismiss him from their attention. Besides, we had Melchior--that is until Rudolf Bing took over the Metropolitan Opera. Bing's irrational attempts to cut budget had an easy target--the expensive Wagner operas. He simply did not program them; therefore, he did not need Melchior or Traubel, both of whom he fired. Astrid Varnay was "kicked to the curb," and sent to Europe to continue her career. Not until 1959-60 did Wagner find his place in the Metropolitan, although Hotter did make his famous New York debut at the Met in 1956 as the Dutchman.</p><p>Nearly ten years passed without a connection to Wagnerian voices. Fortunately, when the connection was reestablished, there were voices worthy of listening. We made fun of Wolfgang Windgassen (because he was not Melchior). We made fun of Ramon Vinay because he was a baritone at heart and not Melchior. We made fun of Hans Hopf (who appeared in the few early 1950 Wagnerian productions at the Met) because by the time he came back to the Metropolitan in the 1960s he had sung his voice away and he was not Melchior. However, the late 1950s and 1960 was actually if not a golden age of Wagner singing, it was a silver age. The voices of Nilsson, Windgassen, Frick made up for those like William Johns. By 1964 the Metropolitan still struggled to produce Wagner operas on a consistent basis, but hat year I discovered Sandor Konya, who may well still be my favorite Lohengrin and Regine Crespin.</p><p>Fortunately, it was at this time that long playing records were introduced, and the American public could hear many more performers than had previously been possible. The Furtwangler recording of Tristan and Isolde, which was recorded in the early 1950s, finally became widely available in America. For many of us this was the first time that we had heard Ludwig Suthaus. When the Seraphim label (Angels of the Highest Order) released the Furtwangler Walkure, we were able to hear him again, and realized that there was life after Melchior. More importantly, that Tristan recording was the first time many of us had heard Fischer-Dieskau in a Wagner production. For many of us, this was a revelation. Here was a singer who was doing more than singing. Even without seeing him, we knew that he was acting, providing nuance, feeling, and vitality into the role. Not until I heard Waltrude Meier many years later did I find another singer with such talent. Fischer-Dieskau, despite what many think now (reaction always sets in) was one of the great Wagnerians. He imbued every role not with just a big voice but with an interpretation that perfectly fit the character. He is Wolfram. His Dutchman has been the model for numerous singers, including James Morris. His Telramund is nuanced and complicated. His Amfortas exemplifies the suffering and regret of one who strives for salvation. His Sachs reflects the sacrifice of a man yearning for happiness, but sacrificing his own for that of others. Again the words nuanced and penetrating come to mind. </p><p>Christa Ludwig, James King, Jon Vickers, Marti Talvela, and a few others reflected the glory that can be found in Wagnerian performances, but at this point I reached an empty field bereft of flowers, trees, grass. I will not vilify the names of singers whom I cannot appreciate, but I found the 1980s and 1990s a difficult time. There are exceptions. Jessye Norman never failed to provide a great performance. Peter Hofman, before he sang his voice away, was a more than adequate Wagnerian. Siegfried Jerusalem made up with versatility what he might have lacked in vocal beauty, and his Parsifal may be the best we will hear for a long time. Placido Domingo tried to be a Wagnerian, and occasionally succeeded. Sadly Ben Heppner too sang his voice away too soon. </p><p>Presently, only Jonas Kaufman holds my attention, but like Vinay, he is really a baritone to my ear. I suppose that I am jaded having, as I now realize, grown up with the giants. A memory can be a terrible thing. It makes one impatient waiting for the present to match the past. What I fear as we enter this new year is that the transient, the flighty, the in the moment will suppress the thorough, the cogent, the developing. Already in America opera recordings are available only through a few sources. Opera houses are closing or hanging on by their fingernails. The pandemic has crippled them even further so that even the mighty Metropolitan Opera is in danger. Perhaps it is a good thing that I have my memories.</p>LittleMurphyDoghttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08114822440826912349noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3410542671510347331.post-58635263921052233362020-11-11T06:50:00.003-08:002020-11-11T06:50:52.245-08:00Veterans Day<p><span style="font-size: medium;">This is a day we pause to remember those individuals whose lives were lost in the service of their country. Unlike our current President who considers them "suckers and losers," I consider them victims, victims of the ideological insanity of a world without empathy, vision, or understanding.</span></p><p><span style="font-size: large;"> Some wars are justified, even by my pacifist soul. The American Civil War, despite what embittered losers say, was a war to end human slavery in a country that promised equality. World War II was a war to prevent another form of slavery, slavery to an ideology that attempted to diminish people for their ethnic backgrounds.</span></p><p><span style="font-size: medium;"><span>I pity the individuals who get devoured by the vast military complexes of countries, religions, and </span>geographies. I grieve for them, their friends, their families. It is their fate that should be remembered on this day.</span></p><p><span style="font-size: medium;">The soldier is one thing; the military is another. World War I, the war that gave birth to this holiday, is an example of the failing of the military. The diplomatic entanglements among the various European countries permitted the militaries to begin hostilities with no exit strategy except for the attrition of the other side. As a result, millions of soldiers died in a stalemate that lasted for five years, far too many years. After the slaughter and destruction, the settlement facilitated the militaries of the same countries to repeat the atrocities some twenty years later.</span></p><p><span style="font-size: medium;">The Korean Police Action is another example of the military entering into combat without an ending strategy. In fact, this war has never officially ended. Do I dare mention Vietnam, a war that was almost avoided. Then two insane Presidents who did not want to lose a war allowed it to go on and on because the military leaders were more concerned with the Presidents' feelings than with the actual ending the conflict. General William Westmorland was more concerned with body counts than in ending the war. As a result, he turned many of the men we seek to honor today into war criminals who burned villages, slaughtered valued livestock, and killed civilians--one dead "gook" body was as good as another when making body counts. There was no exit strategy other than the plan from World War I--attrition of the other side. The United States now faces the same problem in Afghanistan and Iraq. The quicksand of poorly planned and executed military action has the country trapped in a conflict where this time attrition is not even a consideration.</span></p><p><span style="font-size: medium;">Since the start of World War II, the American Military had been subsumed by right-wing, nearly fascist, leaders. In fact, in the 1950s during a time when Joe McCarthy was looking for Communists in the State Department, the Dulles brothers were already spreading their fascist web throughout the government. With one as the head of the CIA and the other as Secretary of State, the US was pummeled down a path of right-wing insanity. Former Nazi leaders were protected by the two, who incorporated these Nazis into the American Secret Service in order to take advantage of their old spy networks in Eastern Europe.</span></p><p><span style="font-size: medium;">The Dulles brothers opened the military door to right-wing generals like Curtis LeMay, who wanted to use nuclear weapons both in Korea and Vietnam; Thomas Powers, who ran the Strategic Air Command as LeMay's handpicked successor. Both of these men saw the end of the Cuban Missle Crisis as a great defeat for the country. How the nation has avoided nuclear holocaust with military leaders such as these is a miracle.</span></p><p><span style="font-size: medium;">I was too old to serve in Vietnam, but I did all I could to end the war, save the soldiers being sent there, and restore the soul of the nation. When I did some of the research for Dr. King's Speech on Vietnam, I had hoped that a nation would listen and end the madness. Nixon later claimed the he had ended the war. It's true, he ended it by a Vietnamese victory that saw the American military escaping in helicopters as Saigon fell to the "enemy." All of those men killed or corrupted there were the victims of a military given too much power and not enough accountability.</span></p><p><span style="font-size: medium;">On this day, honor the dead, the individual soldiers who were ground up by an incompetent military system that seeks glory without accountability. Do not allow this country to be devoured by another conflict that has no clear outcome, no clear ending, no clear solution. Say what we might about Papa Bush, he made a case for his campaign against Iraq, convinced allies of the need, had a goal, and when the goal had been reached (kicking Iraq out of Kuwait), the exit waa made. If only his son had learned the lesson.</span></p><p><span style="font-size: medium;">Wear a poppy to day in honor of those who our government has sent to their death, but don't praise our military leaders.</span></p>LittleMurphyDoghttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08114822440826912349noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3410542671510347331.post-72127446878674799672020-09-14T06:56:00.003-07:002020-09-14T06:56:30.823-07:00Wake Up Trump Voters<p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Cambria; margin: 22.5pt 0in;"><span style="font-size: 14pt;">How could anyone consider voting for Donald J. Trump? I shake my head in disbelief. His supporters seem to be blind and deaf to the truth about the man. As a former freedom rider, a former small business owner, and an educator for nearly 60 years, I am appalled that such a person can gather a following. In the hopes that any of the followers might take the time to question their position, here is a recounting of some of the most grievous sins of their hero:<o:p></o:p></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Cambria; margin: 22.5pt 0in;"><span style="font-size: 14pt;">First, he is a xenophobic racist: </span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Cambria; margin: 22.5pt 0in;"><span style="font-size: 14pt;">A. He has closed the borders of this country to people who have always been welcomed here, people who add to our diversity and cultural makeup. I suppose Trump has never read Emma Lazarus’ poem inscribed on the Statue of Liberty. So, he arrests those seeking asylum, separates them from their children, and then places the children in what are basically concentration camps. He builds walls to keep out those who like my ancestors, his ancestors, everyone's ancestors except native Americans seek the opportunity for a better life. </span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Cambria; margin: 22.5pt 0in;"><span style="font-size: 14pt;"> B. He ignores a segment of the American population, a segment seeking equity and justice. He went to Kenosha, WI, after the shooting by police of a black man. Did he visit the family of the victim? No, he rallied against reforming the police departments rife with bigotry and prejudice. He encouraged civilians to take arms against peaceful protesters, which resulted in the shooting of two protesters by a minor, who belonged to a white nationalist group, and then he justified the actions of this vigilante. <o:p></o:p></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Cambria; margin: 22.5pt 0in;"><span style="font-size: 14pt;">Second, Trump wants to eliminate the social network, which protects those American citizens over the age of 65. He initiated his plan in August of this year through an Executive Order eliminating the Social Security withholding tax. This was part of a series of Executive Orders signed that month.<o:p></o:p></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Cambria; margin: 22.5pt 0in;"><i><span style="font-size: 14pt;">But the most potentially far-reaching order <a href="https://www.whitehouse.gov/presidential-actions/memorandum-deferring-payroll-tax-obligations-light-ongoing-covid-19-disaster/"><span style="color: blue;">concerns the payroll tax</span></a>, which funds Social Security and part of Medicare. This order, along with comments Trump made at the signing ceremony, poses a mortal threat to the 64 million Americans who currently receive Social Security benefits and the hundreds of millions more who will receive benefits in coming decades.<o:p></o:p></span></i></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Cambria; margin: 22.5pt 0in;"><i><span style="font-size: 14pt;"><u>If he’s reelected, Trump said, he will “terminate” the payroll tax. Make no mistake: He’s talking about bankrupting Social Security</u> (Los Angeles</span></i><span style="font-size: 14pt;"> Times, August 10, 2020). My underlining.<o:p></o:p></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Cambria; margin: 22.5pt 0in;"><span style="font-size: 14pt;">Third, Trump is a charlatan. He claims to be a brilliant business man. The claim is another example of smoke and mirrors. Look at his record; he is responsible for 13 failed businesses and six bankruptcies. He is a fraud and a phony:<o:p></o:p></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Cambria; margin: 0in 0in 0.0001pt;"><i><span style="font-size: 14pt;">Failed business<o:p></o:p></span></i></p><p style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-size: 10pt; margin: 0in 0in 0.25in; vertical-align: baseline;"><i><span style="color: #454545; font-family: Cambria; font-size: 14pt;">1. Trump Steaks<o:p></o:p></span></i></p><p style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-size: 10pt; margin: 0in 0in 0.25in; vertical-align: baseline;"><i><span style="color: #454545; font-family: Cambria; font-size: 14pt;">3. Trump Airlines<o:p></o:p></span></i></p><p style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-size: 10pt; margin: 0in 0in 0.25in; vertical-align: baseline;"><i><span style="color: #454545; font-family: Cambria; font-size: 14pt;">4. Trump Vodka<o:p></o:p></span></i></p><p style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-size: 10pt; margin: 0in 0in 0.25in; vertical-align: baseline;"><i><span style="color: #454545; font-family: Cambria; font-size: 14pt;">5. Trump Mortgage<o:p></o:p></span></i></p><p style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-size: 10pt; margin: 0in 0in 0.25in; vertical-align: baseline;"><i><span style="color: #454545; font-family: Cambria; font-size: 14pt;">6. Trump: The Game<o:p></o:p></span></i></p><p style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-size: 10pt; margin: 0in 0in 0.25in; vertical-align: baseline;"><i><span style="color: #454545; font-family: Cambria; font-size: 14pt;">7. Trump Magazine<o:p></o:p></span></i></p><p style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-size: 10pt; margin: 0in 0in 0.25in; vertical-align: baseline;"><i><span style="color: #454545; font-family: Cambria; font-size: 14pt;">8. Trump University<o:p></o:p></span></i></p><p style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-size: 10pt; margin: 0in 0in 0.25in; vertical-align: baseline;"><i><span style="color: #454545; font-family: Cambria; font-size: 14pt;">9. Trump Ice <o:p></o:p></span></i></p><p style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-size: 10pt; margin: 0in 0in 0.25in; vertical-align: baseline;"><i><span style="color: #454545; font-family: Cambria; font-size: 14pt;">10. The New Jersey Generals <o:p></o:p></span></i></p><p style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-size: 10pt; margin: 0in 0in 0.25in; vertical-align: baseline;"><i><span style="color: #454545; font-family: Cambria; font-size: 14pt;">11. Tour de Trump <o:p></o:p></span></i></p><p style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-size: 10pt; margin: 0in 0in 0.25in; vertical-align: baseline;"><i><span style="color: #454545; font-family: Cambria; font-size: 14pt;">12. Trump Network <o:p></o:p></span></i></p><p style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-size: 10pt; margin: 0in 0in 0.25in; vertical-align: baseline;"><i><span style="color: #454545; font-family: Cambria; font-size: 14pt;">13. Trumped! <o:p></o:p></span></i></p><p style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-size: 10pt; margin: 0in 0in 0.25in; vertical-align: baseline;"><i><span style="color: #454545; font-family: Cambria; font-size: 14pt;">Companies Trump Bankrupted:<o:p></o:p></span></i></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Cambria; margin: 0in 0in 0.25in; vertical-align: baseline;"><i><span style="color: #454545; font-size: 14pt;">1. Trump Taj Mahal <o:p></o:p></span></i></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Cambria; margin: 0in 0in 0.25in; vertical-align: baseline;"><i><span style="color: #454545; font-size: 14pt;">2. Trump’s Castle<o:p></o:p></span></i></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Cambria; margin: 0in 0in 0.25in; vertical-align: baseline;"><i><span style="color: #454545; font-size: 14pt;">3. Trump Plaza Casinos<o:p></o:p></span></i></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Cambria; margin: 0in 0in 0.25in; vertical-align: baseline;"><i><span style="color: #454545; font-size: 14pt;">4. Trump Plaza Hotel <o:p></o:p></span></i></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Cambria; margin: 0in 0in 0.25in; vertical-align: baseline;"><i><span style="color: #454545; font-size: 14pt;">5. Trump Hotels and Casinos Resorts </span></i><i><span style="color: #454545; font-family: "Helvetica Neue";"><o:p></o:p></span></i></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Cambria; margin: 0in 0in 0.25in; vertical-align: baseline;"><i><span style="color: #454545; font-size: 14pt;">6. Trump Entertainment Resorts (Labor 411, September 2016)<o:p></o:p></span></i></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Cambria; margin: 0in 0in 0.25in; vertical-align: baseline;"><span style="color: #454545; font-size: 14pt;">Fourth, Trump is a traitor to the United States. He is in the pocket of Putin and the Russian Mafia who have financed his failed business efforts:<o:p></o:p></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Cambria; margin: 0in 0in 0.0001pt;"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-size: 10pt;"> </span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Cambria; margin: 0in 0in 0.0001pt;"><i><span style="color: #2a2a2a; font-family: Georgia; font-size: 15pt;">…for more than three decades, at least 13 people with known or alleged links to the Russian Mafia held the deeds to, lived in or ran criminal operations out of Trump Tower in New York or other Trump properties. I mean that many of them used Trump-branded real estate to launder vast amounts of money by buying multimillion-dollar condos through anonymous shell companies. I mean that the </span></i><i><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-size: 10pt;"><a href="https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/we-will-be-in-moscow-the-story-of-trumps-30-year-quest-to-expand-his-brand-to-russia/2018/11/29/91f9f100-f3f4-11e8-aeea-b85fd44449f5_story.html?utm_term=.59b05088beea&itid=lk_inline_manual_2" title="www.washingtonpost.com"><span style="color: #1955a5; font-family: Georgia; font-size: 15pt;">Bayrock Group</span></a></span></i><i><span style="color: #2a2a2a; font-family: Georgia; font-size: 15pt;">, a real estate development company that was based in Trump Tower and had ties to the Kremlin, came up with a new business model to franchise Trump condos after he lost billions of dollars in his Atlantic City casino developments, and helped make him rich again (Washington Post, March 29, 2019).</span></i><i><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-size: 10pt;"><o:p></o:p></span></i></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Cambria; margin: 0in 0in 0.0001pt;"><o:p> </o:p></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Cambria; margin: 0in 0in 0.0001pt;"><span style="font-size: 14pt;">No wonder he courts Putin and fails to confront him over bounties paid by the Russians to Taliban militants for killing American soldiers. I will not mention how he kowtows to Kim Jon-Un, a murderer and dictator.<o:p></o:p></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Cambria; margin: 0in 0in 0.0001pt;"><span style="font-size: 14pt;"> </span></p><p><span style="font-family: Cambria; font-size: 14pt;">Fifth, Trump is a sexual predator. I suppose a single charge of sexual harassment could be questioned, but not accusations by twenty-five different women (The Independent, December 2, 2019). There can be no defense for this since there is a video confession that has aired often, but which Trump supporters seem to ignore.</span></p><p></p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><iframe allowfullscreen="" class="BLOG_video_class" height="266" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/NcZcTnykYbw" width="320" youtube-src-id="NcZcTnykYbw"></iframe></div><br /><span style="font-family: Cambria; font-size: medium;">Finally, he is a criminal. Upon leaving office he will be charged with income tax crimes, money laundering, and other assorted financial shenanigans. He may well go from the White House to Federal Prison.</span><p></p><p><span style="font-family: Cambria; font-size: medium;">Let'a see: racist, destroyer of social security programs, business fraud, traitor, and sexual predator, criminal. What else can one say? The man must be stopped!</span></p><p><span style="font-family: Cambria; font-size: 14pt;"><br /></span></p><p><span style="font-family: Cambria; font-size: 14pt;"><br /></span></p><p><span style="font-family: Cambria; font-size: 14pt;"><br /></span></p><p><span style="font-family: Cambria; font-size: 14pt;"><br /></span></p><p><span style="font-family: Cambria; font-size: 14pt;"><br /></span></p><p><span style="font-family: Cambria; font-size: 14pt;"><br /></span></p>LittleMurphyDoghttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08114822440826912349noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3410542671510347331.post-50659706788580732132020-08-14T05:07:00.001-07:002020-08-14T05:07:50.737-07:00A Long Walk Home<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
