My most unfavorite word: RELAXING

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I live in either the tiniest big city in the world, or the biggest small town in the world: Williamsport, Pennsylvania.  Because it has a unique history, namely that it lies on a point on the Susquehanna River at which it was convenient to locate saw mills, to process the quality lumber that was being harvested from the old forests of Pennsylvania, and so became home to a score of enormously rich lumber barons, it is a town (well, a city, now) with many unusual resources.  Once the old growth was mostly gone, and sails were giving way to steam*, and oak paneling gave way to plasterboard, the town reinvented itself as the home to a small aircraft engine company (Avco-Lycoming), and then to smaller industries (including Pajamas, of course), forklifts, garage doors, and wet/dry vacuum cleaners, and, not least, a library supply company.

The population has always been small, but there is an excellent public library, James V. Brown Library.  When I first moved here, I used to borrow a boxed set of records called, if I remember right, ‘The Time / Life History of Western Music, from Plainchant to Stravinsky,’ or something like that.

I was already interested in music of all eras, but this collection introduced me to older music, such as that by Dowland, and Palestrina, and even older dances, such as those recorded by Michael Preatorius (yes, the fellow who is credited with the tune of The Noble Stem of Jesse was an amateur folk musicologist, long before the term had been invented).  But, with the inevitable march of progress, the library replaced its vinyl collection with CDs (and its VHS movies with DVDs, of course), and when I realized that my favorite compendium of ancient music was gone, it was too late to do anything about it.

In this Saturday’s edition of Archie’s Archives (the weekly radio broadcast that I present for the local community radio station, WXPI FM 88.5, with its radio tower in Jersey Shore, PA, broadcasting with an amazing power of 6 milliwatts, in case you didn’t know), I featured a tune by the real Von Trapp Family Singers, played on recorders.  It was one of those fabulous Renaissance tunes, or even from the Middle Ages, which I had first heard on an LP from the Brown Library.  (It’s more Beige, now.)  On that LP, it was performed on an authentic Renaissance instrument which sounded essentially like a kazoo, and I wanted my listeners to hear that version, rather than the buttoned-down recorders version of the Trapps.  But no; I don’t know where to look for it.

A theme for tomorrow’s show is contrasting versions of the same piece.  So, for instance, I have Pictures at an Exhibition in both the piano version, and the orchestrated version.  So, to contrast with the version by the Trapp Family, on recorders, I wanted to play that tune on the kazoo-like instrument, but I just don’t know where to look for it.

I went on Amazon, looking for titles such as ‘A History of Western Music,’ but there was nothing.  On Amazon UK, I found a very promising-looking CD collection, called ... wait, let me get the title right ... A History of Classical Music in 100 CDs.  But, as I should have expected, the performers are from the late 2oth Century, which means that it cannot be the same collection I was interested in, which dated from, I imagine, the 1960's and 1970's.  Obviously it was going to be expensive to get the item all the way from Britain, so I headed back to good old Amazon US, and looked for that item.

All I got was things like The 100 Most Relaxing Pieces of Classical Music, or Relax with Classical Music!  100 Minutes of Relaxing music from your Favorite Classics!  If I hear the word Relaxing one more time, or even read it, I take no responsibility for what will happen.

[More whining to follow.]

*So that white pine for the masts of ships was no longer in demand

What’s all this I hear, about “Written By Mrs Bach?”

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I feel like Mrs. Latella when I see references to the conjecture by one Mr. Martin Jarvis that some of J. S. Bach’s compositions were actually written by Bach’s second wife, Anna Magdalena [Wilcke] Bach.

Anna Magdalena is most certainly known to have been a close collaborator with Bach (let’s call him Sebastian Bach, just for today, as that was his name within his family, which had numerous other Johanns).  Though we know her best as his amanuensis and his most important copyist (as far as I know, anyway), Jarvis is now engaged in portraying her as a composer in her own right.  Not only a composer, but the actual composer of several important works thus far considered to have been by Sebastian Bach.

I do not have either the experience or the materials or the skills to have an independent opinion one way or another.  Most Bach lovers love Anna Magdalena for various reasons: she was the beloved companion of Sebastian Bach, considered to be a greater soulmate than the composer could have expected to have, at that time in history.  The marriage was evidently largely a happy one, for which fact posterity should be thankful, and Anna Magdalena’s excitement about all things musical was ostensibly the direct cause of the view that we in the 20th and 21st centuries have of the musical activities in the Bach home.  It is difficult to explain to those who are indifferent to Bach and his music how great a joy it is for the rest of us to know that this wonderful family lived and worked in 18th century Leipzig.  If Anna Magdalena were to be definitively ascertained to be the composer of some of the works currently ascribed to Sebastian Bach, no one would be more delighted than I, and I’m sure I would not be alone, despite the inconvenience it would cause to those who are interested in the artifacts of Bach and his bequest to the world from a financial point of view.

