My Kitchen, Julia Child's Kitchen

What a thrill to watch tapes of the first French Chef shows and see that they could easily have taken place in our kitchen. We even had a brown GE oven (circa 1959) like that one until about two years ago.

For the proper musical ambiance, listen to the show's first theme song which starts about 17 seconds in. WGBH obviously modernized her kitchen by the time she made the egg show, and eventually they changed theme songs when they went to color. The music starts at about 29 seconds.

And now you can watch Julia Child playing around with editing a videotape of an orchestral concert:

Photos of Amanda Maier

Thanks to André and Frederik, our blog-reading friends in Sweden, we now have a motherlode of photos of Amanda Maier to supplement this earlier post about her, and a huge thanks to Amanda Maier's great grandson Fridtjof Thiadens for identifying the other people in the photographs.



(There's sure to be some kind of a story behind this one.)






(Amanda with violin, the soprano Louise Pyk standing, the pianist Augusta Kiellander at the piano, and Amanda's father Carl Edvard Maier standing.

(These people were probably Swedish relatives or friends. Amanda's mother was the youngest daughter of Anders Nillson Sjöbeck, blacksmith of the village Tirup near Landskrona. All Sjöbeck's were blacksmiths, farriers, veterinarians and served in times of war in the South Skaane cavalry- and dragoon regiments since the 16the century.)

This portrait must be of Amanda Maier with her soon-to-be husband Julius Röntgen. Here's another photo of him.

(Amanda was already Ill here.)

Rameau-ver the Top

. . . and again in costume

Easley Blackwood on Having Perfect Pitch

I started piano when I was 4 years old and had perfect pitch immediately. I remember thinking all through my early teens that since I was able to recognize every note as it went by, that I must be hearing everything. I remember one day in Boulanger's class, this must have been about 1955 or 1956, she stopped a student at one point and said, "What key are you in?" The student was perplexed and couldn't be sure. And she said, "What kind of a chord are you playing right here? Just what is that succession of chords that you just played?" The student replied, "Well, I just played a German VI followed by a I, VI, IV." She said, "You see, you do know what key you're in." Then I thought, hey, that's interesting. That fellow identified what key he was in not by knowing all the notes he heard, but by a chord progression. I suddenly realized, wait a minute, I'm hearing all the notes, but I'm not hearing the chord progressions.

This is from a interview with Easley Blackwood ("easily" one of the greatest intellects ever to mess around with music) talking with Bruce Duffee at Classical Connect, a nifty music-related site filled with thousands of excerpts of recorded performances (you can use the site as a pot-luck browsing radio using a feature they call "serendipity" if you don't mind having a piece end suddenly and morph into a new one), interviews with composers and performers, and some interesting forums.

Piccolo Amore

Could you even begin to imagine tuning this?

Many Ways to Help

It doesn't matter which organization you use to donate money to help the Red Cross in Haiti, but doing something to help really does matter.

Take your pick here.

Grouches of the World Unite!

There are things to complain about everywhere. Here's the portal to Complaints Choirs of the World. Just click on the video links--subtitles are provided (Thanks Christian!).

Commedia dell'arte

We own much of what we know
about the Commedia dell'arte to
Maurice Sand, the son of George Sand,
who wrote a terrific book of character
sketches for the stock characters we
have all come to know and love from
their appearances in various forms
of entertainment throughout the
centuries.

Roberto Delpiano (what a wonderful
name) has made a great website about the
Commedia dell'arte using Sand's illustrations.

Noble Advice

Charles Noble offers some excellent advice to young musicians. Much of his advice makes sense for not-so-young musicians as well. And some of it might even make sense to non-musicians.

One thing I would add is something that Charles demonstrates consistently. Being able to express yourself in writing is a very valuable skill for musicians to possess. It is sometimes hard won, but it is a skill worth developing.

It is very easy, in our current lax educational environment, for high school musicians to "get by" on their talent, and make it through high school without understanding the mechanics of grammar. It is very easy for non-musicians to do it as well. Many high school teachers don't realize (like my teachers didn't realize) that making a life in the musical world involves much more than playing well. The advice I would add to Charles' list would be to go out of your way to learn how sentences and paragraphs are put together. Demand as much from your English teachers (in college as well as in high school) as you demand from your music teachers, and repay them for fulfilling your demands by putting serious time into improving the mechanics of your writing.

"Before the heart can remember, the mind must forget."

Here's an excerpt from a wonderful article on musical interpretation by Byron Janis:

Thinking is creativity's worst enemy. When I first sight-read a score, everything seems so right, so natural. The notes seem to be playing themselves and the music flows. Why? Because I am not thinking. Inspiration has been my guide—the adventure of a first time. Then comes familiarization, the learning process where, until the piece is well in hand, thinking is allowed. After that, interpretation—choices must be made, but you are finally free to feel and use your creative instincts. And, at last, creation—how do I make the music sound as it did when I didn't know it? The great poet Yeats spoke of this dilemma so beautifully in his poem "Adam's Curse":

Yet if it does not seem a moment's thought,

Our stitching and unstitching has been naught.

Before the heart can remember, the mind must forget. And, when I least expect to, I will suddenly start playing that piece, again without thinking, as I did in the beginning when I first sight-read it. That is when it happens—I have finally discovered my "moment's thought."

You can read the whole article here. Of course the article isn't nearly long enough, but fortunately Janis' memoirs will be coming out in the fall. I'm excited about that. Here's something Janis wrote about visiting George Sand's grandaughter at Nohant fifty years ago. Is it fall yet?

