Almost heaven, West Virginia...

The first time that I heard this song, it was sung by John Denver. Live, in concert.
I was in college, far from home. I almost never went to non-classical concerts, but there I was. The show was simply him and a couple of other musicians sitting on stools, playing guitars and singing. No special effects, no fancy lighting, no larger-than-life overamplification – just the music, most of it songs that he had written.

At the end, he started in on this, which would become one of his most famous songs:

Almost heaven, West Virginia,
Blue Ridge Mountains, Shenandoah River…

Sitting beside me was my friend M., who grew up in the next county over from me. West Virginia was (and is) a place that gets almost no positive notice. Few people have anything nice to say about it.

But anyone who grew up there always wants to go back.

Country roads, take me home
To the place I belong,
West Virginia, mountain mama
Take me home, country roads.

I will never forget looking at her, the two of us amazed and delighted that someone was singing a song about home.

That was a long time ago, and both of us are even farther from home nowadays, a thousand miles and more in opposite directions.

All my memories gather round her,
Miner’s lady, stranger to blue water.
Dark and dusty, painted on the sky,
Misty taste of moonshine, teardrops in my eye.

I have not forgotten the Mountain State. None of us ever will.

*************
Tonight, three of my young friends, singing as the Skipperlings, made their first appearance at the Mill, one of the leading music venues in our community; they were the opening act for an evening of music, singing to an appreciative full house.

And they finished with this song.

I hear her voice in the morning hours she calls me,
Radio reminds me of my home far away…

When I consider how I was one of the people who helped teach these girls to sing, it gives me goosebumps. I do believe that I will remember this night as long as I remember that John Denver concert, and with equal affection.

Dear Skipperlings -- should you see this, thank you for singing that song tonight. You could not have given me a greater gift. I hope you always remember that Music can do such things for people. It can take them home, no matter how many years and thousands of miles it may be.

Doing my part

On my honor, I will do my best to do my duty to God and my country… (from the Scout Oath)

In 2004, I gave too much money to the campaign of Sen. John Kerry. Never again.

In 2007-08, I gave too much time to the campaign of Gov. Bill Richardson. His local headquarters was across the street from our church (in a different part of the same building as this year’s Clinton headquarters), and it was too easy to go over there for an hour or two of volunteer work after my day’s work at the church. That quickly became two or three hours into the evenings, and half-days on Saturdays and sometimes Sunday afternoons. My involvement grew and grew, until it was dominating my life in the final weeks before the Iowa Caucus.

I am glad that I did what I could, and I have some good memories (and a few bad ones, and lasting resentment against the Obama people). But never again.

This time, I was determined to stay out of it. I would show up on caucus night and stand up for Sen. Bernie Sanders (as I wrote here), but that would be it. I am eight years older, and no longer have the energy to do much.

But “Bernie” is one of the few politicians I admire. Alone among the candidates on both sides, he will take on the billionaires and use anti-trust legislation to dismantle the “Too Big to Fail” banks – which are much larger and more powerful now than when they caused the 2008-09 financial crisis. He alone will work toward a sensible single-payer national health care plan – something Obama promised and did not deliver.

As summer moved into fall, and then winter, I was increasingly guilty about doing nothing. “I am too busy,” I told myself. There was Advent, then Christmas. I came to realize how badly I would feel if he loses the caucus (which is very possible, even likely) and I had done nothing – the one presidential candidate in all these years since Jimmy Carter for whom my support is absolute.

Last Friday afternoon, I walked down to the local Sanders headquarters. I signed up so that they would have my name in the list for their planning – I remember from the Richardson campaign how important that is for them, and how difficult it was to get people to actually commit. And I volunteered to give them three full days: the Monday and Tuesday before the caucus, and the Caucus Day itself, Monday, February 1.

Three days. I can at least do that much for my country.

Speak the Language

[This is an essay I have submitted for our AGO chapter's newsletter. Much of the ground has been covered in various posts here at the Music Box, but I consider it worth posting here as a summary. For further reading, use the "Labels" function in the sidebar, looking for articles tagged with "improvisation." There are currently thirty-five of them.]


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Speak the Language

The first step toward improvisation is to Know the Tune.
The second step: Speak the Language.

This, in turn, has two parts: Grammar and Syntax.
And Grammar likewise falls into two divisions: Harmony and Counterpoint.

