Help With Six-Eight Time

Sometimes people new to string playing have a difficult time understanding the physicality of six-eight time. I know that it took me a long time to figure it out, and a long time to figure HOW to figure it out.

I made a nifty scale sheet that you can access here that might help people with violin, viola, and cello students who are faced with the challenges associated with that particular meter.

Old School?

David Usui, a young film maker in New York, sent me a link to a short film he made featuring Gregory Singer, the conductor of the Manhattan Symphonie. Watching the film, I saw a relatively young man (around my age) playing the first movement of the Bach G-minor Sonata, riding his bike around New York City, and doing a nice job conducting the overture to Die Meistersinger in Carnegie Hall. Usui suggested that Singer was one of a breed of "old-school NYers" who are "quickly vanishing."

Old school? You should meet my New York friends!

Vanishing? Nobody is going anywhere. Musicians continue to be musicians even when there isn't a "market" for music. Ask any "old school" musician (from my old school, in particular), if they would stop doing what they are doing (i.e. being a musician) if the money wasn't there to pay for it.

Usui also added a line saying that classical music is vanishing. I don't think so.

Since Usui was bold enough (being a new reader, and not knowing me personally) to suggest that I might want to put a link to his film on this blog, I will be bold enough to take issue with it, at least a bit.

The camera work and voice over during the Bach Sonata is quite good, though I found myself paying more attention to the music than to what he was saying. The biking around Manhattan in the center of the street gave me the willies, and I would rather have heard Singer elaborate on something other than about riding his bike. He did some nice things in the Bach. I would have enjoyed hearing him talk about that, perhaps. Or his violin shop (which he calls "the office"), or his impressive legacy, or even having a twin sister like Lori Singer (who I remember from Juilliard before she became famous, or should I say Fame-ous).

It would have been a good idea to identify the orchestra he conducts (I had to look it up). The players look rather young. At first I thought that he might have been conducting a youth orchestra.

Tea, Coffee, and Music in England

As I was listening to Steven Johnson's "Is the 'Eureka' Moment a Myth" segment on a TED talk today, I heard him make a connection between the first coffee and tea houses in England and the Enlightenment. He mentioned that because the water was lousy, most people drank beer and wine during the day, and spirits during the evening. This implies that the whole British population was in a state of inebriation until the prospect of drinking a stimulant like coffee or tea came into play.

[I thought of the word "teetotaler," which seems to have first been used in the 19th century, and seems also to have a somewhat blurry etymology. Perhaps the expression also comes from the idea that you could drink tea, wine, beer, and spirits, or you could drink just tea. A total tea drinker. But this is neither here or there.]

What caught my fancy was the idea that a lot of English music from before the mid 17th century (and everywhere else where the water was unsafe to drink, for that matter), could have written in the state of light inebriation. Consider the difference between music of a beer-drinking culture (Germany) and the wine-drinking cultures of Italy and France. Consider the languid English music of John Dowland and the tantalizing and intoxicating music of Holborne.

Then consider the clear-headed wisdom of the East, where people had been drinking tea for dynasties.

The first coffee house opened in England in 1652. Twelve years later there were more than 3,000 coffee houses in England, and coffee and tea houses were opening all over continental Europe. The smart people of the day (particularly those who pioneered enlightenment thought) hung out in coffee houses, and stimulated their discussions with what they were drinking.

These were the days in England of Henry Purcell, a prolific composer who might have been in a position (historically) to write hilarious songs about the culture of drinking alcohol because he could look at life with the clear mind someone who had the option of drinking a cup of tea once in a while.



[At this point you might want to exit this post and go off and listen to more of Purcell's works. I'm going off to make a nice pot of tea, and maybe I'll get down to doing some actual work.]

The Ivory Fox and the Hahn!

HH: "Do you still play?"
IG: "Do you still breathe?"

HH: "Do you still perform?"
IG: "I never perform."

Ivry Gitlis and Hilary Hahn talk about music and life in a bar in Amsterdam. These are two violinists from what seem like two radically different worlds, and Gitlis is a gem of a human being. Listening in is like being a fly on the wall.

