The-Courier-musicalassumptions

About a dozen years ago, around the time I started writing my opera Sister Beatrice, I became interested in Hindemith's 1921 Opera Sancta Susanna, a work he set to a 1914 play by August Stramm. There were no recordings available in 2002, and, because of the sacrilegious nature of the work and non-availability of the music, nobody performed it. All I could get my hands on (through interlibrary loan) was a piano-vocal score.

Now (as of yesterday) both the piano-vocal score and the orchestral score of this unusual and brilliant one-act opera are in the IMSLP (the music is now in the public domain in America).

This recording (not a video, but it does have subtitles) of the prelude and the final scene is the best performance I have found. Since my first "viewing" of the opera was in the theater inside my head, no staging I have seen on the half a dozen YouTube videos lives up to the staging I imagined, but Hindemith's orchestration surpasses my imagination.



If you have any interest in my Sister Beatrice (which, even though it was published in 2006, still hasn't had a performance outside of the theater inside my brain), you can hear a computer generated recording (with brass instruments as the vocalists) on this page of my Thematic Catalog or through these links.

Opening [Scenes 1 and 2]
track 2
track 3
track 4
track 5
track 6
track 7
track 8
track 9 (Ave maris stella)
track 10 [Scene 3]
track 11
track 12
track 13

Words of wisdom and music of real beauty.

The Problem: The people who make clip-on sunglasses haven't figured out a way to account for glasses that have a light-weight brow bar on top and wire on the bottom.



This has been bothering me for days. I tried rubber bands, and I tried tape. Nothing worked. Then, while rummaging through my drawers in search of obsolete technology to throw away, I came across a few of these:



Here's what I did:





[The innards come out a lot more easily if you pull the inner-innards (the colored wires that are wrapped in foil) first. The wire threads will them come out easily.]





You might want to cut longer pieces and then trim them to fit, since once you put them on they will only come off if you cut them. My glasses need longer pieces on the bottom.

Here's how the temples look:





The longer pieces on the bottom do not interfere with my field of vision at all.



Voila! The fit isn't perfect, but they do stay on my glasses.

Watch this silly clip from The George Mann Archive all the way to the end (it lasts a minute and a half).



Now visit the Archive for a look at a whole bunch of Hollywood treasures (photos and films) that George Mann (1905-1977) captured with his cameras.

Here's David Rubinoff's obituary from the Los Angeles Times.

I complete my first set of six preludes for piano thirteen years ago on New Year's Day (2001). I finished prelude number seven this evening, which has the appropriate title "A New Year's Resolution," (the only one I'm making this year). You can download the music here, and listen to a computer-generated recording here (I'm not yet a good enough pianist to play it to my liking).

I learned how to use my bow.
I learned how to play double stops confidently and comfortably.
I learned that I love to play the piano.
I learned that playing the piano can help my violin playing and my viola playing.
I learned to love Mozart and Haydn in totally new ways.
I learned that Facebook isn't all that bad. It fills a need in a fragmented world.
I learned that blogging no longer has the community feeling it once had.
I learned that in spite of the lack of community feeling, there are people who appreciate what I write here.
I learned that there are also people who enjoy playing the music I write.
I learned that things I do like can change.
I learned that things I don't like can change for the better.
I learned that it really doesn't matter.

Sherman Walt, the former principal bassoonist of the Boston Symphony Orchestra decided to learn to play the viola when he retired. He bought an instrument from my father, and had a lifetime of making reeds and playing solos moving towards his rear-view mirror. I was devastated by his sudden death in 1989 at age 66 when he was struck by a car while walking across the street in the Chestnut Hill section of Brookline. Reflecting on Mr. Walt's desire to play the viola was one of the things that gave me courage to become a string player. I told myself that as soon as I found a steady job I would start playing a string instrument again. I remembered noodling around on the viola that my father would sell to Mr. Walt, and I felt a special connection. Even a responsibility.

I suppose I can say that the job I got at the university radio station was steady. Year after year the powers that "were" suggested that my job was slated to be a full time job, but year after year I ended up being paid for just 15 hours per week. I though that those 15 hours came without benefits, but one important benefit came as a surprise. After twelve years in the job (regardless of the meager number of hours), I became vested in the university retirement plan, which in Illinois is the state retirement plan. I left the job (for reasons too complicated to discuss) after 13 years, and a portion of the small amount of money that I have drawn over the years since leaving the radio station (teaching at a community college) has made its way into this fund. The upshot is that when I officially retire I will probably "make" more money than I have ever made as a working-age person (not that it's enough to live on). The "steady" aspect of the job, and my personal vow made it possible for me to find a very full musical life after a frustrating one as a flutist without prospects, and keeping that promise to myself has become its own great reward.

That's not the point of this post, however. The point of this post is that viola may not be a usual retirement for bassoonists, but is a common retirement instrument for violinists. Some go to the viola because the high register of the violin becomes physically difficult to hear, and some go to the viola because they imagine that viola parts are less demanding than the first violin parts in chamber music and in orchestra (many are).

I know from experience that playing the viola can be physically taxing, and I also know from experience that the strain on shoulders and elbows grows as the body ages. I know that vibrato slows down and that hearing changes. I know that the pleasure of playing both the violin and the viola has a lot to do with having the hands and arms respond quickly to the musical landscape, and I know that eventually the response begins to slow.

I have many older friends who can no longer play. I know that I could not bear to not make music on a daily basis, particularly when I get into my 80s and 90s, and the world as I will know it will be as drastically different for me as it is now for my friends in their 80s and 90s today. It is for that reason that my preparation for retirement is to continue my daily piano practice, and approach the instrument and its music seriously (it isn't hard to do at all).

I imagine that when fiscal retirement comes, I will be one of the few people around to have a pension without ever working steadily for more than 15 hours a week. I imagine that when I reach the age when I will have to put down the fiddle and bow, I will be a pretty good pianist. I will also probably be able to get along fine without ever developing any kind of virtuosic technique. I will have a built-in excuse: I'll be old. But I'll be happy in my musical company.