Foreign Dispatches

What a Great Song Sounds Like

Not Katy Perry, Lady Gaga or Kesha warbling on some auto-tuned rubbish, but like this.

And to think that this is just one of many incredible passages in Bach's St. Matthew Passion! To anyone interested in listening to an even better performance - not just of "Erbarme Dich" but of the whole work - I highly recommend the recording by the Collegium Vocale Gente, conducted by Philippe Herreweghe.

I share completely Thomas Edison's conviction that religion is bunk, but if there were anything with the power to sway me towards religious belief, it would be the existence of sublime works such as this passion or Monteverdi's "Vespers of 1610"; these are compositions of whose authors, one feels justified in quoting the famous passage from Hamlet:

What a piece of work is man. How noble in reason, how infinite in faculties. In form and moving, how express and admirable. In action how like an angel. In apprehension, how like a god.

Indeed, sometimes I find myself wondering how it can be that the greatest composers, painters, writers and scientists, who leave behind works able to astonish, surprise and delight long after their creators are dead, and the dim-witted hordes who love "Twilight", proudly hang Thomas Kinkade paintings on their walls, think Lady Gaga is a rebel and a genius, and follow the fabricated adventures of the Kardashians with rapt attention, can really be said to belong to the same species ...

Illiberal Democracy, Hungarian Style

If proof were needed about the veracity of my assertion that there is a lot more to Westminster-style liberal democracy than the mere holding of elections on a regular basis, recent events in Hungary seem to be conspiring to establish my argument for me.

How to Listen to Music

Having criticized Classic FM earlier in the day for presenting music from the classical tradition in a manner least likely to encourage listeners to gain a deeper appreciation, let me take the time to actually do something constructive along just such lines: if you want an accessible and down-to-earth introduction to what classical music is really all about, I highly recommend this set of video lectures by Yale's Professor Craig Wright. If you want to understand why Bach's Well-Tempered Clavier is held in such high esteem, what Beethoven is really doing in the opening movement of his 5th symphony, how exactly Debussy paved the way for horror movie music (aka atonalism), or why the "Star Wars" and "Superman" themes owe a great debt to Richard Wagner, here's your chance to learn all of this and more. Once one learns how to listen actively, instead of just keeping an ear out for an easily hummable tune and a catchy beat, the world of classical music becomes a lot more comprehensible and inviting.

I will go further: not only do I believe that watching Wright's lectures will give one a deeper understanding of what exactly is going on at a level beyond just "gut" feeling, I'm convinced that the experience will deepen one's understanding of all musical forms, period, even of the most formulaic pop drivel: if nothing else, a little musical knowledge will help one start to appreciate precisely why certain musicians aren't worth taking seriously, media hype notwithstanding ...

What's Wrong with Classic FM

Seeing as we are currently in what is considered - in the nominally "Christian" parts of the world at least - a festive season, I think it most appropriate to share with my readers this deliciously detailed tear-down of Classic FM, Britain's most popular classical radio channel.

I am not opposed in principle to efforts at broadening the audience for classical music, nor do I have any ideological objections to attempting to mix commerce with art - my views run, if anything, in the contrary direction - but there are good and bad ways of striving towards even the most positive ends, and reducing a musical tradition with so much sophistication, and so many centuries of tradition behind it, to only the most easily memorized excerpts of a select few "greatest hits" from the same limited selection of usual suspects*, actually does a tremendous disservice to the cause Classic FM is supposedly championing.

Classical music is not pop, and cannot be reduced to a few minutes of catchy tunes sandwiched in between adverts and smarmy banter. Unless audiences are taught to appreciate the importance of musical structure and development, they will never come to understand just why it is that the classical tradition should be worth holding in high regard, other than as just another means of signaling one's social status. To truly appreciate the intellectual and artistic ingenuity of the likes of even such well-known names as Bach and Beethoven, one needs to go beyond the familar strains of "Sheep May Safely Graze" and "Für Elise" to explore works like the Goldberg Variations and the Große Fuge, and that will never happen if one is constantly indulged in the notion that the essence of any musical work can be grasped in just a few minutes.

*Bach, Beethoven, Händel, Mozart, Tchaikovsky and Wagner, with a side order of Vivaldi's "Four Seasons" and Pachelbel's Canon.

Too Much Democracy Too Soon

It was only a few months that I expounded on the dangers of assuming that where democracy is concerned, "more" necessarily means "better." What I hadn't foreseen at the time was that events in the Middle East would so thoroughly vindicate my skepticism about the supposedly inerrant wisdom of "the people", especially when all segments of a society are given a voice in equal proportion to their numbers, however ignorant, illiterate and subservient to religious superstition each such voter may be.

Man the Runner, turned Couch Potato

A few months ago, I had the chance to view the BBC documentary series "Human Planet". As stunning as the cinematography for the series was, what made the most lasting impression on me was the sheer amount of physical exertion required to eke out a living by people residing in pre-agricultural societies: hunter-gatherers routinely engage in sustained bouts of walking and running that would put the most fervent joggers in the Western world to shame, and it isn't as if they consider themselves to be doing anything out of the ordinary in the process.