Writing "The Lost Chord" - Parody of a Villain's Ritual

Though I haven't posted any of the material for “The Lost Chord” yet, the 'music appreciation thriller' I'm writing that's a parody of Dan Brown's novel “The Lost Symbol,” I thought I'd show you how it's going – and how I'm using the process of parody.

Having written some 64,000 words by the end of November toward NaNoWriMo's goal of 50,000, I was hoping, now that I've gotten back into it, to make it to 100,000 by the end of April, the second month I've been working on it. I could still make it. It's taken longer this time because (a) I'm not pushing myself as much as I was in November and (b) it needed more thought and research on details that I didn't have to deal with last fall, getting it started.

One of the biggest problems, of course, is finding musical equivalents of Brown's plot elements and props – especially the clues – and this scene stumped me when I first read it. I had thought of skipping it completely but I haven't done that with any of the other chapters so far and only with a few minor details. Then, over the weekend, it came time to do this scene or not. So I just plunged into it. And one by one, items started popping into my mind.

First, here's a preçis of Dan Brown's original scene, chapter 81 (p.301-303):

Mal'akh, the muscular tattooed villain of Brown's story, descends into the “subterranean space” that looked like a normal cellar – boiler, fuse box, wood-pile “and a hodge-podge of storage.” But “a sizeable area had been walled off for his clandestine practices,” a suite of smaller rooms, its sole entrance through a secret doorway in the living room.

The “largest room at the end of the corridor” of this suite was his “sanctum sanctorum,” a perfect 12-foot square (“12 are the signs of the zodiac. 12 are the hours of the day. 12 are the gates of heaven”) A 7'x7' stone table stood in the center (“7 are the seals of Revelation. 7 are the steps of the Temple”). Over the center of the table hung a “carefully calibrated light source” cycling every 6 hours through a specific ordering of colors according to the “sacred Table of Planetary Hours.” “The hour of Yanor is blue. The hour of Nasnia is red. The hour of Salam is white.”

Current time in Mal'akh's basement was Caerra – “the light in the room had modulated to a soft purplish hue.” He wore “only a silken loincloth wrapped around his buttocks and neutered sex organ” (this had been explained in a previous chapter about making sacrifices both of the blood and the personal variety). He is now ready to begin his ritualized preparations.

To sanctify the air, he mixes “the suffumigation chemicals” which he'll ignite later. He folds the silk robe he'll wear later as well, then purifies a flask of water.

(As I was reading this, I was so tempted to come up with a scene out of Julia Child...)

Then he opens an ivory box: nestled in “a cradle of black velvet” is the knife which cost him “$1.6 million on the Middle Eastern antiquities black market last year.” He doesn't at this point explain what the knife is, but I don't think I'll give anything away by explaining it will be revealed as the knife Abraham was prepared to slay Isaac with.

He polishes the blade with a silk cloth soaked in the purified water. Then Brown describes the Dark Arts that his villain is engaging in: “This primeval technology had once held the key to the portals of power” and so on.

(Mal'akh is after the “Ancient Mysteries” of the Masons; he knows of their stone pyramid which supposedly has a map guiding him to a location where these can be found: once in possession of them, he will become, essentially, Master of the Universe, or at least some god-like power beyond his wildest imagination.)

Then he turns to a piece of home-made vellum, a quill pen made from the feather of a crow, a silver saucer and three candles around a solid-brass bowl which contained an inch of “thick crimson liquid” (guess!).

This was the blood of Peter Solomon, the head of the American Masons and the man whose hand he had cut off to set both Brown's hero, Robert Langdon, and the plot in motion.

Mal'akh places his left hand on the vellum, dips the quill pen in the blood and traces the outline of his hand, adding the five symbols of the Ancient Mysteries on each fingertip:

The crown... the king he shall become
The star... the heavens which ordained his destiny
The sun... the illumination of his soul
The lantern... the feeble light of human understanding
The key... the one missing piece of information (the Lost Symbol) which, by the end of the night, he shall possess (if Robert Langdon is doing his job of deciphering the pyramid's map)

He then burns the vellum, adding the ashes to the remainder of the blood – see how well this'd work as a take-off of a cooking show?? – then stirred the mixture with the crow feather, creating a deep rich, nearly black ink.

Raising the bowl with the ink in it over his head, “intoning the blood eukharistos of the ancients," he pours it into a glass bottle, corks it and is now ready, when the time comes, to “inscribe the untattooed flesh atop his head and complete his masterpiece” (by which he means his body, every inch of which is covered from head to almost the crown of his shaved head with ritualistic tattoos).

Okay?

First of all, aside from resetting the story from Washington DC and the United States Capitol to New York City and Lincoln Center, in my parody, Mal'akh becomes a similarly power-hungry villain named Tr'iTone, taken from the name for the interval of two pitches an augmented fourth or diminished fifth apart – say, C and F-sharp – called a Tritone, a very unstable interval that even in the medieval days when music theory was just beginning to be codified was called “Diabolus in musica” or “The Devil in Music.”

Once I figured how to turn Brown's Masons into Musicians – especially composers – my villain's quest would be to find a way of becoming the Greatest Composer in the World, this generation's answer to Beethoven. And he thinks Robertson Sullivan (my version of Peter Solomon) has the answers. Instead of a stone pyramid, there's a plastic bobble-head doll of Mozart (minus its head, just as Brown's masonic pyramid is minus its capstone).

Since Mal'akh perverts Masonic rituals into satanic ones for his evil ends, my Tr'iTone takes the spiritual quest to uncover your Inner Artist from Julia Cameron's wonderful book called “The Artist's Way” (which I worked my way through back in the mid-'90s) and perverts it into something comparably evil.

So here's my parody of this scene. [My interpolated explanations will be italicized in brackets].

I should mention that many critics complained about Brown's excessive use of italics in the text but he employs them for the characters unspoken thoughts, which is how I use them here.

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

Into the basement of his brownstone home on West 68th Street, Tr'iTone now descended careful not to make a sound or unnecessary gesture lest he upset the karmic flow around him. The lighting was a warm pastel shade mixing tints of magenta and brown with the music's slow pulsation which had already begun its gradual increase in speed. This was his “holy of holies,” his shrine to the pale-skinned Sarasvati, Queen of Heaven, Mother of Waters, the Hindu goddess of sensual love, creativity, beauty, art and music, creator of poetry, inventor of music and science and also the beverage Amrita, the 'drink of bliss,' a glass of which he held in his left hand.

A large velvet painting of her – a crescent moon on her forehead, riding on a peacock against a starry sequin-studded background that flowed from the myriad eyes of the peacock's tail – hung at one end of a twelve foot square space, the floor a pattern of square-foot tiles of various colors – twelve across and twelve down. (Twelve are the pitches of the chromatic scale, one for each hour of the day and one for each hour of the night.) Within the center of the square was a smaller square of seven tiles across and seven down, these colors darker, more intense. (Seven are the pitches of the diatonic scale. Seven are the days of the week.) In the center of this central square stood a smaller five-foot square table. (Five are the lines of the staff. Five are the... uhm... days of a normal work-week...)

Directly over the table hung an old plastic color-wheel from the psychedelic '70s, twelve panels of rainbow hues blending one into the other, which Tr'iTone had devised to rotate slowly to the hour hand of a clock. When it was noon or midnight, the color was bright red; the panel gradually blended to orange, the color of 1:00, and then to yellow for 2:00 and so on through the spectrum of green, blue, purple, magenta and brown till it was back to red.

This clock was coordinated with a CD-player that played continuously one of his finest creations, a series of slow-moving chord progressions played on a synthesizer, pulsating chords around a tonic center that repeated various pitch and rhythmic patterns, expanding from the lowest registers until, in a gradual crescendo and accelerando, it climbed to the very highest registers where, during the last quarter of the hour, it gradually filled out to the widest possible range of man's hearing before modulating climactically to the next hour, the new key.

Even though, like perfect pitch, Tr'iTone himself did not possess it, he felt the power of synesthesia, the ability some people have to see colors when they hear music. Each hour was associated with a different color and a different tonality, beginning with a darker shade of its color, the chord progression starting in the minor mode of its key. But halfway through the hour, the color would lighten and the music changed to the major mode. And so his clock reflected this. 12:00 was red which to many synesthetes was the key of C; 1:00 was orange and the key of G; 2:00 became yellow and the key of D. And so on through the entire span of time, the entire range of keys.

He called this composition of his La belle horloge de couleurs cèlestes, “The Beautiful Clock of Celestial Colors.” He had thought of hiring a symphony orchestra to record the piece for him in its entirety but union regulations precluded a twelve-hour service without breaks and he didn't want to have any edits that would minimize its spiritual impact. So while settling for a midi-version of it, he found it also made it easier to record and connect the different sections on his computer. Like all of his latest music, it still awaited its first public performance. He had even made a shortened version where, if you didn't take all the repeats, it would be only two hours long. He had sent the score to John Tesh but never heard back from him, not even the courtesy of “thank you for your wonderful score but at this time we are not looking for a twelve-hour-long work for full orchestra.” Still, Tr'iTone was convinced it would have been an epic presentation on a PBS fund-raising special.

