Insights, Snippets, Quotes, Epiphanies & All That Sort of Things

[Wakefield]

Read on YouTube as a comment to a recent J.E. Gardiner's interpretation of the B Minor Mass:

gyes99:

The audience is bad. They don't get the concept of what to do at the end of the performance when the conductor still has his arms up. He does this to let the last tone properly reflect at the walls of a Church/concert hall to come to an end, and to give the musicians/singers time to settle down and the audience a moment of time to process what they just heard.

This frenetic clapping and chanting is hooliganism, especially after the performance of a mass. They can do this when a Beethovens Symphony is finished. Beethoven would have liked being considered a star.

Grumpy as it is, I liked this comment. 

http://www.youtube.com/v/JxKR7BaitxM

[North Star]

Solvency is maintained by means of a national debt, on the principle, "If you will not lend me the money, how can I pay you?"

[Ken B]

Kurt Schlichter

"Let's be absolutely clear – Donald Trump is entirely the fault of a GOP establishment that lied to conservatives and refused to do what it promised it would do. Trump is no secret Machiavellian genius cunningly outmaneuvering his enemies from his super-classy Atlantic City volcano lair. He's a finger-to-the-wind charlatan who will say whatever he needs to say to maximize his own personal adulation. And he would still be merely a tiresome reality TV catch-phrase generator if the GOP establishment had not treated the rest of us like dirt."

[Wakefield]

One of the basic messages of HIP is the rejection of the idea of progress that still holds many of us—unconsciously—in thrall. The history of music, HIP is saying, is not a story of gradual improvement; or, as Collingwood put it, "Bach was not trying to write like Beethoven and failing; Athens was not a relatively unsuccessful attempt to produce Rome." The history of art can be seen as a kind of Darwinian evolution only if we remember one essential condition: evolution depends on the principle of appropriate adaptation to environment. The goals of a Vivaldi concerto are quite different from those of Mozart, Beethoven, or Paganini; and to compare them is rewarding only in the context of their differing artistic aims. Most important of all, the evolutionary theory breaks down when it is associated with value judgments. A common assumption among musicians is that art evolves in a continuous line to the perfection of the present. This implies that the world of art today must be the best of all possible worlds—a conclusion most people would find difficult to agree with.

-- Bruce Haynes, The End of Early Music: A Period Performer's History of Music for the Twenty-First Century.

[Wakefield]

Some memorable Chesterton's ideas about gratitude:

"The test of all happiness is gratitude."
-- Orthodoxy (1908)

"Thanks are the highest form of thought."
-- A Short History of England (1917)

"You say grace before meals
   All right.
   But I say grace before the play and the opera,
   And grace before the concert and pantomime,
   And grace before I open a book,
   And grace before sketching, painting,
   Swimming, fencing, boxing, walking, playing, dancing;
   And grace before I dip the pen in the ink."

EVENING

   "Here dies another day
   During which I have had eyes, ears, hands
   And the great world round me;
   And with tomorrow begins another.
   Why am I allowed two?"

Excerpt From: Maisie Ward. "Gilbert Keith Chesterton." iBooks (available on the Gutenberg Project)

[Ken B]

Some of these are very funny. Especially the discount.
http://www.tickld.com/x/20-most-profound-things-people-thought-of-in-the-shower-9-is-epic

[kishnevi]

Posted that to my MeWe page.  Thanks.

[Jaakko Keskinen]

"I woke pretty early—a habit you pick up in the bush." - Arthur Conan Doyle

[Wakefield]

I judged this short article about Einstein's relationship with music, interesting enough as to post this link: https://hec.su/bS8A

Just before his 17th birthday Albert played at a music examination in the cantonal school. The inspector reported that "a student called Einstein shone in a deeply felt performance of an adagio from one of the Beethoven sonatas".

In later life, his fame as a physicist often led to invitations to perform at benefit concerts, which he generally accepted eagerly. At one such event, a critic – unaware of Ein- stein's real claim to fame as a physicist – wrote, "Einstein plays excellently. However, his world-wide fame is undeserved. There are many violinists who are just as good".

The physics revolutionary who overturned the classical universe of Newton was nonetheless deeply conservative in his musical tastes. He adored Mozart and worshipped Bach, of whom he wrote in response to an editor, "I have this to say about Bach's works: listen, play, love, revere – and keep your trap shut". Beethoven he admired but did not love, while Schubert, Schumann and Brahms gained only guarded and par- tial approval.

Conservative taste? C'mon!   

[North Star]

A handy guide to some Diner topics.  0:)

There are four kinds of people in this world: cretins, fools, morons, and lunatics...Cretins don't even talk; they sort of slobber and stumble...Fools are in great demand, especially on social occasions. They embarrass everyone but provide material for conversation...Fools don't claim that cats bark, but they talk about cats when everyone else is talking about dogs. They offend all the rules of conversation, and when they really offend, they're magnificent...Morons never do the wrong thing. They get their reasoning wrong. Like the fellow who says that all dogs are pets and all dogs bark, and cats are pets, too, therefore cats bark...Morons will occasionally say something that's right, but they say it for the wrong reason...A lunatic is easily recognized. He is a moron who doesn't know the ropes. The moron proves his thesis; he has logic, however twisted it may be. The lunatic on the other hand, doesn't concern himself at all with logic; he works by short circuits. For him, everything proves everything else. The lunatic is all idée fixe, and whatever he comes across confirms his lunacy. You can tell him by the liberties he takes with common sense, by his flashes of inspiration, and by the fact that sooner or later he brings up the Templars...There are lunatics who don't bring up the Templars, but those who do are the most insidious. At first they seem normal, then all of a sudden..."

[Karl Henning]

A handy guide to some Diner topics.  0:)

Thanks for the Eco . . . and for reminding me that there are reasons why I am not going to read the Paris thread  0:)

[The Six]

Fresh pasta was traditionally produced by hand, sometimes with the aid of simple machines, but today many varieties of fresh pasta are also commercially produced by large-scale machines, and the products are widely available in supermarkets.

[Wakefield]

I have never been a supporter of ideas of minimum wage, but these words by Bernie Sanders to justify a $15/hour minimum wage - in the last Democratic debate - resounded heavily on me:

"It is not a radical idea to say that if somebody works forty hours a week, that person should not be living in poverty."

[jochanaan]

Thanks for the Eco . . . and for reminding me that there are reasons why I am not going to read the Paris thread  0:)

"We'll always have Paris."

[Jo498]

 

A handy guide to some Diner topics.  0:)

Is that from "Foucaults pendulum" or from somewhere else?

[North Star]

Is that from "Foucaults pendulum"?

Yes
https://www.goodreads.com/work/quotes/11221066-il-pendolo-di-foucault

[Florestan]

"The greatest enemy of clear language is insincerity."― George Orwell

"The truth has become an insult."― Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie (never heard of her before but boy is she spot on!)

"I'm very depressed how in this country you can be told "That's offensive" as though those two words constitute an argument."― Christopher Hitchens

[Karl Henning]

We aren't worried about posterity;  we want it to sound good right now.
— Duke Eliington

[Wakefield]

"The greatest enemy of clear language is insincerity."― George Orwell

"The truth has become an insult."― Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie (never heard of her before but boy is she spot on!)

"I'm very depressed how in this country you can be told "That's offensive" as though those two words constitute an argument."― Christopher Hitchens

I see some pattern behind these quotes. 

[Florestan]

I see some pattern behind these quotes. 

Just frustration in general, and bitter disappointment in one particular case...

A bon entendeur, salut!