There's plenty that's been written about the new Bond movie Skyfall in the last month. By now if you don't know it's Judi Dench's last film as M then, well, er, spoiler alert? ;-)
A bit has been made of the observation that the new James Bond movie depicts an older, depressive Bond who dislikes the nature of his work and has become too old to pass field work tests and probably has substance abuse issues. Yet Bond shows up for duty even after he's identified as dead during a battle in which a field agent attempts to shoot a data thief and, through her own failures in aim, shoots 007. Cue one of the few actually decent Bond songs in the last ten years.
Bond returns, like an old Bruce Wayne comes out of retirement to deal with an evil that the new generation of cops can't understand or defeat. James Bond Returns. But he returns to an MI6 that is positive it doesn't really need him any longer. Mallory, whom Bond describes as "a bureaucrat", makes a blunt petition to M (Judi Dench) about her team's failure to prevent the data theft. He says M has had a good run and that there's no dishonor in retiring early and getting a pension and that after such a big failure it's okay to retire and retain some dignity. To this M replies indignantly, "To hell with dignity! I want the job done." This becomes a thread through the film in which there are people who work in and with MI6 who consider personal standing or renown or welfare and those who say "to hell with dignity ... ."
But an equally obvious theme in the storyline has to do with "the shadows". Mallory tells M that she and Bond are, basically, relics from a Cold War time, a bygone era whose methods and tools are no longer relevant. Working in the shadows doesn't make any sense when, thanks to modern technology and information resources, there aren't any shadows. When Bond is equipped with a gun and radio by Q, the young man mentions, "I can do more damage in a single day with a laptop than you can in a whole year out in the field" (I paraphrase). Bond retorts with a question of why on earth he even needs to be around at all. The obviously strictly indoor Q says, "Eventually somebody has to pull a trigger." Later in the film Q will unwittingly let the necessary villain (Silva) break into the data systems of MI6 and Silva attempts to assasinate M during a hearing on problems in MI6 security and policy.
It is during the hearing that M explains why MI6 still needs to exist, because the changing nature of the enemy means the adversary is no longer a nation or an army but those who dwell in the shadows. This is possibly the first James Bond movie that has a theme and at least one potential theme in the film is the question of what the shadows are. Mallory believes the shadows don't exist and M is certain that they not only exist but that both the evils that face society (like Silva) emerge from there and that Bond has lived within the shadows and is the sort of person who can fight men like Silva. At length Silva turns out to have been a former agent of MI6 who overstepped his authorization and clearance, risked compromising MI6's operations, and was given over by M to Chinese authorities during the 1997 transfer of Hong Kong to China. Some have written that this backstory is implausible. Okay, so what exactly is supposed to be "plausible" in a James Bond story can be discussed at some other time.
M's point in the film about the shadows invites a question (for those who actually feel like asking these sorts of questions), what are the shadows and where are they? Even after Mallory said there were no more shadows MI6 is blindsided by an attack from a former agent. The shadows are not merely some place or places but gaps in attention. The shadows are where the people in the light are not looking, even if everything might otherwise be bathed in light. The shadows are in the details you missed, the people you overlooked, the directions in which you were not looking. This is the world in which James Bond, in pretty much any incarnation, has always lived. The shadows, again, are not merely where there is no light, the shadows exist where there is some light (even) but you're not looking.
In a gun fight in the hearing room the younger generation that would see Bond and the old M kindly on their way into some dignified retirement are all attempting to make killshots on Silva, who has come into to kill M for what he believes was her treachery toward him. As people like Mallory and the field agent who will turn out to be the famous desk agent Eve Moneypenny attempt to shoot to kill and fail Bond pulls out his gun. He shoots to confuse, using his famous Walther PPK to saturate the courtroom with fire retardants from the fire extinguishers in the room. Silva ends up being thwarted, of course, not by the youngsters who have said there are no shadows anymore and that M should step down, but by the man who is considered physically, mentally, and emotionally unfit to be in the fight, our dear old James Bond. As Q put it, eventually someone has to pull a trigger and Bond's reticence about his work is how often and why a trigger has to be pulled. Having been shown unable to make easy shots after being wounded in the moment of real crisis Bond, of course, comes through and has true aim.
Of course the usual blandishments of the Bond franchise are present but the Bond girl motiff takes a tertiary role to the aforementioned themes. The most important Bond woman in this film is M and it's fitting that after being in the franchise so many years Judi Dench is given an actually significant role. Severine ends up being almost purely incidental, the path to Silva. It's the agent revealed in the end to be Moneypenny who ends up being the second most important woman in Bond's travels in Skyfall, a well-meaning younger agent who has bad aim and taunts Bond about being the old dog who somehow learned new tricks. Unlike the other generation of youngsters Moneypenny is willing to take Bond's frank and unflattering advice that with the kind of aim she has he'd feel awfully safer knowing she wasn't firing guns out in the field and that she's not cut out for field work. By film's end Moneypenny turns out to accept Bond's blunt advice and Q has been humbled by the discovery that Silva was able to best his technology and defeat his laptop. This being a Bond movie that's no surprise.
Having said all that that's about as much as I think needs be said. The new Bond movie is a veritably solemn affair but it seems that Sam Mendes is better off giving Bond movies some actual themes than cranking out self-congratulatory films like American Beauty. Sometimes taking a big dumb movie franchise seriously and giving it some themes to play with is more fun that attemtping to be above genre trappings and being stuck in the most hoary convention of all, the shallow suburban existence in which dissatisfied people questing for meaning and personal fulfillment do ethically questionable things. After all, you can get that stuff in Bond movies and throw in a few chase scenes.
Sunday, December 09, 2012
Old Life: When Transformation Transforms the Transformers
http://oldlife.org/2012/12/when-transformation-transforms-the-transformers/
... the example of the Amish (as Berry understands them) may also be instructive for those wanting to transform out culture. Instead of infiltrating the city to redeem it, the Amish have fled the dominant culture to cultivate a Christian culture (as they understand it). In so doing, they have avoided the problem that generally afflicts the infiltrators — that they become like the culture they inhabit, that is, in the case of city transformers, they become as urban and hip as they are Christian. The Amish are also apparently free from the self-delusion that often infects the transformationalists, then one where to justify redeeming the culture the cult loses what makes it distinct (the salt is no longer salt).
... This is not, by the way, an endorsement of either the Amish (whom I admire) or the project of Christian culture. I am more and more persuaded that the longing for a Christian culture is illegitimate and whets the soul’s appetite for something we cannot have in this world. But if you are going to look for examples of Christian culture, the Amish may have unwittingly outscored the neo-Calvinists. ...
A surprisingly sloppy post not so much in the ideas presented, which are clear enough, but in the word choice. Maybe the post was published using a mobile device that kicked in with auto-correct. The thoughts are, however, interesting enough that some obviously off-kilter words don't keep the idea from coming across. The Amish have cultivated a Christian culture that is robust and recognizable by not being in the culture around them. Neo-Calvinists, as yet, have not produced a culture that has become so recognizable or long-lasting and this "may" be because they haven't had time or, as Hart implies, they will always lack the foundation form which to build a "Christian culture" because the enterprise itself is dubious. Whether or not you agree with Hart on that is a matter all its own.
Having seen the earnestness with which some pastors in this area have said they want to win people to Jesus, people who will "move upstream" and "shape culture" I've also seen what can happen when people realize they are probably never going to move upstream and shape culture. They despair, they give up, they get resentful, and in some cases bail on church altogether. When a goal of Christian living is to "redeem culture" it may happen to happen but it ends up putting the cart before the horse.
I suppose I could write more on the matter but I don't feel like doing so.
... the example of the Amish (as Berry understands them) may also be instructive for those wanting to transform out culture. Instead of infiltrating the city to redeem it, the Amish have fled the dominant culture to cultivate a Christian culture (as they understand it). In so doing, they have avoided the problem that generally afflicts the infiltrators — that they become like the culture they inhabit, that is, in the case of city transformers, they become as urban and hip as they are Christian. The Amish are also apparently free from the self-delusion that often infects the transformationalists, then one where to justify redeeming the culture the cult loses what makes it distinct (the salt is no longer salt).
... This is not, by the way, an endorsement of either the Amish (whom I admire) or the project of Christian culture. I am more and more persuaded that the longing for a Christian culture is illegitimate and whets the soul’s appetite for something we cannot have in this world. But if you are going to look for examples of Christian culture, the Amish may have unwittingly outscored the neo-Calvinists. ...
A surprisingly sloppy post not so much in the ideas presented, which are clear enough, but in the word choice. Maybe the post was published using a mobile device that kicked in with auto-correct. The thoughts are, however, interesting enough that some obviously off-kilter words don't keep the idea from coming across. The Amish have cultivated a Christian culture that is robust and recognizable by not being in the culture around them. Neo-Calvinists, as yet, have not produced a culture that has become so recognizable or long-lasting and this "may" be because they haven't had time or, as Hart implies, they will always lack the foundation form which to build a "Christian culture" because the enterprise itself is dubious. Whether or not you agree with Hart on that is a matter all its own.
Having seen the earnestness with which some pastors in this area have said they want to win people to Jesus, people who will "move upstream" and "shape culture" I've also seen what can happen when people realize they are probably never going to move upstream and shape culture. They despair, they give up, they get resentful, and in some cases bail on church altogether. When a goal of Christian living is to "redeem culture" it may happen to happen but it ends up putting the cart before the horse.
I suppose I could write more on the matter but I don't feel like doing so.
Saturday, December 08, 2012
The Light's Home: a new ministry/counseling project spearheaded by James Noriega (former pastor at Mars Hill)
http://www.thelightshome.org/board-of-directors/.
As has been discussed at some length at this blog, James Noriega is no longer employed as a pastor by Mars Hill Church. He stopped being listed as a pastor approximately 12-14 months ago, back around September or October 2011. This is what he's been working on over the last year, for those who may be interested in reading about it. Here are a few testimonials with some names some of you regular readers may recognize.
http://www.thelightshome.org/testimonials/
Testimonials of note are from Andrew Pack (Anchor, a MH plant); Gary Shavey (MH Bellevue); AJ Hamilton (MH Albequerque); and Amanda Hightower.
As has been discussed at some length at this blog, James Noriega is no longer employed as a pastor by Mars Hill Church. He stopped being listed as a pastor approximately 12-14 months ago, back around September or October 2011. This is what he's been working on over the last year, for those who may be interested in reading about it. Here are a few testimonials with some names some of you regular readers may recognize.
http://www.thelightshome.org/testimonials/
Testimonials of note are from Andrew Pack (Anchor, a MH plant); Gary Shavey (MH Bellevue); AJ Hamilton (MH Albequerque); and Amanda Hightower.
Thursday, December 06, 2012
Star Trek Into Darkness ... okay
Something tells me this movie will not necessarily feature Spock doing battle against evil sentient flying pancakes that sound like squeaking doggy chew toys.
Mockingbird on Dave Brubeck and a few thoughts of my own
http://www.mbird.com/2012/12/to-hope-a-celebration-in-memory-of-dave-brubeck/
Earlier this year, when I wrote a guest piece for Internet Monk, I mused on how if in Christ there is no slave or free, Jew or Greek, or male or female then this meant that there is no high or low, art or pop, indie or mainstream but all are united in Christ who reconciles all things to God the Father through Himself. It's fitting to remember in the week of Brubeck's passing that he was Catholic (I'm Protestant but let's set aside a few of those ceaseless differences, significant though they are, to consider an element of Brubeck's legacy). Brubeck was catholic in his faith and musical interests and the cool sound he helped develop was a sound that fused "classical" with "jazz" in ways that were new and interesting.
I heard Brubeck twenty years ago and my musical thinking has never been the same since. What may be tedious or unappealing to many music listeners about Brubeck's music could well be summed up in "musical thinking". Brubeck was often a cerebral musician in how he came across, how he'd improvise an idea. There was, particularly for his detractors, something un-swinging and eggheaded about his musical approach. Even twenty years ago when I was introduced to his music I met people who said that Brubeck did not play jazz. About sixteen years ago the magazine Downbeat noted by that time Dave Brubeck constituted one of the pillars of mid-20th century jazz composers and pianists because, quite simply, he'd outlived pretty much all the jazz critics who refused to recognize his music as jazz. When all the dissenters have died off and you're still alive and kicking and touring and recording then, well, you kinda won that battle, didn't you?
Decades ago I wrote a little instrumental piece mainly in 5/8 that people thought I had written after hearing "Take Five" by the Brubeck Quartet. That piece is associated with Brubeck even though it was written by Desmond and when I wrote my 5/8 piece I had never even heard of Dave Brubeck or Paul Desmond. What I had heard was John Coltrane's "Afro Blue" and Tom Petty's "Breakdown". I liked both songs and wanted to come up with a song that was somewhere in between. So betweeen the buoyant 6/8 of Coltrane and the weirdly agitated lethargy of Tom Petty's four-on-the-floor I came up with a slightly astringent 5/8. Nobody at college who heard the instrumental believed I hadn't heard of Brubeck when I wrote the thing ... except for a friend of mine who was an old bandmate who says that the way I think about music the Coltrane/Tom Petty fusion into 5/8 totally makes sense.
Some twenty years on I'll happily say that Brubeck's music has been a touchstone for my way of thinking about composing and to some degree my musical goals. Theere's also Hindemith, Penederecki, Messiaen, Haydn, Bach, Stravinsky, Stevie Wonder ... but Brubeck was one of those seminal discoveries in which this guitarist and composer discovered a kind of fusion (and there are many kinds of fusion) that took hold of me.
Let me say something in defense of cerebral music. It is often said that music is a thing that speaks directly to the heart but it is taken for granted in a preponderance of tacitly dominant musical styles that something is understood and perceived by the mind to be actually be a musical style and an acceptable one before the "heart" has an emotional response. In the last one hundred and fifty years styles have exploded across and within regions. We live in the most polystylistic musical moment in the history of the entire human race. We live in an era in which the very idea of purity of style could be a quaint notion and it would be difficult to say there are any "rules" left to break except, perhaps, two sorts of rules: 1) the rules limiting what is possible with sound due to sheer physical limitations in tone production and human perception (though musical works exploiting infrasound are still feasible) and 2) limits in what is considered to be the barrier between Style A and Style B.
