Days of Uncertainty and Dread by Jerry Bennett

Jerry Bennett's Days of Uncertainty and Dread

More PowerPoint presentations from Andrew Small

Nietzsche's The Birth of Tragedy: The Irresolvable Conflict of the Apollonian and Dionysian

The Theatre of Dionysus near Athens, Greece

In The Birth of Tragedy out of the Spirit of Music, Nietzsche criticizes classicist nostalgia for Greek culture, stating, "Greek tragedy perished differently from all the other, older sister-arts: it died by suicide, as a result of the irresolvable conflict, which is to say tragically." (Nietzsche 45) He argues that Greek tragedy is not simply in perfect harmony with the "unity of man with nature" as described by Schiller's art-word "naive." (Nietzsche 24) 

Nietzsche argues that the Greeks' view of the "image-maker or sculptor and the imageless art of music" is reflected by their respective deities of art, Apollo and Dionysus. (Nietzsche 14) He contends that duality of these drives works in open conflict to produce Greek tragedy. Nietzsche contends this conflict also causes Greek tragedy to destroy itself, giving way to the reflection and reason for which the Enlightenment reveres the Greeks as "noble, simple, elegant and grandiose!" (Johnston)

A statue of Apollo from Versailles.

Nietzsche argues that the view of Greek art as "naive" exemplifies the prevalence of the Apollonian's dominance before tragedy. The Apollonian dream gave meaning and significance to the lives of the Greeks with illusion. Tragedy gives them the ability to imagine themselves as "restored natural geniuses." (Nietzsche 42) Nietzsche theorizes that the chorus in tragedy was originally always satyrs, or goat-men. Through this dream, "the illusion of culture was wiped away by the primordial image of man," linking the Apollonian dream with Dionysian instincts. (Nietzsche 41) 

Through the actors and the plot, Greek tragedy energized the Dionysian celebration of the "inseparable ecstasy and suffering of human existence." The Dionysian impulse leads to the collapse of the Apollonian principium individuationis, joining the group's affirmation of the meaning of their existence. (17) While the Apollonian dream is an illusion, Dionysian music is "a direct copy of the Will itself." (77) 

Dionysus, God Of Wine

Nietzsche argues the Greeks' human condition is anything but simple optimism. Becoming entirely absorbed in either force leads to the destruction of the other, bringing about tragedy's death. The imbalance between the Apollonian and the Dionysian causes mystic participation in art and myth to be lost. (70) The spectators became detached from the experience of the tragedy, causing it to become art instead of ritual. 

Greek tragedy reduced the prevalence of the chorus and the reflective nature of Euripides' human drama emerged. Socrates' emphasis on rationality eliminated the value of myth, suffering and instincts to human knowledge. The deities represent two art-worlds that "differ in their deepest essence and highest goals." (76) After Aeschylus and Sophocles, the emptiness left behind in the absence of tragedy causes a turn to "tragic resignation and a need for art." (75)

The Enlightenment era's nostalgia for "Greek serenity," Nietzsche argues, may exaggerate "the cheerfulness of the theoretical man."(86) He asserts that tragedy exhibits the Greeks' struggle with pessimism.  Dionysian forces give the Greek spectator a healthy, direct experience of human suffering and reality while the Apollonian provides the audience with the protective spirit-of-tragedy dream.  Nietzsche says these natural forces manifested in"music and tragic myth are equally an expression of a people that are inseparable from each other." Nietzsche argues this shows how Greek tragedy addressed the human needs of Greek society and was not simply "naive" expression. Nietzsche reminds us that the shared world of the two gods required a struggle between one another even when they were balanced symbolically. (138)

Works Cited

Johnston, Ian C., Trans. The Birth of Tragedy out of the Spirit of Music: by Friedrich Wilhelm Nietzsche. Google Books, 2008. Web. 13 Mar. 2012. 

Nietzsche, Fredrich Wilhelm. The Birth of Tragedy. Raymond Guess, ed. Ronald Speirs, trans. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. 1999.

Aristotle's Poetics: Is Imitative Art The Sincerest Form of Philosophy?

Sketch of Aristotle studying animals (1791).

