I ran across an interesting passage or two in Reinventing Bach yesterday.
In the first passage the author Paul Elie compared the Bach cello suites as revived in the 20th century to two pieces of visual art.
The first was Gaudi’s Sagrada Familia which Eileen and I saw in person in 2004.
I have been a life long fan of the Casals recordings and Gaudi.
Elie used the phrase “distressed stone cathedral” in referring to Sagrada Familia.
I had not connected the beauty of Gaudi’ vision with Bach’s cello suites. But I like the connection.
All of these Barcelona pics are from a trip Eileen and I took with Sarah and Matthew. It was an amazing experience.
This was the view from our hotel window. The “hotel” was several floors in very large building. It was also the hotel where George Orwell recuperated from being shot in the Spanish Civil War. Curiously, Elie also mentions Orwell a few paragraphs earlier in reference to this same war which was an important event in Casals life as well. Casals was living in Barcelona and actually rehearsing with an orchestra as the war began to unfold.
Elie also compares the Bach suites as played by Casals to Giacometti’s Palace at 4 AM. This one I didn’t know.
I think it looks pretty cool in black and white as well as color.
In addition to these visual comparisons, Elie notes the relationship of Albert Schweitzer recordings to Casals. I end with this (I quite like it).
“It is revealing to compare Casals’s cello suites to the organ recordings Albert Schweitzer made at All Hallows. Schweitzer’s Bach is a sound at the far end of a long dark tunnel; Casals’s cello is heard up close. Schweitzer takes us back to the remote place that is the past; Casals sets out from the past to come and find us where we are.”
Elie is making the point that recording changed and actually helped the dissemination of great music like Bach through wonderful recordings like Casals.
I figured out why my Dupre exercises defeated me so easily Monday. I had remembered them much easier and was frustrated when my usual Monday fatigue seemed to be seeping in as I attempted them. Yesterday I realized that instead of beginning with his first exercise which consists of harmonizing a scale in all keys with root chords, I had plunged into the second exercise where he suggests inversions of chords to allow the bass note to move in contrary motion to the scale.
If this sounds like gobbledygook to you, just think of trying to run before walking or skipping into the middle of a language textbook of a language you don’t know very well.
Anyway, yesterday rather than begin with the easier exercises (which I fingered silently in ballet class while I was not needed), when I got to the organ bench I carefully worked through the more difficult exercise in all Major keys making sure my voice leading was text book.
Drupes began his “preliminary” exercises with a thorough grounding in textbook harmony which is an exacting process that strictly controls how each note of one chord moves the note of another chord (voice leading). Frankly, I’m not sure how important this is to interesting improvising, but am willing to put my self through these paces from time to time to help my own self image as a musician.
I began my second book of Trethewey poems yesterday. It seems to be her latest. I am enjoying it a bit more. In her first book, it took me a while to realize that her use of historical slave and racial bigotry imagery grew out of her own experience as a child of what we used to quaintly call a “mixed marriage” (You know. Like the president. Heh.)
I thought it was interesting that her words at first had made me uncomfortable enough to find learning more of her own situation made a difference to my understanding. In my silly ideal thinking, this should not necessarily have been so. I believe that being a member of some designated group does not automatically qualify one as an expert about it. But at the same time my brain is mundane enough that I cast around for an author’s orientation and background to help me understand their work.
Sigh.
Anyway one of her multi section poems in Thrall is called “Miracle of the Black Leg.” It uses the legend of the saints Cosmas and Damian surrounding the amputation of the leg of one person that is used to replace the sick leg of another. The person losing the leg is a moor (as Tretheway has it in her poem).
Wow. I had never heard of this story. Besides the prominent racial overtones, I wonder about the idea of transplanting limbs. It seems so medically involved to me. Very weird that it is a legendary miracle dating to possibly the fourth century.
Trethewey footnotes two books to this poem.
The Phantom Limb Phenomenon: A Medical, Folkloric, and Historical Study, Texts and Translations of tenth- to Twentieth-Century Accounts of Miraculous Restoration of Lost Body Parts by Douglas B. Price and Neil J. Twombly. I don’t know about you, but I take solace in the fact that this stuffy looking little tome even exits. Very cool.
Also, One Leg in the Grace: The Miracle of the Transplantation of the Black Leg by the Saints Cosmas and Damian by Kees W. Zimmerman.
St. Damian. Ah yes, I spent some time working as a musician in church dedicated to this saint in Detroit. My first Catholic job. I read the Vatican II documents there and wondered if anybody else I was working with had actually read them.
Jimmy Carter quits being a Southern Baptist for reasons of principle. Makes sense to me. Also it’s admirable and looks difficult to leave something so ingrained in oneself.
I woke up with my head buzzing with ideas for the local American Guild of Organist chapter meetings. It has been decades since I have been active with this chapter. I attended a potluck last night graciously hosted by my friend Rhonda Edgington. As usual when I see faces and meet people I am struck by the potential of the situation hence my morning buzzing. I emailed off a list to Rhonda just to stop my brain from whirring.
It looks like my piano trio has agreed to read through Beethoven’s C minor (Op 1/3). This is fun and goofy because I asked them to think about it due to its importance to the novel I am reading: An Unequal Music by Vikram Seth. This happens to me more than I like to admit. I will be reading something that mentions music or a composer and it will draw me to the actual music.
When I was younger I saw this as sort of a weakness of character, getting blown around and influenced by everything I came in contact with. Now at sixty-one I rationalize it as as intellectual hunger but actually it still feels like being easily influenced.
Now I have to print off some music. The piano part is 37 pages long. I think I will do that at church instead of using my printer at home.
