Roger Bissell

James, you are exactly right. It is a fine book, and I recommend it highly, too. We are fortunate that two of Nathaniel's three lecture series have been published as books: the romantic love lectures and thepsychology lectures (in The Psychology of Self-Esteem. While it's great that his Basic Principles of Objectivism lectures are still available in audio format (as CDs, yet!), it would be even greater if they could be transcribed and sold as a book -- or even loose-leaf along with the CDs, for study purposes. REB

Man, I am doubly frustrated. First, by being misunderstood by Dragonfly, and secondly, by having nearly finished my reply when my computer crashed. That’ll teach me to compose long replies in the ObjectivistLiving text windows! Anyway…I want to start by saying I appreciate Dragonfly’s comments, even though I don’t agree with all of them. It’s good to have input that reminds me that clearly explaining my theory about the rhythmic character of music will not be easy. But I’m also frustrated that Dragonfly could so misunderstand my views as to think that 40 years of musical training would produce nothing more valuable or valid than Rand’s notion that vividness of color in painting reflects one’s sense of life! As for my view about the rhythmic character of the middle section of the Rachmaninoff C# prelude, I’m sorry I ever used the term “fatalistic.” (Actually, I used the phrase “almost fatalistic,” along with other words like “mechanistic,” “driven,” and “obsessive,” most of which I used in preference to the single, modified use of “fatalistic.” Actually, I think that a sense of fatalism comes less from rhythm than from the melodic/harmonic aspect of music, though I am open to seeing how the former might be the case. (I am not familiar with, nor do I own a recording of the Schubert you referred to, so I can’t comment one way or the other about whether the rhythm contributes to a sense of fatalism – or even whether I’d agree that there is such a sense to be gotten from the Schubert. That is a task for another day.) I realize that you do not hear the Rachmaninoff C# prelude’s middle section as mechanistic either. But I do. I have heard numerous performances of it, by those who play more faithfully to the composer’s markings, as well as those who do not. And it always comes off sounding like “a machine that is going somewhere” – unless the pianist is playing it too slowly or with too much rubato (as though the music said “espressivo” instead of “agitato”). Leonard Pennario is my favorite for bringing out the pell-mell, hell-bent character of that section, but Weissenberg is pretty good. Interestingly, Rachmaninoff himself took several bars to shake off the rubato and get down to business. And I do experience groupings of notes as being stressed or unstressed, even if the pianist is not deliberately accenting them. For instance, it seems automatically the case that the repetition of the first measure of the Rachmaninoff C# prelude’s middle section by the second measure amounts to an “echo,” and thus a stressed-unstressed or trochee pattern on the third level of rhythmic organization. This is so even if the pianist does not play the second measure softer than the first, or with less emphasis. The stress pattern could only be reversed or negated if the pianist deliberately played the second measure louder than the first, which would not be in keeping with Rachmaninoff’s intentions. On the basic rhythmic level, that of pairs of notes that descend in pitch, I also automatically experience the pattern as accent-unaccent, even if the first note of each pair is not deliberately stressed by the player. Again, the second note would have to be deliberately played more loudly and/or emphatically to reverse this impression that the first note of each pair is the more important note, the “mover” of the grouping. However, when I say this section sounds “mechanistic,” I thought it was clear from my multi-level analysis that it was mechanistic on the more concrete levels of the music, and that as the piece unfolded through time, it took on an overall character of goal-directedness. These are both real aspects of the music, and one does not cancel out the other. I certainly never meant to imply that the rhythmic character that predominates on the more concrete level of a piece of music is all there is to the piece of music. Nor do I agree with the idea that the character that predominates at the broader level of the section or piece as a whole is all there is to the piece of music. They characterize each other. All I meant to convey is the idea that what initially strikes you about the passage (especially if the pianist does not dally in hitting high gear is the driven quality of the music, and that only gradually does it dawn on you that the music is going somewhere, that the driven-ness is being put into the service of a grander purpose. When I first thought about what I would say in reply to you, I thought of the analogy between the multi-layered rhythmic structure of a piece of music and the hierarchical structure of a living organism. There are different organizing principles and patterns that operate on the level of the molecule, the cell, the tissue, the organ, the organ system, and the organism as a whole – and none of them is by itself what the organism is all about. They all interact with and characterize each other. But then I realized that a living organism, as dynamic as it is, is too static to help me get across my point. Instead, music is best seen as similar to an enacted drama or a novel. The events unfold through time, and what is happening on a concrete level can come to take on a different significance than what is apparent at first, once the events sum up to a certain point. I’m reminded of how, in Atlas Shrugged, the initial gloom that attaches to individual acts of going on strike gradually is transformed as the broader pattern of action that is generating the strikes is revealed. The individual events are still the same kinds of events, but they are integrated into a different overall perspective, one that puts a new light or significance on the individual events. It doesn’t negate them or make them not-strikes. They are still painful, but they are seen as pain (leaving one’s project or career) for a good purpose. Similarly, mechanistic rhythms and patterns on the lower levels of a musical piece’s structure can be seen as building blocks of teleological patterns on a higher level. I’m the first to admit that my approach to analyzing rhythm is not new. It is basically the approach presented 45 years ago by Cooper and Meyer. And they made many of the same kinds of observations about different levels of musical organization that I have made. What I add to the discussion (and which I’m not aware has been said before) is the idea that beginning-accented rhythms lend a more mechanistic, driven, cause-effect character to a passage, while end-accented rhythms lend a more teleological, value-drawn, goal-directed character to a passage. But as fascinated as I am by this aspect of music, and by the insight that comes with taking this perspective on a piece of music, it is only a part of the whole picture. In fact, when I started working on my “Serious Schmaltz…” talk two years ago, this whole rhythmic focus was a minor point of my overall presentation, so minor it had to be cut for time. My major thrust then was to analyze melodies in terms of their melodic contour, tonality, and energy level, and that will continue to be a major emphasis as I write my book. But I see now that rhythmic analysis is a vital, dynamic part of understanding a piece of music, and that it very well may have the kind of multi-level philosophical implications or causal connotations that make it similar in a very general way to the other great temporal art, literature. Rand has been criticized by Torres and Kamhi and others for over-generalizing from her philosophy of literature, for trying to suggest that Romanticism is best in all the art forms. At the same time, she had very little to say about music that helped to make her case. It has been my continuing belief, the product of my experience of a great deal of music, that many of the same general kinds of dynamic structuring processes that generate emotions are taking place in music as take place in literature. And it is my intention to use my professional scalpels to pick apart music to show how those processes operate. People here are ObjectivistLiving are welcome to contribute suggestions for where and on what to perform incisions! :-) REB

