First they came for Aunt Jemima
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@Mik said in First they came for Aunt Jemima:
@Horace said in First they came for Aunt Jemima:
@Rainman said in First they came for Aunt Jemima:
transgenders play transgender part(s),
Gender Fluid can pick any roles they identify with that day.
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@Axtremus said in First they came for Aunt Jemima:
@George-K said in First they came for Aunt Jemima:
(https://slippedisc.com/2020/07/piotr-beczala-its-absurd-we-cant-blacken-up-for-otello/
It is ridiculous you can no longer imagine wearing make-up for Otello in a theater. Forbid anyone to paint themselves black to sing Otello? Forbid painting narrow eyes on Madam Butterfly?
The protest movement will give you two easy answers:
- Get a naturally dark-skinned opera singer/actor, perhaps even a Moor, to play Othello.
- Get a Japanese opera singer/actor to play Madam Butterfly
Or better yet, go write and produce some new operas or some new art forms entirely that speak to the issues and sensibilities of today.
So, we should do away with blind auditions, amirite?
@George-K said in First they came for Aunt Jemima:
So, we should do away with blind auditions, amirite?
Yesterday I posted about the proposed elimination of âblind auditionsâ for symphony orchestras, so that race and gender could be used as selection criteria to help diversify orchestra musicians. It would be the elimination of what previously was a meritocracy:
For decades leading symphony orchestras have used âblind auditionsâ to hire musicians. That is, the musicians are not seen at all, only their music is heard. That way, implicit or explicit racial, ethnic, or gender bias cannot enter into the hiring decision, only the quality of the music. It is as close to a pure meritocracy as I can imagineâŚ.
The desire to move away from âblind auditionsâ hurts people who otherwise would have been chosen based on the quality of their music, or in other contexts, their academic performance on standardized tests and other objective measurementsâŚ.
I mentioned in that regard that this overt intent to discriminate was, in campus-speak, called âequity,â which is the opposite of equal opportunity:
On campus, this is called âequity,â a euphemism for racial, gender and other discrimination. Itâs the opposite of equal opportunity, itâs demanding equal results even if it means discriminating against some people on the basis of race, ethnicity or other immutable factors. Itâs the core driving the âantiracismâ movement on campus. When campus activists and administrators say âequityâ (as opposed to âequalityâ), what they really mean is discrimination based on race to achieve a desired racial outcome.
As mentioned previously, the suggested Cornell summer reading and discussion topic is How to Be AntiRacist, which seems to be the roadmap used to develop the proposed compulsory racial activism for faculty, students, and staff. Hereâs a key concept from How to Be AntiRacist:
âThe only remedy to racist discrimination is antiracist discrimination. The only remedy to past discrimination is present discrimination. The only remedy to present discrimination is future discrimination.â
The Orchestra post inspired a reader to send me this message:
âHarrison Bergeron lives!! Only thing Kurt Vonnegut got wrong was that he thought it wouldnât happen until the latter half of the 21st century.â
The message was accompanied by a link to the Kurt Vonnegut, Jr. 1961 short story, Harrison Bergeron. Iâm embarrassed to say I had not read it before, but now Iâm glad I did. As with George Orwell, and other authors also, Vonnegut understood human nature, and the tyranny to which we seem inclined.
Vonnegut foresaw the abysmal âequityâ culture, though he didnât use that term:
THE YEAR WAS 2081, and everybody was finally equal. They werenât only equal before God and the law. They were equal every which way. Nobody was smarter than anybody else. Nobody was better looking than anybody else. Nobody was stronger or quicker than anybody else. All this equality was due to the 211th, 212th, and 213th Amendments to the Constitution, and to the unceasing vigilance of agents of the United States Handicapper General.
As that opening paragraph suggests, all were made equal by handicapping the over-achievers in various ways, including requiring them to wear weights and to have their thoughts interrupted through implants and other devices.
Some things about living still werenât quite right, though. April forinstance, still drove people crazy by not being springtime. And it was in that clammy month that the H-G men took George and Hazel Bergeronâs fourteenyear-old son, Harrison, away.
It was tragic, all right, but George and Hazel couldnât think about it very hard. Hazel had a perfectly average intelligence, which meant she couldnât think about anything except in short bursts. And George, while his intelligence was way above normal, had a little mental handicap radio in his ear. He was required by law to wear it at all times. It was tuned to a government transmitter. Every twenty seconds or so, the transmitter would send out some sharp noise to keep people like George from taking unfair advantage of their brains.
Harrison Bergeron was too smart and could not be easily handicapped:
âHe is a genius and an athlete, is under-handicapped, and should be regarded as extremely dangerous.â
Harrison Bergeron required special handicaps in order to bring him down to othersâ level, so all would be equal:
He had outgrown hindrances faster than the H-G men could think them up. Instead of a little ear radio for a mental handicap, he wore a tremendous pair of earphones, and spectacles with thick wavy lenses. The spectacles were intended to make him not only half blind, but to give him whanging headaches besides.
