Why We Sport

With the exception of this month–long quadrennial tournament, tomorrow’s championship game is the most widely watched sporting event in the world.  For that reason, we digress for one afternoon on the subject.

“Sports replace armies and dreams, and although many people derive from them a form of vicarious pleasure, it is excellence that attracts many more.  Grace and excellence.  It is a sense of imagined community and common beliefs and wishes, and is as important territorially as any district line or catchment area.”

Whether you believe the statement above, quilted together from innumerable sources, is less important than the unchallenged place of sports in a society that often discourages antagonism.  Competition, you see, is what made us into the most intelligent life form on this lonely planet, and we would be denying our inner need to excel if we relegated ourselves to more peaceful pursuits and more private achievements (if we used our athletic abilities, for example, to cope with the dangers of urban living and to help those in need in urban crises, which are the aims of this discipline).  Granted, maybe you shouldn't take that last sentence at face value, but what’s in a name?  Sport is shortened from disport, which persons of very choice vocabulary might use to describe amusement or diversion, more evident in the Spanish equivalent.  A few of us are entertained by clashes, by miniwars between evenly matched opponents whose every move may decide the outcome.  Others seek commonality in what they watch: their fellow fans are a sort of surrogate family that rises and falls in unison.  Should sports be a struggle or a bond?  It should be, and is for most adherents, a bit of both.      

Sports are certainly an outlet for violence and frustration, and we needn’t belabor how many of our highly evolved species exhibit signs of bestiality.  Watching something intensely athletic or even ultraviolent, a term apparently coined by this writer, gives us a sense of the Darwinian struggle, of the fittest and the leanest and their right to claim supremacy.  The vanquished foe, someone whom we will never know away from the battlefield, represents the fall of the unjust, of those destined to lose and bow before superior strength.  We hold that superior strength.  We raise our arms to heaven in victory when we halt injustice and evil and hatred and when we champion the triumph of some higher power.  Our wishes have been met, our squad has captured a title and a piece of history (or at least a place in the annals), and all other teams become easy targets of our year–round discontent.  I suppose the majority of sports fans secretly harbor no ill will towards the opponents they jeer and mock, but there is great satisfaction in ventilating the tension of the day on rich young men whom we will never get to know personally and who, in any case, couldn’t care less about what we thought of them.      

Often, these brave new worldbeaters can be seen thanking that higher power for allowing them to win.  Many cynics find such displays of gratitude disingenuous, probably because they don’t thank anyone for anything and believe that they alone are responsible for their lives and accomplishments.  Clearly, many athletes who indefatigably refuse to offer their services unless they squeeze another few million out of their teams are not quite as pious as they may claim; one particularly laughable accessory is a cross or crucifix laden with every gem and precious metal that taste would permit.  Even if separating the righteous from the wicked (insert alternative hyperbole here) is absolutely none of our business, we still find, among the hypocrites and moneymen, players who remain gracious and meek in the face of their extraordinary talent.  These young men should be especially admired because they are surrounded by temptations at every platform of their profession and, as celebrities, are almost coerced into behaving badly (Who, tell me now, finds modest and thoughtful players interesting?  Players humbled by the fact that they have succeeded while the multitude fail?  A few of us, I suppose). 

 

These men — in this country, around the world, in the smallest of society's campsites — are teammates, wear identical uniforms, and work towards shared accolades, but they are no longer of the same ethnic heritage.   No pictures of the French or Dutch national soccer teams are needed to prove that point, nor to explain the policies of centuries ago that resulted in this multiculturalism.  Yet let us remember how exceedingly rare it is to be able to root gladsomely for something apolitical and transcultural, where race, religion, gender, age, native language and homeland mean absolutely nothing.  True, a certain parochial flavor obtains in local rivalries, or even those between two great American cities; but globalization and telecommunications have advanced to such a point that we lucky Jims and Janes now have near unlimited possibilities for living and working where we choose (we being, albeit, still a fragmentary minority), and fans can follow their teams from all the ends of the earth.  Regardless of their distance or the likely fact that they are no longer able to watch the games live, they still feel part of an imagined community, a brotherhood and sisterhood of similar goals. 

