Gilles Apap Mozart Cadenza

I love Gilles Apap's playing, and it is just great to have this video clip of him accessible to anyone by way of YouTube.

Excellent Mozart Article in the New Yorker

"Examination of Mozart’s surviving sketches and drafts—Constanze threw many sketches away—reveals that the composer sometimes began a piece, set it aside, and resumed it months or years later; rewrote troubling sections several times in a row; started movements from scratch when a first attempt failed to satisfy; and waited to finish an aria until a singer had tried out the opening. Ulrich Konrad calls these stockpiles of material “departure points”—“a delineation of intellectual places to which Mozart could return as necessary.” In other words, the music in Mozart’s mind may have been like a huge map of half-explored territories; in a way, he was writing all his works all the time. The new image of him as a kind of improvising perfectionist is even more formidable than the previous one of God’s stenographer. Ambitious parents who are currently playing the “Baby Mozart” video for their toddlers may be disappointed to learn that Mozart became Mozart by working furiously hard, and, if Constanze was right, by working himself to death."

I was really happy to come across this article called A Storm of Style by Alex Ross in the New Yorker. The article speaks for itself: no comment is needed. I'm glad that a "hard copy" will be arriving in the mail shortly because this is one I would like to read many times.

Just the way it has always been

I find a special pleasure knowing that when I practice I am doing pretty much the same thing in the pretty much the same way that I would have done ten years ago, or twenty years ago, or fifty years ago, or one hundred years ago, or one hundred fifty years ago, or even two hundred years ago. In this modern world where much of the technology we use on a daily basis changes so quickly it is nice to know that the most important musical technology, careful practicing, has remained pretty much the same.

Making judgements about music

"No art is so subject to indiscriminate judgement as music. It would seem that nothing could be easier to judge. Not only professional musicians, but even those who pose as amateurs, would like to be regarded as judges of what they hear."

". . . We fare no better with regard to composition. We would not willingly be considered ignorant, and yet we do not always feel that we are capable of deciding matters rightly. Thus, in order that we may regulate our judgements accordingly, our first question is usually, 'By whom is the piece composed?' If, then, the piece is by someone to whom we have previoulsy given our approval, we immediately, and without further reflection, declare it beautiful. If the opposite is the case, or if we perhaps object to something about the person of the composer, the piece too is considered worthless. If anyone wishes to be palpably convinced of this, he needs only to put forth two compositions of equal quality under different names, one in good, the other in bad repute. The ignorance of many judges will soon be apparent."

Johann Joachim Quantz, On Playing the Flute (1752), translated by Edward R. Reilly

Musicians are still basically an insecure lot, and there is nothing that aggravates musicians' insecurities more than having to make a judgement about a piece of music written by a living composer. There seem to be all sorts of strings attached to formulating an opinion, including exposing oneself as being ignorant of 20th century- or 21st-century techniques, or being thought of as "backwards" for embracing and enjoying tonality. Some people find favor with music from "exotic cultures" simply because of the "hipness" of the culture, whether it be foreign or domestic; and some people have preconceptions about music written by a person of a particular nationality, and they don't know whether to judge the music as "good" on the basis of how much it represents their own preconceptions of the culture. We also still tend to judge music on the basis of the gender of the composer.

I find myself in at least three positions regarding making judgements about music. Since I write CD reviews, I am required to make judgements about recordings I hear. I always have to go with my instincts regarding new music that is unfamiliar to me. Through reviewing recordings I have found several living composers who have written pieces of music that I really like. I feel it is my duty as a musician to say why I like what they have written. Hopefully there are music lovers and composers who appreciate my efforts.

As a performing musician I look for usefulness in music. If I am going to perform a piece of music, I want it to be a piece that I can spend several hours a day with for a long time. I want it to be a piece that is continually interesting for me to practice and rehearse. I want it to be a piece that can eventually sound good on my instrument, and a piece that I can express myself through musically.

As a composer, everything is different when it comes to making judgements about music because I don't write music to be judged. I write music because I like to write music. I do not consider anything I write to be anything besides what it is: music to play and to enjoy. It is not great. It is what it is. It is a vacation from what I do as a "critic," but not far removed from what I do as a performing musician because I do feel that it is somehow useful. People still need new music to play, and people (people who do not feel the burden of having to make any sort of "larger" judgement) seem to like listening to the stuff I write. I have come to the conclusion that people of the present like to have music and art that reflects something of whatever this era we live in is, and as long as I need to express myself in this way, it is perfectly fine to do so.

So, if anyone reading this ever hears anything I write, please refrain from having to make a judgement about it and its place in the "grand scheme" of music. Just enjoy it if you do, and listen to something else if you don't. I imagine there are other composers who feel this way.

Words on marrying well from Virgil Thomson

This is from Virgil Thomson's 1939 essay "How Composers Eat, or Who Does What to Whom and Who gets Paid."

