Greg Stepanich

Oral program notes call on other another art

As I noted in passing the other day, it's rare to attend a classical music concert these days without hearing an oral program note. I pretty much expect the performers to come out on stage, get the welcoming applause, and then wait as one of them steps out to say a few words to the audience.

I think this is basically a good thing, in that it does give you some more insight into the pieces you're going to hear, and with the generally recognized decline in music education in the public schools, it's more important than it used to be. Time was, it seems, that the audience would come to the concert with a body of historical and concert knowledge it had gained on its own, and the performers were offering another interpretation.

These days, though, almost everything is a new work for some portion of the audience, and concert presenters have recognized this.

But there is a small difficulty. The art of presenting the spoken word is different than that of music, and someone who can beautifully sail through the intricacies of a forest of 32nd notes might find himself or herself tongue-tied by a couple of simple sentences. On the other hand, some people have a natural rapport with audiences, an ability that makes people on both sides of the stage feel comfortable.

We're probably at the point at which concert organizers and presenters have to think carefully about who is going to do the talking when it comes time to address the audience. And that's a matter of theater more than it is of music.

The most successful concerts will be done by those who can combine the two in a seamless presentation.

A performance of say, the Piano Concerto No. 17 of Mozart by a brilliant young pianist who brings revelation to those venerable notes would of course be worth applauding. But what if the oral presenters on that same program mumbled and fidgeted? What if they told a long, boring story about how the piece came to be written that no one found interesting except themselves?

Would the concert be a success? The Mozart, yes, but the whole concert? I doubt any critic or audience member would fail to mention the blemish on the concert caused by the inept spoken presentation, regardless of how little of the actual concert was occupied by the chatter.

We lost something when we lost the generally educated audience of a generation or so ago, and the new reality is that classical music presenters are going to be spending more time on extramusical considerations in order to get audiences into their shows.

Again, the victorious concert organizers of the future will be those who understand how to use all the arts to bring the focus in on just one. Those concerts will be somewhat different than the ones we're used to, but I don't doubt that the music at the best of them will live in the same lofty regions they currently do.

Topic 88: Visiting a piano-centered blog

Here's another tasty blog on things musical: Bart Collins runs a site he calls The Well-Tempered Blog, and there's much to enjoy here if you're a fan of piano music.

I've already used his links to classical sheet music to print out copies of Fauré's 13th Barcarolle and a Nocturne by Vassily Kalinnikov, who didn't live long enough to become the great composer he probably could have been.

But I'm enjoying browsing through these tidbits of piano news, including a nice piece from The Boston Globe about the prevalence of the piano in 19th-century America. The piece makes the excellent point that you wouldn't have found bluegrass-style string bands on the Wild West frontier, you'd have found pianos.

With the piano as the chordophone of choice, not the guitar, you get a populace that's more familiar with more of the musical world as well as the mechanics of music, and you also get a different kind of pop music. If composers use guitars to write their pop songs, the harmonies draw from a different well than that of the piano. With every exception to the rule now noted silently, the piano sound world tends to be more complex than that of the guitar.

I play both instruments, and when I'm writing a pop piece on the guitar, I summon up a different sound package in my head — more modalities, for one — than I do when I write with the piano. I don't say everyone does the same thing. Perhaps I don't write the same kinds of chords and melodies with the guitar because I know I can keep my guitar skills rudimentary and save the weirder stuff for the piano, where I know my way around a little better.

I also try when I'm writing guitar-based things to keep it simpler because I'm expecting to play it with other people, and I want the song to be arranged by the group rather than me alone. It seems more democratic that way, and more fun.

So the music of the Wild West would probably have been old parlor songs about unrequited love, a few light classics, traditional ballads, and minstrel songs. And you'd have found quite a few people out there who could have done some creditable work on the 88s, too, I'd bet.

Collins' blog offers an interesting way to stay in touch with the culture of the piano, and if that interests you, have a look.

This weekend: The Palm Beach Chamber Music Festival wraps up its 14th season with music by Holst, Saint-Saëns, Schubert and Frank Bridge. It's been a good series so far, and there's every reason to believe this concert will be no exception.

Bridge, the British composer whose seeming neglect I mentioned in a blog a while back, also gets a hearing Sunday afternoon during the second Bethesda-by-the-Sea organ recital series. Also on the program: Music by Frederick Swann, Robert Hebbie, Theodore Dubois, Leo Sowerby, John Cook, Louis Vierne and Bach.

See you there.

Requiem for a duck

To me, he was entirely beautiful, a miracle of design whose neck, head and bill were perfectly suited for his daily life, whose welcoming honks always followed the slamming of the car door as I came home each worknight.

But now he is gone, and I wanted to take this moment to remember and honor our wonderful bird friend, who came to visit our house in February 2002 and never left.

Our pet white Pekin duck, whom we always simply called Ducky, died July 8 after being badly wounded sometime early on the morning of July 4.

I woke up that day to go out and feed him and saw immediately, even from a distance, that something was wrong. He was floating in his larger of the two pools we had for him in the backyard, but he was barely moving. I ran over to him and saw that a large chunk of his neck was missing. It had been stripped of feathers and skin so that his internal muscles and tendons could clearly be seen, and there also appeared to be something wrong with his right wing.

I ran back into the house to get Sharon, and we tried to figure out how severely he'd been hurt, who or what had done it, and what we would do now. He was too weak to climb out of the pool like usual, so I bent down to scoop him up, and saw how drenched he really was. These are animals built to be buoyant on the water, but he was sinking.

I lifted him out of the pool, and he stood there for a long time, twitching and shivering. We immediately began calling around to veterinarians, looking for help, but it was July 4, and we weren't able to get anyone at first. We've lived here a while, and we know that there are emergency animal clinics all over the area, but we didn't take him to one of them right away.

