Sullivan highlights an interesting piece comparing the string quartets of Bartok and Shostakovich. The observation about Bartok’s “ironically anticlimactic” endings is dead on.
Philip Kennicott finds that Hungarian composer Béla Bartók’s quartets evoke “the enlightenment of a restless mind finding something definite and tangible in its search for certitude”:
[C]ompare the Bartók quartets to the 15 quartets of Shostakovich, and one hears an almost desperately single minded consistency in the former. Shostakovich’s cycle is deeply personal, and often imbued with a profound sense of fear; Bartók’s is strangely depersonalized, and more focused on anxiety. Although fear can be based on a false sense of danger, anxiety is a more ungrounded emotion, free floating, detached from immediate causes or explanations. While fear can be dispelled, anxiety is ever present, lifting on occasion but always settling back in. Even at its most calm and reflective, as in the lento movement of the Fourth Quartet, one never senses any slackening of Bartók’s obsessional need to keep control of the music. His relation to his musical materials…
I strongly encourage all readers with an interest in classical music to read this account of the history of Shostakovich’s Seventh Symphony (“Leningrad”) and to watch the linked videos – a fascinating article about an iconic piece of music.
Stephen Walsh praises Brian Moynahan’s Leningrad, a book on how the siege of the city influenced the work of composer Dmitri Shostakovich:
Shostakovich, a native of Leningrad/St Petersburg, was in the city for the first few weeks of the siege, and by the time he was flown out in early October 1941 he had composed the bulk of three movements of his Seventh Symphony. He already saw it as a symbol of the city’s defiance, and in Moscow he told an interviewer: ‘In the finale, I want to describe a beautiful future time when the enemy will have been defeated.’
It had become a Leningrad Symphony in all but name. Its composer had been photographed on the roof of the Conservatoire in a fireman’s outfit hosing down a (non-existent) conflagration. Now, in his absence, Leningraders struggled to concerts played by emaciated, half-dead musicians in freezing halls. Music had become an…
Andrew Sullivan’s take on the extraordinary interview given by Pope Francis to a Jesuit publication is well worth a read. In this series of articles, Sullivan explores not just the stylistic differences between the new pope and his predecessors, but also the likely (and less likely) implications for church doctrine and policy. Well worth a read.
Well, if the theocons hadn’t got the message by now, they can only blame themselves. The new interview with Pope Francis is a revelation. This Pope is not the Pope of a reactionary faction obsessed with controlling the lives of others – a faction that has held the hierarchy in its grip for three decades. He is a Pope in the spirit of the Second Vatican Council, a Pope with a larger and more humane perspective than the fastidious control-freaks that have plagued the church for so long. I need to read and absorb the full interview – it’s 12,000 words long – before I comment at any greater length. But here are the key phrases that are balm to so many souls:
“This church with which we should be thinking is the home of all, not a small chapel that can hold only a small group of selected…
Andrew Sullivan, who a week ago was tearing his hair out at what he saw as the Obama administration’s collapse into the same neo-conservative, interventionist sinkhole as his predecessor, is now waxing eloquent about how well President Obama has engineered a situation whereby the Russians are forced to take responsibility for their wayward client state and help to enforce international norms and agreements. Fair play to him – my views on Syria have also been evolving, so I do not begrudge him that – though it is interesting that a week ago, Sullivan appeared fairly dismissive of readers who put forward the idea that Obama might be playing a tactical long game. Personally, I feel that Sullivan is giving Obama too much credit for a serendipitous outcome that appears to have sprung quite unexpectedly from an off-the-cuff remark by his jetlagged Secretary of State, John Kerry. One line in particular was too much for me: “Yes, he’s still a community organizer. It’s just that now, the community he is so effectively organizing is the world.” Really, Andrew? I think that this goes a little too far. The outcome may be encouraging, but the process by which we got there certainly was not. If Assad relinquishing his chemical weapons to the international community is enough to prevent US attacks on Syria, why was this not mentioned before everyone started dusting off the Tomahawk missiles?
That was one of the clearest, simplest and most moving presidential speeches to the nation I can imagine. It explained and it argued, point after point. Everything the president said extemporaneously at the post-G20 presser was touched on, made terser, more elegant and more persuasive.
