Hello?   (2017Feb28)

Tuesday, February 28, 2017                                             11:42 AM

Feeling a little disappointed lately with the traffic on my blog and YouTube channel. Makes sense, though—I’ve been so busy writing posts and posting videos that I haven’t spared any time to appreciate other people’s blogs and music videos. I do follow some bloggers and YouTube musicians—I’m not completely self-absorbed—and besides, isn’t the point of the Internet to allow us all to bounce our ideas off each other? Sharing ideas and creativity is the only real communication—everything else is entertainment—click-bait and eye-candy to lull the masses.

So, I’m thinking maybe the end of Winter is a particularly fertile period for people to get work done, get new ideas, and feel inspired to create. Like me, everyone else is too busy doing their own thing to check in with my stuff. Either that, or I’m getting old, predictable, and uninteresting—always a dark possibility that I’m sure I won’t recognize when it happens—if it hasn’t already.

Today’s videos use new pictures of the baby—some of them are a little dark because I just used them, as is, to make the video. I’ve been processing hundreds of pictures lately, and for this batch of 376 new ones, I decided to take the easy way out—no photo-shop, no enhancement, just the candid camera. Fortunately most of the pictures are just perfect, like their subject, and my only worry was in recording some music that would be suitable accompaniment to such a beautiful baby.

I tried to play one of Bach’s French Suites—the b minor—but my left hand is getting so spasmodic that I may have to stop sharing my piano-playing and go back to playing for my own amusement. It’s never been that good, but it’s really starting to mess up everything I play. And I really hate not being able to play a strong bass line—it’s my favorite part, dammit.

With our new president, I have a bug up my ass about something he says or does nearly every day—so I’m struggling to come up with non-political posts, just to break the monotony of my constant bitching. I need ‘happy’ posts because I don’t like to put my beautiful granddaughter’s videos on the same page as a post about that horror-show.

But here I am, bitching anyway—and about people ignoring me, no less. What an idiot. I look at YouTube Creators notes sometimes—they always talk about requiring a minimum of 1,000 subscribers for certain programs they offer—and I go check my channel and see that, for my eight years of posting videos, I’ve amassed a whopping 60 subscribers. Usually I’m grateful that there are that many—but YouTube always reminds me that I’m not really ‘in the mix’, as it were. It’s depressing to be a music-lover and be such a terrible musician. Still, it beats living without music in my life.

All’s I can say is—if global warming is going to destroy the world, it’s surely offering us some lovely weather for the apocalypse. Last day of February and it might as well be the first day of June. The crocuses, snowbells, and what-all are simply exploding out of the ground. I should get my camera out there while it’s all blooming—those flowers come and go in the blink of an eye. Even indoors, we’ve got red and white amaryllis blooming all around the kitchen. It’s a very flowery day—too nice a day to complain. Hello.

Big Book of Christmas   (2016Dec16)

20161216xd-bigbkoxmassongsfront

Friday, December 16, 2016                                               11:29 PM

I’m trying to post my final Christmas carols before anyone gets here—I expect to be posting far less once the house gets full-up. I have the raw recordings from last night, but editing them will take some time. This always happens to me—I’m about to complete my big project of recording the entire Christmas songbook—and before I finish, I’m already feeling foolish for having bothered. After all, who wants to watch a long piano recital by a half-assed piano-player, no matter the theme of the concert?

But then I remember that family will watch. Poor piano-playing can actually add a homey touch to a video—and these videos are as much baby-albums of all little Seneca’s pictures and videos, as they are piano performances. I haven’t really created a Playlist—I’ve created a deluxe photo album of the first four months of my granddaughter’s existence (with holiday soundtrack included). And that is certainly worth a little effort on my part.

Just as few words about the completed playlist of: the Big Book of Christmas Music. There is one song missing from the book—“Joy To The World”, strangely enough—somehow the page came loose, and I couldn’t play just the first page, and stop in the middle. It’s not important—I’ll just include it in the next book’s recordings (“Joy To The World” is in every Xmas songbook).

Also, there are a few of these that I don’t play so well. Some pieces use figurations, especially in the left hand, that are difficult for me—I usually avoid them, but this was a clean sweep of the table of contents, from beginning to end, so I did the best I could with the ones I shouldn’t have been playing. The good news is that I won’t be posting these carols ever again, now that I’m sure I’ve done the whole book.

In doing this sight-reading every year, I’m always struck by the carols and songs that are of an earlier popularity—the ones that you can only barely remember hearing before—and then in childhood. There’s really an endless supply of Christmas and holiday music—I was just watching Bill Murray’s “A Very Murray Christmas” (2015) on Netflix yesterday—and that whole musical special was a list of songs I don’t have the music for—great stuff, too. I hadn’t realized there’s this very show-bizzy-type side to Christmas music as well—and Paul Shaffer is fantastic at that stuff. It was excellent fare—for a Christmas Special.

As for the words—this was a big project for me—and close-captioned lyrics would have made the whole thing take ten times the work. If you want to sing along, the lyrics to songs are easily searched online—so, I left it to you, if you want them, they’re out there. I did supply the title at the beginning of each song, so you’ll know what song to do a lyrics-search for.

The entire playlist can be heard here.

But if you want to find a song, here’s the detailed list:

 

Thirteen (13) Christmas Carols – November 21st, 2016

20161121xd-13_carolcoverssongtitles_card

 

 

Nine (9) Christmas Carols – November 23rd, 2016

20161123xd-9_carolcoverssongtitles_card

 

 

Eleven (11) Christmas Carols – November 27th, 2016

20161127xd-11_carolcoverssongtitles_card

 

 

Nine (9) Christmas Carols – November 28th, 2016

20161128xd-9_carolcoverssongtitles_card

 

 

Twelve (12) Christmas Carols – November 29th, 2016

20161129xd-12_carolcoverssongtitles_card

 

 

Thirteen (13) Christmas Carols – December 1st, 2016

20161201xd-13_carolcoverssongtitles_card

 

 

Nine (9) more Christmas Carols – December 1st, 2016

20161201xd-9more_carolcoverssongtitles_card

 

 

Twelve (12) Christmas Carols – December 6th, 2016

20161206xd-12contdcarolssongtitles_card

 

 

Four (4) Christmas Carols – December 12th, 2016

20161212xd-4_contdcarolssongtitles_card

 

 

Nine (9) Christmas Carols – December 12th, 2016

20161212xd-9_contdcarolssongtitles_card

 

 

Seven (7) Christmas Carols – December 12th, 2016

20161212xd-7_contdcarolssongtitles_card

 

Twelve (12) Christmas Carols – December 15th, 2016

20161215xd-penultimate12carolssongtitles_card

Nine (9) Christmas Carols – December 15th, 2016

20161215xd-last9carolssongtitles_card

 

Th-th-that’s all, folks!

 

Christmas Is Nice   (2016Dec05)

Sunday, December 04, 2016                                                       2:57 PM

I have to write something nice to post. I’ve started to get some conflict between my gruesome, acidic rants and the videos (of baby-granddaughter and the Xmas-carols) that go with them. I don’t want cute photos of our little Seneca to be stuck beside my venomous diatribes and gloomy Eeyore-isms. So, if I don’t write something pleasant, I have no post to put the new videos in.

Monday, December 05, 2016                                                     8:46 PM

Christmas Music sweeps a broad path—it isn’t a genre—it’s more of a filter applied to every genre. It has the sanctity of church music and the jollity of Santa Claus, the grandeur of Hallelujah and the intimacy of a newborn’s cradle, it has angels in heaven and Elvis in a Blue Hawaii—there are very few things that can’t be squooshed into a Christmas Song, when you get right down to it—including silver bells, one’s two front teeth, and Grandma’s vehicular demise.

I like to be chronological about my annual return to the Christmas-music pile. (When we were younger, I made a point of putting them back in the library bookshelf every January, but lately, they just sit in a dusty pile by the piano until December comes round again—it’s like: why make your bed, if you’re just going to sing it again next December?)

