Mozart | The Casual Blog

March 12, 2017

A family visit, defending against motivated reasoning, Mozart’s Figaro, and swimming

Sally’s flowers, with snow falling on Sunday morning

The weather in Raleigh was sunny and mild this week, and the trees started to leaf in. I was looking forward to some outdoor activities for the weekend, but the temperature dropped into the thirties on Saturday, and on Sunday there was light snow.

Jocelyn came down from New York to visit us this weekend, along with her friend Kyle. Gabe and our granddog, Mowgli, also stopped by. We had some of Sally’s good cooking and some lively conversation. Among other topics, we considered what’s happening to journalism, including fake news, imaginary fake news, and partisan attacks on media, and how it is possible to be both highly intelligent and deeply deluded.

Jocelyn, ready for dinner

I told them about a podcast by Julia Galef called Rationally Speaking in which Galef talks with intellectuals about their ideas. She likes a good argument, and keeps things popping along. I find her openness to new ideas and curiosity to be really cheering and inspiring.

Kyle, ready for dinner

This week I came upon a talk Galef did last year at a Tedx conference titled Why You Think You’re Right, Even When You’re Wrong, in which she gives a good way of thinking about motivated reasoning and how to do less of it. She analogizes different thought habits to two types of army soldiers: regular fighters and scouts.

She summed up the idea here:

Our judgment is strongly influenced, unconsciously, by which side we want to win. And this is ubiquitous. This shapes how we think about our health, our relationships, how we decide how to vote, what we consider fair or ethical. What’s most scary to me about motivated reasoning or soldier mindset, is how unconscious it is. We can think we’re being objective and fair-minded and still wind up ruining the life of an innocent man. …

So . . . what I call “scout mindset” [is] the drive not to make one idea win or another lose, but just to see what’s really there as honestly and accurately as you can, even if it’s not pretty or convenient or pleasant. This mindset is what I’m personally passionate about. And I’ve spent the last few years examining and trying to figure out what causes scout mindset. Why are some people, sometimes at least, able to cut through their own prejudices and biases and motivations and just try to see the facts and the evidence as objectively as they can?

And the answer is emotional. So, just as soldier mindset is rooted in emotions like defensiveness or tribalism, scout mindset is, too. It’s just rooted in different emotions.For example, scouts are curious. They’re more likely to say they feel pleasure when they learn new information or an itch to solve a puzzle. They’re more likely to feel intrigued when they encounter something that contradicts their expectations. Scouts also have different values. They’re more likely to say they think it’s virtuous to test your own beliefs,and they’re less likely to say that someone who changes his mind seems weak. And above all, scouts are grounded, which means their self-worth as a person isn’t tied to how right or wrong they are about any particular topic. So they can believe that capital punishment works. If studies come out showing that it doesn’t, they can say, “Huh. Looks like I might be wrong. Doesn’t mean I’m bad or stupid.”

Galef comes at some of these same issues from a different direction in a short (5:41) YouTube talk titled How to Want to Change Your Mind. Here again, she proposes looking at reasoning as having an emotional component that needs to be addressed in the interest of better thinking. We tend to get defensive and closed off when we feel threatened, and Galef has some helpful tips for counteracting that tendency. For example, she suggests picturing your opinion as separate from your self. She also notes that it’s possible to get comfortable and even pleased to discover your belief is mistaken — because you’ve just gotten wiser!

Gabe with beer

The Marriage of Figaro

Last week we saw and heard The Marriage of Figaro by W.A. Mozart and G. de Ponti in a performance by the N.C. Opera. It was sublime. The music all by itself is brilliant, well worth listening to even without benefit of story. The story is essentially a comedy of love, but a unique and strange one — startlingly dark and cynical by moments, but also poignant by moments.

The leads all sang beautifully, and just as important, created believably human characters with their acting. Jennifer Cherrest as Susanna brought wry saucy humor along with her tonal strength and range. She had good chemistry with Figaro, her betrothed, the very fine Tyler Simpson. Other standouts included D’Ana Lombard as Countess Almaviva, who had a lovely voice and musicality. Cherubino (Jennifer Panara) was wonderfully comic.

