Performance & Composer's Diary

On 9/16/17 we had an afternoon of music I've composed and arranged. Jeff Poole of the Orange County Review, and a great photographer, was there in a private capacity and took these pics so unobtrusively I never noticed he was taking them. (Thanks, Jeff!)

Here's the music room with the 1923 Steinway where it all happened.

While people were gathering and getting their drinks, I played some of the piano pieces I wrote back in the late 80's and early 90's

Here's Karla, our hostess with the mostess, welcoming her guests.

The first number was Mosaic, dating from around '93 or '94, with Dr. Andy playing the lead on cello.

Then with Heather joining us on clarinet we did "Encumbrances of Angels", a poem by Dr. Andy's wife Janet I set to music sometime in the late 90's.

Here's Janet reading "My Tale", a poem of hers I set to music last year.

This pic shows Karla singing "My Tale" with Benjamin joining us on violin. 

I doubled Karla's vocal an octave down in the alto flute.

Lama Tashi was here from Arunachal Pradesh and we did the Mandala Offering and the Om Mani Peme Hung chant from Mantra Mountain, with Stephen joining us on cello.

From this pic it looks like I neglected to give Benjamin the music and he's having to look over on to Dr. Andy's music

Here's one section of the audience with top row from left to right my sister-in-law Carolyn, cousin John, his wife Kate, cousin Ada and cousin Wallace.

In this pic Heather, Andy and I are playing "explorations", a trio I wrote three or four years ago.

Here are Sage, Patrick and Benjamin playing Karlalied, which was written two years ago.

These three are all students at James Madison University and really fine players and here you can see them playing with a wonderful ensemble feel . . . 

. . .  and with marvelous expression

That feeling when you hear your music being played by others and you can just sit back and listen and hear them take it places you hadn't realized it could go.

Taking a well deserved bow

The last piece on the program was Mosaic again, but this time with Heather playing the lead and Dr. Andy playing an accompanying line I added just a few months ago

Recalibration

Thanks to Kyle Gann friending me on FaceBook, a lot of new music has come my way. I particularly like this one for two reasons. 

First, there's the marvelous slowness of it. I've always thought there was room for a lot more very slow music, and I even made a CD trying to fill that gap, but this piece is way slower than anything I can remember encountering, while not becoming boring. It has the effect on me of recalibrating my sense of time, getting me to realize I'm not as calm and relaxed as I'd like to be. While it's almost ambient, there's always the sense of meant structure (at least to me).

The other thing is that this piece recalibrates my ears. By the end of it, I feel my ears are hearing much more delicately than usual - that there's greater depth to the soft sounds than when the piece starts. It's as if my ears are relaxing along with my time sense.



Terry Jennings's 1960 piece for solo piano 'For Christine Jennings', played by John Tilbury. From the CD 'Lost Daylight', which features music for piano and electronics by Terry Jennings and John Cage. www.anothertimbre.com

Ingolf Wunder

This past Sunday afternoon I had the great good fortune to hear Ingolf Wunder perform over at Montpelier. The concert was arranged by Chopin in Barboursville.

Here is the program:

Mozart:

   Sonata in B-flat Major - KV 333

Chopin:

   Nocturne Op. 55/2

   Nocturne Op. 9/3

   Ballade No. 1

   Nocturne Op. 62/1

   Allegro de concert Op. 46

Liszt:

   Hexameron

It was one of the most extraordinary experiences of listening to music I've ever had. Mr. Wunder has the uncanny ability of bringing music to life in such a way that at every moment you feel the totality of the piece, while at the same time each detail is lovingly created. 

Over and over I had the sense he was feeling every note of the music within himself. Not once did I have the sensation, that I often get from classical musicians, that he was just getting through some notes played a thousand times to get to the bits he liked. Every note and every phrase was played in such a way as to convey to the audience his deep sense of what the music expresses.

It was a gestalt experience, and pulling out details does something of a disservice, but I have to mention his astonishing dynamic palette. He used everything from ppp to fff and all manner of shades between them. Most amazing to me was how his crescendi and decrescendi sometimes seemed to go on for measures at a time to wonderful effect. 

Another part of how his playing brings such life to music is his always letting the music breathe, so even when fast it never once sounded rushed. 

