Please Give to the Red Cross

If everyone helps, even just a little bit, putting the east coast back together will be a little less difficult. Just click the image below, and it will take you to the "donate" page for the Red Cross.

Voice Talk and Ear Talk

I just came across Daniel James Shigo's fascinating blog about singing. A post from yesterday describes ear dominance, and uses the two presidential candidates as examples to study.

I have always felt a great imbalance between the two hemispheres of my body, which is why I think I only feel truly whole as a string player. The two hands doing the same exact kind of thing, with only the central air mechanism being expressive and active often makes me feel like I am in an expressive box. My hands have different strengths, sizes, weights, and temperatures, and until I became a string player I never even noticed. I am right handed and, according to all accounts, left brain dominant. I should "lead" with the right, but I always "lead" with the left. I always look left first when crossing the street and when turning around. I always have to be on the right side when Michael and I walk together, so that he is on my left. I far prefer being on the right side of a music stand so that I can look to the left to read the music. The "right" is an area of mystery, and sometimes even discomfort.

I have read studies about eye dominance (I'm highly left eye dominant), and I have always been aware that my two ears hear differently from one another, but this is the first time I have seen an actual study about it. I know that my left ear is dominant, so I have to remember to listen with both ears, which sometimes requires a small amount of effort. When I do, the world brightens up. I hear more.

I guess I must be mixed dominant.

When I walk down the street listening to music or even listening to the sounds around me, people always smile at me. I never really understood why until now: I must look happy when I am listening with both ears. I like what Shigo says about students trying to appear happy in order to sing better.

Of course, the student can't fake happiness. But they can pretend. And this can go a long way. The brain will accept an image more than a fact. Did I mention that my student had a breakthrough, singing up the scale into her head voice with great beauty? To emphasize my point: she 'got' what it looked and sounded like when she wasn't tense around the eyes. Now. Will she be able to keep it? That's another matter. Changes in audio-vocal control have to carefully nurtured until they become integrated.

Shigo sings beautifully, by the way. Listen to him singing Joseph Turrin's setting of "She Walks in Beauty."

Division!

Yesterday I finished writing a set of Divisions on a Ground for alto recorder that will be part of a collection curated by Daniel Wolf that he is calling "The New Division." I am one of 24 composers who are each taking a different ground from John Walsh's The Division Flute and writing new Divisions (you could also call them variations) on the grounds that Walsh collected in 1706.

I had so much fun writing my "New Divisions on an Old Italian Ground" that I want, like a cell, to keep dividing. I'm currently working on a piece for violin, viola, and piano that could easily benefit from this kind of thing (a ground round, perhaps?), so I decided to check out Christopher Simpson's The Division Viol, which is an actual method book for writing divisions from 1655. (Perhaps it might have, in retrospect, been a good idea to read this before writing my set of recorder divisions, huh?)

The text and illustrations are as interesting as the Divisions themselves. This lovely orb, for example, shows the relationship of music to the zodiac "The outmoft Circle reprefents the Zodiack, and the Aspects of the Planets, to which you fee the Diapason with its Interfections exactly agreeing . . ." The bottom drawing shows that "all the Sounds that can poffibly be joyned together in Mufical Concordance, are ftill but the reiterated Harmony of Three."

Here's taste of Simposon's prose: a passage that explains his concept of music in relation to the zodiac. This is the 13th section of the second part of this book, his "Reflections upon the Concords of Music" (I have modernized the spellings, but have retained the capitalization):

And here I cannot but wonder, even to amazement, that from no more than Three Concords, (with some intervening Discords) there should arise such an infinite variety, as all the Music that ever has been or ever shall be composed. And my wonder is increased by a consideration of the Seven Gradual Sounds or Tones, from whose various positions and Intermixtures those Concords and Discords do arise. These Gradual Sounds are distinguished in the Scale of Music by the same seven Letters which in the Calendar distinguish the seven days of the Week; to either of which, the adding of more is but a repetition of the former over again.

