I Knew a Man Who Knew Brahms

I was, of course, curious about the title. The man who knew Brahms was the son of a Viennese pharmacist who was delivering medicine for Brahms to the home of his friend Eduard Hanslick. This man, who Nancy Shear, the writer of this memoir, met in the library of the Philadelphia Orchestra, also knew Mahler.

I was also intrigued by what I hoped would be descriptions of the work of an orchestral librarian. Though I am happy with the path in music that I have taken, there was one point during my early teens when I used to hang around the Berkshire Music Center music library that was housed backstage in the Theater at Tanglewood mainly so I could watch the people working there write with their italic pens and I could pick their brains.

It is indeed rare to find a memoir written by a librarian, particularly a music librarian, but there was enough librarian-related stuff here to satisfy my particular needs.

Mostly this book concerns the growth of a music-loving teenager who played the cello, and her path into and through the world of music by way of her working relationships with librarians and orchestral musicians and her personal relationships with some of the most powerful men in the "old school" musical world of the twentieth century.

Shear approached Leopold Stokowski the morning of February 3, 1964 and asked him if she could come to attend a rehearsal. I suppose the pleasure of having an eager teenage girl with blond hair (who, according to her grown-up publicity photo must have been pretty as a child) ask to attend a rehearsal, even if rehearsals were strictly closed, outweighed the idea of breaking her heart. That began a long working relationship which became an intimate personal one, but, thank goodness, only after Shear had become an adult.

She offers a great deal of insight into the mind and manner of Stokowski. Some of it I knew, and some I didn't. I don't share the general adoration for Stokowski's work that some do, but I can save that for another post.

Shear, who must have kept a careful diary during those years, also writes at length about Eugene Ormandy and Mstislav Rostropovich. She was particularly close with Rostropovich, and the picture she paints of him is a genuine likeness of the man I observed giving masterclasses at Tanglewood in the 1970s. Her portrait is much more intimate, and I would say is required reading for people who admire him and his work.

Another important element in the book (and I would say the most important element) is the look at how a woman fared professionally in the world of music in the 1960s and the 1970s. Shear, who was certainly qualified for an orchestra library job after her five years of work at in the Philadelphia Orchestra's library, her work in the rental library of Theodore Presser, and her work as a freelance editors (even working with Vincent Presichetti), didn't get the job because she was a woman.

Her interviewer asked her what would happen if her husband wouldn't want her to work at some point (she wasn't married, and didn't intend to get married). He also asked her how she could carry all the heavy parts, scores, and folders. She replied that she could make two trips or use a cart with wheels. She did manage to get a job at the Curtis Institute in her home town of Philadelphia (she called Rudolf Serkin, a frequent soloist with the Philadelphia Orchestra, who knew that they needed a librarian who could manage orchestra rehearsals and out-of-town concerts). That gave her summers free, so she could go visit Leopold Stokowski, who had left Philadelphia for England.

And the story becomes most interesting. I won't spoil it for you.

 You can find out more about the book here.

Bach to Haydn in Plain Sight

We wake up to such awful news every day. Every day. And every day I do my best to keep it together by practicing Bach and Haydn on the violin, the viola, and the piano.

It gives me a feeling of accomplishment at the end of the day, and gives me something to look forward to for the next day. Rinse and repeat.

I hope that this terrible period in history will end, and I hope that it ends in such a way that I can play Bach and Haydn to celebrate the beginning of better times. But in the meantime I am so very grateful that I have this music to play.

The Alma Mahler Doll

You can read all about it here, in the Public Domain Review, one of the great places on the internet.

Notes from Underground

I really enjoy the fact that my little space here in the musical internets, on a platform designed for sharing thoughts rather than for making money, is visited by a handful of people who are interested in engaging on mostly musical matters.

So much has changed in the political landscape of the country I happen to live in. But as far as I can "see" as I read about history mostly through literature and music, political landscapes always change. Little pockets of civilization happen within larger pockets of civilization here and there, and if we are lucky those creative people leave their mark in the form of music, art, or literature (including plays and poetry, of course).