Now was the Hour of B-flat, still in the minor mode. Dressed in his ritual boxers with a pattern of crowns and stars and smiling suns, he took his glass of Amrita – the “drink of bliss” concocted from Sarasvati's recipe freshly and carefully prepared exactly a week ago and left to ferment in the refrigerator for the requisite seven days – and drank it slowly to begin his ritual.

On the table before him were a metal box, a little lantern, a small clay pot with a miniature rose bush growing in it, a small photograph in a black wooden frame, a piece of paper on a deep blue china plate and a small dark cup, like one you might use to wash your eye with. Next to that was a small glass bottle like one you might find in any old European apothecary shop, its glass stopper carefully held in place with a red ribbon. Last was a bowl, its exterior plated in gold and quite aged, possibly even cracked, but no matter: it was empty – for now. [A tangential reference to Henry James' final novel, The Golden Bowl.]

He did not yet open the metal box. He did not need to, to admire its contents.

The pen.

After spending nearly a decade tracking it down, he had paid over $1 million for it at the black market arts fair held in Vienna last year. He wondered when the last time was that it had been used to write anything down?

He opened the box and took out the pen that had been carefully wrapped in a square of rich red velvet and a swatch of ermine, wiping it clean with a small scrap cut from a pair of lederhosen dipped in tap-water he had brought back from Vienna years ago and kept in a special air-sealed bottle in his refrigerator until this very moment in time.

[The pen will turn out to be one of the first steel-tipped pens ever made. It was manufactured in Birmingham, England, in 1803, and was given as a gift by Prince Lichnowski to his friend (and tenant) Ludwig van Beethoven. After a spat with the prince, though, Beethoven threw the pen in his waste basket where it was rescued by his student Ferdinand Ries – the story will continue from there in a later segment... While the pen could've been real, that Beethoven had been given one is a fiction. But the timing and the characters involved are all real and thus create a probable context for this historical fiction.]

Next, he examined the sheet of paper on the china plate. This, he sighed, was not just any piece of paper: it was an ancient manuscript written on vellum, hand-made by monks from the skin of a baby calf. In turn, he checked the other items, giving the eye-cup a careful look, swirling it and sniffing its bouquet as if it were a fine red wine.

But it wasn't a centuries old vintage of wine. When he was in Vienna, he'd thought of trying to buy the last remaining bottle from the collection Beethoven's publisher had sent the dying composer in 1827, but it was Mosel wine, Beethoven's favorite white wine, and Tr'iTone would have preferred a deep, hearty red, himself. No, in many ways, this was even better.

[It is true that Beethoven's publisher had sent him a case of Mosel wine which arrived as he lay on his death bed: in fact, his final words were, seeing the wine, "A shame, a shame - too late." Mosel wine is a white wine and I was trying to find the name of a red wine that Beethoven might have been able to drink in the 1820s but it took me an hour to find this out which then required some fudging.]

The cup he held before him contained 1/8th of a cup of blood. Robertson Sullivan's blood.

After lighting the little lantern, he touched each item in turn, from the box with the pen to the little apothecary jar, muttering unintelligible incantations, repeating them each three times as he took out three candles, lit them and carefully placed them one at the center back of the table, the other two in the center of either side, creating a triangle within the square.

He took the last bit of Sarasvati's beverage and let it drip onto the potted plant, a miniature rose that he had nurtured from a rose bush that grew on Robertson Sullivan's estate in Cornwall-on-Hudson. More a scrawny sapling than a true miniature, It was just barely alive – just like Robertson Sullivan, now that he mentioned it – but alive enough to serve its purpose. He had cut a slip from it when he went back to sneak around the property, summer a year ago: no one had been home and he'd thought about breaking in again but figured, if the gizmo he'd been looking for [which contained the map to the Ancient Myseries] were there at all, it wouldn't be out in the open, now, would it? No, he probably kept it in a hidden wall safe, any way: besides, this was much more aesthetically pleasing than breaking and entering, an act of mere petty larceny.

He looked fondly at the photograph taken of him when he was a teen-ager with his faithful German shepherd, Fleck, his one truly understanding friend until the poor dog had gotten run over by a neighbor's truck backing out of the driveway. [Fleck is German for Spot...]

The little apothecary bottle was a treasured item, too, purchased a few years ago on E-Bay: Gustav Mahler's dying breath, a steal at only $557.

Lifting the feebly shining lantern, he spoke the lines he had planned for this ritual years ago. “This lantern represents the hornéd moon.” Holding it close to his face, he added “and I, the man in the moon. But soon, my goddess Sarasvati,” holding the lantern up toward the painting, “I will be like Lord Apollo, King of the Sun.” He hoped this meant no disrespect to her deityship.

He lifted the next two items and presented them lovingly to her.

“This thorn-bush is my thorn-bush; this dog, my dog...”

[Since much of this original scene is so over-the-top, I wanted something particularly silly, here. I've transposed Brown's crown, stars and sun to the boxers Tr'iTone wears instead of Mal'akh's loincloth, but the lantern was the ignition for Shakespeare's Wall from the rustics' play in the final act of “A Midsummer Night's Dream.”]

Then he reverently picked up the vellum on which an ancient monk had written in simple notation – very old, using a three-line staff – the chant for the DIES IRAE, the “Day of Wrath” from the Requiem liturgy for the Mass of the Dead that had been, for centuries, associated with the sounds of evil. After kissing it three times, he held it to his forehead and chanted the text's three lines in Latin, moving his lips as he recited it in his mind.

Dies irae! Dies illa
Solvet saeclum in favilla,
Teste David cum Sibylla.

Day of wrath, that day
Dissolves the world in ashes,
So spoke David and the Sibyl.

Then he rolled up the small piece of vellum like a spring roll and held it over the flame of the center candle, allowing it to burn into ashes – favilla: ashes of the dead, still glowing like embers – and he now placed the china plate in the center of the table.

Julia Child, he thought, eat your heart out!

With a small branch he'd broken off from the rose bush, he scraped the ashes into the golden bowl, then poured in Robertson Sullivan's blood, mixing them gently with the sprig of rose. The resultant mixture was a thick, black ink that he would use when he'd take the pen – (ah, the pen) – to inscribe the one remaining chord on the remaining space of bare flesh on his body – the very top of his head – long reserved for a very special chord that would make him complete.

That special chord was “The Lost Chord.” Possessing it would make him Master of the Composers' Universe.

[Instead of Mal'akh's Masonic symbols, Tr'iTone covers his body in tattoos of chords taken from Elliott Carter's “Harmony Book” and so becomes a walking compendium of thousands of possible pitch combinations. Elliott Carter himself becomes a character in the next scene of “The Lost Chord.”]

He held the bowl up before him, three times aloft to the heavens before the painting of Sarasvati, held it against the top of his head for thirty seconds while three times chanting

Holy Triad,
Mighty Trichord,
Immortal Ternary Form.
Find me worthy...

[This is taken from the Russian Orthodox prayer, the Trisagion: Holy God, Holy Mighty-One, Holy Immortal-One, Have mercy on me...]

Three, another sacred number found in most religions. The Trinity.

Three, the number of sharps in A Major, the number of flats in E-flat Major.

A and E-flat.

Together, they formed the interval of three whole steps – a tritone.

DIABOLUS IN MUSICA, he intoned with a roaring, indeed even diabolical laugh, and set down the bowl with a smile.

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

In this last bit, Tr'iTone's prayer, a Triad is a three-note chord based on major and minor thirds used in tonal music; a Trichord is a chord made from three pitches not all based on intervals of the third which would not create a consonant triadic sound or a traditionally tonal function; Ternary Form – usually diagrammed A-B-A – is the basis for the structure of much classical music, based on the premise of Statement – Digression – Restatement which is also the foundation of Sonata Form's Exposition – Development – Recapitulation.

The notes A and E-flat have already appeared as a clue. While pitches can be turned into letters to spell words and names (a key ingredient in “The Schoenberg Code”) and E-flat is “S” in German (as B-natural is “H”), these two pitches spell out the monogram for Arnold Schoenberg who also figures prominently in other clues in “The Lost Chord.” For many, Schoenberg is the Great Bugbear of the 20th Century, an appropriate Diabolus in musica.

And so there you have the first excerpt to be posted from “The Lost Chord.”

More (much more) to come... eventually.

