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：The Language of Music
A painter hangs his or her finished pictures on a wall, and everyone can see it. A composer writes a work, but no one can hear it until it is performed. Professional singers and players have great responsibilities, for the composer is utterly dependent on them. A student of music needs as long and as arduous a training to become a performer as a medical student needs to become a doctor. Most training is concerned with technique, for musicians have to have the muscular proficiency of an athlete or a ballet dancer. Singers practice breathing every day, as their vocal chords would be inadequate without controlled muscular support. String players practice moving the fingers of the left hand up and down, while drawing the bow to and fro with the right arm—two entirely different movements.
Singers and instruments have to be able to get every note perfectly in tune. Pianists are spared this particular anxiety, for the notes are already there, waiting for them, and it is the piano tuner’s responsibility to tune the instrument for them. But they have their own difficulties; the hammers that hit the string have to be coaxed not to sound like percussion, and each overlapping tone has to sound clear.
This problem of getting clear texture is one that confronts student conductors: they have to learn to know every note of the music and how it should sound, and they have to aim at controlling these sound with fanatical but selfless authority.
Technique is of no use unless it is combined with musical knowledge and understanding. Great artists are those who are so thoroughly at home in the language of music that they can enjoy performing works written in any century.
：Quebec's demography
The Americas
Quebec's demography
The cradle's costly revenge
Jan 8th 2009 | MONTREAL
From The Economist print edition
A baby bump courtesy of the taxpayer
AS A French-speaking outpost in a predominantly English-speaking continent, Quebec hasalways been sensitive about its demographic prospects. For a long time these wereencouraging. The province was legendary for its families of 15 or more children. Its populationmore than tripled between 1900 and 1960; its relative weight within North America alsoincreased. The revanche du berceau “revenge of the cradle” dreamed of by some romanticnationalists as retaliation for the British conquest of 1759 didn’t seem so far-fetched.
Then came a sudden rebellion by Quebeckers against their Catholic heritage and church-dominated institutions. The birth rate plunged from the highest in Canada to the lowest. By themid-1980s the fertility rate—the average number of children born to a woman—dropped to1.36. Since a rate of 2.1 is needed to maintain a stable population, nationalists, and otherstoo, began worrying about extinction.
This stung the provincial government into action. After much fine-tuning under severaldifferent administrations, signs have at last emerged that its efforts are bearing fruit. The firsteffort was a “bucks for babies” scheme. Parents were paid C$500 $425 at today’s exchangerate and C$1,000 for their first and second offspring respectively; subsequent children earnedas much as C$8,000. But Quebeckers seemed to be unbribable.
So the government stepped in to support child care. While this can cost C$50 or more a dayper child elsewhere in Canada, Quebec offers big subsidies to day nurseries and childmindersprovided they charge parents just C$5 a day increased to C$7 in 2004. Despite long waitinglists for places, the province has developed a reputation as parent-friendly. Parts of Quebecbordering Ontario saw an influx of young families, even though the move involves paying muchhigher income tax.
Even so, the birth rate edged up only modestly. But in 2006 the Liberal provincial governmentof Jean Charest introduced a provision for parental leave that is more generous thananywhere else in North America. And at last the children came. The number of births in theprovince jumped almost 8% that year with a particular bump in January as parents delayedconception to qualify for leave, and then a further 2.6% in 2007. Early figures for last yearshow the trend continuing. The fertility rate has risen to 1.66, still below the replacementlevel but higher than the national average.
“Baby boom is a big word. It’s more of a little bump,” cautions Céline Le Bourdais, ademographer at Montreal’s McGill University. “It will have to be seen over the long term.” Fromthat perspective it may prove unsustainable. Both subsidised day care and the parental-leaveprogramme, which allows parents to take almost a year off at up to three-quarters of theirsalary, have been popular beyond the government’s wildest projections. Their cost is way overbudget. There are now 200,000 subsidised day-care places across the province, each costingabout C$13,000 to the government, and with plans for 20,000 more within two years. Theparental-leave programme, which was forecast to require C$1 billion annually, already costs50% more.
At a provincial election last month Mr Charest managed to win a third term with a narrowmajority having governed with a legislative minority in his second term. With Canada’seconomy sliding towards recession, the fiscal calculus is more complicated. So he may betempted to cut spending on day care and parental leave. Both programmes help to makeQuebec the most taxed and indebted place in North America. But they are popular, and manyQuebeckers see them as a price worth paying to prevent a demographic death sentence fortheir culture.
：act chief executives
Business
Second-act chief executives
Comeback kings?
Jan 8th 2009 | NEW YORK
From The Economist print edition
Steve Jobs triumphed, but most returning bosses do not do so well
DOES Michael Dell, founder of the world’s second-biggest computer-maker, regret going backto run the firm that bears his name? He says not. But nearly two years after returning as chiefexecutive to the troubled firm he had left on a high two years before, he shows no sign ofrepeating his earlier success. On December 31st Dell announced another restructuring and thedeparture of some senior executives Mr Dell had recruited to lead his turnaround. The firm’sshare price has fallen by more than half since Mr Dell’s return.
