Here is a recording from a concert broadcast on the radio my father played with clarinetist Harold Wright and pianist Gil Kalish in 1974. It sensational chamber music playing.
You can listen here.
Sunday, November 17, 2024
Saturday, November 16, 2024
My Father
I would say that the Burton Fine (August 7, 1930 - November 15, 2024) I grew up knowing was a person of tremendous intelligence and tremendous integrity who expressed himself musically in the most elegant ways. He also had beautiful handwriting. It was fluid, unique, and elegant--unlike any handwriting I had or have ever seen.
My father was a puzzle to me when I was a child. He wasn’t at all like other fathers. I don’t remember him ever hugging me or ever telling me that he loved me. I do remember him singing “I want to hold your hand” when we would cross the street. He sang snippets of pieces of music occasionally, and made parody patter songs, which he sometimes sang for us at dinner, but otherwise I don’t remember him singing. But I do remember him practicing.
The greatest memories of my childhood were hearing him practice in the basement. What I remember most are solo Bach (Cello Suites and Sonatas and Partitas), Reger, Brahms (G major Violin Sonata on Viola), Franck (Violin Sonata), and Paganini Caprices. When he practiced he expressed love very freely. Love for the musical line (in any piece of music) is as real as any love from (or to) a human being to me. My mother, who met my father in 1950, married him in the early 1950s, and divorced him in the 1970s, expressed her love through her painting. She always did art, but became serious about it when she could no longer play the flute. My father didn’t think much of her artwork.
I know very little about either of my parents. Both were puzzles. Their first child, my brother Marshall, was not neurotypical. He, like my father, had a tremendous intellect, but neither of our parents, like most new parents in the 1950s, understood much about parenting. They did bring Marshall to Dr. Spock in Cleveland (my father’s first job was at the Cleveland-based government agency that was to become NASA), but anything regarding the autism spectrum, where Marshall self-identified as an adult, was unknown in the 1950s.
I came out neurotypical in 1959, and my younger brother Richard, born in 1961, came out really gifted in math and things related to the world of computers, where he has been working since he graduated from college. Marshall and I were compelled as teenagers and as adults to express ourselves musically by playing and writing music. Richard is happy as a choral singer and as an avid listener. Joshua, my half brother, who grew up in the 1980s is, like Marshall, not neurotypical, and he benefited (eventually) from an environment of understanding about the autism spectrum that has allowed him to thrive as a choral singer and as a responsibly employed person.
When Marshall, Richard, and I were children, our father did all the driving in the family. He did all the shopping and all the outings. Perhaps it was to take us off our mother’s hands for a while. I remember being almost five and going in a rowboat on Jamaica Pond in West Roxbury. It was shortly after my father joined the Boston Symphony as a violinist. The story goes that he saw an ad in International Musician one day, took the next day off to practice, flew to Boston, and won the audition. My mother didn’t think he would get the job, but she reluctantly left Cleveland when he did.
I didn’t know until much later that my father didn’t know how to swim when he took us boating. I do remember wearing (and enjoying wearing) life jackets, though. He also took us to the Boston Children’s Museum when it was in its infancy, and took us ice skating at Cleveland Circle. He immediately broke his ankle and had to drive to the hospital in incredible pain. (If I used the word "incredible" when describing something, he would snap at me. "It's very credible," he would say).
We used to go bowling too. And there was a time when we would try to play tennis.
My father taught Marshall to play the violin, and I remember that going bowling was used as a reward for his paying attention. Marshall did not like lessons with my father, who might not have liked to teach him either. But he learned from his father, Nathan Fine, who was, according to my father, as good as anyone in the Philadelphia Orchestra. Like proper Bostonians, we only played candlepins. Our mother never came to the bowling alley.
At seven I was big enough to play the half-size violin that we had. My father gave me an “A Tune A Day” book, and let me teach myself. Perhaps he didn’t want to mess things up for me like he had for Marshall. Richard had no interest in the violin, but he got to have piano lessons, and he became a really good pianist. I became an autodidact.
Our father used to bring me and my brothers to the Tanglewood grounds during open rehearsals on Saturdays in the summers, and eventually we used to go to the concerts on Sundays. Through exposure to the Boston Symphony throughout my childhood I got to hear a lot of really great music. And as a teenager I was pretty much on my own, and I would go to Tanglewood to hear student concerts. Never having the opportunity to be anything other than independent, I enjoyed a great deal of freedom as a young person. If (when) I got in trouble I never told my parents about it. And they never asked.
