Update: going live in about 2 minutes
Just in case any of y’all might be interested, I’m going to be talking with the really wonderful interviewer, Desiree Schell, about my almost twenty year old book, Measure for Measure, my attempt to retell the history of science through the stories of a series of musical and scientific instruments — from the pipe organ to the digital synthesizer, with stops along the way at the microscope, the scale, chimeric mice (sic!) and the ‘cello:
The conversation will take place on Desiree’s Skeptically Speaking radio show, and can be heard live there at 8 p.m. EDT, 5 p.m. PDT. It’ll be archived and podcast later too, of course. (If you are a glutton for punishment, you can catch my earlier chat on the same program with Desiree’s guest host, Marie-Claire Shanahan, on my more recent book, Newton and the Counterfeiter.
In the meantime, I hope everyone is enjoying the first full day of NFL football (Patriots begin as I hope they go on…), and that’s about it.
Open thread, all.
Image: Amedeo Modgiliani, Cello Player, before 1920.
lamh35
Man, ya’ll have got to see the pic of 1st Biden with the biker chick on his lap:
http://twitpic.com/aswlo7
On Biden per pool: @samsteinhp
Biden asked biker at diner: “Can I borrow one of your bikes? They don’t let me ride anymore.”
The Photo of the Day has to be this pizza restaurant owner lifting POTUS!
http://tinyurl.com/9str9h2
On POTUS per pool: @samsteinhp
“Look at that!” Obama exclaimed once back on firm ground. “Man are you a powerlifter or what?” (pool)
@samsteinhp
Of the Secret Service agents flipping out over Van Duzer lifting Potus, he said: “He said I was alright as long as I didn’t take him away.”
BTW, @BuzzFeedAndrew
RT @laurameckler: The pizza shop owner says he is a Republican who voted for Obama in ’08 and will in ’12. #goodstaffwork.
Davis X. Machina
I hope the book can be re-done some day to take advantage of the possibilities of multi-media.
My biggest frustration with books about music qua music — as opposed to biographies of musicians, e.g. — is a very shaky grasp of musical notation. Measure for Measure isn’t full of mute, accusing snippets from scores, but a lot of music books are.
jl
@lamh35:
That Biden pic is for real, not another Onion satire?
The biker dude on the right looking askance. Biden got too chummy? Was there a rumble?
The Dem ticket is too cool. Unlimted corporate cash can’t buy that.
The Ancient Randonneur
What? No cowbell?
Dee Loralei
@lamh35: HA! I tweeted both. Biker Dude looks like he’s fixin to get ready to defend the honor of his woman! Secret Service prolly made him hesitate.
And that;s a huge bear hug the pizza guy is giving Obama.
lamh35
@jl: yep the Biden pic is real.
the biker dude is looking like dude you betta be lucky you have SS…lol
Davis X. Machina
Fox of course will use the pic to tell us that the President is a lightweight.
Ronzoni Rigatoni
I enjoyed the book thoroughly, and was surprised that the math therein was explained to me years ago by a (gasp!) Mormon engineer. LOL The piano can’t really equate the exactitude of the scale because of its tonal limits. But a barbershop quartet could do so. I was pleasantly surprised. But I still like our ol’ pianoforte. I don’t think the guys really tried to mathematically fix the tonality differences anyway. But they sounded pretty damned good.
jl
@lamh35:
And thanks for metnion of Sam Stein twitter feed. Looks like Mitt’s promise to keep ban on discrimination against pre existing conditions has some, actually a lot of, fine print. What a miserable swindler. Why did I not see that coming? I’ll have to follow Stein on that.
JWL
Levenson: Come what may, it’s a beautiful attempt to accomplish something important. Kudos.
RAM
Bears destroyed the Colts. Who are not in Baltimore anymore, by the way.
JWL
@RAM: Tough “luck” for the Colts.
Tom Levenson
@Davis X. Machina: I’d like that too. May happen.
@JWL: Many thanks!
jl
@TL
Thanks for heads up. Looks interesting.
