#IWSG SEPTEMBER 2017 CHECKIN – THE CAPPER OF A PERFECT YEAR? IRMA IS ON HER WAY!

In what has to be the most monumentally perfect end and seque into what has got to be a better tomorrow – and this is being said with my tongue firmly planted in my cheek, we are bidding a fond adieu to this third quarter of 2017 and looking ahead to the last quarter of 2017 and heading into 2018, with the hopes that all of this will be far, far better than what has gone before and I must elucidate.

Hurricane Irma, 09/06/2017 01:48 am edt. Marching up the Caribbean to Florida.

After coming home from Japan, which was surely a highlight, it took a while to get back into my normal routine, and as a matter of fact, I'm not sure I ever got there. This is rather a disaster for someone like me. I'm hard-wired to the max and it's difficult for me when I get out of my routine; I get out of sorts and lose my appetite, have trouble sleeping and just generally do not operate at my optimal level best, but I soldiered on.

Things seemed to be settling down into a normal routine, until I had two unfortunate hospitalizations; one in March and one in late July. The one in March was due to some atypical chest pains that were attributed to my essential tremor, which I've grown accustomed to experiencing, but the one in July, was a bit more difficult, as this one was caused by my essential tremor once more interfering with my autonomic functions, by lowering my blood pressure and this time, my heart rate, throwing me into bradycardia and had the unfortunate effect of leaving me with a poor sense of balance and with vertigo. I was also having my usual trouble of keeping weight on. The upshot? Home with physical therapy, occupational therapy, extra food, care of Meals on Wheels and extra vitamin supplements.

My handsome viola, Wolf. He's an Italian snob and it shows in the way he looks and sounds. No wonder he doesn't want to get his feet wet!

Then, after a few weeks of that, I came down with a case of strep throat; only my 2^nd in my entire life. I knew it was strep, because my gums threatened to run away first. Lovely stuff. This is on top of having had my new cell phone stolen back in May. What a bad summer. The highlight was seeing my old and dear high-school chum of 40+ years back in May. That was 3 days of laughing hysterically over everything. I get to see her again in the spring, along with another cohort of ours, and I can't wait.

So, here we are. It's September 5^th, 2017 and what do we have awaiting us? Why one week after Hurricane Harvey, certainly one of this epoch's most destructive storms in terms of human misery and the cost in property damage and just the scope of destruction, we have Hurricane Irma, not just lying in wait, but what has become quickly, a category 5 storm, with winds of 185 miles per hour, at least 3 times the width of Florida, so that it matters not where she comes ashore, we're all at risk. And it matters not whether or not I am ambulatory, or if I have a vehicle or not. I have a valuable instrument, and as long as I'm in a place that is high and dry, it behooves me to stay put. Or rather, it behooves the underwriters of the insurance policy that hold Wolf's policy for me to stay put. Not that I'm tempted to go and grab a boat and go punting through the streets of Tampa anyway. Nebraska Avenue is weird enough, when it's normal out. I can just imagine how bizarre it's gonna be with Irma's impact. Mr. Cigaret and his “Merry Christmas” in July and Abraham singing to the cars will have new audiences to sing to and new patrons to greet, if FEMA and disaster relief need to make their way to our shores. As for me and Wolf, it's highly doubtful that we'll be singing for our suppers, but you never know. Stay tuned. At any rate, when Irma leaves, it's time for this run of luck to change! 

#ROW80 – A SMALL DEATH IN TAMPA (NO APOLOGIES TO THOMAS MANN; THAT WOULD BE CREEPY)

One of my constant companions in the latter part of my adventurous life, gave up the ghost. Turned up his toes, went as far as he could and died in my arms last night. It was to be expected, because he had been ridden and ridden hard these last five-and-a-half years. He will certainly be missed, because there was such an intimacy between us and we shared so much together; laughter, misery, anger and fun.

 "What or whom could she be talking about?"

Edward Elgar's Enigma Variations, played by the St. Petersburg Orchestra (once the Leningrad Symphony, conducted by one of my favorite people, EVER, Yuri Temirkanov*

To be honest, I'm surprised he lasted this long, with all the abuse and pounding and dropping and losing he forebore over the course of his (I think, I haven't checked his warranty) long life, but I do believe the average life-span is about two years and I, in my usual manner, not tending to coddle electronics, any more than I am myself – beyond routine maintenance care – have done more than my share of harm, although he has proven himself time and time again, that he is able to be resurrected from the dead. I am, after all a “Practitioner of the Dark Arts”. But my best and most clever fix-its from my bag of spel-er, tricks, turned out to be futile. Thus, an old friend must be laid to rest.

His partner lives on happily – Ms. Wireless Mouse, mainly because she has no moving parts – I can just hear my male readers “so like a woman”, but I do tend to anthropomorphize my computers and their peripherals and my viola. So, sue me. My viola is a male, and I did not choose the gender, nor his name. My 6-core AMD processor is not a female, although my dual-core is. I just know this, weird. The other “babies” in the house, are either trans-gender (because I run virtual machines of varying types), or haven't made enough of an impact on my life to regard them as anything other than, “them”. I just hope “they” don't rise up some day and take over the house.

