Kept

I'm endlessly fascinated by one composer's thoughts about another. It reveals so much more about the one doing the thinking rather than the one actually being thought about, and it provides for a less cringe-inducing read than when a composer writes about his own music (with a few exceptions of course). Two books I'm reading right now: Lou Harrison's Music Primer and Messiaen's book on Ravel's piano music. The latter has little gems of observation, whether filtered through the lens of Loriod or not doesn't concern us, observations such as:

"Since all the pieces in Le Tombeau are dedicated to friends killed during the 1914-18 war, one might perhaps imagine Ravel wanting, in his only fugue (the only fugue in his entire output), to reunite these people he had loved, and so create a kind of multiplied presence drawn from the one theme, which is repeated twenty-two times."

There are certain impulses which seem to come naturally to music: one is play, and the other is mourning. To understand Ravel's fugue as spirits mingling, reunited once again in musical space, is really quite touching.

Harrison's Primer is loaded with gems of wisdom. My favorite: "If you really have to be a composer and are attractive and uninhibited, then try to get yourself "kept" - whether by a man or a woman. This might be easier than undertaking a whole second career in order to be able to afford composing and you might get a little restorative affection as well."

Ah, the sublime earthiness of wisdom, the joys of a kempt and kept composer.