Swimming again

Earlier in the week, I added back some lap swimming to my exercise regime. I’d gotten out of the habit when the Pullen Park pool closed for repairs and then quit having morning hours. The gym I joined earlier this year has a small lap pool, but I found it hard to get motivated to head toward the water in the early hours, when it’s cold and dark. But once back in, I quickly remembered what I like about swimming. The water feels good on your skin. There’s a rhythm to it, and quietness.

Our granddog, Mowgli

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January 8, 2017

Ice, dark matter, Photoshop, AlphaGo, and Haydn

The forecast on Friday called for major snow, but in downtown Raleigh we only got a couple of inches. Still, the roads got very icy and temperatures went down into the teens. We stayed home, cozy and warm, and caught up on backlogged magazines and Netflix.

One of the New Year’s thoughts I saw recently was a tough one: a wish for lots of failure in 2017. The idea is, if you’re operating outside your comfort zone and trying new things, you’ll be doing some stumbling and falling. Failure doesn’t usually feel good, but it can be a sign that you’re going somewhere. On the other hand, if you aren’t having any failures, either you’re the luckiest human in history or you’re stuck.

One way to assure a level of failure is to try keeping up with contemporary physics. I’d thought it was reasonably well settled that a quarter or so of the universe was made up of so-far undetected dark matter. But the BBC reported last week that after recent failures of big experiments to verify the theory, some reputable scientists are reconsidering. It sometimes seems that there is so much human knowledge you could never get to the bottom of it, but there is still so much we do not understand.

Anyhow, I’m looking forward to plenty of failures in the coming year. In photography, I’ve been struggling to get a thorough working knowledge of the relevant tools in Adobe Lightroom and Photoshop. They’re wonderful, but far from intuitive, and at times intensely frustrating.

This week I made up my mind to get a level of competence at using Photoshop layers to combine images. Being iced in gave me a chance to practice, and I discovered many methods that do not work before getting on the right path.

As one of my colleagues recently noted, if you need to know something, you should always try asking Google. Whatever you need to know, there’s usually already a video or a blog post with an answer on the internet. This is certainly generally true for Lightroom and Photoshop, though it took several tries to find the necessary guide post for my layers problem.

Speaking of Google, a word of congratulations to the AI researchers at its DeepMind unit for the latest advances of AlphaGo. Go, which is more complex than chess, was until recently well beyond the reach of artificial intelligence. No more. AlphaGo, which beat a famous Go master a few months ago, last week took on the world’s top player and other distinguished masters and beat them all, 60 games to nil.

In the Wall Street Journal’s report, the vanquished masters seemed stunned by the unconventional and varied style of AlphaGo. It seemed to have absorbed all existing human Go experience and wisdom, and gone far beyond. This is exciting, but also scary. The singularity may be closer than we thought.

To stay calm and balanced, I recommend listening to some Franz Joseph Haydn (1732-1809). Perhaps because of so many unsettling current events, I’ve been spending time with his piano trios and string quartets, of which there are many. This is really charming classical music, which tends to get overshadowed by Mozart. There are many fine recordings easily available on Spotify.

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October 19, 2014

Enjoying opera, and meditating

Looking west at new construction on Glenwood Avenue, October 18, 2014

Some of my musical friends have a phobia about opera, which I can understand, but it’s really a shame. Some of the greatest music ever conceived is found there, and some of the greatest living musicians express themselves in the form. At its best, it is visual, kinetic, psychological — and fun. A case in point: Mozart’s Marriage of Figaro, which we saw on Saturday.

This was a new production from the Metropolitan Opera, performed live and simulcast in HD video to movie theatres around the world, including our own North Hills cinema in Raleigh. The main story concerns a servant, Figaro, about to marry another servant, Susanna, who is being pursued by their master, the Count. It’s a comedy about love and jealousy, but it also has a tragic side, with elements of deception, abuse of power, and corruption. It gets complicated, with various hard-to-follow schemes, impersonations, betrayals, and stolen letters – enough to make you wonder whether eighteenth-century audiences were smarter than we are. But with subtitles, we get the gist.

