Musical Points to Ponder

Miscellaneous topics on Carnatic music
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varsha
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Musical Points to Ponder

Post by varsha »

Hope to run this series for a while
WHEN LEOPOLD STOKOWSKI was recording the music for Walt Disney’s Fantasia with the Philadelphia Symphony Orchestra, the complex recording set up in the basement of the Academy of Music was declared a fire hazard and work was ordered stopped. On the advice of friends, Stokowski called ]oe Sharfsin, then city solicitor and an ardent music fan. Sharfsin quickly withdrew the stop order and recording proceeded.
Later, Stokowski expressed his gratitude and asked, “Now, what can I do for you Sharfsin said jokingly that one of his greatest wishes was to be rich enough to engage Stokowski and the orchestra for a single performance at which he would be the sole audience. Stokowski asked, “When did you have in mind?” Sharfsin answered, “Oh, that’s a long time away.”
Stokowski countered, “How about tomorrow at two o’clock . The incredulous Sharfsin appeared at the side door of the Academy of Music the next afternoon, to be escorted by a deputy of the maestro into the hall, empty except for the orchestra and conductor.
The maestro turned to make sure Sharfsin was there, raised his arms, and conducted for four hours—all the music of Fantasia just for ]oe Sharfsin. in Philadelphia Inquirer

Sachi_R
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Re: Musical Points to Ponder

Post by Sachi_R »

Varsha, what a gem! Thanks for the series start.
ಮಲಗಿ ಪಾಡಿದರೆ.....
I feel there is perhaps no other human context or situation where the giver and the receiver are so mutually benefited and grateful!

vgovindan
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Re: Musical Points to Ponder

Post by vgovindan »

Received the following input from Sri Madhava Munirao -

"Reading the thread of Varsha's 'Musical Points to Ponder', I recalled a very significant incident and I wish to share with you.
Sri Krishna Gana Sabha invited my Guru & Father Sri SSRao to give a concert, if I remember correct, for the first time. There was a very heavy rainfall and rain water flooding the streets in Madras/Chennai. SSRao did not agree for its cancellation and I drove him to the Sabha with great difficulty. Knowing him well, Vid.Tirupparkadal Veera Raghavan and Vid.Tanjore Upendran also managed to reach SKGS. Only five ardent fans of SSRao were in the audience. Full concert was performed.
Sri Yagnaraman wanting to thank the artists, addressed SSRao and said that for a long time he desired to listen to him in 'private' and his wish was fulfilled to-day. Sri Upendran was very much upset and immediately told Yagnaraman 'Neer periya Chakravarthy aakkum Srinivasa Rao taniya paada kerpadarku', 'Avarai appadi ketkame umma manatte kappathinduttel pongo' and 'Kudukkama, Kudukkama Sreenivasa Raukku vayppu koduthele, athudan malai peyaa peychandu'. Yaganaraman was dumbfounded became silent and walked away. May be that was the first SKGS concert, but definitely, the last concert.
This is an episode not only in SSRao's life but many maha vidwans of class but getting the support of mass.
Warm Regards
Muni Rao"

varsha
Posts: 1978
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Re: Musical Points to Ponder

Post by varsha »

FREDERICK LOEWE, Vienna born composer of My Fair Lady arrived in the United States during the 1920s, he found the going difficult. Although he was a gifted pianist. he could find no market for his talent. One morning he was waiting gloomily for some men to arrive to repossess his piano. With a heavy heart. he sat down to play. Bent over the keyboard. he could hear nothing but the music, which he played with rare inspiration.
When he finished, he was startled to find that he had an audience—three removal men, who were seated on the floor. 'They said nothing. and made no movement towards the piano. Instead, they dug into their pockets, Pooled together enough money to pay the instalment due, placed it on the piano and walked away.
(All sourced from Readers Digest)

Nick H
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Re: Musical Points to Ponder

Post by Nick H »

Is it true? It doesn't matter! It is sweet! :)

varsha
Posts: 1978
Joined: 24 Aug 2011, 15:06

Re: Musical Points to Ponder

Post by varsha »

Is it true? It doesn't matter!
We all know that except for the anti communist stuff , Readers Digest was generally authentic , don't we .Anyway ocr did not help me decipher the source in the poor scan . :D Nice story anway .

ANDRE PREVIN, conductor of the London Symphony Orchestra, recently lost a set of unsigned credit cards. A few days later, a young man of artistic appearance presented himself in a London jewellers with a card signed “Andre Previn” and tried to buy a watch. Something in his manner aroused the assistant’s suspicions, and he phoned the police. There was not much the police officer could do; the signature on the card tallied exactly with that of the carrier. But the pretender’s nerve cracked when the policeman gently enquired if “that Vaughan Williams symphony you mentioned on television last week was written before or after the First World War?”The cards were returned to a delighted Previn -The Guardian, London

Nick H
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Re: Musical Points to Ponder

Post by Nick H »

Even better!

