Skipped blogging yesterday. Instead I planned the music for this Sunday. This always starts with a look at the readings assigned for the day.  Then I start looking at the hymns that relate via a very intelligent index, a hymnary we used to call it. After choosing hymns, I came up with another easy one rehearsal anthem. Today I must come up with the organ prelude and postlude.

Sara Miles the author put up on this video on Facebook.  Maybe it was my post holiday melancholy but this video really hit me. The jerky smooth movements of these turf dancers seemed to me to capture the combined mood of sadness, outrage and mocking humor.  I think it’s art. Just my opinion.

The anthem I chose for Sunday sits a bit high in the range for some of my group of singers. I am down to one soprano, which means most of the singers are altos and basses.  The anthem takes the word of the great hymn, “At the Name of Jesus,” and pairs it with the lovely french medieval carol tune, Noel Nouvelet. This is not it, but you can get an idea of the shape of the original tune:

It is this same carol tune that Fernande Decruck used in her Sonate en Ut # for Saxophone (or Viola) and piano. This is a piece that my friend and colleague Jordan VanHemert introduced me to recently. We messed about with it this summer and he performed it in school this past semester . He had asked me if we could perform it over the Xmas break this year at my church.  We seriously considered it. I even put in many hours trying to prepare myself not to embarrass my self with it on the piano.

Last summer I pointed out to Jordan Decruck’s use of the French carol (Decruck uses it but not does not identify it as the carol in the music).  When he asked about using it this December, I said that even though the origin of the tune is a Christmas one, in American hymnals it is more often paired with the Easter text, “Now the Green Blade Rises.”

Yesterday when Jordan came over to bullshit and do some playing, I had to confess that I was using an anthem based on the tune in the lovely piece he had proposed we use at church. Heh. He took it well.

Jordan looked over my shoulder as I added articulations to the Saxophone part of the anthem we collaborated on and then performed this past Sunday.

Then we played through the first movement of Mozart’s Violin Sonata in A major, K. 305. Since it is in A major it puts it in the unwieldy key of B major for the Bb Soprano Saxophone. I had fun running through it with him, but kept getting excited about the wonderful musical ideas in it and getting a bit carried away and speeding up when I was trying to keep it at a modest tempo for his reading through it for the first time.

We both agreed that it was the Mozart of the wonderful Operas and Grand Partita. Lovely lovely music.

I am returning to my days of solitude. With Jordan’s return to college, I really have no musical colleagues locally. He realizes this I am sure and I think that was part of why he made time for me yesterday even though he is busily preparing to return to school.

It is true that I do have a mild melancholic longing for friendship and collegial relationships. But I have been successfully lowering my expectations on how people connect with me.  It helps to have an excellent companion in my loving wife. But some of it is accepting how difficult it is for many to relate to my love of words and music.

Day before yesterday I found myself playing lots of Haydn, Mozart and Beethoven at the piano. It is such a privilege to spend time with the minds of these men.

I don’t really think of myself as a colleague of these geniuses. Rather there is an intimacy of thought in playing through their musical ideas that resembles being in their presence. Very satisfying.

I also have been basking in beautiful prose of John Crowley’s novel, Little, Big.

I’ll close with some quotes.

As Smokey Barnable walks in solitude and gazes at the windows of the estate he is living on, he thinks:

“He looked toward the inscrutable edge of Edgewood which pointed toward him, windows lit already in the fleeting day; a mask that covered many faces, or a single face that wore many masks, he didn’t know which, nor did he know it about himself.”

I love the way Crowley addresses the complexity of personality in this metaphor.

Are we the multiple voices in our heads throughout our life whose character constantly changes?  Where is the singularity of who we are?  Or does this persistent unchanging selfish imp of personality we all are exist under masks we wear for each other? There is a Proustian echo in this quote for me.

Here’s another passage describing a characters life long romance with sleep and dreams:

“She had always lived her best life in dreams. She knew no greater pleasure than that moment of passage into the other place, where her limbs grew warm and heavy and the sparkling darkness behind her lids became ordered and doors opened; when conscious thought grew owl’s wings and talons and became other than conscious.”

Finally, Crowley himself quotes Cicero. It is a wonderful thought I share with you from the dark Western Michigan early morning:

Hours and days and months and years go by; the past returns no more, and what is to be we cannot know; but whatever the time gives us in which to live, we should therefore be content.

Cicero

I ended up doing some composing this week. As I mentioned in an earlier post (link to Dec 29 post: “history, dance, and of course music”), I and a colleague did an arrangement for choir, sax, and marimba of an early American tune.

The piece was designed to be learned quickly (i.e. easy).  This seemed to work well yesterday. Despite many absences (a couple people have actually dropped out), the remaining faithful crew easily overcame their anxieties and plunged into this piece yesterday.

The result was very musical and satisfying.  So much so that I have already spend more time this morning with the piece re-editing it to make the final version more representative of what we did and a better composition. I’m still not done. I want to check with Jordan about articulations in the sax part. He switched back and forth between Tenor and Soprano Sax, eventually deciding on Soprano. I preferred the Soprano, but told him I would leave it totally up to him.

Jordan also played on the prelude and postlude.  The prelude was a composition of his called “Todo Para La Familia” (“All for the family”?). This fit in nicely with the readings for the day which talked about the Holy Family running from Herod after Christ’s birth. It also is a beautiful little composition. Along with the postlude (Jordan’s choice of “Isotope” by Joe Henderson), he and I wailed on these tunes and classed up the morning. Just my opinion, heh.

Very satisfying.  These Sundays after Xmas are sort of “low” Sundays. By that I mean attendance and energy are low. The whole service yesterday had a light playful energy.

Eileen and I walked home to a house empty of our guests. I had family visiting this week which was fun.

I had canceled the usual post service choir rehearsal due to the fact that I haven’t picked out any music yet. I spent this time happily in my kitchen making food for Eileen and me (“Orange shrimp” with rice and roasted Parmesan Broccoli…. mmmmm! and all low cal).

