My First Performance
I used to own a 1971 Ford Maverick straight six two door sedan. It was a compact size American car and had about 62,000 miles on it when my father gave it to me. It was in ok shape when I got it but by the time my first performance rolled around in 1989 it had 90,000 on the clock and was a rolling ghetto.
I would get it started in the winter by taking the air cleaner off and shoving a screwdriver down the carb and spraying in some sort of magic start stuff. It would catch on 2 or 3 cylinders and gradually build up power by adding another cylinder every minute or two. After 15 minutes of this I was ready to roll.
I received a diploma in composition from the Royal Conservatory of Music of Toronto in 1984 and another in Theory shortly after that. I was teaching piano at home when I graduated (no theory students, they were hard to find), and I said to myself, well what now? Not a possible performance for anything I had written in sight (most of it wasn’t very good) and a future of private piano and guitar teaching. Well I will write a symphony, why not? I had time. I certainly wasn’t in any sort of demand. Two years later and about halfway through my symphony I decided I needed a performance of anything so I wrote an overture based on Canadian folk songs, the Canadian Folk Song Overture, which I misspelt as Folksong because I can’t spell, period (more on that in another musing).
It was a 6 & 1/2 minute piece and I sent it off to every Canadian orchestra - not even a nibble. And then I sent it to Erich Kunzel, the American Pops conductor, home base Cincinnati, but he conducted everywhere including Toronto, why not try him - silence.
Back to teaching and my symphony and anonymity.
Just before Christmas 1988 my wife Elizabeth interrupted me in a lesson and said I was wanted on the phone. Oh no, who has died (one doesn’t get called to the phone in the middle of a lesson). It was the librarian at the Toronto Symphony, my overture was to be included in four concerts in late January, 1989, conducted by Erich Kunzel.
“Send me the parts, asap.”
“There are no parts,” my reply.
Silence.
“Send the strings first, then the percussion, then the winds.” There is a reason for this, but more on that in another musing.
Sidebar: In case you don’t know, when a composer writes a piece he writes the full score only, the score only he and the conductor will see. Each musician will have their part, which consists of only the music they have to play.
I cancelled everything. If I could have cancelled Christmas I would have done so. God would just have to wait for his B-day party.
I started writing the parts, which is just the same as writing the whole overture over again but in a different layout. I wrote everyday until my eyes blurred over and I couldn’t focus or until I couldn’t hold the pencil anymore and if I did I couldn’t control the pressure and the points would snap.
Done and delivered halfway though January with performances on January 30, 31, February 1 (matinee and evening), 1989 - wahoo!
A call to the TSO librarian.
“When are the rehearsals?”
“Rehearsal.”
“As in one rehearsal?”
“Yes, the afternoon of the first performance.”
The day arrived. January in Toronto can be very wintery and wintery it was - a snowstorm with high winds and freezing temperatures. The rehearsal was from 2 - 4:30 at Roy Thompson Hall but first I had to pick up my wife Elizabeth at the Royal Conservatory on Bloor Street. I warmed up the Maverick and headed out sliding this way and that - not a lot tread to go on when you purchase used summer tires.
More on my trusty Maverick: The life span of cars, particularly American ones, was much shorter in those days. They hadn’t sorted out the rust problems, particularly in the wheel wells and quarter panels - the areas that come into contact with all that salt and sand they dump on Toronto roads every winter. The Maverick was the proverbial rust bucket. That summer I stuffed all the holes (there were many, some even on the upper body work) with old socks, bondoed them, and then gave the Maverick a quick sand. I rolled on a fetching coat of baby blue paint over the leprosy body sores and it looked sort of attractive if a little odd.
Rust never sleeps. It fought back by attacking the rear under panels in the trunk leaving a gapping hole. I fought back by filling it with an old large orange blanket.
I picked up Elizabeth at the conservatory (snow now coming down quite heavy), and we drove down University Avenue with drifts pilling up - the ploughs hadn’t made much of a difference yet - to the hall.
I was told to use the executive guest parking lot, a little place for just a few select cars, by the guest entrance. Unbeknownst to me, the Maverick’s trunk had opened up at the bottom jettisoning my orange blanket. But the end of it held fast to a rusty bit on the car while the remaining 7 feet trailing behind my rolling ghetto like a colourful bridal train.
One parking spot left, in between a Rolls and a Mercedes. I pulled in and turned off the car but the engine wouldn’t stop. It had run on - a condition where the heat from the engine keeps igniting the fuel causing it to shake and shutter. It sure did. The PA, a young prim beauty who was assigned to look after the great visiting composer, couldn’t stop laughing. Mayhem. That stupid car finally quit after a while and I rolled up the orange blanket and stuffed it back in the truck. I was ready for the rehearsal.
The concert was a light classical/pops program, ‘The Music of the Great Bs’ (thank God my name started with a B). I was sandwiched in between Boccherini and Berlin in the 2nd half which I thought was kinda nice. The main piece was Bruch’s Violin Concerto in G minor, Peter Oundjian - violin.
I did the math. The rehearsal was 2&1/2 hours long = 150 min. However the musicians get a 20 min. break, so 150 - 20 = 130 min. The music on the program (just the music, not the in between bits) was 90 min. So 120 / 90 = 1&1/3 min. of rehearsal time for every min. of music. Hmm.
We were seated on the main floor which is below the stage about seven rows back - not good. I had never sat there before always being in the gods. Sure the sightlines to the conductor and soloist were good but the orchestral sound went right over your head.
A HUGE analogue clock maybe four feet across with a large swooping secondhand hung behind the orchestra looking the conductor directly in the face. The secondhand swept up to 2:00 precisely and the rehearsal began. Most corrections were given on the fly if possible (no stopping) though some stopping was necessary to clarify certain aspects of the pieces, but no going back and getting it right, that is what the first performance was for. My piece was a start/stop affair and lasted 9 min. - again no going back.