Digesting the digest :D
(oh sorry.... you did say Guardian :oops:)

Sachi_R
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Re: Musical Points to Ponder

Post by Sachi_R »

My father was an avid reader of the Digest.
I remember their frequent and aggressive mail campaigns. Many people bought their products. Even my father was "suckered" into buying their Oxford Encyclopaedic Dictionary for ₹300.- (The COD was ₹25). It turned out to be not much of a dictionary, and not much of an encyclopaedia either.

shankarank
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Re: Musical Points to Ponder

Post by shankarank »

Well may be not useful for you. But it did for the esteemed constitutional bench of the Supreme Court of India - and I am given to understand - in a case related to the TVS Family: https://youtu.be/5uVlvlLrURc?t=647

Mccarthyism may be indigestible to some! But it might help us build an Authentic anti-communism! :!: :idea:

varsha
Posts: 1978
Joined: 24 Aug 2011, 15:06

Re: Musical Points to Ponder

Post by varsha »

RSachi
It is difficult to bring out ,in today's google age , the intensity of the impact RD had on our lives in the 60s I grew up in a quaint town that got only 6 copies of THE HINDU every day . And they reached only by 6pm.Elders in my family would wait till 6pm for the breaking news in detail ! . Such was my small window to the World. And RD gave it to me in small mouthfulls. My world did enlarge subsequently .But long before their respective times came , RD introduced us to Hollywood Stars , Western Musicians , World War Heros , Good English Comprehension , Our own bodily mechanisms and Laughter as medicine .Philosophers like Santayana , Humorists like Leo Rosten and Leacock were also packaged around a central core of The Good Life , with a tilt towards America And Britain .

Decades later this is more like a regurgitation and lesser of a digestion .
It was neat and handy , too.

The coffee table book spamming was a poor effort , driven largely by the Indian Arm of RD , possibly .
I hope to move to other arts in general after covering music , in a slow manner
cheers

Nick H
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Re: Musical Points to Ponder

Post by Nick H »

It is difficult to bring out ,in today's google age , the intensity of the impact RD had on our lives in the 60s
And nothing can take away from that. So what that RD might not have been exactly angelic as a corporation (no angels: I remember them for the vast amounts of junk-mail, hard-sell-competition junk mail that came through the letter box regularly. No, their spamming, as we later called it, was not Indian, it was international). I don't think Disney was any angel either, but no-one can deny the pleasure of millions of children. Hey, apparently Beethoven was a horrible guy!

Even though I grew up with no shortage of newspapers, radio, television, and easy access to literature, National Geographic used to bring to the house glimpses of an unimagined world.

Whilst, these days, the internet brings me news, information, entertainment and social life on a daily basis, I still have, and always will have, time and space for books in my life., although they now usually arrive in Amazon boxes. A couple of weeks ago I was in a real book shop, an experience that the internet can't really replace. But then I came across the magazine rack. I used to count the days to publication date of my regular magazines: now, I looked at them and thought, "Why? Because now there's internet."

Sachi_R
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Re: Musical Points to Ponder

Post by Sachi_R »

Image

This was it! Wasn't the 32 volume Britannica (which I bought in 1988 😀)

Varsha, RD was good, and many of our families connected with the larger world through it. (I'm much older than you) I was introduced also in early 1960's by my father to RD.

RD makes worldwide a direct marketing case study. Many ideas come from studying their practices. Nothing in India even remotely approaches it. The US baby boomers grew up with it.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Reader%27s_Digest

shankarank
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Re: Musical Points to Ponder

Post by shankarank »

There were two cricket teams one from the State Bank of India and another from Madurai Medical college(MMC) in a limited overs cricket tournament. The tournament had it's rules. Every team should only have the registered players that were part of the Madurai Cricket association league. As the match progressed, a certain spinner was picking up wickets like peanuts. Then the suspicion started and once the match was over the MMC team found that this guy was from SBI Madras team. They lodged a protest and the tournament committee summoned the records. The player was not registered in Madurai Cricket league. Match was ruled in favor of MMC.

But the SBI team captain was writing his own protest letter and borrowed a pen from the PT building where the match equipment is usually lodged. After finishing writing it , he returned the Pen with a grudge that he did not want anything to do with a TVS property! For, the entire facility was part of the TVS academic institution. The worker that rolls pictches who knew him well as many league matches were played there , had a better sense when he said: "what's with this man, could he not be more gracious than this" ( peruntanmai is the word he used!)!

His SBI building is next to the TVS Head office in West Masi street opposite the Railway station! TVS was a major customer of theirs obviously. Probably he was subscribing to RD also in his home for his children to read. But he was not learning important lessons just from the sweat he was shedding and the salary he drew!

An American banker will have that sense of at least what his customers meant at a minimum!!

In spite of all the intellectual bombardment and the education they were being given, many Indians are completely not grounded on reality of things around them and don't learn from next door , forget reading RD. And they possess somehow an anti-rich , anti-wealth sentiment , a marxist parasitical corruption of similar ideas in our heritage has occupied their mind!

varsha
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Re: Musical Points to Ponder

Post by varsha »

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DuK133dK6eQ
a video ( one of the many on youtube ) that serves as a backdrop for the few posts coming up on Toscanini .
..
WHEN the NBC Symphony was about to be formed, David Sarnoff, chairman of the board of NBC, gave one directive : "Do not engage any players from existing orchestras because that would only weaken other orchestras." The people in charge, headed by Artur Rodzinski, himself a fine conductor, managed to get together a superb orchestra—all except the first clarinettist. When Toscanini was about to arrive from Italy to take over the orchestra, Sarnoff was asked how the problem should be handled. Should Toscanini be left to find out for himself? Should they tell him frankly? Sarnoff said, "Let's tell him." His associates said, "You tell him."

Accordingly, a delegation went down to meet the boat. In his stateroom Toscanini greeted Sarnoff and said, "That's a fine orchestra you got together—very fine, all except the first clarinettist." Sarnoff was taken aback. "Maestro, how did you find out ?" he asked. "I have been listening on a little shortwave radio I had in Milan," said Toscanini, "and I could tell." Yes, he could hear it on a little radio in Milan. Toscanini then said, "Take me to the studios."

