Category Archives: classical music

Turkey.

November 24, 2015classical music, classical musicians, contemplative essays, nostalgia, performance, social commentary, UncategorizedAmerican holidays, dinner, family, holidays, holidays alone, homecooked meals, professional musicians, Thanksgivingruth ann scanzillo

Musicians have a slightly different take on the holidays.

We are the not so silent, persistently present color in everybody else’s landscape. We are the string quartet for the Good Friday service, Christmas Eve Midnight Mass, Lenten Sundays; the background Sousa marches for Fireworks on the Bay on the 4th of July, the marching music in the Memorial Day Parade, the Labor Day Telethon; the New Year’s Eve party band. We are the ubiquitous celebrants. And, then we go home.

Don’t get me wrong. We love making music; we wouldn’t be there, if we didn’t. And, the 200 bucks we put in our pocket, if we plan it just right, will buy groceries for two, solid weeks.

But, there’s one holiday, every year, that puts us all to the test. On this day, we can’t hide behind a music stand. We can’t wear the right costume. We can’t play the right song. We have to face the sum total of our lives.

Yeah. It’s the feast in November. Every year, we scramble to do one of two things: 1.) Did we clean off the diningroom table? 2.) Did we reserve a seat at the local buffet?

I’ve been riding my merry go round for five decades. I think it’s harder when musicians actually have wonderful memories of this holiday. I’m one of them.

Our grandmother spent her adolescence as second maid to a wealthy Jewish family in the Poconos. She learned how to create a feast, alright – Pennsylvania Dutch-style. Stuffed turkey, parsnips, Brussels sprouts, peas, corn, sweet potatoes, mashed potatoes. Home made gravy. Rutabega. Wilted lettuce, with bacon drippings (that, from the Danes). Apple pie. Cherry pie. Elderberry pie.

The oak table was massive, and round, but had a leaf to make it elliptical. And, we cousins with the aunts and uncles, proletariats all, we knew how to squeeze over 20 people into that room, plus a card table in the sewing room for the teens.

The same would be true of Christmas, adding the cousins from Parma. And, for that, the card tables would spread into the livingroom – a linen tablecloth, for each.

But, the Thanksgiving feast was the first and, without all the presents to open in the morning, this one was all about the food. We’d eat until our stomachs were distended, and all stay the day, too, making turkey sandwiches later with fresh lettuce and Miracle Whip.

I loved all my cousins. Each one was more distinct than the next. Mouths full of teeth, all stops out belly laughs. We were all full of ourselves, and we knew how to sell that fact. The boys were natural comics; the girls, ready audience. And, everybody had their story to tell. I don’t remember anybody listening to mine, but I soaked up everything coming at me. And, as each one got married, there’d be a curiously quiet spouse to add to the mix, usually twinkling with amusement at the whole lot of us.

Not sure when it was that I missed the boat. It was probably somewhere between the competitive marching band and mom’s death, followed by the divorce, and the private students, and then Carolyn Dillon’s retirement from fifth grade in the building where I taught music to the children all day. I inherited her after school drama club, and reveled in producing a fully staged, fully costumed, fully underscored musical together with as many as 60 kids and one parent every year thereafter for a decade. To an outsider, this was a fully realized life; to me, it was just what I did.

What I didn’t do was have a child. What I didn’t do was raise a family. What I didn’t do was convince any member of the one I already had that attending my concerts and other live performances would enrich their lives and cement a lasting relationship with me. I guess, like my mother before me who ended up always doing all the housework alone, I assumed they would all just naturally see the value in participating in my life. Lord knew, at the end of my day, preparing a complete meal for anybody but myself was out of the question.

Actually, I did prepare Thanksgiving meal one year. The year mum died. I made dinner for 18 of my family members, all by myself. The 25 lb. turkey; the long grain rice stuffing with dates and mushrooms and walnuts; the sweet potatoes with raisins and pineapple; the squash, in butter, with pepper. The peas, in basil. The tossed salad, with everything. And, baked Gala apples, with drizzled Brie, for everybody. I was never invited by the family after that, until the year my nephew was sick and they needed somebody to sit with the other children. The span of years between those meals was an embarrassing sixteen.

That feeling, somewhere between the heart and the thymus, that I get whenever I think about Thanksgiving now is also embarrassing. It’s an ache, similar to the one I used to feel after a break up with a boyfriend. That a fully fledged, reasonably attractive, post menopausal woman who still had all her teeth should have this feeling approaching the day when, ironically, every American is urged to take stock of all blessings and be thankful, is hard to admit. But, I feel lonely. And, I don’t enjoy any part of that realization. Not one bit.

