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Mother’s Day is sort of turning into a big deal for me today. I’ve always felt that these kinds of holidays have been co-opted by our consumer oriented society. By turning holidays into big marketing days we drain authenticity from important holidays like Christmas and Easter. When it comes to a more gentle idea like honoring our Fathers and Mothers, it seems to me to collapse under the weight of this kind of treatment.
Nevertheless, I have always tried to reiterate my love for my Mom on this day so she doesn’t even suspect I am not thinking of her.
Yesterday I had another full day off. Eileen and I met an old class mate of hers for lunch at the pub. That was fun, talking to someone who played in Band with Eileen in High School. Very cool. After grocery shopping and organ practice, I prepared food. I made a carrot cake to take with us to the annual Hatch Mother’s Day (Hatch is Eileen’s maiden name…. and I told you I was out of control) and prepared a quiche for a brunch with my Mom today.
The quiche is in the oven right now.
I have yet to frost the carrot cake because it came out of the oven at 8:30 PM last night. That’s pretty late for an “early-to-bedder” like me.
At about 6:30 or so, Eileen’s long awaited lawn edging arrived in the mail. She has been marking time waiting for this to arrive. She was planning to use it to create a little three tiered strawberry bed. This involves many wheelbarrows of compost. She looked at me exhausted and said we could wait on doing garden work. But after a brief conference to determine that she actually would like to work on it right away, we went to work.
So I found myself manually laboring again. New territory for this musician/cook. But what the hey.
So by the time the evening rolled around I was once again a tired camper.
Skipped blogging yesterday and worked on church stuff instead. I managed to come up with anthems for the rest of the season (through the middle of June). This kind of work is pretty absorbing. At this stage in what I do, I want the repertoire to work on several levels. I want it to be well crafted. That’s something I have paid attention to all my career as a church musician. But in addition I want it to be music that has a spark of some kind of attraction beyond mere craft. This is much harder to define.
Also, I have to factor in the actual people I think will be performing the music. Will I have enough singers to pull off an anthem? Is there a likelihood they will find something attractive in the music?
Another thing I think about is how will this music enhance the worship of the community. Will it provide a resonant addition of meaning and beauty that could possibly make sense to this community in this time and in this place?
Someone at church recently pointed out to me that I do much more than is required. I take this to mean that I could get by with a lot less work and careful planning. This is certainly true and sometimes I opt for the easy road just to survive. But attempting stuff that I determine will stretch myself and my community is much more fun. Important to be realistic as possible about reaching out of the comfort zone because one of the basic mistakes church choirs make is to perform medium difficult music poorly.
Anyway.
Eileen and I also took my Mom out for lunch in downtown Holland yesterday. I can say it that way because she actually allowed us to treat her. Usually she insists on paying for lunch. Afterward, we had a nice walk in the sunshine down to the fudge shop. Mom bought some fudge for herself and some for Eileen. Then we were off to my Mom’s favorite shop, the Dollar Store. After a quick trip to Walgreens we took Mom back to her place.
We came home and I did some hauling of stuff for Eileen for her garden. She is hoping that some material she ordered will come in the mail today so she can finish planting strawberries.
Eileen helped me in the afternoon by putting the new anthems in the choir folder slots while I practiced organ. Then we went for drinks and appetizers at the pub. Another busy day off.
West Ottawa Schools (northern Holland Michigan area) did not renew it’s millage. I can’t understand how people think our society will be able to continue without systematic education.
Pscholka sponsored our recently passed Michigan Emergency Manager law. He is pissed off that people are going to picket him in Benton Harbor. Where they recently put in a Michigan Emergency Manager. Ahem.
Dick Cheney is someone I have difficulty respecting. From a loud vocal “Fuck You” on the floor of the Congress to “Deficits don’t matter” to meeting behind closed doors with oil companies the first year of Bush’s term, I just think the guy is way off base.
Eugene Robinson, the author of this article, continues to insist on the truth that torture did not lead to Osama. And that torture is a stain on our national honor. I’m with him on that last one for sure.
Interesting day yesterday. I baked a peach pie prepared the day before as I blogged. Took it with me to staff meeting. The staff meeting was very low key. A lot of good feelings about the recent Holy Week celebrations and the direction the church is heading in. The boss is pleased.
After the meeting I took some time and practiced organ. I think I have about four movements (theme and three variations) of the piece I have been working on that I possibly can play this Sunday. I think that’s pretty good for a piece of organ repertoire like the“Variations sur un noël” op. 20 by Marcel Dupré.
I purchased a recording of this piece on Amazon. It was an album of pieces played by Ji-yoen Choi. As I was listening to her album, my attention was caught by the last movement of Bach’s E minor trio sonata for organ. I liked it so much I began rehearsing it yesterday. I love the organ trios of Bach. They are fun to play and challenging in a uniquely organ way. Thinking seriously of learning this movement.
In the afternoon I received a package of used music I purchased from my previous organ teacher, Craig Cramer. From time to time he sends out an email of a list of music he is selling. I bought about 30 titles from him including pieces for organ by Milhaud, Copland, Gerald Near, Vaughan Williams and Stanford.
I also bought three volumes of The Dett Collection of Negro Spirituals and six piano vocal scores of Bach Cantatas I didn’t own.
I immediately set about indexing the organ music based on hymn tunes. I do this by recording the composer and name of a setting on a 4×6 card with the name of the hymn tune at the top of it. I have been keeping this index for several decades and it is very handy for finding organ music in my collection based on certain hymn tunes.
At 5 PM I met Nate Walker and Jordan VanHemert at Nate’s house. We met Roman Tarchinski at the High School for our first gig as a foursome. While there was some very fine playing on all of the players parts at the gig, I’m hoping this group will settle into a bit more equal partnership of players since each musician has a unique musical insight to offer to our collective sound.
This is Nate, Roman and me at our last gig. I found the gig in this picture a bit more laid back and creative than last night’s. But still I had fun and was happy to be asked to play with these guys.
Today I have another full day. I take my Mom to the Neurologist, meet with my boss and then a piano trio rehearsal. Eileen is driving off to meet nephew Emily and pick up Alpaca poop together.
Apparently Alpaca poop is top notch fertilizer due to the fact that Alpaca have three stomachs and their poop is a gentler mix of nitrogen and lower in phosphorus.
I need to get going on a string arrangement I have agreed to do (Yellow by Coldplay) and pick out some choral anthems for the rest of the church year. Not to mention bearing down on some upcoming piano pieces I have to perform: A movement of Glazounov’s ballet, Raymonda for the May term of Ballet classes and a couple of Debussy piano pieces for an upcoming wedding.
As usual I stay pretty busy for someone with the self image of a “bum.”
This is pretty interesting. I saw this quote going around on Facebook and didn’t think much of it. Apparently due to cut and pasting and “sharing”, some quotation marks got mislaid and some words were attributed to Martin Luther King that he never said.
NYT editorial about efforts to get a Judge to recuse himself because he’s gay. Sheesh.
“After the trial, Judge Walker said he is gay and involved in a long-term relationship. Last week, Proposition 8’s lawyers argued that the ruling should be tossed out because he had had a duty to recuse himself, or at least disclose the relationship at the start of the case.
