Friday Miscellanea

In our occasional series of unusual instruments, here is a nice introduction to the Baroque trumpet by David Blackadder, principal trumpet with the historical instrument ensemble the Orchestra of the Age of Enlightenment:

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We have another entry in the unofficial "Piano Virtuoso Miniskirt Competition." It's Lola Astanova playing Chopin. It might also be an entry in a "Sparkly Shoes" competition.

Looks like Yuja Wang has to, ahem, up her game. Here she is with her Chopin:

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Music blogger and writer Jessica Duchen has a nice post up about who she is and what she does and why she is not doing New Year's resolutions:

Darlings, a very warm welcome to all readers, whoever and wherever you may be. JDCMB is Jessica Duchen's Classical Music Blog. It's a relatively random and succinctly spontaneous collection of content involving words and music. 

I'm a writer with a musical training (academic/piano). In my twenties and early thirties I held jobs on music magazines, including spearheading the creation of the UK's first independent piano magazine. Later I was with The Independent as a music journalist and critic for 12 years. Now I juggle different kinds of writing: novels, librettos, articles, reviews, programme notes and more. I often give pre-concert talks and also present narrated concerts, often based on my novels (you'll find upcoming the dates in the sidebar). I enjoy the adventure of these different activities, and others besides: it keeps me on my toes, or at least my fingertips. And JDCMB is simply...my blog.

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Musicology Now has woken up and there is a new post on opera in the French provinces: The Politics of Opera in French Provincial Cities 1685 - 1750.

By exploring the locality of Lully’s tragédies, we expand the network of actors involved in the performance history of this repertoire to encompass singers, directors, and printers who operated beyond Paris, as well as government officials whose ideologies might have influenced the production of an opera. We also push issues of performance to the center, especially in instances where it might seem difficult or impossible to talk about the music: even though the scores of most provincial productions of Lully’s operas have been lost, there are clues in provincial libretti for alterations to Lully’s scores that diverged from how the repertoire was performed in Paris. The canonic narrative of French baroque opera – at least the narrative that we tend to teach in the classroom – often overlooks the locality of the tragédie en musique. We tend to imagine early French opera as a genre that was as rigidly centralized as the absolutist regime of the Sun King. By taking provincial productions of Lully’s operas into account, we gain a clearer understanding of how politics shaped opera – and vice versa – beyond Versailles in Old Regime France.

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Alex Ross has a piece up at The New Yorker on György Kurtág's opera on Samuel Beckett's play Endgame.

The final masterpiece of twentieth-century music had its première last month, at La Scala, in Milan. “Samuel Beckett: Fin de Partie,” an operatic version of Beckett’s “Endgame” by the Hungarian composer György Kurtág, is nominally a product of our time: Kurtág began writing it in 2010 and finished it last year, at the age of ninety-one. Yet the score harks back to the heyday of modernism in the arts, when a figure like Beckett could hold a cultured public tensely in thrall as he tested the extremes. Such authority hardly exists any longer: the age of the dark male genius is past. Given how much brilliant music is being made by new and different voices, the retreat of that cult is not greatly to be mourned. Still, Kurtág’s achievement is stupendous, particularly since this is his first opera and by far the most ambitious undertaking of his career. There are many musical monuments of old age: Monteverdi’s “The Coronation of Poppea,” Verdi’s “Otello” and “Falstaff,” Janáček’s “From the House of the Dead.” But no composer has ever taken so huge a leap so late.

I think what I enjoy the most about Ross' writing are the little obligatory asides like this one: "Such authority hardly exists any longer: the age of the dark male genius is past." Oh yes, no more dark, or light for that matter, male geniuses! From now on, only new and different voices will be heard.

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Anne Midgette, classical music critic for the Washington Post, has a fascinating article about the obscure niche of composing "royalty-free music" for purposes such as keeping us amused or tranquilized while waiting on hold on the phone:

I had been on hold with the IRS for 30 minutes when I noticed that the music wasn’t driving me crazy.

Background music can be a particularly noxious branch of the art of sound. The tinny elevator Muzak. The synthesized Christmas carols that fill drugstores for weeks. The buzzy sound in the background at the bus station. They’re all supposedly there to calm us and improve our frame of mind, and yet they all have the bright, inauthentic, chemical tang of an artificial sweetener. Indeed, background music is sometimes used as an active repellent, piped out of stores onto the sidewalk to discourage loitering. 

