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Post by Deleted on Mar 12, 2014 0:48:35 GMT -5
A Miss Flanders has written in, all anxious to remind us that "At the still point of the turning world . . . there the dance is." What does the membership think? Does dancing get us anywhere or is it a not entirely dignified waste of time?"
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Post by Deleted on Mar 12, 2014 8:26:22 GMT -5
I just tracked down the original article online, Sydney. TLS - Illicit intermissionsWhen I was still at school, my mother insisted that I took dancing lessons. Upon reflection, I don't think that I was particularly good at ballet, ballroom or anything else, although a girl once told me that I was a good mover. In what sense, I wondered? Even today, I find myself being dragged on to the dance floor, even if I now feel like a bit of a twit clubbing with adolescents. Nevertheless, there is an interesting relationship between music and dance. Without music, it is surprisingly difficult to dance. Without dance, it can be surprisingly difficult to make music. I suspect that if you have an aptitude for dance, Sydney, it can get you somewhere, although if you don't, it is a not entirely dignified waste of time.
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Post by Deleted on Mar 13, 2014 4:22:35 GMT -5
One of the avowed purposes of van Beethoven's seventh is I believe to apotheosize "the dance." Which makes one wonder, whether, to be as keen as that, he did a lot of dancing in his youth? It is not a subject one reads much about.
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Post by ahinton on Mar 13, 2014 4:32:03 GMT -5
One of the avowed purposes of van Beethoven's seventh is I believe to apotheosize "the dance." Which makes one wonder, whether, to be as keen as that, he did a lot of dancing in his youth? It is not a subject one reads much about. I have no idea. That said, I have to admit that, whilst I appreciate the extraordinary technical wizardry and dedication of some of the practitioners in the world of dance, it has always been and remains a closed book to me; that's entirely my fault, I'm sure, but I can no more perceive any connection with it in any of its forms than I can perceive an essential one between it and music. In my youth, I played for ballet classes quite often, so I had opportunities to observe how these people work at close quarters, but I always felt as though they could all have done what they do just as well (if not better) without me sat in the corner typing at the piano the while. It certainly would not do for us all to be alike!
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Post by Deleted on Mar 13, 2014 19:38:48 GMT -5
. . . It certainly would not do for us all to be alike! We may deduce then that the member is not a product of the public schools of England! And actually were we all alike life would be much more pleasant profitable and predictable. Every one devoted to the same glorious end what! Call me a Nazi, but I would take all male children away from their parents soon after birth and raise them in an institution - a little like a monastery. Of course even in a monastery not all monks are alike, but they are much more nearly alike than people in the world at large.
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Post by ahinton on Mar 14, 2014 2:33:22 GMT -5
. . . It certainly would not do for us all to be alike! We may deduce then that the member is not a product of the public schools of England! You may indeed, if you must, though the fact that said member is mercifully not such a product seems at odds with the remainder of your post, since those who have undergone education in the quaintly called "public school" sytem in Britain are no more "alike" than anyone else. And actually were we all alike life would be much more pleasant profitable and predictable. Unbearable is the word that I'd use in preference to the first two you yours here, although I'd allow your third one to pass in addition. Every one devoted to the same glorious end What guarantee could there possibly be that such an end be "glorious" in such horrific circumtances? I have no idea what! I would not do that; I'd leave that to you, if so you chose. but I would take all male children away from their parents soon after birth and raise them in an institution - a little like a monastery. Of course even in a monastery not all monks are alike, but they are much more nearly alike than people in the world at large. Why? And what sort of institution? Run by whom? Funded by whom? And - perhaps most importantly of all, why only male children when presumably you would leave female ones to have the kind of life and choices that male ones also do now? Lastly, what does any of this have to do with the art of dance?
