Just a quickie here, but Terry mentions Sunday's NYT Condi Rice profile, in which our failed National Security Adviser says:
I love Brahms because Brahms is actually structured. And he's passionate without being sentimental. I don't like sentimental music, so I tend not to like Liszt, and I don't actually much care for the Russian romantics Tchaikovsky and Rachmaninoff, where it's all on the sleeve. With Brahms it's restrained, and there's a sense of tension that never resolves.
Terry goes on to say:
I myself take a different view of Tchaikovsky and Rachmaninoff (though not Brahms), but it’s obvious that our incoming Secretary of State has strong and coherent musical opinions. I’d love to sit down and chat with her about them one of these days….
Coherent? Now perhaps it's just where we're sitting these days, but for us, reading that same piece Sunday prompted the thought: "Damn, that woman seriously needs to get herself laid. Yesterday." OK, Terry's view may be more dignified and thoughtful, but we still think we're right ...
Not sure if it's true or not but Stoppard suggested once that Lenin was ashamed of himself for crying at the 'bourgeois' music of Beethoven ( in Travesties, I think).
Posted by: genevieve | November 19, 2004 at 10:25 AM
That sounds like projection to me, TEV.
Posted by: TPB, Esq. | November 19, 2004 at 10:48 AM
I could never love a woman who didn't like Rachmaninoff. But that's just me.
Posted by: Ed | November 19, 2004 at 10:49 AM
"Penetration is too sentimental--it's all there on the panties. I prefer the tension that's never resolved, i.e., dry humping."
Posted by: Jimmy Beck | November 19, 2004 at 10:50 AM
She's not into Wagner?
Posted by: Kathryn. | November 20, 2004 at 05:38 AM
The only thing that gives me pleasure about this profile is that, at some point in my lifetime, there will be an interview with a government official that goes like this:
"Secy. of State Taylor believes that Ice Cube did lose his edge after leaving NWA, that Dr. Dre truly provided the background he needed to get his rage across. And though the Bomb Squad made him sound progressive on his first solo album, from then on, Taylor thinks, filmmaking (especially Anaconda) and his eventual decision to continue rapping about being a gangsta when he was already near 40 and worth several million dollars, made the rest of his work insignificant and lacking the tension one needs to jack muthafuckas up."
Posted by: Tod Goldberg | November 20, 2004 at 05:36 PM