To Valhalla We Go

People always throw rocks at things they don't understand.

Eliza Dushku
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If you're an opera lover or even if you are indifferent to opera you may find this post interesting. If you hate opera you have my permission to cut to the bottom, but don't miss the Weekend Contest. There's only one right answer so far.

I was so busy yesterday with my problems (my printer) and other people's problems that I didn't settle down to write until 9:30 p.m. at which point I decided I had to do something nice for myself so I put on a recording of Wagner's "Die Walkyre."

Now some people don't like Wagner, in fact they hate it. There are even some dedicated opera lovers who will put many city blocks between themselves and a performance of a Wagnerian opera. Whenever I hear one of those claim his hatred of Wagner I always want to say facetiously "I'll pray for you."

But it's alright, I'll let them go their way. What really disturbs me is the tendency to make fun of opera and other classical music by people who don't understand it. It's like laughing at a bowl of Chinese food if you don't know what's in it. I'm aware that much of the ridicule come from the fact that people don't know what their hearing, but that's because they don't listen to it. I wouldn't be a Wagner lover today if I hadn't listened to it way back in the early days when I couldn't understand it. So on this trek along the city blocks to get away from good music they don't listen to it, and because they don't listen to it they don't hear it, and because they don't hear it they don't understand it. Okay, so far they're on level ground. But here comes the pot hole. Since they can't explain why they don't understand it and are embarrassed that they can't, they have to put it down by making fun of it. The music doesn't care that it's laughed at. But the musicians do and so does this music lover.

It is understandable that some Jews shun Wagner since he was Hitler's favorite composer, but Wagner lived in the 19th Century and they never met. It is certain that Wagner would have had nothing to do with Hitler if they did.

Opera was invented in the early 17th Century by a group of Italian composers, notably a genius name Claudio Monteverdi, (not to be confused with Giuseppe Verdi, who came along much later) and their purpose was to attempt to recreate ancient Greek drama, about which they knew very little except that it was probably sung.

Wagnerian operas are very long, some of them stretching into 4 hours, even though Friedrich Nietzsche called Wagner "our first miniaturist." It's because his operas are comprised of short themes that represent some idea or emotion and they are strung together like pearls. They reoccur all throughout the opera joined with different ones each time creating an unfolding of the drama even in the orchestra which is sometimes more important than the singing. What you hear in a Wagner opera you've probably heard before ad most certainly will hear again. But to a true Wagner lover there is nothing boring or repetitive about that.

One of the ways people make fun of Wagner is to depict a zaftig woman wearing a helmet with horns on it. I have been to a great many Wagnerian opera performances and I have never seen a helmet with horns on anyone. That sort of joke just belittles the work and the person who thinks it's funny.

If you want to be lifted and carried through a masterpiece of music drama go to a Wagner opera, wear comfortable shoes and be prepared to sit for a long time. But listen. Listen carefully and hear what's going on.

If you want to hear singers sing beautiful songs in French and Italian don't go to hear Wagner.

If you don't like opera or classical music at all then put as many city blocks as you need to between yourself and the opera house or concert hall. But keep your jokes to yourself.

DB - The Vagabond
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Weekend Contest

1 correct answer so far

Who are these important people?

TL
DH
UT
KW
JP
BB
KA
BK
************
Good luck.
First place winner gets a blue hat.

DB
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Claudio's Song

Our chief defect is that we are more given to talking about things than to doing them.

Nehru
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Yesterday afternoon I had a conversation with a woman I've known for many years. We're former colleagues. She's a stage manager. I was reminded about another conversation we had one day. During a break in rehearsal we were sitting together and I was talking about the role, the play and about acting in general. She listened to me with attention. Finally she said "Why do you talk about it? Why don't you just do it?" The question took me back a step. Of course I was doing it. Most of the day was spent doing it. I didn't realize I was spending my free time and her free time talking about it. I had to come up with an answer. If not right then, eventually.

I finally concluded that I talk about it because I enjoy talking about it. I enjoy analyzing things, particularly the art of acting. That's why it tends to show up so often in this journal. If I just talked about it and didn't do it I would be all mouth and no meaning, as we so often see these days on TV.

There's a rule in public speaking which goes: Tell them what you're going to say. Say it. Then tell them what you said. The same rule could be appplied in any of life's activities, although it's probably advisable to forget the first. Do it. Then tell them what you did. If you do it then you have the right to talk about it.

On the other hand you can do what my friend suggested, do it, and not talk about it. I think most of the doers in the world are not the talkers. The doers are those who identify the problem, gather the proper tools together and fix it.