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Post by Deleted on Mar 14, 2014 11:50:08 GMT -5
The art of dance depends, at least to some extent, on the art of music, for without music, it is difficult for anyone to dance. According to Stephen Johnson, for much of his adult life, Beethoven was tormented by ill health. He probably wanted to dance, but could not! I, too, sometimes find myself in this position. Aside from his deafness, Beethoven suffered from tinnitus, headaches, abdominal disorders, rheumatic attacks and various other ailments, not all easily diagnosed. He was also prone to depression – not surprisingly, one might say, given all that pain and frustration. But he was clearly also constitutionally robust, fighting off infections and rising above other tribulations. Sometimes it was work that saved him – as Beethoven admits in his famous private confession, the so-called ‘Heiligenstadt Testament’. At other times the experience of recovery gave new energy to composition. It was in just such a period of recuperation that Beethoven wrote his Seventh Symphony. In 1811 the prominent Viennese physician Dr Giovanni Malfatti recommended that Beethoven spend the summer in the Bohemian spa-town of Teplitz, famous for its ‘cure’. It was also a place of relative peace in troubled times: during the Napoleonic wars diplomats from all sides met there, regarding it as neutral territory. The visit obviously gave Beethoven a personal and musical boost, as he returned to Vienna with plans for two symphonies. He began writing the Seventh almost immediately, while making notes about ‘a second symphony in D minor’. The latter did not fully materialise until 12 years later, as the choral Ninth Symphony; but as soon as Beethoven had finished No. 7, in May 1812, he began work on the equally buoyant Eighth. Whatever else he may have been suffering from, there was no shortage of creative energy. One has to be careful about making direct comparisons between Beethoven’s supposed mood at a particular time and the character of the music he then produced. When Beethoven wrote that despairing ‘Heiligenstadt Testament’ he was also busy on his Second Symphony – a work not without its struggles but, most commentators agree, overwhelmingly positive and full of vitality. Yet it is hard to avoid the feeling that Beethoven’s renewed dynamism after his stay in Teplitz found direct expression in his Seventh Symphony – the symphony Wagner famously described as ‘the apotheosis of the dance’. The sheer physical energy of the work – expressed in bracing, muscular rhythms and brilliant orchestration – can, in some performances, border on the unnerving. Confronted with one of the symphony’s many obsessively repeating passages (possibly the final build-up in the first movement), Beethoven’s younger contemporary Carl Maria von Weber pronounced him ‘ripe for the madhouse’. There are darker elements, expressed in the music’s recurring tendency to lean towards the destabilising keys of C and F major, but the overall effect is of a spiritual victory. It is tempting to steal a title from one of Shelley’s poems and sum up the whole work as ‘The Triumph of Life’. At first there seems to be little of the dance about the Seventh Symphony. Slow woodwind phrases are brusquely punctuated by chords from the full orchestra, but then faster string figures galvanise the music into physical action. Eventually this (relatively) slow introduction settles on a single note – an E, repeated by alternating woodwind and strings. But this soon develops into a sprightly dotted rhythm, and the Vivace begins. This rhythm – basically an emphatic long note followed by two short ones – not only dominates the first movement, but plays a crucial part in the other three as well. You can hear it (in a slightly different form) in the main theme of the following Allegretto, after the initial minor-key wind chord calls us to attention. This magically atmospheric movement was such a success at its first performance that it had to be repeated. It made a huge impression on the young Schubert, who echoed its slow, but strangely weightless, tread in a number of his later works. After the Allegretto, the Presto bursts into life. This has all the racing momentum of a typical Beethoven scherzo. It is twice interrupted by a slower Trio section (with another version of the long–short–short rhythmic pattern in its main theme) and yet its vitality seems irrepressible: a third and final attempt to establish the slower Trio theme is magnificently dismissed by five crisp orchestral chords. This scherzo is, however, in the ‘wrong’ key – the destabilising F major. It is now the finale’s task to ram home the symphony’s tonic key, A major. The result is a magnificent bacchanal, pounding almost to a frenzy at the symphony’s seminal rhythmic pattern: long–short–short. The final build-up culminates in two huge full-orchestra climaxes, both marked triple forte – fff – the first time such an extreme dynamic had been used in orchestral music, and entirely appropriate for an ending that is both logical and dazzlingly affirmative. BBC Proms - Programme note: Beethoven - Symphony No. 7 in A major, Op. 92I saw this particular Prom on television last summer. BBC Proms - Beethoven: Symphony No 7 in A major - BBC Proms 2013As the apotheosis of the dance, Beethoven's Seventh could actually be undanceable?
