In Praise of Martin Stock

It’s hard to believe that I would be writing a blog post about the value of the German film composer Martin Stock’s ambient piano music, but when our two-week-old granddaughter is having baby tummy trouble and needs to be comforted, it does the trick. And it calms parents and grandparents too. The odd thing about listening to this music (on shuffle via our daughter’s Alexa machine) is that it allows you to still have thoughts (the quality of which I won’t evaluate in this Stock-stunned state). Normally when I listen to music, I think mainly about the music, and can’t think about much else. This music plants itself firmly in the background, which, I am learning, has a purpose.

If this is music that serves as furniture (was it Satie who thought about music as furniture? I am rendered immobile—bad pun—by this music, and looking it up in another tab on my phone is too much work) this furniture would be soft and supportive, with a womb-like contour. It would have clean wooden frames made from Kindergarten-room birch. And it would be 73 degrees and sunny, with a slight bit of misty humidity here and there, carrying the scent of lemongrass.

Is it musical Soma? I dunno. Listen for yourself and decide.

The Whistleblower Complaint

Someone had to write it!



September 27, 2019

You can find a PDF on this page of the IMSLP, and you can also get one here. You can listen to a computer-generated recording here.

I would love to post recordings of actual flutists playing this piece (which is pretty cathartic to play). If you make one, please send it to me!

Gnostical Turpitude

Imagine my surprise and delight to find this lovely piece by Amanda Morrell after searching the internets for a definition of "gnostical turpitude" while reading Vladimir Nabokov's Invitation to a Beheading.

It captures the comedic pantomime quality of the novel beautifully.



Here's a link to more of her work.

The Rewind: Ben introduces us to Jimmie Rodgers by way of an interview with Barry Mazor

Curious George Goes to the Conservatory (Marshall Fine, guest blogger)

CURIOUS GEORGE GOES TO THE CONSERVATORY
by Marshall Fine after H. A. Rey
(Based on Scherzo from Shostakovich Symphony #1)

I have it on very good authority that the piece you are about to hear was written with help from a monkey.

Interested? Curious to know why?

One day Curious George was wandering down a city street, when he heard all sorts of noise coming from the music conservatory. He knew what music was, but was this music? And why was this noise being made at all, when every other building in the area was quiet? So he decided to go in at the big front door. Then he saw another set of doors--so he opened those too. It was a big concert hall. But instead of music, there was an ugly sound from the string instruments on stage:

(Shostakovich Symphony #1, Scherzo, first two bars)

“Hold it! Cellos and basses!” called the conductor, rapping the stand with his baton. “Can’t you people play together? Let’s try that again. Slower and not so loud.”

(Fig. 11 to fig. 12, cellos and basses only)

“No, no, no, it’s still not together,” the conductor complained again. “Do it again, please. Slow and soft this time. And make sure it’s clear!”

(last six bars before fig. 23, violas and cellos only)

Rap! Rap! Rap! The conductor stopped again. “Check the parts at break,” he growled disgustedly. “Let’s try another place. From 4 to 5. And make sure it’s in tune!”

(Fig. 4 to fig. 5, tutti strings)

It made such an ugly noise that Curious George clapped his hands over his ears and screamed as only a monkey can!

“What was that??” exclaimed the conductor. Then he turned and saw George. “You! Out!!” Poor George had to leave the concert hall.

He went down a flight of stairs, through a door, and found himself in a long hall with door after door stretching out on either side. Practice rooms, he realized. It wasn’t getting any better. The noise from all these rooms sounded just like the concert hall. In the first one he came to, he heard a piano, just banging chords at the bottom and top of its range.

(First three bars of fig. 22)

Interesting! He went in quietly and sat on the pedals, so that he could see what the player was doing. But the very next chord just hung on and on! The pianist looked down, saw George, and the next instant gave him a terrific kick. George fled in a great fright down the hall.

