As I have observed before on this blog, an odd thing about the teaching career is that although you get older your students remain the same age. There is a consequence of this curious fact that one tends not to notice when one is young but which becomes more important as the years go by, namely that there is always a new audience for one’s shtick. For example, I first taught The Critique of Pure Reason in the spring of 1960 and during that course I laid before my students a revolutionary interpretation of the central passages of that great book, an interpretation I had just come up with months earlier. That was 60 years ago and the students in that course are now in their 80s but as the years went by I taught The Critique 12 or 13 times more and each time, happily for me, the students were young undergraduates or graduate students for whom what I was saying was fresh and new. Over the years, I taught courses on game theory, on political theory, on the thought of Marx, and all manner of other things but each time as I repeated what I had said in earlier iterations of the same course it was to new students for whom it was fresh and novel. I kind of got used to that and liked it. Not only was my textual interpretation new to each group of students, so were my stories which, as I am sure you have figured out, I inordinately enjoy telling.
When I started blogging 11 years ago I had a lifetime of
theoretical work stored up and, or so it probably seemed to my readers, several
lifetimes of stories. But there are limits, after all, to the stories even of
an inveterate storyteller and so I have learned to exercise some caution on
this blog before telling one of my old favorites. Fortunately, Google has added
an app to its blog structure that enables me to search in an instant all my
previous posts.
Well, as I was taking my morning walk in a relatively balmy
32°, it occurred to me to do my comic turn on degrees of separation, something
that has always been a hit when I did it in a class. You know, the bit about
how I am connected by three degrees of separation to Jeremy Bentham. Aware that
I have become rather forgetful in my old age, I activated the app and
discovered to my horror that I had told the story twice before on this blog,
the last time only two months ago! So much for that idea.
But then I thought, it really is not fair. I mean if someone
said “I have two tickets to Itzhak Perlman playing the Beethoven violin Concerto,
do you want to come?” I would not say “no thanks, I heard Milstein play it in
1956.” Good Lord, I must have watched Emma Thompson in Sense and Sensibility
five times and I love it every time.
So as you prepare for a boisterous evening of online in-home
New Year’s Eve celebrating, give a thought to the ancient mariner who stoppeth
one of three.
19 comments:
Alternatively, your blog could be like the comedians' convention, where jokes are told by numbers: you can link previous instances as they occur to you, and we'll all remind ourselves.
Prof. Wolff,
As one who has been censured for offering legal and cinematic anecdotes which most of your readers find annoying and/or irrelevant (although LFC did kindly remark regarding my story in tribute to Sean Connery regarding his intervention on behalf of Lana Turner when he decked her then boyfriend Johnny Stompanato), you have my complete sympathy. Good stories never lose their luster. And even hearing Perlman play the Beethoven Violin Concerto more than once would still be a treat worth repeating (one of my favorites, along with the Brahms, Tchaikovsky, Dvorak and violin concertos, which I can listen to over and over).
Regarding cinematic anecdotes, your reference in a previous post to individuals who refuse to accept that the Covid-19 virus is real and deadly, reminded me of the very sad story about the actress Gene Tierney, made famous, along with the theme song, in the film noir movie “Laura,” released in 1944. In the prior year, when Ms. Tierney was a rising star and married to her first husband, Oleg Cassini, she attended a war bond event known as the Hollywood Canteen while pregnant. A fan approached her and asked her for an autograph, which Ms. Tierney graciously accommodated. It turned out that the fan was infected with the rubella virus and was violating quarantine. (This was before the rubella vaccine existed.) Ms. Tierney’s daughter was infected with rubella and was born deaf, blind, and with a severe intellectual disability which required her institutionalization. Howard Hughes, a close friend of Tierney’s, paid for her medical bills throughout her life. A year after her daughter was born, a female tennis star approached her to thank her for her autograph, not knowing what grief she had caused, and confessed that she had broken quarantine in order to get a glimpse of her favorite star. It is not recorded how Ms. Tierney reacted, but a slap across the face would not have been inappropriate. The tragedy caused Tierney to descend into years of depression.
Post-script:
Ms. Tierney, after her divorce from Cassini, dated John Kennedy before he met Jacqueline Bouvier. The future President broke off the relationship with Tierney, explaining that his political aspirations precluded him from marrying a divorced woman.
Errata:
The ampersand was supposed to be followed by the Bruch violin concerto.
Don't worry Professor- your stories are good even when they have been heard before. And Happy Birthday!
Reminiscent of here
(Neglected to close a tag)
Reminiscent of this. Examples here
Marcel Proust,
Somehow I do not think that a comparison to Commander McBragg is what Prof. Wolff had in mind. I could think of another individual for whom the comparison would be more apt, however. The guy who claimed he had the largest inauguration crowd in American history; who claimed he is a stable genius (very good with horses); who claimed that no one is more empathetic in any given room to the plight of the Blacks than he; who claimed that he knows more about the corona virus than the scientists; who, and on and on ….
What you fail to realize, Professor Wolff, is that many of us are as forgetful as you are and thus, have forgotten that you've already told the same story until you remind us that you have.
Professor Wolff, Do you agree with Professor Leiter's assessment of Beethoven (i.e. that he is "The greatest musical genius of them all")?
I enjoy Beethoven, but I would probably be more likely to choose to listen to something by Dvořák, Chopin, Rachmaninoff, or even Debussy (or *gasp!* Coltrane, Miles Davis, or Herbie Hancock).
