An Unenviable Situation

Thursday, January 03, 2013

Richard Hofstadter, Anti-Intellectualism in American Life

The reciprocal relations of high and low, elite and popular, intellectual and not, or
the condescension of arrogant schoolmen and their students, of the best and the brightest.

The arts are Burkean.
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videos: Debussy plays Debussy, Golliwog's Cakewalk. Motörhead, 1916

2 comments:

dubdobdee6:39 AM
My piano teacher gave me this to learn as a kid -- he explained that the brief yearning non-cakewalky sections are a pisstake of Wagner and German Romanticism generally. My teacher's teacher had been taught by Brahms: it didn't rub off on me.
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D. Ghirlandaio2:40 PM
My mother played Debussy, Satie and Scott Joplin for her children. She played and my parents listened to the Germans up to the late 19th. By the early 20th it was between the French and the Russians. The Russians were pop crap without irony so obviously they went with the French. Back to the Germans again only for Weill and Brecht. The Children's Corner and Gymnopedies bring back very strong memories of early childhood.
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