Logitech Mouse. Plain and simple. I've seen these gaming mice that look like tanks, with 50 buttons on each side. Yikes!

Anyway, that was a huge and scary digression. My wireless keyboard died and no amount of changing batteries, cleaning, pairing, un-pairing would fix him. I'm really sorry to lose him, because he fit like a nicely well-worn glove. There are indentations in the keys from the millions of keystrokes I've bashed on each letter over the years, and an interesting thing; the keys on the left-hand side are more indented and beaten than those on the right, although I write with my right hand, I do nearly everything else with my left. My mom was left-handed, and confusion reigned when it came to using tools as simple as scissors in our house, because she was militantly left-handed. Her teachers tried to force her to use her right-hand and she quit talking for 3 weeks.

So, when they gave up on that and she resumed using her left-hand, and as an adult, she ordered every version of right-handed anything, in the left-handed version, and just threw it in with the rest of the utensils. It gave my Daddy fits, but I adjusted and am perfectly comfortable with either/or.

courtesy:www.lefthandedworld.com                                            

This pretty much just led to twice as much junk in the junk drawer, and if I were in a hurry, a box-cutter would usually do the trick. I think they work in both hands.

It doesn't matter which hand I write with now, anyway because with my essential tremor, either hand is illegible. I seldom hand-write anything but my name; it's that bad. But again, I'm running up a different alley, than from where I started.

You can see the indentations and how the letters have been rubbed off on some keys. I'm willing to bet there are many of you out there, who have keyboards that look at LEAST this bad!

My left hand is the hand that holds some power for playing the viola, and it's an odd kind of power. It has to be done delicately, with the fingers barely above the string. As you read the notes, the corresponding finger should just kiss the string in fast passage work, while you coordinate it with the bow-arm.

What non-string players don't understand is the bow-arm is the hardest thing to learn. There are times you have to exert raw power through the use of pronation – rotation of the wrist, the kind boxers use, to draw the sound from the string, but this all works in concert with the flexibility and balance of your fingers, the angle of your elbow, and the weight of your shoulder. If any one of these is not correct, you're not going to produce a very nice sound.

I figured since we're talking about violas, bows, left-hands and right-hands, you should see some. The viola is "Wolf" named by his luthier in Michigan, when he was appraised and insured. He was made by Guidantus Florenus and is an Italian Aristocrat, but a poor cousin of the Cremonese, as he is from Bologna. The bow is German and modern, a Grunke and weighs in at a hefty 74 grams, the heaviest viola bow available. It was made by an aircraft engineer, as many bows are, due to their wing-like structure. Built to be tough and durable, it is well-balanced and very responsive. The hands are mine. 

Same thing with the left hand. In slow passage work, this is when you want to lean into the string, and work up that nice vibrato, that can be increased or decreased at will to heighten or lessen the intensity of the passage you are playing. The “Vocalise” by Rachmaninoff is a wonderful exercise for this and for developing long, slow, robust bow movement, pressure and changes.

Anyway, enough yammering about playing Wolf. This is in homage to an old and dearly departed friend. Mr. keyboard. (I'm so ashamed I didn't name you... nah) You will be missed. I am keeping your husk around, much like a cryogenic-type thing, mebbe you'll just pop back into life. Or not. I guess I better take those fresh new batteries out of you and save them for a new, wireless keyboard, when I get the chance to buy one. In the meantime, I'll use this dumb, old corded one that has been lying around the house. I already hate it. Take care old friend. May your CTRL + ALT + DEL keys be ever useful wherever you are!

_____

* During a rehearsal break at Meadow Brook, MI, Maestro Temirkanov, who has very little English and I had a "conversation" in my horrible Russian. He insisted that I was Polish. I explained that I was 100% Scottish and had never set foot in Poland. I did tell him however, that what he was probably hearing was my botched-up Spanish accent overlaid in my Russian. We had a good laugh over that. He was amazing to work with!

GOALS: Have written another section of “Nebraska Creepers” and am creeping ever-onward.

#CHERISH – WOLF

We are writing about objects that we cherish and have so much meaning in our lives. Mine is my viola, named “Wolf” by his luthier, who cared for him, when I lived in Detroit, Michigan. Fine instruments are given names by luthiers; I am not sure why that is. I acquired Wolf when I was eighteen years of age, getting ready to start college, and my mother didn't want me to start on a “block of wood” as she termed it. The luthier in San Francisco who sold us the viola, bought “him” from an estate sale, of a woman who had died in her late 70s. She had developed something like MS or some motor disorder and had been a young violist in the San Francisco Symphony. Wolf was found in her closet after her passing.

