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economics inflation See: The Proposed Iranian Oil Bourse
Years ago, when first introduced to free-market economics,
I found myself surrounded by people who expected hyperinflation not only at any time, but thought it inevitable. And welcomed it.
These people, whom I chiefly associated with Doug Casey (perhaps incorrectly), were largely right-wing types who thought investing in gold made the most sense. I understood their welcoming of hyperinflation. They wanted the world to change drastically, radically, and only a horrendous economic condition could do it. After all, America only got its welfare state with the onset of the catastrophe known as the Great Depression. They wanted something similar, something that would allow for a new revolution in the state, but one more to their liking.
I'm afraid I never believed them for a moment. Too much wishful thinking involved, for my tastes. Besides, I had this suspicion that inflation was easier to control than they thought. Governments have no interest in losing control of their apex on the pyramid of power, and simply wouldn't allow hyperinflation to take place.
As the '70s turned to the '80s, my hunch was justified.
Later in the '80s I associated myself with a minor player in the hard-money movement. I even proofread and provided feedback on (that is, I had an editorial capacity) for his hard-money newsletter. For thirteen years I did this, and for thirteen years I tried to get him to abandon a few simplistic concepts for more sophisticated economic ones. The chief of these regarded inflation. He tended to define it as the artificial growth of the money supply.
I didn't like that word artificial.
What did it mean? He meant: government induced growth of the money supply. But inflation didn't require government activity. Banks can inflate the money supply simply with their standard fractional reserve practices. And a discovery of gold can cause inflation, too, in a gold-standard system. No government involved — but inflation occurred nonetheless. He knew this. His training in Austrian economics and his passion for history had alerted him to this. But his adman's approach to selling gold and silver took over, and he only occasionally let me change his wording to defining inflation in terms of increases in the supply of money over the demand for money.
I once confessed to him that I had never believed the late '70s talk of hyperinflation; never believed in its inevitability, and was always suspicious of its ideological dimension, its apocalyptics, its cult-like associations. That is, in its wishful thinking, what I called the ought/is hegemony — the believing in something because it helped one prop up one's values based more on hopes than on reality.
I had not meant it as a criticism of him. He was far better than most hard money men in the biz,
more honest, it seemed to me. But he took it personally, lashing back at me, Then why didn't you get rich on your suspicion?
There was venom in his voice. Of course, it had of course never crossed my mind that I could invest and make money on the hunch that hard-money men were wrong about hyperinflation. I guess I should have realized I'd struck a nerve, and kept mum. But I'd actually thought that he was above such nonsense. Apparently not. Perhaps he made his money off others believing such nonsense — and knew it.
Well, it's been 25 years or more since the years of hyperinflation worries, and how do things look?
Oddly, even I'm beginning to wonder if the odds of hyperinflation aren't increasing, now.
This came home to me as I read a standard Austrian
debunking of trade deficit concerns, Does the widening US trade deficit pose a threat to the economy?,
by Frank Shostak. Trade deficits worry most economists. But not those influenced by Mises, apparently. Shostak nicely sets the scene:
Most economists are extremely alarmed about the effect of the expanding deficit on the current account. In 2004 the deficit stood at $668 billion, or 5.7% of the gross domestic product (GDP). For 2005 we have estimated that the deficit was around $788 billion, or 6.3% of GDP. As a result of the ballooning deficit, the value of US net external liabilities, expressed at historical cost, jumped to $5.1 trillion in 2005 from $4.3 trillion in 2004. As a percentage of GDP, net external liabilities climbed to 41% in 2005 from 37% in the previous year and 4.9% in 1980.
Unfortunately, from this point on, Shostak's article strikes me as a classic case of using micro theory to evade macro issues. My concern with trade deficits are contextual. Trade deficits are fearsome mainly in a fiat money system, which we are indeed encumbered with. They are not so fearsome in an international gold standard monetary system, which has been long abandoned. From what I can gather, the Austrian tendency to debunk trade deficit worries is a hold-over from traditional times, when good economists would debunk trade deficit talk because equilibration could be almost automatic. With fiat currencies, however, there exists additional hitches that can make the equilibration process more disastrous.
