An hour before last night’s performance the musicians had taken showers in our little downstairs motel, dressed, and were loading their car for the trip to the Playhouse (with no showers and too few dressing rooms).
July 15, 2013
Disdain for Classical Music
An hour before last night’s performance the musicians had taken showers in our little downstairs motel, dressed, and were loading their car for the trip to the Playhouse (with no showers and too few dressing rooms).
July 8, 2013
Gretna Nymphs and Angels
Not only does Gretna Music occasionally host 'certain nymphs' like Syrinx, we also have angels. Nancy Hatz is one. Perhaps you could call her our violin angel.
Nancy will soon be able to say she has an earthbound angel for a century. Although she is still two years short of that point, I can now predict it for certain because the state has renewed her driver’s license for 4 years and that will take her well into her second century. She missed Brahms by only 18 years! Nancy, and until recently her late husband Russell, were Gretna residents and neighbors of mine.
Last year Nancy moved to the second floor of Traditions in Hershey, but very soon thereafter had to move again -- with her Steinway grand piano -- to the first floor because the second floor was reassigned to ‘assisted living,’ a service that she didn't need.
Nancy has been in our audience for almost every concert since 1975 and always comes backstage afterward to thank the artists and exchange memories. You may recall that she sponsored the concert by Midori several years ago.
Like this one, that concert honored the memory of Russell with whom she was “The Music Department” at Susquehanna University for many years. One legend has it that Russell, a violinist, was a founding member of the Juilliard String Quartet. The last music Nancy and Russell played together was the same Brahms Sonata in d minor played for 625 people by Sarah Chang and Andrew von Oeyen last Wednesday evening.
Nancy is still passionate about nurturing young musicians and does that with the Harmonia Music Association in Lebanon, an affiliate of the Pennsylvania Federation of Music Clubs.
We are always on the lookout for angels.
Nancy will soon be able to say she has an earthbound angel for a century. Although she is still two years short of that point, I can now predict it for certain because the state has renewed her driver’s license for 4 years and that will take her well into her second century. She missed Brahms by only 18 years! Nancy, and until recently her late husband Russell, were Gretna residents and neighbors of mine.
 |
| Midori and Nancy Hatz in 2007 |
Nancy has been in our audience for almost every concert since 1975 and always comes backstage afterward to thank the artists and exchange memories. You may recall that she sponsored the concert by Midori several years ago.
 |
| Sarah Chang and Nancy Hatz in 2013 |
Like this one, that concert honored the memory of Russell with whom she was “The Music Department” at Susquehanna University for many years. One legend has it that Russell, a violinist, was a founding member of the Juilliard String Quartet. The last music Nancy and Russell played together was the same Brahms Sonata in d minor played for 625 people by Sarah Chang and Andrew von Oeyen last Wednesday evening.
Nancy is still passionate about nurturing young musicians and does that with the Harmonia Music Association in Lebanon, an affiliate of the Pennsylvania Federation of Music Clubs.
We are always on the lookout for angels.
June 28, 2013
Syrinx and old goats playing flutes
by Carl Ellenberger, MD
Notes for our Baltimore Winds concert Sunday, July 7:
Jupiter disguised his mistress, Io, as a heifer to hide her from his wife Juno. Juno saw through the disguise and demanded the heifer as a gift from her husband. Determined to keep Io as a heifer Juno enlisted Argus, who had 100 eyes and never went to sleep with more than two eyes at a time, to guard the heifer.
Commanded by Jupiter, Mercury put on his winged slippers and his cap on his head, grabbed his sleep-producing wand, and leaped down from the heavenly towers to the earth, presenting himself as a shepherd driving his flock. As he strolled, he blew upon his pipes, called the Syrinx or Pandean pipes. Argus listened to the pipes with wonder, having never heard them before. Hoping to lull all 100 eyes to sleep, Mercury played the most soothing strains and told Argus the story of how the instrument came to be:
Before Mercury had finished the story he saw Argus’s eyes all asleep. As his head nodded forward on his breast, Mercury with one stroke cut his neck through, and tumbled his head down the rocks.
Pan, of course, inspired the entire industry of woodwind instruments: the oboe, clarinet, saxophone, and bassoon, as well as their larger and smaller relatives all produce sound with a vibrating reed. Paradoxically, the flute has no reed, its sound comes from air alone passing over the mouth hole of a reed-like pipe, either across the open end of a pipe closed at the other end or at a hole in the side of a pipe near one closed end. Finger holes in effect lengthen or shorten the pipe so you don't need a handful of different pipes. The technical simplicity of the flute may explain why it is probably the oldest wind instrument; bone flutes, obviously longer-lasting than reed flutes date back to 35,000 B.C.E.
In French "flûtiste” means flutist, as does "flautista” in Italian--to answer your next question. My teacher answered it by saying, "depends on what the job pays."
Why Debussy wrote Syrinx in 1912 to accompany the death of Pan in a play Psyche by Gabriel Mournay is not clear to me. Pan is usually not in the cast of characters of that fable, at least the mythological one (Cupid and Psyche). In performance the flutist remains hidden, as did the musicians who provided dinner music for Psyche’s first night in heaven at the magnificent palace--before Cupid visited her in bed. Perhaps Mournay intended the flutist to be Pan and that he died of sorrow at the end of his song.
With its ambiguous harmonies and free rhythm, Syrinx sounds like the kind of music Debussy was thinking of when he wrote, “my favorite music is those few notes an Egyptian shepherd plays on his flute: he is a part of the landscape around him, and he knows harmonies that aren’t in our books.” The piece is loaded with whole-tone scales that contain no fifths and no half steps, making traditional cadences impossible and eliminating tonic-dominant polarity. Debussy used whole-tone scales often as a way to confound his listeners’ tonal expectations and to explore new harmonic possibilities.
Debussy’s rhythms also confound. They can be based on length rather than on stress, on long-short rather than strong-weak. Some liken them to the rhythmic principles of French speech, which is differentiated by syllable length rather than syllable stress.
