Strange Things Happen to the Rice

Since finishing my dissertation I have felt the perhaps-predictable urge to immerse myself in literature unrelated to the 1950s, or to McCarthyism. Less predictably, I've had an odd predilection for the detritus of high culture. Usually when traveling I go straight for the worst trash to read on the plane; I'm talking Clive Cussler and Us Weekly. Flying to Nashville? I scarfed down The Unbearable Lightness of Being. Usually, when driving to work the Mary and I listen to nothing but Lil Wayne and Katie Perry; now I can't turn the dial off of WXPN. I've been scouring concert listings, looking for interesting Curtis recitals. A few nights back, when preparing today's lecture on baroque opera, I began to watch a DVD of Dido and Aeneas, and an hour later found myself still glued to the screen. Inspired by the recent Nation review of her correspondence with Robert Lowell, I just bought Elizabeth Bishop's collected poems, and have been devouring them a few a day, like vitamins.

Such strange gluttony! But anyways, Elizabeth Bishop: fascinating. My favorite poem in the collection is one the editors found written in a Fannie Farmer Cookbook she gave to her friend Frank.

You won't become a gourmet cook
By studying our Fannie's book--
Her thoughts on Food & Keeping House
Are scarcely those of Lévi-Strauss.
Nevertheless, you'll find, Frank dear,
The basic elements are here.
And if a problem should arise:
The Soufflé fall before your eyes
Or strange things happen to the Rice
--You know I love to give advice.

Seven Facts

What better way to cure the non-blogging doldrums than a meme! I've been tagged by Joe for the following. You guys know Joe? You should read his blog, which he appears to be updating with renewed vigor. Joe and I spent a year of graduate school together before I left for the west coast, what, like six years ago? Wow, that's a long time.

The rules:

1. Link to your tagger and list these rules on your blog.

2. Share 7 facts about yourself on your blog - some random, some weird.


3. Tag 7 people at the end of your post by leaving their names as well as links to their blog.


4. Let them know they have been tagged by leaving a comment on their blog.


5. If you don’t have 7 blog friends, or if someone else already took dibs, then tag some unsuspecting strangers.

My seven random facts:

1. I have three framed pictures of my dog in my apartment.

2. I met my future wife on the very first day of new student orientation in college. However, she did not consider dating me at the time, because she thought I was too short.

3. I am 6'2" tall, thank you very much.

4. General David Petraeus, the current Commander of U.S. Central Command in the Middle East, is a cousin of mine.

5. I watch a lot of reality TV, but whenever there is any interpersonal conflict (which is often), I plug my ears with my fingers.

6. I've been using a Mac since c.1984. Mind you, I was only four at the time, but my father brought home one of the those first models, and the interface was so simple, even a toddler like me could figure out MacPaint.

7. My fingers are freakishly bendy. I took a picture to post as an example, but it really doesn't translate well into the photographic medium. It looked vaguely like my hand belonged in a jar of formaldehyde in a museum somewhere.

I hate tagging people...uh...Kariann? Elizabeth? Dan? mb? Ugh, see, I hate tagging people. Tag, you're it if you want it.

If AMS was only more like Gossip Girl

1. Two senior scholars are necking surreptitiously in a dark corner of the Berkeley party. You snap a picture with your cell phone and send it to AMS-l for community ridicule.

2. You spot an Ivy Leaguer wearing a Brooks Brother suit. You scoff and mutter to your friends that BB hasn't made a real sack-style suit since the 1970s.

3. A rival grad student gives a paper that steals your dissertation topic. You rise during the question-and-answer period, and graciously thank them for their thought-provoking work. "Thank you for your paper, I found it very enlightening. I particularly admire that you were able to accomplish such excellent scholarship during what I know was an intense struggle with drug addiction, and I wish you well on the job market."

4. JAMS has recently given your article a revise-and-resubmit. You buttonhole Kate Van Orden in the hallway, who tells you that your work doesn't feel authentic, and suggests that until you've woken up in an East Village gutter in a pool of Richard Taruskin's blood, you'll never be a real musicologist.


Any others?

Change and Not Change

I don't know anybody who voted for John McCain. Well, scratch that, I suppose I know a few people. An old friend of mine from high school, recently friended on Facebook, appears to be a McCain supporter. I think I heard that the husband of a friend of mine was possibly voting for him. Beyond that...I really can't think of many others. I'm not actually happy about that fact. It reminds me of the year 2004. That was when Mel Gibson released The Passion of the Christ, which was so popular it became the 12th highest grossing moving of all time in the United States. Millions upon millions of Americans watched that movie. And yet, at the time, I didn't know a single person who had seen it. I didn't know anyone who voted for Bush in 2004 either.

Such are the segregated ways of politics and culture in our fair country. You can't blame me for wanting to live in places where I feel comfortable, or for wanting to surround myself with people like myself. It is a rare species of utopian who puts their daily life on hold to cross such lines. But I'm finding myself wishing I had taken more time these past years to do just that.

The elections last night filled me with a horrific combination of elation and sadness, watching my candidate win an overwhelming mandate in the Presidential candidate, and also watching my home state of California prove, once again, its fundamental ability to plumb the depths of inhumanity. I can barely describe the awe I feel at Obama's election. I've supported him ever since hearing him speak at a rally in Los Angeles in February of 2007. I'm usually pretty cynical about electoral politics, and their capability to create actual change, but call me a wide-eyed optimist for the moment. "National politics," usually an unwieldy and transparent construction of the media, seems briefly to reach into our local lives. This was the scene in my little corner of West Philly last night, well after midnight. Our local anarchist samba band--doesn't every neighborhood have one?--took over a bit of Baltimore Ave, and the multiracial neighborhood literally danced in the streets. In this blurry clip, the #34 trolley pushes it way through the crowd:



(Kind of reminds you of the beginning of Einstein on the Beach, doesn't it?)

I was so excited to actually be casting a meaningful vote in this Presidential race, after a lifetime lived in resolutely blue states. How ironic, then that as the race neared, I found myself wishing I was voting not here in Pennsylvania, but back home in California. The results on Proposition 8, the measure to ban gay marriage, are not final. But with 95% of the precincts reporting, the ban is ahead by four points, and unless those missing 5% of the precincts are all in San Francisco, it doesn't look good.

Like many in the queer community, I wish gay marriage was not at the center of our political efforts; I would much rather get the government out of the business of relationship sanctification altogether. But marriage we had, in California, and as an institution it was doing its own part for political change. Back in May, when the Supreme Court found that indeed, discrimination was illegal, I assumed that any attempt to create a ban would fail. Even when Prop. 8 made it on the ballot, I assumed that it would fail easily. After all, by the time the election rolled around, we would have had a full six months of gay marrying, and hopefully the populace would see that the world was not ending because of it.

Millions of dollars streaming over from Utah later, five million people in my home state found themselves capable of looking their friends, neighbors, and family in the eye and say, "I find you less than human." It feels like betrayal, and it is. One personal anecdote: there was a fuss in recent weeks in the world of corporate San Francisco after a top partner at one of these firms, Dean C., donated $5,000 to the Yes on 8 campaign. San Francisco corporate law firms might be corporate, but it is still San Francisco, and many of Dean's colleagues in the firm were gay. Understandably, they took his move very personally--how could he respect his fellow partners as colleagues and friends, and yet say that they did not deserve basic human rights? A flurry in the world of legal blogs ensued.

I take it personally too. Dean C. lives in the town in the East Bay where I am from. My family knows his well; I grew up going to school with his sons and daughters, making music with them, playing sports with them. I feel awkward even typing his name out loud here, but if he feels comfortable making a public statement of his own prejudice, then I assume he feels comfortable with the consequences. Obviously he has the right to engage in politics as he--and the Mormon Church to which belongs--sees fit. But Freedom of Speech does not mean Freedom from Discomfort, and I hope he feels deeply uncomfortable.

The other unpleasant truth about Proposition 8 points to the fissure in the Obama mandate that I desperately hope we can overcome in the next four years: the high turnout of the African American and Latino vote in California, which gave Obama such a huge margin there, also helped pass Proposition 8. That is admittedly assumption; I haven't seen the details of the exit polls yet. I hope I am wrong. But the tragedy feels Shakespearean, victory inexorably coupled with defeat.

That's why I wish I had spent more time on the outskirts of my own comfort zone, and more time finding sameness, rather than difference, with those who reside there. I do, however, have high hopes for what Obama might accomplish here. Back when there was the fuss about homophobic gospel singer Donnie McClurkin performing at an Obama concert, I thought Obama handled the situation adroitly. He criticized the homophobia, and made clear his own opposition to McClurkin's statements--just as he also came out against Prop. 8--but also acknowledged the fact that sexuality intersects the color line in different ways, and that engagement, not boycott, was the answer. That sounds about right to me.

So maybe I can end on that positive note. I do think Obama has it in him to make profound political and cultural change in this country, and after last night's blowout he has the authority to do so. So let's hope for the best, and hope that someday, California will find its way back to justice.

Edited on 2/8/10 to remove the lawyer's last name. This entry shows up as one of the first entries when you google his name, and that feels weird.

Get Real!

