Erika Writes:
Goodbye Sidney Poitier
I’m writing this with the movie To Sir With Love playing in the background. It’s one of my favorite Sidney Poitier films, and always good for a good cry–fitting it seems, upon hearing of the passing of Sidney Poitier. It’s hard to choose a favorite film–the first one I ever saw was “Lilies of the Field” but there are so many good ones, although my favorites also include Blackboard Jungle, Guess Who’s Coming to Dinner and Cry, The Beloved Country.
The complete film of Lilies of the Field is on YouTube, but here’s just a little clip.
Good Riddance to Bad Years
Other viewing this week included Netflix’s “Death to 2021,” which was, as expected, good for a chuckle. I look forward to “Death to 20xx” when we’ve had what we might consider “a good year.” Also, as a child of the 80’s, I had to catch up on my Karate Kid viewing and so I binged “Cobra Kai” this week. Sure, it’s another year until the next season but I had to know what happened between Daniel and Johnny at the All Valley tournament, right? The other notable film this week was “Long Story Short” which was a little contrived, but still kind of a sweet story about love and seizing the moment. Totally forgettable fluff, but sometimes we need that.
As a knitter, I can’t let today, St. Distaff’s Day, go by without reading Robert Herrick’s “St. Distaff’s Day; Or, the Morrow after Twelfth-day”
Partly work and partly play
You must on St. Distaffs Day:
A day for spinning, pranks and fiber arts? Why not?
Just in Time for the Feast of the Epiphany (also called Twelfth Night)
And speaking of Twelfth-Day, I’ve been working my way slowly through Twelfth Night. I have always enjoyed a good gender-swapping story, more and more as I’ve gotten older. Years before I read it, my sister and I had watched the movie Just One of the Guys enough times that we’d memorized it. It’s not surprising that I do enjoy this play. The same two books as last week as well: Never Kiss Your Roommate by Philline Harms, and Persepolis by Marjane Satrapi.
There’s also a big WordPress book by my side again. I’ve got a gift card to a bookstore that I’m anxious to spend–I’ve got Sass Orol’s book The Shortest Skirt in Shul on my wish list; Ben Yehuda Press has published excerpts from the book last Friday and today on their Twitter feed. I’ve also got a couple of different editions of Pirkei Avot on my wish list, including this graphic novel version. I’m also open to suggestions, so leave yours in the comments.
Punk Rock
Somehow yesterday the song “New England” got stuck in my head. It’s a toss up between whether I like the original Billy Bragg version or the Kirsty MacCall cover version best. I do love that he added a verse for her when she covered it, and that he performs that verse as a tribute to her since her passing. I do love Billy Bragg, but the song that’s really been on repeat this week has been “Levi Stubbs Tears”. What can I say–I’ve needed to do a little weeping this week?
There’s also been Layup’s “Growing Pains” on repeat a few times. And then a conversation this morning about The Cure versus The Smiths sent Pansy Division popping into my head, so I listened to that for a while. The song that actually came up was “Cowboys are Frequently Secretly Fond of Each Other,” although I think more people are familiar with the Willie Nelson version of the song that was released at about the same time as Brokeback Mountain.
Listening to Pansy Division made me realize that I’ve been listening to them basically since they began. It’s hard to comprehend that, but if you’re interested in the early 90s queercore scene, the documentary Life in a Gay Rock Band is a nice hour and a half about it.
The Viola Debate Continues
Writing music this week (i.e. music to listen to while writing) has included Vivaldi’s Concerto in g minor for Viola, Cello and Strings. I do actually listen to a lot of not-viola classical music, but this happened to come up when Adam was not making fun of viola music and asking a serious question about the repertoire.
Of course, my mentioning Vivaldi elicited the expected reaction until I went on one of my odd classical music tangents and talked about how Handel wrote “outside music” for listening to in the garden and Bach wrote “inside music” for listening to in fancy concert halls, but Vivaldi kind of captured both of those moods, which is why I like listening (and playing) Vivaldi.
This piece in particular, however, I like because it uses the real, robust sound of the viola without trying to make it play like a violin–the really unique qualities of the viola’s sound and musicality come through here. Whatever I listen to, the quest to create more lovers of viola music will continue!
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Adam Writes:
This is not going to be a normal Watch/Listen/Read. It’s going to be a bit raw. Roger Ames, my music teacher, just died. I can’t really go from there to talking about Wheel of Time and other things that have held my interest over the past week. He was a composer, choir-leader, singer, and teacher, and when I was perhaps fourteen, he took me under his wing in all four. Plus musical theater, which was, I think, his greatest love. I wanted to be a professional musician. A part of me still does. He was just such a generous, loving guy. A mensch, really.
