tag:soniccrossroads.com,2005:/blogs/blogBlog2022-11-07T13:15:47-12:00Sonic Crossroadsfalsetag:soniccrossroads.com,2005:Post/70975732022-11-07T13:15:47-12:002024-01-04T03:49:56-12:00Yeni programlar baslayacak!<p>Yayınlarımız ve değerlendirmelerimiz ile ilgili artan sorgularımız oldu. Bu nedenle yayın platformumuzu yeniden düzenleriz ve daha büyük değerlendirme programlarına uygun fiyatlı alternatifler istemenin farkına vararak değerlendirme tekliflerimizi yeniden başlattık. </p>
<p>Son birkaç yıl içinde birçok değerlendirme/denetim programı hakkında bilgi sahibi olan direktörümüz, öğrencilerin ilerlemelerini ölçmek, uygulamaları için motivasyonlarını korumak ve bazı durumlarda gelecekteki çalışmalar için gerekli kimlik bilgilerini almak için sahip oldukları tercihlerin farkındadır. </p>
<p>Yine de bu programın niş bir alanı doldurduğunu düşünüyor ve dünyanın dört bir yanındaki piyano ve kompozisyon öğrencilerinin değerlendirmelerini uygun fiyatlı hale getiriyor. Aynı zamanda öğrencilerin farklı repertuarlar ve biçimsel seçimler konusundaki farkındalığını da artırmayı umuyor. Çoğu durumda öğrenciler, önerilen repertuarlar listemizden bir besteci/performans sahibi ve/veya seçtikleri müzik tarzının tanınmış bir tercümanı tarafından değerlendirilecektir. </p>
<p>Listemize ve web sitemizde yer almak üzere tüm yeni fikirleri memnuniyetle karşılıyoruz. Doğaçlama ve ses tasarımı için ek kategoriyi de kullanıma sunmaktan heyecan duyuyoruz! </p>
<p>Daha fazla bilgi için lütfen <a contents="Çevrimiçi Değerlendirmeler" data-link-label="Online Assessments" data-link-type="page" href="/online-assessments">Çevrimiçi Değerlendirmeler</a> sayfasını ziyaret edin ve sorularla iletişime geçin. Gönderimlerinizi sabırsızlıkla bekliyoruz!</p>Sonic Crossroadstag:soniccrossroads.com,2005:Post/70937152022-11-02T02:58:32-12:002022-12-30T08:31:51-12:00Online assessments are back!<p>We've had increasing inquiries related to our publications and assessments. For that reason we are retooling our publications platform, and we've relaunched our assessment offerings, recognizing the need for affordable alternatives to some larger assessment programs. Having acquainted herself with several assessment / audition programs in the past few years, our director, Kathryn Woodard is aware of the choices students have to measure their progress, to stay motivated in their practice, and in some cases to obtain necessary credentials for future studies. Nevertheless, she feels this program fills a niche area, making assessment affordable for a wide range of piano and composition students around the globe. At the same time she hopes to raise students' awareness of diverse repertoire and stylistic choices. In most cases, students will be assessed by a composer/performer from our list of suggested repertoire, and/or a recognized interpreter of a style of music they have chosen. Also, students may come to realize they know selections that they wouldn't think to perform for other assessments but that are a perfect fit for this program, for example, works by regional composers, transcriptions of traditional music, etc. We welcome any and all new ideas to add to our list and to feature on our website. We are also excited to launch the additional category for improvisation and sound design! </p>
<p>Please visit the <a contents="Online Assessments" data-link-label="Online Assessments" data-link-type="page" href="/online-assessments"><span style="color:#d35400;">Online Assessments</span></a> page for more information and feel free to reach out with any questions. We look forward to your submissions!</p>Sonic Crossroadstag:soniccrossroads.com,2005:Post/64904192020-12-02T12:15:06-12:002022-06-01T13:14:46-12:00Haiduceasca<p>Knowing how much my students like to watch piano video tutorials, I thought I'd share a unique one that was posted on a new music community site recently. "Haiduceasca" is a traditional song form from Bessarabia (Moldova/Romania) and is translated here as "Outlawry Song."</p>
<p>UPDATE: Unfortunately the YouTube tutorial is no longer online -</p>
<p>Click "Read more" to view the videos and full entry ...</p>
<p><iframe class="justify_inline" data-video-type="youtube" data-video-id="gmYoY__gKs0" data-video-thumb-url="https://img.youtube.com/vi/gmYoY__gKs0/mqdefault.jpg" type="text/html" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/gmYoY__gKs0?rel=0&wmode=transparent&enablejsapi=1" frameborder="0" height="180" width="320" allowfullscreen="true"></iframe></p>
<p>The 'flame' effect is especially attractive... </p>
<p>Below seems to be the exact inspiration for the piano arrangement (even the same tonal center): </p>
<p><iframe class="justify_inline" data-video-type="youtube" data-video-id="tJ15kn8Kdt4" data-video-thumb-url="https://img.youtube.com/vi/tJ15kn8Kdt4/mqdefault.jpg" type="text/html" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/tJ15kn8Kdt4?rel=0&wmode=transparent&enablejsapi=1" frameborder="0" height="180" width="320" allowfullscreen="true"></iframe></p>
<p>As one can imagine, many different recordings and interpretations of Haiduceasca can be found, many in a free, unmetered form. The signifiers "Doina" or "Balada" in the examples below seem to distinguish these examples from the dance song above. </p>
<p>Performed on shepherd's flute: </p>
<p><iframe class="justify_inline" data-video-type="youtube" data-video-id="-ZfbLcU9VmQ" data-video-thumb-url="https://img.youtube.com/vi/-ZfbLcU9VmQ/mqdefault.jpg" type="text/html" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/-ZfbLcU9VmQ?rel=0&wmode=transparent&enablejsapi=1" frameborder="0" height="180" width="320" allowfullscreen="true"></iframe></p>
<p>And on cimbalom by Toni Iordache: </p>
<p><iframe class="justify_inline" data-video-type="youtube" data-video-id="3OuZOTehMWo" data-video-thumb-url="https://img.youtube.com/vi/3OuZOTehMWo/mqdefault.jpg" type="text/html" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/3OuZOTehMWo?rel=0&wmode=transparent&enablejsapi=1" frameborder="0" height="180" width="320" allowfullscreen="true"></iframe></p>
<p>I also found this notated example, though of a substantially different melody:</p>
<p><iframe class="justify_inline" data-video-type="youtube" data-video-id="xfU6CT7k41o" data-video-thumb-url="https://img.youtube.com/vi/xfU6CT7k41o/mqdefault.jpg" type="text/html" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/xfU6CT7k41o?rel=0&wmode=transparent&enablejsapi=1" frameborder="0" height="180" width="320" allowfullscreen="true"></iframe></p>Sonic Crossroadstag:soniccrossroads.com,2005:Post/64847722020-11-24T07:05:23-12:002022-05-31T06:29:08-12:00A new resource for young piano students<p>I was excited to learn about <strong>Nate Holder</strong>’s book, <strong>Why Is My Piano Black and White? The Ultimate Fun Facts Guide</strong> published this year and the entire <a contents="Why Books" data-link-label="" data-link-type="url" href="https://www.thewhybooks.co.uk/" target="_blank"><span style="color:#8e44ad;"><strong>Why Books</strong></span></a> series. It’s a fun book to poke around in and there is <em>a lot</em> of information at hand. Nevertheless it left me with questions – some about the book itself, and some that pointed to issues in music education generally. </p>
<p>The book is structured much like an encyclopedia with entry pages for styles, periods or major composers, with smaller lists of short entries to provide further points of interest for readers and to include a range of performers and composers. It’s also loaded with fun illustrations by Charity Russell, and those play a key role in bringing the entries to life. For that reason it’s a resource book in my estimation, one to dive in and out of, not a straightforward narrative, which is not a negative attribute when trying to engage young readers in history and in this case cultural awareness. However, as I poked around myself I was left with questions: </p>
<p>What was the reasoning for the order of entries in the book? (More on that in a moment.) </p>
<p>What ages would this book appeal to? Older kids might be turned off by the illustrations, but the narrative would be quite challenging for younger kids. I arrived at a range of 8 to 12, but I could also imagine some of my older students posing similar questions to the ones I had, including: “He doesn’t even answer why my piano is black and white??” </p>
<p>Product testing with actual students would certainly be informative. But let me unpack my own concerns with the text while also providing moral support for the difficult task Holder has taken on. </p>
<p>The underlying premise of the book is clearly to bring together multiple players in the piano scene, both Black and White, just like the keys on the piano. But then, why do the early centuries of predominantly White composers get the full historical narrative (appropriate for a young reader book) while the popular and predominantly Black styles beginning with Ragtime are relegated to the ‘back of the book’ without a historical context to situate them other than what is provided for the key players and composers in their biographies. I will hasten to add that these entries are not at all the ‘back’ of the book as they take up over half of the book’s length. But as I mentioned these sections are simply given titles based on styles, but styles that students might not be familiar with. This is most easily summed up in questions, for example: What does “Hard Bop” mean? What am I listening for? Why do these players and composers go with that category? And I’m noticing dates that are also twentieth century – why doesn’t this fit in the Twentieth Century (with caps) of the “classical” discussion? These are partially my own questions about styles I’m not as familiar with, and also questions I would ask as an editor. Students at that age might not be putting the concurrent dates together, but that’s even more reason in my opinion to make it clear to them. Otherwise they are buying into the division of classical and popular simply by flipping through pages in a book. </p>
<p>As I grappled with these and other questions, I realized they were an exact mirror of the strategy I use with younger students when choosing repertoire, not necessarily the process of choosing but the process of identifying resources. Namely, there’s always the anthology to be purchased – those tried and true collections that cover all periods (well ok, not <em>really</em> the twentieth century very much, or not to the extent I would like), and then there are the additional books to cover the student’s range of musical interests. Scott Joplin is always a favorite so I suggest the attractive easy arrangements by Lawrence Grant. I also like to play some of Valerie Capers’ <strong>Jazz Portraits</strong> for students and see if they opt for that collection. And then of course, the Turkish anthologies I’ve spent time and energy collating, and I’m always thrilled when students take a liking to one or more pieces. So in fact, students often have an entire book devoted to one composer or region, which ends up dominating their practice time when compared to the classical standards. I have no problem with that and can only say, Hurray! </p>
<p>I also have plenty of students who look up favorite tunes as YouTube piano tutorials and learn pieces this way, and Holder’s book includes similar online resources in the form of Spotify playlists accessible through QR codes (graphic codes that are captured through an app on one’s smartphone and then link to the Spotify site). While a bit cumbersome for those of us used to surfing YouTube, the message is clear that providing royalties to artists (or labels?) through the Spotify service is priority. However, I wonder how many are turned off by the subscription service and the scant level of remuneration provided by Spotify? Perhaps links to streaming sites and services through the WhyBooks website would be a better tool? These are ongoing and difficult issues to grapple with concerning accessibility vs. remuneration. But Holder has provided unique resources within a print format to encourage young listeners. </p>
<p>He also provides quite an eclectic list of suggested reading at the end of the book, and I have much to catch up on! But I also found <strong>Piano Roles</strong> by James Parakilas conspicuously absent from the list. It’s the kind of book that bridges styles and time periods and provides a perspective that would greatly benefit Holder’s own project.</p>
<p>~KW</p>Sonic Crossroadstag:soniccrossroads.com,2005:Post/61123432020-07-10T14:07:09-12:002022-05-31T06:30:57-12:00Online piano exams<p>We are excited to announce our new online piano exams! In response to canceled in-person exams this past spring due to COVID-19, we recognized the need for students to have an opportunity to showcase their accomplishments. So, we launched an online exam that requires three pieces, one of which should be taken from our newly curated lists to highlight a diverse range of composers and styles. Students also have the opportunity to perform their own composition. Examiners and repertoire curators include: Samantha Ege, Francis Kayali, Kat Sounponetsky, Kathryn Woodard.</p>
<p>Please check out the requirements at the following links:</p>
<p><strong><a contents="online piano exams" data-link-label="Piano Exams" data-link-type="page" href="/piano-exams">online piano exams</a></strong></p>
<p><strong><a contents="repertoire lists" data-link-label="Exam Repertoire" data-link-type="page" href="/exam-repertoire">repertoire lists</a></strong></p>
<p><strong><a contents="tutorial videos for select pieces" data-link-label="Tutorial Videos" data-link-type="page" href="/tutorial-videos">tutorial videos</a></strong> for select pieces</p>
<p><strong><a contents="registration form" data-link-label="Registration Form" data-link-type="page" href="/registration-form">registration form</a></strong></p>
<p>Until August 1 the registration fee will be waived!</p>
<p><iframe class="justify_inline" data-video-type="youtube" data-video-id="iD_tB1oMqqQ" data-video-thumb-url="https://img.youtube.com/vi/iD_tB1oMqqQ/mqdefault.jpg" type="text/html" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/iD_tB1oMqqQ?rel=0&wmode=transparent&enablejsapi=1" frameborder="0" height="180" width="320" allowfullscreen="true"></iframe></p>
<p> </p>Sonic Crossroadstag:soniccrossroads.com,2005:Post/61123522019-12-06T12:00:00-12:002022-05-31T06:30:37-12:00Visibility
<p>"Kampf Um Sichtbarkeit"</p>
<p>Alte Nationalgalerie, Berlin</p>
<p>(Until March 8, 2020)</p>
<p>A major survey of women artists of the 19<sup>th</sup> and early 20<sup>th</sup> centuries is currently on exhibit at the Old National Gallery in Berlin. Titled “<a href="https://www.smb.museum/ausstellungen/detail/kampf-um-sichtbarkeit.html" target="_blank" data-imported="1">Struggle for Visibility</a>,” the aim of the exhibit is to highlight a wide array of artists whose lives and works demonstrate aspects of this struggle. The exhibit includes works that have been in the holdings of the museum’s permanent collection for quite some time and others that were purchased specifically for this exhibition. Not only was the breadth and depth of the exhibit laudable but also the commentary that provided the necessary curatorial perspective on various aspects of the ‘struggle,’ including the lack of formal education, limited access to resources, and restricted opportunities to exhibit. Although I expected to be confronted by dozens of unfamiliar names while traversing the exhibit, I was still not expecting to be overwhelmed by the level of craft and unique artistic vision of so many.</p>
<p>High points for me were: “Cherry Harvest” (~1905) by Dora Hitz, “Mission Festival” (1918) by Gertrud Suelzer, Marie Spieler's Self Portrait, and Augusta von Zitzewitz's portrait of Jules Pascin (1913). Hitz’s canvas seems to locate a unique Impressionist style midway between Renoir and Cezanne with the rounded, cheerful figures of Renoir achieved through the broad brushstrokes of later artists such as Van Gogh. I found “Mission Festival” by Gertrud Suelzer to be a phenomenal composition that also portrayed a unique subject, a prayer gathering. While the title might imply a festive occasion, the mystical, sombre nature of the communal gathering is emphasized here with the shade of trees serving as a place of worship. Carefully placed bits of white – in book pages or bonnets or tablecloths – organize and balance the composition. The artist seems place herself beyond the gathering as an outsider looking on, and she also highlights two other observers in bright sunlight on a hill just beyond the meeting place.</p>
<p>The exhibit emphasizes many artists’ struggles to operate fully within the realm of men and to be accepted by the establishment. And yet several works belie this struggle, including several of the portraits at the outset of the exhibit. The fact that such figures as the composer Carl Maria von Weber and the painter Caspar David Friedrich were willing to sit for their portraits by Caroline Bardua points to the high regard in which she was held as an artist.</p>
<p>While the commentary provided poignant evidence for the ‘struggle for visibility’ by women artists of this period, I found the exhibit served as an invitation to celebrate and discover new artists rather than lament their neglect and lack of visibility.</p>
Sonic Crossroadstag:soniccrossroads.com,2005:Post/61123512018-10-07T12:00:00-12:002022-05-31T06:30:17-12:00Peru negro
<p>Although the <a href="https://whyy.org/articles/addressing-oversight-philly-orchestra-to-present-work-by-women-composers/" target="_blank" data-imported="1">Philly O</a> had to engage in a bit of crisis management earlier in the year due to its lack of programming of women composers on any season concert, the recent showcase of "<a href="https://www.philorch.org/concert/south-american-sounds-1?date=2018-10-06_20-00#/" target="_blank" data-imported="1">South American Sounds</a>" was a welcome addition to the season line-up as a nod to the need for including global perspectives on classical music in the 21st century. The program was flawlessly curated to feature works across the geographic region and from a span of just under a hundred years. It opened with Gershwin, a staple of any American orchestra, but his "Cuban Overture" was indeed the perfect overture to what was to follow. Each subsequent work explored different approaches to representing South American sounds in orchestral music. The Harp Concerto by Argentinian composer Alberto Ginastera is a work that was commissioned by the first female member of the Philadelphia Orchestra, Edna Philips, and was in these concerts expertly performed by the orchestra's current harpist, Elizabeth Hainen. The second half of the program featured new works for the orchestra, "Tangazo" by Ginastera's compatriot Astor Piazolla and "Peru negro" by Jimmy Lopez. (The program listed these works specifically as "First Philadelphia Orchestra performances" but not as Philadelphia premieres, so perhaps they have been performed in the region before.) Piazolla's music is of course well known to any fans of tango, but hearing this large orchestral work by the composer placed his music in a different context and perhaps introduced his music to a different audience. The program concluded with a recent work written for the conductor of the concert, Miguel Harth-Bedoya, which he also premiered with the Ft. Worth Symphony in 2013. As the title indicates, "Peru negro" by Jimmy Lopez seeks to feature but also seamlessly blend the music of Peru's African traditions within the orchestral idiom. From my listening the composer absolutely succeeded at this task with a particularly skilled use of the percussion section. The introduction of different percussion instruments gradually throughout the work clearly incorporated traditional rhythms from Afro-Peruvian music and yet never overshadowed other layers of the orchestration as the work developed in intensity and excitement. The overall effect warrants comparisons to the craft and orchestration of Stravinsky in his ballets, and in my view the work deserves to be widely performed and adopted as a major addition to the repertoire.</p>
Sonic Crossroadstag:soniccrossroads.com,2005:Post/61123502018-08-03T12:00:00-12:002023-12-10T04:58:54-12:00Norwegian Airlines...
