Old Man of the Woods

Reverb untamed

2012-02-05T17:20:00.000-08:00

Reverb has allays been my friend, both the natural and electronic kinds. While the "soup" simile may not be very attractive, it's better than the dry toast effect you get in some dead concert halls. Sibelius remarked somewhere that the orchestra needs a "pedal" and his orchestration often demonstrates that built in kind of resounding acoustic.
The other night I went to a concert of the Dessoff Choirs "Bach Refracted" st the cavernous Church of St Paul the Apostle near Columbus Circle. Two of my pieces, September Canons and Holy Ghosts, were played by two excellent musicians, Todd Reynolds and Libby van Cleve, and in both cases we had to tone down the reverb as the space itself was delivering plenty--too much in fact. This was especially apparent in the choral music--the strange effect was that the initial attack was at a lower level than the echo, and there was plenty of that.The idea that a space might not only reverberate sound but actually amplify it as well is kind of unusual.
Last night I happened to be watching the wonderful film Passage to India. There is a marvelous scene at the spooky Malabar Caves where the echos produced disappear momentarily and then come back louder.I'm not sure if this is possible acoustically, but it made for a awesome moment in the film.The strange echo in St Pauls seemed to me to mimic that. I wonder if Paul of Tarsus ever got to India? He certainly traveled a lot.

Lugubrious

2012-01-10T16:13:00.000-08:00

Sometimes, everything seems strangely connected
In my last post I spoke of the Swede Tomas Transtromer and his love of Schubert and his poetic idea that somewhere in the multitudes of New York on a given night, someone must be playing Schubert, and to that person everything else is insignificant.
Yesterday I was perusing a slim volume of his more recent poems, one of which--indeed the title poem--is entitled "The Sorrow Gondola"(Sorgengondolen).It's actual a poem about a piece of music,Franz Liszt's "La Lugubre Gondola II". This very bizarre piano piece uses angular melodies and weird harmonies to create a world of mystery and sorrow--its one of Liszt's very late pieces, composed in Venice (where else!). His friend (and son-in-law!) Wagner died shortly afterwards.also in Venice. I was playing the piece at the piano trying to fathom Liszt's odd chord changes, when I remembered that amongst the vast corpus of the music of John Adams, there is a transcription he made for orchestra of this music; I found the CD and listened. It made so mach more sense in the orchestration than as a piano piece, and this thrilled me to rediscover this strange Adamsian opus.
Now I am going to re read the poem as a musical entity, as if it were to travel in time, as if it was a kind of music.
And then I thought--what would Franz Schubert have thought about it as a lieder text?

Tomas Transtromer

2011-12-18T06:56:00.000-08:00

Pictures above:
TT being serenaded at his Nobel lecture; at the piano with one good hand.

Tomas Transtromer has always been my favorite Swedish poet, well maybe neck and neck wih Ekelov, so I was elated to hear he had won the Nobel prize this year. Some naysayers complained that the Swedish Academy, which chooses the Nobel winners, shouldn't have named one of their own country men. But Tomas Transtromer is a universal poet, and his works have been translated widely, into as many as 60 languages.
Music, and its inner meaning for him, is a theme that permeates his poetic output, and he is especially close to Schubert. Sadly, he suffered a stroke several years ago and lost the use of his right arm.He's been a good pianist and now is learning left handed repertory, and it was rumored that for his Nobel lecture he would simply play something of Schubert (a transcription I suppose), but as it turned out various poets read his poetry to him and did so in several languages.
But the moment that I won't forget (I watched this on the Nobel Prize web site) was of a string quintet playing the Schubert C major Quintet right in front of him, only a few feet away. If you know his poem "Schubertiana" you would know what this meant to him.

Here's the first stanza of his poem:

“Schubertiana”
by Tomas Transtr¨omer. (Trans. Kalle R¨ais¨anen)
I.
In the evening-dark of a place outside New York, a look-out point
where one glance can encompass eight million people’s homes.
The giant city over there is a long, flickering snow-drift, a spiral
galaxy on its side.
Inside the galaxy, coffee cups are slid over the counter, store-fronts
beg with passers-by, a crowd of shoes that leave no traces.
The climbing fire-escapes, the elevator doors gliding shut, behind
locked doors a constant swell of voices.
Sunken bodies half-sleep in the subway cars, the rushing catacombs.
I know, also — statistics aside — that right now Schubert is
being played in some room over there and that to someone
those sounds are more important than all those other things.

Almglocken

2011-09-28T08:40:00.000-07:00

Rambling along on the "canterelle trail" in Sleepy Giant Park the other Day, I found myself besieged by a group of Mahleresque tunes which had invaded my head. I wondered why this would be. Maybe its the sylvan setting? The pastorale? The futility of looking for chanterelles so late in the season (or the irony, which could accord with the Mahler ditties.)

Actually my son had reawakened my affinity with old Gus, as the other day we were driving and he insisted on playing the Symphony No 1, in the car, and l when we got back to the house he put on a record (yes, an LP) of the Sixth, which I must confess is one of my favorites--the slow movement being desert island material. I used to think the Third's slow movement without parallel, but lately I've thought it a bit too indulgent, somewhat over the top in reiterating those achingly longing long lines of desire. (A colleague of mine after a performance of the Third at Woolsey Hall in NH was heard to complain loudly in the lobby about this music's treacly sentimentality--"it's like a bunch of drunks at a high school reunion singing the alma mater over and over again).
Among other things, what kills me in the Sixth is the use of the almglocken (see picture above)
They appear very subtly (in most recordings) and are quite random in rhythm and pitch--Mahler wanted this "aleatoric" texture to conjure up an alpine pastoral setting. (although truth to be told, had a bunch of cows with their clanking bells wandered into the vicinity of one of his alpine composing huts, he'd have had a fit--he demanded silence from Nature when working.)
Another composer who has used cow bells to great affect is John Adams--in his"Naive and Sentimental Music" among others. And having brought Adams and Mahler together here, I ought to mention the book review in last Sunday's NY Times wherein a new biography of Mahler gives John the excuse to write a short essay on his take on the greatest symphonist since Bruckner.

NO POWER!!

2011-09-02T14:51:00.000-07:00

BOLETES

NOTE: THIS POST WAS WRITTEN SEVERAL WEEKS AGO. THE HURRICANE SEEMS A DISTANT MEMORY NOW (WE'RE GEARING UP FOR WINTER-- YESTERDAY I BOUGHT A ROOF SNOW RAKE!)

Many have said "you guys were lucky, your power was only off for a few days" Considering that some folks here in CT still don't have it back (five days running) we do indeed feel "lucky."
Sitting in the dark with some candles and a flashlight or two, I thought "this should be a positive experience, like you are at your cabin in the Sierras and have the kerosene lamps going and the wood stove fired up; but no, its not like that at all. There's no romance. You really want "normalcy" to return. I tried reading for a while but couldn't concentrate so I stuck my iPod buds in the ears and ran the composer gamut, coming to a sudden halt at Sibelius, Symphony No. 4.
"Perfect" I thought--so dark and cold. I thought it might be interesting to follow the score, which I had handy, even though the low light made it hard to read; but the basic outlines of the notes was enough--it's long familiar music to me, but I hadn't listened to it in a while.
Back in Sibelius day--the 4th symphony dates from 1910 or so--electricity was not a given, especially in rural areas. Sibelius liked to compose at night (often with the cognac bottle handy) and I've often wondered if his output increased after electricity came to Ainola, when he could have better lighting for his nocturnal labor. But the Fourth is dark music and seems to paint a bleak but subtle music. It is bare bones stuff, shorn of ornament, frill and decoration. Its nick name was the barkbrod" symphony, which refereed to the Scandinavian tradition of mixing ground up birch bark with flour during times of hardship and famine.
The hurricane left a tremendous amount of moisture from the heavy rains and the woods and fields around here have been bursting with fungi.. I found a tremendous "Hen of the Woods" on my neighbor's lawn (tasty but needs long stewing) and a bunch of boletes, porcini like (not really edulis but close).
Identifying Boletus species can be challenging some times. But eating one you are not sure of is not as risky as you might think. There are no "deadly" toxins in the Boletus family, although there are a few that can give you a nasty gastrointestinal experience. If there are red pores (under the cap) and it stains blue wen cut, you are skating on thin ice.The "bad" ones taste bitter and the edible ones taste good, although many are mediocre.
So the rule is, about Boletes, if it tastes good, eat it! The same cannot be said for other mushrooms, especially the deadly Amanitas which, apparently taste pretty good

Bruckner on the Beach

2011-08-15T17:20:00.000-07:00

After my ramble a few weeks ago over Bruckner as a montane composer I thought it might be interesting to size him up as an oceanic composer, especially as we went to Cape Cod last week and spent a good deal of time contemplating the mighty surf of the Wellfleet beaches. One day the sea wsa very rough and the waves were gigantic--no one , not even the most intrepid surfers, ventured into the water. Walking along the shore I found the scherzi of some of the symphonies quite well matched, but it was on another day, when the rolling breakers had more regular and rhythmic movement, that I found the Adagio of the 7th Symphony most compelling.

I wondered how old Anton would have liked walking along at the waters edge, barefoot, hearing his mighty creation in his ear buds--wait, that wouldn't have happened! Among his many eccentricities was an obsession with counting and apparently, given a beach, he was fond of counting grains of sand. I suppose it was sort of a meditation. I don't think he'd have made much progress.

The Brucknerian gradual build-up of minor climaxes that finally accumulate in something big and smashing, is certainly analogous to the way waves come in to shore. But in essence, I think Bruckner is more at home in the mountains than in the maritime environment.

Of course the ocean has its own sounds and doesn't need any sound track added to it, yet...there's a great temptation. I think the Brucknerian ocean analogue has to do with the peaks and valleys of the waves, those crests and troughs which are reflected in Bruckner's wonderful analogues of light and dark, loud (really loud!) and soft. His climaxes do so often work up to a glorious "breaking" just like a wave's behaviour.
Today, walking in the East Rock woods, there were so many boletes about that I made little progress, stopping so often to check then out and admire them (the red and yellow "Boletus bi-color" was particularly vivid and tasty too)---like Bruckner counting his grains of sand.

