Archive for the ‘Obituaries’ Category

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Michael Dummett RIP

Published by peter on 2011-12-29 in Mathematics, Matherati, Obituaries and Philosophy of Language. 0 Comments

The death has just occurred of the philosopher Michael Dummett (1925-2011), formerly Wykeham Professor of Logic at Oxford.    His writings on the philosophy of language and the philosophy of mathematics have influenced me, particularly his thorough book on intuitionism.   Having been educated by pure mathematicians who actively disparaged intuitionist and constructivist ideas, I found it liberating to see these ideas taken seriously and considered carefully.  The precision of Dummett’s writing and thought clearly marked him out as a member of the Matherati, as also his other formal work, such as that on voting procedures.
POSTSCRIPT (2012-01-21):  The logician Graham Priest remembers Dummett as follows:

It is clear that Dummett was one of the most important — perhaps the most important — British philosopher of the last half century. His work on the philosophy of language and metaphysics, inspired by themes in intuitionist logic, was truly groundbreaking. He took intuitionism from a somewhat esoteric doctrine in the philosophy of mathematics to a mainstream philosophical position.
Perhaps his greatest achievement, as far as I am concerned, was to demonstrate beyond doubt the intellectual respectability of a fully-fledged philosophical position based on a contemporary heterodox logic. Philosophers in the United Kingdom, even if they do not subscribe to Dummett’s views, no longer doubt the possibility of this. Dummett had an influence in Australia, too. It was quieter there than in the U.K., but the relevant philosophical lesson was amplified by logicians who endorsed heterodox logics of a different stripe (for which, I think, Dummett had little sympathy). The result has been much the same.
In the United States, though, Dummett had virtually no significant impact. Indeed, I am continually surprised how conservative philosophy in the United States is with regard to heterodox logics. It is still awaiting a Dummett to awaken it from its dogmatic logical slumbers.
Graham Priest, City University of New York Graduate Center, and the University of Melbourne (Australia)

References:
His Guardian obituary is here.  An index to posts about members of the Matherati can be found here.
M. Dummett [1977/2000]: Elements of Intuitionism. (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1st edition 1977; 2nd edition 2000).

Christopher Hitchens RIP

Published by peter on 2011-12-23 in Obama speeches, Obituaries and Politics. 0 Comments

