Music is something more than an individual possession

The Cambridgeshire Report on the Teaching of Music: Music and the Community by Cambridgeshire Council of Music Education
My rating: 3 of 5 stars

I noticed Music and the Community on a bookshelf six minutes before the public library was about to close and couldn't resist grabbing it.

Originally published by the Cambridgeshire Council of Music Education in 1933, the whole book is a primer for the way music education should be conducted in schools. In the introduction, the importance of this teaching is first made clear: music is a language. Later on in the book, the authors strengthen its connection to literature by saying that "old English music should be as familiar as old English poetry." Yet just as not every English-speaker has to be well-versed in all the nuances and subtleties of poetry, not every person who receives a music education needs to be a virtuoso. The important thing is that the music is learned.

According to the book, however, there are problems that prevent music from becoming "a guiding principle to regulate and illumine all the activities of our existence." Firstly, music deserves to be listened to intensely, but music nowadays is so ubiquitous that

most people who hear music do not really listen to it at all; they let it fall upon their ears as a pleasant succession of sounds, making no effort to understand it and taking their chance of being soothed or stirred by it.

So, the bulk of the book is dedicated to instructing teachers on how to teach music. Music education should begin early with singing (starting from the age of four), be non-restrictive, and quite often be communal because making music together offers "mutual accommodation, a mutual sense of giving rather than of taking, such as no other communal occupation demands in the same degree." At an early age, kids should be taught nursery rhymes, which are important parts of "musical heritage" and have simple melodic structures that help with rhythm retention. Another thing that helps with the "development of the rhythmic sense," the authors note, is dancing - as somebody who has recently caught the jitterbug, I could not agree more. Music learning should also encompass historical and instrumental education as the students progress, and curriculums will differ depending on whether the schools in question are preparatory, public or universities. Yet regardless of the type of institution, "a vigorous musical life is undoubtedly an important factor in improving the tone of a school."

And there are many things that the government sector can do to facilitate the accessibility of music: they should not tax tickets sold at concerts given by local choral or orchestral societies, for example, and public libraries should expand their music sections.

Despite the eagerness with which the book vouches for inclusive music education, however, it also offers words of warning about the extent to which music is perpetuated:

Music should contribute to the life of the community an attitude of social harmony and tolerance; if we do not recognize that there are times when music is out of place we fail in one of the virtues that music is supposed to foster.

And this line made me crack up:

Lovers of music should be most careful not to cause annoyance to others; they may always hope that those who lack fervour will one day see the light, but the change will not come through the antagonizing effect of over-enthusiasm.

So, there is a "danger of making music available at all times" - heard under the "wrong conditions," it will only become an "irritant to nerves."

The whole book is a quick, engaging read. It definitely has a predominantly classical, traditional and British focus concerning music education (it was, after all, published in 1933 by Cambridge), which is perhaps a drawback in modern times, but also presents an interesting point of comparison to today's music scene. Instead of ensuring that every school has a piano, for instance, would a modern-day rendition of Music and the Community insist that every student have an iPod? Or Garageband installed on their computers? Should vocal training take rap into account?

It is fitting that this is the last full-length book I'll read this year (although I'm trying to read a collection of Chinese short stories before I fly out) because it's made me think about all that has changed not only since 1933 regarding music, but everything that has transpired globally and personally in just 2015.

It's been a year of great change and music has continued to be in my life for all of it - experiencing my first snow in Chicago during my orchestra rehearsal, dancing until 1 a.m. in the city to swing music, listening to songs on 15 hour plane rides to and from home.

I started this post as a book review, but as I write this last paragraph I realize that it has also been a way for me to bid goodbye to 2015 and look forward to the new year. I'm excited for the new books I'll read, words I'll write and music I'll hear in 2016!

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There are no two words in the English language more harmful than 'good job'

Whiplash is a film that seizes you from its opening notes and does not let go until the end. Like Birdman, it was nominated for Best Picture at this year's Oscars, involves a lot of drumming and is about a journey to become great - in this case, "one of The Greats."



