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My Life: the Soundtrack

If I had to pick one favorite piece of music in the world, it would probably be Bach’s Well-Tempered Clavier.  Since college, I have spent untold hours listening to this piece of music, ever since I borrowed my dad’s LP copy of a performance by the great Russian pianist Sviatoslov Richter, and I never get sick of it.  The fact that it is like 4 ½ hours long does not hurt.  It was the first CD I ever bought.  It has gotten to the point where I consider it to be something like the soundtrack of my life; I have listened to it through all phases of my adult existence.  I have this vision of listening to it on my deathbed and being soothed by it.  I’ve never really branched out from the Richter recording, either, which, although it is not the most modern, crisp digital recording, is the most poetic and deep that I’ve ever heard.  (I remember browsing in a Tower Records near Lincoln Center when I lived in Manhattan, and this woman and her daughter were trying to decide which recording of the WTC to buy.  I shyly suggested they get the Richter recording, but they rejected it because it did not have “DDD” on it (it is “ADD” since it was recorded pre-digitally).  They walked away with some glistening recording.  I remember thinking, that’s like rejecting the Mona Lisa in favor of a photograph due to its superior clarity and resolution.)

The Well-Tempered Clavier, is a monumental work made up of 24 preludes and 24 fugues, one in each major and minor key, all done twice (books I and II).  For a total of 48 preludes and 48 fugues.

To love the WTC, you have to love polyphony.  Polyphony, or counterpoint, is a style of music in which the higher and lower notes proceed along the melody independently, in separate "voices."  The simplest example of polyphony is a round, such as "Row, Row, Row Your Boat," "Frere Jacques," or other songs in which different singers begin the melody at different times and sing their parts overlapping, on top of each other.  Of course, "Frere Jacques" is to Bach's contrapuntal masterpieces as a child's recital of the alphabet would be to a professional production of Hamlet. 

How does polyphony get more complicated than a round?  First of all, there are usually more than 2 voices – in the WTC, up to 5.  Second, Bach did not simply repeat a melody over and over; he wandered off in all sorts of directions, with variations or bits and pieces of the tune appearing at different times in different voices.  Third, the different voices are frequently different melodies altogether.  Sometimes the second voice is a completely different tune.  Sometimes one melody is the first played backwards, or inverted (where the original melody goes higher, the inversion goes lower).  These last tricks are what give rise to the myth that Bach is a purely "mathematical" composer.  While it’s true that his pieces sometimes have a rigorous order, he found within this order the ability to express the  most subtle and sublime human emotions.

The tricky thing about counterpoint is that not any melody can be turned into a round (let alone the more complicated sorts).  If you take just any tune, and try to turn it into a round, you can quickly end up with a godawful mess (believe me, I've done it, thanks to computer sequencers).  Although the different voices are "independent," they must coincide in such a way as to make pleasing combinations and rhythms.

Another limiting factor is performance, which adds a whole new dimension to the trickiness of polyphony.  After all, for a pianist or organist, with two hands, it's hard enough to play a polyphonic piece with two voices.  Yet Bach composed works of 5-part counterpoint that can be played by one (very skilled) keyboardist.  By having the performer leap up and down the keyboard, crossing hands at times, and playing the right combinations of keys with the same hand, Bach is able to create the illusion of five separate melodic strands.  In fact, Bach composed polyphonic pieces for an instrument on which that would seem to be impossible: the violin.  By rapidly alternating high notes with low notes, and throwing in the well-timed double-stop (in which the player presses down the strings in such a way as to be able to play two at once) here and there, Bach is able to create the illusion of multiple voices. 

Some of us lame-o’s circumvent the limits of performance, however, by using our computers to make music we could never actually play live.

