Hardcore for Nerds

On Bloomsday

Sat, 16 Jun 2018 11:47:38 +0100

So the mutton kidney, which has assumed totemic importance as the symbol of Joyceana on Bloomsday, mechanically reproducing the squeamish disgust at offal as a lower-middle-class food that Joyce clearly meant to provoke and perhaps neutralise (or satirise), is not even the authentic item of Bloom’s meal. Besides which, before eating or even preparing it has to be physically purchased, as “his hand accepted the moist tender gland and slid it into a side pocket” - not something I’d imagine many Joyceans would do with their fancy dress linen suits.

A couple of things I wrote last year about Bloomsday breakfasts which I think were rather good and capture some of my ambivalent relationship with the celebration.

I’m a Bloomsday Breakfast #Truther

Brad Mehldau, ‘A Prayer For Healing’ from After Bach (Nonesuch,...

Thu, 14 Jun 2018 17:26:29 +0100

Brad Mehldau, ‘A Prayer For Healing’ from After Bach (Nonesuch, 2018)

“a six-minute interpretation of Bach’s Prelude No. 8 in E flat...

Thu, 14 Jun 2018 14:53:42 +0100

“a six-minute interpretation of Bach’s Prelude No. 8 in E flat minor (BWV 853) (also recalling the Modern Jazz Quartet’s impression of the same) finds Warren romantically colouring each twilight line whilst teasing out those spine-tingling falling-bass phrases.“ - review by Adrian Pallant

Vinyl Sunday: Robocobra Quartet, Plays Hard To Get (2018)...

Sun, 10 Jun 2018 20:32:45 +0100

Vinyl Sunday: Robocobra Quartet, Plays Hard To Get (2018) [Bandcamp]

(last pic - bonus excerpt from vocal score for ‘I Shouldn’t Have Watched The Film What Lies Beneath (When I Was Twelve)’ and its multi-part harmony)

Jan Dismas Zelenka, Missa Paschalis, ZWV 7: ‘Kyrie. Christe...

Sat, 09 Jun 2018 18:22:03 +0100

Jan Dismas Zelenka, Missa Paschalis, ZWV 7: ‘Kyrie. Christe eleison’

The last part of John Eliot Gardiner’s Music in the Castle of Heaven is devoted to Bach’s Mass in B Minor, and its performance in Dresden where Bach’s contemporary (and seemingly friend) Zelenka was the court Capellmeister. Gardiner mentions that Bach’s composition likely influenced some of Zelenka’s later work - I haven’t done the research to establish if this might be the case here.

There are three Baroque composers I am listening to regularly - one might even say religiously - at the moment : Schütz, Bach and Zelenka. The first I sought out because, in Gardiner’s telling, he was a precursor to and likely influence on Bach. Zelenka I came across by happenstance (read: Spotify Baroque playlist), inspired by Herman Hesse’s Glass Bead Game, though in that novel the composer most frequently mentioned is Purcell (more on whom in another post, hopefully). Handel, despite parochial interest in The Messiah, is a bit too flamboyant to my ear; and Vivaldi, though I’m sure brilliant, isn’t really on my radar yet either. Instead it’s the sacred music of Mitteleuropa that is drawing my attention, like the aural equivalent of Caravaggio.

To my mind, I like Schütz because he is comparatively austere in form - for example his Matthew Passion is entirely a capella, described in this review as falling “midway between the cool impersonality of plainchant recitation tones and the more impassioned idiom of operatic recitative”, a contains only the gospel text - while at the same time vividly exciting in content, the Kleine Geistliche Konzerte (”little spiritual concert” if my German is correct) and Psalmen David being full of moments of almost pop melody in the polyphonic vocals.

Bach is of course wonderful, and I agree with Gardiner that he is unparalleled in the emotional expression of his music - whether that is a channeling of devotional fervour or an outpouring of personal grief - as well as its creative dexterity. Yet precisely because it is so accomplished it tends to feel a bit too much - a bit too rhythmic, perhaps, with every flourish having its place - and I gravitate back towards the more easily enjoyable sounds of these other composers.

