Underrated Classical Musicians: Georg Christoph Biller

 

On this Good Friday, let's remember the Leipzig Thomaskantor Georg Christoph Biller, who died of an unspecified (so far as I know) neurodegenerative disease at the beginning of this year after a long and distinguished career in service of Bach, music, St. Thomas's church, and his students. This comes from 2013, by 2015 he was forced to resign and from 2019 had to spend the rest of his life in a wheelchair, though the disease seemed to spare his mental faculties.

There is another H-moll Messe on youtube from them in 2000. Orchestrally, the other is more distinguished - in 2000, Biller had the Leipzig Gewandhaus, and there is nothing any period ensemble can do to match that level of dedication and uniqueness. But chorally, though, this is more distinguished than nearly any performance ever set down. The vocal clarity, precision, diction, and intonation of every line is just about absolute. One could doubtless ask for more phrasing and contrast, but that is not perhaps the proper approach with such young musicians who can express with naturalness that no adult can ever recapture. So with near-ideal tempi (for me at least), Biller creates an experience that balances the spiritual, human, and formal, in a way puts us closer to the spirit of Bach than nearly any other conductor has.

The sound of the Thomanerchor is a thing of wonder, and one realizes instantly, this is the timbre for which Bach wrote his endless stream of polyphonic melismas - it is meant for young people with no limitations in their stamina, intonation, or air supply. The secure vocal technique of young people is inherent in their physiognamy, and no amount of professional technique can replace this artless naturalness.

So there is something about the Thomanerchor that simply sounds right - whether it's in period circumstances like now or back in the days of Ramin or Mauersberger. I have no idea if this is anything like the sound Bach meant, but there is something that fits Bach's music as uniquely as any amount of period instruments or techniques.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NCWMUt0KmY4

ONL - Bransk 1899 - Scene 5 - Rough Draft

Reuven: Well, here we are, in Reb Wolf's house again... a butcher's a very good living.... don't count up what he's got again...  I can't help it.... Zol gotter pitten we should want to be a little rich....

Duvet... check... Tow ottomans... check... Two armoires with six panels... doh und doh... 4 gas lamps... here and there und here and there.... A Zaydie clock... check...  Tzvai bronze samovars... check... Three silver menorehs... check...  Golden shabbos candlesticks... doh...  More shabbos candlesticks... there... ayntz tzvay drei... five sets of shabbos candlesticks in the armoire!... check... They might all be gold!... giant silver b'sawmim spicebox... check... 

I can't stand this...  Yed'n tag seeing how they live then how I'm gonna live... Uncle Ezra is cutting off the money and we've got nothing left over... like the rich are rubbing their gold in our pawnim...

Well keyn enin vos... I might as well take a few knives again... It's not much but every one of them's a bit of silver I can bury for when we really need to pay somebody off... Und got veyst we're gonna need it... You see how meshuggeh the Bransker are... the Kowalski family vill macht mit a pogrom any day now und we're gonna hobn tsu pay the police again...

(opens drawer, starts stuffing cutlery in his pockets...) 

Don't get ambityes Reuven, just a half dozen... is zex too much?... don't be a real gonif just take four... nu, they've never noticed before... nu... you've taken more than six before... come on... you might as well take eight this time.... look at this, there must be hundreds of silver cutlery here, who's gonna notice when acht go missing?... Ach gott you gotta be quieter about this...

Freu Wolf: Vos tutsu Reuven?

Reuven: Ach... mein gott Freu Wolf... I'm so sorry... (begins to panic) You're gonna fire me I completely understand... just please I'm begging you don't get the politsay involved.... there's no sense in lying about what's going on here... I got so ambitious... (begins to cry) my family is azey rizig and so poor... you know as well as I do a pogrom is coming soon...

Freu Wolf: (calming and reassuring) Reuven! Ziskeit! Don't worry teyereh! Don't you remember? I gave you all this cutlery as a gift? 

Reuven: Oh....

Freu Wolf: Mein mann sees how hard you work, I see how good you are to us, to me... Mir haben dir lieb and we want everything good for you...

Reuven: Well, thank you so much Freu Wolf.

Freu Wolf: And remember? We made presents to you of all that other silverware too.  

Reuven: (thinks for a moment, then dreads) Oh. 

Freu Wolf: It was all geshanks. We're so grateful for everything you do around here, and we're sure you're going to be around for a langeh tzeit to help us so you can become the mensch we all know you're going to be. 

(we hear the unbuckling of pants and rustling of shirts - or tzitzis. Just then the grandfather clock strikes noon and we hear twelve chimes.) 

What is Rachmaninov?

Nobody played Rach 3 as well as Horowitz did, but his Rach 3 is more about Horowitz than Rachmaninov. By his final performances of it, it sounds almost like he's making a talmudic commentary on the piece. There are so many insights into it that you feel as though you understand how the piece is constructed from A to Z, and yet it's not Rachmaninov, who clearly wanted his art disguised. As a piece of music, it's a lot emptier than its fireworks make it look, and there are maybe three performances I know of which do not make the concerto feel fifteen minutes too long for its material. Rach's own, maybe Zoltan Kocsis, and the great Earl Wild.

Aside from coruscating virtuosity, they have no patience with the customary swooning romanticism of most 'finger jocks.' There are plenty of composers in which that style works - including Schumann and even Beethoven, but Rach was a cynically cold as ice classicist who merely disguised himself as a romantic. He was, in every sense, a musical genius, whose romantic expression belies a labyrinth of formal relationships. But like Mendelssohn and Saint-Seans, everything in his work is pro-forma - for all the ingenious construction, everything is done to pre-existing models. There is a barely a single innovation anywhere, and therefore, if you do not stick to the classical form very strictly, his musical architecture of stone evaporates into sugar.

Rachmaninov was practically the only pianist immune to that temptation, but Wild was really the only pianist who approached Rachmaninov's 'realism.' This cold shower so much more convincing than the more traditional thunder and slop of every Russian pianist (save Rach and Horowitz).... and Argerich (ducks).....

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LX8BDsa4sHo

The Ultimate B-Minor Mass

If any work's greater than it can be performed it's the h-moll Messe. There's no such thing as a perfect performance, nor can there ever be. But for me, there's clearly one that takes in more of what's great about it than any other. Harnoncourt, 1968, still in his late 30s, a completely different sort of conductor than he would later be. The ultimate paradox of Bach, perhaps the ultimate paradox in all of music, is that Bach is pure dry mathematical form, and yet he is the ultimate proof that mathematics has emotion. While Harnoncourt contrasts more dynamically between loud and soft than nearly anyone, there is nothing here of Harnoncourt's characteristic personal interjections. There is simple, pure form. Harnoncourt should have clarified the textures much more, and the sound is incredibly artificial, but every tempo but the Sanctus is absolutely perfect so you can appreciate both on the micro and macro levels. On the micro level, even if the textures could be clearer, the tempi are absolutely perfect for appreciating how every single detail along the way contributes to the whole, and on the macro level, the pacing is so perfect to lift the Messe into the air as a single organic construction.