Shostak doesn't really get to the issues that concern me.
In a condition of trade deficits, an area (state, nation, empire) is exporting money in exchange for goods. In a gold standard environment, or other "hard currency" (which we haven't had in what seems like eons; not really in my lifetime), the effect is deflationary: money has left the area, so its value rises and prices tend to fall. Investments look up, and so investments increase. Eventual equilibration of the trade deficit induced deflation.
Now, this often means that the recipients of the money from the trade- deficit region begin investing (along with other savers) in that region, and the situation balances itself out. Shostak does describe this process.
With the introduction of fiat currency into the mix, though, it gets more complicated. You still have the tendency for those dollars to come back in the form of investments from overseas. But because the currency is almost certainly inflating at the same time, this process is corrupted. And if the trade deficit is of long standing, and the rest of the world uses the fiat currency of the trade deficit region as a de facto currency (either as a medium of exchange or unit of account or both — as long as vast reserves of the currency are held in foreign accounts in banks, etc), the effect of the permanent trade deficit is to buffer the fiat currency's inflationary policies with a constant deflationary tendency, therefore stabilizing the currency despite the central-bank inflation. Early recipients of the newly inflated supplies of money gain the most from the process.
The trouble is, how evenly does this process rotate
? That is, how predictable are its patterns? If the process goes along in an even way, entrepreneurs of international currencies will help keep the whole system working for a long time.
But what happens when a shock occurs? What if reasons to hold the trade-deficit region's fiat currency in accounts goes down? What if, for instance, the most valuable world commodity, oil, goes to market not in terms of the fiat currency in question, but with another nation's currency?
Then there would be a big reason to liquidate bank accounts of the trade-deficit region's currency.
Which would bring that money back to the trade deficit region in a hurry.
Which would have a rapid inflationary effect on the region, adding an uncontrollable element of money supply increase to the trade deficit region, on top of the region's own central bank inflationary policy.
Now, I thought that was one of the worries of trade deficit theorists. They are operating from within the framework of inflationary fiat currencies, not of a more readily equilibrating international hard-money standard.
Were the whole world denominates in gold, and a region has a trade deficit, an external shock will not cause money from that region
to head back home
in a flock of roosters
fashion. Why? Because money is money! But fiat currencies have a hitch. They are created by a region's government, are tied to that region, have what amounts to a homing device built in.
This is their chief inadequacy. They are tied to a nation state. A French 20 Franc gold piece may have been coined by the government of France, but its gold value is that makes it money. If the owner doesn't like the rooster on the stamp, he can melt it down and still maintain the coin's monetary value. A contemporary American dollar, on the other hand, is printed by the U.S. Treasury and functions within the context of the Federal Reserve's policies; demand for it is centered on the American government and the economy it rides herd over. An oil market that switches unit of account from dollars to euros could indeed shock foreign investors into liquidating American dollars, and they would head home.
What I've just described in vague terms is part of an actual geopolitical theory, one that sounds as paranoid as anything pushed by a hard-money nut c. 1977. What I'm describing is a scenario integral to the Petrodollar Empire Theory of the American Foreign Policy, which gets a major (mis)statement about once per year by some economist or journalist or other. According to this theory, our government wants to maintain the dollar as unit of account for petrol purchasing, which means that the foreign demand for American dollars would always be high, and maintain a buffer on the American government's own inflationary monetary policies.
But that's my interpretation of the theory. The usual way it's laid out strikes me as, well, a bit goofy. Consider Krassimer Petrov's essay The Proposed Iranian Oil Bourse.
He doesn't seem to understand the nature of empire, and he botches up Bretton-Woods, too. The way he articulates this theory is that America gains an inflationary tax
from elsewhere in the world, by maintaining this policy. I'm not sure if this is the case, as I've not seen the evidence for it convincingly demonstrated. And even if an inflationary advantage accrues to Americans, would it necessarily accrue to the American government?
