Marshall Fine's Tango in Time of War, Opus 100

A conductor just sent an email message asking to hear a recording of my brother Marshall's "Tango in Time of War," so I loaded the recording that I have of the first performance (2003) into into Dropbox (it is too big a file to load into the IMSLP), and thought it would be nice to share here. The score and parts are on this page of the IMSLP.

UPDATE: Here are Marshall's program notes for "Tango in a Time of War."

TANGO IN TIME OF WAR, op. 100
With this work Fine accomplished two important goals: he sublimated his anger over America’s war policies, and he completed his reconstruction and elaboration of his early song The End. That this was done in the form of a tango is also significant; Fine admitted in his program notes for its premiere that the style, being one of the most polyphonic of dance forms, “should have commended itself to my attention long ago”. (And Fine’s appreciation of tango polyphony is fulfilled in the fugal recapitulation.)

The Tango in Time of War is actually the first-fruits of Fine’s discovery of tango writing, which Fine would continue in the next two works (Milagro del Amor and Milonga Para Salina) and would also have used for the finale of the mature Viola Concerto had he completed it. Elements of the tango are also present in the dirge-like coda for the slow movement of his sketched-out Fourth Symphony. Fine’s acquaintance with the tango style can be accurately dated to the summer of 2001, when Penn’s Woods’s new Music Director Gerardo Edelstein did an all-tango program was played which included the Piazzolla Bandoneon Concerto. The bandoneon soloist, Raul Jaurena, praised Fine’s ability to play in the style de-spite his lack of acquaintance with it (his fluency in it was only indirectly derived from his youth as a rock musician).

Subsequently one of his friends at the festival, the flutist Diane Gold Toulson, asked Fine to write a tango for her (the result was the Milagro del Amor, his second tango). At first he considered writing for mixed sextet (Gold Toulson, her husband and Penn’s Woods clarinet colleague Smith Toulson, a string trio to include Fine and his friend Melinda Daetsch, and piano), and after a difficult period absorbing the elements of Piazzolla’s nuevo tango (and its intensified anger and passion) completed this version in March 2002. But he retained this version, and started over with the Milagro.

Meanwhile, Fine had submitted the torso of the original in mid-March to Michael Stern, his conductor in IRIS, in hopes of being able to orchestrate it for performance by them. Stern accepted the work even in its incomplete form, whereupon Fine completed the orchestration in three weeks in May. (This also explains why Fine retained the original sextet version, for in doing so Fine revised some of his row-forms to better harmonize with his tango material, and apparently never had a chance to incorporate these revisions into the sextet version.)

Equally as important as the assimilation of tango style is the welter of influences from Fine’s youth and even early childhood, integrated here as a peculiar variety of therapy. The connection of the Tango in Time of War with The End is so intimate that the song’s tone-row incessantly finds its way into the tango, generally in the bridges between themes. The cello and viola solos have a curious derivation, which is explained in Unresolved Dissonance as Fine’s own scream of terror while running from a bee, imitated by his father. In addition Fine includes in the tango (twice) an in-joke among violists: he harmonizes five bars from the Hindemith op. 25 #1, counterpointing it with his tango themes as well.

The premiere took place in Germantown on January 25, 2003, and was a tumultuous success--Fine’s next-to-last before the mysterious catastrophes that befell him thereafter. Yet up to the premiere Fine had misgivings about the work. After completing it he wrote Paul Pellay that “it does not seem like a dance. It is more like a concert movement, somewhat like the Capriccio from the Second Viola Sonata, which depends on tango rhythms for its get up and go, and sounds angry besides under the influence of 9/11.” The premiere resolved all his doubts about the work, which has since been regarded--among those that had so far been performed, to be fair--as Fine’s best. Moreover, it led directly to IRIS’s commissioning of A Flower of the Infinite Garden in 2004.

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.

Regarding Grief and Regarding Marshall

The modern way of computer-assisted grief is surreal. Because so many of my brother's friends communicate by way of Facebook, I found (and still find) myself in a state of having to deal with something that is deeply personal and deeply complicated in a public way. The constant stream of kind thoughts and carefully worded messages of condolence have helped me to feel very far from alone, so some of the attention has been most welcome.

I have also been stung by the occasional unintentional violation of boundaries by people I do not know. Everyone's family has its specific ways of relating to one another, and when a family is in the "public eye" of the community of musicians, perhaps people assume the right to have sudden intimacies because of the intimacy of a shared musical bond with someone who has died.

