JAMES ROE

2012-01-01T18:20:00.015-05:00

The Knights Celebrate New Year's Eve 2011

at The 92nd Street Y

Henry Purcell (1659-1695)
Fantasia upon One Note (c 1680)

Terry Riley (b 1935)
In C (1964)

Ludwig van Beethoven (1770-1827)
Symphony no. 5 in C Minor, op. 67 (1807-8)

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NOTES ON THE PROGRAM
by James Roe

“There was a time (time out of mind)”
— James McCourt, opening line of Mawrdew Czgowchwz

“Time past and time future
What might have been and what has been
Point to one end, which is always present.”
— T. S. Eliot from “Buirnt Norton” no. 1 of the Four Quartets

“Make a joyful noise”
— Psalm 100

“The Joy of C”

Happy New Year! Tonight’s Knights concert features three radically different (and radical) pieces that each focus on the note C. Through these works, we will explore the ways in which music enhances, disrupts, and even suspends our perception of time. New Years Eve—a time of heightened consciousness of time past, passing, and yet to come—is ideal for this exploration.

In our concept of tonight’s concert, the note C and its continual presence throughout the music, represents time. The music’s relationship to this note changes throughout the concert just as our experience of time changes across any specific moment, hour, day, year, or lifetime.

Music only exists in the passage of time. At the very moment a musical sound is created, it is instantly consumed by the listener and transformed into emotion and memory. Music cannot be held. The intricacies of its beauty cannot be examined in the present tense. Music is always in the past or in the future. Memory and anticipation dance while music plays.

Why C?

The note C is a fundamental sound in Western music. Middle C divides the piano keyboard between soprano and bass, right hand and left. The music student’s first lessons are always in C. Schumann described C Major as “simple, unadorned.” Schelling wrote that, “concerning the physical expression of this key, it appears to be completely pure.”

Composers have gone to the key of C for major musical statements. Two of Schubert’s last completed works are in C Major, his Ninth Symphony, “The Great,” and the monumental Cello Quintet. Mozart set the complex splendors of his “Jupiter” Symphony in C. The gripping narrative of Beethoven’s Fifth Symphony is dramatized in the progression from C Minor to of C Major. (More on this later.)

One of the most famous C Major chords in all of music is in Haydn’s oratorio “The Creation.” After the overture, which depicts the chaos before creation, the chorus quietly intones the words of Genesis 1:3, “God said, let there be light, and there was light.” On the final word “light,” the orchestra and chorus burst forth with a fortissimo C Major chord. An eyewitness to the premiere, wrote that the “enchantment of the electrified Viennese was so general that the orchestra could not proceed for some minutes.”

The note C has pride-of-place in the world of music. It is a starting point and destination, beginning and end, foundation and culmination.

Purcell: Fantasia upon one Note
“Preserving a moment in music”

Henry Purcell was the preeminent English composer of his day. In about 1680, he wrote a group of Fantasias for string ensemble, which demonstrated the 21-year old’s mastery of the current compositional techniques.

The fantasia—or “fancy” as it was called in England—was popular during the 16th and 17th Centuries, and as its name suggests, it showcased a composer’s imagination and wit. These works were intimate entertainments, their principal preoccupation being the harmonious presentation of multiple, equal voices, a compositional technique called counterpoint. The counterpoint of Purcell’s Fantasias achieves an idealization of human interaction in the context of sophisticated musical conversation.

In Purcell's Fantasia upon One Note, a middle C sounds through the entire piece. The other four voices harmonize around this gentle drone, traversing an wide array of sentiments. Listeners may lose track of the sustained C from time to time, but it is there, quietly reminding us that though we may feel time has stopped, it hasn’t. This brief work could make you wish Purcell’s moment lasted forever.

Terry Riley: In C
“Mind altering music”

Terry Riley’s seminal minimalist masterpiece In C erupts with pulsating octave Cs in the piano. The work shimmers and radiates. It can subsume both listener and performer in its trancelike spell.

In his book, "The Rest is Noise," Alex Ross described Terry Riley as, “an easy-going character of the rural-hippie type [who] grew up in the foothills of the Sierra Nevada.” Le Monte Young, the maverick pioneer of musical minimalism, introduced Riley to the mind/time altering influences of marijuana and mescaline. According to Riley, Young also introduced him to the “concept of not having to press ahead to create interest.”

In C is written on a single sheet of paper. It has no specified length or instrumentation, rather it consists of the repeating octave Cs and fifty-three short melodic “events” that he called modules. The modules are played consecutively with each performer having the freedom to determine how many times they repeat each one before moving to the next. The work's improvisatory and interactive elements ensure no two performances are alike.

“Terry Riley’s In C is one of the definitive masterpieces of the 20th Century,” wrote music critic Alfred Frankenstein in High Fidelity. His San Francisco Chronicle review of the premiere offers a brilliant description of the piece: “Climaxes of great sonority and high complexity appear and are dissolved in the endlessness. At times you feel you have never done anything all your life long but listen to this music and as if that is all there is or ever will be."

Beethoven: Symphony no. 5 in C Minor
“Joy follows sorrow”

Beethoven's Symphony no. 5 in C Minor does not begin with a C. Its first sound is silence. This, the most famous work of classical music, begins with a rest.

Contained in that diminutive unit of silence is the last moment of calm before fate intervenes, the last second before learning life-changing news. It is the end of innocence before Beethoven’s famous four-note motif launches the obsessive, anxious, fateful first movement.

Beethoven was preoccupied with the idea of Fate. This is not surprising, as early as 1801 (three years before his first sketches for the Fifth Symphony) he began informing his friends that he was going deaf. In the Heiligenstadt Testament, his will in the form of a letter written to his brothers that Beethoven closely guarded throughout his life, he wrote, “But what a humiliation when one stood beside me and heard a flute in the distance and I heard nothing. Such incidents brought me to the verge of despair; but little more and I would have put an end to my life; only my art held me back.” Yet he attained a kind of personal resolve in the face of his condition. “I will seize Fate by the throat," he wrote, "It will not crush me entirely!” It is striking that, in the face of deafness, Beethoven begins this monumental symphony with a silence.

The Fifth shows Beethoven's full mastery of symphonic form, harmonic narrative, and rhythmic propulsion. Variations of the opening four-note motif sound throughout the work, as the music responds to the tension established by the first movement.

The Scherzo leads directly into the Finale through an extended, murky passage in pianissimo. Here, static harmony and melodic fragmentation create an aural haze with quiet echoes of the opening four-note motif in the timpani. From this, the lowest point of the symphony, a dramatic eight-bar crescendo ensues, culminating in the joyful fortissimo C Major of the Finale. Piccolo, trombones, and contra-bassoon expand the ensemble to create a brilliant burst of orchestral color. It is Beethoven’s “Let there be light” moment, and the upsurge of emotional and musical energy can be transcendent.

Just as the transformation of fate to joy is nearly complete, the murky Scherzo music makes a disquieting reappearance in the middle of the Finale. These dark clouds last only a moment before the triumphal music from the opening of the movement returns. The symphony ends with an impressive fifty-five bars of C Major played by the full ensemble.

“Many assert that every minor [tonality] piece must end in the minor,” Beethoven wrote to his student Archduke Rudolf, “Nego! On the contrary, I find that … the major [tonality] has a glorious effect. Joy follows sorrow, sunshine—rain. It affects me as if I were looking up to the silvery glistening of the evening star.”

2010-12-08T07:41:00.004-05:00

Hugues Cuenod (1902-2010)

It was impossible to feel down around Hughie. Remembering him this quiet, bright morning, I am grateful to have known this musician, whose irrepressible joy in life and art expanded the humanity of everyone he met.

2010-12-02T16:24:00.001-05:00

2010-09-29T15:38:00.002-05:00

German Knights

Die Ritter is headed to Germany. Home on 9 October.

See you then, or there!

2010-07-31T16:46:00.012-05:00

Two Summer Knights

There are two upcoming Knights performances next week in New York City.

Tuesday • 3 Aug • 7:30
Naumberg Bandshell, Central Park at 70th Street

After being rained out in June, The Knights return to the Naumburg Bandshell with a free concert perfect for a New York summer night in August. It's been a distinct pleasure to rehearse this week with Vera Beths who will both lead as concertmaster and play the solo part in Beethoven's eloquent Romance in F Major.

The Knights
Eric Jacobsen, conductor
Vera Beths, violin

Rossini Barber of Seville Overture
Beethoven Romance for Violin and Orchestra in F Major, op. 50
Shostakovich Two Waltzes (arr. Ljova Zhurbin for the Knights)
Debussy Children's Corner Suite (arr. Mouton)
Haydn Symphony in D major, No 101, "The Clock"

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Wednesday • 4 Aug • 7:00
AppleApple Store, SoHo

The Knights
Lara St. John, violin soloist
Eric Jacobsen, conductor

This concert celebrates the release of a new CD of Mozart Violin Concerti played by Lara and Scott St. John with The Knights conducted by Eric Jacobsen.

2010-07-06T08:59:00.011-05:00

Koolhaas & Lohengrin in a Beijing Taxi

Heading to the Beijing airport, our taxi driver spoke no English (and we no Mandarin), nevertheless, he was determined to give us a parting tour of the city. We spoke back and forth in different languages, the conversation moving quickly and incomprehensibly, articulated with brief moments of clarity.

"Rem Koolhaas, CCTV."

Our driver said as we passed the Dutch architect's delirious addition to the Beijing skyline. It was not the most practical vocabulary, but we were glad he knew it.

Then we passed a caravan of cars covered in ribbons. Our driver honked and waved and smiled and told us many things in excited Chinese.

We weren't getting it.

He wrinkled his brow for a moment and then sang, Treulich geführt. Of course! Gamely, we all sang along and waved at the be-ribboned wedding procession passing us on the highway.

As we sang, my mind raced between other instances of this melody in my life, from Beijing to Lima to backstage at The Metropolitan Opera.

Years ago, I played with an opera company in Lima founded by my Juilliard classmate, Miguel Harth-Bedoya. Some members of the opera orchestra were hired to play a wedding. In Peru, Mendelssohn's Hochzeitsmarsch is played as the bride processional, while Wagner's march accompanies the newly-minted couple's first stroll down the aisle on the way out. Richard Wagner and Felix Mendelssohn combined with South American Roman Catholicism in a Peruvian Baroque cathedral; playing "Here comes the bride" at the end of the wedding only enriched the admixture.

Years later, I would play in the stage band for Robert Wilson's contoversial production of Lohengrin at The Metropolitan Opera based in part on Japanese Noh Theater. The stage band musicians wait to play late into the night, there are hours between entrances. (It is actually possible to leave the theater and play a different concert during these breaks.) When the time finally comes, the musicians gather in the dimly-lit wings to play strains of Treulich geführt. Pretty lofty for "wedding gig," I thought, walking up the stairs backstage at The Met, another cathedral in its own right.

How could I have expected to find myself singing Wagner with a Chinese cabbie in Beijing, but I hardly could be surprised.

Would Wagner?

2010-07-04T08:53:00.010-05:00

Happy Fourth of July

Surprise parade on the East River.

2010-06-15T00:07:00.004-05:00

Seven Four

Waiting on the subway platform at 14th Street for the F train to Brooklyn, I heard a young woman in full-Williamsburg hipster regalia playing the accordion.

Her selection? "Ring of Fire" from Johnny Cash and June Carter Cash.

I love this song for so many reasons, but leading them is the instrumental refrain in seven-four time. Count it out. Once the entirely unexpected Mariachi trumpet passage starts, the song is in seven. (Da-dut da dah dah dee dah daaa - 5 - 6 - 7, Da-dut da dah dah dee dah daaa - 5 - 6 - 7) I'm not sure which is more surprising the meter or the orchestration.

Maybe fifteen years ago, I heard Johnny Cash and June Carter Cash at Irving Place. Wonderful, amazing concert. They came with the best sidemen in the biz; country-western 2/4 back beat was elevated to poetry.

If you listen to June Carter and the Carter Family, you'll find a flexible metrical music that easily moves through odd-number bars and playfully skips over an eighth-note here and there.

Seven-four on the subway platform. I love New York City.

2010-05-17T10:53:00.002-05:00

China!

Zéphyros Winds is headed to Beijing as part of the the National Centre for Performing Arts' 2010 May Festival.

Click here for details . . . and tickets!

photo by Bell Soto

2009-09-08T07:55:00.001-05:00

Questions of Vacation

Questions Of Travel by Elizabeth Bishop

There are too many waterfalls here; the crowded streams
hurry too rapidly down to the sea,
and the pressure of so many clouds on the mountaintops
makes them spill over the sides in soft slow-motion,
turning to waterfalls under our very eyes.
--For if those streaks, those mile-long, shiny, tearstains,
aren't waterfalls yet,
in a quick age or so, as ages go here,
they probably will be.
But if the streams and clouds keep travelling, travelling,
the mountains look like the hulls of capsized ships,
slime-hung and barnacled.

Think of the long trip home.
Should we have stayed at home and thought of here?
Where should we be today?
Is it right to be watching strangers in a play
in this strangest of theatres?
What childishness is it that while there's a breath of life
in our bodies, we are determined to rush
to see the sun the other way around?
The tiniest green hummingbird in the world?
To stare at some inexplicable old stonework,
inexplicable and impenetrable,
at any view,
instantly seen and always, always delightful?
Oh, must we dream our dreams
and have them, too?
And have we room
for one more folded sunset, still quite warm?

But surely it would have been a pity
not to have seen the trees along this road,
really exaggerated in their beauty,
not to have seen them gesturing
like noble pantomimists, robed in pink.
--Not to have had to stop for gas and heard
the sad, two-noted, wooden tune
of disparate wooden clogs
carelessly clacking over
a grease-stained filling-station floor.
(In another country the clogs would all be tested.
Each pair there would have identical pitch.)
--A pity not to have heard
the other, less primitive music of the fat brown bird
who sings above the broken gasoline pump
in a bamboo church of Jesuit baroque:
three towers, five silver crosses.
--Yes, a pity not to have pondered,
blurr'dly and inconclusively,
on what connection can exist for centuries
between the crudest wooden footwear
and, careful and finicky,
the whittled fantasies of wooden footwear
and, careful and finicky,
the whittled fantasies of wooden cages.
--Never to have studied history in
the weak calligraphy of songbirds' cages.
--And never to have had to listen to rain
so much like politicians' speeches:
two hours of unrelenting oratory
and then a sudden golden silence
in which the traveller takes a notebook, writes:

"Is it lack of imagination that makes us come
to imagined places, not just stay at home?
Or could Pascal have been not entirely right
about just sitting quietly in one's room?

Continent, city, country, society:
the choice is never wide and never free.
And here, or there . . . No. Should we have stayed at home,
wherever that may be?"

2009-08-10T22:54:00.011-05:00

IN CAMERA

A dear flutist friend stopped by for dinner tonight and wanted me to listen to her play a Bach unaccompanied sonata in preparation for upcoming performances. She played from memory and gave me the score, but I didn't follow along, I wanted to watch her play and enjoy this private performance from my couch.

There regularly is music in my place. I practice, but practicing often is repetitive ruckus, metronome aclacking. I have chamber music rehearsals here, too, but what I heard tonight was a full-fledged performance: poised, eloquent, full of persuasive rhetoric. Even the finest hi-fi could not match the aural pleasures of a live chamber music performance in one's own home.

Let me encourage everyone: treat yourself. (Eschew Netflix for a night.) Invite musicians to play chamber music in your living room. Offer a good meal (they will say yes) and invite just one or two special friends to share with you. Not too many.

You will not forget the experience.

2009-08-05T09:26:00.005-05:00

An Uplifting Proposal

Right before Tuesday's Imani Winds concert at the Naumburg Bandshell in Central Park, the director of the series asked the ensemble whether a young man could propose to his girlfriend on stage during the concert.

Of course!

He and his soon-to-be fiancée live in Atlanta and had met at an Imani Winds concert eighteen months ago. They had travelled to New York City for tonight's concert.

