I’ve been up since 5 AM this morning working on correcting scores for this evening’s service.
Rehearsal went well last night, but of the 10 or 11 arrangements I had ready, there were serious errors in one and minor errors in a couple of the others. I’m hoping we caught them all last night.
I am sans coffee this morning because I am fasting for a blood draw. My four month check up is today. I can’t imagine I noticed that this date was Maundy Thursday when I made the appointment. But what the heck.
My doctor asked me to lose ten pounds in the last four month. By my count I have lost about eleven pounds, but we’ll see what the doctor’s scales say.
Unfortunately, I had to reschedule this appointment for after my first class today. On Tuesday my Mom had an appointment which was scheduled before my morning class. The doctor kept her so long that I missed the class. Bah. So I immediately rescheduled today’s appointment later this morning.
This means I could really use a cup of coffee right now and will have to manage to do the class without sustenance. Heh. I’m pretty sure I can it.
I continue to read bits of Your Hate Mail Will Be Graded by John Scalzi to my wife. Last night I read her one that I found pretty hilarious, “Things to know about clones.” (link to the actual post on his website).
In another post (too old to still be in his current archives), he writes about Heidegger and “angst.” He makes this comment on “embracing one’s nothingness” a la Heidegger.
“Left unsaid is what happens after one has in fact embraced the nothingness; one has the unsettling feeling that it’s difficult to get cable TV. Also, there’s the question of what happens when one has reached a state of authentic being, only to discover one is authentically an ass.”
This article reminded me of the short movie, “Dr. Horrible’s Sing-Along Blog,” which was originally written for and released on the web. Light-hearted fun. Recommended if you don’t know it already. I had to re-listen to the soundtrack yesterday.
I woke up gently this morning. Laying in the dark I sometimes muse on my life and my family and friends.
It’s a mellow feeling. I spent most of my waking hours yesterday in front of a computer, composing and arranging instrumental parts for the three days of the Triduum: Maundy Thursday, Good Friday and the Easter Vigil/Sunday Service. Then I emailed multiple parts and cheat sheets to the musicians. I meet with my boss at 11 to go over some stuff. After that if I haven’t heard from my musicians, I will begin printing up parts for this evening’s rehearsal.
Right now I think I’m going to not think about church burnout and try and stay in that morning feeling.
As I cleared my messy kitchen to make coffee, I was aided in this by listening once again to “One Day Like This by Elbow” on my MP3 player.
I ran across this on Monday and posted it on Facebook as an “antidote to Monday.” Since then I have been listening to it on and off.
This morning I got up and bought Elbow’s latest CD. I’m listening to it right now.
This music is working for me.
Must be that morning mood.
Lippy kids on the corner again,
Lippy kids on the corner begin settling like crows.
And I never perfected that simian stroll,
But the cigarette scent, it was everything then.
Chorus:
Do they know those days are golden?
Build a rocket, boys!
Build a rocket, boys!
One long June i came down from the trees
And cursed on cue,
You were freshly painted angel walking on walls,
Stealing booze and outlawing hungry kisses.
Nobody knew me at home anymore
Build a rocket, boys!
Build a rocket, boys!
Lippy kids on the corner again.
Find More lyrics at www.sweetslyrics.com
Lippy kids on the corner begin settling like crows.
And I never affected that simian stroll, no!
(whistle)
Chorus:
Do they know those days are golden?
Build a rocket, boys!
Build a rocket, boys!
One long June i came down from the trees
And cursed on cue,
You were freshly painted angel walking on walls,
Stealing booze and outlawing hungry kisses.
Nobody knew me at home anymore
Build a rocket, boys!
Build a rocket, boys!
(whistle)
I was thinking this morning how I haven’t been playing my guitar very much lately. Fortunately my guitar skills (such as they are) don’t seem to go away if I don’t practice. When I had my mid-life crisis, quit my job and started practicing and composing more,
part of what I did was revive my guitar songs and then write some more of them. I also starting improving my keyboard skills at the piano and organ.
This improvement is continuing through the present. All of this was and is satisfying. I did several gigs in coffee houses utilizing young musicians and handing out copies of my lyrics.
The popular music genres are part of my musical language. In fact from my point of view everything I write is related.
Though I haven’t had conventional success, my life as a musician and writer seems to be a good one.
I am an eccentric and have sort of stepped out of line from easily identifiable musical roles. But this doesn’t bother me that much. In fact I see it as a direct result of my own conscious choices, few of which I would do differently in retrospect.
I am able to use my skills as a composer (at church) and improviser (at church and the ballet class and the occasional gig) to make a little money while I spent most of my time practicing, composing, thinking about music and reading books. This is a good life.
In this chapter Scalzi scathingly stereotypes three political persuasions: liberals, conservatives and libertarians.
I recommend just clicking and going to the entire chapter, but here are a few examples from each:
Liberals: “The attention spans of poultry; easily distracted from large, useful goals by pointless minutiae. Not only can’t see the forest for the trees, can’t see the trees for the pine needles. Deserve every bad thing that happens to them because they just can’t get their act together.”
Conservatives: “Genuinely fear and hate those who are not “with” them — the sort of people who would rather shit on a freshly-baked cherry pie than share it with someone not of their own tribe.”
Libertarians: “Easily offended; Libertarians most likely to respond to this column. The author will attempt to engage subtle wit but will actually come across as a geeky whiner (Conservatives, more schooled in the art of poisonous replies, may actually achieve wit; liberals will reply that they don’t find any of this humorous at all).”
Since beginning this book shortly after my brother gave it to me, I have checked Scalzi’s blog, “Whatever,” occasionally. He claims to get 40K hits a day, but I found his entries not quite as much fun as his prose in this book. But of course that just suspiciously makes me want to go and buy books by him. Hmmmmm.
I don’t have much time to blog this morning. My Mom called yesterday and told me she had a doctor’s appointment at 7:30 AM which neither of us were aware of before the reminder phone call she received. So I have to pick her up in about 45 minutes.
This was a great obit of a singing coach. Coaching singers is something I do so I admired the story of this man’s life even though I hadn’t heard of him.
The left is stirring and not all of them are completely disgusted with Obama. I of course am more in agreement with people who have my kind of attention span (poultry) than the right or the Tea Partiers. But I do try to keep up with all stripes of comment.
Interesting poem. I think I have mentioned that I knew an English teacher ion my high school who used to routinely yell at us students and tell us that there was more “news” in poetry than in the newspapers and that it would behoove us to read the poems not the papers. As an adult, I do both.
I liked a lot of sections of this poem,but this line jumped out at me:
do you think when someone dies they just vibrate a little differently.
This news organization continues to set the pace for international news. Excellent overview. If you happen to read this article and don’t learn something about individual countries in the complex continent of Africa, I would be surprised. Anyway, I learned stuff.
“Ideology makes it unnecessary for people to confront individual issues on their individual merits,” the late Daniel Bell wrote. “One simply turns to the ideological vending machine, and out comes the prepared formulae.” Ideology knows the answer before the question has been asked.
