Winter Blues Dispelled Or Justice in Fashion

When winter gets really dreary and dull, usually between mid-January and the end of February, and especially when the outdoor movements are limited to narrow tunnels between dirty mounds of snow and melting ice, nothing cheers me up as the anticipation of spring: getting out of heavy boots, thick coats and hair-flattening hats. The long wait for that first warm day can be tedious, even as it provides ample time to get ready for stepping out in the latest sartorial fineries. This year, I find the spring fashion especially lovely. Gone are the skimpy cheap-looking mini affairs and in come the classy elongated silhouettes, with hems below the knees - clothes that make a woman look good as opposed to women making the clothes look good, as has been the case for quite a while.

Dries van Note

Dries van Noten

As usual, there is going to be struggle with arranging photos because the Blogger is soooooo inflexible.  In any case, left and right is my favorite Belgian designer Dries van Noten.  His style is immediately recognizable for its combinations of rich colors, playful patterns and luxurious fabrics, this year hinting at Morocco.  Van Noten's fabric designs extend to   his models' arms and legs in the form of Moroccan henna tattoos.  I will never own any of it and would have nowhere to wear it, but it is pure pleasure just to look at the photos.

 

Then there is the more conservative Chanel with its trademark black-toed sandals (above left) and  more sculpted outfits by the Swedish brand Acne, (above right)  known for simple geometrical lines, and the name which is bound to put off many an adolescent. Of course, there is H & M with its still affordable upscale line (below left), not to be sniffed at, as well as the always minimalist Zara (below right).

And girls, if you are not enthralled yet, here's more of the lovely........oops!  Sorry, guys this is for you - from Damir Doma of Milan:

I am pleased to note that the designers follow lifestyle trends as well as setting them.  Since walking is becoming an important part of daily fitness regime, many leading names in fashion now offer comfortable shoes.  Would you believe that the comfy pair below left is by Chanel?   Unfortunately there are still the ubiquitous platforms (below right), which is fine for the women who want to add inches to their stature, but prohibitive for me.  Something tells me I'll have another year of long searches for suitable shoes.

Some designers go to the extreme in their effort to adhere to life's realities.  As the rich-poor gap widens around the world, it is no longer kosher to display one's wealth.  Clochard-style items from the latest collection of New York's Thom Browne look like costumes for a movie about Oliver Twist. The clothes that only the wealthiest can afford look much like something most homeless would reject. There is justice in fashion.

    

Internet and Philosophy

The Internet is truly miraculous. The other day I ran into an essay by Croatian philosopher Mario Kopić whom I met years ago in Dubrovnik. It immediately brought to mind our last meeting, at a wine bar in Dubrovnik's Old Port that served the loveliest mellow red wine from a small barrel on top of the counter. Over the years, I lost Mario's e-mail so when his essay reminded me of that meeting, I attempted to find him on Facebook, Twitter and other social media sites that have helped me find other friends - alas to no avail.

Mario does not seem to write a blog, does not post his philosophical essays online and does not tweet. As he said in a rare interview to a Dubrovnik magazine, he clearly "lives apart." What little of his work can be found online is posted by others. It's not hard to guess why. Few of his essays - profound contemplations on cultural and existential themes - can be skimmed through quickly and superficially as we do most of our online reading. One that I found, titled Church and Nihilism would probably resonate with any online reader if they could understand it. It's not an easy read even for a Croatian native speaker and it's nearly impossible to translate. I will try my best to convey what it says.

The basis of the Christian ethos is love, which is also in the core of the Christian belief, says Kopić. This essence of Christianity has been obscured by the Church's efforts to achieve and maintain power and domination.  Mind you, this is a simplified, unauthorized interpretation of the original text. The author is much more sophisticated and nuanced. 

While he talks about Christianity in general, it seems clear to me that Kopić refers mostly to the Catholic and the Eastern-Orthodox Church. He says the Church has deviated from the Christian ethos of love for the divine to hatred of everything it perceives as contrary to its preaching. The Church also has taken away from man the right to act according to his own conscience. That right, Kopić asserts citing the Bible, was God-given to mankind through Adam, making the original sin, the birth of Christ and the Resurrection possible. By denying individuals their freedom of conscience, the Church assumes the role of lawmaker and law-enforcer, not unlike the state. In fact, the philosopher notes, the Church has, whenever possible, used the state to help impose its will on the people. By placing the church law above love, it has changed man's status from that of an autonomous God's creation to that of a church member. In this and many other ways, the Church annihilates man's God-given autonomy as much as the secular state does.

Furthermore, instead of promoting the sanctity of life except by banning abortion, Kopić notes, the Church even today tolerates death penalty and blesses armed forces, in some cases even war criminals. 

Kopić further states that no law or religion should replace individual conscience, but stipulates that conscience is not possible without awareness, i.e. understanding of one's own self and the rest of the world.  Human dignity, he argues in an elaborate fashion, results from a person's ability to contain his/her own desires out of love or deference for others. The ability to control oneself cannot be enforced by Agents or Supervisors appointed by the Church or the State, says Kopić and concludes that without love, neither God nor people have much of a future. 

The essay is about Christianity, but its basic ideas can apply to any religion. And Kopić is not the only one to promote them. Years ago, I asked a renowned Muslim scholar, Khaled Abou El Fadl, Professor of Law at the University of California, how God judges a person who has been instructed by his imam to go and kill in the name of religion. Here is what he replied: “The Quran is very explicit about the individual accountability of each person, fully and completely, for their own actions and that they will not be allowed to say in the final day that ‘this person told me’ or ‘that person convinced me.’ That message of individual responsibility and individual accountability is critical [to Islam].” 