There the orchestra was rehearsing and a special dressing-room was waiting for him. He sent for the clarinettist, who arrived in such a state of mind as you can easily imagine. Toscanini said to him, "You are a good clarinet player, but there are certain things that you do wrong." Then he began to work with him. The upshot was that the clarinettist stayed with the orchestra for 17 years and became one of the world's best. —George Marek

Sachi_R
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Re: Musical Points to Ponder

Post by Sachi_R »

Varsha
God bless you. Simply loved it.

varsha
Posts: 1978
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Re: Musical Points to Ponder

Post by varsha »

Hey ! Not so early !! Long way to go . :D
I knew these will be enjoyed immensely .
Who says one picture is worth a thousand words !
Words capture like no other format .
More on the way .....

Nick H
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Re: Musical Points to Ponder

Post by Nick H »

How I wish we still had the like/thanks button!

arasi
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Re: Musical Points to Ponder

Post by arasi »

Yes, Nick.

Varsha,
Go back a couple of decades, and the Digest seemed even more precious to our generation. Word Power, Laughter the Best Medicine, Quotable Quotes, Unforgettable Characters (the best--brought unknown people, unknown heroes into our ken). To our innocent minds, an inspiration of a magazine.
As I grew up, yes, I realized there was no need to read fiction in a shortened form.

Then, from the seventies, their Gardening book was invaluable to me. One of the best I have come across. It served me for three decades, and having lost it in one of our moves, I miss it sorely to this day. All the googling I do now, with a million available pictures and notes cannot replace that book.

We fervently want our children and grandchildren to absorb the good in this world and hope they skip the unwanted.This is what exactly happened to us, growing up with RD. It had such wonderful features which nourished us, cheered us. Above all, it illuminated the humane side in humans...

varsha
Posts: 1978
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Re: Musical Points to Ponder

Post by varsha »

IN his autobiography, Cellist , Gregor Piatigorsky writes about a time he was soloist at a concert conducted by Arturo Toscanini: “The maestro paced the dressing room in which I practised, repeating. ‘You are no good; I am no good.’“ ‘Please, maestro,’ I begged. ‘I will be a complete wreck.’ Then, as we walked onstage, he said, ‘We are no good, but the others are worse. Come on, caro, let’s go.’ ”

varsha
Posts: 1978
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Re: Musical Points to Ponder

Post by varsha »

TOSCANINI, MAGIC MAESTRO
BY SAMUEL ANTEK
He was an almost unbelievable combination of saint and demon—but to play under "the world's greatest conductor" was an epic experience
-------------------------------
A GREAT SYMPHONY orchestra, brought together from the far corners of the world, sat in tingling silence on the huge stage of Studio 8-H in Radio City, New York. I was a violinist in that newly formed NBC Symphony, and we were awaiting, that December day in 1937, the first appearance of our conductor. Suddenly, from a door on the right side of the stage, a small, solidly built man emerged and walked to the rostrum. Our first impression was of crowning white hair and an impassive, square, high-cheekboned, moustached face. He was dressed in a black alpaca jacket with a clerical collar, formal striped trousers and pointed, slipperlike shoes. He gestured a faint greeting with both arms, then, in a rough, hoarse voice, called out, "Brahms !" He looked at us piercingly for a moment, then raised his arms. In one smashing stroke, the baton came down.

Thus began my first rehearsal with Arturo Toscanini, "the world's greatest conductor." That morning, with each heart-pounding timpani stroke in the opening bars of Brahms' First Symphony, our 70-year-old conductor's baton beat became more powerfully insistent. As we in the violin section struck our bows against our strings, I sensed, more than heard, the magnificent new sounds around me. Was this the same music we had played so often before? With what a new, fierce joy we played! "Cantate! Sostenete!" he bellowed as the music reached its first great climax. "Sing! Sustain!" This was the first time Toscanini's battle cry was flung at us, and for 17 years we lived by those words.

varsha
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Re: Musical Points to Ponder

Post by varsha »

Toscanini often said, "Any asino can conduct, but to make music is difficile." He was always St. George fighting the dragon guarding the musical treasure. What a sense of excitement and discovery each rehearsal brought, as the "Old Man"found in a long-familiar work a note, an accent, a 'nuance hitherto unnoticed or glossed over by routine or carelessness! Under his baton, time-wearied, shopworn pieces regained their original lustre and shone anew.

"Routine—the death of music!" Toscanini would wail. I cannot recall him ever making a gesture that was purely mechanical and not closely identified in mood or movement with the expression of the musical phrase as he felt it. He conducted the music, not the orchestra. For a very hushed effect, he would bring the tip of the index finger of his left hand to his lips as though saying, "Sh! Sh!" For even greater expressiveness, he brought his left hand over his heart and indicated an undulating motion, as though playing a wide cello vibrato. "Play with your hearts, not your instruments!" When the music became particularly poignant, as at the end of the Funeral March of Beethoven's Eroica, he would crouch slightly, lean towards us, and indicate with his baton the merest suggestion of a still precise, flowing beat. "Weeping—weeping!" he would cry out.

