Cease fire

Wars rarely settle anything--this is why they usually come in pairs. Or in several installments. The fault lines in Europe have, in reality, provided at least four world wars, though the first two are routinely known as the Seven Years War and the Napoleonic Wars, so even though they involve the same peoples primarily, they aren't given a number.

With this lofty example in mind, and given that there have also been several "police actions" that have killed people in the last century, perhaps this is really more of a squabble. But somebody though it would go down better if they attached the term war.

At this most festive time of year, we often see fit to make a slight provision for those who feel the need to start a war over whether or not we are allowed to say "Merry Christmas." I wish we lived in a world where nobody seemed bothered about it if we did, but that would involve going back and repealing the long history of Christians persecuting and killing people who they regarded as less than themselves, then and now. In other words, I have sympathy with those who would rather not be subject to drive-by Christmasses, particularly when they seem to be more of a threat than a promise. But it also seems that in reality, rather than on TV, most people do not take much offence, and certainly don't start a war over it, if they are suddenly Christmassed from close range. In return, it would be more than helpful if the Christmas lobby realized that their ears would most likely not fall off if they got Happy Holidazed instead. There are folks out there who celebrate other holidays and it might even be considered Christian to respect that. There is at least one fringe character from within the tradition who thought the two most important commandments involved loving God and loving your neighbor. But his teachings seem to have gone out of style.

I bring this up only because this year, in my limit wanderings out of home, to a big box store or two, the post office, a couple of drive-through lanes at the fast food, nobody wished me a happy or a merry anything. And I myself found, although I wanted to, I was afraid to try. The closer we got to Christmas the less I wanted to cork my own tradition by saying Season's Greetings, but I still didn't want to be offensive. Each year it seems that what I wish would translate to Love and Joy and Peace means that less and less because it keeps being used as a battering ram to do just the opposite. And just as in every war, this is justified because the people doing most of the shooting insist it is merely self-defense.

I think we have reached a place where, out of exhaustion, and general sadness, people just don't even want to go there anymore. At least that is what it seemed in my neck of the woods.

Now admittedly that was a small sample size. It has been roundly established by now that we all have our bubbles of experience and should not assume everybody else is getting the same vibes. 

But from where I sit, if it takes a long preamble to do it, I'd like to wish you a Merry Christmas. And if you need to translate that into some other words to make it accord better with your own tradition or your own habits, go right ahead. I don't own copyright on them anyway. They are simply an invitation to joy. An invitation is an invitation, not a threat. It doesn't have to be returned, or accepted. You don't need to RSVP. You can ignore it. 

I'm hoping to find joy in these waning, dark days of December, and I hope you do, too.

Marietta

She died on her birthday. Maybe it is a sign of how much goal-orienting striving has taken over my life that part of me thought: good for her! She made it to a full year. Like crossing the finish line. And it was a round number. She was exactly 95.

The rest of me was sad and hollow. Marietta had been a friend of mine. I hadn't seen her in several years, since I moved away from Illinois. I wanted to visit her last year when I went out there for a concert, but her overprotective son wouldn't let me come. Apparently that's happened to a lot of people. I knew when I left town that I wouldn't see her again.

Marietta was an all-around nice person. But since the piano was such a big part of her life that is mainly how I knew her. She played piano/organ duets with me often when I was the organist at Faith church in Illinois between 2005 and 2016. There are a few stories I can tell.

First there is the story of how she and her husband met. It involved a car accident in which he "accidentally" backed his car into hers at a stoplight. He fessed up about it years later after a service. That was an amusing conversation to be part of! (I think that was also the most put out I've ever seen her)

In my mind she is always around 90 because that's when I knew her. But that didn't make her close-minded. After one of my more mind-bending offertories one Sunday morning (an instrumental Sanctus) she told me that it reminded her of the universe!