The new production, set in the 1930s, had interesting sets, gorgeous costumes, excellent singer-actors, and the great James Levine conducting. The music is perhaps Mozart’s finest — transcendently beautiful. The production took the story seriously, and not just as a sequence of wonderful songs. Along with belly laughs, there was surprising depth in the leads, who were all new to me. I was particularly charmed by Isabel Leonard as Cherubino, Marlis Peterson as Susanna, and Ying Fang as Barbarina. Peter Mattei as the Count sang wonderfully. Ildar Abdrazakov as Figaro was very human, funny, and musical.

The schedule for the remainder of the Met’s season of Live in HD productions includes a couple of other favorites of mine (Carmen and the Barber of Seville) and others that look interesting.

Waking Up

I’ve been reading a new book by Sam Harris titled Waking Up: A Guide to Spirituality Without Religion. Harris is scientist and outspoken atheist, and, it turns out, a serious and experienced practitioner of meditation. He proposes a middle way of approaching what he calls spiritual life that steers between religious mythology and strict scientific rationality. The book is a combination of meditation guide, neuroscience, neo-Buddhist thought, and memoir. It inspired me to find 20 minutes in the schedule for my own meditation practice. If I experience a major illumination, I’ll let you know.

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April 27, 2014

A great Mozart opera

There’s a classic New Yorker cartoon titled “Life without Mozart,” which shows a desert with a few scattered pieces of junk. Such pith! It is probably an overstatement to say that Mozart is the source of all meaning and order in life, but it is difficult to imagine so much harmony without him.

On Saturday afternoon, I took D, my mother-in-law, up to North Hills Cinema, to experience a live HD broadcast from the Metropolitan Opera of Mozart’s Cosi Fan Tutte. The music is some of Mozart’s greatest. I’ve listened to the opera a lot recently while working out, and the glorious fountains of melody carries me through the tough intervals.

The basic plot seems sexist and jarring to 21st century sensibilities. Here’s the concept: two soldiers are wooing two sisters and praising their faithfulness, when an older, more cynical friend asserts that all women are by nature prone to stray. They argue, make a wager, and then the soldiers put on disguises and each seduces the other sister. It’s supposed to be light and funny, but the amorality of the plot line is disorienting. Why would the guys do such a crummy thing? But this production explored a more humane side, and also more difficult, aspect of the story.

James Levine conducted this performance. Maestro Levine is a transcendently great musician, but has been in poor health these last few years, and I doubted we would see him again. But he was in great form on Saturday. The broadcast showed close-ups of his face as he conducted the overture, which showed that he conducts with his face as much as his hands. He smiled with pleasure at the beautiful phrases, and I imagined that his musicians felt well supported and inspired by his warmth and enthusiasm.

The show was altogether wonderful, and much more emotionally complex than I expected. There was humor but also strong notes of pain. The sisters seemed genuinely conflicted and struggling with the temptation of new lovers, and the lovers were tortured by forces they did not understand.

The work is an ensemble piece, in the sense that various combinations of voices have great moments – duets, trios, quartets, quintets, and sextets. The acting of this cast was particularly compelling. Susanna Philips as one of the sisters (Fiordiligi) seemed to truly anguished in struggling with the temptation of new love. Her soprano was a little thin at the bottom but full at the top, and very expressive. She had a way of easing into notes, so that the sound seemed to emerge gently from the silence. She had a couple of long pauses where the silence itself was filled with powerful emotion.

The other sister (Dorabella), played by Isabel Leonard, was less complex, but she sang well and looked sensational – she’s quite a beautiful woman. As to the soldiers, there were not simply heartless cads, but in part victims pushed by larger forces (authority, peer pressure, pride, vanity) to betray their lovers and themselves. Tenor Matthew Polenzani and baritone Rodion Pogossov as the soldiers/Turkish suitors both had great moments, and Maurizio Muraro as Don Alfonso anchored the ensemble with a full bass baritone. I thought Danielle de Niese as Despina, the scheming house maid, was funny and sexy, but as a full on proponent of the view that love meant nothing other than having fun, too exuberant and bubbly for this darker Cosi.

