Phelim McDermott’s Americanization of Mozart

Here in San Francisco we can take a justified amount of pride in the production of Richard Wagner’s Der Ring des Nibelung that is currently in the repertoire of the San Francisco Opera, last seen in the War Memorial Opera House about three months ago. This production was particularly notable for the way in which Director Francesca Zambello conceived a staging that was true to the narrative of the libretto while drawing upon distinctively American icons to situate that narrative in a contemporary perspective. This past season, on the other side of our continent, Phelim McDermott took a similar approach to staging a more classical offering, Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart’s K. 588 opera Così fan tutte (so do all women), for the Metropolitan Opera.

Dubbed the “Coney Island Così” by some, McDermott drew heavily on 1950s Brooklyn but incorporated a wide variety of other sources to create a feast of visual impressions that, for the most part, did not overwhelm the underlying narrative of Lorenzo Da Ponte’s libretto. Indeed, doing justice to that libretto is no mean feat, given that the conclusion is ambiguous enough to be interpreted in different ways. The idea behind the title is that all women are capable of infidelity; and in the libretto the women in question are a pair of sisters, Fiordiligi (soprano Amanda Majeski) and Dorabella (Serena Malfi). They are betrothed to Guglielmo (bass Adam Plachetka) and Ferrando (tenor Ben Bliss), who, in the opening trio, are boasting about their lovers’ fidelity to the cynical old philosopher Don Alfonso (bass Christopher Maltman).

Alfonso proposes a wager that he can demonstrate that both of these women can succumb to infidelity over the course of a day. The basic idea is that the young men will (ostensibly) set off on military service and then immediately return in disguise. In their new personalities each will woo the other’s lover. Alfonso enlists their maid Despina (soprano Kelli O’Hara) to help break down the sisters’ virtuous resolve. To make a long story short, both eventually succumb to their “new lovers” to the point that a wedding is planned, in the midst of which Ferrando and Guglielmo return from their military engagement.

This is where different directors have the liberty to decide how it all ends. Either coupling is consistent with the libretto text. All that matters is that all four of them are wiser, if a bit sadder as a result of the process. The most innovative approach was probably the one that Peter Sellars took in which mere sadness gives way to all four parties having nervous breakdowns. McDermott, on the other hand, seemed content to let things return to the “natural ordering” of the original pairing.

PBS aired the Live in HD broadcast of the performance that took place this past March 31. I recorded the broadcast on local television and finally had a chance to view it. I was impressed by the diversity of images but even more impressed with how very few (if any) got in the way of Da Ponte’s libretto. Occasionally, this involved tweaking the English translation in the titles but never in a way that distorted the source unduly. I can also confess to more than a little nostalgia over McDermott’s choices of icons, having spent several of my earliest years in Brooklyn, which included a few memorable visits to Coney Island.

Nevertheless, it is not the plot that makes K. 588 one of my favorite operas. This is virtually a “mother lode” of Mozart’s vocal music, not only for solo voices but for pretty much all combinations afforded by the six members of the cast. Ultimately, it is the expressive sensitivity of musical interpretation that wins the day in this opera while the rather “stock” approach to comedy works its machinations. I would assume that much of that expressiveness had to do with the excellent chemistry of all the vocalists with conductor David Robertson, working with an appropriately reduced ensemble and a harpsichord continuo player who knew a thing or two about improvisation. The result was an approach to the score that could not have cast Mozart in a better light with each vocalist keenly aware that (s)he was always contributing to a whole that was far more than the sum of its parts.

The one weakness came with the video production work. For the most part the cameras were always in the right place at the right time, but the same could not be said about the microphones. Mozart’s music is always about blending the resources just the right way, and there were too many annoying moments when the audio engineering team lost control of that blend. As might be guessed, the instrumentalists suffered more than the vocalists; and, as a result, those who know their Mozart would have been consistently annoyed by how his judicious use of wind sonorities tended to get lost behind the vocal work.

I only went to a few of the movie theater simulcasts of Met productions, and those were in the earliest days of those efforts. Indeed, the most memorable was the broadcast in March of 2008 of Wagner’s Tristan und Isolde; and the memorability had as much to do with the video direction by Barbara Willis Sweete as it did with the contributions made by all of the instrumentalists and vocalists. Sweete’s technique reminded me of Jordan Whitelaw’s pioneering telecasts of concerts by the Boston Symphony Orchestra, conceived in full appreciation that what you heard often depended on what you saw. Whitelaw used to invest considerable time and resources in preparing for each telecast, and my guess is that the Met quickly realized that it did not have the budget for a comparable investment. The impact of that change for the worse varies according to the opera being presented; and, where K. 588 is concerned, I am afraid that things turned out for the worse.

The Resurrection of HP Will Not Be Televised

I just finished Stephen Shankland’s CNET report of his interview with Ron Coughlin, who runs the Personal Systems Group at HP, the computer and printer business that split off from Hewlett-Packard in 2015. Coughlin believes that personal computers are still a hot item and that HP is bringing a plethora of innovations to that market. He may be right, but his optimism does not necessarily provide grounds for feeling bullish about HP.

The problem is one of a legacy that goes all the way back to the days when William Redington Hewlett and David Packard were still actively involved in their company’s future. Hewlett-Packard was originally a hardware company. It designed and produced an impressive variety of devices that changed the nature of work in the technology sector. However, these were devices that were designed by engineers for use by other engineers.

As a result, for example, the idea that a digital computer could be “personal” was never part of the HP mindset. The same could be said for the idea that the value in a personal computer had more to do with its software than with its hardware. Thus, in the early days of HP’s venture into digital technology, they may have set a world record for some of the most user-hostile interfaces on the market. Apparently, this legacy does not signify in Coughlin’s mindset. Do a text search on Shankland’s article; and you will discover that the word “interface” never appears.

For those of us for whom computers dominate over the working environment, the future is far from the rosy one that Coughlin anticipates. That is because the software we are using keeps getting progressively worse. This is not just a problem of protection against malware. It is also a matter of basic functionality.

For example, part of my work involves using a Web-based “B2B” (business-to-business) download service. Most downloads are large and are therefore delivered as compressed files that need to be “unzipped” after they have been downloaded. This past summer, many of us using this service discovered that we were getting defective ZIP files that could not be decompressed. Over the course of several months, some of us participated in a variety of test cases, none of which showed signs of much progress. Then, one day, my Inbox had a message that asked if I had tried using Chrome. Sure enough, the Chrome browser downloaded perfectly sound ZIP files while both Firefox and Safari were fumbling the ball!

