A minister and a physicist are having coffee with a choral director. The minister, citing scripture and historical evidence (and tossing in thoughtful quotes by everyone from Sitting Bull to Anais Nin) maintains that life is a circle.
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On Sports Journalism and baseball, On Mastery and Teamwork:
Or how our innate need for excellence and for human connection can lead us to peak choral performance (maybe) Before the ESPNing-dumbing down of sports journalism and before the sports section became more like the business section (Player X signs four-year $500m contract: Billionaire Oligarch Team Owner Y suckers citizens of City Z into paying for a $5 billion dollar stadium, etc. etc.), there used to be great sports writing in newspapers by skilled wordsmiths who just happened to love sports. Names like George Vecsey, William Rhoden, Ira Berkow, Frank Litsky and Gail Collins, come to mind, just to mention just a few. Nonetheless, recently there was a brilliant column in the Times by Brad Stulberg celebrating the hard to fathom achievement this year by LA Dodger player Shohei Ohtani who hit 53 home runs and stole 56 bases in a single season! Just wrap your head around the idea of a player who combines the power to hit balls out of the park like Babe Ruth with the explosive speed of a Lou Brock. And he made it look easy because of his hard-earned mastery. Stulberg went on to reflect on the idea of how we can be “inspired by” an achievement such as Ohtani’s and springboard from it to an “inspired to” feeling, transforming awe into an energy that can push us to aspire to our best possible selves. But as always, the devil is in the details, because mastery of any kind does not just happen. It requires infinite amounts of hard, focused work over long periods of time. Sure, some folks have won the lottery talentwise (luck or chance plays a huge role in everyone’s success or lack thereof; consider a fertilized human embryo, it is the result of the random singular mating of one each of 400+/- eggs with 100 million +/- spermatozoa, which makes the odds of any of the masters of the universe out there existing about 1 in 40 billion! Which when you think about it applies to Ohtani or Mozart or me or you.) The other idea that Stulberg plays with is the concept of “self-determination theory,” the idea that the pursuit and achievement of mastery–the positive energy we all feel when we make progress at something through practice–is one of the essential human needs, not exactly up there with food, shelter etc., but nonetheless critical to our intellectual well-being. Here is where the practice of singing in a choir comes into play. Choir is essentially a team sport, take you pick which one. Ohtani’s achievement did not happen in a vacuum, he and all the players around him practiced alone and together for untold amounts of time to achieve the team mastery that allowed Ohtani the opportunity to achieve his ultimate potential. What is most interesting about the concept of “self-determination” is that beyond our natural gravitation towards those who possess mastery, there is a connection between our work towards mastery and our connection with others, which is to say, when we are mastering something in a group, say in The Bagaduce Chorale, we are participating in something larger than ourselves, we are in communion with the music director, with the singers around us, and even with the singers and composers who have come before us who created the foundational structure of what choral singing is and what it can be. Ah, but back to those devilish details! In my last blog I spoke about our Music Director’s awareness of and appreciation for “The Gap”, that distance between what we as a singer and a choir sound like and what we imagine we could or should sound like. Hard work, both as individuals and as a group, slowly moves us across the yawning crevasse of learning. Curiously, going down some dusty rabbit holes a while ago, I stumbled across more thoughts on “The Gap” by Ira Glass which captured some of the struggles we go through trying to reach the other side of the crevasse. He talks about how our “good taste”, that is our appreciation for things of great beauty, leaves us always so disappointed in our own efforts at excellence. This seemingly unclosable gap between the art we produce and that which we imagine we could produce (our cursed “good taste”!) can be frustrating, even stifling, if we allow it to be so. But, this writer at least, finds solace in the mathematical conception of infinite regression, the idea that you can never actually get to the point of zero by fractions, that you can never get back to the beginning of the universe, that, perhaps, we humans can never achieve ultimate perfection. But we can come darn close! Ohtani did, Mozart did, dare I say Morten Lauridsen did! They say the more you put into love, the more you get out of it. Singing in a choir is exactly the same and as we reach the point in our rehearsals where we all begin to smell the possibility of mastery like hounds in hot pursuit, we are pulled collectively with thrilling steps across that icy crevasse, that gap between practice and mastery, toward the glittering icy castle of sublime sound echoing on the dazzling sun-illuminated glacier above us. Oh, and by the way, case you were wondering, the Dodgers masterfully mastered the Yankees 4 games to 1 in October. Bummer! When you ride the London Underground* you will hear a polite British voice advising you to “Mind the gap” lest you disappear into the small void between the platform and the train. If possessed of a fanciful frame of mind, you might imagine the “gap” as a sudden descent into Old London’s sinister sewers or perhaps landing you on some netherworld Platform 9 ¾ alongside Harry, Ron and Hermoine.