I wrote a "note" on my Facebook page so that people who do not know me might be able to understand something about my relationship with my brother Marshall. Here are some excerpts:

Growing up with Marshall Fine as my big brother was not always fun. He was indeed a musical savant as a child, and I was (of course) terribly jealous of his supernatural musical gifts (and they were supernatural). He truly did have the most accurate of musical ears and a great intellectual understanding of form and function in music.

He had serious social difficulties as a child and as a young adult, and it pleases me a great deal to know that he had such a large community of people who really valued what he did as a composer, a violist, a violinist, and as a conductor.

My relationship with Marshall was always riddled with sibling rivalry (Mom did like him best). We did not spend much time together as children, and when he was home (he went to a special-needs boarding school) life was difficult for everybody.

After we grew up we would sometimes go years, and sometimes go decades without seeing one another. I can count on one hand the number of times we have seen one another since he left Boston for Atlanta in the late 70s or early 80s.

We spent the past decade in (rare) phone and (less rare) e-mail contact, and during the past year we worked together helping our (blind and disabled) mother get out of her basement apartment and into a care facility. Our communications over these things had their difficulties, but the difficulties were challenges from the outside our family: people who acted in ways that gave our mother a great deal of grief and difficulty (don't get me started).

I was always bothered by Marshall's elevated image of himself and a whole slew of other things not worth going into here, but in his last six months I also got to know him as a person with a good heart. Perhaps my greatest feeling of grief comes from the fact that I felt that our relationship as brother and sister had really started to have some meaning, and then it was suddenly cut off.

For those people who never knew Marshall, he was indeed as brilliant a person as his friends present him to be. I joined Facebook last year because someone who played at a music festival with Marshall told me that he was on Facebook. I was indeed surprised when I "friended" him how many people loved and admired him. It does me proud as a sister to know that Marshall found his place in Memphis and that he had devoted friends.

Last night I got out Marshall's laptop computer (which I removed from the wrecked car he had been driving), and I sorted through the compositions I found on it. I converted his Sibelius files into PDF files, made a page for him on the IMSLP, and have started uploading his music. My father has manuscript copies of Marshall's violin and viola music that haven't been engraved. We will arrange to have those manuscripts scanned.

Marshall's music, like his personality, is intimidating. I spent much of my young childhood under the shadow of Marshall's enormous ego and intellectual brilliance, and the experience of going through his music puts me right back into "Marshall's sister" mode, something I don't remember feeling since I was a young teenager.

I began my professional musical life doing different things from the things that Marshall did, and now I find myself doing the exact same things that he did, only with a very different musical personality and a different purpose. I am learning through first-hand experience that musical ego does reach far beyond the grave, and it is strangely healing to be able to keep that musical ego available for musicians to enjoy (or fear) even when Marshall is no longer among the living.

Louis Casimir-Ney, brought to you by guest blogger and guest violist Marshall Fine

My brother Marshall Fine (1956-2014) made recordings of the extremely difficult solo viola preludes by Louis Casimir Ney (1801-1877). Marshall, being beyond brilliant in some ways and rather naive in others, thought that by putting these recordings on the iTunes application on his computer, he was sharing them online. I must confess that I was confused about it for a while as well (why was the name used for different purposes?), so I understand his confusion.

Years ago Marshall sent me a CD of his recordings of these Preludes, but it was only the other day that I realized I have the mp4 files he made which I rescued from his computer after his accident. His laptop, which was in the van, was in sleep mode, so I was able to extract all the extractable files from it.

You can listen to the recordings he made through this link:

Louis Casimer-Ney Preludes played by Marshall Fine

Here are Marshall's program notes:

L. E. CASIMIR-NEY: THE 24 PRELUDES FOR SOLO VIOLA, op. 22

Louis Casimir-Ney (1801-1877) is one of the greatest enigmas in music. To begin, his birth: he claimed illegitimate descent from Napoleon’s fieldmarshal, Michel Ney (renaming himself from his original, Louis-Casimir Escoffier). Next, his career: he was well-known in Paris salons as a quartet violist and friend of the pianist, Charles-Valentin Alkan--he transcribed Alkan’s Sonate de concert op. 47 from cello to viola. Unfortunately the Alkan transcription and the Preludes op. 22 appear to be his only extant music. Other pieces, though mentioned in records (such as the op. 18 Etudes for the G-string only of the violin), have no copy available. The Richault edition of the Preludes (1860) is poor: wrong notes, missing accidentals, even errors in tempos. Several metronome markings are missing the flag from what is evidently an eighth-note beat, most flagrantly in nos. 10 and 13. Worst of all, research on Casimir-Ney is still rudimentary. He has no entry in either Grove’s Dictionary or MGG. The American and International Viola Societies apparently know the most about him, contributing most to the online Wikipedia entry for him which is the best entry of any kind.

