Note reading game

This little online game is a great way to help people new to reading music learn to read.

You can find it here. It is also a good way to learn to read alto and bass clef.

Memorial Day on Two Streets in Our Town

Robert Musil, Guest Blogger

From Der Mann ohne Eigenschaften, The Man Without Qualities, written by Robert Musil in 1913:

Something imponderable. An omen. An illusion. As when a magnet releases iron filings and they fall in confusion again. As when a ball of string comes undone. As when a tension slackens. As when an orchestra begins to play out of tune. No details could be adduced that would not also have been possible before, but all the relationships had shifted a little. Ideas whose currency had once been lean grew fat. Persons who would before never have been taken seriously became famous. Harshness mellowed, separations fused, intransigents made concessions to popularity, tastes already formed relapsed into uncertainties. Sharp boundaries everywhere became blurred and some new, indefinable ability to form alliances brought new people and new ideas to the top. Not that these people and ideas were bad, not at all; it was only that a little too much of the bad was mixed with the good, of error with truth, of accommodation with meaning. There even seemed to be a privileged proportion of this mixture that got furthest on in the world; just the right pinch of makeshift to bring out the genius in genius and make talent look like a white hope, as a pinch of chicory, according to some people, brings out the right coffee flavor in coffee. Suddenly all the prominent and important positions in the intellectual world were filled by such people, and all decisions went their way. There is nothing one can hold responsible for this, nor can one say how it all came about. There are no persons or ideas or specific phenomena that one can fight against. There is no lack of talent or goodwill or even of strong personalities. There is just something missing in everything, though you can't put your finger on it, as if there had been a change in the blood or in the air; a mysterious disease has eaten away the previous period's seeds of genius, but everything sparkles with novelty, and finally one has no way of knowing whether the world has really grown worse, or oneself merely older. At this point a new era has definitively arrived.

[Translation by Sophie Wilkins and Burton Pike]

In the original German:

Etwas Unwägbares. Ein Vorzeichen. Eine Illusion. Wie wenn ein Magnet die Eisenspäne losläßt und sie wieder durcheinandergeraten. Wie wenn Fäden aus einem Knäuel herausfallen. Wie wenn ein Zug sich gelockert hat. Wie wenn ein Orchester falsch zu spielen anfängt. Es würden sich schlechterdings keine Einzelheiten haben nachweisen lassen, die nicht auch früher möglich gewesen wären, aber alle Verhältnisse hatten sich ein wenig verschoben. Vorstellungen, deren Geltung früher mager gewesen war, wurden dick. Personen ernteten Ruhm, die man früher nicht für voll genommen hätte. Schroffes milderte sich, Getrenntes lief wieder zusammen, Unabhängige zollten dem Beifall Zugeständnisse, der schon gebildete Geschmack erlitt von neuem Unsicherheiten. Die scharfen Grenzen hatten sich allenthalben verwischt, und irgendeine neue, nicht zu beschreibende Fähigkeit, sich zu versippen, hob neue Menschen und Vorstellungen empor. Die waren nicht schlecht, gewiß nicht; nein, es war nur ein wenig zu viel Schlechtes ins Gute gemengt, Irrtum in die Wahrheit, Anpassung in die Bedeutung. Es schien geradezu einen bevorzugten Prozentsatz dieser Mischung zu geben, der in der Welt am weitesten kam; eine kleine, eben ausreichende Beimengung von Surrogat, die das Genie erst genial und das Talent als Hoffnung erscheinen ließ, so wie ein gewisser Zusatz von Feigen- oder Zichorienkaffee nach Ansicht mancher Leute dem Kaffee erst die rechte gehaltvolle Kaffeehaftigkeit verleiht, und mit einemmal waren alle bevorzugten und wichtigen Stellungen des Geistes von solchen Menschen besetzt, und alle Entscheidungen fielen in ihrem Sinne. Man kann nichts dafür verantwortlich machen. Man kann auch nicht sagen, wie alles so geworden ist. Man kann weder gegen Personen noch gegen Ideen oder bestimmte Erscheinungen kämpfen. Es fehlt nicht an Begabung noch an gutem Willen, ja nicht einmal an Charakteren. Es fehlt bloß ebensogut an allem wie an nichts; es ist, als ob sich das Blut oder die Luft verändert hätte, eine geheimnisvolle Krankheit hat den kleinen Ansatz zu Genialem der früheren Zeit verzehrt, aber alles funkelt von Neuheit, und zum Schluß weiß man nicht mehr, ob wirklich die Welt schlechter geworden sei oder man selbst bloß älter. Dann ist endgültig eine neue Zeit gekommen.

