More Adventures in Noligraphy

This picture, taken from the final frames of the above video, shows that the artist made a cloth-wrapped extension for his Noligraph.

[Perhaps, giving a nod to the title of this video, "Geigenstrich," might be a good name for the home-made model, which could, actually (and by extension--I couldn't resist), use full-length refills.]

It Was a Different World

My aunt sent me this article from the September 6, 1964 New York Times. It is pretty astounding the way the musical world has changed during the last half a century.



Howard Klein mentioned that my parents had two boys. I must not have been at home during the interview. I recall that even at the tender age of five, I was pretty comfortable roaming around the neighborhood without adult supervision. It WAS a different world.

Adventures in Noligraphy

Last night, while looking for a blank sheet of paper to write down a musical idea, I came across a manilla file folder. I decided to try my Noligraph on it, and found that it took the ink really well (something that normal cheap paper doesn't always do to my satisfaction). This morning I boldly opened up the folder to its full and impressive width, made some broad and bold Noligraphic staves, and had the most wonderful time writing. The file folder paper is extremely durable, just the right color, takes pencil very well, erases well (always a good thing), and allows for a stable enough surface to write on while the paper is on a music stand. It's also cheap (a box of 100 costs $10).



What I like best, though, is the size. I love the staff size that the Noligraph offers, and I love the fact that I can continue a musical thought (at this size) without having to go on to a new system after a measure or two.



Some composers proudly claim that they never write at the piano--that they do everything in their heads. I find that there is nothing like being able to hear the actual sound of the instrument in real space while I am writing for it. And this file folder music paper sure makes it satisfying.

[Update: you can download the completed piece here.]

Fugavergnügen

This is a term I came up with some years ago (2006, to be exact) to describe the joy of writing counterpoint. I just thought I'd share it here.

Avril and Shamonia: an April Fool's Joke on Critics

Music by Coates, Rowley, Clarke, Dale, Carse, Fulton, Elgar, Moffat, Dunhill, Bridge, and Tertis
Dame Avril Piston, viola; Shamonia Harpa, piano
Guild GMCD 7275 73 minutes

This recording is a gift to the astute record reviewer. You can read a bunch of reviews from the Essex Chronicle, The BBC Music Magazine, the International Record Review, and a very good one by the independent writer Jonathan Woolf on the Classical Music Review Blog. My review in the the January/February 2005 issue of the American Record Guide didn't make it onto the Classical Music Review Blog's radar, but you can read it here:

Though the music is serious, rare, and very well played, this recording is actually a successful April Fool's joke (as the pseudonyms of the violist and the pianist reveal). The violist's character is described in the liner notes as a student of Lionel Tertis and the pianist is described as a champion of York Bowen. Both women are said to be in their 80s, though the violist has only been a woman since 1961. Before she was a Dame would she have been a Sir? I had never heard of Dame Avril Piston, so, being a dutiful researcher, I search for a male titled British violist named Piston, but I found nothing.

The playing, particularly the viola playing, does not sound like the playing of an octogenarian. Violists in their eighties, if they can still play at all, tend to vibrate slowly and often play out of tune in the high register. This violist, whoever s/he is, has fine intonation in the high register, a lovely and supple vibrato, and a great deal of power. The pianist is equally fine and equally strong. My questions led me to seek these musicians out on the internet, where I came upon a page of hilarious photos. It still took me a while to realize that the joke was on me.

Joking aside, this is a very nice collection of 20th century English viola music, much of it inspired by Tertis. There are recordings of the Bridge and the Clarke that I prefer to this, but I enjoy being introduced to the rest of the music, particularly the pieces by Alec Rowley, Adam Carse, and Eric Coates.

[It is unfortunate that those pictures have been removed from Guild's website.]

David Vernier was fooled. Walter E. Langsam, who made a comment on Tom Roper's blog, suggests the true identity of Shamonia Harper could be Stephen Hough, who has an excellent April Fool's post of his own today.

The Imaginary Trolls that Live Under the Bridge

I finally understand how to get the richest and most interesting sounds out of my viola and my violin. It all has to do with the mental image of directing the vibrations of the string towards the bridge, using any means necessary. My means are totally related to playing on the outside of the hair and directing the sound towards the bridge, which also gives the feeling that I am directing the sounds towards my heart. When the "trolls" who live under the bridge (I'm imagining cute little ones that are actually more like fairies or imps than trolls, but I like the image of paying a toll to the troll to be able to enjoy the rich sound; it's a mental image, and perhaps it doesn't make rational sense, but this image is sensual, not sensible) get excited, the sound expands and grows rich with vibrations.

Listening to the Julius Baker videos I posted the other day reminds me of the importance of air direction in flute playing. When I play the flute, I use my tongue to direct the airstream to the place that excites the little "trolls" that "live" just below the flute's permanent "reed" on the headjoint.



