Stay within Yourself

Over the last few weeks, I've been thinking a bit about advice my pre-college teacher, Dr. Gene Barban, often gave me when I was studying with him.

As a developing pianist (I'm still developing, or disintegrating!) I often let my emotions about the music, about playing, about being in front of people, etc., take over. That often underminded or even sabataged my efforts at performing. The good work I had put into preparing would get mangled by my attitude when it came time to perform. To keep me focused on the essentials of the task at hand, Dr. Barban would tell me to stay within myself.

The advice is still very good for me today. My desire to express, to impress, and so forth, can still rob my playing of security, clarity, and even it's fullest meaning.

I'm starting to see that this lesson from music can and should be applied to life more much broadly. At work, I should stay within myself. Bad emotions - anger, resentment . . . should not color my work or my relationships. Also, complaining rarely helps. Instead, I should choose to be capable and fulfill my various responsibilities and be grateful for work!

If I deal with many of these sorts of problems internally and keep them from spilling over into the rest of my life, I find I am freed, challenged, and blessed to find a new way to think and a better way to care. There is space to pursue and share interests on my own and in my relationships. I become more grounded and open to joy.

In addition to giving more personal fulfillment, staying within oneself can also save coworkers and family members from spending their time on my problems and allows them to focus on their calling and responsibilities instead. The whole world can run more smoothly when we stay within ourselves in this way.

Kyle Matthews Concert

Kyle Matthews performed at Chowan on Sunday night. I appreciated the theme of service that he emphasized in a more and more focused way as the concert went on. A song from his newest CD, "The Main Event," discusses the way that the most important happenings in the realm of God's Kingdom often seem unimportant and eclipsed by the passing acts of human pride, yet those quiet occurrences on the sidelines are often the real main events.

Kyle also mentioned that he had noticed that in the Gospels Jesus seems to have treated every person he met as an individual and never "processed people." Jesus met each one at their point of need. The point of need, both ours and others, is where we meet God.

This point about the way Jesus related to the people has important application for the way I do my job here at Chowan. As I see it, my basic job here is to educate pianists, and to do so, it makes sense to me to study works of Baroque, Classical, Romantic, and 20th/21st Century masters with my students. In addition to this core piano study, it is very good for students to be exposed to many different ways of making music. But our university's mission also suggests that students are getting some vocational training, so education and exposure are not enough. We need to think of the students' futures in music. This seems to call for a more personalized approach. Not every student is aspiring to be a classical pianist. Most have other goals, and those goals might be better suited to those students as well. Thus, I need to be open to the stylistic interests and experiments of my students and find ways to work with them on a case-by-case basis in those areas. For that matter, each student's psychological state, background, attitude towards education, etc., might call for very individualized approaches. Ultimately - and most exciting - we are making something new together as we create our own musical culture here at Chowan, in Murfreeboro, and in the surrounding area.

Back to Kyle, it was really fun having him in town. He was professional and flexible and was enthused to visit with children and students. His music admirably expresses his spiritual journey, and it invites those who hear to join in following the way of Jesus. In addition, he's a deep thinker about the relationship of music and faith.

Gala Recital

Chowan turned 160 years old yesterday. MacDowell Columns looked beautiful decked with yellow mums in the fall light.

Our faculty gala concert was part of the celebration. Playing in that concert provided many good reminders for me:

1. One needs to practice regularly to feel technically stable in performance.

2. One needs to keep performing on one's mind and must be very intentional to make sure the performing reflects one's beliefs about performing and one's best thinking.

3. Certain spaces and occasions call for specific repertoire. For instance, Turner Auditorium doesn't need very quiet music. Instead, a full-sonoritied romantic-styled work such as a Bach-Busoni transcription or a Brahms sonata would work very well there.


So far this semester it seems that I am blessed with some hard-working and very promising piano students. They've encouraged me and made me proud at every lesson. As I teach them, and as I think of my choir director friends, and I also reflect on my classroom teaching, I am struck by some contrasts. Choir directing and piano teaching are in large part about getting musicians to sound better - always moving them to a next level. Classroom teaching is not focused on music performance, so in this way, it's really a very different activity.

I find myself at a really different place personally teaching piano now than a few years ago at William and Mary. At that time I was looking to explore ideas with my students and to present some profound underpinning or proof for my interpretive suggestions. Today I'm mostly listening and responding. At the end of one line I think it needs a little more of the top voice, or I'd like a greater sense of resistance moving into a particular climax, and more often these days I simply say so. We'll see where this leads. It may be a passng thing. And I still do lots of exploring and explaining - I can't stop myself!

I also find myself wanting to tell students how to do certain things that I do, but I don't know how to verbalize those things. I'm working on it.

I've been thinking back to the early years of the Lasker Summer Music Festival and the types of exploration I was undertaking then in terms of seeking modes of performance that express Christian faith. In those early days when I was just starting to imagine and discover some things for myself, the thinking wasn't particularly limiting or dogmatic in any way, and maybe I should refresh my work by revisiting some of the approaches I considered at that time.

However, as my music and faith have become better integrated, maybe I am detecting concepts for myself that aren't so flexible or can't/shouldn't be ignored.

It may be that I need to set forth my basic ideas in writing so I can remind myself of them more systematically. I'd better leave that task for another day.

Spontaneity and a Task Completed

First, task completed:

Some of you know I've been writing a little cantata based on Chowan's quality enhancement plan. The plan was devised to address findings of SACS, which is the accrediting organization for our school. The cantata (or jingleata, as I'm calling it) is to be performed as part of a presentation explaining our plan. A jingleata, by the way, is a cantata made of jingles or a jingle-qualitied cantata. I made up the term, and perhaps the genre.

The scores are now in the hands of the performers and out mine! It was a fun project. It's always nice to have a composition assignment. But it's also really nice to be able to move on to something else.


Now about spontaneity:

On Sunday, after the sermon, Kathy pointed at her watch and gave me the signal to stretch the offertory meditation. It was only 11:45, and our service is scheduled to go to noon - and we're also on the radio until then. So I stretched.

I started by filling up at least a minute, maybe two, with introduction. Then I played a version of "There's a Sweet, Sweet Spirit in this Place" with lots of hesitations between phrases. I embellished that a bit, got a little blusey or soulful, then added a coda using a favorite effect of mine - sort of a random ring imitation on the piano.

Because of the extra time, I explored improvisational aspects that I wouldn't often use in church. I basically explored a variety of things I could do with the tune until it seemed like it gone on for long enough (musically speaking).

The surprising thing about all this is that I belive I had more positive comments about this offertory than any other thing I've played at the church in Ahoskie. I'm not sure if that's because of the different energy of more extended improvisation, because of what I improvised, or maybe it's because people really like the tune.

My friend, Charles Winstead, commented about the accumulation of layers as I improvised. I usually think of layers happening simultaneously, but in this case, they were happening one after the other, as in a theme and variations. I like that thought, because it explains something of the process of the cumulative impact of a theme and variations, and gives me food for thought as someone who makes up music sometimes!

Jacob and Rachmaninoff

Today's Old Testament reading dealt with Jacob's wrestling match with the angel. As a meditation on this passage, I played some of Rachmaninoff's B minor Prelude. After hearing the context of the scripture and the passage itself I could easily hear aspects of the story in the music:

at the beginning, Jacob already struggling in the womb,

at the end of the climactic section - the wounding of Jacob,

and on the final page, Jacob limping,


While this music and the story are full of struggle, I am also reminded of a theme that has surfaced several times during the commentary on the Olympics. I keep hearing that the best athletes actually relax as they get further into their tasks. Perhaps that is a good thing to bear in mind as performing musicians. While the music may picture a struggle, we need to be relaxed so as to be at our best to physically perform the music well. The desire to embody the emotions of the music sometimes leads to a very unrelaxed place.

HWGP

For prelude yesterday I played an arrangement of "Be Still and Know." It's a hard tune to know how to phrase. It keeps coming back to scale degree 5 and then it orbits around scale degrees 3 and 1, too. To add to the confusion about how best to inflect it, and with what mood to do so, is the fact that the text consists of words of spoken by God.

The solution, at least for yesterday, revealed itself in the course of the worship service. Right before the prelude was the chiming of the hour with a handbell playing G, which was scale degree 5. I started in the tempo of the bell and organized my phrasing around the repeated Gs in the tune.

The fact that the words of the song are the words of God made me wonder something I don't remember ever thinking about before:

How Would God Phrase?

To sum up my mulling over this probably odd-sounding question, people phrases are usually arches. That's about the best sort of basic shape we can manage. I think God's phrases would be more complete - circles or spheres.

