Letters to the Editor
had_enough
Published Letters: 886 Editor's Choice: 50
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@nabalzbbfr ... my word.
[Read the article: The right-wing brain in action]
[Read more letters about this article: Here]nab-whatever wrote:
Who turned out to be right? The Neoconservatives or the panglossian liberals, who in some demented Orwellian distortion warp now call themselves realists!
--nabalzbbfr
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I couldn't bear to quote your entire post again. Do you realize that everything in that post was wrong? That everything you said contradicted known facts about the subjects you address? Except Bush's deep religious faith...something that helped get us into this mess, not something that is "protecting us from evil.." huh. Even there, you got it wrong.
I'm truly amazed. First, that you would post such stupidity, and second, that you could be so stupid. I'm hoping this is just malicious trolling, designed to get our dander up on a slow weekend.
You need to get into the real world, dude. Your neocon heros are being exposed and it probably makes you very confused. So you just repeat the talking-points as hard as you can. Wild. I'm impressed. And I'm gonna ignore your gabble from here on in. People who live in fantasy worlds aren't very interesting. Except to themselves, I suppose.
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GOP voters: idiots
[Read the article: John McCain's Iraq problem]
[Read more letters about this article: Here]this is what you get when you lie too often, and too well, to people who will believe anything they're told by Big Daddy.
McCain is hoist on his own petard--or Bush's petard--and it's damned good to see it.
If there is any justice at all in this world, the GOP will be utterly crushed in 2008. We can but hope.
With gerrymandered districts it won't be a thorough a rout as it should be...but maybe it'll be big enough that the nutballs will be pushed back into the "lunatic fringe" category where they have always belonged.
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a variable taken for granted
[Read the article: Classical music falls on deaf ears]
[Read more letters about this article: Here]I've heard Joshua Bell's work live, and on his recordings since he was a teenager and just starting out, and I'm here to tell you that his particular art is not one that would communicate very well in a busy Metro station. Bell's playing (of which I am not especially fond, btw) tends toward the reflective. His sound is extremely sweet, and his playing lacks a certain profile.
Take a different violinist and put them in that setting, playing something with some muscle in it, who knows? There's no way for me to prove this, of course, but if you put Maxim Vengorov--on one of his good days--or Reinhard Goebel when he was in his prime, in that Metro, and you might have seen a little different outcome. Not a lot different, given the imperatives of the "audience" that have already been described, but somewhat different.
Interesting experiment, but not something from which you can conclude much.
As for Marchese's overall assertion that classical music is terminally snobby...well, sometimes, it probably is. Mostly though, it's just music. You like it, or you don't. I realized some time ago that classical music doesn't need my, or anyone's, help. If Beethoven's Op. 132 string quartet...or Mozart's K. 464 can't stand on their own, on their own merits, without any regard to some wider context, then the music deserves to fail. 'course, I'm betting those two pieces, and much else by dead european white guys, will be around long after most of the music of today..of any kind.. is quite forgotten.
David, the current audience for classical music may be "aging" but some of us aren't quite ready to go into the ground yet--I'm 50 and getting younger every day. ;>
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repertoire and context
[Read the article: Classical music falls on deaf ears]
[Read more letters about this article: Here]I just went and read the original article. I think Marchese did pick up on some genuine elitism here..but nothing terribly overt. I can see his point..although, David, methinks you're just a bit on the sensitive side..as others have noted, partisans of different musics are all quite elitist, as I've often has occasion to discover. Classical music fans have no lock on that sin.
I was utterly flabbergasted to read that Bell played the Bach Chaconne TWICE in 45 minutes. That would have consumed well over half the allotted time. That's just fucking insane. What kind of experiment is that? What a ridiculous choice of music. The Bach is way too demanding in that context. And that is not meant as a slur on anyone. It's like asking someong to smell a rose in the middle of an artillery barrage.
There's a time and place for everything. The Bach Chaconne at rush hour in a metro station is about as bad a choice as I can think of. Maybe that was the point though. Still, a stupid idea, from which very little can be concluded..
Also, as has been noted by others, when I have taken trains in the past, I'm nearly always late. There's no TIME to stand around, unless someone's handing out money..and even then, it better be a lot, to miss my train.
oh, and to the poster who proposed that Bell proved John Hughes wrong..not so. A Rembrandt in a parking lot is a very different business from the Bach Chaconne in a parking lot. Or a metro station. Humans experience different emotional responses from seeing, and hearing..and I'd argue that we understand some things more easily with our eyes than with our ears... in short, that Bach in the subway is a hell of a lot harder to appreciate than Rembrandt would be.
I'm not too sure what to make of all this. I think I'll go listen to Reinhard Goebel play the Biber Rosary Sonatas. Someplace quiet and peaceful. Which is, btw, where the Bach belongs too.