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Post by Deleted on Mar 19, 2014 4:27:33 GMT -5
. . . perhaps most imporetantly [ sic] of all, why only male children when presumably you would leave female ones to have the kind of life and choices that male ones also do now? . . . No, not really. The following extract from a novel by Christopher Bradshawe-Isherwood the upper-class Englishman may be pertinent and helpful: I came across that passage only yesterday. Although Isherwood's words are admirably reasonable are they not, and I reproduce them without amendment of any kind, I suspect he would not be tolerated for long on the Radio 3 forum! Of course, he was eighty-two. . . .
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Post by ahinton on Mar 19, 2014 7:36:26 GMT -5
. . . perhaps most importantly [ sic] of all, why only male children when presumably you would leave female ones to have the kind of life and choices that male ones also do now? . . . No, not really. The following extract from a novel by Christopher Bradshawe-Isherwood the upper-class Englishman may be pertinent and helpful: I came across that passage only yesterday. Although Isherwood's words are admirably reasonable are they not, and I reproduce them without amendment of any kind, I suspect he would not be tolerated for long on the Radio 3 forum! Of course, he was eighty-two. . . . Apologies for the typo (corrected above). Yes, Isherwood might have been 82 when he wrote that (although as he died at that age, I cannot be certain that this is indeed the case), but anything less "pertinent" or "helpful" would be hard to imagine. People realise nothing about when "we" (presumably meaning "men") take over, because that's not what's happening and no one is seeking to achieve any such end. Breeding farms? Wards of the State? Even if so inhuman and degrading a prospect were to be contemplated, who would fund this and who would run these places? If most women would prefer artificial insemination to the more conventional route to pregnancy, they'd go for it today, as it is available (which was admittedly not the case in Isherwood's day); the fact that this is plainly not the case puts that one out to grass along with the rest of it. The suggestion that women have no interest in men is likewise absurd and not based upon fact. The notion that women are all lesbians is even sillier. Isherwood's words are indeed about as far from "reasonable" as anyone could get. Writing like that, I can imagine him being tolerated in very few if any places, never mind just the Radio 3 forum! If such drivel is representative of an "upper-class Englishman" (which mercifully it is not), then that term would appear braodly to be synonymous with "mentally disturbed Fascist" - unless, of course, Isherwood was just pulling the legs of his readership....
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Post by Deleted on Mar 19, 2014 9:43:33 GMT -5
Thanks for your comments Mr. H. I expressed myself badly in the preceding post, so I should make a couple of clarifications: 1) the eighty-two year old was Ingres not Isherwood. 2) the "we" in "when we take over" refers to the homo-sexualists, not men in general. 3) I have been reading Mr. Peter Parker's excellent Isherwood biography, in which this passage is quoted. It is set in the mouth of a character (Ambrose) in the novel Down There on a Visit. "Isherwood-Ambrose," writes Mr. Parker, "goes into the fine details of this new utopia, with calculated offensiveness . . . this speech, as Isherwood makes clear, is something of a tease . . . and yet, as for Ambrose, so for Isherwood: he is partly serious. For him, these statements have at least a sort of poetic truth."
Well! Would any members care to explain the term "poetic truth"?
