Richard Kogan lecture "The Mind and Music of Leonard Bernstein"

I'll be seening Maestro tomorrow night (with friends who have Netflix). I have heard a great deal (both positive and negative) about the movie, including the fact that it doesn't contain much about Leonard Bernstein the composer, so I'm getting myself ready for the experience by reminding myself of who he was as a musician. If you have arrived here for the same reasons, Richard Kogan's lecture is a great place to start:



I'm also re-reading Jonathan Cott's Dinner with Lenny (here's a post I wrote about it in 2013), and an exerpt from The Infinite Variety of Music that I wrote about in 2005. In 2010 I wrote a post to mark the twentieth anniversary of Leonard Bernstein's death, with a link to a special edition of Prelude, Fugue, and Riffs filled with reminiscences of him by members of his family.

I overheard the movie trailer, and can report that Bradley Cooper captures the nasal quality that came into Leonard Bernstein's voice as he aged, but the pitch is just a semitone or so higher, and the timbre is a little less gravelly. I imagine it was enough for Cooper to fill Leonard Bernstein's shoes, body, and personality during the filming of this movie, but I can't imagine he would have inhaled enough tobacco to capture the gravel in Bernstein's voice. But I recall Bernstein's voice as an older man, and Cooper is portraying him as a younger man.

By the way, the one thing that Leonard Bernstein couldn't do musically was sing. Stephen Sondheim said that he had a voice like a frog.

Somebody, somewhere?

The shepherds of the internets, the people who write the software that gets unsuspecting humans to feel that they have connections with others through this or that social media platform, have really outdone themselves with “threads.” And in outdoing themselves they have gotten people like me (if there are any people really like me) to become totally uninterested with “connecting” by way of "threads."

The account, which I am about to remove from my phone, is full of posts from people offering lists of people they are interested in having “follow” them: musicians, artists, people who own dogs, people who like rice, photographers, film producers, foodies, etc., and they trust the trusty threads algorithm to do the work of connecting for them. They even address their posts, “Dear Algorithm.” But in reality these lists give a lot of easy information to Meta so that they can target threaders and their followers for ads in other Meta platforms. By making these lists, innocent people interested in finding people who share their interests are simply feeding the hungry algorithm. 

I admit that I have found some interesting people who post on threads, but I have other ways of reading what they have to say. And their work, which has nothing to do with my potential interactions with them, can go on without me.

The promise of finding people just like me is really not for me. In the decades of my life before using the internet, I managed to find people who shared my interests, concerns, and struggles. The common ground I found had a lot to do with circumstances: living in a particular place, working in a particular place (or field), being an outsider in a country or a culture, being single, being part of a couple, having small children, having not-so-small children, having aging parents, participating in particular activities, and not participating in particular activies.

I have learned over the years that I prefer to engage in activities and friendships with people who do not share ALL of my interests. One or two shared interests is enough. By interacting with people who are different from me I gain perspective about life and about the world.

I do appreciate the  “power” of social media mainly because I can use it to share, and I love the ease that the internet offers for me to answer zillions of questions and access music by way of the IMSLP. I also really appreciate the ability to connect with groups of people who need music to play by way of Facebook. And my blogs add a huge amount of value to my life.

I have nothing to sell (work I have done that is sold is the property of one or another publisher), so I view my (non-commercial) corners of the internets as a way of offering something to somebody somewhere who might need it in order to make their life easier, more interesting, or more enjoyable.

It's too bad that most of the messages that I find in my email inbox are put there by people I do not know who want to sell me something. I know that there are people online (like me) who are not selling something. I guess that selling is the main reason for the internets, and without that “marketplace,” blogs like this one wouldn't exist. 

Unbeschwerte Amore performed by the Duo Aliquot

Hodie Cookies (Holiday Oatmeal Cookies)

I made these cookies on a whim this morning before playing a consort concert that was organized around several settings of the Hodie, so I'm calling them "Hodie Cookies." Hodie (pronouced ho-dee-ay) is Latin for "today." I really wasn't sure how they would come out (I was in full improvisation mode--but I did manage to measure and to write things down). I REALLY liked the result. They have a holiday "look" to them, and a taste that suggests gingerbread, but only very quietly.