More similar in orchestration and style, Zelenka is noted as a master of counterpoint style - as was Bach, of course, though perhaps he could be said to have transcended it, whereas Zelenka relies too much on the pyrotechnics of instrumental polyphony. What caught my attention initially, however, was the slow gracefulness of the Lamentations of the Prophet Jeremiah - the stately progress of the strings under the bass vocals (while suited to the content, the composition may have also been influenced by the lack of suitable singers in a higher register at the Dresden court at the time) - that exceeds the contemplativeness of anything I’ve yet heard from Bach. There’s a touch of that I think too in this Kyrie, although equally it is similar enough to the Bach style (or to that of the age, perhaps). At the other end of the scale, Zelenka’s sonatas are pyrotechnics at their best, a fizzing mix of instruments that light up my brain as if I have an understanding of the mathematics at work (although consciously, of course, I have little or none).

studies in form and function, water/stone

Fri, 08 Jun 2018 22:19:01 +0100

studies in form and function, water/stone

Vinyl Sunday: Bach, Cantaten BWV 131, 137 & 190;...

Sun, 27 May 2018 21:15:23 +0100

Vinyl Sunday: Bach, Cantaten BWV 131, 137 & 190; Bach, Cantatas BWV 104, 4; Gustav Leonhardt, Festkonzert Des Barock.

“We definitely did that one a lot quicker than this record. There’s more of a simplicity to ‘Music...

Sun, 27 May 2018 21:13:58 +0100

“We definitely did that one a lot quicker than this record. There’s more of a simplicity to ‘Music For All Occasions’, but this album is much more layered. Some of my favourite albums offer you new things to hear with each listen, even after years. There’s a lot of the orchestration on this album that is somewhat buried, or momentary, to offer that kind of effect. There are drum machines, and string sections, and voices all over the place that are only really audible on headphones. Jeez… some mix engineer, eh?”
Robocobra Quartet | Village Magazine

Really liking the new Robocobra Quartet album, Plays Hard To Get - though true to title, I think it’ll take a while to really start to unpack*. This is what I wrote about their previous album; this album isn’t quite as rock-heavy, or noise-jazzy

* I recently purchased a pair of wireless, noise-cancelling Sennheiser headphones and I’m really loving how involved I can get with music in them.

66.4% Yes!

Sun, 27 May 2018 20:53:36 +0100

66.4% Yes!

R E P E A L

Wed, 23 May 2018 21:53:05 +0100

“Life becomes resistance to power when power takes life as its object.” - Gilles Deleuze, Foucault (1986) (previously)

(Background: this Friday 25th, Ireland goes to the polls to vote on the repeal of the 8th amendment to our Constitution, which establishes the equal right to life of the mother and the unborn, and its replacement with an article that simply says “Provision may be made by law for the regulation of the termination of pregnancies”.)

I used to think there was some level on which I could have intellectual sympathy (if such a thing is possible) for people holding pro-life views: ‘choice’ or ‘life’ doesn’t admit of much compromise, and if you sincerely believed that abortion was the taking of a life you’d have to be pretty intransigent on the subject. However, the more I’ve heard pro-life voices talk about abortion, the more dismayed and angry I become at how they place their abstract idea of ‘life’ above and ahead of the lived experiences of women.

There was an article fairly early on in the referendum campaign by the veteran Irish feminist Nell McCafferty, which got a somewhat ambivalent reception, where she states: “No conversation about abortion is complete without celebration, in the context of contraception, of the magnificent plenitude of conception, pregnancy and motherhood.” The fact that ‘hard cases’ such as rape and fatal foetal abnormality (”life-limiting conditions” in the medical euphemism preferred by the No side) received such prominence in the campaign - not least as the justification for why a simple, relatively ‘liberal’ framework is necessary to accommodate the complexity of real life - meant there was something of a societal confrontation with difficult experiences.

The category ‘life’ encompasses much about potential, joy, loss, heartbreak, fear, confidence, regret, compassion, love, and care. To read about and understand even some of the complexity of how a woman feels about being pregnant in different circumstances, is to know it cannot be reduced down to pro-life logic. Nor can it necessarily be summed up in pro-choice terms, except that choice is the factor that makes the acknowledgement of such complexity possible and meaningful. Another article I read during the campaign, though not specifically related to it, was this from the Cut: ‘Mom Who Had An Abortion at 7 Months’. It’s far from an easy read, but it gets deep into how the ‘hard cases’ are lived. In the end, it’s hard for me to see the pro-life side as having any real emotional complexity: they’re not willing to see the personal impacts of their dogma, even as they trumpet their physical disgust at women and what they do with their bodies, with what they do with what their bodies do.

That is why I am voting Yes to Repeal.

“We are the Judases who left Ireland and can no longer vote” -...

