tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-56987288716355450112012-03-01T23:42:40.976-05:00Do I dare disturb the universe?Susan Scheidhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09250142489341777926noreply@blogger.comBlogger361100tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5698728871635545011.post-33859183613949805992012-02-24T22:34:00.000-05:002012-02-24T22:34:52.120-05:00

—for Friko  In yet another alarming gap in my cultural education, I’d not heard of Wisława Szymborska until Friko’s Poetry and Pictures introduced a poem of hers to me. The poem was The Joy of Writing, and its first line, as translated from the Polish by Czesław Miłosz, is this:  “Where is a written deer running through a written forest?” In that one line, Szymborska summons up the act of

Susan Scheidhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09250142489341777926noreply@blogger.com18tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5698728871635545011.post-16370231651278398682012-02-17T00:05:00.000-05:002012-02-24T22:35:35.663-05:00

At Buttercup Farm, the woods are a tangle of brown and gray. The birds are in hiding.  It's midday, after all, and a red-tailed hawk is about.  The Canada Geese pose for us, though. A muskrat swims to a hidey-hole to chew on grass. Proof of the beaver's carpentry is everywhere, though we've not yet seen a beaver at work. In the distance stand Big and Little Stissing Mountains (

Susan Scheidhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09250142489341777926noreply@blogger.com21tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5698728871635545011.post-80861235884895679002012-02-09T23:51:00.001-05:002012-02-17T00:13:19.835-05:00

And then Estonia was conquered . . . . It seemed that all the dreams were broken. —Taimi Lepasaar In her poem Public Transportation, Elaine Sexton reminds us that what we see on the surface may not be what is: . . . The driver does not have a peanut butter and jelly sandwich in his metal lunchbox.  He has caviar left over from New Year's and a love note from his mistress, whom he just

Susan Scheidhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09250142489341777926noreply@blogger.com18tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5698728871635545011.post-4095675392399292072012-02-02T10:18:00.002-05:002012-02-09T23:57:36.019-05:00

Really, I’m creating a world, and it’s really hard to say what it is, but it is a world of feeling and emotion and color and light.—Zoë Keating  When I was looking for music to accompany my Halo of Sound post, I realized with horror that I knew of no 21st century compositions for the cello.  I went on a frantic search and, with a lot of help, both cyber- and human, came up with some possibilities

Susan Scheidhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09250142489341777926noreply@blogger.com23tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5698728871635545011.post-57995136065620647272012-01-26T19:50:00.011-05:002012-02-02T18:27:40.434-05:00

Exhibition Poster, from Illustrated Legends of Kitano Tenjin Shrine And when he came to the place where the wild things are/They roared their terrible roars and gnashed their terrible teeth—Maurice Sendak An eight-headed, nine-tailed monster greeted us at the door of the exhibition. Fortunately for us, the monster was preoccupied with other business, for he guards the gate to hell. What

Susan Scheidhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09250142489341777926noreply@blogger.com21tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5698728871635545011.post-5278435849579492982012-01-19T16:16:00.018-05:002012-01-26T20:12:48.958-05:00

—for Mark Kerstetter, who introduced me to this poem Ashbery, in his poem Soonest Mended, seems to have had in mind the old proverb “least said, soonest mended,” when he wrote of Ingres’ damsel in distress: And Angelica, in the Ingres painting, was considering The colorful but small monster near her toe, as though        wondering whether forgetting The whole thing might not, in the end, be the

Susan Scheidhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09250142489341777926noreply@blogger.com27tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5698728871635545011.post-40295121868462664182012-01-12T18:50:00.003-05:002012-01-19T17:24:22.564-05:00

Balmy, it was.  Last winter, New York City was snowbound.  We had to pick our way across the slushy streets.  This holiday season, though, we could step out when and where we liked. Our starting point is always the view out our apartment windows—a quintessential cityscape, water towers and all.  We wonder whether cedar water towers, like red barns in the countryside, may one day disappear.  We

