Musical Assumptions

Lonesome Times

noreply@blogger.com (Elaine Fine) — Wed, 19 Jun 2013 01:31:00 +0000

(That's the title of the song.)

Silly thought for the day

noreply@blogger.com (Elaine Fine) — Tue, 18 Jun 2013 13:07:00 +0000

Musicians have a great many different words for slow.

(Including ASLAP)

Taruskin on the Classical Music Audience

noreply@blogger.com (Elaine Fine) — Tue, 18 Jun 2013 00:58:00 +0000

In a New York Times article from September 10, 1995, Richard Taruskin discusses the "Revolution of 1989," when the Berlin Wall came down and Leonard Bernstein conducted that Beethoven's Ninth with "Freiheit" replacing "Freude" in the text of the last movement.

What did it mean, playing Beethoven at that time and in that place? As if the East Germans did not also have their Beethovenfests. As if the high culture and all its icons had not been exploited by every dictatorship (and every commercial interest), used as a bludgeon to beat down spontaneous (popular, counter-) culture and sell every consumer product.

The true musical emblems of that glorious moment were the guitar-strumming kids in jeans atop the wall playing a music that would have landed them in jail the day before. They were the ones who symbolized Freiheit. What did Beethoven symbolize? Just packaged greatness. I'm afraid, and all that that implies of smugness and dullness and ritualism. Just what the revolutions of '89 were revolting against.

And that is why classical music is failing, and in particular why intellectuals, as a class, and even the educated public, have been deserting it. The defection began in the sixties, when all at once it was popular music that engaged passionately--adequately or not, but often seriously and even challengingly--with scary, risky matters of public concern, while classical music engaged only frivolously (remember radical chic?) or escaped into technocratic utopias. By now, the people who used to form the audience for "serious" music are very many of them listening to something else.

Quoted without permission from The Danger of Music and Other Anti-Utopian Essays Published in 2009 by the University of California Press. It's a fascinating collection of essays from throughout Richard Taruskin's career, and many of the reprinted essays have fresh commentary (2008) for this publication.

Trusting Computers with Our Music

noreply@blogger.com (Elaine Fine) — Mon, 17 Jun 2013 02:16:00 +0000

David Wolfson's thoughtful post about posterity and Kyle Gann's post about the fickle nature of computer operating systems both gave me a jolt today. I rely exclusively on the computer as a tool for notating and distributing the music I write.

Perhaps I have come to trust that a PDF file is pretty much the same as a hard copy because Finale's command to print gives me the option to "print" something as a PDF. Since I back up my PDF files on a cloud, somewhere, I haven't felt the need to print up paper copies of music for years, but someday PDF files might be obsolete. Who can honestly say that the format will be around forever? Who can honestly say it will be around in 30 years? 20 years? 10 years?

Who can say that a superior format won't emerge, and the "gatekeepers" will set up shop and translate PDF files into the new format for a price?

Every digital format has changed since the beginning of computing. How many computers today can read IBM cards? Displaywriter documents? Floppy discs? Zip discs?

[My old floppy discs and Zip discs sit in a drawer with old pairs of glasses.]

I wonder how many reams of paper and how much time and toner it would take to print physical copies of the music I have written over the last 15 years. I wonder how much physical space it would take up. I wonder if I should plan to start soon.

Sibling Stamitz

noreply@blogger.com (Elaine Fine) — Sat, 15 Jun 2013 14:39:00 +0000

My brother came to visit yesterday (for the first time in years and years), and we played a bit of Stamitz.

Happy Birthday IS in the Public Domain

noreply@blogger.com (Elaine Fine) — Fri, 14 Jun 2013 13:49:00 +0000

Or at least it will be if all goes as it should. You can read all about it (and the the lawsuit against Warner Chappell) here.

Here are some highlights:

If and to the extent that defendant Warner/Chappell relies upon the 1893, 1896, 1899, or 1907 copyrights for the melody of Good Morning to All, those copyrights expired or were forfeited as alleged herein.

As alleged above, the 1893 and 1896 copyrights to the original and revised versions of Song Stories for the Kindergarten, which contained the song Good Morning to All were not renewed by Summy and accordingly expired in 1921 and 1924, respectively.

As alleged above, the 1899 copyright to Song Stories for the Sunday School, which contained Good Morning to All, and the 1907 copyright to Good Morning to All were not renewed by Summy Co. before its expiration in 1920 and accordingly expired in 1927 and 1935, respectively.