(Although, to be perfectly transparent, the bulk of the music to which I spend my time listening is various sub-genres of rock - mostly sub-genres of metal, punk, and what is usually unhelpfully referred to as "indie rock", or even less usefully "alternative rock".
Lately, I've been on a Star Wars movies, and shows, music kick; so I'm currently listening to John Williams' marvelous score for the original Star Wars [1977], aka "A New Hope".)
Diogenes,
Classical music critics evaluate classical composers based on their innovativeness, musical complexity, chord structures, musicality. These qualities do not necessarily translate into a pleasing sound for all listeners.
About three years ago, the NY Times asked a number of classical music critics to list the composers whom they regarded as the 10 greatest. This is the list they produced, in decreasing order of impressiveness:
Bach; Beethoven; Mozart; Stravinsky; Debussey; Schubert; Brahms; Verdi; Bartok; Wagner
You will note that Tchaikovsky, who wrote 6 wonderful symphonies, and two fantastic piano and violin concertos, is not included. Nor is Puccini, who wrote some of the most moving and poignant operatic arias; nor Dvorak; nor Chopin; nor Bizet, who wrote the most popular opera. This does not mean that they were not great in their own way. For my part, I am not particularly fond of Bach, and would have placed Mozart first, with Beethoven second, and am not sure I would have included Stravinsky, or Bartok, for that matter. I would have preferred Tchaikovsky and Dvorak.
(I enjoy all genres of music, including classical, jazz and rock, but am not particularly talented musically. In 2000, I decided I wanted to learn an instrument that was relatively portable and which I thought would not be too challenging, so I took up clarinet, with the aspiration of eventually being able to play Goodman’s “Sing, Sing, Sing” solo (actually written by Tony Prima). Playing a musical instrument is an excellent way to keep your mind and memory alert, and your fingers agile. After six years of relatively disappointing efforts – the clarinet has so many keys and apertures - I concluded it was never going to happen and stopped taking lessons – although Thursday evening I will serenade several of my friends by telephone with my performance of Auld Lang Syne on clarinet.)
Errata:
"Sing, Sing, Sing" was written by Louie Prima, not Tony Prima. In addition to Benny Goodman's amazing solo, the most popular version features a fantastic drum solo by Gene Krupa.
I don't know what Leiter means by "great". From what he writes in his blog, he has some musical training as a rock guitarist.
However, for many people "great" also means "historically significant" in Western cultural history and Beethoven would be my choice in that sense. He changed classical music and is a beginning, while Mozart is the end of an era. If Western philosophy can be described as a series of footnotes to Plato, classical music in the 19th century at least can be described as a series of footnotes to Beethoven.
My ex mother-in-law, who was a classical violinist playing professionally, thought Bach to be musically superior to Beethoven.
Well, what is this three degrees of seperations "and Bentham" story you speak of? i'm new here. Can someone point me to the previous post?
@ gia_lege
Here's the Feb. degrees-of-separation post. I found it by typing "degrees of separation" into the blog search box in the very upper-left-hand corner.
https://robertpaulwolff.blogspot.com/2015/02/bringing-home-bacon.html
gia__lege
You will find it on Prof. Wolff’s Sep. 12, 2020 post, titled “My Kevin Bacon Moment.” (There is a search engine at the top, right-hand-corner of the blog.)
Addendum:
Regarding my affinity for the clarinet, there are many beautiful clarinet concertos, not often played. But the most exceptional, for my money, is Mozart’s clarinet concerto, which was prominently played on a Victrola in the middle of the Kenyan savannah in the movie “Out of Africa.” It is so exquisitely beautiful that I tear up whenever I hear it.
Re classical music:
I'm not sure ranking composers makes a whole lot of sense. For ex., Beethoven and Brahms are both "great", and whether I prefer listening to one or the other depends to an extent on the particular piece and the mood I happen to be in. I'm a fan e.g. of Brahms' chamber music and piano concertos -- last night on the radio (the local classical music station is on the whole too predictable and "safe" for my taste) I heard Brahms' second piano concerto w Vladimir Ashkenazy and the Vienna Philharmonic (dir. Haitink). Good, old performance. The predictable is sometimes good.
Dvorak, on the other hand, has been ill-served by the fact that the New World symphony, for example, is overplayed on radio (and probably overprogrammed in concerts too). The local classical station plays it way too often. It's a good piece, but it doesn't bear a thousand repeated listenings, which just spoil it. Few pieces do.
MS
Yeah, the Mozart clarinet concerto is v. good. (Also the Brahms clarinet quintet, iirc.) There's a fair amt of good repertoire for the instrument, going up to the contemporary.
I am 18 so I guess I’m pretty young, and listening to your lectures on Youtube (I am now watching the fourth lecture on Marx) and this is meaningful now, even Noam Chomsky and the existentialist didn’t amaze me like your thought does. You’ve taught me so much and I am so grateful, thank you thank you thank you and also a belated happy birthday! :-)
I am 18 so I guess I’m pretty young, and listening to your lectures on Youtube (I am now watching the fourth lecture on Marx) and this is meaningful now, even Noam Chomsky and the existentialist didn’t amaze me like your thought does. You’ve taught me so much and I am so grateful, thank you thank you thank you and also a belated happy birthday! :-)
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