A Most Exciting of Musical Families

I have just discovered the wonderful piano playing of Nadia Reisenberg (1904-1983), and also just learned that she is the sister of Clara Rockmore, (1911-1998) the great Theremin virtuoso, and the mother of WQXR's "The Listening Room" host Robert Sherman.

New Strings, Old Habits

I put new strings on my viola last night (at long last), and this morning I had a little bit of time to break them in. Instead of doing the normal three-octave scales that use all four of the strings, I decided to break in one string at a time. My mind, ear, and hand went to the Taffanel-Gaubert tetrachord exercise that I used to play on the flute every day for at least 15 years. Perhaps even 20.



Like all students of Julius Baker (and all students of students of Julius Baker), I began every day with this. It was a kind of mindless meditation, where my fingers just "did" (I really had no idea what the names of the notes I was playing were, nor did I really stop to consider what the configuration of half and whole steps actually was), and my main concern was the feeling of my breathing and the uniform quality of the sound I was making.

I began on the D string, and went all the way up, shifting with a different finger for each repetition, and changing the number of repetitions I would keep in one bow occasionally. I have always said that the flute was kind of like a violin (or viola) with one string, and the challenge of playing the flute is to use the air and the tongue to manipulate the natural color of the pitches in order to get variety.

My breathing started to get very deep as soon as I began, and I noticed that I could use my deep breathing to allow tension to slip away from my left hand and arm as I played the notes that I could generate without thinking. There was time, due to the repetitions, to consider my bow changes, and there was time and "head space" to consider the quality and process of my shifting.

The strange thing for me is the physical relaxation response that results from playing the same series of pitches on a different instrument. How I wish I could communicate with another flutist (one who studied seriously and played at professional level) who switched to violin or viola and plays at a professional level on his or her new instrument.

I used to do these exercises on the alto flute too (which is pitched in G), so I imagine that all sorts of alto-flute-related sensations will come to mind when I do these exercises on that string, now that my D is broken in. It's funny that doing this exercise on the A string doesn't bring flute sensations to mind for me, but doing this exercise from Marcel Moyse does.



Well, it's time to go and break in my G string.

The Art of the Musical Paraphrase

Castelnuovo-Tedesco:



Cziffra:

Yet Another Study Reveals that Studying Music is Good for Young Minds

Ironically, these findings come at a time when 1.3 million of the nation’s public elementary school students receive no specific instruction in music—and the children who do not have access to music education are disproportionately those who attend high-poverty schools. While wealthier school districts can compensate for budget cuts that reduce or eliminate music programs with private funding, low-income school districts cannot, so the kids who might benefit most from music education are often the least likely to get it. “One certainly hopes,” Iversen says, “that the results of these kinds of studies will cause a re-evaluation of the role of arts education in schools.”

Everybody reading this probably already knows the findings of the latest study about why music should be part of every child's education, particularly in districts where money is not flowing, but I thought I'd share this new article from the The Atlantic by Lori Miller Kase here anyway.

Performing is Such a Strange Word

I do not consider myself to be a "performer," but I find the concentration that I experience when playing concerts exhilarating. It makes me feel so truly alive and truly involved (even relaxed) when I am playing chamber music or orchestral music for a group of people who are listening. When the concert at hand is over, I want to have the experience again; but the only way I can "get" it is through playing music with people for people. I suppose it is kind of an addiction.

Doesn't the word "performing" seem very much out of place?

A Brief History of a Musical Failure

Catherine Tice, the Associate Publisher of the New York Review of Books began her expressive life as a violinist. She writes about her relationship with her piano-playing father, and studying with Henryk Szeryng in this beautiful piece in Granta called, "A Brief History of a Musical Failure."

Tice writes from the vantage point of one who was not able to make a career in music because of her lack of some essential qualities that must be present in a child prodigy:

I never had the makings of a prodigy. I had something else. Easy to say that I have this in common with thousands of others who took up, or were persuaded to take up, and eventually to put down, perhaps with some relief, a musical instrument. The ‘something else’ is what is sometimes called musicianship, which I am too inexpert to define, but at the time when it was just shy of full flower, I nearly gave myself over to the violin completely. I became musically exceptional for a child, but I lacked an essential psychological immunity to the dark side of self-criticism. When essential support was withdrawn by degrees it became increasingly difficult for me to do and be what I initially had no intention whatsoever of doing and being. Moreover, it simply isn’t enough to be good.