An arch that returns to the same starting point might be as circular as we can get in a time-bound medium. Maybe the composer of this tune really struck on something profound.

Musician Pitfalls

For many years, I've subscribed to the idea that each calling and profession has its own particular ethical and spiritual pitfalls. On my recent trip, I visited good friends and returned to locations where I spent a lot of time years ago. In addition to reviewing the course of my life, I also had a quick survey of the lives of a lot of other musicians in a bunch of locations. Through these experiences, I was reminded of three pitfalls we musicians face.

1. sarcasm

Sarcasm seems an unhealthy but sort of natural bi-product of having a vision and being taught to be critical about one's own work. If it gets out of hand, it can rob you of a lot of joy.

2. not really engaging with one's church job as ministry or worship

Sometimes we take jobs because we need money, and that's probably okay. But I think we don't live up to our potential as believers if we don't go beyond that. We might also lose some joy that way.

3. worshiping people, experiences, and institutions

Respecting these should be alright, but worshiping them robs us of our freedom and I think it eventually leads to some imbalance and loss of energy.

Running

I had a nice run yesterday morning, and that reminded me that to be disciplined is to do just the right amount everyday.

Sometimes I over-practice or under-practice, and other times I miss the daily part.

Seeking and maintaining just the right balance involves one's sense of proportion, and that's part of beauty. In this way, one's living and way of working can be a work of art.

Peace

We visited St. Paul's Church which is across the street from where the World Trade Center stood. 14,000 volunteers traveled to St. Paul's to support the rescue workers in the months following 9/11. There were also 500 musicians who played in the church to minister to rescue workers as they tried to rest between shifts.

It seems that being the focal point for so much ministry following 9/11 revitalized the church's sense of mission.

Today the church is also a shrine for many who come to reflect on 9/11 and to remember lost loved ones.

In the church, one hears the inspiring story of volunteers from around the U.S. who reached across all sorts of boundaries in acts of love because of their common cause and their shared humanity. I think that outpouring was a beautiful beginning of healing.

I wonder if that healing movement could have grown into a spiritual revival that would have swept around the world.

But my intuition tells me that the healing and the revival were cut short as war ensued.

The phrase "cycle of violence" and humanity's need to break the cycle of violence really sunk in with me as I thought of that lost opportunity.

As I write that, I must also confess that it must be incredibly hard for politicians to seek peace in the wake of such an event.

And that brings me to another often-heard phrase - "give peace a chance." Frequently, what we learn about and call "peace" is a less-than-ideal agreement dictated by the victors after war has been given a chance.

While war is often presented as the only possible choice, I have heard very little about the times when peace has really been tested as an option.

It seems to me that the anger and indignance that are stirred up by even the most basic talk about peace indicate how unwilling our society might be to really considering peace as a way forward.

Just the Facts

We've just returned from a two-week trip up the east coast to Hawley, MA. On the way we visited friends in Richmond, New York, and Boston. I'll be blogging about some details of the journey over the next few days.

In New York we visited the Met Museum. I was interested in returning to see the great masterpieces there after many years. I wondered what the impact of being in the presence of great works by Rodin, Rothko, Seurat, and others would be on me today. I didn't find myself as personally overwhelmed as I was when I was younger, but I am still moved by the works and respect the genius that created them. In a way, these works have become solid great facts for me, but no longer the vital and immediate challenges and experiences they once were. That isn't necessarily a bad thing. Maybe it means I am free to be moved and to respect the works without worshiping them now.

We also visited Ground Zero. I had intentionally not visited once before when I could have. At that time I didn't feel ready. But this time I felt ready and I like I wanted to and should.

Ground Zero is a construction site now. From street level, no structures can be seen rising. There was little personal impact for me. Maybe I'm numb. But really I think it is that 9/11 has passed from the realm of felt reality to mere fact for me and for many of us who don't live with the personal memory of lost loved ones.

I thought the events of 9/11 would become the principal theme of artists of my generation. But all that has come to pass since that time has changed that.

Lasker and Independence Day

The first session of the Lasker Summer Music Festival was a fine time of deep fellowship and record crowds. Our composer-in-residence challenged us regarding many issues from our attitudes towards people whose beliefs are different from our own, our use of music, and who is included in our communities (musical and otherwise.)

Yesterday I attended several Fourth of July Events. At one we were provided flags made in China and a recording of the national anthem stopped a third of the way through. We went to Edenton to see the fireworks. I was struck by the many ages and visions of the world that were co-existing there: young love, middle-aged workers, elderly observers, etc.

Beethoven Fifth Symphony

Friday afternoon, I played the first movement of Beethoven Fifth Symphony in a two-piano transcription with my colleague Paula Pressnell. This was the final performance of Chowan's piano ensemble camp.

I was surprised by the emotion that performing this work stirred up in me. I hadn't played it before, and I was focused and involved with the energy of the piece and playing it. It's a powerful work and I suppose we all know it very well. Maybe those are the reasons I found it so moving.

It's nice to have mysterious, powerful, and unexpected experiences with music like this to remind us that it is bigger than we are and that great music has power.

Websites

Here are a few good websites on musical topics that I've used with classes at Chowan.

Chant

Bach's Well-Tempered Clavier

Beethoven and Napoleon

Wagner's Ring Cycle

Schoenberg's Paintings

Contrasts

Beauty in the garden inspite of the weather.























There's a big forest fire in three counties to our south. It was smokey most of yesterday morning here in Murfreesboro.

Apart form the fire - which changes the air quality significantly at times - it has become very hot here. Summer weather arrived three days ago in full force.

Our place is air conditioned, but I know at least one person whose isn't and have thought seriously about his situation the last couple of days.

I took a walk with Sophie (our dog) and we sat calmly in Squirrel Park on-campus. Us both being calm is a rarity. By that time of the day, although it was hot, a steady breeze was coming from the east, tempering the mood on the shaded swings hanging from our ancient trees. I realized I should be open to, and take advantage of, such moments of peace that spontaneously occur from time to time.

On Wednesday, the Mercer University Children's Choir performed in First Baptist Ahoskie. It was a lovely service of worship that was admirably presented after a ten hour bus ride. The children had great focus. They impressed us with their rhythmic abilities as well.

As I studied the program, I noted that the majority of the composers were women. Such a program is also a rarity. Maybe more children's choir music is by women since women might find themselves working children's choirs more often than men?

I also thought a bit about the purity for which children's voices are often praised. While the sound of children's voices might be considered pure, I think the way children phrase also contributes a lot to this impression of purity. There is a naive quality about the phrasing of children. And by that, I mean something very good. Their musical expression may be as deeply thought and felt as ours and executed with just as much concentration and intensity. But their type of intensity doesn't bring the same adult type of drive to each note passing to the next and ultimately to a climax and a conclusion. Their feelings about this progress are different and maybe more innocent. I still wonder if some of what we adults think of as passion or intensity might really be anger or fear - and that might be okay. Or maybe we should learn how to make music like children - with peace and joy.

American Liszt Society

I'm starting today feeling a little directionless, maybe because it was such a full weekend.

On Friday and Saturday I attended the national festival of the American Liszt Society in Washington, DC. I heard seventeen pianists perform at least five hours of Liszt's music, and there were more events that didn't attend. (It just struck me that 17 is also the number of dollars I paid to park!)

Some of the highlights for me were:

visiting the Library of Congress where the first day's concerts took place

making new musical friends

and hearing superb performances -

Gila Goldstein playing "Wohin?" was magical. The variety and type of tone, the pacing, and her technique that creates the illusion that she isn't playing made this a performance I'll remember for a long time.

Sean Duggan, Benedictine monk and master of the music of Bach, played several works from Harmonies Poetiques et Religieuses. Unfortunately, I only saw and partly heard the last bit of "Benediction . . ." through the window. Even through the window, he conveyed a spirit of seriousness and sincerity that I found very moving.

Justin Kolb, who is very warm and outgoing in welcoming newcomers to the Liszt Society, played the "Apparitions" and gave a spellbinding rendering of the unsettling and occult mood of these seldom-heard pieces.

Elizabeth and Eugene Pridinoff gave one the best two-piano performances I'v heard. They played Les Preludes and Concerto Pathetique. I believe this second piece is essentially the same work as the Grosseskonzertsolo.

Louis Nagel payed the Don Giovanni paraphrase in a way that drew us all into what he was doing with great concentration, and the audience response - which was almost always enthusiastic - really indicated depth of appreciation for the musical quality of his performance.

In addition to those performance highlights, I also heard some of Liszt's violin pieces, one of which is the piano piece "Il Penseroso" twice with some contrasting material in-between.