Before the last piece on the first half, flutist Valerie Coleman told the audience that before we proceeded, there would be a special announcement. "Hello New York." the young man said into the microphone, his arm around his girlfriend. He calmly went on to explain that they were on stage to thank the Imani Winds for bringing them together and for their music which had continued to be an important part of the couple's eighteen-month relationship. And then he said good night and turned to leave the stage. We thought he had lost his nerve, but he swung back to the mic and said, "Oh, and one more thing . . . " whereupon he reached into his pocket and knelt. The audience exploded with applause and shouts of encouragement. The young woman, clasped her hands to her head, spun around, and before the question could even be asked, she yelled out: YES!!!

The ring placed on her finger, the couple thanked each of the musicians. Everyone was feeling a bit giddy, the audience was nicely stirred up, and before we continued with the program I stepped up to the mic, and asked, "Is there anyone else?"

2009-08-04T09:26:00.012-05:00

IMANI WINDS in CENTRAL PARK

It will be a beautiful night for a summer concert in the park.

Naumburg Orchestral Concerts

104th Season - FINAL Concert of 2009

IMANI WINDS

Tuesday August 4th, 2009 at 7:30 PM

PROGRAM
Bozza Scherzo for woodwind quintet, Op. 48

Marquez Danza de Mediodia

Medaglia Suite Popular Brasileira

Schifrin La Nouvelle Orleans

Ligeti Sechs Bagatellen

Barber Summer Music, Op. 31

The Naumburg Orchestral Concert begins at 7:30pm at the Naumburg Bandshell on the Concert Ground in Central Park located south of the 72nd Street cross-drive.

Admission is free.

No rain date.

www.naumburgconcerts.org

2009-08-03T19:54:00.012-05:00

The Rest is Silence

Two eighth rests, how long are they?

I have had such a good time this summer playing with the Imani Winds while their oboist, Toyin Spellman-Diaz, is on maternity leave. I've enjoyed learning new repertoire for our concerts, but there is something special about working on pieces I've played for decades with Zéphyros Winds now with new colleagues. In these works—Barber's "Summer Music," Ligeti's "Six Bagatelles," Paquito D'Rivera's "Aires Tropicales," and Lalo Schifrin's "La nouvelle Oreleans"—I reengage my ears to another set of musical imaginations.

In these situations, a musician's opportunity to learn is ripe. And if we don't hear other players and play with other players, our various "chops" can atrophy for lack of attention.

In 1998, I was hired to play a single performance of "Annie Get Your Gun." It was a benefit for Lincoln Center Theater featuring Patty Lupone and Peter Gallagher. The audience was filled with notables, Rosie was there, Barbara Walters seemed unpleasantly shocked by how politically incorrect the show was, Rex Reed was reported to have said, "Well, they didn't have to cut 'I'm an Indian, too.'" (Political correctness? And, yes, it did have to be cut.) And the orchestra, contracted by Red Press, was filled was the finest cats on the scene. I was pretty green (OK, very green). Out of Juilliard for just three years, I didn't know any faces in the band, but over the next decade I would come to. The first rehearsal began, naturally, with the overture. It looked pretty straight forward to me. Often in "tutti" sections (times when the whole orchestra is playing), orchestrators will give the oboe the same line as the first trumpet. The oboe doesn't make its most important contribution during these sections—you can't really hear it—so, we end up playing along with the loudest instrument, and that way we stay out of the way. Though I didn't know him at the time, one of New York's top lead trumpet players, Bob Millikan, was on the job. The overture started and I began to play my part, pretty much exactly how it looked on the page, in other words, totally square. The lead trumpet was playing in such a different style, and with so much style, I had to just stop and listen. "How does he know how to do that?" He knew. I didn't, but wanted to, and here, I realized was my opportunity to learn how it really went.

Each year in his Juilliard class, Albert Fuller would pick up a violin part to a Beethoven sonata and ask the students what he was holding. Always someone fell into the trap, "It's music." "No," Albert replied, "you cannot hold music. You can only hear music." Bob Millikan's trumpet playing brought that point home.

Lalo Schifrin's wind quintet, "La nouvelle Orleans," ends with an elaborate oboe cadenza meant to imitate the sound of a blues harmonica. After several performances with the Imani Winds, their flutist, Valerie Coleman, asked whether she could offer me a suggestion for that solo. It was a small thing, she assured me, but it would really help. The oboe cadenza begins after a loud chord played by the whole ensemble. There are two eighth rests between the chord and the oboe solo. "Could you wait a little bit longer before you start?" Valerie asked. One of the most challenging sounds for a musician to make on stage is silence. Modulating the right amount involves some risk. Concerts are about sound, after all. That night, I held onto those rests, the silence, just a little longer. The tension increased, and the solo landed with much more force.

When I was performing with Issa (Jane Siberry) a few years ago for her Carnegie Hall debut, she was coaching me on passage I was improvising. Again her urging was for less sounds, fewer notes, and more silence.

Listening to Albert Fuller's harpsichord recordings, again and again I am amazed at the role silence plays in his music making; especially as a tool to highlight a particular musical moment. He prepares that moment with a break in the sound, the silence features the next music.

Those two little rests written by Lalo Schifrin, how long are they, then? It depends on knowing what you are about to say next.

2009-08-02T17:31:00.001-05:00

On Whitman

This passage opens the second chapter of Susan Sontag's "On Photography."

As Walt Whitman gazed down the democratic vistas of culture, he tried to see beyond the difference between beauty and ugliness, importance and triviality. It seemed to him servile or snobbish to make any discriminations of value, except the most generous ones. Great claims were made for candor by our boldest, most delirious prophet of cultural revolution. Nobody would fret about beautify and ugliness, he implied, who was accepting a sufficiently large embrace of the real, of the inclusiveness and vitality of actual American experience. All facts, even mean ones, are incandescent in Whitman’s America—that ideal space, made real by history, where “as they emit themselves facts are showered with light.”

2009-07-21T10:10:00.018-05:00

36 Hours in Aguascalientes

Our concert in Mexico was a great success. We signed autographs and posed for pictures for at least an hour after the performance.

The historic city center of Aguascalientes is a romanticized picture of Baroque, colonial decay mixed with 21st-century urban renewal. Low stucco buildings in pink, robin's egg blue, and pale yellow, impressive 19th-century French-style government buildings, and elaborate Baroque churches were interspersed with modern structures, cell-phone stores, and ATMs for world-wide banks. (North American chains were mercifully rare, the only exceptions were Starbucks and KFC.) Planted, manicured parks with fountains offered shade from the sun, and though the gardens were in the French style, the flora was decidedly Aztec.

On Sunday morning, handsome couples strolled to church, looking like Italian socialites from the 50s. Cowboys brought their families for a day in the city. Children ran and played everywhere. The churches overflowed with congregants, their interiors clangorous in pink, blue, gold, and silver, and their hefty Baroque spires supporting weightless neon crosses that advertised the resurrection next to gleaming Coca-cola signs.

In this part of the city, little poverty was in evidence, but when it came, it could be shattering. Walking back to the hotel after our concert we were approached by a man begging for money. He had no legs and was pushed in a low cart by a young boy. As they got closer, we realized that the man was made up as a woman, with a blouse, wig, and rouged cheeks. He spoke in an animated, hoarse falsetto. His elaborate appearance and gestures were in stark relief to the boy's affectless silence. What did they need from us? From the world? They were headed out into the city square at twilight; their stage set, though the stakes were higher than any performance I've been involved with. How many pesos should I give them? The contents of my pockets? My wallet? My bank accounts? Do I have empathetic capacity enough to imagine their life? Perhaps for a moment this morning in my Manhattan apartment high above West End Avenue, but hardly equal to the relentless, Baroque difficulties of their lives.

2009-07-15T07:47:00.004-05:00

Guest Turn

Last year, the wonderful oboist of Imani Winds, Toyin Spellman-Diaz asked if I could cover her maternity leave this summer. I was thrilled. Imani Winds is the indispensable wind quintet and one of the nation's cultural treasures. On top of that, the members are, to a one, wonderful people and excellent musicians. Often, when I mention my own quintet to someone, the response is, "Oh, aren't you in Imani Winds?" Their cultural penetration is so deep that they have put the genre back on the musical map and made it relevent to new audiences and exciting for the establishment. The evidence is their packed schedule.

The rehearsals this week have been nothing but fun. We have a number of concerts this summer, try to come if you're in the area.

Sunday, July 19, 2009	Imani Winds in AGUASCALIENTES, MEXICO	Festival de Música de Cámara
	Time: 6:00 pm. Festival Opening Performance. PROGRAM Scherzo – Eugene Bozza; Danza de Mediodia – Arturo Marquez; Suite Popular Brasileira – Julio Medaglia; La Nouvelle Oreleans – Lalo Schifrin; Sechs Bagatellen – Gyorgy Ligeti ; Aires Tropicales – Paquito D’Rivera; “Freyleka” from Klezmer Dances – arr. Gene Kavadlo
Monday, July 27, 2009	Imani Winds in CHICAGO, IL	National Association of Negro Musicians Annual Conference
	Time: 7:30 pm. PROGRAM Scherzo – Eugene Bozza; Danza de Mediodia – Arturo Marquez; Suite Popular Brasileira – Julio Medaglia; La Nouvelle Oreleans – Lalo Schifrin; Sechs Bagatellen – Gyorgy Ligeti ; Aires Tropicales – Paquito D’Rivera; “Freyleka” from Klezmer Dances – arr. Gene Kavadlo
Tuesday, July 28, 2009	Imani Winds in BROOKVILLE, NY	C.W. Post, Long Island University Chamber Music Festival
	Time: 8:00 pm. Masterclass 4-6. PROGRAM Scherzo – Eugene Bozza; Danza de Mediodia – Arturo Marquez; Suite Popular Brasileira – Julio Medaglia; La Nouvelle Oreleans – Lalo Schifrin; Sechs Bagatellen – Gyorgy Ligeti ; Aires Tropicales – Paquito D’Rivera; “Freyleka” from Klezmer Dances – arr. Gene Kavadlo
Tuesday, August 4, 2009	Imani Winds in NEW YORK, NY	Naumburg Bandshell, Central Park
	Time: 7:30 pm. PROGRAM Scherzo – Eugene Bozza; Danza de Mediodia – Arturo Marquez; Suite Popular Brasileira; Julio Medaglia; La Nouvelle Oreleans – Lalo Schifrin; Sechs Bagatellen – Gyorgy Ligeti; Summer Music – Samuel Barber; Libertango – Pizzolla/Scott

2009-07-09T10:40:00.000-05:00

What Helicon Understands

By Albert Fuller (November 1996)

“It’s not enough for poetry and song to be beautiful; they must entice the listener’s soul to follow wherever they lead. Just as laughing begets laughter in others, likewise our face responds to the tears of another. If you want me to cry, then you yourself must grieve.” --- Horace, Ars Poetica, lines 99-103, 23-20 BCE

Helicon believes that art works are the principal recorded evidence of humankind’s consciousness. Existing from all periods of human life on earth, art works demonstrate the connectedness of the human family’s imagination in all times and all places.

Helicon demonstrates this consanguinity with evidence of the sources of imagination by showing how the content and form of musical art works are arresting and lure the heart into profound imagination. Art not only offers a form of self-expression, it, in fact, creates an external, concrete vessel in which the souls of our lives can dwell and communicate with others. Just before his death, Albert Einstein noted to a friend: “To us [physicists], the concept of past, present, and future is only an illusion . . . albeit a stubborn one.” Einstein understood how humankind’s soul practices the arts to the benefit of all humankind, everywhere.

Helicon’s musical activities seek to profit from our expanding knowledge of the many and diverse areas exercised by our own human nature. In the case of those composers whose creations strike us strongly and deeply, it is our specific intent to maintain the integrity of their affective messages by seeking musical results that reflect as closely as possible their creators’ expressive intentions. Unlike today’s normal performance practice, Helicon believes that music should be performed so as to preserve the affects of the composer. If the composer’s messages are not to the taste of the conductor, the performer, or the comfort of the audience, and, consequently, are changed to accommodate that, the composer’s intent is eroded if not actually betrayed. Therefore, the music we love must be understood as of greater value to us as a product of its own period, than if subjected to an attempt to bring it “up to date.”

That is why Helicon so often employs the specific instruments (of the finest copies of them), techniques, and expressive interpretive styles that were the coin of our beloved composers. We do that for a single purpose: to recreate by approaching as best we can the emotional or affective content that the musicians form different times and places had in mind. The philosophy, demanding change and growth, has immeasurably enriched our artistic receptivity and experience. From this point of view, affective musical understanding are sharpened by observing them in historical context, integrating the meaning of music’s invisible—but not inaudible—messages with the other arts, and with the contemporary technological, philosophical, and socio-economic milieus of their times.

All knowledge is based on the past; all work stands on what has gone before. However, present technology suggests to many that we are not connected with the same past that has brought us into being. Electricity’s new role in spreading information implies to some that we are only just now beginning to know. The flood of new information, carried around the world principally by the computer-satellite-television complex, has often obscured the role of feelings in human affairs. This leads a consumer-oriented society to care more for the agora than the individual; more for the package than for the content. But we must ponder about the resultant pride in today’s acquisitions and achievements, asking whether they have not led us to feel our inheritance is poor, and that only now are we beginning to pull out of dark-age ignorance.

Sadly today, the role of feeling—of the soul in the life of the world—has temporarily dropped from general public consciousness, in spite of the fact that our souls are the prime source and stimulus of our imagination, the surest guide to mankind’s destiny.

At Helicon we feel that when we ignore our souls we “are starving in the sight of supply” of the vast riches of knowledge and artworks that the human race has created in arriving at the present. Helicon intends to give witness to the strength of our inheritance by engaging in activities that demonstrate the affective, communicative power of those riches and our gratitude for having received them.

Art creates an external vessel in which the souls of our lives can dwell and communicate with others. Musical art, not being concrete or tangible, is thus often misunderstood, and thereby, its central meaning betrayed. Helicon intends to maintain the integrity of composer’s affective messages by seeking musical performances that reflect as closely as possible their creator’s expressive intentions. By these means, we hope to recreate, as best we can, the emotional or affective content that composers from different times and places had in mind. Helicon is a kind of travel of the imagination through past time.

2009-06-27T23:16:00.003-05:00

Opera for All

Congratulations to the beleaguered New York City Opera. This week, the company that Mayor Fiorello H. La Guardia nicknamed "the people's opera," brought three vibrant performances directly to the people of New York City in a series of free outdoor performances in conjunction with the River-to-River Festival.

From my seat in the principal oboe chair, I enjoyed watching the thousands gathered really engaged in the performances. Tonight, smiles spread throughout the crowd during Largo al factotum. The audience could barely conceal their delight, basking in the joy of live performance.

In the face of the company's very public missteps and a recent—and disgraceful—article in Times (no link supplied), this week the NYCO is working hard, directly focused on their mission. With The Met offering no operas in the park this summer, "the people's opera" has taken up at least some of the slack. And during the last three nights, there were rapt listeners, not picnickers, many standing through the entire performances.

I, for one, am encouraged. The tables selling season subscriptions were swamped tonight. Why don't you subscribe, too? You don't want to miss out, do you?

2009-06-20T09:21:00.005-05:00

Vivaldi's "Big Band" with The Little Orchesta Society

Randall Ellis and I played Vivaldi's Concerto for Two Oboes in D Minor (RV 535) in Zankel Hall Tuesday night with The Little Orchestra Society and Dino Anagnost conducting. The concert was nearly sold out and many friends were there.

I was happy to read about it in the Times this morning. Vivien Schweitzer praised the "polished interpretation of Vivaldi's Concerto for Two Oboes in D Minor (RV 535) by Randall Ellis and James Roe, who both played with a clear tone and elegant phrasing." New York Times, June 20, 2009

2009-05-30T09:15:00.004-05:00

Writing Jazz

Please come to Merkin Hall tonight. The Zéphyros Winds is joining forces with The Lark Chamber Artists and pianist Anthony de Mare for a program that ends with a world premiere by David Rakowski, Stolen Moments for winds, strings, and piano.

2009-05-13T10:04:00.000-05:00

2009-05-12T08:01:00.005-05:00

Knight after Knight

As part of the run-up for their first European tour, The Knights are giving two performances in New York City.

Please try to catch these fascinating programs on whichever side of the Atlantic you happen to find yourself.