Leaving us not only the reeds, Syrinx also left her name to be applied to the syringe as well as the condition called syringomyelia in which the spinal cord has the shape of a hollow reed. Psyche, of course, meaning both butterfly and soul in Greek, gave her name to the modern disciplines of psychology and psychiatry and their practitioners. As for old goats, they occasionally continue to play flutes.
It has taken far longer for you to read this than the duration of Debussy's Syrinx itself. Generations of flutists have played it because it is one of a very few works that a flutist can play alone. It lends itself to infinite interpretations.
Notes for our Baltimore Winds concert Sunday, July 7:
Jupiter disguised his mistress, Io, as a heifer to hide her from his wife Juno. Juno saw through the disguise and demanded the heifer as a gift from her husband. Determined to keep Io as a heifer Juno enlisted Argus, who had 100 eyes and never went to sleep with more than two eyes at a time, to guard the heifer.
“There was a certain nymph, whose name was Syrinx who was much beloved by the satyrs and spirits of the wood; but she would have none of them, but she was a faithful worshipper of Diana, and followed the chase. You would have thought it was Diana herself, had you seen her in her hunting dress, only that her bow was of horn and Diana’s of silver. One day as she was returning from the chase, Pan [a demi-god: half man, half goat] approached her.... She ran away, without stopping to hear his compliments, and he pursued till she came to the bank of the river, where he overtook her, and she had only time to call for help on her friends the water nymphs. They heard and consented. Pan threw his arms around what he supposed to be the form of the nymph, and found he embraced only a tuft of reeds! As he breathed a sigh, the air sounded through the reeds, and produced a plaintive melody. The god, charmed with the novelty and with the sweetness of the music, said, ‘Thus then, at least, you shall be mine.’ And he took some of the reeds, and placing them together, of unequal lengths, side by side, made an instrument which he called Syrinx, in honour of the nymph.”
--from Bulfinch’s Mythology
In French "flûtiste” means flutist, as does "flautista” in Italian--to answer your next question. My teacher answered it by saying, "depends on what the job pays."
 |
| Last known location of the nymph, Syrinx, ~6,000 B.C.E. |
June 13, 2013
Medical Bulletin
by Carl Ellenberger, MD
...from the British Medical Journal, 2009. How did I ever overlook this gem?
"This article by Sarah Bache and Frank Edenborough in our Christmas issue 2008 referred to cello scrotum. It has now emerged that the reference that they provided for the first description of this condition (a letter published in the BMJ in 1974) was a hoax. The author of the 1974 letter (a non-doctor) and his then wife (a doctor who was involved in writing the letter) confessed to the hoax in a rapid response posted on bmj.com in December 2008 and published as a letter in January 2009. We have not yet been able to verify whether they are right to conclude that the letter describing guitar nipple (Curtis P. Guitar nipple. BMJ 1974;2:226), which prompted their letter on cello scrotum, was also a hoax."
...from the British Medical Journal, 2009. How did I ever overlook this gem?
"This article by Sarah Bache and Frank Edenborough in our Christmas issue 2008 referred to cello scrotum. It has now emerged that the reference that they provided for the first description of this condition (a letter published in the BMJ in 1974) was a hoax. The author of the 1974 letter (a non-doctor) and his then wife (a doctor who was involved in writing the letter) confessed to the hoax in a rapid response posted on bmj.com in December 2008 and published as a letter in January 2009. We have not yet been able to verify whether they are right to conclude that the letter describing guitar nipple (Curtis P. Guitar nipple. BMJ 1974;2:226), which prompted their letter on cello scrotum, was also a hoax."
June 8, 2013
How (and Why) to Visit Mt. Gretna
by Carl Ellenberger, MD
Let's say you saw a concert or an artist you might like to hear on our 2013 summer schedule, violinist Sarah Chang (July 3) or The New Black Eagle Jazz Band, Elliott Carter's Woodwind Quintet (yo! chamber music snobs), Miñas, The Tamburitzans or The Capitol Steps -- or Stephanie Blythe with Les Violons du Roy and Bernard Labadie in Elizabethtown on October 14, only a short drive away.
But you live in Baltimore or Philadelphia, or even Shrewsbury. What do you do? Well, here's what I might do if I didn't live right in Gretna.
First I would decide how much time I have, in particular, whether I would I like to rent a cottage and stay for a week, or just visit for a day or two. Both choices are quite reasonable. Trips from Baltimore or Philly are easy, about 90 minutes on scenic routes. Concerts end before 10 pm in plenty of time to drive home. To choose a date for your visit look here and here.
Advantages of renting a cottage for a week: they are cheap; they put you right in the middle of the place where you can walk anywhere, and you can cook. Activities go on all day. Disadvantages: cottages are not as numerous as those at the 'other' Chautauqua in New York State, or as easy to find, and they may be booked during popular times, such as "Art Show Weekend," the third weekend in August. A few cottage owners remain in the 19th century and require your own linen. Rentals are typically from Saturday to Saturday, but most owners are adaptable. Or you could stay in Hershey and take your kids to Hershey Park or in Lancaster and take them to the Strasburg Railroad and Central Market, all about 30 minutes from Gretna.
To find a cottage I assume you can Google but you could start here. And now there's Yelp*. The old-fashioned way is to call: Emi Snavely, doyenne of the Annual Gretna Tour of Homes (August 3), 717.270.1515, or Penn Realty, 717.964.3800.
What if you just have a day or weekend? Pack a bathing suit, set your GPS for 17064 (or see a map at gretnamusic.org) and park in the lot along the road between the post office and the famous Jigger Shop Ice Cream Parlor. The Visitor Center is the tiny fairy building (not to be confused with the nearby 'fairy garden' Gretna's most popular attraction) just a few feet from the Jigger. They have maps, schedules, and lists, either for a human to hand you or in racks on the porch. Three lunch possibilities are visible within 50 yards, as is the Historical Society in a refurbished cottage next to the Playhouse. In the Playhouse you could possibly catch an open rehearsal (Sunday afternoons), a sound check, or even a matinee theater production.
