Page Two THE MICHIGAN DAILY Saturday, May 10, 1969 PageTwoTHE ICHGAN AIL -- --urd .ay . 1. 196W I I records As vast as 'Antartica' By R. A. PERRY Contributing Editor Most soundtracks of music from films are banal, meretrici- ous affairs that at best briefly evoke the film scenery; how many people who have seen ,201 can henceforth hear Thus Spake Zarathustra and not vis- ualize Stanley Kubrick's cos- mology? Mendelssohn't Mid- summer Night's Dream is for- ever woven together in my mind with Max Reinhardt's vaporous film. Even "Tara's Theme," drummed into the brain like subliminal Musak, brings to the mind's eye the technicolor slaughter of the Civil War. A film score has its day, and then recordings are dumped into the bargain bins at K-Mart, treas- ures for the nostalgic minority. Yet a few outstanding com- posers have composed for the film, men like Erich Korngold, William Walton, and Ralph Vaughan Williams, and even when we lack the intended vis- ual counterpart, their music aline often possesses the po- tency to conjure our own per- sonal pictorial scenery. The ability of a good film score to stand ondits own it at- tested by a vividly performed and stunningly recorded per- formance, newly released by RCA, of Vaughan Williams' Seventh S4mphony, his Sinfon- ia Antartica. Written in 1951- 52, the symphony draws sub- stantially from Vaughan Wil- liams' score to the film "Scott of the Antartic," a movie that narrated the -couregeous con- ception and feat of Robert Scott's tragic trek to the South Pole. With a thoroughly English penchant for the Hero as En- durer (remember lyirs. Minni- ver?), Vaughan Williams pro- duced a musical panorama that glitters in precise pictorial detail tail of setting and revels, with- out wallowing in the larger nat- ural forces that transcend the individual acts of men. The Sinfonia Antartica is di- vided into five movements, each introduced by a brief verbal superscription (here read by Sir Ralph Richardson) that indi- cate in a loosely poetic way the general programmatic intent. If Vaughan Williams lacked the philosophic penetration a n d conqqmitant anxieties of Mah- ler, le did command- just as rich a palette of instrumental ef- fects; these immediately appear in the opening "Prelude" which establishes both the vastness- wonderfully suggested by spac- ious orchestral sonorities and a wordless women's chorus- and also the more specific de- tails of nature-such as the glittering of icicles-that are embedded in the monolithic Antartic environment. Against this backdrop, a scherzo movement explores the fauna ("There go the ships and CE j FRIDAY and SATURDAY The MALTESE} FALCON dir. John Huston, 1941 STARRING Humphrey'Bogart Mary Astor Sidney Greenstreet Peter Lorre there is that Leviathan"), and subsequently the music returns to the basic fact of the barren, frozen, hostile landscape. Or- gan and wind-machine are used effectively throughout. A fourth movement, introduced by a quote from Donne ("Love, all alike, no season knows, or clime . ) reflects upon the human hopes of Scott's com- rades, men who found at the Pole that Amundse had just preceded them and who real- ized the unlikelihood of com- pleting the return across the ice. In the fifth movement, the fading i vigor but unflagging courage of the men is suggested by a march tune that becomes sumsumed by the landscape themes of the "Prelude;" a con- cluding soprano vocalise (such as Vaughan Williams used in his Third Symphony) finalizes the snowy remoteness. Such blatantly programmatic music, predicated on human ideals and musical manners that perhaps smack too much of Vic- torian earnestness, may seem dispensible today, though really music only seems "dated" when it still poses a threat. Indeed, certain critics and advocates of more exploratory musical modi operandi look upon Vaughan Williams-along with such fig- ures as Rachmaninoff and Hin- demith-as conservatives un- willing or unable to face the im- plications of the avant-garde. Peter Yates, in his important and imperial book Twentieth Century Music, said of Vaughan Williams: "he lacked that auth- ority of uncompromising genous which would have d r i v e n through to create music his countrymen might have , re- jected." Rejection, a certain badge of honor to Yates, would only have indicated to Vaughan Williams a failure of communication that would be as much his fault as the audiencese's. This English composer was a staunch advo- cate not of the international avant-garde but of nationalism in music, and he believed that universality only came after a composer realized his identity by totally and intensely absorbingi his own national consciousness. Sinfonia Antartica is in theme and presentation thus very Eng- lish, but its powers of pictorial- ization can be appreciated by any imaginative listener. RCA's release features Andret Previn conducting the London Symphony Orchestra, and there is no competition save an old ;mono recording by Boult. I Our neurotic /"anti-Communism complex" getsa penetrating analysis in this "hard-hitting report [which] traces the history and growth of anti- Russian and anti-Chinese policies...and suggests more intelligent alternative actions for the future."