Eileen, Barb Phillips, and I went to hear the Blind Boys of Alabama perform last night. They did the tune, “Way Down in the Hole.” We were happily surprised because we hadn’t remembered that this tune was used as the theme song for the first season of the tv series, “The Wire.”
This was a TV series that both Eileen and I enjoyed watching. I’m not much for TV but I liked the fact that this series took a long look at differing aspects of the city of Baltimore from its streets to its docks to its backroom politics. The ironic point is that all the players were struggling in similar ways with similar dilemmas. Bad guys and good guys at all levels.
The tune is actually by Tom Waits. I like his version as well.
I have been over-saturated with the babbling incoherent rhetoric of our public discussions in the USA. I try to stay informed. But I am developing a very low tolerance for the hyperbolic. I have had it with deliberately provocative speech. I am exhausted and disgusted with dishonesty which ranges from manipulative to plain lying. So needless to say the insane coverage of the 10th anniversay of 9/11 is something I am trying not to pay too much attention to.
I seriously considered getting a doctorate in liturgy a few years back.
When I think of this I am grateful that I did not do it. My relationship to organized religion reminds of Jonah’s struggle in the Bible with God’s command to go to Ninevah and preach to them of their impending doom if they didn’t change their ways.
This is how he ends up in the whale. He takes a ship in the other direction. There’s a storm. When the crew discovers he is running from God, they throw him overboard and he is swallowed by a large fish.
After he repents in the belly of the whale (as I remember it) he is spat up on land. He goes to Nineva. They repent and are saved.
He is disgusted and sits down in dirt waiting to see if the city is truly spared. It’s hot and God mercifully causes a plant to grow and give Jonah shade.
Then God causes a worm to destroy the plant.
In the heat, Jonah begins to suffer and asks God to take him from the world. God asks if Jonah is angry because of the destruction of the plant. Jonah is. God (going to the “root” of Jonah’s bitching) asks if Jonah has concern for this plant why should God not be merciful to Ninevah.
For me, organized religion is just where I don’t want to be. My Ninevah.
Yet I continue to end up serving church communities as their musician. Not only that, but I always end up enjoying it.
I also like the overtones of the Jonah story I have in my head. It reminds me both of Pinocchio
Martin Marty was the teacher I thought of studying with for my doctoral program.
Martin Marty
Speaking of Marty, Mouw says: “Marty said, you know, a lot of people today who have strong convictions are not very civil, and a lot of people who are civil don’t have very strong convictions, and what we really need is convicted civility.”
This comes from what Yeats said in a poem:
“The best lack all conviction, while the worst are full of passionate intensity”
This got me to thinking about civility and how I treat other people.
Another excellent section in this broadcast:
“… to be civil comes from “civitas” and it means learning how to live in the city. The origin with a guy like Aristotle, the ancient philosopher, who said early on, as little children, we have a natural sense of kinship. We have strong positive feelings toward those who are blood relatives, my mother, my father, sisters and brothers, cousins and the like. And then as we grow up, we have some of those same positive feelings that develop toward friends. So we go from kinship and we build on that to a broader sense of friendship where you have that same sense of bonding or something like it that isn’t just based on blood relative stuff.
But he said to really grow up, to be a mature human being, is to learn in the public square to have that same sense of bonding to people from other cities, people who are very different than yourself. And that’s not just toleration, but is a sense that what I owe to my mother because she brought me into this world, what I owe to my friends because of shared experiences and memories and delights, I also owe to the stranger. Why? Because they’re human like me and I’ve got to begin to think of humanness as such as a kind of bonding relationship.” Richard Mouw
I like all of this stuff. I aspire to this even while having reservations about organized religion.
FWIW I did get back to all of those articles I mentioned yesterday. Here are citations of a few of the more interesting looking ones.
I took a class in physical anthropology in under grad school. Learning about the ancestors of humanity awakened a bit of curiosity in me. I’m still fascinated by this history.
He’s the pioneer because he stopped off at a convenience store where they were giving out copies of the Declaration of Independence. Went home and typed it into his computer as the first ebook.
Mr. Fagin takes a blighted view of the current generation of aspiring artists, whom he likened to “pod people.”
Nor does he have much good to say about what has come of his once-beloved downtown art world, which, by his reckoning, ended in February 1975 at a dinner party around the corner hosted by Claes and Patty Oldenburg.
Mr. Fagin, who went with his friend the critic and poet Peter Schjeldahl, recalled his excitement that the artist Robert Smithson was to be in attendance. “But when we got there, all anyone talked about was real estate,” he said. “They’d all just bought lofts in what was later to be called SoHo. We left and I said to Peter, ‘Well, that’s the end of civilization.’
Instead of jumping on the computer first thing in the morning with cup of coffee in hand, lately I have been using part of this valuable time to read and study.
This morning I read Kenneth Gilbert’s introduction to his edition of the Domenico Scarlatti sonatas.
Then I did what I have been meaning to do for several days. I used my Hope College Staff access to Project Music & JSTOR to pull down several articles bibliographed in my recent reading.
If you’re interested here are the titles. Unfortunately I can’t link in the entire article. Someday maybe this kind of information will be more freely legally available.
Dam. It looks like I didn’t quite manage to download the 15 articles and reviews quite properly. There goes a half hour of research. A couple articles did download so that I could access them:
I’ve linked in an abstract for the first article. It looks like the link to the Handel article may allow anyone full access. Not sure. Sometimes my browser keeps me logged in and I get a link to full access even though others might now.
Sigh. Now I have to trace the history of those other articles on my netbook. Ah well.
In the meantime, I am fascinated by Badura-Skoda’s mention of extant 18th century organ-barrels (a kind of mechanical musical instrument that was designed to replicate music …. in effect a sort of dubious 18th century type of recording).
It turns out that there are significant possible insights from examining music on these instruments. Badura-Skoda reports his conclusion that even factoring in accelerated tempos for a mechanical instrument, tempos may have been faster in the Baroque period than many revivalists in the 20th century thought.
