Musical Assumptions

Jean Dujardin (the silent star of The Artist) Sings

noreply@blogger.com (Elaine Fine) — Sun, 29 Jan 2012 16:45:00 +0000

Yesterday Michael and I saw The Artist. I can't recommend a better way of spending an afternoon or an evening. It is a particularly moving experience to see it in a theater. Don't wait until it comes out in DVD, unless you have to.

While looking around the internets for stuff about Ludovic Bource, the film's composer, I found this nifty clip from OSS 117: Cairo, Nest of Spies, which is another collaboration (2006) between Dujardin, Michel Hazanavicius, Bérénice Bejo, and the composer Ludovic Bource. Sure, the instrumental playing is faked, but the spirit is wonderful.

Here's the trailer for The Artist:

Apollo the Violist!

noreply@blogger.com (Elaine Fine) — Sat, 28 Jan 2012 13:44:00 +0000

Is that a viola I see strapped to Apollo's belt?
[from this post on Bibliodyessey]

Grocery, Grocer-ah, Grocery, Grocer-ha ha ha ha ha ha

noreply@blogger.com (Elaine Fine) — Fri, 27 Jan 2012 14:21:00 +0000

It might be difficult for readers of this blog to understand exactly the kind of town I live in. Our kids used to describe it to their college friends and urban colleagues, and the usual response was disbelief, because there is so little to do here. It is no longer the cozy and somewhat vibrant town we moved to around 25 years ago, and from tales I have enjoyed from our plumber (one of my favorite people in town), it is not the same town it was when he was growing up.

Our town used to have a courthouse square as its hub, and a small university a mile down the road from the square. The square is situated at the highest point in town, just a little south of the railroad tracks, and it used to be the epicenter of local activity. It had all kinds of shoe, clothes, and food stores, a department store, a hardware store, a drugstore with a soda fountain, car dealerships, and restaurants. According to Rick (the plumber) there was nothing that you could even imagine needing that you couldn't buy on the square. It was a bustling center of commercial activity, particularly on weekends and evenings.

When we moved to town the square was still a little vibrant, but the vibrations were dissipating. There is still some commercial activity on the square. There's a shoe repair shop that repairs zippers for $3.00 (cash), and a great health food store where the proprietor knows all her customers by name and nutritional need, but most of the square is now dedicated to nostalgia and "antique" stores.

Over the past 25 years stores a bit closer to the university have claimed most of the local day-to-day business, and many stores that flourished on the square back in the day re-located to a west-side strip mall that was near the town's three grocery stores.

A grocery store know as "Eisner's" predated us. By the time we got here it had been bought by Jewel, but local people still called it "Eisner's." Jewel was then taken over by the IGA, which was formerly located down the street a bit (Michael likes to quote me as saying that they even moved the cigarette butts to the new location). Across the street was Wilb Walker, another local grocer that was in direct and friendly competition with Eisner back in the day. Wilb's (we called it Wilb's, but some people called it Walker's) was the cheaper store. Ten years ago we got a "Super Walmart," (one with groceries) a mile or two down the road to the east, and Jewel closed its doors. Wilb's remained the only west-side grocery store.

When Wilb's was taken over by County Market, we still called it Wilb's. The same people worked there, and it still looked pretty much the same. The prices were a bit higher, but socially-responsible people shopped there because it wasn't Walmart. I would still see "socially-responsible" people at Walmart though.

The big buzz in town last spring was that County Market was getting a new building. This meant that Wilb's would be torn down. Wilb's was cold, and it was kind of dreary. It was also kind of limited compared to the supermarkets that Michael and I visit when we go out of town. The new prefabricated building, complete with a vast parking lot and a second story coffee area, went up really quickly, and the grand opening was scheduled for Tuesday at 5:00.

Michael and I had the evening free, so we decided to go and see the store. We didn't go at "Grand Opening" time, but we went a bit later in the evening. We did hear that people were lined up outside. A local first.

The vast parking lots were full, and we barely found a parking space. I have never seen so many people in cars turn out for a local event that didn't have something to do with sports or country music. The place was packed, and to add a bit of the surreal to the situation, there was live music. The uncle of a harpist from another town manages the store, so he asked her to play for the opening. It added a certain panache to the occasion. Surreal panache. When have you ever seen (or heard) a harpist in a grocery store?