Fadl also said a Muslim has to make efforts to understand the Quran and he has to go out of his way to befriend non-Muslims. "God created different people because only through the understanding of human race in all its diversity can people gain true understanding of the Creator," he said.

Interviewed for the same story, late Rabbi Harold Schulweis of Valley Beth Shalom in Encino, California said that Judaism, Islam and Christianity can be compared to different languages teaching the same basic things. The role of religious teachers is to facilitate communication among groups that use these different languages.

“All of us believe that God created the individual in his own image, regardless of race or gender or religion. We are invested with an inviolability - with a divine potentiality. We all come from Adam. And Adam, we must remember, was not a Jew. He was not a Christian. He was not a Muslim.”

Rabbi Schulweis said all men and women, regardless of their religion, are  created by God.  So "to love God, but to hate his creation, is not only a contradiction, it is the uttermost blasphemy.” 

Jewish or Muslim?

There is now near universal agreement among scholars that most world religions, especially the monotheistic ones, share common ethics, although the rites and traditions differ.  A Muslim might be surprised to learn that Christianity's New Testament requires women's subservience and invisibility, not unlike the strictest Islamic law. In his First Letter to the Corinthians, St. Paul said that women must be veiled, and you can still see Catholic women in many countries covering their hair when they enter a church. It is believed that St. Paul also wrote  (Corinthians I, 14:33-35 ) "the women should keep silence in the churches, for they are not permitted to speak, but should be subordinate, as even the law says. If there is anything they desire to know, let them ask their husbands at home." Ultra-Orthodox Jews also require that women cover their hair and submit to the husband's rule. (On that topic I highly recommend the Israeli movie Gett: The Trial of Viviane Amsalem).

It is the outward demonstrations of diversity rather than true religious differences that provoke tensions between religious groups. Catholic theologian James Wiseman, professor at The Catholic University of America, said there is something in the human nature that compels us to differentiate between "us" and "them". But he said religions do evolve with time and so in the 1960s, the Vatican affirmed for the first time the sanctity of non-Christian religions. “The Church has a high regard for the manner of life and conduct, the precepts and doctrines which, although different in many ways from her own teaching, nevertheless often reflect a ray of that truth which enlightens all people,” said Wiseman.

The Internet could make inter-religious communication easier than ever. It even has translation engines to lower down, if not diminish, language barriers. But when did you last see a civilized intellectual discussion on any topic on the Internet? Most online exchanges, religious or secular, are controlled by "Agents" and "Supervisors," including anonymous commentators who revile in the crudest language anyone who disagrees with them, powerful groups that control the thinking of their members, purveyors of hatred and authors of clever and catchy phrases that promise to stick. Philosophers like Kopić reserve their thoughts for readers who would make more effort.

China's Vulnerable Muslim Minority

Islamist terrorism is surging in many places worldwide, despite bombing raids and efforts to influence moderate Muslim communities. In its latest tactics extremist group Islamic State is using foreign recruits to stage attacks wherever they are instead of joining the fight in Syria.  The recruits are increasingly disgruntled young men from Muslim minorities, such as Russia's Chechens and China's Uighurs.  Several Uighurs have been arrested in Indonesia on terrorism charges in the past year,  one just a day before Christmas. Extremists may not be the only ones exploiting Muslim discontent, according to reports claiming that Turkey is transporting Uighurs  from Southeast Asia to Syria to fight  against the Assad regime. I paid close attention to China's Uighurs during the 2009 riot in Xinjiang and am posting here my report from that time for those interested in the origins of Uighur discontent.

Washington,  2 July 2009

In the 6th century, Uighur-Turkic prince Aprin Chor Tigin wrote the following verse:

I desperately long for my woman.

With her lovely eyebrows, she is the fairest of all. 

I yearn to be with her again.

Immersed in deepest thought, I miss her.

I burn with the desire to kiss her.

Prince Tigin lived and loved in Central Asia, a region where more than eight million Uighurs still make their home. In his time Uighurs shared their kingdom with other Turkic peoples of Central Asia and Southern Siberia. But they were far more advanced than most because they lived along the Silk Road, which served as a major route of commercial, cultural and religious exchange throughout history.

At the turn of the 20th century, scientific and archaeological expeditions to East Turkistan led to the discovery of numerous Uighur cave temples, monastery ruins, wall paintings, miniatures, statues, valuable manuscripts, documents and books.

German explorer Albert von Lecoq said the medieval "Uighur language and script contributed to the enrichment of civilizations of the other peoples in Central Asia. Compared to the Europeans of that time, the Uighurs were far more advanced. Documents discovered in Eastern Turkistan prove that a Uighur farmer could write down a contract, using legal terminology. How many European farmers could have done that at that period?"

When the Uighurs embraced Islam in the 10th century, they started to build mosques, religious schools and libraries. Remnants of the medieval Islamic architecture can still be found in cities such as Kashgar, Urumqi, Turpan and Gaochang.

In recent years, Uighurs have become better known as China's separatists, often labeled as terrorists. Even before this year’s riots in Xinjiang, the Chinese government had blamed various Uighur groups for 200 violent attacks in the past decade, including more than 160 deaths. Bejing says Uighur separatists are part of a network of international Islamic terrorism with funding from the Middle East, training in Pakistan and getting combat experience in Chechnya and Afghanistan. In the wake of the September 11, 2001 terrorist attacks on the US, the United Nations added many separatist groups to its lists of terrorist organizations. Among them was the East Turkistan Islamic Movement, or ETIM. The US also has labeled this mostly Uighur group as terrorist.