- Dr. Dick

Odds & Ends: Kizhe, the Devil & 'The Lost Chord'

This weekend, the Harrisburg Symphony is performing a program with four works on it – I've blogged about three of them over at the Harrisburg Symphony Blog, here (“The Sorcerer's Apprentice,” Prokofiev's “Lt. Kizhe” complete with a link to the entire 1934 film the suite is taken from, and Bernstein's suite from the film, “On the Waterfront”).

The other work on the program, Richard Strauss' tone poem, “Death and Transfiguration,” is included in this post.

Back in the late-'80s, when I worked for the Harrisburg Symphony as Assistant Conductor and Orchestra Manager, conductor Larry Newland had initially proposed Christopher Rouse's The Infernal Machine, Strauss' Death and Transfiguration and Dukas' Sorcerer's Apprentice for the same concert. Of course, I, never a fan of your typical marketing slogans, blurted out "Great: Rouse, Strauss and Mickey Mouse!"

I was later told that was NOT the real reason the program was changed - the Rouse was done in January, 1988, the Dukas the following season, in November, 1989, and the Strauss was either dropped or moved to a season after I'd quit and was no longer keeping records of their repertoire. Spoilsports...

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

Meanwhile, I'm working on a climactic scene (or at least the dramatic turning-point scene) of “The Lost Chord,” having just introduced composer Elliott Carter as a character helping the hero and his team-mates on their quest to solve the ancient mysteries also being sought by both the villain, Tr'iTone (a.k.a. composer Iobba Dhabbodhú), and the Chief of Security for the International Composers Alliance (who seems a bit villainous at times), Yoda Leahy-Hu.

Recent characters added to the cast list include code-cracker Haydn Plainview, police detectives Heidi Ho and two of her former colleagues on the NYPD Vice Squad, DePuis LeJour (called “Toots” when she's working) and Wanda Menveaux (think the famous aria from Massanet's Louise and, for the other, Musetta's Waltz with its opening line, “Quando m'en vo” - Whenever I walk alone on the street, men turn and look at me - not The Girl from Ipanema but from Puccini's La Boheme), plus Emil Tesoro y Tonto and his partner Dolly-Sue Apache (think of Don Ottavio's arias in Mozart's Don Giovanni).

There's also a brief appearance by the thief who stole Buzz Blogster's coat (bugged with a GPS unit by the ICA agent Kay Gelida Manina): Damien Johnson is a known thief around Lincoln Center and Carnegie Hall, having recently stolen four basses from musicians in the area in one night. Since the story takes place on November 4th, the night the Yankees defeated the Phillies to win the 2009 World Series, I should point out that Johnny Damon had stolen four bases during the series' 4th game a few nights earlier.

And now I've started Chapter 25 as I continue re-reading my way through Thomas Mann's “Doctor Faustus,” the climactic chapter with composer Adrian Leverkühn's transcript of his dialogue with the Devil during which the plot's Faustian bargain is sealed. It's written in a pseudo-old-fashioned (one could even say “fustian”) style, Leverkühn imitating the delivery of an equally old-fashioned (and similarly fustian) former theology professor of his since it essentially parallels (if not parodies) the debate between the Devil and Martin Luther centuries before.

While, Schoenbergically speaking, this is going to be a tough row to hoe (or read), I admit I'm trying to think how I can use this in “The Lost Chord,” perhaps combining it with the chess game (which, admittedly, is with Death, not the Devil) from Bergman's “The Seventh Seal.” In this case, it would be during Tr'iTone's interrogation of Dr. Dick, which in addition will use my version of Abbott and Costello's “Who's on First” skit regarding the whereabouts of Yoda Leahy-Hu.

Thinking more of the film “Lt. Kizhe” than just Prokofiev's delightful music for it - a commenter at the Symphony Blog sent me this link to the original film – perhaps I should also include an almost true incident back when I worked for the orchestra either as assistant conductor or later as the personnel manager. A close friend, Vikki Moore, who'd been the personnel manager before I took over the job, and I used to joke about how we could easily confuse the conductor by inadvertently creating a musician with a well-placed typo, then wondering if we'd be able to bring it off in true Kizhean fashion.

There had been a concert, once, when the program and its personnel page had to go to print before we had decided upon hiring several key musicians after a series of auditions. So rather than leaving them blank, I decided I should make up some names figuring, you know, who would notice... Since this was a special fund-raising concert, though, and the theme was “The Orient Express,” I decided to go into Agatha Christie's wonderful mystery, “Murder on the Orient Express” and select seven different names for those players not yet hired. There were actually some people in the audience who noticed this and commented on it. I felt so much better, then, thinking the time it had taken to execute the idea (so to speak) was worth the extra effort.

- Dr. Dick

Back to Looking for "The Lost Chord"

It's not that there hasn't been anything going on, it's just that I haven't felt much like writing about it. In the past two weeks, I've finished the song cycle, “The Other Side of Air,” and now I'm in the process of copying it (by hand – none of that fancy computer software only because I've never gotten around to it, mostly because in addition to purchasing it, I'd need to get a newer, faster, bigger, better computer, none of which is in the budget, right now). And after I put up the “The End” sign on the songs, I got back into my musical parody of Dan Brown's “The Lost Symbol” which I call “The Lost Chord.” That doesn't mean it's a musical: it's just a parody of the story told from a musical perspective.

November was “National Novel Writing Month” and so I took the challenge to write 50,000 words in a month and wrote 64,038 words by the end of the month. Because I was nearing in on a climactic scene (but still not half-way through my outline of Brown's story), I kept going for a few more days till I'd done almost 70,000 words. Then I stopped.

Actually, during November, I did no composing: all my “creative” time was spent on the would-be novel. I didn't think I could do a whole parody in 50,000 – though “The Schoenberg Code” was more like 45,000 without even trying – but I had hoped I could get closer to the end than “not quite half-way through.” During December and January, I went back and did a little editing and threw out lots of words. I toyed around with outlines for a couple of scenes but the biggest problem, as the story progressed, was coming up with something that would be the equivalent of the seemingly impenetrable puzzle that Brown's hero, Robert Langdon, has to solve.

There was no sense even starting work on it without knowing what the equivalent of this clue or that character would be, but I had left the biggest issues for later, hoping they would fall in line along the way. Talk about “trusting in inspiration.” And certain smaller ideas have come up only to be solved in just that way. Implementing some of them is another matter.

If you haven't read Dan Brown's novel – and there are a lot less of you than read “The Da Vinci Code” – it won't make a lot of sense. That's how parodies work.

I knew my setting would be Lincoln Center rather than Washington D.C.'s Capitol complex and I knew (like Dan Brown's characters who are obsessing on the Washington Redskin's game the night everything takes place) it would take place the night of the final World Series game when the Yankees beat the Phillies, the perfect sports-obsessing equivalent. Curiously, when I started writing on November 1st, the Series had only just started so I waited a few days before filling in any of the details about things like the day of the week or what else may have been going on that was “day specific.” If the Yankees had lost, it would put a damper on the ending, I guess, but since most of the action takes place during the game, a lot of stuff goes unnoticed because everybody is wrapped up in the anticipation either watching the game or wishing they could be: this could be the night the Yankees win or the Phillies pull one out of the fire to prolong it.

A month later, the next scene I needed to write was a major climactic one, but not one that was an equivalent of anything in the original. Once I knew the story would take place on November 4th, I checked to see what would be happening at the Met – Rossini's Barber of Seville. Not only was it a favorite opera of mine, it was a production I had even seen, thanks to their new HD transmissions into movie theaters around the world. And I knew, given the timing, I would need a chase scene of some kind – like the CIA agents tracking Robert Langdon through the Library of Congress – about the time the first act finale of Rossini's comedy would be taking place. So obviously, my equivalent of symbologist Robert Langdon – that would be me, or rather a parody of myself as the musical know-it-all, Dr. Dick – would end up on the stage of the Metropolitan Opera House (not in the way I had always dreamed it would be).

It would have been a very different scene if they were performing Janáček's "From the House of the Dead" that night...

(And why did I put myself into this story? Well, when I wrote “The Schoenberg Code,” it seemed a logical self-parody and, since many beginning writers write something autobiographical, masquerading their lives in fiction, it seemed somewhat logical to continue this into the sequel. It isn't so much that I'm stuck on myself but rather that I'm stuck with myself. Given my dull life and duller life-style, to say this is autobiographical is only mildly true: what is fictional is wildly untrue, and the wilder, the better.)

Since it had a been a couple of years since I'd seen the Met's production, I was delighted to discover, courtesy of YouTube, a clip of the very finale I was looking for. Unfortunately it's since been taken down for copyright infringement (ooops). But at the time, it helped me place my scene-within-a-scene in what would also become a parody of the climax of the Marx Brothers film, “A Night at the Opera” (which I'd also found on YouTube and which has also been removed for similar transgressions).

Now, hearing the opera and seeing the scene was not the same as translating it into written words that are to be read. I had to give the reader enough visuals for it to make sense and for it to be funny. Just to say “it was a funny scene” was not enough.

