Palmer Journal: 1—Origin StoryI realized yesterday that I don’t remember where he went to school....
Palmer Journal: 1—Origin StoryI realized yesterday that I don’t remember where he went to school. Where Robert Palmer learned the craft part of his craft. Who from? Even the half-biographies floating around on the internet treat the man as if he fell from the sky at twenty-something and immediately went to Tanglewood to study with Copland. But one has to learn to write notes on the page, right? One has to start with 4/4 before they get to 21/16, right? That impeccable script. That tight counterpoint. Where did it come from? The letters begin with him working in a supermarket, but the sonata is all but completed.Have I simply not paid attention to the quaint Wikipedia entry (okay, he went to Eastman), which includes his middle name, Moffat? Nowhere else does his name appear this way. Perhaps whoever created it wished to keep him separate from the ubiquitous pop singer, who enters nearly every conversation I have about the composer who lived quietly in Ithaca, roamed quietly at Cornell in the composition department he helped build. Before that, briefly, it was Lawrence, Kansas, where he taught piano and theory, and played a recital that included Haydn, Chopin and his own First Sonata. A postcard he sent in 1940 shows the administration building, with a little arrow pointing to his office: “my hangout!”
Quietly as the first American composer published by Peters, only to receive a string of apologetic rejections afterward, as his legacy, perhaps his future, vanished in the obliterating force of later experimentalists—serialists, indeterminists, minimalists—namely all the other composers I enjoy playing. Sure, people in Ithaca knew and loved him, and yes, played his work—students, mainly. There doesn’t seem to be much surviving in Kansas. I’ve emailed people at Cornell who remember him fondly. They call him “Bob.”I haven’t seen any of his letters outside of those he sent to John Kirkpatrick, which I saw at Yale a couple years ago, but even those letters begin with the two of them discussing his First Sonata, meticulously composed, maybe a touch overwrought, but mature in style and breadth. He sends fragments, one or two measures with the staff itself handwritten, to Kirkpatrick and Kirkpatrick says yay or nay to such-and-such transition. (One of Palmer’s latest works for piano is called Transitions—I learned it, but won’t record it this go-round). The only thing immature about that sonata is perhaps its ambition, typical of first sonatas. And also typically, his second is much smaller—two short movements, ten minutes.But the narrative begins there for me, and sort of for everyone. And frankly it stops soon after.I want to ask his daughter, if I meet her this weekend in Ithaca, about the narrative. If she knows anything about his parents. I‘ve asked composers who brushed paths with Palmer about his personality, but never his beginnings. And still, they have foggy or short memories. An argument, a look, a generality. Even Steven Stucky, one of the most prominent Palmer advocates before he himself passed away, had few details when we met at Indie cafe across the street from Juilliard—and yet we talked for well over an hour. What did we talk about? I remember so little. But certain half-sentences he left me with continue to endure, as does my regret for not asking for more details. I’m not ready quite yet to share those half-sentences here. Just like I’m conflicted about sharing what little personal information he shares with Kirkpatrick in those letters. Is it mine to share? Is it even important?I’m not even sure where he was born (okay, Syracuse), and after all I’m just a pianist, so maybe I don’t need to know why, in 1943, a time of draft, he was “rejected permanently (4F), for psychological reasons,” which he quickly promised would allow him to now “play more intelligently,” and would “practically make certain” that he could be on the East coast the remainder of that year. Then he writes about a grant he received from the Koussevistzky Foundation.
Quietly as the first American composer published by Peters, only to receive a string of apologetic rejections afterward, as his legacy, perhaps his future, vanished in the obliterating force of later experimentalists—serialists, indeterminists, minimalists—namely all the other composers I enjoy playing. Sure, people in Ithaca knew and loved him, and yes, played his work—students, mainly. There doesn’t seem to be much surviving in Kansas. I’ve emailed people at Cornell who remember him fondly. They call him “Bob.”I haven’t seen any of his letters outside of those he sent to John Kirkpatrick, which I saw at Yale a couple years ago, but even those letters begin with the two of them discussing his First Sonata, meticulously composed, maybe a touch overwrought, but mature in style and breadth. He sends fragments, one or two measures with the staff itself handwritten, to Kirkpatrick and Kirkpatrick says yay or nay to such-and-such transition. (One of Palmer’s latest works for piano is called Transitions—I learned it, but won’t record it this go-round). The only thing immature about that sonata is perhaps its ambition, typical of first sonatas. And also typically, his second is much smaller—two short movements, ten minutes.But the narrative begins there for me, and sort of for everyone. And frankly it stops soon after.I want to ask his daughter, if I meet her this weekend in Ithaca, about the narrative. If she knows anything about his parents. I‘ve asked composers who brushed paths with Palmer about his personality, but never his beginnings. And still, they have foggy or short memories. An argument, a look, a generality. Even Steven Stucky, one of the most prominent Palmer advocates before he himself passed away, had few details when we met at Indie cafe across the street from Juilliard—and yet we talked for well over an hour. What did we talk about? I remember so little. But certain half-sentences he left me with continue to endure, as does my regret for not asking for more details. I’m not ready quite yet to share those half-sentences here. Just like I’m conflicted about sharing what little personal information he shares with Kirkpatrick in those letters. Is it mine to share? Is it even important?I’m not even sure where he was born (okay, Syracuse), and after all I’m just a pianist, so maybe I don’t need to know why, in 1943, a time of draft, he was “rejected permanently (4F), for psychological reasons,” which he quickly promised would allow him to now “play more intelligently,” and would “practically make certain” that he could be on the East coast the remainder of that year. Then he writes about a grant he received from the Koussevistzky Foundation.
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