Scandal: The Stuff of Opera

Check out this article about Puccini's love life. Compared to it, his operas are almost tame!

Viola d'amore Sul Palco in the Humming Chorus

The Humming Chorus of Puccini's Madame Butterfly could be considered three of the most beautiful wordless minutes in all of opera (particularly when you hear it in context). I just found out, from a glance at the score . . .



that the viola d'amore part (which is hardly ever performed with an actual viola d'amore) is supposed to be played from the stage. That really changes everything. The chorus of humming sopranos and tenors is off stage, Butterfly, Suzuki, and baby Dolore are in silhouette behind the screen of their Japanese house waiting motionlessly for Pinkerton to return, and the only movement you see (in Puccini's inner eye and score) is a viola d'amore player, with a scroll that reminds us that love is blind.



There is a visual echo of a viola d'amore scroll a few measures from the end of the second act when Butterfly blindfolds her son.

[No spoilers here for those who have not yet experienced the opera.]

Ruth Crawford Seeger's Transcription of "Ground Hog"

This is what happens when a great composer puts together folksong books for children. We should remember the kinds of things that the children she raised did with their lives, for music, and also for children. And yes, Eden, one of these days you will be able to turn the tuning pegs on your ukulele!

"Oh well" and Other Treats from "On The Town"

I just love Eileen Ferrell's "Oh well. . ." As for Lennie's voice (which comes in for a verse towards the end), it is certainly "singular."



Here Monica Zetterlund sings it with the Bill Evans Trio, and Tyne Daly (as Hildy) shows how well she can cook:



Of course no visit to "On The Town" is complete without hearing Carried Away and Lonely Town.

Autumn Leaves for Two Violins

Here's a slide show with computer-generated audio of the fourth and final installment of the seasonal duets I have spent the year writing for Marjorie Kransberg-Talvi and Ilkka Talvi. Eventually the computer-generated audio will be replaced with violin-generated audio!



You can get the music here.

Now That's What I Call String Theory

This interview with Michio Kaku on today's installment of Fresh Air totally blew my mind.

Well, very simply, that all the sub-atomic particles - neutrons, protons, quarks - are nothing but musical notes on a tiny rubber band, that when you twang the rubber band, it changes from one frequency to another. So it changes from an electron to a neutrino. And you twang it enough, it can turn into all the subatomic particles we see in the world.

So all the subatomic particles that make up our body are nothing but different notes on many, many, many tiny little violin strings, little rubber bands, and that physics is nothing but the laws of harmony of these vibrating strings. Chemistry is nothing but the melodies you can play on these vibrating strings. The universe is a symphony of strings, and the mind of God that Einstein wrote eloquently about the last 30 years of his life, is cosmic music resonating through 11-dimensional hyperspace. That is the mind of God.

28 Minutes of Awesome and Thrilling Bliss from Saint-Saens and Richter

I just found this complete live recording from April 3, 1955 of the Saint-Saens Egyptian Concerto. Back in my radio station days we had a copy of the LP, and I played it whenever I could. After I left the station the powers that were sold all the station's LPs (without my knowledge), and I never thought I would hear this performance again. Now I can share it here. Sviatoslav Richter is playing with the Leningrad Philharmonic Orchestra, and the conductor is Kiril Kondrashin.

Temperate Temperament

The Thanksgiving trip that Michael and I took to Los Angeles was the first trip to a sunny place that we took together (and we've been together for almost 28 years). In addition to being a palm-tree-filled botanical wonder (albeit mostly artificial), Los Angeles is a vegan's delight. Every restaurant we visited (chosen, of course, by our daughter) had vegan options, and most of the restaurants that we visited had many. Some were primarily vegan. This is not something I experience often.

One restaurant in an area called "Larchmont," where the Spanish Colonial architecture of "Miracle Mile" (where we were staying with our daughter and her boyfriend) gives way to "New England Village," offered free coffee drinks to vegans who filled out a post-meal questionnaire. I also wrote down everything I could see about the Green Enchiladas I had eaten in my little red book, and I'm making them for dinner tonight. I learned from this video that the free coffee I had was roasted on site:



This vegan paradise, covered by a clear sky and beautiful weather, is set in a city teeming with the kind of ethnic diversity we lack in the only-slightly-expanded monoculture of East Central Illinois. And where we have miles upon miles of empty ('cause the growing season is over) corn and bean fields, Los Angeles has miles upon miles, upon miles of businesses--some trendy, some steadfast, and some downright dowdy. We have two-lane and four-lane roads, and Los Angeles has six lanes of traffic on its freeways. Our daughter navigates them like a native. I don't know if I could.

Returning to the cold and grey rain of Illinois was depressing, but returning has also been a lesson in temperament for me. I returned to my year-long project of writing seasonal violin duets, and feel new-found gusto for the violin duets I'm writing about Fall. I call the set "Autumn Leaves," and I seem to have a more distinct sense of what is and what is not Autumn after returning to it from the endless summer of Los Angeles.

