Eight Years Ago Today; and Yesterday, Arguably a Surprise

From the annals of Arguably Overthinking Pop Lyrics:
Is “Ain’t it a shame” REALLY all a friend can say of someone living on reds, vitamin C and cocaine?
This is a “friend?!” I cannot be the first to consider this, can I?
I probably shan’t, but some composer with a penchant for dance might could, write the Cthulhu Toodle-oo.
Porridger’s Almanack (Breakfast of Ganglions)

I always attempted to produce something conventional and it always, against my will, became something unusual.

— Arnold Schoenberg (at the U. of Chicago, 1946)

I wrote about composing Oxygen Footprint for Ensemble Aubade here. And later that month, eight years ago today, I finished it:
Whatever else this day may bring, it dawns upon the completion of the world's newest trio for flute, viola and harp. There is not only the pleasure of having finished the score, and the feeling that it is musical work in which I can take pride; but also the artistic confidence that the instrumentalists for whom I wrote the piece will also find the piece engaging, even exciting. And in turn, they will play the piece in November, and some in the audience may be puzzled, some in the audience may be enchanted, and what composer could ask for more?

And, thanks to Ensemble Aubade’s consistent and superb embassage for the piece, Oxygen Footprint is one of my pieces to have reached the widest audience. Meanwhile, yesterday:

My initial title for the Opus 192 was impossibly sentimental. I'm not averse to sentiment, but for this title, no. I decided that the best solution was to turn to Whitman, so the title is O singer, bashful and tender, I hear your notes. And that afternoon, instead of sleeping after PT, I drew up a string fugato.

Karl Henning · Op138a Oxygen Footprint

6 June 2005 Review

“Darning his socks in the night when there’s nobody there” ... what, he’s supposed to darn his socks when he has guests over for tea?!

– Postcards From Red Squirrel Trail

“You won’t get away from Batman that easy!”
—”Easily: Good grammar is essential, Robin.”