He stopped again to catch his breath and found himself in front of a violinist who was playing nothing but his open E string. (Beginning here and concurrent with narration: 2nd violins, from fig. 6 and cut off on cue) The door was ajar. He went in; luckily the violinist had his eyes closed. But soon enough he opened his eyes to look at his bow, and saw Curious George as well. (Cutoff cue!!) Once again George had to flee to evade a kick.

Then he found himself in front of a door behind which a snare drum was beating:

(Fig. 7-8, snare drum)

Next door to this was a pair of clarinetists. They were arguing over a tune.


(Fig. 8-9, clarinets. 2nd clarinet mistuned in B-flat)

“You’ve got the wrong instrument!” yelled the first. “No, you’re just plain out of tune!” rejoined the other.

Actually George was getting the hang of this music, so he pointed at the first one, whose clarinet seemed a little longer.

“Who the blazes are you?” the second growled at George; then suddenly he looked at his own clarinet and realized he did in fact have the wrong one. He changed instruments and they played again.

(Repeat excerpt, 2nd clarinet in A)

But then the argument broke out afresh! The second said, “It’s in three, like that drummer next door.” But the first replied, “No, it’s in four, can’t you feel the phrase?”

George didn’t know what three or four meant here, but he could hear that some notes still seemed out of tune. “Hu-hu-hu-hu!” he exclaimed, putting his hands over his ears. That sent the players mad! “Who asked you? Dirty monkey! Out!!” And again George had to flee.

This time he found himself in front of a larger room with a brass quartet, three trombones and a tuba. They were practicing long held chords. The tuba player was running out of breath before the others.

(Fig. 21-22, trombones and tuba only)

Manners, it seemed, were called for, so he did the same as he’d seen his master do: he knocked. The door opened.

“Who...who...” he fumbled out, in his most refined monkey talk. They introduced themselves, but George could not understand a word.

There was a word, somewhere, that meant he wanted to know something. There! he had it! “Why...why...” he addressed the tuba player.

But that was as far as he got! The tubist exploded, “It’s all about you, monkey. What gives you the nerve to teach us? Get out!”

At this point the conservatory director came up. Student after student had been to his office, all saying the same thing. The brass players laid their horns aside, took one limb each of Curious George, and marched him out the front door with the director leading the way. BUMP! OOF! he went flying and landed hard on the bottom step. And there he lay, hurting with pain and shame. Was this what music-making was like? Forget it!

Just as he had made his mind up to go home and never come back again, a young man came down the steps. “You must be the monkey I’ve just heard of.”

Curious George just nodded.

“You just come back in with me. I’ll hide you. Then you can tell me your story--oops, I mean, show me.” And he took George by the hand and led him back into the building.

George took the young man downstairs to the practice rooms. First he showed the young man the piano room. The young man nodded. “That’s called voicing. She’s just beginning. Her teacher says she has to learn to balance the notes in a chord. I know because I play piano too.”

Then George showed him the violinist’s room, where the poor boy was still trying to make a good sound on his open E. “His bow isn’t straight,” the young man explained. “His teacher sent him down here after only ten minutes of his lesson.”

Then they went to the clarinetists’ room, where the drummer was still hard at work next door as well, though he had changed over to a triangle.

(Fig. 8-9, clarinets 1-2 and triangle)

“My God, what an interesting rhythm! I wonder...I think I can make something of that.” Then, bypassing the brass room, the young man took George to a back staircase, where they went up and listened through a door without opening it. It must have been the back door of the concert hall, for there was the same thing as George had first heard...

(Repeat first two bars)

...the music was still falling apart the same way no matter how they rehearsed...

(Repeat the last two bars before fig. 5, tutti strings)

...the conductor was still yelling that it was out of tune! And no one came by to disturb them.

“Upstairs, come on now,” said the young man. I know a room where I can hide you. It’s my teacher’s office. He has not been pleased with me. He doesn’t understand the music I’ve been writing lately. But come, he is not here anymore today. We will stay tonight and you can show me what to write. A satire on this place. I’ll get even with my teacher, and I’ll get you even with the people who kicked you around.”

