Dame Judith Weir is a British composer with whose work I am entirely unfamiliar except for the present work, which I just heard for the first time the other day. But my lack of knowledge of Weir’s music shouldn’t be taken as any kind of statement of her skill, because her work is apparently of sufficient renown in the United Kingdom that Queen Elizabeth II actually named her Master of the King’s Music, a post which is analogous to a Poet Laureate but for composers. Weir held this post for a ten year term which just ended earlier this year. (Her successor, named by King Charles III, is Errollyn Wallen, whom we’ll investigate another time.)
The welcome arrival of rain is a work Weir wrote under commission by the Minnesota Orchestra. Her inspiration was the arrival of the monsoons on the Indian Subcontinent, and the joy with which the rains are seen when they come. Weir writes:
This profuse and exuberant piece arose out of bare beginnings; a scale passage followed by a simple melody. Whilst I composed it, as the notes and the pages multiplied, I began to think of a comparison with the arrival of the monsoon in India, when aridity is pierced by life-giving rain; and humans, animals and vegetation revel in sudden activity and fertility. Although the monsoon is expected yearly, its arrival is always joyously surprising. The music¹s title was inspired by a passage from the 18,000 verse Hindu text, Bhagavata Purana ( quoted in the score.)
A 6-phrase scale pattern is heard at the beginning of the piece in highly compressed forms; in rushing passages for the winds and as chords for the solo strings. Then an 8-phrase melody is heard in a lush and spacious version where strings predominate above horns and trumpets. From here on, these two melodic sources are alternated as the basis of melody and harmony, right up to the utterly energetic culmination where both melodies are heard together with their respective variations; there follows a gentle, rainy coda. A prominent solo for the drum section (rototoms, tomtoms and timpani) starts in the middle of the piece and reinforces the ever-growing energy of the music.
Here is The welcome arrival of rain by Dame Judith Weir.
You don’t always need to wander far to find great subjects and scenes for photos. I took this while walking the doggos just around the corner from our house.
At the end of my adventures I was drinking a case of sixteen-ounce tallboys a night, and there’s one novel, Cujo, that I barely remember writing at all. I don’t say that with pride or shame, only with a vague sense of sorrow and loss. I like that book. I wish I could remember enjoying the good parts as I put them down on the page.
At the worst of it I no longer wanted to drink and no longer wanted to be sober, either. I felt evicted from life. At the start of the road back I just tried to believe the people who said that things would get better if I gave them time to do so. And I never stopped writing. Some of the stuff that came out was tentative and flat, but at least it was there. I buried those unhappy, lackluster pages in the bottom drawer of my desk and got on to the next project. Little by little I found the beat again, and after that I found the joy again. I came back to my family with gratitude, and back to my work with relief–I came back to it the way folks come back to a summer cottage after a long winter, checking first to make sure nothing has been stolen or broken during the cold season. Nothing had been. It was still all there, still all whole. Once the pipes were thawed out and the electricity was turned back on, everything worked fine.
—Stephen King, ON WRITING: A MEMOIR OF THE CRAFT
So I actually did some writing today, and oddly…that’s something I haven’t been able to say a whole lot lately.
What’s going on? Am I slowing down? Am I losing my passion for trying to tell stories and create literary tales and whatnot?
Am I losing touch with the written word?
At times that’s what it’s felt like, and it’s been deeply disconcerting, I must admit.
Part of it is the “big elephant” in the room of my recent life over the last, oh, year-and-a-half: Photography. I suppose it’s to be expected that when you find a new passion; the other ones tend to fade a bit. I suppose it’s like that famous meme of the guy taking a second look at a pretty passing woman while his current pretty woman looks at him in consternation. And yes, photography has become a huge passion, that much I can’t deny; and it’s not just that it’s the shiny new thing. It’s that it has given me something new to learn. That’s huge.
Of course, it’s not like I have nothing to learn from writing! How silly would it be for me to claim “That’s it, I’ve learned all there is to know about writing, I now know it all and will go forth and learn no more! All that’s left is just putting down the words!” Of course that’s nonsensical…but writing isn’t new anymore, is it?
I expect that as the weather turns to the colder and more unpleasant, and as my main camera is currently a device that lacks weather-sealing, I will find myself turning back to the literary once again. But there’s something else that’s probably at the heart of my reluctance–no, not that, not reluctance, but rather a lack of enthusiasm for writing of late.
