Pauline Viardot!

In the 1990s I became fascinated with the life, career, and music of Pauline Viardot, and I felt quite alone in my quest. I managed to get enough information to write this article for a small magazine devoted to the work of women in music (the article I wrote about Viardot and her family begins in page 13). Things sure have changed!

A very kind person has been uploading Pauline Viardot's songs and piano music into the IMSLP during the past week. I find this very exciting. You can find this ever-expanding motherlode here.

Vi Hart's "Peace for Triple Piano"

While going through the Musical Assumptions "archives," I was happy to find myself re-aquainted with Vi Hart, a brilliant mathematician/musician who tickles my love of things math-related even though I have no way of understanding any of it once she is finished explaining things with her magical set of markers.

You can watch a video about the making of this video here.

And then, if you want more (who wouldn't?) and you have half an hour to be enlightened/entertained, you might enjoy her take on twelve-tone music.

Eva Kor (1934 - 2019)

I heard about my friend Eva Kor's death through the national media today. (Well by text message from Michael, who heard it announced on NPR.) I have had Eva on my mind all afternoon.

During a massive power outage one Friday morning in February of 1994, I was at work at WEIU-FM, a college radio station in East Central Illinois. We had gone off the air. I knew there was an older guest coming to be interviewed that morning in the television station (WEIU-TV) that shared the building with the radio station. I grabbed the flashlight that was in the radio station and helped make sure that this guest could see her way to safety.

That's how I found myself spending two or three hours sitting in a darkened room with Eva Kor.

She had traveled the one-hour journey to Charleston from Terre Haute, Indiana where she sold real estate. A few years earlier Eva had taken a speech class at Indiana State University from Sue Kaufman, the newly-hired news director at WEIU-TV. She took the class in order to be able to learn to speak publicly about her experiences as a prisoner at Auschwitz. Sue wanted to give Eva the chance to speak on television, and also thought it was a great chance for the (fledgling) television station to do something of real substance.

In those few hours Eva told me about her experiences as a victim of Mengele's experiments. She told me about the struggles she had to get people to take her seriously. She really needed to speak, and knew that what she had to say was important. Being taken seriously was a constant uphill struggle for her, and she was desperate for people to believe in her work. She told me that her dream was to create a Holocaust museum in Terre Haute. I offered my string quartet to play (as a gift) for the opening of her museum.

Once the date for the museum opening was set I started thinking about music to play. I couldn't find anything that was truly appropriate for the occasion, so I looked through a book of Chassidic melodies with the hope that I might be able to find something to arrange. I looked first at the texts, and I chose five that seemed to resonate with Eva's character and mission. Then I used the melodies associated with those texts as a basis for a set of pieces.



You can listen to a performance of the Five Pieces through these links:

I. Im en ani li
II. Mi ho ish
III. El male rachamim
IV. Rikud
V. Ani m'amin

Earlier this evening I picked up my copy of Echoes from Auschwitz (which I hope will go back into print) and found this inscription inside. I believe that date (my birthday!) was the date of the museum opening.



Eva and I continued to have a close relationship (sometimes a "surrogate" mother-daughter relationship) for many years. In 2005 Michael and I played for the museum's reopening after the building was destroyed by an arsonist.

Over the years Eva reached a wider and wider audience with her message of love and forgiveness (the only way she could see a way to heal from the trauma she experienced was to try to forgive the people that hurt her and her sister) and every time I read about her activities I would be filled with pride. I knew where she came from. I knew her struggles (and there are many I'm not sharing here). I knew her need to be taken seriously and to do what she could to try to ensure that the ugly part of history that robbed her of her family and her childhood would not repeat itself.

Sensitizing the Musical Palate

Maybe this post is just an excuse to talk about dark chocolate.

One thing I have noticed about dark chocolate, which is the only kind of chocolate I really like, is that it takes a while to actually taste it. You need to sort of "settle in" and "listen" for the flavor. It has to be the right temperature in order for chocolate to release its flavor, and if you don't really pay close attention you might miss something before it melts away to nothing.

There is music that behaves like chocolate, and there is music that behaves differently.

