I have been hosting my brother and his wife who have been visiting. Hence the lack of blog yesterday.

My brother helped me move the harpsichord from the church to my dining room.

As we were moving it, he mentioned recently finding a letter from my Dad to me chiding me for purchasing the harpsichord kit.

He promised to scan it and others in so I could read them.

My daughter Sarah has posted a couple of Youtube videos. I know I’m the Dad and everything but I think they are neat:

Today Mark and Leigh leave for home. I plan to grocery shop, practice organ and maybe do some composing and/or arranging for the Aug 5th gig. Picked up another player, Laurie Van Ark. She will do viola and vocals. She has a great voice and sings in my church choir.

Now that I have my harpsichord in the dining room, I need to get going on refurbishing the jacks. I called yesterday and asked about the strings I am using and the person at Zuckermann said that I have the right strings (I ordered them back in Feb) to restring. So I’m probably going to give the instrument as much of a refurbish as possible.

Hopefully it will be ready by Aug 5.

Got the wireles working late last night. Yesterday seemed to be a day of low energy for me. I was kind of grumpy and melancoly all day.

After Eileen left for work, I went over to church to pick out music for the weekend. I had hoped my bud, Jordan, would perform his Bach sonata at church this week but it was not to be. I chose a very abstract piece by William Albright called “Nocturne” for the prelude. I found it in a later edition of the Gleason organ textbook.

I notice that this U of M composer did not notate this piece very well. The hands tremolo through out creating a “marimba” like effect (the composer’s words). Though they are written with half notes their value is arbitray and follows placement over a strictly written pedal part. Very confusing. But once you figure it out it can be done. It just could have been a bit more player friendly.

For the postlude, I’m using a piece by a friend of mine, Bobby Hobby. It’s based on the melody of the closing hymn, “Joyful, joyful.” I actually looked Emma Lou Diemer’s setting but decided to do Bob’s instead. Diemer was all grumpy about an entry in a previous blog and I admit I might have had a bit of a bad taste in my mouth when I looked at her piece. Anyway, I know the Hobby and it’s a very pleasant end to a church service in my opinion.

The next week I am planning to play one of the Schubler chorales, “Wer nur den lieben Gott läßt walten” BWV 647 of Bach. I always hear this melody as “If thou but suffer God to guide thee,” since I have conducted several choral settings of it with that translation and it is translation of the hymn we will be singing that Sunday.

For the postlude I am seriously considering (and have been rehearsing) a loud section from Hindemith’s first organ sonata.

I received two packages in the mail yesterday. One from Comcast to set up the wireless. The setup was needlessly confusing. I didn’t have time to mess with it before the choir party. So Eileen and I came home and tried to get it working. I was exhausted from my day and had had a few glasses of wine at the party so I wasn’t at my sharpest (ahem).

Eileen began installing the new router and I helped. Eventually she got stumped and went to bed. The difficulty was the encryption stuff.

After she went to bed I turned off the encryption and the wireless worked fine. This is not the best set up but it will do until I decide to up the security.

The second package I received in the mail was the kit to refurbish the jacks on my old harpsichord. I haven’t opened the box yet but look forward to messing with it.

My second meeting with the priest and the children’s choir director was enlightening to me. I am beginning to understand this situation better. It is fraught with overtones from the local college but I did learn a lot more about the point of view of the children’s choir director and am hopeful we can work out some structure and collaboration this fall.

It was emotionally exhausting for me, however.

I now have several musicians committed to performing with me on August 5th at LeMonjellos.

People who have consented to be a musical “friend” of Steve Jenkins on August 5th at LeMonjellos.

This makes me very happy. I have a few more musicians in mind and have been talking with them about possibly joining us.

I’m hoping to plan a unique evening of very diverse music. From Mendelssohn to mayhem you might say.

I think I managed to program our new cable outfit to record a program for Eileen to watch in its entirety at her leisure. Seems to be very easy to do. Now to figure out how to set it up to do so weekly.

I have to do church stuff today. 2nd meeting with children’s choir director and priest. Hope it goes well. Probably going to begin to get to the nitty gritty today.

Need to pick a prelude and postlude. I was hoping my bud, Jordan, could play movements from the Bach sonata we have been rehearsing but he is going to be out of town.

Also way behind on picking hymns but don’t think I’ll get to that today.

Eileen and I went out to breakfast together yesterday at Panera and neither of us realized that it was our 35th wedding anniversary. Eileen later called and left a message on my cell wishing me a good one.

I remained at Panera studying the score of the first movement of the Mendelssohn D minor trio sonata my trio is learning. Score study is something I don’t see a lot of trained musicians doing. It’s one of those dots that rarely gets connected in many educational institutions.

A music student is asked to learn an instrument by way of lessons and is asked to learn music theory and analysis by way of multiple courses. But when I was in school it was the rare student who used his analysis to understand the pieces he was learning.

Conductors are encouraged to do score study. But again my experience of many college conductors is that not even they spend a great deal of time with the scores in preparation for rehearsal and performance. Instead they wing it with the score in front of them using their immediate skills and knowledge to interpret.

I hasten to add that many conductors do prepare scores. It’s the usual thing.

But winging it and giving the appearance of knowing what you are doing seems to be a skill encouraged and developed by being a college teacher.

Just my impression of course.

But instrumental and vocal performers are a different case.

I fear that learning notes and rhythms and dynamics and interp take up so much time that players learn to sort of ignore the nuts and bolts of the music of how the music is put together compositionally.

Having said that, I love to look at the nuts and bolts of music, the puzzle of how it is structured and thought up.

The Mendelssohn first movement mentioned above is a fascinating blend of structure and innovation that doesn’t draw too much attention to the fact that it is subtle and carefully worked out.

By the time I looked up at Panera yesterday at least an hour had passed. But I had cracked much of the code of the piece I was looking at.

This morning I got up and worked on understanding two parallel passages Mendelssohn uses to close off two important sections of the piece.  These two sections had already come to my attention as a performer since they involve some pretty treacherous exposed octave passages (very Mendelssohn) in the piano part.

I was interested to learn that Mendelssohn uses the material in the first instance to calm the piece into a restatement of the main them. In the second instance he extends and elaborates the same material but uses it to build to a climax. Very clever.

These are things one only learns sitting and carefully looking at the notes one is learning.

It is my suspicion that musicians are vaguely aware of form and motive and structure. One knows of course that one is playing a theme or repeating it whole or fragmented or other wise varied.

But I wasn’t sure in this piece (still trying to figure out actually) if Mendelssohn was using the structure that Beethoven, Mozart and Haydn used so much in many of the first movements to their symphonies and sonatas.

This is sometimes called Sonata Allegro form and involves a 3 section piece.

In the three composers mentioned above, these sections are pretty easy to see. Often they are marked off with major repeats.

