Birthday Piece Number 10

Today is my fifty-ninth birthday, so here is the tenth in a series of "birthday pieces" for viola d'amore and piano that I began when I turned fifty. My first "birthday piece" had fifty measures, and each year I add one more. This year's piece has fifty-nine measures for fifty-nine years. My viola d'amore is in the shop getting some repairs done, so this year's birthday piece can be played on either viola or viola d'amore. You can listen to a computer-generated recording here, and you can get the music on this page of the IMSLP.

You can find the rest of my birthday pieces in the IMSLP too.

Paul Hindemith clearly knew the music of Algernon Ashton, and so should you

The first example is from the second movement of Algernon Ashton's Viola Sonata, Opus 44, and the second example is from the second movement of Paul Hindemith's Viola Sonata, Opus 11, number 4.

The homage is palpable.

Ashton was born in Durham, England in 1859, and died in London in 1937. His 1888 Viola Sonata bears homage to several German composers (particularly Bach, Schubert, Schumann, and Brahms). It was published by Simrock in Berlin, and would have certainly been available to Paul Hindemith, who was born in 1895 and was a violist.

Hindemith started work on his Opus 44 Sonata (his first viola sonata) in 1914, and played the first performance in Frankfurt in 1919.

Here's Ashton's New York Times obituary, (available to Times subscribers), a Wikipedia article about him, and an article by David Wright that mentions Ashton's hatred of originality and progress in music.

I think Ashton, had he knowledge of or interest in the music of the young Hindemith, would have been be pleased with what Hindemith did with his theme (if it was Ashton's to begin with).

Marie Jaëll A minor Sonata transcribed for viola

I didn't think I would be able engrave the massive and complicated piano part of the Jaëll A minor Sonata when I wrote my last post about my viola transcription of the piece. But since I couldn't imagine anyone else taking the initiative to do it, and I feel that it is a substantial addition to the repertoire, I spent the past month facing (and solving) some serious engraving difficulties while I patiently entered the 76-page piano part into Finale. I finished it today, and to celebrate I uploaded the sonata into the IMSLP. It was truly a labor of love. I believe that the piece will win the hearts of other violists as well as the pianists they play with. When we performed it in March that audience liked it too.



Marie Jaëll was born Marie Trautman in Alsace. She studied piano with Ignaz Moscheles, and then with Henri Hertz at the Paris Conservatory, where at sixteen she won a first prize for piano performance. She married the pianist Alfred Jaëll, and the couple set up a salon in Paris. Marie Jaëll was the first pianist to perform all of Beethoven’s Piano Sonatas in Paris. She wrote piano music, chamber music, vocal music, symphonic poems, concertos, and an opera, and studied composition with Cesar Franck and Camille Saint-Saëns. She was a close friend of Franz Liszt, and Saint-Säens considered her interpretations of Liszt’s music to be definitive. Jaëll wrote her A minor Cello Sonata in 1881, and it was published in Paris in 1886.

You can find the music on this page of the IMSLP. You can learn more about Marie Jaëll here, and here.

"The Collar" for Bassoon and Narrator! What a great idea!

I just learned that an ensemble in India will be performing my setting of Hans Christian Andersen's "The Collar" with bassoon instead of with cello or viola.

What a great idea!

I just made an "official" transcription and uploaded it to this page of the IMSLP. You can also get it here.

In Search of "Lost" Violinists

I was talking with my father yesterday about article in Sunday's New York Times, (my father was around in New York during the 1960s, and never heard of Saul Lipshutz) and it brought to his mind a fellow student at Curtis, Michael Serber, who, according to my father was the very best violinist around Philadelphia during the 1940s, and, as far as he knew, didn't continue in music.

I thought it would be interesting to see what a few Google searches could find.

I found an obituary for Serber that revealed that he was concertmaster of the National Symphony, the American Ballet Theater, and the National Gallery Orchestra before going to medical school at Howard University. He was the Clinical Director of the Atascadero State Hospital in California, and "pioneered the systematic teaching of non-verbal components in assertive training and introduced the use of film and videotape feedback to teach assertiveness, tenderness and other social and sexual skills."

He died from Cancer at the age of 42.

Curtis has put listings from all of its concerts on line, and I was very excited to find this program for a concert in 1948:


[click for a larger view]

My father, who, like Serber, studied with Ivan Galamian, didn't pursue a career as a soloist. He went into science, and got a Ph.D. in chemistry. He continued to play professionally (i.e. he got paid to play) while he worked at NASA, and if he hadn't taken an audition for the Boston Symphony he might have been one of those "what ever happened to" violinists. But contingency intervened, and he is now known as one of the great violists. (Yes, I know that a viola joke could be inserted here. You can do it yourself.)

There are a great number of musicians who have chosen alternative careers to that of being a soloist (and a lot of them are working in orchestras, teaching, and practicing medicine, law, science, musicology, etc., and probably making a better and more stable living than a soloist) who could be profiled in meaningful ways by the New York Times.

But people like stories about redemption. I say "phooey" on redemption.