Sometimes it takes a while to get accustomed to the musical language of a piece, and sometimes it is difficult to understand the contours of the phrases. When music is mostly made of sound that seems unstructured, it is difficult to recognize and enjoy the "taste" of it. And for me, when there is too much repetitive musical color, my aural "taste buds" become dulled.

It's kind of like what happens when you taste highly spiced food while you are cooking it, and you become desensitized to the spice. If all goes well, though, and you taste carefully and knowingly, and if you use spices properly, the resulting flavors can be surprising and exciting.

So now, after this talk about flavor, you might be ready for this tasty set of variations I found today that Anton Reicha (1770-1836) wrote on Se vuol ballare from Mozart's Marriage of Figaro.

Distressed Fourth

Michael Leddy, who posted this image today, cites 4 U.S. Code §8 which states that the flag should never be displayed with the union down, except as a signal of dire distress in instances of extreme danger to life or property.

Michael's words eloquently express the distress I also feel today:

This Fourth of July, with its tanks and cages, is no ordinary Fourth. I am living in a country whose racist, xenophobic, predatory leader exhibits contempt for democracy and the institutions of government as he monetizes his office, demonizes his opponents, befriends autocrats and despots, welcomes foreign interference in elections, lies to the public and the press, and stages a cruel spectacle on the southern border. He is abetted by all those who cheer or shrug or whisper in dismay. Today’s flag is a signal of dire distress.

Metaphoric Musil Morsel

From chapter 115 of The Man Without Qualities:

He understood the relationship between a dream and what it expresses, which is no more than analogy, a metaphor, something he often thought about. A metaphor holds a truth and an untruth, felt as inextricably bound up with each other. If one takes it as it is and gives it some sensual form, in the shape of reality, one gets dreams and art; but between these two and real, full-scale life there is a glass partition. If one analyzes it for its rational content and separates the unverifiable from the verifiable, one gets truth and knowledge but kills the feeling. Like certain kinds of bacteria that split an organic substance into two parts, mankind splits the original living body of the metaphor into the first substance of reality and truth, and the glassy unreality of intuition, faith, and artifact. There seems to be nothing in between; and yet how often a vaguely conceived undertaking does succeed, if only one goes ahead without worrying it too much!

In the original German:

In diesem Augenblick trat jene Helle des Bewußtseins ein, wo man mit einem Blick seine Kulissen sieht, samt allem, was sich dazwischen abspielt, auch wenn man diesen Eindruck beiweitem nicht darlegen kann. Die Beziehung, die zwischen einem Traum und dem, was er ausdrückt, besteht, war ihm bekannt, denn es ist keine andere als die der Analogie, des Gleichnisses, die ihn schon des öfteren beschäftigt hatte. Ein Gleichnis enthält eine Wahrheit und eine Unwahrheit, für das Gefühl unlöslich miteinander verbunden. Nimmt man es, wie es ist, und gestaltet es mit den Sinnen, nach Art der Wirklichkeit aus, so entstehen Traum und Kunst, aber zwischen diesen und dem wirklichen, vollen Leben steht eine Glaswand. Nimmt man es mit dem Verstand und trennt das nicht Stimmende vom genau Übereinstimmenden ab, so entsteht Wahrheit und Wissen, aber man zerstört das Gefühl. Nach Art jener Bakterienstämme, die etwas Organisches in zwei Teile spalten, zerlebt der Menschenstamm den ursprünglichen Lebenszustand des Gleichnisses in die feste Materie der Wirklichkeit und Wahrheit und in die glasige Atmosphäre von Ahnung, Glaube und Künstlichkeit. Es scheint, daß es dazwischen keine dritte Möglichkeit gibt; aber wie oft endet etwas Ungewisses erwünscht, wenn man ohne viel Überlegen damit beginnt!

Nicola LeFanu talks about writing music

I enjoy what Nicola LeFanu, the daughter of Elizabeth Maconchy, has to say about writing music. And I like listening to her music.

Surprises from the BeeBC

Here's a beekeeper who uses a cello as a hive for bees

The BBC has a bunch of other bee videos there too!

Capitalism Defined, Musical Capitalism Explored

In Robert Musil's The Man Without Qualities, Paul Arnheim, one of the more interesting characters I have encountered in literature, defines capitalism in a way that I can understand it.