The people I saw in the "organic" area ("I'm not here to buy anything, I'm just looking around") agreed that the prices were higher than the prices at the health food store on the square. They would have been in the old County Market as well. That brief moment of having the harp-charged air filled with eager people who had just entered the store's produce area (and it is a nice looking produce area, complete with a tractor) was rather exciting. On top of all the excitement were free gifts: the choice of a free plastic lemon juicer or a plastic zester. And they were giving away ballpoint pens too.

The harpist stopped playing about 15 minutes after we arrived, and the muzak and white noise took its place. Then it became just a store.

Marion Bauer, Guest Blogger

noreply@blogger.com (Elaine Fine) — Mon, 23 Jan 2012 20:14:00 +0000

Marion Bauer (1882-1955) is no longer alive, but her music (when I am not practicing it) lives in my head. The more I practice and rehearse her Viola Sonata, the more I admire her as a composer.

She was once an important force in New York musical circles as both a composer and a teacher of all musical subjects, before she was relegated to the margins of music history by luminaries like Virgil Thomson. In the 1980s he said that she was not any part of a modern movement, and that she should not be grouped with Boulanger or Copland, and that was that. He obviously didn't know that Bauer was Nadia Boulanger's first American student and that Copland's success in New York had a lot to do with Bauer's influence.

The following excerpt from the first pages (4-5) of her book, Twentieth Century Music: How it Developed--How to Listen to it, published by G.P. Putnam's Sons in 1933 (and hailed as "the first important contribution to new music" by the New York Sun) has particular resonance for me.

Most listeners, regarding present-day music as harmful to the continuance of a traditional lineage, dismiss it as the work of fanatics. By avoiding the discomfort of exploring unknown territory, they do not retard progress but only their individual development. the race of the swift and the battle of the strong continue, but they are out of the running and blame modern conditions instead of their own intolerance and short-sightedness.

We have experienced unbelievable development in radio, aeronautics, architecture, painting, and scientific research. Why should we not expect music to follow in the footsteps of its fellow-arts and of invention? It is the usual story of the vision of the few, which is gradually tolerated, then generally accepted, and finally superseded by a new vision. the natural procedure is from the know to the unknown, and the right of way to the New is contested at every step. Opposition to innovation has made history.

We never profit by the experiences of the past. We do not seem to realize that we repeat what other ages have gone through, and never seem to understand the secrets the past would reveal. We are not inventors and innovators but merely pawns used by a force which is a composite of the accumulated needs, beliefs, desires, ambitions, inspirations, and inhibitions of each age. This gigantic force is the cause behind the ever-changing effects. Religion, politics, economics, social conditions, art, all act and react upon each other in response to this "spirit of the age," and in turn help to create it.

. . .

No matter how beautiful, how satisfactory, or how scientific the art of a period may be, we know that it encloses seeds of its fruition, and, at the same time, of its destruction. At the height of perfection, decay begins. The spirit of beauty caught in a net, subjected to a microscope, and preserved in alcohol becomes a museum specimen. Nor can art flourish in the strait-jacket of standardization. And so we see throughout the centuries three inevitable stages in every art epoch: youth, maturity, and decay. The fact that epochs overlap creates friction. The New is seldom welcome; it breeds alarm and distrust. In time it proves its right to a place in the sun, becomes overconfident and arrogant, and, finally, after a life or death struggle, is supplanted by an upstart, a usurper. And the cycle begins again!

Slow Practice

noreply@blogger.com (Elaine Fine) — Sun, 22 Jan 2012 01:45:00 +0000

My father used to always practice music slowly. It was always a great comfort to hear him practice when I was a kid (perhaps my greatest comfort) because everything always sounded so beautiful. It didn't matter what he was practicing (perhaps therein lies my fondness for scales and etudes) and it didn't matter whether it was tonal or not.

12-tone music was the new music of choice in the 1960s and early 1970s, and I still feel kind of goofy when I tell people about the comfort it brings me to hear Schoenberg played well. I also feel a little goofy telling people how much I enjoy practicing the viola slowly. I guess that slow practice is one way to make sure that all the string crossings and shifts that you need to do, and all the pitches that you need to hear find their eventual path of least resistance. It may be "making slow progress," but in the long run slow practice accomplishes the ultimate task of playing well (when it really matters) far quicker than any other kind of practice.

I distinctly remember one week in the summer when my father was practicing a slow passage that I could not get out of my head. I also couldn't identify it. I sang it to every violist and every string player I could find (and at Tanglewood there were many), and nobody could tell me what it was.

Here it is.

I later heard it in context. The passage below comes at the 19-second mark.