I have long been annoyed by the abuse of power that media organizations – even noble and high-minded ones – are prone to engage in.  Newspapers, for example, often run obituaries of people who work for them in support roles, such as their administrative and printing staff.  However virtuous or locally-influential such lives may have been, these people were not public figures, and it strikes me as a mis-use of media power for them to be given prominent public obituaries merely because they happened to have worked for an organization that prints such obituaries.  Until it introduced a section of its obits page for readers’ own accounts of the lives of recently-departed ordinary people, The Guardian, for example, was a key offender in this, with all manner of obscure back-office staff being given national obituaries.   Is this newspaper just an in-house magazine for its employees?
The death of Christopher Hitchens has allowed The Grauniad to fall back on its old ways, with pages and pages devoted to Hitchens and all his works – a seeming HitchFest – as if his death were a major world event.  Vaclav Havel,  who died shortly afterwards, received fewer column inches, yet demonstrably had a greater impact on the world.    I expect that The Guardian has given so many pages to Hitch because he seems to have been known to and had great influence on other journalists, and because it can.  That latter reason, it seems to me, is a mis-use of their power;  it is also something Hitchens himself would have objected to.
Bloggers have also devoted much attention to his passing on.   I have no problem with this, as blogging does not pretend to be a public service activity.   Although I have tried over the years to read most everything Hitchens ever published, usually with great enjoyment, I have hesitated at his passing on to write about my reactions to his work and life.     I never knew him (although I know people who did) so I will not comment on his personality or his personal life.    As a writer, he was an extremely elegant and well-turned stylist, and always provocative to thinking.   His invective, even when I disagreed with it or its targets, was always finely-honed and often very amusing.  I will miss reading him immensely.
I had several major disagreements with his views (at least as far I knew them from his writings).  Firstly,  someone who could join a Trotskyist political groupoid had to have very poor political judgement. (The same could be said for that other early-Trotskyist, late-onset neocon, Norman Geras.). The people in these groups in the 1960s and 1970s were in general in my experience not pleasant, not rational, not open to reason, and not realistic about what works in the world.  And  each group was not unlike a cult.   They were often very elitist, believing they could see the future which the rest of us dummies could not;  and few of the Trotskyists I have encountered in my life had any empathy for working people.   I can only see membership of such a groupoid as evidence of gross mis-understanding about the world, of how it is, and of what it may become.  Of course, we all lack understanding of the world when we are young, and some of us gain our wisdom faster than others.
Secondly, for all his internationalism, Hitch never “got” Barack Obama.  I read his writings in the US Presidential campaign of 2007-2008, and subsequently, and mis-understanding and mis-construals were evident throughout.  Sometimes I thought his mis-readings were deliberate and wilful (as in his accusation that Obama was  not a sincere religious believer), while at other times he was simply mistaken.   From the very first time I heard Obama speak (in 2004), I knew him immediately.  He reminded me of scores of dedicated foreign aid workers I know from Africa and Asia:  “We are the ones we have been waiting for“, “Yes, we can“, etc.  This is the language of community empowerment, of working-with not working-through people, of helping the poor and downtrodden through empathy from a position at their level, not condescending to them from a position at some level above or outside them.    Tim Geithner, with his superb social-parsing skills,  is, it seems, another  person in the same mould.
Hitchens apparently thought such statements by Obama vacuous.  Why would Hitchens – an internationalist – not also understand this about Obama, I wondered?  Hitchens had traveled a great deal, and often to nasty places, but as far as I know he never lived in any such place for any time.   He had not ever had to negotiate a foreign culture over the long term, except that of the USA, which is certainly different to Britain, but not so different as Indonesia, say, or Kenya.   And perhaps Marxism, with its impersonal theory of history across all time, and Trotskyism, with its belief in global revolution across all space, together make it hard to see the impacts of specific cultures, histories and societies – in the here and in the now – on the lives of people, and on their political possibilities, and on what actions are needed to change these lives and possibilities.  And, for the same reason, perhaps a person focused on dialectical analysis of grand theories of global history simply cannot easily understand someone seeking to improve the lot of a single group of people in one housing estate in Chicago, a community organizer say.  This far from the Bolshevik Revolution, it is easy to forget that many on the left (and particularly Trotskyists) disparaged acting locally, to the point where small-scale actions even received their own term of socialist invective: ameliorism.
And, finally, Hitchens seemed to not fully understand religion.  I was with him all the way in his criticism of the evils and sins committed by organized religion, and  in its name.   I was also with him in his refusal to bow down:  Any God that required our worship is not worthy of it.  Certainly no believer in the universal rights of man would countenance such feudal fealty.   Too, I was with him in his courageous refusal to run scared, to adopt religion as a crutch or consolation, as a candle for the dark nights of life.   But, even after all these aspects are considered, there remain other reasons for human religious or spiritual impulses, reasons which are good and valid and true.   Despite what Norm thinks, one may be drawn to sights unseen without any prior beliefs and without any desire to worship deities, but merely with a desire – often unexpressed or even unexpressable – to experience contact with elements of the non-material.   Such a desire motivates many mathematicians and musicians and artists, in addition to explaining the mystic strain evident in most religions.    Is there a non-material realm, outside the world of our five senses?  An entire branch of contemporary physics – String theory and M-theory – is posited on there being such a realm, comprising further dimensions of space-time inaccessible to us, despite the absence yet of any inter-subjective and replicable scientific evidence for it.    Do non-material or spiritual entities exist?   To me, that question is the same as:  Do mathematical objects exist?   On this aspect of religion, Hitchens (from his writings) seemed completely tone-deaf, just as if he lacked  the sense of hearing, or sight.
But, as I said, I will miss reading him immensely.
 
POSTSCRIPT (2012-01-14):  The Times Literary Supplement of 6 January 2012 publishes a letter by Mary Kenny which criticizes Hitchen’s simple-minded, black-and-white approach to religion, in regard in particular to his reporting on the Irish divorce referendum of 1995.    As she says,   “Yet a good journalist, let alone a great journalist –  as Michael Dirda (also December 23 & 30, 2011) claims Hitchens to have been  – would not  have scribbled off such a slapdash and superficial polemic:  a journalist in the tradition of Geroge Orwell would have examined such a social juncture in all its many nuances.”  The polemic by Hitchens that Kenny refers to is in his book, God is Not Great.
 
Footnote:
Andrew Sullivan’s tributes here, and links to Normblog’s and other tributes here.

