Martin Duberman's books include biographies of Paul Robeson, Lincoln Kirstein and James Russell Lowell. Mr. Duberman has written extensively on gay issues including Stonewalland Cures: A Gay Man's Odyssey. Duberman's latest is a biography of political scientist/historian/sociologist/citizen/mensch Howard Zinn (1922-2010).
No doubt about it, Zinn's political views were radical. His 1980 book A People's History of the United States presented an antidote to history textbooks celebrating white male supremacy. This book infuriated many, and does not pretend to be impartial. A People's History has been updated several times and has never been out of print.
Howard Zinn was on the faculty of Spelman College, then an all-black institution for women from 1956 until he was fired in 1963. While at Spelman, Zinn participated in bus boycotts, restaurant sit -ins and was very much involved with the attempts at desegregation, complete with physical abuse and several arrests. He moved on to Boston University, where he was Professor of History from 1964 to 1988. His time there was marked by a rancorous relationship with BU President John Silber, described as a brilliant intellect by some and a fascist by some others. Zinn was among the highest profile BU faculty, and at the time of his retirement was the lowest paid professor in the University.
Here's part of my conversation with Martin Duberman, who has written the first biography of Howard Zinn,
CP: What attracted you to Howard Zinn?
Marin Duberman
MD: I knew Howard somewhat. We were never close friends, but we would pass here and there and say a few words. I also had met his wife, Roz. Howard and I had almost always been on the same wavelength politically, at least in the early years. I went on to become interested in feminism and the gay rights movement, and those two issues never became central to Howard's agenda.
CP: Do you consider Howard Zinn a political scientist, a professor, how would you describe him?
MD: These discipline boundaries are so artificial. He certainly was a historian. He also was a political theorist, and he also wrote to some extent about group behavior, so he was a sociologist as well.
...It wasn't fun and games for Howard. He was a deeply principled man who was very committed to the causes he took on.
CP: It seems to me that Zinn was not afraid not only to stand up for his own principles but also to question the motivation and principles of those with whom e disagreed.
MD: I think that's quite true. Howard was fearless, and strongly held to certain views, and stuck to them, regardless of the abuse that he received. He as always himself. He was a man without any affectation.
CP: Where do you think his passion came from?
MD: I think it came in part from being born into a poor, Jewish immigrant family, and I mean very poor. Often the only way they could have a roof over their heads was from his resourceful mother, to find an apartment where the first month's rent was free and then they had to pay the second month, and then they would always leave, and find a similar deal somewhere else. Both his parents had very limited education, both worked very hard. His father was a window washer and a waiter, even when he suffered severe back problems he had to go on doing those jobs, because there were no alternatives. Howard grew up knowing full well the central American myth, that anybody can get anywhere if they're willing to put in the hard work, he knew that was nonsense.
CP: Which of Zinn's many books would you consider essential to understanding who he was?
MD: Probably his autobiography, You Can't Be Neutral on a Moving Train. I don't think its his best book, but if a reader his interested in his life as opposed to his political activities that would be the book. But he's never very revelatory about his inner life and his relationships. That wasn't Howard. He was very much a public figure, and in fact he went out of his way to conceal his private life to the point when I arrived at the archives, I discovered that almost all personal correspondence he had destroyed. I think the main reason was he didn't want to get political fiends into trouble for anything they had written to him. And also, Howard was very private. He simply didn't talk about his inner feelings.
CP: Zinn was on the faculty of Boston University for many years. For much of that time he had to deal with the President of the University, John Silber. The two men did not see eye to eye. It often became very difficult and ugly. Why do you think Howard Zinn stayed at BU? He probably could have gone many other places?
MD: No, I'm not sure that's true. Howard's politics were very radical. The subtitle of my book is a life on the left.By the 1980s. certainly;y in the Reagan years, there weren't many other places Howard could have gone. I didn't come across any invitations offering him positions. Until he wrote A People's History,his big selling book, the family lived on his BU salary. John Silber always saw to it that Howard was the lowest paid full professor in the University. So he couldn't afford to simply resign. After People's History was published, which by now I think has sold around two ad a half million copies., and ever year the book sells more than in the year preceding-and the book was published in 1980. But it was only then that he had extra income.
CP: A People's History was saying the exact opposite of what many people were taught in the public schools
I thik Howard Zinn and his books have a lot to do with requiring kids today to think critically.
MD: Absolutely,. The year before People History came out there had been a very respected study of high school textbooks. The study showed overwhelmingly the heroic lives of our presidents and business elite. No mention was made of the uglier parts of our history. Certainly no mention was made of the working class and the poor, and the various strikes they engaged in order to better their condition. It was a shocking study, because it showed that American children are indoctrinated generally with a triumphalist version of American history.
I think its better now, thanks to Howard and other young radicals who are writing textbooks.
Howard's main issues were centered in race and class. He made a few gestures later in life to feminism and the gay rights movement. But Howard's house had long been built. His orientation was toward race and class. No matter what generation you belong to, you are born into a certain set of problems, and if you're an activist, those are the ones you tend to be drawn to. Feminism and gay rights were simply not salient movements when Howard was coming up in the 1930s and 40s. But he never said a negative word about either of those movements.
CP: Finally, how would you sum up Howard Zinn?
MD: As a person Howard was a very gentle and kind and generous human beig. I hate reducing a life to one lesson, but if I have to I'd say what Howard's life demonstrates is that it is possible and necessary to commit oneself to public issues, at least to some extent. Howard was a professional historian and political scientist, bu he recognized he was also a citizen. We are responsible for the ills of our society. As citizens, we have the responsibility to lend our efforts to some degree. We can't simply be self absorbed consumers. I think that's the lesson of Howard's life.
D.T. Max is a staff writer for the New Yorker, and the author of a medical mystery, The Family That Couldn't Sleep.
Every Love Story is a Ghost Story is D.T. Max's is a new biography of writer David Foster Wallace, (1946-2008) either the most original writer of the last thirty years, or a literary con man.
Take your pick D.T. Max comes down in the former camp and he'll take you there as well.
"David and I are just a year apart in age. When he published his first novel, The Broom of the System, it was a revelation to me to read such an extraordinary, funny, masterful and overwrought piece of prose from someone my own age...When David Remnick, editor of The New Yorker asked me to write a piece about David's death, I was immediately interested, because I knew so little about David Foster Wallace. I didn't know that he had depression, I didn't know that he had addiction issues, I didn't know how funny he was."
For those who have yet to encounter Wallace's work, Max says,
"David Foster Wallace mastered a kind of writing that really had not been done before. Long, winding sentences that try and capture everything about the world. They are what it sounds like when you think. (italics mine.) They are the sound of our own minds going....David brought a wonderful knowledge of sentence structure and how a sentence should sound to this disorderly, exciting kind of mental state...the sort of David Foster Wallace mind dump."
By the time of his suicide in 2008, Wallace was the author of several collections of short stories and non fiction, and his massive novel, Infinite Jest. This 1,000 page novel runs from locker room towel snapping to very detailed discussions of experimental films made by the deceased, but still very present father of one of the novel's leading characters. There are massive of footnotes as well, and some of the footnotes have footnotes, every word worth reading. You will stay with this book even if you wonder why it so entertaining.
"Infinite Jest is less difficult than most people think. It makes it hard at times to know where you are, but its really an absolutely wonderful story, or really two stories, partially a story about a bunch of kids at a tennis academy outside of Boston, and its partially about a bunch of recovering addicts in a half way house that's just down the hill. David wanted people to read this book. He was not James Joyce. He did not want to make it impossible for you to understand what's going on.
D.T. Max
Max recommends "modestly submitted" Every Love Story is a Ghost Story as a good primer to Wallace's work (he's right) and recommends the on line "road maps" for Infinite Jest. "These reassure you that you are going somewhere, especially early in the book when you have reason to doubt!"
Every Love Story is a Ghost Story is no facile expose of a life of addiction and mental illness interspersed with flashes of brilliance. It's impressive literary criticism, along with the facts of a complex life.
"I didn't want to write about David without writing about David as a writer. It tries to relate the writing to the life and the life to the writing...In the years since his death (2008) he's become a kind of person people just want to know about. There's a kind of moral force around David, especially for younger people, there's a cliched "Saint Dave"...David used to say when he didn't like something he'd go straight to the bathroom, and that would make him go straight to the bathroom. People think of him as someone who had experiences and wrote about them in ways can help them be stronger, and be more centered and happy in their lives. That's his great theme, that he's writing for you. He's writing for you as a reader, so you can take away, experience and knowledge that will help you to experience your life more fully . It's a big task. Most fiction writers don't do that, . David wanted you to emerge from his books stronger ."
D.T. Max points out that he never met David Foster Wallace.
"I tell people when I started this book I was in love with David Foster Wallace, and when I finished it I was even more in love with David Foster Wallace. People ask how that's possible...you show so many of his flaws, but to me he's like a Thomas Merton . He's somebody who lived hard in the world and made a lot of mistakes. He did a lot of learning. We can learn from him. In writing the book, I was trying to learn what David was trying to teach me, about how to live more fully in the world. Our saints today are not going to be virgins! David spent much of his life in 12 step programs. I think that's where he learned that its only those who've been there who know how to get out of the cul-de-sac that we're in, or how to avoid getting into that dead end. That to me is David's great value."
Now that I'm approaching the other side of fifty heading to sixty, I'm becoming reflective.
A number of years ago it was time for me to get a vasectomy.
The reasons are unimportant, but as a lot of the younger men around me are becoming new fathers,
I began reminiscing about the procedure itself and its aftermath.
