Dylan Thomas’ “Do Not Go Gentle Into That Good Night” Performed by John Cale (and Produced by Brian Eno)

in Music, Poetry | April 30th, 2014

I’ve only known a few peo­ple of Welsh her­itage, and most of them have, at one time or anoth­er, looked for a way to pay trib­ute to their com­par­a­tive­ly exot­ic ances­tral home­land. Some start going by their unusu­al vow­el-inten­sive mid­dle name; oth­ers sim­ply start read­ing a lot of Dylan Thomas. The Gar­nant-born Vel­vet Under­ground co-founder John Cale, who spoke no lan­guage but Welsh up until mid-child­hood, took it a step fur­ther when he record­ed 1989’s Words for the Dying, his eleventh stu­dio album. Though it con­tains a few short orches­tral and piano pieces, it has more to do with words than music — words writ­ten by Cale sev­en years ear­li­er, dur­ing and in response to the Falk­lands war, that use and re-inter­pret Thomas’ poet­ry, most notably his well-known vil­lanelle “Do not go gen­tle into that good night.”

At the top of the post, you can watch one of Cale’s live ren­di­tions of this piece, per­formed two years before Words for the Dying’s release with the Nether­lands’ Metro­pole Ork­est.

Just above, we have anoth­er, per­formed in 1992 at Brus­sels’ Palais des Beaux Arts. The album enjoyed a re-release that year, and again in 2005, mak­ing for anoth­er musi­cal vic­to­ry not just in the illus­tri­ous and adven­tur­ous career of John Cale, but in the equal­ly illus­tri­ous and adven­tur­ous career of its pro­duc­er, Roxy Music found­ing mem­ber, artist of sound and image, and rock musi­cian-inspir­er Bri­an Eno. Though col­lab­o­ra­tion has famous­ly put Cale and Eno at log­ger­heads, it has also led to this and oth­er cre­ative­ly rich results; their 1990 album Wrong Way Up, whose cov­er depicts the two lit­er­al­ly look­ing dag­gers at one anoth­er, gar­nered strong crit­i­cal respect and spawned Eno’s only Amer­i­can hit, “Been There, Done That.” And as for their team effort on Words for the Dying, need we say more than that it made the year-end top-ten list of no less a lumi­nary of alter­na­tive artis­tic-rock cul­ture than Cale’s one­time Vel­vet Under­ground band­mate Lou Reed?

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Dylan Thomas Recites ‘Do Not Go Gen­tle into That Good Night’ and Oth­er Poems

Antho­ny Hop­kins Reads ‘Do Not Go Gen­tle into That Good Night’

Dylan Thomas Sketch­es a Car­i­ca­ture of a Drunk­en Dylan Thomas

Col­in Mar­shall hosts and pro­duces Note­book on Cities and Cul­ture and writes essays on cities, lan­guage, Asia, and men’s style. He’s at work on a book about Los Ange­les, A Los Ange­les Primer. Fol­low him on Twit­ter at @colinmarshall or on Face­book.

Listen to “Brian Eno Day,” a 12-Hour Radio Show Spent With Eno & His Music (Recorded in 1988)

in Art, Music, Radio | April 29th, 2014

In ear­ly 1988, visu­al artist, rock pro­duc­er, and “non-musi­cian” musi­cian Bri­an Eno came to San Fran­cis­co. He’d made the trip to put togeth­er “Lat­est Flames,” a “sound and light instal­la­tion” using his own music and “tele­vi­sion as a radi­ant light source” to “cre­ate a con­tem­pla­tive envi­ron­ment.”  He cre­at­ed this con­tem­pla­tive envi­ron­ment at the Explorato­ri­um, a one-of‑a kind muse­um of “sci­ence, art, and human per­cep­tion” I remem­ber fond­ly from my own child­hood in the Bay Area (though alas, I did­n’t start going until just after “Lat­est Flames” closed). Dur­ing that vis­it, he spoke on Berke­ley’s KPFA-FM about his great admi­ra­tion for the very exis­tence of the Explorato­ri­um, which he thinks could nev­er have hap­pened in his native Eng­land, “too fussy” a coun­try to accept such an exper­i­men­tal insti­tu­tion. He also empha­sizes how much grat­i­tude he thinks Amer­i­cans should show for their pub­lic radio sta­tions like KPFA, which, in con­trast to the admit­ted­ly “great radio”-producing broad­cast­ers of the U.K., work more loose­ly, with greater cre­ative free­dom not sched­uled on “five-year plans.” It sure­ly did­n’t damp­en Eno’s appre­ci­a­tion for KPFA that he appeared dur­ing the sta­tion’s “Bri­an Eno Day,” a twelve-hour marathon of mate­r­i­al relat­ed to his work: music, music analy­sis, inter­views new and old, and even lis­ten­er calls.

