My insomnia has returned as of late, so, the other night, I decided to fill up a few sleepless hours by rewatching my very favorite movie of all time. And I realized that, apart from a passing cameo in this old review, I’d never really written about my very favorite movie of all time.

I first saw David Lean’s 1962 magnum opus Lawrence of Arabia in the spring of 1989, when Robert Harris’s restoration screened at the late, only-mildly lamented McClurg Court Cinemas in downtown Chicago. (The theater’s 70mm projection and sound system were, at the time, the best in the city, but the place was pretty charmless otherwise.) It immediately became my favorite movie.

It is not for everybody, I know. It’s long. There’s a whiff of a white-savior narrative about it (though I would argue that one of the great things about the movie is how thoroughly and loving it sets up that trope only to thoroughly and ruthlessly dismantle it). As history goes, it’s iffy (though, in its defense, it got me interested in the actual history of the region and the era, which is complex and revealing and fascinating and—thanks to our staggeringly corrupt and incompetent administration—once again, depressingly relevant). But it has stayed at the top of my personal list. I watch it at least a couple of times a year. If it’s showing in a theatre anywhere within an hour’s drive, I am there. It’s one of a handful of movies of which I never grow tired. It’s one of an even smaller number of artworks in which I never seem to reach an endpoint; every time I see it, I notice something new.

Beyond that, it’s just about the only movie that, even though I know exactly what’s coming and exactly what’s going to happen, still lands, for me, with something close to its original impact. It took me a long time to figure out why. It’s because Lawrence of Arabia is a deeply musical movie. I don’t mean literally, sonically (though the sound design and music are great). I mean structurally. It is a subtly but relentlessly symmetrical movie, in a way familiar to any freshman music-history student. Lawrence of Arabia is a movie in sonata form.

Think about sonata form: you start off with a theme in a given key (however you’d like to define that) which is then followed by a bunch of new themes in new keys. This creates formal tension, which is resolved in the second half of the form, when all those themes return, but, this time, all in the original key. Now look at Lawrence: it’s a rise-and-fall story, the two halves neatly demarcated by an intermission. During the rise, every scene is, in effect, a new theme: new subjects, new characters, new locales, new complications, constantly modulating from mood to mood and place to place as the story progresses. In the second half, the same themes and characters return, but now everything is cast in the key of Lawrence’s downfall, his hubris and its effects on him, those around him, and history.

I suppose you could could say that a lot of movies or narratives follow this pattern, in a very loose sense. The difference is the extent to which Lawrence of Arabia commits to the pattern. It’s not loose at all. For every significant scene in the first half, there is a corresponding scene in the second half that mirrors it—thematically, textually, visually, even down to the composition of the frame and the camera angles.

Here’s an example. In the first half, Lawrence, played by Peter O’Toole, convinces Sherif Ali ibn el Kharish, played by Omar Sharif, to gather a group of Arab warriors and mount an attack on the Turkish-held port of Aqaba. In order to do this, they must cross the Nefud desert, a hazardous undertaking. They make it, but when Lawrence notices that one of their party has been lost in the desert, he insists on going back to find him, a foolhardy risk that dismays Ali. But, of course, Lawrence does rescue the man. That night, as they rest, Ali asks about Lawrence’s family, and Lawrence informs Ali that he is, in fact, illegitimate, to which Ali responds that Lawrence is, then, free to choose his own fate.

Note the composition here: Lawrence and Ali, in front of a fire, Lawrence under a blanket, Ali listening. At the end of the scene, Lawrence lies down and Ali pulls the blanket up over his shoulders. Ali then proceeds to throw Lawrence’s army uniform on the fire. And then there is a hard cut to Lawrence, resplendent in his new, dazzling white Bedouin robes.

In the second half of the movie, Lawrence embarks on another foolhardy adventure, a reconnaissance mission into the Turkish stronghold of Deraa. No success: Lawrence is captured, tortured, and assaulted. Later, as he recovers, we once again find Lawrence, lying in front of a fire, as Ali pulls the blanket over his shoulders.

Lawrence tells Ali that he was wrong, that he can’t choose his own fate, that he’s just an ordinary British soldier and that he’s going to leave the Arab army. There’s another hard cut: to Lawrence, at headquarters, back in his army uniform. The two sequences are virtual mirrors of each other. (Even literally—toward the end of the first scene, Lawrence turns and falls asleep facing away from the camera; in the second he remains facing toward it.)