Section 1 is usually repeated. In it you have the main themes that close off out of the main key.

Section 2 “develops” material. Depending upon the composer this material can be new, derivative, fragmented…. whatever. Haydn liked to use the main theme here again but in devious and clever variations.

Section 2 builds to a restatement of the main theme which then closes off in the home key usually using material from the latter part of section 1.

If it sounds a bit vague, it actually is. But one can lift the veil so to speak and pretty easily see what Mozart, Haydn and Beethoven are up to.

Mendelssohn was writing just after Beethoven’s death and was extremely well informed about how previous composers made their music.

Like Brahms he became both more structurally innovative but releasing more intense romantic emotion via these very disciplined and clearly worked out variations on the forms of the past.

All this said, I’m not 100 % sure that Mendelssohn used this form in this movement.  But it looks like he may have but of course made it not only his own but quite beautiful.  Wikipedia confidently asserts he did use this form. But just as confidently asserts that the development section is in the home key and uses both themes from the first section.

This makes it dubious that it is functioning in quite the same way as the classic development section (usually a push away from the home key).

Hey but what do I know?

Today I plan to take a day off.  First one in a while.  Yesterday’s service went pretty smoothly. I played the Parry postlude pretty well.  The violin teacher from Hope(less) college chatted me up at the coffee hour.  I have a sneaky suspicion I have aroused his pity somehow.

Eileen was ill. She volunteered Saturday at the Children’s Garden at the library and once again no patrons showed up to help. She came home and went to bed and has pretty much stayed there all weekend with a sore throat.

I checked on Mom and half-heartedly volunteered to take her for a ride or something. She also took pity on me and declined. She is looking a bit better every day. Depression does cycle. We agreed to do lunch today.

Before church, I treadmilled to some videos.

This one is very interesting. 6 ways we look at time and what it does to our lives….

I like what David Byrne says in this video about how rooms affect the basic notions of what kind of music we compose and make….

Finally, daughter Elizabeth turned me on to Johana Blakely’s synopsis of what the relatively copyright free fashion industry can teach other industries bogged down in intellectual prop protection.

I spent some time with Mendelssohn and Brahms at the piano yesterday. Then did some reading.

Besides reading in Mao: the unknown story by Change and Halliday and The Doctor is Sick by Burgess, I read in the New Yorker Summer Fiction issue.  I especially liked “Dayward” by Z. Z. Packard. The theme for this issue is “20 under 40”. A few of the stories are online.

Finally Eileen came downstairs to Farmville on the mainframe (no wireless…. makes me crazy) and then joined me watching “A Time to Kill” on our new stupid cable tv.

I read this book years ago but never saw the movie. It’s Grisham’s first. I remember being so shocked when the main lawyer character, Jake Bergance, has a moment of undiluted pleasure when he realizes the case will thrust him into the spotlight and most of all TV coverage.

I couldn’t understand how anyone would look forward to that. Still don’t, for that matter.

I neglected to go practice organ yesterday afternoon. I have in mind performing one of the Schubler for the prelude next week and a loud section from the Hindemith first organ sonata for the postlude.

I desperately need to get back to doing some writing and contacting musicians for the August fifth gig.  Time marches on.

TV doesn’t seemed to have changed much since I last looked.  It’s still a bit addictive and dopey.  It still sucks up life like a sponge. I know. I know. I allow it do that. I like to think that right now it’s just the novelty of having it back in the house that causes me to turn it on.

Yesterday I figure I watched several hours of TV including 40 minutes on the treadmill.

I watched Myrlie Williams, Medger Evers widow, talk about his life plugging the book she helped edit, The Autobiography Of Medgar Evers: A Hero’s Life and Legacy Revealed Through His Writings, Letters, and Speeches (link to video).

I watched Jay Wexler wittily talk about his book and the supreme court. Very cool. He clerked for Justice Bader and is a gentle atheist interested in the topic of separation of church and state. Definitely worth watching.  (link to this video)

Finally Eileen and I watched most of “Up” last night. I have been vaguely interested in seeing it. Maybe I just wasn’t in the mood but I didn’t like it all that much. Surprising.

Also, I rilly rilly miss my netbook wireless connection.

It was so nice to turn over in bed and kick on the internet and look up a word or a reference in something I was reading or thinking about.  I hope I can get this up and running again. It was so convenient and actually contributed to my ongoing learning such as it is.

I was amused to see that the composer, Emma Lou Diemer, left a comment on one of my old blog posts.

I had linked in to her website. I suspect her webmaster either responded on his/her own or pointed it out to her and one of them responded. Her comment doesn’t seem to directly relate to my comments about her music. She responds to my observations about her reputation among musical snobs as though it were my own opinion. She suggests I check out more of her music. After I had described the piece I was playing by her in laudable terms. Plus I have taken the trouble to learn several of her pieces, a few of which are of the highest standards. Usually a composer knows their own work well enough to recognize a gambit of achievement. But maybe not. Maybe Diemer is just as thin skinned and narrow as the rest of us dang church musicians.

Interestingly, I find that some church music composers I have spoken with seem to almost be angry with people like me (little people that is) who learn their music and perform it to the best of our meager ability on less than stellar instruments in our parishes.

I heard a friend of mine bitterly complain that so many people perform his music at workshops without preparing them well enough. No sympathy there.

I emailed David Hurd recently requesting permission to register a piece of his a bit differently than his original composition. I did this mostly out of the novelty of being able to appropriately contact a composer via email (That way he/she can ignore or respond). Also I was trying to be respectful of his intentions and courteous.

He emailed me back suggesting I not use the piece and perform a different piece of his. Which I did. Which meant that one of his piece received on less public airing (no big deal to him I’m sure). His suggestion was a good one. But unfortunately it meant that I would be repeating one of his pieces I had performed before at my church something I try not to do much of.

I have been giving thought to some composing for my August gig. I keep fantasizing about having a group of musicians playing strings, saxes, oboe, mallet instruments, harpsichord, and piano.

I think it would be fun to write at least one piece for the entire group. This means getting some commitments from musicians. So far I have three commitments from three very fine players (violin, cello, sax). Trying to build up my courage to ask some other players that I know find me a bit intense or dopey or something.

So I’m sitting at my desktop in the living room instead of my netbook at the kitchen table. Last night Eileen was forced to Farmville on the desktop as she watched old episodes of NCIS on our “new” cable tv.

So our wireless is hopefully only temporarily gone.  And of course a harder look at the upcoming change in bills reminded me that I was forgetting that it would include not only the base price but extra things like taxes effectively increasing the amount we were paying before (from $90 for internet and phone to more like $110).