More recently, I have been making heavier use of audio streaming. For this I need to explain that I use a MacBook Pro, whose lid is kept closed while I work from an HDMI feed to a wide-screen display with “entertainment quality” speakers. Many of my audio resources require Flash, which is software that I try to avoid as much as possible. As a result, I have a setup in which only Safari permits the use of Flash from the sources I need. After the latest Flash “upgrade” (scare quotes intended) I discovered that the audio was no longer coming from my display but, instead, was squeaking out from under the lid of the MacBook! This time I was prepared; and, sure enough, things worked properly once I used Chrome instead of Safari!

I suppose we could turn this into a story about how Google will take over the world. I suspect that Google may have the best talent pool of software engineers in the technology sector, but I do not think that this is necessarily a matter of malicious intent. Rather, I think it has to do with the fact that the basic skills behind writing, testing, and releasing software have all been condemned to SNAFU status. Furthermore, we are so dependent on the technology that, as E. M. Forster predicted in “The Machine Stops,” we basically self-adapt to accommodate every degradation of the services we require. This happens not only at our desks but also in the face-to-face purchases we make, whether on a checkout line or at a food truck.

As the title of Forster’s short story suggests, things eventually come to a head with an across-the-board failing of all service technologies. This does not lead to mass chaos, because people have been so numbed by their dependence that they cannot even think about what to do next. In terms of contemporary culture, Forster assumes a mass of aimless zombies, rather than an angry mob with torches and pitchforks! Was he successful in seeing the future, and are we it?

Trump Upstaged on the BBC

The news of President Trump's signing of the Congressional bill involving relations with Russia took last place on the 11 AM half-hour BBC World News telecast. That means that Trump was upstaged by the following:

1. Successful gene editing
2. Neymar
3. European bison
4. Prince Philip, Duke of Edinburgh

Will accusations of the BBC providing "fake news" be coming? (Enquiring minds want to know!)

Performances, Recordings, and Karajan

Given that I am now back on track in trying to write about Warner Classics’ Karajan Official Remastered Edition, one of my friends offered to loan me her copy of Richard Osborne’s book Conversations with Von Karajan. I accepted the offer, because I cannot recall having had any opportunity to read or listen to Karajan’s own account of how he approached his work. I also decided to read Osborne’s introduction, “Von Karajan: Profile of a Musician,” in the hope that I might encounter some objective third-party observations that might balance some of my own relatively jaundiced assessments.

One aspect of that essay particularly caught my attention, because it deals with an issue about which I have expressed some rather strong opinions in the past. This is the question of the value of recordings when compared with the experience of being physically present at a performance. Thus, my attention turned from casual to focused when I encountered the following sentence in Osborne’s essay:

When [Robert] Chesterman [in a CBC radio interview] put to Karajan the proposition that concert-hall sound was naturally superior to recorded sound, Karajan replied, ‘For whom?’

Karajan’s point was that even the best of concert halls have acoustical problems. So someone sitting in one of those problematic locations would probably be better off listening to a well-engineered recording. Osborne himself followed up with a comment about the “wretched … acoustics in large areas of the Royal Albert Hall,” suggesting that anyone who was actually interested in the performance of one of the Henry Wood Promenade Concerts would do better to stay at home and listen to the radio broadcast.

I have to say that I am sympathetic with both Karajan and Osborne on this matter. For that matter, I find that my personal attitudes towards audience behavior seem to be getting grumpier as I progress from season to season; and I have to remind myself that, whatever the setting may be, odds are that only a small percentage of the turnout is actually there in the hall for the sake of attentive listening. Furthermore, I have to confess that my comments to the effect that capture technology still cannot achieve the bandwidth that listeners can accommodate may be too casual. I am not sure that I have actually seen an estimate of the reception bandwidth of the human ear, and my guess is that it varies from one subject to another.

Nevertheless, there are limits to my sympathy. There still remains the fact that a recording is a document of a performance; and I would argue that it is still the case that the document is distinct from the performance itself. Most important is that the document has a permanence that the performance lacks. Many would treat this as an asset, but it is worth considering the possibility of a downside. This has to to with the fact that individuals tend to listen to their recordings multiple times, rather than just once. This may be a good thing to the extent that the listener discovers new details with each successive listening experience. However, there is also the risk that multiple listening experiences will “burn” that specific performance into memory, inclining the listener to reject the possibility of a performance that takes a different approach to interpretation.

The other potential shortcoming of an audio recording is simply that it is limited to audio. One does not attend a performance with one’s eyes shut. Even if one is not explicitly aware, there are any number of visual cues that impact the listening experience. Admittedly, the impact of those cues depends heavily on the physical setting and where one happens to be seated in that setting; but, for just about any genre of music, watching music being made is a “richer” experience than simply listening.

Karajan understood this, and this is probably why he involved himself directly in film and video recordings of his performances. It is also why, on this site, I have consistently sung the praises of Jordan Whitelaw. Whitelaw appreciated the distinction between merely hearing and attentive listening, and he understood how visual input could influence the latter. The result was a long series of video documents of performances by the Boston Symphony Orchestra for a Public Television program called Evening at Symphony. Since I have not yet seen any of Karajan’s video documents, I shall not try to compare him to Whitelaw but simply emphasize that there is much to be gained from appreciating that we listen with our eyes, as well as our ears.

Opening an Old Wound

Over the last few weeks I have been working my way incrementally through Andrew Rossi’s documentary Page One: Inside the New York Times, having saved it on my xfinity box after recording it from a Starz channel. The film was released for public distribution in 2011, and I suppose I was drawn to viewing it after having derived so much pleasure from observing the work practices in the film Obit. Life on Deadline, which was also set at the Times. Nevertheless, the films could not have been more different. While Obit. follows the ups and downs of a small team of writers, who come across as being very good at their jobs because they work very hard at it, Page One is an uncompromising examination of a business (not just a single newspaper) on life support. Towards the end we see David Carr addressing a conference of journalists, telling them that the fact that they are still around is an achievement unto itself.

I was writing about journalism and the changes in its work practices long before The Rehearsal Studio was launched. One of the tags I had created for my old Yahoo! blog, Reflections Beyond Technology, was “news;” and I was already worrying about the extent to which the Internet had become a platform for “fake news” as early as 2006. This was a time when I was reading Truthdig regularly, and it provided me with a quote from Joe Conason that is as relevant today as it was when I first read it:

To observe the Washington press corps is to wonder why so many people who don’t remember what happened yesterday and can’t master basic logic are expected to analyze politics and policy.

