Posts Tagged ‘musical instruments’
“I don’t consider it my violin. Rather, I’m its violinist. I am passing through its life.”*…
Jennifer Sandlin is (perfectly understandably) blown away by cellist-turned-photographer Charles Brooks’ images of the interiors of rare musical instruments…
… Each instrument appears as if it’s straight out of a dream — some look like futuristic structures, some like fantasy castles, and others like secret lairs of fantastical creatures. It’s hard to believe they’re real, and I’m just in awe of Brooks’ photography talent.
The photographs are part of Brooks’ “Architecture in Music” series, where, he explains, he “explore[s] the hidden spaces inside fine instruments” which have included a Steinway Grand Piano, the St. Mark’s Pipe Organ, and the Lockey Hill Cello (c. 1780, England), among many others…
Read on for more of the story: “Photographer captures the stunning interiors of rare musical instruments,” from @boingboing.net. See more of Brooks’ remarkable photos on his site. And hear him tell his story here:
* Ivry Gitlis (speaking of his 1713 Stradivarius violin)
###
As we cherish craftsmanship, those among us with a preference for reeds might note that today is Saxophone Day– a commemoration of the birth (on this date in 1814) of Adolphe Sax, a musician and inventor who created several new musical instruments (e.g., a redesigned bass clarinet still in use today), most notably the one that bears his name– the saxophone…
… while the brassier might celebrate the birthday (in 1854) of John Philip Sousa. A composer and conductor known primarily for American military marches (e.g., “The Stars and Stripes Forever,” National March of the United States of America. and “Semper Fidelis,” official march of the United States Marine Corps) he is widely acknowledged in the U.S. as “The March King.”
The press of unusually-intensive meetings is going to prevent posting tomorrow, so (R)D will be away for a day, returning on Saturday…
“The bond of our common humanity is stronger than the divisiveness of our fears and prejudices”*…
Inanna Hamati-Ataya on the importance of understanding our place in the world…
In the 1990s, an entire generation was robbed of its historical consciousness by a powerful and seemingly unprecedented tale. This story, crafted as the Cold War came to an end, declared that real or imagined boundaries had stopped working as they once had. Humans were no longer contained within their old geographies or identities. They now inhabited a new world that appeared to be unhinged from the normal evolution of human society.
The concept chosen to capture this transformational moment in human history was ‘globalisation’. It described how new technologies and networks of connectivity had suddenly brought human communities closer together and made them permeable to an uncontrollable flow of people, ideas, goods and cultural practices, which all moved freely across the integrated markets of the world economy. In the wake of this transformation, new jargon emerged, expressing new anxieties: the world had truly become the ‘global village’ that Marshall McLuhan anticipated in the 1960s, but it was a world shaped by multinational corporations and ‘elite globalisers’, who spoke a common, hegemonic ‘global English’, and were spearheading a destructive ‘homogenisation’ (or ‘McDonaldisation’) of human cultures that national borders were too fragile to withstand.
During the past three decades, more people have begun viewing our ‘global’ world as a cursed fate. With its suffocating time-space compression, globalisation seems to have uncoupled us from the logic and flow of history. Our suspicious, bastard identities – patched together from a mishmash of cultures – appear incompatible with our ancestors’ ‘authentic’ traditions and ways of life. We have become strangers to the places they called home, to the ways they dressed, ate or communicated with one another. And, with no template for how to live and no experience to learn from, the deafening siren songs of anti-globalisation movements are now luring us back into the safer identities and boundaries of a lost, golden past.
This tale of globalisation is the most successful scare story of our times. And like all scare stories, it stimulates our fear of an overwhelming unknown.
But it’s all an illusion. There is no new global world.
Our present appears that way only because we have forgotten our common past. Globalisation didn’t begin in the 1990s, or even in the past millennia. Remembering this older shared history is a path to a different tale, which begins much, much earlier – long before the arrival of international supply chains, ocean-going sailing ships, and continent-spanning silk roads. The tale of globalisation is written across human history. So why do we keep getting the story so wrong?…
[She unpacks the answer to her questions, then turns to it implications…]
… In our own contemporary era, anti-globalisation movements have recently shifted from the far Left to the far Right of national and global politics. Justified resentment against the locally experienced injustices of the global economy and the growing disruptive effect of global climate change are now couched in resentment for the social and cultural dimensions of globalisation. Identitarianism, a political ideology that stresses the preservation of narrowly conceived ‘Western’ ethnicities and cultures, has accordingly become the easiest and most efficient strategy to mobilise local grievances, and direct them at whatever is perceived as a threat to the wellbeing of those suffering within. The ugly age of nationalism is back.