The technician attempted to run the internet through my wireless mobile bless his heart. He seemed to know what he was doing and was unable to get the modem I own to work with Comcast’s modem that brings the tv and internet into the house.  I ordered a “free” modem installation kit from Comcast (S & H $9.99. Hmmm.). I hope it works out so that I can have my wireless service back.

Come to think of it we just lost our TMobile Hotspot (running Eileen’s cell through the internet because otherwise we get bad reception in the house. My cell is not rigged for it.)

Oh well. Eileen has her TV and it does look like it won’t be too hard to “DVR” it (that is, record tv shows she wants to watch and watch later). And Comcast does test out on my desktop at about 12x faster than TDS. Of course my computers are still as slow as they were before.

Eileen was not keen on the TV upgrade. But I know that she enjoys watching and finds it relaxing after a long day at work (like hopefully she did last night). So I insisted we upgrade her access.

Of course I do hate tv.

I also hate the fact that now I will watch more. The 20th century is sucking me back in.  No wireless. Desktop computer. And teeveeeeee.

I also ordered a jack conversion kit for my harpsichord yesterday. My house is a total wreck (and has been since I dragged my parents here to live in 2007). I’m not sure where I will be able to work on this project. The house is full of stuff that could be discarded. Most of it needs to be sorted. If I could toss a bunch of stuff and clear out a room on the ground floor it would be a great place to work on the harpsichord. However I’m not sure this is going to happen.

I did manage to treadmill, take Mom for a drive, and practice organ yesterday.  I also prepared a draft of the tool my boss will use in her next meeting with me, the children’s choir director and herself. That took a couple of hours.

Sheesh.

I had a very pleasant day yesterday. I had nice chats with my niece Emily and her fiancée Jeremy Bastien.

Emily is multi-talented woman whose many interests and skills include a passion for all things equestrian (she is a teacher and owns several horses), weaving, animals, growing things and music.

Jeremy is a highly-skilled artist who is pursuing a career in comix and is the author of a series of excellent books called Cursed Pirate Girl.

Then in the evening, Eileen and I had another pub supper outside with a friend, Roger Jerry. Roger is someone I met at church and share interests with. He is soon to move away and I thought I would like at least one relaxed conversation with him before he left. It was delightful and fascinating.

Wow. All of this contradicts my self-image as introverted non-social geeky musician internet guy.

In between I managed to check on Mom, do some practicing and a wee bit of composing.  Plus a lovely rehearsal with my piano trio.

As I said, a relaxing day.

I am beginning to think about my annual coffee house gig. Shared a bit with the trio yesterday and they seem very amused and interested. I would like to involve several musicians. I have my eye on a gambit of people.

Also I plan to order the jack kit for my harpsichord today. I would dearly like to refurbish my jacks and  use the harpsichord at my coffee house gig  as well.

It would be fun to do an evening of all kinds of music that I love and make. So besides Mendelssohn and maybe a Loiellet trio sonata movement, I would like to some of my old and recent compositions. A lot depends upon who I can convince to play and how much rehearsal I can get from them.

On top of all this good stuff in my life, my blood pressure seems to have dropped in the last couple of readings. Naive to think that my new drug is already working with three doses, but still encouraging when I think I have had two martinis and two beers during this period.

The doctor added hydrochlorothiazide (a water pill) to my daily dose of valsartan. I was expecting a switch to a different class of drugs but maybe this will work. He said should show evidence of working within a week. Of course my BP readings were a bit lower today.

He also assured me (when asked) that I have not been diagnosed with cardio vascular disease. That’s nice. I have an enlarged heart (have known this for years) but  in addition I have some thickening of the heart muscle which indicates the heart is working too hard. Hence the  need to keep the BP down.

My conversation with Jordan yesterday was fun. We were both a bit distracted to play so we just did a lot of shop talk. He showed me a piece he is writing. Before that we discussed the question what makes a “good” melody. I showed him some church musician resources which talk about melody in terms of hymn tunes. It’s kind of goofy but I have found these ideas helpful. I showed him the “mysterious ways” hymn tune from this past Sunday as an example of a weirdly (and hence harder to sing) hymn tune.

Then I showed him the elegant tune HYFRYDOL which consists of five notes until the final phrase where it ascends once to a sixth higher note and then quickly comes to a conclusion. It is an amazing melody to me since it uses such slight materials and can create a magnificent effect when sung by a congregation.

After Jordan and I had lunch at the pub, he took off and I went over to see Mom. I was gratified to see her sitting at the Bride Show in the Gathering Room of the place she lives. She still is fighting the depression. But she is fighting and in what seems to me in a bit of a heroic way.

She told me later the Bride Show consisted in elderly women (probably mostly widows) showing off their wedding dresses and presumably sharing wedding stories. There is something poignant about this to me.  It’s probably therapeutic for the participants. At least I hope it is.

I did manage to get some organ practice in yesterday. I snuck it in early before the weekly Eucharist and then got back later for a bit more. As I was reading a new piece by David Hurd, a parishioner came over and starting listening and then asked questions about it when I stopped. Before we were through I was explaining the metrical index to him in the Hymnal. I like chatting like that.

I had my weekly meeting with my boss yesterday. I think we both look forward to this meeting. (At the end of yesterday she told me that she had had fun in our talk once again.) I think what is happening that is fun for both of us is to sort of talk shop (like I do in music with Jordan) about church and church music.

We decided to continue course in our discussions this summer about the music program with the children’s choir director. I am to prepare another series of quotes and questions to spark further conversation at our next meeting. This meeting will cover ferreting out each of our professional motivations in our work at Grace. I have some ideas about how to make this tool. I only hope that it will be constructive and helpful.

Right after the meeting, Eileen came home from work and we walked down and I had a second meal at the local faux Irish pub. It was a lovely windy summer evening. Very very relaxing.

My niece and her fiancee were arriving later that night so we left the door open for them and made sure there were clean sheets on their bed.

Pretty relaxing day. Probably makes a bit of a boring post, but there you are.

I received some insight into myself yesterday via a staff discussion. Due to a lack of specific information I had severely misread and mis-assessed a fellow worker.  I can see that my interpretation of this person’s behavior was largely colored in a negative way by being too quick to ascribe motives to others. Oy. What a basic mistake.

At the same time I was discouraged to observe that my expectations of people’s education levels and sophistication is woefully naive. Another Oy.

I find myself being drawn deeper into my old vocation of church musician. I have mentioned to a couple of people that I feel like Jonah in the bible story.

But I can’t decide if I’m at the point he is in the ship revealing to the sailors that he is running from God (and consequently thrown overboard). Or if I’m in the belly of the whale stubbornly refusing to listen to the voice of reason (God). Or if having succumbed to the notion that he is called to warn the people of Ninevah, subsequently freed from the prison of the stomach of the sea creature and wandering the streets of Ninevah prophecying doom and being nicely ignored. Heh.