And because I knew this would take a few days to work out – even though I could've just sketched it in and barreled on ahead, coming back to fill in the details later – I ended up putting it aside. I stopped writing just as Dr. Dick and his two fellow-fugitives found themselves, unbelievably, arriving in the middle of the stage, the elevator they'd taken from the sub-basement scene shop turning into the freight elevator that delivers the sets onto the stage. Ooops.

So when I came back to pick up where I'd left off three months ago, the video clips of both the Rossini and the Marx Brothers had disappeared. Since my inspiration from Harpo Marx's backstage antics during “Il Trovatore” was only in spirit, not a literal parody, this didn't really matter, though I enjoyed the laugh whenever I saw it and a good laugh is like good medicine.

As rapid-fire as the action was, it took several days for it to take shape.

Dr. Dick (a.k.a. Brown's Robert Langdon) has been abducted from the seemingly evil clutches of Security Chief Yoda Leahy-Hu (a.k.a. Brown's Inoue Sato) of the International Composers Alliance (a.k.a. the CIA) by an architect working on the Lincoln Center renovations named V.C. D'Arcy (a.k.a. Brown's Warren Bellamy, Architect of the Capitol). As they try to escape through the scene shop in the Met's basement, they are joined by LauraLynn Hardy Sullivan (a.k.a. Brown's Katherine Solomon), sister of Robertson Hope Sullivan (a.k.a. Brown's Peter Solomon) who's had his ear (a.k.a. Brown's hand – well, Peter Solomon's hand, not Brown's hand) cut off and who is herself trying to escape from her brother's captor, Tr'iTone (a.k.a. Brown's Mal'akh), the villain who is disguised at this point as Dr. Iobba Dhabbodhú (a.k.a. Brown's Christopher Abbadon). And so on.

They are being chased by three special agents from the ICA named Kay Gelida Manina, Oona Furtiva-Lagrima and Edie van Sierre. Like the architect, their names are all puns on famous arias: V.C. D'Arcy is “Vissi d'arte” from Puccini's Tosca; Kay Gelida Manina is “Che gelida manina” from Puccini's La Boheme; Oona Furtiva-Lagrima is from Donizetti's Elixir of Love; and Edie van Sierre is the line “e di pensier” that concludes “La donna é mobile” from Verdi's Rigoletto (and famously parodied on-line in the translation “Elephants, yeah!”).

While these agents are clad in skin-tight black body-suits like characters in a futuristic spy thriller or computer game, I've even made reference to their suits as the equivalent of the “little black dress” which caused famous soprano Deborah Voigt to be fired from a production of an opera because she would not fit into the “little black dress” that had been designed for that character. So, here, another agent, reassigned to a desk job because her weight gain meant she could no longer wear the regulation “little black body suit” was named Aïda Lott. (She will re-appear, quite transformed, at the end of the story.)

Many of my other characters' names also are based on musical terms, expressions or aria titles. In addition to people like Tom LeVay and P.K. Arabesk (from the ballet steps, temps levé and piqué arabesque), I am still trying to work in someone named Alice Vergenglikke, from the German “Alles vergängliche” – all things are transitory – a famous line from Goethe's Faust. I suspect she will be a temp...

There is also Lohimar May – from the medieval song, “L'homme armé” – who will become a famous musicologist specializing in early music and the inventor of the game “Where's Gesualdo?” (This last name was reworked from a suggestion by Facebook friend Steve Gregoropoulos who'd come up with something similar.)

After Dr. Dick and company find themselves in the middle of “Freddo ed immobile” (the ensemble starting “frozen and immobile like a statue,” not “Fred's in Mobile”), they see this wagon loaded with pumpkins (part of the actual Met production) being prepared to be brought on-stage. So they begin marching sideways, heel-to-toe then toe-to-heel, crab-like across the stage, the rest of their bodies not moving and taking up position behind a bunch of soldiers lined up on the opposite side of the stage. Confusion continues to mount when Almaviva and Figaro see the three black-clad secret agents with machine guns poised across their chests standing behind the wagon.

As the ensemble builds into its rapid-fire confusion (“my head is banging like it's being hammered on an anvil”), Agent Furtiva-Lagrima sees something hanging over them that's beginning to move – a large anvil that is supposed to descend slowly until it crushes the wagon. However, Agent van Sierre shouts and steps back, firing at the anvil, cutting one of its cables. Swinging dangerously by one cable, it now falls precipitously, destroying the wagon and smashing the pumpkins. The agents then slip and fall into what would have made an immense pumpkin pie, unable to apprehend the three fugitives before they escape backstage with the help of tenor Barry Banks (who actually was singing Almaviva that night) and one of the supers in the group of soldiers named Wyatt Zittipiano (later in the opera there is a whispered trio, “Zitti zitti, piano piano” - Quiet quiet, softly softly – and Wyatt = Quiet, get it?) after Banks recommends they hide in his out-of-the-way dressing room. Meanwhile, the rest of the soldiers do mock-skirmish with the three ICA agents during the bows – to great audience approval.

From there, it seemed logical to parody another scene from “A Night at the Opera,” the famous “crowded cabin scene” on board the ship where Groucho Marx is hiding with Chico and Harpo (who is sound asleep). One by one, various maids, a manicurist, a tourist looking for her aunt, two electricians and finally three waiters with trays of food all squeeze into this tiny little room. Then along comes the indefatigable Margaret Dumont as the matronly Mrs. Claypool who opens the door and everybody spills out into the hallway.

Meanwhile, back at “The Lost Chord,” Architect D'Arcy has gone off (as Bellamy had in Brown's novel) to be apprehended by the ICA as a decoy. LauraLynn and Dr. Dick run into usher Nandi Abbott, a diminutive and otherwise unassuming woman who's blocked their way but was sent off on a wild goose chase when Wyatt Zittipiano told her about the three armed intruders. He says “they don't call her 'Killer' Abbott for nothing.”

(Now, “Nandi” is the name of the White Bull who is the gatekeeper for the Hindu god Siva. Nandi is also the Tamil word for someone who blocks your path. 'Killer' Abbott refers to the killer rabbit in the scene from “Monty Python and the Holy Grail” with Tim the Enchanter and the harmless-looking rabbit who, in actuality, has nasty big pointy teeth.)

Once in the dressing room, Zittipiano tells them not to let anyone else in. So naturally, while they're trying to figure out an important clue, people start knocking at the door. First, it's the tenor, Barry Banks, coming back to enjoy the intermission break in his dressing room. Someone from Costumes arrives with Banks' 2nd Act disguise as the young music master, and just as Dr. Dick asks him what the password is, Banks asks LauraLynn if she'd like to join him for dinner afterwards. “I could really go for some swordfish.” Then Dr. Dick lets Guido in with the costume.

(There is another famous scene – from “Horse Feathers” – where Groucho is trying to get into a room but Chico won't let him enter unless he says the password. After much questioning, Chico says “you can't come in here unless you say 'Swordfish'...”)

This is followed by two people from Make-Up, one of them named Kensington Gore (which is the stock name for fake blood used in the theater), an electrician and later his burly assistant, a girl hoping to get an autograph from Juan-Diego Flórez (who was not singing Almaviva that night), two interior decorators sent to do a make-over of Mr. Banks otherwise shabby little dressing room (“could you make it look a little bigger?”) and then three guys from the Met commissary with trays of food.

Meanwhile, LauraLynn is trying to open a small box that has one of the major clues in it but she is constantly being interrupted by more and more arrivals.

When Dr. Dick realizes someone has left the door open – shouting “Mind that door!” (from Act II of Britten's Peter Grimes) – he ends up body-surfing over the crowd (as the sleeping Harpo did in the original scene) just as someone pulls the door shut. At that moment, Nandi Abbott has returned, irate that Mr. Banks has broken the rules about guests in the dressing room, accompanied by one of the ICA agents. When she yanks the door open, guests cascade out into the hallway and Barry Banks, disguised as a disheveled young music teacher, clambers out over them in time for the three-minute warning. When the ICA agent looks into the room, there is no sign of Dr. Dick or LauraLynn Sullivan.

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There is an earlier scene that is not found or even suggested by anything in Dan Brown's original novel and it includes a recurring character from “The Schoenberg Code,” Dr. Dick's young assistant, Buzz Blogster.

In Brown's novel, Katherine Solomon has an annoying trait where she's frequently brushing a stray wisp of hair back behind her ear. In “The Lost Chord,” this has been transferred to my Yoda-like take-off of Chief Inoue Sato, though it's always associated with her talking to Buzz as if it becomes some kind of sexual nuance.