I listened to performances of Rach's prelude in C#minor by Alex Weissenberg (1970) and Rachmaninoff himself (1919). and I found that both of them played the middle sections with much gusto and rhythm. I was somewhat chagrined at the fact that both of them started off so slowly, but they quickly accelerated and played the bulk of the section "hell bent for leather," as I remembered Pennario doing in my favorite recording. Rachmaninoff did throw in some ritards that are not in the music, but basically he was storming along. One thing I will acknowledge -- the triplet DACTYL rhythms are performed SO quickly that they are submerged by the second level of rhythmic groupings which are mostly TROCHEE. But both are beginning-accented, and both contribute to the very mechanistic, driven quality of the concrete action level of the music. It is only on the 5th or 6th level of organization that the broad goal-driven thrust of the section is evident. Reminds me a bit of how you have to step back from the concrete actions in a novel in order to see the big picture of the plot, of where the story is going. :-) REB

Thanks, Rich. Honestly, Dragonfly, I don't understand half of what you're trying to say, and the other half I disagree with! (So, I guess we're even.) My understanding of how the poetic feet relate to rhythm is drawn from Grosvenor Cooper's and Leonard B. Meyer's book The Rhythmic Structure of Music, published about 1960. Notes are rhythmically grouped together, and they usually fit one of the main patterns. (Occasionally, they are hybrids or elisions of the main ones.) And the notes can be of the same length or different lengths; all that basically matters is that they are heard as being grouped in one way rather than another way. There are ambiguous situations. But the oom-pah-pah pattern of ACCENT-unaccent-unaccent is not ambiguous! Dragonfly, you didn't say anything more about the Rachmaninoff C#minor piano prelude's middle section. But what you did say was pretty puzzling -- I mean, about it not being very rhythmic. What recording are you thinking of? That section is pretty pell-mell in most recordings. My favorite is the one back in the 50s by Leonard Pennario. It sounds almost like a demonic machine running at breakneck speed! And the pulse (with two unaccented beats) is relentless! Dactyl, I say! Now, rhythm is hierarchically structured -- at least, often it is. The rhythm on the level of the measure (2 or 3 or 4 beats) is not always the same rhythm as when two or more measures are considered together as a higher-level rhythmic grouping. For instance, in the Rachmaninoff prelude, the meter is 4/4 (four quarter notes per measure), but each beat is subdivided into three eighth notes, the first one of each beat being accented or stressed, and the other two unaccented. Thus, each measure is in effect four measures of a waltz-like or tarentella-like pattern. So, the basic rhythm (of each beat) is dactyl, but when you group two beats together, the rhythm is Da da (accent-unaccent), or trochee. So, each measure of the Rachmaninoff prelude's middle section is like two "feet" of trochee rhythm. (This may be what Dragonfly was getting at.) Then, on the third level of rhythmic organization, taking the measure as a whole, the first trochee rhythm is heard as stressed, and the second is heard as unstressed -- which means that the first measure is heard as a trochee rhythm at the third level. When you take the first and second measures of the middle section together, since the second is a repetition of the first, they are heard as stressed/unstressed -- again, trochee on the fourth level. However, the stress pattern for the third and fourth measures is unstressed/stressed -- which means those two measures function as an iamic pattern on the fourth level. This means that, on the fifth level (which spans the first four measures of the middle section), the pattern is two measures unstressed and two measures stressed -- i.e., iambic. So, with three levels of solidly beginning accented rhythms (dactyl and trochee), there is a mixing of beginning and end accented rhythms on the fourth level, and a solid shift to end-accented on the fifth level. This overall end-accented thrust on the 5th level of organization is what gives this section such a goal-directed character, even while the first three levels are beginning-accented (dactyls and trochees). And if end-accented, goal-directed action isn't characteristic of Romantic music, I don't know what is! Ooops, I sense that some eyes may have glazed over during this discussion. I will need to contextualize and concretize this a lot better in my book, I realize. But I have been thinking about this stuff for 35 years, and I think it's about time I get it out to an interested audience. :-) BTW, there are recordings of the Rachmaninoff prelude that really butcher the middle section, playing it extremely rubato and almost dirge-like to start with. It should be perhaps not totally strict, but at least largely so. That's how it's marked, and so that's how Rachmaninoff intended it. (My nightmare is to hear a recording by him playing it in the "modern," "emotional" style with much rubato and bending of the tempo in that middle section. Ech.) REB P.S. -- Anyone who read this post before 11:55 PM Friday may be puzzled on re-reading it now. I made a technical goof earlier, which I had to correct. I mistakenly thought I remembered the Rachmaninoff prelude's middle section being in 3/8 meter, with the basic rhythmic pattern stretching over a whole measure -- when in fact the section was in 4/4 meter, with the basic rhythmic pattern occuring within a single beat! I know this is technical stuff, but I had to make a correction and 'fess up in case someone who knows the music thought I was daft and/or trying to pull a fast one! (And thanks to my dear wife, the piano player in the family, for digging out her Rachmaninoff preludes so I could check the source!)