May 15, 2009 8:00 PM	Schubert and Solitude with Osvaldo Golijov - Angel Orensanz Foundation, NYC The New York Institute for the Humanities and the Humanities Initiative at NYU in association with In a Circle present "Schubert and Solitude" with Osvaldo Golijov, in conversation with Fred Child. The Knights Eric Jacobsen, conductor Tehila Nini Goldstein, soprano Brooklyn Rider Golijov - She Was Here (a cycle of four songs steeped in Schubert) Works by Beethoven, Schubert, Glass, and Ives Art Exhibition and Projections by Lennie Peterson Free and Open to the Public •
May 16, 2009 8:00 PM	Benefit Concert for Riverside Food Pantry - Riverside Church, NYC The Knights present a benefit concert for the Riverside Soup Kitchen. This will be the final concert before they head off to Germany and Ireland for their European tour! The Knights Eric Jacobsen, conductor Bach (arr. by S. Beck) - O Haupt voll Blut und Wunden (Chorale for Orchestra) Copland - Appalachian Spring (13 instrument version) Songs of Golijov, Sondheim, Rodgers, and Bernstein Beethoven - Symphony No. 7 Suggested donation $10 Riverside Church - www.theriversidechurchny.org •
May 20, 2009 8:00 PM	Opening Night at the Dresdner Musikfestspiele - Dresden, Germany The Knights, in their first European tour will open the Dresdner Musikfestspiele with soprano Dawn Upshaw as their guest soloist at the Frauenkirche. The Knights Eric Jacobsen, conductor Dawn Upshaw, soprano Ives - The Unanswered Question Golijov - She Was Here Golijov - Night of the Flying Horses Rodgers - He Was Too Good To Me Sondheim - There Won't Be Trumpets Sondheim - What More Do I Need? Bernstein - "Somewhere" from West Side Story Bach (arr. by S. Beck) - O Haupt voll Blut und Wunden (Chorale for Orchestra) Beethoven - Symphony No. 7 Dresdner Musikfestspiele - www.musikfestspiele.com •
May 21, 2009 8:00 PM	The Knights with Christina Courtin at the Dresdner Musikfestspiele - Dresden, Germany The Knights present their second concert at the Dresdner Musikfestspiele with Nonesuch recording artist Christina Courtin at the Alter Schlachthof. The Knights Eric Jacobsen, conductor Christina Courtin, vocal Ryan Scott, guitar Ives - The Unanswered Question Beethoven - Coriolan Overture Glass - Company Copland - Appalachian Spring (13 instrument version) Christina Courtin - Original Songs Dresdner Musikfestspiele - www.musikfestspiele.com •
May 23, 2009 7:30 PM	The National Gallery in Dublin, Ireland The Knights continue their European tour in Dublin with soprano Dawn Upshaw and Nonesuch recording artist Christina Courtin. The Knights Eric Jacobsen, conductor Dawn Upshaw, soprano Christina Courtin, vocals Bach (arr. by S. Beck) - O Haupt voll Blut und Wunden (Chorale for Orchestra) Glass - Company Golijov - Night of the Flying Horses Rodgers - He was Too Good To Me Sondheim - There Won't Be Trumpets Sondheim - What More Do I Need? Bernstein - "Somewhere" from West Side Story Copland - Appalachian Spring (13 instrument version) Christina Courtin - Original Songs

2009-03-18T07:21:00.015-05:00

Ryo Toyonaga at The Vilcek Foundation

From 18 March to 15 May 2009, The Vilcek Foundation presents an exhibition of eighteen ceramic-based sculptural works by Ryo Toyonaga, curated by Midori Yamamura. Created in the seclusion of a cabin in the Catskill Mountains from 1991 to 2003, these works seem to arise from both organic and man-made sources. To contemplate these objects pulls the mind through the paradoxes of appearance and reality. This duality between archaic and contemporary, of organic and constructed, brings to mind the similar duality in the best work of Martin Puryear. As either fossils from the future or distant past, the question is unavoidable: How did these things come to be? And the corollary question, Why can't I take my eyes off of them? The creative impulse that birthed this work—and their organic quality makes the metaphor of birth particularly apt—had to have been a well-spring, the sculptures in this show were selected from a body of 300 pieces. Each is a perfectly conceived unity, almost with its own DNA, making sense by the force of its own presence. We all have thoughts, fantasies, obsessions, whose force on our lives is as powerful as any physical object; sometimes these unseen forces are stronger than reality. Toyonaga has given form, shape, and physical presence to the actors of our unconscious theater, and offers the chance to confront them face to face.

•

From part 15 of Esthétique du Mal by Wallace Stevens

And out of what one sees and hears and out
Of what one feels, who could have thought to make
So many selves, so many sensuous worlds,
As if the air, the mid-day air, was swarming
With the metaphysical changes that occur,
Merely in living as and where we live.

•

Ryo Toyonaga: Mephistophelean
18 March through 15 May 2009
The Vilcek Foundation
167 East 73rd Street
New York City
10021
(212) 472-2500
info@vilcek.org

Viewing from
Wednesday through Saturday
Noon to 6:00 P.M. and by appointment
Catalog available

2009-03-01T09:23:00.014-05:00

On Paper

The crush of major art fairs is coming! Among them, my favorite is the Stanford L. Smith Works on Paper Show running through Monday at the Park Avenue Armory.

The materials an artist employs affect what she says, and paper brings out the lyrical impulse, the poetic, and the intimate. Ink, paint, charcoal, pencil, and the acts of mark making all change not just the surface of the paper, but the paper itself as it accepts the artist's marks. Stretched canvas projects a picture out into the room, creating a dramatic stage for the theater of the artist's imagination. Paper is used (or once was) for personal correspondence, for documenting life's achievements, births, deaths, weddings, for books, for newspapers, for menus, for sheet music, for money. Paper is in our hands everyday and nothing is quite as meaningful as a handwritten note from a friend, a unique object expressing a personal idea, intended just for you; no saved version on the hard drive, rejected drafts crumpled in the author's wastebasket. Art on paper inhabits this intimate touchability. It speaks in private, sometimes intense, whispers, right in your ear.

Exploring this most explorable of art fairs is like searching for just such a personal message from an artist. So many works, so many sizes, such intimate mark making, and then you see it, the message to you. It's signed and dated. You were very young when this message was sent out into the world, but it found its mark. There is a rush standing in front of an immense Titian canvas in a museum, overwhelming, transporting, a feeling experienced and shared publicly and from a distance. The private rush of realizing a work on paper speaks its secret message just to you is a thrill I associate with love and affection.

"Would you like to hold it? Bring it over into the light," I was asked.

Once in your home, the the work and its messages enrich your life; revealing its secrets over the course of a life time.

Many thanks, to Stuart Denenberg of Denenberg Fine Arts.

2009-02-28T18:03:00.006-05:00

Sounds Viennese to Me

With the Vienna Philharmonic in town this week, there has been much talk among New York's classical musicians about the sound of this storied ensemble. I heard their Carnegie Hall concert on my one night off this week, Wednesday, and was captivated by the orchestra's sounds, plural, because these players do not, as some orchestra's do, play with only one sound and apply it (indiscriminately?) to every kind of music they play.

The first element of the Vienna sound I responded to was its clarity; the distinctness with which all parts were clearly heard. This created a sophisticated sound more than merely a luxurious one. The way the orchestra applied vibrato contributed to this clarity. Melodic lines certainly were played with expressive vibrato, but accompanimental music was played with little or none. The melodies never had to struggle to be heard, and all the middle voices contributed in proper balance. In fact, the crispness and concision of the inner lines gave buoyancy and energy to the sound. It was lit from within. This kind variety of sound was evident in the wind playing as well. Solo lines were performed with individuality and freedom, and then, turning on a dime, the same player made an entirely different sound to blend with another instrument in the next passage.

The impression was of orchestral power that rarely was welded full force. Fortissimo passages had poise as well as power. Quiet passages drew the audience close, whispered messages are so sweet.

The sounds of the Vienna Philharmonic arise from unity of purpose, artistic commitment, and a deep understanding of how best to communicate music's messages. I wish I could hear their Schubert 9 tonight.

2009-02-26T10:46:00.006-05:00

Music History

I love that Carnegie Hall program notes list the date each piece received its first performance in the hall. It offers an interesting glimpse of the history of musical life in New York City, and places the current concert in that context.

This is from last night's Vienna Philharmonic concert program:

Wagner Rienzi Overture
Comosed: 1838-1840
Carnegie premiere: 10 Jun 1891, J. M. Lander conducting an unnamed orchestra during a Columbia College graduation.

Chopin Piano Concerto No. 2
Composed: 1829
Carnegie premiere: 2 Dec 1893, Walter Damrosch conducting the New York Symphony Orchestra with Richard Burmeister, piano

J. Strauss II Die Fledermaus Overture
Composed: 1873-1874
Carnegie premiere: 27 May 1906, James F. Boyer conducing the Amicitia Amateur Band*

J. Strauss II "Wo die Citronen blüh'n!"
Composed: 1874
Carnegie premiere: last night

J. Strauss II "Annen" Polka
Composed: 1852
Carnegie premiere: 1 Oct 1949, Ott Sorosoto conducting the Symphonic Accordion Society

J. Strauss II "Unter Donner und Blitz"
Composed: 1868
Carnegie premiere: 9 Mar 1918, Walter Damrosch conducting the New York Symphony Orchestra

J. Strauss II Kaiser-Walzer
Composed: 1889
Carnegie premiere: 8 Jun 1892, J. M. Lander conducting an unnamed orchestra during a Columbia College graduation

J. Strauss II "Tritsch-Tratsch" Polka
Composed: 1858
Carnegie premiere: 7 May 1947, David Broekman conducting the Carnegie Pops

________________________________
*An ensemble that comprised over sixty prominent New York business men, attendance at their Carnegie concerts was by invitation only.

2009-02-04T07:57:00.020-05:00

A Family Affair

Márta and György Kurtág made their New York debut at Zankel Hall Sunday night, with a performance of four-hand piano music that has become something of a legend in music circles. I wasn't surprised to see the hall full, and so full of musicians—composers and performers—some who had traveled long distances especially for this performance. At intermission, friends and colleagues shared stories of Kurtág's famously detailed chamber music coachings and his sophisticated fixation on the production of musical sound.

Yet, the touching sight of the 82-year-old modernist master and his wife seated on an extra-wide piano bench in front of an upright piano (when was the last time an upright was heard in performance at Carnegie Hall?) belied the challenging intensity and intellectualism that characterize his music. The last music of Kurtág I heard was a performance of his bracing masterpiece, Kafka Fragments, so the Biedermeier aspect of a family gathered around an upright piano (literally around in this case, as Gÿorgy Kurtág, Jr. was seated behind the instrument mixing the amplified sound) was poignant and not a little surprising. The theatricality of the scene—a new, polished-ebony upright piano with its two lids raised on either side (like small vestigial wings) flanked by tall cylindrical speakers of a distinctly sci-fi hi-fi sort connected by cords and microphones—made me think of Virgil Fox's famous line (oft-quoted by my dear friend, Albert Fuller), "Honey, they see you before they hear you." But what did this array of high-end electronics and dowdy piano portend?

The piano's soft pedal was engaged for the entire performance, so the supple, electronic sound manipulation produced a muted hush that mirrored the intimacy of the familial scene on stage. The veiled, slightly diffuse sound drew the listener near, yet the quiet amplification also acted as a barrier, an element of remove, even artifice, separating performer and audience. It created a sonic vitrine containing lovely musical curiosities in miniature. This scene was enhanced by the innate theatricality of some of Kurtág's transcriptions. Martá, seated on the right, spread her arms wide to simultaneously play notes in the extreme bass and and treble, while her husband toiled in the mid-range, their arms entwined in a kind of lovingly inefficient distribution of labor that makes certain domestic chores so pleasant to share.

The music itself, selection from Játékok by Kurtág for both performers or one, and four-hand transcriptions of music by Bartók and Bach, flowed with little break and no applause (until the standing ovation rewarded with two additional Bach encores) through a variety of affects and images, so engaging, so inventive, we would have gladly listened all night. The warm waves of applause at the end seemed oddly anonymous after the intensely personal music and music-making we'd just experienced. Instead, it felt as though we each should exchange kisses, shake hands, and thank our hosts for sharing such a wonderful evening.

2009-01-20T08:33:00.004-05:00

Day Dawning in America

"Behold, America! (and thou, ineffable guest and sister!)
For thee come trooping up thy waters and thy lands;
Behold! thy fields and farms, thy far-off woods and mountains,
as in procession coming."

---Walt Whitman from "Song of the Exposition"

---Zoe Strauss "Matress Flip"

2009-01-19T11:05:00.004-05:00

Brooklyn Bridge

In a cab from Brooklyn to the upper east side Saturday night, I was swept up in the stunning urban pleasures of crossing the East River at night and flying up the FDR, city scintillant, gracefully curved edges belying its gridded rigors.

The crowd of us musicians who toil in the mid-town temples of classical music or the theaters of Times Square can easily become provincials, traversing the straight, underground pathway from the upper west side into various orchestra pits (also underground) rarely seeing the city seductively reflected in the river or curving north under girded bridges.

•

"way out; way in; romantic passageway
first seen by the eye of the mind,
then by the eye. O steel! O stone!
Climactic ornament, a double rainbow..."

---Marianne Moore from "Granite and Steel"

•

"O harp and altar, of the fury fused,
(How could mere toil align thy choiring strings!)
Terrific threshold of the prophet's pledge,
Prayer of pariah, and the lover's cry,--

Again the traffic lights that skim thy swift
Unfractioned idiom, immaculate sigh of stars,
Beading thy path--condense eternity:
And we have seen night lifted in thine arms."

---Hart Crane from "To Brooklyn Bridge"

2009-01-17T12:47:00.004-05:00

Reflets dans l'eau

2009-01-15T10:31:00.000-05:00

Please, Read

Notes Toward a Supreme Fiction: It Must Give Pleasure

by Wallace Stevens

To sing jubilas at exact, accustomed times,

To be crested and wear the mane of a multitude

And so, as part, to exult with its great throat,

To speak of joy and to sing of it, borne on

The shoulders of joyous men, to feel the heart

That is the common, the bravest fundament,

This is a facile exercise. Jerome

Begat the tubas and the fire-wind strings,

The golden fingers picking dark-blue air:

For companies of voices moving there,

To find of sound the bleakest ancestor,

To find of light a music issuing

Whereon it falls in more than sensual mode.

But the difficultest rigor is forthwith,

On the image of what we see, to catch from that

Irrational moment its unreasoning,

As when the sun comes rising, when the sea

Clears deeply, when the moon hangs on the wall

Of heaven-haven. These are not things transformed.

Yet we are shaken by them as if they were.

We reason about them with a later reason.

2009-01-14T18:30:00.004-05:00

Please Read

Bruce Haynes
THE END OF EARLY MUSIC
"A Period Performer's History of Music for the Twenty-first Century"

Haynes has produced the essential text for understanding musical performance style today. Every page, I think, "finally someone has said this, and so persuasively."

2009-01-13T17:41:00.002-05:00

Affect in Music

"And since instrumental music has, without words, to express different passions and to carry the hearer from one to another, as well as vocal music; we can readily see that to do that, and supply it in the absence of word or human voice, the composer and he who performs the music must alike have a feeling soul, and one capable of being moved."

Joachim Quantz, 1752

2009-01-13T11:29:00.012-05:00

On Photography

"Photography, though not an art form in itself, has the peculiar capacity to turn all its subjects into works of art." --- Susan Sontag

What can it mean for photographic subjects to be turned into works of art? Do they remain so after leaving the photographer's gaze or the photograph's frame? Does artistic meaning alter the viewer's memory and so live on?

Garry Winogrand said, "I photograph to find out what something will look like photographed."

The following images are corners intersected by morning light. I wanted to see how they looked photographed.

2009-01-12T23:16:00.004-05:00

Nicholas Carone

"I start immediately with paint. Just get involved with that. Because I feel that it's all one. I don't separate drawing from painting. I don't separate organizing the surface from really drawing. I think that's drawing. Drawing to me is designing space really, organizing it. It's not just rendering a particular form . . . calling that drawing an arm or a head or a figure."

Oral history interview with Nicholas Carone, 1968 May 11 - 17, Archives of American Art, Smithsonian Institution.