"But money is surely just as safe a means of managing human relationships as physical force, the crude uses of which it allows us to discontinue. Money is power in the abstract, a pliant, highly developed, and creative form, a unique form, of power. Isn't business really based on cunning and force, on outwitting and exploiting others, except that in business, cunning and force have become wholly civilized, internatlized in fact, so that they are actually clothed in the guise of man's liberty? Capitalism, as the organization of egotism based on a hierarchy in which one's rank depends on one's capacity for getting money, is simply the greatest and yet the most humane order we have been able to devise, to Your everlasting glory. There is no more precise measure than this for all human action." [Translated into English by Sophie Wilkins and Burton Pike]

In the original German:

»Aber ist das Geld nicht eine ebenso sichere Methode der Behandlung menschlicher Beziehungen wie die Gewalt und erlaubt uns, auf ihre naive Anwendung zu verzichten? Es ist vergeistigte Gewalt, eine geschmeidige, hochentwickelte und schöpferische Spezialform der Gewalt. Beruht nicht das Geschäft auf List und Zwang, auf Übervorteilung und Ausnützung, nur sind diese zivilisiert, ganz in das Innere des Menschen verlegt, ja geradezu in das Aussehen seiner Freiheit gekleidet? Der Kapitalismus, als Organisation der Ichsucht nach der Rangordnung der Kräfte, sich Geld zu verschaffen, ist geradezu die größte und dabei noch humanste Ordnung, die wir zu Deiner Ehre haben ausbilden können; ein genaueres Maß trägt das menschliche Tun nicht in sich!«

This makes me think about musical capitalism: composers being valued for how much money it costs to commission their works, or how much their orchestral music is worth to a publisher who can make money on renting parts, or how the name of a composer can attract audiences to performances, or how much the name of a soloist can attract audiences to performances, or how easily a composer or a performer can be publicized through media (social or otherwise), and how an image can be created that will suggest musical experiences of great value or of great controversy (which eventually translate into value).

I have participated in the capitalistic world of music. I wrote CD reviews for more than twenty years, and found my reviews being used to promote recordings. My words had some kind of value in the hierarchy of influence, and were used to sell CDs. Do the things I say on this blog, which are not intended to sell anything, and are accessible to anyone for free, have less value? If I were to put my posts together and sell them as a book, would they have more value?

Choosing not to participate in music from a capitalistic perspective has its low points (in the form of blows to the musical ego in this extremely hierarchical musical world) but I think I lead a more honest musical life by giving out an equal amount to what I have taken in over the years. And I have learned so much about music and musicianship that I will surely be paying it forward for the rest of my life.

I charge money for lessons because the time I spend with students is time when I direct all my attention to their needs. I save that time for them week after week, and they know that their lesson time is something they can count on to become better players and better musicians. I also know that if I didn't charge for that time, my students wouldn't practice. I charge money to playing for weddings and for other forms of entertainment, and I happily accept money for participating in orchestral rehearsals and concerts.

I also accept money for commissions, and the money paid to me guarantees that the commissioning people will be the first to perform the music I have written for them. But I no longer work with publishers because I want to continue to have full ownership of the music I write and arrange; and I find more value in sharing music with people than selling it. Selling through a publisher means that I make about 10% of the selling price. Selling music myself means I have to set myself up as a company, which means dealing with all the business-related stuff that constitutes that 90% that publishers make from the music I write. I also prefer to think of other musicians (who generally don't make tons of money) as colleagues rather than as customers. Does that mean that the music I write, keep in the public domain, and make available through the IMSLP is of lesser value than the music I have published? I don't think so!

Locatelli D major Cello Sonata Performed by Daniel Morganstern and Gordon Steel

My friend Daniel Morganstern and his friend Gordon Steel made this recording of the Locatelli a long time ago. Danny just made it available on YouTube. There is some absolutely beautiful "bel canto" cello playing here.

What I did on my summer vacation . . .

Summer seems to be a good time for me to write music. At least this summer has been, so far.

This piece started as a song that I set, for a lark, on a random piece of text. That melody became the first theme. I abandoned the text and started adding instruments, themes, and material. I had a narrative in mind (it's my secret, and I'll never tell), which I abandoned once the piece had a form that worked. And then came the countless hours of work making sure the right notes end up being in the right places. It is not a thankless task because every little improvement is cause for personal celebration. A lot of little improvements add up, and the piece ends up being better.

