Poem on the Eve of Another Year of Music Education

Running by Lake Hollingsworth
I see a cormorant standing on a pier
wings outstretched in the sun's spotlight
like a conductor
about to give the downbeat
for the lake's morning music

I see another bird with an amber glow
This one I don't know




I pass big men
who are walking
and perspiring hard

And I meet old men with knee braces
who are still moving

And young women
who want to avoid heart disease as much as I do

One wearing roller-blades
sits on a bench between two palm trees
keeping her thought processes going
as she looks at the lake




In and out of the shade I go
as gallinules grub
beneath the fresh growth of water lettuce

It's rural and exotic and urban here
like jazz

Looking at the lotus blossoms
I think of the people who got me here
parents, teachers -
quite an association

And I think of young people
who are learning that cheesecake is a city dessert
and also not exactly a cake

And I thank the Spirit behind all of this




Two-thirds through my run
I see the white portico
of the house
that marks
my stopping point

I remember that it is by example
that we learn how not to give up on the important things

Piano Teachers

The last stop on our recent three-week trip through the Carolinas, Virginia, and Maryland was Rock Hill, SC where I lived from 3rd grade until 11th grade. We had the privilege of being hosted by my high school chorus director, Marianne Helton, and we also had a delightful dinner catching up with Dr. Judith Barban who was the first piano teacher I studied with after my mother.

Each time I think of these three great ladies, I am reminded of the many layers of musicality they instilled in me. For the last few days, I have continued to meditate on the conversation I had with Dr. Barban during that meal. The more I reflect, the more I realize how much of my musicality, my understanding of myself as a person who feels in an artistic fashion, my understanding of my calling, and my spirituality come from the hours I spent with her as a child.

Certainly we can benefit from masterful teachers at every stage of our learning, and each of these teachers needs to address a wide range of issues including musicality, technique, how to structure our work, and how to view ourselves. With that said, it seems that my student career involved the following sorts of layers:

In the musical womb - learning the basics of playing and reading, and having joy in sharing music

Musical mid-wifery or toddlerhood - learning to see oneself as an artist who relates personally to pieces of music

Days of discipline, adolescence? - learning to practice and have some poise and self-control

Preparation - getting ready for undergrad auditions

Professionalism - learning technique and musicianship as an adult who wants to take a place with professionals

The final challenge - working with a master who pushes you to strive for the excellence of the great artists

So True: Things I Was Told and Subsequently Learned About Composing

Here's a post I wrote in June but for some reason never published until now (July 11).

1. Composing = editing.

Dr. Benjamin made this point repeatedly and I disliked it back then. But now I know it's true and I have accepted it.

Finale is great for this process because you easily create draft after draft after draft without feeling the tediousness that rewriting and copying by hand involve.


2. For me, composition seems to work best when I keep it in the realm of the experimental.

Writing for my reputation, for an effect, for posterity - all of these seem to shut down my creativity and bring on writer's block. But when I give myself a clear musical assignment, a one-time exploratory activity, things flow much, much better.

The assignment, or plan, is the generator, as le Corbusier put it. It gets things started and powers them. But often, once things get going, the logic of the sounds takes over and pilots the course of the piece from there on out.

The semesterly composers' concerts and writing for Meherrin Chamber Orchestra at Chowan gave me plenty of opportunities to write with this experimental mindset. Since I wasn't in a formalized composition program in school, I missed out on participating in the regimen of composers' concerts and forums, but my experience at Chowan provided something like those things. Kudos to my colleague, James M. Guthrie, who continues this good work at Chowan. Also, thank you to him for his faith and subtle mentoring. His musing comments in the hallway often led to my own compositional assignments - questions like "Have you ever written a piece in which the pedal stays down the whole time?" or "Have you tried any mirror writing?"


3. Most of the time, composing is not about creating new materials. It's about what to do with the musical materials that already exist.

We've had centuries of creation of materials. It's pretty hard to come up with some completely new basic musical idea at this point. But how to use the ideas and styles that already exist, and what you can say by how you use them, that's the name of the game.

I don't mean to discourage the garage-band musician who believes he or she is working in complete freedom and disdains all rules. That musician's involvement with music may be an expression of non-conformity, but composition itself is almost always a dialog with the principles of an existing style or styles, whether or not the composer is conscious of this. (I suppose non-conformity is too, actually.)


4. It's okay to be tonal.

Since composing is about dialoging with a style or styles, it stands to reason that one would do well to write in dialog with a style they know well. That's part of why I feel okay about being a tonally-based composer. It worked out just fine for Bach and Beethoven as well as Schnittke and Part, also Alice Parker and Bernstein, as well as tons of film composers and composers of music for worship, etc. This is not to disparage atonality but to recognize that I have a good sense of how the materials of tonality work and how they have been used by many composers over the centuries. So tonality is naturally a big part of my vocabulary.

Summer Lessons

I like teaching piano lessons to college students in the summer. I'm more relaxed and so are they, plus, we have more time, so we don't feel rushed and can take on projects that we'd never have time for during the school year.

Yesterday, I spent most of the day with a student working on Bach and Haydn.

We started with an hour on Bach C-minor Prelude and Fugue from the Well Tempered Clavier, Book I. We noticed similarities in Bach's prelude style between this prelude and the C-major and D-minor preludes from the same volume: they are improvisatory in nature, elaborate on standard chord progressions, and have a one-handed passage preparing for the final cadence in which the rhythmic groupings change. We discussed performance practice for Bach, the instruments Bach wrote for, and idiomatic expression on these instruments. We analyzed the fugue a bit, noting the spiraling form of the subject beginning with a 4th, then a 5th, then a 6th. We discussed how memorizing imitative contrapuntal music is different from learning more homophonic music, and we tracked the keys as well as the alterations the intervals in the subject undergo in these different keys and as they appear in various sequences. I also emphasized that the name of the game is fingering if you want a solid learning experience with a fugue. In making decisions about fingering, we need to balance the helpfulness of not having too many different hand positions and the necessity of not over-extending the hand. Also, relying on scale and arpeggio fingers we already know will save a great deal of time and give us more security.

Then we moved on to the first movement of Haydn's Major Concerto in D Major which we discovered feels like a sonata form but only has one really clear theme. We highlighted passages in which the pianist needs to be very clear about the rhythm/meter for the sake of the conductor and the orchestra. We also explored how to interpret the absence of a dynamic marking such as at the first piano entrance in this work. This led to a little discussion of musical editions and what goes into creating them.

We also noticed several textures and figurations that are very typical of Beethoven, which appear to have there source in Haydn. In addition, we pinpointed one of Haydn's "life motives" as Michael White at Juilliard would say: rhythms that go "short short long" as in the "Surprise" Symphony and in this concerto.

Then, we took a break for lunch at our local German restaurant. I tried a chicken aubergine sandwich, which is pretty much like eating chicken parmigiana and eggplant parmigiana at the same time on a sandwich - a great accompaniment to analyzing cadenzas. So during our meal, we did harmonic and motivic analysis of the cadenza printed in the score we were using for the Haydn. The goal of our analysis was to prepare to write our own cadenza. (Haydn didn't write one for this concerto.) After lunch, we listened to the cadenzas Richter and Argerich play on Youtube and charted what happens in those cadenzas, as well.


Things we reviewed/discovered about cadenzas:

They are lengthy elaborations of cadences, usually ending on a trill on scale degree 2.

Cadenzas are usually based on material from the movement in which they are found, and first-movement cadenzas often seem to be more substantial than last-movement cadenzas, keeping with the tradition and mood of the first movement being the intellectual center of gravity for the entire work and the last movement being a rousing conclusion.

Some cadenzas, like the one in our score, further celebrate the most significant theme or themes of the movement.

Some cadenzas are motivically freer and are based on significant harmonic ideas from the movement. The one Richter plays picks up on the low-six scale degree going to scale degree five from an Italian 6th chord in the movement.

Some cadenzas, such as the one Argerich plays,develop more obscure ideas from the movement.

Another strategy is to build on what was heard immediately before the cadenza.

We can also vary our concluding trill so as to play on the expectations of the listeners - a familiar Beethoven trick.

Our composition assignment is to determine the overall chord progression, then flesh it out with motivic material from the movement and appropriate Viennese classical-style figurations. I loaned my student my copy of Czerny's School of Velocity to be used as a catalog of such figurations.