Brucknerian mountains

2011-07-18T11:42:00.001-07:00

Sunday afternoon, a hot sweltering day in the City, I sat in the vast expanses of Lincoln Center's Fisher Hall, and I couldn't imagine being in a place more different from where I had been the week before-on the shore of an alpine lake at the base of the Sierra Buttes in the Sierra Nevada
Yet the glacial ebbs and flows, the undulating valleys and peaks of Bruckner's 9th Symphony transformed the hall (in my mind anyhow) into a very montane environment.
Literalists, or objectivists, would downplay the affective power of a Bruckner symphony, pointing out, in contrast, its purely"musical" (ie, "formal") attributes. Maybe it was because I had so recently been in such an environment that my sensors picked up the connection between musical structure, meaning, memory and mountains.
Yes, there are Brucknerian mountains, and they are not all in Austria
And indeed there are Mahlerian mountains, and even Beethovenian mountains (pace LB whose famous essay "Bullsession in the Rockies" from the late fifties warned us from such "meaningful" allusions - and no, there are no "Buxtehudian "mountains.}
Although I don't think Bruckner was much of an "Alpinist"--ie, a mountain climber/hiker--his music has its wildly contrasting peaks and troughs; in fact whole series of climaxes of varying intensities is a perfect way of "reading" a mountain range or massif such as the Buttes.
This begs the question: can we "read" Nature as we do Art? Or do we need to?

Wholefoods myco harvest

2011-07-10T06:22:00.001-07:00

I was extremely optimistic about a late Spring visit to my cabin in the northern Sierras --actually, by the calendar, it was an early summer visit--as the late melting snow from the record breaking winter accumulation promised a bumper crop of morels and possibly boletes. Normally the prime season is the first few weeks in June, the last vestiges of snow having faded by then. But I guess the message didn't get through to the asco's mycelia that it was ok to come out now. Despite several serious sweeps of known areas of fruiting, the forest floor yielded NOTHING! I did, however, find a cluster of boletes growing in a disturbed area that had yielded the tasty mushrooms in the past.But wouldn't you know it-- they were just over the hill, worm ridden to the max.
Actually, there was one good specimen that we were able to eat after carving away the "bad" spots (In fact, I doubt ingesting the small larvae would do any harm)
Upon our return to the lowlands (Berkeley) we were delighted to find in the kitchen for dinner that night a handsome and generous collection of not only boletes but a few morels to boot! All this harvested in the produce aisle of the local Wholefoods by prescient Debby who must have heard of our misadventures. (Actually, the lack of fungi aside, we had a great week in the Sierra Nevada)
My cabin lies not far from the majestic crags called the Sierra Buttes, which are always awe inspiring in any season, but the late Spring's heavy mantle of snow gave them an even grander disposition; I never tire of feasting my eyes upon them, but this year they were positively Brucknerian.

Another Brooklyn Soaking

2011-06-13T17:31:00.000-07:00

Back in November of '10 I ventured down to Brooklyn's DUMBO neighborhood to catch a concert at Galagpagos that included a piece of mine. In the process I got soaked thanks to the presence of lagoons and narrow unlit walkways (see my blog entry from Nov 2010 for a full description of my watery mishap).
Little did I knows last Thursday as I headed back to the same neighborhood, this time to hear Timo Andres play my Authentic Presence at Bargemusic, that I would get soaked again, only worse-- from head to toe! As I emerged from the High Street subway station, I was practically blown away by typhoon-like gusts and heavy rain. My little black umbrella was useless. Thunder and lightening was brilliantly violent. By the time I got to the restaurant where I was to meet my son Clem ,before the concert, I was completely soaked through, and water was sloshing around in my shoes.
At the concert "hall" (a barge floating woosilly in the harbor under the Brooklyn Bridge) I sat through two hours of brilliantly played pieces by young composers who had for the most part been my students at Yale. I was freezing from the effect of the cold air conditioning on my wet clothing, but I was warm inside because it was such a beautiful concert. As Timo worked his way thorough his program (besides me, pieces by himself, Cerrone, Cooper and Hearne --Boolah Boolah!) the heavens continued the show, sending down fusilades of lighting and thunder, and in the second half, actual fireworks erupted over the harbor. No one seemed to know what they were for.
The evening was full of surprises, and not just from the weather. After playing the last two notes of my piece, and letting them hang in the air for a few seconds before anyone could start clapping, Timo simply began playing Brahms's Intermezzo Op.119 No.1!
At fist I thoght, OMG, people are going to think I wrote this! But he played it so nonchalantly, yet restrained and smooth--just right you might say--that it seemed to make some sense and I sat back, relaxed and took it all in, including the water in my shoes and the flashes of lightening in the sky.
It was a truly memorable eveing and I'll probably never know what the fireworks were all about

Lacunae

2011-05-28T17:57:00.000-07:00

About a year ago I was waxing poetically about morels recently found and consumed.

Francis above, Guston below

This year the dismal Spring continues; I found a total of 5 morels in three visits to my hunting grounds. Lacunae, empty spaces-that's the description of my morel bounty this year.
But my allusions to the music of Morton Feldman are still relevant because there is so much empty space in his music, and there is emptiness in my woodland floor, so devoid of mushroom. One scours the ground, and there is so much detail what with leaf litter and grass and ferns and fallen branches, but the imagined sponge- head beauties are notable for their absence. It's like there are holes in the visual field, where the morels should rightly be!
If you listen to a piece by Feldman, such as "Rothko Chapel," you'll know what I mean--the spaces between the notes, between the gestures are perhaps as important as the sounds themselves. One thinks of Philip Guston, Feldman's favorite painter who left a lot of blank canvass in his paintings. Actually, it's not blank at all, but a muted hazy coloring that in the context appears to be some kind of empty background.

But there are painters who famously left a lot of white canvas in their pictures.One who comes to mind is west coast artist Sam Francis. Betty Freeman,who was one of the great patrons of New Music in our time was also a significant collector of art. Her house in Beverly Hills, wherein she held he famous Sunday, musicales or salons, was festooned with art-=-everywhere you looked in that house there were paintings, sculptures, installations.
Some years ago I was invited to present my work at one of her Sunday soirees. I asked if it wold be OK to show images from "Alcatraz", my collaborative work with photographer Jim Bengston. No problem,, there would be a slide projector setup as well as the usual sound system. When I arrived and was shown the living room where the presentation would take place, I noticed the slide projector, but no screen. I asked Betty where the screen would be set up; she gave me a puzzled look."Oh, when we have a slide show we just project the pictures on the lower right quadrant of the Sam Francis."
Indeed, there on the wall was a huge canvas by Francis, and in his inimitable style the actual painting was confined to only about a quarter of the frame, the rest being empty with a scattering of paint bits here and there. So that evening the work of Sam Francis and Jim Bengston co mingled while my prison doors slammed away in giddy celebration.It was a sort of accidental palimpsest.

Springtime Melancholia

2011-05-07T12:05:00.000-07:00

The sub title of my blog--Mushrooms, Madness and Music--often puzzles me. Aside from the nice alliteration why did I choose it? --the Madness part, I mean. I haven't really touched on the subject of Madness yet, nor, I think, have I exhibited behavior that might suggest it.
Oliver Sacks, the noted Neurologist, has written a book "Musicophilia" which explores all sorts of bizarre, inexplicable relationships between brain disorders or aberrations and music. One of the chapters is titled "Music, Madness and Melancholia..Perhaps what I was aiming at had more to do with Melancholy, or underlying tristesse, than madness

These beautiful springtime images with their seductive efflorescence would seem to mitigate Melancholia and conjure hope in a soul wallowing in darkness. But April and May can be cruel, as we know from the poet, and I often find myself in a bittersweet mood when the darling buds of May come round. No lilacs ever bloomed in my door yard, although they seem to do well in my neighbor's. The squirrels munch on the few scrawny tulips that have emerged, and this year the morels are in very short supply.
Sacks writes optimistically about the power of music to penetrate the deepest states of melancholy in some patients, but I also know that some music can induce this state of Melancholia, or at least complement it, and this is not a bad thing.
Take for example the Schubert Piano Trio in E flat, which I've been listening to lately; in the slow movement there is an underlying C minor shadowy mood, a kind of dark inevitability pushed by an incessant march like movement. This eventually breaks out into a major harmonic world and the sun comes out--but, the pull back to the dark side is ever present; our cheeful, bubbly brook, Franz Scubert, knew Melancholy well.

A Sure Sign

2011-04-04T14:51:00.000-07:00

Of what? That Spring has really come? Usually, the sudden eruption of this periwinkle patch on a neighbor's lawn is a definitive announcement that Winter has been banished. These delightful little flowers arrive after the hardy crocuses which we must admire for their ability to shine through late wintry blasts and snowfalls.But the lavander vinca minoris says there's no turning back. And they are particularly effulgent this year.
And hope springs eternal on the digital airwaves. I have been tuned in to the on line radio of WQXR for over a year now--its called Q2 actually--and it's full of surprises and delights. There's no DJ announcing the selections so you have to go on line to see the playlist, or just guess--its mostly contemporary stuff and I often just leave it on, at a low level and if I hear something interesting, I turn it up (or off, if its some particularly annoying piece, and there are those!)
When WNYC went all talk radio a few years ago, I worried that this great outlet of new and unusual music would cease to exist--and it did, but now with their sister station, WQXR (whose more conventional "classical" programing still slogs along) sending out music in cyberspace, there's more new music than ever.

Oh, oh, oh, totus floreo!

Porcini secchi "Extra"

2011-03-25T09:06:00.000-07:00

Now that Dan Johnson,music critique "heroique" here in NH, has dubbed me unsung genius and mycophile I thought I had better post something about funghi real quick so as to not lose my myco cred.
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A year ago the topic was mushrooms in a vinegar setting--my wife Veronica had brought back from Slovenia a jar of pickled mushrooms.This year, on her trip to Trieste, she returned with two bags of Porcini Secchi "Extra". Dried boletes. Much better than the pickled kind; the aroma alone when you open the bag is worth the airfare to Italy! After a few weeks in a jar I took a whif this morning and got another powerful hit. I cant wait to actually cook them (maybe this weekend, a nice risotto?)
But what, I want to know, does "Extra" mean? According to Veronica, the Triestean purveyor of the woodsy treasures assured her that they were "best quality"--top of the line so to speak. Maybe it has something to do with size--they are big, some of them.
I'll report back on their "Extra"-ness after we've actually eaten some.

The other excitement around here was last night when Timo Andres played my piano piece, Authentic Presence, on a New music New haven concert at Sprague Hall. Timo played the pants off the things. It was dazzling, but even better, it was soulful.
It was a truly "extra" performance.

The Winter that Refuses to Die

2011-03-02T17:42:00.000-08:00

March Fourth and still a good foot of snow covers our back yard! Its a hard, crusty, icy mantle. We've had snow cover steady since Christmas. January was the big snow fall month and February was just plain cold so nothing melted much. Our roof sprang a few leaks, and our heating bill went through the same roof. Huge mountains of plowed snow decorate our streets, but these ungainly sculptures, now soot black, do little to elevate our spirits or arouse our aesthetic libido.
I've had my x-c skis in the back of the car but haven't used them in over a month as this hard old stuff doesn not invite trespass by foot or ski. Frustrating to say the least because it LOOKS so inviting from a distance.