And that was what they did! Young Dmitri Shostakovich wrote, and played, and wrote, and played some more, always based on the noises George had heard; and whenever he did something George liked, George would let out a robust “Hu-hu-hu-hu!!” They produced this piece in a day and a night; and then the next morning he set George free outside the conservatory to return to his master.

The rest, as everyone who knows Soviet music recognizes, is history.

And now, ladies and gentlemen, the piece written with the aid of Curious George: the Scherzo of Dmitri Shostakovich’s First Symphony.

Marshall Fine Sonata for Double Bass on Jason Heath's Contrabass Conversations

I just found this podcast episode that features a performance my brother Marshall's excellent 1997 Sonata for Bass and Piano.

You can listen to it here. The piece begins at 6'26" and goes for about 40 minutes.

John Chiego, bass
Deborah Heath, piano

Recorded live at the University of Memphis on February 14, 1998

Homage to A.T. (13:06)
Scherzo: La Vendetta (5:12)
Warrington-Variations (20:55)

You can read some posts I have made about Marshall here.

We are working with the music library at the University of Memphis to make Marshall’s unpublished manuscripts (like this piece) available in their collection.

UPDATE: I found program notes (written by Marshall in the third person).

SONATA FOR BASS AND PIANO

The Bass Sonata op. 90 (1997) was written especially for John Chiego and his “TK” (Thomas Kelischek) bass, which could play a tone-row in natural harmonics, all the way up to eleventh partial). Having been moved by Chiego’s complaint that few composers (mainly bassists) seem to have the courage to write at length for it, Fine had in mind at the outset to create a piece of major bass repertoire. But what he actually achieved is nothing less than the largest piece ever written for bass (the actual premiere was timed at about 39 minutes). The difficulty of the sonata is also notorious; though Fine worked closely with Chiego, rewriting, providing ossias or adjusting tempi, he kept receiving reports that other bassists such as the legendary Frank Proto were still complaining. The premiere by Chiego, on February 14, 1998 at the University of Memphis, so far appears to be the only known performance.

The end movements are tributes to women composers--mostly from Memphis though one from elsewhere, the folk singer Joni Mitchell, is also given tribute--through thematic allusions.

Ann Taylor, whose violin miniature Gerald’s Tree (on Georgia O’Keefe’s painting) is part basis for the sonata-form first movement with introduction, was a violinist in the Memphis Symphony Orchestra from 1979-1994. Fine had actually played the piano part of Gerald’s Tree for Taylor at its premiere by the Mid-South Composers Forum. Fine preserves the whole piece inviolate (merely adding his own interludes to develop the material) as the ostinato-based main theme and the harmonic-filled second theme, and then blends in with it for his closing section Mitchell’s theme, loosely based on “Songs to Aging Children Come”, a fitting choice since it well described the 41-year-old composer in his own perception, and is based on agonizing Neapolitan relationships. The recapitulation further darkens the prevailing mixolydian D of Taylor’s piece to a chromatic D minor, producing a funereal atmosphere that persists to the end.

Darlene Warrington was an amateur composer whose student piece, Mixdorian, came to Fine’s attention in 1985 (at which time he played it with their composition teacher Donald Freund on one of his studio recitals). Evidently it impressed Fine--though it took another twelve years to expand it into the variation finale of the Bass Sonata. Fine uses only the opening section of Warrington’s work and evolves eight variations: a humoresque that turns the theme’s very first phrase into a palindrome, a scherzo, a fierce march, a “Ricercar a Dodici Toni” (twelve-tone ricercar) based almost exclusively on bass harmonics, a dirge, a romance, a fanfare with bass cadenza, and a sonata-form final variation heavily influenced by bop jazz. It turns out that Taylor’s material is compatible with Warrington’s, and accordingly the three themes of the first movement are blended in, each paired with a motive of Warrington’s.