I downloaded Henderson playing his tune, “Isotope,”  from Amazon for 99 pennies to play while I cooked.

Also pulled down several of Haydn’s piano sonatas which I have been spending time with at the piano.

I like this definition of Isotope I found on the web:

isotopes – radiation sources that have an unstable nuclear (center of the atom) composition.

My center is certainly pleasantly unstable.

There are so many wonderful things in the world.

This sentiment is expressed at the very end of Book person, Micheal Dirda’s interview on Lapham’s Quarterly podcast (link scroll down to episode #5 from Nov 23). He is talking about books and I totally agree with this sentiment, but extend to other things like music, cooking and the internet.

I lay in bed earlier and listened to several of the podcasts on the Lapham’s Quarterly audio and video page. I recommend them. I especially liked Pevear and Volokhonsky, the translators of Russian authors. I was so inspired I sent away for their version of Dostoevsky’s Crime and Punishment.

I liked American Voices (#4) with readings excerpts of the writings of Henry Adams, Walt Whitman and Benjamin Franklin,  all three favorites of mine.

If you go to the second page of these podcasts, you’ll find an excellent discussion of Iliad (again a favorite of mine) with Lapham and Caroline Alexander from April 5, 2010.

On the third page one finds an interesting discussion of the history of drinking alcohol by Ian Gately (Dec 1, 2009)

On this same page Donald Kagan talks about Thucydides. (Oct 29, 2009)

This is how I spent the wee hours buy valium ireland this morning.

Then I got up and purchased an MP3 of Prokofiev’s first opus and first piano sonata in F minor. I have been playing this on and off for about a week.  I have done more studying and playing of his A minor piano sonata, but for some reason the F minor has attracted my attention. I like the melodic themes he has come up with and put his little Prokofievian twist on. Of course I play it much slower than the dude in the recording (Boris Berman).

Last night I snuck away to the church and practiced the marimba part my little upcoming composition for sax, choir and marimba we will perform Sunday. Also went over the jazz prelude and postlude and the hymns. I looked at the bulletin and the secretary (or the boss or somebody) dropped one of the hymns I recommended for communion. Weird.

Came home and the group was watching Dexter (not my favorite but a favorite of the rest of the crew). I edited my Marimba piece some more and then trundled off to bed.

Life is good. There are many wonderful things in the world for sure.

My house is full of company, family visiting, so that’s nice. Less time to fool with the blog.

This morning I made Lemon Blueberry Cake which is cooling. Planning to serve Noodles Alfredo for lunch.  That will be our Xmas meal together since half the crowd needs to leave and get back to a New Years get together.

Read another interesting article online: “The Worst of the Madness” by Anne Applebaum (link to New York Review of Books web site) It’s primarily a review of Bloodlines: Europe Between Hitler and Stalin by Timothy Snyder.

I found out many interesting things that I didn’t quite get about the mass murders in Eastern Europe. Stalin and Hitler played off of each other and both countries systematically killed and moved large groups of people around.

Snyder maintains that both countries though enemies also acted in concert sometimes and facilitated each other’s madness. Interesting article, but I don’t think I’ll read the book.

This came in the mail yesterday. As well as this:

My Pricksongs doesn’t look this nice. I bought an old used yellow paperback.

Well gotta go host.

I have always found Winston Churchill a fascinating figure.  A man who overcame a stutter and was an artist as well as a statesman of the first order.

So I was tickled when I ran across this interesting article online:  “Finest Hours: the making of Winston Churchill” by Adam Gopnik (link to New Yorker article)

I like this quote:

Churchill “… is, with de Gaulle, the greatest instance in modern times of the romantic-conservative temperament in power. The curious thing is that this temperament can at moments be more practical than its liberal opposite, or than its pragmatic-conservative twin, since it rightly concedes the primacy of ideas and passions, rather than interests and practicalities, in men’s minds. Churchill was a student of history, but one whose reading allowed him to grasp when a new thing in history happened.”

Ideas and passion rather than interests and practicalities…. I like that quite a bit.

This book came in the mail yesterday. I ordered it as an Xmas present to myself to sort of balance off Eileen’s Xmas gifts to herself.

I somehow ran across Toni Bentley’s review, “Taking Flight” in the New York Times and became interested in knowing more about the cultural history of ballet.

I have long owned Arbeau’s Orchesography.

I value this book as a resource for understanding Renaissance and Baroque dance terms that are used in music like Pavanne and Galliard.

And I love dance and see physical movement as integral to an understanding of music.

Not to mention becoming more involved with ballet class accompaniment in the last decade or so.

Thus I look forward to learning more about ballet even though I am approaching this book with my usual skepticism exacerbated by letters in the Times responding to the gloom and doom of both the book and the reviewer (link, link).  I always find gloomy predictions a bit suspect. Since history is full of people bemoaning how things are the worse they have ever been and why couldn’t things be the way they used to be.

I have been working on an arrangement of this hymn from the Southern Harmony collection. The melody is the middle line.

It’s in Walker’s Southern Harmony. And there are several versions in the current Episcopal hymnal including the original harmonization above with the melody in the tenor. I have begun an arrangement for saxophone, marimba and 2 part choir.  Today my colleague and friend Jordan VanHemert, saxophonist extraordinaire, is coming by to help me finish it.

I am seriously considering emailing a pdf file of the music and a (shudder) midi mp3 to my choir members so they can get a bit of a heads up on it for Sunday.

Jordan has graciously consented to come and play this Sunday at my church while he is on college break.  At this point I think we are going to do compositions by him for the prelude and postlude. The prelude will be his “Todo Para La Familia” which is a charming little jazz piece. He has some other compositions he thinks will work for the postlude. We will be deciding today which one to use. I am very happy to be using some of his work.

I haven’t been doing too much practicing piano or organ. I think I’m sort of on vacation. But yesterday I spent some lovely moments with Prokofiev’s first piano sonata. Seemed to be just the thing.

