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Rekindling the Rhapsody

Rekindling the Rhapsody

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I had just walked into the house when I heard a familiar piece on the radio. It harkened back, far back, into memory. It was a Brahms Rhapsody, a piece I never learned completely but mastered the first few pages well enough to play — effusively but ineptly — long ago. 

I’m in a funny place with what I still think of as my new piano. I love playing, but I don’t like practicing anymore than I did in fifth grade. 

What’s an adult musician to do? Playing a la fakando — the faux musical term my stand partner Greg and I penciled in above impossible runs when I played string bass in high school — is hard to pull off on a solo instrument. 

When I heard the Brahms, though, I remembered. It’s the music itself that makes me practice. Give me a piece I’m itching to master and I’ll put in some time. So I’m rekindling the rhapsody. 

Sousa!

Sousa!

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There was a time when I played John Phillip Sousa music as we took down the Christmas tree. It was cheerful and made that seasonal task less melancholy than it would have been. 

But I hadn’t listened to Sousa marches in a while, winter or summer, until day before yesterday. Looking for suitable accompaniment to my Independence Day walk, I streamed a recording of Stars and Stripes Forever, the Washington Post March, Liberty Bell, Thunderer and many others. 

They certainly put a skip in my step, which would otherwise have been lagging due to heat and humidity.

It was a 45-minute trip to the turn of the century, not the last turn, the one before that. I imagined unicycles and bunting and girls with pigtails, all made possible by America’s March King. 

Today I repeated the experience. It felt just as fine. 

(Military observance at Sousa’s grave. Courtesy Wikipedia)

Listening Local

Listening Local

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We live close to one of the nation’s great symphony orchestras, but sometimes I like to keep my listening local — hyper-local, in fact. On Saturday there were two concerts within a 10-minute drive from the house: a community orchestra’s year-end performance and an organ and trumpet recital at church. The timing would be close: one began at 4, the other at 6. Could we take in both?

It was not only possible, but it seemed the best possible use of a rainy Saturday afternoon. The Reston Community Orchestra was trying out the last of its four conductor finalists, and sparks (and at one point even the baton) were flying as the orchestra galloped through two Mozart overtures, the Haydn Cello Concerto and Beethoven’s Second Symphony. 

Later, in the (post-vigil-Mass) sanctuary, the church’s new music director turned the organ around so the audience could see all its keyboards and stops. He and the trumpeter began with Handel’s “The Trumpet Shall Sound” from “The Messiah” and ended with Mussorgsky’s “The Great Gate of Kiev” from “Pictures at an Exhibition.” Can any two instruments sound fuller and more orchestra-like? I don’t think so. 

At least on Saturday, listening local was the way to go. 

(Members of the Reston Community Orchestra take a bow)

Anniversary of a Masterpiece

Anniversary of a Masterpiece

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Now I know why I was hearing snippets of Beethoven’s 9th Symphony on the radio Tuesday. It was the two-hundredth anniversary of its premiere. For two centuries now we humans have had this masterwork at our disposal. 

Yesterday I read an account of its creation on the Marginalian. I’d heard some of this before, but I didn’t know about Beethoven’s devotion to Schiller, whose “Ode to Joy” the symphony’s last movement celebrates, or the piece’s long gestation period. I like to think of the notes rattling around in the composer’s head as he took one of his long walks through Vienna. 

Beethoven insisted on conducting, though he was totally deaf by that point.  He was allowed to do so with the proviso that another conductor be present as a “backup.” This conductor instructed the musicians to look only at him. 

When the last notes sounded the audience at first fell silent, perhaps aware even then that they had witnessed not just a concert but a moment in history. And then, in the words of the Marginalian’s Maria Popova, “the gasping silence broke into a scream of applause. People leapt to their feet, waving their handkerchiefs and chanting his name. Beethoven, still facing the orchestra and still waving his arms to the delayed internal time of music only he could hear, noticed none of it, until Karoline Unger [the contralto soloist] stood up, took his arm, and gently turned him around.”

(Beethoven by Julian Schmid)

Noise or Music?

Noise or Music?

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I’d been itching to watch the movie “Amadeus” ever since I heard Mozart’s Requiem in Kentucky. Last night I had the chance.

Though the score is the star of the show (mostly Mozart), one passage of dialogue stood out, when Mozart convinces the emperor to show an opera based on the play “The Marriage of Figaro.”

“In a play if more than one person speaks at the same time, it’s just noise, no one can understand a word. But with opera, with music… with music you can have twenty individuals all talking at the same time, and it’s not noise, it’s perfect harmony!”

