El Hotel Electrico at Astraios Music (April 24 through May 3)

I'm excited to hear this program, which will include a performance of my El Hotel Electrico (performed by flute, viola, and bassoon) via YouTube at 7:00 Central time this Saturday evening.

Vocal Music Instrumentation Index: what a resource!

Anne Charrier and Ben Kazez, creators and designers of the Vocal Music Instrumentation Index have organized the vocal/choral music of J.S. and C.P.E Bach as an elegant virtual library experience

They began this index as a pandemic project, and intend to continue with other composers:

"Parlando," a new classical music podcast hosted by Vivien Schweitzer

I'm so happy to have learned about Parlando, which is a new podcast presented by Classical Voice North America. I listened to the second episode today, which is an interview with Augustin Hadelich. The above link is to the podcast on Spotify, and I listened to it by way of Apple Podcasts, which is what I use on my phone.

Schweitzer and Hadelich talk about the recording projects he has been doing in isolation at home during the past pandemic year, and they even mention the Florence Price "Adoration" project which I am so honored to have played a (silent and midwife-ish) part in.

Oh my ears and whiskers!

I have spent the last several weeks writing music inspired by Lewis Carroll. This one is a duo for viola and euphonium intended for the underserved communities of euphonium players who have friends who play viola, and violists who have friends who play euphonium (silly "mirror" refrence intended).

It can also be played as a duo for viola and cello, as a companion piece, perhaps to the Beethoven Duet mit zwei obligaten Augengläsern, WoO 32 on a program. Trying to imagine dynamic balances in real acoustic spaces between viola and euphonium is difficult, so I treated the euphonium line as a cello part in order to come up with usable dynamics that can be taken down a notch by euphonium players. It was only AFTER doing this that I realized the "mirror" reference to Augengläseren (eyeglasses) in the title.

[April 15, 2021]

You can find the music on this page of the IMSLP, and you can listen to a computer-generated recording here.

And coming to a YouTube channel in the near future is a performance of three songs I wrote for trumpet (cornet) and mezzo-soprano that I call "Adventures with Alice."

Adoring Florence Price's "Adoration" in Modesto, California

Michael Cooper's work on Florence Price

Michael Cooper's article, "The Problem with Programs Part 2," (the second of a three-part series) is so very interesting. Why is the overture for a concert given as part of a celebration of "A Century of Progress" at the Chicago World's Fair by John Powell?

[from Wikipedia] Powell became a world-renowned composer.He had a racialist approach to music, which he expressed in his writings. He was interested in Appalachian folk music and championed its performance and preservation. He was one of the founders of the White Top Folk Festival, held in Grayson County, Virginia annually from 1931 to 1939.

Powell's ideology—and musicology—were strongly racialist and anti-black, a topic which served as the subject for many of his essays.[In the fall of 1922 together with Earnest Sevier Cox (a self-proclaimed ethnologist and explorer) and Dr. Walter Plecker, Powell founded the Anglo-Saxon Clubs of America in Richmond, Virginia. They worked closely with Walter Ashby Plecker to promote state legislation to classify people simply as "white" or "negro", and to end "amalgamation" of the races by intermarriage. The activities of the club split the elite in Virginia, which had tried to take pride in its "genteel paternalism" in controlling racial relations. The clubs attracted more racists.

Within a year, more than 400 white men had joined as members and the club had 31 "posts" in Virginia, including two in Charlottesville, one for the town and one at the University of Virginia. Powell worked with Dr. Plecker, the state's registrar of statistics, to draft the Racial Integrity Act of 1924. The club members were successful in lobbying the legislature to gain passage of the act, which classified as black any person with any African ancestry, although the previous law recognized persons with one-sixteenth or less black ancestry as white.

Michael Cooper (this link goes to his blog) has done the extraordinary work of preparing a motherlode of newly-discovered work by Florence Price for publication by G. Schirmer, and leading the way (clearing the way) for a better, and indeed more diverse, musical future for concerts that include early 20th-century music. The tagline on his home page is, "Helping to make unheard music part of our world."

I did, by the way, have a glance at some of Powell's music in the IMSLP. He wrote a nostalgic violin and piano sonata that reflects on the "charms" of old Virginia. It actually looks like a nice piece. But I'm not going to play it. I'm not even going to download the PDF to my computer. Feh.

You can read the first part of Michael Cooper's series here.

