jwilzewske

Saturday, May 29, 2010

Phoenix Ensemble: Feldman and Babbitt Clarinet Quintets, Security/Acquiescence, Insecurity/Dissent, Morphogenesis

R enoir said that the same color, applied by two different hands, would give us two different tones. But in music, the same note, written by two different composers, gives us the same note. When I write a B-flat, and Berio a B-flat, what you get is always B-flat. By contrast, the painter must create his medium as he works. That’s what gives his work that ‘hesitancy’—that ‘insecurity’ so crucial to painting.”
— Morton Feldman.

M usicians are used to spinning a phrase or rhythm in a certain way. There is a kind of common grammar to the musical language that we all get used to. Babbitt seems to knowingly throw a wrench in it, intentionally pulling or tugging the musicians in very uncomfortable directions. It’s frustrating, but in the end it makes you think in completely new and different ways and causes a kind of wonderful tension in the music. As scary as it was, I grew to like the feeling. I think for all of the musicians in the group, this was the most difficult piece we had ever worked on. Babbitt made himself available whenever we had specific questions about the score... In [Feldman’s] clarinet quintet, and most of his late music especially, he has a way of sustaining this beautiful world and keeping it interesting over very long stretches of time, and for some reason it works. It’s a real challenge for the musicians because there is never any technique or ‘flash’ to grab onto or hide behind. It’s just this ‘stripped-to-the-bone’ musical expression, and our ability to spin a phrase at a constant ppp.”
— Mark Lieb, interview with Robert Carl.

L isten to these excerpts:

[50-sec clip, Phoenix Ensemble, Morton Feldman, ‘Clarinet and String Quartet, m. 283’, 1983, 1.6MB MP3]

[50-sec clip, Phoenix Ensemble, Milton Babbitt, ‘Clarinet Quintet, m. 1’, 1996, 1.6MB MP3]

F eldman’s quintet is like a window—a car window or a window on a train—and you can experience what goes by, what is happening outside: it is the epitome of passive observation.

B y contrast, Babbitt’s quintet is caring-but-confrontational: possibly an intense dialogue between fellow passengers who are on the train.

F eldman, instinctive; Babbitt methodical, mathematical.

B abbitt’s elegant contours—clarinet and string quartet lines thickly folded into each other at the opening, gradually becoming sparser, with reflective pockets of unaccompanied clarinet—radiate genteel yet incisive whimsy, and his pleasure at creating such delicate musical mechanisms expresses itself shamelessly.”
— Philip Clark, Gramophone, MAR-2010.

T he aim of each piece seems to be to convince the performers that they won’t be able to get it ‘right’ unless they’ve understood and accepted the composer’s point of view—even when that point of view is that you have no hope of ‘mastering’ the situation—of “winning”; of living forever; of getting your way. You can influence things while you are alive; you can initiate and change the patterns that develop; you can contribute, laugh, cry. But you are not getting out of here alive.

T he trick in the Feldman piece—with one instrument starting the bar, the next entering on the second beat, and so on until the final note is a chord made up of the motif—is to allow the textural device to do its job. ‘Let it go’ as soon as your note has been played. Otherwise, the building ‘chord’ will tie down the hand and the mind.

I f you are going to try to learn these pieces, it would be advisable to have a surgeon standing by.”
— Ludwig Rellstab (1799-1860), commenting on Chopin’s Etudes.

L aunched into the world, the compositions make their way... wild animals, just weaned. (It’s not like their composer-parent releases them with any didactic or political intention, right?)

A t this first meeting I brought John a string quartet. He looked at it a long time and then said, ‘How did you make this?’ I thought of my constant quarrels with (Stefan) Wolpe, and how just a week before, after showing a composition of mine to Milton Babbitt and answering his questions as intelligently as I could, he said to me, ‘Morton, I don’t understand a word you’re saying.’ And so, in a very weak voice I answered John, ‘I don’t know how I made it.’ The response to this was startling. John jumped up and down, and with a kind of high monkey squeal, screeched, ‘Isn’t that marvelous! Isn’t that wonderful! It’s so beautiful, and yet he doesn’t know how he made it.’ ”
— Morton Feldman, recalling his first meeting with John Cage.

Mark Lieb (clarinet), Aaron Boyd (violin), Kristi Helberg (violin), Cyrus Beroukhim (viola), Alberto Parrini (cello), on Feldman
Mark Lieb (clarinet), Aaron Boyd (violin), Alicia Edelberg (violin), Cyrus Beroukhim (viola), Bruce Wang (cello), on Babbitt

T his recording is an absorbing, totally engaging performance by Lieb and his colleagues and a superb, intimate exposition of Feldman’s and Babbitt’s ideas—about music, about life.

