In Praise of M.T. Anderson and his Symphony for the City of the Dead

...from San Francisco

First, a big shout out to all the wonderful performers and the enthusiastic audience at David Garner's fabulous Faculty Artist Series program on Monday night!  If you weren't able to join us, I hope you were able to watch the concert stream instead.

Leading up to Monday's concert, I could not put down M.T. Anderson's  YA historical novel, Symphony for the City of the Dead: Shostakovich and the Siege of Leningrad--a mouthful of a title that says it all. 

Now, first off, I have to admit that I've been a fan of M.T. Anderson's books for years, beginning with his equally engaging dystopian Feed--written before dystopia had completely taken over as the style-du-jour, and Handel, Who Knew What He Liked and continuing with Strange Mr. Satie, Whales on Stilts, and The Astonishing Life of Octavian Nothing. (He has many more, but those are some highlights.)

Dmitri Shostakovich in 1925

Returning  to Symphony...What a brilliant concept! Who'd a thunk one could use the history of a 20th century classical Russian composer to talk about World War II?  It's an obvious call in retrospect, and beautifully done in Anderson's hands.  Symphony works well on a number of levels: at its core, it's a biography of composer Dmitri Shostakovich (1906-1975) combined with a history of the seige of Leningrad, and it's also a short history on the rise and continuation of Communism in Russia--all informed by and focused on  how both of the latter influenced this enigmatic, great composer who managed to survive in a situation where so many others didn't. (The photo to the right is the young, Harry-Potter-like composer at the age of 19.)

Anderson is honest in his evaluation of what Shostakovich may nor may not have believed and how the exigencies of pleasing Communist dictates may have affected his writing--questions I remember from my own readings in music history. He concludes that we may never know the whole truth in either direction. Nonetheless, we still have the composer's musical testimony, and now we have Anderson's commentary, along with his explanations along the way for non-musical young readers, about musical meaning and meaning in music (not the same thing) for his readers.

Perhaps best of all, reading Anderson's descriptions of Shostakovich's music makes the reader want to go and listen (or re-listen) to his music, especially his towering symphonies and string quartets. How terrific is that, when prose about music--or visual art for that matter--inspires one to go listen to the music itself!

Thank you, M.T. Anderson, for your latest work in cross-arts fertilization...the ultimate in coolth.

What I'm reading: Still Life (the first Inspector Gamache mystery); Margaret Atwood's latest (The Heart Goes Last)

What I'm listening to: Mahler's Das Lied von der Erde (this week at SFSymphony!)..but Shostakovich very soon

What I'm working on: Songs by Hans Winterberg, John Harbison and Frederic Sharaf.

Happy Pi Day!

Pi Pie

...from San Francisco

Today (well, yesterday by time you read this) is a paean in praise of Pi, the number  3.14159265358979323846264338327950 (stopping after all 10 digits have been included) or, as it's commonly known among us lay folk, 3.14.  Hence Pi Day is 3/14, March 14. Crucial for measuring circles and circular objects, pi is an irrational constant and so it keeps rolling on, digit after digit, never resolving.

March 14 is a verrrry popular birthday (three folks in my family own it, for example), but there are fewer famous folk with it than on some other days of the year.  However, one hugely famous Pi Day celebrity--for whom March 14 is a most appropriate birthday--is Albert Einstein (1878-1955). 

Warning: shoals of a famous mathematical formula ahead, but the digression is brief. If desired, skip the next paragraph to avoid possible eye glazing.

(Einstein's special theory of relativity is represented mathematically with another constant, c.That famous formula? E=mc2, where E means energy, m means mass, and c means the speed of light in a vacuum, which is then squared. The constant, c, is NOT pi, but rather a little less than 300 million (299,792,458) meters/second, i.e., pretty darn fast!)

There are many great quotes attributed to Einstein, many nearly aphorisms. I find Einstein, his story, and his words infinitely inspirational--and I hope you will, too. 

Albert Einstein

Here are a half dozen:
            
             Insanity is doing the same thing over and over again and expecting different results.

            Try not to become a man [or woman in today's more egalitarian verbiage] of success, rather try to become a man of value.

            Only two things are infinite, the universe and human stupidity, and I'm not sure about the universe.

            Learn from yesterday, live for today, hope for tomorrow. The important thing is not to stop questioning.

            We cannot solve our problems with the same thinking we used when we created them.

            Anyone who has never made a mistake has never tried anything new.

Interested in more Einstein quotes? Visit Brainy quotes.com.

Who are a few other less-scientific Pi babies?  Quincy Jones, Billy Crystal, and among musicians of olde, George Telemann.

Happy Pi Day, everyone!

What I'm reading: I just finishe Carry On by Rainbow Rowell (recommend by Lee Wind's excellent blog). It's a great book, even though or especially because--depending on your perspective--the title immediately causes the Styx song to stick in one's ear like an earworm. Speaking as one, mind you.

What I'm listening to: When "Come Sail Away" isn't running through my head....I was able listen to Schubert's Winterreise recently.

What I'm working on: David Garner's Mein blaues Klavier, for my next concert (April 4)--it's also on our CD that's coming out on April 8!!!--and songs by Hans Winterberg for May 31 and June 2.