Remembering my brother Marshall

My brother Marshall Fine died ten years ago today, and in his honor I thought I'd share an impromptu video we made in 2013 (the last time I saw him) reading a Stamitz duet. It was the first time we ever played a viola duet together (we are sightreading). Michael took the video.



You can read all my posts about Marshall here.

Harris Walz II "Conventional"

You can find a PDF on this page of the IMSLP.

Hat Hack

It was a day that was both windy and sunny. I really wanted to wear my straw hat, but feared that it would fly off in the breeze.

So I opened a drawer in my desk and found an old shoelace (I always save them if they are in good shape). I fastened it to the little loop on the inside of the hat band, and look what happened!

When it is windy I can tie the shoelace under my chin, and if it isn't windy I can tuck the ties inside the hat.

Notice the bonus use of the shoelace to tie the hat around my waist if I don't want to wear it. Needless to say the other shoelace is now attached to another hat, and both hats can hang nicely on a single hook.

Why have I never thought of this before?

Now: A Retrospective

This is a contradiction in terms, to be sure, but there is no way to talk about "now" unless we do so in retrospect.

I was thinking the other day, while in the bathtub, where my sense of "now" is most active (particularly the moment when I submerge my shoulders and neck), that what we are doing as musicians is making it possible to anticipate, experience, and reflect on material that is happening at a time that we can call "now." We can put everything in place to experience that "now" (or, as composers, allow other people to experience it) by replicating the instrumentation, the horizontal and vertical configuration of pitches, and the dynamics and the textures of the pitches involved.

Yesterday during a consort rehearsal my three friends and I were able to repeat a particular "now" in a piece of Phinot we were playing--a subtle change of mode over three measures that sounded like an opening and closing of a window to the early twentieth century. We did it several times. It was so satisfying.

Phinot, who wrote the piece "then," made that particular "now" possible.

If I were skilled in philosophy I could explain it much better.

When we play a piece of music written by somebody who is no longer alive, we make a musical "now" possible. I'm not talking about authenticity, since there is really no such thing as musical authenticity (unless we are talking about physical objects like instruments or manuscripts). Any performance given at any time is going to be informed by the vast musical experience and vast personal experience of anyone playing or singing, and any performance or reading is going to be different.

I like to think of the huge number of people over time who have shared a thousand musical "nows" with me as I go about my musical life. It is a kind of a community.

I have been obsessed with the idea of "now" on and off for what seems like an eternity. And I tried to depict the idea in musical terms in an opera I wrote based on the Hans Christian Andersen story "The Snow Queen."

I wrote a blogpost about the segment of the opera that concerns the idea of eternity as a "now" back in 2009. Here's a bit from that post:

I have used minimalism, but only in context and for specific purposes. In the case of this moment in my Snow Queen opera, Gerda, while en route to find her friend Kay, is stuck for what might be eternity in a magic garden. The concept of eternity looms large in the opera, and the above excerpt happens in the opera's temporal center. The text comes from a passage in Richard Jefferies' The Story of My Heart, which was published in 1883.

It is eternity now. I am in the midst of it. It is about me in the sunshine; I am in it, as the butterfly in the light-laden air. Nothing has to come; it is now.

The idea here is to make a minute and forty-four seconds seem like a huge amount of time: to mark the moment of now in music that, by its very nature, consists of a series of events that take place over time. This is, of course, distinctly different from the real (or imaginary) moment of actual "now."

Some day I will hear it performed. Here's a computer-generated recording of it as a stand-alone piece for soprano and string quartet, and a link to a PDF.

And I just found out that the thesis I wrote for my master's degree (a full analysis of the opera) is available online here.

Harris Walz now for Trumpet and Piano

I have been writing a series of obbligato parts to accompany the piano original.

My friend Daniel Gianola-Norris and his pianist friend Yvonne Wormer recorded this configuration of "Harris Walz" yesterday afternoon.



The trumpet and piano arrangement is now on this page of the IMSLP.

Leaping Past Zinnias

Elizabeth Tingley is a remarkable writer. I am very familiar with many of places she writes about in the book since I live in the Illinois town where she grew up. I also know many of the neighborhoods and locations she describes in New York and in the Boston area. I am in the rare position to report that she describes these places exactly as they are (or were in the later 20th century).

The madness and murder in the title concerns her brother-in-law Michael Laudor, who killed his pregnant girlfriend in 1998 during a psychotic episode, which was covered (after it happened) by the tabloid press.