In Poetics, Aristotle argues that poetry "seems to have sprung from two causes, each of them lying deep in our nature." The first of these is the "instinct of imitation." This instinct enables man to feel pleasure and contemplate pain. While Plato's Republic condemns poetry and other forms of art as a false imitation of life, Aristotle's Poetics defends poetry as  "a more philosophical and a higher thing than history: for poetry tends to express the universal, history the particular" (Aristotle IX). He argues that the mimesis that Plato objects to enables art forms like poetry and tragedy to evoke fear and pity through character and action, leading to a catharsis that can reveal truth to an audience.

Imitation frames how Aristotle explains the divergence among poets that creates Comedy and Tragedy. Aristotle says that there are two kinds of poets that use different means to balance the two instincts. The distinction lies between the "graver spirits" who imitate noble actions and the actions of good men through "hymns to the gods and the praises of famous men" and "the more trivial sort" who imitate the actions of "meaner persons" by composing satire (Aristotle IV).

Plato (left) and Aristotle (right), 

a detail of The School of Athens, 

a fresco by Raphael. 

Aristotle uses the distinction between the two kinds of poets to evaluate Comedy and Tragedy. He argues that Comedy is an imitation of characters, while Tragedy is an imitation of actions. Like the rest of Greek society, Aristotle gives priority to action, which can reveal character, whereas character without action cannot reveal truth. Through action, the poet "brings in character at the same time and then character can reveal "choice of what to pursue and avoid" (Nussbaum 264).

Aristotle argues any poet's effort to "give pleasure to all" mandates that he should "be the maker of plots rather than of verse; since he is a poet because he imitates, and what he imitates are actions" rather than addressing particular individuals which an audience may not know (Aristotle IX). Plato's objection to poetry and imitation (or mimesis) stems from Socrates' radical departure from Homer and the Greek tragic poets. 

Though Socrates denied to have moral knowledge, he  argued that "a good man cannot be harmed" and that "nothing among humans is worth much seriousness" (Nussbaum 263). Aristotle rejects the idea that Tragedy should disgust a "good man" because it represents pity that is undeserved and fear that should be stoically rejected (269). Aristotle believes Tragic poetry should "admit room for both pity and fear to be legitimate emotions" (Nussbaum 270). 

Aristotle argues that imitation plays a pivotal role allowing the audience a "proper purgation of these emotions" (Aristotle VI). He argues, "the pleasure which the poet should afford is that which comes from pity and fear through imitation" (Aristotle XIV). Nussbaum summarizes Aristotle's belief espoused in Rhetoric that imitation is essential to human emotions because catharsis connects an audience to reality through the tragic hero. 

"At his best, man is the noblest of all animals;
separated from law and justice he is the worst."

-Aristotle

Imitation to makes audiences understand "whatever we pity when it happens to another, we fear lest it should happen to ourselves- and conversely" (Nussbaum 274). Though Plato asserts that "people who believe nothing bad can happen to them will have no fear," Aristotle argues that because "fear takes as its object the hero described as 'similar,'" the audience will fear the downfall of a person like them and the related possibilities for themselves that the tragic hero imitates (Nussbaum 275). 

Through imitation, poets connect an audience to the universal experiences which art aims to express. While the characters and actions in Tragedy, Comedy and Poetry may be fictitious, Aristotle implies imitative arts might bring the audience closer to knowledge than reality. 

Works Cited

Aristotle. "Aristotle - Poetics." Athenaeum Library of Philosophy. Web. 15 Feb 2012. 

Nussbaum, Martha C. "Tragedy and Self-sufficiency: Plato and Aristotle on Fear and Pity." Essays on Aristotle's Poetics. (1992): 261-290. Print.

Give Me A Brake! The Social Significance of Cycling

In 1884, Mark Twain wrote

“Get a bicycle. You will not regret it--if you live.” 

In an unpublished essay titled “Taming the Bicycle,” Twain details his daring efforts to learn to ride a large-wheeled “penny-farthing” bicycle invented by James Starley in 1871 (Levinson).

To Twain’s likely relief, Starley's nephew, John Kemp Starley, invented the first “safety” bicycle called The Rover a year later (“Icons of Invention”). His creation of a better balanced and chain driven bicycle propelled the product to become one of the most popular consumer goods of the next century.