<p>should be out of business.</p>
<p>It was only after I had booked a ticket on the airline that I noticed social media posts about sudden cancellations, and in fact, my return flight to the US was also canceled - without reason or explanation. Luckily, I was observant enough on the initial leg of the flight to realize there was not going to be any help rebooking the flight - the flight attendants on the "Norwegian" carrier didn't seem to have any affiliation with a Norwegian business, wore uniforms that said "Privilege Service" or some such, and spoke Italian and Spanish with one another. My suspicions were confirmed when the check-in staff informed those of us on the cancelled flight that they were only able to provide free hotel accommodations for as long as needed until we could contact Norwegian by phone to rebook our flights. I had already made up my mind that I was going to find my own way out of Rome, and so I didn't notice until much later that the phone number the counter staff provided me on a sheet of passenger rights (in Italian) was completely bogus. I followed that up with a search online to claim reimbursement from the airline and found no contact phone number there either. It was only when THANKFULLY the internet gods decided the carrier's website was overloaded that I received an automated error message with a contact number to call. Interestingly enough, when I tried to input my booking code to claim a reimbursement initially, the airline didn't recognize it though the phone personnel found it readily. The initial automated message after that attempt was to contact the travel agent who booked the ticket since they would have to provide reimbursement. Ah yes, of course - one side has to blame the other, and so kiwi.com and Norwegian Airlines have apparently become a marriage of convenience in this little charade of airline service.</p>
<p>"Charade" is obviously generous. While I was able - as a single traveler - to find an initial flight to another European city, what about others traveling as a family or group with limited funds and/or travel knowledge to expedite the process? The check-in staff even acknowledged that the process of getting rebooked could take up to 5 to 7 days, which to me sounded like some kind of bizarre hijacking of people's lives, finances, and possibly sanity. And if no one is actually responsible on the ground, or in the air, this venture is a catastrophe waiting to happen...</p>
Sonic Crossroadstag:soniccrossroads.com,2005:Post/61123492018-07-13T12:00:00-12:002023-12-10T04:51:33-12:00Szekely's Temptation
<p><em>Temptation</em> by Janos Szekely is due to be released as a reprint edition this month. I first read the book in German (<em>Verlockung</em>) – because it hasn’t been available in English since Szekely died in Berlin in 1958. Following an illustrious career in Hollywood, which included an Academy Award for best screenplay (<em>Arise My Love</em>, 1940), Szekely was black-listed during the McCarthy era and forced to leave the U.S. His works fell into disregard, including <em>Temptation</em>, though the novel makes clear his extraordinary gift for storytelling. It is epic in proportion covering the life of a young boy, Béla, who is coming of age in Hungary between the world wars: from his early life as an abandoned child in a small village to life in the big city of Budapest where he is reunited with his parents. He eventually gains employment as an elevator boy in a luxury hotel and learns the ropes about navigating modern urban life from a colorful cast of characters.</p>
<p>I found the novel hilariously entertaining. Szekely’s language is remarkably descriptive and witty (think <em>A Christmas Story</em> for central Europe), reflecting on situations that were often taken from his own life. The novel also takes the reader through all of the social and political struggles of the time without much historical distance since the novel was first published in 1946. Readers may be taken aback by the portrayal of “angel-makers” (those who terminated pregnancies for village women), the sordid sexual encounters that contradict all of Bela’s purported class struggle, as well as the openly anti-Semitic attitudes throughout the novel. However, for the novel to cover this time period and location in such epic fashion and <em>not</em> to depict these facets of central European life would make the work one of pure fantasy. And one has to wonder if addressing these issues in real life hasn't been thwarted by not allowing such explicit accounts as Szekely's to remain in print. I would argue that Szekely has written <strong><em>blueprints</em></strong> for covering up sexual indiscretion, keeping abortion underground, and perpetuating myths about political movements. And so, if his blueprints aren't available to everyone, they serve only those who have access. Perhaps that's the real reason for black-listing - to keep power in the hands of those who would like to perpetuate what they purport to despise.</p>
<p>From the plot outlined above, readers may also connect the story to the film <em>Grand Budapest Hotel</em> (Wes Anderson), and there are remarkable resemblances. Interestingly enough the film credits Stefan Zweig with its inspiration instead of Szekely. Was Anderson scared off by Szekely’s status as black-listed? He can’t possibly have constructed that plot without knowing the novel. Or were other screenwriters aware of it, but didn’t share it? One can hope that the publication of the novel will shed light on multiple facets of Szekely’s life and work, and his influence on Hollywood.</p>
<p>Look for the book on July 25.</p>
Sonic Crossroadstag:soniccrossroads.com,2005:Post/61123472017-09-14T12:00:00-12:002022-07-19T23:55:06-12:00Uncovering corruption, or ...
<p>How many production companies does it take to make a film about government and police corruption in Egypt? Three. </p>
<p>German, Swedish, and Danish. </p>
<p>The thing is, the plot felt remarkably familiar to cases that seem to plague the state of Texas as well. Specifically, academia. Specifically, female faculty members. Or maybe that's just the world I'm familiar with. I wonder if Perry feels like he's in prison, perhaps he's being blackmailed, or perhaps he views it as protective custody. The security chief in the film definitely bore a strong resemblance (at least to my eyes) to the "General" in <em>Quantum of Solace</em>. But she's gone - or at least no longer an administrator. Who else do we need to know about? </p>
<p></p>
<div class="video responsive"><div class="video-container"><div class="video responsive"><div class="video-container"><iframe frameborder="0" height="350" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/gfK3yXo389k" width="425" class="wrapped wrapped"></iframe></div></div></div></div>
Sonic Crossroadstag:soniccrossroads.com,2005:Post/61123462016-05-28T12:00:00-12:002022-09-09T00:18:34-12:00Newman!
<p>Yep, that's right... In the next segment of our story (Chapter 3) Oskar has a run-in with the postman!</p>
<p style="text-align: left;" align="center"> </p>
<p style="text-align: left;" align="center">Chapter 3. The Escape</p>
<p>Maurus had gone. But he had left his books behind. I immersed myself in them. Then he sent for them, and that joy was taken from me. Anna, or “Nanndl” as we called her, also read everything I gave her. The world of fiction had a strong hold over us. What to do?</p>
<p>We saw an advertisement in the newspaper for Bong Classics. It had a picture of the books, and they looked very impressive. We thought it over. After a few bread-rounds we arrived at a decision. We raked the money together, Nanndl her tips and I my weekly wages. Then we ordered – through the shoemaker again – Schiller’s works, then Lessing, Petöfi, Mörike, Lenau, and Grabbe.</p>
<p>The edition was bound in red with gilt edges. We found it very attractive. We were still afraid that Max would discover our secret, so for the time being we left the books at the shoemaker’s. But there his little children got a hold of them and smudged the pages. We racked our brains for another solution.</p>
<p>I thought of Leni. But Nanndl, who like everyone else in the household knew nothing of the tie between us, opposed the idea.</p>
<p>The wheels of invention were churning in me. What if we managed to make my wardrobe, which stood in the journeyman’s room, accessible only to us two?</p>
<p>The idea took hold of me and wouldn’t let go. It had to work. The only difficulty was to complete the work when no one was around.</p>
<p>On Sunday afternoons the journeyman was usually out. Max had to visit various innkeepers to handle their accounts. Mother usually sat in the summerhouse and knitted, and Leni went to church.</p>
<p>We set to work. We made an accurate drawing of the wardrobe door, cut out the shelf and split it down the middle, so that between the door and the shelf there was a fairly wide empty space – nearly half the depth of the wardrobe. Then we applied all our skill to making a new door for the inside, put a lock on it, and fixed it in its place. Afterwards we made a shelf for show, exactly like the original, and nailed it to the sham door, so that when the original door was opened everything inside looked the same as usual in spite of the hidden space behind. In front for show, we put everything back as it had been before; but in the back we stowed our books, arranging them in a neat row. There stood the mysterious wardrobe, just as before. The key was in the lock as it had always been; when one opened the door there was nothing but uninteresting clothes, collars on the shelf, several ties, and my hat.</p>
<p>The work had taken three Sunday afternoons – hours of danger and excitement. We leaped in triumph when we saw how perfectly it worked. Then we snuck around to the shoemaker’s, fetched our classics one after another, and arranged them in a row on our secret shelf with their gleaming gold bindings turned outwards.</p>
<p>Up to this point we usually looked glum when we were sent on an extra, unexpected bread-round, but now we were willing and even pleased. One of us would steal away quickly, quietly fetch a book upstairs, and hide it under our clothes; then we hurried away. Only after we were beyond the village and there was not a soul in sight would we begin reading. As a rule we read aloud if it was poetry. If it was prose, we separated and agreed on a place where we would meet again. It was quite immaterial whether we understood what we read. What mattered was that we had read it and were familiar with it all. It was total amount that counted.</p>
<p>We were enraptured. The sound of the words intoxicated us. In the end I knew many, many verses by heart. Schiller’s “Song of the Bell” flowed from my lips. And one day I read the first poem of my own to Nanndl. Of course, I recited it with so much feeling that all other poems seemed like lame attempts in comparison, and naturally that had its effect on Nanndl. She praised it highly. I compared it to Uhland and to Schiller and considered it just as beautiful.</p>
<p>Autumn came. We had to mind the cows out at pasture. The days were clear and warm, and the sky hung dreamily over us. We lay on our backs and gazed upwards. We were content. I composed ballads in those days, and Anna was always moved by them. I read eagerly about the varied careers of poets, and pictured my own future accordingly. As a rule, when I had finished a poem I introduced it with a romantic tale about a poet, and did not fail to draw comparisons. In so doing, I believe the figures became clearer in my mind than if someone else had depicted them for me. My stories sounded as if I had personally known Grabbe, Schiller, and all these great people. Some day, I thought, I will also rise up out of obscurity and astonish the whole world.</p>
<p>After a while those at home became aware of my poetry. Emma was living at home again, and I read something to her. She was always a patient listener and was the most optimistic among us. She laughed at me all the same, but found what I had written pleasing. One Sunday, when I couldn’t contain any longer and read a verse to Leni with tremendous pathos, she said, “You will be another Goethe yet.” Only Max couldn’t know about it. My mother was not interested; she read nothing but her prayer book and the church notices in the Starnberg <em>Messenger.</em></p>
<p>Our library grew and with it the danger of being discovered. But we were seized by a sheer fanaticism for book buying. Often we forgot all our precautions and then suffered hours of torment in fear of Max.</p>
<p>“If I’m found out this time, I’ll have to leave, otherwise Max will kill me,” I often said to Nanndl.</p>
<p>She nodded mechanically and complacently, “Yes, you’re right.”</p>
<p>But we didn’t think beyond that. In spite of all our precautions we were never free from fear, and I lost sleep over every slight indication of danger. I worried endlessly, and so did Nanndl.</p>
<p>Mother had once told me that when she was a young girl she prayed to the Virgin Mary to fulfill a particular wish of hers within a certain time. But she went on thinking about her wish, and so it was not fulfilled. But her sister Mary, she said, had once just a passing fancy, never thought about it again, and her wish was fulfilled.</p>
<p>That gave us a hint. Now we constantly thought about the danger and so hoped to charm it away.</p>
<p>One day Nanndl came to the woodshed to report nervously, “Oskar, the postman has been asking the shoemaker why he is always having things sent paid-on-delivery, and what is in the parcels...”</p>
<p>The postman! Our worst enemy! Known far and wide as a vain, gossiping storyteller! A man we never greeted in passing because his face reminded us of Max.</p>
<p>The postman! On account of his appearance and his smart, soldierly bearing, all the girls wanting to get married fluttered around him, and fully aware of this, he inflated his role as the great man everywhere, had his finger in every pie, and was, so to speak, the moral gauge of the times. This chit of a discharged officer whom we had taken prisoner, hanged, shot, run over, and quartered in hundreds of our stories?! <em>He</em> had said that? <em>He </em>was still alive?!</p>
<p>I ran to the shoemaker’s.</p>
<p>“What did the postman say?”</p>
<p>The old man tried to avoid me. I pressed him. At last he admitted, “The snoop! He did ask me why I was always sending for things. I was flustered and said I didn’t know what was in the parcels…“</p>
<p>Now I saw trouble ahead. I ran home again and told Nanndl. I thought it over: one way or another it’s going to come out. I have to leave! Leave!</p>
<p>So I have to flee – but how?</p>
<p>I turned it over and over in my mind.</p>
<p>As I already mentioned, we had a large grocery in addition to the bakery where we sold spirits, suspenders, peas and beans, ribbons, chocolate, cigars, cigarettes, etc. Basically all sorts of things that would be useful if I ran away.</p>
<p>I went to the lumber-room and looked for Eugene’s suitcase he had from the reserves. I put it in the hayloft, and slowly packed it. I stole several bars of soap from the shop, two bottles of spirits, candles, a heap of soup squares, tea, a pound of salt, a packet of sugar, collar-studs, writing paper, pens, and ink. One side of the suitcase was full. Then I fetched my shirts, got an old spirit-lamp from the kitchen cupboard, matches, a few towels, two tins of chocolate that vanished under my hands, and I packed the whole lot together with my shoes and some other clothes in the other side of the suitcase, shut it, and covered it with hay.</p>
<p>My mind was easier now. At any rate I was prepared to flee.</p>
<p>Yes – but you silly fool, I thought suddenly as I crept downstairs, you need money more than anything else if you are going to run away! Money! And once more I was seized by horrible fear.</p>
<p>Where could I get money?</p>
<p>As my thoughts spun around I suddenly remembered the savings bank account that my mother had last shown me on my birthday. I had three hundred marks already.</p>
<p>With such a sum, I am lord of the whole world, I thought. I crept right away to my mother’s room and poked around. There was nothing to be found. The coveted treasure was neither in the wardrobe nor in the chest of drawers.</p>
<p>But the cupboard on the wall with the Madonna above it was locked. That amounted to a silent confirmation. The savings books must be hidden there.</p>
<p>But where was the key? I searched everywhere, but found nothing. In despair I crept back to bed and waited till Mother came upstairs. Luckily the journeyman had gone to the local pub. No sooner had Mother shut her bedroom door than I went and peered through the keyhole. And I was right. She said her evening prayers, went to the wall, raised the Madonna a little to one side, and pulled out a small key. Then she opened the cupboard. I knew everything and was satisfied. I went back to bed at ease. And it was high time, too. I heard the journeyman coughing as he climbed the stairs.</p>
<p>The next day I had the savings book. Nothing came of it. The days passed. My nerves were on edge. I slept poorly. I plunged into my books again, but I couldn’t focus. Any day, any hour might bring catastrophe. Nothing happened.</p>
<p>It must have been about three in the afternoon. Finished with tidying up the bakery, I sat down on a bench and gradually nodded off to sleep. Suddenly the door opened and Max was standing in front of me and grabbed me.</p>
<p>All I heard was, “You – !” and something about the postman, and payment on delivery, and the shoemaker. Then his iron blows rained down on me. Max dragged me up to the wardrobe, turned my pockets inside out for the key, opened first the wardrobe and then the secret door, and hurled the books out. All the while he never stopped beating me. Blood was flowing from my head. I clenched my teeth and shut my eyes. I was covered in sweat, then turned ice-cold, and still the blows rained down. Suddenly I fell to the ground and lay there out cold. When I came to and looked round, all was quiet. The clock showed it was a quarter past four. I got up, carefully dusted myself off, crept down into the stable, let the cold water run over my throbbing head, and washed till I felt refreshed. Back in the journeyman’s room I put on my Sunday clothes, pulled my savings-book out from under the mattress of the journeyman’s bed, and set out towards Aufkirchen where the savings bank was.</p>
<p>I had made up my mind: I would run away.</p>
<p>But first I had to get the money. All the way there I racked my brains as to how I should speak to the cashier so as to make matters appear natural and innocent. It was striking five already. I hurried. By six she might be gone. Perhaps she had already closed the bank and gone for a walk. Again I was seized with terror. I hurled my feet forward and ran panting up the hill. From the top there was a wide view over the fields. It was a clear late autumn day. Manure wagons were standing in the stubble-fields. Ploughs wound over the brown fields, drawn by slow-moving oxen. A peaceful quiet was all around.</p>
<p>What if she won’t give me the money? The thought darted suddenly through my head. I was already considering whether I shouldn’t sleep in the woods and set out the next day. Nevertheless, I trudged along more resolutely than ever.</p>
<p>I actually did find the cashier still at the savings bank. She looked at me with aged, watery eyes through her spectacles, asked what I wanted, and sniffed. The cashier was namely an old maid of sixty with all the allure of a kind schoolmaster’s wife. I played the part of a well-behaved, shy schoolboy and said politely, “Good day, Miss Waschmitzius. Mother sends her kind regards, and I am to fetch the money to get a new suit.”</p>
<p>Miss Waschmitzius looked at me somewhat suspiciously, but because I gazed at her so very innocently, her wrinkled face brightened.</p>
<p>“Well, well – Oh, yes – You come from Graf, the baker. You are Oskar? Oh, yes, but you must sign for it,” she said, and her eyes questioned me.</p>
<p>“Oh, yes,” I said all the more sanctimoniously. “I know, Mother told me – nobody else had time to come – I am old enough to sign.”</p>
<p>She pattered across the room to the safe with the book that I handed to her, counted out the money, and I signed.</p>
<p>“Count it again,” she said.</p>
<p>I did so. Three hundred marks. Ten twenty-mark bills and a hundred- mark banknote.</p>
<p>Yes, that’s exactly right, Miss Waschmitzius,” I repeated very politely and even tried to smile. Then I put the money in my pocket, said, “Thank you,” and left. Out on the street I was overwhelmed by a feeling of triumph. I hurried out of the village and suddenly began to laugh out loud. A heat ran through me, upwards and down again. I was already looking forward to the railway journey, for now everything was settled and firm in my mind.</p>
<p>When I got home I crept to my room through the barn and listened for a while. Nobody made a sound. I had brought down my suitcase from the hayloft, and when I was ready I came downstairs quite noisily, for I knew that Max was driving a cart of manure out to the field. Mother came out of the kitchen. She stood there and looked at me helplessly, “What are you doing?”</p>