I don't know why we didn't. I don't know why we waited.

We left him alone for a little while as we called various doctors, and then maneuvered him into a big cage we have for him but had never used, and deposited him on our screened-in porch. We tried to take a good look at him and see how bad things were, and for some reason that I will never be able to explain except to call it the stupidity of hope, we determined that he'd had a close call, but probably would make it.

And so we watched and waited, when what he really needed was immediate attention.

We finally did get him to a vet early the next morning, and they worked on him for a couple days, trying to clean him up, trying to make him eat. But his wounds were much deeper than we'd realized. The vet said originally it probably was a raccoon attack, but then said the puncture wound in his back was too big, and that more likely it was a dog.

It could also, we think, have been a fox, frightened and enraged by the continual barrage of fireworks that went on for days in our neighborhood before the Fourth. We'll never know for sure.

It became clear late on the night of the 7th, as Sharon held him in her arms — for the first time ever, since Pekins always run when you try to grab them — and I tried to clean his wounds and give him antibiotics, that he was getting worse and that there was little we could do, as the vet had warned us. So we took him to an all-night clinic down near Lauderdale, and they looked him over and agreed there wasn't much to be done except end his suffering.

And so, weeping, we said farewell.

People write about their pets a lot, and they always write when they're gone, and it's not very interesting to people who aren't involved. But like a lot of childless couples, our animals are the closest thing Sharon and I have to our kids, and they mean the world to us.

So I beg your indulgence as I pay this tribute.

If we had gotten Ducky treated right away, he would have had a better chance of surviving, and he might even now be recovering on our porch. And had I built a pen for him, like I meant to, so he could be safe from predators at night, he'd be with us still.

Friends have said that we gave him a good life; after all, he was wandering around the neighborhood the day we got him, and had he not stopped at our house, I don't think he would have gotten through the rest of the day unbruised.

But that doesn't help. I want to tell him how sorry I am that he was hurt, how much I feel that we let him down when he needed us most, and how helplessly we miss him.

It's astounding that these creatures can mean so much to us, but they do. I try to write about the better things of humanity when I write about music and literature, and it seems to me that caring about other animals with whom we share little but space fits into that same category, the one in which the reedeming qualities of humanity are listed.

And so:

In my mind's eye, it will always be a Saturday just after the big pool has been filled with fresh, cold water, Ducky's quacking impatiently for me to get out of the way, and then he slides in. He scratches the right side of his head with an orange foot, then dives, swimming around and around in circles, then shoots up to break the surface, quacking and slapping his wings on the surface of the water. I can watch him do this endlessly, fascinated by how perfectly he fits his environment, and how much he complements it.

What I see is joy, and what I feel is joy, and when I think about him, I will think of this.

And those Saturdays will go on forever.

Beethoven, king of the downloads

British commentators are amazed by the results of a recent experiment in which complete Beethoven symphonies were available for free download from the BBC. Listeners from around the world downloaded these canonical works a total of nearly 1.4 million times, according to this piece from The Guardian.

That's a substantial amount, and far more than the pop tunes being downloaded at the same time (which aren't free as there are still copyrights in effect). As I see it, the music being free had much to do with it (one of the comments attached to the article talks about a listener pleased to be getting something else from the license fee Britons have to pay to fund the BBC), but that should not blind us to the reality that there were plenty of people out there curious enough about this music to hear for themselves what it's all about.

I have long maintained that classical music, despite what the doomsayers tell us, and despite the obvious decline of the old high-culture aesthetic that kept it in the forefront of more consciousnesses than at present, is music first and foremost, and therefore cannot fail to appeal to all kinds of ears. I personally subscribe to the old saw that there are only two kinds of music in the world, good and bad, and that the good stuff, be it Beethoven's First Symphony or Blue Moon of Kentucky, is art.

All you have to do is open your ears, mind and heart, and you might find Beethoven showing up on your playlist.

But that's an old point. The new one to be made here is the one about technology.

The Guardian piece quotes Chaz Jenkins, head of LSO Live, as saying that "downloads are the future for classical music," and I think he's right. For a lot of people, the stuffy trappings of the old classical music culture, as well as the idea that it's old and historical, are simply too intimidating. That's why someone who might find himself or herself fearing the ridicule of friends and family too much to venture out to a concert can still feed his or her inner classical jones with a furtive symphony download in the middle of the night.

"Honey! What the heck are you doing in there? Come to bed!"

"Just a minute — uh, just checking my last e-mail! Come on, Ludwig, hurry up!" Meanwhile, another masterwork from the ages, and from our common heritage, rolls onto a chip, there to feed the mind, heart or just the feet, at a more propitious time.

The download question raises important questions about the survivability of traditional music industry practices, and as I've mentioned in a previous entry, there needs to be some sort of general Internet tax or BBC-style license fee in order to make sure living writers get their royalties, and that performers of less commercial music can continue to pursue the kind of art at which they excel. I, for one, would be happy to pay it.

In any case, I find this latest bit of news cheering, even more so because it appears to support my unshakable belief in the strength of music as a form of communication, and my never-ending surprise at what people will listen to, if given the chance.

Getting it all done: Desperately seeking strategies

If you troll the Web for the kinds of blogs I do, you'll find a good number of creative people who apparently are accomplishing a great deal in a very limited amount of time.

This makes me jealous, of course, because I've tried many a tactic to get all the creative work done I need and want to get done, and most of them seem to fall short. I think where I run into difficulty is not allowing myself enough downtime in the schedule, so that when I feel the need to blow something off, I can't do it without guilt.

Any and all suggestions for getting creative work done on a reasonably disciplined schedule will be accepted here. I'm hoping to hear some good suggestions.

