Sorry dang, but I have to disagree. Nothing about this site design is "too common to be interesting." The whole thing is highly irregular. In an extreme case like this, the weirdness of the layout has to be considered a *principle feature* of the website, not a side distraction. Another commenter mentioned Time Cube, and that's not far off.
Commenters are correct that the whole thing reads like a meta joke, where the site itself is a mess. We have to at least consider the possibility that the author is in on the joke.
Petition to eliminate this stub, and merge this discussion of *the website's primary distinguishing feature* into the main conversation.
My understanding is that for centuries after Bach's death, they were disregarded. They were seen almost as etudes, for cellists to use for practice to hone their technique. They didn't really gain their current status as respectable concert pieces until Pablo Casals dug them up in the early 20th century and produced his classic recordings.
> My understanding is that for centuries after Bach's death, they were disregarded.
Not exactly.
Bach died in 1750. At this time the "market" for music was going through big changes. In Bach's time the main customers for music were courts of barons and kings and municipalities. That's the career he had, a musikmeister.
But look deeper and you'll see an economic landscape changing: the rise of cities, merchants, financial capitalism, etc. A bourgeoisie was rising and consuming music in concert rooms, opera houses and for private playing. But this bourgeoisie had different tastes. They didn't have a deep musical instruction so they preferred more "pop" music: easy to listen, easy to play, easy to follow. Bach's music is the opposite of it. It was out of fashion.
Bach's sons followed this simplified style. Most of all, Carl Philip Emanuel Bach was big into it. He got so good at this that he became an instructor and mentor to both Mozart and Haydn.
But Carl never stopped adoring his father music and used Johan Sebastian Bach (his dad) material for teaching. So J.S. Bach was widely known and venerated among musicians, including Beethoven.
However, the public recognition of Bach's worth only began when Mendelssohn made public presentations of his masses, in 1829. But this was 37 years before Pablo Casals was born.
Yeah, that mostly tracks with my understanding. But can both of our stories be true?
The initial obscurity of the cello suites was part of the larger disregarding of Bach's work, in the shift from baroque to classical style. But did the "re-"regarding of the cello suites happen at the same time as Mendelssohn? Or did Mendelssohn only start the process, by rediscovering a few good pieces, while other pieces like the cello suites waited another ~hundred years?
The composers went in and out of fashion after their deaths.
My understanding is that both Mozart and Schubert started to fall out of fashion in the early to mid 1900s for being "lightweight" and just stepping stones to Beethoven. It took some dedicated musicologists from Britain who championed them in the 50s to really solidify their standing in music history.
I also believe we are now seeing a resurgence of interest in Salieri in part thanks to the movie...
The cello wasn't a popular solo instrument. Pablo Casals was a celebrity who made the instrument a much bigger deal. The cello suites rode on his celebrity.
As were the Partitas and Sonatas for unaccompanied violin. It wasn’t until the great 19th century violinist Joachim began playing them in recitals that they came to light again. Even then it was not widely accepted. I believe it may have been George Bernard Shaw who had pretty harsh words to say about the very idea of treating these works seriously. My daughter is preparing for her conservatory auditions; and these works are now compulsory literally everywhere!
Yes! The Gavotte en Rondeau from the 3rd Partita is probably my favorite Bach piece, beating out even the cello suites. Here's a lovely performance by Kavakos: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UNy9fH7VaV4
Hilary Hahn did the same thing a few years ago. In one case, played a movement from a sonata that wasn't in the program, and in another replayed a movement from earlier. Both very interesting, and fantastic performances!
I play viola, and usually it's only the cello suites that are played on viola. But I fell in love with the sonatas and partitas. They're just incredible. The only one that I ever learned fully and performed was the second partita. Of course, on viola you have to play them down a 5th but they still work beautifully and sound great.
One of the more straightforward things you can buy is a "value" index fund, which will tend to be more durable / low beta / lower P/E / a bit more recession-proof. The tradeoff is lower vol and lower* returns -- you'll partly miss out on the rest of this big run-up.
Value funds are widely available (often paired with the opposite "growth" funds), and you can put some money there if it helps you sleep. The concept might already be oversubscribed, idk, but at least it's simple and you're still owning equities at 1x, no weird derivatives. It's not a big fancy ripoff like some sort of "structured product" that you'll get if you ask your question here of a self-interested financial advisor.
If you think you've got too much Mag 7, you could also go for small and midcap funds. Often means higher beta & vol, but less concentrated. But who knows, aggregation theory might still not yet be fully played out, and the giants could keep eating more and more of the pie.
Bond funds have a place, too.
* Or maybe not, see reducesuffering's comment below.
I know there's consensus that smaller caps are actually higher beta and thus higher risk. However, I don't believe there's any consensus on value being lower beta, less risky, or less returns. After all, large cap and mid cap value also outperformed total market: https://www.portfoliovisualizer.com/backtest-asset-class-all...
I think it's still accurate to say that you'll lag the total market during the run-up, right? So anyone buying value should be prepared for that feeling of FOMO, in exchange for long-term peace of mind.
Then again, the beta on your small cap portfolio is 1.04 (higher than your mid/large cap portfolio .93). This matches my intuition: going for value means lower beta, but going small means higher beta. So for small cap value, these effects sort of cancel out and you end up slightly above 1.
Altogether, small cap value is an interesting choice. Not bad.
No that wouldn't be accurate either, as a total market bull run like '91 - '96 or definitely '01 - '07 still had value outperforming. There's enough uncorrelated returns that it's too tough to say how it will behave during each decade.
Yes, I agree 99% of financial funds are rip offs with 1% fees and dubious payout. Personally, only 0.10% or less total market index funds make sense to me, but Small Cap Value as a low cost index strategy could be an ok addition.
Yes, that's absolutely the allusion. Brautigan's line is a popular title for stuff, including a widely read post by Dario Amodei two months before the CCC talk you've linked:
Commenters are correct that the whole thing reads like a meta joke, where the site itself is a mess. We have to at least consider the possibility that the author is in on the joke.
Petition to eliminate this stub, and merge this discussion of *the website's primary distinguishing feature* into the main conversation.