Saying Good-bye to Shadow, Classics in Commercials, and Erard survives the Terror.

It's the day before Thanksgiving as I write this. We just said good-bye to our dog Shadow. She was just a puppy when we got her twelve-plus years ago. It went too fast. She was a faithful, loving creature....always following me around...or laying at my feet. You may be aware that I listen to a lot of music...most of it classical. She heard quite a bit of it over the years. She seemed to like it too... at least she never complained about it.

Her kidneys were failing. She stopped eating and walking. She waited until Jack and Ethan came home from school this week. She hung on as long as she could and gave us a chance to face this as a family....to say good-bye to her. We all went to the clinic with her this morning. They ushered us into a room right away and had a soft blanket on the floor for her. It was very hard, but it was the right thing. She is in heaven now.

Afterward, the four of us had a family hug outside of the clinic. A long hug. 

When we got home, Cheryl and I took a walk. Shadow loved her daily walks, and since she was a puppy, she carried her leash in her mouth. When we actually had her on the leash, she would constantly turn around and try to take it out of our hands and carry it herself. I finally bundled the leash up so it was manageable and that's how its been ever since. She never wanted to run away or stray from the path (I always had another leash in my pocket just in case though...but I never needed it.) So this morning, we carried her yellow leash with us on a walk in her honor.

She brought us so much joy and gave us so much love. She will be missed.

********************

Christmas commercials are running non-stop now....here's one that uses the music of Beethoven to great effect. This is from his Symphony no. 6 (1808).

********************

Three things came together for me the other day, just by chance I'm sure. I have been reading A Tale of Two Cities for quite awhile now. I'm almost done with it, and once the French Revolution really got going, I found that the reading got easier too. After storming the Bastille and unleashing the revolution, the movement itself became known as The Terror. I read a few pages one morning before work and then went about my day. After work, my wife and I met with her financial advisor as part of her annual review of her retirement fund. This nice young man works for a local investment firm that is a subsidiary of a much larger company called AXA. I had not heard of AXA before. So later that evening, I was doing some reading and research. I stumbled on a detailed history of the Erard piano company. Sebastian Erard started making pianos in 1777 and then harps as well shortly after that. His pianos were played by the likes of Beethoven, Chopin, Liszt, Wagner and Mendelssohn. But all of this almost didn't happen; The Terror came calling:

"September 9, 1793. 

To the Citizen Minister of Justice.

Citizen Laurent has the honour of denouncing to you an emigrant who left fifteen months ago to go and find the other emigrants in London. Had he not taken his paintings with him you would find in his home at least three hundred thousand livres worth of paintings. He has two houses, one where he lives and another one. In the one where he lives, he has had at least two hundred thousand Francs of repairs done in the past two years. This individual lives on the rue de Mail, he is a native of Germany, his name is on the sign Herard [sic] musical maker.(Herard means Erard of course)"

Erard was able to prove that he was not an enemy of the State but he was very fortunate that the search of his office happened when it did. Nine days later, on September 17, 1793, the Law of Suspects was passed. This law unleashed the full Terror on the nation and Erard may not have been spared. As it was, Erard and his company were spared. But the company was not spared of economic demise. By the mid 1900's the company folded. 

"But after the company closed its doors in the middle of the twentieth century, they were all but forgotten...a heap of old archives and objects in a storeroom in the basement Salle Gaveau in Paris. After the sales of the brand names of Gavaeu, Erard , and Pleyel, as well as the Salle Gaveau itself, these archives became property of the AXA insurance. Thanks to the perseverance of a handful of Erard devotees-both musicologists and AXA managers, the archives were finally saved from destruction."

AXA, Erard and A Tale of Two Cities all came together for me in one interesting day. Life can be amazing like that.

********************

I don't listen to music when I run anymore. I used to. But the hassle of earphones, my declining eyesight, and maintaining playlists etc made it a chore. So I just stopped. I much prefer the quiet of the moment...the sound of my breathing...the sound of my shoes hitting the road. AND, the music that seems to play in my head. It can be anything, and yes, most of the time it's a classical piece that I seem to having playing in my brain, and sometimes I end up humming or singing along with it. So in this respect, I do still run with music.

My playlist is pretty wide and varied, but yesterday, the music that I ended up hearing for my run was a very odd selection....it was the Unanswered Question by Charles Ives. It is a great piece, but not one that I would probably put on a running playlist! But it was there...in my head...and it felt good.

I have not been sleeping much the past couple of days. Shadow was not able to get up in time to go to the bathroom, and she had given up trying. So we had her resting on her doggie-bed in the living room by the fireplace. We were spending a lot of time trying to keep her clean and comfortable, and of course we knew what was coming....and it was very hard emotionally. Maybe this experience brought the Unanswered Question into my mind? I don't know....but it may express the conflicting feelings I had while sorting through questions about life and death...and coming to grips with having to good-bye to her. 

Classics in Commercials and A Coat Story

I saw a very funny Doritos commercial this week. It also used classical music!

The music is the Flower Duet by French composer Leo Delibes (1883). 