But this subsidiary point is not required. The American government could simply be striving to maintain an evenness to its fiscal and monetary policies, while keeping deficit spending at home, by ensuring that the world continues its high demand for America's fiat dollars. Cheney and his puppet, Bush, could be engaging in strategic bullying in the mid-East in part to maintain the continuation of The American Way of Government. That is, of big government, fiat currency, deficit spending, and the like. Why they would prefer to spend trillions of dollars and go into increased debt merely to maintain certain terms in an oil bourse seems a bit weird. Could it be that they merely want to postpone a day of reckoning, have hyperinflation occur on a later administration's watch?*
I see this theory as simply a variant of the Trade Deficit macro-worry obsession.
Within a context of a gold standard, the equilibration process to deal with trade deficits is not really much of a problem. That's why Austrians argue against trade deficit worries. Makes sense.
But in a fiat currency context, the equilibration process is made more cumbersome, allowing for a less even and more catastrophic reactions. All those American fiat dollars, and accounts denominated in dollars, if liquidated, would come home to America, and could cause quite a ruckus. Hyperinflation. And it would be pretty hard for the Fed to control it, because it can only control growth through the manipulation of certain interest rates, in collusion with the U.S. government. Even if it stop the printing presses
(which is just a figurative way of describing what it actually does; in actuality the Fed's power to create money is not in the U.S. Treasury's printing office), the dollars returning home would be devaluing all dollars held at a fast clip.
This variant of the Petrodollar Empire Theory, as a monetary policy issue focused on the biggest element in the trade deficit (petroleum purchases), seems to dovetail with Austrian theories of the business cycle. You know, the Austrians' insistence on the monetary origins of the business cycle. Ready equilibrations of supply and demand for money spoiled by central bank controls.
All that.
But since Austrians have not advanced this, and I'm not an economist, perhaps the whole theory is as goofy as the obviously nutty
hyperinflation fixation of '70s hard-money enthusiasts.
It's also likely that this analysis, more clearly stated, has been advanced by Doug Casey himself. What goes around comes around.
* As always, any one action or policy probably has more than one reason. A coincidence of reasons provides motive for action; a lack of coincidence, a lack of motivation. So this theory could only be a partial explanation for American state foreign policy. Conveniently, this theory of multiple reasons is also Austrian, straight out of Menger. (He applied it to personal economies only, however.)
T i m o W i r k m a n V i r k k a l a | February 3, 2006 | permalink
foreign policy Islam See: Don't let the Islamo-fascists kill the right to free speech
The Kama Sutra has one bit of prudential advice that I think can be extended beyond the sexual realm. That advice (loosely translated) is don't fuck with crazy women.
In general, I suggest treating crazy people as gingerly as possible, never (following the Kama Sutra) getting too intimate, and only forcibly intervening when you have no other alternatives. The usual social shunning and avoidance can do a lot to marginalize a full-blown nut.
Other people, more careless in their sexual habits and (more to the point) more prone to grab for the revolver, think that controlling crazy people is precisely the most sensible of options.
David Brown, writing on The Webzine, takes the occasion of the cartoon-inspired uprisings to argue against peaceniks
:
Some peacenik types, practiced in the art of highly selective observation and quotation, bleat that all that America or the West need do to defuse the threat of Islamic terrorism is forbear from ever getting involved militarily in conflicts overseas.
It's not that the Islamo-fascists hate our culture or freedom, nor that they wish and strive for a global caliphate. After all, don't the Bin Ladens of the world even announce explicitly on their video tapes that, hey, all you have to do is throw in the towel in your war against us and all will be well? And we all know what credible truth-tellers the mass-murdering terrorists are.
Sure . . . the only problem is our foreign policy . . . not our culture and freedoms . . . but only, it seems, so long as our culture and freedoms don't . . . permit publication of the wrong cartoons.
