Where are the chanterelles of yesteryear?

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

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

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

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 ?

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

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

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.