This was a painful reminder that the mess we are in is not the fault of the Internet. Rather, it is part of a bigger picture that meant so much to Max Weber, who recognized that a society whose only value is market value faced the two-horned prospect of loss of meaning and loss of freedom.

From an idealized point of view, newspapers provided a base of activity for professionals whose primary expertise could be found in making sense out of what happened in the world on any given day. Unfortunately, when advertising ceased to be a source of sustaining revenue for newspapers, making sense was no longer a priority. Indeed, all priorities were lowered with the rise of simply being able to have enough cash on hand to pay the bills. In such a setting, meaning no longer has priority; and the noble effort of making sense out of a confusing world, which is captured admirably in the narrative threads that are woven together in Page One, is more likely to be punished than rewarded.

As my own writing progressed, I found myself less and less inclined to rail against a world in which meaning no longer had any currency. I suppose that music provided me with an escape hatch. I could deal with matters of meaning and sensemaking in a domain that had a limited audience, but it was an audience that still took those matters seriously.

Mind you, it is not as if the performing arts have elevated themselves above the dominating forces of market value. They have to worry about paying the bills just like the rest of us; but, as long as I can thank the Social Security Administration for my being able to pay my own bills, I can continue to keep my own attention focused on performance itself. Given Carr’s prioritization on the value of still being around to do one’s job, I suppose I should be thankful for what I have!

Signal and Noise from Music Choice

I used to be a faithful subscriber to Sirius/XM as one of the more reliable sources of music for serious listeners. Unfortunately, the prevailing climate of property development here in San Francisco put an end to that. For about a year (at least), I have had to live with the fact that there is no longer a clear path along which I have been able to receive an effective signal from a Sirius/XM satellite. As a result I discovered the Music Choice service that I can receive as part of my Comcast service.

The good news is that this service provides channels that offer an impressive variety of both classical and jazz recordings, and the classical selections have turned out to offer a fascinating journey of discovery. The bad news is that the listener is not always sure just what it is that his/she is discovering. There is an abbreviated display of composer, title, and performers, which definitely provides more content than my old XM receiver; and, for my money, I prefer those displays to the babble of announcers that do not seem to know that all much about what they are playing.

Unfortunately, many of those displays have serious noise problems. Thus, one will read the name of an orchestra conductor while listening to solo piano music. On the other hand, when the music is orchestral, one may read the name of an ensemble that did not even exist when the conductor was alive!

This system is obviously driven by a data base. The problem is that the data base has been "fed" by a process that has no check for data accuracy. Given the size of the library available to Music Choice, one can appreciate their need for efficiency; but efficiency in the absence of accuracy does not count for very much!

For the most part this is little more than an annoyance; and, like those depicted in E. M. Forster's "The Machine Stops," we live in a world in which we tolerate annoyance, because we no longer have the technical skills to remedy it. Nevertheless, one has to wonder just how many other instances there are as disinformation being presented as legitimate content for no reason other than the premise that fact-checking costs too much and takes too long to do correctly. Meanwhile, my network connectivity is such that it may be worth checking on whether I can receive Sirius channels through an app on my television or Blu-ray player; but can I count on them to provide more reliable content?

Memorializing Robert Silvers

As a reader of The New York Review for more decades than I recall, I did not have to be reminded of the significant role that Robert Silvers played in editing the content of that "paper," as he called it. Indeed, I had mixed feeling about reading all the memorial encomiums in the latest issue, even when they were by some of my favorite contributors. Nevertheless, one sentence by Zadie Smith struck me as worth singling out of attention:

He [Silvers] was even a little suspicious of formal academic expertise, at least it came at the price of a readable sentence.

This may be the best diagnosis of the current backlash against expertise that I have encountered thus far. Yes, Michael Gove was probably on to something when he declared, "We've had enough of experts;" but, like many who make such sweeping generalizations, he could not distinguish the baby from the bathwater. Rather, he was incorrectly generalizing expertise as the work of a "great expert, primarily for the edification of other great experts," as Anna Russell put it in making fun of rabid Wagner fans. Indeed, the last time I invoked Russell's turn of phrase was in a reaction to a full-page advertisement by the Harvard University Press (in The New York Review, no less) touting the number of "experts" they had published.

On the other hand, it is hard to avoid the feeling that, while I believe in the "readable sentence" as much as Silvers and Smith do/did, it is hard to avoid feeling that it is an endangered species. Ultimately, it is being driven to extinction by the proliferation of tweets, suggesting that the Darwinian process may be as applicable to mindsets as it is to organisms. Put another way, we now live in a world in which our very resources of information, broadcast media as well as the Internet, no longer required the "readable sentence" as a useful too for communication. Indeed, those who even care about "readable sentences" are probably, themselves, doomed to extinction over the next decade or so. How else are we to explain the dangerous expressions of extremism that we encounter wherever we choose to look, even at the ballot box?

The Lab: March, 2017

Four events involving adventurous approaches to the creation and performance of music will be taking place at The Lab between now and the end of the month. The first of them will take place this coming Friday, making for an overlap with “coming attractions” announced not only in an article trying to summarize just how busy this weekend will be but also in this week’s Bleeding Edge installment. Nevertheless, The Lab is definitely a venue for those who prefer to get away from the beaten path; and that criterion means that it deserves the same focused attention that is usually given to the Center for New Music.

For those unfamiliar with the venue, the performing space is located in the Mission at 2948 16th Street. This is a short walk from the corner of Mission Street. This is particularly good for those using public transportation, since that corner provides bus stops for both north-south and east-west travel as well as a BART station.

The Lab is currently in the midst of a membership drive and has a Web page that summarizes the benefits of different levels of membership, which include reduced price (sometimes free) admission to all events. These events tend to attract a large turnout, so early arrival is almost always highly recommended. Advance registration is also recommended, but the names of members will always be on the list of those registered at the door. With all that as introduction, here are the four events coming up this month that are likely to be of interest:

Friday, March 17, 8 p.m.: British Artist (and winner of the Turner Prize) Martin Creed will be visiting to present a program entitled Words and Music. He has been producing musical compositions alongside his visual work ever since his graduation from the Slade School of Fine Art in London in 1990. The song “I Can’t Move,” from his album Love to You, was used in the television series Weeds and was included on the album of music from that series. Performances of Creed’s songs are often accompanied by his own films and videos. This event is being co-presented with Kadist, and the artist will be donating his fee to the American Civil Liberties Union.

Admission will be $15 with no charge for members of The Lab. Doors will open at 7:30 p.m. Members may wish to login, and for others there is a Web page for advance registration.