A month or so ago in conversation with our Music Director, this writer, with a characteristic lack of tack, asked Bronwyn if she ever longed to direct a “perfect choir”, a choir that learned music instantaneously, that always sang in perfect Singlish, and that intuited every dynamic or emotional direction that she dreamed of. Without hesitation she emphatically answered no. And she then proceeded, with characteristic Bronwyn “brio” to share why she loved directing choirs. She loves the shared journey of singers and director from the first tentative readings of new music, to the frustrating mid-season sessions when everyone forgets what was known just a week ago, to the late season moments when learning gives way to artistry (if only for moments), and finally to the glimmers of mastery that begin to glow like celestial shafts of sunlight through a clearing thunderstorm. And then she said she viewed the “shared journey” as a way of “Minding the Gap” (which is therapist-speak (and now apparently business-speak) for being mindful of the space between our expectations and reality). This metaphor expresses the void that exists between two boundaries; between our abilities and our aspirations. The void may be small, like that step onto the train, or vast, like a program of music that challenges and humbles singers at every turn. Therapists work with clients to effect change that will bring the walls of the void closer together. They encourage the development of skills that allow us to more closely approach our aspirations, or they might bring our aspirations closer to reality, or they might employ both approaches to move the walls of the void closer together simultaneously. And this therapeutic process is rather like a typical choral season. As we journey together from learning to mastery, we are simultaneously building up our vocal skill set while gently adjusting our expectations. The trick of course is shrinking the “gap” by changing your reality rather than changing your aspirations. So here’s a thought experiment for you. Suppose we all were to work to jump start this process, this bridging of the gap. Suppose we all committed to singing in Singlish from Day 1 in rehearsal? Suppose we all worked outside of rehearsal to begin to learn the notes and tempos on our own? Suppose we all thought about what we aspire to sound like and pushed each other together to get there? Might we perhaps find that we could come closer to our aspirations, to our shared longing for the bittersweet magic of musical mastery. *The London Underground first began using the recorded “mind the gap” messages in 1968 and somehow that seems just right. 1968, a year when many young people in the western world clearly saw the gap between the reality they knew and longing they all felt for a different, a better, a more perfect world. The journey continues! The Art of Mind Full of Friction: Motion Studies on some of the music on the Bagaduce Chorale's 50th Anniversary program.
A conversation with Dr. Moe Chen of the Institute of Musical Motion.* This conversation has been condensed and edited because Moe Chen is rather long-winded with a tendency towards tangential (at best) digressions. Richard Shute (RS): Dr. Chen (Oh, call you Moe? sure, absolutely!) Moe, your area of speciality is metaphorical interpretations of movement in music, can you expand on that a bit for us? Dr. Moe Chen (DMC): Well, gotta stop you right there, I study motion in music, not movement. Movement is random, unordered, fractal, chaotic. Motion implies a more controlled, though possibly still chaotic, progression. Also, did you know LBJ had a saying "never elaborate"? I subscribe to that school of thought. Ideas, concepts, metaphors, they should speak for themselves! RS: Well hopefully you will express yourself in this conversation in ways that speak for themselves? DMC: Let us hope! So before I dissect some of the songs on the program, chew on this rawhide of an idea: "change means movement, and movement means friction". Saul Alinsky maybe said that first, who knows right? Maybe MLK, maybe someone else. Anyway. I would have said Motion not Movement. But, whatever. Anyway this totally applies to music. Music, all music, even music by say Philip Glass or John Cage, is built on change which is built on movement and ergo friction! Dissonance? That crazy rubbing together of notes to make fire: blame friction which allows musical movement. RS: Okay then! We are off an running...somewhere! Ok, yeah, so the Bagaduce Chorale program, you choose which pieces? DMC: I picked those where the motion is interesting, less predictable, non-traditional, even surprising at times. Lots of western music, particularly the "classics", whatever that means, are totally predictable. Let's focus on the compositions that pull both the singer and listener into a state of motion that is dynamic, flexible and counters our expectations. RS: Where do we begin? And where do metaphors come in here? DMC: I focus on body-in-motion-metaphors, usually this translates to sports-like metaphors, something that most people can easily conceptualize. Let's start with "Alleluia" by Haggenberg. I hear this and I think: figure skating programs, right? This piece has two tempos, the 7/8 fast footwork, trippy sections of "alleluias" and the flowing legato sort of 4/4 section. The 7/8 segments are like the intricate, punctuated, precise, and