Funny. Had I raised a family like most everyone else, there would be grandchildren to hold and cuddle this week. There would be lives to laud and honor, details of accomplishments, and travel itineraries, and photos, and mementos. I might be the matriarch at the head of my own table. I might be the one.

But, I wouldn’t have become a cellist and pianist, or even this amateur writer. I wouldn’t have developed the ability, at any given moment, to make – using my hands – something rapturously beautiful out of simple sound. Nor would I have had the energy to teach thousands of children and train several. I would not have brought to the table my gifts, because they would have lain fallow in the service of another purpose.

And, so, on Thursday of this week, the windows and doors will be flung open. The autumn sun will stream in. And, I will clean my house. I will have the whole, entire day, uninterrupted by expectation. Maybe even play somebody else’s music on the CD player, and sing along.

We are all born to something. Eat your turkey. Don’t you worry about me; I’m an artist. I’ll be just as thankful as anybody else.

littlebarefeetblog.com

Original Sin.

November 23, 2015Christian fundamentalism, Christianity, classical music, classical musicians, Deep Thoughts, human behavior, Uncategorizedcello solos, cognitive dissonance, composers, Erie Chamber Orchestra, Hungarians, live music, live orchestra, Michael Ludwig, Miklos Rozsa, music, original sin, serenadesruth ann scanzillo

[final draft].

Everybody secretly yearns to be the next “original.” Nobody wants to remind anyone of somebody else they know. In spite of the billions upon billions of us and, though likely manifest more strongly in some than in others, we each carry within us the desire to break the mold.

Among the vast and nearly endless array of musical masterworks created for orchestra from across virtually every country in Europe (and, more recently, the rest of the world), many have enjoyed a wide audience for decades, crossing the generations. From Beethoven’s symphonies through the Russian masters to Americans like Copland and Gershwin, these comprise a virtual museum for the listening ear – the “classics.” And, each is a singular original.

Others are lesser known.
In the hands of mere mortals, just such unfamiliar pieces are nonetheless a real challenge to pull off; in short, they’ve garnered less air time because they represent, in the hands of all but the best, a greater risk to the reputation of the musicians.

A certain serenade fits that bill.

Miklos Rozsa, best known as composer of film scores for such epics as “Ben Hur” and “The Thief of Baghdad”, wasn’t only servant to the cinematic medium; he also composed legitimate, stand alone orchestral pieces. One of his most sensuous he called “Hungarian Serenade” because, well, he was Hungarian.

Like most Hungarians and probably few Serenades, the piece is both passionate and flamboyantly effusive, yet irresistibly persuasive; it bespeaks at once the soul of a man who yearns, whose feelings are deep, and of a nation’s people wearing their hearts on its sleeve.

Now, this Hungarian composer loved the cello. He loved it so much that he featured the instrument prominently in the music he wrote. His Serenade has five movements, but the second is devoted almost exclusively to the cello’s voice.

And, no shrinking violet, Rozsa gives the cello one royal entrance: an octave shift, right out of the gate.

From the day of my own emergence, and many years before I knew what a cello was, I was destined – if my father had anything to say about it – to be one of a kind. He would raise me on the sound of his bari-tenor, crooning the hymns and gaslight love songs of his generation. A singular talent, himself, he would continually remind me that I was a “born artist.” Eventually, I became one – first, through visual media, and then, via the musical profession. And, I did so boldly, from the deep conviction of my father’s endowment.

But, my mother was raised on fear. Her father was an English street preacher. He regularly beat his eldest daughter. And, he took his family, every Sunday morning, to the small, exclusive, sectarian Fundamentalist meeting hall of the Plymouth Brethren, where they could be reminded – all day long, and again on Tuesday and Friday night – of their inheritance: total, and original, sin.

It would take the whole of life thus far for me to realize how un-reconcilable such branding would be; conceived to be a creative, to express the ineffable, yet saturated by a sense of sinfulness. Instead of finding an otherwise inevitable place among the “free spirits”, self-loathing became my middle name.

This past Saturday, as section leader among the cellists of the Erie Chamber Orchestra, and the ” Hungarian Serenade” having been an included feature, I was called upon to present Rozsa’s cello solo in all its magnificence. I meditated; I set my inner narrative on the positive affirmations of my musical lineage; I prepared, diligently, the entire body of that singular voice; I took my beta blocker. I was, by all accounts, ready to meet the task.

But, this time, the devil would be in one, pesky mathematical detail: statistical probability.

Delicately balancing delusional grandeur and innate fatalism, I had faced that formidable octave each time with the measured mix of physical distribution of weight, point of arrival, and trajectory. Between practice at home, and the three opportunities our orchestral budget would allow with my colleagues, I had managed to nail that shift at every rehearsal. And, I mean, down to the precisely required vibrational frequency.