There's also the issue of the boy choir - which, to me at least, feels as much as though it's something Bach's always missing as any period instruments. Bach was as true believing a Protestant as Lutherans got, and for better or worse, anything which smacked of refulgence or decadence would have gotten the conductor thrown out of the organ loft. There is much obviously to recommend about using a mixed choir, but even if only women soloists have the professionalism to make the arias sound right, an all male choir simply fits this music like a glove in a manner a mixed choir does not. To me, Bach performance hit a golden moment around 1970, at the beginning of the HIP movement's eminence, when both HIP and traditional performances could not help but be influenced by one another. No longer did we have 200-member amateur choirs who grew up in Victorian choral societies, and could barely get through the music even at tempi 30% too slow, nor did we have generations of slick professionals surrounded by pop music, who emphasize Bach's dance rhythms at the expense of his spirituality. Not everything before or after this era was terrible, and not everything in this era was great. But this performance and Leonhardt's in the 1980s are the only two B-Minor Masses I know which sound as though they are conducted the way Walcha or Ruzickova or Tureck play the keyboards (and Leonhardt obviously...). You'd think severity of their approach makes the music colder, but by not yielding, the music gains everything. It's the kind of music that makes everything about your life feel understood and heard and assures you that to everything in life there is a season. Hearing Harnoncourt conduct the B-Minor Mass is like your first experience of an eglise in France or a duomo in Italy. You did not know that the story of being alive could be told in a building until you exist in such spaces, and afterwards your life is forever larger

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_nWXoOXvpDg

Brief Comment on an Anne Applebaum Article

 

I've tried in recent years to scale back on sharing political articles, because we all have better things to do with our time. But please, read this. Anne Applebaum is a towering historian of Eastern Europe, some people call her conservative (she's not, and by American standards she's left-of-center), but every liberal the world over has to re-examine what is liberal and what is conservative right now, and that re-examination is 50 years overdue. Liberals are nearly 95% right on questions of domestic policy, progressives are 80%, socialists are 60%, but on foreign affairs, you all turn into libertarians, and people who know better have let you without calling you on the fact that you could get us all killed as easily as a neoconservative who wants to nuke every time a foreign leader furrows an eyebrow.

The result of all that is that Putin makes an international network of worldwide far right organizations to defeat democracy in every first world country. And don't think it would end at defeating democracy either - the next step might be 'eliminating threats', including those of us who would like to restore democracy. It seems far-fetched, but he's successfully jeopardized democracy everywhere in the world, and even now, there is barely a response. There's barely even an acknowledgement that a response is necessary. There's barely even an acknowledgement that the democracies we live in are better, safer, freer, more prosperous, than dictatorship; because god forbid anything put even the most regulated capitalism in a flattering light. I know everybody wants to avoid war and anybody sane wants to live in a world without war - unfortunately, no such world exists, it never has and it never will. Whether it's this war, or with China, or resource scarcity after Global Warming, or even domestic civil conflicts in every major country, world war is coming for us all, and the more surprised we are, the more of us will die. We can all either start preparing now and let go of the whole "military force = capitalism = evil" syllogism, or we all can willfully allow ourselves to be stunned when places and people we've known all our lives disappear forever while we're too busy to mourn them.

https://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2022/05/autocracy-could-destroy-democracy-russia-ukraine/629363/?utm_source=facebook&utm_medium=cr&utm_campaign=The%20Atlantic%20-%20Ukraine&utm_term=The%20Atlantic%20-%20Ukraine%20-%20There%20Is%20No%20Liberal%20World%20Order%20-%20Subscriber%20Lookalikes%20%2B%20Page%20Retargeting&utm_content=The%20Atlantic%20-%20Ukraine%20-%20There%20Is%20No%20Liberal%20World%20Order%20-%20Subscriber%20Lookalikes%20%2B%20Page%20Retargeting%20-%20Perhaps&fbclid=IwAR2OYurmSB-IEgN9dy7Lt-KGZWJD56Las0SpYSUDvgvgpO3kmdonwlj48wQ

ONL Scene 4 - Bransk 1899 - Second Draft

 Levi: 

Alright Levi... just milkh der fucking coos... if the milk gets on things, you just wipe it up. She can't tell. Of course she can't tell, and even if she says she found milk on the floor, she hasn't found drek. .....And she's quite a shtik drek isn't she...

(Levi hears a chicken cluck and looks) 

(annoyed) Oh what is this farshtunkener chicken doing here? I put them all away!

(puts it back in the coop/lool, another chicken starts clucking)

Ach gott, another one... and how do these two look exactly alike..

(puts it back in the coop, then a third)

Was der shtup... a third?

(the third chicken is a bit noisier and starts clucking)

Hoooooon-hoon-hoon-hoon-hoon-hoon-hoon-hoon, come on, kum tzu Levi...

(chickens get louder and faster)

Oh don't make me chase you....

(chicken starts sounding articulate and saying "shalkheni ki alah hashakar" - meaning let me go for the dawn is breaking.)

(silence for five seconds)

Levi: Did this chicken just say what the Angel just said to Jacob? 

(chicken starts clucking again)

Levi: That's meshuggeh even for the voices.... Here, let's just get you back to the lool and pretend that never happened. 

(a fourth chicken appears in the spot where the last one did and also says "shalkheni ki alah hashakar")

Levi: Four chickens appearing out of nowhere, two of them quoting the Toyrah... 'shalkheni ki alah hashakar'... (figuring out if he remembers the translation correctly) let me go for the dawn is breaking... it's a miracle!... Such a stupid miracle.... Well, there it is, Levi Kharlap, prophet of Hashem, was present for God's dumbest miracle.... What am I supposed to do with chickens that quote the Toyrah? Maybe they become really good matzoh ball soup... 

(Chicken starts clucking again) 

Levi: Oh farcockt....

(then a second chicken starts clucking, then two more, then four more, then eight, then sixteen, then a thousand...)

Levi: This is getting weird....

(the cacophony of clucking chickens goes for 10-12 seconds)

The Lamb: SHA-A-A-A-A-A-A-A-A-A-A-A-A-A-A-A-A!!!!!!!!

Levi: Great... now the lamb's talking too. 

(must be background music from the Psalms here, gets louder and louder until end of the scene)

Lamb: L-e-e-e-e-e-e-vi. I am a desce-e-e-e-endent of the she-e-e-e-ep slaughtered by A-a-a-a-a-a-abel and A-a-a-a-a-a-a-a-a-vraham. The yichus of my bloodline was used on the sla-a-a-a-a-a-a-ave doors of E-e-e-e-e-e-egypt. My ancestors were present at the death of Sa-a-a-a-a-amuel and were given to the Me-e-e-e-elech of Eretz Yisroel by Me-e-e-esha the Mo-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-oabite. And I must die immee-e-e-e-e-e-e-ediately. There is so little time to expla-a-a-a-a-a-a-ain, but a fault in how we say the khakham harazim brakha means that as many as six-hundred thousand Je-e-e-e-e-e-ews will soon die if you do not kill me right now, te-e-e-e-e-e-errible things are happening, and if you do not act, a ca-la-a-a-a-a-a-amity will befall the entire people of I-i-i-i-i-i-i-israel. 

Levi: But...

Lamb: Hurry! It may already be too late!

(Levi panics and slaughters the lamb, we hear the knife slitting, we hear the lamb choking on its blood, we hear the blood splattering on Levi) 

(music stops, you hear the lamb chocking to death, and all you otherwise hear is the soft slow clucking of one chicken. Both stop in ten seconds. Two seconds of silence)

Levi: Fuck how am I going to explain this to Reuven?