* AnD- "Couism A Report Prepared for the Peace Education Division of the American Friends Service committee $4.50; paper, $1.50 10 HILL & WANG 72 Fifth Ave., New York, N.Y. 10011, - h~sW~ found this Previn/LSO per- formance marvelous from every standpoint: instrumental tex- tures clean and crisp, tutti forces shaped into awesome but controlled fortes, a non-self- aggrandizing devotion to the evocative potential of the music itself. The stereo sound, and I do not say this perfunctorily, is splendid: transparent, bass rich, and with a depth of field (es- pecially necessary for wind ef- fects) lacking in too many modern recordings. This RCA release augers well for the promised Vaughan William ser- ies from Previn and the LSO. I am very enthusiastic about another new RCA release, an- other "travelogue" of sorts, but by no means a film score. Bert lioz's Harold in Italy needs little introduction. Inspired by a read- ing of Byron's Childe Harold, Berlioz sought "to put the viola in the midst of poetic recollec- tions left me by my wanderings in Abruzzi." The resulting viola concerto effects a program less specifically pictorial than per- fumed by vague reveries. The orchestra provides the setting and the viola expresses the per- sonal response of the Wanderer. Walter Trampler, probably the best violist alive, turns in a wonderfully sensitive viola per- formance on a new RCA record- ing (LSC 3075). His identifica- tion with the expressive senti- ments of "Harold" seems com- plete, convincing, vital and totally fresh. Like Glumiaux, cthis artist throws away not one phrase; his instrument truly becomes a voice of the poet. George Pretre conducts the LSO with equal sensitivity and precision, although he does not come near Colin Davis' whip- ping up of startling, chthonic forces in the "Orgy of the Brig- ands" movement. The fine recorded sound ap- propriately features the viola, so much so that now, along with Casals moaning, S e r k i n 's stamping, Gould's humming, and Toscanini's singing, Tramp- ler's sinuses are forever immor- talized. theatre Junior Light Opera: The realPeter Pan By WALLACE IMMEN If you think that only Mary Martin can play Peter Pan, you will be pleasantly surprised by the current production of the Ann Arbor Junior Light Opera, The play, originally staged to highlight the versatility of Miss Martin, takes on an intriguing new direction when produced with a real boy playing Peter and some new dramatic twists. In this version, a more sensitive portrayal of Peter and a stripping of some of the play's excess lineage makes for faster- paced and more substantive action. The junior light opera's company, consisting entirely of local talent ranging in age from 6 to 16, presents a delightful evening's entertainment in spite of, and even aided by, their amateur status. Their sheer enthusiasm made up for some of the lack of tech- nical polish. For instance, no professional could have put half as much excitement into the flying to Neverland as did Layman Allen as Peter. He whirled and soared, sometimes out of control, but kept on singing. His tune was virtually drowned out by applause, Mr. Allen's voice range, however did not match his acting ability and he at times missed the high notes which were written for a soprano voice. Christopher Metas was a traditional Captain Hook, in the style of Cyril Richard, right down to his well-modulated sneering laugh, Richard Emmons as Smee and the rest of the motley pirate chorus played fine comic relief. What the Indian chorus lacked in talent they made up for in sheer noise. Peter Pan is a fantasy and so one has to use his imagination to get the full effect. The scenery, designed by David Emmons, is true to that spirit; it suggests, and lets the imagination do the rest. One particularly good effect was a slow swaying of Hook and the pirates to simulate the rolling of the ship. Technical problems in lighting and scene changes at times detracted from the performance, but Tinkerbell should be able to flash on cue in future performances. Three separate casts are presenting two performances each. A matinee on Saturday begins at 1:30 and an evening performance begins at 8:00. Sunday shows are at 1:30 and 4:30. Tickets are available at the door. f The incredible string band will be appearing on the only American tour this year at Ford Auditorium in Detroit. They will present one concert at 8:30 p.m. next Friday. dance Plan West Park dance concert I' The Ann Arbor Dance Theatre will present five new dances and a revival at a major con- cert scheduled for early June in the West Park bandshell. The company now numbers about 30 dancers. They meet regularly on Mondays from 8-10 p.m. at the Ann Arbor High School auditorium. The June concert may also include a sculpture display by Richard Turner and a live music performance by Jerry Hartweg. A University dance student, Dana Reitz, is creating a new group dance called "Vision" for the concert. Both Taya Bergmann and Sylvia Turner are also choreo- graphing new group works for the concert. Elizabeth Weil Bergmann will return to Ann Arbor Dance Theatre to produce a new solo and perform in other works.