She had been a piano teacher for many years, and could be very demanding! When we practiced she always wanted to make sure we had the right balance between piano and organ. And if somebody goofed we tried it again. But she was too nice to say anything vulgar to the usher who turned the lights out on us during a postlude! 

(At the early service there generally weren't many people and the usher, a very consistently grouchy fellow, turned the lights out 45 seconds after the benediction and if you were still in the sanctuary, too bad!)

Whenever the piano needed to be tuned there were three stages it had to pass through since we had a tight budget. 1) the part where I noticed the piano was starting to lose its tune a little. It annoyed me, but I figured, nobody else yet. 2) the part where Marietta came up to me after the service and mentioned that the piano needed to be tuned 3) the day it suddenly 'fell off a cliff' and would be noticeable to the average person. That's when I got the piano tuned. 

I got to visit Marietta in her home a few times, and see the butterflies and and the bees that enjoyed her flowers. We always had something to talk about. I miss her.

Radio problems

The local classical radio station in Pittsburgh, WQED-FM, went off the air for a few days last week because of problems with their transmitter. Apparently some time on Thanksgiving Day the tower caught fire. This in itself is interesting because that afternoon I went for a run around Pittsburgh (no dinner to attend and a wife working, so why not?) and at one point I ran right by the station. I don't recall seeing anything on fire. 

One can imagine the frustration of not being able to broadcast. There was an alternative, however. The station can also be heard online, so it was to that medium that they took to appeal to listener patience and perhaps a temporary change in habits.

Trying to reach listeners can be challenging enough when the equipment works. It was around that same time that I realized that my little radio station might be shorting its own listener reach because the little advertisements I was putting in the corner of each page of pianonoise.com weren't always showing up. All of that work goes for nothing if your viewers don't know it's there. 

And why would that be? Simply because I was calling my little files "ads" and anybody with an adblocker wasn't getting them. I renamed them "ants" earlier this week so now, prominently displayed in the right hand upper corner of each page should be a little box that tells everyone what is currently playing on Pianonoise Radio. Click on it and this week you'll be treated to an hour of Christmas-related music I recorded over the last few years here in Pittsburgh.

I can't, of course, control the listener's experience, as I've lamented before. The quality of the sound depends largely on the equipment of the one playing it. I had a lovely experience when testing the show; it turns on that my recent tablet acquisition has very suitable speakers. It is the first time I didn't mind the sound quality from computer speakers. Normally I have to use headphones, but I doubt most people are willing to do that. For that matter, most probably aren't willing to actually listen. But at least speakers are being made now of such quality that playing music in the background on your phone or computer doesn't sound too grating. 

The final component is the mood of the person listening (mostly or slightly). I can't control that either, although music is often used as mood control, and that, it just might be in my power to alter for the better this holiday season. I often look askance at the limited uses music is put to in order to affect its recipients like sonic caffeine, or sonic prozac, or some other sonic drug, but somebody is probably having a rough day, or a rough life, and could use a but of what is, after all, a relatively harmless drug. 

And if you find yourself getting addicted, there are another 40 hours in the archive. Just paste this into your browser window:

www.pianonoise.com/Listen.PianoMusic.htm

Enjoy!

Beethoven's Pastorale

 It's Beethoven's 250th birthday today, and I haven't played a note of his music. Of course, I just got out of quarantine, so there's that, and we're in the middle of the Christmas season, so there's that (even in the year of the pandemic I have a good bit of seasonal music to provide). 

When I was in high school I used to pass out Beethoven's Birthday cards to mark the occasion. I hope he doesn't think I'm backsliding.

A strange thought occurred to me when I thought about what I might play for you of his music. What, after all, does one play to sum up, represent, a composer with such a huge and quality catalog of works? And what do I have in my stock of available recordings that might answer?

