An Earth-Day Journal

Another Earth Day rolls around though it was yesterday, in a warm sunny lull between a rainy Monday and a stormy Tuesday afternoon, I managed to plant some seeds and pot up some pachysandra and euonymous that I’d been rooting over the winter. The few strands I’d trimmed off the euonymous last fall, a low bushy, vine-like version of the plant, is now all I have left after the deer, ignoring the fact it was touted as being “deer-proof,” nibbled it to the ground where it has yet to resprout. The forsythia are fading, the leaves now adding a tinge of lemony green to the once solid golden mounds in my back yard. The neighbor’s magnolia tree whose scent made it almost pleasant to walk to the mailbox to pick up my junk-mail, has passed its prime, shedding its thick milky-white petals onto brown-turning heaps on the grass.

With the milder weather, it’s good to see plants I had been afraid had died over the winter were actually showing signs of life. The clematis out front is already full of leaves and dozens of buds (usually it has 10-15 flowers on it; last spring it had 104) but the three varieties of wild milkweed I’d planted to be a refuge for monarch butterflies had so far not materialized. The oak-leaf hydrangea I planted last fall has managed to survive, pinkish-red nubbins that will gradually unfurl into these huge leaves.

In the back, the white bleeding heart was one of the first to emerge (I quickly put a peach-basket over it so it wouldn’t becomes someone’s lunch) and now the astilbe which looked like it had died last fall is sending up spindly red shoots. The peonies are back, mostly in places where they won’t do well any more. When they were planted 50 years ago, it was sunny but now the dogwood overshadows everything and they will get little sunlight once its leaves come out, including the one surviving deep red one, part of the original stock my mother had brought from her mother’s first house where it was planted in 1919 (it didn’t bloom last year, but I’m afraid to move it to a better spot for fear of killing it outright).

The “beauty berry” bush, with its iridescent purple berries that the birds love, so far shows no signs of rejuvenation. The two different kind of hosta and the “lamb’s ear” I’d planted near it, however, seem to be on the verge of life. It depends how tempting they look in Nature’s Cafeteria in this land where the deer and the jackalope play...

It’s been an on-going challenge once the deer nibbled down the epimeium after it started sprouting. Planting seeds in starter-pots seems pointless to me but at least if they germinate, they have a better chance of making it to seedlings than if I planted them directly into the ground. Last year’s lush carpet of pre-pubescent alyssum and impatiens were mowed down by rabbits in less time than time-lapse photography could’ve recorded their sprouting. Then I bought plugs of already grown plants to plant there instead: they lasted a day.

I joked about using lady-bugs to control aphids and praying mantises to control grasshoppers, but I’m not sure what I would use to control the squirrels, rabbits and deer. Perhaps a puma but then what would I use to control the puma population? Fire-arms do not strike me as a terribly green solution, regardless of the legality of firing them in my own back-yard.

The other night, sitting in the darkened living room with the drapes closed after watching the 11pm news (with some report of another escaped criminal a county away), I heard the scrape of a porch chair pushed back against the picture window and wondered if I really wanted to open the drape to see what was there. I’ll assume it was rabbits frolicking on the porch who bumped against it or maybe a deer coming up to see if the drive-through window was open ("Got any house-plants in there?").

This morning I looked out to see pile of – let’s assume – rabbit-barf on the porch with the remains of what can only have been an iris once growing twenty feet away. Fortunately, there were many shoots to choose from, so this was less devastating than it might have been had it been the lone white bleeding heart recently freed from its peach-basket protection. I’m wondering if I should clean up the barf or move it over closer to the iris bed to remind them, “see, this is what this plant makes you do.” But like little children they’ll probably have to check it out one more time, at least, to see if it does it again.

All of the trees in my yard were planted within the first year my parents had built this house. In fact, the biggest silver maples in the very back had been saplings on the field when we bought it and, unfortunately, my mother decided we should try to keep them – free trees, you know. Unfortunately, there are now three other clumps of silver maples across the yard and we have dealt with this nemesis of “whirrly-gig” propeller seeds in the spring and the copious quantities of leaves in the fall clogging up rain-gutters. I’m wondering how much it would cost to take them out – they’re all huge – especially now that dead branches are constantly falling into the yard: one three-foot branch was impaled in the grass, sticking almost straight up most of the winter (this photo, right, was taken in February, looking toward the parent clump that in 1959 had been a small sapling).

But then the yard would seem so much less without trees there. I had joked when I was a kid and had to mow the grass (about 3/4s of an acre was huge to a teen-ager even on a riding mower) that if I ever lived here in the future, I would plant nothing BUT trees until it killed all the grass. So it seems odd now to be thinking about removing trees...

Considering the Japanese Maple is turning 50 (we were told it might live 25-30 years) and the two dogwoods have also lived well past their standard shelf-life, I wonder what to plant in readiness? At my age, with all due apologies to Joyce Kilmer, I would probably never see full-grown trees there again.

Then there are the forsythia which originally came from a bush we’d been given by my father’s mother. Most nursery-bred forsythia seem to be sterile and don’t spread, making nice little accent shrubs along the house or round bushes in the middle of the yard. This one, probably a forest-born weed that had been growing too close to their back door, soon took over our back yard. That first summer, we planted it in what was then the bare eastern corner at the back of the house. Somehow it started growing in the northeast corner of the yard. Trimming it one fall, Mother kept a bunch of branches cut into three foot lengths, for some reason, stacked in the garage for several years before she thought they would make great stakes in the vegetable garden she was going to put in in the northwest corner of the yard, growing peppers and tomatoes and, alas, zucchini.

I think this lasted three or four summers before the amount of work it took to raise them far outweighed the frustration of either eating all the zucchini or trying to give them away. She would forget to harvest them for a few days only to find they had developed into potentially lethal weapons. Since the rabbits didn’t seem to eat these plants, I figured we could use the zucchini to club them to death. If you just turned them into compost, no doubt the seeds would sprout and soon we wouldn’t be able to see the house for zucchini vines. Anyway, even before the garden expired, the stakes from the forsythia – the ones that had been kept in the garage for several years – had sprouted and spread like the undead. And now there are two vast clumps on the western side of the yard that clearly have an agenda of their own. Beautiful for the month of April, they create a vast wooded network for squirrels and rabbits, protection for the birds from overhead hawks and ample space for a complexful of catbirds to nest in.

In the mid-80s, N and I came out to chop down the original forsythia which had by then, a storey tall, taken over the corner of the house. N’s dad brought out his saws and clippers and, of course, the “chipper” for turning tree branches into sawdust. This project took the three of us most of the day and I was exhausted before we were even half-way through, though N’s dad, then in his mid-70s, was still going strong as the sun began to set. As I look around the yard 25 years later, I figure that original pre-sawdust forsythia was maybe 1/12th of what there is out there now... and it’s still growing and spreading from the original stump which no chemical seemed capable of killing.

Meanwhile, one of this spring’s project is staring me in the face: reseeding the vast patch of brown where the geothermal system was installed last August. I have not yet calculated the increase in my electrical usage to heat the house this winter compared to the previous winter’s expenses with the old oil furnace, but I was glad to be able to declare “30% of the installation cost” on my federal taxes last week – or rather, the “up to $2,000" part of it which was really less than half of that 30%. But still, comparing that to the 0% amount allowed by Pennsylvania, I’m not complaining.

Amidst the calls of birds – does it mean something different when a call of a falling perfect fourth repeated four times is answered by an inversion of those same pitches but repeated five times? – I hear the cry of the lawn-mower as I sit on my bench under the Japanese Maple and work my way slowly past the half-way point of David Copperfield (only because of time dedicatable to reading, not for any lack of enjoyment). Floyd the Pink Flamingo (an original 1955 Florida souvenir, not any cheap modern plastic imitation) is now back in place after migrating to the living room for the winter.

Once again the Earth has gone full-circle, constantly renewing itself as it has done for centuries and eons, by whatever means man has devised for the telling of time. I drive through my community which I remember was mostly farm-land fifty years ago and is now chock full of houses – though I can still see the pond not far away where we used to swim when we were kids, now home to mallards and geese and the occasional passing white egret. I look at the topographical map my grandfather gave me that was printed in 1899 and though many of the basic roads are already there, the place seems unrecognizable otherwise.

This area had been settled in the 1750s, woods and fields before it became farmland. And now some 300 acres of nearby woods, fields and farmland are being turned into townhouses and McMansions, just one of the most recent development projects in the vicinity. The impact on the region’s traffic and infrastructure is one thing but I wonder about the deer, for instance, whom I’d never seen in my back yard before: why are they stopping by now? Probably because their fields have been foreclosed and they have to move on? Maybe I should not worry so much about them eating a few of my plants...

- Dr. Dick

Another Blog!

Well, I've started another blog this morning - in addition to the one for Market Square Concerts, there is now one for the Harrisburg Symphony where I've posted about the up-coming concert next weekend with Puccini's Tosca, including the conversation Stuart Malina and I had earlier this week about the opera, and also about the YouTube Symphony with Harrisburg Symphony bassist Devin Howell was one of 96 players chosen from around the world, performing this past Wednesday at Carnegie Hall (you can even see a video of the first half of the concert - I'm waiting for them to post the second half, so check back later).