This hap­pened dur­ing KPFA’s reg­u­lar pledge dri­ve, and as every Amer­i­can pub­lic radio lis­ten­er knows, pledge dri­ves hold out the promise of desir­able thank-you gifts to donat­ing callers. In this case, these entice­ments includ­ed items signed right there in the stu­dio, between turns at the micro­phone answer­ing ques­tions and chat­ting with com­pos­er-host Charles Amirkhan­ian, by Eno him­self. The auto­graphed Oblique Strate­gies decks run out first, and even after that peo­ple still call in with ques­tions about their ori­gin, their best use, and their future avail­abil­i­ty. They also (and Amirkhan­ian, and ambi­ent music expert Stephen Hill) have much else to ask besides, fill­ing the hours — those not occu­pied by pledge pitch­es, records Eno pro­duced, or the full length of his own Thurs­day After­noon album — with talk of the mean­ing of his inscrutable lyrics, the record­ing stu­dio as musi­cal instru­ment, the mak­ing of “Lat­est Flames,” his impa­tience with com­put­ers and syn­the­siz­ers, his rec­om­mend­ed Eng­lish art schools, and how ambi­ent music dif­fers from new age “muzak.” A fan could ask for no rich­er a lis­ten­ing expe­ri­ence, even 26 years after it first aired — and few more enter­tain­ing lis­ten­ing expe­ri­ences than, toward the end of this long Bri­an Eno day, the man of the hour’s (or rather, of the twelve hours’) deci­sion to delib­er­ate­ly answer each and every remain­ing lis­ten­er ques­tion with a lie. You can stream all of KPFA’s 1988 Bri­an Eno Day above. It’s also bro­ken into nine the­mat­ic seg­ments at the Inter­net Archive.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

The Genius of Bri­an Eno On Dis­play in 80 Minute Q&A: Talks Art, iPad Apps, ABBA, & More

Bri­an Eno Once Com­posed Music for Win­dows 95; Now He Lets You Cre­ate Music with an iPad App

Bri­an Eno on Cre­at­ing Music and Art As Imag­i­nary Land­scapes (1989)

Watch Bri­an Eno’s “Video Paint­ings,” Where 1980s TV Tech­nol­o­gy Meets Visu­al Art

Jump Start Your Cre­ative Process with Bri­an Eno’s “Oblique Strate­gies”

Col­in Mar­shall hosts and pro­duces Note­book on Cities and Cul­ture and writes essays on cities, lan­guage, Asia, and men’s style. He’s at work on a book about Los Ange­les, A Los Ange­les Primer. Fol­low him on Twit­ter at @colinmarshall or on Face­book.

Animated Life Lesson from Auschwitz: Make Sure All of Your Words Could Be Your Very Last

in Life | April 29th, 2014

In 2008 com­pos­er Ben­jamin Zan­der gave a TED Talk called “The Trans­for­ma­tive Pow­er of Clas­si­cal Music”. Despite the title, the talk end­ed with some thoughts on the pow­er of words. Year lat­er, those poignant remarks have been ani­mat­ed by See­saw Stu­dios. Just a lit­tle some­thing to con­tem­plate as you start your day.