Havel na Hrad!

Published by peter on 2011-12-19 in Heroes, History, Intelligence and Espionage, Obituaries and Politics. 0 Comments

A memorial salute to Vaclav Havel (1936-2011), who died yesterday.  I first read his Letters to Olga in the 1980s, and have found this and his other writings inspiring.  Havel’s life, too, reads like one of his own plays, and I long admired his courage, his profound self-awareness, and his integrity-of-purpose.

In one of his memoirs, Havel mentions the trepidation which Mikhail Gorbachev apparently felt prior to their first meeting, a meeting that took place in Moscow in 1990 shortly after Havel’s assumption of the Presidency of Czechoslovakia in December 1989, and immediately following Havel’s first official trip to the USA.  Gorbachev, a victim like any other citizen of Soviet misinformation and propaganda, it seems had never met a genuine dissident before and feared what Havel would say or do in the meeting, perhaps even fearing that Havel would attack him physically.
This anecdote came to mind today while reading a surreal account (Chodakiewicz 2011) of the fall of communism in Eastern Europe and the USSR, which claims the entire process of political transformation 20 years ago there was engineered by the Russian Communist nomenklatura as a grand, multi-national, multi-party, multi-year, multi-political-party conspiracy to remain in power.   Among Chodakiewicz’s offensive absurdities is to claim that the leadership of the Polish United Workers Party (the Polish communist party) was second only to that of Bulgaria in its servility to Moscow in the post-war period.   One wonders just why, then, did Poland experience no Stalinist show-trials in the early 1950s?  Why then was Wladyslaw Gomulka arrested, stripped of his posts and detained for several years in the same period, without being interrogated or tried or punished or executed (as were, say, his equivalent colleagues in Hungary and Czechoslovakia) and then later restored to a leadership position?  Was this, too, a charade that was part of the grand conspiracy?    How could such evident nonsense be published in a reputable refereed journal?
Footnote (2011-12-26):
In an interview with David Remnick of The New Yorker (2003), Havel says regarding his first meeting with Gorbachev (in which the two negotiated the withdrawal of Soviet armed forces from Czechoslovakia):

I met Gorbachev about two months after I was elected President.  We went to Moscow, for my first visit to the Kremlin, and we met for eight or nine hours.  At first, Gorbachev looked at me as if I was some kind of exotic creature – the first living dissident he ever saw, who was coming to him as the head of a state that had been part of his realm.  But, gradually, we developed a kind of friendship, which had even begun to develop at the end of that first long visit to the Kremlin.”   

References:
Guardian obituary here, and Economist tribute here.  The Economist claims that Charter 77 was the “first open manifestation of dissent inside the Soviet empire”.  That claim rather ignores the various uprisings going back at least to 1953 (in the DDR), in Hungary in 1956, in Poland on numerous occasions, and even in Moscow – the public protest by the Moscow Seven in August 1968 against the Warsaw Pact invasion of Czechoslovakia, which was indeed, one of several protests in the USSR and elsewhere in the Eastern Bloc.
A salute to another Czech hero here, along with a note on the leninist nature of Gorbachev’s reforms.   And here a tribute to the Moscow Seven.
Marek Jan Chodakiewicz [2011]: Active measures gone awry:  Transformation in Central and Eastern Europe, 1989-1992.  International Journal of Intelligence and Counter-Intelligence, 24 (3): 467-493.
David Remnick [2003]:  Exit Havel.  The New Yorker, 17 February 2003.

Vale Dennis Ritchie (1941-2011)

Published by peter on 2011-10-15 in Computer Science, Computer technology, Matherati and Obituaries. 0 Comments

A post to note the passing on of Dennis Ritchie (1941-2011), co-developer of C programming language and of the Unix operating system.  The Guardian’s obituary is here, a brief note from Wired Magazine here, and John Naughton’s tribute in the Observer here.    So much of modern technology we owe to just a few people, and Ritchie was one of them.
An index to posts about the Matherati is here.

In memoriam: Christophe Bertrand

Published by peter on 2011-09-30 in Matherati, Music and Obituaries. 0 Comments

This post is a memorial to my friend Christophe Bertrand (1981.04.24 – 2010.09.17), a young French composer and pianist who died a year ago this month. I first heard his chamber work, Treis, at a concert ten years ago by Manchester-based new music group Ensemble 11. Impressed by this music, I contacted him and we began a long and deep friendship, discussing his music, along with music and life more generally.