Come the concert, and its moment of truth, however, one inner battle with cognitive dissonance could not be surmounted by either mental conditioning or earnest commitment to the music; statistically, my odds for missing that octave had steadily increased!

Like all good Hungarians, I heaved a melodramatic sigh, smiled at my section mates, gave my conductor a sure nod, and went for it.

There was much to celebrate at the close of that performance. Our featured violinist, Michael Ludwig, stepping in at the last minute to cover the most difficult concerto in the repertoire, was an absolutely flawless and mesmerizing sensation. Our ensemble had never been tighter. Each family of the orchestra was more than worthy of thunderous acknowledgement. And, I would immerse myself in the joyful relief of having expressed my creative soul more fully than ever before.

Yet, if I truly bore the aforementioned stain, the devil would have his jollies. He would indulge them in that microtone living just beneath the point of arrival of the octave B, and it would not matter one iota if anybody else admitted to the hearing.

Original sin is so engraved in the psyche that, even when one proves to oneself a capacity for the truly amazing, one can spend a lifetime yearning to give oneself its permission. In the meantime, opting to be carried by the exultant triumph of the human spirit, seeking the rewards of the total spectrum of artistic experience, can rival even the exacting order of the universe. We may all be self-generating expressions of the same, original DNA, after all. Original sin, be damned.

littlebarefeetblog.com

The Second Rehearsal

November 17, 2015classical music, classical musicians, Uncategorizedruth ann scanzillo

As a professional ensemble musician for most of my life, I’ve become quite well acquainted with the emotions connected to preparing for ensemble performance.

If the musician is worth his or her salt, said musician will begin by spending due diligence investigating the composer’s intent, by way of phrase and dynamic contrast, within the part assigned to the musician’s particular instrument. And, many will delve even more deeply – into the score itself, if accessible, to compare voicings and other relevant relationships. This is accomplished in solitude, either at home or in a designated available practice space.

But, once the musician’s part is ready to be combined with the rest of the orchestration, and the schedule indicates, the first rehearsal convenes.

Now, I can’t speak, of course, for every musician who ever held a Union card. But, I have certainly sat alongside scores of different players – both from within my cello section, and from within those nearby – such as the violists, bassists and, depending on my seat assignment, the occasional wind player. And so, I can safely say, each musician brings his or her own reality to the experience.

I speak, here, for myself.

Having been raised by those steeped in the Protestant work ethic, I arrive prepared. Every note that I am able to execute is ready. Every rhythm is analyzed and set. Every pitch is carefully placed. All of this I do, to the best of my given ability, with the fear of God and all its accompaniments: fear of the conductor’s glare; fear of the other musicians’ sniping; fear of error, exposed.

But, once each musician has had that first chance to put the pieces of the music together, a certain collective sigh ensues. The nervous chattiness of the extroverts, and the fixed repetition of passagework known as “woodshedding” from the introverts, which characterize the minutes just prior to the downbeat of the first run through, are replaced by a communal attitude of assurance; the group has become itself, the intended ensemble. The birthing process has begun.

And, so it is with this emotion carrying me that I anticipate the second rehearsal. Usually scheduled 48 hours from the first, in order to allow a period for reflection, review, and a conceptual gelling, it is the session I most enjoy. Perhaps others from among the collective agree with me; this is the phase during which we really revel in our mutual relationship with the music.

We still have time on our side. Time, the essential element in our art form, without which we could not organize any live musical expression, permits us two and a half solid hours to immerse ourselves totally. We, in effect, are making music for our own, mutual satisfaction. We are realizing our truest purpose.

The dress rehearsal is for buffing and polishing. It’s for refining our offering, to the nth possible degree, in preparation for our audience. I have, on many occasions, “peaked” at dress rehearsal; my performance is “ready” ahead of the show date.

The concert, itself, generates its own set of emotions. For many, there is a degree of anxiety. Residual beliefs about passing tests often creep into the mix. Many musicians have come by their seats in orchestras via the audition process, which pits one musician against another in the style of an Olympic gymnastics tournament. Realizing value becomes intimately connected to the memory of these experiences, and informs performance.

I am so grateful for the supportive warmth of the audience, knowing full well that orchestras cannot survive without those who make the time to arrive ready to share by respectfully listening. But, I thrive on the second rehearsal. I prefer the pure joy of making music, alone together with my fellows. I know that, unlike life, such rehearsal is a gift; rather, living itself offers no such luxury. For life, there are no rehearsals at all.

littlebarefeetblog.com