Pollini's Bach

Prelude & Fugue in B Minor, BWV 869

Art and Science

Two articles for your enjoyment from Science Daily.

First, we all knew this was coming - I'm surprised it's taking so long actually:
ScienceDaily: Computer Scientist Plans Bach Over Broadband

And, the following...

Source:
Rutgers, the State University of New Jersey
Date:
July 20, 2007

Art And Music For The Birds
Science Daily — Nature is a valued source of inspiration for artists. But what have artists offered the natural world? Would a bird even like rock and roll?

Conceptual sculptor Elizabeth Demaray, an assistant professor of fine arts at Rutgers University—Camden, is testing the musical tastes of our fine feathered friends with an exhibition featuring four 10-foot red perches offering what are considered to be the best in classical, rock, country, and jazz for local birds.

Demaray’s concept of art for the birds hatched from a conversation with co-creator John Walsh, a video artist, who sent Demaray sounds made by the catbird, an avid appreciator of human noise. The Rutgers-Camden scholar makes art that interacts with natural surroundings –- imagine spotting a tree donning a sweater or finding a rock upholstered as a baseball. She decided to find out if rockin’ robins do exist.

“Humans have an impact on other animals around us. Catbirds and mockingbirds listen to noise we make, but we don’t know if they might respond to human sound,” says Demaray. While there have been no scientific studies on birds’ response to human music, anecdotal evidence suggests that certain species of bird listen to and replicate human song.

“My interest with the piece was to get us to think about the impact we have on the other species around us,” she adds.

The bird listening stations are part of the exhibition “Inside/Outside: Habitat” on view at the Abington Arts Center’s Sculpture Park in Jenkintown, Pa., through Wednesday, Nov. 21. Visitors of the interactive exhibit receive a schedule of songs emitting from each station, which will repeat approximately five songs each.

Birds can tune in to classics like Vivaldi’s “Concert in D Major,” Miles Davis’s “Blue and Green,” and Led Zepplin’s “Kasmir.” They may also hear songs about the winged life like “Marching Jaybird” by Etta Baker, “Birds” by Neil Young, and “I’m a Cuckoo” by Belle and Sebastian.
“If we’re going to give birds music, we might as well give them what we consider to be our masterpieces. But the only gauge humans have on what’s good music is our own interest,” says the Rutgers-Camden artist. “Of course, we may find that birds have their own criteria for assessing our music. So, to see it they might prefer Miles Davis to the Dixie Chicks, you should come see for yourself.”

Note: This story has been adapted from a news release issued by Rutgers, the State University of New Jersey.

75th Anniversary Bach Festival, April 20-22, 2007

The Baldwin-Wallace College Conservatory Riemenschneider Bach Festival gave it's 75th Anniversary performance last weekend at Severance Hall in Cleveland, Ohio. Conductor Dwight Oltman led the combined Baldwin-Wallace and Bethlehem chorus in a resounding redition of the B Minor Mass. Read more about the Bach Institute that has put on this outstanding festival for 75 years. There is another chance to hear the landmark performance at the 100th Anniversary of the Bethlehem Bach Festival

In all truthiness...

...it wasn't about the truth. It was about the money.

Oprah's self-ablution was a product of a bottleneck of market forces, not any high-minded search for the truth, as she claimed in her thesis:

When she dismissed the controversy on Larry King, she was in concert with her millions of viewers who were so affected by Frey's work that they could see the forest for the trees, but after she made that dismissal, she realized that an even larger number of her viewers could not, and they reminded her of the true meaning of truth.

So, ever the capitalist, she changed her tack, and in an instant, her truth changed. She no longer felt that the book's message transcended its inaccuracies, and poor Frey had to submit to an hour's worth of scolding that served but one purpose: to restore the lustre of Oprah's brand. Had her bottom line not been threatened, there's precious little chance that her truth would've ever waivered from her initial support of Frey.

By the end of the grotesquerie, there was a vigorous agreement among all present (except the author and the rightly stunned publisher) that books should come with a sort of Truthiness Meter built in, like a turkey thermometer, letting everyone know just how much truth is exactly in the book that they're buying. But the truth is that there is no truth, a point that Nan Talese made, only to have it vacuumed up by the black hole of Oprah's withering indignation.



Whoever it is that decides to tell a story, no matter how earnestly they strive to tell it truthily, changes the story. Bach realized this at the end of his life as a series of pieces of pure music. What point is there in fixing an instrumentation for pure counterpoint? There is too much material for the ear to digest. The sloppy truth of a six part fugue is hardly clarified by a fixed orchestration. So, in honor of James Frey who took one on the chin today for no good reason, here's Webern's version of the sixer ricercar from the Musical Offering. Hold on, James.