tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-13593902.post3105029299222405649..comments2024-02-11T09:55:50.468-08:00Comments on The Eastside View: Three Pieces for PianoCharles Sherehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10480432901356490235noreply@blogger.comBlogger3125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-13593902.post-46430036550141416542020-01-18T18:06:57.755-08:002020-01-18T18:06:57.755-08:00Was googling and came upon this and thought you mi...Was googling and came upon this and thought you might like to know that Goodwin Samuel died yesterday at 94. He was indeed a splendid fellow and great Francisco Street neighbor. David Bankhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/03385323699247619243noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-13593902.post-15467740768398851612012-06-05T14:18:37.661-07:002012-06-05T14:18:37.661-07:00Well, you know how it is, you can''t go ho...<i>Well, you know how it is, you can''t go home again. I remember visiting my sixth-grade friend Larry Rinne, who lived at the top of Francisco Street back in the late 1940s; it was in his back yard I saw/heard my first jet-propelled airplane. Later, Alice Waters taught in the Montessori school there; she and David Goines lived down at Francisco and Grove. (Lindsey and I lived at 1947 Francisco from about 1962 until 1973; perhaps we saw you now and then on the street.)<br /><br />Goodwin Sammel: what a splendid fellow, marvelous musician, enthusiastic gourmet. I miss him.<br /><br />As to the music: I wonder what Bartok you were playing at: I can't think of any atonal Bartok. The war between serial (not "atonal") and neoclassical styles was long and at times bitter; one of its worst accomplishments was the consequent near-total exclusion from the American intellectual scene of a third alternative, to my mind the most interesting, the music of the New York school: Cage, Wolff, Feldman, Brown.<br /><br />A new bar-café, curiously called <b>Bartavelle</b>, has been announced for the old Café Fanny space; you can read about it <a href="http://www.berkeleyside.com/2012/05/25/bartavelle-owner-whats-cooking-for-ex-cafe-fanny-space/" rel="nofollow">here</a>. That's all I know. </i>Charles Sherehttps://www.blogger.com/profile/10480432901356490235noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-13593902.post-6038525843021749272012-06-04T07:25:48.320-07:002012-06-04T07:25:48.320-07:00In 1973-4, we lived in an apartment building I was...In 1973-4, we lived in an apartment building I was managing at 2021 Francisco (also the building across the street). Goodwin Sammel lived next door, and whenever he heard me playing Bartok, he would linger out on the sidewalk to appraise my rendition. <br /><br />I don't think I could play this piece, even if I had the skill, since it's in a style I don't follow. Back in my undergraduate days, I used to browse an academic periodical which featured erudite articles on the "new music" trends. In those days, it was believed (I assume, in the universities) that atonal music was the only genre worth pursuing, and anything else had become passé. Thank goodness those days are long gone.<br /><br />Lately I've been trying to finish a piece I suppose might be tentatively entitled Elegiac Fanfare for the American Dead of Afghanistan--a piece altogether too influenced by Aaron Copland. Not sure whether to put the theme in the brass section or the strings. All this is of course idle, since I don't know the exact ranges of instruments (except for the piano). <br /><br />I think you once stated somewhere that you were at least as intrigued by how musical notation looked, as by how it sounded. I'm sure I must have mentioned Frederic Sommer's abstract musical "drawings" once here, which seem relevant. <br /><br />Our Francisco memories are overshadowed by dark events of those years--our son's diagnoses at age four of juvenile diabetes, my stepfather's death in an automobile crash in Montana. My unsuccessful attempt to become a poet. <br /><br />Serendipity was just around the corner, next door to what is now Corso Restaurant. This was all before Shattuck went "ghetto" and "gentry" and upscale. How sterile it now seems, with those "Constructivist" high-rises and lazy liriodendrons.<br /><br />By the way, is Fanny's ever going to reopen?Curtis Favillehttps://www.blogger.com/profile/06213075853354387634noreply@blogger.com