Meanwhile, it was announced yesterday that composer Lisa Bielawa has won this year's Rome Prize and will be spending her time in the Eternal City writing a new work for Market Square Conccerts which will be premiered on the February Concert of the 2009-2010 season! You can read more about that, here.

Meanwhile, it's a gorgeous sunny WARM spring day and I'm going out on my back porch to spend the afternoon reading... and shooing away the rabbits and the deer who are eating my plants... ah, nature...

- Dr. Dick

Rites of Spring

Once past the groundhog, then past the Vernal Equinox and finally by the time I begin to feel like it’s actually Spring, once the forsythia are in bloom and I can tell whether some of the plants in my garden will make it back for another year, I think of all the “Spring Music” that easily comes to mind and that, for 18 years, I had programmed abundantly through the hope of March and the showers of April – from symphonies by Schumann or Britten to songs by Schubert or (without words) by Mendelssohn – and one work stands out for me: Igor Stravinsky’s ballet, Le sacre du printemps or, as we know it in English, The Rite of Spring.
From the original Russian, the title (not pictured above, btw) translates more accurately as “Sacred Spring” but somehow the idea of ritual became part of the title and it has become part of my spring ritual, as well.

My first encounter with this music, one of the most significant works for the 20th Century, was in a cartoon. Walt Disney’s Fantasia, to be exact. I don’t remember when I first saw it – probably when I was in 2nd Grade, about 7 or 8 years old. Classical Music was not new to me: I had heard Bach’s Toccata & Fugue in D Minor or Beethoven’s Pastoral Symphony before, somehow, but I had never SEEN them before. I remember my mother thinking the Night on Bald Mountain was simply too scary for a child my age but the thing I remember most about the movie was the dinosaurs.

A couple of years later, after my folks gave me a collection of 12 LPs called “Music of the World’s Greatest Composers” which included The Rite of Spring, I could only listen to it thinking of dinosaurs. Otherwise, the music didn’t make sense, not like Beethoven’s Eroica or even Wagner’s Prelude & Liebestod from Tristan und Isolde which were also included in this collection. Eventually I realized what Disney did to the music – going back to the opening at the very end and all that – had nothing to do with Stravinsky’s original story, that of a young girl (what did a 9-year-old know of virgins?) who dances herself to death as a sacrifice to the God of Spring. Funny, but the violence of the fighting dinosaurs was okay, but the human drama would have been too much, no doubt. Given the beauty of Disney’s animation even then, I wonder what an actual setting of the Sacrificial Dance would have looked like?

As often as I heard the music, through recordings or concert performances, I actually never SAW the ballet danced till I was 27. I was teaching in Connecticut and a bunch of friends and I decided we just had to go to the Metropolitan Opera in June of 1976 to see the production by the American Ballet Theater. It was choreographed by Glen Tetley and though it was fairly abstract, it still essentially followed the essence of Stravinsky’s plot. The opening of Part Two, the night scene, was a long (and brightly lit) pas de deux with Martine van Hamel and Clark Tippet that was far more beautiful than anything I had ever imagined with this eerie music. The other thing that was rather surprising: the Chosen One, the virgin who dances herself to death, was a man.

I have no idea how you prove he’s a virgin. We were sitting in a balcony box near the front of the stage, looking down on the dancers. After the Chosen One was writhing on the ground and then ran across the stage to throw himself down a few seconds later over there, you could see the complete outline of his body marked in sweat on the floor.

As the wild rhythms of the Sacrificial Dance grew to a goose-bump inducing, eye-widening frenzy, the other dancers pounced on the Chosen One as if they were going to tear him limb from limb. Four men hoist his now limp body above the crowd - there is that amazing silence - and then, on the last crashing chord, he flew up above the stage, what seemed to be higher than our 2nd balcony seats, his arms spread wide like a crucifix, frozen into a pin-spot followed a second later by a black-out.

I was so startled by this, I almost fell over the balcony railing into the pit below. To be very honest, nothing has ever given me that same visceral response in a live performance. Even the best concert performances pale – ho hum – by comparison.

Two more times that summer, I drove down from Storrs to New York to see that production. The information I can find on-line mentions Baryshnikov danced the opening night, but in all three performances, I never saw him dance the role (he had only defected to the west two years earlier and was quite the rage, then). The name I remember is Charles Ward.

After moving into New York, I saw two more productions of the ballet. One, for some reason, I can’t recall. The other was by a touring company from Germany with a famous dancer/ choreographer whose name I cannot remember, either, but this production was clearly from his Alley Oop period, as a dancer friend of mine described it. Instead of an abstract setting with leotards or body stockings, this was more realistic, taking Stravinsky’s original scenario very much to heart. To a point.

In this case, the Chosen One is danced to death by the High Priest (the famous dancer/ choreographer) who is dressed in a shaggy bear-skin over-the-shoulder affair that would have annoyed the politically correct Geico cave-men no end. At the very end, standing on a rock (was it in front of a cave?) high above the wildly gyrating crowd, the High Priest throws the girl up in the air, she lands straddling his shoulders, spinning around as he turns his back to us (this, during that momentary silence) so that, on the final chord, she suddenly falls backwards, as if hanging with her feet around his neck, arms splayed and the whites of her eyes visible from the second tier of seats!

The only thing I remember about the third one – a literal telling of the story but not so realistically staged or costumed – ends with four long-bearded sages each carrying a long staff who close in on the Chosen One during her final dance, getting imperceptibly nearer to her as she becomes increasingly more terrified. By the end, they have her confined in a narrow space between them, almost hiding her from the audience. At the end, the four sages raise these staffs on the flutes’ up-beat, poised over the dancer in that frozen silence, then on the final chord bring them crashing down as the lights black out, a brutal sacrifice in the old sense of the word.

The sheer physical athleticism required by the music may well make up for any shortcomings in the choreography in general. Bejart’s famous 1970 production (which I did not see) seems to start among germinating rodents before turning into the Sex Olympics. Pina Bausch’s version (I found only the final scene on-line) appears to take place at a singles bar where the dancers in the background seem totally uninvolved as the Chosen One who seems more like the Rejected One convulses before finally keeling over (if Janet Jackson’s wardrobe malfunction disturbed you, you may want to skip this one).

But Nijinsky’s original choreography (more the cause of the riot at its 1913 premiere rather than Stravinsky’s music) has been reconstructed by the Joffrey Ballet. I recently found it complete at YouTube (of course), dividing (badly) the two parts of the ballet into three segments. But it will give you an idea of the power of the ballet. Keep in mind how this must have looked in Paris in 1913 – when people had never seen anything like Martha Graham or Modern Dance or gratuitously overdone psychological symbolism and people must have been wondering what happened to the tutus and all those graceful pliés and leg extensions. Ignore the fact many of the costumes make them look like Dilbert’s Elbonians.

Spring in Russia arrives with a violence unknown in other climates as the frozen soil suddenly erupts with a great upheaval and cracking of the ice. This, I think, is actually described near the end of Part One – in the middle of the second screen, below – after the Ancient Sage kisses the earth and the music erupts into a frenzy of upward motions.

What surprises me most about this choreography is how well it suits the music, more than just physical actions set to very physical music. There is a great deal of stamping as if the dancers feet become another percussive extension of the orchestra, as well as hand-clapping and even thigh-slapping: the dancers are not only seen but heard. In the final dance, the Chosen One may be limited to a series of repetitive gestures in a very small physical space stage center – and it is not easy to stand still so long in that tense position before her dance even begins – that emphasizes her supplication to the gods, her life in return for a good crop, but also her personal fear of death in such a bargain.

Screen 1 (Beginning of Part 1)
- - - - - - -
- - - - - - -
Screen 2 (End of Part 1 - Beginning of Part 2)
- - - - - - -
- - - - - - -
Screen 3 (End of Part 2)
- - - - - - -
- - - - - - -
Stravinsky’s music has been subjected to a wide range of interpretations – realistic, psychological, violently symbolic – and some of it perhaps a great deal of silliness beside. Though at first I thought this next one was one of the sillier ones (for all its athletic virtuosity) it is one of the more fascinating I’ve seen if only for the question “how do you choreograph horses?!”

Yes. Horses. This is a performance with dancers and horses and very often dancers ON horses, filmed in 2002 in an arena with L’Orchestre de Paris conducted by Pierre Boulez. The dancers are members of Zingaro, the choreographer goes by the name of Bartabas (you can read more about him, here). Of course there is also the practical concern, thinking what dancer wants to be rolling around on a dirt floor when horses, cantering about, answer Nature’s call, but leave those thoughts aside. The horses make their entrance about four minutes into the ballet. The pure white horses during the night scene that opens Part Two are themselves the dancers. Then in the final dance, watch the build-up as the Chosen One is selected.
- - - - - - -

- - - - - - -

After that, there is nothing more to say.