Tue, 22 May 2018 20:22:30 +0100

“We are the Judases who left Ireland and can no longer vote” - Aisling Bea

nineteenfiftysix:Hoover - Father (Live @ Washington Peace...

Sun, 20 May 2018 21:04:10 +0100

nineteenfiftysix:

Hoover - Father (Live @ Washington Peace Center; Washington, DC - 1993)

Guillaume de Machaut, Messe de Nostre Dame: Kyrie - Diabolus in...

Mon, 14 May 2018 22:23:13 +0100

Guillaume de Machaut, Messe de Nostre Dame: Kyrie - Diabolus in Musica, Antoine Guerber (YouTube)

“Kyrie, eleison” (Lord, have mercy)
“…my interest is in emphasizing the potentiality and movement of exodus within power relations themselves, their reversal and the flight from them that is always possible, but never leads to an outside of power. This is the reason for stressing the ambivalent constitution of self-government of governmental modes of subjectivation. An exodus from neoliberal governmentality arises from the rejection of capitalizable self-government and the turn to a self-conduct that test new modes of living in disobedience. These kinds of rejections are not a deliverance from all previous neoliberal entanglements, but rather the beginning of engagements and struggles to no longer be governed and no longer govern oneself in this way, at this price.”
Isabell Lorey, State of Insecurity

I’ve been thinking more about how to connect spiritual music with political theory (except it’s not really ‘connection’, but polyphony, a kind of intellectual counterpoint… with apologies to those more versed in musical theory than I’ve become in several weeks of watching YouTube videos… mainly from Adam Neely).

This would probably work better if the line was ‘Lord, deliver us’, but meditating on the use of the word Kyrie is enough (cf. “kyriarchy”, a word that I always thought was redundant - how can you have arche without kyrie? - but I guess that’s the point). Given how intertwined Christianity is with the development of political power in Western civilisation - not just in the formal exercise of power, but its cultural understanding, the models of obedience and dedication (and of course, confession, as Foucault argues) - does it not make sense to also study the ars spiritualis as a means to understanding and illuminating the concept of power? And perhaps to convert that experience into a new kind of liberation?

Johann Sebastian Bach, Auf Christi Himmelfahrt allein, BWV 128:...

Sun, 13 May 2018 23:01:34 +0100

Johann Sebastian Bach, Auf Christi Himmelfahrt allein, BWV 128: Aria (Duetto): Sein Allmacht zu ergründen - John Eliot Gardiner, Monteverdi Choir.

Continuing my weekly Bach cantata listening, this time for Ascension (Himmelfahrt, lit. heaven-going) Sunday.

I particularly like the sound of this aria, and its poetic imagery:

Sein Allmacht zu ergründen,
Wird sich kein Mensche finden,
Mein Mund verstummt und schweigt.
Ich sehe durch die Sterne,
Dass er sich schon von ferne
Zur Rechten Gottes zeigt.
To fathom his omnipotence
no man will be able.
My mouth becomes dull and is silent.
I see through the stars
that already from this distance
he shows himself at God’s right hand.

I also finished reading Gardiner’s Music in the Castle of Heaven today, will hopefully write about it again soon.

Its critics are right that neoliberalism has multiple meanings and can be used in a way that is more...

Wed, 25 Apr 2018 20:57:34 +0100

Its critics are right that neoliberalism has multiple meanings and can be used in a way that is more pejorative than precise. But it also has an intellectual genealogy with real bearing on our time, making a careful reconstruction of its history essential to understanding our global economy.
How Neoliberalism Changed The World | The New Republic

Johann Sebastian Bach, Ich werdet weinen und heulen, BWV 103:...

Sun, 22 Apr 2018 22:13:29 +0100

Johann Sebastian Bach, Ich werdet weinen und heulen, BWV 103: Aria: Kein Arzt ist ausser dir zu finden - John Eliot Gardiner, Monteverdi Choir.

Starting a personal project where I listen to one of Bach’s cantatas on the Sunday on which it was originally meant to be performed, as determined by the Lutheran church calendar, and based around the Gospel reading for that week. Partly it’s a way to acquaint myself with more of his music in a regular - one might say disciplined - fashion, but it’s also because I want to encounter the work in some of its original context, with its reflective purpose. As part of that, I also read along with the text in parallel German-English translation here on this excellent website.

