Mozart’s Jupiter Symphony: thoughts in preparation of performance
(musical musings): August 2009
The Power of Small
(cultural deliberations): January 2009
Response to NY Times Op-Ed “Dancing in the Seats”
(cultural deliberations): November 2008
Mozart’s Jupiter Symphony: thoughts in preparation of
performance
(musical musings): August 2009
I spent some time memorizing and playing with the finale and 2nd movement of the Jupiter Symphony this morning, and realized, very viscerally, that there is no construction, artifice, or confection made by our species more perfect. Texturally flawless, structurally miraculous, and EXPRESSIVE--without ever getting into program--touching regions I don't know how to describe. It refracts in so many directions and intensities all at once, and simultaneously holds unity and diversity, complexity and simplicity, elegance and abandon, obsession and balance, sweep and detail, yearning and satiety, affirmation and angst, abstraction and earthiness--and pretty much any other pair of seeming opposites one could find. Truly a miracle. I can't wait.
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To Repeat or Not in Symphonic Form - not as technical as you think it might be
(conductorly deliberations): March 2009
Recently the topic of whether to take repeat or not in symphonic form was discussed on the conductor's list-serve from the League of American Orchestras. The original question arose with Brahms symphonies. Here is my reply. While some of this looks technical, it is really mostly about trying to find out how the music breathes and occupies time and space. I hope you find it interesting.
My approach on whether or not to take a repeat is something of a case-by-case assessment. In the case, for instance, of Brahms 2nd, there is a big question posed by introductory sounding material which ushers in what is seemingly the movement proper. Yet, when you take the repeat, that introductory material is repeated also because the repeat sign goes all the way to the first bar. Hmmm, it must be part of the real "allegro" movement, or Brahms is repeating an introduction (very unusual for our supposed reactionary classicist). Then at the recapitulation, the "introductory material" is presented concurrently (in counterpoint) with what we thought was the beginning of exposition proper. So taking the repeat is very much a part of the gradual elucidation of the form/material and its implications, and its luminous wonderful ambiguities. Then, too, in the first ending is an insistence on the descending scale, which will be so prominent throughout the symphony, and have its eventual apotheosis in the final bars of the finale. After that investigation, I cannot, for myself, possibly leave out the repeat.
Further thought on this also leads me to keep the repeat. In the Fourth Symphony, which I believe is the only first movement Brahms Symphony without a repeat sign, we are a third of the way (or so) into the development before we discover that we are NOT in the throes of a repeat (because of literal repetition). This creates its own beautiful tension and smearing of forms that Brahms was so fond of. That effect is all the clearer if we DO take the repeats in the earlier symphonies of Brahms. Thus in the 4th, we have a conflation of sonata form, and curiously, a sonata-rondo form (AB{AC=dev}ABcoda {=A})....so nice of him to provide us with a last-movementish form here in the first movement, since he will rob us of that chance with his devastating chaconne in the finale. Brahms is even thoughtful enough to straddle the A material over from the development into the recapitulation and create a symmetry with the start of the development. These moments of evolution of idea are minimized if I am not used to the notion of the repeats in the earlier symphonies.
Here's another thought: at least considering taking the repeat in any particular symphony can lead us to very interesting deliberations on that topic we never seem to discuss anymore as conductors: pacing. Yet, Wagner's book on conducting, if my memory is correct, discusses almost nothing else! If we relax a tempo for the second subject (for instance), what happens at the repeat? These will be case by case answers, but at least considering the idea of repeating will inform that very interesting journey of how we structure the movement in time. In the end, it seems I usually (though--I don't think--always) find reason to repeat. In any case, the question of repeats is, for me, a great and interesting part of the dialogue with the score: what is the piece asking of me as I try to realize it most convincingly as I can for that performance.
Response to NY Times Op-Ed “Dancing in the Seats”
The Power of Small
(cultural deliberations): January 2009
One upside to the country’s downturn: I feel people, for the first time in a long while, are examining our assumptions about our current culture so characterized and driven by “the market.” This shift gives us a welcome chance to refocus our attentions on the individuality of the artistic experience. During this previous period of hyper-market-driven expansion we, in the art world, have spent a lot of effort and thought on groups: demographics, niches, market shares—terms strikingly unindividual, and impersonal. Ironically, the dialogues and practices resulting from this kind of thinking often are tinged with almost socialist realist goals—mass appeal, understandable and predictable storylines, and so on.
Yet, say, in a small, black box theater, we all inhabit for a few hours a very intimate space. For the performer, that proximity means that we have the chance—and therefore the obligation—to explore nuance, shifts, and purpose at every instant. A large 3,500 seat hall on the other hand fits a different plan: a spectator, having purchased the commodity of a ticket, sits at a remove, a literal distance, with an evening and entertainment to be consumed, unfolding before him/her. Unspoken and hanging over the head of the spectator is the anxious thought “it better be good, it’s an evening of my time, I paid a lot.” In other words, the physical remove can create an alienating distance and a passive posture. Performers on stage and administrators, being sensitive creatures, pick up on this stance, and try to deliver sure, can’t-miss productions. The most vibrant elements of an audience then fall off, leaving those seeking predictability; the performers on stage become jaded or complacent, and the whole construct can wither as seats and enthusiasm dwindle. Then, a board, a critic, or administration decides a whole new formula is needed to change the “energy,” and a new market segment, a new mass demographic is targeted, and a new schema devised. And what about the music? “Well, that’s a given—always good, right? That’ll take care of itself.” And so in this very process cultivating the art and making it transcendent has just been side-stepped, and that act is worse than assaulting the art head-on.
