“You’ve been rolling your yoga mat the wrong way.”
— Porridger’s Almanack (Breakfast of Ganglions)
One of the interesting things about Bond is, that he’s just as bad as they are ... the real sense of distaste for who he is, what he is, because he’s old enough to recognize himself.
— Timothy Dalton
Something I meant to add yesterday ... enlarging, as it were, on the Trifles theme is that one artistic response to Greta & Todd reading duets of mine was to arrange Three Things That Begin With ‘C,’ Op.65 for clarinet and bassoon, and All the Birds in Mondrian’s Cage, Op. 97 № 2 for bass clarinet and bassoon.
And two years ago today, in “I didn’t even see the irony, Officer, honest!”
Watch 1,000 Musicians Play Pink Floyd’s “Another Brick in the Wall (Part Two)”
— Porridger’s Almanack (Breakfast of Ganglions)
Now, in November 1967, numb with chronic fatigue, I discovered that the spirit of competition may be the needed philosophical foundation for a free-market economy, but for the individual human being the urge to be overly active is, at best, a delusion and at worst a psychological illness. Since I knew myself to be afflicted by it, this was now the time to overhaul my life. As I struggled with the decisions how to do this and that, As I sat up late at night rummaging in the recesses of my mind, I recalled scenes that were filed away but never forgotten.
There was the illness and the death of [Dimitri] Mitropoulos. After finishing one grueling eight-week stint with the New York Philharmonic, he had a heart attack and landed in hospital within two days of the final concert. Having little else to live for he returned too soon to the orchestra and to the Met, for the inevitable second attack and further hospitalization. As if on a suicidal mission he undertook in 1960 to prepare the Third Mahler Symphony with the orchestra of Milan’s La Scala and died during a rehearsal, Perhaps through shock from the proverbial chaotic conditions of Italy’s musical world.
There are always romantic tail spinners who will proclaim this to be an heroic end. To me it is a sorry finale for a distinguished and good man. Even the obituary in the New York Times mentioned, with more accuracy than delicacy, that all the unparalleled kindnesses to players did not obtain for Mitropoulos their best efforts. There is, alas, no relation between human empathy and musical good behavior.
— Erich Leinsdorf, Cadenza: A Musical Career
Well, am I composing again yet? Yes and no. Finding myself, on one hand, with the shades of a question mark hovering over the Ensemble, or at least over its calendar, and on the other a wish to write something, only not for the shelf, please, I took an inspirational cue from my friend Luke Ottevanger and decided to write brief easy piano pieces. Two, thus far.
When Greta & Mike presented the clarinet/bassoon version of Janky Juke Joint, our Todd immediately expressed interest in playing it. So this is not an absolute surprise. Still, I wasn’t expecting Friday’s message from Greta that she & Todd had got together Thursday and that they also read the bass clarinet/bassoon version of the Lamentatio. So, it is for Greta & Todd that I shall compose the Op. 212.
Another alien in another movie who oversimplifies, and gets it wrong. “Everything you [humans] created is used to destroy.” Hello? One word: Music. Do a little homework before off-handedly condemning the race, hunh? — Porridger’s Almanack (Breakfast of Ganglions)
A person who wishes to stay in public life must edit what he says or he must allow others to tone down and rephrase opinions, ideas, and statements, lest a personal truth in unpalatable form make trouble. There arrives a moment in a man’s career — if it has not been wholly inconsequential — when he wants to say what he really feels and thinks. Autobiography is well suited to such a purpose if three principal pitfalls inherent in that genre are avoided. First there is the “Apologia Pro Vita Sua,” then “Get Even with the Bastards,” and finally “Mellow Memories of Overripe Age,” all of which I have aimed to avoid. I feel no need to apologize. If any bastard got the better of me I blamed myself and I have no further need for getting even. Mellow I am not and while some of my memories are bathed in a glow I believe that — in many respects — the Golden age is with us right now, at least for the professional who performs music. If one does not overestimate the significance of the small cabals, my profession is honest. The attempts at “corriger la fortune” lead either nowhere or not very far. Perhaps there is a difference between my definition of success and that of simpler minds to whom money and notoriety spell fulfillment. Ultimately each of us faces only the Self, whom we cannot cheat. — Erich Leinsdorf, Cadenza: A Musical Career
My friend and colleague Aaron Larget-Caplan has selected the Henning Opus 203, Uneasy Sleep to be part of his second Bach & Beer event at the Lilypad in Cambridge next month.