Kunzel turned to me afterwards, “What do you think?”
“Fine.” What could I say? Most of my overture had zoomed over my head.
The rehearsal went on. Afterwards I went up to him and asked him, “What’s it going to sound like?
“I dunno, ask me after the performance.”
I went home in a stupor, drank a half bottle of sherry and went to bed. That evening, on my way to the concert, I felt like Marie Antoinette, on her way to the guillotine.
The TSO performance was excellent. I went to all four performances.
Lollipops
Lollipop. A short piece with a attractive memorable melody that is not too difficult to play.
One way to fame and fortune as a composer is to write a lollipop. Think Beethoven - Für Elise, Debussy - Clair du Lune, Elgar - Salut d’Amour. Not only will you hear the cash registers ringing but folks might want to perform some of your other stuff - maybe.
This doesn’t always work of course (it’s best to get performances by who you know - I know doodlysquat).
I wrote my ‘I See the Moon’ 20 years ago and it is slowly becoming my lollipop. Folks say they like it. It comes in umpteen versions. Name your instrument and I will make an arrangement for you. The original was for flute and guitar but soon flute and piano came along and then whatever, including mandolin and accordion.
It’s been recorded three times - Viveza (the group led by Gwen Thompson - violin), Elmira Darvarova and Howard Wall (violin and horn respectively) on a disc of horn trios, and now by just Howard Wall on a horn sonata CD.
And it has been performed quite a few times and even at the recital hall in Carnegie Hall a couple of times as part of the New York Chamber Music series.
But, the cash registers have not been ringing for some reason, hmm, so maybe it’s not such a big hit.
Mother Goose
My mother used to recite or read me Mother Goose Rhymes when I was a kid. You know, “Diddle diddle dumpling my son John (my middle name is John), one sock off, one sock on” - particularly when I couldn’t find my other sock. Endearing.
I set three Mother Goose tongue twisters (Peter Piper, She Sells, Betty Botter) to music, for soprano and chamber ensemble, interspersed with a couple of instrumental mvts. in a work called Where the Geese Go Barefoot. One of the instrumental mvts, I See the Moon, has become a lollipop, a minor listenable hit - my one hit wonder. Fine, I’ll take it.
I only remember three books in our house when I was a kid, maybe there was more, I dunno. We did buy the proverbial (door to door) 20 vol. encyclopaedia set (to help the kids learn I guess), at mother’s insistence one thinks, because my father kept bring up the cost and the fact we weren’t using it enough. It did gather dust next to the other three books in our two shelf bookshelf (there was space for other for additions which never came). Honestly, the encyclopaedia, was pretty dull stuff, pictures and all, and even the bits on women’s body parts didn’t arise much interest.
However the Mother Goose rhymes stuck and I remember them with fondness today.
And as for the other arts in the Brown domain - zilch. Painting, posters, images - none - bare walls. Music none. Forget any of the other disciplines. I hounded my parents into buying me a radio when I was 12 and I would go to sleep (in Kitchener, Ontario) listening to Chicago AM radio stations which would bounce across the sky at night. Somewhere along the way we acquired a record player, I think it was mine, a Sea Breeze model, a toy really, small, but it played records. It was designed to play 45s (the number of rotations per minute) and when you played albums (33 & 1/3rds) the record would hang over the edge of the player wobbling a bit. It had a volume nob, not sure about a tone nob, maybe not. My mother got in on the act and bought three records (I still have them), MyFair Lady (not the the Broadway cast), Camelot (not the Broadway cast), Greatest Hits of the 40’s. There was a 101 Strings Play Broadway Hits but that didn’t survive the ages, so maybe Mom had four records. My record collection grew however. At every B-day or Christmas I would ask for more and once I got a job at 14, paying 75 cents and hour moving furniture, my musically horizons began to grow - rock and blues - John Lee Hooker, Burning, it had a picture of a roaring campfire on the cover, “Boom, boom, boom, gonna shoot your right down”.
1750's health Care
Did you know that the same English doctor, John Taylor, who blinded Bach had the dubious distinction of blinding Handel as well. He was a travelling English cataract doctor who spent his life inserting needles into eyeballs - sans antiseptic, sans painkillers. As part of his treatment he administered laxatives, blood letting, and blood from slaughtered pigeons was used as eye drops. Many patients, like Bach and Handel, died from complications.
But what choice would one have. You were going blind, or already blind, and this guy comes along and says he can inject your eyes with a curved needle and you will be able to see again, and sometimes it supposedly worked. Think about it - just lie quiet for a bit while I sharpen this needle and insert it in your eyes.
Writers and Music
Writers do not make very good listeners of music let alone composers. They mostly listen to pop pablum and if they venture into the classical genre they start asking questions like, ‘what does it mean?’ The kiss of death.
Composers however, do make good writers, not of fiction, but of musical textbooks (Walter Piston, Hector Berlioz), and autobiographies (Vernon Duke), and essays on music in general (Robert Schumann, Claude Messiaen, Arnold Schoenberg, Aaron Copland and others).
Anthony Burgess - writer, did manage to bridge the gap writing writing three symphonies, lots of chamber music, and much piano music including 24 Preludes and Fugues. He once said, "I wish people would think of me as a musician who writes novels, instead of a novelist who writes music on the side.” Fat chance of that.