Most of this is rhetoric, and I'll ignore it. I can't ignore the challenge here, though:
So, it's all about foreign policy? Tell it to the recipients of the latest Islamo-fascist death threats.
I guess I'm one of the peacenik types,
since I've thought the Iraq conquest was foolish from the get-go, and argued for by conscious liars. And I really think it foolish for the West to involve itself intimately in the affairs of the Mid-East.
But it's not because I think they
hate us only because of American foreign policy interventions. No. I have adopted a hands-off approach because I think they
(that is, the radical Islamists) are dangerous crazies, hating us for nutty
and very foolish reasons. Just as family members are the best people to handle crazies in everyday life, Islamic crazies and are best handled by other Islamists, Islamists with ties to civilization, wealth, trade, and even to Western culture.
After all, Islamic objections to Western writers writing about Islam are old hat. Remember Salman Rushdie? I actually read his offensive
book, and I've never forgotten the fatwa against him. This week's cartoon episode is nothing new, not in kind. Not even in severity.
I do think that America's foreign policy has exacerbated the issue. That's an important point. And it's also something that we can (ostensibly) control. But there's another reason to avoid further foreign adventuring and entanglements: I just don't think that force will subdue these crazies. They are fanatics. They are encouraged by conflict, and their ranks are fed by poverty and futility. The only long-term strategy that can succeed in subduing them is a cagey, hands-off approach. Corrupt them with trade, resist them their immediate onslaughts, but, if they kill their own brethren (or our diplomats) in their own country, don't get too upset. These people are whack jobs, and should be treated as such. Gingerly. At as great a distance as possible.
At no point have I forgotten the antipathy of the old-time Islamists to modernity. I just don't think we moderns should ram our culture down their throats. That doesn't mean, in this global age, suppressing our own art (freedom forbid!), but it does mean that we don't attempt to conquer and rule them in their own lands.
Is this really a hard position to understand? Hands off, as much as possible; cordon them off if necessary; keep them out of our lands, if we must. Try not to piss them off by warring with them and ruling them (their religion is a very political one, far more political than Christianity at base). Stand up to them when we have to. Kill them if they seek to kill us. But rooting around in their lands is a recipe for disaster. There may be many things we can do, actively, to help them, and thus help us; but most of all, give them time.
Over time, Christianity became civilized. Over time, this eschatological cult became a family-values religion. Over time, the totalitarian impulse within the clerical caste was curbed. Over time, the popular consensus became anti-bloodshed, and the religious wars were brought to a stop. The same can happen to Islam. It took hundreds of years for Christianity to reform itself. It will no doubt take at least half a century more for today's Islam — under a barrage of market-induced enticements backed by careful defensive forces — to go as far as Christianity had by 1800. Until then, stop thinking in terms of all-or-nothing victories. Remember, marginal gains are better than huge lumps of horror. And the path of worldly wisdom can only go slowly, up against old traditions of otherwordly nonsense.
Speeding this up, with continual, never-ending forcible interventions, will only feed the fires of the crazies. I say: don't fuck with these whack jobs. Leave them as much as possible alone.
T i m o W i r k m a n V i r k k a l a | February 7, 2006 | permalink
Ceremonial Institutions
utilitarianism music See: Beethoven conducts Fidelio
John Stuart Mill, defending utilitarianism against the charge that it is a pig philosophy,
asserted that It is better to be a human being dissatisfied than a pig satisfied; better to be Socrates dissatisfied than a fool satisfied.
Let's switch from man vs. pig/philosopher vs. fool to levels of excellence in one discipline, contrasted for worldly success. Americans, especially, should find the following question something of a challenge:
Is it better to be Ludwig Van Beethoven and a pauper than it is to be Barry Manilow and rich?
T i m o W i r k m a n V i r k k a l a | February 8, 2006 | permalink
My fellow dissidents to the political mainstream — Mugwumps, Independents, Greens and Libertarians — often refer to the two major American political parties as ONE, either as Demopublican
or Republicrat.
