People From Michigan

"[W]hen I was in high school, I formed a vocal group that was at first more like Four Freshmen harmonies—just this side of barbershop quartet. But then when I heard the Hi-Lo’s and Clare’s arrangements, I started writing more like that, and would write it down trying to figure out what they were doing. That was a big lesson for me on developing more advanced harmonies, and I took that with me to New York and all that. If you listen to Speak Like a Child, his influence is huge on that record, in the voicings and the harmonic devices."

"[I]t was many years later that I met Clare—maybe 15 or 20 years ago, in the A&M Studios in Los Angeles. I wasn’t working with him, I just found out he was in the building and I jumped up: “Clare Fischer?! Aw, man, I gotta tell him what he’s done for me!” And when I met him, he had no idea that I even knew him, much less that he was a big influence on me. I explained the whole thing to him and it tripped him out, because he told me I influenced him! It was really pretty cool. We just bonded right away; I could feel it, and I knew that he could feel it, too. There weren’t that many more encounters, but when I got to meet Clare and talk to him just those few more times it was always special. I wouldn’t be me if it wasn’t for Clare Fischer."

"An interesting modulating example is the jazz piece Excerpt from Canonic Passacaglia by Clare Fischer (issued on Alone Together in 1997). The chord progression, the bass line, and also melodic details are reminiscent of Benny Golson's Whisper Not (1956). Clare Fischer turns this model into a continuously modulating pattern d: i – ♯vi / a: ii – V – i which traverses the entire circle of fifths. The five bass tones D – C – B – A combine the descending line C – C – B – A with the zig-zag D – B – E – A in the m3/P5 lattice. The title Passacaglia is most likely a reference to the descending fourth-line (such as D – C – B – A). The deviation from the more typical descend (D – C – B♭ – A) with B♭ instead of B is in solidarity with the constitution of the fundamental bass pattern with B being a minor third below D. Despite the obvious similarities with Whisper Not, the Canonic Passacaglia by Clare Fischer (see Fig. 15) does not show the same kind of hierarchical organization. It is a chain of modulating 2nd modes through all twelve tonal centers, each of which provides a clear tonal anchor."

"Verve released an album by Dizzy Gillespie titled A Portrait of Duke Ellington. The orchestral writing was nothing less than brilliant, but, alas, the album gave no arranger's credit. The writing sounded like Ellington and yet not like Ellington; like Gil Evans, yet not like Gil Evans. It was in fact apparent that the arranger had studied everything and everyone and then developed his own highly personal approach to writing. Unable to reach Dizzy by phone, I set out to find out who had done this remarkable writing. It turned out to be the young man about whom Dizzy was so wildly enthusiastic, and this time I did not forget the name: Clare Fischer. Clare was at that time chiefly known as the pianist for the Hi-Lo's, the superb vocal group out of which the even more brilliant Singers Unlimited group developed. The Gillespie-Ellington album provided convincing evidence that he had one of the most original and advanced compositional minds in jazz."

"According to Shipton, "It is one of the least successful of Dizzy's big band ventures, lacking the authentic stamp of Ellington's own personality." I don't think it was meant to reflect Ellington as much as the broader instrumental palette that Gil Evans had explored. If, as Shipton suggests, Dizzy wanted a setting comparable to that Miles Davis had found with Gil Evans in Porgy and Bess and Miles Ahead, he had found the right arranger. But when Fischer arrived in New York from California, charts completed, he found that Dizzy, with the out-to-lunch carelessness of which he was capable, hadn't bothered to book an orchestra. Fischer had to do it at the last minute. Most of the best jazz players in New York were already engaged, and Fischer had to fill in the instrumentation with symphony players. They didn't grasp the idiom, and the album is stiff. In a word, it just doesn't swing. But the writing in that album is gorgeous; its failure is Dizzy's fault."

"Producer David Z (brother of Revolution drummer Bobby Z) welds the tracks magnificently and Clare Fischer's inspired string arrangements give the album a conceptual feel."