So I start with the carol books—songbooks that focus on the ancient and traditional standards. By the time I work my way up to Irving Berlin and Jose Feliciano, that stuff sounds downright snappy, compared to stuff that was written contemporaneously with Gregorian Chants—or hymns written by Martin Luther himself (does that guy have to do everything for you Protestants? Write a hymn, dammit.)

This year, I’m recording Christmas Carols for YouTube videos like it was my job or something. I guess I hear a skull chuckling at my elbow—and this is my way of setting myself up for absent Xmases. But it’s a good thing I started early this year, in November—here it is December 5th and I’m only half-way through the first book of songs.

I have about five different caroling books—and if I get that far, I have some George Winston sheet music, too. I feel like Winston’s “December” Album is the last modern-day addition to the Xmas-music repertoire. That, and Lennon’s “War Is Over”, and Joni Mitchell’s “River”, represent the furthest reaches of Xmas-music evolution for my generation—younger people could probably cite more recent ‘classics’, but such would be dross to these fuddy-duddy ears.

The rare instrumental Xmas-tunes are my favorites—but they are unanimously difficult on the piano—Tchaikovsky’s Nutcracker excerpts, Handel’s Messiah excerpts, Leroy Anderson’s “Sleigh Bells”, March of the Wooden Soldiers—you name it: if it has no lyrics, it’s a bitch to play. But I get a little better every year. Come to think of it, if my other musical efforts were seasonal, I’d probably be making better progress with them as well. I should have an era a month, from Elizabethan to Swing—that would probably be fun. Hmmm.

But December is taken—and I am on a mission. In future years my carol-playing may become worse, but it’s highly unlikely that it will ever get better than it is now—so the video archive of all of it will make a repeat of the same thing unnecessary next year and in years to come. Maybe next year I can try for the whole Nutcracker, or the entire Messiah (which would be tricky without a full chorus, but there are arrangements…)

Someday, I’d also like to do a good recording of Tchaikovsky’s The Seasons, all twelve months—it’s not official Christmas music, but there’s something about the winter months that’s very seasonal—and it does end with December, after a November ‘sleigh-ride’. Plus the fact that it ‘circumnavigates’ the year makes it kind of New-Years-ey, too. It’s Xmas-ey to me, anyhow.

I’m reminded of my good fortune in being an amateur musician—while doing these books from front to back, I find some of the fun is fading and it’s becoming a bit of a chore. Music is all fun and games until you’re committed to doing a pre-determined set-list, one after the other, easy or hard, like it or not. It’s a whole different animal—and I’m not even performing.

Friday, December 02, 2016                                               9:21 AM

Living Today   (2016Dec02)

If my health were a small child, I would give it my sternest look and say, “I’m very disappointed in you.” Our bodies are a miracle of moving parts, of chemical balance, of evolutionary design—I should be grateful that mine works at all. Bodies are fancy British sports-cars—genius engineering, incredible performance—but get some moisture in the fuel line, a little air in the brake line, a slight under-pressure in the tires—and, suddenly, it’s all hobbled, wobbly and life-threatening.

I’m feeling tremendously empowered today—for a rarity, my body is mobile and my mind relatively clear. That is a glaring contrast to the last few days, when I had so-many-more-than-usual pings and ratchets, I felt ready for the junkyard. But this is something healthy people (and I remember, once, being one) do not have the capacity to appreciate—to wake up in the morning with a clear mind and a body that does what you tell it to—such incredible power—such potential for this day.

I love to write. I bitch about ‘who cares?’; ‘is anyone listening?’; ‘do I have anything to say?’; and so forth, but the truth is I do this because it feels good. Sometimes I go off the rails—but I don’t post everything I type—I give myself liberty to write whatever-the-hell, and then I decide whether it’s fit for public exposure. Like most people, my privacy is important to me—and I try to respect the privacy of others—but that means I’ll never be good writer. Actually, the desire to keep myself to myself is just half of it—I’m also a lousy liar—and a good story-teller has to be comfortable telling stories.

But I don’t need to be good at something to enjoy the hell out of it—take my piano-playing for example—horrible stuff—but you can see that I’m very into it. And I write the same way. I’ll just be sitting around or watching TV and I’ll be struck, out of nowhere, by a notion that propels me to the keyboard—it’s almost inconvenient, except that there’s a thrill that comes with the compulsion.

I suppose it’s an obvious adaptation to the lack of people to talk to—or maybe it simply reveals that I prefer to do all the talking. You have to admit, I do have plenty to say—whether or not it’s worth saying, aside—I really crank it out—I can’t shut up. But there are people wandering the street-corners of New York City that could make the same claim—and they’re actually collecting change—maybe they’ve got more on the ball than I do.

The trouble is that writing is an industry, music is an industry. It is virtually impossible for me to enjoy my hobbies without the thought sneaking in, unwelcome, that other people make money this way—it’s like trying not to think of a purple elephant. I fucking hate money. I’m lucky my wife handles all of it—it makes my skin crawl. But whose head would not be turned by the thought of all the glittering prizes, the fabulous wealth, of the successful—rarer than power-ball winners though they may be?

Shows like American Idol or America’s Got Talent whisper to us that the point of enjoying the arts is to win. Better that more people enjoyed the arts as I do, for their own sake. The talented would still shine out, would still be plucked into the heavens—but the rest of us could just be comfortable with the immense pleasure that amateur artistic pursuits offer us.

To be of less-than-professional training and ability is a very modern concept—a few generations ago, gathering around the piano and singing was as natural as sitting down to watch TV together. And writing correspondence was as much a part of an evening as saying one’s bedtime prayers—volumes of such source material inform our historians. Maybe that’s why we bloggers are so legion—letter-writing is gone out of style—and we’ve all taken to writing letters to Ulysses’ ‘Noman’.

It’s an ironic concept—I’ve learned to use all these social-media apps, WordPress, Facebook, YouTube—and all these graphics and audio editing software suites—just so I can approximate the 19th century habit of playing piano in the living room and writing letters to distant friends.

Beaux Artes, in Passing   (2016Nov19)

statue-liberty-evacuation

Saturday, November 19, 2016                                          12:44 PM

“Give me your tired, your poor, your huddled masses yearning to breathe free, the wretched refuse of your teeming shore—send these, the homeless, tempest-tossed, to me. I lift my lamp beside the golden door.”

—Emma Lazarus (from “The New Colossus”)

I can’t vouch for perfect accuracy of the above quotation—I typed it from memory. Sometimes it feels good to type something out, instead of just remembering to myself.

I suppose if I lived in a city, I’d spend part of my day on a soapbox. Once this journal-writing/blog-posting/daily-commentary thing gets under your skin, you become a wild-eyed prophet of sorts—whether you’re smart, stupid, or just plain crazy (or all three, as in my case). And it is odd that an activity so clearly aimed at others’ ears (or eyes) should reveal itself to be pure self-involvement. I start out expressing what I think others should know—and, without fail, I end up telling them what I want to say.

joseph-haydn-d

I was just playing some Haydn on the piano. Haydn is the guy—he always puts me in a good mood. Whether you favor Beethoven or Brahms or Stravinsky or Tchaikovsky, you’ve got to give it up for Haydn—he has the best sense of humor of any composer in history. I always loved the drama and the towering emotions of the other great composers—but as I get older, it occurs to me that Haydn was the only composer who regularly laughed at himself. And it takes a certain genius to write music that makes people laugh—I have a hard time telling a joke, with words—it’s kind of awesome that Haydn can do it with sheet music.

20140517xd-renaissncmusiclinstrumnts_ridouvf_01

I have always loved art and music and poetry. When I experience the great peoples’ masterpieces, I am always a little bit tempted to envy them their seemingly superhuman talents. But I always yank my focus away from that, so that I can just enjoy the wonder of their works. Envy is always just under the surface with me—but I try to rise above it. When you spend your life trying to do something worthwhile, envying the greats is hard to avoid—especially if, like me, you’re a little defensive. But because it pollutes my enjoyment of their stuff, I always try to turn away from envy.

