Thought for the Day

I was thinking, "Wouldn't it be great if I could have an advocate like Joe Biden to speak up for me when I need it?" Then I realized that is just what he is doing.

Thank you Joe Biden for saying exactly what you mean.

If Only Central Illinois Were More Like Amsterdam!

The Real Toscanini: Musicians Reveal the Maestro

Cesare Civetta is a conductor by profession and not a writer, so the biographical parts of this book are (thankfully) not overly "writerly." Civetta became interested in learning about Toscanini when his high school band director, who had played trumpet in Toscanini's orchestra, introduced him to Toscanini's Beethoven recordings. He supplemented his reading and listening by interviewing people who knew Toscanini and worked with him. During the 1970s Civetta produced a 35-part interview series on WFUV (Fordham University's radio station), and his guests included members of the NBC Symphony, singers who performed with Toscanini at La Scala as well as at the Metropolitan Opera, and other conductors. He also gathered information privately from people who knew Toscanini and worked with him in various capacities.

This extremely useful book is a thematically organized collection of quotations from 40-50 people (including many people I knew from my days in New York in the late 1970s, so I enjoy "hearing" their voices). Each chapter is divided into subheadings that offer commentary on a given subject from several musicians. The chapter on tempo, for example, includes subheadings that discuss rubato, Toscanini's sense of timing, his clarity of beat, his rhythmic accuracy, tempo in relation to acoustics, and working with soloists. There's a chapter on opera, one on musical architecture, and chapters on balance, baton technique, philosophy, rehearsal style, and recording.

The book is rich with quotations from Alan Shulman, A cellist in the NBC Symphony, who was also an excellent composer, the oboist Robert Bloom, the violist Emanuel Vardi, the violinist, Misha Mischakoff (by way of his daughter's book), bassist David Walter, the choral conductor Robert Shaw, and many other musicians. Together they not only describe Toscanini as a conductor and as a human being, but they demonstrate a kind of like-mindedness that permeated Toscanini's musical New York, and informed its first true golden age of music.

I'll give you just one quote from Josef Gingold, and then you'll need to get a copy of the book to read the rest.

"My wife likes to tell the story about the day I had some bug and wasn't feeling well enough to go to a rehearsal, but there was something on the program that I wanted to play, so I said: 'I'll bundle up and go, and I'll play that one piece and then come right home.' I went there feverish and in no condition really to play; but once the Maestro began the rehearsal, I became so absorbed in what we were doing that I forgot I was sick, I forgot about myself entirely; and at the end of the rehearsal I was feeling completely well. This was the effect Toscanini had: when you were playing with him your mind never wandered for one moment; you were completely absorbed in music-making and one with him and with the composer."

Musing on Pastiches

Fritz Kreisler is famous for writing pastiche pieces for violin and piano, and, according to legend, he picked the names of the composers who "inspired" the styles of those pieces out of a music encyclopedia, even though he didn't have any way of knowing what each composer's style might have been. Back in the first decades of the 20th century nobody really knew what Francois Francoeur's music sounded like, and we still only have a few examples. The well-known E-minor cello sonata could have been written by Konstantin Petrov Popov, who edited a Russian edition from 1907, or Pepov could have been a pseudonym for another cellist/composer who really wanted to have a good baroque-style piece to play (Konstantin Petrov Popov's only listing in the IMSLP is as the editor of the E minor Francoeur Sonata). I don't have any kind of absolute proof, other than a hunch, but I'm not totally convinced that the cello sonata is written by the same person who wrote these violin sonatas sometime between 1720 and 1733.

One of my favorite musical hoax pieces is the one that Samuel Dushkin wrote in 1924. He had the nifty idea to claim that it was written by a contemporary of Mozart's named Maria Theresia von Paradis who was a pianist and a composer. She was known mostly for the high quality of her playing, the pieces that were written for her, and the fact that she was blind. This portrait demonstrates that fact by representing her eyes without irises.



Other people have suggested that Dushkin used the Romanze of the Weber Violin Sonata Opus 10, No. 1 as a model (the second movement of first sonata in this volume), but I think it owes far more of its inspiration to the Sicilienne part of Fritz Kreisler's "Sicilienne and Rigaudon."