That this musical enigma should have left behind a collection of legendary and notorious difficulty--a cycle through the keys in the style of the Well-Tempered Clavier or the Chopin op. 28 Preludes, as well--is therefore nothing short of miraculous. To this is added the sheer size of the cycle. At over 110 minutes it dwarfs every other cycle before or since, except the Bach and the Shostakovich Preludes and Fugues op. 87. (Even my own Rock Etudes op. 114, which I completed and recorded directly before the Casimir-Ney cycle, is only twelve movements, and designed at some 45 minutes to fit on the second half of a recital program.)

Analysis of the Preludes shows why they are the stuff of legend. They are no mere bagatelles, but fully worked-out forms. Only one, no. 2 in A minor, is less than 2 1/2 minutes. Several are over 6 minutes (no. 20, over 8:00). To accommodate the extreme range--up to g’’’--Casimir-Ney invents a new clef, a sort of two-sided treble clef, to denote an octave above treble. (A similar system, using “phi” and “sigma” clefs, was invented about 1970 by the Savannah, Georgia savant Ted Bryan-Turner.) Double-stopping and chord problems of all kinds abound, tantamount to a true string polyphony in two voices. Some of these are tenths only soluble by using high positions; and in one conspicuous place, in no. 7, there is an outrageous twelfth in a low position, on the basis of which it is usually surmised that Casimir-Ney used a very small instrument. This and a similar passage in tenths in no. 8 are the only two passages that I have changed in this recording. Casimir-Ney even invents new techniques. In no. 20 he requires pizzicato with all four fingers, one on each string, a device not even Hindemith, in the 1937 solo sonata, could duplicate exactly. And in no. 10, he invents a new bowing technique, best described as a “portato-tremolo” because the notes are bowed in pairs unlike a normal tremolo.

The compendium of established techniques, plus new ones thrown in, is still not enough to interpret Casimir-Ney pro-perly. A too-literal approach results in disaster--this alone has probably given him his reputation of unplayability. One must know his derived forms and style concepts, all of which--absorbed from Paris of his day--reveal him as a consummate musical sophisticate. Nos. 1, 7, 14, 15, 19, and 23 are two-part forms derived from grand opera. Others, such as nos. 6, 11, 13, 17, 20, 21, and 24 are purely symphonic. In no. 17 in A-flat, he develops an alternative tonal scheme avoiding the dominant--modulating instead to E and C. For all these, the solo viola is clearly his orchestra and it is his aim to wring every available sonority from it.

But mostly these preludes derive from Chopin, with whom he was contemporary (from the the list of subscribers, which include Joseph Massart and George Onslow, they can be dated between 1843-1852, pending further research). The melos is astonishingly Chopinesque. Knowledge of Chopin’s slancio and rubato have helped me avoid the overliteral approach and allow time where needed, indeed demanded. The forms are reproduced with astounding effect and authenticity. Nos. 6 and 18 are nocturnes in extended song-forms. Nos. 9 and 17 are polonaise/rondos, the former in addition being written out entirely in three-bar phrases. No. 16 is a somber mazurka that changes in the middle to a giddy, phantasmagoric waltz. Nos. 10 and 12 are highly expressive laments. In no.12 the 4/4 main theme is set off by more flowing episodes in 3/4. The former is a funeral march whose main theme is transfigured dramatically in the recapitulation by the “portato-tremolo” bowing. No. 8 is in places (notably the end) very close to the G minor ballade. And no. 22 is an extended tone-poem, also in ballade style with six sections, capturing the mood of Rossini’s William Tell in a central “storm” section followed by a ranz de vaches coda wholly in harmonics, interrupted briefly by the severely truncated recapitulation.

Indeed, the one form Casimir-Ney eschews is sonata-form, a curiosity in itself since Chopin’s command of the form is sure and dramatic. And one must concede that he knows what he is doing. Only one prelude, no. 24 in D minor, uses sonata-form to any degree; and I believe he intends to mock it. There is no development section, only three chords that make a quick retransition; and after four or five notes of the second theme recapitulation--his sole gesture towards the form--he “pulls his punch” and enters the coda.

