Jonathan Brodie, Guest Blogger

From his substack "Adventures in the Clef Trade"

In memory of Abraham Chavez

And the music played on and the mercury just went higher

It’s just the vertical expression of horizontal desire . . .

[The Bellamy Brothers]

Why not go both horizontal and vertical at the same time? But where is it possible to do that? Try a string quartet. Take a seat with your buddies and play through the second violin or viola part. Preferably Franz Joseph Haydn because who else? Even though you are sitting down, the middle voice gives you the illusion, no…the realisation that you are simultaneously standing tall and pushing your feet down into the floor. You hear what’s up and know what’s down. That takes care of the vertical. Now you are able to take a peek over the music stand and see the first violinist holding close in the hollow of the box all manner of tuneful stuff while your feet feel the shakes of the cellist offering the solace of fundamental things. So where’s the horizontal? Here: you are spread flat and and thin in between two upscale neighborhoods; while peering from this middle place you are moving your eyes across the page of your music from left to right. It was type-set that way by a 19th century typesetter in Danzig or Vienna on that old and patched Peters Edition. You are in two different places at the same time; and I don’t mean East St. Louis and rural Moline. Illinois.

In the midst of a string quartet is the place to be. Forget Moline.

But let’s go back to Boulder, Colorado. That is where, in 1975 at my University, I encountered for the first time the happy business of being inside such an ensemble and to play a middle voice. The group consisted of three Graces and had conveniently just lost their violist as “Four Graces” doesn’t sound right. What led the temporary trio to invite me, a scattered and undisciplined violin student, to fill the position? I will never know. The invitation was accepted immediately if not sooner. Apparently, if properly motivated, I could put my aleatoric meanderings aside and find the center. It took me less than a day to pretend to read the alto clef more or less accurately. The motivation for this education had nothing to do with gaining more musical perspective and everything to do with the social embellishments of the ensemble that issued the invitation.

A perfect-accuracy reading score in the new clef used by violists wasn’t in the cards. This was because instead of figuring out the actual pitches notated on the page and then calculating where those notes were to be found on the fingerboard, I resorted to a foolish transposing method that frequently, but not always, worked. It should be described here just in case a violinist asked to play viola is tempted to try such a dubious method of learning alto clef. Maybe describing it will alert the potential victim to sniff out the dangers found on such a sketchy street. My advice is to take a little extra time and know the names of the notes you are playing. Don’t use the following tactic:

Even though you are holding a viola, pretend you are still playing your violin and still reading treble clef. Then place your finger two whole steps lower than the note under consideration, and sound the note. Be sure to have a look of serenity and wisdom that comes sooner and usually later comes to the face of all violists. To some, after they are dead.

My problem in those days was that I was so constantly distracted by the strangeness and exoticness of the world around me that I found it difficult to learn new things. Everything was remarkably peculiar or radiant. Sometimes both at the same time. All I could do was witness. My new string quartet was working on Beethoven’s charming Opus 18. No. 4, but the charm of my colleagues interfered with my being able to fulfil my charge; to express competently and expressively the manifold charms of the Beethoven while staying at least approximately in tune. The impediment to reaching this standard happened mostly because my attention and priorities lay elsewhere. Gilbert Keith Chesterton’s words describe my state of mind exactly. To work on Opus 18 with those musicians was like working “with the first plough in the childhood of the world.” I was so stunned by the ambiance of the situation that I couldn’t concentrate on being a musician. All I could do was luxuriate in the warmth of the new-found land where miraculously and unaccountably, I found myself. I was a tourist, not a music-maker.

It was no better with my violin lessons. My teacher was the extraordinary Abraham Chavez. His musical abilities were profound. He could transpose unaccompanied Bach sonatas and partitas into any key at a moment’s notice without benefit of the score. His solfege skills were unexcelled. When asked to whistle any snippet presented to him from the score that lay on his desk and he would do so with pitch-perfect accuracy. During my lessons he would demonstrate passages from the music I was studying while holding a lit cigarette in his right hand. When he moved the hair of his bow from the tip to the base of the stick, his unfiltered Camel would briefly be positioned over the exquisitely formed f-holes of his Stradivarius. How could I take in his musicianship and pedagogical insights when my principal preoccupation was wondering if burning ash would fall onto the top of that rare instrument and then through the sound holes into the sacred interior.

When unhappy with the sloppiness of the University Orchestra’s rendering of the opening bars of The Marriage of Figaro Overture, this Magus played the passage impeccably, to show how it should be done. Perched on his tall three-legged stool in front of the ensemble, he first played it on violin, followed by viola, then cello. This last instrument was hard to hold while he sat on his high stool. He held the cello with his legs, the sharp point of end-pin jutting out crazily towards the orchestra like a weapon but not interfering with the dexterity of the fingers of his left hand. The message implied by the awkward position of the cello’s endpin was not lost on the orchestra. We were a perceptive bunch.

But he wasn’t finished. He left the podium and went to the bass section and played. And then the woodwind section, where the bassoon was, and rendered the notes expressively on that instrument as well. That was it. Mozart hadn’t scored the passage for any other instruments. But had the Marimba been part of the orchestration of the passage, it was certain that this conductor would have nailed it on the wooden keys.

How could I learn from Abraham Chavez? All I could do was gawk and wonder.

Occasionally his actions percolated into the mystic. Hanging from the chain on his neck were several emblems that revealed that, beyond music. he was walking an esoteric path. Most prominent of these emblems was the Rose Cross and a Magan David to show that he was both a Rosicrucian and a Marrano. Why be one when you can be both? Once a bass student, confused about the time of his orchestra try-out, showed up during my lesson time. Welcomed to audition then and there, he asked what he should play; an excerpt from the repertoire, a scale, or solo. Professor Chavez told him there was no need to play anything. He removed a pendulum that was housed in the vicinity of the Rose Cross and Six-pointed Star and dangled it in front of the astonished candidate. It moved clockwise. “You’re in” said Professor Chavez. My lesson then continued, but I remember none of it. To this day I recall nothing Abraham Chavez taught me that day. That lacunae applies to the totality of the lessons I took with him. This failure to learn is on me. The virtuosity blinded me. I didn’t have the strength to pick up at least a few glittering shards that my teacher was offering.

There was still something else that got in the way. I sensed that to better hold and replicate the graceful violinistic motions this artist was teaching, I had to become a convert to an obscure, almost unrevealed knowledge. Alas that an innate skepticism prevented me from becoming an initiate. Had I thrown aside suspicion and entered the temple, I could have learned more and become a better violin player. Instead of entering, I tried to look but vapours from the burning stick took the shape of a knotty curtain that hid what was behind.

My teacher’s knowledge was obscured by what I was able to see: a pebble slowly moving; and then smoke drifting vertically and horizontally until it became a whirlwind rotating counter-clockwise.

Erik Christian Haugaard, guest blogger

Erik Christian Haugaard's Introduction to his 1974 translation of Hans Christian Andersen's complete fairy tales and stories is remarkable. I have loved Andersen's stories all of my life, and Haugaard's translation of all of them, which I first read in the 1990s and am re-reading with Michael now, are infinitely more enjoyable than the sterilized, edited, Danny Kayed, and Disneyfied versions I learned as a child.

I have set ten of these stories to music (using my own free adaptations of Haugaard's translations) over the past twenty-five years. These stories that have meant so much to so many people from so many times and from so many cultures are extremely meaningful in this fraught-ridden second quarter of the twenty-first century.

Here's an excerpt from the introduction that I find particularly meaningful:

These stories that Andersen heard as a child were all very simple tales, and their characters were probably more archetypes than they were individuals. They were not meant to surprise--let alone shock--the listener. Indeed, their attraction lay in the fact that they were familiar. The mean, the petty, the evil, the good, and the kind were so in the manner that one was used to; it was the plot itself that held one's interest. We of the twentieth century, who are so used to plotless novels with heroes so infinitely complex that, after having read the book, it is easier for us to describe the characters' nervous systems than to tell what the story was about, hardly ever come into contact with this early form of literature. Yet these stories, stripped as they are of the fashionable and the modish, give us—at least for a moment—that peace which is necessary for survival. Man must live in his own time—he has no choice--but for the sake of his sanity he must sometimes escape its tyranny--if only to be able recognize it. Once upon a time denies time and thus curtails its power over us. 

Once upon a time is a definite point in the infinite. It exists somewhere but has no particular date, which is a feat that is hardly explainable--and yet, maybe it is. We have divided time into precise periods. Was once upon a time in the Iron Age, the Bronze Age, or the thirteenth century?" we ask, for we are enlightened. But the peasant who heard a fairy tale in the market place and retold it to his family when he came home had no such conceptions. Time, for him, stretched from the creation till that moment which can best be described as now. And though he knew that raiment and customs changed, he did not believe they had very much influence on people. He knew the Bible well, yet it did not disturb him to see the Virgin portrayed as if she were a rich Florentine lady. Were not Saul and David like the kings he knew? Was Eve much diferent from his own wife?  Once upon a time was not magic or poetic, as it is to us. But then, the twentieth century has produced no fairy tales.

Andersen was the last great teller of fairy tales. We may create tales of imagination and fantasy, but they are not fairy tales. The fairy tale and the folk tale take place in the real world, no matter how exotic and strange their backgrounds may be. Witches, trolls, or mermaids may appear; but they are not figments of anyone's imagination; they are as real as the princess or the peasant. We who are manacled by a belief in progress and theories of natural behavior find it hard to understand this. We prefer to escape into fantasy, into worlds that are safe because they never have existed and never will. 

You can look at a preview of the book through this Canadian Random House site, and order a copy of it in the regular places.

Camille Saint-Saëns, Guest Blogger

I have always loved Camille Saint-Saëns as a composer. But there is also much to marvel at in his prose.

These two passages come from his essay "The Ideas of M. Vincent D'Indy" from Outspoken Essays on Music (translated to English in 1922 by Fred Rothwell):

Art came into being on the day that man, instead of being solely concerned with the utility of an object he had made, concerned himself with its form, and made up his mind that this form should satisfy a need peculiar to human nature, a mysterious need to which the name of "aesthetic sense " has been given.

