Thoughts Approaching Route 66

As I approach birthday number sixty-six I have suddenly become aware that this is first birthday where I no longer expect that my father will forget to wish me a happy birthday. He can't forget, because he is no longer alive. It was his habit, for as long as I can remember, to forget about my birthday. 

The story goes (I think it was a story my aunt told me) that while he was at the hospital waiting for my mother to give birth he ran into a colleague from his lab at NASA. My father's colleague asked my father what he was doing in the maternity ward, because my father didn't tell any of his colleagues that he was going to have another child.

He was probably deathly afraid that his second child would be as difficult as his first. My older brother was postmature, and was so underweight that he had to be in an incubator. And since he was on the autism spectrum (before anybody knew what the autism spectrum was), life with him as a baby and as a toddler was extremely challenging.

My father started touring with the Boston Symphony Chamber Players during April of 1964. I turned five while he was away on tour. His violin colleague and tour companion Joseph Silverstein had a daughter named Bunny with a birthday on April 30th (and, oddly enough he was married to a woman who had the same birthday as my mother, June 30th). I was told that they celebrated my birthday (our birthday) together. It may or may not have been true.

He was away on tour for every birthday of my childhood, so I learned not to expect any kind of birthday recognition from him.

During the last ten years or so of his life I would typically call him the day after my birthday, and he would tell me that he could never remember whether my birthday was on the 29th or the 30th. It happened every year, and eventually it became OK that he never remembered. We had far more important things to talk about. I also knew that he was happy that I was born, and that he was happy that I was his daughter.

Michael and I have been watching the Netflix series "Love on the Spectrum," and I see so much of my father in the young people that are the "stars" of the show. I imagine that my father experienced a great deal of difficulty when he was a young adult when it came to the subject of dating. His sister described him as being "painfully shy," but people have always loved making music with him. In musical situations he was safe, eloquent, and brilliant. 

Though I am neurotypical, and not a person that anyone would describe as shy, I still find the experience of interacting musically with others is a lot easier than interacting in extra-musical (i.e. social) ways. In music, particularly in music that is written down, every utterance and every interaction is mapped out. There is even a distinct timeframe, a clear tempo, indications concerning whether you should be loud or soft, play notes short or long, float above the texture with a melody, or support a melody floating above your part. Paying attention to what is required takes up a whole bunch of head space.

We musicians can give our whole emotional heart and soul to a phrase, and never feel we have "overstepped." And the intimacy that happens between musicians is best when it melds with the music itself, and the moment (or succession of moments) becomes magical.  And consider the wisdom, wit, and brilliance of the composers we get to play! 

 I imagine that some people experience this kind of communication when playing sports or working together with numbers or chemicals. Maybe even watching animals, or experiencing natural wonders. I mainly get it with music, though sometimes I get it while reading (the same book at the same time) with Michael, watching a movie together, or looking at art together. I also get it while playing games with our grandchildren and doing art projects with them.

Another odd thing about turning sixty-six is that I now know that I no longer think of myself as a young person. Yesterday I saw a notice for a composition "contest" where the "prize" was to write a viola concerto. The guidelines said that a person of any age could apply, but that they were looking for a composer at the beginning of their career who wasn't known internationally. Suddenly I realized that as much as I would like to be asked to write a viola concerto, I no longer fit the criteria for this contest.

Perhaps one of the great benefits of being over sixty-five is knowing where I happen to be on the path of my life, and knowing that it is the best path for me.  

Notes from the State of Mow

I love mowing the lawn because it puts my mind in a wonderfully free state. There is something about the straight path of the mower, the sound of the motor, the even pace, and the feeling of forward-moving accomplishment that allows my various random trains of thought to follow some kind of logical course. Today's mow was exceptionally rich.

I was thinking about time, and how we passively divide units of time into decades and centuries, and accept that those bundles of time are useful. I accept that the year is a useful unit, because of the earth's rotation around the sun, and I'm totally fine with the divisions that we employ within the year: months, days, hours, seconds, etc. And I believe strongly in the divisions of musical time into units. I'm also a big fan of measuring speed like miles per hour and beats per minute. But the significance of a decade, a century, or a millenium doesn't seem to work as well for me when describing periods of time longer than a year.

I started thinking about this in relation to the idea that the twentieth century could, by and large, be called the "American Century." But in my mind (which is different from your mind, obviously) the rise of America as a country of significant cultural and intellectual weight began in the 1860s (yes, I have to use the decade thing) with the idea of the end of slavery. Proclaming slavery as a bad thing at that time, when so much of the wealth of the country happened as a result of one human being owning another (or one human being owning many other human beings), caused a movement towards a different kind of economy, and pointed towards a different kind of world.

