Redstate

and paved the way for Schoenberg, who did away with form entirely.

Two schools emerged in Germany/Austria in the middle of the 19th century.  One was led by Wagner (and included eventually Debussy and Mahler, among others) and the other by Brahms and included other greats like Dvorak (who started a Wagnerian but then saw the light).

Brahms expanded form, but kept it intact, whereas Wagner replaced form with the leitmotif, which is merely a repeated theme but doesn't actually embrace the rest of the music.  Music was no longer civilized, and instead churned on and on, always becoming and evolving, but never contained except by a beginning and an end.

While Schoenberg's innovation was not necessary, it was a logical and not so great step based on the destruction which Wagner had wrought.  And Schoenberg led the great Germanic tradition into ruin, at great cost to all of civilization.

I know some of the music experts around here will have something to say about this.

Asked my wife what she wanted for Mothers Day.  Her answer was clothes.  So I told her she had a deal.  She could buy what she wanted as long as she would purchase these on monday May 1 and boost the economy on a day others were attacking it.  

Now she can spend money and I can feel like a political statement is being made at the same time.  You can't do that often!

Support your country and your economy today!  Its amazing its come to this but it has.  Give the wives and mothers the plastic and let them go to town!

I'm quite sure I'm gonna be sub-par this year (here's hoping).  Ended last year on my first ever par round.  First couple rounds this year have went well.  I'm dead on with my long and medium irons and the putting is coming around.  The driver really likes veering right, so I've been teeing off with the 1 iron until I can spend some time on the range to get that under control.  If I do need distance, I can aim to the left about 40 degrees and land in the middle of the fairway, it's a pretty nasty slice.

In case you end up being right (here)  about the lack-of-effectiveness of the May Day "El Walkout," has anybody thought about this implication?

If "the economy" can withstand a day-long "boycott" of immigrant contributions, isn't the Immigration Appeasement crowd wrong about the value of their contributions to it?

I'm lucky enough to live in a place with a long tradition of honest labor and institutionalized poverty (translation: "This area has not been attractive to illegal migrant workers, because Americans will do the jobs that exist"), so there will be literally zero impact here.  However, the TV informs me that the rest of the country can't possibly survive without their turn-down service and $1.29/head lettuce... I just don't think that's true.

+++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++

As an aside, mass roundups of illegals, first to waystation internment, excuse me, happy fun camps, then to regional deportation centers, then to ... uh, well... I'm not operationally sure how deportations actually occur.... (anyway) ...would be a big, ugly mistake.

Remember, this is government we're talking about -- knowing that gov't efficiency isn't a guiding principle, we can plan around that in order to preserve maximum human dignity...

My counter-proposal to mass deportation?

Individual deportations, one at a time if necessary. (Deputize some bouncers ffs!) A waste of manpower, time, fuel, and probably many other things, but I feel that this would demonstrate two things that have not hithertofore been:

1. We really, really, really don't think you're a bad person.
   
   
2. We really, really, really want you to enter our country legally and want you out until you do.

"It is necessary, therefore, that the legislators of the democracies and all honest and enlightened men who live there work relentlessly to uplift the spirit and keep it facing heaven.  It is necessary that all those interested in the future of democratic societies unite with each other, and that all, in concert, make continual efforts to spread in the bosom of these societies a taste for the infinite, a sense of the great, and a love of non-material pleasures."

(Rocky translation because it's mine, but surely you get the point.)

From Chapter 15 of Book II, "How Religious Beliefs Sometimes Redirect the Spirit of the Americans toward Non-Material Pleasures"

So if thousands and thousands of illegal students walk out of our schools, the impact would be exactly what?

Less crowding, more teacher time on students who are citizens or legally here?  Less focus on remedial or initial English instruction and more focus on math, science, reading, history, etc?

And that would be bad how?

but it rained all weekend.  Hoem course underwater, unplayable.

here hoping the country gets 24hrs straight of monsoon style rain today.  Give the streets a good cleaning.

at Antietam have shortened the Civil War? Given the circumstances and field of battle, could this have been achieved? I have struggled with this for a long time.

Although I do not believe we can speak for his overall motivations, it is conceivable that McClellan found it distasteful to kill more of his countrymen than necessary to achieve victory. Yes?

The schools was what first steered me toward these logical conclusions... "Wait, if Los Ninos Illegalos aren't in school...?"

Extortion only works when one has leverage.  People-who-SHOULD-be-disenfranchised have none.

How does the corporation, an enterprise of men commissioned solely for profit, when granted the legal status of man fit into the idea that "non-material pleasures" are the highest good?  What is their role if the "regular" citizen develops a taste for the infinite?