"Clare Fisher, talk about a muse. He was my inspiration for getting the strings on the record. Clare had done work with my father—my father being the arranger and Clare being the string arranger. So, I had that “in,” although that was not how I was thinking about it at the time. Prince and I were listening to a bunch of Rufus records back in the day—and this was before we thought about doing strings on the first record. We were talking about how brilliant the strings were on those albums. I had also been listening to a lot of Claus Ogerman and Bill Evans. There's one record they did called Symbiosis and it's just one of the most beautifully arranged records. Ogerman's string arrangement, and Evans playing the piano over it, is some of the most beautiful music I have ever heard. The only thing that's ever come close to feeling as perfectly arranged in terms of the strings was on the Rufusized record. I just said, “Prince, why don't we get Clare to do the strings on our record?” He said, “Yeah.” I said, “My dad knows him.” I called my dad and said “Pop, you gotta call Clare and see if he's up for it.” He was. We sent him the 24 track. He got back to us right away and said “Absolutely.” Within a month we had all the lead sheets and we had the entire score for the record. We went in and cut it and I couldn't have been happier."

"When Clare was sending something, Prince would get very excited. When's the tape coming? And when it would get there and first thing, he'd get in the car and listen to it."

"When he won a Grammy in 1984 for Best Latin Jazz Album,✱ he delighted his fans by giving his acceptance speech in Spanish."

"The string arrangement is Clare Fischer. I'd been waiting both for the material and the opportunity to work with him. And on this song "It Could Happen to You," which ends up just strings and vocals, I was at home writing, and I'd written this piece—[hums a couple of measures]—and my mother heard it. And she says, "Oh, that's the bridge..." And I said, "No! That's not the bridge for anything. I've just written it." She says, "No, no; wait a minute." So she phoned back 15 minutes later: "Found it! Here, listen to this," and played me Peggy Lee singing "It Could Happen to You." I'd even written the bridge in the same key. So, I must've heard this when I was six or something. So I made the arrangement for an acoustic quartet, and sent it to Clare for the string arrangement. And when I got there, he ran through the string arrangement. And I was just in awe of how accurate he'd taken the flavor I was trying to re-illuminate from the song. And I just dumped everything I had on tape, and left it as spare as that, because it was just... poifect."

"I'm a very big fan of this Brazilian singer-guitarist called João Gilberto. And this next song... um... his music inspired me to write it, three or four years ago. Turns out that he heard it in Brazil, and liked the string arrangements on it, which were done by the same arranger, Clare Fischer, who arranged the music for me this evening. So it's nice when something that inspires you goes round and comes back, and you're full circle.✱"

"[Stan Kenton] gave composers carte blanche to write anything they wanted to. The main problem was there was no money for rehearsals so all I remember is an unbelievable mass of notes going in front of my face and us trying to make a halfway decent performance out of it. There were some good compositions that came out of that: Bill Holman, John Williams. And Clare Fischer, one of my all-time heroes, albeit a bit difficult to get along with sometimes, wrote some magnificent music for that band."

"With special thanks 2 Clare Fischer 4 Making Brighter the Colors Black and White"

"Therese [Stoulil]: Please send 2 Claire Fisher 4 Orchestration. Tell him I'd like a full orchestra. There are 12 open tracks. Tell him 2 go 4 broke and play something thruout the whole song. I'll edit what I can't use. If he is unable 2 do the date ask him 4 recommendations of other people. Tell him I hope he's in good health & spirits. Thanks."

"At this point, I wouldn't want to jinx it by meeting him. His arrangements are incredible. I just send him a tape, we talk on the phone, and he sends me the finished orchestra tracks. Hear that? I'm gonna get that chord on the radio, baby!"

"Palmer comprehends (by dint of predatory maleness, I suppose) that this music is ultimately about seduction rather than romance. Clare Fisher's [sic] arrangements have the kind of brassy swagger and classy, stylish sweep that a ladies' man needs."

"Other losses that took a bite out of the music world: the swinging jazz piano of the incomparable Dave Brubeck, the lush arrangements of classical and jazz composer Richard Rodney Bennett, and Judy Garland’s musical director Mort Lindsey, who arranged her celebrated comeback at Carnegie Hall in 1961. And there was nobody more brilliantly talented than Mr. Clare Fischer, one of the finest composer-arranger-conductors in jazz for 60 years. He was the sound behind the Hi-Los, the sensational vocal quartet that revolutionized jazz singing in the 1950s, but he also enhanced the work of Dizzy Gillespie, Bill Evans ✱ and Cal Tjader."

