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"!)
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"!)
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