Bad Saw

"Bad workmen always blame their tools". It doesn't follow that people who blame their tools are bad workmen, but that's is what people intend when they use this tired saw. However, a little thought will show that bad workmen falsely blame their tools, good workmen truly blame theirs!

Let's keep it simple and assume a task is done badly either because the workman is bad or his tools are. According to the old saw, the bad workman wants to deflect blame for his shoddy work onto the tools, which are in fact perfectly fine. The good workman also wants to blame his tools, but this time, given our assumption, it is because the tools are indeed at fault. So when a task is poorly executed, we find workmen of all levels blaming their tools. How do we decide whether it's the tools or the workman at fault? Examine the tools!

Moral: if a workman is blaming his tools, don't assume the workman is bad; check his tools first!

Menuhin? - no women, you in!

My heavy singing engagements (we had a couple of gigs!) preventing me from witnessing Midori's rendering of the Tchaikovsky violin concerto with our own very wonderful Colorado Symphony, it suddenly stuck me that, in contrast to the even quite recent past, the world of the virtuoso violinist is weighty with women. The days of Menuhin, Stern, and Oistrakh have gone - now we have Mutter, Hahn and Josefowicz. And these ladies can play - Hahn's rendering of the Bach concertos is spellbinding.

Ah, I hear you say, they got there on looks as much as anything. Then I call my next witness, m'lud - Julia Fischer. If anyone going to get there on looks it's Julia. So let's check credentials: winner of Menuhin competition at 12 (famed critic Edward Greenfield remarking: "Not only did she win outright in the junior category, she was manifestly more inspired than anyone in the senior category."), standing ovations at Carnegie Hall, played with most of our leading conductors, and her recording of the Brahms (and how many versions of that are there?) was rated with the benchmark by BBC Music magazine. And she's but 24. I rest m'case!

So we can say without fear of falsity, women rule the world of the violin, despite looks! So I shall look forward indeed to Nadja Salerno Sonnenberg's Shostokovich in January!

A Wonderful Person?

Our family Christmas party having broken up at the alarmingly early hour of 8p, there was nothing for it but to watch It's A Wonderful Life again. It's my favorite movie, one of the few I've seen more than once and of which I never tire. And I admit it, I can't help welling up at the end, me an oak of a male specimen notwithstanding. It always raises some questions as I watch - how come he never sees Mary between the time she leaves for college and returns therefrom, why exactly did George Bailey feel he had to stay at the Building and Loan, where on earth did he get the two grand (in 1930's money, to boot) to spend on his honeymoon (I didn't spend that on mine!), can you really catch a cold by walking home with your top-button undone, and so on. But an aspect of the film struck me this time that hadn't before - George's abusive behavior under pressure.

Maybe it was because Amy and I had just finished watching the last few episodes of season 3 of Six Feet Under, in which the main character, Nate, falls to pieces after his wife leaves for a 3 day trip up the California coast to see her sister and goes missing - for days and then weeks, with no news from her or the cops. Nate, no saint but a reasonably decent dude, is now totally self-absorbed, unable to censor his actions and devoid of empathy for the victims of his abusive behavior. One feels for his plight but recoils from what that plight makes him do. Same with good ol' George; one feels for his loss too - the S'n'L he's given his life to, through duty rather than choice, to boot, is about to collapse through no fault of his own (except his very faultlessness!), but that loss reveals what this erstwhile icon of virtue is capable of: abusing his family, berating a hapless teacher, and the ultimate violence of self-murder - he really would have done himself in had it not been for Clarence's rescue, and for what? - a mere 4 times the amount he was going to blow on a honeymoon.

I always wondered about the final moral of the tale "No man is a failure who has friends". That's not the moral at all - George was frustrated, yes, but not a failure, even in his own mind (he was clearly a success at running the S'n'L), and it wasn't friendship that inspired the donors, it was a sense of owing it to the man who'd done so much for their community. The point presumably is that if you stick to what's right, people will stick by you. But a secondary moral that can be drawn might be: even the best of us is capable of the worst when things get desperate. Not an uplifting thought - maybe I won't shed a tear next time I play the movie.

Christmas Message

Happy Holidays to all my reader!
George Carlin once said something to the effect that the best thing about religion is the music, and that is certainly true of Christmas. I am a complete sucker for Christmas Carols, from Renaissance tributes in latin, to modern works with olde Englishe texts. I buy Christmas CDs every year, this year I splurged and bought 3 (my wife, I should add, keeps pace with party Holiday CDs, as if a balance were required to be kept between the serenity of In Dulci Jubilo and the nausea of All I Want for Christmas Is My Two Front Teeth). Easily the best is Marian Christmas II by local a capella group St Martin's Chamber Choir, whose collection of female singers make a noise that is pure heaven. They span the aforementioned spectrum from the awe-inspiring Angelus ad pastores ait of one Samuel Scheidt to the simple but poignant The Fader of Heven by Maxwell Davies. But the centerpiece of the album is clearly Maria Laudate by local composer John White - exquisite!

However wonderful these works, they are unlikely to get into the popular repertoire of carols, particularly as that repertoire is so strong - O Come Emmanuel, Ding Dong Merrily, Hark the Herald, etc. are masterpieces. Which bids the question, which is your favorite carol? Glad you asked - about 10 years ago I bought a 5 dollar Christmas CD at Target which was a complete bargain - carols sung by Kings and Clare colleges under Willcocks and Rutter. Carol 12 was one I hadn't heard before, but it knocked my socks off, and still does every time I play it - the Willcocks arrangement of the Basque carol Gabriel's Message ("The angel Gabriel from heaven came..."). I do hope when Dawkins succeeds in stamping out religion, he keeps this music - it is rather heavenly after all!