Dies Irae

I have a theory that Canada's cities will implode. I have written about this in many posts (see my "multiculturalism" and "immigration" categories). Multiculturalism, which was supposed to bring people together and form one happy utopian global family, has alienated people altogether. Offspring of immigrants (those "Canadian-born" hyphenated Canadians) on whom great hopes were bestowed to build that wonderful multicultural utopia, are clinging together, since on personal cultural levels they have nothing to connect them to the "main" culture.

I recently sent bold and frank letters to relatives that they return to their homeland to live authentic and happy lives AS ETHIOPIANS, rather than in this forced cultural hot pot. My message has actually resonated.

So what happens when this stewing war starts to boil over, in five years, thirty years? I bet on sooner than later.

Mississauga and Toronto are now cities of enclaves. People gravitate to neighborhoods of their own ethnic makeup. And those who have settled in some multicultural hub do so because of mortgage commitments, or their children's high school, or simply because the neighborhood appears to be nicer, cleaner, more convenient, with attractive parks and convenient shopping centres.

In our building, there is no cheerful "Good Morning" or "Good Evening" as one enters the slow and often crowded elevator. What occurs is silence broken by some cell phone conversation in Urdu or Cantonese, often loudly, and clearly showing the cell phone converser couldn't care less about the rest of the elevator's riders. They don't understand what he's saying anyway, and he shuts them out of his radar and continues with his uncouth, careless behavior.

And it is the same with actual conversations, when they do occur. Those talking to each other do so in their country of origin's language, loudly and without regard for anyone else. For example, I could be between such two people, and rather than move to get closer to each other, they will talk over me loudly and confidently, as though I don't exist.

And the same with apartments units. The building was built about twenty years ago when Mississauga was erecting high rises to accommodate a greatly increasing immigrant influx and was choosing Mississauga for the much touted "farmland" and open space.

Walls are cardboard thin, which makes these sound insensitive residents' telephone conversations from China or India all the more grating. These calls are often during the evening hours (time difference?) when one would expect one's home to have some peace and quiet in preparation for the long night of sleep ahead.

Air conditioning and heating systems are dated and archaic (and badly constructed) that they churn out air through groaning turbines. Ventilation is ineffective in neutralizing the heavily spiced foods that permeate through the hallways. And structures both superficial (wall paper) and internal (the heating system) are deteriorating, despite the regular maintenance that takes place and which constantly disrupts life in the apartments and the building as a whole.

At one point I blamed the inhuman multicultural system that made Canada (and Mississauga) into this ghettoized Gomorrah.

But the residents are fully to blame.

There is something profoundly opportunistic about people who moved thousands of miles away to come and live in the land of plenty: in Canada. They left relatives, a cultural network, familiar landscapes, their gods and idols to live in a country which gives them much in material goods and benefits. Their children can go to school for free in some of the best educational institutions in the world. They can shop in clean and fully stocked grocery stores where fresh produce is available year round. And if they have monetary problems, and most are likely to, even extending to their "educated" children, there is a generous welfare system to hand out their monthly dollars as it takes the funds from the society's purse.

How long will this last, is the question.

I predict not for long.

Perhaps God's wrath will manifest itself as it periodically has. We might get a flood of Biblical proportions.

Or there might simply be an internecine warfare, slow at the beginning until it explodes into something big and destructive.

We have already started this warfare, if behavior in elevators is any indication. And I think it IS an indication.

And God might be preparing us for that clean slate, a new beginning, to rebuild a city, a land worthy of His name.

We should, we must, prepare.

Zephaniah 1

1 The word of the Lord which came unto Zephaniah the son of Cushi, the son of Gedaliah, the son of Amariah, the son of Hizkiah, in the days of Josiah the son of Amon, king of Judah.

2 I will utterly consume all things from off the land, saith the Lord.

3 I will consume man and beast; I will consume the fowls of the heaven, and the fishes of the sea, and the stumbling blocks with the wicked: and I will cut off man from off the land, saith the Lord.

4 I will also stretch out mine hand upon Judah, and upon all the inhabitants of Jerusalem; and I will cut off the remnant of Baal from this place, and the name of the Chemarims with the priests;

5 And them that worship the host of heaven upon the housetops; and them that worship and that swear by the Lord, and that swear by Malcham;

6 And them that are turned back from the Lord; and those that have not sought the Lord, nor enquired for him.

7 Hold thy peace at the presence of the Lord God: for the day of the Lord is at hand: for the Lord hath prepared a sacrifice, he hath bid his guests.