Afterwards form was enriched by ornament, or decoration, which serves no other purpose than to satisfy this aesthetic sense. Subsequently it became man's desire to reproduce the form of his fellow beings, human and animal, and he began to do this--as a child still does—-by a stroke or line. This line does not exist in nature.

Here is the starting point in the radical difference between nature and art; art is destined not to reproduce nature literally, but to suggest an idea of nature. This principle, badly interpreted, gives rise to the aberrations which manifest themselves at the Salon d'Automne and the Salon des Indépendants.

It is by virtue of this principle that the most insignificant sketch gives an impression of art which will never be supplied by the finest photograph, however "artistic."

It is also on this account that the purists are mistaken when they attack "imitative music." Real imitative music would consist of the green-room noises by which a life-like imitation is given in the theatre to thhe wind and the rain and the various other sounds of nature. So-called imitative music does not imitate, it suggests. Composers have described storms, but there is not one that is like any of the rest. The singing of birds, which offends certain persons in Beethoven's Pastoral Symphony, is there imitated in very imperfect fashion; it is this very facct that constitutes its charm.

And a few pages later:

Everything is relative, we are told. This is true, though only within certain limits which cannot be overstepped. After a severe frost, a temperature of twelve degrees above zero seems stiflingly hot; on returning from the tropics, you shiver with cold at eighteen degrees above zero. There comes a limit, however, beyond which both cold and heat disorganise the tissues and render life impossible.

The dissonance of yesterday, we are also told, will be the consonance of tomorrow ; one can grow accustomed to anything. Still, there are such things in life as bad habits, and those who get accustomed to crime, come to an evil end. . . .

It is impossible for me to regard scorn of all rules as being equivalent to progress, by which word we generally mean improvement. The true meaning of the word—progressus—is a going forward, but the end or object is not stated. There is such a thing as the progress of a disease, and this is anything but improvement.

The more civilization advances, the more the artistic sense seems to decline: a grave symptom. We have already said that art came into existence on the day when man, instead of being solely preoccupied with the utility of an object, began to concern himself with its form.

More and more at the present time does attention to utility assume the foremost place ; we do away with all adornment and trouble ourselves nothing about form. The need to know is being substituted for the need to believe and to admire; and since what we know is insignificant compared with what we do not know, there is an immense field open to the human intellect.

Michael Tilson Thomas, Guest Blogger

I had the chance to work with Michael Tilson Thomas at the very beginning of his career. I was ten or eleven, and he was the assistant conductor in charge of conducting the children's chorus during an unstaged performance of Alban Berg's Wozzeck at Tanglewood.

Then, when I was fourteen I got to sing in a Boston Symphony Orchestra performance he directed of Stravinsky's Canticum Sacrum and his Symphony of Psalms, along with a bunch of double choir pieces by Gabrieli and Schutz.

And now, nearing the end of his life, I still think of him as the young man I first knew (a young grown-up, because I was a young kid), even though he has made such a huge impact on the musical world since his years in Boston.

I found this Facebook post he made the other day, and for the benefit of those who are not on Facebook, I will share it here:

Dear Friends,

Three years ago, I wrote to tell you that I’m battling Glioblastoma. The three and a half years since the initial diagnosis have been a special time in my life, filled with friends, family, and music. They have also been challenging, as I had to undergo a second operation and manage complications from the treatments that have held the tumor at bay.

My doctors have informed me that the tumor has returned. We continue to work with the superb group at the UCSF Brain Tumor Center. There are treatment options, but the odds are uncertain.

Joshua and I are in San Francisco with the pups, and we take occasional jaunts to Bolinas. Our home is filled with memories of a full life. There’s a keyboard on each floor and occasionally a piece by CPE Bach, Mozart, Brahms, Schumann, a Broadway melody, or one of my own tunes seem to emerge. Sometimes I can share these moments. Other times I find my own personal peace and solace.

Now is the time to wind down my public appearances. During the past year, I had the opportunity to come full circle with musicians and orchestras I hold most dear. My work with the London Symphony Orchestra, New York Philharmonic, Chicago Symphony, and the Los Angeles Philharmonic was very special. In March, I have concerts planned with the New World Symphony and, on April 26, the San Francisco Symphony is celebrating my 80th birthday. At that point, we all get to say the old show business expression, “It’s a wrap.”

A “coda” is a musical element at the end of a composition that brings the whole piece to a conclusion. A coda can vary greatly in length. My life’s coda is generous and rich.

Life is precious.

— MTT

Daniel Morganstern, Guest blogger "A Late Bloomer"

This is a picture of my life-long friend Daniel Morganstern with June DeForest, his wife and chamber music partner. June, who spent her last years dealing with the effects of Parkinson's Disease, died this past October. She was a remarkable person, and I thought I would share Danny's beautiful tribute to her and their life together here. I also put a few links in, because I can.

A Late Bloomer

During her twenties, my wife June always claimed that success would come to her later because she was a late bloomer. She also explained that, before any great event happens, there are always harbingers (leaves and twigs that float up), and this is the way it happened.

In 1974, right after the end of the Lyric opera season, June decided to go back to the Manhattan School of Music and finish up her master’s degree, which she had abandoned in 1963 when she wisely decided to go on tour with the American Ballet Theater. Among other things, she included the Ives Second Violin Sonata on her program, along with the Kodaly Duo. Also included were Tartini’s Variations on a Theme by Corelli and the Brahms D Minor Sonata. I thought she played beautifully, and so did my entire family, but most of all, her teacher, Raphael Bronstein (who had been an assistant to Leopold Auer) who said, “At last, I have a master’s students who really is a master.”

Was it prescience, or just a lucky break, that right after that 1974 master’s recital, we gave a series of three concerts at the Cultural Center in New York? The first two were comprised of Brahms Trios, two Bach Unaccompanied Cello Suites, and the Kodaly Duo. At the third concert, we did an all Ives concert consisting of his Piano Trio, Second Violin Sonata, and a few solo piano pieces.

We were rewarded with an invitation from the National Gallery of Art to participate in the hundredth anniversary series of Ives’ birth, for which June was rewarded with a review in the Washington Post, which said her performances were first-rate. This one performance put us on the map as a legitimately important ensemble. At that time, there were only a small number of managers for chamber ensembles like what was to become the American Chamber Trio. June pointed out, after many attempts and rejections to get concerts, that while there were many artists, there were only a few managers. As we found out, every presenter had a better artist or a cheaper artist, and there was no way of convincing them otherwise. 

June took a novel attitude towards the whole situation, saying, “Why shouldn’t WE be a manager and deal with presenters on an equal basis?” And so, with the help of the Volunteer Lawyers for the Arts, the American Chamber Concerts was incorporated. Then, in the persona of Helen Winter, June managed to convince all kinds of people to take us seriously when we played in New York and engage us for concerts all over the country. In the second of our series at Carnegie Recital Hall, June got a wonderful review in The New York Times for the Kodaly Duo: it was acclaimed as, "distinguished by technical polish and keen musical understanding" in The New York Times.

One day, June decided that to be a real violinist, she needed to get a real violin. Maybe not a Stradivarius or a del Gesu, but something of exceptional quality with a pedigree and papers to prove it. The first thing she did was to get the most expensive Jaegar violin case, covered in leather and cushioned in velvet for whatever was the top price at that time. Within three months, on a tour to San Francisco, either June found her violin or her violin found her at the shop of Frank Passa. It was love at first sight, and she played that violin for her entire career.

Another example of June’s prescience was when she decided that she wanted to be a teacher. Before any sign of her getting a job appeared, she took off both the Lyric Opera season and the American Ballet Theater season and started looking in The College Music Society for openings, and she started preparing for auditions. I kept bothering her, “WHY do you want a $15,000 a year job in the middle of Iowa, or worse, Kansas, when you can make so much more money playing at the opera or at the Met with the ballet?” She actually did go down to Florida and auditioned for one of those $15,000 a year jobs, which she didn’t get, but she was prepared. In her fingers, she had the Mendelssohn concerto, the Bach E Major Partita, and the big violin solo from Strauss’ Ein Heldenleben. She also prepared a tape of performances we gave on WFMT of the Tchaikovsky trio and the Kodaly Duo. At the last minute, an important job opened up at the College of Wooster in Ohio for a distinguished visiting professor of music. Needless to say, she got it by acclamation, and this became the foundation for a long and successful teaching career.

June’s engaging personality made her many friends. The conductor for all our initial Wagner operas was Ferdinand Leitner, a very famous and well-established authority on the music of Wagner and Strauss. One Christmas, June bought him a beautiful necktie with an inscription on the tie saying that read, “This tie was especially made for Ferdinand Leitner.” Then, she asked him whether he would be willing to her listen to the solo from Ein Heldenleben since he was a friend of Strauss and could give her the word of God. Well, she listened, and she learned, and in doing so elevated the level of her violin playing of that solo considerably.

A similar story was how she went up to David Nadien, legendary concertmaster of the New York Philharmonic, after a performance of the Chausson Poeme at ABT where he was the soloist and said, “I really need to improve my playing. Would you teach me?” He said, “Sure, as long as you’re willing to pay the rate I get per hour in the studios.” June always said that Nadien taught her how to think on the violin, and he did it by giving her one concerto after the other with his fingerings. The repertoire he assigned her were always real violin pieces, starting with the Vitali Chaconne and La Folia, and going onto the violin concertos of Viotti, Spohr, and onto the biggies: Mendelssohn, Wieniawski, etc., all the way through to the Barber concerto. June made many friends supplying other violinists with his fingerings and bowings for these major concertos.