For some reason I read through Liszt’s transcription of Beethoven’s 6th Symphony, first movement on the piano yesterday. Then I listened to it as I made the salad for the AGO potluck.
The salad was a combination of greens, sliced pears, gorgonzola cheese, chopped walnuts, dried cranberries, red onion rings, lightly dressed with balsamic vinegar and olive oil.
It’s rainy in Holland Michigan.
I found myself with a bit more energy yesterday than usual for a Monday. That is, until I sat down at the organ and tried to work on Dupre improv exercises.
I pick these up from time to time and work through them. It’s more about harmonic progressions than improvisation…. what we called “keyboard harmony” when I was in college.
Anyway, I was doing great until I tried to work through these yesterday. Then I started feeling tired.
Started the day feeling pretty good about my improv technique. After this I was pretty sure I suck. Typical jupe mood swings.
Warning to Republican readers. This is a partisan article. One that I agree with:
Republicans live in an intellectual bubble. They get their news from Fox and other captive media, they get their policy analysis from billionaire-financed right-wing think tanks, and they’re often blissfully unaware both of contrary evidence and of how their positions sound to outsiders.
Of course we all live in our own bubbles. I just see more critical thinking happening in non-partisan circles.
What time is it? I asked and looked at the proffered wrist watch of a parishioner. Good. I had seven minutes till church starts, time to run upstairs and grab another descant for the Gloria. I moved quickly through the commons area, up the stairs and into the choir room. I pulled out the folder of an absent soprano and grabbed the descant. Since I had some extra time, I penciled the corrected notes for the mistake in it I had just noticed downstairs in the choir area.
As I returned to the choir area, my boss said jauntily that it was time to begin the prelude, eh? I told her my prelude was about three minutes or so and was she sure? She smiled gamely and said it’s already five minutes after the starting time. I looked at HER watch.
Damn. I had mis-read the time!
I shuffled through my music, came up with the prelude and began playing it. I had carefully worked over the prelude at the piano that morning in a last minute final rehearsal. It was a fugue by Mozart. Not maybe one of his best pieces but certainly a respectable (and from my point of view, interesting) fugue. I had decided that I would probably perform it under tempo a bit which would allow me to do some of the trading buy cheap generic valium back and forth of voices between hands (it’s really just for manuals or the keyboards, no pedal).
The voice writing is clear and beautiful and I wanted to be sure and execute it so that the fugue could be heard.
But now I was late. A quicker tempo would be helpful not only to the sense of the piece but also it would get the service started just a bit sooner.
So I began the fugue much quicker than I had planned.
Not in a good way. For example, number four: “Like colleges, airports see customers as powerless transients. Hey, you’re going to be gone tomorrow, but they’ll still be here.”
Thank you to Cory Doctorow for putting this up on Boing Boing.
This article has the amazing phrase regarding manhole explosions: “clearly gone beyond what it is statistically reasonable.” Ahem. There is a statistically reasonable number of this things?
Last night Eileen and I joined our friends, Rhonda and Mark Edgington, to attend a dance recital by Peter Kyle.
One of the things that struck me about it was the music that accompanied the dance “KnowOne.” There were three players: keyboard, bass and drums.
The group is named “the Michael Bellar/The AS-Is Ensemble.” You can get a sense of their sound from this promo video.
There was only one drummer last night (the guy with beard in the video).
First of all I was relieved there was actually live music for the dance. But by the end of the evening I was feeling pretty good about my own improvising.
Earlier in the day as I sat in a classroom waiting to accompany my viola player for her solo for Solo and Ensemble Festival I read an interview with Robert Nicholls, an organist who won the 2012 National Competition in Organ Improvisation. It makes me crazy that the interview is not available to link online.
In the interview (by Christa Rakich) Nicholls has words of advice for people who want to improvise. Trained organists are supposed to improvise. There are schools of thought about how, plus many books to work through. I have always felt a bit out of place with my own ideas about improvising.
I have developed some rules of thumb for myself. First of all I tend toward the spontaneous. In other words the more worked out an improvisation is (for me) the more it begins to approach composing.
I guess I do this in order to distinguish in my own head the difference since I do both activities.
Weirdly the criteria I have for a good improvisation is that it is a good composition which is made up on the spot.
I see the contradiction in this approach but unfortunately it is one I seem to be stuck with.
I improvised music before I formally studied it. Maybe that’s part of why I approach it the way I do. I trace my improvising back to playing in little rock bands which performed at wedding receptions and dances for young people in the late 60s and early 70s.
I was finishing up high school when I befriended a slightly older musician who used to show up and talk me into splitting for a U-haul rental trailer to take our equipment from Flint Michigan to Oscoda where his parents had a cabin and we played for clubs on Wurtsmith Air Force Base housed there in Northern Michigan.
I vividly remember improvising on tunes by the Doors whose music I found as an exemplar of improvising. In retrospect I hear their music as much as what has developed as “minimalism” as rock and roll.
So my early experiences of improvising were both solitary (alone in my father’s church at the piano) and with a group (playing the clubs at the Air Base).
There was structure to these improvisations however rudimentary.
Later after I morphed from playing in bands to playing in churches for money. I continued to improvise seeking little moments in the service when a bit of music was needed and making it up.
I later found out that classical pipe organ players often improvise as part of their arsenal.
In the meantime I had become pretty trained in traditional keyboard harmony even to the point of being hired as an undergrad by my teacher to teach the class when he was away.
Time and time again I have worked through textbooks about improvising for classical pipe organ. Usually they feel a bit stilted, but good discipline.