This Mysterious number of seven, leads me into a contemplation of the Universe, whose Creation is delivered unto our Capacity (not without some mystery) as begun and finished in seven days, which is thought to be figured long since by Orpheus his seven stringed Lyre. Within the Circumference of this great Universe, be seven Globes or Spherical Bodies in continual Motion, producing still new and various figures, according to their diverse positions one to another. When with these I compare my seven Gradual Sounds, I cannot but admire the Resemblance of their Harmonies, the Concords of the one so exactly answering to the Aspects of the other; as a Unison to a Conjunction, an Octave to an Opposition; the middle Consonants in a Diapason, to the middle Aspects in an Orb; as a Third, Fifth, Sixth, in Music, to a Trine, Quartile, Sextile in the Zodiac. And as these by moving into such and such Aspects transmit their Influences into Elementary Bodies; So those, by passing into such and such Concords, transmit into the Ear an Influence of Sound, which doth not only strike the sense, but even affect the very soul, stirring it up to a devout Contemplation of that Division PRINCIPLE from whence all Harmony proceeds; and therefore very fitly applying to sing and sound forth his Glory and Praise.

Stories about Music by Arnold Steinhardt

The violinist Arnold Steinhardt (of Guarneri Quartet fame) has started a short story website about his musical adventures called "In the Key of Strawberry."

Here's the first story.

Driverless Cars Following the Path of Automated Music?

I just came across this article in The Economist about the ways fully-automated cars, which are, at this point, significantly more than a pipe dream, will change life as we know it. It is kind of like the way digitally-recorded and delivered music has already changed musical life as we know it.

Times are Tough, But Music is Tougher

Be grateful that I spared you the spoils of the "spell" I have been in over the past couple of days. Now that I have come to the other side, I have come to accept that, professionally speaking, things are not going to get better for me where I live. I can't imagine any act of fate that would suddenly compel enough community college students to sign up for music appreciation classes in sufficient numbers to make it necessary to add another class (or two) for me to teach, so I have decided not to let it bother all that much. Perhaps other professional opportunities in the world of music (but outside my geographical area) will come my way.

I think about the really tough times in history that the composers I admire lived through. I think about the oppression, the bigotry, the unfairness, the poverty, the wars, the famine, and the sexism that would have made it difficult for me to live and work during any time before the second half of the 20th century. Anyway, the reward for a composer is in the work itself: doing it, which brings daily pleasure (and challenge) and then hearing it played (which brings a different kind of collaborative pleasure), and not in recognition, which is illusive anyway.

It is clearly a lousy time to be a wedding musician, and a lean time to be an orchestral musician, but that's the way it is now, and there's nothing that anyone can do about it. Playing better (the only thing we really can control is the quality of our playing) does not mean that there will be more work, or that we will be fairly compensated for our time. And there is no such thing as going back. It just doesn't work, because time moves forward. Sometimes I think about what it might be like return to the time when the musical establishment frowned upon women participating in musical life in any way aside from singing, the occasional functional keyboard playing, as patronnesses of the arts, and as muses. When I do this, I get extremely uncomfortable.

When times get tough, I think of Beethoven working on his "Harp" Quartet (Opus 74) while Napoleon was bombing Vienna. Napoleon kicked the Archduke Rudolph, Beethoven's friend and student, out of his palace, and was living there. Napoleon had lousy musical taste too. He didn't think much of Beethoven's music. What do we musicians and music lovers have from this time of difficulty? A lot of great music that people wrote to brighten up a dismal, unstable, and often dangerous world.

Perhaps that is what we need to keep reminding ourselves. Music is something that brightens the world, or at least it brightens the lives of people who care about it. It always has, and I just have to keep remembering that it always will.

Done!

Welsh Singing

". . . for singing is in my people as sight is in the eye"

Michael and I watched How Green was My Valley last night.



You can watch the whole movie on YouTube here.

Romnesia

Bravo Barack!

"We have got to name this condition he is going through. I think it is called Romnesia. I think that's what it is called. Now I'm not a medical doctor. But I do want to go over some of the symptoms with you because I want to make sure nobody else catches it.

If you say you're for equal pay for equal work but you keep refusing to say whether or not you will sign a bill that protects equal pay for equal work, you might have Romnesia.

If you say women should have access to contraceptive care, but you support legislation that would let employers deny contraceptive care, you might have a case of Romnesia.

If you say you will protect a women's right to choose but you stand up in a primary debate and say you'd be delighted to sign a law outlawing that right to choose in all cases, then you have definitely got Romnesia. . .

. . . If you come down with a case of Romnesia and you can't seem to remember the policies that are still on your website, or the promises you have made over the six years you've been running for president, here is the good news: Obamacare covers pre-existing conditions. . . We can fix you up. We've got a cure. We can make you well."

