From the Alwinac: Boston Symphony Cellist-Composers: Carl Bayrhoffer

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[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.]



Carl Bayrhoffer (1859-1926) was BSO first cellist for the latter part of the orchestra’s inaugural 1881-2 season, under the direction of conductor George Henschel. Bayrhoffer was born in Dusseldorf on May 19, 1859, the middle son of a local music publisher. In 1878, both he and Boston composer George Chadwick were students at the Leipzig Conservatory; at that time Alwin Schroeder’s older brother Carl was the cello teacher there. Chadwick may well have encouraged Bayrhoffer to come to the United States when the formation of the Boston Symphony Orchestra was announced.

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Copyright © 2021 by Geoffrey Dean

Iceage (a novel): Chapter 1. The End

A work in progress.
Chapters will be posted
as they are written.

I’m not sure how long I have before the lava moves this way. Two days ago the Earth corrected itself, making the entire Caucasus mountain range shake and rumble. We have been at the base of Elbrus Volcano buried in an ice hell for nineteen years, after the Earth turned two degrees on its axis, which set off an ice-age event and trapped us here. From the beginning, we have fought to survive, but this looks like the end. While this project may terminate in failure, there were moments of glory and success.
    Let me start at the beginning, seeing as how I believe I may be the last one alive on this mountain. What was left of the team tried to escape to the south, but I fear the eruption a few minutes ago may have killed them.
    I met Professor Eugene Upwight, from the University of Washington, in Seattle. He was looking for a Security Specialist. I had spent five tours in Afghanistan leading a great bunch of Special Forces guys. But, upon leaving the Army, I found my skill set was of little use in the real world. A friend had set up the interview with the Professor for me.

Highways and Byways: Lutheran Service

By Maik Strosahl

With some in the Roman Catholic faith believing that a new schism is building, I have done some research into another break in that church, that with Martin Luther in the 16th Century.
    I have friends who are Catholic and relatives who are Lutheran, but I never really knew what the difference was between the two until reading about Luther’s disputes with the church and his resulting excommunication, in 1521.

From “The Scratching Post”: My Bizarro Barometer

By Ken Marks

[Opening from the original on The Scratching Post, July 26 , 2021, published here by permission of the author.]

For the most part, life is boring. It’s much like a seismograph. It generally shows a flat line, but every so often, a blip appears. Rarely, there are a few small spikes. We experience this as unpleasantness, something between mild depression and vague discomfort. The medicine for this “illness” — yes, we’re all slightly ill — is distraction. We must heap it on our malady to make life manageable.
    Many a fortune has been built on this phenomenon. The entire fashion industry depends on it, as does the music industry. It explains why car makers offer so many models and design changes every year. It explains why Baskin-Robbins has 31 ice cream flavors. (Actually, it’s 1,300 since they opened their doors.) It explains why Chanel offers 127 perfumes. These are manufactured distractions. They work because they directly stimulate our senses. They take their cue from nature, which offers peacocks and roses and honey and salt licks and pheromones.
    There are also distractions that stimulate our minds rather than our senses. For example, if I told you a fatal disease had broken out in China, I’d probably get your attention. Or if I reported that astronomers have found evidence of a giant asteroid heading right at us, that would work too. But what if I were lying about the asteroid? If you thought I was a credible person, the result would be the same. You’d be uneasy. Maybe you’d say, “C’mon, really? I’ve got to check this out.” Either way, I put a blip on your seismograph.
    Before I go on in this vein, I have to reveal something about myself. Like you,....

[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: Humoresque: 2021 Illinois Chamber Music Festival

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[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.]


It has been a wonderful couple of weeks here in Bloomington, Illinois, where after a virtual festival in 2020 the Illinois Chamber Music Festival is back in person! The student ensembles have been truly committed to making the best possible music, resulting in some outstanding performances, and the faculty have worked hard to bring out the full potential of each group through daily coachings and open studio classes. I have enjoyed coaching works ranging from Schumann’s piano quartet to the Five Sketches for string quartet by Bulgarian composer Marin Goleminov, and performing the Villa Lobos string trio, the Dvorak piano quintet....
    Naturally this post also has an Alwin Schroeder connection. Last night the ICMF student cello ensemble played a Humoresque by Julius Klengel, Schroeder’s Leipzig cello colleague in the 1880s....