It is this point of view of discipline and structure that I illicit from the Nicholls interview.
After reading his interview, when I rehearsed organ yesterday I found myself working through the hymns for today, playing them in other keys (something I have always found challenging) and playing the melodies in canon. These are disciplines that are important I know. I continue to learn them.
But after listening to the sometimes rambling improvisations of Michael Bellar and his band last night I felt very much better about my own meager abilities. One of the weaknesses I perceived in their music was the lack of solid composed musical material (themes and such). One of the strengths was the engaging rhythm, especially that sound emitting from the bass and drums. They were fabulous players.
Both of these aspects of music (solid musical materials such as melodies and harmonies & interesting engaging rhythms) are areas of improvisation I strive to achieve.
Yesterday morning stumbling about in the near dark I accidentally tripped on the wire that connects my laptop to my speaker system. I fell and the speakers went flying. The laptop remained on the stool where we were using it to watch tv the night before. I picked myself up and went on with my morning.
Later after returning from grocery shopping and wanting to listen to some music while I put away the groceries and straightened the kitchen, I discovered that the speakers would no longer work with the laptop.
I plugged the speakers into my desktop and they didn’t work there as well.
I ended up taking speakers and laptop to a local computer repair shop. The service man checked out the speakers and told me there was nothing wrong with them. When I tested them at home I plugged them in incorrectly.
The laptop however would take several days to diagnose and repair.
So I am laptopless. Bah.
I used my netbook to read the paper and treadmill yesterday.
The whole day yesterday I seemed to be a bit out of sorts. Mislayed my keys. Discovered I had let one of my Mom’s credit cards go unpaid to the point that it was not working. Started projects like folding clothes and then leaving off in the middle. I only practiced Schubert at the piano. Didn’t work on music for upcoming Sundays. I believe my fatigue might be getting to me. But who knows?
I am due in Muskegon this morning to accompany my viola player at her Solo and Ensemble Festival. Will be leaving in about an hour. Have added an extra half hour to travel time since it seems to have snowed even more last night.
It has been fun to come in contact with this young player once a year for these festivals (she usually gets ones but opts out of the next level at state). Her tone and abilities have improved each year to the point that this year she is making some very lovely sounds with her instrument. I love viola.
I continue to be interested in how things are in China. Guangzhou is miles from Beijing where my daughter and son-in-law are living. But it still interests me. Good anecdotal reporting in this article.
Drone technology is driving a lot of global warfare. I find the lack of transparency, defined law and ethics very troubling around this remote killing.
So the President didn’t mention the deficit in his inauguration speech. Krugman thinks that it’s hopeful the public discussion is going to move past this bogus talk.
I just got a call from the dance department that they do not need me this morning for class. This is a reprieve for sure. Yay! I was just skipping blogging and forcing myself to have something to eat to fortify me for the walk in the cold.
On Wednesday I decided to learn two pieces from the Fitzwilliam Virginal Book to play a week from Sunday.
I have owned this two volume Dover collection since the late sixties. I purchased it when I was building my goofy Zuckerman harpsichord (which is now NOT in working condition as it lays around in parts in my dining room awaiting installation of new jacks…. ay yi yi. I miss it.)
We are singing a little Tallis anthem that Sunday. There are actually pieces by him in this collection. But they are long and maybe not as interesting as the two I landed on.
I love William Byrd’s music and his keyboard stuff is no exception. This is a charming little Fantasia which will make a nice prelude.
And then I thought the title of this one was funny so I’m scheduling it as the postlude. The composer is probably Father Tregian who was thought to have a hand in assembling the collection itself.
The Byrd sounds very cool on piano. I’m able to bring out certain voices. But at this point I’m still thinking I will perform it on organ.
I checked out Mao: A Life by Philip Short from the library yesterday.
It’s a daunting tome but I’m curious about the history of the Communist party in China. I have already read over three hundred pages in Mao: The Unknown Story by Jung Chang and Jon Halliday.
My son-in-law and daughter Elizabeth (who are living in China right now) both said that the latter is suspect for some reason. It is highly footnoted but I have found that it’s reputation is that it’s strongly biased. So I checked out the one by Short. I think it would be a good candidate to read on the Kindle if it weren’t for the awkwardness of the footnote procedure which goes by page and not footnote. Kindle’s can do pretty good with a numbered footnote, linking the reader back and forth. But so far I haven’t figured out to how to use footnotes that are at the back of the book by page. I guess I could bookmark it and go back and forth that way, but I don’t always consult footnotes in books not about music or liturgy. Anyway I’m trying to pay more attention to the leadership questions in China.
So I’m lazing around this morning. It’s 9:30 AM and I’m just getting to blogging. This will be my only day this week I don’t have a morning commitment scheduled. Ballet classes are canceled for me today for one reason or another (They’re still having class. They just don’t need me.). This is a welcome reprieve in my relentless schedule. Saturday I have to be in Muskegon around 10 AM for Solo and Ensemble festiveal to accompany the violist I have been rehearsing with.
This is not the player I’m working with. But isn’t this cool?
My silly Kindle balked this morning. I was trying to turn a page (touch the screen) and nothing happened. Again. Nothing happened. Again. Nothing happened. As I waited the screen went blank then went to the screen with guy sitting under a tree and one of those strips which indicates something (?) is happening.
Good grief. I put the dang thing aside and read a real book. Minutes later it still wasn’t done.
I get so annoyed when the designers of software interrupt me to update their stupid stupid software.
