Meadowmount film from the early 1960s

Back in 2015 I made a post about a U.S. State Department film about Meadowmount that was shot in the early 1960s. I was able to identify a couple of the musicians in the film, and hoped that there might be musicians around who could identify more.

I was thrilled to wake up today to an email message from Sydney Manowitz, the retired concertmaster of the former Southern Sinfonia (of New Zealand) that has since been renamed the Dunedin Symphony Orchestra, providing a great deal of further identification.

By the way, and speaking of things New Zealand, Michael and I have been reading stories by the fantastic New Zealand writer Katherine Mansfield, who I just learned was a cellist.

If you happened to be around Meadowmount (or Curtis or Juilliard) during the first decades of the 1960s, please have a look at the film (by way the link above), and see if you recognize yourself or some old friends. And if you do, please do leave a comment.

Standing Desk

Michael introduced me to a new study suggesting that sitting for ten hours a day could increase the risk of dementia. After a little hemming and hawing, I thought it might be interesting to explore the idea of using a standing desk.

Fortunately for me a standing desk doesn't need much in the way of height, so I used a modular shelf (that I already had), and propped my computer onto a nifty Glenmorangie box (too nifty a box to ever throw away, in my opinion, and happens to add exactly the right amout of height).

The light is better up here by the window, and I can use a music stand to prop up whatever I happen to be working on.

I also have better head and neck posture, and seem to have an improved attention span. And if I am working on music, I can allow my body to move (what a novel idea).

When I'm finished with my work, I can sit down to take a break.

Enough Is

My resolution for 5784 (this Jewish new year) is simply to remind myself every day (and every once in a while during every day) that enough is.

And that is enough. Happy new year.

Musical Assumptions Posts from Years Past as PDF Files

Now that I have close to twenty years of blog posts here, and with an eye on what the next twenty years might bring (to both the blog format and to me), I have started making yearly digests in PDF form so that everything I have written here doesn't simply disappear into a puff of air.

I toyed with the idea of organizing things into book form and presenting it to a publisher, but I decided not to. I'm not interested in making money (for myself or for a publishing company) from the things I have written in my blog, and I'm certainly not interested in taking it down (which I would probably have to do) after signing a contract that would give all the rights to what I have written in it to a publisher.

In order to keep things in "digestable" chunks, I have left the comments out of the digests. I have also eliminated recipes, posts that have to do with things fully non-musical, and almost all of the pictures. I have not included posts that only reference other posts and websites (many that no longer exist), and have cleaned things up so that everything looks uniform. The posts that I have left off the PDF digest are still accessible by way of the sidebar. Once I finish the digests I will get around to improving the labels (in case you really want to find a recipe or something).

The digest for every year reads from January to December, pretty much in order (in contrast to the way blogs read backwards, with the most recent posts at the top). The files are between 200K and 1000K. I have removed the individual dates of each post, but the pages are all numbered.

Posts from 2005
Posts from 2006
Posts from 2007
Posts from 2008
Posts from 2009
Posts from 2010
Posts from 2011
Posts from 2012
Posts from 2013
Posts from 2014
Posts from 2015
Posts from 2106
Posts from 2017
Posts from 2018
Posts from 2019
Posts from 2020
Posts from 2021
Posts from 2022
Posts from 2023
Posts from 2024

Fanfare for Orchestra for Fall

I wrote a piece for four trombones around twenty years ago, and one of the projects I took on in 2020 was to orchestrate it. Seesaw published the trombone piece in 2003, and Subito (which acquired the Seesaw catalog) put my expanded and orchestrated version in their catalog.

The video images are from that beautiful fall of 2020 when all was quiet, and many of us took to walking in the woods to find some sanity.

The Internet, the Cafeteria, the Street, and Me

I remember so very clearly when access to the Internet was something that people connected with academic institutions could use. I remember exchanging emails with my mother from my portal at a university radio station and her portal at Mass Art. I remember the first real-time "chat" that I had from three different computers on campus (with Michael and with our friend Norman who now lives in Norway). I remember user groups where I found that there were thousands of people who shared my interests.

I enjoyed lively conversations with people about music and viola playing, and I found a great many people I would otherwise have no access to at "play." I had meaningful email correspondences with many people I met through those user groups.