But the most interesting activity is to put on walking shoes and stroll around the winding streets and paths, and chat with denizens watching you do that from their porches. You will see ancient Chautauqua buildings like the 'Hall of Philosophy,' 'Scientific and Literary Circle', and the Playhouse, only the latter a modern (well, slightly) replica necessary after the original collapsed like a soufflé in 1994 under snow and ice. There is also the Campmeeting Tabernacle, a slightly smaller version of the Playhouse built in the 1890's (by a different sect employing the same builder) and recently elevated to the National Register of Historic Places. It "still looks almost exactly as it did 100 years ago." Equally as interesting are the cottages, some unchanged for over 100 years, others remodeled to serve as year-round homes, and a few McMansions. I bought a modest winterized cottage in 1973 when living on an assistant professor's salary. On your walk you can rest at playgrounds or picnic areas.
You can walk to the lake but the entrance to the swimming area is on its far side, so to swim or sunbathe it might be best to transfer your car to that parking lot. The other reason to get back into your car is to travel to the Timbers for dinner (taking you through the newer sections of Gretna) but it is closed on Sundays as are some of the restaurants in this region on the outskirts of Amish buggyland. Check out Sunday and other dining possibilities here and on Yelp.
For lodging for a night or two -- Yelp, again. But start with the elegant Mt. Gretna Inn. Because Hershey and Lancaster are both tourist meccas you can find innumerable lodgings and other attractions there and along the roads to them, both 20-30 minutes away.
Anyone who answers 717.361.1508 will be more than happy to guide you and answer questions.
Let's say you saw a concert or an artist you might like to hear on our 2013 summer schedule, violinist Sarah Chang (July 3) or The New Black Eagle Jazz Band, Elliott Carter's Woodwind Quintet (yo! chamber music snobs), Miñas, The Tamburitzans or The Capitol Steps -- or Stephanie Blythe with Les Violons du Roy and Bernard Labadie in Elizabethtown on October 14, only a short drive away.
But you live in Baltimore or Philadelphia, or even Shrewsbury. What do you do? Well, here's what I might do if I didn't live right in Gretna.
First I would decide how much time I have, in particular, whether I would I like to rent a cottage and stay for a week, or just visit for a day or two. Both choices are quite reasonable. Trips from Baltimore or Philly are easy, about 90 minutes on scenic routes. Concerts end before 10 pm in plenty of time to drive home. To choose a date for your visit look here and here.
Advantages of renting a cottage for a week: they are cheap; they put you right in the middle of the place where you can walk anywhere, and you can cook. Activities go on all day. Disadvantages: cottages are not as numerous as those at the 'other' Chautauqua in New York State, or as easy to find, and they may be booked during popular times, such as "Art Show Weekend," the third weekend in August. A few cottage owners remain in the 19th century and require your own linen. Rentals are typically from Saturday to Saturday, but most owners are adaptable. Or you could stay in Hershey and take your kids to Hershey Park or in Lancaster and take them to the Strasburg Railroad and Central Market, all about 30 minutes from Gretna.
To find a cottage I assume you can Google but you could start here. And now there's Yelp*. The old-fashioned way is to call: Emi Snavely, doyenne of the Annual Gretna Tour of Homes (August 3), 717.270.1515, or Penn Realty, 717.964.3800.
What if you just have a day or weekend? Pack a bathing suit, set your GPS for 17064 (or see a map at gretnamusic.org) and park in the lot along the road between the post office and the famous Jigger Shop Ice Cream Parlor. The Visitor Center is the tiny fairy building (not to be confused with the nearby 'fairy garden' Gretna's most popular attraction) just a few feet from the Jigger. They have maps, schedules, and lists, either for a human to hand you or in racks on the porch. Three lunch possibilities are visible within 50 yards, as is the Historical Society in a refurbished cottage next to the Playhouse. In the Playhouse you could possibly catch an open rehearsal (Sunday afternoons), a sound check, or even a matinee theater production.
But the most interesting activity is to put on walking shoes and stroll around the winding streets and paths, and chat with denizens watching you do that from their porches. You will see ancient Chautauqua buildings like the 'Hall of Philosophy,' 'Scientific and Literary Circle', and the Playhouse, only the latter a modern (well, slightly) replica necessary after the original collapsed like a soufflé in 1994 under snow and ice. There is also the Campmeeting Tabernacle, a slightly smaller version of the Playhouse built in the 1890's (by a different sect employing the same builder) and recently elevated to the National Register of Historic Places. It "still looks almost exactly as it did 100 years ago." Equally as interesting are the cottages, some unchanged for over 100 years, others remodeled to serve as year-round homes, and a few McMansions. I bought a modest winterized cottage in 1973 when living on an assistant professor's salary. On your walk you can rest at playgrounds or picnic areas.
You can walk to the lake but the entrance to the swimming area is on its far side, so to swim or sunbathe it might be best to transfer your car to that parking lot. The other reason to get back into your car is to travel to the Timbers for dinner (taking you through the newer sections of Gretna) but it is closed on Sundays as are some of the restaurants in this region on the outskirts of Amish buggyland. Check out Sunday and other dining possibilities here and on Yelp.
For lodging for a night or two -- Yelp, again. But start with the elegant Mt. Gretna Inn. Because Hershey and Lancaster are both tourist meccas you can find innumerable lodgings and other attractions there and along the roads to them, both 20-30 minutes away.
Anyone who answers 717.361.1508 will be more than happy to guide you and answer questions.
May 25, 2013
Travel Insanity
"You drove? That's insane!" Exclaimed the checkout guy at Trader Joe's in an ancient Pittsburgh suburb as he clanged the bell to request a second cart. We were stocking up for summer in Mt. Gretna after a cross-country journey from our winter residence in Palm Springs -- 48 hours ahead of the tornado in Oklahoma City, where we stopped for a "Truffle-Shuffle" at The Wedge Pizzeria, dining outdoors as the sky darkened and the winds churned.