Toscanini never spoke matter-of-factly. Excitement and dramatic expressiveness filled his phrases. I could feel each member of the orchestra straining every ounce of technique to attain the sound and mood the Maestro wanted. Always when we played with him, the sound that emerged differed as completely from what we had formerly played as does refined gold from the original ore. We would nod to one another, beaming with satisfaction and almost disbelief.

varsha
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Re: Musical Points to Ponder

Post by varsha »

There were two Toscaninis : the conductor at rehearsals and the conductor at concerts. At rehearsals, he would shout, bellow and sing. At concerts he seemed to freeze. I often had the impression that he wished he were invisible so as not to come between the audience and the music. He never smiled at a concert. Sometimes, if a particular passage fell apart, he would shake his head as if saying, "Well, we failed !" At other times, if a player or a section did something especially displeasing, his head would rock balefully as though to say, "Wait till I get my hands on you!" And if a player made a wrong entrance or played indifferently (at least in Toscanini's opinion), Toscanini would actually shake a clenched fist at the hapless wretch. No conductor more grudgingly accepted recognition from audience and orchestra alike. Many times, at rehearsals, men would spontaneously break into applause when a particular phrase shone with unusual brilliance. Toscanini never acknowledged these compliments. "No! Is not me!" he would say almost angrily. "Is in the music, just before your eyes." Few, if any, conductors knew scores as Toscanini did, or even approached his genius for laying bare the flesh and bones of an orchestra's effort.

Unerringly, he could put his finger on just where and how a passage had been muddied. "You know," he would say, stopping suddenly, "you play—I hear something —but is nothing—is a big pasticcio [ mess] . Come, we study." Each line would be gone over separately. When all was put together, so delicate, well-timed and sensitive was the balance that every note spoke. "Everything so clear I can touch it!" One of Toscanini's most enigmatic qualities was the almost unbelievable combination of saint and demon. As he stood on the rostrum at rehearsals, he looked the personification of a venerable saint His face was transfigured with a spiritual light as he worked on a passage of surpassing beauty. Then, suddenly, like a thunderbolt, the saint would flee and the demon lash out at the orchestra in language to rival that of a stevedore.

Toscanini had one favourite Italian curse that he used without much provocation. He would hurl it with particular relish at a fellow Italian, saying, "You are Italian. Good ! I don't have to explain !" Once, however, when he started to use this epithet, he caught himself and put his hand over his mouth. Several women were in the hall. He made a grimace, glared at the player and shouted, "Hmmmmph! You know what I want to call you, but —" The rehearsal went on, until the mistake was repeated. Now Toscanini bellowed, "Zuccone! I tried to control myself, but you won't let me. You are a !" Out came the epithet in fullest glory. He glared triumphantly at the player. A moment later he was his angelic self again. If any other conductor had spoken to an orchestra the way Toscanini did, he would have been brought up before the musicians' union on charges of "misbehaviour"!

varsha
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Re: Musical Points to Ponder

Post by varsha »

In 1950 the NBC Symphony went on tour, giving concerts throughout the United States. We saw great snowcapped mountains, vast deserts and exciting cities. But, as the tour progressed, we realized that the greatest wonder of all was on the train with us—our incredible 83-year-old Maestro. His zest and enthusiasm astounded us all. Once,in Sun Valley, I came upon him at ten o'clock in the morning, stretched out full-length on the lawn of the hotel, drinking a toast in champagne to the beautiful mountains! In Atlanta, an incident occurred that illustrated his almost mystical attitude towards music. As we entered the huge auditorium that morning, we were greeted by the sound of hammering. In the centre of the auditorium workmen were busy erecting a ring for the prize-fights that were to take place that night. Our concert was to be played the following night. All the noise stopped when Toscanini came to the stand and during the brief rehearsal. But, as Toscanini stepped off the rostrum, the workmen reappeared and a foreman walked past the Maestro with his hat on. Toscanini stopped abruptly.
With a flick of his baton he knocked off the foreman's hat. "Ignorante! Take off the hat! Is a church here !" The man, dumb with amazement, looked round at the prizefighting ring and stared at the Old Man in perplexed terror. "Yes! Ignorante!" rasped the Old Man. "Where is music is a church! Off with the hat, stupido!"

As a conductor, Toscanini stood like a colossus astride the musical horizon. For me, his principal genius lay in his capacity to transform music-making into an epic experience. Those who had the proud privilege of playing with him until the NBC Symphony was disbanded in 1954 felt that we had undergone a spiritual regeneration. Making music became the very noblest of professions and aspirations. This was the miracle of Toscanini.
Concluded

Sachi_R
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Re: Musical Points to Ponder

Post by Sachi_R »

Image
That piece has a necklace of priceless gems of quotes, Varsha! Oh for the music that inspires such word imagery.

Hope you like this portrait.

(The NBC Radio City Music Hall in Manhattan - what a place. What a space. Been there a couple of times.)

varsha
Posts: 1978
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Re: Musical Points to Ponder

Post by varsha »

RSachi ..Loved it . Two more entries on Toscanini before we move on.

varsha
Posts: 1978
Joined: 24 Aug 2011, 15:06

Re: Musical Points to Ponder

Post by varsha »

IN HIS AUTOBIOGRAPHY , Cellist , Gregor Piatigorsky writes about a time he was soloist at a concert conducted by Arturo Toscanini: “The maestro paced the dressing room in which I practised, repeating. ‘You are no good; I am no good.’“ ‘Please, maestro,’ I begged. ‘I will be a complete wreck.’
Then, as we walked onstage, he said, ‘We are no good, but the others are worse. Come on, caro, let’s go.’ ”

-------
Once Toscanini saw a couple of critics taking seat after arriving late. Turning to his orchestra he whispered :
Assassins !!!

