Why We Love Vivaldi’s “Four Seasons”: An Animated Music Lesson

in Animation, K-12, Life, Music, TED Talks | February 10th, 2017

Remember listening to Peter and the Wolf as a child, how the narrator would explain that certain instruments correspond to particular characters: the duck — an oboe, the wolf — three horns, and so on?

In the above TED-Ed lesson (memorably animated by Compote Collective), music historian Betsy Schwarm fulfills much the same role for The Four Seasons by Antonio Vivaldi. (Stream it here.)

Why are we so drawn to this Baroque concerto? Is it because we associate it with brunch?

The hundreds of movies and commercials that have featured it?

(Director Robert Benton chose Vivaldi rather than an original composer for the score of Kramer vs. Kramer, arguing that “Concerto in C Major for Mandolin & Strings” captured the troubled Manhattan couple’s refined lifestyle far better than the John Williams-esque bombast the ear associates with some many other cinematic hits of the period. The 1979 film’s success sent “The Four Seasons” to the top of the charts.)

These pleasant associations no doubt account for some of our fondness, but Professor Schwarm posits that the stories contained in the melodies are what really reel us in.

Basically, we’re in the thrall of a musical weather report, reveling in the way Vivaldi manages to bring to life both the birdies’ sunny spring song and the sudden thunderstorm that disrupts it.

Summer rolls out the meteorological big guns with a hailstorm.

Autumn’s cooler nighttime temperatures keep the wine-flushed peasants from turning their harvest celebrations into a full-on bacchanal.

Winter? Well perhaps you’re tucked up contentedly in front of the fireplace right now, gratified to be hearing your own comfort echoed in the largo section.

Inspired by the landscape paintings of artist, Marco Ricci, Vivaldi penned four poems that drive the movements of his most famous work. Their translations, below, are nowhere near as eloquent to the modern listener’s ear, but you’ll find that reading them along with your favorite recording of the Four Seasons will corroborate Professor Schwarm’s thesis.

Spring – Concerto in E Major

Allegro

Springtime is upon us.

The birds celebrate her return with festive song,

and murmuring streams are softly caressed by the breezes.

Thunderstorms, those heralds of Spring, roar, casting their dark mantle over heaven,

Then they die away to silence, and the birds take up their charming songs once more.

Largo

On the flower-strewn meadow, with leafy branches rustling overhead, the goat-herd sleeps, his faithful dog beside him.

Allegro

Led by the festive sound of rustic bagpipes, nymphs and shepherds lightly dance beneath the brilliant canopy of spring.

Summer – Concerto in g‑minor

Allegro non molto

Beneath the blazing sun’s relentless heat

men and flocks are sweltering,

pines are scorched.

We hear the cuckoo’s voice; then sweet songs of the turtle dove and finch are heard.

Soft breezes stir the air….but threatening north wind sweeps them suddenly aside. The shepherd trembles, fearful of violent storm and what may lie ahead.

Adagio e piano — Presto e forte

His limbs are now awakened from their repose by fear of lightning’s flash and thunder’s roar, as gnats and flies buzz furiously around.

Presto

Alas, his worst fears were justified, as the heavens roar and great hailstones beat down upon the proudly standing corn.

Autumn – Concerto in F Major

Allegro

The peasant celebrates with song and dance the harvest safely gathered in.

The cup of Bacchus flows freely, and many find their relief in deep slumber.

Adagio molto

The singing and the dancing die away

as cooling breezes fan the pleasant air,

inviting all to sleep

without a care.

Allegro

The hunters emerge at dawn,

ready for the chase,

with horns and dogs and cries.

Their quarry flees while they give chase.

Terrified and wounded, the prey struggles on,

but, harried, dies

Winter – Concerto in F‑minor

Allegro non molto

Shivering, frozen mid the frosty snow in biting, stinging winds;

running to and fro to stamp one’s icy feet, teeth chattering in the bitter chill.

Largo

To rest contentedly beside the hearth, while those outside are drenched by pouring rain.

Allegro

We tread the icy path slowly and cautiously, for fear of tripping and falling.

Then turn abruptly, slip, crash on the ground and, rising, hasten on across the ice lest it cracks up.

We feel the chill north winds coarse through the home despite the locked and bolted doors…

this is winter, which nonetheless brings its own delights.

You can download the Wichita State University Chamber Players’ recording of Vivaldi’s “Four Seasons” for free here.

