A bitter pill

So a lot of brou-ha-ha is being made over some comments that Barack Obama made regarding the mentality of the blue collar class and how they've reacted to lost jobs, lost opportunities, dying communities, etc. For the record, Obama said these words, "You go into these small towns in Pennsylvania and, like a lot of small towns in the Midwest, the jobs have been gone now for 25 years and nothing's replaced them. And they fell through the Clinton Administration, and the Bush Administration, and each successive administration has said that somehow these communities are gonna regenerate and they have not. And it's not surprising then they get bitter, they cling to guns or religion or antipathy to people who aren't like them or anti-immigrant sentiment or anti-trade sentiment as a way to explain their frustrations." Oh, puh-LEEZ! These words, are, for what it's worth, true. That is exactly how people tend to react when times get hard. They turn to something that they feel that they can trust (or mistrust, as the case may be) and use that as a way to deal with their feelings. But now, Obama is being called an "elitist" for speaking these words when we all know that they are true. So you can't speak the truth anymore if you're a politician? You can't say things like this and not have people's feathers get ruffled? I mean, I suppose it does sort of stereotype the typical angry white male blue collar Joe Lunchbucket, so I suppose in a way that there are words there that could be misconstrued, but it does seem to portray what most of us think of when we think of displaced blue collar workers whose jobs have been shipped to Mexico or China who are probably seeing a lot of immigrants come in and take all the low paying service jobs that could be going to a displaced blue collar worker who just needs anything to make a buck to put food on the table. But still, I think that a lot of ballyhoo is being made over what is largely nothing more than what seems to be the impression given of an angry white male displaced blue collar worker living in a once thriving industrial community. Think Youngstown. Or someplace else that was a one horse town that has struggled to reinvent itself since jobs began going south and overseas. You meet a lot of folks that Obama described perfectly when you travel to places like that, so what all the nonsense is about, I just don't know. One more item in the Clinton toolbox to use to take down her opponent, I guess. Seems like you can't say diddly anymore in a campaign without it being pounced on by your opponent and used as a cudgel to take you down. Politics is a cruel business, and you'd better have a hide of steel in order to survive it.

APOLLO MEETS MOZART - AND HAYDN

Friday evening, a friend and I went to St. Paul's Episcopal Church in Cleveland to hear Apollo's Fire, Cleveland's Baroque Orchestra perform Haydn's Symphony No. 59 in A Major, known as the "Fire" symphony, and several works by Mozart, "Solitudini amiche......Zeffiretti lusinghieri" from Idomeneo, Re di Creta K. 36, "In un istante...Parto m'affretto" from Lucio Silla K. 135. The soprano singing these arias was Amanda Forsythe and she's got a really glorious and crystalline voice, just lovely. I always admire a soprano whose voice has a bell-like quality to it, clear, resonant high notes and the ability to make it sound utterly natural and not forced. Not being a soprano myself, I envy the ability to do what someone like her can do and hit those gloriously high notes so easily. At best, I am probably mezzo-soprano to alto. I was once a soprano myself, but in my mid-teens, my voice began to mature and deepen somewhat, so I became a mezzo soprano/alto in choirs that I have sung in since. Not that I mind singing harmony, because it's always come so naturally to me, but when I hear a soprano with so beautiful a voice as I did the other night, I realize that all the great composers wrote for the high voices and I wish that I could sing like that. Anyway, on to the rest of the program, which was finished with the Mozart Symphony No. 40 in G Minor K. 550, one of Mozart's darker pieces, but one I know almost by heart from hearing it so much. It was tough not to want to hum along with the entire piece, but it was interesting hearing it performed by a baroque sized orchestra instead of a full symphonic orchestra by whom I am accustomed to hearing it done.

Jeanette Sorrell, the conductor, studied under Roger Norrington, whose work I am familiar with, and I could hear his influence on her style. Norrington has done a pretty good job of turning the music world on its ear by conducting Beethoven far faster than most people would think to take it, but when you hear a Norrington conducted Beethoven symphony, it is literally like hearing it all over again for the first time, and that is kind of how I felt the other evening hearing Sorrell conducting the Mozart 40th. I know this piece inside and out (I used to have a cassette tape of it in my old car that I played - a lot!) and hearing Apollo's Fire do it the way that they did was a revelation to me. I loved the intimacy of the smaller orchestra and being able to hear nearly every instrument's part. I loved the mood struck by the way that Sorrell conducted it. I loved hearing the urgency of Mozart at work in this piece, whose health and wealth were failing at the time of this piece's writing. I could almost close my eyes and see scenes from "Amadeus" as the work proceeded, the ill Mozart frantically composing as he feels his life slipping slowly away from him, struggling to get out this incomparable music that he no doubt heard in his head, music that, to this day, has no equal. As the character Antonio Salieri says in the film, "Music is the voice of God, and Mozart is His voice." Amen to that.