It was probably inevitable that as I look for varied ways to create video karaoke for Doctor in Spite of Himself tunes, I'd find my way back to two of my favorite summer discoveries: kinetic typography and Wordles. Technically, what you see below isn't a Wordle, but its look is certainly inspired by those colorful word pictures - especially in the way that words are scattered across the canvas. It also isn't nearly as animated as some of the better kinetic typographimations out there, but I did borrow from that words-as-characters sort of look. The inspiration here comes directly from the vividly angular impact of Martine's vengeance aria, "Women Everywhere." As I describe over on the Doctor Blog, Gounod portrays the wronged wife's emotional outbursts with wide, angry leaps that are countered by tender, sobbing chromatic lines.
In order to show how pitch range is used to bring Martine's inner life to life, I decided to plot the words vertically in a way that literally shows the intervals at play. Thus, the karaoke becomes a sort of visual listening guide (a pet topic of mine), which is just as well since it's harder to sing than the average karaoke subject. The effect is intentionally unpredictable and a little frightening - which seems to be Gounod's conception of Martine!
Also note that the audio and video for Karaoke #3 have been improved.
Monday, August 25, 2008
Friday, August 22, 2008
Doctor Karaoke #3
#2 on the indispensable Beloit Mindset List for the incoming Class of 2012 is the following:
Read more about it here.
Oh, and you really should check out that list.
Since they were in diapers, karaoke machines have been annoying people at parties..So, laugh if you will, but my karaoke publicity machine for The Doctor in Spite of Himself is speaking to the kids out there (or, possibly, horrifying them). Anyway, Karaoke #3 has been posted, even though it wasn't really ready to go. I found that executing my animation idea was a much bigger pain than expected, and the little letters going by are still pretty hard to read. Well, you can always hit pause to catch any words you can't catch. [UPDATE: audio and video have been improved. See the originally posted version here.]
Read more about it here.
Oh, and you really should check out that list.
Monday, August 18, 2008
Classical Economics
As I mentioned in an update to my Value Judgments post, I just ran across an early August NY Times article (found via Thoughtlights) which suggests that significant artworks can be usefully ranked according to how often they're pictured in art history texts. I enjoyed reading it because it backs up my totally unsupported assertion that art historians/critics don't like admitting that markets play a big role in how artistic value is perceived. Quoth David Galenson, subject of the Times piece, "Quantification has been almost totally absent from art history. Art historians hate markets.”
I don't know if Galenson's right or not, since I've admitted that art's not really my thing, but I'm intrigued by the implications of this theory for the classical music canon. I've been meaning to post for awhile about the unofficial "Music History Anthology" canon, an odd assemblage which (like Galenson's list) has a tendency to emphasize a few composers who are especially known for one or two works. For example, my completely unscientifically gathered experience suggests that "Dido's Lament" from Purcell's Dido and Aeneas is perhaps the most inevitable work to show up in history and theory anthologies, partly because of that easy-to-illustrate ground bass structure. (I mentioned this here.) It's ironic that it often stands in as THE Baroque opera aria, since D&A is an unconventional little mini-opera, and Purcell isn't otherwise known as an opera composer. Anyway, it's not that the generally underrated Purcell is really a one-hit wonder, but in canonical terms, he is.
Galenson's #1 is Picasso's Les Demoiselles d’Avignon, which is interesting because one could argue that the #1 musical icon is Stravinsky's Le sacre du printemps; neither Picasso nor Stravinsky would by any means be considered a one-hit wonder, and they probably stand as the most acclaimed artist and composer of the 20th century, so there's a nice symmetry there. Along with The Rite and Dido's Lament, I'd guess that Schubert's Erlkönig, Debussy's Prélude à l'après-midi d'un faune and Berlioz's Symphonie fantastique are the other virtually unavoidable works for the music student. Certainly none of those composers are one-hit wonders either, although Berlioz probably comes closest in the public's estimation. I don't think the big three of Bach, Beethoven, and Mozart can be pinned down to one inevitable work; the Eroica may come the closest. I'd say the same for Palestrina, Vivaldi, Handel, Haydn, Schumann, Chopin, Liszt, Verdi, Wagner, Brahms, Mahler, Ives, Bartok, and everyone else I've forgotten.
