Bill’s Big Diamond Blog noted this frightening bit of news about the struggle inside the Corporation for Public Broadcasting. Check it out. It’s pretty un-nerving. I’m beginning to really smell a foul propaganda machine stench oozing into everything; academia, the media, government, corporate structure, the legal system.

Stormwind tagged me with the book meme. I’ve never done this before. Thanks, Stormwind, for asking me to share this stuff. It was a powerful reminder of what books shaped me.

Total number of books I’ve owned: Reading has always been work for me, because I’m so slow. The words move around, and my mind wanders. So my library has always been spare. I use the library regularly. Then I can check out 20 books and try them on for size. When a book earns a place in my library, it becomes part of me. If I lend it out and misplaced, I mourn its loss. A good many of my books are poetry, since it’s denser than prose.

Last book I bought: I just bought Random Family by Adrian Nicole Le Blanc. It’s a vivid, novel like reportage of 80’s ghetto life in the Bronx. Love, sex, early motherhood, drugs, drugs, drugs, in a vicious cycle. If I didn’t know it was fact I’d call it pure cliche. I’ll be looking for books like it in the future.

Last book I read: That would be Invisible Man by Ralph Ellison. Saul Bellows 1952 review is here. This is not to be confused with THE Invisible Man by H. G. Wells. The Ellison novel was written in 1947, and it explores the complex, layered, desembodied existence of the Negro in 40’s America. The protagonist is un-named. The writing is both insightful and poetic. The structural faults are easily overlooked when a brilliant passage shows up, of which there are many. Some of my favorite parts are pure description or reflection. The plot is secondary. I returned my library copy, but I want to buy a copy soon. Then I’ll quote my very favorite passage here.

Five books that mean a lot to me:

1. The Bhagavad Gita, which means “Song of the Lord”. Eknath Easwaran’s translation is the only one I’ve read, but his clear explanations were helpful with terms such as atman, brahman, karma and dharma. The text is a spiritual classic dating from somewhere between 700 to 1000 B.C.E. It’s teachings influenced Sakyamuni, who became known as the Buddha. The yogic approach to life is scientific, analytical, which appeals to me. The Gita is a spiritual dialog which takes place before a great battle. The conversation is between the warrior Arjuna and the god incarnate Krishna, who has taken the form of Arjuna’s charioteer. Here again, the “plot” is not relevant. Their long poetic conversation is a metaphor for the dialog in each of us, between the divine and temporal selves. I’d like to learn Sanskrit, or just listen to a recording of the original Sanskrit, just to enjoy the sounds.
2. Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance by Robert Persig. I read this a long, long time a go, but it affected me deeply. The story is about his motorcycle trip with the author’s son. That didn’t interest me as much as his philosophical explorations of reality. He intellectually discerns the nature of the present, the moment, which is often discussed in Zen teachings. His theory is called the Metaphysics of Quality. Actually, Andy’s description of the book is much better than mine. I need to read it again. I read Lila, the sequel, years later. It was the same kind of book, where he continues his exploration into the nature of “quality” as the defining motive of all existence.
3. Dune by Frank Herbert. I read the whole series in on summer. Me, a slow reader, read 6 books, each 400 plus pages, in one summer. How’s that for a good review? The world he creates is fantastic, believable, and often implies our own twisted, violent history here on Earth. I love the Bene Geserit priestesses who are wise, manipulative and very, very powerful. But even they mess up. The result is the creation of a super being, a Bene Geserit male. I found it most intriguing that, at the end of the last book (he intended to continue the saga), women run the universe. The Bene Geserits are matched with an equally powerful counterforce, the Honored Matres. Men are reduced to hard laborers and sperm carriers.
4. The Man with the Blue Guitar by Wallace Stevens. If one single poem could be my favorite, this is it. I first read it aloud, feeling the word and rhythms, more than understanding. Like music’s notes, the meaning flows with the sound. (I’ve included a photo of Picasso’s Old Guitarist, which some say inspired the poem.) The last section is:
   

   Throw away the lights, the definitions,
   And say of what you see in the dark

   That it is this or that it is that,
   But do not use the rotten names.