Rosenkavalier in Another Context

I was very pleased to read Matthew Guerrieri's interesting musings about Richard Strauss this morning, and when I sat down to read Alexander King's May This House Be Safe From Tigers, I had every intention of writing a blog post quoting King's half chapter about Rose O'Neill, the inventor of the Kewpie doll (which all Kewpie doll collectors should read--it's in Chapter 12, and there are copies of the out-of-print book still at large), and the way the editorial staff of the New Yorker edited a story he wrote about her to smithereens, but then I found myself in Chapter 13, and had to share this story first.

When he was a child in Vienna, Alexander King's family doctor suggested the theater as a way to satisfy little Alexander's lust for life and to keep him quiet.

"But, Doctor," said my poor mother, "he just wants to go everywhere and to see everything. He goes to bed at two-thirty and he gets up every morning at six. What can we do with him?"

"Take him to a theater or a concert, maybe, but nothing that will upset his nervous system. I strictly forbid it," he said.

So my parents got some seats for the first performance of Der Rosenkavalier, which was to be conducted by Richard Strauss in person at the Hofoper.*

[Footnote: Please, please don't bother writing to me that this date is wrong. I know all about the official statistics on this subject, but when I did a piece on Rosenkavalier for Vanity Fair in 1931 I verified with Richard Strauss himself that, although the opera had its premiere in 1911, a preview of it was given in honor of the King in 1908.]

Since this opening was scheduled for the evening, I'm afraid my folks weren't exactly fulfilling the doctor's orders; but luckily they hadn't the vaguest idea how to raise a child, and, besides, I would certainly have fought like a savage if they had suggested taking me to a mere matinee.

Then a really bad piece of luck hit me: I got a terrible earache--got it around two o'clock in the afternoon of the very day when we were supposed to go to the theater. It was no ordinary pain either. It was as if somebody had inserted a good-sized corkscrew into my eardrum and was trying to pull the left side of my brain along with it. But I just had to keep my trap shut about it or else there certainly wasn't going to be any show that evening. I don't know how I finally managed to make it. All I remember is that I took about half a dozen aspirins before we finally started out, and that my mother had to dress me twice, because I perspired all through my clothes the first time. Of course my parents wanted to stay home, but I gave them such a desperate sales spiel that at last I managed to change their minds. That evening, obviously, cost us all a great deal even before the joy of it was properly under way. When we were finally seated in the opera house, my pain, luckily, left me, or it well may be that I just couldn't spare any further attention to it, considering all that was going on around me.

Once, years late, I saw a bum movie about the Congress of Vienna, with Lilian Harvey, and believe me, it was almost exactly like that. Everybody was dolled up in fancy dress with at least one red sash across their frilled shirt fronts; loaded down with swords and epaulettes and decorations of all sorts; and bowing and heel-clicking and hand-kissing enough to dazzle the most blasé of worldlings. I was embedded in such perfumes, such hair oils, such pomades and hairdos on all sides that I thought I was suddenly going to rise right up to the crystal chandelier with the wonderful odor and ecstasy of it all. It also seemed to me that the men who were pouterpigeoning it all around me were even more startlingly decked out than the women. The women showed off a lot of bouncy bosoms and bare shoulders and stuff, that's true, but the men were the ones who really had the most daring explosions of gold and silver trimmings all over their duds. It was sheer heaven.

There was one depressing not in this glittering assembly, however: me, and my folks. We looked like a nest full of molting dormice, and I must say I have never before realized that my old man was such a complete failure. He didn't even wear a silk rosettes in his buttonhole, or have a feathered cockade in his hatband, or nothin'. He was a real false note, and no mistake about it.

The minute the show started, the pain in my ear woke up again. It throbbed like crazy and I suddenly felt some tears running down the side of my nose. But it was dark and nobody noticed anything. I can't tell you how much I dreaded the coming of intermission. On previous occasions these used to be my favorite times in the theater, because, in Vienna, people stowed away enormous wads of grub during every entr'acte and this was always my big chance to wolf a lot of contraband stuff that I was never allowed to eat at home. I think I often liked to attend a lot of plays especially for the exciting food interludes that were offered at least twice every evening.

But not this time. I nearly died during that intermission.

Later I must have fallen into a kind of protective stupor or something, because I can't remember much about it. All I know is that when the opera was finally over and Strauss was up on the stage holding hands with the bowing principals, I suddenly slipped from my seat and passed out cold.

I woke up in the office of Dr. Brieger, a friend of my father's who lived right near the opera, and that gold man diagnosed my condition as a middle-ear inflammation.

"It is fiendishly painful," he said, " and I don't see how the child was able to stand it for all those hours."