<p>“I am leaving,” I shouted at her and was on the verge of crying. I slipped hastily out the back door. There was a lump in my throat and I could hardly breathe.</p>
<p>Leni was loading the cart with manure. When I passed her she just looked at me. I wanted to speak, but I was ashamed of myself and looked in the other direction, and then I ran on quickly.</p>
<p>I went down into the Etz Valley to where the steamers stopped. On the road I met Nanndl. She said, “Are you off now?”</p>
<p>I only nodded and looked at her sorrowfully. She stood and waved after me for a long time. In a rush I had told her to send the books to me secretly, and occasionally something to eat, too. I would write to her through the shoemaker.</p>
<p>It was not till I had seen the last of them that I felt more at ease. It seemed to be finally clear to me that I only had myself to rely upon now.</p>
<p>I looked out over the meadow at the bottom of the valley where the horses grazed, and everything came back to me – playing Indians, the shooting, our destructive pranks, and the horse chasing – and my feelings turned nostalgic and sad. But these thoughts were interwoven with others about the city and the future. It was all a confused tangle. I gulped down my tears and went resolutely on my way.</p>
<p> </p>
Sonic Crossroadstag:soniccrossroads.com,2005:Post/61123452016-05-21T12:00:00-12:002022-05-31T06:34:13-12:00Baker's Hours
<p>Baker's Hours or 'Wia die Wuiden' (Chapter 2)</p>
<p>In the first installment for <em>We Are </em><em>Prisoners </em>I mentioned the fact that the work was first translated in the 1920s (immediately after the book's publication in German), so I thought I'd provide a rationale for a new translation and the second chapter already more than provides that rationale. The original translation was by Margaret Green for Alfred Knopf (and which I am consulting as I work on my own). It strikes me as hurried at best and profoundly negligent at worst. Graf's language is simple. He's recounting his own life growing up in a small town in Bavaria as the first chapter makes clear. He calls the work "A Confession" not a memoir for reasons that the reader can deduce on his/her own. The translation in contrast strikes me as overly convoluted in language and outright incorrect both in terms of German meaning and proper English usage in numerous places. One specific place will illustrate what I mean - the middle paragraph of the second page of Chapter 2. For some inexplicable reason, Green translates 'wie ein Wilder gearbeitet' as 'worked like a n---' Yes, the N--- word.</p>
<p>'Wie ein Wilder" is an idiomatic expression in German (and in Bavarian which I've provided at the top in the plural) and is used in just such a context. Literally, "Wilder" could be translated as wild man, savage or native - or more idiomatically as 'like mad' as I have done here - but the word certainly carries no specific racial reference, much less can it be interpreted as a racial slur. It would be the equivalent of reading "She slaved over a hot stove" in English and taking the liberty of using a racial slur to translate it into another language. Why it would occur to Green to translate it thus, and how the editors at Knopf would let it pass is beyond my understanding, regardless of the word's usage or prevalence in the 1920s. </p>
<p>Silly me, and I thought addressing Graf's encounters with anarchists and socialists in pre- and post-WWI Munich was going to be the challenging part...</p>
<p> </p>
<p>Chapter 2 - Events</p>
<p>Time passed. Winter came, and the village rooftops were covered with snow. Christmas was approaching. There was a great deal of work to be done. I had to roll shortbread the whole day with Max, then cut out the shapes, lay them on greased tins, and bake them. Whole baskets full of cinnamon stars, butter fingers, and marzipan were ready by the evening. At ten o’clock I could go to bed; at twelve o’clock the journeyman woke me for the night’s work. My head was heavy, and I was more asleep than awake as I plunged my bare arms into the dough to knead it. If I dropped off, I was jogged awake and beaten. And that went on night after night. At six in the morning I tromped through the snowy darkness with my loaded breadbasket and delivered bread to the distant villages. About midday I came home drenched through and through. I had some food, changed my clothes, and was then required to help Max make confections for Christmas trees. And so the weeks slipped by. One night I fell asleep and fell into the dough. The journeyman set upon me and beat me with his bony fists. I snatched my arms out of the dough and ran howling to Max to complain. Startled out of his sleep, he sprang out of bed and threw punches blindly, so that I rushed downstairs again in terror and went on working and crying. “Ha! I guess he showed you!” scoffed the journeyman, and shoved me at every opportunity, so that I went on kneading, without thought or care like an animal. It can’t go on like this, I thought each night and yearned for a way to escape.</p>
<p>On Christmas Day work stopped. The journeyman went into the city. There was punch in the parlor, and each of us received a little present. And one could sleep the whole night through. At last, after the New Year, the Christmas festivities came to an end. There was less baking to do, and less work by day. I had to go into the forest every afternoon to cut wood with Max. The snow covered the ground and trees. Max spoke very little, but he climbed the trees and sawed off thick branches. It was great fun for him to watch the snow fall on me as he shook the tree. Sometimes he laughed a little when I shook the snow off and shivered.</p>
<p>At the end of February Maurus came home from Bamberg. He took over what little baking there was, and I had to help him. For some reason or other Max avoided him. They hardly spoke to each other.</p>
<p>And so now I had a different superior the whole day. At first we got on well together. Maurus told me about his books again, about other places, and sometimes even joked around with me. I grew more attached to him.</p>
<p>If Max was out, we worked more hurriedly, got done with everything quickly, and then sat on the bench in the bakery while Maurus began to read <em>Henry IV </em>to me. But I had difficulty in understanding the lines, though he often explained the jokes quite fully and bluntly, and gave me encouragement now and then. To escape a beating I often laughed loudly, which gave him great pleasure.</p>
<p>Now there was very little work at night. The other journeyman, a surly fellow, left us. He had stolen too much bread. An old, grey-haired man had come from the city and was drunk most of the time. But he was a good baker, and because he very seldom struck me, I worked well with him. He gave me a new name every day, and played all kinds of tricks on me. When he was tipsy he sang old songs from his reservist days. He would often lay in the oven pit and bawl as though he were spurring on a horse, “Whoa, whoa – gently, Vogel, gently!” Then I helped him up, and he kissed me so that his smutty face left a mark on my cheeks. He stood unsteadily and called out in a loud, hoarse voice, “Here I stand! Major Vogel! General Vogel. Of the High Order of Knighthood! Decorated with the Order of Max the Ox! Hurrah! Hurrah! Hurrah!” The house resonated with his voice. He embraced me affectionately and thanked me for being so kind to him.</p>
<p>“Little Oskar” or “Little Siegfried” or “Little Aloysius, “ he always said. “I will never forget you! You are a good fellow!” And I was touched. I worked like mad and did all that I could for Vogel. Those were happy nights. During Vespers and mealtimes the journeyman snored away on the bench, and I read stories about Indians and travel books, and woke him when it was time to start work. Around four o’clock, when my mother arrived, we had generally finished. The maid came down and attended to her work in the stables. We had coffee, and at six o’clock I had to set out on my delivery rounds with Anna.</p>
<p>Our time together on the open road was the most pleasant for us. On the way home we made up stories to tell each other, in which we – the main characters – lived on a giant ship in the Pacific, surrounded by fabulous wealth and inconceivable luxury. Sometimes the stories took a dramatic turn. There were fights with hostile pirates, whom we promptly subdued and punished with extraordinary cruelty. If there was anyone in the village whom we hated, he was brought into the story and somehow or other taken prisoner. Then we enacted a terrible vengeance.</p>
<p>On bright Sunday afternoons Maurus and I would go off on our bicycles and find a quiet, sunny place in the forest, where he read aloud to me. I grew more and more familiar with Ibsen’s plays, Kleist’s stories, and especially Shakespeare, which we read again and again. Then there were the Russians – mainly Tolstoy – and Heine and Lessing. Maurus read with feeling, and it revived my enthusiasm for our literary rivalry and the triumphant feeling of knowing something that the other had not read. I persuaded Anna to read books, too, and our delivery rounds lasted longer and longer. Then Max would often beat us.</p>
<p>One day when we came home Maurus and Max were quarrelling. We didn’t know what it was about. They shouted louder and louder, and at last it came to blows. There was a terrible fight, and Max would not let go till Maurus was leaning against the wall, covered with blood. Then Max went upstairs and put on his best clothes, for it was Tuesday and he had to go to choir practice. There was no winner in any case. Anna and I went to Maurus, looked at him intently, and clenched our fists, “He’ll have to pay for that, the brute!”</p>
<p>Maurus sobbed with rage, but then pulled himself together, and washed himself off at the fountain. That same evening he went to the city, and for a long time we had no news of him. Max was now sole master once again; he knew how to get rid of any troublesome sibling. Eugene went to America at the end of his military service, and my sister Theres followed Emma’s example. She, too, learned dressmaking in the city.</p>
<p>The household had changed. Besides Mother, Anna, and myself, there was a maid, Vogel the journeyman, and Max, whose orders were obeyed almost without thinking.</p>
<p>Fate even came to General Vogel one day. He went into the city and got so drunk that he fell asleep in the train and travelled on as far as Tutzing. There he hired a carriage late at night, and arrived at our house at two o’clock in the morning. He was not in a condition to work, and I could not get through everything alone. There he lay, snoring. Every now and then he made a coughing noise. I had to wake Max, and we baked the bread. The next day Vogel was dismissed. He cried like a child, for he liked being with us. But things couldn’t go on like that. A new journeyman was hired. He beat me more than any of his predecessors. I had no one to help me, no one to whom I could complain about my nightly torment. Max must not be allowed to know anything about it, Mother always cried softly and helplessly in response to my wailing, and Anna couldn’t help. There was only one person in the whole house who sometimes understood me: Leni, the maid. And though I hardly noticed her sympathy, nevertheless I was conscious of it.</p>
<p>One morning I was leaning against the kitchen cabinets with a bleeding head and crying quietly to myself. Mother just said, “If only we could have a little peace and quiet once in a while,” and went into the shop. That upset me even more. Leni came in and was going to the fireplace when she saw me.</p>
<p>“What is the matter, Oskar? Are you bleeding?” she asked as she came up to me. “He has beaten me silly,” I said. Leni went to the fireplace shaking her head. “The brute!” she said, with her back towards me. It was only a word. But there was something in her voice that I had never known before, something warm and comforting. When she was going out of the kitchen again she stopped beside me and said in the same tone, “With us it was Father,” and then disappeared. I went to the fountain and washed myself. Her last brief words revealed to me someone who had similar experiences and who understood. It was as if someone came to me out of the silent darkness and said, “Look, I suffered the same!” Happiness surfaced in me, and an unspeakable comfort.</p>
<p>Every day when I came home from delivery rounds, I had to cut chaff with Leni. She fed the machine and I turned the flywheel. We were glad when we were alone on the threshing floor, started up a conversation, and shared our experiences in a warm, friendly manner. We looked in each other’s eyes and then lowered them, without knowing why. Once – I don’t know how it came about – I flung myself helplessly on Leni’s breast and embraced here, moaning again and again, “Leni! Leni!” and kissed her passionately. She was horrified and resisted earnestly, but she was not angry. I saw her flushed face, and her bosom rose and fell. I wanted to hide myself completely in her arms, but she pushed me away and said, “Oskar? Why, Oskar? – What s the matter? – What has come over you?” I let her go, pulled myself together rapidly, and stood there panting, ashamed and confused. She stroked my forehead and spoke with motherly gentleness, “It’s just not possible.” For the moment I did not know what to do and jumped up hastily, seized the handle of the chaff-cutting machine and turned the flywheel faster and faster. When we had finished I ran hastily down into the bakery without looking at Leni again. At dinner as we sat across from one another at the table we lowered our eyes, and afterwards I slipped out quickly. Nothing further arose between us. We remained good friends to the end, and though Leni was a woman of thirty – industrious, sensible, and very pious, too – she was still aware of all my pranks and helped me out of tight places when there was a threat of trouble from Max. After I was allowed to go to bed, I often stared secretly out the window for hours, because Leni was busy washing below. That was the extent of my love.</p>
<p> </p>
Sonic Crossroadstag:soniccrossroads.com,2005:Post/61123442016-05-14T12:00:00-12:002022-05-31T06:33:45-12:00We Are Prisoners
<p>As a new track for the blog, I will post chapters of a translation I am working on for <em>We Are Prisoners </em>(Wir Sind Gefangene), an autobiographical 'confession' by Bavarian author <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Oskar_Maria_Graf" target="_blank" data-imported="1">Oskar Maria Graf</a> (1894-1967). Look for a new chapter each week!</p>
<p>Though a contract to publish is not in the works, and I haven't secured individual copyright, I do assert all claims to intellectual property for this translation. I find the work is in such need of a new translation - which hasn't been made since the first one in the 1920s - that I am posting chapters here until other arrangements are made. (And yes, the irony of this decision should not be lost on those continuing to read later chapters in the blog...)</p>
<p>(Part I - The Early Years)</p>
<p>Chapter 1. A Changed Life</p>
<p>On that May afternoon when our teacher suddenly entered the room, came up to my sister Anna and me, and told us that we should go home because our father was very ill, I felt no emotion whatsoever. Out on the road we spoke very little and kept a serious facade. Basically, we were pleased to be through with the dull arithmetic lesson. We were good at our lessons and enjoyed going to school, but I disliked arithmetic. There was no element of surprise in it; everything was clear and straightforward.</p>
<p>It was a marvelously clear and sunny day. The meadows around us were fresh and green and dotted with flowers, the apple trees on either side of the road were in full bloom.</p>
<p>When we reached the village a peasant woman met us; she stopped and said, “Go home, your father is seriously ill; He is in a bad way.” We quickened our pace. At home somehow it was silent. We went into the kitchen, which also served as the living room, and saw Mother handling some bottles on the stove. She just said, “Go up to Father,” and burst into tears. We put down our satchels and went upstairs. When we entered the room we began to cry. We didn’t know why. I didn’t feel any sorrow, I just had a slight sense of dread. The room smelled strongly of medicine and perspiration. My brother Eugen sat by the bed in his uniform and gazed incessantly at Father. Theres and Emma stood behind him. My eldest brother Max stood against the wall and stared at us. Maurus was leaning against the window, and Lorenz whispered to us, “Go to him.” His face was swollen from crying.</p>
<p>We timidly approached the bed and said together, “Father.” The sick man lay motionless and had a gurgle in his throat. His face was strangely yellow and sunken. My younger sister leaned against the bed and sobbed again, “Father.” At that he moved his head a little and gazed at her silently. Everyone looked at him and then began to cry aloud. Eugen wanted to put his arm behind Father’s neck to help raise him. But at that moment the dying man uttered a coughing sound, his body became straight and stiff, his face twitched and the whites of his eyes stood out terribly. Death had come.</p>
<p>Lorenz ran to the door and called out, “Mother!” We all stood around the bed sobbing and folded our hands. Only Max remained calm. Our mother came in and approached the bed, crossed herself, cast a sorrowful glance up at Heaven, folded her hands, and softly murmured a prayer while the tears streamed down her wrinkled cheeks. After a while she crossed herself again, bent over the dead man and closed his eyes. Meanwhile, Theres and Emma lit the two candles that had been left there after the priest had given last rites; they fetched some holy water and sprinkled it over the dead man. With a sorrowful voice my mother began to say the Lord’s Prayer, and we all joined in, one after the other. Then we left the room and went down silently into the kitchen. The funeral was arranged, the body prepared, and a priest secured to conduct the service. By six o’clock the hearse was parked at the door, and the coffin was loaded into it amid loud lamentations and driven to the priest’s. We, along with many of the villagers, walked behind it with bowed heads and said our rosaries. When the coffin was placed in the chapel, people came up to my mother and the eldest siblings and extended their hands. They looked with pity at the younger children and said to us, “Poor children” or something similar.</p>
<p>The next day we were awakened by solemn bells, which tolled throughout the morning. The Veterans Club flag was lowered three times into the grave, and guns were fired nearby, for my father had served in the war of 1870-71.</p>
<p>We had lunch at the inn and the relatives and cousins came, too. All kinds of stories were shared about my father, and people recalled what he had said on this occasion and that. In the afternoon the whole family with all the relatives went down to the lake and drank coffee together in a restaurant. It all seemed like Sunday to us, and we children really enjoyed it – only now and again we thought of our father and felt sad for a fleeting moment.</p>
<p>From that time on everything was different at home. We had a flourishing bakery and a grocery store and a confectioner’s as well, some meadowland and forest, four cows, a horse, and usually four of five pigs in the sty. My mother’s home had been a large farm, and my father was a baker. When they married the house had been quite small; now because of my father’s love of building, it had grown to quite an impressive size.</p>
<p>My departed grandfather, Lorenz Graf, who had been an accountant, dreamed all his life of such a house. But as he never prospered in his wretched business, he began to count on some swift stroke of luck. He played the lottery in those days with great passion, often spending his last penny in this endeavor, to the distress of his large family. But he only became poorer, and when he died the property was in debt and in ruins.</p>
<p>Towards the end of his life my father lost his health, and Max took partial control of the household when he returned from military service. His manner in exercising authority was curt, brusque, and rough, provoking violent arguments while my father was still alive. Once even, the old man grabbed a knife and made for his son, all the while cursing. My mother flung herself between them.</p>
<p>After that the two did not speak to each other, and Father began drinking. He ordered Affental wine on draft, sat all day grumbling on the sofa, and gulped down glass after glass. He had his meals alone so that he wouldn’t see Max. The two avoided each other as far as they could, and when one was obliged to speak to the other there was such bitter quarrelling that we children always screamed and ran away. After these scenes we generally found our mother broken down and in tears. Father went out, got drunk at some inn or tavern, and did not come home till late at night.</p>