Scrap metal was hung all over him. Ordinarily, there was a certain symmetry, a military neatness to the handicaps issued to strong people, but Harrison looked like a walking junkyard. In the race of life, Harrison carried three hundred pounds.
And to offset his good looks, the H-G men required that he wear at all times a red rubber ball for a nose, keep his eyebrows shaved off, and cover his even white teeth with black caps at snaggle-tooth random.
Want to know what happened? Read the story. Itâs short. Short enough even for people who are used to typing TLDNR.
I think Harrison Bergeron holds great relevance to the campus and societal push to achieve âequityâ at the cost of âequal opportunity,â through discrimination on the basis of race in the name of antiracism.
We are heading for this dystopian vision, or we may already be there.
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I remember when I was on the Board, I would question central cabinet members during presentations to the Board, asking them to define terms they so easily threw around.
One was "equity" vs. "equality."
Overall, they confused equity with equality, mostly coming down on the side of "equality of opportunity" to be the basis for both words. To doubly confuse, I would ask for definitions for "outcome based education" which is of course, equity.It was not deliberate confusion on their part. But over the years, "equality" came to mean "equity" and it's like these assistant superintendents never realized the change.
But, the Rubicon had been crossed. By the time a distinction could have been made between equity and equality, it was too late. Any criticism would be immediately countered with accusations of racism.
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Mr. Vonnegut got most things right.
He really got it.
I think I've read all of what he published, it's been a while. But I haven't seen the movie.
I think I liked Player Piano the best. This pandemic might actually bring us something like the reeks and wrecks.
Diana Moon Glampers is everywhere.
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https://slippedisc.com/2020/07/why-auditions-fail-and-the-times-is-so-wrong/
Max Raimi of the Chicago Symphony takes issue with the New York Timesâs demand to abolish blind auditions:
To promote greater diversity in our symphony orchestras, The New York Timesâ chief classical music critic Anthony Tommasini proposes that auditions should no longer be held behind a screen. Here is an excerpt from his article: âBlind auditions are based on an appealing premise of pure meritocracy: An orchestra should be built from the very best players, period. But ask anyone in the field, and youâll learn that over the past century of increasingly professionalized training, there has come to be remarkably little difference between players at the top tier. There is an athletic component to playing an instrument, and as with sprinters, gymnasts and tennis pros, the basic level of technical skill among American instrumentalists has steadily risen. A typical orchestral audition might end up attracting dozens of people who are essentially indistinguishable in their musicianship and technique.â
âAsk anyoneâ? Nobody asked me. I play viola in the Chicago Symphony. A significant percentage, very possibly a majority of our auditions, end up with us failing to hire a musician. I am currently on the audition committee to find a new Principal Viola. We have had two rounds of auditionsâprelims, semis, and finalsâand have heard well over 100 candidates. We even tried out two of the more promising players, having them play a few concerts as Principal. The committee and our Music Director, Riccardo Muti, have been in agreement that none of the candidates meet our standards. Mr. Tommasiniâs premise, that there is any number of more-or-less interchangeable candidates who can fill the openings in our major orchestras and the decision of which of them to select is essentially arbitrary is a fantasy. Unfortunately, once the pandemic allows it, we will again be back at square one, sitting for hours and days on end listening to one violist after another play Strauss orchestral excerpts.
The statement I cited was troubling for another reason as well. Mr. Tommasini talks about the âathletic component to playing an instrumentâ, comparing us to âsprinters, gymnasts and tennis prosâ. Fair enough. But then, in a splendid sleight-of-hand, he talks about âdozens of people who are essentially indistinguishable in their musicianship and technique.â Disingenuously, he inserts âmusicianshipâ into it; this has no parallel in his athletic metaphor.
Many years ago, our former Music Director here in Chicago, Daniel Barenboim, insisted that we have violists play the opening of the solo viola part to Mozartâs âSinfonia Concertanteâ at auditions. It is not at all technically demanding. But I was astonished at how after six measuresâperhaps twelve seconds of musicâI knew everything I needed to know about whomever I was listening to.
The viola in this passage, in octaves with a solo violin, rises an octave on E Flats, the lower one a grace note, the upper one held for more than two bars that call for a crescendo and then a diminuendo. The music then meanders down the E Flat major scale, taking a scenic route with brief digressions. At first, the soloists are all but inaudible, lost in the sympathetic vibrations of the E Flats in the orchestra. Miraculously, at some point in the crescendo, we become aware of the soloists. It is as if they have always been there, since the beginning of time, but we hadnât noticed.
