The December issue of The Juilliard Journal includes coverage of the Albert Fuller Memorial Concert, including photographs by Peter Schaaf and tributes by Andrew Appel, Barbara Bogatin, and James Roe.
For the article, "Celebrating the Life of an Extraordinary Musician," click here.
Monday, December 3, 2007
Friday, November 23, 2007
Bobby White's remarks at AF's Tribute Concert (12 Nov 07)
ALBERT FULLER - Thoughts in Passing
How do I celebrate the life of someone as remarkable as Albert Fuller? How do I explain those feelings of loss, the loss of truly one of my very closest friends, mentors, best, best buddies in the whole world?
Albert was unique. I--and virtually everyone I ever have known that came in contact with him in the glory years, in Albert's youth and very enlightened older age, before he got ill these past several years and slowed down--all agree that there was no one like him. His radiant sense of humor and appreciation of the offbeat and bizarre, informed so much of what made him special.
His words and insights could sometimes be 'sharp', but they were always to the point. This ability was apparent from early on. Albert loved to tell how he handled a stern headmaster's challenge when he was a mere 9 year old boy in his Washington D.C. grade school. The teacher glowered at Albert in his seat and said, "MASTER Fuller, did you give me a dirty look?" Albert replied, with great calm, "Teacher, you might have a dirty look, but I didn't give it to you!"
The experiences that I had through Albert's kindness, his loving friendship, his caring about me as a human being, as a musician.. as an artist..enhanced my life in myriad ways....Albert reminded any and all of us, students and professionals alike, that we each must be (pause) "The Artist of Your Life". "Don't let people put you down!", he'd say. "Don't let ANY one smother your art! And the biggest person to watch out for in all of this, is your SELF, because YOU'RE the one most responsible for keeping that spark of art alive in your heart!"
Albert helped us achieve this so often by his own enthusiastic example......whether it meant cooking an absolutely FLAWLESS, Glorious, Chinese meal for a dozen friends, or a classic French meal, or an Italian one..or a Belgian waterzooi, (Pronounced vatter-zoy), ..whatever the cuisine, Albert could throw it together at the drop of a toque..(PAUSE) And there'd always be 'Music' following dinner, either live or in recordings of extraordinary performances from Monteverdi to ALMOST Montovani...by that I mean, Aretha Franklin would share the spotlight with Wanda Landowska or Janis Joplin with Couperin's Leçons de Ténèbres. If the music-making was superb, that's all that mattered to Albert.
I met him in 1961 when I was 24 years old– can it be nearly half a century ago?- at the Spoleto Festival in Italy. Throughout the 60s, 70s and 80s, I sang in numerous concerts with Albert at the helm. So many beautiful performances took place as well with Mel Kaplan's New York Chamber Soloists...Albert inventing away at the clavicembalo. As Artist-in-Residence at the NYU Medical Center over on East 30th Street, Albert presented many seasons of extraordinary concerts under the aegis of his great friend on the NYU Medical Faculty, immunologist Dr. Zoltan Ovary.
I will never forget the glorious Baroque operas Albert arranged and conducted here at Juilliard in the 70s, as well as endless instrumental and vocal works performed through the years at his Aston Magna and later, Helicon series. A stunning Platée- of Rameau- radiantly sung by then Juilliard student Barbara Hendricks under Albert's direction- is only one of many events that remain burned in my memory. His beautiful apartment on West 67th street with the two-story living room was the scene of so many wondrous musical evenings. Pianos and harpsichords and viols and lutes were constantly coming in and out of the apartment as young performers took their places for yet another 'soiree musicale' chez-Albert.
Lovely performances took place as well in a number of the several sumptuous apartments lived in by his great friend and musical benefactor, Gregory Smith. I recall a special evening of French poesie and Couperin music at Gregory's french-boiseried home on 73rd street just off Vth Avenue - The Pulitzer Mansion. Albert played harpsichord, Hugues Cuenod sang and Jean-Louis Barrault and his wife Madeleine Renaud read Racine and Moliere texts.
Albert had a great friendship with Alice Tully who was in his home so often for dinners and concerts. Through Albert, young performers got to know and perform for this legendary lady in the most gracious and personal of ways. How fitting that Albert was to be Alice's affectionate and perceptive biographer.
Another great friend and colleague was Hugues Cuenod, the Swiss tenor, who made his Met Opera debut in 1986 at the age of 84 in the Zefirelli production of "Turandot". I heard that performance, seated between Albert and Alice (who was born the same year as Cuenod..1902). Recently this past Summer, to the astonishment of us all, Albert, confined to a wheelchair, flew- ON HIS OWN- to Switzerland to celebrate Cuenod's 105th Birthday(!), and, as Albert put it all too prophetically, "to say 'goodbye' to Huguie."
I'd like to end this note on Albert by reading from an email I received from another dear friend and colleague, the distinguished British pianist Graham Johnson, who too, was devoted to this wonderful man. Graham writes: "..Albert retained voracious interests in ALL aspects of music-making and he greeted those whom he regarded as talented with an openness of heart that will always be unforgettable. Like all great artists he was capable of being moody and self-absorbed, but he remained to the end someone who respected talent when he saw it, and found it, as an utterly sacred thing, to be nurtured, helped, advised and encouraged....One of the greatest teachers, thus, that I have ever known.... After an evening in his company when he was on form, one could be lifted to another place. Whatever our problems, we were artists and part of a family that nothing could destroy. Albert made one feel part of a blessed community of kindred and supportive spirits."
Graham says in closing, "Albert treasured a signed portrait of Mae West that I had bought him at the Argosy Bookstore in Manhattan after staying at his flat in 2000. Couperin and Aretha Franklin.... Alice Tully and Mae West.... that was our incomparably curious, incomparably iconoclastic Albert."
Robert White
12 November 2007
How do I celebrate the life of someone as remarkable as Albert Fuller? How do I explain those feelings of loss, the loss of truly one of my very closest friends, mentors, best, best buddies in the whole world?
