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Yesterday after Ballet class I looked in the accompanist slot to find a copy of the piano reduction of Prokofiev’s ballet, “Romeo and Juliet.”
This, of course, is not the score. But the one she put in my box looks a bit like this.
In a discussion with the chair of the department who had asked me for music by Prokofiev and Rachmaninoff for class, we had agreed that her request covered a bewilderingly large corpus of music. She told me that she had a piano score of “Romeo and Juliet” and would loan it to me. I suggested she put it in the accompanists’ slot for me. I checked several times thereafter and it wasn’t there. Subsequently I interlibrary-loaned a copy. I had it with me yesterday at class but there was not an opportunity to ask her which scenes she wanted me to learn.
Prokofiev
She did not mention to me that she had done what I had asked and put her copy in the slot where I find my time card. But there it was. And she had marked which scenes to learn. The music is pretty difficult, but I will do what I can to learn the scenes. I started working on them immediately yesterday.
My piano trio rehearsal was different yesterday. My cellist has a full week of symphony commitments and begged off. I invited Deb Coyle, oboe, to join Amy and me and play through a volume of Canzoni by Frescobaldi I recently purchased.
We did so and as I suspected the music is charming and would serve as lovely music for a prelude and postlude. There is also a part for the cellist. I played it yesterday on a bit louder stop and did the realized continuo part on a quieter stop (for the most part – occasionally I played it all loud to assist the reading process of the other two people).
After Deb left, Amy and I read through two Violin Sonatas by Mozart. This is something I have wanted to do for a long time but have never found a violinist interested in doing so. The music is amazing.
In the evening, I met my friend Rhonda Edgington and John Boody the organ builder for coffee and a chat.
I found Boody interesting to talk to. After a bit he pulled out his laptop and treated us to an abbreviated version of a talk he gave this week for the American Institute of Organ Builders 2012 Convention on Monday in Lansing.
The subject of his talk was a description of one of their current works in progress, Opus 65, being installed in Grace Church, New York City.
As you can imagine this was very cool. Boody is a craftsman and artist. It was a joy to listen to him and look at his power point presentation.
Despite having two days free of ballet classes, I’m still pretty exhausted this morning. My Wednesday is a long day no matter how you stack it up.
I usually have time to rest, but yesterday my boss asked if we could meet in the afternoon. So I had a little less recuperation time before the evening rehearsals. Last night the theme of the education classes was to “build” a Eucharist (communion service). What this meant for me was I had a shortened Kids’ Choir rehearsal. Then I played for an informal Eucharist in which various members of the community had prepared the parts of service. One group baked quick bread, one picked readings on Gratitude/Thanksgiving (the new “Christian Practice” theme for these Wednesdays), one wrote prayers. The Kids Choir sang the anthem they sang Sunday for it.
After this I had the usual weekly Chamber Choir rehearsal.
This morning I have to return for a funeral at Church.
Busy busy busy.
In the middle of all this, I had time to practice organ and a bit of piano.
I found a very interesting and well written organ piece for a week from Sunday that I spent some time with: “Hymn tune variations on O Master Let Me Walk With Thee.” This was written by the late composer, Noel Da Costa and is found in the MorningStar African-American collection, volume 3. The variations shed some interesting light on this old warhorse of a tune and I am enjoying learning them.
I also found time to carefully play through Takemitsu’s Litany (I) in memory of Michael Vyner. What a gorgeous piece!
I tried to cobble together a meal for Eileen and me last night. I love to cook, but haven’t done a whole lot of cooking recently probably due to my relentless Fall schedule.
Eileen’s boss gave her some tomatillos. I’ve been meaning to make some salsa with them. So I built a little meal around salsa verde. Picked up some chicken breast, Spanish rice mix, fajita seasoning, local flour tacos, tortilla chips, fresh local salsa, limes, avocados and a couple of Jarritos.
Came home and peeled the tomatillos. I put them and a lot of garlic in the oven. Cooked up some mushrooms and onions. Fixed the chicken fajitas. Warmed the flour tortillas in the oven. Prepared the spanish rice according to the directions on the box.
My salsa verde turned out to be kind of runny and dominated by lime. I went easy on the suggested cilantro since Eileen doesn’t go too much for that taste. Next time less lime. I sliced the avocados and served them on the side (for me, Eileen doesn’t really like them).
I have to decide what anthem to begin teaching my Kids’ Choir this evening to sing on All Saints. I only have two rehearsals with them since Halloween is the Wednesday before we celebrate All Saints.
I have long admired Ned Rorem’s simple setting of the text, “Come pure hearts.” It would be a great choice for them for All Saints. It’s from “Four Hymns” by him and is out of print (this makes me crazy, that the good stuff is not accessible legally). It’s also found in the Episcopalian Hymnal Supplement, Hymns III (pictured above). I think it would sit nicely in a cello/viola/keyboard transcription to accompany unison singers. But I think it might be too hard for my kids to learn quickly.
Instead I’m thinking seriously of using a composition that sets the text, “We are the Lord’s” by Karl J. P. Spitta to the melody called Londonderry Aire.
I have seen many anthems over the years that use the tune Londonderry Aire. I have never been able to bring myself to use one because I hear the sappy song, “O Danny Boy,” so strongly in the melody. And there’s the inevitable pun.
But I’m leaning strongly towards this for the kids. It’s a very singable melody even if they have never heard it. I can use it to continue to develop their range and vocal sound. I only had two children Sunday but I swear both of them sang the high E in the anthem nicely when it occurred. This anthem dips into the lower range of the child’s voice which is something I try to treat gingerly or avoid entirely. It covers a range from low A (!) below middle C to that high E.
I also considered a setting of the Te Deum.
The church owns multiple copies of a Healey Willan collection.
In it there’s a lovely simple shortened setting of the Te Deum it which would make a great Kids’ Choir anthem for All Saints.
Despite my own predilection for using Willan in an Episcopalian setting, I think the time constraint points to the derriere song.
Townshend was on the Daily Show Monday evening. Eileen and I watched the recording last night. I had read this review during the day and am attracted to reading this book.
