Too much vibrato

I continue to work my way through John Eliot Gardiner's box set of Bach Cantatas. After listening to nearly half the CD's, I am afraid I have to express some negative sentiments.

Gardiner is well known for insisting that Bach be played at a fast tempo. Michael O'Donnell, in his review of Gardiner's book Bach: Music in the Castle of Heaven, describes Mr Gardiner's philosophy as follows:

It is a sin to "plod" in Bach: The tempo must be bright and fast, and the music "has to dance." Mr. Gardiner quotes a fleeting but tantalizing line from Bach's obituary suggesting that the composer himself shared this view: "Of the tempo, which he generally took very lively, he was uncommonly sure."

Unfortunately, a fast tempo does not pair well with the male soloists in these performances, many of whom employ a very broad vibrato. If the period of the vibrato is longer than the duration of an individual note, then often the voice does not reach the pure pitch of one note before it transitions to the next note. As a result, the male parts are often a terrible, wobbly muddle.

Frederick K. Gable describes the problem succinctly:

[D]isagreements concerning vibrato actually come down to questions of degree, and this is true especially in respect to vocal vibrato. How much fluctuation from a precise pitch or at what speed, and just how much deviation from regularity can be tolerated without vibrato becoming something else, or simply turning into defective tone production? ... How far can a "vibrato" deviate before becoming merely unsteady singing? [emphasis added]

Gable then summarizes the verdict of musicologist Greta Moens-Haenen in her book Das Vibrato in der Musik des Barock:

[A] "natural" vocal vibrato possibly existed, but was very narrow and unobtrusive.

Would that the vibrato of the various male soloists in these performances had been less obtrusive! The ostentatious vocal technique employed is far better suited to, say, a Verdi opera than a Bach cantata. It almost seems as if the soloists are guilty of the sin of vanity, unwilling to subordinate their vocal pyrotechnics to the greater good of the piece as a whole. One cannot help but wonder if male soloists chosen from a boys’ choir, with voices perhaps less technically skilled, but purer and lacking the broad vibrato, would do a better job.

I do not find the same problem with the female soloists or with the musicians, who sing and play their parts with little vibrato. See here for my rapturous appraisal of the aria duetto from Du wahrer Gott und Davids Sohn from the Gardiner CD's.

Violin and mandolin in the castle of heaven

I have been listening to a CD I recently bought with Jascha Heifetz playing Bach's violin sonatas and partitas. They call Heifetz "God's fiddler" and he is certainly the greatest violinist in my (obviously limited) ken. His renditions of the Bach pieces were all I expected. But, what may be even more remarkable is that the renditions of these pieces by the gifted young mandolinist, Chris Thiele, compare favorably with those of the great fiddler.

I have been on a Bach jag for quite some time now, listening to as much of the music of the great composer as I can. And, obviously, I consider Heifetz divine. But, I had never listened to the combination of Heifetz playing the Bach sonatas and partitas. In fact, I had never (to my great shame) listened to all the Bach sonatas and partitas. And my experience of Heifetz came rather through the great romantic and heroic violin concertos of Beethoven, Brahms, and Felix Mendelsohn.

So, instead of coming to the Bach pieces through Heifetz, I happened to buy Thiele's CD last year and listened to all the Bach pieces together for the first time in his brilliant interpretation on the mandolin. I immediately recognized that Thiele, like a Heifetz, was the best player of his instrument for the last, say, 100 odd years or so.

But, now I have bought the Heifetz CD and I find it stunning. But, I find that I am appreciating the Heifetz renditions of the Bach pieces all the more because I am so familiar with them from having listened to Thiele play them with such feeling, virtuosity, and verve.

Heifetz and Thiele. Each is the great modern master of his own respective instrument. Each does things with his instrument that do not seem possible for mere mortals. And when you put such virtuosity together with the Bible (as Heifetz called Bach), you surely end up with music in the castle of heaven.

BTW, for a wholly unique record of musical genius, you can listen to and watch Heifetz play the Chaconne from the Bach Violin Partita in D minor here. (I love the "Take one!" at the beginning of the tape. Did the technician think that God's fiddler was going to require more than one take?)