Karen Tuttle, Violist and Teacher, Dies at 90 by Margalit Fox (link to NYT)

I know it’s weird but I love to read obits. This particular obit vindicates this practice of mine. Tuttle sounds like a fascinating person. She had her students cut a hole in their shirt so they could feel the vibrations of their viola against their skin thereby presumably increasing their connection to the sound.

I love the story of how she came to the decision to leave one of her husbands:

“Ms. Tuttle was practicing one day when her husband ran an incriminating finger over the furniture and thrust it, dust-covered, under her nose

Ms. Tuttle hit him over the head, though not, thankfully, with her viola. She used a frying pan.”

I would love to read her biography.

“The Big (Military) Taboo” by Nicholas Kristoff (link to NYT)

If you read me regularly you know I respect this writer.

This article is about the need for the US to curtail and improve its spending on arms.

A couple of quotes:

The U.S. military now has more people in its marching bands than the State Department has in its foreign service — and that’s preposterous…

Paradoxically, it’s often people with experience in the military who lead the way in warning against overinvestment in arms. It was President Dwight Eisenhower who gave the strongest warning: “Every gun that is made, every warship launched, every rocket fired signifies, in the final sense, a theft from those who hunger and are not fed, those who are cold and are not clothed.” And in the Obama administration, it is Defense Secretary Robert Gates who has argued that military spending on things large and small can and should expect closer, harsher scrutiny; it is Secretary Gates who has argued most eloquently for more investment in diplomacy and development aid.

Two Cheers for Nature: Behavior may come naturally, but that doesn’t make it good by David P. Barash (link to Chronicle.com)

Now we get in to articles I have bookmarked for future reading.

I get a lot of these from this website: link to Arts and Letters Daily.

Left Out by Francis Fukuyama link to American Interest.com

This man is an interesting thinker whose ideas keep popping up.  In this introduction to the topic of the current issue of The American Interest,  he describes the current situation in the US:

a state of affairs in which the rich influence government in such a way as to protect and expand their own wealth and influence, often at the expense of others… this influence may be exercised in four basic ways: lobbying to shift regulatory costs and other burdens away from corporations and onto the public at large; lobbying to affect the tax code so that the wealthy pay less; lobbying to allow the fullest possible use of corporate money in political campaigns; and, above all, lobbying to enable lobbying to go on with the fewest restrictions.

More future treadmill reading for me.

What Makes a Song Sad by Daniel Wattenberg (link to the Atlantic)

Articles like this never fail to piss me off. I read them anyway.

The Solitary Life by Peter Campion (link to NYT)

I routinely read book reviews. Besides pointing me to books they can be interesting in and of themselves.  Leopardi was a 19th century poet according to this review of a new translation of his work now available.

Which brings me to another link that recently caught my eye and is on my list to read:

“Solitude and Leadership: if you want others to follow, learn to be alone with your thoughts” A lecture given by William Deresiewicz to the “plebe class at the United States Military Academy at West Point in October of last year.” (link to The American Scholar)

This one is definitely up my alley since I value solitude highly and seek to find people who know how to lead at this difficult time in our society.

I can see that my links are piling up. Verbosity and excess is definitely one of my vices.  I will attempt to moderate and stop here even though I have several more links bookmarked for my own future reading.

Bon Appetit.

While I treadmill I like to read the internet on my little netbook. It makes the time pass quickly and expands the usefulness of exercise in my mind.

Yesterday I lined up several articles to read while I was exercising.  But I was drawn in to an unattributed article on The Economist web site: “The Disposable Academic: why doing a phd is a waste of time.”

I myself have had a hate/love relationship with college all my life.

When I was considering college, my father arranged for me to have a lunch with Robert Anderson who later became president of the college my father graduated from.  He gave me sage advice about college from the inside. He told me it was like any institution and was best approached on its own screwd up terms.

I thought of this conversation often as I later attended several colleges.

Throughout my life I haven’t had a lot of advice. My father tended to keep his distance both emotionally and intellectually.  But I can remember the people who have advised me.

At the first college I attended (Flint U of M) I quickly became dissatisfied with my English major classes. Admittedly the advisors put me in the advanced classes including an interesting experimental seminar which met weekly for discussions and assigned reading.  I got something out of my logic and French classes there, but for the most part my head was moving away from college.

I remember a final conversation with a counselor there in which I told him I was going to eventually study harpsichord and that I needed some time away from school.

I eventually did study harpsichord years later.  People who know me now are not very aware of my skills in this area. Recently a local college teacher told me there was no way that the college would loan my church its harpsichord for a performance.  She was surprised that I would even consider it possible.

Actually it’s not that preposterous for a college to loan a harpsichord out especially to someone who plays it competently (that would be me).  This is assuming that the college is interested in spreading and supporting the arts locally.

This is an example of how institutions blithely ignore the realities of content while emphasizing one’s ability to get credentials that in themselves often do not indicate any level of understanding. I sometimes say that my degrees do mean something because I got a good education.

I threw myself into school when I returned to Ohio Wesleyan where I studied composition and piano for a couple of years.  From that point on in my life I was motivated by a passion for music which I still have.

There were a couple of good teachers there that helped me.  Eventually I wound up studying at Wayne State University. Here I studied organ and church music. Undoubtedly I received an excellent and well rounded education at WSU. Not only in my music course but in the other non-major courses. They were excellent and affect the way I think to this day (Nutrition, Physical Anthropology, Poly Sci).

My organ/harpsichord teacher and mentor was Ray Ferguson. Ray had a Masters degree from Oberlin.  He also was an active performer in Detroit and was the DSO organist. He was an excellent harpsichordist and while I knew him continued his education with excellent people all over the world.

He told me that all I needed was a Masters degree.  I’m not sure if he thought I was doctorate material but what he said was that I wouldn’t need one.  So far he has been correct. The article I linked at the beginning of this post paints a bleak picture of the need for doctorates at the university level.  It reminded me of Ray’s comments.