My student was interested in featuring the more obscure aspects of the concerto in this new cadenza. I think it's a good idea as it brings some balance by drawing our attention to the motives and ideas that have remained mostly in the shadows during the movement. But I suggested also having one or more really obvious references to the main theme that every listener would be able to hear in addition to the development of the more obscure details that the connoisseurs can enjoy.

I'm looking forward to seeing the results!

Maps

I'm reading a good book by Gerald Danzer entitled Atlas of World History. A couple of points have stood out as being relevant to music.


The term "geography" is often used very generally today, but it traditionally fit into this scheme:

topography - mapping a small enough region that the local level details of the landscape like hills and streams can be shown

chorography - mapping a region or continent

geography - mapping in a global context


I extrapolate this idea of several meaningful levels to music study.


For example,

local-level analysis of harmonies, motives, and so forth (topography)

consideration of the form of the work at hand (chorography)

understanding of the work in the context of the composer's output or the style (geography)


Another scheme might go this way:

intra-opus style (the first two levels from above)

inter-opus style (the third level from above)

and finally, the place of the work's performance in broader culture which would include musicological and ethnomusicological topics


We musicians need a bit of all this in our lives.



A second point is what I think is an extremely well-stated definition regarding the concept of "classic" or "classical."

Danzer writes:

"A society develops a classic culture when it gathers together traditional ways of life and expresses their values in such a powerful way that it sets standards of achievement for future generations."


Here's a link to a fascinating program for preserving valuable elements of the cultures on our planet.

Sad

School's over.
Students are gone.

May in April

Amaryllis and lilies blooming - looks like May to me here on April 1.

Also, fighter jets are scrambling over Lakeland - part of the big Lakeland air show, but still unnerving at times.


Excellent theory students pulled several April Fools pranks on me today:

First, a happy-looking sign on the door said that our class was cancelled.

A single student was waiting just inside the door with a string attached to a dollar bill on the floor. The student said she was the only who showed up.

Then, the rest of the students came in through the back door. Coincidentally, there were no lights in the room due to a momentary power outage.

At the end of class, my attention was drawn to a snail that had been placed on the podium.


I particularly enjoyed the incongruity of all these things happening in conjunction with each other. Most of all, I appreciate the caring and imagination my students expressed in this playful way. I'm glad we can have fun together and learn, too. Thank you all!

Now, back to those interval class vectors!

Storm

Campus was hit by an intense storm around noon today. My class prayed, told alligator stories, and practiced identifying 13th chords by ear.

Maintenance workers were darting about campus within minutes of the peak of the storm to address the possibility of any dangerous issues that could have developed. It was very impressive to see the immediacy of their response.

The rains and winds continue.

The Divine Servant Fountain looked particularly substantial and persistent in the midst of the storm.

Music!

Reading C.S. Lewis on the problem of animal pain this morning - excellent and serendipitous preparation for teaching a lesson on the very poignant "Little Shepherd" from Debussy's Children's Corner.

Driving to and from school today, listening to the last movement of Beethoven's fifth piano concerto - marvelous imagination and variety expressed with basic scales and triads!

Now I'm watching an episode of The Incredible Hulk. Great soundtrack in this series: sensitive reiteration of a handful of motives in a range of settings, and played beautifully by live musicians. Joe Harnell's "Lonely Man" theme from the closing of the show.

Birthday

After a week, I'm still 39.

On my birthday, I went for a drive to Zephyr Hills 30-some miles from Lakeland. It's a town with a water-bottling plant and an old-fashioned touristy strip of buffets and waffle houses.

On the drive back, I heard this moving interview with Fleisher that touches on his relationship with Brahms First Concerto and his struggles with his hand.

I also heard a portion of another interview with a musician. Unfortunately, I didn't learn who it was that was being interviewed, but the important and timely thing for me was his description of a time in his life when he started asking what he would contribute to the musical world. Perhaps I'm entering that type of season, too. I realize that it is probably time for me to determine some priorities amongst my many goals and focus time and energy on the most important of my goals.

Written at 5:39 A.M.

I'm turning 39 today. Not yet a fan!

Spring Break is here - a great thing about life in academia. You can feel the break arriving for about two weeks.

So far, I've seen the mini-shuttle fly across the sky, I've gone for a jog with a friend in the Circle B Bar Reserve - an excellent place to see alligators, and I watched the Yankees stomp the Phillies in an exhibition game.

A post by a friend reminds me that rest is part of God's plan.

I also discovered the amazing work of a very talented friend from high school. I'm purchasing a copy of the film for my birthday.

There's so much I don't know.

I do know:
I'm where I should be doing work I believe in.
I have a way of working that is my own.
And I miss my students.

King David

On Friday, I was listening to a recording of Josef Hoffmann playing Rachmaninoff's C-Sharp Minor Prelude, and with the first three notes, I remembered the term "sound picture" or "tone picture" that I think I first encountered in an older book about Beethoven.

That Rachmaninoff prelude is so vivid that images and emotions immediately came into play and moved me away from thinking of musical values like harmonic progressions and the performer's inflections that usually occupy my mind when I'm listening.


Friday evening, I attended Rich Balach's senior recital and had similarly fresh and transporting experiences listening to Wolf's "Schlafendes Jesuskind" and "Begegnung."


Last night, I had the privilege and fun of playing piano in Southeastern's performance of Honneger's King David. The work is a compelling choice for a college department to present. It's a masterpiece involving a variety of 20th century techniques in addition to being a little Hebraic and a little Handelian. It's challenging for the performers, but not as forbiddingly difficult as a 20th century work can be. There are lots of solos, each of which is brief, of a distinct character, and has a few difficulties of pitch or rhythm. Thus, lots of students get to sing manageable but challenging solos.

In the midst of all of this is the conductor who, on this occasion, was our own very capable Dr. Dan Gordon. This was my first time playing an extended work with him and I was impressed with his conducting clarity and presence of mind. He made me think of a World War I fighter pilot, exposed to the elements, piloting, sometimes upside down, through clouds of bitonal bullets and metrical mayhem - an odd image, but an appropriate one for a work premiered in 1921.


As a member of the chamber orchestra playing this performance, I had the perspective of a pianist sitting in front of singers, behind trumpets, next to a keyboardist (playing harmonium and celesta parts), and at the opposite side of the room from the percussion, cello, and trombone. What I heard was not what the audience heard since I was sitting two feet from the piano and positioned as I just described. So while I'd like to hear the overall product, I did get to know about some details that the audience didn't experience as fully as I did. This is one of the reasons that playing in performances of works like this is so valuable. You get an entirely different perspective on the work involving a different kind of intimacy. While the experience provides another way of understanding the work that I could share with others, it is primarily meaningful and special to me.

This particular piano part is a very enjoyable part to play once you get over the fact that you are counting for much of an hour and half while also trying to calibrate your musicality to the movements of the conductor. Actually, those things can be pleasurable, too, but they require discipline.


During our rehearsals and the performance, I started to appreciate the extent and power of Honneger's "tone painting" in this work. Similar to my experiences with Hindemith, once I accepted Honneger's techniques as a part of his language, I could more readily focus on how masterfully clear he is in conveying the experiences that his "symphonic psalm" is all about. His constant responsiveness to text is something he shares with Handel.

A few examples from the piano corner:

#2 The Song of David, the Shepherd - the chromatic counterpoint within a small range throughout beautifully conveys the feeling of the "quiet pool" of the text, but it can also convey a sense of disquietude as David desires restoration of spirit, protection from pain, and so forth.

#4 Song of Victory - the energy of this choral writing is totally galvanizing. I'm surprised that this brief chorus hasn't become a musical icon to be used by HBO and others alongside the opening of Carmina Burana and the Dies Irae from Verdi's Requiem.

#6 Psalm: In the Lord I put my Faith - the piano chimes in with tremelo and vaulting patterns at "Flee like any bird unto the mountain" instantaneously transporting the listener to a different clime. It is also in this number that the pianist gets to strum the first harp-like chords that frequently accompany David in his many moods throughout the oratorio.

#11 Psalm: God the Lord shall be my light - the rhythm of the piano part is positively infectious and underscores the joy of triumph over a dangerous foe as described in the text.