My answer is a painful one, but I invite others to supply it.

that the victory could have been more decisive, but he does not suggest in any way that a more decisive victory would have ended the war, only that it would have sped up the end of the war.  

But he doesn't address your question directly and fully enough.  And it's a good one.

I thought John Daly was the only one still carrying one of those. I recommend hybrid clubs, of which the Sonartec Md is my favorite. It's targeted to the lower handicapper, which you sound to be. If you like a high(er) ball flight, go with the Taylormade Rescue.

Of course, I guess all that doesn't matter if you're happy with that butter knife you've got right now.

is that Lee set himself up in a position at Sharpsburg that left him with little or no room to retreat if anything went wrong.  And had McClellan handled his troops better by making the main attack on one front and throwing in reserves, he likely would have won and destroyed the Army of Northern Virginia because it was boxed in by the Potomac and would not have been able to retreat.

Richmond would be threatened and likely would fall. The Confederates would have been forced to move troops out of tennessee and mississippi to reform that front in Virginia.  The strength of the Union Army would have been overwhelming.  The war might not have ended in 1862 but may well have sometime in 1863.    

I've lost count of the number of times I've been below 60. (But those EA Sports announcers get irritating sometimes.)

84. That's my actual best round. I'm more focussed on bowling.

Jack Bauer.

(legal) immigrant coworkers at work today. I guess since they took the trouble to follow the rules, they weren't invited to the protests.

Thereby causing rates for all law-abiding people to go up to pay for the damage caused.  Thank goodness more and more cities in our area are towing the cars of uninsured motorists.

Do you think those on public assisance are going to burn their checks today as well and stay away from other government handout offices, etc?

They take your license plate away and give you an 8-1/2" x 11" neon orange sticker on your back windshield which expires in 7 days.

Once they catch you. CAFTA*Cough*Cough

...but they'll be back in the free-lines tomorrow...

Some of these government-funded programs really do good work... however, we can't be expected to subsidize every Earthling's existence (until we pass laws stating that intention, of course) :|

He doesn't seem, on the face of it, to advocate massive govt intervention a la FDR to correct the problems which come from profit-seeking.  

It could be said, however, that the biggest problem he sees in America is too great a concern with obtaining material goods.

Tocqueville hopes to counter this American cupidity with religion, with the family (which he thinks is much more loving in democratic times), with civil associations, and perhaps above all with the strong principles of women!

As he writes at the end of chapter 12 of the same volume, "if you asked me to what I think one must principally attribute the singular prosperity and rising power of this people, I would respond that it's attribuable to the superioriy of its women".

INVADE MEXICO!

Here's why...

1. They have a lot of OIL.
   
2. They have a lot of LAND.
   
3. They have a lot of really cool vacation spots.
   
4. They have a bunch of their people already here that Congress and the President seem hell-bent on making citizens.
   
5. They have a much narrower southern border, which should make it easier to secure.

A lot of the Mexicans/Latinos that are protesting are asserting they are just taking back what the US took in the Mexican War.  Maybe the answer is that we should finish what we didn't do in 1850.

Had the Army of Virginia been able to regroup quickly, they could have taken Washington DC immediately after First Bull Run, which likely would have ended the Civil War in very short order.

one of the variables to this approach was, what would have been the cost to McClellan? Would a  Union Army depleted by "total victory" at Sharpsburg have sufficient strength (both in numbers and physically)to redeploy and protect against any counter attack on the capital?

...did not however in his day have the Supreme Court decision which granted human status and citizenship to human enterprises, said enterprises being formed and continued solely for profit.

As this farce has played out, the self-sufficiency and character of the average American of Tocqueville's time has been squeezed out for Land Trusts in Perpetuity and big-city conveniences.  Hardly any American today is even theoretically capable of feeding themself if the factory farms* or the distribution channels were to become unavailable.

*Surely Msr. de Tocqueville would be revolted by such an ugly phrase!

CAFTA (& previously NAFTA) have dissolved borders for corporations capable of exploiting this fact.  The people north of the Mexican border, however, remain ignorant to it.

Anyone but me notice that both the NYT and the WaPo are, at least at this point at 10:24 a.m., featuring relatively light coverage of the immigrant protest/boycott?  In the past two weeks their coverage of the Surging Latino Immigration Movement has been practically nonstop: yet today, the day of the protest involving potentially millions of people and dozens of cities throughout the U.S., I see no pictures on their home pages, and the only stories talk about the "rifts" in the movement and how employers are girding for the impact.  It's almost like it isn't happening...it's almost like they don't want you to think about it very much...it's almost like they are deliberately downplaying it to prevent people from panicking...it's almost like it's happening after this editorial from the Times on Saturday.  Their current lead story on the topic features a group of relatively well-dressed, orderly people standing in a line outside a church in Chicago waiting to attend a citizenship workship.  Decidedly non-scary.  