There has got to be a better way. It feels like I’m being naive to expect designers to factor in users in a realistic manner. When I’m doing something on the computer, I usually think it’s important. I might even be having a thought or two. When this gets interrupted so that some stupid stupid software has to update itself I’m sure my blood pressure goes up a notch.
(Blood Pressure note for concerned readers – Hi Sarah! – Today is the thirteenth day in a row my blood pressure has been good.)
I finished reading Lucille Clifton’s collected poetry yesterday.
It was a pretty wonderful experience. This woman could definitely write poems.
Here are a couple I especially liked.
*****
god
is
love
no
god
is love
is light
is god
no
place here
the name
you give
to god
is love
is light
is
here the name
you give
to
yes
*****
the angels have no wings
they come to you wearing
their own clothes
they have learned to love you
and will keep coming
unless you insist on wings
*****
The poems seem to be in rough chronological order. Lucille Clifton had a long life. Judging from her poetry it was a full one. Many of the poems are about her mother and father. They tend from the beautiful to the mundane to the disturbing. In other words they are poems.
The editors closed the selection (on page 727!) with this one.
*****
In the middle of the Eye,
not knowing whether to call it
devil or God
I asked how to be brave
and the thunder answered,
“Stand. Accept.” so I stood
and I stood and withstood
the fiery sight.
*****
This poem along with another entitled “God Bless America” were found in Clifton’s last “day-book” from 2010. It was “tucked in the short days of February, the month she would die in—“. Good way to go out.
I was taught how to break in a book by a Junior High School librarian. I was a library worker. Junior High School is what we used to call Middle School.
I have started breaking in books again since I have noticed that many of them fall apart of old age. I wonder if I had broken them in properly they would be in such bad shape as old books.
Relating to the physical object of the book might be something that young students might be lacking.
I have been teaching the Bible to my Kids’ Choir. I give them all Bibles and ask them to find the Psalms. They seem to have no idea what I am talking about. I mention that the Bible is divided up into two main parts, Old and New Testament. After some discussion they seem to understand this. But still putting their hands on the correct part of the book is something of a puzzle for them.
In order to get them to understand the proportions of the physical book I suggest that the psalms are somewhere in the middle.
Doing this reminds me that sometime in my education a teacher taught me to estimate exactly where I wanted to land in a book and to turn there. For example using a dictionary I automatically think of where the word I am looking for might possibly be and attempt to open the page at that point.
As I use my Kindle and computer I think about the fact that I continue to do these kinds of mental processes which are based on a relationship to the physical object. I wonder how readers who don’t have a relationship to a physical experience and instead are reading screens of one type or another conceptualize.
I know that using the Oxford English Dictionary online is a great experience. I like the interface they have built to this huge collection of information. Much easier to use it than the multi-volume version (which I never could afford anyway).
So there are the inevitable trade offs of change.
In the meantime, I value my own visualizations and attempts at dragging my physical experience of reading (which I value) into my cyber experiences (which I also value).
Here’s a beautiful paragraph I read this morning in Lyndall Gordan’s bio of T. S. Eliot which sparked some of my musings.
Soul history and sermon are the dominant forms of American writing from the time of the Puritan settlement in the seventeenth century; to retrieve them is to be that quintessential New Englander which Eliot claimed transplantation brought out. For he shared with Emerson, Thoreau, and Dickinson, and Whitman too, a guarded mode of confession Unlike St. Augustine or Rousseau, who draw us into intimacy, these Americans throw the onus of introspection back into the lap of the reader. Their confessions, like The Waste Land, are fragmentary and, left so deliberately incomplete, demand a reciprocal effort. The point lies not in their content so much as in the reader’s act of self-discovery and judgment. The purpose is not expose the speaker but to create the reader.”
from T. S. Eliot: An Imperfect Life by Lyndall Gordan, p. 149
In addition here are two poems by Jack Micheline I read this morning and admire.
EVERYWHERE I GO
Everywhere I go is beauty
trees illuminated
street lights glowing in the darkness
I want to run up to strangers and kiss then
but there is too much noise
men kill each other
I’m sick and tired of seeing sad faces
stop that bastard machine
everyone is God and Holy
a spike is ripping at my throat
I smell a fragrance of a rose
every I go is beauty
1958
NOBODY HAS TIME FOR LIGHT
I was sitting in my room
shining with light
I called up twenty people
to come and look at my shining light
I waited
and nobody came
my room shining with light
“…his attitude is one of pervasive ambiguity: he was never completely at home anywhere and, even after he adopted British citizenship, he would sometimes sign himself ‘metoikos’, the Greek for resident alien.
He cultivated such distance and detachment as if by not fully belonging, or wholly participating, something of himself was preserved—something secret inviolable which he could nourish.” Peter Ackroyd, T. S. Eliot: a life p. 88
I don’t really compare myself to T. S. Eliot, but when I read this passage this morning it helped me think a bit about myself and my own attitude towards my daily life. I have always dreaded social contacts as far back as I remember. I trace the beginnings of this to being brought up in a preacher’s house where the family has to make appearances and is generally expected to attend most church functions and behave.
But now at the ripe old age of sixty-one I realize that even though I mix well and enjoy people, there is a side of me that finds socializing with people who see life very very differently than I do uncomfortable.
This is not true of everyone in my life. There’s my boss, my new friend Rhonda and her husband, and of course Eileen.
Resident alien is a good way to say it, not that there is a place I know of I would fit in any better. Thank goodness for music, books and the internet.
Last night I spent a good 45 minutes trying to get my netbook to talk to the internet well enough that I could use it to listen to online audio books. I finally gave up and came down stairs and got my new laptop. When it moved slowly I realized that it wasn’t just my netbook but also the website I was trying to use. Oy. Listened to BBC which worked fine.
