New day’s resolution: S-p-R

By Moristotle

[Originally published 10 years ago, on December 29, 2011]

Moristotle, you recently said that you’d be more mindful how you spend your time. Are you spending it better?
    If you’d asked me that yesterday, I don’t think I could have answered coherently—and not sure I can yet. Apparently, the challenge to be more mindful went deeper than I realized. It raises lots of difficult questions.
    For example?

What if basketball games weren’t won or lost?

By Moristotle

[Originally published 12 years ago, on December 30, 2009]

We’re going to a Tar Heels men’s basketball game tonight. I know, for those of you aware of my attitude toward spectator sports, it isn’t possible that I’m going. Nevertheless, my wife and I are going; we want to spend as much time with our daughter and son-in-law as possible and they told us before they came to visit that they would like to go if I could get tickets.

The PocketRock Heart Project: The Things We Hold Dear (Part 1)

By Maik Strosahl

Heading back into work after spending Thanksgiving with my wife and boys, I received my next load assignment. Three deliveries and a pickup in the Quad Cities. First time for everything. A load heading to my home town of Moline, Illinois.
    Now, I have been working out of Fulton, Missouri, for over three years and have taken many a load that goes farther than the 244 miles to Moline, but I have never pulled that load—mostly because their stores are usually serviced out of Janesville, Wisconsin. This was special.

Belated “Merry Christmas” to Ken

By Moristotle

[Originally published 11 years ago, on December 26, 2010]

Well, Ken [Marks], I’ll see what I can do about a few field observations in the persona you suggested of an anthropologist from an atheistic society:

From “The Scratching Post” 2021: Story of the year

By Ken Marks

[Originally posted on The Scratching Post three days ago, on December 24, 2021. Extracted here by permission of the author.]



We thought last January that the worst was behind us. We had a new president with an inspiring agenda. He called on an admirable cast of professionals to fill his cabinet posts. Covid vaccines were widely available. In short order, a Covid relief bill became law, though without the support of a single Republican senator. That was the first dark sign. Now, as the final days of the year play out, our democracy is clinging to a cliff’s edge. How the hell could this have happened? Let me count the ways.

All Over the Place: Christmas Eve on Ash Street

By Michael H. Brownstein

The day before Christmas there was a glorious silence.

Even the meth house next door closed down for the holiday.

The drunk racist bar owner did not come out of her home

with her hee-hee laughter filling the air with bad bourbon breath.

No trucks left their loud engines running as they banged

deliveries down long metal ramps. No car doors slammed.

No one cursed in East Side Terrace. No one broke a window.

No one played obscene rap music so loud it scrambled eggs.

Seventy degrees by noon, the third day of winter, a glorious quiet

and we sat on our porch, reminisced about Christmas, family 

and friends, the dogs in the yard by the alley patiently perfect.

By nightfall, the moon shared the sky with a warm spring drizzle

and we settled down to dinner, in love, and then—the soft hum

of a cricket, the melody of songbirds, a whistle of wind and leaf.

No one anywhere could ask for anything so precious as this.

Copyright © 2021 by Michael H. Brownstein Michael H. Brownstein’s volumes of poetry, A Slipknot Into Somewhere Else and How Do We Create Love?, were published by Cholla Needles Press in 2018 & 2019, respectively.

Acting Citizen: Once in a Decade

By James Knudsen

This has never happened. Well, it’s never happened to me. Is this a case of white male privilege? Is that supposed to be hyphenated? Have I lost my train of thought? Again? Where was I?
    Christmas 2021 is on a Saturday. Since joining Moristotle, the fourth Saturday has never fallen on December 25^th, and the pressure to bring a spirit of “glad tidings, joy, noel (where’s the umlaut?), mistletoe & holly, cup o’ cheer, let’s be jolly” is once-in-a-decade intense.

Goines On: “Merry Christmas!”

