Greatest Moments of Singing VI

I couldn't resist but share another supreme example of Caruso in a Verdi ensemble. Here is "Solenne in quest'ora" from La forza del destino. It was recorded in 1906 -- the year some say was Caruso's prime:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ntGizYQjht8

The baritone was Antonio Scotti -- Caruso's friend, colleague, and compatriot (Scotti was also Neapolitan). It is said that Scotti was an invaluable advisor to Caruso in many matters of savoir faire. (Caruso, after all, came from peasant stock.)

Greatest Moments of Singing V

Caruso at his utterly glorious best: the famous trio from Verdi's I Lombardi with Frances Alda and Marcel Journet.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_3578_SBlxo

I love hearing Caruso in ensembles. What a great collaborative musician he was! Then, of course, that was that voice ...

Greatest Moments of Singing IV

Then you had a guy named Caruso ...

I've heard it said that 1906 was Caruso's "prime." Don't know if it's true, but here in any case is the 1906 recording of Tosti's beloved Ideale:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=w85mS_Z8OAQ

Greatest Moments of Singing III

Who sang Tosti like Gigli?

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dso0bF4xXCs

Greatest Moments of Singing II

Nicolai Gedda and Erik Werba rehearse for their 17 August 1961 recital at the Mozarteum, in Salzburg. Bask in this stunning version of Richard Strauss's Heimliche Aufforderung:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4AASx6jnDTI

Hope for the Catholic Church

Seems hard to believe that the following is this blog’s fiftieth post.

Recently I had the pleasure of working with a Roman Catholic priest who is, in my opinion, one of the finest liturgists in the Archdiocese. The church was filled with young people, teenagers, and young adults. What? Young people, attending a liturgy that adheres to the General Instructions of the Roman Missal (GIRM)? You mean the incense didn't scare them away? The good music didn't scare them away? The sacred silences didn't put them to sleep? You mean you can have a good liturgy, a liturgy that actually resembles a religious service, and young people will still come?

Perhaps the above is hard for some priests to believe. All the harder it will be for them to believe that this parish in question is growing and expanding.

As a child I walked into church and smelled incense. How nice to smell it again at this young, vibrant parish. At a different parish which I have served, I would walk in and smell coffee brewing (yes, in the actual sanctuary). Sacred silences were kept to a minimum, to avoid the "lulls" or "lack of momentum" that the pastor feared. The Post-Communion appeals for money were well thought out, the homilies not always. The music was carefully monitored so as not to be "too good." In short, the clergy made every effort to prevent the liturgy from being "too churchy," circumventing the GIRM at every turn, so as not to "scare away" the youth and young adults. The youth and young adults at this very same parish often voiced their preference for the very things these clerics were trying to avoid: the organ, the plainchant, the silences, the incense, the mystical aspect of the Holy Mass, even the Rosary. The youth weren't afraid of tradition; the clergy was.

Many of my colleagues are also noticing this trend. A chaplain at an important college told me in an e-mail (I quote), "The music you play is growing in popularity among the devout." The Director of Music at an important seminary told me (again, via e-mail),

Another stupid argument people make is that you have to use pop-sounding music to attract "the youth" and others who might have fallen away. This just isn't true; even if attracted temporarily by such stuff, those people usually don't stay for very long. There is a book by Marva Dawn (a Lutheran musician) called Reaching Out Without Dumbing Down. She describes a survey done of people who came back to church after being away for a long while, and the number one reason they returned was "at the invitation of a trusted friend," and not because of the pop music.

That is an interesting point that even the more fiscally minded pastors often miss. You're running a capital campaign. You're asking your parishioners for $500,000. Who's going to shell out that dough, the teenager who shows up once or twice to hear the new electric guitar band and then leaves, or the older parishioner whose family has been attending the church for 75 or 100 years? Why, then, would a pastor alienate these pillars of the church and then expect the parish to "grow"?

How nice, however, it was for me to experience these recent liturgies, carried out beautifully in every way. I felt that the most important thing to that pastor was the liturgy. Not the capital campaign, not the new school, not some poor attempt at liberation theology – the liturgy. Maybe a great liturgy in itself doesn't bring in the crowds. Maybe a bad liturgy in itself doesn't keep the crowds away. (Said coffee-brewing church is not empty, no matter how slipshod the liturgy.) However, I now know, more clearly than ever, that a beautiful Mass does not keep the youth away. Chances are, they will like it.

History's Greatest Pianists IV

The greatest two-piano recording ever made: Harold Bauer & Ossip Gabrilowitsch play Arensky (1929).

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MLnwYotkkQU

History's Greatest Pianists III

Paderewski: another pianist whose Romanticism and occasional wrong notes disqualified him from the respect of late 20th-century critics. If this isn't music-making of a great master, tell me what is.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=f9ZxnObmcdU

History's Greatest Pianists I

When Liszt first heard Vladimir de Pachmann play, he said to the audience, "Those who have never heard Chopin before are hearing him this evening." Enough could never be said about this man's Chopin playing (see the fabulously informative website, http://nettheim.com/pachmann/ ).

And yet, critics of the second half of the 20th century dismissed him completely. Harold C. Schonberg just did not take him seriously. After all, he occasionally missed some notes! How could he?!

Here is a link to actual footage of this legend. The music you hear in the background is actually a 1925 piano roll of Pachmann's playing -- it isn't even a recording. And yet the piano roll has more nuance than the actual recordings of today's pianists.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AwTw7hBZbkY&feature=related

By contrast, an actual recording (not a roll) of Pachmann playing the same piece two years previous can be heard here:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-3WuBOtCsYs

History's Greatest Pianists II

Like Pachmann, Cortot was dismissed for much of the 20th century because he missed a couple of notes. The fact that he was one of the greatest musicians ever to touch a keyboard didn't seem to matter. My piano teacher whom I won't name but whose initials were Wha-Kyung Byun told me in a lesson, "In Korea, I listened to Cortot recordings, because that's all there was."

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=o8E_0glY3nI&feature=related

Greatest Moments of Singing I

"May I have your ear?" from The Bartered Bride (Smetana). Nicolai Gedda & Giorgio Tozzi (1959)

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jqClLXQFLmk

The much-more interesting world of opera

Today, I posted the following on a popular organist listserv. I'm guessing the organist-types won't care so much for it. I thought you would enjoy it more!

My good friend Andrew Farkas sent me this today:

http://operachic.typepad.com/opera_chic/2009/11/gloves-off-angela-gheorghiu-blasts-alagna-he-wants-me-back-his-family-in-corriere-della-sera-intervi.html

It is entirely more interesting than anything going on in our little organist world. True, the musical and vocal level of singing has never been lower. But at least there's something INTERESTING to read about. Bigger-than-life personalities, like the Greek gods throwing lightning bolts at each other.

These folks aren't circus attractions who get 15 minutes of fame from their little trick. ("I can play 'Granada' with my ear lobes!") They do more than inspire curiosity. These are personages who dominate a stage, and what's more, they have a relationship with their audience. Their audience sees through the performer who says, "I want your attention and will stoop to absolutely anything to get it." These operatic titans are simply living their operatic lives, and they get attention because they are INTERESTING -- interesting people who are really living life -- not always cleanly, but living it they are.

Biggs and Fox were interesting. Menuhin was interesting, and he happened to be a prodigy. But just being a prodigy doesn't automatically make you interesting. (And what happens when you grow up? An old prodigy becomes like a retired baseball player, increasingly grateful for the people who still remember him. And if they're really unlucky, they live long enough that no one remembers them except some bespectacled librarian. "Oh, yes, I remember you! You pitched for the Manhattan Island Red Stockings in 1742.") Liberace was interesting, and he happened to wear sequins. But putting on sequins doesn't automatically make you interesting. There has to be something more.

Biggs and Fox had something more. Horowitz and Rubinstein had something more. And these operatic numina? Well, they don't sing so good, some of them. But boy, do they have that something more! I was on the edge of my seat reading about the Sicilian tenor and the Romanian soprano. And I immediately became sad that in my inbox today, there was nothing about organs that put me on the edge of my seat. In fact, it's not just today.

Organists as Musicians, Part II

Though it may seem like an artistic step backward, this notion of mass-producing pipe organs, I think the outcome would be the opposite.

In the 19th century, builders as diverse as E. & G. G. Hook and Cavaillé-Coll had catalogs that advertised "stock models." Model 1, Small Organ, X amount of stops, Y dollars. Model 2, Medium-Sized Organ, and so forth. And yet the quality was not lower than the organs of today but higher.

Why? There are many reasons, too numerous and complex to list here. However, a very significant reason is that they had the opportunity to build and rebuild and re-rebuild the same instrument. What if piano builders had to build a brand-new design for every single piano?! Think of how flawed these experimental pianos would be! Yet this is what pipe organ builders routinely do ... reinventing the wheel each time ... requiring formidable cost on the part of the consumer ... and the results are frankly variable.