Brubeck was a musician who spent a lifetime crossing back and forth between what we might call Style A and Style B. He may not have always had equally effective and compelling moments in any of those two way stations, if you will, but that he was able to travel so freely and readily between those stations is itself an example for us to consider both now and in the future. We have lived through so many fractures and revolutions that the possibilities for moments and movements of consolidation and fusion may seem hard to imagine. Those moments were not hard for Dave Brubeck to imagine, he imagined them in all sorts of ways. It may be both too corny and too obvious to say that this enterprise of fusion and consolidation requires acting in faith and yet, as we know if we've listened to more than just a little Dave Brubedk he wasn't afraid to be either corny or obvious when he decided that it was musically worth doing.
Earlier this year, when I wrote a guest piece for Internet Monk, I mused on how if in Christ there is no slave or free, Jew or Greek, or male or female then this meant that there is no high or low, art or pop, indie or mainstream but all are united in Christ who reconciles all things to God the Father through Himself. It's fitting to remember in the week of Brubeck's passing that he was Catholic (I'm Protestant but let's set aside a few of those ceaseless differences, significant though they are, to consider an element of Brubeck's legacy). Brubeck was catholic in his faith and musical interests and the cool sound he helped develop was a sound that fused "classical" with "jazz" in ways that were new and interesting.
I heard Brubeck twenty years ago and my musical thinking has never been the same since. What may be tedious or unappealing to many music listeners about Brubeck's music could well be summed up in "musical thinking". Brubeck was often a cerebral musician in how he came across, how he'd improvise an idea. There was, particularly for his detractors, something un-swinging and eggheaded about his musical approach. Even twenty years ago when I was introduced to his music I met people who said that Brubeck did not play jazz. About sixteen years ago the magazine Downbeat noted by that time Dave Brubeck constituted one of the pillars of mid-20th century jazz composers and pianists because, quite simply, he'd outlived pretty much all the jazz critics who refused to recognize his music as jazz. When all the dissenters have died off and you're still alive and kicking and touring and recording then, well, you kinda won that battle, didn't you?
Decades ago I wrote a little instrumental piece mainly in 5/8 that people thought I had written after hearing "Take Five" by the Brubeck Quartet. That piece is associated with Brubeck even though it was written by Desmond and when I wrote my 5/8 piece I had never even heard of Dave Brubeck or Paul Desmond. What I had heard was John Coltrane's "Afro Blue" and Tom Petty's "Breakdown". I liked both songs and wanted to come up with a song that was somewhere in between. So betweeen the buoyant 6/8 of Coltrane and the weirdly agitated lethargy of Tom Petty's four-on-the-floor I came up with a slightly astringent 5/8. Nobody at college who heard the instrumental believed I hadn't heard of Brubeck when I wrote the thing ... except for a friend of mine who was an old bandmate who says that the way I think about music the Coltrane/Tom Petty fusion into 5/8 totally makes sense.
Some twenty years on I'll happily say that Brubeck's music has been a touchstone for my way of thinking about composing and to some degree my musical goals. Theere's also Hindemith, Penederecki, Messiaen, Haydn, Bach, Stravinsky, Stevie Wonder ... but Brubeck was one of those seminal discoveries in which this guitarist and composer discovered a kind of fusion (and there are many kinds of fusion) that took hold of me.
Let me say something in defense of cerebral music. It is often said that music is a thing that speaks directly to the heart but it is taken for granted in a preponderance of tacitly dominant musical styles that something is understood and perceived by the mind to be actually be a musical style and an acceptable one before the "heart" has an emotional response. In the last one hundred and fifty years styles have exploded across and within regions. We live in the most polystylistic musical moment in the history of the entire human race. We live in an era in which the very idea of purity of style could be a quaint notion and it would be difficult to say there are any "rules" left to break except, perhaps, two sorts of rules: 1) the rules limiting what is possible with sound due to sheer physical limitations in tone production and human perception (though musical works exploiting infrasound are still feasible) and 2) limits in what is considered to be the barrier between Style A and Style B.
Brubeck was a musician who spent a lifetime crossing back and forth between what we might call Style A and Style B. He may not have always had equally effective and compelling moments in any of those two way stations, if you will, but that he was able to travel so freely and readily between those stations is itself an example for us to consider both now and in the future. We have lived through so many fractures and revolutions that the possibilities for moments and movements of consolidation and fusion may seem hard to imagine. Those moments were not hard for Dave Brubeck to imagine, he imagined them in all sorts of ways. It may be both too corny and too obvious to say that this enterprise of fusion and consolidation requires acting in faith and yet, as we know if we've listened to more than just a little Dave Brubedk he wasn't afraid to be either corny or obvious when he decided that it was musically worth doing.
Wednesday, December 05, 2012
Dave Brubeck has died
I meant to write more than just noting the passing of the pianist and composer but life happens. Dave Brubeck died this morning at the age of 91. Perhaps I'll get around to blogging more about him, his music, and passing later. Today's just not turned out to be that day.
HT Mockingbird: The Humblebrag
http://www.mbird.com/2012/12/my-emails-send-so-slowly-from-cannes-social-media-and-the-art-of-humblebragging/
http://www.nytimes.com/2012/12/02/fashion/bah-humblebrag-the-unfortunate-rise-of-false-humility.html?_r=0
There’s nothing new about false modesty, nor its designation as a form of bad manners. But the prevalence of social media has given us many more canvases on which to paint our faux humility — making us, in turn, increasingly sophisticated braggers.
... a humblebrag is an opportunity for the attention-starved to stake a claim on our sympathy.
The humblebrag, unsurprisingly, appears from people in ministry at megachurches. Despite having mentioned almost completely in passing about how his church was even able to rent the city of Ephesus for a day a nobody trying to tell everybody about somebody managed to tweet this.
Mark Driscoll@PastorMark 19 Jun 12
What do you call a guy expected to do what he cannot do with resources he does not have?
Pastor.
Could be a humblebrag, maybe.
http://www.nytimes.com/2012/12/02/fashion/bah-humblebrag-the-unfortunate-rise-of-false-humility.html?_r=0
There’s nothing new about false modesty, nor its designation as a form of bad manners. But the prevalence of social media has given us many more canvases on which to paint our faux humility — making us, in turn, increasingly sophisticated braggers.
... a humblebrag is an opportunity for the attention-starved to stake a claim on our sympathy.
Indeed, this may be why false modesty is no less discomfiting to its audience (and is sometimes more so) than outright bragging. Outright bragging expects to be met with awe, but humblebragging wants to met with awe and sympathy. It asks for two reactions from its audience, and in so doing makes fools of its beholders twice over. The practice is also ineffably irritating because it ultimately and slyly asserts the triumph of business over the personal: given that there’s a higher tolerance for bragging in business than social circles, many falsely modest statements on Twitter and Facebook try to fly under decorum’s radar by whispering to their readers, “You’re my fan, not my friend.”
The humblebrag, unsurprisingly, appears from people in ministry at megachurches. Despite having mentioned almost completely in passing about how his church was even able to rent the city of Ephesus for a day a nobody trying to tell everybody about somebody managed to tweet this.
Mark Driscoll@PastorMark 19 Jun 12
What do you call a guy expected to do what he cannot do with resources he does not have?
Pastor.
Could be a humblebrag, maybe.
Tuesday, December 04, 2012
Duo Rubicund, set of links to a Seattle flute and guitar duet
Er, they've been a flute and guitar duet up until about now. They're closing shop as the flutist is leaving town, if memory serves. But here's a bunch of links to stuff they've done. I'd encourage you to give their stuff a listen and check out some of their videos on YT.
Duo Rubicund
flutist Erica Coutsouridis and guitarist Meredith Connie
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=n5yAIALIscw
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OkDmbF33EfE
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4Y1-DCaBErw
http://soundcloud.com/duorubicund/
I hear local Seattle guitarist Michael Partington has a new album out of works by Bryan Johanson. I also hear another Seattle guitarist, Hilary Field, has an album of viola and guitar music that should be officially released some time soon. As Wenatchee The Hatchet kinda tackles chamber music for classical guitar as a blogging topic from time to time you can anticipate that blogging about things like that will be a goal.
Some of you may have noticed there's more links and less lengthy blog posts and not as many of them. There are reasons for that. Sometimes life off-line keeps you busy in ways that are beneficial. I had thought about blogging about Skyfall and how it's sorta trippy that there's a James Bond movie that has a theme but I don't know if I'll necessarily do that now or not. I mean, the movie was out practically a whole month ago, wasn't it?
Duo Rubicund
flutist Erica Coutsouridis and guitarist Meredith Connie
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=n5yAIALIscw
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OkDmbF33EfE
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4Y1-DCaBErw
http://soundcloud.com/duorubicund/
I hear local Seattle guitarist Michael Partington has a new album out of works by Bryan Johanson. I also hear another Seattle guitarist, Hilary Field, has an album of viola and guitar music that should be officially released some time soon. As Wenatchee The Hatchet kinda tackles chamber music for classical guitar as a blogging topic from time to time you can anticipate that blogging about things like that will be a goal.
Some of you may have noticed there's more links and less lengthy blog posts and not as many of them. There are reasons for that. Sometimes life off-line keeps you busy in ways that are beneficial. I had thought about blogging about Skyfall and how it's sorta trippy that there's a James Bond movie that has a theme but I don't know if I'll necessarily do that now or not. I mean, the movie was out practically a whole month ago, wasn't it?
PsyBlog: Why people believe weird things and 8 ways to change their minds
http://www.spring.org.uk/2012/12/why-people-believe-weird-things-and-8-ways-to-change-their-minds.php
...
People love sensational stories. They like to pass on tales that make the listener very happy, disgusted or afraid: anything that provokes a strong emotional response.
Neutral stories, which are probably more likely to be true, but much more boring, therefore get short shrift.
I've noticed this can happen on the internet from time to time. :) I could comment at greater length but it would not have any impact on those who might most benefit from such a discourse. ;)
...
People love sensational stories. They like to pass on tales that make the listener very happy, disgusted or afraid: anything that provokes a strong emotional response.
Neutral stories, which are probably more likely to be true, but much more boring, therefore get short shrift.
I've noticed this can happen on the internet from time to time. :) I could comment at greater length but it would not have any impact on those who might most benefit from such a discourse. ;)
Sunday, December 02, 2012
Doonan vents his spleen on the travesty of modern art, a travesty observed by Calvin & Hobbes 2 decades earlier
By all means read all of THIS link ...
http://www.slate.com/articles/arts/doonan/2012/11/art_basel_why_i_m_not_going_hint_it_s_because_the_modern_art_world_is_the.single.html
before skipping to THIS link.
Bill Watterson was famous in the industry for his staunch views on artist rights and control over licensing and merchandising over against what his publisher wanted to do. Word has it that there's a documentary about Bill Watterson developing Calvin & Hobbes that's wrapping up, or should be, by late 2012 (according to a piece in Wired). If the movie wraps and gets a 2013 then that movie and not others will be the most anticipated film of 2013 for this blogger.
http://www.slate.com/articles/arts/doonan/2012/11/art_basel_why_i_m_not_going_hint_it_s_because_the_modern_art_world_is_the.single.html
before skipping to THIS link.
Bill Watterson was famous in the industry for his staunch views on artist rights and control over licensing and merchandising over against what his publisher wanted to do. Word has it that there's a documentary about Bill Watterson developing Calvin & Hobbes that's wrapping up, or should be, by late 2012 (according to a piece in Wired). If the movie wraps and gets a 2013 then that movie and not others will be the most anticipated film of 2013 for this blogger.
Saturday, December 01, 2012
Annette Kruisbrink: Dances 1, 2 and 3 for double bass and guitar
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qXgQm1dl0Iw&feature=related
Excerpts from Annette Kruisbrink's fantastive Five Dances for double bass and guitar.
Go find yourself the album Cirex by Kruisbrink where she plays her music for double bass and guitar with her brother. It's a fine album and Kruisbrink has composed what I consider to be the largest and most substantial body of chamber music for this pair of instruments. Time and resources permitting I'm hoping to do a detail analysis with linked Youtube video of Kruisbrink's fantastic and moody minimalist/fusion piece Cirex. :) I might have to keep that in store for Chamber Music Week 3 ... or 4.
Excerpts from Annette Kruisbrink's fantastive Five Dances for double bass and guitar.
Go find yourself the album Cirex by Kruisbrink where she plays her music for double bass and guitar with her brother. It's a fine album and Kruisbrink has composed what I consider to be the largest and most substantial body of chamber music for this pair of instruments. Time and resources permitting I'm hoping to do a detail analysis with linked Youtube video of Kruisbrink's fantastic and moody minimalist/fusion piece Cirex. :) I might have to keep that in store for Chamber Music Week 3 ... or 4.
duets for trombone and guitar are a bit rare but they do exist.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=y4KbQTcmiUg
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hFjui_726Uc&list=UL
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=w28Ra-p2uFY&list=UL
Then there's Contrapunctus 14 for trombone and guitar. Yes, THAT Contrapunctus 14.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uyU47OExGdQ&list=UL
They do a good job.
I have been working through sketches for a sonata for tenor and trombone for years and, well, shameless self-promotion here, if I were to contact an ensemble about that sonata when it's done these would be the folks I'd want to contact.
I've got some testing out of some things to do with my sonatas for guitar with trumpet and for guitar with tuba before I try tackling trombone, French horn and euphonium.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hFjui_726Uc&list=UL
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=w28Ra-p2uFY&list=UL
Then there's Contrapunctus 14 for trombone and guitar. Yes, THAT Contrapunctus 14.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uyU47OExGdQ&list=UL
They do a good job.
I have been working through sketches for a sonata for tenor and trombone for years and, well, shameless self-promotion here, if I were to contact an ensemble about that sonata when it's done these would be the folks I'd want to contact.
I've got some testing out of some things to do with my sonatas for guitar with trumpet and for guitar with tuba before I try tackling trombone, French horn and euphonium.
Friday, November 30, 2012
from the Carnival ... "The invisible women bishops of Phillipi"
http://dougchaplin.wordpress.com/2012/11/24/the-invisible-women-bishops-of-philippi/
If you saw the last post and remember that I read Jim West's blog and Scotteriology then you may have worked out what the Carnival is. Well, here's something from the latest Carnival.
A very lengthy quotation:
I’ve been pondering yesterday’s reading for St Clement. (For me it’s also tomorrow’s reading as I’m preaching at a transferred patronal festival.) It includes these verses from Philippians:
Thoughts? Invitations to comment at Wenatchee The Hatchet are invariably met with the endless throng of the singing of crickets across the cosmos. Maybe that's what we deserve for having disabled comments on some of the posts that were most likely to have inspired comments?