In my class at Yale, ("Minimalism: Before, During and After") we have just listened to John Adams Harmonium. I am amazed at how powerful and full of expressive grace it is after all these thirty some years. Sure, it has an abundance of exurberance--maybe a bit too much--but it really holds up. Those cowbells at the end of the second movement haunt and remind me of a September night in the Sierran cabin when we were awakened by faint clangings, distant harbingers of summer's end (the bovine migration from the high country).h

News, news news!!
But the big Adamsian event was, of course, the Met's production of Nixon In China.We were fortunate to be able to attend the dress rehearsal and had great seats just six rows back from the pit. I am not an opera fan and I doubt that many contemporary operas will still be around in the next fifty years or so, but I have a feeling that Nixon will, if only because there's so much damned good music in it! A week after seeing the performance live, I was able to see it again in so called HD transmission in Yale's Sprague Hall. This was overwhelming and brought you into the opera more than the live performance. It was thoroughly captivating. Jame Madalena does a remarkable job with Nixon's character and has been doing so all over the world in the last 25 years. His voice seems a bit strained now, and he on occasion misses a high note or two, but his dramatic power is flawless; he really owns that character.
Dramatically I've always found the enigmatic last act weak, but it doesn't pull down the rest of the work; it is what it is and as such is unique and probably will be around for a long time.

A lonely ski trail

2011-01-23T10:47:00.000-08:00

Where, one wonders, does it go?
More snow this week and as it mounts into great piles it remains serene and quietly seductive on fields and meadows and in woods. I was thinking yesterday as I was pushing along on my old skis--gliding actually,the snow being fresh and dry--about an obscure piece by Sibelius, A Lonely Ski Trail (En ensam skidspor) written in his "late" period. Based on a poem by Bertil Grippenberg, it's a charming little "melodrama" with the poem being recited. Charming isn't quite right as it's full of that Nordic tristese and resignation tinged with a kind of loveliness. It's rather dark actually.
But I wondered, as I glided through this crystalline, wintry landscape, did Sibelius go out on skis? I suppose he must have, it being comme il faut in rural Finland. But I bet he dressed to the nines--coat and tie and knickers.

Correction: Not so bleak afterall

2011-01-08T08:49:00.000-08:00

This is one of those magical snowfalls that you remember in your dreams

Out on skis this morning along Mill Creek (Eli Whitney's old stomping grounds). About a foot of pristine snow, easy to glide along in.
The prediction of bleakness for today was ill-advised.
Maybe it's me, feeling kind of bleak myself lately. I've been grappling with the last psalm of my Psalmbook, and it keeps turning into a doxology (it is, in fact "Old Hundred"); now its becoming a Halleluia of sorts. The whole idea of the Psalmbook came from Arvo Paert's "Missa Brevis" wherein the vocal ensemble and string quartet are truly minimal and perfectly so--talk about economy of means! But it's turned into something more akin to Steve Reich's "Tehillim".
The anxiety of Influence! That's the trouble. Well, I have often preached that composition is only the art of discovery. Originality is a construction, a "trope." (Thats a foggy notion!)
I've been thinking about Tucson, remembering the pristine natural beauty of the mountains and desert and the souless suburban sprawl that offsets it; why do these violent acts always seem to happen in places where the weather is good?

In the bleak mid Winter

2011-01-06T19:00:00.000-08:00

After the Boxing Day Blizzard two weeks ago, we still have large patches of snow and ice here and there; it's also rather cold. Bleak is a good word for this season.
I love that Christmas carol, written by Gustav Holst, and I love even more the other setting by Harold Darke--it seems., well, bleaker, but also redolent of hope which, I think, is the sub-text of Christmas, isn't it?
Just occurred to me that this is the last day of the Nativity the so called Three Kings Day, so I can report on our Christmas Eve dinner, a beautiful side of Norwegian salmon, garnished-- no, covered-- in chanterelles. Yes, that's right, I broke down and bought them t the local Whole Foods. To my amazement, they were reasonable in price ($15 lb) and in decent condition ( chants are hardy and can maintain their integrity when others mushrooms have rotted away.). I believe their provenance was Oregon. With all the winter rain the PNW has been getting this year there seems to be a bumper crop. We enjoyed more on New Years Eve,when they underscored with their earthy, chewy succulence some gamey lamb shanks..
I suppose it was the utter lack of chanterelle fruitings last summer that gave me"permission" to buy them.
A recent post on my friend JA's blog ("Hellmouth") talks about "Stravinsky's Arm Farts." www.earbox.com/posts This is worth checking out. It tuns out, according to John (backed up I imagine, by his old nemesis, R Taruskin) that as a young boy Igor was quite adept at this method of body percussion --he learned it from a local serf on he family estate in the Ukraine--and that it may have been the source of his punchy, off kilter rhythmic machinations heard in Le Sacre etc. Musicologists, take note!
A new snow storm has moved in. It's quite lovely outside now; tomorrow it will be bleak.

Gloucester Cathedral-Holst

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xRobryliBLQ

Kings College Camb.-Darke

www.youtube.com/watch?v=xNdqF9XfMD0&feature=related

Cage the Harmonist

2010-12-09T07:40:00.000-08:00

One of the most telling anecdotes John Cage relates is the story of how Schoenberg warned him that if his ear for Harmony didn't improve he'd spend the rest of his life banging his head on an impenetrable wall, andCage's acceptance of that reality.His feeling for Harmony simply did not exist or if it did, had no role in his composing.

I think that on a higher plane, however, Cage was indeed a harmonist

A new biography has recently appeared (Kenneth Silverman Begin Again ) and has been widely reviewed, most notably by John Adams in the NY Times and Alex Ross in a lengthy piece in the New Yorker. According to Adams, a veritable "Cage Industry " has arisen in academia. I'm not sure I see evidence of that but the Cageian mystique certainly lives on, some 18 years after his death. There are already several good books on Cage (Kyle Gann's short but incisive one on 4'33" is my favorite) but the new one is more comprehensive; it clocks in at well over 400 pages. And there are still areas of his life and music not examined that thoroughly.

The main thing that I got from the book was the unrelenting dedication Cage had to his creative process; he was, in a word, hyper-industrious. The act of "composing" for him was his life and despite the fact hat he traveled widely and was always showing up at this festival or that, he was only truly content when at home working. This applies to all periods of his life. He just wrote and wrote, and always followed some scheme, pattern or process..

The other thing that Silverman brings out is Cage's assiduous attention to details and correctness in the interpretation of his music. It is often thought that his cavalier attitude to the traditional building blocks of music, leaving such details to chance-generated processes, would allow free-wheeling improvisation in performance. Once he had arrived AT CERTAIN PROCEDURES, HE DEEMED IT PARAMOUNT TO ADHERE TO THEM--NO MONKEYING AROUND as the NY Phil players did for their infamous "performance" of Atlas Eclipticalis in 1968.
Oddly, I think, he was both a free wheeling spirit, allowing any and all sounds or events into his musical world, and a stickler to detail and the rules. A paradox? Perhaps.
One of the more amusing and astonishing adventures in Cage's life occurred in 1959 while he was living briefly in Italy. He became a contestant on a popular TV quiz show called "Lascia o Raddoppio (Leave or Double). The idea was that a person's expert knowledge of a single subject would be subject to more and more difficult questions as the prize money doubled; missing a question would result in falling back to nothing. This was similar to the American quiz show, The 64 Thousand Dollar Question.
Th show was extremely popular and Cage became a celebrity in Italy over night. The final question, which won him five million Lire, asked him to identity all the white spored mushrooms in an authoritative book called Studies in American Fungi by George Atkinson. He not only knew the answers but rattled them out in alphabetical order! Clearly he had done his homework, and I suspect, he had something of a photographic memory.
The penultimate question asked him to identify a picture of one species and elaborate on various aspects--spore color, size of spore in microns etc..Silverman erroneously identifies the mushroom as "Bacillus tomentosis which, upon investigation, turns out to be a mishearing of Suillus tomentosis! (see picture above) Alright, Silverman is neither a musicologist nor a mycologist! But what happened to fact checking?
John Cage died in 1992 at the age of 79. I remember quite vividly what I did that day. I was in Maine with family on vacation and heard the news on the local classical music station. I was shocked because John Cage was not the sort of person you expected to die, so I went out by myself on my bike looking for mushrooms--it seemed the proper thing to do. I found a beautiful cache of Dentinum repandum. When I returned from my foray I sat down and wrote a spontaneous improvisatory "remembrance" of Cage. It was printed in the Fall issue of the ISAM Newsletter.
The great divide in Cage's music has always been a point of contention and controversy. There are many who admire the early percussion works and prepared piano studies but eschew completely the body of work based on indeterminacy, and I suppose there are some whose taste and admiration go in the opposite direction..
I see his life as one of great harmony Here is what I wrote at the end of the essay:

"Cage's contribution to new music before his leap into indeterminacy around 1950 was enough to gain him a place in the Pantheon. The percussion music, prepared piano and works such as the string quartet and the Seasons comprise a very original and impressive collection. Even though he turned his back on that way of composing, the works still exist and he did not disown them.
Perhaps this music represents a forcing or pushing principal, the Yang part of his life, whereas the later work is a more yielding acceptance of the way things are--the Yin side. So there would seem to be a great harmony in his life, even if our ears don't always hear it.

Dobranoc, Henryk

2010-11-15T06:06:00.001-08:00

A beautiful Indian Summer afternoon. As I walked down the path from top of Whitney Peak-- carefully, as the fallen leaves have now accumulated, hiding rocks and roots which cold send one sprawling-- I wasn't even looking for mushrooms. Despite the warm weather and recent rain, I knew the season for mushroom foraging was over.
A few days ago we heard that Henryk Gorecki, the great Polish composer, had died at the ge of 76 in his native city, Katowice. I wondered as I walked if Gorecki had been a mushroom hunter. I knew that he lived part of the time in a chalet in the Tatras mountains, not far from his childhood home (Supposedly paid for with the royalties he received from his big "hit," the Third Symphony --over a million copies sold!), and it seemed to me he would have been the type. In Poland, apparently, everyone hunts mushrooms, especially in the mountains. Why would he be any different?
So I thought about Gorecki and his music on my walk, but I didn't listen to his music on my iPod. Instead I listened in my memory-- especially the amazing, inexorable eight part canon in the Third Symphony. When I got home I put on the recording of "Good Night" one of his more austere pieces,and one that could truly be called "minimal". Dawn Upshaw's shrill (in the good sense ) declaiming of the famous lines from Hamlet sent a chill up my spine.