My violinist and cellist both grimaced when I told them this yesterday. I share their frustration. This kind of performing requires a great deal of preparation.
I recall performing a Haydn symphony with the Grand Rapids symphony (my one instance of playing with them). Lockington took tempos at breakneck speed. His tempos surprised me and presented a challenge for me at the harpsichord since the purpose of the harpsichord in these early Haydn symphonies is largely to keep the ensemble on time (the audience can barely hear it).
I was unhappy with my performance. I wish I had another shot at it. I think I could do better. At the time I suspected Lockington of trying out a modern tempo on Haydn. Now I suspect he had read more extensively than me and was possibly reflecting contemporary scholarship about tempos.
“Countries like the United States, France, Britain and Qatar did something historic in supporting a military operation that was largely about preserving lives, not national interests.”
This is a discouraging article. I detect a whiff of ideology in the stance of author, but nevertheless suspect he is largely right in contended that individual action counts for naught on a the world wide scale.
Wednesday is turning out to be a long day (and hence stress).
I like my work, but am having more fatigue, both mental and physical. Yesterday in addition to 2.5 hours of ballet class I also had a staff meeting at church. In between events I dashed to the Farmers Market to get tomatoes, cukes and peaches.
My rule at work (and sometimes in other parts of my life) is do no harm.
This entails more quiet from Jupe.
I try not to talk or react quickly.
I wonder if this makes my presence more brooding, but can’t help it.
I actually think that people notice I’m in the room less and less as I age.
I also have my basic dang introverted nature to constantly deal with.
When I have to interact with people I can do so pretty well. It just takes a lot out of me.
So Thursdays are shaping up to be good days. One short ballet class, meet with boss, piano trio rehearsal, give a piano lesson, all pleasant things for me.
Still plunging head with my study of interp of Bach. I’m concluding that Bach didn’t use cross rhythms very much.
Instead Badura-Skoda (for one maintains) Bach expected performers to “assimilate” written duple rhythms as triple ones.
“Assimilation” is what Badura-Skoda calls this. I hadn’t heard that term used in this way before, but it’s quite handy.
Due to my training in performance of French Baroque music which is often played much differently than it is written I have been aware of this possibility for much of my performing life.
I also know that Bach played with a French band of musicians as a young man and would have been exposed to this practice.
But this didn’t convince me that it should be applied with triplets and duplets are mixed.
Badura-Skoda convinced me with his arguments. Badura-Skoda careful examined Bach manuscripts and publications that occurred in his lifetime with his supervision which give evidence. Also there is some pretty convincing internal evidence in some pieces.
Anyway, it’s a working solution which is what a performer needs.
I don’t think I have mentioned this book in the blog yet. I have been reading it since Monday when I picked it off the shelf of the Hope College Music Library.
Badura-Skoda is an elder statesman in the performing and scholarly world. Along with his wife he has done quite a bit of work in this area. I am just discovering his writings and recordings.
The book I am reading is chock full of very clear recommendations and rationale about how to play passages of Bach that puzzle me.
It’s refreshing to read Badura-Skoda’s clear prose and ideas about these problems. He draws not only on logic but also Quantz and CPE Bach both of whom I have read in.
Another cool thing about reading this book is that now I have access to many of the articles footnoted via my online staff privileges at Hope.
Speaking of books, I don’t think I’ve mentioned the new fiction book I have started.
Somewhere I read about this writer and inter-library-loaned a couple titles by her. As I began reading I remembered that she had been described as writing about family in a way that intrigued me.
I am about fifty pages in and Desai definitely has sharp insight into the way families work and more interestingly don’t work. Here’s an early passage that I think shows this.
“MAMANDPAPA. MamaPapa. PapaMama. It was hard to believe they had every had separate existences, that they had been separate entities and not MamaPapa in one breath. Yet Mama had been born to a merchant family in the city of Kanpur and lived in the bosom of her enormous family till at sixteen she married Papa. Papa, in Patna, the son of a tax inspector with one burning ambition, to give his son the best available education, had won prizes at school meanwhile, played tennis as a young man, trained for the bar and eventually built up a solid practice. This much the children learned from old photographs, framed certificates, tarnished medals and the conversation of visiting relatives. MamaPapa themselves rarely spoke of a time when they were not one.”
To me this is a breathtaking suggestion of a basic lack of differentiation that is part of so many relationships. Probably inescapable at some level.
My quasi son-in-law, Jeremy, recently observed to me in an online chat (he is living in China right now) that he did not know many people whose living parents were still together and still liked each other. It was a huge compliment to Eileen and me.
I see “lack of differentiation” as “globbing” that we all do.
Ironically, it expresses itself both in loss of identity as Desai describes and also (maybe more often) “cut-off.”
Briefly: when people cut themselves off from significant others in their lives it usually is an indication of lack of clear differentiation between themselves and the ones they are in reaction to.
This kind of thing often lasts a lifetime and many times outlasts the lives of one or another of the people involved. Tragic but common.
Christopher Morley’s writings seem to have a nostalgic appeal to me. They romanticize books and book shops. I was a part owner of a book shop for a while. We kept this quote on a plaque on our wall:
“Please smoke”!!!! Those were the days.
All this bookshop nostalgia came to mind yesterday when I read the following article by a writer and thinker I admire, Cory Doctorow:
Doctorow talks about his experiences as a bookseller.
Speaking of guilty book pleasures, I also found another online collection of books. Specifically according to the website itself: “9,554,741 total volumes.”
Click on me to go there
I love it when I stumble across stuff like this. Amazing collection. Seems to be open to all users!
That’s right kiddies, it’s time for us wallow in 9/11 weird shit with upcoming anniversary.
Hitchens who is far to the right of myself is someone whose thinking and prose I quite admire even (especially?) when I disagree with him.
Interesting take on recent history:
“Holocaust denial is in fact a surreptitious form of Holocaust affirmation.
“The fatwa against Salman Rushdie was a direct and lethal challenge to free expression, not a clash between traditional faith and “free speech fundamentalism.”