While I first introduced Security Chief Yoda Leahy-Hu speaking very much as Yoda did in “Star Wars,” I quickly decided to drop it as it became not only difficult to do but tiresome and distracting to read. More recently, however, she's taken on other characteristics as I find myself imagining the part played in the movie-version by Linda Hunt, or actually more like the character she plays on “NCIS: Los Angeles,” Hetty Lange.

The problem with Buzz, though, was what to do with him once the action of the plot started. When V.C. D'Arcy abducts our hero in the sub-basement level of Lincoln Center, there is no room to include a side-kick. Since he was now in the hands of the ICA Director of Security, it seemed logical he should be interrogated – but another question was “where?” Given the renovations going on at Lincoln Center, the Security Offices were currently (fictionally or actually, I have no idea) housed in a construction trailer in the underground area not far from the 62nd Street entrance. Since there wouldn't really be room for an interrogation room there, Leahy-Hu commandeers the men's room.

Now that I'm this far into it – and some 71,000 words total, at this point – I should just start posting it. Yet I'm only half-way through Brown's story. I estimate his novel to be about 230,000 words which would make mine, if the proportions hold out, to be about 2/3rds the length of the original – in fact, it would put it within the Golden Ratio: the Golden Section of c.230k is c.142k and uhm... double the words I've written up to the half-way mark would make it a total of c.142,000 words. Hmmm...

Well, anyway, I've got to get back to work. Two things must happen in the next scene: the equivalent of Brown's pyramid and capstone are to be reunited – in my case, it's a headless bobble-head doll of Mozart with the head in a separate and long separated container (plus there's also an old Seth Thomas metronome which looks a bit like a pyramid minus its capstone, though I haven't quite figured out how this really functions in the overall plot) – which will reveal further clues, including one leading them to another clue in the equivalent of Brown's use of Albrecht Dürer's 1514 “Melancholia” which I've figured will be found in Schoenberg's 1934 essay, “Problems of Harmony.” Not sure how that's going to happen.

Most of the details have already been worked out, as I've outlined Brown's story chapter-by-chapter (all 135 of them). But some of them still need clearer resolution and that's why I don't want to start posting the chapters I've already written, like a serial-novel-in-progress: I may need to go back and change some things as new details and possible solutions evolve. And then there's always the editing process, anyway.

Right now, I just want to write and get it down in a rough draft.

Meanwhile, I have officially been diagnosed with Spring Fever. I think another walk is in order, after four days of 60° weather. It's cloudier today with more clouds and some rain in the forecast through next Tuesday, so I think I'll go enjoy it while I can. One always hopes there's plenty of time to work, later...

- Dr. Dick

Schubert, Leverkühn & Me

Today was a blogging day: though I'd recently completed the last of the songs – “To Music” – for the cycle of seven songs about inspiration called “The Other Side of Air” and should be copying it instead, I ended up writing three posts today about Schubert's “Great C Major” Symphony over at the Harrisburg Symphony Blog:

Part 1 includes video footage of Karl Böhm conducting the Vienna Philharmonic in 1973 of the entire symphony in eight installments (clocking in at 51 minutes) – not my ideal performance, if I have one, but what I could find complete, courtesy of YouTube.

Part 2 covers some of the historical background of the symphony, how it fits in with the history of the form and with Schubert's development as a writer of symphonies.

Part 3 explores more personal issues around the composition of the Great C Major and Schubert's quest for a new, expanded musical language and sense of structure.

This is actually a continuation of a post written last week about Schubert's D Minor String Quartet, “The Death and the Maiden,” which became more tied in with the “Great C Major” posts than I was originally anticipating. In a sense, all four of them constitute something of a cycle.

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Recently, I picked up my copy of Thomas Mann's “Doctor Faustus” again, a novel about a fictional composer supposedly modeled on Arnold Schoenberg, not at all to Schoenberg's liking, especially as the composer in question, Adrian Leverkühn, invented a system of composing very similar to Schoenberg's Method with 12 Tones but whose genius is also considered to be the result of syphilis and, if that weren't enough, a pact with the Devil.

The book is one of the greatest works in literature about compositional creativity and one of the few books by a non-musician that is not so totally cringe-worthy whenever it discusses the details of music, not that that didn't stop Schoenberg from pursuing a lawsuit against the author.

I'd first read it when I lived in New York City back in the late-70s, not a very good time for an insecure composer unsure of his future direction both aesthetically and professionally to be contemplating such a tale. It was difficult reading on any number of levels, not the least because much of my best reading time was on the subway: I had read much of Mann's “Magic Mountain” on the subway, too, and speaking of not good times to be reading something, found myself turning the page to start the climactic scene of Tolstoy's “Anna Karenina” while standing at the 101st Street Subway Station of the Broadway downtown train...

Once again, sometime in the early-90s, I thought I'd try reading it again but this time got bogged down in the turgid translation's style, the famous debate between the composer and the Devil (part of this is Mann's fault: he imagines it being written down by the composer as a parody of Martin Luther's didactic theological style). So I put it aside.

Then, in 1997, I bought the well-reviewed new translation by John E. Woods. It was becoming quite the thing to bring out new translations to replace the traditional (and often only) ones available to English readers of both Mann and the Russian writers like Tolstoy and Dostoievsky. In fact, over the past 12 years or so, I found myself collecting the new Pevear and Volokonsky translations of most of the Russian novels I'd already read, mostly in Constance Garnett's standard translations. Suddenly it dawned on me that the reason I could never tell the difference between Tolstoy's style and Dostoievsky's style was that Constance Garnett couldn't either: in fact, what I was reading was her style, not theirs.

Typical of my habits, I've purchased them as they came out but not necessarily read them, yet: “War and Peace,” yes (see my earlier post here about that experience), and Dostoievsky's “The Idiot” but not, so far, the others.

Also sitting on that “to-read (someday) pile” was Wood's translation of “Doctor Faustus.” I had gotten about 80 pages into it a few years ago and, for some reason, probably coinciding with a time I was trying to do some writing of my own, I put it aside.

So the other week, I saw it sitting there, again, its buttery gold cover making it look like an old parchment manuscript, inviting me into its parallel universe once again. I picked up where I left off and covered episodes I recalled as clearly as if I'd read them only months ago, not years – or, actually, decades ago, come to think of it.

One of my favorite passages is the long concert-lecture the young composer and his friend the narrator attend in their small, largely unmusical hometown, Kretzschmar's talk about Beethoven's Piano Sonata in C Minor, Op.111. Not too many summers ago, when I was doing a Gretna Music pre-concert talk for Jeremy Denk's performance of this work – paired wonderfully with Charles Ives' equally monumental “Emerson” Sonata – I didn't bother preparing my usual behind-the-scenes in-depth remarks: I simply read most of Thomas Mann's account of the work. It was one of the few times I can recall having everybody's attention...

Well, at any rate, the other night, I resumed reading after a few days' hiatus and found this passage near the beginning of Chapter XXI, following a letter from the composer, Adrian Leverkühn, about his enthusiasm for Chopin (I am reminded that next week is the 200th Anniversary of Chopin's birth) and about...

- - - - - - -
“...the conservatism of his mode of life, which often looked like rigidity and could appear somewhat oppressive to me. It was not for nothing that in his letter he had expressed sympathy for Chopin's not-wanting-to-know, his unadventuresomeness. He, too, wanted to know nothing, see nothing, indeed experience nothing, at least not in the manifest, external sense of the word; he was not interested in variety, new sense impressions, amusement, relaxation – and particularly when it came to relaxation, he like to make fun of people who are constantly relaxing, getting tanned and strong, though no one knows for what. 'Relaxation,' he said, 'is for people for whom it does no good.' He had little use for traveling in order to see something, absorb a new experience, 'educate' himself. He disdained pleasures of the eye and as sensitive as his hearing was, he had always had almost no desire to school his eye to forms in the visual arts. He approved of the differentiation made between eye-people and ear-people, claimed it to be incontrovertible, and counted himself definitely among the latter... True, Goethe also says that music is totally inborn, something within that needs no great nourishment from without, no experience drawn from life. But there is also an interior sight, a sense of vision that is different from and includes more than mere seeing.”
(... Thomas Mann: Doctor Faustus – translation by James E. Woods, published by Alfred A. Knopf, New York, 1997 – p.188.)
- - - - -

It surprised me to read this: it was like reading an encapsulated description of myself.

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For me, at the moment, I am immersing myself in Schubert, not Chopin. Last week, as I wrote earlier, I was writing one of my up-close and personal posts (see also, here) posts, this one setting up Brooklyn Rider's impending performance of Schubert's String Quartet in D Minor, the “Death and the Maiden” Quartet. This week, it's been Schubert's final symphony, the “Great C Major” Symphony for this weekend's concerts with the Harrisburg Symphony. Rather than experiencing adventures and travels, I have been quite content to burrow into scores and biographies, cross-referencing dates and chronologies, placing compositions in context and in general ignoring the weather (among other realities) to consider imponderable issues like “where did Schubert's 'late-style' come from?”

