Thursday, March 25, 2009

One of Saturday's four neutralized Oakland policemen, John Hege (LINK), was the younger brother of choral composer / Yale scholar Anne Hege, who conducted "Our Jungle Holy Land" in January of 2004. Juniper Hills' heart goes out to Anne and family. Arnold Schwarzenegger said in a sworn statement issued on Saturday that flags at the capitol would be flown half-staff.

The Antelope Valley Fair Board has tipped its hat to the establishment of a carpetbagger Miss Juniper Hills beauty pageant: PDF, PDF, and PDF.

Dr. Juniper Hill's 2005 dissertation, "From Ancient to Avant-Garde to Global: Creative Processes and Institutionalization in Finnish Contemporary Folk Music," approved by Professor Timothy Rice, UCLA, is enjoying a spate of e-publication: PDF.

Aims of This Dissertation

This dissertation provides an ethnographic exploration into the processes through which contemporary folk music is created, focusing specifically on how the ideology, pedagogy, teaching methods, and institutional setting of the Sibelius Academy Folk Music Department have shaped contemporary folk music and its performance practices. In addition to documenting contemporary folk music emerging from the Siblius Academy in 2002-2004, and providing the necessary historical, contextual, and musical background for understanding it, I hope to illuminate five larger socio-musical processes:

1. how the institutionalization of a previously orally and informally transmitted folk music into a Western-conservatory-style tertiary-level formal educational institution has transformed the perceptions, performance practices, creative processes, social position, and sound of folk music;

2. how authenticity, historical continuity, and legitimacy are created through the identification and enactment of ideals, specifically an ideal process of creating music and an embodiment of qualities and skills of an ideal folk musician (in contrast to ideal sounds, styles, or contexts);

3. how the authority of an individual to be creative and innovative with a musical tradition is determined, constructed, and earned;

4. how ideology and pedagogy can encourage, limit, and shape individuals' creativity, and how specific teaching methods have changed the way people create and express themselves through music; and

5. how the performance of music other than one's "own" reifies idealized relationships with others (especially with other cultures) and reveals the
multilayered, often transnational, identities that these relationships engender. A review of the relevant theoretical literature and discussion of the implications of Finnish contemporary folk music on these issues appear in Chapter 3 "Theoretical Implications."

~

Excerpt from Chapter 3

Along with the emphasis on individualism comes a valorization of individual creativity and a belief that music has progressed, and will continue to progress, through the contributions and innovations of individuals. In Western art music, the individuals in question are genius-composers such as Bach, Beethoven, Mozart, Schoenberg, Stockhausen, and Cage. Jonathan Stock has noted the adoption of these progressoriented and composer-glorifying values and beliefs in both Chinese and Balinese conservatories (Stock 1986 and 2004, respectively). The same inherent belief in and ambition for artistic progress and development through individual creativity is present in the Finnish Folk Music Department; however, because they believe that each musician should be able to fill all musical roles and that folk music should be created anew during the moment of performance, each musician, and every single student, not only has the potential and the right, but is expected and required, to develop her or his own artistic expression and creative contribution. They have both embraced the Western art music values of individualism and progress, and turned the hierarchical, authoritative meritocracy on its head. Composing and creative interpretation are not the domain of only prodigy composers and socio-musically powerful artist-teachers (as Kingsbury describes [1988:87-94]) but rather are the right of everyone regardless of skill, age, training, or talent. The rebellion against the hierarchical Western art music socio-cultural system is intentional; leading Finnish folk music pedagogues, such as Heikki Laitinen and Hannu Saha, have developed teaching methodologies to combat what they see as a stifling of creativity in Finland's Western music education system. Their ideology and ambitions, which have been realized in the Folk Music Department, have had a powerful impact on amateur folk music practices across Finland wherever conservatory influence has spread.

Moreover, the air is thin in Nepal.

