A departure from the melancholy mood...

...of the past two posts, and a turn towards the simpler, the more lighthearted, and the direct, by means of a well-known quote from Ravel:

"I do not ask for my music to be interpreted, but only for it to be played."

Play on

For the moment - but just for the moment - the dog joyfully leaping to the sound of the bow drawn across the strings is suspended in air. It's an image of sheer exuberance; the musician smiles sweetly as she plays, and a man to the right lifts one leg daintily, in a mannered, practiced pose. But even if their poses are still visible, seven centuries later, on the pages of the Maastricht Hours, we understand too that the melody will fade in due course. After all, the vellum upon which the figures are painted was once animal skin - skin now cut and sanded so fine that the image on the opposing face is faintly visible, a ghostly presence.

Last Thursday, on a beautiful spring day, I took Cleo to Patterson Park. And she, in turn, took to the large castle that forms the center of the playground. Back and forth; over and under; hiding and shrieking. As you can see in the video above, she's quick: blink and she's gone. Even faster is her rapid glance towards us: a turn of the head, to make sure that we're watching. And we are, of course. For even as she disappears, the music of the playground persists, preserved in pixels, if not on vellum.

Death (and life) and the maiden

Somewhere in this picture of a Winchester, VA playground, believe it or not, is a tiny sliver of Cleo. And somewhere in this cluttered view, as well, is a sense of risk that reminded me of musical compositions that wander from from their home, and then, finally, return.

Here's what I have in mind. The Wikipedia entry on Schubert's Quartet no. 14 (Death and the Maiden) is a nice example of what the Web, at its best, can offer. Alongside brief excerpts of the actual music, the authors parse the composition in clean, appropriate language. For instance, take their summary of the final passage of the second movement: "In the fifth variation, the second violin takes up the theme, while the first violin plays a sixteenth-note arpeggiated motif, with the cello playing the triplets in the bass. The variation grows from pianissimo to fortissimo, then again fades and slows in pace, finally returning to a restatement of the theme - this time in G major.

And here's why I have it in mind. For most of her little life, Cleo's been a relatively careful girl. I wouldn't say that she's unadventurous, or unimaginative - but she's never been the sort of kid who clambers out onto the diving board, unaccompanied, or who stuffs a fistful of black mushrooms into her mouth. And she still isn't. But on Saturday, she was ready to play, and to play on her terms. At one playground, she joined two older girls on a whirling playground wheel, racing to try to keep up with them and laughing as she announced that she was dizzy as the sky wheeled above her. A few hours later, in Winchester, she raced towards the tower you see above, and then, pausing, noticed that I was standing, watching, at the edge of the playground. 'You don't have to stand there, Dad,' she told me. 'Go sit on a seat.'

All right, then. And so I sat as she disappeared into a sea of kids. And sat. And wondered if, and when, she might return. Shouts to our right. A man with tattoos covering his entire arm. A car leaving, suddenly, from the parking lot. No sign of her. Should I get up, and find her? I was about to, when she reappeared through the grillwork of the tower, all smiles. And was then off again, to race across the small suspension bridge and gawk at the slide. Variations on variations: a composition. I smiled. Another car drove off; a blindfolded child under a distant tree swung wildly at a pinata. And then, once more, Cleo reappeared, tottering towards me in the stride that implies that she's done with something. Finally returning to me, from the world: in a different key now perhaps, but home, momentarily, nonetheless.

No teacher was more considerate and kindly

In around 1863, the young Tchaikovsky - then 23 - began to study with Nikolai Rubinstein, an intimidating force of a man who was also the director of the Conservatoire in Saint Petersburg. According to Herman Laroche, Rubinstein's potent personality "inspired us students with unbounded affection, mingled with not a little awe. In reality no teacher was more considerate and kindly, but his forbidding appearance, his hot temper and roughness, added to the glamour of his European fame, impressed us profoundly." And yet, while Tchaikovsky venerated his teacher, Rubinstein was relatively unimpressed with the pupil who would later become so successful. As Laroche put it, "It is not difficult to understand this, because Tchaikovsky's artistic growth was perfectly normal and equal, and quite devoid of any startling developments."

Which may be why, in turn, Tchaikovsky's parents did not receive weekly e-mailed reports on this progress in school. Or perhaps that was because the Conservatoire was simply no Bolton Hill Nursery. Because, after all, we do get wonderful, and wonderfully regular, reports of Cleo's ups and downs. And yet, despite the gap of 150 years, and the technological chasm that lies between us and them, it sometimes seems that not that much has changed. For Exhibit A, see the report that landed in our box a few moments ago:

Cleo doesn’t get in trouble often. She had a strong sense of right and wrong and is very hesitant to cross those lines. Well, last week she got lost in her thought and started drawing on the floor. Ms Kelly told her to stop. Cleo was taken back and needed to calm down in book nook for a little. She immediately felt very bad for her mistake and Ms Kelly was quick to remind her not to worry and that it was a mistake and she is a lovely and magnificent powerful girl. Cleo has been having a lot of fun helping to save the land of Zamonia from the dark forces of Reginald Fortwasher. A lot of our projects these past two weeks have worked to help build the world of these stories. Cleo got a lot out of watching her creations become contributions to a greater environment that we built together. She’s been a lot more vocal with the girls lately too, showing off dance moves and telling goofy stories.

