Just Music

He was a guy that we all sniffed at, because look, he wrote for the movies. And so he wasn’t serious—not like us, who were real musicians and composers and…

…snobs.

But the movies saved Erich Korngold’s life—literally. A Jew born into a musical family, he once stated, “we thought of ourselves as Viennese; Hitler made us Jewish.” It was a lucky break when Warner Brothers asked him, in 1938, to come to Hollywood to write the film score for “The Adventures of Robin Hood,” starring Errol Flynn.

Korngold hadn’t set out to write movie music—in fact, he was composing by age eleven, and both Gustav Mahler and Richard Strauss praised him highly. Oh, and later Puccini. By 13, he had composed a ballet that became a hit at the Vienna Court Opera. By the time he was 17, he had an opera, a sinfonietta, two piano sonatas, and a piano trio behind him. He then turned to conducting opera until 1934, when he was asked to adapt Mendelssohn’s A Midsummer Night’s Dream.

And so for roughly a decade, Korngold turned out film music, and did a fine job of it. Here’s what one scholar, Brendon G. Carroll, said about his work:

Treating each film as an 'opera without singing' (each character has his or her own leitmotif) [Korngold] created intensely romantic, richly melodic and contrapuntally intricate scores, the best of which are a cinematic paradigm for the tone poems of Richard Strauss and Franz Liszt. He intended that, when divorced from the moving image, these scores could stand alone in the concert hall. His style exerted a profound influence on modern film music.

And what is his style? Well, he’s not ashamed to be late Romantic, at a time when it was out of style. And of course, somebody had to crack the remark—Korngold’s is more corn than gold. And so for the last ten years of his life, he gave up film work and returned to “serious” composition. The two concerti below stem from this period.

The only question is why aren’t these works—especially the cello concerto—better known? And why did the label “film score composer” get stuck on Korngold, but not on Shostakovich and Prokofiev, both of whom also composed for film? Is it because the Russian film industry has cachet, but not Hollywood?

Whatever; it still lingers. Consider the following comment, from the YouTube clip of Hilary Hahn playing the violin concerto:

Hahn is a fine player and Nagano (as usual) leads a high-quality performance. But, gang, I gotta tell you: This is not one of the great 20th century violin concertos -- not even close, despite a number of lovely passages. In no way does it stand up to the Walton and Barber concertos, which it roughly parallels chronologically. Sorry.

And then the response:

"parallels chronologically"? Perhaps you mean "the Walton and Barber concertos, which are roughly contemporaneous." But that's only your view. Personally, I think this concerto is fully the equal of the Walton, which is nowhere near the quality of his more famous concerto for viola. Do I detect some snobishness on the grounds that Korngold "sold out" to Hollywood (gasp)?

Well, a later commentator makes the point that if “selling out” meant writing the scores that Korngold did, it was a good move. Maybe it’s time to say it—there’s no film music or serious music.

Just music….

On Music and Teaching

Well, it’s clearly a day not to read the newspaper, since is it really sensible to be taking antidepressants one minute and reading The New York Times ten minutes later? Nah…

So I bring the story of Thomas Sudhof, who shared the Nobel Prize for medicine and physiology this year. And who was his greatest teacher? His bassoon teacher who, in Sudhof’s words, “taught me that the only way to do something right is to practice and listen and practice and listen, hours, and hours, and hours.”

You know, it may be true. Anyone playing a double reed instrument like the bassoon or the oboe is openly flirting with madness; at one moment you’re playing music, the next moment you’re squawking. Oh, and you neither have any control nor any warning….

And I’m thinking about teaching, lately, because I did it for a large part of my life. In fact, I still do it, and like it. My problem, however, is that I had and have absolutely no idea of what I’m doing—I am perpetually improvising.

Other teachers know what they’re doing, as I saw yesterday when I was reading a New York Times article on schools which are “flipping.” And that is? Well, here’s the Times:

Students watch teachers’ lectures at home and do what we’d otherwise call “homework” in class. Teachers record video lessons, which students watch on their smartphones, home computers or at lunch in the school’s tech lab. In class, they do projects, exercises or lab experiments in small groups while the teacher circulates.