Апокалипсис, швейцарское качество

Вышел новый роман Кристиана Крахта

Новый роман Кристиана Крахта «Я буду здесь, на солнце и в тени» издан в «АСТ». Автора критики бегло именуют  то «швейцарским Бретом Истоном Эллисом», то «швейцарским Уэльбеком». Прежние книги Крахта («Faserland», «1979», «Метан») в России издавал Ad Marginem — воинствующий диноличник эпохи коммерческих слияний, чуть не последний из могикан паблишингс лица необщим выраженьем».

По выражению лицо это напоминает резиновую маску для Хэллоуина. Но — высоколобую, яйцеголовую. Глаза маски скептически сощурены. Иногда в них  красным индикатором мигает что-то этакое… Скажем, знание максимы  Бегбедера: «В обществе потребления отлично продается критика общества  потребления».

Ну и лицо «обобщенного персонажа» Крахта в том же роде, хоть есть нюансы. В новой книге, например, — это лицо темнокожее. И увенчано буденовкой.

Биография Кристиана Крахта не так уж необычна для европейца 1960-х годов рождения. Но у русского читателя еще  способна вызвать белую зависть. Корреспондент «Шпигеля» в Южной Азии,  издатель германского интеллектуального журнала (в  выходных данных адресом редакции значился Катманду), он успел также пожить в Сомали, Северной Корее,  Танзании, Парагвае, Аргентине, взойти на Килиманджаро. «Белый мир» старой цивилизации, как тающий айсберг в  тропических морях (точней было бы  сказать — в морях «печальных  тропиков», по Леви-Строссу), — его сквозная тема. Что ж, и это модно в  нашем старом белом мире. И этот  апокалипсис лет двадцать как идет на ура.

Но свой пленэр и свою тему Крахт знает основательно: наблюдал годами.

Вслед за романом «1979» о компании западных юношей и девиц в Тегеране времен исламской революции (лаконичное имя книги не зря кивает на Оруэлла), вслед за отвязной и крайне угрюмой фантастикой недавнего псевдонаучного «Метана» о войне цивилизаций вокруг газовой трубы — он написал довольно веселую, азартно- пародийную антиутопию. (Или просто российскую публику этими ужасами уже не пронять?)

Исходник: вследствие гибели Российской империи от флюидов Тунгусского метеорита тт. Ленин и Троцкий были вынуждены вернуться в Швейцарию и делать революцию там. Вот уже сто лет на той далекой, на Гражданской, кипят бои с буржуазной Германией и Англией. Конница, бронепоезда, партизанские рейды в Альпах, суровая комиссарская любовь, расстрел маршала фон Колча на льду, над прорубью, погоны, вырезанные на плечах, запрещенная Библия, жилистые швейцарские старухи, весь век прожившие впроголодь, по карточкам, — все налицо. (Даже Николай Рерих пишет пейзажи Шамбалы в специально оборудованном бункере!) И совсем как в жизни, в Шенгенскую диктатуру пролетариата вполз тлетворный буржуазный дух. В моде ауротерапия — внутривенные инъекции солей золота. Они бодрят, но передозировка ведет к смерти.

Герой — из африканских детей, великодушно воспитанных Европой. Специально для войны. («Еврей, женщина и чернокожий — это и есть Швейцария, это и есть новый мир!» — бурчит кто-то в романе.) И только дезертирство в родной Мозамбик спасет его.

Антиутопия-стрелялка динамична.  Написана с яркой иронией — но ее соц- арт не вульгарен. Что до  предупреждений изможденному ауротерапией старому миру… ну-ну.

Давным-давно, когда до Москвы  добирались двадцать переводных романов в год, в каждом из них  открывались бездны. Теперь, когда их выходит две сотни в месяц… то ли  бездны измельчали, то ли смыслы  примелькались. То ли читатель уже не  может отпраздновать столько текстов: отравлен, как солями золота. Тома  летят в издательском заппинге, сливаясь в пресс-релизы и топ-листы…  листы и релизы… лы-ы… ры-ы…

И все же хроники швейцарской революции Крахта честно заработают  свою жердочку в вольерах рейтингов. Многим «книгам недели» не в обиду будет сказано.

