At the memorial gathering for a highly unusual drama-vocal coach many of his former students spoke of his insistence that they sing with their own voice rather than try to sound like, for example, Frank Sinatra. There were some extraordinary testimonies to the power of that advice. Attractive? Some, certainly, more than others. Genuine? Unquestionably.
It was such a contrast to the made-in-the-factory quality of a woman who sang (incomprehensibly, I must add) two songs of her own composition at a gathering of admirable people seeking to raise consciousness of our society's lack of understanding of persons with mental illness. How is the cause of mental health addressed by imitating the worst effects of commercialization on human expression: for isn't our voice one of our most cherished manifestations of self-hood?
Maybe everyone needs a good vocal coach, in whatever guise such a person comes.
Saturday, June 21, 2014
Friday, June 20, 2014
More on the Natural Horn
Yesterday in our third rehearsal on the Brahms Horn Trio (natural horn, violin, and piano) my son Jacob made the most extraordinary observation: the horn's falset notes have a timbre quite like that of the violin, while its "real" pitches, in this case the overtones of E-flat, resonate more like the piano's black keys, of which there are many in the piece.
This shockingly relevant observation informs and enriches every single note of the piece for each of the players.
It would never occur to either the violinist, Gregor Kitzis, or myself, or probably anyone else playing the piece with a modern horn, that such detail would be possible or desirable or meaningful.
For all of the above, thank you very much, Johannes Brahms!
This shockingly relevant observation informs and enriches every single note of the piece for each of the players.
It would never occur to either the violinist, Gregor Kitzis, or myself, or probably anyone else playing the piece with a modern horn, that such detail would be possible or desirable or meaningful.
For all of the above, thank you very much, Johannes Brahms!
Thursday, June 19, 2014
Poetry in Music
It has definitely helped my musicianship that two of my closest friends are a painter and a poet. What we share is a respect for imagery of a non-literal kind. Isn't all imagery by definition non-literal? Not if your musical education relied on the language traditionally used to describe music.
Such words as heroic, poetic, atmospheric make it harder for a student with an instinctually keen ear to develop confident musicianship.
These terms are meaningless unless they attach directly to sound imagery. But even here we have to discriminate between genres of sound. The 21st century notion of music resembles coloring book objects more than live sound, which is subject to countless variables both in the origin of the sound and in its perception.
This is not to throw out the pictorial or literal poetry--quite the contrary. I use drawings by my friend, Joan Farber, as covers for my recital programs, not because of any literal parallel between their subject matter and the music du jour, but because they embody attentiveness of eye and hand the way I want my performance to embody attentiveness of ear and fingers.
And I pay a great deal of attention to my poet friend, Michael O'Brien whose ear for all manner of sounds is receptive and instructive all at once.
I invite your attention to their work as I feel their work invites attention to our shared worlds.
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| Turning to Look |
These terms are meaningless unless they attach directly to sound imagery. But even here we have to discriminate between genres of sound. The 21st century notion of music resembles coloring book objects more than live sound, which is subject to countless variables both in the origin of the sound and in its perception.
This is not to throw out the pictorial or literal poetry--quite the contrary. I use drawings by my friend, Joan Farber, as covers for my recital programs, not because of any literal parallel between their subject matter and the music du jour, but because they embody attentiveness of eye and hand the way I want my performance to embody attentiveness of ear and fingers.
And I pay a great deal of attention to my poet friend, Michael O'Brien whose ear for all manner of sounds is receptive and instructive all at once.
I invite your attention to their work as I feel their work invites attention to our shared worlds.
Wednesday, June 18, 2014
Sound Imagery
We are in an age of reproduction, simulation, mass production, uniformity--you get the picture.
In terms of sensory aliveness, alertness, attentiveness this is a disaster.
For centuries humans have crafted art out of their surroundings, bringing to enhanced life the facts of life in which they live their ordinary daily lives. One of the commonest references in music is to bells. These have all but disappeared from the soundscape (a useful and truly relevant word). No longer do we know when there is a wedding, a funeral, a feastday, or simply time to stop everything and say your prayers. There are no church bells to herald such events, except for a very few countable exceptions in high tourist parts of Manhattan. The neighbors tend to complain about church bells in residential parts of the city.
I am struck by the fact that the Muslims do have calls from their minarets...
The many references to bells in music thus are likely to go unobserved. The post-USSR Eastern European will not notice bells because the Communists melted them down to make cannons. The quoting of street cries and folk songs is all but gone as street cries and folk songs are obsolete. The most characteristic noise of my surroundings is the automobile horn--immortalized in Gershwin's An American in Paris. I am grateful for the little scissor-sharpener's truck that occasionally roams my neighborhood with its distinctive chime.
In terms of sensory aliveness, alertness, attentiveness this is a disaster.
For centuries humans have crafted art out of their surroundings, bringing to enhanced life the facts of life in which they live their ordinary daily lives. One of the commonest references in music is to bells. These have all but disappeared from the soundscape (a useful and truly relevant word). No longer do we know when there is a wedding, a funeral, a feastday, or simply time to stop everything and say your prayers. There are no church bells to herald such events, except for a very few countable exceptions in high tourist parts of Manhattan. The neighbors tend to complain about church bells in residential parts of the city.
I am struck by the fact that the Muslims do have calls from their minarets...