#12 Incantation of the Witch of Endor - I've been involved with a couple of performances of King David and this number seems to capture the imaginations of the listeners the most. It's about an incident with Saul and a witch that is probably kind of obscure to a lot of us. Honneger has his own fresh way of painting the creepy sound-world of such a scene. In a way, it's in the tradition of Berlioz. But it strikes me that to paint his scene, Honneger doesn't resort to anything particularly novel in terms of instrumentation or instrumental techniques (for his time) as Berlioz did. To me, the two pianissimo interjections played by the piano at "Appear! Appear!" seem as erie as any woodwind bending its pitches. Of couse, a lot of the imaginative impact of this movement comes from the spoken monodrama.

At the end of #12 there's a strange chord, one that's physically uncomfortable to play for both hands. There's so much sound going on when you play it that I doubt anyone could discern if you just played a more comfortable cluster in each hand. I tried that in rehearsal and it sounded pretty much the same to me. But in the performance, I played Honneger's chord. Maybe he wanted the pianist to feel a little uncomfortable there, and at the very least, I'm sure the pitches he wrote fit logically with everyone else's notes at that moment.

#16 The Dance before the Ark - includes a very striking chord change in an already sparkly bit of writing for the piano at the word "splendour" in the phrase "O radiance of the morn and the splendour of noon, Mighty God be with us."

#18 Song of the Handmaid - has a questionable instrumentation choice, I think. In a pretty transparent texture, piano and flute play short notes together in a high register, and the tuning is problematic, given the nature of the instruments themselves. But maybe that slight disagreement about pitch is what Honneger wanted - an imitation of the sounds of crickets David could have heard when he rose from his bed to walk around the roof of the palace one evening and saw Bathsheba.

#19 Psalm of Repentance - puts words of repentance in the mouths of both male and female choristers which made me think of David and Bathsheba repenting together. That's a scene I'd never thought of before.


This brings me to a final general reflection on King David. Before the concert, Dr. Gordon prayed a thoughtful prayer that emphasized that David was human in all the best and worst ways that we are, too. I believe Honneger's music communicates the richness of that human story. Indeed, it restores humanity to a familar character from the pages of the Bible.

Good Times in Florida

My 200th blog post!



I started the day with the discovery of this creature moping around our screened-in porch. He's the creepiest frog I've come across.




His body looks pretty much like the head of a snake, which leaves you wondering where the rest of the snake is.


He's mean-looking, too.
(Click on the photos to see up close, if you dare.)


This afternoon, I rehearsed my beginning band piece with the beginning band. I learned several things from the process:

Harmonic 4ths, 5ths, and octaves chosen from a minor pentatonic collection that I thought would sound austere and bluesy by turns are much more dissonant and complex-sounding due to the tuning difficulties of beginners.

True accelerandi require too much coordination with the conductor to really work at this level.

On the positive side, I think my piece is a good teaching tool that invites awareness of some jazz traditions as well as allowing for a little culture to be built up around studying the piece. It's a rhapsody that begins with a fanfare, has a 12-bars blues progression, a stop-time in which the low brass get to stand up and play Glenn Miller-style, and a call-and-response build-up at the end.


Back at home, we had fresh tangelo juice squeezed from the crop of our own tree. Very sweet juice.

After supper, I took a cool jog to Lake Hunter.

Spice of Life

A varied day in music here in sunny Lakeland:

five minutes reminding my hands how Chopin First Scherzo goes

attended faculty prayer

a little intro to Dalcroze Eurythmics with a student doing an informal independent-study version of Keyboard Skills for Music Educators

a piano lesson drilling letter names and rhythms with an adult beginner

Ceasar salad for lunch

gave a theory test on chromatic mediants, various pitch collections, tritone substitutions, and jazz harmonization

post-test orange juice sitting on a bench

put new horn obliggato for Malotte's Lord's Prayer into Finale

played for choral rehearsal of the dance from Honneger's King David

coached "Super Boy and the Invisible Girl" and "Little Shop" for Night on Broadway event

listened to some of Mahler 7 first movement on the way home - wondrous fanfares, nature sounds, and sweeping lines that feel like syrup poured on my soul

Imagination

Those of you that know me well know that exploring the intersection of music and faith is my passion. That pursuit has led me to the more general recognition that we human beings need help with re-integrating our faith into the various compartments into which we've separated our lives. The end result is hopefully a more joyful, peaceful, and connected existence.

To put this in another way, I find myself working for a fuller expression of God's image in us. To me, that means that we exist as a cooperative and loving community of creators, which is what I think the Trinity is.

I remember writing in cover letters for job applications seven or eight years ago that I was interested in teaching imagination. At that time, that mostly meant getting my students to think and feel more personally about the music they perform. I'm now realizing that those words about teaching imagination were prophetic. It recently dawned on me that, as I help students recognize God's image expressed through creativity, I am teaching imagination. The word "image" is right there in the word "imagination" but I've been missing the deep connection to God's image in us.

I don't think this realization will necessarily radically change the way I teach, but it does allow me to see how my various musical and pedagogical activities serve a single spiritual goal. When I help my students organize their thinking about music, when I show them how to develop proficiency at the keyboard, when we experiment with ways to communicate in performance, I am nurturing their creativity, their God-image-ness. When I am patient with them, when I challenge them to live in community, when I'm honest about myself, I model wholesome productivity in my relationships with them.

I am grateful for the distinct opportunity of working in an environment in which I can realize these truths about my calling. The culture of faith integration at Southeastern was a providential surprise for me, and it affirms my faith that the Holy Spirit coordinates our lives in very specific ways.

Years ago, I introduced myself to new acquaintances as a classical pianist. Frequently, that led to the response "But what do you do for a living?" or something to that effect. Once I had a full-time college job, I started introducing myself with "I teach in the music department at such-and-such university." That sounded more conventional and sometimes led to more substantive conversations about music.

Now, I think I'm going to start telling people that I teach imagination. That will be unusual, but I think it will lead to the most meaningful conversations and connections yet - a type of witnessing that is rooted in what I do everyday and that focuses on what I believe to be the beauty of God's will as expressed from the very first chapter of the Bible.

Gesture

Four hours of rehearsal yesterday - Broadway, folk tunes, sacred anthems . . . and private piano teaching today . . .

From my current perspective, it seems that the root compelling thing in a performance of a piece of music is the grasp of gesture. If a performance conveys shape and movement, it acts upon me and I am moved. Tired and out-of-tune voices might be okay if the way they move through the music has purpose. I might experiment with having students focus on conveying the gestures of a work before thinking of the dynamics and tempi written in the score. Those markings can be used to refine the students' understanding of the gestures after they have really engaged with the basic gestures.

Hearing

Several points regarding human hearing:

Rich Wilkerson Jr. spoke this week in an SEU chapel service. He mentioned that, according to scripture, hearing seems to be more important than seeing in the Kingdom of God. This is all bound up with relying on God's voice and living by faith. I plan to keep that in mind as I read scripture for myself.

Rev. Wilkerson went on to mention that we human beings don't see so well for our first six months of life, so much of our early knowledge and connection with our parents and surroundings comes through our hearing.

This morning, I happened to hear (and see) a bit of a music education presentation that compared our senses of sight and sound. The ratio of the wave lengths of violet to red light - the extremes of our visual range - is less than 2 to 1. We hear a much wider range of a least seven octaves with each octave being a 2 to 1 ratio. So in a way, we hear a lot better than we see.

Beagles and Beginners

It's "raining up a storm" in Lakeland and has been since early morning. Sophie (the beagle) was disconsolate last night due to the lightning and thunder.


I'm writing a beginning band piece for a specific beginning band. I like writing to specifications. Clear parameters really help me know what to do and to feel good about it. They push me to engage very realistically with the craft of composition.


Here's my assignment as I understand it so far:

jazz-based or influenced

small number of low brass that play best together

clear and restricted ranges for all instruments (generally an octave or less)

clarinets are the strongest and largest section

parts need to be simple enough to be played but engaging enough not to bore the players

fairly simple rhythms

and nothing can move much faster than moderato

it would probably be a good idea to write music that sounds pretty good even if some of the players lose their place and keep playing anyway!

And I'm sure there are more things I'm not remembering at the moment or haven't realized yet.


This composition process is fun but slow: discovering what the piece is and can be. It's very true in this situation that the primary work of composition is editing. I write a little, trying to make something I like, I listen back and think of the parameters, adjust it accordingly, then I listen again to see if it works for me, then I adjust it accordingly, then I think about the parameters, adjust, put the passage back in context, adjust, etc. etc. etc.

Like I said, fun but slow. And good for me.