Good Night, Henryk, flights of angels sing thee to thy rest.

Both Gorecki and Arvo Paert composed music in the late seventies that spurred the so called "Holy Minimalist" school. This could be a misnomer but they did start something. A considerable group of Eastern European composers writing in a new, simpler, deeply spiritual manner grew up in their wake. Tormis, Kancheli, Silvestrov, Martynov, Sumera, etc to name a few at random.
One composer from Slovakia that I have recently discovered is Vladimir Godar. A CD of his music has come out on ECM (where else?). Even though his music might occasionally remind you of Paert or Gorecki it has a distinctive sound and his voice is unique. Especially noteworthy is his Slovakian Stabat Mater --Stala Matka --which is built around the astonishing, brooding alto voice of Iva Bittova

MINIMAL !

2010-10-25T13:46:00.001-07:00

One week ago I was in Scotland for a three day festival-- mostly in Glasgow, but also a day in lovely Edinburgh. As you can see from the photo of the festival poster, I was last but not least. They put on three pieces--Fog Tropes, Alcatraz and Orphic Memories; the last played by the stellar Scottish Chamber Orchestra --it was a really good performance under the guiding hands (he doesnt use a stick!) of Baldur Bronnimann

The festival was simply called "MINIMAL," and featured music by most of the usual suspects.
I used to be adverse to the all too facile use of this sobriquet--the "M" word--and would rail against its indiscriminate use in musical taxonomy. But now I don't care anymore; it is what it is, and once these labels catch on, people get use to them and that's that.
I could argue that early Steve Reich (Violin Phase for example) is actually Minimalism as an "aesthetic," but early Adams (Shaker Loops for example) is actually Minimalism as a "style."
But I won't, because the time has come to leave these distinctions to the nit picker musicologists who will need fodder for their mills
But in one area there an undisputed legitimate use of the word Minimal--the mushroom scene.
There has been nothing, not even a minimal flowering of fungi to speak of. When I returned fom my Scottish trip I scoured the woods of East Rock park and found nothing but a bunch of old King Stropharias, not worth bothering with.
This year there are no Honey mushrooms, no Bi color boletes, no black trumpets.--none of the usual Fall species one would expect to find. Not even agaricus campestris on lawns.

The only mushrooms I have found recently has been a cluster of "honeys" (armilleriella melea) growing at the base of an oak tree in Glasgow's Kelvingrove Park. It was a healthy looking cluster but I didn't harvest them, for where was I going to cook them up? in my hotel room?
Also, "honeys" can be surpsingly bitter or acrid in some areas (something to do with the tree they are growing on--they are lignacious), so why take a chance? I remember that in San Francisco honeys growing in eucalyptus groves always had an off, camphor like taste.I ate them anyway--stupidly.
So, this has been a truly Minimal season for mushrooms. I am almost tempted to rename my blog "The Minimalist Mycophage"

Ritual

2010-09-23T09:18:00.000-07:00

The other day while walking thrugh the woods and ritualistically keeping an eye out for mushrooms--indeed I knew there wasn't anything to be found due to the dry summer--it struck me that the ritual itself is the purpose; its a self justifying activity.
This led me to re- think the idea of ritual in my music, both in the music itself and in the composing of it.
I suppose this thought was spurred on by an interview I did with the Dutch radio for an upcoming concert of Kingdom Come in Amsterdam ( Oc t. 1 if you are interested) in the concert house known as "Muziekgebouw aan t'IJ")
Click here to see the video
There's so much to say about ritual in music that it tires me just to think about it.
Some other time.

9/11

2010-09-11T09:29:00.000-07:00

Today is the 9th anniversary of the unthinkable abomination which has come to be known by its numbers--9/11.
Several years after that day my friend Jim Bengston suggested I compose a work that would somehow communicate something about that horrible day. At first I was reluctant, thinking how could I possibly say what hasn't been said, move people with my music to anything approaching consolation or lamentation?
I also knew that plenty of other composers had expressed their feelings about this event and who needed another? The wonderful John Adams piece, The Transmigration of Souls was underway and I had heard parts of it. But I remember, in the several days afterwards, what did we hear in the way of high toned consolatory music? The Brahms Requiem!! That old warhorse (a noble steed, never the less) just didn't do it for me. It and the Verdi Requiem and the Mozart of course always seem to be trotted out when calamity strikes.
So I wrote my own humble contribution and it turned out to be a pretty good piece. I also think the "meanings" behind the music are pretty clear.
I've not made a big deal about it being my "9-11 Piece", even shying away from that association at times. But now I think I'd like the world to know how much it really is about all the configurations of grief, regret, anger etc. that went through my brain in those several weeks of the aftermath.
So if you haven't heard September Canons, follow this link to my web site where its available for listening. It's played to exquisite perfection by violinist Todd Reynolds who also set up the electronics.
www.ingrammarshall.com/recordings.html
(click on "From the Vault" to access)

Thank you Jim for making this possible.

Now I know where they have all gone to !!

2010-08-30T08:40:00.000-07:00

My European correspondents have clued me in to the mystery of the "lost fungi" of 2010. They have turned up in record numbers in Italy, German and Norway!
News articles from Italian and British papers (the Guardian among them) tell of some twenty mushroom pickers in Italy who have perished while on the hunt, but not from eating poisonous ones; no far stupider than that--from falling off cliffs and slippery slopes while prowling in the dark with miners lights trying to outsmart each other. Apparently this years bumper crop has encouraged more "amateurs" to seek out the prized boletes.
My friend Jim recently reports having a great meal at a restaurant in Weimar Germany where a generous helping of steinpilz (boletes to us) garnished the rack of lamb. The chef, pleased to hear of their delight, invited them into the kitchen where he displayed some 30 pounds of perfect specimens JUST GATHERED THAT MORNING IN THE LOCAL WOODS!!
And yesterday, in Oslo, in their local woods, my friends retrieved a bounty of various species (see picture above) All this makes me insanely jealous of course.
So all the summer mushrooms of Connecticut seem to have migrated to the old country.

Where are the chanterelles of yesteryear?

2010-08-22T17:38:00.000-07:00

Usually, by mid-August, I have found several flowerings of the golden, delicious chanterelle, in spots known to produce faithfully year in and out.But this year,only a pittance, and those, old and rubbery (although still tasty).
I had put off writing a new posting until a good cache had been found--something to write about!!
But, sadly, this posting is about the absence of mushrooms.
I suppose it might have been the searing heat of July that closed down the summer's
fungal florescence, but who is to know? It's always been a mysterious science, understanding what causes the underground mycellium to shoot up their fruit.But I am an optimist and can see myself in another week coming home with a basketful of the critters.We have had some cool, rainy days.
Chanterelles are-- morels aside-- the best, the most pronounced in flavor. They have an aroma unique, rather reminiscent of apricots. You can find them in some gourmet stores but they are usually old and dried out, hardly worth their exorbitant price.
They are relatively easy to identify and often can be found in abundance.
DO NOT INGEST ANY MUSHROOM OF WHICH YOU HAVE THE SLIGHTEST DOUBT!

Chanterelles are found all over but seem to thrive in more northerly climes (but in California they love the coastal oak habitat). In the birch and spruce forest of Scandinavia and the Baltic states, they can be found in profusion, and there is a certain mystique around them in those countries--folk tales abound about mushrooms throughout the northern European lands.

One of the better known composers of Estonia, Lepo Sumera, who sadly died in 2000 at only fifty, admits of a spiritual connection to the native fungi of his home land (see his picure above) and has written a MUSHROOM CANTATA!! The text of this remarkable work consists of the Latin names of his favorite mushrooms .
Sumera wrote: "I came into a closer contact with mushrooms and their inner life in 1977" Think about that! The inner life of mushrooms. You might wonder if he was influenced by Cage, but I doubt it, as in the seventies Estonia was part of the Soviet Union where artistic currents from the West were severely surpressed. The style of his choral writing is often quite innovative, although at times it sounds a little hokey, too reminiscent of early Stravinsky and even Karl Orff! But for the most part the choral music on this CD, sung by the estimable Estonian Philharmonic Chamber Choir unbder Tonu Kaljuste, is compelling and beautifully dark.
(I just realized I made a bad pun above!)
Another choral work of his on the same BIS CD that I also find compelling is,in English, THOUGH YOUR HOMELAND MAY BE IN DARK FOR LONG.
If Lepo were alive today, he'd most likely be spending some time out in the late, darkening summer forests of Estonia, hunting for "Seene." I'll be thinking of him as I contemplate "the inner life of mushrooms" on my next foray (soon!)

Mountain Morels

2010-07-02T16:49:00.000-07:00

The morel season is really a personal odyssey. If I am restrained here in New England, it lasts a few scant weeks in mid May, but this year I managed to get out to the Sierra Nevada in mid June where the snows were not entirely gone. Here and there around my cabin, elevation 6500 Ft., remnants of old snow banks made driving up the road an adventure.
In the western montane region of North America, morels tend towards the dark side, that is to say, instead of the tan-yellow of the Eastern variety, they are camouflaged in black and brown hues, looking very much like the small pine cones that litter the forest floor.In a word, they are very hard to see, and you can easily walk right by them or, worse, ON them.
The steep slope behind my cabin reaches up to the cabin of my friend John, and over the course of several days, I traversed it frequently; almost every time I found a morel or two. By the third day maybe a dozen were collected, and eaten. The incidences of morels scattered out over time and space reminded me of the music of Morton Feldman where events, made special by their scarcity, can grab your ear and assume a kind of gravitas.Yes, I know that mushroom analogies ought to be reserved for John Cage, but I find the resemblance to the music of his cohort more apt.

And another thing-- the harder you look, scouring the forest floor with eagle eyes, the less you find. You have to have a relaxed, open visual field, alert to what you seek, but not too rigidly focused. Again this reminds me of some of Feldman's music: don't listen too hard!

SOUNDINGS: Listening casually to the new Nonesuch CD of "Alarm Will Sound" Arhythmia I find the hidden gems (or morels?) in this sea of off-kilter motor driven vessels of high energy pulsation to be the transcriptions of Conlon Nancarrow. Now there was a true maverick who still boogies.

Les Morilles du Chacal

2010-05-30T07:24:00.000-07:00

This video speaks volumes about the excitement of stalking the elusive morel. Make sure your audio is turned up

I dont know who M. Chacall might be, but if I were in his shoes in that verdant bed of lurking "morilles" I'd be cackling away too . One senses a certain "joie" in "la chasse" that equals if not surpasses that of the actual harvest.

