Wednesday, April 24, 2013

Ives, Bernstein & Rouse

A brief visit to New York included my first New York Philharmonic concert in years.  We were attracted by the scheduling of Charles Ives's Fourth Symphony, which requires resources of orchestra, chorus, and rehearsal such that it doesn't get on symphony programs all that often. Plus many people put Ives in the rather massive category of modern music they don't get.  

Ives, however, has wonderful uber-American elements in his music.  He loved bands and church hymns, so his works are full of them. I had forgotten that he was so sophisticated a composer that the references are often brief and not all that long and thus not always able to register as you move from hearing one and listening for more.

The symphony runs about 35 minutes and is sufficiently complex as to require a second conductor to assist the Philharmonic's dynamic young leader, Alan Gilbert. I gather that the second conductor (the NY Phil's associate conductor) guides selected parts of the orchestra but I can't be definitive on that. There was also a large chorus, made up of apparently star members of major New York choral groups and styled as the New York Choral Consortium. They sang hymns in the first movement and then briefly in the finale--I wished they were involved in more.


The Ives left us at the end feeling a bit less than overwhelmed. Lots of clashing sound and yes, fury, but not much became clear as to what he was really aiming to achieve. I always loved the concept that motivated him--he liked trying to compose what it would sound like if two bands marched toward each other--but in the hall, it was hard to discern what was going on.

The Bernstein was a serenade, which really was a violin concerto, and featured the marvelous soloist, Joshua Bell.  His virtuosity, combined with Bernstein's usual exciting, attracting themes, made this the highlight of the evening, even if the programmatic reference to Plato's Symposium may have left me less than able to grasp everything he may have intended to convey in the piece. Bell always is exciting to watch as well as hear--he does fantastic things with his fiddle. 

The curtain-raiser (even if there was no curtain, of course) was Christopher Rouse's short piece based on Poe's The Masque of the Red Death. It was echt-modern and not as exciting or interesting as the Ives. Using a Poe story is fine but I can't say that the product stirred much response; it proved very difficult to gather what he was seeking to do.

I'm not sure if this was a typical Philharmonic crowd--compared to years ago, when I last attended one of their concerts in the Pierre Boulez days, and half the audience walked out after Schoenberg's Verklarte Nacht--but the house was mostly full and these days, most folks don't dress up for concerts any more. On that front, it was fun to see the orchestra players in full evening dress--tails--while the conductors and soloist were attired in fashionable black "modern" non-suit suits.

Thursday, April 18, 2013

Getting Obits Right

Neither of the two newspapers I read daily seems to get their obituaries right.  The Washington Post does try to run an obit for almost anyone, but rarely runs them before weeks have passed since the subject's death. You have to be very important to have a story run the day after or even the next day after that.

Being very important doesn't get you an obit in the N.Y. Times anymore. Now the obituaries there--yes, if you're a truly world figure, you'll get one as a news story--focus on people who are, for lack of a better word, quirky.  Someone who gave an unusual performance of something or other or someone who excelled in an art that remains mostly obscure.  

I thought about this today when I read the death notices--the ones in tiny print--in the Times. This is where people who previously were regarded as significant, people who had made major societal contributions or been influential leaders of powerful or prominent or vital institutions, now are remembered.  In previous Times, the paper would have written obits about them--now their heirs or institutions pay premium prices for lengthy recitations in the agate type.

Two notices--both very long--stood out today. One was about a Dr. Richard A. Bader, who clearly was a major medical figure with a distinguished career at Mt. Sinai in New York, complete with major research, fabled teaching and clinical prowess, and overall lasting impact on generations of patients, colleagues, and students.  

The other was about Dr. Gerald W. Lynch, who was president of John Jay College of Criminal Justice, part of the City University of New York, for decades.  Dr. Lynch, I learned from the notice, had actually saved the college back in the '70s when budget-cutters wanted to kill it.  Not only did he preserve it, he was the mastermind behind a new campus and was lauded by the present incumbent and the Chancellor of CUNY at the time of Lynch's retirement.

At one time, there would have been genuine obituaries about these major New York City figures. But not now. The rather warped view the newspaper now takes in seeking out rather weird deaths to report reminds me of when it reformed its obituary practice many years ago--in the 1960s, I believe--to make obituaries less worshipful and more news-oriented.  The then-new style presented the pluses and minuses of the deceased, something different from the prior practice of respectful attention to career and accomplishments.

In retrospect, I should have seen where that shift would lead--to the present strange kind of obit. One of the first major figures chronicled in the new, very critical kind of obituary was, as the princes of the church were then styled, Francis Cardinal Spellman, long one of New York's and the nation's most powerful clerics.  

The late cardinal certainly had both fervent admirers and harsh critics. One who had great regard for him was the late William F. Buckley, Jr. In a column he noted that how the Times had approached writing about the cardinal produced something less than worshipful prose. He added deliciously that the cardinal's power during his life had been so great that Buckley believed the newspaper would never have written something so critical of the cardinal had the latter still been alive.  It was, he concluded, all the more reason to mourn his passing.

April 24 Post-Script: I was wrong about the Times, as a day or two later, they ran a fairly long obit on Gerald Lynch. Oh well, there are plenty of other juicy long death notices most days that don't get full obit treatment.


