#SparksOfJoy: A weekly post about something that makes me happy

Felix Mendelssohn: Violin Concerto in E minor, Opus 64: A concerto is a musical structure dating to the Baroque period (roughly 1600-1750) that features a solo instrument backed by a full orchestra. It’s traditionally composed in three movements with a fast-slow-fast structure. Mendelssohn’s Violin Concerto (composed in 1844, which puts it squarely in the Romantic period) is a lighthearted delight that explores a range of happy, inarguably beautiful and requisitely contemplative musical voices in its first two movements. But its third movement--a bouncy, exuberant celebration of musical virtuosity titled Allegretto non troppo – Allegro molto vivace (starting at 22:06 in this recording)--is completely joyful and captivating and downright triumphant for any violinist who masters it. Part of its joy stems from Mendelssohn’s placement of the violin solo mere moments after the downbeat of the movement instead of letting the orchestra introduce the solo, as had been the convention for 200 years. Romantic music is about emotion--often extreme emotion--and the joyful emotions of this third movement leap at you with no room for impatience or distraction.

#SparksOfJoy: A weekly post about something that makes me happy

Jean Sibelius: Symphony No. 2: An early 20th Century work that opens with a gorgeous, watery, almost circular pulse that deliciously grows and evolves and eventually explodes in a brassy, anthemic, triumphant statement of hearty Scandinavian pride. Its ebbing and flowing between muted contemplation and rousing, full-brass glory are textbook Romanticism, though it was written (in 1902) two years after the Romantic movement in music is conventionally defined as ending. I discovered this symphony via a CD that was shipped to me in error from an order I’d placed from a CD club in the mid-1990s, and I was literally enraptured by it within hearing its first subtle, pulsing phrases. Since then, I’ve heard it live more times than I can count, including once from the chorus seats (which are sold to the public for performances that don’t involve a chorus) above the Chicago Symphony Orchestra’s mighty brass section in Chicago’s Orchestra Hall. The experience was profoundly transcendent for me.

Fun fact: Sibelius is probably most famous for his stirring 1889 tone poem Finlandia, which was written as a covert protest against growing censorship against the Russian Empire.

There are giants in your life. And there are GIANTS in your life.

Norita was the giant who towered with loving influence and musical joy over all others while always elevating everyone around her to her level.

As my decade-plus piano teacher, she instilled in me the essential importance of learning technique and mastering both basic scales and fundamental theory; the artful balance of metronomic rhythm and emotional phrasing essential for playing even the simplest of Bach Preludes; a healthy respect for the rigid mechanics I needed to master before I could enjoy the brilliant ornamentation of Mozart; and a lifelong love/hate relationship with the ungainly accidentals layered over the impossible key signatures behind what was undoubtedly her—and subsequently my—lifelong love of the shimmery musical evocations of Debussy.

Her introductory description of Debussy and the Impressionists—that their work wasn’t as constrained by meter as it was driven by emotion—gave me a helpful (albeit transparently clumsy) crutch when she assigned me their pieces: Their works were among the hardest to master and therefore the most frustrating to learn and the easiest to avoid practicing, so I’d often show up for my lessons COMPLETELY unpracticed and try to use the I’m-not-unprepared-I’m-really-just-deeply-caught-up-in-the-emotion-of-these-chords-that-I’m-playing-so-slowly school of rationales as I secretly struggled to wrap my hands around their unfamiliar tangles of notes in front of her. I’m sure she totally saw through my strategy, but she patiently let me struggle there at her piano, no doubt secure in the knowledge that I was still playing the music at least once a week ... even if it was on her time.