Here's the "Paradis" Sicilienne performed (beautifully) by Jaime Laredo:


and here's the Kreisler piece ("in the style of Francoeur") from 1910 that is strikingly similar in spirit and in "violin-ness." It also just happens to have the same title as the Dushkin.



Here's a nifty NPR piece about the subject of "musical fraudsters."

Gish Gallop Again

I couldn't resist doing this (with big apologies to Franz Liszt).

[It clocks in at two minutes, and has a mixture of familiar and unfamiliar material designed to befuddle.]

Gish Gallop

Sound Familiar?

Playing by the Rules?

From Thursday night's debate rules:

"No props, notes, charts, diagrams or other writings can be used by the candidates; however, they can take notes on the type of paper of their choosing."

Now watch this:



Do you think that whatever Romney took out of his pocket and slyly placed on the podium while he was looking up and passing by the audience was a piece of flexible paper he wanted to take notes on? I don't think so. I also don't think that he imagined a camera would be trained him while he did it.

His campaign people have dismissed this as really being a handkerchief, which does makes sense, since a handkerchief is flexible and can curl up in your pocket. He could, however, have had notes written on said handkerchief. Sure, singers and fiddle players often bring handkerchiefs on stage with them, but they do not lay them out flat so that you could, if you wanted to, read what might be written on them. And if I were to cheat in such a way, I would make sure to mop my brow or cough into the handkerchief, and then slip it back into my pocket.

Rage Against the Machine

There used to be some advantages connected with living in a small midwestern college town. I just returned from a walk on this beautiful fall day, and found that the huge sound system that the local university installed at the end of its athletic field effectively covered up the sounds of nature I might have heard. The banter from athletic events now permeates the air on weekends. You can hear the voices clear as day from two miles away, and the city itself is only about four miles long and four miles wide, and the stadium's speakers are sitting pretty much in the physical center of town. I do like to listen to the sounds of nature when I walk, but I also like to listen music or podcasts. Today the sound system was (and is, I can still hear it blaring through the closed doors and windows of my house) turned up so loudly that I could clearly hear the names of the people competing in the athletic event of the day through my Bach, Handel, and Haydn. I imagine that these sounds send the birds elsewhere.

That this state-of-the-art sound system was set up by the university athletic department using money donated by alumni, including the rich and famous Tony Romo, a distinguished alumnus of the university. I imagine it was designed for use in a large city stadium, where the audio for athletic events has to project over the sounds of car traffic, trains, planes, sirens, people, and general city noise.

On my hour-long walk today I saw half a dozen cars. There are places for sound systems like this one, but this town isn't one of them. There's nothing anyone can do about it either.

Rant over.

Why Save PBS?

It's nice to be reminded that PBS is probably the best value out there for $1.03 per person, per year. Silly Mitt.

First Recording Ever of the 2nd Brandenburg in the High Octave

This will "blow" your mind! It was recorded in 1932 in Berlin, and the trumpet player is Paul Spörri. Albert Harzer is the flutist, Gustav Kern is the oboist, and Szymon Goldberg is the violinist. Alois Melichar conducted the Berlin Philharmonic.

"Debate" Performance, Truth, and Lies

First of all, last night's presidential debate was not really a debate. The questions were too broad for the two-minute-response format, and the moderator did nothing to enforce the "rules," if there were any. Romney spoke loudly and quickly, and tried to sound kind of like Reagan (who was a far better actor than Romney). He raised far too many questions in his responses to the moderator's questions for anyone to rebut given the small amount of time, and I think that was part of his strategy. Obama smiled through Romney's lies, spoke slowly and deliberately, and told the truth.

The immediate criticism from my household and from all the post-debate comments I read was that Obama should have been more aggressive, and should have taken Romney to task on some issues. Some people feared that Obama lost the debate and therefore lost the election. I don't think so.

Some people wish that Obama could be more like Bill Clinton, but I don't. We already have Bill Clinton around, and if Obama tried to be like him it would appear phoney; perhaps it would be kind of like Romney coming across as a phoney Ronald Reagan. I also don't think that Michelle would appreciate him acting more Clintonesque, especially on their 20th wedding anniversary. One thing that nobody can deny about Barack Obama is that he doesn't pretend to be anything he isn't. He lives his life honestly.