8 And it shall come to pass in the day of the Lord's sacrifice, that I will punish the princes, and the king's children, and all such as are clothed with strange apparel.

9 In the same day also will I punish all those that leap on the threshold, which fill their masters' houses with violence and deceit.

10 And it shall come to pass in that day, saith the Lord, that there shall be the noise of a cry from the fish gate, and an howling from the second, and a great crashing from the hills.

11 Howl, ye inhabitants of Maktesh, for all the merchant people are cut down; all they that bear silver are cut off.

12 And it shall come to pass at that time, that I will search Jerusalem with candles, and punish the men that are settled on their lees: that say in their heart, The Lord will not do good, neither will he do evil.

13 Therefore their goods shall become a booty, and their houses a desolation: they shall also build houses, but not inhabit them; and they shall plant vineyards, but not drink the wine thereof.

14 The great day of the Lord is near, it is near, and hasteth greatly, even the voice of the day of the Lord: the mighty man shall cry there bitterly.

15 That day is a day of wrath, a day of trouble and distress, a day of wasteness and desolation, a day of darkness and gloominess, a day of clouds and thick darkness,

16 A day of the trumpet and alarm against the fenced cities, and against the high towers.

17 And I will bring distress upon men, that they shall walk like blind men, because they have sinned against the Lord: and their blood shall be poured out as dust, and their flesh as the dung.

18 Neither their silver nor their gold shall be able to deliver them in the day of the Lord's wrath; but the whole land shall be devoured by the fire of his jealousy: for he shall make even a speedy riddance of all them that dwell in the land.

Dies Irae, from Mozart's Requiem in D Minor (Text)
La Chapelle Royale Collegium Vocale
Orchestre Des Champs -Élysées
Philippe Herreweghe

"Preserving This West" with Mozart

Lawrence Auster: Social and Cultural Commentator and Writer
View From the Right

Here is an email I sent to Larry Auster, while he was ill:

From Reclaiming Beauty
October 06, 2014
"Preserving this West"

Larry,

As someone who grew up in the West, yet who comes from a non-Western background, you have helped me so much in remaining calm and confident when all those around me were ready and happy to knock down this wonderful and beautiful civilization.

I now continue in preserving this West from these alien, destructive forces.

Here is a Mozart piano sonata, which I hope you will enjoy listening to.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_embedded&v=4RZiaBlkodE#at=375

(If this doesn't open, you can listen to it here.)

K

[Note: the youtube page has been discontinued, but the Sonatas can be listened to here]

You could say that I am a Mozartphile

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Below is my February 2013 blog post somewhat explaining my coinage of the word Mozartphile (which probably should be Mozartophile):

I can never have enough praise for Mozart. You could say that I am a Mozartphile. I am forever surprised, astounded, delighted and intrigued by his music. Recently, I have been listening to Dvorak and Sibelius, and they surprise and astound, but they never really delight like Mozart.

The incredible thing about Mozart is how accessible he is, without losing any of his musical complexity. I think he does this by keeping his essential melody (often enchantingly beautiful) always within the listener's reach.

He bends and rotates the melody, without ever putting the fear into the listener that the melody would get lost in a myriad of incomprehensible notes. Each note, however distant and distinct from the original, makes perfect sense, and is as natural a progression as the air we breathe.

In other composers, I sometimes wonder why they went in the direction they went, or at some point, I get a little bored or distracted with their melodious experiments. But never with Mozart.

In fact, I get irritated when other (worldly) things distract me from Mozart's intricate meanders. But, he never leads us far from the origin, and never teases us too much, although he loves to tease. His music may have some jest and playfulness in it, but it is, down to the simple piano sonatas, very serious. Each note was chosen with a certain aim, and is as precious as the next.

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Here is my modest take on Mozart on his birthday in 2013, which somewhat explains my Mozartophilia:

I can never have enough praise for Mozart. You could say that I am a Mozartphile. I am forever surprised, astounded, delighted and intrigued by his music. Recently, I have been listening to Dvorak and Sibelius, and they surprise and astound, but they never really delight like Mozart.

The incredible thing about Mozart is how accessible he is, without losing any of his musical complexity. I think he does this by keeping his essential melody (often enchantingly beautiful) always within the listener's reach (more at the post).