Dragonfly, how can the Tarantella be a trochee rhythm? Trochee is a two-beat rhythm -- ACCENTED, unaccented: Da-da. The Tarantella is a three-beat dance pattern: Da-da-da, ACCENTED, unaccented, unaccented, which is by definition a dactyl meter. And begging your pardon, but the middle section of the Rachmaninoff C#minor piano prelude is virtually non-stop dactyl meter. Look at the figures in the right hand part, for Pete's sake! I'll address your other examples some other time, but unless this much is clear and agreed, I don't think further discussion would fare any better! REB

OK, Michael, no more false modesty. Yes, I'm a bastard, too. But hey, I've already gotten 235 Atlas points for this joke over on Rebirth of Reason! Oh...uh...well, sorry, I lied. :---) It's just 28 Atlas points. Guess that makes me a dishonest bastard. (Please don't tell my mom I found out about the last part.) REB P.S. -- It may have something to do with being a trombone player. I learned early on how to play "false tones" in the low register. Back when I was single and would play false tones, women would fall into a rage and tell me "THAT IS SO TOTALLY FUCKING OUTRAGEOUS WHEN YOU DO THAT! YOU LYING BASTARD!" Once they cooled down, I would show them how I was able to play in 7 positions, and they would usually melt into my arms, heh-heh. :-)

Kat, you wrote: The two aren't mutually exclusive, Kat. It really happened, and I really am being a provocateur. :evil: In response to a guy named Joe Steele (you'd almost think his name was an Anglicization of Josef Stalin :-), the following was written this Wednesday past by Hillary Clinton, Nancy Pelosi, or the third (unnamed, but well described) person: I think you can see by the context that you and Michael were the ones being referred to as "those dishonest bastards." Of course, given the out-of-control rant nature of the comments, it's possible that she was referring to all of us who post here -- but I'd like to think it was a form of professional jealousy of one forum-owner to another. :-) Since we've been concerned here at Objectivist Living with all the "airbrushing" by ARI et al of the Brandens et al, you and our other friends might be amused to see the following response to the above feverish remarks. It was posted by Carla Marks (any relation to the author of Das Kapital?): Screaming with capital letters can be irritating, but it can also show just how over the top emotionally someone has become. Too bad all that energy isn't put to constructive use, eh? :-s REB

