In my not too frequent perusal of my extensive files of photographs, negatives and slides always wonder about the one that is filed simply as French Woman With Log. Inside there is a white envelope with 18 frames in b+w of Kodak SO-115. This was a precursor to the finest grain film ever made Kodak Technical Pan. It was not all that easy to use as its exposure rating was a slow 25 and a special developer had to be used to control the heavy contrast that was inherently built-in to a film that had been designed for astronomers to photograph solar flares.

The only other information on the envelope is Wreck Beach early 80s. That would be correct as Technical Pan came into production in the mid 80s and it replaced SO-115 and the other (also fine grained) SO-410.

I remember nothing about the woman except she was from Paris. I have no idea if she knew someone I knew or if I simply went up to her and asked, “May I photograph you?”

By the mid 80s I was not in the least shy and I wonder why I did not ask the French Woman With Log to take her bikini off. We were on a nudist beach after all. But I must admit that I have no recollection. Except for one or two most of the pictures I took as a profile on the same large drift wood log.

When I looked at the pictures today I thought of two things. One was about sand. I had a Manila-born uncle Luís Miranda who was my maternal grandfather’s first cousin. His comment on going to the beach (in his perfect Castilian Spanish) was, “I don’t like to go to the beach because sand gets into my shoes.”

My other observation upon seeing the pictures of the French Woman on the Log is that she had an obvious and very special sensuality about her even though I now have no memory for her voice or what we talked about. I even love the worry lines on her forehead.

As I wonder about how she might have looked without her bathing suit there is a poem by Emily Dickinson that comes to mind. On a first reading you might think it is all about flowers in a garden. But after a second reading you might suspect the poem is about her (or a surrogate) taking it all of (ripping it off in some places) for a neutral observer.

I tend my flowers for thee – Emily Dickinson (Fall of 1862)

339

I tend my flowers for thee—

Bright Absentee!

My Fuchsia’s Coral Seams

Rip—while the Sower—dreams—

Geraniums—tint—and spot—

Low Daisies—dot—

My Cactus—splits her Beard

To show her throat—

Carnations—tip their spice—

And Bees—pick up—

A Hyacinth—I hid—

Puts out a Ruffled Head—

And odors fall

From flasks—so small—

You marvel how they held—

Globe Roses—break their satin glake—

Upon my Garden floor—

Yet—thou—not there—

I had as lief they bore

No Crimson—more—

Thy flower—be gay—

Her Lord—away!

It ill becometh me—

I’ll dwell in Calyx—Gray—

How modestly—alway—

Thy Daisy—

Draped for thee!

Lavinia Norcross Dickinson

Pray gather me anemone! 

Ample make her bed

His caravan of red 

Me-come! My dazzled face  

Develops pearl and weed

But peers beyond her mesh

Surgeons must be very careful

Water is taught by thirst

I could not prove that years had feet

April played her fiddle

A violin in Baize replaced

I think the longest hour

The spirit lasts

http://blog.alexwaterhousehayward.com/2014/03/i-left-them-in-ground-emily-dickinson.html

 http://blog.alexwaterhousehayward.com/2014/01/i-felt-my-life-with-both-my-hands.html

http://blog.alexwaterhousehayward.com/2011/03/currer-bell-emily-dickinson-charlotte.html

The month of November has included for me two concerts that featured Western music of the 17th Century. This is music of the early baroque. Until most recently this kind of repertoire was only the expertise of a small minority of connoisseurs. Just like the Colt revolver (the Peacemaker) made easy killing readily available and it sort of evened the playing field, now YouTube has given us at least 30 versions of Antonio Bertali, Claudio Monteverdi, Tarquinio Merula, Francesca Caccini, Giovani Girolamo Kapsperger, Andrea Falconieri, Arcangelo Corelli,Johann Heinrich Schmelzer, etc of a chiacona (chaconne and many other spellings) which filled the no-radio airways of the 17^th century. If you have never heard this 17th century chiacona before you will find it surprising that most of them induce you to want to dance and clap and if you are not careful you just might spend a whole night looking for them on YouTube as I did recently.