Other one-hit wonders that come immediately to mind are Monteverdi's Orfeo, maybe Josquin's Ave Maria, Smetana's The Moldau, and Schoenberg's Pierrot lunaire, although Schoenberg doesn't usually get the one-hit treatment - it's usually Pierrot plus one. A case could also be made for Rossini's Una voce poco fa, Mendelssohn's Overture to a Midsummer Night's Dream and Copland's Appalachian Spring. By the way, I don't feel overexposed to any of these works; they're all canon-worthy (yeah, yeah, my conception of canon-worthy is significantly defined by these works). The one work I've run across more than I'd like would be Schütz 's Saul, Saul, was verfolgst du mich? I'd rather hear my daughters' Disney Princess CD 12 times in a row before sitting through Saul, Saul again.
I don't know if Galenson's right or not, since I've admitted that art's not really my thing, but I'm intrigued by the implications of this theory for the classical music canon. I've been meaning to post for awhile about the unofficial "Music History Anthology" canon, an odd assemblage which (like Galenson's list) has a tendency to emphasize a few composers who are especially known for one or two works. For example, my completely unscientifically gathered experience suggests that "Dido's Lament" from Purcell's Dido and Aeneas is perhaps the most inevitable work to show up in history and theory anthologies, partly because of that easy-to-illustrate ground bass structure. (I mentioned this here.) It's ironic that it often stands in as THE Baroque opera aria, since D&A is an unconventional little mini-opera, and Purcell isn't otherwise known as an opera composer. Anyway, it's not that the generally underrated Purcell is really a one-hit wonder, but in canonical terms, he is.
Galenson's #1 is Picasso's Les Demoiselles d’Avignon, which is interesting because one could argue that the #1 musical icon is Stravinsky's Le sacre du printemps; neither Picasso nor Stravinsky would by any means be considered a one-hit wonder, and they probably stand as the most acclaimed artist and composer of the 20th century, so there's a nice symmetry there. Along with The Rite and Dido's Lament, I'd guess that Schubert's Erlkönig, Debussy's Prélude à l'après-midi d'un faune and Berlioz's Symphonie fantastique are the other virtually unavoidable works for the music student. Certainly none of those composers are one-hit wonders either, although Berlioz probably comes closest in the public's estimation. I don't think the big three of Bach, Beethoven, and Mozart can be pinned down to one inevitable work; the Eroica may come the closest. I'd say the same for Palestrina, Vivaldi, Handel, Haydn, Schumann, Chopin, Liszt, Verdi, Wagner, Brahms, Mahler, Ives, Bartok, and everyone else I've forgotten.
Other one-hit wonders that come immediately to mind are Monteverdi's Orfeo, maybe Josquin's Ave Maria, Smetana's The Moldau, and Schoenberg's Pierrot lunaire, although Schoenberg doesn't usually get the one-hit treatment - it's usually Pierrot plus one. A case could also be made for Rossini's Una voce poco fa, Mendelssohn's Overture to a Midsummer Night's Dream and Copland's Appalachian Spring. By the way, I don't feel overexposed to any of these works; they're all canon-worthy (yeah, yeah, my conception of canon-worthy is significantly defined by these works). The one work I've run across more than I'd like would be Schütz 's Saul, Saul, was verfolgst du mich? I'd rather hear my daughters' Disney Princess CD 12 times in a row before sitting through Saul, Saul again.
There's much more to say about this, and obviously my list has been biased by the textbooks/anthologies I've used the most, but Galenson is certainly right that we can learn something from this kind of quantitive analysis, even if my analysis is much more the result of intuition than research. Who does research in August? For now, you can draw your own conclusions, or suggest canon staples I've left off the list.