Tuesday, May 25, 2010

Sportsman's Weekend

This is going to be a great Sportsman's weekend. We have the first game of the Stanley Cup Finals Saturday night...which features our beloved Flyers....followed by the Indy 500 on Sunday...the "Greatest Spectacle in Racing."
My wife is taking my daughters down to Florida to see her Mom and visit the new Harry Potter Disney creation. My son will be in Baltimore for the NCAA Lacrosse Finals and I will be home alone with the dogs and my Samsung HD T.V. Sports look absolutely amazing on the HD channels on this box.
I will sneak in some Skeet shooting on Saturday as it will not be too hot and then maybe some Squash or Tennis at the Club in late afternoon...and hope to do some Deep Sea fishing on Monday morning. So, some of my Bachelor buddies over for steaks and hockey Saturday night. Perhaps household projects will be neglected...
Parentetically, the Flyers playoff ride has been astonishing and I cannot believe they did it....now 4 more wins and a Parade down Broad street...we can hope!

Jo van den Booren Chamber Music for Films: Musical Narrator, ‘Third-Person-Limited’

T here are three ways to play the drama: (1) you can play through a scene, establishing a mood that will ignore specific moments of greater or lesser intensity; (2) you can phrase a scene, carefully acknowledging both obvious and subtle shifts in emotional tone and dramatic content; and (3) you can hit the action, accenting specific moments in the drama with the music... ‘Playing through’ is really the earliest film scoring technique, dating back to the pre-sound era of silent movies. In those days the local pianist selected different pieces of music for each dramatic section and simply played through each scene until the next section.”
— Fred Karlin & Rayburn Wright, p. 238.

S hortly before Patelson’s closed last year, I was in there rummaging through what was left on the shelves. I found a copy of a peculiar score for brass quintet, entitled ‘Potpourri’, by the [now 75 year-old--] Dutch composer Jo van den Booren. This 10-minute piece is filled with surprising dynamics and exchanges between the players. The rapidly changing polymeter time signatures tell a story—mystery! a thriller!

W hat a fantastic find! I had never encountered any of van den Booren’s music before. I began to explore, to see what recordings of his works might be available. Sadly, the result was meager. But he has received a number of awards in Europe; his compositions in Donemus’s catalog number more than 200...

R eally marvelous, van den Booren’s sense of timing and suspense—in the brass quintet, and in other of his music. Not surprising, then, that he has done scores for films, including chamber ensemble works to accompany old silent films—his 1985 score for the 1928 silent ‘La Passion de Jeanne d’Arc’, directed by Carl Theodor Dreyer and starring Maria Falconetti, is highly regarded...

W e get natural competition between the visual gestures and actions in the silent film. By contrast, in contemporary films sound-effects compete with the music. But in silent films the sound-effects are implied by the on-screen action and, to some extent, by the sub-titles. Visual effects as surrogates for sound-effects. Sometimes, the musician(s) ‘tread water’ before the cinematic effect; at other times, they come smacking in with something ‘new’ right after the visual effect...

T rumpet-led ostinato ‘processional’ music; tuba-instigated ‘introspective’ music; trombone gone wild...

V an den Booren considers each scene as though it were a philosophical question, to be considered from multiple angles. This adds to the character development and serves as a stimulus for the viewer to engage her/his imagination. As such, van den Booren is a wonderful teacher to learn from. The composer, acting as an impromptu companion to the viewer, should regale the viewer with honest musical remarks. The viewer sees the wheels inside your head working; you are a kind of narrator, third-person, ‘limited’. Your remarks are not ‘inexplicable’; they are spontaneous but explicable. Most of the time, your remarks are friendly; but sometimes you can be difficult...

B efore you phrase a scene you’ll need to select a tempo and rough-in the cue, putting correct timings at the top of every bar or two... consider adjusting the tempo slightly to accomodate any ‘hits’ that need to be precise. Compose your thematic material for the scene, or, if you already have the material, play it against the video without trying to fit it exactly to the scene. Place the thematic material roughly where you would like it to play. This may leave silent bars on one or both sides of the thematic statements, which you can fill in later. Now shift the material slightly and try playing it in several different places. When its location seems most compatible to your music in terms of your selected ‘hits’ or phrase-timings, lock it in. Use the SMPTE timecode to identify the start coordinate... Adding a soft string-pad under the theme as the heroine turns and says, ‘I love you,’ can be enhancing to the scene without disturbing the flow of the music.”
— Fred Karlin & Rayburn Wright, p. 307.