Harmony:
The best place to start is by harmonizing the scale. Both Dupré and Hancock in their books on improvisation begin with this [Marcel Dupré: “Complete Course in Organ Improvisation” (A. Leduc) and Gerre Hancock: “Improvisation” (Oxford)]. Following Dupré, I recommend starting with C major, in whole notes up and down, and a written harmonization. Do this carefully, with good voice leading. Play it at the organ or piano; memorize it. Transpose it into other keys – this will aid in the memorization. Sometimes, put the scale (still in the soprano) on a solo stop so that your accompanying voices are in the left hand and pedal.

When you can do this in all major keys, do it again, this time with the scale in the bass line, sometimes in the bottom voice of the left hand, and sometimes in the pedal. Again, all major keys. As time passes, begin to vary your harmonization. Become comfortable harmonizing the scale with a variety of chords, a variety of bass lines, differing numbers of voices.

Then, play the scale en taille, in the tenor. Play it with the left hand on a solo stop, accompanied by two higher voices on another manual and a bass line in the pedal. All major keys. This is important, for when you are in full improvisatory flight and you suddenly find yourself in B major, you will not panic, for you are as comfortable with five sharps as with one.

Then, the whole process repeats with the minor scale. To be thorough, work with all keys in both the natural and melodic minor forms, and with the scale in all three positions: soprano, tenor, bass. It is profitable to do some work in the modes as well, especially Dorian and Phrygian. Be patient, for this will probably take a long time to become comfortable. I was stuck at this stage for most of a year.

Hancock abbreviates this process quite a bit, and adds the suggestion of doing your harmonizations in a variety of styles, and with the scale varied rhythmically. Once you have developed a degree of facility with the basic slow scale, this is a good idea and will help you retain your sanity.

You need not avoid other improvisatory work; keep “Knowing the Tunes” and using the skills you already have to improvise on them, and of course keep playing literature and hymns and anthem accompaniments. The harmonizations of scales should run in parallel with your other organ work, and over time you will find that you are playing more comfortably, both in your improvisations and your written repertoire.

This work is never done. When you sit down to work on improvisation and find yourself devoid of ideas, harmonize scales. It will get your creativity started. Even in a “real” improvisation in a church service or concert, if you are stuck, throw in a scale passage. It will be something that is so comfortable for you that it will allow you to regain your bearings.

Beyond Scales:
The next step is to harmonize melodies. After all the work with scales, this will be straightforward. Again, experiment with the melody in the tenor and bass as well as the soprano, and work in a variety of keys. Dupré gives many sample melodies, mostly from plainsong, but you can find plenty of material in any hymnal. It is well to begin with melodies that are mostly stepwise, and to have just the melody before you, not a hymnal harmonization. If need be, write the melody on staff paper.

Another time-honored approach is Figured Bass. This will teach you to work from the “bottom up” as well as “top down,” and you can experiment with improvising melodies over the bass, staying in the harmonic structure indicated by the figures. Or, given a melody (let’s say, a vocal recitative with figured bass), make countermelodies or figurations that complement the melody.

This leads us to the other approach:

Counterpoint:
Most people begin with Harmony. Counterpoint would be an equally good place to start, for wherever you begin, one eventually leads to the other.

The best primer that I have seen for a contrapuntal approach to improvisation is a little book by Jan Bender, now out of print: “Organ Improvisation for Beginners” (Concordia, 1975), but you can do much of this work without Bender’s book. Start with a hymn tune in the soprano and play around with little “answers” to it in a lower voice. Maybe just little fillers at cadences, or something that imitates the tune, or maybe a bass line. “Play” is the operative word: do be playful in this work. Don’t worry if it is not up to the standard of JSB, and (at first) don’t worry about parallel fifths and suchlike; let your ear tell you what works and what doesn’t. And don’t, don’t, don’t add a third part! Not yet. Just melody and counterpoint.

Bender takes the student from here to the improvisation of a two-part chorale-based invention. If you are brave, see if you can imitate the Bach inventions, or the little Duets toward the end of the Clavierübung, or passages of two-part writing in the chorale preludes. Again, don’t feel that you must live up to his standard or create a full-scale piece – but do think about how he is working, how he is creating a second line that imitates the first, and note his economy of material. See if you can do that on a smaller scale, perhaps an eight-measure beginning for an invention, or if you will, the exposition of a two-voice fugue. For that is where you can take it, if you have the will and the time. Two voices, then three, four, five…