The 1893, 1896, 1899, and 1907 copyrights to Good Morning to All were forfeited by the republication of Good Morning to All in 1921 without proper notice of its original 1893 copyright.

The copyright to Good Morning to All expired in 1921 because the 1893 copyright to Song Stories for the Kindergarten was not properly renewed.

The piano arrangements for Happy Birthday to You published by Summy Co. 111 in 1935 (Reg. Nos. E51988 and E51990) were not eligible for federal copyright protection because those works did not contain original works of authorship, except to the extent of the piano arrangements themselves.

The 1934 and 1935 copyrights pertained only to the piano arrangements, not to the melody or lyrics of the song Happy Birthday to You.

The registration certificates for The Elementary Worker and His Work in 1912, Harvest in 1924, and Children's Praise and Worship in 1928, which did not attribute authorship of the lyrics to Happy Birthday to You to anyone, are prima facie evidence that the lyrics were not authored by the Hill Sisters.

In 1934 the people who made "Pardon My Pups" had to write an alternative version (you'll hear it at 1:33) of "Happy Birthday" in order avoid paying royalties:

and Fred Rogers took the opportunity to write a truly lovely birthday song:

Tonschönheit ist Nebensache

noreply@blogger.com (Elaine Fine) — Thu, 13 Jun 2013 21:38:00 +0000

In an essay about Bach Cello Suites in Richard Tarushkin's The Danger of Music and Other Anti-Utopian Essays, he refers to the phrase "Tonschönheit ist Nebensache" (beauty of sound is secondary) as Paul Hindemith's motto. He does mention (In an essay about Hindemith) that the phrase comes from Hindemith's tempo marking in the fourth movement of his Opus 25, no. 1 Sonata, "Rasendes Zeitmass. Wild. Tonschönheit ist Nebensache," but I believe that Mr. Taruskin jumps to a general conclusion about Hindemith's feelings about expression that may not be appropriate.

As you can hear from the performance below, the movement can be played with wild abandon, scratching the instrument like crazy:

But I believe Hindemith's suggestion is specific to the one minute and 51 seconds it takes to play the movement, and not to his music in general. It is a minor point, I know, but the word Nebensache also means a minor point. I believe that what Hindemith is telling the violist is to play with abandon and not to worry too much about making a beautiful sound.

I have heard it played beautifully, by the way.

Clara's Father and Clara's Sister

noreply@blogger.com (Elaine Fine) — Wed, 12 Jun 2013 22:10:00 +0000

I stumbled across an amusing and interesting book in the IMSLP. Frederick Wieck was, of course, the father of Clara Schumann.

Much of the book is written as a series of socratic-style dialogues and little plays concerning teaching music to children. It is a very interesting glimpse into a world most of us know about from what people wrote about Wieck and not from the man himself. The book first came out in 1853, and this 1882 translation by Mary Pickering Nichols was the first (and probably the last) translation of it into English. I imagine that it might be a scan from the translator's own copy because there is one instance when the word "shall" is crossed out, and the word "will" is written in its place.

Somehow, through all my years of reading about Clara Wieck Schumann, I missed out on learning much about her younger half sister Marie Wieck who also composed (here's a sample from a Scherzo for piano). Much of what Frederick Wieck talks about as a teacher rings true a century and a half later.

Ageism in Composer Opportunities

noreply@blogger.com (Elaine Fine) — Sun, 09 Jun 2013 20:59:00 +0000

In Bill Doerrfeld's NewMusicBox post from June 5, he mentions that:

There are various examples of 501(c)(3) not-for-profit organizations who accept tax-deductible donations and who discriminate based on age even when it is not within their organizational mission statement to do so. For example, one organization sponsoring a composer opportunity states their mission as follows: “Our mission is to enrich the cultural vitality of the region and to offer a unique experience to exceptionally talented musicians.” However, they limit composer submissions to those under the age of 35. Looking at their mission statement, one has to ponder whether or not it is possible for an older emerging composer to “enrich the vitality” of the community. This is but one example of a disconnect between an organization’s mission and their policies, and one which I believe hampers musical progress.

I agree.

