The wave form from about 20 minutes into Kontakte (this is the beginning of part 3), a gradual decrescendo and diminuendo lasting about 20-25 seconds and sounding a bit like running your fingernail over a comb's teeth:
I propose Kontakte as the new national anthem of the United States of America. It should be played before every ballgame while spectators stand for 35 minutes with their hands over their hearts. And if they don't, they're with the terrorists.
Conservatives (conservative Republicans and conservative Democrats) in Congress have fought universal health care tooth and nail. They wanted to sign away our rights because of the 3,000 people who died on 9-11; they mortgaged our future to kill over a million people for nothing; but they demand that not one dime of deficit spending go to end the deaths of the uninsured, more of whom die each month than died on 9-11.
Bernard Herrmann's score for the 1951 film The Day the Earth Stood Still is a remarkable example of an early sci-fi movie soundtrack. And though it may be true nothing like it had ever been heard before in popular cinema, it went on to become one of the most imitated scores in film history. Copied by countless film composers, it soon became impossible to listen to the score without hearing the cliche.
It seems to have had an impact on film music similar to John Williams' music for the initial Star Wars film. Most of the film music of the time had a similar feel--up until perhaps Stanley Kubrik's "temp track" in 2001: a space odyssey, which must have seemed so fresh, or Jerry Goldsmith's Planet of the Apes.
Bernard Herrmann
Herrmann didn't introduce electronic sounds into film music, but his work on this film seems to have made them iconic, leading to eventual overexposure. In fact, by the 1970s, electronic sounds were in a sense stigmatizing, to the point that George Lucas and Walter Murch, when they made THX 1138 in 1970, constrained themselves not to use a single electronic sound. Quite a limitation for a film that takes place in an underground city packed with technology!
Instrumentation
Herrmann employed tape techniques, electric organs, electronically amplified strings, the chilling sound of bare pianos, an immense percussion section including vibraphones and glockenspiels and, most significantly, the Theremin, a haunting electronic instrument that was already familiar to cinema-goers and destined to become the most identifiable cliche.
A Theremin, and the inventor demonstrating the instrument
If you've ever imitated a cheesy horror or sci fi flick's soundtrack by singing ooooo weee oooooo ooooo...well that's the Theremin, right there. The player never touches the instrument, but moves his hands in the air about antennae which control pitch and intensity. It's difficult to learn how to play the instrument well and there are few Theremin players in the world who can do a credible job (I once went to a Halloween "pops" concert where the Theremin player was basically incompetent, not that it mattered much, because just hearing the Theremin live was a treat for the audience).
Listen
Here are samples of music from the film, arranged into a suite and conducted by the composer, from the classic Decca recording of the early 70s. The orchestra is either the London Phil or the National Philharmonic Orchestra; unfortunately, the notes are unclear. This brief (11:36) suite is split into two parts on YouTube, 1 and 2. I've also given you links into the time indexes of each of the eight queues in the suite:
To see how Olivier Messiaen's idiom jibes with Herrmann's, try this brief redub of a the "Space Control" scene from The Day the Earth Stood Still played first with the original score and then overlain with a clip from Messiaen's somewhat more sophisticated Trois Petites Liturgies de la Presence Divine, written about 8 years before Herrmann composed his score. Messiaen's score doesn't use a Theremin. It uses the ondes Martenot, an electronic instrument which is similar in sound (in fact, the principles are virtually the same...I'll post about this soon). It wouldn't surprise me if Hermann was influenced by Messiaen's music. By the way, notice the much faster tempo in the original "Space Control" queue as it appears in the film vs. how Herrmann conducted it on the Decca recording above.
To be honest, I think it's fair to say that Herrmann, as a composer, was overrated, but his music is definitely memorable and effective as film music. He knew how to set a mood and provoke emotions. On my dark, lonely 5 am drive into the office this morning, listening to the "Gort" and "Robot" queues gave me chills.
I had a vivid and bizarre dream and immediately set it down, precisely as it happened, in every detail I can remember:
I am walking in downtown La Jolla, right on the corner of Torrey Pines and Ivanhoe, a place I've known all my life. Although it is broad daylight, I look southwest up into the cloudless sky and see every star as if this is the darkest night far away from the city lights. The moon is full, large and clear, and the sun is visible, but only as the brightest star, otherwise unremarkable. I have a feeling of foreboding.
