Georgiana, Lady Greville

George Romney (1734-1802)
Georgiana, Lady Greville
1772
Courtauld Institute Of Art, London

Oil On Canvas
30 1/2 Inches By 25 3/8 Inches

Veterans Day Weekend

We very much enjoyed our three-day Veterans Day Weekend.

On Thursday night, my middle brother and Joshua and I went to Bloomington to see Bloomington Civic Theater’s production of the Cy Coleman-Dorothy Fields-Neil Simon musical, “Sweet Charity”. None of us had seen a staging of “Sweet Charity”, and none of us had seen the film version.

“Sweet Charity” is very much a second-rate musical. The score has a couple of familiar and pleasant numbers, but Coleman was more manufacturer of music than genuine composer for the stage. His music has the surface appeal—and the character and depth—of television jingles.

Simon’s book for “Sweet Charity” is poor. The dialogue is both glib and protracted—not a happy combination—and the characters are not allowed to register as three-dimensional human beings. Simon’s book is also insufferably 1960s.

Bloomington Civic Theater’s production was not especially strong—the stage design was not as fine as the company frequently offers and the choreography was, I thought, entirely lame—but the show held together because the young woman playing the lead was very fine. She sang well, she danced well, and she displayed a very beguiling stage personality. Had it not been for her, we probably would have departed at intermission.

Unaccountably, the Star-Tribune had singled out this young actress as the chief weakness of the production, claiming that her portrayal was not well-rounded and that she lacked the necessary vulnerability to bring the character to life. Whatever may have happened on opening night, the presence of this same young actress was the only thing that made the performance endurable on Thursday night.

Before the performance, we ate dinner at a barbecue place in Bloomington. We ordered pulled-pork sandwiches with baked beans and coleslaw.

On Friday morning, my brothers and Josh and I took my niece and nephew to Saint Paul to visit the Science Museum Of Minnesota.

The main interest—for us and the kids—was the dinosaurs. The Science Museum Of Minnesota is renowned for its dinosaur collection.

The museum owns one of only four Triceratops in the world, and its Triceratops is the largest and most complete anywhere.

The museum owns an Allosaurus and a Camptosaurus, the latter the largest ever discovered. The two are displayed together, in combat.

The museum also owns a Stegosaurus and a Diplodocus. The Diplodocus is 82 feet long, and was actually discovered in Minnesota. I believe it is the largest dinosaur skeleton on display anywhere.

My niece and nephew were awed by the dinosaurs, as children generally are. We spent an hour and a quarter walking around the skeletons and examining other dinosaur parts and fossils, at which point the kids had seen enough and were ready to leave.

On Friday afternoon, Josh and I checked the progress on our house. We do not believe the house will be ready for settlement this coming Friday—and this will create no problems for us.

My mother made a special dinner on Friday night. Her supplier had located for her a large and beautiful fresh carp, so she built a dinner around baked carp. We started with homemade tomato-cream soup, and continued with an elaborate garden salad. Next came individual cheese soufflés, for which I was responsible. The main course was baked carp, redskin potatoes, fresh green beans and a white grape salad. Dessert was custard-rhubarb pie.

The dinner was excellent—and the kids liked the carp (but, as a precaution, my mother had had boiled chicken standing by).

Minnesota hosted Wisconsin on Saturday, and on Friday Josh and I decided to accompany my father and my brothers to the game. Minnesota had played well the previous two weeks, and we had hoped that a rejuvenated Golden Gopher squad might create some problems for the mighty Badgers, especially since the game was in Minneapolis.

Our decision was not a wise one. Wisconsin showed up ready to play ball, and the game was effectively over at the end of the first quarter, with Wisconsin leading, 14-0. Minnesota had zero first downs and three yards of offense in the first quarter; Wisconsin had nine first downs and 198 yards of offense in the first quarter. The latter figures, and not the first-quarter score, told the story of the game.