“The mass murder in Bosnia-Herzegovina was not the random product of “ancient hatreds” but a deliberate plan to erase the Muslim population.
“The regimes of Saddam Hussein and Kim Jong Il and Mahmoud Ahmadinejad fully deserve to be called “evil.”
“And, 10 years ago in Manhattan and Washington and Shanksville, Pa., there was a direct confrontation with the totalitarian idea, expressed in its most vicious and unvarnished form. Let this and other struggles temper and strengthen us for future battles where it will be necessary to repudiate the big lie.”
On the ground in Libya. I especially liked the part where Madoun was about to release a video of his decision to go with the rebels. His wife has a wonderful response: “I told him it’s a big mistake… Why don’t you think before you do this?’
He didn’t do it. His wife helped him see how it would endanger not only himself but her and their kids.
Yesterday after coming home from work I found time to complete an arrangement of “Wilt thou forgive that sin.”
It is a poem by John Donne.
Set to music by John Hilton.
It’s possible that Donne himself commissioned the tune for the text, but not certain.
Here’s the text.
Wilt thou forgive that sinne where I begunne,
Which is my sin, though it were done before?
Wilt thou forgive those sinnes, through which I runne,
And do run still : though still I do deplore?
When thou hast done, thou hast not done,
For I have more.
II
Wilt thou forgive that sinne by which I’have wonne
Others to sinne ? and, made my sinne their doore ?
Wilt thou forgive that sinne which I did shunne
A yeare, or two : but wallowed in, a score ?
When thou hast done, thou hast not done,
For I have more.
III
I have a sinne of feare, that when I have spunne
My last thred, I shall perish on the shore ;
Sweare by thy selfe, that at my death thy sonne
Shall shine as he shines now, and heretofore ;
And, having done that, Thou hast done,
I fear no more.
The poem puns on both the names of Donne and his deceased wife whom he was still mourning, Ann (whose maiden name was Ann More).
I stripped out the alto and tenor voices added by Elizabeth Poston in 1967 to create a full four part harmonization. Hilton wrote only the melody and the bass line as was usual for his time (c. 1599–1657).
In the a Capella version I retained and slightly altered Hilton’s bass line for the lower harmony and composed a higher harmony myself.
When I first began this web site (back before the term blog was was being used), it was my hope to make my work more available.
I have succeed in that. But failed to really connect with many people who would avail themselves of it. (Excepting of course the occasionally snarky publisher who detects my use of copyrighted original melodies…. this should not obtain in the Donne arrangement).
No matter. At least I have a place like Luther’s church door to tack up my stuff if any one is interested. That seems to suffice. I think of it like cyber busking. If you’re not interested, you can just move on.
I also subscribed to St. James Music Press online catalog yesterday morning in a desperate attempt to come up with anthems for the upcoming season.
For $139 a year, you can get full access to their catalog online. It’s searchable which is a plus. I use these Episcopalian composers all the time. I think a lot of their work is good. It fits the gig.
I put in for a reimbursement check while I was at work.
This is an amazing performance of Ibarra Quartet and Makoto Fujimura recently at the New York Club, Le Poisson Rouge.
I was in this room a few years ago with Eileen, Elizabeth J. and Jeremy Daum. I listened to some wonderful Baroque music and Medieval Spanish singing.
I thoroughly approve of Le Poisson Rouge.
I love the variety and quality of stuff they put on their stage.
Eileen and I went to see “Rise of the Planet of the Apes” yesterday. It was fun. Neil Postman used to say that TV was at its best when it simply entertained. I think he meant the medium itself gets a bit shaky when it tries to be what it’s not (like a purveyor of information). I think movies have gotten like this. Very few makers know their craft in the way Spike Lee talks about. There seem to be very few intelligent movies being made. Instead we viewers sigh with relief when a movie like “Rise of the Planet of the Apes” comes along with an entertaining plot and visuals.
I saw a few of the references but most of them escaped me. The screens of the TVs in the primate house are very small. So the references on them are not very obvious. Other things are like the model of the Statue of Liberty, Caesar is putting together when John Lithgow gets attacked.
Anyway, Eileen and I both enjoyed this movie.
I seem to have a bunch of links bookmarked so I think I’ll just make the rest of today’s blog links and comments.
This is a repeat of a link from yesterday. But in reading it several passages leaped out at me. The following one is about something I sometimes ponder, namely the fact that civilians now are just as likely (more likely?) to die in war as soldiers.
“…[V]iolence was directed not just against soldiers but above all against civilians (a large share of the deaths during World War II occurred not in battle but under the aegis of occupation, ethnic cleansing, and genocide). And the utter exhaustion of all European nations—winners and losers alike—left few illusions about the glory of fighting or the honor of death. What did remain, of course, was a widespread familiarity with brutality and crime on an unprecedented scale. The question of how human beings could do this to each other—and above all the question of how and why one European people (Germans) could set out to exterminate another (Jews)—were, for an alert observer like Arendt, self-evidently going to be the obsessive questions facing the continent. That is what she meant by “the problem of evil…”
Now we live in a time when it’s not unusual for unarmed people to be fired on or blown up. This always strikes me as cowardice. This may be my western orientation, but so be it.
Judt says that immediately after WWII there was not the consciousness that eventually evolved around the Holocaust. This comes later in the 80s he maintains as people began to understand and memorialize the awfulness of one people exterminating another.
When I was in middle school (Junior High we called it then) the paperbook edition of Shirer’s Rise and Fall of the Third Reich was sitting on a shelf near my desk in study hall. I have a memory of reading most if not all of this book during the term.
It is probably my first conceptualization of the history of that war.
“We as a nation must undergo a radical revolution of values. We must rapidly begin … the shift from a thing-oriented society to a person-oriented society. When machines and computers, profit motives and property rights, are considered more important than people, the giant triplets of racism, extreme materialism and militarism are incapable of being conquered.”
Elizabeth linked this in for me on Facebook. I didn’t notice the running transcription on the right of the web site. I took notes on it and put the notes up on Facebook as well.