Oh, and guess what? Everybody, for once, is completely on board with this idea! From the same article:

The flipped classroom is a strategy that nearly everyone agrees on. “It’s the only thing I write about as having broad positive agreement,” said Justin Reich, a fellow at the Berkman Center for Internet and Society at Harvard who studies technology and education.

Well, it’s familiar territory: there’s Marc and there’s the rest of the world. Because when I saw the video that a flipped teacher had prepared, I was less than impressed. In fact, I was half appalled. Check it out:

Full disclosure—I am perhaps one of the few people who really enjoys a vigorous discussion of subject / verb agreement. And in fact, the topic drops by for dinner occasionally, usually in the form of Mr. Fernández sputtering about the capricious way that English handles collective nouns. Spanish, of course, is completely logical—all collective nouns in Spanish are singular. But what fun is that?

All right—about the video. First, the teacher states that singular verbs have an added “s.”

Little Marc (seated in second desk, third row—and very cute): I works? You works?

Teacher (exasperated): No, Marc….

Marc: But aren’t “I” and “you” singular?

Teacher: Yes, Marc, but we’re talking about “he /she / it.”

Marc: Oh, the third person singular in the present simple indicative?

Teacher: Ummm? 

Next, the teacher discloses a trick—something he calls the “it / they” rule. Big question: “Tony works” or “Tony work?” Well, we can replace—so sez Teach—“Tony” with “it.”

Yeah?

Marc: But isn’t Tony a “he?”

Teacher: Well, yes, but to make it simpler we’re using just “it.”

Marc: How does that make it simpler?

Next, the teacher suggests that we simply count the nouns, using the example “Marc and Mary”—that’s two, see? Plural.

Marc: What about the sentence “Neither Marc nor Mary?

Teacher (nervous—he sees what’s coming): What about it?

Marc: Well, there are two subjects, but should the verb be singular? You wouldn’t say “Neither Marc nor Mary work in the mill,” would you?

Then there’s the problem—the teacher gives it away when he says “that doesn’t sound right,” in discussing the “it / they” rule.

Marc: But what if someone doesn’t know what “sounds right?” Maybe he’s never heard it right, and so he can’t tell what sounds right? Or what if he’s learning English as a new language?

Teacher: Well, I think we can assume….

I hate to say this—no wait, let’s be honest, this causes me no pain whatsoever to declare—but the teacher in this video doesn’t seem to be too bright. How would he handle the question that I, even as a child, would have asked?

Marc: What is a subject, anyway?

Teacher: Well, the subject performs the action of the verb.

Marc: What about the passive voice? What about, “the patient is examined by the medical team?” Is “medical team” the subject?

Teacher: No, the subject is “the patient.”

Marc: But is the patient examining?

That would have lead to the old and mostly true “the subject is the noun before the verb.” A possibly useful rule of thumb, yes—but it does beg the question.

Maybe it’s time to do two things. First, I seriously think that we need to reinstitute Greek and Latin into our schools, and yes, in grade school, when those young minds can soak up the rigor and the discipline of the languages. Because then kids will be able to decline nouns and conjugate verbs, which means that he or she will be able to give an example of the third person positive singular present perfect active indicative using the verb “to see.”

(“he has seen” is the answer, by the way….)

Second, why can’t all kids learn a musical instrument? You know, I’m back to playing the cello now, and looking at YouTube clips of musicians speaking and coaching. And guess what? We’re a bright, talented, funny and quick group. And it occurs to me—have I ever met a stupid musician? If I have, I’ve forgotten him or her.

The video of the subject / verb agreement has gotten 57,000 hits, and the comments are almost all positive. Some people say that he’s really helped them. But check out the video below, of the legendary Dorothy DeLay. Then tell me…

…who’s the better teacher?

Finding and Losing Freddy

I seem to be running a war on my life. It’s two PM, and what have I done?

Well, I spent the morning wondering about 10AM, which was when the alleged plumber was supposed to show up. Instead—no need to sit down for this news—he arrived telephonically at noon. I went downstairs to let him in….

Nobody….

Right, checked the shoe store, above which I live.

Nobody….

