Friday Soirée: Feynman & Villa-Lobos
Let us have now a little soirée, a short program of ideas and music to cheer up my rather drab Friday evening. On tonight's program, Richard Feynman and Heitor Villa-Lobos.
The Feynman bits are both excerpts from a BBC series called "Fun to Imagine" (1983), in which Feynman is interviewed and talks about all sorts of things. If you'd like to hear more, the YouTube pages for the following will lead you to them.
1. Feynman on Magnets and "Why Questions"
The interviewer says that when he pushes two magnets towards each other, he feels something there; he asks "What is it?" Feynman tries to explain why he finds it difficult to give a satisfying explanation, which is fun enough. But lurking behind his exposition are a few other, profound ideas.
At the root, perhaps, is the idea of scientific reductionism, that everything in the natural world can be explained in terms of more fundamental phenomena, and that those in turn can be further explained in terms of still-more-fundamental phenomena, etc. (In fact, its turtles all the way down.)
What goes along with the reductionism is an interesting aspect of abstraction: when we talk with each other and explain things, we are always explaining then at some level of abstraction. Good explainers, good teachers, good technical presenters, are all able to choose a level of abstraction that will suit their audience.
There's also a manifestation in this reductionism of the idea that many, many, many ideas in a scientific explanation of the natural world are interconnected in uncountably many different ways, forming an interlocking understanding of what's going on. Crackpot theorists–let's include "intelligent-design" creationists and global-warming deniers–never seem to understand this, being quite willing to overthrow part of the system or replace it with some absurd notion they've dreamed up without regard to all the other connections said idea has in the vast web of scientific ideas. (This was something I was trying to get at in my posting "The Majestic Unity of the Natural World", but I don't think I managed very well. I'll have to give it more thought someday and try to say it all more clearly.)
But that's enough background for this 7-minute segment, ideas that came to me while I listened and might trigger something while you're listening.
2. Villa-Lobos: Bachianas Brasileiras #5, for Soprano & Eight Cellos
This is a short piece piece in two parts, "Aria" ("Cantilena") and "Danca (Martelo)", that I love to play for people who have never heard it. It exists in many arrangements but this, I believe original form, with accompaniment by eight celli is my favorite, and not just because I'm a cellist.
We will listen to the first part, the "Cantilena", a song without words. The harmonies and pizzicato lines merge to give the most remarkably rich timbre, and the melody can haunt me for days. After a contrasting middle section, the lyrical opening is reprised with the soprano humming, an effect that always gives me tingles, particularly the final note of the piece. (About the piece with an image of the opening page; from a website devoted to Villa-Lobos.)
This is a beautiful performance that I only discovered this evening, by soprano Bidu Sayão. One commenter tells us that she was the soprano for whom Villa-Lobos wrote the piece in 1938 (the first movement; the second was added in 1945), and that Villa-Lobos was conducting the ensemble, featuring Leonard Rose as the solo cellist, for this performance. Evidently it's an earlier recording but the presence of the sound is quite nice and it's easy to hear all the parts in the cello ensemble (compared to many performances that tend towards muddiness).
3. Feynman on Trains
After that refreshment, we're back to Feynman from the same BBC series. This is a very short (2 minutes) but very fun segment in which Feynman asks the question you didn't even know needed asking: "What keeps the train on the track?", and then gives the answer that even elicited a "humph" from me. (Clue: "Did you ever see the differential on a train?") I think I'll be using this explanation at dinner parties for some time to come.
In: All, Friday Soirée, It's Only Rocket Science, Music & Art
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on Sunday, 9 August 2009 at 23.57
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Sure enough, the train differential explanation was fun and fascinating. Nowhere else do I learn such things. Thanks.