I am interested in learning but have never set my sights on a full time teaching position. I have some skepticism about the purpose of the university institution as an arena of learning (This stems directly but not exclusively from my conversation with Nicholson mentioned above).  Many professors I have known are obviously not curious people. They are trying to make the system work for them as individuals. But they are not primarily interested in helping others learn.

Any college student paying attention can reel off a list of people like this.

I did some adjunct teaching at GVSU. I enjoyed it. I enjoyed sharing my passion with students and learning about theirs.  The man who hired me was temporary chair of the music department. When the new chair came in, I don’t think he saw me as an asset. Rather I was an old guy with a masters degree who wasn’t interested in shit adjunct assignments.  After I refused a couple of classes, he quit offering me work.

This was probably because he was trying to get the professors to teach more and was trimming the adjuncts down to people who would jump when he said to.  I remember him telling me (he was my age or a bit younger) that he and his colleagues had done their share of adjunct teaching. He implied it was a way of paying dues.  He also said church music was a tough way to make a living. In that he was right, I guess. I have been underpaid for most of my career in this area, but have managed to pay bills combining two lousy incomes (Eileen’s and mine).

But church music has been a place where I have been able to live out my passion.

Craig Cramer, my teacher at Notre Dame (where I did my masters) had a doctorate from Eastman. The ideal behind a doctorate is that it is original research that contributes something to the conversation of ideas in a field.

This turns out to be a rarity. Craig consistently ridiculed his thesis.  It was about an obscure French composer, Alexandre Pierre François Boëly. I never heard Craig play any of this guy’s work.  In fact I never heard him speak well of him.

It was obvious that he wasn’t that interested in the research, that it was a way for him to get his doctorate. I don’t fault him for that at all. I do think that he has a good mind and is a good player and learned quite a bit from him.

Well this post is longer than I wanted it to be.  I was going to close with the links to the other articles I found yesterday but will save those for another time.

At this time of my life I can look at my own abilities and education and feel satisfied that I continue to learn and extend my formal education by composing, studying, reading, practicing and performing.  This is how my passion continues.

Nice chilly Sunday morning in West Michigan.  In an hour or so I will bundle up and walk to church.  I like walking to work. I can also walk to the college campus where I accompany ballet classes. These classes resume in the second week of January.

Yesterday Eileen pulled her mini out and drove it back and forth to the Hatch Christmas.  I think she enjoyed having her car back since she has stored it since snow started falling. She is determined that it won’t rust out the way her Suzuki did.

I actually have a pretty busy week ahead of me. I have to do some planning for church. The choir returns next Sunday and I need to have some anthems ready for them to rehearse after church.  I am contemplating trashing the anthem I have chosen for next Sunday. It is an easy version of “For Unto Us” by Handel.  I have had two choir members complain about how hard it is to do a different version from the one they know. Both members wanted me to use the original version. I refused. The easy version has eliminated the need for singing strings of quick notes.  This technique is one that most amateur choirs murder without some training. Training that our after church only rehearsal regimen makes impractical.

I did get a nice comment from a singer on Christmas eve. She used to sing in this choir and said that it sounded surprisingly good to her.

I have many critical ears in my congregation and sometimes I feel that many of the professional musicians in the congregation look askance at my work as a church musician. So it’s nice when a musician of caliber makes the effort to let me know she thinks something is pretty good.

This has been a burnout Christmas for me. I know that my schedule really knocked me for a loop back in November.  In addition when I get tired my tolerance of the trivialization of our culture gets lower.  Also the banality of Christianity.  This is not good during the Christmas season the most banal and obnoxious time of the year for the culture.

Somehow I have managed to retain some semblance of a positive outlook despite this.  Somehow I have grown stronger this year in my ability to shirk off bad behavior of people I know and to look past the stupidity of the culture. If you happen to monitor this blog regularly and don’t believe me, consider that I think a great deal more than I write.  Little journal entries are just that. As it would be with anyone these kinds of small communications represent a very small portion of my thoughts and life and outlook.

I know, I know. They seem to drag on at length and are verbose to a fault to most people who come here.

But that’s why I try to put in the pictures. So you can skim through the words and still get an idea of what I am blathering on about it.

Well I better start getting ready for the cold walk.

Ok, I didn’t post this morning because I was exhausted and was happily making breakfast for my lovely wife and lovely mom.  Also opening gifts and then riding up to the Hatch family xmas lunch.

Last night went very well at church.

The choir outdid themselves with singing well and being very responsive to my directing. That’s always nice. My friend Dawn played the cello sonata that I edited for her by Vivaldi. She nailed it and I really like this piece. The cong sang their little hearts out for Jesus and I made it through the postlude, a Vivaldi/Bach concerto movement, with just a little frazzled moment of a wrong registration change.

Home to martinis and the pope on tv (of course… but not for long…. just looking in on what’s on that late on Xmas eve).

So last night was a Italian baroque Xmas at Grace church: Corelli and Vivaldi. Tomorrow for the prelude and postlude I am going a bit more tradition with French Baroque noels by my favorite composer of these: Dandrieu.

I was surprised to read that Dostoevsky didn’t think of himself as a believer. His books are such great books about life and they always seemed kind of religious to me.  Gethsemani, the trappist monastery where Thomas Merton lived, used to insist that people who wanted to enter the monastery as monks read the Brothers Karamazov as part of their training.

I got the new translation of this book for Xmas. In the introduction the translator quotes this passage in a letter by Dostoevsky:

“I will tell you regarding myself that I am a child of the age, a child of nonbelief and doubts up till now and even (I know it) until my coffin closes. What terrible torments this thirst to believe has cost me and still costs me, becoming stronger in my soul, the more there is in me of contrary reasonings. And yet sometimes God sends me moments in which I am utterly at peace.”

This is the closest I can get to inspirational on Xmas day itself. I myself relate to this passage quite strongly.

Today I am having a bit of that peace that he mentions.  Admittedly I am exhausted and sipping a martini but definitely utterly at peace.

