Bach, Beer and Henning

 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.

Thoughts on the Contents of the Fritz Reiner Box

Little Miss Muffet sat on her tuffet

Eating her curds and whey;

When along came a spider whose backside was wider,

And elbowed Miss Muffet away.

— Postcards From Red Squirrel Trail

“I’m loaded with options” — legend on an apron worn by Peter Falk at a barbecue in The In-Laws

Lawd, but there’s scarcely any Richard Strauss missing here. One notable omission from my standpoint is the Metamorphosen, but overall one gathers that Reiner considered Strauss the most significant composer in his lifetime. There is just the super-saturation of Beethoven and Brahms which one would expect. There are two recordings of the Schumann Piano Concerto, but no symphonies of either Schumann or Mendelssohn. Somehow, no Mendelssohn Violin Concerto. A mild smattering of Haydn and Mozart symphonies. If you asked me. I should probably say I prefer HIP to otherwise for Mozart. However, I just cannot argue with a recording that sounds this good. There are even two Mozart divertimenti (including of course Eine kleine Nachtmusik.) This was well before questions of historical practice arose, so on one hand this is some distance from the composer’s sonic experience. On t’other, one clearly cannot fault a conductor for the wish to present these works. French and Russian music perforce take a back seat, and the only Italian music is Respighi’s Pines and Fountains. Of nineteenth-century Russians, we find the usual suspects. From Reiner’s own century, Audience-friendly Rakhmaninov is represented both by the expected concertante works and Isle of the Dead. The only Stravinsky works are the non-threatening Chant du rossignol and the Divertimento (suite from Le baiser de la fée) the latter is paired with the landmark recording of Hovhaness Magic Mountain Symphony, which is both the first commercially available recording of that composer’s work and the only work by an American composer in the box (pace the expatriate Czech composer Jaromír Weinberger, whose Polka and Fugue from the opera, Švanda Dudák appears. The greatest curiosity in the box, perhaps, is a Concerto for Jazzband and Symphony Orchestra by Swiss composer Rolf Liebermann.

Summertime

To give you an idea of his character: when he popped the question, the enraged question popped right back.
— Porridger’s Almanack (Breakfast of Ganglions)

I am without hope. I am a dispossessed soul tiptoeing in agony across the wasteland of my shattered dreams....
— a despondent guru in Rod Serling's Night Gallery. 

This week in “Nobody can tell me this is a Smart Speaker” ... I instructed the Echo device to pause; I asked the device what the track was; asked the device to resume playing; and promptly heard: I am not sure what to resume.

We had some excellent and highly productive Henning Ensemble rehearsals in July. We have not, however, succeeded in finding a date or dates on which to present a program. Furthermore, a misalignment of heavenly bodies has frustrated attempts to find musically productive rehearsal time in August. Merely reporting facts.

Before I understood the degree to which Project Concert was slouching towards Limbo, I adapted the Magnificat from the Op. 87 Evening Service in D (an event which was a particular musical success, I felt, albeit St Paul’s would give me the cold shoulder later) for our Quintet.

N.B. I am actually posting this on 5 August 2026.

Present Thoughtage

The We-Wouldn’t-Dream-of-Making-Trouble Dead
— Postcards From Red Squirrel Trail

I was feeling a little disgruntled with the world at the time and had put together about six different plots, each of which ended with the destruction of the world in a different way, and for a different reason. It was to be called “The Ends of the Earth.” While I was filling in the details of the first plot—in which the earth was demolished to make way for a new hyperspace express route—I realized that I needed to have someone from another planet around to tell the reader what was going on, to give the story the context it needed. So I had to work out who he was and what he was doing on the Earth... ...the BBC’s attitude toward the show [the radio production of THE HITCHHIKER’S GUIDE TO THE GALAXY] while it was in production was very similar to that which Macbeth had toward murdering people—initial doubts, followed by cautious enthusiasm and then greater and greater alarm at the sheer scale of the undertaking and still no end in sight. Reports that Geoffrey and I and the sound engineers were buried in a subterranean studio for weeks on end, taking as long to produce a single sound effect as other people took to produce an entire series (and stealing everybody else’s studio time in which to do so) were all vigorously denied but absolutely true. The budget of the series escalated to the point that it could have practically paid for a few seconds of DALLAS ....

— The late, great Douglass Adams

Having been around the block a few times, I know the difference between today and ever after. So yes, this is today.

All in all, pleased with what I have composed in 2026 so far, the Opp. 205-210, albeit less than half an hour of music all told.

Although I have some notions for a new piece/adaptation or two (and an unfinished chamber orchestra piece) the plain fact is that today I feel no particular motivation to creative work, particularly no need to write another large-scale work for the shelf.

