The Curse Of Tone Deafness

[dulcinea]

The canonization of the two siblings of Fatima on 13 May was a grand occassion, what with all the people who attended the open air ceremony. Only one thing marred the event: the fact that HH Pope Francis is totally tone deaf and cannot tell the difference between, say, Schubert and Snoop Doggy Dogg.
Is there a cure for such a lamentable affliction, please? King Alphonso XIII was so stone tone deaf that he had to have a courtier by his side on public occassions to tell him to stand to attention whenever the MARCHA REAL was played, because, despite the many times the tune was played in his presence, he could never recognize it.

[jbuck919]

The inability to sing can be attributed to a number of things other than the rare and clinical condition of true tone deafness. Remember that Francis, among other things, has only one lung. I am sure that, shall I coin a term, dyscantia has plagued many pontiffs over the centuries. We have been somewhat spoiled by the last two unusually musical popes and misled because of their world-wide-broadcast singing. Benedict VI, whose brother was the director of the Regensburg Cathedral Choir, didn't have a beautiful voice (well, who can tell when he was so old?), but was always spot on with his intonation.

I am more struck by other things. Francis is the first pope in many centuries who is not an adequate let alone outstanding latinist. When a pope with the education of a Jesuit makes an elementary mistake in delivering a blessing that even I can detect, we know that a very long era has come to an end.

Perhaps more significantly, I do not understand this particular canonization. No news source seems to mention that these two kids died from the great influenza epidemic that took so many. They had no opportunity to progress to what is commonly called the age of reason Their older sister and fellow receiver of the alleged visions, Lucia, lived to a very old age in a convent, and has never been canonized, though a cause is under way. (A cause is underway for practically everyone, except for any lay person living a normal life who could serve as a useful role model of virtue.)

[John F]

I guess this is the definitive word about the pope:

http://www.catholicnews.com/services/en ... e-deaf.cfm

As for sainthood, if it means that God has received the departed into the company of His saints, canonization by mortals is necessarily guesswork, unless the pope claims direct communication with the Almighty. Failing that, seems to me that it's essentially about church politics, the image it projects to its members and the secular world. In the wake of years of sexual abuse of children by its priests, the church's image needs repair.

If the pope is willing to believe that these two pre-teen kids had visions and agrees that this was a miracle (it was officially recognized as such in 1930), nobody on earth can say him nay - he has the final authority. Right?

[jserraglio]

So Pope Francis' intonation doesn't produce earworms. So he can't sound off to perfection in an archaic tongue now used mainly for ritual. Even allowing for a dollop of afflatus, I wasn't aware a Jesuit education conferred such abilities on its recipients.

Many popes have left people cold. They came across as jesuitical without benefit of being Jesuits. Often they sounded tone deaf, even when they were pitch perfect. Francis is not one of those popes. Arguably, he has reached out to more folks outside the Catholic Church than any pope since John XXIII. I like the guy and could care less whether he can chant or pronounce Latin.

BTW, a New York Times story of May 13 does mention that the two kids just named saints died in the European influenza epidemic. https://www.nytimes.com/2017/05/13/worl ... aints.html

And Wikipedia lists quite a few infant and child saints who died before reaching the putative "age of reason". https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_c ... note-frc-1

I am no fan of canonization nor of saints in general, but I do understand the cultic rationale behind the move to canonize the Fatima kids. And hey, hasn't Fatima produced a slew of them there miracles?

[THEHORN]

This is odd, because from all reports, Pope Francis is a big opera fan .

[jserraglio]

This is odd, because from all reports, Pope Francis is a big opera fan .

"Among musicians I love Mozart, of course. The ‘Et incarnatus est’ from his Mass in C minor is matchless; it lifts you to God! I love Mozart performed by Clara Haskil. Mozart fulfills me. But I cannot think about his music; I have to listen to it. I like listening to Beethoven, but in a Promethean way, and the most Promethean interpreter for me is Furtwängler.

