DEFERENTIAL VALUES in Relation to Other People (Week 6) GLOBAL EMOTION THOUGHT ACTION VALUE CONVICTION ATTITUDE Avoiding Harm Non-malevolence Acknowleding the Other’s Humanity Restraining Fairness Common Ground Tolerance
Value for Tuesday of Week 34 in the season of Interlude
Advocating – Championing
Juliette Schlucter, patient advocate
Hector Concepcion, little league coach
Advocating on someone’s behalf – championing them – is a way of standing up.
- All advocacy is, at its core, an exercise in empathy. [attributed to Samantha Power]
- I’m not running from the left; I’m running from the bottom. I’m running in fierce advocacy for working-class Americans. [Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez]
- I’m passionate about people. I’ve spent my life in advocacy. People matter – whether or not we agree on the issue, people matter. [attributed to Ann Marie Buerkle]
The task of pleading a case is not reserved for lawyers, who are not the only ones skilled in that art. Each of us is an attorney-in-fact: the parent advocating for a child, a student defending a thesis, a worker requesting a raise or better working conditions. By standing up for our children, we teach them to stand up for themselves.
Real
True Narratives
Clarence Darrow, the iconic trial attorney of the early 20th century in the United States.
- John A. Farrell, Clarence Darrow: Attorney for the Damned (Doubleday, 2011).
- Andrew E. Kersten, Clarence Darrow: American Iconoclast (Hill and Wang, 2011).
- Clarence Darrow, The Story of My Life (1932).
- Clarence Darrow (Edward J. Larson, ed.), The Essential Words and Writings of Clarence Darrow (Modern Library, 2007).
- Clarence Darrow, Crime: Its Cause and Treatment (Thomas Y. Crowell Company, 1922).
- Donald McRae, The Great Trials of Clarence Darrow: The Great Trials of Clarence Darrow: The Landmark Cases of Leopold and Loeb, John T. Scopes and Ossian Sweet (Harper Perennial 2010).
- Donald McRae, The Last Trials of Clarence Darrow (William Morrow, 2009).
Margaret Thatcher, prime minister of the United Kingdom in the late 20th century, was an advocate for her causes:
- Charles Moore, Margaret Thatcher, The Authorized Biography, Volume One: From Grantham to the Falklands (Knopf, 2013): “The excellent first volume of Charles Moore’s official life of Britain’s only woman prime minister made the question of Thatcher’s gender the animating force behind the story: how this grocer’s daughter from an unfashionable part of England overcame the prejudice of the times and her party to become Conservative leader, and then battled the skepticism and constant slights that implied that as a woman, not least a lower-middle-class one, she wasn’t up to the job of running the country.”
- Charles Moore, Margaret Thatcher, The Authorized Biography, Volume Two: Everything She Wants (Allen Lane, 2015): “This new volume opens with Thatcher reaping the political rewards of her success, winning a thumping 144-seat parliamentary majority at the 1983 general election, and covers the four-year period up to another comprehensive victory in 1987 when Thatcher became the first British prime minister since Lord Liverpool in the 1820s to win three successive elections.”
- Charles Moore, Margaret Thatcher, The Authorized Biography, Volume Three: Herself Alone (Knopf, 2019): “Pairing this puritanical approach to politics with a devotion to the adversarial method that her training as a barrister had inculcated . . . Thatcher, who relished the cockpit of the House of Commons as much as she was repelled by the consensual processes that cabinet government ultimately demanded, saw politics as an exercise in advocacy, in which the truth would emerge from the clash of ideas and policies. Her duty was to push for the truth as she saw it; let others do the same.”
Other advocates:
- Roger Steffens, So Much Things to Say: The Oral History of Bob Marley (W.W. Norton & Company, 2017): “As the New York Times pop music critic Jon Pareles once wrote: ‘Bob Marley became the voice of third-world pain and resistance, the sufferer in the concrete jungle who would not be d’enied forever. Outsiders everywhere heard Marley as their own champion.’”
- Nicholas Buccola, The Fire Is Upon Us: James Baldwin, William F. Buckley, and the Debate Over Race in America (Princeton University Press, 2019): “The proposition before the house was: ‘The American dream is at the expense of the American Negro.’ For Baldwin, who would roll his eyes more than once during the debate, the question indicated glaring ignorance. The American dream was a nightmare from which he was trying to wake. For Buckley, the American dream was a giant bootstrap that American blacks refused to employ.”