Julian Treasures has some important points about listening habits. He points out that listening is not being taught in our schools and should be. Both Eileen and I can recall being explicitly taught listening skills in school as kids. Sigh.
I’m conflicted about stuff like this. I am sympathetic to people who are trying to bring to light what they see as injustice. But I also understand trying to hear the music.
I have now completed my first week of ballet classes. It was a short week since it began on Tuesday. I noticed that my changed schedule was taking a good amount of my energy. I decided to slow my treadmilling speed a bit and concentrate on good balance as I walked on it.
I benefit greatly from eavesdropping on ballet teachers’ instructions to aspiring dancers. They understand how the body is constructed in the same way that the Alexander technique talks abut it. In some cases this connection is explicit as the teachers have actually studied the technique.
I love to hear them talk about the skeletal design of the body and how to let the body function the way it is setup to.
I was noticing that my walk seems to be changing.
A year ago I noticed that my habitual step causes my feet to point a bit to the outside of the step. I knew this was not right. But Alexander cautions against “correcting” something like this. Instead he tries to teach “inhibition.”
I see the same thing functioning when Amanda (one of the excellent ballet teachers) shows a student how to hold their body with more ease. She touches them the same way an Alexander Technique touches as she talks to the student and at the same time the whole class.
She knows the skeletal/muscular structure of the body in a frighteningly thorough way.
Amanda uses the “inhibition” type idea of being careful to “let” stuff happen with the body. In other words to stop or inhibit the wrong direction to the body. Very very cool. And very helpful.
Recently I have been wondering if my trending higher blood pressure (which has subsided, probably temporarily) was related to the great amount of stress in my life. Briefly this stress comes from contact with other people who are out of control and some of whom I care deeply about.
Amanda talked about anxiety this week with her usual metaphors. “Own it!” She says. “Know when it is happening to you.” She teaches students to “holster” or “pocket” the anxiety in the middle of dance for later consideration.
These two approaches to stress and anxiety may possibly be working for me as well. Concentrating on a balanced slower walk in my treadmilling is coinciding with a drop in my blood pressure. Are the two related? Probably, but in the way of the body in a complex way that is pretty hard to isolate from other factors.
I can see that pacing myself is going to be an important part of my approach to life this Fall. I have been telling people at my church (the boss, the musical teenager who bothered to show up for pizza and to help me the other night) that my job is to stop myself from making my part time job a full time one.
Since I am pretty dedicated to excellence there are parts of my work where I will not compromise (like execution and preparation of my playing and training of singers). In the other parts, I have identified “dead ends” that I need to avoid.
All of this seems related: the physical balance of the body and the psychological balance of the soul. I think we sometimes parse out things that are bits of the same whole: body, mind, soul, emotion.
Reappraisals by Tony Judt is a collection of essays by this excellent writer. This morning I finished his essay on Hannah Arendt. (available to New York Review of Books subscribers here…. this doesn’t include me. I own the book pictured).
I read Arendt’s Eichman in Jerusalem: A Report on the Banality of Evil as a young man. It has colored my thinking ever since as I have watched society become mired in banality.
Arendt proposes that the evil that was done by German Nazis was often done by people like Eichmann who were just doing their insidiously boring and nondescript job.
It is an indictment of the normality and invisibility of truly terrible things that humans do. Torture in the 21st century comes to my mind as a possible example.
Here’s a link to a complete online essay I plan to look over about this:
I also read this short story yesterday. I am a fan of Murakami and have read several of his novels and collections of short stories. This story about the weird relationship between an adult son and his addled father did disappointment me.
I checked this book out of the library a while ago and finally started reading it last night.
It seems to be a companion volume to a PBS special the author directed:
Netflix doesn’t have a DVD available but happily one can stream it which is really my preference anyway.
It seems to possibly be a mix of old ideas and new. After having finished George Lakoff’s The Political Mind, I would be very interested to see brain science applied to music.
Mannes seems more interested in documenting therapeutic aspects of recent research which is mildly interesting to me.
She interviews McFerrin and also one my favorite musicians, Evelyn Glennie.
She footnotes her book to her documentary quite a bit. I will probably at least try to watch it. I find when people attempt to communicate information with videos there is an inevitable dilution of the content (Hence Mannes book no doubt).
I’m willing to admit that my reluctance to get my primary information from videos (TV, Movies, whatever) and preference for prose may very well be a flaw(further examples of my own werid anachronistic approaching to being alive right now).
However I am enjoying Mannes book so far. It’s just not as “meaty” as I had hoped. I’m sure the information I’m looking for is available. I will probably run into it sometime.
“Glennie notes that most people tend to make a distinction between hearing a sound and feeling a vibration. But the distinction we make in English doesn’t exist in the Italian language. The verb sentire means ‘to hear,’ and the same verb in the reflexive form, sentirse, means ‘to feel.’ ”
Elena Mannes, The Power of Music
Glennie of course perceives music as vibrations due to her deafness. Like so many people confronted with physical differences these days she has turned her lack of auditory perception into an blazing asset. She is a wonderful musician period.
“Daniel Bernard Roumian, a young cross-genre violinist who is known as DBR, thinks one reason music is so powerful is that sound actually penetrates our bodies: ‘You know when someone says that a piece of music ‘touched me’ or ‘moved me,’ it’s very literal. The sound of my voice enters your ear canal and it’s moving your eardrum. That’s a very intimate act. I am very literally touching you, and when you speak to me, you are literally touching me. And then we extend that principle to the sound of a violin.”
Elena Mannes, The Power of Music
I just put this quote up on my church’s Music Ministry Facebook page. I think it’s very cool. Musicians know this instinctively.
