Leonard Link

Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince

2009-07-16T21:53:28-04:00

This latest Harry Potter film was my reward this afternoon for finishing up the assembly of my materials and syllabus for Contracts for the fall term 2009 and getting it to the NYLS Copy Center!

I just read the first few books in the Harry Potter series, but have seen all the movies so far. This one struck me as almost unremittingly grim. Most of the time, sets are dark and gloomy and threatening, music is ominous, and everybody is wearing frowns and puzzled looks. The lead actors have grown into those awkward teen years when they are not quite at ease in their bodies, and some of the dialogue comes across as a bit too studied. The pacing falters at times. Michael Gambon is fantastic as Dumbledor, and the other adults do fine work here. The kids will work their way through it, I'm sure, to be more at ease in the final two films in the series. (Press reports state that the last novel was so long and packed with events that it is being stretched out into two films.... These producers know how to milk a franchise.)

I would say this movie is not for people who haven't either seen the prior movies or read the books. That is, this is a slice of action in the middle of a plot, which starts without rehearsing the back story and just stops at a convenient breaking point. Seen on its own, it would not make a whole lot of sense to anybody not familiar with the characters and their prior development - it would probably just be one big puzzle. For those who have been keeping up with the story, it advances the plot efficiently and has some notably thrilling scenes - the quidditch match, the classroom scenes with the new professor of potions (broadly played by Jim Broadbent, a new addition to the ensemble), and the underground lake scene. The technological manipulation to produce the quidditch match is breathtaking.

I'm glad I saw it. I suspect millions of people will do the same.

Monteverdi Teatro d'amore - a puzzle solved

2009-07-16T21:46:57-04:00

I've commented on this new recording several times. I remain obsessed with it. My one slightly negative comment is that if one is interested in following scores, one has to do lots of work figuring out where the various tracks come from, because the insert booklet is curiously vague about sources. After a fair amount of detective work, I have been able to compile a directory to the recording for score readers:

1. The Toccata is of course the familiar opening music from the opera L'Orfeo. I have the Novello vocal score edited by Denis Stevens, where this appears on pages 1-2 of the music.

2. Ohime ch'io cado. This is one of three songs that Monteverdi contributed to an anthology of songs published by Milanuzi in 1624. A contemporary score containing this song is Claudio Monteverdi "A Voce Sola" published by Ricordi, distributed in the US by Hal Leonard Music. This song is on page 1 of the publication.

3. Pur ti miro. This duet is the finale of the opera, The Coronation of Poppea. I have the Novello vocal score, edited by Alan Curtis, in which it appears starting on page 256.

4. Damigella tutta bella. This is from Scherzi Musicali, page 40 in Vol. X of the Complete Monteverdi edition published by Universal-Edition.

5. Amor - Lamento della Ninfa, Rappresentativo. This is from the 8th Book of Madrigals, on page 306 of the widely-available Dover edition.

6. Si dolce e 'l tormento. This is another solo from the 1624 Milanuzi anthology, and appears in Ricordi's "A Voce Sola" on page 18.

7. Sinfonie & Moresca. This is a suite of instrumental excerpts from Acts II and V of L'Orfeo. In my Novello vocal score, this begins with the Sinfonia at the beginning of Act II, p. 39, continues with instrumental music from the end of bar 54 (p. 42) to bar 64, continues from the end of bar 134 (page 47) to bar 142, then jumps to the Moresca that concludes Act V on pages 147-148. It makes a very lively continuous dance sequence.

8. Interrotte speranze is from the 7th Book of Madrigals, on page 94 in the Universal-Edition publication.

9. Chiome d'oro, also from the 7th Book of Madrigals, appears on page 177.

10. Oblivion soave is a brief solo from The Coronation of Poppea, beginning on page 179 of the Novello vocal score with the brief recitativo followed by the aria.

11. Hor che 'l ciel e la terra. This is from the 8th Book of Madrigals, p. 39 in the Dover score.

12. Tempro la cetra, from the 7th Book of Madrigals, page 1 in the Universal-Edition score, including the extensive instrumental introduction and postlude.

13. Ballo. With no more than the name to go on, this took a bit of detective work. It is the instrumental portion of Ballo delle Ingrate from the 8th Book of Madrigals, beginning on page 350 of the Dover score. Pluhar and L'Arpeggiata do some improvising here based on the bare outline provided in the score. In fact, they do lots of improvising of instrumental accompaniment throughout the recording.