Davide Dondi, an Italian composer who has about 80 pieces represented on the Getty website, says it’s a hard business to break into. Dondi, a former graphic designer in the advertising world who plays bass in a cover band, decided three years ago to quit his job and become a composer, taking online courses and working with a private teacher. He said in an email that he works two to five hours a day, producing about six tracks a month that he shares on a wide range of royalty-free music sites. But with so much music available, Dondi said, companies tend to look at the top sellers first.

There's competition everywhere!

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One big trend this past year seems to have been the astonishing growth of tourism. A picturesque little town on the Italian coast, population 2,000, saw in the neighborhood of two million visitors! The Guardian has a piece on the record number of visitors to the Louvre last year: Beyoncé and Jay-Z help Louvre museum break visitor record in 2018.

The Louvre, the world’s most visited museum, broke all ticket office records last year with more than 10 million people viewing its Paris collection of fine arts and antiquities, boosted by foreign tourists and the interest in Beyoncé and Jay-Z’s music video filmed there.

The 10.2 million people who came to the museum in 2018 marked a 25% rise in visitors, beating the previous record of 9.7 million visitors in 2012. It is the highest number for a museum of its kind, ahead of the National Museum of China and the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York.

Over ten million people visiting a single, if large, building in one year has to be a record. When my ex and I visited Paris in 1991 we were rather exhausted when we got to the Louvre, having just come from the Musée d'Orsay and seeing a lineup, even then, decided to just pass it up.

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Here is a story about five classical music "projects": Beyond the Concert Hall: 5 Organizations Making a Difference in Classical Music in 2018.

As a brand new resource, the Composer Diversity Database represents — pun intended — a progressive step towards a more inclusive canon. The search engine offers over three dozen filters to help users discover new music based on composers’ gender identity, ethnic or racial background, instrumentation, or all of the above. Search for people whose work you might have been missing, or contribute a new entry, here.

Whenever I see that hackneyed phrase "making a difference" I always want to ask, was it a good difference or a bad difference? It could go either way, after all, and I don't think making a difference for the worst is a good thing. The example above would seem to be a difference for the worst. Instead of searching for music by anyone at all that might be good, you can exclude whatever groups you like, typically "dark male geniuses" I imagine! That leaves you free to just focus on the politically correct oppressed groups like women and visible minorities. Yay!

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 I suppose the logical envoi today would be something by Lully. Here is the Chaconne from Act I of Cadmus et Hermione:

UPDATE: By special request, a second envoi of Kurtág. This is a piece for violin, viola and orchestra from 2003:

A Review of Netflix

I have had less exposure to television than most people I think. We didn't own a television until I was nine years old and it was a black and white that received one channel: the CBC (Canadian Broadcasting Corporation). Even as a teenager we still only had three channels and they went off the air at midnight. I left home at eighteen and never owned a television until I married at age forty. So, apart from a few visits home at Christmas when I saw A Christmas Carol every year, I didn't see much television! At age fifty I canceled my cable and gave my television to my maid.

This doesn't mean I am completely unaware of television. Along the way I ended up watching a few series with interest, among them Homicide: Life on the Street, a gritty police show set in Baltimore, Star Trek: The Next Generation, and, oddly enough, Buffy the Vampire-Slayer. As movies seem to have gotten a whole lot less interesting (I can think of few things more boring than interminable fight scenes between "superheroes" larded over with gratuitous special effects and CGI), television seems to have gotten more interesting with good writing and intriguing characters. Most of the characters in the blockbuster films seem two-dimensional. Shows like The Sopranos (which I never got into) and Game of Thrones (which I did) are quite compelling viewing.

But I still resist broadcast television as I find it simply unwatchable. The commercials, especially for the networks themselves, and the plodding, repetitive news shows, are unbearable. Netflix is a different animal however. Visiting a relative a year or so ago we ended up watching a couple of seasons of The Last Kingdom on Netflix. The story of the conflict between the Danes and the Anglo-Saxons in Dark Ages Britain was not bad at all. When I was staying at an AirBNB apartment in Montreal in September I noticed that there was an active Netflix account so I started watching. No Game of Thrones, of course, because that is on HBO, but a wealth of other stuff, including all the Star Trek spinoffs. After a couple of days the account expired, but by that time I was hooked so I took the plunge and signed up. Back in Mexico I am still watching.