The Trader Joe's guy proved to be prescient; the only insanity came as we, laden with frozen fish, chia, black bean quinoa chips, and pomegranate green tea, tried to return to an (any!) interstate through a warren of winding 19th century streets in South Side, too many of them under repair. The GPS lady was confounded by our detours and finally disappeared into the cloud. We ultimately stumbled onto the PA Turnpike heading East. The vista of the city emerging from the Liberty Tunnel onto the bridge over the Monongahela--I think that was where we were--is spectacular, though we were more relieved than impressed at that point to see signs directing us to I-376.
What (among a lot) we learned on our trip:
SiriusXM radio (channels 74-76, Met opera, "Pops" classical, Symphony) broadcasts a wide variety of rarely interrupted music played by good performers and announced by knowledgeable but succinct hosts, including Martin Goldsmith (his book about his parents, The Inextinguishable Symphony; A true story of music and love in Nazi Germany, is moving). The Public Radio channels (121-123) are good too. We laughed at Garrison Keillor's phone call to his mother, and learned from Ira Glass that it is useless to offer facts, observations, or any kind of science to a climate-change denier. That just makes them angry.
You must pay a small subscription fee for SiriusXM (thank you Hertz). When I get around to it I will attach an inexpensive SiriusXM tuner to the cassette player in my very old car.
Despite reviews that sometimes seem juvenile or amateurish, reading between the lines on Yelp* proved a good way to find great restaurants that you might overlook, like Harvest in St. Louis where we enjoyed our best dinner in months. Along a busy street near Washington University (an alma mater), Harvest looked plain and uninviting, like a place where you would order meatloaf. I had delicious pork cheeks. The retired Architecture Professor at a neighboring table thought it the best restaurant in St. Louis. That city, by the way, has enjoyed an amazing renaissance since I was last there as a medical resident 40 years ago. It blows Cleveland (my home town) out of the water. We ultimately sampled Indian (east), Mexican, "American (New)," Italian, Japanese, and Spanish food, each in different places along our route.
The 3G wireless network in the US needs to catch up with other developed countries. There are voids where you can't connect and other places where connections are excruciatingly slow. We did, however, reserve rooms ahead each day from the road on my iPad, after deciding how much further we could drive.
Roads in the West are better maintained, smoother, and less congested. The landscape in the East is greener. Trucks rule all the roads. If you plan to drive 2546 miles, it is better to do it in a large comfortable car. The rented Hyundai Genesis was perfect, >32 mpg every day. Old Route 66 ("Get your kicks") parallels interstates for most of its extent, and you can see--or actually drive on--that 2-lane winding road in many places. We left it in St. Louis as it turned north to its origin in Chicago. We'll investigate some of the old attractions, listed abundantly on signs, on a future trip.
Wheeling WV has an amazingly good Hampton Inn, owned privately by the same family for 40 years. I had to drag Emi away from the large salt-water fish tank in the lobby, and the breakfast buffet did not serve the tasteless pale-yellow silver-dollar-like patties called "eggs" that satisfy most "hot breakfast" claims on billboards.
Santa Fe is as picturesque and interesting as they say: great museums, great restaurants, galleries, jewelry stores, quaint architecture, scenery, Indian culture, etc. Native American art is second to none, as is the Georgia O'Keefe Museum. Neither the Opera in its lofty Crosby Theater nor the Chamber Music Festival had begun their seasons. At the Coyote Grill we nursed martinis at the bar three feet from the cooks at work, and then ordered what looked most appetizing. The mesquite-grilled salmon was the best I have ever had. Be careful; more than 50% of the "Native American" jewelry and art for sale is actually "international." (Look for the made in Malaysia label on the tag.)
But Santa Fe is also a city where ordinary people live as well as a destination for 1.7 million annual visitors. Golden arches and all the familiar chain retailers line streets and strip malls, as in all the cities we passed. The graduation rate of Santa Fe Public schools is a miserable 55%. The Santa Fe Indian School may be the place to send your kid--if s/he is native American and a good student. Their impressive website shows they offer "Band, Chorus, Guitar, and Music Appreciation" among many opportunities.
There is vast "undeveloped" territory in the western US, mainly (and fortunately) because it lacks water, I suppose. The country is spectacularly beautiful--most memorable were the brightly colorful mountains in northern New Mexico loved by Georgia O'Keefe--but burgeoning civilization is doing its best to change that. Some man-made objects are just outright ugly, and many, when no longer useful, appear to be simply abandoned. There seem to be no limits to bad taste or the ruining of Nature's beauty for human sustenance. Wireless towers and windmills are the least of the offenders.
When I travel again, the place where I would choose to spend more time--or even live for awhile--is northern New Mexico. It's easy to see how Georgia O'Keefe fell in love with the place.
The Trader Joe's guy proved to be prescient; the only insanity came as we, laden with frozen fish, chia, black bean quinoa chips, and pomegranate green tea, tried to return to an (any!) interstate through a warren of winding 19th century streets in South Side, too many of them under repair. The GPS lady was confounded by our detours and finally disappeared into the cloud. We ultimately stumbled onto the PA Turnpike heading East. The vista of the city emerging from the Liberty Tunnel onto the bridge over the Monongahela--I think that was where we were--is spectacular, though we were more relieved than impressed at that point to see signs directing us to I-376.
What (among a lot) we learned on our trip:
SiriusXM radio (channels 74-76, Met opera, "Pops" classical, Symphony) broadcasts a wide variety of rarely interrupted music played by good performers and announced by knowledgeable but succinct hosts, including Martin Goldsmith (his book about his parents, The Inextinguishable Symphony; A true story of music and love in Nazi Germany, is moving). The Public Radio channels (121-123) are good too. We laughed at Garrison Keillor's phone call to his mother, and learned from Ira Glass that it is useless to offer facts, observations, or any kind of science to a climate-change denier. That just makes them angry.
You must pay a small subscription fee for SiriusXM (thank you Hertz). When I get around to it I will attach an inexpensive SiriusXM tuner to the cassette player in my very old car.