Anyway, after my conference and taking my Mom to the shrink and going out to lunch with her, I found myself working intently on more organ music for upcoming services. Specifically this Sunday I am preparing a hoary old Anglican organ postlude bySir Charles Hubert Hastings Parry. Sheesh.

After I decided to use this piece this Sunday, I thought it might be nice to point out to the congregation that I chose this postlude because Parry was also the author of the closing hymn tune. And before you know it I had written up a little article for the bulletin, something I have been trying to avoid doing because I think it might be a bit of good natured over functioning on my part as an under paid part time employee.

But there you are.

A high point for me yesterday was actually finding a check in my box for the funeral the day before. Although this may have been due to the graciousness and alertness of this particular family, I am still glad not to have to do the all too usual groveling and begging after I play music to get paid.

After a pleasant meal with my wife at her place of employment I came home and purchased an MP3 album of the Isley brothers greatest hits. I was thinking of them due to the recent death of their bass player, Marvin Isley. I do like the funk. I also listened to Public Enemy’s youtube version of their hit Fight the Power. All of this cheered me considerably.

After purchasing this album, Amazon decided to email me a coupon for $4 towards their on demand video service.

I was just eyeing a 1957 movie, “Lucky Jim,” based on the novel by Kingsley Amis that I recently read and starring Ian Carmichael an actor I admire.

So I broke pattern and sat down and watched it online by myself, something I rarely rarely do.

I enjoyed it thoroughly. I don’t necessarily recommend it unless you like goofy b&w adaptations from UK 50s bestsellers. Apparently I do.

I have an appointment in just an hour with my former doctor to try to get onto stronger high blood pressure meds. My present internist is gone until July and I don’t want to wait until she is back to change meds. It’s a bit awkward because I intentionally switched doctors and now I am returning to the guy I left.  But it should work out fine.

Yesterday my day was filled with the funeral I played and getting my Mom out of the apartment.

I kind of was confused about the music at the funeral. When the rector asked for pre-service music and then a prelude, I thought she was indicating that the family would be seated for the prelude (something she began doing a few funerals ago).

So when I arrived a half hour before I noticed that friends and family were already being seated. I usually test the waters a bit at funerals. The atmosphere was a bit tense yesterday at the beginning, so I sat down and played some Mozart starting with slow movements from the piano sonatas.

I think this music can be quite consoling in a very positive way.

At about ten to, I couldn’t find my rector to double check with. She of course was busy doing rector stuff. I figured I had about 8 minutes of the Bach Schubler chorales ready to go and about 3 minutes of a Bach chorale prelude for the prelude thereafter.

I sat down and played the Schubler chorales.

They actually didn’t go too bad. At least I thought they didn’t. I had a couple of shaky moments. The place was packed as I sort of expected. There seem to be a lot of local intelligentsia that stays a bit under the radar. I was glad I had played the Schubler chorales and was looking forward to finishing with the lovely Bach chorale prelude I had ready (“Wenn wir in hochsten Noten sein” from the Orgelbuchlein).

I noticed my boss and mentioned to her that I was done (I meant with the pre-service music). She  nodded and disappeared. I waited for the family to enter. Then I noticed that it looked like we were beginning the service. That is, skipping the prelude.

I grabbed and told her I had made a mistake and hadn’t finished the music yet. We quickly agreed it was inconsequential (the family hadn’t specifically requested this procedure or piece) and just went on.

Dang.

I hate screwing up like that. Oh well.

I kept eyeing the gathered assembly wondering how they would sing the victorian hymn chosen by the family for the first hymn of the service (sung just before the gospel reading). The hymn was “Come, Labor On.” The tune was by the American early 20th century organist, T. Tertius Noble. I had his varied hymn accompaniment handy in case the group started singing lustily.

Which they instantly did. Suddenly I was trying to lead a packed house with my itty bitty pipe organ. Fortunately my old teacher, Ray Ferguson, had taught me what to do in such a case. This involves switching the music up an octave and getting clever with adding 16 foot stops. This worked nicely and I finished with the varied hymn accompaniment. I thought it was a well done moment in the service.

Funerals are always hard. This man, Jack Wilson, was someone I and my father exercised with at the  local Parkinson’s exercise group (which my father eventually refused to attend). He was an art historian and taught at Hope(less) College. I knew him before his Parkinson’s hit him as a gentle bright sardonic man.

He outlived my dad by 13 months.

I thought we gave him a pretty good send-off  yesterday.

I went over earlier to keep rehearsing the organ music.

Afterwards I immediately went over to my Mom’s apartment and she agreed to go for a little ride.

By the time I was seated resting in my home it was after 5 PM. I was exhausted emotionally and physically. Mondays are usually a day I try to lay low.

Fortunately my lovely daughter, Elizabeth, called and cheered me quite a bit.

I think it’s pretty cool that she reaches out to me and Eileen regularly. My brother, Mark, also observed with wonder that she calls him on occasion. I like it that she connnects. I guess I’m a bit of a connector myself when I am at my best. Heh.

God moves in a mysterious way
His wonders to perform;
He plants His footsteps in the sea,
And rides upon the storm.

The assistant pastor was musing in his sermon yesterday about why people left church communities cutting themselves off from others.  Did they think that they didn’t have real relationships with the people there? The left for (odd) reasons like they didn’t like the sermon….. pause…. or the hymns…. like that opening hymn (today)…. (general laughter)

Deep in unfathomable mines
Of never-failing skill
He treasures up His bright designs,
And works His sovereign will.

I love this guy. He is retired and is now my boss’s assistant. He doesn’t seem to have a mean bone in his body. So his comment was not mean spirited by any means.

Ye fearful saints, fresh courage take,
The clouds ye so much dread
Are big with mercy, and shall break
In blessings on your head.

When he saw the crowd reaction he looked back at our mutual boss a bit uncertainly and smiled apologetically.  Apparently she gets blamed for my decisions, heh.

Judge not the Lord by feeble sense,
But trust Him for His grace;
Behind a frowning providence
He hides a smiling face.

I actually like this hymn. Especially the part about “feeble sense” and “behind a frowning providence He hides a smiling face.”

His purposes will ripen fast,
Unfolding every hour;
The bud may have a bitter taste,
But sweet will be the flower.

The melody this is set to in the hymnal (LONDON NEW) does wander a bit and is not that easy to sing at first. One might even say it “moves in a mysterious way.” Heh.

Blind unbelief is sure to err,
And scan his work in vain;
God is His own interpreter,
And He will make it plain.

I mentioned to the priest after church that it comes to us via the English/Canadian branch of the church. I didn’t point out that I played a postlude based on it by the Canadian composer, Healey Willan.

I also didn’t point out that Benjamin Britten used it in his cantata, Saint Nicholas.