Nicholas Carone (B.1917)
"Untitled" (1961 - 1964)
oil on paperboard
18 x 20.2 in
signed 'Nicolas Carone'
oil on paperboard

2009-01-10T15:36:00.006-05:00

Issa in the mail box

I was so pleased to come home today and find three copies of Issa's new CD in my mail box. I popped it in my stereo and found I was hearing entirely new work in a language I knew—but didn't know it could say these particular things, in this particular way.

I am fortunate to know Issa, and to have worked with her on this project, and others. Time with Issa surprises with joy!

"May the first word on our lips in
thankfulness be ...

YES"

2009-01-05T21:37:00.003-05:00

Hitting Home

Sad news tonight.

It was just announced that the Miami City Ballet could not raise enough money to pay the live musicians they had contracted for their New York debut at City Center in a few weeks. The company, accustomed to working with live music, will dance to canned music, and the musicians will not work that week.

Of course, we were alerted to this possibility in the Times a couple weeks ago, but the personal impact on each musician and the diluted artistic impact of the performances underscores the cultural price exacted by our economy's plight.

2008-12-30T09:48:00.004-05:00

Affection & Affect

Some thoughts on musical expression from Johann Joachim Quantz:

"If musicians are not themselves moved by what they play, the cannot hope for any profit from their efforts, and will never move others through their playing, which should be their ultimate aim."

"Musicians cannot move others unless they themselves are moved; it is essential that musicians be able to put themselves in each Affection they wish to rouse in their audience, for it is by showing their own emotion that they awaken sympathy. In languishing, sad passages, they languish and grow sad. That is visible and audible."

"What does not come from the heart will not easily touch the heart."

And from C. P. E. Bach:

"One should play from the soul, and not like a trained bird."

And finally this familiar passage from Horace:

"It is not enough for poems to be 'beautiful'; they must also yield delight and guide the listener's spirit wherever they wish. As human faces laugh with those who are laughing, so they weep with those who are weeping. If you wish me to cry, you must first feel grief yourself."

2008-12-24T12:33:00.002-05:00

The Look of Christmas Eve from West 106th Street

I hope he'll survive the rain . . .

2008-12-10T23:53:00.012-05:00

Contemplation

When a composer's music is perfectly fitted to his time, one can wonder what or even if he would have composed where he born a hundred years earlier or later. If Mozart lived in the 20th century, I expect he might have been a film maker rather than composer.

Centenary considerations are much on the mind these days, with Elliot Carter's big day widely celebrated around the city. On the hundredth birthday of Oliver Messiaen (today), I attended an sprawling program of his work at The Church of the Ascension.

Hearing the "Quartet for the End of Time" live is always a powerful experience. The performers tonight, Paul Kim, piano, Curtis Macomber, violin, Jonathan Spitz, cello, Alan Kay, clarinet, revealed the work's intense expression and spiritual questioning, within the framework of its beauty of both sound and form. After intermission, Jon Gillock played an impressive selection of movements drawn from various organ works into his own suite.

Listening, I was struck again by how constructed Messiaen's music sounds. Its madeness is conspicuous to the point of being part of its meaning. Music, by contrast, that sounds "natural" almost defies the idea of its being composed. There are songs by Stephen Foster and melodies by Mozart that seem so inevitable that it is hard to believe there was a time when they didn't exist, as if composers discovered rather than created them. The unnaturalness of Messiaen's music seems related to its task in that so much of what he writes asks us to look directly, unflinchingly, into the greatest mysteries of existence and not avert our gaze. The wrenching knowledge that such knowledge is unknowable is a difficult truth, a question with no answer. Such contemplation is essentially an unnatural act. Quite outside nature, it is supernatural.

Nature does not contemplate, existence is enough. When Messiean introduces bird song into his music, the ambivalent sounds of nature bring the personalness of our spiritual experience into sharp relief. It brings to mind Giovanni Bellini's 1480 masterpiece, St. Francis in the Desert, at The Frick Collection in New York City. The artist baths Saint Francis in one of the most extraordinary streams of light in Western art at the transcendental moment when he receives the stigmata. In the background, a crane, a donkey, and a flock of sheep stand unaffected by the miraculous transformation. The saint's moment in the light is his alone. The knowledge that nature is unconcerned about our struggles draws us to contemplate things beyond nature, beyond what is knowable. Messiaen's music is an indispensable guide. Mozart and Stephen Foster provide the perfect balm.

•

Musee des Beaux Arts
W.H. Auden (1940)

About suffering they were never wrong,
The Old Masters; how well, they understood
Its human position; how it takes place
While someone else is eating or opening a window or just walking dully along;
How, when the aged are reverently, passionately waiting
For the miraculous birth, there always must be
Children who did not specially want it to happen, skating
On a pond at the edge of the wood:
They never forgot
That even the dreadful martyrdom must run its course
Anyhow in a corner, some untidy spot
Where the dogs go on with their doggy life and the torturer's horse
Scratches its innocent behind on a tree.
In Breughel's Icarus, for instance: how everything turns away
Quite leisurely from the disaster; the ploughman may
Have heard the splash, the forsaken cry,
But for him it was not an important failure; the sun shone
As it had to on the white legs disappearing into the green
Water; and the expensive delicate ship that must have seen
Something amazing, a boy falling out of the sky,
had somewhere to get to and sailed calmly on.

2008-11-25T14:47:00.002-05:00

Zoe Strauss "We love having you here"

Photographer, Zoe Strauss' show at Bruce Silverstein in Chelsea opened last weekend and runs through 10 January 2009. Please stop by for a visit. Her images are beautiful and harrowing in equal measure.

2008-11-12T21:42:00.012-05:00

The Joys of Solitude

I like to think of art as serving two main functions, to transport and to report.

The responsibility of the artist to represent an honest picture of her time can result in unsettling art that confronts its audience with insights into the difficult truths of life. This art reports; and so often, it reports bad news.

Other art, however, offers solace in times of trial. In a day when reportage submerges the mere mortal in a flood—a deluge—of information, poll numbers, and market indices, art that transports offers a deeply reparative function in our lives. Of late, when I come home much too late from a long day, and pour a glass of red wine, I want music that transports, not reports. I've had enough reports for one day.

The internationally acclaimed Dutch violinist, Jaap Schröder, has released a CD of music that perfectly accompanies a quiet evening. "Jaap Schröder The Seventheenth-Century Violin" presents sixty-five minutes of music for unaccompanied violin music by well-known and obscure composers, perfect for contemplation, introspection, and solitude. Listening to Jaap's CD, I am reminded of the marvelous Duccio “Madonna and Child” at the Metropolitan Museum of Art. The front edge of its frame is charred in two places by candles, because this work of great artistic sophistication—virtuosity, even—was used for personal devotion; two candles illuminating its mysteries in the pre-electric night.

In the current November evenings, dark so very early, solitude is welcome. Jaap's music is a balm to the rampant reports and retorts we must fend off each day.

2008-11-08T23:39:00.004-05:00

Operatic Bailout—Someone, anyone?

"The opera always loses money. That's as it should be.
Opera has no business making money."
---Rudolph Bing

The appointment of Gerard Mortier as general manager and artistic director of the New York City Opera was a visionary move on the part of the company's board of trustees. It distinguished the company from their deluxe neighbor across campus and spiced up the opera world in the process. With the New York Times report today that Mortier will leave—before his first season, before even the renovations to the hall are completed—this is the company's second major self-definition misfire.

First they strongly and convincingly made the case that the New York State Theater was inhospitable for singers, but then had to announce they were unable to move to a new home. Now they've defined themselves as the cutting edge opera company in America, but in the current economic climate, they cannot afford to realize these plans. Unfortunately, they also announced that their old model is "financially broken."

This is a pickle they're in. It's terribly distressing to see this institution with so much history and accumulated talent faltering so. Are there angels enough to get the New York City Opera back on its feet? Is there a leader intrepid enough to give the company direction and vision while working within a budget crisis? I hope so.

2008-11-06T07:37:00.008-05:00

Brilliant Friends

Congratulations to Bart Feller, who last night played C. P. E. Bach's D-Minor Flute Concerto with the Orchestra of St. Luke's. He played with a shimmering tone, assured rhythmic poise, and infallible sense of line. The first movement is written in long paragraphs for the flute. Bart suavely led the audience through these, illuminating the music's intricate rhetoric with charm. In the lyrical second movement, he deftly scaled the emotional arch drawing us toward the touching cadenza. The finale is all fire and drama. Bart chewed up the scenery, ripping through the virtuoso passages with brilliant flourish and power.

Music from this period is fascinating and is enjoying something of a revival. Long written off as transitional, it only sounds that way if you listen with Mozart and Haydn in your ear. Knowing what comes next in music history can make music of the mid-18th century sound as if it is searching for something it can't quite find. In last night's performance, surrounded by the music of JS Bach and Handel, CPE sounded like the adventurer he was.

What a thrill to hear your friends do such fine work!

2008-11-04T14:37:00.014-05:00

The Look of the Election from West 106th Street

When I got on line to vote this morning, I recognized a handsome young man from my building right in front of me.

"Alex?" I poked his shoulder, "Is this your first time voting?" "Yep, just turned 18." He was a toddler when I moved in 15 years ago. I watched him grow up in the hallways and on the front stoop.

Walking home, I wondered what it might mean for him, the son of a black father and a white mother, living in a—still—very diverse neighborhood in New York City, to cast his first presidential vote with Barack Obama on the ballot.

I don't mean to deny hockey moms their moment, but Sarah Palin and her running mate have much to answer for once this campaign is over. Their rallies revealed a shameful side of American culture and legitimized it by handing it a bullhorn. We can only hope that the race-baiting, xenophobia, and culture-war hysterics Palin stirred up will sink back into the mucky bottom after tonight.

It's time to wipe the lipstick off the pit bulls!

It's time to celebrate the dignity of a young man from West 106th Street casting his first presidential vote. When he hopes for the future, I want to know what he sees.

2008-11-01T22:23:00.011-05:00

"Sounds My Father Taught Me"
Listening to the Songs of Charles Ives

Iconoclastic American musician, Charles Ives (1874-1954), was raised in Danbury, CT, son of renowned Civil War bandleader, George Ives. By the age of five, Charles was able to play popular tunes on the piano, but unlike most musical prodigies who used their fingertips to pluck out the melodies, he used his fists. "It's all right to do that, Charles,” his father told him, “if you know what you're doing." For the rest of his life, Ives never quite could keep his fists off the keyboard.

He did develop a standard keyboard technique, and by the age of 14 became the youngest salaried church organist in Connecticut. His father, however, always encouraged the innately idiosyncratic elements of his son's musical mind. Famously, Ives’ father once assembled two municipal marching bands and sent each marching around the town square in opposite directions, playing different marches! The clangorous effect of alternating rhythmic phasing, chance clashes, and surprising counterpoint, left all but the most maverick New England listeners (in other words, everyone but George and Charles Ives) a bit stunned. But, in fact, such commingled music accompanies each of us throughout our daily lives. Songs stuck in our heads mix with elevator music and the mindless, off-key singing of a (mindless?) co-worker lost in his iPod. We hardly are aware of the cacophony; Ives had the audacity and curiosity to try to recreate it.

Charles Ives studied musical composition at Yale with Horatio Parker, but found himself and the conservative music faculty at constant cross-purposes. Upon leaving Yale in 1898, Ives did not follow the usual career path of young aspiring American composers by continuing his studies in Germany. Instead, he took a $15-a-week job as a clerk with the Mutual Life Insurance Company in New York City. He stayed in insurance for the rest of his life, producing his large body of music in the evenings and weekends. Working in almost complete isolation from the musical mainstream, Ives composed without either the experience or even the prospect of hearing his works performed. It brings to mind the self-cloistered Emily Dickenson, who produced over 1700 extraordinary poems while tucked away in her Amherst, Massachusetts redoubt, or, especially, poet Wallace Stevens, who became vice-president of the Hartford Accident and Indemnity Company while producing the most important body of American poetry since Walt Whitman.

Eventually, influential American musicians—including Leonard Bernstein and Aaron Copland—championed Ives’ music, even so, many of his works had to wait decades for a performance. Toward the end of his life, Ives reputation burgeoned. He was elected to the National Institute of Arts and Letters in 1945, and the Symphony no. 3 won the Pulitzer Prize in 1947. In 1951, Bernstein conducted the New York Philharmonic in the premier of his Second Symphony, some 40 years after its completion. (Ives and his wife listened to the broadcast of that concert on a neighbor’s radio. When the Carnegie Hall audience exploded in a thunderous ovation, Charles’ wife turned to her husband and remarked, "Why, they actually like it!”) His Symphony No. 1 was given its first performance in 1953, half a century after it was finished. He died a year later. Posthumously, Ives is recognized as America’s greatest musical innovator.

Music historian, Jan Swafford, movingly points out that Ives’ father “taught his son to respect the power of vernacular music. As a Civil War bandleader, he understood how sentimental tunes such as Tenting Tonight on the Old Camp Ground, Aura Lee, Stephen Foster songs, and marches and bugle calls were woven into the experience of war and the memories of soldiers. Much as did Gustav Mahler a continent away, Charles Ives came to associate everyday music with profound emotions and spiritual aspirations. One of his father's most resonant pieces of wisdom came when he said of a stonemason's off-key hymn singing: ‘Look into his face and hear the music of the ages. Don't pay too much attention to the sounds—for if you do, you may miss the music. You won't get a wild, heroic ride to heaven on pretty little sounds.’” For both father and son, high and low art were distinctions that hobbled, rather than refined, musical experience. I want to “kick out the softy ears,” Charles would shout, “Stand up and use your ears like a man!” At its most successful, Ives' music achieves a kind of musical imitation of actual thought. In this way his work is similar to his contemporary, James Joyce. By following multi-layered ideas and references in and out of memories, both distant and familiar, Ives gives us a glimpse of the mind’s inner workings.

The seven songs we’ll hear tonight display Ives in a mischievously touching mood. Hymns, popular melodies, Civil War Songs, spirituals, and parlor ditties, all weave in and out of the proceedings. A passing piccolo whistles “Dixie” in He is There! Even the pianist has a few words to say along the way. The results are familiar and quirky, sentimental and outright funny, commonplace and breathtakingly original. They paint an intimate portrait of a true American visionary, as he paints his own portrait of the nation at the dawn of the “American Century.”

Helicon Symposium 87
2 November 2008

Seven songs by Charles Ives
Performed by Nicholas Phan, tenor
Pedja Muzijevic, piano
Alex Sopp, fife

Memories: A - Very Pleasant, B - Rather Sad (1897)
My Native Land (1897)
Mists (1910)
Luck and Work (1920)
He is There! (1917)
At the River (1916)
The Circus Band (1894)

2008-10-18T19:38:00.007-05:00

Without Words

While rehearsing Copland's Appalachian Spring with The Knights this afternoon, the strings were trying to find the right sound for a hymnlike passage in the final pages. Eric Jacobsen suggested they hum it. What a great sound these twenty young virtuoso string players made singing together. Hushed, focused, gentle, earnest; it was perfect. I know the recording tomorrow will capture those characteristics, but I'm sure glad I heard it sung.

(By the way, Zéphyros used the technique for a passage in our Gounod recording . . . )

2008-10-16T22:50:00.012-05:00

Knights like tonight . . .

Tonight at Le Poisson Rouge, The Knights, conducted by Eric Jacobsen, played their second concert of a pair with cellist, Jan Vogler.

Sony Classical is turning these performances into a live CD.

In a life made up of thousands concerts, when one stands out, it is for important reasons. I am so grateful my musical path brought me to The Knights. Tonight, with a capacity crowd surrounding the orchestra on all sides, the musicians played with such joy, energy, and unity of purpose. It reminds me of why I wanted to be a musician in the first place.

2008-10-16T10:27:00.003-05:00

Love in a Time of Low Carbs

This morning, I finally had to leave the reed desk for a snack. I popped over to Silver Moon Bakery on 105th and Broadway. Judith Norrell, baker and harpsichordist (she was a student of Albert Fuller), has created the indispensable spot for baked goods in Morningside Heights. Weekends and holidays, people line up around the block, happily chatting with neighbors, as they wait for their croissants and bagettes. Judith presides over a crew decked out in white, all smiling. Everyone seems happy at Silvermoon, the bakers, the sellers, the buyers, Judith, even the bread seems happy.

