Louise

I am so grateful that my mother-in-law, Louise Leddy, was able to spend the last five of her almost ninety-three years of life in a series of care facilities in our small Illinois town. Tomorrow with our family (both of our children, their partners, and all three of our grandchildren) we will celebrate the ninety-third anniversary of her birth together.

That she died peacefully in her sleep is a gift. And being able to work with the many excellent caregivers (first in assisted living, then in memory care, and finally in a skilled nursing facility where she had and excellent team of transitions nurses) who enjoyed Louise's grace, kindness, and Brooklyn accent, is a gift.

I confess that I would often dress "for" Louise, who always told me that I was beautiful, even through the impaired cognition that comes with advanced dementia. Louise meant it. She also knew how much Michael loved her, and trusted him completely with managing her care. She often remarked about how handsome he was.

Having Louise in my daily life, especially given the dearth of demonstrative love in my family of origin, has been a transformative experience.

Thank you, Louise, for sharing this last part of your life with us. And thank you for being the mother of my kind and handsome husband, who learned how to love purely and completely from you.

You can read Michael's post about Louise here.

Rite of Spring, Rite of Passage

[Click for a larger image of the huge orchestra (reinforced by the East Central Illinois Youth Orchestra for the Mussorgsky version of "The Night on Bear Mountain" and huge audience. It is easy to find me in the picture: just look for the violist with the grey hair.]

I played Stravinsky's The Rite of Spring a few days ago. I have known the piece (i.e. heard) for the greater part of my life, but aside from practicing the alto flute solos out of context (and never under pressure), this was my first experience playing it. I joked that I was the viola virgin that was being sacrificed.

Though I intellectually understood what I needed to do in order to play the piece as a member of the viola section, I was not as physically equipped as my section mates, all of whom (as you can see) are young enough to be my children.

Playing the passages that require oft-repeated down-bows, for example, can (and did after several rehearsals) really stress muscles and joints that we don't normally use in that particular way, at that particular loud dynamic, and for that long.

The first rehearsals went surprisingly well for me (I had practiced), but by the last rehearsal I worried that I might be getting too old for viola-playing musical life at this physical level.

I also realized, when I realized that I had forgotten my thermos of coffee in the car before the last rehearsal, how much adequate amounts of caffeine are necessary for the mental and physical stress of The Rite of Spring.

Fully caffeinated for the performance (and well fed to boot), I found the experience exhilarating, and am pleased to say that I functioned as a fully present member of the viola section.

Now, except for the fact that I am still sore, I feel like I can accomplish just about anything. Musically, that is.

If I Were an Earworm

A friend asked me to make an arrangement of this song from 1967 a couple of weeks ago. So I did. And now I'm working on another one for Summer Strings 2026.

I just can't seem to stop working on it, and even though I have other musical distractions going on concurrently (The Rite of Spring, for example, which I'm performing on Saturday, and for the very first time), this song always bubbles up to the surface of my consciousness.

Sometimes it mixes with "The Glorification of the Chosen One" in Part II of The Rite of Spring, which is very interesting.

The Fiddler song seems, somehow, to be surging through the bloodstream of the entire world right now. It's opening rhythm is like a pulse that cannot be turned off. (I can't help but be sensitive to these things.)

I'm hoping that when I am finished with the arrangement it will magically leave my head.

Right.

I'm also hoping that the disgusting amount of greed (did somebody say insider trading?) that has been darkening what seems like every corner of the world these days will magically recede into the background and be replaced with generosity, fairness, and good will. And while we're at it could I make a small request for having the kind of goverment that makes it possible for people to live decent lives without fear of being deported for no reason?

It just hit me . . .

UPDATE:

I got a nice note from Philippe Quint today (April 4), and he will do his best to make it right. 

_____________________

Excited about hearing the performance by Quint and Litton that I wrote about in a blog post I earlier today, I went to the Pentatone website and found that I could listen to the first few phrases of the piece. 

Quint does add a couple of extra double-stop notes to my transcription, which he has every right to do. What he and Pentatone do not have every right to do is not to give me credit for the making the transcription, making it available to download from the IMSLP, and keeping it in the public domain (where I found the original version for organ) so it could be performed and recorded by anyone, anywhere. 