One of these days the piece will fall into the public domain, and I'll be able to give you more than this image from an article by Milton Babbitt about certain remarkable measures from the Schoenberg String Trio, Opus 45. I guess this bit stuck in Babbitt's imagination as well, huh?

Street Signs: Spoils from My Walk

noreply@blogger.com (Elaine Fine) — Sat, 21 Jan 2012 20:49:00 +0000

Complete Works of Purcell

noreply@blogger.com (Elaine Fine) — Tue, 17 Jan 2012 17:24:00 +0000

It's so difficult to decide on which pieces to link to because they are all so wonderful. I can't tell you how long I have waited for a catalog like this. All the Purcell works have score images from the first printed editions, and are all given excellent performances. Listen to this part song in praise of the Viol, and then bookmark this portal to the whole channel.

If you just want to graze a bit, listen to Pox on You, Young John the Gardner, If Music be the Food of Love, and There's Nothing so Fatal as Women

From a 1913-1914 Boston Symphony Program

noreply@blogger.com (Elaine Fine) — Mon, 16 Jan 2012 04:05:00 +0000

How many composers in this ad are women? I count four. My latest challenge/project/obsession is Marion Bauer's EXCELLENT sonata for viola and piano. It's only been recorded once, but it is in print and available (though not in the Petrucci Library).

Medical Marijuana and the Cold-Hearted Candidate

noreply@blogger.com (Elaine Fine) — Fri, 13 Jan 2012 19:24:00 +0000

This is the man I remember from my days at Bain.

Mike Daisey on This American Life

noreply@blogger.com (Elaine Fine) — Fri, 13 Jan 2012 16:59:00 +0000

After you spend 39 minutes listening to Act 1 of this episode of This American Life you may be as boggled as I am, particularly if you listen to it through any sort of electronic device (and there is no other way).

If you live in New York or happen to visit New York during the next few months, you can hear Mike Daisey's whole monologue "The Agony and Ecstasy of Steve Jobs" (the piece on This American Life is an "edit" from the 2-hour show) without having huge pangs of first world guilt.

Reconsidering Norman Lebrecht

noreply@blogger.com (Elaine Fine) — Wed, 11 Jan 2012 18:45:00 +0000

Over the years, and in these pages, I have been critical of Norman Lebrecht, but after listening to his interview with Thomas Quasthoff, I have a fresh opinion of him. The interview is mostly Quasthoff, but Lebrecht seems to have helped him feel comfortable enough to be honest and forthcoming about all sorts of very personal subjects. That is a talent in itself. I look forward to hearing the rest of Lebrecht's BBC interviews.

I think that bloggery is better for Lebrecht's purposes than bookery (though I haven't read his fiction), and he seems to be very successful in engaging people in dialogue concerning the ever-changing (and clearly not dying) world of music.

The sad news that led me to write this post (which I read on Slipped Disc), is that Quasthoff is retiring from performing. He's only 52 (my age), and he's retiring for health reasons. The interview clearly shows that he is far more than "just a voice" or even "just a musician." He is a person of serious substance and serious intellect.

Happy Birthday, Seymour!

noreply@blogger.com (Elaine Fine) — Mon, 09 Jan 2012 12:42:00 +0000

My dear friend Seymour Barab is 91 today. I have written about him and his wonderfully witty and beautiful music quite a bit over the years. I'm taking the occasion of his birthday to let you know about a brand new recording of his charming 1995 setting of Norman Rockwell's story "Willie Was Different" for flute, clarinet, piano, and narrator that was made by the trio@play.

Bird lovers take note!

James Dean and Opus 111

noreply@blogger.com (Elaine Fine) — Sat, 07 Jan 2012 15:25:00 +0000

From an obituary in the New York Times:

Earlier in life Mr. Hirshbein had taken up auto racing, as a consequence of his friendship with James Dean, a racing enthusiast. The two had met when Dean was an unknown young actor.

Dean was sitting on Mr. Hirshbein’s doorstep one day listening to him practice while waiting for a neighbor to return. When Jessica Hirshbein invited him in, Dean asked Mr. Hirshbein whether he could play Beethoven’s Opus 111 Sonata.

“That piece really swings,” Ms. Hirshbein recalled Dean saying. “ I love those syncopations."

After Dean was killed in an automobile crash in 1955, Mr. Hirshbein gave up auto racing at his wife’s insistence.

Who knew?

I imagine the syncopations Dean liked are the ones that begin at 3:33 and really start to swing at 5:13 in this recording by Wilhelm Kempff, one of the rare recordings on YouTube that has the whole movement!

What a treat it has been to graze through the Opus 111 offerings there.