Hmmmm.

And how's this for finessing the language:

The budding Latino movement's discord over today's event appears to boil down to a rift between groups whose main focus is to work within the system to gain legalization for immigrants and those that want to build a more radical grass-roots workers' movement, Kazin said.

Oh, you mean, the rift between the people who want to keep working and stay in America as America ... and the Marxists who want to Smash the System.

"Radical Grassroots Workers' Movement" is becoming as much of a euphemism as the word "Community."

While I think some of Wagner's arias can be quite stunning with the right vocalist, I have never been able to respond to Wagner's work in total the way I can to someone like Verdi (my favorite operatic composer).  I agree with you that Wagner led us down the path to the formless atonality that characterizes so much of 20th-century classical music -- while Brahms and Schumann were still was fighting the good fight.  Here I'm on less firm ground if someone who really knows more than I do wants to take me to task, but I wouldn't necessarily hold up "Wagner the Progressive" vs. "Brahms the Traditionalist" as a perfect dichotomy, but I agree that they were moving in two different directions.  And from what I understand, they really personally and professionally disliked each other.

Always preffered using it rather than a fairway wood.  I get about the same distance with it as the 3 wood and it's more forgiving if you get under the ball a bit.  I also have much better control with my irons for some reason.

I never really used it as a driver, but then again, my slice off the tee wasn't really that much of a concern until about mid way through last year when I started scoring well.  And my slice didn't seem to be as bad as it is this year.

stick with it.  Count yourself among the very few that can hit it, and feel comfortable doing it.

Just pointing this out, but I cannot access ConfirmThem.  It brings up an entirely different page.  It says, "there is no website configured at this address."

Yes, it took a while (WARNING--JOKE AHEAD--"took a while for them to roll out of bed!"), but I just turned on CNN & they have scary typeface "DAY WITHOUT IMMIGRANTS" on , and they're threatening to cover it all day. Oh, and Lou Dobbs will be predictably reliable later.

The comment I caught was, "We are fighting over the crumbs of society.  What does that tell you?"

Kowalski, your euphemism is cut short, or emphasized wrongly! It's "a MORE RADICAL grassroots movement" not just "radical" ...

ZERO coverage on MSNBC

Fox has had one segment with aerial views, then went to commercial...

CNN has taken a break as well, after their nearly hour-long coverage...

Aleida Guevara, the daughter of Latin American revolutionary icon Ernesto "Che" Guevara, was among 6,000 marching to the U.S. Embassy - a traditional target of many Athens' protests. The protesters cheered when they saw actor Tim Robbins, who opposes the war in Iraq and was in Athens to present a theatrical production.

Can you guess what their motivation would be? Is it:

-The MSM does not pass up any opportunity to mention Iraq

-The MSM does not pass up any opportunity to mention how the rest of the world loathes our position on Iraq (incorrectly, of course)

-The MSM wants to show that somebody still cares about Hollywood actors

- Che Guevara is still an MSM hero and they want to be more like him

I have no clue about "form," but I know that I quite enjoy Wagner, whereas I can barely tolerate Brahms.

In most battles of the civil war, one side would not have been able to completely destroy the other.  One would always be able to get away.  The difference at Antietam was that the confederate army was boxed in a bad position.  And the Army of Northern Virgina was weak due to straggling, recent battles, and the army being divided with the whole Harpers Ferry thing.  McClellan also moved faster than he ever did because he had a copy of Lee's plans.  If the ANV could ever have been destroyed before 1865, this was the one chance.  Even with his army hurt, he had alot more reserves to call upon, and the CSA had very little to throw up before Richmond.  The key would have been destroying the ANV which was trapped and could not easily retreat in a hurry.

Have you been to Puerto Peñasco, err, Rocky Point.

 - operationally incompetent.  He could train and organize but could (or would) not fight an Army.  He was a railroad executive with a glib tongue and an attitude.  He had Lee's complete OPLAN in his hands two days before the armies met; and could only fight Lee to a draw while leaving more than a corps of his own army disengaged.  Dolt!

BTW:  His screw up at Antietam and the risks he took at Chancellorsville do not identify an iota of military genius in Lee, either.  Two bumbling generals stumbling into each other at Antietam, only to be kept from total wreckage by subordinates. A prelude to Gettysburg.