Heat the oven to 350 degrees Farenheit

Cream together:

1 stick softened unsalted butter and
1 cup granulated cane sugar

add

1 tablespoon molasses
1 teaspoon vanilla extract
2 eggs
1/2 cup chopped walnuts

Combine:

1.5 cups white whole wheat flour
1 teaspoon baking soda
1/2 teaspoon salt
1/2 teaspoon ground (powdered) ginger
1 teaspoon ground cinnamon

Mix the dry ingredients into the wet, and then add

1.5 cups lightly-sweetened whole cranberry sauce (lightly sweetened if you make it yourself, out of the can without extra sugar if you use canned cranberry sauce).
1/2 cup raisins
3 cups quick-cooking oats

Mix together, and then drop by tablespoons onto baking sheets lined with parchment paper or silicone mats. Top each cookie with a little bit of cane sugar. Bake for 20-25 minutes. Cool and eat.

This recipe made around 50 small cookies.

I imagine that you could use fresh ginger. If you do make sure to grate it finely, and mix it in with the wet ingredients so that the flavor distributes.

In Praise of the Day

I wish I knew who made this little gem:

Three Christmas pieces arranged for flute, viola (violin), and cello

'Tis the season for Christmas parties, so for your (and my) Christmas party pleasure I'm sharing a set of three transcriptions of ever-popular pieces that I made for a party that I am playing next week.

The viola parts do not extend beyond the violin range, so there is a treble clef part in the set for people who play violin and are not used to reading the alto clef. The flute parts can also be played on the violin.

For wind trios the cello parts can work on the bassoon, and the treble clef violin part could be transposed and played on the clarinet.

Here's the link.

Rejoice, violists!

Every so often I get the pleasure of playing the viola part in Mozart's 1789 orchestration of Handel's Messiah. It is a pleasure because Mozart gave the violists a really challenging and interesting part to play, particularly in the numbers where Handel had us tacet (like "Rejoice geatly"). It is unfortunate that this year's Messiah program does not include all of the movements that have the great viola parts, but I can still rejoice and marvel at the Mozart viola parts in the movements we are playing.

"Rejoice greatly," for example, was originally written for soprano, a single violin line played by two violinists (sometimes played by only one), and continuo. Here are the final few measures (after the singer is finished):

Look at the great counterpoint that Mozart gave the violas in his final measures of "Rejoice greatly":

You can read some fun facts about Mozart's transcription here, but Teri Noel Towe, the writer of the entry at Classical Net, didn't seem to notice the vast improvements that Mozart made in the viola part of the Messiah. When I play this part I feel a deep and personal connection to Mozart. He loved us because he was one of us. One of us, one of us, one of us!

Little Frogs in the Yakety-yak

Just in case you miss the frog songs that we hear in the warmer weather! (Actually there are no actual frog sounds included, but there are lots of songs about frogs.)

You can find the music on this page of the IMSLP.

Welcome Clara to the IMSLP

Clara is a new way to navigate through the IMSLP. Give it a spin!

You can sort and filter, search for works, and even listen to a sample (eventually this feature will work). It is both interesting and not interesting to see what the most popular pieces in the catalog are. No spoilers from me (and no surprises from the list).

Scores and Maps

I have always loved maps. My love of maps began with this Ciacoma Cantelli da Vignola map of the Turkish Empire from 1679 that used to hang in the entryway of my childhood home. It has (somehow) followed me through my life. And now its image can "hang" on this page of this blog. (You can see a zoomable digital version of this map here.)

When I was a child I used to make detailed maps of my neighborhood, showing the route that I would walk to school. My father had a map of Paris on the wall of his basement practice studio. I had absolutely no understanding of Paris (or the Turkish Empire of 1679, for that matter), but I used to "walk" along those streets. One of the things that attracted me to Henry Miller (the writer) is that while he was living in Brooklyn he had a map of Paris, and he used to follow all the streets and imagine that he was there. Once he got to Paris he knew his way around.

Our son inherited my love of maps (the above map "lived" on the wall of his room throughout his childhood). And I'm rather thrilled that all three of our granddaughters love maps.

But I digress.

This early morning, while I was rehearsing some Haydn (Opus 77 #2) for a concert in the later morning, I had the sudden sensation that playing chamber music is a little like following a map. It is particularly map-like when you are playing an inner part because you can see and hear all the inner connections.

There is just so much to see and hear in Haydn, and there are all sorts of "side streets" and changes in "landscape."

But if the goal of a chamber music experience is a performance, the "points of interest" should really be found during score study and rehearsal so that we don't get distracted by new insights during performance and cause our trusting listeners to be dragged off onto unfamiliar roads or back alleys.

During orchestral performances I have the leisure to observe the music, because my main job is to play together with my section and to follow a conductor who, like a tour guide, has the paths s/he wants the music to take mapped out.

