Musical Points to Ponder

Miscellaneous topics on Carnatic music
Post Reply
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
Posts: 1865
Joined: 07 Nov 2010, 20:01

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
Posts: 4042
Joined: 15 Jun 2009, 07:16

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
Posts: 4042
Joined: 15 Jun 2009, 07:16

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
Posts: 4042
Joined: 15 Jun 2009, 07:16

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
Posts: 1865
Joined: 07 Nov 2010, 20:01

Re: Musical Points to Ponder

Post by vgovindan »

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

shankarank
Posts: 4042
Joined: 15 Jun 2009, 07:16

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

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

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.
-----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
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 !”
---
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
----
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."
------------------
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.
----
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.”
----
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
----
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.
----
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
----
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
----

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

Re: Musical Points to Ponder

Post by varsha »

Gems. Gems. Simply gems.
30 days worth to go at current rate :)

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

Re: Musical Points to Ponder

Post by varsha »

LIKE MOST FAMOUS singers and musicians, GalliCurci was besieged by aspiring young musicians for her encouragement and help. Once, after a concert, she opened her dressing room door to a trembling awestruck young girl who clutched a pitifully small handful of roses. Always gracious, GalliCurci invited the admirer into the flower banked dressing room and asked, “Do you sing, my dear?”“Oh, no!” gasped the girl.
Galli~Curci motioned to the piano.“Well, then, do you play?”“Heavens, no!” exclaimed the girl.“I just listen."At that GalliCurci embraced the astonished girl and, taking the tiny bunch of roses, placed them in a vase on her dressing table. “I had forgotten,”she said happily,“that there were people left who only listen.”
----
HELEN KELLER: I who am blind can give one hint to those who see : Use your eyes as if tomorrow you would be stricken blind. And the same method can be applied to the other senses. Hear the music of voices, the song of a bird, the mighty strains of an orchestra as if you would be stricken deaf tomorrow. Touch each object you want to touch as if tomorrow your tactile sense would fail. Smell the perfume of flowers, taste with relish each morsel, as if tomorrow you could never taste and smell again. Glory in all the facets of pleasure and beauty which the world reveals to you; make the most of every sense.

vgovindan
Posts: 1865
Joined: 07 Nov 2010, 20:01

Re: Musical Points to Ponder

Post by vgovindan »

"I had forgotten that there were people left who only listen."

Wonderful!

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

Re: Musical Points to Ponder

Post by varsha »

THE BAMBOO for prosperity,” a Japanese artist explained to me, “the pine for long life, the plum for courage” “Why the plum for courage?”I asked, picturing courage as a great oak.“Yes, yes,” answered my friend.“The plum for courage, because the plum puts forth blossoms while the snow is still on the ground.” —Anne Morrow Lindbergh,in Gift From the Sea

-----
LEONARD BERNSTEIN was asked if he wasn’t weary of the phrase, “pianist-composer-conductor,” by which he is frequently described. “Actually, it’s a most useful designation,” said Bernstein. “Suppose one night I conduct a performance that is not considered really fine; people will think that for a pianist it was not a bad effort. Or, if I should do a piano solo that’s not top standard, they’ll think that for a composer he doesn’t play badly.”

RSR
Posts: 3427
Joined: 11 Oct 2015, 23:31

Re: Musical Points to Ponder

Post by RSR »

Varsha ji, Even an appreciative 'sound' from a corner, will disturb and distract an artiste , immersed and lost in the bliss of his experience.. As you plan to keep posting many more, of this, I refrain from lengthy eulogy. . Just a small suggestion. You were the person responsible for a section on Hindusthani classical and light classical music in this forum. Do we have such a section for Western Classical ? It would be a great contribution .... I am afraid, there may be many ( like me) who have no exposure to Western Classical. Short posts in step by step introduction for absolute beginners may be fine! . I am reading all your posts in this thread . It stands apart. After you finish the concert, I will add my related(?) appreciative comment. Best Regards. . .