Simultaneous conversations that produce beauty not cacophony. Perhaps we should be singing out all our national disagreements. A strange thought … but maybe an interesting experiment?

(Photo: Wikipedia)

Sold Out at Singletary

Sold Out at Singletary

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In Kentucky for the weekend, I take in a sold-out concert at the Singletary Center for the Arts, including a spirited performance of the Mozart Requiem. The stage was packed with the orchestra and combined choirs of the University of Kentucky. 

The last time I was at this venue I was on the stage. Last night I was (gratefully) in the audience. And what an audience it was: attentive, respectful, spirited, just what the excellent music deserved. When the final notes sounded, the audience leapt to its feet for a standing ovation.

Though I love attending musical events in the D.C. area, I especially enjoyed last night’s performance. There was a communal feeling to it, a sense of togetherness among musicians and listeners, as we all fell under the spell of the Lacrimosa, said to contain the last eight bars of music Mozart wrote. 

Worthwhile

Worthwhile

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The rain has stopped, the sun has peeked through the clouds, and I have in mind a piece of music I always hum this time of year: “God So Loved the World,” by John Stainer.

Not knowing much about the composer I looked him up this morning. He’s not as contemporary as I thought. His dates, 1860-1901, mark him as a Victorian through and through.

Though his choral music output was prodigious, nothing much is performed these days except “The Crucifixion,” from which this piece emerged as an Easter and Passiontide favorite. 

Give it a listen, if you have time. Maybe you’ll agree with me that to be remembered for one piece of music — if it were a piece like this — would make an entire life worthwhile. 

Moon Landing

Moon Landing

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To continue with the theme of wonder, there is now a U.S. spacecraft on the moon for the first time since 1972. It landed Thursday on the lunar surface, near the south pole. 

The space craft was built and flown by a Texas-based company, Intuitive Machines, with NASA equipment on board. There were some tense moments at first due to issues with the craft’s navigation and communications systems. But those appear to be resolved and the robot lander, Odysseus, is now transmitting signals.

Surely it’s worth a song. I’m imagining this one set to the tune of Yusuf/Cat Steven’s Moon Shadow. 

We’re being treated to a moon landing, moon landing, moon landing. 

Leapin’ and hoppin’ with a moon landing, moon landing, moon landing.

And if we ever lose our way, tip our craft, botch our stay. 

And if we ever lose our way — let’s hope we can launch once more. 

Happy Birthday, Rhapsody

Happy Birthday, Rhapsody

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Yesterday, after the errands were run and the groceries put away, I sat down at the piano, pulled out the ancient sheet music and played the opening run. For the next 30 minutes, I bungled my way through one of the most important and beautiful pieces of American music ever written, George Gershwin’s Rhapsody in Blue.

A hundred years ago to the day, on a snowy February 12, 1924, Gershwin played the piece at Aeolian Hall in New York City in a concert billed as “An Experiment in Modern Music.” Paul Whiteman had commissioned Gershwin to write the piece, and Gershwin had done it in just a few weeks, roughing out the original idea on a train trip from New York to Boston. “I heard it as a sort of musical kaleidoscope of America, of our vast melting pot, of our unduplicated national pep, of our metropolitan madness,” Gershwin said.

He had created a masterpiece. Though no one knows exactly how the piece sounded that day (it wasn’t recorded and Gershwin improvised parts of it), a recording made a few months later is thought to be a close replica. The piece was an immediate success, with multiple recordings, and Paul Whiteman made the Rhapsody the theme song for his radio show. Gershwin had created an anthem for the Jazz Age. 

Later versions of the Rhapsody give it a more lush orchestral sound, but the original performance brought out the jazzy brightness of the piece in all its syncopated glory. Even hopscotching through the music as I was last night, cherry-picking the easier sections, I felt its magic in my bones. 

(Thanks to Wikipedia and The Syncopated Times for info and art, and to Hot Jazz Saturday Night for the inspiration.) 

Catching up on Taylor Swift

Catching up on Taylor Swift

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I’ve just spent more time than I meant to reading about Taylor Swift. I’m not exactly at the vanguard of popular culture, but the juggernaut that is Taylor + Travis, especially as we race toward Super Bowl Sunday, seemed like something I should know just a little bit about. 

This led me to watch a few music videos, do a little googling (there’s a Taylor Swift class at Harvard and, of course, she was Time‘s Person of the Year for 2023) and feel just a little more a part of the cultural zeitgeist. 

I’m still mostly in the dark about the superstar and her super-athlete boyfriend, but I’m curious enough that I may tune in on Sunday, if not for the football then for the celebrity dish.

(Photo: Patrick Smith/Getty)