Finally, I ran across this yesterday and liked it quite a bit and put it on Facebook. Here it is:
A priest I worked for used to call this week Hell Week, instead of Holy Week. He would wave his hands and say, “Too much church, too much church.” Lately, any church at all has been too much church for me due to burn out and fatigue but I’m trying to not to dwell on it.
Yesterday went well despite the erratic behavior of some of my musicians. Another person indicated they wanted to play with GELO (the instrumental ensemble playing at Maundy Thursday and Good Friday). A couple singers indicated they would not be attending certain services of Holy Week they have been asked to sing at. People arrived late and left early, skipped rehearsals. Typical stuff. I put a good face on the situation and simply tried to do my job well and with as little anxiety as possible. Fuck the duck.
The congregation sang well. At least one or two people actually noticed the postlude I had prepared. This was remarkable since it was sort of a quiet one. One young man has made a point to come and stand and listen several times at this point in the service, recently. I keep thinking he needs to chat with me, but apparently he is just coming to listen. That’s nice.
I still have some work to do before Wednesday night’s rehearsal, arranging and making up parts. I’m not planning on doing that today. I have a full schedule of classes. That and exercising will take up my energy.
Ann Rand keeps popping up in my mind as watch the public discussion on government and markets. I read Rand as a kid. This is a pretty good article by Maureen Dowd who is someone whose articles I read but don’t always pay that much attention to since they are usually polemical and attempts at humor.
“You’d think that our fiscal meltdown would have shown the flaw in Rand’s philosophy. She thought we could derive morals from the markets. But we derived immorality from the markets.”
This essay by Nicholas Dames is quite good. It examines the incoherent attack on humanities in the public square. Here are a couple of quotes:
“Innovation,” Nussbaum puts it succinctly, “requires minds that are flexible, open, and creative; literature and the arts cultivate these capacities.”
“The divorce between liberalism and professionalism as educational missions rests on a superstition: that the practical is the enemy of the true. This is nonsense. Disinterestedness is perfectly consistent with practical ambition, and practical ambitions are perfectly consistent with disinterestedness.
I seem to have had books on the mind yesterday. Dames uses three books in his article:
Terry Castle. The Professor and Other Writings. Harper, 2010.
Louis Menand. The Marketplace of Ideas: Reform and Resistance in the American University. Norton, 2010.
Martha Nussbaum. Not for Profit: Why Democracy Needs the Humanities. Princeton, 2010.
I have read most of Cultivating Humanity by Martha Nussbaum, the last author, and have found her insightful and eloquent.
Terry Castle. The Professor and Other Writings. Harper, 2010.
Louis Menand. The Marketplace of Ideas: Reform and Resistance in the American University. Norton, 2010.
Martha Nussbaum. Not for Profit: Why Democracy Needs the Humanities. Princeton, 2010.
I spent several hours transcribing and arranging string parts for Holy Week. For Maundy Thursday I prepared string accompaniment to the choral anthem for the evening: “As in that upper room you left your seat” text by Timothy Dudley-Smith, music by Carl Heywood. I have taught the choir this lovely hymn for use as an anthem. I added a short string intro, interludes and postlude. This will dress it up.
For Good Friday, I finished a transcription of an organ piece by Timothy Flynn based on “O Sacred Head.” Flynn has written a series of chords that fit nicely on piano. I gave the melody to the strings in octaves. This will make a nice prelude for that evening.
I emailed off the parts to the players.
The challenge in the Maundy Thursday and Good Friday selections was my ensemble consists of one viola, two cellos and piano. This challenge made it kind of fun.
I will do a few more hymn arrangements for these four players. We have a rehearsal scheduled on Wednesday. I am trying to make these arrangements well with in the playing capabilities of these players since they are receiving the scores just before they will be asked to perform them.
In between, for fun, I started my first serious analysis of a Charles Ives piano piece. I enjoy throwing myself at compositions and trying to figure out how they work.
This piece is the first of the “Five Piano Pieces” I purchased through the mail. It is called “Varied Air and Variations: Study #2 for Ears or Aural and Mental Exercise!!!” (One commentator suggests there might be a bit of a pun in that title: “Very Darin’ Variations.”)
It’s a sectional piece, ostensibly a theme and variations. It also includes a short introduction, brief interludes and a small postlude all of which are labeled “protests.” The intriguing aspect of it initially are these little comments from Ives throughout the piece. An example is the note he has written over the first introductory Largo section: “First Protest from ‘box belles’ when ‘man; comes on stage”. This reminded me of Satie’s piano music where he sometimes prints comments throughout. In Satie’s case the comments are ironic performance notes. At first I thought Ives’s words were something similar.
example is the top note which translates “To play this motif 840 times in succession, it would be advisable to prepare oneself beforehand, in the deepest silence, by serious immobilities”
My attention was first caught by the second variation, “March time or faster,” which is in an obvious mirror inversion counterpoint. This is a fancy way of saying that the right hand melody is mirrored by the left hand melody (there are only two parts) but when the right hand goes up, the left hand goes down the same distance and when it goes down, the left hand goes up the exact same distance.
But this technique wasn’t really what caught my eye. I also noticed that it seemed as though the notes went through all 12 possible of the notes of the scale before repeating. This piece is dated c. 1910, revised 1925 (according to Groves Online Music Dictionary. Thanks again, Hope College, for this perk for the old guy playing the piano in the ballet class!). It is just about period of music history that across the ocean Schoenberg is developing an influential strict technique that uses all twelve notes equally (link to wikipedia article on 12 tone technique).
Intrigued I began counting unique notes. I found that Ives uses 11 of 12 possible different notes in a row, stopping just short of Arnold’s 12 tone row. Then he started over with a series of 7 unrepeated notes. Then he begins to repeat notes. Also about half way through the variation he abandons the mirror inversion technique.
It was at this point, I began to look closely at those little comments Ives put in the music. I realized that they tell a dual story. One story is the story of a musician who is playing for an unappreciative audience (“box belles). You can hear this clearly in his label for the least dissonant of the variations: “16 nice measures, E minor as much as possible! All right, Ladies, I’ll play the rock line again and harmonize it nice and proper.”
When I read this, I wondered about instructing a player to “play something in E minor as much as possible.” Then I realized this was a descriptive comment, not one meant to affect the key in which the player plays. Then I thought about the phrase “rock line” in terms of the way Ives strictly ordered his pitches throughout the piece.
Sure enough, he refers over and over in his comments to stones and rocks: “the old stone wall around the orchard– none of those stones are the same size” and “Follow the stone wall around the mountain.”
At this point I began to see what Ives was driving at. Even though I found this piece described as a programmatic piece, I think it is a unique example of sort of a non-programmatic programmatic piece. The music does tell a sort of story. There are repeated soft and loud sections which represent the protests and eventual acclamations of the audience. There are also the theme and its variations which culminate in a wild rhythmic dissonant finale in the description of the “man” getting mad at the audience and starting to “throw things at them.”
But the music materials of the theme and variations itself is about the stones or rocks of the chosen material not actually making musical sounds that make a picture in a more typical programmatic way.