J.R.R. Tolkien Snubs a German Publisher Asking for Proof of His “Aryan Descent” (1938)

in History, Literature | April 28th, 2014

As you’d expect from a man who had to cre­ate, in painstak­ing detail, all the races that pop­u­late Mid­dle-Earth, J.R.R. Tolkien had lit­tle time for sim­ple racism. He had espe­cial­ly lit­tle time for the high­est-pro­file sim­ple racism of his day, the wave of anti-Jew­ish sen­ti­ment on which Adolf Hitler and the Nazi par­ty rode straight into the Sec­ond World War. His first nov­el The Hob­bit, pre­de­ces­sor to the Lord of the Rings tril­o­gy, first appeared in 1937, a time when the sit­u­a­tion in Europe had turned omi­nous indeed, and would get far ugli­er still. It did­n’t take long after the book’s ini­tial suc­cess for Berlin pub­lish­er Rüt­ten & Loen­ing to express their inter­est in putting out a Ger­man edi­tion, but first — in obser­vance, no doubt, of the Third Reich’s dic­tates — they asked for proof of Tolkien’s “Aryan descent.” The author draft­ed two replies, the less civ­il of which reads as fol­lows:

25 July 1938
20 North­moor Road, Oxford 

Dear Sirs,

Thank you for your let­ter. I regret that I am not clear as to what you intend by arisch. I am not of Aryan extrac­tion: that is Indo-Iran­ian; as far as I am aware none of my ances­tors spoke Hin­dus­tani, Per­sian, Gyp­sy, or any relat­ed dialects. But if I am to under­stand that you are enquir­ing whether I am of Jew­ish ori­gin, I can only reply that I regret that I appear to have no ances­tors of that gift­ed peo­ple. My great-great-grand­fa­ther came to Eng­land in the eigh­teenth cen­tu­ry from Ger­many: the main part of my descent is there­fore pure­ly Eng­lish, and I am an Eng­lish sub­ject — which should be suf­fi­cient. I have been accus­tomed, nonethe­less, to regard my Ger­man name with pride, and con­tin­ued to do so through­out the peri­od of the late regret­table war, in which I served in the Eng­lish army. I can­not, how­ev­er, for­bear to com­ment that if imper­ti­nent and irrel­e­vant inquiries of this sort are to become the rule in mat­ters of lit­er­a­ture, then the time is not far dis­tant when a Ger­man name will no longer be a source of pride.

Your enquiry is doubt­less made in order to com­ply with the laws of your own coun­try, but that this should be held to apply to the sub­jects of anoth­er state would be improp­er, even if it had (as it has not) any bear­ing what­so­ev­er on the mer­its of my work or its sus­tain­abil­i­ty for pub­li­ca­tion, of which you appear to have sat­is­fied your­selves with­out ref­er­ence to my Abstam­mung.

I trust you will find this reply sat­is­fac­to­ry, and 

remain yours faith­ful­ly,

J. R. R. Tolkien

“I have in this war a burn­ing pri­vate grudge  against that rud­dy lit­tle igno­ra­mus Adolf Hitler,” Tolkien wrote to his son Michael three years lat­er, by which time the war had reached a new height. “Ruin­ing, per­vert­ing, mis­ap­ply­ing, and mak­ing for ever accursed, that noble north­ern spir­it, a supreme con­tri­bu­tion to Europe, which I have ever loved, and tried to present in its true light.”

He had already faced Ger­man forces in com­bat dur­ing his ser­vice in World War I, and had almost became one of World War II’s code­break­ers after the British For­eign Office’s cryp­to­graph­ic depart­ment brought the pos­si­bil­i­ty to him in ear­ly 1939. He did not, in the event, par­tic­i­pate direct­ly in the con­flict, but he did leave behind an uncom­mon­ly elo­quent paper trail doc­u­ment­ing his stance of unam­bigu­ous antipa­thy for the Nazis and their ide­ol­o­gy.

For more such fas­ci­nat­ing per­spec­tives vouch­safed to his­to­ry through the mail, do have a look at Let­ters of Note: An Eclec­tic Col­lec­tion of Cor­re­spon­dence Deserv­ing of a Wider Audi­ence, the brand new book from the site of the same name. Tolkien’s let­ter above comes from it, as do many of the illu­mi­nat­ing mis­sives we’ve fea­tured here before — and, with­out a doubt, those we’ll con­tin­ue to fea­ture in the future.