 

These affiliations may not replace nations at war, although we would all benefit if they did.  Occasionally, maybe even more often than that, the inflamed passions of patriotism are tempered by smaller divisions and victories.  How often do we hear of better work environments on Monday morning after a local team's victory over the weekend (and the attendant apathy on the heels of defeat)?  Considering how uninvolved we are in each other's lives, and how society affirms that we are all victims who have experienced unique suffering and difficulties, what is wrong in finding an abstraction that gives us a reason to smile kindly upon our cubicled neighbor?  This desire for microsuccess and camaraderie is not, and should never be, anything deplorable.  Some may find it odd that a person like myself, devoted to a long life of learning, would be at all interested in sportsmanship.  But it is precisely a connection with persons I cannot meet that reminds me of our common interests: peace, equality, fairness, and a healthy dose of ambition.  Some (maybe those same some) think that fandom is primarily for underachievers who, enfeebled by a lack of skill or initiative, decide to let others strive and take vicarious pride in those milestones.  Admittedly, a lot of hero worship persists.  That is why the Hellenes had gods of every capacity, why medieval varlets looked upon galloping warriors with such blissful acceptance, and why today we have innumerable leagues of superheroes, one of the most curious collective abstractions in human history.  Whatever the truth may be, we may agree to admire those who can do things we could never possibly accomplish, and yet still work towards our own goals.   There is no mutual exclusivity in this proposal.

 

The turning point in a man's maturity is the exact moment he realizes he will never become a professional athlete, and some men, as we know, never quite arrive at this juncture.  I am certainly proud when I root, but it is ironically the quiet pride of the parent or guardian or teacher that prevails, one that understands that we, as fans, have little to do with any team’s on—field success.  Yet we do have a say in preserving the societal value of sports as a method of learning teamwork, pride, dedication, discipline, and patience, of being gracious in victory and wanting to play the game by the rules.  And most of all, of learning how to lose.  Because loss will always be our building block for strength.

Anticipating the Original of Laura

Is there a greater thrill for a bibliophile than the publication of a newly discovered work by a deceased author he admires?  All literary criticism, bad and good, feels much more comfortable with the dead than with the living, and not only because the dead cannot tell them how foolish and misbegotten their analyses are.  There is, inevitably, a wholeness (especially if the writer reached a decent old age) to the oeuvre of a writer which mimics life’s own swerves and shapes.  From the brash and roguish writings of youth to more pensive middle age, to silver–haired masterpieces, to the last recounting of a long journey into night, a writer’s oeuvre is his photo album, diary, résumé, and testament.  Unless his time on earth was engulfed by extraordinary savageness or sensationalism (and we know the adage on that point), he will only be remembered for the papers he chose to engrave.  Once he is no longer around, his next life, that of a literary figure, may truly commence.    

As such, there has been more than a bit of idle chatter regarding the unpublished manuscript of this great polyglot, none of it, alas, conclusive.  After the same argument is repeated in paraphrase about a dozen times, it is then for some reason suggested that the best justification for adhering to the author’s final wishes to burn The Original of Laura would be that the half–work might endure undeserved critical silliness (as if, we suppose, his other works do merit such scrutiny).  If Nabokov, a fastidious mastermind, got as far as is claimed — roughly thirty normal pages, so maybe about twelve or thirteen thousand words, although this remains pure speculation — one can be sure that the quality of the production will be at the same standards as readers have come to expect.  The only foreseeable drop–off would be in structure, those artificial beams and bridges that often do not materialize until all pertinent details have been mapped.  Yet Nabokov was just as accomplished an architect as he was a portrait painter, a rarity in our age of overspecialization.  And although he famously claimed to have rewritten everything he had ever published at least a hundred times, his clarity of phrasing is evident even in his correspondence and discursive writings.  If anyone were to be protected by the fortress of his own talents and unable to tarnish his image with any posthumous palimpsests, Nabokov would be among the most likely to survive unscathed.