. . . A surprisingly large number of composers are men of private fortune. Some of these have it from papa, but the number of those who have married their money is not small. The composer, in fact, is rather in demand as a husband. Boston and New England generally are noted for the high position there allotted to musicians in the social hierarchy and for the number of gifted composers who have in consequence married into flowery beds of ease. I don't know why so many composers marry well, but they do. It is a fact. I don't suppose their sexuality is any more impressive than anybody else's, though certainly, as intellectuals go, the musician yields to none in that domain. After all, if a lady of means really wants an artistic husband, a composer is about the best bet, I imagine. Painters are notoriously unfaithful, and they don't age gracefully. They dry up and sour. Sculptors are of an incredible stupidity. Poets are either too violent or too tame, and terrifyingly expensive. Also, due to the exhausting nature of their early lives, they are likely to be impotent after forty. Pianists and singers are megalomaniacs; conductors worse. Besides, executants don't stay home enough. The composer, of all art-workers in the vineyard, has the prettiest manners and ripens the most satisfactorily. His intellectual and his amorous powers seldom give completely out before his death.

Song of the Limberlost: a new piece for harp

Last summer, after promising myself that I would have nothing to do with composition contests, I wrote a piece for one. I did it because the specifics of the contest (it is called the USA International Harp Competition) asked for a piece that had something to do with Gene Stratton-Porter, who is one of my favorite writers. My first favorite book ever was The Magic Garden. I found a copy of it in my attic when I was a child. I was looking for The Secret Garden because my fourth grade teacher was reading it to us, and I wanted to read ahead. I read it countless times in childhood, and was able to read it again in adulthood when my husband Michael found a copy of it through a used book store many years ago, and gave it to me as a present. He also read it out loud to me. What a guy.

When I moved to my small midwestern town I actually found people who knew who Gene Stratton-Porter was, and there were even books of hers in the local library. Thanks to the library and to interlibrary loan (and a few lucky days in used book stores) I was able to read nearly all of her books in their original editions. Now her books have been reissued and are easily available. They are still rare and special to me.

For this contest I chose to write reflections on A Girl of the Limberlost because I have always wanted to write a piece to reflect the music in the novel. I am very proud of what I wrote, but it didn't win any of the prizes offered by the competition.

The big prize for me is that now I can share the piece, and anyone can play it. Here is a recording of it played by Julia Kay Jamieson.

Back to Reality

Well, I have taken off the fairy-princess dress, and I am back practicing viola. I have viola music to learn, and the only way to play viola parts well is to practice them on the viola. Of course I have to do my Sevcik too since I have become greedy and still want to acquire more technique.

I'm giving my violin a well-deserved rest until it's time to work on the Debussy Sonata. I hope it appreciates the time off.

So what have I noticed about the viola that I didn't notice before? The resonance is totally different from the resonance of the violin. There is much more potential for roughness in the sound, and the upper register has a quality very much unlike the sweetness of the violin's high register. I also notice that I am far more comfortable playing at the frog when playing the viola than I am playing the violin.

Sense of Accomplishment

I just finished all 480 of the numbers in my Moyse chart as applied to Sevcik, and know that I am a much better violinist because of it. I even played a recital this past weekend that was a great improvement over the last one I played, proving that practicing Sevcik really works.

So what's next? I guess I'll apply my number system to a few more books of Sevcik or Dounis, maybe.

Practicing technique does strange things

I don't quite understand how it works, but after doing my steady diet of a "row" of Sevcik for 26 days in a row, I know that I am a much better violinist. I feel a little bit like I did 30 years ago when I was in the process of "acquiring" technique on the flute. I feel like anything is possible. I feel like there is nothing that I cannot (eventually) do musically. When I am not practicing I think about practicing. When I'm sleeping, I dream about the violin. Last night it was a dream about my grandfather and the music in his violin case.

One interesting difference between now and 30 years ago is that now I can appreciate and enjoy the process of learning. When I was young I had my sights firmly set on the future. I only wanted results, and getting to where I needed to be technically seemed like an eternity. Now that I am older (47 to be exact), it takes far longer to learn something than it did when I was in my 20s, but it somehow means much more, and the process seems to go more quickly.

Old School Practice Technology

When I was in a hurry to gather together as much technique as possible on the flute, my favorite way to do it as quickly as possible was by using Marcel Moyse's Scales and arpeggios: 480 exercises for flute. It begins with the numerical grid pictured here. The numbers on this grid refer to 480 of the most difficult combinations of notes possible. Each combination lasts for about 4 measures or so.

Since I imagine that Moyse, who was a very cosmopolitan musician and teacher, could have gotten the idea for this from the violin technique books of Sevcik, I numbered the exercises in three of my Sevcik books (Shifting the position, Double Stops, and Exercises in the First position) so that covering all three books comes to 480. I pasted the above grid in one of my books, and I do a line every day. It takes about an hour, and I digest all the most difficult aspects of violin technique in four measure "bites."

