Jam and Jobim

Yesterday evening, Amos Shaked, an accomplished pianist who took up trombone and plays it in the big band where I play baritone saxophone - together we inhabit the lower realms of the songs we play - gave himself a sixtieth birthday party by inviting a bunch of musicians to a jam session at his house. 

Amos worked in hi tech for years,  but when the startup he was working for folded, he decided to take early retirement and started playing in a number of ensembles. I attended his party along with my close friend and fellow musician, Bob Trachtenberg, who after retiring from a career as a lawyer, has also given himself over almost completely to music. He and Amos drive (separately) all over the country to play with groups. I don't have the energy or enthusiasm to follow their example.

A lot of us got to play. It was enjoyable and congenial. I brought my alto saxophone, though I haven't been playing it very much recently, because it's much smaller and lighter than my cumbersome baritone sax. I considered bringing my flute, but I didn't think it would be audible. I didn't know there was going to be a sound system with mics. I also thought of bringing my tenor sax, which I've been playing more recently, but it's in a heavy fiberglass case now, and I didn't feel like transferring it to a gig bag and carrying it to Bob's house. That's another example of a certain kind of laziness that hits me now and then.

I took solos on a number of the pieces. I don't think my solos are any good. But I do free my mind and play without thinking very much about what I'm playing, so that I often surprise myself in my solos. Two other guys in the big band also played solos, and both of them, in my opinion, think too much about what they're playing, and their solos aren't interesting. Sonny Rollins, to whom I by no means compare myself, said that when you practice you should think about what you're doing, but when you perform, you should just play. When I practice I try to listen to myself attentively. I think that helps when I'm called upon (or call upon myself) to solo.

For a very long time I loved listening to jazz, but I didn't understand what the musicians were doing. I didn't know about the chords underlying the melodies, the changes, and I didn't understand the structure of a jazz performance. When I was in high school, I had an am radio in the headboard of my bed, and when my parents thought I was sleeping, I used to listen to a jazz program hosted by Mort Fega on WEVD (standing for Eugene V. Debs, the socialist politician). I vividly remember when he played The Girl from Ipanema, with Stan Getz, three times in a row, because it was such a new sound. (Bossa Nova means "the new thing.")

Although it's probably his most popular song, The Girl from Ipanema isn't all that characteristic of Jobim, who was a brilliant and sophisticated composer. For many months now I've been trying to memorize his Chega de Saudade. It's frustrating, and I've only gotten, tentatively, to 3/4 of the piece. But I'm convinced the exercise is useful.

Before leaving for Amos's party, I had a conversation with Ruth Mason, Bob's wife, about getting old. I said that for me the worst part is the closing of the horizon. She asked me whether I'd heard about research claiming that having a positive attitude toward aging increases one's longevity. Taking part in a jam session when I'm nearly 82 years old is, I guess, a positive thing to do. Maybe in a month or two I'll be able to perform Chega de Saudade and improvise on it!

How Can We Concern Ourselves with Music in Times like These?

Our failure to deal with climate change effectively, the ongoing war between Russia and Ukraine, the ongoing wars in the Middle East, the political uncertainty in the US, and so on, and so on are all such serious problems that it seems ridiculous to worry about how to phrase a passage in a piano sonata. On the other hand, has there ever been a time in history when problems weren't pressing? Artists are affected by the threats to health, security, prosperity, and tranquility perhaps even more than ordinary people, because they are more sensitive than ordinary people. Yet, despite these threats, artists continue to compose and perform music, to paint, to write poetry and fiction, and thinking people continue to ponder the eternal mysteries of life in the universe.

Recently I began watching a documentary on Youtube about young musicians who aspire to careers as concert pianists, although, as some of their teachers say, their chances of "making it" are slim. I am troubled by the idea of "making it." My admiration for the dedication of the young pianists is enormous, though I wonder why the entire system has to be so competitive and why whole families have to devote all their resources to the success of their girls and boys. They all reach a very high level of musicianship, even the ones who don't win competitions and go on to brilliant performing careers. Why isn't there a place for these talented, hard-working young people outside of the concert hall? 