Meanwhile, at Starbucks, a year after Howard Schultz pictured returned as chief executive,the coffee chain’s share-price has fallen by half and it is unclear whether his new strategy isworking—especially as the recession makes sales data hard to analyse. So far, neither chiefexecutive seems likely to repeat the spectacular second act of Steve Jobs at Apple. Itsshareholders rejoiced this week when, responding to rumours that he was on his deathbed, MrJobs said his health is improving and he intends to carry on as chief executive see article.Since Mr Jobs returned to Apple following its acquisition of another of his start-ups, NeXT, in1996, its share price has grown roughly 20-fold.
Messrs Dell and Schultz and their shareholders can take some comfort from the fact that evenMr Jobs got off to a shaky start the second time around. But there is an ominously long list ofdisastrous second-act chief executives. Kenneth Lay’s second act ended with the bankruptcyof Enron, his trial for fraud and early death. Ted Waitt was unable to revive Gateway, thecomputer-maker he founded, when he returned for a second stint as boss in 2001. Paul Allaire,who successfully ran Xerox during the 1990s, lasted only 15 months the second time around.And so on.
That there are so many disappointing second acts is perhaps not surprising, given the difficultcircumstances in which they tend to begin. According to Rudi Fahlenbach of Ohio StateUniversity, former chief executives typically “come back when the firm is doing awfully”. In arecent study of 60 returning chief executives, he and two other economists found that theytypically replaced bosses under whom the firm’s share price had dramatically underperformed itsindustry benchmark—by 20% a year on average.
The returning chief executives in the study had been particularly strong first time around, andmost had not been retired for long, so they could plausibly claim to have remained familiar withthe inner workings of the firm, making them better placed to revive it than any outsidecandidate. Indeed, most of them including all but two of those studied by Mr Fahlenbach et alwere members of the board that reappointed them, and in many cases the chairman. Strikingly,
Apple’s Mr Jobs was an exception, having distanced himself from Apple after being ousted in aboardroom battle in 1985—a separation that may have contributed to his second-act success.
This raises a troubling question: did most of these returning executives ever really leave? Anddid they contribute to the poor performance of their successors? Their presence on theboard may have hindered initiatives that they regarded as threatening their legacy.
Elvis has not left the building
“There was no alternative,” said Charles Schwab after returning as chief executive of thefinancial-services firm of the same name in 2004. “There was really only one person in the worldwho could do the things required for the company.” Well, maybe: the firm’s share price hasdoubled since he returned, despite the financial crisis. But having a successful predecessorsitting on the board and, as is often the case with second-act chief executives, a bigshareholder to boot cannot have made life easy for David Pottruck, who had taken over fromMr Schwab in 2003.
Intriguingly, many chief executives whose poor performance prompts their predecessors toreturn—75% in the Fahlenbach study—were internal appointments, often hand-picked by thereturning boss. Their failure typically became clear very quickly: on average, they were gonewithin two years. This suggests that many second-act chief executives deserve some of theblame for the problems they have to fix, if only because of inept succession planning.
In some cases returning chief executives remain so close to the helm of the firm that dismissingtheir successors and making a comeback is largely scapegoating. At Starbucks Mr Schultzreplaced Jim Donald, and promptly changed the firm’s strategy—but the rapid expansion thatgot Starbucks into trouble was Mr Schultz’s strategy as much as Mr Donald’s, says JeffSonnenfeld of the Yale School of Management. Indeed, it is said that Mr Donald was in MrSchultz’s office twice a day to check he was doing the right thing.
Two crucial questions must be asked before a chief executive is allowed a second act, says MrSonnenfeld. First, does he or she have a strategy that is more than a “quest to recaptureheroic stature”? Too often bosses, like generals, dislike being away from the heat of battle,and use their past heroic status to undermine their successors and lobby for their ownreturn.
Second, is the returning manager able to avoid being blinded by past triumphs? Mr Jobs isfamously unsentimental, and took being forced out of Apple as an opportunity to think afresh.This may be the crucial test for Mr Dell who, after all, gave his name not just to the firm but toa whole business model just-in-time, made-to-order manufacturing using an outsourcedsupply chain, key elements of which have since been adopted by his competitors.
To his credit, Mr Dell has consistently said that a new model is needed to revive his firm; hisdifficulty has been finding one. Cost-cutting, selling in shops as well as online, a push intodeveloping markets and hiring some prominent outside executives have not worked. Perhapspromoting some Dell insiders will.
By contrast, Mr Sonnenfeld fears, Mr Schultz may be too nostalgic, trying to revive the oldStarbucks strategy of creating a “third space in life for lingering coffee drinkers”. Maybe. Yet astrategy of closing outlets opened during a period of overexpansion, introducing healthieroptions and improving customer service got McDonald’s out of a very similar crisis a few yearsback. Messrs Dell and Schultz both risk tarnishing their strong reputations with unimpressivesecond acts. History may be kindest to bosses who quit while they are ahead—and do not comeback.
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