I thought the cellist was for the prima dona angle, not the cello angle.
But, what? No wheel? Waddabout the lever?
Not sexy enough or what?
lamh35
@Dee Loralei:
yep, that biker ain’t amused. Thank goodness SS is close.
Still at the very least, the difference in the 2 camps are are obvious form the pics. One camp is just more comfortable campaigning among the people. The Obamas and the Bidens are always working beyond the ropeline.
How often does the Romney camp do the same?
I remember the wrestler at the Olympics who asked to pick up FLOTUS. And FLOTUS was like alright, if you want. She was there to support the athletes and if she figured lifting FLOTUS would help, FLOTUS was like ok. Could you even imagine Miss Ann letting that wrestler pick her up, or Mittens even allowing a big hug from the restaurent dude? I sure can’t.
The interaction with regular people is way more intimate with the Obama camp than the Romney.
Hill Dweller
Biden is the bee’s knees. He might screw up on occasion, but his every-man persona seems to inoculate him from any damage, ultimately giving him a freedom that every politician would love to have.
Maude
So much for the elitist meme about Obama.
Maybe he should talk about arugula again.
PurpleGirl
@lamh35: Both pictures are great — really regular folks.
jwb
@Ronzoni Rigatoni: haven’t yet read Tom’s book, but there is no perfect tuning system. You are always having to compromise one thing or another, which is one reason systems of tuning and harmony make for such wonderful political allegories. Anyhoo, I always liked Max Weber’s Rational and Social Foundations of Music, which is packed with all sorts of brilliant insights even if many of the local details are mistaken.
Davis X. Machina
In some ways being POTUS is a shit job for short pay — the President makes what a third-string MLB shortstop makes, albeit with better fringies.
So I’m glad he’s having a good time doing it. It’s not a gig you take for the money.
jwb
@Ronzoni Rigatoni: Also tuning systems get you into all sorts of fun math. Like try extracting the 12th root of 2 (which you need to do for equal temperament) by hand.
scav
@lamh35: I think the biker guy is way beyond somewhat pissed that with all the leather and machine and etc, he’s still being momentarily outshone by a guy in a suit. Biker chick’s enjoying it and golly is Biden too. Too funny.
srv
Tom I suggest some digital sampling Zoe Keating cello in your syllabi.
Dee Loralei
@lamh35: That’s exactly what I was reminded of. FLOTUS and the wrestler chick!
The Obamas and the Bidens love the American people, and it shows in their interactions with us.
For the Romneys, we are just “you people” to them!
jl
@lamh35:
I did not notice the Olympic wrestler FLOTUS lift when it happened. Here is a USA today article vid on it.
Lady wrestler picks up Michelle Obama
http://www.usatoday.com/sports/olympics/london/story/2012-07-27/michelle-obama-us-wrestler-elena-pirozhkova/56528798/1
The video is great, though it took me three tries to get it.
Check it out, peoples. Bonus video of Nancy Reagan sitting on lap of Mr. T Santy Claus, and Dub negotiating dignified presidentin’ compromise with volleyball chick who wanted a butt slap.
M Janello
Tom, I loved your book on Newton (Newton invented the ‘milled edge’ for coins, who knew??!!!), and as a professional musician I’ll look for your other book with interest. I always loved the idea that Galileo’s father was a very well-regarded music theorist, and some of young Galileo’s earliest experiments were in that area.
One that I remember was putting different weights on the end of a wire under tension to see how much the pitch changed. (follows a square law, as I recall)
With regard to earlier comments about scales and the inadequacy of the piano keyboard, Vincenzo Galilei (the dad) was a colleague of a guy named Niccolo Vicentino, who tried to solve this problem by inventing a harpsichord with 32 keys per octave instead of 12.
It was really cool (look up ‘archicembalo’ and you’ll see pictures of it) but playing it and tuning it must have been a nightmare, lol.