Practice Mute Point

noreply@blogger.com (Elaine Fine) — Fri, 06 Jan 2012 19:22:00 +0000

Actually, this is a practice mute tip, but I couldn't resist the pun.

I like to play with recordings, and I particularly like to play with recordings when I'm learning a new piece and I want to be able to hear and feel how my part interacts with the other part or parts. Sometimes I do it by loading music into my iPod and playing while wearing headphones, which works pretty well as long as the headphone cords remain behind my head, and sometimes I use speakers, which works pretty well as long as I'm playing violin. The viola is louder under my ear than the violin, so it is difficult to hear the sound of the recording unless I crank it up to an inappropriately high volume.

After a bit if frustration this morning, I tried using my practice mute to play along with a recording. It was a great success! The practice mute allows me to keep a recording at a realistic volume, allows me to physically "dig in" to the instrument and be as expressive as I like, and it lets me hear the sound of the violist I happen to be playing with (who is often playing well and nicely in tune) as well as the other musicians on the recording.

I take no credit for this . . .

noreply@blogger.com (Elaine Fine) — Fri, 06 Jan 2012 02:56:00 +0000

. . . but I had to share it!

[Click on the picture to make it bigger.]

Composer's Datebook

noreply@blogger.com (Elaine Fine) — Wed, 04 Jan 2012 19:24:00 +0000

I tend to let the Composers Datebook podcasts pile up for a while on my iPod (each one is only a couple of minutes long), and then I listen to a bunch of them. I always learn something.

The composers presented on Composers Datebook are all excellent composers, but listening to the podcasts end to end can be terribly intimidating, particularly when the American Composers Forum discusses current successful composers (and there are some that seem to come up repeatedly). I know that I lack many of the commerce- and commodity-related skills a person has to have in order to be a successful composer, and for most of my writing "career" I have measured success in terms of how pieces I write sound, and if they are vehicles for people to express themselves. I'm not good at selling myself (even if I try), and am not very good at doing the kind of networking that is necessary to get pieces performed. I could even say that I believe that one of my strong points is not to be intimidating. But that means, in this dog-eat-dog world, that I am a good candidate to be on the receiving end of intimidation: to be intimidated.

Perhaps it doesn't matter. Perhaps that podcast is geared more for consumers of music (i.e. people who don't write music themselves) than it is to composers.

Intimidation is different from inspiration. For me nothing inhibits creativity like intimidation.

The Rake's Progress

noreply@blogger.com (Elaine Fine) — Tue, 03 Jan 2012 17:44:00 +0000

Michael and I were both excited to find this item about Igor Stravinsky. I was particularly excited because I once owned (and lost) a Stravigor. I spent many years searching for a replacement, which was very difficult because the name "Stravigor" wasn't printed on the device. Unfortunately Stravinsky was not as good an engineer as he was a composer. You can see that the lines in Arnold Newman's photos in the above link are uneven. The Noligraph is a better tool.

Both of these are versions of the Rastrum, which, as I learned from Sean, the keeper of the Blackwing Pages, comes from the Latin word for "rake.”

Half-Acre Whole Family

noreply@blogger.com (Elaine Fine) — Sun, 01 Jan 2012 04:25:00 +0000

Here's a moment of family music. Rachel and Ben have flown back to their grown-up nests, but right before they left (literally) we made this video.

(No, we don't all play backwards! Ben's computer just recorded it as a mirror image.)

Vi Hart Mathomusician

noreply@blogger.com (Elaine Fine) — Thu, 29 Dec 2011 16:39:00 +0000

I was delighted to come across this video explanation of the way overtones work on Mind the Gap.

Isn't it a treat to learn that the brilliant Vi Hart is a violist (though she doesn't admit to it in this interview, and she does treat her viola oddly by writing on it) and a composer? And look at the way she uses a music box to demonstrate the way a mobius strip works as a conduit for musical possibilities. Somehow, as a bona fide mathophobe, I feel optimistic living in a world with young people like Vi Hart opening up possibilities of how to think about things differently. Here's her YouTube channel, where I plan to spend a lot of time.

[Clearly, the apple hasn't fallen very far from the tree.]

Bravo!

Instruments for Political Figures

noreply@blogger.com (Elaine Fine) — Sat, 24 Dec 2011 14:11:00 +0000

From Barack Obama's Interview with Barbara Walters

"If you could change one thing about yourself, what would it be?

PRESIDENT OBAMA: I deeply regret not having learned a musical instrument. And I regret not having focused more on Spanish when I was studying it in school. I would love to be able to speak Spanish fluently and play an instrument."