Albert was unique. I--and virtually everyone I ever have known that came in contact with him in the glory years, in Albert's youth and very enlightened older age, before he got ill these past several years and slowed down--all agree that there was no one like him. His radiant sense of humor and appreciation of the offbeat and bizarre, informed so much of what made him special.
His words and insights could sometimes be 'sharp', but they were always to the point. This ability was apparent from early on. Albert loved to tell how he handled a stern headmaster's challenge when he was a mere 9 year old boy in his Washington D.C. grade school. The teacher glowered at Albert in his seat and said, "MASTER Fuller, did you give me a dirty look?" Albert replied, with great calm, "Teacher, you might have a dirty look, but I didn't give it to you!"
The experiences that I had through Albert's kindness, his loving friendship, his caring about me as a human being, as a musician.. as an artist..enhanced my life in myriad ways....Albert reminded any and all of us, students and professionals alike, that we each must be (pause) "The Artist of Your Life". "Don't let people put you down!", he'd say. "Don't let ANY one smother your art! And the biggest person to watch out for in all of this, is your SELF, because YOU'RE the one most responsible for keeping that spark of art alive in your heart!"
Albert helped us achieve this so often by his own enthusiastic example......whether it meant cooking an absolutely FLAWLESS, Glorious, Chinese meal for a dozen friends, or a classic French meal, or an Italian one..or a Belgian waterzooi, (Pronounced vatter-zoy), ..whatever the cuisine, Albert could throw it together at the drop of a toque..(PAUSE) And there'd always be 'Music' following dinner, either live or in recordings of extraordinary performances from Monteverdi to ALMOST Montovani...by that I mean, Aretha Franklin would share the spotlight with Wanda Landowska or Janis Joplin with Couperin's Leçons de Ténèbres. If the music-making was superb, that's all that mattered to Albert.
I met him in 1961 when I was 24 years old– can it be nearly half a century ago?- at the Spoleto Festival in Italy. Throughout the 60s, 70s and 80s, I sang in numerous concerts with Albert at the helm. So many beautiful performances took place as well with Mel Kaplan's New York Chamber Soloists...Albert inventing away at the clavicembalo. As Artist-in-Residence at the NYU Medical Center over on East 30th Street, Albert presented many seasons of extraordinary concerts under the aegis of his great friend on the NYU Medical Faculty, immunologist Dr. Zoltan Ovary.
I will never forget the glorious Baroque operas Albert arranged and conducted here at Juilliard in the 70s, as well as endless instrumental and vocal works performed through the years at his Aston Magna and later, Helicon series. A stunning Platée- of Rameau- radiantly sung by then Juilliard student Barbara Hendricks under Albert's direction- is only one of many events that remain burned in my memory. His beautiful apartment on West 67th street with the two-story living room was the scene of so many wondrous musical evenings. Pianos and harpsichords and viols and lutes were constantly coming in and out of the apartment as young performers took their places for yet another 'soiree musicale' chez-Albert.
Lovely performances took place as well in a number of the several sumptuous apartments lived in by his great friend and musical benefactor, Gregory Smith. I recall a special evening of French poesie and Couperin music at Gregory's french-boiseried home on 73rd street just off Vth Avenue - The Pulitzer Mansion. Albert played harpsichord, Hugues Cuenod sang and Jean-Louis Barrault and his wife Madeleine Renaud read Racine and Moliere texts.
Albert had a great friendship with Alice Tully who was in his home so often for dinners and concerts. Through Albert, young performers got to know and perform for this legendary lady in the most gracious and personal of ways. How fitting that Albert was to be Alice's affectionate and perceptive biographer.
Another great friend and colleague was Hugues Cuenod, the Swiss tenor, who made his Met Opera debut in 1986 at the age of 84 in the Zefirelli production of "Turandot". I heard that performance, seated between Albert and Alice (who was born the same year as Cuenod..1902). Recently this past Summer, to the astonishment of us all, Albert, confined to a wheelchair, flew- ON HIS OWN- to Switzerland to celebrate Cuenod's 105th Birthday(!), and, as Albert put it all too prophetically, "to say 'goodbye' to Huguie."
I'd like to end this note on Albert by reading from an email I received from another dear friend and colleague, the distinguished British pianist Graham Johnson, who too, was devoted to this wonderful man. Graham writes: "..Albert retained voracious interests in ALL aspects of music-making and he greeted those whom he regarded as talented with an openness of heart that will always be unforgettable. Like all great artists he was capable of being moody and self-absorbed, but he remained to the end someone who respected talent when he saw it, and found it, as an utterly sacred thing, to be nurtured, helped, advised and encouraged....One of the greatest teachers, thus, that I have ever known.... After an evening in his company when he was on form, one could be lifted to another place. Whatever our problems, we were artists and part of a family that nothing could destroy. Albert made one feel part of a blessed community of kindred and supportive spirits."
Graham says in closing, "Albert treasured a signed portrait of Mae West that I had bought him at the Argosy Bookstore in Manhattan after staying at his flat in 2000. Couperin and Aretha Franklin.... Alice Tully and Mae West.... that was our incomparably curious, incomparably iconoclastic Albert."
Robert White
12 November 2007
Tuesday, November 20, 2007
Article in The Concise Edition of Baker's Biographical Dictionary of Musicians, eighth edition, 1994
Fuller, Albert, American harpsichordist; b. Washington, D.C., July 21, 1926. He studied organ with Paul Callaway at the National Cathedral in Washington, D.C., then attended classes at the Peabody Cons. and at Georgetown and Johns Hopkins Univs. He studied harpsichord with Ralph Kirkpatrick at Yale Univ. and also theory there with Hindemith, graduating with a M.Mus. in 1954. He then went to Paris on a Ditson fellowship; upon his return to the U.S., he made his N.Y. recital debut in 1957; his European debut followed in 1959. In 1964 he became a prof. of harpsichord at the Juilliard School of Music in N.Y. From 1972 to 1983 he was founder-artistic director of the Aston Magna Foundation.