Is nationalist identitarianism the ethos we will now deploy to confront the common existential threats that await us in the coming century? Why wouldn’t it be? Does anyone doubt that national borders will be turned, once again, into sacred physical boundaries and fiercely defended against those fleeing the environmental, economic or military devastation of their homes? Do we doubt that eloquent voices animated by the most (ig)noble intentions will rise to justify patriotic bullets being aimed at ‘alien migrants’ and climate refugees? And that leaders will say these displaced people cannot be accommodated because of their numbers and cultures, and the threat they pose to our secure lives – to our ‘identity’?
Such scenarios are far too likely given the rise of xenophobic worldviews, such as the conspiratorial idea of a ‘Great Replacement’, in which elites – imagined to be Jews and other minorities – have begun executing a plan to replace so-called indigenous white Europeans with other populations of apparently greater and threatening reproductive vitality. These racialist worldviews dangerously converge with a public misunderstanding of ‘race’ as reflected in the recent craze for DNA ‘ancestry tests’. DNA has little to do with ‘identity’, as social and political ideologies have constructed it, and much to do with physical and social geography. Our genes are a result of human adaptive mobility, and the journeys, rich encounters and kin-making that our freedom of movement made possible over tens of thousands of years. Our genome does not tell our whole story, but the story it does tell shows how past globalisations made us what we are today.
As we search for ways of communing with one another beyond the stubborn ideology of difference, we should also prepare for vicious future distortions and manipulations of our current scientific and historical understanding of identity. Some humans today carry a few genes that their Pleistocene ancestors inherited from intercourse with our Eurasian Neanderthalian and Denisovan cousins, whom some communities of Homo sapiens encountered on their journeys of cosmopolitan expansion. How might such a genetic difference among us be interpreted and used in the future by those intent on pursuing identitarianism to its silliest or most murderous conclusions? Might they declare that some humans are not ‘pure’ enough to enjoy the full freedom, security and dignity we recognise as the natural rights of humankind? Or might they, on the contrary, elevate the Neanderthalian or Denisovan gene as a marker of Eurasian ‘distinction’ to recreate narratives of racial superiority, similar to those that once plagued archaeological thinking about the allegedly more ‘advanced’ nature of those human fossils laying the farthest away from the species’ original African homes?
Palaeontologists who insist on ascribing the label ‘humans’ to the entire Homo genus while reserving that of ‘modern humans’ to the surviving representatives of the lineage (ie, us) probably understand better than most the dangers of ideological manipulations of scientific taxonomies. But in the open marketplace where ideas freely flow in the name of freedom of thought and expression, how can we protect ourselves and one another from such dangers, if we still perceive plurality as a threat to survival, and cannot see the richness of our shared human culture?
The wars we wage against one another are all civil wars. Until we recognise them as such, they will remain tragedies we accept as natural – or horrors we cheer on in the name of grand notions sold to us by loud voices who know our fears too well (and know too little of the richness of our world and our history). We have always been global, and this is our shared identity. It is our unique way of being and remaining in the world as one family. Whatever we cherish in our humanity and culture has been crafted by our global journeys and encounters. Through them, we will continue to write the story of how we become us…
All of our religions, stories, languages, and norms were muddled and mixed through mobility and exchange throughout history: “There are no pure cultures,” from @berytia.bsky.social in @aeon.co.
Still, as Venkatesh Rao reminds us, the “vacuous over-large abstractions like “globalization” make us underestimate the horizontal historicity of the world.”
* Jimmy Carter
###
As we go with the flow, we might recall that it was on this date in 1690 (or so musicologists believe) that Johann Christoph Denner, inspired by a reeded recorder-like instrument called the chalumeau, designed and created a longer and keyed (so more widely-ranged) instrument that was quickly copied and modified by other makers– and became what we know as the clarinet. By 1791, Mozart was composing for the instrument; by Beethoven’s time, the clarinet was a staple member in the orchestra.
To the point of the essay above, it’s worth noting that the chalumeau– and thus the clarinet– were direct descendants of ancient Greek and ancient Egyptian reeded pipes… that may themselves have been modeled on similar instruments from Central and East Asia.