The one time I don't want a picture of the cat, she sneaks in; the bow is German-made, by Richard Grunke, and at 72 grams is the heaviest viola bow made.

She had all of his papers and provenance, so there is no question that he is a Guidantus Florenus of the Bolognese school of violin making, not the Cremonese school, which turned out the lovely Stradivarius, Amati and Guarneri instruments. You can go on for days and days about different makers, houses, schools, blah blah blah. I have all the viola I need right here. When I first played Wolf, I could not believe the sound that came out of this small, unassuming looking instrument. It was huge! The lower notes were full and rich, the higher ones were sweet and piercing without stridency. I had to take this instrument to my professor to have him listen. There is an adage: "Don't buy the first instrument you play" and naturally, this was the first one I played!

Florenus had some odd little things that he would do with his instruments; here, he has managed to match up 2 pieces of maple so that Wolf appears to have "stripes" the length of his back.

I took him to my professor, the good and kind, late Dr. Jakey and we went to the concert hall. I played Wolf, while he walked around the hall and listened. He had me turn my back to him, because conversely, the viola's sound is projected through the back of the instrument, due to it's size, and not the f-holes, like the violin (probably more than you want to know, but there it is) and he walked up and down, back and forth. Then, he played and I did pretty much the same thing. There wasn't a false note on the instrument, no matter how high up the register, or high up you played on the lower strings. The viola was just solid and so rich. Wolf "plays easily" too. By that I mean, he's a dream to play. I had a viola once that I was trying to sell for a friend, and I felt like I'd been in a cat-fight every time I played it.

Another "hallmark" of Florenus' house (usually several members of one family worked on a "bench" or for a "house" - Antonio Stradivarius passed on his fiddle-making to his sons) is that his f-hole work looks like cavemen chiseled them out with rocks. Interesting, since he took such care with the backs, but then, wait until you see the scroll!

Before Wolf got his name, I had to have some work done on him. I took him to my luthier in Detroit, Michigan. I needed to have all of his pegs changed out to rosewood, his fingerboard was beveled as was the custom in the 18th century and needed to be smoothed out and evened, I wanted to have him outfitted with matching chin rest and end pin to match his pegs. He also had a tiny, tiny crack on the front and that needed to be fixed. The luthier, Peter, said he could do all of that, but would have to take the top off. I went into a near-frenzy. I think all players do that. He said, "relax, just going to put a tiny cleat on that crack underneath". 

Wolf is small compared to most violas; 15 and 7/8" inches, instead of 16 1/2, or 17 inches, but because he is "fat" between his front and his back, he is able to project the kind of sound much larger violas produce. He can pretty much out-shout bigger ones, but then I have a "heavy" arm and have had to learn to back off and play with a lighter arm, when necessary. Now, that I'm back playing symphonically and no longer a free-range violist, I actually have to pay attention to the dynamics. When I toured with rock 'n' roll bands, like Styx and the Moody Blues, no one gave a hoot about dynamics. 

He went off to do his voo-doo, while I paced around and fretted. Peter came back in a bit, and said, "come here, I want you to see this?" I'm thinking, "oh geeze, he's gonna tell me the thing's got termites." So we go back into his inner sanctum, and he's taken the top off of Wolf. First off, there's a dust bunny in there, that's been there so long and is so huge, it's viola-shaped. Just kidding. Peter shows me where he fixed the tiny crack and the set of pegs, chin rest and tail or end pin, that he's picked out for Wolf. Wolf is not a deep red, or mahogany; he's blond and his varnish is also a softer varnish. That's another thing string people yap about; varnish. For days. 

This is a true Florenus scroll. It's out of kilter. It looks like something that got left out in the sun and kind of melted. There is no symmetry and I laugh every time I see it. If I were to have no provenance or proof of Wolf's lineage, an appraiser would look at this, his f-holes and his back and go, "yep, Florenus". They're all horrible. It's like Florenus just didn't care, at least about the head-on part of it. 

Anyway, Peter is looking at Wolf's scroll and his front, deep in thought. He says, "Mary, I've seen this viola before." I'm like "Orly?" in my head. Peter goes to his catalogs. Luthiers have very, very expensive catalogs that are updated every so many years with notable string instruments. He hunts around for a certain year and pulls out this book. It's huge and it's heavy and he flips through it to the "F" section and there is my Florenus. I was pretty shocked. I told him I have the bill of sale. I had to have the instrument authenticated and insured, but Peter named him "Wolf" because of his huge, at times gruff sounds on his lower strings. Another weird convention: Wolf is a "him" because I'm female. This is not etched in stone, it is more a tradition that has gone on through the centuries, among luthiers and string players. 

Wolf and I have been a team now for nearly 41 years; that's longer than any of my marriages have lasted and longer than the time I had my father in my life. Wolf is by my side pretty much all the time, and we have had our adventures, and our disasters, although I make sure that if it's gonna get physical, I take the brunt of it, like falling off a stage. Ribs can heal; it's damnably hard and expensive to fix an Italian Aristocrat. This happened to a friend of mine; I completely understand his “tuck and roll” move.