Obviously these must be, and I'd like to see a documentary about the musicians who find another path after realizing they aren't going to be famous performers. A cousin of mine started off at the conservatory at Oberlin but realized he wasn't going to be a successful performer. Instead he studied musicology at Oberlin and then at Yale and went on to a successful and rewarding career in the record industry. I would say he "made it"! A young friend of mine is a very gifted saxophonist who went to medical school after finishing studies in a conservatory rather than pursue a professional career in music. He'll never be a saxophone virtuoso, but he'll be a fine family doctor.

My own musical talent is minimal compared to the brilliant young pianists in the documentary, or to my cousin's, but I get a lot of pleasure from music at my modest level. In most weeks, I play baritone saxophone in a big band and in a quartet, and I play flute duets with a friend of mine. During the summer, the big band is on hold, and the quartet has been meeting only sporadically, as one or another of us can't make a rehearsal, and my flute duet partner and I have had to put off playing together for one reason or another. That has been discouraging.

This week, however, not only did the quartet manage to get together, but I also played a lovely Quantz duet with my friend. I play better when I play with other people. I concentrate on the music, listen more attentively, and play somewhat more expressively, since it counts. Playing with other people is the only justification for practicing.

The music doesn't undo the crises threatening us. It doesn't empower us directly to act to save the environment and resolve our political problems, but it give us spiritual strength to cope.

Different Kinds of Practice

In an instructive video that I saw on Youtube by Molly Gebrian, a violist who is also a neuro-scientist, she emphasized that one should have a goal every time one picks up one's instrument to practice. This is probably something that music teachers should tell their students.

I'm aware of many weaknesses of mine as a musician, and I try to address them, not all at once, when I practice. Incidentally, my music guru, Arnie Lawrence, disliked the word "practice." He told us that we should play, not practice. In other words, there shouldn't be a difference between practice and performance - though he also hated the word "performance," as it suggests something artificial. A person who was performing  was doing something slightly dishonest, at least as Arnie saw it. I don't see what verb you can use instead of "to perform," but maybe one should think of practice as performance.

Sometimes when I practice, I concentrate on my sound. I play long notes and intervals between them, trying to hear what I'm playing. How can you not hear what you're playing? It's easy, especially when you're reading music and concentrating on playing the right note, the one that's on the page. So what you hear is whether you played a G sharp when it's called for, whether you're playing the articulation and phrasing that the composer demands, but not the way you sound when you're playing. I hope that the attention I give to my sound, to the way I move from note to note, to the intonation, and so on, will carry over to my playing when I'm reading music.

I also work on memorizing music, playing by heart, transposing songs from key to key by ear. I hope to deepen my understanding of what I play. I consciously notice when an accidental appears in a song, when it moves momentarily from key to key, what the interval is from the end of a phrase to the beginning of the next one. I'm not good at remembering the chords that underlie the melodies I play, but I give them attention, too.

When I play the flute, which is not a transposing instrument, the written notes are the notes that are played. If a song is written in a certain key, those are the notes I have to memorize. But when I play the same song on a tenor saxophone or another instrument that's in B flat, I have to play it in a different key to produce the same audible notes. I often find it difficult to remember the original key of a song when I try to play it by heart on a different instrument. That's something I keep working on.

I also play duets with another flutist, and to prepare for our sessions I have to work in a different way. I wrote "work" and not "practice," because mastering the notes of the duets is work of a different kind from developing my sound. While I'm trying to master sixteenth-note runs and unusual figures, I also try to play with a good tone, but the focus is different.

Awareness and mindfulness, the goals of meditation, are not so much the goals of playing music as the basis of it. If you think too much about what you're playing you get in your own way. But if you don't think about it, you won't get anywhere. The difference between practice and performance is connected with the amount of thought in your playing. If you've thought enough while you're practicing, you shouldn't have to think much while your playing.