Composing is like building a house. That doesn't sound very original. But I like architecture and this image helps me. It's also good for appreciating, from the outside, the significance of what composers do.

When you build a house, you need to consider what that house is for - a single young professional, a large family with children . . . shelter in the tropics or on a mountain in New Hampshire . . .

And you need to make sure it's structured well. There are principles involved in making it a good "machine for living" and lots of wise people and regulations to help you do that.

And from time to time, someone comes along and suggests a totally new type of room or way to use an existing room. Then that catches on and changes the way we see houses and the way we live in them.


When composing, I need to take into account who's going to be using my music and where it will be used:
opera singer? congregation? children?
concert stage? church? classroom?

How will it be structured? Its structure will have something to do with the questions I just posed above - "form follows function."


And then Beethoven comes along and says "What if we make the first theme sound like an introduction, put the second theme in major mediant, and have a really long closing group? Oh yeah, and a quick appearance of the first theme transposed into the Neapolitan right when we think the piece is about to end. How did he come up with this stuff? But it really works, so we listen to him.


Finally (sort of a new topic) the other day I noticed that almost all the melody notes in "All the Things You Are" are the thirds of the chords that tend to be used to harmonize them. Anyone who tries to play the piece on the piano with good voicing has probably already noticed this. But it struck me because I've been thinking about the relationships between melodies and their accompaniments, and particulatrly about how what members of the chords are featured in the melodies contibutes to the mood of the music.

Before Christmas, I was meditating on the fact that Mary "pondered all these things in her heart." That sounds very inner to me. I was wondering how to write a melody that would express Mary's inner-ness, and I improvised some melodies that focused on the insides of chords - the thirds. It seems like that leads to melodies that are sweet and warm, and at times, rather innner in nature.

Something New

I ran my first 5K today. I ran with Clark, a friend from church. He's a more experienced runner with a good attitude - basically that running is a nice way to experience a nice day.

I don't think this means I'm in particularly good shape but that I'm not in such bad shape. It might also mean that I am, in fact, leading a healthier lifestyle, which was one of the goals I set for myself in moving to Florida.

Also new, I'm listening to a different recording each week as I drive to and from work. Watching various PBS arts events over the holiday inspired me to get back into learning about more repertoire.

So far, I've listened to Kyle Matthews's Timeless Christmas Child CD driving back and forth to visit family around Christmas. Kyle's work is accessible, fun, and profound, and sometimes, all three at the same time. The next week was Sondheim's A Little Night Music. This week I've been lisening to music of Richard Danielpour. I like his music, and I find that I like it more the more I listen to it.

Next week, Giordano's Fedora.

A Day I Will Remember

While Kathy took one of the tests for certification as a music teacher in Florida, I explored north of Tampa. I stumbled upon the Hindu Temple of Florida, a beautiful structure. Just down the street is a residence that is a small replica of Graceland complete with Elvis's musical gate and stone wall. That sightseeing was followed by an excellent coffee at a Selena's Latin Cafe, a new place in that neighborhood.

After picking Kathy up at the end of her successful test taking, we went for a walk on a trail nearby and saw a rather large alligator sunning itself on the opposite side of a pond. We returned to Selena's for a fantastic Cuban-style pulled pork sandwich.

Back at home, I finished reading Daina Chaviano's Island of Eternal Love which is a beautiful and touching book that involves African, Spanish, and Chinese families who moved to Cuba; famous Cuban musical figures; and a phantom house, and imp, and ghosts. Also a highly ideological parrot named Fidelina.

After reading, I checked e-mail and saw a four-minute-old story about the shooting of Gabrielle Giffords. We have watched the story of that tragedy unfold into the evening.

I played some Lecuona.

Lots to Blog About

The holidays tend to be a time of abundant life for us musicians - lots of work, work that's inspiring, as well as some time to reflect on its meaning.

Kathy and I returned to Lasker (as well as Murfreesboro, Ahoskie, and Rich Sqaure) for the first time since our move. The occasion was my eighth Christmas concert in Lasker, an event in which Kathy joined me on her horn, also singing, and as piano four-hands partner.

It felt like returning home and like Christmas. Many friends came to the concert and visited with us during our time there.

I rarely travel so far for a performance. It puts a different emphasis on the work. This time, it was a good thing, and it usually is, in my experience.

As we prepared the concert, I thought of the many approaches composers have taken to Christmas. On this concert we played, among other things, pieces about

a town
heavenly bread
Mary and Joseph
a tree
a star
spreading the good news
meditation under the night sky
the ways Jesus is envisioned by children around the globe
joyful singing
gift giving
the night of Jesus' birth
snow
and riding in a sleigh!


Our goal was to match our energy to that of the music and to communicate with the audience. Kathy played very well and I was pleased with my effort, too. By the end of the evening, I was reminded that being one's self is what is really required and that so much of the other stuff is really stressful and extraneous.

I also connected more deeply with "I Wonder as I Wander" than ever before since I was a returning Carolinian playing a piece with roots in NC for Carolinians.

Former students attended and turned pages for me. We visited at the lovely reception afterwards. All these things were very special to me.


We were back in Lakeland in time for Christmas Eve at the Church in the Meadows. I always like to offer prayers for friends around Easter and Christmas services. These times deepen my sense of connection with the sacred, so it seems like more of heart might be in the prayers.

In that spirit, I tried something new. I offered my playing at the Christmas Eve service as a prayer for an old student that I learned had recently had to leave to school. I did this in the same sense that Mass might be said for someone or ones who are ailing.


I brought in the new ear with some Liszt, this year being the bicentennial of his birth. I practiced Sposalizio on the 1st. I'm building my relationship with the piece on a daily basis. On this occasion, I noticed how important it is to stayed tuned to the metrical flow of this music - especially in the single-line passages and phrases with lots of rests - so as to really hear what Liszt has written.


On the first Sunday of the year I played new stuff for our service: my own prelude on "Morning Has Broken" (an arrangement I wrote for a student in the fall) and for offertory, I premiered my tune MEADOWS. That was the first thing I wrote after moving to FL. It is a song expressing the concept of Christian community.

2010

The sun is setting on 2010 here in Lakeland, FL.


Greetings to all our friends, near and far.
You are on our minds and in our hearts.

Christmas Season

It has been a beautifully crisp and clear winter day here in Lakeland, complete with driven chops out on Lake Bonny. Tonight, the house is filled with wonderful Christmas cooking smells: sweet potatoes and chocolate cookies.

I woke up this morning thinking of my student days and the various existences I have led in Baltimore, New York, and Richmond. I think fondly and prayerfully of all my old friends and enemies, and of our growing up processes. I hope they think the same way of me from time to time.

Perhaps I am growing up a bit more now as I am coming to recognize the various seasons I have moved through. Our friend, Stefan, has stressed the concept of seasons from time to time, and there seems to be great groundedness to that. I am at peace with my current season which is one of savoring the experiences of each day without being anxious about the passage of time. (That's just happened to me. I don't entirely know why, but I know it is a grace.) This is also a season of slower, but probably better, work for me. And it's a season of settling down and treasuring home and family life.

Perhaps being at peace with various seasons of life, and with the seasons of a piece of music, is part of the affect and aura of a late performance by Cherkassky or Moravec. Neither ever seems rushed, and the music is always noble and fresh.

Tonight, I'm also grateful for the yearly return of Christmas music and my cyclic hearing of my Joan Sutherland Christmas CD. It never fails to move me. I have a tiny sense of what happens physically to make that shimmering quality her voice has, and that's moving. Plus, there's no fear, only excitement, as her voice climbs. And in the lower register, there's a touching vulnerability without the nervousness of other voices. Added to that golden instrument is her absolute genius sense of line. If you're a musician, I'm sure you are moved at first by this, but I find I need to suspend my own sense of line to be the most deeply touched and instructed when listening to her. Her sense of line is much better than mine. She is always tuned into the forward movement of the music. She takes breaks without losing momentum. She grasps and sings each gesture and conveys the tremendous meaning of each line's shapes in a way that goes beyond words for me. It is power and flight and love and joy and humanity.

So, Merry Christmas to all and God bless us every one!

Florida Christmas

Reflections and memories from this first Christmas season as a Florida resident:

First day the heat came on in our house - cozy!

First lizard in our house - too small and quick to catch, also the same color as our den carpet - hard to see. I assume he's still somewhere in the house. I also realized that I think of lizards as being male just like I've noticed that some folks always think dogs are male and cats are female. But lizards can't all be male.