A sense of growing intensity is established right at the beginning by the crescendoing sound of drums in the dark, followed by stellar dialogue between the film's two protagonists: Andrew Neiman (played by a focused, convincing Miles Teller) and Terence Fletcher (an astounding J.K. Simmons), whose enigmatic entrance from the shadows befits his near-Satanic personality. Of course, there are moments in the film when we see the tender side of him - when he high-fives a little girl and when he tears up at the thought of one of his old students. Yet as Damien Chazelle himself said to Simmons, "I want to see a monster, a gargoyle, an animal." This is what Simmons brings to the big screen.

Neiman is a first-year jazz student at the Shaffer Conservatory, where he is initially an unconfident alternate for the core drummer of a practice band. However, his dreams are big and music is everywhere. The jazz score in the opening scenes brings the promise of possibility, despite the eerie green lighting and a road sign that appears for a brief second, bearing the following warning: "watch your step on the road ahead."

As Fletcher tells Neiman amiably before he plays for the first time, Charlie Parker only became 'Bird' because Jo Jones threw a cymbal at his head. We are meant to bear this analogy in mind throughout the film as Fletcher hurls a chair at Neiman, screams profanity-laced insults at him and even slaps him to make a point about tempo (the famous rushing/dragging scene). Finally, traumatized and driven in a demoniac way, Neiman becomes so drawn into drumming that nothing - not even near, literal "whiplash" from a car accident - can diminish his desire to play his part and impress. Indeed, the myriad close-up shots of sweat, ears and eyes in the film only further reinforce the intense, intimate and sensual nature of drumming. It is electric and all-consuming.

Thus, the philosophy of Whiplash is one that has, no doubt, raised eyebrows. It defines the price of success as sacrifice, maddening commitment and sweat and blood (literally) to an inhumane extent. Those who can reach that peak are immune from humiliation or discouragement. In the film, Neiman approaches such a dimension by wrapping bandaid after bandaid on his bleeding hand, drumming at breakneck speed for five hours straight to "earn" a part, and by finally going back on stage to challenge his conductor in an exhilarating finale that leaves your ears ringing. The fearful face of Neiman's father through the door crack is striking as he watches his son play - it is as if he knows his son is transcending the mortal, going beyond "what's expected" and approaching a terrifying territory of greatness that he cannot touch.

So, watch Whiplash - be it for its message, Fletcher's astonishing insults, or ~108 minutes worth of great jazz and drumming!

Sometimes it is the very people who no one imagines anything of who do the things that no one can imagine.

Morten Tyldum's The Imitation Game is a beautifully shot, sequenced and acted film about Alan Turing, the unsung British hero who saved 14 million lives by breaking the German Enigma machine during the Second World War.

The word "game" fittingly belongs in the title; at once, it suggests both the eagerness with which the geniuses approach their task as they say, "let's play," and the complexity of a puzzle that master linguists have deemed impossible to crack. War itself is also a game, but no one wins. Turing, who finally succeeds in building his incredible machine - what does he win in the end?



Turing (Benedict Cumberbatch at his best) is a character who is "out of the ordinary." At a professional level, he thinks differently from his colleagues by insisting on designing a machine to decrypt German codes: by using "a machine" to "defeat another machine."

Although it is his success in building "Christopher" that turns him into a hero, Turing has, in many ways, been a hero all his life. Knowing that one sometimes "can’t do what feels good" but instead "what’s logical," Turing lets the first British ship that they discover is in danger sink, tells Joan he doesn't care about her in an attempt to protect her, and even as a child refused to cry in front of his principal in a fierce attempt to hide his feelings for Christopher, his childhood love.

Yet such heroism is not immediately perceptible by those around him, for in taking on the endeavour of building "Christopher," Turing isolates himself, is perceived as narcissistic by his colleagues and also considered a great mystery. Thus, it makes sense that Graham Moore has not structured the film in a linear way, but instead reveals the puzzle pieces of Turing's life through moments from his childhood as the film progresses: the threads of his life are being sewn together because the man, like the codes he cracks, is an enigma. He even seems to understand "electrical brains" better than the subtleties human speech. "I can't judge you," Detective Nock says with a air of stupefaction after he interrogates Turing. "You’re holding on to more secrets than the best of [spies]," Stewart Menzies, the head of MI6, tells him.

