Language

I was talking with my dad today about how language has changed over time. I brought up the subject because I was noticing how many people (myself included) leave out subjects or objects in many of their sentences. For example, "sounds good", or "Fine." These can both mean different things depending on the words around them, but people have taken to relying on context to leave the listener to infer what they meant.

My dad said that this represents a recent degeneration in language. That this phenomenon of texting lingo and  abbreviations is showing a greater downward trend in the intellectual quality of modern culture. I disagree, however. If you look at a sentence from the 17th century and one from the early 1900's, you will see a big drop in explicitness and clarity, just as you would when comparing an early 20th century sentence with one today. Another point my dad brought up was longevity of things such as letters and emails. "Back in the day,"  so to speak, people often wrote very long letters to each other, whereas today, one often receives and sends one-sentence emails. I think that this follows the exact same trend as the sentences mentioned previously.

I view this occurrence as a graph throughout human history. In the stone age, people were not writing long letters to each other, and sentences consisted of grunts. Then, in the iron and bronze ages, language grew greatly, but was still rather bland. In the middle ages and the renaissance, language became much more varied and colorful, and writings much more lengthy. Then, with industrialism and the modern age, language has started to regress back to its origins. I think that this graph would not show an upward line followed by a downward one flattening out. I think that it's more sinusoidal. I think this pattern will continue it's downward trend, but will eventually come back up to renaissance-era heights.

In a salute to modern literature and culture, here's a link to one of my all-time favorite spoken-word poems. (WARNING: naughty words)

Beloved

By this point, I am about halfway through Beloved, and I love it so far. A lot of my friends do not, however. Many of them seem to think that Tony Morrison's difficult-to-understand writing style makes it a bad book. I agree that her writing is not easy to read. It can be a struggle sometimes to understand what she means by a passage. But I don't think this detracts from the book. Rather, I believe it adds to the power of the novel. While I occasionally have to reread a section multiple teams to gain an understanding of it, and yes, this does interrupt the flow of the reading, I like how not everything is explicitly stated. Many things have to be inferred by the reader, and one is constantly having to read in between the lines to get the subtle meaning behind phrases. But I think this is fun, and I enjoy reading literature that makes you work. Of course, this means the readings take more time, which is unfortunate for my cramped schedule, but I don't really mind that much. So you should read Beloved, because it's an excellent book.

Shostakovich

This week I am at All-State Orchestra. One of the pieces we are playing is Shostakovitch's Symphony Number 5. Today's blog post is going to be about why Shostakovitch is an uber-genius.

Dmitri Shostakovitch lived his whole life in Russia. At this time, Russia was a socialist regime ruled by Stalin. As you may have heard, Stalin was not a very friendly guy. Due to his extreme idea of nationalism, there was intense censorship across the cultural spectrum. Stalin heard some of Shostakovitch's early music and deemed it to be upsetting to Russian ideals. While this may not seem like a big deal, at this team, people that upset Russian ideals tended to dissapear rapidly with the aid of the KGB. Shostakovitch became deathly afraid of this fate, and was so paranoid that, when he finished his Symphony No. 4, he refused to let it be premiered in case Stalin did not approve. So what did Shostakovitch do? Wimp out and become a factory worker? No. He wrote one of the greatest works of art ever. Shostakovitch's Symphony No. 5 is freaking amazing. Allow me to explain why.

The whole piece has a very patriotic feel to it- the battle march sections and blaring brass seem to show a real pride in Mother Russia. However, his music goes much deeper than this. Beneath a facade of nationalism lies a sarcastic, angry, scared view of his circumstances. For example, in the first movement, there are many times when the whole orchestra stops and there are three solid individual chords. These chords are harsh and sharp. They are meant to represent the KGB knocking on Shostakovitch's door, an event which he was constantly paranoid about. Another example is the end of the fourth movement. The last two minutes of music consist of a loud brass chorale, which seems very happy and proud. However, the whole section is underscored by the entire string section playing an A. With the same rhythm. Over and over. For two minutes. This is meant to represent how this happiness that Russians supposedly feel towards their leader is strained, forced, and fake.

The reason Shostakovitch is such a bamf is because he was able to write one of the most beautiful pieces of music ever (I didn't mention the 3rd movement- absolutely stunning), and make relevant and active political commentary at the same time. A man with this talent is nothing short of a genius.

I'm attaching two links to this- one is for the fourth movement of his symphony, where you can hear the blaring A's at the end. The other link is to the second movement of his second piano concerto. I know I didn't talk about this at all, but, in my opinion, it is one of the most beautiful works ever, and I highly recommend you listening to it.