Tuesday, November 13, 2007
Remarks given by James Roe at Albert Fuller's Tribute Concert, 12 Nov 2007, The Juilliard School
Ladies and gentlemen, I am so pleased to see a full house tonight. My name is James Roe, I am the Artistic Director the of The Helicon Foundation, an organization Albert Fuller founded in 1985 to explore the use of period instruments in chamber music from the 17th, 18th, 19th, and early 20th centuries. Emailing last week with Albert’s long time friend, Frank Heller, he mentioned how much Albert would have loved this program; indeed he would have. All the performers tonight are ones he loved dearly and with whom he had long fruitful association and so we thank them for being a part of this tribute. While I’m thanking people, let me express gratitude to President Polisi and Juilliard for hosting this event. On the Helicon side, I have to thank Matthew Herren for his indispensable assistance in planning this event. I also thank Helicon Board Member Karen McLaughlin and her friends at Live from Lincoln Center for producing and editing the recording of Albert speaking and for making the DVD included in your program. On a personal note, everyone who loved Albert owes a deep gratitude to Patrick Rucker, who in the last year of Albert’s life, and especially during his final illness, provided him with care, comfort and dignity as he lived out his final days in his own home.
I met Albert Fuller in 1990 as a student in his Juilliard Graduate Seminar called “Performance Problems in 18th-Century Music.” Seventeen years and two months ago, fresh and green from northern Michigan farm country, I was sitting just upstairs in Karen Wagner’s office planning my course work. “Why don’t you take Albert Fuller’s class?” she said, “I think you’d enjoy it.” Well, Karen, I’d say that was a terrific suggestion . . .
Albert referred to his graduate seminar as his STYLE CLASS. Any of us who spent any time with Albert, knew that his very life was a class in style — and his style was in a class all by itself.
His course didn’t follow the usual or expected linear format—usual, expected, and linear were never his abiding interests—rather it wended its way, equal parts Socratic and rhapsodic, through issues important to him: the power of artistic self expression to unite humanity, the development of an individual voice, and the recognition of historical music’s vernacular power. This last point was a great motivator in his exploration of period instruments and performance practice, the stripping away of grimy layers of interpretive build-up on centuries-old music could reveal audacious power in the original. But he also approached this question from the completely opposite direction, through popular music. For Albert, the question of cultural relevance was uncomplicated by category. He was touched by Madonna and Monteverdi, The Beatles and Bach, Aretha was divine, “Elvis was the translator,” and all music basically came down to singing and dancing!
From time to time, Albert would ask me to proofread his new Seminar materials. One day he handed me a nearly blank piece of paper, “Jim, take a look at my new final exam.” There was only one printed line which read: “Question: What have you learned from this class during the year? (Use both sides only of this one piece of paper.)”
This fall, I found a file full of answers to his final exam from 1998. Reading them, I was struck at the intimate and touching picture they painted of Albert as a teacher. He inspired these young musicians. They really got him. I would like to read you some excerpts from their answers. I happen to know that at least two people in the audience today were members of this class, and I’m going to read from both of their exams, but I won’t reveal any names. Don’t worry; you both got “A”s. So, here they are:
I feel that today, musicians rely too heavily on technique. It seems that fast, clean playing with lots of vibrato is what we strive for. But from this class, I have confirmed in myself that music comes first and technique is only a tool. Now I try to think about how singers would sing phrase and I imitate that on the cello.
In this class, we learned the importance of what earlier artists had to say and how to pass on their message by making music alive in the way it was alive for those who heard it for the very first time.
We should keep in mind that the audience we face is not of the past, but of the present. You have to look not only to the past to find music’s fundamental meaning, but also you have to look inside yourself for your own interpretation, which must inevitably reflect the psyche of your age.
This year, you didn’t once say, “You must agree with this interpretation,” you said, “This moved me, does it move you?” I don’t want to make your class sound like a therapy session, but now that it’s over, I feel that was its effect on me. In the past, I would pick up a new piece and say, “Where’s the hardest lick?” Now I think, “WHY did the composer write this? And WHAT does it mean?” You got me to confront getting on stage and saying something outrageous, something dark, something much more wild than the audience expected. This class has made me want to stop being a student and starting being an artist.
I think this class should be required for all Juilliard students. Everyone knows about music history and theory, but so few musicians know about themselves.
Your coaching me in the Beethoven C Minor Violin Sonata was particularly memorable. As you worked with us, I realized that I had never been taught to truly respect or create a logical interpretation of the set of instructions written down by the composer. I have also learned that there is a great deal of good French music.
I grew up in communist China and was taught early on to think like everyone else and to play the violin like everyone else. But you told me to become the artist of my own life and listen to my own heart. When I walked out of Juilliard after your class, I felt the sun shining on my face for the first time in my life. Thank you, Mr. Fuller.
I met Albert Fuller in 1990 as a student in his Juilliard Graduate Seminar called “Performance Problems in 18th-Century Music.” Seventeen years and two months ago, fresh and green from northern Michigan farm country, I was sitting just upstairs in Karen Wagner’s office planning my course work. “Why don’t you take Albert Fuller’s class?” she said, “I think you’d enjoy it.” Well, Karen, I’d say that was a terrific suggestion . . .
Albert referred to his graduate seminar as his STYLE CLASS. Any of us who spent any time with Albert, knew that his very life was a class in style — and his style was in a class all by itself.
His course didn’t follow the usual or expected linear format—usual, expected, and linear were never his abiding interests—rather it wended its way, equal parts Socratic and rhapsodic, through issues important to him: the power of artistic self expression to unite humanity, the development of an individual voice, and the recognition of historical music’s vernacular power. This last point was a great motivator in his exploration of period instruments and performance practice, the stripping away of grimy layers of interpretive build-up on centuries-old music could reveal audacious power in the original. But he also approached this question from the completely opposite direction, through popular music. For Albert, the question of cultural relevance was uncomplicated by category. He was touched by Madonna and Monteverdi, The Beatles and Bach, Aretha was divine, “Elvis was the translator,” and all music basically came down to singing and dancing!
