No Way to Say No

When I began walking this morning, pink clouds were piling up on the horizon. The day was just getting to know itself. I needed a quiet tune, so I chose Dan Fogelberg's "To the Morning." 

There's a line in the song I've always liked: "There's really no way to say no to the morning." It's an obvious statement but one I need to hear sometimes.

To listen to it as I walked this Monday morning was to hear how beautifully reality can be crafted. Yes, there's no way to say no. But there are so many ways to say yes.

Bouncing Along

Music matters. I believe this always, but especially when choosing the soundtrack for a walk. Today's choice was Bach's Brandenburg Concertos. 

I started with Number Two, remembering the story my long-ago piano teacher told me about the physical rigors of playing the trumpet solos of that piece. Her husband played the trumpet, she said, and the second Brandenburg was so difficult, even when played on the smaller piccolo trumpet, that one could pop a blood vessel with the effort.

Apparently, she did not make this up. A quick bit of research today tells me that the second Bach Brandenburg Concerto is "a trumpet player's Everest."

For a walker, though, it's an energetic beauty of a piece. It revs one up and keeps one going. And this morning, it kept me bouncing along. 

(One of my favorite music-themed photos, shot May 2010 in Vienna's Musikverein.)

Rekindling the Rhapsody

I had just walked into the house when I heard a familiar piece on the radio. It harkened back, far back, into memory. It was a Brahms Rhapsody, a piece I never learned completely but mastered the first few pages well enough to play — effusively but ineptly — long ago. 

I'm in a funny place with what I still think of as my new piano. I love playing, but I don't like practicing anymore than I did in fifth grade. 

What's an adult musician to do? Playing a la fakando — the faux musical term my stand partner Greg and I penciled in above impossible runs when I played string bass in high school — is hard to pull off on a solo instrument. 

When I heard the Brahms, though, I remembered. It's the music itself that makes me practice. Give me a piece I'm itching to master and I'll put in some time. So I'm rekindling the rhapsody. 

Sousa!

There was a time when I played John Phillip Sousa music as we took down the Christmas tree. It was cheerful and made that seasonal task less melancholy than it would have been. 

But I hadn't listened to Sousa marches in a while, winter or summer, until day before yesterday. Looking for suitable accompaniment to my Independence Day walk, I streamed a recording of Stars and Stripes Forever, the Washington Post March, Liberty Bell, Thunderer and many others. 

They certainly put a skip in my step, which would otherwise have been lagging due to heat and humidity.

It was a 45-minute trip to the turn of the century, not the last turn, the one before that. I imagined unicycles and bunting and girls with pigtails, all made possible by America's March King. 

Today I repeated the experience. It felt just as fine. 

(Military observance at Sousa's grave. Courtesy Wikipedia)

Listening Local

We live close to one of the nation's great symphony orchestras, but sometimes I like to keep my listening local — hyper-local, in fact. On Saturday there were two concerts within a 10-minute drive from the house: a community orchestra's year-end performance and an organ and trumpet recital at church. The timing would be close: one began at 4, the other at 6. Could we take in both?

It was not only possible, but it seemed the best possible use of a rainy Saturday afternoon. The Reston Community Orchestra was trying out the last of its four conductor finalists, and sparks (and at one point even the baton) were flying as the orchestra galloped through two Mozart overtures, the Haydn Cello Concerto and Beethoven's Second Symphony. 

Later, in the (post-vigil-Mass) sanctuary, the church's new music director turned the organ around so the audience could see all its keyboards and stops. He and the trumpeter began with Handel's "The Trumpet Shall Sound" from "The Messiah" and ended with Mussorgsky's "The Great Gate of Kiev" from "Pictures at an Exhibition." Can any two instruments sound fuller and more orchestra-like? I don't think so. 

At least on Saturday, listening local was the way to go. 

(Members of the Reston Community Orchestra take a bow)

Anniversary of a Masterpiece

Now I know why I was hearing snippets of Beethoven's 9th Symphony on the radio Tuesday. It was the two-hundredth anniversary of its premiere. For two centuries now we humans have had this masterwork at our disposal. 