Composers in their 50s were once thought of as being in the prime of life. There is a mistaken idea that people over 40 should step aside and let younger composers have the chance to have their music heard. Perhaps it's part of the mistaken idea that people who don't "make it" before the age of 40 will never "make it" (whatever "making it" is). A future dominated by an idea like that would be sad indeed.

Dinner with Lenny

noreply@blogger.com (Elaine Fine) — Thu, 30 May 2013 03:15:00 +0000

On November 20, 1989, Jonathan Cott, who was writing for Rolling Stone at the time, brought his tape recorder to Leonard Bernstein's home and recorded their dinner conversation (dinner lasted more than 12 hours). Leonard Bernstein died the following year, and it took 24 years for this book to make it into print. It's published by Oxford University Press, and is well worth the $25.00 price tag. I certainly could have read the book in a 12 hour sitting, but the intensity of Leonard Bernstein's personality is so extreme that I needed a few days to take it all in.

Bernstein is quite candid with Cott, and Cott puts himself in the place of every astute wannabe dinner guest of Leonard Bernstein. Cott contributes a great deal to the conversation: it is not a "great man" holding forth, but is more like a conversation you might overhear between friends. There are many great stories. Lenny (reading this book has put me on a first name basis with Mr. Bernstein) tells many stories, including one about his friendship with Alma Mahler (who actually tried to seduce him), and he sets the record straight about the famous Black Panther party that was held in his apartment (Tom Wolfe came to the party as a guest). Lenny talks about children and the ways children learn, and he explains something he calls the "Maria complex."

We also get a whiff of the air of 1989, and Lenny's criticisms of the Reagan presidency are swift and biting. The Berlin Wall had just come down, and towards the end of the dinner he talks about planning to go to Berlin to conduct that famous Beethoven's Ninth with an international orchestra and with "Freiheit" inserted in place of "Freude" in the last movement.

I talked to Leonard Bernstein for a few seconds when I was 11. He seemed to be a huge man then, but he was nowhere near the size of the huge person who reveals himself so generously in this book.

Lorca's Guitar

noreply@blogger.com (Elaine Fine) — Tue, 28 May 2013 15:10:00 +0000

The New York Public Library has a great exhibit dedicated to Federico Garcia Lorca. The big surprise for me was that Lorca's very own guitar was in one of the display cases. Photography was not permitted, and there are no photos of the instrument to be found on line (shame on me for not writing down the name of the maker).

There is, however, a terrific film about Lorca uploaded to YouTube by Gottfried Geist. A little after the 3-minute mark of this segment, there's a recording of Lorca playing the piano.

In another segment (I believe it's the second segment), Lorca's brother talks about Federico having such bad penmanship as a child that he had to take the class multiple times.

Here's a link to all the segments of the film.

"No one looks at a flower, really. One hasn't time."

noreply@blogger.com (Elaine Fine) — Tue, 28 May 2013 00:58:00 +0000

Michael and I usually spend our trips to cities in art museums. We spend a lot of time looking at the world of the past and the present from the perspective of others. Our experience at the Peabody Museum on the campus of Harvard University in Cambridge, Massachusetts was quite different, because the exhibits (many of them unchanged since my last visit on an elementary school trip) do not interpret the cultures they present. They offer beautifully arrayed artifacts, and you (or I) are invited to learn something about the experience of the people who used them. It is a pretty self-directed museum experience, and one that can change from visit to visit. I found myself comparing fish hooks used by people oceans and centuries apart, and marveled at the fact that people who would never have had any sort of contact with one another managed to figure out how to weave reeds and cloth into baskets and clothes.

We also experienced the marvelous mixture of sculpture and botanical illustration that allows us to learn more about the natural world than the natural world will allow us in real time. As Georgia O'Keefe once said, "No one looks at a flower, really. One hasn't time." I don't remember seeing the Glass Flowers when I was a child. It's really hard to believe they are made of glass because they look exactly like the flowers that line the sides of roads in summer. The flowers are three-dimensional botanical illustrations that invite you to compare not only the stems, roots, petals, reproductive parts, fruit, and leaves of the flowers, but they let you see what a cross section of a seed or stem looks like when viewed under a microscope.

I only recently learned about the way a cashew grows, and was trilled to be able to see it in three dimensions. This photograph (from the Wikipedia article about the Glass Flowers) doesn't really do justice to the real thing because it turns a three-dimensional sculpture into a two-dimensional image.

