Trouble in Tahiti or Wherever You May Be

A friend of mine likes, “good news/bad news” jokes. He asked me once if I knew the good news and bad news about opera. He continued, “the good news about opera is you usually get your money’s worth because operas are incredibly long. And the bad news – operas are incredibly long!”

I thought of him recently, and his joke that does not apply to Leonard Bernstein’s opera, Trouble in Tahiti. This one-act opera’s running time is about 45 minutes. Perhaps for this reason it is seldom performed. Written in 1952, this opera depicts suburbia of the time, “Happily married, sweet little son…up-to-date kitchen, washing machine, colorful bathrooms and Life magazine, and a little white house in Brookline…Suburbia.” Just seven years after the end of the Second World War, funded in part by the GI Bill of Rights, suburbia had become a Garden of Eden for many families. And compared to the recent memories of World War II, the fighting and death abroad, the rationing at home, everyone’s life on hold till the war ended, suburbia certainly was Eden for many an American family.

The Next Theatre Company, Evanston, IL [http://www.nexttheatre.org] figured out an innovative way to bring Trouble in Tahiti to their audience. This opera has become the first act in the world premiere of The American Dream Songbook, described by artistic director Jason Loewith as “our hybrid world premiere music-theatre event.” After the conclusion of Trouble in Tahiti, the audience returns after the intermission for a second act titled, “The American Dream Revue” which consists of five contemporary songs written by Kevin O’Donnell, Michael John LaChiusa, Michael Mahler, Michael Friedman, and Josh Schmidt. Act One, which is Trouble in Tahiti, reveals an inner life of suburbia that doesn’t match its outer image. Act Two, “The American Dream Revue” sings songs of present day American Dreams. It left me wondering if this generation might not have any more luck in finding genuine happiness in their many and varied lifestyles than their parents or grandparents did in suburbia some sixty years ago.

The children and grandchildren of 1950s suburbia have other dreams. Many have repudiated suburban lifestyle, searching for other manifestations of Eden, through diverse careers, gentrified urban

neighborhoods and/or back to the land rural retreats to name just a few. How will these epiphanies of the American Dream look to people in another 50 years? What might our children and grandchildren’s dreams look like in 2058, and how successfully might their dreams take shape? And who will be the composers who capture these dreams in their music?

Music helps us to explore, communicate, and reflect upon each generation’s version of the American Dream. Music also often reminds us that each generation finds different and differing manifestations of their dreams, including the ever elusive American Dream. Leonard Bernstein’s short opera, Trouble in Tahiti does these things exceptional well on its own. Contextualized in The American Dream Songbook, it becomes even more focused for us today who still search for a Garden of Eden in our midst.

The American Dream Songbook runs until March 22, 2008 at the Next Theatre in Evanston, IL.

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Transfiguration

This post was written by Michael Dodaro, and posted on February 18, 2008 | Filed Under culture, religion, music and religion, music | Double-click any word for more info | View other posts by Michael Dodaro | Leave a Comment | For info on this author, visit http://operaciv.blogspot.com/

During the 2nd week of Lent, I began to read a book suggested by a friend who is an atheist. I had some interest in the book, Sense and Goodness without God, by Richard Carrier, and I thought I might agree that that ethics and epistemology can be justified on the basis metaphysical naturalism. The contention that humanity is capable of goodness without God is not untenable even for the religious. Historic theology includes doctrines of an existing moral order, referred to variously as natural law or general revelation that precede explicit revelation to prophets or saints. The Apostle Paul begins his Epistle to the Romans with, among other things, a discussion of the “law” that is known to Gentiles because it is “written in their hearts”. The world’s religions, even while they are divergent theologically, have come to many similar conclusions about ethics. Christians do not assume they are superior to others but that that they are beneficiaries of God’s grace.

I admit I have only begun to read the book, but I started without any particular expectation that I would be so astonished by the author’s incomprehension of things that most civilized people take for granted. Mr. Carrier is former editor-in-chief at Infidels.org. His comments on the Bible are informed by so little imagination that he seems tone deaf to poetry and the dramatic texts that have inspired art and faith for millennia. In brief, his claim is that the only viable methodology for knowing anything is rigorous logical analysis based on “experience”. What he’d make of Shakespeare is anybody’s guess. He thinks his methodology is the norm in science and technology and that everything we need to know can be ascertained through application of empirical rigor. Apparently he’s unaware that enthusiasm for logical positivism dwindled off somewhere the middle of the twentieth century and that the rigor and professionalism, which he says he admires in industry and academe, are also applicable to the facile ideas he generates. None of the four hundred pages of his book will ever see light of day in any noteworthy philosophical journal.