She does get a bit into the physical aspects of hearing. I don’t think this science is at all new and I think she either dilutes or confuses things a bit with talking about “electrical signals.” (This is the way I used to think about this, but now I see the physicality as much more complex). But I did enjoy learning that the body is designed in part very like a musical instrument literally laid out in attenuated lengths to perceive pitch:
“[R]emarkably, hair cells [inside the ear drum] are designed to respond to frequencies from low to high, like a piano keyboard. [They] then convert the vibrations of different frequencies into into neural signals, which travel from the ear to the brain stem and up into the brain as electrical signals… The electrical charge goes to the auditory cortex, which is laid out in pitch order. So our auditory system is designed rather like a musical instrument itself, organized to produce our perception of different frequencies.”
Elena Mannes, Ibid
These pictures are not from her book, but she does have some photos in it.
Don’t these inner ear hair cells look like organ pipes? Heh.
One of the nice things about having a librarian for a wife is occasionally I run across books and ideas I might have missed otherwise. This morning this book was laying on the table. I picked it up and read it over my morning coffee.
Chris Van Allsburg is the author of 2 famous children’s books, you may recall.
This is his first non-fiction book apparently.
This book is the story of a former charm school teacher, Annie Edson Taylor, who decided to court fame and fortune by being the first person to go over Niagara Falls in a barrel. If you look closely above you can see her specially constructed barrel as it approaches the edge of the falls in the pic above.
As usual, Van Allsburg’s pictures tell the story with texture and depth.
Doris Hull was the model Van Allsburg chose for Annie.
This was a good way for me to wake up this morning, reading about an elderly woman who reached out for a dream and didn’t quite succeed the way she imagined. Recommended.
I planned to embed this video but the uploader turned off that option. Sheesh. Wouldn’t want to extend the meager influence of obscure classical music, would we?
Anyway, it’s a lovely piece, played well.
This particular video got me asking questions about the piece I was planning to play for the prelude Sunday.
Since the opening hymn is “Christ is made the sure foundation” sung to Purcell’s tune, WESTMINSTER ABBEY, one of the options I considered for organ music was playing some of his keyboard music for the prelude and postlude.
I have been a fan of Purcell since I was a young man. I met a friend, Dave Sieffert, when we both were searching out the same beautiful hard bound edition of Purcell’s music in a musty basement music library at Ohio Weslyan.
Sieffert was himself a larger than life figure who could have stepped from the pages of a Purcell opera or better yet of a Dickens novel.
He brandished a pipe and was given to yelling out the words, “Cheap Fuck!!,” at inopportune times. He seemed to spend his post college years between church music and rock and roll. He died a few years back. His memory colors my fondness for Purcell.
I found a lovely “Ground in C minor” in my little Dover collection of Purcell. It’s marked Z. T 681 (Z is for Frank Zimmerman, the man who cataloged much of Purcell’s music).
I thought it would make a good prelude. I came home and checked it out on YouTube. The recording linked above was the one I found and it was the piece I had chosen but there were some significant differences. I liked the YouTube one a bit better and investigated.
It looks like the one in the YouTube (and also the one I plan to play Sunday) is probably by William Croft who was in the next generation of English composers after Purcell and was mightily influenced by his work.
I searched and found a copy of the Croft rendition on Werner Icking’s music page. Thank you, Werner Icking, whoever you are! His music page has some wonderful arrangements of many pieces of early music. I bless him for sharing the wealth. The Croft piece is probably Purcell work ZD 221. I went ahead and attributed it to Purcell. It looks like Croft took ZT681 and re-worked it. So there is some Purcell material in there.
Haimish: adjective, having qualities associated with a homelike atmosphere; simple, warm, relaxed, cozy, unpretentious, etc.
Origin: Yiddish < Ger heimisch, homelike: see home & -ish>
I saw where one high-schooler recommended this to another on Facebook. Hmmm. I think you need a phone for the best use of this one. Or at least friends.
I had my first class yesterday. I walked in and there was a baby grand Steinway next to the extreme clunky piano I usually use. I thought no one would mind so I opened up the good piano and strummed through “Rhapsody in Blue” (which for some reason I have been reading through).
The teacher walked in. She is also the chair of the department. She asked me how I liked the new piano. I told her it was great but I assumed it was just sitting in the studio left over from some program. No, it turns out she had procured it for the dance department. Very nice.
Later when I mentioned it to my wife she wondered about our her friend, Allan Sheets, who had donated his mother’s piano to the music department at Hope College. It’s very probable that they ended up with one too many good piano and that’s somehow related to how the dance department received its instrument.
At any rate, it’s an actual piano as opposed to what one usually has to play. At least this one. My upcoming gig at the nursing home is always a trial as far as the instrument is concerned. I usually debate about taking my electric piano or not. So far I haven’t done so. The last time the piano was slightly improved but still pretty bad.
The ballet teacher had the students read the syllabus aloud, with each student reading a paragraph or so. To my ears most of them read haltingly.
Maybe they were just nervous, but my feeling was comprehension was low.
No wonder the teacher has them read it out loud. I noticed that when several of the students arrived at the end of sentence their voice sort of fell with that relief that one sometimes hears in a child struggling with reading.
Later that evening I had a nice chat with a young high school student. I had invited several students from my church to join me for have pizza and help me file music in the choir room. It was mostly a ploy to pick their brains. I had one person show up. All of these kids are pretty bright. I look for ways to involve them in the music ministry but its pretty tough to do so regularly.
When I was talking to this young high school student about it, she said that she mostly just has to prioritize which commitment is in most need of her presence. She described having her long distance running coach negotiate with her band director to see which of their two events were more important for her to attend.
So of course church music is out of the question for people who are so involved.
I do wonder about the busyness.
I asked her if she had any idea why kids’ time was so filled with activities. She really didn’t.
I wonder if it has anything to do with the high anxiety in the our society. I know some parents feel they need to keep their kids busy to keep them out of trouble. Maybe the anxiety is about achievement. Hell I don’t know.
I do wonder about those kids in the ballet class whose breathy reading was mildly disturbing to me. Hope College is definitely a college of economic privilege. The kids in the room were probably not suffering from more typical problems of students in the U.S.A. like poverty and lack of opportunity. Still I do marvel at what people of all ages do not seem to know. Oh well.
