Music of Our Mothers Radio Program May 10th

Tomorrow, May 10th, between 1:00 and 3:00 p.m Eastern Time I will be one of the featured composers on a radio program called "Music of our Mothers" on WFCF, Flagler College's radio station, 88.5 in St. Augustine, Florida. You can listen to the live stream of the program through this link and read about the program on their website.

There will also be music by Cecilia Macdowell, Mercedes Zavala Gironés, Vivian Adelbert Rudow, Chen Yi, Joan Tower, Missy Mazzoli, and Nancy Dalberg on tomorrow's program.

They will be talking about and playing my set of pieces for contrabassoon and piano called "More Greek Myths."

Stefan Zweig on the writing of "La Marseillaise"

From "The Secret of Artistic Creation," written in 1938 by Stefan Zweig and translated from the German by Will Stone:

Rouget de l'Isle is not a poet proper, nor a composer. He was an officer of genius who during the French Revolution found himself in Strasbourg. On 25h April 1792 at midday came the news that the Republic had declared war on the kings of Europe. An atmosphere of drunken exaltation flooded the city. In the evening the mayor laid on a dinner for the officers. During the meal he turned to Rouget d l'Isle, to whom he said: why not write some jubilant verses, and in friendly fashion asked him to compose a song which the troops could sing as they marched into battle. And why not? Until midnight the officers remained assembled, then Rouget de l'Isle set off for home. He had fully participated in the general merriment and had drunk enough; his head rang with toasts and speeches, words such as "Allons, enfants de la Patrie!" and "Le jour de gloire est arrivé." He sat at the table and wrote straight out the required lines. Then he took up his violin and struck a melody. In two hours it was finished. The next morning at six, he went to find the mayor and presented him the finished song, the completed composition. Ignoring fatigue, and in a kind of trance, he had somehow created one of the most immortal poems in the world, one of the most immortal melodies, through sheer inspiration. it was not of course he himself who was author, but rather the genius of the hour.

You can read more about Rouget de l'Isle here.

This essay, which is part of a collection called Messages from a Lost World (published by the Pushkin Press) is outdated at times, especially when it comes to music (I don't know if anyone still subscribes to the idea that Mozart, Schubert, and Haydn never made sketches, for example), but much of it is terrific. Here's another morsel:

The true artist is then as occupied by his creation as the believer by his prayer, the dreamer by his dream. As a result, in contemplating the internal, he is unable to see clearly the external, or himself. This is why artists, poets, painters, [and] musicians are incapable, whilst they are creating, of observing themselves, still less of explaining themselves, or by what manner they have produced the work. They are bad witnesses, useless witnesses for the creation courtroom, and, like inceptions criminologists, it would be a mistake on our part to rely blindly on their testimony.

Brian Collins Interview

I’m sure that this interview with designer Brian Collins will resonate with other composers. He talks about being “different” as a child, and embracing his unique view of the world and his personal interests (reading and drawing) rather than allowing bullies to bother him. He talks about designers not merely being problem solvers; he thinks of them as “problem creators.”

Isn’t that exactly what composers do? We create musical problems, and we try to solve them in the most expressive ways possible. Collins talks about envy (and what composer doesn't carry a bunch of envy), and he talks about periods of depression being useful (if not essential) for growth.

Performing musicians do their best to identify problems in musical situations, and then they draw on the depths of their creativity to solve them. Performing musicians also create problems while they are performing (I made this crescendo, and now I have to maintain it; I need to get to another part of the bow; I have to adjust my intonation to match the clarinet; I have to match a bowing; I need to take a breath somewhere; I'm not sure where I am; I made a counting error, and now I have to make up for it, etc.), and they have to solve them on the spot, and without anyone noticing.

Composers make all those problems possible. (And some make solving them impossible.)

I think musicians (composers and performing musicians) will find it interesting listening.

Yitzhak Schotten: The Art of the Bow Arm

Yitzhak Schotten played in my father's viola section in the Boston Symphony in the 1960s. My father often referred to him as "Dr. Shotten," and as a child I always thought that he must have been a medical doctor as well as a musician. I wondered what would happen if he got called to perform emergency surgery during a concert. Holding a high degree in a non-musical field wasn't that unusual to me. My father sometimes got mail addressed to "Dr. Fine" (because of his Ph.D. in chemistry), and Charles Kavalovski, the principal horn at the time, had a Ph.D. in nuclear physics.