Thanks for the encouragement, Ellen. You're right about it being fun -- but on a deeper level, very fulfilling and integrative, because it unites a number of my serious interest areas: philosophy, psychology, music, and mathematics -- and it has practical applications beyond theory and pedagogy. If you look over in the Aesthetics folder, you'll see that I too tried to contact Rand about my hopes and ambitions regarding explaining music, but got no further than her secretary either. <sigh> I'd like to think you're right, that my approach would have gotten Rand's attention and perhaps even support. I tried to get a foot in the door with Peikoff by offering him one of my jazz CDs (the one of me on trombone with a pianist partner), but he (amazingly) said he only likes jazz with piano. (Too much demand upon his abstractive capacity, apparently.) But it probably wouldn't have worked out anyway, since he would have found out soon enough that I've been consorting with the "enemy" in JARS. However, for what it's worth, I did run my approach and projected book by Nathaniel Branden yesterday, and he said he thought it sounded fascinating. I discussed several examples with him, and he responded exactly as I would hope thinking music lovers would respond. Which gives me hope that I'm on the right track, and that I am up to the task of communicating this stuff in a clear and interesting way. So, onward! REB P.S. -- Interestingly, there are two aspects of music, even in popular songs, that convey a sense of mechanism vs. teleology. Or, if you prefer, determinism vs. free will. The one that has caught my fancy during the past week is rhythm. End-accented rhythms (iamb = da DA, like a hearbeat and anapest = da da DA, like a horse's canter) connote end-oriented or goal-oriented action (teleology). The anapest is used (hell, beaten to death) by countless 19th century overture composers, notably, Rossini (William Tell Overture) and Von Suppe (Light Cavalry Overture), but also Rachmaninoff (e.g., the accompaniment figure of the front section of his G minor prelude, as well as accompaniment figures in his 2nd piano concerto finale and his 2nd symphony finale). In all cases, the listener gets a sense of something heroic happening, though exactly what is left to the imagination, of course (except where the program notes tell us that we're supposed to be hearing horsies :-) An amusing personal anecdote: the Disneyland Band every winter does local concerts for 2nd graders in conjunction with the Orange County Philharmonic Association, and when we do the W.T. Overture, the roomful of several hundred kids spontaneously start "riding their horses" -- and not one of them had the benefit I did of hearing the theme as associated with "The Lone Ranger" back in the 50s. I think that rhythm is VERY strongly associated with the horse hoof rhythm...Anyway, on the other side of the ledger is the front-accented rhythms trochee (Da da) and dactyl (Da da da), which have a very different character and connotation, one which I think is very mechanistic, obsessive, rigid, almost fatalistic or driven -- pushed rather than pulled, in your lingo, Ellen. :-) One of my favorite examples is the Tarantella which is practically pure dactyl meter -- also the Jewish Hora dance. Also, the middle section of the Rachmaninoff C# minor piano prelude. I like to think of that as like a locomotive train, as if it were the soundtrack to the running of "the John Galt Line." :-) It's about as unvolitional a sense as you can get from music -- like it's inexorable, rather than deliberate. Naturally, many pieces don't have such clear-cut examples to point to. Instead, they have much mixing of rhythms, more subtle shifts between the driven and the aspiring. But that doesn't take away from the blatant character of the pure cases. It just means that to dig out all the subtleties, you need a lot of musical vocabulary and tools (as Rand said), more fine-tuned analysis. And this doesn't even mention the enormous suggestive power of melody, of rises and falls of pitch -- as well as the harmonic framework, with major vs. minor tonality, and the way the progressions (or lack of same) between harmonies is handled. These convey a lot about processes of goal-directedness (volition, value-seeking), too -- again, in musical terms, very general, and often quite capable to "telling a story" without needing any literary text attached to it. The challenge and delight for music analysts is to be able to outline a strictly musical plot with strictly musical characters (themes), so that the listener is able to grasp why there is such a strong sense of drama and conflict and resolution and value-seeking in music. Some music. Other music is relatively static and non-teleological. That music is good, too. But it's so amazing to me that the same kinds of things show up in the homely little 32-bar songs that constitute the Great American Songbook as show up in long-winded symphonies and sonatas and concertos. Not everything that the longer forms are able to do, of course. But so much of the really good popular songs of the 20th century are just serious 19th century music "writ small," so to speak. And that is why my own research and lecturing strategy will be to focus on a digestable unit: the popular song and the classical theme, rather than 30 to 60-minute long pieces. It may be catering to the impatience of our age, the desire to have everything compressed into 3 minutes (or 20 seconds!) -- or it may simply be a recognition that with music being aural, there is a real crow epistemology problem in enlightening people about how it works. In any case, I have a lot of very fascinating and fun work ahead of me -- and thanks again for your interest and support!

To whom does the following recently posted phrase refer: "Those dishonest bastards" 1. The Bush Administration (as written by Hillary Clinton) 2. The Republican Party (as written by Nancy Pelosi) 3. Kat and Michael (as written by someone whose compulsion for bashing David Kelley and the Brandens is the verbal equivalent of eating Krispy Kreme donuts, who seems more unable than ever to turn her focus to offering positive contributions to philosophy, and whose name will not be remembered by anyone 100, no, 50 years from now)

Yes. As a wise old man recently speculated: "Perhaps Objectivism has found its Hillary Clinton." :-#

Dragonfly, I am a jazz musician and a musical arranger -- it is my stock in trade to take pre-existing material and re-work it for my own and others' enjoyment and entertainment. I occasionally do the same with jokes, rather than always making up my own lame jokes. :-) BTW, I saw Nathaniel yesterday (no joke), and he said he wanted to ask me a riddle as an experiment. He said, "A skeleton walked into a bar, and asked for a beer and a mop." I had heard the joke before, but (being a crass Social Metaphysician) I couldn't help laughing anyway, and he said it proved I had the mentality of a 10 year old. Had I not laughed and just puzzled over the point of the joke, it would have proved my mind was on a somewhat higher level. I said, "That's the real joke, right?" We both broke up laughing. :-) Then I told him one: "A grasshopper wearing a vest and a beret walked into a bar, and asked the bartender 'whaddaygot?' The bartender said, 'I've actually got a drink that's named after you,' and the grasshopper replies, 'You've got a drink named Schlomo?'" I'm not sure what mental age that one indicates, but Nathaniel laughed, even though, as he said, he had heard that one before, too. Nothing else of consequence happened during our get-together. I'm joking, of course, but this is not the place to report on it. :-) REB

The Library of Congress sponsored a nationally televised event focusing on Objectivism, and they invited the three top recognized spokesmen for Objectivism to speak. Miracle of miracles, all three accepted! When asked how they wanted to be introduced, David Kelley said, "I want to be referred to as the most knowledgeable Objectivist in America." Leonard Peikoff upped the ante and said, "I want to be referred to as the most knowledgeable Objectivist in the world!" Nathaniel Branden, in his characteristically jovial, relaxed manner, smiled and said, "You can just say that I'm the most knowledgeable Objectivist in this room."