<p>We all hated Max. When he entered the house something alien came with him. He tormented us with sharp, biting words. Gentleness was unknown to him, he was always quick to strike. With his hand, with a dough mixer, with anything nearby. Eugen, the only one of us who was his equal in strength, was serving his term in the army. Lorenz, or ‘Lenz’ as we called him, worked with the journeymen at night, Maurus was learning the confectionery trade in Karlsruhe, and Emma was being taught dressmaking in Munich. Theres, who came next to Max in age, stood apart from the rest of us. In the morning she delivered bread with the horse and cart, and for the rest of the day she worked in the house. Max did not take issue with her since she knew how to deal with him. The two took no notice of each other, but they were bitter enemies.</p>
<p>After our father’s death the younger siblings became closer. Lenz read Karl May books a great deal, and secretly ordered sporting rifles to shoot pheasants, hares, and squirrels during his delivery rounds in the morning. He hid them in the breadbasket and roasted them at night with the help of the journeymen. At first I was not initiated into this ritual. Only after I had to accompany Lenz once did he lead me into the woods, fetch his rifle out of a hole in the rocks and tell me everything. I was excited. Another sporting rifle was ordered for me right away from Solingen. These deliveries were always addressed to our village shoemaker. We paid for his silence with bread.</p>
<p>As time went on we were no longer content with this solitary sport. All the boys our age in the village were initiated, and on Sundays we scoured the woods. Everything that crossed our path was shot down. Anyone who felled an animal with the first shot was awarded the “Hunter’s Prize,” which meant the rifle that had been bought communally became his sole property. Gradually our dealings became known. A policeman came to our house. We lied up and down, but there was a terrible row between Lenz and Max, which ended with Lenz going to town to look for work and never contacting us again. Later, after wandering the length and breadth of Germany in truly romantic fashion, he boarded a ship in Hamburg and sailed for America.</p>
<p>About this time I left the vocational school. Now I had to help at night in the bakery. Max kept a sharp watch on me. I was thoroughly intimidated and for a long time did not rebel. But on Sundays we would destroy the new park benches installed by the local Restoration Society – of which Max was a representative – tear up young trees, or set fire to a haystack. Something within us drove us to do these things. We actually regarded them as our appointed task and couldn’t be dissuaded. “Lenz must be avenged,” I always said. Something must be done. We hated the villagers. At that time we read <em>The Downfall of the Seminole Indians. </em>How unspeakably beautiful was the ending: “The last of the Seminoles bends over the dead chief, cuts open a vein and drinks his blood, which cries out for eternal vengeance. Then he goes to the Sioux tribe and joins in the struggle against the white men …”</p>
<p>There were three of us: Martin, a school friend of mine, my sister Anna, and I. One day we met in a cornfield outside the village. I outlined the plan for vengeance, and the other two knelt down, raised their hands solemnly, and said, “I swear.” We had agreed that if one of us betrayed anything, he would suffer the worst. Then we set to work. The miller had left his iron plough standing in the field. We took it apart and threw the pieces in all directions. The innkeeper by the lake was building a little wooden hut on the Etztal Hill. We slaved away for four Sundays—constantly interrupted by innocent people on their walks—until we had loosened it from its foundation and it went crashing down the hillside. That was a gigantic achievement; the trees in the way were broken, earth and stones tumbled after it, and the wooden monster rolled on with terrifying force. At the bottom of the hill people scrambled as if there were a fire, but they could do nothing. We were out of the way long before this, and were playing innocently at home, building houses with empty boxes in our yard.</p>
<p>Once the mayor left his foals out in the pasture. We made a channel to divert water from the stream nearby to the meadow, made a fire in the middle of the field, and drove the animals over the fire and through the water until their coats steamed. Then we moved away the willow fencing, and the foals galloped away in terror. It was not till late at night that they were discovered, trembling and terrified, on a narrow rocky path in the castle grounds.</p>
<p>We stole the tablecloths off of the tables in the inn garden and burnt them; we destroyed the finest beeches and oaks, so that they withered. People always said, “It’s the baker’s brats again!” But when they actually spoke to my mother, she said, “Nonsense! It’s impossible. Come, how could such little children do that!” Strangely enough, Max heard little or nothing about it.</p>
<p>Something must be done! Our vengeance was far too slight. In our minds nobody was really hurt by it.</p>
<p>Once again we ordered rifles. We started hunting again, only this time we left what we shot lying where it fell. One journeyman had been sentenced to three days in prison on account of the affair with Lenz. He wanted nothing more to do with us and always threatened to beat me at night. What could we do but keep it all secret? Every Sunday we renewed our oath as we gradually suspected danger on all sides. After a time the ceremony became a bit more romantic. I was the chief, and after my sister and Martl had taken the oath, we joined in eating a stick of ‘Andres Hofer Fig coffee’ that we had stolen from the shop. It tasted horribly bitter and gave us a stomachache, but exactly because the stuff was so nasty, we regarded it as a kind of conspirators’ communion bread. For some unexplained reason, we called the fig coffee ‘Claro’ because it sounded foreign and Indian and was printed on the cigar boxes in our shop. Sometimes when we met on weekdays and one of us had an inkling of threatened danger, we whispered to one another, “We have to eat Claro again!” The words were understood and no further questions asked.</p>
<p>We had to work hard. In the evening I was woken up by the journeyman – in the winter at eleven o’clock, in the summer at nine. We worked right through the night. At six in the morning Mother counted the loaves and put them in my basket, laid rolls on the top, and filled the knapsack for Anna, who was already waiting in the kitchen yawning sleepily. And out we went into the cool morning air until midday. Anna continued her rounds the whole afternoon. I had to help make cakes. I beat egg whites beside Max, mixed the batter and kneaded the shortbread dough. At five o’clock I was allowed to go to bed. That was the regular day’s work. For Easter, Whitsuntide and Christmas time it was often much longer. In addition I had to chop wood and cut chaff. And all the time Max’s threatening voice, like the crack of a whip: “Hurry, hurry, hurry! March! March!” For this work Mother paid me five marks a week in summer and in winter three every Sunday. At Christmas and on my birthday something was put into the savings bank for me, and I could see it entered in my book. But Max mustn’t know anything about it. He had his own ideas about me anyway. When he returned from military service he said in his offhand way, “The boy must go to sea!” He cut a bow for me and wanted to teach me to shoot, but it was badly made and the archery practice soon stopped.</p>
<p>Then I was to learn to play the zither. As soon as I got home from school I was to start practicing. Always the same, first learning the notes, and then finally the melody, “Rosebush, Elderblossom.” But I didn’t learn a thing, even though the discipline was strict. I bribed the tailor who was giving me zither lessons with bread and money for beer. He gave up trying. The zither was a torment to me and I hated it. One evening as Max was going out and I was supposed to the tailor’s, I hid behind an adjoining fence until my brother was out of earshot. Then I opened the zither case, put in sand and stones, and dropped the despised instrument into a neighbor’s fishpond. The next day when I was asked to play, the zither was not to be found. I told lie after lie and was severely beaten in the end, but I was free. From that time on, discipline was exceedingly strict. Fortunately, however, I left school soon afterwards and worked at night.</p>
<p>Things went on like this for two years. Gradually our Indian campaign of vengeance came to an end. One of the journeymen had a book entitled <em>How to Become An Inventor. </em>I read it, and my life took a new curve. I ordered technical books through the same shoemaker who took our rifle deliveries. I began to sketch. All my writing materials were hidden in the garret. I invented something – it was a bootjack. I sent the drawing to a patent office in Kassel. A reply came in the form of a most encouraging letter that gave me great hopes. But it said I must send seventy-five marks.</p>
<p>Seventy-five marks! My heart skipped. With that sum one could earn thousands, once the patent was registered. I showed the letter in strictest confidence to Theres. She was also set aflame. We shared the secret with Mother. I received the money and sent it off. In five weeks I found myself the owner of a German Imperial patent, sent printed prospectuses in all directions, and awaited the result, confident of victory. Every day I went to the shoemaker’s. Nothing but rejections.</p>
<p>One firm asked for a sample. Curse it! A sample! A sample! That meant another sixty marks, and once more Mother and Theresa secretly gave me the money. The sample arrived at the shoemaker’s and - it didn’t work. One rejection came after another. Theres just smiled. I took comfort. Even Edison did not become a millionaire overnight. I must stick to it. I must be indefatigable.</p>
<p>A new plan! An honest man wrote from Mecklenburg that all patent agents were frauds. He would do the job for the low price of eighty marks—he enclosed an exact and honest statement—and would promise to refund the money if the invention did not sell. There really are still honest men in the world, I said to myself.</p>
<p>My second invention was set in motion. The drawings were sent to Mecklenburg by registered post, and again within five weeks the second patent was secured. A self-pulling cork. Something that everyone would buy. It would sell in the millions!</p>
<p>This time I wrote personal letters to the manufacturers. I wrote very politely. Refusals. I wrote in a yet friendlier style: “Dear Mr. Bayer, I have an invention which I am sure you will be able to profit from in your factory. I shall be glad to dispose of all the rights to you for the small sum of a thousand marks. Yours most sincerely, or Yours faithfully, or Very cordially yours, Oskar Graf, Inventor.” Refusal! I chose this formula: “Sir, I have invented a very sellable article. I enclose a sample. I will dispose of all the rights to you for five hundred marks; I would also accept less. Please take it off my hands. I would, in fact, accept three hundred marks. Yours sincerely, Oskar Graf, Inventor.” Refusal. Or no answer at all. The wretches would not even give me fifty marks, not even thirty. The world simply refused to recognize my genius.</p>
<p>About this time Maurus came home from Karlsruhe. He brought books with him. A stack of<em> Jugend</em> magazines, a volume of Heine, Stifter’s books in the Reclam edition, a volume of Uhland, Lessing’s dramatic masterpieces, Napoleon’s<em> [Love Affairs</em> and <em>Mistresses</em>,] Ibsen’s <em>Enemy of the People, The Lady of the Sea, </em>and Viktor Scheffel’s <em>Novellas</em>. He spoke High German with something of a Swabian accent, told me of a book about the Emperor Wilhelm II entitled <em>He,</em> and read Shakespeare to me. This he did with such passion, such intensity, as to spur my ambition. I began to read his books. But within a few weeks Maurus quarreled with Max and gave everything up. After a fight, with bloodshed, tears, and cries of rage, he packed his trunk and went off to Bamberg.</p>
<p>What next?</p>
<p>A cow fell ill. Four pigs died. The horse died of colic. The mayor lent Max a book called <em>The Veterinary Doctor. </em>I read it at night. Slowly my interest was aroused. Moreover, I was turning over in my mind what profession I really wanted to pursue. Again a cow fell ill. The district veterinarian came and gave us a lecture in the byre. That was the nudge. I made up my mind: I will be a veterinarian.</p>
<p>The cow died. “Infection,” said the veterinarian.</p>
<p>Infection? What is that?</p>
<p>I ordered <em>Diseases of the Cow </em>from Parey’s in Berlin as the first book for use in my future profession. It was a dark blue, thin and elegant little volume with fine gilt lettering. There!</p>
<p>I read and read. Suddenly I was stuck. There, among all the other words and just like them was: ‘immune.’</p>
<p>But what did it mean? What did it mean?</p>
<p>I wrote at once for a dictionary of veterinary terms. And then I set out to learn it by heart. From A to Z. Every delivery round with the bread was filled with recitations of the most outlandish words. If by chance the district veterinarian drove past, I took off my cap and ran some distance behind his machine, heart beating rapidly. For this man was something of a god to me; his head must be packed with what he had learned by heart!</p>
<p>After <em>Diseases of the Cow</em> came books on horse breeding, diseases of the dog, and the different breeds of poultry, then the sheep’s scab, and finally even books on breeding fish. All of the siblings were ambitious, and each of us was spurred on by the desire to outdo the others and to master our environment. Not one of us could bear to be behind anyone else in ability. What you have learnt is your own, I thought, and perhaps you will astonish your future teachers. I remember clearly how I began reading books with Maurus. We competed with each other in our reading, and I was filled with triumphant pleasure when I could say, “Ah, you haven’t read that yet! That is something quite different.”</p>
<p>The semester’s courses at the Agricultural College in Pfarrkirchen were announced in the newspaper. I made my plans: I will begin there and finish at the University of Veterinary Medicine in Munich. I did not want to go to a veterinary school. That was not good enough. It must be something with “University” in the title. I read my vocabularies aloud on the way to customers’ houses and before I went to sleep, and it was extraordinary how the driest material was tinged with emotion for me. Upstairs under the lead roof a fine collection of books was packed in a large cardboard box. Every day before I went to bed I climbed up to the garret, listened with a beating heart to make sure that nobody was coming upstairs, took the box out slowly, stroked the smooth cover of my books, and picked one out. I never went to sleep until I had put the precious treasure under the mattress, for if it had come out that I had the books, I should have been beaten till I couldn’t stand. In the first place the books cost a terrible lot of money, and secondly since the failure of my zither lessons, my orders were simply to be a baker. It was settled.</p>
<p>The weeks slipped past. My secret consumed and tormented me. I must say something. At four o’clock in the morning Mother came downstairs and put on the water for coffee in the kitchen. I always repeated the same complaint to her. The journeymen were rough, they beat me because I often fell asleep. One of them once threw a heavy sack onto my head, so that my whole body shuddered. But it was no good. Max shouldn’t hear anything about it. My mother always cried when I complained and said with annoyance, “If only we could have some peace and quiet for once.”</p>
<p>But – something must happen. It must!</p>
<p>“Today I will tell Maxl that I want to go to Pfarrkirchen. You must tell him. I simply won’t be a baker! I don’t want to. Each of the others has been allowed to learn something: Eugen was sent to the Business College, Maurus went to Karlsruhe and now he is a confectioner; Max just turned Lenz out, and he means to get rid of me someday, “ I wailed. Every day the same complaint, tough and bitter.</p>
<p>It wore my mother out. Her face grew more and more gloomy and she looked at me helplessly.</p>
<p>“Hm – I don’t know! Veterinarian. That’s nothing for you! A baker can always earn his wage – there is always something to eat, “ she argued. But it was no good. I was as obstinate as a mule. The term at Pfarrkirchen began on September 15<sup>th</sup>. I grew more and more insistent, but day after day no success.</p>
<p>“He’ll beat you up, then you’ve had it,” Mother said referring to Max.</p>
<p>“Even if he beats me to death, I will never change my mind,” I replied stubbornly. Meanwhile, nothing happened. I had an idea. I wrote to Eugen. The brute couldn’t do anything to him. There also wouldn’t be a fight or an uproar because Eugen was in Augsburg serving in the army.</p>
<p>I wrote, “Dear Eugen, Because nobody at home will listen to me, and because I believe I have the ability if I’m allowed to study, I am writing to you with a request to make it possible, as only you can. If you don’t help me I shall go to the dogs at home. I would like to go to the Agricultural College in Pfarrkirchen on September 15, and then to Munich to the University Veterinary Medicine, for I want to be a vet. But I can’t tell Max – you know that. He would only give me a good beating, the brute. But I must be a vet, or I shall go to the dogs. So do help me. Just write a good, strong letter to Max. He is afraid of you, but he will only beat me. But don’t tell Max in your letter that I wrote to you, or he will beat me for that, too. I will send you something to eat, if you help me. Your loving brother, Oskar.”</p>
<p>A few weeks later – it was September 8<sup>th</sup> already – I came home from my bread rounds and spoke softly and discreetly to Mother beside the stove, “Have you seen anything? Hasn’t Eugen written yet?”</p>
<p>Mother spoke so loudly that I had to calm her down, “If only I could have a little peace and quiet every once in a while! – Just go on as a baker – you will earn a much better wage.”</p>
<p>Max heard her. It was his habit to sit at the writing table in the next room about this time of day, and the door was open.</p>
<p>“What’s that?” he asked roughly.</p>
<p>“Oskar wants to be a vet, and the term is just about to begin, he says,” answered my mother plaintively. My whole body was trembling. I was gripped fear. My heart beat loudly. I stood there and waited. Something was playing out now that would be decisive for the rest of my whole life. As I stood there I quickly pictured my time in Pfarrkirchen almost as clearly as if I were already there, leaving my residence and going to lectures every day in my Sunday clothes.</p>
<p>Then Max suddenly got up and stood in the doorway and said, “What do you want to do?” He gestured threateningly and shouted, “You stupid fool, you listen to me! – What good will it do you? Schatzlpeter has been studying eight years now and still has nothing to show for it! – I’ll cure you of your studies!”</p>
<p>And that was the end of that. Actually I was glad the whole process ran its course so easily, without coming to blows or an uproar. But I was filled with rage towards Max, and I swore bitter revenge.</p>
<p>I went on working at night in the bakery, also toiled by day, and gradually lost interest in veterinary medicine. It was strange that after every instance of such tension and enthusiasm, my energy always withered and leveled off. And a new search began. The dust lay thick on my inventions under the floor of the garret; my books on veterinary medicine lost their fascination and rotted under the iron roof.</p>
<p> </p>
Sonic Crossroadstag:soniccrossroads.com,2005:Post/61123412016-03-04T12:00:00-12:002022-05-27T23:45:24-12:00The Middle East Restaurant Reunion
<p><img src="//d10j3mvrs1suex.cloudfront.net/u/393911/3ea5c3277518da56c6d93c530a20411e3b59d6e9/original/middle-east-restaurant-2.jpg/!!/b%3AWyJyZXNpemU6NDUweDMzOCJd.jpg" class="size_orig justify_inline border_" alt="" height="338" width="450" /></p>
<p>Meesha Dance with Joseph Tayoun, William Tayoun, Roger Mgrdichian, Baris Kaya and others</p>
<p>In an exciting development for world music in Philadelphia, Franky Bradley's (@1320 Chancellor St.) presented the debut of its First Thursday series on March 3. To get the ball rolling, this first installment was a tribute to the legendary <a href="http://articles.philly.com/1997-07-17/news/25549483_1_belly-dancers-middle-east-restaurant" target="_blank" data-imported="1">Middle East Restaurant</a> that had been run by the Tayoun family for almost 40 years before closing in 1997. Despite not being advertised on the club's own website, the event packed the house with belly-dance enthusiasts, nostalgia-seekers and friends of friends of friends. We look forward to following future installments of the series to be curated by keyboardist, William Tayoun.</p>
Sonic Crossroadstag:soniccrossroads.com,2005:Post/61123402016-01-06T12:00:00-12:002022-08-11T17:04:09-12:00Join our list of featured titles at the next Midwest Clinic!