The second movement, La Vendetta, is the only one not based on music by female composers; instead it is a humorous portrait of Chiego in rondo form. The nature of the “vendetta” is musical. “In two of the episodes,” Fine admitted, “I decided to make the bass behave as outrageously as he had on the occasions that inspired them, taking quick fixes on the music that was performed in context of these tirades.” In the first, he did this by borrowing the theme from Hindemith’s sonata op. 11 no. 4, paired with a motive from the Beethoven overture Coriolan--to which is also added a soggetto cavato motive derived from the name Rosenbaum (a former, brief-tenured faculty violist). The last episode uses a small motive, the final flourish at the end of the “Firebird’s Variation” from the Stravinsky ballet. As Fine relates the story, it appears that Chiego misinterpreted a gesture by Fine and flew into a rage at him during a rehearsal. “It was over some intonation between the bass harmonic and the piano, something insoluble. So I decided to satirize it by blowing up the intonation problem from a microtone into a whole step.” This is done by making the motive--in extreme augmentation--the object of a violent polytonal argument between the bass and piano. That Fine was able to give his judgment on such absurdities so diplomatically--that is, in musical form, and in such high artistic value--is something for which he was never given credit. In any event, there is no doubt that it kept Fine and Chiego fast friends.

UPDATE

Thanks to the kindness of Michael Hovnanian, who send me a scan of the (clear and clean) manuscript, you can find the music on this page of the IMSLP. It is also available here.

Alpine Adventures Online

Michael and I just read the ninteenth-century novella Bergkristall by Adalbert Stifter. We read it in an English translation (as Rock Crystal) by Elizabeth Mayer and Marianne Moore. The story takes place in (mostly) the area between two small Austrian towns that sit at the foot of a snow-capped mountain. The physical description of the area, and the cultural matters between the two towns reminded me of the culture of Schladming, the small town where I worked from September of 1980 through August of 1981. It was still a small town then. Everyone knew everyone.

I was curious to see the location of the two towns in the story, so I looked for them in Google Maps. The town called Millsdorf (literally Mill-town) is purely fictional, and the other, called Gshaid, has a name similar to a town in the region around Schladming. From that, I imagined that the mountain might have been the Dachstein, the mountain the loomed large over Schladming, because it is the only glacier in that part of Austria.

I wondered if there might be any connection between Adalbert Stifter and Schladming.



And then I found a street named after him there!

I did a search for Stifter and Ramsau, the plateau above Schladming that leads to the Dachstein, and I found this:



The plot thickens. This fantastic writer was also a painter.

In a search for Stifter and Dachstein, I learned that Stifter was very close friends with Friedrich Simony, the first person to cross the Dachstein glacier (in 1842). It was through Stifter's writing and artwork that Simony, the Dachstein, and its environs became widely known.

This excerpt from Adalbert Stifter: A Critical Study by Eric Blackall does have a few spoilers, but it clearly identifies the Dachstein-specific inspiration for the story.

Here are some posts about Schladming, and here's a link to a post about a piece of music I wrote for wind ensemble called "The Dachstein."

"The Spider's Web"

I was thinking about the WGBH radio program "The Spider's Web" that I listened to (in both Boston and New York) during the 1970s, and I was, sadly, unable to find the recording they used of the theme song, which I believe was sung by Odetta.

A great big thanks goes to these girls, who are teaching others how to harmonize it on YouTube.



And here's a recording of the song by an unnamed grown-up, who, kindly, is sharing the words and chords online.

I wrote two posts about the radio show back in 2009.

Stand Hand 2.0

Here's an explanation for how to use the original (as of two days ago) Stand Hand.

You can find a PDF to print on sticky paper here.

Let's Read Zoom Mail with Ben!

This episode of "The Rewind" is incredibly exciting for our family.

Just think! Ben loved the WGBH TV show Zoom when he was a child, and now he gets to share that love as part of his job.