20140517xd-renaissncmusiclinstrumnts_ridouvf_03

In fact, it kind of bugs me, as an atheist, that I respect the Seven Deadly Sins—but, like the Ten Commandments, there’s a lot of good advice under all the mumbo-jumbo. Religions have that going for them—between the mythological parts, there’s a whole lot of experience-based, how-to ‘life-hacks’ included. It is the codified version of advice from old people—and now that I’m old, and know something about human nature, I find myself in agreement with many religious principles, in spite of my rejection of religion as an institution.

20121002xd-googlimages-guidorenifresco

 

Once you’ve gotten five or six decades under your belt, you witness how people can self-destruct through Envy or Lust or Pride, et. al.—religions label them sins, but even un-washed savages, once they reach a certain age, come to recognize these things as dangers—and that younger people don’t usually see that clearly. Religion includes a lot of old-people-advice. Perhaps that’s why a lot of people get ‘Saved’ or ‘embrace Islam’ in prison—it may be the first time in their lives when they’ve received advice from an experienced source.

20140517xd-renaissncmusiclinstrumnts_ridouvf_05

Another reason even we atheists have to give it up to religion is the inspiration it has provided to artists and musicians over the years. Bach seemed to feel that his compositions were prayers of a sort—when his fugues invoke a sense of grandeur, they are his way of glorifying God in music. Now that’s religion I can get behind.

20131124xd-bach2

And it’s funny that a section of Germany that became so progressive about musical religious strictures (and music was bound by many limitations, back then) would produce, in rapid succession, Bach, Haydn, Mozart, and Beethoven. One might speculate that any portion of Europe that enjoyed a sudden freedom in the creative arts would have produced similar giants—talent equal to our historic composers may have resided in many people, living in many places where such expression was illegal or sacrilegious. We’ll never know—this is the way it worked out. So, that’s a point against religion, as well.

20120819xd-googl-doge-antonio-grimani-kneeling-before-the-faith-1576

You can tell I’m a lapsed Catholic—we are the only atheists who obsess over religion more, as unbelievers, than we ever did as members of the church. But I’ll tell you why that is. Catholicism is very strict, very powerful—Catholics would make good Jihadists (just kidding—although, in the past, that was actually true in a way). My point is that they make this world seem like a temporary inconvenience—as if the important stuff is outside of reality. That was my home. And now I live in reality—dusty, achy, pointless, bothersome reality. I miss my home—recognizing that Catholicism is a delusion doesn’t change the fact that I was happier under that delusion.

20130605xd-googlimage_maxfieldparrish_old-maple

Recent archeological studies have raised doubts about the biblical account of the Jews who left Egypt for Canaan—scripture would have us believe that Joshua led the Israelites in the conquest of Canaan, and renamed it Israel, or ‘the promised land’. But it appears that the writers of Exodus may have indulged in a bit of revision of history, for appearance’s sake. Digs in the area now indicate that the Canaanites held sway long after the appearance of the tribes of Abraham, and that rather than conquer the land, the Hebrew culture insinuated itself into the area over generations. It seems the children of Abraham were not conquerors, but simply a more productive and stable society than the one it lived among.

mosesndark

That struck me, when I heard of it, as an odd sort of propaganda—after all, conquest isn’t very godly—and the fact that the Hebrews changed the lands, and the people, of the area they settled in, non-violently and almost purely out of living in a better, more civilized way than the natives, says something better, to modern ears, than that they ‘kicked ass’. But it also proves that the Old Testament is as much an exercise in creative writing as it is a historical document, or the ‘revealed word of the Lord’.

bayeux-tapestry_03

But there are other, more recent, records that serve as a source of controversy as much as they serve as a source of information. The Bayeux Tapestry, for example, is as much a collection of mysteries as it is a treasure trove of historical information. To begin with—it is not a tapestry—technically it is an embroidery. It is over two-hundred feet long and twenty inches high. And although it commemorates William the Conqueror’s Norman invasion of Anglo-Saxon Britain, the tapestry was worked in the Anglo-Saxon style over several generations. And it is worth noting that French historians are only recently admitting that it was not done in the Norman style.

bayeux-tapestry_04

Damage to the Bayeux Tapestry is to be expected—Sylvette Lemagnen, conservator of the tapestry, has said “Its survival almost intact over nine centuries is little short of miraculous…” And while that is true, the beginning panels and ending panels are either missing or beyond repair. Historians speculate that the tapestry was always stored rolled up—and, depending on how it was rolled, either the end panel or the beginning panel was exposed to air and moisture far more than the rest of it. Thus the story told on those missing or damaged panels remains a mystery—over the centuries, many enthusiasts have attempted to recreate possible replacements. The missing panel at the end, in particular, has inspired several artists to re-imagine the tapestry’s continuation, telling the history of England far beyond its original story of the Battle of Hastings.

bayeux-tapestry_02

The story the tapestry was intended to tell is obscured by the damage and by the various interpretations of certain scenes and Latin phrases (the exact truth of which has been lost or forgotten over the centuries). But the tapestry still illustrates for us a host of facts about the Norman invasion—and tells another, unintended, story—about how those 11th century Britons lived, worked, and fought. Above and below the main scenes in the tapestry are borders that depict a variety of subjects. People are shown fighting, hunting, weaving, farming, building, and in other activities. Animals, both real and fantastical, are also used as border decorations. Many tools, weapons, and techniques of the times are clearly illustrated. And the story told by the major scenes is augmented by Latin labels, comments and explanations (which are referred to as tituli—which I guess is Latin for ‘sub-titles’, or something).

bayeux-tapestry_01

All in all, it is an awesome thing—a piece of embroidery, showing what amounts to an historian’s paradise—and it outlasted a multitude of castles, fortifications, and whole nations—a roll of fabric that only becomes more priceless as it disintegrates. And the most capricious aspect of all is that this ‘Britain’s first comic-strip’ tells us more about that time than all the source documents or written accounts that survive from that age.

Sunday, November 20, 2016                                            5:24 PM

I’ve been pondering the beginnings of formal music in Western Civilization. There has always been folk music—or so I assume, since even children will hum or whistle or stomp to a rhythm—but since folk music was ephemeral, passed from parent to child, never notated, never recorded, that is the only assumption we can make about early folk music.

20130605xd-googlimag-arthurrackham-thedanceincupidsalley

Some records have survived—the Bulgarian Women’s Choir famously performs songs that reach back to the work songs, love songs, and laments of the peasants of Tsarist Russia. Musicology researchers in 1920s USA found folk music among the hill-people that may be near-perfect preservations of that of the Elizabethans who first settled there—and British, Irish, and other musicologists have found similar hand-me-down relics of the folk music of the British Isles, closer to their origin. Many sources from many places give us remnants of the music that existed before music became the formalized fine art we practice today.

hals2

But when I speak of our ignorance of folk music, I mean that we don’t know where the surviving fragments evolved from, what came before that, and what came even earlier. We can never know—because music has its own pre-history, which dates to far more recently than pre-history in general. I assume that people made music for millennia, but the ‘civilizing’ of music in the formal notation and harmonies that we loosely call ‘Classical Music’ is the first time that any records of music were made. There is some notation stuff from the Roman Empire—but nobody knows what scale it’s based on, and other important contextual stuff that would allow us to translate it into a performance—that isn’t an exception, so much as an example of my point.

So, aside from whatever we might guess, or imagine, or assume about music’s history, the very beginning of its recorded history was Gregorian Chant. Original manuscripts of Gregorian Chant still exist today—and they are still often sung as written, today, by groups that specialize in archaic music. I believe there is an ensemble of monks who are famous for their recordings and performances. The Vatican preserves some beautifully illuminated neumes on original parchment.

vaticanmusic04

In the late 800s, something called the Metz project developed a system called ‘neumes’, which would develop into today’s standard staff notation. The Gregorian chants from all the surrounding areas were collected and recorded using neumes—and thus the church standardized its musical portion of the liturgy. These chants were very simple by today’s standards—to our ears they sound quite monotonous, but there is a rough grandeur to them—and their main purpose was in singing the words from scripture—or, really, chanting them.

vaticanmusic01

 

As with anything, formal music then developed through a combination of new ideas butting up against established norms, popularity overcoming prurience, and tradition often stifling innovation. And there was a lot of ground to cover, if we were to get from Gregorian chant all the way to Ariana Grande, so it isn’t too surprising that it took centuries for music to reach the variety and sophistication we enjoy today.