Monday, December 1, 2008

Catherine Winkworth

Last week's visit to Ölbergkirche in Neukölln (where, circa the September 11 incident, an orchestral ensemble called the Joyful Avant Garde—Die fröhliche Wissenschaft—made a live recording on which its album Friedrich Nietzsche for Contemporaries would be based: LINK) proved a rewarding surprise, musically and spiritually. Maestro Nick Currie and his fabled Hisae (LINK), fingering a hymnal, were amongst those rendering a Messiaenized "Morgenglanz der Ewigkeit" ("Dayspring of Eternity," translated by Catherine Winkworth, clickable above, in 1855 and 1863).

Ölbergkirche's website promises that Principal Organist Anon sometimes, during hymn and/or tithing accompaniments, segues into Satie or the lulling ring or soft malleting of a gong, for example, if so moved. On the day at hand, launching into the first of four hymns to be sung by all below, he had obviously determined, from up in his loft, that harmonies bathed in the tongue of ethereal dissonance were in order. What mystifies in the harmonic language of Messiaen is as ineffible as what deeply moves in that of Bach (MP3); each was Principal Organist at a significant church of his day, Bach at Leipzig's Thomaskirche, Messiaen at Paris' Trinity Cathedral until he crossed the Great Divide in the early 1990s. From the Joyful Avant Garde's webpage:

Even though Friedrich Nietzsche has been dead for more than a century, his philosophy continues to exert enormous influence on the aesthetics of music and language. Nietzsche's assessment of music as the most significant art form grew out of his critique of language. Language implies a truth which never coincides with reality. For Nietzsche, the essentially open and associative nature of music provided a way of freeing language from its traditional structures.

"Joyful Avant Garde" picks up from this modern linguistic critique by confronting different levels of language with contemporary music. Speaker and double bassist Matthias Bauer reads aphorisms and extracts from the works of Friedrich Nietzsche. Vocal virtuoso Alex Nowitz reveals the depths of the text using collage techniques, fragmentation and electronic alienation effects. Mezzo-soprano Ute Döring draws on the spirit of the 20th Century to impart the lyrically ambiguous nature of song. The percussion-free ensemble consists otherwise of two string and two wind instruments. Pre-recorded elements are introduced into some of the pieces, blending with the live atmosphere of the concert.

lt is impossible to connect Nietzsche's lifelong fascination with music exclusively to the music of his own time. His early enthusiasm for the music of Richard Wagner was followed by love of a lightness of touch which he found in "the music of the South," and the music of the "Joyful Avant Garde" can also not be defined by a single style.

 

Thomas Böhm-Christl uses elements of popular music, which he alienates by setting them in unexpected surroundings, while Joachim Gies introduces a creative freedom into contemporary chamber music. The styles range from atonal chamber music to interactive composition, improvisation to sound collages. With an ironic "wink of the ear," the "Joyful Avant Garde" breaks through the usual barriers between genres with a mockery of fairground music (Pious Beppa) juxtaposed with formal chamber music (Joke, Cunning, and Revenge), elements of jazz (The Penultimate Avant Garde) contrasting with musical quotes from the late European Romantics (The Meaning of Metre), and free structures coexisting with careful compositional planning.

"Joyful Avant Garde" reveals the subtle psychological and ironic side to Nietzsche. This most musical of 19th Century philosophers sets everything in motion, standing at the rim of the volcano, laughing.

The experience brought to mind the Metropolitan Church of Art of Jesus the Conductor, of which Satie was Founder and Pope (and, one guesses, Principal Organist): LINK. Both Messiaen and Satie—and maybe Bach, and our own Anon up in the loft—experienced a mild form of synaesthesia. After service at Ölbergkirche, and following an extensive ceremony at the Jan Lindenberg homestead, where seven distinctive teas were served and savored, some of them sweet, some almost piercingly bitter or astringent, others proteinous-tasting or striking the tongue as an etheric miso, David's non-Japanese stomach grumbled a trifle, and he apologized. Nick replied that, though he hadn't heard a grumble, a very fleeting spate of Sihk pastels had been noticed glowering across the wall above the bureau.