Click image for more vignettes

As the Christmas cards arrived in the Goineses’ mailbox – some of them holding back from “Merry Christmas!” with “Season’s Greetings!” – Goines remembered something he had read the day before:

The Christmas holidays (including New Year’s Day) are sad for reminding us of losses. Our parents are dead, some of our siblings, a number of friends. We can’t quite get back into the child’s belief in Santa Claus.

Silent night, empty night

12 years later,
still silent and empty

By Moristotle

[Originally published on December 23, 2009.]

It behooves me, I think, to try to explain why the Christmas holidays compound life’s sadness, as I said the other day they do.
    It’s actually pretty simple. The sadness of life lies in loss. We are born (if we haven’t lost already in the womb) and immediately start losing things, at last our life itself. The holidays are symbolic of our once-upon-a-time hope that loss is an illusion:

Highways and Byways: Windshield Martyry

By Maik Strosahl

Throughout my years, I have heard of several “miraculous” incarnations of important Holy people. I remember as a kid reading something of a corn flake-shaped Savior. A quick internet search found an article about the Jesus pancake, the Lord’s smudge, the blessing from the ironing board, and my personal favorite, Mother Mary’s grilled cheese.
    So, when a stray rock was launched my way as I was taking an eighteen-wheeler down a rural Missouri back road, I too came to see a miracle. Right before my eyes.

Happy Birthday

To all good people
born on December 21

By Moristotle

[Originally published on December 21, 2019.]

Because today is the birthday of my son, Contributing Editor Geoffrey Dean, I would like to dedicate today’s [re]publication of poet Bob Boldt’s “Caruso in Honduras” to him and to all other good people born on this date, in whatever year.
    Honored individuals (and everyone else, good or bad): don’t deprive yourselves of the joy of reading Bob’s poem and watching and, especially, listening to his video performance and the video performances of Luciano Pavarotti & Lucio Dalla and Andrea Giuffredi.

Boldt Words & Images: Caruso in Honduras

By Bob Boldt

[Originally published on December 21, 2019.]










A couple stands by the wind-blown bus sign.
His chin, still fuzzy, merely a boy,
an unstrung guitar string hanging there.
With three strings he begins his song.

Two ways of looking at the chicken in the egg

By Moristotle

[Originally published on Thor’s Day December 20, 2012.

    This republication is dedicated to Dr. Nortin M. Hadler and all other Scientific Americans, whether or not they are members of the Sigma Xi Scientific Research Honor Society.]

The following science story came to my attention this morning [9 years ago]:

All Over the Place: A Dance to the Music of Wind and Sunlight

By Michael H. Brownstein

The morning sky cobalt and emerald,

a ghost river and a ghost shoreline without litter,

and then shadows of decrescendo and allegro,

a challenge that brings fortissimo to daylight.

Three “little Siegfrieds”

 

Siegfried Dean as a pup

12 years later
all still beloved

By Moristotle

[Originally published on December 18, 2009.]

[The woman] who sold us our beloved Siegfried back in March [2009] has announced the availability of three more “beautiful Cream/White puppies.”

35 and 118 Years Ago: December 17, 1903

By Moristotle

[A visit to the Wright Brothers memorial at Kitty Hawk, North Carolina, in October 1986 unexpectedly provoked me to write a poem, and the arrival of December 17 again renews the thrill of the remembered occasion. Originally published on December 17, 2006, during this blog’s first year, without the image.]

Oh, calm brothers, a thousand glides
off Kill Devil Hill and you know
your Flyer’s cambered wings can catch enough

Withholding yourself

15 years later,
still instructive

By Moristotle

[Originally published on December 16, 2006, without an image and in the default font of the time.]

In Colm Tóibín’s novel, The Master, Henry James is visiting his old friend, the wealthy Paul Bourget, an “unpleasantly rigid and authoritarian” anti-Semite:

Henry did everything he could, in the early days of his stay, not to discuss Zola or the Dreyfus case with Paul or Minnie Bourget or their guest, feeling that his own views on the matter would diverge from those of his hosts. His support for Zola and, indeed, for Dreyfus was sufficiently strong not to wish to hear the Bourgets’ prejudices on the matter.