I was of a certain age, delighted with the child I had and not expecting more. A call to the OSU Medical Center referred me to the dept. of Urology, and a date was made. No muss no fuss.
Men are always sold the line that snip-snip on your lunch hour and, simple band aid in place in the lower extremities, go off and play racquet ball. You won't feel a thing. All of us hold on to this myth. I did uneasily recall a neighbor who spent a week post snip wandering around his yard in his jammies, when not sitting on a pillow and looking dazed. I decided his procedure was part of something , well, I don't want to say larger in this context, but maybe prostrate surgery.
If there were any pre- appointment instructions, I ignored them. Do Not Do This. On arrival, meticulously showered and you bet with clean NEW skivvies, I was met by a very large woman holding a 35 cent disposable Bic razor. She was not a soft spoken large lady, either.
ARE YOU HERE FOR YOUR VAZ?
In the background ran a tape of Donna Summer and Gloria Gaynor liking the night life and
God bless us and spare us, liking the booty. This when I'm about to lose mine.
TAKE YOUR PANTS OFF. Check.. NO HONEY, UNDERPANTS TOO.
I looked for the butt open hospital gown and seized it gratefully but once stirruped
(is this a woman's revenge on male OBGYNs?) I realized that no gown would be of any use.
DID YOU SHAVE?
Uh-no.
MY GOD Y'ALL GOT A FOREST DOWN HERE!
And so she set to work in and near where the sun don't shine.
Meanwhile Gloria Gaynor continues to rock.
Many of you will not recall the disco era. Ask your parents.
(Get them drunk first)
As she scraped and shaved I muttered the expected, "My its cold in here"
to which the response was IF I HAD A NICKEL EVERY TIME I HEARD THAT FROM A MAN...
Apparently she was able to feel her way around the objects which were in full retreat.
I guess that made the shaving easier. I don't want to know.
YOU ARE ONE HAIRY MAN! I'M REALLY HAVING TO CHOP AWAY DOWN HERE!
I sweat to God, she really did say 'chop away'.
Now, bald in my privates-and it really WAS cold-I awaited the arrival of my surgeon.
Sure enough, a very distinguished looking Asian gentleman arrived..
And his name was...wait for it...Dr. Gong.
You can't make this stuff up.
Dr. Gong was pristine, after- shaved, nail trimmed (thank God) polite and heavy accented.
I didn't get a word but I had a translator.
HE SAID YOU CAN GET THIS REVERSED BUT INSURANCE WON'T PAY AND IT'S TEN THOUSAND DOLLARS.
Well, I could have it reversed or take my denuded privates off the table and go home.
But in for a penny.....
Dr. Gong was accompanied by a pack of acolytes (I wanted to call then mandarins but that would have been in poor taste, considering.) I was reminded that OSU is a teaching hospital. A large group of white coated women and men, the former looking smug and the latter terrified.
A digression. I had never met Dr. Gong but a routine physical a few years earlier morphed into my first ever prostate exam. I'll spare you most of this except to say that not one person put on a glove, about FIFTEEN people put on a glove. I was a Thanksgiving turkey to these good folks, and the male students were more mortified even than I was, bless them. And the attending that day kept saying to each of them, "No! You're not feeling around correctly! Do it THIS way! I was there for an hour and never again will the phrase "A hole's a hole" escape my lips.
Before and After?
Back to the Vaz. Dr. Gong is seated primly while I have no secrets left and very little dignity.
(And it being so cold did nothing for my ego, if you know what I mean).
I cut now! he proclaimed.,.
HE'S CUTTING NOW, HONEY.
and at this point Donna Summer began "Let's Dance". You betcha. Call me later.
Tug tug pull pull. Have you ever had a distinguished looking Asian gentelman pulling on you "down there". Even if you have, at least presumably the room was warm and the lights were low. Not here. The good doctor wanted to share the (lack of) wealth with each of the acolytes, so that-again-all could have a look and take turns watching the scalpel ONE AT A TIME.
YOU'RE ALMOST DONE, HONEY. YOU'RE LOOKIN' GOOD!
Just, what looks good?!?.
I love it when even through Novocaine doctors ask "Am I hurting you?" and "Gotta cut deep with this one". Two of the acolytes took phone calls during, and I swear one said, You'll never believe what I'm seeing now.
The sewing kit was shared by three of them. The men had the kindness not to snicker, not so the woman.
You get up, now.
C'MON SWEETHEART. LEMME HELP YOU UP! OOOH LOOK IT! WHAT AS GREAT SHAVE. DID Y'ALL NOTICE HIS SHAVE?
And by God doctor and acolytes alike filed back to take a deeper look at my large, loud lady friend and her disposable Bic. I thought, if she offers me that razor as a souvenir, I'm going to throw up.
"No sex two weeks!" said the doctor. "I give you Viagra."
He's giving me Viagra and telling me no sex for two weeks.
You might want to write that down.
Since it really was my lunch hour, I was hungry. This in spite of a packet of instructions with words like blood, pus, and my personal favorite, discharge.
I headed to McCarthy's on Indianaola for blueberry pancakes, stopping at home first for a pillow on which to....oh, never mind.
You will, and Monica Wood's new memoir When We Were the Kennedys will tell you all about Mexico, Maine and leave you begging for more
This was one of those books on a library display wall. I'd never heard of Monica Wood. I visited Maine often, in fact I was married there, but in touristy, faux-cute Maine.And the Maine people I knew catered to those visitors (summah people). Mexico is in Western Maine, far inland. It was the birthplace of Ed McMahon! But it was most crucially for this book the home of the Oxford Paper Company, the area's pollutant and largest employer. Ms. Wood makes clear. No mill, no schools, no doctors, no grocery stores, no libraries, no people. The mill didn't provide jobs, the mill was jobs-to residents of Mexico, Rumford and environs.
Monica Wood gives us the few years immediately following her father's sudden death on April 25, 1963. He was on his way to work, lunch pail in tow. (My father had a lunch pail. So did yours. The rest of you can ask your grandparents) Mr. Wood just...died. right there in the garage. Gone. Over and out. He left a widow and five children, and a brother in law who adored him. In fact, if you're looking for a cold, taciturn down-easter paterfamilias, look elsewhere.
There's an older son, Barry, a musician who works in the mill. Anne, who teaches school, and as the neighbors lamented "those three little girls". Betty is what we'd call today a "special needs child." Monica and Cathy are at home. Mum goes from self reliance to a woman taking to her bed at every opportunity.
President Kennedy is assassinated the following November. the Wood family isn't close to recovering from Dad's unexpected death. Now another family has lost their father, and the whole country lost a father figure. Irish Catholics took President Kennedy's death personally. I know. I was raised in a similar environment.
There are Catholic Schools, benevolent nuns (no silly jokes here) Father Bob, Mum's younger brother who thought of Dad as his own father, and who is undone by grief. There are nosy, difficult landlords from another old country, (Lithuania) kindly neighbors and good friends. No villains in this book. So is it too sweet, too cloying and unrealistic?
No. Along with the nice people there is on every page a sense of loss and grief that complements the rest of the story, never weighing it down. Father Bob and Mum both die of cancer, too early. S Anne the school teacher sister gets married....at the age of 68! The mills change hands multiple times before dying away, taking Monica Wood's world with it. And by the last page of When We Were the Kennedys, you'll wish that Mr.Wood was your Dad.
Arturo Toscanini (1867-1957) was the dominant figure in America's concert live form 1937 until his death twenty years later. David Sarnoff and RCA created the NBC Symphony for the Maestro. Concerts were broadcast weekly form Studio 8-H in New York, and these programs made Toscanini famous to all, after a fifty year career that began in the cello section of the word premiere of Verdi's Otello.
Toscanini led the world premieres of La boheme, Pagliacci and Turandot. He gave the Italian premiers of Wagner's Ring operas (with the extraordinary tenor Giuseppe Borgatti as Sigfrido). By 1937 he had served music directorships at La Scala, the Metropolitan Opera and the New York Philharmonic. He had given concerts with the BBC Orchestra and the London Philharmonic. The Maestro journeyed to Palestine, accepting no fee to lead the inaugural concerts of the Palestine Symphony (today the Israel Philharmonic)
He was an ardent anti-fascist who was beaten up by Mussolini's thugs in the early 1930s, for refusing to play the fascist hymn, Giovinezza. Toscanini conducted Tannhauser and Tristan und Isolde at Bayreuth, refusing to return after 1933."I cannot go against my conscience as an artist and as a man."
He had love affairs with celebrated divas, children out of wedlock and a long marriage to Carla Di Martini.
Cesare Civetta is himself a noted young conductor. In 1976, when Civetta was very young indeed, he produced a radio series for WFUVin New York. UnderstandingToscanini featured interviews with musicians, critics, writers and members of the NBC Symphony. From them and from Maestro Civetta we have the present volume, The Real Toscanini: Musicians Reveal the Maestro.
Toscanini was known for his volcanic temper, and this is acknowledged in context. He was often enraged at himself, when he felt that his own powers were not up to the music at hand. Themes emerge as to the Maestro's demands on himself and others, but also on his humility, kindness and phenomenal memory. He could be paternal and he could be severe. Today one of the few criticisms is the fast tempi Toscanini was thought to favor
"For me it was never too driving. It was never too fast for me. It was always under control, no matter what tempo. He knew exactly what he was doing".--George Koutzen, cellist NBC Symphony
"Toscanini sought expressive quality through dynamics or texture, not through tempo, which was the constant" --Robert Shaw
Cesare Civetta
Cesare Civetta has produced a book by a musician with musicians about the supreme musician. The best books on music lead you back to the music itself, and The Real Toscanini is no exception. I read this twice in one sitting-and will read it again. It's a rich book. informative and entertaining. And every so often I put it down to listen to the Maestro in concert. I returned to the music,. as I'm sure Toscanini would have wished.