Another NYT editorial. I thought it put it well. I continue to be a bit disturbed at the hatred and anger that is directed at the President. This bothered me with Bush as well even though I totally disagreed with his presidency. Civility and good behavior in public is paramount to me.
“One of the subtexts to this argument is that Mr. Obama is not a true American, a thread soaked in the politics of fear and racial intolerance that runs through so much of the anti-Obama right.”
I continue to abhor violence enacted by governments. Torture is for me the opposite of concepts I think America should stand for, namely freedom and the willingness to tolerate and respect those we disagree with.
Salient quote:
“….[A] closer look at prisoner interrogations suggests that the harsh techniques played a small role at most in identifying Bin Laden’s trusted courier and exposing his hide-out. One detainee who apparently was subjected to some tough treatment provided a crucial description of the courier, according to current and former officials briefed on the interrogations. But two prisoners who underwent some of the harshest treatment — including Khalid Shaikh Mohammed, who was waterboarded 183 times — repeatedly misled their interrogators about the courier’s identity.”
Got up yesterday. Blogged. Made a nice breakfast for Eileen and me (Fruit Salad, softer breakfast burrito for Eileen, breakfast fried rice for me). Then we walked to our precinct and voted in the millage and school board election. We were voters number 110 and 111. Not a big turnout.
In between I fingered the fifth variation of “Variations sur un noël” op. 20 by Marcel Dupré. When I was in grad school I :fingered all my pieces. This means writing a finger number on every note. Before that, my undergraduate teacher, Ray Ferguson, spoke of taking a portion of his summer vacation and fingering all the pieces he planned to perform in the coming year. Fingering is an arduous task. One has to plan the logic carefully utilizing both the logic of limiting hand movement as much as possible and also what seems logical to you as a unique performer.
I chose to finger this movement due to the fact that the right hand is a perpetual mobile kind of figure of quick notes. I could already play it pretty well at a slower tempo and realized that if I always used the same fingers it would speed up the process of learning this difficult variation. This took a good chunk of my morning.
I have figured out that my son, David, hits the road for his morning commute in California at 10:15 my time. This is a time he has time on his hands and a good time to call him to shoot the breeze. In California, it is against the law to talk on a cell phone and drive. This is a good law, I think. What phone users are expected to do is use hands free devices when they drive.
David insists that talking to me on the phone using his hands free dealy is no more distracting than listening to the radio. The time difference makes it less easier for me to call him to chat after his work.
So yesterday I took advantage of this and called and chatted with David for a bit.
After that, filled the dishwasher, then helped Eileen move a bunch of compost from our driveway to where she is planning to raise vegetables. She usually does this work herself, but she is still recuperating from her fall and having some other back issues as well. I volunteered. Amazingly, I am not that sore today even though I rarely do manual labor.
Then I came in and made two pies, one blueberry for a welcome gift to the neighbors and one peach to take to today’s staff meeting potluck at church. While the blueberry was baking I went over to church and practiced Dupré.
OK. This is not really me at my church. This is me in England. Just sayin.
I can play the theme and six of the variations of this piece. But not all of them are “ready for prime time.” I will choose the ones in best shape on Saturday to play on Sunday and probably continue working on them and the others until I learn the whole piece.
There are ten variations. The last one is quite involved. It begins with a fugue and ends with a toccata. The sixth variation is a clever little three part canon. I quite like it and plan to end whatever group I come up with for this Sunday with it. The canons begin at the interval of a descending fifth. This is like singing “Row, row, row your boat” with each voice the round starting in a different key. The result is arresting to my ears.
After practicing, I came home and treadmilled. Then Eileen and I went out to eat. This was a good relaxing day off that I badly needed.
Today I have some tasks. Besides the staff meeting, I have a little jazz gig with the Barefoot Jazz Quartet around 5 PM. We are playing for a National Honor Society reception at the local high school. My bass player is graduating this year I think. I suspect he is a member of this organization.
A week after On the Media reported on this, the New York Times follows suit. This whole deal drives me nuts. I think that consumers should boycott copyright holders who sue customers.
And as I watch all-American, 20-something Caucasian males fist-pump and chest-bump one another outside the White House lawns in celebration, I hope and pray that we are on the road to changing this past decade’s master narrative of the “Global War on Terror.”
“I suspect many people will also feel somewhat embarrassed that their reasonable emotions were manipulated by cheap propagandists into something dreadfully exaggerated and irrational. We have a right to resent some of the shameful things done in our name. We have an obligation to make sure they do not continue.”
I have been chagrined and embarrassed by watching unbridled jubilation at the death of Osama bin Laden and the weird anger of people I know towards our president. I share this writer’s idea that people are manipulated by cheap propaganda in the USA. I call it the “echo chamber” since so few people are critical of what they see, hear and read in their news sources. I think this has seriously damaged us as a country.
My wife and I attended the funeral of her uncle Pat (her Mom’s younger brother) yesterday in Muskegon. The funeral was in a funeral home.
Funeral homes always strike me as surreal in a sort of “Talking Heads” or Matthew Barney way.
The open casket sat between two huge floral arrangements. To the right of the casket was a podium where the preacher was to stand. Before it was a a long couch. Behind that were rows of chairs.
Uncle Pat was 80 something years old. Many of the mourners were elderly themselves. There was a restrained sadness in the air. It’s hard not to use a liturgist’s eye in this situation. Humans need ritual so intensely. Ritualizing our lives is one of the things Americans have such difficultly doing. Our lives seem so rootless sometimes and we never know what to expect at those important times of our lives like birth, marriage and death. We lack a common authentic culture.
But this vacuum is quickly filled by attempts to make sense of these moments of change. Yesterday, speaking through a microphone (of course), the genial Baptist minister walked the congregation through the moment by reading some scripture, praying, preaching, inviting up Pat’s daughter for a moment of invitation to accept Jesus as our Lord and Savior, preaching some more, then inviting the mourners to come to the church for a meal and reminiscences of Pat’s life to be followed by burial at the cemetery.
At one point, he plopped down in the easy chair behind him. Music started up in the P.A. It was “Amazing Grace” with a synthesized Hammond B3 accompaniment and a smooth voiced male singer singing. It wasn’t long before this group of about a hundred people were humming and murmuring along with the recording uninvited. Soon they were singing. They obviously knew all of the three verses the singer sang. It felt like a moment of meaning that sort of leaked in to a situation struggling to be human. The genial preacher did not sing.
After his bit, the local Veterans marched up and ritually walked past the casket and saluted slowly one at a time. Then the local Commander of the Veterans and the Chaplain led us through another entire service of prayer which culminated in a 21 gun salute outside out of sight, taps (sounded like a real horn to me), and presentation of the flag and a pouch with the empty shells of the gun salute to the widow.
Then the funeral director came up and instructed us how to leave (back row first, file past the coffin and exit).
When I was in graduate school and taking a class in the ritual of Eucharist, we had an assignment to attend a non-liturgical church and observe and report on it. I did a Christian Scientist service and was able to see ritual (albeit unacknowledged or sought for) throughout their prayer. Many of these Christian denominations deliberately position themselves as non-ritual. But I think ritual is inescapable where there are human beings. From domestic rituals like brushing our teeth or reading bedtime stories to highly stylized rituals like beatification of Roman Catholic saints, rituals help us be human.