Wednesday, March 22, 9 p.m.: John Chantler is currently based in Stockholm. He works primarily with synthesizers and other forms of electronic gear. He has developed his own personal approach that involves both composition and strategies for improvisation. While he applies this approach primarily to the electronic domain, he has also worked with pipe organs. This would make him a successor to David Tudor in spirit, if not in practice.

Admission will be $25 with no charge for members of The Lab. Doors will open at 8:30 p.m. Members may wish to login, and for others there is a Web page for advance registration.

Sunday, March 26, 9 p.m.: Arnold Dreyblatt was born in New York City in 1953 but has been based in Berlin since 1984. His music teachers were Pauline Oliveros, La Monte Young, and Alvin Lucier. He began composing in the late 1970s, making him a “second generation” minimalist, following the “first generation” of Young, Steve Reich, and Philip Glass (who prefers to avoid being called a minimalist). (For the record I have considered that the “zeroth generation” of minimalism was established by Anton Bruckner!) Dreyblatt has worked with ensembles he has arranged and organized under the title “The Orchestra of Excited Strings,” with which he has explored alternative approaches to both performance and tuning.

Admission will be $25 with a $15 charge for members of The Lab. Doors will open at 8:30 p.m. Members may wish to login, and for others there is a Web page for advance registration.

Wednesday, March 29, 10 p.m.: The month will conclude with a visit from Australia-based Lawrence English. English is both composer and media artist. His work covers an eclectic array of aesthetic investigations with research interests in field effects, perception, and memory. Through live performance and installations he creates works that ponder subtle transformations of space and ask audiences to become aware of that which exists at the edge of perception.

Admission will be $25 with a $15 charge for members of The Lab. Doors will open at 9:30 p.m. Members may wish to login, and for others there is a Web page for advance registration.

Attacca Quartet Explores Music by Michael Ippolito on their New Album

This Friday Azica Records will release its second album of performances by the Attacca Quartet, whose members are violinists Amy Schroeder and Keiko Tokunaga, violist Nathan Schram, and cellist Andrew Yee. As usual, the album has already been assigned a Web page on Amazon.com, which has been set up to process pre-orders. The title of the album is Songlines; and it consists of four compositions by Michael Ippolito, all of which are less than ten years old.

Azica’s first recording of Attacca came out in March of 2013. Its title (following the case conventions on the cover) was fellow traveler: the complete string quartet works of JOHN ADAMS. While Adams himself has endorsed Attacca’s performance of his music, I must confess to finding it a bit disconcerting to encounter the adjective “complete” applied to a composer who is still alive (particularly when the age of that composer is so close to my own)! Furthermore, if we take “string quartet works” to include music involving string quartet and orchestra, then the album overlooks “Absolute Jest,” which was first performed by the St. Lawrence String Quartet performing with the San Francisco Symphony (SFS) conducted by SFS Music Director Michael Tilson Thomas. (It would have been simpler, and more accurate, to say just “string quartets!”)

Nevertheless, it is worth dwelling on the “fellow traveler” part of the title, since Songlines seems to have been a product of such fellow travelers. Last year Attacca was named Quartet in Residence at Texas State University of Music, where Ippolito is currently Assistant Professor of Composition. So, at the very least, Ippolito and Attacca are “fellow travelers” in academic life. Nevertheless, all of the compositions on this album predate the arrival of Attacca at Texas State in 2016. (The group was formed in 2003 when all four members were students at the Juilliard School.)

This recording was my “first contact” with both the ensemble and the composer. I feel necessary to begin with a sort of disclaimer when it comes to the general topic of new music for string quartet. Those who follow this repertoire probably know that San Francisco is the “home base” of the Kronos Quartet; but it is also a city that enjoys a generous number of more recently-formed quartets that share Kronos’ interest in exploring and presenting new repertoire, often motivated by commission. To highlight two particularly appropriate examples, Friction Quartet celebrated its fifth anniversary this past September; and the Thalea String Quartet, which is currently quartet-in-residence at the San Francisco Conservatory of Music, was featured as a “next generation” string quartet during KRONOS FESTIVAL 2017 at the beginning of this month.

This posed a difficulty when it came to listening to Ippolito’s music. The problem was that all five of the selections on this album suggested that the composer had been listening to too many Kronos recordings. This is probably a warped perception. However, it highlights the fact that, while there is, indeed, far more diversity to the string quartet repertoire than Kronos has covered, it was unclear that Ippolito had established a a voice that is distinctively his own in this genre. His biographical statement in the accompanying booklet suggests that he has cultivated a substantial catalog that includes orchestral writing, as well as chamber music; but, even across this single album, there is a sense that he has not explored very far beyond the bounds of a relatively limited comfort zone.

To be fair, this may be an occupational hazard in the world the Internet has made. Results of creativity are often subjected to almost immediate distribution on a global scale, meaning that just about anyone interested in “new music” has opportunities to explore far more than (s)he can handle. The downside to all this is that we run the risk of becoming a society in which the superficiality of “consumption” tends to trump the slower-paced culture of attentive listening. It used to be that universities provided sanctuary from market-based thinking that cares about little more than efficient production to satisfy consumption; but the “inconvenient truth” is that a university run by such market-based thinking often ends up questioning whether or not a music department provides “value for money.” In such desperate times my personal feelings about Ippolito’s work as a composer seem to pale against more serious questions concerned with whether or not our society is willing to view him as productive member.

Zuckerberg Goes Head-to-Head with Aristotle

One of my favorite topics, outside of the domain of music, on this site has been Max Weber’s proposition that too much attention to market values and consumerism can lead to loss of meaning. My own effort to keep loss of meaning at bay has involved a concerted effort to read texts that require sustained cogitation, rather than simple “consumption” based on a “bottom line.” This is the sort of reading that sticks with you long after you put the book or article down; and experience has taught me that it often involves interaction with the physical medium (not only annotation but also leafing back and forth through the pages to recall what one thinks one has previously read). Thus, it is not reading that fares very well on a computer screen, whether we are talking about a monitor or a desk or the surface of a tablet.

Not too long ago I posted a “progress report” on my efforts to work my way through the “Nicomachean Ethics” of Aristotle. I am still at it, but I have just embarked on a domain that has already started my reflecting on the fact that I have begun to spend more time on Facebook since the demise of Examiner.com. It turns out that Aristotle devotes two entire books (the eighth and ninth) of the “Nicomachean Ethics” to friendship; and in the revised Oxford translation edited by Jonathan Barnes and published by Princeton University Press (in the Bollingen Series), this comes to about 27 pages. In other words there is a lot more to friendship than creating a social network by clicking a Friend button!