From Envy to Admiration

I recently heard a quartet playing mainly Brazilian music, led by the singer, guitarist, and composer Fernando Seixas. He is a charming man and a fine musician. The drummer who played with him, Avinoam Maraton was excellent, as was the bassist, Eve Glula. Fernando's son, Gabriel, in his early twenties, played tenor sax and flute. At first he didn't play very much, and I wasn't impressed. Then he got into it, playing melodiously and confidently, and fitting in perfectly with the ensemble, not trying to dominate it the way a tenor player can.

He never looked at a bit of written music throughout the whole evening. Since it was a planned performance, he had plenty of time to learn the songs by heart, but only a musician with a good ear and a good musical memory could have carried it off the way he did.

Any tenor sax player performing Brazilian music has to have Stan Getz hovering over his shoulder, and Gabriel wasn't intimidated by Getz's ghost. Rather, he was inspired.

How Many Times Can You See/Hear the Mikado?

Every year here in Jerusalem an amateur group puts on a production of an operetta by Gilbert & Sullivan. Every ten years or so, they put on the Mikado again. I saw it last week, and I'm pretty sure it was the third time I saw it here, along with God knows how many times I saw it before. Although essentially amateur, the singers are excellent, the chorus dances gracefully, without being great dancers, the scenery and costumes are excellent, and the small orchestra plays admirably. Every year just about every English speaker in the area comes out to hear them.

The D'Oyly Carte company came to New York when I was eleven, and my mother took me to every one of their productions, a memorable experience. My distinguished cousin, Tom Shepard, a fine musician and composer who also produced many records for Columbia, RCA, and Sony, is a devoted Savoyard as well as a big fan of Broadway musicals, of which he produced many original cast recordings. So on his authority I admit that I love Gilbert and Sullivan operettas, no matter how many times I've seen and heard them, and although I concede they aren't great artworks.

I know that Gilbert and Sullivan didn't get along well, despite the success of their collaboration, and I recommend Mike Leigh's movie Topsy Turvy for an exploration of their very different characters. Obviously Gilbert's wit and shameless exploitation of improbable plots is a key to the enduring success and even relevance of the operettas, but without Sullivan's music they would long have been forgotten. It's not great music or deep music, but it's perfect for its setting. The melodies keep ringing in your ear! If they produce the Mikado again in another ten years, and if I'm alive and not deaf, I'll make a point of seeing it again.

A Fine Jazz Documentary

Youtube recommended a documentary about jazz in Detroit to me, The Best of the Best. I watched it, and learned a lot from it. First of all, I didn't know how many great jazz musicians were born, raised, and educated in that city. The film tells the story of the Black community in Detroit, thousands and thousands of people who came from the rural south to work in the automobile factories. It also tells a story about a generous tradition of music education and mentorship.

I am envious of the great musicians I saw in the movie. I never had their natural musicianship or their commitment to music, but I still enjoy playing and have reached a decent level of proficiency. One of the constants in discussions of jazz is the individuality of the musician. Yusef Lateef, who was a brilliant and original musician, says in the documentary that the goal in music is to sound like yourself. This, of course, is far from easy. Before you can sound like yourself, you have to discover who you are. That is lifelong quest.

What Makes Grigory Sokolov's Playing so Wonderful?

Youtube once decided to offer me a performance by Grigory Sokolov. Since then I have listened to many performances by him and have always been enthralled. 

Fortunately for us, the world is full of brilliant classical pianists. The music-lover would be hard pressed to choose a favorite, but there's no need. Why do I have to decide whether Andres Schiff or Angela Hewitt, so different from one another in personality and self-presentation, is a better pianist than Yuja Wang, let's say, or twentieth century virtuosi like Rubinstein and Horowitz? 

Nevertheless, I find something particularly compelling in Sokolov's playing. When I listen to one of his (obviously) recorded performances I have the illusion that he is playing just for me, that he is sharing with me an intimate and personal understanding of the music.

That understanding goes beyond technical mastery of the pieces he plays, the impressive mastery one hears in a performance, by memory, of long, difficult, and demanding pieces, by any competent concert pianist. It is also more than sheer musicological understanding, which I'm sure he has. It's the elusive quality of emotional understanding. As he plays, one senses that the music is meaningful to him, that it has reached deeply into his soul, to use language that makes me uncomfortable. Because it has that meaning for him, he conveys that meaning to the listener and miraculously connects the listener to the composer, simultaneously making himself invisible, a link between the long dead composer and the living audience, but also incredibly present.