Following is an edited version of some of the footnotes from my 2002 JARS essay, a portion of which I just posted over in the Aesthetics folder, along with a link to where the full version is posted, for those interested. Please feel free to post this material elsewhere on the Internet. It deserves a wide audience, as yet more proof that the ARI/Valliant crowd is more interested in destroying truth and obliterating facts than they are with what they call "justice." REB ============================================== Apparently sometime early in 1960, as noted in a letter to John Hospers dated 17 April of that year, Rand (1995, 503) made a series of four radio broadcasts, possibly on Columbia University Station WKCR. She referred to having earlier kept a promise by sending Hospers copies of the scripts of those talks. In a subsequent letter to Hospers, dated 29 August 1960, she indicated that the third talk was entitled “The Esthetic Vacuum of Our Age” (507). She urged him to read it when he had time, for it “presents (also much too briefly) the essence of my theory of art, and will serve as my answer, if we disagree.” It is unlikely that this talk occurred much later than 1 April 1960, and there are no known extant copies of this radio script, which is the earliest known version of her esthetic vacuum talk. A second and longer series of radio shows was broadcast on WKCR in early 1962. The overall format of the twelve-week series of radio programs was described in the “Objectivist Calendar” (Rand 1962–65a) as follows: “On alternate weeks, Miss Rand will give one of the lectures she has delivered at various universities. On the other six programs, Professor John Hospers of the Philosophy Department of Brooklyn College will discuss Objectivism and the lecture of the preceding week, with Ayn Rand, Nathaniel Branden and Barbara Branden.” Rand’s esthetic vacuum talk was the ninth program of the series and was broadcast on 26 April 1962 with the title “Our Esthetic Vacuum.” What was surely the same talk was delivered the previous day at Boston University and listed (Rand 1962–65b) as “The Esthetic Vacuum of Our Age.” Both talks were based, probably with little or no revision, upon her 1961 address to the Cultural Arts Festival at the University of Michigan. The Ayn Rand Bookstore also markets a companion tape (AR62C) labeled and referred to in their catalog as “The Esthetic Vacuum of Our Age, Q&A,” but referred to on the tape as “Our Esthetic Vacuum.” All the evidence suggests that it is a tape of the radio broadcast from 3 May 1962, referred to in the “Objectivist Calendar“ (Rand 1962–65a) as “Discussion by Prof. [John] Hospers, Ayn Rand and Barbara Branden.” It is worth noting that, although the radio programs were scheduled to run an hour in length (Tape AR25C, being 60 minutes in length, conforms to that plan), the Q&A tape is curiously shorter by a significant amount, being only 40 minutes long. Although Hospers’ name is not listed on the tape’s container or label, or mentioned on the tape itself, his voice is unmistakable, and he asks a number of questions to which Rand responds. Barbara Branden’s voice, however, is nowhere in evidence on the tape. The most plausible motive for the deletion of fully one-third of the Q&A broadcast would seem to be the consignment of Hospers and Branden, as punishment for their offenses against Rand, respectively, to anonymity (unnamed moderator status) and oblivion—or, in Objectivist terms, to non-Identity and non-Existence. A similar practice is employed in the edited tapes of Rand’s “Lectures on Fiction-Writing”: any time that Barbara Branden or Nathaniel Branden asks a question or reads an excerpt from a book, their voices are replaced by a voice-over speaker. A related syndrome is the reprehensible practice of certain editors of Rand’s previously unpublished materials who have selectively omitted and/or rewritten her original words (see, for example, The Art of Fiction: A Guide for Writers and Readers, by Ayn Rand, in which editor Tore Boeckmann omits a great deal of material that later appeared in The Objectivist Newsletter, The Objectivist, and The Romantic Manifesto). The result is that scholars and new readers alike are deprived of the opportunity of seeing Rand’s earliest organized thoughts on the subject of aesthetics. An expensive twenty-one-tape set of the 1958 fiction lectures (edited down to 23 hours from about 48 hours of “raw tapes”) is still available for purchase through the Ayn Rand Bookstore. Scholars seeking a more comprehensive view of the development of Rand’s aesthetics must continue to make use of the oral tradition—even if it too is edited.