In light of the current situation, I try to take an isolated walk everyday. Being alone with my thoughts, I often find myself wandering aimlessly as I become overwhelmed with some ideas that capture my consciousness and keep me going.<br />
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Yesterday I was captured by the horrible realization that there are far too many people who cannot think beyond what they are told. I am not referring to the religious fanatics who cite their interpretation of the Bible at the drop of a hat to cover any dilemma that begs for logical, clear thinking. I have already dismissed them as superstitious parrots who mindlessly spout religious platitudes. Instead, I am consumed by and afraid of the unthinking Trumpsters who accept as gospel any inanity uttered by the current occupant of the White House or the covey of sycophants who bubble to the top of the public trough seeking to aggrandize their own power and hide their true insignificance under a facade of toadyism.<br />
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These thoughts lead to other thoughts as I walk, and I am suddenly overwhelmed by the damage that is being wreaked on the very fabric of a nation that has for the last fifty years tried to make itself healthier, cleaner, and safer. Public lands are being leased to industrial supporters of the President who will destroy the natural beauty or vulnerability of the delicate environment for which the land was set aside. Each step of my walk, besides taking me further from home, inspires another thought that takes me deeper into the swamp of despond, a true slough of despair. The country for which I sacrificed to make more equitable is rapidly decomposing into a fascist state where privilege and wealth are worshiped and human aspirations for dignity and opportunity are denigrated. </div><div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on"><span> </span><br /></div><div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on"><span>In the past few weeks the landmarks of social justice have been undermined. First, the Voting Act has been attacked not only theoretically in the courts but also in practice by state legislatures drawing voting districts in such a way that a single political party is almost always guaranteed victory. Voting rolls have been purged, voting precincts eliminated, </span>inaccurate machines that lose or adjust votes have been put in place, and now the practice of mail-in/absentee ballots is under attack--attack to the point that the powers that be are destroying the US postal service to ensure that ballots cannot be distributed or collected. Second, the human rights of various segments of society are once again being undermined by leaders appealing to the lowest of human emotions and prejudices. People of color live in fear of the very people who should be there to protect them. Bull Connor's ghost now haunts too many police agencies. We must always remember that Black Lives Matter. The LGBT...community endures prejudice that no one should have to endure. Muslims are despised as potential terrorists for no reason other than their religious beliefs. Immigrants are now looked upon as villains despite the fact that with the exception of Native Americans all of the rest of us derive from immigrant roots. The idea of refugee has taken on a new meaning--danger. So our government arrests them, separates them putting their children in concentration camps, and holding the parents as prisoners awaiting extradition in facilities where Covid-19 preys upon them. And of course, anti-semitismis re-emerging as the elite urge their duped followers to seek scapegoats for any ill that inconveniences them. I feel that I am now a long way from home.</div><div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on"><span> </span><br /></div><div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on"><span>Perhaps as </span>frightening is the invalidation of the truth. Our country is now led by a hypocrite who spouts lie after lie, many of which contradict each other. He seeks to justify his practical ineffectiveness by blaming others for his failures or he minimizes his failures by telling a lie that these failures were actually successes or by minimizing the results. The country has lost over 166,000 people to the Covid-19 virus; the correct number my be closer to 200,000 since our leader has decommissioned the CDC and taken over the tracking of the disease. Instead of responding to critics with serious arguments to support his positions, he resorts to name calling, belittling his critics and exonerating himself.</div><div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on"><br /></div><div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">As I walk, I count the political yard signs that express support for candidates in the upcoming election. To my disbelief, most of them are for him. How is this possible? Has the country totally lost its moral compass? </div><div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on"><br /></div><div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on"><span> Even if the election changes things, I fear that it will be a long walk home.</span><br /></div>
LittleMurphyDoghttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08114822440826912349noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3410542671510347331.post-72501450363236833892019-03-26T06:08:00.001-07:002019-03-26T06:08:45.633-07:00We Are Here and Gargoyles<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
Our species has eternally sought to explain our universe by inhabiting it with spirits, sprites, gods. We felt connected, and as the middle link on the Great Chain of Being, we felt secure and assured of a place. In the late eighteenth century, the geologists and astronomers cut the Great Chain, and we lost that secure position as the center point of a heavily populated universe. Chambers and Lyell and others made us accept geologic time and other scientists began to explain the many mysteries of the world with logical explanations. The price of knowledge was isolation. We were suddenly alone in the universe, accidents of cellular and crystal evolution. This is the starting point of Wade Terry's two novels: <i>We Are Here</i> and <i>Gargoyles.</i><br />
<i><br /></i>
Set in the late 1960s and early 1970s the novels explore a geologist's hope to find a benevolent substitute for the God(s) that the scientists have stolen from us. However, the others he sought find him, but bring with them a problem that makes the reader recall the saying, "Be careful what you wish for; you just might get it." To explore this hope, Terry does not resort to aliens from outer space. Rather, he investigates the scientific notion of "string theory" and has the aliens appear via a unique door that opens the divisions between dimensions. This approach allows him to speculate about the relationship of time to the other dimensions and whether or not a timeline changes when one moves through the door from one dimensional set to another. This approach also allows him the ability to question the consistency of evolution from one set of dimensions to another.<br />
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The straight-forward plot lines are developed in complex narrative structures in both novels. Terry uses four different narrators in each story--each has a part of the story to tell. With skill, the author supplies each narrator with a unique vocabulary complete with the jargon of his profession. The novels are set within a framework with the outside frame narrated by an omnipotent voice describing the actions of three innocent, young women grounded in a naive reality searching for one of the women's cousins. When they discover journals and begin to read them, the other narrators take over.<br />
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Tim Murray is the geologist who seeks to atone for the sin of those geologists who came before him, the men who destroyed the Great Chain of Being and replaced Liebnitz with Kant and Schopenhauer. As the characters move from one dimension to another, the reader journeys from the phenomenal world of his or her own set of dimensions into the neuminal world of the other sets of dimensions. Murray is a heroic character without knowing it. He takes the honors he has received and those that come his way without realizing the magnitude nor importance of them. His article is the key to the stories, and it reflects his doubts and loneliness. His name means to honor God, but as a scientist he realizes that God has been removed from the universe; hence his search for a replacement. The biblical Timothy was of mixed race, which also impacts the events of the second novel, although Terry does not develop the idea wholly--it may be a clue to a sequel yet to appear.<br />
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Terry assists the reader by naming his characters so that the names reflect their roles in the story. The three young women who begin the search for Tim are given names of little consequence; they are the anchors in reality of the story and need to be simple and straightforward. Karen, Sally, and Helen are simply 1990 teens providing an anchor to the world of that time and looking back thirty years before. Once the journals are opened, however, we discover people whose names--like Tim's--provide explanations of their roles in the stories. For instance, the apparent leader of the aliens is named Lahand, and his hand guides the action of the stories. His sister Sera is, in Tim's eye, a princess as the name implies. She appears as a Seraphim, since she is other worldly (comes from the other dimensions). By choosing the spelling Sera rather than Sarah, Terry invokes the French word for "will be." Sera will be Tim's Princess. Tim's feelings are torn between two women: Sera and Amy. Amy, whose name comes from the Latin Amare, is the possible love of Tim's life. Much of the humor of the stories develops from the entanglement of Tim with these two women. Other character names supply clues to their roles in the stories. Aaron, the mysterious man who saves Tim and Amy from the darkness and the storm, is the user of a staff, which is like an antenna through which the various forces of the universe are focused. The group under Aaron's direction seeks guidance from Lillith, the first woman of Hebrew lore. Nancy, or in Hebrew "gracious" provides the other characters with support. Frank Smith, the African-American chemist, is forthright and to the point; his wife Julie is, true to her name, youthful in her outlook, although she is one of the older members of the group. Mac McClure, or the son of the cold one, is a cold, fact based physicist, whose favorite phrase is "I didn't like it." His wife Estelle is the star of both novels, since she comes up with the solutions for the conundrums. Chuck Carlson, true to his name, is the man--he finds the oldens, he takes the staff. By using the familiar name Chuck rather than the formal name Charles, Terry presents a character who is to-the-point, direct, and yet childlike. As for the villains in the stories: Calpurgis is a play on Walpurgis when people lit fires to drive off the winter's cold. Calpurgis is cold and cruel. Clotfor, as his name suggests, is a Clot, a blockage, to the peace of the universe.<br />
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Both novels are quest stories in the heroic tradition even though they are told with tongue in cheek. <i>We Are Here</i> is a quest to destroy something. <i>Gargoyles</i> is a parody of <i>The Odyssey,</i> as Tim confronts his own Calypso, fights Harpies, and must revive the lotus eaters. Invoking archetypes Terry calls forth some of our deepest memories--each one presents another avenue of understanding. For example, Tim's first view of the aliens causes him to describe them dressed as warrior heroes. Clotfor is an ogre; Calpurgis as an old man, not a guide, but a villain. Perhaps the most fascinating character is Echo, the Ximera. As his name implies, he is a puzzle to Tim and his friends, but he resounds with skill and friendship. In the second novel, Duroo the Flemtor redeems his race when all of the characters are under duress.<br />
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When we wish for things, we often find that what we get as a result does not resemble what we really asked for, or if it is what we asked for, we must do great things to ultimately attain it. Such is the case in these two novels. Both are available from Amazon in Kindle or paperback versions.</div>
LittleMurphyDoghttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08114822440826912349noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3410542671510347331.post-71606356280382633652018-03-20T11:50:00.000-07:002019-04-18T13:20:57.149-07:00Reactions in Time<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
Time has a way of under mining our fondest memories and dearest feelings. The idea is implicit in Chaos Theory, so I guess that I should not be surprised. Revisionist history may attempt to right the wrongs of the past, but the people writing the "new' history often get it wrong, and sadly when they get it right and have documentary evidence, entrenched beliefs--beliefs held onto as tightly as superstitions--cannot accept the conclusions. Dr. John Newman has produced the documentary evidence that President Kennedy had ordered the removal of all American forces from Vietnam by 1965 (<b style="color: #222222; font-size: 14px;"><span style="font-family: inherit;">National Security Action Memorandum Number 263</span><span style="background-color: white; font-family: sans-serif;">). </span></b> Yet Ken Burns and other traditional historians continue to present the same old nonsense. Facts are facts. However, some things go beyond facts--to taste, to talent, to brilliance.<br />
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So on the other side of the coin is the sad fate of those who reached pinnacles of greatness, but now are the victims of a reaction to that greatness. Three examples will suffice:<br />
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Lauritz Melchior ruled the Wagnerian opera stage from the 1930s to the 1950s. He sang every Wagnerian heroic tenor role--he was the Tristan of his age, and even in his 50s sang as boyish a young Siegfried as one can imagine. He had his critics who pointed out that he sang ahead of the conductor, that he was temperamental, and was not much of an actor. Yet, every opera house wanted him, and people clamored to hear him. The reaction began to set in when Rudolph Bing did not renew the Metropolitan contract of the 60 year old singer. Of course, Bing did not have anyone to replace Melchior, so Wagner performances at the Met dwindled almost to none for 10 years. The Met was in dire financial trouble after World War II, and it was much cheaper to produce multiple Verdi and Puccini productions with home-grown talent such as Robert Merrill and Richard Tucker. By the 1960s there was still no one to replace Melchior, but the reaction continued. "Melchior belonged to the Park and Bark school of singing." Melchior sang ahead of the note.... and so on and so on. I have heard live performances by many heldentenors from Max Lorenz to Jonas Kaufman. To my ear, none of them match the brilliance and ease with which Melchior sang. His current-day distractors are missing much.<br />
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Dietrich Fischer-Dieskau was a generation behind Melchior. During the 1960s and 1970s his was the voice that conductors sought out, that composers wrote for, and that other singers tried to sing with when they could. Even Thomas Stewart's wife Evelyn Lear sought out Fischer-Dieskau instead of her husband for her recording of Berg's Lulu. Fischer-Dieskau taught Pavarotti to breathe during the recording sessions of their MacBeth. Britten sought him out for the War Requiem. Even George Jellinek, not Fischer-Dieskau's biggest fan, seemed to pay tribute to him almost every week on his "The Vocal Scene." As the man and his voice aged, his upper register dried out, but the true baritone elements were as pure and elegant as ever. He capitalized on his popularity by recording and recording, leaving us with a testament to his greatness, but Dale Harris, Irving Kolodin, and Conrad L. Osborne in <i>High Fidelity </i>reviews carped about "this month's" Fischer-Dieskau's release. Sadly by the 1990s the revisionists were in full voice. The reaction that time seems to inevitably demand raised singers of far lesser stature and ability above the man who was the darling of his time. Critics of the famous Furtwangler <i>Tristan </i>now begrudgingly admire Fischer-Dieskau's interpretation, but then complain that he sounds too young for Kurnewal. The 1956 Bayreuth recording of <i> Parsifal </i>is saved by Fischer-Dieskau's Amfortas. The voice is young and fresh, but full of pain and suffering as the role demands. The much later Solti recording of <i>Parsifal</i> illustrates how a great singer is able to arouse the emotions without smothering Rene Kollo's exhausted hero. Their voices blend beautifully in the final scene's "Heraus die waffen" and "Nur eine waffen tau."<br />
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The latest victim of the revisionists is Luciano Pavarotti. When a late 1960s recording or Strauss' <i>Der Rosenkavalier</i> was released, Pavarotti's "Italian Tenor" was described as a "breath of warm Mediterranean air." He was soon the "King of the High C's" and in demand worldwide. By the time Pavarotti took a step back from the stage, the cries of showboat were being heard. Today, many years after his death, we hear the words "vulgar" and "excessive" with regard to his performances. Perhaps, that is if a Mercedes or Lexus is vulgar or excessive.<br />
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We all have our favorites, but to tear down the great to praise the mediocre is a great crime. </div>
LittleMurphyDoghttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08114822440826912349noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3410542671510347331.post-84760065091304490992017-12-16T06:33:00.001-08:002017-12-16T06:33:41.098-08:00How America Earned the World's Hatred<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
After filling their coffers with World War II military sales, America's corporations continued to profit by the conversion of war-time procedures to efforts to meet pent up peacetime consumer demands. The expression "What's good for General Motors is good for America" became a slogan for the economic growth of the time. Sadly, as we found out what was good for General Motors and General Electric and Boeing and General Dynamics and the other corporate conglomerates was war.<br />
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By the end of the 1950s the American economy showed signs of softening. The stagnation continued into the 1960s and President Kennedy managed to cut taxes to free up capital for businesses and increase income for workers. Sadly, this effort was insufficient for military-industrial complex that Kennedy's predecessor had warned of while helping build it.<br />
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The American military-industrial complex during Eisenhower's presidency was busy fomenting military upheaval around the world, particularly in South and Central America. With the help of Allen Dulles's CIA, American business interests overthrew blossoming anti-colonial governments from the Western Hemisphere to places like Iran and the Congo.<br />
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The success of Castro's Cuban Revolution was an irritant that threatened to obstruct the profit-motivated actions of the hawkish American military and business interests--legal or illegal, it made no difference. Castro's success banished the American mafia from Cuba, as well as sugar cane producers and oil interests. As it had in so many other parts of the world, the CIA with the help of Cuban exiles and the Mafia began efforts to subvert Castro's government and to eliminate its leader.<br />
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When Kennedy took office he inherited a plan to have Cuban exiles invade their homeland and lead a popular uprising, which would overthrow a Communist government in the Western Hemisphere. Men like David Phillips and E. Howard Hunt were the point men in Allen Dulles's master plan, which was put in place under Eisenhower and was to be carried out when Richard Nixon won the 1960 election, since Nixon would send American troops to support the overwhelmed exile invading unit. Kennedy agreed to the plan (not knowing that it was meant to fail, which would require the use of American military forces to save the plan). Kennedy would not commit American troops, allowing the invasion to fail on its own. He avoided Dulles's trap but earned the hatred of the American military, the CIA, and the Cuban exile community.<br />
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Kennedy fired Dulles from his position at the CIA further earning the hatred of those forces.<br />
<br />
However, the military-industrial complex was not satisfied. Anyone who has read about Operation Northwoods should now understand why Americans can no longer trust their government. <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Operation_Northwoods" target="_blank">https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Operation_Northwoods</a> Follow this link to see why almost every recent tragedy in the US raises suspicions. Kennedy was so astounded and appalled by the proposal that he dismissed General Lemnitzer as head of the Joint Chiefs of Staff and sent him off to a post in NATO. This was a good start, but it was followed by an error--the appointment of Maxwell Taylor to Lemnitzer's old position.<br />