-------
One last article on Toscanini coming up before moving on.

vgovindan
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Re: Musical Points to Ponder

Post by vgovindan »

varsha wrote: 24 Jul 2017, 08:23 "Where is music is a church! Off with the hat, stupido!"
As far CM is concerned when people like me say music is lakshya - not only lakshana - we are called idiots with hats of bhakti which needs to be knocked off at the concert. We are asked to go to Pravachanams.

Thanks for the quote.

shankarank
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Re: Musical Points to Ponder

Post by shankarank »

As of 1992 - some in Christianity have a different view looks like:

http://www.leaderu.com/orgs/probe/docs/music.html
First, the term "Christian music" is a misnomer. Music cannot be declared Christian because of particular ingredients. There is no special Christian musical vocabulary. There is no distinctive sound that makes a piece of music Christian. The only part of a composition that can make it Christian is the lyrics. In view of the fact that such phrases as "contemporary Christian music" are in vogue, this is a meaningful observation. Perhaps the phrase "contemporary Christian lyrics" would be more appropriate. Of course, the lyrics may be suspect doctrinally and ethically, and they may be of poor quality, but my point is concentrated on the musical content

shankarank
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Re: Musical Points to Ponder

Post by shankarank »

varsha wrote: 24 Jul 2017, 08:23 "Where is music is a church! Off with the hat, stupido!"
I take it that, Toscanini had an inherent self experiential sense about the sacredness of music and its spaces and he drew the Church as an analogy given that, that is the known sacred space to most! But the Church has it's own view of things and sets its own terms when it comes to admitting what is acceptable!

shankarank
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Re: Musical Points to Ponder

Post by shankarank »

vgovindan wrote: 25 Jul 2017, 17:48 As far CM is concerned when people like me say music is lakshya - not only lakshana
Lakshya is an inherent pursuit in music and something sought after within that! Limiting that to a feeling or emotion in a narrow context robs it of its full import. Again I may have misunderstood what you meant!

As regards lakshana, the tradition treats it as a svabhava of ISvara : nava vyAkaraNa svabhava as mentioned in Siva Siva bhava bhava of Sri narayaNa tirtha. Hanuman is described as the learner of all nine grammars.

vgovindan
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Re: Musical Points to Ponder

Post by vgovindan »

Shankarank,
You are right. Let us not go too much into semantics.

shankarank
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Re: Musical Points to Ponder

Post by shankarank »

vgovindan wrote: 26 Jul 2017, 02:22 Let us not go too much into semantics.
Sri V Govindan, I wish we adhered to that in musical enjoyment as well! I mean the below!
shankarank wrote: 25 Jul 2017, 21:42
The only part of a composition that can make it Christian is the lyrics
The last semantic nuance before we drop it would be: sAhitya is more than lyrics and its meaning!

But I am not saying this to lecture to you. You don't need one. You belong to a generation that stepped over Mother drawn kOlams or sometimes stepped on it even in ignorance , but still were given that innate sense of sacred spaces as you got out of your home! Why next door - just in front of your house!

But now - we have left with us just the gravity of the English language and possibly in addition the sense carried by Toscanini with us!

varsha
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Re: Musical Points to Ponder

Post by varsha »

Toscanini Records the Ninth
Half a century after he first conducted it, the amazing little Maestro at last consents to record "the greatest piece of music ever written." (JM Conly music critic of The Atlantic youth!), was one of eight onlookers privileged to witness the recording here described.)
-----------------------------
On March 31, 1952, something happened for which music lovers round the world had been waiting for a quarter of a century. Arturo Toscanini, 85 years and six days old, walked into Carnegie Hall New York, to put on records his incandescent interpretation of Beethoven's Ninth Symphony. Patently he had dedicated himself all anew to the score, after 50 years' acquaintance with it. Each note sounded as if it might have been written the day before. As he played, there grew in the minds of his listeners the inescapable conviction that they had never really heard the symphony until now. The other 191 parties to the venture had arrived before the Maestro —the technicians, the chorus, the soloists, the instrumentalists.
The musicians were gayer than the technical staff, partly because they had been through all this two days earlier, when Toscanini had broad-cast the Ninth. They might have been less gay had they known he had gone home thereafter fuming with dissatisfaction and had refused even to listen to the tapes of the broadcast. The soloists were apprehensive. No singer is ever confident about the finale. Beethoven had long been deaf when he wrote it, and apparently had forgotten the limitations of the human voice. At best it is a 20-minute ordeal. With Toscanini on the podium, it can be a full hour of absolute torture. Only the veteran tenor Jan Peerce had the nerve to wisecrack : "Who's afraid of him?" looking over his shoulder in mock panic.

varsha
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Re: Musical Points to Ponder

Post by varsha »

