Concert in Rhinebeck, New York

I was very excited to learn this morning that some musicians (flutist Eugenia Zukerman, pianist Babette Hierholzer, and soprano Kimberly Kahan) will be performing one of my pieces in Rhinebeck, New York this Sunday. Here's a screen shot of the article, and here's a link to it. I imagine they will be performing either "Asleep in the Deep," "Bird in a Gilded Cage" or "In the Gold Room." These are pieces in a series I refer to as "new tunes for old songs."

Math

By the time my children reached the sixth grade I could no longer help them with math. Sixth grade was that time in my life where I tried to "fit in" with the kids around me, and I lost a lot of ground making stupid mistakes. I stopped playing violin, and I no longer took the academic work of school seriously. I suppose that you could say it was a time of rebellion, but I recall that prior to the beginning of sixth grade, most of my interest in things having to do with learning and music was self directed. Nobody made me practice or made me do homework. When I did do homework, I used a crutch. When I stopped practicing violin it was simply assumed that I did not have any interest in playing, and when I did poorly in math, it was probably assumed that I didn't have any aptitude. My low SAT scores didn't matter, because I was going to music school. I had to wait until taking the GRE was not required before I was able to get a Master's Degree.

When I realized that I really needed to play an instrument somewhere in the middle of the 7th grade, the violin was something I didn't feel I could go back to. As a result of not playing attention in sixth grade math class, I was lost when it came to 7th grade math. I never thought to ask for help. All I really cared about during jr. high school was music, and my teachers were all impressed with my dedication to music. Perhaps they bought into the myth that music and math are pretty much the same thing. I am living proof that they are not. The fact that I graduated from high school (there was not much of a math requirement, and "easy" math counted as part of it) proves that intuition can get you far enough to fool people. For some odd reason I do remember something about geometry, and I do recall finding it a lot of fun. I never understood algebra.

Here's my stash of books from the library. My plan is to start learning 6th grade math now, and then I plan to make my way through the subsequent levels in order to become math literate.

I did it with the violin, I did it with writing music, and I am doing it with the piano. Any guidance from readers who are sympathetic to my cause would be highly appreciated.

Scenes from EMMA will be Performed in New York on May 13, 2015

I'm very excited to let you know that Leonard Lehrman and Helene Williams will be performing some scenes from my 2008 opera EMMA as part of a seminar about Jewish Opera. The seminar series, which begins next week, will be held at the Community Church, 40 East 35th Street, in New York City.

Traveling with musical instruments

This new FAA law allowing musicians to travel safely with instruments makes for some interesting reading.

Four Pieces from Doktor Faustus

Karlīna Īvāne played my "Four Pieces from Doktor Faustus" a couple of days ago, and put the performance on YouTube. I am happy to share it here. If you know the Thomas Mann novel, you should recognize the references. If you haven't read the novel, I recommend reading it!

The first movement is based (loosly) on the song "Oh How Lovely is the Evening," which is discussed at length as one of the pieces that Leverhuhn and the narrator sang together. The second movement is based on the Hetaere esmeralda row and incorporates the Tristan chord. The third movement represents the encounter with whatever it is that the narrator (who is a viola d'amore player), says that Leverkuhn (the composer and main character) encounters, be it a daemon or a hallucination of one, and the last movement is a "portrait" the little boy called Echo.

Henry Miller on Writing

I spent my 20s reading everything written by Henry Miller, and I spent my 30s reading most of the books he mentions in "The Books in My Life." I know that I must have read this list of "commandments" concerning writing, because I tend to follow them (unconsciously) when writing music and while practicing, when I have had the leisure to do so. Seeing this list again is like having met an old friend, so I thought I'd share it here.

Apple Amaretto Cake

This may be one of the world's best snacking cakes.

Here's the recipe:

Heat the oven to 400 degrees F, and butter a rectangular baking dish.

Peel and finely dice two apples.

In one bowl mix 2 cups whole wheat flour
1/2 cup brown sugar
2 teaspoons baking powder
1 teaspoon sea salt
1 teaspoon cinnamon

In another bowl mix 1 cup slightly warmed milk
1/4 cup melted butter
2 eggs
2 tablespoons Amaretto.

