Gotterdammerung and Gemeinschaft

"Das Wesen des Menschen vervollkommnet sich nur in Gemeinschaft, in der Einheit des Menschen mit dem Menschen"

The other day we stumbled into a video clip of Solti's 1964 recording session of Gotterdammerung. Needless to say, the sound coming through a compressed file on a desk top computer was less than full force and purity.

Nevertheless, from the outset, we were astonished by the sheer sym-phonization of human endeavour. To be sure, such coordination of effort is something that takes place even in a quartet, but the sheer size of romantic orchestras renders the synchronization an immensely complicated and astonishing event.

As we watched these rehearsals we kept on thinking of "sinews... sinews..." Every individual musician, with his piece, was a sinew of the whole who had to be integrated flawlessly and cooperatively into a sonic organism. The result was beauty.

Oddly enough it was the cymbalist, in a related clip, who brought this realization home. Such a simple and singular thing a cymbal, and yet there was, in fact, nothing very singular about it. We watched as the cymbalist stood intent and imminent, his ears, eyes, and nervous reflexes attuned to make the crashing gong at just the right moment with just the right reverberation. Watching him, tense and poised to make the perfect klang, we glimpsed an internal coordination of sense and synapse that was an equally amazing correlative of his external coordination with the whole.

If the cymbalist illustrated what it means to integrate, Solti's conducting provided a visual impression of what it means to draw out a consensus. Because this was an in-studio work-session, Solti's body language was much more demonstrative than would he would allow in a public performance and his body became an incorporation of the orchestra's members.

I was fascinated at how physical gestures in space reflected tonal modulations in time -- how Solit's torso said "lunge," how his arms said "full" or how his fingers said "tremolo" and his wrist, "gentle fade and ...lift off lightly" -- in short, how these sights matched the sound and made sense.

And so, we were brought to think of something Pope Benedict said recently, this past April, when he referred to the study of music as a "gymnasium" which exposes students to the challenges of interacting collectively, not only on an artistic or professional plane, but as human beings.

Speaking to a visiting youth orchestra, Benedict pointed to their "constant practices carried out with patience; the exercise of listening to the other musicians; the commitment not to play 'in solitude,' but to do so in a way that the different 'orchestral colors' -- while maintaining their own characteristics -- were established." Such exercises, he said, reflected a "common search for the best expression" with implications that went beyond just making music. Music, the Pope said, is "capable of opening minds and hearts to the dimension of the spirit and of leading persons to raise their gaze on High, to open to absolute Goodness and Beauty, which have their ultimate source in God."

From a pontiff who does not shy away from reminding Christians of their Greek roots, it was hardly surprising that he should consider musical practice to be an exercise in political formation; and from an academic steeped in the heritage of Christian thought it was no surprise to hear that, ultimately, the political city should be ordered toward reflecting Truth, Beauty and ultimately God.

At the same time, one could not but hear echoes of Hegel in the Pope's remarks; for, at the core of Benedict's orchestral metaphor was the what Germans call the Gemeinschaft.

In its more modern signification "gemeinschaft" means little more than community, association, a working-together. But within the tradition of German idealism, the word denotes that vision of society as a living organism -- not a collection of individuals pursuing their happinesses but a living, dynamic union in which and through which the individual is allowed to discover and express his individuality. As Ludwig Feuerbach put it,

"Isolated man by himself has not the essence of man in himself, the essence of man is contained only in the community, in the unity of man and man, a unity, however, which depends only on the reality of the difference between I and you. Man by himself is man (in the ordinary sense), man and man, the unity of I and you, is God"

... or at least Gotterdammerung.

This is a theme Benedict had repeatedly returned to in his papal writings. In his first encyclical, Spe Salvi, he drew a sharp distinction between faith as a social reality and as a subjective experience. Taking a swipe at Luther's "I saw, therefore I am saved", Benedict asked, "are we not in this way falling back once again into an individualistic understanding of salvation, into hope for myself alone, which is not true hope since it forgets and overlooks others?"

Benedict answered: "Within Catholic teaching, salvation has always been considered a “social” reality. The Christian message was not only 'informative' but 'performative'."

One might paraphrase: " It is not enough to say 'I believe', the true believer says 'We do!'"