How did a composer who could write such original and innovative songs like “Gretchen am Spinnrade” and “The Erl-King” when he was a teen-ager write such pleasant but derivative symphonies like his 5th and 6th Symphonies by the time he was 21, only to write four years later the B Minor Symphony we know as the “Unfinished”? And how could he not recognize the magnitude of what he'd accomplished and just put the work aside when the 3rd movement he'd started wasn't going in the right direction? How did all this lead to 'The Great C Major' only three years later? Never mind what else he might have written if hadn't died a two months short of his 32nd birthday after completing the String Quintet in C and the last three piano sonatas in a little over two months?

In between these two great symphonies – the only two of all he had started that have entered the repertoire as avowed masterpieces – he wrote the “Death and the Maiden” Quartet, part of a project, that spring of 1824, to evolve a more expansive style and write a 'grand symphony,' something on a larger scale than anyone (except Beethoven) had ever done before. Beethoven, a composer who Schubert thought, writing in his diary when he was 18, was so full of eccentricities as to be unnatural. What made him change his mind?

Here was a composer going through a “style change,” putting his youthful endeavors behind him and taking on the fearsome work of reinventing himself – and Schubert, one of the most insecure composers among the pantheon of great composers, dealing with the Unknown by plodding along, unaware he had created some of the greatest music ever composed (at least in my opinion) but never being deterred by the fact so few others even knew he existed. Wouldn't someone who'd be considered more... what, normal? - just have chucked it all or decided to write what people wanted in order to gain some acceptance, some recognition? Some form of income or at least acknowledgment to validate what he was doing?

In that sense – insecurity, yearning for validation and perhaps a thousand other fears – I identify with Schubert as well, though I am nearly twice his age, now, and have accomplished the tiniest fraction of what he composed in his short life, if one weighs it by mere quantity, never mind the quality.

No, I don't yearn to “write like Schubert” or even adopt his creative aesthetic, though his concept of reinventing himself, somehow, intrigues me, translated to my own style and times.

That is also what lies behind a lot of what I am reading, now, in Mann's “Faustus,” how this late-blooming composer is working to invent himself to make the transition from a young to a mature composer. At my age, of course, that's a little late, but then I had two decades where I did almost no composing and, worse, little thinking about composing. So I have a lot to get caught up with, which is why I normally describe myself as a “recovering composer.” It takes a lot of work and I'm still not sure I have it in me, much less the talent, to work my way through to the other side.

(I should also point out, unlike both Schubert and Leverkühn, I am not, to my knowledge, suffering from syphilis... Just thought I'd mention that.)

Yesterday, I read a bit of advice for would-be writers posted at the Guardian, the English newspaper's website, where Colm Tóibín suggests “if you have to read [something], cheer yourself up read[ing] biographies of writers who went insane.”

Right before that, he writes “Work in the morning, a short break for lunch, work in the afternoon and then watch the six o'clock news and then go back to work until bed-time. Before bed, listen to Schubert, preferably some songs.”

I just finished listening to one of Schubert's deliciously expansive piano sonatas, the one written before the last three. It's the Piano Sonata in G Major, D.874 – my recording, on the Sony label with Arkady Volodos. The little music-box of a trio in the 3rd Movement is enough to transport me beyond any world that includes Afghanistan, Sarah Palin or Health Care Reform in it. The last movement, if not the whole sonata, is one continuous smile. It is, however it was called into being, a small bit of magic that can be shared between a man who wrote it in 1826 and a man who is listening to it 184 years later.

But yes, tonight I think I will listen to some Schubert songs – probably not the end of “Die schöne Müllerin” (where the young lover commits suicide by drowning himself in the brook) or any of “Winterreise” (when I first heard “Der Leiermann,” the song cycle's desolate conclusion, I was so depressed I could barely function for days), but there are so many to choose from.

And then I will go back to reading about Adrian Leverkühn, Thomas Mann's would-be composer who invents his own original style, who will, eventually, die insane.

After all, what is a metaphor for?

- Dr. Dick

News from Haiti: One Month Later

This article – from an Episcopal Diocese on-line newsletter called EpiscopalLife Online – was posted last Friday, the one-month anniversary of the Earthquake in Haiti. Though I'd seen it then, I hadn't gotten around to posting it here along with other reports from Haiti in the month since the earthquake.

This photograph of Jeanne Pocius – for those of you new to these blog-posts here, a friend and former student of mine from the University of Connecticut – was taken by Eddy Alcindor of the Diocese of Haiti and shows her standing amidst a pile of retrieved music cases and instruments found in the rubble of the music school associated with the Cathedral Ste. Trinite in Port-au-Prince.

Mary Frances Schjonberg interviewed Jeanne for her article, speaking with her by phone from Port-au-Prince. After the February 5th Concert in BelAir (read a post here), members of the school's orchestra and the choral group Les petites chanteurs took part in a memorial service and concert on the 12th, in honor of those who had died in the quake. Another performance was going to take place the next day on the grounds of the cathedral's ruins. Given the extreme emergency of taking care of the survivors, the idea of rebuilding schools and churches at this time is impractical: with the rainy season on the way, housing is a major priority – living under a tarp is not the best way to be dealing with any impending hurricanes, in due season, either. Meanwhile, people try to find and salvage what they can: staying alive, however, is difficult enough.

Here, with more details than I'd posted before, is Jeanne's description of what happened on that day, a little over a month ago.

She was on the stage of the school's auditorium, the Salle Ste. Cecile (the main if not the only concert hall in the capital), getting ready for a jazz band rehearsal when the quake struck shortly before 5pm. She had just gotten up from the piano bench to pass out some sheet music when there was a “deep rumble.” At first, she thought the nearby construction work had caused the elementary school next door to collapse.

“Then the floor began bucking like an ocean in a hurricane. I remember shouting to the students to run. I sort of spun around in a circle, got down on my knees in the middle of the stage, put my head down and said 'OK, Lord, this is it. I am OK with that. You can take me home, thy will be done,' and I felt absolutely no fear.”

Then she tried getting out of the building, gathering up scared students along the way. She heard people walking on the auditorium's roof and found the director of the school, conductor Pere David Cesar, leading his staff to safety from their offices which had been on the 5th floor before the building collapsed. In another interview, considering how far they had fallen, he said they were surprised they were still alive.

Jeanne and four others helped lift a chunk of concrete off a child so the girl's father could pull her from the rubble. She had survived only because she had been cushioned by the body of one of the school's employees.

“I didn't lose control,” she continued, “until I got outside the gates and saw that the cathedral had collapsed.” She'd kept thinking they needed to get to the cathedral, then “everything would be okay, but it wasn't OK. Nothing was OK.”

Jeanne was injured – comparatively minor wounds, compared to what she saw around her – but she began to set up a makeshift field-hospital amidst the cathedral's ruins after scavenging up first-aid supplies and some over-the-counter pain killers. They were able to help about 300 people there, many with “absolutely heart-breaking injuries.” She improvised bandages from sanitary napkins and torn sheets just to cover peoples' wounds.

At the camp near College Ste. Pierre, not far from the cathedral where some 3,000 survivors continue to live, Jeanne has turned her attention to the children. She decided to start a school and as word got around she soon had about a hundred students gathering in a space that's about 25 square feet [sic – I suspect they mean “25 feet square”]. “It's been a little cacophonous,” she added with characteristic understatement.

At first, they just sang songs but eventually she was able to find paper and pens and crayons so the children could record “the stories of their lives and their survival.” One boy hoped his younger brother who'd died when their home collapsed was watching them from heaven. Another was hoping his family was looking for him: he didn't know if they'd survived.

Jeanne said “I am so proud of my students” from the music school. ”I have seen these young kids become adults overnight – some of them went out to [help] collect cadavers, they're helping clean the camp, they're helping me with the school.” The work they've been doing confirms her belief in “practical Christianity” as “[we] roll up our sleeves and get down to business. They're living their faith.”

In the past few days, Jeanne's had access to the internet and has posted some up-dates on Facebook and sent e-mails to her friends. Here are some of the links in the e-mail I'd received:

CNN's coverage of the “Haiti Concert for Hope” on February 5th.

A blog kept by Sister Sarah who'd been at Ste. Trinite before the quake: here, she's posted many before-and-after photos of the cathedral.

“...including this stonework divider to the right of the cathedral's altar.”

“This is what I saw when I exited the ruined school after the earthquake... and it broke my heart!”

An article in the Episcopal newsletter that talks about the refugee camps.

“A letter from our beloved Evecque (Bishop) Jean Zache Duracin.”

“Note the photos on the right of before/after”...the National Palace and the Cathedral Notre Dame “which is one block over from Holy Trinit, where I was teaching.”

(and these doctors didn't even arrive til after the worst injured had already died, still it describes a little of what I experienced the  night of and day after the quake...)