Almost all the music we hear today is not polyphonic but homophonic – composed of a melody with chords, like a bridge with periodic supports.  Of course, there are bits and pieces of counterpoint in all varieties of music, but no major composers since Bach have made it the foundation of their music.  Around the time of Bach's death in 1750, polyphony went out of style in favor of homophony.  (Actually, polyphony as practiced by Bach went out of style BEFORE his death, and he was regarded as somewhat old fashioned during his lifetime.)  Although later composers – Mozart, Beethoven, Mendelsohn, Brahms, and others – studied Bach's work, incorporated elements of polyphony, and even wrote an occasional fugue (see below), none ever equaled Bach's mastery at counterpoint.  Bach represented the end of polyphony and also its culmination.  Maybe that’s because he set such a high standard that no one has had the heart to try to surmount it. 

The great thing about polyphony is that you can listen to it many times without getting bored, because it sounds different each time depending on what you pay attention to.  You can follow one voice (the others surrounding it dancing around the edges and intruding into the focus of your consciousness in a pleasant way); you can listen to one voice, then skip to another, then another, at various points; or you can sort of sit back and enjoy the effect of all the simultaneous voices.  Since humans can only pay attention to once thing at a time, what you can never do (Mozarts among us possibly excepted) is grasp the work whole, as is possible with a chord-based piece.  Good polyphony overloads your circuits in a most excellent way, hitting that pleasant boundary between chaos and order.

The fugue is a particular kind of polyphonic piece that has a confining set of rules, much like some forms of poetry.  A fugue, which can have two or more voices, begins with the first voice stating the theme by itself.  It then moves on to a counter-theme while a second, lower voice enters, repeating the primary theme.  When the second melody is ready to begin the countermelody, a third voice can enter. As each voice enters, all the others play around, doing various things, perhaps staying quiet for a while, repeating the theme, playing the theme in a new way, or introducing new themes.  At certain points through the piece, the voices successively enter again.

If we represent the melody and countermelody with Xs and Os, it might look kinda like this:

voice 1: X X X X X O O O O O OXOXOOOXXXOOX X X X X X O O O O OOX ...
voice 2:           X X X X X O O O O O OXOXXOOOXXXOO X X X X O O ...
voice 3:                     X X X X X O O O O O OOOXXXOXOXOXOXO ...

Two cool books related to all this:

Godel Escher Bach, Douglas Hofstadter.  Among many other fantastic things, an excellent mathematical and philosophical perspective on counterpoint and other things Bach.

The Bach Reader, ed. David & Mendel.  A fun collection of primary sources on Bach’s life.

Oh how I have gone on.  Anyway, free recordings of the WTC can be heard here but the quality varies widely.  Other free Bach music is here (there may be better free sources I don't know about).  I'd say don't fool around - go straight out and buy the Richter recordings. You can't own the Mona Lisa or the Statue of David but you can own this.

Tapas #14: The Prophet

An improvisational piece I recorded a few months ago.

Jay Stanley - The_Prophet.mp3 (256k, 1:17, 2.4 megs)

This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-Share Alike 3.0 United States License.

Is the Internet Destabilizing America?

As more and more people get more and more connected, a lot of people are celebrating the political impact of the Internet.  I’m among them.  But all this connectivity could be having an unexpected side effect.

In grad school I once came across an article that argued that nonlinear feedback metaphors and epidemiological analyses were a good way to understand charismatic religious movements in particular, and how social movements are propagated in general. 

Randolph Roth, “Is History a Process? Nonlinearity, Revitalization Theory, and the Central Metaphor of Social Science History,” Social Science History Vol. 16, No 2 (Summer 1992)

U.S. history has been regularly punctuated by sweeping charismatic religious moments, evangelical revivals and “Great Awakenings.”  Roth points out that, like many nonlinear physical phenomena such as dissipative systems (chaotic, self-organizing chemical reactions), these movements “emerge abruptly and with apparent spontaneity from microscopic disorder.”  

Dismissing linear models developed by other historians, and drawing on work by theoretical ecologist Robert May, Roth points out correctly that nonlinear dynamics are a far more powerful way to understand social movements:

Let us assume that the nine members of a small community, because they are confused, indifferent, or ambivalent, at first decide randomly whether to support or oppose an evangelical revival.  The random probability that all nine will support or oppose the revival after their initial contact with a revivalist is negligible. (220)

However, like any group the 9 are of course influenced by each other.  Since they’re all influencing each other, it becomes a reflexive dynamic rife with feedback loops, and assuming that some of the group buy in to the revival up front, it is easy to see how those feedback loops could create chaotic swings in support.  Roth lays this all out with graphics and charts but anyone with any nonlinear intuition will quickly grasp its truth.