   How should you walk in that space and know
   Nothing of the madness of space,

   Nothng of it’s joclar procreations?
   Thow the lights away. Nothing must stand

   Between you and the shapes you take
   When the crust of shape has been destroyed.

   You as you are? You are yourself.
   The blue guitar surprises you.

   The generations’s dream, aviled (sic)
   In the mud, in Monday’s dirty light,

   That’s it, the only dream they knew,
   Time in its final block, not time

   To come, a wrangling of two dreams.
   Here is the bread of time to come,

   Here is its actual stone. The bread
   will be our bread, the stone will be

   Our bed and we shall sleep by night.
   We shall forget by day, except

   The moments when we choose to play
   the imagined pine, the imagined jay.

   It’s about everything, the big picture and the tenuous connection between words and reality. It’s about the power of the poet. Another favorite short poem by Stevens is “Of Mere Being”. See below

5. The last book is a toss up between Zen Mind, Beginner’s Mind and Letters to a Young Poet by Rainer Maria Rilke. The Rilke letters influenced me in my twenties, and perhaps had a deeper affect. A sentence such as this is hard to forget: “…it is so important to be lonely and attentive when one is sad: because the apparently uneventful and stark moment at which our future sets foot in us is so much closer to life than that other noisy and fortuitous point of time at which it happens to us as if from outside. “

I haven’t been blogging long, so I don’t “know” many bloggers yet. I’m sending this meme to:

1. Angela at Fluid Pudding. She’s a got a hilarious sense of absurd humor, and I’m curious what appeals to her. Her young children provide most of the material for her blog.
2. Alex at Fictioneer . He’s a noted writer, and I’m curious what he’s put on his list.
3. Brian at Shadow Footprints. He has a beautiful photo of an open book and glass of wine as the background photo on his blog, so I’m wondering what book that could be.
4. Weez at Weez Blog. Weez is fun. What does she read?
5. Guusje at On Life, Ebay, Education, Travel and Books. What more do I need to say.

There’s no obligation. Just a little nudge to tell us more about yourselves.

Of Mere Being
by Wallace Stevens

The Palm at the end of the mind,
Beyond the last thought, rises
in the bronze decor,

A gold-feathered bird
Sings in the palm, without human meaning,
Without human feeling, a foreign song.

You know then that it is not the reason
That makes us happy or unhappy.
The bird sings. Its feathers shine.

The palm stands on the edge of space.
the wind moves slowly in the branches.
The bird’s fire-fangled feathers dangle down.

Technorati tags:books, poetry

Learn all about recorded music at alwaysart.com

I just read The Record Effect, by Alex Ross. It’s amazingly well written and researched. He explores many facets of the recording industry’s influence on music of all kinds, including classical. Since I am an orchestral musician, he asked my opinion on the effect of recordings on live classical music.

He often refers to two works, among others. The first is Mark Katz’s Capturing Sound: How Technology Has Changed Music (California; $19.95). The other is Robert Phillip’s Performing Music in the Age of Recording”. I learned a few things from Ross’s discussion of these. For example, I never knew that violin vibrato became more accentuated to accommodate sonic output unique to early phonograph recordings, which sound fuzzy and bland. Apparently Fritz Kreisler figured out that a wider, more intense vibrato (wobble) gave a fuller, more colorful sound and covered intonation problems on recordings. Before that, it was only used sparingly for color. It became the norm. What I thought was a stable tradition in performance style was, in fact, created to fit the medium of recordings.

Technique and intonation improved with recording technology. Access to recordings of almost any performance gave the players a valuable tool. Musicians are often their own objective critics using recordings for feedback. In addition to doing that, I have listened to countless recordings of other orchestras. Overall, I believe this has greatly improved the "instrument" of the orchestra. After all, we are perfectionists, and recordings feed our hunger for self criticism.