And of course, without 15th-century advances in metallurgy, drawing fine wire would not have been possible! So science for the musical win, again.
jl
Got the videos mixed up. Here is the one I meant to link to:
Lady wrestler picks up Michelle Obama
http://youtu.be/RP7Tr5PpOhI
Dennis SGMM
Tom, don’t know how relevant this is. Back in my early machinist days I worked for a shop that had a Bridgeport mill with a Moog CNC control grafted on.
It did not play Bach, other than that it was just as bad as all of the other early early efforts to direct machines with code.
G00, muthafuckas!
jwb
@M Janello: There’s nothing “inadequate” about the piano keyboard (or any keyboard). They just demand a certain kind of compromise (one where the octave is divided into twelve parts; today that division is usually but not necessarily equal). A keyboard where the octave is divided otherwise (with more divisions equal or unequal) is certainly possible, but that leads to other issues (especially increased complexity) and other compromises requiring extensive use of ficta and decisions as to whether harmony or melody should prevail when the tuning leads to contradictory results.
The Ancient Randonneur
@Davis X. Machina: Yeah, but POTUS never gets stuck in traffic.
Tom Levenson
@The Ancient Randonneur: True dat. My coolest experience on the roads was long ago as a volunteer driver in a Mondale motorcade in New York in 2004. I was driving the NBC crew on assassination watch during a routine Mondale trip to the city — fund raisers and a quick rally in Harlem. Cruising through town under NYPD and Secret Service convoy protection was like no other driving I’ve ever done.
Dennis SGMM
@The Ancient Randonneur:
Just by chance, I fell into the wake a VIP motorcade here in SoCal. I was on my way to pick up friends arriving at LAX and I’d been dreading it for weeks. The CHP motor officers were amazing. A normally clogged four lane freeway suddenly became open road as they did an odd-and-even pullovers and closing on ramps.
Mark S.
Geez, Nate Silver is giving Obama an 80% chance of winning?
M Janello
@jwb: Of course! But if you want 1/4 comma mean-tone tuning AND modulation, then the 12-note keyboard is inadequate, thus the archicembalo.
Keyboards with 2 or 3 ‘extra’ notes per octave were quite common in the 17th century but different (the so-called ‘well tempered’) tuning systems became the norm by the 18th and the 12-note octave became the only one around.
The 12-note octave for keyboards is an excellent compromise and ‘won’ for very good practical and musical reasons.
There were some experimental ‘extra key’ instruments from the 19th C that I’ve heard of, but I think they were acoustical demonstration instruments rather than musical instruments. Then the 20th saw more, of course.
Though I do believe that except for the 17th-C split-key instruments, which were pretty widespread, none of these (including the archicembalo) were more than of fringe interest.
jl
@jwb:
IIRC, equal temperment is useful when you want that newfangled chromatic stuff, popularized by that degenerate, Wagner.
If you play mostly in a few keys you can use other scale systems that get the required intervals physically correct, but only for that and a few closely related keys.
Mathematics of Musical Scales
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mathematics_of_musical_scales
Well Tempered Clavier: intended tuning
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Well_Tempered_Clavier#Intended_tuning
jl
Time to go Ives on people’s ass.
Charles Ives: Three Quarter-Tone pieces (1903/1923)
http://youtu.be/BhF0-hN4I8k
Not a Sessions fan, so someone else will have dig up that stuff and we can argue what tuning system is used.
? Martin
Man, Romney is just fucking the narrative. He’s now attacking the WH and the GOP for going with the sequestration cuts plan. Now, I know he’s got to pander on Medicare, and I know he wants to balance the budget by increasing defense spending by a trillion or more dollars, because magic. But the GOP wants spending cuts particularly on entitlements, and are at least in private willing to sell out defense spending to get them (as Rand Paul noted today). So why is Romney even reminding voters of this, and why is he attacking spending cuts? It’d be okay if he was offering a better spending cut plan or other way to avoid them, but he’s not doing that, so this is just him stepping on his own dick again.
scav
Oh, ant TomL@Top? Hoping for a lot on those mice, chimera and cellos next but go squeekers! And huzzah for the Self Aggrandizement Alert! (I had forgotten, which at least I predicted, small comfort.)