One danger with flute playing is to compress the air too much (perhaps with the muscles of the face and mouth), and kill the vibrations. The results can range from a sound that is forced and reedy to a sound that is dead and dull, and the rarity of excellent flute playing has to do with the immediate sensibilities of the player and serious control over the whole breathing mechanism and the articulation mechanism. I think it also has to do with the specific flexibility and agility of the tongue, which I understand is mostly genetic.

The various components of the breathing and articulation mechanisms in flute playing are directly analogous to the various components of the bow arm in string playing, but the advantage to string players is that they can breathe freely while they play, and wind players, obviously, cannot. String players can also release tension in their bodies through functional motion, while wind players risk looking conspicuous when they move. In the case of Julius Baker, he managed to deal with every possible aspect of tension mentally (and way ahead of time), so he could remain still, and could let the music do all the work while he was playing.

The big difficulty, with all three instruments is to maintain that overtone richness while moving from note to note. Therein lies both the difficulty and the fascination of the whole process of playing. With string playing there are the variables of string tension, string length, and getting from one string to the next, and with flute playing there are the issues involving the length of the tube, and going from one register to the next.

But once those trolls start to dance, you have to keep them in step and in line, particularly when the music at hand involves double stops!

Julius Baker Plays the Poulenc Flute Sonata and Villa Lobos Jet Whistle

These performances come from an early 1960s television broadcast. It is interesting to note that the pianist, Vladimir Sokoloff, made recordings with Baker's teacher, William Kincaid.

Advice for Musicians From Their Teachers

I put the following comment on Noa Kageyama's Bulletproof Musician Post (that he presents as a contest). I prefaced my comment with note that my comment is not an actual entry--just a comment.

It's about Julius Baker. I began this blog with a post about Julius Baker, and couldn't resist revisiting my memories of him when I saw Kageyama's question.

I studied flute with Julius Baker for four years (1976-1980) at the Juilliard School of Music. I met Julius Baker when he was in active recovery from a heart attack, and at a time when he was full of a kind of second wind (no pun intended) for living life to the fullest and embracing the idea of good health. He was, at that point, an example for a lot of people. He would get up at five in the morning and jog (he was in his early 60s at the time), and then drive from Brewster to Manhattan (about an hour, if the traffic wasn't bad) for a full day of rehearsing and teaching, and would have a performance at night with the New York Philharmonic. His teaching time was more "social time" than hands-on teaching. Lessons consisted mostly of meeting him for lunch in the faculty part of the cafeteria, and then going as a group to his studio and having masterclass-type lessons. From those classes I learned that it was important for a woman to dress well and look good, it was important to be extremely competent, and that if there were technical problems to be tackled, he was not the person to ask to solve them. He was an extraordinary player who taught by example (he advised his students to jog, for example). He showed us that social skills were of maximum importance, and that you should always be friendly to people, even if you didn't like them much. He always considered himself a "regular guy," and tended to relate to the "regular guy-ness" in people. He would talk to strangers with the intention of brightening their day.

It was very rare to have a private hour-long lesson with Julius Baker. In four years I may have had five or six. One moment in one lesson stands out in particular.

I was working on an etude by Marcel Bitsch. The Bitsch etudes are more like studies in writing for a solo line than they are technical etudes. There were a bunch of notes that made up a lyrical motive, and I suppose I just didn't "get" the sense of how they worked in relation to one another. Julius Baker played the passage for me, and it made a certain kind of sense. Then he likened the passage to playing a jingle (Prior to being the principal flutist for the New York Philharmonic, Baker had been a big freelance recording musician, and made a great living playing radio jingles), and told me that even if the jingle you are playing is not particularly interesting, it is your job to make those notes, those few seconds of music, as beautiful and as interesting as possible.

From that statement I understood that it was applicable to all music. That the job of a performing musician is to make every note and every phrase beautiful and interesting, regardless of the quality of the passage or even the piece. Now that I am older (much older), and know a great deal more about music than I did when I was a Juilliard student, I can apply Julius Baker's lesson in expanded ways. When the music is great--when a passage in question is a gem, your playing has to meet the expectations of the passage so that it can be as beautiful as it should be.

After I made the permanent switch from flute to viola (and violin), my family and I went to Brewster, New York to visit the Bakers, and Michael took this picture.


[Julius Baker, his wife Ruth, and the 39-year-old me on July 18, 1998]

Music Really Happens One Beat at a Time

With all the musical events happening all over the world, all the music that is being written, premiered, and discussed, and all the "talk" about the "industry" of classical music and its various "stars," it is easy to forget that most of the music making in the world happens off the internet grid. It happens between a musician and the pitches he or she is playing. It happens in the isolated spaces of composers who spend ridiculous amounts of time worrying about how best to get from one harmony to the next, or from one note to the next. It happens when performing musicians have rehearsals. It happens in lessons. It happens when people practice, and it happens when people play concerts in places far away from you or from me, and in places that are close by.