Insightful student reminded me that it's good to be sad sometimes. A balance of some sort is what is needed. The music of Haydn demonstrates the reality of that balance well, as does the music of Chopin. Maybe that's why good Haydn pianists are sometimes good Chopin pianists.

First experience playing the celesta part in Nutcracker excerpt. Also enjoyed playing keyboard parts for excerpts from Polar Express and It's a Wonderful Life. Special to me: playing piano for Chip Davis "Silent Night" arrangement with my theory student as the solo cellist.

I'm feeling very at home in Lakeland and missing our usual warm Flordia weather!

I also feel very at home at Southeastern. In my experience so far, our mission statement is true: We are a loving Pentecostal community. Love is a hallmark of the place, as is a strong belief in the Holy Spirit. So it's a great place to be.

Advent Inspiration

If you have any interest in being moved this Advent season, here are two must-see videos. Thank you so much to the friends that shared these with me!


The first one helps us see, hear, and feel that the kingdom of God really is among us.


The second demonstrates what an extraordinary part of God's creation the human being is. This is border-line miraculous and the feeing you have when you see it will probably show you how it is that human talent serves as a sign of the Divine. The experience is the glorious opposite of seeing a disaster and involuntarily uttering "My God."

Mortality

If you play enough events for long enough, these sorts of things will happen.

One of the gentlemen who attended our house concert last Sunday passed away on Wednesday. I didn't know him, but a number of friends from church had their last visit with him during our musical evening.

On the most recent Sunday, the beginning of Advent, at the conclusion of a worship service devoted to hope, another church member collapsed during our closing hymn "O Come, O Come, Emmanuel." He will be okay, I think.

I have no point to make about this. Using these facts to make a point would be insensitive. I only want to recognize that these things happen and that they change one's perspective.

Fall House Concert

Sunday night, we had our first house concert at our place here in Lakeland. There were thirty in attendance, mostly friends from church and a few neighbors. We called the event "Piano, People, and Pies." Ten folks brought pies, including my colleague and his wife, Dr. Hawkins and Lisa, who dropped off a fantastic sweet potato pie and pie pockets in the morning, even though they couldn't attend the actual concert.

The repertoire was
Malotte "Lord's Prayer" for horn and piano
Gottschalk "Caprice on Home, Sweet Home"
Hulin Thanksgiving Sonata for horn and piano
Ross "Variations on Auld Langsyne"



The Gottschalk is a lovely version with some Chopin nocturne quality and some three-hand effect. I cut out half of the repetitive section at the end.

The Thanksgiving Sonata is a "medley sonata" as Dr. Guthrie described it. I composed it for Kathy and me, and it features most of the well-known Thanksgiving tunes as its themes. There are three movements:
I. Plymouth - mostly dissonant depiction of the Pilgrims' struggles at sea and here on the American continent.
II. Spacious Skies - a majestic lullaby about the grandeur of the frontier.
III. Rondo - with ASH GROVE as the primary theme.
I like the piece a lot. If anyone ever really has a need or interest in such a work, let me know.

The Ross variations are from my ancestral anthology (click here for blog dedicated to that collection). Ross was a Scottish composer who wrote several concerti, but this is the only work of his that I've explored.

The pies were as follows:
Chocolate with cookie crust
Lemon Meringue
Butterscotch Meringue
Two Pecans
Peanut
Pumpkin
Sweet Potato
Lemon Chess
Cherry

In general, it seemed like a success. With that much pie, the deck was sort of stacked in our favor. Plus, we had an ace up our sleeve, Kathy's charming 97-year-old grandmother who sat in the back corner of the den and conversed with all of these new people.

I felt a little unhappy with my effort, and for a simple reason. Several reasons, actually. I need to get the piano voiced and regulated. Also, I needed a little more regular practice going into the event. But most of all, I was reminded that a bottom line for me ought to be simply to do a good job with the basics of musicianship: tempo, balance, phrasing . . . and having a plan about these things. Composers have a reasonable expectation of at least that much. Spontaneity can be good, but not as one's total interpretive strategy. A plan lets the performer know how to judge his or her efforts. And, playing works of less-than-genius quality might require more conscious planning to give the pieces their best chance.

Engagement

A few weeks ago, I had the privilege of performing a concert with my new colleague, Dr. Shudong Braamse, a marvelously talented soprano who performs compellingly while being the model of humility and egolessness. I was blessed by the way she really performed the repertoire when with an audience. In other words, her level of energy rises to that of the music in a warm and personal way that brings the listeners together in a significant artistic experience. Perhaps having one's energy rise to the level of that of the music is an aspect of the mechanics of the charisma of musicians.

We performed the same concert again this weekend (11/9). While Dr. Braamse put forth an excellent effort once again, my level of energy did not rise to that of the music this time. I was tired. Also, I had fallen over my dog and landed on my wrist a few days earlier (I'm okay now) and that resulted in me not practicing for a couple of days.

I mulled over this energy level issue during the afternoon and night following my recent lack-luster performance. While energy level is part of the equation for me, it struck me early on the morning after that what I was really lacking at that concert was engagement with the music.

I can play most of the repertoire on that concert without practicing, and I have learned the parts that required practice, so I can get through all of the music with just a few minutes' touch-up right before the performance. But daily practice is necessary to maintain engagement with the music.

Thanksgiving Break

Here's a lovely blog post by a Southeastern music student to get the Thanksgiving holiday started. Be sure to listen to the Youtube link at the end of the post as part of the experience.

Chopin Sonata No. 2

Over our fall long weekend, I visited with a pianist friend who is working on Chopin's second sonata. So we could talk about the piece, I studied the score and listened to some recordings. Here's what I noticed.

1. This seems to be a work without satisfying climax. There is no plateau at which the music feels that it has arrived. Instead, Chopin keeps deflecting in another direction at the moment when we expect a convincing arrival.

(In his recording of the piece, Michelangeli plays it in such a way that the second theme in the first movement sonds like the climax. That is, the resolution is the arrival point in his performance.)

2. There is a general lack of contrast in the work. The themes are closely related within and between movements. All of the movements are in the tonic key except for one in the subdominant. The mood of the first movment is so similar to that of the beginning of the second that it almost feels like the first is continuing when the second begins. The energy and project of the first movement may not yet be done.

3. For a large sonata, the first movement exposition is actually really compact. Perhaps that adds to its tension.

Maybe its agitato marking is more about emotion to be supressed than expressed - a tension between the public and private selves.

The fragmented nature of the devlopment with its unadorned melody-in-octaves utterances can feel downright futuristic.

4. The second movement seems perhaps to indicate a contrast between male and female in a dance setting, perhaps indicated by register, tonality, and mood.

It seems to me that its loud dynamic markings might be of the restraining type, that is, "forte" might mean "only forte."

There is some lightness in this scherzo, but it is easily missed if the pianist doesn't play the passages in major with some joy. Those passages actually don't even sound particularly like they are in a major key if they are played with the same attitude as the minor sections.

5. The march and its return seem to have an inexorable quality. They are part of the public ceremonial acceptance of death, not an individual and personal outcry.

6. The overall impression of the entire sonata feels a little like an unraveling over the four movements.

DREAM

This may seem like a rare political post from me.

But I don't think this is a political issue. It's a human issue.

It looks like the U.S. Senate will consider the DREAM Act soon. There's lots of misinformation about the Act, as well as general lack of knowledge about the relevant issues. I've met some of the people whose futures hang in the balance, and I think it's very important. Please take a look:

DREAM Act

Tchaikowsky Champion

Last night, I had the great joy of hearing my new colleague and friend, Young-Ah Tak, perform Tchaikowsky's Piano Concerto No. 1 with the Imperial Symphony Orchestra here in Lakeland. The performance was masterful and a work of art that persists vividly in my mind today.

From the beginning, Young-Ah demonstrated that she was in full command of this very difficult concerto, never even beginning to seem the least bit desperate in handling its demands. Instead, she played with poise and intensity, giving the audience an experience of the concerto, not as a vehicle of virtuosity, but as an expressive masterpiece.

Those who know Young-Ah's playing will rightly assume that the octaves were miraculously fast and clean and that the rapid filigree passages were incredibly clear and consistent. But deeper aspects of her talent made the performance particularly moving.

