twang twang twang - MUNICH

Here's another article about the future of classical music.

Rupert Christiansen in the Telegraph a couple of weeks ago -

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/arts/main.jhtml?xml=/arts/2004/02/11/barc11.xml&sSheet=/arts/2004/02/27/ixmusicmain.html

(I'm a Grauniad girl - but Christiansen's excellent. While I'm on the subject, WOT is the the Observer's much-feted Music Magazine doing calling itself that without any classical music??? eh??? eh???)

On the whole I agree with his argument that most cross-over projects are commercial, superficial and unsatisfying. So much is left out in favour of wet T shirts, dodgy transcriptions and chill-out beats: issues, erm, of interpretive musicality and creative artistry; historically-informed, academically rigorous performances [similarly, I had to explain to someone the other day that music was actually a valid subject to study academically, like history or physics or fish-farming]; the notion that it's as rewarding to shell out ten quid to see inspired live performance as it is on anodyne sampled pap...I could go on. Christiansen puts it better: "Children can sense an underlying mauvaise foi about the "barrier-breaking" and "cross-over" crusade, and they easily detect that the music-making that goes forth in its name is often mediocre or worse. Much better to keep faith with purity and persevere with concepts of grandeur, depth, complexity and subtlety".

It reminds me how the head of music at my mother's school remarked that teachers shouldn't be afraid to play schoolchildren contemporary music - he said they were some of the most receptive and intelligent audiences he experienced. I remember myself being destroyed by Lutoslawski 4 when I was fourteen in youth orchestra. The music hadn't been altered, re-arranged or in any way "dumbed down" to make it easier for us - and so, because we experienced it in its full honesty, we fell in love with it.

However I don't think there's no room to play around with classical music at all. I'm currently transcribing a famous work onto the harp. Here's some justification: the accompaniment is originally for harpsichord, but is almost always played in a romantic piano realisation, so it's been messed about with already. Indeed by putting it back onto an instrument closer to the harpsichord than the modern piano we'll hopefully recolour the music both anew and as of old. So the transcription isn't a totally alien act - but it does mean a certain amount of change, obviously.

I think this sort of organic change and development within classical music is necessary for its survival. Here, again, is the excellent quote from Gary Giddens' Visions of Jazz, which I quoted earlier in the post "Lobotomised Grin":

"...many ruefully recall a vanished age when what we now call classical music was a vital, transfiguring, seductive, and galling art, often improvised, that spoke to people's lives and kept them on their toes. It was also popular. Then the institutions took over and retailored it into a malleable craft and fixed repertory, easily channeled from one orchestra to another, for the amusement of the upper middle class shopper out on a cultural excursion, the fat-cat subscriber whose seasonal boxes entertain clients and friends, and children who eat their spinach. True, an active contemporary music scene flourishes downtown and on campus, but who cares? Name five composers under forty. All right, three."

Is this what cross-over is doing? Are those of us who find it on the whole unconvincing so conditioned by our years of establishment education that we are deaf to its innovative combinations and commence de siecle social comment? But, to return to Christiansen's arguments, is it that so much of it fails because it takes the identity of one sort of music, snaps it together with another, and doesn't really consider whether the marriage is a happy one or whether it's chalk and cheese in funked-up Pachelbel soup.

I had a gastronomic gigging Valentine's weekend where Zilli was doing the cooking and then Carluccio came into the restaurant I was playing in. We could use their expertise at the classical cook-out.

Ooh!

I was lamenting my Brit Awards screw-up with a friend, and they said one year a harpist was asked to play topless. The first person who was asked refused, but the second agreed!

:0

Who was it????? Salacious...

Doh!

I got asked to do a gig last night in town, but turned it down because I had to go off for an early orchestral call elsewhere. As soon as I put the phone down I thought "I shoulda depped the band date and done this one", but what's done is done and I do like orchestral work, so I thought no more about it.

Turned out it was the BRIT AWARDS!!!!!! DOH!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Clever or What

OK guys, I admit it, I didn't write all those posts today. But The Man Of The House thought he'd disabled my old blog (in order to host his!! Cheeky), and then we found it was still alive, so here they all are. What a shame we can't just cut and paste all the time (well, I dunno, you tell me, some of these posts are sooooooooo 2003)

must go to bed - got to be in Guildford at 10.00 am to play film music. Not amusing if you live in North London

Hubris?

