The Intrepid Soprano

Ah, now it's clear!

2010-03-26T20:21:00.002-05:00

From this month's Classical Singer:

p. 26: "As we all know, getting hired through an audition is a real crapshoot."

p. 43: "Auditions, done properly, are not a crapshoot."

Good to know, folks.

From this week's rehearsal

2010-02-26T00:58:00.001-05:00

Oboist: Jaya, you're a soprano. Have you got a nail file?

High Mass and high volume

2009-12-12T00:01:00.003-05:00

Wednesday night was the dress rehearsal for Sunday's performance of Schubert's Mass in A-flat (along with a second go-round for Bavicchi's Three Psalms, and the Hallelujah--in English--from Beethoven's Christus am Ölberg) with the Philharmonic Society of Arlington (my fourth engagement with them!) Despite the appellation, large swathes of the work are nowhere near A-flat, and in places the circle of fifths is as well traversed as the track for the Indy 500. As well as I had learned the parts that I sing as a soloist, I wasn't at all familiar with the parts that I don't sing--all but sixteen bars of the Credo, a great deal of the Gloria, and the entirety of the Sanctus (treating the Sanctus and Benedictus as separate movements), and hearing them for the first time was occasion for many surprises.

Schubert's style doesn't exactly scream "liturgical", and much of the A-flat is redolent of his expansive symphonic technique and the more dramatic elements of his lieder, qualities that landed his works on the Society of St. Gregory's Black List in the early 20th century. The opening of the Gloria makes me think (despite several obvious differences) of the galloping-across-the-frozen-plains theme in Prokofiev's Aleksandr Nevsky, and the Osanna (both times) would be at home in any beer garden. (The surprise is even greater coming out of the restrained and thoroughly classical Kyrie and Benedictus.) On the other hand, the "cum Sancto Spiritu" fugue at the end of the Gloria (directly on the heels of a near-barbershop chord) is a masterful gesture toward Bach (who, granted, probably would have made it about half as long.) Several elements are at play here, and in many places the near-sublime rubs shoulders with the almost tasteless. You won't be bored, and for most--if not all--of the piece, I suspect you'll be delighted.

Throwing in musical surprises is what composers do. Throwing textual surprises into the Mass is, to say the least, frowned upon, but Schubert does it anyway. The Kyrie, the Sanctus and the Agnus Dei don't really have enough words to mess with (Marty Haugen notwithstanding), but the Gloria and the Credo are much lengthier and wordier (and thus much wider targets.) Schubert only makes a few little tweaks to the Gloria, but the Credo has some enormous (and theologically significant) lacunae. Judging only from the score, it is difficult to tell if Schubert is actually at odds with the doctrinal bits (such as, significantly, "unam sanctam, catholicam et apostolicam ecclesiam"--the same article of faith that Beethoven buried deep in the texture of the Missa solemnis), or if he just doesn't understand Latin very well (as the resulting omissions create some real howlers. My favorite of those is "Confiteor unum baptisma in remissionem peccatorum mortuorum," in which he appears to anticipate one of the doctrines of Joseph Smith by at least eight years.) Speculating as to whether Schubert was a closet Unitarian ("genitum non factum, consubstantialem Patri" has been excised), a closet Sadducee (as per omission of "et exspecto resurectionem"--though "vitam venturi saeculi" still makes the cut), or a closet revisionist feminist (his omission of "Patrem omnipotentem" may be the earliest example of vertical inclusive language) is about as useful (musically, anyway) as speculating on whether he was gay.

I'm not involved in Beethoven's aforementioned "Hallelujah", but said piece nonetheless is etched in my consciousness. I sang it with my high school choir (back when primitive creatures roamed the earth and oversized t-shirts were still moderately fashionable), and our director told us a highly amusing story of one of its previous rotations. Every year, the Pioneer select choirs sing for the Rotary Club luncheon at the Michigan Union, selections from their fall and winter repertoire. One year (I don't know which, but well before my high school tenure) the Beethoven was on the program, with its bombastic introduction in percussive piano reduction. As the pianist began to play, the piano started to roll forward. Undaunted, Mr. W. kept conducting with one hand, and with the other hand plucked two (unused, I gather) spoons from a nearby table, stuck them under the front wheels of the piano, and finished the piece unscathed. Every time I hear this piece, I think of that story--and I am relieved that no one will have to stick spoons under the orchestra.

The concert is at 3 p.m. this Sunday at First Parish in Arlington, and tickets are available at the door. It will be a Gaudete Sunday--or third night of Hanukkah--well spent.

Worst trip ever!

2009-12-11T23:50:00.001-05:00

On a choral music bulletin board, someone seeks copies of Reger's "Maria Wegenleid" [sic].

Ask you German-speaking friends why this is funny.

"Is it REALLY weekly?" musical bon mot #055

2009-11-29T19:35:00.003-05:00

"Sometimes we go to the opera
to watch the tubby tenor
woo the imposing soprano
but most I like the concert recitals
where fat women with perfect control
in astonishing frocks exercise
the range of the emotions
and the capacity of their lungs
and are applauded."

--Christine Donald

On selling it to the masses

2009-11-28T00:54:00.002-05:00

Yes, I read the Metro. I don't read it for the news (though occasionally some manages to sneak in) or for the hard-hitting commentary (which has never, during my tenure in Boston, managed to sneak in), or really for anything that's actually in the paper. I read it solely because I ride the bus, and if I want my bus book to stretch very far, I have to dilute it with this sort of thing, the textual equivalent of the fillers in a vitamin tablet.

Being one to choose my battles (or indeed my rants), I did not put pen to pixels to grumble about the Little-Rag-That-Could-but-Chose-Not-to's misidentification of the Roman Catholic cathedral in Boston as the "Cathedral of the Holy Name" in an article that a) quoted an archdiocesan representative (who probably could have set the reporter straight) and b) ran next to a picture of the cathedral facade, including the sign in front that says "Cathedral of the Holy Cross" in fairly big letters. I did not expound on the annoying weekly columnist's (whose petulant and uninformed style invites disagreement) misuse of the term "staccato" and misunderstanding of the term "hymn". I said nothing about the crossword's four-letter word for "Rice wine" that was not rice wine at all but the pen name of H. H. Munro. I grumbled, but not in print (virtual or otherwise), that the paper for many days entirely ignored the fact that Pakistan was being pummeled by terrorist attacks yet devoted several inches to the fact that Hillary Swank looks like Jon Bon Jovi.

But as this is a music blog, one of my latest Metro-related grumbles deserves inclusion in its virtual pages. I have no desire to pick fights with arts columnists, as they're the people who get the audience to show up--but honestly, folks, is this really the best you can do? In the listing for the Boston Choral Ensemble's North American Premiere of the Villarosa Sequences (featuring a dear friend and brilliant colleague as soprano soloist), Matthew Dinaro writes:

"This performance of a new Swedish symphony for voices only may superficially resemble your college a capella [sic] group, but the stuff they're singing is slightly more challenging than the cover of "Don't Stop Believin'" you guys do--only slightly, though, because the flat-out awe-inspiring charisma of Mr. Steve Perry truly cannot be replicated by even the most highly trained conservatory masters."

Really?

(The other two events listed under the "Music" rubric are performances by bands Sonic Youth and Melt-Banana--spelled with and without a hyphen within a five-inch radius. No doubt the BCE is delighted to be included in such august company, and by such a venerable publication...)

At the top of the listings page is the plea, "Got a cool event you want your fellow readers to know about? Send us the details." A more accurate request would read, "Send us the details--and if we don't understand them, we'll make something up."

I am grateful for one thing, though. For several years, Metro has listed classical music events under the "Culture" heading, while "Music" was reserved for Sonic Youth et al. The blurb may be awful, but at least the editor has stopped implying that classical music is not music (or that pop music is not culture?) And on Monday I'll be back on the bus with a Metro on my lap. If nothing else, it makes any book I read look like an immortal classic by comparison.

A tribute, and a bonus musical bon mot (#054)

2009-11-15T21:26:00.009-05:00

"Make a mistake. Make it sound like contemporary music."

--John Bavicchi

I'm just home from the dress rehearsal for tomorrow night's Tribute to John Bavicchi at the Berklee Performance Center. My contribution is as soprano soloist in Mr. Bavicchi's Three Psalms (Op. 50), originally composed in 1963 for the Cecilia Society of Boston. The other soloists are Maria DiStefano, mezzo-soprano, Martin Thompson, tenor, and Paul Guttry, bass, with the Arlington-Belmont Chorale and the members of the Kalistos Chamber Orchestra (strings plus trumpets) under the direction of David Callahan. It's rather intimidating to rehearse with the composer present, and it is reassuring Mr. Bavicchi has been exceedingly gracious to everyone throughout. This is good, because he has written a very difficult piece (which, despite the hurdles presented in learning it, is growing on me.) The Kalistos players are very good, and it is a joy to work with them (even if I am seated directly in the trumpets' firing line--almost as scary as sitting directly behind the gong for the Detroit Symphony's performance of Aleksandr Nevsky so many years ago.) It is particularly amusing to watch the 'cello section's dithyrambic strumming in the third movement paired with the calm faces of the cellists.

I get a second go-round with Three Psalms in December at the Philharmonic Society of Arlington's winter concert, this time paired with Schubert's Mass in A-flat, D.678--different venue, different audience, and (most significantly) different orchestra. I'll practice diligently of course--but I'll also rely on today's bon mot.

Aspiring-to-be-weekly musical bon mot #053

2009-11-14T17:49:00.002-05:00

"Do you know what he told me after lying under a cliff for thirty six hours with two inches of his femur sticking out? He said: Queenie, I think I'm going to pass out, and before I do, I'm going to give you a piece of advice--God, I thought he was going to die . . . and he said quite solemnly: Queenie, always stick to Bach and the early Italians--and passed out cold as a mackerel. And by God, it's not bad advice."

--Walker Percy

A citation (the good kind)

2009-10-04T16:56:00.002-05:00

Read by Richard Knisely at last night's benefit concert:

Be it known that the Masachusetts Senate hereby extends its Congratulations to the professional singers of the Commonwealth of Massachusetts in Recognition of your artistic, educational and economic contributions to the artistic life of our Commonwealth; and Be it further known that the Massachusetts Senate extends best wishes for continued success; that this Citation be duly signed by the President of the Senate and attested to and a copy thereof transmitted by the Clerk of the Senate.

By: Therese Murray, President of the Senate
Attest: William F. Welch, Clerk of the Senate
Offered by: State Senator Steven C. Panagiotakos
October 3, 2009

Thank you, senators. We look forward to seeing you at future performances.

Something for the technologically advanced among us

2009-09-24T21:36:00.003-05:00

I don't have an iPhone, but I'm still amused by the ocarina and the light saber and so forth. On the 29th, as reported on Fr. Z's site, a new app will hit the market for $14.99: Liber Pro, your very own copy of the Liber Usualis on your very own phone. Granted $14.99 seems like a lot of money as apps go (as opposed to, say, the Singing Cat), but it's less expensive than the $107 reprint (and lighter.) Plus, you now have a good reason to bring your iPhone to solemn high Mass (and for heaven's sake, put it on "silent" while you're there.)

If, however, the fanciest thing on your phone (like mine) is the alarm clock (or maybe the stopwatch--I can't decide), and (like me), you're short on funds, you can always download your very own PDF Liber from the Church Music Association of America. And all you'll pay for it is a whole bunch of space on your hard drive.

A night out and a good deed

2009-09-24T20:24:00.004-05:00

I'm not getting paid for my next gig--and neither is anyone else involved, at least not directly. On October 3, a large cohort of professional singers take the stage in support of a recently founded good cause, the Boston Singers' Relief Fund. In the words of the website, "The Boston Singers' Relief Fund will provide financial relief in a confidential, respectful manner to those who have contributed to the vocal arts in New England and are facing illness, job loss, catastrophic acts of nature, or other events such as vandalism or theft, and who have insufficient resources with which to handle such situations." Naturally, you can see why we all were happy to volunteer.

The concert, "The Singers' Voice: Keeping the voices of New England strong" is on October 3 at 8 p.m. at the Church of the Covenant in Boston. Tickets are $35 for reserved seating, $20 for general seating and $15 for students and seniors. More information can be found at the website, along with a downloadable flyer (which we would love for you to print out and post) and a PayPal donation button (with which you can support us even if you're busy or too far away on the 3rd.)

We singers, particularly the ones with unstable day jobs, minimal health coverage, apartments in dodgy neighborhoods and so forth, thank you very much.

Weekly--at least in spirit--musical bon mot #052

2009-08-01T10:27:00.001-05:00

"Art is the imposing of a pattern on experience, and our aesthetic enjoyment is recognition of the pattern."

--Alfred North Whitehead

Concert program and notes

2009-07-21T23:20:00.010-05:00

Well after the fact, my BEMF Fringe concert on virtual paper (apologies for the formatting glitches):

Love’s Excess:

English baroque songs of stage and salon

a Fringe Concert of the Boston Early Music Festival

Jaya Lakshminarayanan, soprano

Alastair Thompson, harpsichord

One

Ouverture in D major . . . . . . Charles (François) Dieupart (c.1667-c.1740)
The Prologue, in The Iſland Princeſs . . . . . . Richard Leveridge (1670-1758)

Two

Sappho to the Goddeſs of Beauty . . . . . . John Blow (1649-1708)
Urania to Partheniſſa . . . . . . Matthew Locke (c.1621-1677)
Adieu, dear Object of my Love’s exceſs . . . . . . James Hart (1647-1718)

Three

Suite in C . . . . . . Locke

Almain

Corant

Gavott

Country Dance

Four

The Thraldom . . . . . . Henry Purcell (1659?-1695)

Sweeter than Roſes

Let us, kind Lesbia

Many thanks are due to Pamela Dellal, Eowyn Evans, Holly Baldwin and the Beacon Hill Friends House

for making this performance possible.

