An Die Musik (Tribute to Schubert)

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to enjoy all the musical detail.

I've been working on learning to sing Schubert's An Die Musik. 


Gee, it looks so simple!


Har, de har har.


It's a lovely praise of art itself, and the pleasure it gives us to simply be caught up within the music.

Part 6: Cradle Songs and Distant Melodies, The Highwayman's Daughter

 Part 6: Cradle Songs and Distant Melodies, 

* * * The High Toby * * *
Listen to this entire story in the April Edition of "Unpolished Performances", a free podcast in the iTunes Store. Download it by clicking on this link.

Somehow Da had acquired a horse for Dolly and her brother to ride into the country. She hadn’t known, at the time, how they could afford a horse of their own, and such a magnificent beast as well. 

She knew now. 

The two children had called the animal, Shrugu, because of the patches of white that appeared mysteriously on it’s dark coat. Eventually her father had taught her to apply the dark brown dye that helped to turn Shrugu into a shiny black horse instead of a gray. The coloring had served to protect the horses’s identity when her father had first taken him from among his fellows. It also made Shrugu nearly invisible, when it came to hiding beneath a tree on the toby.

Fion well remembered the promise he’d made to his wife. He’s sworn that he’d leave his old lay behind him in Ireland. Never again would he order the hapless carter or coach driver to ‘stand and deliver’. But he’d promised to care for their children as well, and some vows have more power than others.

With those children well hidden beneath a screen of bushes or trees, he would approach a lone vehicle on Shrugu’s back, his pistol at the ready. Excitement and fear pulsed as one, for this could be the moment when a hidden pistol would emerge, and take him down with a lucky shot. Then there was the bully, well-beloved moment of excitement when, with pockets heavy with coin and a still racing heart, he and the horse lit off with a great woop and a yell, well in advance of the mark. What that mark didn’t know was how shortly Fion and Shrugu would pull up beneath another tree, only a few yards away.

Soon his well-born victims would struggle off down the road to resume their interrupted travels, fuming and wailing over the loss of watches, rings and money. The children, as Da had taught them, waited quietly in their secret abode. For they knew that Fion would soon double back to put them up on Shrugu. Then, once more, they traveled masquerading as itinerant tinkers with a box of ribbons and a few spools of thread to give them a reason to always be moving onwards along the hard high road.

Fion had chosen his marks carefully, never too many on the same stretch of road. He’d taken only enough to feed himself and his children and to pay for shelter during the cold months. The MacLiams had been tobeymen for generations, and he knew well that a highwayman didn’t have much chance of a long life. Yet, with care, he could provide for his children until they were old enough to fend for themselves. He’d heard there was farmland to be had out west. Owen and Dolly were old enough, now, to set to work ploughing and planting.

* *

The highwayman’s daughter patted the horses muzzle softly and murmured into the great flickering ear. “Hsst, Shrugu,” she whispered. “Do you want them to hear us? Dinna gie us away.”

The carriage jingling down the road was pulled by a pair of fine plump grays. The coachman was well togged out in fine livery. Should she take a chance? Da would have said ‘no’, but Da was gone now. He’d been taken and hanged when he tried to rob the mail, thinking it a worthwhile risk for two men. So, Owen had gone with him. Luckily for her brother they needed young soldiers in Ameriky more than they needed corpses. Owen was stationed now, not so far away, in the Allegany mountains. 

Jenny had taken up with Johnny Hodges, the butcher’s son. But town life for an unmarried tinker’s daughter was no sinecure. She was wise enough to know that life with Johnny would continue only as long as his head wasn’t turned by a trimmer ankle or waist. And she was skilled enough to know what she had to do to make the money she needed to build that farm that they'd always dreamed of.

Dolly fumbled for the pistol at her belt. That belt held up a pair of Owen’s old trousers. Clad in men's clothes and with her hair stuffed beneath her brother's old hat, no one would ever suspect that Dolly MacLiam had been the tobeyman this night.

She thought back to the last time she’d lain in wait for Fion. Just that once, he’d decided to take his son along . “Just this once so we can get enough money to build that farm.” Da had never meant for Owen to take to the family lay. And he’d certainly never meant for his daughter to find herself pointing a pistol down the road and calling out, ‘stand-and-deliver’.