Technical and Analytical Readings
Photographs
Documentary and Educational Films
- Howard Zinn: You Can’t Be Neutral On a Moving Train, about the noted advocate for progressivism
Imaginary
Fictional Narratives
And now, men and women of America, is this a thing to be trifled with, apologized for, and passed over in silence? Farmers of Massachusetts, of New Hampshire, of Vermont, of Connecticut, who read this book by the blaze of your winter-evening fire, — strong-hearted, generous sailors and ship-owners of Maine, — is this a thing for you to countenance and encourage? Brave and generous men of New York, farmers of rich and joyous Ohio, and ye of the wide prairie states, — answer, is this a thing for you to protect and countenance? And you, mothers of America, — you who have learned, by the cradles of your own children, to love and feel for all mankind, — by the sacred love you bear your child; by your joy in his beautiful, spotless infancy; by the motherly pity and tenderness with which you guide his growing years; by the anxieties of his education; by the prayers you breathe for his soul’s eternal good; — I beseech you, pity the mother who has all your affections, and not one legal right to protect, guide, or educate, the child of her bosom! By the sick hour of your child; by those dying eyes, which you can never forget; by those last cries, that wrung your heart when you could neither help nor save; by the desolation of that empty cradle, that silent nursery, — I beseech you, pity those mothers that are constantly made childless by the American slave-trade! And say, mothers of America, is this a thing to be defended, sympathized with, passed over in silence? [Harriett Beecher Stowe, Uncle Tom’s Cabin, or Life Among the Lowly (1852), Volume II, Chapter 45, “Concluding Remarks”.]
Novels:
- Louise Erdrich, The Night Watchman: A Novel (Harper/HarperCollins, 2020): “. . . the issue of authenticity is paramount. Erdrich retakes the lead by offering the reader the gifts of love and richness that only a deeply connected writer can provide. You never doubt these are her people.”
Poetry
Music: Composers, artists, and major works
Édouard Lalo, Cello Concerto in D minor (1876) (approx. 23-28’) (list of recorded performances) was composed “in collaboration with the talented Belgian cellist Adolphe Fischer (1847-1891) who was the soloist at the work première the following year at the Cirque d’Hiver under the baton of Jules Pasdeloup. The programme was a great success and a week later it was repeated.” “The work is brilliantly written from a cellistic perspective, as it showcases the deepest register as well as the brightest.” It “is remarkable for the assuredness with which Lalo keeps the soloist in the foreground as protagonist.” Great recorded performances are by Starker & (Skrowaczewski) in 1962, du Pré (Barenboim) in 1967, Harrell (Chailly) in 1985, Jesús Morales (Jaime Morales) in 2007, Moser & PKF Prague Philharmonia (Hrůša) in 2015;, Müller-Schott (Bloch) in 2021, and Vogler (Domenech) in 2023.
Susana Baca has compiled a long and distinguished career singing Afro-Pervian and other South American music. “Although many of her songs are based on traditional forms such as the landó or vals, she also incorporates elements of Cuban and Brazilian music.” Here are links to her playlists, a live concert, and a presentation to her contributions to Afro-Peruvian music.
System of a Down is a metal/rock group known for its members’ political activism and opposition to injustice. “All members of System of a Down grew up in Los Angeles’ Armenian-American community and each had family who survived the Armenian Genocide (1915-1923). The ongoing denial of the genocide by the Turkish government highlighted to them how injustice can persist without the political will to stop it.” “For (Serj) Tankian, whose outspoken political activism often animates his songwriting, seeking international recognition of the Armenian genocide has been a lifelong and personal campaign. On stage that night in Yerevan he told the story of his grandfather Stepan Haytayan, who was just five years old when he saw his father murdered in the atrocities; he later went blind from hunger.” Here is a link to its releases, its playlists, and some videos, and a documentary film called “All Roads Lead to Yeravan”.
Many conductors have served as composers’ advocates. Examples include John Barbirolli and Adrian Boult for the composer Edward Elgar; Adrian Boult for composer Ralph Vaughan Williams; Herbert von Karajan for composer Richard Strauss; and Eugen Jochum for composer Anton Bruckner. Such advocates sometimes are called champions of the composer. Similarly, in life, an advocate is a champion for a person, organization or cause.
