Re: On authority

[Shane Mage <shmage@xxxxxxxxxxxx>]

Michael wrote:

> My friend, Aldo Matteucci, sent me this.  I would like to know more.
> Maybe some of you have even seen the book.
>
>
> Frauchiger, Urs. 1982. Was zum Teufel ist mit der Musik los (Bern:
> Zyglogge).
>  69 ff: The first to conduct was Carl Maria von Weber, in 1817, at
> Dresden, followed by the composers Spohr and then Mendelssohn.  At the
> time, Schumann pointed out the contradiction between the conductor's
> baton and republican principles -- it was perceived  then as a political
> act.

There were conductors long before the baton was introduced.
Bach, Mozart, Beethoven all conducted their own works--often
from the keyboard.  Jean Baptiste Lully (the favorite composer of
the Roi Soleil) used a wooden stave--and died from gangrene
after accidentally striking his own foot.

Shane Mage

"When we read on a printed page the doctrine of Pythagoras that all
things are made of numbers, it seems mystical, mystifying, even
downright silly.

When we read on a computer screen the doctrine of Pythagoras that all
things are made of numbers, it seems self-evidently true."  (N.
Weiner)