Call the number that had just called me—nice you can do that with cell phones—and got the company, not the plumber. The plumber, it turned out, was on the next street up, and so the guy at the company patched in the plumber, who said he would come down one street. What did he do? Of course, he walked up one street.

I have wanted this plumber more than I ever wanted my first sexual experience or my first—and only—husband. And now, like so many things including my childhood and my faith in the essential goodness of people…where is my plumber going?

The company guy is busy explaining to Freddy, the plumber, that he is going the wrong way. Freddy, instead, is describing absolutely everything he sees—some of which are phenomenological. “There’s a woman parking her car,” reports Freddy.

Freddy, dear?

“Two cats are mating,” he says.

This I ponder for a moment—have I ever seen two cats mating on the street? It occurs to me: no. So why Freddy and not me? I do live here after all….

“Do you see any businesses on your street?” I ask.

“No,” he says.

“Freddy,” I beg, “go back to where you were. Stand absolutely still—describe every store you see. I’ll come find you, Freddy, BUT DON’T LEAVE ME!”

Oh—and I forgot to mention that all this is occurring in a construction—more accurately destruction—site, and that’s important to know, because their reaction—those big burly guys—to a desperate middle-aged guy professing his love and need for Freddy?

“No me dejes, Freddy!”

“Te quiero, Freddy!”

Bésame mucho, sings one. Kiss me a lot….

Freddy, in the meantime, has retraced his steps and is in front of the Bombonera, a long and now defunct tradition. I race to get him—talking nonsense on the way. We return, only to be greeted with cheers, whistles and catcalls. Oh, and scattered applause.

I grab Freddy’s hand—he’s the ebony on the keyboard, I’m the ivory—and raise it above our heads. We both bow.

“Freddy is the plumber,” I tell the guys. They give me a special smile.

Freddy, amazingly, is completely unfazed by this ridiculous situation, and gets right down to work—in this case pulling the handle off the faucet with such force that it crashes and breaks. Oh, and he will later inform me that it would be silly to buy a replacement because they’re ridiculously expensive. Who would want such things?

Well, it turns out that Freddy, of course, doesn’t have the parts and will have to go Bayamón to get them. I instantly object.

“You’ll never come back, Freddy,” I tell him. “People disappear in Bayamón—lost in traffic jams, or aimlessly drifting around in Plaza del Sol, or who knows what. Don’t, DON’T go to Bayamón!”

Before Freddy, I was a baritone—now I’m a mezzo-soprano in a very bad opera. Is this the moment to sink to my knees, and gaze upon him beseechingly?

He leaves, as so many men do, paying absolutely no mind….

I sit down at my computer. What to write about, today? I could tell you the improbable story that the redoubtable—love that word, by the way—New York Times served up this morning. It seems that the FBI arrested two rabbis in the New York area. And what for? Blackjack in the synagogue? Cocaine in hollowed-out Torahs?

Nope, the rabbis were employing a hit man to work over husbands who were unwilling to give their wives a divorce. Here’s the Times on the subject:

In some Orthodox Jewish communities, a divorce is granted only once a husband provides his wife with a document known as a get. And stories of the frustrations and obstacles that women face in their quest to obtain a get are commonplace. While a woman can sue in rabbinical court to try to secure a get, some husbands do not comply with the court’s edict.   

Right—be warned, any Orthodox Jewish readers of the blog, the little lady wants out? Give it to her—otherwise you’ll get kidnapped and worked over, and by the way, these guys are professional. They don’t leave marks, so when you go to the cops, they’ll just think it’s some weird Jewish thing, and shrug it off.

I ponder this for some time. Can I write about this? Is there enough here for a post? Can I combine it with some other story?

It’s no use. Freddy has come into my life, Freddy has left me. I am desolate. How is it in French? Je suis désolé. Better, I think.

There is nothing, absolutely nothing to write about today, and guess what? There is also no going to the bathroom because Freddy has dismantled both faucets and turned off the water. Fortunately in reverse order. But if I turn the water back on? It’ll be like the fountains at Versailles, though horizontal.

It took me back a bit to the 70’s, in those pre-AIDS days that we all very much enjoyed. Guys came into your life, and then they left. So long, baby-cakes!