The author of the words, William Cowper, is someone I have thought of as a mad poet ever since I began associating his name with the weird text of my childhood church experience: “There is a fountain filled with blood.”  When I was a young man working his way through college by conducting a Methodist choir in Ohio I had my choir learn this simple four part hymn and sing it as an anthem. This I did out of a perverse fascination with its imagery and also that I knew it was part of the heritage. A quick check of the current United Methodist Hymnal published late last century reveals it is still in the their hymnal.

There is a fountain filled with blood drawn from Emmanuel’s veins;
And sinners plunged beneath that flood lose all their guilty stains.
Lose all their guilty stains, lose all their guilty stains;
And sinners plunged beneath that flood lose all their guilty stains.

I still find the imagery almost Dantesque. While this hymn doesn’t appear in the Hymnal 1982 of the Episcopal church I do find it in the Episcopalian African-American Hymnal: Lift Every Voice and Sing II.

Several parishioners came up to me to tell me they liked the hymn. I mentioned with a smiled that we weren’t exactly holding a referendum. The former organist was quite kind. She told me she liked all of the music that day (this doesn’t always happen), especially the prelude.

This is interesting because the setting I played of BEACH SPRING by Wayne W. Wold (I can’t help but wonder if his friends tease him about Wayne’s World) was a bit innovative in its treatment of this American Sacred Harp tune. I used snippets of it later in the service to introduce it and improv while the priest returned from the center of the church where he read the gospel to the front of the church where he preaches.

I went back over in the afternoon yesterday to rehearse and prepare for today’s funeral. I am planning to play three pieces by Bach that need a little attention. Planning one more rehearsal this morning. Funeral this afternoon.

If you’ve read this far, I sheepishly acknowledge and almost but not quite apologize for all of this silly church music stuff.  But as Thom Yorke sings:

This is what you get
This is what you get
This is what you get when you mess with us

Karma Police

Another fascinating post from jupe…. ahem…..

So my blood pressure is creeping higher and higher. This morning’s read was another all time high of 152/105. Bah. If this continues next week, I will call my doctor and ask for stronger meds.

Of course the past week has been pretty stressful. Nevertheless, I feel like I am staving off the inevitable switch to higher meds as I age.

I was reading about the song, “Because,” on the Beatles Abbey Road yesterday. The story is told that John Lennon was listening to Yoko Ono play Beethoven’s Moonlight Sonata on the piano. He asked if she could play the chords backwards. When she did, he said, we’ve got a tune and wrote “Because.”

I immediately pulled out my scores to both pieces.  I was unable to find a much backwards Beethoven chord progressions in “Because.”

But.

It would be safe to say there is some obvious inspiration going on. Even a bit of derivation.

They share the key of C # minor. They both begin with the same arpeggio figure. Beethoven uses triplets, but the Beatles use duple statement of the same three notes in the electric harpsichord beginning. Both pieces use their keyboard figurations throughout.  The choral melody sounds a bit like the Beethoven melody.

The back-up vocals do some obvious classical choral  riffs which could be a reference to making a song that is inspired by a classical hit (Moonlight Sonata). They sound more like Swingle Singers Bach to me than any kind of Beethoven choral stuff. Makes me wonder if the Beatles heard them. I kind of suspect they did.

I mention this primarily as more evidence of our derivative the art and music is in our lives. It is frustrating and naive to me when artists are unaware of their debt to their art for providing them the materials and context of their own work. It is a tricky issue to be sure. However, over and over I see that a good portion of the music I love is clearly referring to and even actually using material from other sources.

I like music that does this. And I like being aware of how it is doing it.

I was reading the Abbey Road wiki article and ran across a couple of other steals. “Something” by George Harrison takes its first line from the James Taylor song which preceded it and was even recorded at Apple Studios. It looks like a conscious steal. The first line of “Come Together “Here come old flat-top,” was not only taken from the Chuck Berry song, “You Can’t Catch Me,” it was even the subject of litigation.

I put on Abbey Road to treadmill to yesterday. I noticed that the tracks were not in the original album order. This frustrated me so much I got off the treadmill and renamed the files and put them in the old order.

Then I read (somewhere) that this entire album was influenced by a more self-conscious “classical” approach to the album structure. And indeed there are recurring riffs and use of “You never give me your money” that are more satisfying to me as a listener when the tracks are played in the original order. Hmmm. Interesting.

Speaking of derivative music, I played through the entire Bach Schübler Chorales for organ yesterday.

I have a request to play Bach Cantatas for the prelude for a funeral tomorrow. Cantatas are larger works for a bunch of players and singers. To do them as a solo is a challenge.

However Bach himself derived five of the six Schübler chorale preludes from identifiable Cantatas.  They are doubly derivative because of course each one is based on a pre-existing hymn or choral melody.

I would dearly love to play one or two tomorrow. Not the famous “Wachet Auf.”

But maybe the “Ach bleib bei uns” or the “Wer nur den leiben.” I know the English words to the last one as “If thou but suffer God to guide thee.”  The links are to the James Kibbie pages where you can download or listen to an mp3 or AAC file (whatever that is). Bless Kibbie for having all of Bach’s organ music online. I won’t play the “Ach bleib” as fast as he does. I actually hear it a bit slower and of course I’m less likely to screw it up at a slower tempo.

Eileen and I bit the bullet yesterday and signed up for Comcasts “Triple Play” special: Cable, High Speed Internet and Phone for around $90.00 a month.

Right now we are paying that amount for a slow internet connection and phone (TDS Metrocom and AT&T). So we will be able to raise the quality of life and pay the same amount. Interestingly the cable internet does not automatically come with a wireless modem. But after installation I can order a free kit to allow me to install my present modem. We’ll see how this all comes out.

Finally, I pulled out my banjo (actually my quasi-son-in-law’s banjo…. mine needs adjustment) and did some writing yesterday.

Never sure if these little spurts of composition will amount to much. If so, watch this space for further developments and actual recordings. Especially if it stays on the banjo. I can record my voice and my banjo pretty well with my little Shure mic.

I had another connection with a musician I knew in high school via Facebook. I know that Facebook is evil, but what isn’t evil these days? I do like connecting with people from the past. Especially if they have any vestige of the passion they had when I knew them.

Speaking of passion, I had  a great rehearsal with Jordan the sax guy yesterday. We worked on the Bach sonata we are learning (BWV 1020). I am having a jolly old time talking Baroque interp and editing with Jordan. We also ran through the second movement of the Decruk sonata.

I also picked out a couple of organ ornamented choral preludes which I think would be cool on the sax with piano accompaniment. I am pointing Jordan at these because I think I learned a lot of the logic of baroque interp and diminution (the practice of stylistically adding notes in the manner of the baroque musician) from playing these kinds of pieces.