Susan Scheidhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09250142489341777926noreply@blogger.com18tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5698728871635545011.post-44138298792353026982012-01-05T15:15:00.003-05:002012-01-13T17:52:44.113-05:00

“Even if we returned skillfully and victoriously to those wondrous paintings of Tamerlane's time . . . in the final analysis, all of it'll be forgotten,” I said mercilessly, “because everybody will want to paint like the Europeans." “My Enishte believed the same,” Black confessed meekly, “yet it filled him with hope.” —Orhan Pamuk, My Name Is Red  We had two hours to cover the ground.  Even

Susan Scheidhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09250142489341777926noreply@blogger.com19tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5698728871635545011.post-68042209856860875822011-12-29T00:01:00.010-05:002012-01-05T20:53:53.456-05:00

In 2011, Vienna, Austria, ranked first in the world for its quality of living.  I have no idea about the veracity of the report.  Its purpose seems to be to guide companies in deployment of their “expatriate employees,” and the categories used are understandably mundane. I’ve not been to Vienna, but I’ve often visited a Vienna of the mind.  How much my Vienna bears any relation to reality, I

Susan Scheidhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09250142489341777926noreply@blogger.com13tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5698728871635545011.post-62943101820501436932011-12-17T09:08:00.008-05:002011-12-29T16:33:43.534-05:00

I have a confession to make:  before this year, I had no idea what a “remix” was.  Thank goodness for Wikipedia, which advised, “A remix is an alternative version of a recorded song, made from an original version.” The definition didn’t get me very far, as it turned out.  The Chiara String Quartet CD of Jefferson Friedman string quartets included two remixes by the "electronica supergroup" 

Susan Scheidhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09250142489341777926noreply@blogger.com14tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5698728871635545011.post-33948972797709444102011-12-10T23:51:00.025-05:002012-02-23T16:43:52.696-05:00

When I ventured into the world of contemporary classical/new music last year, I wasn’t at all sure how to proceed.  I followed every lead suggested by composer John Metcalf, reached for book after book (notably Alex Ross’s indispensable The Rest is Noise), searched the internet, and read reviews. The internet portion of my journey was imponderable and overwhelming, until I discovered two

Susan Scheidhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09250142489341777926noreply@blogger.com19tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5698728871635545011.post-40076743098405774702011-12-03T00:14:00.018-05:002011-12-11T00:20:58.616-05:00

Tomas Tranströmer’s Allegro begins: After a black day, I play Haydn, and feel a little warmth in my hands.The keys are ready.  Kind hammers fall. The sound is spirited, green, and full of silence.The sound says that freedom exists and someone pays no tax to Caesar. Tranströmer’s poem brings new words to music’s lexicon: I shove my hands in my haydnpockets and act like a man who is calm about it

Susan Scheidhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09250142489341777926noreply@blogger.com17tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5698728871635545011.post-69276201835924240852011-11-26T23:15:00.019-05:002011-12-04T22:53:19.913-05:00

My poems are meeting places.  Their intent is to make a sudden connection between aspects of reality that conventional languages and outlooks ordinarily keep apart.—Tomas Tranströmer On a bitter winter evening this past February, I left the bustling warmth of New York City’s Grand Central Station and headed to Scandinavia House.  The wind blew frigid air at me in a sideways slant, the sort of

Susan Scheidhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09250142489341777926noreply@blogger.com18tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5698728871635545011.post-85345242038960391172011-11-20T00:03:00.011-05:002011-11-27T20:52:39.874-05:00

Do you know what this young man is doing? Here's a hint: If you haven’t guessed, he’s singing and dancing to Terry Riley’s In C. The place is Poughkeepsie Day School, at its playful and play-filled Fall Festival Reimagined. The musicians are students, teachers, and parents at Poughkeepsie Day School, aided and abetted by Contemporaneous players Dylan Mattingly, David Bloom, Finnegan

Susan Scheidhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09250142489341777926noreply@blogger.com9tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5698728871635545011.post-66020180369115568282011-11-13T17:22:00.004-05:002011-11-20T00:15:11.876-05:00