From time to time, Albert would ask me to proofread his new Seminar materials. One day he handed me a nearly blank piece of paper, “Jim, take a look at my new final exam.” There was only one printed line which read: “Question: What have you learned from this class during the year? (Use both sides only of this one piece of paper.)”
This fall, I found a file full of answers to his final exam from 1998. Reading them, I was struck at the intimate and touching picture they painted of Albert as a teacher. He inspired these young musicians. They really got him. I would like to read you some excerpts from their answers. I happen to know that at least two people in the audience today were members of this class, and I’m going to read from both of their exams, but I won’t reveal any names. Don’t worry; you both got “A”s. So, here they are:
_
I feel that today, musicians rely too heavily on technique. It seems that fast, clean playing with lots of vibrato is what we strive for. But from this class, I have confirmed in myself that music comes first and technique is only a tool. Now I try to think about how singers would sing phrase and I imitate that on the cello.
_
In this class, we learned the importance of what earlier artists had to say and how to pass on their message by making music alive in the way it was alive for those who heard it for the very first time.
_
We should keep in mind that the audience we face is not of the past, but of the present. You have to look not only to the past to find music’s fundamental meaning, but also you have to look inside yourself for your own interpretation, which must inevitably reflect the psyche of your age.
_
This year, you didn’t once say, “You must agree with this interpretation,” you said, “This moved me, does it move you?” I don’t want to make your class sound like a therapy session, but now that it’s over, I feel that was its effect on me. In the past, I would pick up a new piece and say, “Where’s the hardest lick?” Now I think, “WHY did the composer write this? And WHAT does it mean?” You got me to confront getting on stage and saying something outrageous, something dark, something much more wild than the audience expected. This class has made me want to stop being a student and starting being an artist.
_
I think this class should be required for all Juilliard students. Everyone knows about music history and theory, but so few musicians know about themselves.
_
Your coaching me in the Beethoven C Minor Violin Sonata was particularly memorable. As you worked with us, I realized that I had never been taught to truly respect or create a logical interpretation of the set of instructions written down by the composer. I have also learned that there is a great deal of good French music.
_
I grew up in communist China and was taught early on to think like everyone else and to play the violin like everyone else. But you told me to become the artist of my own life and listen to my own heart. When I walked out of Juilliard after your class, I felt the sun shining on my face for the first time in my life. Thank you, Mr. Fuller.
_
All of this, of course, begs the question: what did you and I learn from Albert’s class and from his style? As we grapple with this question over the course of the next months and years, channel the Positive Bar: don’t give much heed to self-doubt, do not censor yourself, remember, fantasy precedes fact and your most precious possession is your own creativity.
The work and the joy of remembering Albert begins now. We’re all charged with it, and I can think of no better group of people to undertake it. I hope the champagne at the reception in a few minutes will charge up a bunch Albert stories. I have one would like to leave you with you that best describes what I learned from his class.
During my first years with Helicon in the early 1990s, Carnegie Hall presented us in a series called, Vintage Originals. Before one of these concerts, Albert gave a preamble that he ended by reciting the opening seven lines of the poem, “Peter Quince at the Clavier” by Wallace Stevens. The New York Times critic (I will refrain from naming him) complained in the paper the next day that Mr. Fuller had spoken of personal matters rather than technical. Therein is Albert’s lesson: technique is itself meaningless without something personal to say.
Here are the lines of Wallace Stevens that Albert so loved:
Just as my fingers on these keys
Make music, so the self-same sounds
On my spirit make a music, too.
Music is feeling, then, not sound;
And thus it is that what I feel,
Here in this room, desiring you,
Thinking of your blue-shadowed silk,
Is music.
Monday, November 12, 2007
Albert Fuller Memorial Tribute
A TRIBUTE CONCERT
CELEBRATING
ALBERT FULLER
_____
Monday
12 November 2007
6:00 PM
PAUL RECITAL HALL
THE JUILLIARD SCHOOL
144 West 66th Street
RSVP (required)
(212) 799-5000 x 329
_____
Participants:
Andrew Appel, harpsichord
Aymeric Dupré la Tour, harpsichord
Arthur Haas, harpsichord
Myron Lutzke, 'cello
Pedja Muzijevic, piano
Lionel Party, harpsichord
Joseph W. Polisi, President, The Juilliard School
Linda Quan, violin
James Roe, Artistic Director, Helicon
Marc Schachman, oboe
Jaap Schröder, violin
Jonathan Ware, piano
Robert White, tenor
Sunday, November 11, 2007
Letter from oboist, Sarah Duval
Dear Jim,
I just want to say that I was so sorry to hear about Albert's passing. He was a special man and influenced so many people, including me, in such a variety of ways. I was sorry that I lost touch with him in recent years.
When I worked for Aston Magna for those years under his directorship, it was his inspiring philosophies on music and life, and his wonderful charisma that made me choose the early music path, which I've never regretted. These days when I'm playing more "modern" oboe, and composing as well, I still hear his voice from time to time about creativity and the cosmos, and the link between all the arts. I especially thought of him during a recent visit I made to MoMA. It was the motion of one of Calder's mobiles that made me think of one of his quotes about the motion in visual art and music being similar.
I'll see you on Monday for the memorial.
All the best,
Sarah
I just want to say that I was so sorry to hear about Albert's passing. He was a special man and influenced so many people, including me, in such a variety of ways. I was sorry that I lost touch with him in recent years.
