Apollo the Violist!

Is that a viola I see strapped to Apollo's belt?
[from this post on Bibliodyessey]

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.

Marion Bauer, Guest Blogger

Marion Bauer (1882-1955) is no longer alive, but her music (when I am not practicing it) lives in my head. The more I practice and rehearse her Viola Sonata, the more I admire her as a composer. She was once an important force in New York musical circles as both a composer and a teacher of all musical subjects, before she was relegated to the margins of music history by luminaries like Virgil Thomson. In the 1980s he said that she was not any part of a modern movement, and that she should not be grouped with Boulanger or Copland, and that was that. He obviously didn't know that Bauer was Nadia Boulanger's first American student and that Copland's success in New York had a lot to do with Bauer's influence. The following excerpt from the first pages (4-5) of her book, Twentieth Century Music: How it Developed--How to Listen to it, published by G.P. Putnam's Sons in 1933 (and hailed as "the first important contribution to new music" by the New York Sun) has particular resonance for me.

Most listeners, regarding present-day music as harmful to the continuance of a traditional lineage, dismiss it as the work of fanatics. By avoiding the discomfort of exploring unknown territory, they do not retard progress but only their individual development. the race of the swift and the battle of the strong continue, but they are out of the running and blame modern conditions instead of their own intolerance and short-sightedness. We have experienced unbelievable development in radio, aeronautics, architecture, painting, and scientific research. Why should we not expect music to follow in the footsteps of its fellow-arts and of invention? It is the usual story of the vision of the few, which is gradually tolerated, then generally accepted, and finally superseded by a new vision. the natural procedure is from the know to the unknown, and the right of way to the New is contested at every step. Opposition to innovation has made history. We never profit by the experiences of the past. We do not seem to realize that we repeat what other ages have gone through, and never seem to understand the secrets the past would reveal. We are not inventors and innovators but merely pawns used by a force which is a composite of the accumulated needs, beliefs, desires, ambitions, inspirations, and inhibitions of each age. This gigantic force is the cause behind the ever-changing effects. Religion, politics, economics, social conditions, art, all act and react upon each other in response to this "spirit of the age," and in turn help to create it. . . . No matter how beautiful, how satisfactory, or how scientific the art of a period may be, we know that it encloses seeds of its fruition, and, at the same time, of its destruction. At the height of perfection, decay begins. The spirit of beauty caught in a net, subjected to a microscope, and preserved in alcohol becomes a museum specimen. Nor can art flourish in the strait-jacket of standardization. And so we see throughout the centuries three inevitable stages in every art epoch: youth, maturity, and decay. The fact that epochs overlap creates friction. The New is seldom welcome; it breeds alarm and distrust. In time it proves its right to a place in the sun, becomes overconfident and arrogant, and, finally, after a life or death struggle, is supplanted by an upstart, a usurper. And the cycle begins again!

Slow Practice

My father used to always practice music slowly. It was always a great comfort to hear him practice when I was a kid (perhaps my greatest comfort) because everything always sounded so beautiful. It didn't matter what he was practicing (perhaps therein lies my fondness for scales and etudes) and it didn't matter whether it was tonal or not.

12-tone music was the new music of choice in the 1960s and early 1970s, and I still feel kind of goofy when I tell people about the comfort it brings me to hear Schoenberg played well. I also feel a little goofy telling people how much I enjoy practicing the viola slowly. I guess that slow practice is one way to make sure that all the string crossings and shifts that you need to do, and all the pitches that you need to hear find their eventual path of least resistance. It may be "making slow progress," but in the long run slow practice accomplishes the ultimate task of playing well (when it really matters) far quicker than any other kind of practice.

I distinctly remember one week in the summer when my father was practicing a slow passage that I could not get out of my head. I also couldn't identify it. I sang it to every violist and every string player I could find (and at Tanglewood there were many), and nobody could tell me what it was.

Here it is.

I later heard it in context. The passage below comes at the 19-second mark.



One of these days the piece will fall into the public domain, and I'll be able to give you more than this image from an article by Milton Babbitt about certain remarkable measures from the Schoenberg String Trio, Opus 45. I guess this bit stuck in Babbitt's imagination as well, huh?

Street Signs: Spoils from My Walk

Complete Works of Purcell

It's so difficult to decide on which pieces to link to because they are all so wonderful. I can't tell you how long I have waited for a catalog like this. All the Purcell works have score images from the first printed editions, and are all given excellent performances. Listen to this part song in praise of the Viol, and then bookmark this portal to the whole channel.

If you just want to graze a bit, listen to Pox on You, Young John the Gardner, If Music be the Food of Love, and There's Nothing so Fatal as Women

From a 1913-1914 Boston Symphony Program

How many composers in this ad are women? I count four. My latest challenge/project/obsession is Marion Bauer's EXCELLENT sonata for viola and piano. It's only been recorded once, but it is in print and available (though not in the Petrucci Library).

