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Ahimsa, in its simplest sense, means not to inflict harm on others through thought, word or action. An ancient concept, yet one which has not caught on sufficiently in our troubled world. Humankind is not only in endless violent conflict within itself, but by and large we fail to recognize that we are part of all of life on this earth and all that life is a part of us. Thus, we inflict the same violence, if not worse, on the innocent lives of all Earth’s creatures, as we do upon ourselves.

The music reflects this basic principle for living, in sections honoring those who, for me, were guiding lights for how to live your life in this way. The simple lessons for life taught to me by my grandfather, and then the great guiding lights – Mahatma Gandhi, Martin Luther King and John Lennon – all of whom died while in the pursuit of holding up the candle of ahimsa for all to see. It is hard to think of any who are their match today, but those with their intensity are sorely needed.

CREDITS

COMPOSER: Stanley Grill

CONDUCTOR: Marek Štilec

ENSEMBLE: Komorní filharmonie Pardubice

PRODUCER: Jiří Štilec

RECORDING ENGINEER: Václav Roubal

RECORDING DATES: May 23-24, 2022

RECORDING LOCATION: Dům hudby, Sukova třída 1260, 530 21 Pardubice

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GLOBAL MUSIC AWARDS SILVER MEDAL WINNER

CLOUZINE Best Classical Composition & Recording, Spring 2023

“Listening to AHIMSA, I was struck by the powerful simplicity and serenity of the piece. How, perhaps, we’ve entered a time where modern music is moving toward a contemplative state – where overblown heroics and cinematic tirades are falling out of vogue and being replaced by works of a deeper philosophical and spiritual nature. It would be nice.”

PAST DAILY WEEKEND GRAMOPHONE REVIEW

Und das Lied bleibt schön is a collection of new music for early instruments composed over a decade of collaboration between composer Stanley Grill and PANDOLFIS CONSORT.

Poetry by R.M. Rilke, Heinrich Heine, Rose Ausländer, Selma Meerbaum-Eisinger.

Music by Stanley Grill, performed by Pandolfis Consort with guest artists Lisa Rombach, soprano and Nicholas Spanos, countertenor.

PANDOLFIS CONSORT

Elżbieta Sajka-Bachler, viola and viola d’amore
Ingrid Rohrmoser, viola
Günter Schagerl, violoncello
Hubert Hoffmann, theorbo

Recorded May & July 2021 at Atelier 73, Unterretzbach, Austria
Producer: Richard Winter
Recording Engineer: Franz Schaden

GRAMOLA RECORDS

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PURCHASE FROM GRAMOLA RECORDS

TAKE EFFECT REVIEWS. “Grill and company make the most of the interpretations with a firm classical slant that dances around orchestral and chamber nods in this highly meticulous and memorable listen.”

GLOBAL MUSIC AWARDS. SILVER MEDAL WINNER. Classical Chamber Music.

Having recently attended several promising but ultimately disappointing concerts of new music, it struck me that many of the compositions I heard, while artful, lacked the key ingredient to good composition. The composers were clearly highly trained – but somehow, in all their studies, seemed to have missed the overarching element of a musical composition that, if there, inspires. Sound as story telling. A solid architectural foundation upon which notes, like bricks, are laid. It little matters if the language of the composition is tonal or atonal, dissonant or consonant, contrapuntal or harmonic – but what must unfailingly be there is an underlying architecture that makes each note meaningful, with every note arising from an inexorable musical logic, with no note missing or out of place. Without that architecture, every musical gesture sounds empty. Many years ago, it was playing Bach that led me to first understand this – not a single note that doesn’t belong precisely where it is, no more, no less. But, like a building without a solid foundation, a musical composition that lacks a structural underpinning will collapse into a pile of notes that leaves you, at best indifferent, at worst, annoyed.

Each to their own, but when I’m yearning to listen to an emotionally satisfying symphony, it has been forty or more years since the thought of turning to any of the symphonies of Haydn, Mozart, Beethoven, Schubert, Schumann or Brahms has crossed my mind. My go to symphonists have, instead, been Bruckner, Sibelius and Shostakovich, whose symphonies I can hear again and again without ever tiring of them.

That said, over the past several months, I’ve gradually been working my way through the complete symphonies of various other composers – music that for whatever reason, I’d never gotten around to hearing before. This journey has raised one of those, why oh why, questions, as I’ve listened to music that makes me wonder why I rarely, if ever, find them programmed by any orchestras or played on the radio. Most recent listens have been the complete symphonies of Vaughn Williams, Prokofiev, Nielsen, Harris, Weinberg and Myaskovsky. And while his body of work is somewhat uneven, Hovhaness wrote many symphonies of incredible beauty and power. While perhaps my personal tastes in music reflect a minority of one, I wonder if these works were programmed by today’s symphony orchestras their audiences would not only welcome them, but return again and again for more.

