Instant Encore!

Thanks to Chantal, I learned about this fantastic concert search (and concert broadcast) tool called Instant Encore. Thanks Chantal. That was a lovely Bach Double from Indianapolis.

Irving Berlin's advice to George Gershwin

I have been enjoying a walk through the Past by way of the 1948 edition of Dale Carnegie's How to Stop Worrying and Start Living. Excellent musical and literary references abound in this book, but they are balanced by the 1948 world view concerning the place of women in society (and in marriage), as well as health advice that has been proven harmful in the intervening 60 years. I thought I'd share this reference to Gershwin in the chapter called "Find Yourself and Be Yourself:"

Be yourself. Act on the sage advice that Irving Berlin gave the late George Gershwin. When Berlin and Gershwin first met, Berlin was famous but Gershwin was a struggling young composer working for thirty-five dollars a week in Tin Pan Alley. Berlin, impressed by Gershwin's ability, offered Gershwin a job as his musical secretary at almost three times the salary he was then getting. "But don't take the job," Berlin advised. "If you do, you may develop into a second-rate Berlin. But if you insist on being yourself, someday you'll become a first-rate Gershwin."

Practice Articles of Faith

These Articles of Faith from Erin Russell are so good that I just had to reproduce them here:

Article #1: knocking the problem over the head 1,000 times will yield results. Don't look for magic. Just address the issue over and over again and you will progress, because:

Article #2: it is not about being gifted or smart. There are plenty of morons who get really good at the cello. Maybe they get good because everything is hard for them, so they just apply the same nose-to-the grindstone ethic to the cello that they need for crossing streets, chewing with their mouths shut, and remembering to put their pants on before shoes. I was lavished with the titles of gifted and brilliant as a kid, and I was flattened by people who worked their asses off because talent and blah blah doesn't get you too far. I happen to know that most adult beginners (and Jen is a supreme example of this) are good at a wide variety of things, so the cello is particularly punishing because it rarely lends itself to innate technical ability.

Article #3: unless you take time off, there are no backward steps. I am just filled with metaphor and simile today, so let's keep it up: I think of being proficient at the cello as this 3 dimensional picture that one can observe from many angles and distances. One day, it looks like the details, the next it looks like widespread tendencies. But it's all the same thing, just different aspects. So you pick up the cello and you're really relaxed. That means that you've explored what relaxation feels like in spring, with a wildfire in Pomona, tomato soup for lunch, and Leo in Cancer. Tomorrow? Everything is different. The more angles you are presented with, the more likely you'll be able to bob and weave with the changes life throws at you and your physiology. The key is to find what's common to the experiences and to develop the thread that ties your whole playing experience together.

Article #4: What feels good will sound good. Even if it doesn't at first.

If you hold these articles as true, and then apply them to your practice, you should gain the comfort of knowing that what you are going through IS the process. IS the norm. And if I can talk about this stuff at such length, and bloggers of all different strengths and abilities are chiming in, don't you think that there is a way to muddle inelegantly through it? Just by persisting?

Then when you look back on this baptism by fire, the first time you are actually practicing the whole instrument and not just the notes, you will notice that there is definitely an elegance to simply nodding with patience and silently sharpening your resolve for another day of the Cello Life.

And they apply to any instrument and for any life.

Sharing Henryk Szeryng's Bach

I guess it must have been 16 years ago, around the time I first started playing the violin, that I bought Henryk Szeryng's edition of the Bach Sonatas and Partitas because I loved the way he played them (you can listen to the first movement of the E-major Partita, as well as a lot of other music, on his My Space Page!).

I love his (hypothetical) My Space friends: they're my kind of people. Of course Szeryng was well known for being a really arrogant person: the kind of artist who is best left as a personal mystery. I appreciate Marcel Harvey's comments over at the J.S. Bach Homepage concerning Szeryng's Bach recordings, and I would imagine that many of his 1877 MySpace friends are personally better off never having known the man. In most cases he either died before these friends were born or was born after they died.

But I digress . . .

When I first started working on the Sonata and Partitas I was baffled by Szeryng's choices of fingerings. I simply couldn't do most of them, so I crossed out his fingerings, and replaced them with my own. Recently, after taking some time off practicing the Sonatas and Partitas (including many years of just not practicing the violin in favor of practicing the viola), and devoting at least an hour a day of the past three years to Sevcik, Szeryng's fingerings are magical. They make it possible for me to play in tune, be comfortable, and be expressive. I'm going to take a huge eraser and wipe the whole book clean.

Now leave this post and spend some time listening to the fantastic recordings on Szeryng's My Space page!

Lend Me a Pick Axe

Lisa Hirsch wrote a great article concerning what she calls the "slow dismantling of the compositional gender divide" over at NewMusicBox.