A teaching assistant at Columbia University, the writer claims some expertise in ancient languages and philosophy. It seems abrupt then when he writes off ancient philosophy in less than one sentence: Plato, he thinks, “Made a mistake”. He takes a couple of pages to dispatch the arguments of Alvin Plantinga, professor of Philosophy at Notre Dame, who, incidentally, does publish his work in reputable philosophical journals. Mr. Carrier justifies this end-run around the professional rigor of the field in which chooses to publish by noting that philosophy only matters when it is intelligible in non-technical language to those who seek values grounded in experience that can be applied in real life. Unimpressed by the Bible, he nonetheless claims to have read the New Testament in the original Greek. This is dubious because the Koine Greek of the New Testament is, by any measure, dissimilar to the Attic Greek of philosophy and ancient history. Koine resembles Modern Greek, not the language of Plato and Aristotle, just as Carrier’s language resembles the daily bilge of the Internet, not philosophy.

Reading Carrier’s book thus far has made me doubt that the groundswell of activity in the blogosphere is adding much to the public discourse, regardless how many infidels are making names for themselves online. He says confidently that in school he mastered any science to which applied his nimble mind, but after graduation he was not in possession of any skills by which he could earn a living. He admits spending years doing menial jobs such as gardening and waiting tables. By now he might be qualified for service as a maître d’ in a good restaurant, but he has chosen to disencumber the world of its philosophical pretensions and religious illusions. While he raised himself from “poverty”, he was content with the life of the mind and of good friends because in his youthful quest he had discovered the truths of the Tao. The Tao is self evident, coherent, and practicable as opposed to the childish nonsense of the Bible, he says, though he doesn’t enlighten us in these profundities. As I recall, “The Tao that can be told is not the Tao”, a tenet that Lao Tzu seems to have neglected in writing about a hundred pages on the subject. Richard Carrier does claim transcendental experience of all an encompassing unity and being. He enlisted in the Coast Guard, and one night at sea, after being awake for something like 35 hours during training exercises, he attained cosmic consciousness or the equivalent. He tells us that he continues to seek to improve his mind, but now “in maturity” he knows everything required to live a satisfying, knowledgeable, and moral life.

The writer’s misapprehension of how ethics might be theoretically grounded is very unlike ancient philosophy. Plato’s discussions of justice are engaging dialogues that explore many facets of the ideal. Carrier’s sophomoric monologues go on for hundreds of pages in such digressions as the kind of evidence that might indicate the truth of the proposition “I have a cat” –creaturely claws, hair on the sofa, vet bills, etc. Some of Carrier’s role models, notably A. J. Ayer and Bertrand Russell, wrote like this, but it wasn’t long until people like G. J. Warnock and J. L. Austin dismantled silly arguments about sense data and evidence for things nobody would ever doubt. When the cat is purring in my lap, I don’t need to produce evidence for its existence.

I rehearsed most of this on the way to choir practice last Thursday night. By the time I got to church, I was in a mood to demolish Carrier for anybody who would listen. Of course, that was not the reason I was there. I got involved in the Lenten music we were preparing. Our conductor is a musical whiz and does not waste time. If your mind wanders under her direction, even for a minute, you end up feeling as negligent to detail as is this infidel PR hack, Carrier. We sang for a couple of hours. Beyond our illuminated loft the music resonated in the distance of the darkened sanctuary. Near the end of the rehearsal the conductor read the following notes on the transfiguration as related to the music she had selected for this Sunday:

In every year of the lectionary cycle, the particular Gospel proclaims the Transfiguration of the Lord on the 2^nd Sunday of Lent. In addition to the image of the glory that Christ would receive in his Resurrection, the church has always seen in this event a glimpse of the promised glory that each follower of Christ receives as a baptized member of His Body the Church. In a sermon about the Transfiguration, Pope Leo the Great wrote, “With no less forethought, Christ was also providing a firm foundation of the hope of the holy Church. The whole body of Christ was to understand the kind of transformation that it would receive as His gift. The members of that body were to look forward to a share in that glory which first blazed out in Christ their head.”

One thing missing in the work of currently fashionable advocates of religious abnegation is any sense of how faith, particularly Christian faith, provides hope in the face of unbearable sorrow. The story of Jesus is hope starkly defined against the passion of the man of sorrows. For Jesus, opposition is unrelenting, and there is treachery even among those he loves. While he heals the diseases of the throng, he knows that suffering will continue and that the poor–and the poor in spirit–will be always among us. Liturgical worship is a rehearsal for the passion none of us will ultimately evade. Familiarity with it helps us to recognize ourselves in Jesus. The crucifix behind the altar represents more than recurring cycles of the Lenten progression. Everyone will eventually carry or hang on the cross. Hours spent in contemplation in this atmosphere may improve our prospects.

