Monday, April 21, 2014

Founded in a spirit of science

A recent article in The Global Post headed 'Australia's war on science' reports that the Commonwealth Scientific and Industrial Research Organisation (CSIRO) is bracing for a 20% budget cut in the Abbott government's forthcoming budget. The government has already announced that the Department of Environment will have its budget cut by $AUD100 million over four years resulting in the loss of a quarter of its staff.

I'm quite happy to kick the Abbott government, but I think there's a broader concern here. The modern state of Australia was founded in a spirit of scientific enquiry. Cook journeyed to the South Pacific to observe the transit of Venus; an observatory was set up at Sydney Cove in the early days of settlement. I know from my own research that the writings of Spencer and Gillen were influential on Freud. But how many Australians know any of this? Can they name our Nobel Laureates? Do they know, as Green deputy leader Adam Bandt points out in that same article, that Australian researchers contributed to "the flu jab, the quantum bit, blast glass and Wi-Fi..."? As far as I know, there is no book on Australians' contribution to science.

1874 photograph of the observatory at Dawes Point, named after the marine who was charged with establishing an observatory in NSW. Dawes Point was originally to be named after the Royal Astronomer, Maskelyne

Interestingly, last year, another Nobel laureate Joseph Stiglitz warned the incoming Australian government not to launch into massive cuts ('Australia, you don't know how good you've got it,' Sydney Morning Herald 2 Sep 2013 - http://www.smh.com.au/comment/australia-you-dont-know-how-good-youve-got-it-20130901-2sytb.html): "...substantial cuts to the government budget...would be a grave mistake, especially now. Recent experience around the world suggests that austerity can have devastating consequences, and especially so for fragile economies..."  I guess, there's my 'kick'. But then, budget cuts are about the only tool conservative governments have. And Australians don't admire great thinkers.



 

 

Monday, April 7, 2014

Nothing, my Florestan

Another observation in the perennial argument over words and the music in opera:

To those who say that music is more powerful I often say that no composer can match Abraham Lincoln's prose. Copland's Lincoln Portrait is okay, but he doesn't allow a single speech to dominate. And is there a composer in the world whose phrases could match the length of thought in Lincoln's letter to the bereaved mother, Mrs Bixby:  "I feel how weak and fruitless must be any word of mine which should attempt to beguile you from the grief of a loss so overwhelming. But I cannot refrain from tendering you the consolation that may be found in the thanks of the Republic they died to save."

I would also note that the most powerful moment in many performances of Beethoven's Fidelio is not musical. After Leonore has risked her life at the end of a gun to save her husband, he turns to her and says, "My Leonore, what have you done for me?" In the German original there is an exchange of dialogue, but in Klemperer's 1962 recording her answer is reduced to "Nichts, nichts, mein Florestan." (It was nothing, nothing, my Florestan.) It needs no music right at that moment, it is throat-swallowingly moving, although then the duet ('O namenlose Freude') swells up.

The odd thing is that in Bernstein's recording he omits this exchange and goes straight from the thwarted murderer Pizarro's exit to the duet. I have always thought Bernstein understood words (he composed some gems for Candide), but this is a real dramatic moment missed.