Much of what is on Netflix is mediocre or not to my taste, but that still leaves a lot of interesting stuff. The movie selection I don't find too interesting as it is skewed towards current movies. Netflix' idea of a "classic" is something filmed in 1995! There are some popular series like Friends and Breaking Bad (which I also never got interested in) and some Netflix originals like Jessica Jones which I did get into. The whole Marvel Cinematic Universe of which it forms a part is on Netflix and I watched most of the movies which are ok if not really great. Some of the TV shows like Arrow and Daredevil are probably more interesting. I often wonder if they don't have to be more creative on television because they don't have the huge special effects budgets. Nothing ruins a film more than excessive special effects: case in point, the Matrix sequels.

Some of the most interesting discoveries are television series that are not American. There is an interesting series called Crossing Lines with Donald Sutherland and a cast of European actors that chronicles the story of a (fictional) investigative team working for the International Criminal Court at The Hague that is well done and refreshingly different from a typical police procedural. I also just discovered a fascinating series called El Ministerio del Tiempo (The Ministry of Time, in Spanish with English subtitles) set in Spain that is a fascinating blend of science fiction and history. Think Warehouse 13 but more interesting and with better acting. In an abandoned building in Madrid there are the offices of a secret government ministry whose task is to safeguard the history of Spain. Deep below ground are hundreds of doors, each of which offers access to a different place and time--restricted to the current territory of Spain. The primary team of three investigators consist of a 21st century Madrid paramedic, a late-nineteenth century woman university student and a 16th century soldier from Seville. You have to suspend your disbelief in the fact that they can Skype between different eras (in exchange you get to enjoy the 16th century soldier asking "what's Skype?") but the characters are interesting and likable and how can you not love a police department whose sketch artist is Diego Velázquez! There is a scene where he goes to Barcelona in 1899 to get Pablo Picasso's signature which they need to forge a receipt for La Guernica. It is fun to watch him lure Picasso into praising Velázquez' painting Las Meninas as a work of genius. Honestly, where else on television would you have two characters discussing a 17th century painting at some length?

Velázquez' Las Meninas (the painter is depicted on the left)

I don't know how much Netflix skews its offerings according to where you are, perhaps the Canadian ones are different from the Mexican ones, but if you can find El Ministerio del Tiempo in your region, it is worth a watch. You learn a bit about Spanish history and literature as well in the series though no musicians are mentioned so far. Don't get on the wrong side of the Ministry as their incarceration cells are in an 11th century dungeon!

"Chase" (2015) for violin and piano

Time to give you a listen to some of the music we recorded in Toronto this month. The shorter piece, one I wrote in 2015, is rather like an encore.

Some background: I wrote this piece over three years ago for a couple of friends who were about to appear in a concert a few days later. Without much thought at all, I sat down and wrote the piece in a couple of hours. There are some typically Latin American syncopated rhythms and a lyrical middle section. The piece was rather a hit at the concert as lots of people came up to me afterwards with compliments (which rather surprised me). Afterwards, looking at the piece, I decided it was a bit too short and rewrote it, extending the middle section in particular.

Several months ago I organized a recording session in Toronto for my new piece for violin and guitar, "Dark Dream" so it seemed a good time to do a recording of "Chase." The violinist is Valerie Li, first violin with the Afiara Quartet and one of the finest chamber musicians in Canada and she is accompanied by the very excellent pianist Todd Yaniw.

The video clip is mostly of the performers and the studio, but it begins with a photo of the exterior of the Royal Conservatory of Toronto where we rehearsed the piece before going into the studio. The recording took place on the 9th of December in the Glenn Gould Studio at the CBC Broadcast Centre. This is one of the finest recording venues for classical music in Canada.

Chase (2015) by Bryan Townsend

UPDATE: Sorry for the "unavailable" link. I think I have it fixed now, so let me know if the link is working.