To some extent I might be accused of trivializing Facebook by writing that last sentence. However, I prefer to look through the other end of the telescope: By its very nature, friendship is a highly complicated dimension of human interaction that, by its very approach to interface, has been trivialized by Facebook to a degree that the noun has been almost entirely stripped of meaning. This may seem like an extreme position to make over a rather innocuous piece of software. However, it is basically yet another instance of a precept expressed by H. L. Mencken that I cannot cite too often:

For every complex problem there is an answer that is clear, simple, and wrong.

It is through clarity and simplicity that Facebook has managed to build up such a large user community, but size signifies only in matters of marketing rather than the complexities of social interaction that occupied so much of Aristotle’s thought. One might almost argue that a Presidential election came down to choosing between a candidate that was not afraid to confront complexity and one that had a clear and simple answer for everything without caring very much whether or not that answer would be effective if put into practice.

Nevertheless the nature of meaning has not yet been entirely lost. The good news is that there is still a body of individuals out there, however small their numbers may be, that are not afraid of big books and complex arguments that do not always result in easy resolutions. We may have to keep a low profile for the next four years; but, as long as we continue to express ourselves through media that exceed the prevailing attention span, we have a fighting chance of keeping at our business. We just have to view that low profile as a safety measure, rather than a sign of weakness.

The “Vanity Projects” of Yehudi Menuhin on DVD

It took over two months for me to go through the box of eleven DVDs that serve as a “video appendix” to Warner Classics’ The Menuhin Century collection. This was due, in part, to the fact that, because my highest priority is on listening, most of my time is spent either at concerts or with recordings. About halfway through the effort, I realized that, if I was going to see the light at the end of the tunnel at all, it would be best to focus only on the performances and dispense with the “documentary” content (scare quotes intended to suggest that what I did see of that content was not particularly compelling).

Overall, this is a rather unbalanced collection of performances. The basic organization is as follows:

1. Two DVDs consisting almost entirely of short (“encore” style) performances made by Paul Gordon and Bernd Bauer filming at the Charlie Chaplin Studios in 1947
2. One DVD of films and telecasts from Paris, about half of which involve Menuhin playing with his sister Hephzibah
3. Four DVDs of video documents of concerts given by Menuhin in the Soviet Union in 1987 and 1989, directed by Bruno Monsaingeon
4. One additional Monsaingeon DVD divided between Menuhin playing The Four Seasons with the Yehudi Menuhin School and the Opus 77 violin concerto of Johannes Brahms (along with two encores of Johann Sebastian Bach) with Kurt Masur conducting the Leipzig Gewandhaus Orchestra

The distribution across these categories suggests something that probably occurred to many as soon as they opened the box enclosing all of The Menuhin Century in its entirety: This vast effort was very much a “vanity project” by Monsaingeon based on the desire to create a hagiographic account of Menuhin’s life based on 70 years of audio and video recordings. This may go down well with those harboring enthusiastically passionate memories of Menuhin in concert, on television, or on recordings; but, as accounts of the audio portion of this collection have suggested, those primarily seeking stimulating listening experiences are likely to find themselves disappointed.

Most interesting are probably the films made at the Chaplin Studios. In a filmed conversation with Humphrey Burton, Menuhin explained that he was approached by Gordon to make a series of films that would provide a concert experience in a movie hall. In many respects these films are the venerable ancestors of the HD videos that are now being captured in concert halls and opera houses around the world, many of which are projected in real-time to audiences seated in movie theaters. Gordon’s pioneering efforts are thus interesting simply for his having achieved them, even if many of them come off as awkward or even flawed.

Much of the content overlaps with those “Virtuoso” recordings that, as Menuhin himself explained, were based on listening to recordings of Jascha Heifetz. Indeed, it is possible that Gordon approached Heifetz first and without success. (On the basis of what we know about Heifetz’ personality, his reaction would not be surprising.) What is most important is that Gordon managed to pull off the project, regardless of who his soloist was.

Regardless, also, of the quality of Gordon’s techniques as a director, these short films provide a significant perspective on Menuhin as a performer relatively early in his career. That perspective also takes in other performers whose careers would rise during the second half of the twentieth century. My own interest was particularly piqued by opportunities to see Antal Dorati in action, both accompanying Menuhin at the piano and conducting the Symphony Orchestra of Hollywood (which may or may not have been a pickup group assembled for Gordon’s project).

If, from a technical point of view, the results are somewhat crude by current standards, they are still far more satisfying than those produced by Monsaingeon. This is were that motive of hagiography rears its ugly head. Through a series of performances of both concertos and chamber music, Monsaingeon’s capture and editing techniques linger over images of Menuhin as if they were sacred icons. In the concerto recordings, when the camera is not locked on Menuhin, it is locked on members of the orchestra staring at him in rapt admiration. Shots of what the conductor is doing are minimal and are sometime muddled by ill-conceived overlay techniques. The result is that anyone familiar with the video work of Jordan Whitelaw or, more recently, Barbara Willis Sweete will find it difficult to watch any of Monsaingeon’s videos without squirming.

Those who make the entire journey through The Menuhin Century are thus likely to come away feeling that the journey had more to do with the cult of personality than with the underling arts and crafts of making music.

The Bleeding Edge: 12/5/2016

This is turning out to be a busy week of events having absolutely nothing to do with any holiday celebrations taking place this month. Tonight’s Gray Area gig was already listed last week, and December activities at the Center for New Music were reported even earlier. Nevertheless, there are five additional activities that are likely to be of interest to adventurous listeners. On the other hand, as of this writing, no activities are currently listed on the Outsound Presents calendar. As a result, the additional options for the week are as follows:

Wednesday, December 7, 7:45 p.m., The Nunnery: Those who have been following “bleeding edge” events for some time probably know that The Nunnery is the garage in Tom Nunn’s house in which he works on inventing and building musical instruments, many of which are known as skatchboxes. Nunn opens this space to the general public for occasional concerts. These usually take place on Sunday afternoons, but this one will be an exception. The program will follow the usual Nunnery format of two sets, using the time between the sets to collect donations. The Nunnery is located in the Mission at 3016 25th Street, and the requested donation amount is $10.

