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(10/11/18 9:54am)
MAGNOLIA PICTURES
We are in another age of heroism. With every great struggle of each national and international drama, protest, activists and general outcry fill the air. Hope for a better future may seem, at times, in short supply, but the general rage at the current state of affairs is a reminder that people care and are actively working to fight for any and every small improvement. The #MeToo movement, to take one example, is surely a leaf on the same tree as the anti-war and the civil rights movements of earlier times. It is not unreasonable to wonder who will become the next Martin Luther King Jr. or Mahatma Gandhi.
In many ways, it will not be Fred Rogers. Rogers was not the man leading protests. He was not in the streets with angry signs. He did not use his celebrity status as a jumping board for political activism. His big political moment was when he won funding for PBS, not by yelling or politicking, but by reciting a children’s song about restraining one’s anger. Rogers was a wealthy, white Christian who grew up to be the soft-spoken, cardigan-wearing host of a children’s show. One director described his show as the opposite of everything that marks good television. Yet he was the subject of last Saturday’s film of the Hirschfield International Film Series, which attracted what many called the largest crowd seen at a such an event. There were tears in routinely dry eyes. At the film’s conclusion, François Clemmons, who portrayed Officer Clemmons on the program and was a friend of Rogers’ and of Middlebury, said through tears, “I have never before been speechless.”
What did Fred Rogers ever do to earn such reverence? His show was, admittedly, unique in many regards. Yet this reverence transcends artistic independence. Rogers did something truly revolutionary. Rogers told children that, no matter who they are, they deserve to be loved. And he believed it.
That message lost no power as it traveled through half a century and a black and white projection to the audience in the Dana Auditorium. One has to wonder if the overwhelming emotion the audience felt was for Rogers or for themselves, having been told for the first time in who-knows-how-long that they are unique, special, lovable and loved. It makes one wonder what sort of world we would live in if everyone was reminded of that fact more often. That is precisely what Mr. Rogers was doing.
Can it really be that simple? It’s one thing to say you love someone, even if you say it slowly with some emotion and conviction behind it. But could that actually have such an effect on people? On grown adults as well as children? They should know that they’re loved without needing constant reminders, right? The Hirschfield event showed the powerful necessity of those three words. (Fun fact: Fred Rogers weighed exactly 143 pounds for years, which to him represented the number of letters in each word of “I love you.”). Not only was Dana Auditorium packed at 3 p.m. on a Saturday during the event-filled Fall Family Weekend, but there was a noticeable energy buzzing silently through the theatre during Clemmons’ Q&A. This was not a film that people enjoyed so much as one they didn’t know that they needed.
There is no doubt that the world needs, now as much as ever, those dynamic, exuberant social figures and forces such as Mahatma Gandhi, Martin Luther King Jr. and #MeToo, but perhaps we should also remember the unimaginable power of simply loving each other. If we start with love, and end with love, maybe we can bring people that much closer together. Could there be a bigger need to bring people together than now when our campus and our country is often diametrically divided? It’s as simple as saying, “Won’t You Be My Neighbor?”
(09/20/18 9:58am)
In the heart of the brutalist bunker that is the Johnson Memorial Building, a small collection of thought-provoking paintings and ceramics can be found. “Portraits of Power” is a formidable exhibition of work by the students of Jim Butler’s Portraiture in Ceramics and Oil Paint class. The works span a range of topics, from violence to religion, and a myriad of styles, from abstract impressionism to realism. They are united by their representation of that which is uncontrollable yet which controls, that which may inspire fear or reverence or revolt, in short, that which is powerful.
Take, for instance, one painting hung on the south side of the gallery. It portrays an expressionless Christ as he condemns a man to hanging and damnation. Unlike in traditional representations of a vengeful god, here the man found guilty is no obvious sinner, no demonic form of evil, but an average, sweater-and-jeans-wearing guy. Despite his apparent lack of incriminating evidence, there is no hope for appeal, no ability to persuade the blank face of his judge. The man’s fate is in the hands of the supernatural.
And yet, even Christ has a hint of powerlessness. The leaping flames, a violence reminiscent of Jonathan Edwards’ famous “Sinners in the Hands of an Angry God” sermon, are mirrored by the streaks of fresh blood running from Christ’s own wounds reminding viewers that he too was executed by vengeful judges. In this depiction, even the son of God cannot escape the seemingly arbitrary judgement that plagues humankind. One wonders who controls our destinies — is it the god from whose hand we dangle or from some other, unforeseen force that punishes our gods?
On the opposite side of the gallery sits another image, less concrete in its depictions and yet perhaps more primal than the first. A serene expanse of blue, like the night sky as seen through a distant metropolis, spreads across the canvas, interrupted by a fiery intrusion of hot pink and yellow. There is a tension that ebbs between these two forces, and an electric dynamism plays across the image. Each field is poised to overpower the other, and yet they are balanced. The colors take up nearly even amounts of the canvas with equal force. They seem to be perpetually in turmoil and yet always held in equilibrium.
SILVIA CANTU BAUTISTA/THE MIDDLEBURY CAMPUS
Although modern in look, this piece seems to draw from the same primal idea from whence came the Yin and Yang and the Tao Te Ching. Conflict and turmoil, it seems, is an omnipresent fact of reality. Always in balance, always present, yet constantly shifting and changing. Nothing stays the same. As Robert Frost said, “Nothing gold stays,” or in the immortal words of Marx and Engels, “All that is solid melts into air.” This piece seems to be a glimpse of a truly frightening yet familiar sense of the universe that makes one wonder: what can be done when the whole of reality is always churning in an equally destructive and productive rage? How do we weather the perpetual storm?
In the back, on the east wall, stands another image of a slightly different nature. Both realistic and abstract, it leaves behind the tension and drama of the aforementioned pieces for the sort of calm of promised but insofar unspoken wisdom.