Programmaticaly there are only those shorter sections throughout which aurally represent the reaction of the audience to the music. (At one point Ives marks a series of hammered bland C major chords FFFFFFFFFFF. Note that there are 11 of those fortes. Hmmmm. This is supposed to represent applause of the players attempt at harmonizing in E minor mentioned above.)
I love finding stuff like this. I don’t really care whether Ives was flirting with the same technique that Schoenberg basically has the credit (blame?) for originating.
In fact I love the fact that he used his brain in a similar way to make a piece of music, but instead of the serious academic approach of Schoenberg, he used it playfully and humorously in sort of a double programatic way.
Apparently Ives wrote this piece as a sort of ironic critique of the reception of some of his finest piano music including my favorite, The Concord Sonata. Cool beans.
Joel Ralphaelson from Chicago says that when George Bernard Shaw was confronted with trying to come up a clear description of his reaction to music without resorting to trite metaphors he wrote: “Shaw was confronted with the lack of an exact, non-metaphoric word for what he wanted to say. So he wrote, “I did with my ears what I do with my eyes when I stare.”
I quite like that.
I also like this:
David Brooks’s column is a strong piece of advocacy for the arts in education. “Metaphors are not rhetorical frills at the edge of how we think,” he writes, paraphrasing James Geary. “They are at the very heart of it.”
And this is what educators know about the importance of the standing, speaking, moving, memorizing, hearing and seeing in an arts curriculum: they are not frills, they are at the heart of learning. They are the nation’s hope for a strong, confident and competitive future.
In our panic over how badly we’ve used our resources, how shortsighted we’ve been, how deeply we’ve gone into debt, we could cut out our hearts.
“Corporations are roaring. Wall Street is rolling in cash. C.E.O. bonuses are going gangbusters. It’s a really good time to be rich! If you’re poor, not so much.”
Fun fact he cites:
“[T]he spurious argument that cutting taxes for the wealthy will somehow stimulate economic growth is not borne out by the data. A look at the year-over-year change in G.D.P. and changes in the historical top marginal tax rates show no such correlation…”
Lastly even though I personally struggle with the whole concept of war, I find this aging Marine’s ideas interesting and worth thinking about:
“In Mr. West’s view, counterinsurgency strategy in Afghanistan is a feel-good, liberal theology that is turning the United States military into the Peace Corps and undermining its “core competency” — violence.”
I’ve always felt that this is the basic reason to have a military: to wreak violence and death on enemies. Even though I have a son who benefited from spending time in the service and nephews and nieces who have served and are still serving in military, I still feel uneasy at the morality of the whole thing. Mark Twain describes this nicely in his War Prayer (link to text).
As he ends his story: “It was believed afterward that the man was a lunatic, because there was no sense in what he said.”
I got a bunch of my tasks done yesterday: paid Mom’s and Eileen’s and Steve’s bills. Both of our accounts balanced to the penny. I have been trying to balance these on a weekly basis. Eileen helps if I can’t manage to make the numbers work. I like it when I can do it myself.
I did a modern dance class and a ballet class yesterday. I felt a bit more connected. Improvisation draws me on to innovate as I do my job. Yesterday seemed to be melody day. I always think melody but yesterday I tried to make beautiful and interesting melodies up on the spot. That was fun.
I finished music for my string players for Easter Sunday. I also outlined a plan for my little ensemble of volunteers called GELO (Grace Episcopal Liturgical Orchestra). Today I need to nail down an organ postlude for the Easter Sunday Vigil service (usually done on Saturday night, but this crew sort of does a faux sunrise service with the vigil ritual). Then I need to get titles and anthem lyrics to the secretary so she can finish up the booklet. Then get to work on doing several arrangements for GELO (That would be for viola, two cellos and piano, these are the people who have indicated they will be there).
I received some sheet music in the mail that I ordered.
Charles Ives’s “Five Piano Pieces” and his first piano sonata. Unfortunately I’ve been too busy to sit down and look at them. But soon I will.
“The president told his backers Thursday night that he expects Republicans to continue using that process to enact their political agenda under the guise of cutting spending. He specifically called into question the sincerity of Budget Committee Chairman Rep. Paul Ryan (R-Wis.), who crafted the House GOP’s controversial 2012 budget which includes significant and controversial cuts to Medicare and Medicaid.
“When Paul Ryan says his priority is to make sure, he’s just being America’s accountant … This is the same guy that voted for two wars that were unpaid for, voted for the Bush tax cuts that were unpaid for, voted for the prescription drug bill that cost as much as my health care bill — but wasn’t paid for,” Mr. Obama told his supporters. “So it’s not on the level.”
My cellist canceled rehearsal yesterday so I spent the time arranging music for my piano trio to play on Easter Sunday morning. I managed to finish adding string parts to the anthem we are singing and also arranging an organ piece for violin, cello and keyboard for the postlude. I’m over halfway through arranging another organ piece the prelude. I am planning to tuck my musicians back behind a modesty wall behind the organ. That way, they won’t have to suffer with unconscious people not noticing them and bumping into them or what not.
Next project is to arrange material for use with the Grace Episcopal Liturgical Orchestra for Maundy Thursday and Good Friday. This organization has not accomplished the task that I designed it for, namely to draw in multi-generational talented instrumentalists into an occasional performance at church. The reason it has not done this, I believe, is that I don’t contact 20 or so people personally. I send out an email, put announcements in the weekly bulletin. This works mostly with people who are self-motivated anyway to participate.
This time even two of those have indicated that they are too busy.
But my goal will be to use the people who have indicated they want to play and make it both a rewarding experience for them and an addition to the silly prayer of the Triduum.
This is a bit challenging because of the wide range of abilities of the players. But I think I can do it.
Ballet class was weird yesterday. I guess I should say that I was in a weird space. I felt disconnected. It was not helped by the fact that this teacher neglected to tell me I wasn’t needed for a class on Tuesday and then yesterday didn’t mention it. I’m sure it was just an oversight. I should have said something to her diplomatically. But I just sat and did my job and said nothing.
Besides burn out, I also find that as I age I become more and more reticent. I believe this is partly from pressure from my extended family and acquaintances and also our society seems to think that men (especially old men?) should be the silent type.
If you read this blog regularly you will probably find that amusing if not amazing. But that’s one of the reason for this blog. It’s a place where I can gab on and on.
My wife is an excellent listener and very supportive, but it’s not realistic to expect her to be the only outlet for my ideas and blather. I try to keep my logorrhea appropriate and sometimes screw that up because of my own failure to factor in other people’s boundaries. This is almost always inadvertent.
I did chat briefly with my lovely daughter, Sarah, yesterday on Skype. She is also a good listener but she lives in England and has a pretty busy life of her own. I had to cut our chat short so that I could go and do errands like grocery shop and pick up my suit at the cleaners and then exercise before Eileen got home.
I read Obama’s entire speech and commentary pro and con. I must say that most reaction seems pretty incoherent to me, but I like what Herzberg blogged. He is a writer I read regularly.
First Herzberg deftly describes Obama’s critics on the far left:
“…the disillusioned left, which is easily, almost perpetually disillusioned because it has such an ample supply of illusions. (A lot of lefties, notwithstanding their scorn for “the system,” seem to have an implicit naive faith in the workability of the mechanisms of American governance…).”