Sunday, May 23, 2010

Indianapolis 500

With Memorial day weekend coming up...I am fixated on the greatest spectacle in racing: The annual running of the Indy 500. As a sportsman, I am intrigued by the physical and mental stamina exhibited by the drivers. They drive 200 Laps at speeds in excess of 210 m.p.h. in serious traffic..they have to engage in strategy regarding pit stops, fuel,tires and lap position...and perhaps more than anything...they have to deal with the fact that their chosen sport could easily take their lives...a nasty death in a twisted flaming spiral of racing gas and sheared metal.
In 1989 I went to my first Indy 500 with 10 of my Lehigh buddies. 2 guys flew out on Thursday before race day and rented a huge R.V. and 2 minivans. They secured a spot in a field along the outside of the track which would be our campsite and headquarters for a tremendous guy's weekend of beer swilling buffoonery and serious racing.
The advance team also purchased a Weber Grill, a ping pong table ( for marathon beer pong games..the real kind..not this candy-assed Beruit ball tossing nonense)and chairs, tarps, charcoal, Wiffle Ball gear,about 40 cases of beer, ice, coolers,four 1/2 gallons of bourbon and enough burgers, buns, PB&J and related items to feed a bunch of beer soaked knuckleheads from Friday night thru race day.
The rest of the crew arrived Friday night and with shuttle trips in the minivans to get everyone from the AIRPORT..we were ready for action. Generally, Friday involved a trip to the Speedway, Indiana ballet for some cultural activity involving one dollar bills and morally casual brass pole artistes.One year a few of the Lehigh guys that were kicking ass on Wall Street brought several huge,fresh, bank wrapped stacks of 1000 singles and slapped them down on the bar...it created a feeding frenzy amongst the G-Stringed performance artists in residence and pissed off the local mullet and cut off T-shirt crowd as they received ZERO attention for the balance of the evening.
Saturday featured beer and burgers for breakfast..perhaps the odd funnel cake or turky leg from the Midway vendors. Then we played beer pong and wiffle ball until mid afternoon when we would go to the Indy Museum at the track and after the tour go to the Georgetown Rd. intersection that served as a Commodity market for race day tickets. Once we had secured our tickets it was back to the R.V. for more beer swilling,Bourbon Shots, poker, beer-pong and a bonfire. The party atmosphere in this giant field of race fans was captivating and hilarious. As the poker and beer pong wore down, we would get set for a group stroll down the midway along Georgetown road. Here were the locals cruising, liquored up wenches raising their shirts at the request of nearly every Skoal chomping, Old Milwaukee slurping Corn-Belt half wit on the sidewalk , hucksters selling everything from Indy car coolers to Indy Undies for the ladies in a nifty spark plug shaped carton,the ubiquitous corn dogs and lemonade stands. Beer was toted along in a 40 gallon trash can with ice bungee corded to a Radio Flyer wagon...procured for that purpose by the advance team.
Then Sunday...Race Day!!...a huge progression of nearly 400,000 fans stream into the track for an exciting day of motor sports and more Herculean beer consumption. With the Jet Fly-overs and the singing of Back Home Again in Indiana and the flags and anthems and tributes to our Armed Services...it is and was a truly stirring American event.
After we had enjoyed the race..we returned to the RV, packed up and headed to Indianapolis proper to drop off the rented vehicle and seek showers and civilized comforts in a down-town Hotel. We would all meet up for a bit of fine dining and then watch the race on T.V. when the recorded broadcast was shown that evening. Incidentally, every year we would auction off ,burn, or give away the grill and Ping Pong table and lawn chairs. Somewhere in 2 bedroom ranchers in Speedway, Indiana backyards near the track there are Families cooking on our old Weber and sitting on our chairs telling stories about the crazy drunken College boys who gave them this stuff after the Race.
Monday..off to the Airport to fly home in time for back yard cook-outs and the like.
We did this same routine until 1996 when the CART/IRL split screwed up the race and when the boys started to get married and have kids. The stories are legion and legend and too numerous and tawdry for this post or my typing stamina. There are highlights like when Teddy G. drove a race-team golf cart right off of gasoline alley..out of the track and back to our camp. There was even a cold six pack on board. Or the time Wighty left the boarding line at the Airport and went to the E.R. for treatment of the colossal and debiltating hangover caused by 3 days of drinking...legend has it they hung 4 bags of saline on him before declaring that he was no longer dehydrated. Our lexicon now includes gradations of hangovers such as "a 4 bagger"
Or the time Jimmy H. went missing for a while Saturday night... until he was spotted on the Bed of a 2 story high Monster truck with his shorts at 1/2 mast, a beer in each hand... and loudly inquiring of any girl in the crowd of thousands...whether they would apply certain oral ministrations...the excrement in Derek's hat or Kipper with the under- seat inflatable Mae West style Flotation device from the plane around his neck all weekend...I could go on and on...but these guys now have respectable jobs and kids who may read this....
So...this coming Sunday..Start your engines.