My Father

I would say that the Burton Fine (August 7, 1930 - November 15, 2024) I grew up knowing was a person of tremendous intelligence and tremendous integrity who expressed himself musically in the most elegant ways. He also had beautiful handwriting. It was fluid, unique, and elegant--unlike any handwriting I had or have ever seen.

My father was a puzzle to me when I was a child. He wasn’t at all like other fathers. I don’t remember him ever hugging me or ever telling me that he loved me. I do remember him singing “I want to hold your hand” when we would cross the street. He sang snippets of pieces of music occasionally, and made parody patter songs, which he sometimes sang for us at dinner, but otherwise I don’t remember him singing. But I do remember him practicing.

The greatest memories of my childhood were hearing him practice in the basement. What I remember most are solo Bach (Cello Suites and Sonatas and Partitas), Reger, Brahms (G major Violin Sonata on Viola), Franck (Violin Sonata), and Paganini Caprices. When he practiced he expressed love very freely. Love for the musical line (in any piece of music) is as real as any love from (or to) a human being to me. My mother, who met my father in 1950, married him in the early 1950s, and divorced him in the 1970s, expressed her love through her painting. She always did art, but became serious about it when she could no longer play the flute. My father didn’t think much of her artwork.

I know very little about either of my parents. Both were puzzles. Their first child, my brother Marshall, was not neurotypical. He, like my father, had a tremendous intellect, but neither of our parents, like most new parents in the 1950s, understood much about parenting. They did bring Marshall to Dr. Spock in Cleveland (my father’s first job was at the Cleveland-based government agency that was to become NASA), but anything regarding the autism spectrum, where Marshall self-identified as an adult, was unknown in the 1950s.

I came out neurotypical in 1959, and my younger brother Richard, born in 1961, came out really gifted in math and things related to the world of computers, where he has been working since he graduated from college. Marshall and I were compelled as teenagers and as adults to express ourselves musically by playing and writing music. Richard is happy as a choral singer and as an avid listener. Joshua, my half brother, who grew up in the 1980s is, like Marshall, not neurotypical, and he benefited (eventually) from an environment of understanding about the autism spectrum that has allowed him to thrive as a choral singer and as a responsibly employed person.

When Marshall, Richard, and I were children, our father did all the driving in the family. He did all the shopping and all the outings. Perhaps it was to take us off our mother’s hands for a while. I remember being almost five and going in a rowboat on Jamaica Pond in West Roxbury. It was shortly after my father joined the Boston Symphony as a violinist. The story goes that he saw an ad in International Musician one day, took the next day off to practice, flew to Boston, and won the audition. My mother didn’t think he would get the job, but she reluctantly left Cleveland when he did.

I didn’t know until much later that my father didn’t know how to swim when he took us boating. I do remember wearing (and enjoying wearing) life jackets, though. He also took us to the Boston Children’s Museum when it was in its infancy, and took us ice skating at Cleveland Circle. He immediately broke his ankle and had to drive to the hospital in incredible pain. (If I used the word "incredible" when describing something, he would snap at me. "It's very credible," he would say).

We used to go bowling too. And there was a time when we would try to play tennis.

My father taught Marshall to play the violin, and I remember that going bowling was used as a reward for his paying attention. Marshall did not like lessons with my father, who might not have liked to teach him either. But he learned from his father, Nathan Fine, who was, according to my father, as good as anyone in the Philadelphia Orchestra. Like proper Bostonians, we only played candlepins. Our mother never came to the bowling alley.

At seven I was big enough to play the half-size violin that we had. My father gave me an “A Tune A Day” book, and let me teach myself. Perhaps he didn’t want to mess things up for me like he had for Marshall. Richard had no interest in the violin, but he got to have piano lessons, and he became a really good pianist. I became an autodidact.

Our father used to bring me and my brothers to the Tanglewood grounds during open rehearsals on Saturdays in the summers, and eventually we used to go to the concerts on Sundays. Through exposure to the Boston Symphony throughout my childhood I got to hear a lot of really great music. And as a teenager I was pretty much on my own, and I would go to Tanglewood to hear student concerts. Never having the opportunity to be anything other than independent, I enjoyed a great deal of freedom as a young person. If (when) I got in trouble I never told my parents about it. And they never asked.