We remained for the entire debacle—we were too embarrassed to go home early, since my mother had warned us that we had signed ourselves up for a grievously disappointing afternoon—yet at least we were able to witness Minnesota’s special teams score twice in the second half (while Wisconsin was playing its reserves).

Our disappointment in the game was tempered by the splendid Norwegian peasant dinner my mother had waiting for us when we returned home: homemade beef barley soup; tomato-onion salad; and minced Norwegian fish, riced potatoes and sour mixed vegetables (including beets) soaked for twenty-four hours in a special Norwegian brine before being quick-fried with bacon. I would not want to eat the sour mixed vegetables often, but I can handle them once every five years, which is about how often my mother prepares them. For dessert, we had slices of buttercream Dobish Torte, which my mother had picked up at a bakery.

My mother, my sister-in-law and the kids had eaten their dinner at the normal hour. They had enjoyed the very same dinner foods—except they had eaten NORMAL mixed vegetables (and with no beets).

On Sunday, we stayed in all day after service.

We had a big post-service breakfast: Eggs Benedict, followed by buttermilk pancakes and sausages, followed by cranberry-orange muffins.

When the kids woke from their naps, we helped my nephew play with his BluTrack for a couple of hours. BluTrack was one of my nephew’s birthday gifts, and BluTrack has become one of his favorite toys.

He has learned that he can create all sorts of twists and contortions with the track, and that the cars will nonetheless continue to glide on the pathways. He will set up BluTrack in a particular configuration and run the cars a few times, after which he will devise a new configuration. The process repeats itself endlessly.

My niece watches with interest while her brother plays with and rearranges BluTrack. Even the dog finds himself fascinated with the cars gliding on BluTrack—although we have to restrain the dog from acting upon his natural inclination to pounce on the cars when they glide by him and to grab them with his teeth and run across the room.

It is easy to understand why BluTrack has become so popular with young children. BluTrack encourages creativity and use of imagination while providing an hour or more of pleasure and fun at a time.

We had a good Sunday night dinner: pumpkin-poppy seed soup; pasta and Cayenne shrimp in a Cayenne cream sauce; and chicken quarters baked with an apple-cranberry glaze, succotash, glazed carrots and an apple-cranberry salad. We had cherry crisp for dessert.

At church on Sunday morning, we learned that we were wise to have skipped this weekend’s Minneapolis performances of Royal Winnipeg Ballet. The company had brought its full-length Alice In Wonderland ballet to the Twin Cities—the ballet was titled “Wonderland”—and we were told by persons that had attended the production on Saturday night that “Wonderland” had been God-awful.

We have decided to skip the Saint Paul Chamber Orchestra’s ten-day Bach Brandenburg marathon currently in progress all around the Twin Cities. For some reason, the prospect of sitting through five Brandenburg Concertos in a single evening (the SPCO is omitting Brandenburg Concerto No. 2) does not appeal to us at present. Further, Josh and I have some interest in attending four consecutive weeks of SPCO subscription programs beginning in another two weeks, and we do not want our musical appetites to become satiated before the stimulating late November/early December programs commence.

We are contemplating attending University Opera Theatre’s production of “Cosi Fan Tutte” at the University Of Minnesota next weekend, but we will not make a firm decision until the weekend draws near. We attended Minnesota Opera’s production of “Cosi Fan Tutte” only six weeks ago—and there are reasons in favor of, and reasons against, attending a second production of the opera in such close succession to the first.

Nikisch

The mesmerizing Arthur Nikisch (1855-1922), the greatest figure of the podium that ever lived.

Orchestral musicians throughout Europe were willing to die for Nikisch.

Antic Meet

Kabuki

On Friday night, Joshua and I joined my parents for a Minnesota Orchestra subscription concert. The orchestra played music of Britten, Sibelius and Debussy. Music Director Osmo Vanska was on the podium; guest soloist was Midori.

“Four Sea Interludes” from “Peter Grimes” opened the program. The Minnesota Orchestra was on good form in the Britten, although Vanska—as always—was prone to overstatement if not fierceness. Subtlety is not Vanska’s strong suit. The man invariably delivers high-octane-grade fuel, even when high-octane power is neither needed nor desirable.