If you saw the last post and remember that I read Jim West's blog and Scotteriology then you may have worked out what the Carnival is. Well, here's something from the latest Carnival.
A very lengthy quotation:
I’ve been pondering yesterday’s reading for St Clement. (For me it’s also tomorrow’s reading as I’m preaching at a transferred patronal festival.) It includes these verses from Philippians:
I urge Euodia and I urge Syntyche to be of the same mind in the Lord. Yes, and I ask you also, my loyal companion, help these women, for they have struggled beside me in the work of the gospel, together with Clement and the rest of my co-workers, whose names are in the book of life. (4:2-3 NRSV)Here, even more than in many places in Paul, it’s hard to reconstruct the details of the situation that is being taken for granted by Paul and his addressees. However, it seems to me that we can say the following.
- This touches on the main reasons for the letter. Paul’s appeal to Euodia and Syntyche echoes the language of his appeal in chapter 2 “to be of the same mind” which leads into the famous Christ-hymn.
- A personal disagreement between these two women seems to mirror, perhaps cause, a disagreement in the life of the church.
- Their position and their relationship is important enough for Paul to direct much of his argument towards healing it.
- There is no appeal to any other leader to solve the problem, knock heads together, etc, and there is noticeably no appeal to any man to exercise any authority over these women. Even Paul does not try to make his appeal one to authority, but one to friendship and mutual loyalty.
- The identity of the loyal companion Paul addresses is unknown. He is, however, a man asked to assist them. There is no male superiority assumed as a right.
- The women are equated with Clement (traditionally identified as the later bishop of Rome) and all Paul’s fellow-workers who have struggled with him in proclaiming the good news.
Thoughts? Invitations to comment at Wenatchee The Hatchet are invariably met with the endless throng of the singing of crickets across the cosmos. Maybe that's what we deserve for having disabled comments on some of the posts that were most likely to have inspired comments?
Theology and Music, 2 Samuel 18:33 as chant HT Jim West
http://meafar.blogspot.ca/2012/11/theology-and-music.html
I remember being surprised when I discovered the priest at the church in Patmos was also the choirmaster. He looked at me, a complete stranger, when I appeared at choir practice, introduced by the hotelier from Chicago, the owner of the hotel where we were staying on that small Greek island in the off-season, February 1997. And he said two words "maggiore, minore"? And I replied with major and minor thirds. I was younger then and I could sing them without wobbling. And he said - "You - sit here!" and directed me to a place beside him where I could receive instruction. I sat through the entire session, watching the others tape the whole rehearsal so they could learn it at home. The priest had not had someone there who could sing and hold the drone - so that was a good job for me, for I could neither read Greek nor read their strange chironomic notation above the text.
But there it is - all Orthodox priests have to be musicians. They continue the liturgical empire. Well - and so do the Anglicans. I have a couple of new projects starting - who knows how long they will take? But I have interested production staff, performers, composers, and arrangers here and all have now been introduced to the performing of the music of the Bible as deciphered by Suzanne Haik Vantoura.
There's quite a bit more but that's the teaser to get you to, I hope, follow the link.
I remember being surprised when I discovered the priest at the church in Patmos was also the choirmaster. He looked at me, a complete stranger, when I appeared at choir practice, introduced by the hotelier from Chicago, the owner of the hotel where we were staying on that small Greek island in the off-season, February 1997. And he said two words "maggiore, minore"? And I replied with major and minor thirds. I was younger then and I could sing them without wobbling. And he said - "You - sit here!" and directed me to a place beside him where I could receive instruction. I sat through the entire session, watching the others tape the whole rehearsal so they could learn it at home. The priest had not had someone there who could sing and hold the drone - so that was a good job for me, for I could neither read Greek nor read their strange chironomic notation above the text.
But there it is - all Orthodox priests have to be musicians. They continue the liturgical empire. Well - and so do the Anglicans. I have a couple of new projects starting - who knows how long they will take? But I have interested production staff, performers, composers, and arrangers here and all have now been introduced to the performing of the music of the Bible as deciphered by Suzanne Haik Vantoura.
There's quite a bit more but that's the teaser to get you to, I hope, follow the link.
any news about Nikita Koshkin's 24 preludes and fugues for solo guitar?
I heard that Selyutina's been working on recording them and that Editions Margaux is the planned publisher but actual release date or publication date for recordings and scores has been a mystery. Obviously I'm keen to get both when they become available. Seeing as it's been a couple centuries since the Well-Tempered Clavier was put together for this kind of achievement to get tackled by a guitarist is unique.
Now while I can appreciate that some people believe that the whole idea of writing in every major and minor key for solo guitar no longer seems relevant in our age I would suggest the opposite may be the case. To the extent that a steady body of works in all major and minor keys has not had much traction in the guitar this gets to what some might call the question of an inferiority complex among guitarists as performers and composers.
In other words, to put things in polemical terms, if we never bothered to master musical expression and the development of musical ideas in all keys as happened for the keyboard then there's a sense in which moving along with modern styles is moving along in a way that doesn't mean the same thing it woudl for keyboard literature. Perhaps it's like jumping on a motorcycle without having ridden a bike. A guitarist can jump into the modern, anything-goes approach to music or skip over how sonata form and fugue are staples in the early keyboard literature and speak as though we just be happy with the literature we have; it may not be music that's necessarily as profound as the warhorses of keyboard or string literature but who wants to hear the clangy and loud piano?
Well, me for one. I enjoy Angela Hewitt's Bach recordings, for instance. I've got all the Beethoven sonatas. Is there some reason we guitarists should not compose in every possible key simply because Schoenberg showed up before Ponce wrote his sonatas? I don't see how that seems relevant at all. Let's say for the moment that the guitar was something Segovia wanted to elevate to the level of other instruments. Whether or not he succeeded could depend on the sort of repertoire that was available, right? How was that repertoire going to happen (if we eliminate Bach and Albeniz transcriptions) if guitarists as a group scrupulously avoided taking the comprehensive approach to keys that keyboardists tackled centuries ago?
So whether or not Koshkin's preludes and fugues for solo guitar end up being warhorses in the literature or if they become a curio "almost" doesn't matter. What I've heard so far is promising. Whether or not Koshkin uses true countersubjects or has dared to write a double fugue remains to be seen.
I've read some say that the fugue is a difficult form to tackle for the guitar because it can too often end up sounding like a scholastic exercise rather than real music. Perhaps we should say "real music" because people have stopped thinking and listening in contrapuntal terms as of longer-ago than pop music. Berlioz didn't always have the nicest things to say about Bach's work, for instance. Guitarists can, as a group, have an actually physical aversion to contrapuntal music. :) But I digress ... as usual.
Now while I can appreciate that some people believe that the whole idea of writing in every major and minor key for solo guitar no longer seems relevant in our age I would suggest the opposite may be the case. To the extent that a steady body of works in all major and minor keys has not had much traction in the guitar this gets to what some might call the question of an inferiority complex among guitarists as performers and composers.
In other words, to put things in polemical terms, if we never bothered to master musical expression and the development of musical ideas in all keys as happened for the keyboard then there's a sense in which moving along with modern styles is moving along in a way that doesn't mean the same thing it woudl for keyboard literature. Perhaps it's like jumping on a motorcycle without having ridden a bike. A guitarist can jump into the modern, anything-goes approach to music or skip over how sonata form and fugue are staples in the early keyboard literature and speak as though we just be happy with the literature we have; it may not be music that's necessarily as profound as the warhorses of keyboard or string literature but who wants to hear the clangy and loud piano?
Well, me for one. I enjoy Angela Hewitt's Bach recordings, for instance. I've got all the Beethoven sonatas. Is there some reason we guitarists should not compose in every possible key simply because Schoenberg showed up before Ponce wrote his sonatas? I don't see how that seems relevant at all. Let's say for the moment that the guitar was something Segovia wanted to elevate to the level of other instruments. Whether or not he succeeded could depend on the sort of repertoire that was available, right? How was that repertoire going to happen (if we eliminate Bach and Albeniz transcriptions) if guitarists as a group scrupulously avoided taking the comprehensive approach to keys that keyboardists tackled centuries ago?
So whether or not Koshkin's preludes and fugues for solo guitar end up being warhorses in the literature or if they become a curio "almost" doesn't matter. What I've heard so far is promising. Whether or not Koshkin uses true countersubjects or has dared to write a double fugue remains to be seen.
I've read some say that the fugue is a difficult form to tackle for the guitar because it can too often end up sounding like a scholastic exercise rather than real music. Perhaps we should say "real music" because people have stopped thinking and listening in contrapuntal terms as of longer-ago than pop music. Berlioz didn't always have the nicest things to say about Bach's work, for instance. Guitarists can, as a group, have an actually physical aversion to contrapuntal music. :) But I digress ... as usual.
Mere Orthodoxy and Rachel Held Evans
As complementarian/egalitarian interaction goes this is almost a unicorn.
http://www.mereorthodoxy.com/controversy-and-interpretation-biblical-womanhood/
http://www.mereorthodoxy.com/year-biblical-womanhood-review/
These are worth reading and the first because Evans has written that it is one of the first written responses from a complementarian to listen first and disagree in a respectful way.
Per an earlier post this week I think that blogging "merely" provides an opportunity for the presentation and discussion of ideas. In most cases this ends up being preaching to a choir at best or self-involved soap-boxing at worst. That's for "normal" blogging. But for not-normal blogging there is the sometime possibility that ideas and information can be presented and shared in a way that provides a newer level of informed assessment and decision-making.
http://www.mereorthodoxy.com/controversy-and-interpretation-biblical-womanhood/
http://www.mereorthodoxy.com/year-biblical-womanhood-review/
These are worth reading and the first because Evans has written that it is one of the first written responses from a complementarian to listen first and disagree in a respectful way.
Per an earlier post this week I think that blogging "merely" provides an opportunity for the presentation and discussion of ideas. In most cases this ends up being preaching to a choir at best or self-involved soap-boxing at worst. That's for "normal" blogging. But for not-normal blogging there is the sometime possibility that ideas and information can be presented and shared in a way that provides a newer level of informed assessment and decision-making.
Thursday, November 29, 2012
Things I Think and things I think about blogging
http://michaelnewnham.com/?p=805
1. As I end yet another year of blogging , I’m amazed and discouraged at how right I was years ago and how little difference it makes. I knew the internet would become the new Wittenburg door, but I thought minor “reformations” would follow. Didn’t happen…if anything, things are worse in terms of ecclesiastical accountability.
I wasn't around Phoenix Preacher back when that observation was made, that I know of, but if the observation was that simply blogging about things would not change anything then I pretty much agree. Blogs set up to catalyze change can't accomplish much by themselves. People have to make decisions and take actions and blogs are almost by definition incapable of doing this merely as blogs.
However, as the blogging community of textual scholars and specialists in biblical and apocryphal literature showed earlier this year, there are things blogging can do. The irony may be that the little that blogs seem able to do may be the most important things they can do, inform.
So often blogs are about whatever the latest flash in the pan in blogland may be. It means that many blogs will have a proverbial fifteen minutes of fame and then those minutes will burn away with the next thing. Some blogs stick around for the long haul by being able to jump from wave to wave or making waves. In the blogs I read Rachel Held Evans gets discussed, though for precisely how long is nobody's guess. Evans could be around for years or decades depending on a host of things nobody can anticipate.
Helping people make informed decisions and assessments by getting them the best information you can is about the best (and maybe all) a blogger can do. Well, there's also encouraging and inviting discussion. This blog may not be the most wonderful blog about facilitating conversation because it deals with a lot of esoteric stuff and I admit the learning curve can be a little steep and unforgiving. It's not meant to alienate comment or conversation. I do admit that there are certain kinds of comments and conversations I tend to implicitly discourage but that'd be another post unto itself.
Not as active on the blog these days, obviously.
1. As I end yet another year of blogging , I’m amazed and discouraged at how right I was years ago and how little difference it makes. I knew the internet would become the new Wittenburg door, but I thought minor “reformations” would follow. Didn’t happen…if anything, things are worse in terms of ecclesiastical accountability.
I wasn't around Phoenix Preacher back when that observation was made, that I know of, but if the observation was that simply blogging about things would not change anything then I pretty much agree. Blogs set up to catalyze change can't accomplish much by themselves. People have to make decisions and take actions and blogs are almost by definition incapable of doing this merely as blogs.
However, as the blogging community of textual scholars and specialists in biblical and apocryphal literature showed earlier this year, there are things blogging can do. The irony may be that the little that blogs seem able to do may be the most important things they can do, inform.
So often blogs are about whatever the latest flash in the pan in blogland may be. It means that many blogs will have a proverbial fifteen minutes of fame and then those minutes will burn away with the next thing. Some blogs stick around for the long haul by being able to jump from wave to wave or making waves. In the blogs I read Rachel Held Evans gets discussed, though for precisely how long is nobody's guess. Evans could be around for years or decades depending on a host of things nobody can anticipate.
Helping people make informed decisions and assessments by getting them the best information you can is about the best (and maybe all) a blogger can do. Well, there's also encouraging and inviting discussion. This blog may not be the most wonderful blog about facilitating conversation because it deals with a lot of esoteric stuff and I admit the learning curve can be a little steep and unforgiving. It's not meant to alienate comment or conversation. I do admit that there are certain kinds of comments and conversations I tend to implicitly discourage but that'd be another post unto itself.
Not as active on the blog these days, obviously.
the feeling of never being out of the woods
Ever since I was young (as in substantially younger than I am now) I tended to think of myself as a bit of a fuddy duddy. I wouldn't have said I was an "old soul" because I didn't exactly think I was wise beyond my years and there's that proverb about how you should let another praise you and not yourself. The phrase I preferred to think of applying to me was (and is) "old at heart" in both bad and good senses of that term. In the good sense, for me, I found it easier in my teens to relate to and converse with people older than me. Call it an interest in transforming any potential relationship with someone older, male or female, into at least a possibility for apprenticing in life.
In the bad sense ... well ... perhaps it would be in the form of a kind of pessimism ... .