ONL - Scene 4 - Bransk 1899 - Rough Draft

Levi: 

Alright Levi... just milkh der coos... if the milk gets on things, you just wipe it up. She can't tell. Of course she can't tell, and even if she says she found milk on the floor, she hasn't found drek. .....She's quite a shtik drek...

(Levi hears a chicken cluck and looks) 

What's this farshtunkener chicken doing here?... I thought I put them all away. 

(puts it back in the coop/lool, another chicken starts clucking)

Ach gott, there's another one... looks exactly like the last one...

(puts it back in the coop, then a third)

Was der shtup... there's a third? And they all look exactly alike!

(the third chicken is a bit noisier and starts clucking)

Hoooooon-hoon-hoon-hoon-hoon-hoon-hoon-hoon, come on, kum tzu Levi...

(chickens get louder and faster)

Oh don't make me chase you....

(chicken starts sounding articulate and saying "shalkheni ki alah hashakar" - meaning let me go for the dawn is breaking.)

(silence for five seconds)

Levi: Did this chicken just say what the Angel just said to Jacob? 

(chicken goes back to clucking)

Levi: That's meshuggeh even for the voices.... Here, let's just get you back to the lool and pretend that never happened. 

(a fourth chicken appears in the spot where the last one did and also says "shalkheni ki alah hashakar")

Levi: Chickens quoting the Toyrah... 'shalkheni ki alah hashakar'... let me go for the dawn is breaking... it's a miracle... And such a stupid miracle.... Well, here it is, Levi Kharlap, prophet of Hashem, was present for God's dumbest miracle.... What am I supposed to do with chickens that quote the Toyrah? Maybe they become really good matzoh ball soup... 

(Chicken starts clucking again) 

Levi: Oh farcockt....

(then a second chicken starts clucking, then two more, then four more, then eight, then sixteen, then a thousand...)

Levi: This is getting weird....

The Lamb: SHA-A-A-A-A-A-A-A-A-A-A-A-A-A-A-A-A!!!!!!!!

Levi: Great... now the lamb's talking too. 

(must be background music from the Psalms here, gets louder and louder until end of the scene)

Lamb: L-e-e-e-e-e-e-vi. I am a desce-e-e-e-endent of the she-e-e-e-ep slaughtered by A-a-a-a-a-a-abel and A-a-a-a-a-a-a-a-a-vraham. The yichus of my bloodline was used on the sla-a-a-a-a-a-a-ave doors of E-e-e-e-e-e-egypt. My ancestors were present at the death of Sa-a-a-a-a-amuel and were given to the Me-e-e-e-elech of Eretz Yisroel by Me-e-e-esha the Mo-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-oabite. And I must die immee-e-e-e-e-e-e-ediately. There is so little time to expla-a-a-a-a-a-a-ain, but a fault in how we say the khakham harazim brakha means that as many as six-hundred thousand Je-e-e-e-e-e-ews will soon die if you do not kill me right now, te-e-e-e-e-e-errible things are happening, and if you do not act, a ca-la-a-a-a-a-a-amity will befall the entire people of I-i-i-i-i-i-i-israel. 

Levi: But...

Lamb: Hurry! It may already be too late!

(Levi panics and slaughters the lamb, we hear the knife slitting, we hear the lamb choking on its blood, we hear the blood splattering on Levi) 

(music stops, all you hear is the soft slow clucking of one chicken)

Levi: Fuck how am I going to explain this to Reuven?

ONL - Branks 1899 - Scene 3 - Semi-Final Draft

 (inside a barn with chickens, cows, goats and sheep) 

Reuven: You're so fertummelt Levi. 

Levi: But you don't understand how vivid they are. They have to be real! They're as real as you right here!

Reuven: OK. So are they emesdikker real or are they falshen real?

Levi: (slightly annoyed) Well they're obviously not real the way you and I are! 

Reuven: So your mind is falling for your own schvindle?

Levi: (more annoyed) It's not a schvindle. (trying to explain) It's like you can see them completely, but you can also see through them.

Reuven: You should always see through a schvindle....

Levi: (quickly) It's not a schvindle! I know what these malakhim tell me are true!

Reuven: And what do they tell?

Levi: You obviously wouldn't believe them. 

Reuven: No I wouldn't, but I want to hear them anyway. 

Levi: That this will be the Great Age of our people. That we will be destroyed, we will lose everything, but then we'll all be saved.

Reuven: You mean like the coming of Moshiach?

Levi: Ikh veyst nit, they haven't said. I just know that we're about to live through the most important time in thousands of years. 

(two or three seconds)

Reuven: Feh!

Levi: That's what they said!

Reuven: Levi I'm getting worried. Has anyone pointed out to you you might have a Lokhen Kop?

Levi: You asked so I'm telling you!

Reuven: Just don't you dare tell Tateh this. You used to be such a mensch but you're getting really weird. If he finds out you're as meshuggeh as him it'll break his heart. 

(Butchers wife calls from outside the barn)

Butcher's wife: Stop shtupping kibbitzing un get back tzu arbeit!

Both of them: We're working!

Butcher's wife: You're schrecking so much I can hear it from the bodroom! Why's the door to the lool open! Why did the coos not get milkhed yet! You've only sheared three of the sheep! My husband must be paying you to kibbitz! 

Reuven: Froi Wolf your husband is paying us to do our job right. 

Butcher's wife: What's right about not milkhing der coos by eleven o'clock?!

Reuven: Look at how clean the chickens are. A shaygetz could pick them up and bite the head off right now. 

Butcher's wife: Well then stop kibbitzing and get to the coos! Isn't work supposed to set you free! 

Reuven: (joking around) Froi Sarah, when has work ever set anybody free? Especially around here!

Butcher's wife: I dunno, it's a shprikhvort around here. You musta heard it. 

Reuven: Oh we've heard it from our Tateh. 

Levi: Yeh. Five or six millions of times we've heard it. 

Reuven: That saying's gotten more Jews in trouble than Khmielnitsky. 

Levi: Sha! Don't mention his name!

Reuven: Who? The biggest merderer in Jewish history? He's been dead for two and a half centuries, he won't bother us again. 

Levi: Don't ever mention his name! 

Reuven: What, the evil eye again? 

Levi: Do you really wanna tempt it?

Reuven: Didn't you tell me the biggest merderer in Yid history was Emperor Hadrian. 

Levi: Reuven! (spits three times) Do you have any idea how bad it is to mention their names on the day Maneh's giving birth?

Reuven: Seriously, was it Hadrian or Khmielnitsky?

Butcher's wife: Oy, Reuven, how did you become such a gelernte? It's not fair to be gelernte and sheyn.

Reuven: Levi over here would tell you you're tempting the evil eye by giving me that much of a compliment, but Levi's the illui about history, I just work with him. 

Butcher's wife: Levi, your Tateh's getting old, why don't you take his place in the Kheyder. 

Levi: He wants to keep teaching. 

Butcher's wife: You'll be zo gut at it, and you're zo terrible at barn work. 

Levi: You're a real tzadeykes Froi Wolf...

Butcher's wife: Don't talk back to me meeskait! We pay you so much and the job you always do is ongepotchet! My husband's too nice and won't say what a schlechter job you're doing, but I know! We can't keep you in this barn for tzedokkeh. I'm gonna make him let you go soon and you're gonna need to find something before you turn into nishts but a kadoykhes. 