"And then Bach’s Passions. The piece by Bach that I love so much is the 'Erbarme Dich,' the tears of Peter in the St. Matthew Passion. Sublime. Then, at a different level, not intimate in the same way, I love Wagner. I like to listen to him, but not all the time. The pebrformance of Wagner’s Ring by Furtwängler at La Scala in Milan in 1950 is for me the best. But also the Parsifal by Knappertsbusch in 1962."

Pope Francis is totally tone deaf and cannot tell the difference between, say, Schubert and Snoop Doggy Dogg.

Francis' favorite author is Cervantes. That should count for something with the author of this thread.

[dulcinea]

??? The WIKI article on AMUSIA lists Pope Francis and Alphonso XIII along with Charles Darwin, John Dewey, US Grant, Theodore Roosevelt and WB Yeats as fellow sufferers of this ailment.

[Wallingford]

Speaking of tone-deafness:

I read in a Stereo Review article from about half a century ago, that Francis Scott Key, who bent and twisted the charming melody of the old English drinking song "To Anacreon In Heaven" to make our national anthem, was tone-deaf. Not only that, but his children and grandchildren supposedly inherited it. (whether this last is really scientifically provable, I have no idea.

[jbuck919]

Speaking of tone-deafness:

I read in a Stereo Review article from about half a century ago, that Francis Scott Key, who bent and twisted the charming melody of the old English drinking song "To Anacreon In Heaven" to make our national anthem, was tone-deaf. Not only that, but his children and grandchildren supposedly inherited it. (whether this last is really scientifically provable, I have no idea.

Amusia, eh? Well, you've certainly succeeded in doing that.

According to the reference in that article, the pope's alleged tone deafness is based on self-reporting rather than clinical diagnosis. As I have implied already, people who can't sing well routinely say "I'm tone deaf" when what they mean is "I lack singing talent or the desire to develop what little talent I have." Tone deafness is not the same as having a tin ear. My informal observation is that the latter condition characterizes at least half the population. I encountered a truly tone deaf person only once in my life. He spoke in a complete monotone because he could not distinguish the ups and downs of normal speech. What someone like that does in a country where a tonal language is spoken, well, I can only imagine.

[dulcinea]

Speaking of tone-deafness:

I read in a Stereo Review article from about half a century ago, that Francis Scott Key, who bent and twisted the charming melody of the old English drinking song "To Anacreon In Heaven" to make our national anthem, was tone-deaf. Not only that, but his children and grandchildren supposedly inherited it. (whether this last is really scientifically provable, I have no idea.

Amusia, eh? Well, you've certainly succeeded in doing that.

According to the reference in that article, the pope's alleged tone deafness is based on self-reporting rather than clinical diagnosis. As I have implied already, people who can't sing well routinely say "I'm tone deaf" when what they mean is "I lack singing talent or the desire to develop what little talent I have." Tone deafness is not the same as having a tin ear. My informal observation is that the latter condition characterizes at least half the population. I encountered a truly tone deaf person only once in my life. He spoke in a complete monotone because he could not distinguish the ups and downs of normal speech. What someone like that does in a country where a tonal language is spoken, well, I can only imagine.

So HH is selling himself short because he can't sing? I can't sing either, but I have such a good ear that once I recognized as a Hummel a piece that I had never heard before just from listening to the very first phrase.

[jbuck919]

So HH is selling himself short because he can't sing? I can't sing either, but I have such a good ear that once I recognized as a Hummel a piece that I had never heard before just from listening to the very first phrase.

I believe you mean "attributed." If you had never heard it before, you could not have recognized it or even identified it.

It is common for otherwise musical people not to be able to sing, i.e., to lack the talent to product their voices to their own satisfaction or that of others. I imagine every member of our little band would own up to some such "deficiency" without being apologetic because what is left that he or she can do is still so considerable and rare.