Yesterday I read an account of its creation on the Marginalian. I'd heard some of this before, but I didn't know about Beethoven's devotion to Schiller, whose "Ode to Joy" the symphony's last movement celebrates, or the piece's long gestation period. I like to think of the notes rattling around in the composer's head as he took one of his long walks through Vienna. 

Beethoven insisted on conducting, though he was totally deaf by that point.  He was allowed to do so with the proviso that another conductor be present as a "backup." This conductor instructed the musicians to look only at him. 

When the last notes sounded the audience at first fell silent, perhaps aware even then that they had witnessed not just a concert but a moment in history. And then, in the words of the Marginalian's Maria Popova, "the gasping silence broke into a scream of applause. People leapt to their feet, waving their handkerchiefs and chanting his name. Beethoven, still facing the orchestra and still waving his arms to the delayed internal time of music only he could hear, noticed none of it, until Karoline Unger [the contralto soloist] stood up, took his arm, and gently turned him around."

(Beethoven by Julian Schmid)

Noise or Music?

I'd been itching to watch the movie "Amadeus" ever since I heard Mozart's Requiem in Kentucky. Last night I had the chance.

Though the score is the star of the show (mostly Mozart), one passage of dialogue stood out, when Mozart convinces the emperor to show an opera based on the play "The Marriage of Figaro."

“In a play if more than one person speaks at the same time, it's just noise, no one can understand a word. But with opera, with music... with music you can have twenty individuals all talking at the same time, and it's not noise, it's perfect harmony!”

Simultaneous conversations that produce beauty not cacophony. Perhaps we should be singing out all our national disagreements. A strange thought ... but maybe an interesting experiment?


(Photo: Wikipedia)

Sold Out at Singletary

In Kentucky for the weekend, I take in a sold-out concert at the Singletary Center for the Arts, including a spirited performance of the Mozart Requiem. The stage was packed with the orchestra and combined choirs of the University of Kentucky. 

The last time I was at this venue I was on the stage. Last night I was (gratefully) in the audience. And what an audience it was: attentive, respectful, spirited, just what the excellent music deserved. When the final notes sounded, the audience leapt to its feet for a standing ovation.

Though I love attending musical events in the D.C. area, I especially enjoyed last night's performance. There was a communal feeling to it, a sense of togetherness among musicians and listeners, as we all fell under the spell of the Lacrimosa, said to contain the last eight bars of music Mozart wrote. 

Worthwhile

The rain has stopped, the sun has peeked through the clouds, and I have in mind a piece of music I always hum this time of year: "God So Loved the World," by John Stainer.

Not knowing much about the composer I looked him up this morning. He's not as contemporary as I thought. His dates, 1860-1901, mark him as a Victorian through and through.

Though his choral music output was prodigious, nothing much is performed these days except "The Crucifixion," from which this piece emerged as an Easter and Passiontide favorite. 

Give it a listen, if you have time. Maybe you'll agree with me that to be remembered for one piece of music — if it were a piece like this — would make an entire life worthwhile. 

Moon Landing

To continue with the theme of wonder, there is now a U.S. spacecraft on the moon for the first time since 1972. It landed Thursday on the lunar surface, near the south pole. 

The space craft was built and flown by a Texas-based company, Intuitive Machines, with NASA equipment on board. There were some tense moments at first due to issues with the craft's navigation and communications systems. But those appear to be resolved and the robot lander, Odysseus, is now transmitting signals.

Surely it's worth a song. I'm imagining this one set to the tune of Yusuf/Cat Steven's Moon Shadow. 

We're being treated to a moon landing, moon landing, moon landing. 

Leapin' and hoppin' with a moon landing, moon landing, moon landing.

And if we ever lose our way, tip our craft, botch our stay. 

And if we ever lose our way — let's hope we can launch once more. 

Happy Birthday, Rhapsody

Yesterday, after the errands were run and the groceries put away, I sat down at the piano, pulled out the ancient sheet music and played the opening run. For the next 30 minutes, I bungled my way through one of the most important and beautiful pieces of American music ever written, George Gershwin's Rhapsody in Blue.