"When it would come back, it was always, "Oh my God, this is so exciting." He'd get the FedEx package and inside would be the multi-track tape and on the stereo pair of tracks would be this orchestral mix that Clare had done. He'd push up the faders and there it is. I mean, there's something brand new. It was thrilling and really, really exciting. Those were breathless moments. Prince loved what Clare did."

"Well, voicings, I learned a valuable lesson once when I was in a piano club with Clare Fischer and George Shearing.✱ And it was Shearing's club. And it existed, I'd say, from '62 to '63; and then, unfortunately, he had to let it go, because certain members in the club went into the business side of the club as a political force. But that one year we were in his organization, I learned a lot from Clare and George Shearing about the technique of voicing. I was taught to just take any chord and, all of a sudden, just take it through every single key, every single imaginable voicing that I could come up with. Just runnin' through every single key. And Clare Fischer told me; he said, "Joe, you will get to that point, once you run everything through every, every single key," he said, "you will reach that point that you could just throw your hands on the keyboard and play blindly, and you gonna play a chord. you gonna play some kind of voicing." And that was something I worked on for years."

"By the time "Sonando" came around, I had already had a few friendly arguments with Clare Fischer about "Poncho" and "Straight Ahead," regarding my approach and style. Clare Fischer is a genius, a wonderful musician, but he overpowered me and my ideas. He had a different approach. I was always leaning more toward a typical style. I was coming from bebop and an authentic Latin style, whereas he would like a lot of electronic influences. By the time I signed with Concord, my other band was ready to record, so me and Clare split up in a friendly way."

"We went down and got a six-pack of beer, and we're coming back in the van – back to the concert site – and all of a sudden, Clare said, "Oh, look! There's a Jack in the Box! And we went... "So?... We just ate prime rib, dessert and all; and you say, 'There's a Jack in the Box'??!!!" Well, Rob was drivin', I was ridin' shotgun, and Clare was sittin' in the middle... and he said--he said "Pull in there quick! Pull in there." You gotta be kidding! We pulled in there. He got into the Jack in the Box line. "What do you want from here?" He goes, "I want.." Oh no, first he goes, "Do you guys want anything? You want anything?" We said, "Clare, we just ate a prime rib dinner! We just want our beer, ya know? And he goes, "OK... Give me seven apple turnovers." Seven apple turnovers from Jack in the box! They gave him seven apple turnovers. We took off, and there's a bag down here, and I'm shaking my head. "This guy wants seven apple turnovers!" We took off, and he immediately started eating two of them, fast. I'm lookin' at 'im, and sayin', "Damn!" And then Rob Fisher looks at me and says, "What the heck. I guess I'll get one." As soon as he put his hand in the bag, Clare grabbed his hand! He said, "Those are mine! I asked you guys if you wanted anything. I would buy you anything! Those are MINE. Stay away from them!""

"One of the things I liked about Los Angeles was that Clare Fischer, the arranger, used to organize something called the piano club.✱ It was an informal group of pianists, and we would meet at someone's house and discuss what was going on in the world of jazz piano. It became a good meeting point for all types of pianists, and as well as Clare, I remember meeting other players such as Joe Sample at those get-togethers. It was felt by some of those who attended that Clare had originally organized it as something of a shopwindow for his own talents as a player and arranger, but in fact the diversity of those who showed up took the spotlight off any one individual and we could really home in on pianistic ideas."

"Pianist-arranger Clare Fischer is a unique and complex musician who is both a modernist and a traditionalist, a purist and a radical explorer who has always gone his own way and, at the same time, held strictly to the rules of the road. For example, there is a remarkable moment at the end of our conversation where he brings together Latin, bebop, rock and roll and boogie-woogie in a way that summarizes fifty years of music in under a hundred words; that is typical of this man's unique insight and approach."

"I suspect your ability to hear into the heart of the Latin feel is not unrelated to your ability to converse fluently in the Spanish language, and to emotionally identify with where it comes from. I must relate a story to you. I was talking to Paquito D'Rivera, and he told me that he spent two hours conversing in Spanish with a gentleman at Disneyland about all sorts of things, politics and culture. A Nordic gringo, he said, and then he said, "I must excuse myself, I must go find this man, Clare Fischer. I've always wanted to meet him." And it was you; you said, "But I am Clare Fischer." And he had no idea who he was talking to. And he was startled at your fluency in the language and your ability to understand the culture."