Notes

Although French by birth, Charles (or François) Dieupart spent most of his musical career in England. In 1701, three years before emigrating to London, he published his Six Suittes de Clavessin, dedicated to “Madame la Comtesse de Sandwich”, Elizabeth Wilmot Montagu, grandmother of the fourth Earl of Sandwich John Montagu, supposed inventor of the eponymous lunchtime staple. It is from this collection, unusual in that each suite begins with a French overture, that we take our first piece. Dieupart composed the incidental music for fellow expatriate Pierre Anthony Motteux’s play Britain’s Happiness in 1704, and it is from another Motteux play that our prologue is taken. The Island Princess (1699) was an adaptation of John Fletcher’s (1579-1625) play of the same name, and contains music by Daniel Purcell (1664-1717), Jeremiah Clarke (c.1674-1707), and Richard Leveridge (though in several accounts Leveridge takes credit for the whole thing.) Leveridge composed the music to the prologue and sang it in the play’s premiere, making its high range surprising when since Leveridge was a bass.

John Blow has set a translation of Sappho’s (c.630-570 B.C.) Fragment 31, “Φαίνεταί μοι” and addressed it to “the Dutcheſs of Grafton”, Isabella Fitzroy (c.1668-1723). He names Sappho’s subject “Paphiana”, a reference to Aphrodite’s origins on the island of Paphos, and perhaps a snide little joke about the Duchess’s rumored activities during her husband’s long absence at sea. Matthew Locke’s setting of Thomas Flatman’s “Urania to Parthenissa” is unusual both in its use of recitative throughout and in its subject matter, a non-satirical poem about affection between women, reminiscent of John Donne’s (1572-1631) longer—and much more explicit—“Sappho to Philaenis”. Flatman was part of the same literary circle as Katherine Philips, “the Matchless Orinda”, and would have been familiar with her friendship programs, and it is from one of these that James Hart has taken the text of the final piece in this set. The source poem, “Orinda to Lucasia parting, October, 1661, at London”, much longer than the few lines set by Hart, is addressed to Philips’s longtime friend Anne Owen, whom she addresses with the pastoral moniker “Lucasia” in several poems.

Locke’s keyboard collection Melothesia (1673) was published during his tenure as “Composer in Ordinary to His Majesty, and organist of her Majesty’s chapel” under Charles II and Catherine of Braganza. It is from this work that we take the ensuing suite, which pays homage to the conventional (and mostly French ) forms before ending with a thoroughly English country dance.

Henry Purcell, rightly considered one of England’s greatest composers, is at his expressive best in his setting of “The Thraldom” by Abraham Cowley, another member of Katherine Philips’s royalist coterie. In setting the unattributed “Sweeter than roses”, Purcell shows off his florid recitative style, described by some as distinctly English (or at least distinctly Purcellian.) Purcell uses a simpler style in our last piece, a translation of Catullus’s (c.84-c.54 B.C.) “Vivamus, mea Lesbia, atque amemus”, addressed to the poet’s muse and lover Claudia, called “Lesbia” as a reference to Sappho’s homeland and thus to Claudia’s beauty and skill at least in inspiring poems, if not actually in writing them.

Jaya Lakshminarayanan’s stage credits include Conradi’s Die schöne und getreue Ariadne, Hildegard’s Ordo virtutum and Jacquet de la Guerre’s Cephale et Procris. An avid proponent of new as well as early music, Jaya has premiered works by New England composers Gabriella Snyder, Stephen Serpa and David Sears. As a choral singer, she has sung with the Handel and Haydn Society, the Boston Secession and the Choir of the Church of the Advent. This is her third BEMF Fringe Concert.

Alastair Thompson has been the regular harpsichordist for the Heliotrope Consort since he moved to Boston in 2000. Since then he has also accompanied ensembles at Boston University and Longy School of Music. As a graduate student at Tufts University, he has investigated the roles & institutions involved with the ballet de cour during the adolescence of Louis XIV. This is his second BEMF Fringe Concert with Jaya.

Where have I been?

2009-07-21T22:08:00.004-05:00

Nowhere special, really, despite having spent the past few weeks being cavalierly absent and wantonly depriving my five-and-a-half readers of their weekly bons mots. At the beginning of July I crossed the Charles River for the second time and am now firmly ensconced in Somerville, at least for the time being. The Market Basket and I are getting reacquainted, and I'm devising a ballot measure for the next general election.

I'm also slowly amassing the necessary things to apply to Grad School, Round Two. (If I write about it on my blog, I have to do it, right?) That involves some writing (I've narrowed down some interesting topics), and taking the GRE again, since my last scores are over five years old (and the school I chose ended up not needing them anyway.) Long, long ago, in my last round of standardized tests, I took one of the last Music GREs ever offered. At the beginning I signed the little agreement that said I would not reveal the contents of the test even if enemy agents were to stick bamboo skewers under my fingernails and threaten to tell my supervisor/best friend/current crush/parish clergy/blog readership about that really mortifying thing I did when I was twelve. I intend on taking that information with me to the grave, but the upshot is that there are a few pieces of music that make me say, "Oh, I heard this on...er...somewhere. I heard it somewhere."

My BEMF concert went well, and the audience contained a fair proportion of people I don't know (which, in my opinion, makes it a success), and my harpsichordist pal and I are considering other occasions and venues in which we might reprise it, perhaps with additions of various ilk. We also had the honor of performing one of the pieces in Gillian Keith's masterclass. I'm devising other recital programs which may or may not see the light of day (how do folks feel about interactive concerts with audience scorecards?) Mostly, though, I'm enjoying the rest, and when things pick up again in the fall, I'll be ready.

Why yes, I do notice popular culture

2009-07-01T09:10:00.004-05:00

Purist that I am, I would designate this NSFC (Not Safe For Church), and the applause rubs me the wrong way, but that said, this is a truly masterful postlude--and hardly the first time a pop tune has sneaked its way into liturgy.

As for MJ's tempestuous life and untimely death, I have little to say, as I don't go in either for hero worship or for general lack of charity. Let three somewhat random points suffice.

1. Making music is brutal, but for many not making music is more brutal.
2. I pray for dead people because they are dead--but I don't canonize them.
3. "I Want You Back" is a fantastic song. And it gets bonus points for quoting the chaconne.

(Yes, I have been absent for a while, since I'm moving today. Blogging is a great time-waster in between packing sessions.)

The joy of odd-numbered years

2009-06-06T16:00:00.005-05:00

Doubtless, dear reader, you have been spending your weekend thus far wondering what to do on Monday afternoon. Wonder no longer, then, for herein is your cure for post-dominical boredom, and indeed your plan for the whole week.

Every other year (as mentioned previously), Boston is transformed for a week into the world's most comprehensive early music destination. This year's centerpiece is Monteverdi's L'incoronazione di Poppea, accompanied all week by fifteen festival concerts, nine symposia, seven masterclasses, an enormous exhibition and many, many fringe concerts--which is where your Monday plans come in.

My contribution to the historically informed mayhem--along with a stint at Longy's exhibition table--is a fringe concert at 2:30 p.m. on Monday the 8th: "Love's Excess: English baroque songs of stage and salon." Assisted by the illustrious Alastair Thompson at the harpsichord, I shall spend roughly an hour indulging my musical esteem for That Sceptered Isle to the music of Purcell, Leveridge, Locke, and others. For the price of admission, you get a French overture, a theatrical prologue, a Sappho fragment, a dance suite, and a whole boatload of Stupid Soprano Tricks and erudite doubles entendres. It's at the Beacon Hill Friends House at 6 Chestnut St. on (surprise) Beacon Hill, a tremendously English-looking part of town. Admission is by donation, suggested at $10 for general admission and $5 for students, seniors and BEMF pass holders. Those numbers are just a suggestion, though--we just want you to show up, pay what you can and have a good time. I shall be quite happy to see you there, and happier still if you decide to bring along some friends and/or random people you don't know.

Several of my friends are also performing in fringe concerts during the week, and I encourage you to go hear them too. You might enjoy:

Cascata (Brenna Wells, soprano; Peter Cama-Lekx, violin; Rachel Cama-Lekx, viola da gamba; Dieter Hennings, theorbo). Crossroads of Virtuosity. Sunday, June 7, 2 p.m. at Marsh Chapel.

Seven Hills Renaissance Wind Ensemble (Elizabeth Hardy, Cathy Stein & Matthew Stein, shawms & dulcians; Rigel Lustwerk, cornetto; Daniel Meyers, sackbut; Daniel Stillman, shawm, dulcian & sackbut). Musicians of the Golden Fleece: Wind Band Music from the Hapsburg Courts of the 16th Century. Monday, June 8, 12:30 p.m. at First Church in Boston.

Cascata (Peter Cama-Lekx & Joan Plana, violin; Rachel Cama-Lekx, viola da gamba; Dieter Hennings, theorbo). Spectacle and the Virtuoso. Monday, June 8, 5 p.m. at the Cathedral Church of St. Paul.

Quaver Viol Consort (Marie Dalby, treble viol; Brady Lanier, bass viol, Loren Ludwig, treble & bass viol; Tobi Szuts, tenor viol). Polyphonica: Music of Five Centuries. Tuesday, June 9, 1 p.m. at the Goethe-Institut Boston.

Les Bostonades with Teresa Wakim, soprano (Sarah Darling & Laura Gulley, violin; Kate Bennett Haynes, ’cello; Justin Haynes, viola da gamba; Akiko Enoki Sato, harpsichord). La Morte di Lucretia. Tuesday, June 9, 2:30 p.m. at Lindsey Chapel, Emmanuel Church.

Seven Times Salt (Karen Burciaga, violin; Daniel Myers, recorders; Josh Schreiber Shalem, bass viol; Matthew Wright, lute; with guests Tracy Cowart, mezzo-soprano; Michael Barrett, tenor; Kyle Parrish, narrator). A Brave Barrel of Oysters: Music of Samuel Pepys’ London. Tuesday, June 9, 4 p.m. at the Beacon Hill Friends House.

Ensemble Suave (Jeanne Lucas, soprano; Gerrod Pagenkopf & Steven Serpa, countertenor; Laurie Israel, ’cello; L. Mark Slawson, harpsichord). Love Kills Sweetly: 17th- and 18th-Century Italian Vocal Works. Wednesday, June 10, 3 p.m. at the Gordon Chapel at Old South Church.

Viola da Gamba Society of America. The Gamba Gamut. A series of five mini-programs, spanning the repertoire of the viola da gamba, performed by emerging and established artists of the VdGSA. Thursday, June 11, 9 a.m.-noon at the Cathedral Church of St. Paul.

Longy School of Music Early Music Department (Students from the Longy School of Music’s Distinguished Early Music Degree Programs). Longy School of Music Student Performer Showcase. Friday, June 12, 11 a.m. at the Goethe-Institut Boston.

Duo Specchio (Sudie Marcuse, soprano; Richard Maloney, lute). Time Cruel Time: English lute songs and solos. Friday, June 12, 1 p.m. at the Beacon Hill Friends House.

Quicksilver (Robert Mealy & Julie Andrijeski, violin; David Morris, ’cello & gamba; Greg Ingles, trombone; Dominic Teresi, dulcian; Avi Stein, harpsichord; Aaron Sheehan, tenor). Stylus Phantasticus. Saturday, June 12, 11 a.m. at the Beacon Hill Friends House.

Convivium Musicum, directed by Michael Barrett. Going for Baroque. Saturday, June 12, 12:30 p.m. at the Church of St. John the Evangelist.

Weekly musical bon mot #051

2009-06-06T15:56:00.001-05:00

"What we wished was to see whether or not Mankind takes seriously the gifts of God, of which Art comes next after Love..."

--Johannes Rüber

Weekly musical bon mot #050

2009-05-31T13:38:00.001-05:00

"She was not entertained, so she blamed the entertainment."

--Sylvia Townsend Warner

Weekly musical bon mot #49

2009-05-23T14:02:00.000-05:00

"Once the values of a spiritual order are re-admitted as valid in their own right for the full life natural to human beings, then, and then only, art ceases to be mere decoration, sentimentality and 'dope' and comes to be the creation and enjoyment of the products of the spiritual imagination."

--Sir Michael Tippett

Ascendit Deus

2009-05-21T12:29:00.007-05:00

Today is Ascension Day (except in the dioceses where it isn't.) First, from the Liber:

And a little silliness from the Diocese of Wenchoster (hee hee):

Hymns Modern & Ancient

212: All hail, Ascension Day! (Parts 1 & 2)

(Tune: "Salve festa dies" Ralph Vaughan Williams. 7.9.7.7. with Refrain)

©Pharisaios 2003

HYMN FOR ASCENSION - PART 1

All hail, Ascension Day!
The Thursday that’s now disregarded,
Calls just a few to church,
Kneeling in silent awe.