In the Britten, the orchestra’s playing was more well-drilled than atmospheric, yet I suspect I heard about as fine a performance of the “Sea Interludes” as one is ever likely to hear. Truly great orchestras find Britten’s music unremarkable, unimaginative and unrewarding—and, as a result, are unable to deliver Britten compositions with much style or conviction. Over the years, “Four Sea Interludes” has become something of a concert potboiler, one of those pieces beloved by provincial ensembles, capable of fully realizing the music, yet ignored by the very finest orchestras.

Figures as diverse as Virgil Thomson, Igor Stravinsky, Herbert Von Karajan and Pierre Boulez sniffed at the score of “Peter Grimes”, and it is easy to understand why they thought so little of the opera: Britten’s musical ideas are paper-thin, and not worked out as skillfully—or as seamlessly—as his writing would later become in “Billy Budd” and “The Turn Of The Screw”.

The storm music that comprises the final “Sea Interlude” is emblematic of the weakness of Britten’s score: the four note/five note motif is bizarrely unimaginative, and Britten does absolutely nothing to develop this most insipid of themes. The composer offers repetition, re-orchestration and ever-rising volume, and little more, to keep the storm music going. As conclusion to an orchestral piece, the storm music is undeniably loud, but it has little else to recommend it. The storm music is closer—dangerously so—to bad 1940s film music than most Britten advocates would ever be willing to admit.

The Sibelius Violin Concerto followed the Britten. It proved to be the most satisfying performance of the evening, and credit for the success of the performance must be given to violinist Midori.

Over the last fifteen years, Midori has developed into a great artist. She is one of the finest musicians before the public today, with a very personal sound and a very personal way of making music. Twenty years ago, music-lovers would not necessarily have predicted that Midori would make the successful transition from youthful virtuoso to profound artist. For the first ten years of her public career, Midori was a faceless virtuoso whose music-making lacked character, personality and deep insight. Something happened to Midori in the second half of the 1990s, however, and her performances have become increasingly interesting over the last decade-and-a-half. Her appearances now are virtual red-letter events.

Midori has a unique gift: she can project calmness and anxiety at the same time. I know of no other violinist, past or present, with this remarkable gift.

Midori produces a sound of great sweetness, perhaps the sweetest sound among the many excellent violin virtuosos that bless the present age. Her phrasing is very precise—controlled, detailed, elegant—and she is capable of creating genuine radiance in performance.

Midori’s phrasing in the first movement of the Sibelius was sublime. She did nothing unusual, nothing bizarre, but the way she caught and shaped each phrase utterly commanded the listener’s attention. In the two first-movement cadenzas, her playing was inspired. In fact, the first-movement cadenzas were the high points of her performance.

Tempi in the second and third movements were slower than the norm (the third movement was the slowest I had ever heard, live or on disc), yet Midori never allowed concentration to lapse or tension to dissipate. The leisurely third-movement tempo did, however, remove some of the excitement inherent in the concerto’s final movement.

After intermission, the orchestra played Debussy.

Two orchestrations of piano works were played first: Andre Caplet’s orchestration of “Clair De Lune” and Bernardino Molinari’s orchestration of “L’Isle Joyeuse”. Myself, I wished the orchestra had programmed Leopold Stokowski’s marvelous orchestration of “La Cathedrale Engloutie” instead.

“La Mer” concluded the program. Vanska’s was a big-boned, primary-colors “La Mer”—and successful on those terms. His was not a French-tinged reading nor a performance of subtle shades and tints. “La Mer” as Russian-style orchestral showpiece was what Vanska delivered, and the audience appeared to be perfectly happy with such conception of the work.

Before the concert, we ate dinner at an American restaurant only a couple of blocks from Orchestra Hall. We were disappointed in the food, but it must be acknowledged that the restaurant was phenomenally busy early Friday evening. The kitchen staff may have been strained by the crowd of early diners.

We ordered wild mushroom croquettes as a starter course.