When I worked for Aston Magna for those years under his directorship, it was his inspiring philosophies on music and life, and his wonderful charisma that made me choose the early music path, which I've never regretted. These days when I'm playing more "modern" oboe, and composing as well, I still hear his voice from time to time about creativity and the cosmos, and the link between all the arts. I especially thought of him during a recent visit I made to MoMA. It was the motion of one of Calder's mobiles that made me think of one of his quotes about the motion in visual art and music being similar.
I'll see you on Monday for the memorial.
All the best,
Sarah
Wednesday, October 31, 2007
AF Tribute by Peter Lombardo
Zoltan Ovary, AF, Hugues CuenodI first met Albert in the fall of 1963. I was on my way to a dinner party and was waiting for the elevator in my hosts’ building when two gentlemen came up who obviously were going to the same party. Apparently they knew more about the guest list than I did as the younger man said in that cheerful and friendly voice that I came to know so well. “You must be Peter Lombardo, I’m Albert Fuller and this is Dr. Zoltan Ovary.” That was the start of a forty-year friendship with these two wonderful people which has ended only now with Albert’s passing.
Others more qualified than I have written so eloquently of Albert’s musical genius and accomplishments. I can, however, speak to his friendship and generosity of spirit. I was a young physician who had just finished my training and had a head full of medical knowledge but no patients and few friends. Albert and Zoltan quickly changed that situation. They introduced me to their friends and colleagues who became my friends and patients. It was a privilege to have the world of baroque music opened for me by Albert and to share in his friendship which was always given with a spirit of joy and a patina of fun. Can we ever forget the wonderfully riotous and delicious dinners we had at Albert’s table?
All his friends appreciated and admired Albert for the music and we all loved him for the fun and laughter!
Rest in peace, dear friend you are missed.
Peter Lombardo
Wednesday, October 24, 2007
Tribute by Barbara Bogatin
Albert Fuller, Mentor Extraordinaire
It’s amazing how many people who had the great pleasure of working with Albert consider him not just teacher, but mentor. Yes, he was a “specialist” in early music, but what he taught was all of music, and not just how to play with others, but how to play with life. To be caught up in his world was to look deep inside the music, to get “the shivers,” to meet an extravagantly colorful cast of characters, to read and think and laugh, and to eat and drink very well. What a stroke of luck to find Albert early in my Juilliard years, when he was just beginning Aston Magna, and eager to recruit interested students to come to Great Barrington, exchange our steel strings for gut and try out his Baroque bows. I spent eight summers there, learning that music is not in a world by itself, but integrally connected to the art, architecture, literature, dance and historical context of its time. In that musical and scholarly community that he created, we learned to make spaces between the notes, relish the symmetry in the gardens of Versailles, and dance the sarabande.
But it was all of life that Albert cared about, and I find his wisdom so relevant today as I try to guide my own children and students. At a time when I was feeling particularly lost, struggling to find my place in the daunting professional world, I saw Albert dining alone in a café on Columbus Ave. He waved me in, bought me lunch and at once tried to sort out my confusion. He told me to “make a list of everything you want to accomplish in the next year…..then in the next 5 years….then the next 10 years……then 20 years….and now listen to that still quiet voice inside, that’s connected to your heart and your gut, and let it guide you…..”
The big picture, and the most essential truth, that was Albert. He once told me that he loved museums because if he got very quiet and looked at great art for a long time, the paintings spoke to him. I didn’t have any idea what he meant at the time, but 30 years later, a quiet hour in a museum fills me with a calm joy. So take a few minutes out of your busy day, sit down somewhere, just be still, and listen very carefully…..you just might hear, way in the distance, Les Sauvages played on Baroque harp.
Barbara Bogatin
Cellist, San Francisco Symphony
(and occasional viola da gambist and Baroque cellist)
It’s amazing how many people who had the great pleasure of working with Albert consider him not just teacher, but mentor. Yes, he was a “specialist” in early music, but what he taught was all of music, and not just how to play with others, but how to play with life. To be caught up in his world was to look deep inside the music, to get “the shivers,” to meet an extravagantly colorful cast of characters, to read and think and laugh, and to eat and drink very well. What a stroke of luck to find Albert early in my Juilliard years, when he was just beginning Aston Magna, and eager to recruit interested students to come to Great Barrington, exchange our steel strings for gut and try out his Baroque bows. I spent eight summers there, learning that music is not in a world by itself, but integrally connected to the art, architecture, literature, dance and historical context of its time. In that musical and scholarly community that he created, we learned to make spaces between the notes, relish the symmetry in the gardens of Versailles, and dance the sarabande.
But it was all of life that Albert cared about, and I find his wisdom so relevant today as I try to guide my own children and students. At a time when I was feeling particularly lost, struggling to find my place in the daunting professional world, I saw Albert dining alone in a café on Columbus Ave. He waved me in, bought me lunch and at once tried to sort out my confusion. He told me to “make a list of everything you want to accomplish in the next year…..then in the next 5 years….then the next 10 years……then 20 years….and now listen to that still quiet voice inside, that’s connected to your heart and your gut, and let it guide you…..”
The big picture, and the most essential truth, that was Albert. He once told me that he loved museums because if he got very quiet and looked at great art for a long time, the paintings spoke to him. I didn’t have any idea what he meant at the time, but 30 years later, a quiet hour in a museum fills me with a calm joy. So take a few minutes out of your busy day, sit down somewhere, just be still, and listen very carefully…..you just might hear, way in the distance, Les Sauvages played on Baroque harp.
Barbara Bogatin
Cellist, San Francisco Symphony
(and occasional viola da gambist and Baroque cellist)
Monday, October 15, 2007
AF tribute by Johan Stern
One time at Juilliard I had to take the baroque cello owned by the school to a violin maker for some adjustments and new strings. I was playing some chamber music with Albert and another student of his, the oboe-player Andrew Adelson, preparing some trio sonata for his recital. Albert suggested that I should take the cello to William Monical at Staten Island and he asked me if I would like him to join my trip – of course, I was delighted to accept his offer! From the first day I came to New York I was mesmerized by the city and used most of my spare time to explore it. In books like E.B White’s Here is New York or Singer’s Enemies unfolded all those typical New York stories of completely different worlds taking place just some blocks away from each other. It all felt so different from Europe, not to mention Sweden where I grew up!