Highways and Byways: The Orchard

By Maik Strosahl

When mistakes are made in a relationship, it is easy to compound them. Especially big mistakes. I have made my share of them, as many have through the years.
    I have always been impressed by people who seem to find a way to work through even the toughest circumstance, overcome the greatest betrayals, and find a way to make a relationship work. I admire them, but I don’t know whether I could be that great a person.
     Today’s poem was an experiment in working through the pain and some of the consequences of mistakes that can last a lifetime. I dedicate it to those who have found a way to stay, live through the day, and enjoy their responsibility for guiding the apples that come from The Orchard.

Goines On: ​Was this what was going on?

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On the drive home from his endocrinologist, Goines surmised a possible reason for his “memory loss” earlier that morning. It wasn​​’t so much memory loss as divided attention, or neglecting to give full attention to the task at hand: pouring hot water into the already soapy coffee carafe and then pouring most of it over the dishes in the sink.
    The resulting lapse, he guessed, was that he was attending more to narrating to himself what he was doing than attending to what he was doing, rather like an editor paying more attention to how someone had phrased the sentence he or she was reading than to what the sentence was saying.

Goines On: ​ What​​’s going on?

Click image for more vignettes

Goines was washing the dishes before he took off for his endocrinological appointment in Chapel Hill. He had just picked up the coffee carafe containing hot, soapy  water to pour over the dishes in the sink for washing, and was now looking around the kitchen for the coffee carafe itself, which also needed washing. Where was it!? Had he already put it in the closet unwashed?
    But then he felt and saw the carafe in his hand, which more shocked than relieved him. Wow, he thought, he had just emailed a neighbor who hadn’t answered him for several days and joked whether he should notify the coroner or have a memory specialist come around to check on the neighbor.

All Over the Place: The Hungruf

By Michael H. Brownstein

In the early evening, the Hungruf^* gather to feed,

One legged, one armed, half a head, half a body,

They come from sleep into a standing position and wait.

Why search for food when food is just a touch away?

Why race after prey when flesh melts away leaving meat

On bones, fresh blood for drinking, cooked by a mere finger

Prize (a poem)

Second Saturday’s Sonnet
6 Years & a Month Ago

By Morris Dean

[Originally published on November 15, 2015, here slightly amended.]



“Stately?” she quizzed my comment on her walk,
    her high-heeled shoes exalting shapely limbs
displayed in tights that summoned men to gawk
    and sing out praises fit for churchly hymns.

Goines On: Getting Goines going

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Goines felt anything but physically ready as he approached the electrical box where he usually did at least one of his two sets of push-ups. But he had to try, if only to confirm that he wasn’t up to it...or to discover that maybe he was up to it, that maybe he could get going this morning, however his body felt. Might he, for example, even do his two sets of 50 push-ups with only, say, a minute’s break between them? Usually he’d walk another quarter-mile or so before doing the second.

Goines On: In need of inspiration

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Goines didn’t remember subscribing to “Inspiring Quotes,” but every day he was receiving an email under that rubric:

Today’s Quote: “Music is a higher revelation than...”

15 Quotes on Getting Older

Today’s Quote: “Love is free; it is not practiced as a way of...”

Mindfulness explained in 14 quotes

Today’s Quote: “Great necessities call out great...”

Highways and Byways: The Seduction

By Maik Strosahl

I currently have a hundred browser pages open on my iPhone. Ridiculous, I know, but they are open to many items I hope to use for future pieces.
    This poem was started in May from a challenge prompt put out by The Ekphrastic Review.
    The challenge was to write something about the painting “Hylas and the Nymphs,” created in 1896 by John William Waterhouse.

From the Alwinac: US Cello Performances, 1891-2: An Annotated Timeline, part 2

[Click on image to
go directly to
the Alwinac’s home page]

[The Alwinac blog is part of the schroeder170 project, honoring the life and musical career of cellist Alwin Schroeder (1855-1928) and exploring the history of cello playing in the US.]