The Burton I grew up with had a very difficult time telling anything but the truth, or what he felt to be the truth. I imagine it might have gotten him in trouble if he shared his feelings with his colleagues in the Boston Symphony, so he kept pretty much to himself. He read a lot, and knew a great deal about history.
I remember going to a party with him after a concert that was hosted by some very rich people who acted like they were superior to everyone else. I mentioned that I didn’t feel comfortable around those people, and he said that they were people who supported the orchestra, and that we needed to be nice to them. His eventually married someone from a “donor” class family, and grew to be comfortable with it. I prefer to remember my father as a member of the intellectual working class.
When I returned to string playing in my early thirties and I had an instrument in hand, I was able to communicate with my father in his language, and I finally was able to recognize that were cut from the same cloth. When I had the opportunity to play chamber music with him (he came to Illinois to play concerts three or four times), it was always a wonderful experience. He was a truly great musician.
I sometimes hear shadows of the familiar sounds I heard in childhood when I practice. And when I see my hands and arms behaving the way I observed my father’s hands and arms behaving, I feel like he is a part of me, and that best part of him is with me to carry on in music making.
I used to write CD reviews for the American Record Guide, and my father read all my reviews. He would call to talk about the recordings. I loved those phone calls. He would also give me solutions to problems I had with difficult passages in the viola parts I played in orchestra, which I would share with my section-mates. And he would listen to recordings I made of the recitals I played. Some of them must have been painful for him to hear because my development as a violinist and as a violist in adulthood was slow.
A note from Marshall, an excerpt from his memoir.
My father was a puzzle to me when I was a child. He wasn’t at all like other fathers. I don’t remember him ever hugging me or ever telling me that he loved me. I do remember him singing “I want to hold your hand” when we would cross the street. He sang snippets of pieces of music occasionally, and made parody patter songs, which he sometimes sang for us at dinner, but otherwise I don’t remember him singing. But I do remember him practicing.
The greatest memories of my childhood were hearing him practice in the basement. What I remember most are solo Bach (Cello Suites and Sonatas and Partitas), Reger, Brahms (G major Violin Sonata on Viola), Franck (Violin Sonata), and Paganini Caprices. When he practiced he expressed love very freely. Love for the musical line (in any piece of music) is as real as any love from (or to) a human being to me. My mother, who met my father in 1950, married him in the early 1950s, and divorced him in the 1970s, expressed her love through her painting. She always did art, but became serious about it when she could no longer play the flute. My father didn’t think much of her artwork.
I know very little about either of my parents. Both were puzzles. Their first child, my brother Marshall, was not neurotypical. He, like my father, had a tremendous intellect, but neither of our parents, like most new parents in the 1950s, understood much about parenting. They did bring Marshall to Dr. Spock in Cleveland (my father’s first job was at the Cleveland-based government agency that was to become NASA), but anything regarding the autism spectrum, where Marshall self-identified as an adult, was unknown in the 1950s.
I came out neurotypical in 1959, and my younger brother Richard, born in 1961, came out really gifted in math and things related to the world of computers, where he has been working since he graduated from college. Marshall and I were compelled as teenagers and as adults to express ourselves musically by playing and writing music. Richard is happy as a choral singer and as an avid listener. Joshua, my half brother, who grew up in the 1980s is, like Marshall, not neurotypical, and he benefited (eventually) from an environment of understanding about the autism spectrum that has allowed him to thrive as a choral singer and as a responsibly employed person.
When Marshall, Richard, and I were children, our father did all the driving in the family. He did all the shopping and all the outings. Perhaps it was to take us off our mother’s hands for a while. I remember being almost five and going in a rowboat on Jamaica Pond in West Roxbury. It was shortly after my father joined the Boston Symphony as a violinist. The story goes that he saw an ad in International Musician one day, took the next day off to practice, flew to Boston, and won the audition. My mother didn’t think he would get the job, but she reluctantly left Cleveland when he did.
I didn’t know until much later that my father didn’t know how to swim when he took us boating. I do remember wearing (and enjoying wearing) life jackets, though. He also took us to the Boston Children’s Museum when it was in its infancy, and took us ice skating at Cleveland Circle. He immediately broke his ankle and had to drive to the hospital in incredible pain. (If I used the word "incredible" when describing something, he would snap at me. "It's very credible," he would say).