Battered Haitian Art shines through the devastation.

ABC News video, “Haiti's Orchestra Rises from the Rubble.”

“The beautiful mural that was behind the altar at Ste. Trinite.”

- Dr. Dick

Two World Premieres: One in NYC, Another in Harrisburg

Market Square Concerts' program this weekend will feature the world premiere of a brand new work by Lisa Bielawa called Graffiti dell'amante (roughly translated as "Sketches of the Lover") for voice and string quartet. You can hear a free open rehearsal of it on Saturday afternoon between 1:30 and 3:30 with the performance Saturday evening at 8pm, both at Market Square Church on the Square in downtown Harrisburg. She'll be performing it with the string quartet, Brooklyn Rider.

One of her blog posts from November describes some of the work behind its composition. The most recent post (to date) from Jan. 25th, 2010, announces the new work has a title but apparently isn't complete, yet. Of course, the premiere is February 20th, so there's plenty of time ;-)

Also on that program, recent works by Rider violinist Colin Jacobsen ("Achilles' Heel") and a composer associated with The Silk-Road Project, Uzbek composer Dmitri Yanov Yanovsky ("Lachrymosa") as well as Philip Glass' String Quartet No. 2 ("Company") and the chestnut on the program, Franz Schubert's "Death and the Maiden" Quartet.

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Here's a New York Times review that was posted yesterday of a recent world premiere, a woodwind quintet recently completed by Elliott Carter around the time of his 101st birthday.

Other recent works were also on the program: Retracing II (2009), Tre Duetti (2008-2009) and "Wind Rose" (2008). Elliott Carter celebrated his 100th birthday in December, 2008, with many premieres and performances during the course of that year, many of which he was able to attend!

As a friend on Facebook pointed out when he posted this review, "it's important to keep busy."

Meanwhile, I'm still schlogging away at the last of the songs for my song cycle, The Other Side of Air, the setting of Rilke's sonnet "To Music." I would not have thought it would take six weeks to work out six minutes of music, but it's proving a little more challenging to work things out just the way I want them. Still, that's moving right along, compared to the slowness of speed it's taken to finish other works of mine. But as I pointed out to another composer-friend on Facebook, since I have no project deadlines, the amount of time it takes to compose a piece expands to fill the time available and, at the moment, I have all the time in the world...

- Dr. Dick

Dancing the Snowpocalypso: The Blizzards of February

Considering Washington DC and Baltimore got 30” of snow, 16” of snow on my front porch (see right) doesn't seem like much. President Obama referred to it as "Snowmageddon" while others called it "Snowpocalypse."

Someone said we broke the record earlier this morning for "The Snowiest February," set back in 1893. I don't remember that one... but I think I will remember this one. The second storm in four days started last night and I just checked: so far, 13" and it's not supposed to stop until this evening.

Having a next-door neighbor who cleared my driveway with his snow-blower (which I've nicknamed “Moses,” for its parting of the White Sea) certainly helped ease the impact of the first storm. I had nothing to go to over the weekend so the idea of sitting snuggly in my living room, wrapped in cats and listening to the Met broadcast of Verdi's “Simon Boccanegra” was a pleasant use of my time (fortunately, I hadn't planned on schlogging my way out to the local movie palace to see their HD transmission of the opera).

Looking out at the back yard (see left), watching the birds coming in to the feeder, was refreshing, reminding me how beautiful a snow scene can be - as long as I didn't have to go to work in it or deal with a concert. It's unfortunate that Market Square Concerts' CD Release Party with cellist Zuill Bailey scheduled for tonight has been postponed - driving there would've been one thing, parking in-town quite another. But as this storm is developing, I have no qualms in saying "Sorry, I'm not leaving my house"...

It's not that the northeastern part of the United States isn't used to the occasional big snow storms.

When I was going to grad school in Rochester, NY, famous (along with Buffalo) for heavy snowfalls mostly from “Lake Effect Snow” which people usually pronounce as if it's not “real snow” despite the fact it still has to be shoveled, we joked about the region's two seasons: Winter and the 4th of July. We got 14” of snow one day then had a day where the high was in the mid-40s so much of it would melt, followed the next day by another foot of snow. I remember being able to figure out how cold it was as I left my apartment for my eight block walk into the school: if I had to zip up my coat, it was 10° or less. If my mustache froze by the time I reached the Chinese Restaurant half way to school, it was probably 0°. One morning, my mustache froze as I stepped off my porch: it was -8° when I passed the time-and-temperature clock a block from the school. Yet somehow you get used to this, after a while.

Another great storm was one in February 1978 when I was teaching at the University of Connecticut. This was the blizzard that collapsed the roof of the relatively new Coliseum in downtown Hartford just a few hours after a UConn basketball game, there. I remember huddling in one room of the apartment with my roommate (so we could conserve heat if we'd lose power) listening to the howling wind all night. One of the movies we watched on TV was something called "Bug," one of the worst films I've ever seen, about incendiary cockroaches attacking California. This storm was the first time they actually closed the campus and suspended all classes: in 15 minutes, the grocery store near the Fine Arts buildings was sold out of beer. When I finally got in to my office, the snow had drifted so high the two-story Fine Arts Building looked like a single story. My office window on the first floor was completely blocked by snow for about a week. I remember sleeping there for 3 nights to avoid the roads: talk about cabin fever...

And it's not like we haven't gotten hit by successive storms in the past, here, either.

The (in)famous Winter of 1996 saw numerous storms waving across the mid-state – the first storm had almost 2' feet of snow and was followed a few days later by a storm that measured around a foot, as I recall. But then successive Wednesdays saw weekly blizzards until by January 20th or so we'd gotten about 80” in total snowfall. There was no place to put the snow when you tried to shovel your car out or clear your sidewalk. I would sit in my living room and watch hats struggle past because that was all you could see: the sidewalk, so narrow you had to walk sideways to get through, was like a trench cut five or six feet into the snow.

And that was before the January Thaw. It could've been just another blizzard but it was so mild, it was just rain. Lots of rain, enough to cause one of the worst floods in Harrisburg since Hurricane Agnes in 1972. Part of the old iron trestle bridge (the Walnut Street Bridge, known since before my childhood days as “Old Shaky”) crinkled into a heap of scrap metal in a matter of minutes from the pressure of the ice-jam, lodging itself under the stone span of the Market Street Bridge a block below.

In 1994 there had been a pair of storms in January – one, around Martin Luther King Day and the next a few days later. I remember these because N's father had died that Sunday and it had already started to snow when we were called to the hospital. The next storm hit the night before the funeral and the only reason I was able to make it was because a neighbor with a 4-wheel drive vehicle got a snow-day at work. The roads, however, were impassable and we were unable to get to the cemetery, It was also bitterly cold – the coldest temperatures ever recorded here coincided with these storms: several nights of subzero readings bottomed out at -22°.

There was a President's Day Storm in 1979 – blame Carter – which dumped 20” of snow in Harrisburg. I was living in New York City at the time where we had something similar, bringing the whole city to a complete standstill. As I recall, even the subways were closed. Another President's Day Storm in 2003 – blame Bush – dropped almost 27” on parts of the mid-state over a period of three days.

Curiously, I have no real recollection of this one.

There's one memory I can't match to a storm, maybe one of the mid'90s ones. The Sunday evening engineer got stuck overnight at the radio station and pulled a 24-hour air-shift until I was able to get in to relieve him (I have no idea why they couldn't get someone else in before then). A non-music person, he had to deal with almost a whole day's worth of classical music announcing, trying to pronounce names he had never seen before. I was finally able to get out of my house and into the station by 2pm, taking the board until 1 or 2am after he'd been rested up and took the overnight shift until the next day's crew was able to get back on schedule. That may well be why I don't remember much of that storm...

Hmmm. President's Day is coming up next Monday – and I see there's a “chance of flurries” in the extended forecast.

I do remember a March snowstorm in 1993, the only big storm of the season, but it dumped some 20+” in Harrisburg. Penn Street, a quaint narrow one-lane alley with fashionable row homes in my neighborhood, was drifted shut from side to side: you could barely tell there were cars parked there, completely hidden by the drifts except for a little bump here and there and the occasional antenna poking out.

In 1983, with that Lincoln's Birthday Blizzard, I didn't have a car to worry about so, basically, I didn't have a care about how much snow there was: it was amazing and it was kind of fun. I was a good bit younger, then, too.

Ten years later, it took me several days till I could get my car dug out – back trouble – and in the 1996 storms, the only parking place I could find was four blocks away from my house. Not fun when you leave work at 1am. That spring, then, a garage just around the corner from my apartment became available and I was able to get it: no more walking four blocks at 1am after a blizzard! Right. So the first snow storm we had brought a snow plow down Penn Street and they piled it... right in front of my garage door! So I had to sheer away a freaping cliff of SEVEN FEET of snow to get my car out of the garage!