In this they to try to show not only disrespect, but the essential unity of their enemies in the two parties.
I don't quite approve. I do not believe the parties are unified, much less fungible. Instead, the two groups coöperate in the marginalization of dissent. They both jockey for power, coöperating to insulate themselves from competition. But this does not make them one.
It does make them worthy of disrespect, though.
So they need new nicknames. But not longer monikers, per Demopub and Republicrat; they need shorter ones. I offer my current preferred epithets:
These terms play on their current names as well as reveal (by word association) some of the designates' character — the rodential propensity of the nibblers in the left-leaning party, and the simple loathesomeness of the right-leaning traitors.
T i m o W i r k m a n V i r k k a l a | February 9, 2006 | permalink
Slow Men Workingepitomize cynically the activities of democracy.
Tonight a bout of levity led to my creation of three jokes. These are not the first of my jokes unleashed upon the world. And they are certainly not the best. Nor, I hope, the last. But on the basis of these three jokes I hazard that my hope is not shared universally amongst the civilized of mankind. Well, here they are:
Nyuk nyuk.What were they charged with? Nyuxorcide.
T i m o W i r k m a n V i r k k a l a | February 10, 2006 | permalink
Carl Menger economics See: The Unfashionably Dismal Carl Menger
Gloom. Despair. Agony. If it weren't for bad luck . . . The overcast of the spirit, perhaps caused by the overcast in the skies, and the drizzle of cold rain.
Or: lacking in merit; particularly bad.
Such are the current definitions of dismal. Sorta. I don't know which definition Carlyle was up to when he defined political economy (economics) as the dismal science.
I just know that he wasn't being nice. He was, in fact, being a reactionary curmudgeon of extraordinary degree. He was complaining how economists assumed human beings to be pretty much equal, and thus unfit for slavery, especially racially-based slavery. What a villain Carlyle was! What great men were the early economists.
So when I read C. J. Maloney's encomium to my favorite economist, The Unfashionably Dismal Carl Menger,
I had every reason to be dismayed. Menger? Dismal?!? Never!!!
But really, Maloney's essay is charming in its way, and if he praises in the context of damnation, I will not gainsay his rhetorical stratagem. In a world that praises unreadable authors propounding concepts so convolved as to indicate intrinsic error, Menger shines. And Maloney reflects that illuminating light. In this great Austrian thinker readers have an ally, someone who demonstrates each step of a complex argument carefully enough that the reader can master each step before passing on to the prize sought. So, upon getting to the prize, the prize has been won. The reader understands.
And I understand how Ludwig von Mises could say that this one book made an economist out of him.
It's that good.
I didn't learn the essentials of economics from Mises or Rothbard or Kirzner or Friedman or Hicks or who-have-you, I learned the essentials from Menger. I had read Mises and Rothbard and Kirzner and Friedman and Hicks previously. But it was Menger who made it all clear to me.
Those who are familiar with Austrian economics may be amused to learn that I was not convinced of the Misesian praxeological approach by reading Mises. Or Rothbard. Or even Kirzner's excellent The Economic Point of View. I saw the point of praxeology while reading Menger — who did not argue for this approach — and, simultaneously, reading Destutt de Tracy's treatise on political economy. There's much to not admire in de Tracy's treatise. He even descends into the idiotic error of the labor theory of value. But his main concept, of seeing political economy as the purview of the will and its effects
(basically, the French version of that phrase is the original title of the book his translator, Thomas Jefferson, gave in English as A Treatise on Political Economy), helped clarify the careful Aristotelian steps in Menger's treatise. I could see that this was all about human action.
Much more convincing, Menger-plus-Destutt, than Mises himself! No cumbersome Kantianism! Just plain categories of causation, as well as (of course) ends and means.
I'm a puzzler. Perhaps this is why I learned economics the way I did. Hayek admitted to being a puzzler, too, as was his peculiar teacher, Wieser.