Through the Gilded Age, public perception of the bicycle went from that of a dangerous play toy for rich daredevil men to a popular, practical device for the working class that everyone could use.

Bicycles were expensive at first and not available to everyone. Robert Smith, author of A Social History of the Bicycle, estimates that “any of the nearly two-thousand men employed in cycle plants in 1890 would have had to work nearly half a year at the prevailing wage to purchase one of the machines he helped assemble” (Smith 26).

Perhaps they were better off waiting. Early bike enthusiasts bought bikes before innovations like the invention of the pneumatic tire and the subsequent inventions of brakes and gears made the hobby safer. After possibly the scariest beta tests in history, bicycle prices began to drop in 1893, as a result of public pressure and overproduction on the part of the manufacturers (25).

Bikes became a popular form of recreation and a practical machine, stimulating many business innovations of the era. Bicycles provided an energy efficient alternative to horses and brought rapid individual transit before the mass production of affordable cars. The innovations in mass production--including mechanization, vertical integration, and aggressive advertising—would all become ideas that the automobile industry adopted soon. Many automobile makers began their training in bicycle plants.

The bicycle became a major consumer good. Major bicycle manufacturers spent between $4 million to $9 million a year to advertise bikes in newspapers designed to market the “identity” of a cyclist (Furness 17). 
Though early models of the bicycle were marketed towards the upper class (costing around $100 to $150), the bicycle had become affordable to working people by the turn of the 20th century (Smith 17).

In 1895, suffragist Frances Willard wrote in her book, A Wheel Within a Wheel: How I Learned to Ride the Bicycle:

Tens of thousands who could never afford to own, feed and stable a horse, had by this bright invention enjoyed the swiftness of motion which is perhaps the most fascinating feature of material life (Willard 11).  

The president of the Women's Christian Temperance Union emphasized how important the bicycle had been in reviving her health and political optimism, using a bike as a metaphor for politics of action, stating "I would not waste my life in friction when it could be turned into momentum"(“A Whole Philosophy of Life”).

Though the bicycle created some friction with the horse and buggy industry, it expanded possibilities for cities. Cycling created demand for suitable roads to provide ambulances, policemen, postmen, and other bicycle-savvy solutions to problems. The League of American Wheelmen lobbied for paved roads with the financial assistance of Columbia bike manufacturer, Albert Augustus Pope. They created pamphlets and magazines such as “The Gospel of Good Roads” and Outing, propagandizing the need to legalize biking, to build roads, and to implement safety features (Furness 18).

Businesses such as farmers, hotels, and inns benefited from tourism created by bikes journeying into rural areas (Smith 54). The bike boom brought about change by connecting communities closer together not only through building roads but also by emergence of amateur social cycling clubs and professional bicycle races (“Bicycling” 46). Bicycle culture created industries for accessories and uniforms associated with cycling clubs. The social benefit of the bike would soon quiet complaints from even the bicycle's harshest critics.

At the onset of the bicycle craze, physicians’ accused the bicycle of producing “chronic disease” while priests condemned it as “diabolical devices of the demon of darkness” (Smith 1). Cycling soon proved to not only to be beneficial for strengthening the lungs, improving circulation and building muscle tone but it also changed America's conception of moral propriety and social rules (67). The bicycle was touted as an alternative exercise for women to horse riding in 1890 (Tyng 61). Not only did the bike provide for good exercise but also many people argued that it also encouraged temperance because it deterred men from drinking so they could control their bicycle.

Though originally marketed to men, women began to use bicycles and it changed their fashion choices from clothing like the restrictive corset to more comfortable clothing such as bloomers. Though some would criticize bicycle fashion as a moral decay, most would welcome “rational dress” as a “reform that had been long demanded by common sense” (Smith 109).

Susan B. Anthony affirmed the progress the bicycle had brought about for women, stating in a New York Sunday World interview on February 2, 1896: 

Let me tell you what I think of bicycling. I think it has done more to emancipate women than anything else in the world. It gives women a feeling of freedom and self-reliance. I stand and rejoice every time I see a woman ride by on a wheel...the picture of free, untrammeled womanhood (Bly 10). 