I woke up thinking about children and Christmas.

If Christmas can be a time when childhood sort of opens up and allows all of us to look at life with a bit of awe,  it makes me wonder what is happening to children in the US right now.

Childhood survives, of course. It survives all our adult attempts to co-opt it into what we think it should be.

But the assault some adults make on childhood by forcing children to bear the burden of their own struggle is disconcerting to witness.

Children have the ability to side step the glitz and greed and see things pretty clearly.  As they age the greed and selfishness become harder to resist.  Not that kids aren’t selfish. They just are more honestly so.

It disturbs me to watch adults offer children a trivialization of what living is. Christmas is a time when this is in strong evidence in many Christian circles as well as permeating our consumer culture.

The myth that living well is to accumulate is a sad one to press on young people.  We (and they) know that satisfaction in life comes from giving not getting,  from helping not exploiting, from taking time with small things not rushing to be done first.

But as we grow older we forget. By the time we remember we have cluttered our memories so badly that we have distorted our childhood and then attempt to correct stuff through our kids.

I remembered a song I wrote a long time ago this morning. It’s a simple short ditty. But I’m glad I remembered it. I have been wanting to get it down on paper just for my own sake.

The guitar part is entirely played with harmonics.  This means you use the left hand to deaden part of the string and pluck so that you get a high pure sound.

I wish I had a recording to pop up so non music readers could hear what this sounds like.  But I only just remembered the piece.  Haven’t recorded it.

It’s not that great a song particularly. It just tells me something about myself.

I associate this song with dancers.

I pictured singing to a china ballet dancer when I wrote it.  So as I learn how to be an effective accompanist of actual ballet classes at the piano I have thought back to this first naive impression of the beauty of dance.  I’m glad I remembered it.

After reading several hundred pages in Little, Big by John Crowley, I started over and began reading much slower and more carefully.

This book has a lot more in it that I first thought.

Here’s a lovely passage from it:

“I dreamt that I had learned a way of saving time I didn’t want to spend, and having it to spend when I needed it. Like the time you spend waiting in a doctor’s office, or coming back from someplace you didn’t enjoy going to, or waiting for a bus—all the little useless spaces. Well, it was a matter of taking them and folding them up, like broken boxes, so that they took up less room. It was really an easy trick, once you knew you could do it. Nobody seemed surprised at all when I told them I’d learned how….” The character Sophie Drinkwater speaking in John Crowley’s Little, Big

Besides the lyrical prose, there are some pretty interesting ideas in this book about unnameable stuff in life that holds beauty and constant surprise.

Re-reading it slower is paying off.

So I played for my Mom’s retirement home yesterday.

Here’s my playlist.

I began playing a bit early.  Folks come early to these things. I thought the Mozart would be a happy way to begin. I quickly discovered the piano was not only out of tune with a much worse tone than I recalled, but the low G two octaves below middle C also stuck.

Oy.

Of course many of the pieces I had chosen utilized this note quite a bit.  I mentioned it to the audience. If they were watching they could easily see that I was unsticking it from time to time as I played.

The Bach was the Gavotte from the G major French Suite. It’s a happy little thing.

People responded well. It’s kind of tricky working this kind of crowd. Levels of cognition vary widely. But there was lots of singing along on the pop Xmas tunes which I encouraged.

I talked to them a bit about the Brahms before I played it. Brahms was my age when he wrote this lovely piece (you can check yesterday’s post for citations of the Mozart and the Brahms I played).

It’s so ironic because I took some special pains to walk into this gig prepared to play the classical music well. Yesterday morning I played slowly through several of the pieces as though I were preparing for a recital.

I told my wife over drinks last night that my performance was distorted by the bad piano sort of like looking at something through rippled glass.

The musical ideas were there but garbled by the bad intonation and sound of the piano. Ah well. I still gave it my all.  And it’s not unusual for pianists to be given an impossible instrument to play.

I ditched the Satie because of the sticking G note.

The Gymnopedie I prepared was actually in G major (as was the Bach).  The hypnotic repetition of the piece would have been seriously disturbed by simply playing the bad note an octave lower. Or at least that’s what I thought on the spot.

I decided to include this familiar piece by Chopin:

After the Chopin one member of the audience derisively commented that it was perfect soap opera music.  I think it’s lovely.

Today I will rehearse a piece I have transcribed with my cellist for Xmas eve.

Here’s the original online music:

And here’s the first page of my edition:

Here’s pdfs of my working editions, for what it’s worth. (cello part pdf, harpsichord part pdf). I’m not quite satisfied with the realization of the figured bass (the right hand of the keyboard part was improvised by players at the time… that’s the reason there are only two lines in the original… to make a modern playing edition it’s necessary to “realize” or fill in the harmonies).

I’ve also updated my “Mostly Original Free Music Page” with these scores.

I’m playing at my Mom’s care facility today. It’s the monthly celebration of birthdays. For December obviously.

Last time I played there I realized that I didn’t do any classical piano. Or at least much of it. A couple of the residents mentioned that they wished that I had done more but they understood that not everyone wanted that.

Cripes! So this time I definitely want to include some classical music.

I’m thinking of performing the first movement of the K.279 Mozart sonata

and the wonderful “Intermezzo in A major” from Brahm’s Opus 118.

I have been performing these pieces for years. It’s good to schedule things that don’t take a ton of prep to do well for gigs like this. I played both of these Saturday at the wedding reception.

The Brahms I began performing in the 80s when the church I was working at owned a 10 foot Steinway grand sitting in a sumptuous two story drawing room. The reason for the fanciness is that the church was First Pres in downtown Detroit.

In its heyday it was a huge fancy church. The facilities there were pretty impressive. The performance room had a balcony that ran along three of the four walls.

Behind this balcony were windows and different rooms one of which was the choir room for a while if I remember correctly. The music director’s office was just off the front of the church sanctuary (which also had a huge balcony which represented at least half of the seating).  The office was actually under where the monstrous pipe organ’s pipes were hidden.