A friend of mine on Facebook put up a status asking what people thought about allow researchers access to death statistics. I didn’t respond, but I lean towards as much transparency as possible. One of the commentators on this article suggested simply omitting the social security numbers from the information available.
Another day of no ballet class. I will again have some opportunity to rest, but I do have to give a piano lesson and do some work for my program at church.
I am seriously thinking of attacking two more big Bach (at least to me) pieces: the fugue from Fantasia and Fugue in G minor BWV 542 and another trio movement (BWV 526 in C minor mov I). I rehearsed these yesterday. I also was delighted to notice that another organist besides Rhonda and myself (Elizabeth Claar) is playing some William Bolcom on an upcoming recital. In fact, she is playing the on based on “What a Friend we have in Jesus” which is the one I have spent some time beginning to learn.
Today I have to submit music for a week from Sunday for the church bulletin. I have been trying to discipline myself this fall to submit music on Tuesday for the service for the Sunday following the upcoming one. This keeps me (and the secretary) a bit ahead. Also it helps me map out my organ work more coherently and consistently.
I also have to choose at least one anthem to begin working on with my Kids’ Choir tomorrow evening.
I have been reading poetry by the people I met recently every morning (Jon Woodward and Oni Buchanan). This morning I bogged down a bit with Woodward because I reached “Uncanny Valley,” the long poem by Woodward that he and his wife commissioned composer John Gibson to set which I heard them perform the other night.
I asked Woodward who made up the “instructions” in the poem: “Lines notated like the previous two/Are repeated (as a pair)/As many times as the reader desires from zero to 255…”. I had just purchased the book and had overlooked them with a cursory glance. He said that he did and I verified by checking it in my new copy of his book. Sure enough.
However, in the program at the concert there were 16 titles which were not in the poem in the book. If I had my wits about (a rare occasion admittedly), I would have asked who wrote the titles. I read the entire poem this morning and noticed that it is exactly 16 pages long. Each page has 12-15 lines on it. I have begun matching the titles in the program to the pages of the poem in the book.
I suspect (wonder if) Gibson the composer added titles. At the very least Gibson and Woodward must have talked about adding titles.
More on this (probably) when I finish my analysis. This morning I’m thinking seriously of checking out the archival Hope College recording made that evening so I can learn a bit more about how the piece works.
I have returned to reading The Pale King by David Foster Wallace. I have been reading in it on and off since the summer. I thoroughly enjoy it, but it is sitting on my netbook in an ebook and I sometimes forget I’m reading it. This happens because I usually am reading four or more books at any given time.
This review of a bio of David Foster Wallace was in the Sunday NYT Book Review last weekend:
The reviewer suggests that The Pale King is perhaps his best work. He also debunks Wallace’s obtuseness: “Wallace’s writing is not as difficult to read as it is famed to be, nor as pandering to entertain as he worried it was. Wallace writes in grammatically correct sentences; he tells jokes; and his work, if you are wired a certain way, will affect you emotionally.”
I relate to this take on Wallace. I confess that I tend to read footnotes in every book I read so his footnotes which annoy some readers are part of the fun for me.
Wallace himself has this to say about concentrating and reading:
“[S]itting still and concentrating on just one task for an extended length of time is, as a practical matter, impossible. If you said, ‘I spent the whole night in the library, working on some client’s sociology paper,’ you really meant that you’d spent between two and three hours working on it and the rest of the time fidgeting and sharpening and organizing pencils and doing skin-checks in the men’s room mirror and wandering around the stacks opening volumes at random
I’d always felt frustrated and embarrassed about how much reading and writing time I actually wasted, about how much I sort of blinked in and out while trying to absorb or convey large amounts of information. To put it bluntly, I had felt ashamed about how easily I got bored when trying to concentrate.
It took … entering a highly selective college to understand that the problem with stillness and concentration was more or less universal and not some unique shortcoming that was going to prevent me from ever really rising above my preterite [jupe note: preterite means Expressing a past action or state] background and achieving something. Seeing the enormous lengths that those elite, well-educated undergrads from all over the nation went to to avoid, delay, or mitigate concentrated work was an eye-opening experience for me. In fact, the school’s social structure was set up to prize and esteem students who could pass their classes and assemble a good transcript without ever working hard.
People who skated by, doing the absolute minimum required for institutional/parental approval, were regarded as cool, while people who actually applied themselves to their assignments and to the work of their own education and achievement were relegated to the status of ‘grinds’ or ‘tools,’ the lowest caste in the college’s merciless social hierarchy.”
Some good ideas used in the U.K. Impossible there to discuss how allow people to not be treated when they are dying is an economic factor, impossible here in the USA not to.
Hooray! Today and tomorrow Hope has Fall Recess so no ballet classes. I’m mostly glad about today. My present schedule gives me little time for an entire day off so I look forward to one today.
I’m still basking in satisfaction about “Bach Sunday” at my church yesterday.
Okay it wasn’t really “Bach Sunday.” The readings for the day included the difficult sayings of Jesus about divorce (he forbade it).
My boss did an excellent job of breaking this open for contemporary Episcopalians and then connecting it to the second part of the gospel which included the story of Jesus pointing out that one must be as a child to inherit the kingdom.
Briefly she talked about how most of us are touched by divorce. That when Jesus made his comments about divorce only the man could initiate it. When he did so the woman became ostracized. This is what Jesus was forbidding. Then she said that he had deliberately moved from forbidding throwing people away to reaching out to children who were themselves as much property as women. Good stuff.
It was the latter part of gospel that led me to choose anthems and recommend hymns for the day. It’s harder to find happy divorce hymns.
Bach’s Cantata 139, movement one begins “Wohl dem, der sich auf seinen Gott Recht kindlich kann verlassen!” which can be translated “Happy is the man, who to his God can abandon himself just like a child!”
As I continually point out, the index I use to find hymns usually connects the Sunday readings to a Bach cantata.
The words certainly connected this time.
The Kids Choir sang along on Bach and also had a little anthem of their own whose words also connected to the gospel: “We All Are God’s Children” by Johannes Brahms, arr. by Harriet Ilse Ziegenhals which begins “We all are God’s children you made us every one.
You guard and watch o’er us from morn ‘til setting sun.”