For main course, my mother ordered salmon, asparagus and a cheese-apple salad.

My father and I ordered chicken roulade (chicken breast stuffed with goat cheese, spinach and sun-dried tomatoes, all wrapped in pastry) and garlic mashed potatoes.

Josh ordered Cajun-broiled walleye, Rosemary potato terrine, and carrots and green beans.

We skipped dessert. Service at the restaurant was unreliable, and we feared we might be late to the concert if we proceeded with dessert.

On Saturday, we did outdoor work until early afternoon. Saturday was probably our final day of outdoor work at my parents’ house until next Spring.

In the middle of the afternoon, we cleaned up and split into two groups. My brothers and my niece and nephew went over to my older brother’s house, where they were to spend the rest of the afternoon and evening. My parents, my sister-in-law, and Josh and I went downtown to The Walker Art Center, where we were to view an exhibition and attend a dance performance.

The exhibition was devoted to choreographer Merce Cunningham and artist Robert Rauschenberg. The exhibition included costumes, set designs, full-scale stage backdrops, videos and other artifacts from Rauschenberg’s years designing for the Merce Cunningham Dance Company.

Earlier this year, The Walker purchased over 2,000 items from the Merce Cunningham Dance Company. The institution intends to mount a significant number of Cunningham-related exhibitions between now and 2015. The just-opened Cunningham/Rauschenberg exhibition is the first such exhibition in the multi-year series; a second exhibition is due to open shortly.

In walking through the exhibition, I was immediately struck by how cheap and shoddy were the materials used for the actual stage sets and stage costumes. I doubt that Rauschenberg intended his work for Cunningham to be viewed at close range. Further, I doubt that Rauschenberg intended his work for Cunningham to be anything other than of temporal value. In fact, I do not believe for a minute that Rauschenberg, in designing for Cunningham, believed he was designing for posterity.

The dance performance, held at The Walker’s theater, was by Merce Cunningham Dance Company. This weekend’s four performances at The Walker signaled the final appearance by the company in Minneapolis. The company will permanently disband at year-end.

Cunningham’s troupe has been a regular visitor to the Twin Cities for over half a century, offering performances at a large number of local venues, everywhere from Northrop Auditorium to The Guthrie Theater to The Walker Art Center to parks and civic plazas. As a general rule, the company's many Minneapolis appearances have been sponsored either by The Walker or the University Of Minnesota, and Cunningham visits, roughly, have been at five- or six-year intervals.

My parents had attended company performances a couple of times over the years, but I had never seen Merce Cunningham Dance Company until Saturday night—and neither had my sister-in-law, and neither had Josh.

The works on the program were “Antic Meet” from 1958, “RainForest” from 1968, and “Pond Way” from 1998. The respective designers were Raushenberg, Andy Warhol and Roy Lichtenstein; the respective composers were John Cage, David Tudor and Brian Eno.

I have a limited appreciation for modern dance—for me, much of it is as strange as Kabuki—and I derived limited enjoyment from Saturday evening’s performance.

To begin, I was startled by the absence of beautiful bodies onstage. None of the thirteen dancers possessed what might be termed “dancer” bodies. The odd proportions of the dancers induced disbelief. The lack of muscle tone was particularly shocking.

Matters were not helped by the fact that the dancers, without exception, were singularly unattractive. I could not help but think, the entire performance, that the dancers onstage were rejects from Paul Taylor and David Parsons.

One of the dance works, “Antic Meet”, was a comedy, but the humor was exceedingly obvious and heavy-handed, as if the choreographer did not trust his audience to comprehend the jokes. I found the entire work eyeball-rolling.

The other two works often invoked animal behavior, some of which was mildly amusing but most of which was not. I have no idea whether the works represented typical Cunningham pieces.