Well, it’s 2:41, and page three, and exactly 904 words.

And Freddy?

And in my heart there stirs a quiet pain

For unremembered lads that not again

Will turn to me at midnight with a cry.

(From Sonnet XLIII, Edna St. Vincent Millay)

On Schools and Teaching

It all started yesterday, when I began to realize that the conservative right—the Tea Partiers who have us by the short hairs and are dragging us ever closer to the financial cliff—have now set their sights on education. And why not? The idea is attractive for many reasons. There’s money, there, for one thing. How much? Well, according to the head of the Chicago Teachers Union, 380 billion dollars.  Oh, and what better time to instill a little conservative ideology? Let’s not forget old St. Ignatius: give me a child until he is seven, and I will give you the man for life, or words to that effect.

And if you read Diane Ravitch, a professor of the history of education at New York University, you’ll find out: the prevailing theory is that our public schools are failing. But is it true?

Ravitch says no—nor is it an opinion that she’s held long. In fact, she served in the first George W. Bush administration, and supported the No Child Left Behind program. What was not to like? The idea of standardized testing, quantifiable results, strict accountability—wow, great stuff.

So what happened? Well, teachers got the message—better teach to the test, because your evaluation, or maybe even your job, depends on your results. So what happened? The teachers crammed the info into the kids—and what happened to the subjects like art and history and music and science? Sorry—the focus was reading and math.

In addition, there have been reports of…well, Let the Huffington Post tell the story:

The indictment last week of 35 teachers and administrators in Atlanta for manipulating test scores is just the latest chapter in that city's long festering "teacher cheating" scandal. In turn, Atlanta is just one of many cities where evidence has surfaced that educators fudged testing data.

Perhaps the best way to think of these cheating scandals is that they are the result of a natural experiment: What happens when you change incentives so that low test numbers translate into pain and high test numbers translate into rewards?

OK—so teachers will cheat if their jobs depend on it. And why shouldn’t they? Because, according to Ravitch, they’re a pretty demoralized bunch right now. There was a time when parents took their kids to school on the first day of class, and made the following speech to the teacher—though it really was to the kid: “my child gives you any problems, you smack a good one, and send a note home. I’ll beat the tar out of him…..”

And we don’t want to go back there, tantalizing as the phantasy might be. But the larger question is what we are asking our teachers to do, and with what resources? It used to be that kids were generally better behaved, a teacher had broader range of disciplinary tools, and could teach pretty much how she saw fit. Oh, and that was all she had to do. Now, she has to be a psychologist, social worker, nurse, and then—at the end of a long, long school year—get told that her kids didn’t score the additional five points that an educational psychologist had decided was appropriate.

So what’s happened to our schools since No Child? Well, we’ve certainly created a huge testing industry, which has made some people rich. But what has it taught the kids? How to take tests.

Nor is Obama’s program, Race to the Top, much of a change from No Child. It, too, puts lots of emphasis on testing, with the difference that if the school consistently fails, then bam! It turns into a charter school. And according to Ravitch, Race to the Top puts the blame for poor scores squarely on the teacher.

But is that fair? What does a teacher do when confronted with a hungry, sleepless kid who has spent the night in a homeless shelter? In fact, what correlates with poor performance in school? Poverty.

Right—so how does Ravitch feel about charter schools? Well, she’s not impressed. According to her, charter schools tend to “skim,” selecting the best students, and consigning the learning disabled, non-English speaking, to the public system. And why not? They have a product to turn out—wouldn’t you select the best raw material?

Ravitch suggests two things: first, that we get rid of the high-stakes testing, and second, that we regulate charter schools more, so that they admit everyone, not just the best students.

However well or badly the schools, either charter or public, are doing—I wonder if compared to seventy years ago they are much better. I took a 5^th grade test, recently, from 1930, in which I was asked through what bodies of water I would pass if I went by sea from Malaga, Spain, to the Philippines. Errr—don’t think I got full credit on that one….

It can be argued—is it producing anything of worth to know the answer to the question above? Do kids really need to know this, much less adults? Wouldn’t learning how to read a map be of more use?