"He just didn't want to miss the excitement tonight," said my tearful mother.

"Well, we'll have to lance it immediately," said Dr. Brieger. "I'm sure he'll be a good little trouper about it."

He was wrong, of course. I screamed bloody hell when the time came, and when my poor parents finally carried me home through the noisy, festive streets I was jus a collapsed bundle of whimpering disaster.

Twenty years later, on the very day, I was back in the Vienna Opera House to hear Dear Rosenkavalier, with Richard Strauss conducting again. He had gotten quite a lot older in the meantime and so he was directing the orchestra sitting down in an armchair. Well, I was there, all the way from New York, to help him celebrate the twentieth anniversary of his work, and my wife was there too, but my children, better brought up than I had been, were both properly asleep at our hotel.

It was a wonderful if somewhat less picturesque evening than the last one, and when we finally got back to the Bristol my wife and I were still harmonizing some of the enchanting melodies from the evening's production. when we arrived at our room, however, we found that we had nothing to sing about, because my older boy, age eight, was sitting up in his bed and tearfully complaining about a bad earache.

In the middle of the night we had to rouse the hotel physician, who examined him with Teutonic thoroughness and finally told us that the kid was suffering from an acute inflammation of the middle ear.

Fortunately I'm not particularly superstitious, so I never attached any special significane to this silly coincidence. It was just a drag, that's all.

While I was busy writing these last few lines about Rosenkavalier, my own ear suddenly started to hurt again after an interval of fifty years. So I knocked off for a while, applied a heating pad and even took a nap for a couple of hours.

But the pain continued.

Dr. Merton Hoskins, a neighbor of mine here in Framingham, just left me, after having given me a stiff dose of penicillin.

And what do I deduce from all these goings-on? What meaningful conclusion have I drawn from this astonishing, almost symphonically repetitive emergence of the earache them in juxtaposition to the Rosenkavalier leitmotiv?

Only this. That the knowing monitors of The New Yorker magazine may never dare to offer their sophisticated clientele any stories that form neat little patterns or have vulgar O. Henry finishes, but life, much more carelessly edited, just obviously doesn't give a good goddam.

[Margie King Barab holds the copyright for the Alexander King portions of this post.]

Why am I Not Surprised?

I just read that the Pittsburgh Symphony Orchestra was unable to pick a winner for its public and partially online concerto competition. Maybe the reason is similar to why some major orchestras have trouble filling first chair positions. People who find themselves in the position to judge other musicians always act subjectively. Too much "personality" (for better or for worse) often doesn't make it past the preliminary stage, but not enough "personality" is (or not hearing anything special) is a big reason for deciding not to hire anyone.

I imagine that when it comes to hiring soloists, administrators tend to be concerned with extra-artistic matters, like how well a potential soloist will promote ticket sales, and how much promotional money they would have to spend to make everything work out financially for their organization.

It is sad that as the "business" of music has come to embrace the values of the greater business world at large, people tend to make decisions that are musically counterintuitive.

The judges could have voted to have Odin Rathnam in the semi-finals, but he, as a result of the video he sent in for the competition, has gotten several offers to appear as a soloist elsewhere. To think, Pittsburgh could have gotten him for cheap. Why is it that some people don't pay attention to the obvious when it comes to evaluating musicians.

Tuba Sonata: Under Construction

[From a photo by spcbrass]

I have been a bit quiet (at least blog-wise) these days because I have been most of my time at the computer at work on a Tuba Sonata for my friend Chris Dickey. I am having, pardon the expression, a blast.

I do have a non-tuba-related thought to collectively ponder, however. If I am inspired to quote a measure of music directly from another composer, and that measure is a very famous grand pause, can that silent measure be interpreted as a direct quotation?

Auto-Tune: ultraminimalism

The human voice, at its best, is able to sing three octaves. It can also sing very softly and very loudly. It can project ranges of emotion that we can't even use words to describe.

Our normal speaking range, as reflected by an auto-tune device, spans less than an octave. Most speaking voices seem to only ascend a fifth above the "tonic" that is our baseline speaking voice. We rarely ever go below it in normal speech, unless we are doing so deliberately. Music generated by auto-tuning is therefore extremely restrictive. It seems always to be harmonized tonally, and it always seems to be accompanied by a steady rhythm, making patterns of speech have an elevated rhythmic interest in comparison with the background. Auto-tuned music also seems to come in a very small variety of dynamics. Auto-tuning, unlike sprechstimme or recitative, isn't generated by people. It's generated by machine.