I have often noted this curious fact: in a large venue, many audience members stand up to leave immediately after the applause begins, even before the end of the first curtain call. In a smaller venue, this situation is far less likely. Of course, audience members in smaller venues are not fighting to be first out of the swamped garage. But, it could be, too, that there is a closer contact, a deeper sense of connection between performers with whom you have really shared an evening. The applause is genuine. It is part of and a cap to the 2-hour dialogue with the artists. The response is not perfunctory and polite, but comes from a visceral need. A 3,500 seat hall can feel more like a movie: the performers may sense some general collective audience out there, but I am often acutely aware that the audience feels out of the thread of communication, and the performers less receptive to the makeup of an audience. In small halls, we performers feel the audience collectively, and, I am convinced, the audience collectively feels attuned to itself, each other, and the performers more keenly.
To be sure, a titanic performance can conquer a larger hall. Enormous moments can be grand, and stirring. But with a less exalted venue, with less “production value,” when the space is intimate and the contact is palpable and immediate, artists are called upon to create—rather than deliver—a universe with only the tools of their craft, the strength of their imagination, the size of their effort, and the depth of their soul. That creation requires the vulnerability to involve the audience in co-creating that universe.
Whatever the size of our audiences and our halls, the intimate, personal, and genuine are qualities that I most cherish in my working with fellow musicians, and in the performances I lead and attend. The largest artistic gestures—Mahler Symphonies for instance—are also imbued with these qualities; if they weren’t they would not be memorable. Real performance requires this same personal commitment, this depth of searching, and the openness to share with our audience members so that art does not become a statistic, a demographic or a niche, but can inhabit and offer a full human expression.
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(cultural deliberations): November 2008
After all, there has been music in churches for 1000 years, mostly with no dancing whatsoever. So the notion that we have been only listening with no physical participation for a scant couple hundred years seems misinformed. Lyric poetry dating at least as far back as Homer, (ca 750 BCE) probably did not permit much dancing when the audience must have been spellbound and straining, no doubt, to try to hear lyric poetry fused with music.
Music is often alloyed to dance, and sometimes it is not. Our very usual (and sensible) split for music and its association is "song vs. dance." Three of the nine Renaissance muses were musical ones, and of the three only Terpsichore involved dance as well. The other two, Euterpe and Polyhymnia fused music and word. Music is joined with word and/or with movement and sometimes with nothing, just as word and movement are sometimes disassociated with music.
Perhaps most disturbing, this op-ed piece reflects an implicit lack of tolerance in our hyperactive, shoot-from-the-hip America for a contemplative, meditative art form. Such art forms reward and require stillness of mind, spirit, and—dare I say it?— of body. Must everything aspire to the exulted form of the rock concert, just because the marketplace has rewarded that expression? Is there not room for different kinds of expression? No doubt Dr. Levitin is a skilled psychologist, and his revelations about brain activity and related art forms are intriguing. It would be nice, however, if, before he recommends fundamentally abolishing one way in which we perceive art, that his historical forays were a little more complete, and the considerations of his advancements a lot more rigorous. By his logic, every tennis match should be sound-tracked.
Op-Ed Piece; The Arts Link Students' Hearts and Minds
May 20, 2008 Reprinted with permission from the Baltimore Sun
Last week, I attended the "Sing and String" concert at Roland Park Elementary/Middle School. The energy in the room was extraordinary. As a conductor and parent, I was immensely proud of our music programs. It is not coincidental that so many of the students advancing to the most rigorous academic programs are also linchpins of their school's music programs. But dwelling excessively on this correlation severely limits the value of the arts and their potential place in our lives. Anecdotes about the link between the arts and intellectual achievement are legion. It is no secret that Einstein was an avid amateur violinist. Somewhat less well-known: When Werner Heisenberg had his epiphany for the Uncertainty Principle while at a conference, across the courtyard from his hotel room, a violinist was playing the Bach "Chaconne." The arts, however, represent far more than mere steroids for academic achievement and socialization. Thought and learning require an outlet. Scientists have shown that a person deprived of dreaming, even with sufficient sleep-hours logged, will go insane. The arts provide a waking dream, if you will.
Yet the human need for the arts runs still much deeper. The best of the arts fuses the nonrational with an intensely structured and rigorous internal logic. The creative process is often erroneously reduced to "fun" or "imagination." Yes, it does feel exhilarating and is often - though not always - fun. But this element is only half the equation for the arts. Conductor George Szell said that in music (read: the arts in general), one must learn to think with one's heart and feel with one's mind. In fact, Oliver Sacks, in his book Musicophilia, documents incredible crossover in the hemispheres of musicians' brains. The intuitive and the logical are united. Perhaps for this reason, the arts, along with scientific inquiry, represent the summit of human endeavor. We only have to think of the great civilizations and we immediately conjure up their art forms: Egypt = the Pyramids and hieroglyphics; India = the Taj Mahal; Greece = Homer and the Acropolis; the Renaissance = Michelangelo, Da Vinci and Dante; Elizabethan England = Shakespeare; Enlightenment Europe = Beethoven and Mozart; 19th-century Russia = Tolstoy and Tchaikovsky; 20th-century America = Frank Lloyd Wright, Louis Armstrong and Martha Graham. These, of course, are just instances. Without the capacity to express, to explore - often wordlessly - that realm that is both nonrational and intensely structured and rigorous, the human is devoid of spirit, and we as a species devolve into an amoebic colony of metabolic units. In the obsession with test scores and grades, it's too easy to forget the real value of the arts - not as a booster for academic success, but on their own terms. To our arts educators, I say: I can think of no more meaningful endeavor than exposing our students to these experiences. I can think of no greater purpose in life than cultivating the art spirit in our next generation. In sharing your great work, joy and inspiration with your students and their parents, you pass on our most important legacy. Jed Gaylin, a Baltimore resident, is music director of the Hopkins Symphony Orchestra and New Jersey's Bay-Atlantic Symphony.