Wednesday night's lunar eclipse (lousy photo, but, well, it was beautiful ... you should have been there)



Tomorrow (today? Thursday!) night, I get to substitute for a flutist in a concert given by a small (about 30 players) local orchestra. I'm really looking forward to it!

Click on picture to hear just one of Beethoven's most beautiful pieces
(If you're on modem, you may want to skip this)

Lately, for some reason, I haven't been listening to much classical music. Instead, I've been grooving alot on the Allman Brothers, Pink Floyd, the Stones (particularly Exile on Main St.) and Lynyrd Skynyrd. All of them are wonderful and make me feel good, driving down the road, singing along and grinnin' like a frog eating onions.

But, here it is, December 16th and I started my annual Beethoven marathon yesterday, listening to the first seventeen of his thirty-two piano sonatas, and today I've finally worked my way through his symphonies and am just now listening to his final ninth symphony. Tomorrow, I'll finish the piano sonatas and wrap it up with his Missa Solemnis.

Guess what? As great as Lynyrd Skynyrd is, none of that rock stuff comes close to Beethoven. Who'da thunk it, anyhow?

If I get his complete string quartets in the next year, my marathon will have to start a week or so earlier.

Last week, I played flute with two friends (bassoon and clarinet) at a local Middle school. We presented an all-French music program with slides of various French paintings that (more or less) went along with our music (I glommed the slides from the internet for the Powerpoint show with the bassoonist giving a bit of background for each piece). All the students in the various French classes sat on the floor while we played.

The coolest part, though, was the last piece - the aria Habanera from Bizet's opera, Carmen. What literally rocked the students back on their heels was that, with our trio playing softly in the background, their French teacher, who has a wonderful voice, up and belts out a powerful rendition of one of Music's most sultry seductresses.



(Want to hear Maria Callas sing this aria?)


Another stereotype "Aw-she's-just-the-old-French-teacher" preconception bites the dirt. The eyes came popping out of the kids' heads, the jaws universally dropped and you could almost hear the collective "Woooowwwww!!!!" as the lightbulbs started coming on over their heads with their realization that maybe their teacher just might have a Life outside of the classroom. The best lesson of the day had nothing to do with French. You would have loved it!

This Saturday, I'll be playing in a new group ... a flute quartet! Our trio has found a new flutist, but (this time) we're going to keep the trio going, too. So this will make (if you include the flute, clarinet and bassoon group that plays only a few times a year (next gig is February 15th)), let's see, six musical groups in which I have the great fun of playing/singing.

Beethoven! His music stops me dead in my tracks with a reverently whispered "Wow!" coming from my lips.



He's right up there with Shakespeare in my Pantheon of Idols.

Today's his birthday (I have a Happy-Face party hat on my statue of Beethoven (he looks like he could use some cheering up, right?)).

Try to listen to something, anything by Ludwig today. At 4:00 am, I have already started my annual marathon of going through all his symphonies, followed by as many piano sonatas and concertos and string quartets as time (and my library) allows. I just realized that I no longer have a recording of Missa Solemnis, darn it!

I suppose you could always watch A Clockwork Orange, too.


(By the way, Walter is now Wendy ... her Timesteps is incredible!)

I love music. For me, one of the highest and most moving forms of music is the Requiem Mass. Bach's Mass in B Minor or Verdi's Manzoni Requiem or Mozart's or Faure's or Beethoven's Missa Solemnis are just a few of the sublime works that take me to another place outside of time and space. Other shorter sacred choral pieces, particularly Lauridsen's O Magnum Mysterium will stop me dead in my tracks and put me into an instant trance.

The thing I've been wrestling with for many years now is that, on the one hand, these are deeply religious works and, on the other hand, I'm an agnostic and, well, that shouldn't compute, right(?). But, still, their impact on me is very real and profound.

The other night, as I was listening to all of the above pieces, a thought occurred to me that, besides the inspired music, the thing that was really moving me was the same set of emotions that one experiences at the funeral of a relative or of a dear friend. Death is a very powerful (probably a gross understatement - make that "the most powerful") and Real Thing in Life. When someone close to me dies, a Tsunami of various conflicting emotions sweeps over, around and through me. There's the deep sadness. There's the uncomputable, sudden and for ever absence of a person that, just that morning, you took for granted would still be here. There's the feeling of you having, once again, dodged the bullet (well, this time, at least). There's the communal grief and leaning on shoulders shared between friends and relatives that are left behind (the "Survivors" (well, for the time being, at least)). There's the release and rejuvenation at the wake when I "wake up" (for a couple of days, at least) to the finiteness and preciousness of our own Life which, most of the time, I so take for granted. There's the cultivation the memory of the departed, now that memories are all that are left. Swirling among all these are many other emotions and thoughts that muddle the mind.

Well, somehow, for me, listening to a Requiem Mass smooths and clears these troubled waters. Listening to a Requiem Mass puts Death into perspective by giving some kind of non-verbal meaning to our own Life in the face of Irrefutable Death.

For me, it's all in the music. I don't speak Latin and I don't even think of what the words are trying to impart (on the other hand, I probably WOULD have a difficult time singing the words in a mass chorus, which is, indeed, sad for me). The transcending music, itself, is what lifts me up from the minutia of everyday busy-ness. I would guess that for most, if not all, of these composers, it was the impact of the death of a dear friend (and/or of their own impending demise) that served as the inspirational font for their compositions. The Latin text of the Mass might have been just a secondary format compared to the world-stopping grief that Death hands us all.

So, don't worry (he tells himself), I'm not becoming religious yet. For me, the Requiem Mass is all about Life, not Death or the hereafter.

So, would you please fill up my margarita glass again and here's to all of you, my good friends!

I would explode if I couldn't make music. There are things inside each of us that SHOULD come out, if only in the shower or drifting by yourself in a canoe or when you're with a whole bunch of friends/strangers. These things are totally orthogonal to the phenomenom of Words and can only be "expressed" (pun intended) by breaking out into spontaneous music, whether they are transmitted by voice or by some musical instrument or even by flatus or arm-pit music. Solos can be very insightful and theraputic, while groups in synch can move mountains.

As a side note, I think the major achievment of my Life is being able to play "Marie's Wedding" on a penny-whistle rammed up my nose (now if I could just do that while juggling on a unicycle ... now THAT's the ticket, huh?).



(Actually, this nonsense is only an excuse to try out my third icon ... more later, to be sure!)