Music Making in a Time of Acute Trouble

 I play baritone saxophone in an amateur big band sponsored by the Jerusalem Municipality. I enjoy it and can still pretty much hold my own, though at the age of 81 I'm significantly older than the other musicians. We rehearse in a building in the Hinnom Valley under the walls of the Old City. It was renovated through the generosity of Herb Alpert of the Tijuana Brass and named after his parents.

We were supposed to play in a concert with two other municipally sponsored bands on March 1, 2026, the second day of the war against Iran. Obviously that performance was cancelled. Against all odds, we were able to rehearse yesterday, March 9 (a Monday, our usual rehearsal night), and everyone came: the drummer (who lives about an hour's drive away), the bass player (the only woman in our band), the guitarist (an accomplished musician, who, on a volunteer basis, is the band's manager), all five saxophonists, four trumpet players, and our only trombone player, and the director of the band (a saxophonist who plays piano, since we don't have a regular pianist yet; he is a high school teacher whose students are distressed, and the parent of two adolescents, who are going through a hard time) - 14 musicians in all, if I counted right.

No one I know is happy about the ongoing war against Iran, with missiles and drones launched against Israel and bombardment of Iran by Israel and the US. The war is causing physical, mental, and economic damage on a vast scale. Though Jerusalem is seldom targeted by the Iranians, we hear frequent air raid sirens, enter our bomb shelters, and listen to the explosions of interceptions. Most things are closed, and people are stuck at home.

Getting together and playing music was hugely important to us. Maybe by next week we'll stop firing missiles one each other.

Masters of Improvisation, Memorization, and Blues for Alice

Recently I viewed a valuable documentary about Keith Jarrett, in which he had a lot to say about his art. I also saw a valuable Q and A session with Joe Henderson about learning how to improvise. Both of them emphasized the importance of memorization. Jarrett, whose trios played standards, usually not deciding in advance which ones they would play at a given concert, told how he memorized countless standards early in his career. Henderson talks about listening to records, transcribing solos, and playing from memory. Jarrett and Henderson did what they did naturally, without teachers telling them that's what they should be doing. 

Not every expert musician is a great memorizer. But a professional jazz musician ought to know the melodies of hundreds of standards as well as their underlying harmonies and to be able to improvise according to those harmonies by ear. A musician who can't do that will become some other kind of player.

Certain types of classical music also demand memorization. Concert pianists and other soloists are expected - and expect of themselves - to memorize the music they perform, an ability that astounds me. Some of the works they play are long, technically difficult, and very complex. It appears that the process of mastering a concerto includes memorizing it.

When I was young, taking piano lessons, I think I was told to memorize pieces, but it didn't stick, and I never became even a fair pianist. All my subsequent musical education was based on reading notes well, and I never felt confined by that emphasis. I was never a natural musician, and that hasn't prevented me from enjoying playing.

However, I think it's important to address my weaknesses as a musician, even at my advanced age, so I try to memorize pieces and I sometimes go through the exercise of playing a memorized piece in a number of keys. Since I play saxophones in Eb and Bb as well as flute, I have to be able to play tunes in three different keys, an interesting challenge.

One of the pieces I am trying to memorize is Charlie Parker's "Blues for Alice." It's difficult for me, partially because the changes (the chords) aren't those of a standard blues. I assume that Parker didn't write the music down and play it from the written notes before improvising on it. He probably composed it in his head and played it from memory. Among many others, Roland Kirk recorded it. Since he was blind, he had to learn it by listening to it and playing it by memory, not a feat one should take for granted, as the melody is tricky.

Even if one is not a natural musician like the great masters of jazz improvisation, one can inch forward toward greater competence.

What is Music For?

Recently I read about the discovery in Slovenia of a bone flute that is 60,00 years old, made by Neanderthals. Other prehistoric bone flutes that have been discovered are only 35,000 years old. On a visit to the Smithsonian Museum of Natural History I heard recordings of the sounds made by such a flute. Musical instruments of that age or earlier, made of less durable material - reeds or wood -obviously will never be discovered, but must we not assume that people were singing and also making and playing musical instruments since there were human beings?