If you walk this path, you will soon find that you need a more structured approach, and for that, there is no better guide than the “Gradus ad Parnassum,” the famous text on Species Counterpoint by the master J. J. Fux. This (in its 1725 Latin edition) was the only theoretical book found in the library of J. S. Bach at his death. It was the book which Joseph Haydn used to teach himself composition, carefully working out every exercise, and then he used the book with his student Beethoven. An English translation by Alfred Mann (W. W. Norton, 1965) is readily available as an inexpensive paperback; the original Latin is freely available as a PDF at several places on the Internet. You can and should do the exercises in writing – but for our purposes, you should then go to the keyboard and see if you can improvise them. There is another book that takes this approach: “Organ,” by Arthur Wills (Schirmer Books), wherein the latter part of the book comprises a short course in improvisation, beginning with the Species Counterpoint. Inexpensive used copies appear to be readily available online.

I will confess that I never got beyond two-voice counterpoint – but I will also confess that this work was of great value to me.

Syntax:
Harmony and Counterpoint are the building blocks, the grammar. Syntax, or Musical Form, is the manner in which they are assembled into a coherent musical statement. Both Dupré and Hancock provide excellent leadership into this realm, with Dupré’s second volume preparing the student to improvise in the symphonic forms after the manner of Widor and Vierne.

One of Hancock’s suggestions is the imitation of what others have done. When you encounter a particularly fine piece of music, select a phrase from it and see if you can imitate it. As a beginning, you might simply transpose it so that you are no longer bound to the printed notes. Or you might take an eight-bar phrase and see if you can continue it into a sixteen-bar period, different from what the composer has written but continuing in the same style. It is better to create a short section of what could become a full composition and work with it, rather than immediately launching into a larger form – for example, see if you can extend your eight or sixteen bar fragment into the A section of a ternary (A-B-A) form.

Or you might take another approach: determine the formal structure, and make a piece of your own in exactly the same structure, down to the same phrase-lengths. If the original is chorale-based, see if you can create your piece by using a different (but similar) chorale or hymn tune but otherwise adhering closely to the original.

There are dozens of fine books on musical form and analysis. I will limit myself to one recommendation, another little paperback: “Fundamentals of Musical Composition” by Arnold Schoenberg (Faber and Faber, 1999).

Conclusion:
This is your music. I have suggested some ideas; if you do not find them helpful, try something else. You may be temperamentally unsuited to months of scale harmonization. Or you might not have the slightest interest in counterpoint, or patience for species counterpoint exercises. Or you might find that counterpoint is of supreme interest to you, and harmony – not so much. Try different approaches; when you find a path that is promising, follow it.

But a caution is in order, which is also a word of hope: the time will come when you are stuck. You have been improvising for a while, perhaps years, and you have been pleased with your work. But after a while, it has begun to all sound the same, and you may feel that you are trapped in a style that has become your style, but in which you have nothing more to say. Your dissatisfaction is an important and hopeful point in your musical career, for it will force you into a new path. And it may lead you back to basic work with harmony and form, or counterpoint. The tools will be there when you need them.

Books from 2015

After reading this post at Fr. Tim's website:
Books I read or re-read in 2015

it seems good to me to post a similar list. Like Fr. Tim's list, this is in the order in which I read them.

- The Apocrypha (I had never read all of it at one go, and some of the murkier parts that are not in the Daily Office Lectionary never at all. Until this year.)

- Bernstein, Wm. J.: Rational Expectations (there are four finance/investing books on my list, because I must deal with such things in terms of retirement savings, but more so because I find the subject fascinating. This was the most immediately practical of the four, though Graham [see below] is a greater and more important book in the long term, as Bernstein himself would probably admit.)

- Anderson, Poul: The Psychotechnic League Trilogy
----- The Psychotechnic League
----- Cold Victory
----- Starship
(These three paperbacks have languished on my shelf for decades. It is a "future history" that Anderson wrote in the late 1950's, beginning with a back-story where President Eisenhower died on the operating table following his 1955 heart attack, and the new President Nixon "pushed the button," launching a pre-emptive strike against the USSR and all but destroying the world. Not Anderson's best, but enjoyable.)

- Shiller, Robert J.: Irrational Exuberance (another financial book, from a Nobel laureate, describing the investment "bubbles" of our time. He pretty much thinks that we are in another one. I use his cyclically adjusted price/earnings ratio, or CAPE, as a primary market indicator.)

- Dawn, Marva J.: Unfettered Hope: a Call to Faithful Living in an Affluent Society (She is an author to whom I always attend, ever since her book "Reaching Out without Dumbing Down." This is another fine book, mostly about how a Christian life of simplicity, peacemaking, and love is a Witness, a Hope in our affluent society.)

