During a lesson this afternoon I revealed the silly words that I had in my mind for the piece my student was playing. The words were not particularly good (and I'm not repeating them here), but they were THE words that I gave to the melody nearly 30 years ago, and they will forever be married to the melody. Having words did help my student understand the rhythm, so sharing them proved successful.
I told her that once you give a melody words, you don't usually change the words. It's kind of like naming a stuffed animal or a doll. I have never changed the name of a stuffed animal or a doll. I have never known anyone else to change the name of a stuffed animal. Once you give something a name, you have named it. And that's that.
It's the same with people. You can use nicknames, but it doesn't change the fact that there was once an official name. If you make a legal name change as an adult, that name change becomes permanent. It's just that you name yourself rather than go with a name given to you by a parent.
Showing posts with label Musings. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Musings. Show all posts
Monday, December 10, 2018
Saturday, April 26, 2014
The Education of the Senses
My friend Norman Spencer (who has told me over and over that music is not one of his areas of real knowledge) put this post on Facebook where he made reference to his fondness for the second movement of Beethoven's Seventh Symphony. He included a picture of Linus (of Peanuts fame) sitting next to a radio on top of a caption that reads "Happiness is a Sad Song."
The first piece of meat I ate in a decade was a piece of chicken I had at our daughter's wedding two weeks ago. Surprisingly the chicken itself had little in the way of flavor for me, but it gave me energy and kept me full. Meal by subsequent meal during these last two weeks I started to notice complicated and pleasurable flavors that were in my food. It was not instant. It was kind of like a negative developing, or like a distant radio signal becoming more clear. Now that I am eating meat regularly I have a much more acute sense of the various flavors in the plant foods that accompany it. I simply get more pleasure from the various (and they are now really various) flavors that are in my food. I wonder if eliminating a whole category of food (or two categories if you include dairy) eventually began to dull my sense of taste.
I wonder if people who have only had the experience of listening to music through a recorded filter suffer unknowingly from the same kind of passive sensory deprivation that I had during my decade of eating only plant-based foods. I wonder if people who only listen to music played in a few keys (you know, C major, G major, D major, and A major and their relative minors) don't happen to notice that there are all sorts of harmonic possibilities beyond three sharps. And young brass players who live in the keys of F, B-flat, E-flat, and A-flat might not realize the possibilities available in the worlds of sharp keys. Pianists get used to the tempered tuning of their instrument, and they may not really notice that when they hear vocal music or string music that the musicians are often using a natural (or pure) scale when they are singing or playing.
One of the maxims in Stevens Hewitt's Oboe Method reads, "The only education is the education of the senses." This makes total sense (no pun intended) to me now. As human beings we are totally pleasure driven. If it were not for pleasure, we would not bother to procreate. If it were not for pleasure we would not form communities. We make music for pleasure and for the pleasure of others. We cook food for pleasure and for the pleasure of others. The experience of pleasure is what allows us to recognize it when we encounter it again. Teaching people to recognize the pleasures available in the world around them is a genuinely worthwhile activity, but, like anything worthwhile, it sometimes takes time and courage for relative novices to hear (and taste and feel) for themselves.
Here are some more of Hewitt's maxims (for your pleasure).
I think I've said before that I am intellectually a pessimist, but emotionally an optimist. People without a tolerance for ambiguity might find this to be a paradox, but in combination they result in a wistful melancholy, like music in a minor key. However much I am cheered, even exhilarated, by Mozart's Singspiele, I am comforted by the Allegretto movement of Beethoven's Seventh, the greatest piece of music ever written, in my opinion, because, because like me, it is both major and minor.Here's my response:
Some of the most uplifting and exhilarating pieces of music happen to be in the minor mode. And that fine line between the emotions can be crisscrossed constantly and imperceptibly by a composer who has the sensitivity to understand how complex the human animal is. I don't really understand why people (who do not prioritize music) divide it between major and minor, reflecting merely happy and sad states of being. We have areas of our tongues that taste bitter, sweet, salty, and sour (not to mention umami), and most of us see a wide swash of the color spectrum in three dimensions. We feel a wide range of temperatures and textures with our skin, and we experience smells that allow us to recall times and places from our most deeply buried memories. Composing musicians and performing musicians offer us those kinds of experiences in organized sound (though too many people hear only happy and sad, loud and soft, or fast and slow). A good performance of the slow movement of Beethoven's 7th (not to mention the whole Symphony) can stimulate and challenge the senses of people hearing it partly because it stimulates and challenges the senses of the people playing it. It is one of the handful of pieces in the orchestral repertoire that instantly allows the people playing it and the people hearing it to become one.Then I started thinking about my own sense of sense in relation to my recent gastronomic expansion and the pleasure that it has given me to eat from the whole "repertoire," not just from the foods that grow in the ground.
The first piece of meat I ate in a decade was a piece of chicken I had at our daughter's wedding two weeks ago. Surprisingly the chicken itself had little in the way of flavor for me, but it gave me energy and kept me full. Meal by subsequent meal during these last two weeks I started to notice complicated and pleasurable flavors that were in my food. It was not instant. It was kind of like a negative developing, or like a distant radio signal becoming more clear. Now that I am eating meat regularly I have a much more acute sense of the various flavors in the plant foods that accompany it. I simply get more pleasure from the various (and they are now really various) flavors that are in my food. I wonder if eliminating a whole category of food (or two categories if you include dairy) eventually began to dull my sense of taste.