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

Re: Musical Points to Ponder

Post by varsha »

RSR . Thanks . It has been my pleasure. Though this thread does not lend itself much to discussions , I decided to pursue with these because they were such nice stories. Hope you enjoy the ones yet to come up.
As regards the idea for a Western corner here , I would be the most inadequate person to drive the request.
What I could do is to bring out the articles on Western Music and Musicians from Readers Digest in a separate thread . They are all as sweet as the ones on Tosacanini and the bunch is several weeks worth .
As far as Western music appreciation goes I am a big zero.Maybe others could pitch in .Cheers

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

Re: Musical Points to Ponder

Post by varsha »

AT A PICASSO retrospective show in Paris in 1966, hundreds of canvases were arranged in chronological order, the first works being traditional landscapes and still lifes. A little further on, the landscapes took on new colours and the still lifes became less still, until, turning the corner, one came upon the bold,exuberant experiments for which the painter is known today. A friend who had seen the show exclaimed to Picasso, who was then 85, “I do not understand the grouping; the beginning pictures are so mature, so serious and solemn--then the later ones more and more different and wild. It is almost as if the dates should be reversed. How do you explain it?”“Easily,” replied Picasso, his eyes sparkling. “It takes a long -time to become young .
----

WHEN HARRY BELAFONTE was co starring in a revue, he was signed to do a midnight turn at a nightclub, after the evening performance. The club owners suggested that Belafonte leave the theatre as soon as his revue number was finished, instead of waiting for the curtain call. This would allow him ample time to relax before starting the nightclub show.“No,” said Belafonte. “For a performer there's nothing as relaxing as a bow

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

Re: Musical Points to Ponder

Post by varsha »

HENRY BESTON who spent a year living in a tiny shack on a windswept section of sand dunes on Cape Cod, Massachusetts, Wrote about his experience thus :Some have asked me what understanding of nature one shapes from so strange a year. I would answer, one’s first appreciation is a sense that the creation is still going on, that the creative forces are as great and as active today as they have ever been, and that tomorrow’s morning Will be as heroic as any of the world. Creation is here and now. It is as impossible to live without reverence as without joy.— The Outermost House (Holt, Rinehart and Willston)
--------------
THE LAST WORDS of playwright Brendan Behan were to a nursing nun who was taking his pulse. He looked up at her, smiled and said, “Bless you, Sister may all your sons be bishops

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

Re: Musical Points to Ponder

Post by varsha »

CAROL CHANNING explains how she manages to keep the freshness in her performances of Hello Dolly . ‘If I start to lose the role, I play the show to my father,” she says.“That’s something the Lunts taught me: ‘Put people you love in the audience.’ I don’t really see him out there--he died 20 years ago. It’s just the thought of his presence, of someone who knows and loves and understands me, and will ‘not tolerate anything second-rate from rne.”
----
COMEDIAN Ben Turpin began his Hollywood career as a prop man for a producer who was notoriously tight-fisted. One day, when the shooting was finished, the producer saw Turpin lift a bouquet of flowers from the set, hide it under his coat and slip out of the door. Greatly angered, the boss-man decided to follow him. Turpin hurried along until he came to a cemetery. There, after looking about stealthily, he climbed over the fence and approached one of the graves.

Now he stopped, removed his hat and, taking the flowers from under his coat, placed them on the mound. Watching this scene, the producer felt his anger melting away. He was still deeply moved when he met Turpin some time later. He confessed that he had followed him, and apologized.“That was a beautiful thing you did, Ben,” he said, “and from now on when we use flowers on a set I want you to take them to the cemetery.”“Of course I will,” replied Turpin. “That’s where I get them.”

shankarank
Posts: 4042
Joined: 15 Jun 2009, 07:16

Re: Musical Points to Ponder

Post by shankarank »

That is like the tulukka chAmandi pUvu that our females will avoid - b'coz they know what it might have been used for? :lol: :lol:

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

Re: Musical Points to Ponder

Post by Sachi_R »

Varsha,
Take a bow!
Creation is here and now. It is as impossible to live without reverence as without joy.
This totally resonates with all I have learnt in my life.
‘Put people you love in the audience.’
Long back, these words came from me to a couple of youngsters performing. One bemoaned the lack of audience appreciation for her Kalakshetra dance form and style. I asked her to put Attai in the audience, up front. The other was searching for inspiration at a studio recording.