- In addition, Phil Stamps has been commissioned by the dance theatre to choreograph a new group work for the concert. Ann Young's "Caracole" will also be presented in a revived version which has been enlarged to include the men who have joined the company. Other summer activities are also being planned by the group. The company this year has undergone what its president, Ann Woodward, calls a "tre- mendous resurgence" due to the active participation of an "un-f precedented" number of able dancers and choreographers. Dance classes are provided by the company, taught by Stamps. Order Your Dail y Now- Phone: 764-0558 10 No Deposit 'FREE service per month Required and delivery ' CallUU NEJAC TV RENTALS 662-5671 SERVING BIG 10 SCHOOLS SINCE 1961 COLLEGE OF JEWISH STUDIES BEET DAS Courses for Spring and Summer Half Terms: HEBREW LANGUAGE -all levels Tuesday, Thursday: 7-8:30 CONTEMPORARY JUDAISM: Prospects & Problems Tuesday: 8:30 THE NEW SCHOOL COLLE65E I is the senior college of the New School for Social Research, an urban university # located in Greenwich Village with all of New York City for its campus. There 4 e.' are three main New School units. One is the Graduate Faculty, a leading center Ra in the Social Sciences that offers training to 2,400 masters and doctoral students ~ 4 :' under scholars like Economist Robert Heilbroner, Political Scientist Saul K. Padover, and Philosopher Hannah Arendt. A second is the New School evening division, which provides a vast range of courses, workshops, and lectures for some 12,000 New Yorkers annually, and-serves as a major cultural center for the community-at- large with programs of concerts, films, modern dance and art exhibitions. The newest unit is the NEW SCHOOL COLLEGE an undergraduate program, limited to 500 students. The College offers a two-year program for students whto have already completed their sophomore year elsewhere, and who are interested in earning their B.A. with emphasis in humanities or social science; in a program which considers undergraduate education important in itself. Instead of lectures, every class in the College is designed as a seminar, with about twenty students sitting around a table to learn through participatory discussion. Instead of textbooks, the student confronts the actual works produced by great minds of the past and the present-Aristotle and Sartre; Freud and Erikson, Sophocles and Pinter. Marx and Marcuse, Shakespeare and Picasso, Joyce and Antonioni. Instead of requiring its teachers to engage in specialized research and publi- cation, the College has a faculty whose primary commitment is to teaching, and it frees them from extrinsic demands so that they can concentrate their talents on the instructional program. Instead of taking a collection of unrelated courses, students take i Divisional Program-a set of courses designed by the faculty to fit together into a total educational experience. And instead of a-major," each student pursues his own Individual Study Program, in which he investigates, in considerable depth and over a two-year period, a problem of his own choosing under the guidance of a tutor. The student takes three year-long courses during his first year and two year-long courses during his second. This constitutes his Divisional Program. The rest of his time is spent in Individual Stud- ies, which he initiates during his first year and pursues for half of his time during his second year. 1 40 7 &9 662-8871 ARCH ITECTURE) AUDITORIUM, Orientation-Registration Tues. and Wed., May 13-14, 7:-8:30 P.M. at Hillel-1429 Hill Street First Classes-Tuesday, May 20 THE DIVISIONAL PROGRAM: Unlike most colleges, we are not divided into specialized departments like English, History, or Psychol- ogy. We have only two Divisions-the Humani- ties and the Social Sciences. The entering student normally elects to study in either the humanities or the social sciences, but may choose to work in both. The significance of this unorthodox Divi- sional structure is twofold. It means that the student takes courses at an advanced level that are genuinely interdisciplinary rather than nar- rowly specialized. And it means that the student is free, in the Individual Study portion of his program, to investigate a problem that defies the boundaries of conventional departments, perhaps cutting across philosophy and drama, or psychology and economics. THE HUMANITIES: The humanities com- prise all the creations of man-in music, paint- ing, and literature, in history, science, and philosophy. Yet at most colleges, a student who wishes to study these creations at an advanced level must limit himself arbitrarily to the study of a single kind, and even to a single country or period. There is no "department" at most colleges that will allow him to major in both Thomas Mann and Dostoyevsky, both Pinter and Proust. And even when he limits his study to one of these figures, the intellectual tools that he requires for exploring the ideas of that writer in depth can only be acquired by taking courses in still other departments-philosophy or theology or psychology. Similarly, a student who majors in the conventional philosophy de- partment cannot develop, within his specialized courses, the aesthetic sensitivity that he needs to penetrate fully the philosophy of thinkers such as Plato and Nietzsche and Heidegger, whose philosophic visions are expressed by means of image, myth, and dramatic action no less than by