Want to down­load a Tolkien audio book for free? Start a 30-day free tri­al with Audible.com and you can down­load one of his major works in unabridged for­mat. You can keep the book regard­less of whether you con­tin­ue with their great pro­gram or not. There are no strings attached.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

“The Tolkien Pro­fes­sor” Presents Three Free Cours­es on The Lord of the Rings

Dis­cov­er J.R.R. Tolkien’s Per­son­al Book Cov­er Designs for The Lord of the Rings Tril­o­gy

C.S. Lewis’ Pre­scient 1937 Review of The Hob­bit by J.R.R. Tolkien: It “May Well Prove a Clas­sic”

Dis­cov­er J.R.R. Tolkien’s Per­son­al Book Cov­er Designs for The Lord of the Rings Tril­o­gy

Col­in Mar­shall hosts and pro­duces Note­book on Cities and Cul­ture and writes essays on cities, lan­guage, Asia, and men’s style. He’s at work on a book about Los Ange­les, A Los Ange­les Primer. Fol­low him on Twit­ter at @colinmarshall or on Face­book.

Meet Carol Kaye, the Unsung Bassist Behind Your Favorite 60s Hits

in K-12, Music | April 28th, 2014

Car­ol Kaye: you may not rec­og­nize her name but chances are you’re famil­iar with her work.

Now 81, the lady has laid down some deeply icon­ic bass tracks in a career span­ning 55 years and some­thing in the neigh­bor­hood of 10,000 record­ing ses­sions.

Joe Cock­er’s “Feel­in’ Alright”?

The Beach Boys hits “Help Me, Rhon­da,” “Sloop John B,” and “Cal­i­for­nia Girls.” 

The theme song to The Brady Bunch?

Nan­cy Sina­tra’s “These Boots Are Made for Walkin’ ”?!?

Holy cow, talk about some­thing to tell the grand­kids.

Her inter­view for a nev­er com­plet­ed doc­u­men­tary above left me with none of the melan­choly I felt on behalf of the under-rec­og­nized back up singers pop­u­lat­ing the recent film Twen­ty Feet from Star­dom. This may be due to some rock and roll gen­der inequal­i­ty. The girls far out­num­ber the boys in the ranks of back­ing vocals, where looks play an unde­ni­able part, at least when the band’s out on the road. Kaye’s con­tri­bu­tions occurred in the record­ing stu­dio. She appears plen­ty con­tent to have num­bered among an elite team of hard work­ing, clean liv­ing Los Ange­les ses­sion musi­cians.

Unsur­pris­ing­ly, she was one of a very few women in the field, though girls, take note: her web­site has 115 play­ing tips for fledg­ling bass play­ers. Boys are free to take note too…

Now that you’ve “dis­cov­ered” this leg­end, may we sug­gest set­ting an hour aside to get to know her bet­ter in the longer inter­view below? Also make sure you see our relat­ed post: 7 Female Bass Play­ers Who Helped Shape Mod­ern Music: Kim Gor­don, Tina Wey­mouth, Kim Deal & More

Relat­ed Con­tent:

7 Female Bass Play­ers Who Helped Shape Mod­ern Music: Kim Gor­don, Tina Wey­mouth, Kim Deal & More

The Neu­ro­science of Bass: New Study Explains Why Bass Instru­ments Are Fun­da­men­tal to Music

The Sto­ry of the Bass: New Video Gives Us 500 Years of Music His­to­ry in 8 Min­utes

Paul McCart­ney Offers a Short Tuto­r­i­al on How to Play the Bass Gui­tar

Ayun Hal­l­i­day is the author of sev­en books, and cre­ator of the award win­ning East Vil­lage Inky zine. Fol­low her @AyunHalliday

German String Quartet Performs Vivaldi & Mozart in Delightfully Comical & Acrobatic Routine

in Music | April 28th, 2014

Mak­ing the rounds on the inter­net is this per­for­mance by the Ger­man string quar­tet Salut Salon. Fea­tur­ing Ange­li­ka Bach­mann (vio­lin), Iris Siegfried (vio­lin and vocals), Anne-Moni­ka von Twar­dows­ki (piano) and Son­ja Lena Schmid (cel­lo), the quar­tet knows “bet­ter than any oth­er cham­ber music ensem­ble how to seduce their audi­ence with pas­sion­ate vir­tu­os­i­ty, instru­men­tal acro­bat­ics, charm and a great sense of fun.” Above you can get your week start­ed by watch­ing them per­form a mash-up of Vival­di, Mozart, and Kurt Weill. And to keep your day going, you can always watch 2Cellos bang­ing out a ver­sion of Guns N’ Ros­es “Wel­come to the Jun­gle” and this 14-year-old girl play­ing a blis­ter­ing heavy met­al per­for­mance of Vival­di. Enjoy.