Musings About The Yard

The only thing about this post that has anything to do with music is the fact that while I am out in the yard pulling up vines, the last movement of Brahms Third Symphony seems constantly to be weaving its way through my brain.

We are having a strange year out in Illinois. Normally I don't spend time looking at the ground (I'm usually looking up), but this year I noticed that our back yard is a jungle of all kinds of vines. It didn't rain this summer, so we didn't mow (and therefore didn't know what was happening out there). It has been rather wet for the past month, and all the plants seem to be making up for the time that they lost during the summer. The vines in the yard seem to have the sole purpose climbing to the top of the hill, and I have taken a sacred oath to make sure that they never get there.

It's rough going, but I have been dedicated. It's raining now, which is the only reason I'm not pulling up vines, so I'm entertaining you by writing about the experience.

I'm rather new to thinking horticulturally. The culture part I get, but the "horti" part is another matter. I would love to know more of exactly what is in my basket.

I know this is a wild strawberry. I kind of like having wild strawberries growing in the yard because the birds and squirrels eat them.


and this is the wild strawberry flower. Yes. We have flowers and fruit both present (and thriving) during this odd Fall in Illinois.



This pine-like plant pops up everywhere. Here it is in its young form (in the ground), and then in its mature form (out of the ground). I would love to know what this one is. It smells like an evergreen, and it looks like a bonsai.





Then there's Vinca, my foe. Vinca looks really beautiful when it is contained, but it squeezes the life out of anything grasslike in its path when it is allowed to roam, undetected, like a snake in the grass. It is, however, rather rewarding to pull. It comes up in long ropes, and its young roots separate from the ground with just the slightest tug. Pulling it up does give a kind of "ping" of satisfaction, and with satisfaction being relatively rare in life outside of the back yard, I confess that I sort of enjoy the fact that it's there for me to pull, though I also want to win the battle for the hill. The pine vine likes to keep company with the Vinca. Here they are together.



and here's the battlefield:

New Music Quartet Plays Beethoven Opus 59, No. 3

Broadus Erle and Matthew Raimondi, violins; Walter Trampler, viola; Claus Adam, cello







[Thanks David!]

Review: A Late Quartet

I had the great fortune to watch a preview of Yaron Zilberman's A Late Quartet, a film that will be released in theaters in New York and in Los Angeles on November 2nd. If you like string quartets (the music and those who play it), I imagine you will find watching this film as enjoyable and worthwhile as I did.

The movie is about (I'm not giving any plot spoilers here) The Fugue, a highly-successful New York-based string quartet that has played together for 25 years. Their oldest member, a cellist named Peter Mitchell (played by Christopher Walken), is diagnosed with Parkinson's Disease, and has made the decision to retire from the quartet. This change, along with influences from people outside of the quartet, begins to erode the delicate balances (musical and familial) that allowed the quartet to function as a successful musical organization.

Walkin plays the elder-statesman-musician very well. Peter Mitchell does not seem to be modeled on a particular cellist or, for that matter, on any musician in particular, but he has qualities of humanity, humility, wisdom, generosity, and morality that many of us like to expect from our chamber music mentors (some have actually lived up to our expectations). Daniel Lerner, the quartet's first violinist, is played by Mark Ivanir. Lerner came to Juilliard as a foreign student, and formed the quartet with Mitchell and two of his equally-young colleagues. He is a self-absorbed perfectionist who makes bows as a hobby. Robert Gelbart, the second violinist in the quartet (who takes risks in his private life and wants to take risks in his musical life as well) is played by Philip Seymour Hoffman. He is married to Juliette Gelbart, the quartet's violist, who is played by Catherine Keener. They have a 24-year-old daughter named Alexandra, played by Imogen Poots, who takes lessons from Daniel Lerner and plays in a quartet that is coached by Peter Mitchell.

Much is made of the unorthodox seven-movement structure of Beethoven's 13th Quartet, his Opus 131. It frames the film, beginning with the opening fugue subject from the first movement, and ending with the final Allegro. Opus 131 accompanies and punctuates much of the action (there is also some non-Beethoven music) and becomes almost like a character. Motives from the first four movements serve as leitmotives for the various relationships between pairs of characters during the exposition. The relationships reveal themselves gradually, and though they end up being quite complicated, they are never implausible.

