The Enlightenment philosopher’s attack on cosmopolitan élites now seems prophetic.
Rousseau had little formal education, but he accumulated plenty of experience during a largely unsupervised childhood and adolescence. Born in Geneva in 1712, to a struggling watchmaker and a mother who died shortly after giving birth, he was only ten years old when his father deposited him with indifferent relatives and left town. At the age of fifteen, he ran away and found his way to Savoy, where he quickly became the boy toy of a Swiss-French noblewoman. She turned out to be the great love of his life, introducing him to books and music. Rousseau, always seeking substitutes for his mother, called her Maman.
.. In Rousseau’s view, the newly emergent intellectual and technocratic class did little more than provide literary and moral cover for the powerful and the unjust.
.. Smith argued that the human instinct for emulation of others could be turned into a positive moral and social force.
Twinkle, Twinkle, Vogel Staar: On Mozart’s Feathered Collaborator
So what kind of murmur began that spring day in Vienna when a twenty-eight-year-old Mozart, jaunty in his garnet coat and gold-rimmed cap, strolled into a shop to whistle at a starling in a cage? That bird must have zeroed in on Mozart’s mouth, drinking-in the whistled seventeen-note opening phrase from his recent piano concerto:
.. No matter how the starling learned the song, on May 27, 1784, it spat that tune right back at the tunesmith—but not without taking some liberties first.
.. composers obsessive over the rhetoric of sonata form: first establishing a theme, then creating tension through a new theme and key, then stretching it into a dizzying search for resolution, and finally finding the resolve in a rollicking coda. The formal understanding of this four-part structure permeated classical symphony, sonata, and concerto. By 1784, sonata form had imprinted itself on the listening culture enough to feel like instinct
.. As the old German saying goes, the music of Bach gave us God’s word, Beethoven gave us God’s fire, but Mozart gave God’s laughter to the world. He found the accidents in song that reminded music to glorify the playful, the mischievous
.. all courting males organize their love songs in a four-part sequence of Whistle, Warble, Click, and Screech.
Each bird begins with a set of repeated whistles—a kind of reedy introduction. Next, as the feathers at his throat seethe and puff, he weaves a run of maddening musical snippets—as few as ten or as many as thirty-five—curated into descending tones. Some of these snippets are filched from nearby species (or lawn equipment, or cellular phones). It’s here, in this second movement, that the “Twin-kle Twin-kle” meets the chackerchackerchacker, the smoke alarm, and the Bee Gees. Without stopping, he then slams into the third section, that of the percussive click solo. Syncopated and note-less rattles shoot from his beak at presto speed, as many as fifteen clicks per second. And then he ends with a fortissimo finale of loud, exclamatory shrieks, enough to wake the neighbors.
.. After a millennium of searching, we cannot figure out where in the brain this starling song is bred. It’s possible the whole process is the result of a mental function humans simply don’t possess. Or most of us don’t, anyway.
.. computer studies of his “autograph scores” that show revision after revision scribbled onto the pages in multiple inks. We now know Mozart drafted and woodshedded for his entire career. He didn’t simply spit music out; musical ideas incubated inside him for decades.
.. Mozart’s best trick was an improvisational game not unlike an eighteenth-century rap battle. A court composer or some member of the cognoscenti would play a sparse bass line on the keys, over which Mozart would improvise a melody—sometimes complete with harmony or counterpoint. Then his much older opponent would answer back with a different melody, which Mozart would rework, and back and forth again and again until the challenger eventually crapped out. Pipsqueak Mozart never did, and his royal audiences delighted in these on-the-spot reworkings of their musical rules. That’s how Mozart grew up: chasing melodies as they flew by him, hunting for the ways each note might pivot into something new.
.. the bird lived with him for thirty-six of the most vibrant months of Mozart’s career.
.. Leopold Mozart complained in a letter that his son’s home buzzed at all hours with rabble-rousing factions: students, rehearsal groups, goofy late-night jam sessions. Their noise was nonstop and deafening. Mozart reportedly hated being alone, even when he worked.
.. As Mozart hammered them shiny, the bird sent the tunes back upside-down, at half-speed and double-time, and piped one inconsequential middle note for five straight seconds. It’s not difficult to imagine Mozart valuing this kind of collaboration, as he spent so much of this period reaching out to various “songbirds.”
.. Starlings are more responsive to human eye contact than most mammalian pets; they know when they’re being watched and aren’t afraid to hold a gaze. It’s one of the primary traits—along with a high touch response—that allows deep bonding between starlings and humans, as we love eye contact, too. One ornithologist called the starling “the poor man’s dog” for its ability to connect and demonstrate loyalty.
.. Mozart took the bird with them. We know this because he made such a fuss over the starling when it died a few months later.
On that day in early June, the new Mozart home welcomed a dozen mourners in elaborate, costumey garb—giant plumes and feather fans, or maybe black masks with beaks. The guests were first treated to a dirge (arranged by Mozart) for chamber ensemble, and then the maestro recited a short elegy he’d written to the bird, his Vogel Staar.
.. Who knows why Mozart planned this cuckoo funeral. We have no evidence that he ever mourned this way again. The verse and the dirge and the funeral party could have been a mock solemnity—Mozart rarely passed up the chance for a weird party or a good gag. On the other hand, he could have been somewhat serious, as he was a known animal lover. But why publicly mourn a pet starling and not his own father, who died without ceremony in Salzburg just a week before?
Postgres: There is no year 0.
The first century starts at 0001-01-01 00:00:00 AD, although they did not know it at the time. This definition applies to all Gregorian calendar countries. There is no century number 0, you go from -1 century to 1 century. If you disagree with this, please write your complaint to: Pope, Cathedral Saint-Peter of Roma, Vatican.
Donald Trump’s Bad Bet on Anger
In his speech to the Republican National Convention, the presidential nominee revealed a deeply flawed political strategy.
Trump’s speech was advertised as an update of Richard Nixon’s 1968 “silent majority” address. It is nothing of the kind. This is a bulletin from a grimmer and more pessimistic society than that which would shortly afterward land a man on the moon.
.. Trump’s country is divided in a different way: between those who have lost a status they deserved—and those who have gained a status they do not deserve.
.. Donald Trump’s country is a country in which deserving people feel they have lost even the right to complain about what has happened to them, lest they give offense to some grievance group.
.. And Donald Trump’s offer to them is less what he will do—about that he is exceedingly hazy—and much more what he will say: “I am your voice,” is the powerful phrase that he uses twice.
.. I’ve compared Donald Trump to William Jennings Bryan, who forfeited the chance in 1896 to build an alliance of all those discontented with industrial capitalism because he only truly felt at home with rural people—and could not refrain from inflammatory language about cities and city people.
.. But it’s not enough to be right to become president, as Henry Clay famously quipped. You have to be right in the right way and at the right time. You have to be the right messenger to carry the right message.
.. The political observer Michael Barone warned in 1992 that Pat Buchanan would go nowhere in politics because Americans aren’t angry people, and they don’t trust angry people with power.