Next month, it will be 50 years since I first moved into this house with my parents. We had some bad storms that first winter, too, in 1960-61. I don't recall the number of inches for either of them, but there were two in fairly close succession. And drifting, too – my west-side neighbors are slightly higher than us on our little hill, and the snow would blow down from his driveway and cover ours. I recall his driveway being almost clear. Ours was so deep, once it was plowed, it was like looking down a canyon. You couldn't see the cars going up or down. Walking down for the mail reminded me of that great scene in “The Ten Commandments” when the Israelites crossed the Red Sea: I hoped I would make it back to the house before it would collapse...

Yesterday, before the storm and while the sun was still shining brightly on my snowy front yard, I saw five robins flying back and forth between the trees and my roof. They may have been a little early for Spring – I don't recall the earliest date I've seen robins, here – but sometimes there are robins wintering over in the mountains just a few miles north of us, here. They were gone soon. I hope they found a safe place to hang out till this is over.

There are icicles hanging from the edge of the roof: these are the ones outside my bedroom window (see left) looking east.

So now I'm listening to the moaning of the wind which kicked in around 9am – they're calling for wind gusts up to 40mph with the heaviest snow later this afternoon – and wondering if we'll get the 18-20” that's the upper range of today's prediction. On top of what's left of the last storm, that's more snow than I care to deal with, right now.

When I checked last night at 10:30, there was a mere 3” of new snow on that front porch post – I'd cleared off the old snow before it had begun snowing just after 4:00. This morning at 8:00, there was 7.5” on the post. But the second phase of this second storm – the new Low that is supposed to form off the coast and “explode” into a fierce Nor'Easter late this morning – hasn't begun yet.

Here is a photo taken at 11:30 looking along my front sidewalk toward the driveway (to the west). I'd shoveled most of that walk yesterday but now there's 13" of new snow on it and it's drifting. Uh huh...

Okay, it's not the end of the world and I'd rather deal with snow than with mudslides like Los Angeles or earthquakes like Haiti. As someone posted at Facebook – and don't get me started on their “new look” – “snow and adolescence are two things that will go away if you ignore them long enough.”

Did I just hear thunder? Yes - a friend in CT heard a report on the radio that the Mid-Atlantic was experiencing "thunder snow," something that used to be a rare occurrence but is becoming less so, these days. Still, if the banshees weren't enough, that's better than the Grim Shoveler...

39 days till Spring! See you then!

- Dr. Dick

Links About Friday's Concert in Haiti

Here are three links about Friday's concert with musicians from the Music School of Ste. Trinite performing in one of the most devastated areas of Port-au-Prince:

First, NPR's Weekend Edition aired this story on Saturday morning's program.

CNN posted this two-minute video about the concert on-line:
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This was posted by ABC-News:
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Jeanne Pocius has a state-side charity organization that collects instruments and music "accessories" - everything from sheet music to valve oil for trumpets - "a foundation dedicated to the development of disadvantaged persons through instrumental music programs." Now they are collecting donations for Haiti, everything from camping supplies to baby-wipes and, of course, financial contributions which will be sent directly to the school at Ste. Trinite.

I contacted one of the people Jeanne mentioned in her recent post at Facebook (and quoted in my previous Haiti post) about "Instrumental Change, Inc" or ICI Mark Schwartz wrote back:

'ICI is not just a “throw-together” built by amateurs, by the way. Marty Rooney is a trumpet student of Jeanne’s and an attorney, who is a senior partner with Curley and Curley in Boston. I am senior manager of a CPA firm and have been friends with Jeannie since our playing days together over twenty years ago (I now live in Arizona, but grew up in the Boston area). Bonnie Lowell, who lives in Connecticut and coordinates all of our public relations and website activities, sits on the boards of several major charitable institutions related to cancer treatment and research. Janet Anthony [whom I've mentioned several times regarding the Facebook pages about Ste. Trinite] is a world-class cellist and a professor at Lawrence University in Wisconsin. She has been the catalyst for many of the music-based efforts down in Haiti with which Jeanne became involved over the past few years.'

Tax-deductible donations can be sent c/o Mark Schwartz or Marty Rooney to:

INSTRUMENTAL CHANGE, INC
301 Newbury St, S-142
Danvers, MA 01923

They will then transfer the funds to a bank in Haiti where Jeanne can distribute them through the Episcopal diocese there and the school.

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“Life beats down and crushes the soul and art reminds you that you have one.” – Stella Adler

A Concert in Haiti - and an Update from Jeanne

While I'm getting ready to do a pre-concert talk here in Harrisburg for Concertante Friday evening about Schubert, Frank Bridge and Bruckner, I've been thinking a lot about my friend Jeanne Pocius (see photo, right) who was in Haiti getting ready for a rehearsal when the earthquake struck.

Mariano Vales, one of many musicians who's worked with the students at the Ste. Trinité Music School in Port-au-Prince, posted this item about a concert in Haiti this Friday at the “Friends of Ste. Trinité” Facebook page:

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The musicians from Sainte Trinité are preparing a concert for this Friday February 5th at 4pm at the Kay Nou center in Bel-Air. Kay Nou is a culture-sports center build by Viva Rio, a Brazilian NGO, and now it is hosting tents with thousands of displaced.

Our musicians were able to rescue some instruments from the school’s rubble, and the idea behind the concert is to bring hope to the displaced people living there and to re-launch OAS’s orchestra program for youths at risk. The concert is going to feature the string orchestra, the brass ensemble, and the Petit Chanteur.

President Preval and Minister Delatour are expected to attend, also Yele Haiti people. I will try to get there but it is not going to be easy. Please help spread the word, it is important to give media coverage to the event.

The coordinates for Kay Nou are:
Address: 67, Boulevard Jean Jacques Dessaline, Portail...... Saint Joseph, next to La Saline, Port au Prince
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Janet Anthony, a tireless supporter of the school there who teaches in Wisconsin and who's been indefatigable in keeping us informed about friends and loved ones in Haiti following the earthquake, posted this on Jeanne's Facebook page:

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Just spoke with Jeannie - she's fine!

She's in rehearsal right now (how cool is that!) ...There will be a concert with members of Holy Trinity on Friday at 4pm in BelAir, PAP.
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After talking with her sister by phone (finally - direct 1st-hand contact!), Jeanne posted this note on Facebook via Janet Anthony:

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Hi, Everybody:

just a short note to let you know I am alive in Haiti.... survived having the auditorium fall ON me during the earthquake (soft tissue damage and bad bruising to my head, my right arm and ribs, my legs), but am on the mend and starting to play trumpet again (couldn't for a couple of weeks -- hurt too much!).

Don't know when I'll be back in States, so please keep me (and all of us here in Haiti) in your thoughts and prayers.

Mark Schwartz and Bonnie Lowell and Marty Rooney are running Instrumental Change, Inc, while I'm here, so donations are VERY much appreciated and needed (especially tents and camping supplies and baby-wipes, since water is in short supply and the dust from the demolished and destroyed buildings is very much a factor -- just walking gets you very dirty very quickly).

Address for donations (tax-deductible):

INSTRUMENTAL CHANGE, INC
301 Newbury St, S-142
Danvers, MA 01923

I love and miss you all very much and don't know when I'll be able to get internet access again...

Blessings,
Jeanne
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Good news - and an address now to send donations to!

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According to Deacon Ormonde Plater, there is one mural left standing in the beautifully painted Cathedral of Ste. Trinité (see photograph, left), the Baptism of Christ. This is only one out of many in this outstanding building, once a UNESCO World Heritage Site. For more photographs of the incredible artwork in this cathedral, now mostly destroyed by the earthquake, go to this page.

This video was taken five days after the quake in the area of Kay Nou, the sports and cultural center built by Brazilians (where Friday's concert will take place) in the section of Port-au-Prince known as BelAir, a region described in this Wikipedia entry as “the most devastated area of Port-au-Prince after the 2010 Haitian Earthquake”.



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Jeanne is busy working with the brass players from Ste. Trinité for Friday's concert. Please send hopeful thoughts and prayers to Haiti during the concert (if you can't be there in person) which starts at 4pm EST. Let's hope this bit of good news – and video coverage from the concert – makes it onto the TV news programs and on-line!

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UPDATE: Jeanne posted this on Facebook this afternoon (2-04-2010)

"...donations can be sent to Bishop Jean Zache Duracin, Epsicopal Diocese of Haiti, Petion Ville, HAITI THANKS! Watch CNN Friday night for coverage of concert Friday afternoon (warning: I'm not in great shape playing wise, only started back yesterday, still have bruised ribs). Also interviewed today by NPR, will air on Saturday morning."
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(For earlier posts about the Earthquake in Haiti, begin here.)

- Dr. Dick