When Dylan Mattingly first introduced me to violinist Finnegan Shanahan, Shanahan was wearing a hat.  He and Mattingly conferred about whether he should wear it during the Contemporaneous concert that night, and they decided:  no hat. The hat was back at the November 11, 2011, concert, and Shanahan—not to mention every other performer—was in fine form.  (As Shanahan explained, for the earlier

Susan Scheidhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09250142489341777926noreply@blogger.com14tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5698728871635545011.post-28614188769392302162011-11-12T00:12:00.006-05:002012-01-26T20:05:28.638-05:00

In October, we like to look out at the hills and watch the color coming on. This year was no different, at least at first. A fox sat peaceably in the meadow. Deer grazed in the grass. A woodpecker tested out a bluebird box. The evening sky glowed with color. And then . . . The lights went out and on and out and on again.  We heard a transformer blow; the lights went out for good.  The

Susan Scheidhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09250142489341777926noreply@blogger.com8tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5698728871635545011.post-13980350019146451272011-11-06T08:44:00.004-05:002011-11-12T18:49:31.194-05:00

After a far-too-early blast of winter here and a power outage that wouldn’t quit, it’s not surprising that the re-dawn of electrical power might call to mind the beginning of the world. In the midst of the outage, I decamped to New York City to set up a provisional place to work.  While there, courtesy of David Nice, I learned about a concert on BBC3 Radio, available for listening only three

Susan Scheidhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09250142489341777926noreply@blogger.com12tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5698728871635545011.post-22520672529131219102011-10-30T15:05:00.004-04:002011-11-06T08:57:10.091-05:00

In autumn, Innisfree Garden, so lush with blooms in spring and summer, begins to reveal its bones.  The stands of yellow flag have been cut down, the bed from which peonies once spilled out has been returned to bare ground. The clematis are reduced to withering vines.  The lotus flowers are spent, their great pods dried out, their leaves curling to brown. Our neighbor Leslie Land, a mistress of

Susan Scheidhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09250142489341777926noreply@blogger.com16tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5698728871635545011.post-451074350027909862011-10-23T16:53:00.005-04:002011-10-30T15:04:47.181-04:00

Birds have their seasons in the Hudson Valley, as everywhere else. The geese are on the move.  The hummingbirds have long since left us and won’t be returning to our feeders until next year. So different now from spring and summer, when we’re visited by all sorts: In April, a fine little rufous-sided towhee appeared among the still-bare branches of a bush. Palm warblers poked among last

Susan Scheidhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09250142489341777926noreply@blogger.com16tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5698728871635545011.post-77379281304351486712011-10-16T00:09:00.040-04:002012-02-23T17:00:56.522-05:00

When I began my exploration of contemporary classical music, I didn’t have the least idea what to expect.  For the most part, I suspected I’d find it hard to grasp and impossible to enjoy, but I was determined to give it a try. In the grip of that determination, I discovered a concert in the offing in a nearby town.  The program, by a group I’d never heard of called Contemporaneous, included

Susan Scheidhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09250142489341777926noreply@blogger.com10tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5698728871635545011.post-6410637953908631122011-10-09T11:41:00.003-04:002011-10-16T22:08:51.771-04:00

September wasn't the best of months in the Hudson Valley.  We were grateful to have been spared the ravages Hurricane Irene and heavy rains wrought on nearby communities, but the weather has been sodden, bringing with it, as the proprietress of our local bakery is wont to say, “Mosquitoes the size of American bald eagles.” I haven’t witnessed that phenomenon myself, but I can attest that

Susan Scheidhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09250142489341777926noreply@blogger.com11tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5698728871635545011.post-76521093293749673762011-10-02T15:11:00.007-04:002012-01-26T20:06:23.438-05:00

And every word written shall lift off letter by letter, the backward text read ever briefer, even more antic in its effort to insist that nothing shall be lost. —Kay Ryan The first time I read Edmund White’s comment on Rimbaud’s Antique, I wondered what he was on about: ". . . Stroll about by night, softly moving this thigh, this second thigh and this left leg.”  These lines have become

