This is beyond unusual: It's simply wonderful

I guess it must be in the genes: he is the great grandson of Konstantin Stanislavsky.



Tags: Alex Prior

Musical Stewards?

I once played a performance of a piece for violin and piano written by a young (and rather talented) composer. I told him that I really don't enjoy performing my own music, and that I much prefer playing concerts of music written by other people. His answer was something like "other people are better stewards of my music that I am." I had never heard anyone refer to a person playing a piece of music as its "steward."

I looked up Steward in Merriam-Webster and found the following definitions:

1 : one employed in a large household or estate to manage domestic concerns (as the supervision of servants, collection of rents, and keeping of accounts)
2 : SHOP STEWARD
3 : a fiscal agent
4 a : an employee on a ship, airplane, bus, or train who manages the provisioning of food and attends passengers b : one appointed to supervise the provision and distribution of food and drink in an institution
5 : one who actively directs affairs : MANAGER

I don't really get the idea of a person playing a piece of music being its "steward," but I kind of like the idea of performing musicians and composers being like note stewards. Composing musicians manage the harmonic and melodic concerns of the music while it is being written (would you like another E-flat in that chord, can I make that sextuplet more comfortable to play by changing the articulation, would this make more sense if there were five beats in this measure?), and performing musicians direct the affairs of the notes and phrases (I think that the G-sharp is the most important note in this measure, or that low D could be softer, or this is the right tempo).

Which reminds me of a totally unrelated story (or maybe it is related): Samuel Coleridge-Taylor was having a composition lesson with Charles Villiers Stanford, and Stanford spilled some of his tea on Coleridge-Taylor's score. He was then reported to have said "now your piece is in the key of ti."

Tags: Stewardship, Samuel Coleridge-Taylor, Charles Villiers Stanford, tea

Standing String Quartet?

Charles Noble wrote a response to a concert that the Emerson Quartet played last week in Carnegie hall with three quarters of their ensemble standing up. It seems that the Emerson Quartet's influence has rubbed off on some of the younger just-out-of-music-school quartets that are cropping up like violets just about everywhere.

To me chamber music, particularly playing string quartets, is a musical experience among equals, and four people sitting together, moving only when necessary, and watching one another's bows and faces, are playing together on a kind of equal turf. The musical product of the group of four has every chance of sounding like a unified sum that is greater than all its parts.

When the group of four stands up they become four standing individuals who each claim their own place on the stage, very much like the way a standing soloist takes a commanding place on the stage. The audience, which reacts physically (we all do) to what it sees as well as what it hears, has its attention pointed towards the players rather than towards the music. It is, as far as I'm concerned, the beginning of the end for any chance of a purely musical experience. What we get is "entertainment."

To me standing to play a string quartet is like standing to eat a meal. Sure, standing makes it possible for upper string players to move around more freely (though Noble said that the Emerson's violinists were kind of stiff), and moving around freely is one of the things that young string quartets are encouraged to do so that they can feel the music, I guess. Standing string quartet players look better as individuals because you can see the actual cut and style of their clothes, and costume is important when you are trying to provide a kind of (often expensive in cities) entertainment in order to compete for the "leisure dollar."

The idea of a string quartet concert as entertainment is a new thing for me. I like listening to string quartets for the music. I like the intimate experience of listening to four people sitting down and playing a piece of music for my enjoyment, my enlightenment, my education at times, and to satisfy my emotional needs. Entertainment I can get from the television.

I certainly hope that this is just a passing fad.

Tags: String Quartets, Emerson Quartet, Classical Music

Those wonderful teenage (y)ears

I love reading the recent posts and comments at Dial M for Musicology about teenage listening experiences. We all had them, and they almost always involved "discovery." When our children were young I tried not to impose my musical preferences on them because I remembered the joy I had as a teenager when I found my "own" music. Sure, my discoveries were sometimes found in my parents' small collection of recordings they never listened to (the small number of recordings we had amazed me since my parents were both musicians), and they were sometimes pieces I heard played at my father's concerts, like the Brahms and Dvorak Piano Quartets, but nobody told me what to listen to. I am grateful that my parents let me develop my musical tastes on my own, and I wanted to pass that experience to my own kids.

From a very young age both of our kids practiced (violin and cello), took lessons, played in orchestras and chamber music groups, sang in chorus and in shows, and managed to become exposed to a lot of what I would consider worthwhile music through the stuff that they heard around the house.

I will never forget the day that my daughter Rachel (who is now 20) came into my bedroom and started singing some Simon and Garfunkel songs for me. She had just heard them on the radio (a few years ago "oldies" stations were all the local rage). She had a look of pure joy on her face while she sang them. She had found something of her own, and it was something really beautiful, and it was something she wanted to share with me. I loved Simon and Garfunkel as a teenager too. Imagine my inner kvell.