This is not despondency, but merely a current report. I could see the situation turning on a dime. I do not, at the moment, see the dime.

I was thinking of a piece for horn and organ, but the response to my suggestion was at best unenthusiastic, and I do not feel like writing another piece no one else actually wants.

Gravity Is In

 Ernest Borgnine playing a Russian (in Ice Station Zebra.) Now I have lived!
— Porridger’s Almanack (Breakfast of Ganglions)

A dull, argumentative bigmouth who sets back the art of conversation a thousand years...
— Rod Serling (1963)

With the completion of One for Ahmad, Op. 208 for the 1 December troika, and apparently semi-subconsciously reflecting that there is probably room/need for another piece, yesterday I wrapped up the Opus 210. Semi-subconsciously, because a night or two before I dreamt of composing a piece. In my dream the initial conceit of the piece came to me clearly: an ostinato with the two flutes which takes its time, thereby setting up the drama of the bass clarinet entrance. In my dream the piece bore the title The Measure of a Life, which is one of those things which seemed better in the dreamworld than upon waking. But what I felt was the title which suited the piece as it took shape in my waking labors was Gravity Is What Keeps Me Abed at Night.

Photo by Maria Bablyak.

Re-Thinking December

 While it is by no means the chiefest of my quarrels with Peter Jackson’s Tolkien adaptation, the accent in Sméagol is so glaringly obvious, I fail to see any rationale whatsoever for rhyming it with “beagle.”
— Porridger’s Almanack (Breakfast of Ganglions)

Gene Wilder: Do you call this tea?
Marty Feldman: No, I call it hot water. I was rinsing out the cup when you grabbed it.
— The Adventure of Sherlock Holmes’ Smarter Brother

First thoughts for our December date at King’s Chapel appeared here. However, we shall again be a trio, though a different trio. As a result, I have designated a new scoring and discovered new musical material for One for Ahmad, Op. 208. Dennis Báthory-Kitsz, Frank Warren  & Chris Forbes have graciously and gamely consented to compose into the change, as well. And another new piece is sneaking up on me: Gravity Is What Keeps Me Abed at Night.

And we have July rehearsals in the book for the Sextet.

Soiled Amplitudes

 The Sound and the Chewy: A fable of the effable
— Postcards From Red Squirrel Trail

Correct is not everything, even if I seem to make that point; rather, in this economically stressed culture, it tends to be an either-or choice. A composer colleague told me about an orchestral work that was commissioned and performed here--an acceptable, well-received, flawed performance. Some years later, he used his life savings to hire a pay-for-play orchestra in eastern Europe to record it. He said it was correct, a good example of his composition, but he was disappointed that it did not have the life and enthusiasm and raw musicality of the local performance.
— Dennis Báthory-Kitsz, Soiled Amplitudes

Soiled Amplitudes, Dennis Báthory-Kitsz
2026

Subtitled My Musical Composition and Notational Aesthetic in Five Seasons. The subtitle does much of my work for me, but I shall try not to be lazy. I knew that graphic scores would be a significant part of the book, as I had seen the author call for samples while the book was in preparation. This review should not be about me, yet a word about my background is needed, I think, to put my review into fair perspective. From my days as an undergrad music student, graphic scores puzzled rather than stimulated me, and for the most part those puzzles did not engage me. During the years of my graduate work, I played from non-conventional notation a few times, usually in good faith. One of these occasions stands out as clearly the least musically gratifying performance experience in my life. Here in the Boston area two composers with whom I have collaborated have enjoyed working in graphic notation (worth pointing out that while I simply use “graphic notation” as shorthand, Dennis explains that there is a distinction between “graphical notation” and “performance scores”). I respect their enthusiasm without having felt any inclination as a composer to tread that musical path myself. That will serve as sufficient fair disclosure, though I will add that I saw Dennis’ book (I have collaborated with him and will therefore use his Christian name) as an opportunity to enjoy having what might be considered a musical deficit of mine challenged by a colleague’s expertise. The book is well organized, handsomely printed and well written. As a musical exositio pro vita sua, it was, I found, a thoroughly engaging and enjoyable read. Not only a composer, the author is a poet of the musically lost. Now and again, I’ll read a statement or would-be summation and I think, “Perhaps, or perhaps not.” And part of the value for myself of thst statement hs been the times when I found that I need to reflect, to ensure that if I set that assertion aside, there is deliberation in my process, and not the mere mental twitch that masquerades as so much “thought” in the present day. So although, as noted above, this review should not be about me, part of the book’s value for me was to prompt me to think and reflect on some matters which I had set aside sometime ago. The musician who is engaged by graphic notation, and others such as myself, will in their several ways find this a highly illuming tome and a conversational autobiography worth the resding.