If we are lucky there are (or were) people who have the wherewithal to recognize when something is of value. If we are really lucky there are (or were) people who are able to see and hear value that goes beyond the price that someone can get for it, whatever it is. And then anything that survives across the centuries and cultures is a tremendous gift from those kind (and sometimes greedy) souls who managed to preserve it from harm during times of war, natural disasters, or simply natural decay.

I feel so fortunate to have spent my entire life (up to this point) in the safety of a democratic society. Whether that safety will be preserved throughout the lives of our children and our grandchildren is not something I can be sure of. But something about me feels assured that the things I value in life will endure in spite of how governments change, if only because they have endured.

I think of CPE Bach and his servitude in the court of Frederic the Great (he was hired as an accompanist, and would never become promoted to the role of court composer). I think of the Mozart family's struggles with monarchs. I think of Haydn who worked as a musical servant until his patron was no longer in need of his services. I think of Beethoven who, despite having a less-than-gracious personality, developed relationships with the very musical Viennese aristocracy, only to have them stomped on by Napoleon. I think of Schubert, who, as a teacher, didn't make enough money to marry his fianceé at a time when local laws decreed how much a man had to make in order to marry. She married someone else, and he got syphilis.

But a lot of the music, thankfully, has been preserved. A lot of the music that was played or written down over the past several thousand years was not preserved, and what it was and how it sounded we will never know.

The business of music had a great ascension during the 19th century. Thanks to enterprising instrument makers and publishers, not to mention performing establishments and salons, musical life was rich and varied. And patrons were also rich and varied.

Wagner and Liszt lived like royalty. Brahms, the Schumanns, the Mendelssohns, and their friends made excellent livings playing concerts and teaching. Opera singers like Pauline Viardot were in positions where they could live from and for their art. Verdi made enough money to build a retirement home for singers.

And then came recordings. Edison, being the brilliant inventor/opportunist that he was, managed to get recorded music (performed by the most recognizable artists of the day) and the machines used to play it into living rooms across America, and around the world.

The twentieth century, for a variety of reasons, and mostly through European musicians relocating to New York, Boston, Chicago, Philadelphia, Detroit, Pittsburgh, and Los Angeles, was the American musical century, at least as far as “classical” music is concerned.

My childhod was subsidized by the Boston Symphony (my father was a member). And the musician's union made it possible for musicians to work for fair wages and under safe conditions.

The support of very wealthy people living in a democratic society made all this possible. Those wealthy people also supported institutions of higher learning, and there was money from the government for research that created possibilies for science and medicine that went far beyond what anyone could imagine in the twentieth century.

Now the government seems to be systematically kneecapping every institution: educational, scientific, and even cultural (though the powers that be don't--thankfully, and for the moment--seem to know what may or may not be of value). But education, science, and culture cannot be destroyed. Scientists will move elsewhere. Culture (as I know it) can move underground, a place where it has gone from time to time across the millenia. And under the umbrella of culture we have music, art, history, poetry, drama, and education. Religion, in some of its forms, might go there as well.

Individual human beings, being mortal, have finite lifetimes. Those of us who have something to share with the rest of our race (the human race, of course), can do our best to share the richness of what we know and where we have been with the generations that will, undoubtedly, follow us.

If the trajectory that I see (I'm thinking that we could be all speaking Russian, for example) is somehow averted, we still need to keep both our wits and skills about us.

So rather than spending all your time fretting about where things are going, I would suggest doing everything in your power to resist using artificial intelligence to do your researching and writing, read literature you have always wanted to read, watch films that you have always wanted to watch, follow new paths to find books and films you have never known about, and engage in as many in-person musical activities you can, whether as a participant or as a listener.

How close we have gotten to general acceptance of the notion that people can love who they choose to love. How close we have gotten to the idea of having the decision to be a parent (or not be) one that any person can make. How close we have gotten to the (obvious) notion that women and men are equal both intellectually and creatively, and it is up to the individual person to develop that intellect and that creativity.  

During my sixty-six years of life I have watched technology and human understanding move forward by leaps and bounds, at least in what we call the developed world. Let's hope that the backwards fall (involving war, famine, natural disasters due to climate change, and repression) that we are now experiencing in real time is one that the human race can recover from in the twenty-first century. 