Maybe pessimism isn't quite strong enough a word, actually. A friend of mine has joked that if he's like Superman I'm like Batman. He likes to see the positive side of things and how people are basically good and can be trusted. Me ... heh heh ... you may have already begun to see the comparison work itself out. But I'll proceed anyway. I tend to have a grim view of human nature. We are not so smart and we are often dumbest when we are sure we're brilliant. We are not as rational as we think we are in our most "rational" moments.
There are things in life where how things work out can seem to be the opposite of what might be implied. I've joked that Arminians emphasize how free we are as individuals in the ordo salutis but they can be emphatic about the need to find God's best will if you've grown up in Wesleyan settings of any stripe (let alone a Pentecostal/charismatic scene were working out your divine destiny/spiritual gift/place can be obsessive. Calvinists, notoriously, posit that you can't possibly choose God of your own accord and that the Lord must intervene on your behalf for you to even make a choice. Yet many Calvinists go through life blissfully unconcerned about what, exactly, God might want them to do. So long as it's not something expressly forbidden in the Bible and you want to do it, don't bother working out whether or not you "should" do it. If it works, great, if not, well, that happens.
By extension a counterintuitive application of my kinda gloomy view of the human condition is a desire to give individuals the benefit of a doubt. Maybe I'm wrong about something and maybe this other person knows all kinds of stuff I don't. One of my siblings described this disposition in contrast to people who are optimistic and trusting about people but become withdrawn and upset when hurt or disappointed. This optimistic sort could be described as a sensitive optimist, where as the sibling and I could be described as "friendly pessimists". We have a view of the human condition generally that can be grim ... but since you're here and all that's no reason we can't get to know each other. As I put it to a friend years ago, I tend to anticipate the worst so that when the worst doesn't happen I can be pleasantly surprised. The friend said he always assumed the best whether for outcomes or expectations of people and that this was why he would get so morally outraged over his disappointment. Moral outrage is the sort of thing that falters the more a boy cries wolf so I'm not usually eager to get angry about people. THings ... I can have a bad temper about.
Well, part of this disposition is a feeling that you're never really out of the woods. The trees may have thinned enough that you can see a prarie or a lake. You might even come to the lake but you're technically still not out of the woods. Even in my teens and twenties the inevitably of death was not something I was able to put out of mind for long. Life is short and fragile. I had ambitions and dreams and so on like many a teenager would but in my teens the spectre of End Times stuff meant that any ideas for a lasting legacy were mooted by End Times stuff. I may have cast off dispensationalist futurism in my mind but perhaps at some emotional level the feeling that everything a person says or does can get swept away into nothingness by the end of life on earth can stick with you even when you don't necesarily want it that way.
I've had a rough few years, possibly some of the worst years I've had. I don't stop considering, from time to time, that things can still get worse and that death could be around the corner. In the setting I used to be in I heard a lot, and I mean a lot, about people building legacies. From someone who went through Ecclesiastes about three times the emphasis on legacy seems weird because Ecclesiastes goes on at some length about how death destroys legacies overnight and names are forgotten in scarcely two generations, maybe even within the generation itself. But adventures in Ecclesiastes is for some other time.
In the bad sense ... well ... perhaps it would be in the form of a kind of pessimism ... .
Maybe pessimism isn't quite strong enough a word, actually. A friend of mine has joked that if he's like Superman I'm like Batman. He likes to see the positive side of things and how people are basically good and can be trusted. Me ... heh heh ... you may have already begun to see the comparison work itself out. But I'll proceed anyway. I tend to have a grim view of human nature. We are not so smart and we are often dumbest when we are sure we're brilliant. We are not as rational as we think we are in our most "rational" moments.
There are things in life where how things work out can seem to be the opposite of what might be implied. I've joked that Arminians emphasize how free we are as individuals in the ordo salutis but they can be emphatic about the need to find God's best will if you've grown up in Wesleyan settings of any stripe (let alone a Pentecostal/charismatic scene were working out your divine destiny/spiritual gift/place can be obsessive. Calvinists, notoriously, posit that you can't possibly choose God of your own accord and that the Lord must intervene on your behalf for you to even make a choice. Yet many Calvinists go through life blissfully unconcerned about what, exactly, God might want them to do. So long as it's not something expressly forbidden in the Bible and you want to do it, don't bother working out whether or not you "should" do it. If it works, great, if not, well, that happens.
By extension a counterintuitive application of my kinda gloomy view of the human condition is a desire to give individuals the benefit of a doubt. Maybe I'm wrong about something and maybe this other person knows all kinds of stuff I don't. One of my siblings described this disposition in contrast to people who are optimistic and trusting about people but become withdrawn and upset when hurt or disappointed. This optimistic sort could be described as a sensitive optimist, where as the sibling and I could be described as "friendly pessimists". We have a view of the human condition generally that can be grim ... but since you're here and all that's no reason we can't get to know each other. As I put it to a friend years ago, I tend to anticipate the worst so that when the worst doesn't happen I can be pleasantly surprised. The friend said he always assumed the best whether for outcomes or expectations of people and that this was why he would get so morally outraged over his disappointment. Moral outrage is the sort of thing that falters the more a boy cries wolf so I'm not usually eager to get angry about people. THings ... I can have a bad temper about.
Well, part of this disposition is a feeling that you're never really out of the woods. The trees may have thinned enough that you can see a prarie or a lake. You might even come to the lake but you're technically still not out of the woods. Even in my teens and twenties the inevitably of death was not something I was able to put out of mind for long. Life is short and fragile. I had ambitions and dreams and so on like many a teenager would but in my teens the spectre of End Times stuff meant that any ideas for a lasting legacy were mooted by End Times stuff. I may have cast off dispensationalist futurism in my mind but perhaps at some emotional level the feeling that everything a person says or does can get swept away into nothingness by the end of life on earth can stick with you even when you don't necesarily want it that way.
I've had a rough few years, possibly some of the worst years I've had. I don't stop considering, from time to time, that things can still get worse and that death could be around the corner. In the setting I used to be in I heard a lot, and I mean a lot, about people building legacies. From someone who went through Ecclesiastes about three times the emphasis on legacy seems weird because Ecclesiastes goes on at some length about how death destroys legacies overnight and names are forgotten in scarcely two generations, maybe even within the generation itself. But adventures in Ecclesiastes is for some other time.
Wednesday, November 28, 2012
and another HT to Jim West: JEsus and the Jehovah's Witnesses cartoon
http://zwingliusredivivus.wordpress.com/2012/11/28/jesus-and-the-jehovahs-witnesses/
Let's just say you don't really have to be able to read German to get this one.
Let's just say you don't really have to be able to read German to get this one.
Jim West makes a passionate case against X-mas and gets into the Greek alphabet
http://zwingliusredivivus.wordpress.com/2012/11/28/the-letter-x-is-never-used-in-the-nomina-sacra-please-dont-say-it-is-and-dont-say-its-a-proper-replacement-for-christmas/
... X (the English letter) is not equal to Χ (the Greek letter). Ξ is. Further, really, how many people know the Greek letter Χ and use it, and know that they’re using it in reference to Christ? Finally, the abbreviation for χριστος in the nomina sacra is χρ with the line above, never, to my recollection, is it simply χ (though I’m happy to be shown the error of my ways if someone can provide an example). ...
As Christian bloggers go this would be the part where we nod thoughtfully and discuss how irenic West's post was. After all, that's what you're supposed to do in the Christian blogosphere, right? ;-)
... X (the English letter) is not equal to Χ (the Greek letter). Ξ is. Further, really, how many people know the Greek letter Χ and use it, and know that they’re using it in reference to Christ? Finally, the abbreviation for χριστος in the nomina sacra is χρ with the line above, never, to my recollection, is it simply χ (though I’m happy to be shown the error of my ways if someone can provide an example). ...
As Christian bloggers go this would be the part where we nod thoughtfully and discuss how irenic West's post was. After all, that's what you're supposed to do in the Christian blogosphere, right? ;-)
Monday, November 26, 2012
a riddle--what do Miles Davis and Jackie Chan have in common?
a puzzle for consideration. :) Post answers if you wish.
Saturday, November 24, 2012
possibilities for Chamber Music Week 3
I've been wanting to do Chamber Music Week 3 at Wenatchee The Hatchet superbad for a long time now. I've been running through ideas of stuff to write about in some detail and have realized that the mundane responsibilities of off-line life are going to make that kinda tougher to pull off (though that's actually a good thing in itself that I'm not going to necessarily explain here).
So that's to say Chamber Music Week 3 might resemble a Linkathon from Phoenix Preacher only instead of a link to something about a hot topic or a person there might be links to specific Youtube performances of chamber pieces.
Or I may end up doing thumbnail overviews of albums I'm pretty sure you won't have heard about. Now if you happen to go digging up recordings of quartets by Rebay, or a CD dedicated entirely to music for mandolin and guitar then maybe what is in the works won't be new to you. Here's hoping, however, that Chamber Music 3, when it finally comes together, will introduce you to at least a little bit of music for classical guitar (or not) that you haven't come across and may even find interesting.
We're not done blogging about Rebay by a long shot, for instance. There's also some interesting stuff for alto saxophone and guitar to discuss and there's an analysis of an Annette Kruisbrink piece I've been thinking about doing for a while. It's not as though I ever completely gave up on that proposed project explaining cyclical motivic development in Koshkin's sonata for flute and guitar but there's a point where a blogger realizes that something with a title like that is more a master's thesis kind of thing than just some blog post. Any long-time readers remember hints that there might be this "little" project for Mockingbird? Yeah ... well, some 20,000 words later it's not nearly as little as any of us thought it would be.
So that's to say Chamber Music Week 3 might resemble a Linkathon from Phoenix Preacher only instead of a link to something about a hot topic or a person there might be links to specific Youtube performances of chamber pieces.
Or I may end up doing thumbnail overviews of albums I'm pretty sure you won't have heard about. Now if you happen to go digging up recordings of quartets by Rebay, or a CD dedicated entirely to music for mandolin and guitar then maybe what is in the works won't be new to you. Here's hoping, however, that Chamber Music 3, when it finally comes together, will introduce you to at least a little bit of music for classical guitar (or not) that you haven't come across and may even find interesting.
We're not done blogging about Rebay by a long shot, for instance. There's also some interesting stuff for alto saxophone and guitar to discuss and there's an analysis of an Annette Kruisbrink piece I've been thinking about doing for a while. It's not as though I ever completely gave up on that proposed project explaining cyclical motivic development in Koshkin's sonata for flute and guitar but there's a point where a blogger realizes that something with a title like that is more a master's thesis kind of thing than just some blog post. Any long-time readers remember hints that there might be this "little" project for Mockingbird? Yeah ... well, some 20,000 words later it's not nearly as little as any of us thought it would be.
Motivic augmentation in "Dear Prudence"
Sometimes when attempting to explain a musical idea or compositional device the most obvious and potentially boring example is actually the best example. Augmentation is the idea of taking a melodic gesture and multiplying the durations of the notes. As simple demonstrations of melodic augmentation goes it would be impossible to find a simpler or more effective example than "Dear Prudence" off the White Album. Yes, dear readers, we're going to be that obvious.
The sun is up
the sky is blue
it's beautiful
and so are you
You all know the words, and you all know that the vocal line draws out all these notes at double their previous duration at the end of the song. Interspersed with this drawn-out form of the chorus are rising guitar riffs that form a response to the vocal call. As pop songs go it's genius, a combination of augmentation of a simple gesture with an antiphonal instrumental response decorating, expanding on, and sequentially developing a mirror-phrase to the augmented melody.
But there's something about augmentation of a melodic line that can be easy to overlook that makes or breaks whether or not the device is possible or effective. That "something" is that the melodic idea you expand rhythmically has to have a harmonic rhythm that you can play with. You have to be able to draw it out linearly in space and time, and when you do that there has to be more room to play with. To put it in reverse, the musical idea that sounds good all long and drawn out also has to make sense musically in a much tighter, more compressed harmonic rhythm. In other words you need a rocking chord change implicit or explicit in whatever you're subjecting to augmentation or diminution of harmonic and melodic durations. Surely after about half a century we know that "Dear Prudence" delivers this by the truckload.
If you don't know the song "Dear Prudence" and haven't heard it, well, even this not-necessarily-a-Beatles-fan might have to wonder what you've done with your life! Listen to the song (again) and I think you'll find that the experience of hearing with your own ears can better illustrate the concept of augmentation than mere words on a blog could provide (especially since the song is under copyright and all that). I might digress into the subject of the descending bass line as foundation to a passacaglia or how descending linear progressions show up in other Beatles songs ... but this blog entry is going to just stick to "Dear Prudence" here in the Emerald City where the sun is most definitely not up, the sky is definitely not blue, but it gets to beautiful and you do, too. ;-)
Don't come out to play, though. Seattle drivers are lame in the rain.
The sun is up
the sky is blue
it's beautiful
and so are you
You all know the words, and you all know that the vocal line draws out all these notes at double their previous duration at the end of the song. Interspersed with this drawn-out form of the chorus are rising guitar riffs that form a response to the vocal call. As pop songs go it's genius, a combination of augmentation of a simple gesture with an antiphonal instrumental response decorating, expanding on, and sequentially developing a mirror-phrase to the augmented melody.
But there's something about augmentation of a melodic line that can be easy to overlook that makes or breaks whether or not the device is possible or effective. That "something" is that the melodic idea you expand rhythmically has to have a harmonic rhythm that you can play with. You have to be able to draw it out linearly in space and time, and when you do that there has to be more room to play with. To put it in reverse, the musical idea that sounds good all long and drawn out also has to make sense musically in a much tighter, more compressed harmonic rhythm. In other words you need a rocking chord change implicit or explicit in whatever you're subjecting to augmentation or diminution of harmonic and melodic durations. Surely after about half a century we know that "Dear Prudence" delivers this by the truckload.
If you don't know the song "Dear Prudence" and haven't heard it, well, even this not-necessarily-a-Beatles-fan might have to wonder what you've done with your life! Listen to the song (again) and I think you'll find that the experience of hearing with your own ears can better illustrate the concept of augmentation than mere words on a blog could provide (especially since the song is under copyright and all that). I might digress into the subject of the descending bass line as foundation to a passacaglia or how descending linear progressions show up in other Beatles songs ... but this blog entry is going to just stick to "Dear Prudence" here in the Emerald City where the sun is most definitely not up, the sky is definitely not blue, but it gets to beautiful and you do, too. ;-)
Don't come out to play, though. Seattle drivers are lame in the rain.