The Burton I grew up with had a very difficult time telling anything but the truth, or what he felt to be the truth. I imagine it might have gotten him in trouble if he shared his feelings with his colleagues in the Boston Symphony, so he kept pretty much to himself. He read a lot, and knew a great deal about history.

I remember going to a party with him after a concert that was hosted by some very rich people who acted like they were superior to everyone else. I mentioned that I didn’t feel comfortable around those people, and he said that they were people who supported the orchestra, and that we needed to be nice to them. His eventually married someone from a “donor” class family, and grew to be comfortable with it. I prefer to remember my father as a member of the intellectual working class.

When I returned to string playing in my early thirties and I had an instrument in hand, I was able to communicate with my father in his language, and I finally was able to recognize that were cut from the same cloth. When I had the opportunity to play chamber music with him (he came to Illinois to play concerts three or four times), it was always a wonderful experience. He was a truly great musician.

I sometimes hear shadows of the familiar sounds I heard in childhood when I practice. And when I see my hands and arms behaving the way I observed my father’s hands and arms behaving, I feel like he is a part of me, and that best part of him is with me to carry on in music making.

I used to write CD reviews for the American Record Guide, and my father read all my reviews. He would call to talk about the recordings. I loved those phone calls. He would also give me solutions to problems I had with difficult passages in the viola parts I played in orchestra, which I would share with my section-mates. And he would listen to recordings I made of the recitals I played. Some of them must have been painful for him to hear because my development as a violinist and as a violist in adulthood was slow.

A note from Marshall, an excerpt from his memoir.

. . . This was before my father, Burton Fine, was a research chemist with NASA, having gotten his Ph.D. in chemistry from IIT. After leaving Cleveland, he would serve as principal violist of the BSO for 29 years before being demoted in 1993; and he retired on New Year’s Eve 2004.

I know a fair bit about what he did as a chemist. Many years ago I read his dissertation, The Solubility of Iodine in Benzene/Carbon Tetrachloride Solutions. It does not sound to me like the work of a rocket scientist; but at the time I read it I could neither know, nor care about, nor even comprehend its practical aspects. I have not seen it since; it must be misplaced in his own house, or hidden. As a rocket scientist, he might have been involved with the Gemini Project. I believe it was classified and remains so, which means I will never know. He wrote 18 papers, mostly for a journal called Combustion and Flame, which I located at the chemistry library at Yale at the time I unsuccessfully auditioned for their music school in 1977. Strangely, the shortest of these--a critical letter to the editor in 1961--became the most widely quoted. Almost every subsequent article would refer to it, freely.

Musically, though, he is a mystery. What I know of his early years is awfully sketchy. He won a composition prize at age nine in his hometown of Philadelphia, where his ancestor, Joseph Fine (1877-1976) came to escape the pogroms of Nicholas III. His prizewinning piece, a cradle song, was orchestrated and performed by the Philadelphia Orchestra under Stokowski. Yet I have been unable to find so much as a mention of it.

At age thirteen he applied to study composition with Menotti and was turned down. It seems he had also been playing violin at the same time; he had several years study with Ivan Galamian, and his father (my grandfather) Nathan (1907-1985) was also an excellent amateur violinist. Anyway he turned there. At some point--for how many summers I don’t know, but it must have been several--he attended Galamian’s camp at Meadowmount. That was probably how he became acquainted with the viola, for it is well known that Galamian would hire a cellist to work in string quartets with three violinists at a time, one of whom would obviously have to play viola. Later he attended Tanglewood (1950) and Red Fox (1954 or so). Despite this musical excellence, he majored in chemistry instead of music while he attended Penn. Why, I’m not sure. Perhaps Grandpa might have told him that music was best left an amateur sidelight. Which is why he wound up in Chicago as a doctoral student in chemistry at the time he married Mom.

My father, Burton Fine, died last night at his home in Newton, Massachusetts. He was 94.

Marshall Fine's Musical Assumptions

As I learned music, I gradually observed that my experiments with alternate key levels and hierarchies, as basis for my own handling of tonalities and even tone-rows, lent themselves better to triple periods than double. It appears that I may have discovered a basic new truth, which all these examples demonstrate: that just as double periodicity was necessary to accommodate music based on an ascendant tonic and dominant (or dominant-substitute), triple or greater periodicity is the new wineskin for the fresh wine, music of expanded tonality and rhythmic scope. The chances are excellent that a phrase of modern music, that on the surface appears to lead nowhere due to a "free-flowing" character, or otherwise lies uncertainly or ambiguously, will come clean when considered a multiple period.