The pairing on this disc is remarkably fortuitous. These are the last two of a series of ballets Prokofiev wrote for Diaghilev’s Russian Seasons, written within just a couple of years of one another, in the late 1920s; they both met with success on the Paris stage, and (ironically) were both works which Prokofiev couldn’t really “carry” into the Soviet Union when he re-patriated to Russia. Yet the two works are still more intriguing in their differences. Prokofiev wrote Le pas d’acier at a time when the style mécanique was tout ce qu’il y a du chic in Paris; and it is a ballet whose scenario expresses some of the fascination which the Communist experiment exercised on Western intellectuals in the 20s (this was before the West much reckoned the cumulative human cost of this radical experiment). On the surface, it seems a ballet which ought to have pleased the music bureaucrats in Moscow; but there can be no pleasing some people. L’enfant prodigue is of course a stage adaptation of the Biblical parable; in terms of Prokofiev’s subsequent return to Russia, this piece was as leaden a balloon as one might attempt to fly, in an atheistic Communist state. In 1925 Diaghilev (whose company had produced The Buffoon in 1921) approached Prokofiev for (in the composer’s words), “a subject from contemporary life; this is to put it delicately. Crudely translated, it means that I have to write a Bolshevik ballet”. There is something a bit brash, impersonal, Mayakovskyan in the overall tone; the focus of far the greater part of the action is on the People, the Collective, a general bustle of activity. Even the principals are designated by trade: the Sailor (who will become a Worker) and the Working Girl have one tender duet, immediately before the Scene Change; it is a beautiful number, the more poignant for being the only personal moment in the ballet. Prokofiev labored assiduously on his scores, even when on tour; a busy schedule notwithstanding, he orchestrated 60 pages of Le pas d’acier while in America. Often freely spoken, he once replied to an American reporter’s query about the American music scene: “You all ride in automobiles, yet you lag behind in music. I would prefer you rode in horse-drawn carriages but were more up-to-date in music”. Neither the French Le pas d’acier nor the English The Steel Step really captures the sense of the noun in the Russian title, which is more like The Steel Leap. Le pas d’acier is Prokofiev’s Opus 41; his Opus 40 was the enormous and inexorable Symphony No. 2. Even though motoric rhythm is an element characteristic of Prokofiev from the start (cf. the Opus 11 Toccata for piano), and though his music would always be ready for bursts of vigorous energy, there is an earthy right-ness to the proximity of this “iron and steel” Symphony, and this ballet. Yet they are strikingly distinct, as well; the Symphony almost constantly revels in crunchy harmonies, and is a riot of apparently chaotic textures spanning broad stretches of time; the ballet has a consistent “C-majorish-ness” (domazhornost) to it, sings a succession of melodies, quite a few of which return from time to time, and, of course, the whole consists of a number of relatively compact dance numbers. The first scene opens with a tutti unison, which will return as one element in the ebullient polyphony of the Finale. There is something a little tongue-in-cheek, perhaps, in Prokofiev depicting the Commissars with quietly dignified bassoons; but then a cheerful 3/4 tune from the second number (Train with Baggage-Laden Peasants) returns, and against this the Commissar theme is set in firm (and possibly bureaucratic) counterpoint. All the crowd scenes of the ballet are an energetic bustle, with well-shaped melodies; inviting some comparison to (without resting in the shadow of) Petrushka. The Factory is especially effective musical illustration, a chromatic ostinato in bassoons, violas and piano serving as the undercurrent hum of the machinery, while the oboes and English horn play a steady, understated, purposeful melody. There is a seeming dissonance between alterations associated with L’enfant prodigue. Although the parable from the Gospel according to St Luke is universally known as the Prodigal Son, the title substitutes for fils the more general enfant. Yet the ballet’s scenario fleshes out (so to speak) the episode of the Prodigal’s dissipation, with a very specific (and stageworthy) Seductress, who is absent from Luke’s narrative. We merely remark in passing that these two changes do not seem quite harmonious: changing the title to L’enfant ‘un-sexes’ the title character, which cannot really be said for the Seductress. Where Le pas d’acier is a full-throated Song of the Collective, L’enfant prodigue is, in sharp contrast, a tender drama in the life of one very human family. That it is a ballet Prokofiev wrote for Diaghilev, is one of music’s supreme ironies. The Saisons russes in Paris were always about spectacle, brilliance, surface and wit (and, to be sure, bringing glorious Russian artistic talent to the Western audience). The sentimentality of the 19th century was forbidden. But such is the power of the reconciliation scene with which Prokofiev closes L’enfant prodigue, that many at the première shed tears. Said Balanchine, “It was Lifar [Serge Lifar, who created the title role], on his knees, that made the ballet.” Diaghilev widely praised the score as a masterpiece: “At this moment when we are experiencing such a shortage of real feelings, it seems simply incredible that Prokofiev could have found such musical expressiveness”. The opening scene (The Departure) is an archetype of Prokofiev’s economy of writing, and of the succinct power of his musical characterization. The vigorous, and unsentimental (‘unfeeling’) opening which depicts the son’s determination to leave; the tender entreaties of his sisters that he stay (solo clarinet in two statements, then solo oboe); these alternate in a brilliantly paced dialogue, yielding to a long-breathed, calm aria senza voce for the father’s appeal to his son. But the son’s mind is made up. Prokofiev’s gift for writing for the stage displays itself here in music which practically choreographs itself. Having left his family, the son is now free to have a great time with his friends (who will remain his friends as long as he is flush with his inheritance). The second scene opens with a brute, coarse energy which is a cousin to the Knights' Dance in Romeo & Juliet; if it is somewhat thick-skulled music, it serves a fine-gauged dramaturgical purpose, and contrasts perfectly with the music of those who truly love the son. The entire ballet is a masterful fusion of story with expertly turned music. A particular delight is the agile clarinet trio (two soprano, one bass) of the Burglary scene. The Prodigal awakes from his excesses, and remorse steals upon him with artful variations on the father’s first-scene ‘aria’, and music of his sisters’ pleading. The emotional crest, though, is of course the Return of the Prodigal (in Prokofiev’s scenario, undisturbed by the displeasure of the older son of the Gospel parable), a miraculous achievement of tender understatement, combined with quiet strength, a scene which seems only briefly to raise its voice above a whisper. Mikhail Jurowski and the WDR Symphony give these ballets impeccably phrased, vibrant readings here. Thanks to their witness, the world may well wonder why these pieces have lain neglected for so long. Although Diaghilev had let The Buffoon drop out of his company’s repertory, Le pas d’acier played for three seasons running. L’enfant prodigue premiered in May of 1929; but Diaghilev’s health failed rapidly, and he died that August, at age 57. The Russian Seasons would after re-organize and continue in name. But without Diaghilev, who had felt a paternal interest in fostering Prokofiev (“my second son,” he called Sergei Sergeyevich, after his “first,” Stravinsky); and because Prokofiev’s at times difficult personality had alienated some key people in the company (notably Balanchine), there was no one after Diaghilev to keep either Le pas d’acier or L’enfant going. After December of 1935, when Prokofiev returned to take up permanent residence in Moscow, there was little in his power to keep the ballets in circulation there, either.

An "Ain't" Addendum

No one teases the bejeezus out of "Bringing in the Sheaves," like Chas Ives
Every night, Barry fights to keep it in.
From the Bureau of Sentimental Claptrap: “We don’t have tomorrow, but we had yesterday.”
Il n’y a personne ici, sauf nous les poulets.
Porridger’s Almanack (Breakfast of Ganglions)

Schoenberg remains; those who cannot understand him come and go.

— Chas Wuorinen

Something I meant to say as a reflection upon our first rehearsal for the November concert at King’s Chapel: Even as I know that I should not make the reading of this blog at all tedious for you, the Reader, and must not therefore keep sounding a sour note, I’ve struggled to remain optimistic as a composer trying to make a name for himself. The paucity of performances in whose organization I am not directly involved. The considerable body of music which (although eminently likeable) sits unperformed. All the scores I submit to calls which result only in the latest rejection. If I had perhaps begun to feel that I was something of a failure, I’m deeply grateful to my colleagues for Monday’s session made me feel again that I really am a composer. To this quixotic end I decided to write another chamber orchestra piece, 15 minutes in duration. I’ll reserve my provisional title as I suspect it’s really off-puttingly sentimental and I strongly suspect a change even before I get to notes. I set up the file in Sibelius (Opus 192) but—as just suggested—there are as yet no notes. I felt like shaking up my process a bit, just for a change-up. It’s a long time since I’ve done this, but I’m graphing the piece out and shall work in from the abstract. This work, I have begun.

The picture is Michelangelo’s David bricked up for protection during the throes of the Second World War.

Inaugurating "Ain't"

Name for a night club: The Purple Gerbil
Breakfast at Chimpanzee’s
Just heard someone ask “What flavor is this?” in CVS; and I barely stopped myself from piping in with “It’s bleeding seabird flavor, innit?”