Add the wet ingredients to the dry, and mix in the apples. Pour the mixture into the prepared pan, and cook it for 25 to 30 minutes (27 worked for me).

You can, of course, use brandy instead of the Amaretto. Or you can use vanilla or almond extract.

Yehudi Menuhin on Holding the Violin

I was so happy to hear this discussion on the 8th DVD of the Bruno Monsaingeon Edition devoted to films about (and of) Yehudi Menuhin. The first thing I teach my students about holding the violin or the viola is to place the top of the instrument on the collarbone, because it's what I do. Balancing the instrument on my collarbone reminds me of the way a cellist uses the endpin for balance on the floor. Here's what Yehudi Menuhin had to say about it in 1994:

I was the victim of the type of thinking which to me now is anathema wherever I see it; whether in violin playing, in diplomacy, in habits, whatever it is. It is the rigid: the idea that to establish an order you begin with the motionless. You begin with what doesn’t move, then you add movement.

You begin with the first position on the violin, and then you don’t explain it. Because it’s called the first position, you begin with the first position. And you press fingers down; you don’t know how to hold the violin. And then afterwards you will add motion, instead of realizing that the world began with motion.

People begin with the solid, they begin in their minds with something secure . . . either all men are terrible or all men are equal or some theory, something that is rigid, whether political theory or religious theory, it’s that rigidity . . .

Now, it’s idiotic to begin in the first position because it’s the farthest away from the body; the violin is heaviest there. It’s also bad to begin near the shoulder of the violin because you are inclined to hold the violin and support it. So you begin in between, and you don’t begin in a position, you begin with motion right away . . .

One of my main motives in life seems to be to correct for myself, first of all, and then for as many as I can reach, a false notion of thinking, basic idea of thinking, as if the body were a statue and then you breathe into it motion. . . .

* * *

If you are dealing with something that has to vibrate, as soon as you hold it tightly you inhibit the vibrations. As soon as you squeeze, as soon as you oppress a human being, you destroy the opportunity of dialogue, of giving and receiving. And the same with the violin.

The violin is said to rest on the shoulder, because that’s obvious; anyone can see a shoulder. But few people can see a collarbone, and all the most crude and obvious approaches I was subjected to during those first eight months of study with that teacher in San Francisco, an old-fashioned teacher who got results (you get results: you can run a country with slave camps, you get results—they work) but my feeling is you can’t become the kind of violinist that I admire, and which exists today more than before because people are more evolved in their thinking than before. Before it took a genius to be a Paganini, or perhaps a Corelli, or maybe not . . . maybe those people played just like that.

But then came this oppressive approach where you only got results by whipping, and that has been against my whole attitude to life.

Then I looked for the truth and I found some truths. For instance, probably knew the truth, and everyone who played the violin already did it beautifully, but I had to find these things out for myself against a very strong environment of security, false security, and against my own ambition, or with my own ambition to play so that finally I realized that the violin does not rest on the shoulder. It rests on the collarbone. The bone which, connected to the violin communicates the vibration, the bone which is a harder substance than the shoulder. Besides, as anyone can see, as soon as you raise the shoulder against the chin you have a crazy kind of diagonal, and it lifts the elbow away from the violin.

Then you have those violinists who play with their thumbs right above the fingerboard, the neck of the violin. And instead of the shoulder feeding the flow into the fingers, you have it inhibiting. And so they get over it. You can get over so many things, so many obstacles, and still play the violin very beautifully and make it communicate. Its extraordinary how badly you can play the violin and still communicate if you really want to. But even so, the feeling of continuity in motion, in other words: the economy of motion consists in not allowing any motion to be wasted. If there’s already a motion, don’t push it. You don’t say “now I’m going to do something” if it’s already there. The same in walking. . .

That fact that if you play with everything balanced, and you can move each joint: you can roll the violin between thumb and finger, you can feel that this [the elbow] is a pendulum, that the shoulder can move, so that the farther the hand goes away, the lower and backwards the shoulder goes. You don’t do that [he leans forward]. You always do that [he leans upwards and backwards]. One of the first exercises without the violin, after I’ve made the children walk on all fours, is to raise the collarbone and lower the shoulder. It’s perfectly possible. One becomes gradually aware: (I can feel that [the collarbone] rising, I can feel that [the shoulder] lowering).