1. Gone are the days long ago
When such was a feast of obligation.
Streets filled with banners on high,
And hymns of glory sung.

All hail, Ascension Day!
The Thursday that’s now disregarded,
Calls just a few to church,
Kneeling in silent awe.

2. Try to get people to come
To mass outside a normal Sunday.
Pray or entreat or implore,
They simply stay away!

All hail, Ascension Day!
The Thursday that’s now disregarded,
Calls just a few to church,
Kneeling in silent awe.

HYMN FOR ASCENSION - PART 2

All hail, Ascension Day!
The Thursday that’s now disregarded,
Calls just a few to church,
Kneeling in silent awe.

3. High on the church's tall tower
The choristers all did assemble,
Singing their hymnody loud
Though none down below them could hear.

All hail, Ascension Day!
The Thursday that’s now disregarded,
Calls just a few to church,
Kneeling in silent awe.

4. Ending the forty days
Our risen Lord did walk among us,
People at work or at home
Mark yet another spring day.

All hail, Ascension Day!
The Thursday that’s now disregarded,
Calls just a few to church,
Kneeling in silent awe.

(Okay, it's not that silly. But do check out the rest of the site.)

The proper Psalm for the day includes, in the Authorized Version, the line, "God is gone up with a merry noise." For some reason, I get "merry noise" conflated with "silly noise" or "rude noise", which is bad enough. Then I remember the German word for the Ascension: Himmelfahrt ("going to heaven", but for English speakers the damage is already done), and it all falls apart. If all goes well, I won't follow this train of thought at church this evening. We'll see.

Almost-weekly musical bon mot #048

2009-05-16T18:01:00.000-05:00

"When Mozart was composing at the end of the eighteenth century, the city of Vienna was so quiet that fire alarms could be given verbally, by a shouting watchman mounted on top of St. Stefan's Cathedral. In twentieth-century society, the noise level is such that it keeps knocking our bodies out of tune and out of their natural rhythms. This ever-increasing assault of sound upon our ears, minds, and bodies adds to the stress load of civilized beings trying to live in a highly complex environment."

--Steven Halpern

Oh, Lord!

2009-05-03T14:46:00.005-05:00

My Sunday travels often take me past the lovely Arlington Street Church, best known (at least to me) for its beautiful windows and for being one of the few churches in Massachusetts still to have tower bells rung by hand (as opposed to the midi files favored by so many--including my college chapel.) As part of the church tour, visitors are invited to ring the bells, so Sunday afternoons at the Public Garden can be accompanied by some pretty interesting tunes. A few Sundays ago, I was treated to the dulcet tones so gamely exemplified by the good sisters in the video. (After all the time I've spent at the Advent, it wasn't until the second line that I recognized the tune. I just thought it was the intonation of Tone V.)

I don't know how old I was when I learned "Kum ba ya", but it must have been in the realm of the early elementary years. What I do remember is that I hadn't the faintest idea what the heck it meant. Wikipedia has a fairly comprehensive article on the origins of this one--the short version of which is that no one really knows. (The discussion page even contains a suggestion of a "neo-Aramaic" derivation of the term--only slightly more farfetched than the Angolan origin proposed in hymnals I've seen.) It's generally agreed that the widespread transmission (and re-transmission) of "Kum ba ya" occurred within less than a hundred years, and yet it is surrounded by enough cultural amnesia that its origins remain a mystery and even a point of copyright dispute.

My hymnal collection (not particularly extensive, but ever expanding) contains four instances of this slippery customer. The earliest example occurs in the United Methodist Songs of Zion (1981), a supplemental volume of songs from the African-American Christian tradition. "Kum Ba Yah, My Lord" appears at number 139 as a two-voice arrangement in (surprisingly) triple meter. The editors sidestep the question of origin by listing both words and music as "traditional", and by 1981 this was probably true. No translation of the opening words is given, probably under the assumption that everybody who went to church already knew. A similar version, this time harmonized for four mixed voices, appears in the Presbyterian Hymnal (1990) at number 338 as "Kum ba Yah" (with the editors recognizing "ba" as a preposition, and therefore not to be capitalized.) It is given a metrical designation (8.8.8.5, which curiously does not appear in the metrical index) and an only slightly less general attribution: words as "African-American spiritual", music as "African melody". An asterisk before the first line informs the congregation that the mysterious invocation does indeed mean "Come by here."

Bread for the World's Banquet of Praise (1990), "A book of worship resources, hymns and songs in the spirit of justice, peace and food for all", reproduces at number 216 the version in Songs of Zion with a slightly different attribution (both words and music as "African-American spiritual"), a tune name (KUM BA YAH) and a meter (Irregular). In itself, that's unremarkable enough, but the real interest is the prayer at number 68, under the heading "Renewals of Commitment". I quote (with original spelling, capitalization and punctuation):

All sing:
Someone's crying Lord, Kumba yah. Someone's crying Lord, Kumba yah. Someone's crying Lord, Kumba yah. O Lord, Kumba yah.
Leader:
Someone's crying, Lord, somewhere. Someone is really millions, somewhere is many places. They are crying tears of suffering, and of empty stomachs, tears of weakness and disappointment, tears of strength and resistance, tears of the rich and of the poor.
People:
Someone's crying Lord. Redeem the times,
And bring us to a new beginning.
All sing:
Someone's dying, Lord, Kumba yah. Someone's dying, Lord, Kumba yah. Someone's dying, Lord, Kumba yah. O Lord, Kumba yah.
Leader:
Some are dying of hunger and thirst. Some are dying because others are enjoying too many unnecessary, superfluous things. Some are dying because people go on exploiting one another. Some are dying because structures and systems crush the poor and alienate the rich. Someone's dying, Lord, because we are still not willing to make a choice, to be a witness, to act.
People:
Someone's dying Lord. Redeem the times,
And bring us to a new beginning.
All sing:
Someone's shouting, Lord, Kumba yah. Someone's shouting, Lord, Kumba yah. Someone's shouting, Lord, Kumba yah. O Lord, Kumba yah.
Leader:
Someone's shouting loud and clear, some have made a choice. Some are taking a stand, offering their very existence in love, to fight death surrounding us, To wrestle with the evils which we use to crucify each other.
People:
Someone's shouting, Lord. Redeem the times,
And bring us to a new beginning.
All sing:
Someone's praying, Lord, Kumba yah. Someone's praying, Lord, Kumba yah. Someone's praying, Lord, Kumba yah. O Lord, Kumba yah.
Leader:
Someone's praying, Lord. We are praying in tears and anguish. In frustration and weakness, in confusion and longing. We are praying in strength and endurance. We are shouting and wrestling. As Jacob wrestled with the angel, he was touched, was marked, became a blessing.
People:
We are praying, Lord. Spur our imagination. Sharpen our political will. Through Jesus Christ You have let us know where you want us to be. help us to be there now. Be with us, touch us, mark us, let us be a blessing. Let your power be present in our weakness. Someone's praying Lord. Redeem the times,
And bring us to a new beginning.
All sing:
Someone's singing, Lord, Kumba yah. Someone's singing, Lord, Kumba yah. Someone's singing, Lord, Kumba yah. O Lord, Kumba yah.

There are several observations to be made here--the first being that this edition must have been edited in a hurry. There is the assumption (probably correct) that everyone present will know the song, but more interesting to me is the attempt to turn a fundamentally non-liturgical song into a paraliturgical prayer (cue eye-rolls from the Catholics, Orthodox, Anglicans and Lutherans--or at least the ones I want to hang out with. Can you imagine Cranmer having written, "Lord, do Thou sharpen the political will of us Thy servants"? "Domine, exacue voluntatem publicam nostram" is hardly better.) There is, of course, the infelicitous "topicality" that is so good in newspapers and so bad in church, and the transformation of the pidginized yet fully coherent sentence "kum ba ya" into the near-meaningless invocation "Kumba yah". I don't know how often this prayer has been used in public since 1990, but my guess is that it hasn't made anyone's top ten.

Farthest afield is the version in the New Zealand Hymnbook Trust's Alleluia Aotearoa (1993). At number 31 is "E te Atua", a Maori version of our mysterious song, this time in duple meter (the way I learned it) and with a petite reprise, in a keyboard arrangement by some nice folks with the authentic Maori names Nicola and Guy Jansen. (It's not a bad harmonization, all things considered.) The first verse, "Et te Atua aroha mai, ake ake tonu e," translates roughly as "O God, love us forever and ever." The question that comes to mind (and also in the case of the H1N1 virus, as it turns out) is that of how and when it got to New Zealand from North America, and how widespread it is there now.

Probably it's obvious that "Kum ba ya" (or in Spanish, "Ven aquí", which I have also heard) is not one of my favorite songs. I don't doubt that it can be an expression of genuine religious sentiment ("Veni, Domine" is always a valid prayer), but it reminds me less of desire for God and more of the stunningly annoying Troop Beverly Hills, or the substitute organist in Suzanne Strempek Shea's lightweight Selling the Lite of Heaven. It's fine around a campfire, but not on church bells and never, ever in public worship. Whatever criticism the Erie Benedictines may have drawn in the past few decades, we can all be thankful that their television production number days are probably over. For that, someone's relieved, Lord.

Weekly musical bon mot #047

2009-05-03T14:27:00.001-05:00

"If you do not know, for example, Bach's setting of [the Sanctus] in his 'B Minor Mass', then your education still has at least one gap in it."

--Bryan Thwaites

Tailoring with Top Gun

2009-04-25T15:37:00.005-05:00

Singing, particularly in its technical aspects, lends itself well to automotive metaphors--shifting gears, navigating difficult turns, traversing bumpy passages and so forth. This is all very well, but it has limited resonance for me, as I can't drive (and don't want to approach singing as a passenger.) The next closest thing that I do know how to operate is a sewing machine, which is also motorized, requires its operator to control speed and direction, and is greatly improved by an on-board computer. Permit me to expand.

Singing as a soloist with continuo or other minimal instrumental accompaniment is like sitting down to your trusty Bernina and whipping up a few quilt blocks. Even though there are other factors involved, you're in control of the operations, and you call the shots. When you drop the feed dogs and pick up the presser foot for a little free-form ornamentation, a good accompanist and a good sewing machine stay right there with you, and you end up with a beautiful finished product.

Singing in a small, conductorless ensemble, is a like operating an old-fashioned industrial sewing machine, one that requires several operators. It's a little more complicated, but so long as the people involved know the equipment and are in tune with each other, everything turns out nicely.

Singing as a soloist with a large ensemble--chorus, orchestra, or both--has you back at your modern machine again, but this time you're on board a fighter jet. You have to stay in constant communication with the pilot, adapt to any mechanical failures or other surprises along the way, and still turn out a perfect notched collar by the end of the flight. It's an enjoyable challenge, and you've trained for it and are well-prepared, but it still causes your eyes to go very wide in places.

So tomorrow afternoon, I fasten my seatbelt. This is my second gig with the Philharmonic Society of Arlington, and unlike with last winter's hoary, well-beloved chestnut, this time I'm the inaugural soprano for a piece written specifically for this group, Psalm 125 by Arlington Philharmonic pianist David Sears. (Also, I'm not fighting an ill-timed cold and furtively blowing my nose between arias.) It's a good piece, pleasant to sing--and entirely worthy of the fighter jet analogy. There are more than a few surprise loops and rolls before getting back to the tarmac.

Sears rubs elbows on the program with Dvořák and Mendelssohn, the latter interpreted by the winner of the PSA's 2008 Young Artists Competition. It promises to be an exciting concert, after which I shall go back to sewing on the ground for a while.

Weekly musical bon mot #46

2009-04-25T15:33:00.000-05:00

"We must never forget that art is not a form of propaganda; it is a form of truth."

--John F. Kennedy

Weekly musical bon mot #45

2009-04-18T21:34:00.000-05:00

"I just went on stage and got on with it."

--Susan Boyle

Holy Weeks I have known

2009-04-11T10:19:00.004-05:00

Today is Holy Saturday. As it happens, this is the first Holy Week in a long time in which I'm not working--at all. As much as I miss being in the choir stalls for my favorite week of the liturgical year, it's nice to have the privilege of just going to church and not being totally fried by 2 p.m. tomorrow. My church-related travels this week have uncovered several neat little customs (the pre-conciliar rite of washing the altar with wine and water on Holy Thursday, the tolling of the Nine Tailors on Good Friday, the English practice of "creeping to the Cross", the Oratio Jeremiae in the Dominican rite and so forth) and some surprises (Victoria's Improperia in English?!), and also to reflect on previous Holy Weeks I have witnessed. There was much that was beautiful and solemn--and much unintentional comedy. Here are some highlights (leaving the congregations and their locations unnamed):

--The Palm Sunday procession accompanied by "Joy to the world" ("The people don't know 'All glory, laud and honor'!") It almost works textually, but the result was just too weird.

--The (I'm not making this up) percussion instruments during the Passion narrative on Palm Sunday (or was it Good Friday? or both?)

--The overly dramatic (and sanitized) Palm Sunday Passion reading with many roles and only one microphone. I was relieved that no one made chicken sounds at the third cockcrow.

--The Tenebrae (beginning in broad daylight) at which I came down with a bad case of hiccups during the organ prelude. (Also the fact that Tenebrae had an organ prelude.)