Fungal fantasies May fullfillment

2010-05-28T18:23:00.000-07:00

After a long hard winter, my annual Spring time trek up to limestone country was not unsuccessful. After the false promises of the escaped specie (see last post) I had some trepidation regarding the annual morel fruitings. About two weeks ago I was delighted to come across several excellent examples of the noble fungus. I didn't find many but those I did were perfect. Sometimes quality trumps quantity. My yield after a full day in the woods? Only three, but they were all the better for their scarcity. And we enjoyed them with white wine butter sauce on our free range chicken breasts. Each bite was a symphony--although one by Webern, not Mahler-- or maybe Feldman is a better analogy. But their authenticity was beyond question--the real McCoy indeed.

I wonder if morels were ubiquitous we'd love them as much. I hear that in the mid West they harvest them by the bushel and then do outrageous, grievous harm to them in the kitchen; breaded and deep fried!!

I have, in some years, found more than a handful--maybe 20-30--but I can't say we enjoyed them any more for their abundance. On the whole, less is more.
And here come the compositional analogue....but, no, it doesn't need to be said, does it?

Semi-Authentic ?

2010-05-13T08:45:00.000-07:00

Walking n East Rock Park the other day, keeping my eyes loosely peeled for morels --they never grow around here, where the soil is very acidic, but you have to keep alert as you never know--I stumbled across a large fruiting of wine red mushrooms in a patch of wood chips under a tall tulip tree. It took me a few minutes to scan through my fungus memory bank, and then I remembered--Stropharia rugosoannulata the so called "King Stropharia"This is an escaped species, believed to be native to Europe but not here. They are widelty cultivated in Europe and maybe here but Ive never seen them for sale
They sprout in the Spring and love woodchips and other garden mulch. Edible and not bad, but not one of the best. Yet they are impressive with their dark wine color and clustered myriads. I consider them to be "semi-authentic." And I know I could make a musical allusion here but I won't-- there's just too many examples of the semi authentic.

But to return to the unalloyed authentic, Louis Andriessen's monumental DE STAAT was resurrected last Monday at Zankel Hall under the guiding hand of John Adams (who also graced us with his own "Son of Chamber Symphony" and Stravinsky's "Concerto for Piano and Winds" -Jeremy Denk was the pianist. It was an amazing concert. I was spell bound, entranced, completely sucked into the glorious brass and woodwind sonorities of Louie's masterpiece. For me, de Staat towers over most music in the latter part of the last century. Its a kind of music that you could say was "invented" as much as it was composed.The enthusiasm of the young musicians of the Carnegie Hall "Academy" (ACJW) was palpable; this is young music and it has finally found its audience and its musicians
Louis is one of the authentic originals of our time.Three cheers to Maestro Adams for his advocacy and skillful rendering of a very subtle piece actually. And please note in the picture of Andriessen above his wielding of a pencil.

Authenticity II-Mondrian's Brush

2010-05-03T10:05:00.000-07:00

Last week the iconic Polish composer Penderecki came to Yale and conducted an orchestra concert of his own works, both old and new."Threnody for the Victims of Hiroshima for 52 Strings" held me spell bound; I was astonished at the originality of this 50 year old example of "Sonorism," a style that Penderecki literally invented. The other pieces were of more recent vintage and easily fell into the catch all category of Post Modernism. I suppose Threnody must be considered a perfect example of modernism; but wait! --there's more to it than that; its a genuinely heartfelt work of music emanating from within. It's authentic without question.
When you hear it, or just look at the score with all its graphic notation devices and strange symbols, you know its Penderecki. Sure, there have been scads of similar pieces using all those "extended" techniques pumped out by other composers anxious to hop on the bandwagon, but there is something about this piece--it has his touch, it has been painted with his brush.

Morton Feldman tells the story of Mondrian’s brush: Someone suggested to the Dutch artist that since his color fields were solid blocks of pure color, who not use spray paint to save time and energy? So Mondrian did, but the results were unsatisfactory; the paintings weren’t Mondrians. What was missing was the brush. Likewise, Feldman used a pencil for composition and never other means; his pencil is like Mondrian's brush.
Of course the analogue is that much of our digital technology mimics “hand” created scores, so in a way we are using spray paint!
Our anxiety is more abstract, less to do with the mechanics or craft, more to do with one’s identity. It’s so easy now to be an artist, a composer, but the paradox is that it’s actually harder.
We are still at the mercy of technology, but we suffer the illusion that everything is now possible-—we believe it but still we dream of that infinite realm of possibilities just waiting around the corner.
Feldman wrote: “One never has an identity, as an artist, but in a vague way remembers oneself in that role.”
So, one must be immersed in one’s own history to know one’s true identity—it can never be taken for granted. Maybe the word “authenticity” is the key to all this.
One ought to seek the “authentic” in one’s art and, in seeking it, remembers one’s identity.
That’s why Memory in art is so important-—the two are almost synonymous.

Authenticity

2010-04-19T06:54:00.000-07:00

Recently, my lovely wife, Veronica, announced her menu for an upcoming dinner party; the main course would be a butterflied leg of lamb stuffed with WILD MUSHROOMS.As the event will take place in mid May I assumed that the mushrooms would be morels foraged by me. I warned her that my fungal forays sometimes failed to produce much. "Oh, I wasn't planning on your gritty mushrooms; I'll get them at Nicas" (our local "gourmet" market).
"If it's actual wild mushroom you want, you wont find them there" I said. All those so called "wild" ones are cultivated, although occasionally there might be a pile of soggy old chanterelles flown in from Asia or South Africa and priced beyond any reasoned buyer's purse.The shitakes, cremini, porto bellos, oysters, are all frequently mislabeled "wild"--in restaurants as well as stores.
In other words, they are unauthentic.
In France and Italy, in the "off" season you will often find real wild mushrooms that have been dried and these can be quite good if prepared properly.In some ways they are bet er than fresh as the flavors tend to be more concentrated. In the picture above, taken in January at a market in Nice, France, you can see "cepes" (boletes or porcini), "morilles" (morels) and "oronges" (Caesar's mushrooms, similar to the coccoras I found in California last November)
I've never tried "oronges sechees" but I can vouch for dried morels--they are strongly perfumed and keep their form after being re-hydrated and cooked; and of course, dried porcini are wonderful in risotti and pasta--you don't need many to impart a real flavor and aroma of the earth.

And there's something about AUTHENTICITY in music that this wild mushroom issue illuminates.It boggles the mind to come across composers now a days who still slavishly follow the "Indeterminate" Cagean point of view (I don't'call it a style or aesthetic) and compose with conceptual ideas which may translate into some kind of music, although usually not.A case in point recently came to my attention; this music (and I shan't mention the culprit's name) seemed to have all the right identifiers to be deemed part of the 70's avant garde which dealt in static, repetitive, minimalistic and chance procedures, as well as arbitrary mathematical schemes that generated notes and rhythms. He obviously owed a lot to Cage and Feldman if not Reich and Riley.
This was sonic randomness, wherein the composer could stand back and feign indifference to the actual sound world he had unleashed, as if it had nothing to do with him--the Cagean idea of eliminating personality from composition.
This "music" came not from within but from outside, delineating ideas that he had absorbed almost as text book examples of what experimental music of that era was like. It sported "cleverness" but lacked authenticity. Period.
This music struck me as hollow, not from a true source of artistic "realness." But then again, searching for the Real is often a thankless task. Sometimes to find the Authentic you have to forage in the woods.

Rites of Spring (soon!)

2010-03-20T09:23:00.001-07:00

I noticed snow drops and crocus emergent in my neighbors yard this afternoon, and I thought that in only two months I will be out in the woods snuzzleing around in the leaf litter searching for the elusive MOREL!
But thats still a long time off--mustn't get too excited.
there's something wonderful about seasonal food--produce of short duration that you long for throughout the year and can only get for a few weeks maybe. Strawberries for example (no, not the fat ones from California that come in mid winter--worthless! I mean the local small guys that fruit in May and June only for a few weeks. And asparagus- the skinny green ones that always grace out Eastertide plates,
how about shad roe or the actual fish?
Can you imagine a dish of poached shad with asparagus and morels??

It's not that we haven't enjoyed some recent mushroom culinary adventures. Veronica brought back from a trip to Trieste, a jar of wild mushrooms from Slovenia, preserved in some kind of pickle. The label in Slovenian reads:

GOZDNI JURCKI B KISU

From what I can make out from a Croatian dictionary (Slovenian is close to Serbo-Croatian) it simply means "Forest Mushrooms in Vinegar." As to the species, it looks like there were a few boletes in the mix, but the others I couldn't identify. They are quite tasty eaten as is, but I thought they might enhance a pizza rather well, and they did, although the vinegar does stand out as the forward flavor. In Italy you can get mushroom "under oil" ("sott'olio") without the acidic "aceto" and these, while expensive, are quite good.

For most wild mushrooms, drying is the best preservation, but the oil immersion works well too; freezing is not good, usually resulting in a sodden mush.
In San Francisco, back in the day, I used to forage for "slippery jacks" out in the far reaches of the city hard by the old Sutro Baths and Seal Rocks--Lincoln Park I think it was called. There were several species of Suillus, a relative of the bolete. to be found there. These slimy topped mushrooms were quite tasty once you pealed off the slippery cap. The local Russians (there was an old colony of Russians out there in the outer Richmond) could often be seen foraging; I asked on older lady how they were prepared in traditional Russian cookery and she directed me to a delicatessen nearby where i found slippery jacks pickled and put up in jars. Naturally I purchased a large jar but I found them to be, well, a bit slimy--but I ate them all anyhow, although no one else did.
BTW, the pizza I made last night with the pickled Slovenes, was quite tasty although it looked to be a chaotic disaster--I had a bit of trouble getting the oil drenched dough into shape and into the oven in one piece. My pizza dough making chops are a bit rusty to say he least.

Shutter Island: Addendum

2010-02-23T06:19:00.000-08:00

If anyone has seen the movie, I'd be curious to hear your opinion, especially as to the efficacy of the soundtrack

SHUDDER ISLAND

2010-02-22T07:50:00.000-08:00

Sitting in the movie theater last Friday, nervously waiting for the familiar fog horn blasts which announce the beginning of my old chestnut "Fog Tropes" I had some apprehension as I knew my music would start the actual movie, Shutter Island starring Leonardo di Caprio, but I had no idea what would appear on the screen.
Well, Leo and his US Marshal pal, Mark Ruffalo, are on a small ferry boat in choppy seas heading out to their island destination, and the music syncs up nicely with the image (Leo is leaning over the bow--a not so subtle allusion to Titanic?), and suddenly cuts to him violently vomiting in the head--Fog Tropes continues with the French horns and trombones weighing in.