That’s one of the first exercises. And then the ease of the neck so the neck just touches, it doesn’t clutch the violin, it touches it, and in such a way that it can slide on the chinrest, and that it can compensate the motion of the hands [he demonstrates a pulling back motion with the hand loosely moving up and down the imaginary fingerboard].

The Portable Swan

Here's a performance from Tel Aviv by the Pizzicato Quartet playing my string quartet arrangement of Saint-Saens's "The Swan." I get a kick out of a group named the Pizzicato Quartet playing this arrangement because the viola part is played totally pizzicato. I call it a "portable" swan because it is a lot easer to travel around with a string quartet than with a harp or a piano!



You can see the arrangement here.

Finding a Voice: Musings on Creativity

It occurs to me that so much of what becomes popular culture (in other words, culture that catches on with a large casual audience) has to do with imitation. Take Christmas music, for a seasonal example. Many of the enduring classics of the Christmas season, like "Rudolph the Red-nosed Reindeer," written by Johnny Marks, are pretty much variations on the same formula, much like what we think of as candy bars are variations on pretty much the same few formulas. There is popular Christmas-season music that doesn't follow the Marks formula, like descendants of "Sleigh Ride," selections from the Nutcracker, and the ever-popular Schubert "Ave Maria," but there is a lot of exquisite Christmas-specific music that people in stores and shopping malls would never identify as Christmas music.

Here's one example, and here's another.

I heard an interview with Audra McDonald the other day where the interviewer, who was not a musician, asked her who she used as a model for her voice. Her elegant response was that when she was young she tried to imitate singers she admired, but she failed miserably, so she understood that she had to live with her own voice. The current assumption, I suppose, is for "lay" people to imagine that musicians must model what they do on someone else's creativity. Some of us, like Audra MacDonald (or perhaps I should say unlike Audra McDonald), fail miserably when we try to imitate another person's voice.

I don't know about you, but I would prefer to fail as an imitator than succeed as an imitator.

"Having written"

Before I started writing music, I had a talk with a composition student about writing music. He told me that he enjoyed having written music, but did not particularly enjoy writing it. Once I started writing music myself, I found the process itself far more interesting than the satisfaction of "having written." There are some pieces that I am happy to have written, many, in fact, but the real creativity and the real satisfaction comes in the putting of one note after and against another.

I suppose that we are all wired differently.

The big problem comes when you have written a lot of music, as I have, and have little motivation to engage in the process of self promotion, which has been elevated to the status of an art in itself. A person gifted in the art of promotion can make anything seem appealing, no matter how useful, beautiful, or worthwhile it actually is. But a person without the drive or the means to promote his or her music this way can feel the act of "having written" as something negligible.

In the years before the internet, composers had music festering in drawers and files. Now it can fester in plain sight on publisher's computer hard drives or in online libraries, amid hundreds of thousands of perfectly good pieces that other composers have written.

Mild success can give a person hope, but success always seems relative. Seymour Barab always felt let down when his efforts to promote his excellent work (and it remains excellent work) proved unsuccessful. The fact that his Little Red Riding Hood was performed constantly didn't mean much to him, but the fact that his more recent theater work could not get a run in an off-Broadway theater did. Fortunately during the very last year of his long life he got some of the acclaim he deserved. When we talked about this his reply was, "I wish it hadn't taken so long."

Seymour was always most interested in what he was working on at the moment. At the end of his life he was working on a set of songs that he wasn't able to finish. It was a set of songs about New York, and the last time I saw him he described the texts as being racy jokes. I remember when he ran out of the specially-sized music paper that he liked to use for songs, and how I found some PDF score paper that could be photocopied into a size that would work for him. He was very happy to be able to get back to work.

Now that Seymour Barab is no longer writing, we have the music that he has written. And there's a lot of it.