More recently, in his encyclical on Social Justice, Caritas in Veritas, the Pope wrote that "Every Christian is called to practise [a public ] charity, in a manner corresponding to his vocation and according to the degree of influence he wields in the pólis." This institutional or political form of charity was, he said, no less excellent than personal acts of charity. On the contrary,

"Man's earthly activity, when inspired and sustained by charity, contributes to the building of the universal city of God, which is the goal of the history of the human family. In an increasingly globalized society, the common good and the effort to obtain it cannot fail to assume the dimensions of the whole human family, that is to say, the community of peoples and nations, in such a way as to shape the earthly city in unity and peace, rendering it ... an anticipation and a prefiguration of the undivided city of God."

Clearly, Benedict is working on a theme. In the passages we have cited , the words "music" and "charity" could be substituted and the "score" would still make sense. Benedict most emphatically espouses the view that the best way to kill beauty is to reduce it to a question of aesthetics -- the what do "I" see. But if beauty becomes a mode of action, in music, in sport, in charity and in politics, then we get a panoramic intuition of God's Gemeinschaft so that contemplating Solti's recording sessions becomes a way of meditating on Aristotle's dictum that "man is a social animal".

Looking at the "orchestral gemeinschaft", the first thing we notice is that it consists of an inter-locking of sounds and it is readily apparent that no one instrument could itself produce the whole-sound. But does the whole diminish the part? In the final scene of Gotterdammerung the horns appear subordinated to the whole-sound. One would think that the full expression of what it means to be a horn (or a violin or flute) would take effect in a solo composition. But if Feuerbach is right, a horn only becomes fully a horn in differentiation with a violin.

What individuality, exactly, does man discover in gemeischaft with his others? Anything else other than that he discharged the function of a timpano or a meister shoemaker? What creative scope does such an individual member have? Benedict, at least, is quite clear that there is a script to perform.

"Without truth, without trust and love for what is true, there is no social conscience and responsibility, and social action ends up serving private interests and the logic of power, resulting in social fragmentation ..."

When he speaks of "Charity in Truth", Benedict emphatically means that there is a truth which must inform charity just as charitable disposition must inform truth.

So too Wagner. Watching Solti makes it clear that there is a responsibility to the score; one that allows for subtle interpretations, perhaps, but which unmistakably requires an immense amount of discipline. This social working together is no ad hoc jam session.

The Enlightenment Mind protests: Is it not totalitarian for every member to play from a dictated script, as interpreted in details by the conductor? Each musician may be singular but where does his uniqueness shine out and fulfill itself? It is true that the a "con"cert by a cymbal solo would consist of several klangs... spaced 15 or 37 minutes apart. But if such roles are meaningless "on their own" they have been made so by the script for the whole.

One is left not with "I have performed." but rather with "I have participated."

There arises then, an opposed view; one that is characteristically American and which holds that the good of all comes from the individual pursuit of happiness.

It goes without saying, that such a paradigm easily lends itself to mere individual gratification. But the Framers of the America polis weren't laying the foundations for a desert. They intended a gemeinschaft but one, which in their view, was to be driven and shaped by indiviudal pursuits. What shape such a society would take was impossible to say precisely because the individual pursuits are random. One is left to believe in an invisible hand or, in the manner of Tolstoy, a divine calculus of history, in which "strategies" are displaced by the unfathomable and unpredictable flowing together of individual impulses.

What would such a polis sound like? Not surprisingly, a typically American jazz session comes to mind, although the contrast is perhaps illusory given that even "free form" jazz entails adherence to chord structures and rythmic rules. It seems to us that the sound of such a polis (as opposed to the spontaneity of its becoming) is more likely to be something like Putnam Camp by Charles Ives,

Or perhaps Circus Band

Is cacophony symphonic? The answer is not clearly, no. At least Ives heard symphonies in nature and in the discord of man. And, this view leads to a third spiritual alternative: faith as acceptive which posits a beauty beyond perception.

What kind of orchestration is required of us as humans? A chipster brain is not big enough to encompass an answer. And perhaps there is no answer other than that there are many ways to make music. But it does seem to us that observing how musicians co-ordinate and don't, how they are at one and in many and what is required to make music together is a living metaphor for what is entailed in being human.

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Chipmunk Chewie

The other week, while shopping at our local organic and sustainable coop, we came across a nut n' berry bar called Chipmunk Chewie. We looked at the ingredients and discovered that they consisted of everything a right proper chipmunk would chew on. How could we refuse?

