Continuing my irregular series on convention Codes of Conduct, here’s one on the North American Science Fiction Convention, coming up this month in Buffalo. Compared to some others, the problems of the NASFiC code of conduct are minor. There’s nothing like “Don’t say anything negative about anybody” or “Don’t offend anybody.”
BUFFALO in all caps means the convention, not the city.
(more…)
In July, I’ll accompany the 1920 German silent film The Golem twice. On Tuesday, July 16, I’ll livestream it with keyboard accompaniment on YouTube at 8 PM Eastern Time. On Friday, July 26, I’ll accompany it live at the Plaistow Public Library at 1 PM. Watch both if you like; you’ll hear it accompanied two different ways. Please “like” the YouTube item if you’re inclined to give it a boost; that will make it more discoverable.
This is the third Golem movie that Paul Wegener made and the only one that survives. Its full title is Der Golem: Wie er in die Welt kam (The Golem: How he came into the world). Unlike the others, it deals directly with the legend of Rabbi Löw’s creation of a golem to protect the Jewish people.
(more…)
Louis Spohr wrote four clarinet concertos as a result of his professional acquaintance with clarinetist Johann Simon Hermstedt. The first shows that Spohr’s often conservative approach to composition didn’t keep him from writing a concerto with some serious surprises. It’s a difficult work, especially for the clarinet of his time, which had fewer keys than the modern instrument.
The difficulty is partly due to Spohr’s unfamiliarity with what is easy and what is harder on a clarinet. His preface to the printed music reveals that this concerto led directly to improvements in the instrument’s design:
(more…)
Not being an active gamer, I hadn’t heard about the CRIT awards before today and don’t know if they’re of any importance or just a fringe group of nuts. But they’re in the periphery of SF fandom, and I’ve made a specialty of analyzing Codes of Conduct. CRIT has the worst one I’ve seen yet.
They’re described as “an awards group dedicated to recognizing talented creators in the Tabletop Gaming space.” They were going to have an award ceremony at GenCon, a major gaming convention. They have pulled out as a result of widespread outrage at their code of conduct.
(more…)
In 1806 Louis Spohr married Dorette Scheidler, an excellent harpist. The two of them often performed together, with Louis on violin. Their marriage led to his developing a thorough understanding of the concert harp. Mozart’s concerto for flute and harp is delightful, but he treats the harp like a naked piano. Many other composers have used the harp mostly to add its shimmering color to the orchestra. Spohr makes free use of scales, chords, and arpeggios, while avoiding clichéd usages of the instrument. Spohr’s works for harp, alone or with a few other parts, are among the most important for the instrument. They include five sonatas for violin and harp, listed in the order of composition which Clive Brown’s biography gives:
They were all relatively early works, but he kept the last three just for performance with Dorette for years before publishing them, resulting in their high opus numbers.
(more…)
In the nineteenth century, minstrel shows were a popular form of entertainment in the US. Their focus was racial caricature. The songs were in a fake form of black dialect, and many of them trivialized bad things that happened to black people. Some of them have survived in a cleaned-up form. “Dixie,” the unofficial anthem of the South, was originally “Dixie’s Land,” about a woman who “died for a man that broke her heart,” treating it as a bit of fun. (“But if you want to drive away sorrow, / Come and hear this song tomorrow!”) Other songs were still worse.
Minstrel shows featured performers in blackface. This didn’t mean simply black makeup; it was an intentional caricature, with dark makeup on the face and white lips. A well-known example is Al Jolson in the 1927 film The Jazz Singer. Even black performers were sometimes expected to wear blackface.
(more…)
Sonata-like pieces for miscellaneous small ensembles were popular in the Classical and early Romantic periods. They might be called serenades, divertimenti, or cassations. Sometimes they were named for the number of instruments; Spohr did this with his Septet and Octet. The Opus 32 Octet, composed in 1814, has an unusual instrumentation even for this catch-all category: a clarinet, two horns, a violin, two violas, a cello, and a bass. The clarinet, horns, and violin get most of the leading lines, leaving the lower strings to provide solid support throughout. Spohr was a top-rank violinist, and he may have intended the violin part for himself; it’s full of fireworks.
The slow, brief introduction presents an important motif in the first measure, the eighth notes E-G-C (down a sixth, up a fourth). The intervals change, but the shape is consistent. Shortly we hear a dotted rhythm, up and down a half step. These two bits provide most of the material for the Allegro, which goes from E minor to E major. The down-up motif is the basis for the first theme, tossed around from one instrument to another. The dotted motif impatiently makes an appearance in the first theme, but it’s the secondary theme where it establishes ownership. The violinist gets to show off in sixteenth-note passages all through the movement. The music is written in 3/2 time, but it’s easy to hear it as 3/4 initially and get confused. It’s three moderate beats to the bar, not three fast ones.
(more…)
Threats to freedom on the Internet keep popping up. The latest outrage is a proposal by Surgeon General Vivek Murthy to compel social media websites to deliver a warning of “potential mental health harms.” He doesn’t claim that social media have been scientifically shown to damage mental health; rather he says “social media has not been proved safe.”
What would it take to “prove” them safe? When the burden of proof is shifted to the negative, people can make unlimited claims of possible harm, and the defenders must somehow show these arbitrary assertions are false. Murthy has even cited lack of evidence as a cause for panic.
He has asserted that the situation is an “emergency.” In other words, he wants Congress to rush the decree through without debate.
Compulsory speech is, except in limited cases, a violation of the First Amendment. Freedom of speech has to include the freedom not to speak. Americans may not be compelled to pledge allegiance to the flag or to recite a prayer. Forcing website owners to say “We haven’t proven our site won’t harm your mental health” is an outrage.
(more…)
Louis Spohr, like Beethoven, wrote nine symphonies. (Actually, he wrote a tenth but was dissatisfied with it and withdrew it; it’s heard occasionally.) As with Beethoven, his Fifth is a stormy work in C minor. It’s my favorite of his symphonies.
Is this symphony really in C minor? The first movement begins and ends in C major, and the symphony ends in that key. The slow introduction presents a lyrical theme that doesn’t suggest any storms at first. This is what I’ll call the “peace” theme, conveying a message of calm against a sea of troubles. In the seventeenth measure, staccato triplets intrude, the mode becomes minor, and the tempo accelerates. At the start of the Allegro, the key signature becomes C minor, and the conflict is fully underway. The first theme is full of tension; the second is in E-flat major but is very hesitant.
(more…)
My livestreaming of the Buster Keaton short “One Week,” with live accompaniment by me, is rescheduled for Wednesday, June 26, at 8 PM Eastern time. I still haven’t solved the problem with my laptop, but if I can’t fix it in two weeks, I should turn in my computer science degrees.
Thanks and apologies to everyone who showed up yesterday.