These quartet musicians are human, and some of them make very human (and often risky) mistakes. I believe that this film does a lot to show people who are not musicians how delicate the personal balances can be in a chamber music ensemble. They are as delicate and as fragile as the complications and balances in the music itself.

The superb actors have clearly spent time becoming familiar with their instruments. Their left hand positions, and the way the vibrato looks compared to what it sounds like might bother some string players a bit, but it is not enough to interfere with my enjoyment of the movie. After all, this is a movie about who we (string players) are and what we do, and these excellent actors are taking certain risks by entering our world and exploring the music that we love and the kinds of relationships that we have. I am particularly grateful for the care that the actors, their coaches, and the camera people put into focusing on the beauty of a straight bow stroke, whether the strokes are made by the actors or "bow arm doubles." Some of the off-the-string strokes show a valiant effort (it takes a good 20 years to develop a fully-functional bow arm). The synchronization between the actors' fingers and the actual sounds, made by the very fine Brentano String Quartet (celebrating their 20th year together), is very good, and the instruments (supplied by Rare Violins of New York) are simply beautiful.

After watching the film I opened my score to Opus 131, and I have to say that the film helped me to "see" it in a new way. Although Opus 131 is not the ideal starting place for people new to Beethoven quartets, the film serves as a perfectly good gateway to the kind of lifetime obsession that many musicians and music lovers through many generations have had with these 16 enduring and constantly-relevant masterpieces.

What better "lay" spokespeople for Beethoven and for string quartets could we ask for than this particular group of actors and actresses and this director?

Watch the Trailer.

Thought for the Day

I was thinking, "Wouldn't it be great if I could have an advocate like Joe Biden to speak up for me when I need it?" Then I realized that is just what he is doing.

Thank you Joe Biden for saying exactly what you mean.

If Only Central Illinois Were More Like Amsterdam!

The Real Toscanini: Musicians Reveal the Maestro

Cesare Civetta is a conductor by profession and not a writer, so the biographical parts of this book are (thankfully) not overly "writerly." Civetta became interested in learning about Toscanini when his high school band director, who had played trumpet in Toscanini's orchestra, introduced him to Toscanini's Beethoven recordings. He supplemented his reading and listening by interviewing people who knew Toscanini and worked with him. During the 1970s Civetta produced a 35-part interview series on WFUV (Fordham University's radio station), and his guests included members of the NBC Symphony, singers who performed with Toscanini at La Scala as well as at the Metropolitan Opera, and other conductors. He also gathered information privately from people who knew Toscanini and worked with him in various capacities.

This extremely useful book is a thematically organized collection of quotations from 40-50 people (including many people I knew from my days in New York in the late 1970s, so I enjoy "hearing" their voices). Each chapter is divided into subheadings that offer commentary on a given subject from several musicians. The chapter on tempo, for example, includes subheadings that discuss rubato, Toscanini's sense of timing, his clarity of beat, his rhythmic accuracy, tempo in relation to acoustics, and working with soloists. There's a chapter on opera, one on musical architecture, and chapters on balance, baton technique, philosophy, rehearsal style, and recording.

The book is rich with quotations from Alan Shulman, A cellist in the NBC Symphony, who was also an excellent composer, the oboist Robert Bloom, the violist Emanuel Vardi, the violinist, Misha Mischakoff (by way of his daughter's book), bassist David Walter, the choral conductor Robert Shaw, and many other musicians. Together they not only describe Toscanini as a conductor and as a human being, but they demonstrate a kind of like-mindedness that permeated Toscanini's musical New York, and informed its first true golden age of music.

I'll give you just one quote from Josef Gingold, and then you'll need to get a copy of the book to read the rest.

"My wife likes to tell the story about the day I had some bug and wasn't feeling well enough to go to a rehearsal, but there was something on the program that I wanted to play, so I said: 'I'll bundle up and go, and I'll play that one piece and then come right home.' I went there feverish and in no condition really to play; but once the Maestro began the rehearsal, I became so absorbed in what we were doing that I forgot I was sick, I forgot about myself entirely; and at the end of the rehearsal I was feeling completely well. This was the effect Toscanini had: when you were playing with him your mind never wandered for one moment; you were completely absorbed in music-making and one with him and with the composer."