The chipmunk chew was so delicious we could hardly wait to go back to the store for more. As we were piling chewies into our basket one of the store attendants walked by and said, "They are good, aren't they?" We got to talking and the result was the recipe for Chipmunk Chewies

9 cups walnuts whole (they seem cut up to me)
5 cups pecans roasted and salted
5 cups hazelnuts
4 cups sesame seeds
4 cups apples diced
2 cups cranberries
2 cups sunflower seeds
4 cups coconut chips

3 cups rice syrup
1 cup corn starch
1 Tbs vanilla

Get some gloves ready.
In a large pot place syrup, cornstarch & vanilla.
Heat on high stirring to break up cornstarch.
Bring to a ull and vigorous rolling boil.

Continue to boil for 1 minute or slightly more, stirring constantly
Look for a caramel color when ready.

Turn off heat and add nut/fruit mix.
Stir fast and hard. Keep stirring until everything is coated

Turn out onto the sprayed sheet pan(s).
Press down with gloved and oiled hands until even

Cut while still warm 6x8. Place in cooler / refrigerator.

Adjust proportions for smaller amounts.

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The Pathos of Plastic Surgery

Albert Durer House, Nuremberg

Sixty five years ago this night, Churchill and Morgenthau's plan to decimate Germany reached its infernal climax with the firebombing of Dresden. This eighteenth century gem, was not the only architectural wonder to be reduced to smouldering rubble. A month before "Bomber Harris" had sent his crews into the clear winter skies to wreak devastation on the medieval treasure of Nuremberg.

Eighty percent of all German cities were fifty percent destroyed. Dresden and Nuremberg where annihilated almost in their entirety.

It was all part of a plan -- as Morgenthau swore -- to reduce Germany to a permanent cow pasture; and with it, to erradicate forever and for all generations to come, some of the fairest lands in Europe and a thousand years of artistic achievement.

Since then, brick by blackened brick, the Germans have patiently sought to reconstruct the devastation and to give back to future generations some of Germany's mutilated beauty.

This patient labor works on two levels: the reconstruction of renown works of art, such as Dresden's Fraunekirche and the recreation of an urban ambience -- a medieval mileu in Nuremberg's case, baroque grandeur in Dresden's.

However, while we can be grateful, Germans did not entirely resign themselves to the cultural defeat of malls and modernism, the result of their labors seems to me to have produced, on the urban landscape, much the same effect as reconstructive plastic surgery produces on a face.

The pieces are there, but they are too smooth, too linear, too lacking in patina and naturality.

At times, one feels one has gone to a DisneyLand version of Alte Deutschland

Daniel Liebeskind, the American Jewish architect, is critical of Dresden's attempt to recreate "the past". In an interview given to Der Spiegel , Liebeskind says,

"I can understand the impetus of the city wanting to retrieve its past. People want to have something of the city's glory days. But even if you rebuild the Frauenkirche and the city's other great buildings, you cannot bring back the history. The city has been fundamentally altered. The events from the past are not just a footnote, they are central to the transformation of the city.... Sentimentality is not a foundation on which you can build a new city."

Liebeskind believes "recreating the past" ignores the "discontinuity" with the past that is part of true history. In his view, the past was irremediably interrupted. Liebeskind was asked to participate in the reconstruction of Dresden's neo-classical Military Museum. His contribution reflects his perspective.

click to enlarge

Liebeskind explains:

"The triangular structure on the front of the arsenal points to the direction from which Dresden was bombed. It also interrupts the smooth flow of that big arsenal. It creates a question mark about the continuity of history and what it means. It gives people a point of reflection."

Liebeskind has a legitimate point, although what he calls "recreating the past" I have called "reconstructive surgery" -- the aim of which is precisely to pretend the awful accident with it's disfiguring third degree burns never happened.

But I disagree with Liebeskind to the extent that he assumes "recreating the past" can actually succeed in ignoring the "interruption". It cannot. Howsoever "successful," plastic surgery is always a failure and always reflects the discontinuity it seeks to embalm over. Therein lies its pathos.

Accepting the "interruption" and moving on to live in rebuilt modern cities does more to obliterate the discontinuity because literally nothing is continued on --rather a space is simply refilled with newness and "memory" becomes a bronze plaque or footnote to the effect that "a baroque city once stood here."

"Recreating the past" actually does more to underscore the fact that the past was destroyed and therefore needs to be recreated, even though the need will fail in the attempt. Without the too smooth, too new, "old" facade of the Military Museum, Liebeskind's cutting triangular section would be just another instance of glassy geometry in a landscape of impersonal forms. Together with the plastic act of rememberance, we are reminded of history's loss.

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Parsnips

There is so much to write about that I am falling behind. But parsnips are surely a priority posting.

