Most people know Aaron Copland’s Rodeo and Billy the Kid (as well they should–they’re perfectly wonderful pieces, popular in the best possible way). Surprisingly few concertgoers, though, are familiar with the abstract instrumental pieces of Copland’s middle years, which are “abstract” only in the sense that they weren’t written to accompany ballets. In fact, you’ll find in them the same sweetly austere harmonies and long, leaping arches of melody that make Copland’s music so immediately distinctive and quintessentially American in sound and style.

I recommend the Violin Sonata of 1943, which Isaac Stern recorded in 1968 with Copland himself at the piano (he was a fine pianist, crisp and unmannered). It doesn’t get played much in concert, and I don’t know why, because it’s extraordinarily beautiful, from the gentle open-prairie lyricism of the first movement to the stomping vigor of the finale. Maybe it isn’t flashy enough for your typical hot-shot virtuoso. All I know is that the Copland Violin Sonata never fails to bring tears to my eyes.

– Jerome Robbins’ royalty in 1944 for each performance by Ballet Theatre of Fancy Free, his first ballet: $10

– The same amount in today’s dollars, courtesy of Inflation Calculator: $106.83

(Source: Deborah Jowitt, Jerome Robbins)

I’ll go my way by myself, this is the end of romance.

I’ll go my way by myself, love is only a dance.

I’ll try to apply myself and teach my heart to sing.

I’ll go my way by myself like a bird on the wing,

I’ll face the unknown, I’ll build a world of my own;

No one knows better than I, myself, I’m by myself alone.

Howard Dietz, “By Myself” (music by Arthur Schwartz)

Shepard Smith of Fox News was on Bourbon Street late Sunday afternoon, carrying a cell phone and watching the diehards party. He ran into one man who was walking his dogs.

“What are you still doing here?” he asked the man incredulously.

“None of your ——- business,” the man answered.

I wonder where that guy is now?

A few brief notes from a harried blogger:

– Last night’s Erin McKeown show at Schuba’s was a blast whose double aftereffect I’m still feeling: I’m still all charged up from it and at the same time rather crestfallen that it’s over. This show was quite different from her appearance last year on the same stage–as one of my companions put it, the brainy chanteuse of Distillation and Grand gave way to the brainy rocker of We Will Become Like Birds for this one–but no less exhilarating. McKeown played almost everything from the new album, recast some old favorites in new tempos, and generally poured her heart out all over the stage. This was not surprising, but the opening act was: Chicago-based folk singer and guitarist Rachel Ries was just captivating with her melodious waterfall of a voice and a very disarming stage presence. Her brand-new album is available here.

– Hooray–as promised, the Chicago Reader recently beefed up its on-line presence, adding features, reviews, and in fact all content to its website, here. The current issue of the free Chicago weekly notably contains a short story by local writer Kevin Guilfoile, of Coudal Partners and Cast of Shadows fame, that comes from a new anthology of Chicago Noir fiction. It’s available as a PDF.

– Memo to Random House production: If you must divide “Mussoliniesque”–especially at a page break–the only acceptable division is “Mussolini-esque.” Truly.

“So, what did you do all afternoon?” my friend Allie asked as we settled into our seats to see Junebug.

It wasn’t until last Friday afternoon that I was willing at last to admit what I’d suspected all along: I simply don’t like the much-ballyhooed new Museum of Modern Art, which I saw for the first time
just before it opened to the public last November. My first impressions had been sharply mixed, but I did my best to side with the strengths of the new building, knowing that such impressions are almost always deceptive. I went back a month later, and since then I’d stayed away, wanting to give the curators a chance to find their footing before I rendered anything like a final judgment.

Sure enough, some things have changed since the new MoMA opened its doors, and one of them is genuinely encouraging. The museum’s great Monet “Water Lilies” triptych, which had been hanging in a multi-story atrium across from Barnett Newman’s monstrous Broken Obelisk, has now been moved to a small side gallery which it shares with two other late Monets and a pair of large paintings by Bonnard and Vuillard, a modest but nonetheless welcome gesture to civility.

Otherwise, the MoMA I saw on Friday is basically the same MoMA I saw last November, with the same ineradicable problems that were immediately apparent to me (and many others) on first viewing. The exaggerated scale of the building swamps the art it contains, and the austere d

For reasons I can’t yet reveal, I just had occasion to draw up a list of my fifteen favorite American movies of the past seven years. I’ll share it with you when the time comes, but for the moment I’ve decided to post a teaser–the twenty runners-up.

In alphabetical order, they were:

About Schmidt

Being John Malkovich

The Cooler

Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind

Garden State

Guinevere

The Life Aquatic With Steve Zissou

Lilo & Stitch

The Limey

Lovely and Amazing

Magnolia

Master and Commander: The Far Side of the World

Me and You and Everyone We Know

Pi

The Secret Lives of Dentists

Sideways

Sunshine State

The Tao of Steve

The Whole Nine Yards

Three Kings

Watch this space for the winners….

February 2004:

Without exception, my friends are puzzled by my more than occasional practice of reading biographies from back to front. It puzzles me, too, even though I’ve been doing it for years, and I can’t offer any explanation, however theoretical, for a habit that at first, second, and third glances makes no sense. All I can tell you is that for some reason not yet accessible to introspection, I often prefer to read about a person’s life in reverse chronological order, starting with his death and working backwards to his birth….

(If it’s new to you, read the whole thing here.)