Yes and no. I think that there has to be a certain amount of basic information that is drummed into a kid’s head. Anybody should be able to figure out a 15% tip in a restaurant, without having to resort to the calculator on his cell phone.

So it may be the work of childhood to learn where the Philippines are, what the capital city is, and the five main exports. But something happens when a child becomes an adolescent: he or she becomes capable of abstract thought.

Tracy Kidder wrote a book about teaching, in which the teacher struggled to get through her curriculum, and in fact never really made it. At one point, the teacher worries that her students are going to go through life never knowing who won the Civil War….

Here’s what I think: in elementary school, you learn the fact: the North won. In short, you learn answers. In High School, you ask the questions: didn’t the South have the right to secede? To what extent was this was based on a principle: the freeing of slaves? Wasn’t there also an economic basis for this war? And what would have happened if England….

In short, you learn questions.

I’m officially on the fence about charter schools. If they work, I’m for them. Having worked for the largest company in the world, I’m a little uncertain that the corporate model is appropriate for education. The only things I am sure of?

That education of our kids is a lot more important than making money. And that any system—public or private—that fosters inequality because of race or socio-economic status is heinous. 

Two Brothers, Both Out of Line

OK—of course it’s got a liberal slant; it comes from Robert Greenwald, the same guy who brought you “Wal-Mart: the High Cost of Low Price,” which trust me, didn’t provoke cries of joy in some executive offices down there in Bentonville, Arkansas.

But it’s what we have on David and Charles Koch, the oil-baron billionaires who have contributed millions to various causes and groups that in turn have subverted our political process.

That was the nice way of saying it.

The real way?

The Koch brothers have bought the government, and are fucking the environment and us.

You could look at my state of Wisconsin, for example, and the enormous amount of money that the Koch brothers have spent. How much? Well, Tim Phillips, the president of Americans for Prosperity, which the Koch brothers founded and (presumably) still fund, said that the group had contributed 10 million dollars “in 2011 and 2012 on TV ads, direct mail, staff and other expenses to support reforms made by Walker and the Legislature.”

Or look at the recall election in Wisconsin: Scott Walker raised 30 million to retain his seat; his opponent raised a bit under 4 million. Or so said Debbie Wasserman, Democratic National Committee Chairwoman, three days after Walker, a Republican, beat Milwaukee mayor Tom Barrett.

But was it true? A Milwaukee Journal Sentinel article says no—the Koch brothers gave no money to Walker directly. So they’re in the clear, right?

Who knows? Because Americans for Prosperity “as a tax-exempt ‘social welfare’ organization, AFP does not have to disclose its donors, according to the Center for Responsive Politics, a nonprofit in Washington, D.C. that tracks money in politics on the national level.”


The article goes on to say that Americans for Prosperity has received funds from other sources than the Koch brothers, but is that the point? Who cares what rich, libertarian, fat cat puts up the money? The effect has been the same everywhere.

And that is, you say?

Well, first you have to control the dialogue—so you create a playbook. And in Wisconsin, it was all about creating jobs. Excellent—and what was the obstacle to job creation? You guessed it—that stifling state government, with those pesky regulations on pollution, or worker safety, or collective bargaining, or health care or whatever. You just had to get enough people to say the words, “stifling government,” and those good Wisconsin dairy farmers got it into their heads—Scott Walker was going to go right down there to Madison and put that crazy legislature in shape.

Well, he certainly did. You know how that worked out—the first state in the union to allow unions for public workers became the first state in the union to ban them. But was that all? No, because what worked its way into Bill 11, in the year 2011? Well, we have this, on the bottom of page 23….

.                 1  16.896 Sale or contractual operation of state−owned heating, cooling,

.                 2  and power plants. (1) Notwithstanding ss. 13.48 (14) (am) and 16.705 (1), the

.                 3  department may sell any state−owned heating, cooling, and power plant or may

.                 4  contract with a private entity for the operation of any such plant, with or without

.                 5  solicitation of bids, for any amount that the department determines to be in the best

.                 6  interest of the state. Notwithstanding ss. 196.49 and 196.80, no approval or

.                 7  certification of the public service commission is necessary for a public utility to

.                 8  purchase, or contract for the operation of, such a plant, and any such purchase is

.                 9  considered to be in the public interest and to comply with the criteria for certification

.                 10  of a project under s. 196.49 (3) (b).