There's moles in them there holes

About a month before the last time that Magicicada Brood X appeared in Illinois (2004) our lawn was filled with mole hills. At the time we had no idea why there was such a eruption of mole activity, but we have since learned that the mole activity increases because of all the juicy and ripe cicadas burrowed in the ground that will emerge next month after their seventeen-year lives as larvae. The ones that escape the moles will come above ground, latch onto trees (and whatever else they can find), spread their wings, and fill the air with their chirpy and buzzy noises. Then, unless they are eaten, they will mate, lay their eggs, and die. 

Seventeen years ago Brood X was joined by Brood XIX (the thirteen year cicadas). This synchronicity only happens every 221 years.

In 2011 I made a post about the thirteen-year brood, which was not accompanied by that much in the way of mole activity. Seeing mole hills like these all over town this past week, leads me to imagine that the Brood X is an exceptionally tasty treat for moles. 

Now I know that while the moles are happily feeding themselves they are also doing the good work of irrigating the lower layers of our soil, which helps improve drainage so that we won't have so much flooding of our basements when the big rains come.

These photos are not from our yard, but they are from my walk today.

I wrote a violin duet in 2011 in honor of Brood XIX which you can find here. Both broods make an appearance in the third movement of Evening Music for two violins and viola.

Molly Gebrian plays my Sephardic Suite

I started writing the middle movement of the "Separdic Suite" as a viola piece about twenty years ago, and because my son's cello was in the house at the time, and because I could, I wrote the outer movements for cello, and reworked the middle movement. I did make a transcription of the piece for viola, but I never considered publishing it because I couldn't get it to sound as good on the viola as it sounded (when played by a real cellist) on the cello.

Molly Gebrian inquired about the viola version (which I guess I must have mentioned somewhere), and encouraged me to make it available. Molly plays this piece so beautifully, and it sounds right at home on the viola, where it was "born." This video is from a concert that premiered last night on Youtube.

Solidaridad plays "Chee Buenos Aires"

What a tango band! What an exceptional video!

Four Coliloquies for Flute and Oboe

This is a video from a March 27th concert that is part of the (this year virtual) 5th Annual International Music by Women Festival. The flutist is Rebecca Johnson, and the oboist is Elizabeth Sullivan.

It is a really windy day on the prairie today, so I thought it would be a good day to share this video (which is cued to begin when this piece begins). The fourth "coliloquy" poses a question about where the wind comes from, and where the wind goes.


You can follow the music here, if you like.

"A Tunes" on Amazon

I can't believe I'm posting this, but, since I am engaging in commerce with this educational opus, I'm pleased to say that "A Tunes" has made it into the vast (and reviewable) world of Amazon. You can see the entry in all its "prime" glory, with a "look-inside" feature here.

It also has a ranking (which I hope will go up one of these days). Bear in mind that this is day one for this listing.

I hope that people familiar with my work will leave a comment!

Marcel Proust, guest blogger

I have rarely come across writing about music that is so about music itself.

. . . just so I found my bearings in this music which was new to me, and recognized the landscape of the Vinteuil sonata; and, more wonderful than any girl, the little phrase, wrapped, caparisoned in silver, streaming with brilliant sonorities light and soft as scarves, came towards me, still recognizable under these new ornaments. My joy at meeting it again was increased by the familiar, friendly tone in which it spoke to me, so persuasive, so simple, yet allowing its rich, shimmering beauty to unfold in all its splendour. Its purpose this time, however, was simply to show me the way, a different path from that of the sonata, for this was a different, hitherto unperformed work by Vinteuil, where he had simply chosen to make an allusion (explained at this point by a note in the programme which we should have had before us) by introducing, just for a moment, the little phrase. Having been recalled for a moment in this way, it disappeared and I found myself in an unknown world once more, but I now knew, and everything I heard confirmed, that this was one of the worlds that I had not even imagined Vinteuil could have created; for when, tiring of the sonata, whose universe was exhausted for me, I tried to imagine others equally beautiful but different, I simply did as those poets do who fill their imagined Paradise with meadows, flowers and rivers duplicating those on Earth. What I now heard caused me as much joy as the sonata would have done if I had not known it; that is to say, it was just as beautiful, but different. Whereas the sonata opened on a lily-like dawn in the country, dividing its floating whiteness but only to attach it to the light but thick tangle of a rustic bower of honeysuckle and white geraniums, the new work took off on a stormy morning over flat, level surfaces like those of the sea, amid an acid silence, in an infinity of emptiness, and then it was in a rosy dawn that this unknown universe began to be built before me, drawn out of silence and night. This new, red light, so absent from the tender, rustic and candid sonata, tinged all the sky, as dawn does, with a mysterious hope.