Emma Goldman on the American Experience

I just finished watching a broadcast of the excellent PBS American Experience program made by Nebraska Public Television in 2004 about Emma Goldman (you can stream it and/or read the transcript here).

In my late 20s I learned from my grandmother that my great grandfather was a friend of Emma Goldman, and then I spent a good decade reading everything I could find about her. In 2005 I wrote an opera using the text of Howard Zinn's play EMMA as its libretto. Being true to the spirit of Emma Goldman, Howard Zinn and I kept the work in the public domain, and we made it available in the IMSLP.

I was particularly pleased when the historian (and playwright) Martin Duberman, who made comments in this documentary, said of Emma Goldman that he thought her whole life was operatic. It was.

You can find the score and a computer-generated recording of my Emma Goldman opera here. And you can see other Musical Assumptions posts about Emma Goldman here.

Four Seasons Reading Club

Michael keeps lists of the books we read together, and makes an “annual report” every May. Here is the list from 2018-2019.

Some of the best writing about music I have read in a major magazine

Robinson Meyer of The Atlantic has written one of the best pieces of writing about music I have read in a long time. Meyer normally writes about climate change and technology for the magazine, but I hope he gets more chances to write about music.

. . . On a lighter note

I am getting a considerable amount of musical joy from practicing Caprices on the violin and the viola. Because the violin is so much easier to play, I find the act of playing Caprices more capricious on the violin. In order to remember (and remind you, the reader) that when times get tough this road (or Rode in violin and viola speak) to sweetness and light is available, I'm putting a link to all the violin caprices in the IMSLP here.

Most people know the Paganini Caprices, which, in addition to being both difficult and great, are fun for those who have the technique to play them. And then there are the Dont Caprices, which could aptly be named "Can't" when attempted on the viola. Who can resist Federigo Fiorillo's Caprices, which lead into one another and make "chain reading" through them entirely natural. Often overlooked, because they have been hidden away in libraries, are lovely and lively caprices by Ferdinand David.

There is so much to explore, and so much to be gained by exploring!

The Time of the Season?

I am a creature of seasonal habit, but the seasons are changing. I really want to go and dig in the garden, but, because of the constant rain, the ground is too wet. The air is also too cold to even consider planting the cucumbers and tomatoes that would normally be happy to be growing outside. There are tomatoes on the window sill, which, during a spurt of hopefulness, I started a few weeks ago. Instead of working in the garden I have been spending time "weeding" through PDF files that can benefit from a little care.

But everything I have experienced during my sixty-one (and a few days--I turned sixty a few days ago) revolutions of the earth is off. The seasonal things that we, as residents of particular areas on our particular planet, have been able to trust are no longer trustworthy.

I used to feel creative in April and May. It's a time when the concert "season" comes to a close, and a time when the music I am practicing and rehearsing is no longer always running through my mind, leaving an empty spot in my head for original musical thoughts.

This "writing season" I have ideas for pieces to write, but I do not have any original musical thoughts. None. Zilch.

I could blame it on the lack of lively and appropriate birdsong outside my window. I could blame it on lack of the usual stimulation I get from things that are growing. I could blame it on not being able to dig in the garden. I could blame it on the underlying noise of unfairness that disproportionately invades the airwaves.

That noise seems to seep into everything.

If I do "find" some original music in the air through that noise, I can't imagine that it will be very pretty.