I had the honour and good fortune to be able to commission some music from him (Quartet #1 and Arashi), and he dedicated one piece to me (Arashi). Christophe’s compositions were marked by the use of Fibonacci sequences and other mathematical patterns and constructs, and so I recognized a fellow member of the matherati.  An early death is always sad, especially of someone whose life had had such achievement and even more promise.

Christophe co-founded a contemporary chamber ensemble, Ensemble in Extremis, and there are details of his works and prizes here.  Also, this site seems to have updated information about performances of his music, although without  mentioning his passing on.   The composer Pascal Dusapin has dedicated his work, Microgrammes (2011), 7 pieces for string trio, to Christophe.

I think of all the conversations and interactions we had, and feel the pain of losing future conversations which can now not occur.  And I recall George Santayana’s poem on the death of a close friend, here.

Below I list Christophe’s complete works and works in preparation (derived from his former website,  here).   One work listed there, Dall’inferno, Christophe told me he intended to retract from his catalog, after some of the performers found the score too difficult to play.

POSTSCRIPT (2013-05-27):   Someone has uploaded to Youtube a recording of a performance by the Mangalam Trio of Virya along with co-ordinated images of the score.  That is a nice tribute.

POSTSCRIPT 2 (2013-10-31):  The Music of Today series at London’s Royal Festival Hall, curated by Unsuk Chin, held a free concert by players from the Philharmonia Orchestra led by Alejo Perez of Christophe’s works on 31 October 2013.  Works performed were:  Virya, Madrigal, and Yet.   About 100 people were present.  I wondered if anyone else in the audience knew him, and felt his loss.  Here is a review by Sofia Gkiousou, who had not heard Christophe’s music before this concert, and to whom the music spoke.

POSTSCRIPT 3 (2014-01-21):  A concert to remember Christophe was held in Paris last night, with his music performed by his group, Ensemble in Extremis, and Ensemble Court-circuit.   How difficult it must have been for his former colleagues to play his music last night?  But what an honour to do so.  Details here.

POSTSCRIPT 4 (2023-12-29): I have just seen a book devoted to the music and writings of Christophe (in French):

Olivier Class (Editor & Director) (2015): Christophe Bertrand: Ecrits, entretiens, analyses et temoignages. Paris: Hermann.

CHRISTOPHE BERTRAND LIST OF WORKS:

Works in Preparation:

OKHTOR  pour orchestre (15′)
Commande du Mécénat musical Société Générale
Création 11 février 2011
Orchestre Philharmonique de Strasbourg ; dir. Marc ALBRECHT

QUATUOR II   pour  quatuor à cordes (15′)
Commande du Festival Musica pour le Quatuor ARDITTI
Création au Festival Musica 2011

ARKA  pour soprano, cor, violon et piano (12′)
Texte original de Yannick Haenel
Commande de l’Orchestre National d’Ile-de-France avec le soutien de la SACEM
Ensemble des Musiciens de l’Orchestre National d’Ile-de France ; Françoise KUBLER, soprano
Création mai 2012 – Festival Iles de découvertes

Nouvelle Œuvre pour clarinette, violon et piano (12′)
Commande de l’Ensemble Accorche-Note
Création à définir

Completed and acknowledged works:

Ayas (2010) Fanfare pour onze cuivres et percussions (2′)
Commande de l’Orchestre Philharmonique de Strasbourg
A Cristina Rocca
Création mondiale : novembre 2010, Palais de la Musique et des Congrès de Strasbourg – Orchestre Philharmonique de Strasbourg

Scales (2008-2009) pour grand ensemble (20′)
Co-commande de l’Ensemble Intercontemporain et du Concertgebouw d’Amsterdam
A Susanna Mällki et les musiciens de l’Ensemble Intercontemporain
Création mondiale : 24 avril 2010, Concertgebouw d’Amsterdam – Ensemble Intercontemporain, dir. Susanna Mälkki
Première allemande : 9 mai 2010, Philharmonie de Cologne – Ensemble Intercontemporain, dir. Susanna Mälkki

Diadème (2008), pour soprano, clarinette et piano (9′)
Commande de l’Ensemble Accroche-Note
A Frédéric Durieux
Création mondiale : 5 ocotbre 2010, Festival Musica – Françoise Kubler, soprano; Ensemble Accroche-Note