This morning I am trying to clear my netbook of un-needed programs. When I did that with my desktop it sped up considerably. But my netbook is moving so slowly that this process itself is very very slow.
I was looking for my copy of Zen Flesh, Zen Bones this morning. My library is admittedly in about 20% disarray due to my neglecting to reshelve books in order. However, I’m not sure where I would file this book since I mainly recall the title, not the author (I tend to file books by author). It has some great stories in it and has had a bit of an influence on my thinking.
I was looking for it because near the end of Lucille Clifton’s collected poetry she launches into a series of poems based on the famous Ten Bulls or Ox-herding pictures. These pictures exemplify stages or aspects of enlightenment embodied in observations about the bull or ox.
I was delighted that Clifton in her old age wrote these poems. Equally delighted to find them online to share.
It is possible to come up with many treatments of these pictures so Clifton is joining her poems to a long tradition.
I especially liked her 5th picture: Herding the Ox
*****
5th picture — herding the ox
the hands refuse to gather
they sit in their pockets as i
command ox and enhance my name
i am lucille who masters ox
ox is the one lucille masters
hands caution me again
what can be herded
is not ox
*******
It put in mind of the phrase “herding cats” for some reason.
So I couldn’t find my Zen Flesh, Zen Bones. I also couldn’t come up with a collection of organ music by William Bolcolm recently. My friend Rhonda played a piece from it yesterday and asked me to listen to her version of it on Saturday. I went to church and couldn’t lay my hands on it. Since then I have been going through places where I might have left it. So far no luck.
This article points out that guerrilla warfare is actually more conventional historically than other types of war. Surprising to think that right now in the world there are no two uniformed official armies fighting each other. The bias of the writer shows a bit when he inadequately describes Che Guevara’s execution as done by Bolivian soldiers. Yeah, Bolivian CIA trained soldiers.
I have fallen entirely out of sympathy for the Roman Catholic church due to their swing to the far right. Nice to see someone officially exercising integrity in such a corrupt situation.
George Orwell wrote a novel called Coming up for Air. I wrote a song that used this phrase several years ago when I was producing a lot of poppy music for me and others to perform on the street and in coffee shops (mp3,). I just listened to it all the way through for kicks. It’s not near as bad as I remember most of my work. It is a bit long, however.
Eileen and I have been listening to books at night via our local library’s subscription to audiobookcloud.com. Last night I put on Orwell’s Coming for Air. That’s why I was thinking of it and its title.
Last night was a library worker’s dinner at the local Elk’s club. Somehow it was to make up for a lack of a Christmas dinner. Not sure about the whole thing but Eileen wanted to go so go we did.
We sat and chatted with some other people. I marvel at my own weird introvert overly sensitive nature that causes me to come away from conversations feeling so conflicted. The phrases and exchanges between people linger in my head in a way that is not terribly comfortable for me. I helplessly analyze and speculate for the next 24 hours (apparently). Jupe is not much an extrovert.
Yesterday I made recordings of today’s prelude and postlude. I did so in the hopes I might learn something about the pieces I am playing. The main thing I learned is that they are not in too bad shape for today. In the fugue I might try to play it a bit more relaxed. Here are the videos if you’re interested.
The second video is today’s postlude. Taken from Bach’s Orgelbüchlein it is based on the sequence hymn’s tune for today. “When Christ’s appearing was made known.” One of the verses refers directly to the gospel story for today: the story of Jesus turning water into wine at Cana.
I have returned to reading Dostoevsky’s The Brothers Karamazov.
Yesterday I arrived at the chapter entitle “Cana of Galilee” Part III, Book 7, chapter 2. The chapter describes the reading of this gospel story over the dead body of the recently deceased holy man, Zosima. Zosima is an esteemed monk who figures pretty importantly into this story. People go to him and listen to his words of wisdom. This includes one of the brothers Karamazov, Alyosha.
Alyosha reminds me of Prince Mishkin (in The Idiot). He is the youngest brother who is struggling with idealism and a call to Christianity.
The Cana story is one of “showing forth” of Christ’s messianic nature. In Dostoevsky, it seems that goodness and holiness show forth in his story to no avail. The famous little story, “The Grand Inquisitor,” in which Christ returns to earth in the midst of the Inquisition and is subsequently recognized and executed, takes place as a story one character tells another in this novel. I suspect that Dostoevsky is making a point about how attempts at goodness in life are almost futile and certainly unrecognized in utilizing “The Grand Inquisitor” and the Miracle at Cana in his novel.
Our internet went away yesterday for several hours. Long enough that I wondered if I had inadvertently neglected to pay the Comcast bill and it had been shut off or something. It came on later so I guess this was not the case.
In the meantime I was reduced to reading back issues of The New Yorker and the American Organist. In the March 2012 issue of the latter there was a mildly interesting interview with organist/composer, Thomas Pavlechko about coaching Brad Pitt for his organ/piano playing role in the upcoming movie “The Tree of Life.”
What was interesting about the interview was Pavleckho’s experience of working with an astute professional actor. Pitt time and time again displayed the craft of watching Pavlechko closely and then imitating his behavior. This ran the gamut from quickly noticing which stops Pavlechko pulled out and then sitting down and replicating the exact order he pulled them out to never varying the way he sat at the organ once he had figured out the posture (something Pavlechko bemoaned is so difficult to get actual organ students to do).
Anyway, I would link in the article but of course it’s not online. Good grief.
We had tickets for a concert last night and forgot. The group was called The Suspicious Cheese Lords.