. . . Update a few hours later (and with a little help from Michael)

Gerard von Brucken Fock Viola Sonata

The Dutch composer/pianist/violist/landscape painter Gerard Hubertus Galenus von Brucken Fock was Born in 1859 in Ter Hooge castle, near Middelburg, He studied composition with Clara Schumann’s stepbrother Woldemar Bargiel and with Friedrich Kiel.

He worked as the music critic for the magazine De Amsterdammer, and was very critical of Richard Wagner. His extra-musical activities included working as a farmhand and working with the Salvation Army in France. Brucken Fock was close friends with Julius Röntgen, the husband of Amanda Maier. Röntgen introduced von Brucken Fock's piano music to Edvard Grieg who later referred to von Brucken Fock as the "Dutch Chopin."

Yesterday John David and I read his Viola Sonata, Opus 5, which is in the IMSLP. I spent much of last night and this morning cleaning up and resubmitting the PDF of the viola part. It is a lovely piece, and one worthy of attention.



There's a great Dutch site about Brucken Fock that is loaded with pictures.

Treasures from the Family Archives

My mother (born June Blume) and grandmother (born Anne Bohrod) both wrote songs! My mother, who wrote "I Just Can't Get You Out of My Mind" at seventeen, was by far a better song writer than my grandmother, who wrote "Why?" when she was a young woman, though I have a strong suspicion that my grandmother is only responsible for the lyrics of her song.

My mother’s sister found these pieces of music while cleaning out the house that Grandma Anne lived in during the last part of her life (my grandmother died in 2004 at age 98).

As you can see from this detail from the cover, my mother wrote her song in 1946. I love the way she was searching for a creative way to write her name, and then covered it over with something that eventually fell off.







I do love the way my grandmother "fancied up" her name:

And it seems that Walee Brown made "arrangements" for a lot of would-be popular songwriters:



and my grandmother might have responded to an advertisement like this one, which appeared in Popular Mechanics:



If you would like a PDF of my mother's song, which is bundled with a nice little piano waltz she wrote, you can find it here.

Elgar Salut d'Amour Transcription

There is little that makes me happier than being able to share my string orchestra transcriptions with ensembles like the Duke String School:

PDF Restoration: My New Hobby

I find using my iPad to clean up less-than-readable files in the IMSLP really rewarding. Yesterday I read the Viola Alta Sonata by Max Meyer-Olbersleben with John David, my partner in musical "crime." We really enjoyed playing the piece, but the state of the viola part PDF in the IMSLP (possibly the only copy available) was not good. The first page of looked like this:



Here's what it looks like now:



Here's a little detail comparison:

before:



after:



I sent the restored part to the IMSLP. You can find it here.

Ostinato with Links

Behold the mighty ostinato!

Consider the way Monteverdi exploited it during the 17th century. Consider the English ground. Consider Purcell's Dido's Lament, and it's kissing cousin the Crucifixus from Bach's B minor Mass. Consider the second movement of Beethoven's Seventh Symphony, Ravel's Bolero, and the Pachelbel Canon, the most popular ground of all.

In 2002 I exploited the ostinato with a piano sonata that I called "Sonata Ostinato." We also have a whole generation of minimalism that exists mainly through magic of ostinato. Who can resist a pattern?

Towards the end of a rehearsal yesterday that included Gustav Holst's "The Planets" and John Williams's "Star Wars Suite," along with one of two short new pieces that exploited ostinato, I coined a new term!

Ostinatitis: The state of having compromised concentration in rehearsal after playing a lot of extended ostinato passages.

Paul Chihara's "Amatsu Kaze" on The Poetry of Places at Symphony Space

Paul Chihara's 2002 "answer" to Pierrot Lunaire is very beautiful, and this ensemble has three people in it that I know from three distinct "places" in my past (though in the world of music it seems that all things converge at some point). And I also have an interesting history with Joel Sachs, the person who commissioned the piece.



References abound in this beautiful piece: Ravel's "Afternoon of a Faun," Ravel's " Chansons madécasses," Hindemith's "Symphonic Metamorphosis," nods to Poulenc, and fantastic mixtures of tone colors acting like watercolors.