And as I bit into my (here I must confess) chocolate brioche, I thought, there is something about bread that just speaks of love. It must be all that kneading that metes out nurishment both for soul and body. Certainly, the carbs in my roll contribute too many calories to the day's intake, but as those carbs turn to sugars, the sugars turn into a smile.

We mustn't forget that happiness is part of health.

2008-10-15T23:20:00.007-05:00

Run, not walk

I once heard a storied Juilliard violin teacher say he would "run, not walk" to hear Mark Steinberg play the violin. I love this idea, and I would, too. Run, that is, or, more likely, take a cab . . .

My own "Run, not walk" list of violinists also includes Jennifer Frautschi, Vera Beths, and Colin Jacobsen.

And now I am adding one more (I guess I'm going to be running a lot . . . ), Johnny Gandelsman. When I first played with The Knights last May, Johnny was leading Beethoven 6 and I was swept away by his playing. For Johnny, every expressive device available to the violinist was in play at all times, and every musical moment was infused with imagination. I didn't want to miss a beat, a gesture, I even wanted to hear him play the rests! One of the highlights of The Knight's current program is a waltz by Ljova where Colin and Johnny trade off long lilting phrases. Heaven!

When one of these five musicians plays, I certainly would run—not walk—to be there. (And the fun of Helicon is that they all are on the roster!)

2008-10-15T08:15:00.007-05:00

The Knights Tonight

Tonight and tomorrow, cellist Jan Vogler and The Knights conducted by Eric Jacobsen perform Shostakovich, Hendrix, and Copland at New York City downtown venue, Le Poisson Rouge.

Wednesday & Thursday
October 15 & 16
8:00 P.M.

Shostakovich — Cello Concert No. 1 and Waltzes arranged by Ljova
Jimi Hendrix — Machine Gun arranged by Kyle Sanna
Copland — Appalachian Spring (October 16 only)

Eric Vogler, cello
Eric Jacobsen, conductor
The Knights
Le Poisson Rouge
158 Bleecker Street • NYC

Tickets $20
www.lprnyc.com
(212) 505 FISH or (800) 55 TICKETS

These concerts are part of a live recording project for SONY CLASSICAL.

JAN VOGLER has become one of today’s most sought-after cellists. He is known for his decisive musical concepts and singing playing style. During the last years he won a large following in regular performances, and acclaimed recordings. He started as principal cellist of the Sächsische Staatskapelle Dresden but left the position in 1997 to fully concentrate on his already successful career as a soloist. Since then he has been playing with major orchestras and conductors worldwide. In November 2005 he gave his debut with the New York Philharmonic and Lorin Maazel as part of the reopening of the historic Frauenkirche in Dresden. In October 2006, he received the European Cultural Award in Dresden from the European Foundation for Culture.

Founded by brothers Colin and Eric Jacobsen, THE KNIGHTS, are a fellowship of young musicians of diverse and accomplished backgrounds who come together for the shared joy of musical exploration. "A little orchestra of some of New York's best strings-about-town," (The New Yorker), The Knights have brought audiences varied and and engaging programs consisting of masterworks from all eras, world premiers, collaborations with jazz artists, singer-songwriters, and arrangements of folk music from different world traditions in their quest to bring new light to old works and new work to light.

2008-10-01T10:36:00.002-05:00

Reading in Autumn

"Summer Reading" by John Ashbery

With these lighter days a concomitant
urge to scrutiny arrives. Signing in,
my motivation palls, pusillanimous.
Are we to take it inside the house?
I have to go.

Tell me another dream. The long events surface
wider, farther apart, like autumn breakers.
Birds are suddenly there. The house of cards
on sand falters, fatally. I'm elated.

You never know how things work out
except through "sleight" of hand, sometimes.
I'm worried about knowing later.
The high-school principal killed his star student,

for instance. Feeling competent,
they quashed him. Until he wins the crisis
we can't promote it. Keep that rodent away.
What have you seemed to do?

Do interesting things well done and may
spring chasten you. We had everything in mind.
Everything softballed, wound up on my back porch.
It's okay, though. Keep us on your docket. Cut through the . . .

2008-09-22T10:30:00.002-05:00

Albert Fuller, in memoriam
7/21/1926 - 9/22/2007

A year goes by. Life converts experience into memory and emotion, substance scatters, seeds sprout, and the cycle of seasons reminds us that "no man ever steps in the same river twice; it's not the same river and he's not the same man."

"We build a house,
but it is the empty space inside
that makes it livable."

----Tao Te Ching

2008-09-16T10:45:00.001-05:00

Love or music

"Love or music—which power can uplift man to the sublimest heights? It is a large question; yet it seems to me that one should answer it in this way: Love cannot give an idea of music; music can give an idea of love. But why separate them? They are two wings of the soul."

—Hector Berlioz

2008-09-15T11:07:00.001-05:00

Chamber Music

The chamber music composer is like "the painter who shades and colors a picture destined to be viewed at close range much more delicately than, for example, a ceiling painting, which is far removed from the eye, and in which these details would not only be lost, but might even weaken the effect of the whole."

—Heinrich Christoph Koch (1749-1816) German theorist and violinist.

--------------------------------

Chamber music "was not intended for a large public, but actually only for connoisseurs and amateurs. . . . it was more finely worked out, more difficult and more artistic . . . composers who wrote for the chamber could presume more accomplishment and experience in listening among their audience."

—Gustav Schilling (1805-1880) German writer on music, who died in Nebraska.

2008-08-26T08:55:00.012-05:00

Paintings by Dov Talpaz

A few years ago, I encountered the work of a young artist named Dov Talpaz as part of a show put up by a group of fellow art school colleagues.

His work is representational, often drawing on literary themes. Serious in tone, figural yet abstract, inventive in color and perspective, cohesive in vision, Talpaz is an artistic descendant of El Greco and Edvard Munch. Each picture's narrative is emotional or psychological rather than active, and is expressed through color, form, and perspective. His strongest work reveals characters caught up in the inevitable and personal workings of their fate. They seem to display themselves to us in intimate acceptance of their condition. We empathize and yet understand that their world is not our world. We can only see each other only through the window of the artist's imagination.

Dov currently has a show in New York City, details below. It only runs through September 3rd, so you'll have to hurry to catch it. I highly recommend it.

Paintings by Dov Talpaz

August 23 - September 3, 2008

Opening reception Saturday, August 23, 6- 9 pm.

Manhattan World Culture Open Center

19W 26th Street, 5th floor (between Broadway & 6th Ave.) New York, NY

Gallery hours:

Open on Monday and Friday, 12 – 6 pm.

Saturday, 2.30 - 6 pm. Wednesday and Thursday

by appointment, Please call 212.244.7200.

For more info you can write to dubitalpaz@walla.com

or call 718.789.7920

2008-08-24T07:13:00.000-05:00

"Fear not, Mary!"

Et incarnatus est
De Spiritu Sancto
Ex Maria Virgine,
Et homo factus est.

And was incarnate
by the Holy Ghost
of the Virgin Mary,
and was made man.

When Mozart set these words from the CREDO in his C Minor Mass, K. 427, he created a remarkably human way of understanding this central miracle of Christianity, extrapolating from the text—the way a great preacher does—to reveal deep truths.

Et incarnatus est, these lines of the Mass, rote and dry from weekly incantation, suggest a direct yet mystical congress between Mary and various parts of The Trinity. To become pregnant by the Holy Spirit and give birth to the Son of God is certainly no routine miracle, and Mozart proposes a musical realization of this spiritual - corporeal union, giving voice to Mary's sacred acceptance in this mystical moment.

The work is set for soprano solo, accompanied by strings with an obbligato trinity of flute, oboe, and bassoon. Graciously opening with the trio of winds, the soprano answers their greeting with a simple, chant-like melody. The winds begin to woo, encircling the soprano in a beautiful cloud of contrapuntal caresses. The music of the wind instruments takes the role of the Holy Spirit preparing Mary, represented in the soprano solo, to become a mother. As the movement progresses, the soprano line gradually opens up, becoming more and more elaborate with trills, melismatic ornamentation, and great leaps of tessitura. Finally, a quartet cadenza for the winds and soprano carries the audience through an extended state of exquisite tension, ending in a gentle cadence. Back to earth, rocking rhythms sooth in the afterglow of mystical intertwining.

Et homo factus est.

Mozart's wife Constanze sang the first performance.

2008-08-13T09:48:00.009-05:00

"(Time out of Mind)"

I was walking down the street with a copy of James McCourt's new novel, "Now Voyagers: Some Divisions of the Saga of Mawrdew Czgowchwz, Oltrano, Authenticated by Persons Represented Therein, Book One: The Night Seas Journey," when I ran into a friend:

"What are you reading?" he asked.

To the unfortunate uninitiated, James McCourt and his fictive (but mythically alive) diva, Mawrdew Czgowchwz (unpronouncable, but "Mardu Gorgeous" is accepted performance practice), is a fairly ambitious topic for a casual street corner encounter. "It's James McCourt's new novel." A glimmer of recognition. "Not Frank McCourt . . . James." How to describe the author of the book under my arm? "If Firbank is like Mozart, James McCourt is like Richard Strauss." It was the best I could come up with.

I picked up "Mawrdew Czgowchwz" a few years ago, led to it by various reviews. The first chapter was dazzling and confounding, I wasn't sure what had just happened to me. Turning back to the first page, I reread it straight through, realizing it was, indeed, dazzling and fabulous. Immediately, I called my friend, Matt, and read the whole chapter to him over the phone. No one's been the same since . . .

It is not for everyone. Perhaps the first sentence will reveal which camp—ahem—you're in.

"There was a time (time out of mind) in the sempiternal progress of divadienst, at that suspensory pause in its career just prior to the advent of what was to be known as "Mawrdolatry," when the cult of Morgana Neri flourished in the hothouse ambiance of the Crossroads Café, in the shadow of the old Times building, across Broadway from the very hotel (a ghostly renovated ruin) where Caruso had sojourned in the great days, whose palmy lobby, once ormolu and velvet, had been transformed into a vast drugstore, and in Caruso's suite a podiatrist had been installed."

2008-08-10T09:45:00.004-05:00

Theme and Variations

In the right hands, theme and variations can musically approximate thought: one idea held in the mind, turned over, examined from every angle. I think of the middle movement of Mozart's B-flat Major Piano Concerto, K. 456. Its eight bar theme in G Minor expresses such sadness, such quietness in the face of loss, and then in the last four eighth-notes, it gently ends in B-flat Major. A simple cadential figure briefly touches a sunnier world. It's as if the experience of pain brought to mind memories, souvenirs, of when hope was possible. The theme is repeated, variations ensue, and the thought process of working through that initial idea begins. This movement is a true masterpiece, and all the romp and jollity of the last movement cannot mask the memories of what came before.

Albert Fuller used to say, "What's past is prologue." Yet you cannot go backwards. You cannot touch the past. Music is experienced as memory and emotion, which is also how we process the experiences that change our lives.

2008-08-08T08:12:00.003-05:00

In and Out of Context

While rehearsing the first movement of Ravel's Le Tombeau de Couperin, the conductor isolated an inner line in the strings. Underneath the melodic exuberance of the violins, the violas and cellos play a descending chromatic line: searching, nostalgic, almost mournful. It reminded me that each of the movements in Ravel's suite is dedicated a friend killed in the First World War. This work is not sombre, but stashed away amidst the sparkling exterior, are clues to other truths.

2008-08-05T22:14:00.018-05:00

Context—In and Out of the Cage

"I have nothing to say and I am saying it." --- John Cage

The other evening, my friend, Pedja Muzijevic handed me an advance copy of his wonderful, new CD on Albany Records, "Sonatas & Other Interludes." You can pre-order your copy from Amazon by clicking here.

The ingenious conceit of this recital is its form. The title references Cage's cycle "Sonatas and Interludes," which groups 16 Scarlatti-sized sonatas interspersed with four interludes, all played on "prepared piano." Pedja has chosen eight of Cage's prepared-piano sonatas and places them between works (the "Other Interludes" of the title) by Scarlatti, Liszt, W. F. Bach, Schumann, Strauss, and a Chopin paraphrase by Michalowski. In this context, the Sonatas become the Interludes; those kind of inversions would certainly have delighted John Cage. In a surprising sense, the CD presents two recitals superimposed, which is not unlike the way Cage and Merce Cunningham worked.

As a musical programmer, I have been continually impressed by Pedja's innate sense for contextualizing music of disparate periods in ways that compliment and enhance. Fans of his series, The Movado Hour, will have many memorable examples at the ready. In this recording, the tart, concision of Cage's sonatas—not to mention the altered timbre of the "prepared piano"—acts as citrus palate cleansers between courses of a well-planned and well-executed meal. Pedja and I were both close friends of the late Albert Fuller who often discussed musical programs in terms of fine menus, and indeed Pedja uses this metaphor in the personal note that introduces the program. As for the performance, Pedja plays beautifully throughout, deftly moving through some three centuries of musical styles with ease and dexterity. The distinctness with which he presents each historical period is so natural, one almost forgets the sophistication this kind of musical thinking requires.

Another notable aspect of this CD is its theatricality. Were this a live performance, the performer would require at least two pianos on stage and, of course, the para-musical work of altering the entrails of one of them for the Cage sonatas. The intricate manipulation of the piano required for the Cage works elicits some fine insights in Pedja's program note:

"Sonatas and Interludes includes instructions not found in any volume of Czerny études. The performer is asked to 'prepare' the piano by inserting screws, blots, plastic and rubber into the strings. It is all too easy to note that Cage's instructions are wonderfully explicit and vague at the same time. It IS John Cage after all! However, the same can be said for Beethoven or any other composer. It is exactly that vague, gray area that makes us play the same works over and over; precisely because there is no definite 'truth.'"

In his program note, Pedja disabuses us of the notion that this recording has an "underlining story, title or subtext," and I certainly won't quibble. However, as I listen again and again to this CD, at each work's ends, my ear yearns for the next unexpected sound. The recital is a page-turner, a cliff-hanger. This listening experience is quite outside the classical-music norm, and works like the finest story-telling. Its juxtapositions open unexpected vistas, and you never end up where you thought you would. How often can you say that of a piano recital?

One bit of acknowledgment is due: the recording is made possible through the generosity and vision of Jim and Yukiko Gatheral.

Now, go get yourself a copy. Don't deprive yourself!

(Photo credit: the portrait of Pedja is by fashion photographer, and friend, Bell Soto.)

2008-08-04T15:21:00.007-05:00

In Context—Mozart and Beethoven

I have played primarily (mostly?) Mozart for the last two weeks. In that context, rehearsing Beethoven's fourth symphony today brought into relief the rhetorical differences between the two composers.

Mozart is always an opera composer. In symphonies, concerti, and chamber music, the lyrical (without the lyrics, mind you) explicitness of his rhetoric sings forth from the operatic stage. His cast of characters listens, responds, provokes, flirts, dances, and weeps. The lacking libretto is merely a technicality.

Beethoven's is a purely instrumental rhetoric, more abstract, yet in some ways more elemental. In a Beethoven symphony there are not characters, per se, rather the interplay is between emotions summoned through the composer's singular mastery of harmonic narrative and rhythmic persuasion. Whereas it is not easy to imagine words set to Beethoven's melodies, his music is vivid in meaning and formally cohesive.

Mozart's music lives in a world of intricate human relationships. Beethoven reaches for truths beyond the world of words.

2008-07-18T11:57:00.004-05:00

Done!

2008-07-08T11:06:00.007-05:00

Releasing and Dispersing and Rings of Smoke

In the seemingly endless process of emptying Albert Fuller's apartment as co-executor of his estate, moments of grace visit from time to time, shining light into dusty corners.

Those close to him have taken the books they wanted from his sprawling, eclectic library, still leaving the better part of 200 books not of interest to Albert's circle of friends, a pretty literate bunch. I loaded a push cart with half the remnant and headed up for Housing Works, but as I turned the corner onto Columbus Avenue (Albert always said, "Columbus's Avenue.") I saw the used book seller who has had a couple tables on the east side of the street between West 67th and 68th, for years.