A number of performers put collections of pieces together and asked the audience not to applaud until the end as they believed there were connections between the works. This happened with both halves of Michele Campanella's recital - first half, sacred works and the second half, Hungarian Rhapsodies, and also with the violin pieces.

A final reflection on hearing so much Liszt in a few hours - while I believe a great deal of Liszt's music is very strong, I don't think he expected anyone to ever hear so much of it at once. Any good composer would organize things in a very specific way if they knew that the works they were composing would be played back-to-back for hours on end.

Jefcoat and Galilee

We attended a fun Murfreesboro event - Porkfest:

20+ Eastern NC Barbecue caterers preparing their food in "Pork Alley"

A classic car show on our street

and admission to the Jefcoat Museum.

The Jefcoat is a treasure almost in our backyard!
From a musical standpoint, it houses a whole floor of square grands (including a Broadwood which was one of Beethoven's preferred brands,) pump organs, player pianos, music boxes, a cimbalom, a very ornate Erard harp, various bells, early phonographs and radios - many of which are still in working order. I anticipate a field trip for my Music History class.

In addition to the musical collection, there is a wealth of Americana - a kind of miniature Smithsonian (17,000 objects all on display at the Jefcoat vs. 136 million owned by the Smithsonian's museums - I looked this up because I was curious and because the numbers are amazing at both places.) At the Jefcoat there are all sorts of washing mashines, butter churns, ice cream mixers, a hunting room full of mounted animals, guns, and traps, etc. etc. etc.

After seeing all of this, I drove to Pasadena, MD to play a concert at Galilee Lutheran Church. The people there are always warm and Joel Borelli does a great job of enthusiastically promoting whatever he's presenting. It's a gift he has, and I appreciate it.

One thing I learned from the recital relates to Ravel Sonatine. I wasn't feeling that my performance had the type of clarity I like, but Joel commented positively on the clarity afterwards. While I didn't feel like my playing was as clear as I wanted, I was keeping most of the piece pretty quiet - which is how Ravel marked a lot of it anyway! It seems that keeping most of the dynamics pretty low helps with the clarity. (Note to self: Read and follow the score!)

Another thing that sunk in with me about the program I've been playing is that the works by Schumann and Prokofief (Papillons and movements from Romeo and Juliet) go together nicely and that seems to be the case because both works demonstrate their composer's mastery of musical characterization. To play them realy well, it might be a good idea to think more like an actor than a musician and seek to become each of the characters depicted.

Trinity Sunday

It's another beautiful morning here in Murfreesboro. The quiet, cool, early summer mormings have begun.

I note that this is my 100th blog post since starting this blog in March 2005. I've enjoyed doing this as a hobby and as a way of connecting with people. Thanks to Martin Tiller, my friend who started blogging and got me interested. Also, thanks to Jeff Prillaman who took up blogging around the same time.

While I'm thanking folks -
This summer I hope to get a lot of composing done. As I find myself getting more comfortable in my composer skin, I have been reflecting about the people who have helped with that transformation.

Stefan Waligur, a composer Kathy and I met a few years ago in D.C., shared a CD of his work with us. The work is clear, worshipful, and can incoroprate musicians of all levels. I found the style very moving and liberating to me as a composer. The first thing I wrote that I felt really good about was my Christmas cantata which was influenced by Stefan's work.

James M. Guthrie, my colleague here at Chowan, is the other influence I am deeply appreciating. Dr. Guthrie is a superb composer - gifted and highly skilled. His great gift to me has been simply recognizing me as a composer, which frees me to produce without becoming entangled in judging my own output.

Tomorrow night I have a concert. Yesterday I found myself not knowing quite where I was technically or musically with the music I'm playing. On the eve of Trinity Sunday, I am reminded that symbolic practice is very helpful in such a situation. By "symbolic practice" I mean structuring one's practice time using meaningful numbers (such as thre)e from the Christian tradition.

I've known the works I'm playing for some time, but some sections don't feel totally secure at the moment. Trusting that three (or seven or twelve {rarely twelve!}) focused repetitions of these passages will reconnect me with my history of work with this music is very useful in keeping my practice realistic and keeping me on a good plane emotionally!

This morning I also returned to another practice I gravitate to from time to time: praying through my repertoire. Here I ask what I want the audience to get from each portion of each work, and pray for that to come to pass. This approach teaches me a lot about the music, and it helps me to make music with a consciousness of God.

Music for Pentecost

Today I played a short organ prelude I composed based on the chant "Veni Creator Spiritus." It was organized into several layers moving at different rates. Between the pentatonic qualities of the chant and a few dotted notes I added, the overall feeling was vaguely early American!

For postlude I played the last movement of Ravel's Sonatine on piano. This piece sounds like a rushing wind, and the harmonies seem to suggest the supernatural in a traditional church context. After the service, it dawned on me that it's also a good piece to play when Pentecost and Mother's Day coincide as it has been suggested that falling fourths, such as those that permeate the melody of this work, symbolize Ravel's relationship with his mother.

Nice Weekend

Saturday was a very nice unplanned day here in Murfreesboro. I went to the Farmers Market for the first time, and we bought some very good tomatoes and strawberries and looked at some art by local artists. We took Sophie for a long walk, and in the evening, we went to the grand opening of our new Mexican restaurant, Los Amigos, where we ate outside under an umbrella in the cool evening weather.

That day we also learned the story of one of the handsome homes in town that was built by a family that owned a basket factory and helped their employees make it through the Great Depression.

It was also a very musical weekend. Saturday night we heard an excellent Viginia Symphony concert in Newport News that included a work by Schreker. Sunday we had brass and children's choir with Orff instruments at church, and in the afternoon, I attended Paula Pressnell's studio recital. It's always inspiring to hear the results of all the piano practice that young people are doing. In the evening, we celebrated Ascension Sunday with an Italian buffet accompanied by James M. Guthrie's work, Ascension, at our house.

Juxtaposition

Now that the school year has come to a close, there is a little time for blogging again.

Chowan ends the academic year with an interdisciplinary symposium that involves faculty from all disciplines in exploring a single topic. This year, that topic was the environment. In addition to this forum, there is also a symposium of student research and other special events. This gives the end of the year an exciting flavor and energy that are decidedly scholarly and informative.

The culminating event of this year's symposium (as well as the music department's year) was a performance of parts I and II of Haydn's Creation. This involved the student choir and neighborhood chorus, members of the Meherrin Chamber Orchestra and Virginia Symphony, and soloists Lori Parker (an excellent soprano who happens to be married to our conductor,) Walter Swan (a vibrant singer who taught here in past years,) and my good friend, tenor Jeff Prillaman. Kathy, my wife, was in the horn section. I played viola, and another good friend from Richmond, Jeremy McEntire, played flute.

I list all that information about these personal connections because the personal connectedness of this performance is part of what made it very special. Many people who have known each other, worked together, or taught and studied with each other, worked independently for awhile, then came together to create a rich tapestry of musical and spiritual energy.

Now for the juxtaposition part. During the intermission of this sublime work about the creation of the world, more details started to arrive about the tornadoes in nearby Suffolk, VA. One person onstage received a phone call with the number 200 in it, and it wasn't totally clear if that 200 referred to deaths or injuries. Fortunately, it only referred to injuries.



Here's a bit of musical trivia from my experience. Haydn sets words about the creation of insects with a little text painting from the violas. I almost didn't play the section as I thought the professionals next to me would do it very well and that I might mar their efforts. But I decided that it was such a quintessential viola moment that I should play it for experience's sake. I did, and I think it was okay. In fact, Jeff was impressed by this "swarm" for the first time in our performance.

CMS, CBF, AGO

It has been a busy few weeks.

Jeff Prillaman and I presented a lecture-performance on Liszt's Petrarch Sonnets at the College Music Society meeting in Gettysburg. Here are some of the ideas we shared:

Liszt resonated personally with Petrarch's struggle between the spirit and the flesh.

Liszt puts the performers in the appropriate dramatic moods through the technical demands of the music.

The sonnets are constructed of a series of styles ranging from art song to Bel Canto to Verismo. Such a demanding progression of vocal requirements is similar to the sequences of technical demands he puts on pianists in works like the Dante Sonata or Mephisto Waltz.


We heard many excellent presentations at the conference including presentations on piano music from China, Haiti, and works by the Russian jazz-influenced composer, Kapustin. A personal favorite of mine was on the strategic use of bands on the battlefields of the American Civil War.