Listening to music rarely brings me to tears, but at this performance it happened several times. It was always during the gorgeous pianissimos with the amazingly subtle dynamic shifts followed by just the slightest of breaths. The palpable tenderness catalyzed emotional releases that were analogous to a skilled masseur finding and working on knots of muscle tension and the release feeling so good tears come.

Really good music making is magic, as it casts a spell and takes you for a while to a different plane. After each piece there was a bit of silence as the audience needed to come out of the reveries induced by the music before being able to applaud.  

Thanks to the Chopin in Barbourville group, Montpelier, and especially Ingolf Wunder for this transcendent experience.

Montpelier Program

This past Sunday the Kenwood Players provided music for an event at James Madison's Montpelier. This is the program (slightly edited) I wrote up for the portion of the evening we played music of the Madison era.

 Music for 

James and Dolley Madison's Montpelier

Sunday July 15, 2012

Summer Family Barbecue and Picnic

The Kenwood Players

Hayley Parrish - Flute

Dick & Maggie Stageberg - Trumpet & Clarinet

Bill Burnside - Alto & Tenor Sax

Crawford Harmon - Tuba

Bill Chapman - Tuba & Mouth Harp

Judy Peterson - Percussion

Lyle Sanford - Alto Flute, French Horn, Banjo & Guitar

Bob & Don Davies - additional vocals

Ed Harvey - audio engineer

Music of the Madison Era

Introduction

Mr. Madison's March & Mrs. Madison's Minuet

Mrs. Madison's Waltz

This Great World is a Trouble

Four Tunes from The Beggar's Opera

The Richmond Ball

Corelli and Handel

Chester, by William Billings

Introduction

    This is a collection of tunes that were popular during the time of James and Dolley Madison, a few of which we can be fairly certain they heard performed.

    The arrangements are simply transpositions of the originals into keys friendlier to our instrumentation. Guitar chords have been added, which fills out the harmonies, and the scoring for the wind instruments fills out some harmonies as well. Otherwise the music is as originally published.

    The addition of guitar chords makes improvisation easier. Back in the early 19th century it was still expected that musicians would be improvising from time to time.

    We are not trying to replicate the music of the era in the way in which it would have then been played (Historically Informed Performance). We are, however, trying to bring it alive with our modern instruments.

    In this music's heyday it would have most often been heard when friends gathered to make it themselves, either in the tavern or at home. Perhaps in part for that reason, we've found this music a lot of fun to play.

    We're playing this music as background during the Open House and the picnic, as that's most likely the way it would have been presented in the early 1800's. The notion audiences should sit quietly in the dark had not yet taken hold. Even at operas of the day, the house was fully lit and the audiences socialized, flirted, hobnobbed and politicked throughout the performances.

    The Kenwood Players enjoy playing and performing music in a wide variety of styles, including classical chamber music, 60's rock, Dixieland jazz, big band tunes, country, folk, blues, spirituals and hymns.

Lyle Sanford, Registered Music Therapist

Mr. Madison's March & Mrs. Madison's Minuet

Two Pieces Written Expressly for the Madisons

    Alexander Reinagle (1756-1809) was an English-born musician who spent his formative years in Scotland. A teacher, composer and theater and concert entrepreneur, Reinagle's performances and compositions introduced the piano-forte to American audiences.

    He emigrated to New York but soon moved to Philadelphia where his talents were quickly recognized. He organized concert series, performed frequently on keyboard and violin and was in demand as an instructor.

    In 1792 he joined with Thomas Wignell to build a large 2,000 seat theater that opened in 1794 as the New Theatre. Wignell recruited and managed the players; Reinagle directed the orchestra from the pit and arranged or wrote most of the music for these performances. Over the next ten years the two produced nearly 500 operas, pantomimes, and plays with incidental music. . .

    These two pieces were probably written for a specific performance to which the Madisons were expected to be in attendance. The orchestra would play “Mr. Madison’s March” when Madisons entered the theater and Mrs. Green and Mr. Francis might dance the minuet as an entr’acte or integrate it into one of the two pieces on the bill of the evening.

    According to the New York Gazette (June 2, 1809), Francis’s ”Mrs. Madison’s Minuet” was the “favorite dance at Washington” in the spring of 1809.
- Music of the War of 1812 in America; Dances, Marches & a Love Song; Set II 
www.1812music.org    (The Colonial Music Institute)

Mrs. Madison's Waltz

    The proprietor of the 1812 Music website tells me this is a pirated waltz by Muzio Clementi. It was published in Philapelphia with no composer attribution by "G. Willig", the publisher of "Mr. Madison's March" and "Mrs. Madison's Minuet".