I asked if he'd like some books. He sure did. He always has such interesting material, and I told him I'd be back with more.

As I left, I quipped, "Maybe you'll find a treasure in there you can retire on."

He took the trademark stogy from his mouth, "More important, your books will go to people who will enjoy and use them," punctuating his points with his cigar, cinders swirling.

Much more important, indeed.

2008-07-04T00:01:00.000-05:00

2008-06-29T09:40:00.005-05:00

Last night before the Caramoor concert, Peter Serkin and I discussed the beauties of meantone temperament tuning. He used 1/7 comma for his performance of J. S. Bach and Mozart.

2008-06-22T17:21:00.012-05:00

Water & Ice on a Hot Day—
110° in LA and We See Palm Trees . . .

From “The Lovers of Achilles” by Sophocles

When ice gleams in the open air,
children grab.
Ice-crystal in the hands is
at first a pleasure quite novel.
But there comes a point—
you can’t put the melting mass down,
you can’t keep holding it.
Desire is like that.
Pulling one to act and not to act,
again and again, pulling

•

"The Glass of Water" by Wallace Stevens

That the glass would melt in heat,
That the water would freeze in cold,
Shows that this object is merely a state,
One of many, between two poles. So,
In the metaphysical, there are these poles.

Here in the centre stands the glass. Light
Is the lion that comes down to drink. There
And in that state, the glass is a pool.
Ruddy are his eyes and ruddy are his claws
When light comes down to wet his frothy jaws

And in the water winding weeds move round.
And there and in another state—the refractions,
The metaphysical, the plastic parts of poems
Crash in the mind—But, fat Jocundus, worrying
About what stands here in the centre, not the glass,

But in the centre of our lives, this time, this day,
It is a state, this spring among the politicians
Playing cards. In a village of the indigenes,
One would have still to discover. Among the dogs and dung,
One would continue to contend with one’s ideas.

. . . at the End of the Mind

2008-06-09T23:01:00.026-05:00

Daze and Night

This evening, after rehearsing "new music" in Brooklyn (a combination of words that can strike fear into the hearts of old-fuddy-duddy musicians who still live on the increasingly unaffordable and decidedly Starbucks-ridden Upper West Side), my dear friend Marianne Gythfeldt and I had dinner in one of my favorite restaurants, Olea in Fort Greene (171 Lafayette Avenue, Brooklyn, 718-643-7003). My meals there turn out consistently to be among the finest I've eaten anywhere. (Do not miss the halloumi cheese or the dates stuffed with almonds and wrapped in bacon or the roasted eggplant . . . mmm. Or the white mango sangria!)

Eating at Olea means a long trip home to West 106th, but the MTA seemed to be up to the task tonight, and the No. 3 express train sped from Atlantic Avenue through lower Manhattan to West 96th Street in what felt like just a few minutes. There I emerged from the frigid, air-conditioned train onto a hazy, hot platform, strangely crowded for half-past eleven on a Monday night. It was also strange for the mercury to near three digits on an early-June evening. Sometimes New York City is just strange, you accept that.

The No. 3 train didn't budge, and so stalled, it complained, loudly in a constant, monolithic blast of fortissimo white noise, of an ailment I was glad not to share. It was too hot on the platform for the passengers to do anything, too hot to read, move, or even be upset. It was too hot to do anything but sweat. And that we did, profusely.

Suddenly the platform loud speakers erupted in multiple announcements. Utterly indecipherable, overlapping ululations of glossolalia, commanded us, warned us, informed us, of WHAT? Of nothing, because the train noise and the simultaneous blatting from the speakers voided any message. It was too hot to care . . . and then a voice did emerge from the din: "Last stop on this No. 3 express, last stop, last stop, EVERYONE OFF this train."

The train cars hotly coughed out their contents and the platform teamed with people.

We awaited the No. 1 local. We hoped the No. 3 would move on to the train infirmary, making way from its replacement. It was too hot to be rubbing shoulders with dozens of sweat-drenched strap-hangers at a quarter-to-midnight, but it was too hot to walk home.

The No. 3 never moved. It only roared unanswered complaints, doors closed, cars empty, lights ablaze. A No. 1 train finally did roll up, jammed with passengers. When its doors opened, no one got out; not a single person got on. As if having told a joke that falls completely flat, the train sat with doors ajar while hundreds of people stood, motionless, just hoping it will go away. It was a moment of total MTA impotence: an empty train out of service on one side and a full train stalled on the other, with hundreds of people sweltering in between.

I left. It was too hot not to.

Luckily, the M104 bus was right there. Before me on line was a young man with an immense tuba case. Once he got situated in his seat, I stopped in the aisle beside him. I couldn't resist. Referring to my tiny (especially in this context) oboe case, I quipped:

"Don't you wish you played the oboe?"

"No," he replied, "then I'd have to make reeds!"

"Touché!"

"My brother played the bassoon, so I know what it's like."

"Oh, so you shared a fraternal clef."

"Yeah, we kept it all in the family."

"So did we. My brother played the flute, but being the smart one, he started a plumbing business."

"Isn't plumbing sorta like making reeds for the tuba . . . ?"

At this point, we arrived at West 106, so I said goodnight. Some strange things you just have to accept.

2008-06-08T11:59:00.000-05:00

Aren't they?

"Some news are actually old."

-Gemzel Hernandez, M.D.

2008-06-08T11:46:00.008-05:00

Thus

As for the key, we know it must be minor.

B minor, then, as having passed for noble

On one or two occasions. As for the theme,

There being but the one, with variations,

Let it be spoken outright by the oboe

Without apology of any string,

But as a man speaks, openly, his heart

Among old friends, let this be spoken.

Thus.

The major resolutions of the minor,

Johann's great signature, would be too noble.

It would do certain violence to our theme.

Therefore see to it that the variations

Keep faith with the plain statement of the oboe.

Entering quietly, let each chastened string

Repeat the lesson she must get by heart,

And without overmuch adornment.

Thus.

by Donald Justice, from "The Summer Anniversaries" (1960)

2008-06-06T13:17:00.000-05:00

Isn't it?

"It's a funny thing, the more I practice the luckier I get."

American Golfer, Arnold Palmer

2008-06-02T13:34:00.006-05:00

Days & Knights

Topping off an amazing week of demanding and rewarding work with The Knights, it was gratifying to read Allan Kozinn aglow over Saturday night's concert. He knighted Eric Jacobsen an "interpretive dynamo"!

Click here to read the review in the New York Times.

Click here to read a blog review by my friend, Gemzel Hernandez, M.D.

2008-06-01T08:23:00.000-05:00

Mikhail Ivanovich Glinka at the Swim-Up Bar

Think of Van Gogh, needled by that ringing in his ear,
of Nijinsky in his straitjacket, of Robert Schumann.
Yes, think of Schumann, whose wedded bliss lasted
only four years before his mind betrayed him.
Not even Clara could save him from madness.
Not even she. If my wife were here, she’d say,

“Honey, don’t forget Dianne Arbus or Plath.”
And what about Virginia Woolf, contemplating
each stone she sewed into her sweater
before she waded into the stream.

Think of them all, I nod to myself,
though there must be other etcetera
to distill into palliatives, every plum
of suffering, every genus of indifference.

Even now, when I listen to my music
I catch myself muttering, “Fool.”
Fool who made the sorrows of all souls count
as nothing even as I squeezed the crystal,
everything vanished into the umlauts of Berlin nights.
Even my scores lightened, rose as cloud.

These days, I no longer need to sleep.
I remember, have always remembered too much.
No matter. The Hermitage, that ridiculous little gusli,
the Bolshoi. Computer problems with the Mir.
Bach’s Brandenburgs as played by six dozen balalaikas.
This is what they want to know about in the Provinces,
I tell Vladimir, the mixer at the swim-up bar,
the Four Seasons in Duesseldorf.

Vladimir looks as though he listens closely, I’ll give him that,
those silver wings tucked tight behind him,
angelic concern spread behind his Cossack moustache,
right finger checking and rechecking
the geography of his saber scar for luck.

There’s one conversation we’ve never had,
and Vlad leans into me, refills my Stoli on the house,
adds some ice—Say I loved Ludmila,
say how Ruslan comes to me speaking
one night with a voice made of cellos,
then next night keening like massed bassoons.

Say I even craved those nightly visitations—
that they awoke in me my Spanish dreams,
hummed a Jota Aragonesa, my Memory
of a Summer Night in Madrid,
though I’ve never been.

Oh, Vlad, you should have heard my dreams.
Like an eight-armed goddess retelling
the lives of czars while peeling oranges
and humming Prince Igor as I bowed.

By Jeffrey Levine from "Mortal, Everlasting" (2000)

2008-05-29T00:37:00.009-05:00

The Knights

Please try to attend the next concert (my first) of The Knights this weekend. Here are the details:

May 31, 2008
8:00 PM The Knights at Washington Irving
On May 31st, the young members of The Knights will come together to perform Beethoven's Symphony No. 6 "Pastoral". As part of the evening's program, they will also be joined by singer songwriter Christina Courtin with a second set of original music. This special event, a lively combination of the revered and the eclectic, embodies The Knights at their best: an exhilarating, soulful revisiting of the Classical pantheon...but also a fierce performance with their indie cohort Christina Courtin.

Where:
WASHINGTON IRVING HIGH SCHOOL
17th Street and Irving Place (one block east of Union Square subway station at 14th Street)
TIME: 8PM
TICKETS: $20 IN ADVANCE OF 5/31; $25 AT THE DOOR
FOR TICKETS, CALL: 917-478-5341

One of the indelible musical experiences of my life was the New York premiere of Stefano Landi's Il Sant'Alessio given by William Christie and Les Arts Florissants. That night I was cut to the quick by the ensemble's committed unity of purpose and esprit. So often this unity is not achieved or even expected in orchestra concerts, where paycheck and job-security provide the glue holding together a particular night's performance. But The Knights offer a different path (my closest professional corollary is with The Orchestra of St. Luke's and The Mostly Mozart Festival Orchestra), it is not and orchestra cobbled (hobbled?) together by blind auditions but one chosen for artistic sensibility. The result, it seems to me, is one of truly shared artistic purpose. The rehearsal process favors interpretive consensus built on persuasive rhetoric, spoken and played. Strikingly brilliant and inspiring comments come from all corners of the ensemble, amplified by deft examples. In the end, what The Knights achieve is really the dream of fusing chamber music ideals with orchestral performance. Other storied ensembles have tread this path, but The Knights seem to have found the way to breath life into their ideals. The musical result speaks for itself, and speaks volumes.

2008-05-28T07:42:00.003-05:00

You're It!!!!

Nicholas Phan tagged me in a meme-inspired game. The details are as follows:

The rules of this game of tag:

1. Pick up the nearest book.
2. Open to page 123.
3. Find the fifth sentence.
4. Post the next three sentences.
5. Tag five people, and acknowledge who tagged you.

With such fun rules, who couldn't not play along?

Nearest book: "Edgar Allan Poe & The Juke-Box—Uncollected Poems, Drafts, and Fragment" by Elizabeth Bishop

From her unpublished and unfinished poem: "Brasil, 1959"

"Meanwhile, you've never seen
a country that's more beautiful.
—or this part of it, anyway—
The delicacy of the green hills
the new bamboos unfurl the edges
are all so soft against the pink watery skies
below, the purple Lent trees.

Shall we change politicians?"

Shall we, indeed?

Thanks, Nick. I'll post my five tags in a bit.

2008-05-27T01:07:00.000-05:00

Florent

I cannot believe that Florent is closing; a restaurant that I've visited at least once during every hour around the clock, the one I've been to more than any other, the first to welcome me as a regular.

I turned 35 there, I turned many corners there, I became me on those stools, sitting in on the banquette surrounded by everyone I loved. Oh, the hours in that room . . . Eating apple pie after buying two Danish-modern lounge chairs at Phoof (long closed, alas) at three in the afternoon with Abbe . . . Steak Frites and Bourgogne at 2:00 a.m. with Matt . . . my first brunch in New York City with Alan & Hassan almost 20 years ago. (I'll never forget that hair-raising taxi ride down Ninth Avenue, I thought we'd die, and some of us did, but not by the hand of a careless cabbie.) . . . or the 11:00 p.m. dinner after a Helicon recording session in SUNY Purchase with Albert and Pedja, the rental car fresh from the West Side Highway, parked nearby, as we gorged on French Fries, wondering at our good fortune . . . Or the Wednesdays and Saturdays between matinée and evening performances, chatting with the staff, chomping something yummy, wishing not to leave.

Oh, the look of the light streaming in those windows. And all of us streaming in and out and in and out, truckers and trannies and scared little boys from Michigan, all being made to feel chic and cared-for and right at home, wishing wishing wishing wishing not to ever leave.

2008-05-12T12:16:00.019-05:00

VOX 2008

Each spring, the New York City Opera presents a showcase of new operas by living American composers called VOX. This season, I played principal oboe.

On the weekend of May 10 & 11, we performed portions of ten new operas. Project Director, Yuval Sharon ran an impressively smooth ship; no easy task considering the weekend's myriad logistic and personnel demands.

Though in past seasons there have been operatic offerings by luminaries (Mark Adamo, Richard Danielpour, David Del Tredici, David Diamond, John Eaton, Lou Harrison, Lee Hoiby, John Musto, Bernard Rands, Greg Sandow, Bright Sheng, Charles Wuorinen, and John Zorn), this year's composers, Sorrel Hays, Cary Ratcliff, Veronika Krausas*, Steve Potter*, John King, Scott Davenport Richards, Alice Shields, Justine Chen, David T. Little, and Robert Manno, were entirely unknown to me, except for Justine Chen, whose Juilliard years overlapped with those of enough of my younger friends that we crossed paths. She even presented Zéphyros with a wind quintet a number of years ago.

The criteria by which the jury chose the Vox 2008 offerings were not spelled out, however, the eight works I played exhibited, almost to a one (the aleatoric opera by John King being the notable exception), a tonal musical vocabulary, a concern for dramatic vocalism, and engaging story-telling devices.

The pervasive tonal idiom brought into sharp relief the composers' response to the power of popular music in our culture. In the case of Richards' jazz opera and Little's heavy-metal inspired score (I was reminded of playing with Metallica in Madison Square Garden . . . ), popular music was the vernacular musical voice of the composers. I was not convinced that the undeniably campy elements of heavy metal (to everyone except, I suppose, the true fan) ultimately well-served Mr. Little's wrenching storyline, but his opera left many in the crowd deeply moved.

The most tenatious popular musical style this weekend was film music. Can there be—or should there be—a post-atonal music free of the the well-established tropes of film scoring? Of course, the language of film music capitalized on the most vivid techniques of late 19th-century and early 20th-century orchestral music, now the influence moves strongly in the other direction. After Helicon's recent presentation of Verklärte Nacht last month, some audience members remarked that the music reminded them of early 20th-century film scores. These comments refer to how much Max Steiner, Franz Waxman, et al., learned from their pre-film forebears and how pervasive the sound of late 19th-century romantic orchestral music had become. Should we be concerned when the compositional techniques codified in a century of film making enter the concert halls? Perhaps not, but the overt sentimentality of some of this music, combined with its easy surface appeal makes me wonder about its lasting power.

The most successful work of the ten was Justine Chen's Jeanne, a griping version of the Joan of Arc story. Chen also wrote the libretto. Her music inhabits a communicative harmonic world that is inventive, powerful, and distinctly personal, with vocal writing distinguished by its sure-handed maturity and lyrical sweep. The overture consisted of an unaccompanied prayer sung by Joan of Arc. Its ethereal beauty and demanding virtuosity built to a climax of supplicating ululations, and was deeply affecting. Chen is an accomplished violinist and her instrumental command was evident in her handling of the orchestral forces. When the work came to it's fiery conclusion, I noticed two women in the first row so evidently moved, so rapt, I went at the intermission to speak with them.

They were new to opera. One had been brought to Bohème and Satyagraha by her boss and Vox was her third operatic exposure. She had brought her sister along who had never attended an opera before. We talked the whole intermission. There is nothing like fresh enthusiasm to wash away pretense. These two audience members engaged with each new work at face value. Did it move them? Did they like the performances? Did the composer succeed in getting the story across? None of my concern for the influence of popular music clouded their experience. If they were touched, the music was had done its job, and they were open to being touched by this music. Ten new operas they saw over two days, and I am sure that they will be equally curious about seeing their first Carmen as with any of Gérard Mortier's most ambitious plans for the New York City Opera's 2009 season. I hope to see them in the front row many more times.

