Adventures in vibrato (and time and space)

I spent some time last week attempting to make a satisfactory recording of the violin part of "My Antonia." I was planning to combine it with a recording of the computer-generated piano part, so that I could give some sense of "my" Antonia's violin voice for people, like Lisa, who have shown interest. Antonia is a remarkable violin, but I haven't yet been able to make a recording that did her (it) or the piece justice.

One thing I learned from my experience trying to record the piece is that my arm-powered viola vibrato is just not fast enough for this violin. 

This morning I began my quest to bring it up to speed. 

Practicing scales using regular rhythms tends not to be stimulating enough for me, but my eye caught a copy of "Weights and Measures" that I keep by my music stand. And "Spacial Scale," one of the lyrical pieces, ended up being exactly what the doctor ordered.

I practiced "Spacial Scale" in each of the minor keys, allowing myself time and room to find and enhance resonance in different areas of the fingerboard (the feeling of vibrato is different in different positions because the angle of the arm is different), making my way stepwise from one pitch to the next using as fast and as continuous a vibrato I could produce. Transposing these scale pieces is surprisingly not difficult. The pitches travel up a step or down a step. They also jump the octave or repeat at the unision. It is easy for the inner ear to hear where the next pitch will be, and you don't even need to know the name of the pitch you happen to be playing. This gives you (and me) a chance to focus on the physical aspects of playing, in both the left hand and the bow arm, as well as the sound.

After a trip around the circle of fifths, I jumped into a few Rode etudes (hit the Rode), and was pleased to find that my vibrato had gained a little speed. I sounded a little bit more like a violinist.

What more could anyone ask for in an instrument than having it compel us to become better players?

Jule Styne on Inspiration

The music that Jule Styne wrote for Mister Magoo's Christmas Carol is really remarkable. Though Mr. Styne would say that "enthusiasm is hardly inspiration" (in another context, I know), I was so enthusiastic about the music that I have loved since childhood that I was inspired to look Styne up in the IMDB. Like you, I knew he wrote the music for Gypsy, but that was as far as my knowledge went before yesterday. Now I know more. I really appreciate this statement he made that is quoted in the IMDB:

Enthusiasm is hardly inspiration, it's perspiration. I think only amateurs have to be inspired in some ways. You're a professional, you do your job. The inspiration comes later on when you haver already got something and are inspired to make it better, better than it is. When I write a score for a play, just to give you an idea, I write between forty and fifty songs to get sixteen. Sometimes they accept this, and I come back but I change this, and they say,'Gee, this is better', or 'No, we'll keep the original'. But I test. I draw on myself.

The Third Stream of Personality Type

The traditional classifications of "introvert" or "extrovert" have never helped me to find my place of comfort and community in the world. And the concept of "ambivert," a mixture, I guess, of being an introvert and an extrovert, having tendencies of both, never resonated with me.

I do have a deep need for connection with other humans (hence this blog, and hence my need to write music and share the music I write), but I have always been hesitant (to the point of avoidence) to join any organization, even an organization of people who share my interests.

I certainly have a sense of "we" when it comes to family, musical groups I play with, and individual friends I might be in conversation with, either in person or by correspondence, but I feel extremely awkward socializing in a great many situations. Which, I guess, is why I don't.

A couple of weeks ago I came across the term "otrovert," and I took a test on this website. I enjoyed taking the test a great deal (they ask such good questions), and scored very high on the otrovert scale.

Michael got the Kaminski book from interlibrary loan, and we are both reading it.

Never in my life have I felt so "seen," not that being "seen" is going to change anything.

A Question of Karma

This is literally a question about karma, as it is used in casual conversation, and not corresponding to Indian ideas of rebirth (an element of faith that is impossible for living beings to prove right or wrong).

I have wracked my brain (Michael's too), but haven't come up with a single incidence in history (aside from apocryphal tales) where something bad (aside from matters of disease or legal consequences, like imprisonment or execution) has befallen a person who did something really rotten to a person or to a group of people.

I know that I am not alone when I like to believe that the laws of literature ring true to the laws of life, but every instance of poetic justice or "just desserts" I can come up with is either a matter of fiction or a matter of belief (as written in religious texts).

So, dear blog reader, please give this matter a bit of thought, and if you come up with something that you have experienced in real life, please share it in the comments. And please stay away from matters of religious belief or faith.

Just for the record, I have known people who have done lousy things, have learned from their mistakes, and have worked to become better people through therapy, learning experiences, support from friends or family, or through music, literature, or art. Those examples are everywhere. Thank goodness.

Queendom is a Word!

The OED tells me that queendom has been in use since 1603, which is the year that Queen Elizabeth I died.

Why couldn't it have been in use during the forty-five years of her reign?

I have learned so much lately about scientific discoveries made by women, and I seem only to learn about them when looking in a figurative rearview mirror. The literal rearview mirror, by the way, was invented in 1909 by Dorothy Levitt.

It was a surprise to me as well. Here is a page from Levitt's book, The Woman and the Car (you can find the whole book here). Please click this image for a larger view of necessities for travel. You will see that a mirror is on top of the list.