On this occasion the opening set will be taken by Bryan Day, performing on his own invented instruments. He will be followed by the T.D. Skatchit duo of Nunn and David Michalak giving premiere performances of two pieces from their current Skatch Art project, along with one other new work. The two of them play skatchboxes, other invented instruments, lap steel guitar, and percussion. They will also be joined by vocalist Dean Santomieri for a performance of Santomieri’s composition, “The lowercasing of Isabel Sands.”

Wednesday, December 7, 8 p.m., Gray Area: This will also be the final installment of Perpetual Motion, a series of performances presented through a partnership of Gray Area Art And Technology and the San Francisco Cinematheque. The theme of the series has been the combination of innovative approaches to the projection of animated images with real-time performance of music. This final program will consist of three sets.

Both the opening and closing sets will be taken by Bruce McClure. At both of these, McClure will present his Rotorattlers. He calls these “deconstructive prepared projector performances;” and they involve flickering film loops, optical sound, 3000-watt strobe lighting, and control through guitar effects pedals. Between these two “bookends,” there will be a performance of “Skeleton,” a four-movement dance macabre conceived by Greg Pope involving a battery of slide projectors and hand-cranked flicker devices. Music will be provided by Sult, the acoustic noise trio that brings Oakland-based percussionist Jaco Felix Heule together with visiting Norwegians Håvard Skaset on acoustic guitar and Guro Skumsnes Moe on bass.

The Gray Area Art And Technology Theater is located in the Mission at 2665 Mission Street. Admission is $20 at the door with a special rate of $8 for Cinematheque members. Tickets purchased in advance are only $10 or $15 on the day of the show. (The Cinematheque discount is only available at the door.) A cash bar will be available for those aged 21 or older. Ticketfly has created an event page for advance purchase of tickets.

Thursday, December 8, 8 p.m., Exploratorium: This will be the next concert in the Resonance series, presented as offerings during After Dark Thursday Nights at the Exploratorium. Curated by Wayne Grim, these events present new works by contemporary musicians and sound artists. The performances are then supplemented by discussions about the creators’ ideas, techniques, and inspirations hosted by Nicole Minor.

This particular event will be a solo performance by composer and intermedia artist Marielle Jakobsons. Her music-making involves synthesizers, strings, flute, and voice as well as her “macro-cymatic visual music instrument,” which converts audio source content into hypnotic waves of water and light. She will perform selections from her recently released Thrilljockey album Star Core. That performance will then be followed by a screening of her film “‘Recognition’ for Prepared Piano, Sine Waves, and Macro-Cymatic Instrument.”

Resonance events are held in conjunction with the “adults only” offerings at the Exploratorium on Thursday evenings. The Exploratorium is located at Pier 15 on the Embarcadero, across from the intersection with Green Street. Tickets are $25 for general admission and $20 for members. Admission is only for those age 18 or over. Tickets may be purchased in advance from a special Web page for Thursday Nights admission on the Exploratorium Web site, which has a calendar for selecting the specific date. Those interested in visiting the Tactile Dome will be required to pay an additional $10 at the door. The performance itself will take place in the Kanbar Forum, where seating is relatively limited (150 seats) and will be made available on a first-come-first-served basis.

In addition, this will be the first of five events in the fourth season of Resonance. As a result, season tickets are also being sold, which will entail a 20% discount, amounting to $100 for general admission and $80 for members. The schedule for all five events is given on the Season Tickets Web page, which includes a hyperlink to the Calendar Web page for purchasing this season passes.

Friday, December 9, 7 p.m., Adobe Books: Adobe may have a monthly music series, but that does not mean that the concerts have to be separated at four-week intervals. Following up on last Wednesday’s gig, Heule will return, performing this time in his Voicehandler duo with Danishta Rivero. There will also be another percussion set taken by Jordan Glenn. The remaining set of the evening will be taken by the neem duo of kelley kipperman and gabby fluke-mogul. The concert will be hosted by Benjamin Tinker.

Adobe Books is now located at 3130 24th Street (still in the Mission). The gig is free. However, donations will go directly to the performing artists and are strongly encouraged.

Friday, December 9, 8 p.m., Turquoise Yantra Grotto (TYG): The next house concert at TYG will offer two sets involving invented instruments. One of these is the Bazantar, created for Mark Deutsch, who may well be its only performer. It extends a conventional five-string acoustic bass with four drone strings and 29 sympathetic strings, the latter covering a range of four octaves. As can be imagined, the resulting sounds are more resonant; and the sympathetic strings exploit the contributions of upper natural harmonics. Deutsch will use this instrument to accompany a butoh performance by Martha Matsuda.

The other set of invented instruments are those of the Schumann-Theta Harmonic Series Gamelan performed by the Pet the Tiger Instrument Inventors Collective. The instruments of the Schumann-Theta Harmonic Series Gamelan were inspired by the ideas developed by William Colvig and Lou Harrison in their work on the American gamelan. However, as the name suggests, the Schumann-Theta gamelan involves pitches that are the frequencies of natural harmonics. The performers will be David Samas (vocals, corrugated whirling tubes, and conduction), Peter Whitehead (flute overtones and voice) and Stephen Parris (playing the Harmonic Compass that he invented).

TYG is located at 32 Turquoise Way; and admission is between $10 and $15.

Bicoastal Blowback

Elizabeth Drew's latest dispatch for NYR Daily on the current election follies is entitled "Down Goes Trump." She leads with the assertion that, as far as Donald Trump was concerned, the whole electoral process was "another tool for promoting himself," taking his own reality TV show to the next level, so to speak. If that is the case, then it may well be that "real reality" is thwarting his objective. This morning the ABC7 News Web site has a story about Trump's star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame having been vandalized. A photograph is included, and the job seems to have been thorough. (The article also mentioned an artist who had built a little wall around Trump's star; but brute force seems to have trumped, so to speak, subtlety!) Even better in my book, however, is the following sentence from Drew's article:

His opulent new five-star hotel in Washington that he’s showed off in campaign events has rooms going begging even at heavily discounted rates, and tenants in two of his residences on New York’s Upper West Side have signed petitions asking that his name be removed from their buildings.

A star on Hollywood Boulevard is little more than symbolism. Blowback on the East Coast seems to be much more a matter of substance!