Satka (2008), pour flûte, clarinette, violon, violoncelle, percussions et piano (13′)
Commande du Festival d’Aix-en-Provence
A Jean-Dominique Marco
Création mondiale : 11 juillet 2008, Festival d’Aix-en-Provence – Jérémie Siot (vn), Florian Lauridon (vc), Cédric Jullion (fl), Jérôme Comte (cl), Jean-Marie Cottet (pno), François Garnier (pc), Guillaume Bourgogne, direction.
© Edizioni Suvini Zerboni/SugarMusic S.p.A, Milano

Haïku (2008) pour piano (6′)
Commande d’Ars Mobilis, pour le festival “Les Solistes aux Serres d’Auteuil”
Création mondiale : 31 août 2008 – Festival des Serres d’Auteuil – Ferenc Vizi (piano)
© Edizioni Suvini Zerboni/SugarMusic S.p.A, Milano

Dall’inferno (2008), pour flûte, alto et harpe (9′) (Retracted:  see note above)
Commande du Musée du Louvre
non encore créé
© Edizioni Suvini Zerboni/SugarMusic S.p.A, Milano

Arashi (2008), pour alto seul (5′)
Commande de P. McBurney
A Peter McBurney et Vincent Royer
non encore créé
© Edizioni Suvini Zerboni/SugarMusic S.p.A, Milano

Kamenaia (2008), pour douze voix solistes (6′)
Commande de l’Ensemble Musicatreize
A Roland Hayrabedian et l’Ensemble Musicatreize
Création mondiale : 15 mai 2008 – Marseille, Eglise Saint-Charles – Ensemble Musicatreize, dir. Roland HAYRABEDIAN
© Edizioni Suvini Zerboni/SugarMusic S.p.A, Milano

Hendeka (2007), pour violon, alto, violoncelle et piano (11′)
Commande du Festival “Les Musicales”
A Bruno Mantovani
Création mondiale : 10 mai 2008 – Colmar, Les Musicales – Ilya Gringolts (vn), Silvia Simionescu (al), Marc Coppey (vc), Claire-Marie Le Guay (pno)
© Edizioni Suvini Zerboni/SugarMusic S.p.A, Milano

Vertigo (2006-2007), pour 2 pianos et orchestre (20′)
Commande de l’Etat Français et du Festival Musica
Création mondiale : 20 septembre 2008 – Strasbourg, Festival Musica – Hideki Nagano, Sébastien Vichard (pnos) – Orchestre Philharmonique de Liège, dir. Pascal ROPHÉ
© Edizioni Suvini Zerboni/SugarMusic S.p.A, Milano

Sanh (2006), pour clarinette basse, violoncelle et piano (11′)
Commande de l’Etat Français
A Armand Angster
Création mondiale : 11 octobre 2007 – Strasbourg, Festival Musica / Ensemble Accroche-Note
© Edizioni Suvini Zerboni/SugarMusic S.p.A, Milano

Quatuor (n°1) (2005-2006), pour quatuor à cordes (20′)
Commande du Beethovenfest de Bonn et de M. P. McBurney
Dédié au Quatuor Arditti
Création mondiale : 19 mars 2006 – Bruxelles, Festival Ars Musica – Quatuor Arditti
Création française : 20 juillet 2006 – Festival d’Aix-en-Provence – Quatuor Arditti
Création mondiale de la première version : 24 septembre 2005 – Kunstmuseum Bonn – Mandelring Quartett
© Edizioni Suvini Zerboni/SugarMusic S.p.A, Milano

Mana (2004-2005), pour grand orchestre (10′)
Commande du Festival de Lucerne
A Pierre Boulez
Création mondiale : 9 septembre 2005 – Lucerne KKL – Lucerne Festival Academy Orchestra, dir. Pierre BOULEZ
Création française : 2 juin 2006 – Orchestre Philharmonique de Radio-France, dir. Hannu LINTU
© Edizioni Suvini Zerboni/SugarMusic S.p.A, Milano

Madrigal (2004-2005), pour soprano et ensemble (11′)
Commande de la Fondation André Boucourechliev
A Françoise Kubler et Armand Angster
Création mondiale : 30 septembre 2005 – Strasbourg, Festival Musica – Ensemble Accroche-Note
© Edizioni Suvini Zerboni/SugarMusic S.p.A, Milano