I wonder if people who have only had the experience of listening to music through a recorded filter suffer unknowingly from the same kind of passive sensory deprivation that I had during my decade of eating only plant-based foods. I wonder if people who only listen to music played in a few keys (you know, C major, G major, D major, and A major and their relative minors) don't happen to notice that there are all sorts of harmonic possibilities beyond three sharps. And young brass players who live in the keys of F, B-flat, E-flat, and A-flat might not realize the possibilities available in the worlds of sharp keys. Pianists get used to the tempered tuning of their instrument, and they may not really notice that when they hear vocal music or string music that the musicians are often using a natural (or pure) scale when they are singing or playing.
One of the maxims in Stevens Hewitt's Oboe Method reads, "The only education is the education of the senses." This makes total sense (no pun intended) to me now. As human beings we are totally pleasure driven. If it were not for pleasure, we would not bother to procreate. If it were not for pleasure we would not form communities. We make music for pleasure and for the pleasure of others. We cook food for pleasure and for the pleasure of others. The experience of pleasure is what allows us to recognize it when we encounter it again. Teaching people to recognize the pleasures available in the world around them is a genuinely worthwhile activity, but, like anything worthwhile, it sometimes takes time and courage for relative novices to hear (and taste and feel) for themselves.
Here are some more of Hewitt's maxims (for your pleasure).
Monday, July 23, 2012
"Being" an Anything, Particularly a Composer
Sometimes I wonder what "being" a composer is. I only really feel like one when I am writing, and when I am writing something that seems like the "same old, same old," I feel like either a lousy composer or not a composer at all. Stuff I have written (and there's a lot of it since I pretty much chain-wrote my way through my 40s) is written, and, like most music that hasn't been somehow "branded," it sits around dormant and silent. Once in a while I hear from somebody who has enjoyed playing something I wrote, and it feels pretty nice, but it is difficult to feel current about something that I did to the best of my ability a while ago, particularly when I spend a lot of my music writing time trying like hell not to inadvertently repeat myself.
Visual artists have it easy, perhaps. Take Cezanne, for example. He could paint fruit bowl after fruit bowl, and each one could be an original and meaningful piece of art that says essentially one thing: I am an example of the way Cezanne saw a bowl of fruit. We can enjoy any one of these Cezanne bowls of fruit at any time of year, and these bowl of never-decaying fruit can be found in multiple locations around the world. We can even enjoy them as reproductions, and (as evidenced above) in "collections" on the internet. We can enjoy them for their colors, for their composition, for their quality, for their Cezanne-ness, for their value in the art market, and for their influence on other artists and on art in general. And each one is a masterpiece.
Music, being not a "thing" exists mainly in time, but it does paint figurative pictures and does take up figurative space. Really great music written by really great composers (Haydn and Bach come immediately to mind, but there are scads and scads of others) is like the fresh new air of morning, piece after piece. I wonder if either Haydn or Bach felt like Cezanne did (hundreds of years later) while painting fresh pictures of fruit. I also wonder if either Bach or Haydn ever felt a little like the way I feel right now, which is in a state of creative defeat, or as (the character) Molly Dodd demonstrated when she (in the context of an episode of "The Days and Nights of Molly Dodd") hosted the David Letterman show declared "our fields are fallow."
Visual artists have it easy, perhaps. Take Cezanne, for example. He could paint fruit bowl after fruit bowl, and each one could be an original and meaningful piece of art that says essentially one thing: I am an example of the way Cezanne saw a bowl of fruit. We can enjoy any one of these Cezanne bowls of fruit at any time of year, and these bowl of never-decaying fruit can be found in multiple locations around the world. We can even enjoy them as reproductions, and (as evidenced above) in "collections" on the internet. We can enjoy them for their colors, for their composition, for their quality, for their Cezanne-ness, for their value in the art market, and for their influence on other artists and on art in general. And each one is a masterpiece.
Music, being not a "thing" exists mainly in time, but it does paint figurative pictures and does take up figurative space. Really great music written by really great composers (Haydn and Bach come immediately to mind, but there are scads and scads of others) is like the fresh new air of morning, piece after piece. I wonder if either Haydn or Bach felt like Cezanne did (hundreds of years later) while painting fresh pictures of fruit. I also wonder if either Bach or Haydn ever felt a little like the way I feel right now, which is in a state of creative defeat, or as (the character) Molly Dodd demonstrated when she (in the context of an episode of "The Days and Nights of Molly Dodd") hosted the David Letterman show declared "our fields are fallow."
Monday, March 12, 2012
The Difference is in the Doing
I think that one difference between what we call "classical music" and what we might call "popular music" or "commercial music" (including music written in the various idioms used for what we call "classical music") has a lot to do with the motivations of a composer. The same composer can, of course, write music that is intended to be commercial as well as write music that is done with little regard for how it sells (or is consumed). There have always been great composers who wrote both commercial (or popular) and non commercial music. I suppose it has a lot to do with who the consumer of the music happens to be, and how s/he consumes it.
I believe that commercial music is written primarily to engage audiences. Film music is written to manipulate an audience to react to visual images and narrative in a particular way. Opera is too, and even more so in the 20th century. What we call "pop music" is very intensely geared to appeal to an audience, and it is "consumed" mostly by people who are not practicing musicians. Vocal pop music is often defined by a singer (or THE singer) connected with a song rather than the composer of a song, unless it happens to be a rare instance when it is the same person. In the case of the singer-songwriter, the idea of writing the song in the first place seems to be about sharing an emotional experience directly with an audience, where it is often consumed like "pop music," but is then "covered" by people who want to sing it themselves (and often not for an audience).
I assume that I'm not alone when I mention that communicating something to an audience is the last thing I have in mind when I write a piece of music. I write music in order to communicate with musicians and allow communication between the musicians who are playing the music I write. It is their business to communicate their interpretation to an audience. My job ends (if all goes well) where their jobs begin.