- Dr. Dick

Caught Between Seasons, Between Works

It is that time of year when I look forward to leaving Winter behind and welcome warmer weather, though it may take a while before Spring finally asserts itself enough to make me feel totally comfortable with the change of season. Flowers help.

There was a patch of “aconites,” tiny wild-flowers growing near the edge of the yard that had begun blooming even in late March, delicate green leaves with buttery-gold flowers. So I transplanted some of them to my little garden spot off the back porch where I could see them better, where they were quickly eaten by the deer. But at least it was a sign of spring-to-come, and that was enough to make me feel better about things.

This year, it is also a time when I find myself “between works,” an awkward state I haven’t experienced often over the past couple of decades, after having finished one composition but not yet started on the next one or made the decision just yet what it should be. In addition to blogging about the Guarneri Quartet for Market Square Concerts, I have been trying to get my thoughts organized to get back to some creative work.

The Violin Sonata is not only completed but copied, finally – the old-fashioned way – mailed off and now officially received. Since it started life as a single piece for John Clare and I to play before growing proportionally into a few more, dedicating the whole thing to him out of friendship for having brought it into being seemed natural. I mailed it off on Wednesday in time for him to receive it on his birthday Saturday! Having turned 39 – now entering the Jack Benny Decades, complete with the urge to play Kreutzer’s 2nd Etude and “Love in Bloom” – John now looks ahead to another project ofr his next birthday: a recital of violin and piano pieces written especially for him by composer-friends. Though we’d played the first piece almost 3½ years ago, I was still concerned I might not finish mine in time for his 40th... Whew...

But whereto next? Having finished the Sonata on February 28th, I wanted to focus on copying it before I got distracted by something else – the full score for the songs, “Evidence of Things Not Seen,” has yet to be completed – but in the past few weeks, the itch to write started manifesting itself in stray thoughts while I’m trying to focus on copying. Afraid to say “Go away, I’m busy,” because there was a time (many years’ worth) such thoughts never came, I started dutifully trying to figure out where things would go.

Having heard some of Lee Hoiby’s beautiful songs and thinking of them as models of simplicity and directness as well as extremely well-written piano parts – all aspects my music lacks – I thought it might be time to go back to write some songs with piano. I don’t think I’ve done this since I was in college: any vocal music since 1971 had been with chamber groups or orchestra.

Usually, I dislike reading poetry not for any dislike of the art but because it usually means I want to set them to music and that usually means a whole series of legal hoops to get (and usually pay for) permission to do so. The one time I asked a poet for permission, back in the late-70s – Richard Thomas, the actor and also a very fine poet – he offered to write some new poems specifically for me that I could set before they would be published, thus avoiding that particular hurdle: this coincided with a sea-change of a style change for me, along with other major events undermining my life at the time, and instead of songs with piano, they became songs with guitar (which I’d never written for before) and turned out to be among the worst things I’d ever written in my life. And so they, along with that and other similar projects, were set aside.

But what texts, if I’m looking for something in Public Domain? My musical affinities do not normally attract me toward 19th Century poets – and then, even if I chose earlier poets like Michelangelo or Petrarch, I would have to deal with paying rights to use English translations. When I was at Eastman, I even learned enough about Chinese to be able to translate some of Li Po’s poetry myself rather than rely on published translations, all still under copyright. These became my Seven Songs from the Middle Kingdom for soprano, mezzo-soprano and chamber ensemble which I conducted at Eastman in 1973, my studently answer to George Crumb’s Ancient Voices of Children.

But once I started reading some possible sources – getting out my grandfather’s 1905-ish copy of Shakespeare’s Sonnets, for one – I started thinking “if you want to work on your piano-writing skills, why not just write piano pieces?”

Off and on, I had seriously considered writing a collection of short pieces for solo piano. It would make sense, maybe even something I could play myself, since I have nothing to show when people ask me to “sit down and play something,” the typical “roll over/sit up” response many people have when composers admit to being composers. These would be short, like etudes but setting up creative challenges for the composer, not the player (unless that player is me, in which case, yes, anything is a technical challenge).

So as soon as I started jotting down some ideas, what started coming to mind was – a piano quintet...

Now, there is no reason for me to write something for piano and string quartet. If I write piano pieces or songs, there are ample opportunities for performance, thousands of models no one may think about when hearing them, but when someone hears I’m writing a piano quintet, suddenly there are a small handful of works – like Brahms, Schumann, Dvořák and Shostakovich, much less Schnittke or Adès – to be compared to, to be accused of trying to replace, to fight for space on a program.

While listening to the Harrisburg Symphony rehearse Shostakovich’s 9th Symphony or the Guarneri Quartet play Kodály, I found myself jotting down ideas for a piano quintet. There are 35 different possible combinations for these five instruments that I can use in the course of the structure. How can I make that structure work? I’m not writing down notes, yet – I’m writing down shapes, forms, details, framework. Once any of those make sense, bam! I’m sunk...

So far, the Piano Quintet is winning...

Moses, the Valkyrie, the Passion & Patelson's

Normally, I do not listen to music around the house. I mean, sit down and LISTEN to music. After 18 years of being out-of-place in the radio business, I am no fan of aural wall-paper. When I was a student and still discovering many works that I had as yet never heard before, I had the radio on all the time, whether I was paying attention to it or not. If I could, I would stop and focus on it when something that caught my attention. Eventually, especially when I was composing, it was difficult for me to listen to other people’s music when I was trying to coax my own stuff out of my brain and on to the page.

Saturday, however, I chose to sit down and listen to the Metropolitan Opera broadcast of the 2nd installment of Wagner’s epic Ring of the Nibelung. I missed the 1st episode, Das Rheingold, the other week, but I intend to settle into the remainder of the series – and to follow the live performance with my Dover edition full-scores. So yesterday, I listened to Die Walküre while five of the cats acted out the Ride of the Valkyries across the living room floor (and furniture and walls)... Next week, Siegfried, and the following week, wrapping it up with the end of the world, Götterdämmerung.

One tradition of the last several years was playing Handel’s Israel in Egypt before Passover and Bach’s St. Matthew Passion on Good Friday. There are few radio-friendly works that capture the intensity of these religious holidays and probably none to match their settings, especially Bach’s telling of the events leading up to the Crucifixion, even for those of little faith.

Once, I scheduled Bach’s St. John Passion just for variety and got a complaint about that gospel’s anti-Semitism which therefore implied Bach was anti-Semitic for setting it and we were anti-Semitic for broadcasting it. So for several years, the decision was which recording of Bach’s St. Matthew to play and how many recordings of a work – even one of the Great Works of Western Art – that you’re likely to play only once a year could a radio station library afford when shelf-space was becoming very dear? Some listeners wanted to hear Osvaldo Golijov’s Passion according to St. Mark but couldn’t understand it was illegal to broadcast it without paying a hefty fee, something called “Grand Dramatic Rights,” with an even heftier fine if caught doing so without having obtained the special license.

So this year, no longer limited by these radio restrictions, I listened to two different works entirely, ones I could never play on the radio because more people would have turned it off than choose to listen to modern works that challenged their ears with anything remotely unfamiliar.

On Wednesday night, when my Jewish friends would be sitting down to their Seders, I listened to Arnold Schoenberg’s opera, Moses und Aron. With the full score. (I am such a geek...) (The image at left is one of the composer's sketches from the Scene with the Golden Calf.)

When I was in 11th grade back in 1966, I’d bought my first recording of this work – the old Rosbaud recording on Columbia, I believe the first complete recording (originally a live radio broadcast of the world premiere staging from Zurich in 1954) and at the time probably the only one available. I’d found it in a store in Philadelphia when I was down visiting a friend and chose it, despite never hearing a note of it, over the Flagstad recording of Wagner’s Tristan und Isolde though I knew the conductor of the Harrisburg Symphony, Edwin McArthur, who’d been Flagstad’s accompanist in the ‘30s (one degree of separation). This discovery became a scene in my novel-in-progress, Echoes in and out of Time, so I should perhaps post that segment here rather than go into more detail, now, but suffice it to say my initial reaction was not very positive (“I spent $14.99 for this?”). But eventually, after I came back to it and acclimated myself to it, even that same recording, it eventually become one of my favorite operas.

Stagings of it are rare. I’d gone to New York City to see two different productions of the work staged by New York City Opera (was it 1990?) and later (finally) by the Metropolitan Opera (in 1999). At one point, I stopped in at Patelson’s and debated buying the hard-bound full-score, one of those bright yellow Schott editions, which they had on a 2nd floor shelf. But I decided I could not afford it. In 1998, realizing how important a work it was to my musical up-bringing, I decided I could not afford not to buy it. So I did. For $100.

(It may be a coincidence that in November, 2000, I completed the first piece I’d completed in over 16 years.)