World War II Story
My name is Alfred Einstein, yes, the great German/American physicist. This morning my friend Robert Oppenheimer, the great American physicist, and I were caught on the Western Front, in France by Erwin Rommel, trying to escape Nazi Germany in a truck that sounded like a tank because I had poured a bag of diamonds into the gas tank - stolen diamonds. In fact, Rommel thought it was a French tank, the dupe. He didn’t know about the diamonds. He didn’t know about the diamonds and he didn’t know we were trying to escape, but he suspected it.
He began the interrogation just back of the front line in the woods, asking my friend Oppenheimer the usual questions about what we were doing there, and then told him to demonstrate how useful he could be. My friend Oppenheimer started a fire by rubbing two sticks together and then started to boil water.
My turn. I stumbled around a lot, mumbled, and couldn’t think of anything to tell Rommel, or anything useful to be, so I poured coffee grounds into the top of my head which I had opened up, and then hot water, and I became a coffee strainer. Thus began my life as a kitchen appliance.
Six, Just Like Bach
“Six, just like Bach”, I get this a lot. And I didn't even have plans to write one cello suite let alone six. However after my friend Hannah’s, a cellist, gentle urging to arrange Takakkaw Falls my flute suite for cello and her subsequent performance of it, which was so fine, I decided to thank her by composing a suite written specifically for her and her cello - Fire.
Now what. I have two suites in contrasting styles that seemed a tad unbalanced with each other and about 45 minutes of music. Time for a third suite - There Was a Lady in the East - that would nicely balance the set (folk - rock - folk). Also, I did have my promoters hat on, thinking third suite = 60 minutes of music = CD, voilà!
So now I was done. Finished with cello suites. Finito.
Nope.
In the summer 2010 I had a serious health issue that left me unable to compose for over a year. In 2011 when I started to think about what to write next I knew I wouldn't be able to handle anything as complex as my piano quintet or piano concerto. One line of music would be enough of a challenge, so another suite it was - Lilies and the Roses - a suite with lots of short movements, not as technical for the cellist as the others, and would be attractive to intermediate and advanced students as well as professionals - a sort of introduction to my suites.
Now what. I have a nice first set of three suites and one more suite sort of just hanging around looking for friends. Two more suites were called for so I composed Magneto and Flowers of the Forest - to complete a similar balance to the first set (folk - rock - folk). These were composed in 2012 and 2013.
And now I have six suites. "Just like Bach."
Cougar Hike
I like to hike. True, I get get pretty darn tired these days after an hour or two of up and down in our local hills but I do my best.
I was telling my brother last fall that after 25 years in BC I had never seen a cougar. Sure, deer live in my backyard and elk are close by, and bears of all sorts are fairly plentiful, including grizzlies once you get back in, but I had never see a cougar - not many BC folks do.
That changed last fall after a hike in Mt. Steward (not a mountain - a hill), a local park. I had just come out of the trail and gotten into my Jeep when across the road a cougar came out of the bush from the direction in which I had been hiking - a magnificent beast. Must have been 200 lbs - as big as they get. He gave me the eyeball and just stood there while I searched around for my camera which took a minute or two.
Take a look at the pic and note his attitude. That look in his eyes is definitely up close and personal. Then, he looked both ways before crossing the road - no fooling - pausing halfway to give me the once over once more.
They say cougars are shy and elusive - not this one.
Check out the pics on my Facebook page.
First Piano Sighting
I didn’t see a piano until I was 17, no fooling.
I was living on Wards Island at the time. It is one of a group of islands in the Toronto Harbour. My first girlfriend Olga, a model, and I had rented a two bedroom summer cottage furnished for $65 a month for the winter. No insulation, an oil furnace we couldn’t afford to use, and a small one row natural gas fireplace. It was a very cold winter that year. Ice formed on the walls, milk froze on the counter (why bother with the refrigerator), you could see your breath in every room - an igloo. In a cold snap I would push the couch and chair in front of the gas fireplace, their backs facing toward it and throw a blanket from the couch to the top of the fireplace to form a roof. Then throw a mattress inside the structure, add sleeping bags and cookies and the dog and the cat and then crawl inside for three days or so until the weather abated - cosy.
We made a living by modelling. Olga did some fashion stuff as she was very beautiful and we both did some artist modelling, you know, take off you clothes and sit like you are carved in stone for a very long time. It didn’t pay very well, particularly the artist bit, but we got by. Fed the animals and ourselves and the gas stove but we never made enough to buy a tank of oil for the furnace.
On the next street over lived Bob Mallory, a painter. Bob’s home was similar to ours and he couldn’t afford a tank of oil either, but his gas stove put out enough heat so he didn’t have ice on his walls. They perfumed their home with cedar branches in a large pot of water on top of their gas stove. He called his girlfriend Moscow and said he used to tie her up for something to do. He used a rope to tie up his pants with a big bow in the front so maybe when he didn’t have to hold up his pants the rope served a double purpose.
Bob had many of his paintings about his cottage laying about in clusters against the walls waiting for a buyer which I thought would never come. I knew nothing about art but I did know that Bob’s paintings were exceptionally crude.
He also had a large object against the wall with black and white strips running along the front of it - a piano I was told. “So that is what a piano looks like,” I said. I was always curious. On the first Rolling Stones records there was a faint tinkling going on in the background and I didn’t know what it was. The only other instrument, other than a guitars or drums, listed on the album covers was a piano and now I had finally come across one. The Stones piano was played by Ian Stewart (he didn’t become a full member of the band, I learned later, because his hair was too short - think about that).
Moscow played the theme from Exodus which I thought was exotic - it was all very enticing in a beatnik sort of way. Olga and I liked Bob and Moscow very much and we spent a lot of time together that fall and early winter before we took the train (with the cat but not the dog - he moved in with other friends on the island) to Vancouver and then the bus to San Francisco (after we sent the cat back to Toronto as livestock by train) and then to Hollywood in 67, or was it 66? I dunno, you know what they say, if you can remember the 60’s you weren’t really there.