– Postcards From Red Squirrel Trail

One of life’s great dilemmas is, you can’t get a job if you have no experience, and you can’t get experience without a job. God creates things like that, I think, to build our character and teach us frustration.

— Lewis Grizzard, If I Ever Get Back to Georgia, I’m Gonna Nail My Feet to the Ground

We got together and read Nostalgia Ain’t What It Used to Be for the first time:

Review of 12 May 2005

I’m watching “In Search of Beethoven,” which is quite good, of course, though perhaps the marvel is, that anyone lost him.
Who’s panic buying accordions?
And today, in “things which adults have sung”...
Well, you can tell by the way I use my walk, I’m a woman’s man: no time for talk....
Porridger’s Almanack (Breakfast of Ganglions)

Sorry, honey, but I haven’t worn a nightgown in years.

— Gregory Peck to Audrey Hepburn in Roman Holiday

Prokofiev wrote with legendary facility and surety. Sergei Eisenstein wrote of the experience of working with the composer on the film, Alexander Nevsky: “We view a new piece of film at night. And in the morning, a new piece of music will be ready for it. Prokofiev works like a clock. The clock does not run fast, nor does it run slow.” Uncharacteristically, then, the piece which eventually became the Symphony-Concerto for cello and orchestra cost Prokofiev unusual time and labor. He composed the first sketches for a Cello Concerto № 1 in the summer of 1933, a summer he spent largely in Paris. The composer often worked on a number of projects in parallel; but in the case of the Cello Concerto, his Muse was unusually coy. He would complete a second Violin Concerto three years before the Cello Concerto’s première in Moscow on 26 November 1938. Of the ultimate piece, cellist Alexander Ivashkin notes in this CD booklet, “The Symphony-Concerto is indeed extremely difficult for the cello, but it is never impossible (as was the case with Cello Concerto No. 1).” The impossibility of the solo part did not overawe the young Mstislav Rostropovich, however, who played the concerto in December of 1947, in the Small Hall of the Moscow Conservatory; when the composer went backstage afterwards, he promised the cellist to rewrite the concerto for him. Slava spent some time at the Prokofiev dacha for four successive summers; at last, a piece so utterly re-worked, that Prokofiev dubbed it Cello Concerto № 2, received its première in Moscow on 18 February 1952, with Sviatoslav Richter conducting. In rehearsal, members of the orchestra ridiculed the solo part as unplayable and dissonant. With Rostropovich as consultant, Prokofiev probably did not commit to paper what he was not confident that the cellist could execute; but there are numerous quadruple-stops (the cellist playing all four strings at once), often in rapid succession; some passages of the formidable cadenzas are notated on two staves; and there are many rapid figurations high (for the cello) on the treble clef. Still, following this performance Prokofiev made considerable changes in the orchestration, recomposed the third movement, and then definitively re-titled the work Symphony-Concerto. In this final form, the piece would not be performed in public until after the composer’s passing, on 5 March 1953 (deeply ironically, the same day that Stalin died). The recomposition of the third movement is an amusing tale. In 1948, the (deservedly) unknown Soviet composer Vladimir Zakharov offered the opinion that Prokofiev had no melodic talent. When Prokofiev re-worked the third movement, he exchanged a series of variations on a Zakharov song, “Bud’te zdorovy, zhivite bogato (Be healthy, live richly)” for one of the interior episodes. The character and breadth of the piece itself, argue for the unusual title (which is Symphony-Concerto, and not Sinfonia concertante with its implications of Mozartean delicacy and classical restraint). In length (40 minutes), it is not much briefer than both the violin concerti put together. Considered as a Symphony, this is a piece which departs more freely from the ‘symphony mold’ than was quite approved by the Proletkult (in 1948, Prokofiev had been censured for his Symphony № 6, whose most obvious features are its three-movement cast, and insufficient cheerfulness). In contrast the Symphony № 7 fits neatly the classic four-movement model, and is beguilingly transparent — “But is not the music too simple?” he pressed his colleagues; yet the fact is that Prokofiev wrote convincingly, regardless of where any given piece registers on the density scale. Closer in spirit to his other concerti than to the later symphonies, the Symphony-Concerto is richly episodic; the overall design is clear enough, yet each succeeding passage has an air of novel discovery to it. Apart from its symphonic scope, the piece is a departure from the concerto tradition in overall plan; instead of the usual fast-slow-fast scheme, Prokofiev wrote a central Allegro giusto (at nearly 18 minutes, the dominant movement) flanked by two Andantes. The first movement opens with a fortissimo statement of a simple la-ti-do-mi ostinato (the same figure which, more hushed, accompanies “Juliet alone”, in № 47 of Romeo & Juliet). The first and second movements have extended passages in Prokofiev’s lyrical vein. The third movement begins with a curiously Mendelssohnian chord, and the soloist declaims Prokofiev’s theme, which then undergoes some rhythmic transformation; a brief developmental episode begins to introduce fragments of the Zakharov “Bud’te zdorovy” as a motivic outgrowth of Prokofiev’s tune. Its complete initial statement is entrusted to the bassoon; the tune is passed to the soloist in double-stops, then to a sextet of soli strings, in a charmingly archaic