These articles might have been why Gershwin was on my mind yesterday. Although come to think of it I have been playing through the piano transcription of “Rhapsody in Blue” for a few days.
I have a lot of respect for John Conyers. And of course I feel that creators should be in line to profit from their work. But I have questions about this as well. I find it especially disheartening to read of another government official (Mitchell Glazier) moving from public to private sector in the same area (from copyright counsel to the Republican chairman of the Judiciary Committee to chief lobbyist for the recording industry association). This to my mind suggests at the very least lack of objectivity and balance (if not a whiff of corruption).
Again with the transparency. When governments lie (like ours does routinely) extreme outing of secrets seems more warranted. But of course the government defense of keeping people’s lives safe is a sound one. One just wonders about the truth of it all.
I spent the day yesterday in a kind of restlessness.
I think it was because it would be my last free Monday for a while. I start my ballet accompaniment this morning.
Yesterday I would sit and try to read for a bit and then find myself wandering off to sort music or fill the dishwasher.
As usual I spent a lot of time on the piano. Bach, Scarlatti, Mendelssohn, Albeniz, Granados were on the rack yesterday.
Ended up with Debussy.
My Mom’s nursing home emailed me yesterday and asked me to play for the September birthday party.
The woman said in her email that she had never had a performer more requested for a birthday party. Complimentary but I also was wonder what statements like that actually mean. What parts do they remember as enjoyable? Was it the fact that I included some decently performed Bach and Debussy? Was it the old tunes from WWII? The hymns? Hard to say. I do remember one woman requesting The Blue Danube Waltz. I guess I’ll have to dig out an arrangement of that.
Today I only have the one class from 8:30 to 10.
I’m not sure exactly which teacher or which classroom but I’m sure I’ll easily figure that out.
Apparently, there is a DVD of the summer performance of the Global Water dance by the lake for which I wrote music waiting for me in the office. Maybe it’s free since the email from the chair didn’t mention a fee. I dread the sound (bad recording no doubt) but also want to hear it. Not sure if I have the tech to rip it and share it, but if I figure out a way, I’ll put it up.
My younger daughter, Sarah, (Hi Sarah!) who makes up part of the small readership of this blog was (is?) infatuated with Burning Man. I don’t think she ever made it to one (You didn’t, did you?). There are lots of interesting ideas around this project including the Ten Principles.
It’s helpful to hear how Spotify is screwing small labels. Generally I am for free music but never at the expense of the creators. I was very surprised when I learned that Naxos (the classical record label with an extensive catalog) is only $20 bucks a year. When I quit my college job, I’ll probably subscribe.
This installation artist seems to have a civic/community thing going on.
She put up this installation completely with chalk for passersby to fill in their answer. I like it.
She has done other stuff like this apparently.
Before I die: I want to practice piano one more time. I always admired the fact that when John Hartford discovered he was dying, he began to practice more.
I have been playing my way through Domenico Scarlatti’s 555 Essercizi (Keyboard Sonatas).
This is a page from a hand copied manuscript in a library in Barcelona. They have an excellent web site which allows you to view their manuscripts online.
I am on volume 6 of 11 volumes I purchased from my teacher, Craig Cramer. This means I’ve carefully played through close to half of them. I find the music consistently beautiful and surprising.
This edition is actually completely online, but I preferred to purchase a used copy from my old teacher. I found it more convenient than printing up 10 volumes page by page off the internet and cheaper than a more modern and accurate edition.
I have heard this editor (Kenneth Gilbert) lecture and play. He is quite good. He is that wonderful modern combination of scholar and musician.
Since I am on such a Scarlatti kick, I decided to go back and thoroughly revisit Ralph Kirkpatrick’s seminal bio of him.
I am interested in finding out more about how influenced he was by Spanish folk music and rhythms. His music is very unusual for the time.
I know that the Kirkpatrick scholarship, though important, has been updated and will probably pursue the updated conversation as well.
I continue to be amazed at how people run their lives. The Servant Leadership principles are basically life principles of honesty and fairness. It does turn out that common sense is pretty uncommon. Business principles like “treat the staff with dignity at all times,” “show that you care about them as individuals,” and “be an active learner and teacher” are translations of how I think people ought to live.
Of course not only our social lives but our public lives are saturated with dishonesty and manipulation.
It’s hard to be real, I guess.
But what the hell. I have a good life in my little corner of the universe.
If you don’t know the Zingerman article or the book it’s based on, Servant Leadership by Robert Greenleaf, you might want to check them out. I think they’re pretty good.
I applied and received conscientious objector status when I was eligible for the draft for Vietnam. I have struggled with this idea because I’m sure that I would defend my loved ones with any kind of violence necessary. But organized killing seems deadly and inhuman to me. I guess sometimes it’s the only alternative. But I don’t see human’s seeking out the alternative as much as I would hope for.
“I still have a dream that one day the idle industries of Appalachia will be revitalized, and the empty stomachs of Mississippi will be filled, and brotherhood will be more than a few words at the end of a prayer, but rather the first order of business on every legislative agenda.” M.L. King
As usual the people on the ground suffer. Some good quotes from actual people in this article.
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“Murdoch and American Politicians, UAW, Labor’s Bulletin Board Win” The Audit : CJR
Sooprise. Sooprise. News media people manipulate the news for the rich and powerful.
I “synched” my book to my Kindle for PC copy of Brothers Karamazov yesterday. By that I mean I found my place on my Kindle for PC software in the book and then found the place in the actual copy of the book and started reading from there.
This morning I got up and found this passage again that I read last night:
“If I did not believe in life, if I were to lose faith in the woman I love, if I were to become convinced of chaos, if I were struck even by all the horrors of human disillusionment—still I would want to live….”
“…. I’ve asked myself many times: is there such despair in the world as could overcome this wild and perhaps indent thirst for life in me, and have decided that apparently there is not…”
“I want to live, and I do live, even if it be against logic. Though I do not believe in the order of things, still the sticky little leaves that come out in the spring are dear to me, the blue sky is dear to me, some people are dear to me, … some human deeds are dear to me, which one has perhaps long ceased believing in, but still honors with with one’s heart, out of old habit.”