Bloch on Bach

From Essays on the Philosophy of Music, translated by Peter Palmer (Cambridge University Press):

. . . . He cherishes his theme, in which he as no other composer compressed what was to come, tension and the sharpest outline of tension. He goes on lovingly considering the theme from all angles and prospects until it blossoms forth and until, in the great modulations of the fugue, it has become an unlocked shrine, an internally unending melody (`internally' meaning within the context of the theme), a melismatic universe in respect of the developed individuality of his theme. For precisely this reason, Bach's layout is not purely diatonic, however clear its flagrant nature. Obviously the harmonic clement in itself becomes irrelevant with Bach insofar as it is manifested in a fortuitous, pleasantly meaningful simulultaneity of the parts. But it is surely not irrelevant to the extent that the pertinent motions and their framework, which is to say the counterpoint, are now also the paramount factor and, as such, emphasized. To the extent that it represents a complete horizontal transparence, it is certainly the essence of Bach more than it is of Beethoven and Wagner. And yet, even in Bach, there is in the layout an active desire. There is the pervasive flow of a succession of themes rich in associations, a twofold thematicism already inherently rich in tension which finds itself far less strongly dependent on the constant polyphony's non-decisive part-writing than on the transitional, turning and corner points, but above all the rhythmically stressed anchor-points in the harmony. And as we can see, this is not straightforwardly homophonic but a different, deliberately chosen harmony, one that underlines, that emphasizes by virtue of its mass. The one reflects upon the other, even though Bach remains the master of the single voice, multiplying the old homophony by two or by five, the intrinsic master in the spinning to of lines and in this procedure's seemingly unlyrical, supra-lyrical domain. The blending, harmonic-rhythmic element still has an influence: it prevents a revelling in the mechanics and the formal aspect of counterpoint even where Bach's wide gaps between parts play an important role in preventing a vertical blending, i.e. the being and changing of whole columns of notes or hosts of chords, no matter whether rhythmically diminished or caught up by and released from he dominant. But it is only the song, the theme, that seeks to become extensive and unending within th fugue melody which is, as it were, internally unending. It is by virtue of this above all that the element of diatonic counterpoint is reduced to a mere means, to something reflexive, permitted only because the lyrically flourishing melismata acquire a sharper profile from the juxtaposition. For it is in the contrapuntal or, rather, dailiness system of balances that they can best represent their protected, unbroken simultaneity, that lyricism of theirs which no longer has any individual relevance but simply means soul, developed soul. And that lyricism, in spite of all the dramatic community choruses, is the core of Bach's Church music. Where this balance is self-supporting, it is easy to recognize, within the framework of Bachian counterpoint, the hidden, connected, multi-layered lyricism of he Passions, built into the niches of three-dimensional counterpointing. It is akin to the uneven surface of the bas-relief, where we can feel the presence of air, the arrangement of figures in the landscape and, in fact, the whole actual landscape that is set in the rise and fall of the uneven background.

Thanksgiving Music

Many people know this traditional Thanksgiving Hymn as "Come, Ye Thankful People, Come," but you might not know that its original name was "St. George's, Windsor." It was written by Sir George Job Elvey (1816-1893) who was the organist there. The Hymn works very well as a duet for violin and viola.

You can click on the images for a larger view, and a PDF is available on this page of the IMSLP. Here's a note about the piece from the Psalter Hymnal Handbook

George J. Elvey (PHH 48) composed ST. GEORGE'S WINDSOR as a setting for James Montgomery's text "Hark! The Song of Jubilee," with which it was published in Edward H. Thorne's Selection of Psalm and Hymn Tunes (1858). The tune has been associated with Alford's text since publication of the hymn in the 1861 edition of Hymns Ancient and Modern. ST. GEORGE'S WINDSOR is named after the chapel in Windsor, England, where Elvey was organist for forty-seven years.

This serviceable Victorian tune is held together by the rhythmic motive of the opening phrase. Sing the opening stanzas in parts, but sing the prayer of stanza 4 in unison. Use of the descant by C. S. Lang (PHH 253) with stanza 4 may suggest a foretaste of heaven's glory.

Here are some settings of that other Thanksgiving favorite, "We Gather Together" that can be played by any combination of instruments. The melody comes from the 16th-centuiry popular song "Hey wilder dan wild" (wilder than wild), and this setting from 1626 by Adrianus Valerius is called "Wilt heden nu treden".

You can download a PDF of this arrangement here.

UPDATE for 2020: I have made versions of "Come, Ye Thankful People Come" for string orchestra, bassoon quintet, and trombone quartet with bass trombone that you can access through this link.