I thought of this after a weekend in which I went through all the projects I've still got to get through this year, and it's daunting. For starters, more than a dozen new books await reviews, including:

* A new biography of Beethoven, written for Harper Collins' Eminent Lives series by Edmund Morris, whose previous books include bios of Theodore Roosevelt and Ronald Reagan. Due out in October.

* A bio of British poet Leigh Hunt ("Jenny kissed me"), by Anthony Holden, whose biographies include one about Tchaikovsky. Due out in December from Little, Brown.

* Souled American: How Black Music Transformed White Culture, by Kevin Phinney. Due out in September from Billboard.

* More volumes in the Amadeus Press series on composers; the newest one, out last week, is David Hurwitz on Dvorak. This book has two full CDs from the Czech Supraphon label, much of it fresh material such as excerpts from his operas. In paging through the book, I find this bold assertion on Page 2:

Indeed, if one defines greatness as the ability to create a series of masterpieces over a broad range of musical media, then Dvorak was, demonstrably and without exaggeration, the greatest composer of the last half of the 19th century,

Now that's a big claim, but I admire Hurwitz for making it. He's done two other books on Mozart, one that tackles the instrumental works and the other that addresses the vocal. I need to do a piece that looks at several of these books for their music appreciation value; I can't think of a concert I've been to within the past two or three years in which someone didn't talk from the stage about the music that was going to be played. This is where the education is happening these days.

* I'm currently finishing the the newest book by Albert Murray, The Magic Keys, in which his protagonist, a jazz musician named Scooter, has signed up for grad school in New York and is trying to figure out exactly what he wants to do with himself. This is the fourth book Murray's written featuring this character. Also upcoming from me for the books pages: Novels by Paul Hond (Mothers and Sons), Susan Swan (What Casanova Told Me), and Elizabeth Hickey (The Painted Kiss).

Also had a busy weekend, concert-wise. I'll offer some brief thoughts, and hope to post a Web review or two in the next couple days:

* Saturday night, the third concert in the Palm Beach Chamber Music Festival's summer series. An all-French evening, and an excellent one it was. The Chausson trio I talked about in my last entry has its Franckian weaknesses, in particular its repeated climaxes of cyclical material, but the performance by Lisa Leonard, Mei-Mei Luo and Susan Moyer was beautiful and absorbing. Also on the program was the Valse Très Lente of Massenet — played extremely slowly, but the tempo helped give this salon music a kind of cold purity that was very attractive. Another rarity was AndréCaplet's Légende, which was typical music of its period, moody and harmonically slippery but without a strong melodic profile.

The best piece on the program was the Gounod Petite Symphonie, a classic of woodwind literature played here with zest and a clean, crisp approach that highlighted Gounod's conservative instincts and his melodic wit. A delightful piece, well-played and welcome.

* Sunday afternoon, the first concert in a four-program series of informal organ recitals at Bethesda-by-the-Sea Episcopal in Palm Beach. Full disclosure: Concert organizer Diana Akers came up with the idea for this series while I was talking to her about what was going on musically this summer, and we both lamented the lack of an outlet for area listeners to get acquainted with the riches of the organ literature. Next thing I know, it's Summer Sundays at the Console, a series of four programs on Sunday afternoons in July and August. I didn't have anything to do with organizing it, but I'm happy to see it.

Bethesda's Harold Pysher and Matthew Steynor, a British musician currrently working at St, Thomas Episcopal in Coral Gables, presented the first program, which lasted about an hour (there's a free-will offering to defray costs of printing and other expenses). Much fascinating music on the program, including Les Cloches de Perros-Guirec, by Marcel Dupré, with its extensive bell sounds, and Salamanca, a piece by the Swiss composer Guy Bovet that featured the Bethesda organ's drum sounds and some terrific variations of Spanish folk tunes. Both were played by Steynor, who proved to be a fine player.

Pysher offered two barn-burning French works for the opening and closing moments, starting with an Allegro vivace from the Second Sonata of Alexandre Guilmant, and ending with the Toccata in D minor of Albert Renaud. Powerful, grandiose works, beautifully played. Pysher also introduced a brand-new piece, the Variations on 'Hanover' by Michael Burkhardt, a professor at Carthage College in southeastern Wisconsin. A conservative but well-written piece that would fit comfortably into any church service; Pysher gave the premiere last week at the Sewanee Church Music Conference.

About 50 people were on hand for this first-ever concert, and it was well worth an hour on a steamy Sunday in July.

Next Sunday at 2 p.m., the series features three organists: Jack W. Jones of the Royal Poinciana Chapel in Palm Beach, Jeffri Bantz of the First Presbyterian Church in Pompano Beach, and Stephen Kolarac of The Cathedral of St. Mary in Miami and Temple Beth El in Boca Raton. The Third Symphony of the French composer Louis Vierne is on the program.

* And then there's the music I have to finish writing and recording for Web projects and friends. Again, if anybody out there has a good plan for getting everything done, drop me a line. I'd love to hear some strategies.

Early Chausson work prompts look at his too-brief life

I can never think of the music of Ernest Chausson without thinking of how he died. The 44-year-old French composer was out bicycling in the countryside on June 10, 1899, when he lost of control of his bike and slammed into a wall.

An sudden, violent, and awful end, especially for someone who by was still in the process of musical self-discovery. A recent piece in The Independent on Chausson's life by classical music blogger Jessica Duchen was posted by the folks at Andante; here's her fine piece. I'm listening right now to Susan Graham's new recording of the composer's Poème de l'amour et de la mer, which is getting lots of critical raves. It's a ravishing piece, and it seems to suit Graham's dark mezzo admirably.

This music, as well as the better-known Poème for violin and orchestra, certainly bears the influence of Chausson's master César Franck in its heavily chromatic language, but there's something less manipulative about it, something more refined and integrated. Chausson was one of the most cultured men of his time, a participant in, and supporter of, the artistic avant-garde movements of his country.

