Blog/News

Americans grow up having it drummed into our minds that our system of government is the best in the world. That belief is shared by Americans across the political spectrum and is a matter of great national pride. However, yesterday, as I absorbed the results of Tuesday’s election, as I have in the past, I wondered whether that is just our own brand of self-brainwashing. Perhaps it is the best, when compared with other systems, and perhaps it isn’t.

Forms of government are the invention of people and people are imperfect, so there is likely no ideal form of government, and ours, however imperfect it may be, may be the best – but perhaps it is not. As I tally up vote counts, I had to wonder, is an ideal government one that persistently thwarts the will of a clear majority of its citizens? Is our government the “best of all possible worlds” when the majority of the nation’s inhabitants are made to feel like an ignored minority and “the enemy of the people?” As the majority, WE ARE the people. Am I my own enemy? I think not.

I leave it to better political minds to think about what the solution might be, but to those who stand by the Constitution as if it had come down from the mountain, I remind them that it was written by men – very good men – but men nonetheless, and written for a particular time. If there is better to had, that would be a better instrument of expression for the majority of this nation’s citizens, it should be considered.

With that thought, I then turned to my music, that perpetual source of beauty and solace, and composed another song, setting the fourth poem in Guillaume Machaut’s “Le Lay de Plour” for Laure Slapiak’s rich, beautiful contralto voice. Just a coincidence, but the words of that poem begin with “Raisons et Droiture…” – Reason and Justice. We could use more of that!

Searching for French poetry to set to music, I started with Verlaine – but after reading the body of his work, came away uninspired. He had a talent for beautiful, sonorous language – but unfortunately, his failures as a human being permeate his poetry. Despite writing one work called Sagesse, wisdom was something that seemed to eternally evade him. After reading lots of poems by various French poets over the past hundred years or so, I finally took a trip further back in time, and turned to the romance poetry of Guillaume Machaut. Always one of my favorite composers, I had never previously explored him as a poet. Why not write new musical settings of his words, without reference to the melodies he himself composed for those words? Started yesterday, and so far, two poems of twelve from his “Le Lay de Plour” are done. On a roll…

Attending the 2018 Congress of the International Viola D’amore Society was a pleasure – and I made some good friends while there. Since then, Gheorghe and Simona Balan have performed my Nocturnes for violin and viola, Marianne Ronez has asked me to set some haiku for soprano and viola d’amore, and Rachel Stott will perform Der Februar in London. Little by little….

On the return trip from Breckenridge yesterday, we stopped for a visit to Denver’s newest museum – the Kirkland Museum of Fine and Decorative Art. Thanks to Paul Hughes, a museum guide (and former New Yorker and art gallery owner) who gave Renee and I a personal tour of the museum. I had never heard of Vance Kirkland before, but loved his art work. Over the years, he moved through many different styles, creating distinctive and moving work in all of them. Most interesting to me was that he experienced synesthesia and listening to music at night (Mahler, Shostakovich, Bartok) filled his mind with colors which he employed in his painting the next day.

His larger works needed to be painted with the canvas flat on a table – and to reach the center, he floated above the table on a system of straps. In his “dot” paintings of the exploding stars and nebulae in the vast expanse of space, he floated like an astronaut, with no up or down to his paintings. We learned that periodically the museum displays those paintings in different positions, as the artist wanted them to convey the non-directionality of space.

As I stood in front of one of his “dot” paintings, Paul Hughes told me that it was estimated to contain about 75,000 dots. While he told me that to convey the immensity of the painter’s effort, it struck me that, as a composer, that wasn’t a huge number. I lay down thousands of dots all the time.

During these hot summer days, I’ve been hearing music while out walking. Making progress on a new “summer” symphony, having finished a second movement today. The sound of cicadas is in the air.