See Part 1 here.

January 1892 

9       Liederkrantz Hall, NY – Anton Hekking among the solo performers

on Liederkrantz 45th anniversary event for 600 members and guests.

11      Academy of Music, Philadelphia – Alwin Schroeder performs solos

on Boston Symphony Orchestra concert there. The Leipzig Musikalisches Wochenblatt reported on the “enthusiastic reception” of Schroeder’s playing in Philadelphia, and the local press wrote….
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Read on….

Copyright © 2021 by Geoffrey Dean

West Coast Observer: Roe v. Wade

By William Silveira

In 1965 the United States Supreme Court decided the case of Griswold v. Connecticut, which held that the 14th amendment’s due process clause implied a fundamental right to privacy and overturned the Connecticut law. This was the first recognition by the Supreme Court of a constitutional right to privacy. But it has withheld court challenges ever since.

    So, along comes Roe v. Wade in 1973, in which the Supreme Court had to decide whether a woman’s right to privacy is outweighed by the due process clause, which gives an unborn child a right to life. So then, you had all the debate about when an unborn child is viable and deserving of due process protection, and so on.

All Over the Place:Santa Claus Visits the Projects

From My Teaching Book

By Michael H. Brownstein

I asked my fourth-grade class a number of years back to write about Santa Claus’s visit to the projects. I was hopeful. I thought I might receive a variety of stories—some funny, some serious, some outright violent. Unfortunately, they were all violent. These are from children living in the Robert Taylor Homes, at the time the world’s largest public housing development. The high-rises are now torn down and gone. The school these students went to is abandoned. The essays will always resonate within me. Here are four samples, unedited and written from their hearts and souls:

Quindrell: One Christmas Eve, Santa Claus goes to people’s house and gives present (sic). Then he gets to my house in the projects. Santa Claus crawls on the wall with a rope and busts your window. Then he said, “Ho, ho, ho, merry Christmas.” Then they shot Santa in the mouth because they think he is a burglar.

15 Years Ago Today: “I don’t believe that x” ≠ “I believe that not-x”

By Moristotle

[Originally published on December 4, 2006.]

Last night I sliced open that one Fuyu persimmon from this year’s harvest [on Ironwood Place in Chapel Hill, North Carolina], preparing twenty or thirty thin slices for our dessert. (There was only the one fruit because, after last year’s Fuyu harvest of over 300, I apparently pruned the tree more severely than I should have. I won’t go into the theory of persimmon cultivation; anyway, my imperfect practice of it tends to disqualify me from stating it.)

Boldt Words & Images: Are we living in a simulation?

By Bob Boldt

[Editor’s Note: This fine essay was submitted over two years ago, but we never got it off the ground. We are prompted to publish it now because of something revealed by a recent book review: “The Novel That Riveted France During Lockdown Arrives in the U.S.” (Roger Cohen, New York Times, November 23):

Yet in the end the double anomaly at the heart of the novel – the upending of time in a world that discovers it is simulated – captured a moment when the pandemic stopped the world and existence veered toward the virtual.]

Are we living in a simulation? And what if we are? A 23-minute documentary film, What If the Earth Does Not Exist?¹, explains what “living in a simulation” means and why the idea is taken seriously as a possibility. The film is imaginatively and descriptively visual. I had seen many of its demonstrations before, but they have been effectively re-imagined here. The film makers spend so much time on the video game series Grand Theft Auto, however, that I suspect coin may have changed hands – maybe I’m just joking with this observation.

Goines On: ’Tis the season

Click image for more vignettes

The Goineses chose Tuesday again for their weekly Costco shopping. Goines let his wife out to go in while he got gas. 

      When he entered the store himself, he was accosted by music loud enough that when he phoned Mrs. Goines to tell her he was in the store and ask where she was, each of them had to speak louder to rise above the din.
    Later, in the car, Mrs. Goines said she had complained to the front desk about the noise, but she was told, “The head office issued a directive we are to play seasonal music every hour during the month of December.”