intrusion. Prokofiev’s theme returns in a modified recapitulation, and then there is a magical transformation of the theme, with eighth-notes sparkling in the celesta against the soloist. Paris in the early 1920s flirted with artistic implications of the Machine Age. Then it was that expatriate American George Antheil scored a Ballet mécanique for eight pianos, pianola, four xylophones, two electric bells, two propellers, tam-tam, four bass drums and siren. Swiss composer Arthur Honegger enjoyed his greatest single success, perhaps, with his “allegory in speed,” Pacific 231, which used an orchestra of more traditional make-up to imitate a locomotive. In his first symphony, Prokofiev had nodded towards the august tradition of Haydn; and for his next, he wanted nothing to do with the ‘dead hand’ of Glazunov, as he rebuked his friend Myaskovsky for his latest symphonic work. Prokofiev found some fascination in the style mécanique, though he was not completely intoxicated by it; he coolly evaluated Honegger’s locomotive as “insignificant in content but very tough and brilliantly orchestrated.” Very tough and brilliantly orchestrated is a perfectly apt description for the Allegro ben articolato which is the first movement of the Symphony № 2. So dense is the scoring that, Prokofiev’s focused labors notwithstanding, the orchestration was not finished until two weeks before the premiere (6 June 1925). Given such a short time for Koussevitsky and the orchestra to try to subdue so unusual a score, it is no surprise that this first performance nonplussed the audience; and the reviews, ranging from tepid to scornful, stung Prokofiev. Walter Straram rehearsed the orchestra intensively for the second presentation of the symphony, on 26 May 1926 “If they haven’t learned to love it,” Prokofiev wrote Myaskovsky, "then at least now they are afraid of it.” The first challenging feature of the symphony is, it is in two movements, but lasts nearly forty minutes in total. (Strangely, the duration listed in the Boosey & Hawkes score is 25 minutes; with determined pacing, the second movement, alone, could be made to fit in at 25 minutes, but the entire symphony — impossible.) For its twelve minutes, the first movement is an unstoppable force of motoric rhythms, and seething melodic fragments. A bit surprisingly (considering its non-traditional surface), the movement is laid out as almost a routine sonata-design. Only, the theme groups are not melodies clearly exposed in a single recognizable line; the first theme group is a boiling polyphonic goulash which continues to puzzle many listeners even today. But the closing theme is marked by a relaxation in tempo, and draws to a clear cadence; the beginning of the development discloses itself honestly to the ear; the recapitulation is a clear event. Once the listener gets his bearings with these, the arrival of the second theme group in both exposition and recap becomes, well, obvious. The whole arc of the movement is a swirl of dense textures and unrelenting harmonic clashes, though supporting what is generally diatonic thematic material (in which, Prokofiev mastered the grammatical lessons from Stravinsky's Le sacre du printemps). Perhaps the problem in this piece’s reception then was, its breadth. (And subsequently, it is one of a number of major works which it would prove impractical for Prokofiev to bring forward in the Soviet Union.) But its architecture holds together; there is a sense in which the only ‘problem’ with Prokofiev’s piece is, that it came forty years ahead of the day when such sustained pitch density would become general practice. The Theme and Variations of the second movement is a fusion of the traditional form, with the fragmentary approach to melodic material employed in the first movement. In the classic theme and variations, the overall form of the theme is preserved in each variation, as a framework; but Prokofiev elects to do otherwise. His theme for the second movement, in abrupt contrast to the sustained blaze of activity of the first, is a quiet melody floating above an accompaniment of serene, shimmering calm — is in fact, the first long-breathed tuneful utterance of the piece. The variations take up the general principle of piecing the melody apart which characterized the first movement; each variation has its own shape, and the first through third variations form a big accelerando. Variation IV is a silken Larghetto. Subsequent variations gradually bring first the character, and then thematic material, from the first movement into juxtaposition with the varied theme; the result is a (loud) echo of the Allegro ben articolato, culminating in a full-throated passage like a huge hammer ... and then ... the theme returns, literally, without alteration save for the very last cadence. Was the violent storm only a dream? Or is this calm the dream? Valery Polyansky and the Russian State Symphony Orchestra are in admirable command of these two enormous, unwieldy scores; and Alexander Ivashkin’s performance of the Symphony-Concerto is nothing short of breathtaking. In the Symphony-Concerto, there are a two brief passages where a background contrapuntal figure is faint in the back of the mix; and three measures where the soloist and accompaniment lose their otherwise perfect synchrony. But these are trivial flaws, in comparison to a great achievement with these two still-underappreciated masterworks.
Label: Chandos
Sergei Prokofiev Symphony № 2 in d minor, Op. 40
Sinfonia Concertante for cello & orchestra in e minor, Op. 125
Alexander Ivashkin - cello
Russian State Symphony Orchestra Valery Polyansky

September 2013 Review

Sooner or later, Love was gonna get him.
The cheapskate of Sheepsgate.
Shredded Memory Foam—Does it remember?