Stephen Stubbs

It all began for me when I heard Arcangelo Corelli’s Opus 5 Folia played by Monica Huggett on violin. Mitzi Meyerson on harpsichord, Sarah Cunningham, cello and Nigel North on archlute, theorbo and guitar. I discovered a tune, perhaps rampant in the 16^th century that was “covered” by all sorts of composers in Europe including Folias collected by an Englishman called John Playford. I heard this Folia or ground (and we shall soon find out that a ground is simply the English word for chiacona, chaconne, etc). This ground I heard in a delightful CD Apollo’s Banquet with David Douglas on violin, Paul O’Dette, theorbo and Andrew Lawrence-King, harps.

I will write about two concerts. One was Early Music Vancouver’s Sunday (November 9) concert Monteverdi’s Songs of Love and War at the Orpheum Annex, Seymour and Robson, and the other Stile Moderno’s Friday concert Light and Dark held at the lovely chapel of St. Andrew Wesley’s Church on Burrard and Nelson.

Reginald L. Mobley

In the former, not too well hidden I heard two grounds or chacones and in the latter the concert ended with Antonio Bertali’s Chiacona.

Some nights ago I thought of that Penthouse Magazine short story that I read in the late 80s about a group of LA music promoters who came up with the idea of bringing in something new from the past to inject with a jolt the music scene of the city. They hopped on a time machine and brought back baroque composer and harpsichord virtuoso Domenico Scarlatti (1685-1757). Their plan did not go as planned. Scarlatti discovered the Moog synthesizer and dropped out. He was last seen playing with a rock band. 

Tekla Cunningham, Catherine Webster, Elizabeth Reed, Stephen Stubbs

I thought about going to the 50s and bringing back Gerry Mulligan and his pianoless quartet. By eliminating the piano from the standard jazz quartet, piano, a sax, a bass and drums and adding a trumpet it imposed an uncommon stress and obligation on the sax and the trumpet (later the trombone). This idea shook up the jazz world.

I don’t know how fresh Mulligan’s quartet would sound in comparison to what is now considered to be jazz. Perhaps Mulligan would find YouTube’s samples of 17 century baroque music tempting and he and his baritone sax would drop out and join Stile Moderno’s trio of lute, violin and viola da gamba.

Tuning the baroque harp

 As far-fetched as that might sound I discovered that in that 17^th century in which baroque music seemed to follow a formula, a priest, Claudio Monteverdi decided to shake it up a bit. This is better explained below. It also clues me in as to why Dutch-born Arthur Neele, violin, Natalie Mackie, viola da gamba and Konstantin Bozhinov, archlute call their trio Stile Moderno.

Seconda pratica, literally "second practice", is the counterpart to prima pratica and is more commonly referred to as Stile moderno. The term "Seconda prattica" was coined by Claudio Monteverdi to distance his music from that of e.g. Giovanni Pierluigi da Palestrina and Gioseffo Zarlino and describes early music of the Baroque period which encouraged more freedom from the rigorous limitations of dissonances and counterpoint characteristic of the prima pratica.

Stile moderno was coined as an expression by Giulio Caccini in his 1602 work Le nuove musiche which contained numerous monodies. New for Caccini's songs were that the accompaniment was completely submissive in contrast to the lyric; hence, more precisely, Caccini's Stile moderno-monodies have ornamentations spelled out in the score, which earlier had been up to the performer to supply. Also this marks the starting point of basso continuo which also was a feature in Caccini's work.

In the preface of his 5th Book of Madrigals (1605) Monteverdi announced a book of his own: Seconda pratica, overo perfettione della moderna musica. Such a book is not extant. But the preface of his 8th Book of Madrigals (1638) seems to be virtually a fragment of it. Therein Monteverdi claims to have invented a new “agitated” style (Genere concitato, later called Stile concitato) to make the music "complete/perfect" ("perfetto").