I have read that Telemann's motivation for writing music was to give people music that they enjoyed playing. I believe that Bach's motivation was similar, but he also had a job where his music needed to demonstrate the teachings of the Lutheran church. He managed to combine the whole enjoyment of playing thing and the manipulation of spirit thing rather seamlessly. Even people who describe themselves as not the least bit religious are moved emotionally when they listen to Bach's religious music. Instrumentalists who play Bach's non-religious music find personal enjoyment in the process of practicing it. And the personal enjoyment is something that we experience daily. For most of us there is no need to perform Bach's music. We play it because of what it does for us in our own private spaces.
Haydn and his contemporaries published string quartets so that people could play them for collective enjoyment. The challenges and jokes that he put in his music are there to enhance the private musical discourse. When Mozart wrote his "Haydn" Quartets, he did so as a way of communicating with a composer he admired. I believe that the idea of performing them for an audience would have been the furthest thing from his mind. The commercial success for most of the composers of the Classical Period came from the sales of their music. It's kind of like the concept of commercial success for Milton and Bradley comes from the sales of their games.
Sure, Mozart and Haydn did write music that was intended for audiences, and those audiences were often important ones that included monarchs and patrons, but I believe that some of their "public" music was different from the music that they wrote for their friends and for musicians they admired. I think that they wrote chamber music and piano music primarily for people to enjoy playing, and I believe that they always wrote their orchestral music (particularly Haydn, who had standing relationships with the members of his orchestra) so that the musicians would enjoy themselves while playing it. In Beethoven's later years he cared a great deal about what audiences thought of his Quartets (like the late Quartets), but those people were often musicians themselves, and Beethoven was an exception to all rules.
Moving forward to the period of uncommon practice (a.k.a. today), composers write their music for musicians to play and enjoy. The idea of the standard musical ensemble has expanded greatly. There are a great number of percussionists who like to use large numbers of instruments. There are people who enjoy using sophisticated electronic instruments, people who have expertise using extended techniques, microtones, and multiphonics, and people who enjoy exploring non western scales. Many of these musicians are young, and many are interested in playing new music written by people of their generation. The existing repertoire would be very small (if existent at all) for an ensemble made of tuba, percussion, flute, harp, bassoon, and French horn, and for such an ensemble to survive as a performing group, it would need good new music to play. I like to think that composers who would write for a young ensemble like the hypothetical one above would be more concerned about how playable the harp part is, if the bassoon can be heard above the tuba, or whether the percussionist can participate in the ensemble without dominating, than how an audience will respond to his or her musical ideas.
Members of the listening public and consumers of recorded music should remember that there is a lot of new music that is not being written for your enjoyment. It is being written for the enjoyment of the intended performing musicians, and for the enjoyment of other ensembles made of the same instruments as the intended ensemble. If they succeed at communicating the essence of a piece of new music to you, they have succeeded in their mission. If they don't, it could have something to do with the composer (who, if given a chance to hear a performance, can correct the problems in the work), or it could have something to do with errors of judgement (or notes, or rhythms) made by the performing musicians.
I really don't believe that contemporary composers should be judged against composers from a previous eras. I don't believe that living composers should be judged against dead ones. (The living composer can grow, and the dead one can't.) I also don't believe it is fair to judge a composer from the "common practice" period against a composer from what I call the "uncommon practice" of the present day. There will never be another Rameau, J.S. Bach, Haydn, Mozart, Beethoven, Schubert, Brahms, Schumann, Debussy, Bartok, Ravel, Stravinsky, or Shostakovich (to give just a few examples). These were all singular musical personalities who continue, long after their lives ended, to challenge our imaginations and remain relevant and modern. I believe they all speak to the musicians who play their music now with the same voices they spoke with while they were living, but as "consumers" of music (everyone reading this post is probably, on some level, a consumer of music) we need to keep an open mind about what the music of today means to today's young musicians. The best stuff will survive because people will want to play it, and the stuff that nobody wants to play might have to wait for another generation to find musicians who appreciate. It could also simply fade into oblivion. Only time will tell. While we wait, musicians will still enjoy playing music written by the composers on the above list and by composers who may have not been as well respected or well known during their lifetimes.
I'll end this little rant by paraphrasing a statement I heard Stephane Wrembel make about the influence Django Reinhardt has on him: you can work under the shadows of great composers, or you can be illuminated by their light.
I believe that commercial music is written primarily to engage audiences. Film music is written to manipulate an audience to react to visual images and narrative in a particular way. Opera is too, and even more so in the 20th century. What we call "pop music" is very intensely geared to appeal to an audience, and it is "consumed" mostly by people who are not practicing musicians. Vocal pop music is often defined by a singer (or THE singer) connected with a song rather than the composer of a song, unless it happens to be a rare instance when it is the same person. In the case of the singer-songwriter, the idea of writing the song in the first place seems to be about sharing an emotional experience directly with an audience, where it is often consumed like "pop music," but is then "covered" by people who want to sing it themselves (and often not for an audience).
I assume that I'm not alone when I mention that communicating something to an audience is the last thing I have in mind when I write a piece of music. I write music in order to communicate with musicians and allow communication between the musicians who are playing the music I write. It is their business to communicate their interpretation to an audience. My job ends (if all goes well) where their jobs begin.
I have read that Telemann's motivation for writing music was to give people music that they enjoyed playing. I believe that Bach's motivation was similar, but he also had a job where his music needed to demonstrate the teachings of the Lutheran church. He managed to combine the whole enjoyment of playing thing and the manipulation of spirit thing rather seamlessly. Even people who describe themselves as not the least bit religious are moved emotionally when they listen to Bach's religious music. Instrumentalists who play Bach's non-religious music find personal enjoyment in the process of practicing it. And the personal enjoyment is something that we experience daily. For most of us there is no need to perform Bach's music. We play it because of what it does for us in our own private spaces.