But Xinjiang separatists say China is using the international anti-terrorist campaign to justify its long-standing repression of non-Chinese minorities. Washington-based Uighur-American attorney and activist Nury Turkel said the Chinese government has consistently enforced cultural assimilation of Turkic people with the majority Han Chinese culture. “They are using all the possible tactics, such as banning the Uighur language, banning the Uighur names -- they come up with a Chinese version of the Uighur names -- encouraging the Chinese people to marry the local people,” he said. But he said the Uighurs have never been religious extremists and that most of them do not practice Islam.

Uighur boys in Kashgar, Xinjiang

Several human rights groups have condemned China's crackdown on Uighurs. In a recent statement, Amnesty International said the ethnic identity of Uighurs in western China is being systematically eroded. Earlier reports have said the crackdown on suspected terrorists includes restrictions on religious freedom, closure of mosques and mandatory "political education" of academics, key personnel in the media and arts, and Islamic clergy.

But some analysts warn that even though the Uighurs' connection to international terrorism may be minimal, it has to be watched. Graham Fuller, former vice chairman of the National Intelligence Council and one of the authors of a new study on China's Uighur Autonomous Region, said examples of Russia, Sri Lanka, Serbia and other countries with large ethnic minorities show that frustrated independence movements may resort to terrorist acts.

He said religion plays an increasing role in supporting these movements. "There is militant Judaism, even militant Buddhism in Sri Lanka. So we are witnessing the phenomenon of religion coming in and bolstering, if you will, ethnic minority. So political Islam is involved here. How much will political Islam become a dominant force in the Uighur struggle? Today it has been a lesser force, but I would bet that if the rest of the Muslim world is any indicator, Islam will be growing in its role in China, supporting and cheering this nationalist struggle," said Fuller.

China has made efforts to develop Xinjiang, fueling funds into industrialization, education and employment, but Uighurs say the Han Chinese have benefited the most from it. Frederick Starr, founder and chairman of the Central Asia-Caucasus Institute in Washington, said China’s economic success will not necessarily improve the Uighurs' lot. He said some political change is essential to avoid violence. According to Starr, China is more likely to avoid conflict by allowing greater local initiative, communal self-government at various levels, and some expression of oppositional sentiment by Turkic and Uighur and Muslim people within the system.

The northwestern province is predominantly agricultural and pastoral, but it is also rich in mineral resources and energy. The oil fields in the far north are among the largest in China. The region has extensive deposits of coal, silver, copper and lead. It is clear that people who have called this land home for thousands of years must have more say in how these resources are to be used. 

US: Nation of Powerful and Weak

Just as I produced my TV package on homelessness in the United States, I came across an article in The Washington Post about a homeless Harvard Law School graduate, arrested for sleeping outside an office building in downtown D.C.  In one of my earlier blogs I mentioned two of my friends with Harvard degrees who have difficulty finding stable employment. Are these people exceptions or part of a phenomenon that is called America?

Skid Row is a 50-block section of downtown Los Angeles, known as the "homeless capital of the United States." Several thousand people live there under tents or tarps, some temporarily, others chronically. The shanty town has been around for more than one century, and it has grown over the years. The city has tried different solutions - most recently it pledged $100 million to help Skid Row denizens - but no one believes this will make a difference.

"From what I see, it can't be solved," said a longtime Skid Row resident Walter Sanders. "Not unless they drop an atom bomb on this place and blow everybody up. That would solve it."

 Homeless woman in Los Angeles

Homelessness in Los Angeles has spread far beyond Skid Row. The number of people living in the streets has risen 12 percent in the past two years. And now some parts of the city are struggling to manage big homeless populations they've never seen before. LA is by no means the only U.S. city with this problem. New York, Philadelphia, Washington D.C. and many others are not far behind. In fact, New York seems to have a higher rate of homelessness per total population. So many people sleep in the streets and parks that pedestrians don't even notice them any more. The image sparks in my mind the memory of elementary school lessons in which we were told that "in America, a person can be dying on the sidewalk and no one would stop to help." I can't remember if I believed the "communist propaganda" at that tender age, but it clearly left an impression. 

Reverend Andy Bales, an executive at LA's Union Rescue Mission, called homelessness "the worst man-made disaster in the United States." He told Sky News in a recent interview that people living in the street are increasingly victims of chaos and violence. And he said money is only part of the solution. "Most of all we need a change of heart about these precious people who are dying on our streets," he said.

In response to my recent TV report (see below) on U.S. homelessness, a viewer commented:

"For all the good that Franklin D. Roosevelt did in his 11 years as President, he made one fundamental mistake; he signed into the law Social Security. It was the front door to more welfare legislation that quickly turned Americans from being self sufficient and community conscious to dependent on Government and self entitled. Instead of a community looking out for each other and lending a helping hand to those in need, now people look to the government with an outstretched hand looking for a handout. And people will lie and distort truths to get government assistance, just to avoid having to work."

This is a belief shared by many Americans - that those who want to work can get a job and afford a home. So if you don't have a home, it means you don't want to work. There are currently more than 500,000 homeless people in the United States, about 65,000 fewer than in 2008, during the height of the global financial crisis.  Since then, more than 30 states reported a decline in homelessness.  But other 17 reported an increase in the past few years, in some cases significant. American cities including Portland, Denver, Seattle, and the entire state of Hawaii, are among those worst hit by the problem and have asked for emergency funds to cope with it.  

The economy has recovered in recent years, the unemployment rates have declined, and since President Obama took office, the economy reportedly has added 8.7 million jobs. So why are half a million Americans living in shelters and shanty towns? Could it be that they all prefer to live without regular meals, showers, clean clothes and something meaningful to do?