As I gaze at the bizarre sky, I see another moon rise behind the full moon. As it rises, it expands like a balloon. I look around at people passing on the street. No one seems to care what's happening. Some people look up but only smile, as if this sort of thing happens every day. Morons!
I look back up and the object is now entirely visible and is eclipsing the moon. It keeps getting bigger and bigger--it must be coming toward us at fantastic velocity. I look around again; still no one seems at all concerned, but it doesn't matter what they think anyway, since there's nothing anyone can do.
So I just look on in horror as the strange moon keeps getting closer. It hits our atmosphere, and I see ripples spread across the sky like water ripples. Suddenly I realize it isn't a moon at all but a mist. The mist resolves into thousands of tiny dots. They get closer and closer. Soon they are about to hit. I shield my head with my arms and look down. I see one clatter on the street under me, and, soon, others fall harmlessly around, some even hitting me but doing no harm. I stoop to pick one up off the asphalt. It's a simple scroll of paper wrapped around a light hollow plastic tube.
With the roar of clattering continuing like a hail storm around me, I unwrap it and it says the following in big bold lettering.
Though, in reality, my children are of different ages and in different grades, in my dream, they have a single teacher. I am speaking with her and she tells me she has written their homework on the board. I search the classroom but don't find anything written on any of the boards. When I turn around to ask her what she meant, she is gone.
I wander out of the classroom and find the "school" is a gigantic sprawling complex of buildings, too big to be a children's school campus, but more like an office park or a mall. I wander in one of the buildings to find an old colleague (who will remain nameless for reasons that will become obvious) sitting forlorn and sad in a chair in a waiting room. Doctors in white coats are walking around.
I sit down and ask him why he looks so sad. He tells me he's just been informed that he is infected with a deadly blood born illness called infaminix. Now that I'm awake, I realize that infaminix is not an actual disease, but in my dream I nod gravely and my heart sinks, because I know there is no cure for infaminix and that he will be dead within a few months at the most.
He begs me to give him a second opinion. When I point out that I'm not a doctor, he tries to convince me that I have enough expertise to render an opinion. To placate him, I agree. I stroll into a door and find a lab. I put on latex gloves and insert a slide containing a sample of his blood under one of the lab's light microscopes and peer at it for a few moments. Right away, I see the crystaline cage structures that are characteristic of the last stages of infaminix infection. I dispose of the slides, strip off the gloves, and meet my friend again in the waiting room.
I inform him that, as far as I can tell, he is certainly infected with infaminix and that it is in the final stages. From what I know, he will be dead within weeks, maybe even hours.
"That's worse than what the doctors said!" he yells at me.
"Well, I'm not a doctor...whatever they told you is probably more correct."
He says, sarcastically, "MORE CORRECT? It's either correct or it isn't!" He storms off, with a murderous rage.
I shrug my shoulders. I'm sad for him, but what can I do? So I wander out of the waiting room and find myself in a large, grandly decorated interior, like a movie theater lobby. There's a pool table in one corner, and a teacher is sitting on the edge of the table talking to a student. I wander over to him to ask where the parking lot is...I seem to have gotten lost. I see he's chatting with the student about something in his hand, which I soon discover is a revolver. He removes the cylinder from the gun and I see bullets inserted in three of the chambers. With measured anger, I tell him that he shouldn't have firearms around children. Sheepishly, as if he has just realized the impropriety of what he's doing, he agrees with me and puts the gun away. I send the child out of the room.
Then I see that this man has a list. On the list are about twenty names, with mine as the last. He takes out a small pair of scissors and snips off my name. Then he reassembles the revolver and points it at me. I realize that the colleague has hired him to kill me for the crime of confirming his doctors' opinion. I gather that the other names on the list must be his doctors and perhaps some other people he has grudges against.
Like in a 1930s ganster film, I snatch the revolver from his hand and pistol whip him to the ground, unconscious. I turn to run and there is a Robert De Niro look-alike with another gun trained on me. This is a small, almost delicate silver gun with a pointlessly long barrel. I snatch it from his hands. I fire two rounds at him, and he dodges them like a character in The Matrix. Then click...click...click. No more bullets. I feel utterly stupid.
