It's Wednesday and there are a few topics that caught my attention this week as…
Travelling music
The Covid situation in Australia has deteriorated in recent months after the conservative NSW government allowed it to spread (after a lax approach to quarantine – privatising the service). For the last 9 weeks or so I have been stuck in another state, away from home, and wondering when I could get back across the border again. Well yesterday I finally acquired a travel permit to cross the border between NSW and Victoria and 10 hours later (by car) I am now back at home. So I am catching up on things this afternoon (with two computer monitors – yeah) and there will be no formal blog post. But there is some music. Back tomorrow.
Music – for travelling
Sometimes you need to really concentrate on a new album and play it several times to appreciate the nuances and subtlety of the performance by the artist(s) and the mastering by the producer.
So a long road trip, when no-one else is in the vehicle and volume can be adjusted to suit the single taste (loud in this case), is a pretty good platform for accomplishing that aim.
Just such an album is – Voices – by the post minimalist composer – Max Richter.
It was released last year (July 31, 2020) and was “inspired by the Universal Declaration of Human Rights”.
This article (June 25, 2020) – Max Richter Announces New Album ‘Voices’ – provides some background about how the readings were organised and sourced.
The album has a voiced section (with various readings) and then the voiceless version of the music.
Here is the full album, which uses what Max Richter refers to as a “negative orchestra” (“nearly all basses and cellos”).
At some stages in the album you think you hear a deep rumbling – one of the deepest sound the human ear can hear I suspect – and it is a very stark background to the negative orchestra.
The whole album is 56 minutes then repeats in voiceless mode.
My favourite track is Mercy with the solo violin played by – Mari Samuelson.
Mercy begins at 48:51 and then at the end of the second version of the album.
A breathtaking way to spend 10 hours driving a car I can tell you.
Here is a short video from Max Richter explaining the motivation of the album and its meaning.
He always has a very sound and progressive intent behind his music.
He commented on the album:
I like the idea of a piece of music as a place to think, and it is clear we all have some thinking to do at the moment. The Universal Declaration of Human Rights is something that offers us a way forward. Although it isn’t a perfect document, the declaration does represent an inspiring vision for the possibility of better and kinder world.
He goes further in this NPR interview (August 2, 2020) – Composer Max Richter On ‘Voices,’ A New Album That Envisions A Better World.
Here is a review of the album from British Gramophone – Richter Voices.
That is enough for today!
(c) Copyright 2021 William Mitchell. All Rights Reserved.
hi bill,
perhaps you could respond to the piece of nonsense below in a blog piece, once you have got over your incredulity 😉
https://www.richmondfed.org/publications/research/economic_brief/2021/eb_21-12
regards , mahaish
I thought you’d be listening to this one Bill.
Dear Alan Dunn (at 2021/09/15 at 1:03 pm)
No, we need patience and calm.
The cart must stay after the horse.
I propose singing the song relentlessly after about 22:30 Saturday week – probably I will keep singing it for several days until the throat becomes too dry!
best wishes
bill
ps to those who don’t know what we are talking about – stay tuned.
Here is a hint:
@ mahaish,
HI, it seems that Bill isn’t going to reply.
I read the linked article.
I found about 19 places where it got MMT wrong, and 3 places where it said something true about economic reality.
Therefore, I would describe that article as a typical hatchet-job attack by MS economists on MMT.
It talks about MMT policy recommendations, but never mentions the only one MMT actually makes, i.e. the MMT-JGP. MMT only says that Govs. *can* deficit spend more. Some MMTers, like our Bill, do say that the Aust. Gov. (& others) should deficit spend more, though.
For example, it says, “The core tenet of MMT is that a government can print money indefinitely and without constraints since it is the monopoly issuer of currency.” Later it says, “In fact, many MMT theorists are quite concerned about the dangers of inflation — perhaps to a greater extent than adherents to post-Keynesian or even New Keynesian views —”
. . . So, the example is just a bold face lie to misrepresent what MMTers say. It also intentionally uses the inflammatory phrase ‘print money’ instead of the correct MMT phrase ‘deficit spend’.
This is just 1 of the 19 places it lies about what MMT says about econ. reality.
Enough said.