June could walk into a room of strangers and walk out in ten minutes with five friends, while I would be hiding in a corner someplace so I didn’t need to deal with anybody I didn’t know. At the 50th reunion of my high school class, June came out with a man named Mark Starr who had been studying conducting with somebody famous in Italy. I went to school with Mark Starr for at least three years and never met him or had any indication that he had any relation to serious music-making. In ten minutes, June had brought him over to me, where he told me he was related to both John Corigliano, concertmaster of the New York Philharmonic at the time we were in high school, and to John Corgliano Jr., famous composer of the Ghosts of Versailles and other light classics of the 20th century.

It occurred to me in three years I had no idea that Mark Starr existed, and in ten minutes June brought him over to make serious conversation about conducting, composing, and creating a career.

When Bill Ryden, Editorial Director of International Music, came to Chicago for the Midwest Band Convention, we took him out to lunch at the Russian Teatime. Then, June asked very casually (knowing he was a composer) whether he wrote any piano trios. Three days later, three trios arrived, and we began a long and fruitful relationship that encompassed sixteen of his rags that we recorded, six that we played in Carnegie Hall in New York, three that were published by Ludwig Music, and which we played to great enthusiasm all over the country for the next many years.

John Lane was the Director of Entertainment on the Epirotiki cruise line, and June convinced him to hire us for what ended up being five cruises. Our obligation to Epirotiki was one 45-minute concert per week, and with Epirotiki, we cruised the Mediterranean and Black Seas, from Venice to Odessa and back through the Greek Islands, from Buenos Aries to Rio de Janeiro, from Los Angeles to Vancouver, and various others up to Alaska.

Both Bill Ryden and John Lane came to all our New York concerts, bringing many friends with them. Two incidents that stand out in my mind that characterize June as a friend have to do with her friendship with Julia Markham.

At one point, Julia was beside herself with an apartment cluttered beyond belief, and it was driving her insane. June picked up the phone, called United Airlines and made a reservation, and was with Julia the very next day. She stayed a week to help Julia get everything in order. When Julia died of cancer, June was there to be with her in her last moments. If June was your friend, you had a friend.

One day, at the Metropolitan Opera House, violinist Joe Shorr, former concertmaster of the New York City Opera and the Denver Symphony, knocked the corner off his Guarnerius off. He looked and looked but couldn’t find the corner. June stayed for an hour after the rehearsal and looked for it until she found it and it returned it to Joe.

The biggest commitment June made was to her mother who, at 85, could no longer take care of herself. June moved us from New York to Chicago, against my vehement objections, so that we could have a place big enough for each of our needs. Isobel stayed with us for ten years and took great pride in June’s being a professor at a university.

One of the things that June took the most seriously was teaching the violin. She had no ambitions to go into competition with Almita Vamos or Dorothy DeLay, so her ambitions were not about the aggrandizement of her reputation, but entirely for the students. It didn’t matter to June whether her various students had talent or brains, but she was willing to go the extra mile to get a very sub-standard talent good enough to pass her exam to get her degree. On the other hand, if she did have somebody with talent and could bring them up to a respectable level, she would enter them into the Music Teachers National Association Competition, pay the entrance fee, drive them to the competition, and pay for the pianist.

Five of them represented the state of Indiana, which definitely upgraded their resumes, either going to college or to graduate school. She went out of her way to make friends with important violin teachers in big universities so she could place her students, and they were happy to have her sending students to them who were well-trained and knew what was required. Since June felt that David Nadien had taught her how to think on the violin, she oriented all her teaching to a think-on-the-violin model. Early on, she noticed that the students that came to her were stuck in first position, so she put them into third position, uncomfortable as it must have been, right away. She always had two stands in her studio so that she could see what her students were playing and how and demonstrate how to make it better.

The next item on her agenda had to do with phrasing. She had her special red pencil with which she would insert commas so that phrases did not become run on sentences. June insisted that her students play her pieces in context with the piano or a slowed down tape or CD where she insisted they be able to go from one end to the other without stopping and work towards that end endlessly. She had studied all the pieces that she taught, and was in a position to demonstrate how various passages could be executed. In her book Practice for Performance, published by Mel Bay, most of these insights are elaborated upon, and is available.

In spite of the fact that June was a very good teacher, she found out that there was a terrific Russian teacher who specialized in the education of middle school aged children who taught at the Meadowmount School of Music. I vehemently objected, saying, “Itzhak Perlman and Pinchas Zukerman go to Meadowmount, definitely not June’s students.” Fortunately for June, the director of the Meadowmount School of Music was Eric Larsen, our very long-term friend and colleague, who said, very simply, “Why not your little kid rather than someone else’s little kid?”

The Russian teacher's name was Tatiana Vorobieva, and she came to Meadowmount every summer to be with her son, Dmitri Vorobiev. June’s students came back with beautiful bow arms and wonderful, balanced left hands. AND, every summer, the DeForest Morganstern Trust Fund sent a check to Meadowmount so that all June’s students got scholarships. Over time, it definitely paid off for the students.

Another aspect of June’s endless generosity was her connection with the violin shop A 440. Very often, A 440 would get violins made in Hungary and Czechoslovakia. They were very good and relatively cheap. June was always on the lookout for these Hungarian Strads and either sold them or gave them to her students. It was just one other way that she made life better for anybody who came in contact with her.

Italo Calvino, guest blogger

A person's life consists of a collection of events, the last of which could also change the meaning of the whole, not because it counts more than the previous ones but because once they are included in a life, events are arranged in an order that is not chronological but, rather, corresponds to an inner architecture. A person, for example, reads in adulthood a book that is important for him, and it makes him say, "How could I have lived without having read it," and also, "What a pity I did not read it in my youth!" Well, these statements do not have much meaning, especially the second, because after he has read that book, his whole life becomes the life of a person who has read that book, and it is of little importance, whether he read it early or late, because now his life before that reading also assumes a form shaped by that reading.

This passage comes from Mr. Palomar (written in 1983 and published in an English translation by William Weaver in 1985).

Leo Tolstoy, Guest Blogger

Tolstoy takes us to a concert for chapter five of the seventh section of Anna Karenina. The piece Konstantin Dmitrievich Levin hears seems to be a version of this piece by Balakierv: .

At the concert in the afternoon two very interesting works were performed. One was a fantasia, King Lear in the Steppe; the other was a quartet dedicated to the memory of Bach. Both were new and in the modern style, and Levin was eager to form an opinion of them. After escorting his sister-in-law to her stall, he stood against a column and tried to listen as attentively and conscientiously as possible. he tried not to let his attention be distracted, and not to spoil his impression by looking at the conductor in a white tie, waving his arms, which always disturbed his enjoyment of music so much, or the ladies in bonnets, with strings carefully tied over their ears, and all these people either thinking nothing at all or thinking of all sorts of things except the music. He tried to avoid meeting music connoisseurs or talkative acquaintances, and stood looking at the floor straight before him, listening.

But the more he listened to the King Lear fantasia, the further he felt from forming any definite opinion on it. There seemed to be a continual beginning, a preparation for the musical expression of some feeling, but it fell to pieces again immediately, breaking into new expressions of emotions, or simply into nothing but the whims of the composer, exceedingly complex but disconnected sounds. And these fragmentary musical expressions, though sometimes beautiful, were unpleasant, because they were utterly unexpected and not prepared for by anything. Gaiety and grief and despair and tenderness and triumph followed one another without any connection, like the emotions of a madman. And those emotions, like a madman’s, sprang up quite unexpectedly.

During the whole of the performance Levin felt like a deaf man watching people dancing, and was in a state of complete bewilderment when the fantasia was over, and felt a great weariness from the fruitless strain on his attention. Loud applause resounded on all sides. Everyone got up, moved about, and began talking. Anxious to throw some light on his own perplexity from the impressions of others, Levin began to walk about, looking for connoisseurs, and was glad to see a well-known connoisseur in conversation with Pestsov, whom he knew.

“Marvelous!” Pestsov was saying in his mellow bass. “How are you, Konstantin Dmitrievich? Particularly graphic and sculpturesque, so to say, and richly colored is that passage where you feel Cordelia’s approach, where woman, das ewig Weibliche, enters into conflict with fate. Isn’t it?”

”You mean . . . What had Cordelia to do with it?” Levin asked timidly, forgetting that the fantasia was supposed to represent King Lear.

“Cordelia comes in . . . see here!” said Pestsov, tapping his finger on the satiny surface of the program he held in his hand and passing it to Levin.

Only then did Levin recollect the title of the fantasia, and made haste to read in the Russian translation the lines from Shakespeare that were printed on the back of the program.

“You can’t follow it without that,” said Pestsov, addressing Levin, because the person he had been speaking to had gone away, and he had no one to talk to.

In the entr’acte Levin and Pestsov fell into an argument upon the merits and defects of the Wagner school of music. Levin maintained that the mistake of Wagner and all his followers lay in their trying to take music into the sphere of another art, just as poetry goes wrong when it tries to paint a face, which is what should be left to painting, and as an instance of this mistake he cited the sculptor who carved in marble certain shadows of poetical images floating around the figure of the poet on the pedestal. “These shadows were so far from being shadows that they were positively clinging to the ladder,” said Levin. The comparison pleased him, but he could not remember whether or not he had used the same phrase before, and to Pestsov, too, and as he said it he felt embarrassed.

Pestsov maintained that art is one, and that it can attain its highest manifestations only in conjunction with all kinds of art.

The second piece that was performed Levin could not hear. Pestsov, who was standing beside him, was talking to him almost all the time, condemning the music for its excessive affected assumption of simplicity, and comparing it with the simplicity of the Pre-Raphaelites in painting. As he went out, Levin met many more acquaintances, which whom he talked of politics, of music, and of common acquaintances. Among others he met Count Bohl, whom he had utterly forgotten to call upon.

“Well, go at once, then,” Madame Lvova said when he told her; “perhaps they’ll not be at home, and then you can come to the meeting to fetch me. You’ll find me still there.”

We are reading the Modern Library Classics edition translated by Constance Garnett, and revised by Leonard J. Kent and Nina Berberova. This edition is hard to find in paperback, but I bet your public library has a copy or two. I love reading this novel. I know that it doesn't end well for the title character (perhaps the only things most people know about the book are the opening sentence and the ending), but what lies in between is a fascinating, engaging, maddening, heart-wrenching joy to read. I'm sorry that we are so near the end.