We stand and face each other. He smiles superciliously at me, with triumph, and indicates with his eyes that there is someone standing behind me. I don't react at first, but finally I turn around and see the colleague with the first man's gun in his hands. He is about twenty feet away and, realizing that it's my only chance, I rush him with all my strength, bullets whizzing past my ears, hoping only that I can somehow snatch the gun from him and win the upper hand again.
I realize that I am probably soon to be dead or at the very least seriously injured. With just a few more feet to reach him, I leap...
I'm always joking with my girls. They're pretty wise to me, but my humor can be "dry" (to put it charitably) and they don't always necessarily know when I'm serious and when I'm not. Sometimes when I tell them to do something they don't want to do they will ask, "Daddy are you JOKING??!" hoping that I am.
Last night, at Burger King, as Daddy ate his gross raw food meal while the girls enjoyed their mac n cheese kids' meals, fries, o-rings, and half a veggie burger each, I shoveled up a nice big gross spoonful of hummus and avocado and said, "I'll give one of you fifty bucks if you eat this." I expected them both to laugh and say no, but I was immediately worried, because Fiona was clearly thinking about it. Finally, she said, "No, I value my life more than money".
I said, "What?...What do you mean? Do you seriously think this will kill you?"
She looked at me, and, quite seriously, repeated, somewhat eerily, "I value my life more than money."
I was surprised to hear such a statement coming from her--I didn't quite understand why she was saying it.
We dropped the subject. Then, a few minutes later, Fiona said, "Okay, I want to do it."
"Want to do what?" I asked, hoping she didn't mean what I thought she meant.
"I want to eat that. That stuff."
I said, "Fiona, you will throw up. Seriously. Are you sure?"
She told me she was sure and that she wouldn't throw up. So, reluctantly, I loaded up another big, gross spoonful. She took an experimental "test taste" on the tip of the spoon and then...OMG she ate the whole thing. I watched her for what seemed like minutes slowly masticate this disgusting bolus of food, barely fit for adult palates. Her reaction was mild, without so much as a look of disgust. And when she finished she simply gave me an arch glare, as if to say "pay up, Chump."
I said, "Okay, okay, um, I don't have the fifty on me, so I'll pay you later?"
"Yeah. When?"
"Um, we'll go to the bank right after this, okay?" Rhiannon looked at Fiona in awe.
"Hmmm," Fiona said and looked skeptical. "How much do you have on you?"
I counted it out. "Thirty-five."
"Okay, give me that for now." Wow, she means business. She gets that from her Mom, I think. Later, I exchanged her $35 for two twenties and a ten.
"I said, Fiona! I am so amazed and proud of you. See, you tried unfamiliar food and it didn't kill you!"
Fiona seemed unimpressed by her breakthrough, and smugly content to have a nice stash of cash for her next book purchase.
Rhiannon said, plaintively, "are you amazed and proud of me?"
"Yes, Rhiannon, I am amazed and proud of you, too," which instantly made her smile.
The cash sits in Fiona's cash box on top of a book case waiting to learn its destiny.
To some, this is the height of culinary disgust, I suppose. To me, it's delectable: A quartered avocado in a generous puddle of hummus. Delicious. I had this for lunch today, with some raw cashews (which is something of an oxymoron, since it takes heat to shell cashews, but forgive me), some raw almonds, and grapes as a foil to the oiliness of the rest of the meal.
I'm trying eating raw foods exclusively. Why am I doing this? I honestly don't know. I'm not really trying to lose weight (although I could lose some pounds). I'm just, somehow, attracted to this diet right now. Maybe I feel instinctively I need it. Or maybe I'm just aesthetically attracted to the idea. Also, it fits me in that I'm already a vegetarian (it's possible to eat raw meats, but, aside from sushi, who'd want to? Steak tartar? Ew.). And I hate to cook. LOL. We'll see how it goes. I'm just doing it for a week, and, at this point, that's all I have the stomach for (NPI).
Breakfast
handful of rolled oats
a few dried apricots
a few whole raw almonds
a banana
3/4 cup skim milk
Lunch
Half cup of hummus
Half a cuke
Handful of baby carrots
A dozen raw almonds
8 raw macadamia nuts
A few dried apricots
A medium hothouse tomato
A banana
Dinner (this is getting monotonous)
Half cup of hummus
1/4 a cuke
Handful of baby carrots
A dozen raw almonds
8 raw macadamia nuts
A few dried apricots
A banana
A handful and a half of grapes
A peppermint hard candy (oh dear)
Behold, the atheist's nightmare: Kiwi Christian minister Ray Comfort.