It’s that Mom is gone.
My mother wasn’t huge into enthusiastically cheerleading for my writing. That just wasn’t her style. But she always believed in my ability, and she always made that known. Mom believed in me as a writer probably more than anybody else in my life, and now that source of encouragement and belief is gone. I wonder if that’s a part, in any way, of my general feeling of “Meh” when I would otherwise have been sitting down to write. It’s hard, I think, to keep doing a thing that you’re not always sure you’re really good at when one of your constant sources of possible belief that keeps you going is gone.
But then…the stories get a vote too, don’t they? And they’re not done. Forgotten Stars V is languishing in a holding pattern between edits; I need to get it out to some readers. The Adventures of Lighthouse Boy (not the actual title) is unfinished, and that’s the one I’ve been starting to work on again. Others remain: the second John Lazarus book, The Jaws of Cerberus (my demonic kayak adventure novel), Orion’s Huntress (space opera set in the same world as The Song of Forgotten Stars, but with no overlap), among others. A story cycle set on a fictional Finger Lake in New York, an essay book about Star Wars, another essay book about James Bond…these things aren’t gonna write themselves.
Hold on, let’s start here: one of my favorite paintings at the Buffalo AKG Museum.
Giacomo Balla, “Dynamism of a Dog on a Leash”
Nice, huh? I like the suggested motion in the dog’s figure and in the leash. I always linger on this one when I get to where it hangs in the museum.
Now, where was I? Oh yeah, flashlights.
(Yes, the painting is relevant. Bear with me.)
The flashlight company is called OLight, and my coworker likes to tell me–rather mischievously–when they’re running sales. Whenever he says this, my response is always the same: “Oh lord, don’t tell me that!” Because if there’s one thing that’s almost guaranteed to get me to part with money, it’s a flashlight. (By the way, that old post of mine, linked above? All but two of those flashlights are now distant memories, and I don’t even remember the little red keylight that was apparently two bucks at Home Depot whenever I got that.)
But anyway, back to OLight. I do not visit that site with any regularity at all, because they’ll get a lot more of my money if I go too often. Heck, I just looked up the URL to link it above and I almost clicked four things to put in my cart! Dangerous, it is! However, sometimes there is necessity, and thus I have to discuss my one time (thus far) purchasing from OLight.
Enter the dogs.
Specifically, Hobbes.
When we adopted him last year, it was late in the summer when the nights were starting to settle earlier. Cane, you’ll remember, was mostly white with a few brindle spots, so we could see him in the back yard even when it was totally dark; we knew where he was and could corral him to bring him in when we let him out there to do his business either at night or in early morning. Hobbes, however, is completely brindle, so The Wife realized pretty quickly that it was going to a problem seeing him when he was let loose into the yard when it was dark.
She brought this concern up, and then I visited the OLight site…and saw this item here:
Now, was this a case of my phone listening to me and making sometime appear? I don’t know, but I do know that based on what I read, this is what the doctor ordered: a small light, with a multi-colored LED set-up on each end, about the size of one of those small McCormick spice containers, with a carabiner-style clip for attaching to stuff…like a backpack, or a belt loop, or somewhere on one’s person or on a dog’s leash.
Yup, this appeared to be just what the doctor ordered. Or rather, it’s what “the doctor” suggested and what I ordered. I got two of them, one for Hobbes and one for Carla. And then we proceeded to not use them for almost a year because Hobbes got injured and to this day he hasn’t been released into the yard on his own recognizance. But as our night-time dog walks are increasingly happening when it’s dark out, we have started using them even though the dogs are leashed. Hobbes doesn’t wear his yet, but on a lark I threw one on Carla’s collar one night. We wondered how she would react…and she didn’t. At all. She just does all her normal walk stuff with this light hanging from her collar. It barely weighs an ounce, so I’m not sure she even physically notices it, aside from seeing light.
And this is where our painting above comes into play, because a few times I’ve snapped Carla’s picture while walking, and the results put me immediately in mind of my favorite painting at the Buffalo AKG!
