A Special Day for "Aphorisms" - I Invite You to Join In...

This entry marks my 5ooth blog entry, and so I feel that it is about time to explain to  the reader the reasons for having begun this  series back in 2007:
After having undergone a series of pushes and shoves on the part of family and students to establish a blog site, I decided to do so, with some highly focused,  self-inflicted rules of specificity, which were inculcated and remain in force to this day:
To make sure that non-technical language be utilized, so that readers from all aspects of pursuance and interest can understand what they are reading.
To write about subjects that pop up in my mind, and to write them down at about the rate of one or so a week.
To write the blog without referring to any written source of information; in other words, to make this a kind of  'game'  in order to see how long this blog can last. The salient rule I abide by in this  'game',  is to rely solely on my memory bank, without resorting to the Internet, or a thesis or book etc. Only twice in these six years have I been forced to refer to some written material; one being my piece on one of Napoleon's soldiers visiting the composer Beethoven's apartments, and I needed specific words from the soldier's memoir to describe the disorder and unhealthy condition of Beethoven's living quarters on that day.
 The second time I needed exact written words was my piece on Beethoven's own rather truncated  written descriptions of the problems he had about his maids whom he hired to clean up after him.
All my other blogs  are things that 'pop' up without any reason, other than my commemorating a particular day in history, as I am rather good with dates.
My overall 'theme' is divided into two categories; simply, either  to write about something generally not known about a well-known figure or event; or,  to write about a figure either not known or  long forgotten.
My ultimate goal is to stop this blog when nothing 'pops' up - I am rather surprised that after six years, things keep 'popping' up, without my getting technical about this field we call Music.
It has been fun, and I hope that you will continue to have fun with me!

"The Art of -" A Personal Remembrance of a Gifted Artist...

The normal pursuit that I actuate in my blogs is to write about such issues as music; or, paintings; or, architecture etc.
However, do please allow this writer to project to you another example of Man's art by way of a  personal experience; to be precise, the Totem Pole.
During my childhood years, my father would arrange to have the family spend each August in the Adirondack  Mountains, which happens to be the largest state park in the United States. Through my elementary and high school years, the family would reside in a hamlet named Old Forge, located in the southwestern section of Adirondack State Park, and from that little town, over the years, we attained a considerable knowledge of this vast, wonderfully beautiful wilderness.
One of the residents of Old Forge was a Native American, whom I met early on as a child, when Maurice Dennis (his name) was the official lifeguard of Old Forge Pond.
His biceps and striking  musculature were the first items I remember about this young, bronzed God, who at the same time was a totally affable fellow with a great affinity to laugh and to guide and teach the young boys who gravitated around him, especially when we met each day to learn how to swim - yes, he took the time out, while his assistant did the lifeguarding, to give us swimming lessons Monday through Friday of each week. Amazingly, almost all his students, including me, became accomplished swimmers.
Among other activities he engendered was to teach how to correctly and safely handle a canoe, and with some of us , as a personal aside he obviously loved doing, taught us how to use a lemon wood bow. He had us learn from the bow he fashioned with his own hands.   I distinctly  remember my shooting at an archery target that was positioned across a narrow portion of the pond.
With all of the above, the most impressive aspect of this hero of my young years was his artistic propensities, especially when it came to his carvings, the most singular object of his work being the Totem Pole, for which, in his later years, he became well-known in the Northeast and in Maritime Canada.
To this day I do not know whether the stories he carved into each totem pole were his own, or traditional stories of his tribe; namely, the Abenaki, who lived and still live, I believe, in both northeastern America and maritime Canada. Maurice was, at a particular time in his life, made a Chief {I suspect that the title was a form of honorary recognition), and he  was generally known as "Chief Dennis" from that time on.
Above all of the memories I hold of Maurice Dennis was his striking totem poles, some of which remain scattered here and there throughout the region.
Man's Art - how many faces??

What About Great Women Violinists? Read On!