So my musical debut in a major Hollywood film, seen and heard by millions, accompanies one of the biggest stars tossing his cookies. Great.

But it does get better; there's a couple of more cues where the mood is set quite well by the music--not just Fog Tropes but "Prelude: The Bay" from "Alcatraz"
If you see this quite unique film (critical opinion is about evenly split--you either love it or hate it) you'll also hear music by Penderecki, Ligeti, Cage, Scelsi and a host of others. The most ominous affect is garnered from Penderecki's Third Symphony "Passacaglia" which barks out in a sort of anunciatory way at least four times in the film's course.
All this music was assembled by Scorsese confidant Robbie Robinson, formerly of "The Band."I have to say, it works for the most part--The ultimate re-mix approach to film scoring.

They say the film was shot in Massachusetts, but the outdoor scenes on the rugged island with its pine forest and verdant cliffs remind me more of Maine; I imagined that a good bounty of chanterelles might be lurking in those woods (Maine in the early Fall is great for mushrooms).Too bad Mark and Leo didnt have time to do some foraging (or maybe they did?) Perhaps when the DVD comes out with its "Behind the Scenes" doc we'll see the cast out in their spare time prowling around those cliffs and mossy copses in pursuit of the golden beauties--after all, Scorsese and diCaprio with their Italian heritages ought to be fanciers of funghi selvaggi.

Saga

2010-02-06T14:16:00.000-08:00

No snow for us today in New England (although they are getting inundated further south in DC) but it's very cold and windy. Good weather for staying home, but I ventured out into the frigid world taking my usual route up to Whitney Peak. Too cold a day for Schubert on the iPod. Sibelius somehow seemed more appropriate.

En Saga--one of Sibbe's lesser known tone poems but one of my favorites. its all about inexorable forward movement and retreat-or more a kind of stasis or slow motion. I think. But oh how wonderful it is to have music like that in one's ears just when one needs it! It complements the icy weather to a T and kept me moving. It got me thinking about the saturation of our society now, sonic saturation that is. Supposedly a hallmark of Post Modernism. It's so easy to have any music where or whenever!! I think the twenty-somethings just take this for granted and why not?) But I can remember back in the 80s when portable music became feasible how miraculous it could be. I remember my first visit to Venice when I walked through San Marco with the antiphonal sounds of Gabrielli on my headphone, and in the"Frari" Basilica I listened to Monteverdi's Magnificat, and out on the lagoon on the vaporetto, the slow movement of Mahler's 5th just as it was in Visconti's marvelous film of "Death in Venice."

And today I thought of another Thomas Mann book, one I've been reading in fact-- The Magic Mountain. Hans Castorp, the protagonist, becomes enamoured and possessive of the new Gramophone the Kurhaus has acquired (this is pre WW I remember). It's like a miracle to him; he stays up late into the night listening to his favorite records which he treats like sacred objects; he can't get enough of it. Mann's description of the amazement and wonder this musical machine inspired in its early days is one of my favorite parts of the lengthy novel. While he doesn't directly talk about it, the idea of the commodification of music is the underlying theme.
For me, listening to music while out walking or driving is still special in that I choose to do it only when I want to, which isn't all that often. But I think for many young people its part of life-- the soundtracks of their lives are habitually running.

Postmodern Mushrooms

2010-02-01T09:02:00.000-08:00

I am teaching a course called "Post Modernism in Music of the last 30 years" (or something to that effect)
When I mention this to people they often ask me flat out,
"What is it?"
"Well, I don't rightly know for sure," is what I usually mumble.
"I think the idea of the class is to find out."
PM, whatever it is, seems to be a necessity, a way of getting out from under the suffocating blanket of Modernism, or at least the "high" kind with all its ideological trappings and high falutin language.Modernism in music seems to me to have been just plain wrong, a seriously wrong direction.
BUT, there are some excellent composers in the early experimental days of Modernism--early Schoenberg, Webern Varese, Cowell, Ives, Ruggles et al. With them the idea was to "sound "modern" at any cost, structure and formality being relatively less important. Of course, with later Modernism, structure, process and form became all important.

Just as Modernism is not a "style" but more of an aesthetic inclination, a cultural context, so it is with PM, which will, I think, be remembered as a general cultural trend, a "correction," if you will.

The more obtuse and serious purveyors of "theory" see PM in a much broader way--it is a "condition." And we are all living in it, so in a way all music, all art for that matter, being practiced now is, by default, PM

So, mushrooms themselves cannot be PM, but one's attitude towards them, use of them, general relationship to them, could be PM where the grand narrative of fungi, the scientific taxonmomic ordering of species is no longer relevant.But in this context,let the consumer beware!

But what would John Cage think about that, and it reminds me that no one seems to know if Cage himself was a Modernist or Post Modernist. I think He was very PM, but his music (whatever that is) is not--it is in fact quite Modernist.

But why, you may ask, is the mushroom illustrated above "postmodern? It might be because it's called, in the vernacular, "Old Man of the Woods," and I can relate to that. BTW, Strobilomyces floccopus is edible, and I have tried it, but I don't recommend it; its rather insipid as I recall.

Trompettes des Morts

2010-01-28T14:47:00.000-08:00

While I am shoveling out the latest white precipitation, my West Coast fungal friends are gleefully harvesting oodles of "black chanterelles or "trompettes des morts" as they are inexplicably called --(ok, they are black/ gray and have a certain haunted look.) They are also called Horns of Plenty derived from the latin name Craterellus Cornucopioides. To add insult to injury they send me a picture of the latest haul. Disgusting!

We East coast mushroom fanciers have to live vicariously in the frosty months. In California these dusky guys can be found in large quantities under live oak and laurel and since they dry well, can be stored for later consumption. We do do get them here, in August, and last year I collected quite a few and dried them. To reconstitute all you need do is soak then for 5-10 minutes and they are ready for the saute pan, or the risotto pot, or the pasta sauce--whatever!
So my California friends needn't feel guilty about the picture--I have my own stash of trompettes sechees.

But wait! Merde!! A search into the larder reveals an empty jar--there's none left! All I can find in that dark cupboard is a bunch of dried wood ears (auricularia sp.) or tree fungus as the Chinese call them, and these not foraged but purchased in the local Asian food market. I put a handful to soak and later that night I find them ballooned up to three times their original size--quite a show. But they are tough, and practically devoid of flavor;the Chinese consider them a "texture" food. They are crunchy, good in soups and reportedly full of healthful things.

Indeed, there are all kinds of amazing claims made about the health benefits of fungi, and some of them may be true.Those made about reishi (ganoderms sp.) which is a "conk" growing on dead pines or firs in New England are particularly interesting and the subject of serious research.

White Music/ Gray Mushroom

2010-01-24T20:42:00.000-08:00

I sat in a cold, dimly lit Anglican church last night and listened to 500 year old music by Taverner, Jenkins and Tallis sung by the Yale Schola Canotorun.My favorite was the Western Wind Mass by John Taverner.There is very little harmonic tension in this music, it all flows along so perfectly. I think of it as "white" music because there is little timbral coloring. Its like a black and white print; there is shading and it can be subtle but color?--no.
The purity of the voices served the music very well and I have to say Simon Carrington, the guest conductor, who was the director of this ensemble the last five years or so, really accomplished something at Yale.(Full disclosure:Simon conducted my "Savage Altars" with the group last year, smashingly well).

Speaking of choral music, I heard a little bit of Valentine Silvestrov's "The Creed"(on ECM records) sung by the Kiev Chamber Choir on NPR All Things Considerd (they actually are still reviewing classical CDs!) He uses the natural resonance and echos of what must be a large cathedral in a very remarkable, compositional way. He blends the harmonies by using the slow decaying residues. Its a technique of which I am jealous!BTW,on the same program there's also a rather nice review of my new CD here.

But what's with the mushroom above partnering with Simon C? Well, I was blathering on about the grisette (amanita vaginata) in my last post but I forgot to illustrate it. But I realize no that it's not really such beautiful mushroom afterall--I mean, it does have a sort of slender elegance but I think its cousin, the cocora, lovelier.

Der Lindenbaum and a Spurious Morel!

2010-01-21T17:17:00.001-08:00

Took a nice walk up to Whitney Peak this afternoon; little snow left but lots of mud.Listening to Winterreise again--most appropriate. When "Der Lindenbaum"appeared in my headphones I stopped dead in my tracks, for only last night I had been perusing Thomas Mann's monumental novel, The Magic Mountain. I had skipped to the very end of the book wherein he quotes from the Schubert lied. Hans Castorp, the hero of the novel (although he's no real hero by any stretch)is seen as a soldier in WWI traipsing across a muddy, sodden battlefield in Flanders, rifle and bayonet in hand, and he can be heard singing snippets of this most famous song, so ingrained into Germanic culture that it is often thought to be a folk song.

"Upon it's bark I've carved there
So many words of love--

And all its branches rustled,
As if they called to me--"

But what does any of this have to o with mushrooms? (Stay on topic, dude!) One of the leading characters in the Magic Mountain is a doctor at the sanatorium where all the "action"-- such as it is in this amazingly narrative-less book-- takes place.Dr. Krokowski likes to give lectures to his captive audience of invalids and happens to be talking about mushroom, and succeeds in shocking some of his female auditors with a peroration on "one fungus famous since antiquity for its form and the powers ascribed to it--a morel, its Latin name ending in the adjective impudicus, its form reminiscent of love..." Of course, phallus impudicus (unlike Mann, I don't shy away from using the first part of its name) is not a morel at all! Its common name is "stinkhorn" and I wrote of it's cousin in an earlier blog (see Nov. 2, 2009)

These are astonishing fungi to watch as they seem to emerge and expand into their embarrassingly suggestive form rather quickly. Over the period of a day if you keep you eye on it, your can see this emergence. They do smell bad and attract flies (indeed, that's how they disperse their spores).
Mushroom taxonomy can be quite racy, and not just on the male side. One of the beautiful, and quite edible, amanitas is amanita vaginata sometimes known as the grisette.Its name refers to the prominent vulva like sac which caresses its lower stem. It's a popular edible in France.This is the only amanita I have ever eaten.

