Phil, you are right that a more balanced treatment of the Objectivist philosophy would be good for all concerned. TOC was going to publish a nifty monograph on my "Art as Microcosm" essay, which would have included critiques by Michelle Kamhi and John Hospers, plus my rejoinder essay, but because of funding cutbacks, they pulled the plug on it. Both TOC and ARI have published very nice books on Rand's fiction writing in the past several years. Will Thomas's edited volume,
The Literary Art of Ayn Rand, is the most recent, but ARI put out books on
We the Living and
Anthem which are both quite good. And each of those books contains numerous essays. It's a real feast for the literary oriented.
For this July's TOC Summer Seminar, I tried to interest Will Thomas in my talk on emotion in music. Here is what I pitched to him:
QUOTE
I delivered a talk in March 2004 in San Francisco called
"Serious Schmaltz and Passionate Pop: Are There Objective
Indicators of Emotion in Music?" It was very well received, and
I think an expanded version of it would be very illuminating
and entertaining for the general Summer Seminar audience.
I am attaching the fleshed-out topic outline, but I want to
propose that this talk be expanded to two (perhaps three)
sessions, so as not to be rushed, and to allow a focus on
the wealth of American popular songs and Classical
themes that illustrate my thesis.
He rejected this (and two other proposals). However, he did accept my proposal for an hour of Romantic and Jazz music by me (on trombone and vocals) and my pianist. Here is the title and description of what we will be doing the evening of July 4 in Orange, CA, along with our bios:
QUOTE
TITLE: Reason, Expressiveness, and Creativity in Romantic and Jazz Music: Performance and Commentary
SESSIONS: 1 60-minute session plus 15 minutes Q&A (75 minutes total).
DESCRIPTION: Join Ben Di Tosti, pianist, and Roger Bissell, trombonist-vocalist, for a session of heart-felt romantic ballads and creative jazz improvisation. Ben and Roger will explain how rational awareness, far from dampening one’s enjoyment of emotionality and creativity, actually enhances these musical experiences for the performer and the listener. They will place special emphasis on the vital role of melody, showing their audience how the performer can shape the attributes of a melody to give fullest expression to the emotional content of a ballad, and can re-compose the constituents of a melody to provide a more integrated kind of extemporaneous jazz creation.
BIOGRAPHY: Ben Di Tosti and Roger Bissell have been performing together since 1985. Their 1992 CD, “The Art of the Duo,” was released in 2003 to much critical acclaim (including the legendary Dave Brubeck). Their 1996 recording of Mancini’s music from “Victor/Victoria” is yet to be released. More recently, they have appeared together on three CDs of jazz and ballad standards by Robert Stovall, for whom Ben is the musical director.
Ben, a free-lance pianist in the Los Angeles area since 1957, has made a number of jazz recordings, including two trio albums in the early 1960s, "Ben Di Tosti Plays the Music from the Broadway Hit 'Carnival'" (Pacific Jazz) and "Out of This World" (Everest), and a recent solo album, "Solo Jazz Piano - Vol. 1" (Thematic Music, 2000). In future solo projects, Ben hopes to explore music from operatic pieces and other classical selections, as well as music by great traditional jazz composers. He also is seeking to conduct workshops on improvisation for jazz schools, as well as for classical music departments. For more information, go to
http://www.jazzundiscovered.com or contact Ben at benbdt@hotmail.com.
Roger, a free-lance trombonist and musical arranger since 1971, has played on numerous commercial and jazz recordings in Nashville and Los Angeles. In addition to his full-time job with the Disneyland Band, he has appeared with the Side Street Strutters Jazz Band on community concerts around the country, as well as on pops concerts with the Phoenix and Houston Symphony Orchestras (among others). Roger, who can be emailed at REBissell@aol.com, has lectured on improvisation and emotional expression in music, and he also spoke on the nature of art and music to the 2002 TOC Advanced Seminar. His essays, some of which have been published in the Journal of Ayn Rand Studies, are accessible from his home page:
http://members.aol.com/REBissell/index.html.
So, there is hope, after all. [-o<
But it has been my long experience that aesthetics has been treated as the poor step-child of the Objectivist movement. [-X And this goes back to the late 1960s in my recollection. Ethics and especially politics just have more "octane" in driving interest in Objectivism, and they probably always will.
REB