 “With or without solicitation of bids?”

“No approval or certification of the public service commission?”

OK—let’s be fair; apparently the bill failed. And I have spent thirty minutes looking for the same language in the bill that did pass, Senate Bill 10. And what can I tell you? That, according to Wikipedia, the bill, which was the Wisconsin Budget Repair Bill, and which caused the massive demonstrations in the state capitol, ‘authorizes the Department of Administration to sell state heating plants. The proceeds from any sale, net of remaining debt service, would be deposited in the budget stabilization fund.’[4][8][9]

I should, I really should wade through the Wisconsin Repair Bill to find out—was that language above incorporated into the Repair Bill? But then I wonder—I’ve checked both the Wisconsin State Journal and the Green Bay Press Gazette—and got a nearly identical quote: “The bill authorizes the Department of Administration to sell state heating plants. The proceeds from any sale, net of remaining debt service, would be deposited in the budget stabilization fund.”

What accounts for the curiously similar language? Well, the Press Gazette comes out and says it: information provided from the office of Governor Scott Walker. Who presumably provided the same information to Wikipedia.

Well, guess what? Apparently the provision of selling the state heating and cooling plants didn’t make it through the legislature. And how do I know? Because, according to the Journal Sentinel, the provision is back!

When Republican Gov. Scott Walker set off a political firestorm two years ago by unveiling a bill to impose restrictions on public sector unions, one piece of his proposal didn't become law.

That proposal - to sell off state-owned power and heating plants - could get resurrected this month when the governor announces his proposed 2013-'15 state budget.

Wisconsin Energy Corp. Chairman Gale Klappa has been signaling to company observers for months that the proposal would return. Last week, state Sen. Robert Cowles (R-Allouez) announced during a public hearing, "It's coming back."

Well, I set out to tell you the news—the power of the Koch brothers is sufficiently strong to get PBS to not air a documentary called Citizen Koch. So that means you have to organize a group to show the documentary; that’s a trifle harder than putting your finger on the remote.

It’s now 2:29—I have spent a good four hours digging around, investigating the Kochs. And guess what?

I’ve barely started….

I invite any reader.

http://host.madison.com/news/local/govt-and-politics/highlights-of-gov-walker-s-budget-repair-bill/article_3d93e6aa-363a-11e0-8493-001cc4c002e0.html

http://www.greenbaypressgazette.com/article/20110216/GPG0101/110216041/Read-summary-Gov-Scott-Walker-s-budget-repair-bill

A Genius on Top of the Heap

Why do I never hear anything but Johann Sebastian Bach?

At least, that’s the way I frequently feel when I’ve just heard Bach. And the funny thing is that I never feel that way about any other composer. Yes, I can’t imagine a world without the Beethoven string quartets, and I would miss sorely the Brahms’ symphonies. But if I had to take only one composer to the famous desert island, there’s no question who it would be.

Among musicians, this is hardly a radical statement. In fact, most musicians would say exactly the same, and I’ve never met a musician who didn’t like Bach, or was indifferent to him.

What’s surprising about Bach is how little anybody knows of him, and how, in general, unpleasant a man he must have been. As you can hear in the clip below of John Eliot Gardiner, a clinical psychologist brings in a list of symptoms of a personality disorder, and reads them off: deeply suspicious, feels that others are after him, feels surrounded by enemies, refuses to believe that he may be wrong. That’s Bach completely, says Eliot Gardiner, or words to that effect. And what is the disorder? Paranoid Personality Disorder.

Well, he didn’t have an easy life—he lost both of his parents when he was nine, and had to go off to live with an elder brother. As well, he did poorly in school, and may have been bullied; there was also a cruel schoolteacher. But he pulled himself together, got a scholarship as a chorister, and then set out to study.