For example, numerous times Young-Ah listened so well to the orchestra's pacing (which may have been different from her own conception of the flow of the piece) and she bent her playing to meld with the energy of the orchestra. Because of this, the huge emotional waves that pass between piano and orchestra had a cohesiveness that I have rarely felt in this work.

At other times, she pushed in a way that was appropriate and exciting, in a way that emphasized the complex and dynamic relationship between orchestra and soloist in a Romantic concerto.

If you are a pianist with an International score of the piece, the rehearsal numbers in the following remarks will assist you in getting a good sense of what struck me so much about the interpretation.

Leading into #10: Young-Ah's phrasing and sound had a melting quality over the course of this passage that took us all into a deeply personal space.

Between 14 and 15, so much tension is built up, and I think it can be very hard to keep the rhythmic intensity going with a large orchestra exchanging chords with the pianist's octaves, but they did maintain the tension, and the way Young-Ah played the arpeggios just before 15 conveyed the essence of something elemental that had been unleashed and was spinning out.

At 20, there was no sense of diminished energy or sound when the piano took over from the orchestra. The seamlessness was amazing and invigorating.

In the cadenza after 31, in the passage with measures of alternating accelerando and a tempo Young-Ah played the a tempo measures in a beautifully contrasting fashion that returned us to that deeply personal space I mentioned before.

The opening theme of the second movement was played with great tenderness and inflection that still haunts me.

Just after 37: Young-Ah thoughtfully played one of these bars as a slight echo of the bar before.

The bar before 38: a wonderfully felt two-note sigh at this transition.

Also, Young-Ah accompanied the orchestral soloists in a lovely relaxed way at the a tempo before 39.

Given the right instrument, acoustic, and performer, 39-46 can be a colorful sonic feast for the listener. The sounds can be so good and varied that there is no need or time to think about them beyond registering that "This sounds great!" That was the case last night.

At 46: Again, poignantly personal melodic playing as well as amazing trills that fit perfectly into the line.

At the risk of sounding silly, I'll say that in the last movement, Young-Ah's energy was that of a giant cat and the orchestra was her ball of string. It was very playful on a monumental scale.

At 63, I couldn't help but smile at the sparkling suppleness of her playing, and I smile even more now when I think about the storm that was to be unleashed at 66. As Young-Ah precisely coordinated the beginning of the cadenza with that final timpani strike, I also thought about how nice it was to have our departmental chair, Dr. Tindall, as the timpanist. He is, as I have said, the most spirited timpanist around - a real musician.

The orchestra played with heart throughout, and Maestro Thielen listened closely and did an admirable job of coordinating all the effort onstage into a meaningful and unified expression.

Following the concert, there was a lovely reception in which warm remarks were made by the general manager, the conductor, and Young-Ah. Young-Ah spoke of making a connection, which is exactly what she did with the orchestra and the audience. It was an inspiring night that refreshed my belief in the tremendous value of the arts to humanity.

Feelings

Here are some ideas that help me.
I was reminded of them as I worked with piano students this week.


Be the best you. Noone else has the opportunity to do that.


Feeling the music is an expression of your intuitive grasp of the music. Your subconscious understands the structures of the music that you think about in theory class. Don't let the thinking-about stop the feeling. Being conscious ought to help you feel with greater sensitivity.


What should you feel as you play? Sometimes it's the momentum of a phrase. Sometimes it's conviction about a rhythm. Feeling and movement are linked. Some passages require that your body learn them through drumming or dancing, and that's what you should be feeling when you play them.


relevant paraphrases:

St. Augustine - rhetoric involves conveying structures with appropriate feeling

Fleisher - everybody has feeling, the job is to pour that feeling into the shape of the vessel (piece of music) before you

Hope

This post is dedicated to my late father who was born on this date in 1929.


Today, Kathy and I visited the Smithsonian's new air and space facility near Dulles Airport. The history of aircraft we saw there was a complex reminder of the ingenuity, bravery, and treachery of humanity.

In one tiny corner of the facility, there was a shining disc of hope, a golden record like the records of the sounds of earth that are traveling through space on the Voyager satellites. The inspiring inscription on the records reads "To the makers of music - all worlds, all times."

How meaningful and important music must truly be to our planet's civilization for us to have reached out to the universe in such a beautiful way.

The list of music on the records is here.

First Performances

One's first performance in a new town can be a little stressful, especially if it's a new town in which you plan to live for a while! The main reason for the stress is that you know that many people will base their understanding of you, your musicianship, and your abilities on what they perceive on that occasion. In addition, you never know who will be at such a performance or what they know or believe about piano playing. Often, some real connoisseurs show up, so you want to be at your pianistic best. As an insightful friend suggested to me, it can feel a little more like an exhibition than a concert. You want to give the audience a good sense of the range of things you can do well. Further exacerbating the situation is the fact that your competitiveness can kick into overdrive which can result in a distorted reading of the music and get you off-message. And that brings me to my point.

For me, the mature approach to these issues is to stay focused on the message of the music. The message has enough weight to replace the smaller personal concerns and competitiveness. Perhaps some of the really meaningful energy of performing comes from the confrontation and struggle between the message and the self on-stage.

What do I mean by "message?" I'm referring to what the music might be able to say to me as a human being and what its value is to my spirit. A good way to start to articulate what such messages might be would be to say what pieces of music might be about without using technical musical language. Imagine you're an audience member who is not a musician. What might you get from a given work?

At my first performance in Lakeland last week, I played Chopin's C-sharp Minor Nocturne Op. 27 No. 1 and a transcription of Schubert's Arpeggione Sonata with flute.

From its very first measure, the Chopin is filled with a lot of uncertainty - and that might cause you to feel a little uncertain as you play it. As unsettling as that is, it might be okay and even appropriate. Preparing for last Monday's performance, I felt that the message of this nocturne is about the experiences of struggle and effort, the ups and downs of life, and the fact that the sympathetic God is with us through it all. I think it is a very affirming and honest work, moving between uncertainty and moments of hope, with great victories followed directly by defeats that seem beyond our control, ultimately concluded by a sunrise.

The Schubert is a lengthy work with many wonderful tunes but perhaps not the most compelling overall shape. As I tried to understand its drama and trajectory, I remembered that Schubert was a school teacher. For some reason, a lot of his music for instruments makes me think not of the dramatic moods of the poems he sets as songs but of more peaceful scenes at home. Picturing him in his classroom expands those feelings for me. I can hear both lovely and dreary moments of classroom life in the Arpeggione.

I imagine Schubert was a great story teller and probably told some stories that captivated the imaginations of his students - maybe stories about pirates. At any rate, they are lively stories, charming and colorful, but not actual events. I think that might express the tone of the piece, as well. There's a little more narrative mixed into this sonata than the title "sonata" would lead us to believe.

In the end, I think a big part of the spiritual message of most any work of chamber must be the enactment and celebration of cooperation.

Bloch Again

This morning's Sunday School lesson is on Ecclesiastes. To get in the mood, I put on Bloch's Schelomo while I was preparing to cook biscuits.

Our household is very in-sync with the music today. After the climax that's followed by a flutey section that always reminds me of a startled flock of birds after a gun blast, Danny (our cat) joined in by drumming on the corner hutch. To hear his tapping, and to see him spring into action at that precise moment, added to the mysterious and spiritual mood of the moment. Something about Danny's involvement made me think of Martin Buber (I seem to remember that he wrote a bit about his cat in I and Thou) and about moments of being on the razor-thin edge between the spiritual and the mundane, of moments when real encounter with that which is beyond us seems very near.

A while later, as the music reached its final climax, the tea kettle also reached its highest-pitched whistling.

Older post on Schelomo

I can also never think of Schelomo without thinking of Stephen Kates. I think the first concert Kathy and I attended together included a performance of the piece with Mr. Kates and one of the Peabody orchestras. I believe this was the first time I realized I was hearing someone put their classical and beautiful abstract technic into the service of such a raw and splenetic expression, sometimes even disregarding (or maybe I should say "transcending") those concepts of supposedly "good playing." Mr. Kates transcended my idea of being a classical cellist and become some sort of deeply human folk musician, connected with something ancient and authentic, seemingly grasping the infinite depths of meaning the music was meant to convey. The proper way to play at a concert seemed to have no relevance to him as he played (yet his performance was great through and through), and I think "the right way to play" was also the farthest thing from all of our minds in the audience as we witnessed this extraordinary event.

