We are developing the social individualist meta-context for the future. From the very serious to the extremely frivolous... lets see what is on the mind of the Samizdata people.
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Life is far more fun when you have a really good book on the go, and the only thing wrong with mine just now is that it weighs too much to be lugged about comfortably on my pedestrian journeyings around London. It is The Lives & Times of the Great Composers by Michael Steen. For me, this book is perfect. I know what most of the music that the great composers composed sounds like. But I am enjoying hugely learning more about the circumstances in which this wonderful music was composed and first listened to.
After an Italian prelude, the first big name composer Steen deals with is Handel, the German who ended up living in London for most of his life.
Handel’s London was an exciting place (p. 39 of my unwieldy paperback):
The year before Handel arrived, Sir Christopher Wren’s St Paul’s Cathedral had been completed at a cost of £1,167,474 paid for largely by the import duty on coal. Sir Isaac Newton, the great scientist was still at work. London, with its sounds of wheels rumbling on cobbles and cries from the street vendors, was well into a century of commercial and cultural prosperity: the country’s population grew by 71 per cent over the century; its merchant fleet more than doubled in tonnage between 1702 and 1776.
London, in other words, then as now, was making lots of progress. Perhaps because music itself can be such an otherworldy thing, even when composed by such a worldly figure as the energetically entrepreneurial Handel, Steen chooses in this book to emphasise the material aspect of things when describing the world in which this music was created.
The kind of people who enjoy the fruits of material progress, but who enjoy them more than they think about how they were first devised and are now cultivated, often dismiss progress as a small thing, perhaps because they dislike the kind of people who are needed to make it, and the methods they must be allowed to use. (Basically: commerce. And insofar as “public spending” is involved, someone has to make that money first before it can be spent.) Such people should ponder pieces of writing such as what Michael Steen says next about Handel’s London:
Behind its superficial prosperity and elegance, London was overcrowded, squalid and full of beggars. People had fleas, lice and few teeth. Most people defecated in nooks and crannies, or used public lavatories built over rivers such as the Fleet. For the more refined, with a small fee, the ‘human lavatory’ would provide a pail and extend its large cape as a screen. Lavatory paper did not exist, the alternatives ranged from a sponge on a stick in a container of salt water, to stones, shells and bunches of herbs.
Delightful.
But the most chilling observation Steen makes about the trials and tribulations of material life in the early eighteenth century – instead of the early twenty-first, say – is this, a couple of paragraphs later:
The political outlook was uncertain.
So? When was it not? But now, hear the reason:
Queen Anne, who was in her late 40s, had borne seventeen children; mostly still-born, none had survived.
Let an anti-progress person of now read that, and then try telling us that material progress of is no great importance, or of no “spiritual” significance, that it is merely a matter of brute, animal comfort. The Queen of England, no less – who presumably enjoyed, if that is the word, the very best medical attention then available – scored zero out of seventeen in the deadly game of childbirth and child-rearing; which meant that there was no obvious royal heir, which meant that the political outlook was uncertain. Poor, poor woman.
Later (p. 54), Michael Steen throws light on another kind of material progress, of a sort that is far more widely and deliberately scorned than progress in things like plumbing or medicine (which is often merely forgotten about), namely cosmetics. Steen has this to tell us about the way that the sort of women Handel often had dealings with – such as the highly paid and outrageously indulged and pampered opera singers whom he supplied tunes for, the crazy rock stars of their day – tried to beautify themselves:
Their faces were painted with compounds of white lead, rice and flour, with washes of quicksilver boiled in water with bismuth.
Suddenly, the progress made in female adornment, which has put incomparably more convenient and healthy – to say nothing of far more visually appealing – methods of adornment into the hands of any modern woman with a few quid to spare who wants them, appears almost as impressive as progress in plumbing, medicine, nutrition, travel, civil engineering, electronic entertainment, or even the wondrous progress that was about to be made in the two centuries after Handel, in music.