First Lutheran Church—where she influenced literal generations of singers as the universally beloved director of children’s choirs from kindergarten through high school—once bought out a production of Forever Plaid that I was doing at Theatre Cedar Rapids 20+ years ago. There’s a moment in the show where I sit at the piano to play a very complicated arrangement of “Heart and Soul” while the other Plaids search the audience to bring me an unwitting duet partner, and on the FLC night they completely randomly selected Norita to bring on stage for our impromptu duet. When I looked up from my playing to find her sitting next to me, both of our hearts soared; I was so proud to show her what her years of lessons had taught me to do, and she was thrilled at the opportunity for us to perform together. And the audience—all FLC members who knew us well and who knew that she’d been my teacher since early grade school—roared with approval over sharing our moment together. I’ve accompanied the FLC choirs she’s directed, I’ve played duets with her at recitals and I’ve been behind the piano at many concerts she’s attended, but that brief, unexpected moment next to her at the keyboard in front of 500 people we both knew and loved remains one of my two favorite memories as a pianist. (The other is conquering the mighty Wilhousky “Battle Hymn of the Republic”—with her considerable help and guidance—and being able to accompany my mighty high-school choir as they sang it at my graduation.)

Norita had been in the ICU this week after complications from heart surgery. My sister had been to see her, but I wasn’t able to get to the hospital until this morning. I brought my sister with me, but the door to her room was shut when we got there as her family met with her doctors. We moved to the waiting room and eventually learned that they were saying their goodbyes, and Norita died soon afterward. While I’m sorry I wasn’t able to see her to maybe hold her hand and say my own goodbyes, my heart continues to soar over the loving memories of her that people are sharing all over social media. She was the patient, loving church mother to thousands of kids who spent their entire childhoods singing in her choirs. She was the consummate musician who tirelessly shared her love of choral and piano music with performers and audiences alike. And she was always a supportive friend to generations of students and choir members she always called “my kids,” even as we reached our 50s and 60s.

Among her many legacies are the careful phrasing and fingering notes she copied from her well-worn piano scores into her students’ new books before she started teaching us new pieces. She had beautiful handwriting, and I—along with countless other pianists—have stacks of music books filled with her thoughtful, helpful notations. And since I can’t find a good photo of the two of us, I’m instead posting this image of Edvard Grieg’s “Papillon”—an Everest of late Romanticism that I regretfully never *fully* conquered—covered in her bright red markings. Just finding and photographing my sheet music filled me with joyful memories of her excitement over introducing it to me, my delight over slowly unlocking its beautiful secrets, and her growing pride over my milestone accomplishments as I became more deft at its mechanics and more expressive with its emotions.

It’s always sad to say goodbye to a beloved friend and mentor, but it’s extremely comforting to know that Norita is being loved and celebrated so happily and so genuinely as word spreads of her passing. Her “kids” will always love and remember her every time we sing in a choir or sit at a piano. And she’s no doubt already spreading her joys of music to hosts of heavenly choirs.

We’ll miss you, Norita. But you’ll always be with us.

LITANY OF COMPLAINTS:

• Canada apparently burned down the White House while I was asleep
• The Fake News media totally fake-newsily didn’t even cover it
• “Feisty Cherry” Diet Coke
• Antonín Dvořák’s New World Symphony is on the radio right now and I’m trapped because I love hearing the muted ti-ti-ti-tum-tum violin motifs in the third movement and I don’t want to leave the room and miss them
• Not even for a quick run to the bathroom
• Which will happen the moment the entire ti-ti-ti-tum-tum exposition has finished
• Trust me on this
• Because damn, we have a loud toilet
• Autocorrect automatically put the accent in Antonín just now but I had to add all the diacritics to Dvořák myself
• Plus it nonchalantly changed automatically to automagically
• Seriously, autocorrect?
• I’M the only one allowed to make up stupid words on my blog
• Forrealsly
• If autocorrect is going to keep this up, we might as well thank Canada for burning down the White House, disband the last coherent fragments of our country and convert our phone keyboards to Cyrillic right now
• Settings > General > Language & Region > iPhone Language > Russian
• до свидания

Dah ditditdit!

I fell asleep listening to 91.7 on the couch earlier and woke up in the middle of Tchaikovsky’s Romeo and Juliet, and now I’m climbing into bed as Beethoven’s Symphony No. 9 blares through our speakers. No matter how cold and rainy and dreary your day may be, there’s really no better remedy in the known world than a fuzzy blanket and an evening of bombastic Romantics. Good night!