Grieving in Silence
His compositions can be found on the internet, and when I heard the news yesterday (Jan 6, 2022) my immediate instinct was to put on my favorite recording of his work. But I squelched that instinct. Partly from a desire to allow my thoughts to wander where they would, unguided by the recordings, whether through reminiscences or distractions. But partly, too, because I found the music was already playing in my head. I could hear it so clearly that it would have been redundant to add the recordings on top.
I did take last night to walk around a bit, to talk to people who knew him. But today I started listening to some of those recordings. I want to take a moment to talk about my favorite piece of his, its context, and its meaning.
Roger’s Amazing Grace (Yes that’s a Pun; Roger loved puns)
Roger (he insisted on a first-name basis with his students) came to class one day in 2002 (twenty miles and at most twenty weeks from the events of 9/11/2001). He had the section leaders of our chorus pass out copies of a piece he said he’d just written. We were all familiar with the basic material: it was an arrangement of “Amazing Grace,” that hymn by a naval conscript who later became a slave-trader, and later still an abolitionist. But Roger explained that when he’d gotten the commission for an arrangement of “Amazing Grace” from the Westminster Choir College, he protested that there were hundreds of such arrangements, and they said: “but we want yours.”
The Context of the Music
Roger was devastated by the loss of life precipitated by the destruction of the Twin Towers. He took it personally, as I think he took all suffering. A lot of his music is about peace. When I first met him, he had a ponytail, and in a lot of ways he remained an old hippie at heart. So a few days after the events of 9/11/01 happened, he wrote a chorale as a kind of memorial, to the lyrics “Kyrie eleison”—“Lord have mercy.” Months later, trying to arrange “Amazing Grace” for this commission, he realized that the chorale he had written could be made to fit underneath the melody of “Amazing Grace.” And thus was born one of the most hauntingly beautiful pieces I’ve ever heard; certainly one of the most beautiful and gratifying I’ve ever sung with a chorus. Its full title is “Choral Reflection on Amazing Grace.”
There are ‘straight’ recordings of his piece. I’ve included one here. But the best version is by LAKMA (Los Angeles Korean Music Association), with the lyrics of “Amazing Grace” translated into Korean. I think it would be interesting to explain why it’s the definitive recording.
A Chorus is a World in Miniature
Roger, at the time, was working as a chorus teacher. That was his primary role. Yes, he also taught music theory to a few kids (I was one of them). And was usually the conductor of the pit-orchestra for the school musical. And co-taught a special class called STAGES in which 20-30 high school seniors would get together and learn about musical theater before collaboratively writing and producing an original musical (I was in that class, too; we wrote a musical about Salvador Dalí).
And yes he also wrote pieces of music that we the students did not hear, much less get called upon to sing. But his primary work, at least in terms of hours, was with us, his choristers. He arranged music for us, rehearsed endlessly with us, and, in a limited way, socialized with us. The door of the chorus room was always open and someone was always spending a free period chatting with him. For many of us, he was the first adult to treat us as colleagues, not children. He was the teacher we went to when we needed a Grown Up Perspective.
The point is that I believe the inspiration for “Amazing Grace” came from that format: a chorus of mixed voices with lone piano accompaniment. The piano part is complex but not virtuosic. It would be possible for someone of his skill to conduct a choir while playing the piano part. And indeed, that is what he did. For Roger, those four vocal ranges, combined with that piano, were enough. A string section would have been nice but was not needed. A percussion section would have been nice but was not needed.
A whole world of emotion could be expressed by that chorus and that piano. If anyone knew the truth of that, it was Roger, for whom those were the only tools he had at his disposal. A piano can make a big sound, but it might sound small and lonely against the thundering ranks of a full chorus. He made that smallness, that loneliness, an asset. When he wanted fullness and community, the chorus came in. When he wanted the still small voice of the individual, he had the piano. They balance each other thematically.
Wait… DON’T let your Soloists Stick Out?
Which brings us to the soloists. In other recordings you can tell that the soloists are standing at separate microphones from the rest of the choir. I say “the rest of the choir” but the soloists are not part of the choir in those recordings. They are distinct; a separate section.
In LAKMA’s recording of “Choral Reflections,” the soloists are standing on the same risers as the rest of the choir. The only way you know which singers are singing the solo-parts is by watching their mouths. They are “first among equals.” Perhaps most importantly, they do not have separate microphones, nor do the other singers quiet down to nothing in order to make room for the soloists. The result is that the soloists add brilliance to the ensemble, without pulling focus from it. I sent Roger a text message after I discovered this recording. He said it was his favorite, too, for much the same reasons. Not surprising when you think about it. My musical sensibilities were shaped by him to no small degree.
