(2023-2024)

I would greatly like to try to write a piece for the Coronation of King Charles III rd. I am looking at Haendel’s 4 coronation anthems and searching for a text. I was thinking of using exactly the same instruments so as to make any performance more familiar. I will give myself a month to see if I have any ideas. I don’t mind even if it doesn’t get performed. Yesterday evening, as soon as I got back to Milan, I found a website called bibletalk.tv/royal-psalms and I do like the biblical subject of Melchizedek, though just the first phrase, otherwise there are lots of other phrases of other parts of the Bible. I shall put two phrases together. January 2023

Music and the Arts

Aim so high that you know from the start that you will never be able to reach your goal. In this way, you will always do your best, be true to yourself, and accept your limits so that you can live a better and more peaceful life.

Art, the depiction of the human soul, is conceived the moment the subconscious takes the upper hand; what most people call organised inspiration. It is when every choice, at every level, is better than any previous or future one and it is impossible to extract anything from its context. It is when everything hangs together perfectly through thoughts of free association. (27.5.07)

The strength and the spirit of an artist lie in daily life.

The road to professionalism may have many stages, but the finish line is always far away, perhaps unreachable, however, this does not authorize us to stop walking, one step after another, with a precise sense of limits. (text ?)

Luck

Life is all about good and bad luck. We can search for good luck but we cannot do anything about bad luck when it happens. Those who are born or put themselves in the right conditions may be advantaged but good and bad luck do not look at anyone in particular. They just happen and often you have to accept your fate, knowing that you cannot do anything about it. 11/2024

If there is a one-and-only indivisible prize, only one can be the winner, though numerous rivals may be his equals. (Giuseppe Brusa)

The soul is the invisible spiritual discourse between the heart and the mind. 16/11/2024

If Man is passion, life is sufferance; if he is desire, the way is effort; if he is intelligence, life is discernment, concentration, and contemplation. (Religious text ?)

DNA

I went to two specialist doctors in 2022 and they officially told me that I have Lipedema, a type of fat that is different from the norm. People who do not know about this have always thought that fat was only due to food. It starts with puberty and then increases with all the changes and phases of the body and hormones. Apparently, an enzyme is missing from birth, a genetic problem that I inherited from my mother and my great-great-grandmother. Diet and exercise do not help eliminate Lipedema and they can only contribute to losing normal fat. At the moment there is no cure. Two of my great-grandmothers came from the Vikings of Sweden who invaded eastern England. They had the surnames of Johnson and Wilson typically derived from the Vikings, obviously the son of John and William, with reddish blond hair. They had Dupuytren’s disease like my mother and my uncle. Part of the Hansfords also descended from the Vikings, but they had settled in South-West England. Most likely they came from the Vikings of Ireland, so much so that my great-grandfather on the other side was called Jabez, Ireland, William Hansford. His grandmother or great-grandmother was Irish. I have 1% Irish DNA.

Physical Pains

Sometimes it’s hell, but I hope it will get better and that I will go back to how I was before I fell, even if this before is far from feeling normal; before the vertebrae operation. I hope to live quite normally and travel again. My dreams of traveling……. who knows if I’ll be able to continue? Going to the Conservatorio will not only be painful, but increasingly dangerous. Every time I take a bus or tram I am very unstable and always afraid of falling so I ask to sit down. Once a couple of young people commented to each other “but she looks so young” when they gave me their seat. It’s all heavy-going and I wish I had never been operated (in 2010) in the first place. It has ruined my life. 4/9/2016

In 2018 I was given a disabled person car pass to go through the centre of Milan and park wherever I want.

I must rest my bones lying down and be careful of what I eat even if it is not necessary for the Lipedema. I have lost 7 kilos of normal fat during the 7 weeks of illness from the middle of September till the 1st week of November 2024. My dresses are loose and I can now wear a beautiful dress that I have never worn before, only I don’t have any place or opportunity to do so. I must regain all the energy I have lost and return to traveling to keep my spirits up, even if by myself. I must do exercises EVERY day as I’ve been doing since 2000. Some days during this period I didn’t feel like going out for a stroll, despite days of beautiful weather. The lumbar pain where I had the unnecessary surgery is becoming worse and it is due exclusively to that avid neurosurgeon who operated me in 2014. It is the only pain that is not part of my DNA for which there is nothing that can be done, unless I have the whole arthrodesis replaced by a bigger one, with no guarantee that I may feel less pain. The knees must wait as long as possible, even if I can only do one step at a time. 19/11/2024

Life in general

When I visited ‘Holbein at the Tudor Court’ Exhibition at the Queen’s Gallery I read about Thomas Vaux, 2nd Baron Vaux of Harrowden who, in 1536, alarmed by religious reform and a ‘great many foes’, retired from court. Apparently, Baron Vaux was an accomplished poet whose work celebrated the ‘quiet mind’ that is ‘clear from worldly cares’.