Me and Ron
After I left school when I was 16, I went to work at Schreider’s Furniture Store in downtown Kitchener as a driver’s helper making deliveries and moving folks homes. The driver was Ron. He was old, maybe in his 30’s. He was a good guy, liked Canadian country bands, and used to buy me a bottle of cheap red on Satday nights if I gave him the money. We moved stuff in a five ton truck.
One day, on King Street (the main drag), with a full truck load, stopped at a red light, I asked Ron if he could pop-a-wheelie in this thing. The light turned green and Ron popped the clutch and floored it snapping the axle. I pushed the truck off the road while Ron steered (once you got it going it was easy). We found a phone and called in and the owner of the store showed up stewing (he knew something wasn’t right). He rented another truck and we transferred the broken truck’s contents to it. The owner left and there we were at the the same lights with the same contents in another five ton truck. Ron look at me, I looked at Ron, nothing was said, the light turned green and Ron floor it. Fortunately (Ron had a family and his job was on the line) the axle didn’t break - no wheelie.
Glen and Me
I studied under Glen Gould. His apartment, the penthouse floor, floor eight on St. Clair Avenue West close to Yonge Street, was a story above my teacher Bill Vaisey’s. It was an art deco building shaped like Hercule Poirot’s in the BBC TV adaptation of Agatha Christie’s novels. Since it was a U shape building the windows of each wing looked in at each other across the entrance way making the act of being a Peeping Tom very easy. Gould whitewashed all his windows circumventing the peepers. Supposedly he would only go out at night and wearing a winter coat and gloves even in the summertime, a sort of frozen musical Dracula haunting Toronto on the streetcar system.
He gave to the Salvation Army and would eat his Christmas dinner there with the down and outs. He was raised in the East End/Beaches, an area of single and attached houses with leafy quiet streets, and attended Malvern High School. I was an East End/Beaches import and heard about him from an ancient piano teacher, a Mrs. Mumford, a character of charm and sophistication in the Victoria manner (she could have been the queen herself reincarnated) who had a house across from the school. She was a registered music teacher (RMT) and getting up there in years (had a lift installed to get her up to her bedroom on the 2nd floor). Mrs. Mumford would throw a once a year soiree on a fall Sunday afternoon and invite all the local music teachers and hold court and her students would serve and she had the best sherry ever so I would get tipsy on that surgery concoction and eat flowery cookies and bits of Glen Gould gossip would ooze out. He was not the high school type, he skipped classes, didn’t graduate. He got 94 on his diploma Royal Conservatory examination, age 12, - someone else got a mark higher, that sort of thing.
You could hear him practicing now and then in my teacher’s apartment. He would play bits of this and that, Webern and Bach, and string them all together without breaking time. He had a favourite chair, modified by his father, and used it whenever and wherever he played. It was so worn out in the end that the seat had no padding - he would sit on the crossbar. A reclusive, if you got on the elevator he got off, seatless chair and all. He drove a BIG American car, a Lincoln Continental, a gas guzzler - to fit his chair in? How he managed to back it into his parking space I dunno, there was only inches to spare between the concrete pillars.
After he died of a stoke at 50 two gays moved in. All that was left of him in the apartment was a small rug from under the piano pedals when he was practicing - they had it cleaned and framed.
First Motorbike
My first motorbike was my brother’s, a 49cc Honda Cub. He let me borrow it from time to time when I was 15 or so and sometimes I would, unbeknownst to him, take it anyway. Top speed just under 45 mph, maybe on a downhill with the wind at your back - fast enough in those green days.
One time, with my guitar slung over my shoulder, I sallied off on an adventure. Along the way alcohol was drunk and I drove home in a state catching the head of my guitar on a parked car and snapping it off at the neck. The folks were out when I got home - I lay down on the kitchen floor with my Mary Queen of Scots guitar and slept awaking to the folks looming over me silently observing. Nothing was said and I went to bed. Thank goodness my brother’s Honda was undamaged.
Sunrise Serenade
I once wrote a piece for string orchestra called the Sunrise Serenade. The tile came from a cocktail I invented for my daughter Caledonia’s 2nd birthday. The music used the guitar suites of Robert de Visée (1652-1730). He was the court musician and composer for Louie IV, yes that Louie, the Sun King, not only powerful but mega mega rich - think Versailles. His title was 'Guitar Master of the King’.
Before computers, cell phones and streaming, and before CDs, records and tapes, and radio, and before electricity if you wanted a little evening music, particularly at 3 am when you couldn’t sleep, someone had to play if for you. And for this to happen you had to be rich, preferable mega rich. The wealthy would keep orchestras for concerts - think Haydn and his boss Esterhazy and sometimes they would have music commissioned for bedtime relaxation - think Bach and the Goldberg Variations. Btw, Goldberg was the harpsichordist who played to his insomniac master Count Kaiserling, the Russian ambassador to the electoral court of Saxony. In a little twist of fate the famous variations were not named after the master but after the pleb who performed them, a nice ironic touch.
So Louie the IV needed bedtime tunes and deVise provided them on the Baroque guitar, a five-course, 10-sting instrument - no low E string, that came along later. He composed many suites of short movements all very attractive that were easy listening for his king to nod off too.
I used to play the guitar at the intermediate level and these suites were part of my repertoire. They are great.
So when I needed a new piece for my chamber orchestra in Sidney, BC, (the St. Cecilia Orchestra, name changed later to the Sidney Classical Orchestra - we would do four concerts a year), I took the tunes from the deVise suites and sliced and diced them and added my own bits, creating the Sunrise Serenade. It received a good review - see below. And in the program notes I printed my cocktail receipt - see below.