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Copyright © 2021 by Geoffrey Dean

All Over the Place: And Now the Great Missouri Floods

By Michael H. Brownstein

—Summer, and the Missouri floods after more than a week of rain and storm (2021)

Earth blisters into a break towards a view of the bench—

a stutter of grass, a scar of leaf:
the great Missouri’s flood water,

stagnant pools over bottom-land and farms,

muddy ponds on the Katy Trail
gone.

Acting Citizen: Czech Republic 4, U.S.A. 1

By James Knudsen

What would your reply be to the following statement? “Donald Trump was right.”
    That’s rather broad. Allow me to rephrase. “Donald Trump was right about immigration.”
    No, not the golden escalator moment; I mean when he was actually President. And to be fair, he really didn’t know he made a statement that included a milligram of truth. It was early January of 2018, and the former, one-term President (we cannot say that enough) was doing what he does best, complaining. Specifically, he was complaining about immigrants who come from— At this point, the former, one-term President used an expletive to describe the sort of country that, in his mind, most immigrants hail from. Statistical figures from the Pew Research Center show that in that same year, 2018, the top five countries of origin were: Mexico, China (including Hong Kong and Macau), India, The Philippines, and El Salvador. I know, the former, one-term President still hasn’t said anything accurate, but bear with me. The former, one-term President also suggested that the United States should be allowing immigrants from Norway. Hmm.

Goines On: Toe’s up!

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The very evening of the day Goines had reviled himself for uttering his “T”-cap joke to the landscaper, he stubbed a big toe on the stepping stone the landscaper had recently installed just off the lawn near the composting tumbler, which Mrs. Goines had suggested be positioned near their back porch for his convenience. He didn’t sleep well that night, with a throbbing, electric pain, about level 3 out of 10, but enough to slow his going to sleep, or back to sleep each time he awoke to pee.

Goines On: Maggot caps & fraudsters

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To go out and hand their landscaper a check for the morning’s lawn work and a bit of weeding, Goines chose from his array of billed caps the red one with the “T,” which a neighbor had given him about five years earlier. Stepping out now with it on his head, he remembered his initial reluctance to wear it in public.
    Goines and the landscaper had talked politics on numerous occasions and found themselves happily quite aligned, so he decided to make a joke about politics. “You of course know what the ‘T’ does not stand for...,” he said with a grin that was visible because he wasn’t wearing a mask against Covid. But the landscaper was fiddling with his own mask – against dust and pollen – and so didn’t hear what Goines had said.
    “I said you know what the ‘T’ on my red cap doesn’t stand for….”

Highways and Byways: Days in the Sun

By Maik Strosahl

A couple of months ago, I read an article about an 8-year-exposure photograph that was published by the University of Hertfordshire Press Office.
    In 2012, a simple camera made from an aluminum beer can, duct tape, and light-sensitive photographic paper was attached, facing skyward, to the side of the University of Hertfordshire’s Bayfordbury Observatory. Fine arts student Regina Valkenborgh placed it there and then forgot about it. Eight years and one month later it was found, revealing an image tracing eight years’ worth of solar paths across the sky.

Goines On: The stairs

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It rained again today, hard at times, so Goines walked inside for half an hour. Or, rather, he mounted the 13-step stairs to his office over and over, recording each ascent with a vertical mark on a card. Only once, he was confident, did he forget to mark, but he did two verticals after the very next ascent.
    His timer signaled just as he began to descend for the 37th time, but he’d consider the 37 to include that descent as well, because he needed to go down to drink some water and relax a few minutes before monitoring his blood pressure, which he hadn’t done for over a week.

