Vivaldi, Pisendel, Respighi, Malipiero, et Moi

The Vivaldi D major Sonata, now known as RV 10, is a much-loved recital piece that became popular in the twentieth century.



We don't have a Vivaldi manuscript, but we do have a copy made by Johann Georg Pisendel. Pisendel (1687-1755) was a great violin virtuoso and a good friend of Johnann Sebastian Bach. We can imagine Pisendel's copy to be (mostly) accurate since he was good friends with Vivaldi as well. He was also friends with Telemann, who was clearly inspired by the spirit and substance of this Vivaldi Sonata while writing his solo violin fantasias. I noticed this yesterday when I played through all twelve.

You can read about the Pisendel/Telemann friendship in this very good article in Classical Net, and you can see Pisendel's work as a composer, a copyist (work he copied for his personal and professional use, no doubt), an arranger, and an editor on this page of the IMSLP.

This is from the cover of Pisendel's copy of the Vivaldi:



This is the first page:



And here is a later page, one of three that are nearly impossible to read:



Ottorino Respighi made an edition of it in 1910, and Gian Francesco Malipiero edited a 1962 Ricordi publication of it, which you can see in the above video.

There are a few mistakes in the Respighi-Malipiero edition, particularly in the slow movement. I was able to correct these in my transcription by referring to the Pisendel copy (a big thanks to the IMSLP for all of this). Some of the last movement is unreadable in the Pisendel copy, so Respighi had to make some educated choices. He also added some original material to the end, which adds considerable excitement (I wonder if Malipiero knew).

Here's the first page of the product of my labors:



And the last page, with Respighi's ending:



You can find the score and parts on this page of the IMSLP.

Note reading game

This little online game is a great way to help people new to reading music learn to read.

You can find it here. It is also a good way to learn to read alto and bass clef.

Memorial Day on Two Streets in Our Town

Robert Musil, Guest Blogger

From Der Mann ohne Eigenschaften, The Man Without Qualities, written by Robert Musil in 1913:

Something imponderable. An omen. An illusion. As when a magnet releases iron filings and they fall in confusion again. As when a ball of string comes undone. As when a tension slackens. As when an orchestra begins to play out of tune. No details could be adduced that would not also have been possible before, but all the relationships had shifted a little. Ideas whose currency had once been lean grew fat. Persons who would before never have been taken seriously became famous. Harshness mellowed, separations fused, intransigents made concessions to popularity, tastes already formed relapsed into uncertainties. Sharp boundaries everywhere became blurred and some new, indefinable ability to form alliances brought new people and new ideas to the top. Not that these people and ideas were bad, not at all; it was only that a little too much of the bad was mixed with the good, of error with truth, of accommodation with meaning. There even seemed to be a privileged proportion of this mixture that got furthest on in the world; just the right pinch of makeshift to bring out the genius in genius and make talent look like a white hope, as a pinch of chicory, according to some people, brings out the right coffee flavor in coffee. Suddenly all the prominent and important positions in the intellectual world were filled by such people, and all decisions went their way. There is nothing one can hold responsible for this, nor can one say how it all came about. There are no persons or ideas or specific phenomena that one can fight against. There is no lack of talent or goodwill or even of strong personalities. There is just something missing in everything, though you can't put your finger on it, as if there had been a change in the blood or in the air; a mysterious disease has eaten away the previous period's seeds of genius, but everything sparkles with novelty, and finally one has no way of knowing whether the world has really grown worse, or oneself merely older. At this point a new era has definitively arrived.