Winterreise

2010-01-02T14:19:00.000-08:00

The other day we got a nice 2-3 inches of fresh snow--not enough to ski on, but enticing for a walk down the hill to the post office.I usually don't listen to music while out walking, but there are exceptions. I had just read Alex Ross's review of the Schubert Winterreise/Samuel Beckett conflation in New York, and it struck me that Schubert's winter journey might be appropriate listening for my peregrination.
Matthias Goerne's beautiful and intensely probing recording was a perfect companion for my little "reise." Schubert uses minimal gestures and motives to bring out the profound affects of the poetry; there's a barebones,immediacy to this music. Benjamin Britten, a big Schubert fan, once said that looking at the first page of the song cycle can be daunting--"there seems to be nothing on the page."

Many of the songs have a persistent movement, a built-in rhythm that propels the "action" along-- its not always a walking tempo, but it's always moving, moving; even the very slow, static songs (for example "Im Dorfe") seem to have a built in pulsation. One feels this all the more if walking while listening, which I highly recommend.

But generally I don't find listening to music while walking --whether for pleasure, exercise or mere transport-- a very good idea.But this seems to go against the grain here on the Yale campus where easily half the students walking to and fro are listening to the sound tracks to their lives.

Back in the 80's when "Walkman"s became popular, and portable music consumption became more and more apparent, I used to wonder what people were listening to. It seemed unfair to me that someone would be walking down the street absorbed in a private music that only they could hear--well if not exactly unfair, it seemed to be anti-social! Of course, the alternative was the cacophonous belchings of the boom box, which in a public space were marauders--to my ears at least.
I suppose the preponderance of "private listening" which has become so normative is but another manifestation of the Post-Modern condition.Thanks to the iPod and other gadgets of its ilk, we now have the possibility of constant music of any type available to us, for a walk, an airplane ride, a bike ride, a dull lecture, lunch, dinner.
I'm still curious about what people are listening to. Isn't there some hi-tech device now that lets you eavesdrop into the ear buds of unsuspecting passers by?

But what, you may ask, would Franz Schubert have listened to on his iPod whilst traipsing around the wooded hills and dales outside of Vienna? Probably nothing, because what we know of his composing habits indicates that he was always composing in his head--how else could he have written those hundreds of lieder?

Foraging for mushrooms on skis

2009-12-25T17:34:00.000-08:00

Yes, the esculent Gyromitra Gigas (Montanas) does grow near melting snowbanks in the Spring in the higher Sierran elevations.About twenty years ago, I was up at the cabin (elevation 6700 feet) in early May and there was still a great deal of skiable snow. The old logging roads were still covered and the weather was warm--in the 60s. I decided to do a solo ski tour up to a ridge and down over the other side through a valley I knew well from summer hikes that would take me down to a campground by the highway, not far from the road up to the cabins. The first part of the adventure was beautiful; the Spring snow was full of glide but slow enough to control one's descent, and the few falls I had only served to exilerate -I was wearing shorts and a tee shirt!

As I lost elevation I noticed the snow cover diminishing rapidly. I found myself walking with my skis on over dry patches of forest floor--pine needles began to adhere to my waxed ski bottoms. But this slow down in progress allowed me to gaze around and scan the forest floor which was gradually becoming more revealed. Sure enough, I spotted a trove of tan/golden "Snowbank" helvellas sprouting up next to a patch of old snow. Eureeka! This was like finding gold nuggests in a mountain stream, only better!

It was foolish of me not to realize that as I went further down in elevation I might run out of skiable snow, but the walk-bushwack down to the campground and up the road was a small price to pay for the thrill of the chase; and my quarry, a very delicious mushroom in the morel family,provided me with a sumptuous repast that night.

Although I'd have to admit I find morels the most exquisite spring fungus, the snowbank "brain" mushroom is always welcome in my basket, and they are so stunning to come across, especially while skiing.

Early Winters

2009-12-20T16:47:00.000-08:00

Almost a foot of fresh snow this morning--and not even officially winter yet! Out on skis in the early pm along Mill Creek. Pristine and quiet, no one about save a few hardy walkers (who unwitingly mess up my carefully made track).The glide is perfect, serene. I think of past ski tours in the Sierras and in the Ringebu Vidda in Norway.I am high (naturally).
Good ski days are rare here in southern CT so when they happen, and I can get out,it's a precious gift, if only for the memories they provoke.And memory is what my music is often about. So I guess the skitur is part of the compositional process?

Where does the mushroom fit into all this? The chances of finding mushrooms while out skiing are pretty slim, but I did in fact do this once, but that's another story.

Bear invasion

2009-12-13T11:14:00.000-08:00

E mails from some of my Sierran cabin neighbors last weekend were alarming; six or seven cabins had been invaded by bears, mine among them. Fortunately these same people did some patch up work to secure broken doors and windows, so I'm hoping that the winter, now in full force in the Sierras, will not also invade the cabin.
Well, there's not much I can do about it until the Spring, unless some of my "Friends of Butchrabben" (Dan S, David R, Sam A, John A??) manage to get up there.
There was something suspicious about this incursion as by the start of December, bears up there should be IN HIBERNATION!! Don't those dumb bears know that they shouldn't be marauding around this time of year, but safe and cozy in ther dens?

It seems that wildlife all over are on the increase and there will be more and more encounters--even here in Conn where we have several flocks of Turkey's in our neighborhood, coyotes are seen and heard, foxes and racoons make regular appearances, and moose... well, they havent gotten down here yet but there have been sightings in NW Conn.

SOUNDINGS: Three thousand cheers for WNYC Radio for inaugurating Q2, its 24/7 New Music Streaming channel

They started off with a week long marathon of Steve Reich--not just his music but that of many composers and musicians who influenced, or were influenced by, him. I guess that includes me.
Q2 refers to its repertory as 500 Years of New Music. I like that latitude--but it could be broader, after all Perotin was major.

Der Schwamerl

2009-12-07T10:52:00.000-08:00

A few postings back, when discussing Alfred Brendel's talk on "character" I raised the question of what kind of a mushroom he might be--Schubert, of course, had the nickname of "Schwamerl" which means little mushroom.A casual conversation with Dan and Kyle in Cutlers Record shop the other day reveled to me that the cover photo of Brendel on the CD I was about to buy showed him looking rather "schwamerlisch"--it was the cap which did it.
And I would have to say that his image might not unfairly be compared to that of the most noble and prized Boletus edulis, known here as King Bolete and in Germanty as Steinpilz

More on this later. In the meantime there has been a serious Bear Invasion at my cabin tht needs attention.

!! NEW CD !!

2009-12-06T08:28:00.001-08:00

New World records has just released "SEPTEMBER CANONS" It is available through them and Amazon or Cutlers Records in New Haven.The cover photo, as well as those in the booklet, are by Jim Bengston. The extensive notes are by Libby van Cleve. Todd Reynolds, the violinist, for whom I wrote September Canons created the electronic processing for the piece in his own studio. I am very proud of this composition, ranking it very high in my oeuvre of electronically processed insturmental works.
The second track on the CD, Peaceable Kingdom was originally composed for the LA Philharmonic New Music Group in 1990, but is here performed by members of the Yale Philharmonia under Julian Pellicano. It incorporates recordings I made in Croatia and Italy in the 80's. Woodstone was composed for the Berkeley Gamelan, an "American" gamelan built by my old friend Dan Schmidt in the spirit of Lou Harrison; it is my only essay in the genre.
The CD ends with an excerpt from The Fragility Cycles the live electronic piece I used to perform in th late seventies. It employs the Balinese flute (Gambuh), synthesizer, voice.
This CD covers a wide span of time in my compositional life--some 25years! Now I just hope the critics are kind towards it, and that it doesnt fall into the hands of that notorious reviewer for the ICO, Marcel Proost!

My own Magic Kingdom in "Disneyland"

2009-12-03T17:41:00.000-08:00

I've never been to Disneyland (honest!) but I've now been to the new Walt Disney Concert Hall in LA, and it really is something; it's all it's been hyped to be, inside and out.I had the transformative pleasure a week ago to sit in the hall and hear the LA Master Chorale under Grant Gershon sing my "Savage Altars." Hearing it sung by a fairly large choir was a revelation as I designed it for a chamber choir and thought it might lose clarity and focus in a bigger choral setting. But Grant's choir sings like a chamber choir, spot on you might say. It was magic.
And then, mirabile dictu, a week later I was back in the magic kingdom and heard just about the best performance ever of "Fog Tropes" under--guess who?-- the guy who made me do it, John C. Adams!
John's concert, part of the LA Phil's Green Umbrella series, had Harry Partch, Frank Zappa and me--still living! The sell out audience went wild for the Zappa stuff, and actually gave me a pretty good hand as well.
The frosting on the cake was "Alcatraz" being shown on monitors in various spaces iall over the building; you might say it permeated the atmosphere during the several weeks of this "West Coast/Left Coast" Festival. Actually, you could barely hear the music on most of the monitors, but Bengston's pictures looked pretty good. Maybe people will buy the CD in the gift shop in order to hear the music properly!
Actually, Alactraz has just been reissued for New Albion Records and has a newly printed booklet with photos of much better quality than the old booklet.
(PS I have a new CD coming out in less than a week--stay tuned)

Ultimate Meal

2009-11-25T07:25:00.001-08:00

In my zeal to let the world know about my mushroom bounty, I gave short shrift to my colleagues at Montalvo who contributed so much to the retrospective concert on Nov 21. Hats off to Julie Lazar (who started it all) and Kelly Sicut (who organized it) and Michelle (who fed us brilliantly),the young members of the Afiara Quartet who played soulfully, and of course Jim Bengston whose sublime photography over the years has inspired me more than anything or anybody. He has been my muse and my helpmate--without Jim, no Alcatraz and Eberbach, no beautiful CD covers which so perfectly illustrate my music.(Stay tuned for new CD announcement soon!)
Note in one of the above snap shots you see Jim consuming a green liquid; this is some kind of magic elixar which he alleges keeps the demons of geezerdom at bay, and is called, actually, "The Ultimate Meal." It ocurred to me that had we consumed our amanitas wrongly identified, then they too would have been an ultimate meal!!

