Trust & Resistance Concert

It is such an honor that the German cellist Katja Zakotnik is including my Sephardic Suite on this "trust & resistance" concert. I like to think that music will, somehow, see us (the big "us," meaning the people who inhabit our fragile planet) through the dangers of the present moment and the dangers of the dark future ahead.

It looms like a very dark series of clouds just over the horizon.

We need to use all of our collective strength to resist, take shelter in music, literature, dance, and all kinds of art, and trust that the current darkness and the coming storm will eventually pass.

Sienna, Burnt and Raw for Guitar and Double Bass

This past Friday guitarist Saffron Sonoda and double bass player Joana Izabelle played the first performance of this duo at Sacred Trinity Church in Salford, UK. They will be recording it later this year. Saffron and Joana call their duo "Her Endangered Melody," so the title of the piece relates tangentially to the subject of the danger of extinction, and the importance of preservation.

I always found the names of the colors “burnt sienna” and “raw sienna” in the Crayola crayon box of my childhood extremely evocative. Sienna is a pigment made of manganese oxide and iron oxide. Because it was used in cave painting, we know that sienna was one of the first pigments that human beings used to express themselves.

In its raw state it is a light brown color (like the finish of a guitar), and in its burnt state it is a deeper brown (like the finish of a double bass). Named for the Italian city of Siena, its use in string instrument varnish began in the early Renaissance.

Burnt sienna was slated for removal from the Crayola box in 2003, but it was saved from extinction due to popular demand. This light-hearted piece serves as a reminder that musical expression and dialogue have survived through difficult times over the millennia. Popular demand will not allow for its extinction.

The cover image, in all its burnt and raw sienna glory, comes from the Cave of Lascaux.

You can listen to a computer-generated recording here.

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

Excellent performance of my Harlequin Sonata by Ella Hebrard

It is really remarkable when musicians play music I have written with a real sense of musical personality. And I want to give a big (because it is contrabassoon) and public (because it is a blog) "thank you" to Ella Hebrand for including this piece on her University of Michigan master's recital, and to both musicians for playing it so beautifully, and with so much character.



Because of the range and the poor quality of most computer speakers, you will want to use headphones to hear everything.

Here is Maurice Sand's portrait of a Harlequin listening. Maurice was George Sand's son, just in case you are curious about him and about the drawing. He doesn't have to wear headphones because he is a drawing made long before headphones were invented. Or even needed.

Three Stages of Bean Salad

Life is difficult these days. So I decided to share this photo I took at lunch. I could call this "Three Stages of Be-in' Salad," but I thought I'd save it for the text of this post rather than for the title.

The three stages are raw, sprouted, and, for want of a better term, cooked. We have raw green beans, sprouted mung beans, and lightly browned tofu (made from soy beans and bought at the store).

There is also some shredded cabbage (green and purple) in there, as well as some chopped scallions.

This salad is great with every kind of dressing, but today I had it with tahini dressing. Here's how I make it:

Put a nice spoonful of sesame tahini in a bowl, and splash in an equal amount of cider vinegar (the kind with "the mother" tastes best). If you don't have cider vinegar, lemon juice works as well.

I actually started using cider vinegar instead of lemon juice, and like the taste more.

Mix them together to form a very thick paste.

Slowly add some water, and the mixture will become thick (a different kind of thick), and white.

You can add salt to this mixture, or you can add soy sauce. You can add spices like powered garlic, or even ginger. Anything your heart desires.

I started making this back in the 1970s when I used to go to Amy's at 77th and Broadway in New York, on the way home from a hard day of practice at Juilliard. It was freely available in big a dispenser with little cups. My friends and I used to consume the contents of so many of those cups that the dispenser was, eventually, disbanded.

Before I learned the term "deconstruction," which Jacques Derrida wrote about in 1967, is "not the mixture but the tension between memory, fidelity, the preservation of something that has been given to us, and, at the same time, heterogeneity, something absolutely new . . .," I deconstructed the Amy's tahini sauce.