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Sunrise Serenade (recipe)
Ingredients: banana, ice cubes, orange juice, lime, white rum and a mini-umbrella.
Into a blender add banana, ice cubes, oranges juice, a squeeze of lime and white rum (throw caution to the wind). Pulsate until ice cubes are crushed. Pour into a champagne style glass and top off with a mini-umbrella. Toast: "to the joys of music."
PS: the composer's students' advise (from an in-depth research project), before the pulsation, add a dash of vanilla.
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Sunrise Serenade: Sidney, BC, St. Cecilia Orchestra, composer conductor. "A delight... Brown has created a work with its feet in both centuries, from its lively and stately (typically French) opening to the nobimente close. The work has a number of tricky changes of tempo and metre (particularly in the second movement) which were generally handled very well, as well as some wonderfully idiomatic string writing. For example, the passage in the passacaglia which is played initially on the double bass and divsi cellos, which is them joined by the violas, shows a genuine feel for the potential of the lower strings." Deryk Barker - Times Colonist, Victoria, British Columbia
Pop Songs
Is there something sinister in writing pop songs? Think about it, they use terms like ‘hook line’, ‘catch phrase’, ‘fingerprint’, and ‘money note’. Terms that two backsliding pickpockets might be using in an exchange of techniques.
And what is a pop song? Hotel California is 50 seconds long. It has a 25 second verse and a 25 second chorus. Everything else is either same thing again with different words or the same thing again with just instruments which, in the end, adds up to 6 & 1/2 minutes.
Btw, I think this a terrific song. The Eagles’ chord changes in the verse is startlingly original. It’s a new sequence. Sequences, the same material used at a different level - think Pachelbel’s Canon, have been around for centuries. They sit in a composer’s toolbox waiting to be hauled out when one needs to extend an idea with motivic and chord unity. In the Baroque Period (1600 - 1750) composers couldn’t get enough of them.
One would think that all the good ones had been thought up, and so they had until The Eagles came up with theirs.
The most common sequence is the Circle of Fifths going downward: C-F-B-E-A-D-G-C. I am talking the root of the chord only - one note, not chords. And remember there are only seven music notes (A B C D E F G). Let’s not think about Germany at the moment which has a sort of H. If you start on C and count right to left (downwards) you get to F, a fifth below, and a fifth below that is B, and so on until you get back to C. Btw, in music you count the note you start on.
Pachelbel’s Canon is in D major, but for the sake of simplicity, so we get no sharps or flats, we will put it in the key of C major. It goes: C-G-A-E-F-C-F-G (roots only). The sequence is in the first six notes which go: down 4 up 2, down 4 up 2, down 4 up 2. It breaks off for the last two letters to create a cadence (a stop, similar to a period in spoken/written language - all languages, including music, need stops).
The sequence in Hotel California takes place in the Verse which is in the key of B minor. The Chorus is in the key of G major and the relationship of these two keys is another interesting aspect of this song.
Again for simplicity sake, to get rid of any accidentals (shapes and flats), let put the Verse in A minor. It goes A-E-G-D-F-C-B-E (roots only). The sequences is in the first six notes which go: down 4 up 3, down 4 up 3, down 4 up 3. Again it breaks off for the last two letters to create a cadence.
It doesn’t sound like much does it? Instead of down 4 up 2, it’s down 4 up 3, but nobody in the 300 Years of Common Practice (roughly 1600-1900) used it. Why? Well, once you add chords, which are mostly Dominant 7ths, it steps out a tad beyond chord and key relationships of that period. But it works very well for this particular pop song as anyone who has heard this song will know.
Subway Hopeful
Once, I was in the Toronto Star newspaper as a subway hopeful, Sunday, September 18, 1983, picture and all with hat, home made glittery vest (I still have it) playing the accordion. I was 35 and tired of driving a cab. I was going to make it as a full-time musician no matter what.
The city was cleaning up the buskers in the subway system, going to an audition process that would weed out the untalented undesirables. If you survived the audition you paid $100 to play in the subway. Hmm.
They got the BIG HOOK out before I finished my first tune, the Italian favourite Santa Lucia, a waltz. I could see the incredulous sour looks on the committee of singer/songwriters, “What’s he doing, why isn’t he playing a guitar and singing John Denver, Gordon Lightfoot, or James Taylor tunes in 4/4 time.” I wasn’t a good fit and they hoofed me out of there PDQ.
No subterranean performances for me. I was back to performing above ground in Hazelton Lanes between Yorkville and Cumberland where I played all the Italian waltzes I pleased - phooey on youie.
Why Study Music Theory
A good friend of mine and a friend of his, an educated lady, were visiting one night for dinner. My teaching came up in the conversation and she asked, “Why study music theory? I don’t see the reason for it.”
I was quite annoyed by this question and in order to avoid saying something I would regret I hurriedly left the flat leaving her a note, “I am going two the store too buy to more bottles of French red.”
Model T
In ’67 Rita (my 1st wife to be, a Jewish princess from Brooklyn) and me were making our way from New York to San Francisco. Rita’s friend Chris (female with way too much luggage) was with us. We took the bus to Oklahoma City - that’s as far as our cash would take us and put our thumbs from there. Chris bailed in Salt Lake City taking the bus back to NY - surprise, she came across a stash of emergency cash in a sock. Rita and I continued on - no cash, but most folks were kind. Besides giving you a ride they usually fed you so one didn’t go hungry and some had couches to sleep on.