I'm reading a slightly cranky but nonetheless compelling book - David Tame's The Secret Power of Music: The Transformation of Self and Society Through Musical Energy (Rochester, 1984). It's basically arguing for a music with a direct spiritual and moral aim, as in Bach's devotional motivation or ancient Chinese beliefs: when music becomes only sensual or materialist (image-conscious music industry, or bloodless electronic chill out tracks), it precludes the collapse of that music's society. Bit extreme, I think; I enjoy what Tame rejects as quasi-sinful sleazy sensual music (Debussy! Jazz & Blues!), but he does raise the question of what is happening to music today.

Up to the end of the nineteenth century, Tame argues, classical music enjoyed high status; from ancient times to Beethoven, composers saw their work as mirroring the word of God. Because classical music, with all its rules of tonal and harmonic structure, creates a finished product that is beautiful throughr how the notes are ordered, it was seen from ancient times as an audible reflection of the cosmic order above this planet. How the cosmos is depicted depends on the music's particular culture - Chinese music avoids harmony, because "the tendency was to express single tones as clear, undifferentiated manifestations of the imminent, living cosmic Tone which pervaded the entire universe" (p. 45); Bach's counterpoint is "a filigree lattice-work of mathematical precision which I could almost reach out and touch...timeless and immaculate beyond all powers of verbal description" (p.20). The New Music of the twentieth and twenty-first centuries, in contrast, moved from the tonal experiments of Schoenberg finally to Cage's nihilistic almost anti-music:

"contemporary music is changing But since everything's changing we could simply decide to drink a glass of water To have something to be a masterpiece you have to have enough time to talk when you have nothing to say"
(Cage, 1952)

Tame takes a strong stand against the New Music; compares the electronic experiments of Skinner and Vorhans to hallucinogenic drugs controlling the human mind, and above all draws a clear social parallel. At its worst, "Music could be not an art for the uplifting and spiritual emancipation of humanity, but a ruthless, mechanised industry designed to milk the last penny from the pockets of the enslaved, and to utterly control human behaviour for political purposes." (p.117)

Well, I'm not about to dismiss all avant-garde music - Beethoven's sublime late quartets were hardly played in his lifetime, after all. But how far can contemporary music go? Where does musical experimentation stop being innovation and become senseless noise? Obviously all traditions need to grow and develop if they are to survive; anyone who's had an "old school" music teacher who won't let go or accept changing musical conceptions has first-hand experience of the problems that arise when people won't keep pace with the times. It's also doubly difficult to assess contemporary value in comparison to the classical canon because all the dross from Mozart's time has been lost centuries ago, whereas we have everything modern facing us and awaiting our evaluation.

But as Tame points out there are some damning factors surrounding much contemporary music at the moment. Nobody, really, enjoys listening to most of it; audiences without the benefit of twenty years of expensive middle-class music lessons want the Four Seasons by candlelight. Even trained musicians, who can comprehend what the music is saying, cannot necessarily engage with it emotionally: so much of the avant-garde is mind without heart, Tame claims.

I think maybe the whole dilemna boils down to rules, to conceptions of order, and how far we can push those boundaries before we stop enjoying the innovative cutting-edge feelings bending the rules incites, and instead feel hopelessly at sea. If music's appeal lies in the ordered patterns of sound it presents, you can argue that no order at all equals senseless noise. So many composers today, of course, stand more on the side of the traditionalists, and shape their creativity within established tonal frameworks.

2 camps, then - those who are pushing the boundaries more daringly, but in a less audience-friendly manner, and the traditionalist who proceed more stealthily. Is stealth the best way, because you can convince others as you go along, or is it better to forge ahead and be appreciated after your death?? I'm caught between the two myself at the minute. On the 11th, I'll give a recital of British contemporary flute and harp music, and the British fl & h. rep is dominated by the traditional (and, some might say, British rep in general, but that's a topic to throw open to the floor), but on the other hand, I've just had a piece written for me where I have to tie a strip of painted cloth down the column of the harp, while reciting Nietzsche - and, as I haven't played it yet, who's to say it isn't good? To read over, there's much that is both witty and incisive . All a bit much for a harpist of little brain like me. Any suggestions? To what extent do we need rules in music? What future lies for the avant-garde now that Cage has reduced music to silence interspersed with chance noises (4'33)? Here's the Chinese sage Lu Bu Ve to finish:

"They deemed the loud sounds of big drums, bells, stones, pipes and flutes beautiful and thought that mass effects were worth while. They aimed at new and strange timbres, at never heard of tones, at plays never seen before. They tried to outdo one another and overstepped the limits." (Spring and Fall)

Those Who Can

Today I met a ten-year-old who wants to learn the harp. We had a bit of a taster sesh with the help of my lovely stuffed assistant, Mouse the mouse, I gave her parents a list of teacher phone numbers and all was well. I felt rather sober afterwards, 'though, and went for a long walk down the canal to Camden Town musing on the responsibilities music teachers face.