I do have to give Florenus this much. When it came to the serif and the profile, there were few better. The sweep from the serif up to the crest is gorgeous. The only prettier one I've seen is on a Gofriller cello. All in all, Wolf is a spectacular instrument! I'm so fortunate to have him.

In an eery coincidence, several years ago, I developed a motor disorder and it was though that I would not play again. Understandably, this may have been caused in part by about 10 or 15 years of total hell – went blind, had congestive heart failure, during which time, husband got a girl friend, left his cheating ass, tried to buy a house with the settlement, lost it in econ meltdown of 2008, got sick AGAIN and HOMELESS, this time – and at one point, I just wanted to lay down in my traces like a tired old cart horse and not get up. But, that's not what we do in my family. We come roaring back, and are usually made stronger by whatever set us back on our pins in the first place.

But, the motor disorder, is in fact inherited and I had been displaying symptoms for many years. They just chose to become overt and I was unable to play. Well. Shit. After two years of fighting with a bunch of quacks who call themselves “neurologists” I was set up through the Parkinson's Foundation with a world-class neurologist, who had me diagnosed and out the door in well under 2 years. Understand, that neurological problems typically take from 6 to 10 years for a diagnosis. Within a year, I was playing again. I joined the local symphony and took it head-on. We started our season with Beethoven's 5^th Symphony (Oh, I should mention, Beethoven is my muse, not just for music, but for life) and ended with Shostakovich's Fifth Symphony for Big Orchestra, and gave a seminal performance. I am so thrilled to be able to make music again on this level! It was just a dream, but to have Wolf? Icing on the cake and I'm making up for lost time!

#A-TO-Z CHALLENGE 2015 – LETTER “C” - CLARENCE “GATEMOUTH” BROWN, AMERICAN MUSICIAN AND BLUESMAN

I love me some blues. I love playin' the blues, especially on dat non-fretted viola; dem slides and bends are marvelous! I love listenin' to the blues. That being said, Clarence “Gatemouth” Brown did not consider himself a blues player, although he did play blues on the viola. I know smartasses who think violists get the blues from playing the viola, but that's not true. We get the blues from listening to violinists. Just kidding.

First 8 measures of "Blues at Dawn" by Clarence "Gatemouth" Brown from my collection. I just transpose on my viola.

Anyway, I knew that when I chose this theme that I would write about Gatemouth. His life does seem to be the stuff of blues, but I don't really think he would have considered his life to be something that one would write a bluesy batch of songs about. He was born in Vinton, Louisiana, the heart of Delta Blues country, and began playing fiddle (the same thing as a violin) at a young age; his father, a railroad worker, played the fiddle and taught young Clarence. Subsequently, he picked up the guitar, mandolin, harmonica and viola. During a one-year Army stint, he was a drummer His professional life began when he sat in one night for T-bone Walker. He walked on stage, picked up Walker's guitar and made up a tune called “Gatemouth Boogie” and made 600.00 in tips in 15 minutes. Afterward, Gatemouth began to take his guitar playing much more seriously.

 courtesy:bibliolore.org                     

Typical Clarence "Gatemouth" Brown visage. Easy to see why he eschewed the term "Bluesman".

He typically dressed in Western shirts and cowboy hats and called himself an “American Musician”. He opined once, “Why do I want to moan and groan about women bein' bad and all that?” This left him free to explore different aspects of music and blend styles as he saw fit. He played a mixture of deep blues, Cajun, jazz and swing. He disdained deep delta blues, which he thought were too negative and was dismissive of Robert Johnson, the great blues player, who with only 27 recorded tunes under his belt and an untimely demise, became the cornerstone for modern blues and is lionized by the likes of Eric Clapton, Jeff Beck and Robert Plant. I've listened to Robert Johnson's playing, and undoubtedly, he was great, but his greatness lay in his inventiveness, and more than likely several months of hard, hard practice. “Devil at the Crossroads” is a wonderful myth, but Brown eschewed it, while Johnson's contemporaries, like Son House and Willie Brown fed into the myth. Whether or not they truly believed Johnson made a deal with the devil is conjecture.

courtesy:sacurrent.com

Robert Johnson. In the mid-30s, he was playing in the deep delta juke joints and was recorded. 27 of his tunes have formed the basis for today's Blues and Rock. Every great artist from Eric Clapton, Jeff Beck and David Gilmour of Pink Floyd cite Johnson as a heavy influence in their artistry and development. Whether the Devil at the Crossroads had anything to do with it is another matter. Gatemouth thought it was a bunch of hooey, although he did respect and admire Johnson's artistry.