UPDATE: By the way, I do realize that Galenson is mainly talking about 20th century art, so my extension of this idea back through music history is obviously something of a departure from what he's doing. Part of his point is that "only in the 20th century did art enter the marketplace and become a commodity." A more controversial point, perhaps, is his assertion that "breaking the rules became the most valued attribute. The greatest rewards went to conceptual innovators who frequently changed styles and invented genres. For the first time the idea behind the work of art became more important than the physical object itself." Back when I taught a general arts lecture course, I used to talk a lot about this same phenomenon, which I referred to as "capitalist values invading the art world," the great irony being that the typical artworld ideology is hardly capitalist in the political sense. It's nice to see this idea fleshed out by an actual economist.
Foul Play
Yesterday, a first. Sitting at the Red Sox-Blue Jays game, talking to an old HS school friend I hadn't seen in about 20 years. I mentioned to him that I'd sat in these seats-in-law (owned first by my father-in-law and now by my brother-in-law) for more than 30 games over the years, but had never come close to getting a foul ball, even though the seats are along the left-field line, close to 3rd base, just six rows back from the field. About 5-10 minutes later, a high popup seemed to be tracking right in our direction which, to be quite honest, made me nervous. I'm pretty sure I've never tried to catch anything falling from such a height. Fortunately, the ball landed about 5-6 seats away. It bounced (off what I'm not sure), disappeared, and suddenly rolled right up under my seat where I grabbed it before a hand reaching under could get it. Just like that, I had my first foul ball, though hardly acquired in heroic fashion.
The game was horrible (down 6-0 after half an inning, and then it went downhill), which gave me plenty of time to catch up with my old buddy and to ponder this little gift from the baseball gods. Everyone wants to get a foul ball, but what does it mean? It's just a scuffed-up baseball, for which I have no real use. Maybe I'll throw it to my son in a year or two, but it's not better for that than any other baseball. I had a variety of passing thoughts. When an usher passed by with an enormous trash bag to collect empty cups, wrappers, etc. I wondered if I should toss in this bit of game debris. Later, a more mischievous side of MM thought how easy and disruptive it could be to toss the ball back in play the next time a base hit bounced around in left field. No, I wouldn't have done either of those things, especially since the latter might have ended up with me on the street and my brother-in-law having his tickets revoked.
But, picking up from the half-baked musings of my last post (now featuring new pic), what's the point of this foul ball that happened into my hands? It's not a glamorous homerun ball. It was hit in the first inning by Lyle Overbay - not exactly a glamorous player. It was thrown by Josh Beckett, a great pitcher who had an awful day, so I can say it was touched by an all-star. Really, its main distinction is that it was used in a major league game and, out of 37,000 or so people at the game, I was one of maybe 30-40 to go home with such a souvenir. It's a door prize.
All it really has is some supply-demand based sentimental value (I'm guessing the monetary value isn't much more than a Wal-Mart baseball), which also endows it with some value as an objet d'anecdote. I already posted a Facebook boast about getting my first foul ball, and here I am blogging about it. It also made the whole trip to the park seem worthwhile, even though it was a forgettable game; in fact, for once a lousy game seemed like an advantage, because it made a good backdrop for catching up with an old friend (no distracting big-game situations after the first couple of innings), and I already had my story. Would I have traded this ball of dubious meaning for a Red Sox victory? Probably not, although that would change if it had been a game of greater magnitude. So, the main purpose of this story is that the main purpose of this souvenir is to be the subject of just such a story.