<p>Following our debut at the Midwest Clinic last month and after numerous inquiries from other interested composers, we are offering a limited number of slots to composers who want join our team next year and promote their music. Composers who have titles suitable for middle and high school and college-level ensembles can submit their music for consideration. For a promotional fee of $400 each composer will receive one conference badge with access to all the performances, workshops and exhibits, <strong><em>and</em></strong> targeted promotion of your contracted* new titles to educators at the conference. The Midwest Clinic is an international band and orchestra conference that features clinicians, workshops and performances by invited student ensembles of all levels from across the U.S. and internationally. The educators who attend are looking for exciting new music to program with their ensemble, and three new music reading sessions also promote newly published titles – including yours!</p>
<p>Learn more at www.midwestclinic.org and use the ‘Contact‘ page to drop us a line.<a href="mailto:sonic.crossroads@gmail.com" data-imported="1"><br></a></p>
<p> </p>
<p>(*A digital publishing contract with Sonic Crossroads is required for each score you wish to promote prior to the conference.)</p>
<p> </p>
Sonic Crossroadstag:soniccrossroads.com,2005:Post/61123392015-11-18T12:00:00-12:002022-08-06T22:02:24-12:00Aegean Spring at Midwest Clinic
<p>We are pleased to announce that excerpts from "Aegean Spring" by Ulvi Cemal Erkin will be performed at the Orchestra New Music Reading session at the Midwest Clinic in Chicago. As part of our promotions for the Clinic we have updated the available readings on our Research page to include a short description of Bartok's folk music research in Turkey. Erkin along with two other composers (Saygun and Akses) accompanied Bartok on this short trip to observe his methods and serve as interpreters. This short reading would be suitable as a handout to your students as you begin to study and rehearse Aegean Spring or Anatolian Sketches by Erkin.</p>
<p>We have also included a selection of free perusal scores on the Research page! These will be available for download until Dec. 22.</p>
Sonic Crossroadstag:soniccrossroads.com,2005:Post/61123382015-08-07T12:00:00-12:002022-03-18T21:17:15-12:00Midwest Clinic
<p>Following some recent conference visits, presentations and readings, we are proceeding with our plans to exhibit at Midwest Clinic in Chicago and to submit several of our titles to the Texas UIL prescribed music list for consideration this fall. If you are interested in providing us with a reading of one of our titles, please feel free to contact us at office [at] soniccrossroads.com. This year the UIL committee will be considering large ensemble titles - string orchestra, full orchestra, concert and symphonic band among others - and we welcome all inquiries from ensembles interested in our titles. (View them <a href="/sheet-music" target="_blank" data-imported="1" data-link-type="page">here</a>.)</p>
Sonic Crossroadstag:soniccrossroads.com,2005:Post/61123362014-11-01T12:00:00-12:002022-05-31T06:28:49-12:00Korean Percussion Ensemble at NAfME
<p>In addition to the Young Composer's Concert and the U.S. Army Field Band concert ( and the line dancing at the Wild Horse Saloon), a highlight for me of the NAfME National Convention was the concert and 3-hour workshop in Korean Drumming led by Dr. Soojin Ritterling of the University of Wisconsin-La Crosse. In the three-hour period she managed to teach an entire piece of the Samulnori genre, featuring four instruments - Jing, Buk, Janggu and Kkwaenggwari. She first described the original context for traditional Korean drumming and how the piece we were learning was a concert version of this traditional music. Dr. Ritterling with the help of four students in her ensemble at UW-La Crosse taught the piece using her own transcription of the piece into Western notation, but also referred to some of the traditional drumming syllables that would have been used to teach the piece orally. Actually, a written notation exists using graphic notation and (at least in the case I saw) the Korean syllables/vocables transliterated into Latin script. Ritterling's rationale for using Western notation, despite the fact that a student of hers thought the Korean notation was clearer, was that it made the piece easy to teach to teachers and students already familiar with staff notation. And I can confirm that over the course of the workshop - if one took the initiative to try out the parts for all four instruments - one could reasonably learn the piece well enough to convey to a group of students. One of the La Crosse students even offered some suggestions about how to go about substituting various instruments for the difficult-to-obtain Korean ones. Ritterling also offered copies of all the parts along with a simple handout explaining the instruments and the contexts she described. I'm ready! Put me in front of a class!</p>
Sonic Crossroadstag:soniccrossroads.com,2005:Post/61123482014-10-11T12:00:00-12:002024-01-04T03:49:56-12:00We didn't mean to create a monster
<p>Yes, this was posted on Oct. 12, 2014 though some links were added later. </p>
<p>>>></p>
<p>We had the unique opportunity to peruse a funding proposal by the Silk Road Project recently, and it raised some serious questions. Well, first one sees the main pitch, "the Silk Road Project led by renowned cellist Yo-Yo Ma" and honestly, does anyone spend more than 10 seconds reading beyond that when perusing a bucket-load of proposals? But reading on gave us some interesting answers about how the project promotes itself when applying for funding.</p>
<p>Let's start with the 'core personnel' listed on the proposal - Shane Shanahan, <a href="http://music.arts.uci.edu/content/kojiro-umezaki" data-imported="1">Kojiro Umezaki</a>, Johnny Gandelsman, and Sandeep Das. All outstanding musicians, no doubt about it. But does Colin Jacobsen realize he's not even mentioned on this proposal? Oh that's right, I guess his name just doesn't sound international enough to help out the angle that the Silk Road Ensemble does in fact represent countries of the Silk Road. Umezaki is from Tokyo, Gandelsman is from Russia and Das from India, but how long have they been living in the US? And 'Shanahan'? How is that more relevant than 'Jacobsen'? And an even bigger travesty - how On Earth can one leave out Wu Man from this proposal? The renowned pipa player from China has been involved from the beginning and her instrument and playing most clearly represent music of the Silk Road. Does this reflect the Project's stance toward women as leaders of the ensemble? This is an interesting point that we neglected to mention in our previous post - that the majority of the musicians featured on the Princeton Ensemble concert were women, the young students and the professional soloists. So the fact that Wu Man is the only regular female player in the Ensemble - and not even recognized as a core member - also doesn't seem to represent well the reality of Music from the Silk Road.</p>
<p>This brings us to the next point about the proposal - targeted audience. Usually on a proposal for government funds an organization wants to make a case for targeting a broad constituency, for taking the music to as broad an audience as possible including outreach to children and populations for whom the project would seem relevant. But not here. Nada, nothing, zero, null. This is also odd considering I just recently came across a post by Wu Man on social media with wonderful photos of her performing for a large audience of children. Obviously, the interest in outreach is there, most likely among other members of the ensemble as well. Is it just these particular summer concerts that won't involve outreach? And if so, why pitch this series/tour to a funding agency?</p>
<p>Truth be told I haven't really followed the latest developments with the SRP, but I do remember in the early days the excitement of having Yo-Yo Ma at the helm which would bring untold amounts of attention to regions and music of the world that most Americans were unaware of. And this has undoubtedly happened. So how has this vision been hijacked? or has the framing of the Project's activities always been this skewed? I know a major source of funding in the beginning came from the Aga Khan Trust for Culture, an organization based in Switzerland that could provide the kinds of money that would subsidize large artist fees in order to present concerts in a wide variety of venues initially. I also know that the AKTC formed its own Music Initiative soon after the Silk Road Project began. So possibly the AKTC is not as closely involved anymore. And in any case there exists a US foundation affiliated (at least in name) with the AKTC, the Aga Khan <a href="http://www.partnershipsinaction.org/content/aga-khan-foundation-usa" data-imported="1">Foundation</a> USA. Has the Silk Road Project established ties with this non-profit? And if not, why not?</p>
<p>We keep saying 'nuclear' but I don't think it means what we think it <a href="http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0246460/" target="_blank" data-imported="1">means</a>. Not in all <a href="http://www.theismaili.org/news-events/prince-rahim-and-princess-salwa-expecting-their-first-child" data-imported="1">cases</a>.</p>
<p> "As for the Elephant Birds, they kept asking each other why they were there at all. In the excitement of the departure from the Respectorate, they had somehow been swept aboard along with the Argo, but they couldn't remember being asked if they would actually like to come. ... They felt kidnapped, shanghaied, dragged along on an adventure that had nothing to do with them and was very probably extremely dangerous, and yes, they thought they might fall off the rug as well."</p>
<p>-Luka and the Fire of Life- Salman Rushdie</p>
Sonic Crossroadstag:soniccrossroads.com,2005:Post/61123342014-10-04T12:00:00-12:002021-09-10T08:30:36-12:00Unraveling the Mystery
<p>It wasn't just the language barrier though that was part of the problem. Very soon into the Closing Concert of the Princeton Chinese Music Festival at Carnegie Hall, it became apparent that the printed program was a jumble. I found it strange that the program content for such an event was primarily in Chinese, but was willing to accept the fact that a predominantly Chinese and Chinese-American audience would benefit for a Chinese program. I also understood that "Princeton" didn't necessarily mean Princeton University but the Princeton University Chinese Music Ensemble was listed as one of the featured performers and a co-presenter with collaboration from the Central Conservatory of Music (not specifically Beijing or Shanghai) and the China Conservatory of Music (again no specific location). The program did indeed start off with what appeared to be the featured student works - winners of a competition - performed ably by the youngest students of the evening, first a large group of 8 to 10 year olds on the guzheng followed by a mixed ensemble of both Chinese and Western instruments. After that presumably the Princeton University Ensemble performed although given the jumbled nature of the rest of the program it was difficult to ascertain if, when, and who this ensemble actually was. The title of their piece was importantly identified as "Capriccio Taiwan." Translations of program notes were provided for some titles but not for all, and titles and composers for other pieces were not transliterated. Anglicized performers' names were given however, and this and the number of performers involved were often the biggest clues as to which piece was being performed.</p>
<p>All this to describe a dilemma that didn't necessarily detract from enjoying the concert - at least not in my case. I was aware that several selections represented a highly politicized interpretation of traditional Chinese music - with compositions for 4, 6, and as many as 10 guzheng - like 'chamber orchestras' of guzheng - or the three pieces for zheng and piano (possibly orchestra reductions). These clearly represent attempts at Westernizing music and instruments that were traditionally performed solo and without any harmonization. However, i was more struck by the variety of styles exhibited in the pieces and undoubtedly extended playing techniques developed by players and composers over time. Who's to say that these instruments and the repertoire can't develop beyond a traditional context even if the original impetus came from reform politics and a desire to Westernize? And in fact, one assessment on my part was quickly dispelled. During a piece for erhu quartet, very much composed like a string quartet, and which seemed to me to be Dvorak, Lalo, and Sarasate all rolled into one, I mused at one point "Oh that melody has to be straight from Hunga... Oh wait everyone seems to recognize this melody. So much for that." </p>
<p>I was proud that my initial inquiry into the program jumble by consulting a neighbor confirmed my suspicion that the erhu solo with the rapid galloping rhythms and even quartal double stops was he one portraying "Mongolian Wind" not "clouds over ocean as in a dream." And there were several erhu solos (not just Westernized ensembles) though it's difficult to say which were older, more traditional tunes and which may actually be new compositions. Which brings us back to the Mystery. I'll admit even if the Princeton ensemble performance is only tangential to the entire program, I would expect anything associated with an Ivy League institution, or purported to represent an Ivy League institution, would have clear and complete program information. Someone with an extreme case of paranoia possibly held over from the Cold War might even say the jumbled program was a tactic to obfuscate information, hide identities, or Worse, maybe even communicate in Code!! Well, what to do about it? Who might be Willing & Able to serve the ensemble, say, translate titles and bios, provide more complete program notes. I would imagine someone who has learned some Chinese living/studying abroad, maybe even spent some time playing the zheng... A mystery indeed...</p>
Sonic Crossroadstag:soniccrossroads.com,2005:Post/61123352014-07-24T12:00:00-12:002022-05-26T00:09:28-12:00Victory March - commentary