Virya (2004), pour flûte, clarinette en sib (+ clarinette basse), percussions et piano (7′)
Commande de M. Francis Rueff
A Frédéric Kahn
Création mondiale : 19 mars 2004 – Espace 110 Illzach – Ensemble In Extremis
© Edizioni Suvini Zerboni/SugarMusic S.p.A, Milano

Aus (2004), pour alto, saxophone soprano, clarinette en sib (+ clarinette basse) et piano (8′)  
Commande de la Radio de Berlin-Brandeburg
A Philippe Hurel
Création mondiale : 24 janvier 2004 – Berlin, Ultraschall-Festival – Ensemble Intégrales
Enregistrement : CD “European Young generation” par l’Ensemble Intégrales aux éditions Zeitklang (ez-21019)
Pour l’acheter : www.amazon.fr
© Edizioni Suvini Zerboni/SugarMusic S.p.A, Milano

Haos (2003), pour piano seul (10′)
Commande du Festival Rendez-vous Musique Nouvelle de Forbach
A Laurent Cabasso
Création mondiale : 9 novembre 2003 – Forbach, Festival RVMN – Raoul Jehl, piano
© Edizioni Suvini Zerboni/SugarMusic S.p.A, Milano

Iôa (2003) pour choeur de femmes à huit voix (3′)
A Catherine Bolzinger
Création mondiale : 23 mai 2003 – Strasbourg, Palais du Rhin – Ensemble Vocal Féminin du Conservatoire de Strasbourg, dir. Catherine BOLZINGER
© Edizioni Suvini Zerboni/SugarMusic S.p.A, Milano

Yet (2002), pour vingt musiciens (10′)  
Commande de l’Ensemble Intercontemporain
A Pascal Dusapin
Création mondiale : 29 septembre 2002 – Strasbourg, Festival Musica – Ensemble Intercontemporain ; dir. Jonathan NOTT
© Edizioni Suvini Zerboni/SugarMusic S.p.A, Milano

Ektra (2001), pour flûte seule (5′)
A Olivier Class
Création mondiale : 16 juin 2001 – Strasbourg, Cercle européen, Académie des Marches de l’Est – Olivier Class, flûte
© Edizioni Suvini Zerboni/SugarMusic S.p.A, Milano

Dikha (2000-2001), pour clarinette/clarinette basse et dispositif électronique (9’30)  
Réalisée dans le cadre du cursus de composition et d’informatique musicale de l’IRCAM
A Pierre Dutrieu
Création mondiale : 15 juin 2002 – Paris, Festival Agora, Espace de Projection de l’IRCAM – Pierre Dutrieu, clarinette
© Edizioni Suvini Zerboni/SugarMusic S.p.A, Milano

Treis (2000), pour violon, violoncelle et piano (10′)
Mention d’honneur au Festival Gaudeamus 2001/1er Prix Earplay 2002 Donald Aird Memorial Composers Competition
A Rosalie Adolf, Anne-Cécile Litolf et Godefroy Vujicic
Création mondiale : 7 octobre 2000 – Strasbourg, Festival Musica – Rosalie Adolf (vn), Godefroy Vujicic (vc), Anne-Cécile Litolf (pno)
© Edizioni Suvini Zerboni/SugarMusic S.p.A, Milano

La Chute Du Rouge (2000), pour clarinette, violoncelle, vibraphone et piano (11′)  
A Ivan Fedele
Création mondiale : 11 mai 2000 – Strasbourg, Oratoire du Temple-Neuf – Ensemble du Conservatoire de Strasbourg
© Edizioni Suvini Zerboni/SugarMusic S.p.A, Milano

Skiaï (1998-1999), pour cinq instruments (8′)
A Pierre-Yves Meugé
Création mondiale : 11 mai 1999 – Strasbourg, Musée de l’Œuvre Notre-Dame – Ensemble du Conservatoire de Strasbourg
© Edizioni Suvini Zerboni/SugarMusic S.p.A, Milano

Strofa II (1998), voix de femme, violon et piano (5’30) (Retiré du catalogue)
Création mondiale : 11 mai 2000 – Strasbourg, Oratoire du Temple-Neuf – Ensemble du Conservatoire de Strasbourg
inédit © Christophe BERTRAND

Strofa IIb (1998-2000), pour voix de femme, flûte alto (également flûte en ut), et piano (5’30)
Création mondiale : 2 juillet 2000 – Wangen (67), Vieux Freihof – Aline Metzinger (voix), Olivier Class (fl), Christophe Bertrand (pno)
© Edizioni Suvini Zerboni/SugarMusic S.p.A, Milano
Photo credit:  Pascale Srebnicki (2008).

