Classic Ross Amico

Category: Daily Dispatch

Facebook Algorithm Issues Comments Removed?

Has anyone else been having issues with Fa ce book recently? More than usual, I mean?

Have you heard anything about the alg orithm having been tweaked?

The reason I ask is that because within the past week or so, I’ve had several comments re moved. I’m wondering if it’s because they contained question marks, so that perhaps the f ilter confused them with transparent ph ishing schemes. You know, those random introductions from supposedly adoring admirers that attempt to sca m you into friending them. It might also be possible that the system has been tweaked so as to be extra vigilant at heading off rhetoric and vitriol with the el ection season heating up.

Of course, the day-to-day operations of Fa ce book no longer seem to be run by people at all. Some Fa ce book Frankenstein could simply have thrown a lever and unleashed an A. I. automaton, and now it’s raging across the so cial m edia platform de leting posts and ba nning people and lo cking users out of their accounts, seemingly willy-nilly. Another user contacted me recently to let me know she was lo cked out for “un usual ac tivity,” because she attempted to respond to an understandable increase of well-wishers on her birthday.

With the de letion of my comments, I received a boiler plate explanation stating that they had been identified as s pam. When my post (promoting my upcoming talk at Princeton Public Library on October 8 ) was removed, I was notified that it was because it vio lated community st andards. And no, the vio lation had nothing to do with promoting the event. I did share the announcement from another page, but that wasn’t in vio lation of any Fa ce book rule. I can only assume it was something in my characteristically witty commentary that the soulless al gorithm didn’t get (kind of like my old boss).

These de letions were accompanied by ominous warnings that repeat of fenses could result in time-outs or banishment. With all the illiterate garbage and ugly, inflammatory bear-baiting on the pl atform, obviously the guy they want to go after is the one who gets ten likes on his posts about classical music.

I was offered the option to ap peal the post de letion, which of course I did. (No such options were offered for the re moved messages.) Supposedly, the case will be reviewed within a certain number of days, and if it’s found the judgment was in error, the post will be restored. I’m not holding my breath. Everyone knows there are a very limited number of live people working in the boiler room at Fa ce book.

I apologize for the gratuitous number of spaces inserted into potentially sensitive words, my attempt to dodge having even this re moved, as an earlier attempt to explain what was happening in a message thread caused the comment to be de leted.

Naturally, I don’t want to be exiled from Fa ce book. It’s yet another reminder that I shouldn’t be investing so much of myself here, beyond perhaps posting fluff and teasers, and that really I should be shifting my longer-form rants and ruminations to a blogging platform.

I took a screen shot of one of the notices, which I will include in the comments below.

September 23, 2024
Autumn Delights Fall Fun & Festivities

When autumn arrives this morning at 8:43 EDT, I’ll be shaking the moths out of my sweaters and layering on the flannels and devouring fruit pies and Spiced Wafers and swilling pots of coffee and pans of hot cider and quaffing mugs of soup and bowls of chili and inciting leaf battles and soaping windows and watching monster movies and poring over events calendars for library book sales and hurling peanuts at squirrels and cavorting with Bacchus and building a playlist of wistful Brahms, energetic Baroque, and cloudy day Bruckner. From now until Thanksgiving life will be very good indeed. Welcome, Autumn, season of Cockaigne, Dionysian paradise, wonderland of revelry and solitude!

September 22, 2024
Autumn Equinox Rediscovering American Composers

This week on “The Lost Chord,” in anticipation of tomorrow’s Autumn Equinox, lend a little color to your weekend with seasonal evocations by two American composers.

Henry Hadley (1871-1937) studied at home with George Whitefield Chadwick and in Vienna with Eusebius Mandyczewski. In Europe, he befriended Richard Strauss and conducted the Berlin Philharmonic in his own Symphony No. 3. He was assistant conductor at the Mainz Opera, later music director of the Seattle Symphony, and became the first conductor of the San Francisco Symphony. One of his operas, “Cleopatra’s Night,” was performed at New York’s Metropolitan Opera. He served a stint as assistant conductor of the New York Philharmonic, he founded the National Association of Composers and Conductors, and he was instrumental in establishing the Berkshire Music Festival at Tanglewood. He guest conducted orchestras from Buenos Aires to Tokyo. Why then do so few remember him?

We’ll dig deep into the leaf pile of music history to revive Hadley’s Symphony No. 2, from 1901, subtitled “The Four Seasons.” The work begins with an evocation of a turbulent winter storm, followed by “Spring,” then “Summer.” The symphony concludes with a melancholy portrait of autumn, enlivened by the appearance of some rollicking hunting horns.

Toward the end of the hour, we’ll have just enough time for music by Leo Sowerby (1895-1968), sometimes called “the Dean of American Church Music.” Sowerby was awarded the Pulitzer Prize for Music in 1946 for his cantata “Canticle to the Sun.” As antidote to the reflective nature of Hadley’s “Autumn,” we’ll conclude with the exuberant “Comes Autumn Time,” an uplifting work for solo organ.

I hope you’ll join me for “Well-Seasoned” – American composers of experience celebrate autumn – on “The Lost Chord,” now in syndication on KWAX, the radio station of the University of Oregon!

Clip and save the start times for all three of my recorded shows:

PICTURE PERFECT, the movie music show – Friday at 8:00 PM EDT/5:00 PM PDT

SWEETNESS AND LIGHT, the light music program – ALL NEW! – Saturday at 11:00 AM EDT/8:00 AM PDT

THE LOST CHORD, unusual and neglected rep – Saturday at 7:00 PM EDT/4:00 PM PDT

Stream them, wherever you are, at the link!

https://kwax.uoregon.edu/

September 21, 2024
Celebrating Holst Folk Music & The Planets

This week on “Sweetness and Light,” to mark the sesquicentenary of the birth of Gustav Holst (born on this date in 1874), we’ll have a down-to-earth celebration of the composer of “The Planets.”