- Mason, Bernard S.: Woodcraft (this was from my mother's house, and came to me when we cleared out its contents. As I wrote elsewhere, my mother started what may have been the first Girl Scout troop in her state as a young schoolteacher around 1935. This book, much underlined and annotated, is from that period of her life. Although I grew up with it on the bookshelf at home, I never read it. I wish I had.)

- Brown, Rita May: Animal Magnetism (a gift to my wife, who reads Brown's "Sneaky Pie Brown" mysteries. This book is nonfiction, an autobiography of Brown's lifelong relations with animals of all sorts, especially horses and dogs, and the lessons she has learned from them.)

- Collins, Suzanne: The Mockingjay (I had read the previous volumes in the "Hunger Games" trilogy, and wrote of them in the Music Box; I did not get around to this one until now. I find it less compelling -- it is as if Collins were writing a movie novelization. Almost every scene seems as if it were written with an eye as to how it would appear on screen, a failing which at times afflicts the latter volumes of the Harry Potter series in my opinion. But the first book of Collins' trilogy, "Hunger Games," is outstanding.)

- Bailey, Albert Edward: The Gospel in Hymns (this was one of my Big Projects for the year. It was formerly one of the standard American texts on hymnody, and remains both important and often inspirational. Like many of my music-related books, this came from my old friend Mary Landrum, whom I mentioned in the previous post. This volume especially will be a reminder of her, for the bookplate in the front identifies it as belonging to her mother.)

- Graham, Benjamin: The Intelligent Investor (in my opinion, the classic investment book. This was a second reading; there will likely be a third and fourth should I live sufficiently long.)

- Edleson, Michael: Value Investing (recommended in the Bernstein book mentioned above. Edleson is another Nobel laureate. I modified my investment plan somewhat based on Bernstein and Edleson.)

- Williamson, Jack: two from the "Legion of Space" series
------- The Legion of Space
------- The Cometeers
(again, a science fiction volume that has gathered dust for decades. Williamson was one of the Grand Masters of the early days of science fiction, and this is pure "space opera" adventure from the 1930's. One can see where George Lucas stole some of his ideas for the Star Wars universe; there is even what amounts to a "Death Star." Williamson does it much better than Lucas, in my opinion.)

- Chesterton, G. K.
----- Heretics
----- Orthodoxy (a second reading)
----- The Ballad of the White Horse (a fourth or fifth reading; I try to get around to this every year on or after the Feast of St. Alfred the Great)

- Campbell, Patricia: Songs in their Heads: Music and its Meaning in Children's Lives (a "music-ed" book that, again, has languished on the shelf for years. Some intriguing and useful ideas here which are applicable to my work with the youth choir)

- Carter, Jimmy: A Full Life. (Carter is one my my heroes. I have his first book, "Why not the best," written as a campaign biography during his presidential run, and now what may be his last book. Knowing of his fight with cancer, I wept several times while reading this account of his "full life." I should write more fully of it elsewhere, but it it worth noting here that in this book, he considers among the important accomplishments of his presidency such things as sharing the Gospel of Jesus Christ with several world leaders who came to him and asked for it, when they were in positions where they could not publicly acknowledge any interest in such things, and his encouragement of Deng Xiaoping to loosen restrictions on Christianity in response to the normalization of relations with the U.S., toward which Carter had done much.)

- Boswell, James: The Life of Samuel Johnson (This was my other Big Project for the year; a gigantic work about a gigantic character.)

- Williams, Peter and Barbara Owen: The Organ (a second reading. This was mostly drawn from the New Grove Dictionary of Musical Instruments, and published as its own volume. It is colored largely by the anti-Romantic views of the authors, viewing the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries in organbuilding as an unfortunate aberration. I do not like this book at all, but there is information here that would be hard to find elsewhere.)

and finally:
- Wills, Arthur: Organ (of which I wrote the other day).

Some of these were e-books; I have had a Nook bookreader for a couple of years now, and enjoy it, especially for reading on the transit bus where the lighting is not the best. But this list reminds me that one of the pleasures of Real Books is that they have a history, such as the books from my mother's life as an idealistic young schoolteacher, and Mrs. Landrum, both of them departed this life. E-books do not carry that sort of weight.

I am currently reading "This Day," which is a book of Sabbath poems by Wendell Berry, and "God in Search of Man: A Philosophy of Judaism" by Abraham Joshua Heschel. Both are excellent.