The constant temptation for writers here at Samizdata is to focus only on politics, and as a direct consequence to get depressed. Politics is always depressing. Depressing is what politicians do. They say they are going to encourage this or that, but these thises and thats generally involve extorting yet more tax to pay for such encouragement, which depresses taxpayers yet more, and the encouragement as often as not turns out to be the opposite, while nevertheless scaring away any non-governmental encouragers who might really have helped, which is especially depressing for everyone who got their hopes up.
So, I will now write about opera on DVD, which is not nearly such a depressing subject as politics, and especially not right now. True, opera is often paid for by governments – which goes a long way to explaining why most new operas now are such junk. And true, the stories told in operas are often themselves very depressing, involving, as they often do, politicians, as well as other sorts of bad people doing bad things. But, despite all that, the presentation on DVD of the operas that date from the time when opera was show business and when people ran opera houses for fun and profit, rather than out of a sense of cultural duty, is now getting seriously into its stride.
DVD has always seemed to me the obvious way to enjoy opera. The thing itself, in an actual opera house with actual live singers and players, is for me just too expensive and too chancey. For instance, a few years ago I attended an English National Opera production of Madame Butterfly. It was advertised as being sung in English, but it turned out to be that particular sort of unintelligible English that only opera singers sing. Waar-blaar-traar-hyaar etc. I couldn’t make out one single damn word of it. Since I was paying for someone else to be there too, that was a big slice out of a hundred quid in exchange for a few tunes that I already knew and already had on CD in several versions, all of them better.
And as for when they are singing in another language, well, where’s the fun in that if you don’t understand it? To enjoy that, you have to do a ton of homework, and for me that drains all the fun out of it. No, the answer had to be DVD, with subtitles (which I believe you can often summon up even if they are singing in operenglish). And the good news, for me, is that opera DVDs are finally coming within my price range.
I don’t buy opera DVDs new, any more often than I buy full price regular classical CDs new. I buy them new, that is to say, only very occasionally. Fifteen quid for one disc? No thank you. And operas on DVD still tend to cost nearer thirty quid than fifteen, if you buy them new. But, and this is the really good news, opera DVDs have finally started to show up in decent numbers in the second hand classical CD shops and market stalls that I regularly visit. So, for instance, I recently got the entire Levine/New York Met set of Wagner’s Ring Cycle for thirty quid, and, during the same trip, Beethoven’s Fidelio and Richard Strauss’s Der Rosenkavalier for a tenner each. Some operas are going now for even less. That, for me, is value. These prices mean that now, I can finally allow myself to enjoy opera, because if I become addicted to it, as I never have allowed myself to so far, the habit will not ruin me and mean that I have to die under Charing Cross Bridge in a cardboard box, instead of indoors and comfortable.
Have I disliked opera because I really did dislike it? – mostly because of the wobbly, incomprehensible way they so often sing it. Or did I dislike it in mere self-defence against being economically ruined by it? Hard to say. But, a few nights ago, listening to the closing scene of Der Rosenkavalier, I could feel myself getting seriously hooked.
Der Rosenkavalier contains many ridiculous things. The leading man is sung by a soprano, which takes some getting used to, however well she sings. And teenager Sophie, whom the leading man (well, more like a boy) eventually becomes engaged to in that melodious last scene, is, in this production, rather obviously nearer to forty than twenty, albeit a very nice looking forty-year-old. Above all, these people are all old-time Viennese, which means that not only does the villain have a thoroughly warped view of the world, but so, frankly, albeit to a lesser degree of course, do the good guys. I.e. the good girls.
But no matter. Richard Strauss’s taste in operatic singing is pretty much the same as mine. He adored the light soprano voice – as opposed to the heavy, wobbly, knock-a-giant-down-at-fifty-paces Wagner-type soprano voice – to the point where ever since, people have tended to call such sopranos “Straussian”. (Gundula Janowitz and Lucia Popp are two of my favourites, both of whom were sublimely wonderful performers of Strauss’s sublimely wonderful Four Last Songs, which I have adored for decades.) Der Rosenkavalier, like most operas, has its longueurs, when they do that annoying form of operatic talking which is half talking and half orchestrally accompanied singing, which is similar to what actors used to do, without music. But every so often, and the final scene of Rosenkavalier is definitely one such time, they get some actual tunes to sing, and as Sophie and the Boy/Girl Soprano sang away ecstatically, I could feel myself surrendering.