Now I own four different recordings of Moses on CD (though I can only find three at the moment - perhaps the other one I was thinking of is a still-unpacked LP). I listened to one of two I have conducted by Boulez which I’d also bought it in 1998. I also have one from Naxos, but not the DVD recorded live in Vienna. Here is an excerpt from the DVD’s opening scene, courtesy of the ubiquitous You-Tube (the scene is between Moses and the Voice of God from the Burning Bush which does not, contrary to what it might look like, take place in a train station...)
- - - - - - -

- - - - - - -
Even today, I still remember the excitement I experienced the first time I heard Krzystof Penderecki’s St. Luke Passion, listening to its first recording (released barely a year after its world premiere) and newly arrived at the Susquehanna University Music Library. Sitting there 42 years ago, my ears encased in bulky old-fashioned headsets plugged into the back of a bulky old-fashioned record player, I was amazed that any mind could have found a way to create sounds like this and translate them into something that could be played by standard instruments and voices unenhanced by any electronic technology then the rage. It became one of the most ear-opening experiences of my creative life, this discovery.

I heard Penderecki’s St. Luke Passion a year or so before I heard all of Bach’s St. Matthew Passion which was written around 1727 or so. I first heard the Bach live in the early ‘70s when I was a graduate student at Eastman but have never heard the Penderecki live. On the other hand, I had the chance to meet Krzystof Penderecki and hear a brand new work of his, a Partita for harpsichord and orchestra, which received its world premiere at Eastman, something I could never do with Johann Sebastian Bach unless I would have started doing some fairly serious drugs then the rage (a friend of mine tried LSD once and listened to The Rite of Spring, telling me he met Stravinsky. “He's dead,” I said. “Could've fooled me,” he said.)

Here is an excerpt from the St. Luke Passion - the a capella setting of the Stabat Mater in Part II - found, naturally, on You-Tube, the Land Where You Can Find Anything: I wish I could find some of the Crowd Scenes - they are amazing! (For a brief sample, go here and listen to Track 10!)
- - - - - - -

- - - - - - -
Listening Friday night to the recent Grammy-nominated recording on Naxos, it occurred to me I might have the score somewhere in my own library. I remember it – the Schott edition with its bright yellow cover – but once I started going through at least those I’ve unpacked (and finding other bright yellow Schott scores), it must have been that afternoon I stood in Patelson’s reading through it from cover to cover, taking mental note of its notation – how he put those amazing sounds on paper to be recreated by live performers – and wondering if I could afford the cost. I forget what that was but considering at the time I was living in New York City making $95/week playing piano for a few ballet classes and paying $495/month rent – I never said math was my long suit – it was an easy decision to just look through it and put it back on the shelf. I was not the only musician who would treat Patelson’s as a non-lending music library, browsing through scores for reference rather than buying them. But the memory of looking at the score was so powerful, I went through my rather disorganized library to look for it and realized I must never have bought the score, whatever it cost.

So it is sad to realize, in connection with these two works so significant in my life, that the Joseph Patelson Music House, just behind Carnegie Hall and a mecca for musicians around the globe, is going to be closing next week, a victim of on-line shopping but more significantly of the current economy. (Update: you can read the New York Times article here.)
I have often referred to Patelson’s as the Best Little Score-House in New York. Some people would wait at the Carnegie Stage Door to meet great conductors or performers after a concert, others chose to hang out in Patelson’s when they’d be in town because quite likely they would end up there during their stay. In addition to running into friends of mine there who now played in major orchestras around the country, I also ran into (quite literally) Samuel Barber, turning around in one of their cramped aisles to find he was trying to squeeze behind me. And in turning around, I stepped on his foot. I was too embarrassed to bother him for an autograph but I later did get him to sign my vocal score of his Antony & Cleopatra, a score I had bought during one of my first visits to Patelson’s a decade earlier.

Looking through an Elliott Carter score one afternoon, I overheard one of the guys answering the telephone, telling the caller “yes, we have one of the largest collections of contemporary music in... yes... ah... yes, actually, we do have some songs by Barry Manilow...” Twitters (in the old-sense) all around.

Another time, someone was trying to track down a copy of the Kodály “Buttocks Pressing Song.” Assuming it was one of those odder folk-dances, he spent several minutes trying to locate it on the shelves, in the back-stock, even in any catalogue. Admitting defeat to the caller, he found out what she really wanted was an old English dance-hall song, “Could I but Express in Song.” (I’m not making this up. It may be the music store equivalent of having Prince Albert in a can.)

After moving back to Harrisburg from there in 1980, no trip to New York City was complete without at least one stop at Patelson’s. The last time, a little over a year ago, was a disappointment. It was not less cramped but seemed to have less to offer. I had a long list of scores and books I wanted to look for. They had none of them in stock. A month or so later, I ordered nine works by Elliott Carter through their on-line division and they had seven of them in stock which made me feel infinitely better.

When I heard they were closing their doors soon, I called the 800-number to see if they had any of a short list of works I hoped they might still have in stock, including Penderecki’s “St. Luke Passion.” They did not.

Patelson’s opened their doors in 1939. I had been going there frequently since the mid-1960s, probably on a weekly basis during the two years I lived in Manhattan. I had so many of their distinctive gray envelopes, I started keeping my old manuscripts and sketches in them, filing them away on my shelves. Most of my piano music, practically all of my scores (at least the new ones) and many of my “technical” books came from Patelson’s, my study (and formerly my childhood bedroom) too small to contain them all, now.

Saturday, April 18th, 2009, will be the last day the store will be open. I almost feel I should go to NYC just to say good-bye.

- Dr. Dick

- - - - - - -
Update: Several people told me "April 18th" would be the closing date but the New York Times article says the owner, Marsha Patelson, daughter-in-law of the founder, has no specific closing-date in mind beyond shutting the store by the end of April.

Memories & Celebrations

This weekend’s program was called “Memories and Celebrations,” though I rarely don’t think much about marketing ploys and the music they’re meant to promote. For me this month, the Harrisburg Symphony’s ‘slogan’ was not in the music but in the experience. Not just the experience a listener in the audience would have, though. I sat in on all the rehearsals for this concert, arriving near the end of the Thursday afternoon one to hear them reading through the Serenade for Winds that Richard Strauss wrote when he was 17 and then staying through the end of the Dress Rehearsal Saturday afternoon.

The first symphony concert I ever attended was during the orchestra’s 33rd Season – considering their up-coming season will be their 80th, this was, yes, a long time ago. I was 13. This was on March 19th, 1963, 46 years ago almost to the week! Not only has my age gone up considerably since then, individual tickets that cost $44 today cost $3.40 for the same seat then. You could buy a whole subscription for those same seats – seven concerts (five by the orchestra with two concerts by guest orchestras, usually the Pittsburgh Symphony and the Cleveland Orchestra) – for $20.00.

True, gas cost $0.31 a gallon then but in 1962-dollars, that would probably be the equivalent of $4.48 in today’s income (assuming you have one). I don’t remember my folks complaining about “how expensive” gas was in those days: by comparison, it looked unacceptably high when it reached $4/gal this past year but given what the dollar would be worth today, it was actually more expensive then.

That first symphony concert I attended featured the cellist Raya Garbousova, a name probably unfamiliar to most listeners today but arguably one of the great cellists of that generation, just not as well known as Casals and Piatigorsky (Samuel Barber wrote his Cello Concerto for her – you can read more about her, here). She played the Dvorak Cello Concerto, not surprisingly, the one major cello concerto that gets heard (and requested) the most – well, it is the major cello concerto, after all.

Somewhere along the way, I had developed an interest in playing the cello, the main reason my parents took me to this particular concert. My father had met a woman who played viola in the orchestra (Dora Kanarr actually played in it since Day One at that very first reading session in 1930 even before it became an orchestra: she retired in 1984). She urged him to take me to a concert, since I was taking piano lessons and had begun to exhibit an interest in composing at the time. If I hadn’t been affected by music as a career possibility before, now I was hooked.

That following year, then, I started taking cello lessons when I was in junior high school. I remember asking my teacher if she could play the Dvorak Cello Concerto and she laughed, adding if she could, she wouldn’t be teaching strings in a junior high school. Bugging my folks for a cello the way most kids would badger them for a puppy, my dad found an old cello at a mid-town pawn shop which, as I recall, cost $80 (clearly, it was not a Strad). Though I never really exhibited any talent for the instrument and chose to focus more on composition and piano (in that order), I still have the cello though the last time I played it was probably 1972. Curiously, I find I am more comfortable today composing for the cello than any other instrument, including the piano.

Ironically, my first teaching gig was at UConn not far from where Garbousova was teaching at the Hartt School of Music in Hartford. She had started there only in 1970, four years before I moved to Connecticut but I never knew that at the time. Later, after I left UConn in 1978, a pianist friend of mine who lived and played in Hartford met her and had many wonderful stories to tell about her.

I also didn’t know that she had married a man named Kurt Biss and had a son Paul who married the violinist Miriam Fried.

