'Tis the season for revision! Last week I played a string quartet wedding, and the couple requested Beethoven's Für Elise, a piece that is familiar to just about anyone who has ever taken piano lessons as a child. It is really a fine little bagatelle, but it is a true bear to translate into a piece for string quartet. I made my first stab at it about fifteen years ago, and, thinking that I was paying Beethoven the highest respect, I used only the notes in his original. The result was extremely repetitive as well as precarious. There is nothing less satisfying to me than treading on figurative ..read more

You can read the story here. (Did you notice the dogs in the picture ..read more

I remember the day in third or fourth grade when my teacher read The Secret Garden aloud to our class. I wanted to read ahead, so as soon as I got home I went up to the attic and looked through a big box of my mother's books, and found The Magic Garden by Gene Stratton-Porter. I figured that it must be the same book, so I brought it downstairs and started to read it. I supposed that my teacher must have skipped the beginning part, since this book was so very different, but then I found myself forgetting about the neglected and unloved girl in India, and becoming deeply attached to the neglecte ..read more

The other eveing I found myself in a lively conversation with a mother of young children. After discussing many of the difficulties (lack of sleep being one) of being a new parent, I heard myself say that the real benefit of the parent-child relationship is the opportunity for the parent to feel unconditional love by giving unconditional love. And it is an opportunity. I realized afterwards that I try to feel that way about all of my functional relationships; as a parent, a life partner, a co-worker, a teacher, a friend, and even as a member of a community, though in a community relationship ..read more

Everything in any way beautiful has its beauty of itself, inherent and self-sufficient: praise is no part of it. At any rate, praise does not make anything better or worse. This applies even to the popular conception of beauty, as in material things or works of art. So does the truly beautiful need anything beyond itself? No more than law, no more than truth, no more than kindness or integrity. Which of these things derives its beauty from praise, or withers under criticism? Does an emerald lose its quality if it is not praised? And what of gold, ivory, purple, a lyre, a dagger, a flower, a bu ..read more

I have always loved practicing etudes. I cut my flute teeth on Andersen, Altès, Berbiguier, Bitsch, Bozza, Castérède, Jeanjean, Moyse, and Schade. And I cut my violin and viola teeth on everything I could get my hands on by Dont, Fiorillo, Kayser, Kreutzer, Mazas, Rode, Ševčík, and Wohlfahrt. One early dream I had as a composer who was also building up technique as a performing musician (and helping other people to build up technique by teaching) was to write etudes myself. It seems that I have done quite a bit of etude writing over the past several years, and I have collected posts about th ..read more

Shifting on the viola or the violin involves the fingers 1, 2, 3, and 4, so you can appreciate (or groan about) the motivation for the title. This piece is part of Dancing on the Fingerboard, which is available, in versions for both violin and viola, on this page of the IMSLP ..read more

My salad . . . has three states of "bean-ing": sprouted (mung), raw (green), and cooked (garbanzo). And after it has been (!!! if you say that with a British accent) eaten, you get "Beaning and Nothingness." (Thank you, Michael.) The rest of the salad is made of parsley and scallions, and the dressing is white balsamic vinegar and olive oil. The garbanzos were marinated in soy sauce, ginger, garlic, and salt. I should have put some quartered grape tomatoes in, but there wasn't room in the bowl (what you see above is about half of what was there at the start of lunch ..read more

So far this piece, based on a story in Danish by Hans Christian Andersen, has been performed (as far as I know) in English, Finnish, Italian, and now in Spanish. This video has a transcript of the script in Spanish that you can follow. You can also follow the script in English (original to the music) here. (The transcription tab has the bassoon version.) One thing that I find nifty about "The Collar" as a bassoon piece is that there is a part of a bassoon reed called a "reed collar ..read more

A person's life consists of a collection of events, the last of which could also change the meaning of the whole, not because it counts more than the previous ones but because once they are included in a life, events are arranged in an order that is not chronological but, rather, corresponds to an inner architecture. A person, for example, reads in adulthood a book that is important for him, and it makes him say, "How could I have lived without having read it," and also, "What a pity I did not read it in my youth!" Well, these statements do not have much meaning, especially the second, because ..read more