Postell at his Harvard graduation

That does not seem to be the case with Alfred Postell who recently appeared at D.C. District Court to answer charges of sleeping outside a downtown office. It turned out that Postell studied law at Harvard alongside with Supreme Court Justice John Roberts, former Wisconsin senator Russ Feingold and Judge Thomas Motley, who presided over Postell's hearing at the D.C. court in June. Postell was described as a motivated and disciplined student who had a well-paid job after graduating. Until he was struck by schizophrenia and everything went downhill from there.

To be sure, very few homeless Americans have college degrees, but many of them have at least once in heir lifetime been gainfully employed, married or settled in some other way.  I knew one of them, a member of the VOA Serbian Service addicted to books and alcohol, who was persuaded to resign after his alcoholism became uncontrollable following his mother's death. 

Postell homeless in Washington D.C.

More than 50-thousand people lacking permanent shelter are war veterans, who believed serving in the military would make it easier for them to find a job afterwards. A quarter of all the homeless are children, some of them without parents.

Advocates say most people become homeless as a result of a tragic event in their life: loss of job or bread-winning spouse; onset of a mental disease, drug addiction or alcoholism; post-traumatic stress disorder, especially in the case of war veterans; and other tragedies some people find hard to cope with. But many Americans have lost homes, or are on the verge of losing them, due to the increasingly high cost of housing against shrinking income, especially in cities like Los Angeles and New York.

Does elite education provide protection from failure? Does it guarantee success? Neither, it would seem. My two friends holding Harvard degrees in architecture and archeology respectively, have held only temporary jobs throughout their lives and Postell has been jailed for sleeping in a public space. Thousands of others, neither especially talented nor endowed are making millions: reality show stars, buffoons, peddlers of cheap goods, "celebrities". The old truth that anyone willing to work hard can make it in this country is beginning to shake. It looks more as if to make it in America you have to be clever enough to recognize opportunity, determined to pursue it, prepared to push rivals out of the way, ready to overcome obstacles, and be completely insensitive to insult, shame, rejection and setbacks. Weakness, disease, sensitivity, modesty and vulnerability are poor assets in Jungle America where fitness is essential for success if not survival.

Still, the majority of middle class Americans are doing well, or at least better than people in many other countries. And those fleeing poverty  and violence at home for the "pursuit of happiness" in America usually are better off than before. Statistics do not show any number of immigrants among the U.S. homeless.

Americans contribute more money to charitable organizations, and their free time to help the poor than any other people in the world.  Over the years I have known a number of friends to forgo holiday parties and family reunions to help serve food to the poor.  It is not clear what "change of heart" Reverend Bale is talking about. If he means that we need a complete overhaul of our goals as a society, I would agree. The culture promoting wealth, beauty and power as its core values instead of truth, knowledge, duty, honor, love and loyalty, and the society that places the rights of an individual over the rights of a community, are creating a nation of strong individuals and weak masses. Homelessness is just one symptom that no money and volunteer work will solve.

http://www.voanews.com/media/video/united-states-homelessness/3121080.html

Washington: Choral Capital of the World

End-of-the-year holiday season is paradise time for choral music lovers in Washington D.C. There is hardly a concert hall, church or school that does not offer a Christmas concert, musical, oratorio or some other choral performance. It’s hard to decide whether to attend a Messiah sing-along, or a concert of favorite carols, and even harder to decide which group to chose - the Washington Chorus, Washington Bach Consort, Washington Men’s Camerata,  Heritage Signature Chorale, Zemer Chai, Gay Men’s Chorus, Capitol Hill Chorale, or......

From the endless list of local choirs, my longtime favorite choice was the Choral Arts Society of Washington under the leadership of Norman Scribner.  For close to half a century, he was the heart and soul of that massive chorus that gave about 8 concerts a year, regularly marking Martin Luther King's Day, Easter and Christmas. Despite the regularity, and many of the same popular numbers, Scribner managed to offer a completely new performance for each of those occasions year after year, after year. 

My favorite were Christmas concerts, which always included a sing-along of carols, but the focal point was always a selection of holiday pieces from a foreign country.  Scribner organized these concerts in collaboration with embassies - and there is no shortage of those in the U.S. capital.  He told me in an interview that the diplomats usually organized a fund-raising party to help cover the expense of the visiting artists.

One of the most memorable for me was the concert featuring Spanish music, which I covered for a VOA radio feature all those many years ago.  It included a Spanish guitar player and castanete artists Carmen de Vicente.  She produced pure magic on castanetes and I can hardly remember anything else but her performance from that evening.  Later she told  me that her instrument is much more versatile than people think and that she can play Bach and Mozart on castanetes.  Unfortunately, no recording that I am aware of was made that evening and so with time the event turned into one of these indelible ethereal memories, all the more precious because they cannot be reincarnated.  But here is another example of de Vicente's artistry:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HAeeljMlf1I

The Choral Art Society's other memorable concert was the 2011 Holiday Treasures from Russia made in collaboration with the Russian Embassy.  No fund-raising was necessary as the Russian government wanted to impress the Washington public and paid for a grand performance. In addition to the soloists, the Washington Choral Art Society was joined by 80 members of the Ural Philharmonic Orchestra led by Dmitry Liss.  They performed the Dance of the Tumblers  from the ballet Snegurochka and the walz from the opera Eugene Onegin.  Soprano Iirna Shiskova sang Bach and Gerchaninov's lullaby as well as Schubert's Ave Maria. On the last evening , the Ural orchestra also played the complete Scherezade, an additional 45 minutes to the program. Russian contributions might have outranked those of France, Germany, Belgium, Finland, Singapore and Alaska, but for me, no soloist in Scribner's Christmas concerts ever outranked Carmen de Vicente.  

