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 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.

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. . . .

. . . But on this summer night, when the almost full moon wakens sleepers in their beds, the dolls in their long slumber begin to stir . . .

From "The Dolls Wake" in Steven Millhauser's Enchanted Night.

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.

Variations for Solo Viola d'amore

I wrote this piece for Yvain Delahousse, a terrific young French viola d'amore player. You can hear him play the beginning of it here. Yvain is planning to record a video of the whole piece soon, so you can find out what happens in the course of its four-minute life. I will post it when it is available.

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.

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. 

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.]

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.

"In Key" Podcast Interview

A couple of months ago I did an interview for a music podcast, and it just went on line today. So I'm sharing it here.