Louis Casimir-Ney, brought to you by guest blogger and guest violist Marshall Fine

My brother Marshall Fine (1956-2014) made recordings of the extremely difficult solo viola preludes by Louis Casimir Ney (1801-1877). Marshall, being beyond brilliant in some ways and rather naive in others, thought that by putting these recordings on the iTunes application on his computer, he was sharing them online. I must confess that I was confused about it for a while as well (why was the name used for different purposes?), so I understand his confusion.

Years ago Marshall sent me a CD of his recordings of these Preludes, but it was only the other day that I realized I have the mp4 files he made which I rescued from his computer after his accident. His laptop, which was in the van, was in sleep mode, so I was able to extract all the extractable files from it.

You can listen to the recordings he made through this link:

Louis Casimer-Ney Preludes played by Marshall Fine

Here are Marshall's program notes:

L. E. CASIMIR-NEY: THE 24 PRELUDES FOR SOLO VIOLA, op. 22

Louis Casimir-Ney (1801-1877) is one of the greatest enigmas in music. To begin, his birth: he claimed illegitimate descent from Napoleon’s fieldmarshal, Michel Ney (renaming himself from his original, Louis-Casimir Escoffier). Next, his career: he was well-known in Paris salons as a quartet violist and friend of the pianist, Charles-Valentin Alkan--he transcribed Alkan’s Sonate de concert op. 47 from cello to viola. Unfortunately the Alkan transcription and the Preludes op. 22 appear to be his only extant music. Other pieces, though mentioned in records (such as the op. 18 Etudes for the G-string only of the violin), have no copy available. The Richault edition of the Preludes (1860) is poor: wrong notes, missing accidentals, even errors in tempos. Several metronome markings are missing the flag from what is evidently an eighth-note beat, most flagrantly in nos. 10 and 13. Worst of all, research on Casimir-Ney is still rudimentary. He has no entry in either Grove’s Dictionary or MGG. The American and International Viola Societies apparently know the most about him, contributing most to the online Wikipedia entry for him which is the best entry of any kind.

That this musical enigma should have left behind a collection of legendary and notorious difficulty--a cycle through the keys in the style of the Well-Tempered Clavier or the Chopin op. 28 Preludes, as well--is therefore nothing short of miraculous. To this is added the sheer size of the cycle. At over 110 minutes it dwarfs every other cycle before or since, except the Bach and the Shostakovich Preludes and Fugues op. 87. (Even my own Rock Etudes op. 114, which I completed and recorded directly before the Casimir-Ney cycle, is only twelve movements, and designed at some 45 minutes to fit on the second half of a recital program.)

Analysis of the Preludes shows why they are the stuff of legend. They are no mere bagatelles, but fully worked-out forms. Only one, no. 2 in A minor, is less than 2 1/2 minutes. Several are over 6 minutes (no. 20, over 8:00). To accommodate the extreme range--up to g’’’--Casimir-Ney invents a new clef, a sort of two-sided treble clef, to denote an octave above treble. (A similar system, using “phi” and “sigma” clefs, was invented about 1970 by the Savannah, Georgia savant Ted Bryan-Turner.) Double-stopping and chord problems of all kinds abound, tantamount to a true string polyphony in two voices. Some of these are tenths only soluble by using high positions; and in one conspicuous place, in no. 7, there is an outrageous twelfth in a low position, on the basis of which it is usually surmised that Casimir-Ney used a very small instrument. This and a similar passage in tenths in no. 8 are the only two passages that I have changed in this recording. Casimir-Ney even invents new techniques. In no. 20 he requires pizzicato with all four fingers, one on each string, a device not even Hindemith, in the 1937 solo sonata, could duplicate exactly. And in no. 10, he invents a new bowing technique, best described as a “portato-tremolo” because the notes are bowed in pairs unlike a normal tremolo.

The compendium of established techniques, plus new ones thrown in, is still not enough to interpret Casimir-Ney pro-perly. A too-literal approach results in disaster--this alone has probably given him his reputation of unplayability. One must know his derived forms and style concepts, all of which--absorbed from Paris of his day--reveal him as a consummate musical sophisticate. Nos. 1, 7, 14, 15, 19, and 23 are two-part forms derived from grand opera. Others, such as nos. 6, 11, 13, 17, 20, 21, and 24 are purely symphonic. In no. 17 in A-flat, he develops an alternative tonal scheme avoiding the dominant--modulating instead to E and C. For all these, the solo viola is clearly his orchestra and it is his aim to wring every available sonority from it.

But mostly these preludes derive from Chopin, with whom he was contemporary (from the the list of subscribers, which include Joseph Massart and George Onslow, they can be dated between 1843-1852, pending further research). The melos is astonishingly Chopinesque. Knowledge of Chopin’s slancio and rubato have helped me avoid the overliteral approach and allow time where needed, indeed demanded. The forms are reproduced with astounding effect and authenticity. Nos. 6 and 18 are nocturnes in extended song-forms. Nos. 9 and 17 are polonaise/rondos, the former in addition being written out entirely in three-bar phrases. No. 16 is a somber mazurka that changes in the middle to a giddy, phantasmagoric waltz. Nos. 10 and 12 are highly expressive laments. In no.12 the 4/4 main theme is set off by more flowing episodes in 3/4. The former is a funeral march whose main theme is transfigured dramatically in the recapitulation by the “portato-tremolo” bowing. No. 8 is in places (notably the end) very close to the G minor ballade. And no. 22 is an extended tone-poem, also in ballade style with six sections, capturing the mood of Rossini’s William Tell in a central “storm” section followed by a ranz de vaches coda wholly in harmonics, interrupted briefly by the severely truncated recapitulation.

Indeed, the one form Casimir-Ney eschews is sonata-form, a curiosity in itself since Chopin’s command of the form is sure and dramatic. And one must concede that he knows what he is doing. Only one prelude, no. 24 in D minor, uses sonata-form to any degree; and I believe he intends to mock it. There is no development section, only three chords that make a quick retransition; and after four or five notes of the second theme recapitulation--his sole gesture towards the form--he “pulls his punch” and enters the coda.

Jacques Barzun, Guest Blogger (again)

This comes from Music in America Life (1956). It still rings true after 66 years. I have reinforced it with links, which I'm sure Barzun would appreciate.

Music in the literary fallacy Neither composers nor listeners nor—reprehensibly—the critics seem to appreciate the extent to which their convictions depend on the deceptive charm of words. "Absolute" music gives comfort, "pure" art gives nobility, by the mere name on the label—just like a patent-medicine. Writings about music are weighted down with traditional errors embodied in familiar phrases. All references, for example, to musical logic, to its kinship with mathematics, to its suitability as a universal language, to its total separateness from other arts, to its immateriality and meaninglessness, are old catchwords with no shadow of validity. They are repeated, however with unanimity of a flock of crows on a telegraph wire by all the educated men and women who address themselves in speech or in print to the delicate particular questions of modern and classical music.

The contrasts of music with literature are especially absurd, in that they show the speakers have never given a moment‘s thought to the questions: what is the literary effect, what is the pleasure of literature? before they contrast that art with their notion of the pleasure and effect of music. They assume that literature does not differ from what they experience in reading the morning paper or the instructions on the bottle—whence their views about meaning in words and in music, and mutatis mutandis, meaning in pictures, dancing, etc.

The one important difference between literature and the other art is external and consists in the fact that literature has developed a fairly rich vocabulary of criticism, whereas the other arts flounder about in technicalities mixed with bad metaphors. The music critic’s second pressing task is therefore the development of an adequate, precise, non-technical vocabulary for describing without sentimental or fanciful imagery what happens in music, as well in as in his mind while he listens. This is a continuing obligation which carries with it the duty of criticizing the question-begging, fallacy-breeding vocabulary now in use.

To date, the most encouraging attempt to fashion a proper speech for discussing music is Mr. Robert Erickson’s The Structure of Music (Noonday, N.Y. 1955). But in speaking of this desideratum to the literate connoisseur in one’s circle, one encounters great resistance to the idea that any need exist. When the need is shown, the second lot of resistance is that a language of criticism for music is an impossibility. When fragments of such a language are pointed to as already in use, the third entrenchment of the stubborn is that talking about music destroys its essence and robs the listener of his enjoyment. One must then give assurances that the intention is not to make critical talk a substitute for attendance at concerts, but simply a means of greater pleasure before an after—it being obvious the talk (and writing) about music is already a massive occurrence which nothing is going to stop.

The distinction between sound criticism and "music itself" is no different from that between intelligent discourse and any other activity. The distinction applies to life itself which is meant to be lived and talked about. People read about painting and baseball and old silver without failing into the error of supposing that a paragraph is the same thing as a canvas, a home run, or a teapot. The fact, then, that music lovers fear words is not the result of greater devotion but of a more muddled mind.

This would harm none but themselves if our acceptance of a high art were unself-conscious or, as we say, traditional. But as we just saw, it is highly self-conscious and demanding. Like Lydia in The Lady of the Aroostook, the interested public "wants to know." It wants to know whether something is atonal or surrealistic or Native American or expressive of dialectical materialism. And this is what justifies the criticism of criticism. Unguarded, the public takes in but little more than homeopathic doses of newspaper reviewing and program notes, and only adds to its own confusion when it makes an effort to escape it.

The use of words can lead to over-intellectualizing and desiccation, no doubt. But this is a danger chiefly to the composer and performer, who are often ruined by "getting ideas." The point of a fit critical vocabulary is not necessarily to increase anyone’s stock of ideas; only to put better order among those he has, so that they will not stand in the way of intelligent perception. The most articulate critic will willingly join the great inarticulate creator in keeping absolutely quiet while music unfolds its meaning in its own medium; and afterward both may be disposed to approve of the words of Lowell Mason when, having found the first Academy of music in this country, he prepared a teaching manual:

Music is almost the only branch of education aside from divine truth whose direct tendency is to cultivate the feelings. Our systems of education generally proceed too much on the principle that we are merely intellectual beings. . . . Hence we often find the most learned the least agreeable.