Saturday, May 22, 2010

Lumbricals, Some Getting Stronger, Others Discouragingly Staying the Same

G reat strength is necessary in the fingers, yes, but it comes with playing, if one plays rightly—that is, musically. From the moment one senses that the finger must ‘sing’, it becomes stronger. That is quite a different matter from playing exercises or etudes merely for the sake of strengthening, and saying ‘I must exercise my fingers and make them strong.’ Such playing as this latter sort does not help at all.”
— Vladimir Horowitz.

M y guitarist-pianist friend and colleague at work comes and visits with me this week, says that for more than a month he’s been doing exercises to strengthen the lumbrical muscles in his hands. The left hand has been responding, but the right hand—especially the ring finger and pinky—has been staying the same or, paradoxically, might even be getting weaker.

H e worries about focal dystonia. (Jason Solomon of Georgia Guitar Quartet has an excellent article about that here.) He worries about carpal tunnel syndrome (CTS). I am not a neurologist, but I know enough to know when to go and hire one. I ask my friend about whether he has any numbness or difference in sensation among the fingers on the right hand, or between the right and left...

T he fact that my friend is a professional software developer/engineer who spends 70+ hours at a laptop keyboard each week is something the neurologist will need to know, as part of the evaluation—in addition to the heavy hours on guitar and piano. In other words, if what my friend is experiencing is some type of repetitive stress injury (RSI), then characterizing the various types and intensities of repetitive motions will be clinically important.

T he state-of-the-art of hand biomechanics and hand problems of musicians have been a recurring interest for me for some years, so, in response my friend’s immediate situation, I go online and scan the current medical journal literature, to see what, if anything, is new in the last year or two. For his benefit and maybe for your own, I gather some relevant things together in the list of links below.

W here exactly is the ‘carpal tunnel’? The carpal tunnel is the narrow space anatomically between the small carpal bones of the wrist and the ligament called the flexor retinaculum. Here’s how you can find it: Put your left index finger in the center of your right palm, then move the finger about two inches down your palm toward your arm, stopping when your finger approaches the edge of the fleshy part of your hand. Your finger now lies directly over the carpal tunnel. The carpal tunnel is the U-shaped depression with carpal bones below and on either side. The flexor retinaculum ligament stretches over the top of the ‘U’ to make a tunnel-like space. The cross-section of the tunnel is only a centimeter or so, and nine flexor tendons (two to each finger and one to the thumb) have to pass through that little tunnel. The space is so narrow that some of the tendons are bundled on top of each other instead of going side-by-side the way they do outside the tunnel.

B esides tendons, the median nerve also goes through the carpal tunnel. By contrast, the ulnar nerve does not run in the carpal tunnel. The median nerve supplies most of the palm, the thumb, the index finger, the middle finger, and part of the ring finger. The first and second lumbricals (i.e. the two that are most ‘lateral’ on the radial side; index and middle fingers) are innervated by the median nerve. The third and fourth lumbricals (i.e. the most medial two; middle, ring, and little fingers) are innervated by the deep branch of the ulnar nerve. So if what’s going on is actually CTS, then you might expect weakness predominantly in lumbricals and/or interosseous muscles serving the thumb or index finger or middle finger or maybe the middle fingerward side of the ring finger. And you might think ‘ulnar neuropathy’ if the ring finger and/or pinky are predominantly affected.

B ut, gee, knowledge of the neuroanatomy of peripheral nerves in your arm and wrist and hand only gets you part of the way toward figuring out what is going on. In part, this is because of the interconnections elsewhere, including the motor cortex in your brain. Besides clinical evaluation, electrodiagnostic (EDX) tests are usually needed to confirm the diagnosis.