Dennis Lehane's new novel Live by Night traces the career of Joe Coughlin, from his youth Boston as the son of the police commissioner, to his rise amid that city's speakeasies and bootleggers, to his career in hotels, gambling, off-loading and more near Tampa, Florida. Lehane's readers will recognize the masterful blend of street smarts and vulnerability in Coughlin, along with the color of Lehane's favorite era, the 1920s.
Lehane's previous novels include Mystic River, Gone Baby Gone, Any Given Day and Shutter Island.Dennis Lehane's voice is among the most authentic in writing today. Having myself an ear for Boston-laced dialogue, I had long wanted an interview. Here it is, a phoner recorded October 23, 2012
CP: Your new novel, Live by Night, deals with the end of prohibition and goes into the depression years. In your previous book you dealt with the Boston police strike of 1919. What makes a particular historical time interesting to you as a writer?
DL: I'm not exactly sure. Given Day was interesting to me because I was interested in the Boston police strike, so the germ of the idea was always the Boston police strike. That led me into, as I was writing that book, to my favorite decade, the 1920s. The reasons for why that's my favorite decade are as shallow as they had great clothes. It's the grandest failed social experiment in American history-prohibition-you look at a time in which the entire country turned its back on the rule of law. We became a society of outlaws. That must have been so exciting.
CP: I've noticed in your books that even if a reader has never set foot in any of the places you write about, you immediately recognize them. You immediately become at home. You have a wonderful sense of place. Is that something you developed ? Are you aware of that?
DL: I am insofar as its something I'm place-centric in a lot of ways. I'm someone who can become quickly depressed living in a place I don't like. I'm not one of those people who can just live anywhere. I don't get those people. That might have something to do with my psychology when it comes to place. When I do write about a place its usually a place that I'm enamored of in some way, shape or form. And I try to put that onto the page. But there have been plenty of times when I've written about places I've never been, that I thought for whatever reason sparked my imagination and came out as vividly as I'd hoped. I'm thinking of Oklahoma in Given Day or the Pinardo Rio region of Cuba in Live by Night.
CP: Your ear for dialogue I like very much in that everything sounds very authentic, whether in Florida or Oklahoma, or South Boston or Dorchester.
DL: The dialogue is the one thing, I don't want to say born with,but its something I brought to the table when I started to become a writer. The reason I don't say 'born with it' is because I grew up in a place where people spoke very vividly. Boston in general, but then you get into the sort of inner city neighborhoods, people just speak very vividly. Very pronounced dialect. So, by the time I started writing, as I began down this path, the one thing I could always do is write dialogue, because I'd heard so much great dialogue my entire life, just walking out the door every day.
CP: Specifically, all of your characters speak in very short questions. Instead of saying "Do you know what happened?" they say "Know what happened?' .
DL: The very first kind of moment I remember having as a writer -the first revelation I remember having, was connected to dialogue. It was just standing on a subway platform, I heard somebody say-this is the polite PG version, that's not what he said, he said "The hell ya doin'?" It just hit me at this moment. I think I was about twelve, he didn't say 'What" . He went right to 'the hell you doing?" . That's suddenly a moment when you just tune your ear without knowing you did it, but I remember that was a great moment for me, I remember writing it in a notebook. Wow! That's how people really speak here! Not what you see in books, you know?
I CP: You were twelve years old, is that when you knew you would become a writer?
DL: No, that's when I was kind of really walking down the path, but I didn't know I was going to become a writer til I was twenty.
CP: But a twelve year old wouldn't think to go home with a notebook and write something like that down.
DL: I knew that I liked to write, but it was not considered a viable career option where I came from. That's why it just didn't occur to me until by the time I was twenty I'd dropped out of college, with two differed safety majors, I just realized that I was no good at anything else.
CP: You're not Patrick Kenzie are you?
DL: Not remotely. The thing about Patrick I always say is I gave him my taste in music, and I gave him my sense of humor because you can't fake sense of humor.
CP: In the movies made of your books, are you satisfied in the way they handled dialogue and accent and place. To me, Gone Baby Gone was really vivid
DL: Gone Baby Gone is wonderful -that's the movie where the accents are pretty stupendous. That was (director) Ben (Affleck) That was Ben sort of riding herd , and this is what an authentic Boston accent sounds like . And Casey (Affleck) being the lead -having gown up there as well. As far as I feel about the films over all, I think they're all wonderful. I can't judge them at the end of the day, but I would say they're certainly extremely faithful, and they capture the spirit of the books which is all you can hope for.
Opera Project Columbus began last year with two women, one who wanted to sing more and the other who wanted to help her sing more. How many orchestras and opera co.s have collapsed in the past ten years. Who 's nuts enough to start a new Opera Co. Are you? Not me. I'm already on cold cereal and generic lean cuisine.
Thank goodness the two wwomen were, if not nuts, then brave. You know what we have in Columbus, Oh? Football, beer, Football, good Chinese food, Football, soccer even hockey (sometimes, and I'm a Bostonian so don't get me started) Jeni's ice cream, terrific garage theater, two professional orchestras, Football...and damned good young singers. Very talented folks, many of whom love Football. I wish they had a venue locally that would pay them heartily. They don't. That may come in time. Opera Columbus is doing a good job with the young audiece pool, who put down their I-phones and coke spoons long enough to enjoy La boheme.
Here's a bit from last season:
Tonight at 8 Opera Project Columbus presents an evening of opera scenes. None of this Bastein and Bastienne shit. La sonnambula, Manon Lescaut, Madama Butterfly, The Barber of Seville, und so weiter. They have folks who can sing this big boy big girl stuff. I want them to keep together as a company attached to a local church or museum 'in residecne' where they'll have a rent free place to perform. Many of this kids--er artists (sorry) are already working professionally. The New York Times has raved aobut one of them. Now its their communities turn. I have to get there late tonight but you don't. Bottoms in seats plase, tonight 7.30, Opera Project Columbus, First Unitarian Church, 93 W. Weisheimer, Columbus. Park in the funeral home lot (don't start)
I don't know all of tonight's singers but I don't mind telling you I have a great paternal affection for several of them. I'm also deply impressed with the professionalism, and how they condcut themselvs. Many are now having children of their own.
Sutherland, Callas, Pavarotti, Price, Domingo, Merrill, Tebaldi, Milnes, Corelli, Tucker, I heard them all. I got hammered with two of them and I slep--never mind-with another. They were all young singers once. People went to churches in their home town s to hear them. Nobody went away disappointed. Nor will you, See you tonight.
Opera Columbus continues its renaissance with a new way to present La boheme.
You know the drill. Impoverished students in Paris circa 1850 live in cold and want but manage to find wine, women and (obviously) song. Puccini used Henri Murger's Scenes de la vie de boheme as the basis for his opera. So did Leoncavallo, composer of Paglicacci, who also wrote a La boheme, a wonderful opera never heard. That's another story. Call me up on the phone.
La boheme. The cold, the poverty, the wine, the muff, the death:
Along comes Opera Columbus wanting to do something new. Rent is based on La boheme and its been a smash for years. Can Puccini build a new audience?
YES!
Last night I went to see Opera Columbus's new production of La boheme at Shadowbox, a venue in the Brewery district reminiscent of the shoe-biz 'rooms' of an earlier time. It's a lovely restaurant and bar, and a performance space with its own company, led by Stev Guyer (no 'e' at he end, please.) Stev's a favourite guest of mine on All Sides Weekend. So is soprano Peggy Dye, Opera Columbus's new Head Diva in Charge.
Together, Shadowbox and Opera Columbus are presenting La boheme, in English, sung by attractive young local artists. (Last night the baritone had a wardrobe malfunction giving the audience a bonus.) The show is performed in the restaurant, and I do mean performed. Shadowbox has long been the home of the most creative and entertaining revues, with its artists encouraged to work the room. Musetta sang her waltz (beautifully) five feet from me. If several gentlemen nearby had coronaries, I'm here to tell you the died happy.
La boheme. Intimate, musical, sexy, lovey and in English. Almost in your lap. Don't miss this Sundays at 5 PM through November 18. FREE. Shadowbox is at 503 S. Front St.
No excuse. you don't need to watch another presidential debate or reruns of The Real Housewives of New Jersey. The baritone has probably bought a new belt by now for his britches, but Musetta and company remain potent and wonderful. They, with their formidable, multi-tasking pianist, will delight you. As will Puccini..
This is a transistor radio. You might want to write this down. A radio like this was my gateway.
Verdi: Luisa Miller with Adriana Maliponte, John Alexander, Cornell MacNeil, Bonaldo Giaotti, Paul Plishka, Mignon Dunn conducted by James Levine. Metropolitan Opera December 11, 1971
Did you have a shitty childhood? Mine wasn't so great. Forty years after this broadcast of Luisa Miller I have learned compassion. I look back on those days now knowing that people really did do the best they could while fighting their own demons. So when I hear in my head my father's voice, saying "Where's Chris, Mary? I'm getting ready to take the dog out" I no longer shudder. This must have been a cold Saturday afternoon in Boston for Luisa Miller. I was trying to tape all the Met broadcasts in 1971. I had just turned fifteen and had a real to real tape recorder Luisa was one of my first tapes and in those days for me it meant putting a Ken-doll type mic up to the face of my transistor radio. Thus, when Adriana Maliponte says the lines, "Non temer, piu nobil spirto.." my father's call to the dog came through on tape loud and clear. It took me many years to listen to that part of the opera without mixed emotions
James Levine is much in the news these days, with his return to the Met after years of infirmity. This Luisa performance was early in his first run of Verdi. Levine had made his Met debut the previous summer. He was 29, and EVERYBODY noticed there was a new sheriff in town. Fausto Cleva's death left a need for a Verdiano conductor, and there was Jimmy. He is cheered to the walls in this broadcast-and forty plus years later I know he will be again.