The Little Fiddle, and the Parlor Guitar

There comes a time, it seems, at least in the musical universe when things come together. Yesterday was such a day.

We went to St. Louis to meet our son, who was there for the day on a business trip. We had a great lunch and a visit to the soap store in the Hill, and then, simply because I thought they would both be enchanted and amazed by Geoff Seitz's violin shop, we stopped in there. I had been to the shop many times before, but never with Michael.

Geoff had "my" little fiddle, an instrument made in 1791 that I had met and "mingled with" on many a visit, all tuned up (I did let him know we were coming), but I really did not expect that it would come home with me.

I had been expecting for years that I would inherit my father's Scarampella violin, but circumstances must have changed since I spoke about it with him several years before his death. 

Of all the instruments I have played over the years, I have never had the opportunity to choose one for myself. I have had a flute, a piccolo, a baroque flute, and a violin made for me, before I really knew what to ask for. I bought a viola at a garage sale. One recorder was given to me as a gift, and the others I bought "off the rack" without knowing what to look for in a recorder. The flute I have now was my mother's, and my viola and viola d'amore were both my father's. Our piano (which I love) came to us for free from the radio station where I once worked.

Though I have chosen instruments for others, and I though have chosen bows for myself, I have never been able to "meet" and fall in love with an instrument that one day would be mine.

Twenty-five years ago my father gave his Becker instrument to my brother Marshall, and he gave an instrument he no longer had use for to me as well, just to be fair, I guess.  After Marshall's death I inherited the Becker from both my parents (it is complicated). As soon as I tried the Becker, I no longer had any desire to play the viola my father gave to me, so I made a contract with Geoff to sell it for me.

On the way to St. Louis I contemplated the possibility of doing a little barter if we happened to find a parlor guitar for Michael (he had been toying with the idea of wanting one for many years) in Geoff's shop, and maybe something for our son, if he found something he wanted.

Geoff happened to have the most beautiful parlor guitar I have ever heard or seen: a 19th-century instrument in beautiful condition with a warm, and almost baritone-rich sound. I asked Geoff about doing the barter thing with the guitar and the little fiddle (plus a really nice bow), and he was fine with it.

So now I have a really good violin, an instrument that I have chosen myself. It is not valuable like the Scarampella would be (last I looked they were going for 200 grand), but it has a true soprano violin sound, and an enormous amount of musical character. I think I will call her "Antonia" after the character named Antonio in E.T.A. Hoffmann's story "Councillor Krespel."

And if I choose to imagine that my father would prefer this instrument to the Scarampella (which I do), and if I choose to imagine that Antonia could be, in the spirit of the magic that happens in the Hoffmann story, a kind of inheritance from my father, I can. 

And it is also a great gift that I get to listen to Michael play his remarkable new instrument.

And they sound great together.

Flute Etudes

During the almost two decades I devoted to being a flutist I spent thousands of hours practicing flute etudes. Even though I know that flute playing really should be done by people for whom it really is their voice, there is a part of that period of my life that I still embrace.

I do, for example, love writing for the instrument, and I particularly love it when something I write is played by a honest-to-goodness great flutist. I have been fortunate to have known many.

When I was asked to write a group of flute etudes for the Illinois Music Teachers Association last February, I shamelessly "asked" for my highest ideals of flute playing, while trying to make the music accessible enough to be played and understood by high school flutists.

I just came across these video recordings made by Jonathan Keeble, the flute professor at the University of Illinois (and sometimes principal flutist in the Champaign Urbana Symphony Orchestra), and after hearing him play the two "senior" etudes, the flutist's heart that beat in my heart through much of my teens and all of my twenties is still a-flutter.

Two new Schubert Arrangements

You can buy the music here.

An oboist friend, the great John Dee, who I have had the pleasure of playing with in the Champaign Urbana Symphony Orchestra for the last twenty years, asked me if the above Schubert arrangement would work for oboe. Unfortunately (or maybe fortunately for flutists) the flute part is too "flutey" in nature for the oboe, not to mention too high. But John's question set me on a quest.