Some people ask how composers know when a piece of music is finished. It would be nice if a piece could be finished when you make that final double bar, like the way it is depicted in the (very) occasional movie about one composer or another. But the double bar just signifies the ending point of the piece. For me that is where most of the hard work begins. Sometimes I decide a piece is finished when I get tired of working on it. Once what has been running through my head long day and night (all day and all night) is accurately represented by what is written down, and what is written down is in a form that makes physical sense to play, it is done. When I cannot find ways to improve it, it is done.

I did toy with the idea of adding another movement, thus postponing the void created by not having this piece as my companion; but I abandoned that idea because I felt the piece was the right length.

So now I'm writing a blog post about it because I guess I am having a bit of difficulty letting go of it.





The score and parts are on this page of the IMSLP. You can also listen to a computer-generated recording here.

I guess I'll go practice some scales now.

I'm All Ears

Errol Morris's New York Times Opinion piece about Sviatoslav Richter, "The Pianist and the Lobster," is a fantastic piece of writing about one of the most enigmatic of an enigmatic breed of great pianists. And it includes interviews with Richter's video biographer Bruno Monsaingeon and pianist (and illustrious member of the musical blogosphere) Jeremy Denk.

I knew about Richter's problems with pitch as he got older, but I was struck by the peculiar nature of the way Richter's sense of pitch changed. Then again, why should Richter, who functioned on the on outer expressive margins of musical possibilities, have an experience with physical changes in his hearing that wasn't singular?

ERROL MORRIS Hearing things a half tone up or down — was this also a problem related to depression?

BRUNO MONSAINGEON It was probably related to depression. But actually, he mentioned that a bit later in our conversations. One day in a hotel room in Paris, he went to the Clavinova [an electric practice piano] which he had in his room. We had great problems plugging the machine in. And finally he started playing the “Carmen” overture. And he said, “This is in A major, isn’t it?” And I said, “Yes, yes of course, Maestro.” But he was playing the left hand in B major. There was a separation in his mind between the left and the right hand. One was playing one key and another in another key. It must have been a real nightmare for him.

ERROL MORRIS How can you play a piece when you’re transposing only one hand into a different key?

BRUNO MONSAINGEON Well, that’s why he stopped. At that time, he had stopped playing in public. He was trying, towards the very end, the very, very last weeks of his life, he was trying to go back to the keyboard and was even planning to play some concerts. But, during those three years, there was not one note played (except on occasion on that Clavinova). Not one note. And he was desperate about it. It’s a very sad ending. This mighty artist and great, great mind, affected by all these problems.

Both my parents, at least two of my grandparents, and all three of my brothers were born with absolute pitch. Even within the term "absolute pitch" there is a continuum. My father has it to a lesser degree than my brother Marshall, who had a pair of ears that might have compared to Richter's, but Marshall didn't live long enough to experience physical changes in his hearing. To the rest of the family perfect pitch was just a given utilitarian thing. I grew up feeling like I was missing something. In most families the person with absolute pitch is the "other." In my family of origin I was "other." And if I sang something in the wrong key, my brothers would always let me know.

"You're in the wrong key!"

Pitches and harmonies are magical to me. They always were. But like most magical things they are also illusive. Sometimes a piece of music running through my head is in the right key, but I just don't have the wherewithal to name the key or the particular pitches. I sometimes recognize pitches by their color when they are played on a particular instrument, and my string-playing arm will usually find them when prompted by visual (i.e. reading music) stimulation. But my navigation through the world of pitches is like the visual experience of walking through a seasonally changing stretch of woods, following a well-worn path, and looking up, down, and all around to find wonderful happenings. Some people who walk through the woods see (and name) species of trees, species of flowers, species of birds, species of insects, species of mold, numbers of living trees, numbers of dead trees, geologic formations, erosion, and diseases of all sorts. Their visual experience is different from mine.