20130605xd-googlimage_maxfieldparrish_evening-shadows

The church would remain the sole source of formal music for centuries—until the advent of court musicians, members of a royal household whose sole function was to create musical entertainment. After that, further centuries would see formal music confined to the church and the nobility. Don’t worry—the regular folks still had their folk music—and if I had to choose, I might have preferred their entertainments over the renaissance and early baroque composers’ refinements.

latroupe

 

Classical music would not see verve equal to Folk music until the advent of Ragtime and Jazz. Even when a composer like Brahms would adapt a Hungarian folk tune, say, its wildness would be contained by an over-civility inherent in composed works of the age. So don’t feel too bad for the poor riff-raff excluded from the fancy music chambers of royalty—they knew pleasures far more vital than those heard by the stuffed shirts at their concerts.

In those pre-industrial times, a commoner’s life was hard work—the chance to gain a post as a church musician or a court musician was no small advantage—and the internecine rivalries and petty squabbles of the musicians vying for these posts was a constant. The film “Amadeus” shows us something of this, but in a rarefied form, since its ‘villain’, Salieri, is tortured by envy over Mozart’s heavenly talent more than his professional position.

baroque

We also note the high number of composers who come from musical families—Bach, Mozart, Beethoven, Brahms, and others had musician parents, even musician grandparents. A sure sign that competition for these sinecures was fierce: once someone got their foot in the door, they did their best to secure the same for their children. Though in fairness, every trade and career in those times was primarily handed down from father to son. Women, with rare exceptions, were excluded from the music profession.

Clara Schumann

I used to think of composers as wise men who sat writing down notation all day—but I’ve come to realize that many of these great composers led lives of constant busyness. You can read it in their records—complaints about the amount of work expected of them, their students needing training, their ensembles and choirs needing rehearsing, problems with money, instruments, venues, and preparations for big events—and in their few, free, hurried moments they would jot down the actual music we love them for, even today.

musiciansatwork

I doubt most people consider the effort involved—writing down every note sounded by every instrument and choir-voice, in separate manuscripts for each performer’s music-stand (and this was back using a quill pen and rough paper)—the notation alone must have been incredibly tedious, notwithstanding the need for the finished product to create beautiful music. Thus I have come a long way from seeing my books of piano music as ancient, alien diagrams from the forgotten past.

Today, when I play, I think of that person—the life they led, the place and time they lived in, and the shared humanity between myself and this or that guy who lived in 15th century England or 16th century Germany. If you listen closely, you can almost hear them saying ‘hello’. It’s a little miracle.

composers

Big Numbers   (2016Nov15)

Tuesday, November 15, 2016                                           3:24 PM

20161115xd-nancyhd_s_pottery-6

It’s a large-number day! Jessica forwarded 50 new pictures of the family, mostly of princess-baby-granddaughter—and I am working as fast as I can to process them into a new video slide-show with piano music—my hands are stiff and numb from sitting here in the front room typing all day on this rainy, chilly November Tuesday.

Claire received her case of professional pastels—a big wooden chest containing three wooden removable drawers, each with rows of different-colored pastels. I assume it is meant for the studio—schlepping this thing around would give someone a hernia. I used to dream of getting such a set, back in my artsy days—but such panoply of choices would paralyze me—that’s probably why I mostly stayed with ink and paper. Claire will put them to good use, I’m sure—she’s not afraid of color. She’s even dipped a toe into oil-painting recently.

I was not left out—I received several pieces of pottery from Nancy Holmes-Doyle in the post today. One of them—a heartbreakingly gorgeous pinch-pot bowl—was shattered in transit. Just another reason to feel bad about missing the ceramics party, from which I could have carried them home unharmed—and gotten to visit with the Holmes-Doyles. It’s been too long—but every day it gets harder for me to get around. Still, we have two beautiful new mugs, two beautiful new candle-houses, a decorative platter, and a little spoon-rest in the shape of a hand—incredible stuff. I’ll try to photograph them all for this post—you really oughta see them.

 

 

Wednesday, November 16, 2016                                              9:52 AM

Can We Be Rude To God?   (2016Nov16)

Believing in God is not a neutral act—it is an offense against reason and a surrender of sanity. I don’t say that to be cruel—it is simply a fact. It’s even part of the rules—ask your preacher—if there were any practical proof of God, then there wouldn’t be any faith—or any need for faith. God says, “Believe in Me.”—He doesn’t say, “Look over here.

Recent ‘Questions’ posted on The Humanist website seem to be subtly asking, ‘How do Humanists make allowances for our group psychosis?’ In a way, they seem to be asking how far we’re willing to go with this Rational Thinking business—and whether or not we non-believers reach a point where we are willing to be rude about the differences.

And that is a valid question in a country founded on religious freedom. After all, it was our religious freedom that allowed us to eschew religion without being burned at the stake—it stands to reason that Christians would wonder if we’ve been given too much freedom—if perhaps it is they, or at least their faith, that will be victimized.

It is a thorny question. Obviously, I am an American, and Americans believe in freedom of religion—but freedom of religion doesn’t address an important issue: How much respect is shown for another’s beliefs? People who believe in something that no one else respects usually get put into mental institutions—it is only natural for believers to be concerned with the amount of respect they are given.

Yet how much respect can a non-believer have for the fanciful tales and notions of theists? Shorn of their ‘given’ legitimacy, the arcana of the major faiths become ludicrous—heaven, hell, angels, an old bearded guy in the sky, transubstantiation—these fantasies are no more acceptable than Greek or Norse mythological tales. As a rational man, I can’t possibly respect these ideas—yet, as a man, I can respect other people having other ideas.

If someone says to me, “I’ll pray for you.” I am capable of holding my tongue—there is little to be gained by insulting someone who has just expressed concern for my welfare. If, at a funeral, a child is being reassured that grandma will be happy in heaven—I’m not going to be the cretin who decides Grandma’s funeral is the place for discussing atheism. But I behave this way because of my respect for other people’s feelings, not my respect for their beliefs.

So please, Humanist-question-contributors, stop asking questions that are sneaky attempts to force us to show respect for your faiths. We don’t respect your faiths—we are unable to. It’s nothing personal—we are simply practicing freedom of religion by answering ‘no’ to all of the above. What we can and do respect are your feelings—if you want to believe in God, we will try not to laugh about it or argue against it.

But if you insist on believing in something that isn’t there, there are going to be conflicts of perception—women and gays are two good examples. The whole point of freedom of religion is to avoid the kind of bloodthirsty nonsense that’s playing out in the Middle East right now. Yet Religious Freedom can only do so much—there will always be disagreements between people of different faiths—and people without faith—the point is to try to live side-by-side, in spite of the disagreements. That’s the reason for separation of church and state—so that no one can make rules to enforce their beliefs, or to criminalize another’s.

But you are probably asking yourself—wouldn’t I, as an atheist, try to criminalize theism, given the chance? I would be tempted—there are many aspects of faith that seem little more than child-abuse or bigotry—indoctrination from infancy, or bias against women and gays—these things are wrong from my point of view. But then again, they were deeply religious people who came up with freedom of religion, and separation of church and state—and those principles kept us atheists from being declare outlaws, back when our lives could have been forfeit. Turning your own good ideas against you would be the height of ingratitude and incivility. I like to think I’m better than that.

So please, Humanist question-submitters, try to stick with questions asked out of curiosity and avoid questions that are little more than subtle digs at ‘the other’.