On the way home, I played at Woodland Heights Baptist Church where Kathy and I worked in Richmond, and in the aternoon I played on a concert with friends from the Talent Developing Studio at Slash Christian Church. Slash is the oldest wooden church in Virginia.

Last night, Kathy and I drove to Raleigh for part of the Cooperative Baptist Fellowship of North Carolina meeting. There I learned about the Winston Salem-based Institute for Dismantling Racism. I took part in a fascinating discussion of the use of arts in missions work led by Jonathan and Tina Bailey who are artistic missionaries in Indonesia. They discussed the complexities of creating new Christian expressions within traditional styles such as gamelan and shadow puppetry. I also attended a presentation on the history of Chowan University given by our president, Dr. White. I learned many interesting things there including some facts about the recent restoration of the MacDowell Columns building. The massive columns on the portico are made of cypress and had around 35 layers of paint on them before they were scraped and repainted.

Today I played a concert for the Northeastern North Carolina Chapter of the American Guild of Organists at Roanoke Bible College in Elizabeth City. I had not been on that campus before and was impressed by the facility in which I played. It housed a nice chapel with a good older Baldwin, a gym, and a library. The building is situated right next to the water where there are swings, geese, and ducks.

I've felt a little frustrated practicing lately, but I've pushed through it each time and kept practicing. I felt like it paid off today as the memorized works held together better than in the previous performances. Also, my frustration pushed me to connect on a deeper level with the Prokofiev Romeo and Juliet pieces I've been playing. I played them more personally today and with more focus on the various characters from the play as they are expressed in the music. I had been trying to do less with time and more with color, which is what my best Russian-trained friend tells me is most stylistically appropriate. I appreciated that and agree with that, but I allowed myself a little more rhythmic freedom today, and I believe the pieces really came to life in a way they hadn't before for me.

Maybe frustration in practice is sometimes a sign that the opportunity for better playing and a deeper personal connection is at hand if only we don't give up.

As an encore I played my recently composed Ragtime Etude. The piece is a little bitonal and I think the bitonality of the last page keeps any one pitch from sounding like a strong tonic. I think that may be a compositional problem I need to solve. As Dr. Benjamin often told us, most composing is editing!

Easter

We're enjoying a beautiful spring here in Murfreesboro.

Last week was Easter and also a special day for me as it was my first Sunday as the official organist/music associate at the First Baptist Church of Ahoskie. For offertory and postlude I played Handel: I Know That My Redeemer Liveth and Palestrina: The Strife is O'er.

I'm still reflecting a bit on the nice spring break we had. On our trip to Raleigh, we visited the state capitol building. As a native North Carolinian, I was very inspired by our time there. Three things I found especially stirring were plaques commemorating the Edenton Tea Party (I graduated from high school in Edenton and some of my ancestors lived there,) and the Halifax Resolves, and the monument to the North Carolinians who were presidents of the U.S.

Kathy's family was here this weekend, and we visited a local store that is typical of many of the things we love about Murfreesboro - The Woolery. The Woolery is owned and run by a couple who moved from Syracuse, NY in search of better weather. In their store we saw all sorts of spinning wheels and looms. They also sell every imaginable sort of book relevant to topics from knitting patterns for your dog's neck warmer to a work called Making the Most of Your Llama to several reference books on the various Tartan plaids. There is also a section of used books on a variety of topics as well as a whole shelf of literature in French!

Da Capo Concert and Masterclass

Over the weekend, I played a concert and taught a masterclass in Richmond, sponsored by the Da Capo Institute.

As I turned 36 a week earlier and I was also on spring break, the occasion proved to be a good time for reflection on my musical life.

Right before the concert, I had a feeling I'd never had before, and that was that having to play from memory is somehow undignified - as if art music required some sort of parlor trick.

After performing, I realized that I am more comfortable performing James M. Guthrie's Intermezzo and Fugue than Schumann's Papillons. From a techical standpoint, the Guthrie is a lot harder to play. But it fits me better tempermentally, or at least my current way of playing it does.

That evening, I had a good long talk with my good friend and musical collaborator, Jeff Prillaman. We shared our autobiographies as performers. Out of that came at least two solid bits of pianistic wisdom for me to remember:

Different works as well as different eras in one's life require different performance approaches. When I was a lot younger, I used a method acting approach to most of what I played. Then I came to trust the music more. Now I am trusting the music and my talent. Ultimately, I would do well to keep my music-making focused on my theme of integration - particularly the integration of my art and faith. I believe there are many ways in which one might make music so as to honor God - and I ought to pursue them more intentionally .

The other point also deals with difference and that is that different pianos can be radically different and one can't do everything one wants to with a piece on every piano. This ought to be taken into consideration when one evaluates one's performance goals and efforts.

Chowan Pianofest

We held our first annual Chowan Pianofest at the beginning of March, and it was an inspiring few days around town for musicians.

Richard Becker who teaches at the University of Richmond was our guest pianist. Richard inaugerated this new fest with a brilliant recital which was, as Kathy described it, an event. While the music may or may not have been about something outside itself, it was an event of importance in and of itself - like a sunset or the Grand Canyon.

He played two Beethoven sonatas, probably as well as they can be played. The second half consisted of a group of Debussy preludes and a Chopin group concluding with the First Ballade.

On the following morning, Richard worked with seven local students in a masterclass where he expounded on the work of the pianist: to express what's on the page and to be responsible for the progress through music that occurs in performance. He helped our students relate more closely to the piano and its technical demands and possibilities. He also helped students recognize their talent through sensitive and open listening and encouraging comments.

That eveing, I performed a solo recital. The program is posted here I think the Intermezzo and Fugue of James M. Guthrie really made the program. Guthrie is a colleague of mine that I've mentioned before. I was also intrigued by comments indicating that the Friar Laurence movement of the Prokofief was a special favorite for some audience members. I revisited passages of Shakespeare's Romeo and Juliet the afternoon of the concert and realized how significant a character Friar Laurence was, and also what a genuinely good fellow he was. (And as always, I am amazed at Shakespeare's ability to create what seem like real people - many of whom also happen to speak in verse a lot of the time!) I find his conversations with the young Romeo very moving because of his understanding and his caring. I think we'd all do well to have a Friar Laurence in our lives.

I used the Friar Laurence movement as an organ postlude at church the next day, and I thought it worked quite well. I added a little chime on the last two chords.

My colleague, Paula Pressnell, played a lovely recital the next day showing off her terrific clear and even technique in a couple of classical works. (She doen't show off, though. She's quite humble.) The second half included Brahms rhapsodies which struck me as not very rhapsodic because what seems like a big exposition repeat at the beginning of the B minor Rhapsody! Paula ended our weekend of piano music with a sparkly Liszt Hungarian Rhapsody.

Hearing the three of us on the same piano and in the same hall reminded me of the amazing variety of sounds and affects that can be created with a piano by different hands and temperments.

I'm already looking forward to next year.

Eugene Onegin

We saw Virginia Opera's production of Tchaikowsky's Eugene Onegin last week.

Early on, I was struck by the Mozartean clarity of the ensembles and the almost instrumental nature of some of the vocal writing.

I think some of the best music in the opera conveys sentiments that we seldom hear in opera - domestic sentiments such as the two elderly sisters singing about how habit had replaced joy for them or the scene in which one of the sisters is helping her young charge get ready for bed.

Finally, Pushkin's plot seems a lot like Jane Austin's Pride and Prejudice only with a sad ending. Normally, I think about how much life in the past was like living today when I go to the opera. But at Onegin I felt like my society is quite different from the one portrayed onstage. I haven't engaged in class-oriented cultured social dancing or dueling over my honor in a long, long time.

Learning

I've been learning old and new lessons the last several weeks -


Faure studied with Saint-Seans. I think that explains the various piano figurations in the A major Sonata for violin and piano.


Most musicians go through at least two stages if they stick with it long enough:

stage one - you think everything always comes out fine in your performances regardless of your preparation - and you're wrong!

stage two - you think your perfromance didn't sound very good, but when you listen to the recording you discover you were wrong!


Now for something really basic: you need to practice every day if you want accomplish anything.

Tired!

One of the challenging tensions of being a musician is that it reminds you, pretty much on a daily basis, that you are both spirit and flesh.

Music is an emotional, intellectual, and spiritual endeavor.

At the same time, it's physical.

The combination complicates one's life, but I think it keeps you aware that you really are living!

Today I'm facing some fatigue that's standing in the way of me feeling up to par musically. My hands are arms are tired and I'm not reading as well as I normally do. Those things make me feel uncertain at the piano. And because I'm tired, my mind leaps from topic to topic instead of staying on the task at hand.