The pipes were on about five levels. I used to climb around in there and learn about organs. Lots of fun.

Anyway, back to Brahms. I gave recitals at this church one of which was a piano recital for the women’s group (I believe it was). I scheduled the Brahms with some trepidation. My piano training was truncated when I left my first wife. I haven’t studied since then but practiced like the devil to improve my technique. Romantic literature like the Brahms had always seemed a bit out of my reach if not technically at least interpretively.

The director of religious education at this church had a Masters in Music. After the recital she told me that my Brahms was wonderful and that I shouldn’t worry about not performing the romantics. This encouraged me. Plus I do love many of the Brahms piano pieces.

I think of this woman when I pull out the Brahms.  She had a physical disability caused by an accident at her birth. Some kind of lower brain damage occurred when the doctor used forceps. Consequently she spoke with a slur and had some other physical quirks which I can’t remember right now.

But fascinatingly her capacity for music was also affected. She told me that it took her forever to learn a piece of music in school (she also was an organist). But that once she had learned it it was always waiting there in her brain to be performed.

She also ran a kick ass summer program for inner city kids.  She shrewdly used her oddness to egg on kids to realize their own potential. I remember are bright and tough. She took kids out of the city for the first time in their lives to the nearby beaches. She paid them to work for her, the older ones serving as counselors and leaders to the younger. It was  a fabulous program.

I worked with her on an annual summer musical she did with the kids. The musicals tended to have more volume than melody but it was a gas working with her and the young people.

I eventually had to leave the church because I missed liturgy too much. But there were some nice parts to it.

It’s nice to have this memory built in to compositions that I occasionally pull out of my hat and perform.

Eileen had the day off so we were able to spend the day together.

This was very pleasant for me.

I made breakfast for us,

packaged up the boxes to go to England (not a secret…. we chatted with Sarah on Sunday about it),

and then we went and stood in line together at the post office, always more fun with a companion.

We dropped off a plant Eileen had prepared for a friend at the library where she works. By this time it was time for lunch so we went to a restaurant where Eileen had not eaten before (Zoups).  Picked up a Xmas tree. Came home and brought it in and set it up.

Then Eileen gave me moral support while I turned in our final medical receipts online for reimbursement from her flex plan.

We celebrated by going to see “Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows part I.” Then off to the local pub for drinks and food.

All in all, an excellent day.

Had a  nice Skype chat with Sarah in England yesterday. Eileen did most of the talking. I dozed in a nearby chair and listened in, occasionally chiming in with comments.

Church went well yesterday.  Since I use this blog to vent my inner thoughts, it probably seems like I’m sort of a gloomy gus in real life. I don’t think this is so.  Activating groups of people like congregations and choirs takes energy.  I almost always rise to this kind of thing.

My piano trio did a lovely job on the Gershwin piece. The added carols for the lessons and carols went well.  The choir anthems came off well especially the one we had prepared for the day which combined the melodies of “Of the Father’s Love Begotten” and “Lo, How a Rose.”  The fiddle tune rendition of Psalm 24 with which we began communion was kind of cool. We finished off with a closing hymn that combined the tune of “Good Kind Wenceslas” and a text about Mary, Joseph and Elizabeth.  The Andrea Gabrielli postlude which sort of mimicked the first few notes of the closing hymn tune went fine.

One parishioner told me that he had a friend who was an “Organist-Choirmaster.” This is the old Anglican lingo. It’s almost as though part of the ethos was dressing up in cool robes and calling yourself by cool titles appealed to the people involved (sarcasm).

This guy would always schedule the Sunday after Christmas off because he found the Christmas season so draining. I sympathize.

Mine isn’t that bad. But I did tell the man relaying this story that I crash on Mondays each week but can usually find the energy for the Sunday after Christmas.

I’m working my way through the NYT annual Ideas of the Year Magazine (link)

Since I have been an avid reader of the NYT for years I’m pretty sure I haven’t missed one of these. I usually read through them and share with Eileen the ones I think she might be interested in.

So far I thought that these were pretty cool:

This is a video of Chen Jianjun’s idea of a train that doesn’t have to stop to get passengers. Money and time saver.

I also liked the improved wind power machine that Cornell U is working on:

[Link to article I googled on this]

Eileen has today off. It’s her Christmas time off work since she is already scheduled to be off on Saturday. We plan to try and get a package off to England for our family branch over there. Also romantically plan to go over submitting receipts to her Flex plan at work so that we can get reimbursed and then spend that money on more health care stuff (both of our teeth and other upcoming fun stuff).

Finished this book last night:

I like Martin Amis usually. But this book felt contrived. He does language well. But the plot wasn’t that strong. Maybe I just had trouble with the contemporary Brit slang.

Started this book:

I interlibrary loaned it.  I was wondering what the series was like. Got sucked in.

Also today we go looking for a Christmas tree.

We have always put up our tree later than other people.

Part of this was due to my stubborn resistance to early commercialization and also having a brain dead liturgical notion that it’s not Christmas, it’s Advent.

Now I could give a fuck.  I just haven’t gotten around to it.

As usual we wonder if we can find a tree at this late date. For most people around here  (both merchants and religious types) Christmas is practically over by now.

As I sat at the little baby grand piano playing music for cocktails for a wedding reception, I was reminded of the playing experiences of my youth. I made money playing in a wedding band when I was 16-17 years old.

In both cases, I listened and watched people drinking and talking. In both cases, I felt an intimate connection with the music, almost like being alone with it.

I seem to still be dealing with my melancholia/burnout. I was dreading my wedding/reception gig.  Today I see the Lessons and Carols service which will my church’s main service this morning as a mountain to climb over, an obstacle to survive.

All of the tasks involved in the wedding, reception and today’s church service are well within my skill level.  And I feel reasonably prepared.

But like the wedding and reception yesterday I anticipate living through these experiences in a sort of bubble of awareness that is unshared by most of the participants.

