Music in Anatomy of a Fall

Michael and I watched Anatomy of a Fall last night, and I was deeply impressed by the unusual way music was used. (I am being vague in this description because I don't want to offer any spoilers.) But for people who do not know the Chopin Prelude that weaves its way through the film, my observations might enhance the experience of watching.

At the beginning of the film a boy who has seriously limited vision is working on Asturias, the fifth section of Isaac Albénez's Suite Española, Opus 47. The boy uses a tablet which blows up a PDF of the music so that it is large enough for him to learn the piece one measure at a time. It might be the very same PDF as this one that I found in the IMSLP.

His progress on the piece is used to show a year's worth of time passing.

A little later in the film there is a scene where the boy and his mother play Chopin's E minor Prelude, Opus 28, No. 4, as a three-handed piece. The boy plays his version of the harmony with both hands, and the mother plays the melody. He is clearly a developing pianist, and she is clearly not a pianist, but the way they play together reveals some really intimate communicaton.

The film's denouement begins with only the right hand of the Chopin Prelude, and once everything becomes clear to the boy, the Chopin is heard with both hands (played by one pianist). The credits offer an elaboration of the Chopin Prelude, with added figures and voices.

Revising old arrangements

'Tis the season for revision! Last week I played a string quartet wedding, and the couple requested Beethoven's Für Elise, a piece that is familiar to just about anyone who has ever taken piano lessons as a child. It is really a fine little bagatelle, but it is a true bear to translate into a piece for string quartet. I made my first stab at it about fifteen years ago, and, thinking that I was paying Beethoven the highest respect, I used only the notes in his original.

The result was extremely repetitive as well as precarious. There is nothing less satisfying to me than treading on figurative eggshells when playing something that sounds repetitive.

So I revised it by filling in pitches, changing textures, changing voicing, changing octaves, and changing articulations. I put the arrangement in the IMSLP, where I hope it might be of use to string quartets who are asked to play it by well-meaning brides and grooms to be who studied piano as children.

Revising old arrangements is extremely satisfying for me. And I have a good many that need revision, so I might be occupied for quite a while.

A Lassie Story in Celebration of Tomorrow's Celestial Event

Johannes de Sacrobosco’s 13th century description of a solar eclipse.

You can read the story here.

(Did you notice the dogs in the picture?)

The Magic Garden

I remember the day in third or fourth grade when my teacher read The Secret Garden aloud to our class. I wanted to read ahead, so as soon as I got home I went up to the attic and looked through a big box of my mother's books, and found The Magic Garden by Gene Stratton-Porter. I figured that it must be the same book, so I brought it downstairs and started to read it. I supposed that my teacher must have skipped the beginning part, since this book was so very different, but then I found myself forgetting about the neglected and unloved girl in India, and becoming deeply attached to the neglected and unloved American girl named Amaryllis in this novel. I was completely hooked by the introduction of John Guido Forrester, a boy who imitates the sounds of birds and sheep on his violin.

Hmm. Frances Hodgson Burnett wrote her novel in 1911, and Gene Stratton-Porter wrote her novel--her last of dozens--in 1926. I imagine that there could have been some influence. The Magic Garden was recently digitized (2022), so I am very happy that I can share the whole text (the link is above).

Finding a physical copy of this book was nearly impossible for me in the days before the internet. Michael somehow managed to find me a copy in the late 1980s, and gave it to me as a present. He read the whole book to me out loud, and his very John Guido-esque gesture really did help soothe my "hungry heart."

Here's the section (it begins on page 47) where John Guido is introduced:

Then she heard something. Something coming. It seemed as if it were coming down the brook, and yet it could not be coming down the brook, because what she heard was music. Amaryllis knew about music. She had seen people play pianos and harps and violins. She had heard bands and orchestras. She knew about the instruments that you blew in one end and wonderful tones came out of the other. Her governess played tunes on the piano for her to dance to. She knew what this music coming toward her was. Times when her mother had been having a party, men, or sometimes women, had played on violins standing beside the grand piano in the music room. She knew a violin, but she had never heard a violin played the way this one was played. This violin played like sunshine and flowers in bloom. Sometimes it stayed in the same place quite a while. When a bird up on a branch very carefully said, “Pee-a-wee! Pee-a-wee!” right over after it the violin said the same thing. When a lamb across the meadow said, “Baa-a-a ah!” the violin said, “Baa-a-a-ah!” too. That was a joke making a violin talk like a bird and baa like a sheep.