This was another connection that slipped under my radar. When I was the assistant conductor, Ms. Fried played the Beethoven Violin Concerto with the Harrisburg Symphony in January of 1984 – a concert I will never forget because we had a blizzard that day which kept both of the orchestra's bassoonists from making it to the concert so I had to condense both bassoon parts – prominent solos for the 1st bassoon and important bass-lines for the 2nd – into a single part for the available Bass Clarinetist, Jim Dunn, who sight-read this concoction during the concert!

One of the newer talents receiving a lot of buzz in the classical music world the past couple of years is the pianist Jonathan Biss who is Miriam Fried’s son and therefore the grandson of Raya Garbousova.

It is, after all, a fairly small world in Classical Music, but the connections here – going back to the soloist at my very first orchestra concert – make me smile.

Last night, I smiled a lot to see so many young people in this audience, some clearly still in their single digits. (And, I should add, very well behaved, for those of you wondering about such things.) There were several in their teens as well, in a day when most people talk about 30-somethings as young people in the continually graying audience for classical music. I wonder if, 43 years from now, any of those kids will be sitting, possibly gray-haired, in a symphony audience somewhere?

In 1964, I started going in to hear some of the orchestra’s rehearsals, walking in as they rehearsed the final measures of the Franck Symphony’s first movement. My dad knew Al Morrison, a fellow pianist on the Harrisburg scene, who played percussion in the orchestra. He arranged for me to meet the conductor, Edwin McArthur, and I handed him a piece I’d written which they played at a Young Person’s Concert in November, 1964. I started studying harmony and composition with violinist Noah Klauss, the orchestra’s assistant conductor who also conducted the Youth Orchestra. Like any soccer mom today, my dad drove me in for my weekly Saturday morning lessons and also to hear symphony rehearsals every month, regular parts of my education until I was off to college in 1967.

After moving back to Harrisburg in 1980, I became involved with the orchestra again, hanging out with some friends of mine who were now playing in it, including one of my best friends from high school, Vikki Moore, who not only “played third bass for the symphony” (as she described it) but was also the personnel manager. After writing program notes for them, I become the assistant conductor in 1983, having conducted a rehearsal of Mahler’s 1st as my “audition” the previous fall, and then eventually the personnel and orchestra manager when Vikki decided she didn’t want to deal with that any more and the job description was expanded. After a number of political straws, I left the orchestra and went on to spin CDs for the next 18 years. Aside from being a music person in a radio-person’s job, I found myself no longer regularly listening to music, just hearing it, and enjoying it a lot less, all of which had a hugely negative impact on my soul.

I’d attended concerts regularly since conductor Richard Westerfield moved them from week-nights to weekends in the mid-‘90s, but it wasn’t until a few months ago that I’d gone in to hear rehearsals again – those, for Mahler’s 9th, conducted by Stuart Malina.

But it was curious, walking in to hear the wind section playing the Strauss Serenade on Thursday, to realize 8 of the 13 wind-players on stage were people I’d worked with between 1980 and 1988, including a few I’d sat in on their auditions. In fact, 23 of the orchestra’s current players had been on at least one symphony pay-roll I’d filled out back in the ‘80s, though I’m counting principal violist Julius Wirth who I’d spent two seasons trying to recruit as a sub and finally got him scheduled to audition the week before I quit.

Looking around at some of the newer faces in the orchestra, some of them weren’t even born then...

Karen Botterbusch, the piccolo player who told me she had played the Shostakovich 9th with conductor Larry Newland his first season in 1978, was showing me pictures of her grandchildren, one of them now going to school (these were on the cell-phone: the brick-and-mortar photos were in her piccolo case backstage). Time and technology marches on.

Several other friends came by to chat and ask how I was doing, happy to see me again at rehearsals, “just like the old days.” In a sense, it did feel like coming home – having spent so much time growing up in that hall since that first concert in 1963 – but also because it was just a thrill to be involved in “live music making” again, even if I wasn’t making it myself. I never was a performer but did some conducting; more often, I’d consider myself a “performance facilitator,” I guess. I was asked about balance in the Mozart (a strange hall to check balance in, too) and several players asked me what this or that sounded like in the hall, grateful to know the Strauss blended beautifully, for instance, when on stage they had no idea.

And of course it was a thrill to hear all of this come together for the performance, listening to how well the orchestra responded to Malina's direction – and sitting down as just another member of the audience. Ravel’s Tombeau de Couperin was ravishingly beautiful; pianist Tanya Bannister offered some of the most exquisite Mozart I’ve heard live in years, playing one of the most popular and beautiful of Mozart’s concertos; the Strauss was too short but a wonderful showcase for the wind section who blended like they’ve been playing full-time together for years; and the Shostakovich was just as exciting to hear as any major orchestra’s recording only here it was live and these were my friends on stage playing it.

There’s a lot more I could write about these rehearsals – the process itself is an interesting topic – as well as the concert, but it’s a cloudy Sunday morning in early Spring and other things (like copying my recently completed Violin Sonata) suggest I spare your attention span for now.

- Dr. Dick

Music for the Soul: Finding Inspiration in Difficult Times

At the Market Square Concerts blog, I responded to several people who’d heard Lee Hoiby’s Sextet for Winds & Piano which the Dorian Wind Quintet & Stuart Malina played at Whitaker Center last weekend. There are several suggestions about some of his compositions that have been recorded which I highly recommend to anyone unfamiliar with his music or, having heard the Sextet, want to explore his music more.

The focus of this briefer post, no more than toe-wetting the topic, is about my finding some inspiration in music that has helped sustain me over the years. Perhaps these will also be inspiring, in these difficult times, to remind us that Art is not a luxury but a necessity, that as

Life beats down and crushes the soul... Art reminds you that you have one.
(-- Stella Adler)

One of Hoiby’s latest recordings, the Naxos collection of his songs called “A Pocket of Time,” includes a song that I’ve been listening to a lot. So I wanted to include these excerpts from that post.

*** ***** ******** ***** ***

Some believe there really are only two types of music, whoever said it first – good and bad. I like all kinds of music but just because I like Elliott Carter’s music doesn’t mean I’m not going to like Lee Hoiby’s music. There are lots of modern “atonal” – gnarly, difficult – composers whose music I don’t care for just as there are a great deal of tonal – tuneful, accessible – composers whose music I also don’t care for. Perhaps a better way of delineating “good or bad” would be to say “sincere or insincere.” It’s not a degree of talent, either: it’s the ability to connect with a listener, an intangible talent that cannot be taught and which few of us learn.

As a musician always looking for reinforcement, two of the most inspiring works I’ve ever heard – the equivalent of artistic anthems crossing all national boundary lines – would be Schubert’s An die Musik (not just because it’s Schubert but anything called “To Music” should be listened to as a Daily Affirmation) – here is tenor Fritz Wunderlich with translation in the foot-notes –



...and the Composer’s Aria from Richard Strauss’ Ariadne auf Naxos, which got me through many low-points in my career. Here is Tatyana Troyanos singing it from a Metropolitan TV Broadcast in 1988 (an excerpt from the full production, the aria does not stop when it ends but immediately continues, unfortunately lopped off here).



To these, I’ve now added a third musical prayer – Lee Hoiby’s song “Where the Music Comes From,” the sixth song on this Naxos album, which I’ve listened to probably 10-12 times a day this past week. It’s not “about” music – in fact, music is only the first line – but it speaks perhaps to the importance of music as just one aspect of what sustains us. It’s the composer’s own text:
- - - - - - -
I want to be where the music comes from
Where the clock stops where it’s now.
I want to be with the friends around me,
Who have found me, who show me how.
I want to sing to the early morning
See the sunlight melt the snow.
And oh, I want to grow.

I want to wake to the living spirit
Here inside me where it lies.
I want to listen till I can hear it.
Let it guide me and realize
That I can go with the flow unending
That is blending, that is real.
And oh, I want to feel.

I want to walk in the earthly garden
Far from cities far from fear.
I want to talk to the growing garden,
To the devas, to the deer.
And to be one with the river flowing
Breezes blowing sky above.
And oh, I want to love.
-- Lee Hoiby
- - - - - - -

The song itself is as simple as it could be, three slightly varied strophes that begin with one of those circular accompanimental patterns that Schubert might have used to set the mood just before the voice enters. I could imagine the composer sitting at the piano, noodling around and coming up with this pattern, wondering where it could go and before realizing the clock had not indeed stopped, he had completed this song (if it took him hours of sweat to work out the details, it certainly doesn’t show).

If some of the other songs on this album – especially “The Lamb,” “In the Wand of the Wind,” and “Lady of the Harbor” along with the emotional impact of his “Last Letter Home” – hadn’t reminded me that Lee Hoiby is one of the finest composers of songs in this country, this one showed me why. It may sound no more modern than if Schubert had written it himself – aside from a characteristic modal inflection now and then – but it wasn’t written by somebody out to imitate Schubert’s style: it was written by someone who understands Schubert’s heart.