For the past several Christmases, I have been obsessed with a couple of genres. One of them is the Pastorale, a type of piece that evokes the countryside, and possibly shepherds (abiding in their fields), with its drone bass, triple time, and dotted notes creating a bucolic atmosphere that makes city-dwellers like myself (and most of the composers of these things) pine for the simplicity of the rustic life. The first year I looked at examples by Bach and Buxtehude which seemed connected to the Christmas story. Then some examples that for one reason or another different fit the "official" description of a Pastorale in one way or another; works by Pintaric (one practically a polka), or Parker, or Liszt--am I forgetting anybody? Probably.

Anyhow, it just happens that one of Beethoven's 32 piano sonatas has the nickname "Pastorale" and indeed begins with a movement that includes a drone bass (repeated) and a leisurely triple-time melody that is just right for this kind of piece. And it's very relaxing.

However, it is the fourth and final movement that I'm going to play for you. It also has a drone and is in triple time, and is, by Beethovenian standards, pretty relaxed, save for the storm that pops up in the middle. It satisfies my obligation to observe Beethoven's birthday and it continues the tradition of posting a pastorale or two for Christmas.

Enjoy!

Beethoven: Sonata in D, op. 28 "Pastorale" -- Mvmt. 4 "Rondo: Allegro ma non troppo"

---If you'd like to (re)visit some of those other pastorale-related entries, a good start is the ten-part series which is in the right hand menu under the caption "Shepherd Series"--subsequent entries include the Parker Pastorale, which can be found here. There's also an entry about one by Edwin Lamare. If you'd like more information about Beethoven, there is a series that I wrote while teaching a course of lectures on him a couple of years ago, also in the menu on the right, under "Beethoven" (duh)

Quarantine

 It began a week ago, with a slight cough and a little tightness in the chest. 

Covid symptoms.

Of course, anything is a potential Covid symptom. Anything and nothing.

But the lower respiratory part worried me. It even made it a little harder to breathe. And I had childhood asthma, so I know what that feels like. Not good. Kind of like you are dying.

But this wasn't nearly so severe. In fact, in the days since the onset, it only feels like a very, very, very mild cold. Which is sort of embarrassing.

But I can't take any chances. I'm supposed to quarantine immediately. That way, if I test positive later on, my doctor wife, who must quarantine 10 days from last contact with a person who tested positive, will get her sentence truncated, due to time served. And I won't infect anybody aside from anyone with whom I was in close contact last week, 5 to 7 days before symptoms. Only there really wasn't anybody besides her.

I called to my wife from the stairs. She asked me to choose a room. I went with the bedroom. I pulled my chair in there, and prepared to spend a week in isolation. It hasn't been too bad, really. The first time I was in this room for a long period I was going through chemotherapy and felt really terrible. The second time I had a bad case of the flu. This is cake. And I can watch Netflix. And when my new computer arrived I had plenty of files to post produce to send out to the church choir, files I had recorded already because back in November I was already worried that this might very well happen. I recorded all of the carols for Christmas Eve in mid-November. Usually I try to make Christmas wait a little, but this year...well, we could all use some extra cheer anyway.

It was a bit challenging having to stay in one small room all week, but there were upsides. My cat really missed me. Once I opened to the door to use the bathroom and she came charging toward me from 20 feet away, trying desperately to get in before I could close the door on her. I hurriedly closed the door. Help! I cried. There's a tiger outside and I'm trapped!

And may I say the room service was excellent. I would almost stay at this hotel again. Every time I needed food it just showed up at my door! I told my wife that I was going to be really bummed when this was all over and I opened the bedroom door and there was no food sitting there, waiting for me to eat it.

When I called my health providers the first day they suggested I wait a few days before getting tested because if you get tested on the first day of symptoms you often get a negative result that isn't really true. Wait a few days and you get a more authentic result. I wanted to be sure if my test was negative I could really trust it. A lot of tests seem to fail anyway. So I waited until the fourth day. Then they made me shove a large Q-tip up my nose and swish it around. I sneezed like crazy but I wanted to make sure it was accurate.

Today the test results came back...negative. No Covid detected. Waist of a quarantine?