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Post by Deleted on Mar 19, 2014 12:27:17 GMT -5
As a form of poetic truth, John Keats famously concluded that ' ... beauty is truth, truth beauty, — that is all ye know on earth, and all ye need to know.' Bartleby - Ode on a Grecian UrnTo be honest, Sydney, I think that you take a rather extreme view on the separation of the sexes. As a heterosexualist, I would naturally be concerned by the proposed take over by homosexualists. I tend to take an ultra-liberal view on the expression of sexuality, although I would admit that I tend to be a little more conservative in my own behaviour. Feminists and homosexual(ist)s might argue that our society has historically been dominated by male heterosexual(ist)s, but perhaps this is changing? As for dance, having played a central role in pagan religious rites, the artform was largely ignored in the Middle Ages by the Church, although it sometimes found its way into rustic entertainment. It seems to me to be a direct and obvious way in which we can express our sexuality. I do, on occasion, ask people to go clubbing, but a trip to the ballet generally proves more popular. Royal Opera House - The Sleeping Beauty
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Post by ahinton on Mar 19, 2014 15:56:05 GMT -5
Thanks for your comments Mr. H. I expressed myself badly in the preceding post, so I should make a couple of clarifications: 1) the eighty-two year old was Ingres not Isherwood. 2) the "we" in "when we take over" refers to the homo-sexualists, not men in general. 3) I have been reading Mr. Peter Parker's excellent Isherwood biography, in which this passage is quoted. It is set in the mouth of a character (Ambrose) in the novel Down There on a Visit. "Isherwood-Ambrose," writes Mr. Parker, "goes into the fine details of this new utopia, with calculated offensiveness . . . this speech, as Isherwood makes clear, is something of a tease . . . and yet, as for Ambrose, so for Isherwood: he is partly serious. For him, these statements have at least a sort of poetic truth." Well! Would any members care to explain the term "poetic truth"? OK - one at a time. Firstly, I did not - any more than others would - assume that you had meant Ingres and not Isherwood. If "we" in the context in which you wrote was intended to mean "homosexuals" (please, not "homo-sexualists", once again, for heaven's sake!), then the very notion of such people as supposedly conducting some kind of global "takeover" is even more absurd than it would have been had you meant men in general. OK, so the "ideas" that you quote are properly ascribed to the Ambrose character (some ambrosiality - not!) rather than to its creator and author, but what material difference does that make in principle? It was, after all, still the author who wrote it and who chose thereby to accord such "ideas" to a character of his creation, so no conceivable excuse there. Parker apparently writes of "this new utopia" when he is nevertheless referring to the very opposite of one, thereby identifying this particular expression of his "scholarship" as questionable at the very least, since it risks being read as though some kind of arm's length endorsement. "Poetic truth"? That term must mean, if anything at all, "lies, damed lies and, in some cases, meaningless statistics as purportedly concealed within poetry" (or, as in this case, prose)!
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Post by ahinton on Apr 3, 2016 12:47:57 GMT -5
. . . It certainly would not do for us all to be alike! We may deduce then that the member is not a product of the public schools of England! And actually were we all alike life would be much more pleasant profitable and predictable. Every one devoted to the same glorious end what! Call me a Nazi, but I would take all male children away from their parents soon after birth and raise them in an institution - a little like a monastery. Of course even in a monastery not all monks are alike, but they are much more nearly alike than people in the world at large. I have just reviewed this strange exchange and, at the risk of "bumping" this thread, I note that I omitted to question the reasoning behind the apparent assumption about the kind of school education that I received. I have no idea why what I wrote would be thought indirectly to identify and/or reveal anything about the nature of my school education and, whilst indeed I did not attend one of those private schools oddly known as "public schools" in England or anywhere else (and my school education began in my native Scotland in any case), I fail to perceive the relevance of the particular school/s that I attended and who paid for the education received there in terms of the context concerned. To return to the topic, however, my blind spot about dance does not prevent me from understanding that, for me, at least, dance is what music itself sometimes does rather than being something that people do to that music - and, although I cannot now lay hands on the quotation per se, I recall that Stravinsky (a fair amount of whose work is likewise a closed book to me and whomn I rarely quote in any context) is reported to have said that if music does not sing or does not dance it is of no use; whilst I doubt very much that mine dances any more than its composer does, I do hope very much that at least it sings!
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Post by Deleted on Apr 4, 2016 0:34:57 GMT -5
The member once said something about his persuading his head-master to do or not to do something - I forget for the moment what - but it was something that at a public school would not be possible. Therefore he did not attend one; Q.E.D.
In regard to "dancing around", there is a tremendous difference between music that dances pleasantly around, and dancing around oneself. I share the member's distaste for the latter; perhaps for different reasons: in my case I find it a vulgarity.