****************

The Coat Story

True story. A couple of years ago now, my son Ethan needed a new outfit to wear to prom...he didn't have any nice dress clothes. This was in March. Ethan hates shopping, especially for clothes! So Cheryl and I knew this was not going to be a fun outing. And sure enough, it was not. After trying several stores, we ended up at J C Penny. Ethan is very frustrating to shop for. "Ethan, do you like this shirt?..."I don't care." "Ethan, what color pants do you want?....I don't care." That is the pattern. So after a couple of frustrating hours, facing his indifference and the noise and crowds, we were all at the ends of our rope. I noticed a rack of winter coats in the Men's section, so I took a break from Ethan and went to look at it. I found a coat that I really liked and I tried it on. It fit great, but it was too expensive. Plus it was already warm by now...Spring was in bloom. So I hung the coat up and went back to Ethan. We did battle awhile longer until we finally found what he needed. By now, we were all exhausted and mad at each other and the world in general. As we were paying for his clothes, I was ready to get the hell out of there and go home. But at least Ethan was going to look good for prom! When we got home, we all relaxed and peace was restored. And we did get a great deal on the clothes. The only negatives were our heightened tempers and the loss of a pair of glasses that I had somehow misplaced in one of the stores we visited. 

Fast forward about five months. It was now the end of August. I went back to J C Penny to look for some dress shirts. While I was there, I noticed in the back of the Men's section there was a small rack of winter coats...the same coats I had tried on in March. And this time, they were marked down to $50...they had been close to $300 when I had tried them on in the Spring. But there were only a few coats left on the rack. I looked through them and there was only one coat that was my size. I tried it on and it fit great. This coat was going to be mine. Before I took it off, I put my hands in the pocket and felt something...hmmm....what is this? It was my glasses...the pair I had lost in March. The one and only coat that remained in my size was the same coat I had tried on while we were shopping for Ethan in March. Small world.

Pablo Casals and Robert Johnson make history...on the same day.

I had the Bach Cello Suites on my "must listen" list this week. I got around to it this past weekend, and the cellist I listened to was Pablo Casals (1876-1973). Casals is regarded as the first true pioneer of this beautiful instrument. He had a long and distinguished career...he even played at the White House for JFK. And he was the first cellist to record the Bach Cello Suites.
And this is where the story gets truly fascinating. On November 1, 2018, I was listening to Pablo Casals' recording of the Bach Cello Suites. The sound is surprisingly good for such an old recording. As I read the liner notes, I learned that he recorded two of these at Abbey Road Studios, where the Beatles recorded most of their music in the 1960's. (I walked across this same crosswalk when I was in London in 1987).

Anyway, as I am listening to Casals' recording and reading about him, (and loving the music) I discovered that he played a concert in my hometown of Kansas City, MO in 1916. I also learned that on November 23, 1936, the same day he recorded two of the Cello Suites, another legendary musician was also making a recording that would change the world...the SAME day. On that day, Robert Johnson was in a small hotel room in San Antonio recording songs that would later inspire just about everyone...the Beatles, Led Zeppelin, Rolling Stones, etc etc....
Here is a great article I found that tells the story about two very different men and music who none-the-less changed history.

https://www.npr.org/2011/11/23/142700464/robert-johnson-and-pablo-casals-game-changers-turn-75

Pablo Casala played a recital in Kansas City on February 8, 1916. He shared the program with a famous tenor named Paul Reimers. Here is the review I found in the Kansas City Times from the next day. Seems like Mr. Reimers stole the show!

***************

THE CASALS-REIMERS RECITAL

A Great Cellist and a Charming Tenor for the Fifth Fritschy Event

     It was not the expected beauty of Pablo Casals' playing yesterday afternoon at the Schubert Theater that gave the audience its most obvious pleasure, but the unexpected qualities in the singing of Paul Reimers, the German Tenor, who was associated with the famed cellist in joint recital. Reimers is that rare type of artist-a singer who places interpretation first.

     The concert, fifth in the Fritschy series, offered a succession of surprises. First was the attractive stage setting for which the packed stage of Mme. Homer's concert and the bleak and battered drop that Paderewski made his audience forget, failed to prepare those present. A gasp of surprise and pleasure greeted the pretty scene with its cleverly arranged lights and then the audience settled back to luxuriate in the Casals tone.

     With that excellent artist, Maurice Eisner, at the piano, the Handel sonata was profoundly beautiful. The clear song of the slow movement disclosed limpid depth of tone, resonance, warmth, and carrying power. Mr. Casals enjoys the reputation of being the greatest cellist of his day, and his work throughout the program bore out this rating.

     But the apt and elegant Saint-Saens does not compare with the fine, high beauty of Handel. The concerto seemed superficial, full of bright passage work for the violincello, but lacking in character. If it proved anything yesterday, it was that the old music is Handel is still more vital than the new music of Frenchmen, whose artifice and dexterity cannot compete with inspiration. Still, the skill demanded was something to excite admiration. At times, the voice of the cello, warm and human, matching its timbre with that of the piano, drew fanciful figures against a rich tonal background. Again, the voices mingled in bewildering fantasy.But in nothing was there the transparency of tone disclosed by the Handel music until the last group of numbers, introduced by an aria of Bach and including three lighter pieces. These awakened almost as much applause as that accorded the tenor, and the cellist had to return many times to bow his thanks. But he gave only one encore.

     Mr. Reimers is the sort of lieder singer who, in times of peace, remain in Germany. It is understood they find a full and complete appreciation only in their own land. But Americans are learning appreciation, too-as witness the success of Wuellner a few years ago, and of Julia Culp and others. Reimers is not like any other. He has a good tenor voice, which he can make, upon occasion, sounds just about as he pleases, express much or little, humor or sadness. He commands tones sweet as honey, but never sweet except for purposes of musical wooing or hoodwinking, or some other chicanery in which he takes delight.

     It was most thoughtful of him to recognize the audience's non-German limitations, and tell in his captivating English the little stories in the songs. Some of these were French, some American and one was a fine old Russian hymn. There were many encores-four or five and even then the audience was not satisfied perhaps because Mr. Reimers had been rather a surprise and his singing has a piquancy and flavor rarely encountered.

     Every seat was filled and there were a few standees.

***************