A hundred years ago to the day, on a snowy February 12, 1924, Gershwin played the piece at Aeolian Hall in New York City in a concert billed as "An Experiment in Modern Music." Paul Whiteman had commissioned Gershwin to write the piece, and Gershwin had done it in just a few weeks, roughing out the original idea on a train trip from New York to Boston. "I heard it as a sort of musical kaleidoscope of America, of our vast melting pot, of our unduplicated national pep, of our metropolitan madness," Gershwin said.

He had created a masterpiece. Though no one knows exactly how the piece sounded that day (it wasn't recorded and Gershwin improvised parts of it), a recording made a few months later is thought to be a close replica. The piece was an immediate success, with multiple recordings, and Paul Whiteman made the Rhapsody the theme song for his radio show. Gershwin had created an anthem for the Jazz Age. 

Later versions of the Rhapsody give it a more lush orchestral sound, but the original performance brought out the jazzy brightness of the piece in all its syncopated glory. Even hopscotching through the music as I was last night, cherry-picking the easier sections, I felt its magic in my bones. 

(Thanks to Wikipedia and The Syncopated Times for info and art, and to Hot Jazz Saturday Night for the inspiration.) 

Catching up on Taylor Swift

I've just spent more time than I meant to reading about Taylor Swift. I'm not exactly at the vanguard of popular culture, but the juggernaut that is Taylor + Travis, especially as we race toward Super Bowl Sunday, seemed like something I should know just a little bit about. 

This led me to watch a few music videos, do a little googling (there's a Taylor Swift class at Harvard and, of course, she was Time's Person of the Year for 2023) and feel just a little more a part of the cultural zeitgeist. 

I'm still mostly in the dark about the superstar and her super-athlete boyfriend, but I'm curious enough that I may tune in on Sunday, if not for the football then for the celebrity dish.

(Photo: Patrick Smith/Getty)

Standing Ovation!

My rule for a standing ovation is this: if the performance deserves one it should lift you up, almost a levitation, and you should find yourself standing as if by magic. 

I don't always follow this rule. You stick your neck out when you leap to your feet before others. And you seem the curmudgeon when you stay seated while everyone else is standing. 

Every so often, though, conditions are right. The music moves you, you've cleared your lap of program and purse, and when the last notes sound you're ready to jump up and start clapping. 

That's what happened last night when the National Symphony Orchestra played the final bars of Shostakovich's Symphony Number 5.  It's a prodigious work, one I've loved since I first heard the Leonard Bernstein recording of it at my friend Barbie's house in high school. 

I listened last night with significantly altered ears, heard the suffering and the pathos of it, the triumph, too. I felt the shiver down the spine, the frisson that cannot be faked. I knew that when it ended I would be on my feet.  It was the least I could do.

(The Kennedy Center Concert Hall stage, January 25, 2024)

Stand Up

We were more than two-thirds of the way through the program last night when the orchestra struck up the familiar prelude. It was the Hallelujah Chorus of Handel's Messiah; time to stand up.

The tradition of standing during this song began, so it's said, when King George II was so moved that he rose to his feet during the London premiere, and the rest of the audience followed suit. 

Last night's hall was almost filled and the conductor encouraged us to sing along, too, a challenge only a few of us were brave enough to accept. Still, it was impressive to see hundreds of people on their feet as the chorus belted out the familiar words: 

"King of Kings, forever and ever. And Lord of Lords, hallelujah, hallelujah. And he shall reign for ever and ever. ... Hallelujah, hallelujah, hallelujah!"

Every Verse

"Second verse, same as the first," goes a line from an old Herman's Hermits song. 

Two verses used to be the limit for the processional and recessional hymns at my church. But there's a new music director in town, an organist no less, and he plays all four verses of every entering and leaving song.

Is it my imagination, or is there a certain restlessness as we plunge into verse four of the entrance hymn, a narrowly avoided temptation to glance at the watch? 

As for the recessional, people are voting with their feet. This morning, about half the congregation left before the last notes of "The Church's One Foundation" sounded and the postlude began, organ chords thundering down from on high. 

This is how we're supposed to leave the sanctuary, I thought, as I made my way to the holy water font and out the door — caught up in a marvelous swell of sound. 

(This organ is from San Bartolome Church, Seville, Spain, not my church. I wish!)