This bit of memoir tears at my heartstrings. I imagine that Catherine Tice's life is full, and that she is busy with obligations, but reading this makes me want to put a fiddle into her hands and tell her that she can return to playing if she wants to. That she doesn't have to consider herself a musical failure simply because she didn't make it as a child prodigy or that she disappointed her father.

Here's a personal note to Ms. Tice (that I'm putting here to share with others who share the same kind of disappointment): My father told me that I had that "something else" too. My older brother was a prodigy, and for that matter my father was as well. I was normal. I loved music. I loved the violin, but as a daughter I felt crushed when he referred to my time playing as a child as something of a failure, so I took up the flute, which was a way to continue in music. The flute was not the "voice" I wanted in music, but I figured it would do. It didn't. In my very early 30s I retaliated, and I started playing violin again. I built up technique from scratch (literally), gave myself permission to fail, both in private and in public, and have found a kind of musical fulfillment that keeps giving because it's all mine. Nobody "gave" it to me.

Readers of this blog know about my devotion to Marjorie Kransberg-Talvi's blog Frantic: the Memoir. You might enjoy it too. And then you might consider that playing the violin is something that you can still have in your life. There is even a late starters orchestra you could play with in New York.

What Teachers Make

Inadvertent Guest Blogger: Michael Drapkin

My cousin Michael Drapkin made a post and comment on Facebook, and I'm sharing it here. First the post:

My heart goes out to the concert going public in Minnesota - the real losers in this conflict. Not the administration or orchestra musicians. I don't really care about right or wrong; it doesn't matter...the orchestra doesn't exist for the benefit of the musicians or the board: they exist SOLELY for the people that attend concerts.

Our government and tax laws allow organizations like this to collect tax-deductible donations, operate without paying taxes and run tax-free endowments in order to benefit the PUBLIC TRUST. In this case, that means the people - the American Public - that are supposed to benefit from an orchestra that is granted these privileges. The fact that these two warring groups - the board and players - cannot get along in the sandbox is the sideshow.

The real problem? Music is huge in America, but classical music is dying; yet we still graduate 12 - 15,000 music performance majors from our colleges each year - at their annual juries they are made to play orchestral excerpts from pieces that they will never get to perform. Similarly, orchestras are not sustainable as playthings of the rich, as is their legacy, nor is their music of "dead white European men" a part of our culture. Labor and operating costs are TOO expensive for them to be run as a hobby by rich patrons, performing 200 year old music from Europe. Leonard Slatkin was quoted in Polyphonic as saying, "we know that our music only appeals to 2% of the concert going audience." Until you start addressing the 98% and stop the deluge of unemployable orchestra musicians, you'll continue to have debacles like Minnesota.

And the loser will be the public and the 98% that don't know why we need orchestras in the first place.

And then a later comment:

Maybe what we should make music school more like med school - difficult to get in and even harder to complete. The only hazing system similar to med school at Eastman was rushing for the insignificant Phi Mu Alpha fraternity. But seriously, my late father, by some miracle, was in the US Army as a drill sergeant and took and passed a medical aptitude test which sent him to Northwestern Medical School on a free ride courtesy of the US Government. He used to tell me that on his first day, all of the new students were in a big hall and they said, "take a look at the person on your right and left. One of you will be gone before the end of the year." The problem I observed at Eastman was that the hardest part of the school was just getting in! Once you were in, you could sail along and you'd still graduate, even if you did not fulfill the potential that got you there to begin with.

I think some of the challenges of med school are some enormously difficult classes - labs where you have to cut people open, anatomy, etc. It is a difficult and not particularly fun curriculum. Maybe that is the problem with music school - it is too much fun! You get to continue to take private lessons like before, and get an absurd number of credit hours for it, even though non-majors take the same lessons and only get one third of the credit. You get to play in ensembles - see? There's that word: "play." Playtime. Music school is fun, and it shouldn't be. You should be made to do unpleasant things like they do in Med School to prepare future doctors for the challenges ahead.

Wait! That's what I am proposing for the Drapkin Institute! Instead of cutting open bodies, my students will have to cut open business models and understand what make them tick. They're going to have to do a lot of things that not only go beyond their current understanding, but actually change the way they think. Things like learning that just because you practice hard and learn excerpts that you are not entitled to an orchestra job that earns you a living. Realizing that you need to find other ways to express your passion for music and finding out which of the other ways appeals to you. Gaining the business acumen to make this passion a reality, and when you fail you can't blame it on the executive director or the board of directors - YOU will be the chairman of the board with either only yourself to blame, or to cheer on with your own success.