Jay Nordlinger’s witty liner notes quote Hoiby calling this “my Cat Stevens song” :-) and concludes with the observation
- - - - - - -
“I have heard a number of singers sing Hoiby songs. But the best singer of them, I have to tell you, is Hoiby himself – even now, even in his eighties. ...More than once I have heard him sing ‘Where the Music Comes From’ which, from his throat, becomes a personal prayer: a prayer for direction and growth. Once you’ve heard him sing it, the song gets under your skin. Of course, it gets under your skin anyway, as does so much of the music of this remarkable, individual man.”
- - - - - - -

One of Hoiby’s great champions was the soprano Leontyne Price, one of America’s greatest opera singers ever and who, early in her career, premiered Samuel Barber’s Hermit Songs, arguably the finest songs written by an American composer, and for whom Barber created the role of Cleopatra in 1966 for the Met-opening Antony & Cleopatra. For her, Hoiby wrote a set of songs called simply “Songs for Leontyne” which she included in her 1965 Carnegie Hall debut, a recording only recently issued on the RCA label called “Price re-Discovered.”

Two of those songs are included in the Naxos “Pocket” CD – along with the anecdote about Ms. Price and the composer performing the song “Evening” at a party. Afterward, the soprano told the composer “You played that awfully fast,” to which he replied, “That’s the way it goes, Leontyne.”

- Dr. Dick

A Concert of Classical Proportions: Focus on Mozart

This weekend’s concert with the Harrisburg Symphony features Tanya Bannister as the soloist in one of the most popular – in many opinions, one of the finest – of Mozart’s piano concertos. The concert takes place at the Forum on Saturday at 8pm and on Sunday at 3pm with a pre-concert talk given by Truman Bullard an hour before each performance.

Also on the program are Ravel’s Tombeau de Couperin, Richard Strauss’ Serenade for Winds and Shostakovich’s Symphony No. 9, all works inspired by the aesthetic ideals of the 18th Century (okay, officially Ravel’s memorial tribute is to a Baroque composer but it’s still mostly a “neo-classical” work). You can read my “up-close-and-personal” post about the Shostakovich here.

*** ***** ******** ***** ***

Mozart had recently turned 30 and was riding the crest of his popularity from a very good year the year before. Getting ready for the Lenten concert series of 1786 (the best times in Vienna for concerts were during Lent and Advent), he composed three new piano concertos between mid-December and the end of March. The Concerto on this program is the middle of these three works.

The major work during this period of six months – both in terms of size and concentration – was the opera, The Marriage of Figaro, which he finished April 29th for a premiere two days later on May 1st. He had already taken time off from that project to quickly compose (and perform) The Impresario (completed February 3rd, with four whole days to spare before its premiere). A month later, he completed the A Major Piano Concerto, K.488 and on the 24th of March, the C Minor Piano Concerto, K.491.

Other works during these same few months included the Masonic Funeral Music, K.477, the E-flat Violin Sonata K.481 (completed 4 days before the Piano Concerto No. 22 in E-flat, K.482), several works either for Masonic services or Masonic friends’ parties, at least four “insert numbers” written for other composers’ operas and a revival of Idomeneo, with two new arias written on March 10th.

Volkmar Braunbehrens, in his now out-of-print book “Mozart in Vienna,” estimates that the “purely mechanical task of writing it all down – quite apart from the creative work of composition – required that he fill an average of six pages [of 12-stave manuscript paper] per day.” Comparing this to a similarly productive period during his last year, 1791, when he wrote the Clarinet Concerto, Clemenza di Tito, The Magic Flute and what he completed of the Requiem, would have amounted to only 3 pages per day.

Creatively, it was also one of Mozart’s happier times. The joy of Figaro certainly permeates the A Major Concerto which sounds like it could have been contemporary with his writing the Finale of Act II, though I have no way of knowing what part of the opera he was working on when he was also writing the concerto. The dark but soulful slow movement – the key of F-sharp Minor is rare in Mozart’s catalogue – could easily be turned into an aria.

Whether the intense concentration of trying to find the musical solutions to the opera’s dramatic complexities resulted in creative over-drive or not would be hard to tell: he needed concertos for the Lenten Season and he had other obligations to fill (the Masonic Music for one, the additional “opera inserts” for another), so perhaps it was fortuitous that the music just flowed even more effortlessly out of him than usual.

In addition to composing, he appeared as a performer or conductor on seven occasions, had his own students (including a young man from England, Thomas Attwood, whose lesson books have survived), had another refugee from Salzburg, the oboist Josef Fiala and one of his better pupils, both trying to make a go of it in Vienna and both staying with Mozart’s family for weeks at a time, and he was busy with his Masonic lodge which was undergoing reorganization following the negative impact of the Emperor’s Masonic Legislation the previous year. A silhouette of Mozart, incidentally, graced one of the more popular calendars of the year 1786, just one indication of his popularity.

Ironically, after this outpouring of incredible music, his star faded quickly. Fighting against Salieri-inspired intrigues at Court, Figaro, based on a pre-Revolutionary French play that lampooned the aristocracy’s old-fashioned self-image and placed servants capable of out-witting them in the spot-light, played for only nine performances and wasn’t heard again in Vienna until 1789, by which time the French Revolution and the fate of the French nobility had erupted in the news.

At that first production, the Viennese nobility, for obvious reasons, didn’t care for it even though the Emperor thought highly enough of it to arrange a private performance at his summer palace and then for additional performances in Italy and in Prague, where it was sung at the wedding of his niece to the future King of Saxony.

Only in Prague was the work an immediate and lasting public success. As a result, Mozart agreed to write them an opera of their very own: the following year he would return with Don Giovanni.

Still, Mozart was able to give only one subscription concert that season instead of three – his best likely source of income – and the reaction against the more dramatic C Minor Concerto soured the public on his music which they regarded as too complex and ornate. Within months, he had become “yesterday’s news.” No wonder he would write his next great opera for another city and, meanwhile, start learning both French and English with the thought of leaving Vienna for new territories to conquer. It never happened, but that’s another story.

*** ***** ******** ***** ***

Another story that occurred while he was working on the bright and lively Piano Concerto in A Major involved a court nobleman and government official and an older woman he had promised to marry but whom he then murdered in an attempt to steal her fortune to pay off his debts. This was no worse a murder than might have occurred at other times, but it became the sensation of the day (akin to today’s scandalous “Trials of the Century”). What was more shocking was the vehemence with which the Emperor intervened, going against his own laws, including the repeals of torture and the death sentence (revoked ten years earlier). The murderer was sentenced to a public execution, the first stage of which involved red-hot pincers being applied to his torso, then being led to a second near-by location where his body was to be “broken on the wheel” (his bones broken one by one starting at the legs and working toward the neck). This was regarded as a terribly medieval reversion from the Enlightened views of the day: if the crime was one thing, the shock of this sentence was quite another.

In all, this execution took four hours and occurred only eight days after Mozart completed the A Major Concerto. The first stage of the execution took place just a few hundred yards from where Mozart lived. That day, he composed the two new arias required for the impending revival of Idomeneo. Two weeks later, he completed the C Minor Piano Concerto which is usually described as “dark,” “tragic” or “demonic” but whether it was a response to the news of the day or just his attempt to balance the light and beauty of the A Major Concerto, we’ll never know.

Suffice it to say, Vienna found the C Minor concerto not to their liking. And Mozart’s star quickly set.

So meanwhile, enjoy the A Major Concerto, written at the height of innocence and success without ever knowing what was, metaphorically if not literally, just around the corner.

- Dr. Dick

Shostakovich & his (kind of) Classical Symphony

This weekend’s concert with the Harrisburg Symphony features pianist Tanya Bannister playing Mozart’s Piano Concerto No. 23 in A Major. Ms. Bannister had appeared last year with Market Square Concerts in a recital that featured Brahms’ take on Handel, works by Chopin and a new piece she’d premiered earlier that season by Christopher Theofanidis, “All Dreams Begin with a Horizon.”

This week - Saturday at 8pm, Sunday at 3pm at the Forum - Stuart Malina conducts a program that is essentially “classical” in its sound-world (you can read my up-close-&-personal post about the Mozart Concerto here). In addition to real Mozart, there is Richard Strauss’s Mozartean “Serenade for Winds,” written when the composer was 17, plus Ravel’s image of The Good Old Days, a suite of pieces originally for piano evoking the 18th Century Age of Couperin, one of France’s greatest Baroque composers. Each movement of his Tombeau de Couperin was originally dedicated to friends who died in World War I, making it a different kind of “memorial.”

No one has ever dubbed Shostakovich’s 9th, which concludes this program, his “Classical Symphony.”

For those who are familiar with his dramatic 5th, the huge war-time symphonies like No. 7 and No. 8, or the big brooding Mahler-like 10th, the 9th fits in like The Odd Man Out. Considering it was written right after World War II ended in the defeat of the Nazi Invaders (the Soviets called this “The Great Patriotic War”), most people expected a triumphant conclusion to the earlier War Symphonies, a victorious celebration of Soviet Power and a portrait of Stalin as Hero of the People. Plus, given Beethoven as a precedent, people felt it would also carry the weight of a “Soviet Artist’s Reply to Universal Brotherhood.”