Levi: Yes Froi Wolf...

Butcher's wife: Reuven on the other hand. Your brider's gonna be such a macher. You're zo smart un zo sheyn un such a mensch un...

Reuven: Froi Wolf like you said, we really ought to get back to work. 

Butcher's wife: What's wrong with compliments!

Reuven: We just have to finish our job as early as possible because our Mameh's in labor heynt.

Butcher's wife: Today's the day your Mameh's giving birth! Mazel Tov Reuven! I'll bake you all a cake und four chickens and you can eat it all tonight during the l'Chaim. 

Reuven: Oh... a... sheynem dank Froi Wolf. 

Butcher's wife: Please though, remember to feed the lamb all that bread. Today's Rosh Hodesh Kislev isn't it Reuven?

Levi: That's tomorrow. 

Butcher's wife: (to Levi) No it's today!... Well we're not slaughtering it for another three and a half weeks, for Rebbe Zilbershtayn to eat it on the eighth night of Hanukkah. He's gonna love it! 

Reuven: I'm sure he is Froi Wolf. 

Butcher's wife: You wouldn't believe what that Rebbitzin's done with the Rebbe's heuse. Oy, she's such a balleboos who's always so angry at the Rebbe. 

Reuven: That's what we've heard. 

Levi: (under his breath) Imagine that...

Butcher's wife: I'll tell you more gossip when you come in later. 

Reuven: I'll be sure to Froi Wolf. 

Butcher's wife: Zay gezunt till then?

(she goes back inside) 

Levi: Does Froi Wolf have a... zakh for you? 

Reuven: I dunno... if she does maybe we'll get paid more, and don't mind what she says, Reb Lazar knows you're doing fine. 

Levi: She's a khazer. 

Reuven: Levi! Don't talk about the boss's wife like that! Who's tempting the evil eye now?

Levi: I'm just saying, she's a vicious dog who looks like a pig. 

Reuven: (trying not to laugh) Levi, please don't say that. 

Levi: She's literally the size of this barn! 

Reuven: Seriously Levi, what did she ever do to you?

(they both explode with laughter) 

Butcher's wife: (from the second floor of the house) I hear you laughing!  

Reuven: (shouting back) We're working Froi Wolf. 

Butcher's wife: Reuven just come in and I'll be downstairs in a minute. Levi, feed the lamb! I don't want him fed too much and I don't want him fed too little and I don't want him fed too fast and I don't want him fed too slow. I'll know exactly how much you fed it so do it exactly right!

Levi: (to Reuven) Would she like to tell me how much to feed the lamb?

Reuven: Would you like to ask her?

Levi: You better go inside so she can tell you more about what a greycer neshawmeh you are and what a khamer your brother is.  

Reuven: Don't take it too personally... And if the voices talk to you again, try to think of her.... 

Levi: I don't think the angels of God need to hear about the teivel.... Gey already... 

ONL - Scene 3 - Second Draft

 (inside a barn with chickens, cows, and sheep) 

Reuven: You're so fertummelt Levi. 

Levi: But you don't understand how vivid they are. They have to be real! They're as real as you right here!

Reuven: OK. Are they emesdikker real or are they falshen real?

Levi: Well it's obviously not real the way you and I are! 

Reuven: So your mind is falling for your own schvindle?

Levi: It's not a schvindle. It's like you can see them completely, but you can also see through them.

Reuven: You should always see through a schvindle....

Levi: It's not a schvindle! I know what these malakhim tell me are true!

Reuven: And what do they tell?

Levi: You obviously wouldn't believe them. 

Reuven: No I wouldn't, but I want to hear them anyway. 

Levi: That this will be the Great Age of our people. That we will all be destroyed, and then we will all be saved.

Reuven: You mean like the coming of Moshiach?

Levi: Ikh veyst nit, they haven't said. I just know that we're about to live through the most important time in thousands of years. 

(three seconds)

Reuven: Feh!

Levi: That's what they said!

Reuven: Levi I'm getting worried. Has anyone told you you might have a Lokhen Kop?

Levi: You asked so I'm telling you!

Reuven: Just don't you dare tell Tateh this. You used to be such a mensch but you're getting really weird. If he finds out you're as meshuggeh as him it'll break his heart. 

(Butchers wife calls from outside the barn)

Butcher's wife: Stop shtupping kibbitzing un get back tzu arbeit!

Both of them: We're working!

Butcher's wife: You're schrecking so much I can hear it from the bodroom! Why's the door to the lool open! Why did the coos not get milkhed yet! You've only sheared three of the sheep! My husband must be paying you to kibbitz! 

Reuven: Froi Wolf your husband is paying us to do our job right. 

Butcher's wife: What's right about not milkhing der coos by eleven o'clock?!

Reuven: Look at how clean the chickens are. A shaygetz could pick them up and bite the head off right now. 

Butcher's wife: Well then stop kibbitzing and get to the coos! Isn't work supposed to set you free! 

Reuven: (joking around) Froi Sarah, when has work ever set anybody free? Especially around here!

Butcher's wife: I dunno, it's a shprikhvort around here. You musta heard it. 

Reuven: Oh we've heard it from our Tateh. 

Levi: Yeh. Five or six millions of times we've heard it. 

Reuven: That saying's gotten more Jews in trouble than Khmielnitsky. 

Levi: Sha! Don't mention his name!

Reuven: Who? The biggest merderer in Jewish history? He's been dead for two and a half centuries, he won't bother us again. 

Levi: Don't ever mention his name! 

Reuven: What, the evil eye again? 

Levi: Do you really wanna tempt it?

Reuven: Wasn't the biggest merderer in Yid history Emperor Hadrian. 

Levi: Reuven! (spits three times) Do you have any idea how bad it is to mention their names on the day Maneh's giving birth?

Reuven: Seriously, was it Hadrian or Khmielnitsky?

Butcher's wife: Oy, Reuven, how did you become such a gelernte? It's not fair to be gelernte and sheyn.

Reuven: Well, Levi over here would tell you you're tempting the evil eye by giving me that much of a compliment. But Levi's the illui about history, I just work with him. 

Butcher's wife: Levi, your Tateh's getting old, why don't you take his place in the Kheyder. 

Levi: He wants to keep teaching. 

Butcher's wife: You'll be zo gut at it, and you're zo terrible at barn work. 

Levi: You're a real tzadeykes Froi Wolf...

Butcher's wife: Don't talk back to me meeskait! We pay you so much and the job you always do is ongepotchet! My husband's too nice and won't say what a schlechter job you're doing, but I know! We can't keep you in this barn for tzedokkeh. I'm gonna make him let you go soon and you're gonna need to find something before you turn into nishts but a kadoykhes. 

Levi: Yes Froi Wolf...

Butcher's wife: Reuven on the other hand. He's gonna be such a macher. You're zo smart un zo sheyn un such a mensch un...

Reuven: Froi Wolf like you said, we really ought to get back to work. 

Butcher's wife: What's wrong with compliments!

Reuven: We just have to finish our job as early as possible because our Mameh's in labor heynt.

Butcher's wife: Today's the day your Mameh's giving birth! Mazel Tov Reuven! I'll bake you all a cake und four chickens and you can eat it all tonight during the l'Chaim. 

Reuven: Oh... a... sheynem dank Froi Wolf. 