If you would like to sup­port the mis­sion of Open Cul­ture, con­sid­er mak­ing a dona­tion to our site. It’s hard to rely 100% on ads, and your con­tri­bu­tions will help us con­tin­ue pro­vid­ing the best free cul­tur­al and edu­ca­tion­al mate­ri­als to learn­ers every­where. You can con­tribute through Pay­Pal, Patre­on, and Ven­mo (@openculture). Thanks!

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Down­load Free Music from 150+ Clas­si­cal Com­posers, Cour­tesy of Musopen.org

A Big Bach Down­load: All of Bach’s Organ Works for Free

The Open Gold­berg Vari­a­tions: J.S. Bach’s Mas­ter­piece Free to Down­load

The World Con­cert Hall: Lis­ten To The Best Live Clas­si­cal Music Con­certs for Free

Piketty’s Capital in a Nutshell

in Books, Economics | April 27th, 2014

It’s hard to fath­om, but some­how Thomas Piket­ty’s 696-page book Cap­i­tal in the Twen­ty-First Cen­tu­ry is No. 1 on the Ama­zon best­seller list. It’s a seri­ous eco­nom­ics book that takes a long, hard look at the dynam­ics affect­ing the dis­tri­b­u­tion of cap­i­tal, the con­cen­tra­tion of wealth, and the long-term evo­lu­tion of inequal­i­ty in advanced economies. Not exact­ly light read­ing. And yet it’s out­selling Michael Lewis’ Flash Boys: A Wall Street Revolt (a lighter, more col­or­ful study of the inequal­i­ties in the finan­cial sys­tem); Don­na Tart­t’s The Goldfinch (the new­ly-named win­ner of the Pulitzer Prize in Fic­tion); and even The Lit­tle Gold­en Book ver­sion of Dis­ney’s Frozen.

So what’s the book all about? One way to answer that ques­tion is to read the intro­duc­tion to Cap­i­tal, which you can find on the Har­vard Uni­ver­si­ty Press web­site. There Piket­ty, a pro­fes­sor at the Paris School of Eco­nom­ics, gets right into the heart of the ques­tions he’s  try­ing to answer in Cap­i­tal:

The dis­tri­b­u­tion of wealth is one of today’s most wide­ly dis­cussed and con­tro­ver­sial issues. But what do we real­ly know about its evo­lu­tion over the long term? Do the dynam­ics of pri­vate cap­i­tal accu­mu­la­tion inevitably lead to the con­cen­tra­tion of wealth in ever few­er hands, as Karl Marx believed in the nine­teenth cen­tu­ry? Or do the bal­anc­ing forces of growth, com­pe­ti­tion, and tech­no­log­i­cal progress lead in lat­er stages of devel­op­ment to reduced inequal­i­ty and greater har­mo­ny among the class­es, as Simon Kuznets thought in the twen­ti­eth cen­tu­ry? What do we real­ly know about how wealth and income have evolved since the eigh­teenth cen­tu­ry, and what lessons can we derive from that knowl­edge for the cen­tu­ry now under way?

As for the answers, those are pret­ty well explained in a digest by the Har­vard Busi­ness Review. Sum­ma­riz­ing the book’s argu­ment, HBR writes:

Cap­i­tal (which by Piketty’s def­i­n­i­tion is pret­ty much the same thing as wealth) has tend­ed over time to grow faster than the over­all econ­o­my. Income from cap­i­tal is invari­ably much less even­ly dis­trib­uted than labor income. Togeth­er these amount to a pow­er­ful force for increas­ing inequal­i­ty. Piket­ty doesn’t take things as far as Marx, who saw capital’s growth even­tu­al­ly stran­gling the econ­o­my and bring­ing on its own col­lapse, and he’s with­er­ing­ly dis­dain­ful of Marx’s data-col­lec­tion tech­niques. But his real beef is with the main­stream eco­nom­ic teach­ings that more cap­i­tal and low­er tax­es on cap­i­tal bring faster growth and high­er wages, and that eco­nom­ic dynamism will auto­mat­i­cal­ly keep inequal­i­ty at bay. Over the two-plus cen­turies for which good records exist, the only major decline in capital’s eco­nom­ic share and in eco­nom­ic inequal­i­ty was the result of World Wars I and II, which destroyed lots of cap­i­tal and brought much high­er tax­es in the U.S. and Europe. This peri­od of cap­i­tal destruc­tion was fol­lowed by a spec­tac­u­lar run of eco­nom­ic growth. Now, after decades of peace, slow­ing growth, and declin­ing tax rates, cap­i­tal and inequal­i­ty are on the rise all over the devel­oped world, and it’s not clear what if any­thing will alter that tra­jec­to­ry in the decades to come.