Vale Robert Oakeshott

Published by peter on 2011-08-04 in Africa, Corporate culture, Obituaries and Politics. 0 Comments

The Guardian today carries an obituary for Robert Oakeshott (1933-2011), pioneer of worker-cooperatives and employee-owned enterprises, whom I once invited to speak at the University of Zimbabwe and with whom I then spent an enjoyable dinner in Harare, at a time when the Government of Zimbabwe was sincerely promoting industrial and agricultural worker co-operatives, supported by many western aid donor agencies.

Bill Mansfield RIP

Published by peter on 2011-07-03 in Obituaries, Politics and Telecommunications. 0 Comments

A belated tribute to Bill Mansfield (1942-2011), Australian trade unionist, ACTU official and Industrial Relations Commission judge, who died earlier this year.   Elected federal secretary of the Australian Telecommunications Employees Association (ATEA), the main union of technical telecommunications staff, at a young age in 1977, Mansfield was one of a generation of Australian union leaders who were progressive, modern, reasonable, anti-Luddite, and very intelligent.    I had the good fortune to meet him and to hear him speak on several occasions, once at a seminar on the drivers and consequences of technological change;  it was clear that most managements would be out-smarted by him, and many foiled by his integrity, his willingness to engage in reasoned argument, and his integrity-of-purpose.  In the 1970s, the ATEA and its fellow communications unions ran a long-running and ultimately successful campaign seeking to get the management of Telstra (as the organization is now called) merely to have discussions with the unions about new technologies, their impacts, and their deployment; it was indicative of the belligerent stupidity of the management of the time that they sought to introduce new technologies without prior discussion with the affected workforce because management feared the workforce would be opposed.
There are tributes to him from his ACTU colleagues here and from Senator Doug Cameron here.

Charlotte Joko Beck RIP

Published by peter on 2011-06-28 in Obituaries and Religion. 0 Comments

A sad post to note the passing on of Charlotte Joko Beck (1917-2011), musician and Zen teacher.   Her books, full of practical wisdom and psychological insight, have been constant companions, as I alluded here.

Connections, south of my days

Published by peter on 2011-06-17 in Matherati, Obituaries and Poetry. 0 Comments

I have previously posted Judith Wright’s famous poem South of My Days, here.  For anyone growing up in rural eastern Australia, this poem with its stories of the great cattle droves of the late 19th and early 20th century resonates.

The SMH recently carried an obituary for John Atkinson (1940-2011), a mechanical engineering lecturer at Sydney University and member of the Matherati.  Atkinson’s mother, Gwen Wilkins, had been a university friend of Judith Wright (1915-2000) at Sydney University in the 1930s.  Atkinson’s father Tom managed a cattle station in Southern Queensland for Wright’s father, Phillip, and Judith apparently introduced Atkinson’s parents to each other.

This long-ago connection of farming families reminded me of the 50th anniversary commemoration of the Stinson aircrash in the remote and treacherous sub-tropical jungles of the Lamington Ranges National Park in Southern Queensland in February 1937, a commemoration I attended. The crash was the occasion of a famous rescue by bushman, Bernard O’Reilly, trekking alone on a hunch, recounted on the O’Reilly Guest House site here.

My father, with me that day in 1987, was surprised to encounter a work colleague also present.  It turned out that the O’Reilly family had farmed in the Kanimbla Valley in the Blue Mountains in central NSW, on a property adjoining my father’s colleague’s family property, before moving up to the McPherson Ranges in 1911.  Despite the distance (about 600 miles) and the remoteness of both locations, the two families had kept in touch through the intervening 76 years, with each new generation becoming friends.

O’Reilly wrote a famous book about his pioneering bush experiences and the Stinson rescue.  Among those I met that day were members of the rescue party that O’Reilly gathered together in 1937.

POSTSCRIPT (2011-12-23):  I remembered that Judith Wright wrote a poem about James Westray, who initially survived the Stinson crash. I have posted the poem here.

References:
Bernard O’Reilly [1940]:  Green Mountains.  Brisbane, Australia.

The report and documents of the official Queensland Government Inquest into the Stinson crash are here.

A remembrance of John Atkinson by a bush-walking friend is here.  Apparently, Dr Atkinson drowned in the surf.