Somehow the only things that made it into our camera were the descriptive cards that accompanied the flowers. You can find more images here, and read an excellent article about the Glass Flowers here.

Most of our experiences in Boston and New York last week involved interaction with people (people we knew, and people we didn't know who happened to share a sidewalk with us or an awning in a rainstorm). We both found that kind of lively and living interaction extremely meaningful. It took us a few days to come back to earth (including the one day to took to drive back to Illinois).

My walking route is full gardens of real flowers. I experience them differently now. Unlike the Glass Flowers, I can touch the real ones. I can look inside their petals. I know that they won't last more than a day or two, but I can experience their beauty while it's there.

Though it really has nothing to do with the substance of this post, I was struck by a statement made by the Headman of Cabrua in 1953 to the anthropologists Robert and Yolanda Murphy that was displayed in the museum.

Before you came to live with us, our lives were as always, and we were happy. We worked, we ate, and then we slept. When you came we were glad, for you brought us many fine gifts. And every night, instead of going to sleep, we sat with you, drank coffee, smoked your tobacco, and listened to you radio. But now you go, and we are sorry, for all of these things go with you. We now know pleasures to which we were accustomed, and we shall be unhappy.

Michael and I have learned to take the pleasures we find with us, and we both feel fortunate to be able to share them in the blogosphere.

Almond Park Prance/Sweet Grandmother's Spatula

noreply@blogger.com (Elaine Fine) — Mon, 27 May 2013 14:02:00 +0000

There may be two images and two banjo voices, but there's only one Ben!

Form Follows Capital

noreply@blogger.com (Elaine Fine) — Sun, 26 May 2013 17:44:00 +0000

Found stamped on the bathroom floor of the Coffee Foundry

No Laughing Matter

noreply@blogger.com (Elaine Fine) — Sun, 26 May 2013 16:45:00 +0000

Michael and I just returned from a vacation in Boston and New York. Most people go on vacation to get away from stimulation and stress, but since our lives are kind of topsy-turvy when it comes to matters of stimulation, we pack the most stimulation possible into our forays into the non-bucolic world, and use the rest of the year to recover, react, reflect, and remark.

Our three-day visit to New York was basically unstructured. While visiting with our friends Seymour and Margie Barab on Wednesday, we learned that on Thursday afternoon there would be a performance of Seymour's No Laughing Matter at the Philosophy Day School, an elementary school in the neighborhood. I hadn't yet had the opportunity to see one of Seymour's shows for children performed live, so we planned our mostly pedestrian sweep of the city on Thursday to end at 12 East 79th Street.

The building, which sits slightly west of the Ukrainian Institute of America, is a beautiful mansion. It houses the School of Practical Philosophy, which operates a Charter School. The school began in 1994, and, unfortunately is closing this year. This performance of No Laughing Matter was its last production.

The beautiful white dresses with little blue flowers worn by the girls in the lower grades (as their uniform) is exclusive to the school (you can see it in their Mission and Philosophy page), and on their page about the lower school. Superficial beauty aside, these were truly beautiful kids. There is something special about children who have the opportunity to get an education that equates the importance of the pursuit of knowledge with the pursuit of wisdom. It is very sad that this school has to close its doors. It was a true honor to have the opportunity to visit.

These fourth and fifth graders of the Philosophy Day School, many who have been singing together every morning as part of their school day since they were toddlers, had the opportunity to perform No Laughing Matter for the very-much alive 92-year-old composer, his family, friends (that would be us), some parents, the faculty, and the children of the lower school. Their usual repertoire is by the centuries-dead William Shakespeare, and they dove into Barab's work with the same integrity, seriousness, and humor that they would apply Shakespeare's comedies. These were not kids being cute. These were kids being actors. These were kids having fun working together.

The voices were beautiful. The acting was superior. Their voices projected when they spoke without the need for any amplification. Their understanding of the play was complete (Seymour Barab has a wonderful way of writing both words and music that children of all levels of sophistication can understand and enjoy). My only criticism was that they students, wanting the show to move at the proper pace, didn't always leave enough time for the laughter and applause of the audience. We had to stop applauding sooner than we would have liked in order to hear all the words.

[N.B. The kids decided to have a boar as the seal for the king in the story because the character of the king was a "bore."]