Sweetzels Spiced Wafers (really great ginger snaps) at Big Lots

I love a good ginger snap.

Our family found a box of these in Big Lots the other day, and the other night we decided to do a "taste test." Hands down, these were the best of all possible ginger snaps with a complicated flavor that stays with you, etching its way deep into your memory of all things Fall. Heated in the microwave for a very short while (we learned the hard way), they become soft and chewy like the greatest gingerbread.

It turns out that they are only made in Pennsylvania in the Fall. Perhaps they made too many this year, so we got a Winter's supply for $2.00 a box at our East-Central Illinois Big Lots. If they make it to a Big Lots near you, and you really appreciate a great ginger cookie, make sure to get more than one box!

You can read more about these Sweetzels Wafers here and see some better pictures.

Patton in Jeans

Thanks to Phil Ford over at Dial "M" for Musicology for posting a link to Patton Oswalt's New Year's post. Oswalt is a young man, and he is quite funny, but he reasons like a young man. If I were a young man (in my 20s or 30s), I might find this bit of wisdom worthwhile:

"Life Is Short"

Is it?

As many people this phrase has helped to get out there, take a chance, grab their talent and make their lives, it's also led to some of the lamest decisions, failed marriages, sell-out careers and dumbass deaths in history.

Life's only short if you're dull or desperate. Take a deep breath, enjoy the present, and keep in mind that, unless you're plankton in jeans, you'll probably be around for 80 odd years. Don't make a limited splash in your twenties and live sixty years of diminishing returns. Build a foundation, and enjoy the whole thing.

Now I know that life is short, and the older I get, the shorter it gets. Perhaps his second paragraph should read "Life's only short if you're dull, desperate, a woman with a biological clock, or you are over 40." And what on Earth does he mean by "plankton in jeans?"

Books About Music in the Petrucci Library

There are 108 of them in the Petrucci Library (to date). There are instrumental and vocal methods, (including the above method by Manuel Garcia and a viol treatise by Jean-Jacques Rousseau) books on harmony (including one by Tchaikovsky), history, orchestration, and composition), and much, much more.

Vegan Enchiladas: Our Family's Favorite

There is no photo here because when the four of us are together there are never any leftovers with this recipe! I have found that the most important thing is to use La Victoria enchilada sauce and Tumaros Healthy Flour White Tortillas. Some of the amounts I use vary, but this is what we had last night.

It takes about 30 minutes to put everything together (that includes time to cook the rice), and takes another 45 minutes to bake in a 350 degree oven.

1 cup uncooked medium-grain white rice
2 teaspoons vegetarian Better Than Bouillon vegetable base
2 cups water
1 chopped onion
3 large cloves of minced garlic
1 cup reconstituted textured vegetable protein, or two cups finely-chopped mushrooms (You can substitute ground beef if you like).
1 tablespoon chili powder
3 oz. tomato paste (about half of a 6 oz. can)
1 15 oz. can black beans, rinsed and drained
1 cup frozen corn
1 package of eight Tumaros Healthy Flour White Tortillas
2 10 oz. cans of Mild Victoria Enchilada Sauce
Olive oil
Natural Unsweetened Apple Sauce

Sour Cream (or soy yogurt)
Shredded cheese (for those who eat cheese)

Combine the rice, water, and vegetable base in a pot with a lid, and simmer it for about 20 minutes. While the rice is cooking, using a large heavy pot, cook the onion in a tablespoon or two of olive oil, and when it is a little bit brown, add the garlic. Brown the TVP or mushrooms, and saute for a few minutes, until everything is soft (or the meat is browned). Add the chili powder, the tomato paste, the cooked rice, and the beans. Add the frozen corn, mix everything together, and remove the pot from the heat.

Pour a generous amount of olive oil into a rectangular glass baking dish (enough to cover all the surfaces). Open up the two cans of enchilada sauce, and pour them into a large measuring cup (at least that's what I do). Stack up the tortillas, and you are ready to assemble the enchiladas.

Using a large tablespoon, put some enchilada sauce on a tortilla, and rub it around. Add a few tablespoons of filling (you can use a lot--there's plenty of filling), roll it, and put the rolled enchilada seam-side down into the baking dish. Repeat this with the rest of the tortillas, until your baking dish is full. Pour the remaining sauce in the seams between the enchiladas and over the top. Cover very lightly with aluminum foil, and bake in a preheated 350 degree oven for 45 minutes.

The foil is bound to stick to the tops of a couple of the enchiladas. Remove it slowly and carefully, perhaps with the help of a spatula or a knife, and serve these with apple sauce, sour cream, yogurt and/or cheese. For a bit more heat you can also use La Victoria Salsa Brava.

Variations: I sometimes add chopped green pepper to the onion and garlic. I sometimes use basmati rice or jasmine rice rather than medium-grain white rice. Sometimes I double the beans, and sometimes I add a bit of Salsa Brava to the filling.

Comparing Jasper Juringa with The Flying Dutchman?

I don't know about this. Patt Morrison writes that political leaders should be more like Sully and "The Flying Dutchman," but I don't think that Morrison would have made that comparison if he knew something about the character of the legendary Flying Dutchman who we musicians and music lovers know from the Wagner opera.

I believe that Jasper Schuringa is a real hero, and he deserves a far better life than that of the legendary Flying Dutchman (though the Wagner opera certainly has some fantastic music). Perhaps Morrison was thinking about the tobacco.