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La Mer

04/24/2012
Posted by Maria Amelia in , ,

Leonard Bernstein in his apartment, New York, N.Y., between 1946 and 1948

Today, by accident, I happened upon a link to a Young People’s Concert which aired on December 1, 1961. Of course, the presenter, the lecturer, was Leonard Bernstein. Leonard Bernstein was ahead of his time, although you could make the argument that promoting the study and love of music is not a modern concept. Yet the way he embraced the technology of his time, and his conviction in promoting his cause by using one of the greatest orchestras in the world, the New York Philharmonic Orchestra, is remarkable. I am a big fan of the Young People’s Concerts, but I’ll leave that for a later post.

The fact, though, that Bernstein chose “La Mer” as the jumping point for his lecture on Impressionism thrills me. What a combination of two things I love so much.

La Mer has a special place in my heart. It ties many beautiful memories of my youth together. I began to love Debussy around my Freshman year of High School. (I was not your typical high school student, that’s for sure.) I credit my piano teacher, Doña Sonia Vargas, with that. She, too, holds a very special place in my heart. But curiously it was my Junior year physics teacher, Fr. Timothy Donohue, who introduced me to La Mer. One day my friend Meg and I were hanging around the physics lab at lunch time (I told you I wasn’t your typical high school student) when the subject of “classical” music came up. We asked Fr. Tim if he liked it. He responded that he was not terribly familiar with it, but that he recalled once hearing a piece called “La Mer” which he had liked. (Yes, yes, I know La Mer is not a “classical” piece, but I am writing in laymen’s terms here.) Naturally Meg and I went on a search for the music, and I was hooked right away. I was, in fact, so enamored with the piece that I purchased a cassette – yes a cassette – of it. I listened to it night after night on my Walkman – yes a Walkman – with the lights off, completely depriving all my senses other than my sense of hearing, absorbing the music. It was transfixing to the 17 year old version of me.

I loved the music so much that I brought the cassette with me on my Senior year trip to France. I remember sitting quietly on the edge of the tub in the bathroom of my room in the Hotel Terminus in Caen the night before visiting Mont St. Michel, and listening to it while my friends chattered away in the room. I was trying to steal a moment of privacy during a very fun and decidedly “unprivate” trip so that I could prepare myself musically for what I was about to see the next day. I wasn’t wearing my headphones as the coach drove up the causeway before Mont St. Michel the next morning, but La Mer played like a soundtrack in my brain as the looming medieval structure grew larger and larger before me. If I ever return I will do everything in my power to have the music present and playing as it comes into view.

If you have never heard it before, I urge you to take nine minutes out of your day to listen to the first movement. You can do it here:

The version of La Mer I first listened to was also conducted by Herbert von Karajan. And if you love it so much you want to hear more, watch Leonard Bernstein conduct the third movement below. The quality of the recording is not great, but if you watch him conduct it, it will give you a sense of how much he loved it. And maybe you will spring a tear as I always do beginning at minute 7:30 (or especially at minute 8:10 of the first movement).

Thank you, Fr. Tim, for introducing me to La Mer at such an important time in my life. Perhaps you have met Claude Debussy already. Say hello for me. Rest in Peace.

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Woody Allen Music

03/27/2012
Posted by Maria Amelia in , , ,

Café de Oriente, 2011This morning, as the girls were getting ready for school, I decided to play some Django Reinhardt. Suddenly, my eldest came into the room and asked me “Is this Woody Allen music?”

Good question.

Good ear.

She’d picked up the driving guitar and applied it to the one and only Woody Allen movie she has ever seen, Midnight in Paris. She’d seen it twice. “Kind of” I replied. “Good question.” “Woody Allen uses a lot of swing and jazz music in his films,” I explained to her. “So since you heard it in the movie Midnight in Paris, you associate it with him now.”

I loved this question, actually. First it showed me she has an appreciation for music – other than Justin Bieber’s (not that there is anything wrong with it). Secondly, it got me in the mood for some good, early morning music listening. I continued with Django, moved onto some Edith Piaf, skipped over to Naples for a little Renato Carosone and boogie woogie, and then came squarely back to Django. I continued in that vein of swing and dixie moving slowly up the ranks and ending with Big Bad Voodoo Daddy and Squirrel Nut Zippers. But the Woody Allen reference haunted me, and I stayed with it.

I’ve been a fan of Woody Allen since I was a kid. I was introduced to him by one of my first childhood friends, Andy, but not through his movies. It was his book Without Feathers that he used to introduce me to him. I quickly followed that with Side Effects and Getting Even, and then moved on to his films. I did not always appreciate all his films, but all those that I really loved were the ones where he demonstrated the most nostalgia. The first one I really loved was Radio Days. It wasn’t his best, perhaps, but it was sweet and sentimental and the music he chose to accompany each individual scene was great. In fact, the point was that each piece of music sparked a specific memory for the narrator.

