Donald's Blog
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This old house was only a few blocks from the state Capitol in Madison,
Wisconsin. All the neighborhood cats lived in the basement during the
winter. The house has long since been torn down, but in 1972 there were
AR2ax speakers in the front room, and a lot of good music was heard there. |
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In the 21st century I am just as opinionated as ever,
and I now have an outlet. I shall pontificate here about anything
that catches my fancy; I hope I will not make too great a fool
of myself. You may comment yea or nay about anything on the
site; I may quote you here, or I may not. Send brickbats etc.
to: dmclarke78@icloud.com.
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July 9, 2015Nat and Gus in New YorkI’m reading the autobiography Nathaniel Shilkret: SIxty Years in the Music Business, published by Scarecrow Press. Shilkret (1889-1981) was a multi-talented man who was music director at Victor Records in the 1920s. He was so full ot stories that he was pursuaded to start writing them down; it isn’t really a very good book, published in 2005, edited (sort of) by his daughter and his grandson, with no dates and some clunky writing, but it sure is full of stories. Shilkret was playing the clarinet in public when he was about seven; at 19 or 20 he was playing for Gustav Mahler.
The following winter I played with the New York Philharmonic Symphony Orchestra. First, Safanov, the great Russian piano teacher was conductor, and he brought quite a few young musicians into the staid German-controlled orchestra. After Safanov came the famous conductor and composer Gustav Mahler. It was a great experience for me at such a young age to be part of an orchestra with such remarkable musicians. Unfortunately Mahler was a very sick man and did not stay long with us.
Then there’s a good story about a performance of Also Sprach Zarathustra under Safanov in which several musicians’ music stands got knocked over and the end of the piece was a shambles. “The next morning I bought all the newspapers, and, believe it or not, we received rave notices for our performance.”
Mahler, like some other conductors, doubled the woodwind players to compensate for the Beethoven scores in the loud parts because the modern orchestra used so many string players.
Mahler was brought from the Metropolitan Opera House, and when he consented to accept the New York Philharmonic he insisted on hiring the great horn player Reuter [from the Met]. Reuter, taking advantage of Mahler’s request, demanded what was for then an extravagant price: $300 a week, and he got it.
The reason for Mahler’s insistence on Reuter was the difficulty of the horn parts in Wagner’s music. Mahler was recognized as the outstanding Wagnerian conductor. He was a strict disciplinarian, and at times could be almost sadistic.
There was a very fine old gentleman in our bass secion who had been instrumental in doing a good deal to help the Philharmonic Orchestra. He was greatly respected by the other musicians and the sponsors.
We were rehearsing the Ninth Symphony of Beethoven, and there are some difficult bass passages in the score. As we came to a bass passage Mahler seemed displeased and remarked, 'Let me hear each bass player play the passage alone.’
For a bass player to play a long passage alone in front of a hundred musicians on such a clumsy instrument is very trying and a nervous experience. A young bass player will have the nerve to try, but for an old man who practically never has to perform as a soloist this could be a very excruciating and humiliating experience.
Mahler was not to be denied; nearly every 20 minutes he would stop the orchestra, turn to the old man (Levy), and ask him, ‘Are you still too nervous to play?’ This went on all through rehearsal. The next morning Mahler walked in and, instead of rehearsing the orchestra, turned to the old bass player and said (in German), “Now that you have had all night to get over your nervousness and have had your rest, play the passage now.” The poor bass player, who had practically never performed as a soloist, grew pale and then picked up his bass and walked out of the room. The rest of the men felt terrible, but in those days conductors were Czars, and there was no arguing or reasoning with them.
That’s the end of the Mahler content. After Mahler left the Philharmonic Society, the board did not renew the horn player Reuter’s contract; he was too expensive and the next conductor (not named) “was not a Wagnerian specialist." The Met wouldn’t have Reuter back either, so he went freelance and toured with Walter Damrosch, as did Shilkret.
Shilkret says that contrary to popular legend, Paul Whiteman was a good conductor. But at the second (electric) recording of Gershwin’s Rhapsody in Blue in 1927, Shilkret conducted Paul Whiteman’s band because Gershwin and Whiteman were squabbling about tempi, according to Ryan Paul Bañagale’s book “Arranging Gershwin”. I hope that story is in the Shilkret book, which I am enjoying. It’s almost like hearing the old man telling his stories with an after-dinner glass of something.
July 9, 2015Gizmo designers are all ESNApple's new music app, or interface, or whatever it is, offers the user 30 million songs, but that doesn't impress me. (Where is Tex Beneke's "Lavender Coffin"?) Anyway I am sure it would drive me nuts. Joanna Stern reviewed it in yesterday's Wall Street Journal, and all my suspicions are confirmed.
The iPhone and iPad app, organized into five tabs, is so crammed with items, lists and menus that it's hard to find things initially, harder still to remember where they are later. Seriously, it's like Russian nesting dolls: menus within menus within menus!
Worse, things you'd assume would be simple aren't. It's what I call the "Am I an idiot?" interface problem. I couldn't figure out how to jump to Elton John's artist page when "Your Song" popped up in a great suggested playlist.
Turns out, I wasn't the idiot. Instead of just tapping the artist's name (which brings up a star rating option), you have to tap the three-dot menu button (as opposed to the three-line menu button) and then the song name (but not "Show in iTunes", which takes you to a completely different app!). Even when I had mastered that, I often landed on a broken "unknown artist" screen. That's why they call it the blues, indeed."
And there's a lot more, but you can always get help from Siri the robot, if you use "specific strings of words."
Too bad Siri can't help you navigate iTunes on a Mac or PC. Apple's bloated 14-year-old media manager needed more features like CVS needs another toothpaste shelf. The already sluggish and hard-to-navigate software is made worse by the addition of Apple Music...
The people who design this stuff have no idea and apparently couldn't care less how their clients are going to want to use it. Everytime they update iTunes they screw something up, probably because they're the sort of people who think they need spellcheck. Yet Stern thinks that, like the original iPod, this new gimmick will wipe out Spotify and the others, because it is so intuitive at telling her what she likes. But I'm lucky; I have 65 recordings of Schubert's "Great" C Major symphony. What do I need with 30 million pop songs?