Louise
Wait. You’re *that* Tom Levenson?? Huh. Your book is on a shelf in my office right now and reading from it is a part of one of my courses! (I’m a professor of music therapy).
Wild!! I had no idea. Nice to meet you.
Anya
Tom, sorry I missed the live interview, will make sure to listen to the podcast.
Litlebritdifrnt
I am always reminded of how approachable both POTUS and FLOTUS are. You only have to look at one of the videos of FLOTUS greeting guests on a White House tour. To begin with the guests are just shocked that she is there behind the door, then their first instinct is to ask for a hug, and they always get one. Can you imagine Queen Anne standing there for an hour shaking hands and hugging folks? I certainly can’t.
Tom Levenson
@Louise: And very nice to meet you too! I’m glad the book is of use to you.
lamh35
@? Martin:
Ryan was on This Week and Romney was on MTP and they kept contradicting each other.
Romney refused to eliminate deductions for the wealthy.
Ryan says in a Romney administration, he’s going to make sure as VP he gets congress to eliminate tax deductions and loopholes for the 1%.
Romney doesn’t plan on ending the Afghan war soon. Ryan on This Week said he and Romney support Pres. Obama’s 2014 Afghan war deadline.
Romney says he would keep some provisions of ObamaCare but still completely eliminate ObamaCare. Ryan says he and Romney would 100% repeal ObamaCare.
The funniest thing was Ryan said Pres. Obama has no foreign policy record. Stephanopoulos had to remind him about Osama Bin Laden.
On MTP, Romney says he’s not running to slow the rise of the oceans or heal the planet. He’s running for people…um Mitt slowing the rise of the oceans and “healing the planet” does help the people.
Ryan was also on Face The Nation and unlike Gregory, Norah O’Donnell committed an act of journalism.
raven
Hey Tom are you familiar with “The Hand: How Its Use Shapes the Brain, Language, and Human Culture” by Frank Wilson? It has an interesting part about some work he did with musicians and artists who lost the use of a hand and how they adapted.
Mark S.
@lamh35:
It’s like they can’t remember each other’s lies.
Tom Levenson
@raven: Haven’t looked at that. Will now — thanks.
Dennis SGMM
Would one of you be good enough to explain to me where Benjamin Franklin’s Glass Armonica (c 1761) falls into the spectrum of musical instruments?
LINK
Linda Featheringill
If you believe in reincarnation . . .
[if not, just walk on by]
Mojii, the orange cat that died recently [age 17] visited my daughter in a dream this last week. He was a kitten in utero. There was this thing about his only having a stub of a tail, like his regular tail had been cut off. No violence or pain but basically no tail, either.
I figure that either Mama is a Manx of he’s a kitten with a birth anomaly.
So if anyone meets a kitten with a stub of a tail in the near future, say Hi for me. Some lucky person who takes this kitten will be blessed with a very, very good friend.
Do I believe in reincarnation? Hell, I don’t know.
jl
Glass Harmonica, I think its a rock instrument, like solid body electric guitar
Stairway to Heaven on Glass Harmonica
http://youtu.be/5Kf2vDVHXn4
Mark S.
After much soul-searching, Doug Mataconis concludes that Romney probably should reveal at least one deduction he’d eliminate.
I swear, he and Joyner would take ten paragraphs to conclude what Hitler did was wrong.
lamh35
on those August Job Numbers
jwb
@jl: None of the scales is right whatever you do: if you tune by fifths your thirds are off; if you tune by thirds, your fifths are off. That’s the crux of tuning, which is called the syntonic comma. That’s why every tuning system is a compromise and also a political allegory.