Our closing hymn was “He’s got the whole world in his hands.” The hymnal arrangement has some nice jazz chords in it.
Our sequence hymn was the Swedish hymn, “Children of the Heavenly Father.” Interestingly this text is only found in Lift Every Voice and Sing II, our African American hymnal in the Episcopal church.
Although it might be counter intuitive to think of the African American hymn practice as including a hymn like this, Africans brought here as slaves appropriated the music of the white church from the very beginning. Actually this use is earlier than the creation of Spirituals and Sorrow Songs by this community.
I have been reading Horace Clarence Boyer’s excellent essay, “Cultural Diversity,” in the Hymnal 1982 Companion.
Horace Clarence Boyer (1935 - 2009)
He briefly chronicles the praying practices of the first American slaves and finds them using metrical psalms and hymns in their Christian prayer. It is only when they pray in private groups away from the watchful (and disapproving) eyes of their masters that they continue to combine the music and prayer practices of Africa with the practices of their white owners.
Eventually Sorrow Songs develop like folk music from the community. This would be mid 18th century. Once the Fisk Jubilee Singers begin using this music as their repertoire right after the US Civil War, the corpus of music moves into white circles and indeed is accepted around the world as a significant contribution.
Ironically, African Americans do not use the spirituals in their evolving prayer practices. Instead Boyer dates the emergence of a distinctive American black prayer practice in the early roots of what becomes “gospel music.” These roots are Pentecostal and begin what is called the Second Awakening in 1900.
African Americans return to using spirituals more in their communal prayer with the advent of the Civil Rights movement in the 1960s.
I’m trying not to blather on too much about this, but I have to close with Boyer’s wonderful description of piano gospel music style (a style I regularly attempt at the keyboard at church).
“A new style of piano playing was created: chordal, rather melodic, percussive rather than legato; and, unlike the organ accompaniment for traditional hymns that double the voice parts, gospel piano provided an additional ‘response’ to the singer’s ‘call.’ Gospel piano sets up the beat and serves, even during sustained passages, as the time keeper throughout the song. Attacks and releases are explosive in this style; divisions and subdivisions of the beat are characteristic.”
Boyer, Horace Clarence, “Cultural Diversity,” The Hymnal 1982 Companion Volume One, p. 29 – 39
Breaking pattern and blogging in the afternoon. Usually I do so in the morning.
As I was preparing for church this morning, Eileen used her blackberry to videotape me.
This short video is the result. Lo and behold it’s a quantum leap in quality from my little web cam.
She basically only uses it as a camera anyway. So now I’ll be using it and feeling better about sharing videos.
Bach Sunday came off pretty good this morning. The organ prelude and postlude went well. The choral cantata movement also seemed to come off pretty good. I managed to drill the parts during the pregame in such a way that may have helped people feel more confident.
I had two absences in the Kids’ Choir. There are only four kids active right now. So that’ s over half. One kid was sick. The other kid’s parents planned and an out of town weekend on Kid’s Choir Sunday. Whatchagonnado?
Eileen and my new soprano were prepared to quietly sing along with the kids to help them feel like they were in a larger group.
So the little Brahms adaptation they were scheduled to sing by themselves at communion came off pretty well despite the absences.
I think the primary purpose of a kids choir is for the kids to have an experience of music and learning.
This definitely happened. The kids sang along in German on the Bach.
I felt pretty good after all of this in service.
This afternoon is blessing of the animals.
As usual I am planning to drag m electric piano, an amp and a battery over to church and play for this outdoor service.
With any luck it will rain and we can have it in the church basement instead.
My brother and his wife
were in town for a quick visit. Hence no morning blog this morning. We all went out for drinks and dinner last night. Good conversation, Good times. They left as Eileen and I walked over to church this morning.
I have been using my new video cam to tape myself.
The sound is terrible. After posting a few of my first videos I find myself reluctant to share more. It’s an experience I have had over and over with recording in general. In order to make it acceptable to ears that are used to high production (in other words everbody’s) I have to spend more time with the recording than I do worrying about the actual notes themselves.
So I have been using the process to help myself to more objectively examine my playing and then improve it.
Yesterday I divided my rehearsal into morning and afternoon. In the morning I taped three pieces (despite the vacuuming going on in the church). Then I came home, converted the files into video files, uploaded them privately on YouTube, and listened to them.
I learned that speeding up the Bach trio to a more normal tempo increases its effectiveness as a piece and is something I can easily do (judging from the recording which was not error free but satisfactory as a rehearsal of the piece… much faster than the one posted here before).
This evening at a wedding at my church, I have agreed to perform Jackie Wilson’s song, “Your love keeps lifting me higher and higher,” on the piano as the couple leaves the room. I know, I know. I’m a whore.
I don’t really object to the music and its use. What bothers me is that there will be little to no congregational participation at this wedding. This will increase the feel of spectacle and decrease the idea of communal event and prayer.
Whippy fucking skippy. Both my boss and the bride rejected my suggestion of singing a hymn or two to combat this. I’m a good dooby and easily defer to my boss’s judgement. But I still think it’s a mistake going in. We’ll see how it works out.
In the meantime, here’s Jackie Wilson’s version:
It’s a great song. There’s only three chords all of which have the same bass note. Watching my rehearsal of a piano version of it, I learned that I could be freer and use less pedal and more rhythmic improv. Good to know.
So I continue to have an ambivalent relationship to the art of recording.
I guess I won’t be posting videos made with my little video cam very often. The sound is so bad it’s embarrassing. That’s not even talking about how well I play in front of the camera. fuck the duck.
This article typifies a certain acquiescing I have seen over and over to the non-thinking extreme right wing in our country. Okay. You win. We’ll fight the battle differently.
One of the great memories I have is visiting Barcelona which is in Catalonia. We went there after Sarah graduated from school in England. Eileen and I treated her and Matthew. Good times.
I am dragging this morning. I have had a full week so far. Tuesday just before Eileen and I left for the concert (see yesterday’s blog), my daughter Elizabeth called to tell us she and her long time partner the lovely Jeremy Daum had gone out and gotten married that day.
My daughter Sarah upbraided me for not blogging about this yesterday.
So here’s a bit on that.