14. Con che soavita is from the 7th Book of Madrigals, p. 137 in the Universal-Edition score.

15. Vago augelletto is from the 8th Book of Madrigals, p. 230 in the Dover score.

16. Zefiro torna - Ciaccona. This is generally labeled as part of the Scherzi Musicali but Universal-Edition does not include it in Vol. 10 of the complete edition, where the bulk of the scherzi musical are published. Instead, it is in the 9th Book of Madrigals, vol. 9 of the Monteverdi Complete Edition published by Universal-Edition, which I have on order. In the meantime, I was able to download a very neat transcription from the internet.

Puzzles solved.

Next to Normal - The Cast Recording

2009-07-13T06:41:13-04:00

I saw a performance of Next to Normal several months ago, and thought it was a brilliant and thought-provoking show, even though I normally don't care much for rock music. I was impressed enough, however, to pick up the original Broadway cast recording when it became available a few weeks ago, and have just finished listening to it.

The show works very well as a recording. One can control the volume of the music, so the "rock" aspect becomes less oppressive than in the theater, and it even struck me on listening that the second act has less of a "rock" aspect than the first act. It helps to have a synopsis and libretto in the booklet, since one might have a hard time figuring out what is going on in the plot without it. The cast is wonderful, although I could have wished that Jennifer Damiano and Alice Ripley, the two women in the cast, had more distinguishable voices, since one can easily be fooled listening without the libretto as to who is singing at any particular time. As with the live performance in the theater, I was much taken by all of the cast, but especially by Aaron Tveit, who plays the "ghost" son with such wonderful fervor. HIs big solo number, "I'm Alive," still totally knocks me out whenever I hear it.

Congratulations to Tom Kitt (composer) and Brian Yorkey (book and lyrics) for a marvelous accomplishment with this show. Treating a serious issue in a Broadway musical is a big challenge, and they meet the challenge here.

Packing the Supreme Court.... Yet Again

2009-07-12T22:00:21-04:00

Every president tries to do it, but few succeed. I just finished reading "Packing the Court," a marvelously gossipy political history of the U.S. Supreme Court by James MacGregor Burns, the eminent historian. Burns has an axe to grind here. He thinks that judicial review, the process by the which the Supreme Court declares unconstitutional federal and state statutes, is illegitimate, not intended by the framers as part of the authority of that Court, and drawn pretty much from thin air by the great Chief Justice John Marshall as a means to assert judicial primacy on behalf of the Federalists once the political branches of the government had been taken over by the new Republican Party of Jefferson and Burr. (That Republican Party, as it was then called, evolved into the Democratic Party that we know today, the name Republican being later taken up anew by the remnants of the Whig Party in the decade prior to the Civil War.)

Burns shows in amusing detail how presidents have sought to control the direction of judicial development by putting on the court judges whose views they expect to reflect the presidents' policy preferences. This has been the case throughout our history. Reading this book is a salutary lesson as we prepare to witness the confirmation hearing this week of 2nd Circuit Judge Sonia Sotomayor for a seat on the Court. Whatever the Senators says, any attempt to claim that President's Obama's nominee should be judged unqualified because she would bring her background, ethnicity, sex, etc., into play as she judges cases would be totally ahistorical. Presidents have selected judges for precisely that purpose since the founding of the Republic. Anyone who claims that Bush didn't select Roberts and Alito for precisely that purpose is lying through their teeth... The occasional exceptions are so extraordinary as to be almost unique - I'm thinking of Hoover's appointment of Cardozo, a rare occasion when the President used no litmus test other than quality. Coming a close second would be Ford's appointment of Stevens.

Presidents have always tried to put on the Court justices who would, they hoped, reflect their views on the hot issues of the day. The problem, of course, is that Supreme Court Justices tend to serve for a long time, and relatively quickly the hot issues of the day change, so that the Justices are deciding issues as to which their appointing Presidents had no ken at all when appointing them. For example, abortion was not seen as a hot Supreme Court issue when any of the justices who decided Roe v. Wade was appointed. Only after Roe did Presidents come to treat an appointee's likely view on abortion rights as important. Abortion has actually come to dominate the process, but in appointing Justices who they thought would embody their view on abortion, Presidents have ended up putting people on the Court whose views on other topics were unpredictable. And, of course, since Presidents know they can not get away with actually securing commitments to vote a particular way on any question, a string of presidents have been disappointed to have appointed justices whom they hoped would overrule Roe but who ended up refusing to vote that way.