Once we were able to connect to the internet at home, I started participating in the newly-created blogosphere. The blogosphere was really lively, and it allowed for a very special and meaningful kind of connection. Writing in the blogosphere remained available to anyone to read, just like a website. The way blogs were set up allowed me to post an organized catalog of music I had written, and provide links to the email address of the publisher I worked with (Subito), the WorldCat (where pieces of mine in libraries could be borrowed via interlibrary loan) and the Werner Icking Music Archive, where I shared my arrangements. I was early to the musical blogosphere, and the title "Thematic Catalog" hadn't been taken yet.

I hoped that people interested in music might search for my (accessible in the WIMA for free) arrangement of the Pachelbel Canon and stay to explore the rest of the music.

People certainly love the Pachelbel Canon. I don't know how many people "stayed" to explore some of my own (non-transcription) music, and I guess I never will. I have, however, made friends with musicians everywhere through this catalog.

I was an avid user of the Werner Icking Music Archive, and I contributed many transcriptions in those early years. The recorder player who ran the archive asked me if I would like to make my own music available in the WIMA, and I jumped at the chance. At that point I had around eighty pieces of music published. After my publisher's death (it was Seesaw) its inventory was sold to Subito, and my music, along with the other music in the acquisition was not made available for purchase for what seemed like a very long time.

Eventually the WIMA became too big for one person to maintain, and it was absorbed into a public domain library for choral music. These two public domain libraries became the IMSLP, which has grown into an absolutely indispensable international resource for musicians, scholars, librarians, students, and performing organizations. I still keep most of the music I write there. Here's the IMSLP page for my music.

I mostly use Facebook to let people know about the music that I have posted in the IMSLP, and I do my best in Facebook instrumental groups to respond to queries for music for a specific combination of instruments. I appreciate having the ability to do this. Sometimes I post links to these blog posts there.

My early experiences with Facebook reminded me of going to the cafeteria at Juilliard when taking a break from practicing. Everybody I knew (from school and from elsewhere in my past) seemed to be on Facebook.  Practicing musicians who emerge from the captivity of a practice room seem to have great social needs when they are let out. We work for hours and hours on the art of communicating musical phrases, and sometimes we achieve the joy of having them flow successfully. but that success falls only on our ears, and then it disappears into the ether.

Even the most introverted musicians need, at some point, other people to play for or with or to talk with. 

Why do we do this thing anyway? Isn't it for making connections with our fellow humans? When I was at Juilliard I was starved for people to play with. It was in the cafeteria that those connections were made.

There used to be a separation between what we call "real life" and what we used to think of as "virtual life" (or, as a friend put it "sidebar life"). But in recent years the "real" and the "virtual" have mixed together. During the year or so of isolation from live music that we experienced due to the pandemic, the "virtual" became the "real." For me the time between March of 2020 and March of 2022 was an incredibly creative time. I wrote a lot of music, really learned to play the violin like a violinist rather than like a violist, and found that I did have real connections with people through the internet. My virtual life became mixed with my real life too.

And then we were let out into the world, and "real life" was presented to us again.

Using Facebook is now (at least for me) like walking along a city street filled with billboards and flashing signs advertizing everything that I didn't know I might need. (Who knew that a nail clipper could work as a wire stripper, or that the little hole in it could bend a piece of metal wire into any shape you desire? And what is wrong with the way I eat and the way I dress?) To further distract from the social experience I crave when I take a break from practicing or working, I see photographs and videos of people I do and don’t know in beautiful places, cooking beautiful food, and having great success in their lives. I also see photographs from my "real life" friends that I enjoy. My emotions are all over the place: overstimulation, happiness for my friends, and a sense that that life I lead in "real life" is rather dull (which it really isn't: I have a great life).

Because I have this blog as a place to express myself, I do not post very much on Facebook. And more and more I restrict my participation to commenting and occasionally linking to blog posts that I have written.

I'm so grateful to have this "place" to play.

Guitarist Yamandu Costa

Yamandu Costa is a household name in Brazil, and he is very well known in Europe, but the concert Michael and I heard him play today was one of only two performances this year for him in the United States.

We feel extremely fortunate to have heard him play at the Ellnora Festival, a guitar festival held every other September at the Krannert Center for the Performing Arts, which is an hour's drive from our house.