 

I keep hearing all this BS about how we have to come together now. Yes, he won the election—that doesn’t mean he stopped being a monster. Yes, your candidate won—that doesn’t make you right. I’d love to ‘come together’—but not with Nazis. You people come back to America—we’re waiting right here. Meantime, try not to turn this place into too much of a friggin nightmare.

I’m starting to think the only reason for Republicans is to turn out the Democrat vote, every other election.

—-0-

I’ve seen a lot of Trump-supporter memes, crowing over their victory all over the internet. Let me remind you of something. The Nazis attacked Britain—and the British invented a thinking machine—a computer—and Germany ended up as smoking rubble. The Japanese Empire attacked America—and Americans invented the ultimate killing machine—the nuclear bomb—which destroyed Japan to its very atoms. My point being that intelligent, imaginative, open-minded, decent people don’t like to waste time on belligerence and rancor—but it’s still a really bad idea to piss them off.

Happy Birthday To Me!   (2016Feb03)

Wednesday, February 03, 2016                                       10:13 AM

20160203XD-SurpriseParty (1)

I am sixty years old today. I was born in 1956. Television is only a few years older than I am—but I’m a few years older than NASA. Some of my sharpest childhood memories are of watching NASA on Television—in between Civil Rights protests, Vietnam War news-reports, the assassinations of Martin and John and Bobbie, the Flintstones, Mary Poppins, and Star Trek. Computers used to be building-sized machines—cars used to have curves—and so many things used to be ‘shocking’—I miss ‘shocking’.

20160203XD-SurpriseParty (2)

There was shocking art, shocking music, shocking language, shocking nudity (remember “Hair”?) and shocking space flights—orbiting the earth (Mercury), docking in orbit—and space-walking (Gemini), and landing on the moon (Apollo). I am not the only thing that has gotten old—‘shocking’ is showing some gray hairs as well—here in the future of wrist-computers, gay marriage, black presidents, and robots on Mars. I like it—I’m happy that we’ve matured to the point of accepting these new normalities—but I do miss ‘shocking’.

20160203XD-SurpriseParty (4)

I miss kids outside, too. That used to be where you found kids—outside playing. I’m too old for kick-the-can—but it’s sad that no one plays kick-the-can anymore. I play Candy Crush now—and, yes, I’m too old for that as well, but I enjoy it—still, it’s no kick-the-can. As a kid, I was often chided for staying indoors all day, reading books—but even then, I spent more time playing outside than the heartiest of today’s kids.

My parents took us five kids camping in the summertime—Taconic State Park was a wilderness to a kid from Bethpage, Long Island—but we also hit Maine, Pennsylvania, Virginia—hiking in the woods, building a campfire, sleeping in a tent—I’m often disappointed with myself that I didn’t do the same with my kids. Being the son of a Scout Troopmaster, I certainly had the skills—I guess it’s just one of those things where you have to grow up to appreciate it—and my kids grew up before I did.

20160203XD-SurpriseParty (3)

My dad taught me carpentry, too. I knew how to use power tools before I had a shop class—my dad had a workshop in the cellar—and I used to have a small workshop of my own—I could build furniture and fix parts of our house—but it’s a library now and most of my tools are gone. My son is familiar with basic tools, but I never taught him as much as I should have—he’s like me—more a reader than a builder.

I find myself thinking about time—the past, the present, the future—and while my head is whirling with thoughts, I have nothing to write down here—I suspect I’ve blogged for so long that I’ve already told most of my life story—and I hate to repeat myself.

20160203XD-SurpriseParty (5)

Claire has put flowers all over the house to mark the day for me—and with the rain pattering down outside the open front door it’s very spring-like for my birthday—how bizarre—I remember one early Long Island birthday party when my father had to shovel a tunnel from the front door to the street—not a path—a tunnel—to allow my party-goers into the house after a blizzard. While blizzards are not the standard, either, it is true that a February-third birthday has always been snow-covered—whether Long Island or Westchester, February’s coming is well into winter—and a lack of snow is unnatural—though these easily-chilled bones have trouble complaining about warm winters.

20160203XD-SurpriseParty (6)

I feel sorry for my contemporaries—hitting sixty has traditionally been the beginning of a slow, comfortable slide towards the sunset—but for us, it’s more like someone has hit a reset button—saying, “All that you have known is no more—and all that is new is strange to you”. Between climate change and technology change and social change I don’t know which is more disorienting. I wish I could come at all of this brave new world with a young heart and a young body—that I could face with some relish. But to have things go whirling off into the unknown, now, when I’m no longer a real part of it—that’s disheartening.

20160203XD-SurpriseParty (7)

Still, I cheer the good changes—and there have been many—the world is undoubtedly a better place than it was in 1956—all our present troubles notwithstanding. You learn that progress changes for good and for bad—the people with bad agendas and self-serving goals adapt and overcome obstacles just like the good people—computers and rockets can be used for good or ill. The fight for the soul of humanity abides—and always will—no progress can change that.

20160203XD-SurpriseParty (10)

Have you ever heard the fourth movement of Sibelius’ 2nd Symphony? It’s the greatest—I mean the whole symphony is nice, but that last movement—OMG. It’s like the Beatles—you can hear the same tune a million times, but it stays exciting and new, year after year. The difference, with classical music, is that you get something that lasts a half hour or more—instead of a four minute tune—that alone makes classical music great—to me, at least—I like something that hangs around for a while. And the conductor can alter the tempo and phrasing so much—I swear, I’ve heard Tchaikovsky’s Fifth by at least five different conductors and it’s like they’re five different pieces of music—it’s really something. Even a piano solo—look at the difference between Bach played by Wanda Landowska and Bach played by Glenn Gould—you’d swear it was a different composer.

Anyways, here’s some of my piano-playing:

 

 

Wednesday, February 03, 2016                                       10:21 PM

Surprise Party!

Okay—talk about a contrast of moods—this morning I was all contemplative—I played a thoughtful improv—I got sentimental with my blog post. I assumed I’d have a quiet day—I had asked Claire specifically not to have any party plans for my birthday—and Pete had called and said we’d get together to jam today. But as soon as we set up to record—Claire threw me a surprise birthday party—Pete was there as a decoy—to make sure I was up and dressed when people arrived, and Harlan and Sherryl came, and Marie and Evan—Claire and Spencer, of course—and Greg came along eventually. It was a lovely time—there was Swedish meatballs and mac’n’cheese and angel-food cake with strawberry icing—and I got nice presents (mostly colored socks—my specialty)—and I had a captive audience while I played the piano. Jessy called by I-phone from California—so we got to see her baby-bump and her pregnancy ‘glow’—she’s so beautiful as a mother to be—even more beautiful than usual. But maybe I’m biased. I gave the camera to Spencer and asked him to take pictures of everyone.

Groundhog Day   (2016Feb02)

20150302XD-LikeALion (38)

Tuesday, February 02, 2016                                             6:32 PM

I had “Groundhog Day” playing in the background for part of the day—Comedy Central ran it on a loop, in honor of the day. And for those of you following at home, Puxatawney Phil did not see his shadow this morning—which legends tells us betokens an early spring—as if global warming wasn’t threatening to bewilder the spring bulbs out of the lawn right here in early February. I have a special fondness for Groundhog Day because it has always been the day before my birthday—which I share with Horace Greeley, among others. And the eponymous film is one of my favorites because lots of people say they don’t care for science fiction—but everybody loves “Groundhog Day”, and if that’s not science fiction, nothing is.

20150625XD-BigTree (1)

My CD-library-designated external hard-drive died, and today I purchased a new one-terrabyte Passport by Western Digital to replace it. I’ve started ripping my CDs to the new drive—but I have hundreds of CDs, so it’s going to take a few days. I hope I didn’t lose anything irreplaceable—but I’m not going to spend $500 to find out (that’s the average cost of a data-retrieval service to restore a broken hard-drive’s data). I’m enjoying the review of my CD collection, anyway—so I’m just going to relax and enjoy rebuilding my digital music library. I was fortunate in using my C: drive for the downloaded music files delivered by Amazon or I-Tunes—I don’t know where I’d begin to restore that part of my music collection. Do I re-order it? Do I have to pay for it twice? What’s the deal? Here’s hoping I never have to find out.