Unfortunately, as Nehru points out, the world is full of the other kind. Go to any civic board meeting, any town meeting, any tenants association meeting and hear the talk. The Latest Up To The Minute News? A few tid bits of information then talk. A fact finding committee? Talk. A board meeting? Talk. The court is in session? Talk. Congress? You guessed it.

Someone, I don't remember who, perhaps you do, once described a committee as that which keeps minutes and wastes hours. I like the old saying that a camel is a horse designed by a committee.

One of my favorite stories in the history of music is about the origins of opera. There are musicologists who will disagree with me about this, but it is open to opinion, and here's mine. During the Renaissance artists were trying to recreate ancient Greek drama which had recently been discovered. They didn't know much about it so they formed a committee, called the Camerata, whose task it was to come up with a consensus, design formal elements and put down some rules of writing and composition. They met for a long time, took expert testimony, learned a little bit about how the ancients sounded and looked. They were carefully and conscientiously designing a camel.

While all that discussion was going on, another man, Claudio Monteverdi, who was basically a song writer, invented opera. Monteverdi was a doer not a talker and when his first opera appeared on the stage everyone knew this was a new art form and it was exciting. Sung drama.

Opera is such an important art form that people are still writing them today, joining story, words and music into a theatre piece on the grand scale of the ancient Greeks. And thanks to Claudio we hove operettas, musical comedy and probably a few MTV videos,

I'm a talker as well as a doer. There's no one around here to talk to so I write. But at least I don't talk about writing. I do it.

DB - The Vagabond
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Weekend Contest Answer.

There were 3 winners (actually 4).
The Grand Prize, a set of aluminum doilies, goes to Barry of the Email Lions
Second prize to mrs. miss alaineus of the Blogspot Tigers
And a tie for third place between the Amazing Sister Act of Val and Krissy also of the Tigers.
Pacifica62 came in just under the wire for 4th place.

Which two items do not belong on this list?
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Cuba
Guatemala
Iceland
Ireland
Madagascar
Manhattan
Puerto Rico
Rhode Island
Sardinia
Sicily
Sri Lanka
Tasmania

The answer is Guatemala and Rhode Island. All the rest are islands.
Thank you folks.
Now here comes the Sunday Puzzle.
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Sunday Puzzle

The bear went over the mountain to see what he could see.
A secret word opens the treasure chest.
Can you discover the secret word?

I'm found at MacDonald's.
I'm good for a view.
I don't take to camels.
But I might be on your shoe.

Good luck.
DB
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Basic Baloney 11/15/08

If you had to identify in one word the reason why the human race has not achieved, and never will achieve, its full potential, that word would be "meetings."

David Barry
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I can't think of any thing more boring and more wasting of time than sitting in a committee meeting. They are usually sessions where people disagree with each other and so get nothing accomplished. Even if the meeting is well chaired and with a solid agenda it still ends up being a rag tag collection of opinions which are stacked up against the problem trying to be solved ad the meeting is adjourned until next time when compromises are made and no one is satisfied with the results.

You know the definition of a camel? A horse designed by a committee.

Now don't get me wrong, there are some excellent committees that provide great services to the world. But very often the same problems can be solved by a single individual working alone and taking a lot less time.

In the 16th Century there was a group of men in Florence, Italy, musicians, scholars and others who decided that the society was being corrupted by the popular music of the day (rock and roll?) no, polyphony, the singing of two or more melodic lines at the same time. So they joined together in a committee called The Camarata to try to reconstruct the music of ancient Greek drama. They knew that it was sung, but no one had any idea what it sounded like. Eventually they came up with a system of approaching musical composition, a sort of rule book. Composers rook it and tried to write works that would follow the rules and solve the problem, to moderate success.

Meanwhile, other composers were working on their own to bring about the kind of music that would appeal to the listeners of the day. One of those independent composers was a genius named Claudio Monteverdi (1567 - 1643). He went back to the ancient stories, had them rewritten and set all the words to music, inserting some songs and what he did was to invent the art form known today as opera.

There is some doubt about which was his first opera, but I believe it was Orfeo.
Monteverdi had many followers and has influenced opera composers through the years. Handel, Mozart, Rossini, Bellini, Donizetti, Verdi, Puccini, Wagner and Strauss, to name a few, are all indebted to Monteverdi. Some of his operas are still performed today, after all these years. Every major opera company has a Monteverdi opera in stock and they bring it out and performa it every now and then.

Monteverdi had no dealings with the Camarata.

DB