The ensemble, based in Washington, D.C., seeks to broaden the global repertoire and listenership of choral music by unearthing forgotten works, breathing new life into familiar pieces, and supporting emerging composers. Specializing in early music, the unique brotherhood’s concerts, liturgies, recordings and educational programs provide a scholarly yet accessible interpretation of music of all eras, inspiring fans and future musicians alike.
The group’s name shows the members’ sense of humor, yet they take their music seriously. The Suspicious Cheese Lords’ name is derived from the title of a Thomas Tallis motet, Suscipe quæso Domine. While “translating” the title, it was observed that Suscipe could be “suspicious,” quæso is close to the Spanish word queso meaning “cheese,” and Domine is “Lord.” Hence, the title of the motet was clearly “Suspicious Cheese Lord”—which in time became adopted as the group’s name. Although the name is humorous, the group appreciates the literal translation of Suscipe quæso Domine, which is, “Take, I ask, Lord.”
Adrienne Rich continues to draw me in and amaze me as a poet. Le Guin is a different cup of tea. Her poetry seems informed by her narrative sensibility which is considerable. I have read and enjoyed her novels. The poetry was interesting but conservative.
My requested poetry books by “beat poet” Jack Micheline arrived at the library this week. I went over and picked them up yesterday.
Last House in America and North of Manhattan: collected poems, ballads and songs.
I am twenty pages into the first. Ran across Micheline in The Outlaw Bible of American Poetry. He impressed me so I inter-library loaned these two books.
let the real die
and the dead die
and the weak and the mouse die
and the ones with too many words
let them all die
the fame suckers
from “Take What is Yours Your Manhood Back Again”
*****
Scum of universities
Professors of death and biology
Now tell us there is no choice
a hungry boy sits by a fountain
and the statues fall in Rio, in Shanghai, in Cairo
power sits forever its mouth full of sores and ideology
who weep for more killing with visions of wasps and rattlers
from “A Poem for Those Who Make a Business of Poetry (for Norman Mailer)”
Another morning without much to say or much time to say it in. I did get to play some at class yesterday, at least in the morning class. However in the second class, I only improvised one piece. Boring. I sat and read in my Kindle.
In the afternoon, after piano trio, I found myself very tired. I sat in the chair and dozed for about twenty minutes before gathering stamina to go grocery shopping.
It turns out that there were probably only two couples who faithfully completed the year of sampling the changing international menu at City-vu thereby qualifying for both a fifty dollar certificate and the drawing for the $100 one and a free overnight stay at the hotel. That means we have a fifty-fifty chance of winning it. At least this is what the waitress told us last night. She had said previously that she hoped we won because the other couple was “mean.”
Piano trio went well yesterday. We played Mozart. My cellist is seriously considering retiring from the symphony. She has played in it for 39 years. She works part time at the college library. Between the two part time jobs she earns her living. She and the violinist seem to enjoy our weekly afternoon music making. As do I.
Eileen has today off work. She has scheduled a conference with her relative the contractor to discuss renovating our house. We want to set it up so that we can live on the main floor. The stairs will become increasingly treacherous for us as we age. While they were living with us my Dad took a tumble that scared us as did my Mom. They didn’t hurt themselves but it was just luck.
That’s about all I have to blather about today. This is my first full week of my increased schedule and I’m feeling pretty exhausted. I can only hope that exercise and dieting will not only keep my blood pressure down, but also give me a bit more energy.
In the last several days I have spent ballet class sitting, waiting and not playing. The teacher has not called on me to play but for a few of these minutes. Yesterday I broke out my laptop at the outset as I vaguely listened to her begin the same lecture she has been giving to her several classes about bone structure and then balance on a swivel board. I prefer having something to do.
Likewise in staff meeting yesterday I felt like I was marking time. Being with other people is important, but I feel like ideas and insights that can come from discussion are missing most of the time.
My voice feels hollow when I attempt to join in. But what the heck. It’s my job.
I have lived through Wednesday class and rehearsals. I did manage to get a bit of organ rehearsal practice in.
Thursday lies ahead of me. Two classes. One rehearsal. Grocery shopping? Eileen and I are talking about going out for drinks and dinner this evening. This relaxes us. If we do, it will be the first alcohol I have had in a week. My weight and blood pressure are down probably due to restraint. So maybe this evening I will splurge just a little bit. We’ll see.
I have been doing a lot of reading on my Kindle. Also adding books, mostly free ones. I find myself flipping back and forth between the third Games of Thrones novel, The Pale King by David Foster Wallace, Out of Mao’s Shadow by Phillip Pan and other books.
Eileen told me last night that I seem down lately. Maybe I am. Mostly I just am keeping on with my schedule: reading, practicing, doing my jobs.
Following this story. I remember watching troops approaching Baghdad and worrying about chemical weapons. This seems so insidious to me. But it’s still not actually verified at this time.
Before leaving for ballet classes yesterday I called my Mom to tell her she had an appointment with Miracle Ear (her hearing aid people). She said she wasn’t feeling well and would I call and cancel it.
In between classes I managed to get hold of them after walking around the Hope College student union (they call it the “Kletz”) with my phone and laptop (for consulting my calendar) trying to get enough bars (reception bars) on my stupid stupid cell phone in order to call.
After I came home and was relaxing before working Mom called and wondered where I was. She was ready for her Miracle Ear appointment. Don’t you remember, I asked her, you asked me to cancel it? You said you didn’t feel well. That’s right, she said, I don’t feel well but I don’t remember. Good-bye she said abruptly as she is wont to do these days.