We used to go bowling too. And there was a time when we would try to play tennis.
My father taught Marshall to play the violin, and I remember that going bowling was used as a reward for his paying attention. Marshall did not like lessons with my father, who might not have liked to teach him either. But he learned from his father, Nathan Fine, who was, according to my father, as good as anyone in the Philadelphia Orchestra. Like proper Bostonians, we only played candlepins. Our mother never came to the bowling alley.
At seven I was big enough to play the half-size violin that we had. My father gave me an “A Tune A Day” book, and let me teach myself. Perhaps he didn’t want to mess things up for me like he had for Marshall. Richard had no interest in the violin, but he got to have piano lessons, and he became a really good pianist. I became an autodidact.
Our father used to bring me and my brothers to the Tanglewood grounds during open rehearsals on Saturdays in the summers, and eventually we used to go to the concerts on Sundays. Through exposure to the Boston Symphony throughout my childhood I got to hear a lot of really great music. And as a teenager I was pretty much on my own, and I would go to Tanglewood to hear student concerts. Never having the opportunity to be anything other than independent, I enjoyed a great deal of freedom as a young person. If (when) I got in trouble I never told my parents about it. And they never asked.
The Burton I grew up with had a very difficult time telling anything but the truth, or what he felt to be the truth. I imagine it might have gotten him in trouble if he shared his feelings with his colleagues in the Boston Symphony, so he kept pretty much to himself. He read a lot, and knew a great deal about history.
I remember going to a party with him after a concert that was hosted by some very rich people who acted like they were superior to everyone else. I mentioned that I didn’t feel comfortable around those people, and he said that they were people who supported the orchestra, and that we needed to be nice to them. His eventually married someone from a “donor” class family, and grew to be comfortable with it. I prefer to remember my father as a member of the intellectual working class.
When I returned to string playing in my early thirties and I had an instrument in hand, I was able to communicate with my father in his language, and I finally was able to recognize that were cut from the same cloth. When I had the opportunity to play chamber music with him (he came to Illinois to play concerts three or four times), it was always a wonderful experience. He was a truly great musician.
I sometimes hear shadows of the familiar sounds I heard in childhood when I practice. And when I see my hands and arms behaving the way I observed my father’s hands and arms behaving, I feel like he is a part of me, and that best part of him is with me to carry on in music making.
I used to write CD reviews for the American Record Guide, and my father read all my reviews. He would call to talk about the recordings. I loved those phone calls. He would also give me solutions to problems I had with difficult passages in the viola parts I played in orchestra, which I would share with my section-mates. And he would listen to recordings I made of the recitals I played. Some of them must have been painful for him to hear because my development as a violinist and as a violist in adulthood was slow.
A note from Marshall, an excerpt from his memoir.
. . . This was before my father, Burton Fine, was a research chemist with NASA, having gotten his Ph.D. in chemistry from IIT. After leaving Cleveland, he would serve as principal violist of the BSO for 29 years before being demoted in 1993; and he retired on New Year’s Eve 2004.My father, Burton Fine, died last night at his home in Newton, Massachusetts. He was 94.
I know a fair bit about what he did as a chemist. Many years ago I read his dissertation, The Solubility of Iodine in Benzene/Carbon Tetrachloride Solutions. It does not sound to me like the work of a rocket scientist; but at the time I read it I could neither know, nor care about, nor even comprehend its practical aspects. I have not seen it since; it must be misplaced in his own house, or hidden. As a rocket scientist, he might have been involved with the Gemini Project. I believe it was classified and remains so, which means I will never know. He wrote 18 papers, mostly for a journal called Combustion and Flame, which I located at the chemistry library at Yale at the time I unsuccessfully auditioned for their music school in 1977. Strangely, the shortest of these--a critical letter to the editor in 1961--became the most widely quoted. Almost every subsequent article would refer to it, freely.
Musically, though, he is a mystery. What I know of his early years is awfully sketchy. He won a composition prize at age nine in his hometown of Philadelphia, where his ancestor, Joseph Fine (1877-1976) came to escape the pogroms of Nicholas III. His prizewinning piece, a cradle song, was orchestrated and performed by the Philadelphia Orchestra under Stokowski. Yet I have been unable to find so much as a mention of it.