I found this information on this page of Trey and Monica's Adventures in California History.

Mi Y'malel, retold for String Quartet

I only wish that making improvements and rearrangements in life were as easy and as satisfying as making improvements and rearrangements in music. When I write or when I arrange I feel like I have total control over my tonal "kingdom" (or "queendom, which is not a word, but should be). But when I encounter the news of the day during this festival of lights, there is nothing I can do except to try to shine some sort of musical light, to make a few minutes of musical entertainment light up the shadows that threaten to darken our spirits.

You will find the above arrangement for string quartet under the transcription tab of this page of the IMSLP. You can also find a PDF here, and listen here.

But who can retell the things that befell us? Who can count them? In every age some hero or sage came to our aid.

I like to think that there are millions of heros and sages among us today (in every part of the world) who are on the side of light, freedom to live, and the side of love.

Happy fourth night of Hanukkah.

Mi Y'malel (Who Can Retell) for the first night of Hanukkah, 2025

For violin, viola, and piano or violin, cello and piano. The music is available here.

My Antonia for National Violin Day

I feel so in sync with the part of the universe that declares days national this day or national that day. I just learned that today, December 13, is national violin day. Maybe I should spell that with initial capital letters: National Violin Day.

I just happened to have finished, after working on it for six weeks or so, a piece for my new-to-me violin. I put the final touches on the score, part, and cover last night, very close to midnight.

I spent many years coveting a lovely German violin made in 1791 by Johannes Doerffel of Klingenthal in Geoffrey Seitz's violin shop in Saint Louis, Missouri, and I finally took it home with me this past August. Because of its soprano voice and magical high register, I named it “Antonia,” after a character in E.T.A. Hoffmann’s story “Councillor Krespel.” Antonia is the central figure in this 1818 German story concerning a violin maker and his daughter, who had the voice of a violin. Here is a revealing excerpt from the story.

He had scarcely bowed the first notes when Antonia cried out joyfully, “Why, it’s me — I am singing again.”

Truly, the silvery, bell-like tone of the instrument had a special and marvelous quality of its own. It seemed to come from the human breast. Krespel was deeply stirred. He played perhaps more compellingly than ever before. And when, with his fullest power, he would storm over the strings in brilliant, sparkling scales and arpeggios, Antonia would clap her hands and cry, delighted, “Ah! I did that well. I did that splendidly!” Often she would say to him, “I should like to sing something, father.” And then he would take the violin from the wall, and play her favorite songs, those which she used to sing. Then she was quite happy.

I am sure that my violin, my Antonia, was being played somewhere in Europe during the time that Hoffmann was writing his story.

You can find the music here, and listen to a computer-generated recording here. You can also find it on this page of the IMSLP.

"But," You say. "Isn't My Antonia a book by Willa Cather?"

Of course it is. But Cather's novel (and central character) sports a diacritical mark over the initial Á.

[Since my friend Daniel Morganstern is celebrating his eighty-fifth birthday in a couple of weeks, I dedicated the piece to him.]

A Perfomance of "The Collar" in Denmark by Julia Reparip and Per Svenson

It is so satisfying to hear this performed in Hans Christian Andersen's native country! The video should start at the beginning of the piece.

Holiday Strings Concert December 6, 2025

You can listen to a recording from last night's concert here.

I feel so fortunate to be able to work with this group of people, who all live in rural downstate Illinois. For this concert we had a couple of librarians, a small handful of university professors, a few dedicated string teachers, a bunch of grown-up people, some who play multiple instruments (in addition to strings) and sing, and a healthy number of kids (elementary through high school). Our conductor doubles as a teacher of meteorology, and he makes sure we get safely to rehearsals and back (we only had two for this program).

I get to make all the arrangements, and I get to fix the mistakes I make in the parts, which is a real gift. I also get to spend the next year at work on new music for next December, which I hope will help keep me in good spirits for the daunting year ahead.

Intimate Conversations: Face to Face with Matchless Musicians

This hefty and very interesting book is a collection of conversations between Larry Ruttman, a lifelong Boston-area music lover who spent his first career as a lawyer, and twenty-one musicians: composers, performing musicians (including conductors) and musical administrators. The chapters are not presented in the usual interview format, which I find refreshing.

Larry Ruttman asks interesting and interested questions to these musicians, all who have some connection to Boston. I grew up in Boston, and know a great deal about some of the people in the book, so it was quite an experience to encounter the more "unsung" musicians in this collection of "subjects."

The most surprising "subject" for me by far was Cecylia Arzewski. I knew her from her days in the first violin section of the Boston Symphony, and always admired her. I vividly remember the summer evening she came to my house to play quartets with my father, when we had a cottage near the Stockbridge Bowl, a mile and a half from Tanglewood. I remember her saying how tired she was after practicing for six hours that day. They played the Brahms A minor Quartet, and it was fantastic to hear.

Cecylia left her position as assistant concertmaster of the Boston Symphony to be the associate concertmaster of the Cleveland Orchestra in 1987, and she later became the concertmaster of the Atlanta Symphony, where she spent the rest of her career.