We concluded our musical rehearsal by singing O Lux Beatissima, by Howard Helvey. This is a setting of a text attributed to Stephen Langton, Archbishop of Canterbury, deceased in 1228, that was used in the ancient Catholic Pentecost Sequence Veni, Sancte Spiritus.

O lux beatissima                              O light most blessed
Reple cordis intima                         Fill the inmost heart
Tuorum fidelium                              Of all thy faithful.
Sine tuo nomine                               Without your grace
Nihil est in homine                          There is nothing in us,
Nihil est innoxium                            Nothing that is not harmful.

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A Whole New Mind

This post was written by Peter Gilmour, and posted on February 7, 2008 | Filed Under books, culture, music | Double-click any word for more info | View other posts by Peter Gilmour | Leave a Comment | For info on this author, visit http://homepages.luc.edu/~pgilmou/

“Moving from the Information Age to the Conceptual Age” is Daniel H. Pink’s subtitle of his book titled, A Whole New Mind (NY: Riverhead Books, 2005). What we are moving away from – the Information Age – is a world focused on logical, linear, computer-like capabilities. What we are moving towards – the Conceptual Age – is a world focused on the inventive, empathic, big-picture capabilities. This book is yet another of the many books that have heralded an ongoing “paradigm shift” in our midst.

So what else is new?

The newness of A Whole New Mind, at least for lovers of music, is the author’s listing of “Symphony” as one of the six essential aptitudes – what he terms “the six senses” – that will increasingly facilitate professional success and personal satisfaction. Pink’s other five senses are Design, Story, Empathy, Play, and Meaning.

Chapter Six, “Symphony” (pp. 125-141) details this sense. “Symphony, as I call this aptitude, is the ability to put together the pieces. It is the capacity to synthesize rather than to analyze; to see relationships between seemingly unrelated fields; to detect broad patterns rather than to deliver specific answers; and to invent something new by combining elements nobody else thought to pair.” The author believes that symphonic thinking is best modeled by “composers and conductors whose jobs involve corralling a diverse group of notes, instruments, and performers and producing a unified and pleasing sound.”

Following each chapter devoted to one of Pink’s six senses, is a section titled, “Portfolio.” These sections have specific activities and exercises to help develop each sense. In the Portfolio section for Symphony, the author suggests listening to symphonies (no surprise here) and recommends five: Beethoven’s 9th Symphony, Mozart’s Symphony No. 35, Mahler’s 4th Symphony in G. Major, Tchaikovsky’s 1812 Overture, and Haydn’s Symphony No. 94 in G Major. He also suggests, among other books, William Benson’s Beethoven’s Anvil: Music in Mind and Culture.

How we go about educating our young people in the midst of this paradigm shift so many writers have documented is a challenging question for all schools today. How we go about re-educating ourselves as out of school adults who also live, move, and have our existence in this paradigm shifting world is yet another challenging question.

A Whole New Mind with its emphasis on Symphony as one of the six basic skills necessary to thrive in the world of today and tomorrow is more music to our ears.

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Christmas Music! (Part 2)

This post was written by Joel Buursma, and posted on December 20, 2007 | Filed Under music and religion | Double-click any word for more info | View other posts by Joel Buursma | 3 Comments | For info on this author, visit http://www.sdgmusic.org/voices/2007/08/19/introduction-joel-buursma/

And now, some of my favorite music in the Christmas carol genre. Again, I would love to hear favorites from others as well. I fear this genre is so broad that I can only cover a fraction of it, but I will do so anyway.

Of all the music in this genre, I think my heart is closest to the a cappella choral recordings of the Robert Shaw Chorale. There are some classic recordings from the ’50s (here is an original LP) that were re-released on CD several years ago, but I cannot locate them online anymore. But the Songs of Angels CD contains newer performances of many of these great pieces, and these two CDs also add to the collection. The great thing about these arrangements is that they add musical interest and vitality to the carols with minimal distortion to their character and harmonic feel (e.g., no “strange” harmonic twists). These arrangements mostly represent the collaboration between Shaw and Alice Parker, which has given the world so much beautiful shorter choral music.

Now, if you actually like unusual harmonic twists on familiar carols, then you can branch out to the Dale Warland Singers in Minnesota with these two reissues of memorable recordings. To pick one example of what these CDs contain: Alfred Burt’s carols are hardly masterworks, but they are worthwhile enough to deserve a decent recording, and many of them get that treatment on these CDs.