My brother Mark left yesterday. But not before we had some nice chats and one last check in with Mom. She is putting up a heroic struggle with depression. I am very proud of her. I cannot imagine the effort it takes to keep getting up, getting dressed and moving when one’s motivation is so oppressed.

I continue reading in Mao: the unknown story by Chang and Halliday and The Robert Shaw Reader edited by Robert Blocker.

I am reading or re-reading Anthony Burgess’s opus. I finished A Vision of Battlements by him. I am trying to read his novels in roughly chronological order. I have owned most of them over the years but was forced to order a cheap copy of The Doctor is Sick yesterday.

I received Stieg Larrson’s second volume in his Millenium trilogy, The Girl Who Played With Fire in the mail yesterday. It should be good escape reading.

I also have been reading Freaks Talk Back: Tabloid Talk Shows and Sexual Non-conformity by Joshua Gamson and Ada by Nabakov on my ebook. The first is the June free e-book from U of Chicago. They are giving away an e-book a month. I like reading my netbook while treadmilling. It props up easily on the music stand I put in front of the treadmill and is easy to see.

I find the Freaks Talk Back very interesting.

Gamson has pointed out that much of the criticisms talk shows receive are actually directed at the people who come on the shows. This fascinates me because it never occurred to me to be repulsed by the outsiders on the tube. I am repelled by the people who moderate and profit by them. Of course, Gamson also talks about the damage critics insist such entertainment is doing to its audience and our society.

I have listened to the quick analysis of just what is causing many of the problems of violence and diminishing literacy and you name it. Usually I am struck by the reductionist aspect and lack of insight of such shrill comments, even as I lament the striking and sad behavior in our society of the angry and illiterate.

But Gamson is fun to read. And it’s free on the web. Cool.

So I guess I only missed posting on one day. It has been a very full few days. I have been pre-occupied with my concern about my Mom and my brother’s visit. Mom is struggling with increasingly severe clinical depression.

My brother arrived in time Wed to accompany us to the psychiatrist’s office visit Mom had scheduled. Somehow Mom had the impression we were taking preliminary steps to hospitalize her that day. I became aware of this when she made the comment, “Hope this fellow lets me come back here to live.”

I immediately assured her that was not what we were doing. I was happy my brother could meet my Mom’s psychiatrist. Always nice to have a face and an impression when talking about care-givers of your loved ones.

I also have been stressed about work.

Before my brother arrived on Wednesday, I lived through a luncheon and staff meeting. My boss and I have had many extensive analytic and strategic conversations around the issues facing our church community. I would say that most of the staff (besides my boss) finds me confusing and enervating to work with. Finding a constructive way to relate to them is exhausting.

For example, in the group exercise devised by my boss for the day, the second questions she asked us to answer to the group was “What would you have done differently last year?”

I of course went first and replied that was an easy one for me. I leveled my eyes at the children’s choir director and said that I would have not “yelled at Jennifer on Palm Sunday this year.” Brutal but true. Of course a group of uptight religious people had no idea what to do with this and in retrospect I’m not sure how constructive it was.

Religious workers who do not see themselves as professional have a tendency to be pretty fakey about everything. Our group has a lot of this. Needless to say no one else had such a revealing and intentionally vulnerable answer to that question.

I found myself practically “team teaching” with my boss as she led us toward a more clear vision of where she would like us to go. I checked with her afterwards and she assured me that my behavior in the meeting violated no boundaries. One of the things I am supporting in is an attempt to raise the bar of professionalism of the staff.

I came out of this meeting drained and exhausted. Waited for my brother to arrive for his visit. Then proceeded to take my Mom to her shrink appointment.

That was Wednesday. My Mom joined Eileen, Mark and me for a nice dinner at the pub. I say “nice” but it ended up being so hard for Mom that at one point she said to no one in particular, “I shouldn’t have come.” Moms. You gotta love em.

Yesterday’s trio rehearsal was a bit of disaster for me. I was a bit hung over from drinking my brother’s scotch (ahem). But even more hung over emotionally from the previous day.

It was therapeutic for about twenty minutes (the length of the Mendelssohn movement we began rehearsal with). But after that I continued to lose concentration, to come in and out of being distracted. My fellow players were predictably understanding and supportive. Oy.

Before rehearsal, Mark and I stopped by to see my Mom. She was being visited by her psych nurse who apparently had made her get up and get dressed. She was the worst I have seen her since her full fledged break down. She spoke in short sentences and had little affect. She claimed to have intentionally held back info from the shrink the previous day and kept asking all of us to leave so she could crawl into bed. Needless to say that didn’t happen quite that way.

Mark and I chatted with the psych nurse, Rachel, both of us meeting her for the first time. Hilariously I got confused in some of my comments to attempt to fill her in on what’s been going on with Mom. Couldn’t remember what happened which day. I remarked that I was failing my “cognition test.” (“Mr. Jenkins? Mr. Jenkins? Do you know what day this is? what month?”)

Finally when Mom was asking us all to leave, I suggested that Mark and I leave Rachel to it. After making sure that Mark wasn’t leaving town right away, she agreed instantly to remaining and working a bit more with Mom.

Mark and I had a late lunch together. I do enjoy his company but worry a bit about being too intense for him. I think it was excellent he was here for many reasons. First of all I do enjoy having him around. But also I think it helped when later we went back to see Mom again and he talked to her about his experience of clinical depression. Good stuff.

When we returned (expecting Mom to have continued to withdraw) she was sitting up dressed and reading a book. Although it was obvious she was still struggling with will to function issues, she actually suggested that she come to my house and have some “potato soup.”

Excellent!

So she did come over yesterday and spend some time here. Mark showed her the video the church that hired him prepared for the hiring process. This video is worth a blog post all by itself. It featured many parishioners and was revealing in interesting and amusing ways. Mark has got a good gig fer sure….. I can’t resisting mentioning that the church he is going to pastor sent a seminarian to the south during the Civil Rights struggle and took a bullet for another person and was martyred…. Wow!

Synchronicity keeps happening to me around composers using folk tunes and other material.

Yesterday I showed Jordan that the second movement of the Decruck sonata we are studying is based on a French Carol.

This was news to him, I think. It was fun to watch him verify my suspicion. When we played through this movement I heard it in a very new way relating Decruck’s lovely music to the material of the tune.

I got my Mom in to see her internist yesterday. She went over her very thoroughly and pronounced her well on the path to healing and could not find a reason for Mom’s complaining about some burning at this point. She prescribed some drugs to alleviate the system. Today Mom has an appointment with Dr. Nykamp her psychiatrist. I’m hoping that he will have some insight into how she can continue to heal.

My boss and my friend Jordan were gracious enough to move around appoinments to allow me to take Mom to the doctor and still meet with each of them yesterday.

