The Legend of 1900

Read the description for this movie last Saturday: an orphan spends his entire life aboard an ocean liner as a piano prodigy.

Do what?

How did a baby wind up orphaned on an ocean liner in 1900? What a silly premise for a movie.

Then I watched it. Two and half hours later, with tears streaming down my face, I watched the retired ship burst into flames as it was imploded and sunk.

And I got it.

If you haven’t seen this movie, find it. If you love music, piano in particular, find it NOW. The score was written by Ennio Morricone, world-famous composer of movie scores for over 50 years, I suppose. If you’ve seen, or heard, “The Mission”, then you know his music.

The last movie that touched me musically in this way was “Somewhere in Time.” Yes, it’s a syrupy love story / time travel thing, but the music…..Rachmaninoff and Morricone. It doesn’t get better.

The first time I heard Rachmaninoff’s Variations on a Theme by Paganini it was by accident. I bought an LP of his works, looking for a piano concerto movement, but I didn’t which concerto it came from. So I put this album on the stereo and sort of half-way listened to the music. It was just ok at first, then the very “russian march” variation came out of the speakers and grabbed my attention, demanding to be heard. Next came the Deus Irae…how did that get in there? Then the music turned all misty, eerie, like it was wandering through fog-shrouded woods at sunset. The key shifted from minor to major, the sun came out, and there it was….the 18th variation. In all the world, I don’t believe there’s a single piece of music any more breathtaking than this one. It’s not very long, maybe a minute or two, but when it drew to a close I was on the floor of my parents’ living room sobbing. This is what I wanted.

But I knew I wouldn’t get there. It was out of my reach. Maybe I could have tried it then; certainly not now.

Then, last Saturday, I heard “Playing Love” from The Legend of 1900, music by Ennio Morricone.

And I sobbed again.

Immediately I came in here and started crawling all over the ‘net looking for it, and discovered that there were lots of  other pianists crawling around the ‘net looking for it too. But it was just out of my grasp. I’d find references to it, only to discover broken links.

Until I tripped over a website in China, dedicated to sharing Morricone’s muic. Yes, they had the piano score, free. But you had to e-mail them to get it.

E-mail someone I dont’ know in China, to get music I really wanted. How do I know this is really a site that supplies music? There were a couple of links to .pdf files of other pieces so I grabbed those. And they were good. There’s a very sultry rag (sounds incompatible, but it works) written by Jelly Roll Morton, a historical character who is instrumental to 1900’s plot.

But, do I dare e-mail them for the rest of the score? Most of the site is in Chinese, for heaven’s sake! Even after you hit the translate button. I debated over it with myself, and after several hours of negotiating, decided to give it a shot.

Obviously, my computer still works, so I didn’t get wormed or virused or anything. But, no music either. I figured, what the heck, it was a shot in the dark anyway, no harm no foul.

Monday I got an email from someone named HAN, in badly translated english, that said “Dear Lady…” and had a link to a site where I could download the score.

My computer still works, the score is in a new folder called music/legend of 1900, and two of the pieces are fresh of my printer.

Think I’ll go play.

 

Quick post

October 31, 2008 concert in Kernersville, NC

I was in Cielo last week hanging out with the Dominican (and American) ladies. It was a great week, exhausting, lots of highs and a couple of lows…..tons of pictures to process and words to write.

For now, check out this interview with my awesome cousin Brian.

 

Taylor and Maria

See that guy in the video up there? His name is Taylor Cameron Carpenter.

If you Google him you find out he’s a “rock star organist”.

When he was about 14, he was our church organist while he attended Arts high school in the area. When I think about those years now it blows my mind to realize he was only 14. His technical skills at the organ, or piano, harpsichord, whatever, are exceptional. But what always amazed me was his ability to improvise. I’m not talking about a typical improv an organist would do to get from a hymn in one key and meter to another hymn in other key and/or meter.