"Walter Wanderley was very talented and very good with arrangements. I remember that there was a famous jazz organ player and arranger, Clare Fischer, and when we arrived, we were playing in L.A. and Clare was sitting next to Walter and paying attention to all the sounds and everything and he told me, "My God, I heard this guy's albums for ages and finally to be able to look at him and see how he does it..." So, you know it was very impressive because he [Fischer] was famous in Brazil as a jazz player, so he [Wanderley] was very very good. He died some years ago."

"I studied some classical giants, especially Bartok and Debussy, but didn't go too far into that realm for fear of losing my focus. I wanted to learn what made a string section really sing, then apply that to what I know and value in jazz. So my sources became Clare Fischer, particularly albums he'd done with Joao Gilberto; Claus Ogerman's things with Michael Brecker, including Cityscape (Warner Brothers); and Eddie Sauter on a a superb album by Stan Getz, Focus (Verve). These men are geniuses, and their music is timeless."

"Saxophonist Tom Scott, bassists John Patitucci and Jeff Berlin, keyboardist Patrice Rushen and drummer Ndugu Chancler are but a few of the L.A.-based contemporary jazz talents who are taking part in "A Tribute to Clare Fischer." [...] The event, which will be emceed by the ever-chipper Chuck Niles, is sponsored by Musicians Wives, Inc. and is being held to offset medical expenses incurred by the Grammy-winning Fischer, a keyboardist-composer-arranger who suffered severe head injuries in an accident in July. Fischer, who has worked with Cal Tjader, orchestrated for Dizzy Gillespie and Prince and had his tunes recorded by Art Blakey, is recuperating at his Studio City home. "Though he's still suffering from short term memory loss, dizziness and depression, he's greatly improved and the latest CAT scans show that blood clots in his brain that showed up after the accident have almost disappeared," said the keyboardist's son, Brent Fischer, a percussionist who plays in his father's band.✱ Fischer said his father is back to playing every day, and "he wrote a new song as soon as he came home. He's just taking it easy, reading and talking to a lot of old friends who are wishing him well." Not only will attendees at the tribute hear a lot of good music, they will be eligible for door prizes which range from a Kurzweil K-1000 synthesizer to signed LPs by Prince and Paul McCartney."

"Everyone who listens to me regularly, either on the radio or in person, knows that I like the music of Clare Fischer. I think he is a brilliant and talented musician who writes and plays beautifully. As a matter of fact, I like his work so well that I recorded two of his works instead of two of my own on my most recent album. Horace Silver once said if you know a man's music you know the man, so I feel know Clare Fischer very well. [...] On hearing some Clare Fischer compositions, the listener is frequently captivated by deceptively simple melodies and harmonies; however, in playing or analyzing those same compositions, the ingenuity and logic of the composer's solutions to his musical problems become much more apparent. The melodic intervals and harmonic progressions are far from ordinary. Even when he pays conscious tribute to musicians he admires, Fischer creates original impressions within the framework of the Ellington, Tristano or Gil Evans tradition without losing his own identity. His writing may combine the looseness of an Ellington or Evans chart with its "breathing space" for soloists, or it may incorporate the long-lined Tristano-inspired unisons with less obvious musical devices to make a musical point, but through it all he establishes a mood and maintains it."

"Before: Is that Clare Fischer? He does some tenth things like that. After: I actually got this record around the same time I got a Clare Fischer solo piano record. And I'm struck by the similarity between their approaches. Both have beautiful touches in the upper register... can make the piano sing."

"One day my aunt went to the record store without me and came home with a number of records, including this one. I loved it. It wasn't a jazz record, but it wasn't a soul record either. Chaka Khan undersang everything. She wasn't up to her usual wailing tricks. The most notable presence on Ask Rufus was Clare Fischer, the uncle of the drummer, André Fischer, and a legendary string arranger in his own right. Orchestral work in black music is nothing new—Philadelphia created an entire genre based on adding orchestral arrangements to songs. But there's something about the beauty of darkness that Clare Fischer adds to these records that's just haunting. This was also a Sunday record in my house. My parents were going to do an extended trip to Louisiana and Miami, gone five weeks. When they told me how long they'd be away, the string breakdown of "Egyptian Song" came on. It's a soundtrack moment, a perfect illustration of childhood sadness, lush and spare and at the same time, creepy. And then the story got sadder, at least for me. In Louisiana, Aunt Karen met a man at a restaurant. It blossomed into romance and they decided to get married. When the grown-ups got back from that trip, my parents gave us another talk: We're not going back out on the road again, no, but Karen's leaving. She took the record with her."