My boss and I sat down for a much delayed meeting of the minds.  As usual it was very fruitful. Today she has scheduled a luncheon and staff meeting. She is interested  in taking us closer to professional ministry. She approved of my ideas about how to constructively connect with the children’s choir director. It is such a privilege to (finally) work for someone as conscious and calm as she is.

Afterwards I met with Jordan. We chatted about historical performance practice especially in the Baroque. We are learning a cool transcription of a Bach flute sonata. We didn’t get to it yesterday  but are scheduled to meet again Friday of this week.  We did rehearse the two movements of the Decruck we are learning. Also we sat and did some minor editing of my transposed transcription of the original viola part for the first movement.

My copy of “The Flight of Peter Fromm” by Martin Gardner came in the mail yesterday.

It was a welcome distraction between my many tasks. At first it felt a bit klunky in its writing style. It is Gardner’s ficitonalization of an evangelistic Christian who attends the liberal University of Chicago and finds his faith completely changed from fundamental to radical.

I was surprised that it kept drawing me in to the ideas about Christianity that I know so well. By that I mean the radical post-post-death of God stuff. The fictionalized professor who radicalizes the Peter Fromm character of the title is a professed atheist who is an active pastor.  His approach to Christianity is one that not only is easy for me to condone but also reminds me of my father’s faith at its most lucid stage. So I continue to be drawn in to this goofy book.

Also my boss gave me a copy of jesus freak: feeding—healing—raising the dead, the book, that she has asked the worship commission to read this summer.

It is the sequel to the book she had us read a couple of years ago, Take This Bread: A Radical Conversion. I found that book kind of fun, especially the descriptions of the author’s experiences in South America as a journalist and in NYC as a cook.

I read a few pages of jesus freak last night and see that it is a bit of a polemic for radical Christianity, which is the direction of my boss, which I strongly approve of.

Neither Gardner or Miles seem to be drawing me in other than awakening mild interest and application to my church gig.

My brother arrives to visit this morning. He is soon to move away to New Hampshire for an exciting new phase of his life, so he  feels a need to connect with Mom (and presumably Eileen and me) while he is still within easy driving distance.

Sunday, the chair of the church vestry approached me at the coffee hour and took my professional temperature. By the time we were done, he had dropped me off at my house and borrowed two books by my dead guru, Ed Friedmann (Generation to Generation: Family Process in Church and Synagogue & Failure of Nerve: Leadership in the Age of the Quick Fix)

I emailed my boss so she knew I had this conversation.

I spent Sunday afternoon struggling with writing a tool to conduct constructive collaboration meetings at church with the priest and the children’s choir director.

I bogged down pretty quickly. After a few hours I gave up and grilled shrimp and scallops for Eileen and me. Checked on my Mom who is struggling with a bad Urinary Tract Infection. She seemed a bit better.

Yesterday I got up and went back to work on the proposed collaborative tool. I managed to come up with enough for the first meeting to email my boss. It includes three concepts for the first meeting with one pertinent quote each and a couple of discussion questions.

It was like pulling teeth coming up with it. Not sure if my boss will buy it, but what the heck. She has good judgement. She and I are having lunch together today. Our first meeting since Pentecost.

I have also been spending a ton of time putting the first two movements of Fernande Decruck’s lovely saxophone sonata into Finale (the music notation software).

The piano accompaniment has the published solo viola version which differs from the alto sax part. Apparently Decruck adapted her sax piece for viola ostensibly to make it more accessible to more players.  Then the sax piece seems to have been a further revision which included some conciliatory simplifications due to the lack of technique of sax players at the time.

So I have put the viola part to mov 1 & part of mov 2 into the software. Once the original is entered this allows manipulation to other keys and octaves. My sax playing friend, Jordan VanHemert, who introduced me to this piece has been advising and monitoring my work. He and I meet this afternoon for more playing and chatting and probably editing the new sax part.

Eileen has told me I seem a bit obsessed with the church and sax thing.

In the meantime, Mom’s car broke down at the gas station on Sunday. I managed to jump start it and get it home. I need to get it to a garage this morning.

Plus I have been over to see Mom every day for the last couple of weeks.  Yesterday she was in such pain, I wavered about dragging her in to the local ER.  I consulted with the caregiver at Maplewood who called the nurse. We decided she would be okay for the evening and I could contact the doctor if needed this morning. The antibiotics don’t seem to be helping.

Eileen helped her take a shower yesterday and we bought some topical ointment to help relieve some of the burning on her skin. I hope she is better this morning. If not, I will be calling her doctor’s office to try and get her in.

Finished reading Smiley’s People by John Le Carree yesterday.

This is the last of my beloved George Smiley novels by Le Carree. I do enjoy these. I also have begun re-reading Pablo Casal’s ghost written autobio: “Joys and Sorrows.”

In addition, I found a very interesting web site this weekend: http://www.truly-free.org/. The Burgomeister’s Books maintains a free online “lending”  library. The web master says that since he has purchased every book on the site, he feels the right to lend out copies via e-books. Users are limited to 5 books at a time and are asked to delete the books after they read them. I downloaded Ada by Nabakov.

I totally approve of what this guy is doing but fear he will get seriously sued at some point by copyright holders (“thieving publishers” as he calls them).

My daughter Elizabeth joined those who have left Facebook due to privacy concerns. This is discouraging because it will make connecting with her a bit harder, but everyone has to do what they think is right.

I seem to be a bit stressed these days.

It might be the price of consciousness or it might be mental illness. Who knows? Heh.

Last night as we were resting in bed, Eileen asked me what I was going to do today.

I replied: “Get up. Live.”

I have been thinking about a couple of great musicians: Robert Shaw and Pablo Casals.

I would like to find a synoptic quote about Casals that describes his insistence on professional musicians rehearsing and preparing performances. I have a memory of reading that he did this in his lifetime.

I use this to encourage musicians of all ilk to do the work of preparation (rehearsing). But I’m not sure where I read about it.

I have read Casals “as-told-to” autobiography, “Joys and Sorrows:Reflections by Pablo Casals” (as told to Albert E. Kahn).

But I also have a vague recollection that I might have read it on a record cover notes.

I do know that I have a few vivid memories from reading this book.

“For the past eighty years I have started each day in the same manner. It is not a mechanical routine but something essential to my daily life. I go to the piano, and I play two preludes and fugues of Bach. I cannot think of doing otherwise. It is a sort of benediction on the house. But that is not its only meaning for me. It is a rediscovery of the world of which I have the joy of being a part. It fills me with awareness of the wonder of life, with a feeling of the incredible marvel of being a human being. The music is never the same for me, never. Each day it is something new, fantastic and unbelievable. That is Bach, like nature, a miracle!”

Pablo Casals in “Joys and Sorrows”

I think of this often when I likewise begin my day with Bach at the piano.