Debussy, a good friend, wrote this to Chausson in 1893: " . . . you are much superior to the people who surround you, and that is because of your qualities of sensitivity and of artistic tact, traits which the others seem to lack absolutely.�

Tonight, the Palm Beach Chamber Music Festival will tackle the early Piano Trio in G minor, Op. 3, of Chausson. It was written in 1881 after Chausson failed to win the Prix de Rome, and an entry in the 1980 Grove says the work's " . . . felicitous spirit pays homage to Massenet but its harmonic richness and cyclical form are a tribute to Franck . . . " It's undoubtedly well worth hearing, and I'm looking forward to it.

I should also mention that in addition to the new Graham recording, there's a disc just out on Telarc of Chausson's opera Le Roi Arthus, conducted by Leon Botstein. Here's a review that comes in on the lukewarm side of things for the music, but it still sounds interesting, and I'll make a note to check it out. Maybe someone out there knows whether the work is a neglected masterpiece or not.

I always hear an extra touch of sadness in Chausson's music because of the manner of his death (here's something about a multimedia project that made use of the death of three French intellectuals, including Chausson, in traffic accidents). It's not fair of me to think that, because by all accounts he was happy and secure, a family man who was born into wealth and made good use of it on behalf of the arts.

Still, what a way to go.

Listening while writing may turn a different page

A recent book of psychological belle-lettres about the science-fiction writer Philip K. Dick (I Am Alive and You Are Dead, by Emmanuel Carrère) says that the novelist of Ubik greatly enjoyed the music of Dietrich Buxtehude and John Dowland, and that he wrote some of his work while listening to their pieces, which on the one hand were organ works from the German Baroque, and on the other were songs from Renaissance England.

These are interesting choices, and it reminded me that when it's time to write, sometimes music can be far too distracting. Actually, for me, that's the case most of the time; if I'm trying to write something it's better to have something more anodyne than challenging. I suppose that's an argument for the effectiveness of Muzak, but I find that every bit as overly noticeable.

The most difficult music to shut out when you're writing is anything vocal, even if the words are in a foreign language. It's too hard not to pay attention to what the words are saying when you're hearing other words in your own head. If I'm just surfing the Web, looking for something to grab me, it's easier to control the music and employ it as accompaniment. But if I'm working, it's easier to work in total quiet.

(Nonetheless, I'm writing this now to the accompaniment of some Buxtehude — the chorale prelude Nun bitten wir den heiligen Geist, to be exact. I've got it on quite low, but I can still hear it.)

So I'm wondering: How heavily did all that earlier music influence what Dick was writing? The Buxtehude might have helped make him industrious (aside from the chemical stimulants), while the Dowland might have encouraged his melancholia, I guess. Would the work he was creating at the time of a Dowland bender been different had he been absorbed in something jollier?

I suppose the answer would have to come from that side of the sciences that looks at how our predilections and genetic inheritances express themselves in our creative acts. If we're already inclined to be bitter about something, perhaps we seek out music that encourages our anger and makes us feel justified so we can keep riding a negative high.

On the other hand, perhaps we're continually on the knife's edge of despair or elation, and the music, chosen without reference to this mental balancing act, pulls us in one of those directions. Unconciously lulled into a certain train of thought by sighing modal melodies and the pluckings of a lute, we give in to our darkest, saddest thoughts, and then what we're writing takes on an unexpected turn, and we're not sure afterward why it went that way. But the answer would be in the music.

Obviously, listening to music while writing is a pretty common activity, but it would be interesting to experiment with things we know were written under the influence of a certain piece and see what we would do to it if we were listening to something else entirely. Listening to Dowland, the fair maiden expires, lovelorn, on a heath, in the rain. Switching to Sousa, the maiden is suddenly rescued by a band of knights. and everyone waves the flag.

I'd be curious to find out what music works for people while they're writing and what is simply too involving to get anything worthwhile done. And I do mean writing, because it's different to do something more physical to music. I have great affection for a disc of 1950s South African jazz because it helped me cheerfully repaint the study in my house — and I even think it helped me choose the color.

(By the way, this is my 100th blog entry. Thanks for reading, whoever and wherever you are. Here's a discussion of listening to music while writing I nicked at random off the Web.)

Review: Stellar chamber concert enlivened by premiere

As it turns out — though you can be excused for not wondering — the bassoon makes quite a handsome partner for a string quartet.

Local composer Clark McAlister has entered the arena normally occupied only by the likes of Franz Danzi and Anton Reicha with his L'Estivant, a single-movement work that premiered this week in the second group of concerts in the Palm Beach Chamber Music Festival's summer series. McAlister's piece proved to be a carefully crafted, gentle rhapsody that hinted at richer possibilities that the composer might have done well to pursue.

Formally, as the composer explained from the stage of the Crest Theatre in Delray Beach this afternoon, the whole piece — written for bassoonist Michael Ellert,a festival co-founder — the material of L'Estivant (Summer Visitor) is crafted entirely from the opening gesture played by the bassoon, a sinuous, lightly melancholy theme that was promptly echoed in the string quartet (violinists Mei Mei Luo and Dina Kostic, violist Rene Reder and cellist Susan Moyer).

And the narrative of this pleasant piece followed that idea throughout; when there was a fragment of the theme in one instrument or another, it generated an echo response elsewhere in the fabric of the quintet, which made the work easy to grasp and follow. McAlister's language is mild but deeply expressive, and the overall mood of L'Estivant is quiet and unruffled.

So gentle and serene, indeed, that it came across to me as though it were the middle movement of a larger work and not a standalone piece. And while McAlister's aesthetic makes much of the music suggested by the fragments, there were tantalizing hints of other avenues, At one point in particular, the strings played something almost like a Viennese waltz, which made me wish McAlister had spent a few more measures in that mode, not because I'm mad for three-quarter time but because it could have given the work a more elaborate palette.

