Empress Milf's Required Reading

One of the things I love about Maureen Dowd--among the as many that I find aggravating, is how, resistant to the conventional wisdom of anti-intellectualism in politics, she manages to not only rhapsodize at length in highly referential language, with the kind of academic and literary heft that could benefit greatly from footnotes (and lots of them) but that she does so with the same biting, highly sexualized air of the most offensive and effective Republicans. She's a devilish man-baiter, and a diligent disciplinarian of the meek Left. In a national moment when the term milf is thrown around capriciously--I take this quite seriously, she is Empress Milf. The very definition. That she can carry that dusty volume of Stendhal Al Gore dropped in a mud puddle back in 2000, or that her impressions of Obama's then-emergent victory over Clinton in the Democratic primary led her to an analogy to Strauss' opera, Der Rosenklavier, prompts frustration, envy, and utter nerdout infatuation.

I do wish she wasn't so complacent with the gulf between her own articulate command of the canons of the West and a greater sense of indifference, or even vilification from a Right-goaded America--then again writing for The New York Times she knows her audience. But who among us can't share that frustration. And even as it chafes, the notion that anyone among us in her choir needs to hear those sermons for the gospel, when all we really care about is the song, is both delusional and counterproductive.

That said, fellow-choir singers, I find her synopsis of our gripping financial crisis highly gratifying. Be a good, blushing pinko like me and buy today's New York Times:

Republicans, who have won so many elections painting Democrats as socialists and pinkos, have now done so much irresponsible deregulating and deficit spending that they have to avoid fiscal Armageddon by turning America into a socialist, pinko society with nationalized financial institutions and a financial czar accountable to no one and no law.

Yes, but it's not this year's shiver...

Gerhard Richter Confrontation 1 (German 1988)

I was pleased to see the lion, Edward Elgar, made news this morning. Amid a controversy no less. To me the late British composer has always been unjustly pinned under the mantle of his own most famous work, the ubiquitous graduation march, "Pomp and Circumstance". There's much to love in his work, and his patently British air. In a recent listen to his Cello Concerto I found myself thinking silver thoughts of thoughtful, recessively romantic actor, Trevor Howard in David Lean's 1945 masterpiece, Brief Encounter. That air seems to know neither sweat nor panic. Celia Johnson runs for the stairs, there's no shortness of breath, no hysterics. Only Rachmaninov.

The flap, since I brought it up, concerns vibrato, a resonant effect prized in today's performances--and, because of spatial and technological conditions of times past, a recent improvement to the presentation of musical performance. As it happened, a conductor named Roger Norrington, a self-appointed restorationist, decided for an upcoming performance of "Pomp and Circumstance" to (maybe!!!!) go back to the old non-vibrato sound that would've been of the element in Elgar's time. The idea was to hear the music as it originally sounded.

To be honest I didn't really have much of a strong opinion on the subject at first, though the argument itself fascinated me instantly. One commentor on The New York Times website decried Norrington's decision as "Taliban-like", while another exclaimed "YUCK" at the very thought of a cello subjected to such vulgar and antiquated treatment. I'm from the School of Put the Mono Version on Disc 1 and the Stereo Version on Disc 2 and You Decide. It's a rock music sensibility, and I have to say, it fosters a less combative discussion.

Or are classical music people always storming around just looking for a fight?

Many of the folks whose responses I read this afternoon came across as musicians themselves. That may be the problem right there; I absolutely never cared what they thought. For one thing the body resonance with their instruments grants them altogether different listening experiences. Not to say they don't own home stereos, or go out to the symphonies on their days off. But as lay people, we the listening set thrive on this kind of contrastive formulation. It is precisely how we come to understand a work of art. What's more it's common for a first impression to be a negative one, and still produce with further, varied exposures, a warm composite concept of the work. Hear the uneasy peace in Leonard Bernstein's introduction to his collaborative performance of Brahms' D Minor Concerto, with pianist, Glenn Gould. That he felt compelled to give prefatory notes at all revealed Bernstein's misgivings. However his subsequent performance fell in with Gould's concept of the Concerto; he bitched a little, then rolled up his sleeves and did his job.

The idea of ridiculing, or worse still occluding, a point of artistic juxtaposition (or at least any one not causing bodily harm or emotional trauma) sounds both foolishly short-sighted and even a little elitist. Added to which there is a pettiness in expecting the comfort of a fulfilled expectation from a musical experience. Many people who responded did so as though the fire of good sense itself had been snuffed out on Elgar's annual vintage.

What fails to resonate in Norrington's chilly Elgar--should he go that route, might yet be made up in performances of years to come, or in the warmth of an unexpected controversy, which requires we wait no longer.