At about the same time as the Holiday Treasures concert, Russian tycoon Vladimir Potanin donated $5 million to the Kennedy Center to draw Washington's attention to the Russian art beyond The Nutcracker and the nesting dolls. 

So the art benefited from politicking.  Regardless, Maestro Scribner was proud of his internationally flavored concerts.  The sing-along selections  always included Silent Night because the song is known internationally and he wanted at least one strophe sung in the language of the country that was featured in the program.  Russia, of course sent an expert to transliterate its Cyrillic text into the Latin alphabet and help the audience with pronunciation. "It had not always gone that smoothly, Scribner told me.  At the Czech-themed concert several years before, Ambassador Petr Kolar undertook the role of the linguist.  "He entertained the audience with a pretended stage fright, saying he had never taught Czech to such a large classroom.  Then he took the microphone to sing Silent Night in Czech and could not find the right pitch," Scribner recalled.

"After his performance he turned to me and asked if I had any objections to his singing. The audience burst into laughter and clapping and so the worst number of the evening had the most applause.  The Washington Post wrote that with Kolar in the program we did not need Santa Clause, fake snow or Rockettes."

That conversation, my second one with Scribner, took place four years ago.  The maestro retired the following year and died unexpectedly in March of this year.  I attended only one concert conducted by his successor Scott Tucker and - a solid rendition of Bach's Mass in B.  But I realized that for me the Choral Arts Society had become a different group - still good, still strong, but like the same body with a different soul.

In 1963, the National Symphony Orchestra asked Scribner to assemble a choir to sing Handel's Messiah - for Christmas of course. "Usually they would invite three or four big church choirs to sing. I suggested to audition each singer individually because church choirs can have good and bad singers and we needed the best," Scribner told me in the interview. "Of some 500 people that auditioned, we chose 120. That Messiah was so successful that we decided to keep the group together and perform regularly," he said.

Norman Scribner

The chorus founded 50 years ago by Scribner, grew from 120 to 180-190 members. "Each year some people leave and new ones come, infusing fresh blood into he group,"  he said. Under Scribner, the all-volunteer Society came to give its regular concerts in the United States and in addition performed overseas. It sang in venues such as St. Paul's Cathedral in London and Notre Dame in Paris, often with the world's top orchestras.  The 1993 concert in Moscow's Red Square attracted 100.000 people, including President Boris Yeltsin. In 2011 alone, the group sang in Austria, France and Japan. It was directed by celebrity conductors such as Valery Gergiev, Lorin Maazel, Leonard Slatkin, Antal Dorati, Leonard Bernsten and Christoph Eschenbach. It commissioned new works such as Seven songs for Planet Earth by Finland's Olli Kortekangas. Its recordings include Prokofiev's Alexander Nevsky, Rachmaninov's Vespers and Mahler's 8th Symphony, and a Grammy award for its 1996 recording of John Corigliano's Of Rage and Remembrance.

The maestro told me all this was possible thanks to the professional-caliber volunteer singers who spend hours of their free time rehearsing, traveling and performing.  He said Washington has a huge pool of excellent singers, many of them well educated single people who come to work in the nation's capital and want to do something meaningful in their spare time.  

"There have been weddings and divorces among members of our chorale," said Scribner.  "But most importantly, " he said, "a lot of these people that come here simply like to sing and have good musical education."  And so there are many choral groups. Some perform regularly, others meet from time to time.  Some are connected to a school or an institution, others are formed spontaneously by people of similar interests. Then there are military chorales.

"Washington has more choral groups than any other American city and probably more than any city in the world.  In the musical circles we call it the choral capital of the United States," said Scribner.

Choral Arts Society in Moscow's Red Square

Is there a lot of rivalry? "Not at all," said Scribner. "Each choir has its own unique sound and each sings a different repertoire. We all get along well and we often sing together." Hmmm... pity our politicians don't sing!

Despite the acclaim, Scribner was always accessible, always a gentleman. When he talked about a particularly successful concert, like the one in Moscow, his eyes would lit with excitement and even a little wonder, as if he could not quite believe his chorale was so successful. He never put on airs, never acted like a celebrity.  I imagine that his neighbors could freely come knocking on his door to borrow a cup of sugar.

The institution he established in 1965 is still flourishing.  It still commissions new works.  It still celebrates MLK. It still travels and it still hosts foreign artists.  This year the Society toured five cities in China.  Its Christmas concert featured guests from Singapore.  But I did not attend.  I know if I did that in my mind I would be seeing the maestro walking on the stage with a happy smile and my attention would drift to the concerts of years gone by - to Carmen de Vicente, and to the Silent Night in Russian. I would be missing the warm and fuzzy feeling specific to Scribner and it would not be fair to the chorus and its current leader.

Besides, it's time to hear other unique choral sounds this city has to offer during the holiday season.

Aaron Copland Remembered (or Forgotten?)

Aaron Copland, one of the greatest American composers, died 25 years ago. More precisely on December 2 of 1990. I did not hear any of his music played on the WETA Classical station on or around the date. The National Symphony Orchestra's program included Copland’s Billy the Kid Suite in its dance-themed, all-American program last week. And that's about all. What could that mean? That he is not so great after all, or that American "classical" music lovers don't care for Copland?

Appalachian Spring is arguably Copland's best work. He wrote it for coreographer Martha Graham and called it Ballet for Martha until she renamed it Appalachian spring. The Pulitzer Prize-winning composition owes its popularity in part due to the simple sound and familiar American themes, such as the Shaker melody of Simple Gifts. But it was an altogether different style that attaracted Graham to Copland's music. In 1930, he wrote Piano Variations, considered revolutionary at the time. Neither critics nor the public received them well, prompting Copland - as the conventional wisdom goes - to write more accessible pieces. Except that the conventional wisdom is wrong according to his biographer Howard Pollack.