Wieser's brother-in-law and fellow first-generation Menger disciple, Böhm-Bawerk, on the other hand, was a classic case of a master of his subject.
I don't know how Menger thought this all out. I figure he puzzled it out. And then put it down as concisely as he could.
Readers should appreciate the approach, if you ask me. More treatises should be written in that fashion. In fact, one of my projects takes a difficult subject and tries to apply the Menger Touch to it. We'll see how I do, a year or so hence.
For now, just read Menger. You will not be dismayed.
T i m o W i r k m a n V i r k k a l a | February 13, 2006 | permalink
[T]he importance that a good or a number of goods acquire for the well-being of an individual, without which some satisfaction would have to be foregone.
It's not the events themselves, though some, like the sledding races in the Winter Olympics, strike me as rather silly. Actually, I've long preferred individual sports to team sports. The Olympic tradition, running back to ancient times, strikes me as a worthy one. Perseus is my only sports hero. (Greatest discus thrower? Discuss.) Honoring excellence in physical effort seems worthwhile. And it's not as if things haven't improved since the ancient Olympics. For example, I think clothing is an improvement; I don't want to watch naked people competing in events, not even swimming.
So why do I hate the Olympics?
It's the incessant commentary. The never-ending blather.
This is bad enough in the races. Frankly, I can see who's ahead. I don't really need constant update. And I certainly don't need Whoa-ho
in two-point counterpoint.
The blather is unforgivable among the more artistic endeavors, such as when athletes skate, free-style, to music. So here is a young man skating to Rodion Schedrin's excellent arrangement of Bizet's Carmen music. And the nincompoop experts keep cutting in. Every time the lad does a "triple axle" or a "triple Lutz" (whatever they are), the experts start shouting. In Carmen, the weapon is a knife. I'd prefer a gattling gun for the panel's excessive yammering.
The networks should provide alternative sound channels. One with the blather that apparently most people want. And the other would be minimal commentary, where the "experts" would just shut up while the events are going on.
Though we live in amazing technological times, don't expect a reform as sensible as this any time soon. Sports events are broadcast to hard-core fans. And these people, I suspect, tend not to be geniuses. They need a constant barrage of information. Moments of silence are boring
to them. They need commentators as well as laugh tracks and expert guidance . . . though perhaps not when they pee, during the commercial breaks.
Yes, Jim, this contestant always manages to produce a prodigious amount of urine. Notice the thickness of the stream? No other Olympian produces nearly that much, nor of that color. Notice the color? Somehow he has imitated a patient with porphyria! And yet you can see, by the way he points his stream at hot points on the toilet, minimizing splash, that he is in complete control. No madness. I think we can say that the Couch Potato Olympics has proven itself once again, astounding us with something you just don't see every day.
T i m o W i r k m a n V i r k k a l a | February 16, 2006 | permalink
William Schuman symphony See: William Schuman: Symphonies Nos. 7 & 10
Years ago I prepared a tape for a friend, a very eclectic compilation of some of my favorite pieces of music. For some reason I put William Schuman's Third Symphony on that tape. Not Roy Harris's, not Aaron Copland's, not Charles Ives's — or Bohuslav Martinu's, or Jean Sibelius's . . . each of which I prefer to William Schuman's very expert opus. But I did. And my friend loved it.
So, over the years, I've kept an ear open for further work by William Schuman, the master of the grandiose polychord. Recently I purchased two Naxos CDs from iTunes, featuring the Seattle Symphony Orchestra under the baton of Gerard Schwartz. The works recorded? Symphonies 4, 7, 9 and 10, a great little Circus Overture, and a light bit o' fluff.
It is interesting to see how William Schuman progressed. His music became less tuneful and more imposing. He came under the spell of modernism, and my receding ability to remember any one motif, the higher the number adorning each symphony, is living testament to that trend. But Schuman's music, which started out granitic, ended up metamorphosed into something more amazing. Dolomite turns to marble under metamorphic pressure. What happens to granite? William Schuman.