Friday, November 23, 2012
HT to Jim West: Black Friday is a bunch of meaningless hype
http://zwingliusredivivus.wordpress.com/2012/11/23/black-friday-all-hype-no-substance/
http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/wonkblog/wp/2012/11/23/black-friday-is-a-bunch-of-meaningless-hype-in-one-chart/
If you follow the link from Jim West's blog you might have to click through an HP on-line advertisement to get to the article, which just adds a meta level of amusement to the piece.
http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/wonkblog/wp/2012/11/23/black-friday-is-a-bunch-of-meaningless-hype-in-one-chart/
If you follow the link from Jim West's blog you might have to click through an HP on-line advertisement to get to the article, which just adds a meta level of amusement to the piece.
John Podhoretz has come to a new appreciation of cinematic Chicken McNuggets in eight years
http://old.nationalreview.com/podhoretz/podhoretz200407010849.asp
July 01, 2004, 8:49 a.m.
The Best of the Worst
Spider-man 2.
Calling the new Spider-Man film the best comic-book movie ever made — and it is, without a doubt, the best comic-book movie ever made — is a little like calling a Chicken McNugget the best processed fast-food poultry product ever produced. It's praise, but how substantial can the praise really be, given the source?
Movies and television shows based on comic books constitute the worst single genre in the history of filmed entertainment (with the exception of porn). ...
http://www.weeklystandard.com/articles/evil-undone_648824.html
Evil Undone
The moral clarity of Christopher Nolan’s Batman series.
Jul 30, 2012, Vol. 17, No. 43 • By JOHN PODHORETZ
Christopher Nolan’s astounding third Batman feature, The Dark Knight Rises, represents the true maturation of the superhero movie—and provides the key to understanding the bottomless craving moviegoers have for these films, 34 years after the Christopher Reeve Superman gave birth to the genre. It’s not because the odds of seeing something good go up when you buy a ticket to a superhero picture, because most of these movies are lousy (a point on which even diehard fans agree).
Nor is it about the dazzling special effects, the killer action sequences, or the empowerment fantasy that the stories provide to young kids and teenagers who feel so powerless in their own lives—though all that helps, to be sure. You can have all of these, as John Carter did earlier this year, and fail miserably.
What people adore about superhero movies is the signal quality of the Christopher Nolan films—their complete lack of irony when it comes to the portrayal of heroism and the need for heroes to confront evil. When they grab you, and the utterly riveting and entirely gripping The Dark Knight Rises grabs you as few movies do, it is because the filmmakers discard the knowing winks and go all-out, turning their stories into moral pageants dedicated to the elevation of self-sacrifice, selflessness, and heroism.
Somehow Podhoretz failed to notice that this was exactly what Sam Raimi was aiming at in Spiderman 2. Did he not notice it back then because there was a Republican president in 2004? ;-)
July 01, 2004, 8:49 a.m.
The Best of the Worst
Spider-man 2.
Calling the new Spider-Man film the best comic-book movie ever made — and it is, without a doubt, the best comic-book movie ever made — is a little like calling a Chicken McNugget the best processed fast-food poultry product ever produced. It's praise, but how substantial can the praise really be, given the source?
Movies and television shows based on comic books constitute the worst single genre in the history of filmed entertainment (with the exception of porn). ...
http://www.weeklystandard.com/articles/evil-undone_648824.html
Evil Undone
The moral clarity of Christopher Nolan’s Batman series.
Jul 30, 2012, Vol. 17, No. 43 • By JOHN PODHORETZ
Christopher Nolan’s astounding third Batman feature, The Dark Knight Rises, represents the true maturation of the superhero movie—and provides the key to understanding the bottomless craving moviegoers have for these films, 34 years after the Christopher Reeve Superman gave birth to the genre. It’s not because the odds of seeing something good go up when you buy a ticket to a superhero picture, because most of these movies are lousy (a point on which even diehard fans agree).
Nor is it about the dazzling special effects, the killer action sequences, or the empowerment fantasy that the stories provide to young kids and teenagers who feel so powerless in their own lives—though all that helps, to be sure. You can have all of these, as John Carter did earlier this year, and fail miserably.
What people adore about superhero movies is the signal quality of the Christopher Nolan films—their complete lack of irony when it comes to the portrayal of heroism and the need for heroes to confront evil. When they grab you, and the utterly riveting and entirely gripping The Dark Knight Rises grabs you as few movies do, it is because the filmmakers discard the knowing winks and go all-out, turning their stories into moral pageants dedicated to the elevation of self-sacrifice, selflessness, and heroism.
Somehow Podhoretz failed to notice that this was exactly what Sam Raimi was aiming at in Spiderman 2. Did he not notice it back then because there was a Republican president in 2004? ;-)
two Thanksgiving posts by Wendy at Practical Theology for Women
http://www.theologyforwomen.org/2012/11/equipped-by-gospel-for-habakkuk-3-kind.html
http://www.theologyforwomen.org/2011/11/habakkuk-3-kind-of-thanksgiving.html
Here are a couple more links related to Thanksgiving from Wendy.
post-Thanksgiving link: The Language of Thanksgiving by J. S. Bangs
http://jsbangs.com/2012/11/22/the-language-of-thanksgiving/
A small blog post by J. S. Bangs about his sons. It's well worth reading.
Tuesday, November 20, 2012
The perfect piece of music for all the rain we're getting in Seattle
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QCp7bL-AWvw
Yes, longtime readers, it's exactly what you guessed I'd link to, Gyorgy Ligeti's Symphonic Poem for 100 Metronomes.
Yes, longtime readers, it's exactly what you guessed I'd link to, Gyorgy Ligeti's Symphonic Poem for 100 Metronomes.
Sure, why not. Links to Paul Hindemith's Op. 22 string quartet played by the Amar-Hindemith quartet
String Quartet Op.22 by Paul hindemith
Performed by the Amar-Hindemith quartet, recorded in 1927
Movement 1
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=c5IGgeN8slA
Movement 2
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9WaARFJ0dK0
Movement 3
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XwUYzjBJj84
Movement 4
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wQJGhcNcN6E
Movement 5
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zkSCZ0gvBe0
The recording from 1927 has the limitations you'd expect from the time and in movement 2 the quartet sounds like they hit the resonant tone of the room which leads to a sustained hum that, I assure you (having studied the score over the years) is not in the score.
It's Thanksgiving week here in the United States and so you'll forgive me if I end up just throwing up a bunch of links to things that interest me and you won't be hugely surprised that ends up being music.
Anthony Joseph Lanman Sonata 46, performed by Duo46
Truly I've been interested in picking up recordings by this violin and guitar duo for years but have been, as the mysterious Mr. Yotsuya used to tell Kyoko Otonoashi, "temporarily short of funds".
Here's a video of Lanman's replete with the score, which is fun to read along with during the recording.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dF7FcXWqeOI
And here's a video of Duo46 playing the piece where you get to see them playing the same. They really tear into the aggressive passages in this one. :) The lyric moments are also a bit more lyric, almost Romantic but it's all gloriously late 20th century in its sound.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Lnae8RP_D0Q&feature=related
... starting to wonder if this is becoming a de facto chamber music week 3.
Here's a video of Lanman's replete with the score, which is fun to read along with during the recording.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dF7FcXWqeOI
And here's a video of Duo46 playing the piece where you get to see them playing the same. They really tear into the aggressive passages in this one. :) The lyric moments are also a bit more lyric, almost Romantic but it's all gloriously late 20th century in its sound.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Lnae8RP_D0Q&feature=related
... starting to wonder if this is becoming a de facto chamber music week 3.
Into the Radiant Boundaries of Light, duo for viola & guitar by Samuel Adler
Into the Radiant Boundaries of Light, a duet for viola and guitar by Samuel Adler
Performed by Duo Fresco
Movement 1
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3b9fv0LyUV0
There's two more movements and they're pretty sweet, too but we'll just link to the one we could find.
Ester Magi: A Tre (trio for violin, guitar and cello)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ISn8t76XSQs
I heard this piece at the Icebreaker series in Seattle years ago. Now there's a video of the piece. It's a nice little chamber work for guitar. Hope you enjoy it.
I heard this piece at the Icebreaker series in Seattle years ago. Now there's a video of the piece. It's a nice little chamber work for guitar. Hope you enjoy it.
Monday, November 19, 2012
Daniel Corr recital Nov 17, 2012 Frye Art Museum
Remember that post where I mentioned this was coming up? This is the post where I write about the recital. You didn't think I'd mention a recital and not go to it, did you? :)
Daniel Corr put on a very fine recital on Saturday. I'll let you look up his bio and background because that stuff is easily found. I'd like to devote some time writing about what he played and why I liked it.
If you've hung around guitarists, particularly classical guitarists, there can be two rather broad categories of us and by "us" I mean caricatures. There are those guitarists who play warhorse after warhorse for audiences who don't themselves play the guitar and then the second sort, so to speak, grumbles about hearing the same small set of pieces over again. There are guitarists who don't want to hear the Rodrigo concerto ever again because they're sick of it. They may admit to not even listening to most of the music of Sor or Giuliani because they find it daft and they may (or may not) corner you to discuss Henze or Ginastera (personal confession, I still loathe that sonata and couldn't get into Henze despite a weekend immersing myself in the score and a recording (I've since heard) was not the ideal presentation). I just rambled too much ... but blogs are not always for finely refined prose.
I'm happy to report that Corr's program was mostly not warhorses. But the program was full of Rebay, Guastavino, Castelnuovo-Tedesco, Barrios, and Fred Hand. In other words, it was a fine balance of works by composers you "may" have heard of and others you'd have to be a specialist to even know about. There was a nice diversity of styles even though all the repertoire technically qualifies as 20th century music.
The opening piece was a set of variations on a folk song "Das Lieben bringt gross Leid" by Ferdinand Rebay. This is a relatively short set of variations and one that I hadn't heard. Rebay wrote hundreds of works for guitar, many of which were unpublished during his lifetime, so there's a wealth of music from Rebay I hope we'll get to hear more and more of over time and it was a treat to hear the variations as the opening piece in the recital.
Rebay's approach to variation form, from what I've been able to hear so far, is heavy on character variation, which is what we'd expect from a composer inspired mainly by the Romantics. Rebay was particularly fond, in my listening so far, for adapting tunes by Schubert for guitar or ensemble with guitar. The dirty confession I have to make is that I don't actually like Schubert's music ... but Rebay had a knack for picking Schubert tunes that sound allright by me and then doing fun things with them. There's something to be said for a composer taking themes by another composer you don't much like and getting you to like things about the other composer's music. On that particular matter Rebay has helped me kinda sorta appreciate Schubert's music, at least when Rebay is playing with his themes. Who knows if Rebay won't help me actually enjoy Schubert in another decade? Corr's playing was pleasing and fluid and he chose a neat, charming little set of variations to open his recital with.
Corr followed up the Rebay with Carlos Guastavino's first sonata for guitar, a work cast in three movements. Sonata allegro form is, as Corr noted during the recital, a rarely used form for the guitar so he was excited to present (and I was excited to hear) a sonata form in a guitar sonata. Often guitar sonatas by name don't necessarily use a sonata form (or in some cases, like Koshkin's massive Sonata for guitar solo the forms are technically used but with a somewhat disappointing disregard for the tonal hiearchy and architecture that, in the hands of the masters, gave the form a vibrant sense of momentum and drive ... but this blog post isn't supposed to be one where I nitpick Koshkin's handling of sonata allegro form)
Guastavino's sonata opens with a boistrous theme in D minor and a straightforward one. Thanks to drop D tuning this work opens with a nice, pleasant bang and the contrast between themes is appealing. What particularly sticks with me about this sonata form, days later, is how deftly the recapitulation got handled. The second group that appears in major in the exposition is presented in parallel minor in the recapitulation, something that seems unusual to me. Sonata forms are rare and sonata forms in minor keys for solo guitar may be more rare. The amount of physical effort to play a major key theme in parallel minor may be enough that in many cases guitarists avoid it unless the theme is very short and that seems to occur more in variation forms than sonata form, so hats off to Guastavino for writing a sonata with a solid recapitulation.
Yes ... this is a theory nerd sorta of recital overview, isn't it?
Guastavino was an Argentinian composer who assimilated folk and popular elements from his country into traditional forms. For want of a better way to get this idea across think of it this way, in the 19th century European nationalistic composers emerged, finding ways to inject regional flavor into what were, in a post-Beethovenian Europe, pretty standardized forms. In the 20th century nationalism and folkloric movements in concert music were more likely to start from the "raw" material itself and work back into more abstract forms or to start with more abstract neapolitan forms and working steadily away into more regional musical detail. I admit to being a bit too lazy tonight to provide examples that go beyond passing references to Villa-Lobos or Bartok as case studies to contrast with earlier generations of composers advocating for national legacies such as Dvorak or maybe Smetena (?).
I'd be interested in hearing more sonatas by Guastavino and it was cool that Corr played this sonata in his recital.
Tre Preludi Mediterranei by Mario Castelnuovo-Tedesco was a work by a composer whose work I've grown steadily familiar with over the last six years and it was nice to hear these pieces, as well (I like the whole program, for that matter). The Tedesco was followed up by the Barrios work Julia Florida, which I thought sounded nice. This is one of those works that has been described as saccharine, sweet to the point of kicking you into diabetic coma territory but Corr played the piece in a way that I found pleasant. There's such a thing as not over-doing sentimentality in sentimental music and letting the music's formal elegance do the work of charming an audience and that is, I think, what Corr did a fine job of doing with an alternately loved and hated staple in the solo repertoire.
The last work intrigued me, Frederic hand's Trilogy. This is a work inspired more by jazz than "classical" music and the rhythms of Dave Brubeck's Blue Rondo a la Turk pervades the work. Since I happen to own a few Brubeck albums I enjoyed this piece. As a form nerd I admit there were a few spots where Hand's form sprawled a little for me but his work has an unerring sense of proportion and timing. He knows how long to run with an idea and develop it before shifting gears into a new idea, and he has a good sense for when to bring back ideas.
Corr mentioned that Hand began synthesizing and consolidating musical elements across classical and popular styles in the 1970s when jazz/classical fusions were rare (and the few fusions there were that I've heard besides Hand were, often, ineffective). Trilogy was a nice jazzy way to wrap up the recital.