Yesterday I tried to focus on the music itself. This helps. I played a lot of music yesterday: Mozart, Debussy, Handel, Chopin, Haydn and others. The dialog of actually producing sounds that were thought of years ago by other wonderful minds is the sustaining aspect of my life.

But this connection is as fragile as it is rewarding.  It sometimes feels like a juggling balancing act.

One assumes of course that even though one feels invisible that somewhere in the noise and distractions there is an ideal listener.

This is a component part of performing.

Sometimes this is more difficult than others.  It depends both upon the performer (me) and the listeners. As usual it is in my head where I concentrate trying to make a difference.

I didn’t get a check last night even though the bride indicated in her emails that I would be paid after the reception.

I spoke to a best man who dragged the father of the bride out of the reception. He said that my boss had all of the money. I asked him if he was sure that the fee for my playing the reception was included in the check for the church. He answered yes unconvincingly but what do I expect. People in weddings are having a huge moment and I don’t expect them to really do more than pay me.

But when I got home I found an email waiting for me from my boss for which I was very grateful.

She said that the bridal party had given her a check in which the full amount for my services was included ($350). It’s nice when people are specific. She indicated I could get a check by Tuesday. I can’t seem to train my church into the etiquette of paying musicians after their service. But I trust my boss.

I am working on changing my life style a bit to respond to my doctor’s direction to lose 10 pounds. This mostly involves paying much more attention to meals. I have been cooking low cal dishes for Eileen and me this week using a cool cookbook.

I like the author’s style of combining a love of food with an awareness of the intake of calories and fat even though she doesn’t really count calories herself.  Have made some tasty dishes from her cookbook. I checked out another one by her from the library.

So when I came home last night I really wanted a glass of wine (what I really wanted was a martini).  I could have had a glass or two and would have if I really wanted it. But I managed to skip the drink and throw together a low calorie salad for my supper (shredded cabbage, fresh chunks of pineapple, diced onion, canned peas, cucumber, with a dash of balsamic vinegar.. it helps to like everything).

As usual when I look closely at my life it is a very good one.

I read a little piece of mind candy last night called The Ghost by Robert Harris. It’s not my first novel by him. I have also read Fatherland which I remember being a bit better work.

I think I heard of the movie, “Ghostwriter,” based on this book before I realized it was a novel by Harris.

After finishing the book last night, I felt that while there were obvious parallels to Tony Blair’s life, that the book itself was more about the role of the ghostwriter and writers in general than some kind of fictionalized send up of the former prime minister.

SPOILER WARNING

The plot is totally unbelievable but kind of fun in a mind candy way.  The prime minister and his wife in the end seem to be American CIA agents. This unlikely fact explains both the fictional and real life “poodle” effect of a UK prime minister following US interests at the expense of the interests of his own country.

But it struck me how the main character was an amalgam of characteristics of many recent public figures not only obviously Blair but Bill Clinton (charismatic womanizer) and George Bush (intense, full of restless energy). As I read I noted that Lang (the fictional prime minister) did not share Blair’s religious convictions (he converted publicly to Catholicism after he left office).  Plus the tone of the fictional character seemed totally wrong to me.

Though I try to pay attention, I don’t pretend to have a thorough knowledge of either US or UK politics.  This morning I got up and discovered online that Harris the author was more involved with UK politics and Blair than I knew.  Apparently besides authoring light highly successful fiction, he is a UK newspaper columnist and commentator who supported Blair and New Labour’s rise to power. He then becomes publicly disillusioned (like most of Britain) with Blair and the party. Whippy Skippy. This book seems like a romp. In fact Harris himself mentions in a 2007 interview that he had in mind a Hitchcock/Cary Grant type plot. In that, I think he succeeds except for some startingly “slopping plotting”as one review describes it.

I especially think the final denouement (which seemed fairly obvious to me) clumsy beyond sloppy. But still good escape reading for Jupe.

Interesting that the “Ghost” of the title of the book is thought by one reviewer to refer to the way Blair was a Ghost for Bush. Thood for fought.

And now a musical update.

It looks like I have quite a bit of performance time coming up. This afternoon I have  a wedding followed by playing piano at the reception. This can turn into a marathon of playing. Fortunately I feel like the fee I have requested ($350) makes it worth it. Assuming I do get paid. Ahem.

Yesterday my bud Jordan, saxophonist extraordinaire, came over and we chatted then played some standard Jazz tunes of his choosing.  I don’t get to do much improvising with other musicians so that was a pleasure.  As I said to Jordan, I don’t think of myself as a Jazz musician (i.e. Jazz expert player) but I do thing of myself as a composer and improviser. I even think that these oddly my strong suits as a musician. So improvising is fun. And I find traditional Jazz harmonies and improv engaging.

Tomorrow I have cobbled together a bit of an “improvised” Lessons and Carols service.  My boss is out of town.  During her absence, I discovered that the Youth Choir was not scheduled to sing tomorrow as I thought.  Also that a congregational refrain with choral verses was scheduled. Again I didn’t realize this was so.

But all is well.  I searched the books that I have purchased recently that are designed for one pre-service rehearsal with singers (see above) for a quick additional anthem to fill in for the Youth Choir piece.  I quickly found one.

The additional congregation/choir piece is a repeat from last year and utilizes a fiddle tune. I asked the violinist from my piano trio (which WAS scheduled for tomorrow’s prelude) if she would play along. This will dress it up a bit.

So life goes one.

I am scheduled to play at my Mom’s nursing home this week as well.  A freebie of course. I’m glad to do it.

I started work yesterday on an edition of a movement from one of Vivaldi’s cello sonatas. I emailed the cello part to my cellist to consider performing next Friday evening.  She said she would look at it. My Xmas music theme this year is to do some Italian music for Xmas.

We are doing 3 movements from a bastardized version of Corelli’s Christmas concerto.

One in which clever editors from St. James Press have added words to instrumental music. I am learning one of Bach’s organ transcriptions of a movement of a Vivaldi concerto.