– Postcards From Red Squirrel Trail

Icing the Body Electric

— A commentator whose cadence could have been truer to both Ray Bradbury and Walt Whitman

Marina Frolova-Walker and Jonathan Walker (2012). MUSIC AND SOVIET POWER 1917–1932. Woodbridge, UK: The Boydell Press. 404 pp., $99.00. ISBN 978-84383-703-9 (hardcover). “I cannot forecast to you the action of Russia,” Churchill famously cautioned in a radio broadcast of October 1939. “It is a riddle wrapped in a mystery inside an enigma.” In the pell-mell era immediately following the October Revolution and ensuing Civil War, most Russians within the Soviet Union found themselves in the midst of no less puzzling a riddle. Pity, then, the Western musicologists who in our day seek to make sense of that political, social, and artistic foment. The Frolova-Walkers have done historians, musicologists, and Russophiles an exemplary service with a landmark volume of source documents, which step us year by year, from when the blank shot fired from the Aurora’s forecastle signaled the assault on the Winter Palace, to Prokofiev’s virtually permanent repatriation in November of 1932. The documents themselves range widely from reviews of stage events and philosophic discourses on the work of diverse composers, to Arseny Avraamov’s instructions (and argument) for his experimental Symphony of Sirens, to the text of the 1932 Resolution of the Central Committee On the Restructuring of Literary and Artistic Organizations. It is fascinating to read in voices of the time the various (and shifting) attitudes towards major musical figures, and it is at times chilling to review documents that, in hindsight, are emblematic of a steel curtain drawing down. For instance, it was possible for the State Cappella to program Rachmaninov’s All-Night Vigil (in the West, popularly miscalled Vespers) as late as February of 1926—but not without provoking scathing “previews” in print:
And what is the purpose of the State Cappella?
Today—to sing of the Revolution!
Tomorrow—the All-Night Vigil?
Somehow this two-faced nonsense does not sit well with a state institution, ideologically speaking. One position excludes the other. And the “historicity” of Rachmaninov’s Vigil is extremely dubious; no one is proposing to use it for educational purposes—there would be no reason to do so. It seems only right, then, to put a question to Rosfil the Russian Philharmonia]: Why did Rosfil make the secular State Cappella sing the “all-night vigil”? Or, if that’s not the case, then why has a sacred choir of church singers been named the “State Cappella”? (p. 171)
In the introductory section to each succeeding year, the authors of the present volume do an exemplary job of illuming the intellectual and political environment of the documents. The times were extraordinary, and the material does not lend itself readily to easy bullet-points. Not only are there many people (artists, officials, propagandists) and organizations (whose purpose did not necessarily remain consistent), but there is the truth illustrated by the quip, “In a room where you have four Communists, there are five opinions represented.” In spite of the thickets of the evolving situation, the Frolova-Walkers are lucid, helpful, and light of touch; they write with both a respect for accurate optics on the details, and with a sensitivity to the broader narrative. In 1927, for instance:
. . . a few months later, Prokofiev was able to read of Shostakovich’s great public success with his symphony To October (now usually known as the Symphony No. 2)—this was the commission which Prokofiev had summarily rejected, and which was then offered to Shostakovich, who took it up with alacrity. The 20-year-old composer, who had just become a celebrity among Leningrad concertgoers, thanks to his First Symphony, still lacked any funds to ensure the performance of his music, and the commission signaled the prospect of a change for the better, since it promised performance and publication shortly after completion. The commission was issued by Shulgin’s Agitational Department at Muzsector, and the only disadvantage was the stipulation that the work should include a setting of a rather clumsy political text by Alexander Bezïmensky. Shostakovich made no objection to this, and also followed Shulgin’s advice that a factory whistle would sit well within the kind of work they hoped to see. At first, his principal motivation was apparently the thought of the foreign trip the commission fee might possibly cover: “Every day I write four-score pages of ‘patriotic music’ while hearing the call: To Paris! To Paris!,” but in the end, he was proud of his new score. (p. 183)
The book capably serves a dual purpose. It is, of course, an anthology of period documents from which one might target a specific item or three; but its style and content are of an order which make the book an engaging cover-to-cover read. Nor does this reviewer feel that the reader need be a specialist in the period or in Russian music to approach Music and Soviet Power 1917–1932; but the reader who has more general musical or historic interests would likely find the book highly rewarding.
Karl Henning
Composer and Independent Scholar
Boston, MA

An Exercise Without Expectation

I dreamt I was at a gathering of many of my Boston musical friends,
and when I asked for the date of a certain concert, the answer came back,
“the fourth of Othello.”
“Did you just rechristen the month of October?”
“Yes, I suppose so.”
“It’ll KILL Desdemona.”
A number of friends cleared their throats in acknowledgement/protest of the pun.
I believe it’s the first I’ve heard the clearing of throats as a sound in my dreams.
Porridger’s Almanack (Breakfast of Ganglions)

Love is that condition in which the happiness of another person is essential to your own.

— Robt A. Heinlein

Seeing a call for unaccompanied violin pieces, I decided to adapt Thoreau in Concord Jail. If they do not accept it, then they do not. Fine.

Mostly on Stenka Razin

Not for all the cauliflower in the caliphate
The logger of loose leisure likes a slyly larger lager
Anæsthesiologist Agonistes
Gorillas in argyle

– Postcards From Red Squirrel Trail

I have never killed anyone, but I have read some obituary notices with great satisfaction.