On Sunday I had a piano lesson with Olga. She’d warned me that she was juggling a lot of end-of-school-year projects and could only give me an hour, but in the end we worked for an hour and a half. Like Maestro Levine, she’s a generous musical spirit, patient but also exacting. We did a Brahms Op. 39 waltz, Rachmaninoff’s Elegie, and Chopin’s Fantasie Impromptu. We talked about slow versus fast attacks and worked on some pedaling techniques that were new to me, including doing a slow release. I always go in thinking I’ve been listening to the music carefully, and she always makes me hear new things.

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October 6, 2013

An eye update, and a very musical weekend

It was quite a musical weekend, with three concerts, but before I get to that, for those kind souls following my eye surgery saga, a brief update: my one week postop checkup was last Tuesday. While Dr. M was away speaking at a conference, I got examined up by Dr. S, one of his fellows. I did substantially better on the chart test, seeing part of three rows (up from zero the previous week). But things were still very foggy. Dr. S detected corneal edema, which sometimes happens after surgery, and likely would clear up in a few weeks. From what he could see of the retina, he thought it was doing OK.

Friday evening was mild and clear, and we sat outside for dinner at Buku. Their pad thai may be the best in town In any case, it was delicious. I tried the flight of three wines from Naples, which were worth trying. For dessert we got two spoons and one apple tart with cinnamon ice cream, which was a treat, then walked three blocks to hear the N.C. Symphony.

It was our first symphony concert of this season, and I was looking forward to it. The highlight of the evening was Ravel’s Rhapsodie Espagnol, a piece with rich colors and textures that featured sectional solos from most subgroups of the orchestra. The sound was fantastic. I was particularly struck by the warmth and vibrancy of the strings, which made me think of the famous Philadelphia sound. Conductor Grant Llewelleyn always looks great, but at times he’s struck me as too rhythmically literal and rigid. Not last night – there was a lot of rhythm flexibility as well as high energy. It was a brilliant performance worthy of a great ensemble.

Also featured on the program was a young Korean pianist named Joyce Wang, who played Cesar Frank’s Symphonic Variations and Manuel De Falla’s Nights in the Gardens of Spain. I liked the de Falla, and I really liked her. She was unquestionably a real musician — sensitive, imaginative, and willing to take risks. And she had a spectacular silver shimmering gown, which fit her nicely.

Does it matter how a pianist looks? I’d like to think that the sound is ultimately what matters, but a recent short piece in the Economist points strongly the other way. Experts and musical amateurs tried to rank the three top finishers in a piano competition based on either sound alone or video alone. With sound alone, the amateurs didn’t get close to agreeing with the original judges – but neither did the experts. With video, both amateurs and experts came much closer to the actual results, and agreed together. This suggests that showmanship is a big part of what we enjoy about a musical performance, and how we distinguish one player from another.

On Saturday night Diane, my mother-in-law, and I went to the N.C. Opera’s new production of Mozart/da Ponte’s Cosi Fan Tutte. I’d enjoyed listening to it on my iPad during my morning workouts, but had never seen it. It was a really good show! The set was classically elegant, and the period costumes almost sumptuous. English subtitles were projected above the stage. The six principles were all musically and comically gifted. And Mozart’s music is sublime. So much melody, so natural but so inventive and surprising!

The plot device is oddly dissonant to a non-eighteenth-century audience: it is a comedy on the theme of women’s (but not men’s) inconstancy in love. There are moments that seem harshly cynical and misogynistic. But the meta message is more cheerful: human attraction is unquenchable, touching, and also at times very funny.

On Sunday afternoon Sally and I went to a concert by the Jerusalem Quartet, which played Mozart, Shostakovich, and Dvorak. They were four intense young men in dark suits and ties, and they were excellent. This is really a world-class ensemble, with a brilliant first violinist. I

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