 - discretely running for the Presidency. Which, in fact, he did do the following election.

 - a democrat. Not a Southern Democrat - but (in my opinion) probably in sympathy with the northern Copperheads.

but for some reason, I make an exception for Debussy.

And surely Berlioz deserves some blame.  

he was waiting for more reserves (not that I agree, mind you)? Even though he had the plans, what did he know about ANV troop strength?

Also, (I know this requires some speculation) would A.P. Hill have been able to have any impact on a McClellan advance (say, on his flank) or would these events still leave Hill engaged with Burnside?

He did have a good military start (2nd in his class at West Point)but no argument, McClellan really could not execute. Plus his later stint as Governor of NJ (UUUG)just adds to the jaded history.

Has anyone seen the Novak column today about the recent back and forth with the appropriations process?

It's a fine story, linked here:

http://www.suntimes.com/output/novak/cst-edt-novak01.html

But in the last paragraph there is a sentence that made me do a double take:

Coburn this week will propose removing from the bill $500 million to be paid Northrop Grumman for lost income caused by Hurricane Katrina. The outcome will indicate whether Thursday's events on Capitol Hill truly point to new congressional concern about using taxpayer money.

$500MM of taxpayer money paid to Northrop Grumman for lost Katrina income? If anyone knows the rationale why this is in there in the first place, I would love to hear it, because on its face this item seems beyond bizzare.

Hardly any tunes to hum along with. Not like Offenbach at all.

I know the answer to this one - it's (d) Rumsfeld should resign.

And I did it WITHOUT using a lifeline!

I'm a big proponent of going with what you like, and there's a heck of a lot to like about Wagner.  I would not have much of a problem with him if others afterward hadn't extended his innovations until they killed music entirely.  

There are quite a few very cultivated and sophisticated folks who think that music doesn't get any better than Wagner, and I can see why, at least partly.

My personal verdict on Wagner parallels that of Mark Twain: "I'm told that Wagner's music is better than it sounds."

This is an age old argument, isn't it?  "Form" is an ever-changing, continually evolving concept.  If you mean specifically that Wagner led the revolution against traditional opera form, you would have an argument.  Schoenberg's 12-tone method does not necessarily preclude using the old classical forms, and you should really blame Franz Liszt for what Wagner did with recurring motifs and a more daring harmonic palate.


Richard Strauss went as a far afield in form as Schoenberg did, but stayed within the limits of tonality.  Would you say the same about him?  His tone poems would not have been possible without Franz Liszt.  Wagner is basically incidental.  Mahler did much to develop his own version of symphonic form, and also pushed tonality to its limits.  Schoenberg follows from them more then from Wagner, hence the term "New Viennese School".  Wagner's modulations and excursions into distant tonal areas (not to mention his brass writing) were picked up by Bruckner, who then passed it on through his lectures and symphonic writing to Mahler and others.  He was the epitome of the old Viennese school against whom the others were supposedly rebelling.  However, Bruckner had as much old-fashioned Classical leanings in his music as Wagnerian modulations and key relations.  Of course, he had his own problems, didn't he?


Obviously once free of tonality, it made little intellectual sense to maintain the old structural forms.  That must have had its own appeal to the young rebels.  But Wagner would not have approved as he had very specific dramatic reasons for his musical structure - and there is a structure.  But Wagner would not have been possible without Franz Liszt.


In another comment, Arkie Liberal mentions Berlioz, which is a valid point.  Although, I think he was more of a one-off than anything else.  He didn't exactly leave a legacy of followers.  Debussy was breaking free of traditional tonality and form well before Schoenberg, although he did make his own nod to sonata form late in life.  Both he and Scriabin were experimenting with the concepts that would eventually develop into atonality, and they certainly left their own legacy in music outside of any influence Schoenberg had.


But to say that Wagner "replaced form with the leitmotif, which is merely a repeated theme but doesn't actually embrace the rest of the music" doesn't make much sense to me.  The whole reason for the recurring themes are to make dramatic points - to enhance the drama.  Character entrances and moods are colored by his use of them.  We understand what is going on dramatically precisely because of this techinique.  Sure, there are no arias like in Bellini or Mozart, but so what?


Wagner is not to blame for what the modernists have done.  

Haven't you ever seen "What's Opera, Doc?"

I noticed downthread that someone said that Lizst was more to blame for the destruction of music than Wagner - I love Lizst above almost all others.

Still convinced I'm not a Philistine?

"Kill the wabbit, kill the wabbit, kill the wabbit, kill the wabbit."