The violist, in a matter of seconds, must transform his or her sound from a shadow to a physical presence, and then contrive to sing the circuitous downward line in one uninterrupted phrase, lyrically and yet with utter simplicity. E flat is a notoriously hard key to play in tune. The music is sufficiently slow so that your sound and intonation are stripped naked; the passage comes off as either absolutely gorgeous or grotesquely flawed.
The reason that this little except works so well in auditions is because it crystalizes perfectly what we are looking for in a colleague. The technical command that Mr. Tommasini references is a given; our search goes far beyond this. What is required is a concept, a way to tell a story with sound, with phrasing, with dynamics, and with every other resource at our command. Mr. Tommasini would reduce the criteria by which we evaluate candidates for our orchestra to speed and accuracy; judging us as one might judge a stenographer. I find it quite frankly offensive.
An argument can be made that hiring musicians of color is of such importance for the place of orchestras in our society that it should perhaps be a higher priority than necessarily finding the best musician for every opening. If Mr. Tommasini wishes to make that argument, it is a discussion well worth having. But to say that there are so many people who can step into our major orchestras and perform at the highest level that it doesnât matter which of several candidates get the job (so we might as well take the musician of color) is simply not true.
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https://slippedisc.com/2020/07/why-auditions-fail-and-the-times-is-so-wrong/
Max Raimi of the Chicago Symphony takes issue with the New York Timesâs demand to abolish blind auditions:
To promote greater diversity in our symphony orchestras, The New York Timesâ chief classical music critic Anthony Tommasini proposes that auditions should no longer be held behind a screen. Here is an excerpt from his article: âBlind auditions are based on an appealing premise of pure meritocracy: An orchestra should be built from the very best players, period. But ask anyone in the field, and youâll learn that over the past century of increasingly professionalized training, there has come to be remarkably little difference between players at the top tier. There is an athletic component to playing an instrument, and as with sprinters, gymnasts and tennis pros, the basic level of technical skill among American instrumentalists has steadily risen. A typical orchestral audition might end up attracting dozens of people who are essentially indistinguishable in their musicianship and technique.â
âAsk anyoneâ? Nobody asked me. I play viola in the Chicago Symphony. A significant percentage, very possibly a majority of our auditions, end up with us failing to hire a musician. I am currently on the audition committee to find a new Principal Viola. We have had two rounds of auditionsâprelims, semis, and finalsâand have heard well over 100 candidates. We even tried out two of the more promising players, having them play a few concerts as Principal. The committee and our Music Director, Riccardo Muti, have been in agreement that none of the candidates meet our standards. Mr. Tommasiniâs premise, that there is any number of more-or-less interchangeable candidates who can fill the openings in our major orchestras and the decision of which of them to select is essentially arbitrary is a fantasy. Unfortunately, once the pandemic allows it, we will again be back at square one, sitting for hours and days on end listening to one violist after another play Strauss orchestral excerpts.
The statement I cited was troubling for another reason as well. Mr. Tommasini talks about the âathletic component to playing an instrumentâ, comparing us to âsprinters, gymnasts and tennis prosâ. Fair enough. But then, in a splendid sleight-of-hand, he talks about âdozens of people who are essentially indistinguishable in their musicianship and technique.â Disingenuously, he inserts âmusicianshipâ into it; this has no parallel in his athletic metaphor.
Many years ago, our former Music Director here in Chicago, Daniel Barenboim, insisted that we have violists play the opening of the solo viola part to Mozartâs âSinfonia Concertanteâ at auditions. It is not at all technically demanding. But I was astonished at how after six measuresâperhaps twelve seconds of musicâI knew everything I needed to know about whomever I was listening to.
The viola in this passage, in octaves with a solo violin, rises an octave on E Flats, the lower one a grace note, the upper one held for more than two bars that call for a crescendo and then a diminuendo. The music then meanders down the E Flat major scale, taking a scenic route with brief digressions. At first, the soloists are all but inaudible, lost in the sympathetic vibrations of the E Flats in the orchestra. Miraculously, at some point in the crescendo, we become aware of the soloists. It is as if they have always been there, since the beginning of time, but we hadnât noticed.
The violist, in a matter of seconds, must transform his or her sound from a shadow to a physical presence, and then contrive to sing the circuitous downward line in one uninterrupted phrase, lyrically and yet with utter simplicity. E flat is a notoriously hard key to play in tune. The music is sufficiently slow so that your sound and intonation are stripped naked; the passage comes off as either absolutely gorgeous or grotesquely flawed.
The reason that this little except works so well in auditions is because it crystalizes perfectly what we are looking for in a colleague. The technical command that Mr. Tommasini references is a given; our search goes far beyond this. What is required is a concept, a way to tell a story with sound, with phrasing, with dynamics, and with every other resource at our command. Mr. Tommasini would reduce the criteria by which we evaluate candidates for our orchestra to speed and accuracy; judging us as one might judge a stenographer. I find it quite frankly offensive.
