Author: Jonathan Senigaglia

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Grandma’s Potato Gnocchi all’Amatriciana

I learned this recipe in Rome. This dish tastes super gourmet, but it’s actually very easy to make if you give the sauce the time it needs to fully mature. Serve this dish to your friends, and forever after you will be able to make them call you “chef”.

Potato Gnocchi all'Amatriciana
Potato gnocchi all’amatriciana – like Grandma used to make

For this recipe, the quality of ingredients is very important. Try to get yourself to an authentic Italian grocery store if you can. Guanciale might be difficult to find, but can be substituted with pancetta if need be. If you can’t find that, thick bacon is ok as long as it isn’t smoked. If you have the time, you could also make your own guanciale, assuming you have a whole pig’s head lying around. The gnocchi should be freshly made if possible.

Ingredients

3 thick slices of guanciale (pork made from pig jowls), chopped into small cubes

EVOO

1 small onion, chopped

Chopped mushrooms

Hot red pepper flakes

One can of whole tomatoes with juices (again, choose a can with no added preservatives, as natural as possible)

1 pound of potato gnocchi

Fresh basil

1 half jar of filleted anchovies packed in oil

1/2 cup grated Romano cheese

Directions:

  1. Cook the guanciale in a large saute pan over medium heat and sizzle until just starting to turn brown. It should cover the pan with pork fat. Turn off heat and with a slotted spoon remove the guanciale bits.
  2. If there isn’t a ton of rendered fat in the pan, add some EVOO. Turn heat back on and add onions, and cook over low until soft, but not browned. Add mushrooms and red pepper flakes for some kick.
  3. Add tomatoes with juices and the guanciale to the pan. Throw in some anchovies. If they are high quality jarred anchovies, this won’t turn the dish overly fishy. They will actually disintegrate over time and become part of the sauce, and let me tell you, this will change your whole view of anchovies. Let the sauce bubble for at least half an hour. It will thicken quite a bit, but if it gets too thick add a bit of water. No need for any extra seasoning, this sauce will pack a lot of flavor from all that pork fat and those anchovies.
  4. Boil some water and cook the gnocchi. When they float, they are done. Don’t overcook them or they will be too mushy. Pull out the gnocchi and add a dash of oil so they don’t stick together. Add a cup of the gnocchi water to the sauce and stir with some ripped up basil. This will meld all the flavors together.
  5. Remove the sauce from heat and add the cheese on top. Serve it up with a bottle of Chianti Sangiovese. Congratulations, you will never eat jarred spaghetti sauce again.
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Today my son was born

Early this morning the stork paid us a visit, and he gave us the most precious gift. My second son, Charlie was born today.

He’s a strapping boy with dark brown hair and powerful lungs. Today he had to learn some important lessons: how to breathe air, how to eat, how to cry; crucial skills to survive in this world. But since it was his birthday, he got to spend most of the day lounging around on his mama, listening to her heartbeat (which he was so used to hearing from the inside) and smelling her familiar smells.

Charlie also met his older brother Jack.

Jack is a really great big brother. He put stickers on Baby Charlie, and rubbed his head too. Charlie popped his wrinkly little arm out of the blanket, and Jack rubbed the tiny fingers. They were like two old pals.

Two boys, two sons, my progeny, my little family, complete.

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The Painted Bird

When I read The Painted Bird by Jerzy Kosiński, it disturbed me, in that special way that only great literature can. It tore my brain up, left me feeling very uncertain about who I was, about my own species. This music just had to come out.

 

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Music that reminds me of dog sitting

“Andante comodo” from Violin Sonata No. 1

I wrote this on a ranch. I wrote this at the radio station, late late at night. It’s a song of love. It’s a song about feeling alone.

On the day I finished it, I also finished On Chisel Beach by Ian McEwan. This music wrapped itself around that story, and both were planted deep into my brain. Both the music and that story complain and ache and worry, they both drag it out when it doesn’t need to be that complicated. Both improve with age, with patience, with repetition.

On the day I finished it, I drew this picture:

I also fretted about composing too slowly:

Writing words on sheet music is easier than writing music. Maybe I just need to write music as often as I write words.

This song reminds me of sitting up until all hours of the night, on a couch that wasn’t my own, in a strange house, watching WWII documentaries and checking to see if we’d accidentally let the coyote eat the cat.

It reminds me of the last grasping days of college. I was spending most of my time grasping, grasping at what?… grasping at something.

It reminds me of emerging from a dark cavern to greet the morning sun. It reminds me of waiting, waiting, waiting to grow up.

Years and years and years after I finished the music, I played it for someone. She said, “You’re really starting to get good at this.” I pretended that the music was truly new.