Perfectly normal and equal, right? And deeply admiring, as well, of a teacher who is considerate and kindly, and who inspires our daughter with her unbounded affection.

The names change, but, happily, much in the development of our children remains the same.

And sometimes...

...(and increasingly) she just does it all, by herself.

Encore

Sometimes the best surprises are the ones we see coming. John Philip Sousa knew as much: as Paul Bierley points out in his book on the composer's band, Sousa used to have a percussionist hold up title cards that identified the songs played in encores. The result, apparently, was widely enjoyed: a critic in Australia, for instance, applauded the way in which Sousa's band stayed onstage, instead of milking the applause, and the sensibility with which the encore was labeled. Sure, an encore is a special treat, but it's one that Sousa's fans had come to expect. Why pretend, then, otherwise?

And so I shouldn't have been surprised, perhaps, when Cleo made a special request on the way north from school yesterday. A few months ago, in the dark days of winter, I had once brought her a mammoth two-dollar chocolate cookie, as a ridiculous after-school snack. (I ended up inheriting, by the way, most of it: being a dad is a constant education in some of the virtues of trickle-down economics). That moment, though, has stuck with Cleo, and so after riding quietly for a few moments yesterday, she said, "Dad, did you bring me a special surprise, which is a chocolate chip cookie?"

I smiled at the specificity with which she described the surprise, and then launched into a muddle series of hems and haws. (One-time thing; that's what makes it special; maybe some other time...). Only to hear her say, in turn, "I wanted a big one. You keep that in mind."

Will do, Yellowbird. And maybe,if indeed it happens, we'll hold up a sign, in the background, identifying the cookie by type.

Learning from the master

There's a wonderful article in the current New Yorker by Jeremy Denk, a concert pianist, that focuses in large part on his relationship with his former mentor, the Hungarian pianist Gyorgy Sebok. Denk remembers Sebok's sheer physical presence; his flagrant disregard for the rules against smoking in the college studio; his tendency towards Zen-like aphorisms ("To show love for someone, but not to feel that love - that is the work of Mephistopholes"). But he also recalls, vividly, the way in which Sebok revealed new landscapes or levels in the music that Denk was learning.  As a student played a Mozart concerto, Sebok once rose, sat at a second piano, and added occasional chords: enunciating, as Denk puts it, a higher rhythm of events. And then the alternation of two harmonies sped up, "and suddenly Mozart released everything into eight sailing bars - a balloon drifting, all ties to the earth cut. It was unforgettable," claims Denk, "this demonstration of structure..."

Lovely, no? But touching (if not quite unforgettable) demonstrations of structure are not confined, thankfully, to Mozart. The other night, I was putting Cleo to bed when she paused and turned to her battery-operated night lamp, in the form of a ladybug. She carefully and gently tugged at each of the ladybug's legs, so that all of them were splayed, pointing straight out from the body. 'What are you doing?' I asked, truly intrigued. 'Just straightening her legs, so that she doesn't sprain her ankles,' answered Cleo.

I'm not half the observer that Denk is, and Cleo, I'll freely admit, is no Sebok. But in that moment, I too enjoyed a deep and sudden flash of insight into a pattern that had been only superficially visible to me. A new structure had been revealed, a private motivation come to surface... and I remain thankful for it, days later.

Side by side

Images on the mind today, folks: images that involve collaboration, and that generate surprisingly complex patterns from initially simple concepts. First up. Toshi Ichiyanagi's 1960 Music for Electric Metronome:

One of many scores developed by composers involved with Fluxus, Ichiyanagi's piece - now in MoMA's collection - essentially describes the reconfiguration of a metronome; the resulting irregularities comprise, of course, the performance. And, second, a picture of the Beast's castle, done a few days ago by Cleo and me:

Look closely, and you'll be able to pick out a full moon shining above a werewolf, Belle's father in the dungeon, and the Beast, in an elevator, concealed in a frenzy of blue that represents motion. Even the slimy Gaston is present, drenched in a flood of aquamarine marks at the right, after fruitlessly asking for Belle's hand in marriage.

Chaos out of order; order out of chaos. Irreverence and iconoclasm; reverence and repetition. In the wake of the dissolution of the rules of art, two generations ago, we nonetheless take up our pens and draw, in faith.