An argument can be made that hiring musicians of color is of such importance for the place of orchestras in our society that it should perhaps be a higher priority than necessarily finding the best musician for every opening. If Mr. Tommasini wishes to make that argument, it is a discussion well worth having. But to say that there are so many people who can step into our major orchestras and perform at the highest level that it doesnât matter which of several candidates get the job (so we might as well take the musician of color) is simply not true.
@George-K said in First they came for Aunt Jemima:
insisted that we have violists play the opening of the solo viola part to Mozartâs âSinfonia Concertanteâ at auditions. It is not at all technically demanding
So many viola jokes come into my mind right now.
E flat is a notoriously hard key to play in tune.
Lolwut? Unless the author is talking about the microscopic theoretical pitch differences between, say, a D# and an Eb, what is he talking about? It's made from the same twelve tones.
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On the topic of symphonic orchestras and the racial constitutions of their players, I have seen argument that says the racial distribution of an orchestra's players should somehow mirror the racial distribution of the "community" where the orchestra is or the "community served by the orchestra."
What does that really mean, and should that even be the right objective?
A medical clinic, a police department, a fire department, a school, a coup kitchen ... yeah, it's relatively easy to identify the "community" served by those institutions.'
But what "community" does an opera or an orchestra serve, really?
Just because an orchestra established its home base in metropolitan area X, does that mean the orchestra "serve" the community of metropolitan area X? What if most of the locals don't listen to that orchestra anyway and the orchestra gets its revenue primarily from out-of-town audience and out-of-town donors?
I tried to find statistics on the racial distribution of audiences of operas or orchestras. I could not find any. Going just by casual observation, I can tell you that most of the time the racial composition of the audience of an orchestral performance look very different from the racial composition of the people living and working around the area where the orchestral performance took place.
Western, classical symphonic orchestra has a very Euro-centric heritage. The pioneers who made the art form what it is were overwhelmingly European and overwhelmingly white. So what? After you get the racial composition of the players to reflect the racial composition of the "community served by the orchestra," are you going to demand that the orchestras play works by a mix of composers whose, as a group, also reflect the racial compositions of the "community served by the orchestra"? What would the Seoul Symphony or the Beijing Symphony or the Calcutta Symphony or the Siam Philharmonic be playing then?
As an art form and as an economic concern, symphony orchestras are on the decline anyway. In the grand scheme of things, I really don't have much of problem to let it fade away, white/Euro-centric or otherwise.
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On the topic of symphonic orchestras and the racial constitutions of their players, I have seen argument that says the racial distribution of an orchestra's players should somehow mirror the racial distribution of the "community" where the orchestra is or the "community served by the orchestra."
What does that really mean, and should that even be the right objective?
A medical clinic, a police department, a fire department, a school, a coup kitchen ... yeah, it's relatively easy to identify the "community" served by those institutions.'
But what "community" does an opera or an orchestra serve, really?
Just because an orchestra established its home base in metropolitan area X, does that mean the orchestra "serve" the community of metropolitan area X? What if most of the locals don't listen to that orchestra anyway and the orchestra gets its revenue primarily from out-of-town audience and out-of-town donors?
I tried to find statistics on the racial distribution of audiences of operas or orchestras. I could not find any. Going just by casual observation, I can tell you that most of the time the racial composition of the audience of an orchestral performance look very different from the racial composition of the people living and working around the area where the orchestral performance took place.
Western, classical symphonic orchestra has a very Euro-centric heritage. The pioneers who made the art form what it is were overwhelmingly European and overwhelmingly white. So what? After you get the racial composition of the players to reflect the racial composition of the "community served by the orchestra," are you going to demand that the orchestras play works by a mix of composers whose, as a group, also reflect the racial compositions of the "community served by the orchestra"? What would the Seoul Symphony or the Beijing Symphony or the Calcutta Symphony or the Siam Philharmonic be playing then?
As an art form and as an economic concern, symphony orchestras are on the decline anyway. In the grand scheme of things, I really don't have much of problem to let it fade away, white/Euro-centric or otherwise.
@Axtremus said in First they came for Aunt Jemima:
I tried to find statistics on the racial distribution of audiences of operas or orchestras. I could not find any. Going just by casual observation, I can tell you that most of the time the racial composition of the audience of an orchestral performance look very different from the racial composition of the people living and working around the area where the orchestral performance took place.
My concert buddy (we go to 5-6 a year together) is a black Englishman. Often he is the only black face in the hall. Sometimes we'll notice one or two more.
A couple of years ago I was going to do a quick in-person introduction with a PW poster who was going to be at the same concert. He was trying to work out this elaborate plan on how we'd find each other (we hadn't shared pics) and I said 'just come to row XX before it starts. I'm the middle aged white guy in glasses sitting next to the middle aged black guy in glasses'. He found me no problem.