Nonetheless, L'Estivant is a worthy, if somewhat slight, work. I'd like to see McAlister write a couple other movements to go with it; Ellert and his compatriots played with beauty, sensitivity and delicacy, and a larger new piece of American music for them to play would be welcome.

The McAlister was one of five utterly fresh works on the festival program, which was played to a substantial house. The musicianship was excellent overall, and stellar in two cases.

One of those instances was the Prélude, Récitatif et Variations, Op. 3, for flute, viola and piano, written in 1928 by a young Maurice Duruflé. This is a gorgeous work, utterly French and redolent of Fauré and Debussy. Dark and funereal at times, it also rises to huge, chordal climaxes that point the way to the organ music that lay ahead.

Pianist Lisa Leonard was the exceptional heart of this piece, demonstrating beautiful technical command and power and passion to spare. Reder and flutist Karen Dixon were fine partners; Reder's chaste, somber tone made an effective counterweight to the rolling arpeggios of Leonard's piano, while Dixon ably joined the pianist for some sparkling figurations in one of the later variations,

A splendid discovery, this work, and it would make a wonderful program companion for pieces such as the Ravel A minor Trio, the Debussy Sonata for Flute, Viola and Harp, or the Poulenc Flute Sonata, to name a few.

The audience responded most fervently to another standout performance, that of the Duetto for cello and double bass, written in 1824 by Gioachino Rossini, who was then still writing operas. Cellist Moyer and bassist Jason Lindsay gave a marvelous rendition of this delightful and witty duet, and in so doing showed how a great composer can build an entire epic statement out of just two solo instruments — and instruments that spend much of their time down in the tonal depths at that.

From the opening bars of this three-movement piece, Moyer and Linsday demonstrated impressive technique and a profound understanding of the work's sense of fun. Rossini's writing for the bass (the piece was written with the virtuoso Domenico Dragonetti in mind) is every bit as difficult as that of the cello, with no quarter given from rapid, dashing scales or songful melodies.

Most moving was the middle Andante molto, which featured Moyer's cello singing out a long aria over Lindsay's fat pizzicati. And the finale had showmanship to spare, as Moyer gave out the expansive theme over a broken-thirds accompaniment in the bass, only to have the two instruments switch roles halfway through.

The Rossini Duetto offered high spirits along with illumination, and that sense of merriment extended to the closing work on the program, Franz Hasenöhrl's 1954 arrangement for wind trio, violin and bass of Till Eulenspiegel, Richard Strauss' tone poem about the medieval prankster whose tricks finally end on the gallows. Hasenöhrl's Cliff Notes-style version of the tone poem (it's condensed to about 8 minutes) nevertheless clearly illustrates Strauss' vivid harmonic imagination and virtuoso approach to the instruments of the orchestra. Violinist Kostic, in particular, gave an impressive performance of her highly athletic part.

The concert opened with a brief group of miniatures by the American composer Jan Bach composed for flute and horn. Bach's 2-Bit Contraptions had the audience laughing several times, especially during the third movement (Gramophone), in which hornist Thomas Hadley and flutist Dixon imitated the sound of a jazzy tune getting stuck on the old Victor Recording Machine in the parlor.

Equally as amusing was the second-movement Calliope, which gave both players strenuous work as they leaped from register to register in almost every bar, handling melody and accompaniment in both parts.

All told, a deliciously inventive, unhackneyed program with first-rate performances throughout. Concertgoers looking for refreshment for the mind and ears could hardly do better on a hot July afternoon.

(This review is an expanded version of an earlier posting, which ended with this: As I noted at the beginning, I found the combination of bassoon and string quartet quite lovely, and it's another reminder that the sound world composers can create is unlimited if they're unafraid to construct something outside the norm. (Here's a review of a disc of music for bassoon and string quartet.)

How the wizard came to Bedford Falls

I don't see any evidence that anyone's mentioned this before (but I'm not looking that hard because I so crave originality), but if you look on the door in the scenes in Mr. Potter's office in the film It's a Wonderful Life, you'll see he has a first name and middle initial:

Henry F. Potter.

Now what nicknames are there for the name Henry? Let's see: Hank (my late great-uncle), Hal (the young prince of Shakespeare) and — Harry (like one of the current princes of England).

That means that George Bailey's nemesis in the sleepy town of Bedford Falls is none other than — Harry Potter. A clutching, grasping, covetous old sinner, as Dickens said of another noted miser, and this Harry Potter is a thief, too.

Is it possible that Voldemort takes over Harry's soul, then travels back in time to 1940s wartime American suburbia, there to pursue the holy bottom line, all the while barking at the silent servant because he isn't pushing you fast enough to the door to watch one of your victims descend into panic?

And how about that wheelchair? Injured in a particularly brutal fall from his Nimbus 2000 during a violent quidditch match, the bones never quite healing, and no spell to relieve him?

Perhaps Harry bears more scars than that lightning bolt on his forehead. Exhausted by near-death escapes year after year at school? Confused by his dark-of-night feelings for his friend Ron? Embittered by his failure to be taken seriously as a person outside of his wizardly acumen?

It would be a particularly dark twist of plot to turn a sensitive boy of great basic goodness and promise and transform him into a small-town greed-o-tron and despot. But you can't say that hasn't happened before. Harry Potter and the Incredibly Cold After-School Reality, volume 8 in a never-ending series, and a story that gets told every day to someone newly introduced to the dry taste of Failure Bread.

Harry Potter, having failed and been seized by the forces of darkness, suffers the worst punishment of all: To be turned into a Muggle, in a small town, fighting the battle of Bedford Falls. He even has to lose his accent.