P.S. And while we're on sports, can I just mention that, impressive as Michael Phelps' eight gold medals are, they do not make him one of the greatest athletes of all time. First of all, it's true that no athlete has ever won eight gold medals in a single Olympics. However, is there any sport other than swimming in which there is even a long-shot opportunity to go for eight medals? The only one I can think of is men's gymnastics, with the team competition, the all-around, and the six individual events, but that seems less plausible than a fast swimmer being sufficiently dominant to win a bunch of different events. And what percentage of potentially great athletes would ever consider devoting their life to swimming? It's still pretty much a sport of privilege (who wouldn't want to spend all day at the pool?), whatever Phelps' background, and there are likely many athletes who could swim faster if they devoted their lives to it. His accomplishments are remarkable, but still achieved within a pretty tightly circumscribed field of endeavor. But, of course, the only thing better than a good story is an exaggerated version of that story. In fact, come to think of it, let's say that baseball you see pictured above was actually snagged out of the air, one-handed, as I reached up above the grasp of several lesser fans. And, of course, let's remember that I was sitting in the seats above the Green Monster, so this was a homerun ball, hit by David Ortiz on an 0-2 count with two outs and the bases loaded, down 3-0 in the bottom of the 12th of Game 7 of the ALCS against the Yankees. Or maybe I bought it at the souvenir stand. After all, it wouldn't look any different. (Actually, a World Series ball would probably be marked as such, and might have a GPS-embedded chip within, but this is PS is long enough.)
Saturday, August 16, 2008
Value Judgments
UPDATE (8/18): If you're skeptical about my suggestion that art historians don't like to see their value judgments as market-based, see this very interesting article from the New York Times. (Hat tip to Thoughtlights.) I have some music-related thoughts about the article as well. Maybe they'll appear soon. [Done!]
Time for some late-summer off-the-cuff musing on topics that are out of my league.
Geoff Edgers writes about concerns that the University of Iowa might consider selling a $150 million Jackson Pollock painting to help cover flood damage costs. It doesn't look like something that's likely to happen, but it was news to me that such an act (identified by the frightening term "deaccessioning"!!) would be considered so controversial.
Here's where I should pause to admit that I'm not really a visual art guy. I mean, I have nothing against painting/sculptures/drawings, etc., but they simply don't communicate to me on a level anything like the way music does. When Terry Teachout, whose wide-ranging arts blog I really enjoy, "strongly suggest"s to his readers that they get themselves to a particular exhibit, I find myself unmoved, literally and figuratively. I even have the low-class thought that I'd be just as happy to view the images online. (Hey, I've got a nice, big, flat color monitor. Paintings look great there. And before you tell me all about texture and space and light, let me suggest that if I walked back into the Renaissance and said, "Hey painters, look at this incredibly flat, wonderfully glowing picture I just 'painted,'" I bet they'd be pretty impressed. And then I'd tell them, "Oh, and I just sent it to my friend on the other side of this flat world, and now he's looking at it, except it's even bigger because he's got a 26"-inch monitor - er, canvas.")
OK, I think I've embarrassed myself sufficiently there. So, anyway, I certainly understand that a museum shouldn't sell its holdings thoughtlessly, especially if selling an object violates a donor agreement. I don't really even have an opinion on the Iowa matter, but it just amuses me that artworld values get so caught up in supply-and-demand market values. Whatever one thinks of Pollock's work, I can't imagine a non-market value sense in which this painting would be considered so much more "valuable" than, say, a good painting by a well-trained artist or a mass-produced reproduction of the very same Pollock. (It is a big painting, so it's not like the reproduction would be a $15 poster, but I'm guessing it would come in well under $150,000,000. )
I suppose that art people would say it's not a market issue, it's a historical one - this painting is a unique historical object that thus has special meaning. Of course, that's also a market-based argument, since the "uniqueness" is basically a supply-demand value. It's just a little ways down the continuum from someone paying millions of dollars for a baseball that happened to be hit for a milestone home run. In simplest terms, a lot of people would like to own this specific painting, and there's just one of them. Doesn't that account for an enormous percentage of its monetary value?