But chamber music is different, particularly when it is by Haydn, because there is just so much to observe.

Salomé's Dance for Violin, Viola, and Cello

You can hear this music accompanying some of the final scenes of the 1922/23 silent film (one hundred years ago!) of Salomé that was produced, directed, choreographed, acted, and danced by Alla Nazimova through this link. You can find the score and parts on this page of the IMSLP.

The piece, which is ten minutes long, can be played with or without the film.

The Face in the Mirror

The other day I glanced in the mirror and, for the first time in my adult life, recognized the third-grade girl in this photo.

The photo record for me is scarce. There might be half a dozen photos taken of me as a child, and most of them were school photos. I was told that my father "didn't believe in" taking photos, and my mother, who was photographed by her shutterbug father a great deal when she was a child, didn't object to my father's lack of interest. I like to imagine that my mother thought that she was sparing us some agony by only having baby portraits taken twice.

It must have been important to me because my earliest memory was being photographed at four in my balloon dress at Clowntown Studios in Lakewood, Ohio. (I don't remember the photo that was taken when I was around one.) I do remember at the age of five being heartbroken when my balloon dress no longer fit.

Individual school photos stopped in sixth grade, and the one or two that appeared in my high school yearbook showed a teenager who did not have the bright eyes of the musical violin-playing child above.

I'm so happy that I have been able to get the essence of this child back.

Life has its crooked paths. I feel tremendously grateful to have somehow found a path that has allowed me to reconnect with the person I was at eight or nine.

Advanced Viola Scale Studies

I'm delighted to announce that the viola transcription of my Advanced Violin Scale Studies is finally available from Mel Bay.

I'm also totally thrilled that they have used a portrait of my 1952 Carl Becker viola for the cover. My father bought the instrument in Chicago while he was a graduate student at the Illinois Institute of Technology. He told me that when he bought it they "wheeled out the old man," so that my father could meet the maker. It was the instrument that my father used to win the audition for principal viola of the Boston Symphony Orchestra, though the powers that were (then) immediately went searching for a higher-prestige instrument for him.

My father always kept the Becker on hand, though. He brought it to Tanglewood with him and loaned it to students from time to time. The only student I recall connected with it was the composer Paul Chihara. Then around thirty years ago he gave the instrument to my brother Marshall. Out of a sense of fairness, he gave me one of his instruments as well: a pretty-looking Italian viola that never sounded as good as it looked. My brother Richard, who doesn't play, got a bunch of bows that my father never used.

I always thought that the Becker was kind of plain and ugly, and Marshall thought that I had gotten the better instrument. We were both wrong. The Becker is quite beautiful, and because of the way it plays and responds, it is far superior to the pretty Italian viola I had been using.

My brother didn't like playing the Becker, so he had an instrument made that satisfied his needs. The Becker sat abandoned in his closet, unplayed.

After my brother died the official ownership of the instrument went back to my parents, but the physical instrument moved to my closet. After my mother's death the instrument became mine. I had a luthier fix some open seams and straighten the bridge. After playing the Becker for a minute or so, I put away the Italian instrument and haven't touched it since. The sound of the Becker was the viola sound that I had in my ear since I was a tiny baby. It brings me joy every day.

And now its face is on the cover of this book of scale pieces.

You can find the music (both for a print edition and an electronic edition) on this page of the Mel Bay website.

Nathan Groot is making video recordings of all the pieces in the book. You can watch and listen here.

Verdi Three Pieces for Two Cellos

I spent a great deal of time collaborating with Daniel Morganstern, the former principal cellist of the Lyric Opera of Chicago and the American Ballet Theatre, on these two-cello transcriptions of music from three of Verdi's operas.

The first piece in this new publication from International Music Company is a wordless aria that serves as the prelude to the opera I masandieri. It is bel canto cello writing at its finest.

In the second act of Rigoletto, the first  cello "sings" the part of the court jester, the title character of Verdi's opera, while the second cello accompanies him with extensive arpeggios. This aria, which incorporates the original solo cello part from the opera, works perfectly as a cello duet.

In her third-act aria from Un ballo in maschera, Amelia pleads with her husband (who is preparing to kill her because he believes she has cheated on him) to let her hold her son for the last time. This highly emotional aria is extremely satisfying to hear played by two cellos.

The music is available now from IMC and from Theodore Front, and it will be available from other music retailers in the near future.

Lili Boulanger's Nocturne and Cortege transcribed for viola and piano

Published by International Music Company and available through this link.