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.