Butcher's wife: Please though, remember to feed the lamb all that bread. Today's Rosh Hodesh Kislev isn't it Reuven?

Levi: That's tomorrow. 

Butcher's wife: (to Levi) No it's today!... Well we're not slaughtering it for another three and a half weeks, for Rebbe Zilbershtayn to eat it on the eighth night of Hanukkah. He's gonna love it! 

Reuven: I'm sure he is Froi Wolf. 

Butcher's wife: You wouldn't believe what that Rebbitzin's done with the Rebbe's heuse. Oy, she's such a balleboos who's always so angry at the Rebbe. 

Reuven: That's what we've heard. 

Butcher's wife: I'll tell you more gossip when you come in later. 

Reuven: I'll be sure to Froi Wolf. 

Butcher's wife: Zay gezunt till then?

(she goes back inside) 

Levi: Does Froi Wolf have a... zakh for you? 

Reuven: I dunno... if she does maybe we'll get paid more, and don't mind what she says, Reb Lazar knows you're doing fine. 

Levi: She's a khazer. 

Reuven: Levi! Don't talk about the boss's wife like that! Who's tempting the evil eye now?

Levi: I'm just saying, she's a vicious dog who looks like a pig. 

Reuven: (trying not to laugh) Levi, please don't say that. 

Levi: She's literally the size of this barn! 

Reuven: Seriously Levi, what did she ever do to you?

(they both explode with laughter) 

Butcher's wife: (from the second floor of the house) I hear you laughing!  

Reuven: (shouting back) We're working Froi Wolf. 

Butcher's wife: Reuven just come in and I'll be downstairs in a minute. Levi, feed the lamb! I don't want him fed too much and I don't want him fed too little. I'll know exactly how much you fed it so do it exactly right!

Levi: (to Reuven) Would she like to tell me how much to feed the lamb?

Reuven: Would you like to ask her?

Levi: You better go inside so she can tell you more about what a greycer neshawmeh you are and what a khamer your brother is.  

Reuven: Don't take it too personally... And if the voices talk to you again, try to think of her.... 

Levi: I don't think they need to hear about the teivel.... Gey already...

ONL 1899 - Most of Scene 3 - First Draft

(inside a barn with chickens, cows, and sheep) 

Reuven: You're so fertummelt Levi. 

Levi: But you don't understand how vivid they are. They have to be real! They're as real as you right here!

Reuven: Are the emesdikker real or are they falshen real. 

Levi: Well it's not real the way you and I are, it's like you can see them completely, but you can also see through them.

Reuven: So your mind is falling for your own schvindle?

Levi: It's not a schvindle. 

Reuven: What do you know from schvindles?...

Levi: I know what these malakhim tell me!

Reuven: And what do they tell?

Levi: You obviously wouldn't believe them. 

Reuven: No I wouldn't, but I want to hear them anyway. 

Levi: That this will be the Great Age of our people. That we will all be destroyed, and then we will all be saved.

Reuven: You mean like the coming of Moshiach?

Levi: Ikh veyst nit, they haven't said. I just know that we're about to live through the most important time in thousands of years. 

(five seconds)

Reuven: Feh!

Levi: That's what they said!

Reuven: Levi I'm getting worried. Has anyone ever told you you have a Lokhen Kop?

Levi: You asked so I'm telling you!

Reuven: Just don't you dare tell Tateh this. You used to be such a mensch but you're getting really weird. If he finds out you're meshuggeh it would break his heart. 

(Butchers wife calls from outside the barn)

Butcher's wife: Stop shtupping kibbitzing and get back tzu arbeit!

Both of them: We're working!

Butcher's wife: You're schrecking so much I can hear it from the bodroom! Why's the door to the lull open! Why do the koos not have milk yet! You've only sheared three of the sheep! My husband must be paying you to kibbitz! 

Reuven: Froi Wolf your husband is paying us to do our job right. 

Butcher's wife: What's right about not milkhing der coos by eleven o'clock?!

Reuven: Look at how clean the chickens are. You could eat them now. 

Butcher's wife: Well then stop kibbitzing and get to the coos! Isn't work supposed to set you free! 

Reuven: (joking around) Froi Sarah, when has work ever set anybody free? Especially around here!

Butcher's wife: I dunno, it's a shprikhvort around here. You musta heard it. 

Reuven: Oh we've heard it from our Tateh. 

Levi: Many millions of times we've heard it. 

Reuven: That saying's gotten more people in trouble than Khmielnitsky. 

Levi: Sha! Don't mention his name!

Reuven: Who? The biggest merderer in Jewish history? He's been dead for two and a half centuries, he won't bother us again. 

Levi: Don't ever mention his name! 

Reuven: What, the evil eye again? 

Levi: Do you really wanna tempt it?

Reuven: Wasn't the biggest merderer in Yid history Hadrian. 

Levi: Reuven! (spits three times) Do you have any idea how bad it is to mention their names on the day Maneh's giving birth?

Butcher's wife: Today's the day your Mameh's giving birth! Mazel Tov! Reuven, come inside later I'll send you aheym with a present. 

Reuven: Oh... a... sheynem dank Froi Wolf. 

Butcher's wife: Please though, remember to feed the lamb all that bread. Today's Rosh Hodesh Kislev isn't it?

Levi: That's tomorrow. 

Butcher's wife: Well then we're not slaughtering it for another three and a half weeks, until Rebbe Zilbershtayn to eat on the eighth night of Hanukkah. He's gonna love it! 

Reuven: I'm sure he is Froi Wolf. 

Butcher's wife: You wouldn't believe what that Rebbitzin's done with the Rebbe's heuse. Oy, she's such a balleboos who's always so angry at the Rebbe. 

Reuven: That's what I heard. 

Butcher's wife: I'll tell you more gossip when you come in later. 

Reuven: Em... I'll be sure to Froi Wolf. 

Butcher's wife: Zay gezunt till then?

(she goes back inside) 

Levi: Does she have a... zakh for you? 

Reuven: I dunno... if she does maybe we'll get paid more. 

Levi: She's a khazer. 

Reuven: Levi! Don't talk about the boss's wife like that! Who's tempting the evil eye now?

Levi: I'm just saying, she's a really big and demanding woman. Just be careful. 

ONL - 1899 - Scene 2 - Semi-Final Draft

(Hard cut to Scene 2)

(4 of Reb Yaakov's sons smoking cigarettes in the Jewish cemetary)

Gad: (imitating his father) They do the mitzvahs, they go to shul, they work so hard, they help their Mameh, they help your Mamehs...

Asher: Oh we help their Mamehs... (they all laugh)

Dan: Naphtali, vilst du roll me one too. 

Naphtali: OK Dan, but every time I roll you a papiros sound like you're gonna huss out Rabbi Schkop! 

Asher: How do you know we didn't ground der Rebbe into tabacco?

Gad: His headstone's right there! Why don't you ask him? 

Asher: Why don't I? 

(hear a fly unzip, Asher pishes on the Rebbe's headstone)

Dan: Oh don't fucking pish on the Rebbe!

Gad: Don't curse in the cemetery! 

Naphtali: Who's gonna hear us?

Gad: You don't wanna tempt the evil eye. 

Asher: What evil eye? You ever see it?

Gad: Mameh's in labor! Just don't do it today, wait to do drek like this tomorrow! 

Asher: What drek? 