Highways and Byways: In the Fire of This Water

By Maik Strosahl

Before getting my license to drive commercially, I worked a couple years in an Amazon warehouse picking orders. It’s a controlled chaos system intended to utilize every bit of available space, so it feels like a scavenger hunt with a scanner gun.
    On one of these many searches, I found a sobriety coin engraved with a serenity prayer for Native Americans who struggle with alcohol. I thought the message in the inscription was beautiful:

Boldt Words & Images: History’s Rhymes 9/11/73

Convergences

By Bob Boldt

[Appeared here originally four years ago today, on November 30, 2017.]

The poem below comes from a portfolio of poems that I submitted during fall semester for the “Poetry Workshop” at Lincoln University in Jefferson City, Missouri. I hope in the coming months to publish a few more of these poems on Moristotle & Co.
    As a frame for today’s poem, I have adapted from the essay that accompanied the portfolio some hopefully relevant reflections on poetry and a poet.

From the Scratching Post:Courage

By Ken Marks

[Originally posted four days ago (on November 25, 2021) on The Scratching Post. Extracted here by permission of the author.]

The subject of courage baffles me. I hear people use the word, I see it in news stories, but I fail to grasp its essence. Maybe it has no essence. I’m told it has a relationship with fear and virtue, but I can’t find a felicitous connection. I’ve sought help in collections of quotations, and ... well, I’ll just show you what happens.

      I’ll start with the view of courage held by Joe Sixpack, as expressed by John Wayne, The Duke of Hollywood legend. With cowboy brevity, he said:

Courage is being scared to death ... and saddling up anyway.

    So many problems there. Wayne is offering only the warrior’s notion of courage, the kind that would probably be the death of me. I imagine my sergeant ordering me and a few others to charge up Pork Chop Hill and take out a machine gun nest. That sounds pretty reckless to me; I’ve got a family back home, and, oh yeah ... I don’t want to die. And damn that sergeant for the conflict he’s laid on me — either being labeled a coward and court-martialed or being riddled with bullets.
    OK, say I and one other soldier survive….

[Read the whole thing on The Scratching Post.]

Copyright © 2021 by Ken Marks Ken Marks was a contributing editor with Paul Clark & Tom Lowe when “Moristotle” became “Moristotle & Co.” A brilliant photographer, witty conversationalist, and elegant writer, Ken contributed photographs, essays, and commentaries from mid-2008 through 2012. Late in 2013, Ken birthed the blog The Scratching Post. He also posts albums of his photos on Flickr.

All Over the Place: Thanks for...

By Michael H. Brownstein

morning enters the room
a selfie
behind the hills
unconscious on his porch
empty bottles nearby

the disease of the woman,
saliva dripping from her open mouth
onto the sidewalk in a place once called
White Clay, Nebraska

Goines On: Clarification

Click image for more vignettes

Goines had to scratch his mind to remember how he had decided the day before to start wearing his distance glasses all of the time, and not just for viewing something on the TV monitor, driving, and taking walks. (Of course, he wouldn’t wear them when he was using his reading or computer glasses.)
    He had already discovered in the first 24 hours of wearing his distance glasses all of the time that he felt better, livelier – even more optimistic. And he could swear that now he wasn’t bumping into stuff as much when walking around the house; now he was truly walking – not stumbling – around.

From the Alwinac: US Cello Performances, 1891-2 Season: An Annotated Timeline, part 1

[Click on image to
go directly to
the Alwinac’s home page]

[The Alwinac blog is part of the schroeder170 project, honoring the life and musical career of cellist Alwin Schroeder (1855-1928) and exploring the history of cello playing in the US.]


The 1891-2 season, Alwin Schroeder’s first in the US, saw an extraordinary convergence of musical talent in this country, and the development of rivalries between New York and Boston musicians and ensembles. The timeline below chronicles some of the concerts given by cellists in the US during October, November, and December, when Schroeder was taking his first steps in establishing himself as a leading cello soloist on this side of the Atlantic.