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Who Am I Stealing From Today? (David Wise)

In late 2017 I picked up Quiquern again and resolved to finish it for the last time. How many times had I called this project complete, only to pick it up again a year later and tinker, tinker? Well those days are done. If I can’t finish a project, like really finish it, how can I call myself a composer, or an artist for that matter? By the New Year had I hammered out the first fragment (now equipped with a Village Dance section) and finally turned the second fragment into a real piece, rather than just a collection of unconnected ideas.

In early January, full of fresh energy and creative juice, I saw the music in a different light and dove headfirst into some new material. In two days I created an entirely original fragment: The Singing House.

Fragment 3: Quaggi – The Singing House

Come on a musical journey with me.

On the far side of the village is the Quaggi – The Singing House. Only men may enter; it is where they go to pray. In times of plenty, the men sing hearty songs of gratitude to the various gods of the Arctic. In times of desperation, they fall into a trance of smoke and dark and sweat and hunger. Arms linked, stomping the holy ground, repeating of the same syllables, the great hunters of the village reach for the gods with outstretched arms.

What does a 10 year old boy imagine of this place? Banned from entering, just like the women, but knowing in his heart, unlike the women, that one day he will be granted entry into the inner sanctum, a young boy of the village can only guess what goes on inside that large tent. He hears from a friend that the sorcerer sings his magic songs and calls upon the Spirit of the Reindeer, and his songs make the wind blow and the ice crack to reveal the seal below. Anxiety and yearning and fear wiggle through his body. One day he would take his place in the Quaggi and learn the secrets of the hunters.

But at fourteen an Inuit feels himself a man, and Kotuko was tired of making snares for wild-fowl and kit-foxes, and most tired of all of helping the women to chew seal-and deer-skins (that supples them as nothing else can) the long day through, while the men were out hunting. He wanted to go into the quaggi, the Singing–House, when the hunters gathered there for their mysteries, and the angekok, the sorcerer, frightened them into the most delightful fits after the lamps were put out, and you could hear the Spirit of the Reindeer stamping on the roof; and when a spear was thrust out into the open black night it came back covered with hot blood.

I should also note that I openly plagiarized the work of another composer in this piece: David Wise, who wrote all the music from Donkey Country (1 and 2). Here’s the tune I stole:

So good right?

The music from this game was the running soundtrack of my childhood. When I was in middle school, I used to pretend I was in a band (perhaps in some jazzy night club) performing this very song.  This music shaped me and my compositional style. I feel honored to sample this man’s music.

The form of “Quaggi” is reminiscent of video game music. The first section is a long musical segment consisting of variations on a couple themes. It then repeats. In fact it could repeat on loop and just BE video game music.

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Quiquern: Village Dance

Remember how I said a while back that the first movement of Quiquern was complete? Well that wasn’t the first time I’ve said that and been mistaken.

Here’s the new version:

I posted what I thought was a complete movement on a favorite forum of mine, the Young Composers Music Forum, (here’s the post). A young composer named Jarron Carlson posted a very thoughtful response:

“Thank you for sharing this (wonderfully poetic!!) music! I love your use of motifs and how creative you are with your harmonic language. Especially in the first movement, I really admire your use of more traditional harmonies how they slip into sonorities that are more modern-sounding. I do wish however, that you exposed us to more variety in texture in the first movement. I feel like most of the piece you stick to the feel of (for lack of a better word) intruding silences and pauses preceded by short melodic phrases. Maybe you were going for this feel throughout the whole movement, but I sort-of wish I got the chance to hear you develop your motivic ideas in a different kind of texture. Texture change can also be very effective for communicating different emotions to your audience (which I read was one of your goals in this piece and I feel like you’re already doing well already, with your writing as it is :)”

That critique really struck home. Quiquern has always been one of my children, and I love her dearly, but she has never been perfect. One persistent problem across the years has been a lack of diversity of sound. There are lots of lovely segments of Quiquern, but when taken together they tend to blend into something long and monochromatic (a touch of which I was going for, as I wrote the music picturing a frozen tundra, but too much can be too much). Throw in a new texture, mix in some beloved themes previously heard, and BOOM magic happens. A fire was lit! I mean shoot, I had enough material to work with!

By the way, you can check out some of Jarron’s work at his Soundcloud: https://soundcloud.com/jarron1099.

I don’t often compose quickly, but this stretch was fast. Statistically now it has been proven that I almost always very musically productive in late December. My Song-Writing Club took place in December, as have many feverish bouts of creative activity.  I started the new section the evening I received the critique (Dec. 13), and completed the new section New Year’s Eve (Dec. 31). Just under 20 days to complete about seven minutes of new music; for me that’s pretty dang quick.

