Concert Conversation

Last night, during the intermission of a Prairie Ensemble concert, before we played Mahler's string orchestra transcription of Schubert's "Death and the Maiden" quartet, a nice woman from the audience (during Prairie Ensemble concert intermissions the audience and the players can comfortably mingle) told me that she watched a YouTube video of the Schubert that afternoon in order to prepare herself for the concert. That left me with a warm feeling about ways computer automation can enhance the appreciation of music that is played in a concert space, before our very (collective) eyes and ears.

The Scourge of "Sameness"

Michael Drapkin writes:

We need to move away from the scourge of “sameness”
plaguing even our best American symphony orchestras. The alternative is boring orchestras that suffer
declining attendance, resulting in budget shortfalls, shortened seasons and more bankruptcies. Audition
by committee needs to be replaced by a system that favors the John Bruce Yeh’s of the world, rather
than passing them over in favor of bland players that can appeal to an entire committee. There is no
shortage of these bland players around, which means that they can be easily replaced by other bland
players, which is a problem when it comes time to negotiate salary and contract. How can you make
demands for your services when what you do is virtually undistinguishable from the next guy?
Distinctive soloistic players are a rarer commodity – their unique voices are a competitive differentiator,
using business school terminology, which means that they are much harder to replace.

[John Bruce Yeh is a very expressive, artistic, and distinctive member of the clarinet section of the Chicago Symphony Orchestra who has playing that is deemed too "soloistic" to warrant a principal chair in an American orchestra; even his own.]

Drapkin gives a sober assessment of the current realities of orchestral musical life, including what he aptly identifies as "followership." If you have any interest in the direction the professional practice of orchestral music has taken, you should read his whole article.

Violin and Piano Concert February 28th 2014

I'm extremely excited about this year's WHAM concert because the music is so wonderful (and so rare). John David and I played Amanda Maier's Sonata a couple of years ago, and are enjoying working on her Six Pieces a great deal. Clara Kathleen Rogers, who performed as an opera singer under the name Clara Doria, was a British composer who studied in Leipzig and settled in Boston. Her Sonata had its premiere at the World's Columbian Exhibition in Chicago in 1893, and, like Amanda Maier's music, has only recently come back into the repertoire. With only a few exceptions, Emilie Mayer's music has been hidden in libraries since her death in 1893. Her Violin Sonata is a terrific piece that, had it been known during the 20th century (it and her many other compositions have been sleeping silently in the Berlin Staatsbibliothek), would probably have been in the repertoire of many musicians. The American composer Florence B. Price was the first African American woman to have a piece performed by a major American Orchestra. Her "Adoration," from 1951 is one of her last works. She wrote it for organ, with an indication to use a violin stop for the middle section. I took it as a cue to make a transcription.

What is it that Moves Us?

Yesterday I was listening to a radio program where people were discussing the neurological basis for recognizing beauty and being moved by it. Much of the discussion was about visual art, but music came up once or twice in the form of a Schubert String Quartet moving someone to tears. The people discussing this phenomenon (and many of us have experienced it) placed the responsibility for the beauty on Schubert.

In addition to hearing moving performances or recordings of Schubert, many of us have also experienced indifferent or technically-flawed performances of music by Schubert (as in out of rhythm, out of tune, or out of balance). The power of making music that moves people is not in the hands of the composer alone.

Had I taken part in the discussion, I would have mentioned that what we as listeners respond to when we hear someone play a piece by Schubert (or anyone, for that matter) is the way the musicians relate to the music. If I were to play the difficult Schubert C major Fantasy on the violin, I would be struggling with technical difficulties. If I were to play a Schubert Sonata on the piano, I might give the piece a lot of love, but I would also probably play wrong notes, use the pedal inappropriately, play the piece too slowly, and not be able to make the phrases sound the way I would like them to sound. If I were playing Schubert as a violist in a string quartet, I would be in hog heaven, particularly if I were playing it with people who loved playing Schubert Quartets as much as I do.

I think that the thing that moves people to tears is as much in the relationship of the players to the music as it is the way the notes and phrases relate to one another. With a great composer like Schubert (or Mozart, or Bach, or Haydn, or Beethoven, or Brahms, or Dvorak, or anyone else who has written pieces that "work" the way they should), there is more of a chance that the players will be able to relate appropriately to one another and to the music at hand.