Tomorrow I am playing a postlude by Andrea Gabrieli.

I thought Andrea was Giovanni’s father but a quick glance at Wikipedia tells me that he was his uncle.

I forgive myself because their is a quote in Giovanni’s `Wikipedia article which says that Giovanni… “may indeed have been brought up by him [Andrea], as is implied by the dedication to his 1587 book of concerti, in which he described himself as “little less than a son” to his uncle.^”

I am particularly proud of the Ricercar Arioso by Andrea I found this week to play.  There are some similarities to the melody in the Ricercar and the tune of the closing hymn.

The text for the closing hymn is not “Good Kind Wenceslas.” Instead it is a text by Carol Goodwin King that begins “Mary, when the angel’s voice called you highly favored.” It goes on to mention Joseph and Elizabeth.

I’m hoping that the repeated three notes (the postlude is in the same key as the hymn) will subtly relate the Italian organ piece from 1595 to the melody of this hymn.

Jupe note: I read this poem every Christmas season.

This fellow matches Ackroyd’s description of 17th c. London street musicians known as “Merry Andrews,” “Jack Puddings,” or “Pickled Herrings.”

“[T]hey wore a costume with donkey’s ears, and accompanied other performers with their fiddles.”

from London a Biography by Peter Ackroyd

Apparently they were pretty surly fellows.  Their nicknames were sarcastically bestowed on them by the crowd.

I love it when I read stuff like this, then as I wonder what depictions referred to in the text actually look like, googling them and finding them.

Then there’s this one:

“The most famous pictorial series displaying London characters [is], Marcellus Laroon’s “The Cryes of the City of London Drawne after the Life,” published in 1687… [In it] Laroon… chose a particular female vagrant to exemplify what he called ‘The London Beggar.’ He did not give her name, but in fact she was known as Nan Mills who, according to the most recent editors of his work, was ‘not only a good physiognomist but an excellent mimic… and could adapt her countenance to every circumstance of distress.’ There is no reason to doubt that she was also poor, and conscious of her degradation.”

(Jupe note: Physiognomist: One who studies, or is an expert in, physiognomy; one who studies the outer appearance of the person (primarily the face) to acquire knowledge of the inner personality… I had to look it up)

I also started re-reading “The Tempest” yesterday.

Preparing for eventually seeing Julie Taymor’s new cinema interpretation starring the excellent Hellen Mirren as a female Prospero (ProsperA) (trailer embedded above).

No more time for blogging. Off to do errands

I got up and read this charming little poem by John Updike this morning:

Yardstick

Like Milton’s        measuring the      twofold world
in constantly       decasyllabic          pentameters,
the yardstick       trims the epic       of land and air
and has it trip      obsequiously        to trimeters,
each foot made   of just twelve         symbols each.

Another one I liked:

Vacuum Cleaner

This baggy broom,
whose hum is doom,
refutes for the obtuse
the thought that Nothing has no use:
no, nothing better tidies up a mess
than Nothingness.

Stumbled across Charles Burns weird and lovely X’ed Out at the library recently.

Brought it home to read.

Unfortunately it is the first volume of a continuing series. But I liked it very much.

The main character, like the main character in Ackroyd’s English Music,

keeps flitting in and out of dreaming and experiencing life.

R Crumb blurbs this about it on the cover: “It’s almost as if the artist… as if he weren’t quite human.”

That certainly captures something about this book.

I read and admired Black Hole by this guy.

So no counting for taste, eh? I like this stuff.

I buckled down and finished reading all of the poems in Endpoint and other poems, John Updike’s posthumous final collection of poetry.

I purchased an earlier collection of his poems when I was a kid. My tattered paperback copy laying next to my netbook looks very much like the one above.  This little book collects two volumes of poetry Updike had written in the 50s and 60s. The copyright on its introduction is 1965.

This is the young Updike around that time. Endpoint and other poems is striking because it really comes at the end of Updike’s long career as primarily a novelist.  I have read many maybe even most of his novels.  I have admired his ability to smoothly and clearly write about what it’s like to be alive in his time. I have also admired his brutal depiction of recognizable and slightly exaggerated examples of all kinds of human frailty and self-deception. The greatest portrait of course is of the befuddled, self-centered, aging high school basketball star turned car salesman, Rabbit.

His novels about Rabbit span and detail the US in the 60s, 70s and 80s. My father warned me away from them as a young person saying they were about nothing but sex. Needless to say this heightened their attraction for me even though I didn’t seriously sit down and read them until years later after his comment.

Ironic to the end, Updike captures his point of nicely in his final poems:

Instead, a shrug and tearless eyes
Will great my overdue demise,
The wide response will be, I know
“I thought he died a while ago.”

from “Requiem” by Updike

And if it were a tap I turn it on,
not hot or cold but tepid infotainment,
and out it gushes, sparkling evidence
of conflict, misery, concupiscence
let loose on little leashes, in remissions
of eager advertising that  envisions
on our behalf the better life contingent
upon some buy, some acquisition.

from “TV” by Updike

Enough poetry. but I do like the phrase “concupiscence let loose on little leashes.”  My own little self imposed leashes have historically not been of the sexual kind, but desires and passions have I many and it is amusing to picture them “on little leashes.”

I have also been reading in Ackroyd’s London the biography. I can see in it the factual background for the novel of his I have just finished, English Music.

In London the biography Ackroyd again uses Hogarth. But now he does so specifically. He cites Hogarth’s prints as depicting areas of his subject.

So he mentions the wonderful Gin Lane (above) in both books. In the novel, characters enter this scene and witness first hand the death of the falling infant and the sounds of corruption. In the biography, the print is cited as sort of documentary evidence of a exceedingly unsavory section of  London at a certain time in its history.

Southwark Fair depicts the young theater district. If you look closely you can see Punch the puppet and actors acting the story of the wooden horse of Troy.

Finally, I escaped into the wonderful sardonic witty prose of Martin Amis last night. I have decided to add him and his father, Kingsley, to my list of writers to read.