Perhaps because the 9th was the first Shostakovich symphony I remember hearing when I was in high-school, I didn't have the benefit of comparison or any of the build-up of expectations. I was able to enjoy it for what it seemed to be on the surface: a symphony that pays a bit of homage to Haydn, especially in the first movement with lots of little quirks and twists, some obvious and some fairly subtle, making me think he was purposely out to do Prokofiev’s “Classical” Symphony his way.

But to those in its very first audience, sitting there in Leningrad (once again St. Petersburg) in November of 1945, it must have seemed a disappointment, considering all the advance buzz they must have been hearing.

After the 7th (written during the siege of Leningrad) and the epic tragedy of the 8th (written during the horrors of the Nazi occupation), Shostakovich himself described what would be his next symphony, already begun before the war was officially over but in the anticipation of its conclusion, as a vast work for large orchestra, chorus and soloists - in fact, very much like Beethoven's 9th - that it would describe in music the heroism of the Soviet people and the Red Army, that it could be described in one word – "Victory!" He discussed writing the opening movement with his students, even played some of it for them in 1944: one of them recalled it as "majestic in scale, in pathos, in breathtaking motion."

Then he stopped working on it for three months. Once he started it again – and apparently starting it over – he completed it in a little over a month. But now, it was nothing like what he had talked about before; the majestic music he had played was nowhere in sight. He described it himself as being totally different from the 7th & 8th Symphonies - light and transparent, by comparison. "Musicians will love to play it," he said, "critics will delight in blasting it."

One writer explained the sense of the audience at the premiere: “We were prepared to listen to a new monumental musical fresco, something that we had the right to expect from the composer of the 7th and the 8th Symphonies, especially at a time when the Soviet people and the whole world were still full of the recent victory over Fascism. But we heard something quite different, something at first astounded us by its unexpectedness.”

Still, the audience heard, according to another writer, something that “charmed the listener with such perfect form that it seemed as though every sound had been exactly matched and that every tinge of color and every secondary tone subordinated to a sapient purposefulness.” What that was, was another matter...

One critic wondered if this was a "respite" from his large-scale works and, given the tragedies of the war years, was this the time for a composer to be "going on vacation, to take a break from contemporary problems?" Another considered it "childish." Well, compared to a celebration over the defeat of Nazism, sure, but is that the music's fault or the critic's fault for presuming something the composer may not have been intending?

Not only did it not win the Stalin Prize that year, it was eventually placed on a "do-not-play" list, banned by the central censorship board of the Soviet government, removed from that list only a couple of years after Stalin's death. It is still one of his less frequently heard symphonies (other than the 2nd and 3rd which almost no one does anymore, anyway).

It seems a little slim to bear all that weight! But yet it got Shostakovich in a lot of trouble in the late-1940s. When his music was condemned by Stalin and the rest of the Soviet bureaucracy in 1936 following the success of his opera Lady Macbeth of the Mtsensk District (which Mr. & Mrs. Stalin walked out on), he composed his 5th Symphony (also bearing expectations from Beethoven) which became subtitled "A Soviet Artist's Reply to Just Criticism." In 1948, when his music was again condemned, along with music by many of his colleagues, the problem was his being too much influenced by the West, especially the German symphonic ideal of... well, Beethoven, Haydn, Mozart and Mahler. This might be a typically political reaction (if not xenophobic) to the culture of "the enemy" but it took composers to task for not writing music that was "good" and "uplifting" for the Soviet people.

This time, Shostakovich's response, basically, was to not write at all. At least not any big grand public works likes symphonies or operas. He wrote string quartets for small performing groups and small, more elite audiences. He also wrote a set of preludes and fugues inspired by Bach - how German can you get? It wasn't until after Stalin's death that he wrote his next symphony which may have been the original 9th delayed, though instead of a tribute to Stalin and celebrating the victory of the Soviet people, it's more a portrait of a tyrant and the victory of the people who, like the composer, managed to survive the dark years of the Stalin Era.

But all that is far removed from the 9th Symphony, perhaps on purpose, at least in the outer movements. Here were have perky little tunes, a jaunty trombone dominant-to-tonic V-I cadence pattern to introduce the second tune (nothing terribly modern-sounding, here) -- all things that Prokofiev had done with his tribute to Haydn in his first symphony, the "Classical Symphony," written in 1917. But there are things here that go slightly... wrong: this is not the Classical well-ordered world we would expect from someone writing in an 18th Century style. Suddenly, measures start having extra beats or tunes wander off in unexpected directions. When the second theme should return as expected, the trombone dutifully plays his V-I cadence set-up but the orchestra just keeps going. And going. The trombone persists -- V-I... V-I... V-I! V-I-V-I -- and things get more intense until - ah! - finally, the theme returns. You can just sense the sigh of relief. It's a joke worthy of Papa Haydn himself.

But the middle movements are full of pathos and the darker side to all this. There is no humor hidden in here and even when what passes for a scherzo gets going, it eventually collapses into the darkness again.

Both the second movement and the brief next-to-last movement (if it isn’t really an extended introduction to the finale) are like soliloquies in this darkness – perhaps very suitable for people who were looking back privately on the death and devastation they experienced in the recent war. The scherzo is perhaps Shostakovich’s most spritely, almost inconsequential and circussy before it evolves into the stentorian brass chords of the next movement without a break. Though it is purely subjective, to me it sounds like an official committee interrogating an individual or, to use an earlier precedent of Beethoven’s, from his 4th Piano Concerto, “Orpheus and the Wild Beasts.”

The last movement then begins with an almost what-the-heck shrug of the shoulders as the bassoon, without a break, turns from severe pathos to chuckling merriment, starting off a finale which also includes quotations from his 1st and 6th Symphonies (now what might be the significance of those?) before reaching an exuberant but not protracted ending.

A question had come up on Facebook (believe it or not) when a musician friend (and former member of the Harrisburg Symphony) asked for serious replies about what made Beethoven’s “Eroica” sound heroic.

A lot of comments followed about Napoleon, about simple triadic themes, the fact it was in E-flat Major (like the “Emperor” Concerto and Strauss’ Ein Heldenleben, “A Hero’s Life”) and so on. I threw my professorial weight into it (“serious” replies, after all) that it didn’t, in fact, sound “heroic” at all except we are programmed to think it does after long familiarity with it and its title.

Simple triadic themes (and there was nothing heroic in the earlier uses Beethoven made of the triadic theme of his last movement) nor the key of E-flat Major would have little to do with it, by themselves (and Beethoven never called his piano concerto “The Emperor,” btw), though his greatly expanded sense of form may have been inspired by Napoleon’s larger-than-life nature (even if one can only “experience” form in hind-sight). If he were writing a musical portrait of Napoleon – it was originally dedicated to him – why would he have written a funeral march in the 2nd movement? And so on. Bruckner’s 7th Symphony has lots of triadic themes and greatly expanded structures but no one associates heroism with it – but of course it’s in E Major, isn’t it...

Well, along comes Shostakovich’s 9th – anticipated as a musical portrait of Stalin the Soviet Hero – which IS in E-flat Major, also has triadic themes, even a surprise out-of-key experience at the end of its first theme, just like Beethoven’s has; the 2nd movement (one could say it’s like attending a funeral) has a theme that is also triadic. While the structure in Shostakovich’s symphony is not “expanded to epic proportions” (would that automatically turn it into an epic?), it is much clearer than Shostakovich’s usual symphonic rhetoric and certainly closer to 1800 than to 1945. Shostakovich’s 9th clocks in under a half-hour, closer to one of Haydn’s London Symphonies, rather than the Eroica’s 45-50 minutes or Shostakovich’s own earlier symphonies which often surpass an hour’s length.

So in many ways, Shostakovich’s 9th may be the opposite of Beethoven’s 3rd (if not his 9th) or perhaps it’s Beethoven’s Eroica up-side down (comparing more than just the themes) – could that fit in with Shostakovich’s image of Stalin the Dictator puffed up as Hero?

The composer was famously tight-lipped about any kind of extra-musical suggestions in his music - he's gone from being viewed in the West as a party hack to being a closet dissident writing secret anti-Communist programs into his symphonies - but where the 9th fits into all this is anybody's guess.

But that's what make art Art. Socratic indulgences included, the great thing about Art is it can be all of the above or none of the above and still be Great Art.

- Dr. Dick

A Visit with Lee Hoiby

It’s probably been almost 30 years since I’d last seen Lee Hoiby, despite the infrequent letters, e-mails and phone calls over the intervening decades. I’ve heard recordings of his music and on too few occasions heard some of it live. So it was great he was able to come down to attend this past weekend’s performance at Market Square Concerts with Stuart Malina playing Lee’s Sextet for Winds & Piano with the Dorian Wind Quintet.

At first, it didn’t look like he was going to make it but then, a few days before the concert, he was able to change his schedule and come down. Ellen Hughes and the Market Square Concerts Hospitality Committee went into action and arranged for Lee and Mark to stay with Martin & Lucy Murray.