Orchestra Strikes in the Age of “Citizen Journalism”

Following the news about the current strike by the members of the Pittsburgh Symphony Orchestra (PSO) reminded me of what it was like being a writer covering concert performances during the last such strike in my home town of San Francisco. That was an occasion when my colleagues and I found ourselves as loose ends, committed to covering concerts that we knew were not going to happen through the writing both previews and reviews. On March 13, 2013, contract negotiations for the musicians of the San Francisco Symphony (SFS) reached an impasse that led to the musicians going out on strike. As the city’s primary outlet for print journalism, the San Francisco Chronicle did a reasonably admirable job of trying to collect the “basic facts” and align them with how they were being interpreted from both labor and management points of view. Those of us working through the Internet were not so lucky. SFS was quite industrious when it came to putting out press releases. However, because the Communications Department was part of the “back office,” the dispatches we received carried only a single point of view. On the other hand the musicians themselves had to be cautious about saying too much to anyone for fear of jeopardizing any interactions that were still struggling to take place.

In politics this comes down to what is sometimes called “owning the narrative.” When one side of a negotiation dominates access to the media, it can be very difficult for the other side to establish that it, too, has a narrative. The one thing that we in San Francisco knew was that the musicians did not want to disappoint their audiences. As a result they arranged to commit their own time to giving performances in venues other than Davies Symphony Hall, and writers like myself and some of my colleagues could pitch in to get out the word about when and where such performances would be taking place.

A little over three and a half years have elapsed since the SFS strike was settled after about half a month of time on strike. For those of us viewing the PSO strike from the other side of the country, it would appear that narrative ownership has achieved a more balanced state. PSO has a blog site, but it does not take the objective reader long to realize that the narratives on this blog are coming from management. In this case, however, there is also now a site called Musicians of the Pittsburgh Symphony Orchestra. Within that site there is a STRIKE UPDATE division, which provides the musicians with the opportunity to present the narratives that they “own.” This means that readers “on the outside” can examine the numbers that have been released on the PSO blog and then read an item-by-item rebuttal from the musicians.

This is fine as far as it goes; but, as any number of philosophers (going all the way back to Socrates) have observed, “understanding” is almost never just a matter of “having the facts.” There are any number of reasons why opposing sides should be developing different narratives; and they cannot be reduced to trivial distinctions between haves and have-nots. The problem is that a fair amount of expertise is required to read either side of the story, not only for its “facts” but also for the implications and consequences that arise if those facts are accepted. Asking someone whose primary interest is in listening to the performance of music in a concert setting to untangle the knots of conflicting narratives is about as absurd as asking a labor negotiator to sit in for the striking concertmaster.

We are thus faced with the classical problem of an Internet that allows us to see more and understand less. Put another way, we, as detached observers, may have more resources that we can consult; but that does not imply that we know what to do with them. All we can do is watch from a distance and try to make sense of it all, possibly with input from those better informed than we are who also happen to have a certain degree of objective detachment. In other words, things are not much different from the way they are when the news sources are trying to report a delicate hostage negotiation. In this case, however, the hostages are the concert-going public.

Using Hypermedia to Write about Music Performances

This morning I found myself allowed to observe an exchange between a colleague and one of his readers. The reader had expressed a desire that my colleague could have augmented his text with sound files, which is a question dear to my own heart. How can any of us do a satisfactory job of writing about a listening experience without providing the reader with appropriate listening matter?

To be fair, technology is not on the side of those of us doing the writing. The authoring tool I had at my disposal when I was writing for Examiner.com basically allowed me to incorporate one image and embed one video from YouTube. These would be placed at the top of the article, and that was that. The tool I use to write this particular article is a bit better. I can embed both images and video at the most appropriate location in the text, but the only way I can incorporate audio is if it happens to be the soundtrack of a video.

Charles Rosen was in a somewhat more advantageous position when he was writing for The New York Review of Books. The editors created what amounted to a blogging site for their authors; and on December 28, 2011, Rosen contributed an article entitled “Elliott Carter’s Music of Time.” This amounted to a review of a recital given in honor of Carter’s 103rd birthday at the 92nd Street Y in New York. Rosen embedded four audio excerpts from the concert into this article. However, he could only do this because the 92nd Street Y had opened an account of SoundCloud, where audio files may be shared in a manner similar to the sharing of video on YouTube. Unfortunately, the hyperlinks that Rosen created for his article no longer work (although there is a link to an MP3 file taken from another recital at the very end of the article, which, as of this writing, is still functional). The good news, however, is that the Web page of the excerpts that Rosen cited are still on the SoundCloud site. Thus, while this is a step in the right direction, it also demonstrates that we have a long way to go in using real-time media to make a case when writing about a performance.

Most important is the question of intellectual property. The resource that Rosen used had been created by the producers of the recital, which reinforces the announcement most of us know by heart prior to any concert, making it clear that we should not be using our personal devices to capture any portion of the performance. (I rather like the kind explanation that Kathy Barr gives before every Old First Concerts recital, in which she explains that holding up a video capture device blocks the view of others.) The fact is that those of us charged with writing about a performance do not have the right to create examples with media capture technology, nor should we. After all, time spent fussing with equipment takes away from paying attention to the performance!

However, even when a third party provides “authorized” media, there are still problems in how those media can be used effectively. Once again I must raise the issue that what we are doing as writers is tightly coupled to an experience that depends heavily, if not entirely, on the flow of time; and what we commit to any document can never be anything but static. The best way to appreciate this distinction is to consider what happens when the static medium is not present. Having had to sit through more lectures about music than I can enumerate, first in classrooms and later at conferences, I am struck by how often it is the case that the lecturer will play a recording and then talk over it, saying things like “Now!” just before the particular moment in which (s)he wants us to pay attention to that recording. (Even with all that support, there will still be cases in which listener may not be sure what was brought to his/her attention.)

The point is that capture and reproduction will never be enough. If one wishes to explain a time-based experience, then one must do it by creating another time-based experience. This means that we have to stop typing at our keyboards and learn the craft of audio and video editing suites. Writing as an old dog that is willing to learn new tricks, I must still confess that all this turns the effort of documenting into a substantial project, My work habits are such that I want to do my writing about an experience while that experience is still fresh in my mind. If I spend too much time assembling my media support, that freshness may wear off; and I may find myself losing my grip on the argument I wished to make in the first place.

This leads to the conclusion that, flawed as they may be, words are still the preferred medium, even when we are charged with accounting for a time-based experience. There is no “method” that serves all of us. After all, there is as much diversity in the “experiencing” as there is in the experience itself. The bottom line is that our own memories are the most valuable resource when it comes to documenting a time-based experience. For my own part I have my own techniques for trying to “reconstruct the past” before I begin writing; but I have no reason to assume that any of my colleagues have techniques that are even remotely similar to my own. Nevertheless, we all do what we can, always well aware that some of those experiences are much harder to document than others!