What instrument do you think Barack Obama would have played well? My guess would be that a polyphonic instrument like the piano would work well for him. And he would probably make a good chamber music pianist. (There's always time to learn as an adult, Mr. President, though I know that it might have to wait until after your second term.)

People who have chosen instruments successfully (or have had them successfully chosen for them) tend to develop personalities that correspond to the way those instruments behave in performance situations, collective or otherwise. What instrument would you assign to which prominent "in the news" political figure (even political players who are no longer in the headlines and/or no longer running for office).

[Our son Ben, who found this interview on line and shared it with me, suggested at breakfast that a good instrument for Ron Paul would be the Erhu.]

Musical Nature Ramble

noreply@blogger.com (Elaine Fine) — Thu, 22 Dec 2011 15:54:00 +0000

I have been doing some reading lately. One of the most eye-opening books I have enjoyed is The Swerve by Stephen Greenblatt. I decided to get the book on a whim when I heard Greenblatt describe it during coverage of the National Book Awards somewhere on television. I thought it would be a good idea to actually know something about Renaissance thought since I spend a lot of time thinking about and playing Medieval and Renaissance music. I always wondered how the people who contributed to the Carmina Burana (or at least some of them), for example, knew about Greek and Roman mythology. But this post is not about my ignorance. That would take up too much space, and would not be very interesting to read.

The Swerve, if you haven't clicked on the above link, is about the circumstances concerning the discovery of a book-length poem called De Rerum Natura by Titus Lucretius Carus. Now I have a copy of Rolfe Humphries' translation of the poem (thanks, Michael), and I find it beautiful and fascinating. I have finished the first book, which makes the case for Epicurus' idea that nothing comes from nothing, that all things are made from atoms that float around in space. The racy parts of the poem (I have peeked ahead) seem to make it clear that the concept of Venus (though not the goddess herself) is what encourages all of nature to continue to be. Some essential components of Lucretius' argument that many people would object to this "holiday season" are his loud and constant claim that there is no life after death, and his claim that there is no entity that watches humanity and causes things to happen.

Lucretius was, of course, reacting against what many modern people would consider mythology: the polytheism of the Ancient Greeks, and probably the polytheism of the Ancient Egyptians, the Babylonians, and other mythologies that might not have survived. But his arguments work just as well to counter the various beliefs and mythologies that people have in the modern world.

Reading the poem helps me to understand that poetry and music are all part of nature. It is comforting to know that what we do as musicians is not "extra" as many members of modern society seem to believe. It also makes a case for the imagination. Anyone who has enjoyed fiction, either as a writer or as a reader, knows that when we create characters or empathize with characters created by other people, we do it with emotions that feel real to us. Some of us care about characters in books and operas with the same kinds of feelings we have for people we know in our non-reading lives. It is one of the reasons we read fiction, and one of the reasons some of us write it (I make up stories, but I have never actually written fiction, per se). Most of us are guilty of believing things that are fictitious about people who are real, and some of us are guilty of making up stuff about people that may not be true. We also sometimes try to believe things that other people believe, and sometimes we try to have faith in something intangible, and attribute "results" to that faith.

I have faith: I belive in atoms, I believe in gravity, I believe in the usefulness of the scientific method, I believe in practice, I believe in instinct, and I believe that each person has his or her own human nature that really can't be altered. I believe in tonality, but I do not believe it's the only way to organize music. I believe in the necessity of musical instinct in the creative act of writing music, and I believe in musical instinct when it comes to interpreting music and playing music with other people. I used to believe in the seasons, but things have changed in our world, and I can no longer trust the seasons. I do believe that as long as the carbon that is inside the planet stays there, nature will find a new balance.

I believe in the continued relevance of Bach, Haydn, Beethoven, Mozart, Schubert, and Brahms (and a whole slew of other wonderful composers who believed in Christian theology), regardless of where they believed their inspiration came from. It's the music that matters.

Polymusic, Polyculture, and Polly Wolly Doodle All the Day

noreply@blogger.com (Elaine Fine) — Mon, 19 Dec 2011 00:31:00 +0000

The more tools I have to look out into the world, the more I begin to understand that there is nothing about modern life that suggests anything like the "common practice" monoculture or set of monocultures that existed in the West before the days of mass communication. There are people who explore a different internet from the one I explore; and there are people who watch a different set of television channels, see different movies from the ones I watch, and read different books from the ones I read. There are people who eat totally different food from the food I eat, and English-speaking people who use entirely different groups of words to transmit reflections on the the world that I understand we share.

