SciAm on vacuums and subways, and a novel I love

http://blogs.scientificamerican.com/cocktail-party-physics/2011/07/11/a-series-of-tubes/ The physics in this post are a bit beyond my level of understanding+ability, but it's well written and exciting to read nonetheless. Thanks Jennifer Ouelette for reminding me of Downsiders - a YA novel (which I loved!) about underground dwellings in NYC.

"Lover's Concerto:" elements of the classical

In the recent book, Beautiful Monsters, Michael Long takes a look at my personal favorite subject area: the relationship between classical and popular elements in music. Long is talking about the classical in pop today, as opposed to pop in classical music or classical "popular" elements such as opera themes. Beautiful Monsters features an encyclopedic dash through modern popular music, with hundreds of pieces referenced in passing. You would do well to read this book next to YouTube, because each reference is complemented by the actual sound material (not all of us have this music at instant mental recall) and the references are frequently cross-referenced.
One piece which I gradually recognized as familiar was "Lover's Concerto" by the Toys. I had first heard this piece as a small child, but not matched the piece to any title (though I still recall most of the lyrics and timbres perfectly) or group name. More recently, I had been stunned to find out that this piece is based on another famous miniature, of a very different era and aesthetic: a minuet by Bach. Duh. The meter is now 4/4, instead of the standard 3/4 of minuets, and in addition to having lyrics unrelated to Bach, the song is complemented by saxophone solos and a girl-group sound typical of the early 1960s.
Long's concern is with the use of the term "concerto," seemingly a misnomer here, to "place" the song in a classical register. At the very beginning of the song, before the band starts, several "concerto" chords on a piano are heard. The song's writers, Linzer and Randel, may indeed have felt "concerto" was foreign enough, and classical enough, to label the song with some exotic flavor, as well as to nod towards the classical origins of the melody. (I am unaware of the story of the artistic choice to use Bach material here in the first place; Wikipedia and allmusic cite the 'Bach' melody as well as the attribution of this piece to Bach, but do not hint at any motivation for the "classical" feel evoked here.)
The structure of the song is very tightly woven together, with the solo-group interplay intersecting with the instruments of the band. While the lyrics seem irrelevant to the title, they are well fit to the notes sung, with few awkward moments. When the saxophone solo takes up the melody during the break, the articulations are preserved from the vocal statement, slurring together the notes to which multi-syllable words are set. Tone painting is mostly avoided, even when dealing with lyrics which address "the rain / which falls," and this seems to avoid the full potential for cliche in a song which can only be heard through cliches.

As the song begins in this live video from the show "Hullabaloo," a bust of (presumably) J.S. Bach is seen in the foreground. The intro to the song features saxophones and a "hook" reminiscent of the Four Seasons, another group produced by the same label and often the same songwriters. This hook does not recur, but the sax scoring continues as a theme throughout. The classical bust as scene-setting reinforces the "novelty song" character of this piece; perhaps audiences were aware of the Bach association, making this scenery the only reference to the actual Bach material. In the personal consumption of the song, the only equivalent was this "Concerto" in the title and the piano chords of the first few bars, after which the "concerto" elements fade away.
"Lover's Concerto" continues to resonate throughout the book, as his many encyclopedic references bounce around and reappear.  Long takes into account many different threads relating to this song: pastoralism, antique elements of the text, and the classical ethos evoked by the title. The great thing for me about classical music and popular music as two complementary bodies of work is the way we can enjoy a good pop song or a fun classical piece at different levels - the structure, the bones are there if you look, regardless of the (often enjoyable) surface material.

History through the Operaglass

When I found this book, about 4 years ago, I was thrilled that one of my favorite subjects had been addressed and compiled at such length. Opera tends to tap the most dramatic of stories, so there are plenty of fictional or mythological plots, but many librettists have seen dramatic potential in real stories. That is not to say that "historically based" operas are always accurate: sometimes they can have more legend in them than those based in myth.George Jellinek guides the reader through approximately 1800 years of opera plots, from Giulio Cesare to Tosca and many others in between. Google Books also has a preview and e-book available.

Perhaps someday this book will be updated to the modern era.

Books for summer and beyond

It's summer, and I have more time to read. Here are 27 of the books which I return to over and again, in no particular order, with some quick keywords and Google or Amazon previews when possible. I could write blurbs about all of them, but in most cases the previews explain better than I could. Suffice it to say that what I love most about a book is an author you can connect with, and handsome writing.

Davies, Norman: Europe: a History not so conservative European history
Mumford, Lewis: The City in History
Johnson, Paul: Modern Times conservative American history
Gould, Steven Jay: Wonderful Life on the Burgess Shale fossil deposit
Tolstoy, Leo: Anna Karenina
Hawthorne, Nathaniel: Short Stories try “The Great Stone Face” and “The Wives of the Dead”
Morrison, Samuel Eliot: Old Bruin - life of Matthew C. Perry
Gombrich, E. M.: Little History of the World
Sandburg, Carl: Remembrance Rock nostalgic American epic
Van Loon, Conrad: Van Loon's Lives quirky biography
Dickens, Charles: Dombey and Son
Dawkins, Richard: The Ancestor's Tale evolution in fast rewind
Cozzens, James Gould: By Love Possessed
Russo, Richard: Straight Man college professor humor
Barbery, Muriel: The Elegance of the Hedgehog
Schmitt, Eric Emmanuel: Il Lottatore di Sumo che non diventava grosso *not yet in English that I can find, but well worth the read if you speak Italian.
Atkins, Peter: The Periodic Kingdom chemical geography
McPhee, John: Annals of the Former World *a collection of 5 books* geology and America
Robertson, Don: Praise the Human Season a shared life
Melville, Herman: Moby Dick beautiful words
Conroy, Frank: Body and Soul a musical life
Helprin, Mark: Freddy and Fredericka Charles and Diana
Sobel, Dava: Longitude John Harrison’s chronometer
Livy: Ab Urbe Condita *links to books 1-8, 9-38 also available* nostalgic Roman history
Solzhenitsyn, Alexander: The Cancer Ward humanity 
Connolly, John: The Book of Lost Things modern fable
Steve Hely: How I became a famous novelist book humor