If there's going to be no one left who cares . . . does that include you, Jay? Do you mean that you're going to declare it a lost cause and just give up on preserving the distinction between “to leave alone” and “to let alone"?
I can't stand Jonathan V. Last's tone in regard to Derek Huffman. Mr. Huffman appears a fool, but he's likely to suffer terribly in Russia's military; of that last fact Mr. Last writes, "Oopsie." May I never be so callous about someone whose main fault is stupidity.
I remember Bandstand before it became American Bandstand in 1957, when it went from a local Philadelphia TV show to nationwide. My older sisters were in high school and watched it every day after school. I was in early on the birth of Rock 'n Roll!
The Huffman situation reminds me of the Lykov family, the Russian Orthodox Old Believers who kept moving further from civilization because literally everyone else in Russia was doing Orthodoxy wrong. They were discovered by a geological team in the late 1970s, after more than 40 years almost completely cut off from the rest of the world.
The Huffmans are repeating history as farce, then?
The Lykov family's bolt into the forest was motivated by genuine threat:
"Things had only gotten worse for the Lykov family when the atheist Bolsheviks took power. Under the Soviets, isolated Old Believer communities that had fled to Siberia to escape persecution began to retreat ever further from civilization. During the purges of the 1930s, with Christianity itself under assault, a Communist patrol had shot Lykov’s brother on the outskirts of their village while Lykov knelt working beside him. He had responded by scooping up his family and bolting into the forest."
Meanwhile, the Huffmans were seduced into exaggerating threat by the likes of influencer Tim Kirby, and Putinist interest in subverting "neoliberalism":
Quoting Sullivan, "For years, Mozart was judged inferior to Beethoven precisely because his music was more perfect, less 'gnarled' and 'tortured.'"
I think I know what's meant by statements like that, but I also find it odd to associate characteristics I associate with much of Mozart's music – frothiness, poise – with "perfection". A professional musician remarked to me earlier this year that he wished Mozart had written more music like the Kyrie fugue in Mozart's Requiem, which I heartily agreed with – and we'd find it odd to call the fugue more "imperfect"! Rather, it suitably expresses the fervor of the text. "Lord have mercy!" isn't a serene statement, and more placid or upbeat settings risk liturgically inappropriate self-satisfaction.
I would likewise find it odd to call Byrd's "Ave Verum Corpus" less perfect than Mozart's. I happen to prefer Byrd's, partly because I find placidity with which Mozart sets the text somewhat confusing. I wonder if those who prefer Mozart's interpret the elevation and adoration of the Eucharist differently from how I would. (I'm Christian but not Catholic, so there are specifically Catholic approaches to reverencing the Eucharist I don't fully understand.)
For music that sets text, Luzzaschi's approach seems hard to beat: "Since poetry was the first to be born, music reveres and honors her as his lady, so much so that music, having become virtually a shadow of poetry, does not dare move its foot where its superior has not gone before. From this it follows that if the poet raises his style, the musician raises his tone. He weeps if the verse weeps, laughs if it laughs; if it runs, stops, implores, denies, screams, falls silent, lives, dies, all these affects and effects are so vividly expressed in music that what should properly be called resemblance seems more like rivalry."
In re: Derek Huffman….. From Mr. Kasparov: “There’s a video making the rounds of a woman with an unmistakable southern drawl walking around a Russian village. This is DeAnna Huffman, who, along with her husband Derek, and their young children, transplanted their family from a peaceful Texas life to Russia in order to escape “LGBT indoctrination.”
The Huffmans, unsurprisingly, are totally out of their depth.
As she navigates her new environs, DeAnna complains that the family has not secured a proper tutor to get their children the necessary Russian vocabulary to start school. Derek joined the Russian military under the pretense that he’d be a mechanic or fill some other kind of a backend role in Vladimir Putin’s war machine.
Instead, he is being thrown into the Ukrainian meatgrinder with just a few weeks of training and zero Russian language competency. There are rumors that he has already been killed. Whether or not those reports are true, Derek Huffman is already coming up on the one-month average life expectancy for a Russian conscript in Ukraine. Humanity is cheap under dictatorship.”
I have long said, “They ought to get a room,” the extreme Left and the extreme Right—and stay there, letting the rest of us alone.
Perfect, thank you.
The whole piece was wonderful as usual....But, I had missed Kevin's ode to Ozzy and went and checked it out...thanks for that too
If there's going to be no one left who cares . . . does that include you, Jay? Do you mean that you're going to declare it a lost cause and just give up on preserving the distinction between “to leave alone” and “to let alone"?
Nope! Never.
