Pages

Monday, February 11, 2013

Gopnick on Music


Thoughts about the Gopnick essay?  There is space at the bottom to share your thoughts.

Here is what I wrote in my email:
Thought you all would rock to this essay. The center of this attached article for me isn't really all about a new fancy technology for making stereo into 3-D sound, though that's very interesting.What's cool to me is that he's led to reflect on how we listen to music, how its meaning changes.He shows us what music can mean when it's in the foreground (old school), not the background (as my kids often listen to it, their earbuds hanging from their shoulders, distorting wildly as a thousand buzzing flies). He talks as a pianist, as someone who makes music, not just a distracted auditor.  In my book that gives him street cred. Plus, I own several fancy amplifiers and speakers, and sort of revere hi-fi, and so does he, I think, which makes him my stereo brother. Enjoy if you have time.

Here is the essay again:

3 comments:

Jerry Masters said...

David,

Choueiri’s comment about Bach’s Mass in B Minor (“the most beautiful thing ever engineered”) reminded me of similar unrestrained adoration for the music by another aesthete, William F. Buckley Jr.

In a review of a Bach biography, WFB reported the following comment about the work by its 17th century Swiss publisher Hans Georg Nägel: "greatest musical art work of all times and nations.” Even expecting that WFB would account for the expected hyperbole by a publisher, Buckley’s other writings would convince any reader that he’d agree with Choueiri.

For example, on March 23, 1985, Buckley used the occasion of celebrating Bach’s 300th birthday to remind his readers that Bach’s contemporaries overlooked his genius. Buckley wrote--reacting probably to then currently stalled negotiations between global east-west political adversaries--as follows: “And it reminds us, too, that there are among us men and women who will not drink from this most precious vessel of our cultural patrimony. To some he does not speak. If we understand that, then we understand, surely, what the problems are in Geneva, where grown men are actually talking to each other as if it were a challenge to formulate arrangements by which the world should desist from the temptation to destroy itself. If a human being exists who is unmoved by the Mass in B Minor it should not surprise that human beings exist who are not moved by democracy, or freedom, or peace. They have eyes, but they do not see, ears but they do not hear.”

Buckley would likely second Choueiri’s appreciation for Bach, and the scientist’s work to explain how eyes and ears work, even in humans who neither see nor hear. However, WFB would probably emphasize a less technical aspect of Bach’s genius. To close that birthday column, Buckley wrote that “Well, Bach tended to end his manuscripts with the initials ’S.D.G.' -- Soli Deo Gloria, To God alone the Glory.” Buckley appreciated technology with the best of aesthetes, but reckoned that some genius--Bach and Shakespeare, for instance--could not be explained by science. S.D.G.

Thanks for the post,
Jerry

Anonymous said...

Anotheг stand οut is tο identify business youг logo.
Add aԁԁitіοnаl embellishments like beads or ѕеquins fοr а reаlly unіque look.


mу wеb blog: affiliate marketing companies

Anonymous said...

But I'm guessing, due to the belief that optimizers is not some form of esoteric knowledge known only to industry professionals, but is Panda and Penguin-proof.

Feel free to visit my page: seo campaign