As for how this impacts life in the U.S., HBR sum­ma­rizes Piket­ty’s argu­ment as fol­lows:

On this side of the Atlantic, wealth and income were less con­cen­trat­ed in the 19th cen­tu­ry than in Europe. After a spike in top incomes that topped out in the late 1920s, the income dis­tri­b­u­tion flat­tened out here again, albeit in less dra­mat­ic fash­ion than in Europe. Since the 1970s, though, the U.S. has seen a sharp and unpar­al­leled increase in the per­cent­age of income going to the top 1% and espe­cial­ly 0.1%. This has not been dri­ven by the cap­i­tal and inher­i­tance dynam­ics at the heart of Piketty’s sto­ry. He attrib­ut­es it instead to the rise of what he calls “super­man­agers.” Piket­ty cites recent research that shows man­agers and finan­cial pro­fes­sion­als mak­ing up 60% of the top 0.1% of the income dis­tri­b­u­tion in the U.S., and pro­pos­es that their sky­rock­et­ing pay is main­ly the prod­uct of sharp declines in top mar­gin­al tax rates that made it worth man­agers’ while to bar­gain hard­er for rais­es. This isn’t the only expla­na­tion avail­able, and Piketty’s dis­cus­sion of U.S. inequal­i­ty doesn’t car­ry the same his­tor­i­cal author­i­ty as oth­er parts of the book. But it sure­ly is inter­est­ing that, as he and sev­er­al co-authors report in a new arti­cle in the Amer­i­can Eco­nom­ic Jour­nal: Eco­nom­ic Pol­i­cy, the rise in the top-per­centile income share in 13 coun­tries was almost per­fect­ly cor­re­lat­ed with declines in top mar­gin­al tax rates in those coun­tries. It’s also inter­est­ing that this huge rise in rel­a­tive income inequal­i­ty has brought no dis­cernible eco­nom­ic ben­e­fit. Yes, the U.S. econ­o­my has grown a bit faster than those of oth­er devel­oped economies, but that’s pure­ly because of pop­u­la­tion growth. Per-capi­ta eco­nom­ic growth has been almost iden­ti­cal in the U.S. and West­ern Europe since 1980, and because of the skew towards the top here, U.S. medi­an income has actu­al­ly lost ground rel­a­tive to oth­er nations.

But why let HBR give you insight into Piket­ty’s think­ing when Piket­ty can do it him­self. Below we have a talk he gave at the Eco­nom­ic Pol­i­cy Insti­tute ear­li­er this month. He starts speak­ing at the 5:30 mark.

And final­ly Paul Krug­man’s review in the New York Review of Books — “We’re in a New Gild­ed Age” — is worth a read.

 Relat­ed Con­tent:

Free Eco­nom­ics Cours­es Online

Read­ing Marx’s Cap­i­tal with David Har­vey (Free Online Course)

The His­to­ry of Eco­nom­ics & Eco­nom­ic The­o­ry Explained with Comics, Start­ing with Adam Smith

60-Sec­ond Adven­tures in Eco­nom­ics: An Ani­mat­ed Intro to The Invis­i­ble Hand and Oth­er Eco­nom­ic Ideas

Watch Glenn Gould Perform His Last Great Studio Recording of Bach’s Goldberg Variations (1981)

in Music | April 26th, 2014

“The best rea­son to hate Bach’s Gold­berg Vari­a­tions,” writes pianist Jere­my Denk, “is that every­body loves them.” As part of Denk’s icon­o­clas­tic chal­lenge to this uni­ver­sal love, he cites anoth­er rea­son: “every­one asks you all the time which of the two Glenn Gould record­ings you pre­fer.” With­out a doubt the most cel­e­brat­ed pianist of the twen­ti­eth cen­tu­ry, and per­haps the great­est inter­preter of Bach’s key­board com­po­si­tions, the eccen­tric genius Gould famous­ly opened and closed his career with the Gold­berg Vari­a­tions, Bach’s “annoy­ing­ly unim­peach­able” (in Denk’s words) Baroque piece, writ­ten orig­i­nal­ly for the harp­si­chord. Gould made his first record­ing of the piece in 1955, and it imme­di­ate­ly launched him to star­dom, becom­ing “what may well be the best known of all piano record­ings,” Col­in Flem­ing tells us, with its “mas­ter­ful show­ing of com­mand, bal­ance, [and] vig­or.”