It seems to me that the "American Century" started in the 1860s and came to a kind of Apex during the early 2020s. And it also seems to me that a small but mighty collective of anti-intellectual forces are doing their very best to turn the country into what it was during the middle of the 19th century, where power was held only by white men with money.

From 2013 until a few days ago the world had a Pope who made a remarkable impact on our world-wide culture. His walk-the-walk message of peace, decency, honesty, devotion, and so much more has shown people of all religious faiths, including those who do not follow any religious faith or teaching, what it means to use power in a way that helps humanity. I hope with all my heart that the next Pope will continue in the same spirit as Pope Francis.

The public figure that, in my mind, contrasts the most with Pope Francis is the current American president. This president is not an original thinker. He follows "playbooks" created by failed dictators like Nero, Hitler, and Musolini, as well as Stalin, whose legacy prevails in Putin. It almost seems that he is using his first one hundred days in office to give the appearance of destroying everything that helped make the "American Century" (i.e. around 160 years) meaningful.

He is also trying his hardest to do as much as possible to inject the world outside of America with his personal poison. America is a young country, and its pre-2025 standing in the world came about because of immigrants who, for a multitude of reasons, were able to live safe and productive lives here. Considering what this president and what has become of his political party have already done to kneecap immigration, education, science, health, cultural institutions, commerce, innovation, reproductive rights, environmental protections, human rights, and so much more, I believe that civilization's next "chapters" will flourish under governments elsewhere.

When I was young I often felt more aligned with European culture(s) and ways of thinking than what I perceived as American ways of thinking. When I lived in Austria I even felt a sense of pride when people thought I came from an English-speaking place other than America. But I still carried an American passport, and enjoyed the rights I had as an American citizen. Over time I did learn to embrace the uniqueness of the American experience, and learned to celebrate many wonderful aspects of American culture. 

I felt genuine pride when I heard Barack Obama and other great Americans political figures speak, and, until the election of this current president, looked forward to a great future for America. I still believe in a future for humanity. And I know that art, music, science, and intellectual life will find a way to flourish, as long as we are able, as a species, not to destroy ourselves and our planet.

Louise

I am so grateful that my mother-in-law, Louise Leddy, was able to spend the last five of her almost ninety-three years of life in a series of care facilities in our small Illinois town. Tomorrow with our family (both of our children, their partners, and all three of our grandchildren) we will celebrate the ninety-third anniversary of her birth together.

That she died peacefully in her sleep is a gift. And being able to work with the many excellent caregivers (first in assisted living, then in memory care, and finally in a skilled nursing facility where she had and excellent team of transitions nurses) who enjoyed Louise's grace, kindness, and Brooklyn accent, is a gift.

I confess that I would often dress "for" Louise, who always told me that I was beautiful, even through the impaired cognition that comes with advanced dementia. Louise meant it. She also knew how much Michael loved her, and trusted him completely with managing her care. She often remarked about how handsome he was.

Having Louise in my daily life, especially given the dearth of demonstrative love in my family of origin, has been a transformative experience.

Thank you, Louise, for sharing this last part of your life with us. And thank you for being the mother of my kind and handsome husband, who learned how to love purely and completely from you.

You can read Michael's post about Louise here.

Rite of Spring, Rite of Passage

[Click for a larger image of the huge orchestra (reinforced by the East Central Illinois Youth Orchestra for the Mussorgsky version of "The Night on Bear Mountain" and huge audience. It is easy to find me in the picture: just look for the violist with the grey hair.]

I played Stravinsky's The Rite of Spring a few days ago. I have known the piece (i.e. heard) for the greater part of my life, but aside from practicing the alto flute solos out of context (and never under pressure), this was my first experience playing it. I joked that I was the viola virgin that was being sacrificed.

Though I intellectually understood what I needed to do in order to play the piece as a member of the viola section, I was not as physically equipped as my section mates, all of whom (as you can see) are young enough to be my children.

Playing the passages that require oft-repeated down-bows, for example, can (and did after several rehearsals) really stress muscles and joints that we don't normally use in that particular way, at that particular loud dynamic, and for that long.

The first rehearsals went surprisingly well for me (I had practiced), but by the last rehearsal I worried that I might be getting too old for viola-playing musical life at this physical level.