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

Re: Musical Points to Ponder

Post by Sachi_R »

“That’s where I get them.”

Once, in a famous temple/mutt, we had an audience with the Pontiff. The guide took us to a corner shop where we got a large wicker tray of fruits, dry fruits, and flowers, all for an astonishingly low amount of ₹300 or so. We were still amazed as we came out after the darshan, and I asked someone who knew the goings-on and led our group, "how come so cheap"?
"They recycle everything back to the shop".

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

Re: Musical Points to Ponder

Post by varsha »

IN HIS youth, impressionist painter Pierre-Auguste Renoir studied for a while with Gleyre, a classicist master who advocated the antique style. When Gleyre first saw Renoir’s work, he remarked dryly, “There is no doubt that you paint simply to amuse yourself.

”Renoir’s reply: “I want you to know that when I cease to be amused, I will no longer paint.”
----
ALFRED LUNT and Lynn Fontanne, the veteran American acting couple, agree that their most memorable theatrical experience was in London, during the Second World War. The play was Robert Sherwood’s There Shall Be No Night. During one of Lynn’s scenes, there was a real bomb alert and the curtain was lowered. Alfred, back-stage, roared, “Take it up again!”As Lynn continued, the buzz bombs were heard, one of them quite near the theatre, exploding just moments before Alfred entered, speaking his first line: “Are you all right, darling?” The audience cheered.

By the time the Lunts were into the scene where the play’s theme of resistance to aggression was stated, the bombs were doing the sound man’s work, right on cue. “Listen,” said Alfred, reciting a line precisely as written, “that awful sound you hear is the death rattle of civilization.” The audience began to weep.“The play was a catharsis,” Lynn explains. “The English would never allow themselves to cry over their personal or national misfortunes. However, it was permissible to become so involved in a play that you wept for the characters, and, through them, for all decency and humanity.”

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

Re: Musical Points to Ponder

Post by varsha »

ROBERT LOUIS STEVENSON observed that art is the knowledge of what to leave out.
Our memories, which leave out so much, are artists of this school. The incomplete survives,; the part outlives the whole. And we all know the agony of listening to a man who has total recall. Indeed, if a bore could stop short of making his recital complete, he would cease being so boring. Another charm of incompleteness : it haunts us with suggestion.
Who has heard Schubert's Unfinished Symphony without wondering where Schubert would have been taken by his themes? Look upward in a redwood forest, and you'll see those giant shafts disappearing in a soft mist at dawn incomplete as trees, yet masters of suggestion.
Man Gregg in For Future Doctors
---
ONE OF MY first assignments as a publicity writer was to interview H. G.Wells. My heart bouncing like a yoyo,I rehearsed what I would say all the way to his hotel suite. Clutching my notebook, I knocked at the door.
The unmistakable, lined face with its heavy lidded, dancing eyes appeared.“Yes ?“ .“Good morning, l’m H. G. Wells!" I said loudly, and then froze with horror at my blunder.
Mr. Wells smiled, and his squeaky voice was casual. “I say, even our initials are the same. Come in, come in.”.

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

Re: Musical Points to Ponder

Post by varsha »

DAVID GRAYSON in Adventures in Solitude: Many times in my life I have repeated Rodin's saying that "slowness is beauty." To read slowly, to think slowly, to feel slowly and deeply : what enrichment ! In the past I have been so often greedy. I have gobbled down innumerable facts, ideas, stories, poetical illusions. I have gobbled down work. I have even gobbled down my friends !
But rarely have I tasted the last flavour of anything, the final exquisite sense of personality or spirit that secretes itself in every work that merits serious attention, in every human being at all worth knowing. —Hodder & Stoughton, London
----
REX HARRISON is often vague about current events, but never about a menu or proposed meal. His former wife, Elizabeth, writes: When we were dining with a few friends at the “21” Club in New York, a handsome young man left a large group celebrating at a table decorated with miniature Stars and Stripes and came to our table. He said, “We just came in on the last flight. You’ve given me so much pleasure through the years, Mr Harrison, I would like to take this opportunity to thank you.”