While the bicycle enabled greater freedom for the working class and for women, the bicycle's freedom on the roads became somewhat of a liability given its unique status.

Many people considered bicyclists menaces on the road. Taxi cab drivers and “teamsters” (previously used as a term for horse-and-buggy drivers rather than truck drivers) tried to have cycling defined as a “hazardous occupation” (Smith 198). Bicycles would be given the same rights as other vehicles in 1897 along with the restrictions and responsibilities that those laws imposed (197).

George Bernard Shaw would joke over three decades later, “newspapers are unable seemingly to discriminate between a bicycle accident and the collapse of civilization” (Moyers 3). Sensationalist accidents and ensuing social stigma marginalized the cycling. Despite having literally paved the road for the possibility of other vehicles, the bicycle presence began to decrease as roads became more heavily populated.

The bicycle remains a fixture of American culture with approximately 16 million bikes being sold in the United States every year (“Facts and Figures”). Approximately 66% of the 130 million bicycles sold globally are made in China (Panday). However, its role in broader society has changed dramatically. The bicycle is still viewed as a luxury item of conspicuous yet pragmatic consumption. A bicycle provides still fulfills superfluous fashion goals of Gilded Age status seekers. Consumer marketing has changed from materialism to an identity of ideals. The bicycle still serves as a symbol of self-reliance to its current enthusiasts, while also representing an environmental and safer alternative to the automobile.

While cyclists relish in their hobby, the majority of society today looks upon them in a different light. Today, less than one percent of all commuters use bicycles to commute to work (Furness 30). Motorists consider bicycles a nuisance and an obstacle in the way of their road. Society still reveres bicycles as a form of recreation and exercise today, but mostly as a childhood right of passage. The motorist-cyclist reveals that many people may no longer view cycling as a legitimate adult form of transportation.

Zach Furness highlights in One Less Car: Bicycling and the Politics of Automobiles how society perceives bicycles as a “childish” device. Furness cites an example of this trope in The 40 Year Old Virgin. Steve Carell's character, Andy Stitzer, rides a bike to work. Andy Stitzer's coworkers, friends, and girlfriend consider his bike  evidence of his childish inability to grow up, his virginity (Furness 111). Ultimately, his girlfriend buys him a bike, embracing his quirkiness but the damage is done; Stitzer’s bicycle is a silly remnant of his childhood to be tossed away, losing his innocence after he brutally wrecks in the road.

Just as bicyclists brushed off criticisms from detractors in the Gilded Age, bicyclists today reject the judgments from those that deem bicycling unworthy of their status on the streets. They have embraced their antagonistic role in the road while also asserting that they can abide by the “grown up” rules designed to ensure their safety. Bicyclists have successfully petitioned government to build bike lanes in many cities. Nevertheless, bicycles face a danger especially in urban areas. In 2009, 630 pedalcyclist deaths accounted for 2 percent of all traffic fatalities during the year. Seventy percent of those deaths occurred in urban areas (“Bicyclists and Other Cyclists”). When Mark Twain warned that you would enjoy a bicycle “if you live” he was commenting on the dangerous design of the penny-farthing he rode; today, after all the possible safety innovations created for and required of bicycles to legally ride, the external threat of the automobile poses the greatest threat to cyclists’ lives.

Many bicyclists consider themselves activists with a duty to highlight the injustices that car culture perpetuates. Cyclists have begun to use their bicycles as a method of protest. One example of this kind of protest is the recent series of naked bike rides that have occurred all across the country to promote awareness of how cars pose a threat to their safety, both on the road and environmentally. These naked protests share the spirit of disregarding dominant concepts of social propriety as their predecessors in the bicycle craze, while emphasizing the idea of positive body image that can be achieved through cycling.

Through bicycle activism, the bike has a chance to represent more than just sentiments about road safety, healthy lifestyle, and fashion; the bicycle has become a physical manifestation of individual power that accepts individual responsibility. At the same time, the egalitarian nature of bicycle culture welcomes both the amateur and the professional. Although the bicycle was designed for the individual, the roads bicyclists demanded demonstrate the possibility of collective effort in producing social benefits and bridging social connections.