Nevertheless, if these recent rumors are well–founded, his son, translator, and literary executor Dmitri appears to be engaging in a game of handy–dandy.  Encumbered by a number of burdens, not the least of which is the maintenance of his father’s artistic integrity in the face of shifting critical winds, the younger (73–year–old) Nabokov would have burned the document by now if he had really wanted to do so.  After all, July marked the thirtieth anniversary of his father’s death.  Clearly, waters have to be tested, and maybe a bit of creative padding needs to be inserted before we get to see the semi–finished product (a few years ago, some impatient scholars decided to get a jump on the competition).  Having spent a decade working in Nabokovia, my understanding is that we will see the pink elephant in the end, although it will still be dripping with distemper.  Nabokov conceded that he would be remembered primarily for his unorthodox translation of Pushkin’s Eugene Onegin (which he justified by Chateaubriand’s rendering of this most sublime of all human creations), and this notorious novel which first brought him censure then worldwide and everlasting glory.  Since soothsayers seem to think that Laura and Dolores Haze are cousins or at least distantly related, a literary executor steeped in the riches and diversity of his father’s works might chafe at the prospect of further Lolitology.  Such is the price of fame and, of course, of original genius.

*Note: The work in question has indeed been published.  You can find a review on these pages.

Christoph Eschenbach

A translation of an interview with Christoph Eschenbach, one of the world's most renowned conductors who will be stepping down as head of the Philadelphia Orchestra after this season.   You can read the original here.

With the Orchestre de Paris and the Philadelphia Orchestra, Christoph Eschenbach heads up two of the most well–respected musical entities in the world.  And both have been recent recording partners with him on the independent Finnish label Ondine.  The conductor spoke with Jörg Hillebrand about his orchestras, his records, and his preference for contemporary music.

A small portrait of Richard Wagner painted by Pierre Auguste Renoir in Palermo in 1882 hangs in the Musée D’Orsay.  In it we see the composer mild in his old age, his face without any sharp edges, with slightly blurry contours.  If this view of Wagner could be translated into music, the result might be exactly what one would get to hear at the Théâtre du Chatelet in Robert Wilson’s production of “The Ring Cycle” taken over from Zurich.  The Orchestre de Paris, which so rarely does opera and is unaccustomed to such long stretches of playing, sat in its pit relaxed and in deep concentration.  There was no visible strain.  At times, true enough, the mammoth score was transformed into sound, in any case without that assiduous overexplictness in the leitmotivs that one has come to experience in most productions.  The orchestra sound became ever louder, ever brighter; in the fortissimo, almost garish.  In the pianissimo, on the other hand, it became mysteriously shaded.  The sound had little depth, almost no weight, coming off all the more thick on the surface as a result.  Chamber music refinement over long stretches.  One word comes to mind: de–Germanization.

At the music stand is Christoph Eschenbach.  His upper arms are still close to his body, his forearms still flapping nervously, his wrists still turning in that incomparable way.  Outwardly, he hardly seems changed at all, even when you stand right in front of him.  His long, bald head is ageless; his body’s stature as small as a boy’s.  He resides on marvelous Marceau avenue, that leads south from the Arc de Triomphe to the Seine, on the top floor of a building constructed in 1914.  Breathtaking art nouveau marks the furnishings of the maisonette–apartment, with wrought–iron lattices on the surrounding gallery and a gold–colored fireplace.   This all contrasts the modern art on the walls.  

Jörg Hillebrand: Mr. Eschenbach, the last time we met for an interview it was also about Wagner, more specifically about your debut with Parsifal at the 2000 Bayreuth festival.  Why didn’t you return the year after that to the “Green Hill”?

Christoph Eschenbach: I couldn’t fulfill the second year of the contract because I had a back problem (attested to by a doctor), lower spine pain that made itself known rather severely when I conducted sitting down.  And in Bayreuth you’ve got to sit when you conduct.  Otherwise the brass section in the deepest part of the pit won’t be able to see you.  My turning it down was in no way connected to the affair in 2000 which ended with Hans Sotin’s departure.  I wasn’t mad at anybody.  Wolfgang Wagner behaved himself superbly in this whole matter.  He stood by me and advised me as to how we should proceed together.  My hat goes off to him!