Rex bowed his head graciously and returned his attention to the wine list as soon as the American had finally gone. “What a very odd fellow,” Rex said later. “I don’t know why he should have made such a fuss about his last flight. I came in on the last flight from London. I don’t go on about it, do I?”
“Rex,” I pointed out gently, “that was James Lovell. He just got back from flying around the moon.”—Love, Honour and Dismay

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

Re: Musical Points to Ponder

Post by varsha »

EDITH SITWELL : It is a part of the poet's work to show each man what he sees but does not know he sees. He is a brother speaking to a brother of "a moment in their other lives"—a moment that had been buried beneath the dust of the busy world. Like Moses, he sees God in the burning bush when the half-opened or myopic physical eye sees only the gardener burning leaves.

----

BERNARD SHAW " The only person who behaves sensibly is my tailor. He takes my measure anew every time he 'sees me. All the rest go on with their old measurements.

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

Re: Musical Points to Ponder

Post by varsha »

ESKIMO artists, when they carve ivory, we are told, do not begin by deciding what to carve.
They say, "I wonder what is inside," As they carve, they gradually find it. It was there, waiting for discovery and release.
—Erik Barnouw
-----
POET ROBERT FROST was an occasional visitor to our University of Massachusetts Literary Club meetings during the 1950s. He would read his poems aloud to us and some times offer a viewpoint, but he refused to appraise students’ poems. Only once did a student succeed in cornering Frost. The boy persuaded him to read a complex, symbol filled study he had written about the thoughts and reactions of a group of people who were attending a cocktail party.

The poem ended with the line: “They talked of people who talked of people who talked of people.” Almost everyone agreed that the message thus conveyed was extraordinarily profound. We watched the great craggy white head as it nodded over the student work. “Son,” Frost said finally, “you’re just starting out. First go write rhymey dimey stuff.”

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

Re: Musical Points to Ponder

Post by varsha »

IT SEEMS to be a characteristic of all great work that its creators wear a cloak of imprecision. Einstein was generally regarded as a vague, impractical man. Many scientists still think this. Yet the truth is that Einstein's calculations had a level of precision and an exactness of thought which those who accuse him of being impractical are themselves quite incapable of attaining.
The girl that Mozart wanted to marry said after his death that she had turned him down because she thought he was a scatterbrain, and would never make good., Wordsworth had matters right when he spoke of Newton — "the index of his mind, voyaging strange seas of thought, alone."-

The man who voyages strange seas must of necessity be a little unsure of himself. It is the man with the flashy air of knowing everything, who is always with it, that we should beware of. it will not be very long now before his behaviour can be imitated quite perfectly by a computer. —Fred Hoyle in Of Men and Galaxies
----
FRANK LOESSER, the composer-lyricist who wrote such songs as Praise the Lord and Pass the Ammunition, Baby, It’s Cold Outside and On a Slow Boat to China, liked to say that songs just popped into his head. “Of course,” he would add, “your head has to be arranged to receive them. Some heads are arranged so that they keep getting colds. I keep getting songs.”

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

Re: Musical Points to Ponder

Post by varsha »

FRANK NORRIS, American novelist and editor (1907-1967), on simplicity : Once I had occasion to buy a, silver soup ladle. The obliging sales-man brought forth quite an array of them, including ultimately one that was as plain and unadorned as the unclouded sky—and about as beautiful:
But the price! It was nearly double any of the others.

"You see," the salesman explained, "in this highly ornamental ware the flaws don't show. This plain one has to be the very best. Any defect would be apparent." There, if you please, is a final basis of comparison of all thing's: the bare dignity of the unadorned that may stand before the world . all unashamed, in the consciousness of perfection.
----
ACCORDING to his cousin, Mark Twain once visited Madame Tussaud's and stood quietly for a long time before a clever piece of waxwork. Roused from his contemplation by a sudden nab in his side, he turned and found himself fact to face with a dumbfounded woman with her parasol still pinned at him, "O LORD', it's alive ! " she screamed, arid hurried from the scene

vgovindan
Posts: 1865
Joined: 07 Nov 2010, 20:01

Re: Musical Points to Ponder

Post by vgovindan »

varsha wrote: 17 Aug 2017, 07:05 "in this highly ornamental ware the flaws don't show. This plain one has to be the very best. Any defect would be apparent." There, if you please, is a final basis of comparison of all thing's: the bare dignity of the unadorned that may stand before the world . all unashamed, in the consciousness of perfection.
Varsha,
How true and how least understood!
tyAgarAja was simple plain - and he and kRtis transcend time. How I wish this is understood!