I find myself often thinking about joie de vivre (joy or zest for life).
I think that I find this in much of Mozart’s music, especially the operas.
Mozart had a short life by modern standards, but he packed into it so much wonderful music that breaths with this sentiment, this zest for just being alive.
In fact when I am most in touch with music I also feel this very deeply even as my ego fades in the act of what I am doing.
I finished reading this issue of Atlantic from cover to cover last night omitting only a short essay at the end of the book by John Barth.
The final essay reminds me a bit of the process I just mentioned in music making: that is the quietening of personality and other distractions and allowing the music to happen and to be the only thing happening
This is difficult and I’m not sure how often I attain this state, only that it like other aspects of my technique is something I am aiming at in my work.
This essay by Brett Anthony Johnston follows nine short stories and packs as big a wallop as a well written piece of fiction.
Here’s a sample.
“I don’t know the origin of the “write what you know” logic. A lot of folks attribute it to Hemingway, but what I find is his having said this:
“From all things that you know and all those you cannot know, you make something through your invention that is not a representation but a whole new thing truer than anything true and alive.”
If this is the logic’s origin, then maybe what’s happened is akin to that old game called Telephone. In the game, one kid whispers a message to a second kid and then that kid whispers it to a third and so on, until the message circles the room and returns to the first kid. The message is always altered, minimized, and corrupted by translation. “Bill is smart to sit in the grass” becomes “Bill is a smart-ass.” A similar transmission problem undermines the logic of writing what you know and, ironically, Hemingway may have been arguing against it all along. The very act of committing an experience to the page is necessarily an act of reduction, and regardless of craft or skill, vision or voice, the result is a story beholden to and inevitably eclipsed by source material.”
I highly recommend the entire essay and obviously not just for aspiring writers.
“A whole new thing” in Hemingway’s phrase above can find its origin in poetry, music, fiction and art. I sometimes think of the phrase, ” ‘art‘ is ‘artificial.’ ” I’m not sure of the meaning exactly except that it makes think of the necessary limits of art. That music is not life. Fiction is not life. Story itself is not life.
But these things and other things help us make meaning. They contribute to a fundamentally deepening of the zest for being alive for the short time we each are given.
The repression is song-specific. Hilarious (due to the light nature of the music) and tragic (due to the life killing nature of censorship) at the same time.
Here are 4 links of articles I plan to check out further. Since I haven’t read them, I don’t know much about them other than they have intrigued me enough to bookmark.
Begins with an interesting description of the narrator’s first steps which he accurately describes as “a kind of delayed falling forward.” My undergrad class in Physical Anthropology taught me the same thing: that walking is basically falling and catching yourself.
Ever since getting back from a short respite my blood pressure has eased back into normal territory (8/27:125/82). Before that it was trending higher (8/23: 136/90). So the two might be related. Hard to tell. But it might be that stress was adding to my trending higher readings.
On my vacation I basically did nothing but read, eat & sleep. As usual I found myself much more tired than I thought I was and kept dozing off as I read. Sheesh.
Yesterday, I kept listening to music by Takemitsu and Ligeti. I especially liked the Hungarian Rock Harpsichord piece and found several recordings in YouTube including organ renditions. This might be the best of them (which I put up on Facebook):
I filled my cart on Amazon with used copies of sheet music of this piece and other pieces by Takemitsu and William Bolcolm. Haven’t had the courage to hit to hit proceed to checkout yet.
This is music I am interested in but probably with no practical application to church or other performance opportunities (unless as usual I make them).
I love the idea of free education. Learning definitely should be available to those who want to grow and think. Commodifying the best parts of life is anathema as far I’m concerned.
Cornel West is a hero of mine. I know he can be goofy, but I tend to totally endorse his ideas. I especially have enjoyed his criticism of Candidate and then President Obama. But then I also like Jeremiah Wright quite a bit as well.
I’m a fan of this magazine. Very happy to see that Amazon has the latest issue available for Kindle.
The issue on Families was is of my favorite, if just for the cover.
This one’s not available for Kindle. Too old, I guess. I have a copy laying around, I’m sure.
I found myself listening to Takemitus on Spotify yesterday.
Found this performance this morning. What a beautiful piece! I may have to buy the music and learn it.
I have loved his music for along time.
I finished Lakoff yesterday.
I am reading some reviews to better put his work in perspective. Even though I agree with his liberal political bias, I can’t help but see that this book mixes some general new brain science with polemic. Critics seem to agree.
I am fascinated by the idea that thinking and mind are beginning to be understood as physical attributes of the brain.
This seems to trouble many people I read. But it doesn’t trouble me. I think it’s pretty wonderful.
I plan to do more reading in this area. I’m not sure exactly what yet. Probably another book by Lakoff that is less political.
And one that deals with politics as well.
In the meantime, I’m still interested in dipping into some other books like The Watchman’s Rattle by Rebecca D. Costa.
It’s sitting in my Kindle for PC on my little netbook which is where I read the Lakoff.
I had a wonderful rehearsal with my piano trio yesterday. The Counterpunctus IX from The Art of Fugue by Bach started to really come together and sound cool. Then we read some of Mozart’s G major piano trio (K. 564) and decided we should program it since it’s not as hard as some of the ones we have been working on.
Lovely stuff.
This is a good performance but it’s not recorded very well. Here’s an even better performance:
Two reviews I read recently. If you scroll down on the second one you can see more of this writer’s ongoing assessment of the book that he is logging as he reads it. Thankfully he finds the first chapter a whole lot better than he does the introduction. I didn’t have his strong critical reaction, but then again I’m not a scientist.
Last living survivor of the original Four Freshman. This group formed at about the time my Dad and my Uncle were in separate male singing groups. Dad’s was religious, Uncle Jonnie’s was pop music based.