“It is by riding a bicycle that you learn the contours of a country best, since you have to sweat up the hills and coast down them. Thus you remember them as they actually are, while in a motor car only a high hill impresses you, and you have no such accurate remembrance of country you have driven through as you gain by riding a bicycle."

-Ernest Hemingway

Broken Strings?

Art of Listening Concert Review: Stravinsky's The Rite of Spring

 Who/What/When/Where:

The concert I attended was the Philadelphia Orchestra's Beyond the Score presentation of Igor Stravinsky's Rite of Spring.

The concert I heard was Orchestra music.

This concert took place on Thursday, April 8th at 7 p.m.

The concert was held in Perelman Theater at the Kimmel Center.

Initially, I was going to post my concert review for this show, but then I realized that my work on that extra credit assignment sucked. I highly recommend checking out these Beyond The Score presentations. My explanation cannot do justice to the intricate imagery and timing involved in the video presentation with narration and teasing of musical ideas in this show. The presentation explained all about Stravinsky's piece from the pagan mythology that provides programmatic context for the music to the foreign sounds of Russian folk music (with live demonstrations of the folk instruments) to what Stravinsky sought to convey with his expansions of dissonance and rhythmic possibility. My summary cannot convey the sensory overload that Beyond The Score provided.

Since I can't explain much about the experience, here's a few facts about how awesome Igor Stravinsky is that I think fit well in my narrative about music.

In 1913, the Rite of Spring premiered in Paris with a rioting audience reacting to its extreme dissonances and rhythm irregularities. Wikipedia has a pretty good summary of the riots and the program notes behind the piece. In Le Sacre du Printemps, Stravinsky "stripped folk themes to their most basic melodic outlines, and often contorted them beyond recognition."

This photo is a drawing Picasso did of Stravinsky when they collaborated on Pulcinella in 1920.

Despite the pagan themes of Rite of Spring, Stravinsky was a devout member of the Russian Orthodox Church all throughout his life, remarking at one time, 


"Music praises God. Music is well or better able to praise him than the building of the church and all its decoration; it is the Church's greatest ornament."

 "All the signs indicate a strong reaction against the nightmare of noise and eccentricity that was one of the legacies of the war.... What has become of the works that made up the program of the Stravinsky concert which created such a stir a few years ago? Practically the whole lot are already on the shelf, and they will remain there until a few jaded neurotics once more feel a desire to eat ashes and fill their belly with the east wind." 
-Jean Cocteau on The Rite of Spring in Musical Times 1923

In 1935, American composer Marc Blitzstein stated, 

"There is no denying the greatness of Stravinsky. It is just that he is not great enough." 


Blitzstein's position was that Stravinsky's wish was to 
"divorce music from other streams of life," 
which is 
"symptomatic of an escape from reality", 
resulting in a 
"loss of stamina in his new works."





In 1940, Igor Stravinsky re-orchestrated 
"The Star Spangled Banner" 
for the Boston Symphony. 


Someone alerted the Boston police, who arrived at Symphony Hall, confiscated the instrumental parts to the Stravinsky orchestration and 
arrested Stravinsky for...


"tampering with public property."


Sound familiar?





The next Beyond the Score presentation at the Kimmel Center will be Modest Mussorgsky's Pictures at an Exhibition on Thursday June 03, 2010 at 7 PM.

Jimmy Heath's "I Walked With Giants" Book Talk and Today's Temple Bell Tower Cipher

More videos on the YouTube playlist.

After the cipher I went to the Paley Library book talk with jazz legend Jimmy Heath. He was promoting his autobiography, I Walked With Giants, printed by Temple University Press. He grew up in Philadelphia, where he played with Sammy Reed in the Uptown Theater band and toured with the likes of Miles Davis, John Coltrane, Sonny Rollins, and Dizzy Gillespie.

Jimmy performs with his brother, Percy.

Heath performed today with Temple students Danny Janklow (alto), Joe Plowman (bass), and Ian Hooper (guitar) as well as Boyer instructor Terrell Staffer (trumpet).



I should have the full talk loaded to Vimeo by the end of the evening and I'll post an update tomorrow with some of my notes and highlights from the nearly hour long chat.