The clarinet, as depicted in Diderot’s Encyclopedia, 1776 (source)
“Off to violin-land, where all is sweetness and delicacy and harmony”*…
Elly Fishman, with the story of a master craftsman…
It’s a few minutes past 10 in the morning, and John Becker stands just inside the door to his company’s office in the Fine Arts Building downtown. He wears a black workman’s apron, which he fits to his body by wrapping the ties around his torso twice. With his shoulders slightly hunched, he quietly observes the almost surreal scene unfolding before him.
A few feet away, Joshua Bell and James Ehnes, two of the most prominent solo violinists on the planet, hover over an Arts and Crafts–style wood table. Normally, Bell, a former child prodigy known for his virtuosic, animated playing, and Ehnes, a musician’s musician celebrated for his technical prowess, would be the superstars in the room. Both have won multiple Grammy Awards, and between the two of them, they have performed in nearly every major concert hall and with all the best orchestras in the world. But here, in Becker’s studio inside his office, another icon takes center stage.
“I’m really nervous and excited,” says Bell, his hands stuffed in his pockets. “It’s like meeting my wife again after two months. I’m a little overwhelmed.”
“Oh yeah, I understand the feeling,” Ehnes chimes in, his tone nearly giddy. His eyes are set on an object perched on a gray cloth that covers the tabletop. “I’ve never seen this violin before. It’s incredible. It’s so beautiful.” He pauses as though to take in every contour. The spruce wood — a swirl of orange and red hues — glows under the morning light. “It’s stunning.”
The violin in question belongs to Bell. The 310-year-old instrument, which Bell has said is worth as much as $15 million, is among the roughly 650 made by the renowned 18th-century Italian craftsman Antonio Stradivari that survive today. Bell left it with Becker for repairs, and over the past two months, the master luthier applied protective polish to preserve the original varnish, removed the top to make internal repairs, and handcrafted several cleats to reinforce tiny cracks in the wood. Bell has flown in from New York to retrieve the violin, which has been his concert instrument since 2001, before he departs on a tour of South America and Italy.
Ehnes plans to leave his own Strad with Becker for more minor repairs — a bridge adjustment, a varnish touchup, a new sound post — which will take only a day. The Canadian has made this essential stop before heading to concerts in South Korea and Japan.
Becker turns to Bell and asks if he wants to give the violin a try. It may look beautiful thanks to the fresh polish, but after 213 hours of painstaking work, the true test is how it feels and sounds…
He’s trusted to repair some of the world’s most fabled — and expensive — instruments. How does John Becker manage to unlock the sound of a Stradivarius? “The Violin Doctor,” from @Elly33 in @ChicagoMag.
* Arthur Conan Doyle, The Adventures of Sherlock Holmes
###
As we treasure timbre and tone, we might send sonorous birthday greetings to Fritz Kreisler; he was born on this date in 1875. A composer and violin virtuoso, he one of the most noted violin masters of his day, and is regarded as one of the greatest violinists of all time, known for his sweet tone and expressive phrasing– instantly recognizable as his.
Kreisler owned several extraordinary violins made by luthiers Antonio Stradivari, Pietro Guarneri, Giuseppe Guarneri, and Carlo Bergonzi, most of which eventually came to be known by his name (e.g., “Kriesler’s Stradivarius”). He also owned a Jean-Baptiste Vuillaume violin of 1860, which he often used as his second violin.
“How low can you go?”*…
… Pretty low if you have an octobass– which the Montreal Symphony now does…
The Montreal Symphony Orchestra has just become the only ensemble in the world to employ an octobass… Here it is dwarfing its new orchestra mates in Montreal:
“This is an octobass – it’s so low it will turn your insides to jelly,” @classicfm
Because of the extreme fingerboard length and string thickness, the musician plays it using a system of levers and pedals which engage metal clamps that are positioned above the neck at specific positions and act as fretting devices.
The octobass, which typically plays a full octave below the double bass, has never been produced on a large scale nor (though Hector Berlioz wrote favorably about the instrument and proposed its widespread adoption) used much by composers. Indeed, The only known work from the 19th century that specifically calls for the octobass is Charles Gounod‘s Messe solennelle de Sainte–Cécile.
Per Berlioz, the octobass’ three open strings were tuned C1, G1, and C2. The fundamental frequencies of the lowest notes in this tuning lie below 20 Hz—the commonly-understood lower bound of the human hearing range—still, these notes are audible due to the overtones they produce. More interesting these inaudible lowest notes (like the 32′ stop on an organ)– known as “infrasound“– elicit a physical reaction: feelings of awe or fear. It has also been suggested that since it is not consciously perceived, it may make people feel vaguely that odd or supernatural events are taking place. In any case, it’s why sound designers in thrillers and horror movies mix infrasound into the tracks at moments meant to be tense or frightening.