Tingley's story is extremely honest, and devoid of sensationalism. It is an intimate portrait of the Laudor family, and a beautifully written account of how her experience with them intersects with her particular daemons (which she is able to work through methodically in the course of her life). It is a beautifully told story of survival--a book I really didn't want to put down.

While looking at reviews of other books and articles about Michael Laudor, particularly this review of this book, I thought about illusions of windows into the minds of people we are close to can only give us a suggestion of what might be happening in their minds. I have also observed that people suffering from mental illness are not necessarily reliable witnesses.

Elizabeth Tingley tells the story of her own life in detailed connection with Michael Laudor's brother Richard. She is a reliable witness, and an honest one.

If Gidi Rosenfeld's review about the shortcomings of Rosen's book resonates with anyone interested in the subject of Michael Laudor or of mental illness, I would suggest reading Elizabeth Tingley's memoir in order to get a more nuanced picture of Michael Laudor.

This is also an important book to read if you are interested in how childhood trauma (and I imagine everyone has childhood trauma to some degree) can, if addressed and worked through with good mental health professionals, be far less of a burden in adulthood than if unaddressed. Elizabeth Tingley became a child psychologist in order to figure out how to process her childhood trauma, and she became a writer in order to be able to write about it. And she did. And I am glad. It just came out last week, and I am honored to be one of the first readers. 

 Here's a link to the book on Amazon.

Harris Walz (somebody had to do it)

I spent yesterday feeling very happy because of the news about Kamala Harris's choice of Tim Walz as a running mate in the 2024 election. Here's a one-minute waltz I wrote to commemorate the day and the choice.

You can find a PDF on this page of the IMSLP.

UPDATE: I have made three transcriptions (so far): one for cello and piano (a cello obbligato to go with the solo piano original), one for viola and piano (a viola obbligato), and one for trumpet and piano. All are available through the transcription tab on the above IMSLP link.

Want to learn more about Nathaniel Dett? There's a blog for that!

And here it is! And here's Nathaniel Dett's page in the IMSLP.

Confidence

I have long held this bit of wisdom from Stevens Hewitt, "Competence is enough. Competence is all there is," close to my heart, but I'm starting to believe that competence needs to be combined with confidence in order to make the statement really ring true.

As I make my daily way towards competence on the piano (as well as competence on the violin and the viola), I find myself rewarded by the fact that I can now, in many instances where I previously had trouble, get from one note to the next or one passage to the next with a real sense of intention. It was something that I longed to be able to achieve during decades and decades of dedicated practice, but until relatively recently thought was impossible.

I always thought my problem was due to some kind of hard-wired musical handicap, like not having absolute pitch (in my household absolute pitch or near-absolute pitch was the norm). It was particularly problematic when I played the flute. I would record myself and hate the fact that what I heard lacked the sense of direction I wanted. Playing with a metronome helped, but it only gave the illusion of phrase direction because of the regularity of the beat. Playing with the metronome on off-beats helped, but the "swing" that resulted seemed to vanish when I turned the metronome off.

It was not as much of a problem when playing violin or viola because configurations of up-bows, down-bows, and slurs could temper the problem. But as I became more competent as a player, my musical standards went up, and I really wanted to correct this inability to make phrases go the way I wanted them to go.

Then, after doing a lot of therapeutic work on myself and learning how to understand things about my childhood that were too painful to fully acknowledge while I was going through adulthood and early middle age, I began to develop a sense of confidence about who I was as a person. I spent my youth dwelling on the things that I wasn't or didn't have, and have had the great fortune to consider my younger years from a distance.  And eventually (and remarkably) the barriers that made it so difficult for me to make phrases that could go the way I wanted them to go were no longer there.

Technically it probably has something to do with having the clarity to pay attention to the direction, speed, and feel of my bow during the note I am moving from to the note I am going towards. These developments started to make physical sense to me around the time I wrote this post about musical doorways on 2023.

And now I am able to control the motion between pitches while playing the recorder, which means I have officially moved beyond whatever it was that was holding me back. 

I attribute this giant step in music making to overcoming a profound lack of confidence that began in early childhood. I must have masked it well because nobody seemed to notice it, and nobody (no teachers or parents) ever talked with me about it. Most of them just contributed to the problem by, I guess, ignoring it.

I think all human beings love watching confident people at work. I love watching artists, gymnasts, and craftspeople work. I feel a sense of physical comfort when I listen to and watch a confident musician. And if that musician is playing or singing virtuoso music, I feel a mixture of satisfaction and excitement. If I hear a person speak with confidence, I feel confident myself, unless that confident person is saying something that angers me. If, for whatever reason, I hear someone I admire lose confidence because they trip over their words, I feel their lack of confidence personally.