John Alexander was a regular with Sarah Caldwell's Boston Opera. His was a case of good voice, outstanding musician. You can have a world busting career the other way around, but Alexander was nothing if not valued. Malipointe was a school boy crush of mine. A few years alter I saw her in La traviata. Bosomy and yummy in her Act I gown, she sang well, too, as she does here. That memory is worth keeping, as is this performance.
R. Strauss: Der Rosenkavalier Elisabeth Soderstrom, Delia Wallis, Erie Mills and Donald Gramm. Mario Bernardi conducts. Houston Grand Opera 1978
Erie Mills: A Star is (was) Born
My living situation was dramatic when I had this broadcast on. I do remember it as a career boost for Erie Mills, replacing Barbara Hendricks. Erie got her star is born broadcast. I saw Soderstrom as the Marschallin yeas later and exquisite she was. She was nearing sixty and you would have jumped her bones from the fifth balcony. Donald Gramm was the papa eminence of the Boston opera, a source of impeccable musicianship, sanity and outrageousness. God rest his soul.
I don't know when the Houston Opera began broadcasting in syndication. I do know I was playing this broadcast on the radio, taped not live, while living in Jamaica Plain, Massachusetts, so it must have been the summer of 1979. I graduated from B.U. in 1978 with a degree in music, little talent and no prospects. A summer work study job in' 78 turned into a full time gig. Where? Sargent College, school training Physical therapists, OTs, Rehab Counselors-a serious place doing serious work, except possibly in my office. I was in the support staff, presided over by a florid Irish-American lady and man did she and the associate dean like their gin and tonics at lunch-every day. The undergrad admissions counselor was running through a love life dry spell, punctuated with the occasional idiot. "Last night this guy walked me home and he started to take off his clothes at my door. in the street." The graduate admissions coordinator was an intense young woman I didn't like who didn't like me. She kept going on a rice diet, kept getting blocked up and kept being admitted to Mass General to be blown apart. You'd think she'd have learned (P.S. she was in no way heavy in the first place)
Sheridan St., Jamaica Plain, Ma. Chez George
Oh yeah, Jamaica Plain. I needed a place to live that summer and I had no money (B.U. salary was $120/wk, considered good in them days) A bulletin board produced George form Jamaica Plain. He had a large apartment in a run down manse in JP-the toilet flushed up, if at all. The glory days of this place were in the time of James Michael Curley. But I digress. The rent was $75/mo. It was a big place, formal dining room, big kitchen, sun deck, two bedrooms. For $75 a month what's the kick.
George was the kick. He has since died. I was amazed he lived as long as he did. Let me say I was very fond of him. George was one of the most intelligent people I ever met. He had a big heart and a dog named Teddy. He built and re build stereo equipment for a living. Today he's be repairing computers for $500 and hour. He could write, oh man, he could write. The type who gets up from the typewriter (this was 1979) and mails the pages directly to the New Yorker where it was published immediately.
George was a gay man, sexually insatiable (he never bothered me and no we did not thank you very much.) He was an alcoholic with no judgement. Many's the night when he would bring home trade and I'd stand top of the stairs and demand to see trade's ID. He wasn't bring home Harvard boys but they were usually over 18. (When he said 'trade' I thought he meant baseball cards.) He totalled two cars in the four months we were roommates, was arrested twice (and bailed out by a rich doctor from Lewis Wharf, don't ask..) and worried my mother when she dropped in one day and found the Gay Community News under Teddy's dishes in the kitchen. Withal, I was crazy about George, even if in his drunken stupor every night he would crank up the Stones at 3 a,m. bringing on the cops. Lesson learned: Sleep in your clothes. George had no problem greeting the police bare ass, but I did have a sense of propriety. I was in no way scarred by any of this. It made me grow up fast, a good thing. George and I kept in touch. He died about 10 years ago, the booze and the plague finally getting him. Ashamedly, I'm surprised he lived so long.
His birdness has become the talisman in the discussions over funding of public broadcasting.. I was a kid who watched Sesame Street and I'm a parent who values Sesame Street. That means Big Bird and company.
But...Let's not forget the wealth of value PBS offers. NOVA, Frontline, POV, Live from Lincoln Center, Masterpiece Theater and Classic...Julia Child! Working at a media outlet I was privy to a morning after Sewing with Nancy didn't air and the sewers and their friends-and there were plenty of them, were not pleased.
I first heard serious music on PBS. I first learned the horrors of a nuclear war on PBS. I learned about Stephen Foster, Elia Kazan Duke Ellington, Stella Adler, Paul Robeson and Jacques d'Amboise on American Masters. PBS told the story of the Kennedy dynasty with praise and honesty. PBS gives voice to children being denied care and education. I could go on and on. So could you.
I'm worried that Big Bird is being used to mock PBS. I interviewed Big Bird a few years ago-I really did-and it was a wonderful experience. I actually said thank you to a large chicken and meant it. Because kids had learned to read and count and sing and I heard Bernstein conduct the Verdi Requiem and Charlie Rose talk to Carl Sagan, Henry Kissinger and Elizabeth Taylor. Put all of those pictures out there with our avian friend.
The Metropolitan Opera's live in HD presentations in movie theatres world wide begins tomorrow with a new production of Donizetti's delightful L'elisir d'amore (The Elixir of Love). And it is delightful, an opera filled with wit and charm and opportunities for gorgeous bel canto singing. I'm not always on the Anna Netrebko bus, but God love her she seems to be the only artist who can guarantee a sell out today. I'm a big fan of Matthew Polenzani's who tomorrow sings Nemorino, the role loved by Bonci, Caruso, Gigli and Pavarotti.
It looks like a cute, down home type staging that won't get in the way of Donizetti's delicious music.
Verdi's Otello is next, October 27. The press is raving over Renee Fleming, and quacking "this is your last chance" to hear her Desdemona. If she drops the role now I'll bet she can clam to have sung it for years without one less than gorgeous note. South African tenor Johan Botha sings the title role. He had a good success with this demanding part a few years ago. Allergies apparently sidetracked him a few weeks ago. I've always liked his voice and his singing. In this rare instance I will comment on an artist's weight to say I hope it doesn't rob Botha of the energy and the passion as Otello must have. German baritone Falk Struckman's Iago is being greatly admired. His is a less than rich and beautiful baritone, but he uses his voice with terrific attention to subtext and insinuation. For a bonus, we get tenor Michael Fabiano as Cassio. In Columbus he's remembered for his magnificent singing of Verdi's Requiem here last season.
And so to Thomas Ades's The Tempest. I've loved this opera on
recording and anticipate it eagerly on November 10.
Charles Long is a baritone who made a fine career in opera, and a fine career in all areas of music as a singer, instrumentalist and conductor. I remember him from my days of attending New York City Opera performances at the New York State Theater (I refuse to call that wonderful building the David Koch Theater). Charles Long was long, very tall and slim and he moved like the prize fighters he admires.
Now Charles Long has written a memoir called Adventures in the Scream Trade (www.mountainlakepress.com)
Singers memoirs are generally "....and then I sang..." "I starred in..." "this conductor is an idiot... and"" I married this idiot and that idiot. They often go on for hundreds of pages in this vein. There are exceptions. Renee Fleming's book is a wonderful primer of building a career-I've bought it for many a young musician. Galina Vishnevskaya survived the siege of Leningrad and Soviet-era politics. Marilyn Horne shares her one case of crabs treated on a lonely Christmas Eve in Germany. (You gotta love her, too)
Charles Long's book is wickedly and delightfully atypical. He knows where the bodies are buried and he spells out locales, proclivities and locations. Valued names in the arts-many of you will recognize them-get some truth telling-this book says what people know and dare not spill. The chronology skips around. I had a hard time counting marriages-come to think of it, I believe one was the magic number. Penny Orloff is mentioned as CL's long time companion. He calls her foxy and on stage from the cheap seats foxy she surely was and I'm sure is. Sexual addiction is admitted. There are delightful scenes of the hetero Charles sharing a communal dressing room with some non heterosexual fellas during summer stock. Their lack of inhibition was a delight not a threat-"I laughed and covered my eyes, which ignited squeals of laughter from bare-assed men dancing in the aisles". (Another blog I use wanted me to say 'bare-bottomed-', but that loses the er, flavor, if you will, of the sentence.)
Charles was too fine a musician and too short on patience for bullshit to make a game playing career in opera. There's a lovely cameo of coaching Russian with the elderly baritone George Cehanovsky. Some big names are praised: Shirley Verrett, James McCracken, Placido Doming..some qualified; and some, well, I guess it wasn't fun to sing with Teresa Zylis- Gara. For the rest-and there are plenty-buy the book. It's a delight to read the life of a baritone who's happy to use the noun bone as a verb.
It's not yet noon of a rainy Wednesday and already this morning, two pieces of news, one great one lousy.