The many references to bells in music thus are likely to go unobserved. The post-USSR Eastern European will not notice bells because the Communists melted them down to make cannons. The quoting of street cries and folk songs is all but gone as street cries and folk songs are obsolete. The most characteristic noise of my surroundings is the automobile horn--immortalized in Gershwin's An American in Paris. I am grateful for the little scissor-sharpener's truck that occasionally roams my neighborhood with its distinctive chime.
Tuesday, June 17, 2014
The Likes of Ludwig
Think about what he must have liked....tradition has it that he walked around humming to himself all the time.
I once got a disbelieving adult student to notice that he dreamed music: after considerable attempts to deny the possibility he phoned one morning to say that, indeed, music had awakened him in mid-sleep.
It must have been Beethoven's delight in certain specific combinations of tones on certain instruments that sparked the 32 Piano Sonatas, the many sets of variations and sonatas for other instruments and piano, the string quartets, the symphonies.
Much of that specificity is threatened by the over-production that is the pride of the commercial recording industry. But think about it: just because delight in new technology is exciting--just look at video games and the attention they command--does it mean that we should not notice what price we pay for these intrusions into the lives of our sensory selves?
Listening is one of the areas where the deprivation seems to be almost hopelessly threatened. And now, with the volume turned up in restaurants, on headsets, and just in general, prospects don't look too promising.
I once got a disbelieving adult student to notice that he dreamed music: after considerable attempts to deny the possibility he phoned one morning to say that, indeed, music had awakened him in mid-sleep.
It must have been Beethoven's delight in certain specific combinations of tones on certain instruments that sparked the 32 Piano Sonatas, the many sets of variations and sonatas for other instruments and piano, the string quartets, the symphonies.
Much of that specificity is threatened by the over-production that is the pride of the commercial recording industry. But think about it: just because delight in new technology is exciting--just look at video games and the attention they command--does it mean that we should not notice what price we pay for these intrusions into the lives of our sensory selves?
Listening is one of the areas where the deprivation seems to be almost hopelessly threatened. And now, with the volume turned up in restaurants, on headsets, and just in general, prospects don't look too promising.
Monday, June 16, 2014
The Trap of Specialization
In my one semester of teaching piano in a music conservatory I was advised not to have my students accompany lessons. Naturally, the first thing I did was to assign to each the job of attaching him or herself to a voice teacher to accompany lessons.
My motive was not to be a contrarian but because I strongly feel that it is impossible to understand the literature for piano solo without immersion in the vocal repertoire. Perhaps it starts with the Bach Chorales, which we are assigned to study in theory class as examples of four-part harmony. They are no such thing! Rather they are paradigms of the interpenetration of tone and text, each voice in each chorale setting revealing aspects of the text of that particular stanza of the chorale. In most theory classes the relevant text is nowhere in sight, nor does the issue arise.
Once having grasped from the Bach Cantatas how profound this link is, it became imperative to prepare Schubert sonatas by getting to know his lieder, Mozart by immersion in the operas, Brahms and Schumann, Debussy and Faure, in their vocal works.
And now we have people majoring in Collaborative Piano. Yikes.
My motive was not to be a contrarian but because I strongly feel that it is impossible to understand the literature for piano solo without immersion in the vocal repertoire. Perhaps it starts with the Bach Chorales, which we are assigned to study in theory class as examples of four-part harmony. They are no such thing! Rather they are paradigms of the interpenetration of tone and text, each voice in each chorale setting revealing aspects of the text of that particular stanza of the chorale. In most theory classes the relevant text is nowhere in sight, nor does the issue arise.
Once having grasped from the Bach Cantatas how profound this link is, it became imperative to prepare Schubert sonatas by getting to know his lieder, Mozart by immersion in the operas, Brahms and Schumann, Debussy and Faure, in their vocal works.
And now we have people majoring in Collaborative Piano. Yikes.
Sunday, June 15, 2014
"Death by Encyclopedia"
The title is in quotes because I did not make it up. The late Joseph Marx, oboist, chamber musician, and scholar extraordinaire, thus entitled a terrific piece of musicological research demonstrating that the authors of various 19th-century encyclopedias had merely cribbed the poor work of a forerunner, thus helping ruin the reputation of a composer who was actually quite good by mixing him up with someone else.
I wish to address a different manifestation of the same crime, this one a result of over-specialization. Pianists seem to care only about piano works, conductors about symphonies, and so on. In the Grove Dictionary of Music and Musicians, therefore, the works of any given composer are divided into categories yielding not the smallest hint of the possible relevance of one genre to another.
In more than one case I have had to compile my own personal timeline, for Mozart and Beethoven, for example. Wouldn't it make more sense to compile a time line of works according to key? This would at least encourage curiosity about the relevance of one source of sound to another.
I wish to address a different manifestation of the same crime, this one a result of over-specialization. Pianists seem to care only about piano works, conductors about symphonies, and so on. In the Grove Dictionary of Music and Musicians, therefore, the works of any given composer are divided into categories yielding not the smallest hint of the possible relevance of one genre to another.
In more than one case I have had to compile my own personal timeline, for Mozart and Beethoven, for example. Wouldn't it make more sense to compile a time line of works according to key? This would at least encourage curiosity about the relevance of one source of sound to another.
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