Is it weird that my one thought at the moment is that if I am hit by a truck tomorrow, at least my memory will forever be enshrined in ProQuest? Of course, if I don't get my copyrights cleared, it will be enshrined in ProQuest, but restricted from public access. That would be sad. Mental note: clear my copyrights.

For awhile I thought it would make a funny blog post to keep a running tally of the paperwork involved in filing my dissertation. I kept that up for a day before it got to be too much. I didn't quite realize how much bureaucratic hazing would be involved in the process. There's the $65 money order--and only a money order--to ProQuest for copyright registration that sent me into a last-minute tizzy before I realized it was optional. There was the form attesting to the fact that I have not used more than 12 hours of University resources this quarter, allowing me to pay a "filing fee" rather than register as a student again. That form, mind you, needed to be signed by both my department chair and committee chair. The pages upon pages of surveys, making sure sure that my time at UCLA was well-fed and well-mentored. (It was.) You have to have two copies of the manuscript, printed on at least 25% cotton paper, in manila envelopes with an extra title page taped to the front--"taped at the corners," the book-length filing guide carefully specifies. On the day itself, you take a stack of paperwork over to one office for a round of checking and stamping, then to a different office in a different part of campus for another round of checking and stamping, and then back to the original office for the final checking and stamping.

The final count, because you care:
Pages, excluding front matter: 250 (a suspiciously round number, no?)
Words: 57,0101
Footnotes: 333 (again with the weird numbers)
Pictures of Doris Day: 2
Blurry Pictures of Maverick Concert Hall I took three years ago: 2
Picture of Sonny Til "Perspiration Streaming Down His Face": 1

Happy Halloween

Mabel the Bumblebee wishes everyone a very happy Halloween:

Next Stop Connecticut

Rather than actual blogging, this space threatens to devolve into nothing but publicity for my conference papers. (Part of my World Domination Tour '08, with stops in Virgina, Connecticut, Los Angeles, and Nashville.)

Happen to be in Connecticut this Sunday? At this year's annual meeting of the Society for Ethnomusicology, I am giving a paper on the Orioles. It's part of a panel organized by my friend and fellow blogger Kariann on "Popular Music History and the Body." Kariann is speaking about the 1960s bossa nova dance craze, and Rachel DeWitt will be discussing burlesque dancing. The panel is co-sponsored by the Gender and Sexualities Taskforce, and by the Popular Music Section. It's from 8:30 am - 10:00 am on Sunday, October 26, on the campus of Wesleyan University. The best part is that we are scheduled to do this in Memorial Chapel, so you needn't feel guilty about missing church to attend.

Choreographing the Black Bourgeoisie: Masculinity and Sincerity in Live Performances of the Orioles

The early R&B vocal group the Orioles is often credited with launching the musical style later known as doo-wop, especially with their 1949 crossover hit “It’s Too Soon to Know.” A smooth romantic ballad featuring the hugely popular Sonny Til as the lead vocalist, the song turned the Orioles into objects of adoration for African American teenagers, and their live performances often became frenzied scenes of adulation. This paper will analyze these early performances, looking at them in the context of the emerging African American middle-class after World War II, the so-called “black bourgeoisie” famously critiqued by E. Franklin Frazier in the mid-1950s. Crucial to the success of the Orioles within this environment was their performance of masculinity, which in turn hinged upon creating a convincing affect of “sincerity.” Drawing upon methodologies from Performance Studies, I use interviews, recordings, and contemporary coverage in the black press to examine this affect through various artifacts of their embodied performances: hairstyles, costumes, stage choreography, and vocal gestures. In a historical moment where the newly-invented category of “rhythm and blues” had yet to coalesce into a coherent musical style, the Orioles helped create an alternative to the more aggressively sexual masculinities emerging out of jump blues. Their choreography of masculinity would become highly influential on popular music of the later 1950s and 1960s, in musical scenes such as that of Motown.

Dear god, I think I misspelled "bourgeoisie" when I submitted this abstract.

Bernstein in Virginia

Doing anything this Saturday? Happen to be driving through central Virginia? I'm giving a paper at the fall meeting of the Capital Chapter of the AMS. It's at Randolph-Macon College, and I appear to be speaking at the oddly precise time of 2:50 pm. It's a surprisingly good program overall; I forget that on the east coast, AMS chapters tend to be more vigorous than those in California. (It has to do, I imagine, with the geographic proximity of musicology programs in the East.) My paper is on Bernstein's second symphony, The Age of Anxiety, and more broadly on Bernstein's relationship with the symphonic tradition of Copland et al. This is the first time I'm airing my work on Bernstein in public, so wish me luck.

Five Foot Two, Eyes of Blue

Your Sunday evening moment of zen:


Mitch Miller, 1963.

I've never followed Miller's career beyond the end of my dissertation (1954), where he was the impresario behind "Come on-A My House" among other great hits. My adviser introduced me to this truly frightening spectacle from later in his career. What would Hans Eisler say about this mass song?

College Music

The Philadelphia Orchestra recently had a "College Night." It was a nice idea in some ways--up to two tickets could be reserved online, and as long as you flashed your college ID at the door, it was free. (Of course, I wonder why this event is only limited to college students, when those younger people who are not in college might perhaps be even more in need of free tickets, but don't mind me, I get grumpy like that.)

But basically a good idea, and as the above-linked Inquirer article says, it's one of many such activities the Orchestra has been engaged in recently, trying in reinterest the city in classical music after the long somnambulance of Christoph Eschenbach's reign. (Memo to the NSO: really?) Definitely worthy. A bunch of my students went to this concert as one of their required attendances at a performance of ye olde classical music. For the most part, it seemed to have gone well. The band played Lutoslawski's Concerto for Orchestra and Tchaikovsky's Tempest overture, both fine choices for the occasion, interesting and challenging. But the middle work of the program was....Haydn's Sinfonia Concertante in B-flat major.

Don't get me wrong. I love Haydn. I have spent many a happy hour sawing away on my viola through the string quartets. The late symphonies are divine. There's a lot of great scholarship on Haydn. Yadda yadda yadda. But...if the Philadelphia Orchestra think this particular piece is a good piece to introduce college students to the glories of classical music, or even just to the glories of eighteenth-century music...well, I'll let my ellipses speak for themselves.

Gossip Girl Liveblogging 2.5

Ah, an evening of Blair and the gang, accompanied by a tofu hoagie for dinner. What's in store for this evening, I wonder?

8:01 For a moment I thought I was watching Project Runway. By the way, ever notice that Blair's mother is played by the poor man's version of Sally Field?

8:05 Mapplethorpe is the artist who "took pictures of naked guys"? I guess you could say that. Does this mean that Lily is modeled after Patti Smith?

8:06 FYI, the Yale English Department has nothing to do with admissions at Yale.

8:10 Doretta, Blair's maid, is kind of coming into her own this season. I'm hoping for a secret romance between her and Dan. That's out of your comfort zone, Danny boy.

8:14 This is not going to end well, Danny Boy. FYI.

8:15 How does Rufus know Blair?

8:20 I know they are Chuck's thing, but I've dated twins, and they're nothing special. Even once you marry them.

8:23 Poor little J. Wait, did that sign say "Constance Gillard School for Girls?" Does Jenny go to a different school or something, because whatever school they went to is as coed as they come.

8:28 Little J! What are you doing! Get back to school!

8:30 I want to take this commercial break to clear up a little misconception from last episode. It has been widely noted that Blair rejected some poor little girl because her family summered in the Adirondacks, rather than the Hamptons. This is actually a misconception on the show's part, one repeated in many other television shows about wealthy New York, like Sex in the City and Real Housewives of New York. It is true that the Hamptons is currently the most important summer spot for New Yorkers. However, to owe allegiance to the Adirondacks is actually a sign of old money, rather than the Hamptons, which unlike the Adirondacks is more forgiving of new money. Just FYI.

8:38 Oh Rufus. Poor Rufus. Little J about to be expelled, and Dan in jail. Awesome.

8:39 Are we surprised that Mr. Bass destroyed the Mapplethorpe? We are not.

8:41 I get a little tired of Shakespearean plotlines that depend upon miscommunication and misread intentions. You know? It would take Little J about five seconds to say something along the lines of, "Blair sabotaged your show, Eleanor."

8:50 Why is it that criminals in shows like Gossip Girl, like Dan's cellmates, always look like bad motorcycle villains from the 1950s?

8:52 If I were Rufus, I would send Little J to Miss Porter's. It's hard to get in trouble in Farmington.

8:56 Maybe my dissertation would be much better if I spent a night in jail. No?

9:00 Ooh, college weekend next episode! wheee!

Good Steps

I've complained before about how The Nation was backing off on music criticism after the death of their longtime critic, Edward Said. So I just wanted to note that the trend seems to be reversing: in recent weeks we've had David Schiff reviewing a production of Peter Grimes, and the ever-fabulous Daphne Brooks writing a smart piece on Amy Winehouse. Keep up the good work! Now you just need to hire a permanent music critic, and you will be back in my good graces.