Anyway, just wondering whether anyone else noticed this pop culture convergence. Me, I'll be hanging tonight with the friendly freaks at a Potter release party somewhere, picking up the new book for my wife, who loves these stories.

Happy reading, and keep an eye out for Clarence. You might need him soon.

Survey: Critics differ by gender on top composers

If you're a female classical music critic, you're much more likely to consider Antonin Dvorak a favorite historical composer than if you're a man.

That's one of the interesting bits of information from a study published in May by the now-defunct National Arts Journalism Program at Columbia University. This study, called The Classical Music Critic, is a survey of 181 critics at newspapers and specialized publications across the country. (You can download a copy here.)

The female critics also listed Prokofiev, Shostakovich and Verdi among their top 10, names that weren't found in the men's list. This is one of those factoids that's fascinating because it could mean almost anything, and therefore is worth discussing.

Here's the men's top 10 of historical composers, in descending order: Mozart, Beethoven, Bach, Schubert, Ravel, Brahms, Stravinsky, Mahler, Debussy and Haydn.

The women's top 10, in descending order: Mozart, Bach, Brahms, Beethoven, Stravinsky, Prokofiev, Dvorak, Shostakovich, Verdi and Ravel.

I'm a little more inclined towards the women's list, if truth be told. Bach, Beethoven, Mozart, Shostakovich and Verdi would certainly make my list, but the other five would be tougher to select. Maybe that would be the best way to do it: Choose a permanent Council of Five, and the other five can switch out in United Nations rotating-seat fashion.

The critics also ranked their top contemporary composers; the list of the top 10, among critics who said they knew the work of these writers enough to be able to rate them. In descending order, from top to bottom: John Adams, Arvo Pärt, Einojuhani Rautavaara, Osvaldo Golijov, Sofia Gubaidulina, Henri Dutilleux, Krzysztof Penderecki, Kaija Saariaho, William Bolcom and Steve Reich.

I'm glad to see Rautavaara's name on this list, because the Finnish composer's music is really worth hearing (the Cantus Arcticus, for example, also known as Concerto for Birds and Orchestra), and his star appears to be on the rise with audiences worldwide.

There's much more in this report worth examining, because it touches on so many issues critical to the health of classical music, and if you've got some time and interest, it's worth a read-through.

It also is probably the last publication of the 11-year-old National Arts Journalism Program, which went out of existence July 1 for lack of funding, unless I missed the news of some last-minute reprieve. I'll make the requisite lamentations, because no matter how much criticism the media deserves, the craft of journalism is absolutely indispensable, as national events such as the jailing of Judy Miller have shown.

In the arts, it's every bit as important, because journalists keep the cultural conversation going, and in so doing keep us in touch with our common heritage. No matter how established an artist is, and no matter for how long, all artworks need renourishment and reconsideration at every possible juncture.

And now an avenue for elevating this conversation to a place of national prominence is closed, and there's nothing good to say about that.

Multitasking musicians could secure classical's future

A recent piece in the Los Angeles Times about the interesting lives of female freelance musicians demonstrates better than I can how open and loose the musical world has become for classical players who are ambitious, brave and skilled enough to try every opportunity that comes their way.

I'm aware of how specific this story is to the L.A. area. One of the points made here is that the women have been able to appear in film and TV spots, which helps pay the bills, but I'm most interested in the reality that these women have rich professional lives because they're able to play a wide variety of styles.

There are a limited number of full-time gigs in big classical organizations, be they orchestras or opera companies, but there seem to me to be an unlimited amount of possibilities for musicians who will lend their instrument to jazz, film, pop and other kinds of commercial endeavors. I think this is the kind of musician that does best out there these days, and I don't see why, like one of the violinists interviewed in this article, you can't go ahead and do the P. Diddy video while still making time to get that classical album recorded.

Maybe it comes from years of being on the sidelines of the musical world, and therefore a little out of touch with the reality of having to be a chameleon to earn your daily bread, but I find the whole idea of bouncing from thing to thing and yet retaining a core of art that is purely yours liberating and exciting.

Sure, there's got to be something about it that's a drag — I've talked to professional musicians who have no hesitation saying that — but most of us have to endure a certain level of tedium and bureaucratic slogging in our jobs, and there's no reason the world of music should be any different.

I find stories like this one about these young multitasking musicians inspiring. It reaffirms my belief in the universal appeal of music in all its multiple forms, and strikes me as an increasingly necessary model for making a living in the world of music today. I'm also quite certain that this catholic approach to the business of music will help bring classical music to more people rather than less, and that while it won't lose completely the loftier sentiments left over from High Victorian times that accompany it, this music will take its place along with the other musics, rather than be set apart in a lofty sphere by itself.

That's not to say there isn't something special about classical music and the habits of mind it encourages and requires. It's just to say that the age through which we are passing will treat that aspect of mind as one among many approaches necessary for a successful musical career.

I'd like to hear from freelance musicians out there who might have something to say about this. Judging from a distance, it looks like an exciting time to be a musician, if you're willing to play and think outside the box.

Cue the celesta; it's time to dance

Make a joyful noise, the psalmist said, which considered one way could mean an injunction to sing, shout, or bang on anything at hand to get the job done. Wandering in the semi-sleepless landscape of late-night TV recently, I've seen two performances by pop bands that offered some unusual takes on the traditional chamber ensemble of guitar, bass, singer and drums.

The basic rock band ensemble, which often includes a keyboard of some kind, has been more or less the same for most of the past 50 years, and as a basic unit of music-making, it's something like the string quartet in that the bare-bones instrumentation hasn't changed, but the sounds that can be drawn from it are limited only by a composer's imagination.

But on one of the late-night shows the other night was a performance by Eels, featuring a string quartet, a string bass, a drummer hammering something more like a big can, and that immortal rock instrument, the celesta.