high speed required footwork section, the 4/4 section is long looping phrases highlighted by leaps and jumps on the long notes. By the way, friction is hard on skates on ice, so you have to work hard to keep the forward motion going, just like you have to do in "Alleluia" to make sure it doesn't start to drag like a not-fit-enough skater at the 4 minute mark in the long program! RS: So next up is "How Can I Keep from Singing", the new improved version by the Podd brothers. DMC: Yes, totally rocks this one. The Old is New Again and all that jazz! And this one is walking vs. skipping! When I was a kid we used to walk home from school and play sidewalk games, one was race to the next telephone pole, another was crack jumping, and my personal fav skip-running. This verion of "How Can I" is totally skip-running 'cause they play with the timing and take the straight time Shaker thing and give it shake (don't you love bad puns!). So where in the original you would be walking along beat, beat, beat, beat, here you are hopping/skipping while the accompaniment is sort of cantering/galloping underneath the vocals for this cool counterpoint or hiccup cadence! Totally infectious! RS: Absolutely! Impossible not to move to the music on this one! (Here DMC went on at great length about the piece by Randall Thompson, the Alf Houkum work, and Barnum's "Afternoon on a Hill" (somehow relating them to the sutained, steady energy created in an nuclear reactor, long-distance swimming and the glories of mountain climbing, but we have edited this out due to time constraints (and the fact that we had trouble following most of DMC's metaphors, particluarly related to friction in sub-atomic chain reactions!)).Yes, well we are running out of time, how about one more, how about the Lauridsen piece? DMC: "Sure on This Shining Night." So the motion of that one phrase pretty much tells the story. I would like you to think of track and field events, specifically, the long jump, or even better, the pole vault! That opening phrase, a 3/4 and a 4/4 measure, built from 12 eighth notes and 1 quarter note (with that beautiful little rest at the beginning!). It is just like what a pole vaulter does. They rock back slightly (the rest) they pound down the runway (12 eighth note steps (with the strong leg step being the first step of each of the douples)) and then they spring into the air, using the speed/energy of the eighth notes to hang suspended on the word "night" for a millisecond before plunging back to earth and the next phrase. What is critical here is the friction that powers the motion up the runway to the moment of gravitational suspension that quickly turns around (falls) into the next phrase. This piece is fiendish, the tendency is to relish and slow the leading notes of the phrase, but if you do, there is not enough motion to create the suspension on the last note of the phrase--what would translate into hitting the bar rather than soaring over it! Really, when you think about it, this is the fundamental energy of choral music, of music period! You need to use the friction of each note to push into the next, every time you slow down or linger too lovingly on a note, you lose energy, which requires more force/friction to push on in the phrase. RS: Funny, I always thought the best music was sort of "frictionless". DMC: Well, it actually is, the more internal energy, forward aiming motion the music has, the less energy it takes to move it forward, therefore less friction occurs between the object (the note) and the motion of the music. Singing should appear effortless, an artful balance between friction and sustained forward motion. RS: Artful balance, one can't help but wonder if any of the composers you mentioned had similar thoughts to those you have expressed when they were creating these works? DMC: Well, a composer hears the notes first in their head right? And, one could say, there is no friction in the mind, and yet, I suspect there is in fact friction related to imagined motion in the mind! The composer intuitively understands the laws of physics, just as we all do, and the notes they hear in their mind have to overcome inertia and friction and everything else. The only difference? In your mind it is easier to overcome these forces then when you sing those same notes out loud in the here and now! RS: Well, I can't wait to put these music motion ideas into practice, I haven't run-skipped in a long time! Thank you so much for talking with us today! Our guest has been Dr. Moe Chen, author of "Music Can Move Mountains!: Using the Energy in Music to Sustainably Power Our Future." *Dr. Moe Chen founded the IMM in Bumblebee, CA. He has a PhD in the Motion of Music and is a world-renowned consultant to professional musicians who turn to him whenever the motion in their music (their mojo) loses forward energy.  The heart of the matter, the tipping point, the nitty-gritty, the sine quoa non, the pivot point, the fulcrum, the soul. Where is the "Crux" of Gjeilo's Sunrise Mass? Answer: Page 48, 3rd movement, rehearsal F, measure 119! Unquestionably, this is where the tension of the entire Mass builds to an almost unbearable intensity (and yet the dynamic marking is pp! Even more intense! ), an intensity that requires singers to commit cleanly, strongly, totally and continuously to every note in the 20 odd measures before rehearsal G.