Music has probably always had a social function - possibly its first function - in producing a shared emotional atmosphere at important social gatherings, ceremonies. Dance, rhythmic movement of the  body, is inseparable from music, part of musical experience. I imagine that people were singing, dancing, and playing instruments together from time immemorial. Music, no less than speech, is what makes us human.

One might object and argue that music has never been for anything, that it is simply itself, not functional. Or else, that functional music is an inferior type of music. I think that's wrong. Without being judgmental, we can agree that there are many different kinds of music and therefore music does many different things. In all instances, I believe, music is expressive. Of what? Of what words cannot express. That's why we need it.

I Think My Talk Went Over My Audience's Heads

 My topic is one that interests me a lot: the connections between musical factors (the demands composers make on musicians and the demands the pubic makes on composers and musicians), technological factors in the manufacture of musical instruments, economic factors, cultural developments such as the building of large auditoriums, the emergence of the symphony orchestra and other ensembles, and so on in the improvement and invention of musical instruments. For example, without the development of sound systems capable of filling a stadium, huge rock concerts wouldn't be possible. But the audience I gave the talk to didn't know enough about the things that I assumed they would know. My talk was too academic and too technical. Oh well.

What would speak to the kind of audience that gets invited to my talk? I began by saying that archaeologists have discovered bone flutes 60,000 years old, and that caught their attention. A talk entitled, "What Does Music Do for Us?" would reach the audience I had. Another way of putting it would be: "What is Music For?"

The simple answer to these conjoined rhetorical questions would begin with the social function of music. Music, when it is performed for a group of people, especially when it's part of a ceremony, broadly conceived, arouses a shared emotion within a group, as in a congregation that sings hymns together. It binds an audience together, especially when the audience is also making the music.

I haven't thought about the topic enough to put together a lecture on this topic, but I think I could avoid talking over people's heads if I gave it a try.

A Talk about Woodwinds

 A few years ago the Jerusalem Municipality organized a short course for retired people (whom they called people in "the third age," a euphemism I'm not fond of) to train them to give lectures to other retired people, the assumption being that people of our age have wisdom to impart. There were about forty people in the course, and most of the subjects of the talks they offered were full of self-help advice. I decided, seeing that I've had a long career, as it were, as a serious amateur musician, to talk about the way music has enriched my life. I eventually gave up on that idea, because it struck me as too boastful: look at me, I play in a wind orchestra! But I found a different way of framing the talk: How and why was the saxophone invented?

I've given the talk twice so far, and I'm slated to give it again in a week or two. Each time I give it, I see ways of improving it. This time I intend to start by telling them about playing clarinet in high school, and why I stopped playing when I went off to college. The main reason was that I knew I wasn't talented and dedicated enough to become a professional musician. Nevertheless, I can still play clarinet with a good tone, and I'll play something on my clarinet to demonstrate.

The first time I tried out the talk, I brought some instruments with me, but I didn't play them enough. My audience expected to hear music. This time I'll prepare songs to play. I still haven't decided just what I'll play. I should probably play something classical on the clarinet first, and then something klezmerish.

After I've demonstrated the clarinet and spoken about it a little, I'll take out my soprano saxophone and talk about the differences between the clarinet and the saxophone and why Adolphe Sax invented the saxophone. The first times I gave the talk, I brought bigger saxes with me, but they're heavy and cumbersome, and the soprano is a more unusual instrument, straight (at least mine is) and not curved like the other instruments in the family. I'll also talk about the family of saxophones.

Then I'll take out the pan pipe that my daughter brought from Peru and talk a little about the ancient history of wind instruments and how they work. Archaeologists have found a bone flute 60,000 years old!

Photograph by Petar Milošević 

Until the 17th century, woodwinds were essentially the same: tubes with holes in them. I'll take out my plastic baroque flute and my Indian bansuri to show that. I'll compare my modern silver flute to the simpler, earlier flutes. I will also make it clear that I'm not saying the modern Western music is better than earlier music or the music of other cultures.Then I'll talk about why instrument builders started adding keys to the flutes, clarinets, oboes, and bassoons they were making. 