Haydn and his contemporaries published string quartets so that people could play them for collective enjoyment. The challenges and jokes that he put in his music are there to enhance the private musical discourse. When Mozart wrote his "Haydn" Quartets, he did so as a way of communicating with a composer he admired. I believe that the idea of performing them for an audience would have been the furthest thing from his mind. The commercial success for most of the composers of the Classical Period came from the sales of their music. It's kind of like the concept of commercial success for Milton and Bradley comes from the sales of their games.
Sure, Mozart and Haydn did write music that was intended for audiences, and those audiences were often important ones that included monarchs and patrons, but I believe that some of their "public" music was different from the music that they wrote for their friends and for musicians they admired. I think that they wrote chamber music and piano music primarily for people to enjoy playing, and I believe that they always wrote their orchestral music (particularly Haydn, who had standing relationships with the members of his orchestra) so that the musicians would enjoy themselves while playing it. In Beethoven's later years he cared a great deal about what audiences thought of his Quartets (like the late Quartets), but those people were often musicians themselves, and Beethoven was an exception to all rules.
Moving forward to the period of uncommon practice (a.k.a. today), composers write their music for musicians to play and enjoy. The idea of the standard musical ensemble has expanded greatly. There are a great number of percussionists who like to use large numbers of instruments. There are people who enjoy using sophisticated electronic instruments, people who have expertise using extended techniques, microtones, and multiphonics, and people who enjoy exploring non western scales. Many of these musicians are young, and many are interested in playing new music written by people of their generation. The existing repertoire would be very small (if existent at all) for an ensemble made of tuba, percussion, flute, harp, bassoon, and French horn, and for such an ensemble to survive as a performing group, it would need good new music to play. I like to think that composers who would write for a young ensemble like the hypothetical one above would be more concerned about how playable the harp part is, if the bassoon can be heard above the tuba, or whether the percussionist can participate in the ensemble without dominating, than how an audience will respond to his or her musical ideas.
Members of the listening public and consumers of recorded music should remember that there is a lot of new music that is not being written for your enjoyment. It is being written for the enjoyment of the intended performing musicians, and for the enjoyment of other ensembles made of the same instruments as the intended ensemble. If they succeed at communicating the essence of a piece of new music to you, they have succeeded in their mission. If they don't, it could have something to do with the composer (who, if given a chance to hear a performance, can correct the problems in the work), or it could have something to do with errors of judgement (or notes, or rhythms) made by the performing musicians.
I really don't believe that contemporary composers should be judged against composers from a previous eras. I don't believe that living composers should be judged against dead ones. (The living composer can grow, and the dead one can't.) I also don't believe it is fair to judge a composer from the "common practice" period against a composer from what I call the "uncommon practice" of the present day. There will never be another Rameau, J.S. Bach, Haydn, Mozart, Beethoven, Schubert, Brahms, Schumann, Debussy, Bartok, Ravel, Stravinsky, or Shostakovich (to give just a few examples). These were all singular musical personalities who continue, long after their lives ended, to challenge our imaginations and remain relevant and modern. I believe they all speak to the musicians who play their music now with the same voices they spoke with while they were living, but as "consumers" of music (everyone reading this post is probably, on some level, a consumer of music) we need to keep an open mind about what the music of today means to today's young musicians. The best stuff will survive because people will want to play it, and the stuff that nobody wants to play might have to wait for another generation to find musicians who appreciate. It could also simply fade into oblivion. Only time will tell. While we wait, musicians will still enjoy playing music written by the composers on the above list and by composers who may have not been as well respected or well known during their lifetimes.
I'll end this little rant by paraphrasing a statement I heard Stephane Wrembel make about the influence Django Reinhardt has on him: you can work under the shadows of great composers, or you can be illuminated by their light.
Friday, January 27, 2012
Grocery, Grocer-ah, Grocery, Grocer-ha ha ha ha ha ha
It might be difficult for readers of this blog to understand exactly the kind of town I live in. Our kids used to describe it to their college friends and urban colleagues, and the usual response was disbelief, because there is so little to do here. It is no longer the cozy and somewhat vibrant town we moved to around 25 years ago, and from tales I have enjoyed from our plumber (one of my favorite people in town), it is not the same town it was when he was growing up.
Our town used to have a courthouse square as its hub, and a small university a mile down the road from the square. The square is situated at the highest point in town, just a little south of the railroad tracks, and it used to be the epicenter of local activity. It had all kinds of shoe, clothes, and food stores, a department store, a hardware store, a drugstore with a soda fountain, car dealerships, and restaurants. According to Rick (the plumber) there was nothing that you could even imagine needing that you couldn't buy on the square. It was a bustling center of commercial activity, particularly on weekends and evenings.
When we moved to town the square was still a little vibrant, but the vibrations were dissipating. There is still some commercial activity on the square. There's a shoe repair shop that repairs zippers for $3.00 (cash), and a great health food store where the proprietor knows all her customers by name and nutritional need, but most of the square is now dedicated to nostalgia and "antique" stores.
Over the past 25 years stores a bit closer to the university have claimed most of the local day-to-day business, and many stores that flourished on the square back in the day re-located to a west-side strip mall that was near the town's three grocery stores.