The recital's balance of style and form and region was impeccable. I love that Corr was able to begin with the Romantic-inspired sounds of the Austrian Rebay and move to Argentinian sonata forms, visit the Italian expatriate in America through Tedesco's work, and transition through Barrios to end with Fred Hand's work. This kind of program represents a kind of trajectory of emigration in flight from totalitarianism, at least that's my willfully idiosyncratic take on the program (Rebay's wife was Jewish and Castlenuovo-Tedesco was Jewish, both composers who in different ways faced anti-Semitism and both of whom, if memory serves, ended up fleeing their homelands for years). Now I admit that finding such a narrative implicit in a recital program is abstract but if you've read this blog for any length of time ... .
Corr put on a great recital and I'm glad I went. Kudos to Corr for playing music by Castlenuovo-Tedesco and Rebay. :) It's been exciting to hear more of Rebay's work and see that it may get saved from the near oblivion it's been in for decades. I'd encourage you to seek out his concerts if he's playing in a town near you.
Daniel Corr put on a very fine recital on Saturday. I'll let you look up his bio and background because that stuff is easily found. I'd like to devote some time writing about what he played and why I liked it.
If you've hung around guitarists, particularly classical guitarists, there can be two rather broad categories of us and by "us" I mean caricatures. There are those guitarists who play warhorse after warhorse for audiences who don't themselves play the guitar and then the second sort, so to speak, grumbles about hearing the same small set of pieces over again. There are guitarists who don't want to hear the Rodrigo concerto ever again because they're sick of it. They may admit to not even listening to most of the music of Sor or Giuliani because they find it daft and they may (or may not) corner you to discuss Henze or Ginastera (personal confession, I still loathe that sonata and couldn't get into Henze despite a weekend immersing myself in the score and a recording (I've since heard) was not the ideal presentation). I just rambled too much ... but blogs are not always for finely refined prose.
I'm happy to report that Corr's program was mostly not warhorses. But the program was full of Rebay, Guastavino, Castelnuovo-Tedesco, Barrios, and Fred Hand. In other words, it was a fine balance of works by composers you "may" have heard of and others you'd have to be a specialist to even know about. There was a nice diversity of styles even though all the repertoire technically qualifies as 20th century music.
The opening piece was a set of variations on a folk song "Das Lieben bringt gross Leid" by Ferdinand Rebay. This is a relatively short set of variations and one that I hadn't heard. Rebay wrote hundreds of works for guitar, many of which were unpublished during his lifetime, so there's a wealth of music from Rebay I hope we'll get to hear more and more of over time and it was a treat to hear the variations as the opening piece in the recital.
Rebay's approach to variation form, from what I've been able to hear so far, is heavy on character variation, which is what we'd expect from a composer inspired mainly by the Romantics. Rebay was particularly fond, in my listening so far, for adapting tunes by Schubert for guitar or ensemble with guitar. The dirty confession I have to make is that I don't actually like Schubert's music ... but Rebay had a knack for picking Schubert tunes that sound allright by me and then doing fun things with them. There's something to be said for a composer taking themes by another composer you don't much like and getting you to like things about the other composer's music. On that particular matter Rebay has helped me kinda sorta appreciate Schubert's music, at least when Rebay is playing with his themes. Who knows if Rebay won't help me actually enjoy Schubert in another decade? Corr's playing was pleasing and fluid and he chose a neat, charming little set of variations to open his recital with.
Corr followed up the Rebay with Carlos Guastavino's first sonata for guitar, a work cast in three movements. Sonata allegro form is, as Corr noted during the recital, a rarely used form for the guitar so he was excited to present (and I was excited to hear) a sonata form in a guitar sonata. Often guitar sonatas by name don't necessarily use a sonata form (or in some cases, like Koshkin's massive Sonata for guitar solo the forms are technically used but with a somewhat disappointing disregard for the tonal hiearchy and architecture that, in the hands of the masters, gave the form a vibrant sense of momentum and drive ... but this blog post isn't supposed to be one where I nitpick Koshkin's handling of sonata allegro form)
Guastavino's sonata opens with a boistrous theme in D minor and a straightforward one. Thanks to drop D tuning this work opens with a nice, pleasant bang and the contrast between themes is appealing. What particularly sticks with me about this sonata form, days later, is how deftly the recapitulation got handled. The second group that appears in major in the exposition is presented in parallel minor in the recapitulation, something that seems unusual to me. Sonata forms are rare and sonata forms in minor keys for solo guitar may be more rare. The amount of physical effort to play a major key theme in parallel minor may be enough that in many cases guitarists avoid it unless the theme is very short and that seems to occur more in variation forms than sonata form, so hats off to Guastavino for writing a sonata with a solid recapitulation.
Yes ... this is a theory nerd sorta of recital overview, isn't it?
Guastavino was an Argentinian composer who assimilated folk and popular elements from his country into traditional forms. For want of a better way to get this idea across think of it this way, in the 19th century European nationalistic composers emerged, finding ways to inject regional flavor into what were, in a post-Beethovenian Europe, pretty standardized forms. In the 20th century nationalism and folkloric movements in concert music were more likely to start from the "raw" material itself and work back into more abstract forms or to start with more abstract neapolitan forms and working steadily away into more regional musical detail. I admit to being a bit too lazy tonight to provide examples that go beyond passing references to Villa-Lobos or Bartok as case studies to contrast with earlier generations of composers advocating for national legacies such as Dvorak or maybe Smetena (?).
I'd be interested in hearing more sonatas by Guastavino and it was cool that Corr played this sonata in his recital.
Tre Preludi Mediterranei by Mario Castelnuovo-Tedesco was a work by a composer whose work I've grown steadily familiar with over the last six years and it was nice to hear these pieces, as well (I like the whole program, for that matter). The Tedesco was followed up by the Barrios work Julia Florida, which I thought sounded nice. This is one of those works that has been described as saccharine, sweet to the point of kicking you into diabetic coma territory but Corr played the piece in a way that I found pleasant. There's such a thing as not over-doing sentimentality in sentimental music and letting the music's formal elegance do the work of charming an audience and that is, I think, what Corr did a fine job of doing with an alternately loved and hated staple in the solo repertoire.
The last work intrigued me, Frederic hand's Trilogy. This is a work inspired more by jazz than "classical" music and the rhythms of Dave Brubeck's Blue Rondo a la Turk pervades the work. Since I happen to own a few Brubeck albums I enjoyed this piece. As a form nerd I admit there were a few spots where Hand's form sprawled a little for me but his work has an unerring sense of proportion and timing. He knows how long to run with an idea and develop it before shifting gears into a new idea, and he has a good sense for when to bring back ideas.
Corr mentioned that Hand began synthesizing and consolidating musical elements across classical and popular styles in the 1970s when jazz/classical fusions were rare (and the few fusions there were that I've heard besides Hand were, often, ineffective). Trilogy was a nice jazzy way to wrap up the recital.
The recital's balance of style and form and region was impeccable. I love that Corr was able to begin with the Romantic-inspired sounds of the Austrian Rebay and move to Argentinian sonata forms, visit the Italian expatriate in America through Tedesco's work, and transition through Barrios to end with Fred Hand's work. This kind of program represents a kind of trajectory of emigration in flight from totalitarianism, at least that's my willfully idiosyncratic take on the program (Rebay's wife was Jewish and Castlenuovo-Tedesco was Jewish, both composers who in different ways faced anti-Semitism and both of whom, if memory serves, ended up fleeing their homelands for years). Now I admit that finding such a narrative implicit in a recital program is abstract but if you've read this blog for any length of time ... .
Corr put on a great recital and I'm glad I went. Kudos to Corr for playing music by Castlenuovo-Tedesco and Rebay. :) It's been exciting to hear more of Rebay's work and see that it may get saved from the near oblivion it's been in for decades. I'd encourage you to seek out his concerts if he's playing in a town near you.
Sunday, November 18, 2012
Slate does a Graeme McMillan with "Were Prehistoric Statues Pornographic?"
http://www.slate.com/articles/health_and_science/new_scientist/2012/11/prehistoric_pornographic_art_venus_statues_and_other_cave_art_weren_t_paleolithic.html
If you've never read an article by Spinoff's Grame McMillan ... well ... do yourself the favor of not looking any of them up or clicking on them by accident. Yes, this is going to be one of those petty, snarky posts where we open with an observation about how annoying a certain writer on comics and films can be.
Anyway, the article opens with a question whether prehistoric statues were pornographic and the rather short answer is "That would entail modern people reading their own biases back into ancient art." The Venus of Hohle Fels doesn't immediately strike me as looking like a human figure, it strikes me very much as a mock-up for one of the dancing chickens in the video for Peter Gabriel's song Sledgehammer.
A short excerpt of the article, which was republished from New Scientist:
JI: Aren't other interpretations of paleo art just as speculative as calling them pornographic?
AN: Yes, but when we interpret Paleolithic art more broadly, we talk about "hunting magic" or "religion" or "fertility magic." I don't think these interpretations have the same social ramifications as pornography. When respected journals—Nature for example—use terms such as "Prehistoric pin-up" and "35,000-year-old sex object," and a German museum proclaims that a figurine is either an "earth mother or pin-up girl" (as if no other roles for women could have existed in prehistory), they carry weight and authority. This allows journalists and researchers, evolutionary psychologists in particular, to legitimize and naturalize contemporary western values and behaviors by tracing them back to the "mist of prehistory."
If you're not familiar with the flak evolutionary psychologists have gotten in the last ten years for identifying gender as having physiological and prehistorically encoded hard boundaries then, well, you have some catching up to do and this blog wouldn't be the place to do that. Think, for the moment, about dancing chickens.
If you've never read an article by Spinoff's Grame McMillan ... well ... do yourself the favor of not looking any of them up or clicking on them by accident. Yes, this is going to be one of those petty, snarky posts where we open with an observation about how annoying a certain writer on comics and films can be.
Anyway, the article opens with a question whether prehistoric statues were pornographic and the rather short answer is "That would entail modern people reading their own biases back into ancient art." The Venus of Hohle Fels doesn't immediately strike me as looking like a human figure, it strikes me very much as a mock-up for one of the dancing chickens in the video for Peter Gabriel's song Sledgehammer.
A short excerpt of the article, which was republished from New Scientist:
JI: Aren't other interpretations of paleo art just as speculative as calling them pornographic?
AN: Yes, but when we interpret Paleolithic art more broadly, we talk about "hunting magic" or "religion" or "fertility magic." I don't think these interpretations have the same social ramifications as pornography. When respected journals—Nature for example—use terms such as "Prehistoric pin-up" and "35,000-year-old sex object," and a German museum proclaims that a figurine is either an "earth mother or pin-up girl" (as if no other roles for women could have existed in prehistory), they carry weight and authority. This allows journalists and researchers, evolutionary psychologists in particular, to legitimize and naturalize contemporary western values and behaviors by tracing them back to the "mist of prehistory."
If you're not familiar with the flak evolutionary psychologists have gotten in the last ten years for identifying gender as having physiological and prehistorically encoded hard boundaries then, well, you have some catching up to do and this blog wouldn't be the place to do that. Think, for the moment, about dancing chickens.
Kinnon TV: Twitter as Interstitialed Narcissism
http://kinnon.tv/2012/11/twitter-as-interstitialed-narcissism.html
Had thoughts I was going to blog but I'll just do a link for now.
Had thoughts I was going to blog but I'll just do a link for now.
Saturday, November 17, 2012
HT Jim West: Beale lectures on the use of Old Testament in New Testament documents
http://zwingliusredivivus.wordpress.com/2011/03/26/beale-on-the-old-testament-in-the-new/
The subject of the OT in the NT has been near and dear to my heart since ThM days when I wrote my thesis on John’s use of Isaiah. So many thanks to Cliff Kvidahl for mentioning this-
Last week, Dr. Greg Beale (Professor of New Testament and Biblical Theology) gave the Gheens Lectures at Southern Seminary. His topic was the New Testament’s use of the Old Testament, one for which Dr. Beale has written extensively on. His three lectures were:
Recent Developments in Old Testament in New Testament Studies that Challenges the Organic Integrity of the Testaments
A Classic Proposed Example of the Misuse of the Old Testament in the New Testament: Hosea 11:1 in Matthew 2:15
The Problem of Allusion and the Implications for Interpretation and Biblical Theology
It's an old post (from more than a year ago) but for folks into lectures on biblical texts these are fun.
Got other things I hope to blog about over the next week but the holiday season is upon us and some of the stuff I hope to blog about requires some things like, well, score analysis and note-taking. Chamber Music 3 may turn into another linkathon more than a set of essays. I keep wanting to come back to a blog post idea in which I go through the cyclical development of a set of ideas in Koshkin's sonata for flute and guitar .... but anyone who even knows that work knows just how much work such a project would actually be. I don't know if I'd say you could net a master's thesis from that level of musicological work ... but it's work all the same. It's going to be worth eventually getting to because I think the sonata for flute and guitar is one of Koshkin's most substantial both in terms of sheer size and in terms of the developmental economy of his thematic material. I wish I could say the guitar sonata he wrote for Papendreou was at the same level but ... that'd be another blog post for another time. Much as I have enjoyed many pieces by Koshkin he can fall prey to a propensity to under-develop musical ideas in exchange for a dramatic, blustery texture or gesture ...
But this blog post is "technically" a set of links to lectures given by Greg Beale on Old Testament texts in New Testament texts. :) Again, HT to Jim West.
Friday, November 16, 2012
more post-mortem musings on post-mortem principles
http://www.dougwils.com/Politics/seven-post-mortem-principles.html
We also need Christians with a thorough-going biblical worldview writing good books, making good movies, and recording good music. As I have argued before, you can't have a naval war without ships, you can't have tank warfare without tanks, and you can't fight a culture war without a culture. And by Christian culture, incidentally, I do not mean pious schlock and I do not mean hipster poses with extra mousse in your hair to make it stick up.
I find the idea of a Christian culture a bit problematic. White European Christendom came and went, didn't it? Do Wilson-style postmillenialists think they have optimism enough to create a culture that will end up being anything more than another Christian reactionary ghetto? Obviously they must think that to some degree for Wilson to write as he has written, but belief will not make that "Christian culture" something that will ever win a culture war. Some of us took Francis Schaeffer more seriously when he indicated that Christians lost a culture war some time back in the 1930s. Weirdly, many Christians have attempted to win a culture war that, had they understood the implications of Schaeffer's initial observation a bit more seriously, they would realize was lost before any of the culture warriors were even born. And for those of us who grew up not being entirely white in upbringing these observation may simply have been more obvious to both observe and accept than, well, some of the more thorough-goingly white culture warriors wanting to have their thorough-going biblical worldview lead to the writing of good books and music and movies ... .