At age thirteen he applied to study composition with Menotti and was turned down. It seems he had also been playing violin at the same time; he had several years study with Ivan Galamian, and his father (my grandfather) Nathan (1907-1985) was also an excellent amateur violinist. Anyway he turned there. At some point--for how many summers I don’t know, but it must have been several--he attended Galamian’s camp at Meadowmount. That was probably how he became acquainted with the viola, for it is well known that Galamian would hire a cellist to work in string quartets with three violinists at a time, one of whom would obviously have to play viola. Later he attended Tanglewood (1950) and Red Fox (1954 or so). Despite this musical excellence, he majored in chemistry instead of music while he attended Penn. Why, I’m not sure. Perhaps Grandpa might have told him that music was best left an amateur sidelight. Which is why he wound up in Chicago as a doctoral student in chemistry at the time he married Mom.
Wednesday, November 06, 2024
The Last Waltz
Unfortunately there will be no last Harris Waltz. The dance is over. The lights that made the future look bright and good have been turned out. The hall is empty.
We don't know what the building will be used for next, and we don't want to imagine the dark possibilities.
At least I don't.
My only solace is that we have two months of constitutional democracy, impaired as it is by the Supreme Court and the House of Representatives. Maybe there are republicans in Congress who will help put some guardrails in place. But clearly misogyny and racism will continue to bubble beneath the surface of the smiling faces we see on the street.
Harris ran a great campaign. She is a brilliant person and a good person. She would have made a great president. And she could have made a difference. I mourn for the kind of a country she would have helped us become.
We don't know what the building will be used for next, and we don't want to imagine the dark possibilities.
At least I don't.
My only solace is that we have two months of constitutional democracy, impaired as it is by the Supreme Court and the House of Representatives. Maybe there are republicans in Congress who will help put some guardrails in place. But clearly misogyny and racism will continue to bubble beneath the surface of the smiling faces we see on the street.
Harris ran a great campaign. She is a brilliant person and a good person. She would have made a great president. And she could have made a difference. I mourn for the kind of a country she would have helped us become.
Monday, November 04, 2024
Thursday, October 31, 2024
She Loves Me
I have been spending my evenings with my violin in the local theater pit rehearsing She Loves Me, a 1963 Broadway show with music by Jerry Bock and lyrics by Sheldon Harnick. The show came right before Fiddler on the Roof in their chronology as a writing team.
It is a delightful adaptation by Joe Masteroff of Miklós László's Parfumerie (1937). Film adaptations of László's play include The Shop Around the Corner (Ernst Lubitsch 1940), In the Good Old Summertime (Robert Z. Leonard 1949), and You've Got Mail (Nora Ephron 1988).
I laughed at the first rehearsal when I noticed that one of the motivic germs of the show is Buffalo Gals, made quite famous in the 1946 Frank Capra film It's a Wonderful Life (the link above goes to a setting of the song in the film). But why is it there? I didn't think that it had anything to do with the song's history.
To quote from a song in The Pajama Game (mentioned below), "I figured it out."
The female lead in that film, played by Margaret Sullavan is named Klara Novak, and the name of the Jimmy Stewart character in She Loves Me is Georg Nowack.
In It's a Wonderful Life, George Bailey sings “Buffalo Gals” on his first date with Mary. It becomes “their song.” It is an important and distinct reference to the character of Georg Nowack in She Loves Me. Needless to say, both characters are named George.
It is a delightful adaptation by Joe Masteroff of Miklós László's Parfumerie (1937). Film adaptations of László's play include The Shop Around the Corner (Ernst Lubitsch 1940), In the Good Old Summertime (Robert Z. Leonard 1949), and You've Got Mail (Nora Ephron 1988).
I laughed at the first rehearsal when I noticed that one of the motivic germs of the show is Buffalo Gals, made quite famous in the 1946 Frank Capra film It's a Wonderful Life (the link above goes to a setting of the song in the film). But why is it there? I didn't think that it had anything to do with the song's history.
To quote from a song in The Pajama Game (mentioned below), "I figured it out."
The male lead in It's a Wonderful Life is named George Bailey, and he is played by James Stewart. James Stewart plays the male lead in the Lubitsch film.
The female lead in that film, played by Margaret Sullavan is named Klara Novak, and the name of the Jimmy Stewart character in She Loves Me is Georg Nowack.
In It's a Wonderful Life, George Bailey sings “Buffalo Gals” on his first date with Mary. It becomes “their song.” It is an important and distinct reference to the character of Georg Nowack in She Loves Me. Needless to say, both characters are named George.