[Translation by Sophie Wilkins and Burton Pike]

In the original German:

Etwas Unwägbares. Ein Vorzeichen. Eine Illusion. Wie wenn ein Magnet die Eisenspäne losläßt und sie wieder durcheinandergeraten. Wie wenn Fäden aus einem Knäuel herausfallen. Wie wenn ein Zug sich gelockert hat. Wie wenn ein Orchester falsch zu spielen anfängt. Es würden sich schlechterdings keine Einzelheiten haben nachweisen lassen, die nicht auch früher möglich gewesen wären, aber alle Verhältnisse hatten sich ein wenig verschoben. Vorstellungen, deren Geltung früher mager gewesen war, wurden dick. Personen ernteten Ruhm, die man früher nicht für voll genommen hätte. Schroffes milderte sich, Getrenntes lief wieder zusammen, Unabhängige zollten dem Beifall Zugeständnisse, der schon gebildete Geschmack erlitt von neuem Unsicherheiten. Die scharfen Grenzen hatten sich allenthalben verwischt, und irgendeine neue, nicht zu beschreibende Fähigkeit, sich zu versippen, hob neue Menschen und Vorstellungen empor. Die waren nicht schlecht, gewiß nicht; nein, es war nur ein wenig zu viel Schlechtes ins Gute gemengt, Irrtum in die Wahrheit, Anpassung in die Bedeutung. Es schien geradezu einen bevorzugten Prozentsatz dieser Mischung zu geben, der in der Welt am weitesten kam; eine kleine, eben ausreichende Beimengung von Surrogat, die das Genie erst genial und das Talent als Hoffnung erscheinen ließ, so wie ein gewisser Zusatz von Feigen- oder Zichorienkaffee nach Ansicht mancher Leute dem Kaffee erst die rechte gehaltvolle Kaffeehaftigkeit verleiht, und mit einemmal waren alle bevorzugten und wichtigen Stellungen des Geistes von solchen Menschen besetzt, und alle Entscheidungen fielen in ihrem Sinne. Man kann nichts dafür verantwortlich machen. Man kann auch nicht sagen, wie alles so geworden ist. Man kann weder gegen Personen noch gegen Ideen oder bestimmte Erscheinungen kämpfen. Es fehlt nicht an Begabung noch an gutem Willen, ja nicht einmal an Charakteren. Es fehlt bloß ebensogut an allem wie an nichts; es ist, als ob sich das Blut oder die Luft verändert hätte, eine geheimnisvolle Krankheit hat den kleinen Ansatz zu Genialem der früheren Zeit verzehrt, aber alles funkelt von Neuheit, und zum Schluß weiß man nicht mehr, ob wirklich die Welt schlechter geworden sei oder man selbst bloß älter. Dann ist endgültig eine neue Zeit gekommen.

Emma Goldman on the American Experience

I just finished watching a broadcast of the excellent PBS American Experience program made by Nebraska Public Television in 2004 about Emma Goldman (you can stream it and/or read the transcript here).

In my late 20s I learned from my grandmother that my great grandfather was a friend of Emma Goldman, and then I spent a good decade reading everything I could find about her. In 2005 I wrote an opera using the text of Howard Zinn's play EMMA as its libretto. Being true to the spirit of Emma Goldman, Howard Zinn and I kept the work in the public domain, and we made it available in the IMSLP.

I was particularly pleased when the historian (and playwright) Martin Duberman, who made comments in this documentary, said of Emma Goldman that he thought her whole life was operatic. It was.

You can find the score and a computer-generated recording of my Emma Goldman opera here. And you can see other Musical Assumptions posts about Emma Goldman here.

Four Seasons Reading Club

Michael keeps lists of the books we read together, and makes an “annual report” every May. Here is the list from 2018-2019.

Some of the best writing about music I have read in a major magazine

Robinson Meyer of The Atlantic has written one of the best pieces of writing about music I have read in a long time. Meyer normally writes about climate change and technology for the magazine, but I hope he gets more chances to write about music.

. . . On a lighter note

I am getting a considerable amount of musical joy from practicing Caprices on the violin and the viola. Because the violin is so much easier to play, I find the act of playing Caprices more capricious on the violin. In order to remember (and remind you, the reader) that when times get tough this road (or Rode in violin and viola speak) to sweetness and light is available, I'm putting a link to all the violin caprices in the IMSLP here.