Those people might still think WALL-E was too environmentalist. And Peter Parker's heroism in Sam Raimi's second Spider-man film is for nothing because there's no explanation spelled out for the foundation of heroism in a popcorn movie ... If only Peter Parker had quoted Rushdoony when he was talking with Otto Octavius and his wife instead of T. S. Eliot in Spiderman 2.
We also need Christians with a thorough-going biblical worldview writing good books, making good movies, and recording good music. As I have argued before, you can't have a naval war without ships, you can't have tank warfare without tanks, and you can't fight a culture war without a culture. And by Christian culture, incidentally, I do not mean pious schlock and I do not mean hipster poses with extra mousse in your hair to make it stick up.
I find the idea of a Christian culture a bit problematic. White European Christendom came and went, didn't it? Do Wilson-style postmillenialists think they have optimism enough to create a culture that will end up being anything more than another Christian reactionary ghetto? Obviously they must think that to some degree for Wilson to write as he has written, but belief will not make that "Christian culture" something that will ever win a culture war. Some of us took Francis Schaeffer more seriously when he indicated that Christians lost a culture war some time back in the 1930s. Weirdly, many Christians have attempted to win a culture war that, had they understood the implications of Schaeffer's initial observation a bit more seriously, they would realize was lost before any of the culture warriors were even born. And for those of us who grew up not being entirely white in upbringing these observation may simply have been more obvious to both observe and accept than, well, some of the more thorough-goingly white culture warriors wanting to have their thorough-going biblical worldview lead to the writing of good books and music and movies ... .
Those people might still think WALL-E was too environmentalist. And Peter Parker's heroism in Sam Raimi's second Spider-man film is for nothing because there's no explanation spelled out for the foundation of heroism in a popcorn movie ... If only Peter Parker had quoted Rushdoony when he was talking with Otto Octavius and his wife instead of T. S. Eliot in Spiderman 2.
post-election musings on politics and apocalyptic language
Last week was yet another election, another election billed as the most important one of our time (they probably all are which is sort of like saying that "everyone is special" which can often mean, as a certain kid in a certain movie put it, that none of them are). I've seen laments that America is no longer the land of the free or the brave because Obama won. Who thought Romney was going to win? Apparently a lot of people but those people may well have been wrong.
But each election cycle somebody manages to fret about how terrible the times are. Before Clinton's final year played out I heard via spam that Clinton was going to suspend the Constitution, declare martial law, and appoint himself leader for life. That, obviously, did not transpire. When the 2000 election came along two men from what sure seemed like political dynasties steeped in some big business ran and the election became a tipping point for many. For years after there was talk of how the election was stolen. When 2004 came along I knew people who were sure Bush 2 was going to declare martial law, suspend the Constitution and maybe invade Iran, too. Maybe even invade Iran within a few weeks. That, too, never transpired, though some folks were sure those problems were around the corner in 2008. I recall seeing actual pieces in local papers where Methodists were discussing how Bush 2 could really, truly be thought of as an antichrist.
Then in 2008 folks told me I had to vote for McCain or else a guy as bad as the Antichrist would end up in power. Seeing as in 2000 when I expressed more support for McCain than Bush 2 I was dubbed another college-educated flaming liberal it was a bit weird to be told by the same person that I had to vote for McCain or dire consequences would come to pass ... but political memory can be the shortest memory of all. Whether it's people I know leaning left or right the paranoia is the same, if you don't have things going exactly the way you want at all details the land is doomed. Libertarians aren't really any different, either. The United States of America is no more or less doomed now than it was before. Every nation is doomed in the end. Electoral politics is simply the process by which you employ your best rhetoric and statistics to make the case that if someone doesn't choose your platform and you as their candidate that the doom will come swiftly and probably swiftly enough inside of your lifetime that you can pre-emptively include "I told you so" rebukes into the campaign.
I got spam declaring that Obama was going to dissolve the dollar and replace it with the Amero. I got warnings that Obama was a Muslim/atheist/communist sleeper agent president, that the Obama administration was preparing concentration camps to send all Christians to. None of these things transpired, though the encroachment on civil liberties seemed comparable to those that people who spammed me with these missives weren't complaining about when Bush 2 was in office.
While people may discuss how the religious landscape of the United States seems less and less overtly religious the quasi-religious fervor of politics will likely retain what it so obviously has retained, an apocalyptic idiom. When you see people saying the United States of America died with the Reagan administration or with JFK this is nothing if not apocalyptic language. Some were going on about how if Bush 2 was in power women would lose the right to choose (abortion). That hasn't transpired any more than those who backed Bush 2 have seen Roe vs Wade reversed. Changes have been made, of course, but both advocates and opponents of abortion have, at times, employed apocalyptic urgency and the language of zero-sum games during elections.
What is so strange about the apocalyptic idiom is that it manages to permeate even the most apparently "heathen" or non-Christian or a-religious polemics. Alan Moore invented his own religion, perhaps, some time after his apocalyptic scenarion in Watchmen, but the apocalyptic end of all life is presupposed unless you're so sold out to the idea that Veidt actually saved the world you refuse to consider how deliberately unresolved Moore left the narrative and how the breaching of the fourth wall implicates you as a reader who has discovered Rorschach's journal revealing Veidt's plan retroactively (in case you weren't paying attention to this narrative detail on the first page). James Cameron could make not one but two Terminator films with a "Judgment Day" of atomic holocaust, an apocalyptic scenario of a similar order to the doomsday scenario Veidt created to avert the global doomsday he foresaw through the Comedian's macabre joke.
But it's not insignificant in that alternate universe that Nixon was still president. Paranoid dystopian alternate worlds belong to everyone, left, right and center. If free-thinkers and secularists want to find a way to discuss political outcomes and possibilities decoupling those outcomes from an apocalyptic idiom might be a good step. After all, apocalyptic scenarios and imagery originated in religious thought, right? The world will not really end if global warming goes unaddressed. In fact the world will go on perfectly well, the question implied in a discussion of global warming will be what life there will be and whether that life will look something like us (and whether or not it even "needs" to is another matter).
But there's no reason to suppose that anyone will give up apocalyptic language to describe how terrible the other candidate is or how amazing your pet candidate will be. This seems no less idiotic to me now four years later as this seems idiotic now. If we lurch from point to point employing apocalyptic screeching this makes sense, I suppose, within a religious milleu but in a state such as the United States the apocalyptic idiom seems to seep into even the most secular realms. As paranoid fears that a cowboy president will annihilate all life on the planet Bush 2 wasn't even the first, Reagan was greeted as someone who would bring forth nuclear winter and acid rain with his "morning in America" approach. That Obama got elected does not mean America will recuperate or that Obama will sink America. America may well have simply been sinking itself with generations of fiat currency, deficits, and global interventionist projects inspired by a combination of imperialism and anticommunism. Everything comes to an end at some point. If the recently departed Russel Means was right then America was simply on a trajectory to becoming one gigantic American Indian reservation. Maybe, maybe not but whether you agree with what Means considered the trajectory of the United States of America as a culture we can at least say that he managed to articulate his ideas without framing them in obviously apocalyptic terms.
But each election cycle somebody manages to fret about how terrible the times are. Before Clinton's final year played out I heard via spam that Clinton was going to suspend the Constitution, declare martial law, and appoint himself leader for life. That, obviously, did not transpire. When the 2000 election came along two men from what sure seemed like political dynasties steeped in some big business ran and the election became a tipping point for many. For years after there was talk of how the election was stolen. When 2004 came along I knew people who were sure Bush 2 was going to declare martial law, suspend the Constitution and maybe invade Iran, too. Maybe even invade Iran within a few weeks. That, too, never transpired, though some folks were sure those problems were around the corner in 2008. I recall seeing actual pieces in local papers where Methodists were discussing how Bush 2 could really, truly be thought of as an antichrist.
Then in 2008 folks told me I had to vote for McCain or else a guy as bad as the Antichrist would end up in power. Seeing as in 2000 when I expressed more support for McCain than Bush 2 I was dubbed another college-educated flaming liberal it was a bit weird to be told by the same person that I had to vote for McCain or dire consequences would come to pass ... but political memory can be the shortest memory of all. Whether it's people I know leaning left or right the paranoia is the same, if you don't have things going exactly the way you want at all details the land is doomed. Libertarians aren't really any different, either. The United States of America is no more or less doomed now than it was before. Every nation is doomed in the end. Electoral politics is simply the process by which you employ your best rhetoric and statistics to make the case that if someone doesn't choose your platform and you as their candidate that the doom will come swiftly and probably swiftly enough inside of your lifetime that you can pre-emptively include "I told you so" rebukes into the campaign.
I got spam declaring that Obama was going to dissolve the dollar and replace it with the Amero. I got warnings that Obama was a Muslim/atheist/communist sleeper agent president, that the Obama administration was preparing concentration camps to send all Christians to. None of these things transpired, though the encroachment on civil liberties seemed comparable to those that people who spammed me with these missives weren't complaining about when Bush 2 was in office.
While people may discuss how the religious landscape of the United States seems less and less overtly religious the quasi-religious fervor of politics will likely retain what it so obviously has retained, an apocalyptic idiom. When you see people saying the United States of America died with the Reagan administration or with JFK this is nothing if not apocalyptic language. Some were going on about how if Bush 2 was in power women would lose the right to choose (abortion). That hasn't transpired any more than those who backed Bush 2 have seen Roe vs Wade reversed. Changes have been made, of course, but both advocates and opponents of abortion have, at times, employed apocalyptic urgency and the language of zero-sum games during elections.
What is so strange about the apocalyptic idiom is that it manages to permeate even the most apparently "heathen" or non-Christian or a-religious polemics. Alan Moore invented his own religion, perhaps, some time after his apocalyptic scenarion in Watchmen, but the apocalyptic end of all life is presupposed unless you're so sold out to the idea that Veidt actually saved the world you refuse to consider how deliberately unresolved Moore left the narrative and how the breaching of the fourth wall implicates you as a reader who has discovered Rorschach's journal revealing Veidt's plan retroactively (in case you weren't paying attention to this narrative detail on the first page). James Cameron could make not one but two Terminator films with a "Judgment Day" of atomic holocaust, an apocalyptic scenario of a similar order to the doomsday scenario Veidt created to avert the global doomsday he foresaw through the Comedian's macabre joke.
But it's not insignificant in that alternate universe that Nixon was still president. Paranoid dystopian alternate worlds belong to everyone, left, right and center. If free-thinkers and secularists want to find a way to discuss political outcomes and possibilities decoupling those outcomes from an apocalyptic idiom might be a good step. After all, apocalyptic scenarios and imagery originated in religious thought, right? The world will not really end if global warming goes unaddressed. In fact the world will go on perfectly well, the question implied in a discussion of global warming will be what life there will be and whether that life will look something like us (and whether or not it even "needs" to is another matter).
But there's no reason to suppose that anyone will give up apocalyptic language to describe how terrible the other candidate is or how amazing your pet candidate will be. This seems no less idiotic to me now four years later as this seems idiotic now. If we lurch from point to point employing apocalyptic screeching this makes sense, I suppose, within a religious milleu but in a state such as the United States the apocalyptic idiom seems to seep into even the most secular realms. As paranoid fears that a cowboy president will annihilate all life on the planet Bush 2 wasn't even the first, Reagan was greeted as someone who would bring forth nuclear winter and acid rain with his "morning in America" approach. That Obama got elected does not mean America will recuperate or that Obama will sink America. America may well have simply been sinking itself with generations of fiat currency, deficits, and global interventionist projects inspired by a combination of imperialism and anticommunism. Everything comes to an end at some point. If the recently departed Russel Means was right then America was simply on a trajectory to becoming one gigantic American Indian reservation. Maybe, maybe not but whether you agree with what Means considered the trajectory of the United States of America as a culture we can at least say that he managed to articulate his ideas without framing them in obviously apocalyptic terms.
Thursday, November 15, 2012
XKCD on 50 shades of gray, a Wishbone adaptation
http://xkcd.com/1128/
As jokes go this is what a friend of mine would probably describe as a "two percenter".
Best kind of humor there is, sometimes.
As jokes go this is what a friend of mine would probably describe as a "two percenter".
Best kind of humor there is, sometimes.
Monday, November 12, 2012
Mars Hills in California 2011-2012, kerfuffles about trademarks and evictions
http://www.charismanews.com/opinion/32227-scott-hagan-speaks-out-on-mars-hill-battle
Published 10/24/2011
... The issue of the Cease and Desist Letter seemed to strike a raw nerve in the broader body of Christ. I will say more about that in a moment. But first, I want to confirm that three staff members from Mars Hill Seattle called and asked forgiveness for any stress and confusion that was caused by the letter we received from the Stokes & Lawrence law firm [perhaps referring to this Stokes & Lawrence firm]. That meant a great deal to me and the other pastors involved (Jason Yarbrough of Mars Hill Church in Fairfield and James Seiler of Mars Hill Church in Galt).
Both Chris Pledger and Dave Bruskas were clear and sincere that the proper step should have been to call us first. We accepted their apology and would like the Mars Hill Seattle congregation to know that your leaders took this step (We are assuming on behalf of pastor Mark Driscoll). They assured us they would not seek any type of legal action, even though they did apply for and were awarded a federal trademark in August of this year for both the name and the logo design. Mars Hill Seattle also posted on their blog late Saturday night a message of clarity and grace. It was greatly appreciated.
...
I was speaking Friday, Oct. 21, in Boston when I finally received a very congenial voicemail from Chris Pledger. By now the social media networks were buzzing with some knowledge about this cease and desist letter. There was zero antagonism in his voice or the message he left. That afternoon we had a conference call between myself, Chris Pledger and J0-st-n H-lc-mb. Both of them were great and shared they were very sorry for sending a legal letter first.
They communicated that their intent now was simply to remove confusion and to ask if we could alter the logo that they had been using since 1996. I shared our story, including how our design by Scott Taylor in 2005 was totally innocent, and that when our church was planted in 2005 we had no knowledge that a Mars Hill Church in Seattle existed.