If, instead, there were a stock-model organ, developed with the same type of trial and error that a Mason & Hamlin was developed, think of the instrument that would result! Movable organs, not tied to any church or building! Predictable tone colors that composers would know how to approach! Soon enough, there would be organ chamber ensembles, and composers providing repertoire for them! And did I mention that they would not be tied to the church?

If the highest quality tracker-action pipe organ costs $30,000-$40,000 per stop, it is inevitable that companies producing pipeless organs should be able to sway the public with instruments at a fraction of the cost. As the technology increases and these instruments sound "almost like pipe organs," the pipe organ companies are going to be in real doo-doo. As soon as someone figures out how to combine the Hauptwerk® set-up with those Bose® two-tower speakers, I doubt any church will buy a pipe organ. Why should they?

If, however, some pipe organ builder heeds my advice and starts building a 10-stop portable stock model organ, at a cost of say $100,000, and if fine composers started composing repertoire for it, I think this and only this would give the non-pipe companies a run for their money. If a concert hall can spend $100,000 on a 9-foot Steinway, they can just as easily do the same for this new type of pipe organ. It won't help for Saint-Saëns or Mahler, but it would be ideal for Bach, Handel, Haydn ... and all the wonderful chamber music and concertos yet to be written!

Organists as Musicians

A fascinating thread -- that is, a so-so thread that evoked a fascinating answer -- has appeared on a popular pipe organ listserv.

The poster was seeking ideas on "organ recitals with a twist." Another poster replied in part:

Organ with other solo instruments, besides brass, opens up a whole different range of repertoire, especially for 19th-21st century pieces. What you get may not be the big, splashy, all-stops-out organ fireworks, but you will get real chamber music with organ, which can draw interest from music lovers who might not otherwise attend an organ concert.

Or organ concertos with smaller, or unusual ensembles. Lots of those around from the 18th century on.

Whatever the antonym of a "can of worms" would be ("can of ... gold?"), that is what was opened up in that response.

Pianists, violinists, cellists, they all have the opportunity to make music with OTHER MUSICIANS! Fancy that: to actually leave one's practice room and make music with ANOTHER PERSON! It's not the fault of us organists: we simply don't have the chamber music repertoire that pianists, string players, woodwind players, etc. have.

This is something I thought a lot about during my teens, but I never knew how to overcome the problem of writing a work -- say, an "organ quartet" (organ, vln, vla, vc) -- that could be played on "most organs" and in "most situations."

That is: what good is writing such a piece if it would work only on 10% of organs or in 10% of choir lofts?

Many parish organists will read what I wrote about "making music with other musicians" and take great umbrage. They will hastily point out that they work regularly with their volunteer choir (heavy on the word "volunteer") or with their parishioner who happens to play the oboe (heavy on the word "parishioner"). Don't misunderstand what I'm saying: working with musicians within a parish is a great Christian opportunity, great cultural opportunity, and great community opportunity. Unfortunately, it is not always a great musical opportunity. I'm not talking about spiritual nourishment -- I have always loved working in the church. But for musical nourishment, we need to work with other musicians.

And so, I do not believe that organists will ever be as respected as other musicians unless we find a way to make chamber music viable.

So, how do we achieve that, and with what type of instruments?

Organs without pipes are not conducive to chamber music. Large, electro-pneumatic instruments (which I often enjoy) are not conducive to chamber music. Yet their movable consoles solve the basic problem of how to position the players. Therefore, the only way, in my opinion, to promote chamber music with organs is to have tracker instruments built in a way that four or five musicians can position themselves near the console and still project their sound to the audience.

However, because that would involve cooperation between organbuilders and architects -- which will never happen -- the only solution that I can see for promoting organ chamber music is the construction of small, two-manual-and-pedal pipe organs that are made to be portable.

An organbuilder should build a stock model, with Bourdons 16 & 8 in the pedal, Great Flute 8-String 8-Principal 4-Flute 2, Swell (under expression) Flute 8-Flute 4-Nazard-Principal 2-Tierce-Reed 8. The specs can be tweaked, but this instrument should be designed and mass-produced.

Yes, it would be an artistic compromise, just like the ubiquitous Steinway is an artistic compromise. But how nice to be able to compose a Piano Quintet and know, more or less, what the piano will sound like. How am I to compose an Organ Quintet if 90% of the consumers will not be able to adapt it to their instrument?

The Pianist and the Critic

(The following is an article I wrote five years ago. I’d almost forgotten about it till this morning, when by chance I came across it on the web. Amazingly, it found its way to the Wladyslaw Szpilman "The Pianist" Official Homepage (http://www.szpilman.net). It is an impassioned piece that I enjoyed re-reading.)

THE PIANIST AND THE CRITIC

“Those who can’t do, review.”

by Leonardo Ciampa

Last night I finally saw Roman Polanski’s film, The Pianist. I avoided it like the plague, the bitter taste from Shine being still in my mouth. (Shine was a perfectly enjoyable movie, until I actually heard Mr. Helfgott play in real life. Perhaps he was so named because even mit der Hilfe Gottes he still can’t play accurately.)

Not so with the Pianist and its subject, Wladyslaw Szpilman.

Firstly, just in terms of moviemaking itself, The Pianist is a phenomenal artistic achievement. This fact was all the more palpable because the previous movie my wife and I had seen was Gangs of New York. In comparison to Polanski’s work, Scorsese’s was like a bad comic book. Typical Hollywood sensationalism which, starting from the very first scene, screams to the viewer, “This is not in any way realistic or even artistic. This is just an extravaganza of superficiality designed to win awards.”

The Pianist had the ring of truth from the getgo – in large part due to the fact that Szpilman’s work was written in 1946. How brave to document his tragedy so soon after it ended.

There is an old adage, “Those who can’t do, review.” It’s one of those silly sayings about which I wish I could say, “They’re not accurate – they’re just debunking expressions used by people who like to dish.” Experience, however, has told me that this expression in particular is a truthful one.
Critic Norman Lebrecht suffers from the same ailment as virtually every other critic: They seem to be against everything but for nothing. Lebrecht’s book, The Maestro Myth, is a case in point. He glories in the demystification and deflation of every great conductor under the sun. The fact, however, remains that it is harder to conduct than it is to write about conductors.

Particularly deviant are Lebrecht’s criticisms of Maestro Szpilman, in a 2002 article entitled “The Real [sic] Szpilman Revealed.” Consider the following utterances:

Whether he was a good, bad or moderate musician is immaterial to his story.

No, in fact, it was perfectly material. Here is a man who was so respected that Jews and Gentiles alike rallied to his defense. Would they have done this for just anyone? What made Szpilman stand out among the millions and millions of other Jews who faced the same fate? Obviously (at least, it would be obvious to one with a rational and healthy mind), Szpilman was a special person with a special talent.

The composer Andrzej Panufnik … failed to mention [Szpilman] either in his memoirs, or (his widow tells me) in any of their conversations. Reich-Ranicki, who knew Szpilman in the ghetto, likewise omits him from his memoirs. … None [of the other important Polish musicians] made public acknowledgement of his contribution, if any, to their careers.

Lebrecht began his article by saying, “In classical music, you’ve got to be dead to be good. Only two or three composers at any given time achieve posterity while alive. The rest go gently into that good night, praying for posthumous recognition.” Why, then, does Lebrecht contradict himself by gloating over his inability to find contemporary kudos for Szpilman? How much contemporary kudos did J. S. Bach garner? As a keyboardist, some. As a composer? Yet another case of Lebrecht’s illogic and his obsession with desecration.

Szpilman did not achieve individual renown. He appears to have been a man with no shadow.

J. S. Bach was not renowned until Mendelssohn revived the St. Matthew Passion 77 years after Bach’s death. Shadows are not always contemporaneous with the people who cast them.

On the other hand, movies tend not to be made about critics’ lives! That’s why criticism contains more ax-grinding than aural discernment.

Musical evidence has begun to emerge from the archives of Polish Radio revealing Szpilman as an artist of ironic refinement and restrained muscularity.

The evidence does not reveal this. It reveals a musician of the highest order, a Golden Age style composer-musician who seems not to have lost a thing despite six years (!) away from his craft. All that should be there is there: a well-grounded technique, a singing melody, an ear for voicing the harmony, an understanding of the structure of the music, all unified by God-given style and taste.

[The] two tapes of the Chopin Nocturne in C-sharp minor … avoid bombast, triumphalism or sentimentality.

Is that piece bombastic, triumphal, or sentimental? Perhaps, then, Szpilman was a good interpreter.

