Category Archives: Music

Update 2: ‘Genius’ In Contemporary America

America, Human Accomplishment, Intelligence, Logic, Music, Reason, The Zeitgeist

With the death of objective standards, the assessment of everything from cultural products to moral nature has become near impossible.

Consider: According to author Richard Reeves, classical liberal John Stuart Mill was “learning Greek at three, taking in Plato and Sophocles at ten, and turning, at eleven, to the mastery of Aristotle’s logic.” Indisputably a genius. Genial too, I believe—which goes against the romanticized notion whereby true genius involves eccentricities and crazy behavior. It seldom does.

The slow Morley Safer of “60 Minutes” has repeatedly provided examples of the difficulties fin de siècle America has in assessing genius.

Some time ago, Morely headed over to Julliard, if I recall, to feature a young man touted as a musical prodigy. The boy was full of affectation and acted eccentrically, as he obviously believed a young man of his “abilities” ought to.

Over the course of this most mundane hour, it became obvious that what you had here were pushy parents and their cocky, narcissistic son, who’d managed to eliminate along the way any opinion contrary to theirs with respect to their son’s designation as a musical genius.

One old school Russian master, who was of the opinion that the lad was not particularly good, was subject to complaints, and promptly dismissed. The rest at Julliard simply fell into compliance with the genius designation out of ignorance and pseudo-intellectualism.

Suffice it to say that to listen to the lad’s compositions was to know right away that he had very little to offer. Passion was remiss, other than for himself. Technique was non-existent. He had, however, watched a lot of Leonard Bernstein footage, as he emulated Lenny’s antics. Thing is, the prodigious Lenny, as repugnant a persona as he was, delivered. I myself am inspired to leap up in the air and land as did Lenny when listening to his recording of Stravinsky’s Firebird and Petrushka. Great fire and precision in that interpretation. (Actually I do leap in the air to Petrushka.)

Particularly amusing to this music lover—Bach, any Bach, and chamber music, in particular—was this goddamn-awful self-styled genius’ insistence that, like Bach, he never needed to erase the music he wrote down. I’m not sure this is fact or folklore, but it is said that Bach Senior wrote without having to erase.

Stupid Safer found this very convincing. I found this an example of the post hoc ergo propter hoc logical fallacy:

The moron had read that J. S. Bach never corrected the music he wrote. He concluded therefore that if he never erased the crap he transcribed he’d be in his right to lay claim to Bach-like genius.

Listening to this lad’s self-reverential, introspective, crappy, choppy compositions was all one needed to conclude that decades of tutoring with an exacting master would be required to produce a solid piece.

The revolting reality was that the pandering parents and pedagogues surrounding this lad partook in the charade.

Update 1 (April 6): Since it seems some readers have not understood what is meant by post hoc logic, let me try again. If A then B is correct in logic. In Bach’s case: his abilities (A) led to his not needing to rewrite what he wrote (B). The proof was in the pudding too, i.e., the music is heavenly; assessed by objective standards, Bach’s music epitomizes genius.

If B then A is wrong in logic. It is exactly the case of the stupid kid. He refuses to rewrite (B) and improve despite the opinion of people greater than he that this is indeed what is required of him if he is to improve. From the act of not rewriting (B), he and his accomplices have reasoned backwards and concluded that his abilities are Bach-like (A).

Reasoning backwards is an error, illogic, bogus. What this means it that there are many other reasons for his not rewriting. Hubris being one.

What had happened is that the lad had imbibed the story of Bach not rewriting, and concluded that if he did not rewrite (B), he indeed did not need to rewrite (A). That the music doesn’t approach reasonable standards in complexity and beauty certainly suggests that scrapping it and trying again is the first order of the day. That other fine—and thus so fired—teachers have suggested that a great deal of learning and rewriting is what’s required if an improvement is to be attained suggests that there are, if anything, good reasons to rewrite and rewrite a lot.

I’ve explained the post hoc error laboriously. If you fail to get this distinction, I can’t help much more that I already have.

Update 2: I’m delighted that Barely A Blog’s resident musician (settle down ye humorless; that was meant to sound pompous), Professor Ira Newborn, has dilated on the topic of the modern-day genius with his usual flare.

Ira is a well-known, highly-accomplished composer. He may be known more for his popular “motion picture soundtracks,” but I’ve heard some of his more serious compositions. Yeah, baby: those made me leap up in the air too, as does Lenny’s Fire Bird and Petrushka. I only wish the tracts where available to the public. How about it, Ira? How sad that the bad (Wonder Boy) pushes out the good (Ira).

Also, sample Sean Mercer for some of the hottest guitar playing you’ll hear with tight arrangements to match technical skill. The recording, which Sean engineered, is a little dated, but it holds up.

Updated: Are Objectivists Cultural Philistines?

Democracy, Music, Objectivism, Technology, The West, The Zeitgeist

When it comes to culture, too many Objectivists display quite a bit of philistinism. For example, from their publications one is led to believe that the Superman/Spider-man genre of film is somehow the pinnacle of Western cinematic accomplishment, philosophically and stylistically. Or at least, this is the impression they give, perhaps unintentionally.