[I noticed that the Sweet Gum is one of the few deciduous trees growing in Los Angeles. Now I understand the confusion I noticed with one of the Sweet Gums in our neighborhood I noticed last week. Once they lose their leaves, they are ready to grow new ones. Perhaps they don't really need the long winter to be dormant. The confused tree now has brown leaf tips, and now it looks like any other Gum preparing for its long winter's nap.]

I keep telling myself that if I were to move to LA, I wouldn't get much done in the way of creative work and in the way of practicing, I could never make enough money to support what would surely become a vegan restaurant habit, I would have a really difficult time finding playing work, and even a more difficult time trying to find a place for myself in the creative musical community.

I have a new wool coat, an insulated hat, and some really warm boots in the closet. I feel adequately prepared for the cold weather that is beginning to make its home in the Midwest. I am very grateful that I have the ability to entertain myself with gastronomical and musical projects, and I know that the sun will come out one of these days. Even if it is shining on ice. Perhaps I really do have a temperate temperament.

Eames Words on Wednesday

The day that Michael and I chose to visit museums in LA happened to be the day that most of them are closed. We did, however, after a rather long walk, make it to the Architecture and Design Museum for their Eames Words exhibit. What a treat it is to arrive at a museum and be able to sit in a variety of Eames chairs, each one offering a particular variation on the theme of functional sitting and comfort, and take in statements about design that apply just as well to composing music as they do to making chairs.

Fiddlers on the Walk

Michael and I were in Los Angeles for Thanksgiving, and returned to the grey, wet, cold midwest last night. Imagine my surprise when I found these three violinists and a violist on the Hollywood Walk of Fame!



And here's Harpo Marx's harp, in his own hand:

The Viola in his Life: Article in the Palo Alto Weekly

Rebecca Wallace wrote an excellent article about Bernie Zaslav's book in this week's Palo Alto Weekly. You can view the article with pictures here. Just click on "section 1" of the November 18th edition where it says "Virtual Edition," and make your way to page 19.

More Seasonal Confusion

Perhaps it isn't that odd to see one of these pop its head out in mid November . . .



but this was a real surprise!

"The Hand Somehow Has a Mind of its Own"

Sol Schwartz has been drawing pictures of musicians at Tanglewood for decades. A friend gave me a copy of his Drawing Music a few years ago because there is a portrait of my father on the page with the text "BSO Members: Each a soloist in their own right, makes this one of the world's great orchestras" (the pages aren't numbered).

Anyway, here's the artist talking about his work:



For people close to the Berkshires, an exhibit of his work at the Norman Rockwell Museum has been extended, and will be open until November 28.

From the Mouths of Babes

One of my younger students is working on the Beethoven Minuet in G, so I showed him this video. His first comment was that he thought Perlman was like a "man violin version" of me (which I take as a huge complement), and he also mentioned that he really thought Perlman might need the next size violin.



I also showed him this one:



He was seriously bugged about how well the girl played. Her identity, as far as I know, remains a mystery.

In Praise of the Sixth (and Other Double-stop Intervals)

The Coleridge-Taylor Violin Sonata that John David and I are playing tomorrow night is loaded with sixths. Violinist-composers tend to load up their music with sixths because the sixth is such a harmonically rich interval. It is simply loaded with overtones, some that can be heard, and some that can't really be heard distinctly. They can be felt though, by the person playing and the people who are listening. It is rare that a microphone can pick up the full array of overtones and difference tones. These are the things that give texture to the music and contribute to the personal quality of an individual player's sound.

I like to think of those overtones as sheep that I am herding. Getting them to line up and come with me is a task that is gentle, yet firm.



The overtones in the interval of the third are a bit more rambunctious, and sometimes playing successive thirds is more like herding cattle than herding sheep.



Sometimes, in some keys and in some registers playing thirds is like trying to herd wild horses.

Practicing scales in double stop sixths and double stop thirds has its benefits beyond simply knowing where the notes are and being able to sustain pitches on two strings at the same time. I believe that it enriches the sound. Every key is also a different "herd." The traditional violin keys (G major, D major, A major, and E major) are actually far less stable (or with more wild horses) than keys that have more sharps and keys that have multiple flats because the sympathetic resonance of the open string and its interaction with the other pitches is an added factor. Throw in an open string, and you need a lasso!

The surprise treat for me in this adventure in sixths is the key of G-flat major. It is unusually rich and warm. Your fiddle will thank you for being brave enough to enter into that forest of flats. Actually, I think that "forest" is more a term I would associate with sharps. Perhaps it's a forest when you think of the key as F-sharp major, and it's something else when you think of it as G-flat major. A swamp perhaps?