Krugman keeps on plugging despite the Orwellian tendencies of our public rhetoric to bend the facts.
“As you may recall, Republicans ran hard against bank bailouts. Among other things, they managed to convince a plurality of voters that the deeply unpopular bailout legislation proposed and passed by the Bush administration was enacted on President Obama’s watch.”
I heard about the Osama killing on the radio yesterday morning. When I sought more information, I went first to Al Jazeera. They continue to outdance American news sources about international news. I read several articles including the one above by a member of the (U.S.) Council on Foreign Relations.
I keep being fascinated by the fall from grace of Greg Mortenson, the man who spearheaded building schools for Afghan girls and then crashed and burned in a scandal in which it appears he defrauded his supporters and mishandled money.
This article is by the illustrious David Rakoff whom I have heard on This American Life. I heard his voice in my head as I read the article.
“If Mr. Mortenson’s apparent fall from grace stems from a failure of character, it also has the ancillary benefit of showing us that the world is indeed a good deal more complicated than merely taking tea with our enemies. That global realities of entrenched money and power, diametrically opposed ideologies, religious conflict and centuries-long geopolitical animosities can render change nigh on impossible, so why try? It confirms the good judgment inherent in our own inaction. It certainly allows me to live another day without getting off the couch.”
New York Times editor, Bill Keller posits the practical solution of compromise in politics.
People tend to remember Nelson Mandela as the moral champion who liberated South Africa by suffering in prison for 27 years. The fact is he liberated South Africa by sitting down and cutting a deal with the white leaders who put him in prison.
The previous article has a link to a puzzle exercise called You Fix the Budget.
“Today, you’re in charge of the nation’s finances. Some of your options have more short-term savings and some have more long-term savings. When you have closed the budget gaps for both 2015 and 2030, you are done. Make your own plan, then share it online.”
My energy is starting to catch up to my exhaustion. Yesterday did not leave me quite as exhausted as the previous Sunday. The music went well. I played a nice set of Variations by Wilbur Held on O Fillii et Fillia. They reminded me of Distler and Bender. I walked over a little early to rehearse them and they went pretty well in performance. They were based on the opening hymn yesterday, O Sons and Daughters.
I introduced the choir to next week’s anthem. Taken right out of the Hymnal 1982, it is a pretty unique text and tune.
1. Look there! the Christ, our Brother,
comes resplendent from the gallows tree
and what he brings in his hurt hands
is life on life for you and me.
Refrain:
Joy! joy! joy to the heart and all in this good day’s dawning.
2. Good Jesus Christ inside his pain
looked down Golgotha’s stony slope
and let the blood flow from his flesh
to fill the springs of living hope. Refrain
3. Good Jesus Christ, our Brother died
in darkest hurt upon the tree
to offer us the worlds of light
that live inside the Trinity. Refrain
4. Look there! the Christ, our Brother,
comes resplendent from the gallows tree
and what he brings in his hurt hands
is life on life for you and me. Refrain
Words: John Bennett (b. 1920), alt.
Music: PETRUS by William Albright (1944-1998)
Nice poetry in the hymnody but what makes it unique is Albright’s tune, PETRUS, which layers an 11 note pattern with a six note pattern in the accompaniment to the stanzas and lapses into sixties R&R in the chorus. The choir responded to it quite well.
I also had applause on my postlude which is always surprising in this context. I played a little Charles Ore setting of “Lift High the Cross.” I like Ore’s work. He combines imaginative rhythms with just a touch of the spice of dissonance. This particular setting is a bit bombastic and for once I played it quite loud. I accomplished this by playing it up an octave and with the crescendo pedal down and adding a few couplers. It made my little organ sound bigger than it is. I think the volume might have had something to do with the fact that this particular postlude grabbed the attention of listeners. Usually the energy of the crowd takes over at this moment which I see as a pretty good thing.
Since I’ve shared a hymn this morning, I think I’ll close with a poem by Emily Dickinson, I read recently and enjoyed.
I shall keep singing!
Birds will pass me
On their way to Yellower Climes—
Each-with a Robin’s expectation—
I—with my Redbreast—
And my Rhymes—
Late—when I take my place in summer—
But—I shall bring a fuller tune—
Vespers—are sweeter than Matins-Signor—
Morning—only the seed of Noon—
Last night’s killing of Osama Bin Laden is all the media noise this morning. But I find this little news story pretty disturbing: The Taliban announced a increase in wanton killing (now that the weather’s nice) and then did it. One of the things about suicide bombings or picking off civilians from a sniper perch that always strikes me is the cowardice of it: killing unsuspecting people in ambush. I figure this is just my own cultural bias, but I do find it cowardly to shoot or blow up someone who is not only unarmed but looking the other way.
Excellent feature article by Jane Gross in yesterday’s NYT.
Why, Mrs. Sachs asked, “do they send buses of psychologists to a high school every time there’s a tragedy,” but here, where death is constant, “there’s only a brief memorial service and cookies?”
Dr. Agronin talked to them about accumulated grief, how one death re-opens others, how they had held themselves together for their families’ sake. He said grief is part of the human condition, not a psychiatric condition.
Believe in a compassionate God and you are more likely to cheat. Makes sense to me. I have watched people who seemed to be cheating who fall in this category and have seen this correlation up close and personal. Yikes.
Since I am an obsessive ol’ compulsive type, I try to avoid harping on or revisiting a subject over and over here. Thus, when I realized I was in the midst of a bit of burnout, I began to guard against always blogging about it. Similarly, my slow bounce back from a Week of Holy (Holy Week that is) followed not by a week of rest but a week of more work, albeit enjoyable work.
The upshot is, I’m still recuperating. Big deal.
Eileen is taking some time off work for herself. She is also exhibiting what I think of as building up to feeling exhausted. By this I mean gradually coming down from the self motivated energy to do something (like a job) and allowing one’s body to feel the fatigue and then rest.
Yesterday I spoke with Nate Walker on the phone. He told me I was pretty much in the band (Barefoot Jazz Quartet) for the summer.
We were discussing a booking for next Wednesday to play for the National Honor Society reception at his High School. I am looking forward to playing with this group.
I am replacing the keyboard player and my colleague and friend Jordan VanHemert will replace the former sax player. This leaves Roman on Drums and Nate on Bass from the original group.
We will be doing next Wednesday without a separate rehearsal and I am confident it will be some pretty good music with these players since we will be doing Jazz tunes from the Real Books.
I am seriously considering (as is Jordan) adding a few of my own tunes to the playlist eventually. This will be a good outlet for my obscure compositions which I like to air out when I can since I have very few venues for them.
I recently purchased MP3s of the Dupré “Variations on a Noel.” The performer is Ji-Yoen Choi an award winning organist. Whew. She plays the hell out of these and makes me realize the amount of preparation necessary to perform this kind of literature. I am trying to learn a few of these to play for the prelude next Sunday. Yesterday I worked on them and began wondering if even a few of them might be biting off slightly more than I can chew. In fact, I have already rehearsed the manual parts (the keyboards) of a couple of the variations this morning on a silent keyboard.
My teacher, Ray Ferguson, used to point out that the vast majority of the technique needed to play the organ is keyboard not pedals. This is true of this piece. This means I can benefit from adding some at home keyboard practice.