Twen­ty-six years lat­er, Gould made his sec­ond record­ing, in 1981, a year before his untime­ly death at the age of 50. Gould had already retired from pub­lic per­for­mance 18 years ear­li­er, due in part to his stage fright, but also to a devo­tion to stu­dio record­ing tech­niques that allowed him total con­trol over his musi­cal out­put. The filmed record­ing ses­sion of Gould’s sec­ond Vari­a­tions, above, opens with a shot not of the pianist and his instru­ment, but of the bank of ana­logue dials and switch­es inside the studio’s con­trol booth. As the cam­era pans over and push­es in to Gould him­self at the piano, we hear the famil­iar melody of the Gold­berg aria, slowed to a snail’s pace. Gould sits in his famil­iar hunched-over pos­ture, look­ing aged beyond his years, his body sway­ing over the keys in an expres­sive gen­u­flec­tion to the piece that made him more famous—and more controversial—than per­haps any oth­er clas­si­cal musi­cian.

The shift in Gould’s style between the two Gold­berg record­ings is remark­able. Revis­it­ing Gould’s lega­cy thir­ty years after his death, pianist Steven Osbourne writes in The Guardian of the 1981 per­for­mance above:

The con­tra­pun­tal detail he finds in every bar is amaz­ing; no one has equalled the way he plays the aria. But even more extra­or­di­nary is the line he cre­ates that con­nects the whole piece. I’m not sure I have heard any­thing where every sin­gle note is placed so care­ful­ly, is so care­ful­ly thought about. For some peo­ple, it’s too con­trolled, but I don’t find that.

“And yet,” says Osbourne, “I pre­fer his 1955 record­ing of the piece. I can’t think of a sin­gle artist who made such a pro­found change in their approach to a piece through­out their whole career.” Cer­tain­ly Gould’s first Gold­berg recording—fueled, as the lin­er notes inform us, by five bot­tles of pills, “all dif­fer­ent col­ors and prescriptions”—stands as per­haps the most idio­syn­crat­ic, and mem­o­rable, ren­der­ing of Bach’s com­po­si­tion. But while the first per­for­mance has “speed and light­ness going for it,” writes Erik Tarloff in Slate, the sec­ond has “an autum­nal grace and the mar­velous clar­i­ty Gould seems to priv­i­lege above all oth­er qual­i­ties.” Luck­i­ly for us, Gould, who “nev­er record­ed the same piece twice,” but for this “sig­nif­i­cant excep­tion,” left us these two career book­ends to debate, and enjoy, end­less­ly.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Glenn Gould Explains the Genius of Johann Sebas­t­ian Bach (1962)

Glenn Gould Offers a Strik­ing­ly Uncon­ven­tion­al Inter­pre­ta­tion of 1806 Beethoven Com­po­si­tion

The Art of Fugue: Gould Plays Bach

Josh Jones is a writer and musi­cian based in Durham, NC. Fol­low him at @jdmagness.

I F***ing Love Science: The New, Uncensored Song by Hank Green

in Science | April 26th, 2014

If you’re a reg­u­lar OC read­er, you’re famil­iar with John Green, the best­selling author who has pro­duced a series of edu­ca­tion­al videos — most notably, A Crash Course in World His­to­ry, A Crash Course on Lit­er­a­ture, and the new PBS video series, The Art Assign­ment. John often pro­duces videos with his broth­er Hank — a musi­cian, bio­chemist and vlog­ger — who put his tal­ents togeth­er to pro­duce this new song, “I F***ing Love Sci­ence.” Be warned, the ver­sion above is uncen­sored. As are the lyrics, found below the jump. A clean, tame, cen­sored ver­sion of the song can be found here.