Work, other responsibilities, changes in schedule, over-practicing - all these things can contribute to a musician being tired.

I almost forgot - bad nutrition, lack of exercise and rest also play a role!

Also, clicking the mouse and staring at the computer screen.

So, I'm going home to take a nap and then do very little until rehearsing tomorrow night.

Recent Highlights

Two highlights of the year so far:

An inspiring weekend working with young students at the Talent Developing Studio in Hanvor, VA. Working on music with these hard-working students reminded me that it's really refreshing and joyful to start with musical ideas and then work on technique to fit those ideas. My tendency is to start with technique in my own work, in spite of my own very wise teacher's admonitions to start with music!

Great art makes us feel things - it challenges whatever numbness we might have. It also gives us a fresh perspective. Tonight I had both experiences as I watched and listened to my colleague's works Windows, Doors, and Metal. The images used in these works were beautiful and suggested many forms and ideas. The music was compelling at times and hypnotic at others. Thank you Dr. Guthrie!

Christmas at Chowan

A little article about Christmas at Chowan

Christmas in Venice

We spent the Sunday after Christmas at Venice Presbyterian Church in Venice, FL.

The service was a service of lessons and carols. We were told that the basic format goes back to Archbishop Benson who chose the readings and so forth back in 1880. Also, the service of lessons and carols has been broadcast on BBC from Cambridge every year since 1928. (This reminds me that I read somewhere that Handel’s Messiah has been performed somewhere every year since it was composed.)

One phrase on the bulletin from Venice Presbyterian refers to the “joy-filled traditional worship style for which VPC is known.” The service we attended perfectly exemplified that statement.

I’ll highlight some of the elements that made the service especially rich for me:

After the reading about the expulsion of humanity from the Garden of Eden, the organist played a setting of a very old and seldom heard hymn, “Through Adam’s Fall All Men Are Cursed.” This gave a sense of connection back through centuries of religious tradition.

Another musical highlight was a piano solo presented by the pastor. He played his well-crafted interpretation with seriousness and sincerity. The trajectory of each phrase was beautifully calibrated to fit into its overall context. His rendering was also characterized by striking shifts of color and very well-projected soft playing.

Just a little later, the choir sang an arrangement of “He is Born, the Divine Christ Child.” In addition to their good blend, the choir added depth to the service at this point with a verse or so in French.

Throughout the service, readers, many of whom were members of the church’s pastoral staff , read passages of prophecy or the details of Christ’s birth from Luke and Matthew. Each reader’s tone matched the respective reading like a glove. One conveyed the sweetness of the manger scene, another, the profound beauty of the coming of Christ, and yet another, the world of the Wise Men.

Regarding these readers, I appreciated being able to match the names in the order of service with the names of the pastoral staff on the back of the bulletin. Coming to the church as a visitor, it gave me a good sense of the warmth and range of some of the folks who minister in the church.

Two of the congregational hymns were “Angels We Have Heard on High” and “We Three Kings.” I thought the organist gave each of these just the right flavor. For the second verse of “Angels” his registration was very reedy and he played a little staccato. This underscored the hardy ways of the shepherds. And throughout “Kings” he maintained a sense of the gait of dromedaries throughout, thus carrying the congregation along on the journey of the Wise Men.

Two surprises (at least to me) were saved for close to the end of the service. The final congregational hymn was “In Bethlehem a Babe Was Born.” This was a new carol to me, and it did a great job of summarizing all the ground that we have covered in the service. The hymn went on to call for contemporary action regarding the ancient message we had been hearing. I also liked it because of a rarely-heard iii chord at the end of the penultimate line that harmonizes the word "forlorn."

The other surprise was the choir’s spirited singing of an anthem entitled “Rejoice with Exceeding Great Joy” by D. Johnson (same arranger as for “He is Born” mentioned above.) This piece was a combination of Bizet’s “Farandole,” “We Three Kings,” and “The First Noel” with quite a few glissandi thrown into the mix. But the great thing about it was the joyful and attitude of the singers! Trumpets and drums couldn’t have added any more life to the scene. The fact that the joy was deeply felt and conveyed with so little inhibition made me notice it and participate in it.
It was during that piece that I really understood the phrase from the bulletin about “joy-filled traditional worship style.”

Finally, after having such a good and uplifting time in the church, we were reminded through a thoughtful benediction and a Bonhoeffer quotation that the world outside the church’s doors is hurting and that we are called to make the joy of Christ’s Kingdom a reality in our world today. The service was bookended by this type of thought - the pastor’s prayer at the beginning provided that same sort of understanding of the context of our worship. We visited the Venice Presbyterian once before and heard the same type of message then as well.

We were very grateful for this Christmastide experience .

Something New for New Year's

Dr. Guthrie e-mailed me this interesting link:

Continuum Fingerboard

Reminsicent of this.

Christmas Cards from Murfreesboro

For any friends who might be reading my blog around Christmas, I'm including a few pictures of our warm and charming surroundings here in Murfreesboro.






This little Christmas tour starts with a scene just outside town.





This is the home of one of our local merchants who sells spinning wheels, looms, and so forth. The children at this house study piano with Kathy.





Here is one of the majestic old homes in the historic district all decked out for Christmas.






The Murfreesboro Historical Association presents a Christmas tour every year, and this year's tour explored some of Murfreesboro's international connections. Thus, the flag of Scotland.





This last photo is the steeple of the Methodist church across the street surrounded by lots of mistletoe. My friend and colleague, James M. Guthrie, is the organist and choir master, and I play there on occasion.

Merry Christmas everyone!

Great Christmas Music in NC

Last week, our church (First Baptist of Ahoskie) held a church-wide party and concert that included mostly lighter selections performed by all the different musical groups in the church. Kathy coordinated most of this music. One creative item was a sing-along accompanied by handbells.

The other two items that really caught my attention were songs I've known for many years but had either never thought much about or have a new take on this year.

"Silver Bells" was the first of these songs. The text in combination with the musical style perfectly situate the song between urban and rural life.

The second song was "Have Yourself a Merry Little Christmas." I had been thinking this song was about the most depressing Christmas song, second only to "Shake Me I Rattle." It has always seemed sappy, sentimental, and maudlin to me.

This year, I'm hearing it differently.

The song is really about community and belonging.

Now that both of my parents have passed on, the song has taken on a new depth for me. As I was hearing it in the context of our church - in the context of Christian community - I realized that these people are my community and family now, and may very well be for many years to come. I'm new here, but the time is right for me to grow into this community, to connect, to know and to be known.

Freshmen Devotionals

Last week was our last week of classes and our final devotional was as follows.

Musicians get very busy at Christmastime. There are extra concerts, church services, parties, etc., all of which require music.

Often we hear the complaint that the busy-ness and commercialism take us away from real devotion to Christ at Christmastime.

While the busy-ness of the Christmas season may distract us fom whatever routine of quiet time we may have, I think a healthier and more joyful approach to the situation might be to recognize that all the busy-ness, whether sacred or secular, is a reverberation of Christ coming into the world so many years ago.

Thus, as we go about the myriad of things we have to do in this season, we can engage in each of them worshipfully and joyfully as we remain mindful of Christ's coming that created this cultural rhythm that has endured for centuries.

Freshmen Devotionals

This is the devotional thought I shared with my freshmen music theory class the Monday after Thanksgiving.


There are several things that make our class hard, not least among them:

Meeting at 8 A.M.

Not all of us find theory a natural fit for our way of processing information

And did I mention meeting at 8 A.M.?

These things and others could contribute to us not feeling so grateful at times.



One of my mother's favoerite Bible verses to quote was Psalm 118:24 -

"This is the day the Lord hath made; let us rejoice and be glad in it."


I have often understood this to mean that God has made the day. God has given me time to live. I should be grateful for that time. By itself, the verse seems to say nothing about what I'm experiencing during that time, but that we should rejoice because God has made the time.

I don't think that's really what the verse means in the context of the psalm. Still, I think it is a good thought, and I am more joyful when I think that way. I'm more mindful of God when I have that mindset.

In its context, the verse refers to a day in which God has saved the writer, and we can also be grateful that God is in time with us, redeeming and saving.

Freshmen Devotionals

Our most recent devotional was based on the following reading from John Wesley's sermon entitled "God's Approbation of His Works."

Such was the state of the creation, according to the scanty ideas which we can now form concerning it, when its great Author, surveying the whole system at one view, pronounced it "very good." It was good in the highest degree whereof it was capable, and without any mixture of evil. Every part was exactly suited to the others, and conducive to the good of the whole. There was "a golden chain" (to use the expression of Plato) "let down from the throne of God;" an exactly connected series of beings, from the highest to the lowest; from dead earth, through fossils, vegatables, animals, to man, created in the image of God, and designed to know, to love, and enjoy his Creator to all eternity.