There are a couple of graphic novels that the New York Times has left online besides the previously mentioned Mister Wonderful. George Sprott by Seth is one.
This insightful article by Charles Blow comments on the Obama birther stuff. Excellent quote:
In 1965, the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. described how the strategy of separating people with common financial interests by agitating their racial differences was used against the populist movement at the turn of the century, explaining that “the Southern aristocracy took the world and gave the poor white man Jim Crow.”
He continued that Jim Crow was “a psychological bird that told him that no matter how bad off he was, at least he was a white man, better than the black man.” He called this “their last outpost of psychological oblivion.”
But the right, with a new boost of energy from Trump, is reaching for new frontiers. The language and methodology are different, but the goal is the same: to deny, invalidate and subjugate, to distract from real issues with false divisions.
Yesterday, I was practicing organ when I suddenly became very very tired. I came home and was too tired to even treadmill. This happens to me after a strenuous period. It’s like I have to work up to being exhausted.
I spent the afternoon talking shop with my priest brother.
This kept my energy up. His visit came to an end and I went over to practice organ after a nice lunch with my wife and that’s when I crashed.
My brains feel like jelly right now. Need more rest and down time, I guess.
Today begins a couple of days off for me. My brains are pretty much fried. My last ballet class (yesterday morning) was a beginning class. The teacher invited me to attend after a bit of consideration. I didn’t realize that she was probably planning for me not to play a note. Instead, I sat on the floor with the other students and we reviewed a video tape they made on Tuesday of a couple of simple routines.
As they watched they were to evaluate themselves with a form the teacher had given them. The tape was of them working in threes and fours. I thought this was a pretty brilliant way to do self assessment. First there’s the shock of seeing one’s self, one’s body and how it is moving compared to the instructions and corrections the teacher has been giving. Then you can compare your movements to the other students.
After doing this the teacher led an evaluation discussion.
I enjoyed this quite a bit. One result of this job is that I have learned more respect for students at this little conservative religious college (Hope). The students I met at Notre Dame (at the under grad level) were very conservative as well (even way back in ’87). They impressed me with their idealism despite their narrow point of view. Also they tended to be extremely smart.
Between then and now, I have gotten to know a few young people who were very conservative and swallowed the Western Michigan point view, hook, line and sinker. They went on to colleges like Hillsdale and other institutions that have changed the intellectual climate in the United States. In my opinion, not in a good way.
So I’m kind of a bigot about young conservatives.
These ballet students however have impressed me with their passion, their dedication, their discipline, their good humor, and their appreciation of dance and music.
It’s a good corrective for me.
Haydn
My piano trio played all the way through the Haydn trio we are learning yesterday. I had thought of canceling this rehearsal. My brother is visiting. I am exhausted. But just like the dance accompaniment, I find myself usually refreshed after an hour of Haydn or Mendelssohn or Mozart.
I’m also working on learning some of Variations sur un noël op. 20 by Marcel Dupré. Dupré is an influential 20th century organist and composer. He’s not really my cup of tea, but I have played his music and read a biography of him. His music is not particularly easy.
Marcel Dupré
When I learn a piece by him I often picture my teacher, the late Ray Ferguson, with fondness. I can see Ray’s hands in my memory. They were very large and very skilled. His long fingers moved nimbly on the keys.
Dupré also wrote very influential texts for teaching improvisation at the organ. I have worked through some of these exercises.
I’ve never performed anything from his Variations sur un noël, but have had the music laying around for ages. There is no way I can learn all of this involved piece of organ repertoire in two weeks. But I decided I would learn a few movements between Easter Sunday and the Hope College May term. I title it in church bulletin as as “Excerpts from Variations sur un noël.” This allows me to continue to work on individual variations and then eventually only schedule the ones that I have learned in time.
“….[T]he birther question was never really about citizenship; it was simply a proxy for those who never accepted the president’s legitimacy, for a toxic mix of reasons involving ideology, deep political anger and, most insidious of all, race…
“It is inconceivable that this campaign to portray Mr. Obama as the insidious “other” would have been conducted against a white president.
My semester as ballet accompanist ends as of this morning. It’s been great, but this last week has been difficult due mostly to exhaustion and burnout.
I had more energy yesterday than Monday. Both of these days were “long” days for me (3 classes = 3.5 hours of class time). In fact Modern went very well yesterday. The last ten minutes of class were a gas. They ran through a long complex routine the teacher has been teaching them. Basically I got to improvise a lengthy dissonant rhythmic Jazz waltz for this period. Fun.
After that class my brother picked me up and he and I and my Mom went for lunch.
In the afternoon classes I started to show signs of wear. By the final class I was very exhausted but fortunately I don’t think it affected my playing too much.
The students have been chatting me up more and more. This is nice. Ballet class etiquette is that at the end of the class, the musician is always acknowledged, usually with applause. Then the students applaud the teacher. Ballet students are instructed to always thank the musician, and to do so looking him in the eye. Sometimes the entire class goes through a slow dance combination called the “Reverence” (pronounced reh ver AHNCE). Basically a formalized warm down it is a rehearsed curtain call that turns from one side of the audience to the other. The final 8 measures are usually a stylized bow toward the musician.
This is kind of embarrassing and often catches me off guard. I was embarrassed yesterday by the warm applause and thanks of so many students. But that’s the way it’s done, I guess.
I didn’t manage to blog yesterday. Monday was a difficult day for me as I did my three ballet classes exhausted. Keeping the odd and even number phrases straight for my Modern Ballet class proved a tough assignment for my tired mind. I apologized to the instructor afterwards because there were more than one moments when I wasn’t sure I hadn’t lapsed from one system of phrasing into another one. She was graciously forgiving.
Before my afternoon class I mentioned this to the instructor and she was sympathetic and advised me to “float” on through the afternoon. She confided in me that she was exhausted herself and had fallen asleep just before her first class of the day. Later she commented to me that even the students were showing signs of fatigue.
I had a nice conversation with her between classes and then a very nice brief chat with the the third instructor before my class yesterday morning. The semester is ending and I feel like it’s been a good one for me. Working with the ballet department has been refreshing and fun. I like sitting and making up little tunes for hours on end while people move with discipline and beauty. I love listening to the wisdom of the instructors who know so much about the body, movement and how artists can work with their own minds and anxieties. Very cool.
I am still in motion from Easter. Yesterday was a deadline for information to be submitted for the next two Sunday Bulletins. I picked preludes and postludes and one more Choral Anthem for a week from this Sunday. I met with my priest and we debriefed Holy Week and discussed visionary changes that might be in our future.
Choosing music (especially the Choral stuff) is taking a great deal of energy and brain power,lately. At this point I have multiple criteria I try to satisfy including ease of preparation, worth and attractiveness of the music, appropriateness to the occasion.
The gospel a week from Sunday is the lovely story of Emmaus where the risen Jesus appears to the disciples in “the breaking of the bread.” It provides phrases in one of my favorite collects in the Book of Common Prayer, “The Collect for the Presence of Christ.”
A Collect for the Presence of Christ
Lord Jesus, stay with us, for evening is at hand and the day is past; be our companion in the way, kindle our hearts, and awaken hope, that we may know thee as thou art revealed in Scripture and the breaking of bread. Grant this for the sake of thy love. Amen.