I can't stand Jonathan V. Last's tone in regard to Derek Huffman. Mr. Huffman appears a fool, but he's likely to suffer terribly in Russia's military; of that last fact Mr. Last writes, "Oopsie." May I never be so callous about someone whose main fault is stupidity.
I remember Bandstand before it became American Bandstand in 1957, when it went from a local Philadelphia TV show to nationwide. My older sisters were in high school and watched it every day after school. I was in early on the birth of Rock 'n Roll!
The Huffman situation reminds me of the Lykov family, the Russian Orthodox Old Believers who kept moving further from civilization because literally everyone else in Russia was doing Orthodoxy wrong. They were discovered by a geological team in the late 1970s, after more than 40 years almost completely cut off from the rest of the world.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lykov_family
The commonality is the mindset that, "Nothing in this fallen world is pure enough for us."
The Huffmans are repeating history as farce, then?
The Lykov family's bolt into the forest was motivated by genuine threat:
"Things had only gotten worse for the Lykov family when the atheist Bolsheviks took power. Under the Soviets, isolated Old Believer communities that had fled to Siberia to escape persecution began to retreat ever further from civilization. During the purges of the 1930s, with Christianity itself under assault, a Communist patrol had shot Lykov’s brother on the outskirts of their village while Lykov knelt working beside him. He had responded by scooping up his family and bolting into the forest."
https://www.smithsonianmag.com/history/this-russian-family-lived-alone-in-the-siberian-wilderness-for-40-years-unaware-of-world-war-ii-or-the-moon-landing-7354256/
Meanwhile, the Huffmans were seduced into exaggerating threat by the likes of influencer Tim Kirby, and Putinist interest in subverting "neoliberalism":
https://united24media.com/latest-news/russias-dream-village-for-anti-woke-americans-draws-only-two-families-sends-a-father-to-warzone-9976
"The Huffmans are repeating history as farce, then?"
Good summary.
Quoting Sullivan, "For years, Mozart was judged inferior to Beethoven precisely because his music was more perfect, less 'gnarled' and 'tortured.'"
I think I know what's meant by statements like that, but I also find it odd to associate characteristics I associate with much of Mozart's music – frothiness, poise – with "perfection". A professional musician remarked to me earlier this year that he wished Mozart had written more music like the Kyrie fugue in Mozart's Requiem, which I heartily agreed with – and we'd find it odd to call the fugue more "imperfect"! Rather, it suitably expresses the fervor of the text. "Lord have mercy!" isn't a serene statement, and more placid or upbeat settings risk liturgically inappropriate self-satisfaction.
I would likewise find it odd to call Byrd's "Ave Verum Corpus" less perfect than Mozart's. I happen to prefer Byrd's, partly because I find placidity with which Mozart sets the text somewhat confusing. I wonder if those who prefer Mozart's interpret the elevation and adoration of the Eucharist differently from how I would. (I'm Christian but not Catholic, so there are specifically Catholic approaches to reverencing the Eucharist I don't fully understand.)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=f9P_RyHWdVs
For music that sets text, Luzzaschi's approach seems hard to beat: "Since poetry was the first to be born, music reveres and honors her as his lady, so much so that music, having become virtually a shadow of poetry, does not dare move its foot where its superior has not gone before. From this it follows that if the poet raises his style, the musician raises his tone. He weeps if the verse weeps, laughs if it laughs; if it runs, stops, implores, denies, screams, falls silent, lives, dies, all these affects and effects are so vividly expressed in music that what should properly be called resemblance seems more like rivalry."
I'd never heard Byrd's setting. Beautiful. And a marvelous performance in that video.
In re: Derek Huffman….. From Mr. Kasparov: “There’s a video making the rounds of a woman with an unmistakable southern drawl walking around a Russian village. This is DeAnna Huffman, who, along with her husband Derek, and their young children, transplanted their family from a peaceful Texas life to Russia in order to escape “LGBT indoctrination.”
The Huffmans, unsurprisingly, are totally out of their depth.
As she navigates her new environs, DeAnna complains that the family has not secured a proper tutor to get their children the necessary Russian vocabulary to start school. Derek joined the Russian military under the pretense that he’d be a mechanic or fill some other kind of a backend role in Vladimir Putin’s war machine.
Instead, he is being thrown into the Ukrainian meatgrinder with just a few weeks of training and zero Russian language competency. There are rumors that he has already been killed. Whether or not those reports are true, Derek Huffman is already coming up on the one-month average life expectancy for a Russian conscript in Ukraine. Humanity is cheap under dictatorship.”
I am incapable of any feeling except contempt for anyone who voluntarily moves their family to Russia.