--The Tenebrae which ended with the Allegri Miserere in complete darkness (except for the candles), thus requiring me to sing (and see) all the right notes (some of them very high!) at the right time, turn the pages and not set anything on fire. At least I didn't set anything on fire.

--The bizarre (and ungrammatical) "recommitment to ministry" rite that replaced the mandatum on Holy Thursday and consisted mostly of a bunch of people talking. I was told that it had the bishop's OK, but I'm not so sure about that.

--The Maundy Thursday liturgy that began in the "upper room"--one of the upstairs classrooms in the church office building. (The church proper served as the Garden of Olives, where Jesus "prayed earnestly to his Father-Mother in heaven.")

--The outdoor Veneration of the Cross on the Good Friday when it was so cold...

--The Good Friday sermon about baseball.

--The Holy Saturday morning prayer sung by an ad hoc "women's schola"--one member of which the director (singing along in falsetto for most of it) tactfully told to "sing this part very softly."

--The very windy Easter Vigil on which it took several tries to light the Paschal Candle.

--The Easter Vigil with "duelling cantors"--each of us attempted to leave an even longer pause between halves of our psalm verses. (We'd been told our pauses were too short.) If the other cantor sang,

"Give thanks to the LORD, for he is good, *
(one...two...three...)
for his mercy endures for ever."

then I sang,

"Give thanks to the God of gods, *
(one...two...three...four...five...)
for his mercy endures forever."

after which he sang,

"Give thanks to the Lord of Lords, *
(one...two...three...four...five...six...seven...eight...nine...ten...)
for his mercy endures forever."

and so forth.

--The Easter Day service during which the choir processed singing "Were you there?" while members of the congregation unveiled the cross and placed flowers around it. When the flowering was finished, we were to sing "Were you there when he rose up from the grave?" Before that point, though, we lost track of the verses, and ended up singing "Were you there when they hmm-hmm-hmm-hmm-hmm?" for a while.

--The Easter Day prelude interrupted by the celebrant asking, "Is that all?"--and the choir director pointing out that no, there was one more piece to go.

--The Easter sermon about basketball.

Happy Easter, everyone.

Weekly musical bon mot #44

2009-04-11T10:18:00.001-05:00

"Contrary to popular belief an artist is never ahead of his time, but most people are far behind theirs."

--Edgar Varese

More-or-less-weekly musical bon mot #43

2009-04-08T18:23:00.000-05:00

"Music is essentially useless, as life is."

--George Santayana

Quartet FAIL

2009-03-30T18:24:00.001-05:00

Maybe it's a quartetto grosso?

Weekly musical bon mot #42

2009-03-30T18:22:00.000-05:00

"The man that hath no music in himself,
Nor is not moved with concord of sweet sounds,
Is fit for treasons, stratagems, and spoils;
The motions of his spirit are dull as night,
And his affections dark as Erebus.
Let no such man be trusted."

--William Shakespeare

Close, but not really

2009-03-24T20:31:00.002-05:00

On my way to a rehearsal, harp in its case and on my back, I stop to buy a snack and some tea.

Barista: What's that in the case?
Me: It's my harp.
Barista: Really? For some reason I thought it was a trombone.
Me: You did?

Paging the Tenth Muse!

2009-03-21T15:47:00.017-05:00

(I was going to call this post "Of Lesbian lays", but then I thought that some of you might be disappointed to find out that it's just about a song I'm learning.)

I'm putting together an English program with a harpsichordist pal of mine, and on it is John Blow's "Sappho to the Goddeſs of Beauty: Addres’d to the Dutcheſs of Grafton " from his Amphion Anglicus (published 1700), a pretty faithfully--from what I can tell--Englished version of Sappho's Fragment 31, "Φαίνεταί μοι":

Happy the Man who languiſhing does sit,

and hear the Charming Paphiana’s Wit,

and ſe’s her ſweetly ſmiling at his Sighs;

this changes, this the mortal Deifies.

Ah me undone! As ſoon as I had ſeen

the Beauty, ſuch the Features, Air and Meen,

I was amaz’d, of ev’ry ſence bereft;

my Voice was gone, not the leaſt accent left.

To check the paſſion, and to eaſe the pain,

I try to ſpeak and to my Freind complain;

But when faint breathings only do remain;

alas! the faultring Tongue muſt move in vain.

Oh! now I burn; the ſubtle flame does riſe

thro’ev’ry Vein, and fixes in my Eyes;

the day to me ſeems but a miſty light;

my hearing, as confus’d too, as my ſight:

Now a cold ſweat my trembling limbs bedews;

and like a wither’d plant, my Viſage shews;

pale, cold and ſpeechleſs, without Breath I lye,

in the ſweet tranſports of my Soul, I die.

(Bonus lesson: Microsoft Word has a long S character in the symbols library. Think of the possibilities!)

(One of the great tragedies of my life is that I can't read Greek beyond a very cursory dip into Athenaze at the end of the year in AP Latin, an experiment which made me splutter--silently, of course--"Articles! What kind of classical language has articles?")

Fragment 31 is one of a very few Sappho poems to survive beyond antiquity in near entirety, thanks to its inclusion in Longinus's treatise On the sublime as an example of, well, the sublime. (Conventional wisdom attributes the destruction of Sappho's reportedly voluminous output to "popes and other barbarians" as in Lawrence Lipking's cheap shot ("Sappho Descending", Eighteenth-Century Life 12:2, p.41), while Margaret Reynolds (The Sappho Companion, New York: Palgrave 2000, p.18) and others speculate that the poetry of Sappho and her imitators simply went out of style toward late antiquity, and therefore was not preserved as carefully as more "important" works.) Such a poem, with its detailed enumeration of the symptoms of lovesickness could not help but appeal to the affetti-obsessed audiences of the Baroque, and the connection with ancient Greece made it that much better. (The Amphion also contains a setting of Sappho's Fragment 1, a hymn addressed to Aphrodite. I thought about programming that one as well, but I just couldn't bring myself to sing "O Veeeeeeeeeenus" repeatedly with a straight face.) Blow (1649-1708) then brings it up to date by addressing it to the "Dutcheſs of Grafton", most likely Isabella Fitzroy née Bennet (c. 1668-1723), Countess of Arlington, who inherited the title from her father in 1685. The unattributed poem calls her "Paphiana", a reference to the supposed home of Aphrodite, the Greek island of Paphos. The cognoscenti of the time may have seen such a reference as a snide little joke, as Lady Isabella was rumored to have been busy during her husband's nine-month absence while at sea. Classical or pastoral nicknames (as in Katherine Philips's (1631-1664) poems to Rosania, Lucasia, Pastora, etc.) were a popular device in Restoration poetry--ostensibly to disguise the persons mentioned, but more often than not they were thin disguises indeed in a court society where everyone knew who was doing what with whom.

A particularly striking aspect of this text, which does not escape the modern reader, is that it is a love poem spoken by a woman and addressed to another woman. Some readers have assumed the speaker of the poem to be male (a reading ruled out in this version by the heading Blow gives to his composition); others have assumed that it is not "Paphiana" whom the speaker loves but "the Man", and this is more plausible but seems a bit of a stretch considering the absence of any anger towards "Paphiana" on the speaker's part. Some have interpreted the original Fragment 31 as an epithalamion, or wedding song, praising the exquisite beauty of both bride and groom. Perhaps that is a possibility in ancient Mitylene, but early modern England would be made very uncomfortable by such a song on a wedding playlist--though it could have been written as a tribute performed apart from the wedding festivities, as Lady Isabella had married her second husband two years before the song's publication. The remaining possibility, of course, is that "Sappho" of the song is indeed enamored of the Duchess of Grafton in some way--such a concept was certainly not absent from the literature of the time. In the Restoration mind, Sappho was associated with a) poetry and b) promiscuity, both with men and women. To call a woman "Sappho" could imply that she was a good poet, or suggest that she had loose morals--or both. By addressing her in the person of woman known for her amorous exploits with both sexes, is John Blow accusing Isabella Fitzroy of being a "wanton tribas"? From my reading so far, that's anybody's guess, and at this point my guess is no.

If only I could have been at the song's first public performance, or at least read the account of someone who was. Would that answer my questions, or suggest more?

Weekly musical bon mot #41

2009-03-21T15:17:00.001-05:00

"People whose sensibility is destroyed by music in trains, airports, lifts, cannot concentrate on a Beethoven quartet."

--Witold Lutosławski

Weekly musical bon mot #40

2009-03-07T16:57:00.000-05:00

"Religion and art spring from the same root and are close kin. Economics and art are strangers."

--Willa Cather

Weekly musical bon mot #39

2009-02-28T22:11:00.000-05:00

"The arts are an even better barometer of what is happening in our world than the stock market or the debates in congress."

--Hendrik Willem Van Loon

Well hello, Quadragesima

2009-02-26T13:14:00.003-05:00

Yesterday was Ash Wednesday, the first day of Lent in the Western Church. That means we don't say the a-word until the Easter Vigil, which right now is pretty far off.

So is there some perverse reason that I spent a good part of the day with the last movement of Exultate, jubilate stuck in my head?

Weekly musical bon mot #038

2009-02-21T14:50:00.000-05:00

"Everybody knows that sacred music is the loveliest of prayers."

--Henri Catalan

Weekly (really!) musical bon mot #037

2009-02-14T13:56:00.001-05:00

"Never look at the trombones. You'll only encourage them."

--Richard Strauss

Return of the weekly musical bon mot--#036

2009-01-24T14:55:00.002-05:00

"The camaraderie of musicians was something I'd always envied. Painters couldn't paint together, writers couldn't write; but whenever you got two musicians together, they always wanted to play something, sing something, even just hum."

--Barbara Wilson

Meme me up, Scotty!

2009-01-21T20:14:00.002-05:00

A short but substantial little quiz as seen on Aphaeresis:

1. Josquin or Palestrina?
Do I have to choose? How about Josquin for Christmas and Palestrina for Easter?

2. Bach or Händel?
Bach, natürlich. You really have to ask?

3. Haydn or Mozart?
Ah, the evil twins of pre-Romantic triteness. Mozart, but barely.

4. Beethoven or Rossini?
Rossini is easier to sing. That said, I'm happy to avoid both of them.

5. Brahms or Wagner?
Brahms all the way. No five-hour chromatic opiates for me!

6. Verdi or Puccini?
Puccini. His operas are shorter.

7. Debussy or Ravel
Ravel, but I like both.

8. Strauss or Mahler?
Mahler--but please, no symphonies.

9. Stravinsky or Schönberg?
Stravinsky, but again, I like both.

10. Cage or Carter?
Cage for prepared piano, Carter for everything else.

If you know who all these people are, you're tagged.

Twelve drummers drumming--and some other stuff

2009-01-19T16:16:00.004-05:00

Yes, folks, I'm still here--with only a temporary slide into the Vortex of No Blogging. Somehow I made it through Advent and Christmas, in spite of a bad cold and bad weather. Here are the stats:

Messiah's: 4
Folky-Renaissance concerts: 2
Times Salt: 7
Radio broadcasts: 1
Snowed-out gigs: 2
Colds: 1
Concerts affected by said cold: 3
Concerts missed because of said cold: 0
Church services sung on Christmas Eve: 1
Church services attended on Christmas Eve: 2
Dinner guests for Christmas Day: 2
Desserts for Christmas Day: 3
Temperature inside my house on New Year's Eve: +39F
Temperature outside my house on New Year's Eve: +5F
New Year's Eve parties attended at someone else's house: 1
Number of subway stops on the way to said party before I could feel my toes again: 17
Days it took for the furnace-repair people to a) show up and b) repair the furnace: 4
Days of Christmas: 12
Days from Christmas to Twelfth Night party: 16
Plays performed at Twelfth Night party: 2
Rehearsals for plays performed at Twelfth Night party: 0

Partridges in pear trees: 0
Pears in cardboard boxes: 6
Turtle doves: 0
Dove chocolates: >4
French hens: 0
French fries: >20
Calling birds: 0
Calling parents: 2
Golden rings: 1
Geese a-laying: 0
Cats a-lying down: 3
Cats a-hiding: 2
Swans a-swimming: 0
Swans a-cowering in the cold: 2
Maids a-milking: 0
Quarts of milk: 1
Ladies dancing: 0
Ladies singing: >40
Lords a-leaping: 0
Cats a-sleeping: 1
Pipers piping: 1
Pipers not piping: 2
Drummers drumming: 0
Percussionists percussing: 3
Timpanists doing their timpani thing: 1

So now it's on to February: The Month with One Audition for Each Coast. And probably the return of the Weekly musical bon mot.

VERY lost books of the Bible

2008-12-11T16:23:00.004-05:00

(Click on the image to read the whole thing. No, really, click on the image.)

Hat tip to sinden.org.

NB: This is not the Psalm 151 "outside the number" accepted as canonical by the Eastern Orthodox Churches. That one is much shorter.

Moderation in all things

2008-12-11T16:02:00.002-05:00

Perhaps you've noticed that in the past few days I've started comment moderation, and no longer allow anonymous comments. A few days ago I received a series of snide, hurtful comments from an anonymous troll, and for a moment there it was as though the past 17 or so years never happened and I was back in middle school (but with better technology. Anyone remember the Apple IIe?) So for the time being, I've decided to play referee in the hopes of preserving a little corner of civility in my part of the web.