See how well you retained your TED-ED lesson with a multiple choice quiz, then read more here.

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Ayun Halliday is an author, illustrator, theater maker and Chief Primatologist of the East Village Inky zine. Her play Zamboni Godot is opening in New York City in less than three weeks. Follow her @AyunHalliday.

by Ayun Halliday | Permalink | Make a Comment ( None ) |

Hunter S. Thompson Gets in a Gunfight with His Neighbor & Dispenses Political Wisdom: “In a Democracy, You Have to Be a Player”

in Life, Politics | February 9th, 2017

What would Hunter S. Thompson, in many ways the ultimate American, have made of his country’s political scene today? Having lived, in the words of his 2005 suicide note, “17 years past 50. 17 more than I needed or wanted,” the self-styled and always uncompromising “gonzo journalist” didn’t stick around to observe much of the 21st century, and even as grimly vivid a political imagination as his could hardly have foreseen many of its developments. Yet like the longer-gone Alexis de Tocqueville, also very much a man of his own time, Thompson’s perspective on democracy in America has in some sense only grown more relevant over the years without him.

Thompson would, in life, offer this perspective on any and all occasions, including during a shootout with his neighbor. In his final decades, his biographical blurbs referenced both a love of firearms and a 42.5‑acre “fortified compound,” known as Owl Farm, in Woody Creek, Colorado.

One might assume that such a remote and secluded location would rule out the possibility of conflicts with neighbors, but Thompson’s experience (as often it did) proved an exception. In the recently released footage above, we see him exchanging gunfire with a newly arrived resident in a dispute having something to do with livestock. “If this son of a bitch wants to bitch about his cows over here and shoot at me, well… it’s our country. It’s not theirs. It’s not a bunch of used car dealers from southern California.”

No matter how impulsive or reckless it might seem, Thompson’s behavior arose organically, from a foundational political philosophy. “The people who did this Declaration of Independence and the Constitution were, uh, good people,” he says in voiceover as we watch him assume a combat stance and fire off a few rounds. “And it’s a good place. Here we are in the middle of it, up on the mountain,” from his perch on which he came to see himself as a kind of ultra-libertarian defender of the mission of the Founding Fathers, or at least the mission of the Founding Fathers as he interpreted it. The author of Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas ends by reminding Americans of something they tend to forget until plunged into one crisis or another: “In a democracy, you have to be a player.”

via reddit

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Based in Seoul, Colin Marshall writes and broadcasts on cities and culture. He’s at work on a book about Los Angeles, A Los Angeles Primer, the video series The City in Cinema, the crowdfunded journalism project Where Is the City of the Future?, and the Los Angeles Review of Books’ Korea Blog. Follow him on Twitter at @colinmarshall or on Faceboo k.

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Benedict Cumberbatch Reads Albert Camus’ Touching Thank You Letter to His Elementary School Teacher

in English Language, K-12, Letters, Life, Literature | February 6th, 2017

It’s never too late to thank the teacher who changed your life.

Oprah Winfrey fell to pieces when she was reunited on air with Mrs. Duncan, her fourth grade teacher, her “first liberator” and “validator.”

Patrick Stewart used his knighthood ceremony as an occasion to thank Cecil Dormand, the English teacher who told him that Shakespeare’s works were not dramatic poems, but plays to be performed on one’s feet.

And Bill Gates had kind words for Blanche Caffiere, the former librarian at View Ridge Elementary in Seattle, who destigmatized his role as a “messy, nerdy boy who was reading lots of books.”

One of the most heartfelt student-to-teacher tributes is that of Nobel Prize-winning author and philosopher Albert Camus to Louis Germain, a father substitute whose classroom was a welcome reprieve from the extreme poverty Camus experienced at home. Germain persuaded Camus’ widowed mother to allow Camus to compete for the scholarship that enabled him to attend high school.

As read aloud by actor Benedict Cumberbatch, above, at Letters Live, a “celebration of the enduring power of literary correspondence,” Camus’ 1957 message to Germain is an exercise in humility and simply stated gratitude:

Dear Monsieur Germain,

I let the commotion around me these days subside a bit before speaking to you from the bottom of my heart. I have just been given far too great an honour, one I neither sought nor solicited.

But when I heard the news, my first thought, after my mother, was of you. Without you, without the affectionate hand you extended to the small poor child that I was, without your teaching and example, none of all this would have happened.