I am therefore not surprised when the responses that I get from my Community College students to a question on their final exam that asks them to list the pieces they liked most and least during the semester are all over the map. Some prefer the pieces that they heard later in the semester (when they finally figured out that they like listening to what we call "classical" music), and some chose music from very early on in the semester--music from the Middle Ages--as their favorite music. Some students really love opera, and some students really hate it. Some people slept through classes, and some people who slept early in the semester stopped sleeping and started paying attention. Some students respond to Wagner, and some respond to Stravinsky. Most people tend to like Mozart (what's not to like?), but some do not respond to Beethoven. Many students have an open mind when it comes to 20th and 21st-century music because they have heard serial music in horror movies and on "The Twilight Zone," and they have heard minimalism in movies and commercials. Some people are comfortable with electronically-generated sounds, and some people find Berlioz too wierd, too dissonant, and too chaotic.

There is no rhyme or reason to the choices students make when it comes to the 500 or so years of "classical music" we study. It all has to do with people's individual personalities. I think about how far we have come as a society when our young adults have the opportunity to make so many personal choices when it comes to music. When I think of my place in the world as a person who might open up doors to the wonders of the senses to unsuspecting people, both in class and in places where I play concerts (not to mention the people who happen by things I have written on this blog), makes me feel proud to be who I am and to do what I do.

Outer Life: Empty Middle Seat

noreply@blogger.com (Elaine Fine) — Sat, 17 Dec 2011 14:11:00 +0000

I read this post several times this morning, and thought I would share this fine bit of bloggery.

Randolph Hokanson's With Head to the Music Bent: A Musician's Story

noreply@blogger.com (Elaine Fine) — Fri, 16 Dec 2011 15:44:00 +0000

Marjorie Kransberg-Talvi introduced me to this book through a blog post, and I am sincerely grateful to have had the opportunity to read it. Not being from the American West Coast, I hadn't heard of Randolph Hokanson when I was growing up, but I certainly knew of two of his closest friends and teachers: Dame Myra Hess and Howard Ferguson.

I first encountered Ferguson's music a few months ago on a recording from a concert Hess played with violinist Isaac Stern on August 28, 1960 at Usher Hall in Edinburgh that was just issued by Testament (I just noticed that one of the quotes from reviewers on the website for this recording is from me!), and was overwhelmed by everything about the performance.

Hokanson had the great fortune to leave the state of Washington in 1936 (when he was 20), and become immersed in and embraced by the world of England's musical and literary intelligentsia (he met G.B. Shaw and H.G. Wells at the same party). In this memoir he chronicles the highlights of his musical education, giving specific (and extraordinarily useful and insightful) examples from Myra Hess and Wilhelm Kempff about the what, how, and why of music.

He manages to condense 70 years of experience into less than 200 pages, and along the way he describes some of the artistic and geographical wonders of Europe, his impressions of what Germany felt like right before WWII (he attended a Furtwangler performance where Hitler was in the audience, surrounded by flags), and what it was like to tour for "Columbia Concerts," an organization that sent New York musicians (Hokanson was living in New York during the 1940s) on long trips to far away places to play concerts for very little take-home pay. Hokanson gives the rollicking details of one such concert in a place he calls "Nowhere," where a terribly out-of-tune piano was put on a "raked" stage (one that was sloped upwards towards the audience).

One of the photos (there are a few pages of photos) has Hokanson with his piano student Corey Cerovsek (who looks to be about nine years old). Now I understand one reason that Cerovsek's Beethoven Violin Sonatas are so spectacular.

Hokanson, who is now retired in Seattle, but is still paying, is a "music first" sort of person and an excellent writer. His memoir makes me long for the musical world of days gone by, when substance separated the competent from the committed, and accomplished musicians seemed to care more about their quest to understand the music they played than about the size and shape of their careers. But he makes it clear that the what, how, and why of music that will always matter, and that the quest to be come a "Beethoven player" is one that does take a lifetime, and one that makes a lifetime worthwhile.

The book is a print-on-demand book that is available through the University Bookstore in Seattle (1.800.335.7323).

I found this wonderful recording of the first movement of the Mozart A minor Piano Sonata, K. 310 on line. The playing says everything.

[N.B. Here's a link to more recordings, and a link to still more!]

How the English Language was Developed

noreply@blogger.com (Elaine Fine) — Thu, 15 Dec 2011 15:52:00 +0000

[Thanks, Carrie!]