    Clementi wrote music expressly for, and in later life manufactured and sold, the pianos which were replacing the harpsichord in the early 1800's. Reinagle, the composer of "Mr. Madison's March" and "Mrs. Madison's Minuet", helped popularize the piano in America.

This Great World is a Trouble.

Sung by Mr. D'Legard in Jupiter and Europa.

Music by Leveridge. London 1723

- British Union Catalogue of Early Music Printed Before 1800

    Richard Leveridge was a basso whose life (1670-1758) spanned the period from Henry Purcell to Handel: he sang for both men. The incidental music he composed for the stage was heard in the colonies in The Recruiting Officer, The Constant Couple, and Love and a Bottle. The first two are known to have been performed in Williamsburg, and Leveridge's music was also known in the colonies through the Bockham, Watts, and his own two volumes.

    William Byrd II's diary shows that he, and probably other Virginians, were patrons of a coffeehouse kept by Leveridge in London about 1718, at the same period they were attending the theater where he was a featured actor and singer. Like other tavern keepers, Leveridge probably kept instruments available for the use of his patrons. Williamsburg tavern owners maintained the tradition, as the inventories of several of them prove.
- A Williamsburg Songbook, John Edmonds, first edition 1964

Four Tunes from The Beggar's Opera

    As early as 1732, four years after the premiere, The Beggar's Opera was well known to Virginians both through performances and through printed texts of the music. In modern terminology a "musical comedy", it enjoyed unprecedented popularity.
- A Williamsburg Songbook, John Edmonds, first edition 1964

    Its nature is that of a spoken play of low life, with songs interspersed, set to popular tunes of the day - English and Scottish folk-song and folk-dance tunes, London street tunes, a few French airs, and a touch of Purcell and Handel.
- The Oxford Companion to Music, Percy A. Scholes, Tenth Edition 1970

Fill Ev'ry Glass

Air # 19, The Beggar's Opera by John Gay 1728

Fill ev'ry glass, for Wine inspires us,

And fires us With courage, love and joy.

Women and wine should life employ,

Is there ought else on earth desirous?

Packington's Pound

Air # 43, The Beggar's Opera by John Gay 1728

The Gamesters united in friendship are found

Tho they know that their industry all is a cheat;

They flock to their prey at the Dice-box's sound,

And join to promote one another's deceit.

But if by mishap, They fail of a chap,

To keep in their hands, They each other entrap.

Like Pikes, land with hunger, who miss of their ends,

They bite their companions, and prey on their friends.

    "Packington's Pound" is an example of an earlier, traditional tune that goes back at least to 1596, and is supposed to have arisen from an incident concerning Sir John Packington (1559 -1635).

     He constructed a pound (pond; "pound" is now dialect). When it encroached upon a public highway, he impetuously cut the embankment and let the water stream over the countryside; this gave rise to a satirical ditty sung to this air.

- A Williamsburg Songbook, John Edmonds, first edition 1964

Lillibulero

Air # 44, The Beggar's Opera by John Gay 1728

Sir, modes of the Court so common are grown,

That a true friend can hardly be met;

Friendship for interest is but a loan,

Which they let out for what they can get.

'Tis true you find Some friends so kind,

Who'll give you good counsel themselves to defend.

In sorrowful ditty, They Promise, they pity,

But shift you for money, from friend to friend.

    It is thought that Purcell may be the author (of the tune) as, in 1689, in John Playford's Music's Handmaid, it appears, with Purcell's name attached, under the title "A New Irish Tune", as a tiny piece for the harpsichord: Purcell also used it as a ground bass in music for a play, The Gordian Knot unty'd, in 1691. The probability seems to be that Purcell was simply using a popular air of the day.
- The Oxford Companion to Music, Percy A. Scholes, Tenth Edition 1970

Lumps of Pudding

Air # 69, The Beggar's Opera by John Gay 1728

A Dance - the finale of The Beggar's Opera

The Richmond Ball

Henry Playford, The Dancing Master, 10th ed.(London, 1698)