I knew, from the name, that it had tahini in it, and I tasted lemon and salt. When I mixed the two ingredients it turned, to my surprise, into a paste. I decided to thin it with a little water, and was thrilled to see that it had the same texture as the Amy's sauce. But it was a bit bitter. I balanced the bitterness by adding some salt. And there you have it.

There you have it: the tension between memory and fidelity (the emulsification of the oil by the acid), that results in the creation of something new. And as far as preservation goes, the mixture will stay good in the refrigerator for some time. But since it is good on everything, you might never find out how long.

Equity Arc Full Concert

The Travelling Companion

Yesterday, while reading Hans Christian Andersen's "The Travelling Companion," I started getting some serious operatic "vibes." I don't plan to write another opera (unless I just can't help myself). But considering my lack of ability to make the kinds of connections that make it possible for opera companies to consider staging my work, the amount of effort that goes into writing an opera doesn't make sense unless a performance is something other than a remote possibility.

I have tried, and I have failed. I know that my failure has nothing to do with the quality of my work. Still, it would be nice to see how things actually play out on a stage in an actual theater, instead of the one inside my head, where the acoustics are perfect, the lighting is ideal, the dancing is extraordinary, the voices are resonant, the diction is perfect, and the costumes and sets are limitless.

And if I were to set "The Travelling Companion" properly I would need to have some flying, some serious magical transformation (from black swan to white swan, and then to princess), and some violence (though that could be done musically).

I noticed that Charles Villiers Stanford, as prompted by his friend Hary Plunket Greene in 1911, made an operatic setting of the story with Henry Newbolt providing the libretto.

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

Stanford and Newbolt, being proper Victorians, minimized the Turandot-like nature of the princess (which Puccini made up for in his 1920 opera Turandot). Many of Andersen's tales are as old as time, and his stories could have had many sources. The Turandot story and other stories related to it most certainly have served as good travelling companions through several countries and several centuries. 

The Wikipedia article on Turandot  gives us a glimpse:

The beginnings of Turandot can likely be found in Haft Peykar, a twelfth-century epic by the Persian poet Nizami. One of the stories in Haft Peykar features a Russian princess. In 1722, François Pétis de la Croix published his Les Mille et un jours (The Thousand and One Days), a collection of stories which were purportedly taken from Middle Eastern folklore and mythologies.One of these stories, believed to be inspired by Nizami, features a cold princess named Turandokht. However, it has been speculated that many of de la Croix's 'translated' stories were his own original creations, with no actual basis in Middle Eastern cultures. De la Croix's story was adapted into a play, Turandot, by the Italian playwright Carlo Gozzi in 1762, which was then adapted by Friedrich Schiller into another play in 1801. It was Schiller's version that inspired Puccini to write the opera.

Stanford and Newbolt turn a troll into a wizard, and give the listener some foreshadowing which Andersen avoids. Andersen's stories tend to be linear, keeping the reader attuned to the here-and-now of the protagonist.

You can read about the latest production of Stanford's opera here.

Saint-Saëns writes about eating Chinese food in New York

From the chapter "Impressions of America" in Camille Saint-Saëns's Outspoken Essays on Music:

. . . After the play or opera it is the fashion to take supper in the Chinese quarter. These Orientals live some distance away in a few small streets where they have set up restaurants. Here you drink excellent tea and eat "ratatouille," a meat and vegetable stew, which no more resembles the real Chinese cooking--such as I became acquainted with in Saigon--than does a meal prepared for a Parisian workman in a creamery resemble a dinner at Voisin's or Paillard's. The difference is even greater, for nothing can compare, in point of delicacy, with the true Chinese fare served in fragile tiny painted cups which look as though they had been made for fairies. Sea-weed soups, lotus grains, young bamboo shoots, edible birds' nests, delicious shrimp pâtes mounded in the form of floweres and stars, perfumed sauces, small preserved tomatoes, light sticks of tortoise-shell and ivory, spoons of flower-adorned porcelain: the barbarous Occident is unworthy of you!

Make sure to follow the above link to Voisin's. It will blow your mind.

Brahms in Haydn

Or should I say in "Hidin'?"