I am not a philosopher who elaborates thoughts about life and writes them down. I live my life, I endure it, I am its victim and I complain about it. (16.11.2024)

Technique and Virtuosity

It is well known that in the past decades, performers have become more and more virtuoso and that they perform works faster and faster, often distorting the composer’s thoughts and style. This is just to show off one’s technique and not one’s artistic thoughts.

More or less the same concept has been applied to composing. For some decades the techniques of instruments have been taught to the extremes. A student often knows how an instrument is made, the different sounds and noises it can produce, and uses only this knowledge to construct a musical idea and a total composition. It doesn’t seem to matter whether the composition sounds good or has musical sense. The composer finishes up by constructing and not creating a work.

The violin part of Brahms’ Violin Concerto was revised by the great violinist Joseph Joachim. He made the concerto more technically violinistic, more virtuoso. However, he did not change the basic musical ideas which makes it a masterpiece. Composers in the past would compose with creative musical thought and phrasing which developed into structure and form. Nowadays they do the opposite, but unfortunately, they don’t achieve the beauty and the quality to create artistic masterpieces.

You have to know harmony, counterpoint, and orchestration well and with this knowledge explore the Classics and understand their Content, Form, and Spiritual message. Because yes, great Music always has a Spiritual message.

Understanding

As one gets older, the quality of what one composes should improve because music appears more and more familiar, clearer, and understandable, including one’s own. One shouldn’t think about technique, which should be a means and not an end, but one should think about what’s behind it, the artistic and emotional message one wants to give.

At the age of 70, I have suddenly understood that Beethoven’s 9th Symphony is full of harmonic, phraseological, and structural faults which have puzzled me for years. I have suddenly realised that he must have found it difficult and confusing to compose without externally hearing the notes and that his inner ear was not so perfect as that of other composers. Beethoven’s ideas are superb as usual but the 9th is not so masterfully well-composed as other compositions of his and it has become very famous because of his Ode to Joy.

Teaching

I don’t give private Composition lessons anymore. Anyway, Composition lessons are more or less impossible to give.

Sometimes, with a Conservatorio student or one of those very few private pupils I have had, I may have made a personal comment through a common rule and well-known thought about Music, but it probably came as a momentary flash through the piece of music I was looking at or listening to, with no real method. Anyway, even I couldn’t remember it once I uttered it.

I have taught Harmony, Counterpoint, and elementary Orchestration methodically and it took years of weekly lessons for a pupil to absorb these techniques. Harmony is the basis of everything in Music because it conveys emotions. If I taught something more than most other teachers, what I said were all fleeting thoughts. I have seen lots of personal compositions, but my comments have always been basic and based on Classical Harmony, Counterpoint, and Orchestration, all notions that could be found in textbooks.

Some say that you can only teach what you are. I can give lots of enthusiasm, love and dedication for Music to those particularly gifted musicians who feel it as much as I do, thus encouraging them to go on and never give up. However, I cannot teach how to Compose or give advice on other people’s compositions. Through my knowledge, I just intuitively feel. Anyway, my husband is much better at conveying thoughts about Music than I am. My thoughts can be understood in the actual music I compose.

Promotion of the Arts

Politicians are the first to be ignorant and not be interested in the Arts, least of all in Classical music. They are the ones who should do something to make young people understand that the Arts are important for the growth of the spirit of a person so as not to live an empty and vain life that ultimately leads to depression!!

Words and Memory

Momentarily forgetting words is my biggest problem. I have never been good with words. When I was seventeen I used to tell Mrs. Dorothy Hoddinott, my English Literature teacher, that I knew what I meant to say but I couldn’t explain it, and she used to reply that if I couldn’t explain something it was because I lacked the adequate vocabulary. I used to reply again that I did understand but I could not explain myself. She was half right. I have learned a lot more vocabulary in time, but my problem is that I get confused because I forget words and they are not there when I need them, which is why I write better than I speak, both in English and Italian. Anyway, I hate speaking in public and always have. I get embarrassed, nervous and forgetful. I used to refuse to do anything on stage and have never played the piano in public except twice. Once I was only 12 years old and was standing behind the curtains of a small theatre with an electrician who kept pinching my bottom. When it was my moment to play by heart, my teacher whispered “lower the wooden music stand” where the music rests on the grand piano. I literally slid out and lifted up the whole cover and put it on the floor and nobody understood what I was doing. My teacher was laughing behind the curtains!! Another time I had written a piece for 10 performers which my school companion Gilberto was going to conduct in a small theatre. During the concert, the cellist’s spike slid on the floor and I looked around to see what had happened and then I missed 8 bars!! I managed to catch up again but I saw G’s eyes looking up at the sky!