I know I am not alone. People experience lack of confidence in different ways. Some people, for whatever reasons, seek reassurance from others in order to believe that their work is adequate. Some people (like me) prefer to judge the work we do ourselves, being well aware of our shortcomings, and knowing that we do the best we can do, always considering the habitually perceived handicaps we carry around with us and try to eviscerate with everything we create.

I believe we can instill confidence in our students. We can do it by really listening to them and commenting in a way that reinforces the things that we observed them doing correctly. It is also important to acknowledge the things that students struggle with and show them ways to address the difficulties. Most of all we need to make it clear that the inability to do one thing or another is not an inborn deficiency. I also think that giving students permission to fail relieves the blow to their confidence if they (gasp!) make a mistake. 

This doesn't mean that we should give them a free pass if they habitually forget to count or habitually forget to look at the key signature or listen for intonation.

By helping students to gain confidence in lessons, and by encouraging students to instill confidence in themselves between lessons (always a struggle), I believe that we offer them far more than the ability to play an instrument or the enjoyment of being able to express themselves musically and communicate musically with others. 

We are giving them tools to organize the world in terms of things that they can do and will be able to do if they apply themselves. And if we are lucky they might even spend a part of their formative years being kind to themselves and, in turn, being kind to others.

One thing that gives me confidence is that I have not passed this "trait" onto our children. They are highly competent and confident adults, great parents, and great teachers.

Mozart K330 Andante Surprise

During these days of chaos and uncertainty, I find myself spending more and more time with music that is organized and certain and have been finding my greatest solace in Bach and Mozart.

Yesterday I came across this odd E-natural half note in measure thirty-nine of the Andante of Mozart's 10th Piano Sonata, K330 that would make more sense to me if that E-natural were a quarter note on the second beat of the measure, since it is so deeply at odds with the F naturals in the bass when it falls on the first beat. But it is in the first edition, published while Mozart was still alive, and it is in the manuscript (shown below the first edition).

My solution to the problem of mitigating that extra dissonance is to play it very softly.

[click for larger images]

Anyway, I did notice something surprising about this manscript: Mozart used the soprano clef for the right hand.

Of course I looked at all the Mozart Piano Sonata manuscripts I could find in the IMSLP, and I found that he only used the soprano clef in one other sonata: the F major, published as number 12 (K332/300k). But then I noticed that this is one that Mozart titled "Sonata III." Look!

I looked up "soprano clef" in Merriam-Webster, and was disappointed to see that their definition of it could be taken as misleading.

They are, of course, talking about the published words "soprano clef" being first used in 1786. Just in case you are wondering, Mozart's 10th and 12th Sonatas were published by Antaria in 1784 with a treble clef in the upper staff. I wonder if the first use of "soprano clef" in print might have been referring to something related to that publication. Probably not.

Also, don't bother to click on the illustration link: you will get a treble clef, not a C clef. You will find a better explanation here.

Reconsidering perfection, again

It seems that the more confident I become as a musician, particularly as a string player, a composer, and as a teacher, the less I look for approval. But I do seek recognition, which I use literally here: I like to be recognized for what I am trying to do. I am my own very harsh critic, and feel mainly "right" with myself and my work when I know that I have done my best. And doing my best means fixing the problems I create for myself.

When I teach I am responsible for finding solutions to problems that other people have created. And I feel like I have accomplished something when any person I teach (or help) either internalizes those solutions, or is inspired by them to come up with alternatives.

As a young student I was a parasite, and though I sometimes remember the source of a particular solution, sometimes I don’t. I rarely learned anything from my formal private flute lessons, because my "official" teachers were more interested in themselves than they were in me.  But friends who shared musical thoughts and ideas with me were (and still are) my best teachers. Even the dead ones, like Haydn, Mozart, Beethoven, Bach, Brahms, Schubert, Schumann, Mendelssohn, Saint-Saëns, and Boulanger

Writing resonant music that is comfortable to play (on any instrument) is really important to me. I aspire to write music that helps people fall in love with music itself, and to communicate that love to the people they play with. It’s an added bonus if there is somebody listening. And if someone recognizes a kindred spirit, I have accomplished the kind of connection I hope for.

And I really enjoy it when something I have written or arranged compels students and friends to be expressive. Freedom of expression is a sacred freedom. And there is no perfection in expression.