<br />
Kennedy continued to resist the urgings of the military-industrial complex. Against the urgings of his military advisers, he did not send troops into Cuba during the Cuban Missile Crisis, and he realized the Vietnam was a trap. Quoting Franco-American diplomat Edward Gullion, Kennedy would say, "How can you fight a war against an enemy that is everywhere and nowhere and has the hearts of the people?" As Dr. John Newman has pointed out with the help of NSA Security Memorandum 263, Kennedy, who had no American military forces in Vietnam, planned to have all 16,000 CIA personnel withdrawn from Vietnam by 1965. Col. Fletcher Prouty and General Krulack wrote the withdrawal plans. <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_M._Newman" target="_blank">https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_M._Newman</a> <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/National_Security_Action_Memorandum_263" target="_blank">https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/National_Security_Action_Memorandum_263</a><br />
<br />
With Kennedy's death, Lyndon Johnson assumed the Presidency and fell into the trap, which Kennedy has struggled to avoid. The "False Flag" Gulf of Tonkin attack became the Military-Industrial Complex's means of forcing the American Congress to commit American military troops to the civil war in Vietnam (to a side that could never win), turning American soldiers into canon fodder and in many cases, war criminals (My Lai is only the best known of American atrocities in Vietnam).<br />
<br />
Billions of dollars flowed into the coffers of corporate suppliers of munitions and other war supplies, all for the purpose of protecting business interests in the region and depriving the native people of the rights to their own homeland.<br />
<br />
There is no need to discuss American actions in support of the Shah of Iran nor of the murder of Chilean President Allende. No wonder the Arabs hate us. No wonder the people of South American do not trust us. America is the greatest threat to peace that the world has ever seen.<br />
<br /></div>
LittleMurphyDoghttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08114822440826912349noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3410542671510347331.post-40690825575907448082017-06-30T11:19:00.001-07:002020-05-05T06:28:02.912-07:00The American Nightmare<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
In the last year Americans have witnessed a rollback of hard won victories--victories that occurred from 1964 until 2016. The 1960s saw the Freedom Rides come to fruition as the South was integrated on the basis of interstate transportation. The schools were integrated nationwide through the victories of many brave African Americans who braved hostile white crowds in the South and White flight in the North. The Urban League fought diligently for the Fair Housing Act. The War Criminal Lyndon Johnson used his waning Presidential Power to get various Voting Rights bills passed. Tireless efforts on the part of many anti-war protesters eventually led to the end of the Vietnam war. While they became a trap, students were provided with various means of financing their educations, and once the trap was discovered, President Obama began to seek ways of unburdening graduates of the debts--first and foremost by holding private proprietary schools accountable, and forcing the closure of those that were not. Older Americans and those with limited income won the right to health care through Medicare and Medicaid. Families were finally freed of the choice of giving up on wage earner's income so that individual could stay home and provide ineptly and without adequate training for a parent with a debilitating condition or keeping both incomes and putting money aside for a child's college or their own retirement. In just the last five years, individuals whose self identity was not represented by the social expectations found ways and were provided with the right to be themselves--even legally to love whom they chose.<br />
<br />
Now we find those victories under attack. White privilege has become a by word for what used to be called bigoted behavior. The conservative members of the Supreme Court and Congress have undermined the Voting Rights Act denying many people of color and the poor their Constitutional Right of suffrage. The new Secretary of Education has taken an axe to many of the hard-won victories there. She has reversed many Obama legislative actions to relieve student loan debt; she has reversed the accountability actions against private proprietary institutions; and she has advanced a budget that would take money from the public schools throughout the country and would give money to private charter school--schools, which in most states like Florida, are the worst performing schools. She says she wants to ensure that students have choice--how can replacing free education in the public schools with tuition-driven private schools be a choice for those in lower economic situations? This is lunacy.<br />
<br />
The religious fundamentalists and arch conservatives in Congress and the President's Cabinet have now invoked the Bible in order to justify cuts to health care for the aged. After all in Biblical times no one retired; they worked until they died. And God provided a healthy life to the faithful. Why should modern America be any different? These people are already sharpening their axes to make massive cuts to Social Security, Medicare, and Medicaid. These same fundamentalists are also set to attempt to rollback the progress made in the protection of LGBT...rights. One small line in a minimal chapter of the Old Testament says something that is now quoted as justification for denying basic human dignity to a portion of the American population.<br />
<br />
I have not even bothered to mention the attack on science and engineering that is currently underway. Just let me quote a spokesman for the attackers: "The ark was made by an amateur; the Titanic was built by engineers."<br />
<br />
America is in a desperate place. The President has an unbelievably low approval rating, yet in local elections the opposing party makes no gains. Without change in the Congress, these dangers cannot be stopped. The future is grim. One more Trump appointee to the Supreme Court and almost all social legislation from the past 50 years will be done away with. Perhaps my age is a blessing; I may not have to endure the catastrophic results of this reactionary, retrograde movement.</div>
LittleMurphyDoghttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08114822440826912349noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3410542671510347331.post-69238260259305033392017-03-09T07:06:00.000-08:002017-03-13T11:02:05.777-07:00Effort in Futility<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
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<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman";">A few days ago I
received an email containing an article entitled “The Greatest
Conductors.”<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>I expected the usual “top
ten” sort of thing, but instead I found an alphabetical list of 50 conductors
whose productive lives ranged from the 1900 to the present.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>As I perused the list, I found the usual
suspects, but then I noticed that so and so was not on the list; in fact, no
one whose career ended before the 1900 was on the list—and only Boulez and Bernstein
were both known as conductors and composers.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>As
more names came to mind, I realized that trying to identify the “greatest”
conductors of all time was an effort in futility, especially by people whose
memories contain at most the last 40 years and who must supplement their memory
with recordings, a medium not available before 1890.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman";">Being old, I
have had the pleasure of hearing live performances by many of the world’s
conductors—from grizzled veterans to mere dilettantes. Echoes from previous
centuries provide another group that must be considered.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>In short, how can any list of “greatest” omit
Wagner’s handpicked conductors—von Bulow, Richter, or Levy?<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>How can Karl Muck not be mentioned? Does
being a composer eliminate Mahler from the list? From the twentieth century, where is Eric Leinsdorf’s
name?<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>None of these were mentioned.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span><o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman";">Perhaps the most
polished conductor of the last century was omitted because he specialized in
the Baroque era—Karl Richter led the Munich Bach Orchestra to heights few
reach. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman";">Interestingly
enough, Carlos Kleiber is on the list, but not his father Eric.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span><span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Anyone with ties to Munich was
omitted: Knappertsbusch and Sawallisch, for example.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>If a conductor chose to work with a small
market orchestra—his name is not on the list—Enerst Ansermet and Stansilaw <span style="mso-bidi-font-weight: bold;">Skrowaczewski, for example.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>No French need apply—Charles Munch and Pierre
Monteux are on the list, but not Andre Cluytens. There are two Russians on the
list—one a contemporary and one from the Soviet era.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>No mention of Gennady Rozhdestvensky or Kiril
Kondrashin.<o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-bidi-font-weight: bold;">Opera conductors with the exception of James Levine seem to be missing
from the list.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Names like Sixten
Erhling, Fausto Cleva, Artur Bodanzky, Tullio Serafin, Walter Damrosch, or so
many others.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-bidi-font-weight: bold;"><br></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-bidi-font-weight: bold;">Clearly, anyone attempting such a list of “greatest” is wasting his or
her time. How can someone who has not heard a live performance by a conductor
possibly judge.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>I consider George Szell
at the top of any list, and while his reputation is now based on all of those
Columbia recordings he and the Cleveland Orchestra made—as great as they
are—they do not match the intensity and brilliance of his live performances at
Severance Hall or with the Metropolitan Opera (some of which can be heard on
Sirius Met Opera Radio). Everyone’s ear is different.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Everyone hears things others do not. Clearly
any list such as this is an effort in futility.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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LittleMurphyDoghttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08114822440826912349noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3410542671510347331.post-37634957525313320842017-02-28T12:13:00.001-08:002017-02-28T12:13:24.741-08:00The Misogeny of Wotan<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
Where, we wonder, would Wotan wander without Wagner's women's wiles, worries, woes which wane Wotan's wishes with wasting, wailing whimpering while weakening Wotan's will.<br />
<br />
Richard Wagner's Ring Cycle is ultimately the tragic story of a God and his world brought down by a curse and a mistake, both of which entrap Wotan so that try as he might, he cannot escape his fate. But while Alberich's curse and Wotan's setting the Ring on his own finger lead to the ultimate disaster, Wotan is, in fact, caught in a web of feminine demands that establish the circumstances that lead to the error and hopelessly complicate his efforts to overcome the error. If we scrutinize Wagner's Ring, especially the first two operas in the cycle, we soon see that Wotan is dominated and unmanned by the women surrounding him. From Fricka to the Rhinedaughters, to Freia, to Erda, to Brunhilde, Wotan's fate is dictated by the demands and pleas of these women.<br />
<br />
If we examine the beginning of <i>Das Rheingold</i>, we discover that Walhalla, the mighty fortress that Wotan builds to satisfy Fricka, inevitably leads to the Twilight that resolves the cycle. This magnificent edifice, which ultimately becomes a fortress, has been erected to satisfy Fricka and make amends to her for his philandering (in other words, other women pulling him astray). Wotan cements the bargain with the Giants--a bargain he cannot keep--to build the house of his wife's dreams. The foreshadowing of disaster is already clear. When Walhalla is complete and the Giants demand payment, Wotan betrays the code on his spear, the code he paid for with his eye, by trying to avoid payment. Thus, Fricka's influence early in the cycle places Wotan in an untenable position from which he cannot recover whatever schemes he might devise. Of course, the pleas of the Rhinedaughters for aid, which Wotan is forced to ignore despite the efforts of Loge, provide the complication that generates the plot. Wotan is caught in a trap without an exit. To help the Rhinedaughters by returning the gold to its rightful owners, Wotan must steal it from Alberich. This would have brought the curse. Alternatively, his debt to the Giants caused by Fricka's ambitions conflict with his solution of returning the Rhinedaughters' gold, but both are overridden by a third obstacle--Friea's peril as she is being held in lieu of payment by the Giants. With no good solution, Wotan must take the Ring and the gold by force from Alberich. The curse is uttered. Wotan puts the Ring on his finger and is cursed. To save Freia, Wotan gives up the Ring as the final part of the payment to the Giants; this act frees Friea, clears the debt, and puts the Ring of power beyond Wotan's control. The conflicting demands of the three women have left Wotan in an untenable position. Wotan's role in the rest of the cycle is now established. He must prevent Alberich from recapturing the Ring. This motivates the machinations of the god as he seeks to invent a way to use his power through others to deny Alberich of the Ring.<br />
<br />
Although his fate is set, his efforts are constantly influenced, denied, prompted, or perverted by the women around him or women who are part of the attempts. Now the warnings of Erda distract him and start him on these attempts. When he follows her to find out more, he resorts to philandering, when Erda presents him with his Walkure daughters. He is now in trouble with Fricka again and has added another woman who will be a new distractor--Brunhilde, his favorite daughter.<br />
<br />
<br />
In <i>Walkure</i>, Wotan tries to escape the bounds of his own moral behavior by creating a hero--a human hero--through whom he can accomplish his goals. To do so, he seduces a human female (another axe for Fricka to grind) who gives birth to twins. Whether intentionally or not, Wotan betrays his human family, which leads to the death of one, the marital slavery of one, and the dispossession of the third. Wotan tells his plan to Brunhilde, but must face the cold, moral logic of Fricka. Once again, Wotan is torn in two directions by the wishes of women. He concedes to Fricka, tells Brunhilde to forget the plan, and prepares to take other action. As a result, he loses two of his children in the final two acts of the opera. First, he must allow Hunding to kill Siegmund; second, he must strip Brunhilde of her godhead for disobeying him. Through Brunhilde's heroic disobedience, Sieglinde is saved so the unborn Siegfried may live. Only her plight, of all the women in the Ring, is ignored by Wotan. She is like a tool, which after use, Wotan discards.<br />
<br />
On the other hand, Wotan's love for Brunhilde prevents his inflicting greater punishment, such as death, which is fortuitous, because Brunhilde becomes the means of salvation, not just for Wotan, but for the world. All of Wotan's machinations to produce a human hero who can act in Wotan's place fail. Siegfried awakens Brunhilde from her god-induced sleep, awakens love in her heart, and inspires her ultimate sacrifice, which returns the gold to the Rhinedaughters. It is the disgraced daughter, not the heroic grandson, who allows the tragedy to play out. Wotan like all tragic heroes meets his tragic end and Brunhilde's funeral pyre cleanses the world in a purgation of conflagration.<br />
<br />
<br /></div>
LittleMurphyDoghttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08114822440826912349noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3410542671510347331.post-68027095667885882212016-12-30T08:45:00.001-08:002016-12-30T08:45:29.679-08:00Praising Greatness<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
2017 will be the 120 anniversary of George Szell's birth. Since his death in 1970, Dr. Szell's legacy has endured among those of us who grew up with his performances, but after nearly fifty years, the time has come to reintroduce the majesty and brilliance of his talent, insights, and genius to those who were never exposed to Szell's magic.<br />
<br />
A pupil of Richard Strauss, Szell was one of the gifted Hungarian conductors who escaped war-torn Europe in the late 1930s and 1940s. Oddly enough three of the great American Orchestras were directed by these Hungarian refugees: Eugene Ormandy with the Philadelphia; Fritz Reiner with the Chicago Symphony; and George Szell with the Cleveland Orchestra. Both Reiner and Szell conducted regularly at the Metropolitan Opera, sharing the Wagner Operas with the House conductor, Fritz Stiedry.<br />
<br />
Here are two examples of Szell's work with the Metropolitan--one from the Wagner repertoire and a Verdi piece.<br />
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The latter shows its age sonically, but the strong orchestral backbone illustrates Szell's mastery. As with so many talented people, Szell could not endure the manipulation and cost cutting efforts of the Met general director Rudolf Bing. Bing eliminated most Wagnerian productions; he refused to renew the contract of Lauritz Melchior; he would not sign Fischer-Dieskau. Szell left.<br />
<br />
Szell had made a great impression on Toscanini; who at that time was given an orchestra by David Sarnoff, the head of RCA and NBC. With Sarnoff's money, Toscanini assembled a group of brilliant musicians. Szell built a relationship with the orchestra, so when he had the opportunity to hire for his own group, he cherry-picked from the NBC symphony. This was a key to the dynamic symphony that the Cleveland Orchestra became.<br />
<br />
Anyone truly interested in Dr. Szell and the Cleveland Orchestra would do well to read Michael Charry's <i>George Szell: A Life in Music</i>, which goes into great detail on Szell, his life, his manners, his mastery, and his foibles, as well as the steps he took to build what was called in the 1960s the World's Greatest Orchestra.<br />
<br />
Szell was given the reins of the Cleveland Orchestra in 1946. His predecessor Erich Leinsdorf had considered the Cleveland job as a stepping stone to greater American positions. He ended up as the director of the Boston Symphony and was, strangely enough, able to maintain a relationship with Rudolf Bing that enabled him to stay with the opera well into Bing's early tenure.<br />
<br />
Szell had greater ambitions for the Cleveland group. He had a vision, but to reach that vision he needed musicians. Biding his time, he began to make personnel moves. Perhaps the most telling move was bringing Josef Gingold from the NBC Orchestra to be his concertmaster. Gingold became the counter point to Szell's dictatorial methods, smoothing ruffled feathers, and providing the leadership that a developing orchestra needs. <br />
<br />
Here is a sample of Gingold's mastery.<br />
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After he left the Cleveland Orchestra in 1960, Gingold spent the rest of his life teaching. One of his most famous students is Joshua Bell, but the list of students is lengthy.<br />
<br />
With Gingold gone, Szell needed another larger than life concertmaster. He chose Rafael Druian. Druian had a very different temperament from Gingold, so the nine years of his tenure were strained, but filled with beautiful music making. Here is an example of Druian's mastery, skill, and genius:<br />
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<br />
Dr. Szell was steeped in the Central European repertoire, but made great efforts to introduce modern music into the concert cycle. One step he took was to invite Pierre Boulez to be a music consultant and guest conductor with the orchestra. When Dr. Szell died in 1970, it was Boulez who stepped in and guided the orchestra until a new permanent director was found. During the 1960s Druian formed a bond with Boulez, and when Druian took insult at something that occurred during a recording session in 1969, he left the orchestra, eventually joining Boulez with the New York Philharmonic.<br />
<br />
Dr. Szell filled Druian's post from within, appointing Daniel Majeske as the concertmaster. Majeske was up to the task and remained at the lead of the orchestra until his death in 1993. He was the last tie for the Orchestra to Dr. Szell. Well, maybe not. The current concertmaster is William Preucil, one of the pupils of Josef Gingold.<br />
<br />
Dr. Szell was a master at finding great musicians. In 1949 he appointed Abraham Skernick as the lead violist. Skernick remained in that post until 1976. Here are Skernick, Druian, and the Orchestra in Mozart's Sinfonia Concertante in E flat major. Listen to the technique of each and the skill with which they are blended.<br />
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<br />
Dr. Szell's orchestra had the first violins on his left hand and the violas on his right hand. Second violins were in front of him next to the first violins; cellos and basses were between the violas and the second violins. Cello was a demanding role for musicians with the Cleveland orchestra. Leonard Rose was the principal cellist in the earlier Rodzinski days of the orchestra. He founded a tradition of strong cello play in the Orchestra. Ernst Silberstein was Szell's first principal cellist; he lasted 10 years, but often as co-principal. In the 1960s Gerald Appleman and Lynn Harrell alternated as principal cellist until Appleman joined the NY Philharmonic. Harrell later won the Avery Fisher Prize and began a solo career after Dr. Szell's death in 1970.<br />