A YouTube link to a bit of Schelomo and photos by Bloch

Speaking of Bloch, some of you might recall that this blog was originally called "Blog About Bloch." That silly title came from a silly discussion with my organist cousin about the idea of opening a French-Romantic-pipe-organ-themed hot dog stand in Jackson, NC that would have been called "Franck's Franks." Neither of us had the money or motivation to throw away on such a business plan that would have had no chance of success, but the conversation got me thinking about writing a "Bloch Blog," which sounded fun since it sounds a little like "blah-blah" although the music of Bloch is very far from blah.

Compositional Diversity

A Facebook conversation between my friends Matt Lane, Beau Mansfield, and Lloyd Arriola led me to this thought. I tried to post the comment there, but something went wrong, so I'm posting it here in hopes that they might see it.

It occurs to me that the surface of one composer's music (by which I mean the organizations of all the notes we hear in his or her works) might be very diverse but might also be based on a small number of deeper ideas. Another composer might explore an astounding array of ideas regarding structure or could work from quite disparate sources of inspiration but express those things using the same musical language all the time. The work of the former might be perceived as very varied, while that of the latter (which might actually be the more experimental and imaginative) might come across as sounding less varied.

Together

A little poem about the experience of teaching, testing, and thinking:




They look at numbers under staves



They listen for tones that are not sounded



They are quiet and sweet




All right-handed, they tilt their heads to the left as they think

Some don't:

two pianists

and a trumpeter who looks really strong




The back row is engaged,

but why are they back there?



I gave them all next week's test yesterday



Stupid me



We are all together in Mod 3

New Job Wisdom

During the transition in my new workplace, I have been reminded of some important principles for musicians in academia, as well as folks in other jobs, to bear in mind.

1. College jobs involve much more than teaching the content area you expect to be teaching when you finish your own schooling. In addition to that content, you may be expected to teach writing, speaking, critical thinking, citizenship, ethics, etc., in your classes. Also, there are many other duties such as committee work and efforts to have interdisciplinary and institution-wide cohesion that require commitment. You need to learn to use relevant technologies for instruction and communication and learn how to address various types of learners. To some extent, you are also responsible for the physical dimension of the equipment and facilities you and your students use. Plus, there is usually academic advising that could involve students beyond one's own discipline. Finding new students can also be important as well as having good relationships with the community that supports your institution. Generally, you are evaluated on voluntary service to your institution and well as the community beyond, participation in professional organizations, and pursuing ongoing education. There is also the growing tide of assessments of all sorts to gather data about your institution so that well-informed decisions can be made at every level of the organization and in such a way as to please accrediting bodies and Congress! And, you are evaluated by your supervisor, your faculty peers, and your students as well as independent outside individuals brought into play as part of the accreditation process. Above all, you share care about students and cooperate with colleagues. All of this is par for the course and new-comers to the job may or may not realize that before they apply for employment.

To some readers, that description of duties and involvements might be surprising, or it might seem a little daunting or negative. I actually view it in a positive light as this sort of job challenges me to utilize many facets of my mind and to develop skills that I might otherwise not develop.


2. Moving to a new place as a musician may mean a gap in your performing activities or at least a major adjustment and some patience. Usually, you have to cancel a few concerts where you came from, and the official concert series in the new region are usually booked for the coming season before you know for sure you are moving there. This can be frustrating as there are moments when you think a year of your performing life may be going down the drain! But, with a little patience, flexibility, and perhaps some creativity, new opportunities do appear. I think it actually makes sense to get re-established gradually anyway. There will be more about becoming part of a new concert scene in a future post.

3. New jobs provide opportunities to recognize (and share!) the limits of your knowledge. There are many questions to ask colleagues about how things are done in the new setting from the details of software to be used to deeper cultural expectations and dynamics. I'm hesitant to ask some of these questions as they show what I don't know, but those questions are normal. Some of the smartest people I've known have been totally willing to ask lots of questions and had no embarassment about what they did not know.

As I ask questions, I also learn yet again how many really good college teachers there are. In every job I discover lots of people who care deeply about the work and the students and have a great deal of conscience and expertise in the conduct of their careers. It's inspiring. Asking and answering questions in such a community diminishes ego and builds collegiality and respect- all things I need.

More Theory Thoughts Again

Maybe I should just change the name of this blog to "Theory Thoughts."

I'm really enjoying the challenge of the new job - excellent students who are engaged with the material, faculty and administration who are supportive of exellence in our discipline, and an institution that encourages the integration of faith with one's teaching.

I'm particularly feeling at this stage that the teaching of theory is the central aspect of my calling here. I cherish the freshness and joy of gathering with my students at noon and sharing around music. It feels a little like church and also like I am at the pulpit. But the real challenge is this: this is the activity in my current professional life that I can pour my heart into the most. But caring a lot means it hurts more when things don't go so well! How to care? How to do well?...

Bringing one's faith to bear on such work in an intentional fashion takes lots of reflection. Doing the basic job of teaching theory excellently is hard to begin with. One basic of which we need to periodically remind ourselves is that the process is messy. That is, the process of adjusting our consciousness to the logic of the music at hand is a marvelous but messy activity. But I want to articulate that activity in a deeper and broader context. The temptation might be to go for too much - too much aiming for profundity and thereby turning one's self into a cliche. The challenge is to keep a framework that allows us to shift from the highest level of living and the universe and beyond, back to the most local details of the organization of the music and styles studied. Being conscious that this is a continuum or a multilayered endeavor should help to hold it all together for me and the students.

As first year faculty at Southeastern, we're reading Parker Palmer's The Courage to Teach, and just in time for me, too, as it addresses the issues of identity and integrity as a person that I am facing in this new classroom setting. Two passages that have sharpened my understanding in our first reading are as follows.

Palmer writes:

Once again, when I seek my identity and integrity, what I find is not always a proud and shining thing. The discoveries I make about myself when I remember the encounters that have shaped and revealed my selfhood are sometimes embarrassing - but they are also real. Whatever the cost in embarrassment, I will know myself better, and thus be a better teacher, when I acknowledge the forces that play within me instead of allowing them to wreak havoc on my work.

Florida Scott-Maxwell, writing in her mid-eighties, made the point powerfully: "You need only claim the events of your life to make yourself yours. When you truly possess all you have been and done . . . you are fierce with reality."

In the margin, I wrote, "This happens in performance." So many times, I have discovered what was actually within me while performing music. There's such an interplay between self and the work of art and the audience when we perform that we often discover feelings, ideas, and aspects of our identity that have very old roots or may even seem unfamiliar to us because we have tried to plan so much of who we are. This dynamic reminds me of the phrase from Fred Pratt Green's "When in Our Music God is Glorified" - "How often making music we have found a new dimension in the world of sound . . ."

This issue of being performers is something to which we musicians who also teach should be sensitive. A lot of good teaching involves active participation and creation on the part of the students. That has to be good for the majority of students. But we who were trained as performers are accustomed to presenting and developing our own ideas. What's more, as students, we sought out master teachers to give us their input and perspective. In the process, we discovered our own voices, but the process was traditionally designed to teach us the art and expose us to the voices of our teachers.

Here's the other passage that immediately shed light on what I'm doing:

How does one attend to the voice of the teacher within? I have no particular methods to suggest, other than the familiar ones: solitude and silence, meditative reading and walking in the woods, keeping a journal, finding a friend who will listen. I simply propose that we find as many ways as we can of "talking to ourselves."

These words made me realize that I might already be developing as the type of teacher Palmer is describing. What's more, since these are all things I do to some extent in my own way as part of my daily routine, maybe I'm actually a contemplative and just don't normally describe myself in that way. Ongoing reflection keeps me moving and refreshed in the midst of work that might seem like a draining activity to those on the outside of it.

Hooray for Florida!

I've just changed the template of this blog to reflect the sunny atmosphere of my new home, Lakeland, FL. It's a beautiful town full of scenic lakes, 1920s homes, a whole campus of Frank Lloyd Wright's architecture, and something always blooming that's unfamiliar to a mid-Atlantic sort of guy like myself. Hopefully, the overall effect on me will be the development of a slightly sunnier disposition!

One thing that's making a difference in my daily journey with students is the expectation of Southeastern that most classes will begin with a prayer. There's some real wisdom in that as I have noticed that when I don't start with a prayer, I usually don't remember to finish with a prayer. While that goofy-sounding statement is true, there's deeper wisdom than that in encouraging such prayers as I find that the prayer is an invitation to remember that we are wanting to live out our days in relationship with God, and we seek to understand our classrooms as holy places where we hope to engage in our work as a sacred activity.

