Seeking Balance

I made this collage back in the golden days of collage (when a favorite family activity was making collages from catalogs that came in the mail). I used to make collages filled with puns. The back of this one has a picture of a jack (as in the game of jacks), a playing card jack of hearts, and a donkey, but the composition is lousy so I'm not showing it to anyone.

This collage is a play on balance, justice, and equality, but it is a really useful tool for me to keep on my wall so I can glance at it while I am practicing. It reminds me that playing the violin or the viola requires balance of both sides of the body, and strength in the center. I realized only recently that many of the problems I have with tendonitis (and I get it in both forearms) come from over using one side of my body when I should be simply using both sides in balance.

I just thought I'd share this image here. The image might help other string players who experience forearm tendonitis.

Mutability: In Memoriam

Luanne Koper read Shelley's "Mutability" at the memorial service for our friend Rob Zseleczky. She read it because Shelley was Rob's favorite poet, and because it was entirely appropriate for the occasion. It was when she read it that I was first able to cry.



The poem was slightly familiar to me because the last two stanzas appear in Mary Shelley's Frankenstein, but I had otherwise never heard or read the poem. All the years I heard Rob talk about Shelley (and there were many years, and much talk of Shelley), I never read any of his work.

I considered setting "Mutability" as a song, but it is one of those poems that doesn't need music to make it better understood, and using music to illustrate a reading of it would only prove a distraction. I ended up writing a 3-minute piece for violin, viola, and cello about the poem, and it really helped me to work through some of my grief.

And I think I'll spend some time reading more of Shelley's poems.

You can listen to my wordless setting of "Mutability" here.
You can read Michael's posts about Rob (including one of his poems) here.
You can download the score and parts here.

Meredith Willson Wrote This Gym-Class Classic!

I vividly remember the six and a half minutes of torture that accompanied this rousing gym-class classic of the 1960s. I found the "chicken fat" part really disturbing when I was a child, but now that I listen to it from a musical standpoint (without the insecurities that children have about their growing and changing bodies), I find it charming, rousing, and rather brilliant.



(Meredith Willson was a fantastic composer.)

Charitable-Industrial Complex

Peter Buffett's Op-ed in yesterday's New York Times is well worth reading. Musicians and people interested in the future of music should read it with the idea in mind that Peter Buffett is a composer who, by accident of birth, has an interesting "seat" in the arena of how charitable organizations work. Donations to musical organizations, you might recall, are considered "charitable."

Countertenor Humor

Now that we have all grown (and groaned) out of viola jokes, there's a new breed of humor afloat. Lying in the very same range as the viola (minus the C string) is the countertenor, and tucked away on Andreas Scholl's website is a page of Countertenor Jokes!

Here's a taste:

How many countertenors does it take to change a lightbulb?
Two. One to screw it in and the other to say "Isn't that a little high for you?"

I have to warn you that the site is rather tasteless and is peppered with crude gif animation, but I'm sure that you will find something to make you smile. I did.

Summer Strings Concert 2013

It's time once again for our annual Summer Strings concert in Charleston, Illinois. We'll be playing on Tuesday, July 30 at 7:00 in the Daum Amphitheater of Kiwanis Park. Admission is free, and any past Summer Strings players reading this who happen to be in town are welcome to play. (Send me a message, and I'll send you PDFs of whatever part you would like to play.)

The Gradual Fall of Musical Bloggery

Last April I noticed that the once-vibrant musical blogosphere had started to slow down. It used to feel very rewarding to write about ideas, post links, and use the little corner of the internet where I squat in whatever manner I chose to use it. Lots of people read my posts, but the number of people who come to my blog has dwindled down to less than half over the last six months. I have been writing at about the same rate, but no matter how much I "give" to the Musical Assumptions "audience," it doesn't do much to stir the pot.

The kinds of musical discussions that used to be on blogs seem to have migrated to Facebook, but they occur in miniature, and they can occur in real time. I guess in this on-line world you have two options: Facebook or Google, and it looks as if Facebook has won.

But I'm loyal to my faithful readers, and I will continue to write here.

August 12th Update: Here's more about this subject.

Emergency Upholstery With or Without Sewing!

I have a great chair that I use for practicing, but it is upholstered with faux leather (i.e. plastic), and it can get uncomfortably hot and sticky after a while. My practically cost-free solution? Take two old T-shirts, and some straight pins, and follow me! It will take you ten minutes at the most to do.



I used two worn-out cotton T-shirts, one for the seat, and one for the back.  If you slide the arms of the seat shirt through the legs of the chair, it should stay in place.  A rubber band or some kind of tying device of your choice on each leg will keep it snug.



Turn the shirt inside-out, and slide it over the back of the chair.



Starting from the edges and working towards the middle, pin the hole that is meant for your head together.


Now pin the arm holes shut.



This is hard to see in this photo, but the last step is to pin the back seam all the way down.



Turn the shirt rightside-out, and slip it back over the chair. Here is how it looks before sewing, which is pretty much the same way it will look after sewing (which you don't even have to do!).  All the pins are on the inside of the shirt and on the back of the chair, so there is no chance of getting stuck.

Have a seat!

A Terrific Musician in a Musical No Man's Land

KOZINN: You studied classical music formally, didn’t you?

PARKS: Yes. In 1952 I went to the Columbus Boychoir boarding school, near Princeton, and that same year I was on the stage at the Metropolitan Opera, with Victoria de los Angeles — I was an urchin in “La Bohème.” Our choir worked with Beecham, Ormandy, Mitropoulos, Walter, Toscanini — all of them. I had an immersion in legitimate music that is absolutely indescribable in its abundance and opportunity. Now I’m caught in no man’s land. I’m not “legitimate” because I lie down with dogs. And yet, doggone it, I’m not a rocker because I work with a premeditated intent. So I’m not really at home in either camp, but I’m at home between them.