Incidentally, do you subscribe to The Nation? If you are a leftie like me, you should. I'm probably biased by my romantic attachment to print culture (and cheap newsprint at that) but I think it's important to support what few institutions for intelligent left political discourse we have left. The Nation can often be supremely annoying, but it's easy enough to skip over Alexander Cockburn's weekly nostalgia for the Cold War in favor of Patricia Williams, Katha Pollit, and one of the best book review sections in the business. Plus, Calvin Trillin, deadline poet! And it's cheap: $32 for a year's subscription.

Bailing out what?

"A solution the markets will have confidence in."
--Sen. Judd Gregg (R, NH)

What does it say about capitalism that "the market" is referred to as a person, with thoughts and feelings?

Book Searching

You know what is on my technological wish list? I wish that if I owned a copy of, say, The Invisible Man, by Ralph Ellison, I could go online to somewhere like GoogleBooks or Amazon, and easily search the entire book, rather than just a limited preview. You know, like there could be some way to prove you owned the book, and weren't trying to steal it or anything, and that you just needed to search it because you are bad at notetaking.

The end.

Gossip Girl Liveblogging: 2.4

I'm late, I'm late! Getting to Gossip Girl on time is difficult these days, since I work until 7pm on Mondays, and the stupid veterinarian I work for takes forever to finish up. I've missed ten minutes; let's see if I can catch up.

8:12 What is Blair wearing?!! Did Tim Burton direct this episode?

8:15 There is something very weirdly fake about the way the characters in Gossip Girl use their cell phones to take pictures. Ever notice that? It's as if they are all discovering the camera phone feature for the first time, and are trying desperately to look nonchalant about how cool it is.

8:16: Lily, Lily, Lily. I forgot all about you.

8:17 If I wanted to leave a message for someone who had a butler, I think in real life that butler would probably take the envelope from me by hand. I don't think the butler would let me lift up a priceless crystal ashtray and use it as a paperweight for a message, and then let me go exploring in the house. Especially if the butler knew the mistress of the house was mistressing her step-son in the next room.

8:21 Such is the state of my life right now that during the commercial breaks, I am reading an article on Machaut I assigned to my students for tomorrow. It is possibly the most boring article on Machaut ever written, I am realizing. Although, as a bit of unsolicted advice for Josh Schwartz, the "Kyrie" from the Messe de Nostre Dame would work much better as a soundtrack than all this annoying emo. The music in this series has really gone downhill, don't you think?

8:27 Blair is much prettier when she is crying, no?

8:29 I am really, really looking forward to Nick and Nora's Infinite Playlist.

8:32 Don't do it Vanessa! If you start confiding in Jenny, clearly it will be on Page Six tomorrow.

8:34 Serena can really be amazing some time. How is it that Dan is such a weenie?

8:35 This one's for Aimee, who is reading this liveblog but not watching. Blair speaking to her Lordly boyfriend: "Isn't it awkward juggling two women, James? Me and Catherine--or do you prefer, 'Mom.'" See what you are missing?

8:45 Wait, I didn't catch that--what did Chuck put in the martini glass? And why does Chuck carry a mysterious blue goo around with him all times?

8:47 Lily and Rufus nostalgically blurring the lines of their friendship? Dan and Serena misunderstanding each other? What next; Blair and Nate not having sex? Maybe the producers are making up for the absurdity of the Duchess story line by repeating every story line from last season.

8:54 Oh that's right Nate, you've never kept secrets from close friends in order to "help" them.

8:59 Well, that episode was a bit...tumultuous. As I often say, I prefer GG when it avoids histrionics and just enjoys the characters and the lush set dressing of the Upper East Side. Too much plot gets a tiring. Oh, and what's with the "promotional consideration" ads for music heard in the episode? Dear god. Although, as a bit of personal trivia, I went to college with the guys in MGMT.

Well, good night and good luck. I need to turn off the TV before One Tree Hill comes on. It might come as a surprise, but I do have some standards.

Can We?

A preview of Obama National Headquarters, the night before Election Day, by way of Les Mis. My first time watching this I was hoping desperately that the real Obama staff had made this video, but alas, it's just some improv troupe. Whatevs, it's great. Hat tip to my friend Ross.



You know, it occurs to me that the Obama campaign owes a serious debt to Yoko Ono. The campaign has tried very hard to make its supporters and volunteers feel empowered in the political process. Drawing techniques from MoveOn, we are encouraged to host phonebanking parties, to create our own discussion groups, to make our own signs. When McCain attacks something about Obama or the Democrats, often we'll get an email from the campaign (or from MoveOn, or from DFA) telling us, "McCain is attacking YOU." It's very effective, I think. But I just want to point out that Yoko Ono and John Lennon have been pushing this line for a long time! The whole point of the "War is Over (If You Want It)" campaign was to inspire people to look at their own lives as a source for political change--War is over, the sign reads, the only fine print being the parenthetical statement that you have to truly want it to be over. Yes, you. If you want something, you can make it happen as long as you believe yourself capable. See, the avant-garde is good for something:



I used to be slightly annoyed by Yoko's signs, which she repurposed in the lead-up to the Iraq War in 2003 in the form of a billboard in NYC. After all, if you were paying attention to the size and intensity of anti-war demonstrations back then, you'd know that people were wanting war to be over very dearly! Heck, my formerly-Republican grandmother went to a peace rally back then, and still we went to war. Sometimes war happens despite people not wanting it, and that's because in our country, power is carefully circulated in such a way so that a few people can still more or less do what they want.

But you know, even though I somewhat doubt the sincerity of the Obama campaign when it comes to empowering his supporters, I'm finding it more and more effective as a political style. I'm not sure it will last beyond this campaign; it's hard to imagine millions of us mobilizing to support President Obama when it comes to, say, mundane details like balancing the budget. The very black-and-white (so to speak) nature of this election, where we really have a chance to turn the country around from many, many decades of conservative and neo-liberal rule, is ready-made for inspiring populist passion, which in turn makes us feel empowered. But even if this is all just cynical manipulation that dies away come February 2009, you know what? Totally worth it.

Of course, if it doesn't work, then off with David Axelrod's head!

Sonatas and Interludes

My observant uncle-in-law noticed that over at allmusic, the "Album of the Day" is a recording by Julie Steinberg of John Cage's 1948 masterpiece Sonatas and Interludes for prepared piano by Julie Steinberg. This is one of favorite pieces of all time, and it's great to see the publicity for it. The reviewer notes, as just about ever reviewer of a recording of the piece (including myself) also notes, that the Sonatas are the closest Cage came to writing a piece of music that might be thought of as a standard in modern piano repertory. There are many lovely recordings of this piece available, although it is also worth mentioning that if it is often recorded, it is not played live very often, thanks to the complexity of its preparations. (Click to enlarge)

In the classic Cage narrative, the complexity of those preparations lead to a certain crisis on his part. As you can tell from the table, he was very concerned with making sure pianists were using the right sounds when playing this piece. Thus, measurements and objects are written down in very exacting terms, so that the sound created is precisely what Cage imagined. As you can probably guess, this ended up being impossible. Pianos and pianists are wildly divergent, and it proved impossible to have a consistent palate of sounds. By way of example, I've created a little montage of the first four measures of Sonata I, as played by six different pianists:



The first is by Maro Ajemian, recorded in 1951 and closely supervised by Cage himself. The other five are more recent recordings by, respectively, Margaret Leng Tan, Boris Berman, John Tilbury, Phillipp Vandre, and Steinberg. (The last is the one reviewed by allmusic; the snippet posted online is mm. 2-4 and frankly, four copies of this piece is enough for me, I'm not buying a new one.)

Obviously, not only do these five preparations sound pretty different, each performer takes a different approach to the score. Tan's version should theoretically sound the most like Ajemian's since she worked closely with Cage and not only used the same kind of piano, but used Cage's own personal box of preparing objects, Her recording, however could not be more different than everyone else. Personality matters, too. Ultimately, these kinds of differences were what lead Cage to chance techniques. Realizing that he couldn't control every aspect of a performance, he gave up control all together. (Or at least, according to his own mythology that's what happened.)

There is tons to be said about the Sonatas. Cage poured every ounce of his little heart into these brilliant little pieces, and it reflects perfectly many of his late 1940s obsessions with rhythmic structures, timbral composition, the influence of Hindu and Zen philosophies as well as his recent arrival on the New York avant-garde scene. Less often noted is the work's neo-classicism. Why, exactly, would an avant-gardist like Cage being writing a piece of music called Sonatas and Interludes? It wasn't an isolated example either, see as well his Concerto for Prepared Piano and Orchestra, Suite for Toy Piano, and String Quartet. This is, I would argue, an inheritance from Satie (by way of Virgil Thomson) that gets ignored by most Cage scholars. At the same time he was composing the Sonatas he was also immersing himself in the Greek-inspired music of Satie, like The Ruse of Medusa and most especially Socrate. For all of the influence of Coomaraswamy and Suzuki and whatnot, there was a big part of Cage that was a French modernist.

I myself prefer the recordings that emphasize the tiny, precise, almost jewel-like nature of these little works. My favorite is actually Boris Berman's recording on Naxos. He takes great liberties with the score--the pedal markings would indicate that Margaret Leng Tan's long sustained hold of the opening fanfare is technically correct--but it's an aesthetic I greatly prefer.