I watched Zoom when I was a child too. I happened, by sheer accident of fate (my best friend, who lived on my street, had a boyfriend who was the brother of one of the cast members) to become friends with the entire cast for the first season of Zoom.

I offer no spoilers for what you are about to see here:



You can read more about Zoom here. (Thanks, Michael)
And there's more Zoom-related lore here.

Stand Hand

Rather than telling my violin and viola students what not to do (like don't play with "pizza hand"), I have taken to asking for positive actions. I ask my students to look at their left palm while they are playing. This causes the wrist to drop and the arm to go under the instrument, which, in turn, causes the fingers to drop from above and the notes to sound in tune.

I made some hand-shaped stickers that I thought I could stick in my students' music in order to give them an easy visual reminder to look at their palms while playing. During my last lesson I decided to affix one of the stickers to my music stand. It didn't stay in place, so I stuck it onto an index card, which I clipped to the music stand.

It's my stand hand.



In this capacity it is useful for all occasions. It can be clipped to the stand itself or to a piece of music that is on a music stand.

I'm giving the stickers I made to all my violin and viola students! And I'm sharing the idea here.

You can find a PDF to print on sheets of sticker paper here!

(And for an updated version with clefs, go here.)

William Jay Sydeman in the IMSLP

While looking at the recent additions to the IMSLP I came across the familiar name of William Jay Sydeman. Sydeman was born in 1928 in New York. His career has taken him in and out of music (and the "in" parts include commissions from Lincoln Center for the Performing Arts, the Boston Symphony Orchestra, and the Tanglewood Music Center). After an impressive career with all kinds of critical acclaim, he is now making some of his music available to download for free through this page the IMSLP.



You can listen to some of his music (some of it computer-generated) here.

Vi Hart's September 11th Post "Never Forget"

When I say “never forget”, this is not a statement of will, not a command or a purpose or a political vote. When I hear “never forget”, when I hear it from politicians or see it posted by random strangers, I don’t hear a statement of purpose, egging us on to seek revenge for the secret benefit of greedy motivations. To me, it’s an expression of this thing inside me that has no better name. I will never forget. I couldn’t if I wanted to. And I find it comforting that we have at least some expression of this particular wound that so many share.

Never forget.

I wish we had better words, better actions. I wish I were more comfortable talking about my feelings. I wish I was one of the students who cried in front of the whole class when we heard the live radio coverage, when we heard the first tower go down, and then, unbelievably, unthinkably, the 2nd. I wish I was properly grim when I heard President Obama announce they killed the fucker who did this to us. I was happy. I cheered. I’m glad he’s dead, no matter how little it solves, no matter what my brain thinks about the whole thing.

Never forget.

I understand that many experience today’s 9/11 remembrances as a politicized thing that reminds them only of the worst of what became politically possible in this country following those events. That makes a good deal of sense, and I’m angry about those things too. But cynicism is easy and impresses no one. The fastest way to make a fool of yourself is by mocking someone else’s words because you don’t understand them.

Never forget, never forget, never forget.

Read Vi Hart's whole post here.

A la una yo naci

Every once in a while I become seduced by the Sephardic muse, and I have to make an instrumental setting of a Sephardic melody.

This traditional melody from Sarajevo, which I found in Isaac Levy's 1959 publication Chant Judéo-Espagnols (and first heard performed by Voice of the Turtle), is one of the most alluring songs in the book. The text of the original song translates "I was born at one, at two I grew, at three I took a lover, at four I married. Tell me, young girl, where do you come from? I want to know you. Tell me if you have a lover. If not, I want to love you."



You can listen to a computer-generated recording here, and find the score and parts here and on this page of the IMSLP.

To learn more about Sephardic music and the history of recordings of Sephardic music, visit Sephardic Music: A Century of Recordings.

Kate Wagner Strikes a Familiar Note

This piece from The Baffler is well worth reading. It tells many truths about the business of music.

Here are some more Kate Wagner Baffler pieces, and here is her blog, McMansion Hell.