I have not registered this transcription (or any of my other transcriptions of the piece) with ASCAP because I don't want to put financial restraints on anyone who wants to maintain Price's hard-won legacy by playing and recording this piece. My dream for this piece is to keep it freely available, and to keep it circulating in the hearts, hands, and arms of musicians and people who like to listen to music long after I am no longer alive.

I encountered this lack-of-recognition problem with this piece a few years ago in connection with Randall Goosby's recording of the transcription for Decca. After I informed him of the omission Mr. Goosby sent me a long and heartfelt apology. He also made sure that Decca gave me credit for the transcription in all the publicity materials for the recording. 

Most people who perform my transcriptions of the piece give me credit, and I really appreciate it. I may not care about making money on this piece, but I feel deeply insulted when my connection with it is ignored or erased, particularly when that erasure is made by a commercial entity that is making money on Price's music.

Yesterday I sent a message via Facebook messenger to Philippe Quint, but I haven't heard back from him. It was a message thanking him for including my transcription on his recording. I didn't mention the fact that Pentatone didn't think it worth mentioning my name on the recording.

I think of that line from Vertigo, "It can’t matter to you."

But it does matter. 

A lot.

Before sitting down to write this post I thought of buying a copy of the CD tomorrow, when it becomes available. But the company is located in the Netherlands, and with the new tariffs, the price would be very high. I also think that owning a physical CD, no matter how beautiful the playing is, might feel like pouring salt in a wound. I suppose I could write to the label and ask for a free recording, but I doubt I would hear back from them. 

They Care if You Listen

I'm very excited about the release tomorow of Philippe Quint's Milestones recording. And I am grateful to A. Kori Hill, from the website I Care if You Listen, for writing something about my violin and piano arrangement of Florence Price's "Adoration," which is offered as a bonus track.

Quint closes the album with Adoration by Florence Price, which he describes as a bonus track. Originally for organ, this piece has found new life in an arrangement for violin and piano, and Quint’s rich, deep tone and keen emotional sense is put to effective use.

Though a bonus track, it was disappointing to find no liner notes for this increasingly popular work that was unknown for decades. It was first arranged by performer-composer Elaine Fine, followed by a published arrangement by G. Schirmer with variances in the piano (and no credited arranger) in 2019. By comparison with the scores, it is the Fine version being performed here. To include her as arranger would have been not only respectful, but historically responsible.

Trust & Resistance Concert

It is such an honor that the German cellist Katja Zakotnik is including my Sephardic Suite on this "trust & resistance" concert. I like to think that music will, somehow, see us (the big "us," meaning the people who inhabit our fragile planet) through the dangers of the present moment and the dangers of the dark future ahead.

It looms like a very dark series of clouds just over the horizon.

We need to use all of our collective strength to resist, take shelter in music, literature, dance, and all kinds of art, and trust that the current darkness and the coming storm will eventually pass.

Sienna, Burnt and Raw for Guitar and Double Bass

This past Friday guitarist Saffron Sonoda and double bass player Joana Izabelle played the first performance of this duo at Sacred Trinity Church in Salford, UK. They will be recording it later this year. Saffron and Joana call their duo "Her Endangered Melody," so the title of the piece relates tangentially to the subject of the danger of extinction, and the importance of preservation.

I always found the names of the colors “burnt sienna” and “raw sienna” in the Crayola crayon box of my childhood extremely evocative. Sienna is a pigment made of manganese oxide and iron oxide. Because it was used in cave painting, we know that sienna was one of the first pigments that human beings used to express themselves.

In its raw state it is a light brown color (like the finish of a guitar), and in its burnt state it is a deeper brown (like the finish of a double bass). Named for the Italian city of Siena, its use in string instrument varnish began in the early Renaissance.

Burnt sienna was slated for removal from the Crayola box in 2003, but it was saved from extinction due to popular demand. This light-hearted piece serves as a reminder that musical expression and dialogue have survived through difficult times over the millennia. Popular demand will not allow for its extinction.

The cover image, in all its burnt and raw sienna glory, comes from the Cave of Lascaux.

You can listen to a computer-generated recording here.