I also believe that it is possible to give enough love to a "lesser" piece of music ("lesser" meaning either a piece by a successful composer not in the pantheon, or a less-successful piece by a composer that is in the pantheon) to make it sound really special. That has to do with the relationship of the person (or persons) to the music at hand, and I believe that what goes into a performance is reflected outward.

A recording is often a document of the love between a person or a group of people and a piece of music. Perhaps it is like a love letter, which we can read over and over (even if it is a love letter written to a stranger) and feel the substance of that love.

Attending a concert, when it is a good one, is actually being in the presence of the love that happens between the people playing and the music they are playing. It's sometimes a gamble, because not all concerts are given in the spirit of idealism we would expect. But some are, and I believe going to a concert of music that seems interesting is usually a gamble worth taking.

Listening to an audio or video recording in private is kind of like reading. It is a personal experience. We bring a great deal of ourselves into listening to recordings, because we are indeed interacting with the music, calling upon all of our experiences as listeners and as players to give the act of listening real meaning. When we read we interact silently (and anonymously) with the writer (in the case of non-fiction), or with the characters (in the case of fiction), because we understand them according to what we make of them. My Emma Bovary probably looks different from your Emma Bovary.

Listening to a performance is ideally a more selfless experience because the phrase-by-phrase relationships that happen between the performing musicians and the music is happening in real time and real space. Sometimes what happens even results from the attention of the people listening, because the people who are playing can feel the attention of the audience. Members of an audience are, in effect, part of the performance.

Remember that after watching strangers perform on a stage, they are no longer really strangers. They may not know you, but you know them. Successful films, like successful books, only give us the illusion.

a poem for the day by W.B. Yeats . . . sort of

I guess Michael and I make our fun in unconventional ways. Lately it has been discussing the plural of "meat loaf." He prefers "meat loafs," while I, even though I don't eat them, prefer "meat loaves," which I happily make for him, but only one at a time. Then there is the related question about the plural of beef. If you count a reference to a word that comes from the 13th-Century French plural of boeuf, "beeves" is actually acceptable. I prefer to think of the plural of beef as beef, like the German Rindfleisch, which is the same in singular or plural.

Here's the poem:



The only reference I found online to "Rindfleishen" was for a few Irish stew recipes. A little serendipity, considering the poem, which you can see in its first home here.

Happy Valentine's Day!

Hope

I found a seed on my walk today. I took it inside, took its portrait, and let it go free. I hope it finds a home in the ground before the next batch of snow comes tomorrow.

A Little Musical Cat Blogging

I just discovered Domenico Scarlatti's "Cat Fugue," so named because legend has it the theme came from one of Scarlatti's cats walking on the harpsichord keys. I happen to really like the way Scarlatti sounds on the piano (at least on recordings), so the video I linked to above is a piano recording. This Cat Fugue reminds me a little of Johann Sebastian Bach's F-minor Sinfonia, which is as good an excuse as any to listen to Glenn Gould play it. Maybe Bach had a cat too.

I would be remiss if I didn't include Barber's "The Monk and His Cat" from the Hermit Songs, Aaron Copland playing his The Cat & the Mouse, and Zez Confrey playing his Kitten on the Keys.

What's in A Room?

For a great treat, look at Mike Brubaker's analysis of the photograph below over at TempoSensaTempo.

Maier and Lipinski Continued

Could Amanda Maier be holding the Lipinski Stradivarius in this photo?

An Amanda Maier Connection to the "Lipinski" Stradivarius

Thank goodness the famous Lipinski Stradivarius will be returned to Frank Almond after the horrible robbery that happened last week. Almond's Kickstarter page about the history of the instrument mentions that the instrument's owner after Lipinski was Julius Röntgen's family. In 1861, when the instrument went to the Röntgen family, Julius was only a child. He also became a pianist and not a violinst, but he did marry the violinist Amanda Maier (1853-1894). I imagine that the Röntgen who played the instrument after Lipinski was Engelbert, the concertmaster of the Leipzig Gewandhausorchester (and Amanda's former teacher). Perhaps Engelbert kept the instrument in the family by giving it to his daughter-in-law, since his son was not a violinist.

The recording that Frank Almond made with William Wolfram has music by Röntgen on it. Perhaps their next recording might include something by Amanda Maier. A few of her excellent violin pieces are in the IMSLP.

More Musical Assumptions posts about Amanda Maier.

"The future is not theirs."