20150514XD-Rijk-RiverViewInFrance_JohanBJongkind_1855

Hillary won (just barely) and Trump lost in last night’s Iowa Caucuses, so I’m cautiously optimistic. I think people forget that Hillary Clinton would be our first woman president—and that’s aside from being the best candidate, regardless of gender. We’ve been so excited and proud, most of us, to have elected Barrack Obama—and now we have a chance for another first—but somehow, the fact that we’ve had our first non-white president takes some of the luster off of the idea of our first woman president—which is weird. I guess, emotionally, people can get too much of a good thing.

CA152CA

Ms./First Lady/Senator/Secretary Clinton has done a lot of the downplaying herself—I guess she doesn’t want to make her gender the focus of her candidacy—and I can see why she’d think that—but I’m excited. Female heads of state may be rare—but guess what’s rarer? Female heads of state who commit war crimes, or get caught in corruption, or do the many bad things that male heads of state get up to when they get the chance—that’s what (or should I say who?). Not that women are always good—perhaps they get less chances to ruin the world—but that still leaves them with pretty good track records.

20141107XD-WalkPix (40)

Good old Bernie is a nice guy—but he’s promising the moon to college kids—and those young people have enough school-loan-debt and unemployment to make them hungry for change—even hungry enough to vote. But let’s get serious about a Socialist running in the national election—the Democratic primary is one thing, but getting the whole country behind him is altogether different. And that’s just getting him elected. Look at Bernie Sanders’ voting record in office and ask yourself how much bi-partisan support his programs are liable to generate—even an elected Bernie could never deliver on his promises unless those same people vote in progressive Democrats to the Congressional and Senate seats.

20150504XD-SuchABeauty (43)

Anyway, I continue to watch the race with interest. Now here are some videos I posted recently—I hope you like them:

 

 

 

 

 

 

And, finally, this is a post originally from my Amazon Customer Reviews:

Monday, February 01, 2016                                             3:58 PM

Book Report: “This Long Vigil” by Rhett Bruno   (2016Feb01)

This would be more properly titled ‘Short Story Report’ but I often fall into the pit of convention—and in this case I am helped along by my Kindle, which renders the purchase and consumption of all fiction into the same seamless ‘buy-with-one-click’ stream—with the exception of the length of time for which we will be beguiled by the author. In this case—blink and you’ll miss it.

I found ‘This Long Vigil’ entertaining, well-written, and engrossing—but far too short. In the case of such snippets, one is more likely to feel the resonance of what’s missing than the paucity of what’s not. In this particularly case, I was left wondering how the premise came to be—what devilish organization would decide to put humans into the situation which the protagonist of this story finds himself? A solitary life leavened only by the voice of a parental computer, but surrounded by a thousand sleeping bodies who will never wake—this story leaves a lot unexplored—particularly how someone could survive such a life without succumbing to emotional imbalance or outright insanity. The protagonist’s final option skirts the issue, but couches it as a hero’s choice—not the ultimate desperation of a tortured guinea pig.

In programming we have the ‘reality check’—we look at a program’s results and, rather than check the calculations, we’d ask ourselves ‘does the output make any sense in general?’ If the ‘number of orders shipped’ equals negative two, or twenty million—you know you have a program bug—that’s a ‘reality check’. Story’s like “This Long Vigil” can be haunting and evocative—but the lack of a ‘reality check’ in the premise always breaks my vicarious concentration. Fortunately, this story is over before you have too long to dwell on it—the doubts come after. I look forward to reading something of Rhett Bruno that is longer and less darkly-toned—and I must stop here lest my review outstrip the story.

Calm Seas   (2015Mar12)

Friday, March 13, 2015                                    1:56 AM

It’s been a quiet day here. I took some pictures of the melting snow and the bare ground starting to show.

Bach felt that D Major was the most joyous key signature and that can be heard in this keyboard partita. I had a recording of this on vinyl, performed by Paul Badura-Skoda on piano. YouTube has an excellent recording of him playing this Prelude on a harpsichord: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LNJgKFJgWiQ&list=PL33FD3673F789B78A

My rendition isn’t quite up to Paul’s standards, but I do my best with the fingers I have. I plan to record the other dances of the partita in the near future—they too have a bouncy delight to them—except for the Sarabande, which is one of the sweetest slow pieces in baroque music. I shall have to feel extra-on-my-game when I attempt that one.

The improv came out very novelette-ish and made me think of waves and wind and open water, thus the title and the ‘cover art’ (pictures, once again, courtesy of the Rijksmuseum web-site). Enjoy—

 

 

A Little Bach, plus (2015Feb22)

Here are two brief fugues from the J.S. Bach Book of Little Preludes and Fugues, and two briefer improvisations. Comments are welcomed.

 

 

 

 

Back to Bach   (2015Feb11)

Thursday, February 12, 2015                                    12:02 AM

Bach’s English Suites are a favorite of mine. This is not the first time I’ve posted a recording of the A Minor Suite, though it is rare that I record the full suite. This recording was done over two days and it’s a bit better than any of my previous attempts, so I’m posting it. Someday, I’ll have to review my YouTube channel videos and delete all the older versions of redundant posts—assuming that the newer ones are always better—I’ll have to do some comparison listening to be sure. So, maybe someday is pretty far off.

It’s not that I don’t listen to my own recordings—I hear them plenty when I’m editing them and I also burn them to CDs and listen to them away from the computer. However, it’s an educational process for me—I hear the mistakes more clearly than the music and I can’t help but make mental notes on how to play it better next time. Once I’ve given them a good listen, they usually just make me itch to jump up, go to the piano, and play it again, better. But that’s just the sheet music for other peoples’ stuff.

My improvisations are a different story—for some reason, I really like my own music. Not every day, and not all day, but I like it and I listen to myself quite often, especially when reading—or to lull me to sleep at night. I like to listen to some real music—all kinds—and listen to some ‘me’. My music isn’t better than real music, but it isn’t exactly worse—it’s more like ‘complimentary’ to real music—it gives me a break from the passion and precision and perfection of say Glenn Gould, or Ziggy Stardust, or Matt Glaser, or Enya. It’s filler, for when real music is too much but silence is too little. To me, anyway.

So, here’s a long-ass Bach piece that came off rather well, and the improvs from each day (I highly recommend Tap-Dance–it came out pretty good):

Something Different (2014Oct28)

I keep to the extremes of classical piano music–I like to play the very old Baroque and Renaissance, or the very late Romantic and Modern composers for keyboard–but there are exceptions, to whit–Haydn, Mozart, and Beethoven (what little of his work is within my technical limits). But Johann Christian Bach (9/5/1735-1/1/1782) the “eleventh surviving child and youngest son of Johann Sebastian Bach. He is sometimes referred to as ‘the London Bach’ or ‘the English Bach’, due to his time spent living in the British capital, where he came to be known as John Bach.” [Quoted from Wikipedia] He falls into the Early Classical, if speaking of the chronology of music history–and is said to have had some influence on Mozart’s works, or at least his concertos–personally, I have trouble hearing such subtleties, so I leave it to you to decide.

One reason I avoid the less titanic composers is that the music of the greats sings out pretty well–even under the fingers of a clumsy dabbler like me–but the delicate and simple music of mere demi-gods such as J.C. Bach really throws a spotlight on inadequate technique–and the poor technique throws it right back, lighting their creations with a guttering fluorescent bulb, rather than the warm sunlight of a proper performer. In spite of this, whenever I make a halfway-decent show of sight-reading some interesting music (and this IS that) I can’t resist posting the proof on YouTube. This is one of those times.

One last thing–I couldn’t blame anyone for passing on 30 minutes of inept classical piano, but you really should give today’s improv a try–it’s got a tangy Spanish flavor at the start that I’m very pleased to have discovered.