So, the museum "code of conduct" apparently says "don't go out and deaccession just to save/make money," but the artistic objection there is hardly just one of "artistic value comes first." To the contrary, it's very much a market-driven way of thinking because the perceived artistic value is so closely tied to market value. Which I suppose is obvious to art people, but I find it amusing because the high-mindedness maybe isn't so high-minded. At the end of the day, I think I'd be just as happy to cash in on the Pollock and diversify with . . . well, that's the problem with me addressing this topic. I wouldn't spend it on paintings at all - or flood damage. I'd probably buy a baseball team. (Whoops, it looks like even the Rays would cost me more than a Pollock, and their stock is certainly rising.)
Let's just move on to more inane musings about value. I'm keeping up with the Olympics and seeing all the Michael Phelps mania, and I know what's he doing is amazing, but there's this annoying part of me that keeps saying, "so he's a split second faster than those other really fast guys? So what?" And yet his fame will be far out of proportion to those small victory margins - the guys who are really fast will mostly remain anonymous; the guy who's just a little bit faster will become superfamous. Why? Supply and demand. He becomes unique by being just that little bit better that puts his accomplishments in very short supply. Which means he can sell Wheaties. Otherwise, he's really not much different than the other guys.
I'll admit my other basic problem with so many of these Olympic speed sports (swimming, running, etc.) is that they're kind of like having a piano competition that consists only of scale-playing. Fast scales are interesting on a certain level, but I'd rather see a pianist put those skills to more complex musical use, just as I'd rather see athletes put their skills to use in a game like baseball or football. And, speaking of music, the classical music world gets caught up in market values all the time, whether it's paying exponentially more to see a name-brand performer or pretending that every little country dance that Mozart wrote is special because it can be attached to a composer whose name is unique. Of course, then that means the market gets oversaturated with Mozart and . . . but that's a topic for another day.
POSTSCRIPT: So, I wrote all of the above, and then I saw Michael Phelps win the 100m butterfly in absolutely astonishing, miraculous fashion. So, I take it all back. I'm now going to devote my life to owning a Jackson Pollock - even if it's just a drip.
POSTSCRIPT 2: No, I'm not a Marxist or anything like that. I'm pretty much fine with market-based economies, but I'm intrigued by how easily those economies end up shaping our value systems. I realize that's probably a stupidly circular argument because value is basically a market concept, but the point is that people like to pretend that there's such a thing as objective aesthetic value - I'm skeptical. AND, as I pointed out here, it's easy to take for granted spectacularly wonderful things that are readily available. Let me close with this spectacularly stupid question, that actually makes a pretty decent point: "Is a $100 bottle of wine really better than a perfectly carbonated glass of coca-cola?" Or, to send you off to a great Malcolm Gladwell article, "is a gourmet ketchup really better than Heinz?"
Geoff Edgers writes about concerns that the University of Iowa might consider selling a $150 million Jackson Pollock painting to help cover flood damage costs. It doesn't look like something that's likely to happen, but it was news to me that such an act (identified by the frightening term "deaccessioning"!!) would be considered so controversial.
Here's where I should pause to admit that I'm not really a visual art guy. I mean, I have nothing against painting/sculptures/drawings, etc., but they simply don't communicate to me on a level anything like the way music does. When Terry Teachout, whose wide-ranging arts blog I really enjoy, "strongly suggest"s to his readers that they get themselves to a particular exhibit, I find myself unmoved, literally and figuratively. I even have the low-class thought that I'd be just as happy to view the images online. (Hey, I've got a nice, big, flat color monitor. Paintings look great there. And before you tell me all about texture and space and light, let me suggest that if I walked back into the Renaissance and said, "Hey painters, look at this incredibly flat, wonderfully glowing picture I just 'painted,'" I bet they'd be pretty impressed. And then I'd tell them, "Oh, and I just sent it to my friend on the other side of this flat world, and now he's looking at it, except it's even bigger because he's got a 26"-inch monitor - er, canvas.")