<br />
The rest of the Orchestra had Szell-selected geniuses in all of the principal chairs. The winds were led by George Goslee, bassoonist, John Mack, Oboist, and Robert Marcellus, clarinetist. Maurice Sharp was the principal flute for Dr. Szell's entire tenure. In fact, one of the requirements for Szell taking the Cleveland job was that Sharp would be hired as principal flute. Here is Sharp playing with a group led by Dr. Szell's assistant conductor Louis Lane (who began in the percussion section of the Orchestra).<br />
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Here is John Mack's oboe and Abe Skernick's viola:<br />
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Here is a recording that highlights Myron Bloom's horn and the rest of the brass section:<br />
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Finally, here is the clarinet of Robert Marcellus:<br />
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<br />
While these great musicians provided the content, it was Dr. Szell who provided the context and made the greatness. He read a score the way I was taught to read text. Look at what is there before you begin to add or subtract from it. The composer's notes or author's words are the basis for everything. Do not try to overlay one's own views on the work--that is gilding the lily. Only when the work is fully studied and hopefully understood does one begin to give it an interpretation. Dr. Szell knew the works almost as well as the composers. There are stories from composers about their conversations with Dr. Szell that prove this. His scores are crammed with side notes int the same way that the margins of text are crammed with side notes by a good literary scholar. As a result, his performances were true, but inspired--accurate, but felt. From Robert Wagner to James Levine, Szell influenced all the conductors who worked and studied with him. When Loren Maazel took the Cleveland Orchestra into the recording studio for the first time in 1973, three years after Szell's death, the core of Dr. Szell's musicians were still in place. The resulting <i>Romeo and Juliet</i> was as much a Szell performance as it was a Maazel performance.<br />
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Finally, listen to Dr. Szell's mastery with Wagner. One hears lines and combinations that most conductors smear over.<br />
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I hope the reader/listener hears Rafael Druian's soaring violin and Myron Bloom's French horn and John Mack's oboe, and Maurice Sharp's flute.<br />
One last excerpt;<br />
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Music making with genius and intellect and feeling.<br />
<br />
It has been nearly 40 years since I attended a performance at Severance Hall or Blossom Music Center, but the performances (even those conducted by Lorin Maazel) remain in my memory. One can only wonder how things would have been after Dr. Szell's death if the orchestra's choice for music director (Istvan Kertez) had not drowned before being offered the post or if the public's choice (Rafael Kubelik) had been given a chance or if Pierre Boulez had signed on. Things change, but greatness is eternal.<br />
<br /></div>
LittleMurphyDoghttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08114822440826912349noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3410542671510347331.post-81805201041197913342016-11-09T07:32:00.003-08:002016-11-09T07:32:50.703-08:00The Whirlwind and After<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman";">The Presidential
victory of Donald Trump and the loss of Hillary Rodham-Clinton may have been a
surprise for many of us, but it should not have come as a shock.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>American politics do not take place in a
vacuum; instead, they take place in a mixed culture with multiple traditions,
an assortment of players, and a myriad of ideologies.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>In a pluralistic society the much-discussed
diversity of the members never speaks with a single voice.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>We need only remember that history is like a
pendulum swinging back and forth, and while its movements might be precise and
measurable most of the time, it too is subject to the whims of Chaos theory and
strange attractors.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman";">Hegel, amplified
by Marx, told us nearly two hundred years ago that history follows the pattern
of a dialectic. We have a thesis, an antithesis, and eventually a synthesis;
the process is not always smooth and even like the pendulum strokes, but the
vacillation is inevitable.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Marx put it
much more boldly, but he misread the end result.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>American politics and culture have
illustrated this process since the country’s beginning.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Born out of Enlightenment principles and
Deist ideas, within a quarter of a century the pendulum swung back with a
second “Great Awakening,” and the ascendency of a puritanical fundamentalism
answered then by the Transcendentalist-inspired anti-slavery movement. The
Civil War freed the slaves; the South reacted with segregation, and the result
lay dormant for 100 years.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Only in the
1960s when some of us rallied to the call for true freedom did this change.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman";">American
political history is similar.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>In the
last century the country was forced to enter a European war and assume its
share of world leadership.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Immediately
after World War I, the pendulum swung back—America became an isolationist
nation with a free-wheeling laissez-faire economic policy.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>When the pendulum had swung to its limit in
1929 and the economy crashed, the country shifted to the other economic-policy
extreme and once again entered a European war.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span>When the war ended, the resulting synthesis was an attempt to recapture
the past, but to push American influence around the world.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Thus began the American anti-communist
crusade, which would dominate American policy for the next fifty years.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span><o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman";">But the pendulum
did not stand still.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>President
Eisenhower (who would today be considered a liberal republican) governed over a
recovering nation, one foot in the past, one foot in the future.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>President Kennedy began the push toward
liberalization, which reached its furthest swing in the failed Presidency of
Lyndon Johnson.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Gains in voting rights,
equal access, equal housing, equal education, and the hopeless anti-communist
crusade in Vietnam brought the reaction that led to the election of Richard
Nixon.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>I woke up the morning of that
election feeling much as I do this morning, and since I survived that, I guess
I will survive this.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span><o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman";">When many of us
tried to prevent the pendulum from swinging back to the right, we supported an
anti-war candidate, George McGovern.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>The
rest of the country was willing to let the pendulum swing.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>President Nixon won that election in one of
the greatest landslides in history, but he was so greedy, so crooked, and so
insecure that he could not allow the pendulum to carry out its own
momentum.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>He wanted to ensure his
victory by stealing the election through spying and dirty tricks, and then when
discovered, denying his involvement. He was forced to resign his office.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman";">In more recent
times the country has swung from the conservative Reagan-Bush years to William
Clinton’s terms to another Bush’s conservatism and the near financial ruin of
the country. The pendulum swung back in an era of hope with the Presidency of
Barack Obama. But affordable health care, civil rights for gays and lesbians,
sympathy for the oppressed and refugees, and more financial oversight has now
resulted in an abrupt turn of the pendulum.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span>Too far, too fast?<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>We will see
what we reap in this whirlwind.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<br /></div>
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<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman";">No, we should
not be shocked.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>The pundits will be
correct.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Ms. Clinton will win the
elections based on the popular vote by about the final poll numbers, but she
will not win based on the electoral college—a safety mechanism established by
the founding fathers to protect themselves from the rabble to whom they had
given the vote.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>What the pundits and the
pollsters failed to realize was that ultimately chaos theory tells us that we
really cannot predict anything.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>The
pundits did not understand that while things are improving economically in the
large urban areas of the country, even eight years after the start of the great
recession most rural, nonurban areas have seen little or no recovery.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>The main streets of small-town America have
far too many empty storefronts.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span>Industries that have not gone overseas with their production have settled
into the recession-suffering big cities where labor is cheap and abundant.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>While home values have recovered in the large
urban areas, in smaller towns many homeowners are still underwater with their
mortgage—those who have been able to hang onto their homes, that is.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Property values have hardly moved in these
areas.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<br /></div>
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<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman";">Also in these
small towns, the hypocrisy of Americans who know next to nothing about their
religion—its history, its fables, its creeds—cite religious freedom as
justification for discriminating against other Americans.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>An African-American’s blackness is the mark
of Cain. The Bible says marriage is between a man and a woman only.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>This split between the religious right and
the free-thinking moderate is a division that runs deep in American
culture.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>We’ve seen it in the temperance
movement of the 1920s. We see it today on the religious television channels
that run 24 hours a day.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<br /></div>
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<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman";">All of these
factors over the last year became “strange attractors” that drew the angry and
the frustrated to the Trump standard.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span>They were so strong that they overpowered and covered up the weaknesses
and flaws of the candidate who continued to preach them. Each particle that
attached itself to the attractor made the attractor stronger.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<br /></div>
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<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman";">Just as there
are these attractors in Chaos theory, there are also repellants.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Ms. Clinton’s historical baggage became the
repellants.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>From the unsolved mysteries
of Whitewater (including the mysterious death of one of the participants) to
her failed efforts for health insurance during her husband’s time in office, to
her weak record as Secretary of State, and of course, to those damn emails, she
repelled many who would have and should have supported her. Even some of us who
supported her did so while holding our noses.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span>No other candidate could have turned a landslide victory into a
humiliating defeat.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Between the strange
attractors and the repellants, Ms. Clinton really never had a chance.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman";">So where does
that leave us on this ninth day of November.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span>What do we stand to lose? The stock markets will do what they do, and no
one can do anything but wait for them to stabilize.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>However, we will probably see the death of
the Affordable Health Care Act.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>We may
see the death of the Department of Education.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span>Hopefully, we will not see the death of Social Security or Medicare. Many
of the so-called entitlement programs may well disappear. We will see a
deterioration of civil liberties. We will see more discriminatory treatment of
immigrants, minorities, and women.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Worst
of all, we will see an arch-conservative Supreme Court for the first time since
1936.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>This is probably the greatest
danger of the Trump election.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Hopefully,
the pendulum will reverse its direction soon.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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LittleMurphyDoghttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08114822440826912349noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3410542671510347331.post-84754948437231740692016-10-24T06:29:00.001-07:002016-10-24T06:29:13.232-07:00Tom Hayden<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
Tom Hayden passed away this weekend. I did not know him well, which is surprising, since we were contemporaries, served many of the same causes, and shared ideologies. Yet we were from different parts of the country. He certainly led a much more glamorous life than I, marrying a movie star and riding her money into political office. Tom was a forefronter; I was a backsider. <br />
<br />
We were both freedom riders, but never together. We were both in Chicago in 1968, but we did very different things. Tom was part of the show; I was there... well, I was there. Tom's efforts in Chicago that year revealed the hypocrisy of the Johnson Administration, the corruption of Mayor Daley's Chicago, and, fortunately, the ability of the American legal system to correct its errors. <br />
<br />
Tom was a totally different personality from many in the anti-war movement. His vision was wider, his concerns more all-embracing. The few times we were together, I never had the sense of dread or despair that I felt with others in the movement. Sharing a stage with Mark Rudd of the Weathermen was an experience that I would like to forget, but never can. It was different with Tom. Of the Chicago 7 or 8 if we count Bobby Seale, Tom was the easiest to know. David Dellinger was my friend, but he was older, I thought wiser, and more in control of himself. Tom was driven, much as I was, to make the world better. Look at the last act of his career--a bill to prevent the death of strays in animal shelters. We will miss this man of great feeling.</div>
LittleMurphyDoghttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08114822440826912349noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3410542671510347331.post-37408344545777907352016-10-21T10:51:00.000-07:002020-05-29T06:46:22.033-07:00Despair<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "times new roman";">The world has
revolved many times in my lifetime, and each revolution has been accompanied by
evolution.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>In my youth I had worked for
and hoped for change that would improve the conditions of everyone on the
planet. In truth, I believed that that had occurred. In my later years, I
realize that the changes I sought and helped to bring about have been lost to or
surrendered to or countered by time, ignorance, or ennui.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>As a child of the depression and World War
II, I knew an America that had fallen asleep and needed to be awakened.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>The isolationism, status quoism, and
hypocrisy of the Republican administrations during the 1920s created a false
vision of the American dream.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>This truly
was the time of White privilege. Racial minorities and certain ethnic groups
survived through the menial labor that supported the slowly growing
white-collar group.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>When the economic
bubble burst, America got its first wake-up call.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Hundreds of thousands were plunged into
poverty.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>The white-collar group who had
been involved with the Wall-Street Casino suddenly found themselves in the same
predicament of those that they had ignored for 20 years.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Roosevelt was President when I was born. He
had spent his first term initiating half-hearted reform measures to little or
no success.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>The stock market slowly
recovered, but those who had been big players before the crash did not have the
means now to “get back in the game.”<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>The
really rich, the one percenters,<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>did
just fine. The rest of us became used to bacon, bacon gravy, boiled potatoes,
and (if we were lucky) wild, roadside plums or elderberries in milk for
dessert. Maintaining a home was labor intensive—the seasons demanded that the
spring and summer be spent in the garden, while fall was spent canning the
produce in order to get through the winter.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span>Many parts of rural America had no electricity until the mid 1930s, so
washing was done by hand, cooking was done with (wood or coal-fired) cook
stoves, refrigeration was accomplished through ice boxes or root cellars.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Some of Roosevelt’s programs changed that by
1935, but then the economic struggle began to replace the hand-operated
appliances with electric ones. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "times new roman";">The second
American wake-up call was the bombing of Pearl Harbor.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Suddenly women had value outside their
societal-imposed role of the home.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Women
were brought into the manufacturing work force.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span>The glass ceiling was quickly put in place, but the door of opportunity
for women would never be completely closed again. America went from not having
enough jobs for everyone to not having enough workers for the available
jobs.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>America never knew the hardships
of the war as the people of Europe and Asia did, after Pearl Harbor, our cities
were not bombed, no battles were fought on our homeland.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>And while women found opportunity, one group
of Americans found further oppression.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>I
was six going on seven when the American Japanese were put into concentration
camps on the American west coast.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>I
feared my grandparents whose name was Gaulke would be put into similar camps
for Germans.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>I needn’t have
worried—America had simply reverted to its racist past.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>That became a call to arms for me in later
years—I wanted to ensure that such an occurrence would not happen again in my
country.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "times new roman";">Roosevelt’s
death brought us President Truman.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>He
ended the war. Now fifteen going on sixteen, I found myself repelled by the
destruction caused by nuclear weapons. Here was another cause for which I would
be called to fight. Truman’s use of the bomb makes for a mixed legacy.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>It was total war. The weapon was unknown. The
death estimates of an invasion of the Japanese homeland were staggering.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Maybe the use of the bomb saved more lives than it
cost.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Still my country is the only one