You can find a PDF of this grid here.

Practice Advice

I'm a firm believer in practicing for an hour, and then taking a break for a while before practicing again in order not to tax myself physically or burn myself out mentally. During one of my breaks I came accross this bit of fantastic practice advice from psychologist Sander I. Marcus.

I guess I'll go and practice some more.

Full of Hot Air

When I teach lessons, the images I use to get students to do something musically usually fade into the air after the lesson is over, but this one I would like to share. A nine-year-old student was working on "Long Long Ago" at her lesson yesterday. When she got to the half notes she simply "checked out," and her attention returned when it was time to play the quarter notes and eighth notes. I told her that the personality of a violinist was "all about" what goes on during the half notes, and I told her that she could breathe in while playing them. Then I got the idea that half notes could be like balloons filled with air, floating upward. She was pretty amazed with the results, and she was able to actually use her breath to control her bow arm.

The breathing in thing always works for me. It is something I noticed years ago when listening to Heifetz play transcriptions of songs. During long notes a singer is unable to breathe because the singer's air is obviously the thing making the sound. When we listen to singers, or to any musicians for that matter, we listen with our bodies, so we react physically to what the musician is doing. What strikes me as interesting when listening to Heifetz's transcriptions, is that music I am used to hearing in one way--with the singer's air creating the sound of sustained notes--I hear a new way, and that way involves breathing during long notes. When Heifetz breathes, I do too, but the sustained note continues and even expands.

The act of breathing deeply causes our bodies to relax. The act of breathing feeds oxygen to every part of our bodies, including our brains.

As a flutist I relied (I guess I still rely on it when I'm practicing the recorder) on breath support for everything, including playing "technical passages." As a string player I use breath support all the time, unless I forget--and then I wonder why things aren't working.

My Father was Simon Barere

This is the name of a CD on VAI Audio (VAIA 1244 to be exact) that has concert performances of the pianist Simon Barere (1896-1951) interspersed with an interviews with his son, Boris Barere. The person talking with Barere is Jacques Leiser.

For those who do not know him, Simon Barere was a Russian pianist who studied with Felix Blumenfeld. He was famous for playing extremely difficult music at extraordinarily fast tempi, but from the interview on this CD I learned that he did so with very little practice. His playing is thrilling to hear, not just for the speed, and not even for the ease of his playing, but for what he is able to do with the music simply because he can. His recording of the Schumann Toccata, Opus 7, had to be fast in order to have the piece fit onto one side of a 78 r.p.m. recording, but he still takes time to let the music breathe, and sing, and fly. It is extremely inspiring.

Technorati tags: Simon Barere, piano, pianists, classical music

Instrumental Mindset: Violin Psyche

It is that time of year again, and I'm spending much of my creative time practicing the violin. All of a sudden my attraction for the instrument has to do with the instrument itself, not just its repertoire. I have been practicing technical exercises: scales, arpeggios, double stops, shifting exercises, bowing exercises, and etudes, and I am actually acquiring some technique. I can finally do left hand pizzicato, and I can now play double stops in tune without relying on mostly luck. I think that all this time I have been spending with the violin has caused me to think like a violinist.

Aside from scales, etudes, and the occasional bowing exercise, I rarely practice exercises involving technique on the viola. Practicing hard technical stuff on the viola hurts my hand after a short time. Most violists spend their practice time improving their sounds, refining their phrasing, and thinking about interpretation. Playing in tune on the viola always has to be taken on a note-by-note basis, while playing in tune on the violin is rather scientific. On the violin a half step is a half step: one finger width. On the viola the notes are just far apart enough to require constant adjustment. A finger width is not always the operative measurement.

The funny thing is now that I have acquired some useful technique, I actually enjoy playing technical passages just for the sake of playing technical passages. It is an eye opening experience for me. This obsession of mine may not last long, but I'm sure having a good time while the spirit moves me.

More Meetings with Remarkable Men

When I was around 11 I went to a summer camp near Tanglewood. It was a "fine arts" camp, so we sometimes went on trips to see and hear performances. One concert we went to was some kind of new music concert at Tanglewood. I was pretty young at the time and had little frame of reference, so I can't remember what was on the program. I do remember that it was in the Theatre building, and I was sitting with my friend Donna Zeif, who lived in New York and was very worldly.

At intermission Donna got very excited and pointed across the Theater at two men who were standing up. She told me that the two men were Leonard Bernstein and Aaron Copland. We ran through the crowd, and she approached Leonard Bernstein and asked him for his autograph. (I knew it was Leonard Bernstein because she addressed him as "Mr. Bernstein," and I imagine she knew who he was from the Young People's Concerts in New York.) He held out his hand like a policeman stopping traffic and said "No, no, not tonight." I said something to him (I know not what), and he laughed. He might have even patted me on the head.

Technorati tags: Classical Music, Aaron Copland, Leonard Bernstein, Tanglewood