First, composers began to write music with accidentals and changes in key. Second, the Industrial Revolution made it possible to build complicated instruments. Third, the manufacture of musical instruments became industrialized. Fourth, larger and larger concert halls were built, along with military parades led by bands - all of which necessitated louder instruments.

There's more to say and more to play. Let's see how the talk goes.

Voices

The other day I saw a great documentary narrated by Branford Marsalis about great tenor saxophonists, but for some reason I can't find it on Youtube again. Never mind. Marsalis spoke about the way Coleman Hawkins essentially invented the tenor as a jazz instrument and played clips of many of great tenor players from Hawkins up to David Murray (it was made in 1992, so maybe other impressive contemporary players would have been included if he'd made it last year).

In the past few years I've mainly been playing baritone sax, partly because if you play the baritone, you can always find an ensemble to play in. I also enjoy playing baritone. I'm not suffering, though sometimes the parts are boring. You hear music differently when you play the bottom notes. 

I do own the other common sizes of saxes, soprano, alto, and tenor, and every now and then I play one of them, to get back in touch with the other horns, but my tenor was giving me trouble. There was a leak in one of the pads, and I couldn't play the low notes at all. I asked a friend of mine, who knows how to repair horns and has a lot of tools, to take a look at my tenor (a well-made Taiwanese Lien-Cheng instrument), and, sure enough, he found and easily fixed the leak, which wasn't where I thought it was. So in the past few days I've been playing tenor for a change. The sound is quite different from the sound of the baritone. Also the transposition to concert pitch is different, so it forces me to make an adjustment.

There are two approaches. Some musicians stick to a single instrument and get deeper and deeper into it. Once, for example, I asked a young tuba player whether he played other brass instruments, and he said there was so much to explore with the tuba, that he saw no need to play any other horn. Other musicians play a lot of different instruments, like, for example, Yusuf Lateef and Eric Dolphy. It's far from uncommon. Many violinists also play viola, classical clarinetists in orchestras also play bass clarinet, and some folk musicians can play guitar, banjo, mandolin, and fiddle. I recently heard a singer who sang with a fine, strong baritone voice and then switched to counter-tenor. Hard to believe the same person was singing.

Every voice expresses a different part of the musician's self.

Like Riding a Bicycle?

 I just spent a bit more than a month abroad and couldn't take a heavy instrument with me, so I took my flute, which meant neglecting saxophone, and I play baritone saxophone in a big band and in a quartet. So it's important to me to be able to play at a decent level.

Upon returning from abroad, I tried playing sax and was relieved that I could still do it. I have rehearsals next week, and I want to be ready for them.

A friend of mine, a fellow amateur multi-instrumentalist reassured me that playing sax, after all the years that I've been doing it, was like riding a bicycle. This was only mildly encouraging, because at my age, nearly 81, I'm not about to ride a bicycle. Nevertheless, he's right. I can still even play clarinet, though I haven't played much clarinet since I was in high school. But, if you haven't ridden on a bicycle for a long time, your legs get tired quickly, and your balance won't be what it once was.

I keep wondering how long I will be able to play at all. One of my music teachers told me not to worry about wrong notes. His brother-in-law is a neurosurgeon, he said, and if he makes a mistake, his patient might die. But if a musician plays a wrong note, it's not a matter of life and death. I'll probably never play as well as I did when I was in my teens. But as long as I enjoy it.... Playing badly is less dangerous than falling off a bicycle.

An Astonishing Cellist

 Last night my family and I attended a fantastic performance, the world premier of Gaia, by the French cellist, Gautier Capucon, at the San Francisco symphony hall. He commissioned works by sixteen composers on the theme of nature and the earth. He performed with an excellent pianist, Jerome Ducros, the composers of two of the pieces he played, and six cellists from the San Francisco Symphony Youth Orchestra.

The music was excellent. I especially enjoyed two pieces by Bryce Dessner.