Maybe. We are suspicious, though. So I'm going to finish out my time anyway. One more day, just in case. And when I bust out of here, It'll be a week and a half until Christmas. And plenty to do before it arrives. 

Pandemic or not, have a meaningful Yule, yinz!

Sounds of the symphony

Tonight I'm going to go back in time four years.

In 2016 I was diagnosed with cancer. This happened shortly before a required move to Pittsburgh, and so, during the time I was undergoing chemotherapy and in and out of the hospital we were also getting ready to leave Illinois and move to a new city. 

It was during the second week of the fourth cycle of chemo that I sat in the rickety rocking chair, in a new house that was too warm, trying to keep my food down, listening to the Pittsburgh Symphony. They were playing the Mahler Fifth Symphony. 

With Mahler, a symphony encompasses "the world" and it frequently takes up the entire concert program. It is an emotional and spiritual journey. During my time with cancer there had been many long nights with classical music. Sometimes having only the endless parade of the same hackneyed selections for company got really old. Other times, they spoke to me in a way they hadn't before and probably never will again. For example, You can hear the Shostakovich Fifth Symphony differently when you think you are dying. Music which is often the expression of the deepest parts of human beings can sound forth with supreme clarity when you really are ready to listen. Many times we save these profound utterances for the background.

On this evening, four years ago, I wasn't listening very well. I was just exhausted. The journey was nearly at an end, we hoped. A positive prognosis had ushered in a time of aggressive but helpful treatment for a rare but treatable form of the disease. But it was still the second week of a three week cycle, the week when every day is very long and very ugly and you can't tell if you are hungry or thirsty and you just hurt everywhere and there is no way to spend your time well because you can't concentrate on anything. Mahler in particular.

So tonight I will sit in the same chair and focus on what I can now focus on. Back then the applause at the end sounded like distorted sonic junk because my ears were unable to hear clearly. I wondered at the time whether my hearing was going to be affected permanently. It wasn't, mostly.

Tonight I will sit in a chair and listen to music. Maybe not with the same life and death intensity. Although when I think about it, what will be gone will mainly be the discomfort. The intensity is still there. The music still matters.

At the interfaith vigil

This past week, my wife and I participated in an event in our community billed as an "interfaith vigil." You might have called it a protest, because basically we stood along the street and held up signs.

Every rally or protest or vigil I've ever been to has been somewhat different from the others. The atmosphere at this one was quietly joyful, which was a bit of a surprise, even though it took place at high noon on a Wednesday, which seems like an odd time for something called a "vigil" (usually I think of those as occurring at night and being associated with specific tragic events).

One doesn't usually worry too much about bad things happening on a Wednesday at noon, but there have been several reports lately of persons driving their cars into protestors and many others suggesting that people ought to do that, so I had a bit of anxiety going in as to what might happen. But it was all fine. The most peaceful event of the many peaceful events that have happened this year (most of what violence there is being at night).

This year has been traumatic for everybody, but we should all be aware by now that people of color can be especially traumatized even by the fact that suddenly white folks want to talk about race 24/7 in public after years of trying to ignore it. At this event, though, several persons of color drove by in their cars and trucks and smiled and waved and honked, apparently glad to see the mostly white participants holding up signs saying Black Lives Matter. For a moment it felt like that cozy world where everybody gets along and everyone is united by respect and love. Of course that world melts away once policy decisions have to be made and white people learn that just carrying signs isn't going to make all the badness go away. But it was still nice to experience it, briefly, if only for a respite, a recharge, and a vision of what utopia might look like if we ever go there. We won't, but, it was nice anyhow for an hour on a Wednesday.

Everybody was masked and socially distanced, six feet apart. There were little marks on the sidewalk for everybody to stand. Since we had a small group of folks from our church it meant we got to see each other in three dimensions after months of appearing only like small, flat images on each other's computers. 

That was nice, too.