The Seventh Symphony is tough music, but always interesting, and beautiful in a way that I do not find in, say, Carl Ruggles's more famously rocky tone roads. Why? Mainly, because I want to follow it. And I do follow Schuman's muse. The first movement, labelled Largo assai,
starts with opening chords that seem strangely foreign, but soon we hear a familiar Schuman touch. The bass clarinet becomes a soloist for the first time early in the movement, and later on has memorably dissonant counterpoint with the clarinet. There are extended passages for strings alone, in this first movement, and the music is more than sad, it's as dark as despair can be, and yet not quite despair. The music builds to several climaxes, often with signature Schuman brasswork. The bass clarinet returns as soloist several times. Somehow, it doesn't seems quite the same instrument that Bernard Herrmann burned into our brains in his best film scores. But it is dark, and this music will not win the hearts and minds of the resolutely cheerful.
The first movement ends with bass clarinet and clarinet slow, almost forlorn fanfares. Without break, the brass start the second movement where the clarinets left off. In a movement marked Vigoroso,
Schuman vigorously moves forward in a dissonant yet remarkably simple exercise, ending, again, with the bass clarinet (followed by oboe) concluding slowly, reflectively, and . . .
not really concluding at all. The second movement is followed without break into the third, Cantabile intensamente,
the strings sadly singing, with interruptions of brief silence, leading to intense . . . well, it's hard to describe music that does not try to explore any common, single emotion, but is nevertheless thoroughly arresting. I used the word granitic
before. Dream of the emotions of statues that have withstood the elements for thousands of years. Not simple human emotions. The sadness of eons . . . but does not weigh heavily, it reflects back to us, no matter what light we may shine upon the statuary of dead heroes. This is their music.
Since I bought the music on iTunes, I have no liner notes. I don't have any great insights to share about the composing or the performing of this work. The Britannica states that it's the Sixth Symphony that's his perhaps finest achievement.
Well. Along with his first two symphonies, it's one of his I've not heard. For now, this symphony, sans liner notes, will have to do. And it does well.
The Fifth, if memory serves, is for strings alone. The third movement of the Seventh is also for strings. Alone. Nothing else necessary. Except, after all this darkness, the transmuted joy of my exemplary statuary, too. What is needed is the existing fourth movement.
It's a scherzo, titled Scherzando brioso,
and a spirited scherzo it is. Very brioso. But expect no long melodies spun out. Schuman's method has become very clear: Motivic play is the thing. The melody in the strings and motivic bursts in the brass that highlight the first section are as modern as anything one could hope for. But not fear. Fun. How about that? Is energetic fun within a context of unearthly greatness good enough? The scherzo is bumptious, but not, until the end, really happy or joyous as normally understood. But as the big brass chords pile up, in characteristic Schumanesque manner, to give a suitable finale with drums and all, triumph leaps into something indeed like joy, if not joy exactly.
The triumph at the end is the very thing I'd come to expect from earlier Schuman. It's upbeat
at the end of this symphony, and perhaps a little out-of-place. Has it been foreshadowed? It doesn't seem tacked on, and the exuberance is of a piece with the rest of the movement. But it does seem a bit more human. Humane. Heroic. I will have to listen to the work over and over to determine what I really think of it.
This will not be a chore.
Oh, and what of the Tenth Symphony, sharing space on the CD?
Why, it's arguably even better!
Gerard Schwartz and the Seattle Symphony play amazingly well. Schwartz's recordings of Piston symphonies have been revelations. His Hovhaness and Creston works are not nearly as well known as they should be (and his Hovhaness efforts are, indeed, well known; they should be even more popular, that's all). And yet when I look at the schedule for the Seattle Symphony Orchestra, it doesn't impress me that much. Where's the Schuman? Piston? Creston?
T i m o W i r k m a n V i r k k a l a | February 17, 2006 | permalink
In the name of the Prophet, figs! People—I mean the people who count in Lichfield—are charitable enough to ignore almost any crime which is just a matter of common knowledge. In fact, they are mildly grateful. It gives them something to talk about. But when detraction is printed in the morning paper you can't overlook it without incurring the suspicion of being illiterate and virtueless. That's Lichfield.