My dog "Crux" (aka "Phoebe-Girl) is an intrepid and fearless trail runner. She matches me mile-for-mile over terrain smooth and rough. And as will happen, we often come across downed trees and limbs in our path. Here I often pause to watch her sometimes graceful hurdle; the moment of liftoff, the climb, and the thrilling moment of suspension, neither going up or down. Like in springboard diving when the diver reaches the apex of ascent, hanging weightless for a moment before surrendering to gravity, or when a skier unweights from a power turn and lifts onto the opposite edge and for a moment floats in zero G. There are moments in certain choral works that are the vocal equivalent of zero G. In Lauridsen's O' Magnum Mysterium, the altos have it on the second "Virgo" Such vibrating, rubbing intensity with all the other voice parts, there is the "Crux" of that short but incredible sonic journey! So where is the "horcrux"* in Ola Gjeilo's Sunrise Mass? You will find it in measure 129 into measure 130. As the chorus sings "Et as cen..." The sopranos, the altos and the tenors all either remain on the same not or move a half step each to resolve to what this non-music-major-sightreading-challenged-singer will call a C major chord. But the basses move to an F major framework. This in itself is beautiful, but the "crux", the "horcrux" of the entire work is in the baritone line!!! They--of all the voices-- they move 1 1/2 steps from a G# to a F natural. Oh Baby! This writer cannot convey to you how exciting it is to move that step and a half! When done cleanly, it becomes an out of body experience, one is suspended midair over the tree trunk, soaring in a weightless instant above the pool, floating god-like into the next hard turn! Music gives us paradoxical moments that are finite yet timeless, little sonic horcruxes that we may only get to sing a few times perfectly, yet they will live on somewhere inside us forever! *From "Harry Potter", "an object in which a wizard has concealed a part of their soul through magic, rendering them immortal until the object is irreparably damaged or destroyed". Alas, all good chords, even chords that hold whole souls, must end. Which makes one think of the Moody Blues and that landmark album "In Search of the Lost Chord". Progress being what it is; unrelenting and unencumbered by either moral or artistic hangups, it is easy to see the day coming (or maybe the day is already here) when Artificial Intelligence will compose a choral work that will be sung by an Artificial Choir. And while at first blush this might signal the end of choir as we know it (Got a weak bass section?, timid tenors?, shy altos?, breathy sopranos? Hey just download this free (sort of) app and “ChoirBalancer” (patent pending) will fill in those vocal voids that drive a choir director crazy!). Well yes, but actually, plenty of music has already been created and sung by humans that might as well have been composed and performed by AI. Bad songs–like bad movies, or books, or art–are, after all, a dime a dozen. And emotionally flat vocal performances, the human equivalent of an AI vocal rendition, are nothing new either. In fact it may just be that the sheer volume of emotionally tone-deaf music out there is what provides the context for the singing that really “lights our fire”.
I was thinking about all this while re-reading Will Shakespeare’s "As You Like It". I was parsing through the Bard’s witty web of fractured relationships, just-add-water love affairs, easy-peasey gender switches and tom- & motley- foolery because of a song by the Canadian choral composer Sarah Quartel that we are singing in our December concert. We are actually singing a pair of her songs, “Blow, Blow Thou Winter Wind” and “On This Silent Night”. Both songs are stunning for their simplicity, for their powerful melodies, for their ability to match music to mood. But the lyric from “Blow, Blow” is from Act II, Scene 7 of "As You Like It" and singing that lyric begged the question; why such a skeptical yet carefree view of humankind Dear Willy? The winter wind is not so “unkind as man’s ingratitude”, “most friendship is feigning, most loving mere folly” and the bitter sky’s sting “is not so sharp as friend remembered not.” Ouch! The sting of these truths doth bite boneward boyo! "As You Like It" is farcical fable or fabled farce of the highest order, a fast-moving mobius of matchmaking and match-breaking culminating in a quartet of marriages presided over by the god of marriage Hymen (yes Hymen!) all punctuated by the comical and wisdom-centric grounding provided by several fools-who-are-not-fools (a character-type Shakespeare was fond of) and, EUREKA!, more songs than any other play by Shakespeare that I can recall (though I confess, I am no scholar of the Bard, or anyone else for that matter!). There is: “Under The Greenwood Tree”, “It Was a Lover and His