Country Musician, City Musician

I have been thinking a lot about this passage from Willa Cather's Lucy Gayheart. Lucy is having a conversation with her piano teacher about a young man from her small rural town her teacher hoped she would marry. They are in Chicago at the beginning of the 20th century:

"You are mistaken, Mr. Auerbach. That is only a friendship."

"Maybe so. But I wouldn't be sorry to see it come to something else. In the musical profession there are many disappointments. A nice house and garden in a little town, with money enough not to worry, a family--that's the best life."

"You think so because you live in a city. Family life in a little town is pretty deadly. It's being planted in the earth, like one of your carrots there. I'd rather be pulled up and thrown away."

Auerbach shook his head. "No, you wouldn't. I've heard young people talk like that before. You will learn that to live is the first thing."

Lucy asked him if there were not more than one way of living.

"Not for a girl like you, Lucy; you are too kind. Even for women with great talent and great ambition--I don't know. Some have good success, but I don't envy them."

The next morning, when Lucy opened the windows in the studio and looked across at the Lake, she told herself that she wasn't going out to the Auerbachs' any more. It dampened her spirits. He was a heavy, thorough, German music-teacher, and there he stopped.

Thrills and Trills

It is so easy to forget to count when trilling, playing measured sixteenth notes written in this kind of "code,"

or playing tremolo passages on a stringed instrument. Perhaps it is because it seems as if the arm, hand, and fingers could be trusted to do the counting for you. But, as I tell my students, fingers are not smart. They don't have brains (unlike the arms of an octopus, which can function individually, even if severed from the body).

The tremolo action on a stringed instrument is kind of similar to the trilling action a wind instrument. The moving finger can take all our attention, leaving the brain to have to work harder to figure on which beat we happen to be playing.

[This brings to mind the image of our son Ben's first trills on the cello. He unconsciously moved his tongue as well as his finger.]

Interested in octopuses? Here's an interesting scientific video about octopus behavior. Here is an octopus opening a jar, and here's a video of an octopus escaping from a jar.

Passing Thoughts about Passover

It is impossible to get Matzo in our small town. We have to drive an hour to a small city to buy it. I remember the Passover about 20 years ago when we found the Matzo supplies depleted in the city, so I tried my hand at making Matzo myself. It was through doing this that I came to understand that the stories about the Jews of Egypt not being able to wait to leave until their bread rose couldn't be correct. The whole point of making Matzo is to do it quickly enough so that the dough doesn't rise. You prick it all over so that the moisture escapes quickly in the oven. This is hard to do in a modern midwestern kitchen with nothing but a rolling pin and a fork. A few "loaves" came out well, but for the most part it was truly the bread of affliction.

Yesterday I was out and about in the city in search of a sheep shank for a seder plate. I went up to a the meat counter in a grocery store and asked if they had any sheep shanks. The woman behind the counter said, "You mean seder bones?" She asked me how many I wanted, and gave me two at no charge. Wow.

The day before I saw a few large legs of lamb in the meat department of an in-town grocery store, and I remember thinking that lamb would be great to make for a seder, except for the fact that it was a leg of lamb, and there was no way of knowing if it was a front or a back leg. Hind legs would be inappropriate for a seder.

Yesterday, with my free sheep shanks in hand, I started thinking about the fact that those bones come from intact legs of lamb, and are then rendered boneless by the grocery-store butchers because their customers prefer boneless leg of lamb.

My father once explained to me that Shtetls in Russia and Poland needed to be established within walking distance (or carting distance) of decent-sized cities so that the Shtetl butchers could sell the hindquarters of their animals. The inhabitants of their villages would, of course, not eat hindquarters because of Kosher laws.

Yesterday's adventure in the city reminded me of that kind of relationship, though twisted around a bit. People who celebrate Passover need to obtain shank bones for their seder plates, and butchers in the city who want to sell boneless legs of lamb are happy to give away the bones.

Willa Cather on the Artistic Nature of Childhood

From Willa Cather's The Song of the Lark

"A child's attitude towards everything is an artist's attitude. I am more or less of an artist now, but then I was nothing else."

(Spoken by the character Thea Kronborg.) Any musician who has not read this book has a real treat waiting for them.

Wyoming

It is so interesting to look at the county-by-county reporting giving the details for today's caucus in Wyoming. There are many instances on the democratic side where only two people showed up to caucus. One person caucused for Sanders and the other caucused for Clinton. One county had ten on either side.

[Michael, who just read this post, tells me that those numbers represent delegates and not numbers of voters, but I still like to entertain the image I offer in the next paragraph.]

