Old, New, Folk, Classical

Striking that so much more recognition is being given genres that would have been dismissed as lower class (musically speaking) 20 years ago: jazz, early music of the more exotic origins (Spanish, Arabic, etc.), klezmer.

I think people who like to listen are craving a return to pitch involvement.  Tone.  Pure and simple, it resonates with us.  Why avoid it?

Because, if you are going to get seriously involved with it, tone requires attention and attentiveness.  Our training prepares us to produce tone, not to notice it.

Now here come these musicians who make tone come alive with their odd instrumentation (ouds, etc.) and their spectacular singing.  We are all wide awake to that.

I, Too, Fall Asleep

When there is nothing happening I fall asleep, just like a lot of other people.  The trouble is that too many people are already asleep thanks to unrelenting noise and sameness of audio feed (to use an idiotic modernism).

Yesterday I was listening to a series of brief performances showcasing ensembles at the Chamber Music America conference in NYC.  After one startling early music group, the Alta Consort (highly recommended)
came a modern group, whose name I don't even recall.  By their second piece I was already drifting to awake only when they stopped playing.  Could it be that silence is more interesting than what they were up to?

I do not question their sincerity (again, a la Flanders & Swann "whether you mean it or not").  I do question where we all are in relation to what we hear.

I commented to the total stranger sitting next to me, who had been there also for the preceding group, how it struck me that so much modern music performance seems to be for avoiding pitch involvement.  She would not put it that way, she said, but rather that there was a notable absence of fine crafting of compositional detail.  To me it is the same thing: nothing to hold onto -- not that we need a melody: a tone, a succession of events, if you will, will suffice.

Engaging the Audience

When I used to write "program" notes for my chamber group's performances they were actually listening notes.  I sought to involve the audience in the same kind of listening that we performers had to undertake in order to play the music -- we were an unlikely combination of timbres and we had an unfashionable habit of playing music we had never heard anyone else play, whether Renaissance pieces or newly composed works.

By drawing the listeners' attention to the fine points of ensemble rather than to historical or theoretical irrelevancies, we developed their interest in our programming at the same time that we improved their ensemble musicianship.

It worked really well as long as it lasted.

Like all good things, it could not last forever.  The invasion of Sovietized stratification killed the sort of spontaneity that prompted our very existence.  Suddenly you either were or were not good enough and  conformist enough. It was all downhill from there.

Playing from Memory - What's the Big Deal?

Yesterday I heard a young string quartet from France, energetic and sincere and all, but severely restricted in their imagination by playing everything from memory.

What kind of memory, I wonder?  It seems to me I heard every beat, every barline, as though they had committed the printed page to memory, not the actual music.  It happens that I knew two of the three works they played in their showcase performance at the CMA conference.  I know the difference between the way they are written down and the way they "go."  These young people clearly cannot afford to know that difference.

That would entail risk-taking; perhaps an inspired sudden change of fingering or bowing, potentially throwing the others off-guard.

But that is exactly what I crave in ensemble playing: that hint of danger, possible only when everyone has access to a printed score to enable rapid reorientation.

We Are Finally All InterCultural

It was delightful to run into a young dancer in the locker room today, sporting Alvin Ailey sweatpants.  Was she a student, I asked.  Was she new to the program?  Yes.  It seems she just arrived from Japan where Alvin Ailey's dance is well known and much loved.

What a relief it must be to know that it is OK to love whatever you love in the arts.  Times have changed from when I was young.  Now the problem is rather the reverse of what it was 50 years ago: now it is the Classical style that is necessarily on the defensive after decades of ritual murder at the hands of well-meaning but narrow-minded pedagogues.

My work Tonal Refraction has to do with legitimatizing emotional responses to musical elements, primarily tone (or pitch) itself.  I realized this afternoon as I was riding the bus uptown that in many of his compositions Mozart shifts the emotional content of tones so that they are rarely speaking to a single frame of mind or heart.

In learning to name notes and identify tonal functions we risk losing insight into this mercurial aspect of his, indeed, of every composer's art.

A colleague (1/3 my age!) recently said that he thinks the trouble starts when young children are taught the names of notes, as opposed to just listening to them.  Good point.

The Del Sol String Quartet

Based in San Francisco, the Del Sol is a group after my own heart.  They present works by living composers, representing a wide range of cultures, styles, even tuning systems.  They awaken the audience to what "live" means.

In one of their more astounding feats they retune their instruments to truer fifths, much like the vocal intonation I so treasure in a cappella singing. Last night I heard them play a piece by a Cambodian composer in which each player is required to sing as well as to play - at the same time but not the same pitches.  The result is amazing.

Visit their website www.delsolquartet.com to find out their concert schedule.  If you have a chance go hear them!

So Much to Think About

Yesterday I attended the funeral for a superb clarinetist who, at age 80, first enrolled in the people-oriented Chamber Music program I coordinated at Mannes for over 35 years.  Over the years I had developed an unwritten rule, to discourage if not downright refuse participation on the part of individuals above a certain age who played treble instruments--violin, say, or clarinet.   Their traditional role as leader of the ensemble plus the sheer wealth of their experience customarily made it difficult for younger players to enjoy their company.

But this man was different.  The moment he picked up his clarinet to play before the assembled would-be-partners everyone wanted to play with him.  His sound embodied generosity.

It was true that he had played "all" the music in the repertoire, but only up to and not including the 20th century.  And so began a wonderful exploration of music by composers totally new to him and, most often, to the coaches as well.   He stayed in the program for several years, on occasion playing such traditional repertoire as Beethoven's Op. 11 Trio for clarinet, cello, and piano.  Once he participated in a fund-raiser playing Mozart 's Clarinet Quintet with a group of professional strings.  I will never forget his playing of those "standards" for which he set a new standard of warmth.

Julien Ander died at the age of 96 having enjoyed and shared many years of the best kind of music-making.  Thank you, Julien.