"Music, Sense and Nonsense: Collected Essays and Lectures", por Alfred Brendel.

Capítulo: “Thanking the Critics - London Critic’s Circle Award

Alfred Brendel ganó en 2003 el London Critic’s Circle Award, el cual que se otorga a quienes han prestado por un largo tiempo un servicio distinguido a las artes. Este premio se ha entregado a Ninette de Valois, Alicia Markova, Judi Dench, Ian McKellen, Helen Mirren, entre otros.
En su discurso, Brendel confiesa que aún en ese punto en su vida y con el gran éxito alcanzado, sigue teniendo algo de la aprehensión que tenía en un principio cuanto trataba de consolidar su prestigio con la ayuda con la prensa, y a veces sin ella.
Brendel agradece en particular a los críticos que después de su primer recital en Graz, Austria, le predijeron un futuro brillante, y a William Mann, quien lo describió en “The Times” uno de sus primeros conciertos como “un recital en mil”.
Brendel también agradece en retrospectiva al “New York Times” que por varios años lo menospreció, por demostrarle que es posible ganar admiradores y establecer una reputación a pesar de él.

https://t.co/d8L71O5LQ3
A pesar de haber escrito algunas reseñas, haber ocasionalmente ventilado públicamente sus recelos sobre Glenn Gould y reconocer en algunos de sus colegas lo que un gran intérprete puede alcanzar, Brendel no se considera un crítico.
Brendel prefiere hablar de la facultad crítica con la que se siente más familiarizado: la autocrítica: “One’s own performances, musical goals and perspectives need to be continuously aired, scrutinised and measured with the yardsticks of the compositions themselves.”
Para Brendel también es importante que no todo sea autocrítica. “Where there is a healthy balance between elation and scepticism the performer is in the right track providing that there is also talent, patience, perseverance, vision, a sound constitution and luck.”
Brendel limita esta autocrítica al plano musical. “A famous pianist once stated that the ethos of a performance was inextricably linked to each and every bite the performer undertakes to swallow. This, I believe, is nonsense. The human being and the artist often operate…
on very different levels if not in different worlds and no one has yet been able to explain the gap between the almost limitless range and accomplishment of the great artist and his limitations as a private person. The idea that the artist necessary mirrors the man is a fallacy."
Para finalizar su discurso, Brendel menciona el obituario que Goethe y Zelter escribieron después de la muerte de Haydn. En el decían que en la música de Haydn encontramos al mismo tiempo ingenuidad e ironía, las características distintivas de un genio.
“I have never considered myself a genius, yet this dichotomy - next to that of chaos and order - has told me something about my own frame of mind. I think it may serve well, not just for geniuses, but as the bond that unites them with civilized critics and performers.”
Este capítulo es el penúltimo de este libro, que ha sido un compañero excepcional en este caótico y difícil último año. Afortunadamente ya tenemos tres nuevas opciones para este 2021:
¿Con cuál preferirían que empecemos?
@threadreaderapp unroll

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I woke up this morning to hundreds of notifications from this tweet, which is literally just a quote from a book I am giving away tonight.

The level of vitriol in the replies is a new experience for me on here. I love Twitter, but this is the dark side of it.

Thread...


First, this quote is from a book which examines castes and slavery throughout history. Obviously Wilkerson isn’t claiming slavery was invented by America.

She says, “Slavery IN THIS LAND...” wasn’t happenstance. American chattel slavery was purposefully crafted and carried out.

That’s not a “hot take” or a fringe opinion. It’s a fact with which any reputable historian or scholar agrees.

Second, this is a perfect example of how nefarious folks operate here on Twitter...

J*mes Linds*y, P*ter Bogh*ssian and others like them purposefully misrepresent something (or just outright ignore what it actually says as they do in this case) and then feed it to their large, angry following so they will attack.


The attacks are rarely about ideas or beliefs, because purposefully misrepresenting someone’s argument prevents that from happening. Instead, the attacks are directed at the person.

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THREAD: 12 Things Everyone Should Know About IQ

1. IQ is one of the most heritable psychological traits – that is, individual differences in IQ are strongly associated with individual differences in genes (at least in fairly typical modern environments). https://t.co/3XxzW9bxLE


2. The heritability of IQ *increases* from childhood to adulthood. Meanwhile, the effect of the shared environment largely fades away. In other words, when it comes to IQ, nature becomes more important as we get older, nurture less.
https://t.co/UqtS1lpw3n


3. IQ scores have been increasing for the last century or so, a phenomenon known as the Flynn effect. https://t.co/sCZvCst3hw (N ≈ 4 million)

(Note that the Flynn effect shows that IQ isn't 100% genetic; it doesn't show that it's 100% environmental.)


4. IQ predicts many important real world outcomes.

For example, though far from perfect, IQ is the single-best predictor of job performance we have – much better than Emotional Intelligence, the Big Five, Grit, etc. https://t.co/rKUgKDAAVx https://t.co/DWbVI8QSU3


5. Higher IQ is associated with a lower risk of death from most causes, including cardiovascular disease, respiratory disease, most forms of cancer, homicide, suicide, and accident. https://t.co/PJjGNyeQRA (N = 728,160)
Great article from @AsheSchow. I lived thru the 'Satanic Panic' of the 1980's/early 1990's asking myself "Has eveyrbody lost their GODDAMN MINDS?!"


The 3 big things that made the 1980's/early 1990's surreal for me.

1) Satanic Panic - satanism in the day cares ahhhh!

2) "Repressed memory" syndrome

3) Facilitated Communication [FC]

All 3 led to massive abuse.

"Therapists" -and I use the term to describe these quacks loosely - would hypnotize people & convince they they were 'reliving' past memories of Mom & Dad killing babies in Satanic rituals in the basement while they were growing up.

Other 'therapists' would badger kids until they invented stories about watching alligators eat babies dropped into a lake from a hot air balloon. Kids would deny anything happened for hours until the therapist 'broke through' and 'found' the 'truth'.

FC was a movement that started with the claim severely handicapped individuals were able to 'type' legible sentences & communicate if a 'helper' guided their hands over a keyboard.