Last night, while reading through Haydn's Opus 64, no. 6 String Quartet, my quartet mates and I all noticed (and at the same time) how much a few moments in second movement sound like the essence of Brahms.



[the video is embedded so it will start at the beginning of the second movement]

It happens in measure 19 and in the repetitions of those particular harmonies and voicings that happen later in the movement.

David Goza's YouTube channel is a great place to explore. He offers excellent commentary and "guided tours" of with light harmonic analysis beneath the scores in his videos. I'm so happy that he has so much Haydn.

Erik Christian Haugaard, guest blogger

Erik Christian Haugaard's Introduction to his 1974 translation of Hans Christian Andersen's complete fairy tales and stories is remarkable. I have loved Andersen's stories all of my life, and Haugaard's translation of all of them, which I first read in the 1990s and am re-reading with Michael now, are infinitely more enjoyable than the sterilized, edited, Danny Kayed, and Disneyfied versions I learned as a child.

I have set ten of these stories to music (using my own free adaptations of Haugaard's translations) over the past twenty-five years. These stories that have meant so much to so many people from so many times and from so many cultures are extremely meaningful in this fraught-ridden second quarter of the twenty-first century.

Here's an excerpt from the introduction that I find particularly meaningful:

These stories that Andersen heard as a child were all very simple tales, and their characters were probably more archetypes than they were individuals. They were not meant to surprise--let alone shock--the listener. Indeed, their attraction lay in the fact that they were familiar. The mean, the petty, the evil, the good, and the kind were so in the manner that one was used to; it was the plot itself that held one's interest. We of the twentieth century, who are so used to plotless novels with heroes so infinitely complex that, after having read the book, it is easier for us to describe the characters' nervous systems than to tell what the story was about, hardly ever come into contact with this early form of literature. Yet these stories, stripped as they are of the fashionable and the modish, give us—at least for a moment—that peace which is necessary for survival. Man must live in his own time—he has no choice--but for the sake of his sanity he must sometimes escape its tyranny--if only to be able recognize it. Once upon a time denies time and thus curtails its power over us. 

Once upon a time is a definite point in the infinite. It exists somewhere but has no particular date, which is a feat that is hardly explainable--and yet, maybe it is. We have divided time into precise periods. Was once upon a time in the Iron Age, the Bronze Age, or the thirteenth century?" we ask, for we are enlightened. But the peasant who heard a fairy tale in the market place and retold it to his family when he came home had no such conceptions. Time, for him, stretched from the creation till that moment which can best be described as now. And though he knew that raiment and customs changed, he did not believe they had very much influence on people. He knew the Bible well, yet it did not disturb him to see the Virgin portrayed as if she were a rich Florentine lady. Were not Saul and David like the kings he knew? Was Eve much diferent from his own wife?  Once upon a time was not magic or poetic, as it is to us. But then, the twentieth century has produced no fairy tales.

Andersen was the last great teller of fairy tales. We may create tales of imagination and fantasy, but they are not fairy tales. The fairy tale and the folk tale take place in the real world, no matter how exotic and strange their backgrounds may be. Witches, trolls, or mermaids may appear; but they are not figments of anyone's imagination; they are as real as the princess or the peasant. We who are manacled by a belief in progress and theories of natural behavior find it hard to understand this. We prefer to escape into fantasy, into worlds that are safe because they never have existed and never will. 

You can look at a preview of the book through this Canadian Random House site, and order a copy of it in the regular places.

Camille Saint-Saëns, Guest Blogger

I have always loved Camille Saint-Saëns as a composer. But there is also much to marvel at in his prose.

These two passages come from his essay "The Ideas of M. Vincent D'Indy" from Outspoken Essays on Music (translated to English in 1922 by Fred Rothwell):

Art came into being on the day that man, instead of being solely concerned with the utility of an object he had made, concerned himself with its form, and made up his mind that this form should satisfy a need peculiar to human nature, a mysterious need to which the name of "aesthetic sense " has been given.

Afterwards form was enriched by ornament, or decoration, which serves no other purpose than to satisfy this aesthetic sense. Subsequently it became man's desire to reproduce the form of his fellow beings, human and animal, and he began to do this--as a child still does—-by a stroke or line. This line does not exist in nature.