    The Dancing Master was issued in 18 editions, beginning in 1650 and ending in 1728. Ultimately the collection was issued in three volumes. The inventory of Robert Beverly, Newland, Spotsylvania County, listed the second volume in 1733.
- A Williamsburg Songbook, John Edmonds, first edition 1964

Arcangelo Corelli

(1653-1713)

    In his day the violin was superceding the viol and he became one of the first great violinists, violin teachers, and violin composers, enjoying in all these capacities universal fame. Monarchs sought him out, pupils came from all countries, and his music was everywhere played. . . . When he died he was found to have amassed a large fortune, in addition to a valuable collection of pictures. . . . Corelli's name ranks very high in the roll of those who laid the foundations of the present art of instrumental composition and performance, yet his works never range beyond his instrument's third position.
- The Oxford Companion to Music, Percy A. Scholes, Tenth Edition 1970

George Frideric Handel

(1685-1759)

    Handel's art has not the concentration of Bach's; he is not so thorough. He has been called a 'magnificent opportunist'. Yet there is a nobility in his music, as there was in his presence, and though facile, never trivial. Beethoven has said of Handel, 'Go and learn of him how to achieve great effects with simple means', and Haydn, hearing the 'Hallelujah Chorus' in Westminster Abbey, rose to his feet with the crowd, wept, and exclaimed, 'He is the master of us all'.
- The Oxford Companion to Music, Percy A. Scholes, Tenth Edition 1970

   Thomas Jefferson's inventory of his music library contains many works by Corelli, as well as a few by Handel.

Chester

    William Billings was a New Englander who wrote a number of songs that were extremely popular in the Revolutionary era. This tune is said to have been more popular than even "Yankee Doodle" during that time.

When God inspir'd us for the fight,

Their ranks were broke, their lines were forced.

Their ships were Shater'd in our sight.

Or driven from our coast.

Howe and Burgoyne and Clinton too,

With Prescot and, Cornwallis join'd

Together plot our Overthrow

In one infernal league combin'd.

The foe comes on with haughty stride;

Our troops advance with martial noise,

Their veterans flee before our Youth,

And generals yield to beardless Boys.

What grateful Off'ring shall we bring?

What shall we render to the Lord?

Loud Halleluias let us sing.

And praise His name on ev'ry chord.

Grimaud Interview

Alex Ross gave a link to this interview of Hélène Grimaud. It's a fascinating read. Here are a few snips from the article:

“A wrong note that is played out of élan, you hear it differently than one that is played out of fear,”

Her albums aren’t merely proficient tours through the repertoire; they are highly personal explorations that can stand out among dozens of rival performances. And in the concert hall Grimaud can offer surprises, something rarely provided by players who have been processed by the conservatory machine.

“By nine, I was already obsessed,” she remembers, in love with “the pure pleasure and evasion of being at that instrument.” But, rather than spending all her time at the keyboard, she did much of her “practicing” in her head. “Some wonderful pianists practice eight hours a day,” she says. “I was never really that person.” 

Chopin, a tempestuous pianist himself, was a musician with whom she felt a kinship. Grimaud, who is left-handed, thought that the Classical greats discriminated against players like her. In their music, the left hand was largely devoted to chords, while the right played the melody. “Chopin opened up the piano for the left hand.”

She also exercised her remarkable ability to prepare without actually playing. Mat Hennek, her current partner, remembers that one day, when he and Grimaud were first dating, they went shopping in Philadelphia and then to a Starbucks. At one point, he recalls, “I said to Hélène, ‘Hélène, you have a concert coming. Did you practice?’ And she said, ‘I played the piece two times in my head.’ ”

She presented her program with intense commitment, sustaining a mood from piece to piece, so that the audience felt pulled into a narrative. Levine, at the Gould Foundation, notes that she “seems so absorbed in the music, so attentive. She has that quality—getting back to Gould—of ekstasis.” Grimaud explains, “A concert must be an emotional event, or who needs it? You can just stay home and listen to your favorite recordings.”

Your Tone Is You

It's my feeling that tone is the most primal of the elements of music making, just as one's tone of voice is the most primal element of speech. 

During my 20's I worked as an attendant and group therapist on locked psychiatric units. My primary responsibility was to insure the physical safety of the patients, which meant closely monitoring the emotional state of patients who might become violent with themselves or others. Over time I learned to pay close attention to tone of voice as an indicator of mood, more so than the verbal content of speech. Listening closely to tone of voice was also very important in understanding what was going on under the surface in group therapy sessions.