Then he describes himself (I relate to this)
Then there are “…people like me: liberals who continue to respect and admire Obama; who fully appreciate the disaster he inherited and the horrendous difficulty of enacting a coherent agenda even when your own party “controls” both Houses of Congress; who think his substantive record is pretty good under the circumstances; who dislike some of the distasteful compromises he has made but aren’t sure we wouldn’t have done the same in his shoes (etc.—you get the idea); but who are puzzled that our eloquent, writerly President seems to have done so little to educate the public about his own vision and to contrast it with that of the Republican right—which is to say, the Republicans.”
I have to say that the reaction of people like Charles Krauthamer and the WSJ editorial (both linked in the last post) does not make sense to me. I can’t even understand the logic of what they are saying which frustrates me. I would like to be able to think logically about people I disagree with, but the criticism I have read is incoherent. But come to think of it some of the support reaction was pretty incoherent to me as well. Maybe it’s just me.
Despite my ongoing burnout, modern dance class yesterday was fun. The movements the dancers make tend to be angular and sharp and have a different kind of beauty from classical ballet. More and more I find I am improvising music that sounds like these movements look to me. Satisfying.
I have now scanned in over a hundred pages of my father’s memoir and emailed it to interested people (my daughters, my son, my brother). Every time I send out an email I also include one published article and one sermon outline.
Holy week is staring me in the face.
I need to make some final choices about instrumental music. Plus I need to start planning beyond Easter Sunday. I am unmotivated, but am sure I will rally in time to get stuff done. Several parish musicians who usually play have indicated they are too busy this Holy Week. I wonder if this portends low attendance at these services.
Fortunately I received an email overnight that my violinist is willing to play at the later Easter Sunday service. This means I will have a cello and violin available for that service. I meet with these people today for our usual rehearsal. I think I’m going to curtail my blog and get to work on making some scores for them to read through today.
Plan to read the rest. I was glad but skeptical to hear the President talk about taking responsibility for each other in our society. This will probably never fly given the current political environment.
Here are the editorials I plan to read after I finish the speech.
This article mentioned the area where Eileen and I stayed when we visited this lovely city:
“On the charming triangular plaza named for George Orwell, who lived here during the Spanish Civil War, stone steps once invited young tourists to sit, drink themselves drunk and make noise through the night. The steps were recently removed, and in March a large round children’s playground was opened, in an effort to deter unruly loitering.”
“Instead of adopting the Republican language and argument, Democrats should be deploring it, pointing out that the deal was the result of extortionate pressure from the House and represents poor economic judgment during a nascent recovery…”
“Democratic leaders and President Obama’s failure to tell the truth about the budget deal for this year: It ushers in a denuded era of loss to vital government services, mostly at the expense of the most vulnerable.”
I rushed over to college yesterday only to find my 8:30 AM ballet class sitting in front of a TV monitor waiting to view a video. “Didn’t she tell you she wouldn’t need you today?” a student asked.
I walked home slower.
Since class was canceled I was able to fix Eileen breakfast and spend some time with her before she left for work.
Between having lunch with my Mom and spending time with Bach at the piano, I managed to ameliorate my burn out a small bit. It is encouraging to see my Mom’s outlook on life improving.
While she was in her shrink’s office I read Bach Collegium Japan, and John Eliot Gardiner by Alex Ross, a music writer I admire (link to his blog, The Rest is Noise). Once again I had the real copy of this article in the current issue, but this time I read it online.
Later in the day, I carefully played through Bach’s A major English suite. Lovely music. Here are the Prelude and Allemande lovingly played on the harpsichord by B. Van Asperen.
I also played through a few movements from his F major English suite (no. 4) working especially on the first movement.
Bach led me to Brahms which is what I was playing when Eileen arrived home last night. Music does soothe my soul, there is no doubt it.
In between, I purchased some MP3s. The first group was Prokofiev’s second piano sonata and Schumann’s G minor piano sonata. I put them together with Prokofiev’s first piano sonata and listened while I made Eileen’s supper.
Afterwards, I couldn’t resist buying and listening to Paul Simon’s new album, “So Beautiful or So What.”
Not bad for a 69 year old guy. I enjoyed listening to it.
Last night laying in bed and reading about Ives’s work “Thanksgiving” which began life as an organ piece and later becomes the fourth movement of his “A Symphony: New England Holidays.”
I realized that my database privileges at Hope College would allow me to instantly listen to this if it was on Naxos. And it was. And I did. Whew. Life is good.
Lots of Civil War stuff around due to the 150 years thing. I winced as a U of M NPR radio announcer stumbled over pronouncing sesquicentennial and then actually gave up. Ah literacy and preparation. Anyway, this is a good short article about how many Americans differ in how they see the Civil War.
This is a link to letters in response to an article on this topic. I especially liked the last one from U of Notre Dame poly sci prof, Sotirios A. Barber, in which he writes:
The modern G.O.P. believes that the current distribution of property and opportunity is basically fair. It believes that, in essence, egalitarian measures by government entail theft.
Its anti-unionism implies that even government’s concern for equal bargaining power entails theft, for management’s unequal bargaining power represents property fairly earned. The modern G.O.P. is a Social Darwinist party.
I’m pretty sure my schedule is starting to burn me out a bit. Yesterday I did 3.5 hours on the bench at ballet class. I continue to enjoy it, but I am watching the clock a bit more. Today I only have one class and am looking forward to that.
I have committed myself to playing for the May term. This looks like a bit of an increase in schedule. M-F 5-8 PM. Whew. Well, hell, I can use the money.
I continued thinking about Ives and Prokofiev yesterday and playing through their music (and that Schumann G minor Sonata). But by the middle of the day I was feeling pretty dull and tired mentally. After my last class I came home and poured myself a glass of wine and put on the dang TV. This is pretty unusual for me. Not the wine, but the TV.
Next week is Holy Week. And the last week of term. It promises to be kind of hectic. I am finding church discouraging. People misbehaving. Late paycheck. Probably just burn out, but nevertheless real enough.
I got up late and have to leave in a bit for class so here are today’s links:
“[T]he philosophy now dominating Washington discussion [is]… a philosophy that says the poor must accept big cuts in Medicaid and food stamps; the middle class must accept big cuts in Medicare (actually a dismantling of the whole program); and corporations and the rich must accept big cuts in the taxes they have to pay. Shared sacrifice!”
I also try to inform myself about people’s views I don’t necessarily agree with. The Wall Street Journal is a decent reporting outfit, but its editorial page usually has something I don’t agree with on it. So I try to make sure I read at least an article or two from this source a week.
Yesterday was the first day of mild weather we have had this year. Eileen washed her car. I sat outside and read poetry and my Charles Ives bio. Later we opened windows and let the lovely breeze air out the house.
On Saturday I finished The Laughing Policeman by Maj Sjöwall and Per Wahlöö. Written in the sixties, it’s a classic police procedural murder mystery that takes place in Sweden.
I started another Swedish mystery.
This kind of reading is strictly escape reading for me.