Years ago I wrote a choral setting for cello and SATB choir of this text. Yesterday I reviewed the setting and considered using it with my choir. After much consideration I decided that even though the text was very appropriate that the composition itself was not good enough for my present standards. So back in the drawer with that puppy.
Then after reviewing tons of material, I landed on an unusual hymn setting right in the Hymnal: “Look there! the Christ, our Brother, comes.” The composer, William Albright, taught at U of M for years. He’s not a favorite of mine particularly but he is clever and has had a presence on the contemporary composition scene. He wrote the melody at a workshop and describes it as a gospel-rock setting with a strong dash of minimalism.
The accompaniment for the verses has an 11 note repeating pattern in the right hand and a 6 note repeating pattern in the left hand. These only coincide after 8 statements of the longer pattern, otherwise they overlap unevenly. Surprisingly it works quite well. The chorus is really a little rock-and-roll piano part written out. Over all this Albright has written a sprightly respectable melody.
I found an MP3 online of a choir singing the hymn and emailed the recording and a copy of the hymn to my choir yesterday. This is probably what took most of my energy.
Later my brother arrived and I had a delightful distracted evening chatting with him before retiring. Another good day.
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LINKS
***************************************************** The Guantánamo Papers – NYTimes.com
This is an editorial from yesterday’s paper giving Obama heck about Guantanamo. I liked it. Good quote:
“But the administration is wrong to insist on secrecy. Inordinate resort to secrecy and resistance to testing evidence in fair and credible legal proceedings put the nation in this fix.”
This is a group attempting to provide some better curriculum standards for college prep for high school students. I haven’t looked closely at it, but the idea is very admirable.
This is the AA text online. Very cool that this is available. I started reading a bit in it recently. AA always makes me think of David Foster’s wonderful novel, Infinite Jest.
“The influence of the King James Bible is so great that the list of idioms from it that have slipped into everyday speech, taking such deep root that we use them all the time without any awareness of their biblical origin, is practically endless: sour grapes; fatted calf; salt of the earth; drop in a bucket; skin of one’s teeth; apple of one’s eye; girded loins; feet of clay; whited sepulchers; filthy lucre; pearls before swine; fly in the ointment; fight the good fight; eat, drink and be merry.”
This is an attempt by a Democratic caucus to articulate a different kind of vision for the budget which retains the values of fairness to all citizens and peace as an agenda item. Interesting.
Arthur Brisbane, the NYT public editor, gives them some hell for navel gazing. And not covering its own flaws while exaggerating the flaws of its competition.
A bit different take by David Halpern on the Libya war from a point of view critical of the aims and goals of those involved. Another article I haven’t read but am interested in.
Whew. I mentioned to Eileen on the drive back from Whitehall that though I don’t think my church work is asking more energy from me, it is taking more out of me. I could use some time off this week, but it’s not in the cards.
I have a full schedule today of classes. And I need to get the house a bit less chaotic and prepped for the imminent arrival of my priestly brother.
I’m sure it will all come together just fine, but I am very exhausted this morning.
Besides all the church stuff yesterday, I spent a lot of time thinking about family systems. The annual Hatch (my wife’s maiden name) Egg Hunt is always fraught with the complexity of an extended family gathering.
I entered this family system in a pretty lousy way due to my own bad behavior years ago. Interestingly, I am only now feeling like that beginning is fading away from my place in the system. Now I’m the old uncle who welcomes other new people into the situation and tries to make people feel comfortable and connected to each other. Kids help.
Well that’s about all I have in my brain this morning. Here’s some links:
It’s about 5 AM and I have to be at church in the next 45 minutes for a service so I don’t have too much time to blog. The church I work for celebrates its vigil in sort of a sunrise service slot. It’s goofy but it’s how they do it. So I have an Easter Vigil ahead of me, then a brunch and then another service.
After that we grab the casserole I prepared to bake yesterday (Ravio-sagna… low cal, low fat recipe from Devine Alexander’s I Can’t Believe It’s Not Fattening Cookbook) and head off for the annual Hatch Easter Egg Hunt.
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Bookmarks from yesterday
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“Yes, Rand was a staunch advocate of capitalism and limited government. She was also a staunch advocate of abortion rights and sexual hedonism, and an atheist to boot, which her conservative admirers have largely ignored.”
Warning this could be offensive to fundamentalist Xtians.
“In the first draft of the sketch, Cock Jesus was his final attempt to shock (it never appeared in the broadcast version for reasons of budget, taste and decency). It’s a statue of Jesus, he explains, “made out of the amputated cocks of dead Anglican vicars whose bodies I’ve been illegally exhuming for the last six weeks!” “Ooh, I do love angry art,” coos the presenter as she moves on to the next contestant to advise on a quick way of doing clouds.”
“Here are some indecorous quotes from the The Quotable Hitchens. “Ronald Reagan is doing to the country what he can no longer do to his wife.” On the Chaucerian summoner-pardoner Jerry Falwell: “If you gave Falwell an enema, he’d be buried in a matchbox.” On the political entrepreneur George Galloway: “Unkind nature, which could have made a perfectly good butt out of his face, has spoiled the whole effect by taking an asshole and studding it with ill-brushed fangs.” The critic DW Harding wrote a famous essay called “Regulated Hatred”. It was a study of Jane Austen. We grant that hatred is a stimulant; but it should not become an intoxicant.”
Okay I’m kind of tired this morning which is pretty logical since this time of year is draining to those of us in the Christian liturgy business. My doctor asked me this week if I was still working three jobs. That seems kind of funny to me since I see myself as kind of a bummy musician. She was thinking of my church job, my college job and my high school musical job. I told her the high school work was seasonal, so presently I’m only doing two jobs plus freelance.
Speaking of freelancing, after I wrote on my blog that I wasn’t playing my guitar that much, I perversely started playing it a bit more. This led me to thinking about my songs. I have been asked to play (this is the freelance part) with the Barefoot Jazz Quartet. They have asked me to do some playing with them this summer. Last time they asked me, the bass player and his Dad both mentioned that maybe we could do some Jenkins’ (that’s me), originals. I didn’t think too much about it since usually I require more rehearsal time for my songs than I thought we would have.
Since then I have thought that if the Barefoot Jazz Quartet is amenable, I might draw up a few of my songs like the jazz charts this group plays from and add some of them to the playlist. This is a good thing for me because I wonder how well my work fits in at the venue of the coffee house (LemonJellos) that sometimes invites me to play. Also each year I wonder if the owner of LemonJellos will continue to ask me to play when I draw such small crowds and do such eccentric music.
So maybe this year I’ll sing my songs at jazz gigs. Not really thinking of using the guitar or not, it’s just that guitar playing always leads me back to a portion of my work that was written with it and a pop style in mind.
I was listening to On the Media this morning (which I do every week) and they had a story about a company that trolls the web and sues people for using material they have procured the rights to. (link to this story). They tend to sue and offer to settle for thousands of bucks. Thousands. This means they are targeting (in the words of one person interviewed by On the Media) “mom and pop bloggers” and “hobby bloggers.” Yikes. That would be me. I need to start saving up for this I guess even though I try to follow a sort of fair use in my borrowing of words. As far as pictures, I think of my use of pictures like making a collage out of magazine pictures to show my friends. Surely that’s fair use. Here’s a link to a website dedicated to helping people who have been sued.
