from the glacier

My fellow 'Mericans! This year in 'Merica we have stayed much the same. The status quo will not be overthrown. The rich got richer, and the poor got poorer. We even see now the lowest savings rate among our subjects since 1933! We have unnaturally force interest rates so low so that we can, as a nation of strong people, continue to avoid thinking about tomorrow and spend more and more money building up the Chinese economy by buying their garbage. But amid all the doom and gloom that 2005 had to offer we have many bright spots. Exxon corporation posted profits of nearly thirty-six billion dollars last year - record setting! It is easy to see why when local subjects in, say, the south suburbs of Chicago, pay $2.35 for a gallon of 87 octane. Way to go Exxon! An exemplar of the 'Merican dream. Heathcare continues to be unaffordable for the working poor, while frivolous lawsuits and the erratic market drive insurance rates up. Ford layed off thirty thousand, Kraft, twenty thousand, but other than that the job market is great.

On the world scene, we are now universally despised by other nations for our global ram-rodding of our virtue down the throats of third-world countries. But democracy will be realized everywhere soon! Soon there will be Starbucks, McDonalds, and Wal-Mart everywhere!! Many young 'Merican soldiers continue to get killed needlessly in Iraq, for whatever reason, as no one can really determine why we are there still, or were there in the first place. China continues to become an industrial power, thanks in no small part to our excessive socially irresponsible spending, and their state-sanctioned slave labor. But let's make sure to watch out for bird flu and follow any reports of this with rapt attention so that we can ignore these other problems and trap the small minds of you, the subjects, with yet another catastrophe. With any luck, some Godforsaken country like India or Louisiana will have another natural disaster to distract us. [oh, Louisiana is part of the U.S.? I had no idea. Did we send them aid?]

Finally, my fellow 'Mericans, my plan for the future. Nothing. Jack shit. Let's keep on keepin' on. Nothing changes anyway, except for for the worse, and I cannot get re-elected anyway, so fuck it.

mostly about this post and the comments. I think most of us in the modern era have forgotten the liberal arts. We have especially forgotten that the second grouping, the quadrivium, is mathematical. Yep, fully 56% of the liberal arts are mathematical. Yes, and this includes music as well. [pop] (bubbles bursting). Also, as I have quoted numerous times, God disposed all according to number weight and measure. It is mathematical. Further, sound can be described by waves (analogously to water waves, as it is a compression and rarefaction, not a peak and a trough). So should we be terribly surprised to find that music is mathematical? But what is the upshot?

I have been thinking a lot about music and the enjoyment of it lately, and something has occurred to me. Think about a song you really love, be it pop music, phat rap - yo, indie whining, or concerto. Upon first hearing it, you were tentative, not certain where the music was going. It is analogous to first meeting another person. You aren't really sure what they're all about. But after listening and listening, it becomes more than a friend (to stretch the human analogy to the point of breaking). No it is much more like a lover (in the Romantic sense of the term) where you know every thought, every breath, every inch - of the music. I would further stretch the analogy to 'knowing' the piece - in the biblical sense. You know every note, and every note has its place and that place is determined by . . . bum bum bum . . . (pick one: how it sounds or the numbers). Because we can't separate how it sounds from the numbers. It is two ways of looking at the same thing. The numbers aren't something superadded to understand the music. They are in the music - from Boethius' story of Pythagoras discovering the 3/2 ratio of the fifth to M. M. Gustin's Tonality. The numbers are there. The vibrations make the sounds. If the vibrations are not in ratios, it sounds like total shit. Do you need to understand the numbers to enjoy? No. Does it enhance the music? Maybe, but only in the understanding, not in the passion for the piece as a lover. Will it make you a good composer? Hell no.

So I guess I will conclude this concerto for twenty-six letters and various punctuation. Music needs to sound good. Numbers are the underlying reason for this. But the most important thing, let me underline that MOST IMPORTANT THING - is to have passion for the music. Know it, love it. Hum it tunelessly to irritate friends, family and co-workers. And, on that note, I think I have a piano concerto to go listen to.

I was wondering, is there anything worse than being subjected to piped-in radio music while being stuck at work? First, I'm stuck at work. That's bad. Secondly, there is K-Billy's Super Sounds of the Seventies lightly echoing in my ears. That's bad enough to contemplate suicide. Enough is enough, on Saturdays I get to take back control of the audio. I can put CDs on the computer and try to drown out the noise. (Saturdays only, because I am the only one here 'working' . . . flying solo). Nothing like Bob Seger singing over Mozart. . .