JH: Well then, as a sort of compensation, your first “Ring.”  What, in your opinion, is the message of the tetralogy?   

CE: It’s about the state of the world and the state of the gods.  Both situations are morose.  It’s about corruption, broken contracts, oaths, perjury, and swindles and deception.  It’s also about “dope,” about drugs.  In short, it’s about everything that’s ghastly these days.  But nevertheless, at the end, there’s a glimmer of hope.

JH: Do you have any role models among the Wagner conductors of the past?

CE: I got to see quite a bit, even in Bayreuth.  As a student, I spent many summers in the orchestra pit, even sitting in the middle of the score and observing the conductors from the front.   I got to see Knappertsbusch, Böhm, Cluytens, the young Maazel and the young Sawallisch.  But for the “Ring,” I emphatically wiped everything that was there out of my head.  The only thing remaining was the score.  And all of a sudden it wasn’t that hard to learn the piece or to find a personal approach to it.  I didn’t even listen to any records, because I really wanted to tackle it from a new angle.  If  you can mention anything akin to a role model, it would be von Karajan’s “Ring,” which lacks Knappertbusch’s weightiness and blackness and offers a very large array of colors.      

JH: Is it hard to play Wagner with French musicians?

CE: No, not at all.  They were completely prepared beforehand.  Many of them came with scores to the first auditions.  And from the first reading to the last “Twilight of the Gods,” not one musician called in sick.  I’m very proud of my orchestra.  The musicians are completely impassioned by this work, and they’ve told and shown me that in many different ways.  It’s really something that, even still before the last performance, a bass group is sitting and practicing in the pit one hour before the show, or that an English horn player is warming up an hour and a half before we start.

JH: You’ve been conducting the Paris orchestra for about six years now.  Our reviewer Manuel Brug once classified it as notoriously second–rate.

CE: That’s not true.

JH: How would you categorize the orchestra qualitatively and with respect to its repertoire in the French music scene?

CE: In France, it’s quite obviously the best.  And I’ve really diversified the program as far as the repertoire is concerned.  Incidentally, my predecessors (for example, Barenboim) also did that, but I introduced even more Neue Musik.  And right at the beginning, I invited Marc–André Dalbavie to be the composer–in–residence.  We’ve performed world premieres by Dusapin, Manoury, Matalon and other French composers, as well as pieces by contemporaries from other nations.  For example with Truls Mørk, we just put on the world premiere of a cello concert by Matthias Pintscher.  It was a stupendous piece, very broad and long, almost like a cello symphony.

JH: Marc–André Dalbavie was the composer–in–residence for the lengthy period of four years.  What do you like about his music in particular?

CE: The spaciousness.  At first he composed more spectral pieces in which orchestra groups were divided up in the audience or on different tiers.  And in the pieces that were no longer spectral, he managed nevertheless to bring in this feeling of space, either in some form of  “Color” or “Ciaccona.”  I’m fascinated by it.  I’m fascinated by the space around music in general.  How space sounds.  I don’t mean the concert hall, but the space in and of itself, the amplitude of musical declaration.

JH: Let’s jump over the big pond to America, but let’s stay with Neue Musik.  As principal conductor in Houston, you rendered outstanding services to your American contemporaries, as well as allocated numerous composition contracts.  And in your opening concert as Music Director of the Philadelphia Orchestra, you’ve already gotten the ball rolling with the world premiere of Gerald Levinson’s “Avatar.”  What role does contemporary American music play in your programs?