Equal temperament starts to creep in already in the late 16th century, perhaps earlier, and Galilei was indeed one of the instigators. A big difficulty, however, from a practical standpoint was the issue of extracting the 12th root of 2 with sufficient precision to get the tuning right. Well-temperament covers a range of temperaments beyond equal temperament; it is any tuning in which all the keys were usable. In that respect, well-tempered is not a single tuning system but rather a practice of tuning. Equal temperament is by that definition well-tempered, but there are many other tunings that are well tempered but not equal, and those other tunings were more common, if I’m not mistaken, well into the 19th century. By the 18th century composers are using modulation and distant keys frequently enough that some sort of well tempering seems presumed. So, no, you can’t lay that on Wagner. It’s probably better to say that the gradual adoption of equal temperament as a standard (and the total technological, economic and social infrastructure that supported it) made the thorough-going chromaticism of his art conceivable.
SiubhanDuinne
Tom, I look forward to listening — I hope live in a couple of hours, otherwise to the podcast when it’s available later in the week.
Re the campaigns, I noticed a rather unexpected bumper sticker phenomenon today. I was shopping in an overwhelmingly white, pretty affluent, and very conservative section of the north Atlanta suburbs today and saw three separate cars with “I LOVE OBAMACARE” stickers. Additionally, I counted probably half a dozen vehicles with regular “OBAMA BIDEN” or “OBAMA 2012” stickers/car magnets.
I saw Not.One.Single.Solitary sticker for RR. This time four years ago, those same roads and mall parking lots were just lousy with “PALIN-McCAIN” stickers (and yeah, most of them listed her name first!) ive seen a few Romney stickers on the roads this summer, but Obama stickers outnumber them. I think maybe people are embarrassed to publicly identify with such a campaign of fail.
Tell you what, I don’t consider Georgia a swing state, and I don’t think anybody else does either, but I do think the gap may be narrowing appreciably this year. And that is very encouraging indeed.
Yutsano
@Linda Featheringill: My kitteh is born a bit early, but she does have a stub tail. My mom said it was from birth (I wasn’t there when her mama had the kittens) and add in a dose of wibbly wobbly timey wimey and it could be…
@jwb: Here’s the perspective on tuning from me: as an oboe player, I have to hit A at either 440 or 442 (done both) and everyone else conforms around me. Tuning is never going to be exact no matter how you slice it, that’s just the nature of performance. But there’s a reason why A is chosen as the starting point: it’s a nice round number. And the theorists lurved them some round numbers.
jl
@jwb:
I am rusty on the math of musical scales, but I think you are right, come to think of it. Even the older key specific tuning systems had to make some compromises. And getting a close approximation was harder for some keys than others.
The older history of scales and tuning would be interesting. Late medieval music was much more chromatic than early modern, and I do not remember reading anything about how they handled tuning way back then. Anyone know?
How did musicians handle tuning between Purcell’s Fantasias and his more modern works, for a later example?
Edit: Wagner crack was a joke, also too.
Dennis SGMM
@jl:
No Stairway
lamh35
BTW Guys we now have video of the Obama lift!
http://www.cbsnews.com/video/watch/?id=7421142n
jeffreyw
@Linda Featheringill:
Hmm…
jl
@Yutsano: Hello fellow double reeder! I will not tell you mine, since people will make fun.
Double Reed Choir – Hallelujah Chorus
http://youtu.be/Wj8zTTGRXic
jwb
@Yutsano: Standardization of pitch is an interesting topic as well. Really it didn’t happen until the early 20th century, and it was driven to a large degree by manufacturers of pitched percussion, especially J. C. Deagan, who pioneered all sorts of instruments. If I’m not mistaken, Lyndon Larouche has some first class nutjob rants against Deagan, standard pitch and equal temperament.
Central Planning
Tom Levenson: Just bought your book; it looked very interesting. Thanks for posting about it.
Central Planning
Tom Levenson: Just bought your book; it looked very interesting. Thanks for posting about it.
Central Planning
And FYWP!
lamh35
more on the restaurant owner who lifted POTUS today in Florida
http://www.politico.com/politico44/2012/09/obama-gets-lift-in-florida-134980.html
Yutsano
@jl: If I had to do my life over again, I’d focus on landing the job of being the English horn player for the BBC National Orchestra of Wales. Not only would I have great healthcare, I’d be making that puppy sing on the soundtrack for Doctor Who. Murray Gold has been writing some real sweet gems in that department.