Despite reviews that sometimes seem juvenile or amateurish, reading between the lines on Yelp* proved a good way to find great restaurants that you might overlook, like Harvest in St. Louis where we enjoyed our best dinner in months. Along a busy street near Washington University (an alma mater), Harvest looked plain and uninviting, like a place where you would order meatloaf. I had delicious pork cheeks. The retired Architecture Professor at a neighboring table thought it the best restaurant in St. Louis. That city, by the way, has enjoyed an amazing renaissance since I was last there as a medical resident 40 years ago. It blows Cleveland (my home town) out of the water. We ultimately sampled Indian (east), Mexican, "American (New)," Italian, Japanese, and Spanish food, each in different places along our route.
The 3G wireless network in the US needs to catch up with other developed countries. There are voids where you can't connect and other places where connections are excruciatingly slow. We did, however, reserve rooms ahead each day from the road on my iPad, after deciding how much further we could drive.
Roads in the West are better maintained, smoother, and less congested. The landscape in the East is greener. Trucks rule all the roads. If you plan to drive 2546 miles, it is better to do it in a large comfortable car. The rented Hyundai Genesis was perfect, >32 mpg every day. Old Route 66 ("Get your kicks") parallels interstates for most of its extent, and you can see--or actually drive on--that 2-lane winding road in many places. We left it in St. Louis as it turned north to its origin in Chicago. We'll investigate some of the old attractions, listed abundantly on signs, on a future trip.
Wheeling WV has an amazingly good Hampton Inn, owned privately by the same family for 40 years. I had to drag Emi away from the large salt-water fish tank in the lobby, and the breakfast buffet did not serve the tasteless pale-yellow silver-dollar-like patties called "eggs" that satisfy most "hot breakfast" claims on billboards.
Santa Fe is as picturesque and interesting as they say: great museums, great restaurants, galleries, jewelry stores, quaint architecture, scenery, Indian culture, etc. Native American art is second to none, as is the Georgia O'Keefe Museum. Neither the Opera in its lofty Crosby Theater nor the Chamber Music Festival had begun their seasons. At the Coyote Grill we nursed martinis at the bar three feet from the cooks at work, and then ordered what looked most appetizing. The mesquite-grilled salmon was the best I have ever had. Be careful; more than 50% of the "Native American" jewelry and art for sale is actually "international." (Look for the made in Malaysia label on the tag.)
But Santa Fe is also a city where ordinary people live as well as a destination for 1.7 million annual visitors. Golden arches and all the familiar chain retailers line streets and strip malls, as in all the cities we passed. The graduation rate of Santa Fe Public schools is a miserable 55%. The Santa Fe Indian School may be the place to send your kid--if s/he is native American and a good student. Their impressive website shows they offer "Band, Chorus, Guitar, and Music Appreciation" among many opportunities.
There is vast "undeveloped" territory in the western US, mainly (and fortunately) because it lacks water, I suppose. The country is spectacularly beautiful--most memorable were the brightly colorful mountains in northern New Mexico loved by Georgia O'Keefe--but burgeoning civilization is doing its best to change that. Some man-made objects are just outright ugly, and many, when no longer useful, appear to be simply abandoned. There seem to be no limits to bad taste or the ruining of Nature's beauty for human sustenance. Wireless towers and windmills are the least of the offenders.
When I travel again, the place where I would choose to spend more time--or even live for awhile--is northern New Mexico. It's easy to see how Georgia O'Keefe fell in love with the place.
May 12, 2013
Charitable Libertarians
by Carl Ellenberger, MD
We like to think that bringing people together with musicians and music in rural Pennsylvania is philanthropic, humanitas. Like education and culture, music is indeed a gift to humanity. But it is only a matter of time until we will need a climate-controlled new indoor hall now that CO2 levels have reached 400 parts per million. Glue in violins will soften and pads fall out of oboes in the humid summer heat. Try playing the flute with sweat dripping off your face!
Maybe our new hall should be Koch Hall.
Like music, “philanthropy” distinguishes humans from other species. Aeschylus coined the word in Prometheus Bound (460 BC). Known for his intelligence, Prometheus “loved” (phil) “humanity" (anthropy). He gave fire (civilization) to the earliest humans who had no culture (and he paid dearly for giving it). With this gift humans became distinguished from other animals by their power to complete their own creation through education and culture. “Philanthropy” is thus, “love of what it is to be human.”
By the first century BC philanthrôpía was translated into Latin as humanitas, and was understood to be the core of liberal education: the study of humanity, or simply "the humanities," in which the study of music was a part (one of the four sciences of the quadrivium). During the Middle Ages philanthrôpía was superseded by caritas (charity), selfless love, necessary to achieve personal salvation. The Renaissance revived the classical humanitas and it flourished through the 18th century as a central value of the Enlightenment.
In our time “philanthropy” and “charity” tend be used interchangeably, though not everyone would agree. A discussion of the differences -- too long for this post -- might include a definition of “philanthropy” as “good deeds, usually brought about by a monetary gift” or (Wikipedia): "private initiatives, for public good, focusing on quality of life." One definition of “charity” might be, “help for those in need” or (Wikipedia): "relieving the pains of social problems." Such a discussion might necessarily cite the Internal Revenue codes, especially 501(c)3 & 4.