I don’t make too much of this sort of honour. But at least it gives me the opportunity to tell you what you have been and still are for me, and to assure you that your efforts, your work, and the generous heart you put into it still live in one of your little schoolboys who, despite the years, has never stopped being your grateful pupil. I embrace you with all my heart.

Albert Camus

The letter was gratefully received by his former teacher, who wrote back a year and a half later to say in part:

If it were possible, I would squeeze the great boy whom you have become, and who will always remain for me “my little Camus.”

He complimented his little Camus on not letting fame go to his head, and urged him to continue making his family priority. He shared some fond memories of Camus as a gentle, optimistic, intellectually curious little fellow, and praised his mother for doing her best in difficult circumstances.

Readers, please use the comments section to share with us the teachers deserving of your thanks.

You can find this letter, and many more, in the great Letters of Note book.

Albert Camus, Editor of the French Resistance Newspaper Combat, Writes Movingly About Life, Politics & War (1944–47)

Hear Albert Camus Deliver His Nobel Prize Acceptance Speech (1957)

Ayun Halliday is an author, illustrator, theater maker and Chief Primatologist of the East Village Inky zine. Her play Zamboni Godot is opening in New York City in March 2017. Follow her @AyunHalliday.

by Ayun Halliday | Permalink | Make a Comment ( 11 ) |

Animated Video Tells the Story of Jean-Paul Sartre & Albert Camus’ Famous Falling Out (1952)

in Life, Philosophy | February 1st, 2017

Yesterday we wrote about Albert Camus’ role as the editor of Combat, a newspaper that emerged from a French Resistance cell and played a central role in the ideological conflicts of post-war France. Camus wrote essay after essay about the problems of violent extremism and the complications inherent in forming a new democratic civil order. Although he briefly fought alongside Communists in the resistance, and stood in solidarity with their cause, Camus would split with his Marxist allies after the war and come to define his own anarchist political philosophy, one he described as “modest… free of all messianic elements and devoid of any nostalgia for an earthly paradise.”

Camus gave the fullest exposition of his position in The Rebel, a critique of revolutionary violence on both the left and right. Published in 1951, this compelling, impressionistic work is an ethics as much as a politics–indeed, the two were inseparable for Camus. To proceed otherwise was a form of nihilism that would only end in profound unfreedom. “Nihilist thought,” he wrote in the chapter on “Moderation and Excess,” ignores the limits of human nature; “nothing any longer checks it in its course and it reaches the point of justifying total destruction or unlimited conquest.”

Fascism and Nazism were not far from Camus’ mind when he wrote these words. But he also referred to the increasingly doctrinaire Stalinism of his close friend and fellow existentialist Jean-Paul Sartre, who, writes Sam Dresser at Aeon, read The Rebel with “disgust.” Sartre published a scathing review in his journal, Les Temps Modernes. Camus sent a long reply, and Sartre countered with what Volker Hage in Der Spiegel calls a “merciless” response. “The split between the two friends,” writes Dresser, “was a media sensation,” the kind of popular feud between public intellectuals that may only happen in France.

Animated by Andrew Khosravani, the Aeon video above gives us a brief narrative of the famous falling-out. There may be “no better bust-up in the annals of philosophy than the row between” these “two titans of Existentialism.” The two fought not only over ideas, but over women, including Sartre’s famous partner Simone de Beauvoir. (Camus offended Sartre by turning down her advances.) Both Sartre and Camus “worried about how to make meaning in an essentially absurd, godless world.” But Sartre, Camus thought, abrogated the radical freedom he had written of in works like Being and Nothingness with his acceptance of dialectical materialism and his admiration for an authoritarian regime that imprisoned and murdered its own people.

Camus found the contradictions in Sartre’s thought intolerable, and he begins The Rebel with a philosophical inquiry into the ethics of killing. Can murder be justified in the name of a utopian ideal? Camus was not a pacifist—he had no problem fighting the Nazi occupation. But he categorically rejected revolutionary violence and all forms of extremism in the name of some “earthly paradise.” Sartre and Camus could not agree to disagree and went their separate ways, and Camus died in a car accident in 1960. In a heartfelt appreciation that Sartre penned shortly before his own death 20 years later, he called Camus, “probably my only good friend.”

NOTE: The creator of this video is now looking to raise funds to produce new animations about philosophical feuds. Please consider contributing to their Kickstarter campaign.