A celesta!

This bell-piano instrument is best known for its starring role in Tchaikovsky's score for The Nutcracker, when the Sugar Plum Fairy comes out to do her delicate thing.

I've never seen it used in a pop piece that I can think of, but it worked here very well. It was a nice tune, compelling and catchy, and while you couldn't say the sound of this band had a lot of rock edge, it nevertheless had energy and novelty.

And then on a rerun of Conan, there was the Canadian band Feist, led by guitar-playing singer Leslie Feist, fronting a band consisting of an organ (a Hammond B3, it sounded like), drums and — a trombone. The trombone playing wasn't too good, and the basic ensemble was markedly out of tune, but it somehow fit the Anthropologie-garage-sale vibe of this quirky singer and her band.

There are any number of great sounds you can get from all sorts of different instruments, and if you know how to use them, you can come up with some refreshingly different aural textures for your music. Anybody who's spent any quality time playing an instrument knows there are a wide variety of colors available on almost anything you're trying to play.

The important thing is to open your ears and allow all those sounds to be part of your universe, even if you're not a performer or writer. People naturally get tired of hearing the same kinds of sounds over and over again, and it's stimulating to hear somebody with a sense of daring trying something new.

The Eels and Feist songs, moreover, were further evidence to me of the spirit of invention and boundary-toppling that's currently abroad in the land of music, particularly in pop and classical. This should be celebrated, not least because it brings us as music lovers back to the spirit of music, which the Hungarian composer and pedagogue Zoltan Kodaly once proposed as the only thing that would keep humanity from the abyss.

It's that elemental joy of creation that he was talking about, I think; it's that sense of a human being interacting one on one with an inanimate object, or just the muscles in his or her throat, and bringing forth sounds that transcend the circumstances of their production and carry listeners somewhere else entirely.

A celesta and a trombone might not rock, exactly, but they tickle the ears of auditors who are expecting something else, and show us that everything old really can be new again, in the hands of confident, unrestricted imaginations.

Chamber music festival promises fresh programming

When it comes right down to it, chamber music might be my favorite form of all. I'm not just counting classical music, either; playing an acoustic guitar with a friend on mandolin, as I've done, also qualifies as chamber music.

The thing I like best about classical chamber music is that it offers composers a chance to explore their most daring, intimate thoughts while at the same time, the variety and richness of the literature presents players and programmers with an ideal opportunity to offer concerts with fresh music.

I've covered a couple seasons of the Palm Beach Chamber Music Festival, in 1994 and in 1997 (I think), and the group's new series of 12 concerts, which begins tomorrow night, gives offbeat repertoire geeks like me plenty to talk about. At the end of this post, I'll list all the pieces, but let me point out a couple things that I find especially interesting.

A new work for bassoon and string quartet by local composer Clark McAlister will be heard in Week 2 (founding bassoonist Michael Ellert is the soloist), and a duo for flute and horn on that same concert by another living American: Jan Bach, a composer who taught for many years at Northern Illinois University.

Week 3 is especially interesting because it's an all-French program that features some true rarities, including the Petite Symphonie of Charles Gounod, for which the group is adding extra winds. A saxophone piece by André Caplet — a good friend of Debussy who helped the older composer orchestrate a couple things — and a trio by Ernest Chausson also are on the program.

Fans of French music can also hear music by the flute virtuoso Eugene Walckiers in Week 1, and in Week 4, the lovely, beautifully idiomatic late Clarinet Sonata by Saint-Saëns. There's also two rarely heard 20th-century British works on that last program: a trio by Gustav Holst and a wind quartet by Frank Bridge.

Here's the schedule:

Week 1 (Friday, Saturday, Sunday) — Mozart: String Quartet in C (Dissonant), K. 465; Beethoven: Trio for flute, bassoon and piano in G major, WoO 37; a quartet for winds by Eugene Walckiers (1793-1866); a trio by Piazzolla, and one of the dances from Eduard Lalo's score for the ballet Namouna.

Week 2 (July 15-17) — McAlister: a new piece for bassoon and string quartet; Rossini: Duo for cello and bass; R. Strauss: Till Eulenspiegel; Jan Bach: a duo for flute and horn; Duruflé: a trio for flute, viola and piano.

Week 3 (July 22-24) — Massenet: Valse très lente; Chausson: Trio in G minor; Gounod: Petite Symphonie; Caplet: Legende.

Week 4 (July 29-31) — Schubert: Quintet in C; Saint-Saëns: Clarinet Sonata; Holst: Terzetto; Bridge: Quartet for flute, oboe, clarinet and bassoon.

Performances are at 8 p.m. Fridays at Helen K. Persson Hall, Palm Beach Atlantic University, West Palm Beach; at 8 p.m. Saturdays at the Eissey Campus Theatre of Palm Beach Community College in Palm Beach Gardens; and at 2 p.m. Sundays at the Crest Theatre in Delray Beach. Tickets are $20 per concert and $68 for the series. Call 1-800-330-6874 for more information.

Thus endeth my plug. But I've yet to be disappointed at a Palm Beach Chamber Music Festival concert, and this season's choices look like another good reason — along with the Renaissance Chamber Orchestra's summer series that began tonight — to celebrate July.

On the Fourth: American music, and my Assenisipian youth

Because it's the Fourth, that means only American music is heard today in my house, and most of that classical. On the playlist today are scores by Barber, Creston, Copland, Griffes, Diamond, Ives, and Gottschalk, for starters. Right now, for instance, it's the Barber Piano Concerto, played, as ever, by John Browning.

It's my way of saluting these hardworking creative types who added something distinctive to the culture of the world. I'm always astonished by how much work there is out there, how good a lot of it is, and how little of it is known by the composers' fellow Americans. I remain hopeful that technology will get this music more widely disseminated, but as I've mentioned before, it's also more likely that people will use technology to feed themselves nonstop diets of stuff they already know they like.

