"Dear Fux"

Dear Fux,

If the Christian Coalition gets their way, will teaching species counterpoint be prohibited in the schools? What will happen to Salzer and Schachter?

Cynical in Scranton, PA

Dear Fellow Cynic,

"Creationist Counterpoint" does in fact seem poised to become the required school of thought should the Christian Coalition come to power. Pat Robertson has already made public his desire to eradicate the "Endangered Species Counterpoint Act" altogether. Thus, rare species of counterpoint such as "47 against 1" will face almost certain extinction, in the absence of U.S. government protection. And so-called "Free Counterpoint" which flourished during the promiscuous 1960's will go the the way of long side-burns, the dodo bird, and the National Endowment for the Arts. As for Salzer and Schachter, the truth is that they are one and the same person, or actually three in one. Early in this century, a music theorist named Heinrich Schachter left his native Stuttgart and the family porcelain figurine business which specialized in "Salzer und Peppar Schenkers" (salt and pepper shakers) and emigrated to the United States where he began a lucrative music publishing career under various pseudonyms such as "Salzer" and "Schachter" (and later many other names). His sermons were soon accepted dogma in music departments far and wide, and his disciples installed in powerful administrative positions. Schenker/Salzer/Schachter et al. will most likely be convicted of demagoguery and "crimes against musicality" and sentenced to some sort of musical "gulag" where he will be "rehabilitated" by transcribing the mittelgrunds of the collected works of Pat Boone.

We can trace the roots of the species counterpoint controversy back to the sixth century, when the firebrand (and short-tenured) Pope Darwinicus penned his 590 A.D. treatise entitled "The Origin of Species Counterpoint", which was roundly denounced by other popes, such Pope Gregory who, in the year 600, claimed that the rules of counterpoint were given directly to him by his good friend, God. Revelation being the most compelling method of Christian argument, Gregory's assertion of divine elision settled the issue for almost a milennium. But, in the fifteenth century, Pope Pius II proposed the existence of modes which he explained in his 1463 tome "Pius a la Modus: A Counterpoint Cookbook." Gregory, however, prevailed over all other popes, and through deft use of intimidation, disinformation, and by aligning himself with a group of wealthy Republican bishops and cardinals, ascended to power. To this day, the "Creationist Theory" of counterpoint is taught throughout the pre-industrialized world.

~JF

Transitional Forms

Quotes from Harvard Professor of Geology and Zoology Stephen Jay Gould:

The anatomical transition from reptiles to mammals is particularly well documented in the key anatomical change of jaw articulation to hearing bones. Only one bone, called the dentary, builds the mammalian jaw, while reptiles retain several small bones in the rear portion of the jaw. We can trace, through a lovely sequence of intermediates, the reduction of these small reptilian bones, and their eventual disappearance or exclusion from the jaw, including the remarkable passage of the reptilian articulation bones into the mammalian middle ear (where they became our malleus and incus, or hammer and anvil). We have even found the transitional form that creationists often proclaim inconceivable in theory--for how can jawbones become ear bones if intermediaries must live with an unhinged jaw before the new joint forms? The transitional species maintains a double jaw joint, with both the old articulation of reptiles (quadrate to articular bones) and the new connection of mammals (squamosal to dentary) already in place! Thus, one joint could be lost, with passage of its bones into the ear, while the other articulation continued to guarantee a properly hinged jaw. Still, our creationist incubi, who would never let facts spoil a favorite argument, refuse to yield, and continue to assert the absence of all transitional forms by ignoring those that have been found, and continuing to taunt us with admittedly frequent examples of absence.

— "Hooking Leviathan by Its Past," Dinosaur in a Haystack: Reflections in Natural History, New York: Crown Trade Paperbacks, 1997, pp. 360-361.

The modern theory of evolution does not require gradual change. In fact, the operation of Darwinian processes should yield exactly what we see in the fossil record. It is gradualism that we must reject, not Darwinism. […] Eldredge and I believe that speciation is responsible for almost all evolutionary change. Moreover, the way in which it occurs virtually guarantees that sudden appearance and stasis shall dominate the fossil record. All major theories of speciation maintain that splitting takes place rapidly in very small populations. The theory of geographic, or allopatric, speciation is preferred by most evolutionists for most situations (allopatric means ‘in another place’). A new species can arise when a small segment of the ancestral population is isolated at the periphery of the ancestral range. Large, stable central populations exert a strong homogenizing influence. New and favorable mutations are diluted by the sheer bulk of the population through which they must spread. They may build slowly in frequency, but changing environments usually cancel their selective value long before they reach fixation. Thus, phyletic transformation in large populations should be very rare — as the fossil record proclaims. But small, peripherally isolated groups are cut off from their parental stock. They live as tiny populations in geographic corners of the ancestral range. Selective pressures are usually intense because peripheries mark the edge of ecological tolerance for ancestral forms. Favorable variations spread quickly. Small peripheral isolates are a laboratory of evolutionary change.

What should the fossil record include if most evolution occurs by speciation in peripheral isolates? Species should be static through their range because our fossils are the remains of large central populations. In any local area inhabited by ancestors, a descendant species should appear suddenly by migration from the peripheral region in which it evolved. In the peripheral region itself, we might find direct evidence of speciation, but such good fortune would be rare indeed because the event occurs so rapidly in such a small population. Thus, the fossil record is a faithful rendering of what evolutionary theory predicts, not a pitiful vestige of a once bountiful tale.

— "The Episodic Nature of Evolutionary Change," The Panda's Thumb: Reflections in Natural History, New York: W. W. Norton & Company, 1980, pp. 182-184.

Webern Day

'A novel contained in a single sigh' On Sept. 15, 1945, Anton Webern stepped out to smoke a cigar. An American soldier, seeing the glow of the cigar, panicked and shot Webern three times. Webern, along with Arnold Schoenberg and Alban Berg, is credited with -- or blamed for -- ushering in an era of composition emphasizing strict, mathematical order over all elements of music, a reaction against the suicidal excess of Romanticism. On the anniversary of his death, BBC Radio 3 hosts Webern Day, during which Webern's complete works will be broadcast. The total time to perform his 31 works is about three hours. (Links grabbed mostly from ArtsJournal.)

New Sega Console

Yeah, it's from May, but it's the hardest I've laughed this week.

DFD's 80th

The Song and the Singer.

For many he is the greatest Lieder singer of the 20th century. As he turns 80, Dietrich Fischer-Dieskau reflects on his long career.