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Next, we have this article, submitted by Jonathan Scull, which says the lectures rail against "passive noise pollution"—that Daniel Barenboim claims we are too frequently forced to hear music over which we have no control and, thus, we listen too infrequently to music we have actually chosen.
Over at The Times, Terence Kealey begs to differ, not just with Barenboim's (and Plato's) premise that music uses sound to educate the soul in virtue, but also that "making music and playing it in an orchestra is the best way to understand democracy."
Good point, Mr. Kealey. Now if he'd said playing in a jazz band, we might find his argument more, shall we say, reality based.
At The Telegraph, Gillian Reynolds isn't convinced Barenboim made either of those arguments at all.
"On that cold and gloomy Friday night I left the Cadogan Hall wondering several things: how long would the [radio program] producer have to wrestle with the material to make it into a programme; whether Barenboim had actually said anything new or remarkable; if the BBC realises how brilliantly Sue Lawley rescues sticky situations; why Radio 4 felt so confident of Barenboim's powers of argument that they let him deliver these lectures from notes, not a text."
As the plane approached the chaos of John F. Kennedy International Airport, I turned my head towards the small oval window to look out onto the bright City skyline.
None of these towers of steel and concrete and glass — their spires stabbing the night and bloodying the blackness with sickly fluorescent glow — could say a word about the magnificence of mountains. It was a struggle for power, as if the City was afraid of being overcome and had waged war with the sky. I felt no life, saw no beauty. In comparison to the miracle of green and perfect balance of Vermont's truth and quiet,…
"They Thought You'd Say This: Unlikely phrases from real phrase books" is a hoot. When I lived in Peru, I collected tourist phrase books from our local second-hand book kiosk—a place that had a two-for-one trade-in policy on books in English. Since I was teaching ESL to folks that wanted to get jobs in tourism and on the police squad dedicated to tourist-related matters, I figured that they'd need to know a lot of these common phrases. I was stunned at how many books had unlikely scenarios, but few of them were as outlandish as in this article.
Jon Iverson sends along this site devoted to the ideas of experimental film pioneer John Whitney, who wrote Digital Harmony, a book that has fascinated JI for years.
"You may notice some interesting links between the visuals and the audio, especially if you are a musician. For example, when the pattern forms a three-arm starfish, the chords you are hearing are diminished chords, which consist of minor thirds, an interval in which the notes are three chromatic steps apart. The chords you hear always bear this type of relationship to the pattern you are seeing, consisting of intervals which…
As a member of the Park Slope Food Coop, I've been seeing signs warning of an international organic banana shortage for months now, but I assumed it was just a seasonal fluctuation, coupled with last year's brutal hurricane season. The New Scientist claims it may be a genetic apocalypse.
Vinyl Recorder has an interesting graphic on how groove modulation works. Check out the home page, too—VR sells DIY cutters!
John Marks sends along this article about the Fred J. Cooper Memorial Organ, a 32-ton, 6398-pipe, three-story organ that I, for one, am going to have to make a sonic destination. Be sure to visit the photo essay and other links while you're reading about the Cooper organ—there's a ton of fascinating information there.
Thanks, John!
Being addicted, or even just a fan of The New York Times means you have to suss out the necessary assumptions and become expert at translating what's really going on there. Even overlooking the woeful sports section and regular incidents of pathetic pandering—a recent travel piece by Robert Kennedy Jr. comes to mind—the institutional psychoses and attitude, subtle as they may be, that the paper infuses, again ever so delicately, into everything is quite amazing.
As a fan, I have to say that while all that is very real, there is still much to marvel over (sometimes good, sometimes bad)…