At the conclusion of the performance, I asked three questions: (1) did Cunningham have any depth?; (2) did his work exhibit any development?; and (3) was Cunningham a genius or a weirdo? The consensus answer to the first question was that Cunningham had no depth at all, but that depth was never his objective. The consensus answer to the second question was along the same lines: development of craft was probably irrelevant, since the artist was nakedly anti-intellectual and worked purely from instinct. Answers to the third question were all over the place—Cunningham was certainly a weirdo, but different viewers find vastly different degrees of genius in his work.

Myself, I could not get beyond the Cunningham weirdness, either of the man or the work. The sheer weirdness of everything, including the weirdness of the odd-looking dancers, trumped all other considerations. I immediately understood—fully—why Cunningham, after sixty years of creating dance, was never able to develop a significant audience for his work.

Over much the same lifetime, George Balanchine’s audience grew and grew and grew. Indeed, Balanchine’s audience grew from absolutely nothing into the largest dance audience in the world: New York City Ballet performs—nightly—twenty-three weeks a year in a single theater in a single city for a single audience, a feat no other dance company anywhere has ever been able to achieve. By comparison, Cunningham found himself largely consigned to the modern-dance circuit, playing one-night stands in small venues across the country (most at colleges and universities) for decades.

Between the exhibition and the dance performance, we went to a nearby café to have a light dinner. We had two starter courses, seafood chowder and crab cake, and we had dessert, triple chocolate cream cake.

On Sunday, my parents had to attend an afternoon function, so after service Josh and I took the dog over to my older brother’s house, where my brothers and Josh and I worked in the yard all afternoon.

My parents were able to join us for dinner. We all sat down to a Sunday night dinner of pot roast, new potatoes, stewed tomatoes, green beans and corn pudding. We had Pepperidge Farm cookies for dessert.

Josh and I have tentatively scheduled settlement on our new house for Friday, November 18.

It will be interesting to see whether the builder can hold to that date.

The Issue: Determining What Constitutes “Culture” For Purposes Of Public Funding

Well, I've seen Merce Cunningham dance (creepy), and I've seen [Minnesota Vikings Running Back] Adrian Peterson run, and what Peterson performs is a form of ballet.

Minneapolis Star-Tribune political columnist Jon Tevlin

Encounter With Cunningham

Cunningham is a true artistic revolutionary. Since composing his first works in the 1940s, his innovations are many and radical. Perhaps most fundamentally, he has created a wholly new vocabulary of movement. Abandoning the established idioms of modern dance and ballet, he invents a lexicon of gestures that range from the most routine of urban-inspired activities to startlingly original, virtuosic sequences. He has introduced chance operations and made indeterminacy an important compositional device. He has crafted a dialogic relationship between dance, music, and visual decor where each is arrived at independently but performed simultaneously. He has “decentralized” performance space, dismantling the notion (derived from Renaissance perspective and the proscenium stage) that the actions of dancers radiate from a central point. In a Merce Cunningham work, the position of one dancer on the stage is no more important than that of another. Moreover, he has displaced the linear, plot-driven narrative of traditional dance with a dynamic, non-hierarchical field in which cause and effect no longer govern the performers’ movements. Since sequences are not rigidly thematized, they can easily sustain a myriad of interpretations, whose sheer variety celebrates the essential “singleness” of the moment in space and time.

John Rockwell (2005, in conversation at Stanford University)

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On Saturday evening, Joshua and I will see—for the first and last time—the Merce Cunningham Dance Company.

The company will offer a weekend of performances in Minneapolis as part of its farewell tour, after which the company will permanently disband.

Prior to the evening performance, we will visit The Walker Art Center in late afternoon and view the exhibition devoted to Cunningham. The exhibition includes full-scale stage settings for several Cunningham works, which The Walker recently acquired.

In preparation for Saturday’s performance, I have been doing some reading about Cunningham.

Alas, most of what I have read is sheer nonsense, entirely consistent with the cliché-ridden gibberish Rockwell uttered (as quoted above).

Downtown Minneapolis 1858

Downtown Minneapolis 1908

What A Nation Values

If a nation values anything more than freedom, it will lose its freedom; and the irony of it is that if it is comfort or money that it values more, it will lose that, too.

Somerset Maugham