Lousy first. The New York Times reports that The New York City Opera is selling off its sets and costumes of previous productions. Costumes worn by the displaced and unemployed NYCO Chorus, not to mention Sills, Domingo, Triegle, Rolandi, Alexander, Lewis, Curtin, Gramm, Bible, Lankston...need I go on? Designs by Maurice Sendak-gone. The 2009 production of Don Giovanni (2009!) probably the company's last hit-gone. I'm sure Beni Montresor's Turandot and Magic Flute are on the discard hit, if not already destroyed in a 1985 fire-and the unit set for Giulio Cesare designed by Ming Cho Lee. The costume-or lack thereof-worn by Norman Treigle in Mefistofele.
Company General Director George Steel cites the rising storage costs and gets off more than one snarky remark.
Remarking that the strange situation has been expensive fir a long time, "I feel like you're making a false story. It's been a complicated money loser for a long time, and we're trying to sort it out.:
And note the NYCO pater familias conductor Julius Rudel, now in his 90s: "It's the final nail in the coffin. Thee is no more company:"
The mail however, just happen to bring an aircheck of the New York City Opera's 1980 Cenerentola by Rossini with a wonderful City Opera cast: Suzanne Marsee, Gianna Rolandi, Rockwell Blake, Alan Titus, and by (briefly) office mate Brian Salesky, now GD in Knoxville. He kept trying to get me to do EST-but was a good guy withal. I was an intern from nYU, at 22 at my most arrogant, obnoxious and immature. To this day I bless the kindness and patience of Nancy Kelly.
The proof is in the viewing and the listening. You can give away the costume, but YouTube lives on!
This is one of the most moving books I've read in a long time.
Two very young soldiers bond in Iraq.
Bond may be the wrong word.
One soldier promises the other soldier he will look after her soon.
This promise becomes a duty, a vow and an imposition.
The son is 18-the other soldier 21.
They are led by a Sergeant not yet thirty.
Even he tough guy asks how old they are? Then he sighs and says look, stay close to me.
We move between the middle east, the U.S. military hospitals in Germany and home: small towns in the U.S. where nothing extraordinary happens.
I won't give it away. It's a brief book, just over 200 pages but a slow read in the best sense.
The writing is rich but compact. Mr. Powers knows how to chose words. He writes with and austerity that fits the plot and situations-and I kept re reading paragraphs so as not to miss the smallest detail.
Whatever your political affiliations or your views on war-this book will haunt you.
Tom Wolfe has called The Yellow Birds "The All Quiet on the Western Front of America's Arab wars."
I call it an important and devastating read.
I believe this is Mr. Powers's first novel. I especially love writers who come out of nowhere and hit it outta the park.
Dichterliebe (Poet's Love) is a collection of twenty-four German lieder (songs) for solo voice and piano. There are 16 songs. The poet is Heinrich Heine , and the music is by Robert Schumann. Dichterliebe was composed in 1840. The songs are not really unified into a 'cycle' or common, story-telling thread. There are waltzes, dirges, quick songs, slow songs with unifying themes of irony, bad luck in love, good luck in love, bad luck in love again.
In 2005 a dear friend, pianist Ben Wiant asked me to join him in preparing Dichterliebe for performance at one of the noon time concerts at Columbus's First Congregational Church (they get mad if you refer to the 'Congo Club')
I kept a diary of our rehearsal process from the fall of 2005 to the two performances given in 2006. The performances are a blur to me. The rehearsals with Ben were a joy. I learned a lot about music, about poetry and about friendship.
Ben Wiant, beloved and patient mentor and friend
Here's the DICHTERLIEBE DIARY. If you seen bold type-these comments were added in 2012.
DICHTERLIEBE DIARY 1
September 16, 2005
My friend Ben and I have decided to collaborate on a performance of Robert Schumann's Dichterliebe (Poet's Love) for performance this November 1st, and a downtown church's noontime recital series. This is a cycle of 16 songs (lieder) for voice and piano, in German, the poetry by Heinrich Heine. The entire set was composed in 1840, when Schumann, syphilis eating away at his brain, had a feverish year writing some of the most exquisite lieder in memory. The songs do not tell one complete story., but allude to nature, love, loss and irony. No namby-pamby. There's a need for bite here.
Why am I doing this? Does the world need me to get up there and fall on my ass? (Maybe). Because Ben is a dear friend who after thirty years wanted to play the piano again-and he asked me to join him on this adventure.And because we both love Schumann's music and Heine's poetry.. I love it more when listening to Dieskau or Fritz Wunderlich in my underwear while scratching myself or eating another piece of cheesecake, but I digress...in short, this is like Mt. Everest, something I'd like to try once before I die.
The term 'bucket list' was not in use in 2005.
I'm going to keep a diary of our rehearsals and preparation. I first learned these pieces in college at in the 1970s. I recently reconnected on line with a former teacher and mentor from those days, who, when told of this project, said "Oh, God. Do you have to?"
This is Robert Gartside, my teacher at Boston University, 1974-1978. Okay, okay, I admit I have a degree in voice without ever having one. A voice I mean. Bob is today as smart and pithy and opinionated in his 80s as he was all those years ago. He used to say, "I don't like any singer after Kirsten Flagstad (she died in 1962). Today he and the rest of us are agog for the young German tenor Jonas Kaufmann. See? People change (!)
Ben and I had our first rehearsal the other day. We are both using scores. I find that just spitting out the German words in time is a challenge. Of course, they are just words and incomprehensible to 90% of the audience-and me at this point. I'm from Boston myself, not Dresden. I learned some choice German phrases from my dear friend Charles, who died in 1986: "Willst du mich Stossen?" and "Wie gros ist deine Schlange?" were two favorites. One must take the timbre of the German language, play with it (so to speak) and match it Schumann's notes. In lieder, the piano never functions without the words. This above all requires the singer and pianist to listen to each other. Ben played the notes and I choked and yelled and gurgled along. We got through the whole thing twice without stopping. Did we make music? Did we communicate the wonderful sense of the lieder? Is the pope Jewish?
Stay tuned. I'm renting a tux for November 1st and come hell or high water I'll be there. Ben will shine and I'll be along for the ride.
Here's song number 1. NO NOT WITH ME! DEAR GOD!
September 21, 2005
This is the continuing saga of my preparation for a performance of Dichterliebe (Schumann) on November 1st. Ben Wiant is the pianist.
Second rehearsal with Ben today. I learned a great deal in that hour. now I know why singers are always told never to learn music from a recording. I've been listening to Dichterliebe for thirty years, but never thought of singing it myself. I'm not a singer. I'm a good musician who loves music and singing but you either got the chops or you don't. I don't. But ego, age and friendship win out, and I am enjoying this collaboration with Ben. But listening to CDs, who notices the little notes and the subtle colors that make this music?
You have to work from the score, listen, study pay attention. Do exactly what the poet and composer ask you to do. It's all there.
As an immature jerk of a college student I thought Donizetti and Bellini were gods. I tolerated Mozart and had no use for German lieder. "Excruciatingly dull" cried Anna Russell, and why shouldn't I believe her? To this day there are people who, if they knew I developed a love for lieder in my near dotage would hoot and holler. (I have less time today for Bellini and Donizetti. Mozart and Rossini are another matter.)
In 2005 my desert island recordings of lieder were by Aksel Schiotz, Lotte Lehmann, Janet Baker and Hermann Prey. As a grown up I would add Dieskau of course, but also Heinrich Schlusnus, Alexander Kipnis, Hans Hotter, Bryn Terfel, Christa Ludwig, Gerald Finley and Jonas Kaufmann. See? I'm learning.
Dietrich Fischer-Dieskau died as I was working on this revision -May 18, 2012. He was the meister.He brought lieder to the world in a way not even Lotte Lehmann had reached. I heard him twice-I was a very young kid at he time, and this was in Symphony Hall in Boston. I remember very little. I was too young it was too long ago to remember the sound of his voice. I do remember,even from the cheap seats, the sense that his performance was effortless for him. Music and text just flowed out of him. He was entirely natural and everything he did seemed "right". I had just gotten glasses and left them at home, so if it was hard to see, I heard. I heard many "legends" at the end of their careers: Cesare Siepi, Tito Gobbi, Richard Tucker and remember nothing about their singing on those occasions.
Performing Dichterliebe is all about listening to one another. Ben asked me to sing with more vibrato. Who wants to hear a fat and fifty choirboy? Well, that's one of the technical problems to handle. Marrying the German diction to real understanding is another. For example
Die Rose, die Lilie
die Taube, die Sonne
die lieb ich einst alle in Liebeswonne**
Ich lieb; sie nicht mehr, ich liebe alleine
die Kleine, die Feine, die Reine, die eine...
The rose, the lily
the dove, the sun
I loved them all with the wonder of love
I love them no more
I love alone
the little one, the fine, he pure, the only one
**Liebeswonne...Is that a great word, or what? It has a more intense meaning than 'wonder of love', more like the miracle or blessing of love, and it suggests eroticism
How to put this across? There's a tradition of singing is sehr schnell, very fast, in one breath. It can be done if you don't mind passing out and leaving your audience as bewildered as before. Filling out each word with the voice it deserves, even if they are 16th notes (Richard Strauss said, "Every note has the right to live.") is a great challenge. Interpretation is often saddled with unnecessary externals. It really is internal, and quite a personal process. I need to believe in the one and only love above all, be she small and fine, and pure (at my age?) and the only one. Nice Irish boy from Boston that I am, I feel like running to confession. And this is only one (one!) of the sixteen songs. Just wait until the end, when the poet calls for a large coffin, large enough to be borne by giants who are stronger that the statue of St. Christopher in the Cathedral at Cologne, and in that coffin he buries his love. It's gonna take some sales job, never mind memorizing the German words.