OK, I think I've embarrassed myself sufficiently there. So, anyway, I certainly understand that a museum shouldn't sell its holdings thoughtlessly, especially if selling an object violates a donor agreement. I don't really even have an opinion on the Iowa matter, but it just amuses me that artworld values get so caught up in supply-and-demand market values. Whatever one thinks of Pollock's work, I can't imagine a non-market value sense in which this painting would be considered so much more "valuable" than, say, a good painting by a well-trained artist or a mass-produced reproduction of the very same Pollock. (It is a big painting, so it's not like the reproduction would be a $15 poster, but I'm guessing it would come in well under $150,000,000. )
I suppose that art people would say it's not a market issue, it's a historical one - this painting is a unique historical object that thus has special meaning. Of course, that's also a market-based argument, since the "uniqueness" is basically a supply-demand value. It's just a little ways down the continuum from someone paying millions of dollars for a baseball that happened to be hit for a milestone home run. In simplest terms, a lot of people would like to own this specific painting, and there's just one of them. Doesn't that account for an enormous percentage of its monetary value?
So, the museum "code of conduct" apparently says "don't go out and deaccession just to save/make money," but the artistic objection there is hardly just one of "artistic value comes first." To the contrary, it's very much a market-driven way of thinking because the perceived artistic value is so closely tied to market value. Which I suppose is obvious to art people, but I find it amusing because the high-mindedness maybe isn't so high-minded. At the end of the day, I think I'd be just as happy to cash in on the Pollock and diversify with . . . well, that's the problem with me addressing this topic. I wouldn't spend it on paintings at all - or flood damage. I'd probably buy a baseball team. (Whoops, it looks like even the Rays would cost me more than a Pollock, and their stock is certainly rising.)
Let's just move on to more inane musings about value. I'm keeping up with the Olympics and seeing all the Michael Phelps mania, and I know what's he doing is amazing, but there's this annoying part of me that keeps saying, "so he's a split second faster than those other really fast guys? So what?" And yet his fame will be far out of proportion to those small victory margins - the guys who are really fast will mostly remain anonymous; the guy who's just a little bit faster will become superfamous. Why? Supply and demand. He becomes unique by being just that little bit better that puts his accomplishments in very short supply. Which means he can sell Wheaties. Otherwise, he's really not much different than the other guys.
I'll admit my other basic problem with so many of these Olympic speed sports (swimming, running, etc.) is that they're kind of like having a piano competition that consists only of scale-playing. Fast scales are interesting on a certain level, but I'd rather see a pianist put those skills to more complex musical use, just as I'd rather see athletes put their skills to use in a game like baseball or football. And, speaking of music, the classical music world gets caught up in market values all the time, whether it's paying exponentially more to see a name-brand performer or pretending that every little country dance that Mozart wrote is special because it can be attached to a composer whose name is unique. Of course, then that means the market gets oversaturated with Mozart and . . . but that's a topic for another day.
POSTSCRIPT: So, I wrote all of the above, and then I saw Michael Phelps win the 100m butterfly in absolutely astonishing, miraculous fashion. So, I take it all back. I'm now going to devote my life to owning a Jackson Pollock - even if it's just a drip.
POSTSCRIPT 2: No, I'm not a Marxist or anything like that. I'm pretty much fine with market-based economies, but I'm intrigued by how easily those economies end up shaping our value systems. I realize that's probably a stupidly circular argument because value is basically a market concept, but the point is that people like to pretend that there's such a thing as objective aesthetic value - I'm skeptical. AND, as I pointed out here, it's easy to take for granted spectacularly wonderful things that are readily available. Let me close with this spectacularly stupid question, that actually makes a pretty decent point: "Is a $100 bottle of wine really better than a perfectly carbonated glass of coca-cola?" Or, to send you off to a great Malcolm Gladwell article, "is a gourmet ketchup really better than Heinz?"
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