I envision middle-aged married (or not married) couples going out to caucus, with the women heading to the Clinton side of the room and the men heading to the Sanders side of the room. Or we could have middle-aged couples where the men head for the Hills and the women feel the Bern.

Technologists Missing the Point about Art

The data-driven innovators over at The Next Rembrandt have a short film that describes their project to generate a "brand new" Rembrandt portrait based on data they generated from portraits he painted. Watching the film made me feel physically sick. I was also not impressed with the result. It reminds me of computer-generated "classical" music.

Happy 90th Birthday to Bernard Zaslav!

Eine Kleine April Fool's Music

For your Miller's Dancing pleasure:

It was as if she had an appointment to meet the rest of herself sometime, somewhere.

I simply can't tell you how enjoyable it is reading Willa Cather's The Song of the Lark so I'll just share a paragraph here:

Of this feeling Thea had never spoken to any human being until that day when she told Harsanyi that "there had always been—something." Hitherto she had felt but one obligation toward it—secrecy; to protect it even from herself. She had always believed that by doing all that was required of her by her family, her teachers, her pupils, she kept that part of herself from being caught up in the meshes of common things. She took it for granted that some day, when she was older, she would know a great deal more about it. It was as if she had an appointment to meet the rest of herself sometime, somewhere. It was moving to meet her and she was moving to meet it. That meeting awaited her, just as surely as, for the poor girl in the seat behind her, there awaited a hole in the earth, already dug.

You can read the whole novel on Project Gutenberg.

Excellent Recording of Marshall's Third Viola Sonata by Daniele Colombo

My brother has a true champion of his music in the Italian violinist/violist Daniele Colombo. It makes me and my family so proud to hear his music played so beautifully and so thoughtfully (not to mention impeccably). I can only imagine how happy this would make him if he were still alive.



Marshall Fine (1956-2014) - Sonata no.3 for Unaccompanied Viola op.121 (2011-12)

I. Obsequy
II. Rap-Fugue (03:17)
III. Rhapsody (07:29)
IV. Moto Perpetuo (13:25)

Daniele Colombo, viola

[Roma, AG Studios, 25-3-2016
Sound Engineer: Pierangeli Ambroselli]

The Space Around Us When We Play

I just returned from a few well-deserved days of vacation in Los Angeles away from playing or even thinking about playing, but when our daughter showed me and Michael a yoga-influenced exercise yesterday that involved a series of movements that raise awareness of the experience of right and left balance, I immediately thought of how the exercises could be applied to violin and viola playing.

A good 24 hours occupied by travel and sleep (sometimes at the same time) passed between the exercise we did and the time I finally picked up my viola back in Illinois. I closed my eyes (I didn't feel like changing into music glasses) and experienced a totally new kind of spacial relationship with my instrument. I will attempt to describe it here.

[It felt as if I were in a dream state having some kind of "vision." I'm writing about here to share, but I'm also writing about it so that I don't forget it!]

While I was playing the Bach G major Prelude I thought of my bow arm traveling along the circumference of a pie chart.

The A string was the yellow 10%, the blue 10% corresponded to the D String, the Green to the G string, and the red to the C string. This all makes perfect sense, and shouldn't be news to any string player reading this. What came as kind of a revelation to me is that my pie chart image was a not-very-thick disc, and that the circumference of the pie chart changed with where in the bow I happened to be. This gave the shape of each of the wedges a new kind of meaning for me.

Then I realized that I so often think of the "where" of my bow as being the "where" of my hand, when, in fact, the "where" of the bow goes both right (towards my hand) and left, towards the mysterious and exciting space that surrounds the tip of the bow on the "other side" of the wheel.

The core of my body (my heart and breathing mechanism) are at the very center of the wheel. I often give my students the image of a fulcrum on a teeter-totter to think of the bow on the string, but the image of a disk or wheel is so much more intense and useful because the space is solid and filled in.

So often as a flute player I thought of projecting my sound either forward or upward. I tried to imagine my sound going to other places in the room by focusing my eyes on different objects, but it always seemed directional, as if there were a dotted line connecting my mouth to the object. It was also very difficult to sustain attention on projecting towards different objects, because it was all something that happened in my imagination. I could sustain attention on it when playing long tones, but not when playing music when there was counting to be done and accidentals to pay attention to. All the "action" in flute playing happens on the right, so the mysterious area to the left is often left unexplored, particularly while practicing.

It IS really different with a string instrument. The movements that cut into in the surrounding space are the very things that make the sound.

I'll go practice now . . .

Bach and Serendipity

Michael and I just returned from an extremely satisfying concert of Bach played by Richard Goode. He played a couple of Preludes and Fugues from the second book of the WTC, all the Sinfonias, the Fifth French Suite, the C minor Partita, and the Italian Concerto. His encore was the Serenade from the B-flat Partita.