But that's a discussion for another time.

Another of my favorite things to do on the Fourth besides sleep in is read the Declaration of Independence aloud, which is rather longer than might generally be realized. Today I might also read the parts of the Declaration that were struck by Congress from the document, such as this:

He has waged cruel war against human nature itself, violating its most sacred rights of life and liberty in the persons of a distant people who never offended him, captivating and carrying them into slavery in another hemisphere, or to incur miserable death in their transportation thither. This piratical warfare, the opprobrium of INFIDEL powers, is the warfare of the CHRISTIAN king of Great Britain. Determined to keep an open market where MEN should be bought and sold, he has prostituted his negative for suppressing every legislative attempt to prohibit or restrain this execrable commerce.

Interesting that the slaveholding Thomas Jefferson would write that, but little surprise that it didn't make the final cut. In the end, of course, Great Britain outlawed slavery decades before we did.

Another interesting thing as I read through my Jefferson today: A document from March 1, 1784, called "Report of a Plan of Government for the Western Territory,� which is exactly what it sounds like. Jefferson was chairman of the committee that came up with the report, but Congress sent it back for revisions before it was accepted on April 22. (The March 1 report also calls for the new states to be slave-free: "That after the year 1800 of the Christian era, there shall be neither slavery nor involuntary servitude in any of the said states...� I don't know whether that made it into the final version.)

What's ideal for the It Almost Happened Department is what Congress cut: The names of the territories Jefferson wanted to carve out of the current states of Minnesota, Wisconsin, Michigan, Illinois, Indiana, Kentucky and Ohio. Jefferson creates more or less rectangular states out of that area and comes up with these fanciful names: Sylvania, Michigania, Cherronesus, Metropotamia, Assenisipia, Ilinoia, Saratoga, Polypotamia, Pelisipia, and Washington (a small piece of present-day eastern Ohio, with some of the Northern Panhandle of West Virgina and western Pennsylvania attached).

Now, I grew up in the Chicago area, which according to TJ's map is in the confines of beautiful old Assenisipia. The western border of this state is the same as the current state of Ilinois (the Mississippi River), and it looks like it goes north to around Milwaukee, east into parts of current Indiana and Michigan, and south to around Kankakee. I suppose other state names we have now took some getting used to, but honestly, Assenisipia is a pretty dreadful name.

And what would the abbreviation be? The two-letter postal code might have been AS, but the older style certainly would have mandated "Ass."

You talk about jokes! Even if Congress had signed off on it, I doubt that name would have survived down to the present. Better to change the name than to consign the citizens of that good state to ridicule forever.

(You can see a little map of Jefferson's plan, along with the document, here.)

My annual review of Americana on the Fourth always turns up something I didn't know about, and reminds me that there's a great deal of the history of my own country of which I'm completely ignorant. This holiday always offers me the opportunity to redress that somewhat, from listening to good American classical music to reading the work of some of the nation's most eminent minds. We don't, as a people, afford them anywhere near the respect they deserve.

Anyway, I'm catching a flight later this afternoon to Cherronesus for the Fourth, then we're renting a car and taking the long drive down to Pelisipia for a visit with some of Sharon's folks. Just hope there isn't too much construction on the Metropotamian Thruway.

Happy Fourth to one and all.

How about Oprah's 'Summer of Debussy'?

"Oprah's Classical Music Club."

It has a nice ring to it. After all, the durable Ms. Winfrey is our only major media apostle of the midcult educational impulse that was embodied by Leonard Bernstein in the 1950s, by the Chatauquans before that, and the lyceum movement in the antebellum years before that.

There's an audience for classical music out there, but it could be much bigger. I've written often that music itself — of every genre — has an appeal that transcends any old marketing techniques, any odd associations and pecuilarities of its creation. Let the music speak for itself, and if it's good enough, it will find the ears it needs.

But to get the music to a place where it can speak for itself, to get it past all that societal noise, requires an interlocutor. Oprah's shown she's unafraid to confront big, demanding works of literature and admit that it's a worthwhile thing to do.

Classical music could use that same kind of approach. I've blatantly stolen this idea from Greg Sandow's blog, but an interesting idea is an interesting idea, and it deserves a little exploration.

This summer, Oprah is discussing Faulkner, including my favorite of that writer's books, Light in August. To this day, I can't tell you how many times I've wanted to say "Keep your muck," like Joe Christmas does, to someone who offers an unattractive treatette ("Care for a celery stick?" "Nah. Keep your muck."), but it's very rude, in and out of context, and you can't count on anyone getting the reference.

Light in August presents all kinds of difficulties, but they're well worth tackling in order to absorb this powerful, multilayered story. (Here's one of several notes-style guides out there on the Web.)

The same basic idea applies to all sorts of musical pieces. Many surface difficulties can be smoothed away by repeated listening and encounters with the music, which at its heart is a liquid sort of communication, one that is able to flow over the walls you encounter in challenging concepts erected by texts. It's harder to ignore music coming at you, but it's easier to shut out, and what needs to be done here is to encourage people to listen more carefully, to listen a different way.

If Oprah or someone like her were so inclined, we could get a whole summer of programs about what makes some of the great music of our common Western heritage so wonderful, so nourishing, so sustaining, so good a companion for a lifelong intellectual journey. And the best thing about so much of this music is that it doesn't even need to do that: Huge swatches of music from the past are so immediately attractive they need not do anything but wet your whistle with an engaging tune.

But in the long run, there's more to it than that, and maybe what's needed to reach people with music they'd love but don't know exists is Oprah's "Summer of Debussy."

Although I'd bet she'd start with Beethoven.