The pianist can almost be heard to smile when there was nothing to smile about.

No, it is Lebrecht who inappropriately smiles. An autographical observation!

In the ubiquitous Rachmaninov Prelude in G-sharp he makes no attempt to compete with the fingerpower of Russian masters, but tosses the piece off with near casual panache.

Incorrect. Szpilman does have fingerpower, which is why the piece sounds “easy.” How Szpilman maintained that fingerpower during those six unspeakable years shall remain one of the great mysteries of pianism.

[The] Sony Classical disc that comes out this week [is] a testament to a shy executant.

Shy? Why, because in Chopin’s Nocturnes he doesn’t pour gasoline into the piano and throw a matchin? Szpilman is one of the only pianists in history to capture Chopin’s dreamy introversion. Or do you prefer Rubinstein’s jaded versions that reek of debauchery?

The most interesting discovery on the disc is Szpilman’s own music… (etc.)

Typical critic behavior: Disarm the reader with a seemly complimentary sentence, then whip out the condescension.

In the ghetto he composed a Gershwin-like concertino for piano and orchestra, astonishingly cocky in the deadly circumstances.

Cocky? Here Lebrecht is making two ridiculous comments – one, that Gershwin’s music is cocky, two, that Szpilman’s is. Is any music that is “lighter” than Beethoven’s somehow brash? And what is the relevance of world events? In 1937 America was in a depression, the world was at the brink of war, and Cole Porter suffered an accident that would eventually result in amputation. That didn’t stop him from writing songs like Most Gentlemen Don’t Like Love, From Now On, and Get Out Of Town. Should he somehow not have been allowed to write light-hearted songs at that time?

Naggingly persistent, [the Concertino] is not a particularly likeable piece but it lodges in the ear like a grommet. It’s one of those pieces you find yourself humming and wonder where it’s from.

Typical mentality of the 20th-century music critic: If a piece is popular, it must not be good. So if the piece didn’t stay in one’s ear, would it then qualify as a masterpiece?

In a year or two, Szpilman’s music will be played no more than Górecki’s.

An easy statement to make, because in a year or two no one will remember Lebrecht’s review in order to refute it.

Leonardo Ciampa
2 February 2004

Copyright © MMIV Leonardo A. Ciampa. All rights reserved.

Note: The soundtrack is played not by Szpilman but by another excellent Polish pianist, Janusz Olejniczak.

278 pages of music in 24 hours!

Friends,

I didn't exactly plan it this way, but within 24 hours, not one but two major collections of my music were published -- one with 128 pages, the other with 150 pages! That makes 278 pages of my music, made available for purchase anywhere in the world. 24 hours prior it was not available. A little surreal ...



The Advent/Christmas album is the result of 20 years' worth of concerts, services, Masses, and concerts.

The Five Organ Symphonies are "Neoromantic," with individual movements suitable for both concert and church use.

To purchase:

http://www.musicamultimedia.net/cic/lang/it/composers/leonardo-ciampa/2009/11/leonardo-ciampa-25-pieces-for-advent-and-christmasleonardo-ciampa-25-pezzi-per-lavvento-e-il-natale/

http://www.musicamultimedia.net/cic/composers/leonardo-ciampa/2009/06/leonardo-ciampa-organ-symphoniesleonardo-ciampa-sinfonie-per-organo/

Addendum

I am grateful for the many thoughtful comments (mostly private) on the last post. It's true that, at the moment, the organ is anything but "in." Chamber music and symphonies by Central European, German-speaking composers, written between 1775 and 1925 -- that is in. But look at how the Early Music movement was a mere curiosity in the 1950s. In the 1960s it was derided, but it was becoming prevalent enough to scare people into that derision. By the 1970s it was starting to be trendy; now people were really becoming scared. By the 1980s, Boston had more Early Music happening than the other kind. Today, most all classical musicians of any camp perform Baroque music with some sort of stylistic understanding. In 1950 it wouldn't have seemed possible.

Why can't there be a musical renaissance if there's already been a culinary one? Today you can go to a regular supermarket and find 15 kinds of whole bean coffee, 15 kinds of pasta, 15 kinds of cheese, 15 kinds of olive oil, 15 kinds of wheat bread ... As recently as 20 years ago, you had to go to expensive specialty stores for anything like that. And TV didn't have entire cooking networks -- there were Julia Child and the Frugal Gourmet, and only a couple of other smaller names. The public has become culinarily more sophisticated, more aware. It can also happen for music, and especially for the organ. In fact, I think it will.

The Future of Classical Music, or of Anything Else

Being a "classical" musician (not sure what that means), it's hard not to wonder, at least occasionally, what the future of "classical" music is going to be.

Some corners of the classical music market certainly will fail. The major conservatories have already started their descent to failure, and the reason is a very simple financial one: tuition prices are moving in contrary motion to the salaries being earned by graduates, which means that the #1 fund-raising source of any school -- alumni -- is soon going to be no source at all. To put in layman's terms that even the administrators of a famous conservatory could understand: you can't teach someone to do a low-earning job and charge that person big money for the privilege.

Also on the road to failure are the major symphony orchestras. Again the reason is a simple one: people perceive that "classical music is boring," and as executed in the major concert halls, indeed it is. The last thing on Beethoven's mind -- the very, very last thing -- was a bunch of people wearing crisp tuxes, playing long programs, requiring the audience to sit for long stretches in total silence -- no one speaks to the audience, the audience speaks to no one. And, for this privilege, the ticket prices continue to climb. It defies all logic, and if fewer people are attending, it's probably for some of the same reasons that I don't attend (unless a friend is performing).

The future of opera? I won't even discuss it, because the level of singing is so low that I don't even respect the genre in the state that it's being currently perpetrated. (Recently I saw a video of a live Aïda from Verona, 1967, with an in-his-prime Bergonzi, Gencer, Cossotto, Colzani, and the list goes on. Excellect chorus. Excellent orchestra. Excellent direction by Capuana. And I remarked to my wife, "You could not even assemble a cast like this today. You could search the whole world and not even find this much talent and ability." And even if you did, you could never get from them a live, unspliced performance of this quality. Opera today is not even to be considered among serious music-making.)

There was an interesting article by Anne Midgette in yesterday's Washington Post about the topic of classical music in today's world:

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2009/11/04/AR2009110404360.html

and many interesting blog responses, notably this one:

http://www.artsjournal.com/sandow/2009/11/quotation_of_the_day_8.html

The future of "classical music," or of anything else, will depend on the leadership not of the country but of musicians. Undoubtedly you will consider this to be exaggerated and mathematically suspicious, but I will state that 99.999% of musicians follow instead of lead. Instrumentalists apply for jobs in symphony orchestras because "that's what's done." When orchestras fail and something else becomes popular, they will apply for that thing because "now this is what's done." To survive in music is very easy. Do what isn't done. Be one of that 0.001% who is strong enough to say, "I feel passion about this, this has beauty, this has cultural value, I'm doing this." People will follow.

And who follows more obediently that a music critic? Recently a critic in a major newspaper was trying to get across how famous Gustavo Dudamel is. He wrote, "Dudamel, in case you've been living in an organ loft, is [a famous conductor, etc.]."

Here is the letter I wrote in response:

Dear [name of newspaper],

I object to Mr. [Critic]'s statement that "[Gustavo] Dudamel, in case you've been living in an organ loft, is [a famous conductor]." Some of my best friends live in organ lofts.

Sincerely yours,

Leonardo Ciampa
Cambridge, MA

They printed it.

The fact, meanwhile -- and the conservatory administrators will be the last, I mean THE LAST, ones to figure it out -- is that the pipe organ is beginning its ascent to a comeback. The reasons are numerous, but here are the two major ones:

1. Churches are gradually forsaking their organs for guitars and drums, and other churches are closing altogether, but in the meantime, there has been a spate of new pipe organs going into concert halls (see http://www.chordstrike.com/2009/06/romancing-the-pipes-an-organ-primer.html ). Secular groups are buying the closed churches, or buying and relocating the organs they contained. Strangely enough, the organ is benefiting from the church attendance crisis. The organ is gradually shaking its perceived affiliation with the church. It is an independent musical instrument, like the oboe or the piano. Because of this, people who normally would never give money to something church-related are giving money to organs and organ recitals.

2. In a world where live, acoustic music played on live, acoustic instruments has never been rarer, people are getting tired of the constant synthetic sound -- the iPods and mp3's and wmv's and TVs and CD players and every other medium of sound replication. The engineering of a pipe organ, and the physics of how it resonates in its acoustical environment, has never been more interesting to an increasingly educated society. It "sounds better." Real sound sounds an awful lot better than a Youtube recording of real sound. And there is no sound more beautiful, more varied, or more interesting than the sound of a good organ played by a good organist in good acoustics.

