Does this happen to you too, or am I the only one? It happens to you too, right? You encourage someone smaller than you to try something that is good for them, such as learning an instrument, and you sort of participate in the beginning to get them started, and a while later find yourself playing cello in an orchestra and are all WTF? How did I get here?
In this way I have found myself in Galway getting directions from the sean nos singer to the harp maker’s house (“The road is quite narrow and there’s a sharp turn, you might not make it around in one go, and be sure and watch out for the mad farmer…”) or having baguette and black coffee for breakfast at four in the morning at the window of a 200 year old stone farmhouse (in France) one balmy February morning.
Just now, an hour ago, I was in the concert hall (not as grand as that sounds) of the local music school discussing composition with the teacher who is co-running the composition program Gamma is taking. Gamma and I, since Gamma was interested but said she’d only participate if I did it with her. And she’s not here, so I went over myself and it was really cool.
I’m composing a piece for cello and ten harps about that dead fox I saw on the side of the road. I have been for some time. Gamma added a badger, so now it’s about a fox and a badger, because just the dead fox was too sad she thought. She’s probably right.
Lately she’s been talking about doing something electronic, or something for piano and fiddle and something else, so maybe I’m doing this fox piece by myself now.
Somehow I ended up here.
The composition is nearly finished. All I have to do is write the fucker down. Figure out the different parts and write it down.
How hard can that be?
Fox is Fuchs in German, and badger is Dachs. Luckily, for my purposes, the notes F,C,B (H in German) and Eflat (Es in German) sound good together, as do the notes D, A, C, B/H, Eflat/Es; and even luckier, the two groups of notes work well together.
And one can do interesting things contrasting the 4 notes (F,C,B,Eflat) with the 5 notes (D,A,C,B,Eflat). Rhythmically.
I’m thinking six parts: the cello part, and five harp parts, for two harps each. Two harps playing a part simultaneously would give you that stereo/reverb effect that makes the Welsh triple-strung harp so cool (the harpist plays the same melody with both hands, a tiny bit off, making this echo-like sound.)
I would, in the piece, work through the fox notes in several ways, and then when it is on the verge of getting a bit boring, have the badger notes start sneaking in, and the cello line start going back and forth between the two.
Maybe the cello goes nuts at the end. Maybe the fox ascends to heaven.
Maybe the badger wanders back into the bushes.
It’s not completely finished.
It sounded pretty cool on the grand piano, though.
The teacher who is coaching us was kind enough to bring her theremin with her this evening, as I’d expressed an interest in it. She plugged it in and let me try it out. As you can imagine, it sounded as bad as one would expect. I don’t think I’ll be composing anything for it anytime soon, either, although who knows; someday. Someday it would be cool to compose sort of a “Dueling Banjos” for theremin and singing saw. I’m serious.
So this theremin tonight: it is not flat and black and sleek like the Moog theremins, and it is not um sort of vertical and pointy like the other theremins I’ve seen. It is about the size of a large shoebox, with one side at about a 45 degree angle, looks like cherry wood: it is not only Lev Thermin’s original design, it is Lev Thermin’s original box. The teacher (I say teacher, she’s also a bona-fide musician etc) was in Moscow recently, visiting the Theremin Institute, where they have a bunch of old stuff that used to belong to the master, and that included a few of these boxes, and one of the men who runs the Institute, by my understanding, built some to Lev’s specifications inside them, with one or two improvements.
Listen: Thermin had this box in his hands, man. And the teacher loaned it to me, as she has no time at the moment to play it and I have an empty house, what better time to practice a theremin?
All we need are a pair of headphones, she said.
We searched the music school. Normally there are headphones everywhere.
Not tonight, however.
So I’m sitting here with Lev Thermin’s theremin.
It’s pretty cool looking.
Two shiny chrome antennas.
Tomorrow I will find headphones or die trying.