On the lower pic, it may appear that Carla has somehow red-shifted, because note the blue on her backside! That blue glow is actually coming from Hobbes’s light behind her. These lights can be set on each end to red, green, blue, or white, or flashing between all of those–and the ends can be set independent of the others, so I can set it to red and blue (on Bills game days!) or maybe red and green once we’re into the holidays. Visibility for one’s dogs is always a good idea, and I like having these for safety reasons.
Is that all I bought on that first OLight order? Why, no! I got a small flashlight for The Wife to carry in her purse or bag, and I got a small pen light to hang on my keychain because I’ve been in want of such a thing since my last keychain light died. Currently that’s all I have from OLight. But I’m sure that will change at some point, as I am highly impressed with what I’ve seen of their products thus far.
(Note to self: It’s probably time to update the “Flashlights I own” post….)
I took both of these Ophelia (my phone), by the way! As much as I love Miranda, the Lumix FZ1000ii, phone cameras are amazing these days…and in truth, I haven’t really done much at all with Miranda in night and low-light settings. Hopefully this winter!
Born on this date in 1813: Giuseppe Verdi, one of the greatest of all composers and a titan of the operatic stage. Many composers lived short lives in ill health and little acclaim, but not so Verdi: he lived to be 87 and was such a beloved figure in Italy that when he died, over 300,000 people attended his funeral.
I’m sad to admit that I don’t know Verdi’s operas very well at all, but this particular excerpt is a favorite of mine. Here is the “Triumphal March” from Aida.
On mornings when The Wife has to work at the downtown Buffalo site (currently twice a week), it falls to me to take Hobbes out for his morning constitutional, so as to save her some time. Yesterday morning I took him out, looked up at the autumn sky, and saw…this.
So I made Hobbes stop in his tracks (frustrating for a dog on his morning walk, I know!) while I pulled out my phone to do a little astro-and-cloud-photography. (Is cloud-photography called “cumulophotography”? Seems to me it should be….)
I am always happy to see Orion the Hunter high in the sky again. It means the winter stars are returning, and I am here for it.
Good to see you again, Orion! May your hunt be fruitful!
Charles Tomlinson Griffes was an American composer whose life forms one of the better What ifs of music history. He was one of those composers who, being born in the late 19th century (1884, to be specific), learned and came of age while American music was still struggling to move beyond its European influences. American classical music would not really start to come into its own until European Romanticism was firmly on the wane, and American factors like jazz would arise. Griffes was enormously talented and his own influences seem to have been the kind of mystical impressionism found in the work of composers like Scriabin, as well as the sound world of the French impressionists like Debussy and Ravel. Sadly, Griffes was struck down at the young age of 35 when the Spanish flu pandemic swept the world. The music of his that survives is often fascinating and suggestive of what might have come to be had he lived to the fullness of his gifts.
The current work, The Kairn of Koridwen, is a chamber work intended for an unusual ensemble: one flute, two clarinets, two horns, piano, harp, and celeste. Since Kairn was composed as a “dance-drama”–I assume that means a ballet–it’s surprising how long the work is, but listening to it, it never feels overlong. Griffes gets a lot of color and almost mysticism out of his material and his scoring for that small ensemble. The work is downright dramatic at times, and never less than fascinating. Here is The Kairn of Koridwen by Charles Tomlinson Griffes.
This morning it fell to me to get up and take Hobbes out for his morning relief walk, which this time of year happens before sunrise. On the way back, I saw a jet contrail in the sky, and this one was neat because it wasn’t just a normal grayish-white contrail, but rather it was lit up goldren-red by the sun that was still beneath the horizon. I always like seeing the shiny contrails of early-morning flights, and sometimes the planes themselves are also catching the morning sun as they jet across the sky, carrying their passengers to adventures galore, some happy and some sad and some probably boring.
Ten minutes later, as Hobbes and I were getting home, I looked up again. That first contrail was much longer and was starting to spread out as they always do…but then I noticed not one but two other contrails, left by planes that were flying almost the exact same path. I had never seen that before. I briefly thought to run inside and check a flight-tracker site to see if I could figure out which planes these were and where they were going on their route that took all three right over our house, but I got wrapped up in dishing up Hobbes’s breakfast and making the coffee and whatnot, so by the time I remembered I had no chance of figuring it out. Oh well. Sometimes mysteries are better left unsolved!