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The Importance of Kindness: An Animation of George Saunders’ Touching Graduation Speech

in Graduation Speech, Life, Literature | April 25th, 2014

Ever since he was first pub­lished in The New York­er back in 1992, George Saun­ders has been craft­ing a string of bril­liant short sto­ries that have rein­vent­ed the form. His sto­ries are dark, fun­ny, and satir­i­cal that then turn on a dime and become sur­pris­ing­ly mov­ing. And the mad­den­ing thing about him is that he makes such tonal dex­ter­i­ty look easy. Over the course of his career, he has won piles of awards includ­ing a MacArthur “Genius” Fel­low­ship in 2006. In 2013, his col­lec­tion of short sto­ries The Tenth of Decem­ber was select­ed by the New York Times as one of the best books of the year. You can read 10 sto­ries by Saun­ders free online here.

Last year, Saun­ders deliv­ered the con­vo­ca­tion speech for Syra­cuse Uni­ver­si­ty where he teach­es writ­ing. Most such speech­es are dull and for­get­table or, as was the case when Ross Per­ot spoke at my grad­u­a­tion, inco­her­ent and churl­ish. Saunders’s speech, how­ev­er, was some­thing dif­fer­ent — a qui­et, self-effac­ing plea for empa­thy. When it was reprint­ed by the New York Times last July, the speech seem­ing­ly popped up on every third person’s Face­book feed.

Brook­lyn-based group Seri­ous Lunch has cre­at­ed an ani­mat­ed ver­sion of Saun­ders’ speech, voiced by the author him­self. You can watch it above and read along below. You’ll prob­a­bly want to call your mom or help an old lady across the street after­ward.

I’d say, as a goal in life, you could do worse than try to be kinder.

In sev­enth grade, this new kid joined our class. In the inter­est of con­fi­den­tial­i­ty, her name will be “ELLEN.” ELLEN was small, shy. She wore these blue cat’s‑eye glass­es that, at the time, only old ladies wore. When ner­vous, which was pret­ty much always, she had a habit of tak­ing a strand of hair into her mouth and chew­ing on it.

So she came to our school and our neigh­bor­hood, and was most­ly ignored, occa­sion­al­ly teased (“Your hair taste good?” – that sort of thing). I could see this hurt her. I still remem­ber the way she’d look after such an insult: eyes cast down, a lit­tle gut-kicked, as if, hav­ing just been remind­ed of her place in things, she was try­ing, as much as pos­si­ble, to dis­ap­pear. After awhile she’d drift away, hair-strand still in her mouth.

Some­times I’d see her hang­ing around alone in her front yard, as if afraid to leave it.
And then – they moved. That was it. One day she was there, next day she wasn’t.

End of sto­ry.

Now, why do I regret that? Why, forty-two years lat­er, am I still think­ing about it? Rel­a­tive to most of the oth­er kids, I was actu­al­ly pret­ty nice to her. I nev­er said an unkind word to her. In fact, I some­times even (mild­ly) defend­ed her. But still, it both­ers me.

What I regret most in my life are fail­ures of kind­ness.

Those moments when anoth­er human being was there, in front of me, suf­fer­ing, and I responded…sensibly. Reserved­ly. Mild­ly.

Or, to look at it from the oth­er end of the tele­scope: Who, in your life, do you remem­ber most fond­ly, with the most unde­ni­able feel­ings of warmth?
Those who were kind­est to you, I bet.

But kind­ness, it turns out, is hard — it starts out all rain­bows and pup­py dogs, and expands to include … well, every­thing.

You can read Saunders’s entire speech here.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

George Saun­ders Extols the Virtues of Kind­ness in 2013 Speech to Syra­cuse Uni­ver­si­ty Grads

10 Free Sto­ries by George Saun­ders, Author of Tenth of Decem­ber, “The Best Book You’ll Read This Year”

Oprah Winfrey’s Har­vard Com­mence­ment Speech: Fail­ure is Just Part of Mov­ing Through Life

David Byrne’s Grad­u­a­tion Speech Offers Trou­bling and Encour­ag­ing Advice for Stu­dents in the Arts

Jonathan Crow is a Los Ange­les-based writer and film­mak­er whose work has appeared in Yahoo!, The Hol­ly­wood Reporter, and oth­er pub­li­ca­tions. You can fol­low him at @jonccrow.