The other day, my wife asked me about  women  who achieved fame on the violin. Instantly, I  realized that among my 498 blogs, I had been remiss in dealing with this particular subject. And so, rather apologetically, I will offer you the following:
A striking violinist who has, in our time, achieved fame, is, of course, Anne-Sophie Mutter, a German virtuoso, who is at the top of her form as you read this, and is, arguably, the most powerful among the violinists of her gender playing today. She, as I recall, was supported from the very beginning by the legendary conductor Herbert  Von Karajan, and performs world-wide, having made a large number of recordings.
What slammed into my memory bank after my wife's  question, however, was a name I had long forgotten about, and she constituted a vital portion of my musical memories when I was a teenager and young adult.
Her name was Erika Morini, a German violinist who died  in her nineties late in the 20th century.
She made her debut in her 12th year with the Berlin Philharmonic, no less, and became a sensation in Europe and, later, in the United States, where she eventually settled. The magazine The Strad termed her as ":the most bewitching woman violinist of our century." There are recordings available, and her performances of the great violin concertos, such as the Beethoven and the Tchaikowsky,  are at the top of the heap of legendary incarnations of these classics.
Her name today, sadly, is pretty much forgotten - a great injustice, it seems to me.
Why not find out for yourself?

Domenico Scarlatti - A Composer With a Magnificent Prescience?

Before discussing the keyboard work of Scarlatti, please allow me to state that not for a  moment do I diminish the work and influence of his contemporary Johann Sebastian Bach, who remains for those of us who understand his unparalleled place in the Pantheon; a place reserved only for the likes of a Bach, or a Schweitzer, or a Galileo, or the few others who cause History to create  a major swerve in its never-ending path.
I simply wish to articulate the case of Scarlatti's keyboard music, as it affects  the performers of import and power in our times.
The magnificence of Bach's works for the harpsichord continues to imbue the musicians of  our time with a glow of recognition of the Master's synthesis of harmony, counterpoint  and just plain mathematics, which remains unabated in power three centuries after his time with us. No other composer has reached the level of universal impact upon the composers who have come after him.
There is, however,  the work of Domenico Scarlatti in the 555-odd works he called "exercises," which we now call "sonatas."
Though Scarlatti was born in Italy, the admixture of Spanish and Portuguese influences upon his style (shall we call them "the Iberian influence?"),  especially in his keyboard works, imparts a special kind of color, folk and the ambient reality of the Baroque, with its clarity of melodic and motif design, laced with uniquely unpredictable harmonic modulations. The result is a style that curiously lends itself beautifully to an instrument just then emerging from the shadows of development; namely, of course, the pianoforte.
We know that Scarlatti wrote a small number of his works for the pianoforte, though the vast majority of the Exercises was designed for the harpsichord.
But the wondrous admixture described above has for some time enraptured a number of the great pianists of our time, and continues to do so. Vladimir Horowitz, of the piano legends performing during the past century , is the most powerful of those who loved playing Scarlatti before the public. He was enraptured by the atmosphere engendered in so many of these brief masterpieces, and has recorded a number of them.
The personal joy  for me is that great pianists such as Horowitz, Gilels and Michelangeli  understood the unique combine of the Baroque and nascent Classical and Romantic elements  that were evident in Scarlatti's incarnations.
I am thankful that these three pianists have given us Scarlatti in many recordings.
I sometimes wonder how Scarlatti would have reacted to his "exercises," as performed on today's piano?
Enraptured? I have to think so.

Beethoven - A Stance of and for the Enlightenment...