These are merely beginnings of the Renaissance. Carnegie Hall still reigns. Juilliard still reigns. The Met still reigns. But they are all weakening, and if you don't believe me, take a peak at their annual reports.

The Effect of Paul Manz

Since Mr. Manz's death last Wednesday, I have listened, re-listened, and re-relistened to the three Pipedreams shows on Manz.

No two people are touched by the same thing in the same way. I knew a cleric who could hear Christian rock music of the lowest music and theological quality and say, "That touched my heart." Thus, these things are impossible to measure. That said, I have in these days been so touched -- in fact blessed -- by Mr. Manz's playing of his own music. It has "jumped out at me."

There are several qualities which make this man and his music remarkable and, well, touching.

A composer playing his own music. Without question, my greatest dilemma as a musician has been the inability to replicate how the composers played their own music. Even if, by some miracle, we could be certain of every articulation, rubato, and inflection of a composer, even by reproducing every one of these details, the personality, the "spirit" (and spirit is real) would never be right. Chopin is an extreme example. We know almost nothing about how he played. (Yes, I own Chopin: pianist and teacher, The Chopin Companion, and every other relevant book. So what? We still don't know what he sounded like. Or as Baron Munchhausen said, "Vass you dere, Sharlie?")

Then in 2001 I discovered the recordings of Ernesto Lecuona, playing his own music. From the "classical" point of view (I don't know what that means, but I said it anyway), the music is not on the level of Chopin, Liszt, or Debussy. But hearing Lecuona play it, it moved me on a profound level. It sounded ... well, right. Not just musically right -- spiritually right.

In 1989, in Newport, RI, I heard Charlie Callahan play the world-premiere of his Partita on "Slane." I remember seeing members of the audience in tears -- and they were musicians. Someday, a student of a student of a student of Callahan will exhume this piece and play it. And it won't be the same.

As a teenager, I played a lot of Neobaroque chorale-preludes, published by Concordia, of various composers of the Manz mold. Useful stuff for church, not all of it great. Today we know a lot more about how Baroque music was constructed. Improvisers like Bill Porter and Harald Vogel are not as rare as they once were. There are quite a few musicians today who can fashion Baroque-style music. We hear it, and in our snobbery we wonder, "How 'authentic' is it?" This week, hearing Manz play his music, the question instead was, "How right is it?"

In the context of church. The music of Manz seems even more right, because he wrote it for use on Sunday morning, during actual worship. Manz went one step further: instead of giving traditional organ recitals, he gave hymn festivals, playing hymn-based compositions and improvisations interspersed with hymns sung by all present.

I could not applaud this more loudly! We have dissected Bach's music from every angle and with every rationale. The composer whose music I most love to play is Bach. And the composer about whose music I feel the most subconscious is Bach. Every time I play a note, I imagine that I've broken ten rules. Maybe it was too legato or too staccato or, worse yet, it "wasn't in the style." What that "style" is, of course, no one knows, a fact that we've already established. It's a rather fluid thing; in ten years the "authentic style" will suddenly be something different.

But hearing Manz play his Neobaroque compositions, in the context of worship, I feel like I'm brought closer to the spirit of Bach. While the organ professors were out having fistfights over articulation, here in the Midwest, far from Boston, was a fervent Lutheran musician, improvising on Lutheran hymns during a Lutheran service. That is much closer to the Bach experience than some Bach recital by some top teacher on the trendy tracker of the time.

A good person making good music. Around 1991, I was at Duquesne University, playing what I think was the world-premiere of the Sonata for Clarinet and Piano by Elliott McKinley. It was some sort of new music festival organized by David Stock. One day, Bill Bolcom did a composition masterclass, during which the discussion somehow meandered to "good" music written by "not necessarily good" human beings. Bolcom mentioned Wagner and admitted that he wasn't sure how to reconcile the fact that great music was written by ... well, Wagner. I admired Bolcom's candor about it; he was brave enough to say, "I don't know the answer to that one."

It is a question that I've thought often of in the almost 20 years since.

There's no question that great people sometimes write bad pieces, and bad people sometimes write great pieces. And frankly, we can't always judge how "good" or "bad" a historical figure was. Some claimed that Verdi, Brahms, and other composers "believed in nothing." Chances are, they very much believed in a Higher Power but did not believe in the church hierarchy. Put differently, God's laws and church laws are not necessarily synonymous. The latter they were happy to break -- and historically the clergy themselves have been only too willing to break both categories of laws. ("Do as we say, not as we do," proclaims their conduct.)

However, what I do know is that when you have a great person writing a great piece of music, it transcends all earthly stratospheres. The greatest music of Perosi is greater than the greatest music of Wagner or some other reprobate. We have, for instance, a recording of Perosi conducting his "Giudizio Universale." This is a musical/spiritual level that Wagner never reached.

And so there is "a certain something" about the music of Paul Manz. It comes across that there is a great human being making this music. There is a simplicity -- a quality that is not childish but childlike. Manz, in his music, seemed to be behaving the way Christ admonished us to behave.

Here are the Pipedreams shows. Experience them for yourself:

http://pipedreams.publicradio.org/listings/2001/0114/

Long live the memory of Paul Manz.

RIP Paul Manz

In Memoriam Paul Manz

by Scott M. Hyslop

Paul Otto Manz, internationally celebrated organist, dean of American church musicians, and composer of the internationally acclaimed motet “E’en So, Lord Jesus, Quickly Come” has died in St. Paul, Minnesota at the age of ninety years.

Manz’s life and career were filled with the honors and accolades that many performing musicians strive for yet seldom attain. With a lengthy list of performances at venues like The Kennedy Center in Washington D.C., with the National Symphony; Symphony Center in Chicago, with the Chicago Symphony; and Orchestra Hall in Minneapolis, with the Minnesota Orchestra, Manz was able to perform the canon of major works for organ and orchestra – a feat that few organists can claim. His charisma at the console made him a favorite of conductors like Leonard Slatkin, Charles Dutoit, and Henry Charles Smith.

While his career as a soloist took him around the world to splendid cathedrals and thrilling concert halls, his charisma as a musician and a servant of the church found its fullest expression in the action of leading people in congregational song. Through his work as an organist and composer, Manz reinvented the classic organ chorale of Buxtehude and Bach, giving it a new voice which spoke clearly and unapologetically with a fresh American accent. His work in this genre led him to play thousands of hymn festivals around the world – playing that excited and invigorated countless organists, church musicians and lay people who came to hear him play. Manz’s work in congregational song and liturgy can be viewed as the spark that eventually became a bonfire in which the standards for service playing and church music in this country were recast.

Even with an enviable career as a concert organist, Manz’s heart was deeply rooted in his work as a parish church musician. “Love the people you have been called to serve” was the surprising answer Manz gave when asked what one piece of advice he would offer to an individual starting out in the field of church music today. This seemingly simple response belies a depth of experience, wisdom, and faith which was formed and molded in the crucible of service to God’s people of the church over the course of a life well lived.

The only child of Otto Manz and Hulda (nee Jeske) Manz, German-Russian immigrants who had come to America to make a better life for their family, Paul Otto Manz was born on May 10, 1919, in Cleveland Ohio. At age five, Manz began piano lessons. Two years later, upon the advice of his first piano teacher, Emily Dinda, Manz began studying piano and organ with Henry J. Markworth at Trinity Lutheran Church in Cleveland, Ohio. In order to study with Markworth, Manz had to agree to take two lessons at the piano for every lesson at the organ. Upon completion of the eighth grade, Manz entered Concordia High School in River Forest, Illinois, eventually matriculating into their teacher training program.

While a student at Concordia, Manz also began private organ studies at the American Conservatory in Chicago with the eminent American organist Edwin Eigenschenk, a student of Bonnet and Vierne. Manz would go on to further study with the eminent Bach scholar Albert Riemenschneider at Baldwin Wallace College in Berea, Ohio, and Edwin Arthur Kraft at Trinity Cathedral in Cleveland. Formal studies at the graduate level were pursued by Manz at the University of Minnesota, where he was a student of Arthur B. Jennings, and in 1952 he received his Master’s degree in organ performance from Northwestern University in Evanston, Illinois.

In 1956 Manz received a Fulbright grant for study with Flor Peeters at the Royal Conservatory of Music in Antwerp, Belgium. An extension of the Fulbright provided Manz with the opportunity to work with Helmut Walcha at the Dreikönigskirche in Frankfurt, Germany. Manz would subsequently return to Belgium for three more summers to study with Peeters. The bond between Peeters and Manz grew so close over the ensuing years that the Belgian government invited Manz to be the official United States representative in state ceremonies honoring Flor Peeters on his 80th birthday and his 60th year as titular organist of the Cathedral of Saint Rombaut in Mechelen, Belgium. At that time, Flor Peeters referred to his former student as "my spiritual son."