Aaron Copland, 1900-1990

"One misconception about Copland regarding his evolution as a composer is that somehow he went from a difficult period to a more accessible period and back to a more difficult period," Pollack told me in an interview in 2000, when his book came out. "That's a sort of cliche about Copland's career in a nutshell." 

Pollack said that Copland alternated difficult works and accessible ones throughout his career because he was very openminded and able to write both for a sophisticated elite and for the wider public. "And he realized that the same work would not appeal to those two different bodies of listeners." said Pollack.

Copland was born in Brooklyn, New York, where his parents ran a small department store. He was the youngest of five children and since his parents were very busy, his older sisters helped raise him. Pollack said Copland developed an early interest in music and literature. By the age of seven or eight, he was already composing, by the age of 20 he was writing pieces that are still performed.

"He wrote a setting for poems by his friend Aaron Schaffer. And those particular songs and much of the early work of his late teens written in Brooklyn might remind listeners of Debussy perhaps, who at that time was considered the cutting edge of the new music."

Pollack said that during Copland's youth, America was a little behind Europe in music developments. So in 1921, the young composer went to study in Paris with the famous music teacher Nadia Boulanger. He stayed there until 1924 and during those three years traveled extensively around Europe, meeting other composers and becoming familiar with their music. Pollack told me that Copland was impressed with works of his contemporaries Francis Poulenc, Darius Milhaud and Igor Stravinsky, and that his own music of the time shows their influence. Pollack said one work that had a lating impression on the young composer was Milhaud's Creation of the World which uses American popular music and jazz, something Copland had always wanted to do.

"Copland attended the premiere of that piece and he always held that piece in the highest regard," he said.

When he returned from Paris, Copland wrote his first major works, beginning with Music for the Theater, which reveals the influence of jazz. "The use of jazz rhythms and colors in the concert hall in the 1920s was extremely provocative, and Copland's work from the 1920s met largely a very hostile reception by both the press and audiences alike," said Pollack. "His Piano concerto (from 1926) was hissed at from coast to coast when it was played."

In the 1930s, Copland began to collaborate with choreographers and film directors, modifying his style to suit their needs. In addition to jazz, he also included folk elements in his music. During the next three decades he produced most of his best known works: ballets Billy the Kid, Rodeo and Appalachian Spring; orchestral works El Salon Mexico and Third Symphony, and music scores for movies Of Mice and Men, The Red Pony and The Heiress. His music for The Heiress won him an Academy Award in 1949.

World War Two evoked patriotic feelings among Americans and Copland reacted to them. He produced a musical portrait of President Abraham Lincoln, with quotations from his speeches in the final part. In this performance by the Utah Symphony, late Hollywood Charleston Heston renders Lincoln's words:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GuXwwLsN98E

During the 1950s, the artistic climate changed. Pollack said Copland and his contemporaries were not as preoccupied with a search for a national style as they were in the 1940's. Although Copland's music remained very American in his application of jazz elements, he abandoned the explicit use of well-known folk tunes. The composer who was now in his fifties, revived the lean, almost austere style of some of his early works. But as always, said Pollack, he would take a break from such sophisticated pieces to create something closer to people's hearts. During that period he wrote new arrangements for a humber of old American songs, such as At the River, the work of 19th century Baptist minister Robert Lowry.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OgCNCK-5K88

During the 1950s, Copland also embarked on a very active conducting career, taking it upon himself to introduce American music to orchestras both at home and overseas. Pollack said as conductor, Copland often included in the program works of young local composers all over the world to raise awareness to their work. His productive career came to an end in his eighties with the onset of Alzheimer's disease.

During the centennial year of his birth in 2000, Copland's works were performed in concert halls nationwide. Pollack's autobiography Aaron Copland: The Life & Work of an Uncommon Man was published the year before.

In the 2000 interview his concluding words to me were: "The last couple of years have seen the real revival of interest in this piece (the 1926 Piano concerto) for the first time since it was written, and it shows that Copland in many ways was years and years ahead of his time."

If that is true, than Copland remains ahead of our time too. The "revival of interest" in any of his work was very short-lived - it lasted barely through his centennial year.

Fortress Europe Getting Militarized

When I revisited Rome in 2006, I was disappointed to find that once wide open St. Peter's Square could only be accessed through metal detectors, at least during the pope's general weekly audience. I could not imagine it would become worse. But it has. The video news packages I have worked on this week about security measures in Rome, Paris, Brussels and other European cities all show the same scenes of heavily armed police and soldiers, patrolling major streets and landmarks. 

Apart from the quality of the picture and different uniforms, one could be watching footage from World War Two Europe. Officials in Brussels are shutting down schools, public transport and some businesses due to "serious and imminent" threat of terrorist attacks in more than one place.

Soldiers and police squads are combing Belgium's capital for suspects, lurking behind every corner. Officials are warning citizens to avoid crowds while promising to defeat terror. France has intensified its bombing campaign against ISIS in Syria as did Russia. Hillary Clinton said the United States must lead the fight against ISIS - "not to contain it, but defeat it." In this country as elsewhere politicians want to close the doors to Syrian migrants as a way of protecting the country from terrorist attacks.

About a year or so ago, I took an online course on terrorism offered by the University of Leiden. One of the things I remember best from that course is a plethora of facts and findings showing the disconnect between politicians and scientists regarding terrorism. For example, according to the scientifically collected data, more people have been killed in Africa, Asia and the Middle East by terrorist groups such as ISIS, al-Qaeda, al-Shabab and Boko Haram than in the combined attacks in Europe and the United States since September 11, 2001. One could add that more people in the United States are murdered each year in mass killings or "ordinary" homicides than have ever been killed by terrorists.  