Indisputably

Until you start raving about how much you love John Cage and Webern, that is...

The argument about Liszt is interesting, but I don't think he did nearly enough to justify putting the blame on his shoulders.

I wish I were educated enough to engage in a philosophical argument about form and art, but my knowledge is quite limited.  Perhaps I'm being simplistic, but I see that once one removes form - that is, a certain set structure which governs the entire work - then the art will eventually (or quickly) die.  (It happened in painting, too, not to mention architecture.)  Not that any artist should slavishly accept every single part of the concept of form which is passed onto him by the tradition - every great composer has innovated - but developing and innovating is different from overturning form entirely.

I see Wagner as primarily responsible for dispensing with form.  

But more on this in a couple days (I'm studying for an exam).

 

" I am waiting for reserves" could well have been the motto on McClellan's Coat-of-Arms.

Seriously, though . . .

He did not need reserves. He was reluctant to fight his army in its entirety for reasons best known to him. He received (and absorbed without much reflection) his ANV troop strength estimates from the (in) famous Pinkereton Agency - which always increased Lee's troops strengths by double percentage points - much to McClellan's satisfaction.

McClellan knew by mid-to-late morning that A.P. Hill's Division was not on the field. He knew it was elsewhere and had every reason to believe it was enroute from Harpers Ferry.

In fact, by virtue of (accidentally) receiving Lee's entire battle plan two days before the fight, McClellan knew where each and every ANV division was (or was supposed to be) located long before the first shot was fired.

Any insightful brigade or even battalion commander worth his salt would have sent a force (of some size) out to intercept Hill if only in order to slow him down.  We all know Lee was on his last pins when Hill arrived and the slighest delay would probably have fatal to the ANV.

But, to answer your question directly:  If McClellan had used his unengaged forces to extend his line - especially eastward away from the river, he would have bumbled into a clear win that day.  Lee was no military genious (in my opinion) but he was certainly no fool and would have had to realize that, at that point, he would need to sacrifice a significant portion of his army to extricate the remainder and get it back across the Potomac. It was impossible for him to extend his line any further without risk of his front crumbling.  Not to do so would have resulted in his being flanked, and rolled up.

Neither of these fledgling ALexanders had yet learned the benefit of fighting from behind fortifications; of maneuver; or of - especially - massing power upon a focused point on the enemy's line to penetrate then roll up the flanks.

The day turned into a draw and the bloodiest day in America's history of war because McClellan would not fight his army, and Lee would - even though ineffectively.

Finally, McClellan's class standing at West Point was a better indicator that he was a decent civil engineer - not a military paragon.

Out in LA, we have cell phone towers that do the work American towers won't do.

of course, being boxed in sometimes helps an army triumph, even when they're outnumbered, because it makes them desperate.

Liddell Hart and others (probably Sun Tzu, too) recommend strongly against trapping an enemy.  One must always leave them at least one avenue of escape.

...while Cage is not really music at all. (And I still have some of the letters Cage wrote to me when I was a kid- he wrote personal letters in triplicate and I got the yellow copies.)

This discussion of form has me nearly baffled. Wagner wrote one of the most revolutionary pieces of all time, Tristan und Isolde, which is nearly six hours long including two intermissions. You simply can't sustain that much content without an absolutely total command of form, and I'm not talking about leitmotifs (which are primarily important in the Ring and to a lesser extent in Parsifal).

I'm really not sure what is meant here by form and its "destruction." People have mentioned Brahms, Mahler and Bruckner, all formally innovative and all very different from one another. Mahler was fundamentally influenced by Wagner, Bruckner more by proximity, and Brahms barely at all.

For Tristan, Wagner had to completely reimagine musical form in order to supplant the architectural role of functional harmony, which he abolished. That he succeeded brilliantly is proved amply by the fact that the opera is coherent and compelling. To this day, musicologists are arguing over exactly how he did it. (Hint: listen carefully to the oscillations across long spans of time between the keys of A major/minor and C major/minor, and how they link to key points in the drama. Mahler adopted this procedure almost to the letter. Bruckner was more interested in symphony than in drama, and he invented a completely different kind of architectonics.)

Sorry I came to this thread late, but I have to say you'd go bananas listening to formless music for hours on end. The form is there, it's just so different and unconventional that it's hard to describe. Tristan was so different that it may as well have dropped onto Earth from a different planet. If you could have heard Tristan in 1858, you would have had the same kind of unique experience of people who saw Le Demoiselles d'Avignon in 1905: you would have witnessed the birth of a completely new way of hearing.