At Lake Tahoe about 10 in the morning or so we were picked up by two party animals (male, about 27 or so - ages are hard to do when you are in your teens) in a Model T Ford, a rickety bucket of bolts, very old automobile. The driver (we never did get their names) concentrated on keeping the vehicle on the road (going in a straight line for this beast was definitely a challenge) and his buddy operated the floor mounted gear shift which was not attached to the machine. He flung it about like a intense professor’s pointing stick. When a gear change was coming up the driver would do a sort of count down and the mad professor would ram the gear shift through the floor boards into the transmission and necessitate the gear change. They were a team.
Between them they had a gallon jug of red - the classic jug with a loop on the neck for your thumb to ease tossing it back, which they did.
They took us back to their cottage in the hills for lunch. It was a perfect Californian day so why not an alfresco meal. After a few trips inside they got fed up with opening and closing the screen door so they kicked it out - ahh, easy access. Now in a mood, they brought out all the pots and pans from the kitchen and spread them all over the lawn sort of like a croquet layout. They were rocking now (still going at the gallon of wine) they started up that beast of a car and proceeded to flatten - after many passes, back and forth, exhibiting terrific team work - all the pots and pans on the lawn.
About 5:30 that afternoon they drove us back to the freeway. We had advanced one exit further.
Neil Sedaka
I read Neil Sedaka’s obit (he died Feb. 27, 2026 at 87) in the NYT today - interesting. At age 9 he received a scholarship to Juilliard - so a classical start. However when he was 13 he started writing songs with a friend and essentially didn’t stop for 70 years. He went from top of the pops in the early 60’s to almost a nobody when Brit Pop and Psychedelia came along - relegated to an ‘oldies act’ while still in his 20’s and of course his label dumped him. And his manager (his mother’s boyfriend) spent all his money. Difficulties all around.
So he moved to England in 1970 and played small clubs for working class folks. There Elton John ‘rediscovered’ him and helped him to build his career for a second time. It worked.
Ben Folds, an American singer/songwriter, said, “(his) songwriting style is very much like the études, preludes, nocturnes, and waltzes of Chopin. Sedaka’s using that vocabulary. ” Well, where is that? His music is pablum pop par excellence. Some tunes like Breaking Up Is Hard To Do, which I like to play, have fairly sophisticated chord changes, especially in the bridge, but Chopin nocturnes - please.
Sedaka quote: “Classical music is good for the soul but not so good for the pocketbook.”
My First Room
When I arrived in Toronto I was 16, guitar in one hand and a few assorted bits I could carry in the other, I started walking the streets around Yorkville Village (think the Canadian version of Greenwich Village) looking for a room. Folks would posts signs in their front window - room to let. I found one north of the village, 12 Marlborough Street, south side of the tracks, $12 a week, third floor attic, just me and another fellow across the landing. One ring hot plate and a small window, bathroom somewhere else, down a floor. My fellow third room renter was older, I dunno how old, but I know he didn’t work because he wouldn’t leave his room until noon or so - he would come back around 7 pm. Once I asked him what he did and he gave me a lengthy dissertation on street corners. Queen and Yonge not so good, Yonge and Bloor was good but St. Clair and Yonge was the best - he was a beggar.
He was a nice fellow and we got along well. He showed me how to open a can of beans with just a knife, which was helpful as I couldn’t afford a can opener (I actually didn’t know what one was) and how to bend a coat hanger into a toast rack to fit on my hot plate - all good stuff.
Ian and Sylvia had lived down the street and even wrote a song about it. I used to spend my evenings in Yorkville Village and one morning at 3 am while sitting on the steps of the Grab Bag convenience store with my guitar Lonnie Johnson and David Clayton-Thomas came along. I was struggling trying to learn the Bessie Smith tune ‘Nobody Knows You When You’re Down and Out’, a tricky song with lots of chords. Thomas talked Johnson (he didn’t want to do it - quite shy) into playing it for me - a revelation, my only jazz lesson.
I stayed on Marlborough Street until I met my first girlfriend Olga. We move into a room on Hazelton Avenue, in the village, ground floor, bigger and $1 cheaper for me once we split the rent.
Stephen Brown: Links
No. 2 Blue Bowl
To begin with I was going to call this painting (and composition) ‘Banana Table’ as it looked like some bananas and other fruit, and a blue thingy I couldn’t figure out, sitting on a table. If you think I can remember what my idea was from 67 years ago - well, forget it.
I sent the image to by brother Gregory for his opinion and he showed it to his wife Kim, an excellent painter (her arresting painting of swap stuff is the cover art of my Seconda Pratica CD and the banner you see above) and she nailed it right away - flip the painting 90º and you have a blue bowl spilling fruit like the Horn of Plenty on all below. Duh, what didn’t I see this, I did paint it after all. However, as I said, that was 67 years ago, so the ‘Banana Table’ has become the ‘Blue Bowl’.
The painting is sort of an Impressionism bowl and fruit still-life and I was thinking of a light soft colourist composition but near the end the piece took a left turn (maybe the bowl fell off of the table, I dunno) and developed an attitude so I went with it. One thing I have learnt as a composer is that you are not always driving the bus and when hijacked by the unknown, it’s best to go with the flow.
A Child's Paintings
Unbeknownst to me my mother saved some of my paintings that I did in Grade 4 when I was 10. I came across them after she died when my brother and I were clearing up her home. I put them in my flat and didn’t think about them. Lots of Mom’s stuff is in my flat not to think about, mostly dishes and blankets and photos, in boxes filling space. I’m hoping someday to clear it all out and pass most of it on to the kids. But I am busy composing - so it sits.
A couple of Christmases ago, my daughter Alberta, staying with me while she played flute for a season with the local symphony, came across them - they surfaced so to speak. She said they were really good. And the last Christmas, in a Zoom call with my daughters Cal and Al and my former wife Elizabeth, they came up again - another positive review. Hmm, maybe a rethink of these paintings is needed. And I remembered an evening with a former girlfriend, an intelligent young beauty, from 15 years ago where we had looked at them and she liked them too. What to do?