Amaryllis stepped from the shoal and started up the stream to find the violin that sounded like magic. It was rather rough going. Some of the stones that looked so perfectly nice to step on were not nice at all. Something slippery was on the tops of them that tried to throw her down, but soap had been good practice. She never fell once. The pebbly places were the safest, but there were not always pebbly places to step on, and sometimes she just had to step on the slippery rocks to get ahead. The bushes and shrubs were coming more thickly willows and elders and button bushes and all sorts of things that Amaryllis never had seen before, not to be right up to them and to touch them with her fingers. But because she was going up stream and the violin was coming down stream, it was not so very long before she found it.

Amaryllis’s mouth fell open and her eyes grew very wide because, when she found the violin, she found something else she had not reckoned on. She had thought maybe it was a magic violin that was floating through the air and playing tunes all by itself the way the water sang gay tunes, and the birds sang glad notes, and the flowers made little waves of colour music. So when Amaryllis got her first sight of the violin, her mouth fell open the widest it ever had, and her eyes grew the biggest and roundest they had ever been, because that violin was right out in the middle or the brook, and that violin was in the hands of a boy, and the boy had a head as black as the blackest wing on the blackest blackbird that came down to the brook to bathe and drink. He had eyes big and round and wide open and almost as black as his hair, while his cheeks were a soft, creamy colour, and there were splashes of red in them. His mouth was red and his teeth were even and white. He was tall and slender. He must have been three or four years older than [Amarylis's brother] Peter. He wore a gray shirt and gray linen trousers rolled up above his knees and held with a belt at his waist. His feet were bare and he was standing in the water.

He was looking up at the sky and all around him, and every note that a bird sang, and every “Moo-o” that a cow called, and every “‘Baa-a”’ that a sheep made, he repeated on the violin. Sometimes he would look down at the brook and make the violin laugh and chuckle and leap down a steep place and whirl out into a shallow pool and chuckle between stones and warble over pebbles. It was the funniest thing. Nothing like it ever had been done before in all the world—-not in any pictures in all the stacks of picture books of which Amaryllis was dead tired.

Then, standing there in a pause, when the birds had forgotten and the sheep were quiet, the boy began to play his own music. But Amaryllis did not like what he played then, because the notes he made were the thoughts that were in her brain spoken on a violin, when worst of all she wanted to sit on somebody’s lap and lean her head on somebody’s breast. Amaryllis had gotten to the place where she did not care the least little bit whose lap she sat on, or whose breast pillowed her, just so it was someone that wanted a little girl, someone who loved all little children. So when the notes grew so lonesome and so hungry that they told Amaryllis that this boy wanted to sit on someone’s lap and put his arms around someone’s neck and kiss someone with those soft red lips of his, Amaryllis started bravely through a rather deep place right up Roaring Brook toward the boy.

When he heard her and looked down at her and took the violin from beneath his chin and smiled at her, Amaryllis walked up to him and held up her hand. In a rough little voice, because of the hard spot in her throat, she said to the boy: “Aren’t you got anyone to love you, either?”

The boy looked down at her and said: “Not today.”

Amaryllis looked up at him and said: “Then I’m worser off than you, cause I haven’t anyone any day.”

I started thinking about John Guido while using my violin to try to communicate with a bird who lives in our yard with a song that the Merlin app fails to recognize. It comes back year after year singing the same three-note song. My bird-wise friend Ruth has suggested that it might be a bluebird with a singular song. I love the idea of a unique bird who knows s/he is being "heard" in our yard. All the better if it happens to be a blue bird!

This is a piccolo rendering of it, though it seems to sound an octave higher. And here it is as recorded in another part of our neighborhood.

Anyone with an ear for birds reading this who might have some idea how to identify our bird friend, please leave a comment!

Unconditional Love and Fish Love

The other evening I found myself in a lively conversation with a mother of young children. After discussing many of the difficulties (lack of sleep being one) of being a new parent, I heard myself say that the real benefit of the parent-child relationship is the opportunity for the parent to feel unconditional love by giving unconditional love. And it is an opportunity.

I realized afterwards that I try to feel that way about all of my functional relationships; as a parent, a life partner, a co-worker, a teacher, a friend, and even as a member of a community, though in a community relationship, conditions often apply. It is also the way I feel about sharing music I write, because I like to believe that it will be accepted in the spirit that it is being offered, even when the person who receives it is someone I don't know. It doesn't matter if it is ignored, disliked, or discarded; my giving part of the musical relationship is still gratifying.