to ever use nuclear weapons on another.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span>It must not happen again.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Truman
rescued the American military from itself.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span>He restored civilian control over the military by sacking Douglas
MacArthur for disobeying an order.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>He
integrated the armed services, a seemingly small step, but for the first time
in some place in American society, Blacks and Whites were on equal ground.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>This was probably the moving of the first
pebble that became the 1960s civil rights struggle.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>He was popular enough after the war to win a miracle
re-election—remember, Churchill failed to do so.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>But by 1952, the first election in which I
could vote, Truman saw the handwriting on the wall.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>No one had a chance to beat the war hero,
Dwight Eisenhower.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Adlai Stevenson had
as much of a chance of beating Eisenhower as Horatio Seymour had of beating
Ulysses Grant after the American Civil War.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span>Truman did not even run.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "times new roman";">Truman had
manipulated the United Nations into the Korean conflict.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Eisenhower declared he would end that
war.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Korea presents many of us with
mixed emotions. It would not be the only time that America would go to war to
prop up a dictatorship. I was in college at the time and remember some protests
of the war on that basis. However, looking at the situation that now exists and
the current governments of both Koreas, perhaps the end justifies the means.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "times new roman";">Eisenhower was
President when Americans tried to put the genie back in the bottle.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>An effort was made to glorify the American
housewife and to take women out of the workforce, to deny their value, to deny
their importance as anything other than an object. While many of us are still
fighting against those efforts, we realize that we are fighting against 2000
years of religious, biological, and sociological conditioning.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Thank you Mr. Trump for focusing our target
on all who believe as you do. Perhaps the most significant event during Mr.
Eisenhower’s presidency was one of his Supreme Court Appointments—Earl
Warren.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Earl Warren was Chief Justice of
the American Supreme Court from 1953 until 1969.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>During those years Justice Warren and his
court vindicated the efforts that I supported and was involved.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>His court integrated the schools, ensured the
right of fair warning (Miranda rights), overturned miscegenation laws, upheld
equal opportunity laws, and furthered freedom of speech overturning loyalty
oaths and furthering the rights to protest.. The only spot on his record is as
Mark Lane called it the Rush to Judgment of the Warren Commission investigation
into President Kennedy’s assassination. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "times new roman";">The 1960s were a
time of turmoil.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>To quote Wordsworth,
“Bliss was it in that dawn to be alive, but to be young, was very heaven.”<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>I had been in Pennsylvania doing research for
Morse Peckham; in Toronto doing research for Marshall McLuhan, and at Grad
School in Des Moines where I heard my fellow student Sherrill Milnes perform. I
worked with radical groups to oppose the war in Vietnam. I became a freedom
rider to help integrate the South. I worked with the NAACP for a Fair Housing
Act. I worked as a researcher for Dr. King.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span>But we lost a President to an assassin(s), and the new President became
the one we had voted against by declaring he would not be the first American
President to lose a war.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>All of Lyndon
Johnson’s successes fell under the shadow of the war in Vietnam.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>We watched the nightly news and saw American
soldiers burning Vietnam villages and killing civilians.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>My Lai was just the tip of the iceberg of
American atrocities in that war.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>It may
have been the one with the heaviest loss of civilian lives, but it was not an
isolated example. Follow the link to see what we all knew, but the government
tried to hide: <a href="http://www.vice.com/read/vietnam-and-the-mere-gook-rule">http://www.vice.com/read/vietnam-and-the-mere-gook-rule</a><o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "times new roman";">We all knew
because CBS televised it every night during the evening news.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>The blood came through our TV screens.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Since I spoke and read Russian, Dr. King
asked me to research Russian reports of the war.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>One of my proudest moments came during his
speech against the War in Vietnam as I heard my research presented.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span><o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<iframe allowfullscreen="" class="YOUTUBE-iframe-video" data-thumbnail-src="https://i.ytimg.com/vi/zyE4eo_leX8/0.jpg" frameborder="0" height="266" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/zyE4eo_leX8?feature=player_embedded" width="320"></iframe></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "times new roman";">I did not realize at the time that this was the speech that would lead to his death. During those heady years of the 1960s we fought for many basic civil rights and liberties. With the help of the Warren Court and Congress, we succeeded. We got voting rights bills passed. We got the Fair Housing rights bill passed. I remember going from town to town as a home shopper. If the House I visited was fit and affordable, I would tell the owner to expect an offer. The offer would come, but I wasn't the one who showed up at the closing--that was the African American whose agent I had been. We got the omnibus Civil Rights Law passed. We opened opportunities for everyone. We knew it was just a matter of time before society would be free and equal.</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "times new roman";"><br /></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "times new roman";">Johnson's stubbornness on the war resulted in the election of Richard Nixon and immediately our gains began to leak away. I watched from an office window as four protesting students were murdered by the Ohio National Guard. The resulting horror led to our only victory during this presidency-- our protests against the war unnerved him and led to his resignation after his paranoid efforts to ensure his second election and to hide the facts of his dishonesty. Gerald Ford became a place holder so disliked that he could not defeat a political novice. Jimmy Carter won the election and became one of the most ineffective Presidents America has ever experienced. A decent man who was in over his head--every thing he touched went wrong. That brought about the election of an Actor who played the role of President. Ronald Reagan's trickle down economics and 20 percent interest ensured the supremacy of the one percent. As his senility set in, the government began to run itself. Then the CIA took over. George H.W. Bush came to the White House after being the head of the CIA. By the time Clinton and George W. Bush had finished with America, nearly all of the gains we had made were lost in history. Obama offered us hope, but the adversarial nature of Congress has prevented the old reforms from strengthening.</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "times new roman";"><br /></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "times new roman";">Today we look upon a country in which women are still treated as sex objects and are denigrated if they do not measure up to some illusionary vision of Venus; where white privilege is still taken for granted, and black men face danger in the street, not from the KKK, but from the police. The last Congress weakened the Voting Rights Act. Fair Housing is still in place, but after the crash of 2008, very few can afford to purchase a home because they were wiped out when the home they were buying was foreclosed upon. I had a cement crew foreman working for me this week. We were talking about the world, and he told me that he had owned his own construction company beginning in 1997. In 2008 the crash ruined his company (no building was being done), so he lost his business, his own home, and his reputation. Oh, and we are now involved in another war that has spanned the terms of two presidents and no end is in sight. How can I not despair?</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "times new roman";"><span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"><br /></span></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "times new roman";"><span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"><br /></span></span></div>
</div>
LittleMurphyDoghttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08114822440826912349noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3410542671510347331.post-87223760214384566272016-10-11T07:53:00.001-07:002016-10-11T07:53:20.504-07:00Transformations<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman";">Richard Wagner’s
<i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Parsifal </i>presents a staging problem
so challenging, yet so intrinsic to the opera, that sadly, most modern
productions simply ignore it and consequently, seriously weaken their
presentations and deform the essence of the opera. Wagner details a series of
transformations: he transforms characters, he transforms ideas, and he
transforms settings.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Each transformation
magnifies the others.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman";">Wagner’s
libretto describes the scene:<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="mso-layout-grid-align: none; mso-pagination: none; text-autospace: none;">
<b><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman";">Im Gebiet
des Grals</span></b><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman";"><o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="mso-layout-grid-align: none; mso-pagination: none; text-autospace: none;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="mso-layout-grid-align: none; mso-pagination: none; text-autospace: none;">
<i><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman";">Wald,
schattig und ernst, doch nicht düster<o:p></o:p></span></i></div>
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<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<i><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman";">Felsiger
Boden. Eine Lichtung in der Mitte. Links aufsteigend wird der Weg zur Gralsburg
angenommen. Der Mitte des Hintergrundes zu senkt sich der Boden zu einem tiefer
gelegenen Waldsee hinab.</span></i><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman";"><o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman";">It is the
nineteenth-century vision of the forest. Wordsworth, Emerson, Thoreau depicted
it in words; Casper Friedrich, in oils.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span>This is not some post-apocalyptic world; rather, it is the phenomenal
world of the Grail realm. The power of the Grail and the work of the Knights
maintain it as an Eden, pruning and caring for the realm (keeping out the
snakes).<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Only when Amfortas ceases to
serve the Grail does the pruning and care end and the land falls into the
shabbiness that Parsifal finds when he is finally able to overcome Kundry’s
curse and return.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Kundry’s curse
prevents Parsifal’s immediate return to the Grail realm.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Instead, it condemns him to the 10 years of
wandering and sacrifice, which takes place between Acts II and III.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span><o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="mso-layout-grid-align: none; mso-pagination: none; text-autospace: none;">
<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman";">Und flöhest du
von hier und fändest<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="mso-layout-grid-align: none; mso-pagination: none; text-autospace: none;">
<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman";">alle Wege der
Welt,<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="mso-layout-grid-align: none; mso-pagination: none; text-autospace: none;">
<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman";">den Weg, den
du suchst,<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="mso-layout-grid-align: none; mso-pagination: none; text-autospace: none;">
<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman";">des' Pfade
sollst du nicht finden:<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="mso-layout-grid-align: none; mso-pagination: none; text-autospace: none;">
<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman";">denn Pfad und
Wege,<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="mso-layout-grid-align: none; mso-pagination: none; text-autospace: none;">
<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman";">die dich mir
entführen<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman";">so - verwünsch'
ich sie dir:<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman";">The kiss
Parsifal receives from her in Act II begin the transformation from “pure fool”
to enlightened one, but the exile is the sacrifice that makes him the chosen
one, the one who can set right the misery that occurs in the Grail realm while
he is wandering in the wilderness.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span>Parsifal’s transformation is complete when his doubter (Gurnemanz) and
his curser (Kundry) anoint him with the waters of the sacred spring and the
soothing oil.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>In this action, Kundry and
Gurnemanz are also transformed:<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span>Gurnemanz becomes the herald of redemption as he proclaims Parsifal as the
promised one; Kundry finds forgiveness and redemption when Parsifal anoints her
head with water from the sacred spring.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span>The symbolism of baptism, of washing away the sins of the past, of
rebirth and renewal denote the transformations. These changes are reflected in
the change in the meadow that Gurnemanz describes as the magic of Good Friday.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
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<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman";">Wagner parodied
these changes when he had Gurnemanz describe Klingsor.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>The villain, in his misguided zeal to join
the Knights, had attempted to transform himself by eliminating the source of
his desires.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>His self-mutalation is more
of a transmogrification than a transformation as his grotesque hatred and evil distort
him and his goals.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>He seeks not sacrifice
but personal power and glory.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span><o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="mso-layout-grid-align: none; mso-pagination: none; text-autospace: none;">
<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman";">In my essay
“Pruning and Preening” I made the distinction between the pruned and cared for
Grail realm and the overgrown, rank pleasure garden of Klingsor. As Parsifal
describes it:<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Wohl traf ich Wunderblumen
an,<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman";">die bis zum
Haupte süchtig mich umrankten…<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman";">Here too we see
the parody depicted in Klingsor’s transmogrification.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span><o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman";">The concept of
transformation is explicitly illustrated in both Act I and Act III when the
scenery is transformed—the Grail forest becomes the Grail Hall.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Gurnemanz explains the change to Parsifal in
this way:<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Parsifal: Wer ist der Gral?<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="mso-layout-grid-align: none; mso-pagination: none; text-autospace: none;">
<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman";">Gurnemanz:<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Das sagt mich nicht;<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="mso-layout-grid-align: none; mso-pagination: none; text-autospace: none;">
<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman";">doch, bist du
selbst zu ihm erkoren,<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="mso-layout-grid-align: none; mso-pagination: none; text-autospace: none;">
<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman";">bleibt dir die
Kunde unverloren.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="mso-layout-grid-align: none; mso-pagination: none; text-autospace: none;">
<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman";">Und sieh'!<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="mso-layout-grid-align: none; mso-pagination: none; text-autospace: none;">
<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman";">Mich dünkt,
dass ich dich recht erkannt:<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="mso-layout-grid-align: none; mso-pagination: none; text-autospace: none;">
<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman";">kein Weg führt
zu ihm durch das Land,<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="mso-layout-grid-align: none; mso-pagination: none; text-autospace: none;">
<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman";">und niemand
könnte ihn beschreiten,<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman";">den er nicht
selber möcht' geleiten.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="mso-layout-grid-align: none; mso-pagination: none; text-autospace: none;">
<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman";">Parsifal: Ich
schreite kaum, -<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman";">doch wähn' ich
mich schon weit.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="mso-layout-grid-align: none; mso-pagination: none; text-autospace: none;">
<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman";">Gurnemanz:<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Du siehst, mein Sohn,<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman";">zum Raum wird
hier die Zeit.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<br /></div>
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<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman";">Then Wagner
details the transformation of the setting:<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span><i>(Allmählich, während Gurnemanz und Parsifal zu schreiten scheinen,
verwandelt sich die Bühne, von links nach rechts hin, in unmerklicher Weise: es
verschwindet so der Wald; in Felsenwänden öffnet sich ein Tor, welches nun die
beiden einschliesst; dann wieder werden sie in aufsteigende Gänge sichtbar,
welche sie zu durchreiten scheinen. - Lang gehaltene Posaunentöne schwellen
sanft an: näher kommendes Glockengeläute. - Endlich sind sie in einem mächtigen
Saale angekommen, welcher nach oben in eine hochgewölbte Kuppel, durch die
einzig das Licht hereindringt, sich verliert. - Von der Höhe über der Kuppel
her vernimmt man wachsendes Geläute)<o:p></o:p></i></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-bidi-font-style: italic;">Here is the backdrop against which all of the other transformations are
set.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Schopenhauer might say that the
Grail Hall exists in the noumenal world where space becomes time beyond the
phenomenal world where the forest lies.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span>Here the many become one and share in the love feast that provides
eternal life—through the final transformation. </span><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman";"><o:p></o:p></span></div>
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LittleMurphyDoghttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08114822440826912349noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3410542671510347331.post-36992961870124798602016-09-17T11:58:00.001-07:002016-09-17T11:58:42.984-07:00Find My Friend. A conversation with Missing Persons<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
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<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman";"><span style="font-size: large;">Hello,<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Officer, yes, uh, Missing Persons, Yes?<o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman";"><span style="font-size: large;">Okay.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>I would like to report a missing person, well
not exactly missing, but maybe abducted and switched.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>You know, like in that 1950s movie <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Invasion of the Body Snatchers</i> with
Kevin McCarthy and Dana Winter.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>What?