Following are the opening and closing portions of my essay "A Neglected Source for Rand's Aesthetics," which appeared in Vol. 4, No. 1 of Journal of Ayn Rand Studies. The balance of the essay was an analysis of Rand's taped lecture, which is considerably longer and richer than the published essay. It is posted online as a downloadable PDF file at: http://members.aol.com/REBissell/indexmmm.html ============================================= Although it has been available in audiocassette form for quite some time[see note 1], “The Esthetic Vacuum of Our Age” has never appeared in print form in its entirety. Substantial portions of the essay were published in November of 1962 in The Objectivist Newsletter (Rand 1962–65) and reprinted with some minor alterations in The Romantic Manifesto (Rand [1969] 1975). This edited version, labeled (Rand 1962b, 3) as excerpts from Rand’s 1961 address to the Cultural Arts Festival at the University of Michigan, was in turn closely related to her 1960 and 1962 radio talks. [see note 2] In fact, the shorter version is lifted nearly word for word from the much longer taped lecture that is very likely a full-bodied replica of the 1961 version. [see note 3] While the print version runs to only 2,500 words or so, the full-length taped version totals nearly 7,800 words, and it contains much more than comments on “popular culture” and the Romanticism-Naturalism debate. [see note 4] The taped lecture discusses Rand’s definition of “art” and the function of concepts, the nature of sense of life, and the relation of reason to aesthetics, and is an eloquent, powerful example of Rand’s writing at its best. [see note 5] Truly, the manuscript of this taped lecture is the “Ur-document” for the Objectivist aesthetics. Comprehensive and stirring in nature, it should have been the lead essay of The Romantic Manifesto, rather than being tucked away in abbreviated form in the middle. Its general obscurity is yet another consequence of the Objectivist movement’s reprehensible tendency toward an oral tradition. As a result, it continues to be difficult for scholars to trace the genesis and development of Rand’s thought and for people in general to obtain a clear, complete picture of how Rand arrived at her challenging ideas. [see note 6] Someday, a full-length printed version of “The Esthetic Vacuum of Our Age” may take its rightful place among Rand’s other published works in aesthetics. [see note 7] -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Notes 1. Currently marketed by the Ayn Rand Book Store (formerly Second Renaissance Books) at http://www.aynrandbookstore.com, as Tape AR25C, it is listed in the catalog as “Our Esthetic Vacuum.” The tape itself, however, is labeled “The Esthetic Vacuum of Our Age.” A similar confusion appears to exist in references to versions of this talk delivered on successive days in April of 1962. See note 3 below. 2. Apparently sometime early in 1960, as noted in a letter to John Hospers dated 17 April of that year, Rand (1995, 503) made a series of four radio broadcasts, possibly on Columbia University Station WKCR. She referred to having earlier kept a promise by sending Hospers copies of the scripts of those talks. In a subsequent letter to Hospers, dated 29 August 1960, she indicated that the third talk was entitled “The Esthetic Vacuum of Our Age” (507). She urged him to read it when he had time, for it “presents (also much too briefly) the essence of my theory of art, and will serve as my answer, if we disagree.” It is unlikely that this talk occurred much later than 1 April 1960, and there are no known extant copies of this radio script, which is the earliest known version of her esthetic vacuum talk. A second and longer series of radio shows was broadcast on WKCR in early 1962. The overall format of the twelve-week series of radio programs was described in the “Objectivist Calendar” (Rand 1962–65a) as follows: “On alternate weeks, Miss Rand will give one of the lectures she has delivered at various universities. On the other six programs, Professor John Hospers of the Philosophy Department of Brooklyn College will discuss Objectivism and the lecture of the preceding week, with Ayn Rand, Nathaniel Branden and Barbara Branden.” Rand’s esthetic vacuum talk was the ninth program of the series and was broadcast on 26 April 1962 with the title “Our Esthetic Vacuum.” What was surely the same talk was delivered the previous day at Boston University and listed (Rand 1962–65b) as “The Esthetic Vacuum of Our Age.” Both talks were based, probably with little or no revision, upon her 1961 address to the Cultural Arts Festival at the University of Michigan. 3. In a previous essay (Bissell, 2001), it was erroneously stated that the taped lecture was probably a replica of Rand's 1960 radio address. This conjecture is rendered invalid by the presence of several 1961 citations in the lecture, including a quotation from Rand's essay "For the New Intellectual." There is some indication that the tape may have been recorded at a considerably later time, because Second Renaissance Books (now the Ayn Rand Bookstore) has labeled it with a 1968 copyright date. However, the plethora of references from 1961 sources and none from a later date, and the absence of audience noise makes it more likely taht the tape is a recording of Rand's 26 April 1962 program on Columbia University station WKCR, listed as "Our Esthetic Vacuum" (Rand 1962-65a). See also note 6 below. 4. As it is described in Kamhi and Torres 2000, 35 n. 10 and Torres and Kamhi 2000, 2. See also Bissell 2001, 307–8. 5. The Ayn Rand Bookstore also markets a companion tape (AR62C) labeled and referred to in their catalog as “The Esthetic Vacuum of Our Age, Q&A,” but referred to on the tape as “Our Esthetic Vacuum.” All the evidence suggests that it is a tape of the radio broadcast from 3 May 1962, referred to in the “Objectivist Calendar“ (Rand 1962–65a) as “Discussion by Prof. [John] Hospers, Ayn Rand and Barbara Branden.” It is worth noting that, although the radio programs were scheduled to run an hour in length (Tape AR25C, being 60 minutes in length, conforms to that plan), the Q&A tape is curiously shorter by a significant amount, being only 40 minutes long. Although Hospers’ name is not listed on the tape’s container or label, or mentioned on the tape itself, his voice is unmistakable, and he asks a number of questions to which Rand responds. Barbara Branden’s voice, however, is nowhere in evidence on the tape. The most plausible motive for the deletion of fully one-third of the Q&A broadcast would seem to be the consignment of Hospers and Branden, as punishment for their offenses against Rand, respectively, to anonymity (unnamed moderator status) and oblivion—or, in Objectivist terms, to non-Identity and non-Existence. A similar practice is employed in the edited tapes of Rand’s “Lectures on Fiction-Writing”: any time that Barbara Branden or Nathaniel Branden asks a question or reads an excerpt from a book, their voices are replaced by a voice-over speaker. 6. A related syndrome is the reprehensible practice of certain editors of Rand’s previously unpublished materials who have selectively omitted and/or rewritten her original words (see, for example, The Art of Fiction: A Guide for Writers and Readers, by Ayn Rand, in which editor Tore Boeckmann omits a great deal of material that later appeared in The Objectivist Newsletter, The Objectivist, and The Romantic Manifesto). The result is that scholars and new readers alike are deprived of the opportunity of seeing Rand’s earliest organized thoughts on the subject of aesthetics. An expensive twenty-one-tape set of the 1958 fiction lectures (edited down to 23 hours from about 48 hours of “raw tapes”) is still available for purchase through the Ayn Rand Bookstore. See LaValle 2000, 15; Sciabarra 1998a; 1998b. Scholars seeking a more comprehensive view of the development of Rand’s aesthetics must continue to make use of the oral tradition—even if it too is edited. 7. I made a transcription of this tape in early 2000 and offered it to Second Renaissance Books for publication. To date, despite two reiterations of this offer, no response has been received. ======================================= This lecture is not an obscure object of curiosity. It is the wellspring of Rand’s The Romantic Manifesto. Along with “The Objectivist Ethics,” it is stark, undeniable evidence of a major spurt of intellectual integration and creativity right at the beginning of Rand’s non-fiction writing career. Some of the best of this lecture was saved for the printed version as well as for later essays, including “The Psycho-Epistemology of Art,” “Philosophy and Sense of Life,” and “Art and Sense of Life.” But only some of it. The entire lecture deserves to take its place alongside the other published works of Rand’s canonical writings.