Lass”, “What Shall He Have That Killed the Deer”, “The Wedding Song”, and the aforementioned “Blow, Blow”. Enough song making for a Broadway Musical! (Plus it has one of Shakespeare’s Top 10 Monologues, “All the world’s a song….”) * But it is “Blow, Blow Thou Winter Wind” that strives to gather the dust on the wind that is the stuff of human life: love, friendship, loyalty and justice, to gather them and shape them into something lasting, even as it is known that the wind will continue to blow, our passions to cool, and our ties and binds to bend and break. “Heigh-ho, sing heigh-ho unto the green holly!” (We may as well make the best of it in this “best of all possible worlds”?). So can/will AI sing “Blow, Blow Thou Winter Wind” better than we mere mortals? Or, to rephrase the question, how can we mortals sing this song better than AI ever could/can/will? Well, we won’t find the answer by looking at notes, tempos and dynamics. No, we as singers have to look into our humaness and reach into the wind to touch the dust of our oft-times farcical failings, to accept that our world may not be “As We Like It”, but it’s still worth trying to befriend and love, and, of course, make beautiful, emotionally tuneful music. * The monologue occurs just before Amiens sings “Blow, Blow” in Act II, Scene 7, to whit: All the world’s a song, And all the men and women merely singers; They have their exits and their entrances (oftimes late); And one man in his time sings many voice parts, His songs being seven ages. At first the howling infant, Mewling and puking in the nurse’s arms; And then the whining school-boy, with his saintly And shining boy-soprano voice, creeping like snail Unwillingly to school. And then the tenor-voiced lover, Sighing like furnace, with a woeful ballad Made to his mistress’ eyebrow. Then a soldier, Full of strange conciets, and bearded like the pard, Bombastic in bass tones, sober and flat in quartet, Seeking the biggest reputation Even in the cannon’s mouth. And then the justice, In fair round belly with good capon lin’d, With eyes severe and beard of formal cut, Full of weaker tones and more modest vocalizations; And so he sings his part. The sixth age shifts Into the lean and slipper’d pantaloon, With spectacles on nose and hearing aid in ear; His youthful hose, well sav’d, his register none-too-wide For his shrunk shank; and his memory of manly voice, Turning again toward childish treble, pipes And whistles in his sound. Last scene of all, That ends this strange eventful history, Is second childishness and mere oblivion; Sans teeth, sans eyes, sans taste, sans singing! (Apologies to William Shakespeare & "All the world's a stage"!) -Introspection (from Latin, "introspectare", keep looking into (OED).
Self-reflection, soul searching, navel gazing, self-absorption. You name it. Self-examination and psychic DYI repairs are a growth business! The spring program Music Director Bronwyn Kortge has gathered--much as one gathers a mixed bouquet--seeks to explore the dark and light of human nature, both individually and globally. Here is a run-down on this emotional rollercoaster ride with all it's nine peaks and valleys. Hang on and probably not advisable to ride after a full meal! (NOTE the "Emotional Dissonance Scale" (patent pending) for each piece is included. Scale runs from emotionally stable (1) to totally schizoid! (10)) Lamentations of Jeremiah (Stroope) (5): Seeking darkness and despair? Look no further than the Old Testament and the the destruction of Jerusalem. Wailing, keening, drama--check, check, check! Written as though a Cantor is leading the conrgregants in a synagogue in a wild, wrenching call and response! Not for the faint of heart! Joy (Hayes) (8): Whiplash baby! The lyrics by Sara Teasedale (whose life story is not exactly uplifting) swing wildly from exuberhance to fulfillment to resignation and to what might be hope. From "I am wild" to "I am loved" to "I can die" to "I live". Pair that with the high-energy music and you got a heady brew of unsustainable euphoria! There Will Come Soft Rains (Podd) (5): "Suppose they gave a war and noboby came." Remember that nugget from the back in the day? Well, here beautiful, soothing music is again paired with Teasedale lyrics to raise what may be the most significant quesion facing humanity in the 21sth century; Will Nature care when we (humanity) are gone? Guess what? Probably not! Nature was here before us and will probably be here after we fry ourselves or otherwise blindly pursue self-destruction (not to be confused with self-examination or Introspection!) Dark Night of the Soul (Burns & Ellis) (10): Do you remember what it felt like when you were 15 or 16 or 17? Remember the explosive internal atomic energy you felt as one minute you were on top of the world and the next in the depths of a despair so deep and unfathomable that it made Jeremiah's despair look