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

Excellent performance of my Harlequin Sonata by Ella Hebrard

It is really remarkable when musicians play music I have written with a real sense of musical personality. And I want to give a big (because it is contrabassoon) and public (because it is a blog) "thank you" to Ella Hebrand for including this piece on her University of Michigan master's recital, and to both musicians for playing it so beautifully, and with so much character.



Because of the range and the poor quality of most computer speakers, you will want to use headphones to hear everything.

Here is Maurice Sand's portrait of a Harlequin listening. Maurice was George Sand's son, just in case you are curious about him and about the drawing. He doesn't have to wear headphones because he is a drawing made long before headphones were invented. Or even needed.

Three Stages of Bean Salad

Life is difficult these days. So I decided to share this photo I took at lunch. I could call this "Three Stages of Be-in' Salad," but I thought I'd save it for the text of this post rather than for the title.

The three stages are raw, sprouted, and, for want of a better term, cooked. We have raw green beans, sprouted mung beans, and lightly browned tofu (made from soy beans and bought at the store).

There is also some shredded cabbage (green and purple) in there, as well as some chopped scallions.

This salad is great with every kind of dressing, but today I had it with tahini dressing. Here's how I make it:

Put a nice spoonful of sesame tahini in a bowl, and splash in an equal amount of cider vinegar (the kind with "the mother" tastes best). If you don't have cider vinegar, lemon juice works as well.

I actually started using cider vinegar instead of lemon juice, and like the taste more.

Mix them together to form a very thick paste.

Slowly add some water, and the mixture will become thick (a different kind of thick), and white.

You can add salt to this mixture, or you can add soy sauce. You can add spices like powered garlic, or even ginger. Anything your heart desires.

I started making this back in the 1970s when I used to go to Amy's at 77th and Broadway in New York, on the way home from a hard day of practice at Juilliard. It was freely available in big a dispenser with little cups. My friends and I used to consume the contents of so many of those cups that the dispenser was, eventually, disbanded.

Before I learned the term "deconstruction," which Jacques Derrida wrote about in 1967, is "not the mixture but the tension between memory, fidelity, the preservation of something that has been given to us, and, at the same time, heterogeneity, something absolutely new . . .," I deconstructed the Amy's tahini sauce.

I knew, from the name, that it had tahini in it, and I tasted lemon and salt. When I mixed the two ingredients it turned, to my surprise, into a paste. I decided to thin it with a little water, and was thrilled to see that it had the same texture as the Amy's sauce. But it was a bit bitter. I balanced the bitterness by adding some salt. And there you have it.

There you have it: the tension between memory and fidelity (the emulsification of the oil by the acid), that results in the creation of something new. And as far as preservation goes, the mixture will stay good in the refrigerator for some time. But since it is good on everything, you might never find out how long.

Equity Arc Full Concert

The Travelling Companion

Yesterday, while reading Hans Christian Andersen's "The Travelling Companion," I started getting some serious operatic "vibes." I don't plan to write another opera (unless I just can't help myself). But considering my lack of ability to make the kinds of connections that make it possible for opera companies to consider staging my work, the amount of effort that goes into writing an opera doesn't make sense unless a performance is something other than a remote possibility.

I have tried, and I have failed. I know that my failure has nothing to do with the quality of my work. Still, it would be nice to see how things actually play out on a stage in an actual theater, instead of the one inside my head, where the acoustics are perfect, the lighting is ideal, the dancing is extraordinary, the voices are resonant, the diction is perfect, and the costumes and sets are limitless.

And if I were to set "The Travelling Companion" properly I would need to have some flying, some serious magical transformation (from black swan to white swan, and then to princess), and some violence (though that could be done musically).

I noticed that Charles Villiers Stanford, as prompted by his friend Hary Plunket Greene in 1911, made an operatic setting of the story with Henry Newbolt providing the libretto.

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

Stanford and Newbolt, being proper Victorians, minimized the Turandot-like nature of the princess (which Puccini made up for in his 1920 opera Turandot). Many of Andersen's tales are as old as time, and his stories could have had many sources. The Turandot story and other stories related to it most certainly have served as good travelling companions through several countries and several centuries. 