Whatever it is, it just adds to the richness of time and place, which is all important with the blues. There are Chicago and Detroit Blues Clubs and I have been in both. There are Elton John Blues, which are a gimmick; I have never experienced the kind of raw intensity that comes with listening to, or playing the blues that occur down here in the South. It's probably all a trick of the mind, but if so, it's a powerful one. The blues evoke hot, sultry nights, despair, loneliness and a deep longing for solace from the pain. Gatemouth played tunes like this, but so very seldom.

courtesy:nnm.me

I have to admit, in finding pictures that exemplify Gatemouth and his joy, fun and exuberance, there are a plethora. This is just one of many!

His sets were filled with energy and fun. He had a tendency to swap out his instruments within songs, so he would jump from violin to guitar to harmonica. He'd pick up his viola and give it hell, tearing the hair from the bow in his exuberance. His songs were more like Texas Swing or something like the group Asleep at the Wheel. His sheer bursts of enthusiasm and energy would bring an audience (mostly drunk) to its feet in response to his liveliness.

This is just a small sample: "Okie-Dokie Stomp" If you like this, I ENCOURAGE YOU STRONGLY to listen to one of his hour concerts on youtube!

I had the great, good fortune to see him perform twice. The second time, we talked violas. Talk about a strange experience. I was telling him about my Italian thoroughbred and he said, “do you let him rip 'n' run?” I thought and nodding my head sagely, “yup, he does it right purty, too.” Gatemouth laughed and signed my book of Blues studies that he had a section in. I really cherish that.

I had been playing out of this book, "Blues Fiddle" by Julie Lyon Lieberman for many years, when Gatemouth first came to Tampa. I took it with me to the second performance that I went to, and with my heart in my throat, asked him to sign my book. We ended up talking about music and violas for a bit; he was funny and and his joy for life was apparent in everything he did.

Later on in that concert, when I was feeling no pain, he picked up his viola, and I jumped up on the table (we were outdoors, and most of the patrons were drunk; this as at Skipper's Smokehouse in Tampa) and yelled “Violas Rule!!!!” He said into the mic, “Don't hurt yourself!” I clambered down off the table, and he launched into something on his viola. All I remember is that it was lively and energetic.

Clarence "Gatemouth" Brown

1924 - 2005

Grammy Award Winner and Iconoclast

That was in 1999. In 2005, several days after Hurricane Katrina, Gatemouth died at his niece's house in Orange, Texas. He had to be evacuated from his house in New Orleans, and I read somewhere that he lost most of his instruments. He died at the age of 81, of lung cancer, which he had decided NOT to have treated. He had lived life on his terms and went out on his terms and for that I respect him. Still, I cannot help but feel a bit of the blues, when I think of a world with no Gatemouth in it.  

#A-TO-Z CHALLENGE 2015 – LETTER “A” - ALLEGRETTO (FROM BEETHOVEN'S SYMPHONY No. 7 IN A MAJOR)

Anybody who knows me, knows that Beethoven is going to be lurking around, in and through my posts and probably a lot during this challenge. My muse in all things, be it music or life, we do share an eerie number of characteristics, but have just as many differences. So, no; I am not channeling him, I just relate well to him and have a very similar temperament in what is acceptable and what is not, both in music, and in life.

Opening bars of the 2^nd movement of Beethoven's Seventh Symphony

Having gotten that out of the way, let me just limn a brief description of what was going on in Beethoven's world, when his monumental Seventh Symphony was debuted, on December 8, 1813. During this period of time, parts of the Austro-Hungarian Empire (as it would later be called) were at war with Napoleon's forces and had been for several years. Vienna was tired, dispirited and her concert audiences were weary of being under his forces' occupation; the city had always possessed a sense of joie de vivre, second only to Paris, and in fact was probably a bit more fatalistic and understood that the party wouldn't last forever. Central and Eastern Europeans share that sense of fatalism with their Russian cousins and understand that in a way that Parisiéns have never been able to conceive. It gets darker the farther east you travel.

Anyway, Beethoven was one of the few people who worked on regardless of what was going on around him. After he had his temper tantrum in the funeral march of the “Eroica” Symphony, he went on to compose bigger and more complex symphonies, as he expanded upon his musical ideas. His pursuit and belief in the purity of his art is unparalleled and his relentless passion in that pursuit continued throughout his life, no matter what was going on around him. He was forever seeking an ideal, and although through his prose, it seems he may not have felt that he reached anything of the sort, anyone who listens to his music and is a true musician, understands what he was trying to reach, and in so many cases, achieved.

The very fact that Beethoven did much of his work under duress is not remarkable; many composers wrote and conceived brilliant music under some horrifying circumstances. One of these, Dmitry Shostakovich, was in Leningrad, during the siege of the city by the Nazis for 900 days. He was a volunteer fireman. Shostakovich managed to compose his Seventh, Eighth and Ninth Symphonies during and in between the shelling, starving and the typhoid outbreaks.

courtesy:www.beethoven-haus-bonn.de

Beethoven's Viola - Bonn Haus, Germany

Beethoven also harbored another trait that is found in Shostakovich; a decency towards and belief in his fellow man. Ludwig could be one prickly cactus (he once called a town official a "donkey's ass", while Ludwig was in his cups), but inherently, down deep, he had a true belief that all men were equal and this is reflected in his music; never so much as in “Fidelio” and his Ninth Symphony, with the iconic “Ode to Joy”.