Here are some other references I noticed: In "I Don't Know His Name" there is a distinct resemblance to the song "Matchmaker" in Fiddler on the Roof (a song yet to be written), In “A Romantic Atmosphere” there is a snippet from Ochi Chyornye (Очи черные or Dark Eyes) in one of the violin solos, and the "Tango Tragique" makes strong reference to "Hernando's Hideaway" from the 1954 Jerry Ross and Richard Adler show The Pajama Game.
We open tonight.
We open tonight.
Saturday, October 26, 2024
Toys in the Attic
The second of these Two little night pieces for three violas d'amore is a great way to get into the Halloween spirit. There is nothing quite like twenty-one sympathetic strings ringing along with the twenty-one bowed strings in an ensemble of three violas d'amore. Thank you Gheorge and Simona Balan for asking me to write a piece for them to play with Yvain Delahousse, and thank you all for playing it so beautifully.
In the attics of the town, the dolls begin to wake. These are not dolls in the freshness of their youth, the dolls who dwell in children's bedrooms, but old, abandoned dolls, no longer believed in. They lean back against boxes of old dishes, sit slumped on broken-backed chairs, lie face down on attic floorboards. . . .From "The Dolls Wake" in Steven Millhauser's Enchanted Night.
. . . But on this summer night, when the almost full moon wakens sleepers in their beds, the dolls in their long slumber begin to stir . . .
Thursday, October 24, 2024
The moon is a cracked dinner plate
The title is inspired by Steven Millhauser's 1999 novella Enchanted Night. Thank you Yvain Delahousse, Simona Balan, and Gheorghe Balan for expressing all the enchantment. This beautiful performance gave me chills and made me cry.
Thursday, October 10, 2024
Variations for Solo Viola d'amore
This one-minute segment is the introduction. I think of it as introducing the "issue" at hand. A theme with variations will follow. The "issue" at hand can be any issue that any playing or anyone listening might be dealing with. Life, in all its complexity, is filled with one thing after another.
Writing this piece was excellent medicine for me. I wrote it during a personal struggle that I had to work my way through, and my path from a place of darkness to a place of light was made clearer as a result of bushwhacking a musical path using the viola d'amore as my means of locomotion.
The cover image is one that my mother painted. I don't know where the original might be, but its image gives me the sense of comfort that having tea with someone friendly and accepting (like my mother) can have. And I remember the lamp from childhood. You can find the music here now, and will be able to find it soon on this page of the IMSLP.
Saturday, October 05, 2024
But what have you done for me lately?
"But what have you done for me lately?" was one of the key phrases that I remember from my childhood. My father used to say it in a mocking way, and I guess it might have been in reference to me, but it could have been in reference to something he had read or observed. It could have been in reference to something either of my brothers might have said. Nobody will ever know. My father isn't in any condition to remember this or any other of the memorable phrases he uttered half a century ago.
But the odd thing is that the feeling behind this particular phrase informs my experience as an adult in the twenty-first century. And it seems to permeate the kinds of relationships far too many of us have what we used to refer to as our virtual lives on social media. These days it seems that "virtual" life and "real" life (life as it happens in analog time and without necessarily using mechanical means) are intermingled in such a way that they lack the separation they once had.
But the odd thing is that the feeling behind this particular phrase informs my experience as an adult in the twenty-first century. And it seems to permeate the kinds of relationships far too many of us have what we used to refer to as our virtual lives on social media. These days it seems that "virtual" life and "real" life (life as it happens in analog time and without necessarily using mechanical means) are intermingled in such a way that they lack the separation they once had.
Is a parent supposed to continue to be the source of all things a child might need? If not, when and how does it stop?
[I don't think it stops with death, because I often rely on what I have of my mother, which I experience through her artwork, for spiritual sustenance that I can connect to when I need to, regardless of what she gave me or didn't give me in childhood.]
Maybe this is all just a byproduct of getting older, and I suppose technology changes during every lifetime, if a person is fortunate enough to live a long life.
I wonder if I am alone when joyous moments in my life sometimes seem like they happened long ago in a place I no longer live (I have lived in the same town for nearly forty years). Even if it is I who did nice or generous things for others, memories of deeds or events seem to fade more quickly than they did in the days before we communicated mainly (it seems) through these rectangles that we hold in our hands or prop in front of us on desks and laps.
I admit that gifts I give through the computer, whether it is ordering things and having them mailed somewhere, or whether it is sharing a piece of music as a PDF, feel less "gifty" than when I hand someone a printed and bound copy of something I have written or an item that I can place in their hands (preferably wrapped).
