January 2015 archive

Lasting from July to November of 1917 this battle (also known as the Battle of Passchendaele) cost nearly a Million lives on both sides of the conflict.

Among Allied critics the argument is made that the objectives were too limited (capture of some ridges controlling a supply line), premature in the face of United States Expeditionary Force deployment, the tactics limited and antiquated, and the price too costly in resources that could have been diverted to other fronts (the Battle of Caporetto for instance).

Among German critics it exposed Ludendorff as a commander of limited skill and little imagination and it was objectively a tactical loss.

Allied apologists claim it blunted German offensive capabilities in the critical year of 1917 and diverted German resources from the Eastern Front which eventually collapsed anyway due to the Russian Revolution.

German ones point out the Germans held long enough to ensure that collapse and the transfer of resources West to enable the Ludendorff Offensive of 1918 (which failed).

It is possible that The Great War could have come to an ultimate decision ending in Allied victory without United States intervention.  The British blockade was just as stifling as it had been against Napoleon a century earlier and the German Army after the failure of a reinforced Ludendorff no more resolute than the French (among which there was spreading mutiny).  What would likely not have happened is a settlement as punitive as the Treaty of Versailles which led, ultimately, to the ascendancy of Hitler and the Second World War.

So, lives wisely spent or not?  Or are you with Chairman Mao who said when asked if the invention of fire had been good for the Chinese people- ‘Too soon to tell’?

Not that Marines aren’t part of the Navy but one Band Leader is known primarily for his marches and one is… well, not.

Nikolai Rimsky-Korsakov was an active duty officer in the Russian Navy with a lot of time on his hands during his 2 year tours of duty.  He felt his early works too derivative of Beethoven and abandonded many of them, but hated Navy life more than music and took a position at the St. Petersburg Conservatory where he was a teacher of ‘Practical Composition’ and studied far more than he taught in fact abandoning composing for over 3 years.  He kept his job in the Navy as an on shore clerk and frequently taught his classes in uniform.

He was much influenced by his mentor Mily Balakirev and came to be associated with him in a group of five Russian composers known as The Mighty Handful.  The other 3 members were César Cui, Modest Mussorgsky, and Alexander Borodin.

They were very representative of the Romantic Nationalist movement and drew much inspiration from folk songs and peasant dances.  Of the group Rimsky-Korsakov was the most mainstream during his lifetime because he wrote in traditional ‘Art Music’ formats like Fugues, Sonatas, Symphonies, and Opera.

They all had a strong mix of what is called ‘Orientalism’ in their music, though it’s really mostly Arabic and Mughal influence, not what we would call oriental today (Chinese, Japanese, and Korean) and is based on their heavy use of a Pentatonic scale and other self concious musical tropes that were highly artificial and not really representative of any authentic or strictly Russian (or Oriental for that matter) tradition.  Rimsky-Korsakov added elements he had encountered at ports of call in Greece, England, the United States, and South America.

In 1873 he was named Inspector of Naval Bands and retired from active service.  At about this same time (and after his 3 year hiatus) he started re-writing his old pieces to bring their orchestration up to date and make them more mature and finished compositions.  He also published 2 collections of folk songs which he would use to provide musical themes for much of his later work.  By the time he left that position in 1884 he was well established as a composer and professor of music theory.

While considered innovative by some Rimsky-Korsakov was quite rigid and conservative.  He didn’t like Tchaikovsky at all and though like many (but not the rest of the Five) he thought Wagner exciting and fresh where he was merely long winded and bombastic, Rimsky-Korsakov never really warmed to the works of Strauss and Debussy.

He’s best known for things like “The Flight of the Bumblebee” from The Tale of Tsar Saltan and Scheherazade but today I present you Mozart and Salieri, a late work full of his most controversial mannerisms that perpetuates the myth that Salieri poisoned Mozart out of jealousy at his talent.

Obligatories, News and Blogs below.

All the other times I began writing my autobiography (which supplied some of the chapters I have already shared) in the end suffered the same fate:  I couldn’t figure out how it was going to end.  After all I wasn’t dead yet.

But perhaps this will be the terminal chapter in my book.  I’ll have to think seriously about that.

I sometimes (partially facetiously) refer to myself as “immortal until proven otherwise.”  This is different than I have felt about the subject in the past (witness four suicide attempts).  But I am a survivor and see no reason for that to change.  Sure, my body might wear out and no longer function well enough to support keeping my being in contact with the world of our outward shared reality (or is that our shared hallucination?), but I cannot believe that my body is the sum total of who I am (for one thing, there’s just not enough room in there to hold all that is me).  

Our culture (is there really such a general concept?) has always seemed to me to place too much emphasis on death, about how we must “prepare” for it (some people spend way too much energy doing so, in my opinion) and how we must live our lives so that some unknown Good Thing will happen when we die.  The truth of the matter (well, it’s my truth) is that we don’t really know what will happen to us when our bodies no longer function.  All is speculation or hope…faith, if you will.  Someday my heart will stop beating.  What will happen at that moment is anybody’s guess.  Think of it as passing through a door that only permits one-way travel.  

I think the worst that can happen is that there will be nothingness, that the “me” that is connected to my physical form would cease to be.  What a waste of lessons learned that would be!  

Welcome to The Breakfast Club! We’re a disorganized group of rebel lefties who hang out and chat if and when we’re not too hungover  we’ve been bailed out we’re not too exhausted from last night’s (CENSORED) the caffeine kicks in. Join us every weekday morning at 9am (ET) and weekend morning at 10:30am (ET) to talk about current news and our boring lives and to make fun of LaEscapee! If we are ever running late, it’s PhilJD’s fault.

This Day in History

Tet offensive begins in Vietnam; Adolph Hitler becomes Chancellor of Germany; Franklin D. Roosevelt born; Mahatma Gandhi assassinated; ‘Bloody Sunday’ in Northern Ireland; The Lone Ranger debuts on radio.

Breakfast Tunes

Something to Think about over Coffee Prozac

Live as if you were to die tomorrow. Learn as if you were to live forever.

Mahatma Gandhi

So tonight we talk about lying in sports and of course the only answer is if you ain’t cheating you ain’t trying.  Seriously, this is why they have refs.

If this were the only NFL scandal it might be worth noticing but in a year punctuated by child abuse and domestic violence along with the continued problem of blunt force concussion it’s hard to really care that much.

And of course the NFL is hardly the only sport effected, if you really want to talk corruption what about Formula One, the Olympics or World Cup.  Their governing bodies are pure graft from bottom to top which is why the sailors at Sao Paulo will be competing in an open air sewer and soccer players in the simmering oven that is Qatar to say nothing of the police brutality to hide the homeless in Rio or the Shia majority in Bahrain or the Nepalise slave labor.

So we’re not even all that exceptional and unless the conversation is sparkling and goes in a different direction than I expect this won’t be the most exciting Nightly Show in the series and the Koch last night was a little flat.

Continuity

Kristen Schaal was pretty funny though.

Show us what we’re fighting for

I’ve never understood why guys talk about their ‘man parts’ as if they were someone else.

Next week’s guests-

The Daily Show

• Monday 2/2: Martin Short
• Tuesday 2/3: Bill Browder
• Wednesday 2/4: Wes Moore
• Thursday 2/5: Bob Odenkirk

Sarah Chayes is a former reporter for NPR and advisor to the Joint Chiefs of Staff.  Recently she’s been working to get Afghan farmers producing perfume precursors instead of Opium.  She may have a thing or two to say about the SIGAR Report on waste, fraud, and abuse in Afghanistan the the Pentagon is now trying to suppress by refusing to co-operate with the Special Inspector General.

As always the real news below.