I write this in response to various opinions that I see shared on social media and in the news following Russia’s invasion of Ukraine. In the classical music world, it began with several Russian musicians who are long-time associates of Putin’s being dropped from their scheduled engagements and long-time associations with major musical institutions after their refusal to disavow Putin and his war. That gave rise to their (and others) response that music should be divorced from politics and isolated from world events, free of the dross of politics. That, of course, was not only a self-serving response, but one arising from a fantasy that music is somehow different than any other human activity, existing independently in an isolated universe free of all of the rest of what humans do, for good or bad. Then, various people started dropping all Russian musicians and Russian music from programs, regardless of the connection to Putin, as if just by performing anything connected with Russia was a statement in support of Putin. To my mind, that was even worse, a failure to recognize that the core reason why Putin’s war is such an egregious violation of human rights is that it entirely ignores the common humanity of Russians and Ukrainians. Russia has a great and glorious history that has made a great contribution to the best of what makes us human – a history that must not be ignored because Russia’s present dictator is a monster. We should not negate Russian culture in its entirety, any more than the world should ignore Bach, Beethoven, Brahms or any other German composer because the country they lived in gave rise to Hitler, Nazism and the Holocaust (or any other similar examples throughout human history). Humanity is eternally in conflict. Music may not always be one of humanity’s better angels, but it certainly is, far more often than not, a power for good, even in the face of great evil.

To my mind, the only thing that makes writing music worth the effort is it’s power for good. It is inextricably entangled with politics in that sense and has been, throughout history, a frequent vehicle to give voice to the oppressed and power protest movements that have changed the world for the better. Just think of Woody Guthrie, the songs that powered the Civil Rights movement, John Lennon’s Imagination, or, in the classical world, Shostakovich’s incredibly powerful but subversive works, written under the ears, so to speak, of the last criminal regime to rule Russia.

It is this history of music that inspires me to write today. Music that intends to effect change, that is an expression in pure sound of the good that can be found in humanity – and by that very expression an implacable foe of evil. In our own age, that means music that is a warrior against racism, against warmongers, those who refuse to accept humanity’s responsibility to be caretakers rather than destroyers of our beautiful earth and the life all around us with whom we share our planet. And, I fully recognize and appreciate my good fortune in not living under a repressive regime where an artist has to mask their belief in humanity at risk of their own lives, and speak in code as did Shostakovich and many others before him. So, I don’t have to mask my beliefs in my music. I say it directly and out loud. Music for peace, for social justice, for environmental sanity. In song, in resonant sound that spreads into the universe.

Having come of age in the 1960s, with everything that came along with that, I am yet another aging human wondering to myself – what the hell happened? It did seem that the world had the potential to change in those days, that perhaps humanity might just, in the famous words of John & Yoko, give peace a chance. How is it that after the great advances made throughout that decade, we are now seeing such an intense resurgence in white supremacy, a body politic indifferent to impending environmental catastrophe, successful attacks on voting rights, women’s rights, immigrants?

Apparently, I’m not the only person of my age feeling like I will be passing along a world to my granddaughter’s generation that is far worse than what I had hoped for as a young man. As an individual without power, it is intensely frustrating – and I do what I can. I write letters to politicians, I work to get out the liberal vote prior to every election, I donate as I can afford to good causes – and for whatever it is worth, I write music that is an expression of my firm belief that every great advance in our civilization, for centuries, has been the work of great liberal thinkers and activists. My music these days, more than ever before, is a direct response to the major societal ills that I see destroying all the good that was accomplished back when I was young, but whose promise stalled as we young folks grew up, got jobs, raised families, and became otherwise so preoccupied by life that we let the flower wither.

So, I was thrilled when a friend emailed me a link to www.thirdact.org. Their website description is right in line with my desire to do more. “Third Act is people over the age of 60 — experienced Americans — determined to change the world for the better. We muster political and economic power to move Washington and Wall Street in the name of a fairer, more sustainable society and planet. We back up the great work of younger people, and we make good trouble of our own.” A perfect mission statement for someone like me!

Any of my musician friends who happen to read this and want to collaborate – get in touch! My dance card is filling up as I’ve been reaching out to like-minded artists as I find them to work on projects that encourage a more sustainable, peaceful society.