A lot of the rest of the links are from bookmarking articles to examine further if not read. Christopher Hitchens is someone I am interested in even though I don’t always agree with him. Have read his memoirs. Philip Larkin was a 20th century English poet.
If you use the colon command (define: meme) in the google search engine this pops up “a cultural unit (an idea or value or pattern of behavior) that is passed from one person to another by non-genetic means (as by imitation); “memes are the cultural counterpart of genes”
Read this one too. Apparently there is a tradition that the English monarchy have been doing for over 800 years to attend a Maundy Thursday service and hand out money to a limited number of regular people.
The sovereign herself still holds a nosegay of flowers and scented herbs, presumably to ward off any residual smell from hoi polloi.
Jupe comment: Traditions are fun.
“”I am a bit emotional about it,” said William Herring, 82. “I think I must have been chosen because I have been playing the organ in church since I was 14. I have seen her before, but not since I watched the coronation in the pouring rain in – when was it? – 1953.”
Jupe comment: Sure, interview the eighty-year-old organist guy who religiously follows and admire the monarchy. What an odd thing for an English organist. Not.
So if you don’t know about this, a guy (Greg Mortenson) was involved with private charity work in Pakistan, took people’s donations, wrote a book about (Three Cups of Tea) and now is accused of mismanaging if not stealing money purportedly collected for good works. Interesting to read about this scandal from the Brit point of view.
I first saw Altermann on CSpan way back before internet. He is a bright articulate spokesperson and writer from the left viewpoint. Since then I have read a few of his books and many of his articles and online blog entries. This YouTube Video is a longish interview of him I plan to check out.
I found this poem when I was looking for an illustration to begin this post. Can’t find an attribution. I like how it uses poetry to explicate the basic ideas of Maundy Thursday. I like the idea of picking glass from a bloody foot after a fight and the fact that the Mom retells this story after dinner (like Eucharist, get it? get it?)…..
anyway
Kind of a busy Maundy Thursday for me. First a ballet class in the morning, then a long wait in the doctor’s office for my four month check up.
Yesterday was a good check-up for me. I have lost a significant amount of weight at my doctor’s request. She asked me to lost ten pounds and yesterday by the doctor’s scales I had lost just under twenty. More importantly my blood pressure was low. So that’s good.
I have a good doctor, but I take responsibility for my health. I have lived hard and don’t expect to have a long old age. I have a bad heart. My mother’s brother died in his sleep at 57 from a heart attack. Life is a terminal business. As they say, no one gets out alive.
So when a doctor tells me to lose weight, I give a try. But I told her yesterday that I see these measures as somewhat staving off the inevitable. My blood pressure will get harder and harder to keep low as I age. I told her if I live long enough I will probably get prostate cancer. Statistically I understand that most males die with prostate cancer developing in their body if they live long enough. But it’s not necessarily that cancer that actually kills them. My doctor agreed with this.
In the meantime I had that rare doctor appointment in middle age where I didn’t leaving feeling like I’m not taking of the old bod.
Afterwards I grabbed some groceries including some gin and vermouth. I planned to have a post service martini, which I did. In an attempt at moderation, I have quit stocking gin and vermouth in the house and only drink martinis when Eileen and I go to eat. But I knew that I would be exhausted and not want to go out after the silly service and would still like one.
Came home and put away the groceries. My oh my, I am quite the domestic. Exercised and then read until time to walk over to church.
The service went well. My work is challenging because its form has changed drastically. No time for a thorough pre-game rehearsal since people don’t come anyway. This limits the material. Usually one tries to develop a choral sound through discipline. This is not working with my current situation. I did over ten arrangements for my little instrumental ensemble to help lead the singing last night. They were easy but I tried to make them interesting and enhance the situation. Again, I wasn’t really challenging the players due to minimal prep time. It all went pretty well.
I find the personalities at work challenging. Fortunately my profile is pretty low. I guess it helps to be invisible. Invisible is how it feels when people you are working with don’t look you in the eye or speak to you.
So one more service of Holy Week done. That’s good.
Today I coast a bit. Nothing really scheduled this morning. No classes or tasks other than doing the bills. I meet with the boss at 1:30 to talk about this evening’s service.
This has been a terrible but amazing time watching the Japanese go through national trauma. Their resilience is inspiring. Their tragedy heartbreaking.
Another musician to check out. Fortunately this is a review not an obituary. I did check Billy Bang from a couple of posts ago. His story is inspiring. His jazz is solid but didn’t draw me in to purchase his recordings or listen more to him. I feel that jazz is a bit like blues. It mostly keeps saying the same things over and over. Doing these genres is fun. But it takes something unusual to draw me into new material. Lehman sounds promising.
I’ve been up since 5 AM this morning working on correcting scores for this evening’s service.
Rehearsal went well last night, but of the 10 or 11 arrangements I had ready, there were serious errors in one and minor errors in a couple of the others. I’m hoping we caught them all last night.
I am sans coffee this morning because I am fasting for a blood draw. My four month check up is today. I can’t imagine I noticed that this date was Maundy Thursday when I made the appointment. But what the heck.
My doctor asked me to lose ten pounds in the last four month. By my count I have lost about eleven pounds, but we’ll see what the doctor’s scales say.
Unfortunately, I had to reschedule this appointment for after my first class today. On Tuesday my Mom had an appointment which was scheduled before my morning class. The doctor kept her so long that I missed the class. Bah. So I immediately rescheduled today’s appointment later this morning.
This means I could really use a cup of coffee right now and will have to manage to do the class without sustenance. Heh. I’m pretty sure I can it.
I continue to read bits of Your Hate Mail Will Be Graded by John Scalzi to my wife. Last night I read her one that I found pretty hilarious, “Things to know about clones.” (link to the actual post on his website).
In another post (too old to still be in his current archives), he writes about Heidegger and “angst.” He makes this comment on “embracing one’s nothingness” a la Heidegger.
“Left unsaid is what happens after one has in fact embraced the nothingness; one has the unsettling feeling that it’s difficult to get cable TV. Also, there’s the question of what happens when one has reached a state of authentic being, only to discover one is authentically an ass.”
This article reminded me of the short movie, “Dr. Horrible’s Sing-Along Blog,” which was originally written for and released on the web. Light-hearted fun. Recommended if you don’t know it already. I had to re-listen to the soundtrack yesterday.
I woke up gently this morning. Laying in the dark I sometimes muse on my life and my family and friends.
It’s a mellow feeling. I spent most of my waking hours yesterday in front of a computer, composing and arranging instrumental parts for the three days of the Triduum: Maundy Thursday, Good Friday and the Easter Vigil/Sunday Service. Then I emailed multiple parts and cheat sheets to the musicians. I meet with my boss at 11 to go over some stuff. After that if I haven’t heard from my musicians, I will begin printing up parts for this evening’s rehearsal.
Right now I think I’m going to not think about church burnout and try and stay in that morning feeling.
As I cleared my messy kitchen to make coffee, I was aided in this by listening once again to “One Day Like This by Elbow” on my MP3 player.