Confusing all of this is the fact that it is entirely possible that Anna Magdalena contributed significantly to the actual composition of quite a lot of Bach’s opus.  The paradigm of “one creation, one creator” is difficult to defend.  Sure; for various practical reasons, legal and commercial, it is good to identify a single creator for each work.  But anyone who has witnessed creativity in progress knows that it has collaborative elements that cannot be denied.
“That sounds terrible!”
“Why?”
“I don’t know ... too dominant-ey!”
“I want it that way!”
“No, it’s too much.  I think it could go ...<singing> or <more singing> ... you know?”  

Ruth Tatlow

Who’s to say that sort of thing didn’t happen in the Bach household?  I would say that it did, to the extent that Bach was patient with his family.  It cannot be denied that there might have been family input into many of his compositions.  The legalities of giving authorship to a work precludes the documentation of any sort of collaborative aspect to the creation of the work.  But Martin Jarvis’s claim is far more crude and simple: Anna Magdalena composed the Solo Cello Suites, and possibly many other works besides.  This link takes you to an article by Ruth Tatlow who puts forward a reasoned refutation of Jarvis’s claims.  Read, and draw your own conclusions.

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Luther Standing Bear's Writings

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Luther Standing Bear

Someone recently posted to my  faceBook  wall an article about the writings of this Native American leader, which (if you don't mind a lot of Adobe Flash Video-based advertising) you can look up here: higherperspective.com/2015/01/standing-bear.html.  I was expecting the usual sound-bite-like fortune cookie sayings I had been conditioned to expect from Native American philosophers.  Instead, it was a nuanced, sophisticated description of the point of view of at least a large part of the Native American people.  Here is a large block of it:

• Praise, flattery, exaggerated manners and fine, high-sounding words were no part of Lakota politeness. Excessive manners were put down as insincere, and the constant talker was considered rude and thoughtless. Conversation was never begun at once, or in a hurried manner. Children were taught that true politeness was to be defined in actions rather than in words. They were never allowed to pass between the fire and the older person or a visitor, to speak while others were speaking, or to make fun of a crippled or disfigured person. If a child thoughtlessly tried to do so, a parent, in a quiet voice, immediately set him right.
• Silence was meaningful with [a] Lakota, and his granting a space of silence before talking was done in the practice of true politeness and regardful of the rule that ‘thought comes before speech.’…and in the midst of sorrow, sickness, death or misfortune of any kind, and in the presence of the notable and great, silence was the mark of respect… strict observance of this tenet of good behavior was the reason, no doubt, for his being given the false characterization by the white man of being a stoic. He has been judged to be dumb, stupid, indifferent, and unfeeling.
• We did not think of the great open plains, the beautiful rolling hills, the winding streams with tangled growth, as ‘wild’. Only to the white man was nature a ‘wilderness’ and only to him was it ‘infested’ with ‘wild’ animals and ‘savage’ people. To us it was tame. Earth was bountiful and we were surrounded with the blessings of the Great Mystery.
• Kinship with all creatures of the earth, sky and water was a real and active principle. In the animal and bird world there existed a brotherly feeling that kept the Lakota safe among them. And so close did some of the Lakotas come to their feathered and furred friends that in true brotherhood they spoke a common tongue.
• This concept of life and its relations was humanizing and gave to the Lakota an abiding love. It filled his being with the joy and mystery of living; it gave him reverence for all life; it made a place for all things in the scheme of existence with equal importance to all.
• It was good for the skin to touch the earth, and the old people liked to remove their moccasins and walk with bare feet on the sacred earth… the old Indian still sits upon the earth instead of propping himself up and away from its life giving forces. For him, to sit or lie upon the ground is to be able to think more deeply and to feel more keenly. He can see more clearly into the mysteries of life and come closer in kinship to other lives about him.
• Everything was possessed of personality, only differing from us in form. Knowledge was inherent in all things. The world was a library and its books were the stones, leaves, grass, brooks, and the birds and animals that shared, alike with us, the storms and blessings of earth. We learned to do what only the student of nature learns, and that was to feel beauty. We never railed at the storms, the furious winds, and the biting frosts and snows. To do so intensified human futility, so whatever came we adjusted ourselves, by more effort and energy if necessary, but without complaint.
•  …the old Lakota was wise. He knew that a man’s heart, away from nature, becomes hard; he knew that lack of respect for growing, living things soon led to lack of respect for humans, too. So he kept his children close to nature’s softening influence.
• Civilization has been thrust upon me… and it has not added one whit to my love for truth, honesty, and generosity.

Can't quarrel with any of that.

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