Toscanini arrived at two o'clock, with his son and manager, Walter. He mounted the steps (five) into the hall and the stairs (13) to his dressing room. To judge from the way he looks at his watch, his clear vision must extend quite three inches beyond his nose. However, he detests wearing glasses and he is gifted with a fantastic memory. He has memorized every set of stairs he uses—as well as every score he has conducted, and a few he hasn't—and he doesn't like to be helped. He walks alone. Also he has a bad knee, the result of an accident two years ago. Each time he walks down stairs (he also avoids handrails) the suspense is almost intolerable.
"Orchestra ready," came a very businesslike voice from the loud-speaker on the stage wall. "Maestro coming down." Toscanini is barely over five feet tall, though his head is large and leonine; and he looks even smaller in his working clothes, which consist of a black alpaca jacket buttoned to the neck, grey striped trousers and black, elastic-sided Italian shoes. Just the same the whole huge, dim auditorium seemed to tingle with almost physical tension when he walked on to the stage. Nor did the feeling abate when the music began: Toscanini first conducted the Ninth in Milan almost exactly 50 years earlier, and he had played it many times since.
Once, when he was a mere 81, he had said, "I think that is the best I can do." Now, from the first baton stroke onwards, he was proving beyond doubt that he could do better. As Toscanini recording sessions go, this was not a tough one. The symphony, at Toscanini's tempi, lasts about an hour and five minutes. On the average, he recorded each portion three times. The entire job took nine hours. It had been scheduled for seven, in two sessions,, but Toscanini ran over and required a two-hour session on Tuesday night. Toscanini is not a man of words. In one passage he could not get the proper accent from the bass fiddles. He did not attempt to explain what he wanted. He made the cellos play their part alone, while he, in a series of stentorian grunts, illustrated what he wanted from the basses. At the next playing, they gave it to him. He performed the same service for the finale of the first movement. In that instance, the whole string section soloed in a fateful, swelling undercurrent while Arturo Toscanini ,impersonated the brasses and tympani, shouting and stamping out the notes with a volume almost alarming from a man so small and so old. The hall echoed nobly.

varsha
Posts: 1978
Joined: 24 Aug 2011, 15:06

Re: Musical Points to Ponder

Post by varsha »

There was seldom any doubt about who, on the stage, was working the hardest. The recording was made in "takes," each seven to eight minutes long. Often a take would be played back. The orchestra would rest, but Toscanini would conduct all over again, measuring his intent against what came out of the loudspeaker. He was patient. Occasionally he asked the men to "play musically, not stupidly." were no tantrums—hot even when the triangle player came in a bar too soon, nor when Jan Peerce unaccountably blew his lines. He spared no one, however. There is a long, sublime, but terribly taxing round for vocal quartet. He put the soloists through it eight times running. In the last two attempts, soprano Eileen Farrell's voice simply died.

Toscanini finally let them go, and the chorus cheered them as they left. In the half-hour breaks, Toscanini trudged up to his dressing room, took off his steaming jacket, and donned a bath robe. He drank a little fruit juice or chewed Italian liquorice drops. At the very last break, at 10.30 on Tuesday night, he didn't even bother to go up. He stood on the podium, passing out liquorice drops and reminiscences to his fiddlers, who crowded fondly around. Walter Toscanini looked down at the stage through the control-room window and said softly, "Where do you get all that energy, old fellow ?" Everyone up-stairs was on the verge of exhaustion. It was at that juncture that Toscanini, having made the fourth, first, second and third movements in triplicate, decided to make the finale of the first movement once more, just to be on the safe side. Then he repeated the first two takes of the fourth.
Finally he called it a day, cheerily bade his players good night, and mounted to his dressing room for a glass of champagne. When his chauffeur drove him away it was nearly midnight, and he felt fine. What makes this not less amazing is that, between September 28 and March 31, in addition to a full schedule of weekly broadcasts, Toscanini had played 20 recording engagements. Toscanini has learned to distrust recording procedure from beginning to end, and is never absolutely satisfied with his own judgment. For nearly a month, before the Maestro went holidaying to Italy, Walter laboured in an electronic dungeon, playing tape after tape to satisfy his father's doubts. The Maestro has a fine sense of pitch and a phenomenal sense of tempo. A test record played at 33 - 4/9 revolutions per minute, instead of 33-1/ 3, will send him raging to the piano to prove that it is off key.

A month before the recording date, he had dug out scores of the symphony and spent hours with them at the piano. He had asked Walter to play recordings—transcriptions of his own performances, interpretations by Bruno Walter, Stokowski, Weingartner and Ormandy. He listened while, over his head, from the balcony at the sunny end of the baronial hall of his home, in a suburb of Manhattan, his 43 canaries twittered in their cages. He once said, "The Ninth is difficult. Sometimes the chorus is not good. The soloists are seldom good. Sometimes the orchestra is not good.
Sometimes I am no good. You know, I still don't understand the first movement." On Monday and Tuesday, March 31 and April 1, nearly everyone was good, but particularly the conductor. And at it o'clock on Tuesday morning he put down his baton and told his orchestra : "I think we know now how the first movement goes." How it goes it would be idle to try to tell in words, except to liken it to a bombshell, or to quote sundry sample listeners, whose unvarying reaction was : "That is the greatest piece of music ever written !" Toscanini would not like to have this called Toscanini's Beethoven Ninth. He considers such proprietorial terminology presumptuous. He needn't worry. For some time hence, this is going to be called the Beethoven Ninth.
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THE MANUSCRIPT of the Ninth—for which the Philharmonic Society (as it then was) paid Beethoven $ 50—carries an. inscription by the composer and usually lives in the British Museum, where it is on loan. In 1939 Toscanini visited the museum and studied the manuscript in its blue and gilt leather binding, making many notes on a sheet of paper which is now kept with the manuscript. At Toscanini's request the manuscript and his own notes were loaned to America last year for three months, so that they could be shown in conjunction with the release of the recording. The manuscript travelled to America in the bullion room of The Queen Elizabeth.

varsha
Posts: 1978
Joined: 24 Aug 2011, 15:06

Re: Musical Points to Ponder

Post by varsha »