Friday Miscellanea

Let's open with this very invigorating arrangement of the Bach Toccata and Fugue in D minor for brass quintet:

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The Guardian is doing the usual end-of-year lists: Classical CDs of the year: a year for lieder, piano recitals – and remembering. Here is critic Andrew Clement's list of top releases:

1. Stravinsky: Perséphone/Esa-Pekka Salonen

2. Rachmaninov: Piano Concertos 2 & 4/Daniil Trifonov

3. Rossini: Semiramide/Mark Elder

4. Hindemith: Das Marienleben/Juliane Banse

5. Ferneyhough: La Terre est un Homme; Plötzlichkeit/Martyn Brabbins

6. Bach: B Minor Mass/William Christie

7. Schumann: Frage/Christian Gerhaher

8. Messiaen: Catalogue d’Oiseaux/Pierre-Laurent Aimard

9. Reich: Pulse; Quartet International Contemporary Ensemble/Colin Currie Group

10. Tippett: Symphonies 1 & 2/Martyn Brabbins

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I have sometimes made the point that all the hand-wringing about the aging and just loss of audiences for classical music is more a North American phenomenon than a European one. Case in point, in the past year the Finnish Radio Orchestra, featuring series of concerts devoted to Witold Lutoslawski and Bernd Alois Zimmermann, had a 97% attendance. Slipped Disc had the report.

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Speaking of Slipped Disc, here is a post of Norman Lebrecht's top stories of the year. Follow the link for the links.

10 Gatti is fired by Concertgebouw

9 International soprano is killed in glider crash

8 Anne-Sofie von Otter is tragically widowed 

7 Principal oboe: Why I had to leave Chicago

6 Steinway to be sold to Chinese

5 Berlin Phil loses US principal horn

4 Why Peter Gelb fired Uncle John Copley

3 Top conductor breaks skull in bike crash

2 NY Phil fires two musicians

1 John Williams leaves his scores to Juilliard

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A hat tip to Slipped Disc for unearthing this rare clip of a young Pierre Boulez rehearsing with Yvonne Loriod, the wife of Messiaen. There is no mention of what they are rehearsing at the YouTube clip, but from the interview in German later on we find that it was Structures II by Boulez.

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Skipping over a zillion stories about misogyny in opera, boys choirs and which record store just went bankrupt we find an interesting article in the New York Review of Books on Bach as recycler. Apparently he was adept at separating plastics from organics and glass. No, wait, sorry, I misunderstood! What he actually recycled was earlier music into later compositions.

Around 1730 Johann Sebastian Bach began to recycle his earlier works in a major way. He was in his mid-forties at the time, and he had composed hundreds of masterful keyboard, instrumental, and vocal pieces, including at least three annual cycles of approximately sixty cantatas each for worship services in Leipzig, where he was serving as St. Thomas Cantor and town music director. Bach was at the peak of his creative powers. Yet for some reason, instead of sitting down and writing original music, he turned increasingly to old compositions, pulling them off the shelf and using their contents as the basis for new works. 

The roots of this change can be traced, perhaps, to the summer of 1726, when Bach decided to incorporate instrumental music written earlier in Cöthen into his third Leipzig cantata cycle, refashioning concerto movements for violin or oboe into a series of inventive sinfonias (orchestral introductions), choruses, and arias featuring solo organ.

 The article is a review of a new book on Bach by Daniel Melamed:

In the end, Melamed’s book is about Bach the craftsman, the astonishingly inventive but pragmatic composer who compiled monumental choral works by blending styles—old and new, secular and sacred—and by appropriating, revising, and even abridging preexisting pieces.

A while back I wrote a post about two fundamentally different kinds of composers: the innovators and the synthesists. Bach, along with Mozart, was a synthesist while Beethoven and Haydn were innovators and Stravinsky was both at different times in his life.

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Here is why I prefer CDs to digital files. You don't actually own music if it is a digital download. Slate has the story:

Ever bought a song or an album on iTunes and, after a while, decided you didn’t like it? Did you wish you could sell it somewhere, to someone, for something, the way you might have done with an old vinyl record or CD? In 2011, a company called ReDigi figured out a novel way for iTunes music purchasers to do just that. But for the past few years, it’s been tangled up in litigation. In what may prove to be ReDigi’s death knell, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 2nd Circuit has all but shut the business down.

Follow the link for the whole story.

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 A commentator once mentioned here that a composer has to learn how to hate. I agree with this sentiment and have found myself explaining it on various occasions. Thankfully someone else has written an essay on the topic: In Defence of Hate.

We have forgotten how to hate.