The concert made us both very happy.

On the way home Michael asked me how I thought Richard Goode compared to Angela Hewitt. It's hard for me to compare pianists unless I hear them play the same repertoire.

We eventually turned on the car radio, and would you believe that the Italian Concerto was playing? We got to hear nearly the whole thing. The pianist? Angela Hewitt!

And both of us preferred the way Richard Goode played the Italian Concerto this evening to the way Angela Hewitt played it on her recording.

Van Gogh on the Work of an Artist and the Future

These excerpts from a letter Vincent van Gogh wrote to his brother Theo on May 20, 1888 resonate for me (and probably will for other composers):

. . . At the height of artistic life therein, and remains, and returns time and again, a hankering after real life--ideal and unattainable.

And sometimes one lacks the will to throw oneself back wholeheartedly into art, and to regain one's capacity for it. One knows one is a cab horse, and that one is going to be hitched up to the same old cab again--and that one would rather not, and would prefer to live in a meadow, with sunshine, a river, other horses for company as free as oneself, and the act of procreation.

And perhaps, in the end, the heart complaint is caused by that. I shouldn't be at all surprised if it is to some extent. One no longer rebels against things, but neither is one resigned--one is ill and does not get better--and one cannot find a precise cure.

I'm not sure who called this condition "being stricken by death and immortality." The cab one is pulling along must be of some use to people one doesn't know. And so, if we believe in the new art, in the artists of the future, our presentiment will not play us false.

When good old Corot said a few days before his death, "Last night in a dream, I saw landscapes with skies all pink," well, they've arrived, haven't they, those pink skies, and yellow and green ones into the bargain, in the impressionist landscape? Which means that some things one can force in the future do indeed come about.

And those of us who are, as I am led to believe, still fairly far from death, nevertheless feel that these things are bigger than we are and will outlive us.

We do not feel we are dying, but we do feel that in reality we count for little, and that to be a link in the chain of artists we are paying a high price in health, in youth, in liberty, none of which we enjoy, any more than does the cab horse pulling a coachload of people out enjoying themselves in spring.

Cloak of Invisibility

Some people fantasize about the power wearing a cloak of invisibility might give them. I'm just the opposite. There is nothing that makes me feel more powerless than the feeling of being invisible. Perhaps it is a "middle child" thing, but I often go through life doing what I do and taking up the space I take up without the feeling that I am being seen. It might have something to do with being short of stature in a world where most adult heads hover six inches above mine. It might even have something to do with being a violist, since in orchestral and chamber music situations we are often invisible (though sorely missed when we are not there).

I have had periods of what I tend to think of as "visibility by association." Over the years I have been thought of as Marshall's sister, Burton's daughter, Baker's student, Michael's wife, Rachel's mom, Ben's mom, or this or that person's friend. When I worked at a radio station and wrote CD reviews, there were people who seemed interested in getting to know me because they believed that I was in some kind of position to help them with their career objectives. Some of those people actually got to know me as a person rather than as a "contact," and became good friends.

There are long-time residents of our small university town who know me by what I do or what I have done, but to most of the newer musicians in town, I am invisible. It is sad that I am also invisible to their students. I am not invisible to the musicians I associate with in the larger towns where I do most of my playing, which helps me to keep going when my internal motivation mechanism gets overwhelmed.

I know that my situation is not unique to me or to musicians. There are a great many people who feel powerless because they have been rendered invisible. My heart goes out to the people in Flint, Michigan. My heart goes out to the faculty and staff at our local university. Many people have lost their jobs, and many more are anticipating pay cuts because our governor will not pass a budget to provide funding for state universities. People may demonstrate (I will demonstrate with them) but in this situation we are essentially powerless and invisible. There is too much power in the hands of our governor, and he has not shown that he is a person to be trusted with power. I feel sorry for the people who voted for him in good conscience. Especially the people who have lost their jobs because of him and the local elected officials who support him.

Perhaps one of the reasons I admire Bernie Sanders so much is that for decade after decade after decade he has spoken out about inequality and has maintained his search for truth by "walking the walk." The corporate media is trying to make him invisible, and they are doing it because they are afraid of having a president in office who might change the way elections are funded. A Sanders presidency would mean, in part, that the various institutions of the corporate media might lose out on the huge amount of money and power they acquire every time we have a big election.

The absence of coverage for Bernie Sanders's accomplishments in this presidential race has become noticeable. And if it continues (and I believe that Sanders's success will) the press might have to make some significant changes on its own. Let's hope that day arrives soon.

What's an Election?

[Posted by a very proud mother. Please play it for your children, students, and grandchildren.]