Gerald Drebes: ‘‘Monteverdis Kontrastprinzip, die Vorrede zu seinem 8. Madrigalbuch und das Genere concitato‘‘, in: Musiktheorie, Jg. 6, 1991, p. 29-42.

Stephen Stubbs and Maxine Eilander

  
So in the Early Music Vancouver concert Pacific Music Works (Seattle) Tekla Cunningham and Linda Melsted, violins, Elizabeth Reed, viola da gamba, Maxine Eilander, harp and harpsichord, Stephen Stubbs, lute and Direction, Catherine Webster and Danielle Reutter-Harrah, sopranos, Reginald Mobley, countertenor, Ross Hauck and Aaron Sheehan, tenors and Douglas Williams, bass I found out how Monteverdi shook up the establishment. The lyrics to his pieces brought and almost hyper reality to the idea of war and love and in one piece Chiomo d’oro, sopranos Catherine Webster and Danielle Reutter-Harrah performed a rousing chaconne-like work that thinly disguised that the words were about a most pleasant sexual orgasm! This work would have perhaps caused Monteverdi’s bête-noir Luigi Palestrina to inform friend Pope Julius III to intercede and excommunicate Monteverdi who happened to be a priest.

 Of Monteverdi soprano Catherine Webster (who sang solo in a beautiful rendition of Monteverdi’s Et e pur dunque vero) conveyed this to me via e-mail:

I'm quite sure I owe my interest in early music to Monteverdi's "Lamento della Ninfa" .  It was played in my college music history course and I couldn't believe what I was hearing.  The passacaglia is such a powerful yet simple device, and I don't think I'd heard true dissonance or language expressed that way - and there were instruments I didn't recognize!  A few years later I saw my first live performance of the Vespers (it was an EMV production!) and could hardly sit in my seat.  I love seeing the music on the page; much of it is quite easy to hear even in the layout:  the "battle" music actually looks like it sounds, with its generally triple time and declamatory style.  Then there are these rich extended cadences in a more renaissance style that seem to be from outer space:  the last section of "Hor che'l ciel" is breath-taking and actually an extremely sophisticated example of modernized madrigal word- features a solo singer with solo violin (most have two treble instruments).  I think Monteverdi really intended the violin to reflect - and guide - the psychological state of the singer.  painting.  Monteverdi was convinced that his new style could truly depict the words and emotions of the poetry so that the listener felt physically moved - and if the performance is great you'll hear a visceral reaction from the audience!  In the solo piece "Ed e pur dunque vero" I did with Tekla on violin, there were moments I found difficult not to gasp, move somehow or melt into oblivion - the musical motives seem to mirror the effect of emotion on the physical self.  It's quite a progressive piece, and the only 17th-century one I know of that

Besides the wonderful ground (chaconne-like performance of Chiomo d’oro) I particularly enjoyed Ego flos campi which featured the fabulous Boston-based countertenor Reginald Mobley. Even when all singers were in unison in some of the other works I could hear his voice separately. Mobley besides being a countertenor of note, likes to shock the establishment with his own personal stile moderno involving always wearing spats and in this later occasion a most startling facial hair arrangement. Via e-mail Mobley sent me the following explanation:

Reginald L. Mobley

You asked me to say a little something about the beard?

Frankly, there's not much to it. I've always had an interest in sculpting facial hair. It's been my most frequent form of self expression. From lightning bolts, to tiger stripes, to even a spiral, my face has served as a mobile canvas with my own hair as its medium. It just so happened that I've gone through a Wonder Woman Renaissance recently. It all culminated with me dressing as a sort of WW inspired "Wonder Boy" for Halloween. The beard reflects the Eagle that adorns her breastplate. Since I haven't had time to hide and let my beard grow out, I've chosen to keep it for a while.