Here is the starting point in the radical difference between nature and art; art is destined not to reproduce nature literally, but to suggest an idea of nature. This principle, badly interpreted, gives rise to the aberrations which manifest themselves at the Salon d'Automne and the Salon des Indépendants.

It is by virtue of this principle that the most insignificant sketch gives an impression of art which will never be supplied by the finest photograph, however "artistic."

It is also on this account that the purists are mistaken when they attack "imitative music." Real imitative music would consist of the green-room noises by which a life-like imitation is given in the theatre to thhe wind and the rain and the various other sounds of nature. So-called imitative music does not imitate, it suggests. Composers have described storms, but there is not one that is like any of the rest. The singing of birds, which offends certain persons in Beethoven's Pastoral Symphony, is there imitated in very imperfect fashion; it is this very facct that constitutes its charm.

And a few pages later:

Everything is relative, we are told. This is true, though only within certain limits which cannot be overstepped. After a severe frost, a temperature of twelve degrees above zero seems stiflingly hot; on returning from the tropics, you shiver with cold at eighteen degrees above zero. There comes a limit, however, beyond which both cold and heat disorganise the tissues and render life impossible.

The dissonance of yesterday, we are also told, will be the consonance of tomorrow ; one can grow accustomed to anything. Still, there are such things in life as bad habits, and those who get accustomed to crime, come to an evil end. . . .

It is impossible for me to regard scorn of all rules as being equivalent to progress, by which word we generally mean improvement. The true meaning of the word—progressus—is a going forward, but the end or object is not stated. There is such a thing as the progress of a disease, and this is anything but improvement.

The more civilization advances, the more the artistic sense seems to decline: a grave symptom. We have already said that art came into existence on the day when man, instead of being solely preoccupied with the utility of an object, began to concern himself with its form.

More and more at the present time does attention to utility assume the foremost place ; we do away with all adornment and trouble ourselves nothing about form. The need to know is being substituted for the need to believe and to admire; and since what we know is insignificant compared with what we do not know, there is an immense field open to the human intellect.

Impressive Singing by the US Army Chorus

Beethoven Symphony No. 5 and the Spirit of Revolution

Rehearsals begin tomorrow for a Champaign Urbana Symphony Orchestra concert that includes Beethoven's Fifth Symphony. I have played the piece several times over the past twenty years (or more), but as I make my way through the viola part I suddenly feel something in the substance of the music that I have never really understood before.

It may have to do with the fact that I have been spending a great deal of time with Beethoven through his piano sonatas, or it may have something to do with basic growth as a musician, which, I am happy to report, is still finding new paths of expression in familiar material. Or it may be due to the fact that we are living in a time that echoes the revolutionary battles, both physical and intellectual, that Beethoven and countless enlightment-inspired European people had with the Napoleon-ruled First French Empire during the first decade of the 19th century.

I can observe and read about what is happening during this new (and unwelcome) phase of American government. Amid my feelings of despair, I do my best to find and hold onto a sense of resistance. I am somehow surprised that practicing Beethoven's Fifth Symphony helps me connect with those feelings in a way that feels productive. Being surrounded by and interacting with all the other voices is sure to be a deeply emotional experience for me and my fellow musicians, and I am eager to share the experience of revolution that Beethoven infused in this symphony with the people in the audience.

The pitches, rhythms, dynamics, harmonies, phrases, melodies, and orchestration of this music may not change from performance to performance, but the human condition of the people playing and the people listening does. Getting in touch with our collective strength and collective humanity through music transcends time and location.

This is one reason that it is so important to play concerts, and a reminder that we need Beethoven now more than ever.

The Country that Once Was: A Bit of Appreciation for the WPA Federal Art Project

I have come to the conclusion that the world will never be the same. But that's partly because we live in linear time, and things happen that make it impossible, for worse and for better, for anything to stay the same.

But I still long for the days of the WPA Federal Art Project, the work that it generated for unemployed artists, and the artwork from the time that remains (and has sometimes undergone restoration).

This article from Racket discusses WPA works in Minnesota, and the artists who made them.