Reverend Comfort's proof of an omnipotent creator's hand in "creation" has been the butt of some well-deserved internet ridicule for years now. Arguably, it does more harm than good to respond in any serious fashion to such a ridiculous argument. After all, even reasonable ideas have poor defenses and incompetent defenders. To pick the worst of them makes it seem like you're shooting fish in a barrel, while avoiding the best arguments. But, though this is a particularly ridiculous argument for "creation", in the following ways it is typical of many creationist arguments, even the "best", and so I think it's worth answering:
It has superficial persuasiveness, from the point of view of the naive, ignorant, and credulous.
It involves very little in the way of evidence and all the evidence is either wrong or yoked in the service of false premises.
It recklessly and brazenly ignores equally persuasive counter-evidence.
The evidence presented, to the extent that it's correct, actually argues against the speaker's thesis.
A hand of god is not required to explain the "creation".
The banana does seem well-designed for human consumption. Everything about a banana seems to aid its being eaten. Although, in this case, most of the evidence presented is correct (the banana easily fits in the human hand, is easy to peel, etc.), it is only relevant if you accept Comfort's false premise that the banana is a natural part of "creation". The banana is actually the product of thousands of years of selection pressure brought to bear upon a tiny seed-ridden blandly starchy fruit that became a staple of certain groups of prehistoric humans. Whatever its shape and snugness in the human hand, that fruit was anything but wonderfully convenient to eat, but it was also likely the result of selection pressure from animals who chose to eat it and thereby propagate its seeds. It undoubtedly became more palatable as a result, evolving from an ancestor that was even less amenable to easy consumption. Here is what a wild banana looks like, ancestor of the banana that was selected for human cultivation:
A jejune and seedy "nightmare", surely, for any hungry atheist, or theist for that matter. Quite naturally, ancient humans who grew and harvested early bananas favored bananas that were sweeter, contained more fruit and fewer seeds. This logical preference, based on human dietary needs and convenience, led to the modern cultivated banana that Comfort admires in his video, truly a "miracle" of human, not divine, creation.
Put another way, though the cultivation of bananas was a conscious effort made by intelligent animals, it is also an example of evolution. Gene frequency changed over time (which is evolution, by definition) guided by the preference of those that depended on the fruit for sustenance and therefore required certain phenotypic characteristics to dominate.
If a god wanted fruits to be easy to eat, he would have done many things differently. For example, if the banana lacks seeds (which, too, is a highly unnatural result of cultivation), why shouldn't apples lack them, or, better, pomegranates? Have you ever eaten a pomegranate? Even those who find them delicious must endure the tedious and endless task of separating seed, rind, and flesh.
Why must a pineapple be so prickly? Why shouldn't an orange's skin slough off as easily as a tangerine's? Why is the pit of a mango so large, fibrous, and hard to separate from its pulp? Why is the coconut so damn hard to open and eat? For that matter, why must fruit ripen and go bad? Why can't it be ready to eat always? Etc. The counter-arguments undermining Comfort's wonder at the ingenuity of "God" in service of the convenience of man are trivial and require but a few seconds' thought. The continued cultivation of these fruits by the hand of man will surely solve these and many other problems, at an ever more rapid pace as our technology develops. No hand of god is required.
So, how could Comfort miss such obvious flaws in his argument? Why would he go before the video cameras with such a lame "proof" of the existence of god? I don't know, but I can guess. Since, judging from the fluidity of his speech and relatively competent grammar, Comfort has a normal IQ, I consider there to be two possibilities.
First, Comfort is so psychologically wedded to the notion of a god that he simply cannot see the obvious errors he makes. I suppose such psychological blindness is possible. It's certainly not unknown to anyone who has any experience with the follies and stupidities of human nature. But, given what I know of human beings, I consider the second possibility even more likely: it is possible that Comfort is deliberately and cynically leveraging the gullibility of his audience.