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Several short posts on Mozart I've made over my years of blogging :

Mozart at 254 (2010)

Two Hundred and Fifty Years: January 27th, Mozart's Birthday (2006)

Mozart's Birthday (2013)

Vladimir Horowitz Plays Mozart; Who Does Bach Justice? /(2013)

Kenneth Clark's Civilization: Mozart's Symmetry (2013)

An Idiot Playing at Genius (2013)

Preserving this West (2014)

Mozart: Genius in Three Notes (2016)

Mozart: Genius in Three Notes

How Mozart Summed Up the Universe in Three Notes

The link above is to a discussion on Mozart's genius by classical musician, composer, conductor, and music commentator Robert Kapilow.

Here are my modest takes on Mozart:

I will start with a quote from my 2013 post on his birthday:

I can never have enough praise for Mozart. You could say that I am a Mozartphile. I am forever surprised, astounded, delighted and intrigued by his music. Recently, I have been listening to Dvorak and Sibelius, and they surprise and astound, but they never really delight like Mozart.

The incredible thing about Mozart is how accessible he is, without losing any of his musical complexity. I think he does this by keeping his essential melody (often enchantingly beautiful) always within the listener's reach (more at the post).

Several short posts I've made over the years of blogging:

Preserving this West

Two Hundred and Fifty Years: January 27th, Mozart's Birthday (2006)

Mozart's Birthday (2013)

Vladimir Horowitz Plays Mozart; Who Does Bach Justice?

Kenneth Clark's Civilization: Mozart's Symmetry

An Idiot Playing at Genius

"Preserving this West"

Here is an email I sent to Larry Auster, while he was ill:

Larry,

As someone who grew up in the West, yet who comes from a non-Western background, you have helped me so much in remaining calm and confident when all those around me were ready and happy to knock down this wonderful and beautiful civilization.

I now continue in preserving this West from these alien, destructive forces.

Here is a Mozart piano sonata, which I hope you will enjoy listening to.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_embedded&v=4RZiaBlkodE#at=375

(If this doesn't open, you can listen to it here.)

Kidist

[Note: the youtube page has been discontinued, but the Sonatas can be listened to here]

2017: More notes: The most recently accessible Youtube collection is here
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Posted By: Kidist P. Asrat
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Kenneth Clark's Civilization: Mozart's Symmetry

Design for a Chimney Piece, Harewood House, Yorkshire
Robert Adam: British, Kirclady, Scotland 1728–1792
Date: ca. 1769

Below is an excerpt on symmetry from Civilization by Kenneth Clark:

Clark writes about symmetry:
P. 293

The reasonable world of an eighteenth-century library is symmetrical, consistent and enclosed. Symmetry is a human concept, because with all our irregularities we are more or less symmetrical and the balance of a mantelpiece by Adam or a phrase by Mozart reflects our satisfaction with our two eyes, two arms and two legs. And consistency: again and again in this series I have used that word as a term of praise. But enclosed! That's the trouble: an enclosed world becomes a prison of the spirit. One longs to get out, one longs to move. One realises that symmetry and consistency, whatever their merits, are enemies of movement. And what is that I hear - that note of urgency, of indignation, of spiritual hunger. Beethoven. The sound of European man once more reaching for something beyond his grasp. We must leave the trim, finite interiors of eighteenth-century classicism and go to confront the infinite. We have a long, rough voyage ahead of us, and I cannot say where it will end, because it is not over yet. We are still the offspring of the Romantic movement, and still victims of the Fallacies of Hope.

And he continues that this restraint, this symmetry, was what the Romantics wanted to escape from:

I have used the metaphor of the sea because all the great Romantics, from Byron onwards, have been obsessed by this image of movement and escape.

Once more upon the waters! yet once more!
And the waves bound beneath me as a steed
That knows his rider. Welcome to their roar!
Swift be their guidance, wheresoe'er it lead!

In Romantic art it usually led to disaster. The escape from symmetry was also an escape from reason. The eighteenth-century philosophers had attempted to tidy up human society by the use of reason. But rational arguments were not strong enough to upset the huge mass of torpid tradition that had grown up in the last hundred and fifty years.

It is as though Mozart was at the cusp of this desire to move, to escape, to gallop (as I write here) from the confines of symmetry.

Here is what I wrote about Mozart, and how he manages to rein in his music, despite the urgency:

[H]e never leads us far from the origin, and never teases us too much, although he loves to tease.

Still, Clark's Beethoven is a consequence of this desire to move, to escape, to gallop off. It is a dangerous desire, which leaves us groundless and always shifting, and open to attacks from all corners, spiritual and earthly.

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Posted By: Kidist P. Asrat

Vladimir Horowitz Plays Mozart; Who Does Bach Justice?