“The death of Jerry Leiber, the lyricist who brought us “Stand by Me,” “Yakety Yak” and other early rock ’n’ roll classics, gives us a moment to pause and give thanks for sugar cane. Sugar cane led to a great wave of Chinese immigration to Cuba, which, through a roundabout process of musical pollination, put an idea into the heads of Mr. Leiber and his collaborator, Mike Stoller, when they were still teenagers breaking into the business in Los Angeles.”
This is an article on Michele Leris, a French anthropologist who wrote a Manhood: A Journey from Childhood into the Fierce Order of Virility. I have bookmarked the article to read. I often think about the false stereotypes of gender identity. This is probably because I myself don’t fit many of the male ones. But I still feel pretty comfortable in my own skin about who I am, especially these areas.
The melody for our closing hymn Sunday will be Jerusalem by Sir Hubert Parry.
It is paired with Carl Daw’s lovely text:
O day of peace that dimly shines
through all our hopes and prayers and dreams,
guide us to justice, truth, and love,
delivered from our selfish schemes.
May the swords of hate fall from our hands,
our hearts from envy find release,
till by God’s grace our warring world
shall see Christ’s promised reign of peace.
Then shall the wolf dwell with the lamb,
nor shall the fierce devour the small;
as beasts and cattle calmly graze,
a little child shall lead them all.
Then enemies shall learn to love,
all creatures find their true accord;
the hope of peace shall be fulfilled,
for all the earth shall know the Lord.
I recently purchased an interesting collection of music written “In Memory of Hubert Parry.”
It looks something like this, but it’s gray and old.
It seems to be sort of a musical festschrift. It’s inscribed:
“At Sir Hubert Parry’s funeral in St. Paul’s Cathedral on October 16th 1918, a few of his friends made a small wreath of melodies, which were woven together and played. The pieces in this Book have been written and given by these friends and a few besides, as a rather larger wreath, in loving memory of him. The title of the book was suggested by the original heading on his own piece (which stands as the first of them), ‘For the Little Organ Book.'”
February 1924
I am playing the Parry piece as a prelude this Sunday.
For the postlude I have chosen one by another Anglican composer I admire: William Mathias.
I once heard a musician who had interviewed him speculate that Mathias wasn’t exactly of this world, that he was a bit on the weird, flaky side. I think this made me like his music even more.
I usually try not to do church stuff on Monday. But Eileen and I are escaping Holland for a couple of days. We are meeting a friend at her cottage on Lake Michigan. So I picked music yesterday and had also had a silly meeting. I told my Worship Commission last night that I was making a last ditch effort at some badly needed R & R.
I probably won’t be able to post tomorrow morning due to lack of internet connection. I figure I have about 20 to 50 hits a day judging from the counter I have on the website, so dear reader my hiatus will probably only be for a day or so.
I have always admired the late Shel Silverstein. The NYT had some nice stuff by and about him this past weekend.
I liked this:
YESEES AND NOEES
The Yesees said yes to anything
That anyone suggested.
The Noees said no to everything
Unless it was proven and tested.
So the Yesees all died of much too much
And the Noees all died of fright,
But somehow I think the Thinkforyourselfees
All came out all right.
Undue Child Focus is a pathology my hero, Ed Friedman, point out as part of the “stuckness” of our times. So I am often skeptical about attitudes toward children. But this is an interesting history of society moving from protecting the weak to protecting the powerful.
My daughter, Elizabeth, linked this on in on Facebook commenting: “?$1,200,000,000,000 (tax payer money!) in secret loans to Bank of America, Citigroup, Morgan Stanley, and other banks/brokerage firms? I do not understand.”
I began this day as I often do by reading poetry. I have been reading snippets of John Donne lately.
According to Wikipedia Donne commissioned this portrait of himself “as he expected to appear when he rose from the Apocalypse.” He hung it on his wall to remind him of the transience of life.
From his first Satire:
“…… doubt wisely, in strange way
To stand inquiring right, is not to stray;
To sleepe, or runne wrong, is;….
“To will, implyes delay, therefore now doe.”
I seemed to have underlined this passage as a young man… “Therefore now doe” could almost be a motto for me. I believe we are more the sum of our actions than our thoughts and words.
I think I am attracted to Donne and Dylan Thomas because of the outlandishness of the juxtaposition of images they use.
The Scarlatti I played at church came off pretty well yesterday. The piano piece (K. 135) stretched me a bit.
The beginning cross-hands passage could have used a bit more time and rehearsal.
Minutes before performing it found me still rehearsing it in the choir room.
I admit it unnerves me a bit to perform in front of professors some of whom are decidedly unsympathetic, keep me at a distance and rarely comment on my work.
College competitiveness has been the bane of my life and done more damage than good in my experience. But it may be these are just the observations of a hack.
Anyway, there were many musical moments in both Scarlatti pieces I performed. The noise during the postlude was louder than usual yesterday. So I thought, heck, no one is paying that much attention I’ll just take the repeats since I like the piece so much.
One parishioner did mention to me that she loved the Scarlatti. I was flattered she noticed.
Another parishioner asked me if I wrote the accompaniment to the second verse of “Morning Has Broken.” He said he could hear the “sweet rain’s new fall” in it. I thanked him and told him it was improvised to help people notice the words they are singing.
Tomorrow morning Eileen and I will drive away for one evening in a cottage by the lake. I really haven’t had a lot of time off this summer. It was by choice. But I still feel twinges of burnout. My ballet schedule starts next week. Not dancing, playing piano for classes. I guess it’s the end of my summer.
July Salmon, the biographer of Wendy Wasserstein (who traded on the stories of her life but still managed to keep some secrets) ponders secrecy, privacy and transparency. I have an aversion to family secrets due to my take on family system psychology. On the other hand I also think people’s privacy should be respected. Whatchagonnado?
I continue to be amazed at the insidiousness of intolerance in all our lives. Roger Cohen writes about how people lower their voice when they talk about Jews in England, even when they themselves are Jewish.
John Dean: A Dud From ‘Darth’ – Book Review – Truthdig
MUSIC SHOP TALK COMMENT FOLLOWS
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