I do wish that I could find a translation of the poetry, and perhaps even the name of the poet.

The Enemy of the Good: A Ramble with Pictures

John David and I really enjoyed reading through the Otto Müller "Grosses Duo" last week. Neither of us had ever heard of Otto Müller, and neither of us could find biographical information in the usual sources. I was sure that there would be a listing for Otto Müller in Die Musik in Geschichte und Gegenwart, but among the dozen or so listings for composers named Müller there was no Otto to be found.

The Duo, published in 1872, is his Opus 11, and there is an additional listing in the IMSLP for a student violin piece that was published as Opus 65. I searched through the Internet Archive and all the publications in Jstor, but I found nothing. The only reference in the Worldcat is a listing for a 1905 Edison cylinder recording of "The Old Grist Mill," a piece for concert band. [Isn't it interesting that the person running an old grist mill in the Germanic world of old would have been a Müller?]

A Google Books search finally took me to a review of the "Grosses Duo" in the April 23rd, 1873 edition of the Allgemeine Musikalische Zeitung, a magazine started by Robert Schumann, and now (as in 1873) edited by one Joseph Müller, a librarian from Berlin.

The reviewer mentions that the piece was dedicated to Ernest II, the Duke of Saxe-Coburg and Gotha, (the brother of Prince Albert who married Queen Victoria) and states that the "Grosses Duo" is, at 49 pages, indeed big. Then he mentions something about the greatness of God being only in the dimensions, and in that regard this duo is the smallest ever put on paper. He calls the motives "everyday," the passages "threadbare," and the accompanying figures "uninteresting." He likens the sound of the piece to the way warm sugar water tastes: not absolutely ugly or unnatural, but immeasurably boring. He declares that one would require the patience of Job to make it through the piece just once. In the footnote to the review he makes sure to mention that he finds the cover tasteless.

While many people have another Mueller on the brain this weekend, I have been spending an inordinate amount of time thinking about Otto, the unknown Müller. I guess one lousy review in the most important publication in the Germanic musical world can destroy a composer's chances of having his music played.

I like to think that if Joseph Müller had been a violist (rather than a librarian) he might have liked the piece. It is great fun to play, but the PDF in the IMSLP is really difficult to read. I took action with my iPad and my magic pencil and spent a couple of days cleaning up the PDF. The cleaned-up viola part is now in the IMSLP.





So now I can get to one of the points of this post: the great being the enemy of the good. Germany in 1873 was a hotbed of great composers. The recently dead cast long shadows, and the great composers who were living wrote a lot of great music. Perhaps this critic considered it his job to cut down and insult composers who were not among the greats. Having spent a couple of decades of my life as a critic, I can understand the way he might have felt about his position in relation to the musical world.

Once very early in my "career" as critic I wrote a note to the editor about a recording I didn't like. It wasn't a review. It was just a note to explain why I was not writing a review. The editor published the note in the magazine as if it were a review. I was really upset. I wrote a letter of apology to the person who made the recording, but never heard anything back. Could Joseph Müller have had any second thoughts about his review? I wonder.

As a violist and a former (reformed) critic I can say in these humble pages that I think the Otto Müller Duo is good. It's good enough to warrant the practice time and rehearsal time required to give a good performance, and it's good enough to warrant the time it took to clean up the part.

UPDATE: I found an entry for Otto Müller in German Wikipedia!

Otto Müller, son of the composer and Regenschori of St. Ulrich in Augsburg, Donat Müller (1804-1879), received his first music lessons from his father. He subsequently studied German literature and music at the University of Munich as well as harmony, counterpoint and organ at the conservatory.

After a first two years as a concert director in Winterthur, he worked at several theaters in Switzerland, most recently in Lyon. In 1869 he moved to Vienna, where he was first employed as an organist at the church on the court. In addition he gave private music lessons. Later he was appointed choirmaster at the Hernals Redemptorist Church, a position he held for ten years. He was also the professor of harmony and counterpoint at the school of the Vienna General Church Music Association until 1915.

His honorary grave is located in the Grinzinger cemetery (group 18, number 138) in Vienna.