"There are passages on a recent album (in which Fischer collaborates with vibraphonist Cal Tjader) that mark some of the deepest, most profound marshaling of jazz, African, and Latin American elements yet heard (Verve V6-8531). "El Muchacho," for example, is the first step forward since the failure of Liebermann to cross-fertilize mambo and concert music validly. [...] At the time that Reed wrote "El Muchacho," he was not aware that he had written a composition that was a natural for further deeper blending with the mambo. But Clare Fischer was aware of this fact, and on this album triumphantly demonstrates that mambo is a still unfinished solution to a still stimulating problem by means of punning on the ostinato patterns of the Mexican son with the ostinato patterns of Afro-Cuban. For those sensitive enough to comprehend his special flair, he has opened the door on a new phase of tri-hybrid blending. And not a moment too soon. For the Castro revolution has cut the traditional ties between Cuba's Tin Pan Alley and our own popular music, and the next Latin dance may well have to be internally generated."

"His work with Cal Tjader on mambo "Alonzo" is a demonstration piece of the virtues of sober revolution. Alonzo opens with a suitably propulsive riff but so celestial are the high-pitched inventions that flow easily and comfortably in the course of this composition that the introduction is retroactively shown to be almost to be in bad taste. Never has a sharpened academic skill more convincingly enriched a piece of dance-hall music. So expressive is Fischer's personality that one can even detect his hand in normally anonymous ostinato patterns. Surely "Alonzo" will inspire Afro-Cuban musicians in the United States to rebel, at least occasionally, against the strictly chiseled conventions of their octave style of accompaniment."

"We all spent a lot of time and energy figuring out what musicians would best bring the music to life, eventually deciding that we shouldn't overthink things and just hire the best, because—and I've found this to be more true in the music world than anywhere else—you have to spend money to make money. The great Claire [sic] Fischer delivered some beautiful string arrangements, and the great Jerry Hey did the same for the horns."

"Between them, Dizzy Gillespie and Clare Fisher [sic] have come up with one of the most thoroughly delightful jazz sessions—small group or large—of the past several years. Gillespie himself has certainly rarely been heard to better advantage than in this program of low-keyed and lovely Ellington classics. This is unusual improvisational fare for his volatile, puckish trumpet, and he responds to it with some of his most sweeping, lyrical, expansive, and joyous playing on records to date. Fisher, until now known as the pianist and arranger for the Hi-Lo's, shows himself to be a most imaginative, witty and ingenious orchestral writer whose sensitive, continually arresting scores enhance the beauty of the original lines and gently but firmly goad Gillespie into solos of consistent taste and inventiveness. Inexplicably, Fisher's name appears nowhere on the album. Recording balances are insensitive at times."

"Fischer's orchestrations do not so much exhaust the possibilities of the genre as they delineate the full richness of its possibilities. In a sense, his charts serve to open one's ears to the limitless potential for significant, telling musical expression within the confines of the mood music idiom."

"Fischer understands strings; his writing for them does not relegate them to a subservient role in providing a soft cushion for the jazz improvisor. No, they are perfectly integrated into his orchestrations on a footing fully equal to every other element involved. [...] For a sample of absolutely gorgeous string writing, listen to the magnificent, moving "Sleep Sweet Child." (I understand from one of the participants that after the first rundown of his arrangement in the studio, the string players stood up and to a man applauded Fischer.) He will take it as the compliment intended if I remark that this piece reminded me forcibly of Sibelius' string writing."

"Clare Fischer has done what I wish Monk would do: he has written his own big band arrangements; the results are admirable. Fischer can make his ensemble whisper, sing, shout, praise, explain, cajole, proclaim. He is not afraid to be simple when simplicity will work; he can write for a mere quintet within the ensemble when he wants to."

"His string arrangements were weird because they went sort of sideways. They just cut across the track like there was a movie going on, but Prince wanted something dissonant, something weird, so I called Clare for Prince."

"The world is full of objects, more or less interesting; I do not wish to add any more."

