All the weather, all at once

I wrote this piece back in March, during a crazy time when we had different weather every day. I finished it while in a "safe spot" during a tornado warning.

Michael Hall, the person I wrote it for, gave the piece its first performance last week, on the first day of summer. He will be making a recording of it at some point in the future, but because people are eager to know what the piece sounds like, I made a "demo" recording last night.

I love making slide shows to "illustrate" possibilities for musical imagery, so I made one for this piece. The images I used are not definitive ones: they are just images that work for me today, with the way I played the piece last night.

Please excuse the occasional foible: making a decent recording of even a short piece is difficult, particularly when that short piece is difficult to play. But I think that the challenges make the music better (particularly when played by a better violist than me).

You can find a PDF on this page of the IMSLP.

Truth

Besides inheriting Ashkenazic genes associated with longevity, a hard-wired need to express myself musically, short stature, and a metabolism designed to keep my body alive in times of famine, I believe I have inherited a sense of respect for the truth. And the general adulteration of the truth that I hear (mostly from political people) distresses me to the core of my being.

As I young person I was often confused about what I really was thinking. I don't think that this is at all uncommon in young people, and many well-meaning young people are drawn down paths that do not reflect their sense of what is right or what is true. Sometimes they/we (we, because we have all been there) realize that we are not in a place we want to be as a result of a less-than-well-thought-out decision. Time teaches us to be more careful, if we are lucky.

Music really helps to identify truth. Intonation is true. Sound is true. Rhythm is true. Physical form strives for truth. The direction of a phrase can go in many ways, and each one can have a trajectory of truth. There is no "right" way to play a phrase, but there are many true ways to play a phrase. Playing a phrase the way you really want it to go involves identifying the way you don't want it to go. I get great pleasure on aiming for musical truth on a daily basis.

I love privacy when I'm practicing: when I am not aware of anybody listening, I listen much more deeply to where I am (in a phrase or in a note), where I am going, and where I have been.

I think of practicing as a reinforcing of whoever it is I am, and combining that with a search for what is true in music.

When writing music I love the search for what is true and what is right. And I am glad that I am able, at this point, after many years of building the skills to do so, to know what to keep and what to discard. The floor around my desk, piano bench, and music stand is littered (figuratively, of course) with discarded pitches, rhythms, and measures.

I never received praise when I was a child, so I never knew if I had any talent. I knew what my shortcomings were (and still are), but I like to believe that my parents believed that they were being true to me by not encouraging me the way other parents encouraged their children. Both of them were child prodigies with exceptional talents that their parents "encouraged" with serious purpose. Maybe they wanted to spare me the pressure they felt as children. Maybe they wanted to let me be a "normal kid," not knowing that I would be a miserable failure in the world of kid normalcy.

So now as a grown-up person with grandchildren, who is basically happy with what I have contributed to the world (so far), I feel that I have told the truth.

What is true is, however, different from what is certain. I don't believe that anybody can predict anything with certainty. I feel (though I am not certain) that my quest to know the difference will continue through the many decades ahead of me during my long Ashkenazic life.

Calico Pie

The only thing that seems to make sense to me these days is nonsense. So I have really been enjoying the nonsense poetry of Edward Lear, and this poem made its way into being a song. Doing this work over the past week (or so) has been a great distraction during a time when we all really need serious distraction. There is nothing that feels as good to me as getting the right notes to fit in their proper places.

I also made a video with the text and pictures (drawn by Edward Lear).

The music is available on this page of the IMSLP.

Asleep in the Deep from Down Under

I couldn't resist putting "down under" in the title of this post, since these musicians are in Australia. What a thrill it was for me to hear (and watch) these members of the Melba Collective play this June 8th radio performance of "Asleep in the Deep" by way of Vimeo today. "Asleep in the Deep" begins at about the 35-minute mark.

The flutist Eliza Shephard, the soprano Judith Dodsworth, and the pianist Yasmin Rowe give the piece an absolutely stunning performance: everything I dreamed about in my mind's ear while working on it.

If you want to follow the score, you can find it on this page of the IMSLP.

The New Grown-Ups's New Recording

Or should it be "The New Grown-UPs'?"

At any rate it is great, and it is available today via Bandcamp.

The New Grown-Ups is our son Ben Leddy's Boston-based band. He plays (mostly) mandolin, and sings, and some of the music they play and sing is written by him.

You can listen (or download) by way of this bandcamp page.

The Surgeon's Cut

I don't think I have watched a documentary series (four episodes on Netflix) that has made as great an impact on my consciousness as The Surgeon's Cut. Made in 2020, it follows the lives, careers, and in-operating-room activities of four surgeons. One is a brain surgeon who removes tumors, one performs surgery on fetuses in utero, one is a liver specialist who does live-donor transplants, and one is a heart surgeon who specializes in repairing holes in the hearts of small children.

The heart surgeon's practice is in India, where a large proportion of the population has congenital heart issues. India also has many languages (the doctor speaks to his patients in the languages that they communicate best in), a great deal of poverty (people can pay what they are able to pay when they go to his clinic for their operations), and several religions (it goes without saying that he respects all faiths).