- John Barbirolli conducting Elgar: Symphony No 1 in A-flat major, Op. 55; Symphony No. 2 in E-flat Major, Op. 63; Enigma Variations and Pomp and Circumstance Marches; and “The Dream of Gerontius”
- Adrian Boult conducting Elgar: Symphony No. 1 in A-flat major, Op. 55; Symphony No. 2 in E-flat Major, Op. 63; Enigma Variations, Op. 36; “The Dream of Gerontius”; and Nursery Suite
- Adrian Boult conducting Vaughan Williams: Symphony No. 1, “A Sea Symphony”; Symphony No. 2, “London”; Symphony No. 3, “A Partoral Symphony”; Symphony No. 4; Symphony No. 5; Symphony No. 6; Symphony No. 7, “Sinfonia Antarctica”; Symphony No. 8; and Symphony No. 9
- Herbert von Karajan conducting Richard Strauss: Also sprach Zarathustra; Eine Alpensinfonie; Don Juan; Tod und Verklärung; Metamorphosen
- Eugen Jochum conducting Bruckner: Symphony No. 1; Symphony No. 2; Symphony No. 3 in D Major; Symphony No. 4 in E-flat major, “Romantic”; Symphony No. 5; Symphony No. 6 in A Major; Symphony No. 7; Symphony No. 8 in C minor; and Symphony No. 9 in D minor
Similarly, great artists have championed the music of great composers:
- Artur Rubinstein, Chopin’s piano music: Nocturnes; Mazurkas; Polonaises; Piano Concertos 1 and 2
- Walter Gieseking, Debussy’s piano music: Preludes; Études; Images, Book 1; Images, Book 2
Award-winning albums by individual artists:
- François-Xavier Poizat, “Ravel: The Complete Works with Piano” (2024) (280’): Gramophone recording of the month, November 2024
In 1920, pianist Vladimir Sofronitski married the daughter of the late composer Alexander Scriabin. Then he became perhaps the greatest champion of his works for piano.
The Alessandro Stradella Consort has recorded volumes of music from Alessandro Stradella, including these albums:
- “La Doriclea – Atto 1” (2022) (81’)
- “La Doriclea – Atto 2” (2022) (93’)
- “La Doriclea – Atto III” (2022) (80’)
- “La Circe” (2021) (112’)
- “Cantatas & Serenatas, Vol. 1” (2021) (75’)
- “Cantatas & Serenatas, Vol. 2” (2021) (67’)
- “Lo Schiavo Liberato; O di cocito oscure deità: O di cocito, o d'Acheronte” (2019) (66’)
Compositions:
- Alexander Borodin, Paraphrases (1878-1879) (approx. 33’): here, Borodin advocates for each composer’s style and perspective.
- Eduard Franck, Piano Concerto No. 1 in D Minor, Op. 13 (1850) (approx. 41’): the music drives forward, focused and purposeful. Franck dedicated it to Clara Schumann.
- Zygmunt Stojowski, Piano Concerto No. 1 in F-sharp Minor, Op. 3 (1891) (approx. 34’), was “dedicated to Anton Rubinstein”.
- Barbara Harbach, Civil Civility for Chamber Orchestra with Soprano, Flute, Violin and Piano (2016) (approx. 29-30’) “highlight(s) six women who made a difference in their lifetimes despite prejudice, ignorance, arrogance, and chauvinism, all were quintessential role models.” “Women have historically struggled to achieve their rights in patriarchal societies even from the time of 9th-century Kassia, born in Constantinople into a wealthy family. She refused to accept the dictums for feminine behavior and therefore founded a convent.”
Other albums:
- Kareyce Fotso, “Gwà” (2026) (34'): Confronted by rising violence against women in Cameroon, Fotso went and asked — her mother first, then the old women who keep the memory — and found the gwà: a Bamiléké women's circle more than a century old, built on speech, solidarity, and collective healing through song and dance, whose original purpose was the fight for freedom and which has since dwindled into a party for a new baby. She gathered the testimony of women who had survived violence and made their accounts, not her ideas, the substance of the songs; her own formulation is that these women's stories inspired the album and not the reverse. What she has made is a voice lent to those no one hears — breaking the silence turned into an act of resistance, the stage converted into the circle it describes, and a woman standing up to speak for people who cannot.
Music: songs and other short pieces
Visual Arts
Film and Stage
- Città Aperta (Open City): a film made during Nazi occupation in Italy about “the lives of a group of people living in Rome during the Nazi occupation, after the Germans had declared it an ‘open city’”: the most powerful message here may be in the making of the film
- Salvatore Giuliano: the film advocates a crackdown on organized crime with its portrayal of an Italian crime syndicate