In her appreciation of music, Ayn Rand was undeniably very limited. She took mainly to Rachmaninoff. So what? Her imperfections are not the point. Ayn Rand was enough of an innovator to have her eccentricities. The point, rather, is the cult-like conduct of her acolytes—to religiously assimilate the peculiarities and tics of another is to relinquish one’s judgment, and learning curve, to say nothing of one’s individuality. Monkeys mimic.

Nevertheless, Objectivists fetishize Rachmaninoff, and try and make the case that classical music’s worth hinges on one representative of Russian Romanticism, rather than on very many giants from other places and periods.

Objectivist publications often feature large, glossy photos of tall American buildings. This rather hackneyed, crude imagery is meant to capture man’s heroic mastery of his environment. I’m an enthusiastic champion of man as master of the universe. But these displays are just too outsized, clunky and out-of-date.

Patriotism is all well and good, moreover, but realism, at least to this writer, is paramount. If Objectivists—and Americans in general—tuned into the world, they’d recognize that our once-great cities are looking rather shabby and old. I am told that America is no longer the place for the latest in architecture (that goes for free-market capitalism too. Here are more amazing buildings).

Sean, who’s at the pinnacle of the electrical engineering profession, always chuckles at the shiny technology shots in said publications—these are supposed to stand for innovation. The projects depicted are often statist rather than private. But even odder—and off—are the “heroic” images of the microchip assembly line. Don’t Objectivists understand that the assembly line is where the product designed by industry innovators is put together by factory workers?

An emphasis on the values of equality and representative mass society is increasingly central to the more militant among Objectivists and certainly to the neocons—values that are also America’s main export. Perhaps celebrating those low on the creativity ladder comports with this philosophical tenet.

Toilet Taliban

Etiquette, Feminism, Music

What a remarkably ill-bred, indelicate creature is singer Sheryl Crow. Read the following bons mots for a sense of creepy Crow’s planet-saving concoctions:

I have designed a clothing line that has what’s called a ‘dining sleeve.’ The sleeve is detachable and can be replaced with another ‘dining sleeve,’ after usage. The design will offer the ‘diner’ the convenience of wiping his mouth on his sleeve rather than throwing out yet another barely used paper product. I think this idea could also translate quite well to those suffering with an annoying head cold.

Raised in a barn she must have been. Her mother clearly never taught her any table manners. How crass and asinine can Crow get? Read on:

Now, I don’t want to rob any law-abiding American of his or her God-given rights, but I think we are an industrious enough people that we can make it work with only one square per restroom visit, except, of course, on those pesky occasions where 2 to 3 could be required.

I’m not sure what’s more offensive, Crow’s notion of what industry and natural rights consist of, or her filthy ideas about personal hygiene. The only thing that might redeem this toilet Taliban is the knowledge that she has a bidet in her well-appointed bathroom. Judging from what we’ve heard so far, she sure needs one.

Paglia Prattles On Pop Music

Music, Pop-Culture, The Zeitgeist

The pronouncements of the once-interesting Camille Pagilia have grown rather obtuse. How bland has she become? You be the judge. What she says here about “CrotchGate” is as worn and uninteresting as anything Gloria Steinem might muster.

Paglia has always substituted symbolism for substantive assessment in the realm of art. Remember her clapped out claptrap about the significance of drag-queen iconography? This awful error has led her to evaluate Madonna as “an authentic, creative artist.”

Madonna cannot sing or compose a song worth hearing. Like most pop “musicians” today, she is a product of the visual medium: first the video, then the DVD. If you were unable to see these “artists,” you’d not want to hear them. I suspect that their image alone has, over the years, supported CD sales. And of course, the masses habituate to the thump-thump studio-engineered racket that substitutes for a voice, instrumental arrangements, and chord progression in a Madonna or Britney ditty.

Every “recording” artist today is drawn from a highly biased sample, where T & A are the prime criteria for selection, not musical ability. Janis Ian’s “Seventeen” would never have been recorded today; she’d have flopped. In music nowadays, the visual, not the auditory, is the medium.

Paglia blathers about the mismanaged sexuality of well-worn, ugly monsters like Britney Spears. (And the media mock Tom Cruise, a man of 44, for his double chin. Have you seen the chins on the big, flat, expanses that make up Britney’s mug?) The Porn Aesthetic is at work here, not the sensual.

The notion of Paglia as a sharp cultural commentator finally evaporated when she called Condoleezza Rice a brilliant woman. The woman, Condi, has not even been able to fulfill the minimum requirements of her office, much less demonstrate brilliance.(Her last official “remarks” are quite good…for a 12-year-old.)

Donald Trump, who, shall we say, has a good sense of what would fly in the private sector, said of the Secretary of State that she was a lovely woman, but that she “goes around to other countries and other nations, negotiates with their leaders, comes back and nothing ever happens.” He’d have fired her, that’s for sure.

In any event, I’ll no longer be following Paglia too closely (her eventual evaluation of the blogosphere came well after mine and only echoed what I had said in “The Importance of Boundaries“).