Hearing Yamandu Costa was like a trip to another world: a world of musical expression that stretches the imagination. His instrument is the guitar, but in his hands the guitar is enormous. It holds the whole world of emotion, of energy, of generosity, of virtuosity, of lyricism, and of an expression of love for everything that is Brazil. And everything that is human.

If you get the opportunity to hear him play a concert, go to the concert. I'm so glad we did. I'm also glad that I was able to take this nice portrait of him afterwards.

Nicolas Slonimsky on Johnny Carson in 1986

Make sure to watch him play at the end . . .

New York City Ballet Orchestra petition for fair wages

I normally don't share petitions here, but this one from NYC Local 802 that demands fair wages and benefits for the people who play night after night in the New York City Ballet Orchestra is really important. This article in Allegro, the magazine of Local 802, explains the situation:

We’re outraged to report that the musicians of the New York City Ballet Orchestra, whose contract expired August 31, are not being offered the wages and healthcare they deserve and are instead being asked to make financial concessions once again.

These musicians bring the magic of live music to the most celebrated dancers, night after night. They are cultural ambassadors who help make New York City the artistic capital of the world.

During the pandemic, ballet management didn’t pay its musicians for over a year, from June 2020 to September 2021. Then, management imposed a 15 percent wage cut on the orchestra, at the musicians’ most vulnerable moment. During this same time period, the NYC Ballet had an endowment that was worth $263 million.

The ballet’s fundraising efforts have been robust and ticket sales have now exceeded 100 percent of pre-pandemic levels. The ballet even received more than $10 million in government support during the pandemic. A fair proposal to musicians would cost only a fraction of the ballet’s operating budget. Yet ballet management refuses to be transparent with financial information to justify its insulting offer to musicians.

To put it bluntly: ballet orchestra musicians are already being paid 9.3 percent less than in 2019. With more than 15 percent inflation, their purchasing power is 23 percent less than in 2019. Musicians and their families have suffered tremendous hardship as a result of this double hit of staggering inflation and the substantial pay cut that management imposed.

We urge the ballet to do the right thing and offer a fair proposal to its musicians that makes up for the sacrifices they were forced to endure during the pandemic — as well as inflation. We’ll do everything in our power to assist the musicians in their fight for the dignity and respect they deserve.

(Don't forget to uncheck the box if you don't want to get follow-up email messages.)

Discipline and Intuition

I was struck by an idea that Alan Alda presented during one of his "Clear + Vivid" podcast interviews. He was talking with his guest about stand-up comedy, and his guest mentioned a very strict kind of form for improvisation that he learned back in the early days of stand-up comedy. It involved using a phrase suggested by the audience, and that phrase had to occur at a specific time in the improvisation.

Alda added the notion that when you need to use discipline to organize something it stimulates the part of the brain associated with intuition.

This struck many nerves for me, both as a practicing and performing musician and as a composer.

I find that when I record myself practicing something while paying attention mainly to musical flights of fancy (like dynamics, expression, vibrato, sound), it never sounds as musically interesting as it does when I focus mainly on rhythm, maintaining an efficient bow stroke, and concentrating on the physical aspects of the left hand.

When writing a piece of music or making an arrangement I always get my best ideas when I am forced to stay within certain guidelines. Sometimes those guidelines involve avoiding instrumental difficulty, and sometimes those guidelines involve an external organizing force like a piece of film or a particular time frame. Sometimes those guidelines involve making my way from one tonality to another, and sometimes they involve staying within a given form (sometimes of my own creation, and sometimes not).

Twelve-tone music may not be great to listen to (at least the twelve-tone music written by mere mortals), but it is really stimulating to write. All that structure releases a lot of whatever chemical is associated with intuition. But writing scale-based pieces, working out species counterpoint problems, and writing fugues seems to do the same thing for me.

Violist's Shirt Syndrome

Yesterday I repaired my favorite linen shirt. It had gone threadbare in the strangest places: figures 1 and 2 show the patches I put on the back part of the left shoulder (shown from the inside and from the outside of the shirt), and figures 3 and 4 show the patches I put under the right arm (again from the inside and from the outside of the shirt). I made my patches from material that I cut from the length of the shirt (which was really too long for me anyway).

Today, after I donned the shirt and saw myself practicing in the mirror, I finally figured out why these areas were worn so badly. The shoulder is where my viola sits, and the stress under the right arm is from the motion of bowing, which pulls ever so slightly at the fabric, but does so constantly.