The discussion might also take a wild (right) turn as well. Jane Mayer wrote about the philanthropic Koch brothers, Charles and David (Covert Operations, New Yorker, 2010):
The Kochs are longtime libertarians who believe in drastically lower personal and corporate taxes, minimal social services for the needy, and much less oversight of industry—especially environmental regulation. These views dovetail with the brothers’ corporate interests. In a study released this spring, the University of Massachusetts at Amherst’s Political Economy Research Institute named Koch Industries one of the top ten air polluters in the United States. And Greenpeace issued a report identifying the company as a “kingpin of climate science denial.” The report showed that, from 2005 to 2008, the Kochs vastly outdid ExxonMobil in giving money to organizations fighting legislation related to climate change, underwriting a huge network of foundations, think tanks, and political front groups. Indeed, the brothers have funded opposition campaigns against...Obama Administration policies—from health-care reform to the economic-stimulus program....“
But wait! The Koch family foundations, among them the Charles G. Koch Charitable (sic) Foundation and the David H. Koch Charitable Foundation, have also generously (albeit on a smaller scale) supported arts, education, and medical research, including the New York State Theater in the Lincoln Center for the Performing Arts (now called the David H. Koch Theater), American Ballet Theater, PBS, the Smithsonian Institution, Deerfield Academy, and the Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory. At their annual strategy meeting last week at an undisclosed hotel near my winter home in Palm Springs I doubt they discussed arts, education or medical research. I don't know for sure because the hotel was heavily guarded.
I have no idea of the reasons for all the Koch's 'philanthropic' impulses. But the reason I started all this in the first place was to examine what my thoughts might be if a Koch-like opportunity should present to us. I haven't reached a conclusion so I am glad it almost certainly won’t.
We do, of course, appeal to foundations and corporations to help us bridge “the gap” between ticket revenues and expenses. Most arts organizations, including those above, have that gap too, at least since the Esterhazy family disappeared.
Maybe our new hall should be Koch Hall.
Our 38th Summer Season opens on July 3 with violinist Sarah Chang.
Flex Tickets are available: 717.361.1508; gretnamusic.org
May 7, 2013
Mentors, Embezzlers, Musician's Dystonia
by Carl Ellenberger, MD
Every musician can thank at least one mentor who inspired him or her to become a musician. Mine was John Stavash. He played many instruments, the flute, piccolo, clarinet, oboe, saxophone, violin, and probably others around greater Cleveland as a freelancer in orchestras, shows, community bands, weddings, and by financial necessity, wherever and whenever he was asked.
"Mr. Stavash," as we called him, was the guy who walked into school classrooms all over town lugging a pile of band instruments to perhaps catch the interest of some of the students, and eventually maybe to rent or sell to their parents so their kids could join the band. He was usually late, in a rumpled brown suit and tie, stocky, almost bear-like, but humble and soft-spoken. Although of recent middle-European descent he spoke perfect unaccented English.
John was also the go-to guy for many of the Cleveland Orchestra players when their instruments needed repair, probably often on an urgent basis because George Szell had no mercy for a wind player with a leaking key (as one painfully learned--and then threw all three parts of his disassembled oboe at Szell, much as an Iraqi reporter more recently threw both shoes at another George. That's also the musical equivalent of a browbeaten junior surgeon zapping the forehead of the senior surgeon with a Bovie electrocautery knife.)
Once a week at 4:30-5:00 Mr. Stavash would arrive at my house for the 4 pm 'half-hour' lesson, leaving only a few minutes before dinner. That was for several years before he established his studio. By then I could drive myself to lessons and they would be kept closer to a schedule. Educator's Music in Lakewood is still run by John's son, "Little John," a clarinetist, and Carol, his daughter, a flutist. One memory that stands out from the repair shop in the back (where I learned how to repair a flute) is of a huge barrel of cyanide (or so I was told). That served as a very efficient way to rid silver flutes of all traces of tarnish, which seemed to infect mine with regularity. I'm willing to bet that barrel no longer exists.
I never knew how John learned about music or how to play all those instruments--I don't think he attended a conservatory. But to my good fortune, unrecognized by me of course at the time, John possessed all the right instincts about wind playing, especially the production of tone and breathing, but also about how to make printed notes into music. (My deficiencies in the latter category probably frustrated him, and indeed, took more decades to develop.)
Also unrecognized by me at the time, one reason he was such a good flute teacher was that his daughter, Carol, a year ahead of me in school, was also a flutist, a better one than I. He handed both of us off to orchestra players during our last years of high school. Before Carol left for the University of Michigan we served as a flute section for several orchestras around town.
Years later John walked into my office in the Neurology Department at Cleveland's University Hospitals. He thought he might have Parkinson's Disease. He had developed difficulty controlling the 3rd and 4th fingers of his left hand, only when playing the piccolo, as he still did in the Lakewood Community Band in the park each summer. I found no signs of Parkinson's Disease and reassured him of that. In 1981 the diagnosis of 'musician's dystonia' was not often recognized, much as it wasn't in the era of Robert Schumann or even a century later in the time of Leon Fleischer and Gary Graffman. (more about that in a future post) So I wasn't much help to John.
Nevertheless, as he was leaving, he slipped a flute to me in the waiting room, a conventional Haynes plateau model and asked me to try it. The instrument turned out to be astonishingly good, far better for me than the Powell French model I had been using, so I 'borrowed' it for several years until John needed it back for his granddaughter.
Then, bereft of such a wonderful instrument, I searched in the usual places for a replacement. In an astonishing coincidence, I found an almost identical Haynes flute for private sale only several blocks away from where I lived. As I tried it and offered to buy it in the living room of the seller's apartment, I asked him if he knew John Stavash. Yes, he said--and then abruptly announced that the flute was no longer for sale.
Perplexed, I mentioned this event to John. The seller, it turned out, was his former employee at Educator's Music. It had taken the FBI years to determine that he was part of an international embezzlement ring that had diverted dozens of instruments in shipment before they reached the store. John had not pressed charges so the employee, a student, was still at large. The flute I wanted had not been among the stolen instruments.
I sent my wife back to his house and, using her name, she bought the flute, the one that I have now played for 30 years. My mother at age 86 dragged John, age 82, from Cleveland to Gretna to hear me play a Quantz concerto on it to open our inaugural season at Elizabethtown College. That performance brought both of them to tears.
In a future post, I will summarize what we now know, and don't, about musician's dystonia, a surprisingly common problem among classical players.
Every musician can thank at least one mentor who inspired him or her to become a musician. Mine was John Stavash. He played many instruments, the flute, piccolo, clarinet, oboe, saxophone, violin, and probably others around greater Cleveland as a freelancer in orchestras, shows, community bands, weddings, and by financial necessity, wherever and whenever he was asked.