We took the subway down to Battery Park, Albert lecturing about the history of the New York Subway, the different private lines long before the Metropolitan Transportation Authority. I couldn’t have found a better guide than Albert; with all his knowledge about the city he was the perfect companion, telling amusing stories, sometimes flavored with indecent details of the secret liaisons taking place in the empty driver’s compartments during roaring rides underground. We boarded the ferry and smelled the breeze from the sea and Albert’s stories changed, describing the sight of the QE and the other great ocean-liners and long before that, how poor and oppressed people from Europe approaching New York with hope of freedom.
Another great memory is how Albert in his Performance Practice class at Juilliard made a thorough analysis on Madonna and her Marie Antoinette remake of “Vogue” from the MTV Video Music Awards 1990. It was one of his many unique qualities – to see and understand a brief moment of what most of us would think was nothing more than superficiality, and understand the very human meaning of it as an expression – far out or "hot shit on toast under glass" as Albert would call it if it really was something very special. How an artistic statement always has many "historical siblings" – a direct link to history, and the need of generation after generation to retell it.
I am very grateful to have so many good memories around Albert's: all the discoveries in our coachings with the TestosterTones playing the Brahms trios, our sudden concerts! – his great trust in us, his warm hospitality, our exit subito when he suddenly felt tired and we, totally unaware of how time flies absorbing scents and sounds of the enchanted gatherings around the Rendezvous Lounge – overtaken and aroused scattering into the city night. I have written him many times over the years, just small notes on postcards from my tours and travel. It was always so natural to share a new moment of experience with Albert.
To put words to what Albert represents is very hard but I can honestly say that still 15 years after my great couple of years at Juilliard, he is still with me on a daily basis in my musical life.
We took the subway down to Battery Park, Albert lecturing about the history of the New York Subway, the different private lines long before the Metropolitan Transportation Authority. I couldn’t have found a better guide than Albert; with all his knowledge about the city he was the perfect companion, telling amusing stories, sometimes flavored with indecent details of the secret liaisons taking place in the empty driver’s compartments during roaring rides underground. We boarded the ferry and smelled the breeze from the sea and Albert’s stories changed, describing the sight of the QE and the other great ocean-liners and long before that, how poor and oppressed people from Europe approaching New York with hope of freedom.
Another great memory is how Albert in his Performance Practice class at Juilliard made a thorough analysis on Madonna and her Marie Antoinette remake of “Vogue” from the MTV Video Music Awards 1990. It was one of his many unique qualities – to see and understand a brief moment of what most of us would think was nothing more than superficiality, and understand the very human meaning of it as an expression – far out or "hot shit on toast under glass" as Albert would call it if it really was something very special. How an artistic statement always has many "historical siblings" – a direct link to history, and the need of generation after generation to retell it.
I am very grateful to have so many good memories around Albert's: all the discoveries in our coachings with the TestosterTones playing the Brahms trios, our sudden concerts! – his great trust in us, his warm hospitality, our exit subito when he suddenly felt tired and we, totally unaware of how time flies absorbing scents and sounds of the enchanted gatherings around the Rendezvous Lounge – overtaken and aroused scattering into the city night. I have written him many times over the years, just small notes on postcards from my tours and travel. It was always so natural to share a new moment of experience with Albert.
To put words to what Albert represents is very hard but I can honestly say that still 15 years after my great couple of years at Juilliard, he is still with me on a daily basis in my musical life.
Tuesday, October 9, 2007
Understanding the Invisible Art
[In the late 1980s and early 90s, Albert Fuller conceived and produced a television pilot called "Understanding the Invisible Art" in the hope it might provide an outlet for Helicon on PBS. Alas it didn't, but the materials he created give a wonderful distillation of his thoughts. The following is an excerpt from the introduction. More to come.]
General introduction to program:
Those of us who toil in the field of music know that we are somehow different from artists of other disciplines. The eye is involved in painting . . . in sculpture . . . in dance, but music depends entirely on the ear. It's an invisible art. That invisible essence of music is nowhere better described than in the poem "Peter Quince and the Clavier" by Wallace Stevens, the 20th-century American Poet.
General introduction to program:
Those of us who toil in the field of music know that we are somehow different from artists of other disciplines. The eye is involved in painting . . . in sculpture . . . in dance, but music depends entirely on the ear. It's an invisible art. That invisible essence of music is nowhere better described than in the poem "Peter Quince and the Clavier" by Wallace Stevens, the 20th-century American Poet.
Just as my fingers on these keys
Make music, so the selfsame sounds
On my spirit make a music, too.
Music is feeling, then, not sound;
And thus it is that what I feel,
Here in this room, desiring you,
Thinking of your blue-shadowed silk,
Is music.
Make music, so the selfsame sounds
On my spirit make a music, too.
Music is feeling, then, not sound;
And thus it is that what I feel,
Here in this room, desiring you,
Thinking of your blue-shadowed silk,
Is music.
It is not then just a coincidence that Galileo, considered the founder of modern science, was himself the son of a musician. Just at the beginning of the 17th century, when the new musical style of opera was created in Italy, the world received Galileo's convincing notion that there are invisible worlds "vital to our being, that cannot be comprehended by our unaided senses"
Since then music has grown into the vast world that we know, that can be viewed as the invisibly expressed art of the imagination. Today at the end of the 20th century, all our new technological tools show us ever newer realities that our other senses cannot perceive. Therefore we are not surprised to learn that music has always been a window into the unconscious mind.
We cannot be surprised as well with the notion that the most important musical instrument of this entire century was invented over a hundred years ago by Thomas Edison. That instrument is, of course, the phonograph.