I have always respected the way my daughters have handled their relationships. At a certain point this has to become a person’s own responsibility. In both cases, my daughters currently have partners who are delightful people to whom they both seem committed and who are committed to them. That’s quite an accomplishment. Many people who marry never come close to this wonderful experience.
Sarah and Matthew her partner
A few in my extended family and in-laws have had a bit of trouble with the way my daughters have chosen to live. I, on the other hand, am totally proud of them. I have gently indicated to those who disapprove of Sarah and Elizabeth how much I approve and love them.
Elizabeth and Jeremy have been together for around ten years. The turning point in their relationship as described on the phone ten years ago by Elizabeth was that she had discerned she was in love with Jeremy. I think they got married now because it was the sensible thing to do and was probably largely influence by the quagmire that awaits any American who wants to reside permanently in China.
Gay people know only too well the roadblocks unmarried couples can run into in ERs and insurance. This is also solved by just getting married. Unfortunately gay men and women don’t always have that option.
I would love to somehow show my love and approval of Elizabeth and Jeremy through a gift, but they have asked their family and friends not to give them more stuff especially as they shedding so much in preparation for moving to Beijing.
Instead they have charmingly asked people to do what they did and photograph themselves eating cake in honor of the occasion. So that’s what we’ll do.
Theirs is the first marriage I have heard of with its own FAQ.
I had the pleasant experience of hearing “fresh music” last night. The composition, “Uncanny Valley,” by John Gibson was commissioned by Jon Woodward, the author of the text, and his wife, pianist and poet, Oni Buchanan.
John Gibson
They performed it last night at the Knickerbocker for only the second time in public. Afterwards, Oni read three poems from her new book of poetry, “Must a Violence.”
The composition and performance combined an array of 20th century techniques. (You can get a good idea of much but not all of what it sounded like on this web page from Ariel Artists who represent Oni and also my friend Rhonda Edgington) Jon read. Oni was at the piano. Jon manned a computer which produced sounds both random and amplified from Oni’s piano. The form of the piece itself probably had origin in the lines from the poem that read “Lines notated like the previous two/ Are repeated (as a pair)/As many times as the reader desires,/ from zero to 255, before continuing.”
The composition is neatly divided into 16 sections one of which is called “Instructions” which utilizes the text which seems to have influenced the form of the piece.
In each section, Jon would repeat phrases over and over after having read several other lines. The poem actually tells a story of sorts. I heard it as a kind of sci-fi tale. One reviewer says that it is a “story told by a stutterer” and that it tells “what happens when seven trees fall on the highway.” That’s as good a description as any.
I was left with visions of future beings, cyber beings, obnoxious and/or charming current sentient beings talking about an incident from several points of view.
Click on the pic for a definition of "uncanny valley"
The music enhanced and set this text almost like movie music at times.
John Gibson, the composer, describes his own doctoral dissertation about repetition in Reich, Feldman, Andriessen, and the duo Autechre, this way: “The essay engages issues such as the disorienting effect of repetition, the role of repetition in shaping large-scale continuity, and the surprising fact that literally repeating patterns may sound different as they continue.”
Jennifer Coates, Ruin, 2011, acrylic on canvas, 24" x 30".
This could describe much of what I heard last night. But it falls short of what was for me a charming and interesting experience. At times Oni played very carefully with the recorded sounds, at one point punctuating jazzy/dissonant chords over an invisible recorded bass sound emanating from the speakers hooked up the computer. At other times she moved the music stand on the piano to allow her to reach in and make sounds by plucking and rubbing the strings.
These sounds seemed to be then picked up by mics running from the piano to the computer and then utilized in good old fashioned echoplex like ways.
At this point it felt very much like a techno concert where the sounds were being used and reused much like the words in the poem would be repeated and repeated and take on a new life from this repetition.
I didn’t follow the sections of the poem until they reached what I suspected (correctly it turns out) was no. 12. This section began with a long piano piece which was drew heavily on Beethoven’s slow movement of the Pathetique Sonata. But Gibson did not merely quote it. He transformed the material and made it his own in a breathless quiet beautiful way suddenly utilizing the harmonic language of tonal music and making a bit of beauty.
In this way, he captured something about Woodward’s work itself which alternates with the familiar mind-numbing repetition of early avant-guard (Hello John Cage and Karl Stockhausen) and then blossoms suddenly into interesting images and ideas.
A good time was had by all.
We were privileged to be included in the after concert meal with the artists and students. I bought a book each of their poetry and had a martini as I listened and chatted with people around me. It continues to amaze me when shit like this happens here in provincial Holland Michigan at such a bleak intellectual time in our nation. It gives me hope and delight. I’m still processing the work and reading the poetry. Life is good.
Finished The English Hymn: A Critical and Historical Study by J. R. Watson yesterday morning. This morning I optimistically began reading the collection of essays that is volume one of The Hymnal 1982 Companion. I consult regularly in this four volume work which I have owned since it was published and read many of the essays and entries in it. It would be good for me to read this volume straight through. Not sure I’ll continue, but it seemed the way to go this morning.
In the Sunday NYT Book Review, Michael Chabon mentioned an author I have never heard of, Edward St. Aubyn.
I poked around on Amazon, library web sites and such. It looks like a good read. One of the reader reviews on Amazon said that it despite it being a “brutal read,” he/she continued to be sucked in. Read the first few pages and decided I would like to get a copy. An interlibrary loan request was denied. It’s $9.99 on kindle. That’s probably what I’ll end up doing, since the used copies are even more expensive.
In the meantime, I have added How Music Works by Byrne to my morning reading. I like his dry formal/informal voice which comes through nicely to me in his prose. It’s like having a conversation with a goofy educated experienced pop musician who exhibits both insight and naivete. I’m going for the insights.
This evening Eileen and I have been invited to have supper with our friends, Rhonda and Mark Edgington, Jon Woodward the author of this book of poetry and Oni Buchanan, the musician who will be accompanying him as he reads. They are performing a setting by composer, John Gibson. Rhonda knows Oni, I believe. They are both represented by Ariel Artists anyway.
Here’s a link to a page about the work with an embedded audio excerpt.
I received an email from my friends Dave Barber and Paul Wizynajtys, yesterday.