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

Re: Musical Points to Ponder

Post by varsha »

CHARLES W GUSEWELLE: The Japanese, although riding the boom of their emergence as a postwar economic power, still pride themselves on retaining-certain traditional values. As evidence, there is the case of the government official who offered himself as hostage in place of the 55 passengers and four hostesses on a jet airliner hijacked by sword-waving radical students.
After being delivered safely from his ordeal, the official was called before parliament to be applauded for his heroism. He did not receive a lifetime pass on Japan Air Lines. He did not get title to a country estate on the lower slopes of Mount Fuji, or half-partnership in a chain of hamburger shops.

He got a white porcelain vase.

----
HUNGARIAN playwright Ferene Molnar had the usual quota of relatives and many of them looked to this fabulously successful scion of the family for financial aid.Once in the 1920's, a Large delegation of his relatives descended upon him in Vienna, where he was living in the cheapest room of the best hotel. Expecting an icy reception, they were surprised when Molnar' greeted them in his friendliest manner and even suggested that they all pose for a family portrait.When the print was delivered, he took it to the doorman, instructing him, "Keep this picture always at hand. Whenever you see any of the people in the photo trying to get into the hotel don't let them in."

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

Re: Musical Points to Ponder

Post by varsha »

ROBERT BOLT , who won an Oscar for his screenplay of A Man For All Seasons writes : Money makes you more greedy. But it is something more than that. It is not a matter of being corrupted.
It is that, when you are earning very little, you must value yourself for what you are.
When you are offered fortunes, unless you are very mature you are tempted to value yourself for what you're earning.
----
WHEN Charlie Chaplin met Albert Einstein, he asked the scientist to discuss his theory of relativity. Einstein suggested that it would not be proper to explain it just then. "It would be," he said, "as if I were to ask you to do some acting for me right now. You probably couldn't do it."
For the next hour, however, Chaplin expounded in mystical terms on mathematical theories until the confused Einstein was exhausted. The next morning, a messenger brought Einstein a photo of Chaplin, inscribed: "To a great mathematician. I hope you liked my acting." —Leonard Lyons

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

Re: Musical Points to Ponder

Post by Sachi_R »

Varsha,
Is there any disease or syndrome or gebetic mutation I may suffer by reading too many of these gems all in go? I am enjoying them so much.
What if the reader can't digest?

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

Re: Musical Points to Ponder

Post by varsha »

Only ten more posts before I conclude.Then it stays as an archive here .
I agree . It is difficult to digest in one go.Even at one set per day
And these are only the ones related directly / obliquely to Arts .!!!!
:D
Readers Digest was ahead of its time , indeed.It anticipated the need for smaller chunks.It did foresee the explosive growth of our information world.Ironic it is defunct today when we need more digested outputs.
As Ironical as Punch closing down when the World needed more humour 8-)

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

Re: Musical Points to Ponder

Post by varsha »

FREYA STARK : In small, familiar things, memory weaves her strongest enchantments, holding us at her mercy with some trifle, some echo, a tone of voice, 'a scent of tar and seaweed on the quay; we have all been explorers in our time, even if it was only when we learned to walk upon unsteady feet on the new carpet of our world; and it is those forgotten explorations that come back.

It is rare in later life to drink such draughts as we do in childhood of the world's wonder, whose first depth remains through all our days. ---John Murray, London
-----
INTERVIEWED IN PARIS recently, Billy Wilder was asked to name the favourite among his own films. He unhesitatingly named Some Like It Hot. The interviewer protested,mentioning, among others, Sunset Boulevard and The Lost Weekend. “Nice little pictures,” agreed Billy comfortably. “But in those daysI wasn't getting a percentage of the gross.”

Post Reply