T he lumbrical and interosseous muscles are important in several motions—including flexing and plucking, increasing and diminishing the ‘spread’ of the fingers, and extending/raising the fingers. The lumbricals are used during an ‘upstroke’ when you are writing with a pen or pencil. These are the muscles that make the fingers separate and spread out or, alternately, converge and come together. The lumbrical muscles, with the help of the interosseous muscles, simultaneously flex the metacarpophalangeal (MCP) joints while extending both interphalangeal (IP) joints. In bats and other animals, these muscles are the ones that enable them to spread the wings and grab the air at one instant and flex and draw them in a few tens of milliseconds later and let the air go. If a bat acquired a repetitive stress injury of its lumbricals, on both sides or one side different from the other, it wouldn’t have long to live. Same thing for a seal: you can’t swim and catch fish if your lumbricals are faltering. Serious musicians—people whose livelihood or soul depends on playing—worry about this, as intently as a seal or bat.

T he EDX testing for these conditions is steadily getting more sensitive and more precise. For example, Sheehan and coworkers (link below) studied people referred with suspected carpal tunnel syndrome (CTS) by measuring the ‘second lumbrical-interosseous distal motor latency difference’ (2LI-DML) as well as by other, more standard tests like ‘median-ulnar palmar velocity difference’. The referred cases included 74% who turned out to be CTS. Sheehan suggests that 2LI-DML, which is a more sensitive test than other nerve conduction velocity tests for detecting mild abnormalities, is useful as a screening test for latent CTS on the asymptomatic side.

M otor distal latency (MDL) differences between the median-thenar and ulnar-hypothenar (M-U) muscles and between the median-second lumbrical and ulnar-interossei muscles (2L-INT) have also recently been used to diagnose early or ‘mixed’ cases. After all, there is no law of Nature that says a person can’t have CTS and UNE or CTS and focal dystonia at the same time. In people in whom the conventional nerve conduction tests are so far ‘normal’ despite the symptoms they are having, the neurologist can measure both motor and sensory W-P conduction and in a large percentage of cases this can establish a diagnosis.

U lnar neuropathy at the elbow (UNE) is the second most common compressive neuropathy of the upper limb. Compared to ‘ulnar neuropathy at the elbow’ (UNE), ulnar neuropathy at the wrist (UNW) is rarer and more difficult to localize with routine electrodiagnostic (EDX) tests. In terms of expectation-setting, it is reasonable to anticipate that it may take some time (and multiple visits) to establish an accurate diagnosis and decide on the right treatment plan. In general, these are not things that can be sorted out in a single, quick office visit.

T he important thing—if you are having symptoms like the ones my guitarist friend is having—is to get yourself examined by a neurologist who is experienced in problems of performing artists and who has the equipment and training to perform the newer EDX tests that are available. You can search for practitioners who are diplomates of the American Board of Electrodiagnostic Medicine here. I regret that I don’t know what comparable search resources there may be for consultants having EDX professional certifications in other countries.

Friday, May 21, 2010

Visitors

The lovely blogger Mrs. Arscott had a gadget on her site called revolver maps...I wanted it...asked her about it and then figured out how to install it. This gadget is fairly cool in that it shows how many visitors your site has had and where the visit was from geographically. Recently I have had visitors from Bogota, Columbia...Zurich, Switzerland, Cairo, Egypt, Ho Chi Mihn City, Viet Nam...not to mention various domestic hits. Perhaps it is juvenile to be intrigued by these exotic hits...and I do not get nearly the amount of comments on my posts as some others (maybe my posts are vapid and uninteresting to the blogging masses??)but nevertheless it amuses me to know that some dude in Indo-China is possibly reading my semi-literate babblings and admiring pictures of guns,dogs ,dead birds, horses and hockey and other nonsense. Then again...maybe that is what this blogging gig is all about.

College reunion, cocktails and lacrosse this weekend...and GO FLYERS!!

Thursday, May 20, 2010

Explanation

Blogger/wordsmith KS Anthony referenced the poem which has the line "Hunter home from the hill" in a comment on my hunting dog post. It reminded me of a favorite old movie of the same name and I thank him for the cerebral cage rattling which led me to post these clips. I had never posted a clip before and even if the few readers who stop by think they are representative of weak old movie offal...I still learned a new blog-skill...for what it is worth.
Nevertheless, I have always loved this film and particularly liked Mitchum's character, Wade Hunnicut. He is a man's man and a true sportsman. He is however deeply flawed. To wit: he cannot seem to keep it in his pants and cats around his small town to the embarrasment of his tortured wife and naiive son. He has a bastard son who he tolerates on one level but shuns on another. All of these fairly sleazy facts help weave the fabric of this MGM melodrama and it's plot.
This movie is also notable for it's early performances by 2 Georges...Hamilton and Peppard.
"Home from the Hill" is certainly worth a slot in a Netflix line-up or an after-thought rainy Sunday afternoon grab at Blockbuster.