Balanced Left Hand

One of my violin students (the one I quoted a few days ago) came up with a lovely response concerning my analogy that keeping the two middle fingers of the left hand down whenever possible was similar to keeping two feet on the floor. He mentioned how much easier it was to balance on a log using two feet than it was trying to balance using only one. I couldn't find any satisfying photos of people balancing on logs, but I do find the above photo both satisfying and entertaining. I think that it illustrates the principle of a nicely-balanced violinist's left hand rather well. Violin playing is, however, a safer form of entertainment.

That Hillary Show

I have really been enjoying Rosemary Watson's impressions of the newly-crowned queen of West Virginia, and just had to share!

Interesting Demographics

I don't know if this whole set of maps has any basis in reality, but it sure offers an alternative to maps of red states and blue states! You can read the article here. According to the map, I appear to be surrounded by agreeable, extroverteted, conscientious, and neurotic people who are not open to experience. The psychological crossroads of America!

The Vienna Opera Finally Enters the 21st Century

Sometimes it seems like it was only yesterday that I was in Vienna, engaged in a long conversation with a violinist from the Vienna Opera Orchestra who told me that music was no profession for a woman. Indeed, in the Vienna of the early 1980s, there were only a few performing organizations in Vienna that even considered hiring women. Now the Vienna Opera has appointed Albena Danailova as its concertmaster, which means a great deal to those who have endured the backward-looking attitudes towards women in the European orchestras.

Musical Energy

Here is a "transcript" of a post-lesson conversation I had the other day with a 14-year-old student who likes math, music, and scouting. This exchange morphed out of a discussion we had about air conditioning (which his father doesn't like to use in the summer), energy consumption, and renewable energy.

ME: Wouldn't it be great if you could harness musical energy?

HE: Or how about happiness--the happiness that comes from playing music? And you can always make more.

I think that this kid has a bright future!

New Violin and Piano Piece

I have always loved the Ave Maria that Charles Gounod wrote as an obbligato above J.S. Bach's C-major Prelude, BWV 846, from the Well-Tempered Klavier, so I fashioned my own obbligato atop another Bach Prelude, the Prelude BWV 999 in C minor.

I just put a pdf of the music (that you can download, if you want) as well as half computer-generated audio recording of the resulting piece, which I call Cloud 999, on my American Music Center page. (The violinist is not computer-generated: its me.)

New Update: The first Mp3 is blank (it was a totally computer-generated recording that I have now removed), so make sure to click on the second one.

Dumb Luck

I think about how much that is good in my life is due to just plain dumb luck. Sometimes it is even blind (in the case of my first date with my husband), and sometimes it is even deaf, when I have, by chance, picked a recording out of a record store bin (back when there were bins, records, and record stores) that turned out to be something really special. I have had dumb luck with instruments too. My (now ex) Powell flute was made for me, as was my (also now ex) Powell piccolo, and my Rod Cameron baroque flute. I didn't have the option to choose an instrument: my number came up, and I took what each of the makers came up with.

There was luck involved in getting the orders for my flute and piccolo, however. My flute order (there was a four-year waiting list for Powell flutes back in the 1970s) was offered to me by a flutist I met at a concert in Stockbridge (actually Interlochen) Massachusetts one very hot and mosquito-rich evening in the summer of 1973. That particular flutist had a "matured" order for an instrument made by Haynes (back in those days the only "professional" were made by Haynes and Powell flutes) and one made by Powell. She chose to take the Haynes, and simply offered to turn her Powell order over to me. I took it, and I got a very nice instrument. In addition, for reasons that had nothing directly to do with playing the flute, that evening ended up being a pivotal one in my life.

Shortly after I got my Powell flute, I thought it would be a good idea to order a piccolo. Powell had just started making piccolos after not making them for many years. It turns out that my mother, who was a flutist, put in an order for a Powell piccolo shortly before they stopped making piccolos during the 1960s. They told her that her order would still be considered viable when they started making piccolos again, so I was able to get a Powell piccolo within a few months.

My violin, one of the last instruments that Douglas Bearden made before he died, has allowed me to grow into having the violin-voice that I have. That instrument was also made to order, and an example of blind and deaf luck. My first viola was a lucky garage sale find (no strings, no bridge, and no sound post for $100), and the viola I usually use was a gift. I love both of them.

Some people say that you make your own luck. I think that things just happen.

So much has changed during the last 49 years of my lifetime. (I just turned 49 the other day) Being in the right place at the right time used to be considered a primary component in "making your own luck." Now, with my physical distance I have from just about everything going on in the musical world that I so deeply want to still participate in, there is no possible way for me to "be" where I want to or need to be in order to make my own luck in the musical world. "Place" and "time" have extended meanings with the addition of the internet into our lives, so it is very lucky for me that you happened to find my "site" and can take part in my musings about the very luck that brought us together somewhere outside of physical time and place.