Indeed, Turing is considered "different" for another reason in the film: his homosexuality, which is well-foreshadowed through the scenes we see of him as a child with Christopher. The film indeed takes a dark turn at the end by addressing this secret, showing how Turing - a man who had helped end the war early and swore to keep that a secret - cannot even properly use his hands to write out the answers to a crossword puzzle. It is heartbreaking to see how he is being forced to reject what made him capable of such success in the first place: his differences.

The highest commendations must be paid to the actors in the film. Notably, Cumberbatch is extraordinary. He is well-suited for playing sophisticated and calculating British geniuses (Holmes and Turing), and all of his emotional scenes are heartrending. Alex Lawther, the young man who plays young Alan Turing, is also astounding.  Keira Knightley delivers a sharp performance as Joan Clarke, although I sometimes did not buy into her role, just as Turning's running scenes seemed oddly out of character. Yet I think this film takes a bold (and just) stance on women's rights: who says a lady cannot outwit a room of men?

The screenplay maintains a sublime balance of suspense and humor; there is never a dull moment. Both elements are even mixed when Turing has his epiphany about cracking the code, for in doing so, he inadvertently spoils Hugh's date.  "Love just lost the Germans the whole bloody war!"

Similarly, the cinematography of the film is stunning. A particular striking scene is when the rotating wheels of the Enigma machine translate into the wheels of British tanks on the warfront as both rotate in time to a crescendoing ticking clock. Through interspersing clips from the warfront into the film, Tyldum ensures that the audience knows - just as Peter, the youngest codebreaker, does - that "there are actual soldiers  out  there  trying  to win an actual war."

But The Imitation Game is more than just a "war movie" or a "British biopic." It is an important film about remembering, as we are so often reminded in the movie, that it is sometimes "the very people who no one imagines anything of who do the things that no one can imagine." Such a line is true for Turing, true for Joan Clarke and the results that follow when one heeds it are extraordinary.

There's a whole world out there where people fight to be relevant every day

As the opening lines from Raymond Carver's Late Fragment suggest, Alejandro González Iñárritu's Birdman is about characters who want to feel "beloved on the earth" and will go to extreme lengths achieve a sense of self-worth.



60-year old Riggan Thomson (Michael Keaton), once famous for having played the "Birdman" in a Hollywood blockbuster, is now adapting and acting in Raymond Carver's What We Talk About When We Talk About Love for Broadway. Right from the beginning of the movie, we know that life is not going well for Riggan; his daughter, Sam (Emma Stone), was not able to get him the lilac flowers he wanted, he is struggling with anger management issues and the deep, taunting voice of Birdman continues to haunt him by reminding him of what he is "capable of" but not achieving. Indeed, Riggan is years beyond his prime. The contemporary allusions drawn throughout the film, such as the mentions of Fassbender, Renner, Twitter and Facebook, plant the film in a modern-day context to further emphasize the fact that the world is moving on without him. All of a sudden, there is so much fuss over "trending topics" and "action" movies that no one, as Riggan's hallucination of Birdman sneers in his face, cares about "talky, depressing, philosophical bullsh*t" anymore. In this way, the film is a powerful commentary on the modern-day film industry and its audience.

But the biggest question in the film, reiterated so often by Riggan as he plays "Eddie" in Carver's play, is this: What is love? What does it mean to feel "beloved?" It seems that all characters in Birdman share the desire to feel loved. Lesley (Naomi Watts), for instance, wonders why she does not have any "self-respect;" Riggan's compliment makes her feel better but Laura (Andrea Riseborough), overhearing it, laments that Riggan has never said anything like that to her in the two years during which they have been together. No degree of professional acting can mask the pain she feels when Riggan very obviously seems less-than-enthusiastic at the prospect of having her child. When Laura and Lesley kiss, they seem to be searching for the answer to Carver's question; finding some way to feel loved when the men around them disrespect them. Even Mike Shining (Edward Norton), who smoothly lies to the media and seems to have a self-inflated ego on the surface, struggles with his self-worth because of his inability to "get it up."

