Culture Briefs

Sad insanity

“I’m listening to what I reckon is the saddest piece of classical music ever composed: Schumann’s neglected Violin Concerto. This is the week of the 200th anniversary of Schumann’s birth, but whenever I hear his work, I can’t help thinking of his death, one of the nastiest endured by any composer. He was as mad as a snake towards the end, goaded by voices planted in his head by tertiary syphilis. But even as his mind was falling apart he wrote music that is beautiful - and this might seem an insensitive thing to say - partly because he was losing his grip.

“The Violin Concerto of 1853 predates his last days in a lunatic asylum, but he was already seriously ill, hearing music at the wrong tempi … and afflicted by paralysis of the tongue. Listening to it, you can hear that he is struggling with the concerto form - for long stretches, the music doesn’t seem to go anywhere…. But this formlessness is somehow really affecting.

“The third movement, for example, is a polonaise that just goes on and on and on. … When the theme lumbers into view for the 20th time, decorated with slow-motion arabesques, you start questioning your own sanity.”

- Damian Thompson, writing on “Schumann’s Violin Concerto …,” on June 10 at the Daily Telegraph

Sad performing

“But even with our historical glasses on, [Sammy] Davis’s cavorting with the Rat Pack is almost unbearable. For all its resonance in legend, the Rat Pack’s act was captured in picture and sound just once, in a 1965 benefit that [Frank] Sinatra organized in St. Louis and that CBS happened to film.

“Sinatra and Dean Martin play the big boys, smirkily condescending to Davis, who alternates between playing the wide-eyed acolyte and joshingly threatening protest marches, as if the Selma tragedy just a few months before were something to be joked about.

“Davis saunters across the stage with a glass of liquor, crowing, ’If this doesn’t straighten my hair, nothing will.’ Soon afterward, Martin carries him back on in his arms, saying, ’I’d like to thank the NAACP for this lovely award.’ ’Put me down!’ Davis objects, but it’s not enough - he let himself be picked up, after all.

“For Davis, the important thing was getting to hang around with famous white people. In fact, one inconvenient obstacle between Davis and an engaged black identity was that he wished he were white.”

- John McWhorter, writing on “Mr. Mimic,” in the spring issue of City Journal

Sad prospect?

“Nonessential. It seems virtually impossible for ’Toy Story 3’ to be anything else, simply because 1999’s ’Toy Story 2’ is so definitive, so authoritative and final in its delineation of these characters, of their purpose and destiny, that nothing more needs to be said.

“The first ’Toy Story’ established that toys exist for one purpose, to be played with and loved by children, and that this is their fulfillment and the meaning of their existence. In ’Toy Story 2,’ faced with the specter of being put on a shelf, abandoned or even given away, even destroyed, Woody’s commitment to this principle was shaken.

“In the end, though, he reaffirmed his original commitment and beliefs. Through his experiences and encounters with Jessie and the Prospector, Woody has already emotionally faced and accepted the idea of Andy growing up - going to college, getting married - and in one way or another leaving beyond the life that he and Woody once shared. ’I can’t stop Andy from growing up,’ Woody said, ’but I wouldn’t miss it for the world.’

” ’Toy Story 3’ will continue this trajectory; I have a hard time imagining advancing it in any significant way, or taking it to another level the way that ’Toy Story 2’ took ’Toy Story’ to a new level.”

- Steven D. Greydanus, writing on “Welcome Yet Nonessential,” on June 8 at his National Catholic Register blog