 

 

 

Booked Into the Awesome Suite   (2014Oct22)

Wednesday, October 22, 2014            11:41 AM

It’s dull and chilly and damp today. Hardly inspiring. My mood slips in and out of types: melancholy, disinterest, avidity, disinterest, persistence, disinterest…. All in all, a good day to go lie down.

Well, big mistake—I got back up again. I played Bach’s English Suite No. 5 in e minor, plus fore-and-aft improvs. I’m making the videos now—not as exciting as I might have wished, but something to do.

I’m thrilled with this sudden increase in my ability to sight-read and play piano in general—but there are limits. For instance, no one should be surprised if the last few dances from the English Suite sound a little raggedy—after the first twenty minutes, even ‘new, improved’ me wasn’t really bringing the awesome.

Still, it’s so nice to be going through a slight improvement, for once—I can’t help but get carried away…

 

 

 

 

Backwards Bach

I’ve been playing Bach for several decades (make that trying to play Bach) and sometimes, just to keep things fresh, I start at the end of the book and play each dance in reverse order. I still repeat the minuet after its middle part–but otherwise I go from last dance to first dance. Anyhow…

Click to watch YouTube Video

Click to watch YouTube Video

 

Click to watch YouTube Video

Click to watch YouTube Video

 

Click to watch YouTube Video

Click to watch YouTube Video

 

 

Three Sweets to the Wind (2013Nov08)

Hello, you lucky people.

I finally have some postable Bach (not that it’s great–or even good) that is about as good as I get.

Please don’t feel bad if you don’t watch the whole thing–I get tired as I go along, so the mistakes and flubs become worse and more frequent as the video goes on….

I’m also very pleased with my Improv today–I didn’t really play the whole thing straight through as shown here–it was all in one recording, but there were three places where I played freestyle–and I didn’t have the patience for separate videos, so they’re all bunched into this one video. As always, I hope you enjoy it…

[Improv – Sweets to the Suites   (2013Nov08)]

[J.S. Bach – selections from three (3) French Suites   (2013Nov08)]

 

Sweets for the Suite

These recordings began as mixtures–I would play some of Bach’s French Suites 1-6 and intersperse that with my usual improvs.

The Bach is very challenging and it is rare that I get a good recording of me playing any of it–this time was not rare at all, so I’ve spared my listeners (who am I kidding? nobody listens…) the Bach and present here only the improvs I played in between the Bach massacres. Frustrated at my inability to post any Bach, I named these improvs in tribute ‘French Sweetys’ No 1 & 2.

I hope they are enjoyable.   By the way… this time I didn’t download any single graphic image from Google Image Search–instead, I took a screen capture (control-shft-PrtScr) and pasted that whole array of pictures (the search term was ‘Painting Queen’). I post the original screen-capture below as a link to the playlist of both improvs–and then below that, I put the two separate improv links…

20131107XD-FrenchSwettys_QueensMontage_01(TitlesCARD)

 

 

You Are Everything And Everything Is You

Siren-UofVTc036

I feel like I must have done something wrong. It just came to me that I’ve hardly ever cared about anything but music. I used to draw and paint to pass the time—I was good at it and I liked being able to impress people—but in the end, it wasn’t something I had to do. Same with reading and writing—a fantastic way to spend time—and it always took me away from the most unbearable environments—in the same house with an arguing family, being a brat on a bus full of brats, being stuck on a long line, and others. So I draw, read, and write here and there—but there’s only one thing I have to do—listen to, and play, music.

Ulysses-sirens-Draper

From that perspective, I can visualize my whole life, my jobs, my social interactions, my buying habits—as one big structure whose purpose is the perpetual availability of music to listen to, and a piano to practice and play on, and a stack of songbooks to sing from. Don’t get me wrong—many of my hardest efforts were in service to my Claire and my Jessy and my Spence. But anything I do for myself is unfailingly music-related. Nothing else has that feeling of obsession that I just can’t shake.

SirensBoutibonne

Unfortunately, I was not blessed with any talent for music—in general, I’m pretty awkward—and at piano, I’m markedly so. Any slight ability I display now, at the age of fifty-seven, is due to daily practice since the age of fifteen. And whatever ability that may be, it is easily out-shined by any toddler with musical talent and a few weeks of lessons. Do I have a great knowledge of music? Yes, indeed. And do I have a familiarity with music history that goes beyond that of nearly everyone? I do. But I’ll never be a musician, in the normal sense—I must eternally satisfy myself with my own puny capacity, and my improvisations (in which I attempt to make strengths of my weaknesses).

pygmalionNgalatea

Thus, there is a Zen aspect to my music-making—I must see my music as one thing and ‘real’ music as another. Otherwise, I’d have to give up the piano. It makes for a unique situation—there aren’t many pianists who practice every day, but never perform in public, never collaborate with other musicians, and are still waiting, forty years later, to get ‘good at it’. But that it exactly my case.

odsirens

The one thing that remains invisible to everyone else is the satisfaction I feel when I’m playing improvisationally—every day, I imagine that today’s improv is tremendous. Most days, I have a camcorder running and when I see the playback or burn a CD to listen to it, I hear something that is not at all tremendous—in fact, it stubbornly sounds like me playing badly—it’s mystifying.

persephone

I’m lucky, I guess—when I was young, I was very bright—I got used to being sure of the right answer, even when everyone else thought differently—it is a very good attitude—I wish I could share it with people who didn’t do well in school, who became averse to non-conformity and repelled by new data. I always feel sorry for people who disqualify themselves from learning, reading, listening to classical music—someday they’ll run schools so that the slower kids will have as much respect for their own viewpoint as they do for the teacher’s—but I won’t hold my breath.

herculesL

So much of my life is a hot-house flower—it can only survive because the conditions are perfect for it. I don’t have to spend the majority of my time at an eight-hour job every day, because of Disability. I have a very fine baby grand in a living room that really only rates an upright. I have the advantage of having been mentored by Matt Glaser in junior high, and Gil Freeman in high school. I was raised to sing Christmas carols and Boy Scout campfire songs, and to sing along with the AM radio pop tunes of my day. As the cherry on top, listening to records of both Keith Jarrett and George Winston taught me, at an early age, that playing the piano can be as much a cathartic experience as a performance.

Godessette

When I was a teenager, in the heat of a summer day, I could put LPs on the record-player—Glenn Gould playing the Well-Tempered Clavier, Books I and II, by Bach—and it would have nearly the same effect as an air conditioner—the cool, geometrical perfection of Gould’s Bach affected me in a physical way. Tchaikovsky’s 1812 Overture would make my blood hot and ready for battle. Silly little pop tunes could make me feel like my heart was breaking (and I loved having my heart broken) or that I was ‘king of the world’.

A-Sirens-Berlin

My sincerest sympathy I reserve for the people that see music as one thing—as rap, or as Bob Dylan, or as Theophilus Monk. Even confining oneself to a single genre is, to me, a tragic waste of potential experiences. I like medieval music, Bulgarian folk choirs, baroque recorder music, the Beatles, the Beach Boys, Enya, Michael Hedges, Carol King, Randy Newman, Leroy Anderson, John Williams (the composer and the guitar player who made the name famous first). I like the Archies, the Partridge Family, the Monkees, Air Supply, Bread, Kris Kristofferson, Andrew Lloyd Weber, Barbra Streisand, Harry Nilsson, Artie Shaw, Glenn Miller, John Philip Sousa, the Roach Sisters, both Guthrie’s (Woody and Arlo), Judy Collins, Burt Bacharach, and just about every other ‘bad’ musician overlooked by ‘serious musicians’.