This passage paints a picture for me of how God created us to be:

without any mixture of evil

functioning at our very best

performing our role which is important for all of creation


These three themes could be foundational to a Christian approach to artistic or student work. We need to have a pure devotion to our work. We express that devotion by striving to do our very best. The health of the whole community depends on us doing the best with our part.

Freshmen Devotionals

Today we compared two Genesis passages.

In the first, God created light.
In the second, humanity was told that survival would involve work.

The comparison reminds us that God is different from us in that God speaks and creation happens. There doesn't seem to be a planning or working stage involved. On the other hand, humanity has to work to get from an idea to a product.

As performing artists, we enjoy the moment before the public. But the life of a musician is really much more about daily work that is for our ears only. We should be grounded in that fact and seek to find some fulfillment in that daily toil.

Theory Fun

1.

In my Music Fundamentals class, we have been studying how to generate intervals above and below specific notes. I taught the students that for ascending intervals, they can use an ascending major scale as a starting point. For instance, if they need to determine a major third above G, all they need to do is consult the G major scale and note that the third note of the scale is B. All of the intervals from the tonic up to any other note in a major scale are major, except for scale degrees 4 and 5, which are perfect. Minor intervals are then generated by lowering the top notes of these major intervals a half step.

One of my students started asking questions about generating descending intervals and whether or not some sort of scale could be helpful. After thinking about this a little, we realized (something that is actually pretty obvious but I hadn't thought through before) all the intervals from the top tonic down to any other note in a major scale are minor, except for scale degrees 4 and 5, which are perfect! Thus, a descending major scale can be used as a template for determining descending intervals.

2.

I have one adult student outside the University. She plays for church services, and the focus of our lessons is for her to learn how to enhance her hymn accompaniments through improvisation.

An important skill to develop towards that end is the ability to quickly understand what chords and chord progressions are in the hymn at hand.

As we were analyzing chords in a hymn, we came upon a cadential six-four chord. As many of you know, the naming of that chord is controversial. Some call it "I six-four" since the pitches in the chord are those of a second inversion I chord. Some call it "V six-four" because it has a strong dominant feeling. The problem with calling it that, though, is that in the standard system for labeling chords with Roman and Arabic Numbers for roots and inversions, respectively, it is assumed that all the chords are stacks of thirds. Thus, the bass note of a cadential six-four chord couldn't really be the root of the chord since the distance from that pitch to the next chord member is a fourth and not a third. In addition to that problem, there is already a chord that is labeled "V six-four" without being inconsistent with labeling principles. The bass of that chord starts on scale degree 2, not 5. The phrase "Dominant six-four" is a little better, but it can still be a little confusing as "V" and "dominant" are synonymous when referring to scale degrees and chords (most of the time.) The phrase "cadential six-four" seems to be the clearest description of the chord's funtion and its inversion.

Now for the good part! I asked my student if the chord sounded like it had a tonic, dominant, or pre-dominant function. She accidentally but very accurately referred to it as "Tominant" - tonic pitches with rather dominant function.

Father

My father would have turned 78 yesterday. That means he passed away a little over eight years ago. It's very hard to believe it's been that long.



Last night at choir practice we were rehearsing the old American tune "Hark! I Hear the Harps Eternal." Kathy said we are to sing it on All Saints Day.

Part of the text of "Hark! I Hear..." is:
"Souls have crossed before me saintly
to the land of perfect rest
and I hear them singing faintly
in the mansions of the blest."

That first line made me think of my father. Over the years, my mother highlighted his integrity in conversations with me by commenting on aspects of his personality:
"He doesn't have an ulterior bone in his body."
"One thing your father can't stand for is people being mistreated."



My father loved music, especially the music of the church. The song "It Is No Secret" by Stuart Hamblin played a crucial role in his call to ministry. One of his favorite hymns was "When Morning Guilds the Skies." He chose that as a congregational hymn for many of the worship services he planned.

He grew up in the heyday of the big bands. He really knew the history and output of Benny Goodman and Harry James. He also loved the crooners like Dick Haymes. He even wrote and recorded a ballad on a couple of occasions. It's called "The Moonlight and You" and it sounds a little Glenn Miller-esque. I have the 45s.



In terms of classical music, certain works that I played really captured his imagination:

Debussy . . .la cathedral engloutie

Paganini-Liszt E Major Etude

Ginastera Sonata, First Movement

Liszt Dante Sonata


He liked the image of me as a happy young musician playing the opening theme of Kabalevsky's Youth Concerto.

Debussy First Arabesque was a bit of theme for us - a little bit nostalgic - as it was theme music for a short segement about astronomy that appeared on Saturday TV. After I went away to college, he would sometimes hear it and think of how he and I had often looked at the stars together when I was still living at home.

He also identified deeply and personally with the beginning of Rachmaninoff Second Piano Concerto. In those opening bars he heard the struggle of a hero and his family facing the stormy opposition of the world and fate.



The second movement of Beethoven Sonata Op. 111 conjures up in my mind my father on his hospital bed in our living room during his last summer. During his mostly unconscious last days it was as though his soul was lingering in the room - not necessarily in his body - maybe up near the ceiling. It is that sensibilty that I hear in the Beethoven: sad, beautiful, questioning, floating, and all about the essence of human identity and existence.



Dad and I were good friends.
Maybe I'll learn Op. 111 for him one of these years.

Freshmen Devotionals

More on music as a family -

Although we may not always feel like it, family members are often the most likely people to "get" us. When things don't work out the way we hoped, when we're irritable, or when we desperately want to be loved, our families (at their best) somehow seem to understand us better than anyone. We may not always feel like that's the case, but when we're far away from them and feeling lonely, we realize it's true.

Sadly, not all families have that sort of connection, but I think it is usually a natural good of being in a family.

Music can provide us a similar connection. Sometimes we encounter musical moods that resonate with our own moods - moods we had previously thought were unique to us. Then we know we are not alone. Others have travelled the same path.

At different times, music can move us from our own conflicted moods to more open and joyful ways of thinking and feeling - just like a good talk with somebody from home.

Olga Kern

Last week, several of us from Murfreesboro drove down to Greenville to hear Olga Kern play a concert at East Carolina University.

In Chopin's Third Piano Sonata she created a beautiful calming effect as she released the intensity of the sound and tempo beginning with and moving into the second theme.

The second half of the concert included Rachmaninoff Second Sonata and Liszt Hungarian Rhapsody No. 2 with a cadenza by Rachmaninoff. This got me wondering about the Liszt-Rachmaninoff connection. Rachmaninoff studied wuth Siloti, who was a Liszt student.

As I was researching that connection, I came across information regarding Rachmaninoff's burial. He was buried in Kensico Cemetery in Valhalla, NY where many other famous people are buried including Anne Bancroft, Tommy Dorsey, Lou Gehrig, Ruth Laredo, Robert Merrill, and Ayn Rand.

Back to Olga Kern, her encores were all Russian, and included probably one of the very best performances we are likely to hear of Rachmaninoff's C sharp minor Prelude, which we most often hear played by high school (or younger) pianists.

Freshmen Devotionals

Most recently, we considered the fact that in Genesis, God is depicted declaring what was accomplished on each day of creation to be good.

Artists, musicians, and poets have typically found inspiration in the created order. The goodness of experiencing nature grounds and heals us. God made nature beautiful, and there doesn't seem to be in reason why it had to be so. In every moment, millions of special, seemingly one-time events happen that can touch us if we are paying attention: the flight of a butterfly, the play of the sunlight, a gentle breeze.

At Chowan, we are blessed to be in an environment in which we have instant access to the beuaty of nature just outside our walls.

Freshmen Devotionals

Today, we continued to explore the ways in which music provides us a family.

Ideally, family and friends are people who will never abandon us. Unfortunately, that's not always the case.

David Dubal once told my class that music will never abandon us. I think this is true in virtually everyone's case. We develop a relationship with music from childhood, and that relationship continues and deepens, if we nurture it, for as long as we live. Family and friends may forsake us, but music will still be with us providing memory, catharsis, and a vehicle for expression. This is one way in which music is a great gift to humanity.

Two New Testament examples:

Paul and Silas had music as their companion in jail.

Jesus, in his most dire hour, quoted a psalm. On the cross, he remembered the words of scripture and found expression in a song.