Gee. Taking a day off practicing has probably taken a serious toll on my psyche. I had better get back to work. Thanks for "stopping by."

"Music of Strange Quality"

And music criticism of unusual quality. Read the New York Times review of the first New York performance of Pelleas and Melisande back in 1908.

Back to Bach

Like most musicians, I have a special fondness for Bach. But there are pieces of Bach that are my particular favorites for various reasons: and they are usually specific reasons. I wonder if other musicians have their particular favorites. These are mine:

The motet Komm, Jesu, komm (BWV 229) because I got to sing it with an adult chorus when I was a teenager.

The D minor Fugue of the second book of the WTC. I remember when when I was a kid we got the Henle edition of the WTC. My older brother declared that the E-minor Fugue was his fugue because it had the longest subject, or something like that. I was forbidden to play it, so I promptly picked the D minor Fugue as mine and I have retained ownership.

The D minor Toccata, BWV 913 because it is so completely limitless and so modern. I didn't hear it until I was an adult, working at a radio station. It was Trevor Pinnock's recording that hooked me.

Cantata 78 because it was my first cantata. I had a volume of tenor arias with instrumental obbligato parts, and the first one in the book was for tenor and flute from Cantata 78. I bought a recording and fell madly in love with the whole piece. My father told me that Cantata 78 was the first cantata he played when he used to play church jobs in Cleveland. I thought that was extremely cool.

The B-flat Partita because of Dinu Lipati's recording of it.

The St. Matthew Passion, for reasons that I simply can't articulate.

The A minor and D minor Violin Concertos, which, when I was a flutist, were forbidden flute-fruit (I always wanted to play them on the flute, but they never sounded right). Now I can play them on the violin whenever I want to hear them.

The Cello Suites and the Violin Sonatas and Partitas. The happiest memories I have from my childhood are the mornings when I would lie in bed and hear my father practice the Bach Cello Suites on the viola. He would also practice the Violin Sonatas and Partitas on the viola, so it took me a long time to figure out what was what.

Das Rheingold

I remember seeing this Karajan film of Das Rheingold on Austrian television in 1980 or 1981, and I was so happy to find it on YouTube that I just had to share it.

Meme (123)

Michael tagged me with this blogging meme, so I will respond:

1. Pick up the nearest book.
2. Open to page 123.
3. Find the fifth sentence.
4. Post the next three sentences.
5. Tag five people, and acknowledge who tagged you.

And I saw that it was a carpet, that flew like a bird; and I was in a valley of flying carpets, that flew to and fro. So lying on my stomach and quaking in great fear, for I knew not whether I would plunge to destruction, I gripped the side of my carpet and flew down into the valley. And the valley was so thick with those flying creatures that I felt them brush against my cheeks and fingers; and I held tight with one hand, and covered my face with the other.

From "The Eighth Voyage of Sinbad," a story in Steven Millhauser's The Barnum Museum. Out of context the "creatures" seem to be other flying carpets, but in the story the creatures are rocs.



Let's see what we get from T, Alex, Tom, Lisa, and Jen.

Metrognome

Sometimes my metronome, which is my little practicing companion, seems to take on a personality of its own. This image popped into my head last night, and with a little help from the paint program you can see it, even though it is imaginary. Anyone want to try making one of these for real?

Playing my own music

I enjoy playing my own music, but I have a great deal of difficulty performing it because I have to make so many decisions in order to give it a successful performance. They are the same kinds of decisions that I have to make when I play music written by other people, but it is much easier to play music by people who are dead and who I never would have known even if they were still alive. I sometimes worry that someone might take my "interpretation" as something definitive, when I know in my heart of hearts that it is just as subjective as anyone else's interpretation of something I write, or just as subjective as my interpretation of something that someone else wrote.

As a composer I find that there is no "right" tempo for anything I write. I go back and forth (pardon the pun) on bowings and degrees of dynamic contrast. From the experience of preparing my own music for performance I learn (over and over again) that the emotional content of a piece has a less to do with the pitches and rhythms than the musical moment or sequence of musical moments that happens during a performance. I also know that a successful piece is one that is open to all sorts of different interpretations.

If you happen to be in the neighborhood . . .

Preparing for this recital has been a real challenge for me because so much of the music we are playing is in the violin's upper register. As a flutist I lived among the ledger lines all the time. As a violist playing the notes above the pitch of D just above the treble clef are kind of like riding on little sailboats while navigating through stormy seas. Faure, Beethoven, and Turina use the violin's upper register really well, and my goal for this performance is to enjoy exposing my fiddle's lovely upper register through their wonderful music.