It Has Come to This

In her opening news summary this morning on her radio broadcast of Democracy Now!, Amy Goodman introduced one of her stories with the phrase "In the latest mass shootings across the United States …." Beyond the Fringe used to have a joke about how, during the Second World War, every evening the BBC would bring "news of fresh disasters." That was funny back at a time when we did not take "fresh disasters" to be part of the stream of everyday life. Now they are; and, while Goodman was anything but casual in her reporting, her phrasing suggested that news of a mass shooting had become about as familiar as news of a hurricane striking. Perhaps we have to be casual about these things because the volume of taking all of them seriously would be unbearable.

Is Eric Schmidt the Donald Trump of Technology?

There was a time when I could always count on Eric Schmidt (now Executive Chairman of Alphabet, the corporation formerly known as Google) to get my dander up every time he made a public statement. However, I see that the last time I had such a reaction is more than a year ago; and I was kind of thankful that he was finally allowing me more time to concentrate on my interest in the performance of music. This weekend, however, Schmidt was at it again, using the BBC News Web site as his bully pulpit for a muddled sermon about artificial intelligence that betrayed just how much the use of that noun "intelligence" is little more than a con job.

This morning, writing for CNET News, Lance Whitney decided to focus of Schmidt's interest in music recommendation and his accusation that Apple employs "elite tastemakers." As usual, Schmidt offered up a flamboyant display of his own ignorance. Anyone who still believes that the Internet is involved in anything other than efficient marketing must be under the spell of some pernicious Kool-Aid. Whether it involves ranking search results (not to mention displaying those results in a frame of advertising links) or making recommendations to "music consumers" (not to be confused with those who actually take the time to listen to music), the game is never about predicting future trends, as Schmidt seems to think. The fundamental premise of marketing is that consumers are sheep, and all they need is a sheepdog to follow. What this means is that recommendation need involve little more than what everyone is consuming now, rather than what they are likely to be consuming in the future. When a trend starts to form, no matter for what reason, technology can amplify it; and this basically makes for a larger body of happy consumers (not to mention the performer involved in the trend). This is not so much rocket science as freshman statistics, and Schmidt probably knows this full well as it applies to the core competency behind Google.

What is more interesting than whether or not Schmidt "gets" any concepts involved "knowledge-based" technology is that he seems to have latched on to learning the rhetorical style of Donald Trump. Having seen how Trump has managed to garner so much attention by saying so many outrageous (not to mention inconsistent) things, it would appear the Schmidt has decided to get in on that game. Could it be that his BBC gig was little more than a rehearsal for a desired appearance on Fox News?

Advances [sic] in Communication

According to Professor Vyv Evans at Bangor University, the development of emoji as a language has now surpassed the past rate of Egyptian hieroglyphics, making it the "fastest growing language," at least in the United Kingdom. This preference for iconic abbreviations may actually be a logical advance over strings of letters (WTF), which tend to be necessary in order to work within the limits of Twitter messaging. Still today's BBC newsbeat report that an "I feel sick" icon is being developed in which the core smiley face may now be not only sad but also spewing green vomit should give us all pause. Could it be that our fixation over efficiency has now advanced to such a state that efficiency is necessary even in the communication of snark? Have we really lost the ability of language to be so colorful as to be interesting while insulting at the same time?

The Marvel Universe Rules the Collective Consciousness

The fact that a parody of the Marvel Avengers has now made its way to Sesame Street suggests that the collective consciousness of our country (if not our world) is more aware of the details of a plethora of fictitious Marvel characters than it is informed about anyone running for high office in just about any country. Mind you, I am not saying this is a bad thing. If I had to choose between sitting down for a drink with Tony Stark and having the same drink with Hillary Clinton, I would go for Stark in a New York minute. This is not because I am a Republican (God forbid). It's just that, when I want a conversation, I do not want to have to protect myself with a fine-meshed bullshit filter. Marvel has woven enough detail into Stark's character that I know his contribution will be ego-laden; but I also know that I shall probably listen out of a combined desire for information and entertainment. All Hilary wants is my vote and my willingness to extract votes from others. Is there really a choice here, even if Stark does not really exist?

HBO Becomes Part of its Own Story (again)

HBO seems to be running up an interesting track record when it comes from taking the news as a point of departure and then becoming the news. I suppose I was first aware of it when John Oliver ran a monologue about net neutrality that concluded by encouraging viewers to make their thoughts known to the Federal Communications Commission (FCC), explaining how they could do so through the Internet. It was pretty simple, since the FCC had set of a site for collecting comments; and the viewer response to Oliver was massive enough to crash that site. More recently, The Jinx led to a revival of attempts to investigate the role of Robert Durst in several unsolved murder cases.

Last night, however, Oliver raised the stakes to an unexpected height. His show had been off the air for a couple of weeks, and he had told viewers that this would be the case. Last night we found out why: Oliver had traveled to Russia to interview Edward Snowden on the issue of government surveillance. This turned out to be a major undertaking, and the show ran about fifteen minutes longer than usual. As had been the case with net neutrality, Oliver began with an extended monologue with his personal stamp of low humor aimed at bringing awareness to admittedly complex issues. There was also a fair amount of low humor in the Snowden segment, but not enough to mask when things got serious. Oliver even persistently argued that at least some of Snowden's actions could justifiably be called irresponsible, and he even managed to milk a reluctant acknowledgement from Snowden. Nevertheless, he let Snowden say his piece about the irresponsibility of current surveillance activities; and, to his credit, Snowden gave some rather good explanations for the why and how the National Security Agency could get away with doing what they did (and are probably still doing).

I suspect that the most important result of the show was that Oliver went a long way towards undermining the efforts of our government to demonize Snowden. It is clear that Snowden will never set foot in the United States as long as he runs the risk of being tried for treason and then executed. Nevertheless, his is a major voice in any debate that takes place over the complex relationship between security and privacy; and last night he demonstrated that he is given more to calm and rational speech than to the strident rants that have become so popular in our excuse for national discourse.

The net neutrality broadcast had particular impact because it ended with an action item. Last night there was also a need for action regarding a legislative stand on the content of the Patriot Act that must be reviewed by June 1. However, Oliver did not push for a write-in campaign, because it would be more difficult in this case. Therefore, the major impact of his broadcast may have been to demonstrate to the so-called "news" networks that neither Snowden's voice nor the issues he has raised can be ignored if we are to maintain even the pretense of a free society. Unfortunately, this is a matter of considerable complexity. Perhaps Oliver's next program should discuss how our country has allowed its educational system to deteriorate to a point that we no longer have the skilled minds to take on such complexity.