Maybe this is all just a byproduct of getting older, and I suppose technology changes during every lifetime, if a person is fortunate enough to live a long life.
One saying my father used to utter, "It's easy when you know how," is something he might have learned from a teacher or colleague. Or it could have been something he made up himself. It is, as far as I'm concerned, a brilliant bit of truth that I have found works in all kinds of situations. When I mentioned the saying to my father last year, and told him that it has really meant a lot to me over the years, his response to the saying was, "Whatever that means."
Perhaps in advanced old age, the "country" my father now lives in, you can posess knowledge, but nothing is ever easy.
Perhaps in advanced old age, the "country" my father now lives in, you can posess knowledge, but nothing is ever easy.
Thursday, October 03, 2024
"In Key" Podcast Interview
Thursday, September 26, 2024
Elly Ameling on YouTube!
Elly Ameling was my first favorite singer. And to hear her talk about music, particularly these settings by Debussy and Faure of Verlaine's "Cest l'extase langoureuse," thrills me and makes me cry. The way she reads the French, the way she translates it into English, and the way she sings.
When I find myself at loose ends I know where on YouTube I need to go. It is indeed "extase langoureuse" there.
Thank you for everything Elly Ameling! Thank you for introducing me to what can be accomplished musically through singing, thank you for introducing me to Paul Verlaine's poetry, and thank you for still being here for me and your other devoted fans.
Here's a link to her channel which, as of today, has seventy-one videos.
When I find myself at loose ends I know where on YouTube I need to go. It is indeed "extase langoureuse" there.
Thank you for everything Elly Ameling! Thank you for introducing me to what can be accomplished musically through singing, thank you for introducing me to Paul Verlaine's poetry, and thank you for still being here for me and your other devoted fans.
Here's a link to her channel which, as of today, has seventy-one videos.
Wednesday, September 25, 2024
Mozart Serenade in C
When I looked at a photo of page of one of the parts (not in Mozart's hand) of this newly unearthed piece from Mozart's childhood, it looked far less spectacular than the pieces he wrote in his later teenage years. This performance makes it clear that the thirteen-year-old Mozart was a kid with serious talent and ability, who had a firm grasp on the musical idioms of the mid 18th century he was exposed to inside and outside of Salzburg.
The young Mozart spent much of his thirteenth year (and much of his childhood) traveling through Europe and being showcased, along with his sister, as a child prodigy. Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart's teacher had been, up to that time, his father. Leopold Mozart was certainly an excellent violin teacher, but he had only so much to teach about composition to a person of his son's musical calibre.
The Mozarts met Padre Martini in 1770, and it was through Wolfgang's study with a truly great teacher that he was able to develop his considerable talent into far more than considerable artistry.
I imagine that there are people who are kind of shocked to hear something mediocre coming from Mozart. We hold our musical gods to very high standards. It is my feeling that a lot of mediocre music by people who became great composers, like Carl Philipp Emanuel Bach, served as kindling. That this little Serenade didn't make it into Mozart's catalog is no surprise to me.
The young Mozart spent much of his thirteenth year (and much of his childhood) traveling through Europe and being showcased, along with his sister, as a child prodigy. Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart's teacher had been, up to that time, his father. Leopold Mozart was certainly an excellent violin teacher, but he had only so much to teach about composition to a person of his son's musical calibre.
The Mozarts met Padre Martini in 1770, and it was through Wolfgang's study with a truly great teacher that he was able to develop his considerable talent into far more than considerable artistry.
I imagine that there are people who are kind of shocked to hear something mediocre coming from Mozart. We hold our musical gods to very high standards. It is my feeling that a lot of mediocre music by people who became great composers, like Carl Philipp Emanuel Bach, served as kindling. That this little Serenade didn't make it into Mozart's catalog is no surprise to me.
Thursday, September 19, 2024
Tuesday, September 17, 2024
Harris Walz III "The Great Debate"
This is a celebration of Kamala Harris's debate performance last week (it's hard to believe that the presidential debate was just one week ago).
You will be able to find a PDF on this page of the IMSLP soon.
You will be able to find a PDF on this page of the IMSLP soon.
Sunday, September 15, 2024
Morning Thoughts about Beethoven
I have to say that I am enjoying my 66th year, particularly since I am learning so much more about life and about music than ever before.