Monteverdi's Zefiro

One of the first recordings I pilfered from the tiny collection (maybe twenty) of records that my parents had was Noah Greenberg's 1954 recording of vocal music of Monteverdi with the New York Pro Musica. I was fourteen, and had just gotten a record player for my room (a KLH reconditioned from summer use in the Tanglewood music library--maybe a model 19 because it had a 16 r.p.m. speed). It was, as I recall, the first year that we had a working record player in the house (my father got one too--his was an AR). My love affair with Monteverdi has been going strong for half a century. "Zefiro" was the first piece on that record.

Ten years ago I posted a video of a wonderful performance of this piece by L'arpeggiata Ensemble, and this week I made an arrangement of it for strings.

[August 28, 2023]

You can find the music on this page of the IMSLP.

Nobody in the orchestra is looking at Lennie!

I guess that he is doing his "thing" for the people singing in the chorus, but I find it amusing that nobody in the orchestra is looking at Leonard Bernstein. The presence of two harps and the two female soloists tells me that this is Mahler's Second Symphony, the sky and the white orchestral attire tell me that this was a Sunday afternoon concert at Tanglewood, and a quick search of the Boston Symphony Archives tells me that the year was 1970. I can name every one of the musicians playing, even from behind.

Oy! I have been AI'd

I just found out that some non-living entity created a profile of me that has nothing to do with reality. I'm not putting the link here, because I don't want it to register any page views. But I can't resist sharing the fact that in its most generic spewing of gobbledygook this "entity" didn't get anywhere remotely close to whatever it is that I do or have done. And the pieces this bot randomly picked up off the beaches of the internets that it claims are my "notable works" are not the names of pieces that I have written.

Alla Nazimova

I just finished writing music for Salomé's dance in Alla Nazimova's 1922 or 1923 silent movie Salome that is based on Oscar Wilde's 1891 play. My setting of the dance is for a collaborative project that will be finished in March, so I can't share my work now, but I will share it here eventually.

As is my custom, I tend to jump feet first into a project like this, going for the emotional substance of the film without doing any research. So now, unable to really let go of the music (which still runs through my head), I'm learning something about Alla Nazimova, who made the film (she was the producer and co-director as well as the star).

Fortunately there is an Alla Nazimova Society website that is full of information about her.

I love the article I found there concerning one of the wigs she wore in the film.

Nazimova seems to be an inspiration for Norma Desmond's character in Sunset Boulevard (made by Billy Wilder in 1950) since Desmond refers to portraying Salomé on film (you can watch that clip here). I don't think that Theda Bara's portrayal would have come to mind since her 1918 film was lost (except for a two-minute highlight reel that only came to light recently).

Alla Nazimova was born in Yalta (in Crimea) in 1879 as Adelaida Yakovlevna Leventon, and died in 1945 in Los Angeles. Once billed as the world's greatest actress, she is also (posthumously) considered the "founding mother of Sapphic Hollywood." She was also a violinist.

Alla's father hid the fact that the family was Jewish, and would not let his daughter perform as a violinist under her family name (her father was a merchant, and having his daughter perform as a musician would damage his reputation), so she took the performing name of Nazimova after a character in a popular novel (Children of the Streets). She went to Moscow when she was seventeen to study acting with Vladimir Nemirovich-Danchenko, who was associated with Konstantin Stanislavski.

Nazimova left Russia for New York in 1905, met an agent, and became a star on Broadway (and a customer of Caswell-Massey, which has a beautiful tribute to her). She made her first silent film in 1916, and then headed off to Los Angeles to make more.

Salomé is extremely rich in visual and dramatic content. The (slightly edited from the original) dance section that I set starts about forty-one minutes in, and lasts for about ten minutes. I find (for obvious reasons) the music that goes with the version of the film that I linked to above distracting, so I prefer watching it with the sound turned off. Maybe some day I will set the whole film.

The Wikipedia article about the film mentions that it was the last film that Nazimova produced, and may have been the first "art" film made in the United States. It was not associated with any studio and was considered a failure at the time. The benefit of that kind of "failure" means that it can have a life as one of the treasures that remain in the public domain. You might enjoy following the links in the Wikipedia entry to learn about the film's cast (I certainly did).

Unlike Norma Desmond in Sunset Boulevard, Nazimova had a vibrant career in sound films and in the theater after her life as a silent film actress and producer.