like amateur hour! Well this secular cantata (which sort of works as a genre identifier) journeys from the most toxic self-loathing, to destruction of the enemy within (your darkest self) and the cathartic liftoff into self-acceptance and peace! Not bad for 15 minutes! This work will knock your socks off with it's percussive beats and counterbeats, dissonances and harmonies! (This gets a 10 on the EDS scale since the first several sections are hands down the most emotionally dark in the entire program but it then moves in a logical upward progression (sort of!). Deep Peace (Douglas) (1): So maybe there are three big themes in this program: (1) dark and light, (2) flying, and (3) waves (are they themes you ask? sure, why not!). Deep Peace is all about waves and what they represent: ebb and flow, recurrence, pattern, beauty, peace, waves in the ocean, waves in the cosmos, waves in the pulse of our blood! Take a moment to breathe deep and relax. You earned it! Measure Me Sky (Hagenberg) (5): This one really takes flight! Each line of music seems to soar upwards on wings. It takes you to the mountaintop and beyond, letting you feel the vastness and immeasureable possiblity of existence. Definitely a positive dub here! (5 cause the euphoria herein is super fragile by nature) Lux Beata Trinitas (Gjeilo) (4): Flowing musical lines pull in and out but remain ever connected, pouring light into the hearts mere mortals who use this mysterious light to pour forth joy, praise, and hope. Definitely a steady Zen vibe here and the perfect seque into the next piece, also by good ole' Ola! Luminous Night of the Soul (Gjeilo) (3): This one has it all: dark and light, flying and waves! The text by Silvestri juxtaposes the impenatrable darkness of night with the luminscent glow of human creativity and spirit. Musically, Gjeilo masterfully emeshes the vocal parts, the piano and the orchestration in a way that has each stepping forward and stepping back, like waves moving in and out on the tide line, and sometimes forming crazy cross chop when one voice hits against another. Truly cosmic in scope, above all else, this work reminds us that it is the "spirit of art" that matters most. I can totally get down with that! Sogno di Volare (Tin) (3): Pair lyrics from Da Vinci's writings with the epic anthem-like music of Christopher Tin and you got a winning combination! "Once you take flight, you decide...man will be lifted by his own creation...filling the universe with wonder and glory!" Ah, the can-do spirit of Renaissance creators! Perhaps the most telling phrase in the lyric is the simple "You decide", not the church, not the state, if you want to take flight, it is your choice! Knowledge is light, ignorance is darkness, let the waves roll on and from the mountaintop of knowledge take flight! Ego Sum! Singing as Navigation or The Many Ways to Find Our Way In Music
A conversation with Wolfgang “Marco” Amundsen (descended from Mozart/Polo/Amundsen (or so he claims) author of “How to Sing Your Way Out of the Shower”. Interview by DR Shuteski (mediocre lifelong student of music) DR: So I’m fascinated by the parallels you draw between how we get our bearings in music and all the innate skills animals and humans use to navigate the world. WMA: Yes, what’s really remarkable is that almost always it is not just one thing. Always multiple skills are being used simultaneously. DR: Can you give us an example? WMA: Well birds are the most obvious example with their formidable migrations. Among the “tools” they use are sun clocks, internal compasses, very low infrasound waves, weather forecasting!, olfactory senses, landmark memory, and even imprinting--memories passed on from generation to generation. DR: Incredible and how would you equate that to what a singer does when singing? WMA: So there are really two levels here right? Humans being humans, we have to put a musical score in our hand first--a map if you will--which attempts to put down all the parameters, the compass headings, the landmarks, the topographic features and what not. But that is the boring part right? The interesting part, the part that brings the music to life, are all the other “navigational” skills we bring to the written notes. DR: And these skills, you believe they may be biological and they are similar to actual navigation? WMA: Sure, take homing pigeons for example. They find their way using visual landmarks (like notes on staves) and very low frequency infrasound (which is kind of like the background harmonic hum that the key in which a piece of music is written vibrates in the singers, like a deep cellular tuning fork). And they use olfactory clues (sort of like the mood or emotion of a particular musical section). And what is really cool and least understood, they use the magnetism in their very pigeon bodies to help them always and subconsciously align with magnetic north! This