I also like to believe that every performing musician who faces an audience experiences a flash of unconditional love, even if it only lasts for an instant. But my concept of unconditional love sometimes feels out-of-step with "institutional" unconditional love.

The other day I came across a video where Rabbi Abraham Twerski discusses something he calls "fish love":

Love is a word that, in our culture, has almost lost its meaning. Let me tell you a story about the Rabbi of Kursk. He came across a young man who was clearly enjoying a dish of fish that he was eating, and he said, "Young man, why are you eating that fish?" And the young man says "Because I love fish!" He says, "Oh you love the fish, that’s why you took it out of the water and killed it and boiled it." He said, "Don’t tell me you love the fish; you love yourself, and because the fish taste good to you, therefore you took it out of the water and killed it and boiled it."

So much of what is love is fish-love.

And so, a young couple falls in love, a young man and a young woman fall in love. What does that mean? That means that he saw in this woman someone who provide him with all that physical emotions and needs, and she saw in this man somebody she feels that she can wed. And that was love. But each one is looking after their own needs. It is not love for the other: the other person becomes a vehicle for their gratification. Too much of what is called love is fish-love.

It is a nice story, but I really wish Rabbi Twerski didn't minimalize what a woman might want in a love relationship. Don't woman also look for someone to fulfill her physical emotions and needs? And how limited it is to reduce a woman's love for a man to someone she can marry!

[Are there still women around who see the institution of marriage as a way to get away from their parents (like in my mother's day and case) or simply an opportunity to have the "elevated status" of a wife in a community?]

I guess if this statement by Rabbi Twerski helps some men think about how poorly they treat the women they are married to, it could serve a purpose. But he offers a view of love from the perspective of someone who doesn't seem to think the emotional needs of women are comparable to the emotional needs of men.

And what is all this "self love" stuff? I often hear this passage from Ephesians when I play weddings:

 In this same way, husbands ought to love their wives as their own bodies. He who loves his wife loves himself. After all, no one ever hated their own body, but they feed and care for their body . . .

I have known many people who feel love for their spouses that would also fall under the "hating their own body" category. And not all of them have been women.

On Praise and Value

Everything in any way beautiful has its beauty of itself, inherent and self-sufficient: praise is no part of it. At any rate, praise does not make anything better or worse. This applies even to the popular conception of beauty, as in material things or works of art. So does the truly beautiful need anything beyond itself? No more than law, no more than truth, no more than kindness or integrity. Which of these things derives its beauty from praise, or withers under criticism? Does an emerald lose its quality if it is not praised? And what of gold, ivory, purple, a lyre, a dagger, a flower, a bush?

From Book Four of Marcus Aurelius Meditations

Etudes

I have always loved practicing etudes. I cut my flute teeth on Andersen, Altès, Berbiguier, Bitsch, Bozza, Castérède, Jeanjean, Moyse, and Schade. And I cut my violin and viola teeth on everything I could get my hands on by Dont, Fiorillo, Kayser, Kreutzer, Mazas, Rode, Ševčík, and Wohlfahrt.

One early dream I had as a composer who was also building up technique as a performing musician (and helping other people to build up technique by teaching) was to write etudes myself.

It seems that I have done quite a bit of etude writing over the past several years, and I have collected posts about those books here.

The Ecquinoctial Pleasures of Gaius Valerius Catullus

Iam ver egelidos refert tepores,
Iam caeli furor aequinoctialis
Iucundis Zephyri silescit aureis.
Linquantur Phrygii, Catulle, campi
Nicaeaeque ager uber aestuosae:
Ad claras Asiae volemus urbes.
Iam mens praetrepidans avet vagari,
Iam laeti studio pedes vigescunt.
O dulces comitum valete coetus,
longe quos simul a domo profectos
diversae varie viae reportant.

Translated by Leonard C. Smithers (1894)

Now spring brings back mild breezes without cold, now heaven's equinoctial fury falls silent at Zephyr's pleasant breezes. Let the Phrygian meadows be left behind, Catullus, and the teeming fields of sun-scorched Nicaea: let us fly to the glorious cities of Asia. Now my palpitating soul longs to wander, now happy in their zeal my feet grow strong. O sweet band of comrades, fare you well, whom various roads in different directions carry back all at once setting out far from home.

