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Last night, I attend a fascinating concert presented by the Hispanic Society of America, entitled “I am Carreno.” Preceded by a short lecture on the life of Teresa Carreno, the program was performed by 4 musicians dressed in mid-19th c. attire, reciting from contemporaneous accounts of Carreno’s performances and performing not only her own music, but music by her many teachers, mentors and students. I did not know about her before this, but from what I learned (and have since read on-line), she was a prodigious talent. Already touring at age 12, she was not only an extraordinarily talented pianist, but could do it all. When meeting Bellini, he recognized her talent, and started her on the road to operatic performance as well, at which she also excelled – and had a career spanning decades as both a pianist, composer, operatic soprano, conductor and impresario.

The program included music by Bellini, Gounod, Liszt, McDowell and others who Carreno either studied with, taught, married or simply met along the path of her extraordinary career. While the performances of these varied works was well done, I have to say that, except for the one Mozart aria, I found all of the music entirely trite. The composers on the program, were, by and large, musical giants who were born with nearly limitless natural skill. But, it reminded me that talent isn’t all. Liszt is, to my mind, the pre-eminent example of this. Another Mozart, except with Mozart’s profundity missing. An incredible talent who wrote an amazing quantity of music that I never want to hear (some exceptions to this, here and there). The compositions on the program, to my mind, mostly belonged in the composer’s trash can rather than in the repertoire. Watching some of them performed, given their level of difficulty, can be impressive – but the musical result just doesn’t merit all of the technical fireworks. The music by Carreno herself that was on the program, fell into that same category. I am curious to listen to more, to see if that is the case, but at least from what I heard last night, as a composer, her musical talent, however amazing, wasn’t enough to join the ranks of the great composers.

While it is an important question, I don’t believe I can define what it is that separates the music that makes my spirit soar from the music which merely entertains (at best) or is annoyingly trivial (at worst).

Dating back to when I stood, as a ten year old, on the Gettysburg battlefield site, at the spot where Pickett began his ill-fated charge, the ease with which men choose to go to war has always entirely baffled me. Always possessed of a vivid imagination, standing there with the sounds and terrors of battle raging in my mind, I had an intense realization that grown-ups who could bring this upon themselves, for any reason, were insane. I knew the world could and should be different, and grown-ups who chose otherwise were not to be trusted.
While I can intellectually explain to myself the many reasons that men are led into war, emotionally I never can quite get it. The logic of peace seems so profound, why invent reasons to go to war – but men do – for all the wrong reasons, whether money, power, boredom, rage or whatever.

A deep underlying belief that peace is possible, despite all evidence to the contrary, has motivated my inner life ever since that sunny afternoon walking across that field of knee high grass. It has certainly motivated my musical life, as I continue to write music intended to inspire thoughts about the possibility of peace. My most recent work in that vein sets, for mezzo soprano and orchestra, seven poems from a powerful anthology edited by the American poet Sam Hamill, in which he collected the best from submissions by over 11,000 poets who responded to his call, in the year following 9/11, for poems to protest the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq. A side benefit of my working on this music was connecting, via LI and FB, with the poets, sharing the common desire that reasonableness would prevail over war. There is always another way, if people only search for it.

Yesterday afternoon, I attended a remarkable concert by the Nikolai Kachanov Singers, that had a title that captured my attention when I first learned of it – Senseless War. That thought alone got me to attend. The program consisted of two major works by composers who were previously unknown to me: they performed selections from the Patarag (Armenian Divine Liturgy) by Komitas and Amao Omi (Senseless War) by the Georgian composer Giya Kancheli for chorus and saxophone quartet.

Although Komitas studied music in the west, the sounds of Komitas’ Partarag seems grounded in a music that pre-dates Christianity. It feels ancient and mythical. The composer’s story is equally compelling. From the bit I’ve read about him today, he seems to have been the father of ethnomusicology, collecting and preserving Armenian folks songs in an ancient notation that has not survived. In yet another of innumerable examples of “senseless war” Komitas was arrested by the Turks at the beginning of the Armenian genocide. He was rescued, by among others, the American ambassador Henry Morgenthau, but lapsed into insanity from the experience, and never recovered. Much of his collection of Armenian folk music was lost.

Although obviously a composer well-known to others, hearing the music of Giya Kancheli at the concert was a happy discovery for me. The pairing of this work with the Komitas was brilliant – as despite their very different musical language, they seemed to both rise out of the same emotional impetus. Often, the voices blended so with the saxophones that you could hardly tell which you were hearing. Amao Omi is made all the more powerful by the composer’s frequent use of silence – which often spoke as loudly as did the climactic moments in the score.

There is a Music Theory group on Facebook that I enjoy following. The members are a mix of folks who know something about the subject and others who have no idea at all and are trying to find out. Someone asked how knowledge of theory will enable someone to, for instance, perform a Beethoven Sonata better. My answer –

Way back when, what made me switch majors from piano to music theory, was seeing my great piano teacher mark up my scores with pencil, so much so that you could barely see the underlying score. The score meant something to him that I couldn’t see on my own, and as I didn’t want to need someone to interpret the score for me, but wanted to get it myself, I switched to theory – and never looked back. You simply cannot understand the composer’s intentions without knowing what he or she knew about musical structure, harmony, counterpoint, etc. Your ear will only take you so far. It has to be supported by knowledge.

I thought to share some of the music theory books on my shelf that, of the many I’ve read, I found most influential in shaping my thoughts about how music works. In no particular order:

Johann Joseph Fux – The Study of Counterpoint (from Gradus ad Parnassum)

Robert Cogan/Pozzi Escot – Sonic Design: The Nature of Sound and Music

Maury Yeston – The Stratification of Musical Rhythm

Felix Salzer – Structural Hearing: Tonal Coherence in Music

Heinrich Schenker – Five Graphic Music Analyses

The YouTube algorithm does have my musical taste figured out. It suggested a video of a track from a new album, Breathtaking, with soprano Hana Blazikova and cornetist Bruce Dickey. Their playing on this album is superb – and the blending of sound between the human voice and cornetto, for which that historic instrument is renowned, is beautifully demonstrated. That got me listening to more music for cornetto, which in turn, led me to videos of Renaissance “loud” bands, playing music written for instruments intended for outdoor performances. No mics!

With these sounds reverberating in my head, I spent this morning writing a short piece scored for 2 cornettos and 2 sackbuts. For lack of a better name, for now, that is posted on the “chamber music” page with the unoriginal title of Music for Loud Band. There is more music bouncing around in my mind, so no doubt, there will, in time, be additional movements added.