Yet, as the Dutch academics pointed out, more money has been invested in the ramped up security, including new agencies in the developed countries than in those most hurt by terrorism. The Leiden scholars also pointed out that these efforts have not made the world a safer place. They suggested that the money would be better spent on financing centers to research terrorism, especially in parts of Pakistan, Afghanistan, Africa,  the Middle East and other regions most endangered by violent groups. But most helpful of all, the online course suggested, would be for politicians to consult with scientists on the matter. ( I am not so sure when I see how some of our politicians reject scientific findings on climate change).

From what I can tell, this is not just the view of a bunch of liberal European scholars. Rosa Brooks, law professor at Georgetown University here in Washington, wrote in an article for Foreign Policy: "If we want to reduce the long-term risk of terrorism — and reduce its ability to twist Western societies into unrecognizable caricatures of themselves — we need to stop viewing terrorism as shocking and aberrational, and instead recognize it as ongoing problem to be managed, rather than “defeated.” "

Years ago, I interviewed Mark Juergensmeyer, the author of what is now a standard textbook on the subject, Terror in the Mind of God: The Global Rise of Religious Violence. He noted an increase of violent terrorist attacks since the 1990s and said they are committed by people who see the world as being in some sort of "cosmic war." During the Cold War, he said, the world was divided into the communist East and non-communist West, with the Third World balancing in between. But after its end, "the rise of geopolitics and of a global economic system, although in some way unites everybody, it also disrupts traditional societies and gives a sense of uncertainty to people who feel that they are not a part of the new world."

According to Juergensmeyer, those who feel disenfranchised, especially  younger people, commit acts of violence or join terrorist groups whose leaders employ religious images of the divine struggle against evil in the service of their worldly political battles. The barbaric acts that seem senseless to most of the world, are what he calls "performance violence," designed to engage the world in the war, quite unlike the kind of terrorism associated with left-wing Marxist movements that was more strategic and had a more practical goal.

According to that analogy, a world leader who declares war against terror, would appear to be falling into the terrorists' trap. Many Europeans seem to think so. A German friend e-mailed me, "It's crazy. Total overreaction - like after 9/11. I thought the Europeans wouldn't do such a thing but apparently yes. And Hollande - like Bush - is of course internally weak and unpopular and now tries to exploit it to boost his image and electoral chances. It's terrible."

Pope Francis has refused to succumb to the terrorist strategy. In his address to the faithful on Sunday he stressed that the doors to the church will not be closed under any circumstances.

Ordinary citizens also have displayed more sang-froid after the Paris attacks than their leaders. Many said they were concerned, but won't allow fear to control their lives, and a video of a Parisian father telling his son "they might have guns, but we have flowers" went viral online. 

Of course, no political leader can ignore the terror threat, and short-term security measures are in order.  In the long term, I am inclined to believe in my grandmother's maxim "better to prevent than to cure " (a disease). 

What have we done all these years to predict, let alone prevent, the march of al-Baghdadi's forces from Syria into Iraq early last year? The sweeping victories by well armed and well trained fighters were a huge surprise to the general public who had never heard of ISIS. But sociologists, scholars, authors, even film makers have been giving us hints for years - decades - of what the future may bring. I mentioned Kureishi's movie "My Son, the Fanatic" in one of my previous blogs. 

Why is it that political leaders cannot read the writing on the wall when a lot of ordinary citizens can? Politicians react and over-react to compensate for the lack of timely action at a great cost to their nations, and it's just what the terrorists want. ISIS is now a household name in every corner of the world, partly due to their own propaganda, and partly due to the attention they are getting from the media and the political leaderships.

As Brooks and others point out, the best way to reduce the benefits terrorists reap from the world's attention is to stop overreacting. History shows that terrorism cannot be defeated by arms, and that safety measures work only until attackers figure out a way to circumvent them.  Even if you destroy one terrorist group, another one will crop up. But a lot can be done to prevent any new wave of violence by foreseeing it.  Closer cooperation between scholars and politicians might help produce a more successful final outcome in the so-called war on terror.

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Furter reading:
An academic study from 2004
http://www.humiliationstudies.org/documents/WyattBrownNY04meeting.pdf  

Recent article from The New York Review of Books: http://www.nybooks.com/blogs/nyrblog/2015/nov/16/paris-attacks-isis-strategy-chaos/?printpage=true

Appomattox, Take Two

In my previous blog, I noted that technology moves forward but human nature does not. One could add that laws make progress but human nature does not. In just the past year Baltimore, Ferguson, Charleston and university campuses in Missouri have been the most visible examples of how far we remain from securing equal treatment for all our citizens. No wonder Philip Glass saw fit to revise his 2007 opera Appomattox to emphasize that in terms of race relations little has changed in the United States since the end of the Civil War. The new version of Appomattox premiered Saturday at Washington National Opera.

Not having seen the San Francisco performance, I cannot compare the two versions, but one critic described the first take of Appomattox as an "epic-proportioned opera, sensational in its conception, drama and music that had one sitting on the edge of one’s opera seat being witness to history." Much of this could be said of the revised version shown Saturday in Washington. While the production did not have me sitting on the edge of my seat with a particularly sensational conception, it had me sitting back and contemplating.

The opera starts with the final days of the Civil War and the surrender of Confederate Army commander Robert Lee to Union General Ulysses Grant in the village of Appomattox, Virginia. It then moves to a post-war meeting between President Abraham Lincoln and African-American activist Frederick Douglass in which Douglass tells the newly re-elected president he would like to see “voting rights for all free men of color.”