CE: A large one, although I try to avoid what principal conductors of other American orchestras do, i.e., concentrate exclusively on American music.  Because to me American music is not that terribly interesting.  The regression in style and the desire to make yourself loved by the public are traits I can’t stand.  Many composers that were once good now unfortunately tend to do this.  But there are today still a few good ones, for example Peter Lieberson.  Augusta Read Thomas is particularly good and I’ve already given her many contracts.  One time in Hamburg I worked her into the program with Mozart’s Requiem.  I started by breaking off in the middle of the ninth bar of “Lacrimosa” and went right into a similarly set up choral work by Augusta.  It was an enormous success.  In Philadelphia, on the other hand, it was far from an enormous success.  Here you can see that the audience’s taste is heading in the wrong direction.  But I’m slowly getting my audience in Philadelphia also used to composers like Rihm and Pintscher.

JH: You’ve been letting composers introduce their works to the Philadelphia public.  Has that helped in their understanding or enjoyment of the works?

CE: Yes, very much so.  Just the fact that I say three words then call the composer up on stage has a certain show effect.  I remember Oliver Knussen asking beforehand: “What am I supposed to say?  It’s all spelled out in the program.”  I said: “You don’t need to say a word about the piece.  You can talk about your grandmother.”  Which is exactly what he ended up doing.  All that needs to be proven is that the composer is alive, that he’s a human being and not some sort of monster.   That breaks the ice.  After that, the audience experiences the piece in a different way than they would have otherwise.  

JH: Last year the Philadelphia Orchestra signed a three–year contract with Ondine, which provides for the orchestra to produce the master recordings itself and let the record label see to the rest.  What’s the explanation, in your opinion, for this unconventional setup?

CE: First and foremost, the orchestra wants to keep the recordings in its possession.  You don’t shell out an enormous sum in advance only to let the record label take over everything.  The orchestra is highly involved in the licensing.  And should it come to pass that the project’s not working out, someone else could be called in or they could do the whole thing themselves.

JH: On the occasion of your first recording together, our reviewer Attila Csampai wrote that the spirit of Eugene Ormandy still marks the orchestra’s character and that you felt seemingly at home in that tradition.  Do you?

CE: I don’t feel at home in any tradition, but I select traditions in order to analyze them better.

JH: Does Ormandy’s ghost still haunt Philadelphia?

CE: No, that’s only in people’s imagination.  If there are any ghosts, there’s Stokowski’s.  Stokowski experimented a lot with the orchestra.  He introduced “free bowing.”  That’s when string players don’t carry out a simultaneous bow change and can use more than one bow stroke per tone, which yields a bigger sound.  That’s what Ormandy took over.  Of course, he definitely left his mark in his forty–four years of conducting the orchestra.   But come on: these are new musicians.  Maybe three of them played under Ormandy.  
 
JH: Your first recording with the Philadelphia Orchestra for Ondine was also your first production on SACD.  Do you see in this medium the future of classical recording albums?

CE: Yes, of course.  I think that in a year’s time, there’ll hardly be any recordings that don’t use this system.

JH: What advantages does multi–channel technology give classical music recordings?

CE: It brings the concert hall into your home.  Even into the homes of older people who no longer go to concerts.

JH: The Philadelphia Orchestra has a relatively new concert hall, the Verizon Hall in the Kimmel Center for the Performing Arts, which opened in 2001.  After your opening concert there in 2003, Wolfgang Sandner in the Frankfurter Allgemeine reported room acoustic problems, particularly regarding the balance between soli and tutti, as well as between the strings and wind instruments.  Have these problems since been dealt with?

CE: The sound in Verizon Hall was very dry and tight at first.  It had to be opened up somehow.  It was discovered that certain mistakes had been committed during construction and that the rules of acoustics had not been observed.  We worked on it a lot together with architect Russell Johnson and his team.  Now the hall sounds very good, actually.  

JH: The next work appearing in Ondine is Tchaikovsky’s Fifth Symphony, which is truly an often–played piece.  The Philadelphia Orchestra alone has recorded it seven times in its history.  What did you do in order to bring out something new?

CE: I didn’t bother too much about tradition.

JH: So again no listening to records?    

CE: No, although I worked in the famous “Philadelphia sound,” which is very good for Tchaikovsky and can be summoned with almost no legerdemain.
                
JH: What else is going to be put out?