<p>Following a conversation recently at an Educators' Conference, I am compelled to offer some additional commentary about one line of the lyrics in Leyla Saz's <em>Victory March. (First discussed here in the Feb. 26 post) </em>It has always been known to me that the name Enver in the fifth line of the lyrics refers to Enver Pasha (General Pasha). While I make the case that this particular March reflects a revolutionary period in Turkey's history and a continuation generally towards Westernization and modernization in that country, it should also be apparent that the Ottoman Empire sided with the Axis Powers in World War I, and its humiliating defeat led to the collapse and break-up of the Empire. In addition, I should state here that Enver Pasha is known to be one of the instigators and orchestrators of the infamous Death Marches in 1915 that led large numbers of Armenians from their homes on foot across eastern and southern Anatolia, causing many deaths from exhaustion and starvation. These events are otherwise known as the Armenian Genocide of 1915. The reason I did not include this information in the article is that I felt strongly that bringing up this phenomenally contentious subject within a relatively short essay would detract from the aim of the article, namely, to shine light on a neglected topic in music history - the agency of women musicians within the Ottoman court and Ottoman society.</p>
<p>However, now that I had the chance to explain myself to an inquirer, I realize that Leyla Saz's specific formulation of the lyrics actually reflects and espouses her agency as much as the unique quality of her music. "Enverle Niyazi unutulmaz bu isimler." literally translates as 'Enver and Niyazi, these names are not to be forgotten.' That, to my ears is not an outright statement of praise, whereas "Niyazi and Enver are our country's heroes!" would be. If I were charged with writing an outright patriotic song to commemorate a state victory, and those were the words I chose for particular individuals - "not to be forgotten" - I wouldn't be expressly an unequivocally positive sentiment. On the contrary, her formulation strikes me as suitably duplicitous. The question is, what did she possibly already know about these leaders? After all, this is 1908 <em>before</em> the events of World War I. Perhaps she already knew enough to know where they could eventually take the Empire if given the chance. And the Empire did collapse after World War I. Maybe those in power didn't listen as carefully as she would have liked to her lyrics and possibly even to the use of subtle vacillations in her makams in the march melody. For those who know their Ottoman history, of course, the name Enver will glare painfully from the page. For those unfamiliar with this particular aspect of Ottoman history it is also an important lesson to learn. I would simply not want his name to overshadow Leyla Saz and her music in the article.</p>
Sonic Crossroadstag:soniccrossroads.com,2005:Post/61123332014-07-18T12:00:00-12:002022-03-03T23:44:16-12:00PMEA Summer Conference
<p>As a first time attendee at a <a href="http://www.pmea.net" target="_blank" data-imported="1">Pennsylvania Music Educators Conference</a>, my only frame of reference was a past experience exhibiting at the <a href="http://www.tmea.org" target="_blank" data-imported="1">Texas Music Educators Convention</a>. I expected to observe differences but not to this extent. First, the states are different in size - that's obvious. Whereas both the TMEA February convention and the combined TBA/TCDA/TODA summer conference are held in the San Antonio Convention Center with about 5,000 attendees if I'm not mistaken [Correction: there were approx. 15,000 attendees], the PMEA summer conference fit easily into a budget hotel with conference facilities. A significant part of the TMEA experience is the prominence given exhibitors - ranging from music publishers to music schools and from instrument sellers to any and every possible fundraising item you could imagine - but the PMEA conference had no space allotted to exhibitors. I'll have to admit I did not partake of many conference sessions in Texas other than a few student ensemble performances. A significant reason for this was that the conference program listings (with advertising) came to 212 pages - enough to overwhelm any first-timer without the benefit of a network of contacts whose presentations you knew about beforehand. In contrast, the PMEA offerings were on a much smaller scale, but without exception they were at a very high standard in terms of quality of presentation and usefulness for educators.</p>
<p><a href="https://musiced.nafme.org/about/nafme-leadership/scott-c-shuler/" target="_blank" data-imported="1">Scott C. Schuler</a> as immediate past president of the National Association for Music Education provided the keynote address. He presented an engaging in-depth summary of the new National Arts Education standards and also involved the attendees in a variety of activities related to these standards and the kinds of assessments that will be necessary to comply. In the afternoon breakout sessions I attended a very informative presentation on incorporating music technology into the classroom given by Rich Fisherowski of DuBois ASD. He went through a range of programs, interfaces and apps that he uses with students in K-6 classes. He discussed specific software and allowed for a lively exchange of suggestions and comments. Then I managed to catch a few selections by the wind ensemble reading group led by Kris Laird and Scott Sheehan of Hollidaysburg ASD. Though my knowledge of wind repertoire isn't extensive, it was clear that the teacher participants were interested in the commissioning projects the two directors described and the repertoire examples that they read through. The day ended with an Advocacy Report by Shannon Kelly, also of NAfME. She took us through the content available on the new NAfME advocacy website, <a href="http://www.broaderminded.com" target="_blank" data-imported="1">www.broaderminded.com</a>, and pointed us to specific tools and language to use when interacting with non-arts administrators as well as policy makers. The new advocacy video is below:</p>
<p></p>
<div class="video responsive"><div class="video-container"><div class="video responsive"><div class="video-container"><iframe frameborder="0" height="350" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/3OZUufyeg7E" width="425" class="wrapped wrapped"></iframe></div></div></div></div>
<p>The second day of the conference was devoted to break-out sessions that certain 'tracks' such as Curriculum/Assessment, Instrumental Instruction, Technology, for which participants could then receive a type of credit.</p>
<p>Because I represented the business interests as well as educational interests of Sonic Crossroads at the conference, I was dismayed to see the lack of involvement from the music industry, even though I did take away a lot from the conference as an educator. In contrast, the large exhibit space at TMEA borders on the nonsensical, particularly with the number of ensemble fundraisers touting their products, which are completed unrelated to the experience of learning or performing music. I also wonder how much interest out-of-state schools are able to garner with their exhibits when Texas schools are so aggressive at recruiting within the state. From a neighboring exhibitor to Sonic Crossroads (a promotional T-shirt business) I got at least one assessment - "I don't really do much business here - it's mostly just to pass along information and maintain connections." However, on the opposite side of the exhibit hall, the sheet music vendor with rows and rows of UIL titles was doing booming business with separate cashier stands set-up at one end of what looked like at least six exhibit booth spaces.</p>
<p>Clearly the two entities TMEA and PMEA have very different approaches to organizing their annual conferences. While I was expecting to be disappointed by the small scale of PMEA, I absolutely was not, though I do feel there has to be some sort of meeting point between the two extremes. Perhaps a healthy involvement of the music education industry in the PMEA conferences would help so many districts struggling with funding in Pennsylvania by establishing business partners in addition to the grant funding mentioned by many presenters. I'm not sure what would bring about change to the TMEA model and if there is even any call for it. From regular attendees I know, the 'total experience' seems to be a big part of the draw in attending each year.</p>
Sonic Crossroadstag:soniccrossroads.com,2005:Post/61123322014-06-11T12:00:00-12:002021-10-27T18:39:18-12:00Society for Arts Entrepreneurship Education
<p>We are very excited to have participated in the first Arts Entrepreneurship Educators conference this past weekend! Read Kathryn Woodard's blog post <a href="http://www.kathrynwoodard.com/revolutions/teaching_arts_entrepreneurship/" target="_blank" data-imported="1">here</a></p>
Sonic Crossroadstag:soniccrossroads.com,2005:Post/61123312013-09-19T12:00:00-12:002022-08-10T17:02:01-12:00Highlights from Arts Midwest
<p>From the showcases at Arts Midwest I highly recommend these outstanding groups:</p>
<p><img src="//d10j3mvrs1suex.cloudfront.net/u/393911/d597edb91374841fe0765e497620b7b6dbbb11e8/original/bettmanhalpin.jpg/!!/b%3AWyJyZXNpemU6NTUweDQwMCJd.jpg" class="size_orig justify_inline border_" alt="" height="400" width="550" /></p>
<p><strong>Stephanie Bettman</strong> (violinist & vocalist) and <strong>Luke Halpin</strong> (multi-instrumentalist & vocalist) have teamed up to create their own tight and energetic yet still soulful brand of acousitc Americana. <a href="http://www.stephaniebettman.com" target="_blank" data-imported="1">www.stephaniebettman.com</a></p>
<p> </p>
<p><img src="//d10j3mvrs1suex.cloudfront.net/u/393911/17ec8559bf89be747034bc9d2f0762a0a01360b1/original/trio-voronezh2174.jpg/!!/b%3AWyJyZXNpemU6NTAweDQ0NyJd.jpg" class="size_orig justify_inline border_" alt="" height="447" width="500" /></p>
<p><strong>Trio Voronezh</strong> performs an eclectic mix of jazz, popular songs and, of course, their own arrangements of Russian folk songs. The instrumentation - bayan (button accordion), bass balalaika and domra - creates a perfect sound and energy for jazz presenters or a chamber series looking to diversify. <a href="http://www.triovoronezh.com" target="_blank" data-imported="1">www.triovoronezh.com</a></p>
<p> </p>
<p><img src="//d10j3mvrs1suex.cloudfront.net/u/393911/900962603e902ed7bf838cf9fb86ff2a60cec318/original/aprilverchtrio-hr.jpg/!!/b%3AWyJyZXNpemU6NTAweDI4MCJd.jpg" class="size_orig justify_inline border_" alt="" height="280" width="500" /></p>
<p><strong>April Verch</strong> is indeed the star of the <strong>April Verch Trio</strong> with her mesmerizing tap dance and virtuosic fiddling - and for the final number <em>simultaneously</em>!!<strong> </strong>This group is a real crowd pleaser and an excellent choice for a university setting. <a href="http://www.aprilverch.com" target="_blank" data-imported="1">www.aprilverch.com</a></p>
<p> </p>
<p>I'm not usually in the business of reviewing comedy ... but the <strong>Chipper Lowell</strong> Magic-Comedy Showcase was a riot!</p>
<p><img src="//d10j3mvrs1suex.cloudfront.net/u/393911/8ac2a3d5df167202bf204a3a601047996597c3a7/original/chipper-lowell.jpg/!!/b%3AWyJyZXNpemU6MjAweDI5MCJd.jpg" class="size_orig justify_inline border_" alt="" height="290" width="200" /></p>
<p><a href="http://www.chipperlowellexperience.com" target="_blank" data-imported="1">www.chipperlowellexperience.com</a></p>
Sonic Crossroadstag:soniccrossroads.com,2005:Post/61123302013-04-16T12:00:00-12:002021-10-19T22:07:56-12:00Don't Idle Engine Nominated for Independent Music Award
<p>We are pleased to announce that <a href="http://engine.alansentman.com/" target="_blank" data-imported="1">Don't Idle Engine</a> - the solo studio project of Alan Sentman - has been nominated for an Independent Music Award in the category of instrumental music! Please visit the <a href="http://www.independentmusicawards.com/ima/Dont-Idle-Engine" target="_blank" data-imported="1">award announcement page</a> to read more about Sentman's music and his new album <em><a href="http://engine.alansentman.com/album/everything-that-falls-into-place" target="_blank" data-imported="1">Everything That Falls Into Place</a> - </em>and be sure to vote for Don't Idle Engine!</p>
<p><img src="//d10j3mvrs1suex.cloudfront.net/u/393911/26487f047db3185849185c101b0f15fac1742a78/original/patina.jpg/!!/b%3AWyJyZXNpemU6NDc0eDQ3NCJd.jpg" class="size_orig justify_inline border_" alt="" height="474" width="474" /></p>
Sonic Crossroadstag:soniccrossroads.com,2005:Post/61123292013-01-15T12:00:00-12:002022-05-21T04:51:02-12:00GlobalFest 2013
<p><img src="//d10j3mvrs1suex.cloudfront.net/u/393911/08b788343d9940bba35229ba03c2856d833e98cd/original/diamata.jpg/!!/b%3AWyJyZXNpemU6NDc0eDYzNSJd.jpg" class="size_orig justify_inline border_" alt="" height="635" width="474" /></p>
<p>Stunning vocalist Fatoumata Diawara from Mali at GlobalFest 2013</p>
<p> </p>
<p>With Webster Hall bursting at the seams for <a href="http://www.globalfest.org" target="_blank" data-imported="1">GlobalFest 2013</a> on Sunday, it was clear to most in the audience that the venture has grown beyond a single evening event. Intended as a large world music showcase for 12 artists on 3 stages at the annual presenters conference in New York (<a href="http://www.apap.org" target="_blank" data-imported="1">www.apap.org</a>), the concert has been heavily weighted toward pop-rock fusion styles for several years running. A good thing, considering any group with less energy and more subtlety than a fully amplified band would not survive in Globalfest's current configuration. </p>
<p>A noted exception this year was the duo featuring Persian kamanceh player, Kayhan Kalhor, and Turkish baglama player, Erdal Erzincan. Although the playbill emphasized the links between melodies of Turkish and Persian classical traditions, making this a likely forum for exchange, the baglama is actually more representative of central Anatolian folk music with little presence in current Turkish classical ensembles. This certainly does not detract from how successful these renowned performers communicated across styles, and the performance illustrated how fluid the categories 'folk, 'classical' and anything else can become in the practice of such masters. Unfortunately, for the first 20 minutes of the set (a continuous 45-minute improvisation) the amplification level for Erzincan did not match that of Kalhor, and the baglama came across as more of an accompanimental instrument. Undoubtedly for this reason, Kalhor took the lead until the problem was fixed, at which point the two were clearly equal partners in this unique stylistic and artistic collaboration.</p>
<p> </p>
<p><img src="//d10j3mvrs1suex.cloudfront.net/u/393911/d4a392d51f2269e24e48d2dc30f394f89229231e/original/kk-ee.jpg/!!/b%3AWyJyZXNpemU6NDc0eDM1NCJd.jpg" class="size_orig justify_inline border_" alt="" height="354" width="474" /></p>
<p>Kayhan Kalhor, kamanceh, and Erdal Erzincan, baglama, in the Marlin Room at Globalfest 2013</p>
Sonic Crossroadstag:soniccrossroads.com,2005:Post/61123282011-12-20T12:00:00-12:002021-12-02T16:07:51-12:00Happy Holidays from Sonic Crossroads!