Another memory I have of reading this book was the of the startling reaction Casals had when he hurt himself in a mountain climbing accident:

“It was when we were making our descent on Mount Tamalpais [near San Francisco] that the accident occurred. Suddenly one of my companions shouted, ‘Watch out, Pablo!’ I looked up and saw a boulder hurtling down the mountainside directly toward me. I jerked my head aside and was lucky not to be killed. As it was, the boulder hit and smashed my left hand–my fingering hand. My friends were aghast. But when I looked at my mangled bloody fingers, I had a strangely different reaction. My first thought was ‘Thank God, I’ll never have to play the cello again!’ No doubt, a psycho-analyst would give some profound explanation. But the fact is that dedication to one’s art does involve a sort of enslavement, and then too, of course, I have always felt such dreadful anxiety before performances.”

Pablo Casals in “Joys and Sorrows”

I had to flip through the book to find that last story. I note that Casals describes anxiety strictly in terms of “before” not during a performance. Interesting.

Anyway.

Yesterday my Mom was feeling her infection more keenly, more pain. I had the floor attendant contact the nurse on call to describe Mom’s increasingly painful  symptoms (which did not include a temperature, thank goodness).  I  hope her pain abated after I left.

I am finding myself pretty unmotivated around church stuff these days.

I rehearsed today’s prelude and postlude yesterday. Worked a bit on Bolcom’s challenging setting of “What a Friend We Have in Jesus,” but lost interest.

Came home and finished reading “The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo” by Stieg Larsson. This is another book I have read entirely on my netbook. I did so using the “Kindle for PC” program.

I found it an engaging escape read.

My daughter Elizabeth briefly contacted me online last night. She is reading “Ada” by Nabakov. Heh. A different class of novel altogether.

I also spent time entering the first movement of the viola part of Decruck’s sonata. I guess she wrote it for saxophone but published it for viola. There are differences in the parts and I thought it might interest my sax playing friend to have  a sax part which is more like the more complicated viola part.

This is good practice for me because it involves carefully transcribing a piece in viola clef.

Picked up some shrimp and scallops for a cook out with Eileen today or tomorrow. She came home exhausted from work yesterday and spent the afternoon in the hammock. Excellent!

I seem to be in a brooding sort of mood for most of yesterday.

The words of Robert Shaw kept echoing in the back of my mind:

Speaking at his installation as Minister of Music of the First Unitarian Church in Cleveland in 1960, he said this of church music:

Only the best is good enough.

Sigh.

I have struggled with concepts of relative worth of different musics throughout my life.

As a student and professional church musician for many years I harbored the idea that I could evaluate musical worth in a relatively objective manner. Questions of harmonic and motivic construction, the span and shape of melodies and other criteria would form a basis on which I could provide an analysis and evaluation.

But there came a time in my life, when I realized that I love all kinds of music despite objective criteria. I began to listen more closely to my own intuitive response to the worth of certain music.

I retain my abilities and propensity to approach music analytically. But now I factor in my own subjective response as well.

I forget that musicians usually have a clear hierarchy of worth. Rarely does mine match theirs. More often I have things on  my list that others do not.

But now I am beginning to try to return to thinking of the relative worth or “goodness” of music as I prepare for some dialog with one whom seems to perceive my work as inferior due to its inclusiveness of wildly different styles and insistence on quality in performance and constant personal improvement of each musician.

Although I am quite understanding when performances fall short of perfection (as most do at some level or detail), I cannot accept anything less than Shaw’s idea of “only the best is good enough.”

At the same time my own personal idea of best is pretty broad. I find art everywhere. So that next to the likes of Bach, Stravinsky and Mozart I place musics made up in the last hundred years like Zappa, Joplin, and Parker.

In addition I have been thinking quite a bit about folk  music.

And also the derivative nature of most artistic endeavors.

I was reading in John Jacob Niles’s introduction to his Ballad Book yesterday:

The ultimate result of creative thinking in the field of music–that is, composition–may appear  to be magic, but it is not. So far as I have been able to tell, the only thing the composer has is what he has inherited, and no matter what modern garb he may employ to dress his ideas, underneath them are the inherited motifs of the past, and this past is studded with folk motifs. A very great English musicologist has said, ‘Music cannot be produced out of nothing.’

John Jacob Niles

I have also been thinking of the words of Paul Hindemith and the great Boethius but I won’t burden the reader of this post with actual quotes at this point.

Suffice it to say that I am determined to pursue my own insistence on both excellence and openness. Even though sometimes this feels like a solitary pursuit.

I went over to my Mom’s place and was pleasantly surprised to find her dressed and sitting up. Apparently she did dress and attend the evening meal last night as well as breakfast yesterday before I arrived.

She still looked as though she didn’t feel well. We chatted for a bit and then I left her. I stopped in to talk to her nurse and found out that she had had a visit from the psych nurse the day before.

Apparently she complained of symptoms of a Urinary Tract Infection.  They were planning to test her and determine whether this was true.

I phoned the pysch nurse office and Rachel the psych nurse explained to me that in the elderly, depression sometimes precedes other symptoms.

So it is probable that Mom’s clinical depression has at the very least been exacerbated by this.

I was glad I didn’t scold her the day before for laying in bed.

Sheesh.

I had a good trio rehearsal yesterday.

It is so obvious that all three of enjoy this time together. We rehearsed the last movement of the Mozart as well as the first. This was our first run though on it and we all were pretty charmed by the writing. Then the Mendelssohn. Nice stuff.

My boss had to cancel our meeting due to a sudden emergency call. I had been thinking about what articles I might suggest for her, myself and the children’s choir director to read together.

My strategy to help the children’s choir director is to establish a common language around the art of church music between us.

I was looking seriously at Howard Swan’s “Conscious of a Profession.”

Howard Swan is sort of the dean of American choral directors.  I have found him very inspiring. I heard him speak in California years ago.

As I was looking at his section on church music, I ran across a lengthy excerpt of an address Robert Shaw gave to a church that had just hired him as its musician. He is another inspiration for me. Jackpot!

Both Shaw and Swan insist on quality in church music which is where I want to head as well.

Then I started poking around on the web and found that this speech was in a collection called “The Robert Shaw Reader.” I instantly ordered a copy.

I also bought Nico Muhly’s recording, “Mother Tongue.” I was again fascinated to find another composer using folk music. This time in a very interesting and clever way. The pieces in this recording tend toward collage of sound. I like it very much.

It’s part of a $5 sale Amazon was running on MP3 downloads. The sale ends at the end of May in a few days.

I grilled salmon for Eileen and me last night. I bought a “grill plank” and used one of those for the first time. It was kind of fun, but it looks like you only use a plank once because it was pretty charred after the grill cooled down. Hmmm.

Served it with home made potato salad, rice, and fresh creamed corn. Yum.

All in all, another good day.