Tamara Volskaya Plays Mozart's Rondo alla Turca

noreply@blogger.com (Elaine Fine) — Fri, 17 May 2013 14:00:00 +0000

What a thrill it is to hear Tamara Volskaya (and the rest of the Abaca String Band) play this piece!

Before today I only knew her as a brilliant woman of mystery from somewhere in Russia, in black and white. Now, a generation later and in full color (I think it's appropriate that she wears red), she continues to be a real inspiration. Here are some more treats:

Der Fluyten Lust (and amore) hof

noreply@blogger.com (Elaine Fine) — Fri, 17 May 2013 00:56:00 +0000

In 1980 I came across a reprint of a volume of Jacob van Eyck's Der Fluyten Lust-hof in the Joseph Patelson Music House in New York. I was preparing to leave town (and country) with my modern flute and piccolo, and had really no idea where I was going after the six weeks I was planning to spend in an orchestra in Graz, Austria and an international flute competition I was attending in Budapest. I had only recently been introduced to the idea of jazz improvisation, and I thought that this little book might be a good way to learn to improvise in an idiom other than the Jazz idiom (which seemed terribly complicated to me at the time). I had no idea that there was a centuries-long tradition of "dividing" popular melodies, so I though that this book, which was actually something quite old, was something quite new.

(You would think that a Juilliard graduate would know something about music history, but this was not the case for me.)

Wouldn't you know it. I got a teaching position in a music school in the little town of Schladming, Austria where a large part of my job was to teach recorder. I hadn't played recorder since I was five or six, so I had to start from scratch with the little soprano Moeck that I found in the drawer of the desk in my studio. I spent the week before the beginning of the school year going through Der Fluyten Lust-hof, and I fell in love with the instrument and the music.

These are five of my favorite melodies from the collection. When I first got my viola d'amore, I tried these pieces out on the instrument. The divisions (all the melodies are divided) are rough, but the melodies are as rewarding to play on the viola d'amore as they are on the recorder.

Here's a link to a PDF of the above piece, and here's a link to the original set of publications from 1644-1656.

The Rite of Spring 100 Years Later: The Ultimate Sacrifice

noreply@blogger.com (Elaine Fine) — Wed, 08 May 2013 20:02:00 +0000

In some ways I wish I didn't enjoy this animation of the Rite of Spring by Stephen Malinowski so much. The music is all synthetically generated using sounds from the Vienna Symphonic Library. All the rhythms, dynamics, and pitches are almost perfect (in the comments an astute trombone player noted a mistake). There is even a believable violin glissando. There are only a few places where the lack of human imperfection sabotages the excitement (particularly eight minutes into the second part, where all of a sudden everything sounds robotic). The animation, however, is remarkable. Watching the video is a fine lesson in orchestration.

Here's Part 1

and here's Part 2

Stephen Malinowski can't do his animations without getting permission for the recordings he uses. Permission costs money. Technological tools (which are expensive) cost less money than licenses. Making excellent electronic scores takes a large amount of skill, but it is a different kind of skill set from the skill set that most real-time (as in 20 or 30 years of experience) musicians have. What used to be considered a helpful tool for composers has become a viable option for replacing professional musicians in all sorts of ways. I can't really see any greater good coming from all this.

Sometimes I fear that the way things are going, we might be looking at a plausible future of large-scale orchestral music. I find this sad. Terribly, terribly sad.

Martin Perry Plays Ives and Binkerd: Ramble After a Recording

noreply@blogger.com (Elaine Fine) — Wed, 08 May 2013 17:15:00 +0000

There is really no way that I can write an unbiased review of Martin Perry's brand new recording on Bridge of the Charles Ives "Concord" Sonata and three of Gordon Binkerd's Essays for the Piano (the first recordings of these pieces), so I will let my biases fly and ramble.

The Ives "Concord" Sonata is a work of time and place for me. I spent a good part of my last year in high school listening to John Kirkpatrick's recording, and reading Essays Before A Sonata. It was at Martin Perry's apartment in New York in the early 1980s (he now lives in Maine) that I first met a live person who actually played the "Concord" Sonata (it was Stephen Drury). It was also in Marty's apartment that I first read Proust and made the immediate connection with the Saint-Saens D minor Violin Sonata, a piece that I played with Marty back in my days as a flutist who really wished she were a violinist (and I'm living proof that wishes like that can come true).

I was thrilled to hear that Marty made a recording of the piece on the excellent Bridge label, and I just finished listening to it.