I got this comment from Rick at Reflecting Light on my earlier post on Mozart's Piano Sonata in A Major, K331, Andante Grazioso:

I have been listening to Mozart recordings quite a bit in the past few days. All symphonies from his "middle period" -- starting with no. 30, up to 35. I've enjoyed the performances although they're quite different.

Charles Mackerras and the Prague Chamber Orchestra: Mackerras was going through his horse-race period, no doubt influenced by the so-called "authentic" performance style. Most tempos way too fast, brash accents ... but Mackerras was a genius, and the rowdiness was tempered by a sensitivity to melody and phrasing. (He later got over that style, and some of his last recordings were of Mozart with the Scottish Chamber Orchestra, wonderful readings.)

Colin Davis and the Staatskapelle Dresden: From the '70s but in typically excellent Decca sound. I cannot praise these recordings highly enough. Davis saw the light and imparted his vision to the fine orchestra in the city that was a smoking ruin only 30 years earlier.

Rick

I agree with Rick. There is a "horse-race" tendency in musicians today, and not just in Mozart. Bach's violin concertos are case in point. Performers compensate for this flight from the piece in different ways. Rick observes the brash accents; I notice a "prettification" of the music.

One of the things I was trained in as a choir performer and while studying piano, is how not to gallop off - it is apparently a natural tendency. It is not simply a matter of giving each note its due, but of controlling our internal rhythm, so we don't allow it to accelerate while singing or playing a piece of music. I think that there are also those with natural musical ability for whom this reining-in is easier. Not every-one can be a musician.

Here is perhaps my favorite piece of music: Bach's violin concerto in A minor, and specifically the first movement. There are performances where the movement is played too fast, bolting aggressively off into some far horizon.

Isaac Stern, in the video below, does it full justice, giving it a delicate grandeur. I love the stretches of yearning by the violin solo.


Bach violin concerto in A minor, First Movement, given an Allegro or an Allegro Assai tempo
Isaac Stern & the English Chamber Orchestra

Probably a composer who can be played in this "horse-race" manner is Vivaldi.

I wrote here about a choral concert by a "Korean-American" concert choir I attended in New York. One thing that struck me was the accelerated speed at which the choir (and the soloists) sang.

This seems to be a contemporary phenomenon. I don't think it is simply a display of virtuoso. I think people are bored with the music, and they don't spend the required time to play the notes, but rather gallop on to finish the pieces. Sitting and listening (like sitting and reading) requires a certain patience, a certain ability to leave the galloping world alone for a while. The world now is full of gallopers, from the fast car highways to the instant connections on the internet highway. Speech (conversation) is also becoming more jumbled and faster, as though people cannot string together words fast enough. So if the audience is based on the galloping type, I suppose the orchestra is also of the same ilk, not just because they want to deliver what they audience wants, but because they really are in tune (in the same wave length) as the modern concert-goer. Speed, expediency (the psychologists have a term for it - Attention Deficit Disorder) is part of contemporary man's make-up.

I also think this is why the Korean choral group performed in the manner it did. It is not "in tune" with Western music, so its interpretation is to get through - virtuoso manner - the musical piece. I wrote about this same lack of sensitivity in the Toronto Symphony Orchestra, an Asian-dominated orchestra group, in the same blog post Asians Playing Western Music.

I wrote in the post:

As the [choral] concert progressed, I began to realize a certain "prettiness" in the performance, a lack of force, drive and even drama. I don't think this is simply a cultural phenomenon (as in misunderstanding the Messiah's content, message, meaning, etc...). I think it is a physio/cerebral problem. I've seen it happen in art and design, and even in science... At some level, I think Asians demonstrate some ability (i.e. memorization, or fast, scale-like exercises). But there seems to be an inability to create a synthesized beauty, which is what much of art (and order in Science) is about.

Perhaps this galloping-off by white members of orchestra and other musical ensembles is also influenced by this multicultural environment, where the deep study of the Western music is being overshadowed by other things like audience appeasement, and non-white (and specifically East Asian) dominance in classical music.
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Posted By: Kidist P. Asrat

An Idiot Playing at Genius

Actor Tom Hulce, aging adolescent hippy at age 53.
Mozart looked nothing like this in later years.

There is silly film on Mozart, called Amadeus, where he is made out to be a bumbling idiot. The portraits of Mozart show him to be a serious, observant man. He has to be, to write the kind of music he wrote.