* “Born to Hand Jive,” Grease
###
As we stretch, we might recall that it was on this date in 1925 that Lonnie Johnson made his first recording, “Mr. Johnson’s Blues,” in a session for OKeh Records. A Blues guitar innovator, his music fueled a blues craze throughout the rest of the decade and influences the next generation of blues and folk musicians.
Johnson was also a talented pianist and violinist, and is is recognized as the first to play an electrically-amplified violin.
“Speed is carrying us along, but we have yet to master it”*…
A call to contemplate the potential negative effects of internet technology along with its promise…
Conversations about technology tend to be dominated by an optimistic faith in technological progress, and headlines about new technologies tend to be peppered with deterministic language assuring readers of all the wonderful things these nascent technologies “will” do once they arrive. There is endless encouragement to think about all of the exciting benefits to be enjoyed if everything goes right, but significantly less attention is usually paid to the ways things might go spectacularly wrong.
In the estimation of philosopher Paul Virilio, the refusal to seriously contemplate the chance of failure can have calamitous effects. As he evocatively put it in 1997’s Open Sky, “Unless we are deliberately forgetting the invention of the shipwreck in the invention of the ship or the rail accident in the advent of the train, we need to examine the hidden face of new technologies, before that face reveals itself in spite of us.” Virilio’s formulation is a reminder that along with new technologies come new types of dangerous technological failures. It may seem obvious today that there had never been a car crash before the car was invented, but what future wrecks are being overlooked today amidst the excited chatter about AI, the metaverse, and all things crypto?
Virilio’s attention to accidents is a provocation to look at technology differently. To foreground the dangers instead of the benefits, and to see ourselves as the potential victims instead of as the smiling beneficiaries. As he put it in Pure War, first published in 1983, “Every technology produces, provokes, programs a specific accident.” Thus, the challenge becomes looking for the “accident” behind the technophilic light show — and what’s more, to find it before the wreckage starts to pile up.
Undoubtedly, this is not the most enjoyable way to look at technology. It is far more fun to envision yourself enjoying the perfect meal prepared for you by your AI butler than to imagine yourself caught up in a Kafkaesque nightmare after the AI system denies your loan application. Nevertheless, if Virilio was right to observe that “the invention of the highway was the invention of 300 cars colliding in five minutes,” it would be wise to start thinking seriously about the crashes that await us as we accelerate down the information superhighway…
The work of Paul Virilio urges us to ask: What future disasters inhere in today’s technologies? “Inventing the Shipwreck” from Zachary Loeb (@libshipwreck) in @_reallifemag. Eminently worth reading in full.
For a look at those who don’t just brush aside Virilio’s caution, but actively embrace speed and the chaos that it can cause:
Accelerationism holds that the modern, Western democratic state is so mired in corruption and ineptitude that true patriots should instigate a violent insurrection to hasten its destruction to allow a new, white-dominated order to emerge. Indeed, some of the foremost exponents of accelerationism today were at the U.S. Capitol on January 6. They included: the Oath Keepers, whose grab-bag ideology states that “paranoid anti-federalism envision[s] a restoration of ‘self-government’ and ‘natural rights’;” QAnon adherents, who remain convinced that the 2020 presidential election was stolen and that former President Donald Trump was thwarted from saving the world from a Satan-worshipping pedophilia ring run by Democrats, Jews, and other agents of the deep state; and, of course, Trump’s own die-hard “Stop the Steal” minions, who, against all reason and legal proof, seek to restore the former president to office.
The objective of accelerationism is to foment divisiveness and polarization that will induce the collapse of the existing order and spark a second civil war…
Read the full piece: “A Year After January 6, Is Accelerationism the New Terrorist Threat?“
* Paul Virilio
###
As we practice prudence, we might recall that it was on this date in 1854 that Anthony Fass, a Philadelphia piano maker, was awarded the first U.S. patent (#11062) for an accordion. (An older patent existed in Europe, issued in Vienna in 1829 to Cyrill Demian.)
“Music helps set a romantic mood. Imagine her surprise when you say, ‘We don’t need a stereo – I have an accordion’.” – Martin Mull
“A gentleman is someone who can play the accordion, but doesn’t.” – Tom Waits
You must be logged in to post a comment.