<p>In the spirit of cross-cultural exchange we've 'borrowed' from the season's online postings for our own holiday greeting:</p>
<p>The official Christmas greeting from the President of Estonia</p>
<p>includes this beautiful rendition of <a href="http://www.president.ee/christmas/en/" target="_blank" data-imported="1">Vater unser</a> by Arvo Pärt</p>
<p>And on the lighter side:</p>
<p><a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-ZggJNsAuIw" target="_blank" data-imported="1">Sleigh Ride in 7/8</a> - arranged by John Eidsvoog</p>
<p> </p>
<p>Enjoy with a hefty cup of egg-nog!</p>
<p>All the best to you and yours,</p>
<p>From the Sonic Crossroads Team</p>
Sonic Crossroadstag:soniccrossroads.com,2005:Post/61123272011-11-19T12:00:00-12:002021-09-13T04:44:05-12:00Native American Pow-wow at Trader's Village
<p><img src="//d10j3mvrs1suex.cloudfront.net/u/393911/30ffad39a780064bad91f21bc86cbedd1c5c6878/original/11-12-11-contest.jpg/!!/b%3AWyJyZXNpemU6NDc0eDMyMSJd.jpg" class="size_orig justify_inline border_" alt="" height="321" width="474" /></p>
<p>Trader's Village in Houston hosted the 22nd Native American Pow-Wow Championship on Nov. 12-13. Dancers competed in several categories in the Teepee Village arena while an open air market offered traditional crafts from across the Southwest for sale.</p>
<p><img src="//d10j3mvrs1suex.cloudfront.net/u/393911/c8abe0a26bd5069127ebb433e0308da91f9da61d/original/11-12-11-dancer.jpg/!!/b%3AWyJyZXNpemU6NDcyeDUwOSJd.jpg" class="size_orig justify_inline border_" alt="" height="509" width="472" /></p>
<p>One outstanding dancer/contestant.</p>
<p><img src="//d10j3mvrs1suex.cloudfront.net/u/393911/e11b23a3599e8dd2eaa44c6a0b77abcf79dda3c7/original/11-12-11-drummers.jpg/!!/b%3AWyJyZXNpemU6NDc0eDM1NCJd.jpg" class="size_orig justify_inline border_" alt="" height="354" width="474" /></p>
<p>The Drummer's Circle accompanying the dance.</p>
<p><img src="//d10j3mvrs1suex.cloudfront.net/u/393911/78fad28499aaef7f9a09adeb78ade5c9b6011217/original/11-12-11-comm-dance.jpg/!!/b%3AWyJyZXNpemU6NDc0eDMxOSJd.jpg" class="size_orig justify_inline border_" alt="" height="319" width="474" /></p>
<p>Spectators were invited into the arena for a community dance.</p>
<p><img src="//d10j3mvrs1suex.cloudfront.net/u/393911/524e85ffa41f1054e851913ebaf4c387c42eb4d9/original/11-12-11-fair.jpg/!!/b%3AWyJyZXNpemU6NDc0eDM1NCJd.jpg" class="size_orig justify_inline border_" alt="" height="354" style="border: 0px initial initial;" width="474" /></p>
<p>And of course the weather was perfect for the open air market stalls.</p>
<p><img src="//d10j3mvrs1suex.cloudfront.net/u/393911/634cb2f9394ff47edc12d5203592ecc71e1abe53/original/11-12-11-teepee-2.jpg/!!/b%3AWyJyZXNpemU6NDc0eDM1NCJd.jpg" class="size_orig justify_inline border_" alt="" height="354" style="border: 0px initial initial;" width="474" /></p>
Sonic Crossroadstag:soniccrossroads.com,2005:Post/61123262011-11-02T12:00:00-12:002011-11-03T01:02:37-12:00WOMEX 2011: Photoblog
<p>WOMEX 2011 in Copenhagen (the World Music Expo) offered something for everyone!</p>
<p>In addition to Baiana System, these are selected highlights from showcases I attended:</p>
<p><img src="//d10j3mvrs1suex.cloudfront.net/u/393911/731124c4f27c83143a5e9312aec81ba8a6b4a5de/original/photo-2.jpg/!!/b%3AWyJyZXNpemU6NDc0eDM1NCJd.jpg" class="size_orig justify_inline border_" alt="" height="354" width="474" /></p>
<p>Carmen Paris and Melissa Aldana (saxophone): Jazz jota from Spain</p>
<p>Represented by <a href="http://doceideas.es" target="_blank" data-imported="1">Doce Ideas</a></p>
<p><img src="//d10j3mvrs1suex.cloudfront.net/u/393911/94b865b4dc20229db2d457885bd87719763b41ff/original/photo-3.jpg/!!/b%3AWyJyZXNpemU6NDc0eDM1NCJd.jpg" class="size_orig justify_inline border_" alt="" height="354" width="474" /></p>
<p>Élage Diouf of Senegal with his band. Check out his <a href="http://www.elagediouf.com" target="_blank" data-imported="1">website</a></p>
<p>Represented in Canada by Pierre-Luc Durand</p>
<p><img src="//d10j3mvrs1suex.cloudfront.net/u/393911/3edc7dff13290b11be7f31a7d5e2730f8f0c993a/original/photo.jpg/!!/b%3AWyJyZXNpemU6NDc0eDM1NCJd.jpg" class="size_orig justify_inline border_" alt="" height="354" width="474" /></p>
<p>Asif Ali Khan & Party ... and it was a party! centered around Qawwali Sufi song from Pakistan</p>
<p>Find them at <a href="http://www.zamanproduction.com/artiste/asif-ali-khan-party" target="_blank" data-imported="1">Zaman Production</a> (France)</p>
<p><img src="//d10j3mvrs1suex.cloudfront.net/u/393911/9f7936a1e9e30e8e8b0695e36a0d0a3bf85fcf7c/original/photo-4.jpg/!!/b%3AWyJyZXNpemU6NDc0eDM1NCJd.jpg" class="size_orig justify_inline border_" alt="" height="354" width="474" /></p>
<p>Hungarian Heartbeats was the sole feature of the opening night showcase. </p>
<p>Violist and manager Endre Liber conceived of this project featuring five distinct groups but often with overlapping personnel. The cimbalom duo with Kalman Balogh and Miklos Lukacs was my personal favorite (as a hammered string player myself). Coincidentally I first heard Balogh in Munich in the early 90s - undoubtedly on one of his first tours westward. The journey continues!</p>
<p><a href="http://www.hangveto.hu/index_en.php" target="_blank" data-imported="1">www.hangveto.hu</a></p>
<p><img src="//d10j3mvrs1suex.cloudfront.net/u/393911/e8bff1a823548d57d2db813ee2f9f375b11a2f22/original/tradefair.jpg/!!/b%3AWyJyZXNpemU6NDc0eDM1NiJd.jpg" class="size_orig justify_inline border_" alt="" height="356" width="474" /></p>
<p>The trade fair at Forum Copenhagen -- next year we head to Thessaloniki, Greece!</p>
Sonic Crossroadstag:soniccrossroads.com,2005:Post/61123252011-10-14T12:00:00-12:002022-07-19T09:09:57-12:00Masterful Story-telling at the Edinburgh International Festival II
<p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; font: 12.0px 'Trebuchet MS';"><span style="letter-spacing:0.0px">Although the initial draw for me to attend this year’s festival in Edinburgh, Scotland was the focus on Asia, another production - a retelling and staging of <em>1001 Arabian Nights </em>by director Tim Supple <em>- </em>was a thrilling addition to my sojourn. </span></p>
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<p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; font: 12.0px 'Trebuchet MS';"><span style="letter-spacing:0.0px">I’ll admit the advertisements for this production did not initially appeal to me. Another re-telling of the Arabian Nights; no photo of the actors or staging; just a vague street scene on the websites and posters - leading me to believe it would simply be another Disney-fied version. Boy, was I mistaken! On the contrary the first of four parts (performed over two nights) was a brutal assault on the senses to such a degree that it elicited the response, “This is just disgusting!” from someone in the audience during intermission. I didn’t disagree with him, but the second part provided enough comic relief to allow me to reflect on the purpose of that violent introduction. For those who need a refresher, the story, or stories, of <em>1001 Arabian Nights</em> are those passed down in several versions telling the fate of Shahrazad (Sheherazade), who weds Shahrayar, a great king turned violent after being betrayed by his wife. He resorts to killing a virgin bride each night, of course after raping her, in retaliation against the entire female population. Shahrazad takes it upon herself to end the violence by sacrificing herself in the belief, hope and determination that she can hold the King’s attention with her stories each night and thus prolong their marriage, saving scores of young girls from death. The scene where she pleads with her father, none other than the king’s Vizier, to allow her to marry Shahrayar is central to understanding the clear intention of her sacrifice. For this reason the initial stories (in this version and staging) are uncommonly violent and depicted accordingly. But as I concluded later: how else is one to hold the attention of a ruler turned violent despot than with tales of sexual conquest, brutal violence and sinister betrayal? And that is what greets the audience during the first part of this extraordinary tri-lingual production (Arabic, English, French) featuring a stunning pan-Arabic cast directed by Tim Supple. </span></p>
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<p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; font: 12.0px 'Trebuchet MS';"><span style="letter-spacing:0.0px">As I mentioned the second part of the first evening took a markedly lighter turn and presented a dizzying array of stories within stories where actors play multiple roles simultaneously. It’s only when the light focuses on Shahrazad center stage and we hear the periodic exchange with her sister (who accompanies her through her ordeal): “Shahrazad, that was the most amazing story! - Oh, but you haven’t you heard the one about the ... it’s even more amazing!” - that the audience chuckles in relief and astonishment as we realize how far we’d been taken on the metaphorical magic carpet. It actually seemed as if the King was following audience reaction when he allowed Shahrazad to continue ... always just one more night.</span></p>
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<p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; font: 12.0px 'Trebuchet MS';"><span style="letter-spacing:0.0px">The fact that the stories are traditionally in Arabic but tell the story of a Persian king presents a unique quandary for those who would love to present the production but who also recognize that such visceral depictions in the arts can spill over into global politics particularly with tensions as they are in the Middle East right now. I don’t know if that was a conscious decision by someone when the North American tour was restricted to Canada and some of the performers were not granted visas to the U.S. (according to someone on the management team). But it’s unfortunate that audiences - (<strong>adult</strong> audiences: the play should be rated ‘R’ for strong language and adult themes) - aren’t able to witness this extraordinary production that deals openly with tough issues. As Supple writes in the program notes, the stories “were not created for children; they are explicit, violent, complex, difficult, long, tough and adult.” Perhaps that is why we are constantly confronted with Disney versions of some of the tales in the West (or “orientalized” for those of you who know your Edward Said). It still hasn’t been possible to cross the threshold, past the ethnic and national origins of the tales to fully embrace their meaning and subtlety. The tri-lingual nature of this production is in my view extremely important for its success in bridging this gap: the stories are predominantly told in Arabic in an adaptation by Hanan al-Shaykh with occasional forays into French and English. The outstanding ensemble cast features actors from across the Arabic world from Morocco to the U.A.E., and an ensemble of musicians provided live incidental music on traditional Middle Eastern instruments but often with unique jazz-inflected interpretations of what’s possible within the Arabic improvisational tradition.</span></p>
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<p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; font: 12.0px 'Trebuchet MS';"><span style="letter-spacing:0.0px">Have we really determined that the Edinburgh International Festival can pull this one off with packed houses at the Royal Lyceum Theatre, but U.S. presenters somehow can’t?</span></p>
Sonic Crossroadstag:soniccrossroads.com,2005:Post/61123242011-09-29T12:00:00-12:002022-05-05T22:19:36-12:00Masterful Story-telling at the Edinburgh International Festival
<p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; font: 12.0px 'Trebuchet MS';"><span style="letter-spacing:0.0px">All it took was an e-mail to launch a week-long trip to Edinburgh, Scotland for this year’s international festival (August 12-September 4). Somehow I was the lucky recipient of an announcement for the world premiere of <em>The Wind-Up Bird Chronicle</em> to take place at the festival, and after further investigation of the festival’s copious offerings from Asia, the internet travel searching began. (I’ll admit, escaping one of the longest heat-waves in Texas for the 65-degree temperatures in Edinburgh was another draw.)</span></p>
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<p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; font: 12.0px 'Trebuchet MS';"><span style="letter-spacing:0.0px">In addition to the staging of <em>The Wind-Up Bird Chronicle, </em>a novel by the acclaimed Japanese author Haruki Murakami,<em> </em>the festival offered a re-telling of Hamlet as Peking opera in <em>The Revenge of Prince Zi Dan, </em>Eun-Me Ahn’s interpretation with her dance company of the Korean folk-tale<em> Princess Bari, </em>and rare performances by the Yogyakarta court gamelan from Java, Indonesia. </span></p>
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<p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; font: 12.0px 'Trebuchet MS';"><span style="letter-spacing:0.0px">If there was one major disappointment, it was that the gamelan ensemble (of mostly bronze gongs, kettle gongs and xylophones) didn’t draw as sizable an audience as I would have hoped and expected. The smaller venue at the Festival’s HUB (which was filled to capacity) reminded me that the nature of the court gamelan and its music demanded an elite audience (musically elite, that is) - one that would appreciate nuance and subtlety and the meditative nature of the music. The festival organizers certainly gauged audience response appropriately, and the choice of venue did allow audience members an up-close look at the musicians and instruments, and for a few numbers, dancers. My disappointment was purely from the realization that so few were availing themselves of this rare opportunity to see and hear one of the world’s great musical traditions.</span></p>
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<p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; font: 12.0px 'Trebuchet MS';"><span style="letter-spacing:0.0px">What the other productions shared (and what clearly draws the crowds) is masterful story-telling. In the case of <em>The Wind-Up Bird Chronicle </em>at King’s Theatre, Murakami’s lengthy and cryptic narrative was expertly molded into a theatrical production by Stephen Earnhart and his team. Earnhart’s background as a film director often came through in the production’s multi-media approach, leaving one with the sense of having experienced ‘staged film.’ It is most probably this sense that allowed me to sit for two hours with no intermission with no notice of the time passed - as if sitting through a standard-length film. The production was astonishing in its ability to create the surreal and introspective nature of Murakami’s narrative as the central character (Toru Okada) tries to understand his wife’s disappearance and at the same time to offer viscerally powerful scenes that grip one’s attention and offer commentary on Toru’s quest to find her. In pre-performance commentary, Earnhart noted the collaborative nature of the production, not only combining Japanese and English language dialogue but also drawing on Bunraku puppetry and the musical expertise of Bora Yoon for the work’s live soundscape. </span></p>
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<p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; font: 12.0px 'Trebuchet MS';"><span style="letter-spacing:0.0px">In contrast to <em>Wind-Up Bird Chronicle,</em> Eun-me Ahn’s choreography at The Edinburgh Playhouse took a well-known Korean folk-tale and interpreted it in a non-linear fashion, exploring themes of gender identity and generational conflict in the process. In <em>Princess Bari </em>the story centers around a royal couple who are seeking a male heir and in the process produce seven daughters. Bari, the seventh daughter, is banished and sent to the ‘other realm’ as an offering to appease the powers that have so disgraced the royal family. After many years away she is then called upon to search for an elixir to heal her ailing father but not before she attempts to restore the family lineage by producing seven sons in the netherworld. </span></p>
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<p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; font: 12.0px 'Trebuchet MS';"><span style="letter-spacing:0.0px">While the story with its origins in shamanistic ritual would seem to lend itself to an austere rendering, Eun-me Ahn’s interpretation is remarkably light-hearted and humorous with ‘moves’ from the dancers blending well with the rock and funk-peppered music of Young-Gyu Jang (on Western and traditional instruments including kayagum, changgo and p’iri). Most striking was the commentary on the inherent issue of the story, Bari’s and her other sister’s identity as female. One could argue that Ahn simply turns the men in her company into featureless girls by putting them in two-sided dresses, but it seems to be a more subtle commentary on what gender differences actually are. ‘Two opposing identities in each person’ works well not only through the explicit nature of the costumes, but also through Bari’s various roles as she passes between living and spiritual realms. (Further note: the polka dotted sides of the costumes from earlier production photographs were substituted with scotch plaid for Edinburgh which, of course, further complicates gender notions as men in skirts are not rare here.)</span></p>
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<p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; font: 12.0px 'Trebuchet MS';"><span style="letter-spacing:0.0px">This performance was the perfect introduction to my time in Edinburgh as I left it feeling upbeat and charged from the energy of the dance and music, but also suitably intrigued by the subtlety that Ahn brought to the story and its themes.</span></p>
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<p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; font: 12.0px 'Trebuchet MS';"><span style="letter-spacing:0.0px"><em>The Revenge of Zi Dan</em> performed by the Shanghai Peking Opera Troupe at Edinburgh Festival Theatre was relatively straight-forward for someone who knows Peking opera and the story of Hamlet. What this production offered was a high-quality introduction to Peking opera through a recognizable story. The singing and musical accompaniment were of the highest calibre as were the staging, movement and sound amplification. (The latter was often a study in distortion techniques from performances I saw in China in 2005.) Hard-core fans may be disappointed in the lack of extended scenes of acrobatics, but it was a wise decision not to overuse them here in such a well-known context. </span></p>
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<p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; font: 12.0px 'Trebuchet MS';"><span style="letter-spacing:0.0px">The only unfortunate distraction from the quality of <em>Zi Dan</em> was the translation projected as supertitles. As my neighbor noted during an intermission - ‘That’s odd. I don’t recall ‘Wow!’ from my reading of Hamlet’ - not to mention the glaring grammatical errors and awkward syntax. I could only conclude that it was the hubris that comes from cultural isolation - ‘Somehow our English version is going to be better than anything Will Shakespeare could write.’ - OR it was a desperate plea for help - ‘Yes, we know we need more open communication channels in our country in order to collaborate with you on a translation.’ (It was all the more disturbing after witnessing such a successful collaboration between American and Japanese artists that <em>Wind-Up Bird </em>offered<em>.</em>)<em> </em>I just hope someone has the sense to fix the supertitles before further tours of the production.</span></p>
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<p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; font: 12.0px 'Trebuchet MS';"><span style="letter-spacing:0.0px">As a final note, the festival should be applauded for its high-quality programs with notes and commentary by some of the most respected scholars in their fields: Benjamin Brinner for gamelan music, Keith Howard for Korean folklore and music, Jonathan P.J. Stock for Peking Opera, and Matthew Strecher for Murakami’s literature. I would think it would be worthwhile to publish the notes along with photography from the performances as a document of this year’s offerings.</span></p>
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Sonic Crossroadstag:soniccrossroads.com,2005:Post/61123232011-08-18T12:00:00-12:002021-07-19T08:07:06-12:00Colombia in NYC: Rebolu, Diego Obregon y Grupo Chonta, and Sexteto Tabala
<p>The next event I chose to attend in New York over the first weekend in August was "Heritage Sunday" on the 7th, which was presented by the Center for Traditional Music and Dance as part of the Lincoln Center Out of Doors Festival. Held in Hearst Plaza, this year's concert featured three groups representing Afro-Colombian musical traditions. The title of the concert, "The Other Side of Colombia" seemed to refer equally to the marginalized status of the Afro-Colombian population within the broader culture and to the two coasts of Colombia, Atlantic and Pacific, each of which has distinct musical styles.</p>
<p>Sexteto Tabala was billed first on the event's ads, but they performed last. This was a wise programming choice whether by circumstance or by curatorial decision. As the one group who had traveled from Colombia on an extensive tour, their music and performance stood in stark contrast to the two New York-based groups, truly giving the audience an aural glimpse of different sides of Colombia. A main focus of the concert, as moderated by Michael Birenbaum Quintero, was to highlight the borrowing across traditions that has resulted in the various styles of Afro-Colombian music and also the borrowing across current Latin styles and the adoption of the 'cumbia' sound by a broad swath of Latin America.</p>