could be equated to how singers find and stay in tune in whatever key a piece is written in, sort of like magnetic inclination. DR: Wow, I love this, so the written note is just a framework on which we singers…. WMA: Right, the notes have no more or no less meaning than a point of longitude and latitude has. What makes the music is what we, the singer, the musician, add to that point--it’s relationship to other points that allow the music to chart a course, which is a whole series of points strung together will all kinds of input along the way. DR: Human musical navigational input? Can you give me... WMA: Right, here’s an example. Take Tone Clusters (which Dale Warland is somewhat skeptical of and Eric Whitacre loves (and Mr. Whitacre submitted one of his very first compositions to Warland which was rejected--kind of a neat confluence of harmonics in and of itself)). Anyway, tone clusters are like when part of the sound seems to go off course, like some migrating birds that get separated by a storm. In order to rejoin the main migrating group the separate group needs to refix their compass heading (which they actually do using their internal magnetic compass systems to re-merge with the main group). And while this happens they are like two notes rubbing up against each other. Both groups needs to be forceful and confident in their respective “headings” so that they stay on course (in tune) and eventually merge and continue on in the greater harmonic structure of the piece! DR: Wowza! So the score, the written stuff, is just a vehicle, a…. WMA: A jumping off point for making music! Right, exactly! It is all the other tools or skills beyond sight reading that makes the music. For example imprinting. Juvenile birds of some species fly their first migrations with mature birds to “learn” the route. Well, lucky western children are imprinted with musical maps practically from the moment of conception. DR: Right, parents-to-be playing Mozart for the little embryo.. WMA: So when we hear Mozart or Bach, we can actually sense where it is going to go. It is on a certain level very predictable because we have learned the map reading skills to get from point A to point B in a Bach Cantata. DR: Sounds like while this helps us in familiar musical situations it might actually…. WMA: Yes--limit our ability to navigate music that comes from a different map or a different part of the globe.Think about jazz improvisation and the Puffin. DR: You mean those silly looking… WMA: Exactly, they are born with many of the same navigational skills as other birds--the ability to memorize visual landmarks, internal compasses, olfactory senses, etc. but their migratory routes are not imprinted. Juvenile puffins leave before the parents on solo migrations which they make up themselves.They travel thousands of miles on an improvised migratory path and eventually return to where they started! DR: That’s remarkable! WMA: You know there is an old expression: “blinded by our vision” which is a beautiful way of saying, all too often humans live as though we only really need one of our five senses. In music, our fixation on finding the music in the notes on the page, on our obsession with the “map” can y “blind” us to actually making music. DR: Like we have to use all our “navigational” skills to give the notes life! WMA: Yes, precisely, or not precisely perhaps because music is a process of adjustment. DR: Meaning? WMA: Our brains, our entire neuro system in fact, is designed to process sensory information--the world as it is or the music as it is written--and make sensory adjustments using all our tools, from our internal “infrasound” harmonics to our auditory stereo processes (I haven’t even talked about how most peoples’ ears are not exactly symmetrical), to make the world--the music--as we want it. DR: There is almost a spiritual level to all this. WMA: Yes, maybe what we call “spirit” or spirituality is simply the sum of all humanity’s behavioural experience up to now being processed by us in this moment with the goal of making adjustments that will hopefully make the world--or the piece we are singing--more like we believe it should be in the future. DR: Music and spirituality as navigation towards “heaven” or Utopia. Incredible! WMA: Perhaps. To paraphrase Timothy Leary, “turn on and tune in”. Turn on and allow yourself to touch all your innate internal biological navigational skills to let you truly tune into to the music you are singing! DR: Thank you so much for your time and your insights! WMA: Time is a navigational tool as well you know, let me tell you about our internal sun clocks….... Source Material: Supernavigators: Exploring the Wonders of How Animals Find Their Way, (The Experiment Press LLC, 2019) A conversation with the late, great theatre critic Walter Cur and that up-and-coming theatre sensation Tony Iwantit (who has not won a Tony--yet!)