I ran across this on Monday and posted it on Facebook as an “antidote to Monday.” Since then I have been listening to it on and off.
This morning I got up and bought Elbow’s latest CD. I’m listening to it right now.
This music is working for me.
Must be that morning mood.
Lippy kids on the corner again,
Lippy kids on the corner begin settling like crows.
And I never perfected that simian stroll,
But the cigarette scent, it was everything then.
Chorus:
Do they know those days are golden?
Build a rocket, boys!
Build a rocket, boys!
One long June i came down from the trees
And cursed on cue,
You were freshly painted angel walking on walls,
Stealing booze and outlawing hungry kisses.
Nobody knew me at home anymore
Build a rocket, boys!
Build a rocket, boys!
Lippy kids on the corner again.
Find More lyrics at www.sweetslyrics.com
Lippy kids on the corner begin settling like crows.
And I never affected that simian stroll, no!
(whistle)
Chorus:
Do they know those days are golden?
Build a rocket, boys!
Build a rocket, boys!
One long June i came down from the trees
And cursed on cue,
You were freshly painted angel walking on walls,
Stealing booze and outlawing hungry kisses.
Nobody knew me at home anymore
Build a rocket, boys!
Build a rocket, boys!
(whistle)
I was thinking this morning how I haven’t been playing my guitar very much lately. Fortunately my guitar skills (such as they are) don’t seem to go away if I don’t practice. When I had my mid-life crisis, quit my job and started practicing and composing more,
part of what I did was revive my guitar songs and then write some more of them. I also starting improving my keyboard skills at the piano and organ.
This improvement is continuing through the present. All of this was and is satisfying. I did several gigs in coffee houses utilizing young musicians and handing out copies of my lyrics.
The popular music genres are part of my musical language. In fact from my point of view everything I write is related.
Though I haven’t had conventional success, my life as a musician and writer seems to be a good one.
I am an eccentric and have sort of stepped out of line from easily identifiable musical roles. But this doesn’t bother me that much. In fact I see it as a direct result of my own conscious choices, few of which I would do differently in retrospect.
I am able to use my skills as a composer (at church) and improviser (at church and the ballet class and the occasional gig) to make a little money while I spent most of my time practicing, composing, thinking about music and reading books. This is a good life.
In this chapter Scalzi scathingly stereotypes three political persuasions: liberals, conservatives and libertarians.
I recommend just clicking and going to the entire chapter, but here are a few examples from each:
Liberals: “The attention spans of poultry; easily distracted from large, useful goals by pointless minutiae. Not only can’t see the forest for the trees, can’t see the trees for the pine needles. Deserve every bad thing that happens to them because they just can’t get their act together.”
Conservatives: “Genuinely fear and hate those who are not “with” them — the sort of people who would rather shit on a freshly-baked cherry pie than share it with someone not of their own tribe.”
Libertarians: “Easily offended; Libertarians most likely to respond to this column. The author will attempt to engage subtle wit but will actually come across as a geeky whiner (Conservatives, more schooled in the art of poisonous replies, may actually achieve wit; liberals will reply that they don’t find any of this humorous at all).”
Since beginning this book shortly after my brother gave it to me, I have checked Scalzi’s blog, “Whatever,” occasionally. He claims to get 40K hits a day, but I found his entries not quite as much fun as his prose in this book. But of course that just suspiciously makes me want to go and buy books by him. Hmmmmm.
I don’t have much time to blog this morning. My Mom called yesterday and told me she had a doctor’s appointment at 7:30 AM which neither of us were aware of before the reminder phone call she received. So I have to pick her up in about 45 minutes.
This was a great obit of a singing coach. Coaching singers is something I do so I admired the story of this man’s life even though I hadn’t heard of him.
The left is stirring and not all of them are completely disgusted with Obama. I of course am more in agreement with people who have my kind of attention span (poultry) than the right or the Tea Partiers. But I do try to keep up with all stripes of comment.
Interesting poem. I think I have mentioned that I knew an English teacher ion my high school who used to routinely yell at us students and tell us that there was more “news” in poetry than in the newspapers and that it would behoove us to read the poems not the papers. As an adult, I do both.
I liked a lot of sections of this poem,but this line jumped out at me:
do you think when someone dies they just vibrate a little differently.
This news organization continues to set the pace for international news. Excellent overview. If you happen to read this article and don’t learn something about individual countries in the complex continent of Africa, I would be surprised. Anyway, I learned stuff.
“Ideology makes it unnecessary for people to confront individual issues on their individual merits,” the late Daniel Bell wrote. “One simply turns to the ideological vending machine, and out comes the prepared formulae.” Ideology knows the answer before the question has been asked.
Finally, I ran across this yesterday and liked it quite a bit and put it on Facebook. Here it is:
A priest I worked for used to call this week Hell Week, instead of Holy Week. He would wave his hands and say, “Too much church, too much church.” Lately, any church at all has been too much church for me due to burn out and fatigue but I’m trying to not to dwell on it.
Yesterday went well despite the erratic behavior of some of my musicians. Another person indicated they wanted to play with GELO (the instrumental ensemble playing at Maundy Thursday and Good Friday). A couple singers indicated they would not be attending certain services of Holy Week they have been asked to sing at. People arrived late and left early, skipped rehearsals. Typical stuff. I put a good face on the situation and simply tried to do my job well and with as little anxiety as possible. Fuck the duck.
The congregation sang well. At least one or two people actually noticed the postlude I had prepared. This was remarkable since it was sort of a quiet one. One young man has made a point to come and stand and listen several times at this point in the service, recently. I keep thinking he needs to chat with me, but apparently he is just coming to listen. That’s nice.
I still have some work to do before Wednesday night’s rehearsal, arranging and making up parts. I’m not planning on doing that today. I have a full schedule of classes. That and exercising will take up my energy.
Ann Rand keeps popping up in my mind as watch the public discussion on government and markets. I read Rand as a kid. This is a pretty good article by Maureen Dowd who is someone whose articles I read but don’t always pay that much attention to since they are usually polemical and attempts at humor.
“You’d think that our fiscal meltdown would have shown the flaw in Rand’s philosophy. She thought we could derive morals from the markets. But we derived immorality from the markets.”
This essay by Nicholas Dames is quite good. It examines the incoherent attack on humanities in the public square. Here are a couple of quotes:
“Innovation,” Nussbaum puts it succinctly, “requires minds that are flexible, open, and creative; literature and the arts cultivate these capacities.”
“The divorce between liberalism and professionalism as educational missions rests on a superstition: that the practical is the enemy of the true. This is nonsense. Disinterestedness is perfectly consistent with practical ambition, and practical ambitions are perfectly consistent with disinterestedness.
I seem to have had books on the mind yesterday. Dames uses three books in his article:
Terry Castle. The Professor and Other Writings. Harper, 2010.
Louis Menand. The Marketplace of Ideas: Reform and Resistance in the American University. Norton, 2010.
Martha Nussbaum. Not for Profit: Why Democracy Needs the Humanities. Princeton, 2010.
I have read most of Cultivating Humanity by Martha Nussbaum, the last author, and have found her insightful and eloquent.
Terry Castle. The Professor and Other Writings. Harper, 2010.