If that is true, then the purpose of his video is not to "prove" anything by rational argument, which is what it is designed to look like. The purpose is to create a memory in the viewer of once having witnessed the destruction of evolution by an apparently elegant and inarguable proof. Once that false impression has been created, the details are forgotten and the viewer, never seeking any other explanations or arguments, is more likely to remain in the creationist "camp", to vote for school officials that oppose the teaching of evolution, to vote for candidates who think the earth is 6,000 years old, and to give to creationist causes.
That is not to say Comfort disbelieves in his creationist folderol, but only that he has no rational argument against evolution. He "knows" evolution is false, because it contradicts his certainty in the literal reading of Genesis I. In the absence of a rational response to a century or more of massive amounts of supporting evidence for evolution, he resorts to this rather transparent propaganda. Once you understand reverend Comfort, you understand much of the snake oil sold by creationists.
Chances are you've never heard this instrument. It's called a clavichord.
During the Baroque and Classical eras (roughly: 1600s through early 1800s), the clavichord was the most popular home keyboard instrument. Early instances of the instrument go back to the 14th century. It has at least three advantages over the harpsichord. It's very quiet, and therefore didn't disturb the rest of the household; it is small in scale, and therefore less expensive; and it has expressive capabilities (in dynamics and even vibrato[!]) that the harpsichord lacked. It's also, as you can hear in the above video, a very beautiful sounding instrument, easy on the ears, sweet and mellow.
Clavichords found home in the houses of amateur musicians and professionals alike. The clavichord didn't really die out as a common household instrument until the 19th century, by which time composers were writing music that, in range, difficulty, and dynamics, was more suited to the burgeoning piano than its lighter weight forebears. JS Bach's household had several, and it's likely that it was the instrument he and his family most often played at home. Most of Bach's non-organ keyboard music works very well on the instrument. Some doesn't. For example, you wouldn't want to play the Goldberg variations on a clavichord.
The clavichord strikes its strings rather than plucking them (as the harpsichord does). And unlike the piano, there is no escapement in its hammers, which on a clavichord are called tangents. The tangent is responsible both for sounding the string and dividing it so that it sounds at a certain pitch (actually, the pitch on the instrument is not so "certain", but that's another story). Once the key is released, the string is dampened (stopped from vibrating). Note that this is different from a piano's action, where an escapement immediately removes the hammer from the string once the hammer has struck. Because the tangent remains in contact with the string, this actually allows you to apply a modest amount of vibrato to a note by worrying the key back and forth slightly!
Clavichords are sold today. In fact, it's probably fair to say that more clavichords are sold today than have ever been sold in history. In general, they're quite expensive, though you can considerably reduce cost by buying them in kit form, of various degrees of completion.
This instrument
This is a rather poor picture of the actual instrument played in the above video. The man in the above video was kind enough to inform me that this clavichord was built by Dick Verwolf in the Netherlands in imitation of one built by Stein circa 1750 (the year of Bach's death). An original Stein survives at the Municipal Museum in The Hague. The keyboard ranges from the C (do) below middle C to the C three octaves above middle C. As of this writing, one can be purchased for US$4,140. A bargain. Who knows what it would cost to ship such a delicate instrument.
The music
This is the adagio from JS Bach's e minor keyboard toccata. It's in a fantasia style. That is to say, it's improvisatory...this is probably very much how Bach sounded as he sat before a clavichord in his own home and improvised. It is beautifully played here by Joris Weimar. I picked this video out of one or two dozen sampled because, though the video quality is low, it showed the best sounding instrument and the one that I think best demonstrates the clavichord's charms. Hope you enjoy it.
Well, if you're wondering what chromatic means in music, this is a pretty good illustration. Chromatic means, essentially, the degree to which music strays from a key, or a tonal center. And, before perhaps Wagner (certainly Schoenberg), music did not get more chromatic than this. Glenn Gould's final comment, that this is "Bach for people who do not like Bach", I guess, means Bach for the musical avant garde of Gould's time who tended toward more chromaticism in music.
This illustrates the many mannerisms that made Glenn Gould Glenn Gould. His unusual posture at the piano, conducting with his free hand, perverse phrasing (extremely staccato or detaché), bringing out melodies in the lower and inner voices that you weren't aware were there, etc. People tend to love him or hate him, for all these reasons. My opinion is that this is a memorable and valuable performance, and, thankfully, there's no need to choose between traditional/moderate approaches and Gould's more extreme idiosyncratic style.