Scholarship Made Pretty

I've been working on a fun article recently. Based on a paper I gave at SAM and a few sundry other locations, it takes as its object of study an argument John Cage had in the late 1940s, with the writer Paul Goodman. It's unclear when or where the argument took place, but the subject was the relative merits of Satie and Beethoven. It was sufficiently antagonistic that the two never really spoke again. It seems like a small issue, but it strikes at the heart of lots of important issues in the post-war avant-garde.

Anyways, it's interesting stuff, I promise, but more importantly, it makes a very pretty word cloud via the fascinating web program Wordle, which I discovered thanks to the livejournal pages of a bunch of my friends.


(Sorry for no Gossip Girl liveblogging tonight, I was off at an Eagle Scout awards ceremony for my cousin. Congrats, Eric!)

Philly Music

A request for assistance: I'm requiring my students to attend and review two "classical music" concerts, broadly defined. I'm putting together a list of possible concerts, and I thought I would see if anyone out there in the ether knew of interesting concerts in the Philadelphia area this fall. Obviously I have the schedules for the mainstream performance organizations, but if you are involved in something interesting that I might not find out about through normal channels, I'd love to hear about it. Just leave a comment!

Truthiness and You

You know, truth is an interesting thing.



I've always been simultaneously amused and bemused by the Jon Stewart approach. At its best, as in this clip, he works by simply letting truths speak for themselves. Sometimes he has to fudge things a bit to make his points, but in this clip, all he really do is sit back and play a stream of clips. The points make themselves.

We on the left find this very funny. And I think we also have an inner monologue that goes something like this: "This stuff is so obvious; how could anyone possibly not see what is wrong with the Republican party?!!" I know I have thought things like that. Even when you know you're being condescending, it's hard not to think that the other side are complete idiots. It's frustrating, of course, and you get shows like Stewart's that seem to think that if only the truth could be revealed to the masses, they would immediately agree with us.


Medea Benjamin of Code Pink being roughed up at the RNC convention during Palin's speech.

Of course, that's not actually the case. As J.L. Austin famously pointed out, there are some statements that are demonstrably true or false. "The sofa is on fire" is either true or false. But then there are statements that are not measured in terms of falsity, but rather in their performative effect. By this, Austin means that statements can actually cause things to happen, and are measured by this. His most clear example is a minister performing a wedding. When the minister says, "I now pronounce you husband and wife," that statement is neither true nor false. Rather, because of legislation giving the minister certain authorities, the two people are bound by those words into a legal contract. We measure the statement "I now pronounce you husband and wife" not by its truth, but by whether or not it works. If, for example, it occurred without the proper authorization ("I do") of the couple, the minister's statement would not have the desired effect.

Anyways. That's the brief (really brief) version of what we academic types call "performativity." This is exactly the world of political discourse, which is measured not in truth versus false, but in its effect. The (sad? maybe.) fact is that you can go around pointing out errors of logic in Republican positions all you want, but doing serves more as a cheerleading function for the committed. Which is fine, but ideally our goal should be change, not a sense of superiority. It's why in some ways Stephen Colbert's approach is possibly the more effective: by pretending to be a right-wing blowhard, I think he actually is much more effective at subverting Republican talking points than Stewart. We live in postmodernity, and it's best to use tools appropriate to the times.

It also means he avoids some common traps. Jon Stewart and others on the left have this bad habit of often descending into very unpleasant political rhetoric when they think they can seize a chance to introduce more truth into the world. Earlier in the show from which the above excerpt comes, Stewart had another bit in which he tore into the hypocrisy of Republicans, and had a little skit in which the Stewart news team camped out in the men's room at the Republican. Pointing out hypocrisy is always a good time, and it could have been a funny skit, but it quickly became apparent that the reason we were supposed to laugh at the Republicans was not because they were hypocritical, but because they liked gay sex at all. "Gross," they seem to say, "men who like men!"

There is a lot of that on the left. Back when the Larry Craig and Mark Foley scandals were in full swing, there was a lot of homophobic discourse on the left. Just like during the primary there was a ton of sexist discourse on Daily Kos and a lot of racist stuff on MyDD. And you know what? There has been a lot of sexist attacks on Palin. Just because Republicans are crying foul for once doesn't mean it's not true. So you know what, my comrades? Cut it out. The problem with Palin is not that she is a mother, or a woman, or that she is "inexperienced," whatever that code word might mean to you. The only problem with Palin is that her beliefs in things like abortion, the environment, education, gay rights, national defense, and just about every thing, would take this country down the wrong track. I think that's enough.

Back to Teaching

After a sedentary year of fellowship, it's nice to be back in the swing of teaching. (Side note: using the word "fellowship," normally defined as the "companionship of individuals in a congenial atmosphere," to describe an academic year spent mostly at home in pajamas is supremely ironic.) Classes start tomorrow, and I've enjoyed a happy day trucking around campus finding the bookstore, learning to operate the air conditioner in the fourth-story walk-up attic office I share with three other adjuncts, and abusing my faculty parking privilege.

I've studied and/or taught at a pretty full range of educational institutions now: a small liberal arts college, a small private university, a gigantic public university. Widener is definitely the hardest to pin down. It has an interesting history, having been founded in 1821 as the Pennsylvania Military College, and only became a comprehensive coed university in 1972. The main campus, where I teach, is in Chester, but they have satellite campuses in Harrisburg and Wilmington, Delaware (where my colleague Joe Biden teaches in the law school). I have no idea what the students will be like. Presumably the quick-witted amongst them will find this blog soon; greetings, young music historians!

One thing I will tell you teaching on the campus of a former military school--the conceptual line between an academic quadrangle and a parade ground is disturbingly unclear.

Off to meet a tech guy who is going to show me how to plug an iPod into my classroom. Some of you might appreciate that tomorrow I am going to teach the fundamentals of listening critically to music by way of Katy Perry.

Gossip Girl Liveblogging: Season 2

OMFG SO EXCITED!!!!

8:03 Who's this chippy making out with Chace?

8:06 Well well well Lonely Boy indeed!

8:10 Commercial break. It's time to admit that I'm a little nervous for this season. I'm sensing...caricature. I think we all know what happened to The OC after the first season. Please don't do that to us again, Josh Schwartz. Step slowly away from the bad emo band cross-promotion, and just develop the characters. Carefully and deliberately. My favorite part of the season was the luxuriously long plateau that was Dan and Serena's relationship. But at the rate we're going now, Serena's going to die in a lesbian car crash halfway through the season.

8:15 Ugh. The repartee is dragging, isn't it.

8:20 I do have some experience with with this social set, and I can tell you that there are indeed high school boys who dress like Chuck Bass. Which is horrifying, I know.

8:28 Did Blair just say..."Mother Chucker"?

8:38 Yawn.

8:39 Wait--did I just see a black person? I think that's a first. It was an extra, but still.

8:40 Yawn.

8:50 I don't want to be too mushy, but I love Dan and Serena together.

8:51 Grandma creeps me out though.

8:53 I can't decide which is more fake about James, his British accent or his American accent.

8:58 Interesting theory on solving writer's block. Insert dissertation-writing joke here.

9:00 Okay, I'm back on the bandwagon. Slow beginning, slower middle, but it got good there at the end. Maybe there is hope for the new season.

Music History Gone Wrong

Alright, alright, let's get back in the swing of things. Summer is over, I hear. Summer usually ends much later for me; I've been on the quarter system for the last five years, and when other bloggers were crying and moaning about summer being over, I always had another month or so. But although I am still somewhat bequeathed to the quarter system of my graduate institution, to whom I still owe one of those "dissertation" things, I am also simultaneously engaged to the semester system of my new employer, and classes start next week.

I'm teaching the first half of a music history sequence, from the beginning until 1750. This is a period I am an expert in. I'm sure the ending date of the course was chosen because in January of 1750, a fire in Istanbul destroyed 10,000 houses. Or maybe because this was the year in which the umbrella first became popular in England. Or perhaps it is because 1750 is when the Westminster Bridge opened? Maybe not. I know, it must because 1750 is the birth year of that esteemed composer Antonio Salieri, on August 18th. That must be it. Why else would we possibly be ending baroque music on 1750?

I kid, I kid. I'm quite looking forward to the course. It is mostly first year students, I hear. Not only that, but it is a 9:30 am class on the first day of classes, and I'm tickled to be these students' first exposure to academia. I plan a lofty speech on the subject.

Speaking of Bach, if anybody can tell me where this chord progression comes from, I will buy you a drink at AMS. It is from my favorite movie of the summer, and I am a bad musicologist both for knowing nothing about ABBA, and also for thinking that this progression sounds vaguely chorale-y or hymn-y and familiar, but being unable to place it exactly, despite my aforementioned expertise in all music outside of the American twentieth century. So help me out.

Georgia

I interrupt this previously unannounced hiatus to inform you of this blog.

It's the blog of a musicology grad student in the midst of a research trip in Georgia. Not the state, the country currently being blown to smithereens. Fascinating stuff.