This is a "review" of the music written by women that was performed at the 1893 World Columbian Exposition in Chicago, which is part of this publication about the Congress of Women held in the Woman's Building of the Exposition. (Be sure to read pages 570-573--you can look at a PDF of those pages here--to get Mrs. Gaston Boyd's take on women in music, which I find very interesting.)



I hope the writer is writing about the singers and not the composers.



On February 28 John David and I will be playing Clara Kathleen Rogers's Violin Sonata in D minor, which was played during the 1893 Columbian Exhibition. It's an excellent piece. My prediction is that it will be performed a great deal in the future, particularly since it's now available in the IMSLP.

N.B. On page 579 there is an entry by Mrs. Caroline Westcott Romney called "Four Months Old in Mexico." I imagine she is a relative of Mitt.

The ADD Section

While I was working on the first movement of a sonata with a student yesterday, she noticed that the development section had a snippet of this and a snippet of that. Nothing stayed in its place very long. It made perfect sense for her because she copes with attention deficit disorder. She called it the ADD section.

I laughed out loud.

In a Sonata Form exposition we have an A theme, a B theme (transition), a C theme (second theme), and a D theme (closing). Then we have the ADD section, which is usually followed by A, B, C, and D presenting themselves in order once again.

Perfect.

Peter Michalove Memorial Concert

Champaign-Urbana composer Peter Michalove intended the concert he arranged for Monday, February 3rd to be his final composition recital, but his terminal illness had other ideas. It is now a memorial concert. My involvement in the concert came as one of the kindest gestures imaginable from a fellow composer.

I have another composition recital at Indi Go on Feb. 3. It will be a little shorter than I had hoped, but it will still be an evening-full of my music. This will be my final composition recital.

But then I saw you're planning a clarinet and viola piece. Lydia is playing in a couple of pieces of mine for my recital. But I said I'd write something just for her. It would have been my last work, and I was going to call it Farewell for Lydia. But Lydia had other ideas (as she always does). She wanted something for viola and clarinet. I said, great! That's an excellent combination.

But once I finished another piece for the recital, I was unable to write any more. I called Lydia, and I said there was no one I less wanted to say this to, but I couldn't give her the piece I had promised her. So I may be making some assumptions here, but now it seems you're going to write the piece for her that I can't.

Do it with all the fondness I have for her.

Peter

The concert has been moved to the Osher Lifelong Learning Institute, 1800 Oak Street, Suite 108, Champaign, Illinois (where Peter taught), and will begin at 7:30. Several new pieces by Peter (and the piece I wrote for him) will be played trumpet players Aaron Romm and Jeremy McBain, violist Lydia Tang (the Lydia mentioned above), clarinetist Vince Gilbert, Oboist John Dee, violinists Anne Heiles and Aaron Jacobs, cellist Samuel Araya, pianist Tatiana Shustova, soprano Cristin Colvin, and double bass player Margaret Briskin.

Who says there's only one right way to hold the fiddle and the bow?

This guy is playing backwards: bowing--using a very unusual bow hold--with his left hand, and holding the fiddle upside-down. His Czardas sounds just fine!

Post by daly triki kanun.

"But that doesn't mean he's gone."

Arlo Guthrie:

I usually do a little meditation and prayer every night before I go to sleep - Just part of the routine. Last night, I decided to go visit Pete Seeger for a while, just to spend a little time together, it was around 9 PM. So I was sitting in my home in Florida, having a lovely chat with Pete, who was in a hospital in New York City. That's the great thing about thoughts and prayers- You can go or be anywhere.

I simply wanted him to know that I loved him dearly, like a father in some ways, a mentor in others and just as a dear friend a lot of the time. I'd grown up that way - loving the Seegers - Pete & Toshi and all their family.

I let him know I was having trouble writing his obituary (as I'd been asked) but it seemed just so silly and I couldn't think of anything that didn't sound trite or plain stupid. "They'll say something appropriate in the news," we agreed. We laughed, we talked, and I took my leave about 9:30 last night.

"Arlo" he said, sounding just like the man I've known all of my life, "I guess I'll see ya later." I've always loved the rising and falling inflections in his voice. "Pete," I said. "I guess we will."

I turned off the light and closed my eyes and fell asleep until very early this morning, about 3 AM when the texts and phone calls started coming in from friends telling me Pete had passed away.

"Well, of course he passed away!" I'm telling everyone this morning. "But that doesn't mean he's gone."