October 1891

9, 10    Music Hall, Boston – First BSO concerts with Alwin Schroeder as first cello

Formerly first cellist of the Leipzig Gewandhaus and Theatre orchestras (1880-1891), Schroeder came to Boston in September 1891 at the invitation of Boston Symphony Orchestra music director Arthur Nikisch to join the Kneisel Quartet and lead the BSO cello section. His BSO predecessors as first cellist included Wulf Fries (1881), Wilhelm Mueller (1882-4), Fritz Giese (1884-9), and Anton Hekking (1889-1891).

14      City Hall, Portland ME – Alwin Schroeder solos….
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Read on….

Copyright © 2021 by Geoffrey Dean

Life Goes On

By Victor L. Midyett

The temperature this morning is the coldest it has been to date this autumn at 33˚F, just one degree above freezing for my Aussie friends.
    The grass is covered in a white sheet of frost, but thankfully there is no wind or even a breeze to speak of. The best part is there are no clouds and the sun is beaming brightly.

Goines On: Friends on the road

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Goines lifted the ice chest onto the back seat of the Volvo to hold the cold stuff he and Mrs. Goines expected to buy at Costco.
    They were going two days earlier than usual because “usual” would be Thanksgiving Day. He went back into the house to see whether Mrs. Goines was ready yet.
    “Oh,” she said, approaching in her housecoat, “I forgot we were going to Costco.”
    The bit of relief Goines felt at her confession surprised him. He joked, “I don’t know whether to feel relieved that you forget stuff too, or alarmed that the whole household memory is declining.”

From the Scratching Post:Fear and trembling

By Ken Marks

[Originally posted on The Scratching Post one month ago today, on October 23, 2021. Extracted here by permission of the author.]

Now and then I’m accused, usually for goods reasons, of being insensitive. At the year’s end, when the subject of new year’s resolutions comes up, I don’t write anything down, but I remind myself that insensitivity is a demon I haven’t exorcised. It’s a lifelong struggle.

Putting on a show

    So I counted it a personal victory when I realized how insensitively we celebrate Halloween. Of all our yearly observances, it’s the cruelest and most misguided. Millions of adults annually go out of their way to scare the bejesus out of little kids. They delude themselves by imagining that kids enjoy it, but the small fry have misled them. To save face, they’ll tell you, “Yow! I think my heart stopped! Ha ha ha!” Fright is supposedly fun. Just ask any roller coaster junky.
    I sense you doubting me....

[Read the whole thing on The Scratching Post.]

Copyright © 2021 by Ken Marks Ken Marks was a contributing editor with Paul Clark & Tom Lowe when “Moristotle” became “Moristotle & Co.” A brilliant photographer, witty conversationalist, and elegant writer, Ken contributed photographs, essays, and commentaries from mid-2008 through 2012. Late in 2013, Ken birthed the blog The Scratching Post. He also posts albums of his photos on Flickr.

From the Alwinac: Hugo Becker’s Love Scenes, Op. 7

[Click on image to
go directly to
the Alwinac’s home page]

[The Alwinac blog is part of the schroeder170 project, honoring the life and musical career of cellist Alwin Schroeder (1855-1928) and exploring the history of cello playing in the US.]


Liebesleben (Love Scenes), a “little suite” for cello and piano, was published in Liepzig by Max Brockhaus in 1894. I discovered it in the Carlo Fischer Collection at the Hennepin County Library in the summer of 2021.
    The six movements are Begegnung (First Sight), Zweifel (Doubt), In Traumen (Dreaming), Tandelei (Flitting), Frage (Question), and Antwort (Answer). The song-like form and expression of five of the movements is contrasted with the instrumentally-conceived and aptly-named Flitting movement. Becker dedicated this suit….

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Read on….