The Wikipedia article on Turandot  gives us a glimpse:

The beginnings of Turandot can likely be found in Haft Peykar, a twelfth-century epic by the Persian poet Nizami. One of the stories in Haft Peykar features a Russian princess. In 1722, François Pétis de la Croix published his Les Mille et un jours (The Thousand and One Days), a collection of stories which were purportedly taken from Middle Eastern folklore and mythologies.One of these stories, believed to be inspired by Nizami, features a cold princess named Turandokht. However, it has been speculated that many of de la Croix's 'translated' stories were his own original creations, with no actual basis in Middle Eastern cultures. De la Croix's story was adapted into a play, Turandot, by the Italian playwright Carlo Gozzi in 1762, which was then adapted by Friedrich Schiller into another play in 1801. It was Schiller's version that inspired Puccini to write the opera.

Stanford and Newbolt turn a troll into a wizard, and give the listener some foreshadowing which Andersen avoids. Andersen's stories tend to be linear, keeping the reader attuned to the here-and-now of the protagonist.

You can read about the latest production of Stanford's opera here.

Saint-Saëns writes about eating Chinese food in New York

From the chapter "Impressions of America" in Camille Saint-Saëns's Outspoken Essays on Music:

. . . After the play or opera it is the fashion to take supper in the Chinese quarter. These Orientals live some distance away in a few small streets where they have set up restaurants. Here you drink excellent tea and eat "ratatouille," a meat and vegetable stew, which no more resembles the real Chinese cooking--such as I became acquainted with in Saigon--than does a meal prepared for a Parisian workman in a creamery resemble a dinner at Voisin's or Paillard's. The difference is even greater, for nothing can compare, in point of delicacy, with the true Chinese fare served in fragile tiny painted cups which look as though they had been made for fairies. Sea-weed soups, lotus grains, young bamboo shoots, edible birds' nests, delicious shrimp pâtes mounded in the form of floweres and stars, perfumed sauces, small preserved tomatoes, light sticks of tortoise-shell and ivory, spoons of flower-adorned porcelain: the barbarous Occident is unworthy of you!

Make sure to follow the above link to Voisin's. It will blow your mind.

Brahms in Haydn

Or should I say in "Hidin'?"

Last night, while reading through Haydn's Opus 64, no. 6 String Quartet, my quartet mates and I all noticed (and at the same time) how much a few moments in second movement sound like the essence of Brahms.



[the video is embedded so it will start at the beginning of the second movement]

It happens in measure 19 and in the repetitions of those particular harmonies and voicings that happen later in the movement.

David Goza's YouTube channel is a great place to explore. He offers excellent commentary and "guided tours" of with light harmonic analysis beneath the scores in his videos. I'm so happy that he has so much Haydn.

Erik Christian Haugaard, guest blogger

Erik Christian Haugaard's Introduction to his 1974 translation of Hans Christian Andersen's complete fairy tales and stories is remarkable. I have loved Andersen's stories all of my life, and Haugaard's translation of all of them, which I first read in the 1990s and am re-reading with Michael now, are infinitely more enjoyable than the sterilized, edited, Danny Kayed, and Disneyfied versions I learned as a child.

I have set ten of these stories to music (using my own free adaptations of Haugaard's translations) over the past twenty-five years. These stories that have meant so much to so many people from so many times and from so many cultures are extremely meaningful in this fraught-ridden second quarter of the twenty-first century.

Here's an excerpt from the introduction that I find particularly meaningful:

These stories that Andersen heard as a child were all very simple tales, and their characters were probably more archetypes than they were individuals. They were not meant to surprise--let alone shock--the listener. Indeed, their attraction lay in the fact that they were familiar. The mean, the petty, the evil, the good, and the kind were so in the manner that one was used to; it was the plot itself that held one's interest. We of the twentieth century, who are so used to plotless novels with heroes so infinitely complex that, after having read the book, it is easier for us to describe the characters' nervous systems than to tell what the story was about, hardly ever come into contact with this early form of literature. Yet these stories, stripped as they are of the fashionable and the modish, give us—at least for a moment—that peace which is necessary for survival. Man must live in his own time—he has no choice--but for the sake of his sanity he must sometimes escape its tyranny--if only to be able recognize it. Once upon a time denies time and thus curtails its power over us. 

