#slonimsky

[classical-crap]

I hate being a musician with the mind and maturity of a 12 year old

[classical-crap]

what a paragraph (from the slonimsky lectionary of music)

[classical-nerd]

Theorist, musicologist, composer, centenarian.

Classical Nerd is a weekly video series covering music history, theoretical concepts, and techniques, hosted by composer, pianist, and music history aficionado Thomas Little.

[serialcomposer]

Nicolas Slonimsky’s “Thesaurus of Scales and Melodic Patterns” is an incredibly underrated book. It’s something that everyone should have a good go at along with the Persichetti book.

I’m no sure I’d get any use out of it but it’s a book I’m forever lending to people to blow their minds.

[homilius]

Apart from my mother's home-made mythology, a lot of confusing information about the origin of life came to me from the Bible. Mary's words to Elizabeth, 'And the child stirred within my belly,' baffled me. I could not imagine little Jesus actually playing inside Mary. Needless to say, I had never seen a naked woman, but exposed female forms appeared to me in my dreams. I felt that there was something ineffably delectable in bodily contact with girls. One summer day in 1908 I was romping with our governess, and she playfully threw herself down on the couch, giggling and squirming. I went after her and found myself on top of her. Then something monstrous happened to my body; an excrescence protruded from it, forming a protuberance, expanding into a promontory. Bewildered by this deformation, I jumped off the couch; the governess gave me a quizzical look. Did she notice that I had become a dragon? There are horrors that one does not talk about, sins that no act of contrition could expiate. Should I go on living with the consciousness of something inexpressibly hideous? Or should I kill my sin by destroying my own sinful body? I decided to write to Tolstoy, who was the ultimate arbiter of moral values in literary circles of the times: 'Greatly esteemed and revered Lev Nikolayevich. Something unspeakably horrible has happened to me of which I can judge neither cause nor effect. I was playing with my governess and unintentionally I came into contact with her body. I know that bodies are sinful. I am not allowed to read your great novel The Kreutzer Sonata, but my older brother tells me that it deals with a violinist who played Beethoven with a woman pianist. Carried away by the tempestuous finale, he put his violin aside and fell into her arms. I play the piano myself, but The Kreutzer Sonata is too hard for me. Anyway, if it were within my technical means I would still not play it with a person of the opposite gender knowing to what dreadful consequences Beethoven's music can lead. But even without Beethoven's sinful enticement, I am already guilty of carnal contact with a governess. Should I kill myself? Please, let me have the benefit of your great soul, and tell me what to do. I am 14 years old.'...I never posted that letter...Tolstoy died two years later. The papers said that he died in a railroad station; he decided to leave his home after receiving a letter from a student reproaching him for leading a life full of luxury while urging others to imitate the simple life of working men.

Nicolas Slonimsky, Perfect Pitch: A Life Story (1988) If I had less restraint, I'd end up quoting from every paragraph of this book. 

[almaine]

I postulated the existence of a subliminal unit of intellect (which I should like to term Intellectum), a module of organized vacuum which possesses neither mass nor energy but is capable of operating incorporeally in a putative zero dimension and governing such immensely significant intellectual units as mathematics and music. That such faculties have local centers in the brain does not change their inherent immateriality. The mystery lies in the working hypothesis that incorporeal essences can be transmitted by heredity into new bodies and souls. George Bernard Shaw, who was not given to religious beliefs, speculated in a fanciful paragraph in the preface to his play 'Back to Methuselah,' that 'a pianist may be born with a specific pianistic aptitude which he can bring out as soon as he can physically control his hands.' He advanced the bold assumption that 'acquirements can be assimilated and scored as congenital qualifications.' It is not an idle corollary that a specific intellectual or musical disposition can be similarly embedded in a non-dimensional space. The possession of absolute pitch attests a musical predisposition. However, the lack of it does not exclude musical talent, or even genius. Neither Wagner nor Tchaikovsky had absolute pitch, while a legion of mediocre composers possessed it in the highest degree. In our family, only my Aunt Isabelle Vengerova, my younger brother, and myself had it. My aunt, who often played the piano in our house, discovered this precious faculty in us when we were very young.

Nicolas Slonimsky, Perfect Pitch: A Life Story (1988)

[almaine]

The art of conducting is paradoxical, for its skills range from the mechanical to the inspirational. A conductor can be a semaphore endowed with artificial intelligence, or an illuminating spirit of music. The derisive assertion that 'anyone can conduct' is literally true--musicians will play no matter how meaningless or incoherent the gestures of a baton wielder may be. In this respect, conductors stand apart from other performers. A violinist, even a beginner, must be able to play on pitch with a reasonable degree of proficiency. A pianist must have enough technical skill to get through a piece with a minimum of wrong notes. But a conductor is exempt from such obligations. He does not have to play--he orders others to play for him. Stories about inept conductors are legion. One conductor lost his place while leading an overture. 'Where are we? Where are we?' he whispered frantically to the leader. 'Carnegie Hall, New York,' the other replied. In his attempt to impress an orchestra by his keen ear, a certain conductor put an extra sharp in the third horn part in a tutti passage. At the first rehearsal he stopped the orchestra at the designated spot and proclaimed imperiously: 'Third horn, C-natural, not C-sharp!' The musician replied matter-of-factly, 'Yes, some damned fool put C-sharp in my part, but I know the music, and I played C-natural all right!' Another conductor, intent on showing his mastery of the score, kept interrupting rehearsals with pompous observations, until the leader stood up and said, 'Listen, mister! If you go on making such remarks, we will follow your beat at the concert!' This was an ominous threat to the arrogant conductor. Then there is the one about a conductor who was in the habit of running off the podium with the last chord. He miscalculated the number of concluding chords in one particular overture, however, and ran off before the end. The orchestra gave him a loud send-off with two more chords.

Nicolas Slonimsky, Perfect Pitch: A Life Story (1988), 133

[laurrrag-blog]

Here is a wonderful music resource! It's the book John Coltrane used to work on patterns.