Gad: Why do you always do things like a mamzer?

Asher: I've got the same Mameh as you Gad. 

Gad: If Mameh saw your drek on the headstone of the Bransker Rebbe she'd have you excommunicated.

Asher: I'm not shitting I'm pishing! 

Gad: (sighs) Alright take a shit in the fucking ocean. 

Asher: (proud) Ha! There's my tzaddik. 

Dan: You still haven't rolled me a papiros. 

Asher: You still haven't told us what this schlock is with that kadokhes Dreyfus. 

Dan: You can read it for yourself!

Naphtali: Asher doesn't read. 

Asher: Shtup ir, of course I read, I just don't like to. 

Naphtali: He says the words look backwards. 

Dan: Wow, we're worried about tempting the evil eye but Asher is the evil eye. 

Asher: And you're gonna get it in your evil eye if you don't tell us what that newspaper says. 

Dan: It's just more drek about that nochschlepper Dreyfus. 

Asher: What's happening to him?

Dan: Bupkes! Like always happens! He's sitting in jail, his rich brother's giving money for him...

Asher: (interrupting) Are we sending him money?

Dan: What money?! 

Asher: We have money!

Naphtali: We had money. Uncle Ezra sends less every year. You know this! 

Gad: It's that apikeyres wife of his. She always hated Tateh. 

Dan: And Uncle Ezra always hated her!

Naphtali: He did?

Dan: You heard what Shimon said. Apparently he goes to bed with a different shiksa from the factory every night. 

Naphtali: Well so what, wouldn't any of us do that if we could? 

Gad: Yehuda told me that when he went to help Uncle Ezra he saw kielbasa in the kitchen. 

Naphtali: (sigh/chortle, stunned) Well now that's shocking... Mein Gott, what the shtup....

Dan: Did you really think Ezra was a Yiddisher kop?

Naphtali: I thought he was like any of us, only rich. 

Dan: Well we did pretty well for a while there. 

Gad: Yeh, cuz we have a reicher for an uncle! 

Naphtali: Doesn't Tateh have anything saved away?

Dan: He had eleven children! 

Naphtali: Well, I guess we mazel'd out. Uncle Ezra cut the funds just as we got Bar Mitzvah'd and could go work. 

Gad: Some work we're doin' here.

Dan: This is arbeit! We're here trimming the grass in the cemetery. 

Gad: This is bupkes! We should have been home two hours ago! 

Dan: What does it matter? Who's hiring right now? When you have eleven brothers there are only jobs for sev...

Asher: (interrupting) Stop, who's this picture of? (holds up newspaper to Dan)

Dan: That? That's Dreyfus! 

Asher: That meeskait is Dreyfus? 

Dan: Ye, that's... who Tateh's been talking about every day since we were in Kheyder. 

Asher: Look at the shmattehs on him! 

Dan: Yeah, he... looks like a shaygetz. 

Gad: That guy's as Jewish as the shtupping Pope! 

Naphtali: Look at the stripes on his fucking hoot!

Gad: And what the shtup is that mustache?

Naphtali: How can a Yid who dresses like that not be guilty?

Dan: And what's with the fucking knepls on his shirt? 

Asher: Dan. Is there any way of telling from the picture what colors his uniform are?

Dan: Well, you're not gonna believe this but I once saw the French uniform on a stamp. It was red, white and blue. 

Asher: Ret, veis, un bleu?! How the fuck do these zelners go into the field without other soldiers knowing where to shoot them a hectare away? 

Naphtali: A feinschmeker like this guy must go into a barber and say "Hey. Make my mustache look like the hair over my putz!' 

(everybody laughs) 

Gad: Seriously, why the fuck do all these alter trombeyniks give a dreck about some French faygaleh?

(interrupts from 10 feet away) 

Jan Kowalski: And who's the faygaleh here

Filip Kowalski: Tak, we know what that word means!

(Franczisek grabs the paper)

Jan: Look at these dupeks! Laughing sie na cemetery!

Franczisek Kowalski: Smoking papieros too!

Jan: They probably think ze sa special cuz they can read!

Aleksander: Well even if they're smieching sie na cemetery they still look as stupid as every other Zhid.

(Jan Kowalski unzips his fly and starts to pisch on Rebbe Chaim Schkop's headstone) 

Dan: Oh don't...

Jan: Don't?...

(pause, only sound of pissing) 

Dan: Don't siki...

Jan: Don't siki? You hear that bracia? I started sikiing thirty seconds ago he wants me to stop! Give me that newspaper. 

(sound of pissing on a paper)

Jan: So what were you Zhids reading about?

Filip: They were probably learning more magic spells. 

Asher: Nie don't know any magic spells. 

Gad: Asher, don't. 

Jan: Asher! Don't. Bracia, hold that one, make sure Asher's watching so we can teach him a lesson. (they grab hold of Gad and he crumbles up the newspaper) Here, take a look at these letters up close. (shoves the newspaper into Gad's mouth) 

Asher: Take that newspaper out of my brother's mouth. 

Jan: Oh! You're brother! Well we hear all about your family Asher Kharlap. A rdzina where all eleven live to be adults? That's fucking black magia!

Aleksander: Tak! They're probably here so nobody can hear their plans to poison our blyading wells!

Asher: Well maybe if your kind cleaned their shtupping wells once in a while your kid siostra wouldn't get sick and die!

(seven seconds of silence)

Jan: What are you saying? That you fucking mordecas of Christ had the secret to not getting chory this whole time and you've been keeping it from us?

Asher: Go back to your shtupping Boyars and Priests! They knew it this whole time and kept it from you to keep you stupid!

Dan: Asher, sey shtil. 

Filip: Are you calling our Holy Fathers liars?

Asher: They're fucking thieves and rapists and murderers!

Dan: Mir ale hobn tzu lozn! 

(Dan and Naphtali run away, the Kowalski kids immediately lunge for Asher, Gad's paper falls out of his mouth and falls down to catch his breath while Asher is beaten up.)

Asher: Gad, helf mikh! 

Jan: Tak Gad, help him! It's just you and him against six of us. Tell you what,... why don't you just leave this idiota for us and you can run away like a nice Jewish boy. 

Asher: Gad, helf mikh! 

Jan: Well Gad, are you going to help your bro....

(Gad runs away) 

Jan: All your zhid brothers have run away. 

Filip: Tak, that's what Jewish boys always do. They always run away. 

Asher: What? You're gonna kill me like your father 'Der Yid Merderer'? 

(Jan hits him)  

Asher: You can't even figure out that your rulers are killing you quicker than you ever kill us! 

(Jan hits him again) 

Asher: You're gonna keep shlogging me the way your father shlogs you? I see the black eyes, you can't even give me a black eye as big as that shikker gives you every night! 

Jan: Franczisek, pick up that papieros. 

(Jan burns Asher with the lit papieros, Asher screams, then they continue beating on Asher, keep going until the third or fourth punch, then cut to Scene 3) 

"Music like a Goy"

A musical friend wrote briefly about the greatness of Donald Runnicles today, and it made me obsess for a little while. There's no question, Runnicles is very, very good, but he arrives me at a pet peeve in music, and attitudes towards life, that generally makes me terribly anxious and depressed. It made me think for three hours about what exactly was it I found lacking in Runnicles, which I couldn't put my finger on all afternoon until it occurred to me

Runnicles is one of those inestimably good musicians who 'makes music like a goy.' Everything is primary states, happy is happy, sad is sad, the shades of ambiguity, the melancholy colors in joy, the lighter moments of sadness, don't occur to him. The musicians for whom this is true, in any genre of music, do not speak to me either. This is why Chopin and Verdi both give me trouble. I don't know what to do with works in which everything means what it seems to mean. What's there to return to?