— Clarence Darrow

I don’t remember when I wrote this review, didn’t even remember having written it. Reposted from here. The artistic collaboration of Shostakovich, the pre-eminent composer of the Soviet Union at the time, and the young poet Yevgeny Yevtushenko, begins with an amusing (but friendly) irony. Yevtushenko’s poem “Babi Yar” had appeared in the Literary Gazette, and Shostakovich phoned to ask the poet’s permission to set it to music. Naturally elated at the thought of his poem being set by the internationally-known composer, Yevtushenko readily consented — and then Shostakovich sheepishly revealed that, in fact, he had already composed the music.
Shostakovich selected four poems of Yevtushenko’s to set for his Thirteenth Symphony; the fifth, “Fears,” the poet wrote at Shostakovich’s request, specifically for this new opus. Yevtushenko scarcely minced words in his trenchant criticism of the Workers’ Paradise. Indeed, the premiere of the Thirteenth (18 December 1962) was greeted with a thunderous applause which was little short of a political demonstration. (The year before, at the 22nd Congress of the Communist Party, Khrushchev gave a second anti-Stalin speech, and the dictator’s remains were soon removed from the mausoleum on Red Square.) Recalling impressions of that premiere, Yevtushenko wrote that “Shostakovich’s reading of my poetry was so exact in intonation and sense that it felt as if he had been inside me when I was writing the poem and he had composed the music as the lines were born.” “The Execution of Stepan Razin” is an interesting follow-up, even if a bit tough to pin down. On the surface, it is compliant with the aims of ‘good Soviet poetry and music’; yet Shostakovich was a little apprehensive that the piece might run afoul of the censors (Yevtushenko had been compelled, after the premiere of the Thirteenth, to alter eight lines of “Babi Yar,” though this did not materially affect Shostakovich’s score). The tone of “Stepan Razin” borrows a certain brutality of manner from that arch-Soviet poet, Mayakovsky; and takes Gogolian satire to a macabre edge, with Razin’s severed head staring down the Tsar, and laughing in mock triumph. And the overall story, the popular folk hero Stepan Razin who stood up to the Aristocracy and the wealthy Merchants, is readily interpreted as a parable of Revolution against corrupt Government, and scorn of selfish Capitalists. There is a dialogue between ‘Stenka’ Razin and the People, a turning point for the latter. Through the whole first part, the People are a ‘supporting cast’ for the Tsarist ‘spectacle’ of the public execution; the People revile Stenka, spit on him, and accuse him of defying them. Stenka explains his actions, apparently ‘correcting’ misconceptions on which the people of Moscow have been fed. He had imagined that, for a good Tsar, he might achieve something — “but there are no good Tsars.” And the crowd berates him in echo: “You fool, Stenka! There are no good Tsars!” A denunciation of monarchy only (and therefore sound Socialist doctrine)? Or of all autocrats, whether monarchical or ... Communist (and therefore potentially seditious)? At the fatal block, Stenka is collected, and defiantly calls, “Let fall the ax!” A change comes over the people, they are quiet and still, even after they are commanded to dance (a command illustrated musically, in a way recollecting the ironic phrase from Testimony, “Our business is being happy!”) As one, they remove their hats in tribute. Decades of cloudy Western scholarship on Shostakovich have yielded scant mention of The Execution of Stepan Razin, and that begrudging attention has routinely expressed casual dismissal. The murk began decades ago as a combination of ignorance and Cold-War ideology. Today there remains something of a ‘fog of war’ as fierce partisanship takes hold of much of the musicological publication on Shostakovich. The irony of the ‘equal-but-opposite’ sources of misinformation would not have escaped Shostakovich, to whom outward circumstances were so sustainedly hostile, that by his final years he was quite embittered. Yet fairness to the composer must still be the ideal, though he himself had ceased to hope for it. There is a dialogue between ‘Stenka’ Razin and the People, a turning point for the latter. Through the whole first part, the People are a ‘supporting cast’ for the Tsarist ‘spectacle’ of the public execution; the People revile Stenka, spit on him, and accuse him of defying them. Stenka explains his actions, apparently ‘correcting’ misconceptions on which the people of Moscow have been fed. He had imagined that, for a good Tsar, he might achieve something — “but there are no good Tsars.” And the crowd berates him in echo: “You fool, Stenka! There are no good Tsars!” A denunciation of monarchy only (and therefore sound Socialist doctrine)? Or of all autocrats, whether monarchical or ... Communist (and therefore potentially seditious)? At the fatal block, Stenka is collected, and defiantly calls, “Let fall the ax!” A change comes over the people, they are quiet and still, even after they are commanded to dance (a command illustrated musically, in a way recollecting the ironic phrase from Testimony, “Our business is being happy!”) As one, they remove their hats in tribute. Decades of cloudy Western scholarship on Shostakovich have yielded scant mention of The Execution of Stepan Razin, and that begrudging attention has routinely expressed casual dismissal. The murk began decades ago as a combination of ignorance and Cold-War ideology. Today there remains something of a ‘fog of war’ as fierce partisanship takes hold of much of the musicological publication on Shostakovich. The irony of the ‘equal-but-opposite’ sources of misinformation would not have escaped Shostakovich, to whom outward circumstances were so sustainedly hostile, that by his final years he was quite embittered. Yet fairness to the composer must still be the ideal, though he himself had ceased to hope for it. The five intermezzi from Shostakovich’s opera, The Lady Macbeth of the Mtsensk District (composed 1930-32), are engaging on more than one level. There is the ironic juxtaposition of the massive, intense passacaglia, against the other four, which are designedly light, almost trivial. And there is the wry irony that this magnum opus of Shostakovich’s, really the first work in which he built upon the compositional promise of his First Symphony (that exceptional graduation-piece written by the 17-year-old Conservatory student), dates from before the infamous unsigned Pravda editorial which brought his star very much down to earth. Not that Shostakovich’s life before that editorial was all ease and gaiety; but compared to the trials which he endured afterwards, it must have seemed easy and merry in retrospect. These (perhaps somewhat exaggeratedly) cheerful intermezzi present one of music history’s most heart-rending imponderables. The last of them contains both pre-echoes of the Tenth Symphony (and, appropriately, Stepan Razin) and relentless percussion, ending with rather abrupt timpani-strokes ... a curiously appropriate curtain-gesture for the disc as a whole.

