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There are two intellectual bugbears which do wreak some historiographical havoc. Mr Taruskin has a profound distaste for obscurity in all its forms; Schoenberg, in particular, seems to be the object of a personal vendetta. He also deeply mistrusts the system of patronage which has proved such a mixed blessing throughout music’s long history. The intellectual sources for these prejudices are, however, impeccable. Mr Taruskin’s feeling about music is that it is neither pure entertainment nor pure formal play. Instead, he makes every effort to show the degree to which music not only reflects life but participates in it. The misleading debate on “progress” is studiously ignored. The result is a refreshingly open-ended view of contemporary music-making that puts many of his predecessors, Burney among them, to shame. Copyright © 2009 The Economist Newspaper and The Economist Group. All rights reserved. -135-
Benson Aug 13th 2009 From The Economist print edition Benson, England’s best-loved fish, died on July 29th, aged about 25 SWNS.COM PETERBOROUGH, in the English Midlands, is a red-brick town, best known as the midway point on the line between King’s Cross and York. But from the bottom of Kingfisher Lake, just outside it, urban toil seems far away. There, all is most delightful silt and slime. A push of your probing nose sends up puffs and clouds of fine mud through the water. A riff of bubbles rises, silvery, towards the surface. The green reeds quiver, and sunlight ripples down almost to the depths where you are lurking, plump and still. Such was mostly the life, and such was the address, of Benson, England’s most famous fish. Her actual place of birth, as a wriggling, transparent fry prey to every frog, pike and heron, was never known. But at ten, when she was stocked in Kingfisher, she was already a bruiser. And there, among the willow-shaded banks, she grew. And grew. At her peak weight, in 2006, she was 64lb 2oz (29kg), and was almost circular, like a puffed-up plaice. Bigger carp have been seen in Thailand and in France; but she still amounted to a lot of gefilte fish. In her glory days she reminded some of Marilyn Monroe, others of Raquel Welch. She was lither than either as she cruised through the water-weed, a lazy twist of gold. Her gleaming scales, said one fan, were as perfect as if they had been painted on. Some wag had named her after a small black hole in her dorsal fin which looked, to him, like a cigarette burn. It was as beautiful and distinctive as a mole on an 18th-century belle. Her lips were full, sultry or sulking, her expression unblinking; she seldom smiled. Yet the reeds held fond memories of her friend Hedges, her companion in slinky swimming until she, or he, was carried away in 1998 by the waters of the River Nene. Abandoned, she ate more. She devoured everything. Worms, plankton, crayfish, lily roots, disappeared down her toothed, capacious throat. She was a one-fish Hoover, motoring through the food-packed sludge and through rich layers of sedimentary smells. But she was offered daintier and more exotic fare. Cubes of cheese, scraps of luncheon meat, bread crusts, Peperami, dog biscuits and tutti-frutti balls all came down invitingly through the water. She sampled most of them. Of course, she was not fool enough to think they came from heaven. Carp are cunning, a very fox of the river, as Izaak Walton said. She could see the lines, and at the end of them the trembling shadows of Bert, or Mike, or Stan, spending an idle Sunday away from the wife with a brolly and a can of beer. Often -136-
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Search Requires subscription Econom
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Politics this week Aug 13th 2009 Fr
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Business this week Aug 13th 2009 Fr
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KAL's cartoon Aug 13th 2009 From Th
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Asia’s rebound has several causes
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democratic region. But Brazil’s l
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World trade and commercial aircraft
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Galileo, four centuries on As impor
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Correction: America's sex laws Aug
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SIR - You mentioned the slaughter d
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Professor of the history of art Sch
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Their arrival coincides with, and i
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and integrated well.) Peru has beco
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Clean energy in the Midwest Greenin
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The economics of natural gas Drowni
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meetings on health reform planned f
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Drought in Texas Not a cloud Aug 13
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Rich animals The dog will have his
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twice the national average. But it
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international institutions and the
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Energy v environment in Canada Bomb
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further sanctions. Yet it is doubtf
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egistered voters are frauds. Yet Mr
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Australia's opposition His own wors
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Taiwan's typhoon Taiwan's disastrou
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Banyan The Burmese road to ruin Aug
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Fatah and the Palestinians Fresh fa
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Iran and human rights The crackdown
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Security in Iraq A return to the ba
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Ethiopia's resilient prime minister
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America and Africa Hillary (not Bil
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Southern Italy's ills The messy mez
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Copyright © 2009 The Economist New
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Italy's vigilantes On the beat Aug
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crisis-driven entanglement in banks
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colluded with the Russian patriarch
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Prospects for recovery Mervyn's rea
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Conservatives will be fighting over
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advanced to scale down much. If the
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Scotland's capital and recession Pa
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Edinburgh festivals Fringe-onomics
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Bagehot Love in the time of swine f
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Correction: Teaching in Britain Aug
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Page 124 and 125: Thinking space Another way to encou
Page 126 and 127: Detecting habitable new worlds The
Page 128 and 129: The history of science Kepler's wor
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Page 132 and 133: prose, having gone from Uighur to G
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Page 136 and 137: Football and economics Game for gee
Page 140 and 141: she continued to lurk, roiling the
Page 142 and 143: Output, prices and jobs Aug 13th 20
Page 144 and 145: The Economist commodity-price index
Page 146 and 147: Trade, exchange rates, budget balan
Page 148 and 149: Markets Aug 13th 2009 From The Econ
Page 150: Office vacancy rates Aug 13th 2009
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