I pored over my recommendations for music for a week from Sunday and emailed them off to the secretary and my boss the priest. Then off to church to pick out the prelude and postlude. We are singing a little Mozart piece that day so I looked over my Mozart organ works.
Many of the organ works by Mozart were written for mechanical organ.
I haven’t done too much Mozart on the organ. Instead I play his piano sonatas. I also love his violin sonatas and have sought in vain for a violinist to play them with me.
Mozart’s dad, Leopold.
Anyway I landed on his Eb fugue, K. 153 for the prelude for a week from Sunday. The notes in my edition say that it along with another fugue in G minor (K. 154) was gleaned from “contrapuntal fragments and sketches” of Mozart by the composition/counterpoint teacher Simon Sechter. It’s a happy little thing that isn’t quite the Mozart of his operas and symphonies but what the hell.
I received my judges’ comment sheets on my “Little Recessional Dance” which I submitted to the Greater Kansas City American Guild of Organist Chapter Organ Composition.
Here are their sheets with the judges’ names removed.
I don’t think Judge number three thought much of my piece. At any rate it was interesting to see how it was rated. The day I mailed it away I looked at it and realized I would rewrite it and change it if I had time. Such is life.
I was going to link in my online copy of this piece but it’s not coming up. There are still a few wrinkles Sarah and I (mostly Sarah) are ironing out with this new server. (Update note… Sarah fixed this. Here’s a link to piece.)
Reading the collected poems of Lucille Clifton straight through chronologically is to watch a poet develop. She starts out in a voice I recognize from the sixties and other poets: angry, succinct, incisive and largely speaking about her experience and understanding of being black (choosing to capitalize it in a few instances: “Black”).
I recognize and enjoy this voice but am delighted to watch her gradually hone her abilities beyond it.
Case in point:
******
love the human
—– Gary Snyder
the rough weight of it
scarring its own back
the dirt under its fingernails
the bloody cock love
the thin line secting the belly
the small gatherings
gathered in sorrow or joy
love the silences
love the terrible noise
love the sting of it
love it all love
even the improbable foot even
the surprised and ungrateful eye
****
I like the way she pulls you from the objective (“scarring its own back”) to the subjective feel of one’s own body or her body ending with the foot and the “surprised and ungrateful eye.”
I think this is a good poem.
It looks like Mondays and Fridays are days I want to think of as lighter days. On Monday I deliberately turn away from thinking about work (mostly church work) and try to find some time for myself. Yesterday I did this a bit. After my early ballet class, Eileen and I took down the Christmas tree. She walked to work and I did some reading and relaxing.
I did do some work putting a piece by Distler into Finale so that I could transpose it for use with my choir. Also at the end of the day after supper I was sitting and reading and realized that I hadn’t practiced organ in two days (Sundays don’t count unless I actually return to the church later and practice) so I went to church and rehearsed some upcoming music.
Eileen hates sauerkraut (I love it) so I substituted a little meat marinara sauce with mushrooms in her version. For the kielbasa, I used some chicken sausage I found with a similar fat content. In my version I used up my frozen veggie sausage and added a ton of cooked onions. I guess it smelled good because the mother of my viola player mentioned it did when they arrived for rehearsal last night.
It didn’t taste like diet food. That’s the beauty of Alexander’s recipes.
I was surprised to read about US policy about this situation in this article as well as startled to see France committing its forces. Isn’t that how we got into Vietnam – cleaning up after the French?
Well my blood pressure seems to be coming down along with my weight due to some recent restraint on my part. At least that’s my conjecture.
I have been thinking about the concept of prayer lately. My parish is reading Ann Lamott’s book, Help Thanks Wow: the three essential prayers.
Despite the quote above, I find her title very reductive. Repellent, even. I slipped one of the copies provided at church into my satchel yesterday intending to look it over. But I find myself shying away from doing so. Just as after playing yesterday’s service (which went well), I wanted nothing more than to put on my coat and walk home with Eileen, shying away from reaching out to parishioners during coffee hours as I should probably do.
When the title was first announced I wondered how my understandings of prayer might fit in to this book.
For many years I have thought of the Daily Office as prayer, understanding the term “Office” as officium which I take to mean “duty.” Is that”Help,” “Thanks” or “Wow?” I wondered.
It is a curious coincidence that after many years of not doing so I have recently picked up praying my morning office again. I think it might have something to do with the novelty of my new Kindle since I am using it to pray the office. Or maybe this isn’t prayer. When I think about the idea that I have to somehow “bend my heart” , my crusty recalcitrant skeptical heart , I doubt that my thinking and actions aren’t quite what Lamott and others have in mind.
I was attracted to Episcopalian ritual originally because (like music) prayer was something I could “do” via the ritual of moving my body and saying words.
But I know that the reasons people attend church are as various as the people themselves. My ideas about prayer are probably not that pertinent to most if not all of the people I now serve at my little congregation as music minister. Whippy Skippy and fuck the duck.
Speaking of the Kindle, I noticed last night that I was getting a slight head ache after reading in it for quite some time. I wasn’t sure if the head ache was fatigue, hunger (dieting, remember?), or attributable to looking at the screen for so long. If it was the latter, this is the first time I have noticed this.
On another note, Eileen and I actually won the drawing at the Citi-vu restaurant. In order to enter one had to have eaten from the changing “International” section of their menu each month. Doing that much earned you a fifty dollar gift certificate and the chance to win the grand prize (grand?) which was a free night’s stay in the hotel plus another $100 gift certificate.
How ’bout that? We won. They are holding our certificate at the lobby front desk for us to pick up.