As we cry "Here! Here!" and echo Mason‘s conviction that vocal music "tends to improve the heart" one mentally measures the distance between his pioneer call to song in the mighty answer it has received. One thinks of his indefatigable colleagues and successors who labored for a century before seeing results in keeping with their enthusiasm, skill, and patience: Mason‘s contemporary old Anton Heinrich, who tried in vain to acclimate Beethoven in Kentucky; Sidney Lanier, the Southern poet-musician who wrote so justly of the two arts; Theodore Thomas and the Damrosch family to whom we owe the founding of our orchestral eminence; William Henry Fry, journalist and composer and gadfly; Jerome Hopkins, the heroic organizer and critic, who yet managed to composing voluminously; MacDowell and Griffes, who still speak to us in their native tongue; Victor Herbert, the born entertainer who also fight for the creator’s rights; T. W. Surette and Archibald Davison, who revolutionized the school repertory; and Koussevitzky who made Boston the trying ground for modern American music. Often isolated and misunderstood and and even misguided, they none the less brought us where we are.

It was a hundred years ago this year that Whitman told an unheeding world: "I hear America Singing." If he returned today, he would find this hopeful baseless metaphor turned into a living truth.

Jacques Barzun July 1955

You can read another passage from this book here.

Jacques Barzun, Guest Blogger

Jacques Barzun, is no longer with us. Music in American Life, a book first published in 1956, reflects on musical life in America a few years before I was born. It concerns music in American life when my parents were starting out in music. Here is what Mr. Barzun has to say about the role of managers in the business of American concert music:

The Manager's Handiwork

The first thing an intrested concert-goer learns is that the great musical artists are the creations and also the sport of managers, on the one hand, and the regimented citizens of the union on the other. "How can I get a good manager?" asks the young violinist fresh from prize-winning at the conservatory or perhaps fresh from a European success. There are two agencies and only two that can insure a top-flight career in the United States. Both regard their work as Marcus Aurelius did the maintenance of the Roman Empire. What lies outside must be vanquished or absorbed. The managerial circuits handle a limited number of performing animals who must jump through pre-established hoops. Fees, schedules, territory are not only set but irrevocably imposed, so that anything like a natural rise in fame or fortune is well-nigh impossible. Artists are sold to local groups in packages--one high-priced and several thrift-shop items. As a $250 number, it is not even possible after paying one's expenses to make a living, which means that a piano tuner is better off than the pianist he serves. New talent, regardless of merit, must wait till the machine offers a "slot."

The last bitter dose for the enterprising wayward is the need to make the program conform to the supposed tastes of the audience. The violinist must have a large repertory of "little pieces" for both the main course and the encores. The vocalist must be lavish with coy numbers, for the lieder program has all but disappeared. And the pianist (as Debussy suggested) must be able to lift the piano with his teeth. It was ever thus and the serious artist, even when managed to the hilt and presumably fulfilling his destiny, complains that he cannot introduce those modern works that have usually been dedicated to him--in hopes. If he is a native or foreign-born nationaliist he also regrets that American music is slighted in favor of European.

Ultimately, all these grievances are chargeable to the public. The provinces mistrust themselves and one another, and all want the latest New York success; a reputation in Cleveland is of no use elsewhere: San Francisco won't listen. To obtain New York notices, the aspirant must give--at his own expense--a Town Hall recital. But even glowing notices will not open the doors of the managerial Kremlin and will not be read in the hinterland. The smaller New York managers and the local ones in the provincial cities can only compete on sufferance with the great circuits, because their constituents, the public, are ignorant, timid, and snobbish.

Jacques Barzun died in 2012 at the age of 104. Much of what he says is (sadly) still true, but I like to think that as a society, even in America (and particularly in the "provinces") we have made a little progress. It is interesting for me to reflect on "the old days," and understand the struggles that so many musicians faced during a time that many of us consider a kind of "golden age" of musicianship. Music in American Life is, unfortunately, not part of the rather extensive Jacques Barzun collection in the Internet Archive, but you can find a used paperback by way of Amazon. I borrowed my copy from a local university library.

Marcel Proust, guest blogger

I have rarely come across writing about music that is so about music itself.

. . . just so I found my bearings in this music which was new to me, and recognized the landscape of the Vinteuil sonata; and, more wonderful than any girl, the little phrase, wrapped, caparisoned in silver, streaming with brilliant sonorities light and soft as scarves, came towards me, still recognizable under these new ornaments. My joy at meeting it again was increased by the familiar, friendly tone in which it spoke to me, so persuasive, so simple, yet allowing its rich, shimmering beauty to unfold in all its splendour. Its purpose this time, however, was simply to show me the way, a different path from that of the sonata, for this was a different, hitherto unperformed work by Vinteuil, where he had simply chosen to make an allusion (explained at this point by a note in the programme which we should have had before us) by introducing, just for a moment, the little phrase. Having been recalled for a moment in this way, it disappeared and I found myself in an unknown world once more, but I now knew, and everything I heard confirmed, that this was one of the worlds that I had not even imagined Vinteuil could have created; for when, tiring of the sonata, whose universe was exhausted for me, I tried to imagine others equally beautiful but different, I simply did as those poets do who fill their imagined Paradise with meadows, flowers and rivers duplicating those on Earth. What I now heard caused me as much joy as the sonata would have done if I had not known it; that is to say, it was just as beautiful, but different. Whereas the sonata opened on a lily-like dawn in the country, dividing its floating whiteness but only to attach it to the light but thick tangle of a rustic bower of honeysuckle and white geraniums, the new work took off on a stormy morning over flat, level surfaces like those of the sea, amid an acid silence, in an infinity of emptiness, and then it was in a rosy dawn that this unknown universe began to be built before me, drawn out of silence and night. This new, red light, so absent from the tender, rustic and candid sonata, tinged all the sky, as dawn does, with a mysterious hope.

This passage, and the passages surrounding it from "The Prisoner," the fifth volume of In Search of Lost Time brings to my mind and ear the absolutely delightful Saint-Saëns Septet, Opus 65:

Curious George Goes to the Conservatory (Marshall Fine, guest blogger)

CURIOUS GEORGE GOES TO THE CONSERVATORY
by Marshall Fine after H. A. Rey
(Based on Scherzo from Shostakovich Symphony #1)

I have it on very good authority that the piece you are about to hear was written with help from a monkey.

Interested? Curious to know why?

One day Curious George was wandering down a city street, when he heard all sorts of noise coming from the music conservatory. He knew what music was, but was this music? And why was this noise being made at all, when every other building in the area was quiet? So he decided to go in at the big front door. Then he saw another set of doors--so he opened those too. It was a big concert hall. But instead of music, there was an ugly sound from the string instruments on stage:

(Shostakovich Symphony #1, Scherzo, first two bars)

“Hold it! Cellos and basses!” called the conductor, rapping the stand with his baton. “Can’t you people play together? Let’s try that again. Slower and not so loud.”

(Fig. 11 to fig. 12, cellos and basses only)

“No, no, no, it’s still not together,” the conductor complained again. “Do it again, please. Slow and soft this time. And make sure it’s clear!”

(last six bars before fig. 23, violas and cellos only)

Rap! Rap! Rap! The conductor stopped again. “Check the parts at break,” he growled disgustedly. “Let’s try another place. From 4 to 5. And make sure it’s in tune!”

(Fig. 4 to fig. 5, tutti strings)

It made such an ugly noise that Curious George clapped his hands over his ears and screamed as only a monkey can!

“What was that??” exclaimed the conductor. Then he turned and saw George. “You! Out!!” Poor George had to leave the concert hall.

He went down a flight of stairs, through a door, and found himself in a long hall with door after door stretching out on either side. Practice rooms, he realized. It wasn’t getting any better. The noise from all these rooms sounded just like the concert hall. In the first one he came to, he heard a piano, just banging chords at the bottom and top of its range.

(First three bars of fig. 22)

Interesting! He went in quietly and sat on the pedals, so that he could see what the player was doing. But the very next chord just hung on and on! The pianist looked down, saw George, and the next instant gave him a terrific kick. George fled in a great fright down the hall.

He stopped again to catch his breath and found himself in front of a violinist who was playing nothing but his open E string. (Beginning here and concurrent with narration: 2nd violins, from fig. 6 and cut off on cue) The door was ajar. He went in; luckily the violinist had his eyes closed. But soon enough he opened his eyes to look at his bow, and saw Curious George as well. (Cutoff cue!!) Once again George had to flee to evade a kick.

Then he found himself in front of a door behind which a snare drum was beating:

(Fig. 7-8, snare drum)

Next door to this was a pair of clarinetists. They were arguing over a tune.


(Fig. 8-9, clarinets. 2nd clarinet mistuned in B-flat)

“You’ve got the wrong instrument!” yelled the first. “No, you’re just plain out of tune!” rejoined the other.

Actually George was getting the hang of this music, so he pointed at the first one, whose clarinet seemed a little longer.

“Who the blazes are you?” the second growled at George; then suddenly he looked at his own clarinet and realized he did in fact have the wrong one. He changed instruments and they played again.

(Repeat excerpt, 2nd clarinet in A)

But then the argument broke out afresh! The second said, “It’s in three, like that drummer next door.” But the first replied, “No, it’s in four, can’t you feel the phrase?”

George didn’t know what three or four meant here, but he could hear that some notes still seemed out of tune. “Hu-hu-hu-hu!” he exclaimed, putting his hands over his ears. That sent the players mad! “Who asked you? Dirty monkey! Out!!” And again George had to flee.

This time he found himself in front of a larger room with a brass quartet, three trombones and a tuba. They were practicing long held chords. The tuba player was running out of breath before the others.

(Fig. 21-22, trombones and tuba only)

Manners, it seemed, were called for, so he did the same as he’d seen his master do: he knocked. The door opened.