Also I share his view that Shtryaffinskii went off the rails around 1915. But then so did Schönberg and his pals. Who was the better composer: Sir Edward Elgar or Arnold Schönberg?
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Post by ahinton on Apr 4, 2016 1:57:55 GMT -5
The member once said something about his persuading his head-master to do or not to do something - I forget for the moment what - but it was something that at a public school would not be possible. Therefore he did not attend one; Q.E.D. Whatever that may have been - and I can no more recall now than it seems can you - as I do not see how my persuasion of a school head teacher to do or not to do something can necessarily of itself be indicative of attendance at a school other than a so-called "public" school, I am mystified as to how or why you arrived at such a conclusion but, in any case, this was not what had originally driven you to conclude that I did not attend a different "public" school, which was instead clarified in my observation that it "certainly would not do for us all to be alike!" having elicited your (or it is their?) response "we may deduce then that the member is not a product of the public schools of England!"; as I stated, I did not attend a "public" (i.e. private) school and, for the record, am pleased that I didn't (a view enforced by a very brief experience teaching at one of England's most expensive ones - just about the only teaching I have ever done), but I am not in any case a "product" of any kind of school, English or otherwise, any more than three years of studentship at London's Royal College of Music turned me into one of its "products"! What a strange and possibly cyncial view it is that perceives that who have attended particulr educational establishments as "products" thereof, as though implying some kind of commodity. In regard to "dancing around", there is a tremendous difference between music that dances pleasantly around, and dancing around oneself. I share the member's distaste for the latter; perhaps for different reasons: in my case I find it a vulgarity. Not so much "different reasons" but an entirely different stance to that which you appear to imply on my behalf in the first place; what I harbour towards all kinds of dance is not a "distaste" at all but a lack of natural ability to make and perceive the connections that so many others can make and perceive, both with it and between it and music. Also I share his view that Shtryaffinskii went off the rails around 1915. But then so did Schönberg and his pals. Who was the better composer: Sir Edward Elgar or Arnold Schönberg? As I did not mention and have never encountered "Shtryaffinskii" (whatever that might be), I have never expressed a view about the derailment thereof at any given time. I do, however, feel that a good deal (though not quite all) of Stravinsky's work from around the end of WWI onwards lacks the power or conviction that characterises much of his earlier work and, whilst I likewise feel that Schönberg (and who were his supposed "pals" of whom you write?) by no means maintained the impetus that imbues most of his early music, his "descent" (if one might call it such) strikes me as far less precipitous than Stravinsky's and in any case it began to occur at a rather later stage in his career (by which time he'd been writing for rather longer than had Stravinsky, being a few years older than the Russian composer). Curious, though, that, poles apart though Stravinsky and Schönberg were from the outset (and remained so), the fine but sadly far less well known (though mercifully much better known today than was once the case) Roslavets, a compatriot and very near contemporary of Stravinsky, came to be dubbed "the Russian Schönberg". I don't know what Stravinsky might have thought of Roslavets or even how aware he may have been of his work (if indeed at all), but another very close contemporary and compatriot of them both - Myaskovsky - evidently thought highly of him and it's perhaps tempting to ponder whether Schönberg - who was at one time considering a move to Russia - might, for example, have had any knowledge of Roslavets' massive Chamber Symphony (missing thought disappeared for so many years), so close does some of it seem to what one might think of as Schönberg's Chamber Symphony No. 1½ ( and followed so closely in time as it was by Schönberg's Chamber Symphony No. 2)... Anyway, to answer your bizarre question as to whether Elgar or Schönberg was the better composer, the only possible answers are yes and no, so take your pick while you consider the sheer pointlessness of comparing the virtues of apples and oranges; that said, there is one particular E flat major passage in Gurrelieder that might almost have been written by Elgar and the affirmative outburst of C major that opens Die Sonne near the conclusion of that work seems to me to find a curious parallel in the opening of Praise to the Holiest in Elgar's The Dream of Gerontius (a work that Schönberg almost certainly could not have known at the time of writing).
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