More Theory Thoughts

One thing I learned from Dr. Falby, and a point that I should always stress with my students, is that music is multi-layered and full of meaningful intricacies. To put this in more poetic terms, great music of genius is, as he said once in Lasker, "saturated with glory."

This saturation with glory makes analysis (that is, pursuing consciousness of all that is happening in the music) complicated. But exploring the layers and intricacies can also be a worshipful activity as we are exercising our abilities to think, to discern, to imagine, and to celebrate wonders.

In this way, our creative work mirrors God's way of creating since the universe of which we are a part is, itself, multi-layered and full of fantastic intricacies.

I am reminded as I write that not only can music be incredibly rich in its internal organization, it also intersects with our lives and other disciplines in an amazingly diverse number of ways from dance, to math, to biology, to history, and religion to the deeply personal and spiritual . . .

Theory Thoughts

As I gear up for teaching music theory in my new job at Southeastern, I'm thinking about what a lot of music theory consists of, especially in the early stages of learning - recognizing and labeling musical materials. When I was a student, I thought those activities were pretty mundane and not very theoretical.

While I have come to accept that mastering some basic concepts is a normal and necessary way of entering into a discipline, I also believe there might be more profound and exciting implications to the seemingly simple act of naming things.

As described in Genesis, one of the first things Adam had the opportunity to do was to name the animals. There are many things I really like about that passage:

One is that it sounds like God made all those creatures because God was concerned about what things were good for us and what things were not good for us. It wasn't good for us to be alone. My dog and cat really are helpers and partners of sorts to me at times, mostly by accepting me and by being small, cute, energetic, and random creatures around the house.

I also like the freedom that is part of this Genesis scene. It doesn't seem like God commanded Adam to name the animals, nor does it seem that God caused him to call the animals anything in particular. Instead, I think God and Adam shared a wonderfully relaxed and uncomplicated communion. I imagine them sitting down over coffee and looking at God's portfolio of work. In this pre-fall picture, Adam's behavior is presented as really healthy and whole. He naturally sees, processes, and acts in a good way. It reminds me of the really bright children I worked with at Collegiate School in Richmond who were endlessly curious and had lots of innate learning skills. What's more, they applied those skills with joy as it was naturally fun for them to do so! Maybe those are more layers of what "coming as a child" means.

I'm also really struck by God the creator's desire to see what each aspect of the creation meant to Adam. That's exactly how we human artists are about our creations. We want to know the significance of the things we create in the experience of our fellow human beings. It is through their feedback that we know that we are, indeed, serving. Because of this, it seems to me that creativity is linked to relationship.

Now, back to naming.

I would think that naming took analysis and reflection for Adam, and developing words to represent creatures must have involved some creative fun. Organizing is an important aspect of the creative process as we know it. Sorting the animals by name was a way of bringing order to the human understanding of the world God had created. In this way, Adam was getting to partner with God in creating.

I'm intrigued by the fact that it seems like language already existed when Adam named the animals. I have usually assumed that we humans created language from its foundations. But in Genesis, God had already spoken some pretty involved sentences to Adam before Adam was given the opportunity to name the animals. Also, I had been thinking that language arose from a communication need between humans, but it sounds like Adam was the only one of us around when this naming happened. That seems significant to me because, while the language Adam was creating would be for the use of the race, at its inception, the language was just between him and God.

While naming, it seems that Adam realized his need for someone like himself, and when Eve was brought into being, Adam verbally expressed his need and prayed a prayer of thanks through the act of naming her.

Maybe God left the animals unnamed so that we could fully appropriate the created order to our experience through thought and language. Through the language aspect, we expressed the need for community with other people, and language went on to create a shared human culture once there were other humans with whom to share it. All of this seems to have grown out of relationship with God and the Creation.

So as we continue to see and name patterns and organizations in the both the created worlds of living things and physical phenomena such as sound, I think we are following through on God's invitation to name, organize, and create within our own consciousness. And through that exploration of what God has made, we can discover and develop community.

Moving, Canon, Calling, Peace!?

Our piano was delivered this week - two average-sized guys, a fancy dolly, and a truck with a lift made it possible. I think the lift is really crucial for a smooth move. The piano was mostly in surprisingly good tune for an instrument that spent several weeks riding around who-knows-where on a truck and sitting on its side in warehouses. The company is Modern Piano Moving out of Missouri and their trucks make big loops around the eastern states picking up and delivering pianos several weeks later. Each team delivers from 7 to 10 instruments a day. They also a have a giant logo on the side of their truck that looks like a very long piano with wheels, sort of like a drag racer.

Now, back to our public radio station. I think that what I've been enjoying about it so much during this time of transition is the affirmation of the canon of music that I love and have devoted a lot of time to here in a new place for me. It provides some consistency and resonates with my childhood revelation that, to some extent, music is my family. The fact that this music has stood the test of time, a fact with which I am very familiar and have heard time and again, is now ringing true in my own experience. It is okay and probably very good to be devoted to a canon since it is an inherent aspect of the nature of a canon that the preserved material has been found to be of value by generations. You can trust the music to be strong, dependable, even powerful.

Another thing that has brought me peace during this move, and something that has been pretty much a spiritual bottom-line for me, is the sense of calling to this place, this work, this home, and so forth. When I wake up and am surprised that I am living in Florida, I just remind myself that it's fine because I was called to make this move. When I'm out walking and am tempted to covet someone else's house, I remind myself that everything happened in such a way with our house as you let us know that we are in the house we are suppose to be in. And when I wonder what I should be playing and where, I can look for a sense of calling to repertoire and events, and all will be well.

It occurs to me that the concept of calling, which is so important to many of us, is rarely explored in our popular culture.

Finally, on a really different note, as I was eating an orange a few mornings ago (an orange grown near here, I think, but packaged in New Jersey for some reason) our lovely wooden wind chime, made by disabled veterans and bearing the single word "peace," fell from the ceiling to the floor. I wonder what that means!?

Welcome to Lakeland

We could not have asked for a more beautiful place to live. Tonight we took a long stroll around Lake Mirror and watched various water fowl and an alligator.

While I am really starting to enjoy the beauty of our new home, I also struggle with the emotions that go along with leaving home again and coming to a new place. The music I've been hearing on 89.7 FM WUSF has comforted me: Chopin 2nd Concerto, Weber First Clarinet Concerto, and Ravel Violin Sonata.

Murfreesboro Memories

Tomorrow, the moving truck arrives, and I'll be exchanging "Carolina Moon" for "Moon Over Miami" or at least "Luna over Lakeland." (I made that last title up). "Carolina Moon" was supposedly written on, or near, the s-shaped bridge in Hertford, NC. Hertford was the hometown of some of my ancestors. The last several years, I've been thinking of doing an Earl Wild-styled arrangement of "Carolina Moon." "Moon Over Miami" just happened to be playing as background music in the Human Resources office when I went to do paperwork at Southeastern.

I sense that my system is still a little confused about our move. Normally, when I leave my in-laws in Lake Mary, I go to Interstate 95 and drive back to NC. This time, I'll get on Interstate 4 and go to our place in Lakeland.

I'll miss looking at the Carolina moon through the pine trees in my back yard. I'll miss the silhouette of the water tower over the library. I'll miss walks through campus with Sophie (our beagle). I'll miss Murfreesboro's connection back to Lafayette and his time. And I'll miss long afternoon talks over iced tea with town and college friends.

I really enjoyed my three years living at 212 E. High St. in M'boro. Being there had a great mix of urban and rural that allowed me to enjoy both my Hulin and Harrison heritage. Being in an old-ish house in the region of my ancestors gave Kathy and me a sense of having lived at "the old homeplace," and has provided us with a psychological space to which I am sure we will often return as we interpret ourselves in new contexts.

There's so much newness involved in this move - new job, new church, new house, new neighborhood, new city, new state, new culture. Fortunately, lots of people have reached out to make the transition less intimidating.

We attended College Park Baptist in Orlando this morning. An inspiring report on youth missions was structured around verses of John Bell's "Will You Come and Follow Me." The depth and relevance of this text continues to reveal itself to me. The second verse, in particular, spoke powerfully to my needs today and to my belief in God's call:

Will you leave yourself behind if I but call your name? . . .
Will you let me answer payer in you and you in me?