In his later seventies, my father, who will be eighty-nine in August, noticed that he started hearing pitches half a tone sharp. Since he is a string player, and has the musical habits of someone with relative pitch, he has managed to adjust. My friend Susan Teicher told me that her father, the pianist Louis Teicher also had that problem. And when I learned about Richter's half-tone-off hearing, I started to wonder if this kind of change in hearing might be a general physical phenomenon, but one only noticed by the small segment of the population who are musicians with absolute pitch.

Musicianship is so much more than pitch memory or pitch labeling. And there are zillions of sounds in the world that are not classified as music: language, animal sounds, nature sounds, motors, anything that vibrates, anything that bangs or rubs against objects. There are certainly people with absolute pitch who are not musical. They just use their sense of pitch in other ways.

We do know that size and shape of our ears change as we get older. This video from the BBC shows how the outsides of our ears change over time. I imagine that the insides of our ears change as well. And I imagine that changes in the inner parts of our ears affect the way we hear pitches. I asked an audiologist about this when it was happening to my father, and he could not give me any information.

After reading the article about Richter last night, I did a little google search and came upon this livejournal discussion, which links to a 2007 article published in Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences about aging and absolute pitch that confirms my suspicions.

Robert Musil, guest blogger

In chapter 82 of Der Mann ohne Eigenschaften, Musil's character Ulrich ______ speaks about the idea of the idea:

"You want to organize your life around an idea," he began. "And you'd like to know how to do that. But an idea is the most paradoxical thing in the world. The flesh in the grip of an idea is like a fetish. Bonded to an idea, it becomes magical. An ordinary slap in the face, bound up with ideas of honor, or of punishment and the like, can kill a man. And yet ideas can never maintain themselves in the state in which they are most powerful; they're like the kind of substance that, exposed to the air, instantly changes into some other, more lasting, but corrupted form. You've been through this often yourself. Because an idea is what you are: an idea in a particular state. You are touched by a breath of something, and it's like a note suddenly emerging from the humming of strings; in front of you there is something like a mirage; out of the confusion of your soul an endless parade is taking shape, with all the world's beauty looking on from the road side. All this can be the effect of a single idea. But after a while it comes to resemble all your previous ideas, it takes its place among them, becomes part of your outlook and your character, your principles or your moods; in the act of taking shape it has lost its wings and its mystery."

In the original German:

»Du möchtest nach deiner Idee leben« hatte er begonnen »und möchtest wissen, wie man das kann. Aber eine Idee, das ist das Paradoxeste von der Welt. Das Fleisch verbindet sich mit Ideen wie ein Fetisch. Es wird zauberhaft, wenn eine Idee dabei ist. Eine gemeine Ohrfeige kann durch die Idee von Ehre, Strafe und dergleichen tödlich werden. Und doch können sich Ideen niemals in dem Zustand, wo sie am stärksten sind, erhalten; sie gleichen jenen Stoffen, die sich sofort an der Luft in eine dauerhaftere andere, aber verdorbene Form umsetzen: Das hast du oft mitgemacht. Denn eine Idee: das bist du; in einem bestimmten Zustand. Irgendetwas haucht dich an; wie wenn in das Rauschen von Saiten plötzlich ein Ton kommt; es steht etwas vor dir wie eine Luftspiegelung; aus dem Gewirr deiner Seele hat sich ein unendlicher Zug geformt, und alle Schönheiten der Welt scheinen an seinem Wege zu stehn. Das bewirkt oft eine einzige Idee. Aber nach einer Weile wird sie allen anderen Ideen, die du schon gehabt hast, ähnlich, sie ordnet sich ihnen unter, sie wird ein Teil deiner Anschauungen und deines Charakters, deiner Grundsätze oder deiner Stimmungen, sie hat die Flügel verloren und eine geheimnislose Festigkeit angenommen.«

Music Roll!

I have often read about music rolls, but I have never seen one. I had always imagined a piano roll to be some kind of tube. I wondered how large pieces of piano music could be rolled up in a tube, carried somewhere, opened up and used right away. Internet searches (and I have searched often) only seem to find the kind of piano roll you put in a player piano.

Michael and I watched The Scapegoat earlier tonight, and I was thrilled to see a piano roll in action. It seems to gently bend the music while giving it support so that it doesn't get damaged.

I took some photographs:

And now a few words by Ruth Gipps on modern musicology

You can find out more about the British composer Ruth Gipps here.