E-mails and phone calls traveled back and forth, including a line I forwarded to Ellen from Lee in which he figured, after estimating the length of the drive from their place along the Delaware River, he would need “a good long nap before the concert.” Considering Lee just turned 83 last month and I was unaware of any further details of his state-of-health, there was some concern about things - would a friendly but large dog be capable of knocking him down, for instance.

They would arrive sometime on Saturday and return the next day.

Before the concert, we met them for dinner at one of the better known restaurants downtown not far from Whitaker, a proximity that could come in handy if we were running late.

Lucy was joking that she had tentatively reminded Lee about maybe wanting to take a nap and he said very robustly, “No!,” eyeing the grand piano, “I want to play four-hand duets!” And so instead, they played Ravel and Schubert!

Though I had not met Mark before, I recognized him from the publicity photo accompanying the new recording of The Tempest which I’d just received a couple days before: he was the librettist for the opera, adapting Shakespeare’s original text and therefore more than just Lee’s collaborator in life.

I first corresponded with Lee around the time Samuel Barber’s Antony & Cleopatra was premiered at the overly grand opening of the grand new Lincoln Center home of the Metropolitan Opera. One of the many issues the critics heaped on the composer concerned his setting Shakespeare’s original text, for some reason (there were many other issues I won’t go into here that turned this work into a disaster only somewhat mitigated by its gorgeous but now overlooked music) so I found it surprising that here Lee had since set two more Shakespeare plays – The Tempest and, more recently, Romeo & Juliet – with Mark adapting the original texts. Lee looked at me in surprise: “Why not?! They’re some of the most beautiful words in the world. What more could a composer ask for?”

As we worked out way into the restaurant, he said “you know, for some reason, people say iambic pentameter is the hardest to set to music, but I’ve always found it very easy...” The thought trailed off as we were ushered toward our table.

As the server put the bread in little upright cornucopias and sprinkled olive oil on small plates, talk focused first on cooking and then combined cooking with music as Lee told us about the one-act opera (or musical monologue) he had done with actress Jean Stapleton, better known as the long-suffering TV wife of Archie Bunker but who, despite her singing [sic] on the show, actually had a very good voice. Called Bon Appetit!, it set one of Julia Child’s recipes to music – adapting one of her TV cooking shows’ episodes about the making of a French chocolate cake (however one says in French “to die for”). (Checking on-line for links, I also discover Mark adapted the text for this and for its companion piece, “The Italian Lesson,” based on a classic Ruth Draper character sketch.)

Julia Child came to see one of the performances and went backstage as soon as it was over. During the bows, Lee was meekly sitting on-stage at the piano waiting for “Julia” to come out to take her bow but the Stage Julia and the Real Julia were having too much fun talking off-stage to be bothered by taking bows.

At this point, it was time to settle on a wine. No one had yet decided what entrees to order and, given my lack of culinary prowess, talk of whether it should be red or white much less any further delineation (the menu also described them with adjectives like “juicy” and something that struck me as the equivalent of “chunky”) flowed right over my unimbibulous head. It was then decided to order a bottle of Pinot Noir.

Examination of the menu filtered through further conversation, ranging from Lucy’s founding of Market Square Concerts 27 years ago to the arts scene in Harrisburg today in general, from Mark talking Lee into writing an opera on Romeo & Juliet (he had first passed on the idea – it’s been done before – until Mark put some sample lines in front of him which Lee quoted from memory and which I cannot even remember, but which immediately brought to the composer’s mind how well these lines could be set to music), then foundering on my attempts to finish copying my violin sonata.

The server came back with a question about the wine, long after most of us would have expected to be drinking it. She seemed confused about what had actually been ordered, mentioning some entirely different wine much less familiar to me than your basic Pinot Noir (alas, they have four different kinds of Pinot Noir on the menu).

Noir, though, appeared to be a stumbling block. Noir: she chewed it over like maybe it was one of those “chunky” wines, pronouncing it as if (a) she’d never heard the word before and (b) it had three syllables. Then someone pointed to it on the menu for her as I might do for fear of mispronouncing the dish and ordering instead a grilled tractor.

We realized by now we had forty-five minutes before the concert and had now spent slightly less than forty minutes sitting down to the table and settling the issue of The Wine. There was some confusion about the Buffet – you could order it separately as a meal but yet it came with every entree. The way things were going, we jokingly wondered if we could order an entree, eat the buffet-that-came-with-it and take the entree home with us? We were assured everything we ordered could be ready in 10-15 minutes (“it’s the pizzas that take the longest”), no problem. Still, three of us opted for the Buffet à solo.

Conversation continued as salads and soup were served. By now we had moved on to our mutual radio experiences – Lucy working years ago as a volunteer at WMSP, the classical music station originally associated with Market Square Presbyterian (the MSP of the call-letters), mine in years spent at our local NPR station and Mark, currently announcing at their local NPR station (I thought he said as a volunteer though there’s not that much difference in the pay scales). We traded horror stories and humorous anecdotes.

There was talk, as we looked around waiting for the entrees, about theater in London and concerts in Harrisburg. Lee talked about being surprised by hearing something on the radio in the middle of the night that so startled him and here it turned out to be a quartet by Haydn who, we all agreed, was full of many surprises and very much underrated.

From there, we moved on to Schubert who also often had his surprising turns, placing unexpected notes that made you, playing them, want to check where you were, exactly. Lee remarked about one song by Schubert – “Gute Nacht!” – how it started with a downward C Minor arpeggio (the only clip I could find on-line that didn't start in the third measure is sung by tenor Peter Pears) but in the last verse, he switches it to C Major (and here he demonstrated the two) creating such a magical effect that always left him with a tug at the heart (or a lump in the throat, I forget, but the reaction was comparable). It reminded me why Lee Hoiby is such a fine composer of songs and setter of words.

Lucy wasn’t sure which song it was and I, geek that I am, suggested “Isn’t that one of the songs from Schöne Müllerin?” to which Lee replied “Uhm... yes, I think so,” but doubtful, too kind to correct me that, as I discovered later, it’s the first song of Winterreise (I’ll take Schubert Lieder for $1,000, Alex – BRAAP, sorry).

By this time, the entrees arrived. We now had less than half an hour before the concert began. Fast food it is not, but those of us who had ordered the Buffet made quick work of what turned out to be various salads and antipastos (which I always think should be antepasto if it’s supposed to be “before” the meal rather than “opposed” to it, but I digress: clearly, I do not belong in such a restaurant). After debating if it would be improper to show up late (Lee’s piece at least was on the second half), conversation was now consumed by more important matters.

With 12 minutes to kill, the final details were quickly despatched and we hurried off to the concert hall. By this time, those of us who had ordered the buffet noticed, too late, its well-stocked dessert corner.

“Running Late” now translated literally. Martin, Lucy and Lee charged on ahead. The last thing I wanted to see was a headline in the morning paper like “Composer Has Heart Attack Running Late for Concert.” Mark, N and I, after one last look back at the desserts (“Local Would-Be Composer Has Heart Attack After Snarfing Down Trayful of Cheesecake”), brought up the rear.

For the concert itself, you can read my post, “The Composer in the Audience” over at “Dr. Dick’s Market Square Concerts Blog” (the name has now been expanded upon request).

After the concert, there was little chance to talk. Meeting Stuart Malina, Lee thanked him for his performance. Stuart had conducted a short work of Lee’s some years ago but neither could quite remember or place what it might have been. I had brought with me my copy of The Tempest which I then asked both him and Mark to autograph – I rarely bother artists for their autographs but having both the composer and the librettist here and with the disc being brand new and all, it was too good to pass up, even though they had to cramp their signatures to fit the little bit of space left in the margin. I’m hoping, now that The Tempest is available for others to hear, finally, it might prompt some opera company to look into their collaboration on Romeo & Juliet which was completed in 2004 but is still looking for its first performance (Lee says “it’s the best of the lot,” and he’s written a lot of operas).

And he is currently working on some new choral pieces – one for the Harvard Glee Club, as I recall, which reminded me of one of the first pieces of Lee’s I’d heard, the choral anthem on John Donne’s “Ascension” with its full brass and organ written for the National Cathedral (“powerful enough to knock me out of my socks,” I think I said) and starting off the cathedral’s long unavailable dedication recording. We talked about computer software – the one he originally started using is no longer in business so he’s switched over to Sibelius which he likes very much – and in the few minutes remaining before we parted ways, several other things like how he and Mark take a 45-minute walk every day.

When I thought he might be tired after a busy day, he said “No! My mind is all jazzed - I couldn't get to sleep now.” Clearly, this is a man for whom age is a state-of-mind.

With any luck it won’t be another 30 years before I’d see him again – that would make me almost 90 and make him even more amazing than Elliott Carter is now. Age has not withered him nor would custom stale his infinite variety (to turn a phrase) but frankly, by then, neither of us could probably much handle “running late.” Well, me, anyway...

The next morning before they left, Lee sat down at Lucy’s piano and played through several Chopin etudes, his daily routine. And then, they were off.