Imagine my surprise to read what she had to say about Seiji Ozawa, and the talk she had with him before she left the BSO.

Ozawa  told her that he wanted to hold auditions in order to rearrange the first violin section. Larry Ruttman asked Arzewski if Ozawa demoted anyone. Arzewski didn't want to give the names of people, but Ruttman mentioned, of all people, my father.

Ruttman was under the impression that my father had left the orchestra at that point, but he was mistaken. My father was removed from his position as principal in 1993, and, in some ways just to spite Seiji Ozawa and his years of abuse, remained in the viola section while receiving, as I recall, principal pay. He retired in 2004.

Arzewski described my father as a great violist, a loner, a thinker, and a very bright man. She said that she saw what was happening to him before she left, and saw that Seiji Ozawa had "designs" on my father. She said that everybody knew it.

I am so grateful that Cecylia Arzewski said the quiet part out loud. It was extremely difficult for me and members of my family to process the decades-long abuse that my father hand to endure. Ozawa did little things, like tell my father that his bow made too much noise. My father used to say that Ozawa told him that his bow went "tick-tick-tick" when it should go "woo-woo-woo." This sent my father on a very expensive quest for a succession of bows that Ozawa might be able to tolerate. Ozawa criticized my father's leadership, while everybody in his section felt greatful to have him as a leader. When my father recorded Don Quixote by Richard Strauss (the solo viola plays the part of Sancho Panza to the the solo cellist's Don Quixote), his name was left off the record cover.

But I digress . . .

There is a lot that is worthwile in this book. I found the chapter about Joan Tower particularly interesting. I also enjoyed reading about Robert Levin's experiences as a student of Nadia Boulanger. I got a little annoyed in the chapter about Benjamin Zander, because the Ben Zander I knew when I was a teenager and as a young adult (I played flute in his New England Conservatory Youth Chamber Orchestra when I was in high school, and played in the Boston Philharmonic when I was in my very early twenties) seemed to have faded away at the time of the interview had with Larry Ruttman. I would have liked to have "seen" the person I once knew, but time does have a way of changing people (including me).

You can find the book, read an excerpt, and read some reviews of it on Amazon.

Holiday Strings Concert in Charleston December 6!

This is the first concert of the winter season for me. And it is a great excuse to share this image of an oil painting made by my mother, June Fine.

A Whole New World and The Same Old Me (but a little older)

The longer you live, the more you see. The more you experience, the more you value the things that haven't changed too much.

Musically (and outside of my own musical changes) I have seen worlds around me accept and reject trends. Serialism, or what my father used to call "Mickey Mouse music," made its way into the highest eschelons of musical performance, even though the musicians at the top of the "classical" musical profession had a really difficult time putting their hearts and souls into it.

Fortunately most people in the listening audience couldn't tell whether the sounds those musicians were making were happening at the proper times. If a skilled professional has a hard time hearing complicated cross rhythms, your average music-savvy listener isn't going to know whether playing correctly or not. Same with intervals that exist between the "cracks" of the keyboard. I have not yet met a musician who could accurately divide a whole step into "slices" smaller (or slightly larger) than a quarter tone. And quarter tones need to be tuned by ear to match the guesses of the other people in an ensemble playing or singing them in order to get that brownish quarter-tone color that some of us recognize as correct.

Please challenge me on this point. I have asked before, and have never gotten a response.

After a long time of listening and playing, I can hear quarter tones, but if I try to sing them it is always a random guess as to where the pitch should go--never a measurement.

I have witnessed technical playing levels in young people (people in their twenties) escalate. I have heard tremendous improvements in wind-player intonation, thanks, in part, to excellent teaching and instruments that are far better than the ones I grew up with.

The musical world I grew up in was dominated by men. Most of the music that I heard in orchestral concerts was written by men. Nearly all orchestral concerts were conducted by men. A female brass player was an anomaly. Female wind players were treated differently from their male colleagues.

Orchestral jobs were hard to get, but somehow, when audition procedures for non-major orchestras became fair, the best players for the job often turned out to be female. This happened in orchestras in major cities, and it happened in orchestras in smaller cities. (The ugly truth behind salary discrepancies between men and women principal wind players in major orchestras didn't come to light until a few years ago.)

We all know that women have been writing music for a very long time, and we all know that music written by women appears on a relative handful of programs of orchestral music. A great many dedicated people tried to change this a few years ago. A few succeeded for a time, but I'm not seeing any kind of practice really stick in the world (Midwestern United States) around me. I have written a lot on the subject of composers who are women here. You can read a bunch of posts here, if you are interested.

But I keep on keeping on, because I trust that the world around me will keep changing. Clearly social media and the bottom-feeding gleaning and regurgitating device that calls itself intelligence will never give me an accurate report on whether people play the music I write or not, but I will just keep on doing what I do, because it is what I do.

Recognition means very little to me. I am wired not to believe it when someone says something good about me or what I have written. I do, however, know when something I do is something of quality, and it pleases me greatly when someone recognizes that quality and uses it to further their expressive musical experience.

And I know when I am playing in tune, counting correctly, and when I am communicating with my musical colleagues in a meaningful way.