Once upon a time is a definite point in the infinite. It exists somewhere but has no particular date, which is a feat that is hardly explainable--and yet, maybe it is. We have divided time into precise periods. Was once upon a time in the Iron Age, the Bronze Age, or the thirteenth century?" we ask, for we are enlightened. But the peasant who heard a fairy tale in the market place and retold it to his family when he came home had no such conceptions. Time, for him, stretched from the creation till that moment which can best be described as now. And though he knew that raiment and customs changed, he did not believe they had very much influence on people. He knew the Bible well, yet it did not disturb him to see the Virgin portrayed as if she were a rich Florentine lady. Were not Saul and David like the kings he knew? Was Eve much diferent from his own wife?  Once upon a time was not magic or poetic, as it is to us. But then, the twentieth century has produced no fairy tales.

Andersen was the last great teller of fairy tales. We may create tales of imagination and fantasy, but they are not fairy tales. The fairy tale and the folk tale take place in the real world, no matter how exotic and strange their backgrounds may be. Witches, trolls, or mermaids may appear; but they are not figments of anyone's imagination; they are as real as the princess or the peasant. We who are manacled by a belief in progress and theories of natural behavior find it hard to understand this. We prefer to escape into fantasy, into worlds that are safe because they never have existed and never will. 

You can look at a preview of the book through this Canadian Random House site, and order a copy of it in the regular places.

Camille Saint-Saëns, Guest Blogger

I have always loved Camille Saint-Saëns as a composer. But there is also much to marvel at in his prose.

These two passages come from his essay "The Ideas of M. Vincent D'Indy" from Outspoken Essays on Music (translated to English in 1922 by Fred Rothwell):

Art came into being on the day that man, instead of being solely concerned with the utility of an object he had made, concerned himself with its form, and made up his mind that this form should satisfy a need peculiar to human nature, a mysterious need to which the name of "aesthetic sense " has been given.

Afterwards form was enriched by ornament, or decoration, which serves no other purpose than to satisfy this aesthetic sense. Subsequently it became man's desire to reproduce the form of his fellow beings, human and animal, and he began to do this--as a child still does—-by a stroke or line. This line does not exist in nature.

Here is the starting point in the radical difference between nature and art; art is destined not to reproduce nature literally, but to suggest an idea of nature. This principle, badly interpreted, gives rise to the aberrations which manifest themselves at the Salon d'Automne and the Salon des Indépendants.

It is by virtue of this principle that the most insignificant sketch gives an impression of art which will never be supplied by the finest photograph, however "artistic."

It is also on this account that the purists are mistaken when they attack "imitative music." Real imitative music would consist of the green-room noises by which a life-like imitation is given in the theatre to thhe wind and the rain and the various other sounds of nature. So-called imitative music does not imitate, it suggests. Composers have described storms, but there is not one that is like any of the rest. The singing of birds, which offends certain persons in Beethoven's Pastoral Symphony, is there imitated in very imperfect fashion; it is this very facct that constitutes its charm.

And a few pages later:

Everything is relative, we are told. This is true, though only within certain limits which cannot be overstepped. After a severe frost, a temperature of twelve degrees above zero seems stiflingly hot; on returning from the tropics, you shiver with cold at eighteen degrees above zero. There comes a limit, however, beyond which both cold and heat disorganise the tissues and render life impossible.

The dissonance of yesterday, we are also told, will be the consonance of tomorrow ; one can grow accustomed to anything. Still, there are such things in life as bad habits, and those who get accustomed to crime, come to an evil end. . . .

It is impossible for me to regard scorn of all rules as being equivalent to progress, by which word we generally mean improvement. The true meaning of the word—progressus—is a going forward, but the end or object is not stated. There is such a thing as the progress of a disease, and this is anything but improvement.

The more civilization advances, the more the artistic sense seems to decline: a grave symptom. We have already said that art came into existence on the day when man, instead of being solely preoccupied with the utility of an object, began to concern himself with its form.

More and more at the present time does attention to utility assume the foremost place ; we do away with all adornment and trouble ourselves nothing about form. The need to know is being substituted for the need to believe and to admire; and since what we know is insignificant compared with what we do not know, there is an immense field open to the human intellect.