This passage, and the passages surrounding it from "The Prisoner," the fifth volume of In Search of Lost Time brings to my mind and ear the absolutely delightful Saint-Saëns Septet, Opus 65:

Listen to Daniel Gianola-Norris play my Sonata for Trumpet and Piano!

Scott Hostetler, Scott Hostetler, and Scott Hostetler Play Poulenc!

Virtue and Music

I grew up in a world where musical competence was social currency. I came up with the idea that people play the way they are, and the more they practice, the more they play the way they are. Being rather naive, and making my young way in a musical world filled with grown-up musicians who were at the very top of the profession, I believed this to be true.  I expected that the grown-up musicians who played beautifully and brilliantly must be kind, moral, and virtuous people, regardless of what kinds of things I was told about them that could cause me to believe otherwise.

I spent years practicing so that I could get better, but, like most people, I had personal limitations that I simply couldn't transcend. To add insult to injury I took the phrase, "You are only as good as your last performance" to heart. It was only through changing instruments, working carefully and methodically for the past thirty years to build a technique, and learning how to solve problems my students have encountered, that I have been able to begin too grow through what I believed were personal limitations.  I know that I have become a better violinist, violist, teacher, and composer than I was a year ago, and I am grateful that I will continue to work and grow. 

My adult experience totally debunks my childish idea that people are the way they play. My new "catch phrase" is "the more carefully and consistently you practice, the more beautifully and consistently you will play." And my goal is to learn things from every "last performance," and to do better the next time.

This kind of musical mental health is hard won, particularly when music is (and always has been) so personal to me. It is not just something I "do."  A good friend who knows me well told me that music is my "transition object," serving as the major substitute for the love that I lacked as a child. I can create it and bring it to life myself, and I can construct within in it a world where truth and virtue reign supreme. As CEO of my work, I am in a position to make decisions about everything (at least while I am practicing and writing). I find total joy in doing my work. It is my way of finding amour-propre, a word I recently learned from reading Proust. And, best of all, I don't need to seek approval for what I already know is as good as I can make it be. Good enough for me is good enough. And it is up to me to raise my own standards.

Early on I learned that giving love feels very similar to receiving love, and since making music is how I habitually experience love, sharing music is the best way of expressing it. That is why I write music for people, and that is why I share most of what I write in the IMSLP. I feel balanced when I have a writing, arranging, or performing project in the works (and I feel out of balance when I don't). A piece of music isn't complete for me unless it has been played or heard by someone else. 

I was unaware the extent to which many of those great musicians I used to believe must be kind and virtuous used their feelings of superiority to "thrust" their greatness "upon" younger musicians who wanted to find their way in the professional musical world. My (more attractive than I was) female friends at Juilliard often believed that their accomplished older seducers (and would-be seducers) believed in their musical talent and their intelligence. I somehow got the message (told to me in no uncertain terms by my teacher, Julius Baker) that in order to be successful as a musician a woman needed to be attractive. Capitalizing on the way I looked in order to be successful in music was not a game I was equipped to play. I considered myself limited then. Now I consider myself fortunate.

I think that in 2021 we have started to open the door on a kinder and more equal musical world. Perhaps this pandemic year, where musicians see one another through "windows" into their houses, and everyone is trying their best to find sanity during a year when direct musical contact with people who listen to music happens mostly through electronic devices, and rarely in real time; and direct musical contact between musicians is rare, masked, distanced, and careful. 

From our "doorstep" we see more and more revelations about the abuse of power from musicians considered virtuous by some (Levine, Gelb, for example), and we see the beginnings in the musical community of an institutional intolerance for sexism and racism. We also see that celebrating "greatness" might just be an outdated nineteenth-century idea (consider Wagner and his circle). I wonder if we are at the beginning of an era where kindness and decency will have greater currency among musicians who play, conduct, and compose, and teach because of the hundreds of excellent musicians who could easily fill the shoes of those musicians who do not conduct their personal lives that the quality of their playing  (or writing) suggests has virtue.