Once you start looking for this pattern in Lawrence of Arabia, you see it everywhere. But I don’t think you’re supposed to notice it. Apart from a few more obvious examples—the fact that the movie begins and ends with motorcycles, a pointed callback to Lawrence seeing his face reflected in a dagger—you’re meant to feel it, to feel a sense of these larger forces playing out, and the arrogance and futility of one man thinking that he can somehow defy them. And it works so, so well. It’s a tribute to the robustness of sonata form. Lawrence of Arabia is, after all, a story of failure, a narrative that could have easily turned into a numbing slog. Instead, its encroaching bleakness is tempered and balanced by the satisfaction and even exhilaration of feeling the form resolve in such a thoroughgoing and disciplined way. 

(Speaking of problematic white-guy-in-foreign-lands narratives, a fun fact: McClurg Court was named after Alexander McClurg, the turn-of-the-last-century Chicago publisher and bookseller who first published the Tarzan novels of Edgar Rice Burroughs.)

(By the way: that Walt Dickerson album up at the top? Legitimately good stuff. Features a pre-Cecil-Taylor-Group Andrew Cyrille on drums, having all kinds of sneaky far-out fun.)

What Have I Been Practicing?

Frédéric Chopin, Prelude in f-sharp minor, op. 28. no. 8. This is one of the Preludes that I never fully learned—in this case, because I am an impatient man, and persisted in trying to put the two hands together before they had been sufficiently drilled in isolation. But with my left hand still on the mend, I am finally in a position to force myself to give the right-hand part, at least, the attention it needs.

I love the Preludes immoderately, and have for most of my life. I’m pretty sure they were the first piece of sheet music I bought for myself, the Joseffy-edited version, in one of those crappy stapled-newsprint Schirmer “student editions” that proliferated in pre-IMSLP days. (It’s still the copy I use, although the cover fell off about twenty years ago, and I’ve had to tape in photocopies of the last few pages.) They’re quintessential Chopin but also gloriously weird Chopin, highly polished and deeply awkward at the same time. (No wonder 12-year-old me was into them—aspiration and reality, side by side.) The Preludes are Chopin’s version of McCartney II: what you get when a restlessly creative musician sequesters themself away and indulges their most curious instincts. (And, yes, I have an immoderate fondness for McCartney II as well.)

Once I started composing in earnest, I found another way to love the Preludes: a handful of them, to my ear, represent some of the greatest instances of a composer turning yesterday’s leftovers into today’s special entrée. Because, come on, that eighth Prelude is totally a bootleg étude. And the fifteenth is a bootleg nocturne! (So is op. 45.) Waste not, want not, &c.

(Speaking of McCartney II: if you don’t already, you should know that NME, the British music magazine, has been uploading a whole bunch of back issues to the Internet Archive, and they are glorious. I jumped in and promptly found this ad for the single release of “Temporary Secretary”:

Seems like something that might come in handy down the line.)

What Am I Listening To?

Just in time for Holy Week, François Couperin’s Leçons de ténèbres, in this new recording by Le Concert Spirituel, conducted by Hervé Niquet (which also features music by Chien, Charpentier, and Lalande). Nobody wrings expression out of half-step inflections like Couperin le Grand. The Leçons are packed with secondary dominants and major-minor sidesteps that exist solely for their decorative shimmer, the melodies bobbing and weaving with chromatic footwork that never derails the momentum. It’s like watching a particularly daring bicycle messenger nonchalantly dart through rush-hour traffic.

As you can hear from that live performance, the one unusual thing about this recording is, unlike every other one I’ve ever heard, even the first two solo-voice Leçons are sung by a full soprano section, in unison, rather than just a single singer. As long as we’re making pop-music comparisons: between that and the unapologetic use of vibrato, it kind of gives off ABBA vibes. Works for me. After all, I suppose this, in its own way, is a Tenebrae service, too.