Church went well yesterday even though I was definitely not in the mood for it. The choir was less of a challenge behavior wise. They sang a Bach chorale setting of “Out of the Depths.” This is a Martin Luther rendition (German words and melody) of Psalm 130 which was the psalm of the day for the service. The organ music was also based on this melody: The prelude was “Out of the Depths (Jesus in the Desert)” from “Three Gospel Scenes Quoting Familiar Hymns” by James Biery.
The Postlude was a passacaglia like variation on the first few notes of the melody by the late German composer, Max Drischner.
Both went well. After church, a talented soprano decided to join the choir for a while before she moves away and joined us for our post-service rehearsal. That was nice.
In his book on Prokofiev, Boris Berman suggests that Prokofiev’s first piano sonata is written in the spirit of Schumann’s G minor piano sonata.
I have been playing my way through this piece. I find it quite lovely even though I am playing it under tempo in order to get the notes. Berman even goes so far as to say that they are motivically related. I can see this, but not sure that it’s a result of Prokofiev borrowing so much as sort of a basic building block of music.
Eileen pointed out to me that the communion hymn, Thuma mina, sounded like the Pulkingham Kyrie we have been singing. Pulkingham says only that she based her melody on African melodies (of which Thuma Mina is one). Both melodies begin with a filled-in descending fourth and proceed pretty much the same.
An essay from John Thompson. He describes what it’s like to almost be executed and then watch the people responsible for screwing up walk away with no consequences. The Supreme Court recently reversed the case which awarded him damages.
Got up this morning and put a descant by Erik Routley into Finale for the opeing hymn for this morning’s service. The tune is called 124TH and the words are “Eternal Lord of love, behold your church.”
I think I might be feeling a little guilty about my lack of motivation. Yesterday I had trouble doing anything too productive for work. Instead I cooked and studied Prokofiev, played piano and read mystery novels. Appropriate for a day off. But I had to drag myself to the church to rehearsal and prepare for today.
I was probably three parts exhausted and two parts discouraged about lack of paycheck. The last vanished when I saw that the church managed to get my deposit into my pending transactions online (see yesterday’s post for background on this).That was good.
I read the preface and the first three chapters in Boris Berman’s Prokofiev’s Piano Sonatas yesterday. The preface and the first chapter are background material on Prokofiev and Berman’s approach (he is an active concert pianist and teacher). The second chapter is about the first sonata.
Sergei Sergeyevich Prokofiev (1891-1953)
I numbered my score, labeled the themes according to Berman (it’s a one movement, strict sonata allegro form in a late romantic style), and played through the sonata. Great fun, really.
Prokofiev was 15 years old when he wrote the first draft of this sonata. Originally in three movements, he discarded the second two and presumably revised the first one into his first “Opused” composition.
Interestingly, his piano teacher at the time, Professor Anna Esipova at the St. Petersburg conservatory, (with whom he had a stormy student-teacher relationship) was critical of his pedaling in his own piece. She took the piece home and wrote in suggestions for better pedaling. As a mature pianist, Prokofiev was known for his restrained use of the pedal. In fact, the published versions of this sonata contain no pedal markings at all. Heh.
The fact that Prokofiev was a clear careful pianist who eschewed a lot of rubato and pedal is helpful in understanding his piano music. Once I learned this yesterday and returned to his first sonata at the piano, it made a ton more sense to me.
Prokofiev is living and composing at the same time as Charles Ives (one of my other current musical obsessions). Ives was about 17 years older than Prokofiev. But it interests me to think of all these composers early in the century coming up with music that uses new techniques. It reminds me of scientific discoveries that occur independently and simultaneously.
Of course composers work much differently than scientists. For one thing, I notice that both Ives and Prokofiev spent their life composing and revising old compositions. This is not very unusual for composers. But makes it harder for people trying to make story out of the events history (Who came up with what technique first? Who influenced who?).
In his Twentieth-Century Harmony: Creative Aspects and Practise, Vincent Persichetti cites Ives compositions 15 times and Prokofiev only 8, according to the index, anyway. Persichetti uses numerous examples which he does not specifically identify illustrating techniques. The numbers in the index seem to point instead to chapter lists of different compositions by different composers. There are many more for Stravinsky, Hindemith, and Schoenberg.
Charles M. Blow has some interesting observations about Obama:
For some, change has not come fast enough, if at all, or it has been change for the worse, and hope has slowly melted away. To those unhappy on the left, he’s a corporatist, war-waging, pusillanimous pushover who is silver-tongued and rubber-spined. To those who most oppose him on the right, he is a Socialist, spendthrift, republic-destroyer who is unfit, unqualified and literally, by way of his “Kenyan birth,” ineligible to be president.
I find that I disagree with all of these characterizations of the President.
Yesterday, I went online to do my bills and discovered that my church had not automatically deposited my paycheck. Since it was pretty early, I didn’t do anything until after my first ballet class. I called the church and asked the secretary if she knew anything about it. She checked her account online and found that she also had not received the expected paycheck.
Oops. It later turned out that the accountant had forgotten to finish her job. They should have it straightened out by Monday.
The secretary offered to write me a check from the church for $100 if I was short. I thanked her and said it was okay. I decided not to pay bills until after I see them money in my account (my usual procedure).
Over and over in my life as a musician, I keep having to not only earn my pay but then beg for it.
In fact in the last church before the one I am working at now, I actually walked away from a service when instead of a paycheck I had a note in my box about how they couldn’t pay me that week. Eventually I quit the job. I found it interesting that the people in the church seem largely unsympathetic to my quandary.
Oh well. Life is still good.
I ended up playing piano for ballet class for four hours yesterday. By the end of the day, I was pretty pooped, but I still managed to make supper for Eileen and me.
In between I found myself playing a lot of Bartok for some reason. Four hours of improvising seem to take up all my composition motivation. Maybe I can get some composing in today.
Dan Savage, the brilliant and foul-mouthed sex columnist, has become one of the most important ethicists in America. Are we screwed?By Benjamin J. Dueholm
Professor Dawkins, your book “The Greatest Show on Earth: The Evidence for Evolution” has just been published in Germany. The German title, though, is “The Creation Lie: Why Darwin Is Right.” Are you happy with that?
Started my day listening to the Mozart Bassoon concerto. Lovely way to start the day. Yesterday should have been a bit of a day off with only one ballet class in the morning and nothing else scheduled.
However, I ended up having another busy day. Treadmilled after ballet class. My Mom not only agreed to go out for lunch but wanted to do some shopping and go the ice cream shop downtown. I was happy to see her so engaged and interested. The sunlight might have had something to do with that. Afterwards I grocery-shopped and got home just in time to have a meal ready for Eileen when she came home. This all seemed to take quite a bit out of me.
Today I have a full schedule of three ballet classes: 8:30 AM, 11 AM and 3-5:30 PM.
My hero, Howard Rheingold, is offering an online course called “An Introduction to Mind Amplifiers” which he defines as “a five week course using asynchronous forums, blogs, wikis, mindmaps, social bookmarks, synchronous audio, video, chat, and Twitter.”