Sometimes I get overwhelmed by the amount of musical material I can access instantly using the electronic device I am using to write this blog post. Sometimes I compare the value of access to those riches with the value of being able to find tone colors on my instrument, and (finally) being able to make them at will. When I compare the value of limitless access to recorded music with being able to move comfortably from one note to the next on my instrument, while sounding resonant and in tune, I find much more value in the ability to make something beautiful happen between one note and the next note.

I like to remember that what I am doing when I am writing, practicing, or playing is the same activity or sets of activities that musicians have been doing for centuries. That part of musical life hasn't changed, and I don't think that unlimited access to recorded music and commentary will ever change it. It is a comforting thought.

March is Busting Out All Over

Yesterday I spent my walk intoxicated by the sounds, sights, and smells of this odd early spring we are having. My usual "Spring Can Really Hang You Up the Most" feelings came out stronger than usual this year. So I took action and finished work on the piece I have been working on for the past couple of months, and now it is out of my system and no longer constantly running through my head.

The windows are open, the birds are singing and singing and singing, and I'm planning to join them with some scales in a moment, and then some nice Bach, in honor of his birthday today.

Eliminativism

Matthew Guerrieri coins a new trend in new music!

It is interesting reading next to a post-mortem on the fate of the (formerly named) "women composer" by Amy Beth Kirsten (in the same internet publication).

Our Fourth (and still counting) Annual March Concert of Music Written by Women

John David Moore and I will be playing yet another program of music written by women (sponsored by the Eastern Illinois University Women's Studies Program) in celebration of Women's History Awareness Month. This year violinist Sharilyn Spicknall will be joining us for a program of music by Amy Beach (her Violin Sonata), Marion Bauer (her Viola Sonata), Rebecca Clarke (her Dumka for Violin, Viola, and Piano), Luise Adolpha Le Beau (her Three Pieces for Viola and Piano), and Me (my Skye Boat Fantasie).

The concert will take place on Friday evening, March 23 at 7:30 in the Recital Hall of the Doudna Fine Arts Center in Charleston, Illinois. Admission is free, and parking is ample.

What's in a name? Marion Bauer was an American composer who, despite her German-sounding name, came from French stock, and Le Beau, despite her French-sounding name, was German.

My name, you ask? Who knows!!!

During the first decade of the 20th century, my paternal great grandfather and his family left a shtetl outside of Kiev, and they sailed for America from a German port. The story I was told was that the ship sank (it must have happened near the port, because eventually my family did arrive in America) and everybody's papers were destroyed.

My (totally unfounded and unproven) theory is that when my Yiddish-speaking ancestors arrived in America without papers they may have been asked the question "who are you?" Perhaps the answer my great grandfather gave was an answer to the question he might have thought he heard, "how are you?" His answer (in English, of course)? "Fine." It is just a hunch, but it does account for the English spelling of the word, particularly when you take into account that the passenger had arrived by way of a German port.

Primas Stefan and his Royal Tziganes

I have written a great deal on this blog about Steven Staryk, but I haven't written much about his musical alter ego, Primus Stefan, a Gypsy fiddler par excellence, who was one of the first (if not the first) "legit" violinists to bring traditional violin music from Eastern Europe to more Western ears by way of recordings. In order to become Primas Stefan, Staryk, who had learned to play traditional Eastern European music as a child in Toronto, had to seek out traditional musicians in post World War II Europe, which was no easy task.

Centaur has added two tracks to the second volume of its forthcoming multi-volume retrospective (this disc is CRC 3203, and it should be available soon). One piece is called "Gloomy Sunday," recorded by Primas Stefan in 1959, and the other is the middle section of Sarasate's Ziegeunerweisen.

This Ziegeunerweisen comes from two recordings: the outer parts come from a 1967 recording of the very familiar Sarasate piece (played exquisitely by Staryk and Douglas Gamley conducting the London Festival Orchestra), and the inner part, recorded in 1959 by Primus Stefan and his Royal Tziganes for the recording pictured above, is a traditional setting of one of the popular Gypsy melodies that Sarasate used in his piece.

Staryk served the concertmaster of both London's Royal Philharmonic Orchestra and Amsterdam's Royal Concertgebouw Orchestra, so the "royal" nature of the Tziganes' name seems quite natural. Copies of the LP are still available, but this "mash up" on the Centaur CD is unique. The disc (Volume 2 of a 2-CD set) is also loaded with Kreisler and other treats. Volume 1 has concertos by Paganini, Beethoven, Mozart, Saint-Saens and Shostakovich.