I have lived all my life without ever having eaten a parsnip. This is the sort of thing that fills one with a panic at the thought of dying without ever having tasted the world's most delicious fruit...out there somewhere, like a Holy Grille.

In any case, I like parsnips, which look like a blanched carrot. In fact the are a blanched carrot. Parsnips are aromatic and their taste is a cross between a carrot and a plantain banana. It follows that they are both boiled and fried. The simplest way to cook a parsnip is as follows.

1. Julienne it in quarters -- i.e. cut it length-wise in half and in half a gain.

2. Blanch the strips in very hot or boiling water. (The real purpose of this is to soften them up a bit so they lie flat when frying).

3. Fry the strips in olive oil with garlic cloves to taste. You want to brown them lightly, so you have to pay attention that they don't scorch. They cook quickly.

4. Serve.

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A Crying Need for Morally Unblemished Actors

Ever alert to such matters, Der Spiegel reports that Britny Spears is scheduled to star in a holocaust sci-fi movie. No... your eyes are not tired.... a holocaust sci-fi movie, called The Yellow Star of Sophie and Eton.

Although the title has a certain, Saint-Exupéry-ish je ne sai quoi the plot is definitely Spielbergian. Perhaps mistaking it for the lastest West Hollywood fitness contraption, Sophie (played by Sears) bumps into a time machine and "travels back in time to fall in love with a Jewish concentration camp prisoner named Eton". Somehow the two manage to catapult back to the present. Alas instead of being deposited some place nice, like Sherman Oaks, Miami or Tel Aviv, the damn contraption dumps our time-flying lovebrids in some erstwhile East German urban slum where, betrayed by their Yellow Stars, they are set upon and done in by a wolf-pack of Neo-Nazis skin heads in Thor Steiner parkas.

"German Jews Horrified by Britney Holocaust Role"

According to Spiegel, "Charlotte Knobloch, president of the Central Council of Jews in Germany, has said she is horrified...." not, apparently, at a script which manages to be sacharine and inane at the same time, but at the choice of starlette. "It is reprehensible to combine the issue of the Holocaust with Britney Spears in an attempt to secure financing...." Knobloch is reported as saying.

One wonders.... is this like Wagner wanting Herman Levi to be baptized before conducting the premier of Parsifal?

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Creme de Chien

Why is it that we can go through a lifetime without ever asking an obvious question; and how come after a lifetime, out of nowhere, it occurs to us to ask an absurd question?

I don't know, but it suddenly occurred to me to wonder if there was such a thing as dog cheese After all, it there can be goat cheese why not canine camambert or Chihuahua Cheddar?

Well as it turns out there is dog cheese. "The taste?" it's makers say, " It is full bodied, and a little musky at first whiff, but salting the cheese really brings out a nice, distinct Frito odor which makes it a natural pairing with beer and three bean dip. Kids like it too"

Of course, it would come from a California Nouveau-Eco Survival blog [here] but I expect Whole Foods will carry it soon and it will become the latest thing to connoiseur about in Berkeley, Marin and West Hollywood.

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Chivalry in Central Park

I'm not Rappaport is the saga of a park bench octagenarian who lives true to his ideals, most of which have something to do with fighting entrenched injustices with predictable results. Unlike Don Quixote, Nat Moyer (Walter Mathau) derived his enthusiasms not from books but from distant yet vivid boyboyhood memories of Lower East Side worker meetings in the nascent heyday of the American labor movement.

Moyer's armour is a cantankerous blend of Jewish vaudeville, chutzpah, false impersonation and inflammed rhetoric, all of which he uses to sally against overcharging supermarkets, co-op associations, Puerto Rican muggers and a cowboy loan shark. His side-kick is a disbelieving, distrusting, down to earth Black boilerman, Midge Carter (Ossie Davis) who wants nothing but peace in old age, but who can't resist Moyer's stories and enticements.

Like his Estremaduran counterpart, Moyer's idealism is both heroic and harmful, fighting for people and callously using them at the same time. It also lands both him and Carter into some bruising righting of wrongs.

The movie is set almost entirely on a bench in Central Park and the play is carried along on the strength of Davis and Mathau's superb character performances which make one forget that the action has barely moved from a single spot.

When his concerned daughter seeks to check him into a senior residence home, will Moyers finally admit what he really is or will Carter entice him into ongoing flights of idealism and fantasy?

As the movie comes to a close, the camera slowly pans away from the park bench, revealing at first a cluster of autumn trees, then the growing expanse of the Park and finally the surrounding stone bastions of power, privilege and capitalism set against a swelling chorus of the Internationale

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