The key points: it is an abdication of America’s exceptional role in the world to look away from the horrific use of poison gas to wipe out civilian populations and kill rebels in a civil war. Given that the world would have ignored August 21 or engaged in meaningless blather about it, Obama took the decision to say he would strike. Since such a strike was not in response to an imminent threat to our national security, Obama felt he should go to the Congress, and reverse some of the strong currents toward the imperial presidency that took hold under Dick Cheney.
The leader of Exodus International, Alan Chambers, has published a seemingly very sincere and heartfelt apology for the pain and suffering that his organisation caused to those who came to seek “help” for their homosexual orientation:
And then there is the trauma that I have caused. There were several years that I conveniently omitted my ongoing same-sex attractions. I was afraid to share them as readily and easily as I do today. They brought me tremendous shame and I hid them in the hopes they would go away. Looking back, it seems so odd that I thought I could do something to make them stop. Today, however, I accept these feelings as parts of my life that will likely always be there. The days of feeling shame over being human in that way are long over, and I feel free simply accepting myself as my wife and family does. As my friends do. As God does.
Never in a million years would I intentionally hurt another person. Yet, here I sit having hurt so many by failing to acknowledge the pain some affiliated with Exodus International caused, and by failing to share the whole truth about my own story. My good intentions matter very little and fail to diminish the pain and hurt others have experienced on my watch. The good that we have done at Exodus is overshadowed by all of this.
On a very personal note, he continues:
Please know that I am deeply sorry. I am sorry for the pain and hurt many of you have experienced. I am sorry that some of you spent years working through the shame and guilt you felt when your attractions didn’t change. I am sorry we promoted sexual orientation change efforts and reparative theories about sexual orientation that stigmatized parents. I am sorry that there were times I didn’t stand up to people publicly “on my side” who called you names like sodomite—or worse. I am sorry that I, knowing some of you so well, failed to share publicly that the gay and lesbian people I know were every bit as capable of being amazing parents as the straight people that I know. I am sorry that when I celebrated a person coming to Christ and surrendering their sexuality to Him that I callously celebrated the end of relationships that broke your heart. I am sorry that I have communicated that you and your families are less than me and mine.
This is a rare, almost unprecedented volte-face from a Christian organisation that was until recently so stridently anti-gay. As is often the case with those most vociferously outspoken against homosexuality, the leader of the organisation himself admits to having same-sex attractions of his own. We see this time and time again with the many (usually Republican/Conservative Party) politicians who seem to spend every waking moment condemning homosexuality as an abomination, before being caught in a compromising position which rather undermines their legitimacy to talk about the subject.
I think this deserves credit as a genuine example of repentance and public admission of shameful behaviour. It is not up to me to forgive him but I find it rather heartening.
The other interesting thing is that he hasn’t actually changed his mind about what the Bible says about gay sex. He still thinks it’s condemned. But he will no longer condemn it himself: “I cannot apologise for my deeply held biblical beliefs about the boundaries I see in scripture surrounding sex, but I will exercise my beliefs with great care and respect for those who do not share them. I cannot apologise for my beliefs about marriage. But I do not have any desire to fight you on your beliefs or the rights that you seek.”
Something like this must be what ought to be meant by the hideous cant phrase about hating the sin, but loving the sinner.
Andrew Sullivan celebrates what he calls an “unconditional surrender in the culture war”:
It’s very rare that one side in a culture war actively renounces its past positions and embraces a new one. That’s particularly true on the Christianist right, where absolutes hold sway, regardless of doubt or charity. So today is a banner day for those of us who have long fought for the equal dignity of homosexuals as children of the same God as heterosexuals, and deserving of no less love and support.
And with regard to the statement itself, he continues:
That’s an enormous statement given the recent past and, to me, a sign of God’s grace. That’s why when I say “unconditional surrender,” I hope Exodus won’t regard that as some kind of victory lap. It isn’t. It just springs from a deep appreciation of their grace-filled decision to re-examine their conduct as Christians and see where the world may have led them astray. Anyone in the public sphere who openly and candidly comes to terms with an error of judgment, and owns it, and even seeks forgiveness for it, is contributing to a more humane, honest conversation and dialogue.
This statement and change of heart from Exodus International is very welcome news indeed. May it spur other people, groups and denominations within the Church to also re-examine their consciences, and seek to welcome and love rather than try to “heal”.
Semi-Partisan Politics 