Check Centaur's website from time to time and do a search for Staryk. These recordings will certainly be listed there soon. If you haven't heard the Beethoven or the "Every Violinist's Guide" that are there, I can recommend them both heartily.

Dancing about Architecture, Again

The phrase "Writing about music is like dancing about architecture — it's a really stupid thing to want to do" is a catchy phrase, but it has always bothered me, particularly the "really stupid thing to want to do" part, which seems to be Elvis Costello's contribution.

The first part of the phrase that refuses to die has been around since (at least) the 1970s, and many of the people who tend to use it do not seem to be people who spend their time studying and playing the stuff that we call "classical" music.

Writing intelligently about math, science, history, literature, poetry, art, philosophy, or even architecture requires discipline-specific vocabulary. Writing about music does too. The vocabulary is not that difficult to learn, but it takes time to amass, and requires a lot of listening and a lot of observation. Writing intelligently takes work, and it usually reflects intelligent thinking. I don't think that the casual user of the phrase would consider the desire to write about the above disciplines stupid, so why should it be stupid for people to want to write about music, particularly musicians?

I am a consumer of things mathematical, scientific, historical, literary, poetic, artistic, philosophical, and architectural, but I am a producer of music. I'm proud of the music-specific vocabulary I have amassed through years of experience. I feel challenged to unravel a musical mystery and excited when I am able to articulate exactly why a particular musical passage might be strong or weak. I feel proud when I can figure out (as a performer) how to bring out compositional strengths or compensate for compositional weakness in a particular piece of music. I also find it very valuable to be able to articulate interpretive concepts to students.

Arts in Competition with One Another

I was rather taken aback to find an announcement about a competition for bloggery about the arts in my mailbox last night. I avoid competitions as a rule, and tend to particularly avoid competitions that are looking for "the best" of anything. I participate in this ever-changing entity that I like to call the musical blogosphere purely for the fun of it, so I'm not throwing my hat into the ring. Besides, I have finals to give during the week that the concert series these people are promoting is being held. And with all the arts at play, I can't imagine how any person or group of people could come up with a single winner.

I am intrigued by the first question, however, so I'll play along.

"New York has long been considered the cultural capital of America. Is it still? If not, where?"

The only thing that is more absurd than trying to decide which of the "arts" is the "best" is to try to decide a location that is superior to another location. I lived in New York for four years, and I had a wonderful time doing so on my limited budget (I was a Juilliard student). When I lived in New York (1976-1980) the city was not as safe as it is today, and it was also not as expensive to live in as it is today. Musicians and artists could find living spaces they could afford. There were day jobs that people could get, because making the city work required people punching typewriters and sending messages from one place to another. Jobs for musicians were not plentiful, but there was still a chance, if you knew the right people, and always played the right notes and the right rhythms, that you could get an array of musical jobs in the city that paid the rent.

I recall that admission to most museums used to be either free or nominal, and it was always possible for me to sneak into concerts during intermission, go to cheap double features at the Thalia, and find bargains at the thrift stores on Third Avenue. I imagine that security is tighter at concerts these days, and I know that movies are very expensive in Manhattan, and things you used to buy at thrift stores have now become vintage items, collectibles, and antiques. It's only been 30 odd years since I lived there. Things change.

I miss telephone booths, the book and record stores, and coffee shops that served only two kinds of coffee: regular and black.

But I digress.

After I graduated from Juilliard I went to Europe, where I was extremely excited to experience culture on an entirely new level, historical and otherwise. In Vienna I found that the museums (which were also free at the time) had mind-boggling collections. I found the culture extremely stimulating (and the coffee was too). I had an American friend who introduced me to the Jazz world of Vienna, a world I knew I never would have gained entry to in New York, and I was welcomed into various other social artistic circles that I never would have been welcomed into in New York.

I only spent a small amount of time in Germany, but I enjoyed the museums I visited immensely. Italy was a total feast, both visually and gastronomically. Never once did I long for New York for its museum culture, its musical hierarchies, the speed at which people tended to play, and the way people had to hustle to get ahead in the musical world.

I love visiting New York, and I always feel at home there. Like any city it has its high points (always personal) and low points (also always personal). My last visit to the Guggenheim museum was a total disappointment, and the Whitney always seems to be hit and miss. I tend to find the "ahead of the trend" visual art scene in New York (reflected in the exhibits at those two museums) on the pretentious side. Sometimes I'm pleasantly surprised.

I'm glad that I live in a place where I can enjoy art and music in many cities. From my perch in Illinois I can visit Chicago, Indianapolis, St. Louis, and the smaller cities (that also have art and music) like Champaign-Urbana and Terre Haute (surprising, I know, but I love the Swope Museum). I love my family in Los Angeles (where there is a huge supply of art to see and music to hear) and Boston, and I love my friends in New York, but I just don't consider it an artistically superior place to the other cities I have lived in or visited.