Paul on the left, Dave on the right. I love this picture.
These are two talented men whose friendship I have valued over the years and art I have long admired. I wish they would use the interwebs to sell their art. They fear copyright infringement or people just plain stealing their designs which are wonderful and unique. They limit their marketing to personal appearances at art fairs and stocking their wares in art galleries. I think if they showed their wares online, they would make a ton of money.
Anyway, the email said that Dave’s Halloween ornaments were currently available at Mackerel Sky Gallery in East Lansing. Since the gallery had put the above image on their web site I assume that Dave has given his permission to so. I put up a link on Facebook and he thanked me in a comment.
Daughter Sarah (Hi Sarah) asked for more pictures and an online purchasing option. I would like that as well and would instantly buy something.
Heard James Meridith on the radio about this. He and others have problems with this commemoration. It does seem questionable to commemorate something that was forced down the throat of a university ostensibly founded to perpetuate white supremacy.
Fascinated when I looked up the word, “deracinated,” used in this article. It’s not “race” as in human race, it’s “race” as in “racine” French for root, hence the meaning is to uproot.
Received an email from a friend of a friend who is affected by this. Her husband has long suffered from erratic behavior. Now he is in advanced alzheimers. It turns out his condition has been caused by exposure to toxic chemicals when he was in the service.
Here’s what I put up on Facebook.
This (is) happening now. I have copied parts of an email from someone who is desperately in need of this bill (HB NO: 2052 AKA The Fort McClellan Health Registry Act) to pass. Please act and pass on.
“The CHAIRMAN of this Congressional Committee is Rep. Jeff Miller, from the Pensacola/Fort Walton area in Florida. HIS PHONE NUMBER IN WASHINGTON: 202-225-4136
Congress will be in session next week from Oct. 1-5 before adjourning until after the Nov. election. I called this office the other day – a very friendly young woman named Noel answered the phone. My call took only moments.
You can just say that you know that Congressman Miller is the CHAIRMAN of the Veterans Affairs Committee in the House of Representatives, and that you want to URGE him to pass House Bill NO: 2052 – AKA The Fort McClellan Health Registry Act – because you know someone whose life has been destroyed by toxic chemical exposure at Fort McClellan.
I’m contacting everyone I can think of – I figure that if Mr. Miller’s office is deluged with calls about this that he will take notice!
Language has been raped. What is called “conservative” is radical, what is called “middle of the road” in on the right, what is called left is in the center. Good grief. Now let’s talk about actual ideas.
I found this a bit troubling. I have since read what she has to say about it (doing an expensive project well) and understand a bit more. I do like these tunes:
I think “The Killing Type” is a marvelous piece. Both music and video.
I think the following performance of her song, “The Bed,” is excellent if a bit hokey (the song is a story and musically reminds me of Andrew Lloyd Weber, no mean feat, but he’s not my favorite composer). But I love the sound in the video. It reminds me of analogue recordings of my youth (e.g. the strings in Eleanor Rigby). I love the simplicity of using a sheet as she does and the setting which is intimate and surreal.
She recently put out a call for local musicians to play on her tour when she arrives at their city. For free. I get that it could be an opportunity for a local dude to play with Amanda Fucking Palmer (as she refers to herself). But I find this troubling but it might be more of my own “boy anachronism” stuff.
The very idea of what “music” is has changed certainly in the populist arena. “Music” now seems to be about a very large ephemeral experience which includes personality, story, emotional strength, entertainment to name just a few. Where I feel out of touch is that I’m interested in music mostly for how it sounds and how satisfying it is to make those sounds physically. When people talk about “music” they seem to mean what’s on their computers, phones and mp3 players.
I have been out of touch, I think for most of my life. I was attracted to the Beatles, Bach and Paul Simon because I thought the sounds were intriguing and satisfying. Later to some extent I identified my own subjectivity in my attraction, but I never quite got that music was a business and much larger enterprise than the sounds themselves.
Then I hit my first music college. I was a bit of a rebel I guess. Certainly again out of touch. I met several fine pedagogues but mostly the teachers were either angry or distant. And they did damage. I was damaged but not near as badly as other students by the teachers myopic arrogance. One of my fellow composition students attempted suicide. I believe it was largely about academic pressure. I watched teachers ridicule students, seduce students, affect airs of superiority (often when they weren’t all that superior), and generally turn people away from music.
Yikes.
I dropped out of my composition program (due to leaving my first wife, not out of disgust with it or anything) and returned to school years later to study organ.
I was on the phone with a bride recently.
It is during conversations like this when I realize how out of touch I am. I hear brides and grooms talk about not using “churchy” music. Instead they want music that is lively and interesting. I of course think that a lot of the music I do at church fits that description. But I certainly get that the church is a strange land for many people. They don’t suspect that what they are looking for is also what a church community might be look for.
The ideal of a community that has a sense of authenticity is a distant one in the USA at this point. These are missing in our society at large, of course, so institutions will have a tendency to mirror that.
In the meantime I make my community out of sounds I guess. Through them I reach other minds, living and dead, and deep emotions as well as playfulness and simple enjoyment.
I have long admired The English Hymnal. The musical editor, Ralph Vaughan Williams, is someone whose music I admire. I have wondered why it and Hymns, Ancient and Modern exist side by side in English usage in the past.
Early in my church music work, I obtained copies of these hymnals and regularly consulted them. Finishing up The English Hymn by J. R. Watson, I ran across the explanation of their co-existence.
In the late 1890s, the editors of Hymns, Ancient and Modern began working on a new edition. In it they were influenced by the philosophy of poet and hymn writer Robert Bridges. Bridges wanted hymnody to be more elevated than the mid-Victorian and gospel hymns. He advocated a return to his idea of heritage: “plainsong, Reformation tunes, Gibbons, Tallis and Bach.”
Eventually he published his own hymnal.
His Yatendon Hymnal (which I had never heard of until reading its name in Watson’s prose) not only attempted a corrective in its selection, it was also a beautifully made book.
Unfortunately for the editors of the Hymns, Ancient and Modern, publication of their 1904 edition began to be known as “that dreadful red book.” They had attempted reform and angered the users of the book.