Our son Ben (who is now 18) and his sister share many of the same likes and dislikes in popular music, but Ben has been devoting a lot of energy into expanding his musical horizons backwards and sideways. The other day he took some recordings out of the library. They were recordings that were important in my husband Michael's teenage years, and if he had known Ben was interested in listening to them, he would have gladly let Ben borrow his copies. I was very happy that Michael was able to share that particular "discovery" moment with Ben.

As exciting as my own teenage musical awaking was, watching and listening to the musical awakenings of our kids is even more exciting. It seems that all discovery for a teenager is self-discovery, and that's one of the things that makes watching (and listening to) kids grow up so much fun.

Update! Ben just told me about his brand new myspace music page where you can listen to him singing (and playing guitar and cello on) some of his own songs.

A Response to Alex Ross "On the Road"

I live in what most New Yorkers might refer to as "beyond the provinces," but my husband and I still get the magazine. It is nice to know that Alex Ross took the time to fly to Indianapolis, rent a car, and drive to a couple of cities accessible by way of the interstate highway system. I'm glad that he enjoyed the concerts he heard played by three of the many fine professional orchestras scattered through the Midwest and upper south, and I'm glad that he shared his experience with the readers of the New Yorker.

He didn't quite get all his information right though. He mentioned that

"conservatories are producing wave after wave of almost excessively skilled players, and, like Ph.D.s in the humanities, hundreds of them fan out across the continent each year in search of jobs. They may stay with a regional orchestra for only a season or two before moving on to a higher salary, but they raise the level of playing as they go."

Mr. Ross needs to change that number to thousands, and he needs to make his geographical range global, because people routinely travel from the far "corners" of the world for the possibility of a job in a full time American orchestra. Also, if someone is lucky enough (and there is a certain element of luck involved in the audition process) to get a job in Indianapolis, Nashville, or Birmingham, s/he is more likely to stay than move on. Vacancies for any instrument in a full-time professional orchestra are few and far between, and the number of highly-qualified applicants is exponentially out of proportion to the number of jobs available "out in the provinces" in any given year.

Distance from the established centers of American music making does not have anything to do with the quality of a person's playing or an orchestra's playing. There are great musicians everywhere, and the people who are able to win competitive auditions should be celebrated the way Olympic athletes are celebrated for their accomplishment. It is no surprise to me that the bass solo in Mahler's First Symphony, as played by the Indianapolis Symphony's principal bassist, was great. The principal string players in Indianapolis are as good (I could even use the world great) as principal string players in any "big city" orchestra who make a lot more money.

There are a few (and that is a literal few: between three and five) people who "move up" in the orchestra world in a given year, but many of the best jobs (many is not a good word: I'm talking about a handful of jobs) in the East Coast orchestras have gone to excellent instrumentalists in their early 20s who have come straight from Curtis, and will stay in those jobs for the rest of their professional lives.

People with Ph.D.s in even the most specialized fields of the humanities have a far better chance of getting work in their fields that would pay the rent and raise a family than musicians graduating from conservatories.

Tags: Regional Orchestras, New Yorker, Alex Ross, Classical Music, Classical Musicians

Peter Maxwell Davies Says it All

And he says it well in The Guardian.

Tags: Peter Maxwell Davies, Music Education

The Power of Vibrato

From a creepy website about brainwashing techniques:

"Vibrato is the tremulous effect imparted in some vocal or instrumental music, and the cycle-per-second range causes people to go into an altered state of consciousness. At one period of English history, singers whose voices contained pronounced vibrato were not allowed to perform publicly because listeners would go into an altered state and have fantasies, often sexual in nature."

Wow. Now that's as good a reason as any to practice vibrato and use it liberally.

Tags: vibrato

Musical Ethics

I love the character of Niles Crane on Frasier. Whenever he violates his ethics (whether as a psychiatrist or as a person) he gets a nose bleed. Wouldn't it be wonderful if people in music had a similar sense of ethics? For many of us the process of playing, studying, writing, writing about, and listening to music is as important and as sacred as religious services and study are to people actively involved in practicing various religions (and there is, of course, some overlap in these groups). Many problems that arise between musicians and in musical institutions are ethical ones, and we do have many "unwritten rules" that cause all of us to scratch our heads and wonder if we are doing the right thing at any given time.

I wonder why this subject that hasn't been discussed much in a public way on line? In my last google search I was surprised to find only seven entries for "musical code of ethics," and only two for "code of musical ethics." A search for "musical ethics" had many more, but they all seemed to be connected with the business of music, popular or commercial music, or legal ownership of intellectual property. I had hoped to find something addressing musical ethics among practicing classical musicians.

A code of ethics would make life much easier. There isn't really, for example, an established ethical way to deal with situations involving possible performances of new works. Communication between composers and the people they write music for might fall into the category of business ethics, except for the fact that with classical music there is little (if any) money to be made. Ethical situations encountered in teaching music to students might be a lot like ethical situations in other forms of teaching, but they involve issues unique to music.

Tags: musical ethics

Hocket anyone?