The WPA also employed photographers. Michael posts about the photographs from the NYC Municipal Archives collection every Sunday. If you follow the above link, be prepared for deep dives into details of life in New York City between 1939 and 1941.

March is the Coolest Month

For a quarter of a century I have spent the months leading up to March practicing music for recital progams devoted exclusively to music written by women. At the beginning of the twenty-first century (and back into the twentieth century) the very idea that women could write music as well as men could write music was an exotic and sometimes subversive thought. Those of us who have played music written by women knew (and know) that gender has nothing to do with quality when it comes to composition. And those of us who have spent their musical lives trying to prove that point have learned, sometimes the hard way, that public perception and, by extension, public awareness is really important.

You can read my musings on the subject here. The posts go back to 2007, so make sure to click on "older posts" at the bottom of each page to see everything this link has to show. I have tried to do my part to increase public awareness.

The pianist with whom I played Women’s History and Awareness Month recitals for years is no longer performing, but I can still enjoy the fact that a great many musicians around the world are now giving concerts in March devoted exclusively to music written by women. Many find the months leading up to March as an opportunity to expand their repertoire by learning new works by living women, and some think of it as an opportunity to study and perform music by women who are no longer living.

The State University of New York at Fredonia hosts a database that offers detailed searches to help find such music.

March is particularly fun for me these days because musicians from all over the world send me email messages to let me know that they are playing something I wrote, often on a concert in March that is dedicated to music written by women. Some people ask for information to use for program notes, and some people send pre-performances recordings and ask for feeback. I have also enjoyed spending time on Zoom calls with students who are preparing performances of pieces I have written. Having a coaching session with living composer be just a phone call away is something I never could have imagined during my student days.

A remarkable thing about this gender-specific expansion of repertoire is that there seems to be a concurrent movement towards accepting the idea that well-written new music does not have to sound difficult, complicated, dense, noisy, or academic in order to be worth listening to or performing.

Michael Tilson Thomas, Guest Blogger

I had the chance to work with Michael Tilson Thomas at the very beginning of his career. I was ten or eleven, and he was the assistant conductor in charge of conducting the children's chorus during an unstaged performance of Alban Berg's Wozzeck at Tanglewood.

Then, when I was fourteen I got to sing in a Boston Symphony Orchestra performance he directed of Stravinsky's Canticum Sacrum and his Symphony of Psalms, along with a bunch of double choir pieces by Gabrieli and Schutz.

And now, nearing the end of his life, I still think of him as the young man I first knew (a young grown-up, because I was a young kid), even though he has made such a huge impact on the musical world since his years in Boston.

I found this Facebook post he made the other day, and for the benefit of those who are not on Facebook, I will share it here:

Dear Friends,

Three years ago, I wrote to tell you that I’m battling Glioblastoma. The three and a half years since the initial diagnosis have been a special time in my life, filled with friends, family, and music. They have also been challenging, as I had to undergo a second operation and manage complications from the treatments that have held the tumor at bay.

My doctors have informed me that the tumor has returned. We continue to work with the superb group at the UCSF Brain Tumor Center. There are treatment options, but the odds are uncertain.

Joshua and I are in San Francisco with the pups, and we take occasional jaunts to Bolinas. Our home is filled with memories of a full life. There’s a keyboard on each floor and occasionally a piece by CPE Bach, Mozart, Brahms, Schumann, a Broadway melody, or one of my own tunes seem to emerge. Sometimes I can share these moments. Other times I find my own personal peace and solace.

Now is the time to wind down my public appearances. During the past year, I had the opportunity to come full circle with musicians and orchestras I hold most dear. My work with the London Symphony Orchestra, New York Philharmonic, Chicago Symphony, and the Los Angeles Philharmonic was very special. In March, I have concerts planned with the New World Symphony and, on April 26, the San Francisco Symphony is celebrating my 80th birthday. At that point, we all get to say the old show business expression, “It’s a wrap.”

A “coda” is a musical element at the end of a composition that brings the whole piece to a conclusion. A coda can vary greatly in length. My life’s coda is generous and rich.

Life is precious.

— MTT