From Allan Kozinn's interview with Van Dyke Parks in today's New York Times.

Le concert matinal

Edouard Vuillard painted "Le concert matinal" during 1937 and 1938. It is connected with the Place Vintimille, which is now called the Place Adolphe-Max (as of 1940) in the 9th arrondisement in Paris. I imagine that Vuillard's musician friends came into his studio (notice that the music stands are artist's easels), and I imagine that the piece they might be playing is the Jongen Trio, Opus 30, because it is a piece of the period (1907), and also one of the few pieces written for violin, viola, and piano. The music on the stands also looks vaguely like the printed music. Here's the link to it in the IMSLP.

I wonder if the violist is the dedicatee of the piece? I wonder who he is? I wonder who the fiddle player is?



UPDATE: The picture is of two violinists: Leon Nauwinck and Madame Ortmans-Bach, and the pianist is Claude Crussard. The music is probably a baroque triosonata.

Le concert matinal, place Vintimille depicts an intimate scene wherein three musicians, two violinists and a pianist, have staged an impromptu concert. The "salon" in which the musicians have gathered is in fact Mme Vuillard's private chamber in the apartment she shared with her son on La place Vintimille. "The renowned violinist Léon Nauwinck was fond of painting; he knew that Vuillard enjoyed music, and consequently got into the habit of dropping by from time to time to soothe his morning doldrums, shortly before lunch, accompanied by Mme Ortmans-Bach and the pianist Claude Crussard. The easel and the drawing-table served as music stands. There were never more than three or four of us to enjoy these sessions, which were held in Mme Vuillard's bedroom, thereby adding fervour to the pleasure of listening to the music of Bach, Telemann and Vivaldi. Annette at Villerville and Bonnard's screen [both] figure in this masterly brush-and-distemper- sketch that us the very incarnation of life" (J. Salomon, op. cit., Paris, 1968, p. 177).

Vivian Fine Interviews

Relatives of Vivian Fine (none of whom are related to me) have put recorded interviews with her and transcripts of other interviews on the IMSLP. You can find them here.

My Music from Seesaw is Finally Available in the Subito Online Store

In 2003 Raoul Ronson, the owner of Seesaw Music, offered to publish my music. It was an arrangement that worked out well for both of us because he liked what I wrote, and he worked diligently to promote it. He was happy, and I was productive. After Raoul's death in 2005, his vast inventory was absorbed by Subito Music, and somehow in the infancy of web-based commerce, much of my music didn't make it onto their website. I had it listed in my on-line thematic catalog, (that link goes to the Seesaw Pieces that are housed at Subito) but aside from using the copies that Raoul sold to libraries, there wasn't any way that anyone could play the 30 pieces that slipped through the data-based cracks.

I waited patiently, assuming that the problem was something that would correct itself with time.

That time has come, and you can see it all here.

I spent much of today and some of yesterday pasting direct links into my thematic catalog, so I guess I am now engaging in a bit of e-commerce. Or I guess I hope to be.

This is what we need!

New York to LA in 45 minutes! That's the way to travel!

Here's the article, and a website about it.

Improvising ≈ Composing?

I am now the proud and mildly boggled owner of an iPhone 4, so last night I went searching for an app to use for recording. I came across one called MTSR that is free (which means it runs an prominent advertising banner that you have to ignore). It allows you to record four tracks, and gives a nifty little countdown so that you know when to start. It has a button that allows you to make a looping track or a normal track that doesn't loop (both of any length), and it allows you to delete individual tracks. It's a nifty little tool.

I plucked something rhythmic into the first track, put on headphones, and bowed something over the plucked track. Then I played something over the two tracks put together, and added a fourth track. It was easy, it was kind of mindless (like all improvisation should be), and it was fun. Was it a composition? No. Not really. Was it worth saving? No. Not really.

Sometimes I think that improvisation is more like conversation (particularly when it is conversation with an actual playing person rather than a recorded utterance in the same musical voice), while composition is more like putting ideas into writing. I don't edit my solo improvisations. I often don't remember them. They are often not worth remembering. I don't edit what I say in my conversations, and I always remember more of what the other person said than what I said, because while my conversation partner was talking I was actively listening. Improvising with myself is fun, but it is just about as stimulating for me as talking with myself. Or looking in a mirror.

I prefer the "single-track" approach to improvisation without a recording device to capture the moment. Once in a while, through improvisation, I come upon a musical idea. After I write it down (I have a lousy memory), I might use it for material for a composition, which I will edit far more ruthlessly than I would any piece of prose.

Through this recording device (which is a great tool), I came to understand much about the current looping-based (or ostinato-based) method of "composition" that a lot of instrumentalists not trained in the craft of counterpoint do. Their editing is done on the machine itself. Since they use the recording machine with the same integrity that they use their instruments, the machine sets their limits. Meters and tempos are often constant, and it's very easy to make the countdown the tempo. Dynamics seem to be best regulated by the machine rather than by the player, but I don't know if you can download the data to manipulate elsewhere.

Me? I'll stick to my tried and true ways of writing music, and have a new respect for doing cooperative improvisations with people who have musical ideas other than my own.

New Branches of the Bach Family Tree (Updated)

The dog days of summer, and the technologies that have entered our lives of late, have prompted me to update my New Branches of the Bach Family Tree post.