Medical Marijuana and the Cold-Hearted Candidate

This is the man I remember from my days at Bain.

Reconsidering Norman Lebrecht

Over the years, and in these pages, I have been critical of Norman Lebrecht, but after listening to his interview with Thomas Quasthoff, I have a fresh opinion of him. The interview is mostly Quasthoff, but Lebrecht seems to have helped him feel comfortable enough to be honest and forthcoming about all sorts of very personal subjects. That is a talent in itself. I look forward to hearing the rest of Lebrecht's BBC interviews.

I think that bloggery is better for Lebrecht's purposes than bookery (though I haven't read his fiction), and he seems to be very successful in engaging people in dialogue concerning the ever-changing (and clearly not dying) world of music.

The sad news that led me to write this post (which I read on Slipped Disc), is that Quasthoff is retiring from performing. He's only 52 (my age), and he's retiring for health reasons. The interview clearly shows that he is far more than "just a voice" or even "just a musician." He is a person of serious substance and serious intellect.

Happy Birthday, Seymour!

My dear friend Seymour Barab is 91 today. I have written about him and his wonderfully witty and beautiful music quite a bit over the years. I'm taking the occasion of his birthday to let you know about a brand new recording of his charming 1995 setting of Norman Rockwell's story "Willie Was Different" for flute, clarinet, piano, and narrator that was made by the trio@play.

Bird lovers take note!

James Dean and Opus 111

From an obituary in the New York Times:

Earlier in life Mr. Hirshbein had taken up auto racing, as a consequence of his friendship with James Dean, a racing enthusiast. The two had met when Dean was an unknown young actor.

Dean was sitting on Mr. Hirshbein’s doorstep one day listening to him practice while waiting for a neighbor to return. When Jessica Hirshbein invited him in, Dean asked Mr. Hirshbein whether he could play Beethoven’s Opus 111 Sonata.

“That piece really swings,” Ms. Hirshbein recalled Dean saying. “ I love those syncopations."

After Dean was killed in an automobile crash in 1955, Mr. Hirshbein gave up auto racing at his wife’s insistence.

Who knew?

I imagine the syncopations Dean liked are the ones that begin at 3:33 and really start to swing at 5:13 in this recording by Wilhelm Kempff, one of the rare recordings on YouTube that has the whole movement!



What a treat it has been to graze through the Opus 111 offerings there.

Practice Mute Point

Actually, this is a practice mute tip, but I couldn't resist the pun.

I like to play with recordings, and I particularly like to play with recordings when I'm learning a new piece and I want to be able to hear and feel how my part interacts with the other part or parts. Sometimes I do it by loading music into my iPod and playing while wearing headphones, which works pretty well as long as the headphone cords remain behind my head, and sometimes I use speakers, which works pretty well as long as I'm playing violin. The viola is louder under my ear than the violin, so it is difficult to hear the sound of the recording unless I crank it up to an inappropriately high volume.

After a bit if frustration this morning, I tried using my practice mute to play along with a recording. It was a great success! The practice mute allows me to keep a recording at a realistic volume, allows me to physically "dig in" to the instrument and be as expressive as I like, and it lets me hear the sound of the violist I happen to be playing with (who is often playing well and nicely in tune) as well as the other musicians on the recording.

I take no credit for this . . .

. . . but I had to share it!


[Click on the picture to make it bigger.]

Composer's Datebook

I tend to let the Composers Datebook podcasts pile up for a while on my iPod (each one is only a couple of minutes long), and then I listen to a bunch of them. I always learn something.

The composers presented on Composers Datebook are all excellent composers, but listening to the podcasts end to end can be terribly intimidating, particularly when the American Composers Forum discusses current successful composers (and there are some that seem to come up repeatedly). I know that I lack many of the commerce- and commodity-related skills a person has to have in order to be a successful composer, and for most of my writing "career" I have measured success in terms of how pieces I write sound, and if they are vehicles for people to express themselves. I'm not good at selling myself (even if I try), and am not very good at doing the kind of networking that is necessary to get pieces performed. I could even say that I believe that one of my strong points is not to be intimidating. But that means, in this dog-eat-dog world, that I am a good candidate to be on the receiving end of intimidation: to be intimidated.

Perhaps it doesn't matter. Perhaps that podcast is geared more for consumers of music (i.e. people who don't write music themselves) than it is to composers.

Intimidation is different from inspiration. For me nothing inhibits creativity like intimidation.

The Rake's Progress

Michael and I were both excited to find this item about Igor Stravinsky. I was particularly excited because I once owned (and lost) a Stravigor. I spent many years searching for a replacement, which was very difficult because the name "Stravigor" wasn't printed on the device. Unfortunately Stravinsky was not as good an engineer as he was a composer. You can see that the lines in Arnold Newman's photos in the above link are uneven. The Noligraph is a better tool.

Both of these are versions of the Rastrum, which, as I learned from Sean, the keeper of the Blackwing Pages, comes from the Latin word for "rake.”