You don’t know…well it was remade in the 1970s with Donald Sutherland… what’s
that? Donald Sutherland… he was the professor in <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Animal House</i>, What?<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span><i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Animal House, </i>the John Belushi movie
about fraternities.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>You don’t know
it?<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>What year were you born? 1985? Okay,
never mind.<o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman";"><span style="font-size: large;">I think that
someone has kidnapped a noted musicologists and put a phoney in his place.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span><o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman";"><span style="font-size: large;">Victim’s
name?<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Dr. Mark Berry.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Does he use any other names?<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Well yes, he writes under the name of
Boulezian.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>What?<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>B O U L E Z I A N,<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>You know that French conductor composer who
tried to eviscerate Wagner’s operas… E V I S C … it means to cut the guts out
of.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>No it’s not important.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Just listen, I think that either space aliens
have replaced him like in that movie or, well you see, there is a Facebook
group—you know what that is, right?<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span>Well, there’s this Facebook group that has been mercilessly abusing him,
calling him a Regietheater agent and apologist, really virolent attacks, but I
think that this group has gotten him and replaced him with someone who they pay
to fulfill their accusations.<o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman";"><span style="font-size: large;">What proof do I
have, is that what you asked?<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Okay,
listen.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Dr. Berry has written many fine
reviews that have for the most part been fairly objective, for instance:<o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
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<span style="font-size: large;"><span style="color: #000018; font-family: "Times New Roman";">On
August 13, 2015, with an open mind he wrote the following about the production
of <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Fidelio</i> at the Salzburg Festival: “</span><span style="color: #1a1a1a; font-family: "Times New Roman";">Claus Guth justifies
himself, again in the programme, by disingenuously claiming that Beethoven’s
revisions leave us with an ‘indefinite, indeed open form’. For some unspecified
reason, the Salzburg Festival ‘in particular, offers us a place to open a space
for non-normative ideas where we are able to experiment as if in a laboratory.’
All very well, if they work, but they do not. Instead, we have especially crass
references to Beethoven’s deafness thrown in, a woman, Leonore’s ‘shadow’,
frantically using what appears to be sign language, Florestan covering his ears
in agony, and a banal narrative of personal self-discovery (I think, in
Leonore’s case) superimposed upon the opera to no good effect. I shall leave
the last word to designer, Christian Schmidt: ‘On our quest for a place for the
events, we tried … to avoid any clarity.’ Quite.”<o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
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<span style="color: #1a1a1a; font-family: "Times New Roman";"><span style="font-size: large;">Here
is a confident critic taking Regie theater to task for caricaturizing and
distorting Beethoven’s monumental work.<o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
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<div class="MsoNormal" style="mso-layout-grid-align: none; mso-pagination: none; text-align: justify; text-autospace: none; text-justify: inter-ideograph;">
<span style="font-size: large;"><span style="color: #1a1a1a; font-family: "Times New Roman";">On August 14, 2014, he wrote
the following paragraph about the Bayreuth production of <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Gotterdammerung</i>: “Why start rather than end there, if indeed I were
to mention it at all? Because none of these possible interpretations – or
indeed many more: what of Bakunin-like pyromania? of the revenge of the natural
world through the Rhine? of Wagner’s Schopenhauerian shift from <i>eros</i> to <i>caritas</i>,
etc., etc. –</span><span style="color: #1a1a1a; font-family: Georgia;"> </span><span style="color: #1a1a1a; font-family: "Times New Roman";">is prepared or considered in Frank Castorf’s
staging. That might not matter: perhaps he might have something new to offer.
Not really, alas, though this <i>Götterdämmerung</i> is certainly an
improvement upon the absolute nadir of his <i>Siegfried</i>, if not quite a
return to the (relative) form of <i>Das Rheingold</i>. But if, as Castorf, at
least at times appears to be hinting, there is something of a political meaning
to be gleaned, might it not be worth considering what others have thought about
the <i>Ring</i> in that or indeed in any other respect? Above all, how can a
staging which apparently takes no interest whatsoever in the music – I am told
that Castorf never so much as looked at a score, referring only to a yellow <i>Reclam</i>
version of the poem: true or false, it has the ring of truth – possibly begin
to consider such necessary</span><span style="color: #1a1a1a; font-family: Georgia;"> </span><span style="color: #1a1a1a; font-family: "Times New Roman";">questions as the contextual
meaning, be that context of the work, the production, or better, both, of that
culminating motif, to which Wagner</span><span style="color: #1a1a1a; font-family: Georgia;"> </span><span style="color: #1a1a1a; font-family: "Times New Roman";">once enigmatically gave the
label, ‘glorification of Brünnhilde’? Why, even if we are concentrating
one-sidedly upon the poem, discard any sense of the ‘watchers’ whose social
being contributes so much? They need not necessarily be ‘moved to the very
depths of their being’, as Wagner’s Schopenhauerian suggestion has it; they
could be something more akin to the cloth-capped, almost Brechtian questioners
of Patrice Chéreau. There might be good reason, in context, to dispense with
them, but one would have thought that they might have appealed to Castorf’s
‘post-dramatic’ conception of theatre. Like so much, alas, it is difficult not
to suspect that they, like the small matter of Wagner’s score, were never
considered in the first place.”<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Let
alone the directions in the libretto, one might have added.<o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
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<span style="color: #1a1a1a; font-family: "Times New Roman";"><span style="font-size: large;">On
July 30, 2014, he opened his review of the Bayreuth Siegfried this way: “Alas,
it seems my tempered enthusiasm, amongst all the frustrations, as experienced
in <i>Das Rheingold</i> was very much a case of having jumped the gun.
Following a dramatically inert <i>Walküre</i>, this <i>Siegfried</i> hits a new
low. Either Frank Castorf is failing catastrophically in what he is trying to
do, or what he is trying to do is quite simply inadmissible – or, most likely,
I fear, both.”<o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
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<span style="color: #1a1a1a; font-family: "Times New Roman";"><span style="font-size: large;">In
his July 28, 2014, review of the Bayreuth <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Walkure</i>,
he notes: “Too much of what we see proves to be just a setting, against which the
singers essentially sing their parts. Aleksander Denić ingenious set, Hunding’s
farm house transforming into an oil well, and film clips showing anything and
everything from a woman eating cake to an issue of <i>Pravda</i>, a man on the
telephone (it later seems that he might be Wotan, but our unreliable narration
kicks in again, not unfruitfully) to a reappearance for the <i>Rheingold </i>barman,
now in Azerbaijani oil man guise, are too often little more than scenery. I can
only assume that Wotan’s delivery of his second-act monologue is purposely
stationary, even un-directed: attempted deconstruction, perhaps, of the
plethora of action in Castorf’s <i>Rheingold</i>, a reinstatement, presumably
contemptuous, of ‘opera’ as he perceives it, but certainly not as Wagner did. Certainly
Fricka’s mad behaviour is the most conventionally ‘operatic’ I have ever seen
and could hardly contrast more strongly with Wotan’s subsequent standing and
(mostly) delivering. Much the same happens in the greater part of the third
act, once the other Valkyries, some with horned helmets, have departed the
scene. It frankly becomes boring, the impression having been given, rightly or
wrongly, that often the singers have been left to fend for themselves.”<o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="color: #1a1a1a; font-family: "Times New Roman";"><span style="font-size: large;">His
review of that year’s Bayreuth <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Rhinegold</i>,
while praising certain concepts is certainly critical of the Regie theater
deconstruction of the opera: “Anyway, back to Castorf. This <i>Rheingold</i>
has ideas of considerable promised and moments of real dramatic power. The
Texan setting of the ‘Golden Motel’ on Route 66 is undeniably not one for those
who want their <i>Vorabend</i> to develop in an elevated setting; just as
undeniable is the loss, common to many stagings, of anything that might make
clan Wotan something akin to gods in the first place. Ernst Bloch may have said
that these were gods without being gods, but that is far from the whole of
Wagner’s story. Listen to the score – <u>as Castorf seemingly never does </u>–
and you will hear noble inspiration in Wotan’s dream of Valhalla. Wagner’s
Feuerbachian understanding of religious inversion, which underpins not only
Wotan’s sacerdotal fortress but also, by ‘true socialist’ extension, Alberich’s
conversion of gold into capital and his construction of Nibelheim, is
disregarded, again as so often, in favour of something cruder, more one-sided,
far less interesting (underling added).”<o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
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<span style="font-size: large;"><span style="color: #1a1a1a; font-family: "Times New Roman";">He
noted that even a “minimalist,” or even a concert performance of the Ring is
superior to Castorf’s Regie Theater mess: “Ironically, </span><a href="http://boulezian.blogspot.de/2013/07/prom-20-staatskapelle-berlinbarenboim.html"><span style="color: blue; font-family: "Times New Roman"; text-decoration: none; text-underline: none;">Daniel Barenboim’s Proms performances</span></a><span style="color: #1a1a1a; font-family: "Times New Roman";"> have proved not only the
most satisfactory of recent years, but perhaps of my entire <i>Ring</i>-going
experience, with the possible exception – again, ironically – of previous minimally-staged
performances at the Royal Albert Hall from the Royal Opera under Bernard
Haitink” (July 27, 2014).<o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="color: #1a1a1a; font-family: "Times New Roman";"><span style="font-size: large;">But
in the last four months Dr. Berry’s obvious imposter has decided to wage war.
His first target was Bernd Weikl’s book, <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Swastikas
on Stage.</i> Not being a resident of Europe, I cannot comment on the politics
being invoked in the review, but this imposter painted with a broad
brush.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>“Cheered on by Facebook’s
‘Against Modern Opera Productions’ (AMOP) page, which chillingly declares that
it is not a forum for discussion but for mobilisation and conceals its
mysterious administrators under the cloak of anonymity, this Kulturkampf
receives implicit support in this equally chilling book by Bernd Weikl. Weikl
certainly seeks no anonymity. Whether his politics in more general terms
resemble those of AfD and AMOP, I have no idea; I have no reason to think so.”<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span><o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-size: large;"><span style="color: #1a1a1a; font-family: Times New Roman;">Furthermore
his reviews of this year's Bayreuth Ring productions sounded as if they had been written to prove that viscious Facebook page correct bearing his name.</span><span style="color: #1a1a1a; font-family: 'Times New Roman';"> </span><span style="color: #1a1a1a; font-family: Times New Roman;">Wait, what?</span><span style="color: #1a1a1a; font-family: 'Times New Roman';">
</span><span style="color: #1a1a1a; font-family: Times New Roman;">Yes, a man is entitled to change his mind. You are referring to Emerson’s
famous quote: </span><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman";"><span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>“<span style="color: #000018;">A foolish
consistency is the hobgoblin of little minds, adored by little statesmen and
philosophers and divines.” But officer, Notice the diction. The key word is
“little.”<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Little because these minds do
not grow beyond the prejudices in which they have been cast.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Little minds take a position, which they
defend despite revelations. Emerson, the transcendentalist, was using nature
and the dynamic, organic world as his guide.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span>In 1951, Morse Peckham<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>What?<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>P E C K H A M, identified the three qualities
that constituted the Romantic view of the Universe.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>It is dynamic, organic, and diverse. Change
became a value of the Romantic. Before human thought became temporarily
shackled by the “laws” of the Enlightenment and the Great Chain of Being,
budding scientist looked at the world in new ways. Consider the divines of the
Church who would not accept or adapt to the new vision of Galileo.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>When the telescope brought new things to our
perceptions, only the little minds cried out heresy. It took the geologists of
the early 1800s to make people realize that the Rules did not always work.