Into this came Vaughn Williams and his crew with a completely new hymnal. The editors of Hymns, Ancient and Modern refused copyright use of some of their tunes.
Vaughan Williams apparently jumped at the opportunity this created and paired the words of these hymns with English Folk tunes.
FOREST GREEN
MONK’S GATE
KING’S LYNN
The English Hymnal was also a beautifully designed book.
This last text by G. K. Chesterton could easily have been written about our day and age.
I admit that I am a reader and admirer of Chesterton. This morning as I read Watson’s analysis of his hymn, I was struck how his time (pre WWI and the loss of empire for Great Britain) has much in common with my own.
O God of earth and altar, bow down and hear our cry,
Our earthly rulers falter, our people drift and die;
The walls of gold entomb us, the swords of scorn divide;
Take not Thy thunder from us, but take away our pride.
From all that terror teaches, from lies of tongue and pen,
From all the easy speeches that comfort cruel men;
From sale and profanation of honor and the sword;
From sleep and from damnation, deliver us, good Lord!
Tie in a living tether, the prince and priest and thrall;
Bind all our lives together, smite us and save us all;
In ire and exultation aflame with faith and free,
Lift up a living nation, a single sword to Thee.
“Our earthly rulers falter, our people drift and die; The walls of gold entomb us, the swords of scorn divide; Take not Thy thunder from us, but take away our pride” could have been written about American right now.
Chesterton even mentions “terror” and the harm it can do in the next verse and along with “lies” and “easy speeches” and asks for deliverance from all of it.
The last stanza is a call for community in my reading. A tether that will “bind” all. He doesn’t entirely avoid nationalism as he calls for a spiritual revitalization. In that he also echoes American now who cannot see herself as anything but first in the world.
Samuel P. Huntington’s much misrepresented book “The Clash of Civilizations and the Remaking of World Order”: “The West won the world not by the superiority of its ideas, values or religion … but rather by its superiority in applying organized violence. Westerners often forget this fact, non-Westerners never do.”
It would also have been helpful if Cooper and the editors had explained that the U.S. actually has a horrendous record when it comes to supporting free-speech and democracy in the Muslim world.
The U.S. currently supports and arms autocratic and free-speech averse regimes in Saudi Arabia, Yemen, Bahrain, Qatar and the United Arab Emirates.
This is the piece I played for my Kids’ Choir on Wednesday. I’m still learning it.
I hope my final performance is a little better than this one. I can see how recording affects my view of my playing. First of all it’s informative to watch myself.
I do move a lot as I play. Probably a hold over from the rock and roll days when my fellow rockers actually told me I needed to move my body more as I played.
I remember at my audition for the grad department at Notre Dame the professors were quite concerned when I shifted my body once while playing. Yeah, the whole ND experience ended up shaking my self confidence as much as educating. My teacher and his wife very unhelpfully told me as I graduated that the consensus was that I wouldn’t make it through. Nice.
A dear professor killed himself right after I left the program. They abandoned the inter-disciplinary approach between music and liturgy quickly thereafter. There are reasons I am bitter about college.
I could have done a few more takes and probably gotten the glitches out of this performance. I’m too lazy for recording.
Wednesday, I asked the kids if they knew what a duet was.
It was interesting that one of them asked if dancing could be a duet.
I said yes of course. He then said that he had danced a duet at talent show (I think it was a talent show).
We discussed what a trio was.
I demonstrated that my feet played the low notes. I asked them what instruments played low notes. Eventually I got “tuba” and “bass.”
At first someone said oboe.
I said no, oboe is like my right hand and played a bit (it’s a reed).
We talked about the musical materials of Bach’s piece. I pointed out how the beginning melody is changed in the second section. Two of the choristers agreed it was like “going up the stairs,”
then “going down the stairs.”
I found this observation quite marvelous.
After I finished playing the entire piece for them, I said now you know something: an organist can play a trio with him/herself.
I didn’t blog yesterday since daughter Elizabeth got up early enough to keep me company. Having her around reminded me that there are people besides Eileen who “get me” (Eileen’s phrase). I do like my adult kids.
She helped me pick out the web cam and helped me try it out. She taped several instances of me playing which I want to look at for evaluation of my technique. In the video above, the camera angle is such that at first I thought I might be holding my left shoulder funny. After several viewings I’m not sure. I (Elizabeth really) did adjust the camera and do some more taping so I have something to compare it with.
I haven’t looked at all of the recordings yet. I was dismayed to find that there is no video editing program building into Windows XP as there is in Windows 7.
There is one available through Windows for XP if one updates with one of the dreaded “service pack 2” for XP.
I didn’t do that.
Instead I edited on my netbook, uploaded privately to youtube, viewed, reedited, then re-uploaded publicly. There is an interim step of converting a “project” to a .wmv file format. This is clunky and time consuming but it works.
My plan is eventually to move the finished files off my netbook via dropbox because I don’t want to use the netbook for storage. Instead I will store videos on my exterior hard drive.
It’s quite an elaborate process at this point and that’s why I haven’t yet checked out all the videos Elizabeth helped me make this week.
The Arab revolutions have not turned anti-Western. Nor are they pro-Western. They are simply not about the West. They remain fundamentally about social justice and democracy — not about religion or establishing Shariah law.
On a related note, Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist Jose Antonio Vargas addresses how “illegal” quickly transforms into “Mexican” or just a dehumanizing pejorative in this article in a segment on this week’s On The Media.
Daughter Elizabeth pointed me to this. Haven’t read yet. She said it’s about drones. I definitely have a problem with the way the US is using drones to kill people. But at this point I still plan to vote for Obama.
I didn’t blog yesterday because daughter Elizabeth is visiting and got up early enough for me to chat with her instead of blogging. I love having adult kids. We went to the farmers market together. Then she helped me pick out a camera to make videos of myself playing.
After talking to a salesperson, I decided his advice to use a good web cam was worth trying. I bought a pretty fancy (for a web cam) one.
and a cool tripod.
All for about a hundred dollars. Now I have to build up the energy to actually video myself playing.
After that, Elizabeth and I dropped by my Mom’s, chatted her up, and invited her to go out to eat with us. She was glad to see us, but didn’t want go out with us. We went home and were in the process of making lunch when Mom phoned and said she had changed her mind, she did want to go out for lunch.