Leap Frog for Two Violas

After she saw my "La Grenouillère" viola sonata, my friend Robin Kearton commissioned me to write a duet for violas based on the game of leap frog.

You can hear me and Robin play "Leap Frog" here, and the music will be available soon on this page of the IMSLP.

What to believe

The other day a profile appeared in the New York Times about a boat builder named Saul Chandler who changed his name from Saul Lipshutz after he stopped playing the violin. Somehow he became known to Alex Vadukul, a writer in search of someone he felt had a human interest story that would resonate with readers (and it did). Vadukul put the words "redemption" and "lost prodigy" in the title, and illustrated the story with striking photographs. The words "excellent," "gift," and "genius" pop up all the time. Those are the words of Vadukul, who interprets Chandler's stories with the eye and ear of a writer who really wants to believe the stories he is told.

Michael and I both questioned how much of Chandler's story is true.

After a few beers, however, Mr. Chandler might tell a story that is not of the cheerful maritime sort:

“I played Carnegie Hall twice before I was 13.”

“I was known for my Bach.”

“They turned me into a trained monkey.”

“If I could forget about music I would.”

When asked to say more, he shrugs, and the stories fade into the barroom haze. But this mysterious specter follows him to his boat. When music is playing on the radio, if a certain violin concerto comes on, he may get up and switch the station off. “The violin upsets me,” he said. “It reminds me of terror.”

In the 1960s, Mr. Chandler was one of the most promising classical violin prodigies in New York.

Details in this article gnaw at my brain. If Chandler was one of the most promising violin prodigies in New York during the 1960s, with a career as a soloist in Europe as well, why are there no reviews of his concerts anywhere to be found in newspapers online? Vadukul mentions newspapers "that chronicled his talents."

(Michael only found one reference to Chandler--then Lipshutz--playing the solo part in Bach's Brandenburg Concerto #5 when he was a student at New Providence High School in New Jersey in 1963.)

I think that Chandler might, in the course of the past 50 years, augmented his accomplishments. I think that Vadukul, who knows about music from reading at least one book about musical prodigies, wanted to believe him.

I can't imagine how a violin that had been sitting in its unopened case for 50 years and gave off a musty odor could look like this:

I wonder how, after 50 years, the violin could have a bow with it that still had hair, a bridge and sound post that were both still standing, and strings that still looked new.

Mozart's Thematic Catalog

You can see (and read) Mozart's Thematic Catalog online at the British Library. It is hyped as being a diary where he composed his later works (which it is not), but it is still remarkable to see.



The viewer takes some time to load, and the pages take some time to resolve, so exercise patience . . .

Private Thoughts (made public here)

Yesterday flutist Rebecca Johnson and pianist Cara Chowning played three pieces of mine ("For Poulenc," "In light we see, in light we are seen," and "Cante Jondo") on a concert of music written by living American women.

I went to the concert alone, and sat by myself. My experience in this public setting felt very private. I marveled at the creativity of the musicians, and observed that there were "things" in the music that were new to me ("things" being more than the notes, rhythms, dynamics, and articulations). It was overwhelming to encounter the combined emotions of Rebecca and Cara through music that I thought I knew really well. And there were moments during the performance when I actually had chills. All my pieces were new to everyone in yesterday's audience (except for me, of course). Now they are pieces that "belong" in some way to everyone who was there.

Listening to this concert made me realize a little more about the enormity of music. Music is far more than what is written on the page by the composer. It is far more than any one musician's individual sound, technique, style, or sense of line. It is far more than any one person's particular emotional relationship with the materials at hand, and even more than the combined emotional relationship that the musicians enjoy through the music and share with the audience.

In this case the audience happened to be members of my own community, since this concert happened in my own small college town. People play my music all over the world, but there's something especially meaningful to me when it is played in my own neighborhood, and for my neighbors.

A few months ago Rebecca and Cara made some video recordings of these three pieces, and when the videos are all finished (the audio and the video need to be mysteriously merged), I will post them here.

Wake Up and Smell the Coffee

It has been a very strange couple of weeks for me. I had a really strange virus that somehow allowed me (thanks to DayQuil) to play a concert, teach a few lessons, and go about my daily business while it lingered. It's not unusual for me not to be able to taste much of anything or smell much of anything when I am sick, but once my nose was no longer stuffy I found that I could not smell anything at all. Nothing.

My friend took me into a soap store in St. Louis, and I could not smell soap. It was the first time I realized that something was really wrong. I could taste salty and sweet foods, but I couldn't smell anything.

I looked online and found that it is possible for a virus to permanently obliterate a person's sense of smell. I tried all the suggested remedies like eating raw ginger (which I couldn't taste), and drinking cider vinegar and honey (which I could taste a little bit). I read somewhere that the brain can shut off the sense of smell and needs to learn to smell again, so I regularly (every hour or so) stuck my nose in a mason jar of ground coffee, ate a piece of raw ginger, and tried to smell the (strongly-scented) almond hand soap we use in the bathroom.