Change was necessary to fully understand as our perceptions grew.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>But NOTHING changed between 2014 and
2016.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>These were the same
productions.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>He may have sat stage right
in 2014 and stage left in 2016, but that would be it.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>All the weaknesses Dr. Berry pointed out were
still present in the 2016 performances.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span>Clearly, an imposter has taken his place.<o:p></o:p></span></span></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-size: large;"><span style="color: #000018; font-family: "Times New Roman";">Further
evidence?<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Yes,<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Just in the last month the British Labor
Party realized that something was wrong.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span>They saw that Dr. Berry was not Dr. Berry.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>What did they do, You ask?<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>They threw the imposter out of the
party.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Isn’t that proof enough.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Please Officer, move heaven and earth to find
my real friend.</span><span style="color: #1a1a1a; font-family: "Times New Roman";"><o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
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LittleMurphyDoghttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08114822440826912349noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3410542671510347331.post-65547941300799233582016-07-23T08:08:00.001-07:002016-07-23T08:08:13.993-07:00The Hidden Gem of Revenge<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
Just before the commencement of the 2016 Bayreuth Festival, an announcement appeared that Jennifer Ann Wilson's contract to sing Sieglinde was being bought out and that the American Soprano would be replaced by another singer. Those who read Ms. Wilson's open statement after the fact should certainly be impressed with her magnanimity and aplomb in the face of what clearly was a sacking. We will never be sure if her statement contained her true feelings or was an attempt to preserve her reputation as cooperative as she sought other bookings. Either way, one must commend the very public face she put on the outcome.<br />
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However, what struck me most in her statement was the following paragraph:<br />
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<span style="color: #222222; font-family: proxima-nova-n4, proxima-nova, arial, sans-serif; text-align: center;">Perhaps my honking lustily in these rehearsals only convinced Mo. Janowski of his earlier impressions and sealed my fate. But last Saturday we had a meeting in which he told me he had no complaint with my instrument, preparation or musicianship, and that he was happy with our work together in the sitzproben and Hauptprobe. However, he said that he considered mine a Brunnhilde rather than a Sieglinde voice, he wanted a different timbre for the part, and he asked me to withdraw. </span><span style="font-family: proxima-nova-n4, proxima-nova, arial, sans-serif; text-align: center;"><span style="color: blue;">He told me that he no longer conducts staged opera </span><span style="color: red;">because he hates the productions</span><span style="color: blue;">, but that if a concert of Walkuere came up he would be happy to have me as his Brunnhilde</span></span><span style="color: #222222; font-family: proxima-nova-n4, proxima-nova, arial, sans-serif; text-align: center;">. - See more at: http://slippedisc.com/2016/07/just-in-bayreuth-drops-its-american-sieglinde/#sthash.j3xY1Sfo.dpuf</span><br />
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Many years ago when I was writing editorials for a widely followed Facebook page, this statement would have been a gold mine. Now I can only read it with mouth agape and wonder at the state of affairs in Bayreuth. For years this edifice and the festival devoted to the legacy of Wagner and his works presented productions that closely followed the dictates of the composer. I realize that this was partly due to Wagner's English daughter-in-law who essentially ran the festivals before and after her husband's death. The Second World War and the ideologies associated with it took a terrible toll on the festival. When the festival resumed in 1951, many of the productions presented followed the traditional settings of the libretto. Wagner's grandchildren took over, and to inject new life into the sagging festival and to remove some of the stigma of the Nazi absorption of the festival during the war redesigned the Ring, placing it into an abstract setting. The result was applauded and panned--not unusual in the opera world. <br />
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Considering the financial strains that the festival was under in the 1960s, the stripped down staging and use of lights provided the operagoer with a blank canvas upon which to project the tradition of the opera without the trappings on stage. Any philosophical intent the brothers Wagner might have had beyond a new approach was not inflicted upon the opera, the audience, the scholars. However, a decade later the critical concept of deconstruction (curse you, Jacque Derrida) consumed the artistic and critical world. The first leak in the dam was Patrice Chereau's exploration following on the heels of some productions by Joachim Herz in Leipzig. Suddenly, the operas could be caricatured, distorted, and filled with things from someone's head other than the composer's. This is the essence of deconstruction--if the text makes you think of something, that something must be in there. The trend has continued to the point of absurdity. The logic of the original setting--time and place--has been lost in ideology. Sadly, what is on the stage at Bayreuth would not be recognized by the composer as his works.<br />
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Now in this tactful release by Ms. Wilson, we discover that there is at least one in the Bayreuth power group who is not on board with this trend. Is Katrina aware of this? Will she have Thielemann escort Mr. Janowski to the door as the latter did to Ms. Wilson. Perhaps that simple line was Ms. Wilson's revenge. One wonders how many others at Bayreuth dislike the current productions. If there are many, why are they not speaking out to stop the travesty. Did they muster up enough strength to oust Meese and prevent his <i>Parsifal?</i> Time for them to step up again and restore the Wagner operas to a recognizable form. Embrace the zeitgeist in which they were written. Embrace the philosophy that they espouse--stop distorting the ideas of sacrifice and love that imbue these works with greatness. When all things are in their rightful portions, then rightful are all things. </div>
LittleMurphyDoghttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08114822440826912349noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3410542671510347331.post-2423590760066660112016-07-10T06:42:00.000-07:002016-09-22T12:05:34.409-07:00Black Lives Matter<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
Things do change--apparently, they change for the worse. Unbelievably in my eightieth year, I must leave my comfortable retirement chair and return to the ramparts. The ramparts that I returned from Canada in 1964 to defend. Motivated by the movement being organized by Dr. King, called by the Freedom Riders two years later, putting my body and my life on the line during those turbulent days, I did my best to win victories that I hoped would last and help my country fulfill the promise for which it was founded. <br>
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In those days African Americans were afraid to try to vote, they were afraid to try to eat at public restaurants or stay at public hotels and motels, they were afraid to swim at public pools. They were attacked with bombs and guns and nooses in their churches, in their segregated schools, and in the general countryside.Through the efforts of very brave people on the front line of the struggle, we changed all of that--at least on the surface. A portion of the American population has always had to fear those who were supposed to protect them. The Southern police forces were often the forces of suppression and discrimination. Ask any freedom rider whom he or she feared the most--the answer will be the small town chief of police followed by the head of the local Klan.<br>
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I was often in fear for my life, yet the one who led us never seemed to show fear. How ironic that he is the one who died at the hands of the very people the rest of us feared. His message has lived through these years; but now things have changed.<br>
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The enemy has declared himself. I stood up. I willingly placed my life and safety on the line for others. I chose to put myself in harm's way. Today, Black people do not have that choice. No one is in more danger in America today than young Black men. I can get into my automobile and drive anywhere I want at any time of day. My next door neighbor puts himself in danger when he tries to do the same. The difference: the color of our skin. Should my neighbor after working in the yard during the afternoon need a mower part or a tool, he cannot simply drive to the hardware store in his sweaty work clothes late in the day without risking his life. Should he creep 5 mph over the speed limit, should a tail light be out on his car--he is prone to being profiled, pulled over, and should he protest, shot. That is reality in America today. This is worse than fifty years ago. This is not supposed to happen. That is why we did what we did fifty years ago. Obviously, we failed.<br>
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Black Lives Matter. People respond "All lives matter." True, but only black people are being killed by authorities in a cavalcade of murders--let's call them what they are--week after week. Cell phones capture the events. Excuses no longer cover the acts. Our police forces have taken on the appearance of a fascist militia right down to the shaved heads that many of the officers sport. I have seen the difference in the way officers approach people. On my way home from a late night class, I missed a speed limit sign. I was pulled over. In my suit and tie, I was clearly someone connected with the College. The officer approached me almost apologetically. I explained that I was tired after a long day and simply missed the sign. He gave me a warning and sent me home. A year later, I was in the car with a colleague. We were pulled over for no apparent reason. The officer warily approached the car, then gave the driver a tongue lashing for careless driving. The tone of the encounter was totally different--the hostility was evident. Fortunately I called attention to myself so that my companion was not ordered out of the car. Still the result was a $250 ticket. Unjustifiable; illogical, and reprehensible--no crime had been committed. The policeman had profiled the driver and stopped him to send a message. <br>
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Those in the police forces who still believe in justice and fairness, those who do their duty, those who uphold the oaths they have sworn need to stand up and urge reform. The bad apples must be cleaned out of the barrel. We are running out of time.<br>
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When those who are supposed to protect us become those who are trying to harm us, we are left with few options. I know how Dr. King would respond, and that is what most African Americans seem to be doing. But fear is a terrible thing. It will take possession of an individual, and he or she will act to protect him or herself and others.We have seen that happen in Dallas this weekend. Willis V. McCall still lives in the heart of too many police officers. The murders on the backroads of Lake County Florida in 1949 of innocent men accused of a crime but not afforded a trial echo through contemporary events. We must not let the old times return. Black lives matter. We must return to the ramparts!</div>
LittleMurphyDoghttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08114822440826912349noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3410542671510347331.post-23698491338906190522016-07-01T10:01:00.000-07:002016-07-25T04:14:06.215-07:00The Golden Age and the Silver Age.<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
One of the curses of being old is that I have memories--memories of times, places, and events that make contemporary experiences that overwhelm the young seem trivial and pretentious. When one of my friends tweeted this: <span style="background-color: white; color: #292f33; font-family: 'Helvetica Neue', Helvetica, Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 16px; white-space: pre-wrap;">Why do I keep finding myself playing recordings from before, during and just after WW2? ♫ , </span><span style="background-color: white; color: #292f33; font-size: 16px; white-space: pre-wrap;"><span style="font-family: Times, Times New Roman, serif;">I had no difficulty supplying the answer--an answer that had been driven home to me by the Boulezian several years ago when I had asked why my dream casts for the Wagner operas always included Melchior, </span></span><span style="color: #292f33; font-family: Times, Times New Roman, serif;"><span style="white-space: pre-wrap;">Flagstad, and Schorr. His reply was: because they could handle the parts.</span></span><br>
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<span style="color: #292f33; font-family: Times, Times New Roman, serif;"><span style="white-space: pre-wrap;">Since I am old, I have actually heard the performances of the time in question in their original broadcast, performance, or recording. The Golden Age of Wagnerian performances just before World War II and of the Silver Age in the fifteen years after the war led one to expect incredible performances. Now, with the dumbing down of culture in the United States and the distractions of pop culture in Europe, we tend to settle for adequate, for acceptable, for ...well, at least it resembles Wagner. Do not misunderstand me; we still have very talented artists and conductors....just not enough of them. Furtwangler could make singers better; Barenboim tries (and often succeeds), but sometimes the task is impossible. We have too many Ernst Kozubs and not enough Hans Hopfs. The Hans Hopfs of today are in such demand that they soon sing their voices away and are lost--where has Gary Lehman gone and what happened to the beautiful voice of Ben Heppner?</span></span><br>
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<span style="color: #292f33; font-family: Times, Times New Roman, serif;"><span style="white-space: pre-wrap;">We still have great talents: Stuart Skelton, Bryn Terfel, Jonas Kaufman, but Kaufman disappears and has not sung Wagner for over a year--Terfel takes few Wagner roles,---Skelton has a limited repertoire (Sigmund, Parsifal, and finally, Tristan). Nina Stemme, Alwyn Mellor, Catherine Hunhold impact the upper registers, but for whatever reason--lack of respect, lack of glory, lack of taste--the numbers are not there. Consider the statistics on music sales released in June 2016--in the United States fewer than 100 CDs, mp3 downloads, and other media of "classical" music were sold. The days of the big recording contracts are gone and perhaps so are the incentives to become involved, to spend the years training one's voice, to endure the long hours of rehearsal, to be involved in a four-hour performance. For whatever reason, today's performances lack the depth, the intensity, the magnitude of what were considered everyday performances in the 1930s, 1940s, 1950s, and early 1960s.</span></span><br>
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<span style="color: #292f33; font-family: Times, Times New Roman, serif;"><span style="white-space: pre-wrap;">It seems that as the technology blossomed, the performance level bottomed out. Recordings opened the world to voices such as Schorr's, Melchior's, or Flagstad. High Fidelity allowed the beauty of Wingassen, Nilsson, Frick, and Fischer Dieskau. Television brought Lawrence Melchior to my living room via the Bell Telephone Hour: a program no commercial network would dare broadcast today.</span></span><br>
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<span style="color: #292f33; font-family: Times, Times New Roman, serif;"><span style="white-space: pre-wrap;">Schorr was reaching retirement age when I was born, but I vaguely remember some Metropolitan broadcasts, which stirred me deeply. He was the baritone idee. George Jellinek would talk about no one else on <i>The Vocal Scene</i>, his long-running radio show. Listen to the ringing quality of the voice that even the primitive sonics of the 1930s cannot hide:</span></span><br>
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<span style="color: #292f33; font-family: Times, Times New Roman, serif;"><span style="white-space: pre-wrap;">With Schorr's exit, his place was taken by Herbert Jansen, Emannuel List, and finally Hans Hotter. After the war came Ferdinand Franz, George London, Fischer-Dieskau, Otto Edelman.</span></span><br>
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<span style="color: #292f33; font-family: Times, Times New Roman, serif;"><span style="white-space: pre-wrap;">From Franz Volker to Max Lorenz the Golden Age had voices to sing all of the heldentenor roles. The shining icon of the Golden Age was Melchior. He could sing anything, and sing it with apparent ease. He never seemed to stretch to meet a note--he was always on top of it, singing it with almost effortless ease. Whether the role was Sigmund or Siegfried, Melchior became the character vocally. Among more contemporary singers, only Siegfried Jerusalem had such range, singing all of Wagner's heldentenor roles, but Jerusalem comes at the very end of the Silver Age. Melchior almost made us overlook the Silver Age--we kept waiting for another Melchior; sadly, there an none and probably never will be. Listen to the ease with which he handles both the low and high notes:</span></span><br>
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<span style="color: #292f33; font-family: Times, Times New Roman, serif;"><span style="white-space: pre-wrap;">Realize that this is from a late 1950s broadcast of the <i>Voice of Firestone,</i> so Melchior would have been approaching 70. In the Silver Age, Gottlob Frick recorded <i>Parsifal </i>for Decca when he was 70, but such longevity is rare. Here is Melchior's younger voice:</span></span><br>
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<span style="color: #292f33; font-family: Times, Times New Roman, serif;"><span style="white-space: pre-wrap;">The duet with Flagstad was during a Met performance when Melchior was 47. Whether he sang with Flagstad, Frieda Leider, Margaret Harshaw, or Helen Trouble, the result was a performance to remember. </span></span><br>
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<span style="color: #292f33; font-family: Times, Times New Roman, serif;"><span style="white-space: pre-wrap;">With the exit of these voices, we moved into the post war Silver Age; a time we were still spellbound by the past that we almost missed. Great voices, under appreciated at the time gave life to wonderful performances. Martha Modl and Astrid Varnay may not have had the sheen of their predecessors, but certainly fulfilled the roles. The along came Nilsson with her laser voice. The metallic sheen took some getting used to, but once we did, we appreciated. Ludwig Suthaus, Bernd Aldenhof performed admirably in the vacuum of Melchior and deserve more credit than they get. Hans Hopf in 1951 had a beautiful voice as Bayreuth reopened, but by the 1960s it had become wooden and brittle. A new sound appeared that we almost overlooked. I first heard Windgassen in the 1951 recording of <i>Parsifal </i>that Decca made during that revival year of the festival. The voice was young and pure. It matched the part. Everyone complained that he was no Melchior, but everyone hired him and nearly wore his voice out Yet, twenty years later he was still singing the roles (all of them) and still in demand.</span></span><br>