Art is about meaning, and meaning is infinite in its layerings. If I want to only enjoy myself, I can always go back to playing in rock bands and feel a lot less lonely in my enjoyments. If I need to suffer, I'll just lock myself in my room and punch pillows while crying and eating ice cream. Joy and sadness are most certainly crucial parts of the artistic experience, but they belong together. You can only arrive at catharsis through a mixture of fun and depth. If it doesn't have both, I think it's time better spent elsewhere. Experience, like family, like love, like sex, like friendship, like meaning itself, gives a deeper, longer sense of satisfaction by the negative experiences involved in attaining its goal. But with many artists, it's only one or the other, and like any experience that's entirely fun or entirely serious, that lack of one or the other makes me terribly anxious. As a bipolar or obsessive or whatever it is I am, you need experiences to ground and center you, and if the experience is too extremely one thing or another, the mind inevitably compensates in the other direction in ways that are not entirely within one's control.

I experience my various favorite works of art (a brief and incomplete list): Mozart's da Ponte operas, Haydn's last two oratorios, Mahler DKW1347DLVDE9, Cunning Little Vixen, Into the Woods, La Regle du Jeu and Tokyo Story, Uncle Vanya and The Cherry Orchard, Pushkin's Eugene Onegin, The Canterbury Tales, The Simpsons, Shel Silverstein, Louis Armstrong, Monteverdi Madrigals Book VIII, Shakespeare's Falstaff scenes and whenever a Fool makes his appearance, Montaigne's Essays, Shostakovich song cycles (those are his greatest masterpieces), Mussorgsky miniatures of all types, Bartok violin duets and the Mikrokosmos, the Book of Ecclesiastes, certain parts of Don Quixote, Joyce's POTA, Calvin and Hobbes, Peanuts, Leonardo's drawing of a fetus and Courbet's Origin of the World, Schubert's final works, Rembrandt's biblical series, the Book of Genesis, various Brahmses, the late paintings of Goya and Van Gogh, Madame Bovary, late Beethoven, the stories of Isaac Bashevis Singer....

In all of these, even The Simpsons, I feel a sense of the infinite meanings, and they not only mean themselves in the moment, but constantly present themselves related to the situations of daily life, the larger world, and the metaphysical world behind the world where truly infinite things lay; and provide this multiplicitous experience on levels physical, intellectual, emotional, and spiritual. Whether it's productive, that's the Jewish attitude toward life, where every state in life is balanced by its opposite, and the only approach I know how to take that keeps me sane. Whether it's productive, that's the Jewish attitude toward life, and the only approach I know how to take that keeps me sane.

This, to me, is what great art does.

Tales from the Old New Land - Complete Scene 2: First Draft

 (Hard cut to Scene 2)

(4 of Reb Yaakov's sons smoking cigarettes in the Jewish cemetary)

Gad: (imitating his father) They do the mitzvahs, they go to shul, they work so hard, they help their Mameh, they help your Mamehs...

Asher: Oh we help their Mamehs... (they all laugh)

Dan: Hey, roll me one too. 

Naphtali: You sure? Every time I roll you a papiros sound like you're gonna huss out Rabbi Schkop! 

Asher: How do you know we didn't ground der Rebbe into tabacco?

Gad: His headstone's right there! Why don't you ask him? 

Asher: Why don't I? 

(hear a fly unzip, Asher pishes on the Rebbe's headstone)

Dan: Oh don't fucking pish on the Rebbe!

Gad: Don't curse in the cemetery! 

Naphtali: Who's gonna hear us?

Gad: You don't wanna tempt the evil eye. 

Asher: What evil eye? You ever see it?

Gad: Mameh's in labor! Just don't do it today, wait to do drek like this tomorrow! 

Asher: What drek? 

Gad: Why do you always do things like a mamzer?

Asher: I've got the same Mameh as you Gad. 

Gad: If Mameh saw your drek on the headstone of the Bransker Rebbe she'd have you excommunicated.

Asher: I'm not shitting I'm pishing! 

Gad: (sighs) Alright take a shit in the fucking ocean. 

Asher: (proud) Ha! There's my tzaddik. 

Dan: You still haven't rolled me a papiros. 

Asher: You still haven't told us what this schlock is with that kadokhes Dreyfus. 

Dan: You can read it for yourself!

Naphtali: Asher doesn't read. 

Asher: Shtup ir, of course I read, I just don't like to. 

Naphtali: He says the words look backwards. 

Dan: Wow, we're worried about tempting the evil eye but Asher is the evil eye. 

Asher: And you're gonna get it in your evil eye if you don't tell us what that newspaper says. 

Dan: It's just more drek about that nochschlepper Dreyfus. 

Asher: What's happening to him?

Dan: Bupkes! Like always happens! He's sitting in jail, his rich brother's giving money for him...

Asher: (interrupting) Are we sending him money?

Dan: What money?! 

Asher: We have money!

Naphtali: We had money. Uncle Ezra sends less every year. You know this! 

Gad: It's that apikores wife of his. She always hated Tateh. 

Dan: And Uncle Ezra always hated her!

Naphtali: He did?

Dan: You heard what Shimon said. Apparently he goes to bed with a different shiksa from the factory every night. 

Gad: Levi told me that when he went to help Uncle Ezra he saw kielbasa in the kitchen. 

Naphtali: (sighs, stunned) What the shtup....

Dan: Did you really think Ezra was a Yiddisher kop?

Naphtali: I thought he was like any of us, only rich. 

Dan: We did pretty well for a while there. 

Gad: Yeh, cuz we have a reicher for an uncle! 

Naphtali: Doesn't Tateh have anything saved away?

Dan: He had eleven children! 

Naphtali: Well, I guess we mazel'd out. Uncle Ezra cut the funds just as we got Bar Mitzvah'd and could go work. 

Gad: Some work we're doin' here.

Dan: This is arbeit! We're here trimming the grass cemetery. 

Gad: This is bupkes! We should have been home two hours ago! 

Dan: What does it matter? Who's hiring right now? When you have eleven brothers there are only jobs for sev...

Asher: (interrupting) Who's this picture of? (holds up newspaper to Dan)

Dan: That? That's Dreyfus! 

Asher: That meeskait is Dreyfus? 

Dan: Ye, that's... who Tateh's been talking about every day since we were in Kheyder. 

Asher: Look at the shmattehs on him! 

Dan: Yeah, he... looks like a shaygetz. 

Gad: That guy's as Jewish as the shtupping Pope! 

Naphtali: Look at the stripes on his fucking hoot!

Gad: And what the shtup is that mustache?

Naphtali: How can a Yid who dresses like that not be guilty?

Dan: And what's with the fucking knepls on his shirt? 

Asher: Dan. Is there any way of telling from the picture what colors his uniform are?

Dan: Well, you're not gonna believe this but I once saw the French uniform on a stamp. It was red, white and blue. 

Asher: Ret, veis, un bleu?! How the fuck do these zelners go into the field without other soldiers knowing where to shoot them a hectare away? 