~Reggie

Early Music Vancouver’s Songs of Love and War was performed in the intimate and brand new Orpheum Annex, around the corner from the Orpheum. The space with its raised seating and smallish room affords a good view, wonderful acoustics and an intimate place for music that might have at one time have been performed to a select audience of potentates. That we are now able to listen to this exciting music (new to me and new to just about anybody else) in Vancouver says something about that axis of goodness that is Portland, Seattle and our fair city. All three cities have virtuoso performers that specialize in the baroque period. The three have joined forces to bring us as of now music that aches to be listened to by anybody who might be tired of the conventional repertoire, heretofore offered. 

Next Early Music Vancouver Concert December 21

A case in point is Stile Moderno. In Friday’s performance at St Wesley’s most of the composers featured were new to me. My 12 year-old granddaughter Lauren who has been playing the violin (by her own choice to my amazement) for four years was all ears as she sketched on her sketch book. I had prepared her for the last piece, Antonio Bertali’s Chiacona by telling her that she would want to stand up to dance. What really helped her appreciate it was lutenist Konstantin Bozhinov’s approach which was much like a rock guitarist’s. Somehow the startling new music of the 17^th century (with some of those odd right wrong notes) was made more relevant by the smiles of the performers who were having with us a splendid time. 



I cannot stop here without pointing out that I absolutely hate the accordion. It seems that some years ago accordion player Bozhinov, had his own road to Damascus moment and suddenly became interested in the lute, archlute and theorbo.  These three instruments, depending on whom you talk to are all the one and the same or not. Ray Nurse, who makes these instruments was Bozhinov’s mentor and we can only thank him from saving us from the bellows. I happen to know that a virtuoso violinist in the audience also had his moment on the road to Damascus and he/she, too abandoned the accordion for the better instrument.

Stile Moderno - Arthur Neele, Natalie Mackie, Konstantin Ruslanov Bozhinov

At the end of the concert Lauren wanted to see the sheet music. She looked at the above by Antonio Bertali and told me, "I can read this but if I read it as fast as I can I would not be able to  play any of it." Time will tell if Lauren will pursue the violin but I know that just by being able to read music she has added a new dimension to her ability to think. She also told me she was looking forward to the next Stile Moderno concert.

Christina Hutten the multi instrumentalist ( harpsichord, piano and organ) who is helping out at Early Music Vancouver (she is an able harpsichord tuner) and who is getting her doctorate at UBC School of music sat down to play the beautiful not so little organ of the St. Andrew Wesley's chapel. We were all impressed and only wonder if Stile Moderno might not just fit in that instrument in a future concert.

Stile Moderno

 

Bronwen Marsden - November 2014

La Mujer de Verde - Izal

La respuesta siempre será así

No hay alternativa,

si la hubiera no me gustaría.

Mira la ciudad por la ventana

de la cafetería,

y me dice que sonría.

Sé que ella quisiera regalar

sus superpoderes

igualarse a los demás.

La mujer de Verde

se ha vuelto a poner el traje

para rescatarme.

¿Qué sucederá cuando las balas no reboten

y los malos sean más fuertes

y volar no sea tan fácil

y conozcan nuestros planes?

Dame una señal,

yo buscaré un disfraz

de carnaval.

Encontraremos algo en el desván

prometo no estorbar.

(Ooooooh, oooooooh)

La mujer de Verde

se ha vuelto a poner el traje

para rescatarme.

¿Qué sucederá cuando las balas no reboten

y los malos sean más fuertes

y volar no sea tan fácil

y conozcan nuestros planes?

Hazme una señal,

yo buscaré un disfraz

de carnaval.

Encontraremos algo en el desván

prometo no estorbar.

Tú dame una señal

yo buscaré un disfraz

de carnaval.

Encontraremos algo en el desván

prometo no estorbar.

Tú dame una señal

yo buscaré un disfraz

de carnaval.

Encontraremos algo en el desván

prometo no estorbar.

(no estorbar)

Tú dame una señal...

yo buscaré un disfraz...