Label: Capriccio
Dmitri Shostakovich
The Execution of Stepan Razin and other works
Kölner Rundfunk-Sinfonie-Orchester
Michail Jurowski

So ... More Calls

I sometimes wonder if the patrons of Caffé Nero are permitted to add milk to their coffee.
I dreamt that I invented a cocktail and dubbed it The Jump Start. Mixologists may be disappointed, in that the only ingredient I could recall on waking, is a wheat grass liqueur.
Porridger’s Almanack (Breakfast of Ganglions)

When they demand to see your papers to “prove” you are who say you are, it’s actually to signal you don’t belong.
That’s the racist heart of birtherism. It’s never about getting to the truth, because they don’t care about truth.
It’s about who is presumed American. Call it out.

— Geo. Takei (who spent some of his boyhood in an internment camp)

I wrote a week and a half ago that I would forgo submitting some scores, allowing the entry fee to be an obstacle. Since then, someone near to me who is always both supportive and optimistic underwrote the entry fees, and so I have submitted both extracts from the Third Symphony as well as the re-scored Surfing an Earthquake. To yet another call I submitted Intermezzo I from White Nights. And I got word from a choral music call I had forgotten about that mine was not one of the pieces selected. Separately, and more immediately musically: The k a rl h e nn i ng Ensemble is gathering anew this Monday evening.

The Once and Future Nostalgia

The recorded message said, “your call is important to us.” I must say, I was really impressed that they knew it was me calling.

– Postcards From Red Squirrel Trail

I told the truth, Lord. How can I learn any moral lessons, if you keep confusing me like this?

— Matthew Broderick in Ladyhawke

A small fact which came to light after this post (id est, I chanced to look where the information rests ... and “rests” is le mot juste) I began composing Nostalgia Ain’t What It Used to Be on 18 April [2024.] I drew up about eight measures. When I resumed work a few days ago, I felt it was an unsatisfactory start, and I shelved those measures provisionally. I composed an entirely fresh start (for the winds’ entrance, anyway—I left the two-mm. double-bass startup intact.) Once I had the beginning I wanted, I found a way to fold in the shelved material. Don’t be afraid to erase, but know when to erase and when to set momentarily aside.

I wrote the piece to serve as a light encore to cap the November concert in King’s Chapel. My tentative lineup is:

Nostalgia Trips

Jazz for Nostalgic Squirrels, Op. 117a
Alan Westby: The Quiet Girl
Down Along the Canal to Minerva Road, Op. 149a
Pamela Marshall: title t/b/d
Nostalgia Ain’t What It Used to Be, Op. 191
On or about August the first I finished updating a spreadsheet I’d been populating with events and repertory, so the summary takeaway is: Beginning on 20 June 2007, there have been 28 performances of The k a rl h e nn i ng Ensemble to date. Or, really the launch of the title “Karl Henning Ensemble” was on 24 June 2009 at First Congo in Woburn, so I’ve “ret-conned” to include the 2007 concert at St Paul’s on Tremont Street. Most of the repertory has been Henningmusick, and in later times the music of fellow band member Pam Marshall.
Other composers whose work has been showcased by the group are:
Brian Chamberlain
Nicole Chamberlain
Josephine Fear
Mark Gresham
Giorgio Koukl
Avrohom Leichtling
David Leone
Charles Turner
Frank Warren

Photo from June 2019

Shall the stars wheel again?

Henningmusick: Leaves no harmful residue. Never did.
Porridger’s Almanack (Breakfast of Ganglions)

I thank God to find myself still a writer and at work on something as ‘uncontemporary’ as I am.

— Evelyn Waugh in 1945

Mostly gauzy (and therefore unreliable) memories of 1999. So it is helpful that I set down some thoughts here. I remember first meeting Yoichi in a Dunkin Donuts in Cambridge. I seem to remember dropping something off in Watertown on a mild not-quite-rainy evening. The score and parts? I don’t quite recall. I’d guess I was dropping off hard copy but that leans on an equally unreliable guess that I was not yet at the time in the habit of e-mailing pdf files. It was a very exciting time: my first commission for a large ensemble piece. (Only such commission, to date, but my heart hoped for better at the time.) And the concert in Quincy was a very emotional experience, though also nervous, so my remembrance of that notable date is very thin.

Six Years Ago Today

Idea for a bumper sticker: Jesus is my Air Filter, so my vehicle answers to a higher Emissions Standard.

– Postcards From Red Squirrel Trail

Roddy MacDowell: “You know, Lieutenant, people do look at their watches.”
Peter Falk: “Yes, they certainly do.”

On 19 August, violinist Mei Mei Luo and harpsichordist Paul Cienniwa gave the second performance of Plotting (y is the new x) in Delray Beach, Florida. I was especially gratified both by Paul’s commitment to the piece, and by the fact that he sold the piece to a new violinist. I also had a great time giving a pre-concert mini-lecture about the piece.

A Wee Bit of Nostalgia, As May Be

It’s the end of Music as a Common Language as we know it, and I feel fine.
Porridger’s Almanack (Breakfast of Ganglions)

Be happy whenever you can manage it.