"Mr. Stavash," as we called him, was the guy who walked into school classrooms all over town lugging a pile of band instruments to perhaps catch the interest of some of the students, and eventually maybe to rent or sell to their parents so their kids could join the band. He was usually late, in a rumpled brown suit and tie, stocky, almost bear-like, but humble and soft-spoken. Although of recent middle-European descent he spoke perfect unaccented English.
John was also the go-to guy for many of the Cleveland Orchestra players when their instruments needed repair, probably often on an urgent basis because George Szell had no mercy for a wind player with a leaking key (as one painfully learned--and then threw all three parts of his disassembled oboe at Szell, much as an Iraqi reporter more recently threw both shoes at another George. That's also the musical equivalent of a browbeaten junior surgeon zapping the forehead of the senior surgeon with a Bovie electrocautery knife.)
Once a week at 4:30-5:00 Mr. Stavash would arrive at my house for the 4 pm 'half-hour' lesson, leaving only a few minutes before dinner. That was for several years before he established his studio. By then I could drive myself to lessons and they would be kept closer to a schedule. Educator's Music in Lakewood is still run by John's son, "Little John," a clarinetist, and Carol, his daughter, a flutist. One memory that stands out from the repair shop in the back (where I learned how to repair a flute) is of a huge barrel of cyanide (or so I was told). That served as a very efficient way to rid silver flutes of all traces of tarnish, which seemed to infect mine with regularity. I'm willing to bet that barrel no longer exists.
I never knew how John learned about music or how to play all those instruments--I don't think he attended a conservatory. But to my good fortune, unrecognized by me of course at the time, John possessed all the right instincts about wind playing, especially the production of tone and breathing, but also about how to make printed notes into music. (My deficiencies in the latter category probably frustrated him, and indeed, took more decades to develop.)
Also unrecognized by me at the time, one reason he was such a good flute teacher was that his daughter, Carol, a year ahead of me in school, was also a flutist, a better one than I. He handed both of us off to orchestra players during our last years of high school. Before Carol left for the University of Michigan we served as a flute section for several orchestras around town.
Years later John walked into my office in the Neurology Department at Cleveland's University Hospitals. He thought he might have Parkinson's Disease. He had developed difficulty controlling the 3rd and 4th fingers of his left hand, only when playing the piccolo, as he still did in the Lakewood Community Band in the park each summer. I found no signs of Parkinson's Disease and reassured him of that. In 1981 the diagnosis of 'musician's dystonia' was not often recognized, much as it wasn't in the era of Robert Schumann or even a century later in the time of Leon Fleischer and Gary Graffman. (more about that in a future post) So I wasn't much help to John.
Nevertheless, as he was leaving, he slipped a flute to me in the waiting room, a conventional Haynes plateau model and asked me to try it. The instrument turned out to be astonishingly good, far better for me than the Powell French model I had been using, so I 'borrowed' it for several years until John needed it back for his granddaughter.
Then, bereft of such a wonderful instrument, I searched in the usual places for a replacement. In an astonishing coincidence, I found an almost identical Haynes flute for private sale only several blocks away from where I lived. As I tried it and offered to buy it in the living room of the seller's apartment, I asked him if he knew John Stavash. Yes, he said--and then abruptly announced that the flute was no longer for sale.
Perplexed, I mentioned this event to John. The seller, it turned out, was his former employee at Educator's Music. It had taken the FBI years to determine that he was part of an international embezzlement ring that had diverted dozens of instruments in shipment before they reached the store. John had not pressed charges so the employee, a student, was still at large. The flute I wanted had not been among the stolen instruments.
I sent my wife back to his house and, using her name, she bought the flute, the one that I have now played for 30 years. My mother at age 86 dragged John, age 82, from Cleveland to Gretna to hear me play a Quantz concerto on it to open our inaugural season at Elizabethtown College. That performance brought both of them to tears.
In a future post, I will summarize what we now know, and don't, about musician's dystonia, a surprisingly common problem among classical players.
April 16, 2013
Generations
by Carl Ellenberger, MD
I talked with a teenager about music. Not a typical teenager but one in a third generation of a musical family: grandfather an orchestra conductor, father on the board of the local symphony.
Soon to be a high school grad, teenager had passed the "magic age" at which musical taste is determined according to musical psychologist Daniel Levitin:
My brain whirred: what about intimacy, silence, and (horrors!) pianissimo? But I soon decided I couldn't begin to summon the eloquence of André Aciman:
I talked with a teenager about music. Not a typical teenager but one in a third generation of a musical family: grandfather an orchestra conductor, father on the board of the local symphony.
Soon to be a high school grad, teenager had passed the "magic age" at which musical taste is determined according to musical psychologist Daniel Levitin:
Fourteen is a sort of magic age for the development of musical tastes. You’re in the ninth grade, confronting the tyrannies of sex and adulthood, struggling to figure out what kind of adult you’d like to be, and you turn to the cultural products most important in your day as sources of cool — the capital of young life. Musical tastes become a badge of identity in social contexts framed by pop culture.
(That observation held true for me: I invaded my father's collection of 12-inch 78-rpm records at about that age.)Teenager intends to become an audio engineer, so he got an earful about loud music. (See "Treasure Your Hearing, October 8) Teenager sagely responded: "Your generation" is accustomed to music in small spaces (the drawing room?) played (by historical necessity) on 'acoustic' (old) instruments. Music of his generation has evolved with modern technology (read electrical amplification) into a 'greater dynamic range' (read loud), all intending to mean, I assume, more advanced and better suited for our time.
