Moondog Memories
So, I'm half listening to this set (for the first time) and half enjoying the wine and the essay when a particular track catches my attention. You know how that is - you're casually listening while you're doing other things or driving along with the Pod on random or the radio humming away when you suddenly become aware that the music you're hearing is something you want to hear again. The beauty of the Pod is that you can do that immediately, and repeat it until you're satisfied. I rise from my seat on the cozy couch and amble over to the Ipod player (one of those Bose units, which is actually pretty good) to see what it was and to play it again. To my surprise, it's called Synchrony for String Quartet (6 other arrangements) No. 2, and it's by Moondog, a/k/a Louise Hardin. It's a short but absolutely lovely piece of music - a lyrical round for string quartet and what sounds like a tom-tom beating once per measure; the emotional content is sweetly melancholic. It's also in the minimalist vein (the one post-war academic genre I enjoy) while the melody has a Coplandesque openess to it. I played it two more times (a short piece, luckily), and have played it several times since then; it's something I'll go back to.
Moondog was a blind street musician/poet and NYC character. He knew both classical and jazz figures of the 50's and 60's, and was a respected eccentric, an "outsider" musician and composer. One of the pleasures of attending High School in Manhattan, which I was fortunate enough to do in the early 60's (commuting from the wilds of eastern Queens), was that when you got out of school, you were in the city and free to explore it. I often ended up in mid-town, catching a movie on 42nd street (which was lined with movie theatres at the time, each dedicated to a particular genre: westerns, crime, war, thrillers, non-porno passion) or heading up to a giant arcade (pre-video days, of course), located around Broadway and 49th and called, as far I can recall "The Broadway Sports Palace" or "Sportland" - you get the idea.
On my way home from there, if the weather was nice, I'd walk across to Lex and then down to Grand Central for the subway home - and sometimes, on 6th in the low 50's, I'd come across Moondog. He was quite tall, and usually dressed in some shamanistic/viking outfit (that's his picture above); he sold poetry and sheet music, and occasionally played on some strange instrument (apparently of his own design). I bought some poems from him once or twice (cheap enough - but which I sadly don't have any more), and passed an idle word or two, but never knew much about him. I've actually learned more since hearing that piece on the Pod than I ever knew before, including the fact that he died in Germany in 1999 at the age of 83.
There are CD's of his work in print, and I expect to listen to a couple of them to see if I have the same kind of positive response as I did to Synchrony #2. But like them or not, the memories brought into play by this one track have been - like the piece itself - sweet and melancholy, as memories of youthful experiences often are, and I'm grateful to Kronos for unknowingly triggering them for me.