Moving away from Articles for a while

Rabindraniath Tagore,, once said, "I have on my table a violin string. It is free. I twist one end of it and it responds. It is free. But it is not free to do what a violin string is supposed to do—to produce music. So I take it, fix it in my violin and tighten it until it is taut. Only then is it free to be a violin string." By the same token we are free when our lives are uncommitted, but not to be what we were intended to be. Real freedom is not freedom from, but freedom for. —Robert Youngs, Renewing Your Faith Day by Day

varsha
Posts: 1978
Joined: 24 Aug 2011, 15:06

Re: Musical Points to Ponder

Post by varsha »

I resolved to ask her (Anna Akhmatova) : now after so many years of work, when she writes something new, does she have a sense of being armed , of having experience , of a path already trodden? Or is it a step into the unknown , a risk every time ?”
Naked.On naked soil.Every Time” she answered.After a pause she added : ” A lyric poet follows a terrible path.A poet has such difficult material : the word …The word is much more difficult material than, for instance, paint.Think about it, really
For the poet works with the very same words that people use to invite each other to Tea”
Lydia Chukovskaya

varsha
Posts: 1978
Joined: 24 Aug 2011, 15:06

Re: Musical Points to Ponder

Post by varsha »

THE TIME to hear bird music is between four and six in the morning. Seven o'clock is not too late, but by eight the singers' fine rapture is over, because, I suspect, of the contentment of the inner man that comes with breakfast; a poet should always be hungry or have a lost love. —Donald CuIro:s Peattie

bird song at daybreak
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KE3In4E9zlM

and at sunset
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yFKJzFA4uCs

varsha
Posts: 1978
Joined: 24 Aug 2011, 15:06

Re: Musical Points to Ponder

Post by varsha »

IN A New York Metropolitan Opera performance of Verdi’s A Masked Ball, tenor Richard Tucker ended his aria according to the libretto, with an impassioned embrace of soprano Régine Crespin. After the applause had continued for some time, Tucker broke a house rule by moving away from Madame Crespin and taking a bow. Later his son Barry, an astute critic of his father's performances, asked, “Aren’t you afraid of what Mr. Bing will say about your stepping out of character? ”Replied Tucker, “Son, at that moment I was much more afraid of what your mother would have to say if I held on to Crespin a second longer !”
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CHATTING with his barber, my father,composer Leopold Godowsky, happened to mention that he was a friend of Albert Einstein. The barber became very excited------~if only he could meet the Great thinker ! Father airily promised that one day soon be would bring the professor to the shop. After that, on every visit the barber would ask, “Well, when do I meet the professor?”
Father did tell Einstein, who noted down the address and said he would go to the shop when he could. Somehow he never did . But when Einstein got the news of Father’s death, he did a touching thing. He travelled to NewYork and paid a call on the barber—his farewell salute to a friend.

Sachi_R
Posts: 2174
Joined: 31 Jan 2017, 20:20

Re: Musical Points to Ponder

Post by Sachi_R »

Lovely.

varsha
Posts: 1978
Joined: 24 Aug 2011, 15:06

Re: Musical Points to Ponder

Post by varsha »

MUSIC IS both the commonest and the most mysterious of all the arts. In a sense, a piece of music is like a two sided mirror. On the one side it reflects the composer, his psychological state and the secret nature of his own creative philosophy. On the other side it reflects the listener; what he gets out of a piece of music is directly dependent on what he brings to it. The response of any two people to a composition is bound to be different, simply because there are no two people in the world with identical psychological makeup
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AS THE college-age daughter of a friend of mine was being seated on a plane a few years ago, she glanced quickly at the occupant of the adjoining seat. Reacting with a mixture of excitement and self-conscious dismay, she wondered whether the nattily attired man could really be Bing Crosby. Try as she might, she could not get up the courage to look squarely at him, but strove with sideway peeks to confirm her impression. Finally, her amused seatmate bent towards her and in that famous baritone said, almost apologetically, “Well, everyone has to be somewhere .

varsha
Posts: 1978
Joined: 24 Aug 2011, 15:06

Re: Musical Points to Ponder

Post by varsha »

MANY people die, as Oliver Wendell Holmes said, with their music still in them. Why is this so? Too often, it is because they are always getting ready to live. Before they know it time runs out. Tagore wrote, "I have spent my days stringing and unstringing my instrument, while the song I came to sing remains unsung."
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Leonard Bernstein" says an associate "always wants to try everything." At an airport. a photographer once asked the noted conductor to pose on a motorcycle. Bernstein refused."That would be phoney." he ob­jected. "I don't ride a motorcycle...The photographer assured him that he could if he tried. He showed him how the controls worked. Bernstein was interested. In a few moments, to the consternation of horrified Philhar­monic officials, be was off at top speed .Then he coaxed a Philharmonic player on to the pillion and made another turn about the airfield.”Now you can take the picture . I am a motorcycle rider”

arasi
Posts: 16774
Joined: 22 Jun 2006, 09:30

Re: Musical Points to Ponder

Post by arasi »

"A piece of music is like a two-sided mirror". How true!