Don't think that I'm going to squelch all disagreement and only post responses of glowing adulation. Civil and intelligent disagreement is not only permitted but encouraged, and glowing adulation makes me squirm a little. But if you're going to be nasty and immature and unprofessional, you lose your voice in this (very small and specialized) forum. Nor will you be dignified with a response. We're all too old for this.

And many, many thanks to all my readers, including the jerks, for reading and engaging. You may be laughing behind my back, but at least you're paying attention.

Pretty good, for an also-ran

2008-12-08T22:22:00.004-05:00

Every year at Messiah time, the chorus and orchestra of the Handel & Haydn Society organize a cookie contest. I'm told that the tradition started in 1988 ("Oh," I said to the orchestra member who told me this, "I was nine years old then." I misspoke; I was actually ten.) and soon evolved into its present form, in which musicians submit their entries anonymously with cute Messiah-related names (this year's entries included, "Smiter", "For the mouth of the Lord hath snacked on it", and "His taste is orange, His coconut is white") on Saturday, and the winner is announced on Sunday during intermission. My entry didn't place, but I am happy to report that first prize went to a member of the chorus (for "O Cookie, where is thy victory?") As promised, here is my recipe:

One yolk, pretty easy: a Divine Union of things I like in one cookie

1 cup all-purpose flour
1/2 teaspoon baking soda
1/4 teaspoon baking powder
1/4 teaspoon salt
1/2 teaspoon ground cardamom
1/4 teaspoon ground ginger
1 cup unsalted butter, softened
1 cup white sugar
1/2 cup brown sugar
1 egg
1 cup rolled oats
1/3 cup crystallized ginger, chopped
1/3 cup dried apricots, chopped
1/3 cup dried cherries, chopped
zest of one orange
12 ounces bittersweet chocolate

Preheat oven to 350 degrees(F). Grease three or four baking sheets and set aside. Sift flour, baking soda, baking powder, salt and spices into a bowl.
In another bowl, cream butter and sugar together. Add egg and mix till combined.
Combine flour mixture with butter mixture. Stir in oats, fruit and zest, mixing until well combined.
Place heaping teaspoonfuls of dough onto baking sheets, one to two inches apart. Bake for 15 minutes, and transfer cookies to parchment paper to cool.
Melt chocolate in a double boiler or in the microwave. With a pastry brush, coat the tops of the cookies with the melted chocolate and let harden.
Makes about 4 dozen.

I think I'm going to make another batch of these pretty soon.

in ur airwaves singin ur chorusez

2008-12-07T01:18:00.004-05:00

This Sunday the 7th, you can hear me (in the chorus--if you hear me specifically it will be because I made an enormous glaring mistake) on the live broadcast of the Handel and Haydn Society's performance of Handel's Messiah on WGBH--89.7 FM in the Boston area, and www.wgbh.org everywhere else. The performance begins at 3 p.m. Eastern (12 p.m. Pacific) and runs about two hours and 45 minutes (we don't take any cuts.) Paul Daniel is conducting, and the soloists are Kendra Colton, Paula Murrihy, Brian Stucki and Brett Polegato.

Paul Daniel has made some bold and unusual choices for this performance, many of which I think are brilliant and ought to be used more often. One of my friends said (in his Facebook status!) that he has "rediscovered his enjoyment" of this piece, and I imagine he's not the only one among the many audience members. There are several places where you will be pleasantly surprised, however many times you've heard (or sung) this venerable old chestnut. It's a real joy to sing, even at just under three hours!

More commentary will follow--including my H&H cookie contest recipe. Now, to bed.

Weekly musical bon mot #035

2008-12-06T23:12:00.001-05:00

"Does the real thing ever have the perfection of a stage performance?"

--Agatha Christie

Weekly musical bon mot #034

2008-11-29T15:34:00.000-05:00

"A choir is a beautiful thing."

--Muriel Barbery

Sancta Cecilia, ora pro nobis!

2008-11-22T23:18:00.002-05:00

Sanctæ Cæciliæ, Virginis et Martyris, quæ ad cælestem Sponsum, proprio sanguine purpurata, transivit sextodecimo Kalendas Octobris.

John William Waterhouse (1849-1917), St. Cecilia

(It's a nice touch, I think, to have both a violin and a rebec. Only angels could make that work.)

Weekly musical bon mot #033

2008-11-22T22:45:00.000-05:00

"It is not whether you really cry. It's whether the audience thinks you are crying."

--Ingrid Bergman

My next album (or, What I do when I'm not sleepy)

2008-11-21T23:42:00.004-05:00

This is probably my favorite meme yet, via the folks at the Shrine of th e Holy Whapping. Here's how it works:

Band Name: Random Wikipeda Link
Album Title: Random quote generator (take the last four words from the first quotation on the page--"quote" is a verb, folks)
Album Art: Flickr Interesting Photo (pick one)

And my result:

(I don't have fancy photo-editing software, so I used the Lol Builder at icanhascheezburger.com.)

So far there's only one real album in my discography, and I always thought that were I to go solo my first offering would be something unoriginal yet descriptive like "Vivaldi Motets", or more likely something with a colon ("Wearing the Pants: Scarlatti's trouser roles" is a possibility, my earth-mother hips notwithstanding.) But should I decide to go the indie band route (though what's more indie than low-budget, self-produced concerts in obscure venues?), I know where to find my inspiration.

If you're reading, you're tagged. This is too good to pass up.

**UPDATE**
So far Aphaeresis and in time of daffodils have jumped onto the indie album train, with marvelous results. I know there are more bands in the making out there...

Don't stop me if you've heard this one

2008-11-21T22:59:00.004-05:00

Narcissistic hat tip to the Ironic Catholic.

Weekly musical bon mot #032

2008-11-15T14:19:00.001-05:00

"Music should never be harmless."

--Robbie Robertson

But wait, there's more

2008-11-15T13:43:00.005-05:00

Yesterday I got the call for the Handel and Haydn Society's Messiah at the beginning of December. This is good news for several reasons: great group, great music, and guaranteed financial solvency for a few months. This means I'll get to spend some time on both sides of several fences this year--chorus/soloist roles, period/modern orchestras, professional/community ensembles and so forth, making this coming month a Learning Experience in capital letters. I'm looking forward to it.

So in honor of the imminent Messiah Season, here's a third of a poetic triptych on that subject by Frances Ridley Havergal, best known nowadays as a hymnwriter. (The other two sections are devoted to Haydn's Creation and Mendelssohn's Elijah.) It's not great poetry by any stretch, but it's a nice illustration of the staying power of Handel's work. It's also evidence that the average English churchgoer at the time of writing was familiar with at least parts of these three oratorios (and there are no prizes for guessing which movement was most popular.) I've highlighted the words from the oratorio itself in red:

Hush! for a master harp is tuned again,
In truest unison with choirs above,
For prelude to a loftier, sweeter strain,
The praise of God's inestimable love;
Who sent redemption to a world of woe,
That all a Father's heart His banished ones might know.

Hush! while on silvery wing of holiest song
Floats forth the old, dear story of our peace,
His coming, the Desire of Ages long,
To wear our chains, and win our glad release.
Our wondering joy, to hear such tidings blest,
Is crowned with 'Come to Him, and He will give you rest.'

Rest, by His sorrow! Bruised for our sin,
Behold the Lamb of God! His death our life.
Now lift your heads, ye gates! He entereth in,
Christ risen indeed, and Conqueror in the strife.
Thanks, thanks to Him who won, and Him who gave
Such victory of love, such triumph o'er the grave.

Hark! 'Hallelujah!' O sublimest strain!
Is it prophetic echo of the day
When He, our Saviour and our King, shall reign,
And all the earth shall own His righteous sway?
Lift heart, and voice, and swell the mighty chords,
While hallelujahs peal, to Him the Lord of lords!

'Worthy of all adoration,
Is the Lamb that once was slain,'
Cry, in raptured exultation,
His redeemed from every nation;
Angel myriads join the strain,
Sounding from their sinless strings
Glory to the King of kings:
Harping, with their harps of gold,
Praise which never can be told.

Hallelujahs full and swelling
Rise around His throne of might,
All our highest laud excelling,
Holy and Immortal, dwelling
In the unapproached light,
He is worthy to receive
All that heaven and earth can give;
Blessing, honor, glory, might,
All are His by glorious right.

At the sound of many waters
Let the full Amen arise!
HALLELUJAH! Ceasing never,
Sounding through the great FOR EVER,
Linking all its harmonies;
Through eternities of bliss,
Lord, our rapture shall be this;
And our endless life shall be
One AMEN of praise to Thee.

The New Liturgical Movement provides a link to the Hallelujah chorus in its "original" Latin--yikes! (Be sure to read the comments too.) It's actually a pretty good translation, but c'mon, folks...

When does Christmas begin?

2008-11-10T21:51:00.005-05:00

For me personally, Christmas begins at midnight on December 25. I'm a firm believer in Advent--purple, expectant, with nary a red-nosed reindeer in sight. Christmas has 12 whole days, and none of them is in November.

For me professionally, however, Christmas begins right about now. (It started even earlier when I had a mall job. I now break out in hives every time I hear the holiday song stylings of Natalie Cole and a Bunch of Whiny Children. Also "Here comes Suzie Snowflake". And "Santa Baby". And others, probably.) Christmas concerts tend to be well before Christmas, and before Christmas concerts there are Christmas rehearsals.

This year I have two big Christmas-before-Christmas gigs.

The first is the obligatory Messiah which, despite being as overplayed as Pachelbel's Canon, is much better than Pachelbel's Canon, and I always enjoy it because it is some of the best music Handel ever wrote. I'm the soprano soloist with the Philharmonic Society of Arlington on Sunday, December 14 at 3 p.m. at the First Parish UU Church in Arlington. It's my first "real" oratorio gig, and I'm excited and nervous and all the requisite things one feels about that. Last summer when I was in Connecticut for AEMF, I got a phone call from the chorus director during my afternoon nap. He asked if I would like this gig, and of course I said yes and promptly told everyone I saw. I took a nap the next day too, but I didn't get hired for anything else that week.

The second is two days later in Cambridge (with other dates and locations pending), as guest artist (voice and harp) with Seven Times Salt for their annual Christmas concert, December 16 at 8 p.m. at the Cambridge Friends Meeting House. I've worked (and socialized) with all the members of the ensemble many times, but this is my first time working with them as STS--and it's their sixth annual Christmas concert, so by this time things are running pretty smoothly. (It's also the first year I'll get in for free.)

These both promise to be very enjoyable concerts, and if you're in the area I hope you'll come and listen. This is good stuff that you won't hear at the mall.

Weekly musical bons mots #030 and #031 (since we missed last week)

2008-11-08T13:13:00.001-05:00

"I know he's going to die on me like an operatic tenor, always popping up for another aria."

--Mary Renault

"Earnestness without aesthetics does not inspire participation."

--Alison Webster

One obligatory post about the election

2008-11-05T18:15:00.002-05:00

(Last night I got together with some friends to watch the returns, and then shared a cab with a friend who lives nearby. Of course we talked about the election.)

Cab driver: And those people celebrating and beating drums in Central Square, it's not black people beating drums, it's white people beating drums!

Me: Probably on one and three.

Folks, in a post-race America, everyone will be able to find the backbeat.

We now return you to your regularly scheduled blog.

Weekly musical bon mot #029

2008-10-25T13:04:00.001-05:00

"If his voice had been any lower it would have been magma."

--Colson Whitehead

Low humor at the expense of high art

2008-10-22T18:05:00.005-05:00

This week's Mass setting at the Church of the Advent is by a 20th-century composer, Henri Sauguet (1901-1989). I've seen bits of his music and enjoyed it, but I never actually said the man's name aloud until last week--and promptly giggled. Of course I understand French, and of course I knew how it sounded when I read it in print, but it wasn't until the word came out of my mouth that I realized how silly it sounds to English speakers. (If you're confused, imagine a bratty 12-year-old remarking to bratty friends, annoyingly and rather offensively, "Ohmigod, that is Sauguet!" And then promise me that you will never use that expression.)

The classical world is full of composers with silly-sounding names. One of my favorites is the Venetian Gregorio Zucchini (c. 1550-c. 1616), whose music was popular at the imperial court of Austria. (There is also Giovanni Bernardo Zucchinetti (1730-1801), for those of you who like a smaller summer squash.) Johann Joseph Fux (1660-1741) has been a conservatory punchline for years, and there's always the English composer William Crotch (1775-1847), probably an endless source of giggles for generations of English choirboys. My favorite silly composer name, though, has got to be the American composer and soldier (and Boston local) Supply Belcher (1751-1836), who managed to get two silly-sounding names for the price of one.

I wonder if he had a long-lost brother named Demand.

Weekly musical bon mot #028

2008-10-18T13:16:00.002-05:00

"There is a greater resemblance between the creative artist and the mystic than between any other brands of human beings."

--Vita Sackville-West

Overheard

2008-10-16T22:54:00.002-05:00

(On my way home from work, I go past the NEC campus.)

First young woman: And also, they're so annoying most of the time.

Second young woman: Me too! I can't stand singers most of the time.

Ladies, I don't disagree--but not most of the time.