Some people love it.



I find the practice of auto-tuning interesting, but only to a point. It is so easy to slip into the practice of being dulled by music, and forget about the enormous potential we have to embrace the full naturally-generated musical spectrum, with all its ranges, voices, and possibilities, and be stimulated by it.

Marjorie Kransberg-Talvi and Randolph Hokansen Play Ravel

[Can you believe that this pianist will be 97 in a couple of days?]
[I'm feeling particularly inspired to practice at the moment . . . ]

You can get to know the violinist here, and read about the pianist here and here.

The Soul of Music is Physical

The soul of music is physical.

This statement comes from a relatively recent discussion with Daniel Barenboim about the physicality of music and the role of a conductor.

I agree with Barenboim. I believe that when music is removed from the physical, it loses something. Perhaps that's why I prefer acoustic music to music that is purely electronic. It is possible to appreciate electronic music with the mind, but that is, for me, the extent of it.

I also believe that we listen to music with our bodies. When we hear a projecting voice that is deep and rich, or high and lithe, we unconsciously put our vocal and breathing mechanisms in positions that might approximate what the singers are doing. That's why some of us go to operas again and again.

Perhaps one of the reasons people consider a nice non-projecting voice that is amplified so "relaxing," is that the physical state of the singer is often relaxed. S/he can sing in a whisper and still be heard. S/he doesn't have to worry about projecting diction any sort of distance when singing softly into a device that does most of the "heavy lifting."

The instrumentalists I prefer listening to are people who have intense physical connections with their instruments. Scraping and blowing on tubes and strings that we make longer and shorter with our fingers and arms is very physical. Using sticks, fingers, or hands to hit stuff is very physical. Watching and listening to people do these things well allows us to enjoy the relationship of the physical action to the sound that it produces. We tend to allow our bodies to echo the physical states of the people performing, even when we don't see them. When we play chamber music, we allow our bodies to echo the physical states of the people we are playing with. That's also how many of us learn from our teachers: we try to emulate the physical approach our teachers have to their instruments.

Sometimes the body learns more quickly than the mind, but most of the time there is a disconnect between the mind and the body, because we imagine that intellectualizing comes first and physicalizing comes second. It is also difficult to truly remember a physical state by purely physical means. That's why we need to practice. Just knowing something is never enough. It needs to become an unconscious habit. Teaching by demonstration is sometimes frowned upon, but I believe that it is the most effective way to teach. I also think that the teacher needs to be able to physically empathize with a student in order to figure out where that person's particular points of tension are. Rinse and repeat.

I think that it is important to write music with physicality in mind. After all, we write music for people to play, and it should feel good to do it. That's why instrumentalists and singers return again and again to Bach, Mozart, Haydn, Beethoven, Schubert, Brahms, Dvorak, Schumann, and Tchaikovsky (not to mention Paganini, Chopin, and Liszt, Shostakovich, and Britten). They all understood what Barenboim understands: that the soul of music is physical.

Dueling Fiddles: 21st-Century Television Edition

This may be the height of gimmickry, but these fiddle players (Daniel Dodds and Droujelub Yanakiew) are terrific; and they seem to be having a lot of fun.



[The lights strobe at the end, so if you are prone to seizures, just watch the beginning.]

Where Stravinsky Got One of His Firebird Tunes

This comes from a fantastic 1911 collection of 100 Folk Songs compiled and arranged by Granville Bantok that is in the Petrucci Library. The Russian section has all sorts of recognizable material.

Kozlovsky and Mikhaylov

The title of this song translates as "Hop Crop," so I imagine it has something to do with making beer; but boy, do these singers (who I just discovered today) make music!

Copland Talks About Electronic Music in 1961

Studs Terkel: What’s your feeling about electronic music?

Aaron Copland: Well, I think it’s a little early to have any feelings about it. Let the boys [Terkel: You believe in experimentation] try it out. Yes, I’m very permissive in my attitudes. Let ‘em try it out. Give ‘em plenty of rope.

Thinking about Compassion

Here's a thought for the day from Isaac Bashevis Singer:

You can't have compassion without passion.

[This thought comes from a 1964 interview with Studs Terkel, where it dawned on Singer for the first time right there, on the air.]