All of us were impressed on every score: Capucon's brilliant musicianship, his openness to new music, his generosity toward the composers he commissioned, and his appearing with young musicians, who will certainly remember this performance as one of the high moments in their lives.

Young Musicians

In the summer of 2025, our California grandson, then thirteen years old, attended the Alameda It where he played viola and trombone in ensembles. He came home determined to play in an orchestra better than the one at his otherwise excellent middle school. On his own he found out about the Berkeley Youth Orchestra, made an audition video, and was accepted in the viola section. On a visit to his family in Alameda, I attended a rehearsal of the orchestra and was impressed by the way it was run. In addition to the conductor, Sam Wilde, a number of instructors sat in during the rehearsal and helped the musicians. Their comments were helpful and supportive.

Luckily for us, the orchestra gave a performance while we were visiting our family. They played well and sounded good. What pleased me, in addition to the music, was the seriousness of the young musicians. They clearly conveyed their conviction that they were doing something consequential that demanded concentration, preparation, and skill. How many opportunities do young people for that kind of seriousness?

Even if they give up music later in life, the experience of rehearsing regularly, of practicing in order to play decently, and performing is character building and offers a sense of accomplishment. It also introduces them to classical music. In general I was impressed by the music program at our grandchildren's elementary school in Alameda. How else would our grandson have ever begun to play viola?

Some Practicing Practices

Sorry, this entry is kind of technical. 

I don't like to read the exercises written by other people, so I make up my own or play scale and arpeggio patterns that I have memorized.

One of the exercises I made up is based on a run that appears in flute duets based on the Magic Flute, which Mozart himself wrote. In the duet, the run starts on an F in the middle register, goes down to a C, goes back up to the C an octave above that, comes down to G, moves up to A, and goes back down to E and then up to F. It then repeats that movement and after that it goes up in the major scale to high F. Taking that pattern, I start on low E on the flute and play through the pattern in the key of E. Then I move up chromatically, playing the pattern in key after key. To vary things I articulate the runs in different ways.

Another exercise helps me master the modes. I start on C and play the Lydian mode (sharp F). I then add flats in the order of the circle of fifths, each time playing a mode of C: F natural (Ionian) - Bb (Mixolydian) - Eb (Dorian) - Ab (Aeolian)- Db (Phrygian) - Gb (Locrian). As I lower the notes of the scale, I go through all the modes and notice how they are related to each other. After playing the Locrian mode, I lower the C to a B and I'm in the B Lydian mode. So on until I get back to C. Playing this exercise keeps me thinking. It gets tricky when you start in a mode with a lot of sharps or flats.

Another thing I often do is play a melody that I know pretty well, like "Pennies from Heaven," and play it in all 12 keys.

These exercises haven't turned me into a great musician, but they help my musical cognition while they make me move my fingers. It's a little like saying the same thing in different languages.

Going for Baroque

 I don't always listen to the baroque music that plays on my computer while I do something else, like writing an entry in this occasional blog. I enjoy the sound of baroque music, maybe because it doesn't always impose itself on the listener. 

I wonder how attentively it was listened to back in the times it was written. Did the courtiers who congregated where music was played, in salons, listen carefully, or did they converse, scheme, and flirt? A lot of baroque music is dance music, and dancers listen to music differently from the way an audience listens to music. And a lot of baroque music is church music. Today that music is performed in secular settings, and the audience listens to it differently from the way the congregation of a cathedral listened to it originally. They were expected to believe in the religious message of the music and to be inspired spiritually. We are also expected to be inspired spiritually, I supposes, but aesthetically, not theologically.

I play in a saxophone quartet. We have several arrangements of Bach. Often when we have played something by him, I have the feeling that my soul has been cleansed by the music.

Recently we hosted a dinner in our garden for friends of ours who recently got married. I played flute duets with a friend of mine while the guests were arriving. No one stood near us and listened attentively, which was fortunate, because I was making a lot of mistakes, and we had to stop here and there when we lost our way. The music was written by Devienne, a secondary classical composer, and after a while we got bored with it. Each of the six duets was pretty much more of the same - pleasant, but not terribly interesting. Recently we've been working on more challenging duets by Kuhlau, a generation later than Devienne, whose music is sometimes too interesting.