In December 1995 a dear friend of ours died from a rare form of cancer. She and her family were ardent supporters of the arts. Her memorial service was not only a tribute to her life, but also a musical celebration of her life offered by Taylor. It was mentioned that our friend had a flair for the dramatic when it came to her artistic talent. She was a painter, sculptor, singer, decorator. Everything she did was uniquely her own, and sometimes got her into a teensy bit of trouble. Like the year she decorated the fellowship hall for Christmas by hanging the Christmas tree upside-down from the ceiling. It was a fad for a year or two, as I recall. But she embraced it! There was the tree, hanging down in all its glory, and people were talking! You would have thought she’d desecrated a sacred icon, instead of twisting an adapted pagan symbol into something completely different, as Monty Python would say.

So, in her memorial service our pastor compared her to “Maria” from “The Sound of Music”, and referred to the song “How do you solve a problem like Maria?” when speaking of her.

Once the memorial part of the service was complete, it was time for Taylor’s musical offering. I remember him playing “In the Bleak Mid-Winter”, which had been one of her favorite carols. There were a couple of other pieces that I can’t recall specifically. One was probably a hymn.

But THIS, I remember: As Taylor played, a simple melody was forming above the frenzy of notes flying from his hands and feet. It was familiar, but not quite above the threshold of recognizability. At first the notes were elongated, making it harder to pull them out of the mire. But as the tempo increased, and the melody rose from the bass line to the upper registers, there it was: How do you solve a problem like Maria?

Of course, my friend’s name wasn’t Maria. And now Taylor is world-famous and goes by Cameron.

But for that one moment in time, on a cold December afternoon, Taylor and Maria danced.

And it was magic.

 

diversionary tactics

I am tired. Part of it is fibromyalgia, but there’s more to it than just the physical and mental tiredness that is fibro’s calling card.

Maybe weary is a better word. This political season has been worrisome and wearisome. The economic situation is worrisome and wearisome. It’s all we hear about and it’s a mess and it makes me so angry, and there really is no platform for people like me to express our frustrations other than here in blog-world, and I don’t wanna blog about it today.

So, here are some diversions I’ve been using.

I’ve been watching old movies. This morning I watched “Three Came Home” about allied civilians kept in Japanese prison camps during WWII. Good movie that poignantly expressed what is really important during a crisis: love, family, friendship, trust, character.

Then there was “A Face in the Crowd” starring our local TV hero, Andy Griffith. An excellent movie, but the parallels between Lonesome Rhodes and so many of our self-absorbed Hollywod elite entertainers and slimy politicians government officials was, well, frightening. Once the political season is over I plan to analyze that movie with college son. Sounds like fun.

And I had no idea that “In the Good Old Summertime” was “The Shop Around the Corner” is “You’ve Got Mail.”

I’m knitting another top-down sweater, and I made up the design myself. This one is pink, will have a sort of sweetheart neck, 3/4 length sleeves. The bottom of the sweater and the sleeves will have a simple lace pattern. It had to be a simple lace pattern; I’m having a hard time remembering and 8-stitch, 6-row pattern. A complicated pattern would be impossible. I’m making the sweater out of cheap yarn. If it turns out, I may splurge and get some pretty stuff from the fancy yarn store and make another one.

I’ve been trying to find a book to read but concentration being what it is (non-existent) I’m not having much luck there. StuffMart had John Adams in paperback so I might pick that up and give it a whirl.

Our student ministry at church is responsible for an annual prayer service during Advent. Last week I spent time planning out that service. Much fun! There’s drama, music, prayer. I wrote some of it, and edited other pieces to fit what we want, and picked out music. Then arranged music, something else I’ve never done before. Found a trial version of some software to use and used the bloody-nose method to figure out how to make it bend to my will! Help files are for sissies!!

Student ministry is also publishing a cookbook to raise funds for next summer’s trip to Cielo, Santo Domingo, Dominican Republic. Several of us are typing recipes. There’s some fun!