<p>Rebolu opened the concert, representing the Atlantic Caribbean with 'bullerengue' and 'gaita' music. Ronald Polo leads the group as composer of its songs, vocalist, and performer on the gaita. The gaita is a unique flute that has its origins among the indigenous people of the Sierra Nevada mountains and is made of cactus wood, charcoal and wood for the mouthpiece, with a ducktail feather for the reed. ('Gaita' is actually a borrowed Spanish word meaning 'bagpipe' and a poor sonic description of the instrument known as 'cuisi' in Colombia.) After Polo offers beautiful solos on the gaita to represent indigenous music high in the mountains, the group then joins in on alegre, tambora, and llamador, three drums that provide the complex polyrhythms typical of much African music. Essentially as gaita players and gaita music migrated down the mountains, they were joined by women singers and drummers descended from the slave populations of the coast who performed these complex rhythmic patterns. The rhythms and the genres they spawned, such as fandango, are collectively known as 'bullerengue,' and Moris Canate masterfully led the Rebolu's ensemble of drummers in these styles. Grupo Rebolu then makes one more shift to include a brass/wind section, completing a process of fusion that has resulted in widespread popularity of such music in Colombia and most widely known as 'cumbia.'</p>
<p>Diego Obregon and his Grupo Chonta performed the second set or the afternoon with Obregon opening as soloist on the marimba. His self-constructed marimba was clearly closer to the African model for the instrument, the 'balafon,' than the standardized, Western instruments, and is made from the Pacific palm named 'chonta,' hence the name for the group. Obregon's solo was the highlight of the afternoon to my ears, demonstrating his ability to improvise and also to carry the energy of the audience through his melodies and various textures on a single instrument. The group's set followed a similar trajectory as that of Rebolu - gradually adding elements to create a unique fusion of styles. In Chonta's case these elements draw on music used to worship the saints that are particular to the isolated black populations of the Pacific rainforests while also incorporating newer sounds of the latest popular styles.</p>
<p>While the first two groups clearly demonstrated the mixing of various harmonic textures with African solo instruments and complex rhythms, Sexteto Tabala's style was a contrast through the absence of any pitched instruments save for the bass instrument 'marimba', a type of mbira or 'thumb piano.' In this case the instrument was anything but for the thumbs, as it was a large box that the player sat on while plucking the metal tongues with multiple fingers. It kept a vague bass line to anchor the percussive texture and call-and-response vocals. Though it took me a while to adjust to the sparser texture (that is, without harmonic underpinnings), the reward of making the shift was to perceive the sheer drive of the call and response vocals and the trance-inducing qualities of the music. Despite, or perhaps because of, the sparser sound of this group, the clear reference to Cuban 'son' music was easier to detect, namely the 3 + 2 clave pattern over a cycle of 8 beats. As the moderator Quintero explained, 'sexteto' music is actually the result of contact between Afro-Cuban engineers who came to Colombia in the 1930s to manage sugar plantations and the Afro-Colombians who worked for them.</p>
<p>Quintero's commentary and interaction with the musicians and audience were central to the success of the concert as were his program notes. At times the audience tended to get restless during his comments wanting to hear more music, but he provided just the right amount of information explaining the cultural context of various songs and picking out musical attributes to listen for. Actually I was amazed at the patience of the audience on a hot and sticky afternoon as there was not the usual come-and-go during breaks that I've seen at other free outdoor events. Clearly the Colombian community and other interested followers came out and were committed to the afternoon.</p>
Sonic Crossroadstag:soniccrossroads.com,2005:Post/61123222011-08-11T12:00:00-12:002021-07-14T22:40:31-12:00Passion in Naples
<p>On a recent trip to New York I managed to take in three films, four art exhibits and two live music performances. Although I intended only to write about the concerts for my blog, I’ll offer some thoughts on my other visits as they relate to music and/or cross-cultural exchange through art.</p>
<p>I started my trip with a stroll down to the Film Forum (Houston and 6<sup>th</sup> Ave.) where I saw <em>Passione, </em>directed by John Turturro. Evidently it was fortunate I had not seen the trailer as several friends reported that they had been turned off by the preview and were not interested in seeing the film. Going in unaware of what to expect I thoroughly enjoyed sitting for 90 minutes and listening to the various vocalists and styles that Turturro chose to feature in this film about the rich musical culture of Naples. The range of vocal qualities and colors was astonishing - from archival recordings of operatic tenor Enrico Caruso to the rich ‘grain’ in the voices of Pietra Montecorvino and Pepe Barra. Nevertheless the “music as portrayed in film” critic in me did take over at times.</p>
<p>The basic premise of <em>Passione</em> was to portray the importance of song in Naples as an emotional thread binding people and cultures together. The widely varying influences that resulted in the uniqueness of Neopolitan music did become apparent through the many sequences of informal interviews and performances. The hip-hop dance sequence that was linked to the energy of a medieval tarantella was particularly striking. It occurred to me very early into the film that the goal may have been to create a <em>Buena Vista Social Club </em>equivalent for Naples. But without the continuity that was created by following members of BVSC for a period of time and several of their performances, <em>Passione</em> merely scratched the surface of what would undoubtedly be a rich field for further exploration.</p>
<p>Several editorial decisions also contributed to the superficial feel of <em>Passione</em>. Most nettlesome was the MTV music-video strategy for filming music performance, that is, using a prerecorded studio version of a song to underscore a lip-synched filming of the vocalists on location somewhere in Naples. This was somewhat tolerable when there was a story to reenact, but in a few instances the filming was done as if the group were performing on the street with microphones, etc. Maybe those of us who perceive the disconnect between the audio and video in such cases are just too few in number to consider. A second short-coming was that none of the female vocalists were interviewed (to my recollection) about their craft, their background, or what they were singing. As many of the songs highlighted women’s dubious social roles as performers (a fact alluded to by Turturro and stated out-right in one of the songs—“They call me a whore”), Turturro could have also chosen to subvert these perceived roles by allowing commentary from the vocalists themselves.</p>
<p>Again, I thoroughly enjoyed the film. These critiques are for those who may be looking at <em>Passione </em>as potential classroom material. With a bit of research to find more in-depth information and additional sound files for comparison, sequences from the film could be used to great effect. And from my experience, asking the questions about how music and musicians are portrayed in film spark the most interesting discussions.</p>
Sonic Crossroadstag:soniccrossroads.com,2005:Post/61123212011-08-04T12:00:00-12:002021-09-12T22:45:03-12:00Western Music in Turkey from the Nineteenth Century to the Present
<p>Western Music in Turkey from the Nineteenth Century to the Present by Kathryn Woodard</p>
<p>From works such as Mozart’s <em>Abduction from the Seraglio</em> and Beethoven’s <em>The Ruins of Athens</em> many music listeners are familiar with the practice of evoking the sound of Turkish music, specifically music of the Janissary corps, within European works of the eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries. What is less known in the West is that shortly after the alla turca style had reached its peak in Europe, Western music also made its way to Turkey, as a substitute, in fact, for the Janissary music that Europeans had come to associate with the Ottoman Empire. This turn of events was the result of Sultan Mahmud II’s decision in 1826 to abolish the Janissary corps after decades of previous attempts by his predecessors at reforming the Ottoman army with little success. Mahmud’s goal was to form a new army along European lines and this included forming a European military band to replace the music of the Janissary corps.</p>
<p>Because of his military career and training in music, Giuseppe Donizetti, brother of the opera composer Gaetano, was invited to Istanbul to assist in the military reforms as they pertained to music. He directed the first regimental band and composed marches for the ensemble. <em>Mahmudiye</em> for Sultan Mahmud I was composed in 1829 soon after his arrival in Istanbul, and Mecidiye was dedicated to Sultan Abdülmecid who succeeded his father Mahmud to the throne in 1839 and who had known Donizetti during his childhood in the palace. Donizetti also formed and directed an Imperial orchestra that performed at the Ottoman palace often for the Sultan’s European guests. In 1836 he assisted in establishing the Imperial Music School (Muzika-i Hümayun Mektebi) that trained the palace musicians, and he invited other European musicians to teach at the school. The instructors taught not only male musicians who served at the palace but also female residents of the harem, which had its own orchestra that performed at court functions.</p>
<p>One of the most prominent musicians to be educated in the harem was Leyla Saz (1850-1936), or Leyla Hanimefendi as she was known before surnames were adopted in Turkey. Her memoirs provide a unique glimpse at the musical life of the nineteenth-century Ottoman palace. As the daughter of the surgeon-in-chief of the palace during the reigns of Mahmud and Abdülmecid, Leyla Saz spent several of her early years in the Imperial harem. It was considered a privilege at the time to be educated in the harem and she made particular use of the music instruction she received as a resident of the palace. Today Saz is recognized as one of the foremost composers of Ottoman classical songs, or şarkı, of the nineteenth century. She also composed pieces in the European style such as marches and recalls in her memoirs how Turkish and Western music existed side by side in the palace: "The orchestra for Western music and the brass band practiced together two times a week and the orchestra for Turkish music only one time.… Western music was taught with notes and Turkish music without them; as had always been the custom, Turkish music was learned by ear alone." This excerpt refers specifically to the ensembles of the harem, including the brass band, and Saz later mentions works played by the harem orchestra on one occasion: selections from Rossini’s <em>William Tell</em> and Verdi’s <em>La Traviata</em>.</p>
<p>By mid-century performances of Western music were not restricted to the Ottoman palace. The broader public was introduced to music from Europe through traveling opera companies and performances by solo virtuosos such as Franz Liszt who traveled to Istanbul in 1847. Foreign embassies provided venues for such performances, as did the establishment of the first theaters in the city during the latter half of the nineteenth century. Italian operas were particularly popular at this time, and full productions of Verdi’s<em> Il Trovatore</em>, <em>Un ballo in maschera,</em> and <em>Rigoletto</em> were performed at the Naum Theatre soon after their European premieres.</p>
<p>Ottoman composers were influenced and inspired by these performances and became interested in writing music for the theater. One of the first to do so was Dıkran Çuhacıyan, of Armenian descent, who traveled to Milan to study composition at the conservatory. Recently I came across scores for operettas by Çuhacıyan and his contemporaries Ismaili Hakkı Bey and Celal Bey from the new Borusan Library in Istanbul. Although the works are called "operettas" implying a connection to European works of the same name, the scores consist of only a single notated melodic line, indicating influence from Ottoman classical music. Rather than simply composing in a polyphonic European style with Ottoman dramatic subjects, the composers retain the monophonic texture of Ottoman classical music, the predominant style at the Ottoman court before the introduction of Western music. The exact instrumentation is not clear from the score and it is possible that both Western and Ottoman instruments may have performed side by side. There are even instructions in some scores for the performance of taksim, an instrumental improvisational form in Ottoman music. Some scholars have proposed that it was standard practice to improvise harmonies to the notated melodies, on the piano for example. Such works demonstrate just how syncretic so-called Western genres had become in nineteenth-century Istanbul.</p>
<p>The practice of creating a synthesis between Turkish and Western music continued in the twentieth century and reached a peak with the generation of composers who came of age at the time of the founding of the Turkish Republic in 1923. Ahmed Adnan Saygun (1907-1991) belongs to this generation and is considered one of Turkey’s foremost composers of Western classical music. His output includes five operas, five symphonies, two piano concertos, and numerous choral and chamber works. Born in the Aegean coastal city of Izmir he received his first musical training by taking lessons on the piano and the ud, a six-stringed lute played in Ottoman classical music. In 1928 Saygun traveled to Paris to study with Vincent D’Indy at the Schola Cantorum as part of a program sponsored by the Turkish government to support the European education of the Turkey’s most promising artists. Saygun spent three years in Paris studying counterpoint, harmony, orchestration, organ and composition. Upon his return to Turkey he assisted in establishing several institutions including the Music Teachers School in Ankara, the new capital.</p>
<p>Saygun’s compositions at this time were strongly influenced by Turkish reform politics calling for the development of a national culture that would combine Western forms and ideals with elements and influences from Turkish folk culture. To some degree, the idea of the reforms can be seen as similar to those instituted by Sultan Mahmud one hundred years earlier. However, unlike the earlier reforms, which allowed Ottoman and Western music to exist side by side, the aim of the Republican reforms was to break entirely with the Ottoman past as an Eastern, and therefore antiquated, influence. Ottoman art and culture were shunned during this period, including music, which was banned for a short time from radio broadcasts, and attention was drawn to folk art, poetry and music from all parts of Turkey.</p>
<p>Although Saygun had already undertaken his own studies of Turkish folk music in the years following his return from Paris, a watershed event occurred in 1936, both for Saygun personally and for Turkish music scholarship, when Bela Bartok traveled to Turkey for lectures, concerts and a two-week expedition to rural parts of southern Anatolia to make recordings and transcriptions of folk music. Saygun served as Bartok’s assistant and interpreter, and he was undoubtedly influenced by Bartok’s music and his approach to research. In 1938 Saygun wrote the Sonatina, Op. 15 for piano, which includes a movement entitled "Horon" a fast-paced dance from the eastern Black Sea region where he traveled in 1937 to conduct his own fieldwork research. The movement includes several references to the sound of a horon, namely the irregular meter of 7/8 and the predominant use of quartal harmony to evoke the sound of the Black Sea kemence, a bowed three-string fiddle on which horons are performed. Irregular meters that combine odd and even numbers of beats are quite common in Turkish folk music, and Saygun refers to them as aksak rhythms, from the Turkish word for "limping," a term that is actually borrowed from Ottoman classical music as a label for various rhythmic modes, or usuls. As we see from this and later examples, Saygun often drew on his knowledge of and affinity for Ottoman art music in his own compositions despite the explicit calls by reformers to reject the style of music.</p>
<p>In a later piano work <em>Anadolu’dan</em> (1945) Saygun continues to explore the use of folk dances as a basis for composing. The title translates as "From Anatolia" referring to the peninsula that is most of the territory of Turkey. The work consists of three dances "Meşeli", "Zeybek", and "Halay" and the use of aksak rhythms is prominent in each of them. In addition Saygun relies on a consistent modal framework for the first dance—the pitches A, B, C, D, E-flat, F-sharp, G—which can be compared to a makam, or mode, in Ottoman classical music, called karcığar that is also found frequently in folk music. For the third dance Saygun ventures into more modernist directions, for example, by using bimodality to juxtapose contrasting melodies. He continues this trend toward modernism in his later piano works. Cycles such as the Ten Etudes on Aksak Rhythms, Twelve Preludes on Aksak Rhythms, and Ten Sketches on Aksak Rhythms still use various elements taken from folk music, but they are divorced from their original context as dances or songs and worked into more complex rhythmic and contrapuntal textures. (Saygun’s music can be purchased from Peermusic Classical and several scores are now available from sheetmusicplus.com.)</p>
<p>Saygun’s most well known work is the <em>Yunus Emre Oratorio</em> (1942) in which he set poetry of the fourteenth-century Turkish mystic Yunus Emre. To my knowledge it is the first oratorio based on Islamic texts and Saygun’s decision to compose such an overtly religious work at that time in the Republic’s history flies in the face of reform period policies, which rejected and banned Sufi orders, including the Bektashi order, of which Yunus Emre is considered the founder. However, since Yunus Emre wrote in Turkish, unlike the well known Sufi poet of the thirteenth century Jalal al-Din Rumi who wrote in Persian, he could be considered a folk poet and therefore an appropriate subject to explore as a source for understanding the origins of Turkish culture in Anatolia. This explanation should not detract from Saygun’s daring in choosing to compose the work and to use Sufi texts. Clearly, his intention was to present the words of the Islamic mystic as a means to bridge religious traditions and foster universal understanding. He purposefully chose to have English, German and French translations included in the score along with the Turkish, so as to make performances by European choruses and soloists more likely. The oratorio did not receive such international attention, however, until Leopold Stokowski performed the work at the United Nations in 1958.</p>
<p>Saygun was one among several composers who had been educated in Europe and who sought to create a national style representative of Turkey. Other prominent composers of his generation were Cemal Reşit Rey, Ulvi Cemal Erkin, Hasan Ferid Alnar, and Necil Kazim Akses. Together with Saygun they were dubbed the " Turkish Five" by the Turkish musicologist Halil Bedi Yönetken as a direct reference to the Russian "Mighty Handful." Indeed, the legacy of these composers lives on in Turkey today through cultural institutions that they helped establish and through the many students they taught. Saygun in particular educated many students as a professor at both the Istanbul State Conservatory and the Ankara State Conservatory. Several of his students now teach at those institutions and I have had the pleasure of meeting some of them as part of my research of Saygun’s life and music. Muammer Sun (b. 1932) has taught at the Ankara Conservatory since 1987 following positions at the Izmir and Istanbul Conservatories. He has been active in promoting choral music in Turkey and has helped establish over 150 children’s choruses. His works draw on folk songs and include several suites for orchestra, song cycles for chorus, and a four-volume cycle of piano pieces entitled "Country Colors." Six of these pieces are found on the Sonic Crossroads album, <em>Silhouettes.</em></p>
<p>Hasan Uçarsu (b. 1965) was one of Saygun’s last students at the Istanbul Conservatory, where he now teaches. Following his studies with Saygun, Uçarsu came to the United States to study with George Crumb at the University of Pennsylvania where he completed his doctoral degree. He has twice won the first prize in the Eczacibasi National Composition Contest for orchestral works. In 2001 Uçarsu received a commission to write a chamber work for the Silk Road Ensemble directed by Yo-Yo Ma. The result entitled "On the Back Streets of Old Istanbul" calls for a unique combination of instruments: clarinet, cello, harp, percussion, and kanun, a zither played in Ottoman classical music. The timbral effects are clearly influenced by Crumb’s music, and here, as in many of Crumb’s works, modernist techniques are employed in order to evoke the sound of an ancient world. By combining instruments from two different traditions, Uçarsu also points the way to a new direction for composers in Turkey, one that not only draws on elements from other styles and transfers them to Western instruments, but also allows the music in its original form to coexist and intermingle with Western genres and forms. Two piano pieces by Uçarsu are found on the Sonic Crossroads album, <em>Journeys.</em></p>
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<p>Pianist Kathryn Woodard specializes in 20th- and 21st-century repertoire and has been researching the music of non-Western composers since 1997.</p>
<p>Resources: Mahmut R. Gazimihal, <em>Türk Avrupa Musiki Münasebetleri,</em> Ankara, 193</p>
<p>Leyla (Saz) Hanimefendi, <em>The Imperial Harem of the Sultan: The Memoirs of Leyla Hanimefendi</em>, Reprinted by Hil Yayin, Istanbul, 1998.</p>
<p>Kathryn Woodard, "Creating a National Music in Turkey: The Solo Piano Works of Ahmed Adnan Saygun," D.M.A. Thesis, University of Cincinnati, 1999.</p>
<p>Recordings: <em>European Music at the Ottoman Court</em>, The London Academy of Ottoman Court Music, Emre Aracı, conductor, Kalan Müzik Yapım, 2000. www.kalan.com</p>
<p><em> Ottoman Music: Women Composers,</em> Sony Music (Turkey), 2001. www.sonymusic.com.tr</p>
<p>Ahmed Adnan Saygun, <em>Symphonies 1 & 2</em>, Staatsphilharmonie Rheinland-Pfalz, Ari Rasilainen, conductor, CPO Records, 2002. www.cpo.de</p>
Sonic Crossroads