Dom zu Coln...Colgone Cathedral
Ond holt mir auch zwolf Riesen
Die mussen noch staerker sein
Als wie die starke Christoph
in Dom zu Coeln am Rhein
And also get twelve giants
They must be stronger than
The powerful Christopher
In the cathedral at Cologne
. September 23, 2005
Another rehearsal today. I didn't have any voice. Nope. Nothing. Nada.
Still, Ben and I worked together well.
What continues to strike me is that all great composers of the lied do all the work for you. If you can really bear down on the German and draw out the colors of the language, you have it made. If you make the affect with your face, or hands than you are clowning, not performing, and certainly not performing Dichterliebe
Lesson learned: Study the score. True, it's all done for you but you have to know how to look. Why this chord and not that one. Does his German word have more than one meaning ? Really, this lied stuff is not for the timid (or lazy)
Today we began with song 9 Das ist ein Floten und Geigen
Trompetern schmettern darien --(schmettern-now there;s a word to tip your hat to!)
The flutes and fiddles
and the trumpets blare
Crisp and enthusiastic pronunciation of the German do so much of the work for you.
This is no time to be precious or cute
That's why the stereotype of the fat lady singing an oh-so-precious-oh-so boring song recital is a hoot. This is pretty earthy stuff, requiring among other things a great deal of energy.
I picture myself as a bug infested lumberjack lost in the Maine woods during black fly season. Looking for "her" and finding "she" is always out of reach and probably a figment of my imagination due to an overabundance of bug spray (which is powerless against black flies-trust me)
I tried to read a very learned treatise on key relationships over the weekend. I got a headache and watched a Peter Sellers movie instead. The author had one stupid remark...only tenors should sing this piece., since re-arranging the key structures dilutes the piece. "It is surprising that any artists would wish to perform something outside their vocal range.: Tell that to Lotte Lehmann, or Fischer-Dieskau or Herman Prey or Fritz Wunderlich. You want to hear Dichterleibe as a peasant who feels the earth unconditionally and poops in the woods.
Nobody can read these poems and listen to this music and do the tight butt cheek hand clasp stuff., with the cool gaze at the audience. This is earthy, sexual and beautiful. And maybe beyond me!
September 26, 2005
Bill Scharf, one of the great people of life has sent me a recording of Dichterliebe with the Russian bass Alexander Kipnis-accompanied by Wolfgang Rose
Bill Scharf became a dear friend. He died in 2009 at 89-he was an avid collector of recordings and books relating to all aspects of music. I spent a number of happy hours listening with him in his Westerville home. Bill was very generous about supplying recordings and was supportive of many OSU music students. I was on a committee which arranged the donation of his collection to the OSU Music Library. Bill was so proud of many things, family of course, and would always tell me "I heard Flagstad and Melchior in Tristan at the Cleveland Public Auditorium in 1937!" God rest Bill.
Kipnis was a huge name in music. He is the father of Igor Kipnis.
Kipnis has long been on my radar. How do you ever answer the question, who has the most beautiful voice? Leontyne Price, Carlo Bergonzi, Cesare Siepi-and certainly Alexander Kipnis. What a magnificent, towering black bass voice this was! His operatic performance must have been sensational.
At first hearing, Kipnis's voice completely overwhelms. It's like hearing the young, wild Callas-l. You can't turn your ears away. But for all of his big, fat juicy voice, Kipnis aims right at the words, dead-on! No slipping and sliding. You don't get seasick listening to Kipnis. He nails you to the wall. He really enjoys the words: liebe (love) heilgie Strome (holy river) brust/Himmelslust (breast-heaven's love).
Here's what the Germans would call eine kleine pause: INTERMISSION
Sills and Troyanos as Romeo and Giulietta, Boston 1975
I got a present in the mail today. I've been sent a recording of Bellini's opera I Capuletti e i Montecchi(The Capulets and the Montagues) a performance given in Boston on June 7, 1975. I was there. Beverly Sills was Giulietta. The late Tatiana Troyanos sang Romeo. Troyanos was very highly strung. She was a wreck all through rehearsals. Sills was cool and kept saying, "Jesus Christ Tatiana! You're the best in the business! Calm down!"
Opera is like a day care center in more ways than one. If one gets sick, they all get sick.
Everybody got sick: Romeo, Juliet, Friar Lawrence and half the chorus (most of the chorus was actually hung over) By third night all was well. This is a wonderful souvenir, and very moving for me to hear it again thirty (!) years later, with Sills, Troyanos and Sarah Caldwell all gone.
I loved the finale. Capellio, the father of Giulietta, comes upon R&;J's dead bodies and cries out "Killed! They are killed! Killed by whom?" and the chorus shouts, Da voi, spietato! By you, wretched man.
Ain't opera grand?
October 5, 2005
Well, here's another problem.
How to sing the entire cycle straight through without losing your voice?
I'm croaking a bit anyway (how could anyone tell?) but hell, at least some of the time
there's some tone there, some spin and some warmth.
I said to Ben today, Let's do the whole thing, start to finish, no stopping.
We stopped a few times, pushing and shoving our ways through the sea wall of this thick and shifting
tonality. I remember when we first discussed doing this. I thought I knew enough
about German so I could learn to do this well. I'm a pretty good musician. I've been listening to Dichterliebe since I was fifteen. How hard could this be?
After one hour of rehearsal, I'm done. I need a week in intensive care.
Just the concentration required, the ability to listen and express what's going on between he bars is an
enormous challenge. Nobody should throw away their Fritz Wunderlich albums, but
this si a wonderful mental and spiritual exercise and I'm grateful for the opportunity.
So-never mind there are two pieces back to back I can't sing because they are too f-ing low.
When I say I can't sing I mean I have no core tone to the singing voice. I can sing in tune, I can carry a tune, I understand the German. You need to absorb this music and these words to really internalize them so you can express your view of the piece. Which means you need to have a view of the piece. I tell younger singers-learn everything about the world in which the work was created. October 14, 2005
Lotte Lehmann as Leonore in Fidelio*
Okay, so I've spent the whole week opening my throat. Damned near gagged with a bulldozer. Finally I know how to squeeze out more sound from the abdominal muscles and use compressed air-the power-through the cords. I'm not saying the sound is pretty, or expressive, or nice. But there is some sound just this side of a steam whistle.
Today I got some minute word by word coaching on the German. I'm the macro type myself, but
this type of work is critical. One needs to breathe where it makes sense musically, and usually it will be where it makes sense in the words, an afterthought or a qualifying sentence.
Yesterday I as asked to substitute teach a class on lieder for undergrads. It was Pat Woliver's song lit class. He took the day off to sing Yom Kippur Services. I told these young people, if you are going to sing this music, then aside from technique and language you must have courage. Don't be afraid to be overly emotional in your approach. Move your bodies, move your faces. Be aware that your eyes are very important points of contact for the audience
The young singers here tend to be musically impeccable and sing very well. They are also of the butt cheeks clenched don't move a muscle school. Bodies must be relaxed so that he audience has no sense of physical struggle. Marilyn Horne advocated the clenched school as a means to increase physical support. To me that deflects the the muscles in the lower belly-diaphragm-but who the hell am I to second guess Marilyn Horne? I tell the students to be emotional and be active knowing they will go overboard and its easier to take emotion away than to add.
One of the reasons the song business is dying is that you have nice people getting up and singing in German. They don't speak German. The audience doesn't speak German. But there we are doing two hours of German. So you have to integrate yourself into the language so completely you could tell the story blindfolded (or gagged) Do I think you need to be a native speaker to excel in lieder. Not necessarily. It helps, but if you sing with no imagination or no way to invite the audience in, it doesn't mater what the hell is your native language. You are up there to tell a story. If the song is about love, what do you know about love? Love and sex (as in fucking) often go together in this literature, but here's no such thing as a vulgar lied. Unless an artist makes it so. (Don't). What do you know about death? Loss? pain? unrequited love? (the worst!) Song literature is full of this.
I knew the students would not know Lotte Lehmann (1888-1976) and they didn't. I showed a DVD of one of her masterclasses, from 1961. I said,This old lady was the greatest exponent of German song. She had an imperfect technique.By the time she came to the States her voice was past its best. How did she manage to pack concert halls here for years? Because she believed every word she sang. She gave something of herself to everything she sang. She was unafraid. So must you be.
Some of the students didn't like Lehmann at all. "Too emotional"! God love them.
Sing everything the composer has asked you to sing, nothing more.
Then gently you can begin to feed your own life experiences into the
music and text. If you sing everything as written and gradually ad your
heart, you'll be fine. But doing one without the other is doing half.
October 16, 2005
OPEN YOUR THROAT!
I had a voice teacher say this to me the other day.
Karen Peeler, friendship and smarts
While learning Dichterliebe and working with Ben, I was pursuing a DMA at Ohio State. I had to go in as a voice major, God bless us and sapre us, because OSU had no program in opera production-the thrust of my studies and certainly my interest. The Dichterleibe
project was not done for academic credit. It was for love and a
learning experience only-and it repaid me enormously. The voice teacher
was Pat Woliver, then and now a supportive, smart, inspiring friend and mentor to many young musicians.
Pat Woliver, artist and mensch
Why a D.M.A for me? I don't intend to teach (but you never know) Karen Peeler is a voice pedagogue extraordinaire is the last word in friendship and smarts. She encouraged me to do this-she made it possible, she was patient and thorough. God love her.