This is a fascinating idea with big implications.  As Roth puts it, these ideas

suggest that sudden shifts in support for and opposition to reviatization movements are more likely in egalitarian communities whose members are undecided at first about the movements and who are influenced predominantly by small circles of intimates. (225)

Furthermore,

Relationships among community members are as important as charismatic leadership and compelling ideologies in determining the success or failure of revitalization movements….  Where relationships among community members are not favorable, ideolgically compelling movements with strong charismatic leaders can fail despite years of proselytization. (226)

Although Roth does not draw it out, the implication is that disconnected, atomized societies are more stable than highly connected ones.  Could it be a coincidence that the United States is the world’s most longstanding stable democracy is also one of the most atomized societies in the world, with our frontier history and our disastrous social geography of interstate highway system, suburban sprawl, and disconnected, isolated individuals who spend their lives in their private homes, their private cars, and their office park workplaces?  While societies like Italy, which might have much healthier family and community life, are hardly paragons of political stability?

When you fly over rural Europe, you see how different the geographical pattern is from rural America: a bunch of dwellings clustered together in a little village, surrounded by farms.  In the U.S., each farmhouse sits alone, isolated in the middle of vast stretches of farmland.  

But hey – at least while Americans are out bowling alone they aren’t spreading around kooky ideas.

But of course of the things that the internet has done is help people connect to each and form communities, link up to others with similar interests and problems and worldviews.

With all this connecting going on, the obvious questions is: could the Internet be destabilizing the US, by creating the conditions for chaotic reverberation of radical new ideas through networks of closely tied, reflexively influencing individuals poised for spontaneous, self-organizing phase transitions?

If yes, one question is whether this is a good thing or something to be feared.  In some ways the way I have framed it above, as “destabilizing” the U.S., is conservative.  God knows we certainly need an infusion of some fresh, radical ideas in this country. In recent decades, the nation certainly has seemed politically unable to renew itself, move forward, and adapt to changing conditions through fresh thinking.  Some revivals are just what we need.  On the other hand, these chaotic dynamics are probably behind many a terrible movement to sweep through a society and I have no doubt the American population is capable of generating some really crazy movements.

On the other hand, this all may be attributing too deep an influence to the Internet.  It may be that all but a few people are engaged largely in superficial networks and relationships online that do not sufficiently challenge or influence them the way that members of a genuine face-to-face human community do.  If, as people constantly complain, the internet serves mainly as a way through which people reinforce their pre-existing beliefs, then few people are going to swing from one view to another.  On the other hand, per Roth’s thought experiments, if some idea comes along that is sufficiently new that most people do not initially have an opinion on it, then we could see it spread like nonlinear wildfire.

Race Report: Eagleman Half Aqua-Velo

Last August I signed up for the Eagleman half-iron distance race with my friend Dave, but I'm still taking it easy on my running so I switched to the "Aqua-Velo" (no run) division of this race.  This was a bummer but the better part of discretion I felt.  I have also signed up for my first Iron-distance race, for November 1, 2008, and right now all my training is about the Ironman, everything else is secondary. So, I didn't take this race as seriously as a real half triathlon ("Aqua Velo" sounds more like a spa treatment than a difficult athletic test), but it was fun to be back in a race after more than a year.

I had a peaceful swim.  It was in the Choptank river in Cambridge, Maryland, a brackish offshoot of the Chesapeake, and it seems the jellyfish weren't biting on this day.  But, I never really felt like I got in a groove -- navigation was a pain for some reason -- and my time was slow for me, 34:39 (though later on I heard buzz that the swim times were slow, for pros and everyone, presumably due to the currents and tides -- a glance at the times from last year confirms this). I did like that it was a one-loop course rather than two loops (same with the bike).