In 1943, Manz married Ruth Mueller, a union which was blessed with four children: David, who died at birth; Michael, who died unexpectedly in 2006; John, and Peter. Following the deaths of Ruth’s brother, Herbert Mueller, in 1961 and his wife Helene, in 1964, the Manzes took in their four orphaned children, Mary, Anne, Sara, and John, increasing their family number to nine. Through all of life’s vicissitudes Ruth was Paul’s partner in every sense of the word, and he has been quoted as saying, “Without her I would probably be playing piano in a bar somewhere. Ruth has been the cantus firmus in our home and for our children, whom I treasure, while I practiced, taught, played and wrote.” Through the course of their 65 years of marriage, Paul and Ruth shared an exceptionally close relationship until her death in July of 2008. Her influence on his work and career cannot be underestimated.

Upon graduation from Concordia in 1941, Manz filled positions as teacher, principal and musician with several parishes in Fond du Lac, Wisconsin and St. Paul, Minnesota. In 1946, Manz received a call to Mt. Olive Lutheran Church in Minneapolis, where he served as full-time director of Christian education and music, an affiliation that would last for 37 years. Over the course of his service at Mt. Olive, Manz’s job description would change several times as the congregation made every effort to nurture and share his gifts with the church-at-large. A man of many sought-after talents, Manz served on the faculties at the University of Minnesota and Macalester College in St. Paul before he accepted a call in 1957 to serve as professor and chair of the Division of Fine Arts at Concordia College in St. Paul. Rather than lose him, Mt. Olive arranged for Paul’s duties to be pared down, allowing him to share his gifts at both institutions.

Manz would serve for many happy years at Concordia. Noteworthy among his numerous accomplishments during his tenure was his establishment of a sound program of music studies with a well-trained and distinguished faculty. His ultimate achievement at Concordia was the fulfillment of the dream that the Fine Arts Division of the school would have its own facility replete with rehearsal rooms, classroom space, and an auditorium complete with a concert pipe organ – designed by Manz, as well as well-designed studios for the art department. Shortly after the realization of this dream, Manz would find himself caught in the whirlwind and cruel chaos that enveloped the Lutheran Church – Missouri Synod at that time. His own convictions, coupled with deeply personal connections to the fray, left Manz with little choice but to resign his position at Concordia. He returned to full-time parish service, this time as Cantor at Mt. Olive with a specific mandate from the parish to use his many gifts in the service of the church catholic.

In 1983, after 37 years of service at Mt. Olive, Paul and Ruth Manz pulled up stakes and began a new chapter of ministry in Chicago, where Manz received a double call to serve as Christ Seminex Professor of Church Music and Artist in Residence at the Lutheran School of Theology at Chicago, and as Cantor at the Evangelical Lutheran Church of St. Luke. Manz retired from LSTC in September of 1992, but this retirement was merely a change of direction that provided an opportunity for friends and colleagues to encourage him to share his wealth of knowledge through workshops and master classes throughout the country. The dream was formalized with the creation of the Paul Manz Institute of Church Music based at the Church of St. Luke in Chicago. The Institute enabled him to continue to give lavishly and selflessly to others in the church, drawing from his own wealth of education and experience.

After a lifetime of faithful service as a church musician, in 1999 Paul Manz retired from the Paul Manz Institute of Church Music and St. Luke Church at age 80. The Manzes moved back to Minneapolis to be closer to family and friends.

Although it was Manz’s intent to keep performing from his base in Minneapolis, his life would soon take another direction. In May of 2000, while in North Carolina preparing to dedicate a new organ at an Episcopal Church in Hendersonville, Manz was stricken with sepsis. While Manz’s life was spared, his hearing was greatly compromised. After months of difficult recuperation it became apparent that he would not be able to play again.

The esteem and respect with which Paul Manz was regarded is seen in the numerous honorary doctorates, and honors he received over the course of his career. Northwestern University, his alma mater, presented him with the prestigious "Alumni Merit Award"; Trinity Lutheran Seminary of Columbus, Ohio bestowed the "Joseph Sittler Award for Theological Leadership”; The Lutheran School of Theology, Chicago presented him with the distinguished "Confessor of Christ Award"; The Chicago Bible Society presented him with the "Gutenberg Award"; and the Lutheran Institute of Washington, DC honored him with the first "Wittenberg Arts Award".

Paul Manz’s organ and choral works are internationally known and are used extensively in worship services, recitals, and teaching, and by church and college choirs. His motet “E’en So, Lord Jesus, Quickly Come”, having sold over one million copies, is regarded as a classic and has been performed and recorded in the United States and abroad. Manz’s life and work is the subject of a doctoral dissertation, published in 2007 by MorningStar Music Publishers in St. Louis, Missouri as The Journey Was Chosen: The Life and Work of Paul Manz.

Composer, recitalist, teacher, minister of the Word, clinician, author, organ consultant, faithful servant -- all facets of Paul Manz’s life shone as sure and faithful reflections of the hope, joy and peace which God has promised to us.

Paul is survived by his children, daughter-in-law Patricia Manz (Michael, deceased) of Spokane, John Manz (Ellen Anderson Manz) of Saint Paul, Mary Mueller Bode (Joel, deceased) of Saint Paul, Peter Manz (Stephanie Cram) of Portland, Anne Mueller Klinge (David) of Saint Louis, Sarah Mueller Forsberg (Dale) of Minneapolis, and John Mueller of Spokane. Twelve grandchildren: Erik Manz (Kimberly), David Manz (Caitlin) Rachael M. Manz, Rachel C. Manz, Rebekah Manz, Sarah Bode Selden (Dave), Katherine Edmonds, Erin Klinge Eftink (David), Jessica Klinge Hemmann (Scott), Laura Klinge, Peter Forsberg, Anna Forsberg, and five great grandchildren; many treasured friends, colleagues, former students, and legions of people in the pews. Through the example of his life, through the legacy of his family, and ultimately through the legacy of music that he graced us with to stir our souls, to excite our imaginations, and to enable our prayer and proclamation, we hear Paul Manz say,

Thank you for the grace of singing with me across the years in good times and in bad, when our words have stuck in our throats and when our eyes have overflowed with joy. It has ever been a Song of Grace: ‘Love to the loveless shown that we might lovely be.’ I have just been the organist. Thank you for letting me play.

(Mr. Hyslop is the author of The Journey Was Chosen: The Life and Work of Paul Manz. To purchase this book: http://www.ohscatalog.org/jowaschliand.html )

MIT Chapel Concerts

(updated on October 1, 2009)

Friends,

I'm happy to announce a new series of noontime organ recitals in the MIT Chapel. I am coordinating the series, which is under the aegis of the MIT Office of Religious Life.

The fall series will comprise five consecutive Thursdays, Oct. 22 to Nov. 19, inclusive. The concerts will be from 12 to 12:30 p.m. I will play the first two concerts (Oct. 22 & 29); the organists for the other three concerts will be Joshua Lawton (Nov. 5), Paul Cienniwa (Nov. 12), and Lee Ridgway (Nov. 19).

The Chapel organ, built by the Holtkamp Organ Company in 1955 (their Op. 1674), is an exquisite example of the organ building of that era. It remains unaltered and, thus, is one of the most important historic organs of that period of American organ building. The instrument is wed felicitously with the acoustics and architecture of Saarinen's renowned chapel.

The Chapel organ dates from Holtkamp's finest period: the tenure of Walter Holtkamp, Sr. (1894-1962), who was president from 1951 till his death in 1962. Many important installations date from this period, including the organ at Crouse College (Syracuse University), as well as our own Kresge Auditorium.

For more information on different ways that you might support these concerts, click here.

To hear this beautiful organ in a worship setting, there is a non-denominational prayer service held every Tuesday morning from 8:30 to 8:50 (preludes at 8:25). I am the organist for this short but meaningful service.

Photos by Leonardo Ciampa (29 September 2009).

Mark Twain V

All publishers are Columbuses. The successful author is their America. The reflection that they -- like Columbus -- didn't discover what they expected to discover, and didn't discover what they started out to discover, doesn't trouble them. All they remember is that they discovered America; they forgot that they started out to discover some patch or corner of India.

*

[Henry H. Rogers said:] "Business has its laws and customs and they are justified; but a literary man's reputation is his life; he can afford to be money poor but he cannot afford to be character poor; you must earn the cent per cent and pay it."

*

Unconsciously we all have a standard by which we measure other men, and if we examine closely we find that this standard is a very simple one and is this: we admire them, we envy them, for great qualities which we ourselves lack. Hero worship consists of just that. Our heroes are the men who do things which we recognize with regret and sometimes with a secret shame that we cannot do. We find not much in ourselves to admire, we are always privately wanting to be like somebody else. If everybody was satisfied with himself there would be no heroes.