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<span style="color: #292f33; font-family: Times, Times New Roman, serif;"><span style="white-space: pre-wrap;">For those of this in the formative young adult years of the 1950s, this finally became the heldentenor voice, and quite unfairly we used it to measure those who followed. Still we finally recognized the talent of Jon Vickers (on the other side of the vocal range), Jess Thomas, and James King. </span></span><br>
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<span style="color: #292f33; font-family: Times, Times New Roman, serif;"><span style="white-space: pre-wrap;">The forty years surrounding World War II were times of astonishing performances. Each one rivaled the next. We could look past the weak sonics of the early years. We did not languish during the war because so many of the great performers who could flee, did and wound up at the Metropolitan, in large American cities or at Covent Garden. We took Bruno Walter to our hearts, we welcomed Otto Klemperer, we found a home for Leinsdorf, and many of us cherished George Szell. However, we lost Hotter for seven years. We lost Knappertsbusch for the same time as he bounced in exile from place to place. We lost Furtwangler and Strauss, but after the war, we rediscovered them and found new treasures that had been hidden by the Nazis. Fischer-Dieskau emerged from his youthful shadow and was championed by Furtwangler. For better or worse, Karajan supplanted Furtwangler in Berlin. Christa Ludwig appeared on the scene, Gundula Janowitz overwhelmed us with her crystal pure unforced high notes. It was a time of discovery and rediscovery. But now it is gone. With the state of opera in a modern, pop culture world, it will probably never return again.</span></span><br>
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<span style="color: #292f33; font-family: Times, Times New Roman, serif;"><span style="white-space: pre-wrap;">Styles change, voices fit ears differently. The first example was Schorr. The final example is his heir.</span></span><br>
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<span style="color: #292f33; font-family: Times, Times New Roman, serif;"><span style="white-space: pre-wrap;">No wonder those of us who love opera, who love Wagner, who love greatness seek out the performances from this time period.</span></span><br>
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LittleMurphyDoghttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08114822440826912349noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3410542671510347331.post-78500186429625403142016-06-05T05:59:00.001-07:002016-06-06T10:28:22.188-07:00Ali<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
With the passing of Muhammed Ali this weekend, I am once again overcome with a myriad of memories of our times--not our times together; sadly, I never met the man--but rather of our times in general and the battles that we both fought.<br>
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Ali was a hero of mine, even though I am six years his elder. We survived the conservative 1950s and the hypocrisy best symbolized by the House Committee on UnAmerican Activities, which somehow ended up as HUAC. By the 1960, those of us who wanted America to live up to its true values discovered that anything that resembled free speech was considered UnAmerican.<br>
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I gravitated to the Civil Rights Movement while Ali was winning an Olympic Gold Medal, which he parlayed into what was then a meaningful thing: the World Heavyweight Boxing Champion. However, as I moved toward the teachings and work of Dr. King, Ali moved into the school of Elijah Muhammed and Malcolm Little. As a result, Ali and I began our social fights together, but apart philosophically. I always struggled with Dr. King's Pauline Christianity, but I found the ideology of the "Black Muslims" even more distasteful.<br>
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On matters of the Vietnam War, I was a minor thorn in the side of the government. While researching for Dr. King, I discovered things that convinced me that the war was a fraud, and that try as we might, we were simply propping up inhumane dictators and corrupting a culture and civilization that had developed in our own ancient past. The war corrupted the South Vietnamese who took the worst of our popular culture, the worst of our weaknesses, the worst of our "values" and made them goals to attain. The six years difference in our ages made me too old to serve, so my efforts were those of Socrates' gadfly. Ali, however, sacrificed everything in his personal protest against the war and his refusal to serve. Already suspect for his brashness, Ali now became a great villain to main street America--he was a traitor, a coward, and obviously a communist. He was jailed for a time, he was stripped of his title, and he was denied licenses to fight in many states. Yet, he was a man of courage. He took it all as he had taken many punches and shrugged it off. <br>
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When he was once again allowed to fight, his tenacity and his skill won back all of those who had deserted him as well as those who had always found him a villain. By the time the war was over, Ali was again the Heavyweight Champion, and unbelievably, an ambassador for the United States to numerous third world countries. By the time he finally retired from boxing, he was the most widely recognized face on the planet. Other sports heroes have come and gone. Ali was a great sports hero, but his memory will live on because he was much, much more than that.<br>
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By accident I will be in Louisville this coming Tuesday when he comes home. My role in the same projects he fought for has been long forgotten, so I may not be able to attend the memorial service. But it will be an honor to be in his town, on his final day of glory.</div>
LittleMurphyDoghttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08114822440826912349noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3410542671510347331.post-24856163974726202472016-06-04T09:32:00.000-07:002016-06-29T12:46:17.241-07:00Transfiguration--the tangential change that defines Wagner<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
Those of us who love, venerate, and dissect the music of Richard Wagner are cognizant that he ceased composition of the Ring in the middle of <i>Siegfried</i> leaving "the hero wandering in the walde."<br>
The composer paused--not because he did not know what lay ahead--the libretto was written; in fact, the parts that lay ahead of him were the first to be written, since he originally conceived of <i>Siegfried's Todt" </i>as the germ that led to the Ring. After sketching out the his original idea, he found that he had to chronologically retreat in order to provide background for his story. Each new tale forced him further back, until he created his mythological world in <i>Das Rheingold, </i>Here he planted the seed of Wotan's error, which became the dominant motif of the Ring--an error for which his grandson and daughter would be required to provide atonement in the final version of <i>Siegfried's Todt--Gotterdamrung.</i><br>
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He did not pause for inspiration. The motifs that carry the operas forward were already incorporated into the music already completed--well, almost.Wagner paused, first from weariness, second, from the deserved hounding of creditors, and third, from the innate feeling that something more was developing in his creative unconscious that needed to be given birth, nurtured, developed, and insinuated into his oeuvre. A fertile imagination cannot be silenced. Plagued by his feelings and fantasies, which he apparently lived out, for Mathlide Wesendonk, Wagner was inspired to expand his compositional techniques into untested realms. In this tranfigurational moment, he developed the ear that would provide impetus to all the art music that followed--not just his, but nearly all the music of the twentieth century. Once the "Tristan Chord" sounded, there was no retreat. Starting with a scaled down orchestral base, he honed his ideas in <i>Tristan</i>. Musicians claimed the music was unplayable, but the public's ears grew quickly to accept the change. To ensure the public's acceptance, Wagner wrote <i>Die Meistersingers</i> to display the new techniques with a huge orchestra and a theme that argued for the acceptance of new and unusual techniques and methodologies. Essentially, Sachs not only sacrifices himself for Eva's happiness but for the musical ideas of Walther. Beckmesser stodginess is relegated to the past as the "new" music emerges. Elsewhere I have illustrated the transfiguration by comparing the Dresden and Paris versions of <i>Tannhauser</i>. The parts added to that opera after the transfiguring moment are ear-opening. Here is the Paris version of the prelude:<br>
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Here is the Dresden version:<br>
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The new complexity is obvious.<br>
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After the sojourn into this new territory, Wagner returns to the forest, and like the forest bird leads Siegfried into a new world. With the new tonal palette, Wagner felt prepared to complete the Ring. John Cumshaw illustrates a major difference to the two halves of <i>Siegfried.</i> He notes that throughout <i>Rheingold, Walkure, </i>and the first two acts of <i>Siegfried</i>, major characters may sing together, but never at the same time. Yes the Rhinemaidens croon to Alberich together in harmony, but none of the other characters sing ensemble--no duets or trios. This is how Tristan begins, but very shortly into the opera, Tristan and Islode are singing duets. In <i>Meistersinger, </i>we find the marvelous quintet when Sach's sacrifice is complete and the characters are free to express their hopes and dreams, now free from the past--David, no longer an apprentice, Eva and Walther, free of the judgement of the contest. In the third act of <i>Siegfried, </i>after cleansing the spear of Wotan by breaking it and the vows inscribed upon it that Wotan forgot, Siegfried goes on to awake the maiden. The duet that ends the opera signals the beginning of the sacrifice these two will suffer to save and remake the world. It takes 10 minutes to get there, but the wait for a true duet is well worth it:<br>
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The orchestra is now playing with the full complexity that Wagner explored in the intervening operas. The transfigured moment shines through and finds culmination in the opera of the great sacrifice: Parsifal. To clearly display the theme of sacrifice, Wagner had to remake himself, his style, and his oeuvre to clearly enunciate this Romantic theme--the loving sacrifice to benefit others and the world. The theme is enunciated in the Good Friday Music and at the end of Parsifal.<br>
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The orchestral voice here is minimized, but expanded at the same time. Wagner stresses the sacrifices made, but the orchestra is playing in the panoply of realms explored in Tristan. This is where the great transfiguration led.<br>
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LittleMurphyDoghttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08114822440826912349noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3410542671510347331.post-14333365276953433952016-05-22T07:10:00.001-07:002016-05-22T07:18:15.199-07:00White Nigger<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
This week marked three meaningful historical events in my life. The most recent is marked by the death of Dietrich Fischer-Dieskau in 2012. The man and his voice were the intellectual and emotional salve required for a life of challenge and dangerous quests. He was there my entire adult life bringing solace, great pleasure, and equanimity when needed most. This is also the birthday week of Richard Wagner whose operas and philosophy of sacrifice influenced me deeply. Not that Wagner consciously sacrificed, but his heroes and heroines certainly do. It is through Wagner that I first met Susan Sontag who impacted the middle years of my life. Her ideas about playing Wagner to whales in order to develop some sort of communication pattern always intrigued me. The third anniversary is the most painful. This week marks the fifty-fifth anniversary of the beginning of the Freedom Rides through the segregated South in 1961.<br />
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Having just finished working with several noted scholars as a research assistant, I answered the call of my conscience joined the Freedom Riders. The original 13 riders inspired another 400 of us to answer the call. For seven months we put our lives on the line for something far more important than the war that was going on in Vietnam. We never knew what to expect as we entered each little town in Alabama and Mississippi. We used to carry chocolate bars in our pockets to distract the police dogs before they got to us, but the police dogs were least of the dangers. It was the klansmen with their guns, their steel pipes, and their firebombs that posed the gravest danger. As the year went on, the opposition remained strong, but the violence slowly decrease--the physical violence, at least. The verbal violence continued. Those of us who were not African American were always called out as "White Niggers," as we exited the buses. I cringe today at the physical beatings we endured on those rides--I guess that I have always been a physical coward--but I endured them because I have never been a moral coward. I would like to think that with the help of CORE, SLC, and the Kennedy Administration we won. However, living now in the South I realize that just beneath the surface the same hatred and fear is still there. <br />
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To the cowards who hid behind their police dogs and hooded masks I say we have overcome. You cannot turn back the clock; you cannot deny freedom; you cannot defeat the noble ideals of your own country.</div>
LittleMurphyDoghttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08114822440826912349noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3410542671510347331.post-81348401198887247782016-05-08T07:10:00.000-07:002016-05-08T07:10:35.922-07:00Changes<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
The end of June denotes two alterations in the cultural fabric of America. The first is a very minor one. After 60 years in the classroom, administration, and ownership of various colleges and universities, I have decided to give up my full-time duties for the life of retirement and part time student-teacher interaction. I will continue to work with the College Board and AP program, and I will continue to teach on a part-time basis. However, the 4:30 a.m. wake up calls, the hours of paper grading, and late night lecture preparations will be a thing of the past. I will have time to campaign against Regie-theater/opera and bemoan the intellectual weakening of my culture as young minds empty, trusting their hand-held devices to know things for them.<br />
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An even bigger retirement will take place at about the same time. James Levine is stepping away for the music directorship of the Metropolitan Opera. His has been the steady hand on the direction of the Met--not just its performance schedule but also its musical direction. Hopefully, his efforts will leave a lasting impression on the institution. If not, Rudolf Bing will have won. All traces of George Szell will be lost at the Met. I cannot think of a much greater loss.<br />
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The story is worth reliving. After World War II the Met was struggling to stay alive due to post-war hyperinflation, American anti-intellectualism, and a facility that devoured budgets as the result of obsolete heating, plumbing, and other physical inadequacies. Rudolf Bing was hired to save the Met. His efforts may have succeeded, since the Met is still around, but many question the price he paid for his cure. He immediately cut Wagner productions, citing their expense and the anti-German feelings left by the war. Step one--deny a contract renewal to Lauritz Melchior. True, Melchior was entering his 60s at the time, but he was still the only voice that could sing the roles--as we discovered through the next 10 years while waiting for Sandor Konya, Wolfgang Windgassen, Ramon Vinay to develop. The few Wagner productions that were maintained substituted brilliant conducting for great singing. Stiedry's baton was taken from his hands and given to a group of hungry, young Europeans who had escaped the madness by taking refuge in America. Erich Liensdorf and Fritz Reiner found themselves with important roles at the Met, but the most exhilarating performances were led by George Szell. He was the director who demanded perfection and would not take directions from others. He remained at the Met for only four years--four years of constant battle with Bing. The fabled story of Szell walking away from an angry Bing tells everything one needs to know about the situation. As Szell walked away, a third party said Szell was his own worst enemy, to which Bing replied, "Not while I'm alive." The people of Cleveland should be forever grateful that Bing axed Szell's contract. Szell transformed the Cleveland Orchestra into an American powerhouse, lighting beacons of brilliance throughout the orchestral world and challenging Boston, Philadelphia, New York, and Chicago for orchestral dominance in America. It is interesting to note that a few years later Liensdorf had left the Met for Boston, and Reiner had left the Met for Chicago.<br />
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Within 10 years, Szell had created one of the great Orchestras of the world, cherry picking Toscanini's NBC Symphony, while discovering other talent throughout the midwest of America. In Cincinnati Szell discovered a young pianist named James Levine. So impressed was the conductor that he invited Levine to become his Cleveland apprentice in 1964, and then he made the young man an assistant conductor of the Orchestra the following year. Levine stayed in the position until 1970 when other orchestras and opportunities began "knocking on his door." Levine spent six years working with Szell, studying his manuscript notations, meeting the maestro's expectations in performances, and devouring and digesting a conducting philosophy that influenced him for the rest of his career--a career from which he is about to withdraw.<br />
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To trace the development of these connections between Szell and Levine, I am including three different selections of the Overture to Tannhauser. The first is a poorly recorded Met recording with limited sonic or tonal value; however, the early Szell vision is here. <br />
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The second is from a 1962 recording in Cleveland. This is two years before Levine became an apprentice, but these are the notations that would have been in the sheet music in the Cleveland Orchestra library when Levine was studying. <br />
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The final selection is from the 1982 Met television production led by Levine. To my ear, at least, the influence is clear. The tempo is identical, the emphases are identical. Later productions at the Met showed growth and development on Levine's part, but the fundamentals do not change. Through Levine, Szell finally had his victory over Bing. Let us hope that Maestro Levine's retirement does not affect the tradition. <br />
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From one retiree to another, Good Luck James; here's hoping your health fully returns and you can enjoy your retirement while the rest of us enjoy your legacy.</div>
LittleMurphyDoghttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08114822440826912349noreply@blogger.com0