Years ago, I wrote a law review article contending that the confirmation process had gotten totally out of hand. My suggestion was that nominees should not testify, because anything they might say of substance on any questions that might come before the Court would be a gross violation of judicial ethics. Instead, my view was that candidates should be judged solely on the basis of their reputation their record of achievement. On that basis, some of the appointments of recent decades should not have happened, because the nominees were obscure enough not to have the kind of substantial record that would merit appointment to the US Supreme Court. I'm thinking here of Clarence Thomas, for example, whose credentials for the appointment were quite thin.

Looking forward to the Sotomayor hearings, it seems to me that the questioning strategy that has been discussed by the Republicans of focusing on her opinions with which they disagree is rather besides the point. As a judge on a federal court that was bound by Supreme Court precedent, she was not a free agent to vote her own views. And it seems that her most controversial votes were in line with existing precedents, thus belying the charge that she is some kind of "judicial activist." A judicial activist, by my reckoning, is a judge who departs from precedent to make new law... And by that token the biggest activists on the current Supreme Court are the Republican appointees, whose appointing President's extolled them as strict constructionist, non-activists, a lie if ever there was one.

To get back to the purpose of this posting.... Burns's book is a marvelous read and a marvelous resource, and anybody who reads it with an open mind will be left with quite a bit of cynical acid for observing the confirmation process that will unfold in the weeks ahead.

Judge Sotomayor is one of the best qualified persons to be nominated to the Supreme Court in a long time, by virtue of education and training, practice and judicial experience, careful attention to precedent and legislative intent, and her judicious manner of operation. Comparing her credentials to those of many of the others appointed in our history suggests that she is in the upper echelons of Supreme Court nominations.

Weekend flicks: "Bruno" and "My Sister's Keeper"

2009-07-12T20:01:54-04:00

I saw "Bruno" on Saturday afternoon. After that experience, I felt like I needed to see a real movie with characters and a plot and emotional catharsis, so on Sunday I went to see "My Sister's Keeper."

"Bruno" is, quite literally, a mess. It centers around a bizarre caricature of a gay "fashionista" portrayed by Sacha Baron Cohen, in effect reprising his "Borat" shtick in a different persona. But this is much less effective, much less coherent, much much less imaginative, and much much much less funny. I will admit that there were a few bits of shtick that had me laughing out loud, but a lot of it was just teeth-grittingly bad to watch, gross, sick, and likely to inspire more homophobia that it was supposedly intended to combat. The entire exercise struck me as pretty pointless, lowest-common denominator "gay jokes" stuff.

On the other hand, "My Sister's Keeper" is a real movie. Based on a novel by Jodi Picoult, it sets up a poignant family drama of a mother who will do anything to save her little girl suffering from leukemia, to the extent of conceiving another child to be the tissue and organ donor to save the first daughter's life. Throw in a dyslexic son, a husband far below his wife in academic attainment (she's a lawyer, he's a fireman), and you've got a real stew. Then throw in Alec Baldwin as the lawyer hired by the younger daughter to represent her in a lawsuit against her parents seeking "medical emancipation" before they can force her to donate a kidney to her dying sister in a last-gasp hope to keep her alive.... I won't give away the plot twist that resolves it all.

This is a total tear-jerker. It really had me going. The author has done everything to wring out the last emotional juice from the audience, and the actors do a great job every step of the way, especially Cameron Diaz as the mother and Jason Patric as the father. The kids are portrayed by Sofia Vassilieva (Kate, dying of leukemia), Evan Ellingsen (dyslexic Jesse, fated to be ignored by his parents because his older sister is dying and his younger sister is the source of spare parts), and Abigail Breslin, wonder-girl (amazing that a kid who is barely a decade old has a rather lengthy filmography... but she's really good, and finding a young kid who's a really good actor is pure gold). So don't see this unless you want a really good cry - it will manipulate your emotions into pieces, and the courtroom scenes have more to do with drama than law, but it is a real movie. "Bruno" really is not, even if it is raking in tons of cash this weekend.