La Mujer de Verde - Izal

Yes: they told me you were fools, and that I was not to listen to your fine words nor trust your charity. You promised me my life; but you lied. You think that life is nothing but not being stone dead. It is not the bread and water I fear: I can live on bread: when have I asked for more? It is not hardship to drink water if the water be clean. Bread has no sorrow for me, and water no affliction. But to shut me from the light of the sky and the sight of the fields and flowers; to chain my feet so that I can never again ride with the soldiers nor climb the hills; to make me breathe foul damp darkness, to keep me from everything that brings me back to the love of God when your wickedness and foolishness tempt me to hate Him: all this is worse than the furnace in the Bible that was heated seven times. I could do without my warhorse; I could drag about in a skirt; I could let the banners and the trumpets and the knights and the soldiers pass me and leave me behind as they leave the other women, if only I could still hear the wind in the trees, the larks in the sunshine, the young lambs crying through the healthy frost, and the blessed blessed church bells that send my angel voices floating to me on the wind. But without these things I cannot live; and by your waiting to take them away from me, or from any human creature, I know that your counsel is of the devil, and that mine is of God.

Saint Joan - George Bernard Shaw

Saint Joan by George Bernard Shaw at the Arts Club Theatre Company's Stanley Industrial Alliance Stage is on until November 23.

Meg Roe Laughs

Nicole Scriabin at my Chickering

It is paradoxical that American Composer John Cage’s most famous work is probably his shortest. I was exposed to it on a summer day in 1995 on Avenue of the Americas (6^th Avenue) in New York City. I was walking with my friend David Morton when we noticed a congregation of people surrounding a very large grand piano. We stopped to observe. A man sat down and opened the piano lid. Then after some flourishes involving the cracking of his knuckles, etc he did nothing. I was too ignorant to think of timing the interval. I shortly after found out that he had performed Cage’s famous 4’33”.

My next exposure to the work was near the year 2000 when CBC Radio had the guts to put 4’33” in a program. What followed was a four minute thirty three second moment of terrible radio silence.

Randy Raine-Reusch a multiple exotic instrument player and composer is egging on his facebook friends to perform in as many ways as they can 4’33” at noon this Remembrance Day ( November 11). It is easy to perform this work if one aims, like Schenkman (read below) to not have cricket sounds. It is also easy as it can be played in one’s head with nothing but a good stop-watch or an iPhone. What is most interesting is that if you go to John Cage’s website here you can download an app with this famous work.

Marc Destrubé, our very own Vancouver virtuoso violinist/director (The Axelrod Quartet, etc) has a keyboard artist  friend, Byron Schenkman who has managed to transpose John Cage’s complex 3-part 4'33" to the harpsichord. Early on in this complex transposition, Schenkman, not always an inveterate purist, decided to omit the bird and cricket sounds when he played this work live (on his harpsichord) some years ago.

While I have never been able to listen to Schenkman play the Cage work I have heard him play the harpsichord many times.

Thanks to Raine-Reusch facebook posting I have given much thought today as to why I have never been tempted to purchase a good set of Koss headpones. I had that ambition in the early 70s in Mexico City. I had purchased as state of the art (then!) Acoustic Research transistor amplifier and I had no money to buy a pair of good speakers. I did without the good speakers (eventually purchasing with saved money a pair of Acoustic Research AR-3A units) and never fell to the temptation of the relatively cheaper but very good Koss headphones.

Like John Cage I like my music with ambient sound (except of course with those clicks that come from some of my older LP records). I cannot understand how technology (the portable kind) has made us (the older ones) forget and the younger ones not understand what they are missing in listening to good music traversing the length of a living room or even a kitchen.

The beauty of Cage’s 4’33” is that I can play it or listen to it anywhere and anytime. For Randy Reine-Reusch I dedicate this today in which I imagine Alexander Scriabin’s grand-niece sitting at my Chickering baby grand while her famous great-uncle performs 4’33”.

I must point out as I write this that the ambient sound in my living room comes from the hum of the cooling fans of my nearby computer and the clicking of the keys on this keyboard. It is a marvelous experience, indeed. 

