Reviews for An orchestra conductor's guide to repertoire and programming

The average rating for An orchestra conductor's guide to repertoire and programming based on 2 reviews is 4.5 stars.

Review # 1 was written on 2018-06-11 00:00:00 Malcolm Haggerty This well-written book is a fantastic way to begin a study into the continuities and breaks in the European conceptions of madness from ancient Greece until the late 20th century, particularly as they appear in medicine and in literature. It contains an abundance of fascinating resources, many of which I had never heard of, and which I cannot now wait to read. Despite all that, there were a few problems with Thiher's method and phrasing that, considered together with his general critical astuteness in matters of historical meaning making, constitute more than superficial nit pickings. One is the fact that Thiher has bookended this study with "women's concerns". He generally holds the thesis throughout the book that the dominant continuity in the Western concept of madness is that it is a "break with logos", with language, or with the public community. He correctly remarks that women have been throughout history de facto excluded from patriarchal logos, but then only really discusses these concerns at the beginning in Greece and at the end in modern France. One is left wondering how the analogies or the equivalences between women's exclusion and madness were made in the two millennia between. Connected to this is the fact that Thiher more or less acts like race and civilization don't exist. This is a huge mistake in a historical survey of Western concepts of madness as the colonial subject (or the "savage" or "primitive") were also excluded from the human community, seen as animals (exactly like the mad), and considered unable to reason. Further, theorists of eugenics and other racist sciences (which he did mention in this book) already made analogies between the so-called "savage" and the mad, so it feels more like an elision than a missed opportunity. One could also say the same about slavery in the US, but, since he mostly stays in Europe, the colonial situation is the one really lacking here. He never mentions the colonies, or race at all for that matter. Lastly, given that this book problematizes the various historical concepts and systems of reason/unreason, sanity/madness, or however it was divided at a particular time, it was troubling to me that he occasionally throws in a phrase like "the certifiably mad" or "the truly insane" when describing someone like Artaud. Of all books, this one should have exchanged these phrases for something like "those considered truly mad" or "those called insane" or something like that. To say "truly insane" implies that there exists some transhistorical and essentially real pathology that merely changes names throughout history, which is something Thiher does not believe, if I read him correctly. This is likely because, for all his concern with the notions and systems defining madness, he rarely talks about the power relations between those considered mad at any time, and those whose job it was to deal with them. Perhaps this is why he did not mention the antipsychiatrists nor the survivor-led movements of the mad in the 60s and 70s. He gives such power relations the most attention when he arrives in the modern era, and mentions that Rimbaud and other poets rebelled against the new police authority of psychiatry. I'll grant him that this police power is perhaps a different topic altogether. Social/political management certainly relies on and utilizes medical authority, but its theoretical aims are at least technically different. Nevertheless, if one's goal is to examine literary usages of madness, as Thiher's was, then I believe he should have paid more attention to how these power relations came to be, and why. Connected with this last point, I don't think Thiher earned the ability to begin using "psychosis" in the last few chapters of the book without defining what that means in his eyes. He just begins throwing it in and discussing different theories about it. He does at one point say that it is akin to dreaming, a "creation of the imagination" or a break with reality, but these are all heavy philosophical statements, which he basically just took at face value. Questions that arise out of this could include the following: What is reality and how is it determined? Is this "break" equivalent to or fundamentally different from former concepts of madness as a "break with logos"? (in other words: is the "break" with reality also a "break" from logos?) How are we to consider those who have "psychotic symptoms" but do not "break" at all, like voice-hearers, or vision-seers, or those who believe they are receiving messages but who function essentially normally in the world? Are they "psychotics" or must they be unable to communicate to be called such? None of this is made clear in Thiher's book, but just taken for granted. Perhaps this last point is asking to much of an already packed volume, but it is something that bothers me about all authors who use the word "psychosis" and do not define exactly what it is they mean. In my experience, the more familiar one is with the writings of the "mad" and the more in-person conversations one has, the less the pure notion of psychosis as fantasy or "break" holds any meaning, especially when one considers that such a lack of ability to communicate is, in every case I have ever seen, a temporary point through which a person passes in and out of. Viewing such a phenomenon as a point of a total narrative adds a whole other layer (and one could continue adding layers when one considers such breaks as breaks between people and not simply as something residing in one person. In other words, all "breaks" are breaks within a family structure, a school, a work place, a friend group, a society, a culture, and so on) to the concept of "madness" largely unexplored in this book, and which is impossible to approach when one imagines there are people who just are psychotics.

Review # 2 was written on 2021-05-14 00:00:00 Igor Susekov Very extensive history of madness, detailed description of medical and philosophical schools of thought. The chronological order, vast explanatory passages and overall good summary of all important points make this a go to work of reference.