Good. For me, classical music is something to enjoy first, rather than to “understand”. But, there is no doubt that if you do want to deepen your understanding of this music, you have to at least be acquainted with opera. Mozart’s piano concertos, for instance, are intensely “operatic”, and a thorough study of the way they echo tunes in his operas will give you an order of magnitude greater feeling for what they are all about.
I already have a number of operatic DVDs, quite aside from the ones I have recently acquired, for the operatic DVD bargain is not an entirely new phenomenon. But, for all the considerations alluded to above, I have tended to keep them on the shelf, unsurrendered to. Now, I look at my little DVD opera collection with new eyes, knowing that I will soon be listening to it with new ears and watching it with those same new eyes, enthralled.
Nice to see that those superannuated rock legends, the Rolling Stones, brushed aside the dictates of Chinese censors and bashed out some of their naughtiest tunes at a concert in China. Mind you, I cannot really see these guys going on much longer.
Here is a teaser from the first chapter of Good & Plenty, Tyler Cowen’s new book about public art and the liberal tradition, out next week:
I write with one foot in the art lover camp and with another foot in the libertarian economist camp. I try to make each position intelligible, and perhaps even sympathetic (if not convincing) to the other side. I try to show how the other side might believe what it does, and how close the two views might be brought together. Furthermore, I use the fact of persistent disagreement as a kind of datum, as a clue for discovering what the issues are really about.
Q: What does the inside of Tyler Cowen’s head look like? A: A sack o’ cats heading for the river, i.e., all fur, teeth and claws, yet somehow… endearingly cute. At any rate, the internal wrestling match should make for a most excellent read.
The new film, V for Vendetta, based on the British comic strip (like so many movies are these days), is an absolute crackerjack of a production, in my view. I watched it last night, having already acquired an outline of what the plot is about from scanning comics over the years, but unlike some transfers from comic to the screen, this film works very well.
It is set in a Britain about 20 or so years from now, a Britain governed by a regime obsessed by managing the citizenry for their own good (sounds familiar), hooked on propoganda and the management of expectations (ditto), scornful of history and traditions (see above), deeply corrupt (recognise anything?) and also quick to resort to violence. Against this is a masked character modelling himself on Guy Fawkes, a character who, in the early 17th Century, attempted to blow up the Houses of Parliament.
And that is what exactly is the aim of the character “V” in this film. Now, in an age of justifiable fears about terrorism, my first instinct was to recoil at the plot, but in fact if you read this film on a certain level, it is great propoganda against overmighty, corrupt authority, and a celebration of freedom, rather than the sort of totalitarian agenda espoused by the likes of radical Islamists in our own day. It may not be an explicitly libertarian film, but it is unquestionably an anti-authortarian one.
Also, any film that contains the following line has to be a must-see for Samizdata regulars:
“People should not be afraid of their governments. Governments should be afraid of their people.”
Not bad, not bad at all.
UPDATE: Objectivist writer Bob Bidinotto, a man who is a fine judge of films, dissents from my positive take on the movie, at least as far as this comment suggests. I agree that this is a flawed film – some of its points are a bit silly – but its overall message is about the need to keep vigilant against the abuse of power, something that a citizen living in a country framed by Jefferson, Madison and Adams would surely understand. Remember, the Founding Fathers were all thought of as subversive pains in the ass in their day. → Continue reading: A fine film
Actorist Susan Sarandon is in negotiations to play Cindy Sheehan in an upcoming telemovie portraying the latter’s life.
(Via Drudge)
“This film cost $31 million. With that kind of money I could have invaded some country.”