Saturday, April 13, 2013

The Milk Snatcher

She was a mean, hard-ass woman who screwed up Britain just like Reagan started the move toward greater inequality in the U.S.  And many, many people in the UK understood her for what she was: a single-minded fanatic determined to steal from the poor to aid the rich. Only the U.S. media remains enthralled by her--reflecting the indirect influence of the malign Rupert Murdoch.

Most Americans know little about her and care less. But to the Brits, she was the personification of the "bloody Tories."  Reactionaries on both sides of the pond have made great gains in the past few decades mostly because pusillanimous opponents--like Clinton and Obama--won't take them on directly. The GOP and the Tories have no reluctance to engage in the most down-and-dirty tactics but we have a President now who tries to compromise with people who have no interest in it. He also paid no attention to the sleaze and dirty tactics that the Republicans used to capture the House and take charge of gerrymandering districts across the country to keep control even when the Dems got more votes last year.

With Thatcher, what you saw was what you got.  She was a shameless apologist and advocate for no-holds-barred capitalism--this precipitated the financial crisis here and in Britain for which almost no bankers or other fiscal denizens have paid any price whatsoever. She started as education minister and did indeed show her true stripes by cutting out support for poor families' children getting milk at school. 

Unlike our supine and hogwashed public, Brits don't ;pay as much mind to what their often blatantly biased media spout.  As noted, it remains totally wrong to me to assume that Americans thought very much of her or even thought about her or knew about her at all. She of course benefitted from a low level of opponent--Neil Kinnock, Michael Foot--not bad men but somewhat inept politicians. Tony Blair played a con game by convincing the Labour Party that he could win by riding the middle. So we get a conservative regime followed by a moderate one that does nothing much to turn things around. 

The same was true of Clinton.  Blair, of course, was sufficiently off his rocker to be persuaded by, of all people, Bush Junior, to support the Iraq war. He also must have tired of holding off Gordon Brown, and must have gotten some minor schadenfreude from seeing the clumsy Brown blow his big chance to get elected in his own right.

Right now, even with a centre-right coalition governing in Britain, things look more promising than they do here. Ed Miliband, the Labour leader, is gaining in repute as the weaknesses of Cameron--the perfect Etonian--are becoming clear even to the Tories. But if you read or listen to American media, you would think that the left everywhere are inept.

Tuesday, April 9, 2013

Take Out the Prexy

Not that the rapid firing of the Rutgers basketball coach was a surprise once the conclusively  incriminating--ah, the legal influence persists, but more on that later--video went viral, as they now say, but with the fairly speedy subsequent ousting of the athletic director, attention should now focus on the justly-maligned President, Barchi.  

Apparently he had already alienated the faculty by dint of his appointment and efforts to effectuate the cost-cutting campaign envisaged by the overrated Gov. Chris Christie. But lawyers especially should have seen through the main smokescreen he threw up that the university was obliged to pay the departing coach his $100K bonus because Rice wasn't fired for cause. I've dealt with public-sector personnel processes enough to know how arcane they can be and frustrate the most well-intentioned manager.  But if you can't say that firing a coach for striking players and aiming basketballs at them clearly seeking impact was for cause, well, what can you fire him for?

This statement was not challenged by anyone I could notice.  Barchi openly based his outrageous position on advice provided by legal counsel. Those lawyers should be hung out to dry because it was an attempt to provide what today has become the ultimate cover for bad behavior: we had to do it under contract. 

Of course, sanctity of contract remains more than a legal maxim--it's close to holy writ for our Supreme Court, among others. And institutions which enter into dumb contracts deserve to pay the price.  Yesterday, for example, the Justice Department was told by an arbitrator that it had failed to follow proper procedures in slapping the wrists of the prosecutors who witheld evidence in the Ted Stevens case.  You will recall that Attorney General Holder had to move to dismiss the case post-conviction and posthumously in the case in Stevens because of these missteps.  The Department had been dissatisfied with a review by a line attorney--required by the rules--so they had a more pliable upper-level manager re-review the matter and reinstate the ordered discipline, which was quite modest in any event. They lost before the arbitrator because he rightly held that they had violated their own procedures.

When I was heading a court office, we caught an employee processing phony vouchers.  Of course, when dealing with someone in a fiscal position, we wanted to fire her. I had to restrain the then-chief judge from doing just that--by court order, of course--because I knew that the employee would be reinstated by an arbitrator or other review panel.  Eventually the employee quit, recognizing that ultimately she would be ousted for cause. So it's not always simple, direct, or easy to get rid of someone who has clearly violated relevant and important rules. And it's absolutely right that those in charge must pay attention to the rules and follow the proper procedures.

That said--Barchi and his counsel should be fired just for presenting the situation so wrongly and for attempting to place the focus on their being constrained by rules instead of their ignoring the whistle-blower and his information until the world got to see the video evidence. They wanted to be in the Big Ten and some coach flipping basketballs at players wasn't going to stop them. Instead, they are now trying to sic the FBI on the whistle-blower for extortion, having trumped up a case to fire him instead of the offending coach. 

Compared to this coach and these administrators, Joe Paterno at least did what he thought he was required to do by the rules as he knew them: report the complaint to those in authority above him. Yes, it turned out not to have been enough under all the circumstances but at least he was doing what he knew he had to do.  Rutgers clearly learned nothing from the Penn State debacle and is digging itself ever deeper into ignominy.