Everybody in the family was a musician—in his part of Germany, the name “Bach” was virtually synonymous with “musician.” But in a letter written by his son, Carl Phillip Emanuel Bach, the names of Johan Sebastian Bach’s teachers are written and then drawn through. Did the son remember—his father wanted to appear as if he had had no teachers, as if he sprung fully formed on the world?

And nobody can say that he was a particularly happy or pleasant employee—he was complaining constantly about one thing or another: the quality of the musicians who would play his works, the living conditions, having to teach Latin to the school boys. In his first or second job, in fact, he simply got up and left, walked a couple hundred miles to go see the great Buxtehude, and stayed four months. Oh—and this was without permission.

He composed an insanely hard passage for the bassoon, and then abused the poor bassoonist, calling him the equivalent of a “prick.” So the bassoonist, with friends, jumped Bach, who drew out his rapier in self-defense. It was either this, or a dispute over wages that landed Bach in prison for a month.

Bach had twenty kids—only ten of whom made it to adulthood. And his first wife, to whom he was devoted, died before him. His second wife, Anna Magdalena, was both a musician and bore him 13 children.

So it doesn’t seem that Bach had much pleasure in his life. Yet however difficult an employee he may have been, there’s no question: he delivered the goods. And so frequently, Bach surprises by being “cheeky,” as Eliot Gardiner puts it. Check out the clip below….

But then, Bach can grab your heart and absolutely wring it of every last drop of blood. And nowhere he does he do it more effectively than in the aria Ebarme dich, mein Gott from the St. Matthew Passion. Here, Peter has betrayed Jesus, and the violin and alto trade long, agonizing lines. Here’s the German text with the English translation:
 

Erbarme dich, mein Gott,

Un meiner Zähren willen!

Schaue hier, Herz und Auge

Weint vor dir bitterlich.

Erbarme dich, mein Gott.

Have mercy, my God,

For the sake of my tears!

See here, before you

Heart and eyes weep bitterly.

Have mercy, my God.

Lastly, there’s often a glorious, triumphant quality to Bach—a jubilant quality that no other composer can match. As nowhere does Bach do it better than in one of his last compositions, the Gloria from the B Minor Mass. And the Et in Terra Pax that follows?

Sublime. 

Bach died at the age of 65, probably because of two botched operations to attempt to restore his failing sight. And the question remains—did he know how great he was? Was he aware of what he had accomplished in his life?

This man, surrounded as he thought by his enemies, would be compared to Shakespeare in literature and Newton in physics. And guess what?

It’s hard to believe that anyone will ever topple him from top of the heap.

Why?

It was long, said Susan—over an hour long. But it was worth it, she said; she also said that most of the people who needed to hear it would be turned off in the first ten minutes.

I only made it halfway through….

And no, the problem wasn’t the length; the problem was the speaker, Matthew Vines. He’s 22, good-looking, articulate, thoughtful and…

…heartbreaking.

Why? Well, he has gone on a two-year quest to reconcile his—OK, our—homosexuality with the Bible. So that meant taking two years off from school—which happens to be Harvard—to read the Bible and study what biblical scholars have said, and are saying, about the Bible.

Why do all this? Because he’s a native of Wichita, Kansas, and was raised in a good Christian home. Oh, and apparently nobody was talking about homosexuality—either at home or at church. And there didn’t seem to be many gay people about, from his description; it was quite 1950’s….

OK—that’s the first problem. I am 57, Vines in 22—when I was his age, the year was 1978. Stonewall took place in 1969, and all throughout the ‘70’s the gay movement was emerging and then growing. And you’re telling me there are no gay people in Kansas in 2013? I looked it up—Wichita has 380,000 people, and is the 49^th largest city in the US. And not one of those 380,000 people is gay?

It may be that this is something that we—who have come out to our families and our bosses and to the world in general—need to remember. There are a lot of people who have never met a gay person—though they’ve met many a closeted homosexual. And there are a lot of places where being gay is…well, almost not an option.

And Wichita may be one of those places; here’s what the Wikipedia article said on Vines:

After accepting defeat in his attempt to convince his family's local church leadership that they misunderstood what the Bible states about homosexuality,[4] Matthew and his parents decided to cease their membership. Matthew reportedly is Presbyterian.[5]

Right—so that wouldn’t be a problem for me; I would have given the church “leadership” a pronated middle finger and hopped back to Harvard. But for Vines—and for many, many other gay people raised in very religious households—that wasn’t and isn’t an option. Another thing for jaded, out gay people to remember.