"This [covariance] is something that is not in the habit of thinking of most amateur investors. They look at their investments one at a time, and they don't, you always have to go back and say, what's the covariance? That's what really matters for what happen to your portfolio. Because when you invest in a lot of companies that are all the same, you're asking for trouble, because the whole thing is going to either blow up or succeed. And you can't live like that. You have to be looking for low covariance."

"To understand the economy then is to comprehend how it is driven by the animal spirits. Just as Adam Smith’s invisible hand is the keynote of classical economics, Keynes’ animal spirits are the keynote to a different view of the economy — a view that explains the underlying instabilities of capitalism."

"I was reminded of how much I had misjudged the potential the profession would see in the time series rational expectations models. When I, as a graduate student at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) around 1970 did some work on the econometrics of rational expectations time series models, I felt rather apologetic about the extreme assumptions in the models. I did not expect others to regard them as anything more than a passing gimmick. Richard Sutch had just written in his MIT doctoral dissertation (1968) an exposition of the coefficient restrictions implied for time series representations of long-term and short-term interest rates, but he never bothered to publish this work. I remember conversations with him and others about rational expectations models, and I did not come away thinking they were the wave of the future."

"If a woman has her PhD in physics, has mastered quantum theory, plays flawless Chopin, was once a cheerleader, and is now married to a man who plays baseball, she will forever be "former cheerleader married to star athlete.""

"Castles continued to be the focus of economic activity as the center of an agricultural domain. Wealth continued to be measured in land and its produce. The only access the lord had to his wealth was to move from one estate to another consuming products from the harvests. Housing and feeding a household including retainers and servants required vasts amount of food and space for food preparation."

"Castles were more than military posts; they were the centers of political and economic power. As government headquarters they were built to impress the local population as well as visitors and rivals. While power was spread among great tenants-in-chief in a system of delegated government, castles in each territory were places where local lords collected taxes, settled disputes, and administered justice."

"Constant warfare, especially against the Muslims, gave rise to a new type of military man—one who combined the character and role of both monk and warrior. These knights, organized into military orders, served officially under the Pope but were essentially independent. Their grand master was both an abbot and a general. They lived under a modified Cistercian rule, and they took monastic vows of obedience, poverty, and chastity. As monks, in theory they owned nothing; for example, their horses and armor were loaned to them by the order. In practice they became a wealthy and often arrogant standing army. Having studied Byzantine and Muslim castles and warfare, they built huge castles that changed castle design in Europe."

"Chateau Gaillard had utilized the last of the newly built, huge great towers, and Rochester had depended on its early twelfth-century tower. During the course of the thirteenth century defense shifted to a towered wall, the enceinte or enclosure castle. Two plans emerged: the castle could rely on a series of courtyards, which had to be taken one after another, or on a concentric defense in which a second wall entirely surrounded the inner wall."

"Richard the Lion Hearted, who became king of England in 1189, had inherited Aquitaine (western France) from his mother Eleanor and Normandy and Anjou—and England—from his father Henry. As Duke of Normandy and Anjou, Richard was a vassal of the king of France, but he controlled more land in France than did the French king. Although Richard had been an ally of Philip Augustus in the Third Crusade, in 1192 he went to war with the king over his French lands. Richard built Chateau Gaillard (he called it the “cocky castle”) on a cliff above the Seine north of Paris to defend his claims to Normandy. (...) Richard chose an excellent site, in the territory of the archbishop of Rouen, who objected strenuously until Richard paid him a handsome sum for the land. (...) Richard also raised money by selling rights of citizenship to residents of the town."

"When an attacking force laid siege to a castle, they used techniques and weapons not unlike those developed by the ancient Romans. First they surrounded the castle in order to cut off all avenues of escape and resupply. They also built a camp ringed by ditches and palisades to secure their own position. Then they built siege engines—great stonethrowing devices—which they hoped would break down the castle walls. Although the knights’ chivalric code gave pride of place in warfare to a charge on horseback with lance or to hand-to-hand combat with swords, military engineers skilled in the mechanics of offensive engines had to first break through the walls. To breach the walls the army used battering rams, various kinds of projectiles, and mines. In other words they tried to go through, over, or under the walls."

"The siege warfare of the Middle Ages consisted of blockading the castle in hopes of destroying it or taking it over for one’s own use. In peacetime castles controlled the surrounding land, but when hostilities broke out they provided passive resistance and served as a base of operations."