All Over the Place: A Hike along the Near Forty

By Michael H. Brownstein

Purple loose leaf in loud clumps of morning glory

and every-yellows dripping with sunshine,

brown recluses covering the bark of the blackened birch,

paper wasp bark and monkey breath Anne’s lace:

Goines On: Exercise

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Goines reached out to his friend Zen, who had been awfully quiet for days. Was Zen okay? Had Goines offended Zen by telling him, after Zen had professed no interest in a project that meant a lot to Goines, that Zen seemed to be more of a taker than a giver?
    Zen made an effort to put Goines at ease by relenting to write that he had done an hour of spin class that day before playing two hours of competitive tennis, during which his team won one of the two sets, and it had been “good emotionally.” The wording seemed to imply that “it” was the winning – or maybe the socializing – that was the main thing, not the physical exercise, but Goines wasn’t sure. “Spin class” sounded like socializing too. Curious, Goines looked it up. He had been thinking that spinning involved whirling like a dervish to get high, but Wikipedia said it was riding a stationary bicycle. Mrs. Goines “spun” on her stationary Schwinn in the garage, but she had never referred to it as “spinning.”

Highways and Byways: Latin Night

By Maik Strosahl

A line in one of Michael Brownstein’s recent poems caught my attention and inspired me to write a piece about the Orlando nightclub shooting in 2016.
    Michael’s piece, “The Druids and Amesemi,” contained a line that stuck with me—"Saturday night, late. (Perhaps it was Sunday morning, early.)” It brought to mind the fog of night when you really do not know what time it is, unlike the daylight hours where you can gauge the time of day by where the sun is in the sky. This is especially the case when trying to give a detailed account of something we may have witnessed.

All Over the Place: A Secular Spot in the Morning Dew

By Michael H. Brownstein

In the secular house near the Rock of the Half Moon

the door weeps for lack of oil.
Wind bleeds through crease and hole

and my son mistakes the mourning dove’s morning song

for that of rock pigeon.
We are at mercy here,
gun powder the rage as eye liner,

thirty-five poems the maximum filler for any book.

Goines On: Reaching out

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Goines’ thoughts had been rushing like a waterfall for days, swirling like a vortex, fluttering like...he cast around for an image to capture the deluge. He felt unable to sort his thoughts out, assemble them, string them on a sensible line. He was more a passive spectator of his own thoughts.
    But something about today was different, and he sensed meaning, accumulation, order, and he wanted to embrace it, like Klara, the artificial friend in Ishiguro’s novel, hurrying to Mr. McBain’s barn to pray to the sun before it descended to its home in the West. (Klara did seem to be praying, even if she didn’t use that word.)

Highways and Byways: Woke (Part 2)

By Maik Strosahl

Last week I talked about many things that disturb a trucker’s sleep. One I did not cover was waking with an idea.
    I wake a lot with ideas I have to capture before they are forgotten. Perhaps a dream or a replayed memory that somehow must be shared with the world. So I rise, get a piece of paper or my phone and bang out what I can.

All Over the Place: A Good Day for Learning – But Still I’m in a World of Contrasts

From My Teaching Book

By Michael H. Brownstein

An anonymous donor sent us two checks for $250 each. I appreciate it a whole lot. The money will go for the development of a character-education program. It’s much needed at my school.
    Yesterday, for example, I found myself rushing into the eighth-grade classroom because of screams and ugly laughter. A student was actually punching the substitute teacher, who was twice her size and trying very hard to restrain herself from punching the girl back. My first problem was getting to the fight through some of the girls who purposely blocked my way. I found myself physically removing students. Fortunately, the girl calmed a little bit and I was able to get her across the hall into my classroom to join my class and the other three students who were earlier removed from their classrooms and placed in my room.

Goines On: Mind behind

Poster by David Lance Goines
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The day before Goines visited Memorial Grove with Mrs. Goines, he had maybe his sharpest feeling yet that he was losing his mind. He had been to the Volvo dealership, although he didn’t remember now why their little station wagon needed servicing – it no longer had Ziggy to ride in the back – but the headrest cushion he had taken to use in the waiting room wasn’t in the car when he got home. He discovered its absence when he reached into the back seat to collect his things.
    And on the way home he had gotten off the freeway at the wrong exit. And when he reached the Sheetz turn-off by an alternate route, he decided to do a quick workout at the gym before proceeding home. (It was almost a year before the Covid-19 pandemic, so he hadn’t stopped going to the gym yet.)