So we went over and picked her up. I asked her why she had changed her mind, she said they were having fish and she doesn’t like the way they do fish. Heh.
So the three of us had lunch together at Crane’s
and then Mom wanted some fudge so we walked to Kilwin’s.
Mary Jenkins, my Mom, at Kilwin's picking out fudge.... thanks to Elizabeth for taking this picture
Mom was pretty tired after that so we took her back to her room. I went off to prepare for my evening rehearsals and practice organ. Elizabeth drove Eileen’s mini around and ran some errands.
When I went to work around 5:45 PM, Elizabeth picked up Eileen they went to one of Eileen’s and my favorite restaurants, Citu-Vu.
I had fun with my Kids’ Choir last night. We worked on Bach and a little Brahms melody. We rehearsed in the church and I worked on teaching them to project their voice. I try to show them some music each week. Last night I played my Bach trio movement for them and had them stand close enough to watch me play it. That trio is one I’ve thought might make a nice little video. I will have to become resolved to the poor stops on my organ I guess.
Clever Elizabeth picture of me preparing worksheets for my Kids' Choir yesterday.
So that’s why I didn’t blog yesterday. Too busy.
Can you fill in yesterday's Kids' Choir spelling game?
This link won’t last long. BBC is running five shows on the piano. This one has a very weird perspective and uses art to illustrate the writer (speaker?) take that piano and classical music is no longer relevant. It’s like rebelling against a dead parent.
“…[W]e need to ask whether we now have an electoral process so vacuous, vicious and just plain silly that most people in their right minds wouldn’t go anywhere near it.
I seem to be suffering from mild melancholia lately. I ascribe it to my schedule. Yesterday I began (for the first time) to entertain ideas of retiring from church work someday.
I guess I feel like I’m getting old to keep banging my head against this particular wall. I enjoy the work, but I tend to turn it into an obsession and make full time gigs out of part time ones.
This notion ebbed a bit when one of the musicians I asked to join me in performing the Bach Cantata movement the choirs are learning quickly said yes. So now I have a violin and myself on organ for it. I sat down and transcribed her part.
The oboist is giving it some thought. The cellist did not respond. One violinist turned me down. Time for the “whatever shrug” that I have been using to keep stuff in as much perspective as I can.
I will wait a bit before emailing the violinist her part. If the oboist says yes, I will give the violin some oboe II parts when it rests. If the oboist says no, I will give her oboe I parts. And in case I will give instrumentalists parts with the cuts that I made in it.
As I was rehearsing at the organ yesterday I realized that the page turn scores I made are so high that no singer or instrumentalist could see me conducting.
Oops. Made shorter scores.
Daughter Elizabeth
and Edison the cat arrive tonight.
That will be nice, especially the daughter part. Eileen and I will be cat sitting indefinitely while Elizabeth joins her partner Jeremy to live in Beijing.
My Mom actually came over to my house yesterday and ate her Wendy’s cheeseburger with me. It’s been some time since she’s had the strength and inclination to do something like that.
The dance department chair has requested some Prokofiev
and Rachmaninoff
for some dance combinations. Unless an instructor is specific about the piece, I find this pretty tricky. I can play pieces by these composers, but do they fit in character with what the instructor expects. Yesterday she asked for a mazurka. My brain went blank. What she needed was so far distant from my experience of Chopin mazurkas that I didn’t even associate them. I did manage to improvise something that fit the dance. It barely related to what I think of as mazurkas but it worked.
I had some Prokofiev and Rachmaninoff with me in case she asked for it. She didn’t. Interestingly while looking through my Prokofiev scores I found some music that intrigued me. I slowly played through a couple pages of his etude in D minor Op. 1#2 yesterday and before that several pieces from his Music for Young People Op. 65. The latter represents him as a composer at his height of his abilities. The music is not too hard but not really for beginning students.
I do like Prokofiev and am glad to get sucked back into his work. I have rehearsed several movements from his piano sonatas and find them pretty profound. I think he has something to say to me.
I had promised myself that I would not begin reading David Byrne’s How Music Works until I had finished The English Hymn by J. R. Watson. But I have been prematurely dipping into it even as I am finishing up Watson. (Thank you again to my brother and his wife for giving me Byrne for my birthday!)
Byrne begins by talking about how the context of music is constitutive (“That makes a thing what it is; forming an essential part or element; essential.” OED 2). He talks not only about the rooms he began playing in at the beginning of his career but also about other rooms.
In a small section entitled “We’re all African,” he says that “percussive music carries well outdoors, where people might be both dancing and milling about.” He says this is the kind of music where “the instruments were carefully fashioned, selected, tailored, and played to best suit the physical, acoustic, and social situation…. a living thing, evolved to fit the available niche.”
I find the African strain in American music extremely satisfying to perform and listen to. I love “percussive music” and I also love jazz and the sorrow songs.
It just so happens that I arrived at Watson’s consideration of Afro-American Slave Songs in this morning’s reading of his book. I had two insights while reading it.
The first is his idea that the gospel songs of Sankey and Crosby replicate techniques in Spirituals but are ultimately “inauthentic and secondhand when set beside” the songs of the slaves. “Gospel hymnody was an artificial construction, a deliberate using of these techniques to manipulate the hearts and minds of the singers and and listeners…”
I wonder if my rejection of the gospel hymnody of my youth had something to do with this inauthenticity. I think if asked then I would readily agree that it did. Now I have made peace with this inauthenticity and know that this kind of music is also part of me.
When I assist the elderly at my Mom’s nursing home in singing songs that fit this category, I do so in a spirit of offering consolation and comfort with whatever means necessary. Of course I also offer a heaping serving of excellent music and popular music in the same sitting.
But my second insight is probably more important for me. The music of Spirituals is the music of a captive people. I believe that the average person in the U.S. is experiencing a captivity. Of course not as dire as one experiences in physical slavery. But our mental situation, our conversation, our language has been captured and taken from our control.
