Simple, Affectionate, Sentimental

Sometimes it helps to remind myself that somebody likes what I do, especially if it was Vaclav Havel. I can't find this piece of music, maybe it was Novak - no doubt I put it somewhere safe but don't know where. I learned a couple hours of Novak, Dvorak, Martinu, and other Czech music, just to play for his reception. I thought I had just scanned the heart, but today I ran across the whole autograph on my computer.

I was just mentioning to someone today how he stood up for genuine human emotion, and complained that sincerity and love have come to be considered quaint anachronisms.

Zippy and baseball

Does this have anything to do with my upcoming solo show?

Memories of Youth

Peter Bergman, whose name I never knew, was someone I used to listen to a good deal as part of the Firesign Theater. His obituary is a riot. I remember a loopy thing called "the Turkish lesson" which gets very murky and lost, after a slow and careful pronunciation of the word "towel" and a non-segue into "may I see your passport please."

Contra Classical Music

I don't like the term "classical music". Here is why: if and when I come to understand a piece of music, whether it was written yesterday or 300 years ago, it comes alive in a shockingly present way. The music of Schumann seems as revolutionary to me this morning as it did in 1848. I am not kidding. When we say "classical" it means we have worn away or conspired to ignore all the hard corners and rough edges of a creation of the human mind, and buried it under a century of dead leaves. A Brahms Capriccio has elements of a Jackson Pollock painting. Gertrude Stein wrote things we would not now dare to say. "Classical" means only that we have forgotten about something or have contrived to put it away in some kind of box. As if Bach and Mozart wrote according to rules. What am I to call the music that I play? I really don't know.

Advice from Gertrude Stein

Dance a clean dream and an extravagant turn up, secure the steady rights and translate more than translate the authority, show the choice and make no more mistakes than yesterday.

This means clearness, it means a regular notion of exercise, it means more than that, it means liking counting, it means more than that, it does not mean exchanging a line.

Why is there more craving than there is in a mountain. This does not seem strange to one, it does not seem strange to an echo and more surely is in there not being a habit. Why is there so much useless suffering. Why is there.

Beethoven with tuba

Mike Strand has set the great fugue from Op. 106 for flute, clarinet, baritone saxophone, and tuba. It is sensitively and intelligently done. I really like it!

Hi, Carl!

Here’s a computer software sound version I put together, of the fugue from Beethoven’s Piano Sonata, Op. 106, final movement. To have heard this on piano, as Beethoven wrote it, is one of the joys of my life. It's a piece that I like better with time, not as accessible at first as the rest of Opus 106.

The attached digitized version is for flute, clarinet, baritone saxophone, and tuba. The exercise of copying it gave me the gift of hearing this piece in a new way. It was interesting to figure out how to put the patterns from two piano staves into four single-voice instrument staves. Working with the complex dynamics was also fun and challenging. I've checked my copy pretty thoroughly. However, due to Beethoven's free and entertaining use of complex harmonies and dissonances, I won't guarantee that it follows the original exactly.

For fun, I'm going to try other combinations of instruments, which is easy now that the music is stored. I'll show you the results, if anything significant comes of it.

This exercise helped me realize again how versatile the piano is, in composing for more than one “voice”. The range of the piano is essentially unrestricted for any voice.

But in choosing individual instruments for each voice, I soon ran into trouble. I had to use flute and clarinet for the two high voices to get the needed range, and tuba was required for the octave doublings in the low voice and for the lowest notes, even where there was no doubling. Even with these accommodations, in a few places I think the clarinet is called to play some notes out of range (e.g. the D below middle C). It was impossible sometimes to hand such notes over to the saxophone or the tuba, as they were already busy.

Of course Beethoven, having written this for piano, used dense chords in places, two or three notes to a "voice". In such places I had to give two or three notes to each instrument – equivalent, for example, to introducing or two extra flutes or clarinets.

I hope you enjoy the result.

Best regards,
Mike

From Charley and Marty

Charley Gerard writes:

Boy, I had that Alleregretto experience too many times. And I've played in an approximatura style, too!
On Feb 11, 2012, at 8:41 PM, Marty Sheller wrote:


NEW MUSICAL TERMS


ALLEREGRETTO: When you're 16 measures into the piece and suddenly realize you set too fast a tempo

ANGUS DEI: To play with a divinely beefy tone

A PATELLA: Accompanied by knee-slapping

APOLOGGIATURA: A composition that you regret playing

APPROXIMATURA: A series of notes not intended by the composer, yet played with an "I meant to do that" attitude

APPROXIMENTO: A musical entrance that is somewhere in the vicinity of the correct pitch

DILL PICCOLINI: An exceedingly small wind instrument that plays only sour notes

FERMANTRA: A note held over and over and over and over and . . .

FIDDLER CRABS: Grumpy string players

FLUTE FLIES: Those tiny insects that bother musicians on outdoor gigs

FRUGALHORN: A sensible and inexpensive brass instrument

GAUL BLATTER: A French horn player


GREGORIAN CHAMP: The title bestowed upon the monk who can hold a note the longest
PLACEBO DOMINGO: A faux tenor

SPRITZICATO: An indication to string instruments to produce a bright and bubbly sound

TEMPO TANTRUM: What an elementary school orchestra is having when it's not following the conductor

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Duet with Donkey

http://www.wimp.com/duetdonkey/