Adam Tendler's Blog, page 31
February 25, 2015
grow up (or, passing mood)
the more i grow up, the less i’m able to tolerate ives’s puritanical bullshit.
and it’s too bad, because it was ives’s music that first invited me to the dance as a teenager when i scarcely knew what modern music was. and it’s too bad, because in college i fought tooth and nail for special-admittance to a course on ives’s music, studying and writing about it in-depth under the guidance of one of the world’s foremost ives scholars. and it’s too bad, because i went on to perform and speak about ives’s music in all fifty states, telling his story with the same myth and pathos that had first enchanted and carried me through a near-decade of autumn-tinged ives fantasia.
but now? as in right now, this moment, today, as i read (for the who-knows-how-manyieth time) the rather famed letter ives’s wife wrote to the wife of carl ruggles about henry cowell—cowell, who was ives’s first (and at first, only) ally, and who was at the time locked up in a 4-foot san quentin jail cell—the picture painted of ives is not of the mysterious and tragic father of american music, but rather that of a couch-fainting drama queen, a child, naive to the point of absurdity, throwing a nelly temper tantrum while turning a blind eye to the numerous faggots to whom he solely owed his reputation as a composer.
i should be well used to this by now, and i thought i was, but today it just doesn’t fit. not for me, not anymore. nor does it really feel “of the time” or any of that other nonsense. ives’s lame-brain drag act has finally, for me, begun to also drag down his music.
and it’s too bad, because suddenly that music’s gnarliness doesn’t strike me as audacious, but rather as kind of annoying, and its sweetness, which once knotted my stomach and quivered my cheeks, comes across as the irritating nostalgia of a very rich man fetishizing a very imaginary postcard. oh, danbury…
have you been to danbury?
i used to weep for ives, not to mention defend and excuse him, but today it seems so foolish. then again, there’s always tomorrow, and i guess, like many of the pianists who have championed his music, i was in the closet once, too.
gratuitous
if every time i decided to have my piano tuned i instead scheduled a massage (same price about), i think my piano would sound much better.
February 24, 2015
inspiration
my favorite art/writing/music isn’t the kind that makes me think that nobody else could have made it, and thus it’s a work of genius, but rather that which makes me think that anyone else could’ve made it, and thus it’s a work of genius.
February 23, 2015
princess (or, i don't act)
for as long as i can remember, at the end of every oscars broadcast i’ve found myself in a haze where it seems not just possible, but inevitable—just a mere matter of time—before i’ll be scooped up by some miracle and made into a movie star.
February 19, 2015
my memory journal for learning feldman’s “palais de...
my memory journal for learning feldman’s “palais de mari”
February 6, 2015
American music junky: I just met a dealer from Amazon on the...
American music junky: I just met a dealer from Amazon on the street to do a cash exchange for this original LP of Copland’s Nonet.
February 3, 2015
quick cowell thought
the more i study his life and music, the more arrows from our modern conception of contemporary music point to henry cowell. even the term “new music” was first thought up by him (and his dad and stepmom) on a camping trip in 1927.
February 1, 2015
subwaybookreview:88x50 by Adam Tendler.
Jordan: “The story is...
88x50 by Adam Tendler.
Jordan: “The story is about this guy who just graduated from music school and wants to do a free series of modem American music in all 50 states over the course of a year. There are 88 keys on the piano and he wants to play in 50 states - hence the title. He comes to terms with being homosexual and there are a lot of parallels between his performance anxiety and his sexuality. It’s a memoir. I relate to the performance anxiety cause I’m a musician. He does an excellent job of putting you in his footsteps. I don’t want to give away too much. There’s a lot really human anecdotes built into the book.”
#newyork #nyc #bookreview #subwaybookreview #book #love #reading #subway #list #fall #bookloversunite #88x50 #tendler #memoir #readinglist #bookclub
#readingisawesome #bookworm #instagood #igers #style #follow #instabook #iphoneonly #vsco (at Union Square Station)
January 25, 2015
guidance
in high school, when i told my guidance counselor i wanted to be a pianist, i remember that she asked point blank, “well, what does a pianist do?”
i could make something up, but i don’t really recall what i said—maybe “play the piano?”—but then she questioned further.
"i mean, do you really want to play ballet rehearsals for the rest of your life?"
January 23, 2015
special printing. special delivery. special music.
special printing. special delivery. special music.