What does all of this blather have to do with the 2^nd movement of his Seventh Symphony; the “Allegretto”? Well, now we're coming up on the more enigmatic part of this post. This particular “Allegretto” is often played as a stand-alone piece and for some reason seems to be subject to “added” features, as if the brilliant music of Beethoven's Allegretto were not enough.

Beethoven's Seventh Symphony, 2^nd movement

Part of this is because there is no real “meaning” itself ever ascribed by Beethoven to this particular symphony, people have felt the need to make things up. Certainly, this is not the case of the “Eroica”, which was initially to have been a paean to Napoleon Bonaparte himself, but this idea was hastily abandoned and with rage, when Napoleon went on the warpath. Thus, the idea of the “Heroic” Symphony was born. The same can be said for the Sixth; the “Pastorale” Symphony, with it's suggestions of fauns prancing and playing pan-flutes, or some nonsense, until the thunder storm sends them scurrying.

courtesy: www.cornel1801.com

This is Disney's idea of what the "Pastoral" Symphony should look like. Not sure that I'm on the same page with this nightmare, here.

No such theme or idea can be ascribed to the Seventh Symphony and in particular, the “Allegretto” has remained, er, fair game for any manner of interpretations and some rather ill-conceived and poorly-executed ideas.

courtesy:1zoom.net

If this picture is anything to go by, I'd have been ready to rest awhile and hear me some Beethoven's "Allegretto" from his Seventh Symphony.

The Seventh Symphony was debuted on December 8, 1813, to benefit the wounded soldiers of several months earlier, in the battle of Hanau. This was one of Beethoven's most successful concerts and Viennese audiences, sick with the malaise of siege, war and deprivation, embraced the symphony's energy and beauty. During the following months, the 2^nd movement was played repeatedly, both as a stand-alone and as part of the rest of the Seventh Symphony. The Symphony itself enjoyed a popularity with the public that was unparalleled at the time, although there were critics – when are there not? One referred to the whole as “something sounding like badly-oiled syringes”. I'm guessing one would have to have heard that to make any comparison whatsoever.

courtesy:www.danvelazquez.com

I have never seen this movie, as much as I like Sean Connery. Something off-putting about a guy in a pigtail running around in his underpants throughout the entire thing, methinks.

But, the second movement itself, the “Allegretto” is STILL often played apart from the rest of the symphony and has graced everything from mediocre sci-fi movies, like “Zardoz”, with Sean Connery in his underwear, to horrible displays of interpretative dance choreographed by the ladies' Church Guild of my old home town, church, St. Paul's Catholic Church. It has been referred to as the “dance symphony”, but this does not give people license to dress up in filmy gowns, flit about the narthex and behave like wilting gladiolas – it's a buzzkill in my book. I guess it's like trying to gussy up a pig with lipstick, or throw glitter on a cat turd; it will not work, no matter the excellence of the diversion.

courtesy:zbhconline.org

The problem with interprative dance is the "interprative" part. Is this a crucifixion, or are the participants offering hosannas to that kid up there near the cross? Whatever it is, I'm pretty sure this is the part where I leave. God only knows what Beethoven would have made of the "wilting gladiolas" of his "Allegretto".

Even Beethoven himself abhorred critics and other composers and musicians trying to attach “meaning” or in today's parlance, a particular “label” to a piece of his music. I for one, feel that is how it should be. Purity of sound and structure on this level exists because it must and is there for the simple enjoyment of listening to. In a way, it is like having a wild and magnificent tiger come and sit by your side. You are graced by the presence of such music. I can find no other words to define how or what I really feel about the “Allegretto” movement of the Seventh Symphony of Beethoven. I just know beauty and the purity of the music and the spirit of it, when I hear it.

PLAYING THE VIOLIN AND HOW TO AVOID IT – REDUX

courtesy of: Copyscape.com

What a riveting start to a post. A list of the post you are about to read and the places you can currently read it. All are legitimate, with the exception of "Otto Benjamin Violins, blah blah." Unless you are fluent in Cowface and Dingbat the site is unreadable, but this is how my friends, Andi Roo and Aaron Brinker brought to my attention the fact that my deathless prose had been gasp! stolen.