*

Oxford is healing a secret old sore of mine which has been causing me sharp anguish once a year for many, many years. ... In these past thirty-five or forty years I have seen our universities distribute nine or ten thousand honorary degrees and overlook me every time. ... This neglect would have killed a less robust person than I am, but it has not killed me; it has only shortened my life and weakened my constitution; but I shall get my strength back now. ... Now then, having purged myself of this thirty-five years' accumulation of bile and injured pride, I will drop the matter and smooth my feathers down and talk about something else.

The Italian (& Hungarian) sides of Joe Maneri

Friends,

I know many of you have been waiting for a (to use one of Joe's favorite adjectives) heavy-duty post from me. Certainly the man whom I said was both "one of the greatest musicians of our time" and "like a father to me" was someone about whom I would have something to say.

Well, I still can't bring myself to write it.

A book could, and should, and will, will written about him. Several, I'm sure. But to reduce him to one blog post? It would be easier to arrange a ten-minute piano work entitled, "Highlights from Beethoven's Last Five Piano Sonatas."

I did, however, find a journal entry that I wrote several months back. It is not even the tip of the iceberg -- it is a snowflake on top of the tip of the iceberg. Still, I think begins to hint at the immensity of my feelings:

3 April 2009

Today was the day that I learned that Joe had a heart attack two weeks ago, and now has congestive heart failure. So it's only natural that I wanted to get some thoughts on paper.

I'm sure I will write something about Joe. And I'm sure it will be viewed by some as a student's adulation for his teacher, something not "impartial."

Well, I will tell you this:

If you went to the home of the greatest Italian chef who ever lived, and you tasted the greatest ravioli ever created by the hand of mankind, and if your reaction was, "Those ravioli are pretty good," that is not impartiality. That is inaccuracy.

If I use superlatives to describe Joe, it shows that he must be very great. If he were not very great, why would I want to write about him? And why would I write with superlatives if he were "normal"?

For to state that "Joe Maneri was within the range of normal" would be an inaccuracy. He was well beyond the range of normal. The only honest thing is to describe a great man with great terms. If through my writing the subject emerges as someone "great," that is not my fault. I am merely reporting a fact.

Joe and I spent many hours -- who knows how many? -- listening to and talking about Italian opera and song. Though Joe had a thoroughly German training with Josef Schmid (1890-1969), his heart and his upbringing were equally thoroughly Italian. At the time it was the furthest thing from my mind that I was "influencing him" in any way. I was simply sharing, and anyone who knew him knew that he was a limitlessly generous man who had a gift for drawing the loves and passions out of those around him. It was natural for his students and friends to share what was in their hearts.

Mascagni's Cavalleria Rusticana was an opera known and loved by countless Sicilians of Joe's parents' generation. Though many musicians and musicologists persist in thinking of this work as being "crude" and, in the worst sense of the word, "pesanty," Joe found much sophistication in it. I can still hear Joe singing the cello theme that opens Scene II -- that heart-breaking F# minor melody. There is a spot where Mascagni uses an F major 6/4 chord, with the cellos playing an open C. Quite a distant chord in F# minor. Joe told me, "When I first played that chord, I cried."

I had trouble holding back the tears when, following Joe's funeral, I was at the Maneri home, seated at the Knabe piano that used to be his mother's, with the old yellowed score of Cavalleria on the rack. I couldn't bring myself to play Scene II, but I played the Prelude. There are no words for the sadness I felt. I think I was sad in particular because I realized, at that moment, how sophisticated that music really is. Joe was right all along, yet the world was years from realizing it. The story of his life.

I often brought CDs of Caruso and Gigli, singing Verdi, Puccini, and of course Mascagni, but also Tosti. Many times did I play Tosti for Joe on one or another of the various pianos in the Maneri residence. On one of these occasions, Joe said to me, "You know, I have to tell you, I think that Paolo Tosti is really my favorite composer."

Joe once paid me a compliment that, at the time, I didn't think I deserved in the slightest way. Today, I think there may have been some truth in it. He said, "You've influenced my teaching. Before my teaching was too German. But because of you, I put more of the Italian in there."

Another composer whom Joe loved in a way that few people realized was Franz Liszt.

Liszt was a lot like Joe. Liszt had a comprehensive knowledge and understanding of all other music and musicians of his time. Liszt encouraged the musicians around him and treated them with the utmost generosity. Liszt pushed tonality ten or twenty years before the rest of the musical world as a whole started pushing it. Liszt plunged depths of spirituality and profundity, yet his detractors insisted he was "posing." All of that could be said about Dr. Maneri.

Once, I had a beautiful print made of Liszt seated at the piano (see image) and had it professionally framed. I don't remember the occasion; Joe's birthday, maybe? Anyhow, when he saw it, he went wild! He looked at it as if to know everything that Liszt was thinking at the time of the photo. It would be a little cliché to say that "it was like Joe knew him." What it was was: Joe really related to him. And he got very excited every time we talked about him.

Once, in class, Joe unexpectedly asked me to go to the piano and sightread (!) several of Liszt's late, mysterious piano works (Nuages Gris and one or two others). These works profoundly moved and fascinated Joe. After all, they were, in the best sense of the phrase, "ahead of their time."

I knew Joe since I was eight or nine years old, before he became my teacher. In September of 1989, during Orientation Week at the conservatory, many of the teachers gave a please-take-my-class demonstration. I could write a small book just about the demonstration that Joe gave that day! But I will mention only one thing which relates to the discussion about "ahead of one's time."

One very misunderstood aspect of Joe was his total humility, which to many seemed to be total arrogance. It wasn't. For instance, once in class Joe said (verbatim), "I'm so amazing it's scary, and I say that with the deepest humility." There wasn't a shred of arrogance in that statement. Joe gave every nanogram of credit, for every great thing inside him, to the Lord. If you knew him, you understood the simplicity and honesty of such statements.

Anyhow, here we were in September of '89 during Orientation Week. Joe's telling us the story of something that happened only a week before. He was cleaning out his swimming pool, and he combined chlorine with something else, and he couldn't breathe, and Sonja had to rush him to the hospital, and it took five hours for them to get him to breathe normally again. Joe then said -- and he couldn't say it without laughing -- "Had I died, ha ha ha, had I ha ha ha died, it would have set the world back 50 years."

That, too, was a humble statement. Joe was merely stating the truth.

The Funerals of Maneri & Kennedy

Organists and Catholic clergy have a stereotype of each other. Priests feel that organists are "in it just for the organ," and organists feel that priests are "enemies of good music." The stereotype is much more often true for clergy than for organists; I can't think of one organist colleague of mine that does not have a great liturgical sensitivity and knowledge, while a large majority of the priests I have known seem to be allergic to the arts.

However, as I read a popular organist Listserv, I see comments of such a fanatical nature that I begin to understand that, in many cases, priests' complaints about organists are entirely justified. One Lister wrote:

> I was shocked at the lack of organ used during [Sen. Kennedy's] funeral broadcast live

That is precisely the trait that priests complain about -- and they're RIGHT. What kind of fanatic listens to those eulogies by EMK Jr. and President Obama and laments the lack of organ music? Should they have eliminated one of those two speeches and replaced it with the Muffat Passacaglia?

Another Lister observed:

> It seems clear to me that all the competing priests from various
> institutions overwhelmed any proper liturgical preparation, resulting
> in bizarre absence of basic liturgical music,

As for "liturgical preparation," I'm guessing there was none whatsoever. To wit: I'm guessing there were Washingtonians organizing the thing, and the clergy simply took it upon themselves to say, "Let us pray" and "Amen" at the proper times.

As for the "bizarre absence of basic liturgical music:" Yes, it would have been nice to hear Jack Nicholson singing "Holy, Holy." But should the Mass have lasted three hours? What are these organists advocating, fewer eulogies and more Haugen?

The organists of the List missed a very crucial point. Had the Mass been more "normal" musico-liturgically, there would have been even MORE of an outcry that Sen. Kennedy didn't deserve such. (Murder is generally frowned upon in the Catholic Church. Unless you're talking about the Crusades, but "that was different.")

Though I agree that the Mass could have been trimmed down -- Domingo subtracted more than he added, and maybe we didn't need a whole cadre of eulogists -- I suggest that, overall all, it was "the way it should have been."

An interesting contrast was the funeral for Joe Maneri. It occurred last Friday at a Nazarene Church in Framingham. Sonja wanted a church service that was just that: a church service. Not a concert, not a musical marathon, just a church service. And it was, with simple hymns, a wonderful sermon, and an unforgettable eulogy (only one). The only "luxury" was to have Joe's piano fugues played for the prelude and postlude. (I'm not saying my playing of them was "luxurious" -- I simply did my best under the circumstances. They are great music).