I did get to thinking about noise pollution. Ever notice how there is always piped in music wherever you go? I have it at work. Every store I go to, whether grocery or otherwise. Every restaurant. (Sadly, even most modern Masses have continual noise [prayers out loud as opposed to silent, constant bad music, etc.]) Where can we get some silence? In high school I used to drive out to the desert (sometimes with my now brother-in-law) just to escape from the clatter of modern living. I wonder if there is something that is destroyed in man by having neither silence nor darkness. Maybe this makes us more distractable, as our attentions are always diverted. That can't be too good of a thing.

While listening to some tunes the other night, I subjected myself to a fugue for two violins by Mozart. Typically, I will be the first to laud the structure, point-counterpoint, and, in general, the mathematical perfection of a piece of music written by Mozart. However, in this particular instance, I was struck by what a bad example of a fugue this piece is. The beauty of the fugue is the repetetion of the theme with variations superimposed on the original theme. It is a harmonious mathematical structure, but in its mathematic complexity it leaves the listener with an aneseptic feeling. That is to say that the piece leaves one with no feeling. I certainly think that it is superior mathematically to any other form of music, but inferior structurally to, say, the concerto. Because of this, I started wondering why there are no good fugues after Bach (at least that I am familiar with). Is it because the advances in instrumentation (the piano) led composers to explore other avenues of harmonic expression? Is it that advances in musical structure (i.e. the allegro-andante-allegro of the symphony or concerto or sonata) rendered the even-tempoed single movement fugues obsolete?

But then I thought, Mozart, Hyden, Paganini all have very good mathematic structure. Yes they have advanced beyond Bach in the form of music. But shortly after these composers we have a more romantic flare, where structure takes a back seat to "feelings". I will not deny that there are feelings in some of Bach's pieces, but on the whole it is lacking. Listening to Chopin's nocturnes or, worse, Rachmoninoff's 2nd symphony suggests that more modern music has too much feeling, so that the structure suffers. So I suppose the whole point is this: do things well. That which is done well is a composite. It is an admixture of mathematical harmony and structural brilliance. I think this applies to more than just music.

Actually, this post is really about something my wife, Erin, said to me. A little background information first, however, is needed. At our parish during the Christmas season they keep a nativity behind the altar rail on the left side (as you face it) of the altar. We seem to always sit on the opposite side of the church (habits and all of that). The vestibule is out the back, opposite of the altar, but there are several exits in just about every direction (possibly because the architecture dates from the not so pretty fifties roundhouse style of church). Shortly after Christmas, Erin asked our oldest child, John, if he wanted to see the baby Jesus after mass. Of course he wanted to, so after mass was over we crossed the front of the church, genuflected, and knelt at the altar rail in front of the nativity scene. She pointed out the statue in the manger. John seemed very disappointed. He said "that's just a statue, I want to see the real baby Jesus." Explanations followed about history, chronology and the time of Christ.

To quote my wife: "How come a four year old can separate something most adult protestants can't?" Or, to put it more clearly, statues aren't people. Images are not what they represent. No one gets confused and tries to eat a still life painting. Why the lack of a corpus on crosses at protestant churches? Why the iconoclast heresy in all its forms throughout history? Probably because these people, in their erudition, forgot what they knew - when they were four.

Or perhaps not. Rather it would be better to say that I have been mired in Mozart's 20th Piano Concerto and "sidoku" puzzles. While listening to the first movement of the piece it occurred to me that there is no better example of melancholic division than in this concerto. The orchestra thunders in violently playing in a minor key. The piano responds, sometimes powerfully, sometimes softly; sometimes in mimicry of the theme of the orchestra, sometimes on its own theme. Always, however there is the underlying division between the soloist and the group, the one and the many - and underlying this, is melancholy, or even frustration.

So I guess I got to thinking about it. Angst is much clearer in this piece than in any rock music or pop music or any other modern harmonic medium. This, of course, got me to thinking about angst in man - not in music. The hypothetical syllogism breaks down like this: if angst is better played without words, if emotion is more clearly stated without stating it (all in music) then this should be applied to man. Angst becomes meaningless as long as it is verbalized. Trivial, yes, and it debases the person. As Heidegger put it "Angst is the fear of - ". If it is the fear of the nothing, then it should be spoken - at no time. Otherwise it is just puerile complaining.