Perhaps my father's "Dr." title was an affectionate one, since Yitzhak Schotten is such a smart man.

His video about the bow arm is excellent. I'm posting it here so that I know where to find it. I hope you like it too.

Preludes to the Twenty-first Century

On December 30, 2000, just because I could, I started work on a set of six preludes for piano. I wanted to finish them before midnight, which would make them some of the last pieces of music written in the 20th-century, but I ended up finishing them shortly after midnight on January 1, 2001, so they are also among the first pieces of music written in the 21st century. This kind of thing doesn't happen often.

You can listen to a performance here.

Bach's direct influence on Brahms, perhaps?

I couldn't help noticing . . .

"Climbing up the Stairs," an alternative to the "Monkey Song" for beginning violinists

I wrote this little piece for a beginning violin student, and thought I'd share it here. It is filled with all sorts of practical "word painting."



Like the "Monkey Song," you "climb" up the A string, but after the half-step interval of C-sharp and D we have the word "kiss." I like to refer to half steps as "kisses" with beginners. It helps them pay attention to their fingers touching when playing half steps (and when you have a lot of half steps, you have really romantic music). The word "mother" also has a half-step kiss, because she has just been kissed.

In order to get to the E string (which is a higher string) to play the open E, you need to lower your right elbow (so getting to a higher note requires lowering something!), and in order to get back to the open A (to get into bed), you have to lift the elbow of the bow arm. Notice that we have a rest following the word "bed."

You can get a PDF of the whole "lesson" here.

Willa Cather explains why we go to the theater

Jim Burden, the narrator of Willa Cather's My Àntonia takes his friend Lena to a performance by a traveling New York theater company of La Dame aux Camélias in Lincoln, Nebraska.

The actress who played Marguerite was even then old-fashioned, though historic. She had been a member of Daly’s famous New York company, and afterward a ‘star’ under his direction. She was a woman who could not be taught, it is said, though she had a crude natural force which carried with people whose feelings were accessible and whose taste was not squeamish. She was already old, with a ravaged countenance and a physique curiously hard and stiff. She moved with difficulty—I think she was lame—I seem to remember some story about a malady of the spine. Her Armand was disproportionately young and slight, a handsome youth, perplexed in the extreme. But what did it matter? I believed devoutly in her power to fascinate him, in her dazzling loveliness. I believed her young, ardent, reckless, disillusioned, under sentence, feverish, avid of pleasure. I wanted to cross the footlights and help the slim-waisted Armand in the frilled shirt to convince her that there was still loyalty and devotion in the world.

What Jim thinks about after the play must be similar to what countless people in all times and in all places (at least in places where there is theater) have experienced.

When we reached the door of the theatre, the streets were shining with rain. I had prudently brought along Mrs. Harling’s useful Commencement present, and I took Lena home under its shelter. After leaving her, I walked slowly out into the country part of the town where I lived. The lilacs were all blooming in the yards, and the smell of them after the rain, of the new leaves and the blossoms together, blew into my face with a sort of bitter sweetness. I tramped through the puddles and under the showery trees, mourning for Marguerite Gauthier as if she had died only yesterday, sighing with the spirit of 1840, which had sighed so much, and which had reached me only that night, across long years and several languages, through the person of an infirm old actress. The idea is one that no circumstances can frustrate. Wherever and whenever that piece is put on, it is April.

I imagine that Willa Cather could easily have been writing about her own theater experience, and since she made mention of Augustin Daly's New York company, it is possible that the actress Cather describes could be Ada Rehan.

Eva Kor

My friend Eva Kor has been awarded Indiana's highest honor. She will be the Grand Marshall of the IPL Festival Parade on May 27.

I became friends with Eva in 1995 when she came to the television station that was connected with the radio station where I worked. She was working mostly from her kitchen table to create the C.A.N.D.L.E.S. organization, and was working on her book, Echoes from Auschwitz, and trying to open a Holocaust museum in Terre Haute. Very few people knew Eva outside of her circle of friends and acquaintances, and now she is a symbol of strength for so many people. I am so proud of Eva, and so gratified that she has gotten the recognition and respect that she deserves.

