inevitably stain our love of the music or the painting? How do we weigh the life against the art? 6 How much pain – not only of the artist but of those close to the artist – is creativity worth? 7 Miles Davis’ life was great because any consideration of the sources, effects and meaning of creativity must include his achievements, 8 but also because he confronts us with the problem of how to evaluate great art created by a man whose treatment of women was so often deplorable. A few words about this year’s contributions. While most of the essays were produced as extended essays or EPQ dissertations, several were written for prize competitions. The pieces by Messrs Al- Saheal, Dewe, Kochhar, Lerner, Lo, Sinclair and Tang were all entered for the inaugural Friends of Dulwich Essay Competition . Faris Al-Saheal was awarded the 2 nd prize; the rest were highly commended. The contributions of Messrs Leung (on immigration), O’Connell and Todd were all written for this year’s Erasmus competition. Again, all were highly commended. Finally, in the Popper Prize, Thomas Callaghan (of year 10) was awarded 2 nd place for his essay on the (ir)rationality of fearing death. I sometimes muse that Semantron will be a valuable source for future cultural historians, revealing as it does the concerns and anxieties of the day, especially as experienced by young people. Of particular interest in this issue, seen in a number of essays, are the various relations and trade-offs between prosperity and economic growth, on the one hand, and sustainability, democracy, equality and fairness, on the other. The representation of power, especially how it relates to identity, continues to be seen as an important topic, as does the marvellous variety of scientific achievement (in this issue there are important contributions about chirality, genetics, neural development, quantum). Not so common is the topic of death but in Semantron 26 you can read and enjoy two very different pieces, though they are both broadly philosophical.
Once again, I hope readers will enjoy the impressive range and ambition of the work reproduced here.
6 Dederer 2024 is a (good) starting point. 7 Dyer (1991) – arguably the best book written about jazz – highlights the addictions, mental health difficulties, and prison terms of jazz players in the middle of the 20 th century (pp. 197-8): ‘But still the damage wrought on jazz musicians is such that you wonder if there is not something else, something in the form itself [my italics] which exacts a terrible toll from those who create it. . . from the 1940s onward jazz advanced with the power and ferocity of a fire sweeping through a forest. How could an art form have developed so rapidly and at such a pitch of excitement without exacting a huge human toll?’ 8 Miles Davis is also important when considering the racism experienced by black musicians in the USA (he was beaten by a policemen while having a smoke outside a jazz club). Quite a few of the jazz musicians of the middle of the 20 th century found that they were treated with unfamiliar respect in European countries. Some chose to base themselves in Europe as a result; Miles Davis himself fell for the French actor and singer, Juliette Greco. There is a surprising passage in Billie Holiday’s autobiography (1956), in which she is full of praise for the then recent NHS, an example, she says, of a country treating all people with respect. Another way in which Miles Davis is a good starting point for a consideration of racism and black music is his attitude to the blues (that some find surprising). He always found it patronising that white people assumed that the ability to play the blues was based on black suffering. Riffing on the lyrics of Summertime , Davis said ‘My daddy was rich, my ma was good-looking.’ Davis has also provoked discussion as an artist who insisted on black faces on the covers of his records, and as a black fashion icon.
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