But the coach was clearly a rich one, a noble family’s(*) vehicle perhaps. Just this once, she’d take the chance. For Owen wouldn’t be a soldier forever, and there was still a farm to build. 

She lifted the bridle rein and a song, that seemed to come from very far away, rose unbidden in her throat.

As I was going over the Appilachin’ mountains


I met with captain Farrell

and his money he was counting. 


I first produced me pistol,

and I then produced my rapier.


Said stand and deliver!

For yeh ‘air a bold deceiver,

musha ring dumma do

whack for the daddy 'ol


whack for the daddy 'ol


there's whiskey in the jar

I counted out his money,

and it made a pretty penny.


I put it in my pocket and I took it home to Johnny.


He sighed and he swore,

But said he never would deceive me,


Oh the devil take such menfolk,

for they never can be aisy.


Listen to this entire story in the April Edition of "Unpolished Performances", a free podcast in the iTunes Store. Download it by clicking on this link.

* Dolly MacLiam's victims were English aristocracy before the American revolution 

The Assemblage: Dawning of The Music (Part 2 of 2)

To enjoy using this illustration as a beautiful bookmark or gift tag*, click on the image, copy to computer desktop, then print on a piece of card stock paper (available at stationary and photocopy stores).

Permission is granted for non-commericial use only.

Did you miss? Part 1: Live from Polovetsia, It’s Redwood Symphony!

Part 2: The Assemblage: Dawning of The Music

The assemblage is when the music discovers itself. The term ‘assemblage’ is not in my music dictionary, but it’s the most basic and important part of the communal musical experience. Its sense of building expectation makes it my favorite part of concert time. After the pre-concert talk, and long before the concert mistress rises to her feet and calls for attention, the audience is introduced to, or reacquainted with, the players. They stroll on stage, sit down, do a little light tuning, and begin to warm-up their instruments, and practice the solo bits. This night was a particularly fine assemblage. It formed the base of a fantastical, illusory composition.

Like any great work, each instrument enters in her own time. In the case of the assemblage, that arrival is based on absolutely natural timing. Conditions of wind, rain, parking lot perambulation, and the length of the bathroom line each affected the arrival of a player on the scene. He finds his chair, greets his fellows, and begins the ritual of mouthpiece maintenance. She tightens her bow and smoothes on the rosin. The music is coming to life all around her. A flute begins to flutter in excitement, then shrieks, and suddenly drops down in a rapidly descending scale. Vigorous blasts of tooting brass, clear and warm the cold chambers of trumpet, trombone and french horn. Bows dash back and forth with no regularity of motion, each moving on its own path, creating small crescendos and evolving separate tunes out of the mass of sound. I would recognize these abundantly practiced bits later in the great works, but the sense of the individual’s hard-won, repeated effort would be missing.

A really great assemblage captures the spirit that came before the bison’s skin was stretched taut across the void, that would some day emerge as a great kettle drum. It feels the first breath from the first bow that drew across the violin’s ancient forebearer, Grandma Rebec. It is the resurrection of the dawning of music, when a welter of pipes configured itself into a horn.

Just for a moment I wished that I could be recording this. Yet the real joy of this time is that it never can be captured or repeated. The very awareness of anyone’s interest in it as a whole, would compromise the music that emerges on it’s own. The assemblage is the best piece of all. It is live music walking through the door, unstructured and unplanned. It is the quintessential chance composition. It will never be heard again.

It is the perfect jam.

* The wonderful vintage luggage tag background I used for this project is a free public download from the HauntingVisionsStock site. Thank you D-O-H!

Live from Polovetsia, It’s Redwood Symphony! (Part 1 of 2)

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Part1: Live from Polovetsia, It’s Redwood Symphony!