CE: We’d like to record some Mahler because the orchestra hasn’t done that in a while.  Ormandy only performed three or four symphonies, Riccardo Muti just one, while Sawallisch didn’t do any.  Now the time has come and the orchestra plays Mahler outstandingly well.  Then we’ll probably continue with some more Tchaikovsky.

JH: Cyclically, thus including the three early symphonies?

CE: That’s my goal because I love them so much.  I can’t say, however, anything more precise about it.  Since the orchestra owns the recordings, it’s very closely linked to the process of the recordings’ coming into being.  We have an “artistic committee” and a “media committee” that both have a say in the matter.

JH: The Orchestre de Paris is also still recording on Ondine.  Four symphonies by Albert Roussel have been announced.  Please introduce this composer to your fellow countrymen.

CE: Albert Roussel is a very underrated composer who speaks in his own language.  The second symphony, for example, is very exciting.  It sounds like music to a Hitchcock film.

JH: Where would Roussel be categorized in the French music tradition?

CE: He’d be somewhat all over the map.  There are, naturally, certain late impressionist aspects, but also some very dramatic eccentricities that really constitute a symphonic cosmos.

JH: In July you’ll be playing with the orchestra of the Schleswig–Holstein festival on double duty as both conductor and pianist for a Mozart piano concert.  And together with Tchaikovsky’s Fifth is the first half of his “Seasons,” your first solo recording in thirty years.  Are you finally returning to the piano?

CE: That’s not what this means.  I might end up mulling over whether I should record the remaining “Seasons” or perhaps other Tchaikovsky pieces.  I might.

JH: What as a pianist have you learned from conducting?

CE: What I used to want to do, i.e. play oboe, cello or trumpet on the piano, I manage to do when I’m on top of my game.

JH: The last time we met, you were Principal Conductor of the NDR Symphony Orchestra, but living in a hotel in Hamburg with a home in Houston still.  Where is your home now?

CE: In Philadelphia.

JH: And where is your homeland?

CE: Inside of me.   A homeland is no place for me.

The Color of Lies

Rare is it that a translated title outdoes the original: director Claude Chabrol released this film as Au coeur du mensonge, "at the heart of the lie," which has a similar if more idiomatic flavor in French. More importantly, the English version suggests that more than one party may be lying, or, as is generally the case with liars, that deceit pervades every aspect of their existence.  We modern beasts like to smear the term "pathological liar" on the untrusted as if such a label weren't redundant. But lying really is a habit and not an exception. Throughout the annals of history, it has remained the easiest and laziest way for us to improve aspects of our lives and dreams.

 

The film is set in this coastal region of France famed for many things, including the shibboleths of the natives. Outsiders and settlers should plan on keeping those credentials for their entire stay. Such is the fate of  René Sterne (Jacques Gamblin), a crippled teacher of drawing, and his wife Vivienne (the always remarkable Sandrine Bonnaire), a nurse whose persistent good humor is as much a product of lifelong study as René's art. They are being watched by a newly promoted police inspector (Valeria Bruni–Tedeschi, soon to become the sister–in–law of this world leader), not only because they, like she, do not belong in this provincial community. A horrible crime (quickly featured in the opening minutes) has also been committed and René, who imparted to the young girl his knowledge of drawing once a week, just so happens to be the last person to have seen the victim alive. 

Regardless of these circumstances, it seems a bit ridiculous to suspect René at all; without his cane and the patience of his wife he would be little more than a wheelchaired invalid. Yet his soul, now almost completely resigned to its dreary end as a failed artist, has little room for mercy or pity, and the subject of its loathing could not be more perfectly represented than by Germain–Roland Desmot (Antoine de Caunes), an overhyped and talentless celebrity writer. Chabrol wisely does not grant us the mildest opportunity of sympathizing with Desmot, because Desmot is a caricature who deserves nothing but contempt. He is foul to his ex–wife on the phone, negligent of their child, arrogant and condescending to the locals, whom he sees as barely evolved past the shellfish they harvest, and lascivious towards the few pretty women in his vicinity. Worst of all, he stands for and believes in nothing except this degradation of the lives of others. Perhaps there is no Tolstoyan truth to be found among these simple folk, but Desmot (whose name is a homophone of "words") has nothing but lies to offer the world both in his books and speech.