Jody, I have a very vivid connection with the things I've written. When I pick up a letter I wrote long ago, one I had forgotten about, my mind quickly reforms around the context in which I wrote it. This is also true of songs I've written. I even remember where I wrote the songs, and how the piano felt when I was writing it. As for my daily grind music playing at Disneyland, that stuff is rote, and I am on automatic pilot nearly all the time, even when doing our sit-down, reading sets. It's all memorized or nearly so. I'm like the centipede -- when I try to focus on the memorized music, I trip up. My brain is off thinking about something I'm truly interested in. Occasionally, I monitor my face muscles or breathing to make sure I'm physically on track. Occasionally, I look around at the people. Mostly I just "go somewhere else," and before I know it, the set is over, and we go down to the band room where I can get some real work done. :-) Also occasionally, we get to do something new, or a jazz tune that requires some creative process, and I crank up the focus on my playing at that point. Far too seldom, I get to play with one of the other groups at DL -- a group I am going on tour with this weekend for 2 weeks in Arizona -- and it is sheer delight. I focus and am engaged and fulfilled. Needless to say, I don't get much philosophizing done when I'm playing with that group -- but I don't mind it! :-) REB

This is all just incredible. I am practically speechless with indignation. :-# And where is that lecture "The Objectivist Esthetics," anyway?? Mayhew...Jesus Christ, man... REB ================================================ SPECIAL EDIT, November 8, 2008: I figure that this is the appropriate place for a post of mine that MSK has just deleted from a thread I began on "Time to Shrug?" For further background details, consult that thread in the Living Room. I hope readers appreciate the irony of my putting this material here, in response to MSK's tossing me into the "memory hole"--and of MSK's doing the very thing he began ~this~ thread to combat. Hypocrite! ================================================ QUOTE(Michael Stuart Kelly @ Nov 7 2008, 11:25 AM) QUOTE(Dragonfly @ Nov 7 2008, 01:20 PM) As several people have in vain tried to explain to you, pointing out racist reasoning in a particular argument does not imply that you accuse the person who makes that statement is a racist. But either that is too difficult for you or you really know better (which would be worse).END QUOTE OF DRAGONFLY Dragonfly, It's worse. Robert Bidinotto does not use racist reasoning and is not a racist. I've had enough. The thread is closed. Michael END QUOTE OF MICHAEL STUART KELLY Oh, really? I guess this means that non-Objectivists are not capable of making an Objectivist statement from time to time, that non-individualists are not capable of using individualist reasoning once in a while, that theists are not capable of uttering atheistic sentiments occasionally -- even if inadvertently or by mistake or under stress. On the other hand, if a person makes a thread-closing statement even ~once~, apparently (by Michael's ultra-touchy, defensive "logic") that means you are a thread-closer. Welcome to the Brave New World of MSK-ism. George Orwell would be proud! REB

Barbara, you wrote a very interesting essay. I hope it's going to be part of a book of psychological and/or sociological insights and observations. =D> The whole "group dynamics" phenomenon is very real and very disturbing. You gave the right perspective on it -- one might say "the benefits and hazards of group membership." :-k I remember talking to an activist Libertarian years ago who pointed out the eerie similarities between superficially different ideological, religious, and philosophical groups. It seemed applicable across the board. And this is not intended as an insult to Libertarians or Objectivists per se, just an observation that people who gravitate toward these perspectives are not immune to the seductive pressures to fit in to a dynamic pattern. How this all fits in with free will and autonomy is an interesting question. It would seem that if all different kinds of groups end up like this, that there is some kind of social determinism at work. However, it remains the case that each person is free to retain his or her autonomy and integrity, if that is what he or she values more highly than membership in a group, however beneficial it might appear to be. Not everyone succumbs to this seductiveness of belonging to one's "family." Some people are such individuals that they "would never belong to a group that would have me as a member." (Mencken?) Even those who succumb for a while, often break free. It is those who are oblivious to cultism in their own group and maybe even in their own psyches that really worry me. (Diana, are you listening in?) REB

I see by the Atlas Shrugged Chronology (google it) that Hank was 11 years older than Dagny (not 9). Still way within any reasonable romantic ball park. :-) I think she was 34 when they met and he was 45. reb

You're right, Kat, Rearden didn't divorce Lillian! And he sure should have! That just goes to show you, rectitude ain't always right! And maybe you're right that they wouldn't have worked out in the long run. I feel a little better now about the way things turned out. But only a little. <sigh> reb