(IT SHOULD BE NOTED, IN THE INTEREST OF OPEN AND FAIR DISCLOSURE, THAT THE READER WILL NEVER FIND OUT HOW TO AVOID PLAYING THE VIOLIN BY READING THIS POST)

I first unleashed this little gem on an unsuspecting world back in early August of 2012, and it went on to become one of my most “popular” pieces, right up there with my “nameless guy who fell down in the Falcons' Superdome and was horrified” and “E. T. Phone Home” posts. This piece also has the erm, distinction along with a couple of other nameless pieces of being stolen and sold on a now-defunct “for-content” website. How ironical, I jestically say, as I've never earned dime one for my blatherings. There's a reason for this. I get PAID (or I used to) to play music and not for writing verbiage. Maybe I should be paid to not write verbiage; I haven't a clue as to whether I'm any good or not as a writer, I just know that from the age of fifteen, I wrote, and understood English at a post-doctoral level.

Einstein wrote his “General Theory of Relativity” and I read an English translation of it. I cannot say whether it was riveting or boring; it got the point across, but it lacked something of the elegance of his little E = MC² equation by pages and pages and so on and so forth. I think my writing is a lot like that. It's kind of hilarious to me that someone “stole” my piece and sold it, when I wouldn't have the balls to try and peddle my own jun -, er, work, yet, in solidarity to my writerly friends, and I owe them much and they depend on their writing for a living, I went the whole route of writing the “publisher” and kindly requesting they remove my piece. I kept it light and airy and the piece was removed within 24 hours. The website disappeared shortly thereafter.

I'll bet he was fun in a string quartet!

I owe what little writing talent I possess to my parents who were very well-read, and downright scholarly in their own ways. My mother held two degrees, and my father, never having graduated from high school, lied his way into the Air Force, went to the Flight Academy and flew B-29s for roughly three years in the Korean action, until he mustered out on a medical discharge, after two crash-landings. That's two whole more flights than I ever want to have endured, WITHOUT the crashing. He continued to fly, privately, as did my mother; I think they were both a pair of loons. I loathe flying. 

 

 He was the epitome of cool; he brought me home from the hospital and was my primary caregiver until I started kindergarten. He and my mom were great together, until they weren't, due to her own mental illness, but she was a star, too. My folks had the hearts of lions.

He then attended college; went year-round and graduated 3^rd in his class. Maybe there were only four students, but he was pretty bright. He did all this while caring for me, as my mom was working three jobs. To keep me quiet, he played a combination of Glenn Miller, Beethoven, Richard Strauss, Tchaikovsky, Tommy Dorsey and Debussy on the Hi-Fi, but not all at once, so he could do his homework. I was a preemie and tended to be fussy. Music was the perfect panacea and the only thing I ever loved deeply and passionately. I love working with computers, but that is more about problem-solving and it kind of sucks as performance art; no one is going to pay for an evening of watching me code, or resolve a system issue caused by the r.schmitt trojan virus. Boring stuff.

My Ma was no slouch in the brains department, either. While working on her second degree, a B.S. in Psychology, she was programming in Fortran, a machine language hardly anyone uses. I found her books, after her death. Since she was taking no classes, she was either plotting a takeover of the world, or writing games for her own enjoyment. I would bet the former.

I went to college on scholarship, and was a lazy student, due to having perfect pitch. But, I have since learned that without music in my life, my life had lost it's anchor. To make this short and sweet, I was diagnosed with essential tremor, after having exhibited symptoms for years and harboring latent symptoms for decades. I finally had to stop playing altogether. This is a condition much like Parkinson's Disease, without the heavy medications; call it “Parkinson's Lite” if you like, but it can be every bit as horrible as Parkinson's, with core tremors and psychosis. I have all the inherent symptoms; tremors, drooling, no sense of smell, I stagger, occasionally and stutter when excited. It also has deep psychological components and at times those were ruinous. But, I found an awesome, awesome neurologist, who found a good medication that mitigates the core tremor and has allowed me to resume my mostly abnormal, life.

Me, the sole offspring of the two pilots above, on the left, with a touring buddy and my partner in crime, "Wolf", a superb viola made only ten years after the death of Beethoven in 1827. I'm happy, because I'm NOT playing the violin!

In fact, I have started playing AGAIN, and have auditioned and am playing in the Tampa Bay Symphony, a group I started with 20 years ago, when I first moved to Tampa. So, I'm currently practicing up a storm, and participating in some clinical trials that I hope helps people farther on down the road. The Parkinson's Foundation has been very, very good to me and I am fortunate indeed to have found them. But that is not what this post is about. It's about playing the violin. Now, that I'm back in the harness, I have to say once again, it is to be avoided; at all costs.

Ring ring!

Me: "Hello!"

Manager: "Hey, Mary. Are you doing anything the week of November 20th to the 25th?"

Me: "Well, let me check my calendar." Sound of pages flapping in the breeze. "Hmm, nothing but the “Merry Parade of Turkeys” and “Turkeys, We Got Your Turkeys Right Here with Skitch Henderson Sound Alikes." At this time, I am living in Charlotte, North Carolina. I am also still playing in Tampa and pretty much driving all over the south. I am also exclusively playing the viola.

Manager: "So, you have open time?"

Me: "Yes." To my everlasting regret, I said, "Yes."