Eva asked me and my string quartet to play for the opening of her museum, and I couldn't find appropriate music to play (short pieces that would give the flavor of the time and place), so I made some settings of Chassidic melodies that were connected to texts that I felt reflected Eva's character and mission. They were the first serious pieces I ever wrote. You can see them and listen to a performance here.

Music Theory Examples by Women

Molly Murdock, Trevor Nelson, and Ben Parcell have put up an exceptionally interesting website that organizes concepts of music theory that are often studied. The concepts link to scores, audio files, and downloadable PDF files. There is also a pop-up page for each concept that cross-references other music theory concepts that are in the piece. All the examples of music theory concepts are from music written by women.

It is beautifully organized, but it is only in the beginning stages of a work in progress. The list of composers they draw from is pretty much limited to the "usual suspects" from the common practice era. The 20th and 21st century sections are still empty, so examples of modal, pentatonic, octatonic, whole tone, and twelve-tone scales are missing.

(Note to the organizers of this website: you might like to look around this blog to find information about women composers with music in the IMSLP who use the elements you would like to illustrate.)

More about Frances Goldstein

A couple of years ago I asked readers to share their experiences studying with Frances Goldstein at Juilliard. The comments on that post might be interesting to people new to this blog. You can find the post through this link.

Thematic Catalog Update!

It is hard to believe that my Thematic Catalog blog will be 10 years old in June!

I have reached the end of my task to repair all the broken links to audio files in the entries in my Thematic Catalog Blog, and am celebrating with this post. The music is arranged by year of composition (or arrangement), by instrument, and by instrument family (with an easy-to-navigate blogger sidebar).

Join the celebration! Look around!

Taking Care of Business . . .

I finished a new piece for woodwind quintet the other day, and, as is my usual practice, I uploaded it onto the IMSLP to share with people who might be interested in playing it. The number of people who have looked at the music still remains at zero as I write:

so I cannot attribute lack of interest in the piece to its quality or playability.

I should attribute it to the fact that the people who might like to know about it don't know about it. I have shared the link to the listing for the piece in my thematic catalog on Facebook, but my Facebook friends are far more interested in life events than woodwind quintets. Facebook has very little in the way of woodwind-quintet-related group activity. Most of the groups labeled "woodwind quintet" on Facebook seem to have an average of five members, and sharing my new piece with these intimate groups of people I don't know doesn't seem right.

I started going through my Thematic Catalog blog to check on the viability of links to the 77 pieces that I have published by Subito, and I noticed that the links to audio files that I thought were viable are no longer active. I spent the past couple of days updating links to audio files for the pieces I wrote in 2000, 2001, 2002, and some of 2003, and plan to spend much of today updating more links to audio files for pieces I wrote from 2003 to 2006.

Going through all this music has been interesting for me. It is a chore to locate, generate, update, upload, and organize a body of work, but I still really like the pieces in my catalog, and I think that it is a good idea to promote them. I hope that some of the pieces I have neglected (for lack of working links) find their way to musicians who are looking for new music to play.

"In Praise of Women" Radio Program from Princeton University

I recently learned about WPRB, Princeton University's student-run radio station (103.3 FM) through a notice about a recording of my Trumpet Sonata being part of a month-long series of programs dedicated to music by women hosted by Marvin Rosen.

You can listen to the station on-line through this link. Marvin Rosen's "In Praise of Women" program airs tomorrow from 5:30 a.m. to 11:00 a.m. Eastern time, which makes it pretty early for people in other time zones. Fortunately this and the other four programs of music by women will be archived until April 12. You can find the programs through this link.

Here is tomorrow's schedule. This and the other programs in this series provide a tremendous resource for people interested in learning more about music written by women.

Cadence Podcast: Something New for Musicians to Ponder

Indre Viskontas, the neuroscientist-soprano who hosts the "Inquiring Minds" podcast about science in our lives, has started a new podcast devoted to music and the mind called Cadence. It looks (and sounds) promising, so I thought I would share information about it here. I have listened to the first of three new episodes. There will be many more to come.