I
heard it a lot in college over twenty-five years ago. I even heard
Maria Callas say it to a terrified young soprano in her Julliard master
classes forty years ago. For the record, it was the only time I heard
Callas in the two classes I attended be anything but patient and kind.
You can't sing with your mouth closed. It is possible to open up
wide and have the back of your throat sealed up there. That's what I've
been doing. Thus the sound is breathy, unsupported and has no vibrato. I
was never able when younger to make the physical connection in my own
body to produce the sound properly. It might be pitched speaking but singing it ain't. And I'll say it again, Dichterleibe really is a ball buster.
The physical mechanisms have to be in first class shape (get thee to the gym)
to get through this. Today, after a weekend of practising the
"beginning of the yawn" without gagging, I went to rehearsal with Ben
and opened my throat. For about three minutes the sound was focused and
rich and terrific. After three minutes it was breathy, constricted,
tight and horrible. But hell, I got those three minutes I never had
before. The great tenor Mario del Monaco used to shove a spoon down his pupils' throats getting to the gola aperto. Gives a whole new meaning to "gag me with a spoon."
Many considerIch grolle nichtto be the heart of the cycle
I won't complain
Even if my heart is breaking'
Love lost forever
I won't complain
Even though you gleam with the glory of diamonds
(Wie du straehlst in Diamantenspracht-say THAT three times fast)
No gleam falls into the night of your heart.
I can't sing this. I know the notes, the words and the mood and
its too low for me, its too high for me, it's a killer and I'm all over
the place. It is song 7, with 9 to go.
I can't really sing song 6 either, ain't that a kick? The exhortation of the Rhine "With its great
Cathedral
of the hold city of Cologne" so far requires more support and gut
strength than I can muster without passing gas. But I'm working on it.
The singing, I mean..
October 18, 2005
The good news is we are not cancelling, which might not be good news to the many. We are postponing.
This entire project began as an invitation to Ben Wiant to play a piano recital at First Congregational Church, Columbus. Ben has been the go-to guy for piano tuning for decades. He had been a pianist in his youth and wanted to get back to playing. He also wanted to work on 'Dichterliebe' and he invited me along for he ride. during the process I benefited enormously from his impeccable musicianship. Ben approached this score with talent, dignity and class. He wouldn't let me say, "No I can't do this". He only said, "Yes you can. Now go work on your German." Or, "Yes you can. you are out of tune here-stop and tune it." I benefited from his talent. I have benefited from his friendship for more than twenty years. Thank you, Ben. What are we going to do next?
What might be mediocre and a stunt could be serious music making and fun if we do it after the holidays. Not that Ben, bless him, has any problems. But me, at 200 plus pounds and nearing a certain age, well...
(Bob Gartside e mailed me: "You're still young!")
I have the German and he intent but not yet the stamina to do this justice.
So we practise and work and we wait. You know, the gift of a piece like Dichterliebe is that every time you finish a one or two page song, and turn the page, it's like receiving a present! The next page is always something that looks small, but is large and miraculous. All that emotion and beauty in a few notes and a few German words. It's very humbling. I suspect neither been nor myself wants to interrupt a rehearsal process that is affording us both, he at the keyboard, me not at the keyboard,a lot of growth.
So we wait.
Diary continues, though.
Charles Panzera
I've been producing a radio series on the art song for fifteen years. I know something about the song literature, how, why, who. I love to go back to 100 year old recordings: Giuseppe Borgatti, Georges Thill, Lili Lehmann singing in their own language. I knew of the French baritone Charles Panzera, but Ben insisted I listen closely to his recording of Dichterliebe.Panzera (1896-1976), born in Switzerland was a lyric baritone. (He was not to my ears the baryton- martinyou hear in French baroque music and sometimes as Debussy's Pelleas-with the high extension and the lighter vocal technique.) Panzera recorded Dichterliebeauf deutsch-in 1935, with Alfred Cortot no less. This to me is the perfect singer/pianist collaboration. There are no affects. The piece is performed by both artists from the page. You can hear the beauty of Panzera's voice, his love for words-and Cortot matching the vocal texture perfectly.
Here's the whole thing. You need to hear his:
November 3, 2005
Two days ago Ben and I were supposed to perform at First Congregational Church. We postponed several weeks ago, but some people did show up. I'm sorry they were inconvenienced. But hey, at least people are interested. Which may or may not be a good thing. We had another rehearsal yesterday.
It's becoming physically easier for me, less of a workout. I couldn't do it now! I'm more pumped at the finish than exhausted. What to my ears sounds too bright and over focused still doesn't carry that well against the piano in the rehearsal hall. Which may or may not be a good thing. We had another rehearsal yesterday.
Most of our rehearsals were in the choir room at First Congregational Church. I'll never forget the kindness of the folks who had offices along the corridor. Never once did they call the cops or animal control when listening to me singing.
Like all important works of art, Dichterliebe feeds anyone who really wants to dig into it and discover what's there. You can't be bored and you are never, but never finished. Just when I think I've caught the right tone of irony, or or joy, or anger, the piano contradicts what I sense is going on.
The irony of a lot of major keys and bright colors, of mood changes, of the protagonists happy and bitter, (not defeated, bitter) in the same verse, with a fee degrees of separation, is overwhelming. I wonder if Schumann or any other composer expected their work to provoke so much study, centuries after their deaths. Mozart usually wrote on spec. Once a work was performed he was on to the next one, for cash. Did he think people would be writing books about the Jupiter Symphony in 2005? They are. Did Bach, who had to produce a slew of music for each Sunday of the liturgical year, think his cantatas would be sung 200 years later? I wonder if Mozart of Bach would have cared. Bach was a salaried employee for many years. Mozart wanted to be, and never in his best years could he attract enough patronage.
Sometimes the larger orchestral works and the big operas overwhelm a listener in their complexity. With lieder, its two people, voice and piano. Should there be more transparency? Is it easier for the listener to hear what's going on? you'd think so. Forget it. A one page Wolf lied is as confounding as all of the Goldberg Variations. I love what Janet Baker says: The preparation is the best part. Sometimes the audience gets in the way. (Not really)
Another "kleine pause" here. I want to remember soprano Evelyn Lear who died on July 1, 2012. She was the world's most gorgeous Marschallin. I'm listening to her 1974 Met broadcast of Rosenkavalierkvelling to her vocal beauty. She is remembered in more detail elsewhere on this blog. Her lieder were sensational.
December 1, 2005
Ben and I got to rehearse today for the first time in weeks. I hadn't opened the score since our last meeting. (I know, I know) I came away a tad discouraged.
One of the purposes of this blog is to work out for myself, in writing, what I hope to accomplish by studying Dichterliebe. I told Ben that we had been rehearsing long and well, except for this hiatus
Now, I said, we have to sit down over coffee, away from the piano, and really decide how we are going to perform. In rehearsal the piano is loud and the choir room very "live." I can't keep up vocally, and there's a lot of banging going on. We have work shopped the music and the text. Both of us know what's going on here. Now we have to bring it together. I said I have to match with what limited voice I have to the tone you are using for the piano. (I'll say it again, for lieder you have to listen as much as you have to sing.) If our attacks are going to be forceful, or tentative, or shaded, let's decide that so that I can color he words to match what you're doing. We'll go over the words carefully, , but yikes! that's difficult here. The songs are each quite short. What moods Schumann cast don't last very long, and the shifts between the bitter, the elegiac and the emphatic are quick. Very little time to prepare. The physical action of throwing out the text is a challenge.
Ein Jungling liebt ein Maedchen
The tune recalls a toothpaste commercial from the 60s:
"Ultrabrite...gives your mouth...sex ap-peal!"
You scamper along, telling of the maiden who marries the first guy to come along. The boy is upset but it still flows until a complete shirt in the last lines:
Und wenn sie ist passieret
Den bringt mein Herz entzwei
It's an old story
but remains new
And he to whom it happens
It breaks his heart in two.
...and you finish off with this heavy-Beethoven like declaration of 'Hertz entzwei"-changing key in two phrases. Just the technique needed to go from Schumann to...God!---Spontini in two phrases is formidable.
All you can do is keep workin'.
February 7, 2006
Francesco Tamagno...in my dreams!
One of the reasons I haven't posted here in two months is that until last week my score has been gathering dust.Ben and I did manage a rehearsal last week. I had no balance with the piano at all. By the fourth song I was either shouting or croaking. In voice lessons I'm taken to high C, and you know what? A lot of it ring and juice and squillo. It's like there's a real voice there.
My life as a singer, though, is firmly anchored in fantasy-land. I can picture myself as Vickers or Domingo or Tamagno as Otello but I open my eyes and there I am sweating like a pig on my new elliptical machine, reading sweaty back issues of Opera News. I tried to listen to CDs. Do not do this. I nearly nodded off during Parsifal.
Back to Dichterliebe. You know, this is music I respect but do not love (Nor true these years later. I love it a lot) It's a bit like kissing your sister.
But if I had several weeks to do nothing else but dig into this score, and sing chunks of it every day, no doubt I'd be happier with it and making progress.
Ben and I really need to work on balance. I have to apply the new technical points I am learning. A good sound is possible. But God, what you have to do to make music. I know what the music is telling me, but getting it out of my throat is a struggle.
No one said it would be easy. Lieder ain't for wimps.
February 16, 2006
Ben and I have begun working again, under the eye of a superb vocal technician who is taking us through the entire cycle note-by-note.