Sartre Writes a Tribute to Camus After His Friend-Turned-Rival Dies in a Tragic Car Crash: “There Is an Unbearable Absurdity in His Death”

Albert Camus Writes a Friendly Letter to Jean-Paul Sartre Before Their Personal and Philosophical Rift

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Josh Jones is a writer and musician based in Durham, NC. Follow him at @jdmagness

by Josh Jones | Permalink | Make a Comment ( 1 ) |

Pakistani Immigrant Goes to a Led Zeppelin Concert, Gets Inspired to Become a Musician & Then Sells 30 Million Albums

in Life, Music | January 30th, 2017

Salman Ahmad, the guitarist who founded the acclaimed Sufi rock band Junoon, has sold over 30 million albums worldwide, performed at the Nobel Peace Prize ceremony, and continued making music despite threats from The Taliban. He also teaches courses on Muslim music and poetry at Queens College of the City University of New York.

Above, in a video produced by The Moth, the boundary-breaking musician recounts his inspirational life story. Born in Lahore, Pakistan, he moved to New York at the age of 11. Being the “only overweight, brown, Muslim kid” in school, he lived in relative isolation–that is until Dan Spitz (later the guitarist of Anthrax) urged him “to get cool.” Cool came in the form of a ticket to a Led Zeppelin concert at Madison Square Garden, which kicked off, oddly enough, with “Kashmir.”

I’ll let Ahmad tell the rest of his story. It’s also a story about how America does good (for the world and itself) when it remains open in heart, mind, and law.

To get better acquainted with Ahmad’s journey, read his recent book, Rock & Roll Jihad: A Muslim Rock Star’s Revolution.

To keep America open, make a donation to the ACLU.

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by OC | Permalink | Make a Comment ( None ) |

81-Year-Old Man Walks into a Guitar Shop & Starts Playing a Sublime Solo: Ignore the Talents of the Elderly at Your Own Peril

in Life, Music | January 25th, 2017

Last spring, I caught a Who concert in Oakland, California, on what happened to be songwriter/guitarist Pete Townshend’s 71st birthday. Five songs into their set, the band played “My Generation”–yes, the song best known for the line “I hope I die before I get old”–and I couldn’t help but think: Townshend’s playing with more inspiration now than when I first saw The Who play in 1982. Biologically, he’s supposed to be over the hill. Musically, he’s still playing a very fine rock guitar.

The same thought crossed my mind at Desert Trip, the October mega concert held in Indio, California. Featuring The Rolling Stones, The Who (again), Paul McCartney, Neil Young and Roger Waters–in short, musicians all over the age of 70–Desert Trip became more colloquially known as “Oldchella.”

Even, Mick Jagger called it “the come and see us before we die tour.” And yet. And yet. Despite the jokes, they’re all still playing with verve, putting on tight, rousing shows. (I’ll admit that Bob Dylan is the notable exception.)

So what’s the takeaway? We can’t stop the clock. Eventually, we get old. Nothing we can do about that. But if you’ve got your health, if you’ve got the desire, if you’ve spent decades refining your craft, then there’s no reason you can’t still do great work. That applies to musicians. (Witness 81-year-old Bob Wood above). It also applies to other parts of life, including our professional lives. Our culture hastily writes off the talents and accumulated experience of an entire generation of people. But stop for a second. Watch the video above and extrapolate it to other parts of life. Then think about all that gets needlessly lost.

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by OC | Permalink | Make a Comment ( 7 ) |

An Animated History of Planned Parenthood, Brought to You by Lena Dunham, JJ Abrams & More

in Current Affairs, Health, History, Life, Politics | January 23rd, 2017

Lena Dunham drafted a host of well known friends for The History Of 100 Years Of Women’s Health Care At Planned Parenthood, the short film (above) she co-directed with animator Kirsten Lepore. Others taking part in the production include comedians Mindy Kaling and Amy Schumer, actors Meryl Streep, America Ferrera, Hari Nef, Jennifer Lawrence, and Constance Wu, and producer J.J. Abrams.

But the real stars of this show are the female trailblazers who fought (and continue to fight) for access to safe and affordable reproductive care for all women, regardless of age, race, or ability to pay.

In the words of founder Margaret Sanger, a controversial figure who seems to share quite a few traits with Dunham, from her deft leverage of her celebrity on behalf of her chosen cause to her capacity for alienating fans with some of her less savory views and statements:

No woman can call herself free who does not own and control her body. No woman can call herself free until she can choose consciously whether she will or will not be a mother.