I also realized, when I realized that I had forgotten my thermos of coffee in the car before the last rehearsal, how much adequate amounts of caffeine are necessary for the mental and physical stress of The Rite of Spring.

Fully caffeinated for the performance (and well fed to boot), I found the experience exhilarating, and am pleased to say that I functioned as a fully present member of the viola section.

Now, except for the fact that I am still sore, I feel like I can accomplish just about anything. Musically, that is.

If I Were an Earworm

A friend asked me to make an arrangement of this song from 1967 a couple of weeks ago. So I did. And now I'm working on another one for Summer Strings 2026.

I just can't seem to stop working on it, and even though I have other musical distractions going on concurrently (The Rite of Spring, for example, which I'm performing on Saturday, and for the very first time), this song always bubbles up to the surface of my consciousness.

Sometimes it mixes with "The Glorification of the Chosen One" in Part II of The Rite of Spring, which is very interesting.

The Fiddler song seems, somehow, to be surging through the bloodstream of the entire world right now. It's opening rhythm is like a pulse that cannot be turned off. (I can't help but be sensitive to these things.)

I'm hoping that when I am finished with the arrangement it will magically leave my head.

Right.

I'm also hoping that the disgusting amount of greed (did somebody say insider trading?) that has been darkening what seems like every corner of the world these days will magically recede into the background and be replaced with generosity, fairness, and good will. And while we're at it could I make a small request for having the kind of goverment that makes it possible for people to live decent lives without fear of being deported for no reason?

It just hit me . . .

UPDATE:

I got a nice note from Philippe Quint today (April 4), and he will do his best to make it right. 

_____________________

Excited about hearing the performance by Quint and Litton that I wrote about in a blog post I earlier today, I went to the Pentatone website and found that I could listen to the first few phrases of the piece. 

Quint does add a couple of extra double-stop notes to my transcription, which he has every right to do. What he and Pentatone do not have every right to do is not to give me credit for the making the transcription, making it available to download from the IMSLP, and keeping it in the public domain (where I found the original version for organ) so it could be performed and recorded by anyone, anywhere. 

I have not registered this transcription (or any of my other transcriptions of the piece) with ASCAP because I don't want to put financial restraints on anyone who wants to maintain Price's hard-won legacy by playing and recording this piece. My dream for this piece is to keep it freely available, and to keep it circulating in the hearts, hands, and arms of musicians and people who like to listen to music long after I am no longer alive.

I encountered this lack-of-recognition problem with this piece a few years ago in connection with Randall Goosby's recording of the transcription for Decca. After I informed him of the omission Mr. Goosby sent me a long and heartfelt apology. He also made sure that Decca gave me credit for the transcription in all the publicity materials for the recording. 

Most people who perform my transcriptions of the piece give me credit, and I really appreciate it. I may not care about making money on this piece, but I feel deeply insulted when my connection with it is ignored or erased, particularly when that erasure is made by a commercial entity that is making money on Price's music.

Yesterday I sent a message via Facebook messenger to Philippe Quint, but I haven't heard back from him. It was a message thanking him for including my transcription on his recording. I didn't mention the fact that Pentatone didn't think it worth mentioning my name on the recording.

I think of that line from Vertigo, "It can’t matter to you."

But it does matter. 

A lot.

Before sitting down to write this post I thought of buying a copy of the CD tomorrow, when it becomes available. But the company is located in the Netherlands, and with the new tariffs, the price would be very high. I also think that owning a physical CD, no matter how beautiful the playing is, might feel like pouring salt in a wound. I suppose I could write to the label and ask for a free recording, but I doubt I would hear back from them. 

They Care if You Listen

I'm very excited about the release tomorow of Philippe Quint's Milestones recording. And I am grateful to A. Kori Hill, from the website I Care if You Listen, for writing something about my violin and piano arrangement of Florence Price's "Adoration," which is offered as a bonus track.

Quint closes the album with Adoration by Florence Price, which he describes as a bonus track. Originally for organ, this piece has found new life in an arrangement for violin and piano, and Quint’s rich, deep tone and keen emotional sense is put to effective use.

Though a bonus track, it was disappointing to find no liner notes for this increasingly popular work that was unknown for decades. It was first arranged by performer-composer Elaine Fine, followed by a published arrangement by G. Schirmer with variances in the piano (and no credited arranger) in 2019. By comparison with the scores, it is the Fine version being performed here. To include her as arranger would have been not only respectful, but historically responsible.

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.