The world knows, of course, of the genius and work of Ludwig Van Beethoven - the power of his language moves us from the Classical to the Romantic, to encapsulate.
The pursuit of the portrayal of the human emotions simply for the sake of the extant  vocabulary of Human Emotion is the ultimate core of the power emanating from this towering figure in the world and history of the language we call Music. Ironically, the  substance and forms of the power of statement we hear when we listen to Beethoven, are, it seems to me, propelled even further because of the deafness, which may very well have acted as a deterrent; a kind of fire wall, against any form of influence, no matter how subtle or insidious. As there are no other examples, with any other great composer, of the same physical disaster that struck Beethoven, I  can only speculate. I've often wondered what kind of a Beethoven would the world know if he had not lost his hearing.
At any rate, his great regard for the works of Plato and other philosophers, is most assuredly reflected in  the tenets  of the morality code available to Man. Most powerful to Beethoven's view of the work of Plato are, of course, the ways of Wisdom and Reason, which dovetail into the ways  of the period of Enlightenment, of which Beethoven was a part. His sense of derision about the place of Royalty and Authority is  well  known to us. His refusal to take his hat off, or bow, metaphorically or in reality, to royalty is certified in his statement "it is they who should bow to us."
Which leads me to wonder -  just how much did Adolf Hitler know about the core of Beethoven?
The great composer's music was certainly heard in constancy throughout  Hitler's regime, which seems to me an anomaly. I'm quite sure that had Beethoven and Hitler been contemporaries; had Hitler's parochialism of the world outside of his own limited visions been dissipated just enough to understand the composer's hate of  artificial authority, Beethoven's stature, let alone possible fate, might very well  have turned  out to be very different. Would it have been  a concentration camp? Or escape, like Albert Einstein? Or would Beethoven have changed because of the ways of  the 20th century? We can only speculate.

Another Great Event in an April of the Past; This Time, in the World of Art...

In my previous blog, I had written about two important events which occurred in Aprils of the past; namely, the death of Roosevelt and the Doolittle Raid.
HOW could I have overlooked Pablo Picasso??
During the last week in April of 1937, an event of pure horror took place during the the tragic Spanish Civil War.
Franco had asked for military aid from Hitler during Germany's re-arming period  in his  defiance of the Versaille Treaty, and the German tyrant was more than eager to try out some of his new "toys".
And so numbers  of German bombers were sent to Spain in a bombing campaign. A particular Basque town called Guernica was singled out to test the bombing capabilities of Hitler's Luftwaffe. The town was essentially annihilated, and many hundreds of its inhabitants were murdered in what was an operation in pure terror.
The world recoiled in horror and revulsion, and  Pablo Picasso, by that time acknowledged as one of the world's great artists, set out to project his grief and pain, let alone his  illimitable  anger, by creating  a mural of large size, which he titled, simply, "Guernica".
The world has known of it since its creation, and is recognized by millions as one of the great paintings of the 20th century, and  one of the most powerful statements ever  made by an artist,  against  one of Man's constant companions; namely,  War.

April - a Month Laden With History...

During the month of April, two events occurred which altered the course of history:
The first took place on this date, the 12th of April, in 1944, when President Franklin Delano Roosevelt died suddenly at Warm Springs, Georgia. The man who held the most powerful position in the Western world had been in office throughout the Great Depression and into much of the Second World War, and, tragically, did not live long enough to be witness to the end of the greatest military conflagration in history.
The second event occurred on April 18, 1942, when the famed Doolittle Raid took place.
A PHD recipient from MIT, in aviation engineering, James Doolittle, was the creator of an unprecedented military operation, and that was a flight of B-25 bombers which took  off from an aircraft carrier(the USS Hornet), having  steamed  to within 700 miles of Tokyo. These large bombers raided Tokyo and three other major cities on the Japanese mainland, which utterly stunned the Japanese military, let alone the civilians, who never dreamed of  being attacked in any form, especially so soon after their attack on Pearl Harbor. This operation was sanctioned by Roosevelt, and  so thoroughly shocked the top military in  Japan, that their reaction was to immediately plan on extending their ring of defense further out into the Pacific. Their primary choice was Midway island, an American territory. Unknown to the Japanese, their naval code had been broken into by the Americans. The result, in brief, was that the Americans were in wait for the Japanese fleet, and permanently  destroyed the offensive  power of the Japanese navy - from that point, the Japanese Empire could wage only defensive war, which ended in its overwhelming defeat in 1945.
And so, April gives us two defining events, which were factors  in the formation of the remainder of the 20th century.