The odd dude in glasses at the end is Bruno Monsaingeon, Gould's biographer and friend.
Imagine being so disgusted with yourself, with the wrongs you've done, that it is like a sickness, a putrefaction in your very bones ("...Als ein Eiter in Gebeinen..."). What do you do, how do you escape? You can't escape yourself. You have to find a way to forgiveness or live in suffering and self-loathing.
I doubt there's ever been a more touching expression of the torment of regret than this aria. The aria is obviously religious, but the universal message is that the very sincere self-loathing and sorrow expressed is the key to redemption, because it is only through honest repentance of a misdeed that we can ever be relied upon not to repeat it and to repair any damage we've done, if possible, which is the only ethical path to self-forgiveness. The agony is the way out of agony.
The equally talented and pretty soprano Magdalena Kozená imparts this message so touchingly here, without making it pathetic or maudlin. She makes you want to forgive her everything she's ever done, including that time she totaled your car and then had the gall to sleep with the tow truck driver who hauled your car to the junk yard!
Liebster Gott, erbarme dich, Laß mir Trost und Gnad ercheinen! Meine Sünden kränken mich Als ein Eiter in Gebeinen, Hilf mir, Jesu, Gottes Lamm, Ich versink im tiefen Schlamm!
Dearest God, Have mercy on me, Grant me solace and grace. My sins sicken me Like a pus in my bones! Help me, Jesus, Lamb of God, I am sinking deep in mire.
Women at the time Bach was writing his cantatas were not regularly allowed to sing in the church. This video hypothesizes a mother-copyist filling in for her malingering son by singing the aria Kommt, ihr angefochtnen Sünder from Bach's cantata BWV 30, Freue dich, erlöste Schar. The mother is played by the incredibly beautiful and gifted soprano Magdalena Kozena.
Kommt, ihr angefochtnen Sünder, Eilt und lauft ihr Adamskinder, Eur Heiland rut un schreit! Kommt, ihr verirrten Schafe, Stehet auf vom Sundenschlafe, Denn itzt ist die Gnadenzeit!
Come ye sinners sorely tempted, Haste from guilt to be exempted, Calls your Saviour, come apace. Adams children, wayward straying, Wake from sin, His call obeying; Now is come the Day of Grace.
This is the aria un pensiero nemico di pace from the Italian version of Handel's oratorio The Triumph of Time and Truth (Il Trionfo del Tempo e del Disinganno). It is Handel's 1757 English version of this oratorio that is the namesake of this blog.
It's hard to imagine anyone singing this better or with more virtuosity than Cecilia Bartoli. Note especially in the da capo when, at about 3'19", she sings a particularly viciously difficult run an octave higher than written. This is bravura with skill to spare. Jaw-dropping.
Un pensiero nemico di pace fece il Tempo volubile edace e con l'ali la falce gli diè. Nacque un altro leggiadro pensiero per negare si rigido impero on'il Tempo, più Tempo non è.
A thought inimical to peace created inconstant, voracious Time, Endowing him with both wings and a scythe. Then was born a second, happy thought, to parry such a harsh dominion, in which Time is no longer Time.
"How many beliefs could a perfect brain check for logical contradictions? The answer is surprising. even if a computer were as large as the known universe, built of components no larger than protons, with switching speeds as fast as the speed of light, all laboring in parallel from the moment of the big bang up to the present, it would still be fighting to add a 300th belief to the list." --From The End of Faith by Sam Harris (see also Labyrinths of Reason: Paradox, Puzzles, and the Frailty of Knowledge by William Poundstone, which Harris cites for this idea)
Speaking of contradictions, the clue to this unintuitive puzzle may be that Harris is comparing apples and oranges. He begins with "a perfect brain" and continues with "a computer...as large as the known universe". It could be that one of the ways a brain is distinct from a computer is that a brain is capable of reconciling competing beliefs and resolving contradictions in a way that a computer is too literal to manage.
I'm about (and so's this blog) being a dad, science, literature, music, history, philosophy, and politics. The purpose of this blog is to highlight and save important articles and concepts, and to keep a record of some of my thoughts--which has become difficult on Facebook since they started restricting the character count.