The “Polovetsian Dances” drew me to Redwood Symphony’s most recent concert. I wasn’t disappointed. The orchestra clearly loves playing this piece, and no one seems to enjoy it more than the director, Eric Kujawsky. During this piece, the maestro handed over th podium to assistant director, Kirstin Link, and moved back to join the percussionists, at the cymbal stand. The look on his face, each time the music crested to meet those great bells, told the audience that he was immersed in the delicious bursts that reverberated when he closed his instrument in a burst of copper, red bronze, nickel silver and zinc alloy.

I also encountered a new, to me, favorite composer, Lee Actor in the rambunctious piece ”Dance Rhapsody”. My ear heard stories from different individuals, bustling, strolling and interacting in a variety of urban social patterns, in this modern work that combines waltz, tango and fandango rhythms. I’ll be looking for the Redwood Symphony take on this in iTunes.

I could make comments about every piece on the program, such as the lure of Peter Stahl on the English horn in Sibelius’ “The Swan of Tuanela”. Not only could I easily envision the swan craning her neck, but Peter’s music told me just the sensation I’m searching for, when I draw the air up from the base of my spine, past my larynx, into the upper reaches of my soft palette and beyond. That's just the feeling I’m reaching for to get the true flavor of the high G in that Alessandro Scarlatti aria I’m working on. First soprano tutorial , whodda’ thunk it?

But…. my very favorite bit of the concert came before the program began. It came, in fact, during the assemblage.

Tomorrow – Part 2: The Assemblage: Dawning of Music

Redwood Symphony: No stranger to Paradise

Like it - when the music resonates right in my chest.

Like it - when I see the performers putting on the show, and I can pick out where the individual sounds come from.

Like it - when that bit the oboe does is coming up, and I spy him picking up his instrument.

Like to - watch the concert mistress rise casually up and exert her presence over her fellow players. She’s one of the people, but she’s also a power within the group unlike the director’s baton. She decides which way the bows move in the strings, and her ear picks up things nobody else’s hears.

I got to attend the Redwood Symphony’s Halloween concert this afternoon. We’ve been on stage together, when my chorus sings with them, and it gives me a neighborly feeling to see their familiar faces. It’s not just a feeling that I’m acquainted with them, but that my voice has a connection to their instruments.

This group is always everything local, friendly music ought to be. Today they started out being Interactive. The audience got to tour the symphony, visiting with each section: winds, brass, percussion and strings. We got specifics on how an oboe is different than a clarinet (about six thousand dollars more for an oboe is one of the specifics) and how the pedals work on the harp (you can get three tones for each string). Then it was listening to lively melodies like John Williams Harry Potter music and The Polovtsian Dances. For me this is the Prince Igor or Kismet music. "Take my hand! I'm a stranger in Paradise. All lost in a wonder land, a stranger in paradise."

We finished up with more interaction. Ten kids attending the concert got an impromptu chance to direct the orchestra. The rest of us spontaneously clapped along to Souza’s “Stars and Stripes Forever”.

I don’t get any of this from itunes.

Quiltin' the Blues

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Kidhood Memories: Singing In Harmony

* * * *

When my parents took a break from laying the cement blocks for our house in Lizard Acres, they got into the front seat of our long black Ford station wagon, and set out for a good long drive through the wide-open valleys that lay around the Huachuca Mountains. Sometimes we headed for Naco Mexico, closer than a drive into town, other times a longer ride to Bisbee, Tucson, Nogales or Cochise Stronghold. And all on twenty five cent a gallon gasoline.

Sometimes it was the radio that kept us entertained, but most of the time we amused ourselves. My father kept his big silver harmonica in the glove compartment and we sang all the classic American childhood songs: Polly Wolly Doodle (Oh I went down south to see my gal), Clementine (I particularly enjoyed the verse Till I kissed her little sister, I forgot my Clementine), and I've Been Working on the Railroad (I had a clear picture of the Someone who was in the kitchen with Dinah. He was a handsome miner in jeans and a red-checked shirt, who always flirting dreadfully with Dianah, in her blue dress and a ruffled white apron, as he strummed away on his old ban-jo).

I get a big kick out of plugging my ipod into the car when I head down the driveway, on my far-from-twenty-five cent a gallon gas. But I sure wouldn't mind a short trip back to the dusty gullies around Lizard Acres when Daddy Sang Bass and Mama Sang Tenor.