Most people know the Paganini Caprices, which, in addition to being both difficult and great, are fun for those who have the technique to play them. And then there are the Dont Caprices, which could aptly be named "Can't" when attempted on the viola. Who can resist Federigo Fiorillo's Caprices, which lead into one another and make "chain reading" through them entirely natural. Often overlooked, because they have been hidden away in libraries, are lovely and lively caprices by Ferdinand David.

There is so much to explore, and so much to be gained by exploring!

The Time of the Season?

I am a creature of seasonal habit, but the seasons are changing. I really want to go and dig in the garden, but, because of the constant rain, the ground is too wet. The air is also too cold to even consider planting the cucumbers and tomatoes that would normally be happy to be growing outside. There are tomatoes on the window sill, which, during a spurt of hopefulness, I started a few weeks ago. Instead of working in the garden I have been spending time "weeding" through PDF files that can benefit from a little care.

But everything I have experienced during my sixty-one (and a few days--I turned sixty a few days ago) revolutions of the earth is off. The seasonal things that we, as residents of particular areas on our particular planet, have been able to trust are no longer trustworthy.

I used to feel creative in April and May. It's a time when the concert "season" comes to a close, and a time when the music I am practicing and rehearsing is no longer always running through my mind, leaving an empty spot in my head for original musical thoughts.

This "writing season" I have ideas for pieces to write, but I do not have any original musical thoughts. None. Zilch.

I could blame it on the lack of lively and appropriate birdsong outside my window. I could blame it on lack of the usual stimulation I get from things that are growing. I could blame it on not being able to dig in the garden. I could blame it on the underlying noise of unfairness that disproportionately invades the airwaves.

That noise seems to seep into everything.

If I do "find" some original music in the air through that noise, I can't imagine that it will be very pretty.


. . . Update a few hours later (and with a little help from Michael)

Gerard von Brucken Fock Viola Sonata

The Dutch composer/pianist/violist/landscape painter Gerard Hubertus Galenus von Brucken Fock was Born in 1859 in Ter Hooge castle, near Middelburg, He studied composition with Clara Schumann’s stepbrother Woldemar Bargiel and with Friedrich Kiel.

He worked as the music critic for the magazine De Amsterdammer, and was very critical of Richard Wagner. His extra-musical activities included working as a farmhand and working with the Salvation Army in France. Brucken Fock was close friends with Julius Röntgen, the husband of Amanda Maier. Röntgen introduced von Brucken Fock's piano music to Edvard Grieg who later referred to von Brucken Fock as the "Dutch Chopin."

Yesterday John David and I read his Viola Sonata, Opus 5, which is in the IMSLP. I spent much of last night and this morning cleaning up and resubmitting the PDF of the viola part. It is a lovely piece, and one worthy of attention.



There's a great Dutch site about Brucken Fock that is loaded with pictures.

Treasures from the Family Archives

My mother (born June Blume) and grandmother (born Anne Bohrod) both wrote songs! My mother, who wrote "I Just Can't Get You Out of My Mind" at seventeen, was by far a better song writer than my grandmother, who wrote "Why?" when she was a young woman, though I have a strong suspicion that my grandmother is only responsible for the lyrics of her song.

My mother’s sister found these pieces of music while cleaning out the house that Grandma Anne lived in during the last part of her life (my grandmother died in 2004 at age 98).

As you can see from this detail from the cover, my mother wrote her song in 1946. I love the way she was searching for a creative way to write her name, and then covered it over with something that eventually fell off.







I do love the way my grandmother "fancied up" her name:

And it seems that Walee Brown made "arrangements" for a lot of would-be popular songwriters:



and my grandmother might have responded to an advertisement like this one, which appeared in Popular Mechanics:



If you would like a PDF of my mother's song, which is bundled with a nice little piano waltz she wrote, you can find it here.