It costs $200 to officially sign up. But as far as I can tell from a cursory glance, anyone can sort of audit it and utilize the online resources.
I thought this article looked very interesting:
Vannevar Bush, “As We May Think,” The Atlantic Monthly, August, 1945
“In this visionary essay, written decades before the invention of the transistor, Bush imagined a machine that used telephone connection, miniature cameras and specially marked paper cards and microfilm to create an extension of the human mind, which he called ‘the Memex.’ ”
I continue reading in the Ives bio by Jan Swafford. Last night this paragraph jumped out at me:
Ives writes: “Father, who led the singing, sometimes with his cornet or his voice,sometimes with both voice and arms, and sometimes … with French horn or violin, would always encourage the people to sing their own way …. If they threw the poet or the composer around a bit, so much the better for the poetry and the music.”
George Ives, father of Charles
Swafford continues: “In the same spirit was George’s [Ive’s father] observation about stonemason John Bell’s off-key bellow at camp meetings: ‘Watch him closely and reverently, look into his face and hear the music of the ages. Don’t pay too much attention to the sounds—for if you do, you may miss the music. You won’t get a wild, heroic ride to heaven on pretty little sounds.’ ”
from Jan Swafford’s Charles Ives: A Life with Music
I was recently chatting with a fine musician about the hymns that Ives uses in his music. She was saying how she found the sound of bad out-of-tune singing distasteful. I had to admit that I have that sound lodged in my ears in a nostalgic way which I associate with my childhood in Tennessee. Ives brings together American singers bellowing and his own adept virtuosity as a composer and performer. This attracts and interests me.
I noticed this book laying around at the library recently. Checked it out and read it yesterday. I like it. The Inspector (whom Snicket says “was a very handsome and intelligent person, not unlike myself) interviews sections of the orchestra looking for the murderer of the Composer. I hate to ruin the ending but it turns out that all musicians murder music occasionally and this plays into the denouement.
The government looks like it’s going to shut down today. It looks like cynical maneuvering by the leaders in Congress. Republicans, Tea Party Expressers and Democrats seem to think that others will be hurt politically. Of course, the entire country loses when our elected officials lose the will to govern well.
One of the ballet teachers has been ill this week. She canceled her classes on Monday. Yesterday she asked them to meet without her and appointed a student in each class to lead them.
I was impressed with both the student leaders and their classes yesterday. The energy was a bit different, almost goofy. But the focus was pretty much there. And the discipline.
The series of moves in a given dance exercise are called “combinations.” The student teachers began by giving these instructions for each exercise, but encouraged class members to offer their own. Which they did. The spirit in which this exchange went on was giddy but respectful.
In one of the classes, the teacher had prepared a handout on “The Physics of Dance” (link to html version of this handout). The student leader led the class through a quick review of it. She told them that she wanted to do her graduate study on this topic. She seemed to be very versed in physics.
I tend to think of college students a bit negatively these days. I live near a conservative college plus when I meet people who are college educated they often have huge holes in their reasoning and even empirical knowledge.
Watching ballet students has changed this a bit in me. These students are actually too old for a conventional ballet career. But they love the dance. And they work at and it and do it well. Their personal character is obvious.
When I taught Music Appreciation a few years back, it seemed to me that students were basically looking for another notch on their belt to get them closer to getting a degree. Most were fundamentally disinterested and unmotivated. At best they were mildly curious. I saw this as a challenge and enjoyed awakening in them a sense of their own ability to connect to music.
I can’t imagine them having the motivation I see in these ballet students. Probably an unfair comparison. But nonetheless it has been instructive to me to get a better perspective on the capabilities in college age people that I believed were there but lacked anecdotal evidence of.
I have been sort of following this election. We elect actors to public office in the USA, so why not pop singers in Haiti. It will be interesting to see how this man governs.
Michigan feels like it is preceding the rest of the country in sinking into a black hole. I mourn Detroit and her symphony and her many wonderful attributes like the Art Institute, the great historical architecture, my alma mater Wayne State, and many other things.
A surprisingly interesting portrait of Bill Cunningham, the 82-year-old New York Times fashion photographer.
Good quotes:
Talking about the time he refused to take money for his work at Details after Si Newhouse bought the magazine, Cunningham says: “You see, if you don’t take money, they can’t tell you what to do, kid. … Money’s the cheapest thing. Liberty, freedom is the most expensive.”
Cunningham is asked if he has ever had a romantic relationship in his life.
“Now do you want to know if I’m gay?” he says, smiling uneasily.
“Isn’t that a riot? Well, that’s probably why the family wanted to keep me out of the fashion world.” Then he answers simply, “I haven’t,” adding, “I suppose you can’t be in love with your work, but I enjoyed it so much.”
Talking about his Catholic faith as “a good guidance in your life,” he gets choked up for a few seconds before grinning and confiding: “As a kid, I went to church and all I did was look at women’s hats.”
I fell in love with some choral music yesterday. The harmonies in this music resonate in my ears with great beauty. It sounds to me like it could easily have been written last week.
It was written in the 1890s by a 20 something Charles Ives.
Charles Ives (1874 – 1954)
What was he doing when he wrote these psalms? In Charles Ives: A life with music, Jan Swafford quotes Stravinsky about the void that the 20th century composer shaking off older conventions faced.
Stravinksy wrote in his book Poetics: “… finding myself before the infinitude of possibilities that present themselves, I have the feeling that everything is permissible to me… if nothing offers me any resistance, then any effort is inconceivable… and consequently every understanding becomes futile.”
Ives peered into this infinitude with a cool Yankee indifference. He was writing music for a future no one could imagine.
Stravinsky was a young guy in the 1990s.
Igor Stravinsky (1882 - 1971)
He was 8 years younger than Ives. Schoenberg was the same age as Ives.
Arnold Schoenberg (1874 - 1951)
Swafford points out that Schoenberg was a late bloomer and came up with his hugely influential compositional ideas much later than Ives.
And then there’s this guy:
Béla Bartók (1881-1945)
His music resounds with harmonies that Ives uses in his early psalm settings. Ives wrote these pieces in hovering combined textures called bi-tonal harmony. Apparently these pieces created in his youth were the only pieces where he used this technique all the way through a composition. He tried it and then moved on. Bartok later exploited this technique in many wonderful pieces.
It’s hard to imagine how Ives heard his music. Usually it was so far-fetched to the American ears who heard it, it provoked laughter. He constantly self-censored his music and tried to tone down his experiments in efforts to get accepted and published. Later in life, he restored his original intentions. And like any composer, he constantly recomposed his work. In the past decades in efforts to establish who came up with what technique first, Ives has been suspected of back dating some of his work. This is true of his setting of Psalm 90.
The truth seems to be more that when he put the good parts back in he was working from pencil sketches and memories of sketches and his evolved musical ideas.
I say, “Who cares!” What cool music.
Then there is the World’s Fair-like 1893 Columbian Exhibition in Chicago. Ives is there.
John Philip Sousa (1854-1932)
John Philip Sousa is there. His band included two songs, “Ta-ra-ra Boom-de-ay!”
and “After the Ball” in their performances at the fair.