I never questioned the validity of striving for the the timeless safety of recorded perfection. Growing up, I would cringe at hearing old Toscanini recordings. They were horribly out of tune and had flabby ensemble. I thought they hadn’t yet been guided, enlightened, by the instant feedback I have access to. These days, with more respect for older performances, I wonder how they would have sounded live, in a good hall. Maybe I would be blown away by the emotion and impact of a live Toscanini performance. Perhaps the roughness would add to the impact, would be a vehicle for the emotion, instead of just an annoyance on the recording. Ross cites some historical practices from before the advent of recordings, which tended to be much rougher and more raw than we are accustomed to. This begs the question, did technical improvements hamper the emotional impact of live music?

Of course the idea of recordings being a mirror, a feedback loop of continual self-criticism, is very familiar to me. I’m referring to recordings of our live performances, which are broadcast later. Yet could this helpful tool to improve technique might also homogenize a player’s expression in favor of precision? Persistent nit-picking of my own playing often bogs me down. I dissect a musical phrase into a bunch of rules for improving the intonation, blend and color. I may resign myself to all the "rules" I’ve created, and lose sight of the musical reason for the phrase. Constant polishing dulls the spirit of it. But it doesn’t have to, if the tool is used properly.

I selectively listen to myself on our recorded broadcasts. (sometimes my fragile ego just can’t take it!) A balanced dose of self critique via record can provide valuable feedback. Each performance inevitably has it’s limitations. Live performances are often battlefields, marathons, adventures. Accidents happen. My best shot is my best shot.

After comparing trusted friends’ accounts of live performances, I am convinced live recordings also fail to capture objectively what is ultimately subjective. The technology is good, but it’s still only a representation. On our recordings of live concerts, the microphones are right above us, without the advantage of acoustical embellishment of the hall. (what little ther is) So the tone, at least, is not the same on the recording as it would be to a listener in the hall. (This is probably not the case with every live recording, just the way ours are set up in our hall.)

As a performer, I thrive playing live. I stretch, finesse, dramatize, cajole and intimate through live interpretation in ways I often couldn’t conjure in the comfort of my practice studio. A similar dampening might take place in studio recordings, which are rarely ever as exciting as live. In fact, I prefer to listen to "live recordings" of any piece over the studio version. Performing live has an edge. That edge is produced by the intense experience of pulling your rabbit out of your hat come hell or high water. (what an image) There’s a lot of pressure. You are naked. Everybody is listening. Somehow, knowing every heart hangs, trusts, on a phrase I create, gives me inspiration to go beyond the pale, to tap into something beyond myself, something from the ether.

I love Ross’s ruminations halfway through, how recordings transform music into a "collectible object, which becomes decor for the lonely modern soul. It thrives on the buzz of the new, but it also breeds nostalgia, a state of melancholy remembrance and, with that, indifference to the present." That along with the "mirror" effect, sums up the paradox of recorded classical music. I think recordings have helped improve the overall technique of performers. But a live performance, if it doesn’t try too hard to be a "recording", is a subtle world of experience, encompassing visual input, physical sensation, and the communal experience of those around you. That cannot be trapped and boxed. (at least not yet)

I also enjoyed this marvelous quote by Benjamin Boretz (whom I’ve never heard of): "In music, as in everything, the disappearing moment of experience is the firmest reality." What a great quote. "…the disappearing moment… is the firmest reality". I often try to capture that paradox in my poetry, with obscure results. (glad I don’t do it for a living) Ross then expands this, saying recordings preserve "disappearing moments of sound but never the spark of humanity that generates them." He broadens this boldly to claim: recorded music is "a paradox common to technological existence: everything gets a little easier and a little less real." Food for thought, but I don’t plan to become a Luddite. Blogging is my way of reaching through technology to the world. And a way back to myself via the "unreality" of technology. Knowing others may be reading it gives me incentive to improve. Just like recordings.

I think live classical music will thrive as long as the human spirit burns. Recently, our orchestra had a taste of what live music can really do. Conductors like Junichi Hirokami, who reminds me of Leonard Bernstein (or Alessandro Siciliani, who built our orchestra on dramatic, passionate unpredictability) are vivid interpreters of a rich tradition. With them an orchestra has a chance to rise out of it’s self-conscious critical "feedback" state, and communicate viscerally, soul to soul, through the medium of the composer’s muse. And live music doesn’t byte reality, it creates it.
Technorati Tags-classical music,live music,record effect,performing live