Things I don't understand

2008-10-15T21:31:00.005-05:00

Today I got the first flu shot of my life. I don't like to put random things into my body if I can avoid it, and I always said that I would only get a flu shot if my immune system were somehow compromised, or if I were in a situation that would potentially expose me to large amounts of flu. Now that my day job is in a hospital (in the Department of Infectious Diseases, no less), the second condition has come to pass, so I took advantage of the free workplace flu shots offered today in my department. Naturally, I asked the needle nurse (yes, I know that's not his official job title) if there were any side effects I should know about. "Well, you may get flu-like symptoms," he said, "but you won't get the flu." Understanding vaccines as I do (which is not really at any advanced level), that makes sense--but isn't the point of the vaccine to make it so that I don't get a fever, chills, muscle aches and so forth? (I've also noticed that lots of diseases that are not influenza are described as having "flu-like symptoms"--usually pretty serious ones, like malaria. Maybe there's some more descriptive vocabulary we could use for this sort of thing?)

So I started wondering about some of the other strange and contradictory (or redundant) things I have encountered recently. Maybe someone can shed some light on these?

zero-calorie energy drink
So where does the energy come from?

sugar-free caramel
I usually call that "butter"--or "empty pan", depending on the recipe.

bodywear
Where else do you wear things?

contemporary music
All music is contemporary with something. Also art, literature, slang, mores,...

I'm mystified. I guess I'll just sit here and nurse the little sore spot at the injection site.

Wednesday picture

2008-10-15T19:38:00.003-05:00

Graduale, Esztergom Cathedral Library

The Graduale is the book that contains the official chants of the Mass. The official version in use today (some would say perhaps not enough use, and I agree) is published by the Abbey of Solesmes in France, the official "guardians" of chant in the modern Roman Catholic Church. It goes without saying that the modern edition is not quite as fancy as this one, with its extensive illumination and text, neumes and clefs in gold leaf over an expensive blue background.

This page shows the introit for the Mass of the first Sunday of Advent, which translates roughly, "To you have I lifted my soul, O my God, in you I trust; may I not blush with shame, neither may my enemies laugh at me." The initial A depicts King David, traditionally thought to be the author of the Psalms (every introit contains a Psalm verse, and many of them consist entirely of text from the Psalms), and the border depicts the Annunciation (the Angel Gabriel on the left, the Virgin Mary on the right, and God the Father at the top.) The notation is the "hobnail" style (because it looks like little furniture tacks) used in and around Germany in the 14th and 15th centuries. Judging from this single page, it is evident that the entire Graduale was made with immense love and an immense amount of painstaking work.

On the other extreme from this particularly extravagant tome is the modern-day phenomenon of the disposable missalette, easy to produce with current technology and replaced every three months or so. Sure, they're "practical" enough and relatively inexpensive, but no one is going to put them in a museum collection (and not just because the paper will disintegrate pretty quickly.) The Esztergom Graduale was made to withstand years of use, and to express faith and devotion through its visual beauty. It must have been a singular joy to be one of the singers who read from this book day after day at Mass (and not just because they had something interesting to look at during a boring sermon.) Faith is not disposable, nor is art--and we run a great risk of diminishing both by communicating them with disposable means.

If you want to compare the Esztergom version of this chant (it's pretty easy to read, in comparison with other manuscripts of the same time period) with the official Vatican version, here's a link to download the 1961 Graduale as a PDF. "Ad te levavi" is on page 1. There are some pretty striking differences--apparently the Esztergom scribe didn't believe in liquescents.

Weekly musical bon mot #027

2008-10-11T11:26:00.001-05:00

"If the music seems to be 'over your head' the best plan is to raise your head."

--Joseph W. Clokey

Wednesday picture

2008-10-08T18:17:00.004-05:00

Lubin Baugin (c. 1610-1663), Still life with chessboard

Admittedly, no one is making music in this picture--it is, after all, a still life. And the still life genre is replete with musical instruments, so what's so special about this one?

Have a look at the book under the lute. (Clicking on the picture will take you to a bigger version.) It's under the lute for a reason, because it's unplayable on any other instrument. That, folks, is French lute tablature, a sure sign that our painter knew what he was about. (Italian lute tablature uses numbers instead of letters, and also shows up in paintings of the same era--but mostly in Italy.) We are presented with a six-course lute and a tablature staff with only five lines, suggesting that the book was one of pre-printed staves on which its owner copied or sketched tunes of his liking, yet another touch of realism in this collection of stuff that the middle- and upper-class man or woman of the time (the sort who would have bought a painting such as this one) might have had around the house. I can't read lute tablature, so beyond the fact that the piece on the open page is in triple meter and that its A-section repeats, I'm lost. Maybe one of my lutenist readers would like to take a crack at it?

Baugin has not incorporated the standard vanitas symbols--the skull, the crown, the balance and so forth--into his still life, but the suggestion of impermanence is still there: flowers wilt, food and drink are consumed, games end, and music gives way to silence. The only thing approaching permanence is the musical score, the written record, reminding the viewer that art is long and stuff is very, very short.

Weekly musical bon mot #026

2008-10-04T12:40:00.000-05:00

"It takes a lot of faith to know you can be successful in music."

--Valerie Coleman

Wednesday picture

2008-10-01T17:54:00.002-05:00

Gerard ter Borch (1617-1681), The concert

One of the things I like best about this painting is the angle of viewing--not because I think people look nicer from the back (most don't), but because it makes the viol player appear completely unaware that we are watching her. The harpsichordist also seems oblivious to any potential audience; the "concert" is solely for its participants. There are no scores or stands visible, so it seems that they are playing from memory.

In many of the smaller ensembles in which I have performed, we often rehearse in similar configurations, facing one another to maintain as much contact as possible. Only in performance, when we are sure of the music and of ourselves, do we "cheat out" and invite the audience into the intimacy we have created in rehearsal. The women in the picture are not professionals, and they don't appear to be "rehearsing" for anything. They are simply playing together because playing together is fun.

What would our society be like if music in our homes were no longer the exclusive preserve of (recorded) professionals?

For I will consider my cat Lolly

2008-09-27T12:23:00.007-05:00

Musicians, I have found, tend toward the cat-person end of the spectrum. In the musical households I know, there's the occasional dog, rabbit or tortoise, but by and large we have cats unless inhibited by allergies (and sometimes even then) or the terms of our leases. My voice teacher in high school had a cat, my voice teacher in grad school had cats, and my voice teacher after grad school has cats. (My voice teacher in college didn't have a cat, for reasons I haven't figured out.) The Boston HP Cat Team includes the violinist's cat, the oboist's cats, the bassoonist's cat, the gambist's and cellist's cats, and many, many singers' cats. Lolly has spent her life in the last category, having lived with two different singers (one of whom she converted from dogpersonhood) before she came to live with me.

Lolly is the only cat I know named for internet slang; before there were lolcats, there was Lolly, thus named because she talks. (Admittedly, I spend a lot of time addressing her by very stupid nicknames including Rumpelstiltskat, the Meowster, Little Furry Thing, and Supreme Commander of the Knights who say Meow. They all seemed clever at the time.) This cat gets more mileage out of "meow" than I ever thought possible--masterful use of unvoiced nasal consonants and expressive velar R-sounds, sometimes blossoming into a beautifully round, pear-shaped diphthong with a marvelous high, forward point. She's so good at it that I've borrowed some of her material for Rossini's Duetto buffo di due gatti, to favorable effect. And if I ever get that bored, a phonetic transcription of the dinnertime Hungry Cat Song could provide some minor amusement. (You know you've thought of it before.)

Cats have been running around western music from the Renaissance Katzenpfote to Stravinsky's Berceuse du chat and beyond. Frederica von Stade even recorded an album of cat songs with Garrison Keillor. Lolly is pretty shy, so I don't think that she and I will be singing any duets (she doesn't really like hanging around while I practice; so far her least favorite is the Brahms Requiem), and that's too bad--because this cat has one great set of pipes.

Weekly musical bon mot #025

2008-09-27T11:57:00.002-05:00

“His dreams led him to imagine that someday he would marry a wealthy Frenchwoman who would lead him to the staircase of the Opéra de Paris and help him become a tenor envied by Plácido Domingo, José Carreras, and Luciano Pavarotti, or maybe the first great opera singer to win a gold medal for figure skating.”

--Zoé Valdés

Wednesday picture

2008-09-24T13:43:00.004-05:00

Francesco Bergamini (1815-1883), Reading the choir notes

Judging by their habits, these gentlemen are probably Franciscans of some sort--though it appears that Lady Poverty is out of town for the weekend. Those two-sided music stands do exist, and several are extant in churches today. Apparently one of the prerequisites for becoming a choir friar was really good eyesight!

Weekly musical bon mot #024

2008-09-20T13:57:00.001-05:00

"Beware of people who say that they know nothing about opera--or poetry or painting or whatever other form of artistic expression is in question--but they do know what they like. No doubt they do. But ignorance of the genre itself makes it all too probable that what they happen to like isn't terribly good."

--Russell Shaw

Apud Bingiam, in diœcesi Moguntinensi, sanctæ Hildegardis Virginis

2008-09-17T21:56:00.009-05:00

Today (which, granted, is almost over, except in the Western states) is the liturgical commemoration of Hildegard of Bingen on the Roman Catholic, Anglican and ELCA (Lutheran) calendars. Although she was never formally canonized, she makes an appearance in the Roman Martyrology, and her relics are venerated at the Abtei St. Hildegard in Eibingen. From the evidence of her extant works, we know that she was a mystic and theologian, a naturalist and something of a physician, a poet and a composer. Particularly in the past 50 years, she has attracted a great deal of serious scholarly attention--and a lot of flakiness as well.

It is, of course, as a composer that I know our saint best. I have been privileged to have performed in three (very different) productions of her Ordo virtutum, and hope to do much more study and performance of her work in the future. In the performances of Hildegard's work I have heard, and in the scholarship I have read (which is, admittedly, only a small portion of what's out there), I have seen little attention to the music as it might have been sung in the monastery at Rupertsberg (and elsewhere?), perhaps because the primary sources are not particularly illuminating on that point. I am also led to wonder what else Hildegard and her sisters sang--as Benedictines, they would have chanted the full Divine Office in choro every day, probably replete with commemorations of obscure local saints (Rupert, Disibod and Eucharius most likely the tip of that iceberg) and perhaps various pre-Tridentine accretions that can be chalked up to "local custom." There are oblique references to paraliturgical and devotional practices among the nuns at Rupertsberg--did these include the popular Latin and vernacular devotional songs that were gaining ground in other parts of Europe? And the most tantalizing question, perhaps: did Hildegard write more music that has since been lost?

Like all saints, and indeed all famous people in general, Hildegard invites a good deal of speculation and conjecture, much of which is probably very far from reality. We want to make her over in our desired image--musical innovator, feminist before feminism, precursor of modern medicine, crypto-pantheist or whatever--as an ally in our favorite agenda. The gaps in what we know about her invite projection and invention, and I am as guilty of this as the next person. If the saints in heaven (and the composers in music's secular pantheon--is that an oxymoron?) are indeed "just folk like me", it is very tempting to create a hero who is also an "ideal self", the ultimate musician/woman/scholar/Christian, an image that says more about us than it does about Hildegard. Musicians have been known to promote particular agendas (no matter how much we argue the contrary!) but saints never do, unless holiness can be considered a mere "agenda". As performers, our only agenda in performing Hildegard's music should be just that: performing Hildegard's music, letting it "do its thing" without our own projections. Hildegard is a saint because she was true to her faith; we can only call ourselves musicians if we are true to our music.

Up periscope!

2008-09-14T20:10:00.002-05:00

Because this year, I am a sub.

Over the summer, the music department at St. Paul's went through a personnel reconfiguration, leaving me without a permanent position. That means that, for now anyway, I'm back to being the James Bond of church music: out of nowhere I get a phone call and a few instructions, and then I get on a train and go somewhere, suit up (usually cassock and surplice, but not always) and do something a little bit scary--and if it goes well, nothing self-destructs. After a long time as a churchgoer and a church singer, I know the modern Roman Rite backward and forward, and the 1979 BCP holds very few surprises. Still, being a sub has its periodic deer-in-the-headlights moments--on fancy-schmancy holy days, for example, or on any old day in non-liturgical congregations--in which my eyes get very big and I whisper frantically to the person next to me, "What do we do now?" I have yet to be brained by a wayward thurible or set alight by a rogue torch, though I have fallen down a few chancel steps.

On Wednesday I had a successful audition for the sub list at the Church of the Advent in Boston, whose music program--and liturgy as a whole--I admire very much, and I'm looking forward to singing there. I'm also on the radar for a few other congregations, and plan to put myself on the radar of some more, figuring that a crack-shot sightreader who understands Latin and reads liturgical theology for fun (really!) has a pretty good chance most places, even if she is a soprano. (Sadly, for us singers, biology is destiny.) I expect to learn some more good music--and perhaps accumulate some more pretty good church stories (though I hope for no repeats of the interpretive dance to a whiny recorded version of "God bless America", the funeral congregation who didn't know any of the responses, the question-and-answer sermon on the topic "What's your manure?", or the couple who chose a passage from The Lorax as the second reading for their wedding--along with a madrigal with a fa-la-la refrain that would make any eighties hair band proud.)

I do miss the security of having a permanent position, and if somebody lands a dream job elsewhere and has to move away to the hinterlands, I'm ready to step into the breach. All the same, life as a sub has its advantages too, and I'm looking forward to it.

So damn the torpedoes, full speed ahead, and all that. Dive, dive!