The brass band sound and specifically these two songs caught the imagination of the American public. The young Ives must have heard these songs in Chicago. He later used them both in compositions.
Scott Joplin (c. 1867 – April 1, 1917)
Scott Joplin is there. It is thought that Ives probably heard him perform. Joplinesque ragtime rhythms permeate Ives’ later work. It was a great time in the flowering of American music. The hugely influential American conductor, Theodore Thomas, quit his position as music director for the Exhibition half way through saying, “for the remainder of the Fair music shall not figure as an art at all, but be treated on the basis of an amusement.” In retrospect his words almost seem like an indictment of how classical music wanders away from its audience in the 20th century leaving some voids to be filled by fascinating wonderful music of the “amusement” kind.
The last decade of the 19th century was a fascinating time.
Johannes Brahms (1883-1897)
Brahms is writing some of his loveliest music for solo clarinet and solo piano.
Claude Debussy (1862-1916) & Erik Satie (1866-1925)
Debussy and Satie are writing and squabbling in Paris. Both with very different styles and aesthetics.
Jelly Roll Morton (18?? - 1941)
There is some doubt about when he was exactly born, but the fabulous Jelly Roll was a young man at this time.
W. C. Handy (1873-1958)
W. C. Handy was an active musician at the time as well. He later popularizes a form of the Blues.
It boggles my mind that all these people were alive and making fascinating music in the same period.
I bookmarked this in order to keep track of what happened yesterday at Wisconsin polls. At this writing, it’s too early to tell. This article maintains that this election is a referendum on Walker’s extreme actions against unions. I’m not sure I buy that kind of speculation but it’s interesting to watch. Here’s the link to the morning report in Milwaukee.
Mrs. Disney, I’m sorry.
It doesn’t feel like I’ve done anything great so far.
I can still see you looking a bit like a mature Kathryn Hepburn
concentrating on writing the note on my report card:
“Stephen, I’m expecting great things of you!”
Your last name was magic to me,
as were you.
I imagined your husband whom I never met
must have been like the Sunday night TV Walt Disney.
When I was in my teens, my family came back to Tennessee.
The little church where my Dad used to be the minister
had moved to a larger fancier building on the edge of town.
We were there to help celebrate their new digs.
I called you on the new church phone.
You acted like you remembered me.
One of the hundreds of messy kids
who passed through your classroom.
I wanted to believe this.
Just as a kid, I clapped
and helped Mary Martin/Peter Pan bring “Tink” back to life
on my family’s little black and white TV set screen.
Now, I don’t think it was important
whether you actually remembered me.
What was important is that at a moment’s notice
you were there again.
Like magic.
I have been thinking lately of the house where I grew up.
It stood right next to the old church.
There was a pear tree in the back yard
I used to climb it and sit and eat pears.
There was a crazy lady next door who would holler at me
for no apparent reason.
At night I could lay in bed and hear the train whistle blast.
The tracks were just across the street.
A few doors down was Crescent School
where I was in your second grade class.
In Google street view
the old house and church are both gone.
Crescent School is still there.
Peering at the screen, now,
I recognize the slope of the hill
behind the school
where the playground no longer stands.
Probably the closest I’ve come to touching greatness
is performing great music
and reading great books.
And who can deny loving
and living with another person for decades
is deep and wonderful like greatness must be?
Watching my children be born
and grow into life is deep like that.
Is that something of what you meant?
At 59 I find my musical skills improving.
This opens up more music for me
to actually touch and create.
My life deepens.
I spend time staring at my computer screen.
Watching for the magic.
I know I put this link up yesterday. But I hadn’t read it yet. It’s adapted from Adam Goodheart’s book, 1861: The Civil War Awakening. As I mentioned on Facebook it shows how history unravels from small actions of real people. Recommended.
Yesterday was a particularly challenging Sunday to work with the choir. Anxiety seemed very high in several members. At the same time, coherence of this anxiety was down. Several people came in late, without their music and proceeded to struggle through the rehearsal. Plus we weren’t sounding sound very good, vocal wise in this rehearsal.
Part of my job is to help a group of people with limited commitment to perform music in service in ways that are as artistic as possible. Yesterday was definitely a triage day. Half way through preparation of the anthem I switched strategies from teaching the anthem to working on vocal production.
I had difficulty keeping people focused.
To show how desperate I was, for the first time with this group of singers I mentioned my little maxim for musicians:
To be early is to be on time.
To on time is to be late.
To be late is unforgivable.
I quickly appended that I understood that church choir was a very small part of their lives and that I do not expect them to be professional in their commitment. But that the music does not understand this.
I felt that I had to make this comment to reinforce the confidence and morale of the singers who are on time and prepared and focused. Plus for my own integrity.
Speaking of which this was a particularly good week for the final execution in public of the organ music I prepared. I chose two pieces both of which has some technical challenges for me. I have been experimenting around with better practice techniques. One very simple almost silly idea is to insist to myself that I play sections through at least 8 times when rehearsing them.
Sunday morning found me doing some final rehearsal of sections this way while I waited for choir members to arrive.
Then in the prelude and the postlude I was able to focus pretty clearly on “making music” as we musicians say. I was very satisfied with the result.
My cellist handed me an envelope with two pop songs she needs arranged for her string quartet: Yellow by Coldplay and November Rain by Guns N’ Roses. I agreed to try my hand at that. This is just the sort of thing I enjoy doing.
After an intense post service rehearsal I came home pretty exhausted. After lunch I finally installed the back up drive I purchased recently.
My blood pressure had spiked this week a bit (158/97), so I made myself treadmill even though I was exhausted.
Walking to church yesterday I started writing a poem or essay or something about my second grade teacher, Mrs. Disney. Will post if I finish it and I feel like it’s worth reading.
Today I have a full day ahead of me: three ballet classes and a worship commission meeting.
This is the link I looked at after my blood pressure spiked. I have been drinking a bit more but I’m not sure that is the problem. This article linked in to Alcoholism and alcohol abuse – PubMed Health which in turn links back in to Hypertension – PubMed Health. Whenever I evaluate my drinking habits, I find that I am historically a heavy drinker, but do not exhibit any of the classic alcoholic symptoms like disruption of work habits or relationship problems. I think the spike is probably related to a bunch of stuff in my life including stress and exhaustion. Will continue to try to lose weight, moderate the drinking a bit, and exercise. Can’t deny that I’m just an old guy.
Up early poking around in the Hope College online access to Groves Music Dictionary. I have been using this research tool for years and years. In the past, I routinely photocopied articles and the bibliography section at the end of them for further research. Groves was considered the first place to begin when trying to learn in deatil about Gregorian Chant, biographical details of a composer, you name it.
One of the reasons I wanted to move to a small town with a college in 1987 was continued access to the print edition of the New New Groves Dictionary of Music. Any small liberal arts music department would have a copy. Sure enough, Hope College did and does.