Holst wrote some very interesting and effective works in a modestly modernist style, but the emphasis this morning will be on his delectable folk-inflected music. In the company of his lifelong friend, Ralph Vaughan Williams, Holst struck out for the fields and fens, documenting by cylinder and notating by hand songs of the English countryside, preserving them against the oblivion of encroaching industrialization. Recognizing their rich potential as raw material for the development of a distinctly “English” national sound, the two artists began assimilating characteristics into their own respective styles.

Since Holst’s day job was as director of the St. Paul’s Girls’ School (from 1905 until his death in 1934), it’s hardly surprising that the larger portion of the music to be heard during the hour will be devoted to pieces introduced by the students and faculty.

We’ll enjoy a worthy successor to the popular “St. Paul’s Suite” of 1913, the “Brook Green Suite,” composed two decades later. The St. Paul’s School is located on Brook Green in Hammersmith, London. The performance will surely be of added interested in that it will be conducted by composer’s daughter, Imogen Holst.

Of course, when celebrating Holst, we can’t very well ignore “The Planets.” For a light music show, it goes without saying, the most jovial of these is “Jupiter, the Bringer of Jollity.” The big tune at its generous heart was further popularized as the patriotic hymn “I Vow to Thee, My Country.” Holst was a master orchestrator (it’s amusing to reflect that his instrument was the trombone), but I think you’ll find his own arrangement for two pianos to be fresh and surprisingly illuminating. Our performers will be Richard Rodney Bennett and Susan Bradshaw.

The Suite No. 2 for Military Band of 1911 is based on a number of delightful folk tunes, including “Swansea Town,” “I’ll Love My Love,” “A Blacksmith Courted Me,” “Dargason,” and “Greensleeves.” We’ll hear it played by the Dallas Wind Symphony, directed by Howard Dunn. And as a bonus, we’ll follow it with Holst’s setting of one of the songs for men’s chorus, sung by the Baccholian Singers of London.

Finally, we’ll have the substantial choral ballet of 1926, “The Golden Goose,” on a scenario adapted from a tale of the Brothers Grimm,” again given its debut at St. Paul’s. This one is long on charm, chockful of good tunes in a folk style. Hilary Davan Wetton will direct the Guildford Choral Society and Philharmonia Orchestra. What’s not to love?

There’s gold in them thar hills! I hope you’ll join me for a Holst sesquicentennial tribute, on “Sweetness and Light,” this Saturday morning at 11:00 EDT/8:00 PDT, exclusively on KWAX, the radio station of the University of Oregon!

Stream it wherever you are at the link:

https://kwax.uoregon.edu/

September 21, 2024
John Williams’ Western Film Scores

Looking back on the cinematic western, by the mid-1970s it was definitely time to water the horses. For much of the preceding decade, most of the important statements in the genre had gone elegiac, revisionist, spaghetti, or some combination of the three.

With the release of “Star Wars” in 1977, elements of the western survived, but beyond a handful of exceptions, the western, like the swashbuckler, had moved to outer space.

Though John Williams became inextricably linked with the intergalactic spectacle, it is little known that he, in common with most of his contemporaries, scored a number of actual, old school westerns. This week on “Picture Perfect,” we’ll listen to music from four of them.

Westerns don’t get much more primal than when revenge becomes a motivator. Mark Rydell’s “The Cowboys” (1972), one of the better of John Wayne’s later films, draws blood when Bruce Dern commits an unspeakable crime against the American West. If you’re a collector of Boston Pops records, you may be familiar with the rousing overture Williams assembled from his score.

Before he slipped into a lazy pattern of inviting his celebrity friends to goof off in front of the camera and then cashing the paycheck, Burt Reynolds made a number of effective dramatic films. In “The Man Who Loved Cat Dancing” (1973), Reynolds plays a laconic train robber haunted by a secret in his past, who finds a second chance with Sarah Miles, the wife of one of his pursuers, who rides along with his gang. Williams provided a really groovy opening number for this one.

Despite the how-could-it-possibly-miss teaming of Marlon Brando and Jack Nicholson – with “Bonnie and Clyde” director Arthur Penn at the helm – “The Missouri Breaks” (1976) bombed with both critics and audiences. (If you ever wanted to see Brando in drag, then this is the film for you.) Williams took a different approach with this one, providing a more intimate, if off-kilter score, tinged with jazz and pop elements, and featuring guitar, banjo, harmonica, honky tonk piano, electric harpsichord, etc.

“The Rare Breed” (1966), on the other hand, is straight-down-the-middle, with James Stewart and Maureen O’Hara introducing Hereford cattle to the American west. Brian Keith, as Stewart’s rival, sports a red beard and a Scottish burr, for some reason. Williams, however, is wholly himself, providing an uplifting, wide-open main theme. Would that film composers still wrote like this.

Saddle up for selections from John Williams westerns this week, on “Picture Perfect,” music for the movies, now in syndication on KWAX, the radio station of the University of Oregon!

Clip and save the start times for all three of my recorded shows:

PICTURE PERFECT, the movie music show – Friday at 8:00 PM EDT/5:00 PM PDT

SWEETNESS AND LIGHT, the light music program – ALL NEW! – Saturday at 11:00 AM EDT/8:00 AM PDT

THE LOST CHORD, unusual and neglected rep – Saturday at 7:00 PM EDT/4:00 PM PDT

Stream them, wherever you are, at the link!

https://kwax.uoregon.edu/

PHOTOS: (clockwise from left) Reynolds loves Cat Dancing; Brando in touch with his feminine side; the Duke; and an unrecognizable Brian Keith

September 20, 2024

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