Weekly musical bon mot #023

2008-09-13T10:40:00.003-05:00

"What we listen to does not remain 'outside' of us, but enters into us and changes our way of feeling, reacting and perceiving."

--Peter Kwasniewski

Weekly musical bon mot #022

2008-09-06T11:11:00.001-05:00

"The first mistake of Art is to assume that it is serious."

--Lester Bangs

Obscure instruments that don't exist--for good reason, probably

2008-09-04T12:17:00.004-05:00

Last weekend was the second annual Weekend of Ill Repute, in which my friends and I prove that, even though we are all getting old, we can spend an entire long weekend engaging in such disreputable activities as picking blueberries, singing shape-note hymns, eating waffles, walking around on beaches, and so forth. On Monday (picnic at World's End on the South Shore), we got talking about the "d'amore" family of instruments, which really have little or nothing to do with each other. There's the oboe d'amore, the viola d'amore, the clarinetto d'amore (which, despite its name, is one of the least sexy instruments on earth, if you ask me), and even the rarely-seen cembalino d'amore (so rarely seen that I couldn't even find a link.) Other suggestions were made: how about a serpent d'amore? A fagotto d'amore was also proposed and quickly vetoed, for obvious reasons.

Surely, we thought, there are other emotions to be explored here--a viola d'odio, for example? (It burns longer.) We came up with the hautbois d'ennui (any oboe accompanying a Bach alto aria, according to our resident oboist), and the frightening zampogna di sdegno (which Bosch may have had in mind.)

The viola family (in this case encompassing members of the viol family and the violin family) also came in for a good deal of speculation. Common practice gives us the viola da gamba (a "leg viol") and the viola da braccia (an "arm viol", and the source of the German and Hungarian words for viola--Bratsche and brácsa.) The viola da collo ("neck viol") and viola da spalla ("shoulder viol") also turn up occasionally in baroque scores. What other body parts could we involve? The viola d'orecchio ("ear viol") seemed like a good one, as well as the viola da pollice ("thumb viol", as in "This is the smallest viol player in the world...") We even branched out into other languages and instruments, giving us the Nasenharfe and the Ellenbogengeige.

Oddly enough, we didn't get to the "da caccia" department. The corno da caccia makes enough sense, but the oboe da caccia? It looks menacing enough, but can you really imagine people decking themselves out in bright red coats and galloping around the countryside punctuating shouts of "View halloo!" with a little double reed action? (Not to mention what would happen if you dropped said double reed under one of the horses...) I suppose it's still more logical than a putative arpa da caccia, perhaps, or (what else?) a viola da caccia.

How about a tromba marina da caccia? (And would you really expect to catch anything?)

Weekly musical bon mot #021

2008-08-30T22:36:00.000-05:00

"Not even the visionary or mystical experience ever lasts very long. It is for art to capture that experience, to offer it to, in the case of literature, its readers; to be, for a secular, materialist culture, some sort of replacement for what the love of god offers in the world of faith."

--Salman Rushdie

Warning: EXTREMELY geeky humor ahead

2008-08-25T12:18:00.004-05:00

A pes dispenser, from Aristotle Esguerra (coolest maestro name ever!):

'Cause if you call it a podatus, it's not as funny.

Weekly musical bon mot #020

2008-08-23T09:51:00.001-05:00

"I passionately hate the idea of being with it. I think an artist has always to be out of step with his time."

--Orson Welles

Note to scholae everywhere

2008-08-20T19:40:00.004-05:00

And that goes double for the celebrant.

**UPDATE**
According to a poster on the MusicaSacra forums, a better translation would be, "When prayers are being recited/chanted, please do not make noise." Speaking as a church musician and a churchgoer, I can say with conviction that this is also very good advice.

Weekly musical bon mot #019

2008-08-16T11:43:00.001-05:00

"My band career ended late in my senior year when John Cooper and I threw my amplifier out the dormitory window. We did not act in haste. First we checked to make sure the amplifier would fit through the frame, using the belt from my bathrobe to measure, then we picked up the amplifier and backed up to my bedroom door. Then we rushed forward, shouting "The WHO! The WHO!" and we launched my amplifier perfectly, as though we had been doing it all our lives, clean through the window and down onto the sidewalk, where a small but appreciative crowd had gathered. I would like to be able to say that this was a symbolic act, an effort on my part to break cleanly away from one state in my life and move on to another, but the truth is, Cooper and I really just wanted to find out what it would sound like. It sounded OK."

--Dave Barry

National anthems

2008-08-14T19:43:00.003-05:00

Like much of the world, I've been sitting around watching the Olympics. Sure, for most of the year I couldn't care less about sports, but for some reason the Olympics are fascinating--I even found myself enjoying volleyball. Naturally, I focus on the musical aspects, which (aside from the music-sports performance parallels) for most of the games consists primarily of the national anthems played at the medal ceremonies. According to the medal count, so far we should have heard:

Yìyǒngjūn Jìnxíngqǔ (22 times)
The Star-spangled Banner (10 times)
Das Lied der Deutschen (7 times)
Aegukka (KOR) (6 times)
Il Canto degli Italiani (6 times)
Advance Australia Fair (5 times)
Kimigayo (5 times)
Gimn Rossiyskoy Federatsii (3 times)
La Marseillaise (twice)
God save the Queen (twice)
Kde domov můj? (twice)
Tavisupleba (twice)
La Bayamesa
Wilhelmus van Nassouwe
Aegukka (PRK)
Azerbaijan Marsi
Deşteaptă-te, române
Bugd Nairamdakh Mongol
Nad Tatrou sa blyská
Shche ne vmerla Ukraina
Schweizer Psalm
Marcha Real
Maamme
Jana-Gana-Mana
Phleng Chat

The music played at Olympic venues is, of course, pre-recorded, and I can't help but wonder who the band was who recorded roughly 250 anthems (the United Kingdom and Liechtenstein use the same tune, though that still doesn't make for much less work.) Granted, some teams are more likely medalists than others, but there is always the possibility, that, say, Nauru will win a gold medal and they'll have to hunt down the recording of Nauru Bwiema, as its absence would be pretty embarrassing at that point.

I've heard medal ceremonies for Chinese, Japanese, American and French athletes so far, and have made a few observations. First, the official Olympic version of La Marseillaise is really, really fast--perhaps because it's one of the longer national anthems and they want to save time? Second, the harmonization used for The Star-spangled Banner is pretty far removed from the standard one we all learned in school, with the Abgesang (I think you can say that SSB fits into the Bar form) chock-full of slidey diminished things and a cadence on a suspension that never resolves. They used the same one four years ago in Athens, and I noticed it then, too. And third: Who taught these atheltes to sing? Sure, I understand being a little emotional under the circumstances, but that's no excuse for not opening one's mouth. People are going to think they don't know the words. (Certain members of the US team don't appear to. Granted, plenty of Americans don't know the words to their own national anthem, and can't handle the range either. If congress authorized a switch to America the Beautiful, I would not object, and not just because of its classy use of the optative subjunctive.)

Personally, I'm hoping that Kirsty Coventry will take a gold medal in something so we can hear Zimbabwe's national anthem. I still don't know how it goes.

**UPDATE**
The arrangement of The Star-spangled Banner used at National Indoor Stadium--thank you, Nastia Liukin--is not the arrangement used in the Water Cube. (Harp glissandi? Really?) That makes me wonder how many other versions might be floating around at the other Olympic venues. Not to mention all the possible tempi for La Marseillaise.

Weekly musical bon mot #018

2008-08-09T14:04:00.000-05:00

"Musical ability, along with other creative skills, are rather like a human version of the peacock's tail; something that has no survival value, but has evolved precisely because it is found attractive by the opposite sex."

--Mairi MacLeod

Weekly musical bon mot #017

2008-08-03T01:08:00.000-05:00

"The artist does us an immense service when he tells us to stop treating things as means and utilities for a moment and to look at them and love their beauty."

--Gerald Vann, O.P.

Look, a meme!

2008-07-30T12:24:00.002-05:00

Gentle reader, no doubt you have noticed that I do quite a lot of reading--and not just because of all the time I spend on public transit. And--surprise, surprise--it's not all about music (or feminist utopia.) This enormous list is via the only person who appears to get all of my jokes.

The book meme

1) Look at the list and bold those you have read.
2) Italicize those you intend to read.
3) Underline the books you LOVE.

1 Pride and Prejudice - Jane Austen--It seems like some kind of feminine heresy that I don't like Jane Austen, but I don't.
2 The Lord of the Rings - JRR Tolkien--now that I've been to Middle Earth
3 Jane Eyre - Charlotte Bronte
4 Harry Potter series - JK Rowling
5 To Kill a Mockingbird - Harper Lee
6 The Bible--I realize it sounds cliché, but how can you not love a sacred text with two whole sections devoted to song?
7 Wuthering Heights - Emily Bronte
8 Nineteen Eighty Four - George Orwell
9 His Dark Materials - Philip Pullman
10 Great Expectations - Charles Dickens
11 Little Women - Louisa M Alcott
12 Tess of the D'Urbervilles - Thomas Hardy
13 Catch 22 - Joseph Heller
14 Complete Works of Shakespeare--I think I've read most of them, but not all.
15 Rebecca - Daphne Du Maurier
16 The Hobbit - JRR Tolkien--not that I remember any of it
17 Birdsong - Sebastian Faulks
18 Catcher in the Rye - JD Salinger--as if I needed another reason to dislike adolescent boys
19 The Time Traveller's Wife - Audrey Niffenegger
20 Middlemarch - George Eliot
21 Gone With The Wind - Margaret Mitchell
22 The Great Gatsby - F Scott Fitzgerald--"This Side of Paradise" was pretty good, so I don't expect to be disappointed.
23 Bleak House - Charles Dickens
24 War and Peace - Leo Tolstoy
25 The Hitch Hiker's Guide to the Galaxy - Douglas Adams
26 Brideshead Revisited - Evelyn Waugh--and I'm so excited about the movie
27 Crime and Punishment - Fyodor Dostoyevsky
28 Grapes of Wrath - John Steinbeck
29 Alice in Wonderland - Lewis Carroll
30 The Wind in the Willows - Kenneth Grahame
31 Anna Karenina - Leo Tolstoy
32 David Copperfield - Charles Dickens
33 Chronicles of Narnia - CS Lewis
34 Emma - Jane Austen
35 Persuasion - Jane Austen
36 The Lion, The Witch and The Wardrobe - CS Lewis--This was read aloud to my first-grade class, and it was pretty well over my head at the time.
37 The Kite Runner - Khaled Hosseini
38 Captain Corelli's Mandolin - Louis De Bernieres
39 Memoirs of a Geisha - Arthur Golden
40 Winnie the Pooh - AA Milne
41 Animal Farm - George Orwell
42 The Da Vinci Code - Dan Brown--as ashamed as I am to admit it. I only read it because someone left it in the recycle bin and I figured I should have the cultural reference. It went right back into the recycle bin.
43 One Hundred Years of Solitude - Gabriel Garcia Marquez
45 The Woman in White - Wilkie Collins
46 Anne of Green Gables - LM Montgomery
47 Far From The Madding Crowd - Thomas Hardy
48 The Handmaid's Tale - Margaret Atwood--I have a constitutional dislike of agenda-driven fiction.
49 Lord of the Flies - William Golding
50 Atonement - Ian McEwan
52 Dune - Frank Herbert
53 Cold Comfort Farm - Stella Gibbons
54 Sense and Sensibility - Jane Austen
55 A Suitable Boy - Vikram Seth
56 The Shadow of the Wind - Carlos Ruiz Zafon --haven't even heard of this one, actually
57 A Tale Of Two Cities - Charles Dickens
58 Brave New World - Aldous Huxley
59 The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-time - Mark Haddon
60 Love In The Time Of Cholera - Gabriel Garcia Marquez
61 Of Mice and Men - John Steinbeck
62 Lolita - Vladimir Nabokov
63 The Secret History - Donna Tartt
64 The Lovely Bones - Alice Sebold
65 Count of Monte Cristo - Alexandre Dumas
66 On The Road - Jack Kerouac
67 Jude the Obscure - Thomas Hardy
68 Bridget Jones's Diary - Helen Fielding
69 Midnight's Children - Salman Rushdie
70 Moby Dick - Herman Melville
71 Oliver Twist - Charles Dickens
72 Dracula - Bram Stoker
73 The Secret Garden - Frances Hodgson Burnett
74 Notes From A Small Island - Bill Bryson
75 Ulysses - James Joyce
76 The Bell Jar - Sylvia Plath
77 Swallows and Amazons - Arthur Ransome
78 Germinal - Emile Zola
79 Vanity Fair - William Makepeace Thackeray
80 Possession - AS Byatt
81 A Christmas Carol - Charles Dickens
82 Cloud Atlas - David Mitchell
83 The Color Purple - Alice Walker--because I feel I should
84 The Remains of the Day - Kazuo Ishiguro
85 Madame Bovary - Gustave Flaubert
86 A Fine Balance - Rohinton Mistry
87 Charlotte's Web - EB White
88 The Five People You Meet In Heaven - Mitch Albom
89 Adventures of Sherlock Holmes - Sir Arthur Conan Doyle
90 The Faraway Tree Collection - Enid Blyton
91 Heart of Darkness - Joseph Conrad
92 The Little Prince - Antoine De Saint-Exupery
93 The Wasp Factory - Iain Banks
94 Watership Down - Richard Adams
95 A Confederacy of Dunces - John Kennedy Toole
96 A Town Like Alice - Nevil Shute
97 The Three Musketeers - Alexandre Dumas
98 Hamlet - William Shakespeare
99 Charlie and the Chocolate Factory - Roald Dahl
100 Les Miserables - Victor Hugo

Observations:
1. I'm not as well-read as I thought.
2. I'm picky about what I like.
3. This is the canon?