Here's a map that will show you how to get there.

Musical Dollars to Donuts

People often ask me why I don't live in a major city where I could have a much more visible musical life. My simple reason is that my husband got a job here 23 years ago, and I decided to make the most out of a move from a major city (Boston) where I typed for a living and had a very small amount of work as a flutist. Since living here I have learned to play violin and viola, I have gotten a degree in composition, I have worked at a radio station, I have raised two wonderful children, and I have written a lot of music. I believe that my musical life is far more rewarding and productive than the musical life I led in either Boston or New York.

My husband and I do both cringe at tax time when we see that my yearly salary from the community college where I teach as an adjunct instructor is so low. Dollars to donuts, it seems that the "price" of the classes he teaches as a university professor are worth ten times more than the classes I teach. Of course he has university obligations, and my obligations to the institution where I teach are zero. I drive about 20 miles to get to class, I teach, I give exams, I hand in grades, and that is that. The facilities are excellent, my colleagues are great, I like the mix of students that I get (particularly the ones that realize that they like "classical" music) and there is never a problem with traffic or parking.

I do a lot of things in music: I write music (most of which is published), I teach violin, viola, and recorder lessons, I teach music appreciation classes, I play viola in three orchestras, I play in a Medieval and Renaissance ensemble, I play in, and do administrative work for, a string quartet, I play two violin and piano recitals a year (I'm playing one next week), I write CD reviews (as well as other articles), I keep this blog, and I co-run a summer orchestra program in my town.

If you lump everything together and look at its cash value, I make a living below the poverty level. If I did not have a spouse with a good job, I would not be able to afford to have a car, rent even a small apartment, feed a family, buy insurance, or live in a safe neighborhood. That is why I choose not to value what I do the way society values it. I am thankful that I can live in a beautiful place, can spend my time doing the things that matter to me, and can contribute to society and make my corner of the world a little more musical, and hopefully a little more beautiful.

Why do people value money so much? Why are people valued for what they earn from what they do? There are many things in life that don't have monetary value. Playing in tune is one of them. It "costs" years of careful technical practice, and its value can not be measured. Knowledge may be something that you could quantify, but wisdom, like playing in tune, is something that comes from paying a lot of dues. Happiness is also something that cannot be quantified. Despite my overwork (or maybe because it is overwork that involves doing things I love to do), I am very happy. I treasure that time that I can take for myself, particularly the time I take to practice, think, and write; and I treasure the ability to be creative and to grow, even at the age of nearly 49. I treasure the fact that I don't have the kind of job where I need to encourage students to be music majors, or lie to them about their possibilities of making a living as musicians.

I treasure the fact that I don't really care to push the business end of music or promote what I do beyond providing information to people. It is really rewarding to me if people enjoy playing (or listening to) the music I write simply because they like it. I couldn't imagine being in the position of having people listen to or play music I write because they should like it (but really don't). When I used to spend my time with the flute repertoire, I encountered a lot of pieces that I didn't like, but felt I should like. Some of those pieces (as well as their composers) are quite well known.

So now it's time for lunch, followed by a walk to the store (I value the fact that we can walk to the store if we want to--if it doesn't rain), and an afternoon of practicing and maybe doing a little work on the violin sonata I am writing.

Willie the Operatic Whale

It's finally here! My favorite music cartoon of all time!

Part 1
Part 2

Le Boeuf sur le Toit

I have loved this Darius Milhaud piece for years and years, and finally last night I got to play it in a concert. What a treat to sit in the viola section and be right smack in the middle of the bitonality! And I made a good joke, which, in the spirit of the piece I will share here. The güiro is probably the most important instrument in the piece because it is what everyone else in the orchestra relies on to snap into the quick "ritornello" that separates all the languid bitonal and tritonal episodes. I spontaneously told the güiro player that he was a "güiro-hero" because he kept us all in line.

Here is an excerpt from the piece made into a highly amusing (and rather lewd at times) film by director Adrian Marthaler and the Radio Symphony Orchestra Berlin conducted by Matthias Bamert. I would love it if someone were to make a film (even an animation) of the original concept of the work as a Chaplin-like silent film with music.

Prairie Stage Companion

That's me in the viola section!

See what violists have to live with?

The version of this passage that comes near the beginning of the piece gives us a clef change before the E flat, which makes the passage much easier to play. The same passage that comes near the end of the piece is much more difficult with the clef change (albeit a copyists quick fix of an error) after the E flat.

This is what we have right before rehearsal number 3:




and this is what we have right before rehearsal number 30



What a difference the placement of a clef makes!

See if you can guess who wrote it. I'll give you a hint. It is an orchestral piece, and this version is from 1955.

Musical Roller Coaster

This is simply too cool for words.