Walking Bass

When I need ballast and rhythm, when I require that steady beat, there is usually one composer I turn to — J.S. Bach. I cue up the Brandenburg Concerto No. 2 because it has the peppy piccolo trumpet I once heard can pop the blood vessels of its players, so high are its notes, so forcefully must one blow to make them sound. 

But also because, like its confreres, No. 2 has a steady walking bass line, the solid quarter notes perfect for pacing one's self, for staying in line, for moving along. 

Although now associated with rock or jazz, the walking bass line has long-ago origins. Some theorists consider Bach its early master. And while this is important for musicians to know, it's equally essential for walkers. We need a beat that will pulse all the way down into our metatarsal bones. 

Although the trumpet notes of Bach's Brandenburg No. 2 dance around on high, underneath them is the dependable meter of the walking bass. It's a winning combination: the flourishes of the former, the steadiness of the latter. Together, they keep me going.

(Can't imagine walking very far with this bass!)

For the Birds

It's a fact of life that if your dear old doggie has passed away, some of the attention he used to enjoy will be passed along to the pets who remain. And so, during our recent Savannah getaway, the parakeets had timed radio music to brighten their day and accompany their chirps. 

Here are these tiny creatures, the two of them together weighing less than a first-class letter, with Beethoven, Vivaldi, Rimsky-Korsakov, Chopin, Rachmaninoff and scores of other composers blaring from the stereo. The house was filled with sound, whether they wanted it or not. 

Luckily for them, the radio shut down a little before 7 p.m. each evening, which means they were spared the news of the day. 

(Toby during a contemplative moment)

A World Without ...

I was driving down the road, a crowded highway that required my (almost) undivided attention, when Beethoven's Fifth Symphony came on the radio.

This is the warhorse of all warhorses, the world's most famous symphony, whose opening notes — dot, dot, dot, daaaaasssshhhh — became associated with victory in World War II, the short, short, short, long of the letter V in Morse code corresponding with Churchill's two-finger V for victory sign.

It's not my favorite Beethoven piece. I couldn't even begin to imagine what that would be: The second movement of the Seventh Symphony, which first came to life for me in the basement of the University of Kentucky's performing arts building?  One of Beethoven's piano sonatas, which I have tortured for decades with my amateur playing? Or maybe the magisterial Ninth Symphony?  That's a logical candidate.

But no. It was his work in toto I considered as I drove, pondering what the world would be like without Beethoven, which is unimaginable. How many other artists have similarly enriched our lives? We all have our lists, whether they contain de Kooning or Flaubert, Springsteen or Brahms. There is an endless supply of artist names to list, of course. I just randomly chose these, except for Brahms, of course. 

(Brahms portrait by Hadi Karimi)

Jollity

Last night under the stars, a glimpse of the planets:  At Wolf Trap Center for the Performing Arts, the National Symphony Orchestra performed Gustav Holst's "The Planets," accompanied by NASA photographs, with my favorite movement, "Jupiter: the Bringer of Jollity," scoring the most applause. 

Jollity is defined as "the quality of being cheerful." Can a planet be cheerful? Perhaps if it's named after the king of the gods. Or if it's a gas giant more than twice as massive as all the other planets combined. 

One reason not to be jolly: what looks in photos to be a big red eye. It's not the result of excessive interplanetary partying, but a centuries-old storm bigger than Earth.

And speaking of Earth, the only planet Holst omitted from his piece, today at 7:15 a.m. EST is the one moment of the year when most of its people are bathed in sunlight — an incredible 99 percent of us. A reason for jollity, to be sure. 

(Photo: Courtesy NASA)

This Time With Music

This should have been yesterday's post. But yesterday I hadn't yet watched a televised recording of what I witnessed in person the evening before, albeit from a distance.

It's been our habit lately to watch the 4th of July fireworks on D.C.'s mall — the same ones that appear in living rooms across the land — from a ridge in Arlington, across the Potomac. While this provides a hassle-free and far-off glimpse at the gorgeous display, it doesn't supply a soundtrack. 

I got that yesterday, when I took in the replay of what I watched live Tuesday night. This time there were no toddlers jumping on and off my lap, but there was Renee Fleming singing "My Country 'Tis of Thee" and the National Symphony playing "1812 Overture." 

It was fireworks with music. It was what I'd been missing.