I, too, have spent the past week wondering just what is going on at the Boston Symphony Orchestra. To recap: on March 6, the BSO Board of Trustees and president and CEO Chad Smith released a fairly terse statement announcing that the contract of music director Andris Nelsons would not be renewed, as conductor and organization “were not aligned on future vision.” The move apparently caught Nelsons by surprise (“not the decision I anticipated or wanted”) and was made without consulting the orchestra’s musicians. Theories as to why have coalesced around two possibilities:

• a) Nelsons, who is also the Kapellmeister of the Leipzig Gewandhaus Orchestra and, of late, has been spending a lot of we’re-just-good-friends quality-time with the Vienna Philharmonic, had stretched himself too thin to keep adequate eye on the store in Boston, with a corresponding drop-off in focus and quality (we’ll call this the “David Allen conjecture”)
• b) Smith, who was hired away from the Los Angeles Philharmonic in 2023, has been itching to revamp the BSO’s programming into something more like LA’s, with more pops-leaning crossovers and post-modern, audience-friendly new music, but has been stymied by Nelsons’ insistent devotion to the European canon (we’ll call this the “you’re-not-from-here postulate”)

You can debate these on the merits (Allen’s diagnosis of decline, for example, might be a bit of correlation-causation confusion; from the start, Nelsons struck me as a kind of Reggie Jackson of conductors—lots of home runs, lots of strikeouts). To be sure, there have been hints that a Smith-Nelsons partnership was not built for the long-term. But that still doesn’t explain the abruptness of the announcement. (Pure speculation, but my own wager would be that this has a great deal to do with the imminent departure of vice president of artistic planning Anthony Fogg, who is retiring in September, leaving an enormous hole in the BSO’s administrative apparatus. If CEO and music director were in a high-noon standoff over Fogg’s replacement, I could see the board panicking and turning an “ease him out” situation into a “rip the band-aid off” situation. But again: pure speculation.)

Among the Nelsons-friendly and more Boston-centric comment boards I’ve been perusing, Smith already has been cast as the heavy in this drama, a top-down corporate outsider imposing an unwelcome agenda. (This take assumes that the unaligned future vision mentioned in the board’s announcement is option b) up there.) Out of curiosity, I went back and took a look at the trustee-board committee that picked Smith to be the CEO. It looked like this: medical research institute administrator, foundation director, arts administrator, corporate governance lawyer, private equity partner, philanthropist, and arts administrator (and former BSO member). It’s a group, I think, symptomatic of the tension at the heart of American orchestra governance, where governing boards are expected to be fundraising machines, fiduciary watchdogs, and artistic stewards all at the same time. On the one hand: if you’re hiring an administrator, that’s the kind of expertise you want in the room. On the other hand: that’s a largely corporate crowd, making a corporate decision-by-committee—not exactly a recipe for out-of-the-box innovation. It’s probably going to land on a corporate candidate.

(Incidentally, lest you think that a gathering like that is some sort of 21st-century late-capitalist perversion of the BSO’s mission, here’s the lineup of BSO trustees ca. 1950: lawyer, judge, investment banker, paper executive, real estate broker and philanthropist, church administrator, car dealer and politician, investment banker, advertising executive, lawyer and academic, media executive, education administrator, lawyer, judge, lawyer. That there were at least three people on Smith’s hiring committee with professional-level musical training is significant progress, for what it’s worth.)

Still, if Smith really is aiming to plug-and-play some facsimile of the LA Phil ethos in Boston, he might want to sit down over a two-hot-dog combo with one of the people who hired him.

Joshua Lutzker—the private equity guy in that list—has been a BSO trustee since 2014. He is a managing director at Boston-based Berkshire Partners. In 2014, Berkshire Partners, in a deal worth right around a billion dollars, acquired Portillo’s, a Chicagoland chain of hot-dog-and-Italian-beef stands. Lutzker was part of the team than landed the deal, and he has served on the Portillo’s board of directors ever since, shepherding the company through both an IPO and a nationwide expansion. (Though it was announced just this week that, with the appointment of a new CEO, Lutzker will be leaving the board. History doesn’t repeat but it rhymes, &c.)

How’s that expansion going? It’s going… just okay. On paper, the Portillo’s acquisition must have seemed like a slam-dunk. Founded in the 1960s, the chain only had a handful of outposts until the 1980s, when it aggressively expanded throughout Illinois. With all locations under central management, rather than being franchised, processes and quality-control were locked-down and consistent. And Portillo’s made a heap of money. At the time of the sale, the Chicago Tribune reported that the average Portillo’s location was pulling in 7 to 8 million dollars in annual revenue, three times your average McDonald’s. Berkshire Partners looked at those margins, thought of all the ex-pats that had fled Chicago winters for warmer climes out of state, and signed the check.