Posthumous Mozart portrait painted by Barbara Kraft in 1819,
under the supervision of Nannerl Mozart
(Here is more information on the authenticity of the portrait - pdf)

One theory about the above portrait is that its model is a Mozart family portrait by Johann Nepomuk della Croce painted in 1780. Mozart would have been about twenty-four then. Men were mature and serious in their early twenties. Now, we have immaturity all the way to the grave.


Mozart
Date Painted: 1790 (a year before Mozart's death, at age 34)
By: Johann Georg Edlinger, 1741-1819
Oil Painting
31.5 x 24.5 inches

This is a more relaxed pose than the one above, with Mozart's hand casually on the back of a chair. Probably by then, Mozart was more confident about his talent, and his role and position in German society.

The actor who plays Mozart in Amadeus looks nothing like him. Why wouldn't a director try to find an actor with as close a resemblance to the character as possible? And if that wasn't possible, why not use film props (make-up, costume, hair, weight gain/ weight loss, etc.), to make him look like his character?

One reason, I think, is that a Hollywood film on a classical musician is difficult to sell to the general public. It might work for a serious production like the BBC, or as a documentary, but for the popcorn popping audience, we need something more FUN. And the idiot the filmmakers chose to play Mozart certainly has that fun credential.

His call to fame, besides his Mozart role, is acting in National Lampoon Animal House as a freshman in college trying to get into a fraternity. The only one that would consider him are The Deltas, who:

...are a motley fraternity of rejects and maladjusted undergraduates whose main goal is disrupting the staid, peaceful, rigidly orthodox, and totally hypocritical social order of the school. The Deltas, oblivious to the danger they're in, are having a great time, steeped in irreverence, mild debauchery, and occasional drunkenness, led by the seniors and pledge master John "Bluto" Blutarsky (John Belushi). They're given enough rope to hang themselves, but even then manage to get into comical misadventures, culminating in the commission of one last, utterly senseless (and funny) act of rebellion.

Roger Ebert, the film critic, says of the film:

The movie is vulgar, raunchy, ribald, and occasionally scatological. It finds some kind of precarious balance between insanity and accuracy, between cheerfully wretched excess and an ability to reproduce the most revealing nuances of human behavior.

Roger Ebert, for some reason, writes affectionately about these brothers, calling their debauchery mild and their drunkenness occasional. The film is one long drunken debauchery, not by maladjusted undergraduates, but mentally deficient young men who had no reason being in college. (I myself saw it in college, as a hard-working college student. My degree was in biology. There was no time to fool around.)

Wikipedia says that Hulce is "openly gay." Trust Hollywood to cast a homosexual in the role of Mozart, who then portrays him like some kind of fairy. Even Mozart's relationship with his wife Constanze, whom he called "Dearest, most beloved little wife," is depicted as some kind of adolescent frolic.


Constanze Mozart
Date Painted: c.1789
By: Joseph Lange, 1751–1831
Oil on canvas
12.7 x 9.8 inches


Left: Portrait of the widowed Constanze Mozart
Date Painted: 1802 (she would be forty years old)
By: Hans Hansen, 1769-1828
Oil on Canvas
[I cannot yet find the dimensions of the original]
Right: The girlish actress who portrays Constanze in Amadeus in 1984

Can the Hollywood actress who played Constanze ever look like the mature widow?

Here is the answer:


Elizabeth Berridge, who played Constanze in 1984,
fifty and still girlish in 2012.

Mozart's music is everywhere. I am sure most people would recognize some melody or piece, which they may have heard in some elevator muzak, in a commercial, or in a restaurant. Many films also use classical music, and I'm sure Mozart's fills in many a background soundtrack. Thus, directors could try a little harder to bring Mozart to the public. Not by making him into a bumbling idiot, but by bringing out the inherent joy of life that Mozart had (as I write here about Mozart's twists and turns, almost joking with us, in his music).

But Amadeus isn't even using comedic artistic licence. It is something much more nefarious than that.

Amadeus demonstrates the general desecration of beauty by a small elite of sophisticated people. They know what they're doing. Demeaning Mozart and destroying his music is like destroying beauty. Destroying beauty is destroying God, the good, and our land and civilization. What they want is to form something else out of the rubble of their destruction, something which they can recreate to their own desires and specifications. Their ambition is nothing short of god-like. They are the Nazis of our era, but even more sophisticated, more patient, and less overtly violent.
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Posted By: Kidist P. Asrat

Mozart Piano Sonata in A Major, K331. Andante Grazioso

Pianist: Jeno Jando
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Posted By: Kidist P. Asrat