I doubt that Romney persuaded anyone that his positions were better than Obama's, because he never came across with the "goods" that were asked of him. His plans, particularly his health care and economic plans, are still shrouded in mystery, and his math still doesn't add up.

But I think that Obama was actually acting strategically. He knew about Romney's bravura on the podium. Romney is a salesman, and in this campaign he is trying to sell his consulting expertise to a "client" that he believes would benefit (at a price) from his help. I hope that we never actually find out what that price might be, and I also help that we never actually find out the secret plans that he is offering "behind door number 2."

Romney has been taken to task for all of his partially true statements and all of his lies in the the post-debate fact checks. His lies are now on video tape, and can be played over and over, analyzed, and be used in ads. Obama is on video tape being deliberate, calm, direct, kind, humble, respectful, and honest. I believe that President Obama knew, while he was being attacked in this forum, that the press would come to his defense on matters of fact and truth, and that people who played back the tape or read the transcript would be able to make up their own minds and make their voting decisions based on truth. He didn't need to play Romney's "game." And it was Romney's game. Romney made sure of it from the start.

I'm really looking forward to watching Joe Biden and Paul Ryan next week! He can take Ryan to task on everything that Romney said in this debate.

Fish Story

I have been thinking about that "give a man a fish, teach a man to fish" story in relation to the way that music tends to work in the fishbowl-like way I see music in rural America these days. Yesterday I wrote about the native "art music" of my area, and the way a certain segment of the local population really enjoys playing (at any level) and listening (to musicians that play at any level). It speaks to the power of music itself, and the durability of folk music everywhere. People who play without worrying about the purity of their sounds, the quality of their vibrato, or even the accuracy of their intonation can still enjoy the way music helps build community and cement friendship.

My problem is that I do worry about the purity of my sound, the quality of my sound, the the accuracy of my intonation, and I have been kind of obsessed with this way of making music for a long time, and on many different instruments. It is just the way I'm wired.

Some women spend time putting on make-up and shopping so that they can dress in a way that is "just so." I'm perfectly happy wearing comfortable clothes that might be decades old, but I will go to all sorts of pains to avoid playing out of tune, and will do everything I can in order to make a vibrant and beautiful sound. I tend to attract (or at least keep) students who value what I have to teach, but for some reason (because living in a fishbowl where there are only a given number of people interested in playing, and other people teaching) the number of students I am teaching now is at an all-time low.

It makes me feel pretty lousy.

When I was young I used to think that I could help to make the world a better place through music. I believed it with all my heart and soul, because I felt that music was singular. I felt that music was the clearest way to communicate truth and authenticity, and I have dedicated my life to trying to play in a way that communicates truth. It takes a lot of soul searching and a lot of practice to meet Bach face to face and play a phrase that is as strong and as true as Bach would have imagined it to be. I heard many, many, many people play in a way I would consider "true" when I was younger, and I saw my ability to recognize that "truth" when I heard it to be kind of a gift; not the kind of gift you talk about when you say that someone is "gifted," but the kind of gift you talk about when you can go directly to experiencing pleasure and surprise from what others might consider relatively unremarkable. It's a gift that keeps giving itself to me, and it's one that I believe I can share with my students--if they are willing to listen.

I sometimes find that kind of musical "truth" present in young children who play, and through a certain amount of work and awareness, finding musical truth (even momentary musical truth) happens during lessons with adults too. It happens in cities everywhere, and it sometimes happens in small fish-bowl communities like mine. Not being able, for reasons beyond my control, to take part in it to the extent I once did feels like a real loss.

City Mouse, Country Mouse, City Music, Country Music

I suppose you could say that I am a city mouse, and since moving to the "country" 27 years ago, I haven't changed my stripes. I still busy myself with "city" (or old-school city) things, and I haven't forsaken city music for the country music that seems to be the music that really puts down roots and flourishes in this area. You could call it a Platzgeist.