Susan Scheidhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09250142489341777926noreply@blogger.com14tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5698728871635545011.post-58047150490675098812011-09-25T12:38:00.019-04:002011-11-16T22:55:19.789-05:00

Last night at the Chapel of the Holy Innocents at Bard College, the ensemble Contemporaneous reached a thrilling new milestone in the annals of contemporary music.  The concert, entitled The Roots Run Deep, featured the work of three young composers:  Gabriella Smith and Dylan Mattingly (both b. 1991), and Shawn Jaeger, the elder statesman of the group (b. 1985).  The composers were all on hand

Susan Scheidhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09250142489341777926noreply@blogger.com13tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5698728871635545011.post-81433710717098648052011-09-19T20:26:00.007-04:002011-11-16T22:56:34.529-05:00

During intermission at a recital, Dylan Mattingly bounded over to his red and black-trimmed bag and pulled out a huge manuscript.  Its spiral-bound cover mimicked an atlas, and within it was a score-in-progress for the composition he’s been working on for most of the last two years. At twenty, Mattingly may be young in his composing life, but his music roams deep into the by-ways of American

Susan Scheidhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09250142489341777926noreply@blogger.com12tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5698728871635545011.post-67007421939591248342011-09-12T16:30:00.007-04:002011-09-19T20:33:58.438-04:00

Verlaine ? Il est caché parmi l'herbe, Verlaine —Stéphane Mallarmé Long ago, I sat in a circle of fifteen girls as Madame __, her hair brittle with red-orange dye, put us through French conjugations.  I hadn’t much patience for the grammar, but I loved the sound of French words, the epitome of which seemed, at the time, to be Paul Verlaine’s Chanson d’Automne: Les sanglots longs Des violons

Susan Scheidhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09250142489341777926noreply@blogger.com11tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5698728871635545011.post-29701543166045324332011-09-09T16:42:00.007-04:002011-12-09T13:58:29.906-05:00

 Ravel wrote most of Le Tombeau de Couperin in 1914, before the outbreak of World War I.  His initial intention had been “a set of dances modeled on French baroque dance suites,” most notably the Ordres of François Couperin.  Time caught hold of Ravel’s intention, and he ultimately offered each of the six pieces that comprise Le Tombeau in remembrance of friends and colleagues who died in World

Susan Scheidhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09250142489341777926noreply@blogger.com5tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5698728871635545011.post-44240798887189884962011-09-04T22:04:00.006-04:002011-09-09T17:06:50.922-04:00

"The dead are sad enough, in their eternal silence."—Maurice Ravel Near my house in Dutchess County are several old rural cemeteries.  One of the two closest is the Verbank Rural Cemetery, with a quaint covered entrance and gravestones winding upward to views of Verbank and the surrounding hills. The cemetery seems to have begun as a burying ground for the Vail family.  One of their number

Susan Scheidhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09250142489341777926noreply@blogger.com17tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5698728871635545011.post-18260079773139823102011-08-29T22:39:00.002-04:002011-09-04T22:06:22.925-04:00

“Clepsydra” is really a meditation on how time feels as it is passing.—John Ashbery John Ashbery’s poem, Clepsydra, begins with the phrase “Hasn’t the sky?”  The question, opening out to anywhere, lured me into the poem. Hasn’t the sky?  Returned from moving the other Authority recently dropped, wrested as much of That severe sunshine as you need now on the way You go. . . .Clepsydra is the Greek

Susan Scheidhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09250142489341777926noreply@blogger.com15tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5698728871635545011.post-34186311128449423102011-08-24T20:59:00.004-04:002011-08-29T22:49:09.271-04:00

Dateline Thursday, July 14, 2011, 12PM. Just back from the Adirondacks, I set out for Innisfree Garden with my camera, too-short telephoto zoom lens, and binoculars, a bottle of water, floppy hat, and all-important three-legged folding stool ready to be stashed in the pockets of my photog vest.  I figured, with my luck of late, the camera would stay slung over my shoulder and the stool stashed,