The interesting thing about this "church service that really was a church service" is that, with Joe's hundreds of colleagues, former students, etc. that would have been happy to lend their talents at a moment's notice, it could have turned into a circus very easily.

My point is: I agree that a church service should never be made a mockery of. And there were, indeed, aspects of Sen. Kennedy's funeral that were "not like a regular Funeral Mass." But I thank God that this complicated Catholic did not receive a regular one, because that would have been a much graver mockery.

Maneri in the Blogosphere

It has been a pleasure to see obits for Joe Maneri pop up on so many different blogs from around the world.

A few writers really "got it," capturing the Joe that I loved.

"It would be hard to overstate how beloved Joe was by the students who took his microtonal improv class at NEC. It seemed he lit a fire in everyone who'd enrolled, through the sheer force of his outsized personality. ... [He was] an inspirational -- practically evangelical -- educator."
Darcy James Argue

"I have fond memories of the half dozen times I was fortunate to catch him in performance. The best was the first at the Chicago Cultural Center and a post-show hang at a downtown hotel with Bhob Rainey as our impromptu sponsor. In the bar, over a bowl of peanuts, Joe regaled us with tales of his past, present and future for hours, finally taking down my address and promising to write when it came time to count sheep. A month went by, two, and I forgot all about the pledge. Then, out of the blue, I found an envelope in my mailbox festooned with glitter and gold star stickers & post-marked from Massachusetts. Inside was a hand-written letter from Joe with an apology for his delay in reply and an effusive, stream-of-consciousness reflection on that magical Chicago night. I still have the letter and treasure it."
"Derek"

"[F]or all the saxists whose sounds have been compared to crying, Maneri was the one who sounded most like he was sobbing when he played. His lines were like hoarse, slow-motion laments. It was a devastating soundworld that his band created[.]"
Hank Shteamer

"Utter greatness. Pretty rare in these modern times for a guy to have a completely (and I mean completely as in NOBODY) unique sound. I've heard his sound on the saxophone compared to a cry but to me it always sounded like some strange language that only he knew how to speak but was easy to understand emotionally."
"me wag"


"I heard yesterday of the passing of my teacher Joe Maneri.
He was by far the most influential teacher I’ve ever had. ... [T]he most profound impact on me was his spirit. Joe so lived music it was part of everything he did, the way he talked, the way he walked, the way he drove a car, everything. And he wanted to share it with you because he dug it so, so much. I’ve never seen a teacher give so much of himself to a student, ever. [...]
He was a father figure for me and many other students. He gave us all permission to find our own music, and I will forever be profoundly grateful to him."
Greg Sinibaldi

Joe Maneri

I am still feeling too devastated to write at length about Joe Maneri. It would be difficult to exaggerate how much his death has impoverished our world. He was the greatest musician I ever knew, and he was the most loving man I ever knew -- and maybe that is no coincidence.

More later.

Exactly five years and two days before Joe's death,
this photo was taken at my older son's Christening
Brookline, MA, 22 August 2004
(Photo: Paul Raila)

RIP Joe Maneri (1927-2009)

Yesterday at 4:40 p.m., Utah time, I received the devastating phone call that I was dreading. About 40 minutes prior (6 p.m., Boston time), Joe Maneri passed away.

I feel no fear of contradiction when I say that he was one of the great musicians of the world. He was more than one of the leading microtonal composers and theorists. He was more than one of the most celebrated jazz improvisers (more famous in Europe than America, ironically). He was someone with the truest understanding of and sensitivity towards music of all periods, be it Palestrina or Elliott Carter. He may very well have been one of the most underappreciated classical musicians of his time.

He and his wife, the outstanding artist Sonja Holzwarth Maneri (who did the painting pictured here), were like parents to me. And so I am too speechless to write anymore at this time.

Portrait by Sonja Holzwarth Maneri (image from JoeManeri.com)

A Poem by Michelangelo

A poem by none other than Michelangelo Buonarroti (1475-1564):

A Vittoria Colonna

Un uomo in una donna, anzi uno dio,
per la sua bocca parla,
ond'io per ascoltarla
son fatto tal, che ma' più sarò mio.
I' credo ben, po' ch'io
a me da lei fu' tolto,
fuor di me stesso aver di me pietate;
sì sopra 'l van desìo
mi sprona il suo bel volto,
ch'io veggio morte in ogni altra beltate.
O donna che passate
per acque e foco l'alme a' liei giorni,
deh, fate c'a me stesso più non torni.

To Vittoria Colonna

When the prime mover of many sighs
Heaven took through death from out her earthly place,
Nature, that never made so fair a face,
Remained ashamed, and tears were in all eyes.
O fate, unheeding my impassioned cries!
O hopes fallacious! O thou spirit of grace,
Where art thou now? Earth holds in its embrace
Thy lovely limbs, thy holy thoughts the skies.
Vainly did cruel death attempt to stay
The rumor of thy virtuous renown,
That Lethe's waters could not wash away!
A thousand leaves, since he hath stricken thee down,
Speak of thee, not to thee could Heaven convey,
Except through death, a refuge and a crown.

(Translated by Longfellow)

Wiki judgment

Friends,

The verdict is in: I am no longer notable! At least according to Wikipedia.

To me the saga had a humorous element. Unfortunately, while I was sitting on the sidelines, half enjoying the silliness of it all, my fans took it much more seriously, some feeling quite upset. Though I appreciate your having rallied to my defense, I must ask you now to exercise restraint. There are musicians far greater than I who do not yet have a page on English Wiki. It is a very understandable symptom of having concertized more in Europe than in my own country (thus the lack of debate over the "Leonardo Ciampa" entry on Italian Wiki, German Wiki, et al.).

Wiki update

Here is the webpage where you can comment pro or con the deletion of the Leonardo Ciampa wikipedia entry: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Articles_for_deletion/Leonardo_Ciampa

Chopin & Wiki vandalism

Friends: next year is the Chopin Year, the great composer's 200th birthday. It's true: I am commemorating the event with nine concerts, three each at three different locations, between April and October, 2010, at approximately three-week intervals, and yes, all the proceeds from all nine concerts will go to charity.

It was brought to my attention that my page on Wikipedia has been vandalized. Someone going by "Grover Cleveland" added a {{citation needed}} tag after almost every sentence. He also recommended the page for deletion. I will look into how to deal with Wiki vandalism. In the meantime, here you have it: my personal declaration, on my official blog, that I am indeed planning this Chopin celebration.

Mark Twain IV (subtitled, "This is Where Twain was Wrong")

In his "unauthorized autobiography" which, as you by now know, is very dear to me, Twain complains of inexperienced writers who want to be published immediately, without paying the proper dues.

Not even the most confident untrained soldier offers himself as a candidate for a brigadier-generalship, yet this is what the amateur author does. With his untrained pen he puts together his crudities and offers them to all the magazines one after the other -- that is to say, he proposes them for posts restricted to literary generals who have earned their rank and place by years and even decades of hard and honest training in the lower grades of the service.

However, I respectfully poing out that Twain's next sentence is completely wrong.

I am sure that this affront is offered to no trade but ours.

Twain gives an imaginary example of a singer with no experience, wishing to sing second tenor in a Metropolitan production of Lohengrin.

[The manager asks the singer,] "Have you ever studied music?"

"A little -- yes, by myself, at odd times, for amusement."

"You have never gone into regular and laborious training, then, for the opera, under the masters of the art?"

"No."

"Then what made you think you could do second tenor in Lohengrin?"

"I thought I could. I wanted to try. I seemed to have a voice."

"Yes, you have a voice, and with five years of diligent training under competent masters you could be successful, perhaps, but I assure you you are not ready for second tenor yet. You have a voice; you have presence; you have a noble and childlike confidence; you have a courage that is stupendous and even superhuman. These are all essentials and they are in your favor but there are other essentials in this great trade which you still lack. If you can't afford the time and labor necessary to acquire them leave opera alone and try something which does not reqauire training and experience. Go away now and try for a job in surgery."

This is where Twain was wrong. This happens every single day at the Metropolitan. Not the last paragraph -- no one at the Met, or in New York City -- has the time to give that sort of advice.

Bach Questions

For many years, prominent Bach scholars including Harald Vogel (to whom I mean no personal disrespect) wanted us to believe that the organs of North Germany and Holland were the "ideal Bach organs" -- i.e., the best organs on which to play the music of the Thuringian master.

Well, Bach wasn't North German. And he'd never been to Holland. Why, then, make these illogical claims?

The answer is quite simple: many of the more Bachian and less tampered-with organs were in the former East and were, thus, not easily accessible to Vogel and others. Part of their data pool was roped off.

