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.

Zero Gravity, Many Tears

When I first saw this image I wondered how it was even possible for a person to play violin in zero gravity. How do you keep the bow on the string?

But Sarah Gillis, armed with a specially-made violin, did. And the John Williams piece from Star Wars: The Force Awakens she played remotely (oh so remotely) with El Sistema students in Venezuala, the United States, Brazil, Sweden, Uganda, and Haiti brought real tears to my eyes in this linked performance recorded the other day and broadcast yesterday.

To Dorico's credit . . .

Slowly I am making my way through the various help screens in the Dorico "manual," and though it takes what seems like eons to figure out what commonplace things (like text boxes) are called, I am finding out a little about the logic of the program.

But to their credit, the engraved musical examples they show are often by composers who are female. So far I have encountered Josephine Lang and Dora Pejačević.

I have also learned that the obtuse nature of the program is a result of the developers, who were "let go" by Sibelius, having to create a program from scratch with names for items and names procedures that would not be identified as proprietary to Sibelius (or to Finale, for that matter).

So I will continue to figure out how to do things Doricolly.

Cumberland Gap: a lot of joy in the morning

And that is our son Ben singing and playing mandolin.

Rockabye

Michael and I have been enjoying watching films starring Constance Bennett over the past week or so. We were introduced to her through a featured collection of pre-code movies on the Criterion channel called "Rebels at the Typewriter," where the lead female characters are strong-minded, and the screenwriters were all female.

Last night we watched Rockabye, a movie from 1932 where Bennett plays Judy, an actress who came to be a great success as a result of her manager discovering her in one of the seedier parts of town.

I give no spoilers about the plot here.

What struck me about the character of Judy is that she seems to be an amalgam of four famous female opera characters who made unfortunate choices in the course of their operas: Cio-Cio-San in Puccini's Madama Butterfly, Juilette in Gounod's Roméo et Juliette, Carmen, in Bizet's Carmen, and Floria Tosca in Puccini's Tosca.

At a central point of the film, Judy returns to one of the speakeasys she frequented (and sang songs in) before she was a famous Broadway star. A patron played by Sterling Holloway asks her repeatedly to sing the 1916 Raymond Hubbel/John L. Golden song "Poor Butterfly." Here's the text, which is a reflection on the story of Madama Butterfly.

There's a story told of a little Japaneses
Sitting demurely 'neath the cherry blossom trees.
Miss Butterfly her name.
A sweet little innocend child was she,
Till a fine young American from the sea.
To her garden came.
Then met 'neath the cherry blossoms ev'ry day
And he taught her how to love in the "merican way,
To love with her soul! 'twas easy to learn;
Then he sailed away with a promise to return.

REFRAIN:

Poor Butterfly! 'neat the blossoms waiting
Poor Butterfly! For she loved him so.
The moment pass into hours
The hours pass into years
And as she smiles through her tears,
She murmurs low,
The moon and I know that he be faithful,
I'm sure he come to me bye and bye.
But if he don't come back
Then I never sigh or cry
I just mus' die.

"Won't you tell my love" she would whisper to the breeze
Tell him I'm waiting 'neath the cherry blossom trees.
My Sailor man to see.
The bees and the humming birds say they guess,
Ev'ry day that passes makes one day less.
'Till you'll come home to me.
For once Butterfly she gives her heart away,
She can never love again
She is his for aye.
Through all of this world,
For Ages to come,
So her face just smiles,
Tho' her heart is growing numb.

(REFRAIN)

Judy doesn't sing "Poor Butterfly," but she does sing Harry von Tilzer's "Till the Right Man Comes Along." Perhaps "Poor Butterfly" would make the connection too heavy-handed, or maybe it was too long for the film. But to anyone who knows the Puccini opera and the 1916 song, the purpose of mentioning the song in the film is very clear.

The way Judy is received in the speakeasy reminds me of the beginning of the second act of Carmen. And her brilliant, vulnerable, devoted, and fragile personality, along with her fame as an actress, reminds me of the character of Floria Tosca (who was based loosley on the actress Sarah Burnhardt) in the opera Tosca. And at one point in the film Judy quotes a few of Juliet's lines from Romeo and Juilet, bringing Juilet's fate to mind. Like all of the above-mentioned opera characters, Judy has difficult choices to make. I will leave it at that (I promosed no spoilers).

The movie isn't on YouTube, but I did find a clip of the speakeasy scene there:



And here's Frank Sinata singing "Poor Butterfly."