Copyright © 2021 by Geoffrey Dean

All Over the Place:Dear Canadian Tourist Bureau

This is Why We Will Not Be Visiting Manitoba Anytime Soon, but We Are Thankful We Went Because We Discovered Frybread

By Michael H. Brownstein

Locked up knocked up trespassed vandalized and varnished,

Plum River curves into Manitoba earth easy as a pout, a frown, gimme tears.

Large mosquitoes thick with blood sprout from heavy grass like so many leopard frogs.

Who is this place where no one smiles?

Who is this place where no one knows thank you, please, excuse me?

A Couple of Maroons: Behind the Splash

Detail from
4th photo

By Craig McCollum & Maik Strosahl

More than one reader have requested more information about how the photo for our “Making a Splash” piece from September was produced. Let Craig tell you about it:

It was a lazy afternoon hanging out on the shoreline of Echo Lake in Montana. The sky was still filled with smoke from distant summer wildfires. It was getting late and I was caught by how the hazel light from the sun reflected across the water.

From the Scratching Post:Joy diminished

By Ken Marks

[Originally posted on The Scratching Post, November 19, 2018. Extracted here by permission of the author.]

I was elated the night of the midterm elections. The Democrats got a combative foot in the door! My tongue reached for appropriate cheers, something to express my joy and relief, and I knew at once that I was poorly equipped for the task.
    At such moments, one pulls up nothing but lame stuff — “Thank God!” or “Praise the Lord!“ or “Bless you, Jesus!” or other variations of religious programming. In my frustration, I wanted to cry out, “Yes, by Zeus!” But that’s the same thing, no?
    There are neo-religionists who, like me, would like to avoid invoking the conventional gods. So what do they say? Flaky stuff like “Bless the Universe!” or “Thank you, Cosmic Spirit!” The universe is gas and dust and a limitless quantum vacuum. It has no affections or affinities. We are on our own, with our values and our commitment or indifference to them.

[Read the whole thing on The Scratching Post.]

Copyright © 2018, 2021 by Ken Marks Ken Marks was a contributing editor with Paul Clark & Tom Lowe when “Moristotle” became “Moristotle & Co.” A brilliant photographer, witty conversationalist, and elegant writer, Ken contributed photographs, essays, and commentaries from mid-2008 through 2012. Late in 2013, Ken birthed the blog The Scratching Post. He also posts albums of his photos on Flickr.

From the Alwinac: Bel Canto Cellists: Cesare A. Casella pere et fils

[Click on image to
go directly to
the Alwinac’s home page]

[The Alwinac blog is part of the schroeder170 project, honoring the life and musical career of cellist Alwin Schroeder (1855-1928) and exploring the history of cello playing in the US.]


Listen to my performance of Chanson Napolitaine by C. A. Casella fils

A second-generation member of an Italian cello-playing family, Cesare A[ugustus] de Casella (1820-1884) was born in Lisbon, Portugal, to parents from the Italian city of Genoa. He was the eldest of three sons who were taught how to play the cello by their father, Pietro Casella (1790-ca. 1858), described as the founder of the Turin school of cello playing. After the family returned to Genoa, Casella made his solo debut there at the age of 14 and studied at the local conservatory. Following Pietro’s appointment as first cellist to King Charles Albert of Sardinia, Casella spent six years playing alongside his father (and, for one season, the teenage Alfredo Piatti) in the orchestra of the Royal Theatre in Turin before resigning this position to apply himself more seriously to the study of cello and composition.
    One of his early cello pieces, said to have been admired by the Sardinian king himself, was an Elegy on the death of Casella’s mother that he would continue to perform frequently. Casella received the titles of Solo Violoncellist of the royal court of Genoa and Professor of the Conservatory before creating a sensation in France, where his performances of his own compositions caused “tears to flow” and elicited flowery accounts:

Behold this fine young artiste, surrounded by a brilliant assemblage in the midst of a profound silence; his instrument is an organ which for a moment becomes part of himself….

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Read on….

Copyright © 2021 by Geoffrey Dean