From Baltimore to Murfreesboro

Night before last, I drove back from Baltimore to Murfreesboro after spending three days in the William Garrison Collaborative Piano Competition. One of many wonderful aspects of the experience was the renewed sense of purpose and belonging here in Murfreesboro. This is home to me now, and as always, I was happy when I drove up the hill and around the curve to see the Murfreesboro skyline (a few street lights across a field.) A startled deer leapt from the roadside, across the ditch, and ran to dark woods.


I learned or re-learned lots of important lessons this weekend.

1. It is very good to view music-making in a broader context than the music itself. Jeff had chosen a set of sacred songs to include in our repertoire for the competition, and the judges chose several of those songs for us to perform. That allowed us to witness to our beliefs and to worship on Sunday morning at the same time we were performing for the judges.

2. Competitions that pit voices against instruments put judges in a tricky bind. Vocal and instrumental music are clearly different genres, are hard to compare and contrast, and many musicians tend to specialize in one or the other.

3. Playing in the competition confirmed, yet again, the importance of balance. From a technical standpoint, I ideally approach the instrument in such a way as to be active, but not to waste energy. That wasted energy can create tension and playing problems. I felt our performances had balance in another way. We maintained technical control while also engaging all of the passion within us to perform. Often, one of these can interfere with the other.

4. Unknowns create tension. Not trying out the instrument in the hall before playing, not knowing who the judges are, not knowing which works they will request to hear: all of these things made the semi-final round very tense.

5. Regarding our repertoire, we learned that the second of Liszt's Petrarch Sonnets probably stands alone the best of the three.

6. The esoteric experience of playing for judges gave new life to my belief in the importance of performancing and the appropriateness of joy and freedom being part of performing in a normal public setting.

7. When you work hard applying all you've been taught, and when you know you've executed your plans well while managing yourself in relation to your environment, then you can have a sense of achievement and pride in your accomplishment that doesn't require affirmation from others.


Things I really liked about the weekend:

Spending three days with my good friend Jeff

Showing him around Baltimore

Seeing the renovations at Peabody

Being warmly welcomed by Mr. Shirley-Quirk and Dr. Falby at Peabody

Hearing Alan Walker's speech and Petri's Ricordanza recording

Visiting with other competitors and Peabody graduates, ushers, Liszt Society officers

Attending Mass

Staying at Ariel and Vivien's home

Thinking of my parents while on a breezy morning walk in the Dechosa's beautiful neighborhood

Ariel's prayers for us that encouraged us to boldly witness

Realizing the quality of colleagues I have at Chowan

Returning home to where I belong

Freshmen Devotionals

Today we read Gensis 1:1-5 - God bringing order to chaos.

The idea that the basis of creativity is the bringing of order goes against the commonly encountered stereotype of artists being disorderly, wild, irrational, etc.

Music students can also make creative works of their lives as they fashion well-ordered ways of working, resting, thinking, and so forth.

Vision

Night before last was my first performance at Chowan. My friend Jeff Prillaman (tenor) joined me for this recital. It went well, and we had a great audience. Also, we continued to experiment on stage with out interpretations and came up with a few new ideas through that spontaneity.

My main post-recital reflection relates to planning.

One of my father's favorite Bible verses was Proverbs 29:18, "Where there is no vision, the people perish." It actually continues, "but he that keepeth the law, happy is he." But most often, we hear the first half quoted alone. When you read the entire proverb, it seems that the vision needed comes from God's law.

The name of the newsletter of my father's home church in Durham was "The Vision." When he had the opportunity later in life to name his own church's paper, he named it "The Vision," too.

So I've always had those words in my mind.

For a while, I paraphrased the verse as my own musical slogan "Where there is no plan, the music perishes." That was during the period after I realized that a totally spontaneous and emotional approach to interpretation is extremely problematic. I saw that I needed a vision - a plan - for performing.

I now believe the music doesn't need the interpretative plan to survive, except in extreme cases. The plan is more for me.

Having a specific plan for each passage of each work in a performance provides the performer many valuable things. First of all, you are provided with a narrow and clear path through the performance, and that protects you from many of the distractions - internal and external - that might compromise the focus and meaning of the performance. Second, you are provided a clear way to gauge your success when evaluating the performance afterwards.

Thinking on this issue of planning has brought me to a new thought about the nature of spontaneity. I wonder what the difference is between a spontaneous interpretive decision and a planned decision in terms of the listener's experience. When a critic praises spontaneity, on what grounds does he or she make the judgement that what the experience was a spontaneous happening? Sometimes my spontaneous playing has sounded planned to other musicians.

All of this leads me to yet another question, and it is a question about that seemingly illusive characteristic of performers - charisma. I think our culture tends to think of charisma as something the individual performer possesses. As I write, that strikes me as an odd stance in a mostly relativistic culture. Certain performers demonstrate tremendous charisma, but it is completely lost on some listeners. What are we to make of that?

As I understand them, sounds have absolute qualities related to physics. However, those qualities are perceived differently depending upon the makeup and functioning of one's ears. While I think I hear sounds the way they really are, a whale or a dog may hear very different aspects of those same sounds. The differences in perception exist not only between species, but also within the human race. Ears of different ages hear different aspects of sounds, too. These facts pinpoint the reality that the experience of music at the basic level of experiencing sound may vary widely from person to person, in spite of the absolute nature of the qualities of the work experienced. And these differences have nothing to do with personal preference or culture. They are rooted in absolute physical qualities of the hearing mechanism.

The preceding paragraph relates to my question about charisma in that it touches on the fact that perceptions of the same musical event vary widely from person to person, and that fact is built into the nature of things.

I sometimes pray that my music might be coordinated within God's will to touch specific listeners in the contexts of their lives - that musical experiences might work together with other life events to bring about good in lives of listeners. A listener may need to be musically inspired in a particular way at one point in his or her life but not at another. This need for inspiration has nothing to do with me, and the fulfillment of that need also transcends the score or my efforts.

Thus, I wonder if charisma is not a quality possessed by a performer, but a gift of experience that comes to listeners when they need it. Perhaps that was the way the people who invented the word understood the gift they were experiencing, and therefore created a word that means a grace, favor, a divine gift.

Pavarotti

Luciano Pavarotti passed away this morning.

I was privileged to hear him once at the Met singing Giordano's Andrea Chenier in the mid-90s. I was struck by two things about him during that performance. The first was the richness of his voice that was not apparent from recordings. He wasn't singing especially well that evening, and didn't seem to be in good voice, but the stunning quality of his gift was still overwhelming.

The other thing was more of a surprise. His persona comes across strongly in videos, but it can give the wrong idea. In person onstage, he had great humility. As I experienced his performance, my sense was that he was concentrating on the same work with his voice as all the other singers were doing with their voices - only his voice shone more brightly, even in that cast of international opera stars.

Freshmen Devotionals

On Mondays, I'm sharing a one-minute devotional thought with my first-year music theory class.

There are at least two themes to be developed in this context over the course of the semester:

creativity

music as a family

Our very first devotional referred to our being made in God's image. My friend Paul Scaringi pointed out to me that, at the point in Genesis at which we learn that we were made in God's image, one of the few things we know about God is that God creates. Perhaps being made in God's image means, in part, that we are creative beings, too.

Today's devotional dealt with one of the obvious things about music as a family. Families are groups of people with which we have meaningful relationships. Music provides us with similar groups of people.

It may be that music draws its practicioners closer together than some other disciplines do. Why might this be? In each piece of music we make together, we experience a life story in miniature: beginning, middle, end, with struggles and a climax, etc. Sharing these compressed and intense life experiences with other musicians can create strong emotional ties between us.

Being in music also gives us a group of people known as the audience. Even though we may not always feel like it, most audience members are on our side. They want to see us succeed and are proud when we do well. That's just the way our biological family members ought to root for us in life, even though not everybody's family always does so.

Music Appreciation: Melody, Harmony, Rhythm

The course I have taught the most is Music Appreciation. Ironically, it also tends to be the course with which I struggle the most. This is partly because, as a music major, I never took a Music Appreciation course. Thus, I don't have personal knowledge of the needs of the types of students who do. I think it rarely happens that the instructor for Music Appreciation took such a course since most of us were music majors.

Another of my difficulties with the course is that I'm not convinced that a course in merely appreciating the aspects of a medium is really meaty enough for college. I have also taught the course as a more sociological exploration of the music world, but I'm not sure that's really what the title of the course suggests. Striking a balance between these two seems ideal.

A third issue is that , as I am not always convinced of any particular approach to the course, I struggle to be fully committed to the project.

The good news is that I think I have struck upon an approach this semester that I believe I will find to be more compelling and meaningful. My goal is to equip the students to recognize the universal application of great music.