Thanks for bringing us anecdotes about music and its unforgettable practitioners...:)

varsha
Posts: 1978
Joined: 24 Aug 2011, 15:06

Re: Musical Points to Ponder

Post by varsha »

Arasi
Thanks.Though the Western context of these tidbits are far removed from the general drift of Our music here , I find they echo with some regularity , when seen in relation to Indian Music. That is what goads me to put these up.cheers

varsha
Posts: 1978
Joined: 24 Aug 2011, 15:06

Re: Musical Points to Ponder

Post by varsha »

BERNARD BERENSON, art critic : I ask myself what would 24-year-old B.B. have thought of B.B. at 94. Would he have been too shy to approach him, or would he simply not have wanted to waste time with a spoilt, vain, self-centred old man? The B.B. of 24 was at the same time too timid and too proud to make up to famous men. What use could they possibly have for him? Thus I have lost Many opportunities which I now regret. For now know with what joy old men receive the young. The young help them to open up; they stimulate them, or, more simply, they warm them with the rays of youth.
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PHILOSOPHER PSCYCHOLOGIST Henri Bergson once asked cellist Pablo Casals what he felt when he was playing the music of Bach or Beethoven. Casals replied that if he was satisfied with his performance, he had an almost physical sensation of bearing a tangible weight of something inestimably precious within. He likened it to carrying inside himself a lump of gold.—H. L. Kirk in Pablo Casals: A Biography

varsha
Posts: 1978
Joined: 24 Aug 2011, 15:06

Re: Musical Points to Ponder

Post by varsha »

CHARLES TEMPLETON, Canadian writer,editor and broadcaster, on the uniqueness of an audience: Many years ago in Indianapolis, USA, an old preacher asked why I was so tense. “Because,” I replied,“there are 5,000 people out there expecting me to be helpful."“No, there aren’t," he said. “There’s only one person, Charles. No one hears you as a crowd. Everyone hears you as an individual.”
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Ethel Merman had held undisputed sway as queen of musical comedy on Broadway until the night when South Pacific opened and Mary Martin tried to wash Erlo Pinza right out of her hair.That night everybody knew that there was a pair of queens. Miss Merman was present on that historic occasion .As she was leaving the Majestic Theatre, she was asked, "What do you think of Mary Martin. Oh, she's all right," shrugged Miss Merman, "if you like talent."

varsha
Posts: 1978
Joined: 24 Aug 2011, 15:06

Re: Musical Points to Ponder

Post by varsha »

JOHN STEINBECK in East of Eden: Our species is the only creative species, and it has only one creative instrument, the individual mind and spirit of a man. Nothing was ever created by two men. There are no good collaborations, whether in music, in art, in poetry, in mathematics, in philosophy. Once the miracle of creation has taken place, the group can build and extend it, but the group never invents anything. The preciousness lies in the lonely mind of a man. —
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7SKEODtaQUU
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FERENC MOLNAR , the Hungarian playwright, took sleeping pills for years. Once he tried to stop by choosing to read a seed catalogue which, he felt, would be so boring he’d go straight to sleep. “But on the second page I began thinking," he said. “Why don’t I have a little garden? Why am I living in a hotel without flowers round me? I became so excited I got up and started planning a garden. So I had to go back to sleeping pills.”

varsha
Posts: 1978
Joined: 24 Aug 2011, 15:06

Re: Musical Points to Ponder

Post by varsha »

ROBERT FROST the great but easy old poet, told me, "I leave a great deal to unfinished business." Savour the richness of time and patience, of hope and faith, that lies in this simple utterance. There is much in the business of our lives that we cannot hasten, for all the urgency of speed that today devils us. There is much—and this is true of the most important of our affairs—that cannot be concluded in a day, a week or a month, but must be let to take a guided course.
Robert Frost is, when I come to think of it, living as nature lives. When an acorn fallen from an oak at last splits husk, sprouts and begins to take root, how much unfinished business lies ahead of it! It has no contract with the sun and rain to have become an oak tree by a certain date. But with their help it will grow until it towers and spreads shade, in the good. time call God's. We ought as trustingly to let our plans and problems ripen to solution, knowing there is another Hand in the business beside our own.
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RABINDRANATH TAGORE, Nobel Prizewinning poet, once said, "I have on my table a violin string. It is free. I twist one end of it and it responds. It is free. But it is not free to do what a violin string is supposed to do—to produce music. So I take it, 6x it in my violin and tighten it until it is taut. Only then is it free to be a violin string." By the same token we are free when our lives are uncommitted, but not to be what we were intended to be. Real freedom is not freedom from, but freedom for.

Sachi_R
Posts: 2174
Joined: 31 Jan 2017, 20:20

Re: Musical Points to Ponder

Post by Sachi_R »

Gems. Gems. Simply gems.
Talking of talent, I just received and watched this clip and said, "she's surely got a lot of talent. And good training." ☺️
https://youtu.be/3eXUcUuqwG8

varsha
Posts: 1978
Joined: 24 Aug 2011, 15:06

Re: Musical Points to Ponder

Post by varsha »

OLIVER St. John Gogarty, who was William Butler Yeats's doctor in Dublin, told this story about the poet : Yeats as an old man had come back from wintering in Spain for his health. He brought with him a letter from his Spanish doctor, addressed to his Dublin doctor. Gogarty opened the letter and read : "We have here an antique cardiosclerotic of advanced age." He knew it was a death sentence, so he shoved the letter into his pocket.

"No, no," said Yeats, "it is half my letter. You would not have had it at all were it not for me." So, very reluctantly, Gogarty produced the letter and read out the fatal words. The old poet rolled one of them over and over on his tongue : "Cardio-sclerotic . . . cardio-sclerotic." Do you know, Gogarty, said he, "I would rather be called `cardiosclerotic' than 'Lord of Lower Egypt !' " There you have the poet's ear for words, the pure delight in the sound of words which enabled him to pick the eye out of death itself. —W. R. Rodgers
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LOTTE LEHMANN, who retired from opera years ago, was celebrating her 69th birthday when a young soprano said to her : "It must be awful for a great singer like you to realize that you've lost your voice." "No," said the great diva of her day. "What would be awful is if I didn't realize it." —Leonard Lyons
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