@jwb: The real problem with recreating any work older than the 20th Century is we have no idea what they originally sounded like. Mozart era clarinets, for example, have a much different timbre than the modern version. Although some still exist and more get recreated, no one knows how the actual horn was played or what techniques were use to produce the air and so on. But they’ve made attempts especially in Vienna with interesting results.
WereBear
@Linda Featheringill: Yes, I do.
catclub
@jwb: I bet a great counterpoint (pun intended) To Max Weber’s book would be: “This is Your Brain on Music”, by Daniel Levitin.
jl
@Yutsano:
I love English horn too, and that would be a wonderful woodwind to play. My double read is bassoon. Tried oboe but think it it way way harder to play, at least well enough so that people do not flee the room.
Learning bassoon, worst you can do is sound like sick cow. With oboe, I shattered glass and I think destroyed a few eardrums.
catclub
@lamh35: Somebody else (you?) posted that the August jobs numbers are the best August numbers
in 5 or six years.
catclub
@jl: You just reminded me of “The Swan of Tuonela” great English horn(?) piece. And neat name.
Downpuppy
Watching the NFL was too much like crossing a picket line. Bad refs & brain injury aren’t a good combo, even with the Pats looking good. So I blogged a sermon.
I figger* half the good sermons are written by agnostics, so why not?
*Like figuring, except you get to make up all the numbers.
catclub
@lamh35: “Pres. Obama has no foreign policy record. Stephanopoulos had to remind him about Osama Bin Laden.”
Plus no memorable long list of fuckups like GWBush. Now _he_ had a foreign policy record. More like a rap sheet.
SiubhanDuinne
@catclub: Yup. I brought Dan Levitin to Atlanta a few years ago for a lecture and some media interviews, and had the pleasure/duty of driving him around town. Really interesting guy, and as you might expect a fascinating conversationalist.
jwb
@Yutsano: Or oboes for that matter, which were apparently easy enough to play in the 18th century that people complained of “marauding” oboists running amok as street musicians.
I think people have a pretty good idea of how natural horns and trumpets worked and what they sounded like. Modern horns and trumpets are sufficiently similar in playing technique that players can adjust to the earlier instruments without a long apprenticeship. I have no idea about the woodwinds, though I understand almost all of them changed markedly over the course of the 19th century.
jl
@jwb:
Renaissance Rackett Collection – Part 3
http://youtu.be/7BVWAx9Vl5I
Baroque Instruments and Makers (violin, oboe and bassoon)
http://youtu.be/Guc_Pp4AGCg
Part on double reads might be only half the story. Clip says they sounded more mellow, but I read in military bands they used metal reeds, which made a racket. I guess an early version of the caliope.
Little know music history horror story that I read about: Whatever King George commissioned Handel’s festival pieces wanted it scored for military double reed choirs. Hilarious intrigue and plotting ensued. I forget what finally happened. But I think Handel wrote out sane scores for sane instrumentation. Not sure what happened at premiere.
jl
It was scored for a large wind band ensemble consisting of 24 oboes, 12 bassoons (and a contrabassoon), nine natural trumpets, nine natural horns, three pairs of kettledrums, and an unspecified number of snare drums. Handel was specific about the numbers of instruments to each written part. In the overture there are assigned three players to each of the three trumpet parts; the 24 oboes are divided 12, 8 and 4; and the 12 bassoons are divided 8 and 4. The side drums were instructed when to play in La Réjouissance and the second Menuet, but very likely also played in the Ouverture.
After the first performance Handel re-scored the suite for full orchestra. Handel wrote notices in the score: the violins to play the oboe parts, the cellos and double basses the bassoon part, and the violas either a lower wind or bass part. The instruments from the original band instrumentation play all the movements in the revised orchestral edition except the gentle Bourrée and the first Menuet, which are played by only the oboes, bassoons, and strings alone.[3]
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fireworks_Music#Music_and_instrumentation