*I did not perform the operas of Ms. Krausas and Mr. Potter, and their works are not considered in this posting.

2008-04-26T19:36:00.007-05:00

Final Notes

Helicon's dress rehearsal of Schoenberg's Verklärte Nacht with Vera Beths, Mark Steinberg, Myron Lutzke, Dov Scheindlin, David Cerutti, & Nina Lee just finished, all shimmering D Major on 24 guts strings. It was one of the finest performances I have ever heard. And as it happens, this will be the last music performed in The Studio, 27 West 67th Street. Albert Fuller would have loved it. Seven months; it's hard to believe he's really gone, but tonight as final notes dissipated into radiant silence I felt him slip into his own bright, clear night.

2008-04-04T18:19:00.001-05:00

Waking, I Always Waked You Awake, by Jean Garrigue

Waking, I always waked you awake
As always I fell from the ledge of your arms
Into the soft sand and silt of sleep
Permitted by you awake, with your arms firm.

Waking, always I waked immediately
To the face you were when I was off sleeping,
Ribboned with sea weed or running with deer
In a valentine country of swans in the door.

Waking, always waked to the tasting of dew
As if my sleep issued tears for its loving
Waking, always waked, swimming from foam
Breathing from mountains clad in a cloud.

As waking, always waked in the health of your eyes,
Curled your leaf hair, uncovered your hands,
Good morning like birds in an innocence
Wild as the Indies we ever first found.

2008-03-27T08:51:00.003-05:00

The Vilcek Foundation Prizes 2008

Last night I attended the splendid annual award dinner for The Vilcek Foundation. Supporting the work of foreign-born artists and scientists who make significant contributions to society, the Vilcek awards stand in stark relief to the bellicose immigration debate that so inflames certain sectors of society, especially during this campaign season.

The 2008 winners were Inder Verma for biomedical science and composer, Osvaldo Golijov for the arts. Ellis Rubinstein, President and CEO of The New York Academy of Sciences and Ara Guzelimian, Provost and Dean of the Juilliard School presented the awards. Dawn Upshaw, a musician closely associated with Golijov's music, gave moving and personal remarks. In his acceptance speech, Osvaldo observed that as an immigrant to America, he was able to come here to follow his own dreams, but that for so many who come here, it is for the dreams of their family and their children's future.

My sister, in fact, is foreign-born. Kelly was born in Korea and joined our family when she was three years old through a Holt adoption. Currently a transplant nurse with the University of Michigan Hospital in Ann Arbor, her work literally saves lives everyday. I am immensely proud of what she does and the vital contribution she makes to her community.

2008-03-25T15:18:00.000-05:00

The Divine Issa

Last night I completed my part of Issa's new recording project. The songs are moving and spending time around Issa always puts me in a remarkable state of mind.

Watch her web site for the release of the new material.

This picture below is of Issa and me after a performance at Carnegie Hall a couple years ago.

2008-03-24T12:25:00.016-05:00

Sight and Sound

Because there are so few notes to play, the English horn part in Verdi's Falstaff offers plenty of time for sitting and listening. The first entrance is 20 minutes into the opera. It lasts for about two minutes and then there is nothing for an hour and a half (depending on tempi, rubato, etc.), which is not a bad thing in such a fascinating piece. Verdi's score overflows with delightful details. Some of these musical devices propel the story or comment on the action, many, on the other hand, are simply there for pleasure, both for the audience and the performers. Even after dozens of performances, I find new delights and relish familiar ones.

On Friday afternoon, my friend Joan Easton and I went through the Asian art galleries that overtook the Fuller Building for Asiaweek 2008. The 17th-century Indian miniatures in Francesca Galloway's gallery are breathtaking (you can see them until March 27, 2008). A small picture of a nilgai by a Mughal artist (c. 1610-12) captivated us. Joan, pointing out the array of intricate details in the background, imagined the pleasure the artist must have took in adding fanciful touches, a bird here, a branch there.

As I sat in the pit of the State Theater yesterday afternoon, with Falstaff going on all around me, I thought about the picture of the nilgai and Joan's comments. The musical pleasures were so delightfully complex as they danced throughout the orchestra, all I could think about was Verdi's pleasure in creating them. He must have thought about various musicians he knew, and those he never could, enjoying the aural spectacle he created.

2008-03-21T15:43:00.001-05:00

Hooked on Bach

I attended the New York Philharmonic's St. Matthew Passion last night with Kurt Masur conducting.

James Taylor was a revelation in the key role of the Evangelist. His performance was a full of clarity, artistic commitment, and virtuosity used for expressive impact.

2008-03-21T08:35:00.001-05:00

Thoughts from my teacher

Albert Fuller said at the first Helicon Symposium in 1985, that "these days we usually hear 18th-century music played on 19th-century instruments with 20th-century Russian technique, which is fine for the music of Stravinsky, but screws up the colors in Bach."

2008-03-20T09:20:00.009-05:00

Thinking about Sound

Last night I played solo English horn for the opening of Verdi's Falstaff at the New York City Opera. The first entrance of the English horn is in Part 2 of Act I and is unusual for a Verdi Cor Anglais melody in that it's not sad. Most often in bel canto opera, when the lower member of the oboe family is hauled out, it's to intone the most heart-wrenching, soul-searching melodies. In this case things are quite different. The opera's four women have just been introduced—Alice Ford, Nannetta, Meg Page, and Mistress Quickly—when Alice and Meg discover that the love letters each received from Sir John read, save the salutations, verbatim. His wooing words and false ardor are painted in the orchestra with a somewhat loping English horn solo, dripping with feigned earnestness as it meanders down to the instrument's lowest range. The characteristic timbre of the English horn rising from the pit suggests serious business. Playing on those expectations, Verdi reveals the author's untrustworthy intentions with a joke of orchestration. The final note of the melody—a D below middle C—is out of the English horn's range, so that note is given to the clarinet. The sudden change of timbre on the very culmination of the melody makes the whole affair risible. As the letter becomes more ardent, the English horn follows suit with even more elaborate material, but the melody is ultimately maladroit and a bit bottom-heavy. (Consider the source.)

Last night before the performance, my friend Steve Hartman, who played principal clarinet, brought two instruments over to where I was warming up. One clarinet was pitched in B-flat and the other in A. He wanted to see which horn gave the best timbral effect in that passage. The experiment was great fun, and the result, I think, really hit the mark. (He used the B-flat clarinet.)

Thinking about sound and finding its invisible shades of meaning is a remarkable way to spend ones life. Verdi's music, full of imaginative propositions, can only come to life in the living breathing musicians lucky enough to be playing any given evening.

2008-03-19T14:51:00.003-05:00

Rainy Day Views from Helicon's New Office

2008-03-17T10:58:00.003-05:00

Ives Songs

I've been gorging on Ives songs. With their amalgamated styles and cultural admixtures, these songs represent the ravenous American search for a voice, equal parts old world & new world, optimism & naiveté, known & undiscovered.

This is how Ives closes the companion essay to his collected songs:

"Some of the songs in this book, particularly among the later ones, cannot be sung,—and if they could perhaps might prefer, if they had a say, to remain as they are,—that is, 'in the leaf,'—and that they will remain in this peaceful state is more than presumable. An excuse (if none of the above are good enough) for their existence, which suggests itself at this point, is that a song has a few rights the same as other ordinary citizens. If it feels like walking along the left hand side of the street—passing the door of physiology or sitting on the curb, why not let it? If it feels like kicking over an ash can, a poet's castle, or the prosodic law, will you stop it? Must it always be a polite triad, a 'breve gaudium,' a ribbon to match the voice? Should it not be free at times from the dominion of the thorax, the diaphragm, the ear and other points of interest? If it wants to beat around in the valley, to throw stones up the pyramids, or to sleep in the park, should it not have some immunity from a Nemesis, a Rameses, or a policeman? Should it not have a chance to sing to itself, if it can sing?—to enjoy itself, without making a bow, if it can't make a bow?—to swim around in any ocean, if it can swim, without having to swallow 'hook and bait' or being sunk by an operatic greyhound? If it happens to feel like trying to fly where humans cannot fly,—to sing what cannot be sung—to walk in a cave, on all fours,—or to tighten up its girth in blind hope and faith, and try to scale mountains that are not—Who shall stop it!

—In short, must a song
always be a song!"

2008-03-09T12:20:00.007-05:00

Yankee Diva

How lovely to receive a comment from Joyce DiDonato last week for the Hugues Cuenod posting. Hughie is all uplift and inspiration. In my experience, it was simply impossible for anything feel impossible when around him, and certainly impossible to feel down.

I first encountered Joyce's singing while playing principal oboe in the Houston Grand Opera in 2004. For the HGO's 50th Anniversary Gala, she sang the finale from Rossini's La Cenerentola. She gave me such frissons that I could barely play my part. It was one of those performances by which others are judged—and usually found wanting.

Her blog—I've been a reader for some time—is great, so I am happy to add it to my links at the right. One of her posts this summer spoke to me so strongly that I have referenced it to friends as we've worked through the complications of Albert Fuller's death. In the face of the monumental losses experienced in the opera world last year, she wrote about the idea of carrying on the work of those who offered us our greatest inspiration.

" . . . it seems impossible to think of going forward without these great people among us, these immense presences in our lives. It almost seems perverse that we should still be able to hear and observe them in song after they've gone, but thank God we can. It makes me all the more grateful they gave so freely and willingly of their art so that we may have an eternal glimpse of their spirit here among us. And yet, it also amplifies for me how little we ever know about any artist that stands before us. How fragile, indeed."

The link in the text above is my addition, naturally. You can read the rest of Joyce's post here.

Carrying on in the face of loss will characterize our paths more and more with each step. As we go, we release our strongest, deepest memories into the world through our work, our music, and our lives, and in so doing experience the truest stuff of life in all its inscrutable wonder.

2008-03-08T12:12:00.000-05:00

On the Wing of Tiny Bits of Sound

"Language is the psychic vessel that the invisible Argonauts we call internal objects use to travel from our mind to the Other, the outer world, in order to explore it and to interact with whatever they encounter in it.

This fact still fills me with wonderment: Images, thoughts, and affects can leave one’s mind and journey on the wing of tiny bits of sound. Even more wondrous, they can be sent into another mind, a mind that can “read” these thoughts, “feel” these affects, and register foreign fantasies and be changed by them without even being conscious of it. We are used to speaking and listening, so we take for granted the amazing fact that language links the minds and the hearts of two separate individuals and allows them to exchange meanings."

by Joseph Simo

From "On healing Eve's Grief" published in Psychoanalytic Review, 87(2), April 2000

2008-03-05T14:24:00.001-05:00

Guest Appearances

I was happy to make a guest appearance on the web site of German organ virtuoso Ansgar Wallenhorst. He found my earlier posting about his New York recital in October and asked if he could add it to his site. His site seems very interesting . . . if my German were only a little better . . . or even existed.

2008-03-02T11:25:00.003-05:00

Advice to young singers

From Hugues Cuenod as published in "With a Nimble Voice—Conversations with François Hudry" Translated by Albert Fuller (1999)

"I would say first of all to take music seriously and not try to advance too quickly. Then I would say not to make a recording before having matured at length in their roles. Above all, I believe it's necessary to acquire an extra-musical culture and to profit by having other activities of a refined nature. I always remember a young man in Copenhagen with whom I was working on Don Quichotte à Dulcinée of Ravel. A little while before the lesson I had gone to visit a museum where there is a beautiful canvas by Daumier depicting Don Quixote. I told this young man to go look at this picture for a half-hour so that he could understand why his interpretation was not satisfactory. He did, and sang much better at the following lesson. That's the kind of advice I like to give. Go to museums, read, don't restrict yourself by working only on music and your exercises. Take half your time for study and use the other half to see the world, to look at painting, to eat well. (I don't dare speak about the rest . . . ) All that is of the utmost importance for having a balanced and interesting life."

And then this for all of us, singers or not. Hudry observes to Hughie that "happiness seems to have been the principal companion of your life."

The singer's responds, "That's because I am content with little and turn to advantage all the tiresome things that happen to me. I remember uniquely the good moments of my life, and I believe that my existence could be summed up by a completely secular trinity: the gift of music, the gift of idleness, and the gift of being kind and agreeable with my friends. Voilà!"

Voilà, indeed.

2008-02-28T21:27:00.002-05:00

Beauty and Bother

"Beauty in music is too often confused with something that lets the ear lie back in an easy chair. Many sounds that we are used to do not bother us, and for that reason we are inclined to call them beautiful. Frequently -- possibly almost invariably -- analytical and impersonal tests will show that when a new or unfamiliar work is accepted as beautiful on its first hearing, its fundamental quality is one that tends to put the mind to sleep."

----Charles Ives

2008-02-25T09:04:00.005-05:00

Perfection & Music

"To excell in music, it is necessary to have an insatiable ambition, love and desire, to spare no pains and labour, and to have the courage to support all the discomforts which meet one in this kind of life . . . a noble obstinacy . . . which inspires us to perfect ourselves more and more."
—Joachim Quantz, Essay, Berlin, 1752

"Perfection in any skill cannot be attained unto without the waste of many yeares, much cost, and excessive labour and industrie."
—Robert Dowland (son of John Dowland), Varietie of Lute-lessons, London, 1610

"Perfection is death. I breath life into every note."
—attributed to Wanda Landowska by Albert Fuller

2008-02-23T10:06:00.006-05:00

For Free!

Free is good, and at the Free Scores web site you can download pdfs of a large range of classical sheet music for free!

I've been using it for Helicon the last few seasons and just added a link to the side bar on the right.

2008-02-20T12:51:00.005-05:00

Experience . . .

"Experience has taught me that powerful hands capable of performing whatever is most rapid and light are not always those which show to best advantage in tender and expressive pieces, and I declare in all good faith that I am more pleased with what moves me than with what astonishes me."

François Couperin, L'Art de Toucher le Clavecin, Paris, 1716

•

"And may at last my weary age
Find out the peaceful hermitage,
The hairy gown and mossy cell,
Where I may sit and rightly spell
Of every star that heaven doth show,
and every herb that sips the dew,
Till old experience do attain
To something like prophetic strain."

Milton, Il Penseroso, 1633

2008-02-18T16:36:00.006-05:00

Zéphyros Winds perform at Merkin Hall
19 February 2008
Tuesday afternoon @ 2 p.m.
129 West 67th Street
(212) 501-3303

Click here for web info.

Building on Merkin Hall's theme for the season, RE:invention, our program of Milhaud, Debussy, Britten, Szervánszky, Ligeti, and Janacek, explores the process of reinvention in six works for winds.

"Reinvention in Early 20th-Century Music for Winds"
by James Roe

The wind quintet had its quiet birth in 1803, with the publication of three works for flute, oboe, clarinet, bassoon, and horn by a now obscure Italian composer living in Paris, Giuseppe Maria Cambini (1746-1825). At that time, chamber music for winds—called "harmoniemusik”—generally was written for an ensemble comprising pairs of oboes, clarinets, horns, and bassoons. The euphonious sound produced by these blended instrumental pairs became ubiquitous in aristocratic European courts from the mid-1700s until the 1830s. Wind ensembles were perfectly suited to entertaining at banquets and out of doors, their sound carried better than strings over the din of dishes and across vast lawns. Harmoniemusik repertoire included transcriptions of operas and symphonic works as well as original music by no lesser lights than Haydn, Beethoven, Schubert, and Mozart. The famous on-stage appearance of a becostumed wind octet in Mozart’s Don Giovanni perfectly underscores the ensemble’s cultural function, performing a transcription of the composer’s own “Non più andrai” from Le nozze di Figaro (along with music of Sarti and Soler) during the Don’s dinner. (Upon recognizing the Figaro aria, Leporello comments, "I know this one all too well!" Mozart’s self-referential jest reveals a post-modern wit, premature only by a few centuries . . . )

Whatever inspired Cambini to disentangle the customary harmoniemusik instrumental pairings in his three quintets is lost to history, but the new genre found fervent converts. Two 19th-century composers made significant contributions to its development: the Czech-born Parisian, Antoine Reicha (1770-1836) wrote over two dozen quintets, and under his influence, German, Franz Danzi (1763-1826) produced a body of nine. Yet, it was not until the 20th Century that the ensemble would gain sustained attention from composers and audiences. With the new century came a cultural hunger for the novel, the colorful, and the populist. The string quartet’s long reign as the preeminent vehicle for chamber music faced challenges from diverse instrumental groupings. Wind instruments, with their advancing technical brilliance and, especially, their distinct timbral variety, led the charge.