I toyed with moving the blog to another platform, but I’m really not in the proper frame of mind to learn another blogging method.

And for now, I’m planning (and dreaming a little) about being in Cielo myself in January.

 

an experiment

I bugged out of a writer’s workshop yesterday. Just had a feeling about it, and I overslept…and there were more important things to do and more important people to hang out with.

For a while now, hubby and I have been joking around about writing “The WORST Country Music Lyrics, Ever.” Years ago hubby’s dad wrote a country song entitled “Blood Under My Fingernails.” It should have been published and recorded. He tried, without success. It’s a shame too, because Hank Williams could have done something marvelous with it.

So, this evening we started writing the WORST country music lyrics, ever. We have two verses and a chorus.

The Worst Country Song Lyrics Ever

 

2:00 AM in Texas

3:15 in Alabam’

He was drivin’ on the freeway

lookin’ for some country ham

Saw her on the shoulder

as she watched the flames arise

From the engine of her pickup

and his heart woke up his eyes.

 

Her hair was long and curly

Miss Clairol, number eight

Her legs were long and luscious

Oh, he could hardly wait

He pulled over, grabbed his Amerex

Model fourteen, color: black

Then he raced up to her engine

And he pulled that trigger back.

 

(chorus)

flames of loooooooooooooooooooooove

watch ‘em buuuuuuuuuuuuuurn

Bob and Brenda

When will they ever learn

flames of loooooooooooooooooooooove

well it hurts so baaaaaaaaaaaaad

when the fire’s extinguished

it was the best they’d ever had.

 

Now it’s someone else’s turn. Next verse please.

 

 

the E string

(I’m headed to the mountains tomorrow morning to help chaperone 40 teenagers at camp for a week. Pray for all of us. We do this every year; it’s always a hard week, physically as well as spiritually and emotionally. But the end result is that we all come away better for having been there.)

A funny thing happened Friday evening. I was vegged out, trying out a new sock pattern and watching Turner Classic Movies. Operation Petticoat had just finished and Father Goose was about to start. TCM has this musical ditty that they always play before a movie comes on, when they are showing the rating for said new movie. So I’m sitting there, knitting away, and the little musical ditty comes on, and out of nowhere my brain says “That note is an E. Furthermore, it’s the low E string on a guitar.” Oh, really?

I’m guitar-impaired. I get it in my head, but my fingers aren’t really interested in learning patterns. They wanna know exactly what notes they’re playing. A handicap of growing up as piano-playing fingers. Lately though, the fingers have been branching out some on the keyboard and learning to play by pattern recognition rather by printed note. This makes the ears start paying more attention to what they’re hearing, listening for those patterns and translating them into chords on a keyboard. So maybe that has something to do with why my brain said what it did about the E. Of course I had to put the brain to the test, and yes indeed, the note was the low E.

In college I had to take “Physics of Music and Acoustics”, which was basically a class on how to purchase a killer stereo system. My professor was of the opinion that “perfect pitch” was instinct as opposed to a learned response to stimuli. I disagreed, wholeheartedly, and we had some lively discussions on the topic. I didn’t give the concept much thought after that. I just knew it was something I didn’t have, mainly because I wasn’t a singer.

Well, so what?

Maybe this: I think the professor and I were both right. I was right in that perfect pitch is a learned response to stimuli. He was right in that it’s more than just an learned response to stimuli.

As my kids like to say, “What that even mean?”

When I heard that note and my brain said “that’s the E string”, I first noticed a feeling in my chest, a specific sort of vibration that touched me in a very visceral, emotional way. Then I noticed that the pitch sounded like the low E string, and because I do at least know how to tune a guitar, I knew to call the pitch “the E string.” Even if I didn’t know what to call the pitch, I recognized it as the low string on a guitar because I enjoy listening to someone playing the guitar.

