Dobranoc, Henryk

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 !

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

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

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 !!

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?

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.