This afternoon’s program is drawn from the first half of the 20th Century, a period that comes the closest to being a “Golden Age” for the wind quintet. Our theme is that of musical reinvention. In each work, the composer reinvents historical raw materials, creating new music for winds.

Darius Milhaud (1892-1974)
La Cheminée du Roi René (1942)

Among the major artistic inventions of the 20th Century, cinema enjoys unchallenged pride of place. Our program opens with film music by Darius Milhaud. Cavalcade d’amour (1939) by French filmmaker, Raymond Bernard (1891-1977), explored the theme of love in three periods: the Middle Ages, the Romantic Era, and the 20th Century. La Cheminée du Roi René is drawn from the music for the first section. The music for the other eras was composed by Arthur Honegger (1892-1955) and Roger Désormière (1898-1963), respectively.

The work’s title refers to the 15th-century court of King René of Provence (1409-1480). For his portion of the film score, Milhaud uses winds to evoke music from the time of the Troubadours and their songs of “courtly love.” This work reveals the composer at his most lyric and least mischievous; his characteristically pungent bi-tonality leaving no trace in this score. Each movement creates a specific scene with vividly picturesque music. Historic influences mix with the harmonies of early jazz (a major influence on Milhaud), and the spiky sonorities of French Modernism. This film score fragment reinvents ancient music, producing something that sounds both new and old at the same time.

"Pan & Syrinx"

There are two sides to every story. How often those sides divide down gender lines is matter for social scientists, not musicians, nevertheless we now present two musical treatments of the myth of Pan and Syrinx. In this case, Pan’s point of view (roughly that of the man, albeit half goat) is pleaded by the oboe via Benjamin Britten and that of Syrinx (the ill-fated but lovely female nymph), by Debussy and the flute. Since the story is by Ovid, there are neither winners nor losers, only metamorphosis. In this pair of works, the composers reinvent the mythological storyteller in the form of a solo woodwind player—a Greek vase painting come to life—and in so doing, each dabbles in Ovid’s transformative magic.

Endre Szervánszky (1911-1977)
Fúvósötös (1953)

Wind music did not take a foothold in Hungary until after World War II. Up to that time, the violin reigned in both concert and folk music. A government-imposed cultural shift mid-century favored less formal music making, and in response, Hungarian composers took up wind chamber music in great numbers.

The immensely appealing, Fúvósötös, or “Wind Quintet,” of Endre Szervánszky, was one of the first of its kind, and is an example of artistic achievement blossoming under oppressive edict. Influenced by the work of ethnomusicologist/composers Zoltán Kodály (1882-1967) and Béla Bartók (1881-1945), this piece evokes a rustic musical landscape with melodies and harmonies inspired by Hungarian folk music. Szervánszky’s melodic writing is characterized by an accented short note on the beat, mimicking the stressed initial syllable in spoken Hungarian; a device common in music based on traditional Hungarian sources. Though he quotes no actual folk tunes, Szervánszky uses distinctive melodies, characteristic metric formulations, and driving rhythms to reinvent the music of the countryside on the concert stage.

György Ligeti (1923-2006)
Six Bagatelles (1953)

''I am in a prison, one wall is the avant-garde, the other is the past. I want to escape.'' ---György Ligeti

On June 12, 2006, the music world lost one of its most compelling and innovative voices when Eastern European composer, György Ligeti died in Vienna at the age of 83. With a career that began under Soviet oppression in post World War II Hungary, Ligeti earned a worldwide audience when his music was used for Stanley Kubrick's movie ''2001: A Space Odyssey'' in 1968. As Paul Griffiths wrote in his New York Times obituary, “The moon music was indicative of only one of [Ligeti’s] expressive modes. After fleeing Hungary in 1956, he also showed himself to be a master of a fast, mechanical and comic sort of music. Between these two poles -- the 'Clocks and Clouds' -- he created works of exuberant variety and range.”

Ligeti’s Six Bagatelles for Wind Quintet were written while he still was a young man in Budapest and combine, in his words, “Bartók with a little Stravinsky.” Originally composed in 1951 as part of an eleven-movement work for solo piano called Musica Ricercata, some of the music existed in an even earlier version, a Sonatina for piano four-hands. In 1953, the same year as Szervánszky published his Fúvósötös, Ligeti extracted six movements of the Musica Ricercata to orchestrate for winds. Through this reinvention of earlier work, Ligeti bestowed upon wind players a true masterpiece in miniature. Audiences today will hardly find this music shocking, but the Hungarian government banned its complete premier in 1956, citing musical ‘decadence’ counter to the good of the state. The work would only receive its first complete performance in Stockholm, 13 years after its composition.

Though the title suggests trifles—mere bagatelles—these six movements are diminutive in length only, most clock in at just over 60 seconds, and the longest is just over three minutes. As in the dances of a Baroque suite, each movement expresses a single musical ‘affect,’ and like any good distillation process, the result is intense and memorable. Moods range from playfulness to grief, contentment to craziness. Before one establishes itself, the next appears.

Jeos Janacek (1854-1928)
Mládí (1924)

Reinventing the self, the idea is as attractive as its reality elusive. In his late 60s, Czech composer, Leos Janacek experienced a creative flowering that carried him through the composition of several important operas and, between them, his most significant masterpieces of instrumental music. Among these late works is a sextet for a sui generis ensemble of flute, oboe, clarinet, bass clarinet, bassoon, and horn. Titled Mládí or “Youth,” this work was published after the composer’s 70th birthday. In fact, his most distinctive and forward-looking music was written during his last decade. As would be expected from its title, Mládí is infused with youthful effervescence and even naïveté. Musicologist Zdenek Skoumal writes, “Janacek recalled the days at the old Brno monastery where he received his early education. There he had been one of the ‘blueboys,’ boys dressed in the monastery’s blue uniforms. The recollections infuse Mládí’s musical content, from the childlike exuberance of the first movement, the monastic solemnity of the second, to the ‘March of the blueboys’ of the third, and the heroic optimism of the finale.”

Janacek kept himself abreast of the musical advances made by the younger avant-garde composers prominent in the 1920s. Though he was older than the last generation of Romantic composers, including Mahler, Wolf, and Strauss, his musical language sounds more modernist than that of his younger coevals. One distinct aspect of Janacek’s style developed from his “speech-melody” theory. Beginning in 1897, he engaged in field research to convert the irregular patterns of common speech into musical notation. The results of this work were immediately evident in his operas, where he sought a “realistic” setting of the text, leaving the orchestra with the work of creating the emotional sound world the singer occupied. This research also influenced his purely instrumental compositions. Mládí famously opens with a melodic realization of the phrase “Mládí, zlaté mládí!” (“Youth, golden youth!”) played by the oboe. Other elements of Janacek’s mature compositional style evident in this work include an expanded tonal palette that functions within 19th-century harmony, development through variation, repetition and accretion, Moravian folk-elements, and surprising rhythmic admixtures. His melodies tend toward the short and easily singable, often encompassing both a small range and duration. (In this aspect, he notably eschews the influence of Mahler and Strauss.) Rhythmic patterns receive idiosyncratic treatment, and sections of contrasting tempo abut without transition or warning.

At times, Janacek’s musical notation evinces conceptual effort, as if he struggled to notate on the page the music he heard in his imagination. Thus, the composer’s initial creative act of invention is left in the hands of musicians to reinvent through the act of live performance.

2008-02-17T13:45:00.006-05:00

27 West 67th Street

For decades, 27 West 67th Street, the first door on your right, was a haven for classical musicians. An invitation to Albert Fuller's apartment was a special thing, it meant that you had arrived or at least were about to. I remember my first visit, while still in my first year at Juilliard. It changed me life. Now almost 20 years later, I find myself in the process of selling that apartment, as co-executor of Albert's estate. This space was home to Helicon for 21 years, the site for so many chamber music rehearsals and performances, vocal auditions, Juilliard coachings, movie shoots, weddings, dinners, and parties. (Oh, the parties!) And of course, it was Albert Fuller's home, and as such embodied, and in many ways continues to embody, the enthusiasm, energy, and promise he brought to generations of musicians and music lovers.

Last week a showing of the apartment coincided with a Helicon rehearsal for our Biber symposium. A bit of serendipity as it turns out. I was worried it might be a disruption, but our real estate brokers, the divine Sharon Baum and her brother David Enloe of the Corcoran Group, found it both charming and meaningful. The experience blossomed into an article in today's Real Estate section of the New York Times. (Click here for the article.) Thank you to Josh Barbanel for being pitch-perfect. (I imagine the article's opening sequence, which, in one sentence, goes from dirty laundry to hot milled cider to Heinrich von Biber has to be a journalistic first.)

2008-02-13T22:27:00.035-05:00

Images from The 85th Symposium of
The Helicon Foundation
James Roe, Artistic Director
William A. Simon, President
Albert Fuller, Founder

The Mysterious World of Heinrich Biber
10 February 2008

Colin Jacobsen, violin
Robert Wolinsky, harpsichord & organ
Daniel Swenberg, lute & theorbo
Myron Lutzke, cello

Photographs by Joe Hsu

2008-02-10T22:52:00.006-05:00

HELICON SYMPOSIUM LXXXV
5 p.m., Sunday, 10 February 2008

"Listening to Biber, Some Thoughts"

Career

Heinrich Ignaz Franz von Biber (1644-1704) was born in the small Bohemian town of Wartenberg, now Stráx pod Ralskem in the Czech Republic. Little is known of his early training as a musician, though Johann Heinrich Schmelzer (c1620-1680), Kapellmeister of the Imperial Viennese Court knew and encouraged Biber’s career, and may even have been his teacher. Biber held posts in Graz and then Kromeriz, before establishing himself in Salzburg in 1670, a move he made without notifying his former employer he was leaving! He flourished in Salzburg, entering the service of Archbishop Maximilian Gandolph von Khuenberg. In 1679, he was given the modest appointment Vice-Kapellmeister, advancing to Kapellmeister and dean of the choir school in 1684. Leopold I granted him ennoblement in 1690 with the title, ‘Biber von Bibern.’ Subsequently, Biber was promoted to the station of 'Lord High Steward' marking the culmination of his social career. By this point, his salary had risen to 60 gulden a month, with free board and lodging including such items as wine, bread and firewood. Jacob Stainer, the most celebrated instrument maker of the day referred to Biber as “the formidable virtuoso,” and indeed his reputation and compositions reveal a man of prodigious talent and quixotic temperament.

Style

Biber’s music can be heard as the culmination of the 17th-century Italian style birthed around 1600 with the invention of opera. In the first decades of the 17th Century, this new Italian music swept over The Alps, quickly dominating the courts of Austria, Germany, and France (the latter, only until the reign of Louis XIV). The major part of Biber’s career was spent in Salzburg, and indeed, it was in this city that Italian operatic music gained its first important foreign outpost. Archbishop Marcus Sitticus von Hohenums, who reigned from 1612-1619, fostered close ties to Italy and in 1614 built a stage in his residence appropriate for Italian opera. On 10 February 1614 (394 years ago today), the first performance of an opera outside of Italy took place on that stage in Salzburg.

To appreciate the music of Biber, it is important to know some things about 17th-century Italian opera. Music before 1600 was characterized by complex polyphony, or the simultaneous sounding of multiple melodic lines. The euphonious pleasures and splendors of 16th-century Italian polyphonic vocal music outweighed clear communication of the text being sung. The music of Palestrina (c1525-1594) represents the highest achievement in music of this style. The invention of Italian opera offered the antidote to the excesses of this complex music. In the new musical style, the vocal line followed inflections of speech and the accompaniment did not obstruct a direct presentation of the text. Instead of polyphony, or multiple melodic lines, 17th-century Italian opera was based on monody.

As Italian opera spread north of the peninsula, it influenced all musical genres, including instrumental music. By the time of Biber, this style had developed a great sophistication of affect, expression, and melodic inventiveness, while retaining its economy of means, and directness of expressive intent.

Each of Biber’s sonatas is a single movement work with contrasting sections. These sections are quite recognizable and while the music is instantly appealing, it may help to know some of the signposts along the road. These works often begin with a freely rhapsodic prelude (Praeludium) where the violin plays seemingly improvised flourishes over long held notes in the continuo. These sections invite the listener to enter the sound world of the work; they seduce and in so doing, prepare the way for what is to come. These preludes are purely instrumental music, but Biber also writes Adagios in the vocal style of small opera arias. Here the accompaniment has a more active and regular metric feel over which the violin sings its songs (albeit without words). The most striking sections of Biber’s sonatas are the long sets of variations (Variatio or Aria e Variatio). These sections are the meat of his works and begin with either a simple song-like melody or simple chord progression. The violin then embarks on a series of fanciful reinterpretations of those simple building blocks. With all the inventive and virtuosic tricks of his trade, Biber moves through these variations, creating a music of accretion, upping the ante with each repetition. These sections can produce a trance-like or meditative experience in the listener. Your own imagination is in good hands with Biber and
these musicians. Enjoy!

Tonight's Violin Music

The eight sonatas published in 1681 represent Biber’s most sophisticated marrying of composition and virtuoso violin technique. Fiendishly difficult, these melody-driven works are marked by unpredictability, inventiveness, and a spontaneity that suggests improvisations. The violinist Andrew Manze suggests that, “but for the fact that it exists on the printed page, [Biber’s music] might have been improvised straight into a baroque tape-recorder.” Biber revels in the surprises he throws at the audience, so be ready.

Biber’s most famous work is a cycle of fifteen violin sonatas based on the Mysteries of the Rosary with a concluding Passacaglia for Violin Solo. “The Mystery Sonatas,” as they are titled, were published in the 1670s. They are remarkable for their use of scordatura, or the retuning of the violin’s strings to allow special harmonic and acoustic effects. Tonight we will hear the first of the “Mystery Sonatas” (and the only one to employ standard violin tuning), to open our second half.

The Sonata Representativa was written for Carnival while Biber was living in Kromeriz. The Prince-Bishop of Olmouc-Kromeriz was a fan of programmatic effects in music, so the piece may have been written for him. The animal noises Biber sets are obvious enough, but they are not exactly his invention. He was quoting from an internationally influential musicological work, “Musurgia Universalis,” written by Jesuit scholar Athanasius Kircher, who codified melodies in imitation of nature. (A chart of these musical/bestial quotations is included with your program.) This work would certainly be an “inside joke” for the highly literate audience. As Robert Frost taught us “all the fun is how you say a thing," and when Biber says something, it turns out to be very fun, indeed.

A quick note on Schmelzer

Johann Heinrich Schmelzer (c1620-1680) began his career as a violinist in the Viennese Imperial court band, a world dominated by Italians, playing Italian music. This young Austrian musician went on to overturn the foreign domination by becoming a master of their style. His Sonatae unarum fidium of 1664 were the first solo sonatas to be published by a non-Italian. Schmelzer also became the first non-Italian Kapellmeister at the Viennese court and was widely considered to be ‘one of the most famous, distinguished violinists in the whole of Europe’ (J. J. Müller, Reise-Diarium, 1660). Though it has been suggested that he was Biber’s teacher, this attractive idea cannot be proven. We do know, however, that he used his influence to aid the younger musician, and certainly, he was an important role model to any aspiring Austrian musician.

The sonata of Schmelzer that ends our program tonight opens with an extended set of variations—a passacaglia—built on a peaceful descending four-note melody. Over this bass line, Schmelzer presents a simple melodic line in the violin that builds in complexity as the piece unfolds. He weaves two contrasting Baroque dances into the repeating bass line, a graceful sarabande and a lively gigue. At the end of the passacaglia, Schmelzer offers a small aria before ending in flourishes of virtuosic display.