A grocery store know as "Eisner's" predated us. By the time we got here it had been bought by Jewel, but local people still called it "Eisner's." Jewel was then taken over by the IGA, which was formerly located down the street a bit (Michael likes to quote me as saying that they even moved the cigarette butts to the new location). Across the street was Wilb Walker, another local grocer that was in direct and friendly competition with Eisner back in the day. Wilb's (we called it Wilb's, but some people called it Walker's) was the cheaper store. Ten years ago we got a "Super Walmart," (one with groceries) a mile or two down the road to the east, and Jewel closed its doors. Wilb's remained the only west-side grocery store.
When Wilb's was taken over by County Market, we still called it Wilb's. The same people worked there, and it still looked pretty much the same. The prices were a bit higher, but socially-responsible people shopped there because it wasn't Walmart. I would still see "socially-responsible" people at Walmart though.
The big buzz in town last spring was that County Market was getting a new building. This meant that Wilb's would be torn down. Wilb's was cold, and it was kind of dreary. It was also kind of limited compared to the supermarkets that Michael and I visit when we go out of town. The new prefabricated building, complete with a vast parking lot and a second story coffee area, went up really quickly, and the grand opening was scheduled for Tuesday at 5:00.
Michael and I had the evening free, so we decided to go and see the store. We didn't go at "Grand Opening" time, but we went a bit later in the evening. We did hear that people were lined up outside. A local first.
The vast parking lots were full, and we barely found a parking space. I have never seen so many people in cars turn out for a local event that didn't have something to do with sports or country music. The place was packed, and to add a bit of the surreal to the situation, there was live music. The uncle of a harpist from another town manages the store, so he asked her to play for the opening. It added a certain panache to the occasion. Surreal panache. When have you ever seen (or heard) a harpist in a grocery store?
The people I saw in the "organic" area ("I'm not here to buy anything, I'm just looking around") agreed that the prices were higher than the prices at the health food store on the square. They would have been in the old County Market as well. That brief moment of having the harp-charged air filled with eager people who had just entered the store's produce area (and it is a nice looking produce area, complete with a tractor) was rather exciting. On top of all the excitement were free gifts: the choice of a free plastic lemon juicer or a plastic zester. And they were giving away ballpoint pens too.
The harpist stopped playing about 15 minutes after we arrived, and the muzak and white noise took its place. Then it became just a store.
Our town used to have a courthouse square as its hub, and a small university a mile down the road from the square. The square is situated at the highest point in town, just a little south of the railroad tracks, and it used to be the epicenter of local activity. It had all kinds of shoe, clothes, and food stores, a department store, a hardware store, a drugstore with a soda fountain, car dealerships, and restaurants. According to Rick (the plumber) there was nothing that you could even imagine needing that you couldn't buy on the square. It was a bustling center of commercial activity, particularly on weekends and evenings.
When we moved to town the square was still a little vibrant, but the vibrations were dissipating. There is still some commercial activity on the square. There's a shoe repair shop that repairs zippers for $3.00 (cash), and a great health food store where the proprietor knows all her customers by name and nutritional need, but most of the square is now dedicated to nostalgia and "antique" stores.
Over the past 25 years stores a bit closer to the university have claimed most of the local day-to-day business, and many stores that flourished on the square back in the day re-located to a west-side strip mall that was near the town's three grocery stores.
A grocery store know as "Eisner's" predated us. By the time we got here it had been bought by Jewel, but local people still called it "Eisner's." Jewel was then taken over by the IGA, which was formerly located down the street a bit (Michael likes to quote me as saying that they even moved the cigarette butts to the new location). Across the street was Wilb Walker, another local grocer that was in direct and friendly competition with Eisner back in the day. Wilb's (we called it Wilb's, but some people called it Walker's) was the cheaper store. Ten years ago we got a "Super Walmart," (one with groceries) a mile or two down the road to the east, and Jewel closed its doors. Wilb's remained the only west-side grocery store.
When Wilb's was taken over by County Market, we still called it Wilb's. The same people worked there, and it still looked pretty much the same. The prices were a bit higher, but socially-responsible people shopped there because it wasn't Walmart. I would still see "socially-responsible" people at Walmart though.
The big buzz in town last spring was that County Market was getting a new building. This meant that Wilb's would be torn down. Wilb's was cold, and it was kind of dreary. It was also kind of limited compared to the supermarkets that Michael and I visit when we go out of town. The new prefabricated building, complete with a vast parking lot and a second story coffee area, went up really quickly, and the grand opening was scheduled for Tuesday at 5:00.
Michael and I had the evening free, so we decided to go and see the store. We didn't go at "Grand Opening" time, but we went a bit later in the evening. We did hear that people were lined up outside. A local first.
The vast parking lots were full, and we barely found a parking space. I have never seen so many people in cars turn out for a local event that didn't have something to do with sports or country music. The place was packed, and to add a bit of the surreal to the situation, there was live music. The uncle of a harpist from another town manages the store, so he asked her to play for the opening. It added a certain panache to the occasion. Surreal panache. When have you ever seen (or heard) a harpist in a grocery store?
The people I saw in the "organic" area ("I'm not here to buy anything, I'm just looking around") agreed that the prices were higher than the prices at the health food store on the square. They would have been in the old County Market as well. That brief moment of having the harp-charged air filled with eager people who had just entered the store's produce area (and it is a nice looking produce area, complete with a tractor) was rather exciting. On top of all the excitement were free gifts: the choice of a free plastic lemon juicer or a plastic zester. And they were giving away ballpoint pens too.
The harpist stopped playing about 15 minutes after we arrived, and the muzak and white noise took its place. Then it became just a store.