I've been blessed to have had two trajectories in my life that both started when I was in grade school - business and music. I wish to gawd that there was a program of the type that we are proposing. Instead I had to learn it the hard way: empirically and on the job. So instead, we are planning on sharing that through our nascent institute.

We need not be defined by the narrow criteria for what constitutes success that was hammered into us in music school, that if you didn't get a job in a major orchestra you weren't successful. Indeed, I have been disgusted by the past ClarinetFests because they always deify industrial clarinet players that have no personality or individuality since they know that they wouldn't get hired if they did. We also have NO model for teaching leadership. In fact, we are hammered into learning followership: from the very first time we set foot in an ensemble, we are taught to follow. Who will be the leaders that arise from this constricted and outdated music school curriculum that is insidiously protected by NASM? No wonder why the orchestra world is a disaster: no individuality, no creative ideamaking, no leadership. Just a whole head of musicians recreating Nero fiddling obliviously as Rome burns and orchestras melt down like the Minnesota Orchestra. There are better ways - much better ways, and I intend to prove it.

I'm pretty sure that Michael's savvy with business is something that flourishes on part of the family genome that I don't share, but that's one reason I find his particular talents so intriguing. Chutzpah he has always had, and success too. Perhaps with the way things are going in the music profession it might be a good idea to try his ideas and see if they work.

Happy Anniversary, Michael

After being married for 29 years to the person the blogosphere knows as Mr. Orange Crate Art, I'm happy to say that we also keep one another entertained at home (i.e. in real life).

His glasses may be fogged, but mine are not. Life is great in our little house in our little town, and we are still very, very happy together.

Marcel Tabuteau Interview

The last part of this video has an interview with Marcel Tabuteau. By demonstration he makes the case that musicianship has everything to do with personality, while stating that his method of teaching makes music into a disciplined intellectual activity rather than one of feelings (because there are days when you might not feel that good). Clearly his cup ran over with an abundance of both.

White, Tye, and Tallis

Next Sunday, October 6th at 2:00 the Eastern Illinois University Collegium Consort will play a concert of English Renassance music at the Wesley Methodist Church on South Fourth Street in Charleston, Illinois. We're playing the concert to honor the 90th birthday of Robert W. Weidner, the scholar who transcribed the music into modern notation. Dr. Weidner spent his career teaching music history at Eastern Illinois University, and people around the world have benefited from his work making instrumental music of the English Renaissance accessible.

Here's a sample from "Sit Fast" by Christopher Tye in the original notation (the three parts are notated separately):

and here's a complicated section from the above manuscript in modern score notation:

We will also be playing several instrumental pieces that use the "In Nomine" section of a mass by John Taverner as a cantus firmus. One is by Taverner himself, and the rest are by Christopher Tye, Robert White, Alfonso Ferrabosco, and Thomas Tallis.

Dr. Weidner came to our rehearsal today, and he described one of the cadences as "very handsome." I like that. A handsome cadence.

Rosemary Buck, Elaine Fine, Peter Hesterman, Charles Hughes, Jeri Matteson-Hughes, Ruth Riegel, and I will be playing various recorders and stringed instruments, dulcian, sackbut, and crummhorns.

The concert is sponsored by the Coles County Arts Council, and admission is free.

New Music for Clarinet and Viola

Here's a brand new set of pieces I wrote for clarinet and viola (three character pieces and one transcription, to be exact) that I just put in the IMSLP. One character piece is modal, one is 12-tone (with only three deviations from strict "by-the-book" 12-tone writing), and one is pure Marxian (as in the Marx Brothers). The piece is dedicated to my violist friend Lydia Tang and our composer friend Peter Michalove.



The transcription is of the Haydn Trio I wrote about last week.

Here's a performance:



You can get the music here.

Cheap and Easy Music Binding

Spiral binding is fine, and it is often quite useful, but sometimes I want to have music that can lie flat. Sometimes I have scores that require paper that is too big for my comb binding machine. I tried my luck with masking tape, but cloth athletic tape, which has the forgiving quality of being removable (if necessary), is the perfect solution.









You can use it to repair books too.

[Update: I now use the paper athletic tape that you can buy at Walgreens in a tape dispenser. The Walgreens brand is best. Trust me.]

Gens and Such: A Ramble about Gunther Schuller

I remember learning about the word "Gens" from a History course I took in high school. Our teacher, Dr. Burnham, who became a full-time poet after he retired, told us that the point of the "Gens" was to propagate a Genius. All my etymological sources tell me this isn't true, but until now I always considered Dr. Burnham's speculation to be correct. I loved studying history, and if I didn't go through my young life with the belief that I would go into music as a profession, I probably would have gone to a real college (Juilliard was a conservatory) and would have studied history and/or geography.