I have been led to this new approach by the struggle outlined above, and by the fact that I am now teaching in a Christian university in which I feel more at liberty to explore the spiritual aspects of the material I cover.

For the most part, I'm teaching the same basic material that I've usually taught. Only I'm looking for deeper connections and references to provide the students a conceptual framework for relating to the music, and maybe even growing as people through that relationship.

So far, we've studied the basics of musical organization - two trinities:

melody, harmony, and rhythm;

dynamics, timbrer, texture.

(Musical form is a bigger category in my mind.)

We started with rhythm, which is analogous to the human pulse. Thus, it relates to the physical body and to movement. As long as we are living, there is the rhythmic motion of blood pulsing through our veins. There are poignant pauses in music that make me wonder if the music can go on, and if so, how? Miraculously, the music continues, just as we do. The persistence of life is fundamental and good.

Melody has been described as relating to the human soul, and I would suggest that its twists and turns, its risings and fallings, relate to the state of the soul. Melodies move us mysteriously. It is hard to understand (even for people who spend lots of time analyzing music) why melodies affect our emotions the way they do. I don't want to discount this mystery and the fact the melodies seem to speak in a spiritual way that cannot be approached by mind or body. But, I think it is meaningful that the state of the human soul is often described in terms of human posture. We lift our hearts, or we are down-trodden. As melodies make their journeys, theyfollow a paths of posture that may relate to the various states of our souls.

Harmony has been described as musical perspective. That is, a series of chords often creates a sense of depth. For example, when we hear a dominant chord, we know we are one move away from tonic. I say "move" because perspective is based on location. So on a fundamental level, harmony might be understood as somehow relating to location.

Sometimes we musically move from home and back again. Other times, we think we're going to stop off at home, but suddenly find ourselves in the house next door (deceptive resolution.) Still other times, we end up in another town entirely (modulation.)

That's my new model. It's a work in progress and a subtle revision of other peoples' ideas.

A quick review before I develop these ideas a bit more:

rhythm - pulse, the body

melody - the state of the soul

harmony - location

It seems like that accounts for the basic aspects of human existence in musical terms.

This scheme becomes more interesting to me when I consider the intersections of these categories - and I have to consider those intersections as we rarely encounter only one of these aspects in a piece of music.


Melody and harmony:

The really touching and expressive melody notes tend to be dissonant. Dissonance is a term that really makes the most sense in the context of harmony. Maybe those expressive tones are so touching because they show us the freedom of melody being shackled by the constraints of harmony. This might resonate with the pain of our own coming to grips with limitations and boundaries.

Rhythm and melody:

At certain moments in music, rhythm seems to motivate the arrival of some superb melodic event. On the the other hand, rhythm sometimes seems to be excited by the intensity of melody. Here we might sense the body and the soul acting upon each other. The outcome of that interaction in life can be joy or friction. Perhaps it is in this way that the stucture of music can tell us of the relationship of body and soul in the culture that created it.

LSMF: Ecumenical Reflections

Yesterday was the last day of the final session of this year's Lasker Summer Music Festival. During this session, I was struck and inspired by the integrity with which each participant brought his or her own faith to the festival and by the respect which each participant showed for each other's faith journey.

We share common ground - each of us is a musician and each of us is a Christian. As I have reflected on this common ground this afternoon, I have tried to articulate for myself what it seems to be that we all share in the way of faith - how it is that we might all be called Christians.

Each of us has a redemptive relationship with God through Christ, and that relationship is mediated in large part by the community of Christians across space and time, and by the Bible.

I am reminded of the words of Herschel Hobbs who suggests that it is good for Christians to cooperate on projects across denominational lines whenever such projects do not compromise the consciences of any of those Christians. Seeking to better integrate one's faith and artistic work seems to be one of those projects, and I feel blessed to have been able to work on that with my friends who were in Lasker this week. Psalm 133 is how I feel.

Tonight it's raining in Murfreesboro. It's the first serious rain we've had in weeks. On the eve of classes beginning, it's symbolic to me of the past being cleaned away for a fresh start tomorrow, and of the thirsts for knowledge and meaningful work that are to be quenched as the semester unfolds.

Pianist/Organist

Today,I substituted as organist at First Baptist in Ahoskie. It was my idea. I thought it would be a good growing experience and fun - and it was.

I played organ for chapel and church services for a couple of years, but rarely in a situation in which a very high standard of organ playing was really required.

This time was different. Since I'm a pianist and not really an organist, and I'm accustomed to maintaining a certain professional and artistic standard in my music making, I'm acutely aware of the unknowns I face when I come to the organ:

1. First, there are the pedals, which I've never practiced for more than a day or two at a time.

2. Registration - It's exciting that the possibilities for sound variation are virtually limitless on the organ, but choosing appropriate combinations is second nature only for good organists.

3. Dynamcs - It's really not obvious how much sound is enough or too much, and the acoustics and organ console placement often obscure the actual volume level at which you're playing!

To put it in another way, having a good pianist who doesn't practice the organ play for a service on a fine pipe organ is like having a watercolor artist execute his vision as a granite sculpture which, by the way, he has to chisel with his feet.

After several days of practice and many mixed emotions, I came to grips with my lack of technic and the unknown instrument and parameters. How? Practice.

I think one of the most wholesome things a musican can do is to practice. What could be better for us than to work on our musical skills, especially when we are preparing for an actual musical event that makes our practicing into clearly needful work?

A little advice for others not in my shoes (that is, other pianists trying to be organists for a day or two.) This advice will be obvious, but try to find a way to play the Doxology without pedals, if at all possible. Don't let your pride get the best of you. After all, viewed in a broader context - and I think it also must be really wholesome to try to view our musical work in a broader context - this whole project is an invitation to humility.

This week, I also spent some nice time with organists. One is my colleague James M. Guthrie whose knowledge as a performer of Baroque and pre-Baroque music is as good as anyone working in the field. He's a practicer!

Kathy and I also spent some time with a wonderful couple of organists, Carol and Paul Doyan in Scotland Neck. Mr. Doyan has a terrific plan for performing all of the works of Vierne during that composer's anniversary a few years away.

Welcome to Chowan

We've been in Murfreesboro for a little more than a month now and have easily adjusted to how nice life is here!

Just as I left behind some great colleagues at UR, I have some terrific new collegues here who have helped us to feel very much at home.

The town is of historical interest. It's a very old town, Lafayette passed through here, and the inventor of the Gatling gun and Walter Reed lived here.

Last week was the Watermelon Festival which is a family-friendly event complete with free watermelon, a parade, a 5K race, fireworks, and lots of good food.

This website has links to the university, the historical association, and the watermelon festival.

Hulin Music

Please note:

the name of this blog will be changing soon to hulinmusic.blogspot.com.

UR Music Department: An Appreciation

I wrote the following for the Univerity of Richmond Music Department newletter this summer.

In the fall, I will be joining the faculty of Chowan University in Murfreesboro, NC. I’m taking this last opportunity to write for News and Notes to express my appreciation for the colleagues with whom I have been privileged to work these last seven years in the Music Department at UR.


First of all, I shall always be grateful to the faculty members who voted to hire me, thereby giving me a great place to learn and work, not to mention financial security and health coverage, for the better part of a decade!


Next, there are the many individuals who have contributed to my development as a professional and as a person:

Dr. Anderson who has been a model administrator and mentor

Mr. Becker whose remarkable artistic openness and friendship have helped my developing sense of self and value as a pianist

Dr. Riehl whose impeccable musicianship has consistently inspired me to strive for a higher level of music making

Dr. Longobardi whose ability to be nurturing and challenging at the same time sets a goalpost for my own classroom teaching

Dr. Fairtile whose joy in hard work and willingness to support and enhance the faculty’s efforts brightens up any trip to the library

Dr. Cable whose concern during my mother’s final illness was comforting to me

Dr. Pellegrinelli who took the time to be a friend and whose intellect has taught me to think better

Dr. McGraw who knows how to be super-competent and easy-going at the same time

Dr. Broening whose quiet commitment to family, teaching, composing, and Third Practice is amazing

Dr. Kong who leads the way as a musician who is totally invested in the work of department and in the welfare of her colleagues (I’m especially grateful for the many times she has recommended me for pianistic work in Richmond.)

And Kathy Panoff whose behind-the-scenes work and advocacy for the arts are so important

Finally, there are the many adjuncts that do so much of the musical work of the department. I appreciate the camaraderie and performances we have shared that have been both entertaining and enlightening.

Thank you all for many good years – years I will remember dearly.