After
Owen's class and
DVC Music History Tuesday-Thursday (including Quiz 7, Classical / Romantic I),
the world changes,
with the Coronavirus...
"The virus is thought to be natural and has an animal origin, through spillover infection. There are several theories about where the first case (the so-called patient zero) originated. Phylogenetics estimates that SARS-CoV-2 arose in October or November 2019. Evidence suggests that it descends from a coronavirus that infects wild bats and spread to humans through an intermediary wildlife host.
The first known human infections were in Wuhan, Hubei, China. A study of the first 41 cases of confirmed COVID-19, published in January 2020 in The Lancet, reported the earliest date of onset of symptoms as December 1, 2019. Official publications from the WHO reported the earliest onset of symptoms as December 8, 2019. Human-to-human transmission was confirmed by the WHO and Chinese authorities by 20 January 2020. According to official Chinese sources, these were mostly linked to the Huanan Seafood Wholesale Market, which also sold live animals. In May 2020, George Gao, the director of the Chinese Center for Disease Control and Prevention, said animal samples collected from the seafood market had tested negative for the virus, indicating that the market was the site of an early superspreading event, but it was not the site of the initial outbreak. Traces of the virus have been found in wastewater that was collected from Milan and Turin, Italy, on December 18, 2019.
By December 2019, the spread of infection was almost entirely driven by human-to-human transmission. The number of coronavirus cases in Hubei gradually increased, reaching 60 by 20 December and at least 266 by December 31. On December 24, Wuhan Central Hospital sent a bronchoalveolar lavage fluid (BAL) sample from an unresolved clinical case to sequencing company Vision Medicals. On December 27-28, Vision Medicals informed the Wuhan Central Hospital and the Chinese CDC of the results of the test, showing a new coronavirus. A pneumonia cluster of unknown cause was observed on December 26 and treated by the doctor Zhang Jixian in Hubei Provincial Hospital, who informed the Wuhan Jianghan CDC on December 27. On December 30, a test report addressed to Wuhan Central Hospital, from company CapitalBio Medlab, stated an erroneous positive result for SARS, causing a group of doctors at Wuhan Central Hospital to alert their colleagues and relevant hospital authorities of the result. That evening, the Wuhan Municipal Health Commission issued a notice to various medical institutions on "the treatment of pneumonia of unknown cause." Eight of these doctors, including Li Wenliang (punished on January 3), were later admonished by the police for spreading false rumours, and another, Ai Fen, was reprimanded by her superiors for raising the alarm.
The Wuhan Municipal Health Commission made the first public announcement of a pneumonia outbreak of unknown cause on December 31, confirming 27 cases—enough to trigger an investigation.
During the early stages of the outbreak, the number of cases doubled approximately every seven and a half days. In early and mid-January 2020, the virus spread to other Chinese provinces, helped by the Chinese New Year migration and Wuhan being a transport hub and major rail interchange. On January 20, China reported nearly 140 new cases in one day, including two people in Beijing and one in Shenzhen. Later official data shows 6,174 people had already developed symptoms by then, and more may have been infected. A report in The Lancet on January 24 indicated human transmission, strongly recommended personal protective equipment for health workers, and said testing for the virus was essential due to its "pandemic potential." On January 30, the WHO declared the coronavirus a Public Health Emergency of International Concern. By this time, the outbreak spread by a factor of 100 to 200 times.
[Wikipedia, January 12, 2021]
We've been concerned over these past 2 months, particularly teaching at a school with a world-wide clientele, indeed wondering at some point between the beginning ot the semester and now that we have pontentially been infected...
Nevertheless, here we are in DVC conference rooms,
learning that there is --
and how
to proceed during --
a shutdown of at least 4 weeks,
re the school and looks like the society at large, starting Monday.
Also note the passing of
Charles Wuorinen (June 9, 1938 - March 11, 2020)
" a Pulitzer Prize-winning American composer of contemporary classical music based in New York City. He performed his works and other 20th-century music as pianist and conductor.
He composed more than 270 compositions, including orchestral music, chamber music, solo instrumental and vocal works, and operas such as Brokeback Mountain. Salman Rushdie and Annie Proulx have collaborated with him. Wuorinen's work has been called serialist, but he came to disparage that term as meaningless. His Time's Encomium, his only purely electronic piece, received the Pulitzer Prize for Music. Wuorinen also taught at several institutions, including Columbia University and Manhattan School of Music. . . .
Wuorinen wrote the book Simple Composition. He described it as
written by a composer and ... addressed to other composers — intending or actual, amateur or professional. Thus it is similar in intent to certain older books on the subject like Thomas Morley's A Plain and Easie Introduction to Practical Musicke (1597), for instance.... It outlines present practice, and while it can be used for purely didactic purposes, it can also be employed in composing "real" music. . . .
Wuorinen was criticized as intolerant and hostile in his writings toward people with differing views on music. In 1963, he wrote in Perspectives on New Music, "I must unequivocally state that pitch serialization is no longer an issue", and that young composers should be "acting out the implications of the older generation's work." For Richard Taruskin, such statements imply a totalitarian view that only twelve-tone composers are to be regarded as composers. Taruskin has described similar statements as "fantasies of infantile omnipotence."
In 1971, the Columbia University music faculty denied Wuorinen tenure, which he attributed to "hostility to the present, and those who advocate it in music." Others have attributed the decision to Wuorinen's intolerant and arrogant attitude.
The opening paragraph of Simple Composition has been controversial. Taruskin describes it as another example of Wuorinen's contempt for music outside the 12-tone system.
While the tonal system, in an atrophied or vestigial form, is still used today in popular and commercial music, and even occasionally in the works of backward-looking serious composers, it is no longer employed by serious composers of the mainstream. It has been replaced or succeeded by the 12-tone system
— Charles Wuorinen, Simple Composition (1978), opening paragraph
In a 1988 interview, Wuorinen said, "I feel what I do is right [...] pluralism [i.e. non-serial music] has gone too far," and criticized views on which "the response of the untutored becomes the sole criterion for judgment". Rather, he suggested, "I would try to change the present relationship of the composer to the public from one in which the composer says: 'please, judge me,' to one in which I say: 'I have something to show you and offer my leadership.'""
24th day of summer, high up 8 to 83, tying with March 3 as the highest of year...
Fairfield, 81
Martinez, 73
Pleasant Hill, 76
In response to the need for remote learning to begin this coming Monday, start
Music History, Op. 335 (March 12, 2020)
with
VIII. Romantic Music II
1a. Schubert to Chopin
and
1b. Chopin to Verdi