For some odd reason, a reason that I’d never tried to comprehend, I’ve always been nostalgic. Perhaps this is because of the stories my parents and uncles told me about their own youths. Radio Days certainly made me imagine what the New York of my father’s childhood must have been like. But interestingly, it’s Midnight in Paris which most struck a chord in me, and not in an intellectual way but in a purely sentimental way. It captured every thing, every artist, writer and musician, and every cliché I’d ever daydreamed. From Pablo Picasso to Cole Porter (whose music I obsessively listened to in college), and  from Ernest Hemingway to Juan Belmonte to Salvador Dalí… they were all there. And what is interesting is that it also captured the imagination of my daughter – and her ear. And true to form, as in Radio Days, the music was the spark.

In the movie Midnight in Paris, Michael Sheen’s character Paul claims “Nostalgia is denial. Denial of the painful present.” I don’t think my youth was particularly painful, nor do I think my present is. I consider nostalgia an exercise of my senses, and when I have a moment I enjoy my Golden Age Thinking, with a little music on the side. You should try it some time.

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Fanfare

03/19/2012
Posted by Maria Amelia in , ,

Before his music became identified with the Olympics, or with an ad campaign for beef, I love Aaron Copland. Before I could listen to it and not have to block out the voice of Bob Costas, or the image of a branding iron searing a steak, I used to lie on the floor of my parents living room with headphones on and eyes closed, and listen to Fanfare for the Common Man and Rodeo. Even then I’d get a lump in my throat. Even then I could appreciate how beautiful it was, and how gifted Copland was… and how fortunate I was that he wrote any of it.

I think I’ve mentioned before that I can’t listen to some music like a “normal” person. I always have to attach emotion to it. I always have to feel it. It’s wonderful in a way, and awful in others. I always wind up enjoying the music, but not before spoiling it with a bit of a bawl. But, what happens when I listen to music that I love is that I wonder how the composer must have felt when he wrote it. Some composers, at least on paper, seem so cerebral to me. But even the most cerebral of those have to have felt something as they wrote their pieces. This brings me back full circle to Aaron Copland. How was he able to capture this feeling of America that I identify with, that I craved to find? I’m jealous of him for it. It goes beyond the pervasive cowboy on his horse. It brings the mountains to life. It encapsulates the sky and the plains. It makes you feel the spirit of this land. It does so, to me, not in the way of Gershwin’s (beautiful, inspiring) machinery and modern age. Copland does so through simplicity and grandiose, broad strokes.

Last month I was lucky enough to finally see the West as I had imagined when listening to the music of Copland. I fulfilled one of the dreams of my life, to see the Grand Canyon and the desert around it. And as I rounded the last bend on the Hualapai Nation road that took me the west rim, and as the Canyon unfolded before me after one final turn through a smaller one, I heard the timpani of the opening movement of Fanfare for the Common Man in my head and in my heart. And I cried.

 

 

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Visiting Woodstock

06/16/2010
Posted by Maria Amelia in

So, we love going to Woodstock. Why? Good question. Let’s look at the facts.

  • The hubby and I are not hippies. We are “blandies”. Yes, it’s true. It bears mentioning that neither he nor I are old enough to have been hippies – although I did spot a few in my youth. I remember watching “them” walk out of “their” high schools literally with flowers in their hair. No joke. They were mystical and kinda scary to me, actually. I’m not really sure why, but I imagine it had something to do with my parents.

Anyway, back to the facts.

  • The hubby and I are not counterculture. No, we are culture… ish? Culture-some. Culturated. Pro-culture. Ach – whatevs.

That’s all my facts. Not a lot.

So why do we love to go to Woodstock? Probably because in some little corner of our beings we secretly wish we had what it takes to be a hippy, counterculture, free-spirited and all that. There’s something romantic about the idea of it. And so it is that we go once a year.

No clue why the Blues Brothers are there, but, what the heck.

This time around we had a blast. Before leaving we packed some nice picnic food. We brought along wine, foie gras, chorizo, jamon serrano, brie, olives and a good loaf of bread. The kids loved it. It certainly is not because there are no restaurants in town. There are quite a few restaurants and cafes there as well as in Bearsville, one of the famous neighboring towns. Gratefully there is also a public bathroom by the main parking lot in town, a must have when your travelmates have tiny bladders. (NOOO. Not me.)

After eating and visiting said bathroom, we hit the pavement… and dirt… and grass. It’s still pretty rural there.

There’s a lot to see. Sadly a lot of the area is commercialized, but happily not by chain stores. The merchants do like to capitalize on the lore of Woodstock and so much of what is sold is either tie-dyed, 60s retro or a throwback of some kind. But there is also a flea market which is fun to visit, and there you can find a lot of genuine artists and artisans.

The area around the town is beautiful, too. I’ve believed for some time now that the Catskills are vastly underrated. New York State is majestic and its natural beauty is something to behold.

In any event, if you want to take a short trip out of the NY metro area, grab a few old CDs – or if your car actually has a casette player bring a casette – and go for a cruise. Our recommended Woodstock cartrip soundtrack includes CSNY, Janis Joplin, Jimi Hendrix and The Doors. (You can pretty much bring The Doors anywhere.)

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