Working Vacation

From top to bottom:
Roy Harris, Symphony No. 3 (1937)
Aaron Copland, Symphony No. 3 (1946)
Dmitri Shostakovich, Symphony No. 5 (1937)
Leonard Bernstein, Symphony No. 2 (1949/1965 rev.)

Anti-Climax

One of the things I love about Auden's The Age of Anxiety is it that ends with a literal anti-climax. The four characters, who have spent the evening drinking together, have retired to the girl's apartment for drinking and dancing. The two older men sense chemistry between Rosetta and the young naval recruit Emble, and leave them alone. After walking them out, Rosetta returns to find Emble passed out on the bed, and muses aloud:

Blind on the bride-bed, the bridegroom snores,
Too aloof to love. Did you lose your nerve
And cloud your conscience because I wasn’t
Your dish really? You danced so bravely
Till I wished I were. Will you remain
Such a pleasant prince? Probably not.
But you’re handsome, aren’t you? Even now
A kingly corpse. I’ll coffin you up till
You rule again. Rest for us both and
Dream, dear one. I’ll be dressed when you wake
To get coffee. You’ll be glad you didn’t
While your headache lasts, and I won’t shine
In the sobering sun. We’re so apart
When our ways have crossed and our words touched
On Babylon’s banks.

One of the interesting things about Auden at this moment in his career is that he was sleeping with a woman named Rhoda Jaffe. This was a rare occurrence for him, of course, and it didn't last long--one sometimes sensed that he enjoyed the affair mostly because he enjoyed shocking his friends with a brief stint of heterosexuality. But she also left an indelible imprint on The Age of Anxiety. The character of Rosetta is pretty clearly based on her, for one. And although Auden was always obsessed with psychological themes (his father was a psychotherapist, and correspondent of Freud's), Jaffe was obsessed with psychiatry, often doing multiple sessions with different doctors in a week. So the theory is that the specifically Jungian framework of The Age of Anxiety--each character represents one of the four differentiated functions of the Jungian psyche--is probably her influence.

* * * *
In other news, I've started work as a receptionist at my wife's veterinary clinic. On my second day on the job I had to put the body of a seventy pound chocolate lab, much beloved by its family, into a garbage bag and put it in the freezer. I've also learned the list of official vocabulary delineated by the corporate overseers who run the chain of clinics. They are not animals, they are "family members." We do not give shots, we give injections. Invoices, not bills. Medication, not drugs. Team leaders, not bosses. I'm a "Client Service Coordinator," not a receptionist. When answering the phone, physically smile so that the client can hear the smile in your voice. And yes, I wear nurse scrubs printed with cartoons cats and dogs, and white sneakers.

Beautiful Music

Certain sectors of the musicological community have recently been discussing...wait for it....Beauty In Music. I will say, the musicological blog world might be small and unkempt. But at least we don't debate Beauty In Music.

On this blog, there shall be no debate about such things. I shall simply proclaim the truth: there is indeed beauty in music, and it sounds like this:



This performance, featuring the "Cold Song" from Purcell's King Arthur, took place six months before he passed away from AIDS in 1983.

What power art thou, who from below
Hast made me rise unwillingly and slow
From beds of everlasting snow
See'st thou not how stiff and wondrous old

Far unfit to bear the bitter cold,
I can scarcely move or draw my breath
Let me, let me freeze again to death.

Reviewing the Review: O'Hara and Logan

There is an interesting review in the Sunday Times of the new Selected Poems of Frank O' Hara, written by William Logan. Typical of Logan, the overall tone is snide, and, I would also say, a bit homophobic. Take his final summary of the poems chosen for inclusion in the volume:

In his best poems...O’Hara found something beyond that terrible vacancy he was trying so hard to fill. (His best poems are rarely his most characteristic or frenzied.) The style, though at times foolish and self-parodic, remains fresh 50 years later. However much these poems live in the world of Lowell’s “tranquilized ’50s,” their giddiness in the face of despair, their animal pleasure in gossip, their false bravado, their frantic posturing and guilelessness and petty snobberies — and these were O’Hara’s virtues — give us as much of a life as poetry can.

There is a long tradition of criticizing the work of queer artists along these exact lines. The common accusations are of being insufficiently serious, and of not working hard enough. O'Hara, Logan tells us, was "preoccupied with the trivial." His "physical world is curiously impoverished." O'Hara "refused to apologize for his narcissism, his comic pretensions, his sometimes insufferable archness." And of course, my favorite line: "What O’Hara most objected to about poetry, however, was the hard work." Not to belabor the point, so to speak, but this approaches cliché. There is a way in which the central aspect of homophobic critique is a revulsion at any absence of procreation, or at least metaphors of procreation, in the artwork of a queer artist. Heaven forbid that an artist should step outside the framework of bourgeois domesticity. Rather than interpreting or even just simply noting O'Hara's approach--which these quotes describe accurately enough--Logan has to pass negative judgment in moral terms.

I wish I could say that Logan was himself being flip or attempting to reproduce some sort of camp humor. But I don't have that sense; I think rather that he really does object to O'Hara's breezy manner. Perhaps he's jealous, which you will understand if you ever read Logan's own ultra-laborious poetry. I'm just not sure how useful a review is that points out that a prolific poet wrote some poems that aren't good. He does, after all, praise quite a bit of his work, and considering that O'Hara died at the age of forty, I'm not sure what the big problem is.

Anyways, I just want to leave you with one of O'Hara's greatest poems. This is the "Salute to the French Negro Poets," from 1958, where he famously links together the common struggle of colonialized people at home and abroad in what is an essentially anti-identitarian politics. Texts like these are why I love working on the 1950s. Read it aloud, and I dare you not to be moved by the last line.

Ode: Salute to the French Negro Poets

from near the sea, like Whitman my great predecessor, I call
To the spirits of other lands to make fecund my existence

do not spare your wrath upon our shores, that trees may grow
upon the sea, mirror of our total mankind in the weather

one who no longer remembers dancing in the heat of the moon may call
across the shifting sands, trying to live in the terrible western world

here where to love at all’s to be a politician, as to love a poem
is pretentious, this may tendentious but it’s lyrical

which shows what lyricism has been brought to by our fables times
where cowards are shibboleths and one specific love’s traduced

by shame for what you love more generally and never would avoid
where reticence is paid for by a poet in his blood or ceasing to be

blood! Blood that we have mountains in our veins to stand off jackals
in the pillaging of our desires and allegiances, Aimé Césaire

for if there is fortuity it’s in the love we bear each other’s differences
in race which is the poetic ground on which we rear our smiles

standing in the sun of marshes as we wade slowly toward the culmination
of a gift which is categorically the most difficult relationship

and should be sought as such because it is our nature, nothing
inspires us but the love we want upon the frozen face of earth

and utter disparagement turns into praise as generations read the message
of our hearts in adolescent closets who once shot at us in doorways

or kept us from living freely because they were too young then to know what they would ultimately need from a barren and heart-sore life

the beauty of America, neither cool jazz nor devoured Egyptian heroes, lies in
lives in the darkness I inhabit in the midst of sterile millions

the only truth is face to face, the poem whose words become your mouth
and dying in black and white we fight for what we love, not are.

Blogging by Bullet Points

In lieu of actual blogging...

• Proposal To Re-Name SF Sewage Plant after George Bush. Utter brilliance. And it looks like they collected enough signatures to get it on the ballot.
  
• What's Obscene? Google Could Have the Answer. A lawyer defending a porn site in court is using Google Trends to show that the local "community" (Pensacola, Florida, in this case) is actually an avid consumer of pornography. The notion of "community standards" to define obscenity has always been intellectually bankrupt. How exactly do you define a "community," and how can you objectively know what its standards are? Well, the answer is, most communities, no matter how you define them, love their porn.
  
• The First Amendment [pdf]. Neely Bruce, a former undergrad professor of mine, set the Bill of Rights to music, in the style of Sacred Harp singing. You can download and perform the First Amendment for free. Anybody here in Philly want to give it a go?
  
• Cody's, Landmark Berkeley Bookstore, Closes. I cannot tell you how tragic this is.
  
• I agree pretty much entirely with GayProf's review of Sex and the City. I do think one strength of the movie was its honest depiction of the psychic damage of betrayal, a subject which features so prominently in mass culture but is always either too sugar-coated or too black-and-white in representation. But beyond that, I didn't find much redeeming value. Remember back when women talking and socializing without men was considered threatening? We used to have lesbian separatism; now we have women coming together for the purpose of talking about men. or buying things with imaginary money.
  
• I recommend reading Dean Dad's two recent posts about the salary disparity between the tenure track and the adjunct class, and also Dr. Crazy's two rejoinders, and especially the often brutal comment threads associated with all of these posts. As a non-anonymous current adjunct, I'm not going to comment myself. But I think this discussion is one of the most important ones in academia right now. The issues are of course different in musicology--unlike English or History, there is not very much part-time employment in our field. Some, but not tons, and therefore I would hazard a guess that a much greater percentage of actual Ph.D.-holding musicologists (rather than moonlighting performers) are in tenure-track positions compared to other disciplines. That's a good thing in many respects, but it does present challenges to those who are, like myself, currently in a rather liminal state. Okay, maybe I will actually do a real post on this subject; stay tuned.