Wednesday, November 19, 2008

Although two biographies of Charles Sobhraj exist, neither remains in print and both are written in an overly eager yet limp-with-velleity true crime style popular in the ‘70s and early ‘80s. In the mansion called literature I would have the eaves deep and the walls dark, I would push back into the shadows the things that come forward too clearly, I would strip away the useless decoration.—Jun'ichirō Tanizaki, In Praise of Shadows Sobhraj has seen something: LINK and LINK.

Sunday, October 26, 2008

Christian Kracht with familiar in Kagbeni (Photo 2008 Frauke Finsterwalder)

An uncertain cannonball (PDF, VID), Christian Kracht's Ich werde hier sein im Sonnenschein und im Schatten ("I'll be here in sunshine and in shadow") is not only reminiscent of Ernst Jünger, it is the most beautiful prose to appear this century in the German tongue: LINK. Momus' "Ashes to Ashes": VID.

 

Tuesday, July 1, 2008

The desert is the wellspring of revelation, genetically and physiologically alien, sensorily austere, aesthetically abstract, historically inimical. Its forms are boldly suggestive. The mind is beset by light and space, the kinesthetic novelty of aridity, high temperature, and wind. The desert sky is encircling, majestic, with nary a trace of probable smile. In other habitats, the rim of sky above the horizon may be broken or obscured; here, together with the overhead portion, it is infinitely vaster than that of rolling countryside or forest lands. In an unobstructed sky the clouds appear larger, sometimes grandly reflecting Earth's curvature on their concave underbellies. From the perspective of a solitary gaping cloud, the angularity of desert landforms surely imparts a nucleopatriphobic architecture.

To the desert go the prophets and hermits; through deserts roam pilgrims and exiles, billionaires and geniuses. Here the leaders of all great religions have sought the spiritual pulse of retreat—not to escape, rather to confirm life in its purest essence.

—Peter Schlepf, Man on Land: The Aesthetics of Nature

On the horizon viewed from Schloss Neuhardenberg's discreet watchtower looms exemplary prequiem subject Ernst Jünger: LINK.

Thursday, June 12, 2008

Lake Zürich

I have received much love from my parents. Through my work I show my gratefulness to them. —Dr. Sheela Birnstiel In Spring 2008, awarded Switzerland's Eiger Stiftung scholarship (LINK), David Woodard served as Writer in Residence at Schloss Wiesenburg, a 12th Century castle nestled in the frosty GDR-tinged hinterlands between Bach's Leipzig and Eno's Berlin: LINK. His Summer 2008 exhibition at Cabaret Voltaire, Zürich, includes elegant and heartfelt contributions from Ma Anand Sheela and Christian Kracht: LINK. A report on the post-mortem thought processes of Ernst Jünger (PDF) appears in Bunter Staub. Ernst Jünger im Gegenlicht (2008, Matthes & Seitz), a handsome anthology edited by Alexander Pschera and also featuring an essay by bigwig philologist Eckhart Nickel, published on the occasion of the 10th anniversary of Jünger's passing: LINK. Max Planck neuroscientist Jonas Obleser questions Woodard about Jünger, and includes a brief excerpt, on his smashing WallOfTime.Net website (LINK)—which borrows its name from Jünger's 1959 work of speculative futurism, At the Wall of Time. In the luxurious ashen confines of Solution 9: The Great Pyramid (2008, Sternberg Press) is a candid report on the conception and composition of "A Cornerstone Cringle": LINK.

 

Tuesday, February 12, 2008

David Woodard with bigwig Swiss graphic designer Chris Eggli and bigwig German graphic designer Tom Ising
(Photo Christian Kracht)