“Who...who...” he fumbled out, in his most refined monkey talk. They introduced themselves, but George could not understand a word.

There was a word, somewhere, that meant he wanted to know something. There! he had it! “Why...why...” he addressed the tuba player.

But that was as far as he got! The tubist exploded, “It’s all about you, monkey. What gives you the nerve to teach us? Get out!”

At this point the conservatory director came up. Student after student had been to his office, all saying the same thing. The brass players laid their horns aside, took one limb each of Curious George, and marched him out the front door with the director leading the way. BUMP! OOF! he went flying and landed hard on the bottom step. And there he lay, hurting with pain and shame. Was this what music-making was like? Forget it!

Just as he had made his mind up to go home and never come back again, a young man came down the steps. “You must be the monkey I’ve just heard of.”

Curious George just nodded.

“You just come back in with me. I’ll hide you. Then you can tell me your story--oops, I mean, show me.” And he took George by the hand and led him back into the building.

George took the young man downstairs to the practice rooms. First he showed the young man the piano room. The young man nodded. “That’s called voicing. She’s just beginning. Her teacher says she has to learn to balance the notes in a chord. I know because I play piano too.”

Then George showed him the violinist’s room, where the poor boy was still trying to make a good sound on his open E. “His bow isn’t straight,” the young man explained. “His teacher sent him down here after only ten minutes of his lesson.”

Then they went to the clarinetists’ room, where the drummer was still hard at work next door as well, though he had changed over to a triangle.

(Fig. 8-9, clarinets 1-2 and triangle)

“My God, what an interesting rhythm! I wonder...I think I can make something of that.” Then, bypassing the brass room, the young man took George to a back staircase, where they went up and listened through a door without opening it. It must have been the back door of the concert hall, for there was the same thing as George had first heard...

(Repeat first two bars)

...the music was still falling apart the same way no matter how they rehearsed...

(Repeat the last two bars before fig. 5, tutti strings)

...the conductor was still yelling that it was out of tune! And no one came by to disturb them.

“Upstairs, come on now,” said the young man. I know a room where I can hide you. It’s my teacher’s office. He has not been pleased with me. He doesn’t understand the music I’ve been writing lately. But come, he is not here anymore today. We will stay tonight and you can show me what to write. A satire on this place. I’ll get even with my teacher, and I’ll get you even with the people who kicked you around.”

And that was what they did! Young Dmitri Shostakovich wrote, and played, and wrote, and played some more, always based on the noises George had heard; and whenever he did something George liked, George would let out a robust “Hu-hu-hu-hu!!” They produced this piece in a day and a night; and then the next morning he set George free outside the conservatory to return to his master.

The rest, as everyone who knows Soviet music recognizes, is history.

And now, ladies and gentlemen, the piece written with the aid of Curious George: the Scherzo of Dmitri Shostakovich’s First Symphony.

Robert Musil, guest blogger

In chapter 82 of Der Mann ohne Eigenschaften, Musil's character Ulrich ______ speaks about the idea of the idea:

"You want to organize your life around an idea," he began. "And you'd like to know how to do that. But an idea is the most paradoxical thing in the world. The flesh in the grip of an idea is like a fetish. Bonded to an idea, it becomes magical. An ordinary slap in the face, bound up with ideas of honor, or of punishment and the like, can kill a man. And yet ideas can never maintain themselves in the state in which they are most powerful; they're like the kind of substance that, exposed to the air, instantly changes into some other, more lasting, but corrupted form. You've been through this often yourself. Because an idea is what you are: an idea in a particular state. You are touched by a breath of something, and it's like a note suddenly emerging from the humming of strings; in front of you there is something like a mirage; out of the confusion of your soul an endless parade is taking shape, with all the world's beauty looking on from the road side. All this can be the effect of a single idea. But after a while it comes to resemble all your previous ideas, it takes its place among them, becomes part of your outlook and your character, your principles or your moods; in the act of taking shape it has lost its wings and its mystery."

In the original German:

»Du möchtest nach deiner Idee leben« hatte er begonnen »und möchtest wissen, wie man das kann. Aber eine Idee, das ist das Paradoxeste von der Welt. Das Fleisch verbindet sich mit Ideen wie ein Fetisch. Es wird zauberhaft, wenn eine Idee dabei ist. Eine gemeine Ohrfeige kann durch die Idee von Ehre, Strafe und dergleichen tödlich werden. Und doch können sich Ideen niemals in dem Zustand, wo sie am stärksten sind, erhalten; sie gleichen jenen Stoffen, die sich sofort an der Luft in eine dauerhaftere andere, aber verdorbene Form umsetzen: Das hast du oft mitgemacht. Denn eine Idee: das bist du; in einem bestimmten Zustand. Irgendetwas haucht dich an; wie wenn in das Rauschen von Saiten plötzlich ein Ton kommt; es steht etwas vor dir wie eine Luftspiegelung; aus dem Gewirr deiner Seele hat sich ein unendlicher Zug geformt, und alle Schönheiten der Welt scheinen an seinem Wege zu stehn. Das bewirkt oft eine einzige Idee. Aber nach einer Weile wird sie allen anderen Ideen, die du schon gehabt hast, ähnlich, sie ordnet sich ihnen unter, sie wird ein Teil deiner Anschauungen und deines Charakters, deiner Grundsätze oder deiner Stimmungen, sie hat die Flügel verloren und eine geheimnislose Festigkeit angenommen.«

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.

Roger Sessions, Guest Blogger

I picked up a copy of Roger Sessions's The Musical Experience of Composer, Performer, Listener at a library sale last month. It is a collection of six lectures that Mr. Sessions gave at the Juilliard School of Music in 1949. I thought that, being a small book, it would be something I could read on an airplane. I think that I'll just keep it with me all the time to read and re-read wherever I happen to be. Here's a sample from the second chapter, "The Musical Ear:"

As happens so often in speaking of music, the facts are much simpler than the words found to describe them. No one denies that music arouses emotions, no do most people deny that the values of music are both qualitatively and quantitatively connected with the emotions it arouses. Yet it is not easy to say just what this connection is. If we try to define the emotions aroused by specific pieces of music, we run into difficulties. I have referred elsewhere to cases in which the emotional purportedly expressed in a given work have been defined by different musicians in quite different terms. For instance, Beethoven's Seventh Symphony has been described by three composers, including Berlioz and Wagner, as "heroic" or "warlike," as "pastoral," or as the "apotheosis of the dance." This is a celebrated example, since two composers of genius and many musicians of lesser stature have been articulate about it. But you have only to read the various interpretive comments on almost any well-known work to find the same result.

Does this mean that the "message" or "emotional content" of music is an illusion, and that actually a given piece of music conveys one thing to one man, another thing to another, and that our illusion of specific emotional content derives entirely from the quite adventitious associations which we are able to bring to it? I do not believe this for a moment and I thoroughly dislike the terms, indeed the whole jargon, in general use. On the contrary, I believe that music "expresses" something very definite, and that it expresses it in the most precise way. In embodying movement, in the most subtle and most delicate manner possible, it communicates the attitudes inherent in, and implied by, that movement; its speed, its energy, its élan or impulse, its tenseness or relaxation, its agitation or its tranquility, its decisiveness or its hesitation. It communicates in a marvelously vivid and exact way the dynamics and the abstract qualities of emotion, but any specific emotional content the composer wishes to give to it must be furnished, as it were, from without, by means of an associative program. Music not only "expresses" movement, but embodies, defines, and qualifies it. Each musical phrase is a unique gesture and through the cumulative effect of such gestures we gain a clear sense of a quality of feeling behind them. But unless the composer directs our associations along definite lines, as composers of all times, to be sure, have frequently done, it will be the individual imagination of the listener, and not the music itself, which defines the emotion. What the music does is to animate the emotion; the music, in other words, develops and moves on a level that is essentially below the level of conscious emotion. Its realm is that of emotional energy rather than that of emotion in the specific sense.

Stefan Zweig on the writing of "La Marseillaise"

From "The Secret of Artistic Creation," written in 1938 by Stefan Zweig and translated from the German by Will Stone:

Rouget de l'Isle is not a poet proper, nor a composer. He was an officer of genius who during the French Revolution found himself in Strasbourg. On 25h April 1792 at midday came the news that the Republic had declared war on the kings of Europe. An atmosphere of drunken exaltation flooded the city. In the evening the mayor laid on a dinner for the officers. During the meal he turned to Rouget d l'Isle, to whom he said: why not write some jubilant verses, and in friendly fashion asked him to compose a song which the troops could sing as they marched into battle. And why not? Until midnight the officers remained assembled, then Rouget de l'Isle set off for home. He had fully participated in the general merriment and had drunk enough; his head rang with toasts and speeches, words such as "Allons, enfants de la Patrie!" and "Le jour de gloire est arrivé." He sat at the table and wrote straight out the required lines. Then he took up his violin and struck a melody. In two hours it was finished. The next morning at six, he went to find the mayor and presented him the finished song, the completed composition. Ignoring fatigue, and in a kind of trance, he had somehow created one of the most immortal poems in the world, one of the most immortal melodies, through sheer inspiration. it was not of course he himself who was author, but rather the genius of the hour.

You can read more about Rouget de l'Isle here.

This essay, which is part of a collection called Messages from a Lost World (published by the Pushkin Press) is outdated at times, especially when it comes to music (I don't know if anyone still subscribes to the idea that Mozart, Schubert, and Haydn never made sketches, for example), but much of it is terrific. Here's another morsel:

The true artist is then as occupied by his creation as the believer by his prayer, the dreamer by his dream. As a result, in contemplating the internal, he is unable to see clearly the external, or himself. This is why artists, poets, painters, [and] musicians are incapable, whilst they are creating, of observing themselves, still less of explaining themselves, or by what manner they have produced the work. They are bad witnesses, useless witnesses for the creation courtroom, and, like inceptions criminologists, it would be a mistake on our part to rely blindly on their testimony.