Sunday Sibelius

The first ebbing, flowing, stalwart strains of the opening movement of Sibelius' Symphony No. 2 are all you need to underscore a perfect fall day. And the final rolling crashes of brass are all you need to sustain you through winter. Sibelius is the master of redefining the emotions and lush tonal visuals of Romanticism for the 20th century. Bliss.

Happy 176th birthday, Antonín Dvořák!

And happy one-year anniversary of my freedom from Cymbalta -- according to the essay below that just popped up on Facebook. I'm sometimes glad Facebook reminds me of these memories to show me what I've survived and how far I've come ... and how I couldn't have done it without my family, my friends and even my little joys like gorgeously thematic symphonies.

It is 9:30 pm on what would have been Czech composer Antonín Dvořák's 175th birthday, and as my dad and I drove around tonight on our Thursday evening errands we listened to Dvořák's Symphony No. 9 -- also called "From the New World" due to its early American musical themes and the fact that he wrote it in the United States -- almost in its entirety.

It's the last symphony he composed -- and inarguably his most famous -- and in my opinion its brilliance lies in its endless accessibility. Its dominant six-note theme, often sung to the words of the folk song "Goin' Home," is never far from the surface no matter how many variations or complex contrapuntal themes he weaves it through.

As a composer, he was rooted firmly among the late Romantics with their heroic storylines and their soaring emotions and their confident nods to the nascent but growing fascination with the shimmering textures of the Impressionists and the gorgeous discordances of what would soon be revered around the world as American jazz. And this symphony sits right at the confluence of all that history, all that emotion, all that foresight and all that promise. And all with a mere six-note theme.

I'm trying not to make everything I write an endless litany of poor-little-bipolar-boy horror stories about deep depressive dives or unfairly short manic episodes or the spirit-killing side effects of my constantly evolving med cocktails. Honest. But I took my final Cymbalta 72 hours ago and my withdrawal side effects -- which I've been hoping would have waned to nothing by now -- spiked to soul-crushing levels of rapid-fire misery this afternoon and they seem to have gotten even worse in the last few hours. I'm dizzy and floaty and tingly and chompy and bouncy and unsteady and sometimes even actually confused. And I don't even have enough understanding of what's happening to me to know when the waves will hit or how strong they'll be or even when it's safe to stand up and assume I'll remain vertical.

But tonight, driving around with my dad, listening to music that has soothed and exhilarated and inspired and sustained me for 40+ years, knowing enough about it that I could come home and organize my thoughts and write about it all for anyone who cares to read my parades of paragraph-long sentences ... it all gave me a calming sense of purpose. Of much-needed focus. Of obligation to myself and to my family and friends to keep going and to trust that I'll come out at the end whole and balanced and maybe profoundly exhausted but thoroughly tested and ultimately triumphant.

Just like those six little notes.

PBS, you really, catastrophically suck.

First of all, do NOT get me started on that sixth-grade Blues Brothers medley that brought an irreparable pall of amateur stupidity to your "A Capitol Fourth" broadcast tonight. Or the fact that you clearly spent the evening devising newer and clumsier ways to sneak up on an unsuspecting John Stamos with your cameras.

But the 1812 Overture? As in Russian composer Pyotr Ilyich Tchaikovsky's formally named "The Year 1812" festival overture composed to commemorate Russia's defense of its motherland against Napoleon's invading Grande Armée in 1812? There is nothing about that piece that is pro-America and everything about it that is pro-Russia. And if we didn't need further proof that our man-boy president or his drooling apologists programmed your music tonight, the fact that you skipped all of Tchaikovsky's early exposition and contextual narrative and went right to the loud parts at the end with all the guns and explosions and big hell-yeah booms tells us everything we need to know about your producers' and your target audience's attention spans, cultural awareness and knowledge of history.

I get more meaningful patriotism from the fireworks exploding meaninglessly all over our neighborhood all night.