Folks, some of the fall-out from the Jan. 14 LAON meeting is that a comment by Nathaniel Branden triggered my resolve to begin work on a book on music aesthetics. Or, some mixture of the music theory, music psychology, and music aesthetics. The book is based on a lecture I gave in San Francisco in March 2004, and its title is "Serious Schmaltz and Passionate Pop: are there objective indicators of emotion in music?" (That's the subtitle from my talk, but the subtitle for the book is a carefully guarded trade secret. Sorry. :-) I have decided that I need to data-base the great American standard songs as well as the best-loved classical melodies and do a lot of study and generalization, as well as relating my observations to the Objectivist ethics and aesthetics. It will be a lot of work, but it should be great fun. I will be finding out what makes the hit songs work -- i.e., what musical factors enable the song melodies (and lyrics) to convey a particular emotion and/or present a particular view of life and the world. I'll give you one out-of-context snippet of the kinds of things I will be looking at. Songs can be categorized in terms of their form. One very prevalent song form is AABA, with the B section called the "bridge." A good example is "Take the A Train" by Duke Ellington. Another very common song form is ABAB' (or some variation thereof). A good example is "I Left My Heart in San Francisco." One salient difference between these two forms is that AABA form usually has the melodic peak in the bridge, while the ABAB' usually has the melodic peak in the last section (B'). These are just general observations, but are part of the preliminaries that have to be done to establish conceptual groupings of kinds of melodies. I just can't resist one other tidbit. :-) Norah Jones' big Grammy hit song, "Don't Know Why," which is in AABA form, has been characterized by some wags as being about sexual dysfunction. (One lyric is "don't know why I didn't come.") Well, as sweet as the song is (kinda Karen Carpenterish), there's some ironic truth to the facetious description. There is NO MELODIC PEAK in her song. All the phrases move downward. There is NO CLIMAX! Now, this kind of laboratory specimen doesn't come along every day -- and yet, there it is, top dog in the pop song world. Go figure! Well, enough teasers. I started writing last Sunday, and so far I'm about 2000 words into the Preface, with no end in sight! (Just kidding. I sense that it is going to wrap up with some acknowledgements shortly. :-) This project feels like a culmination and a new beginning, all at once, and I anticipate being able to work on it and applications of it for years, maybe decades. (And I ain't got that many left! :-( Can you tell I'm excited? :D/ REB

Rand defined art as re-creation of reality, yet she stated in "Art and Cognition" (reprinted in The Romantic Manifesto that one of the arts, architecture, did not re-create reality, and that another one of the arts, music, re-created reality in a way that she was unable to objectively specify. When Binswanger was putting together The Ayn Rand Lexicon just before Rand died, he asked her about this inconsistency when showing her the entries for the letter "A," and her request was that he not include an entry for architecture in the Lexicon. Yow! To compound the travesty, Binswanger retained an entry for "visual arts," which explicitly included architecture. Double-yow!! #-o ) Talk about sweeping errors under the rug! But what was the error, really? I see it differently. I think Rand was wrong in saying that architecture does not re-create reality, and I argue such in my "Art as Microcosm" essay in Journal of Ayn Rand Studies vol. 5, no. 2 (spring 2004). It's also posted at my website as a PDF file, which you are welcome to download, read, and send comments if you like. Here is the URL: Art as Microcosm And please don't hold it against me that I favorably quoted the guy who wrote that atrocious article over on you-know-who's forum. <blech> (The emoticon for "sick" doesn't work.) REB

I remembered one more significant item from the LAON meeting last Saturday night. Someone asked about the health of the Objectivist movement (or something along those lines), and Nathaniel commented that he saw plenty of people chewing and rechewing what Rand wrote. He mentioned in particular a book on consciousness that someone was writing. (This no doubt refers to Harry Binswangers forthcoming book on consciousness. I have a number of his lecture series, and it looks like it's basically the chewing bit, no real ground-breaking, though Binswanger does do a pretty good job of concretizing his points.) However, Nathaniel said, where are the people who are applying Objectivism to their career fields? In other words, where are the books that are informed by Objectivism, but that go beyond it, and are not just rehashes of things Rand wrote 40 years ago? Confession: this comment flipped a switch inside me. Or, it lit a fire under me. Pick your favorite metaphor. Anyway, I have an announcement to make. For details, see my post in the Living Room! REB

Ciro, you are a master chef. You should appreciate this one! How do you make an open-faced Atlas Shrugged sandwich? You put a slice of Dagny on top of a slice of John Galt, and you throw away the Rearden. (I know, Kat, I'm besmirching our little haven here. I'll stop now. :-) reb

Jody, you are so right. I just went over to..."the other place"...and found the thread in question. Jeez, what a depressing waste of brainpower. But it's not the first Libertarian or Objectivist discussion group that I've seen degenerate into such a negative swamp of smearing and character bashing. I have some good news! Which I am going to post in the Living Room... reb

OK, Phil -- I appreciate everything you say, in general terms. But it's clear I need to be more specific, so that my own point is understood. What I had in mind when I wrote my comments was the affair Rand had with Branden in the 50s. My impression or understanding is that Rand was attracted to Branden because he represented her ideal man on the philosophic level. He was the most rational, intelligent man she knew, the man who understood the world intellectually like she did, so naturally you should have the ultimate intimacy with such a man, if you can, right? On the other hand, Frank was Rand's ideal man on the sense of life level. He was the man with whom she felt most at home in a global sense, not specifically on the intellectual level, but overall. Emotionally, he was "home base" for her. You don't want to lose that, either! Which is why she wanted Frank's consent to her affair with Branden. She was not at all willing to lose her sense of life ideal man. (We all presume she would not have pursued an affair with Branden, if Frank had said "no.") So, Phil -- reflect a bit more, if you would, please, on the dichotomy issue. Doesn't it seem to you that Rand had a philosophy/sense of life dichotomy in regard to her "ideal man"? REB