Strangely, this rather obvious answer has been disputed by some. An organist working in the former East wrote on a popular listserv:

[Vogel] used to come here p[r]etty often, even before the fall of the wall. It wasn't impossible, just unpleasant.

However, on the website of the Constellation Center here in Cambridge, MA, future home to what promises to be a stupendous Taylor & Boody, one reads:

While playing the music of Bach has been an important consideration in the design of organs for a long time, the relative inaccessibility of surviving instruments in Thuringia and Saxony during the East German period had prevented the research necessary for musicians and organ builders from the West to gain a thorough understanding of the traditions that Bach knew.

Now this situation has changed. Study of these instruments by builders and players has been taking place for a number of years and some of the most important Thuringian and Saxon organs have recently had fine restorations. Because of recent and ongoing research in connection with the restoration process, it is now possible to have a much clearer understanding of the sounds that Bach worked with and how they were produced.

This landmark Taylor & Boody instrument will be modelled after the much-hyped Hildebrandt organ in Naumberg. And it will be a wonderful instrument for the music of Bach. But is the Hildebrandt organ really "THE ideal Bach organ," as their publicity would have us believe?

The afore-mentioned organist in the former East wrote:

As for Naumburg - JSB helped design it, he examined it and found it excellent, and he pulled quite a lot of levers to get his student and son-in-law appointed there.

True, it is likely that Bach thought highly of this instrument. But how could anyone stretch, "I approve of this instrument," into, "This is The Ideal instrument for my organ music"? I know musicians are creative, but that requires something beyond the normal dosage of creativity!

The late, great Stephen Bicknell wrote:

If such an instrument [i.e., a true "Bach organ"] had existed in respect of J. S. Bach himself we would have a far greater understanding of the man and his music. In truth the historical record conspicuously lacks any such instrument. There is no identifiable Bach organ, and despite the hopes of many researchers the possible connection between J. S. Bach and the design of any particular instrument - whether the Trost organ at Altenburg or the Hildebrandt at Naumburg - is at best treacherously tenuous. [...]

From the record of surviving instruments we have none at which he presided. There are several which he played, even a few where he made a formal inspection at the time of their completion. All have suffered from the vicissitudes of time and, even where they have been conscientiously restored, the sounds that can be heard today give only a partial insight into the instrumental world that the great man inhabited.

In the relative absence of any coherent archaeological record the study of the relationship between J. S. Bach and the organ occupies exactly the same imaginary world as the study of Stonehenge, and the results of that study are witness not to Bach's own genius but to the affairs and concerns of those who have made the various studies. [...]

With this in mind I prefer to see the connection often made between Bach and the organ building of late seventeenth century Hamburg - instruments by Arp Schnitger and his immediate predecessors - as being a story of twentieth century preoccupations. First and foremost it is a story of political upheaval. In the division of Germany after the Second World War the Bach homelands of Thüringia and Saxony became relatively inaccessible, their organs and organ culture obviously so. The instruments of Gottfried Silbermann retained their specific cachet, but that widely acknowledged award of distinction was a matter of survival, not of revival. The remarkable craftsmanship in Silbermann's instruments led them to be revered not only in his own time but in following generations too. I would go as far as to say that in the nineteenth century he was the only organ builder of the past whose name was widely known in the international organ world. When the Iron Curtain came down across Europe even Silbermann's instruments fell for a time into shadow, and the idea of them belonging to an indigenous and varied local organ culture passed completely into oblivion. Attention was naturally diverted for a time to the other great area of importance to Bach's understanding of the organ - Hamburg and the North.

This removal of focus from central Germany to the North was also propelled by the engine of twentieth century musicology[.]

Brahmsian News

You heard it here first: an exciting new Brahms project, slated for completion this summer, to be published by CIC.

For over a hundred years, Brahms's final opus, the beautiful Eleven Chorale Preludes for Organ (Op. 122), has inspired both admiration and curiosity. George Bozarth, Barbara Owen, and other musicologists have opined that Brahms actually intended Fourteen Chorale Preludes, divided into two groups of seven.

The order of the first seven in Brahms's manuscript is 1, 5, 2, 6, 7, 3, 4. Clearly, the current No. 11 would be No. 14. That leaves Nos. 8, 9, and 10. What would comprise the missing three?

The splendid Prelude and Fugue on O Traurigkeit (WoO 7) spring to mind. But that still gives us only 13.

Rumor has it that Brahms sketched a few measures of a canonic treatment of Es ist ein Ros' entsprungen. We know that several of Op. 122 are revisions of earlier works. We know also that Brahms and Joachim liked to write canons, during the great days when Schumann was still among the living.

In this spirit, CIC is preparing the very first edition of "Brahms's Vierzehn Choralvorspiele (Fourteen Chorale Preludes), Op. 122a." Set I will consist of Nos. 1-7 (in the afore-mentioned order). Set II will include (in a yet-to-be-determined order), Nos. 8-11, O Traurigkeit, and Yours Truly's own canonic treatment of Es ist ein Ros' entsprungen, in a Brahmsian harmonic language but with the canonic technique employed by Schumann in his Six Studies for Pedal Piano, Op. 56

This exciting publication will be available on or before September 1st.

Mark Twain Speaks III

Along outside of the front fence ran the country road, dusty in the Summertime, and a good place for snakes - they liked to lie in it and sun themselves; when they were rattlesnakes or puff adders we killed them; when they were black snakes or races, or belonged to the fabled "hoop" breed we fled, without shame; when they were "house snakes" or "garters" we carried them home and put them in Aunt Patsy's work basket for a surprise; for she was prejudiced against snakes, and always when she took the basket in her lap and they began to climb out of it, it disordered her mind. She never could seem to get used to them; her opportunities went for nothing. And she was always cold toward bats, too, and could not bear them; and yet I think a bat is as friendly a bird as there is. My mother was Aunt Patsy's sister and had the same wild superstitions. A bat is beautifully soft and silky; I do not know any creature that is pleasanter to the touch or is more grateful for caressings, if offered in the right spirit.

Mark Twain Speaks II

It was during my first year's apprenticeship in the Courier office that I did a thing which I have been trying to regret for fifty-five years.

It was a summer afternoon and just the kind of weather that a boy prizes for river excursions and other frolics, but I was a prisoner. The others were all gone holidaying. I was alone and sad. I had committed a crime of some sort and this was the punishment. I must lose my holiday, and spend the afternoon in solitude besides. I had the printing-office all to myself, there in the third story. I had one comfort, and it was a generous one while it lasted. It was the half of a long and broad watermelon, fresh and red and ripe. I gouged it out with a knife, and I found accommodation for the whole of it in my person -- though it did crowd me until the juice ran out of my ears.

There remained then the shell, the hollow shell. It was big enough to do duty as a cradle. I didn't want to waste it, and I couldn't think of anything to do with it which could afford entertainment. I was sitting at the open window which looked out upon the sidewalk of the main street three stories below, when it occurred to me to drop it on somebody's head. I doubted the judiciousness of this, and I had some compunctions about it, too, because so much of the resulting entertainment would fall to my share and so little to the other person. But I thought I would chance it. I watched out of the window for the right person to come along -- the safe person -- but he didn't come. Every time there was a candidate he or she turned out to be an unsafe one, and I had to restrain myself. But at last I saw the right one coming. It was my brother Henry.

He was the best boy in the whole region. He never did harm to anybody, he never offended anybody. He was exasperatingly good. He had an overflowing abundance of goodness -- but not enough to save him this time. I watched his approach with eager interest. He came strolling along, dreaming his pleasant summer dream and not doubting but that Providence had him in His care. If he had known where I was he would have had less confidence in that superstition. As he approached his form became more and more foreshortened. When he was almost under me he was so foreshortened that nothing of him was visible from my high place except the end of his nose and his alternately approaching feet. Then I poised the watermelon, calculated my distance, and let it go, hollow side down. The accuracy of that gunnery was beyond admiration. He had about six steps to make when I let that canoe go, and it was lovely to see those two bodies gradually closing in on each other. If he had had seven steps to make, or five steps to make, my gunnery would have been a failure. But he had exactly the right number to make, and that shell smashed down right on the top of his head and drove him into the earth up to the chin, the chunks of that broken melon flying in every direction like a spray.

I wanted to go down there and condole with him, but it would not have been safe. He would have suspected me at once. I expected him to suspect me, anyway, but as he said nothing about this adventure for two or three days -- I was watching him in the meantime in order to keep out of danger -- I was deceived into believing that this time he didn't suspect me. It was a mistake. He was only waiting for a sure opportunity. Then he landed a cobblestone on the side of my head which raised a bump there so large that I had to wear two hats for a time.