I have been working on my piano skills for a while (if you call a while a couple of decades), but now that I can play well enough to actually listen to what I am playing, I find myself totally boggled by the genius of Beethoven, my current companion at the piano.
How is it that I missed so much when I was younger when I listened to recordings and performances of Beethoven's Piano Sonatas? How is it that I never noticed just how personally and effectively he writes for the piano. And how different it is from the way he writes for the violin, the viola, the cello, or stringed instruments in combination.
Beethoven's piano writing contains multitudes, and I am only beginning to be able to notice the surface. His Sonatas are little (or not so little) worlds that are designed to be inhabited and animated by a single human being. The geography is there, the roads are all mapped out and paved, the climate is set, and the progression through the day is layed out. But the drama that happens is a personal one that resides in the mind, heart, and musical experience of the pianist. And that drama can change, depending on the particular feelings and experiences of the person playing.
And if someone is listening, the listener's personal experience can illuminate a secondary drama. I like to believe that in a performing situation the inner images of a person listening can have a great impact on the inner images of a person playing. When there are more people playing or more people listening it is different.
I am actually glad that I have come to this understanding of Beethoven later in my life (and at an age he never reached) because otherwise I would have been too intimidated by what he can do with a given musical idiom, gesture, motive, melodic fragment, harmonic progression to ever consider writing music myself. That what I write and have written is inferior to Beethoven is a given, but how inferior astonishes me on a daily basis.
I understand a lot more about Brahms now, because I understand a lot more of what Brahms understood about Beethoven. I am forever grateful that Brahms took up the job of trying with all his might to keep the figurative fire lit, because of the tremendous music he wrote. And Schubert was able to speak directly to pianists with far more ability than I ever imagine I will have (I do have a volume of Schubert Sonatas, just in case).
Beethoven certainly wrote music for pure entertainment. I would put the overtures and many of the symphonies in this category. And there's nothing wrong with writing and using music for entertainment. Mozart did it extremely well. Haydn too. And Schubert. But I'm so fortunate to have lived long enough to be able to recognize expression that is personal, and intended for pianists to connect with the essence of music.
When music written long ago with great care reaches out from the page and resonates with the beating of my heart, I feel overwhelmed with gratitude.
I have been working on my piano skills for a while (if you call a while a couple of decades), but now that I can play well enough to actually listen to what I am playing, I find myself totally boggled by the genius of Beethoven, my current companion at the piano.
How is it that I missed so much when I was younger when I listened to recordings and performances of Beethoven's Piano Sonatas? How is it that I never noticed just how personally and effectively he writes for the piano. And how different it is from the way he writes for the violin, the viola, the cello, or stringed instruments in combination.
Beethoven's piano writing contains multitudes, and I am only beginning to be able to notice the surface. His Sonatas are little (or not so little) worlds that are designed to be inhabited and animated by a single human being. The geography is there, the roads are all mapped out and paved, the climate is set, and the progression through the day is layed out. But the drama that happens is a personal one that resides in the mind, heart, and musical experience of the pianist. And that drama can change, depending on the particular feelings and experiences of the person playing.
And if someone is listening, the listener's personal experience can illuminate a secondary drama. I like to believe that in a performing situation the inner images of a person listening can have a great impact on the inner images of a person playing. When there are more people playing or more people listening it is different.
I am actually glad that I have come to this understanding of Beethoven later in my life (and at an age he never reached) because otherwise I would have been too intimidated by what he can do with a given musical idiom, gesture, motive, melodic fragment, harmonic progression to ever consider writing music myself. That what I write and have written is inferior to Beethoven is a given, but how inferior astonishes me on a daily basis.
I understand a lot more about Brahms now, because I understand a lot more of what Brahms understood about Beethoven. I am forever grateful that Brahms took up the job of trying with all his might to keep the figurative fire lit, because of the tremendous music he wrote. And Schubert was able to speak directly to pianists with far more ability than I ever imagine I will have (I do have a volume of Schubert Sonatas, just in case).
Beethoven certainly wrote music for pure entertainment. I would put the overtures and many of the symphonies in this category. And there's nothing wrong with writing and using music for entertainment. Mozart did it extremely well. Haydn too. And Schubert. But I'm so fortunate to have lived long enough to be able to recognize expression that is personal, and intended for pianists to connect with the essence of music.
When music written long ago with great care reaches out from the page and resonates with the beating of my heart, I feel overwhelmed with gratitude.
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