-- from Marshall Fine's Phrasing Handbook

I am very impressed with my brother's Phrasing Handbook because of the concise way he contextualizes music from the Middle Ages through the 21st century. It is 77 pages long, carefully written, and makes a great deal of sense.

My brother did have the sharpest ears I ever encountered, even in a family full of people with absolute pitch (our mother, our maternal grandmother, our paternal grandfather, and three brothers), and near absolute pitch (our father). I did not inherit absolute pitch (and boy did I try to develop it). I really felt somewhat handicapped as a child because of my lack of absolute pitch. The very young Marshall, when asked, could play anything he happened to have heard on the piano: even something as complicated as the opening of Tristan. It was truly astounding.

It is really rare to read a contemporary "take" on music history from the standpoint of someone who hears at such a high level. Too much scholarly writing approaches music history from the intellectual side rather than from the practical side.

I think that this handbook might really be helpful to people who want to understand something about the "why" of phrasing.

Marshall Fine's "Missouriana"

In honor and in memory of my brother, Marshall Fine, I'm posting his Missouriana, a delightful short piece for orchestra that he wrote in 1985. Here is what he wrote about piece:

Missouriana, op. 44, is based on Missouri folk themes and fiddle tunes, developed in my style without ever sacrificing the hoedown premise--not even in the fully worked-out fugue in the middle. I wrote it in 1985 for Hugo Vianello, who premiered it the next year, repeated it in the fateful year of 1989, and revived it again in 1994. Yet it is Alan Balter’s interpretation, done in 1989 with the MSO, that I find the best. It is also the first orchestral work that I committed to Sibelius notation; and Carl Fischer, who had published the manuscript original on a rental basis, was overjoyed when I submitted the printed score and parts to them in the spring of 2013.

Here is a link to a recording that could be from either the 1989 Memphis Symphony concert with Alan Balter conducting or the 1994 performance.

The score is available to look at at the Theodore Presser website. I have written to the company to ask them to make it available to be purchased or rented (they don't seem to have a way to do that through the page they have for the piece). I hope that they make the necessary adjustments so that the piece can have more performances.

Bell Carol in Moldova

My brother Marshall Fine made this excellent arrangement. And hearing it played by the Moldova National Chamber Orchestra brings a real smile to my genes (if genes could smile). Our maternal grandparents (and their parents, grandparents, and ancestors back to the time of Alexander the Great, when Jews were allowed to live in the Pale) lived in Bessarabia, which is now Moldova.



Marshall certainly knew about our family's connections with Bessarabia.

The whole history of my mother’s side has been supplied to me by Aunt Jeanne, Mom’s younger sister, who is still living in Chicago. My maternal ancestor was Michael Bogrod, a Jew from the Bessarabian region of what is now Romania, whose name the immigration authorities rendered as Bohrod. Like Joseph Fine, he must have been Ashkenazi. He had a brother who went to Israel and ran a military institute, Beersheva Institute of the Negev--he was able to retain the original spelling of his name. Michael himself, on settling in Chicago, quickly deserted the faith of his fathers and became a Socialist, at the time of the Palmer raids no less. From him came several children, including my grandmother, Anne (1906-2004), the famous trompe l’oeil artist Aaron, and Milton, who became a doctor in Rochester. All lived to be well over 90.

And now you do too.

N.B. My grandmother and Aunt Jeanne didn't know that the region that was once part of Romania, and later part of the USSR had become  Moldova after 1991. Also, just for the record, our grandmother told me that the original spelling of Bohrod was something like “Bogorad,” and Marshall wasn’t aware (or didn’t make it clear) that our great grandfather was Michael’s brother George.

Marshall Fine's Tango in a Time of War and his Train Ride

A friend in Memphis is uploading my brother Marshall's manuscripts into the IMSLP, and his most recent addition is an orchestral piece that Marshall wrote for the IRIS Chamber Orchestra in 2002. As we prepare for a family memorial service in Newton, Mass this coming Friday (St. Paul's Episcopal Church on Walnut Street in Newton Highlands at 4:30) it seems appropriate to let people who read this blog know that this music, which is in the public domain, is available for anyone to play. Michael Stern conducted the first (and only) performance of the piece, and I can email the recording from it for anyone interested in hearing it.

Rather than putting a page of score here, I include a couple of excerpts from the first violin part. Marshall's hand, as you can see, is clear and crisp. The piece is too.

You can get the score and all the parts here.