This may seem like a counterintuitive—or even gallingly stupid—assertion in a world rocked by partisan political infighting, by global-scale ideological conflict, and by a renewed activity in formalized hate groups. Indeed, in 2018, the Alabama-based Southern Poverty Law Center reported that the number of hate groups in the United States has swelled by 20 percent since 2014. On the face of things, the problem would not seem to be too little hate but far too much of it. Hate is a boom industry.

So let me clarify: we have forgotten how to hate well. We have forgotten how to hate rigorously and virtuously. This is, I believe, because we have forgotten how to distinguish between hate’s negative and positive iterations. In the former camp is racial hatred, religious hatred, and other forms of intense, frothing, violent dislike inflamed by malformed ideological doctrines and blind prejudices. The latter, more productive, form of hating is conceived as a form of rigorous, ruthless critique. Anger, says my therapist, inadvertently summoning the spirit of ex–Sex Pistols/Public Image Limited singer John Lydon, is an energy. And this energy can be productively harnessed.

Yes, exactly! Part of one's evolution as a composer is a series of winnowing distinctions that go towards forming your own style. You have to start deciding, not only what kind of music you like, but more importantly what kind of music you hate. Liking actually doesn't get you too far because what you are looking for as a composer is something new, something fresh, not something already done. And you get there partly by moving away from music you dislike which may take you into places that have not been too much explored. Call it a via negativa for musicians.

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One of the works discussed in the book on Bach is the Confiteor from the B minor Mass which was one of the few sections that was newly-composed. The conductor is Philippe Herreweghe:

One Year in the Studio, part 4

Now we come to the year in the studio. In the fall of 1973 I decided not to continue at the university even though it had been a marvelous experience for me. The reason was that they had no acceptable guitar teacher, instead insisting that I take piano lessons and play lute in a Medieval ensemble. Yes, one of my earliest experiences in ensemble playing was Machaut! I dropped the piano after a while as it was quite painful for my right hand--I'm not the only guitarist to have experienced this. My decision was also sparked by the advice of my guitar teacher in Vancouver (with whom I started studying after the end of classes at university) to travel to Spain to study. So I started work with the Ministry of Education in order to save money. Then, in January of 1974, I flew to Spain. First time outside Canada. Actually, first time West of Saskatoon! No discernible Spanish.

I had a little Spanish phrase book, but soon discovered the limitations of that. As soon as I got there I wrote a letter to my parents to let them know I had arrived. Yes, this was pre-Internet and trans-Atlantic phone calls were very expensive. I hadn't seen a mailbox anywhere (in Canada they are bright red) so I consulted my phrase book and came up with "¿Dondesta el buzón? "Where is the mailbox?" The doorman at the hotel, very helpful, responded with a flurry of absolutely incomprehensible Spanish while pointing in several directions. I responded with one of my few Spanish words: "gracias" and set out to find a mailbox. It turned out that they were grey with the colors of the Spanish flag in a narrow band around the middle. That was then, now they are bright yellow.

Several months previous I had ordered a guitar from the shop of José Ramirez, the great Madrid guitar builder. Prior to that I was playing a hundred dollar student guitar:

This was taken just before I left for Spain. What surprises me about the photo is how good my hand position is. I think that starting on the electric bass guitar was likely quite advantageous for my left hand as it forced a good hand position and developed a lot of muscle.

So off I went to the guitar shop. When I visited Madrid two years ago I dropped by the shop just for nostalgia and took a photo:

Click to enlarge

It seemed different from my recollection. Apparently they changed location quite a while ago, so it isn't even on the same street. When I arrived there in 1974 and explained that I had a concert guitar on order (they also make student models) they first showed me to a chair in the back of the store and brought out a guitar. After tuning, I started trying it out and began with a prelude by Manuel Ponce. After they heard a bit, they showed me to a studio in the basement where I could try several different guitars. On the walls were several glass cases containing old guitars that used to belong to Andrés Segovia. After deciding on the guitar, I paid off the balance and set out on the train for Alicante, on the Mediterranean coast where José Tomás lived. The folks in the Ramirez shop provided the address. Oh, and the cost of that instrument? As fine a guitar as could be purchased in 1974 (as far as I knew)? $654 Canadian. I later sold it for two thousand dollars.