Yet the character that struggles most with love is, of course, Riggan. As his ex-wife reminds him, he even struggles with the definition itself by confusing "love for admiration;" this is why he incorrectly assumed that constantly telling his daughter that she was "special" would substitute for his lack of parental presence. Thus, as Sam yells at him in her speech, he is not producing Carver's play "for the sake of art." He is doing it to "feel relevant again" and thus represents the "entitled, selfish, spoiled children" that the critic Tabitha lambastes. When striding naked through the streets of New York City to get back on stage, Riggan only seems to confirm the media's opinion that he is nothing but an attention-seeking, ego-inflating "celebrity" trying to make a comeback as an "actor." As Sam's therapeutic drawing technique teaches her, the brief time that humans have spent on the earth serves to "remind us that that's all our ego and self-obsession are worth.”

Yet what the public eye and Tabitha don't see is that Riggan, despite his ego, is risking everything for the play - putting his self-worth on the line to once again become a "superhero". "Why do I have to end up begging people to love me?" he asks. "I spend every f*cking minute praying to be someone else." This line echoes Sam's question to Mike about how he can "go out there and pretend to be someone else in front of all those people" as an actor on a daily basis. Yet Mike - who drinks real gin on set and even wants to do "it" for real with Lesley in their motel scene - claims that he is not pretending when on stage.

The blurred lines between performance and life are quite telling in the film and are made even more realistic by the visually astonishing and extraordinarily captivating one-take (well, almost) shot. What We Talk About When We Talk About Love indeed directly reflects the characters' lives, especially when Laura recites her monologue about pregnancy and when the characters sit around the table talking about love. It is fitting, therefore, that Lesley (in character as Terri) says that Eddie "shot himself in the mouth" and "screwed that up, too." All this foreshadowing culminates as Riggan, after eerily walking down the hallway with his loaded gun and passing an extra dressed like the Grim Reaper, attempts suicide by shooting himself. Iñárritu also foreshadows this by mentioning "Icarus," the Son of Daedulus from Greek mythology, twice in the film (in one scene, Mike is even reading Labyrinth, the maze in which Icarus was trapped). Icarus, driven by his own hubris, flew too close to the sun and perished.

In the end, however, Riggan survives - with a distorted nose that makes him actually look like a birdman. In the final moments of the film, Riggan seems to have everything he originally wanted - Sam was finally able to buy his lilacs, he is front-page of the Times and Tabitha has given his adaptation a stellar review. But there is no sense of ego here and the voice of the Birdman has indeed vanished. As Tabitha remarks, Riggan has finally demonstrated the "unexpected virtue of ignorance." Like how Icarus, ignorant of his weak feathers, flew up to the sun to achieve greatness, Riggan risked everything and spent all his energy for his play, "willfully" ignoring "a place" that had already forgotten" him." In the end - he flies.

The moments

Boyhood is an extraordinary film and an astonishing endeavour. Directed by Richard Linklater and filmed over a span of 12 years, it tracks the boyhood of six-year-old Mason from 2002 to 2014. The actor who plays Mason, the now-20-year old Ellar Coltrane, was cast at age six, just as the other actors in the film signed up for their roles 12 years ago. So, without a finalized script or clairvoyance (that we know of, at least), Linklater shot segments of the film annually for a 12-year period while the actors got on with their lives. Indeed, we even see elements of the actors' personal lives in the film itself.

Throughout the film, music, allusions and clothing are the markers that guide us through this 12-year span of time. Right at the start, Coldplay's Yellow indicates that the movie is set in the 2000s. Mason's trip to see The Chamber of Secrets in cinemas takes us up to 2002. Near the end of the film, Gotye's Somebody That I Used To Know transports us to 2011. Towards the end of the film, Facebook and iPhones become a part of the story.

The beginning of the film is set in Texas, where Mason lives with his older sister, Samantha (Lorelai Linklater), and his mother, Olivia (Patricia Arquette is fabulous). Mason's father, Mason Sr. (played by the amazing Ethan Hawke) and Olivia have separated, but Mason Sr. soon returns to Texas and begins to visit the children weekly.