I started making my way through Franz Schubert's songs, and found that this Opus 118 set from 1815 works perfectly as a set for pieces for oboe and string quartet.

The IMSLP doesn't have a category for the whole opus, only the individual songs, so I am only sharing this set of pieces through this blog and my thematic catalog blog.

If you would like to know the texts of the original songs, you can find them all (untranslated) here.

You can find the music here, and listen to a computer-generated recording here.

When life gets difficult (as it was for Schubert in so many ways), spending time with his music in any way is a wonderful antidote. It won't solve any of the problems that we face in these challenging times, but it gives a window into the sublime beauty that can be present in the human soul.

And we need to allow that beauty to overpower (even when played dolce and pianissimo) the images and actions (images that result from repulsive actions) that we are faced with on a daily basis, so that we can remain sane and can continue to try to do good in the world.

Mutability and Salome's Dance played with violin, viola, and bassoon

I'm so pleased with how these two pieces sound with bassoon in the place of the cello! And having an ensemble with my name in it devoted to playing music written by women makes me smile.

Sienna, Burnt and Raw

I'm so excited to share a recording of this performance of Sienna, Burnt and Raw by Safron Sonoda and Joana Izabelle, along with photographs of some of the cave paintings from Lascaux that served as inspiration for the piece.



You can find the music here.

An Epitaph for JDM

July 23, 2025 (In memory of John David Moore)

You can listen here.

A note for people who knew John David, but may not know the meaning of the letters F, A, and E in the music: F-A-E stands for "Frei aber einsam" (free but alone), the motto of Joseph Joachim, who was a close friend of Johannes Brahms, Robert Schumann, and Albert Dietrich. The three composers wrote a collaborative work for violin and piano in honor of Joachim. You can read about the F-A-E Sonata here.

The F-A-E Sonata was one of the first pieces I played together with John David, the first of hundreds.

Saying Good-bye to John David Moore

This is an old picture (2013) of me and John David, but it is the way I always want to remember him. The day before yesterday I learned that he had died, and it has taken me a while to fully accept it.

John David, who was a member of the Eastern Illinois University English Department, shared an office with Michael during their first years in town.

He was an erudite and brilliant person who had many literary interests, but I believe he was hired to teach children's literature. He preferred to teach Victorian children's literature, much to the suprise of the students, who might have signed up for his classes in order to read "easy" books.

When he started work at EIU he thought of himself as a person who was once a pianist, but eventually he bought a piano, and found his way back to music. After a short time he became the pianist of the Eastern Trio, and toured around the state with the group playing concerts. When the music department no longer supported the Eastern Trio, John David was left without a musical outlet.

In the early 2000s I was still a "child" violinist and violist. I found myself talking with John David during a parade one Fourth of July, and we decided to read some music together.

We started right away with serious repertoire, and played our first concert together in 2002 or 2003 (I can't seem to find the program).

But I do have programs for many of the thirty-some-odd concerts concerts we played between 2005 and 2018.

We rehearsed every week, and sometimes twice a week when we were preparing a concert. And we read through as much obscure music as John David could find by way of interlibrary loan. It was with John David that I first "met" a great many excellent composers of the past who have been neglected, including Amanda Maier.

It will take a long time for me to sift through the huge treasure chest of musical memories I have had with him. He was like a brother to me. And he was a good friend.

I have posted about our musical adventures over the years. You can read all those posts here. And you can read Michael's post about John David here.

The Very Best Week

It began with the Summer Strings concert, which, because of rain, was held indoors. Our conductor, a professor of meterology at the local university, was able to determine the necessity of using our rain location, a church with excellent acoustics, early in the day. The recording I made came out sounding really good.

You can hear the recording here.

And you can see the music on the program in the comments.

Everyone played their hearts out, and the audience (more than 200 people, I have been told) reflected that love of expression in a really big way. This, for me, is the height of musical experience. Our ensemble has three professional musicians in it. The rest do other things for a living, or else they are kids who are out of school during the summer. Some come from rural farming communities. All of them practice.