Sunday, August 15, 2010
All dressed up . . . to be here now
Towards the end of my life as an aspiring professional flute player, I would often experience the musical equivalent of being "all dressed up with nowhere to go." I practiced diligently, and though I could play the repertoire rather well, to a point, it was never really satisfying. I always imagined that playing for other people, on a very high level, could give me the kind of satisfaction that seemed to be missing from my personal experience playing the flute, but it never quite seemed to work.
I often found it difficult to play phrases that made sense on the flute. When I recorded myself practicing, I would often find that I wasn't holding notes quite long enough to make phrases sound satisfying (why couldn't I hear them while I was playing?). Getting from point A to point B in a piece of music never seemed to involve the closest distance between two points, and there seemed to be nothing I could do about it. I certainly had practice strategies (many learned from string players), but I couldn't seem to overcome my problems with bridging the gap between what I heard in my head and what came out of my instrument.
I remember talking with Joel Smirnoff back in the early 1980s (it was when he was in the second violin section of the Boston Symphony Orchestra, and a few years before he started playing in the Juilliard Quartet). He told me then that he always knew exactly the way he sounded, and that he never needed a tape recorder to verify anything. I always coveted the ability he had to hear himself clearly, in real time. I thought it would have to be kind of a supernatural feat for me to actually hear myself, to actually experience my own satisfying music making, in real time.
I finally can.
It has taken me a good 17 years of violin and viola playing to build a technique equivalent to what I had after playing the flute for five. I have worked like crazy to build up enough string technique to play the music I want to play, and all that practicing is finally paying off. I can now make it purposefully from point A to point B in a musical phrase. What is most interesting is that I don't need any kind of outside validation in order to believe it or appreciate it. I also have more "space" to pay attention and take in the "now." The satisfaction is mine, and I can share it if I choose to.
Some of this new-found sense of experiencing the musical "now" has to do with simple age and experience, but I also think that a lot of it has to do with violin playing (and viola playing) itself. Practicing seems to clarify the "now" and "here" that exists physically in string playing (it only seems to exist conceptually in wind playing). There is real distance involved with getting from one place to another on a string instrument. Shifting is a spacial experience that involves getting from point A to point B in space as well as in time. Measuring the fingerboard with your fingers involves dividing up physical space, and bowing involves complicated measurements of space and time (that eventually become unconscious, like the motions involved in walking).
I often found it difficult to play phrases that made sense on the flute. When I recorded myself practicing, I would often find that I wasn't holding notes quite long enough to make phrases sound satisfying (why couldn't I hear them while I was playing?). Getting from point A to point B in a piece of music never seemed to involve the closest distance between two points, and there seemed to be nothing I could do about it. I certainly had practice strategies (many learned from string players), but I couldn't seem to overcome my problems with bridging the gap between what I heard in my head and what came out of my instrument.
I remember talking with Joel Smirnoff back in the early 1980s (it was when he was in the second violin section of the Boston Symphony Orchestra, and a few years before he started playing in the Juilliard Quartet). He told me then that he always knew exactly the way he sounded, and that he never needed a tape recorder to verify anything. I always coveted the ability he had to hear himself clearly, in real time. I thought it would have to be kind of a supernatural feat for me to actually hear myself, to actually experience my own satisfying music making, in real time.
I finally can.
It has taken me a good 17 years of violin and viola playing to build a technique equivalent to what I had after playing the flute for five. I have worked like crazy to build up enough string technique to play the music I want to play, and all that practicing is finally paying off. I can now make it purposefully from point A to point B in a musical phrase. What is most interesting is that I don't need any kind of outside validation in order to believe it or appreciate it. I also have more "space" to pay attention and take in the "now." The satisfaction is mine, and I can share it if I choose to.
Some of this new-found sense of experiencing the musical "now" has to do with simple age and experience, but I also think that a lot of it has to do with violin playing (and viola playing) itself. Practicing seems to clarify the "now" and "here" that exists physically in string playing (it only seems to exist conceptually in wind playing). There is real distance involved with getting from one place to another on a string instrument. Shifting is a spacial experience that involves getting from point A to point B in space as well as in time. Measuring the fingerboard with your fingers involves dividing up physical space, and bowing involves complicated measurements of space and time (that eventually become unconscious, like the motions involved in walking).
Saturday, August 07, 2010
They don't let me out very often: things I learned on my summer vacation
Since Michael and I live such a bucolic life in our year-round vacation home in Illinois, our summer vacations away tend to be one-week-long over-stimulation festivals, bookended by dawn-to-dusk driving. We do the same thing every year: see family and close friends in New Jersey, Boston, and New York. It is basically a "same time next year" affair, yet each year is distinctly different.
We saw signs (complete with actual signs) of the Recovery Act everywhere. There were projects in progress, and smooth-riding evidence that projects had been completed. The construction projects on I 70 didn't cause any real delays for us, though going slowly through the awesome bridge building projects is actually a pleasure. The delays on I 80 were not very pleasurable, but they could have been much worse (they were for the westbound travelers.)
We also saw even more signs of kindness among the inhabitants of Manhattan's Upper East Side, and its West Village than we noticed during our last visit to the city. The bustle and commerce of the West Village, and the renovation of Chelsea Market (and the awesome transformation of an elevated railway into an urban park) makes me reconsider the merits of capitalism. Here's a picture of me and Seymour Barab, my favorite inhabitant of the Upper East Side.
And here's a photo of me with Seymour's wife, Margie King, my other favorite Upper East Side inhabitant:
Boston and its suburbs have become much more international. What a treat it was to sit in a coffee shop and hear two sets of conversations in two different languages (I understood neither one). New York also seemed a lot more international than I remember it being, and the expansion of the term "International" from the European-dominated 20th-century into the fully global 21st is very exciting.