The liver surgeon, the only American-born doctor in the bunch, is a perfectionist who likens the process of doing an operation to the process of playing music: for her it is an art. She is also talks about what it was like to go to medical school in the second part of the twentieth century, when only a small percentage of the students in medical school were women.

The brain surgeon was an undocumented migrant worker from Mexico who taught himself English as a young adult, got a university education, entered medical school, and then fell in love with the brain.

The doctor who performs fetal surgery invented the process of saving twins that share the same blood supply (in-utero) but do so unequally. Sometimes the process of cutting and reconnecting tiny blood vessels so that each baby has its own blood supply results in the delivery of two healthy twins, and sometimes it doesn't.

The scenes in the operating room are fascinating, and are filmed in such a way that they welcome you to look. I have no idea how the camera people managed to do it, but I am very grateful that they did.

If you need something to remind you of the greatness and nobility present in the human spirit, these four hours will do the trick.

Father's Day 2025

In honor of Father’s Day, which my father never celebrated when I was growing up, I am sharing this photo of him showing his true feelings about the viola d’amore, as prompted by the photographer, Bill Shisler, the Boston Symphony's librarian, to do so.

I am forever grateful that my father gave the instrument to me, and that I am able to enjoy playing it all the time.

The Wisdom of Rob Roy McGregor

I just finished listening to a conversation between Anthony Plog and Rob Roy McGregor from a 2021 episode of the podcast On Music. I learn something new about music from every episode (and there are many), and recommend this podcast highly. There is a serious emphasis on brass playing, particularly trumpet playing, but since brass playing is not something I do, and the brass-player's perspective is not something I have, it is very informative.

Rob Roy McGregor talks at length about the difficulties of being a music publisher in the episodes I linked to above. Sometime before 2021 he sold his thirty-year-old company, Balquhidder Music, to Carl Fisher, and is happily retired from both publishing and playing (he played in the trumpet section of the Los Angeles Philharmonic).

Here is the big take-away for me:

When money becomes involved, then you can be more easily disappointed.

Tomorrow

This is the sign Michael made. Mine is below. We are hoping to have a great turnout for "No Kings Day" here in Illinois 15.

More new (old) pieces by Marshall Fine that are in the IMSLP

. . . and will be available soon. While we wait for clearance you can also access them by way of this portal.

Lament of Daeron for Flute, Viola, and Harp

Concerto for Two Violas and Orchestra

Vieuxtemps-Variations, Marshall's completion of the Henri Vieuxtemps Viola Sonata, Opus 60

Variations on a Theme of Gesualdo, Opus 37 (Score only)

Chorale Preludes for Viola and Chamber Orchestra (Score only)

Dumka for Viola and Piano

Missouriana (Score only)

Marshall Fine String Quartet #2 "Songs of Love and Death"

I now have PDF copies of music that my brother Marshall sent to our father. It is a real honor to be able to make it available for people to play. This is the first of several pieces in manuscript I will be sharing this way.

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

Taking Stock

I decided yesterday to "take stock" and count the number of arrangements I have made for string orchestra over the years. And then I continued to count. Here is my "inventory" to date:

190 arrangements for string orchestra
178 arrangements for string quartet
Six original pieces for string orchestra

Some of these are among the 128 arrangements of various pieces for various instruments that are on this page of the IMSLP, and the rest I share privately (in a way that doesn't involve money) with people who want to use them with their ensembles (please send me an email if you are interested in the link).

I have 81 pieces published by Subito, including three orchestral pieces, two operas, and a piece for large wind ensemble. Most of it is chamber music, solo instrumental pieces with piano, and a few sets of songs.

I have three pieces for published by Jeanne, and three songs published by North Star.

I have four books of solo violin and viola studies published by Mel Bay and four solo flute studies (two junior and two senior) that I wrote for the ILMEA (Illinois Music Teachers Association) auditions.

I also have a piece for cello and piano forthcoming in an anthology published by Schott, and a piece for solo viola that I will put into the IMSLP after it is premiered on June 21 by Michael Hall.

That new piece will join the 177 pieces of music that I make available in the IMSLP.

I have a bunch of string orchestra arrangements in the works to play next summer, and, hopefully, will come up with some ideas for new original pieces.

A Piece of the Pie

". . . once again, the performances of 2 dead, white men outnumber all of the performances of 71 women composers."

Sarah Baer and Liane Curtis made their report about the music programmed for the 2025-2026 concert season by the top twenty-one orchestras in the United States in the Women's Philharmonic Advocacy last month.

You can read the report here.

After the great cultural push made by so many people during the past few years to recognize that composing music is an activity that women and men are capable of doing equally well, the impact it seems to have made on the standard-bearers of classical music culture over here in America is truly disappointing.

I would like to believe that this is an American problem, and I would like to believe that this is a short-term problem, but I think that I might be expecting too much. I sincerely hope that time will prove me wrong.

I am deeply grateful to the Women's Philharmonic Advocacy for doing the work that they do to try to give women who write music recognition. Meanwhile, women who write music can only keep working while we wait for better days, days when we can feel as if we are something in the musical world other than "other."

Adoration played by a mandolin orchestra in Oregon!