tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5687347459208158501.post5198867208690182534..comments2024-03-29T03:19:09.227-04:00Comments on The Philosopher's Stone: TWILIGHT OF THE GODSRobert Paul Wolffhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11970360952872431856noreply@blogger.comBlogger7125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5687347459208158501.post-14627771452904019172014-08-28T05:35:41.628-04:002014-08-28T05:35:41.628-04:00Welcome back, C. Rossi. I am very sorry to hear o...Welcome back, C. Rossi. I am very sorry to hear of the illness, but glad it was not life-threatening. We would very much miss your trenchant comments. I am familair with that extraordinary video, and have watched it several times. It is magical.Robert Paul Wolffhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/11970360952872431856noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5687347459208158501.post-38221363246489903322014-08-27T22:56:14.960-04:002014-08-27T22:56:14.960-04:00I'm glad to respond again after a time of debi...I'm glad to respond again after a time of debilitating but, alas, not life-threatening illness. I especially like your posts about music. This was a lovely analysis and appreciation of the effect on middling musicians (like me)of the the great players. I remember as a not so young graduate student trying to master the classical guitar at night after my daytime battles with Gottlob Frege, I went to Symphony Hall Chicago to see an aging (85+) Andres Segovia. He came on stage slowly and hesitantly carrying the guitar by the neck and almost falling on the seat. I remember thinking that they were taking advantage of the old man to make what they could from his fading art. He was a large man with big, almost fat fingers that seemed unable to play the repetoire selected for the program. He picked up the guitar and magic happened. The old unpliant fingers youthfully played the music of Sor and Bach, and I was relieved of my arrogant distain of the old man and luxiourated in the beauty of his art, an art that I would never attain. The place was silent, and the beauty of the music reigned.<br />However, not just the transcendent artistry of the player but the beauty of the played also inspires. The following video from Spain shows the effect of great music on all who come into contact. In this case, Beethoven's orchestration of Schiller's An Die Freude (which I first understood as Anne De Feude). Look at the faces of the children. This also responds to an old controversery on your blog: when does the conductor appear. How many players can play without the control of the conductor? This is lovely. <br />https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kbJcQYVtZMoC Rossihttps://www.blogger.com/profile/01296866350625800103noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5687347459208158501.post-13108629932423037282014-08-27T17:19:54.268-04:002014-08-27T17:19:54.268-04:00Some professors play warm up music before the clas...Some professors play warm up music before the class to get the class active. Beethoven's Der Grosse Fuge is a very interesting choice. I was thinking something like Mike Oldfield's Tubular Bells. Billy Bragg or someone radical (in music) like Frank Zappa are also more Marx-like than Justin Bieber, Lady GaGa, etc. I also like Gil Scott Heron The Revolution will be televised....but hey the revolution needs a sound track to attract the next generations.Tony Couturehttps://www.blogger.com/profile/05152011867765494204noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5687347459208158501.post-7724275374901943222014-08-27T11:07:34.166-04:002014-08-27T11:07:34.166-04:00Of course, one's first thought is to say, &quo...Of course, one's first thought is to say, "How To Build A Raft With Your Bare Hands," but I appreciate the sentiment. It might be fun to speculate on what one CD one would bring assuming one had a solar powered CD player. The problem is deciding what one would be happy to hear played over and over again.<br /><br />George Bernard Shaw, in Man and Superman, thought that the Devil would be playing Mozart -- he considered Hell a much more urbane place than heaven [but not, interestingly enough, thereby preferable.]Robert Paul Wolffhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/11970360952872431856noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5687347459208158501.post-61106966386143958252014-08-27T10:13:42.658-04:002014-08-27T10:13:42.658-04:00According to Bill Holm, when a journalist asked Ha...According to Bill Holm, when a journalist asked Halldor Laxness what book he would bring to a desert island, he replied, “The Well-Tempered Clavier. It contains everything.” By way of an explanation, Holm quotes Laxness' words from a radio interview:<br /><br />"I have not lived a single day when I doubted the superiority of music to literature for expressing the revelation that the human mind experiences from the cosmos. I seldom hear music so bad that it does not tell me more than the spoken word."Ludwig Richterhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/17145442092958521609noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5687347459208158501.post-79963466349674400622014-08-26T16:43:52.911-04:002014-08-26T16:43:52.911-04:00Good grief, what an impossible question to answer!...Good grief, what an impossible question to answer! Clearly not Bach's B Minor Mass, which is a transcendently beautiful affirmation of the existing order. Probably something by Beethoven that is extremely complex, dramatic, and beautiful, grounded in the forms of the music that precedes it while destroying those forms forever and reshaping them in new and more profound ways -- which means, I think, a late quartet -- say, Opus 130 with Der Grosse Fuge as the last movement. Yes. I think that would do very nicely.Robert Paul Wolffhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/11970360952872431856noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5687347459208158501.post-79539157227697560712014-08-26T16:26:11.178-04:002014-08-26T16:26:11.178-04:00What piece of music/classical or otherwise would y...What piece of music/classical or otherwise would you put in front of Marx's book Capital, to symbolize or convey its meaning to our kind... what music captures Marx's meaning, if any, or would frame your interpretation of Marx's work?Tony Couturehttps://www.blogger.com/profile/05152011867765494204noreply@blogger.com