If you listen to the whole piece, you get the sense that the emphasis on the chorus is a large part of the point, intellectually as well as musically. There is a substantial introduction played by the piano, but it’s very dissonant. As if the lone piano is looking for something, and only finds that something when the chorus begins to sing. From there, you hear lots of very long notes the kind that only a chorus can sustain. In a chorus, the singers can take turns breathing.
The unmistakable melody of “Amazing Grace” is emerging as if from underwater, surrounded by suspended chords. I have listened to this particular recording about once a month since the pandemic started, and I’m only just beginning to understand how it works. Those held notes make me, the listener, feel like I’m being held in an embrace. Even in his music, Roger gave good hugs.
The Climax
And that’s how the piece goes for a while. Until the contrasting section. Suddenly the music is brighter, faster, livelier. Suddenly the piano is pounding like waves on a shore, The sopranos are nearly screaming, like if train-whistles could be taught to blend and harmonize. It’s worth it to listen to another recording first just so you can appreciate how much power LAKMA exerts when reaching this climax. And yes I do mean climax. I said Roger treated us as colleagues, not children. Huge-voiced and bearish as he was, when he didn’t think we were giving enough energy, he would often bawl out things like: “Do you know what this part of the music IS? It’s an ORGASM, DAMMIT!” He was especially prone to saying that when there were sudden full-voiced high notes like there are starting around minute 6 of the LAKMA reording.
Roger was a great optimist. You have to be an optimist to get married, as he did, for a fourth time. And I like to think that having the chorus collectively orgasm during a piece that’s meant as a kind of requiem for the dead is very much in keeping with Roger’s optimism. Life must go on, and for life to go on, sex must go on. In fact, sex is a significant part of how people cope with disasters like that of the 9/11 attacks.
I didn’t understand at the time (20 years ago) that that is what is happening here. But the sign of a great piece of music… of a great anything… is that you can keep coming back to it and learning more. Come find me ten years from now, I might think this great, big, epiphanic moment is more intellectual than physical. But as of right now, I’m putting it in the same category with what Roger once joked was his favorite musical *ahem… climax, “Dulcissime” from Carl Orff’s Carmina Burana:
I actually think Roger’s willingness to talk about the connection between sex and music was an important part of his appeal as a teacher. A chorus of adolescents will not stop thinking about sex because you stop talking about it. Singing pieces that are about sex, but not talking about that aspect, would have been hypocrisy. And kids can smell a hypocrite.
Life Goes On, Even When it Doesn’t
I don’t mean to pull the focus back to myself. But I’m going to anyway, and let’s see what happens: Roger’s death marks a kind of milestone for me. It’s the first death I’ve ever experienced that I’ve been okay with. Not happy, by any means. I’ve lost more people than I’d like in the past two years. Each one has been really hard. A significant chunk of the problem is that I can’t really bring myself to believe that we go somewhere when we die; that our memories persist when our bodies do not. And so when a person I know and love dies, I can’t help but feel flattened by this sense of loss: all that experience; all those memories; all those ideas and affections and responsibilities and desires and fears and favorite ice cream flavors and bad jokes and… Just. Gone.
And sure, there’s some of that with Roger. If wishing could make a person live longer, Roger had thousands of former students, not to mention his friends and his big family, to wish he could have made it past 77. But it would have been a betrayal of all that Roger was to get caught up wishing for what could not be. Roger, who taught a lesson on “Finishing the Hat,” Sondheim’s anthem of artistic loneliness, at a time when Roger himself was going through his third divorce, is not someone to avoid difficult conversations, difficult emotions.
I have been able to follow his example this time. The joy tinged with sadness I feel as I think about what he meant to me is my way of keeping him alive. Because his teaching and mentorship were my first lessons in dealing with those complex emotions as an adult. I remember a friend of mine went to him after a bad breakup and said: “Does it ever get any better?” And he said: “NO!” And burst out laughing. He used to laugh at inappropriate times; it never felt mean or petty. But he explained: The lesson you learn is to keep being open to love, even though you might get your heart broken. Even though you will.
In his honor, I want to do the things he loved; the things I loved doing with him. Playing music, making bad jokes, arguing about this and that, and perhaps most of all learning new things. Even if we don’t remember them after we’re gone, even if nobody does, that’s okay.