The Ives is music of place for me (since I grew up outside of Boston, and had significant events happen at Walden Pond), and it turns out that the Binkerd is also music of place. Gordon Binkerd (1916-2003) spent his career teaching composition at the University of Illinois (50 miles up the road from me), and these three piano pieces sparkle with the prairie landscape that I have grown to love. Marty has never been to this part of the country, but he does a really good job of picking up Binkerd's clues and making it aurally recognizable. The connection to the Ives "Concord" Sonata is unmistakable.

Drew Massey's notes mention that Binkerd's Essays were published in 1976. That happened to be the year I spent obsessed with Ives. Who knew that I would meet Martin Perry at Juilliard the following year, and who knew that I would move to Binkerd's Illinois in 1985? Binkerd retired from teaching in 1971, but he stuck around here for the rest of his life. I could have seen him in the grocery store, in the library, or even at a concert.

All these highly personal coincidences are wrapped up in this remarkable recording.

I said earlier that I cannot be unbiased, so it is with a great deal of bias that I tell you that this is extremely thoughtful and extremely beautiful playing. Marty is a person of serious musical intelligence, and he uses it to bring out all the cyclic material in the "Concord" Sonata in a way that provides a strong structure for the piece. All the musical thoughts have their places. He allows for great amounts of exuberance in the exuberant parts, and extraordinarily touching introspection in the introspective parts. Listening is a rather cathartic experience, and an experience that helps put some of the craziness of the world into perspective for me, if only by presenting a world of pure feeling, pure sound, and a bunch of nostalgia in such a clean and fresh package.

44 Bartok Violin Duos played by Sándor Végh and Alberto Lysy (1974)

noreply@blogger.com (Elaine Fine) — Sun, 05 May 2013 17:03:00 +0000

There is French narration for about a minute and a half into the first segment, but then it's just pure Bartok.

Part one

Part two

Part three

Part four

Part five

Part six

Interview Informercial

noreply@blogger.com (Elaine Fine) — Fri, 03 May 2013 18:04:00 +0000

Last night I heard an interview show on the radio that featured some of the members of Brooklyn Rider. The point of the show was to introduce this particular string quartet as a group of musicians who are saving classical music because they are making it appealing to young people. The host was gushing away about how much he loved the way they were revitalizing music, and how the music they played transformed him. He went on and on. The musicians went on and on also, answering telephone calls from people young and old who echoed the feelings of the interviewer. There were planted questions (or at least they sounded planted) asking about their relationships with people on college campuses, and asking them to describe the responses of the audiences they played for during their recent Asian tour.

These people do have excellent technique, and they can move around their instruments at great speeds, and with great precision. In addition to some of their modal improvisations (inspired by Mediterranean and Balkan traditional music), the host played a bit of a slow movement from Brooklyn Rider's recording of Beethoven Opus 131. It was played without vibrato, and very well in tune. The musicians played it without the usual long-lined phrasing that string quartet musicians spend a lifetime (or four) trying to deliver to audiences and to one another. It was as dull. Is the way to engage the hearts of young people to look counter cultural (dress like a hipster) and play Beethoven without trying to make long phrases and give color to the sound? Is the trick to bore them?

Then there was a bit about Bartok, and the host went on and on about how this music was so new. I love Bartok, particularly his string quartets, but his Second String Quartet (that's the one they sampled in the show) is almost 100 years old. Yes, like Haydn, Bartok will always be "new" in spirit, but it's still the new music of the Brooklyn Riders' grandfathers and great-grandfathers.

Perhaps the worst part of the show was the discussion they had about Bartok's visit to Nigeria, and how it affected the rhythms in his music. Bartok did travel to Tangier in 1906 and in 1913. Tangier is in Morocco, and was a hot vacation spot during the first decades of the 20th century; but the mix of cultures there would have been totally different from anything you would find in Nigeria. Bartok would have had no reason to travel to Nigeria.

I can understand how a non-musical radio host might mix up Tangier and Nigeria, since both are on the continent of Africa; but the musicians should have known better.

I would have not written this post if one of the musicians simply said, "I think you mean Tangier."

Marxolin and Banjo

noreply@blogger.com (Elaine Fine) — Thu, 02 May 2013 04:53:00 +0000

Our son Ben is playing (and beat-boxing) an improvisation with a marxolin player. What a nifty instrument!