Generals Lee and Grant discuss their correspondence with aides.                Photo: Scott Suchman for WNO

One hundred years later in the second and most revised act of Appomattox we are in the midst of the U.S. Civil Rights Movement, and African-Americans are still fighting for their voting rights.   

Then the opera turns into a political farce in which President Lyndon B. Johnson cleverly handles political adversaries while ridiculing their small-mindedness behind their backs. As it moves to more recent years, Appomattox opens the door to a private conversation between two inmates (real-life characters) convicted of racially-motivated murders committed decades before. One, now dead, got away with a negligible sentence. The other, a former Ku Klux Klan member, will spend his life in jail, but scorns the punishment because for him no price is too high in defense of white supremacy - a state of mind not much different from suicide bombers. 

A group of women calling for the end of the strife and healing of the nation in the final scene concludes the epic on a soothing note.  

The first part of Appomattox struck me as the more operatic and colorful than the second. It opens with a gorgeous all-male choral piece sung by soldiers tired of war. Back home women lament the bloodshed. General Lee and his Union counterpart Grant are juxtaposed on the stage, against the background of huge Confederate and Union flags as each contemplates the other's moves. Their correspondence as well as direct communication are gentlemanly throughout, the interest of American people upmost on their minds. 

The second part felt like a surrealist docu-drama in which historic characters and events presented on the stage blend with those from current news reports, as they would in a dream. You could be listening to Martin Luther King or a reverend in Charleston's historic black church after the racially motivated killing of nine worshipers. The historic marches in Selma were sparked by the killing of Jimmie Lee Jackson, the 26-year-old civil rights marcher at the hands of a state trooper.  Today's Black Lives Matter movement was sparked by the deaths of several black men at the hands of white policemen.  As you watch the former, you think of the latter.  As the opera points out, it took much longer to get the voting rights law enacted than it did to get it repealed.  

The music is a mature and refined Philip Glass, with his signature minimalist style still clearly recognizable in the repetition of phrases that underline the text, or stand alone in their eloquence. The choral passages are unanimously gorgeous, at times angelic and ethereal, like the one that ends the opera, or steeped in the African-American tradition: spirituals and songs like The Battle Hymn of the Republic and Ol' Man River.  Glass even produced his own version of the Civil War anthem We Shall Overcome that brought to mind the original without imitating it.

The singers were mostly superb and well suited for the characters they portray. As the opera moves through the time, some of them could conveniently appear in two different roles without being recognized. Bas-baritone David Pittsinger was the epithome of a southern gentleman when portraying General Lee and sinister as murderer Edgar Ray Killen later on. I could not tell that it was the same singer.

The shining star among his equals was Washington's own Soloman Howard, a graduate of the WNO's Domingo-Cafritz Young Artist Program who has already debuted at the Metropolitan Opera. The 33-year-old bass is the only singer I can think of with the right stature and enough charisma to bring Martin Luther King to life. He also appeared as Frederick Douglass in the first act.

Soloman Howard as MLK in Appomattox            Photo: Scott Suchman for WN

Appomatox is packed with energy and powerful characters, but also (and I know I am going to be crucified for saying this) with occasional longueurs, the recitativi that drag it down like millstone.  In the traditional opera, parlando segments serve to speed up the action and can be as memorable and haunting as any aria. Like this dialogue between Tosca and Scarpia: 

Scarpia: "Or su Tosca, parlate!
Tosca: "Non so nulla."

Or Germont's rebuke: "Di sprezzo degno se stesso rende qui pur nell'ira la donna offende."

Or Eboli's outrageous shriek:  "Voi la regina amate!"

In the modern opera, these half-sung-half-spoken conversations, or monologues as the case may be, sound monotonous and if they go on for too long can become a crashing bore. Not only do they always sound the same, but the voice or the intonation raised in the wrong place or at the wrong time makes me wince. I cannot tell if it is the English language, or a lack of effort, or the belief that modern music should not concern itself with appeal, but few of the modern recitativi - if they are still called that - are memorable. And while they are somewhat tolerable in a staged performance, it is hard to imagine that anyone wants to listen to them at home on CD.

One solution Philip Glass and his librettist Christopher Hampton have found to overcome the tedium is the use of witticism and irreverence in the text, for example in LBJ's conversation with U.S. Attorney General Nicholas Katzenbach. Another trick is following LBJ's "televised speech" with an especially attractive instrumental passage.  Still, the sing-song talk combined with Donald Eastman's unchanged set of pillared facade with a long balcony, creates a static impression, turning the opera into an oratorio at times.

Overall, Glass and Hampton have created a quintessentially American work, focused on voting rights, but sending a powerful message about the legacy of racism that has plagued the world's leading democracy since its inception. The accompanying photo exhibit A Journey from Civil War to Civil Rights is a helpful preview, especially for those of us who missed that chapter in the history book.

During the 1960's rights movement in the United States, I lived in eastern Europe where the assassination of Martin Luther King received no more attention than the deaths of Patrice Lumumba, Salvador Allende, Che Guevara or Haile Selassie. When I came to live in the U.S. capital 20 years later, it was with the conviction that racism and segregation were forgotten things of the past. It took years to realize that racial tensions were not just lingering here and there, but seething under the surface all this time to reach a new boiling point this year.

Washington is probably a better place than San Francisco to introduce an opera such as Appomattox, but the work should be seen by more ordinary Americans than the limited number of shows in D.C. can accommodate. Let's hope that WNO records one of the performances for a nationwide television broadcast in the near future, say during the upcoming dreary months of January and February when many people like to stay at home.