— John Cage

Although I don’t know what November will bring, we do have a Henning Ensemble date at King’s Chapel, so of course, one plans repertory. My old chum Alan Westby has furnished a song arrangement, The Quiet Girl, and our colleague Pam Marshall is similarly cooking up an arrangement. My pieces which I’d planned on are themselves arrangements: Jazz for Nostalgic Squirrels and Down Along the Canal to Minerva Road. As can be seen, the program is filling nicely. Maybe it’s superfluous, but I went ahead and wrote a two-minute encore, Nostalgia Ain’t What It Used to Be.

Another Modification Party

And today, in “things which adults have sung”...
Well, you can tell by the way I use my walk, I'm a woman's man: no time for talk....
Who’s panic buying accordions?
Trapped in a savage, parallel universe, in which Leonard Nimoy sports a goatee.
Porridger’s Almanack (Breakfast of Ganglions)

Everyone thinks of changing the world, but no one thinks of changing himself.

— Tolstoy

I saw a call for string orchestra, and I was excited: While the Third Symphony is clearly too big (long) for the call, but I excerpted two potential submissions (nine minutes and five minutes and a half, respectively) but then I noticed (would have been better if I had read more carefully sooner, sure) an entry fee. So no, thanks. Mind you, I suffer no concerns about the Symphony itself. As a consolation endeavor, though, I have re-scored Surfing an Earthquake for flute, sopranino clarinet and violin. I wasn’t going to, because I’m on the record on this blog as having by now had quite enough of that, but there it is.

Today in "I haven't Thought of That in a While"

The Risk:Reward Profile of the Rhythm
An irreparable parable
The spinster’s pinschers.

– Postcards From Red Squirrel Trail

I think a lot of Bernstein—but not as much as he does. Lennie has no humor about his egomania. I do.

— Oscar Levant, from the first chapter (“Total Recoil”) of his autobiography, Memoirs of an Amnesiac

The first piece I wrote for orchestra was in fact a commission, from the Quincy Symphony just south of Boston: my Opus 46, The Wind, the Sky and the Wheeling Stars. The première was a little shaky, and I do not have a recording of the event. The honorarium was very modest (I almost wish I hadn't cashed the check so that I might have kept it for a souvenir.) I find that my feelings about the piece are rather mixed. In my place, Brahms or Varèse would burn the score. It's certainly less polished than my later work (I think much better of the Overture to White Nights, which is the next orchestral score I would compose.) and it is not completely in my own voice. Do I still hope for a decent performance by some other orchestra to convince me that it really is a decent piece, after all? Is it a weakness that I cannot actually dislike the piece? I'm not finding answers, but questions multiply. Mildly surprised to see that nine years ago, my thoughts on the piece were gentler.

Surf's Up!

Just read on a billboard: “Chocolate for motivation.”
A bit surprised no one has asked the really important question: for what service(s) was the duck billing the platypus in the first place?
Maybe you need to be an Eagles super-fan to suppose that entanglement with seven women is somehow “taking it easy.”
Porridger’s Almanack (Breakfast of Ganglions)

Watching somebody’s tight-assed view of themselves just...disintegrate, has great significance.

— Alan Arkin expressing the Zen of The In-Laws

Surfing an Earthquake, Opus 190 for three flutes is now finished and runs five minutes and a half. Possibly because my historically natural aptitude for composing fairly freely was inhibited by my recent anxiety about where I shall live, the composition of this new piece was startlingly efficient. I bumped the start of Nostalgia Ain’t What It Used to Be to Opus 191. I undertook the trio in a wave of optimism upon finding what I thought were two viable listings of apartments. They’ve both crashed, so I’m back to taking it one day at a time. I really like the trio, though.

Learning to Surf

I seem to have forgotten the story of how we begin to remember....
Well, if he holds them till he dies, the fear in him should have subsided, anyway.
“Can [name of high-profile artist] save the arts?” Oh, please. The Arts are a matter greater than an individual with a commercially successful brand. If you don’t get that, you don’t understand Art.
Porridger’s Almanack (Breakfast of Ganglions)

Ken Russell: “President of what?”
Lee van Cleef: “That’s not funny, Plissken.”

— John Carpenter’s Escape from New York

In spite of all the uncertainty in my life at present, the availability of three flutes (Peter H. Bloom, Carol Epple & Dan Zupan) has inspired me to start a new piece, Surfing an Earthquake, Opus 190. It won’t be of epic proportions, today I’ve composed it out to about two minutes, and I’ll just write a bit as I feel bidden.

A New Way to be Un-Hip

The Newness of the Gnus
Turducken in Metuchen?
A Looter in the Bodega of Love
Consider the pluot. What a wonderful world ... we now have a fruit whose name is an anagram for a planet. High time, really.
Porridger’s Almanack (Breakfast of Ganglions)

Peter Falk: “Are you sure the police didn’t follow you here?”
Marsha Mason: “I’m positive. They came with me.”

— An awkward exchange in Neil Simon’s The Cheap Detective

Yet another piece I have written which has yet to see a performance is Music for the Un-Hip Hop. Originally for two flutes (Op. 178) and subsequently adapted for two violins (Op. 178a)Multi-instrumentalist Dan Zupan, one of two new recruits for the k a rl h e nn i ng Ensemble, has most gratifyingly acquired something of an appetite for Henningmusick, and asked me to send parts and scores for sundry duos, a request with which I gladly complied. A subsequent effect is that today, I’ve adapted the Hop yet again now for flute and clarinet (Op. 178b).