I prefer baroque and classical music to romantic music, in general, and I've discussed this preference with my fellow flurtist, who shares it. We both think there's too much ego in romantic music, not that we don't love Brahms, Chopin, and Schubert. Baroque and classical music is essentially about the music itself, not about the composer's angst.

Voice

 I recently read a novel whose content was not to my taste, but I liked the title: Voice Lessons. The idea is that the implied author of a book must have his or her own distinctive voice. This is a problem that I faced during my career as a translator, because the "voice" of the implied author must somehow represent the real author in the original language of the text.

I don't have a good singing voice. My range is limited, and I don't sing in tune very well. That's why I play instruments. Each instrument gives me a voice.

I have just returned from a twelve day dance seminar in northern Greece. I'm not a dancer - my wife is - but I enjoyed watching the dancing and listening to the traditional, local Greek music, played on folk instruments like the zorna, the lyra, the gaida (bagpipe), and the kaval, as well as on Western instruments like clarinet, saxophone, trumpet, and string bass. I took my clarinet on the trip, thinking there might be an opportunity to play with the local musicians, but the music they play is so different from the music that I play, there was no hope for me to join in.

Nevertheless, I did play clarinet almost every day, practicing long tones, a few scales and arpeggios, and some songs that I know by heart. I was a decent clarinet player during my teens, but I gave it up. I knew I could never reach the level of virtuosity expected of a clarinettist by contemporary composers, and I didn't like that music very much anyway (sour grapes). It was nice to get back to the sound of the clarinet, a voice I have largely neglected for a long time. I own a decent vintage Selmer USA clarinet, and it sounds pretty good.

talking to old women about wind instruments

 The Jerusalem municipality is concerned with the plight of senior citizens (or whatever you want to call old people), so they gave a short course to a bunch of us in preparing talks to entertain each other. I decided to prepare a talk about wind instruments, essentially how and why musical instruments evolved from the pan pipe to the saxophone (not that the saxophone is the highest form of musical evolution, though some would make that claim).

Yesterday I got to give my talk for the first time at a club for what is kindly called "the third age" in the Kiryat Yovel neighborhood, and it went well enough, though I had to struggle with laryngitis. My audience consisted of about nineteen women and one man. Where do the old men go? 

I started by introducing myself and saying that for me wind instruments are special, because we power them with our breath, and we put them in our mouths - extremely intimate contact. In Hebrew, the word for the soul (neshama) is derived from the verb "to breathe" (linshom). You put your soul into a wind instrument. I mentioned that archaeologists have found bone pipes that are nearly 50,000 years old.

I brought a shopping cart full of instruments and demonstrated them briefly (too briefly): a pan pipe that my daughter brought from Peru, which I can't really play beyond getting a few notes about it; a bansuri (an Indian flute) that I bought from its maker in Mumbai, which I can sort of play; a modern Sankyo flute; a clarinet; and finally a soprano saxophone. I had kind of imagined lugging my baritone sax as well and posing the question, "How could both this monster and the slender soprano sax both be saxophones?" But I wasn't up to transporting the bari. I was also recovering from a cold and wasn't quite up to playing a lot.

What interests me, and what I tried to communicate, is how each instrument suits the music of its culture. The pan pipe is fine for the Indians of the Andes. The bansuri suits the subtle complexity of Indian music. But modern Western music demands instruments that can play in all twelve keys, plus a bunch of other things that I talked about, such as the improvement in metal working that made it possible to produce wind instruments in factories, the emergence of a public that went to concerts and bought instruments, the need for loud instruments in military bands, and so on. I also talked about the difference between a clarinet and a saxophone. And I sort of explained that the sound of a wind instrument comes from a vibrating column of air, which is lengthened and shortened by opening and closing holes in the tube. 

I made a major mistake in planning the talk, however. I ought to have prepared a short piece to play on each of the instruments as I demonstrated them. I did play some stuff, but I should have paid more attention to that aspect of the talk.

Anyway, it was pretty well received, and I enjoyed myself.