Willa Cather explains why we go to the theater

Jim Burden, the narrator of Willa Cather's My Àntonia takes his friend Lena to a performance by a traveling New York theater company of La Dame aux Camélias in Lincoln, Nebraska.

The actress who played Marguerite was even then old-fashioned, though historic. She had been a member of Daly’s famous New York company, and afterward a ‘star’ under his direction. She was a woman who could not be taught, it is said, though she had a crude natural force which carried with people whose feelings were accessible and whose taste was not squeamish. She was already old, with a ravaged countenance and a physique curiously hard and stiff. She moved with difficulty—I think she was lame—I seem to remember some story about a malady of the spine. Her Armand was disproportionately young and slight, a handsome youth, perplexed in the extreme. But what did it matter? I believed devoutly in her power to fascinate him, in her dazzling loveliness. I believed her young, ardent, reckless, disillusioned, under sentence, feverish, avid of pleasure. I wanted to cross the footlights and help the slim-waisted Armand in the frilled shirt to convince her that there was still loyalty and devotion in the world.

What Jim thinks about after the play must be similar to what countless people in all times and in all places (at least in places where there is theater) have experienced.

When we reached the door of the theatre, the streets were shining with rain. I had prudently brought along Mrs. Harling’s useful Commencement present, and I took Lena home under its shelter. After leaving her, I walked slowly out into the country part of the town where I lived. The lilacs were all blooming in the yards, and the smell of them after the rain, of the new leaves and the blossoms together, blew into my face with a sort of bitter sweetness. I tramped through the puddles and under the showery trees, mourning for Marguerite Gauthier as if she had died only yesterday, sighing with the spirit of 1840, which had sighed so much, and which had reached me only that night, across long years and several languages, through the person of an infirm old actress. The idea is one that no circumstances can frustrate. Wherever and whenever that piece is put on, it is April.

I imagine that Willa Cather could easily have been writing about her own theater experience, and since she made mention of Augustin Daly's New York company, it is possible that the actress Cather describes could be Ada Rehan.

Inadvertent Guest Blogger: Michael Drapkin

My cousin Michael Drapkin made a post and comment on Facebook, and I'm sharing it here. First the post:

My heart goes out to the concert going public in Minnesota - the real losers in this conflict. Not the administration or orchestra musicians. I don't really care about right or wrong; it doesn't matter...the orchestra doesn't exist for the benefit of the musicians or the board: they exist SOLELY for the people that attend concerts.

Our government and tax laws allow organizations like this to collect tax-deductible donations, operate without paying taxes and run tax-free endowments in order to benefit the PUBLIC TRUST. In this case, that means the people - the American Public - that are supposed to benefit from an orchestra that is granted these privileges. The fact that these two warring groups - the board and players - cannot get along in the sandbox is the sideshow.

The real problem? Music is huge in America, but classical music is dying; yet we still graduate 12 - 15,000 music performance majors from our colleges each year - at their annual juries they are made to play orchestral excerpts from pieces that they will never get to perform. Similarly, orchestras are not sustainable as playthings of the rich, as is their legacy, nor is their music of "dead white European men" a part of our culture. Labor and operating costs are TOO expensive for them to be run as a hobby by rich patrons, performing 200 year old music from Europe. Leonard Slatkin was quoted in Polyphonic as saying, "we know that our music only appeals to 2% of the concert going audience." Until you start addressing the 98% and stop the deluge of unemployable orchestra musicians, you'll continue to have debacles like Minnesota.

And the loser will be the public and the 98% that don't know why we need orchestras in the first place.

And then a later comment:

Maybe what we should make music school more like med school - difficult to get in and even harder to complete. The only hazing system similar to med school at Eastman was rushing for the insignificant Phi Mu Alpha fraternity. But seriously, my late father, by some miracle, was in the US Army as a drill sergeant and took and passed a medical aptitude test which sent him to Northwestern Medical School on a free ride courtesy of the US Government. He used to tell me that on his first day, all of the new students were in a big hall and they said, "take a look at the person on your right and left. One of you will be gone before the end of the year." The problem I observed at Eastman was that the hardest part of the school was just getting in! Once you were in, you could sail along and you'd still graduate, even if you did not fulfill the potential that got you there to begin with.

I think some of the challenges of med school are some enormously difficult classes - labs where you have to cut people open, anatomy, etc. It is a difficult and not particularly fun curriculum. Maybe that is the problem with music school - it is too much fun! You get to continue to take private lessons like before, and get an absurd number of credit hours for it, even though non-majors take the same lessons and only get one third of the credit. You get to play in ensembles - see? There's that word: "play." Playtime. Music school is fun, and it shouldn't be. You should be made to do unpleasant things like they do in Med School to prepare future doctors for the challenges ahead.

Wait! That's what I am proposing for the Drapkin Institute! Instead of cutting open bodies, my students will have to cut open business models and understand what make them tick. They're going to have to do a lot of things that not only go beyond their current understanding, but actually change the way they think. Things like learning that just because you practice hard and learn excerpts that you are not entitled to an orchestra job that earns you a living. Realizing that you need to find other ways to express your passion for music and finding out which of the other ways appeals to you. Gaining the business acumen to make this passion a reality, and when you fail you can't blame it on the executive director or the board of directors - YOU will be the chairman of the board with either only yourself to blame, or to cheer on with your own success.

I've been blessed to have had two trajectories in my life that both started when I was in grade school - business and music. I wish to gawd that there was a program of the type that we are proposing. Instead I had to learn it the hard way: empirically and on the job. So instead, we are planning on sharing that through our nascent institute.

We need not be defined by the narrow criteria for what constitutes success that was hammered into us in music school, that if you didn't get a job in a major orchestra you weren't successful. Indeed, I have been disgusted by the past ClarinetFests because they always deify industrial clarinet players that have no personality or individuality since they know that they wouldn't get hired if they did. We also have NO model for teaching leadership. In fact, we are hammered into learning followership: from the very first time we set foot in an ensemble, we are taught to follow. Who will be the leaders that arise from this constricted and outdated music school curriculum that is insidiously protected by NASM? No wonder why the orchestra world is a disaster: no individuality, no creative ideamaking, no leadership. Just a whole head of musicians recreating Nero fiddling obliviously as Rome burns and orchestras melt down like the Minnesota Orchestra. There are better ways - much better ways, and I intend to prove it.

I'm pretty sure that Michael's savvy with business is something that flourishes on part of the family genome that I don't share, but that's one reason I find his particular talents so intriguing. Chutzpah he has always had, and success too. Perhaps with the way things are going in the music profession it might be a good idea to try his ideas and see if they work.

Alexander King: Guest Blogger

This story comes from Alexander King's 1958 memoir Mine Enemy Grows Older, and I am sharing it here with the kind permission of Margie King Barab. You will notice some anachronistic terms here and there, but I have chosen to forgive this singular man for his prejudices, and the choice terms he used to articulate them.