So I decided to write some piano pieces based on the paintings, ‘A Child’s Paintings’. There will be 5-6 pieces each about 2-3 minute in length. Below is a link to No. 1, ‘Leaves - Oak, Maple, and Birch’. I hope to do one a week which I will upload to Youtube as we go along (with the painting image) and then combine them all at the end. So stay tuned.
A Sweeping Story
When I was 21 I was looking for work. I hadn’t had a job since I left home at 16 (it was an early retirement) and now with a family it was time to join the real world. I stood with a bunch of of down and outs on a downtown corner in the early morning on a cold windy fall day in Toronto and men in trucks who needed an extra hand for the day would select one or two men. I was a kid with long hair and rough clothes but I got picked by two guys in a flatbed truck with brooms and dustbins in the back - my first job in four years, a parking lot sweeper.
At 9 am I was instructed to sweep the large parking lot just north of Bloor and Bay. These two fellows said they would be close by - they were, drinking coffee and shooting the breeze in the cab of the truck. I was so happy to be working that I took to my job with ultimate zest. My broom handle broke in the first half hour - back to the truck for another. This lasted about the same length of time. My third broom handle held out until about 11am - I was really making a difference with that parking lot - but then it broke too. Back to the truck for broom handle four.
The guys were looking at me incredulously - a long haired demented hippie with an evil plan to rid the world of broom handles - they handed me broom 4 (the last one). The fourth broom handle shattered into four pieces at 11:30.
I took these last broom bits back to the truck of coffee drinkers, “Get lost", they said. I never did get paid.
Rossini and the Overture February 13, 2026
Gioachino Rossini, 1792 - 1868, wrote 39 operas in 19 years. Whoa, PDQ.
It is said the Rossini composed the overtures (the beginning orchestral bit) to his operas the night before the premiere while lying in bed, flipping the full score finished pages, one by one, out the window to a waiting runner, who would hustle them over to the copyist to make the orchestral parts (btw, the composer & conductor are the only ones who see what everyone is playing - the full score, the musicians only see what they have to play - their part).
Sidebar 1: I guess they would rehearse the overture right before the performance the next day, I dunno, when else, tricky for sure but orchestral musicians are excellent sight readers.
Sidebar 2: When one writes an opera the last thing they write is the beginning, the overture, because it is full of the themes that will come later. So the latter is composed first.
Let’s take a look at a score.
Let’s use his blockbuster the Barber of Seville as an example for the analysis. Btw, it was covered by Bugs Bunny in the Rabbit of Seville - hilarious.
The score contains 264 bars (measures) of music, all in 4/4 time. Tempos: slow, fast, faster.
It is 23 pages long as published and takes about 7 to 7&1/2 min. to play.
It is scored for piccolo, flute, 2 oboe, 2 clarinet, 2 bassoon, 2 horn, 2 trumpet, 3 trombone, timpani, bass drum, violin 1, violin 2, viola, cello, double bass. Each one of these instruments, or group of instruments, get a music stave. There are 15 staves.This makes a system. The publisher can usually fit two systems to a page (the print is pretty darn small) and sometimes, when the scoring is light (not all the instruments playing at once), the publisher can fit three systems to a page by ‘hiding empty staves’. This is aka a ‘reduced score’ (not to be confused with reducing a score to say a piano version). If an instrument is not playing for a few bars they don’t make the page. It’s a bit tricky reading a score of this type because the placement of the instruments, or the lack of them, is not always in the same place, but one gets the hang of it fairly quickly, especially if the publisher has printed the instrument names in short form on the left hand of the page - quite helpful.
However, when a composer writes an orchestral work they are not thinking of squashing several systems onto a page. They work with one system to a page. This gives themselves room to think, to manipulate the instruments how they see fit (think a painter’s canvas) at the time of first writing it down, and perhaps later after second thoughts - not sure though if second thoughts applies to Rossini.
So, there are 47 systems in the overture, therefore, in the original handwritten score, there would be 47 pages.
The first system on Page 1 is four bars long and contains 220 notes (all the instruments are playing). I counted them - a bit tiresome.
Let’s do some math (the final figure is approximate - I am not going to count every darn note in the piece):
System 1, 220 notes x 47 systems = 10,340 total notes x.666 (2/3rds, an approximate guess) because some of the systems are not using the full orchestra = 6,886 total number of notes in the overture.
Heavens, can one write 6,886 notes in an evening. And don’t forget you have to rule your pages (bar lines), write key signatures, time signatures, tempo and performance directions, and some of the notes have accidentals (sharps, flats, naturals), and you are using a quill pen - dip, write few notes, dip, write a few notes, get the knife out and sharpen the nib, dip, write few notes, don’t forget the bathroom issue, let alone eating and drinking like the Falstaffian character Rossini was.
So did Rossini write the overture to his opera the night before? Doesn’t seem possible does it?
More math: I wrote just the notes of the string section of the opening page of the overture for a few minutes nonstop and was able to manage 20 notes a min. I used a pencil, not having come in contact with a pen and inkwell since grade 8. Btw, ballpoint pens were banned in my school - instruments of the devil? wicked modernity? Luddite thinking?
So, 6,886 notes / 20 notes written every min. = 344 min. / 60 min. in an hour = 5.8 hours, say 6 hours, and then add a couple more hours for pit stops (eating, drinking, the bathroom bit, small rest periods) = 8 hours of very hard work.
So, doable but barely, and PDQ.