Last week I listened to BWV 85, Ich bin ein guter Hirt (I am a good shepherd), which got me thinking about pastoralism in the religious sense as well as the political inflection Foucault gives it, into the current discourse around biopolitics and precarity (as based on Isabell Lorey’s State of Insecurity: Government for the Precarious, which I’m reading currently). All of which I started writing up as a longer post on my other blog - continuing on from these musings on the “cybernetic pastorate” and metaphors for governance - but which I didn’t get to finish this week.

What strikes me the most listening to Bach in this manner is a powerful sense of cultural meaning - these were things and ideas that people really believed, or aspired to believe. Which is perhaps a trite thing to say from the perspective of a newly post-secular age (one in which evangelical Christianity is far from insignificant). I grew up attending weekly Anglican church services, including literal Sunday school, absorbing Bible stories like pretty much any other cultural reference - but the truly religious part of it never stuck. As much as I admired - and continue to do - the sentiments of the faith, I could not reconcile its literal creed with secular reason. But there remained an attachment to the Protestant culture - and a fascination with the concept of passionate belief.

Vinyl Sunday: Heinrich Schütz, Der Schwangesang (Opus Ultimum),...

Sun, 22 Apr 2018 20:01:53 +0100

Vinyl Sunday: Heinrich Schütz, Der Schwangesang (Opus Ultimum), The Hilliard Ensemble - London Baroque Orchestra, Knabenchor Hannover, Heinz Henning (EMI/Reflexe, 1985); Glenn Gould, Bach - The Well-Tempered Clavier; Book II (Preludes & Fugues 1-24), (CBS, 1972)

Heinrich Schütz, ‘Motet: Ego sum tui’, Sir Roger Norrington,...

Sun, 15 Apr 2018 20:47:07 +0100

Heinrich Schütz, ‘Motet: Ego sum tui’, Sir Roger Norrington, Heinrich Schütz Choir (1978)

Ego sum tui plaga doloris,
Tuae culpa occisionis,
Ego tuae mortis meritum,
Tuae vindictae flagitium.
Ego, ego tuae passionis livor,
Cruciatus tui labor.
I am the blow which brings thee pain,
I am at fault for that thou art murdered,
I am to blame for thy death,
And for the shame of thy punishment.
I, I am the bruise of thine agony,
The hardship of thy torment.

This version (from this album) sounds significantly punchier than that from the more recent recording of the full Cantiones Sacrae.

Vinyl Sunday: Schütz Choir of London, directed by Roger...

Sun, 15 Apr 2018 20:43:25 +0100

Vinyl Sunday: Schütz Choir of London, directed by Roger Norrington - Schütz: Motets Nos 4-8 (Quid Commisti), Monteverdi: Lagrime d’amante al sepolcro dell ‘amata (Argo/Decca, 1978)

Translation of the titles (from the first lines of each of the pieces): “What has thou done?”, and “Tears of a lover at the tomb of his beloved”

After starting listening to Schütz (and specifically, his Cantiones Sacrae) from reading John Eliot Gardiner on Bach, I jumped at the chance to buy this secondhand. Subsequently I learned that Norrington was one of the pioneers of historical performance practice - also known as “historically informed practice” (HIP) - starting with the Baroque era and moving forward. Whatever about its authenticity, the performance is certainly arresting.

The history of the music is also particularly interesting, bringing together Protestant and Catholic, Reformation and Counter-Reformation, German and Italian, Latin and vernacular. As the liner notes describe:

“Schütz was reared in a Calvinist atmosphere but, as a strong Lutheran, displayed a flexible and tolerant religious attitude which at times seemed to have brought him close to the fervour of contemporary Catholicism. Certainly it is mystical spirituality of an almost Jesuitical intensity which is dominant in his Cantiones Sacrae of 1625, published eight years after he had begun his fifty-five year period of service as Kapellmeister to the Elector of Saxony […] While the Latin title-page emphasises the international and interdenominational character of the collection, the dedication, to the rich Protestant (later Catholic) Hans Ulrich Prince von Eggenberg (1568-1634), acknowledges the presense of two types of music, the old contrapuntal polyphony and the new Italianate monodic homophony. On the evidence of this alone, many of the psalm-settings in the Cantiones seem to be older compositions in the Kantor tradition, but the core of the publication is undoubtedly the fourteen motets to Augustinian or pseudo-Augustinian texts, of which the Quid commisti cycle of five pieces is the most substantial.”

nineteenfiftysix:Torches To Rome - Mass For The Dead (Torches To...

Sun, 15 Apr 2018 20:01:32 +0100

nineteenfiftysix:

Torches To Rome - Mass For The Dead (Torches To Rome, 1999)