I guess Britain's got taste

Paul Potts did win the Britain's Got Talent show, and his prize, aside from world-wide recognition, is to sing for the queen. In addition to talent, Paul Potts has training and operatic experience as Michelle Bennett revealed to us in a link to the German publication 20minuten. Still, I think that this is a great step forward towards interesting the TV-watching masses in "serious" music. Of course this new found interest could go in many different ways.

fantasy scenario 1

Mummy? What is that man singing about?

He's singing a song about the fact that the Queen has made a law that nobody can sleep in the kingdom until she learns his name, but you see . . . (Here's a synopsis of Turandot. "Nessun Dorma" -- roughly translated as "nobody is sleeping" -- comes at the beginning of the third act).

Can we watch this opera some time?

fantasy scenario 2

Some accomplished musicians, including instrumentalists, get the idea to enter these kinds of contests with the hope that Simon and the other judges might give them a chance. They can all make sure to mention their day jobs as their primary occupations.

fantasy scenario 3

People start to realize that singing by really using a trained voice and not depending on a microphone for projection can be a very powerful thing. They might want to do it themselves. Then they might start to think of what they previously referred to as "talent" as a matter of training and discipline, and they might even start to move away from using amplification altogether. Modern churches might once again be constructed to have real acoustics rather than have expensive sound systems, and the ever-growing number of people who will go out of their way to hear excellent singing will choose powerful trained voices over powerfully-amplified ones.

Tags: Paul Potts, Britain's Got Talent, Turandot

Happy Father's Day, Michael

Look at the picture Michael put on his blog today.

Alan Shulman

When I was 20 my cellist friend and teacher Danny Morganstern took me to visit his friend Alan Shulman. I didn't know anything about Alan Shulman at the time except that he played in the NBC Symphony and that he had written a cello concerto for Leonard Rose. I wasn't quite sure what to expect, but then again, I was just along "for the ride."

This was back in the 1970s, a time when the adult world (of which I was not really a part yet) seemed to be divided between people who were "old school" and had lifestyles that were pretty much the same as they would have been during the 1940s or 1950s, and people who were "progressive" and "hip." Shulman was definitely "old school," as was his house, that had a sort of sun room that reminded me at the time of the sun room in the house where I took violin lessons ten years before. He played us a recording of Rose playing his concerto, and I was bewildered because so many of the composers I knew spent their time writing atonal music, and what I heard was strikingly expressive, and exceptionally beautiful and colorful. I found myself wishing that someday I might be allowed, if I ever had the chance to write music, that it could be something like his music.

Then he played us a recording that he said was the very best chamber music he had ever heard. It was a 1975 recording of Teresa Berganza and Felix Lavilla singing and playing Spanish songs. It was an enlightening experience to listen to this fantastic recording with someone who listened so deeply and with so much love for both the music and the music making. Danny tells me that we also talked about a lot of things, but all I can really remember is how much I liked this man and his music.

I went to the record store and bought the Berganza-Lavilla recording, and I listened to it daily for years, until I gave it to someone special (though I can't remember who) when I left the country.

When I started to get serious about writing music, I thought I'd write to Alan to tell him how much it meant for me to meet him twenty years or so earlier. I got his address from Danny, and then got a letter from his son Jay thanking me for the letter and telling me that his father had just had a stroke. Alan died shortly afterwards. Jay knew about the Berganza recording, and he made me a tape of it for me. I cherish the fact that it is a tape of Alan's copy of the recording.

I have been really fortunate to get to know Alan's music by working with Jay to make computer-engraved editions of some of his brilliantly-orchestrated pieces for orchestra, as well as through playing some of his music myself. His music has also been recorded, and continues to be performed, now that "old school" music is now "hip."

You can listen to some examples of Alan's music here.

Sometimes going along for the ride can really change your life.

Tags: Alan Shulman, Teresa Berganza

Insomnia?

Does this bother anyone aside from me? Don't these "music professionals" know that most musicians, especially singers, have day jobs? Who would define himself or herself as a "cell phone salesman" anyway. The whole thing on the part of Simon Cowell, the rest of the judges, and the camera people is so very staged and emotionally edited (maestro, if you will press the green button please), but I imagine that the Welsh audience's reaction is actually spontaneous. Many of the members of the "Britain's got Talent" audience know the piece from the World Cup Soccer tournament a few years ago, so it was a good choice. Do you think that Paul Potts might win?

80 Pieces!

I just finished entering everything that I have written that I consider worth sharing into my Thematic Catalog and now I really feel like I have accomplished something, because I am able to look at it and count it, and realize that I am proud of what I have done over these past eight years or so of writing music seriously. I hope that somebody can make use of some of the music in this catalog.

I think I deserve a nice chunk of violin practice before settling into our movie entertainment for the night.

Thematic Catalog

In an effort to try my hand at the kind of self-promotion that composers have to do in order to survive in the vast world of music, I have decided to start an on-line Thematic Catalog of the music that I have had published (as well as some that is not published) during the last several years. My plan is to put the first page of each movement from one piece every day, or more, if possible.

Tags: thematic catalog, new classical music, new music