Louis Menand. The Marketplace of Ideas: Reform and Resistance in the American University. Norton, 2010.
Martha Nussbaum. Not for Profit: Why Democracy Needs the Humanities. Princeton, 2010.
I spent several hours transcribing and arranging string parts for Holy Week. For Maundy Thursday I prepared string accompaniment to the choral anthem for the evening: “As in that upper room you left your seat” text by Timothy Dudley-Smith, music by Carl Heywood. I have taught the choir this lovely hymn for use as an anthem. I added a short string intro, interludes and postlude. This will dress it up.
For Good Friday, I finished a transcription of an organ piece by Timothy Flynn based on “O Sacred Head.” Flynn has written a series of chords that fit nicely on piano. I gave the melody to the strings in octaves. This will make a nice prelude for that evening.
I emailed off the parts to the players.
The challenge in the Maundy Thursday and Good Friday selections was my ensemble consists of one viola, two cellos and piano. This challenge made it kind of fun.
I will do a few more hymn arrangements for these four players. We have a rehearsal scheduled on Wednesday. I am trying to make these arrangements well with in the playing capabilities of these players since they are receiving the scores just before they will be asked to perform them.
In between, for fun, I started my first serious analysis of a Charles Ives piano piece. I enjoy throwing myself at compositions and trying to figure out how they work.
This piece is the first of the “Five Piano Pieces” I purchased through the mail. It is called “Varied Air and Variations: Study #2 for Ears or Aural and Mental Exercise!!!” (One commentator suggests there might be a bit of a pun in that title: “Very Darin’ Variations.”)
It’s a sectional piece, ostensibly a theme and variations. It also includes a short introduction, brief interludes and a small postlude all of which are labeled “protests.” The intriguing aspect of it initially are these little comments from Ives throughout the piece. An example is the note he has written over the first introductory Largo section: “First Protest from ‘box belles’ when ‘man; comes on stage”. This reminded me of Satie’s piano music where he sometimes prints comments throughout. In Satie’s case the comments are ironic performance notes. At first I thought Ives’s words were something similar.
example is the top note which translates “To play this motif 840 times in succession, it would be advisable to prepare oneself beforehand, in the deepest silence, by serious immobilities”
My attention was first caught by the second variation, “March time or faster,” which is in an obvious mirror inversion counterpoint. This is a fancy way of saying that the right hand melody is mirrored by the left hand melody (there are only two parts) but when the right hand goes up, the left hand goes down the same distance and when it goes down, the left hand goes up the exact same distance.
But this technique wasn’t really what caught my eye. I also noticed that it seemed as though the notes went through all 12 possible of the notes of the scale before repeating. This piece is dated c. 1910, revised 1925 (according to Groves Online Music Dictionary. Thanks again, Hope College, for this perk for the old guy playing the piano in the ballet class!). It is just about period of music history that across the ocean Schoenberg is developing an influential strict technique that uses all twelve notes equally (link to wikipedia article on 12 tone technique).
Intrigued I began counting unique notes. I found that Ives uses 11 of 12 possible different notes in a row, stopping just short of Arnold’s 12 tone row. Then he started over with a series of 7 unrepeated notes. Then he begins to repeat notes. Also about half way through the variation he abandons the mirror inversion technique.
It was at this point, I began to look closely at those little comments Ives put in the music. I realized that they tell a dual story. One story is the story of a musician who is playing for an unappreciative audience (“box belles). You can hear this clearly in his label for the least dissonant of the variations: “16 nice measures, E minor as much as possible! All right, Ladies, I’ll play the rock line again and harmonize it nice and proper.”
When I read this, I wondered about instructing a player to “play something in E minor as much as possible.” Then I realized this was a descriptive comment, not one meant to affect the key in which the player plays. Then I thought about the phrase “rock line” in terms of the way Ives strictly ordered his pitches throughout the piece.
Sure enough, he refers over and over in his comments to stones and rocks: “the old stone wall around the orchard– none of those stones are the same size” and “Follow the stone wall around the mountain.”
At this point I began to see what Ives was driving at. Even though I found this piece described as a programmatic piece, I think it is a unique example of sort of a non-programmatic programmatic piece. The music does tell a sort of story. There are repeated soft and loud sections which represent the protests and eventual acclamations of the audience. There are also the theme and its variations which culminate in a wild rhythmic dissonant finale in the description of the “man” getting mad at the audience and starting to “throw things at them.”
But the music materials of the theme and variations itself is about the stones or rocks of the chosen material not actually making musical sounds that make a picture in a more typical programmatic way.
Programmaticaly there are only those shorter sections throughout which aurally represent the reaction of the audience to the music. (At one point Ives marks a series of hammered bland C major chords FFFFFFFFFFF. Note that there are 11 of those fortes. Hmmmm. This is supposed to represent applause of the players attempt at harmonizing in E minor mentioned above.)
I love finding stuff like this. I don’t really care whether Ives was flirting with the same technique that Schoenberg basically has the credit (blame?) for originating.
In fact I love the fact that he used his brain in a similar way to make a piece of music, but instead of the serious academic approach of Schoenberg, he used it playfully and humorously in sort of a double programatic way.
Apparently Ives wrote this piece as a sort of ironic critique of the reception of some of his finest piano music including my favorite, The Concord Sonata. Cool beans.
Joel Ralphaelson from Chicago says that when George Bernard Shaw was confronted with trying to come up a clear description of his reaction to music without resorting to trite metaphors he wrote: “Shaw was confronted with the lack of an exact, non-metaphoric word for what he wanted to say. So he wrote, “I did with my ears what I do with my eyes when I stare.”
I quite like that.
I also like this:
David Brooks’s column is a strong piece of advocacy for the arts in education. “Metaphors are not rhetorical frills at the edge of how we think,” he writes, paraphrasing James Geary. “They are at the very heart of it.”
And this is what educators know about the importance of the standing, speaking, moving, memorizing, hearing and seeing in an arts curriculum: they are not frills, they are at the heart of learning. They are the nation’s hope for a strong, confident and competitive future.
In our panic over how badly we’ve used our resources, how shortsighted we’ve been, how deeply we’ve gone into debt, we could cut out our hearts.
“Corporations are roaring. Wall Street is rolling in cash. C.E.O. bonuses are going gangbusters. It’s a really good time to be rich! If you’re poor, not so much.”
Fun fact he cites:
“[T]he spurious argument that cutting taxes for the wealthy will somehow stimulate economic growth is not borne out by the data. A look at the year-over-year change in G.D.P. and changes in the historical top marginal tax rates show no such correlation…”
Lastly even though I personally struggle with the whole concept of war, I find this aging Marine’s ideas interesting and worth thinking about:
“In Mr. West’s view, counterinsurgency strategy in Afghanistan is a feel-good, liberal theology that is turning the United States military into the Peace Corps and undermining its “core competency” — violence.”
I’ve always felt that this is the basic reason to have a military: to wreak violence and death on enemies. Even though I have a son who benefited from spending time in the service and nephews and nieces who have served and are still serving in military, I still feel uneasy at the morality of the whole thing. Mark Twain describes this nicely in his War Prayer (link to text).
As he ends his story: “It was believed afterward that the man was a lunatic, because there was no sense in what he said.”
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