Translated by Kate Rears (2000)

Now spring brings back unchilled warmth,
now the rage of the ecquinoctial sky
grows silent with the pleasant breezes of the west wind.
The Phrygian fields should be quitted, Catullus,
& the fertile territory of sweltering Iznik:
let us fly to the bright cities of Asia.
Now the mind trembling in anticipation yearns to roam,
now the happy feet grow strong in their pastime.
Be well, o sweet company of friends,
who having wandered far from home together
return in different ways to a route headed in a different direction.

Translated by A.S. Klein (2001)

Now Spring returns mild and temperate,
now the wild equinoctial skies
are calmed by Zephyr’s happier breezes.
The fields of Phrygia will be forsaken,
Catullus, rich farms of hot Nicaea:
we’ll flee to Asia’s bright cities.
Now restless minds long for travel,
now the glad feet stir with pleasure.
O sweet crowd of friends farewell,
who came together from far places,
whom divergent roads must carry.

Translated into English by Someone Else (who can lead you to more poems by Catullus)

Now spring is bringing back the warmer days,
Now the rage of the equinoctial sky
Falls silent in Zephyr's pleasant breezes.
Catullus, leave behind the Phrygian fields,
And the rich land of sweltering Nicaea:
Let's fly off to Asia's glorious cities.
Now the anxious mind is wild to travel,
Now the happy feet come alive with zeal,
O dear band of comrades, fare you well,
Who set off together from our far-off home,
But different roads lead back in different ways.

Can I Have a Little More?

Shifting on the viola or the violin involves the fingers 1, 2, 3, and 4, so you can appreciate (or groan about) the motivation for the title. This piece is part of Dancing on the Fingerboard, which is available, in versions for both violin and viola, on this page of the IMSLP.

The Musical Fruit

My salad . . .

has three states of "bean-ing": sprouted (mung), raw (green), and cooked (garbanzo).

And after it has been (!!! if you say that with a British accent) eaten, you get "Beaning and Nothingness." (Thank you, Michael.)

The rest of the salad is made of parsley and scallions, and the dressing is white balsamic vinegar and olive oil. The garbanzos were marinated in soy sauce, ginger, garlic, and salt. I should have put some quartered grape tomatoes in, but there wasn't room in the bowl (what you see above is about half of what was there at the start of lunch).

"The Collar" in Spanish!

So far this piece, based on a story in Danish by Hans Christian Andersen, has been performed (as far as I know) in English, Finnish, Italian, and now in Spanish. This video has a transcript of the script in Spanish that you can follow.



You can also follow the script in English (original to the music) here. (The transcription tab has the bassoon version.)

One thing that I find nifty about "The Collar" as a bassoon piece is that there is a part of a bassoon reed called a "reed collar."

Italo Calvino, guest blogger

A person's life consists of a collection of events, the last of which could also change the meaning of the whole, not because it counts more than the previous ones but because once they are included in a life, events are arranged in an order that is not chronological but, rather, corresponds to an inner architecture. A person, for example, reads in adulthood a book that is important for him, and it makes him say, "How could I have lived without having read it," and also, "What a pity I did not read it in my youth!" Well, these statements do not have much meaning, especially the second, because after he has read that book, his whole life becomes the life of a person who has read that book, and it is of little importance, whether he read it early or late, because now his life before that reading also assumes a form shaped by that reading.

This passage comes from Mr. Palomar (written in 1983 and published in an English translation by William Weaver in 1985).

Diane Chaplin Concert Tonight

My friend Diane Chaplin will be playing my Sephardic Suite in an online Facebook Live concert tonight at 8:00 p.m. Central Time (6:00 Pacific, 9:00 Eastern). I'm copying the link here which I hope will get you "there," wherever and whenever "there" might be.

And here it is archived on YouTube:

The Clarinet Quintet: A refrence tool for string quartet with clarinet

The Clarinet Quintet is an exhaustive catalog of music for clarinet quintet (i.e. clarinet and string quartet), that opens a portal to a world that I have never before explored.

Donald L. Oehler, the creator and keeper of the catalog, has over nine hundred meticulously organized entries representing music written between 1750 (a few decades after Johann Christoph Denner reworked the clarinet so it could spring forth from the limitations of its chalumeau days) and the present day.

Go forth and explore! Here's the way in.

Inventions and Creations

I made a couple of short videos using music that I wrote in 2004 and things I saw on a walk I took this morning.