Springtime Melancholia

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

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"

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

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

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

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

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