Keystone pipeline can't get approved by State Department, but uranium deal sails through

The New York Times reports:

Major donors to the charitable endeavors of former President Bill Clinton and his family ... financed and eventually sold off to the Russians a company that would become known as Uranium One. ... Since uranium is considered a strategic asset, with implications for national security, the deal had to be approved by a committee composed of representatives from a number of United States government agencies. Among the agencies that eventually signed off was the State Department, then headed by Mr. Clinton’s wife, Hillary Rodham Clinton.

Hmmm. Maybe the Canadian companies backing the Keystone pipeline just needed to give a donation to the Clinton Foundation.

Oh, my bad. The pipeline supporters already did!

Of course, the pipeline supporters are, IMHO, complete idiots for making these donations for the simple fact that there is a snowball's chance in hell that Clinton, once elected, would ever approve Keystone.

Or maybe they are brilliant, having grasped that their donations will help undermine support for Hillary within the Democratic Party, which will help elect a Republican candidate, who will approve the pipeline.

Good article on closet conservatives in Silicon Valley

Here.

God, what will all my fellow employees think if they find out that I am really a guy?!?

Kissinger and Schultz pan Obama and Kerry's Iran "deal"

Henry Kissinger and George Schultz, two former Secretaries of State, find Obama and Kerry's Iran "deal" wanting..

Ellen Pao and reddit threaten discrimination far worse than anything Pao ever experienced from KPCB

Ellen Pao, who recently lost her gender discrimination case against the venture capital firm KPCB, is also the interim CEO of reddit, the entertainment, social networking, and news site. Ms. Pao has made some remarkable -- and, quite frankly, very disturbing -- statements recently about how she is trying to change reddit's hiring practices. As WSJ reports:

Ms. Pao, who said she wants to stay long-term as reddit’s CEO when a one-year interim period ends, said she has removed salary negotiations from the hiring process because studies show women don’t fare as well as men. She has brought in well-known Silicon Valley diversity consultant Freada Kapor Klein to advise the company. And she has passed on hiring candidates who don’t embrace her priority of building a gender-balanced and multiracial team. “We ask people what they think about diversity, and we did weed people out because of that,” she said.

What exactly is Ms. Pao saying here?

Is she saying that, if reddit currently had, say, a higher percentage of Asian and Indian males in its workforce than the percentage in the general population, then, reddit would apply some kind of "weight" or "points" against new Asian and Indian male job applicants in order to achieve a "gender-balanced and multiracial team?" Is she saying that race- and gender-based quotas are being established at reddit in the attempt to have a workforce that reflects the racial and gender makeup of American society at large?

Suppose I applied for a job at reddit (not that I ever would, given the obviously highly politicized environment there, but suppose). Suppose that, when interrogated about my views on "diversity," I said that my opinion was that race and gender were not criteria that should ever be considered in the hiring process. Suppose that I said that it was my opinion that the goal of hiring the most highly talented, intelligent, hard working employees, regardless of their race and gender, trumped the goal of having a workforce whose racial and gender makeup mirrored that of the general US population. Suppose I said that I subscribed to the philosophy of Supreme Court Justice John Roberts and believed that the way to stop discriminating on the basis of race and gender is to stop discriminating on the basis of race and gender. Is Ms Pao saying that reddit would "weed me out" for holding such principled and unexceptionable views? If reddit did so, it seems obvious to me that reddit would be practicing a form of discrimination far more heinous than any of the things that Ms. Pao ever experienced at the hands of the partners at KPCB.

Quite frankly, if Ms. Pao's statements are a reflection of how she would go about trying to build a successful software company in Silicon Valley, judging skin pigmentation and the shape of one's genitalia to be more important than the ability to craft complex software, it is no surprise that KPCB found her wanting.

As I have written in the past, so-called "Progressives" are now seeking to poison our businesses and universities (see SCA-5) here in California with racial and gender politics. It is time for executives at Silicon Valley companies to stop groveling, get some friggin' spine, and tell these people: we are drawing a line in the sand; your racial and gender categorizing is not welcome here.