I sat down to lunch with these two outsize egos at Eats on the Upper East Side to discuss the current state of Broadway theatre. Sitting at a streetside table we watched the bustle of Madison Avenue on a fine summer day while we talked shop, scripts, great roles, and great actors. The most fascinating focus of our discussion was around the pros and cons of staged readings and full performances. Brilliant Journalist: So Tony, you were recently in a staged reading of “No Exit” that received rave reviews. Tell me your thoughts on how a staged reading is different for an actor than a full performance? TI: Well, obviously, as an actor, I prefer all the glories of a full production, but I’ve done a lot of readings and staged readings. WC: I abhor staged readings, but I have seen all the greats do them, Olivier, Geilgud, Plowright, I could go on and on, I abhor them because I never get that full-blown theatre escape, that out-of-self experience that a fully realized staged production can deliver…. TI: Yes, Yes, no matter how well you read your script, no matter how much you live the lines, you and the audience never quite escape from the reality around you the way you do when the curtain rises on a great production…. WC: I saw Ralph Ricardson in a reading of Hamlet, he was incessantly fingering his script and even dropped it twice, believe me there was no magic there, I…. TI: I believe that you cannot truly become the character with a script in your hand and your eyes on the page. I and the audience are always acutely aware of the present moment as much as we might try to imagine we are on the ramparts at Elsinore. WC: It would be like going to the Met and seeing a production of Carmen with Denyce Graves in skinny jeans with the score in her hands. TI: I don’t know, with her it still might be magical, just sayin’ BJ: Long ago I used to sing in choirs…. WC: Choirs? BJ: You know, a bunch of singers doing choral music. WC: Oh, that sort of thing…. BJ: Yes, and in most of the choirs we held our music in our hands and our eyes would ideally just pop into the music for brief moments and the rest of the time our eyes would be on the conductor… TI: Like a director you mean? BJ: Sort of, anyway, I was once in a choir where we memorized all the music, just like you memorize your lines for a staged production… TI: I have a truly incredible memory, one of the best! BJ: Yes, yes, but what I am getting at is in that choir where we memorized all the music, we escaped ourselves in every song, we transformed notes and beats and dynamic markings that were all imprinted on our memory and seared into our emotional data banks into something more than the music on the printed page. It could become a transcendent experience for both the singers and the audience. TI: The Times called me transcendent in the profile they did in the magazine last week! WC: Transcendent is overused, very few actors I have seen, and I have seen all the greatest actors many, many times, and very few could be called transcendent… TI: Yes, but I was transcendent in Streetcar last year, WC: Hardly, you were powerful and appropriately coarse, but transcendent? I don’t think so… BJ: So what about memorization? WC: What about it? BJ: By imprinting something, music, scripts, whatever, does it transform it into something more than the sum of its parts? WC: You are talking about Genius my good fellow, art in any form produced by a genius is magically something more than the sum of its parts. I saw…. TI: The Times called my performance in Angels in America “pure genius” WC: I saw it, it was not “pure genius”. But you are right BJ, speaking as a genius myself, you could say that I am most definitely more than the sum of my parts…. TI: Variety Magazine said I could have been sculpted by Michelangelo and that the sum of my parts…... This conversation has been edited and condensed in a failed attempt to contain these two larger-than-life personalities. Really Brilliant Journalist. While painting a room "Meeting House White", this writer had one of those random moments of euphoria that can turn an otherwise mundane task into a near spiritual endeavor. I was filling the roller tray, spreading drop clothes, making a cosy bed for the dog out of some old bedding. I took a look round deciding where to start and I hit play on the music machine and started rolling paint to the opening strings of the St Matthew Passion. I was getting into the rhythm just where the chorus enters for the first time and I began to sing along and lo, what’s this? “Come my joy!” The accoustics in the room were remarkable, like singing in an old church or a cavernous shower.
The room is what realtors call a “bonus” room. In this case where the adults in the house used to hang out and play poker and pool, or cozy up to the large wet bar of polished maple at the end of the room, complete with high swivel stools and a brass bar rail and watch sports on the large ceiling mounted TV. As I was listening to opening sections of the Passion, where the talk is of the Passover meal, I imagined this would make a great room for a last supper, though I am pretty sure the Disciples and Jesus all sat at a long table and not around a bar. As I continued singing along to the chorales, I was giddy with the wonderful (so it seemed to me) sound of my voice and I imagined how I could use this space. “I know, I could start a small 8 or 12 voice chorus, the kind I always wanted to sing in and we could rehearse right here.” Of course, with a sinking sensation, I realized, I know virtually nothing about music. How would I ever start a chorus! But then the euphoria returned with a vengeance. How could I be so foolish, I already sang in the best chorus in all of downeast Maine! I didn’t need to start a new choir. All I had to do was do a lot of practicing so that I could hold my own with all the wonderful and talented singers of the Bagaduce Chorale. So as I rolled and rolled that cavernous space, I played thru and thru the St Matthew Passion multiple times, trying to mind-meld my voice to the rehearsal tracks. And lo, by the time the last paint can was empty, though my euphoria had subsided, I felt a fine inner glow of confidence in the my mastery of the bass part and a new appreciation of the mystery and majesty of this masterwork by Bach! Come hear that majesty and mystery and mighty music this coming weekend, May 10 & 11th in Blue Hill and on Sunday the 12th at Ellsworth High School. Accoustically speaking, it will be filled with sadness, sorrow, yearning, pathos, pity and above all else the euphoria of hope! |
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Rehearsal Blog
Witty. Pithy. True (mostly).
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