The Tanglewood Story from 1949

noreply@blogger.com (Elaine Fine) — Wed, 01 May 2013 22:30:00 +0000

The BSO musicians here I remember from my days as a young person in Boston are Alfred Krips, Rolland Tapley, George Zazofsky, Clarence Knudson, Stanley Benson, and Sheldon Rotenberg; violists Eugen Lehner, George Humphrey, and Jerome Lipson; cellist Alfred Zighera; flutist James Pappoutsakis, oboist John Homes, English horn player Louis Speyer, clarinetist Pasquale Cardillo, bassoonist Ernst Panenka, horn players James Stagliano and Harry Shapiro, trumpet player Roger Voisin, harpist Bernard Zighera, and percussionist Charles Smith.

I knew them as the elder statesmen of the orchestra. I don't recognize any of the student musicians here aside from Elayne Jones (you can see and hear her playing timpani at 8:34). That sure is some austere Bach at 12:51! I wonder what happened to that two-headed sculpture? Do you recognize anyone? Who is that composer?

Here's a link to the programs from that 68th Season (1948-1949), which I suppose was Serge Koussevitsky's last season as music director.

Doing Something to Help

noreply@blogger.com (Elaine Fine) — Wed, 01 May 2013 00:31:00 +0000

This was an interesting day for me. It began with a Moyers & Company podcast interview with Sandra Steingraber about her fight with the "authorities" (a.k.a. the law) concerning the environmental dangers associated with fracking. I came home with a heightened respect for civil disobedience.

After my walk, I talked with my mother who has just come through a situation involving her legal right to have a ramp remain attached to her building. The law states firmly that if a person with a disability needs equipment to make it possible for him or her to enter his or her home, that person has a right to install it (or in my mother's case have it remain in place).

My mother said that this episode reminded her that her youth was well spent. When she was young (i.e. my age), she worked for an organization dedicated to claiming rights for people with disabilities. She went to a lot of sit-ins and engaged in a respectable amount of civil disobedience. Her activism caused laws like the one cited by her lawyer to be put in place.

We are faced with some really difficult problems in our corporately-controlled world, and if we all don't do something to fight the injustices (and in Sandra Steingraber's case, the toxins) that threaten us in more ways than we can imagine, there's no hope for the future.

I'm sharing the above link, and I'm also sharing this video from Mayors Against Illegal Guns because I can. Please share it with your friends.

The Newest Thing

noreply@blogger.com (Elaine Fine) — Fri, 26 Apr 2013 01:37:00 +0000

Fran Lebowitz talks here (about 3 1/2 minutes into the clip) why there is so little that's new in current culture.

“There’s nothing new because the culture is soaked in nostalgia. I believe that must be caused by people my age. I mean, that cannot be caused by 17-year-olds. . . . If you’re young, everything is new to you. So if you go to an exhibit of a young artist, everybody says that this is amazing, and you look at it and you think, `This is surrealism. This is a hundred years old.’ But you have to first know that. Otherwise it seems like a new invention. But there is an endless recycling of the culture of the last thirty years that is really death-dealing. I think it’s just horrible. Really awful. That is the sort of change I would like to see. That is the job of people that are young. That’s your job. Do something new.”

I wonder about the idea of "something new" in music and art (or in "non-popular" culture). When I hear something old that I have never heard before, it is something new to me. Maybe my experience might be like the above artist for whom 100-year-old surrealism is a new medium of choice. The Picasso exhibit at the Art Institute in Chicago is loaded with all sorts of pieces by Picasso that were new to me when I saw them last month, but they were works he made a long time ago. The excitement of that "newness" is just as exciting for me as discovering new works by a young artist who is not as well known as Picasso and is currently making art. Unfortunately I tend to find that "something new" more often in works by older people or people who are no longer alive than in people who are young (though art by young children nearly always feels new and exciting to me).

"Something new" doesn't have to be presented in a totally abstract way. Something new happens every time a baby is born, every time two people fall in love, and every time that winter gives way to spring, and things begin growing. "Something new" happens every time a piece of music is played by a living breathing musician (no matter how old the piece might be, or how many times it has been played). "Something new" can happen in a piece of newly-written music that uses instruments in much the same way they were used 100 years ago. "Something new" can even be made of the same kind of harmonic material that composers used over 100 years ago.