Another thing I’ve noticed about myself recently is that I can hear a piece of music and immediately know that it’s in the same key as some other piece of music. And I’m not necessarily talking about music I’ve studied in the past. I hear it in my head, and in my heart if you will, and I know immediately how to identify what I’m hearing in relationship to something else I’ve heard before. How? Don’t know for sure, other than my knowing that music affects me in a very profound, emotional way. It’s something primitive, visceral, instinctive…

I haven’t always been able to do this. Maybe it’s a product of maturity?

And why am I even thinking about this anyway?

Sometimes, when something is true, you know it is so because that truth touches you in both an intellectual and an emotional, or spiritual, way. You hear something, or see something, or maybe even touch or smell something, and a universal truth makes itself known to you. Every time I smell slightly scorched scrambled eggs, I am taken back to my first baby sitter’s house, Mrs. Easter. Her house always smelled like scrambled eggs in the mornings. The truth of what scrambled eggs smell like transcends time and space, taking me from almost-50 back to almost-5, across the state line to the house that, back then, seemed a mansion to me. We drove past that house last week on our trip up the mountain to the funeral home. While it is still standing, the house suffers from serious neglect. There are posted No Trespassing signs. The playroom that used to house a pool table and a ping-pong table is falling down and looks barely large enough to hold one of those itty-bitty smart cars.

There are lots of people who say that what is true for one person may not be true for another. That truth is relative. That all truth is relative. Those folks may or may not be able to identify the E string when they hear it, but if they can then they know that the pitch of the E string doesn’t change.

I wonder, whose house does their mind travel to when they smell scrambled eggs? I’ll bet there is one.

 

Coming of Age

I started writing this post around January 7th. Then I got sidetracked by, well, January. I think I mentioned somewhere down there that I don’t really like January.

Anyway, I met with a friend of mine this week who happens to be the music and arts minister at our church. If the term “arts minister” doesn’t register, that’s ok. Suffice it to say that he finds tangible ways to make worship more meaningful for those of us who are moved by music, visual and fine art, the spoken word, etc. I shared these next words with him: 

“If I can’t be the best <insert noun here> then I won’t <insert associated verb here> at all.”

I hear these words every week from twenty different kids between the ages of 13 and 18.

When I was 12 years old I decided that I was going to college and get a degree in music. There were people who tried to talk me out of it, even bribed me by saying they’d pay for my college education if I majored in anything other than music. But my mind was made up and there was no changing it. I auditioned at Brevard College in NC and received a small scholarship, but decided against going there because, back then, it was a 2-year program and I would have had to transfer somewhere else eventually. I also auditioned at James Madison University, was accepted into their program, and headed to Harrisonburg in August of 1979.

Turns out I didn’t like Harrisonburg all that much, and my piano professor was just plain weird. My boyfriend (husband now) was at Virginia Tech, so I went to Blacksburg and auditioned there, fell in love with the campus and the piano professor who heard me play (and questioned some of the techniques and interpretations my JMU professor espoused) so I headed to Blacksburg the following January.

I got that degree a little more than two years later, finishing college in just under 3 years, and starting teaching piano. Make that babysitting piano students. I had about 2 students, and about 20 kids who were dumped at the studio for an hour every week. Decided that I didn’t want to babysit, got a job at an AT&T assembly plant–factory, that is–, got married, took COBOL programming classes that were way easy, got a programming job, and began a life of working in corporate America. The pay was very good, and programming was fun. Maybe if I’d been allowed to just design, build, test, debug, etc. I could have remained happy. But that didn’t happen. Work became all about making this week’s boss look good and last week’s boss look bad, about training my managers to manage, about training fresh-out-of-college boys who were paid more than me to do my job, whatever it was this week. And on it goes.

All during those years the piano remained in the periphery of my life. I played a wedding, played for the choir at church occasionally, played keyboards when we went “contemporary” a decade or so back. If you’re into classical liturgical music you might be familiar with the Brahms Requiem. He wrote two versions of it: one for choir and orchestra, in German, and another for choir and two pianos, in English. I played one of the pianos once. It was good.