It also seems that classical radio has improved greatly over the past year. In Ohio and Pennsylvania there were actual live in-house radio announcers, who played interesting music. There was a recording of the Prokofiev Classical Symphony with the Philadelphia Orchestra conducted by Ormandy, and a recording of the Schoenberg transcription of Johann Strauss' "Roses from the South" played by the Boston Symphony Chamber Players (I got to hear my father's famous pa pa coming after each um). There was even some vocal music on the radio: some Byrd performed by Chanticleer, that was on a program that followed Phil Schaap's week-long dissection under a microscope (with lots of repetition) of one day in the life of Charlie Parker (I think it was February 11, 1949). Too bad the Columbia University student who announced the Byrd didn't say anything about the Byrd-Bird connection. Who could pass up a radio moment like that?
Eight things I learned this year:
1. Old friends and old friendships get better with time and age.
2. Places change, and sometimes they change for the better. Progress is often a good thing.
3. Classical radio is still alive and well, and it seems to be sharing an audience with Jazz in some places.
4. Whole Foods makes the most extraordinary baked sesame tofu, and it makes terrific picnic food.
5. It is possible to travel well without stopping in a single fast-food restaurant, as long as you bring a large insulated cooler bag on your journey.
6. It is preferable to travel (as long as the weather is good) without stopping in a single fast-food restaurant.
7. Just because a museum is famous and highly regarded, you can't count on it to exhibit contemporary art that is worthy of the visibility.
8. It really doesn't matter anyway, because so much of New York's art is not found in museums: it's found on the streets and in the people.
We saw signs (complete with actual signs) of the Recovery Act everywhere. There were projects in progress, and smooth-riding evidence that projects had been completed. The construction projects on I 70 didn't cause any real delays for us, though going slowly through the awesome bridge building projects is actually a pleasure. The delays on I 80 were not very pleasurable, but they could have been much worse (they were for the westbound travelers.)We also saw even more signs of kindness among the inhabitants of Manhattan's Upper East Side, and its West Village than we noticed during our last visit to the city. The bustle and commerce of the West Village, and the renovation of Chelsea Market (and the awesome transformation of an elevated railway into an urban park) makes me reconsider the merits of capitalism. Here's a picture of me and Seymour Barab, my favorite inhabitant of the Upper East Side.
And here's a photo of me with Seymour's wife, Margie King, my other favorite Upper East Side inhabitant:
Boston and its suburbs have become much more international. What a treat it was to sit in a coffee shop and hear two sets of conversations in two different languages (I understood neither one). New York also seemed a lot more international than I remember it being, and the expansion of the term "International" from the European-dominated 20th-century into the fully global 21st is very exciting.
It also seems that classical radio has improved greatly over the past year. In Ohio and Pennsylvania there were actual live in-house radio announcers, who played interesting music. There was a recording of the Prokofiev Classical Symphony with the Philadelphia Orchestra conducted by Ormandy, and a recording of the Schoenberg transcription of Johann Strauss' "Roses from the South" played by the Boston Symphony Chamber Players (I got to hear my father's famous pa pa coming after each um). There was even some vocal music on the radio: some Byrd performed by Chanticleer, that was on a program that followed Phil Schaap's week-long dissection under a microscope (with lots of repetition) of one day in the life of Charlie Parker (I think it was February 11, 1949). Too bad the Columbia University student who announced the Byrd didn't say anything about the Byrd-Bird connection. Who could pass up a radio moment like that?
Eight things I learned this year:
1. Old friends and old friendships get better with time and age.
2. Places change, and sometimes they change for the better. Progress is often a good thing.
3. Classical radio is still alive and well, and it seems to be sharing an audience with Jazz in some places.
4. Whole Foods makes the most extraordinary baked sesame tofu, and it makes terrific picnic food.
5. It is possible to travel well without stopping in a single fast-food restaurant, as long as you bring a large insulated cooler bag on your journey.
6. It is preferable to travel (as long as the weather is good) without stopping in a single fast-food restaurant.
7. Just because a museum is famous and highly regarded, you can't count on it to exhibit contemporary art that is worthy of the visibility.
8. It really doesn't matter anyway, because so much of New York's art is not found in museums: it's found on the streets and in the people.
Friday, July 23, 2010
Musical Intuition
I have always compensated for a lousy memory and poor math skills with a highly-developed sense of intuition. I do not believe intuition can be learned by studying, and I do not think it can be learned by practicing. It is either inborn, or it develops (out of necessity) in childhood. Trusting it (if you have it) takes a while. Intuition is not celebrated in academia, particularly in musical academia, where "hunches" are not as respected as tools of analysis. Intuition should be respected in academia, because teaching, particularly private teaching, requires mountains of intuition in order for a student to accomplish anything. When I write music, I do it intuitively. What is not intuitive is sensual, and what is not sensual is practical.
I had an oddly intuitive moment today. I was talking on the phone with my cellist-friend Danny Morganstern, and he mentioned that he was practicing the Grieg Sonata. It has been years since I listened to the Grieg Sonata (perhaps the last time was when I heard Danny perform it). I told him that I have been listening to a lot of Grieg, and that I had three CD's worth of Lyric Pieces (played by Aldo Ciccolini) on the ipod that I take on my daily walks. I spontaneously sang a melody from one of the Lyric Pieces. Not only was the melody exactly the same as one of the melodies in the Grieg Cello Sonata, it was the very melody that Danny had been practicing right before our phone call.
During an unspecified time, somewhere, deep in my unconscious, I must have made a connection with a particular Lyric Piece (I don't even know which Lyric Piece it is) and the Cello Sonata. Out of the three hours of Lyric Pieces, I instantly (and innocently) happened to pick out the one that mattered for that moment, even though I didn't know its name.