A young woman, perhaps a student (the distinctive boots suggest a member of our own campus) leans against the frame, gently clutching a novel at the edge of a field of constellations. It is a simple, contemplative piece that resides in the gray area between uncertainty and certainty. Is she lost in the disorder of an ever-churning universe or has she come to peace with her place among the stars? Is the title of her book a plea for “just ‘A Little Life!’ Please?” or is it a contented acknowledgment of the little life that we each have? Do the stars stretch between her fingers at her command or has she simply come to grasp her place in relation to them? These questions remain unanswered, but the possibility of answers is enough to give one hope that there is indeed a way to make peace with the powerful forces that overshadow our lives.
The diverse pieces in this exhibition number just a few, each representing its own unique perspective on life, power and ourselves. These artists have inventively combined various media including oil paint, ceramics, and paper, to form truly wonderful pieces of art. Beyond that, they have embraced vulnerability, peered into often uncomfortable truths and created an exhibition that, if not directly instructive, is certainly inspiring.
(05/03/18 1:31am)
Students, faculty, staff, and residents from across Middlebury converged at the Mahaney Center for the Arts last weekend to listen to a 2000-year-old Bible story sung in German to music written 300 years ago. This was the pinnacle of the eighth annual Middlebury Bach Festival. For three days, Johann Sebastian Bach’s music was played across the town of Middlebury, from the Mead Chapel Carillon to the Robinson Concert Hall to the four different churches across town that included selections from Bach’s prolific repertoire of church music in their Sunday morning services.
The central event of the weekend’s festivities was the performance of Bach’s St. John’s Passion on Saturday evening and Sunday afternoon. This piece, originally written for the early April 1724 celebration of Good Friday in Leipzig, places the biblical account of the Passion of Jesus Christ in a dramatic musical setting. The two hour oratorio passion is indeed a mighty and emotional tour de force of musical and religious emotion. It was just the piece to celebrate the passionate, awesome music of Bach.
Yet the question remains, why Bach? What about 300 year old German religious music is important to celebrate in 2018 at a secular American college town?
“A lot of what we hear today (yes, even trap [rap]) has origins in Baroque music like Bach’s,” said Middlebury Choir member Spencer Royston ’21 in response to that question. “For us performers, Bach has been an incredible opportunity to stretch our sight reading abilities… as well as hitting those German consonants with oomph”
Yet perhaps the best way to answer this question is with the music itself.
St. John’s Passion starts uneasily. Immediately a turbulent sea of strings and dissonant woodwind calls wavers back and forth, setting the stage for the violent drama to come. “Herr!” The choir shouts, launching into their dark, dynamic first chorale. “Show us, through Your passion, That You… have become transfigured!” Thus they ask, almost demandingly, to learn the religious lessons of the Passion of Christ.
Far from the classical stereotypes one might find in Baby Einstein videos or while on hold with tech support, Bach grabs the audience by the collar and demands their attention. The tense energy flows from the stage, inundating the audience in the drama. “This is important!” Bach’s music seems to be saying.
Bach never lets go. Even at the end of this first chorale, when the music gets gentler and John the Evangelist-Narrator starts reciting the story, the drama stays just as sharp, if not as overwhelming, as before. In part this is thanks to the frequent interjections of the choir and orchestra to underline the most important lines. Yet in large part this effect appears through the craftsmanship of the soloists themselves, including Middlebury student Tevan Goldberg ’18 and alumnus Jack Desbois ’15.5. Although not technically acting, the soloists fully embody their roles, making the story painfully real. The sorrow and grief of the betrayed Christ could almost be seen in Desbois’s eyes.
The ability of all the performers, as well as Bach himself, to pull the audience into the story makes the climax, the death of Jesus, all the more emotional. Reaching this point that the music had been building to since that opening chorale, Desbois, as Jesus, declares, “Es ist vollbracht!” It is finished! A mournful aria on that same theme follows. The emotion here is no less moving than it was at that first performance in 1724.
In fact, experiencing Bach’s oratorio passion today is not so different than it might have been back in Bach’s day. Listeners then, as is true of many listeners now, had no great familiarity with the idea of an oratorio passion. The oratorio passion as a genre, first created only two years before Bach’s St. John’s Passion, combined the religious message and undertones of church music with the narrative and musical style of opera music. The result was music that combined both the emotional importance of religion with the emotional impact of masterfully crafted secular music and narrative. Before motion pictures, the widespread acceptance of popular novels, or even modern concerts, this was about the most emotional experience yet created in its time. Its legacy lives on, not just in performances of old religious oratorio passions, but also in modern concerts and art as well. As last weekend’s guest conductor and University of Glasgow professor John Butt explains, “There is a religious aura about [modern] concerts in general.”
It certainly seems true that there is a transcendent, perhaps even spiritual, quality that people enjoy about any concert (or art in general) once they feel adequately swept away from the cares of the world. After all, why does anyone go to a concert if not, in part, to escape their quotidian reality and get a taste of something more? Bach’s St. John’s Passion is at the crossroads, then, between literally spiritual music and the secular escapism we enjoy in music today.
In the end, perhaps that is why we still celebrate Bach, 300 years later.
“Listening to [Bach’s Passion] brings people an overwhelming sense of awe,” Royston said. This comes to a peak at the ultimate chorale, Royston’s favorite. “The majority of the piece is turbulent and intense, but at the very end with the crucifixion of Christ we hear sweet redemption in the music. Bach is reminding us that things get hard, but it all turns out in the end.”
While we may not all be celebrating the Passion of Christ as Bach’s original audience was, it is just as good a time as ever to remember that there is more to life than our end-of-year struggles and that we too shall come through our trials triumphant in the end.