Manager: "Great! I need a violinist for..."

I didn't hear the rest. I was in shock. I told people for years that I didn't play the violin. I never played the violin. I hadn't played the violin since I was sixteen, and here I was at 45. I play AT the violin. I still don't play the violin. I hate the screechy little suckers. They're all under your chin being little and screamy. What the hell is that? I just hate it. The only reason I started to "play" the sons of bitches is because I got sucker punched and caught unawares. I didn't even own a violin for years. I refused to buy one. I rented one for years and a student model at that. I figured since I didn't play the bastard, I wasn't going to be pretentious about it and get some big, souped-up Lamborghini violin or something. I have a Lamborghini viola. I rented a violin with steel tuners, tin strings, and tape on the finger board which I never, ever, ever allowed any of my students to use. That pussy Suziki shit with tape is beyond horrible. If you can't use hand-framing and play by ear, like the God Galamian intended, burn that hunk of wood. You don't deserve to call yourself a non-fretted string player.

courtesy of: collectibleviolins.com

Aargh! No, it's not "Talk Like a Pirate Day!" Those tapes! When you shift positions, the intervals change! It's impossible to develop your "ear" assuming you have one to begin with, if you're using tape as a "guideline" Fluidity counts. Not everyone is meant to play non-fretted instruments; those folks need to stick to "Guitar Hero!"

So, I'd rent these god-awful violins with tin strings and "play" in these violin sections, in the hopes that people would get the hint and quit hiring me to "play" the goddamned violin. I'd play loud. Real loud and shrieky, when the music asked for piano. I'd ask my managers shit like, "why the hell are you hiring me to play the violin? Did every other violinist in Tampa die/migrate/go on vacation?" They still hired me. I tried drinking my way through rehearsals and that didn't work, because everyone else was out smoking blunts during the breaks; they couldn't tell stoned from drunk.

People thought I was a good violin player; I guess because I didn't give a damn and was reckless; I was the Nic Cage of violinists raging around on my rented violins. I started ending up in first violin sections, so it got exponentially suckier. You know what really, really sucks? Playing Mozart on the violin. I hate Mozart. I hate Mozart, MORE than I hate the violin, if such a thing were possible. Because Mozart's a pussy. He gets right up to an idea and says “never mind” and plays mezzo-forte, before limping off into the 600^th pianissimo iteration of the same shit he wrote over and over and over and over. Yes sir, there is Hell in a barrel right there. Eighteen ledger lines above the staff and I'm playing "guess the note." I can't even read that shit. It's in soprano clef. I normally read the viola clef. Okay, I read soprano clef just fine, but when you're up towards the direction of the sun, weirdness starts to happen, physically. Purple becomes yellow. CRYSTAL-BLUE PERSUASION! Mountains walk. Cats do algebra. The horn section is being played by The California Raisins. I look down, unsurprised to find that the stage has turned to lava, when I hit some of those harmonics. My stand partner's hair catches fire. God knows my ears are still ringing.

I was laughing about it though, when I thought about all the variations and different types of gigs and positions I've held. I played with Styx and I can't remember how this came up, but it is also the same with a Johnny Mathis tune; one of his “Brazilian” set. "Sail Away" which is so lovely, is an absolute bitch to play. It consists of 64th notes, practically in its entirety. Denis Deyoung's father was part of the OSS in WWII and was one of the first to reach Paris, with the Allies. You can hear the Chopin and Debussy in Styx's music. An interesting little bit of trivia along with the silly today. There, aren't you edified?

Styx's music is challenging and we had a lot of fun playing it. But, one of the things that does happen with playing that type of music, is you lose the edge on your heftier musical "chops" as we call them. We were touring pretty extensively at the time with Styx and "Domo Arigato, Mr. Roboto" -ing all over the place and having a hell of a lot of fun. In the midst of this tour, we had a layover and and my trio, myself, a violinist and cellist, picked up this "fun" gig and none of us were exactly slouches. Being the, uh, "professionals" that we were supposed to be, we show up for this luncheon or whatever the hell it was to provide "background" music and proceed to play trios, for a couple of hours. I just grabbed a bunch of my trio music and off we went.

Beethoven is my muse; he's always been in my life. I auditioned on his 5th Symphony and won it. I am a rock-and-roll violist!

Now, it is axiomatic that the fewer instruments you have, the more difficult the music is going to be, especially if you are going to play, oh say, Beethoven. If we were going to play, Johnny Mercer, we might have stood a chance, or maybe, some Beatles transcriptions, but Beethoven? It was... interesting. I have played all of his String Quartets. They rock. His Trio in C Minor rocks. It also requires lots and lots and lots of practice. Playing Styx's "Mr. Roboto" for 18 weeks straight does not constitute practicing Beethoven's trio. We all learned a valuable lesson that day; leave the Beethoven at home, if you haven't looked at it in the last, say, week or so. Thank god the Luncheon guests were drunk.