I think that the slave songs teach us how to nobly persist in the face of idiocy. I hope that when I lead congregations in this kind of music (which I insist on doing) I am leading them not into a inauthentic experience. Unfortunately, how people are actually experience music is beyond anyone’s control, it’s so subjective. It’s like the beginning scene in “Blazing Saddles” where the white railroad workers ask the black workers to sing them a song.
If you don’t know the scene, the white workers demonstrate what song they want after (before?) the black workers sing a highly sophisticated version of “I get no kick from champagne.”
So I’m hoping when white congregations sing slave songs they are tapping into the authentic side of themselves and using them to pray a real prayer, not doing the fakey mimic of singing “Camptown ladies” like the white workers in Blazing Saddles.
In order to read this on a single page I linked to the print version. If you prefer the html version there is a link at the bottom of this page.
It’s estimated that, thanks to massive outsourcing over the past 20 years by the Clinton and Bush administrations, there are two government contractors for every worker directly employed by the government… government hasn’t shrunk; it’s just changed clothes (and pretty nice clothes they are).
I finally slugged my way through the final pages of this tome yesterday. I haven’t forgiven the author for having two very repellent narrators in his gallery of four of five that tell the story. The story itself could have been an excellent novel.
It has to do with an Italian (secretly a priest) who traveled under his brother’s identity as a nobleman to England.
This priest comes into contact with many historical personages and historical events.
Charles II, King of England, whose secret conversion to Roman Catholicism makes up part of the plot.
The Italian is present at experiments with blood transfusions and rubs shoulders with philosophers and interesting people in Oxford including Christopher Wren who apparently actually was connected to early experiments of this nature.
The other interesting character in the plot is called Sarah Blundy. She is a blend of Anne Green, a real person who was “hanged in Oxford” around this time, and a fictitious sort of mystic and seer.
I think that Pears had the material for a good novel. He certainly showed that he could write such a novel in his superior second book, Stone’s Fall, which I read first.
In this book, he sustained my interest in the characters through the entire story. In An Instance of the Fingerpost by the time the final denouement arrives (on p. 683!), I just didn’t care. He hadn’t created the interest and suspense of his second novel. Plus this particular plot climax (there are several) was the historical fact of King Charles’ secret conversion. I’m sure there are readers who would be aware of this.
I don’t recommend the first novel, but continue to think that Stone’s Fall was a good read.
I emailed this link to my wife who has an interest in accurate use of facts and statistics. It makes clear what 47% in the recent hubbub actually means and its connection to real statistics.
During my brief tenure as a college adjunct teacher I was assigned a music theory text by this man. Subsequently I looked him and his music up. He was pretty interesting. Maybe I’ll check out more of his compositions. This obit describes some pretty interesting stuff.
I’m adjusting to my new schedule. In my past lives, I have had more time for myself than I do presently.
I have filled that time up with daily accompanying of ballet classes, assigning myself more significant pieces and choral accompaniments to learn on the organ, and taking on more work at church. Add in things like transcribing a string quartet arrangement and a mini-concert at my Mom’s residence and I might be near the limit of energies and abilities.
Of course there’s always the aging thing.
Being 61 years old is a blessing but at the same time I do seem to be tired a lot.
I figured out this morning that J. R. Watson using the word, “English,” in the title of his book The English Hymn: A Critical and Historical Survey in a more specific sense than I was unconsciously thinking of it. “English” as in the people of England not as the name of the language(s).
This occurred to me because I began reading in Chapter 18, “Different Traditions,” which begins this way:
“In the eighteenth century, English hymns colonized American worship; in the nineteenth century, American hymns came across the Atlantic in the opposite direction to enrich the world of Victorian religion … The most spectacular irruption of an American phenomenon into the English tradition, however, was the publication of Ira D. Sankey’s Sacred Songs and Solos in 1874, and the growing awareness of Afro-American spiritual songs through the Jubilee Singers and the publication of the texts of slave songs.” p. 486
Ohhhhh. When I read those sentences I realized the parameters of his brilliant little study.
I turned from Watson to another book I have interlibrary-loaned: Sandra Soderlund’s How Did They Play? How Did They Teach? A History of Keyboard Technique.
This is a massive study and anthology of sources from the 13th century to the early 20th. Soderlund loves to give entire pieces with fingerings. It’s amazing how many composers and teachers over the centuries have provided these. It’s a dry subject, but I still find it pretty interesting.
The book seems to be only available directly from the publisher Hinshaw or maybe from sheet music dealers. At any rate, Amazon does carry it. I would but it used but at $95 list it’s going to have to wait until after my mostly depleted music allowance comes back in 2013.
When I asked the audience at my Mom’s nursing home yesterday if they recognized Bach’s famous Prelude in C from WTC I I had just played for them, a woman in the back shouted out rather curtly in the manner of the elderly, “Of course! It’s ‘Ave Maria.'” I told her she was right, but that the melody of Ave Maria was by another composer, Gounod.
I then sat down and played the theme from Scheherazade and asked if anyone knew it.
I remember hearing this in my childhood which was not particularly well informed artistically. The old guitar playing smoker whom I often greet in the halls said in a critical growl, “Days of our lives!”
I take it he didn’t like it. Undaunted I reminded them of the story of Scheherazade (“Arabian nights”) and then identified and played the themes for the princes and the prince.
Without a comment I launched into “Habanera” from Carmen.
I was winning them over. After identifying Bizet to the audience I played “The Syncopated Clock” by Leroy Anderson.
I figure it’s a Lawrence Welk type tune and would amuse them.
I finished off with a Reader Digest’s version (literally I was playing from one of those Reader Digest’s anthologies) of Rhapsody in Blue.
Then I launched into a series of popular songs, then finished up with hymns. By the time we were done many were singing along. If you ever need an ego boost this is a good volunteer gig. The people who are coherent (about half?) are lavish in their praise.
Earlier in the day I cut orchestral sections of the Bach cantata movement in my rehearsal. I figured out I took out about one fourth of the piece and didn’t remove any of the choral sections. This should make this a bit more appropriate for use in my situation.
I received the organ demonstrator pieces I ordered in the mail. At first glance they don’t look terribly exciting. I will play through them and hope that the music sounds better than it looked.
Having an 8:30 AM class curtails the lazy mornings I like to get up early and enjoy. Gotta skate.