CombWBattle

I’ve seen every musical movie ever, I watched Bernstein’s TV programs on music appreciation when I was little, I listened to every Nonesuch record in the library, back when Nonesuch produced LPs from ‘Bulgarian Folk Music’ to the ‘Koto Music of Japan’. Music is so much a part of my life that if it was excised from my history, my biography would read: “I am born. I get married. I have a family. I die.”

fantasy-fairy-sirens

And that being the case, it seems rather unfair that I should be without even a hint of musical talent—but nobody expects life to be fair, and for good reason. I think it has been good for my character, such as it is—overcoming failure every day is character-building, if nothing else. My dreams of being a great musician would probably lack their zest if I had the slightest idea of what being one is really like. Isn’t that strange? On the plus side (and I say this all the time) it’s good to have a life-long pursuit that can never be completed. I know that Yitzhak Perlman could say the same thing—but being the world’s greatest living violinist, he doesn’t have to focus on that particular fact the way I do.

Boreas_s1

Old Stuff (2013Aug31)

I can’t believe tomorrow is September! Things get old FAST these days!

Here’s an oldie:

John Jay High School – June 1973
Reflections – Volume XIV
Page 25      (Art – Richard Hesse)
with Sue Koponen, Richard Hess and Karen DuBuque.

“Stormhalls”

Falcons wing ‘cross rainbow snow
Pine trees iced white while northwinds blow
Northwind take me high
And carry me
To stormhalls in the sky

Seagulls floating on the breeze
Over trees, across the seas
Of whiteness on the ground
Whisper to me
Of stormhalls in the sky.

 

I only bring up that old poem to show the source of this Improv’s title:

Click here for Video

Click here for Video

 

And now we have something really old:

Click to Play

Click to Play

XperDunn plays Piano
August 30th, 2013

J. Fischer & Bro. [110 West 40th Street / New York, N.Y.]
Piano Classics Volume I

Early Italian Piano Music
of the Seventeenth Century
{For Late Intermediate and Early Advanced Grades}
Collected by Brian Shaw

Reciting from: Fischer Edition No. 8400
——————————————

(01) Domenico Scarlatti (1685-1757) Minuetto
(02) Bernardo Pasquini (1637-1710) Air
(03) Arcangelo Corelli (1653-1713) Gavotte
(04) Alessandro Scarlatti (1659-1725) Air (from Toccata)
(05) Girolamo Frescobaldi (1583-1644) Corrente
(06) Domenico Scarlatti (1685-1757) Allegro
(07) Domenico Zipoli (1686-Unknown) Sarabande

—Well, gotta run!   (I’m not getting any younger…)

 

 

 

 

Journal Entry – June 8th, 2013 01:00 am

Wednesday, June 05, 2013                  11:11 PM

 

Who cares if I miss the Daily Show (I do, unfortunately) but then anything hanging out in the strange time-window of 11PM has got to expect losses from burn-outs like me who can’t keep track of time—especially later in the evening.

Norton 360 kept me off my PC all day—and it wore me out, forcing me to make a back-up profile excluding unwanted folders and file-types from my Norton Online Back-Up (I’ve been on the brink for a long time.. ..I knew it would it would have all kinds of details and mouse-clicking—and that stuff needs a lot of focus from me these days.) But now I am among the proud the few the people who pay good money to have their personal files backed-up  into the sky, or on a cloud, or who-the-hell-knows-where. And Norton goes whole hog—promising to keep actual hard media (Blue-Ray DVD, to be specific) backups of all the stuff I’m always so worried about keeping up-to-date on my own DVD Back- Ups.

I can just imagine. World War Z comes, my PC’s fried—even Norton’s ‘cloud’ is attacked—but, never fear, once the world is put back on a civilized keel, I’m secure in the knowledge that my family photo albums survived in some Symantec Vault high in the Rockies…

Well, it’s all over and the truth is I feel good about knowing all my stuff is safe now, even if I never finish making my own back-up hardcopies on DVD. Plus, I had been getting all kinds of weird incompletions in my optimizations, and red status lights all over—nothing disastrous but still, I was on notice that something was less than perfect inside my computer, and that it could be the digital death of me at any moment. But now, everything is in the green, all the scans come out clean, all the optimizations complete without incident—I love a clean PC.

 

Saturday, June 08, 2013              12:25 AM

 

I’ve been eating all too well lately—tonight was corn soup with sour cream and creamed-spinach crepes, last night was the most incredible meal—simple cod, small potatoes (with the skins still on them) and fresh corn-on-the-cob, ummm… and that’s not unusual—all my meals are top-chef quality. At first, long ago, Claire was self-doubting about her cooking, and didn’t do too well. But eventually she went from that to a good cook, and from that to a gourmet chef—but now she’s in some mega-level where everything she touches is turned into the best food I’ve ever tasted—day after day after day. It’s just incredible!

And that’s not all I have to be happy about. Spencer’s home and I get to see him and talk with him every day. He fixed my computer yesterday! It was making a big noise for years—but he just opened it up, found a wire that was being nicked by the cooling-fan blades as they spun, and just shifted the wire out of contact. I’m a little embarrassed—this must be the first PC I’ve ever owned that I didn’t take apart and put together myself—I’d never even opened it up and looked inside. So, now, the noisy PC is the silent PC—something I didn’t know I was missing, it had been so long.

Spencer is the greatest. I couldn’t have asked for a better kid, or better kids, for that matter—I’m always bragging about my kids and then I have to stop and add something so that I’m not singling one of them out. They’re both great. But Spencer is the greatest boy and Jessy is the greatest girl, so it’s really a different greatness in either case. Okay, enough. O, my kids are great. Okay.

And the doctor and the dentist and the transplant center are all done with me for a good while, and I’m fit as a fiddle and ready for love. I’m reading a book I like. I’m especially excited about some of my recent piano recordings—both the improvs and the sight-reading—I’ve had a few good ones lately, and that always perks me up. I had such a great time watching Bruce Willis in his latest Die Hard movie—just can’t get enough—Bruce is my favorite, the coolest of the cool. And a new Superman is coming out soon, and a new Star Trek just released recently—they will all end up on my cable-movie-menu sooner or later.

O, and I figured out how to revive my Nano, and I bought a slew of old mp3s (well, the mp3s aren’t old, but you know what I mean) so now I can walk around with more classical, popular, and self-performed music than I ever accrued on a shelf of vinyl, a rack of cassettes, or a stack of CDs. Those golden oldies have a surprising power of recall—I think only our sense of smell is better at triggering memories long buried than old songs from our younger days. So, I’m spoiled for choice—one good thing about it not being the sixties anymore is I can buy Bach’s complete works for nine bucks—same with Beethoven, Mozart, Vivaldi, Brahms—it’s a classic-buff’s-holiday at Amazon’s Downloadable-mp3 Store. And the oldies, like BeeGees or Donovan or someone—you don’t have to buy the whole album anymore—you can buy the tracks you love and leave behind the tracks that used to be annoying ‘spacers’ between the good stuff. It’s like heaven. Most people into music these days have no idea what it was like in the stone age—finding out how many LPs could be stacked on a particular Turntable before they started to slide around on top of each other.

My life couldn’t be better—which is strange. I’m so used to being a sourpuss that I have no idea how to deal with this paradise I find myself in.

J.S. Bach Keyboard Partita selections – end of D Maj & start of the E Min (2013May30)

XperDunn plays Piano
May 30th, 2013

Selections from J.S. Bach’s
Keyboard Partitas

– end of D Maj & start of the E Min (2013May30)

4 New Videos!

Improv – The Drowning Man

Published on Mar 19, 2013

XperDunn plays Piano
March 17th, 2013

Improv – The Drowning Man

J. S. Bach – English Suite No. 4 In d minor

Published on Mar 19, 2013

XperDunn plays Piano
March 16th, 2013

J. S. Bach – English Suite No. 4 In d minor

Three (3) ‘American Songbook’-type Standards  (2013Mar16)

Published on Mar 19, 2013

XperDunn plays Piano
March 16th, 2013

3 Song Standards (Piano-Instrumental Covers)

01.  Crazy Rhythm

02.  Body And Soul

03.  Blues In The Night (‘My Mama Done Tol’ Me’)

Improv – C Minor Gigue  (2013Mar19)

Published on Mar 19, 2013

XperDunn plays Piano
March 19th, 2013

Improv – C Minor Gigue