And finally, something to whet your appetite for a future post:

June 20

Today is the 61st wedding anniversary of my maternal grandparents.

They sure don't make 'em like that anymore.

That Ol' Time Black Music

According to the proclamation of our much beloved president, the month of June in the year 2008 is Black Music Month:

For generations, African-American artists have created music that communicates across racial boundaries and expresses both joy and sorrow. When facing the cruelty of slavery and injustice, African Americans lifted spirituals to the heavens, bringing comfort to troubled souls. These timeless declarations of hope and faith evolved into the more modern genres of gospel, blues, ragtime, and jazz, and they are given voice in the musical genius of Scott Joplin, Marian Anderson, Eubie Blake, and Mahalia Jackson. During the Civil Rights era, African-American musicians such as Duke Ellington, Muddy Waters, and Ruth Brown conveyed the struggles of their communities while bringing people of all backgrounds together. Today, this music continues to inspire America's citizens and advance its creative spirit.
[...]
NOW, THEREFORE, I, GEORGE W. BUSH, President of the United States of America, by virtue of the authority vested in me by the Constitution and laws of the United States, do hereby proclaim June 2008 as Black Music Month. I encourage all Americans to learn more about the history of black music and to enjoy the great contributions of African-American singers, musicians, and composers.

Who knew that Georgie was such a musicologist? Of course, like many musicologists, he seems more interested in dead musicians than living ones; not a single person named in the proclamation is still alive. And while I don't want to disrespect the late-career work of some of those named--who can forget Ruth Brown's cameo in Hairspray--I think it's fair to say that George Bush hasn't liked Black Music since about 1970 or so.

But in honor of George Bush's Black Music Month™, I'd like to relate an anecdote from this past weekend. We were driving down to DC, and stopped at a Maryland rest stop for bathrooms and coffee. I went into the Starbucks to order myself a grande non-fat dry cappuccino, and Mary a grande non-fat triple latte. A song, no doubt carefully chosen by a corporate puppetmaster back in Seattle, came over the in-store stereo:



I watched as one of the baristas began nodding her head and mouthing the words. I glanced to my left, and saw that the soccer-mom type was unconsciously bobbing her head a bit. A glance to my right, and a big beefy guy waiting for his drink was ever so gently twisting his hips in time to the music. Then I realized that literally the entire store was dancing to this song.

Jazz might be America's Classical Music, but Motown is What We Listen To. Is there any other single repertoire of music so universally popular? Sure, there are exceptions, but I can't think of any other tunes that retain hipster cachet across racial lines while still managing to assuage baby boomer nostalgia in a non-threatening manner. I can read about Motown in a hipper-than-thou hip hop magazine like Wax Poetics, but I know all of the tunes from listening to my parents' oldies radio stations growing up.

As a grad student, I spent one spring immersed in this music as a teaching assistant for our department's course on "Motown and Soul," taught by my esteemed adviser. The music only gets better the more you listen to and study it. And if very few of my students knew, coming into the class, that the Supremes were actually black, well, that's more testament to Berry Gordy's genius for creating music that anyone could project themselves onto.

So one wonders why Motown isn't part of the George Bush's Black Music Month™. I have no doubt that he himself listens to it, since everyone does. Perhaps, he is intimidated with Barack Obama's Motown-heavy playlist. Maybe there is still a frisson of oppositionality at work in what was, after all, the largest black-owned business created at the height of the civil rights movement. Maybe not. Because I also remember that scene in The Big Chill, where the friends hear this song and begin to dance, just like the crowd at Starbucks. And then I read the excellent Wikipedia entry on "Ain't Too Proud to Beg," and learn that it was similarly used in the movie Remember the Titans as example of racial healing. And since both of these examples make me roll my eyes, I begin to wonder: everyone loves Motown, but why, exactly? Maybe a white guy like me loving Motown is sort of like the George Bush Black Music Month™ theory--black music is great, as long as it is history.

This sort of back-and-forth agonizing probably isn't fun to read, but it's something I think all scholars (should) go through. It is always fraught to analyze people who are different than yourself, and of course anyone who looks at music in the past is necessarily looking at music by people different than themselves. But that difference is especially fraught when it happens to encompass one of the most anxious binarisms in American history, Dubois's black-white color line. A year and a half ago, I blogged elsewhere about how it was difficult for me to understand the attraction of Sonny Til, the handsome lead singer of the Orioles. (I've since figured it out, thank you very much; read my diss for the answer.) Just recently, some anonymous commenter happened upon that old post. After some interesting points, he concluded, "If you can't dig what I'm telling you - maybe you just ain't tan my man!" And you know, he's right. Not in some biologically essentialist way, but in that Sonny Til's attraction was so rooted in its context--race is one, but others as well--that it was really hard for me to appreciate it.

Now, I'm a neurotic musicologist, so these are the sorts of things I think about. But to get back to Motown, I really do wonder what attracts people to it. Great tunes, of course. But as I tell my students: tell me more!

A Few Presidential Thoughts

• Now, I love me some Barack Obama. But if he is finding that his position on gay marriage (opposed, but willing to leave it up to the states) is essentially the same as John McCain's, then...well, I am disappointed.
  
• John McCain is 72 years old. All four of my grandparents are older than John McCain. And unlike John McCain, all of my grandparents retired in the 1980s, when knowledge of computers for work was not yet obligatory. And yet, somehow, not only do all four of my grandparents know how to use computers, all four of them read my blog. One of my grandmothers is even on Facebook. So what's the problem, Johnny Boy?
  
• Apparently Cindy McCain has trouble not plagiarizing recipes. While annoying, it does make me realize that one of the few positive effects of a Hilary Clinton nomination might have been that Parents magazine could have realized that presidential spouses have skills besides baking cookies.
  
• A six percentage point difference is not "a small lead." 51-48, now that was a small lead. 50,456,169 to 50,996,116, now that was a small lead. But 48% to 42% is just...a lead.
  

My New Calling

68 As a 1930s wife, I am Superior Take the test!

When the questionnaire touched on matters of child-rearing, I just mentally substituted our dog. For example, for "Saves punishment of children for father at night," I put yes, because my wife is the Mabel disciplinarian. I just can't say no to my precious baby.

Cage Returns

It's been interesting to read Kyle Gann and Brent Reidy on their past experiences studying John Cage. I've often thought that Cage is something of a gateway drug for musicologists, at least those studying the recent twentieth-century. I know so many other scholars my age who began their careers studying Cage before moving on to other things.

My first encounter came in high school, in the summer between my first and second years. I was spending four weeks on the campus of Cal Arts, down in Southern California, at a state-run summer program for artistically minded high school students. I was there for creative writing, actually, but on the first night I went to a concert that was billed as "A Tribute to John Cage." I'd never heard of him, but was interested enough in anything self-consciously avant-garde to attend. It was organized by the pianist Gaylord Mowery, and on the second half of the program he announced that he was going to play one of the most beautiful pieces of music written in the twentieth-century.

It was, of course, 4'33", and the audience of precocious little would-be artists was entranced. The canonical interpretation of the work is that you are supposed to be listening to the sounds of the environment, but that has never been my own experience of 4'33". Rather, for me it has always been about the people around you. It's a chance to notice those sitting next to you, to listen to their breathing, and, for me, without getting too misty-eyed, it's a rare chance to enjoy silent companionship with strangers.

Since then, Cage has always been an important part of my life. My first tentative efforts at musicology as an undergraduate were on Cage, and I wrote more than a few seminar papers on him in graduate school. Finally, last year I wrote a sixty-page long dissertation chapter on the historical premiere of 4'33" in 1952. Since then, I've been busy with other chapters and projects, but no doubt I will return again.

But as both Gann and Reidy hint at, a longterm relationship with Cage can be problematic. In the first blush of romance, the attraction is all about the purity of his aesthetic. If you grew up in a world of classical music, he seems so utterly radical and right. I don't think it is a coincidence that Gann and I both discovered Cage as teenagers, a time in your life when it is particularly important to be 100% correct, and self-righteous about that fact. A lot of scholarship out there, particularly the early stuff, more or less takes this approach. In fact, up until James Pritchett's book, almost all "scholarship" on Cage was actually just interviews with the man, or collections of his writing.

Since his death, and since Pritchett's important book, there has been a fair amount of actual musicology on him. I don't want to name names in a laid back forum like this, but unfortunately much of it is pretty bad. In all the worry over whether or not he was a composer or a philosopher, scholars seem to have forgotten that focusing "just on the music" doesn't mean you should leave all of your critical faculties at home. The great thing about working on Cage is that his career intersects all of the big issues in twentieth-century music, and yet most seem content to leave him safely ensconced his own little musical bubble. George Lewis's influential essay is a positive example of what can be done if one does not buy into the mythmaking: Lewis asked the simple question, "hey, does race have anything to do with why Cage hated jazz so much?" Of course it does! Lewis might not have the perfect answers as to as why it does, but man, you should see how angry Cage people get when such things are suggested. Similar flareups always happen when you bring up the fact that Cage was gay, or had control issues, or liked flannel pajamas. Any suggestion that Cage was a human being has tended to be rebuffed.