Forbidden fruit

2009-11-24T13:30:00.001-08:00

As the mushroom season wanes here in the East, it comes into its own in California.I arrived in Saratoga CA just a week ago, ostensibly for a concert of my music at the Montalvo Arts Center. The event went very well, thanks to the presence of old pal and collaborator Jim Bengston. We showed our visual-musico opus Alcatraz and its younger cousin, Eberbach. The Afiara Quartet was also in residence and played (beautifully) my Fog Tropes II and Evensongs. But the most excitement for me was the possibility of finding chanterelles or boletes or whatever the forest, after the first Fall rains, might offer up.
The oak and redwood forests around the Villa Montalvo have miles of trails and tempted us daily. The first morning out we stumbled across a cluster of mushrooms that I couldn't believe--the fabled "Coccora" or Amanita Calyptroderma (see above photo).This is a species that I had often looked for in my old Calif days, but in vain. This time they were all over the place.
But alas, I couldn't' find the courage to actually eat them (they are considered a prize edible in Italy where they are sold in markets in October). The genus Amanita has among its members several of the deadliest toxic species. The so-called "Destroying Angel " is among them (colorful name!).There was no question in my mind that these were coccora and not poisonous amanitas --the white "skull cap" veil remnant on the top, the color, the large sac (or volva) on the bottom etc..The illustrations in David Arora's book assured me I was right. But I just couldn't make that leap of faith.
WHEN IT COMES TO AMANITAS THERE CAN BE NOT ONE IOTA OF DOUBT
Had I the time I would have sought out a local fungophile (such as Arora who lives in nearby Santa cruz) to positively ID them. Next time!
Saturday I said goodbye to the coccora infested sylvan climes of Montalvo and flew down to LA to hear the LA Master Chorale under Grant Gershon perform my Savage Altars in the spectacular Disney Hall. I couldn't have been happier --it was a stirring realization
It would have been a pity had I ingested amanita ocreata ("Death Caps") instead of "coccora"--I wouldn't have heard that stellar performance.

Character in Music

2009-11-13T17:56:00.001-08:00

Alfred Brendel. a great legend in a field littered with legends, came to Yale the other night to give a talk on "Character in Music." It was mostly illustrated with examples he played from the Beethoven sonatas, with a few bits of Schoenberg thrown in.
The heart of his peroration was, quite simply, that form and structure do not explain music nor reveal its character;rather inherent character reveals form and structure, in fact. To fully appreciate music such as Beethoven's (or Schoenberg's for that matter) one must have an understanding of the affects and moods the composer expresses through his music. So, character is not to be dismissed as the province of the "amateur" (his word), but ought to have equal status with structure and form amongst the "cognoscenti."
His playing of fragments quite convincingly made his case.
My old pal John Adams touched on similar thoughts in a recent blog wherein he talks about the famous Proustian reference to a musical phrase from a fictional composer, Vinteuil.
One of the great benefits of our so called Post Modern culture is that we can talk about expressivity in music and not be scoffed at or dismissed. Music MEANS THINGS (although not "concrete" things as JA points out)
Or look at the expression on Brendel's visage above. Is it delight or sorrow? It could be either, but it is something; there is Character!

I haven't said anything about mushrooms on this post. I had thought about making a comparative study of Brendel's and Schubert's faces (Schubert, of course, is a huge composer in the Brendelian cosmos). because Schubert's friends called him schwarmerl
which means "little mushroom." I don't see much value in pursuing that path, but I must say that watching Brendel's face as he plays is almost like a movie.It is full of animation and, yes, CHARACTER. I'll think of the right mushroom later.

Big Splash at Galapagos Art Space

2009-11-05T14:35:00.000-08:00

Above photo reveals two blewits hiding beneath autumn leaves; like the music of Ben Johnston mentioned below, they dont reveal their beauties to just anyone!

Tuesday night I ventured down to the ultra hip DUMBO district of Brooklyn to hear a performance of Holy Ghosts at the super cool Galapagos Art Space. The relaization by oboist Sarah Schram as part of the American Modern Ensemble concert was great--she played like an angel. The amplification and mix (pre-recorded tape part vs. live oboe d'amore) wasn't quite right but that's my fault for not showing up for the sound check!
The interior of the space is quite dark and there's a number of large pods with seating around large tables,; in between the pods are bridges over pools of water; in other words there are moats between the pods. I didnt know this and stepped right into the water (dark waters at that) soaking my leg up to the knee. So I made a big spash even before the concert started. Thanks to composer Spencer Topel for coming up with a dry pair of socks for me.
Composer Ben Johnston was there and his String Quartet No. 9 was given a riveting performance by members of the AME.Ben is not as well known as he should be; he is one of the few "microtonalists" who actually writes beautiful, exprerssive music using just intonation. It's sort of a miracle.To call him an American original or national treasure is not going too far. Check out the New World recording of his quartets (including #9 and the amazing "Amazing Grace" # 4)

The Devil Made Me Do It!

2009-11-02T17:18:00.000-08:00

Above photo is of "Mutinus Elegans" or "Devil's Dipstick"

This is not a mushroom I have found around here, but its cousin, "Phallus Impudicus" ("Devil's Stinkhorn") does pop up now and again, especially in gardens. It seems that bizarre or overtly sexual analogues in nature seem to attract the "Devil's" name.
And speaking of the Devil....

Last week John Adams was here in New Haven to give two lectures at the Whitney Humanities Center. The first was a well thought out and handsomely presented exegesis of Thomas Mann's Doctor Faustus, from a composer's point of view. Those familiar with the book will know that it is concerned with the fate of a brilliant composer, Adrian Levrkuhn, who literally sells his soul to the devil in order to attain ultimate acceptance and unparalled artistic achievement.
Besides being the story of a personal tragedy, it is also an allegory about the rise of Germam nationalism and Fascism--heavy stuff.
The second lecture was more about John's music, especially the character of Robert Oppenheimer, or Dr. Atomic in the opera of that name. Oppenheimer's sense of guilt and remorse, mixed with pride and determination (about sucessfully testing the bomb)is powerfully exemplified in the aria "Batter My Heart"A video of Gerald Finley singing the role of Oppenheimer was a crushingly intense musical statement. One almost thought John himself had made a diabolical pact. This is too good!! Does John see some of Dr Faust in himself?
I refer you to John's new blog appropriately called "HellMouth"

And John's latest orchestral essay is fiendishly hot and cool. City Noir Gustavo Dudamel (no, we won't call him "the Dude")whipped the LA Phil into a frenzy with this 30 minute symphony (it has three movements); he also calmed it down for some lovely sentimental moments, but on the whole it's pretty raucous and over the top.PBS broadcast it live and part of that is still on line at the PBS website

Lost in Russia

2009-10-27T11:12:00.000-07:00

Today's NY Times has a strange article about how in Russia mushroom hunters often get lost and need rescuing because they space out and loose their bearings. There's a nice picture of a group of Boletes (Boletus Edulis)
Here's the link:

I got to thinking about John Cage because he once, famously, got lost in a haze while hunting mushrooms in some remore unfamiliar location--I think it was in upper Michigan.He spent the night in a tree fearing that bears might be about. A search party found him in the morning. (If this story if apocryphal, please let me know)
The above picture showing Cage in high spirits after a successful foray, reminds me of an encounter with him in Paris at the Cenre Pompidou sometime in the late seventies.
I was sitting in the bleachers watching the Merce Cunningham Dancers rehearsing--it was an open to the public event-- and I wondered if Cage was around as he often was on Cunningham tours. Just as I was about to leave through a side door, who should walk in but John himself with a nice looking, large basket in hand--much like the above pictured one. After a polite exchange of greetings, I looked down at the basket, which was covered with a white napkin, and said to him, rather knowingly, "How was the hunt? Have you found cepes? girolles?. In the Bois de Boulogne? He looked a bit puzzled and then broke into a smile and said in his familiar lilting voice,"Oh no, this is our lunch I get from the nearby "Biodynamique"--I'm afraid I don't eat mushrooms anymore--they're too "Yang" you know." Or was it "Yin"? I forget but it doesn't matter. The point is that he and Merce had been following a strict macrobiotic diet wherein mushrooms were proscribed.
A year later I ran into him in San Francisco and he told me that he had been out foraging, but I didn't ask him if he had eaten any.

October surprise

2009-10-21T10:28:00.000-07:00

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October 18 09

Today, while descending from my walk up East Rock’s Whitney Peak, I came across a solitary mushroom, a pristine example of Clitocybe Nuda , commonly called “blewit.” It’s been cold, unseasonably so, and I wasn’t really expecting to see much fungal activity, so when I came upon this beauty it was a bit of a surprise. I do like coming across mushrooms when not actively looking for them. It seems that when one is too assiduous in the hunt, the results often can be sparse.
I remembered that blewits like cold weather, so I looked around for more, but found nothing. My solitary, pale lilac- colored mushroom (and I will eat it—it’s an excellent edible) would have to suffice as my mycological rush for the day. Its beautiful stature, delightful color and odor, and its solitariness, reminded me of something a student had brought up yesterday in a lesson.
We had been discussing the Hungarian composer, Gyorgy Kurtag, and my student said: “Oh, I remember seeing a TV film about him when I was around nine. In it he said that sometimes all you needed was one note.. I'm not sure I understood what he meant but it made a strong impression on me”
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That solitary blewitt—Kurtag’s solitary perfect note!
A ways further down the path I spied a mass of white cascading down the side of a dead tree. Hericium erinaceus !! – a mushroom that doesn’t look like one. I picked it (another good edible) and proceeded down the path. I struck up a conversation with some young folks walking up, and they asked me the name of it. I couldn’t remember the common name so told them it was “Old Man of the Woods” (actually the common name of another fungus entirely). We had the perfunctory discussion about poisonous mushrooms and other related cautionary tales, and upon departing I mentioned to them that I had thought about starting a blog about mushrooms, to which one of them replied “You should call it “Old Man of the Woods” (I believe they were thinking more of me than the mushroom--incidentally, the nickname is actually “Old Man’s Beard”)

Well, I seem to have started a blog without thinking about it too much. I will try hard to avoid the pitfall of many a blogger----“blogarrhea” One of my favorite blog writers who does NOT fall into that trap is Alex Ross who appears to be putting his very entertaining and informative blog “The Rest is Noise" to rest . Not that this will take up the slack, but….?.

SOUNDINGS: Back in September I heard a rare thing on NPR—a review of contemporary “classical” music. Robert Siegel found himself “amazed” that he was so drawn into the music of Betty Olivero as played by violist Kim Kashkashian. The piece in question is “Neharot Neharot” It is a very affecting piece of music, but the entire CD is laudable; works by Tigran Mansurian and Eitan Steinberg are also “amazing.” I was especially taken by Steinberg’music. He is not a composer I have heard before, but I certainly will in the future. His “Rava Deravin” for Viola and String Quartet is really a prayer for viola with the quartet providing textures ranging from harmonic clusters (very Japanese sounding actually) to moto perpetuo sixteenth notes reminiscent of Sibelius!. Kashkashian’s playing is an uncanny transfiguration into a human vocal utterance.
Steinberg has an authentic voice; “Rava Deravin” is the real sleeper on this ECM album.