Clint Eastwood. I wonder what particular country he had in mind.
First off, as if it is not entirely obvious, I am not the least bit unbiased about the album and people who made it as I have known most of them for fifteen years. Some of them are amongst my closest friends. With that said… if you like Irish traditional music, watch this space for information on how to buy “Tripswitch” the new album by Johnny McSherry, Donal O’Connor and friends.
The tripswitch, by the way, was in a country town recording studio I know well. A ‘to remain un-named’ member of the band attempted to light a cigarette from the toaster and somehow managed to trip the main breaker. I have been led to believe the eponymous tune was composed in the dark whilst efforts were made to figure out what had happened.
While I am on the subject of album release parties, if you are in New York City, another very dear friend, NIamh Parsons, has a release show for her new CD ‘The Old Simplicity,’ on Tuesday March 14 7:30PM at the Cutting Room, 19 W.24th St.
But now back to Belfast on on with the fun and festivities! → Continue reading: Tripswitch album release party
Well, this does not come as a great surprise, to be honest:
The US television audience for the 78th Academy Awards was down by eight per cent compared with last year.
The ceremony, which saw Crash shock the favourite Brokeback Mountain by taking best film, was watched by 38.8m people, the third lowest audience in 20 years.
I do not know to what extent this decline has been caused by the decline in the number of adults watching movies, as has been reported in various parts, or the increasing refusal of ordinary people to sit watching preening showbiz types mouth platitudes while receiving their gongs. Probably some combination of the two, I think. The film industry is fracturing, partly I think because of technologies that mean you can watch great films in the comfort of home in tremendous quality. A friend of mine recently bought a high definition big screen television for just over one thousand pounds and the quality was magnificent. And there were no annoying chatty couples sitting behind me, bad air conditioning and annoying preliminary announcements and adverts.
The Oscars are nearly upon us. (Okay, please try to keep reading) One thought prompted by this circus and what goes on in films is how films can carry messages very different from the intentions of the film-maker. A classic example is the 1987 film, Wall Street, in which Michael Douglas gave what I thought was his greatest performance as Gordon Gekko. Gekko is what your average lefty Hollywood producer imagines is a capitalist: incredibly greedy, callous and crooked, stamping the lives of good honest hardworking people, blah, blah, blah. And yet we know that in the course of the speech, Gekko gives his tremendous “greed is good” speech, which I sometimes think reads like Ayn Rand on acid.
A friend of mine, Libertarian Alliance founder Chris Tame, once told me that during this stage of the movie, he burst into applause, much to the surprise of the other cinema-goers. I wonder how many other folk have had the same reaction to a speech or line in a film where without realising it, a pro-capitalist point has been made in a way the director probably had not intended? Has anyone got any examples?
What European unity really means to most people.
Very nice writeup here of a vast retrospective of the paintings of the Frenchman Ingres, who worked around the time of Napoleon Bonaparte. Even as I put aside my distaste for Bonaparte, I cannot but admire the man who painted so much of life in Napoleon’s era so cleverly. A good excuse to take that long weekend to Paris and check out some art (not that I usually need many excuses). And meanwhile it is the 400th anniversary of the birth of Rembrandt. A nice appreciation here by Robert Hughes.
Oh, and I can seriously recommend this to China art fans.
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Who Are We? The Samizdata people are a bunch of sinister and heavily armed globalist illuminati who seek to infect the entire world with the values of personal liberty and several property. Amongst our many crimes is a sense of humour and the intermittent use of British spelling.
We are also a varied group made up of social individualists, classical liberals, whigs, libertarians, extropians, futurists, ‘Porcupines’, Karl Popper fetishists, recovering neo-conservatives, crazed Ayn Rand worshipers, over-caffeinated Virginia Postrel devotees, witty Frédéric Bastiat wannabes, cypherpunks, minarchists, kritarchists and wild-eyed anarcho-capitalists from Britain, North America, Australia and Europe.
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