Ultimately, these sorts of political issues are why many people, as I say, started out working on Cage and then move somewhere else. This is true for me as well; after all of my time working on him (eight years, yikes!), he's only one chapter of my dissertation. It would have been very easy for me to do an entire dissertation on him, but I found the discourse of Cage scholarship to be an unproductive world for a young scholar. I still want to contribute, of course, but it's not a place I want to call home.

Jury Duty in a New City

There's been a spate of jurisprudential duties in my circle; a friend in LA a few weeks ago, my wife last month, a friend here in Philly just last week. Like celebrity deaths, jury duty seems to come in clusters, and today it was my time to go.

Living in Philadelphia, you come to assume that anything related to municipal governance is going to be a complete and utter disaster. This is the city that barely has recycling, where most neighborhoods don't have street cleaning. A city that tried to become the first WiFi city in the country only to fail to the point where the private company contracted to provide the service is pulling out its routers and going home. A city where a steady string of leaders have been the target of FBI corruption probes, and where most intersections need to have a sign instructing "Wait for Green" in a futile attempt to corral some of the world's most incompetent drivers. It's a ridiculous excuse for a city, lovable in its constant failures.

But apparently, one thing this city does well is jury selection. My friend Ray, who recently served as well, put it well when he pointed out that if you spend your life waiting for Septa trolleys, it is a major surprise to show up for jury duty and be served free cinnamon cake by friendly clerks. I kid you not, the room was spacious, with plenty of comfortable seats, clean restrooms, vending machines, free coffee, and a table full of snacks. Directions were given clearly, and one of the judges came down to give us an inspirational speech in a thick South Philly Italian accent.

Ironically, I did jury duty in Los Angeles, just before moving, and that was a miserable experience. In Los Angeles, I showed up at 7:30 am to a courthouse, waited until lunch, and then was moved to a courthouse twelve miles away in Inglewood. No transportation provided, they just assumed everyone had a car. There, we waited for five hours before being told to come back again the next day. Then, we waited all day long with absolutely no information, and in an miserably hot cramped room, before being told in severe tones that that because we had complained amongst ourselves about the situation, we had irrevocably tainted our pool and they would have to impanel a new jury.

So yeah, Philadelphia jury duty rocks. And as Ray pointed out, it's one of the few times you have a group of people made up of genuine Philadelphians without suburban interlopers. It was a congenial group, with lots of discussion of the primary results and a bit of flirting. When the clerk called out a funny name, people would give a good-natured chuckle. When the clerk announced "Barbara Bush," everyone burst out laughing. When she called "Cornelius Cardew, Jr.," I think I was the only one to snicker.

And best of all, I was impaneled for a civil trial that settled before we were even called in, and I was done by noon. Philly rocks.

How To Lose Gracefully

I like to think that I have backed more losing candidates than most. My own personal genealogy of support in the 2000 presidential campaign went something like this:

November 1999: I enthusiastically join the board of the nascent Connecticut for Paul Wellstone committee.
January 2000: Wellstone drops out, I cheerfully switch to Bill Bradley. Much campaigning ensues.
March 2000: Bradley loses badly on Super Tuesday, and the writing is on the wall. I begin migration to Al Gore, although I am privately bitter at some of Gore's dirty tricks.
Fall 2000: Somewhat reluctant, but sincere, campaigning for Al Gore. Wrote self-righteous op-eds in student paper about subject. Directed my energies towards a congressional candidate (who then lost, of course), since Connecticut was firmly Democratic for the presidential line.
November 2000: Voted happily for Al Gore. Bush won.

My pattern was most obvious in 2000, but just about every presidential election for which I was a sentient human being went down more or less like that. Jesse Jackson in 1988. Tsongas in 92. Nader in 96. Dean (with qualms) in 04. So, to summarize, I know a thing or two about how to back a losing candidate.

It sucks. No doubt about it. Most of us who worked on the Bradley campaign are still bitter about Al Gore eight years later; he can win as many Nobel prizes as he likes, but I'll always think of him as something of a jerk. There is a generation of Bradley supporters, largely people my age who were in college at the time, who checked out of active Party politics after that election. I did. So I can sympathize with Clinton's supporters, many of whom feel bitter and disempowered. I don't blame them if their heart isn't in the fall election. Losing sucks; it makes you feel both stupid and unappreciated.

But if you, dear abstract Clinton supporter, even THINK about voting for John McCain this fall....well, I'm not sure such people exist outside of the Clinton's politicking machine and the fantasies of a bloodthirsty mainstream media. But if you do exist, dear sir or madam, please ask yourself if you are supporting McCain because you like him better than Obama, or fundamentally distrust Obama, or whatever it is--or if you voting for McCain just out of spite, to make yourself feel better. If the latter is the case, well, from one loser to another, stop being so goddamn selfish.

As for me, I can say that it feels absolutely fantastic to be winning for once.

Thursday Questions

Would anybody mind if I blog once a week? It's not that I'm busy--although I am--it's more that I'm lazy. I have lots of trenchant political commentary on the primary I could blog about, but frankly, I have too much commentary to distill down to a blog post. This is what happens when you work at home, and spend all day listening to CNN in the background and checking in at Daily Kos every five minutes.

A few questions I'm asking myself these days:

• Who would want to recall from me the transcript of the 1949 HUAC hearings on "The Negro in the Communist Party"? It's not that I mind returning it, as I've finished that chapter, but I'm curious who else at UCLA is interested in the subject. It is actually a very interesting hearing, held in the wake of Paul Robeson's famous remark that if the United States ever went to war with the Soviet Union, African Americans wouldn't fight. In response, the HUAC committee subpoenaed Jackie Robinson, who rejoined, "yes, we would." Good stuff. Earlier in the hearing, one "expert witness" testified that the reason there were few black members in the Communist Party was because strong black women kept their more shifty men in check. You can bet I get a lot of mileage out of this comment in my chapter.
  
• If I work as a receptionist at my wife's vet clinic, will I lose all self-respect? Not because of the nature of the job, or the nepotism, but because I would have to wear nurse scrubs printed with cartoon cats and dogs. On the other hand, it fills in some financial holes until I start adjuncting in the fall.
  
• When did Hillary Clinton become the symbol of feminism in this country? I would write a 5000 word blog post on this subject, but it just makes my blood pressure go up unhealthily.
  
• Why was I previously unfamiliar with Roy Harris's Third Symphony? It's a beautiful piece. I knew of it abstractly, before, but as it is relevant to my Bernstein chapter I found a score and sat down for a listen. Lovely!
  
• I've been helping a friend copyedit the bibliography for her book, on a fifteenth-century topic, and I've got to say: thank goodness we twentieth-century Americanists don't have to deal with the gnarly world of fascimiles, twenty-volume multi-year editions, nineteenth-century reprints, and paragraph-long titles. They might get disciplinary capital and the ability to give a paper at AMS whenever they want, but at least our footnotes are a lot neater.
  
• Is my Fu-Wah tofu hoagie ready yet? I hope so. West Philadelphians will know of this delicacy. I know the idea of a "tofu hoagie" probably sounds disgusting--it did to me--but it is one of the best things you have ever tasted, and only costs $3.50.

Confessions of a Newly Suburbanite Griller

West Philly was the original suburban development of Philadelphia, its gigantic Queen Anne-Victorian manses hurriedly thrown up by mid-nineteenth-century developers, proto Toll Brothers mowing down the landscape offering city dwellers the promise of rural peace and lots of square footage.

West Philly doesn't feel so suburban today, but we still have front porches and back yards. Our apartment is on the ground floor of a garish blue-and-pink late Victorian, and includes a large back porch that opens up into a little backyard. It's a lovely porch, and came complete with a hammock, a boarded-up jacuzzi, and our landlord's gigantic grilling machine.

This isn't it, but it looks a lot like this one. I guess technically it's a "smoker" or something? Anyways, it's ours to use, if I remotely knew what I'm doing. Now that spring is here I have cooked two meals on it, both successful thanks to the careful following of recipes and online grilling guides. The first meal was a big chunk of beef (pre-seasoned, sue me) from Trader's Joe, paired with asparagus we bought that afternoon at the Clark Park farmer's market, and which had been picked on a Mennonite farm the day prior. That was good.

This was the first picture I got when searching Flickr for "men cooking." Incidentally, there is actually an entire Flickr community called "Special Men Who Cook For You." ("Pic's [sic] of nude men which displays [sic] good taste/artistic is [sic] more than welcome. ") Whatevs, but when I went to Target to buy some implements for grilling, I was shocked by the size of grilling utensils. They are huge! The tongs looked like they were designed for picking up small poodles, the spatulas like you could use them as a diving board. Why is that? You know, the grill gets hot, but not so hot that you really have to stand ten feet away from it and prod your meat from a distance. I can barely fit my poking fork into our not-so-small grill. The answer probably has to do with phallic anxieties, but that seems so...obvious.