From here onwards, the film touches upon all the chapters of boyhood: young Mason daydreams in class, is fed up with his annoying older sister, flips through lingerie magazines with childish curiosity, goes through an acne phase, gets himself a girlfriend, turns fifteen, graduates...and finally heads off to college.

The interim is interspersed with meaningful scenes that capture the relationships between father and son, son and mother, boyfriend and girlfriend, and so on. One of my favourite scenes is the one in which Mason. Sr. has the "birds and the bees talk" with his children - it is as awkward for them as it is for him and nothing about that scene seems falsified in any way. Another memorable scene takes place when Mason. Sr. drives his children to a park on one of his weekend visits. Here, we see his attempts to  be a good dad: he asks his children how their week was, wanting to get to the heart of the question and refusing to be "that guy," refusing to be the stereotypical dad-who-visits-every-weekend in the divorce. So, what is lovely about the father-son dynamic in this film is the way Mason Sr. - although initially lost and with a drinking problem - cleans himself up and forms a meaningful bond with his children. The most moving instances of this are the scenes in which Mason and his father go hiking, and when Mason. Sr. confronts his son after his break up.

Speaking of father-son relationships, it is important to consider the men in the film because this is, after all, a movie about boyhood. Mason's father is wonderful, but he is not immune to placing expectations on his son. When he takes Mason out bowling, for instance, he insists that Mason forgo the bumpers (through another lens, this could be seen as Mason Sr.'s way of teaching his son perseverance). When Mason and Samantha show him dry Canadian grass and basketball team photos, respectively, it is the latter that grabs his attention. As Mason ascends to the eighth grade, his perceptions of manhood are further influenced by the seniors he meets. Spouting out profanity and challenging "are you gay," these seniors capture the stereotypical immaturity and self-consciousness of teenage boys.

Yet none of this is too troubling, unlike the disturbing "mansplaining" attitude of Professor Bill, Olivia's second husband. He demands Mason to cut his hair, saying that he will now "look like a man instead of a little girl." He orders his own children to do their chores rigorously. He dictates the way his son plays golf. Worst of all, he is tyrannical and abusive - what kind of boyhood will his son experience?

So, as much as the film is about boyhood, it is also about parenthood. Early on, Olivia exclaims, "I'm a parent, that means responsibility." Indeed, she does an astounding job at being a mother - having to face her daughter's "horsesh-t attitude," pulling her family out of poverty and raising Mason and Samantha until they graduate. She uses the tiger as an example to explain love during one of her classes, saying that mother tigers abandon their cubs and "throw them down" in the face of danger. For her, however, the opposite is true; she is the one who clings onto her children despite all danger and strife. Her motherly instinct is further strengthened at the end of the film, when the family runs into Ernesto, the man who had fixed their sewer pipes years ago. Now one of the managers of the restaurant they dine at, Ernesto credits Olivia for inspiring him to learn English and find his current. "[Olivia] is a smart woman," he tells Mason and Samantha. "You should listen to her."Yet the day Mason leaves for college, Olivia breaks down, crying, "I just thought there would be more."  Although the audience will inevitably get caught up in the journey of Mason's boyhood, we must not forget that it is his mother - not his father, stepfathers or peers - who does the best and most wholesome job of raising him.

Speaking about the film's ending, the whole film retains its structural integrity. For instance, it opens with the family moving and ends with another instance of moving, but it is only Mason that moves the second time round - into adulthood. Similarly, we can draw a clear link between Mason's childhood love for staring out of the window to his eventual passion for photography. Even Jimmy, the friend of his father whom Mason met when he was still young, reappears at the end as if to reinforce the length of time that has elapsed since.

So, it is fitting that Mason says to Nicole, one of the first girls he meets at college, that the young kids she tutors "haven't reached the awkward years yet."He, after all, has just gone through those awkward years - and what a journey they have been!