So Vines spent two years reading and writing, and eventually delivered the hour-long talk below. And what’s the focus? Explaining the six references to homosexuality in the Bible, and then arguing that “the Bible never directly addresses and certainly does not condemn, loving, committed same-sex relationships."

There are moving moments in the talk; as you can see in this quote from The New York Times:

“Falling in love is one of the worst things that could happen to a gay person,” Mr. Vines says early in the video, “because you will necessarily be heartbroken, you will have to run away, and that will happen every single time that you come to care about someone else too much.”

Vines then tackles the six references to homosexuality in the Bible—and that’s when it was over for me. Because we start out with the story of Sodom and Gomorrah, and then have this, from Genesis 19, about Lot and the two angels disguised as men:

But he insisted so strongly that they did go with him and entered his house. He prepared a meal for them, baking bread without yeast, and they ate. 4 Before they had gone to bed, all the men from every part of the city of Sodom—both young and old—surrounded the house. 5 They called to Lot, “Where are the men who came to you tonight? Bring them out to us so that we can have sex with them.”

6 Lot went outside to meet them and shut the door behind him 7 and said, “No, my friends. Don’t do this wicked thing. 8 Look, I have two daughters who have never slept with a man. Let me bring them out to you, and you can do what you like with them. But don’t do anything to these men, for they have come under the protection of my roof.”

Vines gets down to work, busy to explain why the passage is not a condemnation of homosexuality. And here I confess—I listened, understood, and accepted the validity of Vines’ argument. I also thought it was completely crazy. Why?

Because in the entire argument, Vines never takes on what seemed to me the most outrageous part of the tale: a father perfectly prepared to throw two of his daughters to the dogs disguised as men, rather than two male strangers. Oh—strangers who are “angels” and are not on record for saying, “what the fuh, dude? You’d do that to your daughters? No friggin’ way!” and turning him to stone. (Right—I just reread the thing, and it’s possible the angels, inside, didn’t hear Lot, outside. But still….)

Look—if we are attempting to derive a moral code from this story, and if this story is indicative of the rest of the damn Bible, we’re screwed. Because as someone put it recently, the God of the Old Testament is in a really terrible mood most of the time.

The New Testament is supposed to be better—but can’t we just say it? The Bible is a morass of conflicting texts and messages written decades after the death of Jesus (in the case of the New Testament). It can be and is cherry-picked to anyone’s liking.

Vines is 22, and has spent two years of his time on this project; he has set up an organization, The Reformation Project, to attempt to change mainstream Christian churches to become more open to gay people. Had he stayed in Harvard, he would probably be graduating in six months. Instead, he has a book coming out early next year, and has created the viral YouTube video below. He’s never had a boyfriend, and wants to save himself sexually for his future husband.

Early in the 2008 Democratic Party campaign, I remember hearing a debate of democratic candidates, all of whom were asked by a member of the audience: Do you believe that every word of the Bible is true? And will you say so publicly?” “

It was delicious; it was ridiculous. The politicians weaseled—nor was it good enough to say that the Bible was the most important, the most meaningful, had been the lifeline when I was sinking in sin and despair…. No, that man wanted to know: WILL YOU TELL THE AMERICAN PEOPLE THAT EVERY WORD IN THE BIBLE IS TRUE!

They caved, of course. They had to. And so all these intelligent, bright guys with their legal degrees from Harvard and Yale looked the man right in the eye and avowed, yes—every word in the Bible was true.

My problem? When are we ever going to stop being nuts? I don’t want to go all Dawkins—there’s a lot of good stuff, like the beatitudes and the whole life of Jesus, in the Bible. But there’s a lot of bunkum, too.

And why do we have to pretend there’s not?

And why does a bright, earnest kid have to take two years out of his life in his twenties, to wrestle with the Bible, to take passages and turn, twist, explain? I looked at him as I would one of my children, and…

…my heart broke.