I first stayed in a little pension owned by a couple of brothers from Argentina. That was an interesting experience. They were really hospitable people. One time when there was a great abundance of smelt (a small fish the size of a sardine) they knocked on my door and handed me a big plate of freshly fried fish. Another time they came with the welcome news that another Canadian was staying in the pension. I popped around, but when I knocked on the door I discovered that it was a couple from Quebec who spoke not a word of English! At that time I spoke almost no French. Spain back then was a different place, much less modern with a lot of old customs. Returning to the pension one evening in company with a Canadian guitarist he made the enigmatic comment: "see you, I've gotta go down to the corner and clap my hands." ?!?!?!? The custom then was if you returned to your apartment late at night you would find the street door to the building locked. On every block was a watchman (here in Mexico we call them veladores) who had the keys to all the buildings. You went to the corner of the street and clapped your hands and he would come around and let you in.

Soon after I arrived I went by José Tomás' apartment which was on Taquigrafo Marti street. My teacher in Vancouver said not to bother trying to contact him in advance. He didn't have a phone and didn't answer letters. So I just knocked on his door. He was a fairly tall man with a head of glossy black hair, of calm temperament and dignified demeanor. I explained that I had studied with his student in Vancouver and wanted to study with him. He was delighted to hear his student's name and asked how he was. He then asked me what repertoire I was currently playing. I told him the Etude No. 8 by Villa-Lobos and some other pieces which seemed to satisfy him that I was advanced enough. Then he said he was leaving for Japan in a few days to give some master classes there, but we could begin when he got back.

So having my lessons all arranged I decided to go to London for a few days to buy some music and attend some concerts. I was hungry to hear live music and Alicante, being a small regional capital, had no significant concert scene. London was a marvel with numerous orchestras, ballet companies and a host of great musicians playing in wondrous venues like Wigmore Hall. It also was the location of the famous Foyles bookshop. Back then it was in two multi-storey buildings with a little street in between. The, I think, third floor of one of the buildings was entirely devoted to the arts. I recall walking through a room filled with inexpensive editions of the classics to get to the room with all the musical scores. This was the first time in my life where I was actually able to view a wide selection of music for my instrument. I stayed there six hours, delving into every drawer where the scores were kept, finally staggering out, lugging a big bag of music in search of a restroom!

Back in Alicante, I moved into a flat near Tomas' apartment, sharing it with an Irish guitarist. We had four bedrooms, fully furnished, linens and kitchenwares included and we even had a maid. All this for the princely sum of $75 a month. Not each, shared. Across the street was a little bar where one went for breakfast. The first time I was there the fellow behind the bar enigmatically said: "you're a guitarist." Yes, ok. "A classical guitarist." Uh-huh. "You study with José Tomás." Right again! I later realized that Tomás was one of the most famous residents of Alicante and that he had a community of young guitarists studying with him was common knowledge. But how did the bartender know I was one of them? I was obviously foreign, of the right age and I had the fingernails longer on the right hand.

So I settled into a long period of intense concentration on mastering the instrument. I had my room in the apartment. It was nearly bare with a bed, a little table, and a chair. That, plus a music stand, was all I needed. I am reminded of a painting of Van Gogh of where he lived in the South of France:

No allusions here to my similarity to Van Gogh!! Just that these little rooms in little towns on the Mediterranean coast were a bit similar.

All I did for month after month was practice guitar. The routine was to start with technical exercises to build agility, control and speed. I would spend at least one or two hours on slurs, scales, arpeggios and studies. I don't recall the details at this distance in time as I have changed my approach a few times since then. I also don't recall Tomás ever giving me any particular exercises to work on. Lessons with him were purely about repertoire. He started me off on the fairly simple pieces in Emilio Pujol's collection of music from the vihuelistas. I still have that book:

Apart from tone and consistency, one of the obvious things you learn from this kind of repertoire is how to handle independent voices. I continued to work on the Villa-Lobos etudes, particularly the first one, a formidable arpeggio study that it took me years to master. I used to have a little book that I noted down every piece that I learned in, but sadly, I lost it years ago. I recall learning a couple of Venezuelan waltzes by Antonio Lauro, some Bach, the English Suite by John Duarte, Preludes by Villa-Lobos and lots of other music. The editions and fingerings by Tomás himself were particularly sought after and we either made photocopies or wrote them out by hand. I still have a hand copy I made of La Burgalesa by Moreno Torroba which is to be played in E major, not the published key, which I think is F sharp. I would memorize pieces fairly quickly. I think I memorized all three movements of the English Suite in a little over a week. I also was working on the Studies by Stephen Dodgson.