The fact that Linklater actually tracked his characters for 12 years contributes to the most striking element of this film: its realism. Yet he also achieves this because the dialogue in the film is so spot-on that it ceases to seem like scripted material. Indeed, I  saw myself reflected in the way Sheena, Mason's ex-girlfriend, chats with Samantha. The awkward laugh, the tucking of the hair behind her ear...I mean, I do that too!

At the same time, Boyhood - for all its realism - cannot be considered a faithful representation of "boyhood," although it may come close to capturing an idealized American boyhood (hence Mason's baseball games, a shotgun for his 15th birthday, a graduation party). Where was Mason's real teenage angst and where were his wild adolescent years of rebellion? Boyhood, striking as it is, deals with certain troubles of boyhood in some parts - but lacks to address some others.

Nonetheless, the final line of the film pithily captures its essence: "It's constant, the moments, it's just — it's like it's always right now, you know?" Linklater, after all, filmed Boyhood in the "right now" moments. He has translated a coming-of-age story onto screen in a way that allows the audience to vicariously experience - and truly witness - the passage of time through film. Boyhood is a work of incredible scope that is, despite its flaws, the most important contribution to cinema in a long while.

2014 -My Year in Books

As the 365-day symphony of 2014 reaches its final bars, I find that a great way to evaluate the music of the year - in both personal and universal contexts - is through books.

Above are the 35 books I read this year (thank you, Goodreads, for helpfully generating the image), listed in chronological order starting from the bottom right.

Well, 2014 was the year of academic reading. 10/35 books this year were read for academic purposes or in an academic context. I have a Goodreads policy of only listing the books I've perused totally as "read," so the number is actually higher. Out of these books, 2 were re-reads (Cormac McCarthy!) in preparation for my extended essay, 2 were Chinese and 1 was French. Despite having read these books "for school," however, I enjoyed them, fell in love with several and was certainly inspired to read further because of what I'd read on their pages.

In 2014, the reading world went crazy for Karl Ove Knausgaard's The Struggle, Donna Tartt won the Putlizer for The Goldfinch and Dave Eggers published Your Fathers, Where Are They? And the Prophets, Do They Live Forever? I also spent the year catching up on the books that had captured the attention of the literary world last year: Alice Munro's Something I've Been Meaning to Tell You and Eleanor Catton's The Luminaries.

This year, I was further convinced that I love reading about the tropical: Jhumpa Lahiri's The Lowland and Michael Ondaatje's Running in the Family filled my year with lyrical prose and enrapturing stories. Speaking of Running in the Family, I also ventured into the realm of memoir/personal narrative this year, not only with My Struggle, but also with Jason Ng's No City for Slow Men, Kim Thuy's Ru, Jean-Dominique Bauby's Le Scaphandre et Le Papillon and Annie Lamott's Bird by Bird.

I was also able to complete some to-reads this year: the aforementioned Bird by Bird, Swamplandia, The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao and Blink, for instance. Meeting Junot Diaz was just the cherry on top of the literary ice cream.

These books have bookmarked my year like rehearsal letters on sheet music. Remembering them is to recall how I spent my days in 2014. Once the SATs were over, I sequestered myself in the HK Library and at home to devour Bird by Bird and Swamplandia; I remember reading The Luminaries in the car on my way to my violin teacher's home; I read 9 books over the summer (from Les Choses to The Language Instinct); I read Your Fathers while waiting for my flight to Pennsylvania; I bought My Struggle and Tinkers in Boston; I remember reading the latter in the lobby of the hotel I was staying at in New York; I read The Language Instinct in the final week of summer while my brother was at his internship; I devoured The Goldfinch over the second extended essay week period and loved that bildungsroman with all my heart.

Looking at these books, I'm also able to set myself some New Years' Resolutions. This year, the ratio of French books to Chinese books I read was 2:1; next year, I hope to close that ratio un peu. I will continue to immerse myself in more non-fiction books and memoirs. I'll try to read the Pulitzer/Orange Prize/Nobel/etc. winners of 2015 in 2015. Of course, I'll also keep reading nonfiction (I have a bunch of books about intuition on my desk right now).

2014 has been a year well-spent reading and writing; I hope the new year will bring its wealth of words and wisdom into my life.