Country music around here runs rather deep. There is a fiddle tradition that has deep roots in southern Illinois and Missouri, and, thanks to a bunch of musicians (some who happen to have grown up in the very town I'm writing from), that tradition has been preserved, and is still being preserved the old-fashioned way. The operative word for how this music is being preserved seems to be the word "collected," because people learn traditional fiddle tunes by going out into the country and playing with the old fiddlers who either made them up or learned them from another (perhaps even older) fiddler.

My friend Gaye Harrison, who was married to the recently (as in a few weeks ago) departed Garry Harrison, used the word "collected" to give the origin of a fiddle tune she played the other night (she was playing with a former student of mine who decided to try out life in the world of old-time music rather than the life of old-school music) at an enthusiastically-attended outdoor fundraising event.

I certainly don't begrudge people choosing old-time music over old-school music, but, being a "city mouse," I have never been very good at making old-time music myself.

We know a terrific plumber named Rick who grew up in Charleston during the 1960s and 70s. He loves to recite the various businesses that used to be on the town square, naming their owners, and discussing various features of the bowels of their buildings (which he knows intimately). It was a flourishing place of commerce. Rick told us that while he was growing up there wasn't anything anyone could possibly need that you couldn't get on the square.

Yesterday I had a phone conversation with a man in his 90s who grew up in Mattoon, a town eight miles west of Charleston, in the 1930s and 40s (he read about our Jewish Community Center in the Chicago Tribune). He talked about Mattoon as a paradise: an extremely tolerant and friendly place where businesses thrived. It was an important railroad town, complete with a roundhouse, and people who went into business there could have things sent in by train (fruit, furniture, hardware, clothes, you name it), and sell it in their stores.

Nobody in Charleston really had the need to go to Mattoon to get anything (Charleston had goods delivered by train as well), and nobody in Mattoon really needed to go to Charleston to get anything, except for "high-brow" culture.

Charleston has a university, and at one point the university had a president who loved music, and he encouraged the university to start a school of music. The school of music attracted some excellent musicians, and it looked like Charleston could eventually become a cultural center. I found a town plan in the public library that had an elaborate proposal (complete with pictures) to turn Charleston into a cultural resort-type town with an arts festival kind of like Interlochen. It all had something to do with a fake lake project, and I suppose this plan was part of Charleston's bid to get the lake, which would bring resort-type tourism to the area. People moved to town to get in on this project from the start, but the lake went to the town of Shelbyville, and the arts center was forgotten.

The Zeitgeist changed after that president retired, and the school of music became a department of music. The people (all city mice, like me) brought here as faculty members of the school of music have all retired, and many of them are no longer alive.

But the music that is native to the area is kept alive by people who care about it, and that is something to celebrate.

The United States of Alec

If you have 56 minutes, it would be really worth your while to watch this video made by Bill Moyers. If you don't have time to watch, take a look at the transcript.

I hate to use this space for things political, but with the privatization and "monetization" of everything, music and those of us who play it and write it (as well as those of us who listen to it) will have our lives changed drastically if this kind of thing continues. And the "beauty" of this widespread scheme is that it's all legal. Before our very eyes we have a "not-for-profit" institution that calls itself "educational" (so it doesn't pay taxes) doing the work that lobbyists are not allowed to do under the law.

Please watch this, and then share it with people you care about. I hate to go all negative here, but this is really SCARY, and really WRONG. This sort of thing should not happen in a democracy.

A Glimpse into the GOP's Twisted Mirror

That, at heart, is the twisted beauty of the plan being championed by Ryan and Romney: The higher Republicans manage to drive up the debt, the more ammunition they have in their fight to slash federal spending for the needy. And the more time they waste trumpeting their "fiscal discipline," the more the nation's infrastructure will continue to crumble around them. Squandering two full workweeks of the congressional calendar on votes to repeal Obamacare has cost taxpayers $48 million. That's nearly the same amount of money now needed to repair cracks in the Capitol itself – spending the House GOP has refused to authorize, out of anti-governmental spite. "If the House wants the dome to fall in," said Senate Appropriations chair Ben Nelson, "I hope it falls on their side." If the Republicans experience a crushing blow as a result of their hard-right agenda, of course, it won't be caused by the laws of physics – it will be delivered by the voters on Election Day.

Read Tim Dickinson's article in Rolling Stone.