Another manuscript that violinists might find interesting (and challenging) is Marshall's Train Ride for solo violin. I think I'll take out my violin and give it a try right now!

Marshall Fine (1956-2014)

This a very sad time for our family and for Marshall's many friends, colleagues, and students. Memories of Marshall (which are ALWAYS interesting and colorful) are welcome in the comments.

Remembering my brother Marshall

My brother Marshall Fine died ten years ago today, and in his honor I thought I'd share an impromptu video we made in 2013 (the last time I saw him) reading a Stamitz duet. It was the first time we ever played a viola duet together (we are sightreading). Michael took the video.



You can read all my posts about Marshall here.

My Brother, My Self

I have been contemplating the "why" of composition lately. After years and years of addressing the "why not?" of composing music, I find myself at an interesting point of pause. And today, after a rather busy few months spent in navigating the hows, whys, and wherefores of music written by other people (with a lot of emphasis on the hows lately), I realize that almost every piece I have written has been a "working out" of something.

I suppose that I have always thought of pieces of music as a way to work through thoughts and work out ideas. Sometimes those thoughts are veiled representations of people, places, stories, and characters. Sometimes those thoughts involve interaction between abstract ideas using instrumental voices. Sometimes those thoughts involve the behavior of characters in history or fiction that do their interacting without words, and sometimes those characters work out their "stuff" with the help of a text.

I used to think that everybody who wrote music did this, but now I am beginning to think that doing this might be a family trait.

My brother, Marshall Fine, wrote program notes for his music. In those program notes he gives explicit details of how he wove the contradictions and concerns in his personal and professional life into the music he wrote. His Rock Etudes for Solo Viola, for example, concern specific events in his life that he connected with particular rock songs from the 1960s and 1970s. (You can read the notes in the IMSLP listing.) I believe that he used a logical organization of things musical to try to work out personal frustrations and experiences in his life that he could name but could not understand.

Every person on the autism spectrum has a unique set of challenges that make interpreting the workings of the world difficult, but because of Marshall's particular make-up, his particular "off-the-charts" set of musical gifts, his outspoken nature, and the relatively small size of his communities (the community of violists, the community of classical musicians in Memphis and Branson), he loomed large.

He certainly always loomed large in my world (and still does). Understanding something of this brother-sister bond through our shared attitude toward creative work gives me strength. My perception of the world is (as far as I can tell) that of a "neuro-typical" person, but the musical "working out" of interactions and ideas is nevertheless the reason that I like to write music.

The Italian violist Daniele Colombo's recording of Marshall's Rock Etudes will be coming out in the Solitudes label in the not-too-distant future. Daniele plays them spectacularly.

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.

Excellent Recording of Marshall's Third Viola Sonata by Daniele Colombo

My brother has a true champion of his music in the Italian violinist/violist Daniele Colombo. It makes me and my family so proud to hear his music played so beautifully and so thoughtfully (not to mention impeccably). I can only imagine how happy this would make him if he were still alive.



Marshall Fine (1956-2014) - Sonata no.3 for Unaccompanied Viola op.121 (2011-12)

I. Obsequy
II. Rap-Fugue (03:17)
III. Rhapsody (07:29)
IV. Moto Perpetuo (13:25)

Daniele Colombo, viola

[Roma, AG Studios, 25-3-2016
Sound Engineer: Pierangeli Ambroselli]

More new (old) pieces by Marshall Fine that are in the IMSLP

. . . and will be available soon. While we wait for clearance you can also access them by way of this portal.

Lament of Daeron for Flute, Viola, and Harp

Concerto for Two Violas and Orchestra

Vieuxtemps-Variations, Marshall's completion of the Henri Vieuxtemps Viola Sonata, Opus 60

Variations on a Theme of Gesualdo, Opus 37 (Score only)

Chorale Preludes for Viola and Chamber Orchestra (Score only)

Dumka for Viola and Piano

Missouriana (Score only)

Marshall Fine's Music in Homage, Op. 69

Robert Patterson made a beautiful edition of my brother Marshall's Music in Homage (a piece that he wrote 1991 for violin, horn, and piano) and uploaded it into the IMSLP. Patterson, violinist Gregory Maytan, and pianist Maeve Brophy gave the first performance of the piece earlier in June, and there is now an excellent recording of it in the IMSLP.

Marshall Fine String Quartet #2 "Songs of Love and Death"

I now have PDF copies of music that my brother Marshall sent to our father. It is a real honor to be able to make it available for people to play. This is the first of several pieces in manuscript I will be sharing this way.