The invisible power of electricity has allowed us to make the acquaintance of and to experience through recording ever increasing amounts of music of the past. Doing this unveils whole new, thrilling layers of our psychic inheritance.
Many of us musicians have found that by using the instruments and techniques of playing them that the composers of the music had in mind, we musicians can come even closer to the psychic thrill of perceiving something from the composers' unconscious minds. When you add to that the social contexts of the past, that is the art, the politics, the behavior of society, the ways people danced, the architecture and literature that they held dear, when we focus on all that, then we feel enabled to experience our music in a way that makes us feel still closer to the composer.
Aston Magna's Notice in the New York Times
For Daniel Stepner's tribute to Albert in the New York Times, click here.
Saturday, October 6, 2007
Boston premiere of Albert's movie
Friday, October 12th, 8PM
Marsh Chapel
735 Commonwealth Avenue
Boston
The movie of which Albert was the genesis and remains the heart, soul and star, Apparition of the Eternal Church, will have its Boston premiere this coming Friday, courtesy of the Boston University Messiaen Project (BUMP--an acronym Albert enjoyed) and its international conference "Messiaen the Theologian." After the show, conference organizer Andrew Shenton will perform the Messiaen organ work of the same name, and there will be a round-table discussion and Q&A with Andrew, Boston Globe correspondent David Weininger and me, hosted by BU's Victor Coelho.
When I interviewed Albert for the movie (the first of 115 interviews), I had no idea he'd ever played a note of Messiaen. So it was one of my biggest surprises and the movie's happiest serendipities that he had been the first to perform Messiaen in the National Cathedral back in 1950, when this music was hot off the press.
Albert figures prominently in the trailer: apparitionfilm.com/assets/ApparitionTrailer20070209QTb.mov
This is the schedule for the BUMP conference ("Messiaen the Theologian"):
http://oliviermessiaen.net/bump/conference-2007/program
(The following night, with Messiaen scholar Luke Berryman, I'll be giving the Boston premiere of a newly published Messiaen work for violin and piano, the Fantaisie.)
Here's the link to the movie's official Website: apparitionfilm.com
Here's the poster for the Boston premiere: paulfesta.com/Boston.htm
And here's Albert's bio on the movie site: apparitionfilm.com/cast/fullerbio.htm
Tuesday, October 2, 2007
Albert Fuller Tribute on WQXR
Click here for an MP3 of a tribute to Albert Fuller broadcast on WQXR, Thursday, 27 September 2007, just before 1:00 p.m.
Tribute by the tenor, Robert White in The Juilliard Journal
"The Incomparably Iconoclastic Albert Fuller" by Robert White
For the Juilliard Journal article, click here.
For the Juilliard Journal article, click here.
photo: AF with Paul Festa and Pedja Muzijevic
This was April 1993 after a Helicon symposium. If I ever find Albert's compendium of Helicon programs I'll look up what we played.
Monday, October 1, 2007
BACH RECORDING RATIONALE by Albert Fuller
In preparation for his 1992 recording of harpsichord music by J. S. Bach, Albert produced the following document as a conceptual guide.BACH RECORDING RATIONALE
I have long felt that all the music I love is in some way a direct metaphor for the human activities of singing and dancing, the gifts of the Muses!
Bach, a personality whom I adore, was, according to this reasoning, likewise inspired in his human physicality by his own understanding of the human need for singin' and dancin'.
The raison d'être of this present recording is to show my own, personal understanding of how this proposition illuminates the harpsichord works that Bach himself created and in what he loved in the works of others.
The Italians first developed the violin as a surrogate voice, allowing those who could not sing to possess the high c's of the sopranos on the stages of their beloved opera houses. Inspired by this idea of surrogate voices and with Vivaldi as his model, Bach demonstrated that the concerto concept, normally realized by seven to a dozen people, could also be a viable expressive vehicle for one person alone at the harpsichord. This Italian Concerto in the Italian style was the result.
At the same time, the French had long been seized by balletomania, the love of dancing. Louis XIV's passion furieuse influenced every house of noble pretensions throughout Europe for almost three hundred years, permeating the entire diplomatic world with the need to dance. Hence the appropriateness of such a work here as the French Set (Suite) of dance pieces with a prélude.
The desire to play the fugal game of musical interweaving came to Bach from German organ writing, derived and developed from vocal church music styles. Unwilling to present the unprepared listener with such a demanding mental musical chess game as is a fugue, Bach wrote introductions or préludes for each of these fugues. The preludes serve as "stage settings" for the fugal interplay. Often these scenes were inspired by images from Bach's own contemporary world: in the F minor, the operatic stage of the aria; in the D Major, the orchestral music of a great potentate.
Bach, however, was also a homebody, with two wives and twenty children . Think how he must have understood diapers and the joys and griefs of siring and supporting his own children through their many young deaths as well as their lives, some quite ordinary and some others fueled by their own, personal musical genius. Therefore, the private music, beloved by his adored wife, Anna Magdelana, and played by his own children forms the most personal sector of this recording. With two exceptions, all these works are dance pieces loved by his family. Louis XIV's beloved Menuet, the polonaises of the internationally set, a bagpipe piece, an aria, and finally a prayer closes this section and this record.
The order of the final section, Bach at Home, has not been decided. The pieces are arranged here in their numerical order in the book. A more affective, emotional arrangement will be conceived to close the recording.
Saturday, September 29, 2007
photo: Soigné gathering, 15 Sept 1957, Oak Room of the Plaza
The Washington Opera is born.
Of course, Albert is in the center of this lively bunch!
Of course, Albert is in the center of this lively bunch!Left to right: Tommy Dunn, Connie Mellen, Peggy Smith, Day Thorpe, Albert Fuller, Margaret Cox, Gregory Smith, Elinor Douglas, Paul Callaway.
Update: See BG Thorpe's comment for details.