There was one curious aspect to my life during all those years, from 1917 to 1948, which I have somehow or other forgotten to mention to you before--that for more than thirty years I wore only pink neckties. Not ever any other color, under any circumstances. It finally got to be an identifying trademark for me, although, heaven is my witness, I never intended anything of the sort when I first started wearing them. In fact, I got into this pink-tie addiction when I was only seventeen years old, and believe me, any boy or man who was willing to wear such an unorthodox color back in those dark days of somber men’s attire had to have plenty of guts or plenty of stupidity, or plenty of both, to get away with it. Of course I stumbled into it all, as I fell into most things, by strictly minding my own business, and by just carefully putting one foot in front of the other. I was working on the New York Sunday World when I was seventeen, and I was also doing some cartooning jobs for the Big Stick, a Jewish joke paper that I already told you about. My salary on the World was twenty-five dollars a week, and I generally took long, leisurely walks every Friday afternoon, just to give myself, and those twenty-five bucks, a luxurious airing. These walks often included window-shopping tours ranging from Nassau Street and lower Broadway to Forty-second Street and Fifth Avenue up as far as the Plaza. Well, then, loaded as I was, one of those Friday afternoons I happened to stop in front of Sulka’s window, somewhere in the Forties or Fifties, and I noticed that they were having a sale of neckties. Six dollars a tie. I wondered what in hell they could possibly have charged for them before the sale. I felt myself getting even a little indignant about the whole thing. However, in spit of my simmering annoyance I found that I was deliberately walking into their cool, expensive-smelling store. I stands to reason, doesn’t it, that I wasn’t planning to buy anything, and the clerk, whose face looked just like a shinbone with eyebrows, knew this as well as I did. But, like two idle dogs of the same gender who can’t resist their pointless browsing, this clerk and I forthwith proceeded to give the stock a judicious fingering; which means that I sneered disparagingly at the tie-racks, while he kept on constructing smart four-in-hand knots in mid-air, just to show off his really stupendous manual dexterity, and also to make me feel like a cheap piker. This went on for about twenty minutes or so, and I was just about to call off the whole silly ballet by making my exit, when the clerk, who was obviously a pansy, suddenly said to me, “You know, we have some colors that are much less popular, and those ties cost only one dollar apiece. Would you care to see any of them?” “Why not?” I said. “As long as I’m here, anyway. What sort of colors are they?” I’ll show them to you. To tell you the truth,” he said with a confidential smirk, “I’m saving some of them especially for my friends.” This, of course, instantly alarmed me, because I was quite sure that any friend of his was bound to be a leaping faggot, but just the same I decided to take a look. He pulled a box of the shelf, removed the lid, and exposed about two dozen crepe-de-Chine ties, all of then pink. “Not a very great selection,” I said. “How much are they, did you say?” “A dollar apiece,” he said. “They cost us more than that wholesale.” Now, then, who really knows what dark and sinister impulses are crouched and coiled in the recesses of man’s unconscious? Who can guess what terrible unfulfilled longings in a man’s heart are just waiting for the right word, or the right moment, to spring into instant, demoniacal action, for the sake of a long-deferred secret appeasement? In short I bought six of those pink crepe-de-Chine neckties, and, believe it or not, I even had a certain feeling hot high accomplishment out of this demented proceeding. It was as if I’d pulled a particularly cute caper, not just on Sulka and Company, but on all the goddamned expensive shops up and down Fifth Avenue. And that’s how it happened that I came to wear a pink tie to work the next day. I labored, a the time, in the tower of the old Pulitzer Building, down on Park Row, and, when I first took off my coat, the screams, the whistles, the yowls and the yodelings all around me stopped all human activity on that floor for the next ten minutes. But, since I was seventeen years old and a man of my convictions, I ignored this racket and quietly went about my business. My business was to make some black-and-white line sketches for the Sunday magazine section, and so I was able, for a while at least, to ben zealously over my drawing board, without having to meet anybody’s eye. This was certainly a help, but even so it was hard for me to ignore the mad cavortings of the office boys and the various younger staff members, who made it their pleasure to pass my desk forty times and hour in that special mincing gait which has even been the immemorial hallmark of the camping fairy. I don’t know how I lived through that first morning. At any rate, right before lunch I took off my tie and hung it in a metal closet where I usually kept only a pair of torn rubbers. When I got ready to quit work that evening, I had a shocking surprise waiting for me. Somebody on that floor and dipped my tie in a large glue vat that was permanently stationed near the fire exit. That glue had completely dried up and left the tie with a texture like a smoked kipper; but since I knew that a lot of furtive eyes were certainly watching me at that moment, I just dropped my violated neckpiece casually into the garbage can and went home. Fools! I thought. Just a pack of crude, conventional fools. Ah, well, they believed I was routed, did they? They thought they had me down for the count, eh? Well, they’d soon learn different. Damned soon, too! I’d show those mush heads a thing of two--or even five, if it came to that, because, as you perfectly well know, I still had five more of those ties hanging at home in my closet, ready and waiting to be launched whenever the spirit moved me. I was determined to teach all those dopes a lesson, to teach them to respect a man’s right to wear whatever the hell he gooddamned well pleased. And so the battle lines were drawn, and no mercy was given or expected. I wore my pink ties every day from then on, and, do you know, as the tense weeks went by a very funny thing happened. In about a month or so, I couldn’t help but notice that slowly, ever so slowly, the fury and the clamor were beginning to die down. In fact, by the time I’d gotten around to wearing the third of my ties, somebody from the business office, who had never before seen my colorful haberdashery and was just about to launch himself into the gibbering state of epilepsy that the occasion seemed to call for, was stupefied into silence when a few of my nearby colleagues told him to shut his trap and to mind his own goddamned business. You see, the young journalists on my floor had not only become used to my pink ties, they had developed a certain comradely state of tolerance toward my special eccentricity. They had come to consider it their peculiar privilege to razz me for acting out of line, but they all stood defensively by me if any unlicensed outsider ever decided to put me down. In short, after six months of nothing but pink ties, nobody around me seemed any longer to notice that I was wearing anything out of the ordinary at all. And then came a real crisis. I gave five of my ties away to be cleaned, in a store on West Eighth Street, and when I came back a few days later to reclaim them, I found to my error that the place had been completely gutted by fire. It was a real calamity for me, as you can plainly understand. Those pink ties were the symbols of my individuality, weren’t they? And, to a certain extend, they had even become the tangible pennants that I had tremblingly fluttered before a hostile world, to announce my freedom of choice. I just couldn’t let myself down now. I simply couldn’t make my appearance at the office wearing some dark, practical colors, not after all I’d already been through, could I? If I did, all would be lost again. Oh, yes, I could just see all those blubber heads on the paper saying, “Well, you’ve finally got yourself straightened out! Decided to rejoin the human race again, eh? Good for you, boy!” No, no, no! It was out of the question. Eternal vigilance was the price of freedom! that was the basic rule of the game, and I damn well knew it. And so, in this frightening emergency, I quickly hustled up to B Altman’s on Thirty-fourth Street, and bought myself three years of candy-pink crepe-de-Chine material. Afterward I consulted a classified phone directory and found that the Acme Tie Company, right nearby, on Thirty-sixth Street, was prepared to make neckties in small quantities to private order. I had myself quite a time finding that goddamned tie place, too, because it was located in one of those depressing blocks between Eighth and Ninth avenues, where there weren’t’ even any drugstores or lunchrooms to break up the solid facade of grim wholesale manufacturing. Id did find it at last, and it was, literally, just a very small hole in a very thick and forbidding wall. Mr. Aron Buxbaum, the owner, turned out to be a neat little bearded elderly Jew who wore a black skullcap and satin sleeve garters, and who showed no surprise whatever at the unusual color of my material. “I’m in a terrible hurry about these ties,” I told him as I unwrapped the stuff. “How soon can I possibly have them?” “Day after tomorrow,” said Mr. Buxbaum. “We generally like to have more time, but, if it’s an emergency, we’ll just do the best we can.” “Fine,” I said. “I’ll pick them up around lunchtime on Friday.” When I returned, two days later, Mr. Buxbaum handed me a pretty good sized package, and a bill for fifteen dollars. I nearly fainted. “How come, fifteen dollars?” I said. “You’re charging me a fortune. After all, I supplied the material, didn’t I?” Mr. Buxbaum looked hurt. “We do very fine work here,” he said. “You just take a look at those ties, and you’ll see what you’re getting for your money. You’re getting a big bargain.” “Never mind,” I said. “I haven’t got time now, I have to get back to work. I don’t get through until four o’clock.” Luckily, because it was payday, I had a twenty-dollar bill on me, and I was able to square myself. “Wear them in good health!” said Mr. Buxbaum, when I finally stood in the open doorway. “Thanks,” I said. “By the way, how many ties did you manage to get out of that material, anyway?” “Exactly sixty two,” he said. “If you had bought just a quarter of a yard more, you could have had sixty five.” And that’s how it was. Ties, I later learned, are cut on the bias and really require very little material. And so, at one stroke, I had added to my wardrobe a matter of more than five dozen pink ties. They lasted for quite a while, too, and when the finally wore out I just bought some more material and had a new batch made up for myself over at Buxbaum’s. And that’s how it happened that I came to march through the ages as a peculiarly necked man. And then, sometime in 1947, all of my luggage was lost by one of the airlines, and I arrived in New York with only one pink necktie to my name, and one that I was wearing. Well, I naturally went straight up to Altman’s to get myself three and a quarter yards of fresh pink crepe de Chine. I’d made these trips and these purchases quite often during the past thirty years, and I no longer had the slights difficulty in locating the Acme Tie Company on West Thirty-sixth Street. But when I finally got there, old man Buxbaum wasn’t anywhere in sight. Instead, a sort of young and beardless caricature of him was sitting agains the back wall and making entries in a huge ledger. “You’re Mr. Buxbaum’s son, aren’t you? I said. “Yes,” he said, “I’m George Buxbaum. And you, I believe, must be Mr. King.” “I am,” I said. “But how in the world did you know that?” “Because,” said George Buxbaum, “my father is now dead, and you used to be his only customer.” “What?” I said. “You mean that I alone have kept his whole enterprise going?” “If you want to put it that way,” he said. “Actually, the matter is a little more complicated than that. You see, my brothers and I are probably the largest wholesale tie manufacturers in America. In fact, we own this building, which houses one of our four factories.” “And what about this store?” I said. “Ah, well, that was all my father’s wish,” he said. “You see, he came to this country as an immigrant and started to feel ties out of a cigar box, on Orchard Street. My mother used to make those ties on a foot-pedal sewing machine at home. Later on he got a pushcart, and by the time my brothers and I were going to high school he’d managed to get himself a nice little store on Second Avenue near Twelfth Street. Well, to make a long story short, we all of us somehow or other got into the necktie business, and we did so well in it that after a while the whole family kept pleading with my father to retire, or to take it easy, or at least to take some kind of an executive position in one of our plants. but, for some reason or another, he just never had any real confidence in our success. It was all too big and much to vague for him. Everything was done by bank drafts and checks, and in our places of business he never saw any real money changing hands; and so, every time we expanded, or opened a new factory, he just got more worried about us. “Finally, one day he pleaded with us to fix him up this little retail place right here, where he at least could go on making a real visible dollar across the counter. I think he felt that he was prepared to save the family from absolute ruin, when we had all smashed up with our grand and highfalutin notions. So we built this store for him, and for a while he even had a couple of dozen customers that used to trade here steadily. But for the last eight or ten years, the only jobs that came his way were your pink ties. “And that brings me to still another point,” he said. “You see, Mr. King, the whole family always gets together for dinner in my mother’s house on Friday nights, and my father and my brothers and I , we would spend hours and hours, wondering and speculating what could possibly be the meaning of all those pink ties. Some of us thought it must be the emblem of some secret society. Others had the idea that maybe it had a certain religious significance, or something. bu my father--you must excuse me of telling you this--my father was convinced that you were an artist, and that you painted naked girls on those ties, and that you sold them at stag parties.” “You father overestimated my talents,” I said. “No. I had those ties made for other good and sufficient reasons.” And then I told young Buxbaum, briefly, the gist of my story. “Well,” he said, “I’m very glad you’ve explained it at last, because if my father’s sporty is anywhere at all, it certainly must be hovering around this little store where he spent so many years of his life.” He opened a small desk file, and I could see that it contained only one single card. George Buxbaum showed me what his father had written on it. It was in Yiddish.

KING, ALEXANDER PINK TIES. ONLY PINK TIES. WHY? The children think he is some kind of a bolshevik, but I’m sure he only makes a few harmless dirty pictures. He is a good and steady customer. May God preserve him from mischief. And from the police.

On the bottom of this card young Buxbaum now wrote Account Closed. “So you are finally giving up the store,” I said. “Yes,” he said. “By the end of next week the door and window will be walled up, and premises will have been absorbed by the rest of the building. But don’t worry, for old time’s sake we’ll make you this last batch of ties from the material you just brought. You’ll just have to call for them on the seventh floor.” And that was the end of the Acme Tie Company, and that was the last of my pink ties, too, because I never had the heart to take my business to anybody else.

© Margie King Barab