My experience in the world of musicians (close contact to high-calibre professionals from a young age) has taught me that there is always someone who can play better and write better. Could you imagine playing at a level so high that it feels like it is impossible to improve? Could you imagine the pressure to maintain that illusion of perfection night after night? And could you imagine peaking as a child and losing that ability to touch the sun at the relatively young age of thirty-five? Or fifty. There is an illusive goal of of perfection in execution, but, thank goodness, in composing there is no perfection. There are only choices. 

I actually don't believe in perfection, and I stand by a blog post I made nearly twenty years ago concerning perfection. It was my first blog post.

I think what really matters is becoming more musically genuine as a result of being able to express feelings through our instruments and through the musical phrases we encounter (or create).

Trouble in River City!

I came across this film clip of Meredith Willson explaining how "Trouble" from The Music Man works.

I first encountered this man when I read his memoir, And There I Stood with my Piccolo which I read (in one sitting) in the Boston Public Library when I was a teenager. I learned something about how shows and operas were put together when I realized that The Music Man had melodic material that threaded its way through every song. I have also come to understand that the “think method” can be a really valuable tool (when combined with actual practice).

What a brilliant man. This is the first time I have seen a film of him in action, and I am so excited to share this experience!

New String Orchestra Arrangements for 2023 and 2024

I regularly add arrangements to this folder, and every couple of years I make a post listing the more recent arrangements and original pieces I have added. Some arrangements are in the IMSLP, and some are (for obvious reasons) not.

You can access the folder here.

(Darling?) Starling

My friend Martha's sister suggested that my bird might be a starling. Boy does that make sense. After all, Mozart bought a starling back in 1784 because he heard it in a pet store singing the theme of the last movement of his 17th piano concerto. They are really smart birds, and can learn their vast repertoire of material from sources other than other birds.

I have certainly seen starlings in the yard, but I dismissed the idea of a starling (I had forgotten that the starling was the star of the Mozart story, and not some other bird) because I might have some prejudice against them. I associate a flock of starlings with a loud and distinctly unmusical clatter, but I had never heard one sing a solo before.

When we first moved to town in 1985 there was a starling invasion of sorts. And they seemed to congregate in the two tall oak trees in the front yard of our rental house. Our landlord used to clap pieces of wood together to get them to leave, partially because they were loud and annoying, but mostly because they raided his squirrel feeders.

Yes. They are an invasive species. The European Starling made its way across the Atlantic because back in 1890 a group of Shakespeare-loving New Yorkers wanted to have every bird mentioned in Shakespeare's works to be present in Central Park.

The huge flocks of starlings that spent time in our town have withered during the past 40 years. I only see them occasionally, here and there.

But our yard (we moved to our own house in 1991) must have had meaning for a flock of starlings one evening in the early 1990s.

We were leaving the Wilb Walker grocery store (which is no longer there) when we noticed that the tree across the street in front of Valerie's Hair Affair (it is no longer a hair salon) had starlings all over it--like leaves. There must have been hundreds, if not thousands, of birds.

We were headed for home, but thought we would have a little adventure and follow them. Their destination happened to be our back yard. There they were: spread out like a black carpet.

What are the odds?

I read Jan Sibelius quoted somewhere (or maybe it was in a memoir) that the musical life of a place is directly related to its bird life. But I never imagined that it could go both ways. That some birds can get their material from the music that they happen to hear. Or that while we are watching them and listening for them, they might be watching us and listening to us.

Hab ich einen Vogel?

From time to time I write about the bird with the singular song that visits our yard. None of the bird-identifying apps and none of my bird-wise friends (and I have the most wise of bird-wise friends) have identified the species of this bird by its song, which I can duplicate exactly on the violin.

My most trusted bird-identifying friend suggested that it might be a singluar song made by a bird who knows many, like an oriole, but the timing is wrong. I have heard this bird as early as late February. And it comes back every year.

I hadn't heard it for a good month and a half, and this morning, while I was practicing some Haydn (the "Razor" quartet, not the "Bird") on the violin, it returned.

It sang (that's a midi rendering of a piccolo), and then I played. It sang back, and I played back. We went back and forth in rapid succession, maybe ten times. Maybe more.

I have had this musical exchange with this particular bird over many years.

Our back yard has a creek in it, which seems to be the home of a great deal of wildlife. Our house is at the top of a small hill, and the room where I practice could very easily be in, according to a bird's eye view, a tree.

I'm wondering now if that bird could have learned his or her song from me practicing a passage like this over and over (as I have been known to do).

Here's an interesting article about the repertoire that some birds have.