Addendum: For any sharpness fanatic noticing the decided unsharpness of  the photograph herein let it be known that I took it with a 50s vintage 6x9 inch format Geman box camera, a Gevabox with next to no focusing capability. The film used was the long  departed and extremely sharp Kodak Technical Pan film in the 120 format. Because of the very low ISO rating of the film  (25) I was able to use the bulb setting of the shutter and fire my sofbox flash during the exposure.

Sandrine Cassini

Cassini came to my house to pose for the last time before she moved on to dance in Europe and in San Francisco and for a short while at the Victoria Ballet. 

She has left such an impression on my soul that every once in a while I seek out her file to see if there is some photograph I might have missed. I found this one. It is in  b+w which I took with my Mamiya and it has similar characteristics to a small camera colour  version from which I used one for this blog on my mother's red shawl series. Her red shawl was one of the first and here she is. The photograph has a fundamental flaw in that I hid her right hand. This is something I should have never done. But there was something about her look, particularly in profile that reminded me of a patient (but restless?) Penelope suffering from a sexual longing for her departed husband Odysseus to the Trojan War. So I used it anyway and Cassini wrote a delightful little essay to accompany the photograph. 

Below is a colour version which I took with a Nikon FM-2 with a roll of  President's Choice  800 ISO colour negative film that if improperly scanned and colour corrected the results could rival a badly restored Technicolor movie. And yet...

melancolía.

(Del lat. melancholĭa, y este del gr. μελαγχολία, bilis negra).

1. f. Tristeza vaga, profunda, sosegada y permanente, nacida de causas físicas o morales, que hace que no encuentre quien la padece gusto ni diversión en nada.

 Real Academia Española

As a child my family called my usual demeanour and the expression on my face, the Alex face. They said that the ends of my mouth always pointed downwards.

For years I have preferred to use the Spanish word (similar to the English one but much more musical) of melancolía. I am often melancólico or melancholic. It seems to sound more poetic and softer than saying, “I am depressed.”

I had a visit today from my ever favourite photographic subject, Bronwen Marsden. She had a smile on her face, one of those soft ones that she is so good at showing. I always discern just a bit of melancholy that makes her smile that much more achingly lovely. She had a copy of Richard Lewellyn’s 1938 novel How Green Was My Valley. Marsden’s mother had given it to her citing that one of the main protagonists of the novel is named Bronwen (and not Bronwyn as many sometimes write Bronwen’s name).

I have been awfully melancholic these last few weeks. I believe it is partly a seasonal maladjustment to the dark afternoons.  I explained to Marsden that in my past I have sometimes delved into extending my bouts of melancholia by listening to appropriate music. My ever favourite is Miles Davis’s Kind of Blue and in particular the long sad tune All Blues.

It was a cold, wet wintery Buenos Aires evening in 1966. I was doing my military service as a conscript in the Argentine Navy. I was living in a pension run by a retired Nazi officer and his wife. That evening his wife summoned me to the phone. It was Susy and she told me, “You are uncouth and uncivilized. I will never talk to you again and don’t try to contact me. I am now seeing a talented violinist of the Teatro Colón Symphony. Good bye.”

That was that. I suddenly felt alone. I went up into my room and placed on my little portable record player the Davis Kind of Blue. I could feel that melancholia dragging me down and it sort of felt good.

A couple of months before I had been listening to Astor Piazzolla live at the Teatro Florida. The seat next to me was empty because Susy had decided to stay at a party when I told her it was time to go to our concert. I left without her. I was completely depressed and Piazzolla’s Milonga del Angel was making it all worse. Suddenly a hand was placed on mine and there she was. To this day most of Piazzolla, and in particular that exquisite Milonga del Angel, take me back to that terrible evening when I was summoned to the phone.

What I found comforting is that when I told this story to Marsden she said, “I understand.” I asked her to pose in our guest bathroom and as I was taking the picture she said, “This dress is kind of blue.”