Friday, September 28, 2007
"Albert Fuller--an appreciation and goodbye" by the harpsichordist, Andrew Appel
I first heard Albert Fuller in a recital of French harpsichord music (he was a pioneer in the repertoire) at Hunter College in 1967. A series of concerts by the world’s leading players presented him alongside Gustav Leonhardt and a few other American colleagues. I was 16 and from his first notes I was seduced by vitality and luxury. I thought, “I want to do that!”
When I returned to New York from studies abroad in 1973, my route was to the Juilliard School and to Fuller’s studio. Albert asked me to meet him for tea at his apartment on West 54th street. I arrived with the attitude of a boy who had moved through the disciplined and socially structured world of a European conservatory. I had never addressed a professor by his first name. The boundaries were clear, the education wonderful and focused.
I rang Mr. Fuller’s bell and was dumbstruck when he opened wearing only his white underwear. Just out of the shower he ushered me in to the living room and asked me to wait, to look around, to play his harpsichord.
That evening he invited me to join friends after one of his concerts and introduced me to New York Szechwan Chinese food at Sheila Chang’s, one of the city’s best.
From that moment on, encounters, lessons, voyages with Albert always introduced and challenged. He demanded reaction and he gave catalyst, he required balance but offered constant opportunities for growth. Life was about interaction. MUSIC was about interaction. Albert demanded that life in all its facets and forms found its way into music. Music needed to illicit a reaction from the listener. Short of that, our performances were banal, roughage, waste.
He moved me away from over-sophistication and inaudible subtlety in my playing yet invited me to events where I could drink fine Champagne and look at Rembrandts and Monets. He helped teach me that the experience of golden and precious art must be married to our experience of being animals, natural, primal. He immersed himself, bringing in his pupils, in pre-Freudian art and made it rich in meaning through his modern understanding of the mind and heart.
He showed me how to talk to an audience about the most distant aesthetics and moments in history without ever insulting them with condescension. He taught me that the glass of champagne and the Rembrandt were to be there for everyone and that it was our mission to make this possible, to open hearts and minds and opportunities.
It may be the case that even before I began my work with Albert, I was this type of musician and person. It may be that Albert and I found each other and coincided in a way that will always make me feel filial gratitude and love, and with his loss, a large open space that can never be filled. But ask his other students. Ask the harpsichordists from James Richman and Ray Erikson to Charlotte Mattox. Ask the instrumentalists who worked with him in those early adventures into repertoire and instruments (gut strings and light old bows, wooden flutes and early oboes) like Ryan Brown, Linda Quan, David Miller. Ask the singers who enjoyed the cantatas and arias worked out together.
Albert left a trail of committed, inspired, intelligent, engaged artists and for each of them, Albert Fuller represents a moment or many moments of light.
This week I went to visit Albert on his deathbed, hospice care in place at home, and cared for by two dedicated and loving friends, Patrick Rucker and Jim Roe. It was painful to see a man of his vitality no longer IN life. I held both Albert’s hands and hoped that he could feel that the blood running through him, also ran through me; that I would continue, if not nearly as well, the work he did so beautifully and generously in his life. And then I noticed that he was wearing only his white underwear.
When I returned to New York from studies abroad in 1973, my route was to the Juilliard School and to Fuller’s studio. Albert asked me to meet him for tea at his apartment on West 54th street. I arrived with the attitude of a boy who had moved through the disciplined and socially structured world of a European conservatory. I had never addressed a professor by his first name. The boundaries were clear, the education wonderful and focused.
I rang Mr. Fuller’s bell and was dumbstruck when he opened wearing only his white underwear. Just out of the shower he ushered me in to the living room and asked me to wait, to look around, to play his harpsichord.
That evening he invited me to join friends after one of his concerts and introduced me to New York Szechwan Chinese food at Sheila Chang’s, one of the city’s best.
From that moment on, encounters, lessons, voyages with Albert always introduced and challenged. He demanded reaction and he gave catalyst, he required balance but offered constant opportunities for growth. Life was about interaction. MUSIC was about interaction. Albert demanded that life in all its facets and forms found its way into music. Music needed to illicit a reaction from the listener. Short of that, our performances were banal, roughage, waste.
He moved me away from over-sophistication and inaudible subtlety in my playing yet invited me to events where I could drink fine Champagne and look at Rembrandts and Monets. He helped teach me that the experience of golden and precious art must be married to our experience of being animals, natural, primal. He immersed himself, bringing in his pupils, in pre-Freudian art and made it rich in meaning through his modern understanding of the mind and heart.
He showed me how to talk to an audience about the most distant aesthetics and moments in history without ever insulting them with condescension. He taught me that the glass of champagne and the Rembrandt were to be there for everyone and that it was our mission to make this possible, to open hearts and minds and opportunities.
It may be the case that even before I began my work with Albert, I was this type of musician and person. It may be that Albert and I found each other and coincided in a way that will always make me feel filial gratitude and love, and with his loss, a large open space that can never be filled. But ask his other students. Ask the harpsichordists from James Richman and Ray Erikson to Charlotte Mattox. Ask the instrumentalists who worked with him in those early adventures into repertoire and instruments (gut strings and light old bows, wooden flutes and early oboes) like Ryan Brown, Linda Quan, David Miller. Ask the singers who enjoyed the cantatas and arias worked out together.
Albert left a trail of committed, inspired, intelligent, engaged artists and for each of them, Albert Fuller represents a moment or many moments of light.
This week I went to visit Albert on his deathbed, hospice care in place at home, and cared for by two dedicated and loving friends, Patrick Rucker and Jim Roe. It was painful to see a man of his vitality no longer IN life. I held both Albert’s hands and hoped that he could feel that the blood running through him, also ran through me; that I would continue, if not nearly as well, the work he did so beautifully and generously in his life. And then I noticed that he was wearing only his white underwear.
Alex Ross mention and link
This blog got a very nice mention and link from New Yorker music critic Alex Ross Wednesday on his blog "The Rest Is Noise."
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