I call that intuition.
I had an oddly intuitive moment today. I was talking on the phone with my cellist-friend Danny Morganstern, and he mentioned that he was practicing the Grieg Sonata. It has been years since I listened to the Grieg Sonata (perhaps the last time was when I heard Danny perform it). I told him that I have been listening to a lot of Grieg, and that I had three CD's worth of Lyric Pieces (played by Aldo Ciccolini) on the ipod that I take on my daily walks. I spontaneously sang a melody from one of the Lyric Pieces. Not only was the melody exactly the same as one of the melodies in the Grieg Cello Sonata, it was the very melody that Danny had been practicing right before our phone call.
During an unspecified time, somewhere, deep in my unconscious, I must have made a connection with a particular Lyric Piece (I don't even know which Lyric Piece it is) and the Cello Sonata. Out of the three hours of Lyric Pieces, I instantly (and innocently) happened to pick out the one that mattered for that moment, even though I didn't know its name.
I call that intuition.
Sunday, September 09, 2007
A Sense of Place
This morning while I was listening to Richard Tauber sing "I'm in Love with Vienna" in English, I believed him when he sang "I was born in Vienna," though I learned from reading the liner notes that came with the recording that he was born in Linz. I believe every word that Tauber sings, because he believes every word he sings. Of course Richard Tauber could not stay in Vienna because of the Nazis, so he started a whole new career in England, singing mainly in English.
This started me on a train of thought about place. Growing up outside of Boston I always felt like an outsider because I spoke like a person from the midwest, and try as I did, I could never even imitate a Boston accent. I was born in Cleveland, and when I was growing up I always held some kind of mythological connection to Cleveland in my heart. As a young adult I sought out friends from Cleveland. I guess it was from one of them that I heard that the street that held my home from birth to four-and-a-half was demolished in order to put in a highway or something.
When I left Boston for New York, Boston felt like "home" for the first time, but only for a year or two, and only when I wasn't there. It also began to change, and it is no longer the place I remember. I used to feel at home at Tanglewood, and then it changed. When I lived in New York, I never quite felt like a New Yorker (that pesky midwestern accent again), but I felt somewhat comfortable in a place that was filled with a lot of misplaced people and a lot of history. I also had good friends. I felt out of place in Schladming, the town in Austria where I lived for a year, but I felt at home in Vienna. Unfortunately I didn't have a real place to live in Vienna, and I couldn't find any work. It is not surprising that I never felt at home in Hong Kong.
It is surprising that I really don't feel at home in the little town in the midwest where I have lived for the last 22 years. Most of the things I have liked about it in years past are no longer here, and so many of the people I have grown close to have either moved away or died. Once I felt like a vital part of the musical life in town, and now I feel like a stranger, or maybe a guest. Sometimes I even feel like a ghost.
Oddly I always feel at "home" sitting in an orchestra--anywhere. I always feel "at home" going through stage doors. I have always been able to go to any stage door and walk into the hall. For some reason I look like I belong there: people have even told me so. (I have gotten into a lot of concerts for free that way.) I feel at home in my house with my family, and I feel at home when I'm teaching, when I'm playing chamber music, and when I'm practicing.
Today I started working on the Bach B-flat Partita (on the piano), and I felt oddly "at home." My younger brother used to practice it when we were kids, and I always wanted to be able to play it. I think that music, particularly Bach, is a wonderful constant to have, especially in a world where there are so many physical changes that rob us of continuity and mess around with our memories and our sense of place in the world.
This started me on a train of thought about place. Growing up outside of Boston I always felt like an outsider because I spoke like a person from the midwest, and try as I did, I could never even imitate a Boston accent. I was born in Cleveland, and when I was growing up I always held some kind of mythological connection to Cleveland in my heart. As a young adult I sought out friends from Cleveland. I guess it was from one of them that I heard that the street that held my home from birth to four-and-a-half was demolished in order to put in a highway or something.
When I left Boston for New York, Boston felt like "home" for the first time, but only for a year or two, and only when I wasn't there. It also began to change, and it is no longer the place I remember. I used to feel at home at Tanglewood, and then it changed. When I lived in New York, I never quite felt like a New Yorker (that pesky midwestern accent again), but I felt somewhat comfortable in a place that was filled with a lot of misplaced people and a lot of history. I also had good friends. I felt out of place in Schladming, the town in Austria where I lived for a year, but I felt at home in Vienna. Unfortunately I didn't have a real place to live in Vienna, and I couldn't find any work. It is not surprising that I never felt at home in Hong Kong.
It is surprising that I really don't feel at home in the little town in the midwest where I have lived for the last 22 years. Most of the things I have liked about it in years past are no longer here, and so many of the people I have grown close to have either moved away or died. Once I felt like a vital part of the musical life in town, and now I feel like a stranger, or maybe a guest. Sometimes I even feel like a ghost.
Oddly I always feel at "home" sitting in an orchestra--anywhere. I always feel "at home" going through stage doors. I have always been able to go to any stage door and walk into the hall. For some reason I look like I belong there: people have even told me so. (I have gotten into a lot of concerts for free that way.) I feel at home in my house with my family, and I feel at home when I'm teaching, when I'm playing chamber music, and when I'm practicing.
Today I started working on the Bach B-flat Partita (on the piano), and I felt oddly "at home." My younger brother used to practice it when we were kids, and I always wanted to be able to play it. I think that music, particularly Bach, is a wonderful constant to have, especially in a world where there are so many physical changes that rob us of continuity and mess around with our memories and our sense of place in the world.
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