Given the unpredictability of digital media producers, there is something reassuring about holding on to a hard copy of a recorded performance that is beyond their reach.
There is good news to report about how we use modern media. True, online digital media still dominate. The way things are going, we wonder if smart phones may soon be surgically grafted into the right hand. Even so, reports from a number of credible sources indicate that Americans are returning to an earlier pattern of collecting physical media: a change from the dominance of on-demand outlets such as Spotify, Amazon, Apple, or local libraries. There is nothing wrong with a lending system, other than their embedded and ever-accumulating fees. But physical copies of a document or performance are indeed having a moment. We are again becoming owners as well as borrowers.
As is obvious, buying a “record” album has again become a thing. Vinyl record sales have been climbing steadily for the last 19 years. And CD sales alone have climbed almost 50 percent in the first half of this year. In addition, the number of new bookstores in the U.S. has started to increase again. More American consumers want media they can own, no strings.
The cases of CDs and vinyl recordings are especially instructive. Owning an original release by a performer or group is close to having a physical master of the music that was originally approved by all involved. The product is a fixed record of a moment in time, and in the case of new vinyl, sometimes marginally improved with better engineering and manufacturing.
As a private person, a record or CD is yours to keep and copy for personal use. Like many, my CDs end up downloaded to an easy-to access home server, in addition to a thumb drive feeding a second home stereo, and another one that sits in a USB port in my car. The only moral imperative here is to pay for the original performance. That keeps a person on the right side of the Digital Millennium Copyright Act, as well as the recording artists who rightfully expect compensation for their efforts.
The media giants have done a great deal to follow a “rent” model of use represented by e-library books or Spotify music lists. But both make a title impermanent. And to keep the music coming, streamers require a payment of a monthly subscription. For their part, public libraries will download books to borrowers without charge for a few weeks.
Films are slightly different. It may be enough to pay for viewing a streamed film once. Except for the most devoted, films don’t easily bend to the idea of multiple view playlists. But music is different. We learn new music and, in many cases, come to love it. A physical copy on hand is like furniture in our head that does not have to be rented or moved. With the right device, it is always ready to recreate the magic that a person may experience with each replay.
It is interesting that studios usually go to great lengths to preserve master copies of their projects. Some of those masters sit in protected warehouses or distant caves that guarantee their safety. The closest a consumer gets to a valuable piece of audio or visual art is their own shelf that contains what I think of as a kind of consumer “master” of a performance. Given the unpredictability of digital media producers, there is something reassuring about holding on to an original form of the product that is beyond the reach of later remastering.
Sadly, we may never see the likes of Tower Records, HMV, or Virgin record stores again. But lucky is the city or town that still has a few bookstores, a record shop, and perhaps one of the 600 Barnes and Noble stores still functioning. Unfortunately, the original Tower Records store on Watt Avenue in Sacramento is gone. If had I spent any more browsing time there while going to college they could have asked me to pay rent. But they still do mail order and, if you are in Japan, there are several multi-level stores. As with so many things, the Japanese got it right. They have never waivered in their love of CDs and records.
An art gallery would have to turn most paintings to the wall if we insist on applying standards of good character to their artists.
Over the years we have seen many films that at least momentarily explore the dynamics of teachers and students in class sessions. But I have never seen one that struck so many chords of recognition as happens early in Todd Field’s film, Tár (2022). Field’s elaborate study of a complicated modern conductor pulls its audiences in many directions. Cate Blanchett’s maestra is a classical music conductor and a polymath superstar. Only later does her dishonesty toward friends and other musicians come into focus. But we first see her as a master-teacher.
We can set aside the complications of the story to the simpler example of ten minutes of a master class in conducting with a group of Juilliard students. Her pedagogical style in mostly one of interrogation. She wants her students to defend their all-too settled choices so early in their careers.
This rigidity shows up in the character of one conducting student, Max, who she sees as using a casually applied insularity to shut off what she believes he must be exploring. And scene feels about right. Getting students to really care about the subject they are ostensibly committed to was, I found, a constant and frustrating challenge as a teacher. I applaud this woman’s full-throated repudiation of her student’s indifference.
“The narcissism of small differences leads to the most boring conformity.”
The set up is simple. Max has chosen an atonal fragment of modern music by Anna Thorvaldsdottir to conduct. It is a real piece of new music that is outside the usual western traditions. And Tár is not a fan. She stops his conducting of it and gently interrogates Max about why he likes the dissonant piece. Among other things, it doesn’t really need a conductor. In her words, it may be a car without a motor. How about something a bit more conventional, she suggests, something like a movement from a Bach cantata. But Max frowns. He is barely able to whisper his response that he has no interest in a “cisgender white male misogynist,” which she takes as an all-too-easy excuse for avoiding perhaps the single most important figure in western music. It is hard to conceive of a conservatory student so easily dismissing Bach, who–to this day–has united most virtuoso musicians in total admiration for his prodigious output. That would include many rockers like The Beatles and Sting, song-writers, jazz musicians and music theorists. Put simply, Bach significantly advanced the possibilities of musical invention for most working in the western tradition.
Does his domestic arrangements have any role in whether to learn from him? The equivalent in communication theory is getting students to try an author who upends simple the simple notion of passing information from A to B. To take the risk of discovering a more nuanced view requires reading, thinking out loud, and, yes, challenging a teacher to defend his or her enthusiasm.
Sitting next to Max at a piano, she demonstrates how the opening of a simple Bach piece turns into a series of consecutive and evocative progressions inviting resolution. She and most of the musical world think of them as essential inventions. But Max clearly isn’t interested. And, in exasperation, she turns on him as someone who may be trading on the prestige of Juilliard rather than using it as a resource for discovery. This is bracing stuff, well outside the musical cliches in most films. But at this point she is no longer teaching effectively, but performing a dramatic character that will let us witness Max’s humiliation. That’s not a good outcome. I love the lesson as a commentary on opening minds. But it can’t end with a student feeling like they are on the outside of the process. See the riveting scene below.
Luckily, Max is not a stand-in for every student. But Field seems to have presented the piece as a warning that being a slave to identity politics is going to leave any student with a very incomplete education. In an art gallery we would have to turn most paintings to the wall if we insist on a character test for its producers.
As I watched this clip I wondered about my own dislike of most of Richard Wagner’s music. Like Max, I have revulsion for a composer who gave such evident pleasure Nazi leaders. Shouldn’t I also follow Tár and focus on the art? My only defense is that the two align too closely for me. Wagner lived years before the rise of the Third Reich, but he displayed some of its worst tendencies, particularly its antisemitism; and both the Nazi’s and Wagner shared a love for a homegrown white super-mythology. Even so, I recognize the possibility that, like Max, my judgment is too narrow.
As a private person, a record or CD is yours to keep and copy for personal use. Like many, my CDs end up downloaded to an easy-to access home server, in addition to a thumb drive feeding a second home stereo, and another one that sits in a USB port in my car. The only moral imperative here is to pay for the original performance. That keeps a person on the right side of the Digital Millennium Copyright Act, as well as the recording artists who rightfully expect compensation for their efforts.
It is interesting that studios usually go to great lengths to preserve master copies of their projects. Some of those masters sit in protected warehouses or distant caves that guarantee their safety. The closest a consumer gets to a valuable piece of audio or visual art is their own shelf that contains what I think of as a kind of consumer “master” of a performance. Given the unpredictability of digital media producers, there is something reassuring about holding on to an original form of the product that is beyond the reach of later remastering.
An art gallery would have to turn most paintings to the wall if we insist on applying standards of good character to their artists.