I agreed to start the process of a logo redesign since they now owned the trademark. They assured me that even though the letter from Stokes & Lawrence called for a name change, that was off the table. On Saturday, I received a voicemail from Dave Bruskas reiterating the same information and again reaffirming that the letter should not have been sent as a means of first contact. ...
http://www.christianitytoday.com/ct/2011/octoberweb-only/mars-hill-trademark-fight.html
Anyway, here's the Mars Hill clarification on some rumors that have been on some blogs ... which may be construed as the brand of Martian PR that attempts to replicate articles in The Economist, a publication that has proudly announced it aspires to such an impersonal and dryly cohesive literary style you can't tell who wrote what. Note that I am not knocking The Economist, it just seems odd that Mars Hill has adopted a comparable voice for public statements about things like the trademark situation or the disciplinary cases that made headlines earlier this year. Without much further ado ... :
http://marshill.com/2011/10/22/clarification-on-some-rumors-that-have-been-on-some-blogs/
...
Sadly, in addition to giving things away, we’ve also had things taken. We’ve had churches cut and paste our logo, take our website code and copy it completely, had ministry leaders cut and paste documents of ours, put their name on them to then post online as if it were their content, and even seen other pastors fired for preaching our sermons verbatim. We're not the only church called Mars Hill, and occasionally there arises confusion between us and other churches that share the "Mars Hill" name, particularly as we now have our churches in four states. This was the case recently when one of our members called us to find out if we had planted Mars Hill churches in the Sacramento, California area. We had not, but when we went to these churches’ websites, it was obvious to us how people could be confused. Each of these three connected churches in the Sacramento region—planted in 2006, 2007, and 2010—bore the "Mars Hill" name and their logo was substantially similar to the logo we've used since 1996. When cases like this arise in the business world, it's customary for a law office to send a notice asking the other organization to adjust their branding to differentiate it. This is commonly referred to as a cease and desist letter. On September 27, 2011, our legal counsel sent such a letter to these three Mars Hill churches requesting that they change their logo and name. In hindsight, we realize now that the way we went about raising our concerns, while acceptable in the business world, is not the way we should deal with fellow Christians. On Friday we spoke with the pastor of Mars Hill in Sacramento to apologize for the way we went about this. We had a very productive conversation and look forward to continuing that conversation in the days and weeks ahead. We made a mistake in not calling these churches prior to sending the letter. We should have picked up the phone before sending any other communication. Unfortunately, rather than hearing from the church in Sacramento, we began hearing that the matter was instead being speculated on by a blogger who did not verify any facts with us and, as a result, provided an inaccurate version of what transpired. This blog post from us is intended to alleviate any confusion. As a clarification, we have not sued any churches and have no plans to sue any churches. We have not sent any similar letters to any other "Mars Hill" churches, and we are not planning on asking any church with "Mars Hill" in their name to change their name.
As spiffy as Mars Hill attempts to make its media content you'd think that someone over there would remember these wonderful little things called paragraph breaks.
Chris Pledger's role in the situation was most likely that of legal counsel since Bruskas is an executive elder. Chris Pledger was legal counsel at Mars Hill for a while.
http://www.texasbar.com/AM/Template.cfm?Section=Find_A_Lawyer&template=/Customsource/MemberDirectory/MemberDirectoryDetail.cfm&ContactID=199729
The statutory profile was last certified on February 18, 2012. So it would appear Pledger was at least possibly a legal counsel to Mars Hill during the trademark situation.
Now if you'd like to go through memory lane and look at the two logos ...
http://www.civitatedei.com/2011/10/king-of-the-hill-ctd/
Chris Pledger got mentioned here as being legal counsel of Mars Hill
http://marshill.com/governance
Who are the officers of Mars Hill Church?
For state law purposes, Mars Hill has a president, Mark Driscoll; a vice president, Dave Bruskas; and a secretary/treasurer, Sutton Turner. Mars Hill also has a chief financial officer, Kerry Dodd; and a chief legal officer, Chris Pledger.
The governance statement, whenever it was published, was already old news by May 2012.
http://twitter.com/ChrisPledger/status/206934500599537664
Chris Pledger@ChrisPledger
Last church service @MarsHill. Very thankful for the ministry and mission of Mars Hill and the privilege to
have been part of it.
7:26 PM - 27 May 2012 via HootSuite ·
Where did Chris Pledger end up?
http://vintage21.com/person/chris-pledger/
Posted on June 28, 2012
Chris Pledger | Executive Director
Chris Pledger serves as Executive Director of Vintage21 Church. Prior to joining Vintage21, he served as Director of Strategy and General Counsel of Mars Hill Church (Seattle). Chris oversees Vintage21′s central operations and business functions
Then there's this private, password-guarded post that has "Chris Pledger" and a reference to a Mars Hill at a wordpress site. Whether it's the same Chris Pledger or the same Mars Hill is moot but mentioned for the possibly curious reader.
Now the tweet from May 2012 by Pledger was the same weekend this announcement came down the pike from Mark Driscoll and Nick Bogardus about Mars Hill Orange County.
http://marshill.com/2012/05/26/update-on-mars-hill-orange-countys-building
http://www.christianpost.com/news/mars-hill-orange-county-church-pressured-to-move-from-rock-concert-hall-76066/
from June 5, 2012
"Santa Ana embraces religious institutions of all types. In fact, about two-thirds of our zoning districts allow churches," the city planning director said. "The city staff has gone above and beyond to help Mars Hill in finding locations, including contacting a perspective landlord on Mars Hill's behalf."
Pastor Nick Bogardus, who leads Mars Hill OC, told CP that he has a long, fond history with the city and wants to comply with its regulations even though he may not understand them.
Still, he says the last seven months have been frustrating. The city made it clear from the outset that the church could not stay long term, Bogardus said.
So the city made it clear from the outset that the church could not stay long term, according to Nick Bogardus. This would seem to have made the eviction both explicable and inevitable. Whatever Driscoll said about not understanding what the reasons for the eviction are moot if Bogardus knew from the outset that the church could not stay at The Observatory for long. If Bogardus knew this in advance (and what he is credited as saying to The Christian Post sure seems to indicate this) why would the core planting Mars Hill Orange County have chosen a building where they knew at the outset that an eviction was not only possibly but even potentially likely?
How far back was "from the outset"? Tough to say. Bogardus apparently met with Driscoll in May 2011. (That link died with the entire campus blog network/archive system going down in early 2012--possibly in the wake of coverage of Andrew, though it can't be certain), the dead link is linked to here (assuming this link still works). Whether or not the Observatory had been selected by May 2011 isn't clear (though it seems it may not have been chosen yet. Here are some photos by Jeremy Tso posted at his site on May 30, 2011. The Orange County campus launched in January 2012. How far back "from the outset" actually went may be moot since the city had made it clear, Bogardus said, that the launch site of Mars Hill Orange County could not be a long-term home.
For whatever reasons Bogardus and company (or whoever made the decision to pick The Observatory) chose that venue after the city had made it clear what zoning issues were going to be issues. Given what Bogardus told The Christian Post and given what the city officials made clear about the nature of the eviction it seems probably that was not a question of whether or not Mars Hill planting leaders in Orange County knew about the zoning restrictions but why they persisted in planting at The Observatory even after the city had made clear what was and wasn't approved. Did leaders at Mars Hill think the city was just going to let them spend months meeting in a place they'd been told at the outset wasn't zoned for church use?
Now below is a link to a letter Kathleen Firstenberg published at her blog from Kyle Firstenberg (her husband) who had served as executive elder at Mars Hill Orange County. The entry was dated July 10, 2012. Kyle Firstenberg was the executive elder at Mars Hill Orange County at that time, at least up until, apparently, the same weekend in late May 2012.
http://kfbergs.blogspot.com/2012/07/kyles-update.html
To our friends and family,
A little over twelve years ago, Kathleen and I first walked into Mars Hill Church at the Paradox theater. It was dark, smelled like smoky indy rockers and the music was horrendous. Pastor Mark came out and preached the Gospel of Jesus like I had never heard before. At that moment, we decided this was our church.
As the years went on, we were married by Pastor Mark and found ourselves volunteering in many different roles in the church. We have seen Jesus bless this church and work by seeing thousands of people saved and baptized and multiple locations launched. Kathleen and I have been blessed beyond words through the teaching of Pastor Mark and the investment of Godly men and women in this church. We are eternally thankful for the real relationships, life long friendships and for the people of this church being a family to us.
I have served in many roles in the church and held many titles, but ultimately my heart and desire has always been to love, disciple and shepherd the people Jesus has put in my care. I had the honor of working with Pastor Bubba in helping plant Mars Hill West Seattle. In that time Jesus used Pastor Bubba in amazing ways to shape my philosophy of ministry and leadership. Kathleen and I have a great love for the people of West Seattle and for dear friendships made there.
Pastor Bubba and I then had the opportunity to be sent to Ballard to serve there and build some incredible friendships in my time there as well. A couple of years later, when asked to move back to West Seattle in a time of need, it was our joy to rejoin that church and serve for another year there before being sent to help launch the Orange County church.
The big move to Orange County was just a little over a year ago. This move was one where it was a leap of faith. We love West Seattle and had a joy of planting roots there and serving the people we lived among. But God had other plans. He put the conviction in both Kathleen and I that we were to be a part of this work headed to Orange County. So we moved and made some incredible friends yet again. Kathleen and I loved being a part of the Orange County Church and were just getting settled when Jesus started moving again; this time in an unexpected way. The role that I love and feel God’s gifting in being an Executive Pastor was beginning to change in Mars Hill.
Six years ago when Jesus was calling me out of Law Enforcement as a Police Officer, He made it clear to me that I was to work in ministry at Mars Hill Church. This was a calling by God and not a job opportunity. For the last six years, I prayed that if the day ever came that I should leave my role at Mars Hill, that Jesus would be kind enough to make it as clear as He did the day He called me. That day came. The role that I loved and served in had changed and I was no longer the best man for the job. For years I have asked for the courage to step aside and get out of the way if the I am ever not the right man for the job.
Around forty five days ago, I had a frank conversation with Pastor Nick and told him that I no longer felt that I was the best man for the job of Executive Pastor at Mars Hill Church and that with our current budget deficit, the Orange County location could no longer afford to keep me on staff. As a result, I was given thirty days to hand off my responsibilities and be laid off. [emphasis added] It was my intention to find employment locally and continue to serve as a non-staff elder at OC, but Jesus had other plans.
In an effort to reduce our expenses, we requested to break our two year lease with our property management company. They told us that they would search for replacement tenants and let us know. Jesus often works quickly and because I really love to have a plan has been teaching me to trust in Him. Almost three weeks had passed and I followed up with the property management company to get a status update on our lease and was told that they had rented our apartment and that we needed to move out and turn in our keys in three days. Praise Jesus that He released us from that lease and He certainly did it in His timing.
We are grateful for all the people who helped us pack up our house and move it into storage. The last couple of weeks have been very hard as we are seeking out Jesus’ plan for us. After much prayer and many conversations with trusted friends and elders, we felt Jesus leading us to Las Vegas, of all places. We went there trusting that Jesus would continue to guide us and He has. In one week, we have made good friends with a Lead Pastor of a local A29 church and have felt God calling us to make a home here.
Kathleen and I continue to mourn the change of Mars Hill no longer being our home, but we see Jesus’ hand in all of this and know that we must walk in obedience to where He leads. In doing so, we are very excited for how we might serve in this new church and continue to contribute to the forward work of the Gospel of Jesus and the hope we have in Him. With this change, and after prayerful consideration and counsel, we’ve decided that it is the best decision for me at this time to transition out of the role of eldership as well as membership at Mars Hill Church in Orange County.
I am so thankful for the years of investment from this church to me, and how Jesus has sanctified me through this work. I would not give up the multiple challenges, changes and locations that I had the privilege to serve at. I am so thankful for how Jesus used Mars Hill to shape me as a Disciple, Husband, Father and Pastor.
Kathleen and I love this church and are sad to leave, but it is with hope and joy that we will still serve in Jesus’ Church and will glorify Jesus with the gifts He has given us and the tools He has equipped us with through His work at Mars Hill Church.
Love,
The Firstenberg family
"Around 45 days ago" from July 10, 2012 lands us somewhere in the weekend of May 26-27, 2012, doesn't it? The weekend in late May during which Mars Hill former legal counsel Chris Pledger tweeted about his last Sunday at Mars Hill was, apparently, the same time during which now former Executive Pastor of Mars Hill Orange County Kyle Firstenberg let Pastor Nick Bogardus know that he no longer felt able to serve as Executive Pastor at Mars Hill Orange County and that with the then-current deficit the church would no longer be able to afford to keep him (Firstenberg) on staff. It was also the same weekend Driscoll announced that Mars Hill Orange County had been served an eviction notice and spoke as though it were mysterious. Maybe to someone who was simply not paying attention to what Bogardus said was made clear from the outset.
As to references to a deficit at Mars Hill Orange County mentioned in Firstenberg's letter, this sermon from June 10, 2012 may include at least some information that could shed light on deficits at the Mars Hill sites:
http://marshill.com/media/the-seven/missional-in-philadelphia-didnt-give-up-or-give-in
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Hhb3erNZbX0&feature=endscreen&NR=1
Old posts referring to some of what was made available about the deficits are in the links below:
http://wenatcheethehatchet.blogspot.com/2012/06/mars-hill-church-update-its-just-that.html
http://wenatcheethehatchet.blogspot.com/2012/07/martian-budgets-past-present-and-future.html
Late May saw a few shake-ups happen. Chris Pledger stopped being at Mars Hill, it seems, and stopped being legal counsel. Mars Hill Orange County, not even half a year from its launch, got served an eviction notice and around the same time Firstenberg, the executive elder at Mars Hill Orange County, stepped down citing deficits at the campus. A new church plant could be expected to run some deficits but according to Driscoll's church updates on the finances all the campuses were running deficits. In fact some of the oldest campuses of Mars Hill were running the highest deficits per capita. Mars Hill Orange County's debt was a bit on the lower side but an eviction a mere five months in is not a walk in the park. Then again, if Mars Hill leaders had actually picked a site zoned for church use to begin with ... .
POSTSCRIPT: Research on MH Orange County is still pending. The time MH transitioned into The Observatory is a bit fuzzy. Driscoll is shown preaching at what looks like a theater venue circa November 2011 but whether that's the Observatory is not for Wenatchee The Hatchet to be certain about. Contributions are welcome for this and other posts in the real estate series.
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