If you read me, consider yourself tagged. That should put, oh, two or three more of these lists out there in cyberspace.

Weekly musical bon mot #016--on time, finally!

2008-07-26T12:28:00.001-05:00

"Yes, the musician. Troublesome people."

--Thomas Day

Yet another early music novel--my favorite so far

2008-07-25T21:17:00.004-05:00

While I was down in New London for AEMF, the music library at Connecticut College was having a book sale--irresistible, of course. Among my purchases was a slim postwar novel on a premise I never would have imagined: a pope attempting to canonize Johann Sebastian Bach.

I have delved into the fictitious-pope genre once before with Morris West's The shoes of the fisherman, a mid-century novel about an unexpectedly elected pope from a communist-occupied country in Eastern Europe who bore a striking resemblance to the late John Paul II, despite being written some 20 years before his election. And for maximum topicality, I happened to be reading it during the conclave which elected Pope Benedict XVI. (My viol-playing friends are off to the VdGSA Conclave next week--not the same thing.) In Johannes Rüber’s Bach and the Heavenly Choir (originally published in German as Die Heiligsprechung des Johann Sebastian Bach), the musical Pope Gregory (what else?) is another unlikely pope, having been not a cardinal but a French Benedictine abbot--and a violinist. The novel begins with speculation in many quarters as to why, though he has been reigning for some years, Pope Gregory hasn't done anything as Pope--no encyclicals, no travel, no canonizations, nothing to define the "Gregorian moment" as it were. (Published in 1956, the novel was written on the heels of the Apostolic Constitution Munificentissimus Deus, which infallibly and dogmatically defined the doctrine of the Assumption of Mary. And it would appear that media scrutiny of the Holy Father is nothing new!) What Pope Gregory wants to do more than anything else is canonize J. S. Bach (rather than the thinly veiled St. Edith Stein whose cause is put forth towards the beginning of the novel.)

The biggest problem with his plan, of course, is that J. S. Bach was not a Catholic--generally a barrier to canonization. Pope Gregory consults the Lutheran bishop of Hamburg, and it is with the consent of the German Lutheran bishops that he decides to put the cause forward. The bishop of Hamburg's daughter is a renowned harpsichordist (and there weren't that many of them in the middle of the last century) and performs in several concerts in Rome during the course of the deliberations. There is a beautiful scene in which the guest Lutheran ensemble, having just performed Bach's Magnificat in the Sistine Chapel, accepts the Pope's blessing on them and their instruments--an audacious act for the time. In fact, the cooperation of the Pope with the Lutheran bishops foreshadows the ecumenical efforts that would be given official approbation with the Second Vatican Council in the decade immediately after the novel was written.

Rüber has written a novel about the intersection of art and holiness--and about the world's general difficulty in recognizing that they do, in fact, intersect. There are a few musicians on the Catholic calendar--St. Hildegard, for example, or Bl. Dina Bélanger--but by and large people are not declared saints for their holiness as musicians. Pope Gregory's point is that this should not be so, that the main evidence for Bach's holiness is in his music. "What we wished," he says after taking up his violin and playing for the College of Cardinals, "was to see whether or not Mankind takes seriously the gifts of God, of which Art comes next after Love." I won't give away the novel's ending, but suffice it to say that if Bach were to be canonized I would rush out and buy an icon of him for my room and celebrate his feast day every year. Even without official church approbation, I have every reason to believe that Johann Sebastian is in heaven where, naturally, everyone appreciates his work.

As a sidenote, there are rumblings in the liturgical music world about opening Olivier Messiaen's cause for canonization, which I heartily endorse. Michael E. Lawrence of the NLM writes, "Church musicians need someone to look up to--a hero to inspire them, and Olivier Messiaen is just the man we need." I would add that Messiaen is not simply a hero for church musicians, but for all musicians (even after analyzing his work in theory class, which should get us all some time off from Purgatory!), and a St. Olivier would give the religious establishment and the musical establishment a chance and a reason to take each other seriously. Only good things can come of that.

Weekly musical bon mot #015--a day late this time

2008-07-20T20:47:00.001-05:00

"During the rests--pray."

--Eugene Ormandy

Thirteen ways of looking at last week

2008-07-16T18:06:00.003-05:00

I
Coastal fog makes the Amtrak Regional feel like the Hogwarts Express.

II
"You have really piercing high A's--you know, the kind that make your eyes hurt."

III
There really are operas in which no one dies. Even in the baroque.

IV
New London has some spectacularly large bugs.

V
Also very big seagulls.

VI
Sometimes every meal really does need ice cream.

VII
It's been a long time since I have had to brush my teeth in the presence of other people. I'm not sure I like it.

VIII
"She's a guy. Ladies love guys."

IX
It's nice when you don't have to be sewn into your costume--or unsewn out of it.

X
Never wear too-small shoes on stage. Or anywhere else.

XI
It's hard to sound enamored in German, but very easy to sound moralistic. Guess which one I did.

XII
Every meal at Connecticut College has a potato course. Every meal.

XIII
"Dude--and I mean, dude."

This week is Medieval-Renaissance-ish things--on Friday I'm the soprano soloist in a great big polychoral Mass by Lambert de Savye. As I saw the thing for the first time on Monday, it's a little nervous-making and I'm still sweating bullets in rehearsal. It's not as flashy as the opera, but it's still worth a listen if you're around. Once again, the AEM website has everything you need to know.

Weekly musical bon mot #014--a day early again to accommodate the festival schedule

2008-07-11T10:35:00.005-05:00

"Is this early music or is it Star Trek?"

--Peter Sykes, on the demographic served by early music festivals

The opera is tonight--I get one aria and a marvelous manly costume with neither bum roll nor cleavage (and I don't have to pin myself into it. Sometimes it's good to be a guy.) If you're in the New London area, please come and hear us; we have a marvelous international cast and orchestra and it's only about an hour and a half. More information can be had at the Amherst Early Music site.

More observations will follow when I don't have to worry about hogging the library computers.

Weekly musical bon mot #013--a little early to accommodate travel plans

2008-07-05T00:28:00.002-05:00

"He died from being an artist."

--Jonathan Safran Foer

Happy Fourth, everyone!

2008-07-04T11:16:00.005-05:00

Remember not to start the National Anthem too high--and for heaven's sake, don't applaud it!

Taxes, opera and all that

2008-07-01T14:26:00.003-05:00

I got my Economic Stimulus check in the mail yesterday, leading me to ponder this (perhaps at the expense of my not-talking-about-politics rule): In the 20th century, Americans made it through their longest war by rationing food and oil, growing their own vegetables, recycling pretty much everything and buying defense bonds. This was patriotic. In the 21st century, we're supposed to make it through our longest war by. . . buying stuff? And in case we haven't bought enough stuff yet, the government (having already spent more money than I can possibly fathom on said war) is giving us more money so that we can--patriotically--buy more stuff. I don't profess to understand anything about economics, but this seems backward. Did I miss something?

Of course I paid what seems to me an obscene amount of taxes for 2007 (all self-employment income--where are the self-employed people who make that much money?), so even with the stimulation of my personal economy the Treasury still has a fair chunk of my money. And, check in hand (or rather, in the bank), I shall proceed to stimulate my favorite sector of the economy--the arts. My government micro-grant is going straight into my AEMF tuition. Yes, I feel less noble than those who will donate their checks to charity, and less thrifty than those who will invest them, but I can't really afford to do either, and I'm still creating jobs for musicians and "enriching the American cultural patrimony" and so forth--and I'm going to spend the next two weeks having a good time with others in my professional field (one not associated especially with thrift and nobility) and economic bracket.

(In a similar vein, the New Liturgical Movement reports that, as of today, the mileage deduction for business use of one's vehicle is going up. For someone with no car and no driver's license, this news is, in the words of the Folksmen, purely academic.)

(And yes, I really am unlicensed at my venerable age. In high school driver's ed. conflicted with show choir. You know what I chose.)

I leave for Connecticut on Saturday, so I've been going down the list of things I need to do and things I need to buy. One of the things I have to do is unearth my baroque dance shoes, which are quite nice but rather obviously women's shoes. (Will it be a problem to have Theseus's loyal sidekick running around in women's shoes?) And among the things I have to buy are a jar of foundation (which I only wear on stage--and only if I absolutely must) and some new tights with no holes in them (as opposed to my current arsenal of stockings), and probably bobby pins are not a bad idea with my Historically Informed Hair. My role, small as it is, is committed to memory and--one hopes--will not proceed to self-destruct in the presence of the orchestra and the other singers. It's going to be a good two weeks, with the only downside being that I have to spend two weeks away from my cat. (She knows I'm leaving, too--the meows are getting progressively more obstreperous, and the cuddling more insistent.)

I will attempt to send the occasional update from the field, but I'm going to be busy and without my own computer, so there is a chance that (gasp!) you'll even have to do without your Weekly Bons Mots for a while. If that turns out to be the case, all shall be remedied upon my return. Really.

For now, just call me Pirithous.

Weekly musical bon mot #012

2008-06-28T09:52:00.002-05:00

"Singing will not resolve into rules."

--Wayne Koestenbaum

Weekly musical bon mot #011

2008-06-21T10:55:00.002-05:00

"Good will is no excuse for a lack of artistry."

--Joan Chittister, O.S.B.

Early adventures in tonality

2008-06-18T12:44:00.002-05:00

I'm back from my West Coast adventure, slogging my way back to EDT with little relish and pointing myself toward the next project and the perpetual paying of bills. Every time I visit the Bay Area (only twice at this point, but with Baby Sis starting a teaching job in San Lorenzo, I imagine I will return again in the next few years) my estimation of California goes up a notch. Sure, it's a gigantic state built on car culture with the highest density of flakiness in the world, probably, but grapefruits grow in people's yards there, and that's worth many, many points.

While out west, I stayed with my cousin, her husband and their four-year-old daughter (and their green parrot and orange cat.) Cousin Heather was a bassoon major in college, so of course we had plenty of music school things to chat about--a nice break from the parenting things, about which I know very little. During one morning playtime, little Elise was particularly garrulous (she's four, after all), and managed to push some buttons with a loud kid-noise approximating a trillo. I pointed this out, and demonstrated with what I thought was a pretty flashy Mazzocchi passage, flapping that glottis through the remains of the blueberry pancakes I had just eaten. Elise liked her version better, prompting her mom to speculate about farming out her kid to the Italian Baroque Circus.

Playtime wasn't over yet, and neither was the singing. Still faced with a noisy kid, Heather suggested, "Let's sing a scale."

"What kind of scale would you like to sing?" I asked Elise, and since no answer was forthcoming, I suggested, "How about a whole-tone scale?" (Despite having been an honest-to-goodness grownup for a while, I still have those little streaks of "Look what I can do!"--which is probably why I'm a professional musician now. Singing a whole-tone scale is something I'm still proud to be able to do.)

"Do," we intoned, waiting for Elise to match the pitch. She came pretty close.

"Re."

"Mi." At this point Elise was choosing her own pitches to suit.

"Fi." Now it gets interesting.

"Si."

"Li." I realized that whole-tone scales are really difficult with the addition of large pauses between notes.

"Do." Elise wasn't really catching on to the concept, but grownup-sanctioned noise sure was fun. We moved on to harmonic minor--I fear that I am ever the showoff.

That little session ended with the "Do-re-mi" song from The Sound of Music, as I silently conceded that maybe good old Ionian mode was a better place to start after all. Off I went to catch my train to Palo Alto (Note to the MBTA: Automatic doors are good. Also arriving on time.) for the afternoon, not really thinking any more about scales.

When I got back that evening, Heather informed me that Elise had been singing up a storm all day, and that--wonder of wonders--she liked the whole-tone scale best. I was duly impressed, and I hoped that the novelty wouldn't wear off once Cousin Jaya had gone back to Boston and things had gotten back to normal. Perhaps here we have the beginnings of a lifelong esteem for Debussy and Messiaen. It could be worse.

Congratulate yourselves, everyone

2008-06-17T18:52:00.002-05:00

Hat tip to the Ironic Catholic. It's nice to have a little ego stroke once in a while.

Weekly musical bon mot #010--from an undisclosed remote location!

2008-06-14T12:14:00.002-05:00

"Sing with your intellect and soul combined."

--Radclyffe Hall

(Okay, full disclosure: I'm in San Jose so that I can see my baby sister graduate from Stanford tomorrow. Hooray for master's degrees!)

Perfection

2008-06-12T08:40:00.003-05:00

Hat tip to the Shrine of the Holy Whapping. (The dialogue is a bit PG, perhaps--but nothing you wouldn't hear in your average music school. Especially in conjunction with the quest for perfect intervals.)

But do they know that the violin wasn't invented until the 16th century?

Weekly musical bon mot #009

2008-06-07T17:12:00.002-05:00

"He said he didn't go for the highbrow stuff himself, but he quite liked that fat bloke, that Italian, what was his name, Nessun Dorma."

--Morag Joss