It turns out, however, that the concept is not quite as portable as all that. Newer Portillo’s locations outside of the Chicago area make money, but nowhere near as much money as those in Chicago. Here’s some per-location numbers from around the time of the company’s 2021 IPO (source):

That’s a nearly 50% drop in revenue once you leave Chicago. And here’s a revealing graph from a Portillo’s investor presentation in 2022:

That graph seems to me to be as good an illustration of how an LA-style revamp of programming might fare in Boston. And it’s for similar reasons. The off-the-charts revenue of Portillo’s in Chicagoland is not just an indication of quality, or value, or even long-term brand awareness, but of just how much demand there already was in the area for what Portillo’s is selling. (Both Chicago-style hot dogs and Italian beef sandwiches have been around since at least the Great Depression.) Likewise, the audience the LA Phil has been cultivating for the past 50 years is not quite the audience that the BSO has been cultivating for the past 50 years. Would there be an audience for what the LA Phil is doing in Boston? Absolutely. Would it be as large and enthusiastic as the audience there already is for what the BSO is doing? That, I’m not sure. You could build that audience, but that is a long-term project.

Anyway, spending all this time with Portillo’s financial data has made me realize the true scandal here: Lutzker has been on the board since 2014, but there’s still not a Portillo’s at Tanglewood? Come on, people.

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What Have I Been Practicing?

My writing procrastination has been formidable this winter, so I came up with this conceit as a way to prod myself into writing more, since I’m always working on some piece of music, which means I’m always thinking about some piece of music, and, given the way my skull-bound hamster wheel tends to turn, those thoughts often lead to something divertingly weird. And then, as soon as I decide to put this plan in motion, what do I end up having to practice? One-handed hymns.

I tripped and fell last week—overconfident American face-planting right in front of H-Mart, I am a metaphor for something—and busted my hand. (Avulsion fracture with dislocation of the fifth metacarpal, if you’d like to wince along at home.) Fortunately, a merciful stretch of the church calendar means I can get by for the time being on five fingers, two feet, and some creative registration. I will hope for a more practical splint in time for Holy Week.

Is there anything to learn from such ad hoc accommodations? Yes, as it turns out: a real physical sense of the origins of gospel music. Because if you take the bulk of 19th-century Protestant hymnody and shift the top three voices into the right hand—as you would do if you were, say, at the piano and wanted to bang out the bass line in octaves—a lot of typical gospel voice-leading starts to happen without even trying. I had sort of made this connection, theoretically, but there’s nothing like accidentally recreating a genre from first principles to drive it home.

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What Am I Listening To?

Naomi Akimoto’s album One Night Stand, released in 1982. I always find dealing with medical things to be a little surreal, so some surreal music felt appropriate. As with Akimoto’s debut album, Rolling 80’s (also from 1982), the track list of One Night Stand—all old-time jazz standards—might suggest that it is an exercise in retro torch-song nostalgia. (The original label on One Night Stand called it “teen-age romantic jazz.”) And, as with Rolling 80’s, it is not. Akimoto’s languorous voice, the glass-and-neon production (by pop mavens Tetsu Hoshika and Daiko Nagato) and the arrangements (uncredited, but I suspect by composer and saxophonist Yasuaki Shimizu, who did the similar arrangements on Akimoto’s first album) reposition all this repertoire at the crossroads of neo-big-band swing, gleaming 80s Tokyo city pop, and experimental electronica. When it works, it’s kind of amazing.

Here’s the thing, though: even when it absolutely, objectively shouldn’t work, it’s somehow equally amazing. Turn up the volume, click this link, but DO NOT LOOK AT THE TITLE. I promise you will never, ever, ever guess what song you are about to hear. (Even well into the verse, I was still not quite able to bend my mind around it.)

Akimoto made six more studio albums in the 1980s before embarking on a long and ongoing acting career; beyond a handful of jazz flourishes on The 20th Anniversary (also from 1982, full marks for work ethic), those later efforts abandoned the Your-Hit Parade-Julie-London-with-synths recipe. Her first two albums remain strange, singular outliers. I am glad they exist. Anytime I want to hear a “Tennessee Waltz” that sounds like a newly-sentient Speak-and-Spell glitching out on designer drugs, I know where to go.