Yes, Desmot is more involved than initially suspected, although this admission gives nothing away. What is more relevant are the immediate models for Chabrol's morality tale of the artist against the non–artist (a crystal–clear stratagem), and how unclear the morals in question actually are. There is another tale of, at once, supreme moral justice and moral ambiguity, and the antagonists in that story are an older man by the name of Chillingworth and a young priest called Dimmesdale. Vivienne makes a lovely Hester, both a sinner and readily sinned against and despised. And it is hard to live in truth if the only things people believe about you are all lies.

Silver Blaze

Although this marvelous story derives its name from this lordly animal set to race in this region of England, its most famous line involves another four-legged friend who "did nothing in the night–time."  My edition boasts that this line is the source of the expression, "the dog that didn't bark."  If this is truly the origin (I will not even dignify it with a search, either online or off), then the future of mankind is indeed in troubled hands.  It would be hard to believe that, after thousands of years of cohabitation, we would need an emaciated and neurotic sleuth to tell us that there is something amiss about a guard dog who chooses not to fulfill his duties.  Wait until someone publishes a story featuring a cat who doesn't sleep (again no search, this cat must be out there somewhere) and decides to watch over its owner, and we may coin an even more telling idiom about human nature.  In Silver Blaze, a beautiful silvery steed from this legendary British stock is missing and its trainer John Straker is dead.  Since the horse can rightly be viewed as a sort of piggy bank – or as we say in our waggish slang, a cash cow – it seems logical to assume that the horse has vanished for the sake of the money that will be earned betting against it. 

This gambit has long since been one of the favorites of sports stories: it is just before the biggest competition of the horse's or athlete's career that the prize participant either gets injured or disappears without too much of a trace.  The team or trainer cannot believe the poor timing with which all this has occurred (although, if you're a betting man, this is the only time for this type of thing to occur; we are witnessing this even now before the largest American sports event of the year), and panic and goldfeverish speculation set in.  The investigation, narrated by the faithful and jubilant Dr. Watson (one of the steadiest and most optimistic narrators in literary history), has all the usual components for a great Holmesian tale.  There is the unique locale, either Victorian or early Edwardian London or one of England’s innumerable moors, tors, or hamlets; the somewhat overtasked police force; a handful of potential culprits who all immediately respect or fear the legendary detective; and the impossible crime itself, which in this case begets one of Holmes’s more ingenious solutions.  Apart from the missing horse, the dead trainer, a band of gypsies, a rival stable, a curious late–night visit, some curried mutton, and a set of diverging tracks, the clues are more than peculiar: a box of matches, two inches of a tallow candle, a brier–root pipe, a pouch of sealskin with that particular cut of tobacco called Cavendish, a silver watch with a gold chain, a fistful of dollars (that is to say, these products from the Royal Mint), an aluminum pencil case, a few papers, and a small, delicate knife with an ivory handle.  “A very singular knife,” remarks Holmes.  His medical companion agrees: apparently, such knives are only used for the finest of surgical incisions.  But such a knife could not possibly have been employed as a murder weapon, since Straker was bludgeoned by nothing less than a large blunt object. 

Unlike other adventures in which Holmes abandons Watson for a few pages to gather data or question informants offstage, very little detail is not made available to the reader.  Holmes’s people skills, which he can turn on and off like electric current, are displayed in their fullest form, and his charm and patience have never proven to be more effective.  And there is also that now–immortal dog who decides not to bark on the night of the murder, even though we suspect he might have every motivation to do so.  Had he barked, of course, we would hardly know of him now.  Yet perhaps one day we will instead remember Silver Blaze for Holmes’s revelatory statement that it was, “in the carriage, just as we reached the trainer’s house, that the immense significance of the curried mutton occurred to me.”  Surely, we think, there must be some aspect of human nature that can be embodied by the spiced meat from two-year-old ewes.