Women like Rosie Jimenez, a single mother who died from complications of a back alley abortion following the passage of the Hyde Amendment, were victimized by laws regarding reproductive choice.

Others, like Estelle Griswold, executive director of the Planned Parenthood League of Connecticut, flouted the laws to bring about change.

More recently Faye Wattleton, Planned Parenthood’s first African American president and its current president, Cecile Richards, have worked to promote awareness of both the public’s rights and any impending dangers to those rights.

(Vice President Mike Pence’s inadvertent fundraising efforts go unheralded, appropriately enough. The millions of women—and men—who made small donations to Planned Parenthood in his name are the true heroes here.)

For more of Dunham’s highly visible support of Planned Parenthood, read her 2015 interview with President Cecile Richards or check out the t‑shirt she designed to benefit the California Planned Parenthood Education Fund.

via Kottke

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Ayun Halliday is an author, illustrator, theater maker and Chief Primatologist of the East Village Inky zine. Her play Zamboni Godot is opening in New York City in March 2017. Follow her @AyunHalliday.

by Ayun Halliday | Permalink | Make a Comment ( 6 ) |

Deconstructing How Louis CK Writes a Joke

in Comedy, Life | January 20th, 2017

Those who subscribe to the notion that deconstructing a joke ruins it may consider making an exception for the Nerdwriter (aka Evan Puschak).

His careful parsing of Louis CK’s Monopoly joke, above, takes rhythm, word choice, and the importance of a clearly stated premise into account.

Delivering the 207-word joke at the Beacon Theater, CK is characteristically nonchalant, but Puschak argues that there’s nothing unrehearsed about his performance.

Take the way he ramps up a scenario that will be familiar to any parent—the six-year-old who is emotionally unequipped to handle losing at games. CK gets at an even deeper truth about the howling injustice of being six, by saying that his younger daughter is “not emotionally developed enough to handle her inevitable loss in every game of Monopoly.”

Oh, the humanity.

Puschak also singles out CK’s acting ability. The way he speaks to his daughter, placing her in the first row of the audience, sharpens the comedy by helping the audience to fully visualize the scenario he’s set up:

I play Monopoly with my kids, that’s really fun. My nine year old, she can totally do Monopoly. The six year old totally gets how the game works but she’s not emotionally developed enough to handle her inevitable loss in every game of Monopoly because a monopoly loss is dark. It’s heavy. It’s not like when you lose at Candyland ‘Oh you got stuck in the fudgy-thing, baby! Oh well you’re in the gummy twirly‑o’s! You didn’t get to win!’ But when she loses at Monopoly, I gotta look at her little face and go ‘Ok, so here’s what’s gonna happen now, ok? All your property, everything you have, all your railroads and houses, and all your money…that’s mine now. Gotta give it all to me. Give it to me, that’s right. And no no, you can’t play anymore because, you see, even though you’re giving me all of that, it doesn’t even touch how you owe me. Doesn’t even touch it, baby. You’re going down hard, it’s really bad. All you’ve been working for all day, I’m gonna take it now and I’m gonna use it to destroy your sister. I mean I’m gonna ruin her! It is just mayhem on this board for her now.

You can view the Nerdwriter’s other videos essays on his website or subscribe to his YouTube channel where a new video is published every Wednesday.

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Ayun Halliday is an author, illustrator, theater maker and Chief Primatologist of the East Village Inky zine. Her play Zamboni Godot is opening in New York City in March 2017. Follow her @AyunHalliday.

by Ayun Halliday | Permalink | Make a Comment ( None ) |

Why We Love Vivaldi’s “Four Seasons”: An Animated Music Lesson

Hunter S. Thompson Gets in a Gunfight with His Neighbor & Dispenses Political Wisdom: “In a Democracy, You Have to Be a Player”

Benedict Cumberbatch Reads Albert Camus’ Touching Thank You Letter to His Elementary School Teacher

Animated Video Tells the Story of Jean-Paul Sartre & Albert Camus’ Famous Falling Out (1952)

Pakistani Immigrant Goes to a Led Zeppelin Concert, Gets Inspired to Become a Musician & Then Sells 30 Million Albums

81-Year-Old Man Walks into a Guitar Shop & Starts Playing a Sublime Solo: Ignore the Talents of the Elderly at Your Own Peril

An Animated History of Planned Parenthood, Brought to You by Lena Dunham, JJ Abrams & More

Deconstructing How Louis CK Writes a Joke

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