Naphtali: Even a feinschmeker like this guy shouldn't go to a barber and say "Make my mustache look like the hair over my putz!' 

Asher: Seriously, why the fuck do all these alter trombeyniks give a dreck about some French faygaleh?

(interrupts from 10 feet away) 

Jan Kowalski: And who's the faygaleh here

Filip Kowalski: Tak, we know what that word means!

(Franczisek grabs the paper)

Jan: Look at these dupeks! Laughing sie na cemetery!

Franczisek Kowalski: Smoking papieros too!

Jan: They probably think ze sa special cuz they can read!

Aleksander: Well even if they're smieching sie na cemetery they still look as stupid as every other Zhid.

(Jan Kowalski unzips his fly and starts to pisch on Rebbe Chaim Schkop's headstone) 

Dan: Oh don't...

Jan: Don't...

(pause, only sound of pissing) 

Dan: Don't siki...

Jan: Don't siki? You hear that boys? I started sikiing thirty seconds ago he wants me to stop! Give me that newspaper. 

(sound of pissing on a paper)

Jan: So what were you Zhids reading about?

Filip: They were probably learning more magic spells. 

Asher: Nie don't know any magic spells. 

Gad: Asher, don't. 

Jan: Asher! Don't. Boys, hold that one, make sure Asher's watching so we can teach him a lesson. (they grab hold of Gad and he crumbles up the newspaper) Here, take a look at these letters up close. (shoves the newspaper into Gad's mouth) 

Asher: Take that newspaper out of my brother's mouth. 

Jan: Oh! You're brother! Well we hear all about your family. A rdzina where all the kids live to be adults? That's fucking black magia!

Aleksander: You're probably here so nobody can hear your plans to poison our blyading wells!

Asher: Well maybe if your kind cleaned their shtupping wells once in a while your kid siostra wouldn't get sick and die!

(seven seconds of silence)

Franczisek: What are you saying? That you fucking mordecas of Christ had the secret to not getting chory this whole time and you've been keeping it from us?

Asher: Go back to your shtupping Boyars and Priests! They knew it this whole time and kept it from you to keep you stupid!

Dan: Asher, sey shtil. 

Jan: Are you calling our Holy Fathers liars?

Asher: They're fucking thieves and rapists and murderers!

Dan: Mir ale hobn tzu lozn! 

(Dan and Naphtali run away, the Kowalski kids immediately lunge for Asher, Gad's paper falls out of his mouth and falls down to catch his breath while Asher is beaten up.)

Asher: Gad, helf mikh! 

Jan: Tak Gad, help him! It's just you and him against six of us. Tell you what,... why don't you just leave this idiota for us and you can run away like a nice Jewish boy. 

Asher: Gad, helf mikh! 

Jan: Well Gad, are you going to help your bro....

(Gad runs away) 

Jan: All your zhid brothers have run away. 

Filip: Tak, that's what Jewish boys always do. They always run away. 

(they continue beating on Asher, keep going until the third or fourth punch, then cut to Scene 3)

Underrated Classical Musicians - Thierry Fischer

 A third Fischer. Another master.

There's suddenly a huge number of youtube videos of the Orquestra Sinfonica Do Estado de Sao Paulo, and as I've worked my way through the first video, it's showing another master who radiates music. Taking all the metronome and dynamic markings into play without being a slave to them, constantly adjusting dynamics in the moment, producing music that sings, dances, phrases, flows with breath, glows with overtones, and creates a sacred space where each musician can express freely.

If this is indicative of what Thierry Fischer does, this is not just the work of another underrated conductor better than the majority of celebrities, this is the work of one of the world's greatest podium masters. Right up there in that silver echelon with Blomstedt and Ivan Fischer.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cxHNbH01o8Y

MTT vs. Zinman

I saw something sad last night. Michael Tilson Thomas came to DC and conducted the National Symphony in Mahler's Resurrection. It was sad not because of MTT, who even in bad health exhibited mastery over the score with complete clarity of technique and nuanced requests, but because of the always frustrating NSO, an orchestra like the New York Philharmonic which has some of the greatest musicians on earth yet still manages to give dozens of mediocre performances every year. They obviously weren't watching him and it was clearly making MTT furious. He was a prefect gentleman to them in curtain calls but they emphatically didn't deserve it.

Even so, the irony is that it's the best live performance I've ever heard from MTT, who in spite of the unhappiness onstage delivered plenty of magic moments along the way. But over the years I've heard him do a really boring Petrushka, a good but not great Rite of Spring, and some not particularly inspiring Beethoven. It's odd because on record he can make orchestras incandescent, but I've found it rare that the atmosphere of his recordings are captured in concert.

Here's a Sacre from MTT that, a few fluffs aside, is absolutely transcendent and certainly better than what I heard live from them a few years ago. Just listen to the Games of the Rival Tribes - one of the very few performances that follows Stravinsky's almost impossible tempo, and handles Igor's virtuoso polyrhythms as though they're no trouble at all. This is MTT at his incredibly inspiring best - usually in 20th century music, with a modernist aesthetic. Like Rattle, what he clearly loves is 20th century repertoire, and he plays it with all the warm familiarity of 19th century music. But while everybody else seems to have heard Rattle screw the pooch in concert, I've never heard Rattle not deliver everything - but regarding MTT, I have never heard him deliver everything a concert with him promises.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nJf5TEfmS-U&fbclid=IwAR0rzds12l3PXL-Sb090Jw0zIwk2Ijl6psm6IHW9r4Tp4qtrYFzmkcQJET0

David Zinman, on the other hand, always delivers - something I even realized as a kid. In The Wire, a detective who had real ability and really cared was called 'good police.' Zinman is 'good music.' And among the major American conductors, I sometimes wonder if he's the only one who was 'good music.'

If I hadn't been hearing the best conductor in the history of this country every week, I doubt classical music would have stuck. And now that he's in his 80s and beset with Parkinson's like symptoms, he's somehow better than ever. His biggest problem was always that he was too controlling, but now he has to let go, and the result is that the sound glows with that spiritual embrace only present in the greatest of masters. As great, exciting, and fun as Zinman's always been, I've always ceded pride of place among his generation to conductors who relaxed a little to let the poetry bloom: Dohnanyi, Jansons, etc...

None of the other Americans deliver like this. Bernstein is less a conductor than a genius of music who coasted on spontaneous combustion. He either provided transcendence or awfulness and nothing in between. Maazel made a fetish of technique, and did a lifelong imitation of emotional expression - listening to him is like going to the dentist. Previn was great in the shallow stuff, but the more depth the music needed, the more lost he got. Schippers was a very good opera conductor but we're sadly missing at least thirty years of his career. Slatkin just has nothing like Zinman's force of personality - nearly everything is just the music in outline (except... weirdly... English music, which he does better than nearly any Englishman). Levine, moral issues aside, had every musical gift except a personality - everything was in place yet it usually expressed nothing. And MTT, it becomes more apparent with every live concert, never quite knew what to do once the young flash went away.

Only Zinman has that mixture of basic musical values and individuality.

He deserves a Blomstedtian victory lap. He deserves a concert every year in front of every major orchestra and festival. He is the ultimate sign that musicians produced here can deliver great music that concedes nothing to anywhere in Europe.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=blxqDDIVZcY