The flip side of all that attention paid to the voice tone of others was trying to always insure my own tone of voice was not accelerating a volatile situation, but rather helping to keep things relatively calm.

Those experiences led me to be more conscious of something I think we all do on a mostly unconscious level, i.e. make judgments about the personality and state of mind of others based in part on their tone of voice, and that we use our own tone of voice as an underpinning to expressing ourselves through speech.

It's my idea that when the neuroscience gets sophisticated enough, we'll see that the tone quality of your music springs from, and affects the listener in, deeper and more primal parts of the brain than the rhythm, melody and harmony. When you make music, your tone sets the stage for whatever else you do. 

(As a side bar to this discussion, there's the question of the tone of piano players. It would seem that, more than wind and string instruments, the tone of a piano resides more in the piano than the player. That's largely true, but the hammer action means that strings can be hit with different amounts of force and at different rates of acceleration (see correction below), exciting the strings in subtlely different ways. Along with that, high level players can control the dynamics and the temporal sequence of every single note to such a high degree that individual styles can be developed and appreciated.)

UPDATE - Jonathan West corrects me in the comments:

By the way, you're wrong about the piano. By the time the hammer hits the string, it is no longer attached to the key and so it is in free movement and has no acceleration due to the key. Being in free movement, the the sound made by the hammer's action on the string varies from one note to the next solely on the speed with which the hammer hits.

What pianists and others think of as tone on a piano is derived from timing and use of pedals, and also from different degrees of force (and hence loudness) applied to different notes of the same chord. To a great extent, the idea of varied tone on the piano is a cognitive illusion fostered by the player - one which the player himself may be unaware of and honestly believe in.

All of what Jonathan says is very well put, especially that last sentence. During my time as a keyboard major in the late 70's I convinced myself that there was something more than simply the speed of the hammer affecting the tone of the note, and had come up with my faulty explanation involving acceleration. There is the acceleration created by gravity as it works to pull the hammer back to its resting position, but that's a constant rate involving the number 32. So maybe what I'm feeling is how that interplay between gravity and the force of the keystroke allows for super fine tuning of the hammer speed. 

Jonathan is also absolutely right to mention pedaling, which I'd not included and which has immense effect on a player's tone. Oftentimes a hammer is hitting a string still vibrating anywhere from a little to a lot from a previous hammer stroke, and pedaling controls the amount of that vibration. 

Levitin on Timing and Expression

In the first of these videos, Daniel Levitin gives an overview of work done in his labs showing that variance from metronomic timing correlates with perceived expression in music. In the second he talks more about the implications of this type of research, name checking Stevie Wonder in the process.

This bit of research may well end up being seen as much of a breakthrough as the recent dopamine study, also out of McGill. They both really get at what's going on with music and emotion, and they each seem to be the first solid, repeatable study that nails down a specific mechanism in the way music works on us. 

"The body is in the musical space. . . "

This article grabbed my attention because of the various references to the physical side of making music, which you can sometimes forget about when approaching things too abstractly. The title of the post comes from this longer quote by the subject of the article, Vijay Iyer:

"I used a paradigm of embodied cognition—seeing the mind as not just an abstract machine but as something physical, grounded in bodily processes and experiences. Rhythmic activity is based on those processes—breathing is connected to phrase; the heartbeat and walking are connected to pulse; speech is connected to ornament and melodic detail. The body is in the musical space, interacting with the instrument.

"These concepts haven't just influenced my scientific work—they have also affected my playing. For example, musical patterns that are not intuitive melodically can arise because they lie comfortably under the hands. Physical logic can be used to generate musical ideas. You can hear this happen in Chopin, whose music is very 'pianistic'—that is, it lies well under the fingers."

Besides all of this fitting so well with my idée fixe about the importance of gesture in music, I think he really understands Chopin. I've long thought that Chopin, being one of the very first composers with access to the modern piano, completely grasped the possibilities of the instrument in terms of sonorities and playability. I don't think anyone has ever done better. The waltzes were among the first 3 or 4 classical LPs I ever purchased. I've mentioned from time to time not feeling particularly connected to a lot of classical music, but my enjoyment of either listening to or playing the waltzes is deep and abiding.