My brain whirred: what about intimacy, silence, and (horrors!) pianissimo? But I soon decided I couldn't begin to summon the eloquence of André Aciman:
Chamber music makes you just as you are and with whatever you’ve got the center of everything. It reminds you of yourself. In fact, it makes you not think of yourself, because the act of thinking about something, even if it’s about yourself, distracts you from being with yourself. Chamber music brings you into a state of perfect congruence with yourself of harmony, where, if there’s a thought, it’s not how beautiful this is, but something like perfect gratitude. It is after all what we feel when a miracle happens: we don’t sit and ponder how miracles happen; we are simply grateful that they do. And with that gratitude comes love. Saint Augustine’s definition of love is the most beautiful: I am grateful that you exist. That’s good enough. Chamber music is intimate not just because it takes place in small spaces with few players. It is intimate because it is direct. It is intimate because there is absolutely nothing, save standing in a holy place, where you can be closer to those things that are timeless, to God, to yourself.I re-discovered Saturday night that also applies to a large degree to a concert in Walt Disney Hall by the exquisite LA Philharmonic. It certainly does to our concerts (at least the 'acoustic' ones) that will resume in July in the Mt. Gretna Playhouse.
Obviously, this is not just generational.
April 1, 2013
Remembering Jerry
Carl Ellenberger, MD
Russian class at Columbia
Apartment on West End Avenue
Audience members of a certain age may remember Jerry Bramblett during our first 10 years. I met Jerry at the Interlochen Center for the Arts (then “National Music Camp”) because in high school he was a flutist as well as a pianist. We competed against each other in weekly “tryouts and challenges” for top seats in the orchestra. In his senior year he won the concerto competition playing the Flute Concerto by Jacques Ibert. A year later I won too playing the same piece because he coached me and accompanied me in the audition. (He had prepared for his audition by playing with a piano accompaniment he recorded himself.)
Jerry left Yale just as I arrived for medical school. He went to Columbia to get a Ph.D. in Statistics, but mainly to study the piano--in secret because his scholarship said “statistics.” We played flute and piano music every third weekend in his aunt’s studio apartment over the Cliffmore Bar on Second Avenue, dined at a restaurant recommended in New York on $5 a Day, and then repaired to an off-Broadway play.
Between and after my visits to New York we corresponded. Some would call Jerry a “polymath” who excelled in a variety of pursuits, actually just about any he put his mind to, including languages, statistics, cooking--a fusion of his mother’s southern style and French--and music. I still read his letters.
Russian class at Columbia
Ah, the delights of fluency in the foreign tongues! I now have six cases at my disposal and 30 or so exciting verbs to boot. I am still bothered a bit about the niceties of the language, as when, the other day, I missed the endings of four consecutive adjectives and left poor Mrs. Berryman in tears, but am trying to develop an ambiguous grunt which will pass for any ending. My efforts at the blackboard are thoroughly professional, however, and I am beginning to receive threatening notes from the less gifted members of the class. I am worried about Mrs. Berryman; she is ill nowadays. Yesterday, as I was struggling erroneously through “That fine summer day I took a walk in the woods with my beloved dog” she got dizzy and had to sit down.
Apartment on West End Avenue
I am sitting on the floor of my new pad. The kitchen alone sleeps four.Visit to apartment by a former professor at Yale
We brought the festivities to a close the next morning with breakfast and a reading (complete) of the Handel flute sonatas. The latter was a trifle bizarre, insofar as the harpsichord had not been tuned for 2 weeks, Janet had never been exposed to the treacheries of said instrument, and I had not touched the flute since Interlochen, but it was fun, and I noticed afterwards that I had no hangover and have not made any errors in propositional case endings since.Visit to a friend
We stopped by the medical school to visit a friend of David’s who is in the psychiatric institute there. A tragic, but rather romantic case: the son of one of David’s teachers at Harvard Med School who flunked out of Harvard his freshman year and promptly went mad. I explained probability theory to him.My girl friend spoke of entering a convent
As for her convent-ional leanings, I think a well fashioned julep (made from the small, darker leaves) to be the handiest and most pleasant of disuaders.Anticipation of fine meal
I must away and prepare a sauce duxelles aux champignons for supper. If it is any good, I will put some in an envelope and send it to you.
It is essential that the champagne be cold, and I recoil at the embarrassment and risk of nursing decanters of chilled spirits aboard the New Haven coaches.Curbside consultation
When you get a chance, please send me the musical remedies for the following: (1) blister on palm from hanging curtains, (2) sunburn on left shoulder blade from asymmetric exposure, (3) small pimple under navel, source unknown, (4) hangover, from next Sunday’s picnic.New job
My first real challenge as a professor of Statistics comes this Sunday, when I shall play host to the statisticians barbecue and beer-blast. Fortunately, this will require no greater efforts than preparing the fields for softball and volleyball, and gathering a few tomatoes and apples, in which activities I will have the assistance of David, who is coming up for the weekend, so I will be able to establish myself as the perfect host. How well I shall do the next morning at my first lecture I shall not venture to guess.Review of his own concert
No doubt I played badly, but I think, with occasional inspiration. The audience was large and vapid, but happily sprinkled with wine beforehand and during and kept its distance, more or less.His piano
I especially envy your perfectly tempered Steinway. Mine, alas, as a result of a recent tuning by Rockville, Conn.’s most distinguished tuner, a complete nut, has developed a rather evil temper, refusing to enter the keys of A-flat and E major, to which I occasionally have recourse.On pets
I appreciate your offer of a kitten, but my enthusiasm for animal companionship has dimmed somewhat since I kept a colleague’s part-beagle for a few days while he was at a convention. The beast was advertised to be newspaper trained but sadly did not seem able to distinguish between the New York Times and a scatter rug, much less between a Steinway leg and a fireplug. I was a wreck before the week was out. Recently I had been eyeing as a possible pet a rather pleasant-looking green snake named Freddy, but accidentally ran over him with the power mower last Monday. And I can’t work up to much enthusiasm for the two rabbits in the yard, since I suspect that they are the ones who have been getting into the basil.Jerry passed away in 1995 leaving a small delegation of devoted friends and piano students who studied with him at Mansfield University and the University of Wisconsin. (He had remained a statistics prof at the University of Connecticut for only three years -- while he got a degree in Music.) Any of them out there?
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)