Then it was onto the bike -- and it was my kind of ride: almost totally flat, with just a slight incline here & there.  First 10 miles I took it easy -- rest from the swim and warmup my legs. Second 10 miles I worked a little harder, but it was into the wind. Next 10 miles (20-30), I really kicked it up a gear. Next 10 miles I tried to keep it in that gear but started to flag around mile 35. I know it was then because 3 times I checked my odometer every 10 minutes (or so it felt) and I was still on mile 36 each time. 

One turn I took somewhat aggressively, but not hugely, and found myself headed straight for a big ol' patch of gravel while in a big lean. So I had to straighten up and go flying into a gravel parking lot. Slowed down, got back on the road and had to spin up again.  The cop standing at the intersection didn't say a word.  I'm guessing it was probably the 50th time he'd seen it.

It being such a big race (2000+), and me being in the final (13th!) wave, the roads were absolutely littered with dropped cycling equipment of all kinds.  It was actually somewhat hazardous, I had to really watch the road; almost hit a few water bottles.  If I had slowed down and scooped it all up, probably would have paid for the race.  Probably $200 worth of air cannisters alone.

Next 15 miles (miles 35-50) I kinda limped along a bit, getting tired, and there were some headwinds that came & went as we made various turns. Mile 50 I decided to try going into overdrive again, to see how it felt, and managed to stay there until the finish at mile 56. Because I was the last wave in a very large race I spent the whole race passing the trailing ends of the preceding waves. I must have passed several hundred riders.  Maybe I should have left my handy-dandy bell on, but I wanted to be aero as possible. I was flabbergasted at how many people, including none-too-lean young ladies and lads, moving down the highway at not exactly a streaking pace -- were nonetheless riding $4,000 machines with Zipp wheels (around $1,000-$3,000 per wheel) and all the rest.  Kind of disgusting -- excessive, decadent maybe.  Also I'd be embarrassed to ride a machine like that, I don't feel worthy.  In any case there is something satisfying about blowing by someone riding equipment that would feed an African village for 18 months.  I got passed early on by 3 people, all aqua-velos -- a woman of around 50, a guy wearing a bike uniform, and a guy pedaling with his legs stuck out and wearing all black (crazy in that heat). By mile 40 I had re-passed the bike shirt and the bow-legged ninja, but no sign of the lady. At mile 45 one guy passed me for good. At mile 53, I finally caught the lady.  That told me that, although she and I had nearly the same times, I paced myself better than she did.

For the whole 56 miles I had a song going through my head: "Perhaps, Perhaps, Perhaps" by Doris Day -- except I was signing "Relax, Relax, Relax."  I'm a big believer that eliminating any tension not actually needed to propel yourself is key to good performance.  And when you're in pain, you tend to tense up even more than usual.

Speaking of pain, the last 3 miles or so I could see part of the run course along the road as I came in, and it was brutally hot and there wasn't a stitch of shade and no trees and the runners all looked miserable. What had been a letdown, having to skip the run, became a cause of celebration.  Plus I had not been saving anything for a run and the idea of doing the half-marathon at that moment turned my stomach. 

On triathlons I always enjoyed the bike leg and found the run to be more or less painful.  But doing the aqua velo, I found the last portion of the bike was pretty grueling.  I remember thinking,"this feels just like the run usually does."  Makes me realize it's not just the fact that it's specifically running that makes it tough -- it's that it's the last hour or so of the race, and you're nearing your limit.  Here, since I didn't have to run, I was pushing myself and nearing my limit on the bike.

After I passed the mats and came into the transition area, my race was unceremoniously over.  Some guy wandering around the transition took my chip and gave me a medal.  Then it was time to drink, eat, swim in the river to cool off, generally chill, and watch the runners come in, including my friend Dave, who had a far tougher day than I did but did very well.

My bike time was 2:37:22, average speed for the 56 miles was 21.5 MPH.  My overall time was 3:14:34, good enough for 4th place out of 47 men.  (Also I actually won my age group for the aqua-velo -- but even though it was the fullest age group, there were still only 14 guys in it. Still it's good to be king of something for once, no matter how small the kingdom).