From Creator to Listener

Since I was born in 1946, roughly the first 54 years of my life took place during the second half of the twentieth century. Much of my time during that period was devoted to making music in one way or another. For the most part this involved playing clarinet and alto saxophone in various ensembles and singing in others (beginning as a second tenor and dropping into baritone as I grew older). I first began to venture into improvising after my parents bought a piano and I was never particularly interested in what I was given for piano lessons. It was only towards the end of my high school years that I encountered a community orchestra in which I played first clarinet, whose conductor encouraged my improvisation efforts, many of which then involved my working with the other clarinetist in the ensemble playing piano, rather than clarinet.

It was only after I began my graduate studies in mathematics (which eventually led to an early doctoral dissertation in computer science) that I shifted my attempts at creativity from musical instruments to tape recorders. My mentor was the composer Ezra Sims, who had no significant academic credentials. I met him as a result of the fact that I was spending more time reviewing dance performances than listening to (or trying to create) music. It was through Sims that I first worked up both the discipline and the competence to create something worthy of the attention of others. My efforts attracted the attention of choreographer Cliff Keuter, whom I then joined on a trip to Tel Aviv, when I created a tape composition for a piece that he created for the Bat-Dor Dance Company entitled “Fall Gently on Thy Head.” At that time I had just finished writing my doctoral dissertation and was able to “take a break” while it was being typed prior to my giving my defense.

After that, computer science pretty much put any efforts in music into the background. My “professional life” began at the Technion in Haifa (which I had visited during my Bat-Dor gig), followed by a lengthier Assistant Professorship at the University of Pennsylvania. After that, I made the move into research laboratory appointments, first in the private sector with General Research Corporation in Santa Barbara, followed by Schlumberger-Doll Research in Ridgefield, Connecticut (involving several engaging business trips to Europe), and then at the Information Sciences Institute, part of the University of Southern California, in Marina del Rey. After that, I joined the “Xerox family,” first at the newly-formed “outpost” for Fuji Xerox in Palo Alto and then at the better-known PARC (Palo Alto Research Center). During that entire span, I managed to inject a moderate number of publications in music theory among the more “professional” papers that I had published.

Nevertheless, my writing about music had more to do with “theory” than with “practice.” It was only after my retirement that I had both the time and the resources to satisfying my appetite for concerts and recitals. Indeed, once my wife and I moved from Palo Alto to San Francisco, we found ourselves living within a matter of a view blocks from the major Civic Center venues for performances. My own “turning point” took place in the spring of 2007 after a San Francisco Symphony performance of Finnish music, which I had attended one afternoon with a former PARC colleague. After reading Joshua Kosman’s column for the San Francisco Chronicle, I could not resist the urge to document an “alternative opinion,” which showed up on this site on April 1, 2007.

Umberto Eco (from a Tourist With a Typewriter Web page)

As Umberto Eco wrote about The Name of the Rose, he wrote the novel because “I wanted to kill a monk.” He then proceeded from that declaration to liken killing a monk to eating potato chips. Drawing upon a familiar advertising phrase, he observed, “You can’t kill just one.” So it was that responding to an opinion about the performance of music in the Chronicle turned out to be something I could not do only once. Since that time, the only thing that has changed is that I no longer write “responses.” For the most part, I experience a performance at the same time as my fellow critics; and I make it a point to document my own opinions before taking the time to read any others.

This April will mark the eighteenth anniversary of my first serious effort. (Eighteen happens to be a lucky number in Judaism, but atheists do not have lucky numbers!) In retrospect, I feel that I have enjoyed more satisfaction over that period than I did from any one my “professional” undertakings. Mind you, it was as a “professional” that I was able to create a “financial cushion” that would support the “retirement gig” that I created for myself; and, while I was working at each of those sites, the assets prevailed over the liabilities. Now, however, the only liability is sitting through a performance and feeling that I had rather be somewhere else; and, fortunately, those occasions have turned out to be pretty rare!