I noticed that I can purchase paperless newspapers by the day on Kindle. This solves trying to read the Wall Street occasionally since it has a much more impenetrable fire wall against non subscribers than most online papers. Here, an op-ed writer helpfully provides his ideas off site.
Although her approach to sexuality often reeks to me of an antiquated understanding (via Mad Men) I always read Maureen Dowd due to her insights on our political stuff. But in this case, I share the link because of this quote:
New York magazine claims that of late, Saudi Arabia’s King Abdullah has a better record of appointing top women than Obama does.
This morning we are singing a choral arrangement of Aaron Copland’s song, “At the River.” It comes from his “Old American Songs.” I ordered a copy of all them yesterday. In the meantime I was able to download and print up this one song in its (supposedly) original version to compare to the arrangement by R. Wilding White.
As I suspected, White has taken harmonies from Copland’s accompaniment and construed a four part harmony of it. Most of it is fine, but he changed the ending note (!) from the tonic to the third (in a couple instances) and in the closing gesture has the sopranos leap up a sixth to close at the high octave of the melody. This last gesture had already troubled me enough to ask the sopranos not to do it.
After looking at Copland’s original I will make a few slight changes so that the soprano (singing the melody of the original hymn, “Shall we gather at/by the river?”) will end on the note in the original melody and the rest of the voices fill in the chord. This will be better I think.
As I was studying Copland’s song yesterday, it occurred to me that should I have difficulty getting the choir to sing Copland’s arrangement after only one rehearsal (and that rehearsal with several people missing), I could have them sing the unison melody and I could play Copland’s piano accompaniment and we would still have a nice little Copland anthem. I probably won’t have to do that.
I finished the second volume (“A Clash of Kings”) of George Martin’s fantasy series, Game of Thrones while treadmilling yesterday. I succumbed and googled “Clash of Kings pdf” and found an online pdf version and read it while exercising. I find the tilted screen easier to work with than a paperback in hand (I don’t have a reading rack on my little $100 used treadmill).
Eileen and I sort of collaborated on supper last night. I made us a small blueberry pie which she kept an eye on while I treadmilled. Earlier in the day I had made some cole slaw for us. While I showered she started the salmon. We sat down to our meal and watched the last episode of the second season of HBO’s Game of Thrones.
I thought that I owned the third volume (as I mentioned yesterday) but when I looked more closely I discovered I had purchased the fourth volume. So I purchased the third one as a Kindle Book and read a bit in it.
Martin mentions that volumes two and three overlap chronologically. I suspect that some of the plot of the final episodes in the second HBO season reflect this. In face I now know they do having read several chapters.
The HBO series has changed plot line a bit. Some characters seem to have disappeared (The Reed children if you’re following this), others act in ways that are a bit different from the book. The books tell an interesting subtle engaging story. Hard to compare an acted drama to the way a writer can spread out his/her story and do subtle things.
This pretty much sums up my lower interest in movies and TV. I know I’m anachronistic (I celebrate it, actually), but the use of many words to tell a story or convey an idea pulls me in in a way that simple dialogue and images don’t. Don’t get me wrong. I like dialogue and images, but find myself returning to words on a page (or a screen). I recall Neil Postman (I believe it was) saying that the number of words in a TV news broadcast would fit on one page of a newspaper.
Writing about T. S. Eliot’s attraction to the Bloomsbury group in England, Peter Ackroyd says that “It was their nonconformity within a culture to which they nevertheless firmly belonged which attracted…” him. When I read this sentence this morning, I thought this neatly described my own attitude and position in the US society. It is a place I will never be able to fit in (conform) to which nevertheless I feel that I “firmly” belong.
Eileen and I have now watched all but the last show of the HBO series adaption of George R. R. Martin’s first two volumes of A Song of Ice and Fire. I am finishing up reading the second volume, Clash of Kings. In the first season, the HBO show seemed to generally follow the first book (which I watched after I read it). But in the second season they mess around a bit with the story in the second. Since I haven’t quite finished reading it (I’m on page 900 out of 969), I’m not completely in a position to understand their adaptation, but at this point it looks like they have conflated some parts of the plot line and truncated and shortened other parts.
I won’t bore you with the details, but I am interested to finish both reading the second volume and then viewing the last episode of the second season to understand just why they chose to change what they did.
I own a copy of the third volume, A Storm of Swords, and at this point, unlike the young bookseller who “took a breather” after the first two I am planning on reading it and the rest of the five volumes of the series.
I am not planning to buy any more hard copies in this series. I think it would be more convenient to have the rest as ebooks. Yesterday I read my paperback while treadmilling. I find this pretty difficult in my present set-up. Much easier if I had an ebook of it and could read it with my Kindle Cloud reader (which I have been using more now that I have an honest to god Kindle).
I find it slightly surprising that the Kindle reader is so convenient for me. Tucking it in my pocket serves my need to always have something on hand to read when I am off to do grocery shopping or other errands that might find me standing in another damn line.
I do think it is helping me read a bit more which is a happy occurrence in my life.
I am experience some slight success at losing a bit of weight.
I am doing this by watching my diet more carefully, stopping having a glass of wine (which is usually the first of many) after treadmilling and not eating (or drinking) in the evenings.
This morning I had my lowest BP reading in weeks. It is not accurate to draw a straight causative line from a few days of changing behavior to one BP reading, but I am allowing myself to be slightly encouraged at these results.
Besides attempting to lower my BP this way, I am also thinking of the increased energies I will need to execute the my Winter schedule. I am hoping some change in behavior will give me more energy and help me rest better. So far so good, but as I say it’s too early to draw too many conclusions.
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