‘The scherzo has such an odd and abrupt ending’
Wouldn’t it be nice to be able to vote for someone capable of forming such a thought? Of course we vote for policies we like rather than music criticism, but all the same, we enjoy seeing such a mind at work. Secretary of State Rice was talking about the Brahms Quintet in F Minor, as described in a lovely piece by NYT music critic Anthony Tommasini. He takes us through her familiar and remarkable biography (see Powerline), and entertains us with some bits we didn’t know.
MS. RICE, an only child, is a fourth-generation pianist on her mother’s side. Her mother, Angelena Rice, who died of cancer in 1985, taught music and science at an industrial high school in a black suburb of Birmingham, Ala. “My mother was a church musician, and she read music beautifully, but she didn’t play classically that much,” Ms. Rice said during the earlier interview. “But she had a marvelously improvisational ear, which I don’t have.”
Her father, John Rice, who succeeded his father, a son of slaves, as minister at a Presbyterian church in Birmingham, also loved music, especially big-band jazz. (John Rice died on Christmas Eve in 2000, days after learning that Ms. Rice had been appointed national security adviser.) When she was an infant, Ms. Rice’s parents gave her a tiny toy piano. “They had a plan,” she said. Today that gift is prominently displayed on the coffee table in her apartment.
But it was her maternal grandmother, Mattie Ray, who proved the decisive musical influence in her life. Because both Ms. Rice’s parents worked, she was dropped off each day at the house of her grandmother, who taught piano privately and sensed her eagerness and talent. Lessons started when she was 3. “I don’t remember learning to read music — you know, the lines and spaces and all that,” Ms. Rice said. “From my point of view I could always read music.”
Classical music became her passion from the day her mother bought her a recording of Verdi’s “Aida,” and she listened, “my little eyes like saucers,” she said, to the brassy and stirring “Triumphal March.”…..
Ms. Rice, who lives a short walk from the Kennedy Center, said she was looking forward to attending the Washington National Opera’s new production of Wagner’s “Rheingold” when she returned from an overseas trip. In February she took in the Kirov’s production of Puccini’s “Turandot,” when the company visited the capital. She spoke of how impressed she had been by the innovative staging. By the music, too. “That’s about the only Puccini opera I can take,” she said. A couple of us, led by this Puccini lover, stuck up for him. But Ms. Rice is not alone in her opinion.
Well, there goes Secretary Rice’s political career. She just alienated the crucial Puccini fan demographic.
UPDATE
On a more serious note, we can’t read the biography of Ms. Rice, or view the workings of her mind without thinking of those appalling cartoons of her drawn by men of the Left, like the Danziger Prissy outrage. (We note that Danziger removed that one from his website, but the Great Man still continues to be syndicated by the NYT.) He said this at the time of that cartoon:
“Whenever this administration is in trouble they send out Condi Rice because the press, which is mostly white and male, gives her a far easier treatment than they would a white male. Meanwhile, our troops are dying and being grievously wounded in a war that could have been avoided, or at least unsought. Ms. Rice’s (and other’s) statements about the aluminum tubes are the same kind of lie as the Gulf of Tonkin lie from Lyndon Johnson’s people. 55,000 GI’s died for that lie.”
We know we shouldn’t get upset when these Lilliputians insult a woman who is so far above them, but it makes our blood boil nonetheless. We hope Mr. Danziger lives long enough to feel the shame he should, and that Ms. Rice goes on to even greater accomplishments to infuriate him and his cartoonish bretheren.