I took the main Quiquern theme and wove it a kind of lively folk dance, the piano strumming like a guitar, a people dancing in the firelight. The woodwinds play all sorts of little games together, chase each other across the ice. There is something festive about this music, but still somber. Just beyond the warmth of that fire is an endless frozen wilderness. It is bitterly cold out there, so cold a man’s skin can freeze off his bones, so cold you go mad. Something is lurking out there, in the distant dark. It could be a god or it could be a monster, or perhaps the wind. Right here, safe by the fire, with my family all around me, I am safe and warm. I celebrate that warmth and cherish it, while I still have it. I pray that all those who don’t have it may find it soon.

How to express a people through music… How to express all the depth of the human experience, all the moments and understandings shared among a tribe… It feels like an impossible task. But at least I feel I added another layer. I wanted these people to celebrate who they are in this music, to have a little fun, to play and wrestle and love. At the edge of the world, surrounded by danger, I wanted them to dance.

 

The image on this page is my an artist named Milo Minock, who meticulously documented the goings-on of the Yup’ik tribe in the 1950s and 60s. Read about his work here.

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Bach’s Christmas Oratorio: Divine and Free

Last night I was lucky enough to see a live performance of Johann Sebastian Bach’s Christmas Oratorio at San Francisco Symphony Hall.  The ensemble was called Bach Collegium Japan, a group founded to spread the music of Bach across Japan. This was their SF Symphony debut, and needless to say, they nailed it.

The music lifted me up and inspired me. I especially recommend the second cantata. The opening movement of that work, called Sinfonia, is subtle and expressive to a degree I have never seen in Bach. In this music he pulls the curtain back and shows us a glimpse of his soul, as well as a preview of an era of music he never lived to see but most certainly inspired.

Always under control of his faculties, his form, his harmonies, Bach is the ultimate master of “composed” music. He leads you where he wishes to lead you and brings you back again. In no hurry at all, Bach weaves together a lovely conversation between the a full baroque orchestra and the luxurious reedy softness of two oboes. Warm baking bread on Christmas morning, the snow falling softly outside the window, papa relaxing at the table with cup of cocoa. This music is home.

Here are a couple different performances. It’s fun to compare!

Here is a nice in depth explanation of the formula behind these cantatas, as well as Bach’s use of other composers’ chorale melodies, including melodies written by Martin Luther: http://bach.org/education/bwv-248/

You can never go wrong with an article by the mind-bogglingly knowledgeable program annotator for the SF Symphony, James M. Keller. Here is his eloquent dive into Bach’s Christmas Oratorio: http://www.sfsymphony.org/Watch-Listen-Learn/Read-Program-Notes/Program-Notes/JS-Bach-Christmas-Oratorio-BWV-248.aspx

Image result for johann bach
The man.

 

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Sketching a symphony

I’m writing some music for my friends. More on that in a bit.

These little nuggets will one day become my first symphony. I guess wouldn’t exactly call them sketches since the music is written beginning to end, but they feel rough because they are not yet fully orchestrated. Either way, once that final orchestration phase is complete, this work will be a substantial piece of music, with a lot of rich content for the listener to explore.

For now I’ve chosen a basic instrumentation of flute, oboe, trumpet, low strings. This can give a feel of being fleshed out, but is small enough to make sketching manageable, and colorful enough to make it fun. This instrumentation also helped me get away from the violin-centric symphony model, since I haven’t included violins in my original sketches. When I sit down and orchestrate this thing for real I will add violins in at my leisure, like a painter who, with one smooth movement, adds a bit of reflected light to a child’s eye.

The next step is to dive deep into the orchestration and make some hard choices. But for now, I’m savoring the completion of an crucial leg of this artistic journey. This particular piece has taken years to get to this spot, and where it will eventually lead I am not entirely sure. Sometimes it’s just important to pause and recognize a milestone.

The working title is “Adventure Cat!”. I’m not totally settled on all aspects of this music, but the overall arc I love. This is music for my friends. It’s a celebration of what we’ve all accomplished together, what we’ve built, the life we’ve lived, the love we’ve felt. The music goes a lot of different places, as do long friendships.

The music also challenges the ear at times, and other times it’s warm and inviting. It tries to take he listener on a road trip, over a fence, into the dark night. Sometimes it’s a song of love, a private moment, a hidden cave.

When I dive back into this music and turn these nuggets into completed symphony movements, I may end up expanding certain chunks, or slowing down the tempo for a section, or taking the music in a slightly different direction if the mood strikes me. I’m still shaping the clay a bit. But the meaning behind the music will not change. It’s that meaning that underscores every note of this music, every rise and fall. It’s that meaning that drives me to complete it.

I welcome any feedback.