You can find the score and the parts here, and on this page of the IMSLP.

A Lesson in Instrument Safety

Last night while I was putting off work I had to do, I did a Google search for my brother. Boy, was I surprised to find this blog post, this article, and this article, that was picked up by the Associated Press! I feel that as a responsible sister I should come to Marshall's public defense (since he was not able to do so very well in court) and mention that he is a very good composer, a very good violist, and also, in spite of the fact that he ran a red light on camera in Memphis, a pretty good driver. It's a good thing he went into music and not into law.

My father told me that Marshall was right about the fact that sudden braking could cause damage to an instrument sitting on the back seat. Of course Marshall should have been prepared to stop when he saw the light turn red, and I agree with the powers that be that the fine was justified. If another car had been in the intersection, there could have been a terrible accident.

I have chosen to learn something from this and to share it with people who might be interested. From now on, just in case (no pun intended) I run into a situation when I have to brake suddenly, I'm going to take my father's advice (advice he got from a luthier) and keep my case on the floor between the front and back seats when I'm driving.

Cheshvan: Prelude #2 from Preludes for 5775

In 2014 and 2015 I wrote a set of twelve piano preludes for the months in the Jewish calendar. I wrote this set in memory of my brother, Marshall Fine. Grief proceeds slowly, and the memories and nuances associated with family life seem to take at least one lifetime to understand.

I plan to post the preludes individually on YouTube, one for each month of the year. You can find the music for the whole set on this page of the IMSLP.



UPDATE: You can find a video of Prelude #1 (Tishri) here, and a video of Prelude #3 (Kislev) here.

The Little Fiddle, and the Parlor Guitar

There comes a time, it seems, at least in the musical universe when things come together. Yesterday was such a day.

We went to St. Louis to meet our son, who was there for the day on a business trip. We had a great lunch and a visit to the soap store in the Hill, and then, simply because I thought they would both be enchanted and amazed by Geoff Seitz's violin shop, we stopped in there. I had been to the shop many times before, but never with Michael.

Geoff had "my" little fiddle, an instrument made in 1791 that I had met and "mingled with" on many a visit, all tuned up (I did let him know we were coming), but I really did not expect that it would come home with me.

I had been expecting for years that I would inherit my father's Scarampella violin, but circumstances must have changed since I spoke about it with him several years before his death. 

Of all the instruments I have played over the years, I have never had the opportunity to choose one for myself. I have had a flute, a piccolo, a baroque flute, and a violin made for me, before I really knew what to ask for. I bought a viola at a garage sale. One recorder was given to me as a gift, and the others I bought "off the rack" without knowing what to look for in a recorder. The flute I have now was my mother's, and my viola and viola d'amore were both my father's. Our piano (which I love) came to us for free from the radio station where I once worked.

Though I have chosen instruments for others, and I though have chosen bows for myself, I have never been able to "meet" and fall in love with an instrument that one day would be mine.

Twenty-five years ago my father gave his Becker instrument to my brother Marshall, and he gave an instrument he no longer had use for to me as well, just to be fair, I guess.  After Marshall's death I inherited the Becker from both my parents (it is complicated). As soon as I tried the Becker, I no longer had any desire to play the viola my father gave to me, so I made a contract with Geoff to sell it for me.

On the way to St. Louis I contemplated the possibility of doing a little barter if we happened to find a parlor guitar for Michael (he had been toying with the idea of wanting one for many years) in Geoff's shop, and maybe something for our son, if he found something he wanted.

Geoff happened to have the most beautiful parlor guitar I have ever heard or seen: a 19th-century instrument in beautiful condition with a warm, and almost baritone-rich sound. I asked Geoff about doing the barter thing with the guitar and the little fiddle (plus a really nice bow), and he was fine with it.

So now I have a really good violin, an instrument that I have chosen myself. It is not valuable like the Scarampella would be (last I looked they were going for 200 grand), but it has a true soprano violin sound, and an enormous amount of musical character. I think I will call her "Antonia" after the character named Antonio in E.T.A. Hoffmann's story "Councillor Krespel."

And if I choose to imagine that my father would prefer this instrument to the Scarampella (which I do), and if I choose to imagine that Antonia could be, in the spirit of the magic that happens in the Hoffmann story, a kind of inheritance from my father, I can. 

And it is also a great gift that I get to listen to Michael play his remarkable new instrument.

And they sound great together.