So what?? Well, way back in 1984 the hometown newspaper printed an article entitled “Giving up the Dream: Some musicians are happier when the music stops.” This article hit me where I lived then. It said that many serious musicians are happier when they come to grips with the fact that they will never go to Juliard, never play a concerto, never ‘make it’ in the music industry. “If I can’t be the best <insert noun here> then I won’t <insert associated verb here> at all.”

Here’s the thing: 20 years later, I still have this newspaper article in my Daytimer. I still read it on occasion. And it don’t believe it. I wasn’t happier when the music stopped, or slowed down, or whatever it did.

Back in college there was an Education professor who had been a piano major at the Cincinnati Conservatory. He went on to receive a Master’s degree in Education and never played the piano again. Ever. I couldn’t understand how he did that.

Twenty years later I realized that I had, for the most part, done the same thing. I did understand how, but not why.

So here I am, sliding into mid-life, back where I was at 12, coming of age. I want to play the piano, and sing, and dance and write and whatever. I’m not going to Juliard or Carnegie Hall. I’m not going to win a Pulitzer or make the NYT best-seller list. But I am going to do something that gives me pleasure.

Back to those kids, the ones that are saying “If I can’t be the best <insert noun here> then I won’t <insert associated verb here> at all.”

Listen up: it doesn’t matter if you aren’t the best whatever. If you love it, keep doing it!

And for those of us that aren’t exactly kids anymore, who may have bought into the “Giving up the Dream” philosophy: if that philosophy works for you, Great! But if it doesn’t, scrap it. Dust of the piano, break out the paintbrush, dance like no one is watching.

Come of age.

 

Dizzy Fingers

Well looky here.

It’s 3:45 AM Sunday morning and I’m wide awake. Blame some of it on the darn cat, who is now sleeping peacefully on the back of the loveseat about two feet from me. He’s a crumudgeon, however you spell it. Eleven, no, twelve years old. My kids named him Simba as in ‘The Lion King’. He’s more of a lion buddha, though. Fat and darned proud of it. He’s had surgery on his ears and they’re sort of wrinkled now. And he smirks. A lot. He’s smirking at me now, matter of fact. He likes to hide in our bedroom and then jump onto the bed after we settle in for the night, which means that he wakes me up. He also likes to sleep on my pillow when I’m using it. No manners at all, this cat.

So he does his thing around midnight, jumps onto the bed and starts wandering around looking for somewhere to get comfortable. He tries my pillow, hubby’s pillow, winds up between us. I’m already having trouble getting to sleep, and now there’s 20 pounds of cat trying to squeeze between my head and the wall, between hubby and me, wherever. Around 2:00 I hit my limit and pushed him off the bed. He proceeded to hack something up on the floor next to me. It was on purpose, too. He woke up hubby, we chased him out of the bedroom, hubby went right back to sleep. Not me.

I squirmed. I tried to think sleepy thoughts. Nothing.

Right after New Year’s I stayed up for 30-some hours. Couldn’t sleep at all. It’s probably hormones. I’m starting to understand the jokes about being post-menopausal and going without sleep for 3 year stretches. Only it’s not funny. It’s annoying. Sort of like the cat, who is now somewhere behind me huffing and puffing, either getting ready to demand that I let him out, or trying to settle his girth on the dog pillow. Nope, scratch that…he’s tippy-tippy-ing around looking for somewhere else to land. I may have to encourage him to go outside for a while, just so I can drink some tea in peace and at least try to settle down mentally for a few minutes. Yep, he’s going out. Now.

Where was I? Oh yeah, trying to calm down. I’m playing the piano this morning. It’s no big deal, a Schubert thing I learned in high school about 30 years ago. It’s nice to have things in the repertoire to fall back on when I have to play on short notice, and occasionally without sleep.

Maybe the opportunity will arise to play ‘Dizzy Fingers’ or ‘Kitten on the Keys’…..but not at church.

Hmmmm…..’Dizzy Fingers’.

That’s me!