I'm not a micro detail person at ll, far from it.
I don't pick up socks. I leave underwear on the floor and drink milk out of the carton. Not good when you are trying to communicate the secret locked into music and German poetry. So being stopped every three notes is new to me. To my relief, I'm far from rattled by this. It seems a note by note approach is the way for me to go, to embrace the work in a technical sense. "More space...breathe lower...Why are your larynx so high...you are getting too edgy...stop it...Oh, your epiglottis is wrapped around your neck (I had to look this one up)...Thee there are the in b flats in the middle of the page. Piece of cake note, right? Middle of the register! Yes?"
No.
Get a good breath under the middle notes! Voices can be weaker in the middle range and that is the heart and meat of any voice. Forget the high notes. (I don't have them anyway) and stop growling your low notes. Und so weiter.
I never had a flippant attitude when Ben and I took up this project last fall. But if you spend time listening to recordings it all sounds much easier than it is. It's a mistake to judge yourself against Lotte Lehmann or Fischer-Dieskau. I'd love to have their rehearsal tapes. I have not a natural voice, but a manufactured one, note by f___ing note. Thank God, I don't really have talent as a singer, and that my passion for music has outlets in radio, pre-concert talks and stand-up.
February 23, 2006
Today Ben announced that we need to schedule an actual date to have at least a run through in front of an audience.
He said, it's only twenty minutes and I'll make a cake.
But its still a few weeks off, thank God.
At today's rehearsal we did the entire work straight through.
We'll need to do this several times per week, or at least I will, for the stamina.
Rule #1: Don't try to jump a three foot wall before you jump a one foot wall.
In my case, my tummy gets in the way of looking at my feet so the height of the wall doesn't matter, but you get my drift.
The gift of this cycle remains with me. Every time I turn a page, I'm astonished and thrilled all over again. Ben is good at micro details.
Hold that note three beats, as Schumann wrote. This is not the place to get artsy.
I play a chord on the second beat dissonant with what you're doing and we have to bring that out. Stop putting umlauts on every vowel except the ones that have umlauts.
For myself, I notice my German has a faux French or Italian accent.
I was pretty shocked when stopped at the first word, "IM wunderschoenene monnat Mai", since I was singing "EEEM wunderschoenen.." Other words like stumm and fluss get the same treatment. About the only accent I couldn't muster, besides German, is Boston Irish and you'd think I'd get that right.
I was looking for an experience from which to lean and grow, and In boy have I found one. An honest and lengthy study of the lied forces introspection and self examination, in addition to developing musicianship. I'm often asked to help young singers. I'm getting a good idea of what I'm asking them to do, and how difficult and exhausting it is.
The problem is to do the text and music as written while still being a musician , linguist, actor, interpreter and technician. Sometimes I can manage one or two together, but no more so far. It is an exhausting challenge, and I suspect even the greatest artists approach music and text with the humility that only makes them greater.
March 3, 2006
The other day Ben and I worked in the sanctuary of the church. We couldn't find the lights so I ever sensitive said to hell with it and we;ll make do with the overcast skies trying to stream through the stained glass.
I'm getting to the point where I m hearing Dichteliebe in my sleep
Well fragments of it anyway. Most of the time I hear Judge Judy or one of the Real Housewives Horror Shows-which mercifully did not exist in 2006. But they are like a train wreck, no? Impossible to look away.
I'm not tired of it at all. A great work is savored over a life time. I've always believed that art in any medium repays tenfold the attention given it, and that's been the case for me.
Trumpeting out das ist ein Floten und Geigen, flutes and strings are heard and trumpets blare, well by this time the trumpet such as it is is shouting and rasping away. Its so easy to forget any technique you may have in the first few minutes of a performance. No, no forget but neglect! It never became automatic for me. That takes years.
Phyllis Curtin
I love #10-Hor'ich das Liedchen klingen and esepcailly # 12 with its exquisite last line: when the flowers in their beauty complement the poet's despair: Sei uns'er Schwester nicht bose Du trauriger, blasser Mann
Do not be angered at our sister You sad, pale man
Singing that line is a gift, as is listening to the piano postlude. I prefer to savor Dichterliebe in its small, exquisite moments.
There are rests, quick dissonances and changes of mood that are easy to miss at first hearing. But as you work through you begin to get "it". Music is like life. You never "get" all of it. I love what Phyllis Curtin said, "I was sitting at the piano one day singing over some Poulenc melodies and thinking to myself oh! I 've finally understood this. Then I realized I was 75 years old and had no voice left!"
April 5, 2006
Ben and I are preparing an actual performance for The Ladies. God bless them, well-to-do matrons who have supported the local symphony -and indeed, founded it-for fifty now sixty years. There'll be a lovely suburban living room filled with spring suits. VO5 hair spray and cocktail jewelry. There'll be plenty of smiles and a table filled with lime green jello molds. Not a chocolate cake or a pastrami sandwich in sight.
(Years ago I spoke to such a group and as offered a vegetable concoction and the Head Lady said: "For God;'s sake, Helen, you can't give that to a MAN!" And out came a large, greasy roast beef sandwich. I tried to demure, but no. The room gasped in delight as I wolfed down every bit of the thing ("God love him, they don't pay him much and he probably never gets a decent meal"...I weighted 220 lbs at the time.)
(And if you think I'm making fun of The Ladies, I'm the first to tell you that without Ladies anywhere in this country there would be no performing arts. Local societies always start with them, and grow because of their generosity and devotion and because wisely the husbands do as they're told.)
Sometimes a husband finds himself stuck in the crowd for one of my talks. I always say, Oh God sir, what did you do wrong? It's either buy her a diamond ring or come hear Christopher of a golf perfect weather afternoon! The husbands get a good laugh. I don't know what awaits them at home. An hour with me on a sunny day should be penance enough.
Back to Dichterliebe. Ben and I have been preparing for this since last fall. I never wanted to do an actual performance because I don't want to be judged as a singer. As an amateur in the best sense of the word-for love, yes. The rehearsal process has been lively and instructive. It's been an oasis for me in the midst of writing scripts, ducking management, school work and watching too much TV. I finished the doctoral program in 2008. You have to call me DOCTOR Big-Butt, now. The cycle is a gift, as is all music and all poetry. The more you hear it the newer it gets. Small things that were not obvious to me. Holding notes for their full value, especially when set against dissonant chords. Making the words "schmerz", "Engel:, "Rhein", "Blumen", "Herz", words used so often by Heine-have a different meaning that matches the musical setting. Expressing the WHY even when there is nothing to sing, especially in the pauses between songs. Patrick Woliver, one of my patient and fantastic teachers reminds me: "Remember you are the face of this work even when you have nothing to sing. There's no time off until the cycle ends."
I don't regret not being a singer. I don't regret that finding an instrument to express what I've learned to be true of Dichterliebe, based on the music and text, has taken so long. Music is always a journey.
On to The Ladies....
April 18, 2006
WE DID DICHTERLIEBE!!!!! or We DID Dichterliebe!!
Ben and I performed Dichterliebe the other day for the Ladies of the Worthington Columbus Symphony Support Unit.
Our hostess, Mrs. H said to me "I'm on the young side of this crowd and I'm seventy-nine. he last time you spoke to us was at Liselotte's house. She died, you know. Went in with an aneurysm poor soul. They were working on her and she said Le me alone! I'm ninety-two and I want to watch my soap operas. So they left her alone and she passed away watching The Young and the Restless. Do you want another brownie?"
Ben and I did the whole piece soup to nuts.
The Ladies, over thirty of them in one living room mad cooing noises and whispered "adorable" and "too fat" behind the smiles.
Ben was adorable. I was....I've since slimmed down. Under 200 lbs for the first time in thirty years!
Even with some adjustments for hearing aids and a plethora of hair pray, it was a lovely morning. Ben and I worked hard. Ben and I worked very hard. My German wasn't awful, and if I didn't sound like Dieskau I made music and told the story. Unrequited love and the struggle between our physical and emotional selves. I came into my own telling The Ladies "Listen for the words HERZ, SCHMERZ, and GELIEBTER. here's the whole history of music right there!"
The Lady to my left, sitting now 2 feet from me, fell asleep by the third song. She was the youngest there, around my age. Mouth open snoring away. Looks of disapproval were shot her way, not by me. Ben and I ignored it and went on. Occasionally a bit of sleep apnea snorted and growled. We tried to make it part of the show. This Lady told me she had never enjoyed music so much! I'll bet!!
After this, how about the Hermit Songs or Fiancailles pour rire?
I'm bitchin; to go on, and Te Ladies will always be with us.
Even Liselotte, who is in heaven watching The Edge of Night. HERE ENDETH THE DIARY
Postcript
Ben and I did finally perform Dichterliebe at Columbus's First Congregational Church. We had been invited by (then) Minister of Music Timothy Smith. Ben is a member and I'm often there for concerts and an occasional service. Good people in a beautiful space. I had come to know the clergy and staff a bit so I was confused that not one of them spoke to us before the concert, and there was no sign of Tim Smith, who after all, had extended the invitation. Oh, well. On we went-about 100 people in the church, mostly friends of Ben. Afterward lots of hugs and handshakes-NOBODY told me I was a fine singer but several noted my love for Dchterliebe came through. THAT was a lovely compliment.
Later I discovered why Ben and I had been avoided by the Church staff and Tim Smith was a no show. Tim's father had died very suddenly the night before. "We didn't wan to tell you that before the concert." It was lovely and humbling when later I was told "Your concert was a nice prayer for Mr. Smith." Isn't that what music is for?