Immediately after the concert, after a short night of sleep, we headed off to New Jersey to see some good friends. We spent a day in Montclair and West Orange visiting a great bookstore, having fantastic ramen for lunch, and exploring the wonders of the Thomas Edison National Historical Park, which was an experience that will take me a long time to fully process. If you ever find yourself in that area of New Jersey, go there. And if you are a "senior" you can get a pass for $20 that will let you and three friends in. You can use that pass for every National Park in the United States.

The next day we headed off to Massachusetts for a wedding. We had a wonderful time celebrating the coming together of two wonderful families (one of them ours) on the most beautiful of days in the most beautiful of places.

Our return trip, which we divided between two days, featured a huge thunderstorm that we encountered while it was my turn to drive. I proudly navigated my way through it. That was a huge accomplishment for me.

Before leaving for our adventure I started working on a piece for the Los Angeles Jewish Symphony, and I did some work on it this morning. I have plans later today to practice the first violin part of Haydn Opus 74 no. 1, and get to play it tomorrow with friends.

I don't think that I have ever returned from a week away with such a full head and such a full heart.

Summer Strings Concert

Tonight's Summer Strings concert is not only going to be indoors, it is going to be live-streamed on Facebook. The concert begins at 7:00 p.m. Central Time, and should last around forty-five minutes.

https://www.facebook.com/share/p/1B7jXWDSvN/

Windows on the World

Michael and I are making our way through a Penguin Classics set of eighty little books (each is fifty some-odd pages of text, and measures six and a half inches by four inches) that offer a great cross-section of written material translated into English, and served in portions just large enough to provide a "tasting menu" of human culture.

There are short stories, poems, excerpts from plays, words of wisdom from antiquity (occidental and oriental), and historical writings.

A lot of it is new to both of us. And reading Marco Polo's writings about his travels in India shows us just how, shall we say "unusual" much of the world has been and, in many ways, continues to be. After reading about Caligula in writings by Suetonius today it occured to me that we as a human race haven't "progressed" since the days of the Roman Empire.

But as individuals and as collectives of individuals we have, somehow, found ways to lasso, cultivate, and preserve the most marvelous extremes of what humanity has to offer, particulary in the practices of art and music (and, as this series also shows, in writing).

It feels like as a human society (globally, as far as I can see through my various digital windows) we are entering a very dark period. We have stepped through one of the doors over here in the United States of America. Many of us haven't stepped through voluntarily: we were pushed through. And the tide will take us to places that I imagine will get darker and darker. We are passing shadows on the walls that feel familiar because of the knowledge that some of us have of history, but a great deal of what has happened to humanity over the millenia hasn't been written down. And a great deal of what has happened in history has never been reported because nobody survived to tell the tales.

But during those dark times there must have been music. Love (romantic, friendship, and between family members) is built into us. Community has always created a (sometimes fleeting) feeling of safety. Beauty and wonder in nature has always been around us, as well as the ability to appreciate it.

The progress that has happened during my lifetime has been extraordinary. I feel that we have prioritized kindness in the generation of children who are in preschool and in the early primary grades. The majority of them have learned (especially in public schools) to be kind to one another, to value kindness, and to be tolerant of the fact that everybody is different and everybody needs to get along.

This is a big thing.

I gave out a lot of candy to kids while I was walking in the Fourth of July parade (wearing my "No Kings in America" shirt).  Every child who was of speaking age said, "Thank you." And the parents of smaller children thanked me on behalf of their child.

This is enough to give me hope that the kindness that has been prioritized in education and in parenting will help us to be a more tolerant society even while we are faced with the darkness that is coming. Darkness can destroy a cruel society. But I would like to believe that a kind society might just have a chance. 

A Tale of Two T-shirts

The image on the shirt in the picture from July 4, 2023 was drawn by our daughter around a quarter of a century ago (her drawing won a local T-shirt contest).

I could wear my "Ring in a Century of Freedom" shirt proudly every Fourth of July until this year.

This year I'm wearing a "No Kings in America" shirt to march with the Coles County Democrats in the blaring heat of today's parade.