Days passed.

Then Michael suggested taking pseudoephedrine and using saline-solution nasal spray. I took the pseudoephedrine once a day, and sprayed my nose many times every day. I did this for a couple of days.

Yesterday I stuck my nose in the coffee jar, and I smelled something. It was faint, but there was definitely something there. It was kind of like hearing muffled voices through a closed door.

Today I woke up, and I actually smelled the coffee. It made my heart sing.

I'm not at 100%, but I'm definitely on the way to getting my sense of smell back. I'm hoping that when I make banana bread later today, I will be able to smell it.

I vow here, in this humble blogosphere, never to take any of my senses for granted.

New Music for Woodwind Trio

After writing "A Little Drama for Woodwind Trio" I found that it isn't common at all to have clarinet, English horn, and piccolo together in a woodwind trio. There are a small number of trios for flute, oboe, and clarinet, and I found a few of them in the IMSLP: a set of pieces by Martin Hill and The Reunion Trio by Joseph Nicholas Fried. On YouTube I found performances of the Divertimento by Malcolm Arnold, and a trio by Michael Kibbe, but none of these pieces use English horn and piccolo together with the clarinet.

Here's my addition to the repertoire:



I have a computer-generated recording of "A Little Drama for Woodwind Trio" to share here, and you can get the music on this page of the IMSLP.

In my virtual travels I found A Survey of Literature for the Oboe and English Horn, a 1959 dissertation by Virginia Downing Snodgrass, which I found interesting, and thorough. I can say with some authority that prior to 1959 (the year of my birth!) there was nothing in the published literature that used piccolo, English Horn, and clarinet together in a trio.

I would love to have this list augmented! If you know of any other pieces for the combination of flute (doubling piccolo), oboe (doubling English horn), and B-flat clarinet, please list them (with links, if possible) in the comments!

The Tipping Point: A bit about my learning curve with the bow

I never realized how many puns and clichés could be used in a post title about bowing! What will follow is fascinating to me, but will probably not be fascinating to anyone who doesn't draw his or her bow across a set of strings for pleasure or for profit, so I will not be offended if you look elsewhere for something to read.

Twenty-five years ago I began my second life as a string player, and my father gave me some serious advice. I remember when and where he said it: in the west pavilion in Morton Park, in my town of Charleston, Illinois. He told me never to play with flat hair. I didn't understand what he was talking about. He explained that playing with flat hair kills the overtones in the sound. I took him seriously (as I always have), and spent the next twenty-five years playing on the outer edge of the bow's hair, making sure not to kill any overtones.

This past January I was practicing my viola transcription of the Ravel Sonata. I was frustrated at the bumpiness of the phrases. I switched to my lighter bow, and I realized I had been using too much bow pressure and not enough bow speed. For some reason, while I was increasing speed and reducing pressure, I decided to try flattening the hair of my bow as I approached the tip. Suddenly I had control of the whole length of the bow, and the phrases lost their bumpiness. The "when" of the flattening became a tool, and the "where" became a fluid solution to make phrases go where I wanted them to go.

What goes down (as in a down-bow) must come up, so the act of moving toward the outer edge of the hair as I made my way through the middle of the bow was another adventure in possibilities.

I showed this discovery to my students, and they were all completely amazed at the results. I imagine that there are geometric equations concerning the hypotenuse that is created when you move diagonally across the ribbon of bow hair that confirm that the bow becomes effectively longer when you play this way. But the upshot of the story is that the extremes of the bow are now each treasured destinations rather than being the "end of the line."

I told my father about my discovery, and he knew all about it. He asked me whether I used my arm or wrist to make the motion (both work).

Marie Jaëll Sonata in A minor

Marie Jaëll (1846-1925) wrote her only sonata for cello and piano in 1881, and it was published in Paris in 1886, the year that Franz Liszt died. John David and I enjoyed playing it so much on our concert yesterday that I would like to share my transcription for viola with people who might be interested in playing the piece.

(You can listen to a recording from Sunday's concert here.)

You can get a PDF file here, and on this page of the IMSLP. The piano part (which I did not engrave and do not have available) does not have to be altered in any way to work with this viola transcription. A modern edition of the piece was published by Hildegard in 1996, but it is no longer listed in their catalog. Fortunately there are copies of the score in several libraries.

WHAM Concert 2018 on March 11

This year's WHAM Concert will have music by Germaine Tailleferre, Cecilia McDowall, Mel Bonis, Marie Jaëll, and me. The concert is sponsored by the Coles County Arts Council, and admission is free.

Viola Sonata No. 2 "La Grenouillère"

Michael and I read two stories by Guy de Maupassant that have action that takes place in a night spot on the Seine known as "La Grenouillère."

The most famous image of "La Grenouillère" is a painting by Claude Monet:



My musical mind went (literally) into the swamp, and I thought it would be fun to write a piece for viola and piano that would incorporate frog sounds and folk songs about frogs.

. . . et voilà.



You can listen here, and the music is available on this page of the IMSLP.