It is safe to say that all I did for the eight or so months I was in Alicante, was to practice guitar four or five hours a day, read Russian novels and go for lunch with other guitarists. My most frequent companion was Klaus Helminen, from Finland. I found a little bookstore that had the Penguin translations of Russian novels and I read Dostoevsky, Gogol, Tolstoy, Sholokhov and Turgenev. I guess I was in a rather removed state of mind. On one occasion my Irish roommate had a friend staying with him, a California blonde, quite voluptuous. As I came out of my room after a couple of hours of technique with a lot of scales in dotted rhythms she came up to me and said, "we're going to go skinny-dipping in the ocean tonight, want to come?" I blearily consulted my watch and said something like, "I dunno, I really have to practice." Excessive practicing of scales can do that to you!

For an envoi today, I have La Burgalesa by Moreno Torroba in my recording:

No Art Was Possible

I'm still reading Simon Leys' collection of essays The Hall of Uselessness in which I found this delightful paragraph (p. 501):

Sometimes it takes a poet to deflate effectively the windy pronouncements of a philosopher. To Theodor Adorno, who declared that, after Auschwitz, no art was possible, Joseph Brodsky replied: "Indeed, not only art, but breakfast as well."

Yes, art has continued on quite well since WWII. What did seem to perish in the gas chambers and concentration camps was the more mystic fantasies of German idealism. And good riddance. I suppose that was what Adorno was mourning.

This might be a good time to re-listen to the String Quartet No. 8 by Shostakovich, a good example of the kind of art still possible after the war. This is the St. Lawrence String Quartet.

One Year in the Studio, part 3

After high school I was really at loose ends--it was one of the worst times of my life, so pointless that I would sleep in until noon and get up not having a single goal. I worked sporadically at weird jobs like digging clams ( eight cents a pound as I recall), and picking salal, a small ornamental shrub that grows wild in British Columbia. It is used in floral arrangements.

As I recall, a friend and I spent a whole week gathering the shrub and earned a splendid $40. So, not a promising career! Actual jobs were limited to planting trees in the mountains of Vancouver Island, which builds strong legs at $4 an hour, and working as a laborer for a stuccoer which paid about the same, but was closer to home. Planting trees means you are an eight-hour drive on logging roads from the nearest traffic light.

The only two things in my life of any promise were the discovery of classical music and a slowly awakening interest in philosophy. I recall at one point I was bunking on a small ship anchored in one of the inlets on the Western side of Vancouver Island, planting trees during the day and reading A Hundred Years of Philosophy in the evening.

The summer I was working for the stuccoer I decided I had to make a change in my life. Some friends who attended university had got me thinking that might be an option. I managed to save up $1,000 and there seemed to be three ways to spend it: go to university, buy an upright piano and do some composing or buy a secondhand Jaguar automobile. I noticed one in the paper for $1,000. I ended up at university, likely the best choice. I remember the first time I visited the library, six floors not counting the basement where the listening library was. I stood there looking around in amazement thinking to myself "I will NEVER read all these books!"

Due to advice from various people, I enrolled in the music education program. An audition was required, which I wasn't aware of, so when I showed up at the music department without my instrument the conducting professor dragged me into a practice room and tested my musical aptitude. "Sing this note. Sing this note. Sing this interval. Is this a major or minor chord?" That was about it. If you know what to listen for a simple little test like this can tell you a lot. Music education didn't really work for me so in second year I switched to the music department proper as a music history major. They did not have a guitar teacher, so I had no real choice.

My real goal was still to become an accomplished classical guitarist so I did not go on into third year. Instead, after working for six months for the Ministry of Education (a desk job in statistics), during which time I was commuting to Vancouver on Saturdays for guitar lessons, I decided to go to Spain to continue my studies. This was on the advice of my teacher in Vancouver, a fellow from Holland who had done the same. The place to go was Alicante and the maestro was José Tomás, a student of and assistant to the great Andrés Segovia.

A fairly young José Tomás playing his eight-string guitar

I made the trip, my first outside Canada, in January of 1974 and stayed there for most of a year. That year is the One Year in the Studio that the post title refers to and it has shaped my life.

As an envoi, here is my recording of a vals venezolano by Lauro with some photos from around that time.