Thoughts about Finale, a music notation program that a lot of musicians relied on that is now defunct:
It makes me think about the Armenian-American composer Alan Hovhaness, (born Alan Vaness Chakmakjian Ալան Յարութիւն Չաքմաքճեան), who was attending a masterclass at Tanglewood. After hearing his work, Leonard Bernstein went up to a piano and played a minor scale mocking the piece, saying “I hate this dirty ghetto music.” Hovhannes left the class, forfeiting his scholarship and burned his music, many of his scores.
It makes me think about the Armenian painter, Arshille Gorky (born Vostanik Manoug Adoian) who survived a genocide, his mother dying in his arms of starvation. He said that everything he painted after that moment in his life was a reflection on the pattern of her dress at that moment. His studio burned down in 1946 and he lost a number of his paintings.
I think about Raven Chacon’s exhibition of For Zitkála-Šá at the Audain Gallery in Vancouver a few years back, and how beautiful, mesmerizing and thought provoking his works are, painted/drawn by hand. I think the same about the drawings on Darius Jones’ piece fLuXkit Vancouver (its suite but sacred). These both make me think about a story my teacher Dr. Yusef Lateef told me about playing with Mingus. Yusef asked Mingus what chord changes he was supposed to play over during his solo. Mingus drew a coffin on the saxophone part, and said “Play that.” Is there an element of these artist's souls that goes into the ink that they press on to the page?
I think about the original handwritten score of Naima, below. And the scores of Janacek’s works that I’ve observed in Brno.
I think about my own experiences with the software, first moving to NYC, and wondering how I could write music without this program that everyone seemed to have. How would I afford the cost of the computer upgrades and the price tag of the software. And I think of my own struggles to learn the program in computer labs at college. Trying to figure out how to do simple tasks and becoming ever so frustrated that I couldn’t achieve a state of flow in the same way that I could with paper and pen. Perhaps it was laziness, but I don’t know…I never did end up learning it.
It makes me wonder about class and race and all the different musicians in the world who create but don’t have access to a program that costs many times more than what some people make in a whole year of labor. It makes me think about all the kids making incredible music on laptops who maybe didn't have access to private music instruction. It makes me think about Dilla, and the music he made by sampling LPs.
And of course I see my own hypocrisy in it all, and the fact that I now use Dorico as an education tool and to notate maqam.
Finally, I think about how nothing is permanent. Everything changes. At each moment, everything is changing.