When Groves went online I became very excited because of the possibility of these bibliographies being kept up to date. This indeed is the case. But access is restrict to those who can pay an exorbitant subscription rate or could get access through their institution. I just checked and it costs $295 a year for an individual online subscription to what is now Oxford Music Online which includes not only the Groves but the The Oxford Companion to Music, The Oxford Dictionary of Music and the Encyclopedia of Popular Music. Needless to say this cost is prohibitive to many many people who would use this.
But probably most of them (like me at this point) can get access through the college or university they work at.
Due to often not being connected with a college or university since graduating in 1987 (pre internet boom years much less online subscription), I’m not that experienced at online research. However judging from this morning it doesn’t seem too difficult.
I was excited to see each entry of the bibliography on Charles Ives had a link.
Unfortunately all this link does is open a window with links to Hope College’s A-Z list of Journals and their catalog. So it’s not site specific to the resource. But still with a few clicks you can find out if the article you seek is available online or if the college has the book listed. I have started a list of books I want to grab Monday. Also pulled down an article on Ives full text, “Bad Resolutions or Good? Ives’s Piano Takeoffs” by Michael J. Alexander, Tempo, no.158 (1986), 8–14 (link to a first page citation… blah, notice that non-subscribers can get access to this ONE article for the reasonable price of $34. You’ve got to be kidding me!)
This all brings me around to thinking about the tiering that has already happened in access to information and is happening even as I write. I have believed all my academic life in the need for people to have access to ideas. When I was in grad school, the profs would assign reading that had limited access (one copy available at the library). I would routinely make photocopies of this primary material for the entire small class. Eventually the department wrote a letter prohibiting me from using the copy machine. Fuck learning. I remember well the ex-grad student who guarded the machine. I’m sort of proud of this.
Likewise, I feel that people who are interested in understanding their field should somehow have reasonable access to the material. Often this only means connecting to a local library as a visiting scholar. But if you are like me and have very unconventional interests in your area (plus in 1987 Hope College was even more calcified than it is now and not easy to approach if you happen to not be a clean cut white Christian), this is not as easy as it sounds.
I have recently purchased online subscriptions to my local paper and the New York Times. I think of this like pledging to NPR. I want to support the institutions I need access to. But when the cost of these becomes so exorbitant, I begin to wonder about the tiering of our society. Check this article out: AT&T Imposing 150GB Data Cap for DSL Customers Starting May 2? –PC Magazine
This morning I was listening to Media Minutes March 18th broadcast on my MP3 player. They quoted people who said their was no reason for this cap, that the idea that increased congestion is causing any kind of a need for this charge is unfounded (link to article about this on Wired). The “haves and the haves-not” is not only a disparate economic situation in the USA and other countries, it is also a restriction of ideas and innovation. Sheesh.
Some interesting observations from Egypt’s current Grand Mufti [The title of Grand Mufti refers to the highest official of religious law in a Sunni Muslim country. The Grand Mufti issues legal opinions and edicts, fatw?, on interpretations of Islamic law for private clients or to assist judges in deciding cases. … link to source]
I have followed Malcolm X since before he was killed. These are three related links about the untimely death of an author and research just days before his magnum opus was to be published. I am planning to wait a few months until some of the people who purchase this 600 page work are seeking to sell it used online. Than I plan to buy and read it. Heh.
This is a link to the MP3 of a recent broadcast which includes the Media Minutes mentioned above. I am about half way through listening. Anya Schiffrin discusses economic media coverage in a fascinating and enlightened way. Recommended.
I have always enjoyed writing and performing music. Often the music I write, I write with specific performers in mind. Then it is very satisfying to go through the preparation and playing of the music with the very people who were in my head when I wrote a piece.
I was talking to a friend this week and mentioned that I have not followed a conventional career as a composer, but that I am interested in writing music and then having it performed.
I used to be much more interested in publishing.
I submitted compositions to several publishers and even managed to get a few choral pieces published. I got to know the executive directors of a couple of publishing houses. They began by encouraging me. They ended up discouraging me, not actively, but by their insistence that my music should follow the norms of church music as they saw them.
Fair enough.
The men I had contact with have all retired and been replaced by people who are probably even less interested in my work. Now I look at their catalogs strictly as someone who might purchase and perform their work. I find the pieces they are publishing written with conventional craft (usually) but I also find the work mostly deadly boring.
This is a tiny vindication of my own lack of conventionality. Whippy skippy. I also feel that at least my work is available to anyone who can make their way to my website and navigate it. Admittedly this is probably not many people. But at least it’s publicly available.
The only recent evidence I have of people interested is that a representative of a publisher was lurking on my site and noticed I had used a tune of theirs in a compositions. He emailed me and politely requested that I purchase copyright permission in order to use it. I pugnaciously just removed the composition from my site. Screw em. I guess they didn’t see any worth in my work except as a possible source of income for their organization.
Also I receive an annual humiliating copyright check from Morningstar which lines out in detail how many copies my titles have sold in the last year. That would be 81 copies of the 3 titles (link to a list of them at publisher web site) I have with their catalog sold during in the July through Dec period of 2010. I figure these are pity purchases from ex-colleagues. Heh. They also mis-attributed someone else’s title to me so that the check (which was for a whopping $18.25) wasn’t really all mine.
I emailed them last week about this error but haven’t heard back yet.
When I mentioned to Eileen that I didn’t know if people were accessing my work online (via my “Mostly Original Sheet Music Page“), she suggested that I put a request for people to let me know if they download any music. I did so this morning.
So despite all this, I continue to compose. Recently I rewrote the piece I composed in memory of my maternal grandparents and added it to my Mostly Original Sheet Music Page (Psalm 121 (For Jim and Thelma Midkiff, my grandparents). SAB, Violin, Keyboard pdf ).
And yesterday walking back and forth to my college ballet gig, I had a full blown idea for a multi-movement piece for my piano trio. I find that talking about a work in progress is not always helpful, so I’ll leave it at that. Suffice it to say that I am thinking about simply writing this piece and performing it and then probably posting the score here. We’ll see if the idea comes to fruition. I have been pondering it for quite a while.
I also have a couple other pieces in mind. I have started an organ multi-movement piece as well.
Yesterday I was proud of my improvs at my two classes. There at least I know that my ability to make music up has an immediate function and the possibility of appreciation by people hearing it. Satisfying.
This article by Steven Greenhouse annoyed me because whoever wrote the headline didn’t seem to read far enough into the piece to find this sentence which specifically contradicts it using similar language: “The Wisconsin law is in ways tougher toward unions..” Sheesh.
I have been to this library and was amazed at the whitewashing the Watergate story received there. This sounds like it’s changed. For the better. I lived through this time and remember it quite well.
A “defendant without means or power” loses 18 years of his life due to a the illegal actions of a “prosecutors’ brazen ambition to win the case, at all costs.” Supreme court reversed damages awarded by a lower court. Favorite sentence in this article: “The district attorney, Harry Connick Sr., acknowledged the need for this training but said he had long since “stopped reading law books” so he didn’t understand the duty he was supposed to impart.”
Ultimately I find that Krugman’s article is about GOP “framing” the idea that cutting government spending and employment would create jobs even when understanding that studies prove otherwise.
Wikipedia articles on framing from a social science perspective (link) and a psychological one (link).
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