Susan Scheidhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09250142489341777926noreply@blogger.com17tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5698728871635545011.post-53342512574801818722011-08-15T21:12:00.022-04:002011-11-16T22:57:48.191-05:00

You don’t have to review.  Just respond. —David Bloom A couple posts back, I asked, “Does Anyone Still Compose a Waltz?’  I feared that, for 21st century composers and performers who (understandably) thrill to the challenge of playing rhythms like 5 against 4 against 3 against 2 (just try clapping that one out!),  the waltz’s plain old one-two-three, one-two-three might be the exclusive province

Susan Scheidhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09250142489341777926noreply@blogger.com14tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5698728871635545011.post-11699798561851991062011-08-04T00:03:00.007-04:002012-01-26T20:07:16.260-05:00

A journey is always a rescue operation, the documentation and harvesting of something that is becoming extinct and will soon disappear, the last landing on an island that is sinking beneath the waves.—Claudio Magris I’ve never seen the Danube, yet the notion of it has long appealed to me.  One source for my fascination must surely have been Johann Strauss, Jr.’s eponymous waltz, for in my

Susan Scheidhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09250142489341777926noreply@blogger.com13tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5698728871635545011.post-63631272099239414252011-07-28T21:50:00.002-04:002011-12-03T00:11:40.452-05:00

The Danube is not blue, as Karl Isador Beck calls it in the lines which suggested to Strauss the fetching, mendacious title to his waltz.—Claudio Magris  On television not long ago, a fellow leered out at me, a violin propped under his chin.  The cameras pulled back on grand buildings and lawns, all bathed in lurid blue light.  The print onscreen announced we were about to hear the Blue Danube

Susan Scheidhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09250142489341777926noreply@blogger.com15tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5698728871635545011.post-44606995637270634882011-07-21T01:05:00.002-04:002011-07-28T22:00:13.414-04:00

—for Jan & Ann While at magnificent Elk Lake in the Adirondacks this year, I had cause to think of John, that consummate birder, over at Hedgeland Tales.  I was thinking particularly of a post about butterflies he’d written when “birds were scarce” at Nene Washes (which looks to be a wonderful nature reserve in Cambridgeshire, England). In the three years at Elk Lake and on many walks closer to

Susan Scheidhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09250142489341777926noreply@blogger.com15tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5698728871635545011.post-12544694555892446792011-07-13T23:48:00.001-04:002011-07-21T01:42:56.927-04:00

His basic attitude toward language is joy.  It amazes me how many people have a problem with that. —Mark Kerstetter The poet John Ashbery is considered impenetrable by many.  Yet if the first poem a reader encounters is The Instruction Manual, that’s hard to understand.  The poem begins As I sit looking out of a window of the building I wish I did not have to write the instruction manual on the

Susan Scheidhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09250142489341777926noreply@blogger.com10tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5698728871635545011.post-74744124444573161752011-07-01T08:22:00.003-04:002011-07-13T23:47:13.957-04:00

I put my hand inside his cranium, oh we had such a brainiac-amour But no more, no more, I gotta move from my mind to the area (go Rimbaud go Rimbaud go Rimbaud) And go Johnny go and do the watusi, Yeah do the watusi, do the watusi ... —Patti Smith, Land I had hoped, when I picked up John Ashbery’s translation of Arthur Rimbaud’s Illuminations, that I’d find a way into it without need of the

Susan Scheidhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09250142489341777926noreply@blogger.com10tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5698728871635545011.post-48459229416392007132011-06-22T21:15:00.001-04:002011-07-01T08:43:31.134-04:00

This past Easter, George Wallace, in his own inimitable commemoration of Easter Sunday, tweeted out a video of Patti Smith singing her song Easter.  He ended his tweet, as I remember it, with the cheer, “Go Rimbaud.” Before that moment, I’d not knowingly listened to Patti Smith or read a line of Rimbaud.  I’ll admit, I’m late to the party.  More than thirty years late, by one count; by

Susan Scheidhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09250142489341777926noreply@blogger.com12