T i m o W i r k m a n V i r k k a l a | February 19, 2006 | permalink
Lamarck Elaborated,first stanza
We all start out as girls.
Or so I learned on House, Fox's excellent, funny, intelligent and slightly whacked medical drama. This week a stunningly beautiful (well, merely nice looking) 15-year-old model learns that she's really
a boy. That is, her testicles never dropped into a scrotum, because her body fought the testosterone her whole life, giving her wondrous breasts and a nice, mostly hairless vulva. But because of the testicles inside her (afflicted by a cancer, actually), she's allegedly really a boy. She doesn't take it well, but she does take off all her clothes to prove she's a woman.
A few weeks earlier, on Grey's Anatomy, ABC's not-quite-as-good medical drama, a misfit girl discovers, because of the same condition, that she could choose to be a boy. It was a heartwarming tale of sexual choice. Spontaneous orgasms could be heard throughout the leftish gay community.
I found the House episode to be far superior, in part because the choice
to be a boy or girl was shown to be the opposite of a no-brainer. On House, the writers' brains are fully engaged, and they are not so resolutely PC. Tragedy is ever-present. Easy ways out are avoided more consistently. It seems more like life; yet it's far more artistic.
By the way, the primacy of the female in the development of the human organism belies the account in Genesis, where the male is prior. If Genesis provided a true account of our origins, then surely the Creator would have repeated the order of creation in the development of each organism. But as it is, ontogeny suggests the very opposite of a creationist phylogeny.
Yup: jus' ribbin'.
T i m o W i r k m a n V i r k k a l a | February 21, 2006 | permalink
success libertarianism See: The Point to Libertarianism: Wealth?
In the course of a life, one thinks many thoughts, expresses many opinions . . . not every one of which makes equal sense. Reflecting in the pages of Liberty, on the life and death of Liberty's founder, R.W. Bradford, Douglas Casey has this to say about libertarianism and wealth:
Bill was, unlike many libertarian intellectuals, financially successful. It always amused him that a class of people who, arguably, understand money and the economy better than any others (including most university professors and financial pundits), seemed to have less money than anyone else this side of the welfare lines. It was nice to see someone not only talk the talk but walk the walk.
I regard this as just plain goofy, to use a Bradfordian term of dismissal. But hey: I shouldn't dismiss it. Could there be any sense to it at all? Well, Bill Bradford himself provided some of the arguments against it! See Instead of a Blog, dated today.
T i m o W i r k m a n V i r k k a l a | February 22, 2006 | permalink
Morals and Modals
Bible literacy See: Hey, Jude: The King James Version's Obvious Superiority
Secularists and liberal Christians like to make fun of those Protestants who prefer the King James Version to all others. Ridicule is not uncommon. Why? Well, some zealots do say the darndest things. But though I've known a lot of proponents of the King James Version, I've never met one who said anything too stupid, and none have been as cultic,
for instance, as described here: .
It [the KJV] is still very popular, in spite of its archaic and difficult to understand language. Indeed, there is a cult-like following of this translation that claim that this is the only true Word of God, superior even to the original languages.
Well, I grew up on the King James Version, and I've tried quite a few of the modern translations. And let me say this: the King James Version is far superior. It should be taught to the young as Shakespeare is, at the very least.
And these smarty-pants scoffers at Fundamentalists? Laugh right back at them. The modern translations are, for the most part, far, far worse in several important ways — as I relate, today, on Instead of a Blog.
And I'm not arguing this just from nostalgia. I have at least two reasons for sticking to the KJV. Yes, other translations should be used, too, in tandem. But the KJV is an important cultural artifact, and through both its literary excellence and deliberate archaisms it performs better as a translation than almost any other contender.
T i m o W i r k m a n V i r k k a l a | February 25, 2006 | permalink | ReadingMatters
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