But I can’t go any farther without mentioning all the wonderful Christmas music from English choirs, much of which comes from the Carols for Choirs books and The Oxford Book of Carols (which also has a newer, more academic, version). There are countless recordings here, but here are a few that are readily available. And, if you don’t find the recordings of John Rutter to be too treacly for a self-respecting musician to take seriously, there are several recordings by him as well. (I do like some of his music, but I wish I could pretend that, for example, “Donkey Carol” never happened.)

I want to mention the Christmas with Chanticleer recording because, beyond featuring their legendary flawless blend and the lovely voice of Dawn Upshaw, it features a rare recording of a multi-movement version of Distler’s arrangement of “Es ist ein’ Ros’ entsprungen” (”Lo, How a Rose E’er Blooming”). I suspect it would be viewed by many readers as heresy for me to suggest that Praetorius’ original could actually be improved upon. I won’t, but I will be so bold as to suggest that Distler’s version approaches Praetorius’.

Finally, if you are fed up with traditional carols arrangements (and yet still reading this post) and looking for something more invigorating than sentimental, I recommend recordings the Tallis Scholars and Joel Cohen’s Boston Camerata. You may well find new vitality from ages past.

What musical riches we have, inspired by the humble but cosmically-significant birth in Bethlehem so many years ago!

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Christmas Music! (Part 1)

This post was written by Joel Buursma, and posted on December 19, 2007 | Filed Under music and religion | Double-click any word for more info | View other posts by Joel Buursma | Leave a Comment | For info on this author, visit http://www.sdgmusic.org/voices/2007/08/19/introduction-joel-buursma/

It’s almost a cliche (and perhaps not “almost”), but Christmas is one of my favorite times of the year. Although the added busyness & stress can sometimes be frustrating, there is so much to like. And, for me, following the rich American tradition of only allowing Christmas music to be played between Thanksgiving and New Year’s, it is a time when a certain not insubstantial section of my family’s personal CD collection comes alive. For you, too, perhaps?

So, just for fun, I thought I’d share some of my favorite Christmas music. I’d love to hear favorites from other readers of this blog as well. For this post, I will focus on fine arts music related to Christmas. I hope to devote a separate post to Christmas carols.

Note: I have at times included links to sample recordings online. Please understand that this is simply a convenient way to show sample recordings and neither an advertisement for a music store nor a true review of any recording.

The first thing that comes to mind for me here is Bach’s Christmas Oratorio (Weihnachtsoratorium, BWV 248). As readers may know, it was not composed as an oratorio, but is rather a collection of six cantatas for performance in the days between Christmas and Epiphany. As the cantatas form a sequence that tell the story of Jesus’ early days, it works reasonably well in collected form.

For me, listening to a John Eliot Gardiner recording of the joyful first movement (I adore every Gardiner recording of Bach I have heard) was love at first hearing. I noticed there is a brand new recording of this piece with Nikolaus Harnoncourt conducting who has also done so many wonderful Bach recordings.

If you consider Handel’s Messiah to be a Christmas piece, you’re probably not paying close enough attention to it. Or, to be more cordial: you might also include it on this list. Certainly, Messiah performances, both amateur and professional, are widespread Christmas traditions for Christians and even many non-Christians. And the rich collection of Scriptural references brings many Christian truths powerfully to mind in a season of heighten spiritual focus.

I also think of Ralph Vaughan Williams’ smaller oratorio called Hodie, based on Lessons & Carols readings and also English poetry (most notably John Milton’s Hymn on the Morning of Christ’s Nativity). I suspect the David Willcocks recording of this work is the classic against which others are judged. The performance is powerful and moving, and I think that Dame Janet Baker’s singing in particular is very memorable. But I see also that there is a new recording with Royal Philharmonic Orchestra playing.

This work has moments for me that pierce the heart with their beauty and send the soul soaring. The Milton poetry inspires Vaughan Williams to touch on both the fragility and intimacy of the baby in the stable in one tender movement (”It was the Winter wilde”) and the cosmic significance of this momentous birth later in the piece. What a great mystery this juxtaposition is! Vaughan Williams ends the work in triumph with the orchestra going full tilt under these words:

Yea Truth, and Justice then
Will down return to men,
Th’enameld Arras of the Rain-bow wearing,
And Mercy set between,
Thron’d in Celestiall sheen,
With radiant feet the tissued clouds down stearing,
And Heav’n as at som festivall,
Will open wide the Gates of her high Palace Hall.

May the music and the message of this season bring home the intimacy and the majesty of this birth to you as well!

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