Towards the end of Gunther Schuller's talk last Wednesday, he mentioned that he was a ninth-generation musician, and that contributed to his success as a composer (success meaning the ability to come up with ideas and write music that pleases him). It occurred to me that, taking his German relatives into consideration, his genius (and it is genius) could very easily be traced to the multiplicity of composers of the Baroque period in Germany. If a generation is 33 years, the first professional musician in his lineage would have been around in 1716. By the Burnham "Gens" principle, he could be the "Genius."

Schuller spent much of his childhood at a boarding school in Germany (studying all his subjects in German), and his English does have a slight German tinge to it. He loves organization, which is one reason he loves writing 12-tone music. He still writes his very interesting (and singular) mixture of 12-tone music and jazz, and has been generating it from the same row he's used since 1976.

I mentioned something about his memoir before he began his talk. He told me that he included all the names of the people he worked with in his index. I told him that I read a review copy (without an index), and was thinking that this book would have one hell of an index. I told him about getting a professional indexer to do the index for Bernie Zaslav's memoir. His response was "I did it myself. I love indexing." There you have it: a great organized mind doing what it likes best.

I have also been thinking about the statement Gunther Schuller made about hating the word "interpret" and loving the word "realize" when it comes to playing music. After thinking about it for a while, and after thinking about his music, I understand his viewpoint. I also know that it is the polar opposite of mine. I love the idea of leaving the ultimate meaning to something I write to the people playing it. I actually absolve myself of "ownership" once a piece is completed, and I love the fact that it could be played in many different ways by many different people, while still following all the pitches, phrase markings, articulations, and dynamic markings.

I imagine that Schuller's musical brain works a little bit like the brain of Arnold Schoenberg (though his personality is quite different), which brings to mind the first post I put on this blog, which I called "Reconsidering Perfection." Both composers have ways of thinking that I find fascinating, and both write music that I admire, but what I have for both composers is admiration rather than identification. In this vast world there is room for much more than one or two ways of thinking. Gunthur Schuller talked about his goal of melding the two "camps" of Schoenberg and Stravinsky in his music. Now, thanks to the many investigations by musicologists and the opening up of resources by way of the internet (the IMSLP, the Internet Archive, the Worldcat, YouTube, Wikipedia, music blogs, and Jstor), we know that there have always been far more than two "camps," and that there is room in this musical world for all sorts of musical expression.

I find it really interesting that Gunther Schuller became so attracted to Jazz, a medium that is built on improvisation, when he himself did not feel comfortable as an improvising musician. He sought out what was external to his experience and comfort, and he made a huge contribution to the work of Jazz musicians by doing what he was good at. I find it interesting that both his sons, the bass player Ed Schuller, and the drummer George Schuller are accomplished Jazz musicians. Like many of us, Gunther Schuller had children who were able to do something well that he was unable to do, like improvise.

I'm very proud that both of our children went to college, and am very proud that they both can do things that I could never do. (In addition to her many intellectual talents and her degree in linguistics, Rachel is an athlete, and she can sing confidently and beautifully. Ben can also sing confidently and beautifully. He as a degree in philosophy and is now teaching history--fulfilling, by almost coincidence, one of my personal unfulfilled dreams.)

Someone asked Mr. Schuller about the various kinds of music and various ways of writing music that are around today (it was a young crowd, and he was viewed very much, at almost 88, as a composer of the past, though he is a composer of the present because he's still writing). He said that he wasn't impressed by music that was generated mathematically, and he considered most minimalistic music repetitive, though he did mention that he liked Steve Reich's work.

After Gunther Schuller's talk, I was excited about trying my hand at 12-tone music again (I haven't used a tone row in years). I found a nifty row, put the pitches on an squared index card in the original order and in inversion, and then I generated rows from every chromatic step of the scale. I had a grand time playing with it, and I turned some of the music I found using the row into a piece for viola and clarinet. It is liberating to be able to escape from tonality for a while, but the very thought of only writing music generated from that row for the next 37 years feels stifling. Organized atonality is an interesting country to visit, but it's not a place where I feel at home.

Haydn Music of the Spheres

I have spent every day of this new academic year reading through Haydn's Piano Sonatas. It's been a wonderful experience (to make a huge understatement). Today I came across the amazing trio section of the Minuet from in his A major Piano Sonata Hob. XVI:12, and I thought I'd share it here.