Anyways, I bought the smallest pair of tongs I could find, and tonight managed to make some hamburgers on the beast. I have to admit, I don't quite feel some primal masculine urge to roast meat over fire. I definitely enjoy cooking outside; it's lovely to be on our back deck with a Yuengling and a warm breeze. But I miss the proper gas burners of our kitchen, and the easy access to cupboards and a variety of pots and pans. It's not that I am a very good cook, but it seems actually a little wimpy to me, to use a grill. It's like, if you're not actually going to collect kindling out in the woods and make a campfire and cook over it with MSR pans, you might as well cook like a normal human being in the kitchen. A Weber on a back deck is a measly little simulacrum for the actual meat-over-flame cro-magnon experience, and no gigantic spatula is going to cure that.

Frida Kahlo

Left to right, that's Leon Trotsky, Diego Rivera, and André Breton. How much would you love to be a fly on the wall for that conversation?

This photo was taken by Fritz Bach in 1938. Trotsky was living with Rivera and Frida Kahlo, and Breton was visiting from Paris--this is the famous trip where Kahlo was "discovered" as a kind of homegrown surrealist. The photo is part of the touring Frida Kahlo Exhibition, put together by the Walker Art Center in Minneapolis, and currently in its last weekend at the Philadelphia Art Museum.

It's a pretty good exhibition. I'm not enough of an expert on Kahlo to know if her art was well-represented, (haven't even seen the movie) but from my sketchy knowledge it seemed like everything I expected to be there was there, and appropriately contextualized. The real gem is that that the curators display, apparently for the first time in public, a series of candid snapshots that Kahlo had given to a friend for safekeeping. They are revelatory, showing Kahlo and her international circle of modernist friends in intimate and revealing moments. I'm a sucker for that sort of thing. You read about how painful her life was, with constant surgeries to deal with damaged caused by polio and a childhood car accident, but it is harrowing to see photographs of her body trussed up in a hospital bed. I particularly liked the pictures of Kahlo and her beloved Xoloitzcuintli dogs.

The show moves next to the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art. Check it out if you are in town. It was insanely crowded here in Philadelphia, so advance tickets might be in order.

Robert Rauschenberg, 1925-2008

Erased de Kooning Drawing (1953)

Gossip Girl and Varèse

Apologies for not liveblogging Gossip Girl last night. I did watch intently, but was also cooking dinner (salmon and orzo) at the same time, and did not have enough hands to run over to my computer and write pithy comments. A few random thoughts:

• I'm still not satisfied with Georginia's character development. It's not enough for her just to be a psychotic stalker and nothing else. I'm concerned that when we finally learn her motivation, it's going to be stupid.
  
• The guy Serena killed/let die "would have died anyways"? Now that's a cop-out if I ever heard one. And why didn't we get to see her apologize to the family? Yet another example of how the character of Serena never really has to face any consequences for being really annoying.
  
• Still very pretty though.
  
• The gossip around Gossip Girl is nearly as good as the show.
  
• As a musicologist, I would like to point out that Rufus's music does not at all sound like it came from the 1990s. Also, has Lisa Loeb been shilling that same song for the last fifteen years? Poor thing.
  
• Why was Jenny not in this episode at all? Or gay Eric? Weird.

Sometimes I worry that my blog is not serious enough, and therefore I will never have academic employment. So here's Varèse's Poème Electronique. If you don't enjoy it, you are a bad modernist subject.

Shake Those Hips, Lenny

I write from the Library of Congress, where I am spending a rainy afternoon perusing the mammoth Leonard Bernstein collection here. I paged the wrong box of correspondence, so while I wait for the right one I'm idly leafing through random letters. I love working at the LOC--comfortable chairs and free wireless.

One discovery: in 1989, Bobby McFerrin sent Bernstein a James Brown mixtape, with the instructions to "put it on when your hips get stuck." That's a vivid image.

West Side Stories

There is an old truism about Golden Age Broadway that when a show is about some exotic location or historical period--the kingdom of Siam, say, or the Salem witch trials--the intention is actually to create a metaphor for some contemporary situation. Thus The Crucible is actually about McCarthyism, or Camelot about the Kennedys, or what have you. When we watch these shows, we see ourselves.

That's all well and good, but it all hinges upon one word that is rather fraught with ideological implications: "we." Who is the "we" in a broadway audience?

I got to thinking about this because Mary and I were in NYC recently, and went to go see In the Heights, the new (to Broadway, at least) musical based on a Hispanic neighborhood in Washington Heights. I'm not really going to review in detail here. The quick rundown is that In the Heights was written by a twenty-seven year-old New Yorker named Lin-Manuel Miranda while he was a sophomore in college. It had a very successful run off-Broadway, and now just opened, with some revisions, at the Richard Rodgers Theater. Miranda himself still stars as Usnavi, a Dominican bodega owner. The music, I feel qualified to say, is outright amazing. When I first heard that it was a "hip hop musical" it's safe to say that I was concerned, but I was completely won over by the musical experience. Often when commercial music theater attempts to use "youth music" it sounds forced. I tend to think it is a matter of tempo more than anything--I love Rent as much as the next artsy suburbanite, but the painfully slow tempos of Larson's "rock music" always make it clear that you are in a very different musical world. At its best moments Miranda's music--and credit equally goes to the music director and excellent pit orchestra--pops along as if unaware of the millions of dollars in revenues weighing upon it. The result is energetic and immensely appealing. Everything else about it is great too, and I hope that next time you are in the city you should run over and see it. If you want to read a real review, try here or here.

In the Heights comes five decades after the definitive Broadway portrait of Nueva York, written by a queer Jew from Boston: West Side Story. West Side Story cheerfully participated in the traditional exoticist Broadway style. When the idea was suggested to Bernstein, he was thrilled to have the chance to play around with Latin rhythms, even if, truth be told, most of them still sound like Stravinsky. Originally the musical was actually to be called East Side Story, since the Bernstein and Co. assumed that was still where the Puerto Ricans lived.

So if "we" all had a great time watching Puerto Ricans fight and dance on stage, what happens with Puerto Ricans themselves go from being the object of a musical to being the creators? Well, one thing was very obvious to me Saturday night: the majority of the audience at the Richard Rodgers theater was speaking Spanish to one another during intermission.

This causes consternation to some people. The critic Terry Teachout, for one, had some praise for the musical, but decided that it rang essentially false:

Mr. Miranda is clearly a very talented young man. Why, then, did he settle for this casserole of warmed-over Disney slathered in hot sauce? It occurs to me that the answer may have something to do with his background: Mr. Miranda's father is a political consultant and his mother a child psychologist, while he himself directed "West Side Story" as a senior in high school, then attended Wesleyan University in Connecticut. Might all this explain why his cheery portrait of street life seems the least little bit faux? Stew, by contrast, drew forthrightly on his experience as a middle-class black kid in Los Angeles to write "Passing Strange," every bar of which rings true to life. I liked "In the Heights" more than well enough, but I have a sneaking feeling that a show about the real Lin-Manuel Miranda might have been a whole lot more interesting.

I'm not even sure where to begin taking this apart. Let's start with the judgment that In the Heights should have hewn more closely to autobiography. Needless to say, that's an unusual aesthetic standpoint with which to judge Broadway musicals, a genre not known for its unsentimental portrayals of gritty realist subjects. Teachout's favorite musical, after all, is Sweeney Todd, which I sincerely hope is not the product of autobiography. Teachout himself makes much of the fact that he himself moves articulately in several different social worlds--small town Missourian living on the Upper West Side, conservative critic in the liberal world of the arts--so one might imagine him to be sympathetic to an artist moving between worlds, and not being confined to his or her origins. But Lin-Manuel Miranda bugs him.

Well, I'm going to say something unpleasant about Teachout: I suspect that the reason In the Heights rang false for him is because the characters in the show did not do drugs, were not criminals, had upwardly mobile class aspirations and were generally good people. In Teachout's world, Lin-Manuel Miranda's parents were well-to-do, therefore Miranda is unqualified to write about Hispanic life in Washington Heights.

The fact is, cloying sentimentality aside (and there is plenty of it!), Miranda is writing autobiography--or at least as autobiographically as Meredith Willson did with regards to River City, Iowa. As the observant might have noticed from Teachout's mini-biography, Miranda and I went to college together. We were in fact classmates. We didn't know each other, and I admit that I didn't go to the production of In the Heights he did our sophomore year because I thought the idea of a Wesleyan student doing a "hip hop musical" sounded ridiculous. But I can at least vouch for the fact that he is indeed Puerto Rican, and is indeed from the Washington Heights/Inwood part of the world. And I hate to break it to Teachout, but there are many people like him in Washington Heights.

The problem, I think, is that In the Heights does not match Teachout's own fantasy about what Hispanic life in Washington Heights is like. And this, I would argue, is because Miranda's musical does not go out of its way to speak to Teachout. Unlike the Jets and the Sharks safely performing a knife-fight ballet to Stravinskian rhythms, the cultural difference of In the Heights spills into the audience, and for many a "typical" Broadway audience member there is the shock of recognizing that perhaps this musical is not speaking to me.

Not in any kind of radical way, of course. The politics of In the Heights, such as they are, are mostly a rather tepid multiculturalism. But at the same time, there's a lot to be said for allowing a new generation of American theatergoers a chance to see themselves in a Broadway musical.