rational discourse. It is for these reasons that our study of the humanities is in- terdisciplinary rather than fragmented into de- partmental "majors." We have designed a set of courses that fit together into a comprehensive investigation of the creations of man. It is possible for us in a single course to juxtapose a treatise by Kant, a novel by Barth, and a movie by Godard in order to deal fully with the problem under in- vestigation. The emphasis is less on assembling information about particular works than on/" discovering the methods of understanding and appreciation that can be applied to any work. The goal is to provide tools of analysis that will extend the student's insight into the hu- manities when he pursues his own Individual Study. THE SOCIAL SCIENCES: The most worth- while research in the social. sciences tends to involve two or more specialties simultaneously. Schumpeter was an economist, but Capitalism, Socialism and Democracy is .,is well philo- sophic, political and historical. Myrdal is an economist, but The American Negro draws on many fields. Arendt is a philosopher, but To- talitarianism is historical; sociological and psy- chological. And current efforts to understand such diverse phenomena as the underdeveloped nations, fascism, poverty, and hippies look to all of the social science disciplines. We have therefore constructed an upper-level program1 THE INDIVIDUAL STUDY PROGRAM: One-quarter of the junior year and one-half of the senior year are reserved for individual- ized study. The student pursues his own spe- cial interests under the guidance of a faculty tutor and by means of the analytical tools he is developing in the Divisional Program; his work generally culminates in a written paper. Some students form ther own seminars or en- list members of the faculty to offer special courses; others take courses from the vast programs, graduate, undergraduate, and adult,' available at the New School for Social Re- search-courses taught by such visiting special- ists as Paul Douglas Rollo May, Bayard Rustin, Leslie Fiedler, Lee Strasberg, Allen Ginsberg:' and others choose to work independently of any course structure, under the direct super- vision of their tutors. The possibilities for In- dividual Study are initiated by the student himself and limited only by his imagination and intelligence. THE INTER-DIVISIONAL CORE: At the center of the Divisional Program are the courses in which students and faculty from both of the Divisions come together for inter- sive collaboration on common concerns. Per- haps no other aspect of the College embodies as radical a departure from the dominant trends in American education as this one, which we call the Inter-Divisional Core. Its purpose is to discover new intellectual arts for dealing with the problems men confront when they try to know and act. We conceive these in- tellectual arts as modern adaptations of the old "liberal arts," whose original function was to "liberate" men from old ways of seeing and doing. The readings in these courses are drawn from all the areas of knowledge-humanities, social sciences, natural sciences, and philosophy. They are selected to shed new light on some of the fundamental issues underlying all knowledge and activity, issues like the relation between fact and value, theory and practice, subjec- tivity and objectivity, thought and action. In a rigorous and serious manner, the courses in- vestigate questions like these: Are there "arts" -of discovery-intellectual strategies for hitting upon new solutions to problems? Are there any "hard facts" in the world-facts that can't be altered by the perspective from which they are.viewed? Is there a method for making one- self into an innovator rather than a passive. transmitter of outside forces? THIS PROGRAM is now three years old. It has drawn students from over 300 colleges and universities throughout the U.S. Although it emphasizes the value of education for its own sake, substantial numbers of its graduates have been admitted to top-ranking graduate schools. Tuition and fees are $1700. Most of the stu- dents live in private quarters near the School. We do not provide housing. We have no gym- nasium. Only teachers, students, classrooms and books. ------mamummmmmm ---mmmm ; NOW! ''3 mindeamn.rv mulm- DIAL 8-6416 _T2 Irv.TlbTra tmMalladwy A onemrarymsc- film....Captures the pop musical willingnessp to hurl yourself into things without all the action stopping self-consciousness of an earlier generation.!t -Renato Adler, New York Times "Yeah, the camera iade love to the Monterey Pop Festiva[ ...a beautiful, well- done, OK-fantastic-film, doing what a film should and rarey' does do, by taking anreal-life event and creating a living form, another reality...'ve just seen a film that's worth seeing. 72 minutes of what music } can do and what a filmmaker with some heart can do." -Lita Eliscu, East Village Other IWhat is your mind-blowing level? A guitar being raped at a pop festival? Something more substantial, like Ravi Shankar tearing loose with a dazzling display of musicianship? So much -- - -------n m m-m - 1 I I U I oveM featherI I I i __ __ _OAP_ _ UH 77 3 E7 t 4i N o r 1; ®r"w, "I Admissions Office THE NEW SCHOOL COLLEGE NW S.L OR C RSmCH I SI I I