Some Cookies

I haven't posted a recipe for a while, so in honor of the upcoming food holiday I'm sharing the recipe for the very best batch of oatmeal raisin cookies I have made to date. I futz around a little with the recipe each time I make them, and after a few months of making them at least once a week, I hit cookie perfection tonight. These cookies are not too sweet, not greasy in the least, very satisfying, and actually probably healthy to eat. [The photo makes them look a lot bigger than they actually are: the wooden board is only about 6 inches long.]

People who have come here from Michael's blog will certainly get the reference in the title, but for those who have found their way to this post by other means, you can get some context here. But don't forget to come back for the recipe!

Preheat the oven to 350 degrees.
Find two mixing bowls, a set of measuring cups, and a set of measuring spoons.

Cream 1/2 stick of softened unsalted butter with 3/4 cup brown sugar. Add 2 eggs and 1 tablespoon of vanilla extract.

In another bowl mix 1 1/4 cups whole wheat flour with 1 teaspoon cinnamon, 1 teaspoon baking soda, and 1/2 teaspoon sea salt. Mix the dry ingredients together and add them to the creamed mixture above. Once everything is incorporated, add 3 cups old fashioned rolled oats (not the quick-cooking kind) and 1 cup of raisins.

The real secret to cookie baking is using the right pan. The right pan is made by USA Pans. Mine is called a "Half Sheet Pan," but it is pretty much the same as the jelly roll pan in the link above. You flip it upside down and use the bottom as a cookie sheet. I also just noticed that they now have an actual dedicated cookie sheet in their inventory, which I bet is just as good as their half sheet pan.



Make tablespoon-sized balls and flatten them out onto the un-greased cookie sheet. I aim for getting 20 onto one cookie sheet, which is about half the batch, and then I put the remaining dough in a covered container, which I pop into the refrigerator to bake in a couple of days. Or the next day.

Bake the cookies for 12 minutes. Take them out of the oven, but leave them on the cookie sheet for a minute or two. Then transfer the cookies to a cooling rack. They will be crispy in about five minutes. Let the cookies cool completely before storing them in a covered container.

Here's a final noble portrait:

Musical Intelligence and School Music Programs

In this article for the new (just up today) magazine Create, Sir Anthony Seldon writes about the value of music for children in state schools:

Research shows that self-discipline is a better predictor of success in life than IQ tests – and it has further shown that good character and resilience can be taught at schools, with lifelong benefits. Work at the University of Birmingham Jubilee Centre for Character and Values shows that an undue emphasis on exam passes robs young people of the broad education that schools should be providing.

The argument has been put succinctly by the distinguished educationalist Howard Gardner, Hobbs Professor of Cognition and Education at Harvard. He says the question that schools should ask is ‘not, how intelligent is this child, but rather, how is this child intelligent?’

As much as I appreciate school music programs, I really believe that it is the teachers and not the programs that make all the difference. Like general education programs in colleges, musical education programs often attract students who are adequate at applying methods to what they teach once the find themselves in school positions, but some are not necessarily good teachers. I have seen too many music teachers make school musical activities uninteresting and even annoying. I have also seen teachers who are excellent musicians themselves turn neglected abused music programs around.

Studying music, particularly the classical kind, is not a way out of economic poverty. Someone who practices like crazy in high school and sets out to make a living in music these days has a good shot at life at or below the poverty level unless s/he acquires the skills necessary to get a day job to support a musical habit. On the other hand someone who has private lessons from a good (and affordable) teacher can bring the values of musical experience into adult life while following a non-professional or semi-professional musical path.

Like everything else in the business of education, what matters most is the ability of the individual teacher to reach the individual student. It can happen in a classroom or in a private studio. This is a slow and steady process that involves commitment on both sides. It is also something that cannot be quantified in any way, because success is different for every single student.

Some students have a lot of intelligence, but they don't pay attention to what they need to do physically on the instrument in order to make a beautiful sound. Some students make lovely sounds, but have difficulty with rhythm. Some students have difficulty opening up emotionally through music. Some students don't have the patience to listen to themselves. Some students don't practice. Some students practice, but hold a lot of tension in their hands. Some students have good enough ears to get away with not reading music. Some students read music well, but have a difficult time thinking beyond the notes and rhythms.

The journey is different for every musician at every stage of the game.