On the Road
I quit school when I was 16 halfway through grade 11. I was booked up with detentions till June. I had to sit in the detention room form 8-9 am, then class, lunches were spent in the same dreary room, then class, then after school from 3:30-5:00 or so. High school and me were not a good fit. I was told I was a shit disturber, though I didn’t see myself as one - just a easy going type of guy. So I quit school - one had to tell the vice-principal. “Well, I certainly not going to stop you”.
I let my parents know of my decision when I got home. “Why didn’t you talk to us?” Gobsmacked. Talk to my parents? That had never happened in my 16 years of existence.
I was already working part-time on the weekends for a furniture store come moving company (75 cents and hour), now I geared up and went full time ($1 an hour) - overtime ($1.25 after 48 hours, no problem, some weeks were 80 hours long. I was a trucker’s helper.
Ron was the driver and he was a great guy. He seemed old but looking back he was probably in his early 30’s. I learned how to pack a truck and pack expensive dishes like crystal glasses into cardboard boxes - all good useful stuff. We had fun too and I worked very hard. One morning we moved, by hand, no dollies or straps, 16 fridges and stoves up three flights of stairs in a new apartment building - just pick it up and hoof it, Ron at one end and me at the other. At the end of the month on the weekends we would move four households a day starting at 6 am and finishing at midnight and then I would walk home because the busses in Kitchener stopped running at 10:30 pm - who needs buses after that?
I saved up my pay and bought a Fender Telecaster electric guitar to replace my Eatons department store piece of junk and a large Epiphone amp with four 8” speakers. I was going to give being a musician a shot. I figured I had fours years to do so - eons, no problem. I quit my job so I could practice all day. My father didn’t like that, me hanging around the house all day - couldn’t see practicing as work, told me to get a job or get out. I got out. Left home at sixteen. Somehow got down to the 401 Highway with a few things in one hand and my guitar in the other and hitch hiked to Toronto.
Beginning, what I look back on it now, as my early retirement.
Spelling
I have never been able to spell. This become oh so clear in Grade 7. The teacher, a young slim beauty with red hair, was a spelling bee fanatic. Whenever there was a dull afternoon she would call a halt to whatever we were doing and announce we would spend the rest of the day in a spelling bee. Oh my, trouble, I could never spell.
When trying to do short assignments in class I could never get past the first paragraph because I couldn’t spell anything. Flummoxed, I would ask the teacher for help and she would give me the first two letters of the word and then I was expected to find the it in the dictionary. No good. A little bit of nagging on my part and then three letters were provided. Sometimes good but most times bad. Four letters gave me a better chance at finding the word and this the teacher eventually gave me, if I pleaded enough, but then the word was just about spelt (but I wouldn’t have know it). And of course the teacher thought I was just playing her along - nobody could be that bad at spelling.
The spelling bee went like this: the teacher would choose the two best spellers in the class (girls of course) and then the selection of teams would begin with the spelling bee team leader standing on each side of the class. Alternately the (twerpy girl) spelling team leaders would choose their teams and they would stand up from their desks and line up behind the team leader. Of course I was chosen last - the last in line, no surprise there. Then the fun would begin. The teach would choose a word and ask the last in line (me) to spell it. Kapow! No idea, not ever a smidgeon of a whisper on how to spell whatever. Eliminated I would sit down and stare out the window, hopelessly board, for the next hour or so while the enthralling contest wound to its dramatic conclusion. I was even chastised (while window gazing) for not following the riveting narrative of the game.
As an adult I found marrying a wife (No. 2, Elizabeth) who could spell was a great advantage (this was before computers and spell check). I was getting on in the world a bit and needed to write letter or two of a little importance. I would be writing away and when I got into spelling trouble (often) I would just yell out the word (sans greeting) and from somewhere deep in the house the correct spelling would be yelled back. Crude yes, but it worked, and it did ease my mind.
The Blinding Speed of Handel Writing Messiah
People are astonished that Handel took only 3 & 1/2 weeks to write Messiah. Blown away. Let’s take a look.
Messiah has around 52 mvts. - depends how you count them.
It is composed for four singers who sing solo arias, except for one lonely duet, and a four-part chorus. The orchestra is small: violin 1, violin 2, viola, and cello - the bass doubles the cello throughout. The two oboes double the violins and the two bassoons double the cellos. The 2 trumpets are used in three mvts. and the timpani in two mvts. The keyboard (organ and harpsichord) parts are improvised from the figured cello line.
If you take all of the recitatives, arias and choruses, not counting the two intermissions, the total time is 2 hrs. and 20 min. = 140 min. Handel composed it in 24 days.
So, the math: 140 / 24 = 5.833 min., say 6 min. a day of completed music. Note: a few of the mvts. were borrowed from previously written works.
It is said that Handel worked with great intensity on the score having his meals sent up and hardly leaving his desk.
But how much could he work in a day? 8 hrs? 10hrs? 12hrs? This has never been answered. Let’s say it’s 12. Twelve to me, is an exceptionally long time at the desk, but it would count for the meals being sent up. But can one write that long with a quill pen? I dunno - dip, write a bar, dip, write a bar, get the knife out and sharpen the quill, dip, write a bar, eat a meal or two (he was 300 lbs), go pee, dip write a bar, yell at the servants for more paper, dip write a bar . . .
Anyway, 12 hrs. a day working / 6 min. of finished music = 2 hrs. of composing for every 1 min. of finished score.
And let’s not forget that the musical language was that of the Common Practice Period - leading notes rose, 7ths fell, a triad was a triad and just that. No messing with time consuming Post 1900 musical language envelope stretching.
There is no doubt Handel wrote quickly. That was his way of working. Many composers of that period did the same. So what. Does it matter?
Compositional speed (fast, medium, slow, so very slow) can be interesting, but what matters is the finished composition.
And Messiah, composed fast or slow, however you slice it, is sublime.