I mean, we all teach to make a bit of cash, even if we see ourselves primarily as players. Lots of pupils are casual too, what my teacher calls "tourists"; they'll learn for a bit out of curiousity, not pay that much attention to it and give it up in time. Nothing wrong with that - music doesn't have to be deathly serious, and some light dabbling in a sonata on a Sunday afternoon's a pleasant, civilised persuit.

But here's the thing - what if a pupil starts taking their music really seriously? Where do you strike the balance between their interests and yours? The temptation's strong to keep them on; it's enormously rewarding to work with someone who's really getting something out of the music, and of course you get the kudos as well.

But we all know the problems people suffer when they stay with a teacher they've really outgrown. Relearning technique entirely, often in your mid-teens, when time is ticking by; terrible politics when you need a change (often nothing personal, just the need for some fresh input) - suddenly your teacher refuses to speak to you any more. I suffered from teacher fall-out myself and I have never been so devastated: it was like the end of a relationship. Especially when you think the sun shines out...and then you realise that plus ca change and nobody's perfect after all.

I think the mark of a really great teacher is letting go. Or, knowing when to quit. It's rare to find someone who's as good with beginners as they are in advanced masterclasses, or vice versa, so where's the shame in acknowledging that while you're good for one person you might not be for another?

Mind you, it's easy for me to hold forth in this self-righteous manner, but far from easy to move your pupils on. The music teacher-pupil relationship is particularly intense and personal: the serious pupil entrusts their dreams and aspirations to be channelled, and the teacher lays their artistry on the table for the judging. I was reading in Antony Kemp's The Musical Temperament: Psychology and Personality of Musicians (well worth a look, especially in navel-gazing mood) how musicians are much more sensitive regarding their professional life than, say, most office workers, because what they do for a living isn't separated from their personal identities. So if you play badly in a concert you aren't just annoyed you didn't do a good job, you feel like a worthless person. Hey, we've all been there. So you can see why it all gets so difficult so often.

Makes you realise what an amazing thing it is when you do get a teacher who can rise above. Respec' .

Brain Gym

A couple of years ago, in my first year at college, I had a couple of lessons with Fiona Hibbert, who's an expert in "Brain Gym", a kind of way-to-help-youself-learn that's very popular in the States. The idea is to get both sides of your brain ("left brain" and "right brain") working together, for maximum productivity with minimum stress. Often, the therapy argues, people get in the habit of over-using one side and under-using the other, tiring themselves out while getting nowhere fast.

You get assessed to find out which, if any, side of your brain is doing all the work. I was pronounced v strong in my right brain and prescribed exercises to counteract this.

Anyway, I've been reading Antony Storr's Music and the Mind (highly recommended, and my saviour the other day, when the conductor changed all the calls and I had to hang about for three hours :( ) which talks about which sides of the brain control which functions. The right side controls emotions, subjective response, creativity and suchlike: the left, logic, rational thought, intellectual analysis etc. Clearly, there is some overlap (language can be controlled by either, depending on whether it's to do with emotions - as in poetry and song - or intellect - as in conceptual thought), but the basic emotional/rational divide remains. Fascinatingly, it's possible to sedate one side of the brain without the other because of how the arteries work: if the left side is doped up, the subject can't speak, but can still sing.

Music's double nature as an emotional outpouring and also an intellectual ordering of notes explains why musicians tend to fall into one of two camps: those who lean towards other art forms, and those who are very good at maths etc. It gets really interesting when Storr points out the common discrepancy between interest in music, and talent for it:

"...those who are not mathematically gifted seldom long to be mathematicians; but musical enthusiasts often confess that their lack of musical talent is their greatest disappointment...perhaps emotional response to music is chiefly centered in the right hemisphere, whilst executive skills and critical analysis are functions of the left."

So, mathmos, is it time to feel smug? As a right-brainer I was certainly getting a bit peturbed. Fotunately before my raison d'etre was irrevocably undermined I remembered Fiona and brain gym and the whole point of the exercise, which was to use both sides of your brain together. And, of course, while music is nothing without technique and intelligence and taste, it's also absoutely nothing without emotional commitment. Simultaneously, you need some intellectual input. Storr was a medical guinea-pig for the drug mescaline, which enhances emotional response while abolishing all perception of form:

"Mescaline made a Mozart string quartet sound as romantic as Tchaikovsky. I was conscious of the throbbing, vibrant quality of the sounds which reached me; of the bite of the bow upon string; of a direct appeal to my emotions. In contrast, appreciation of form was greatly impaired...All that was left was a series of tunes with no connecting links: a pleasurable experience, but one which also proved disappointing."

Ah, so many things in life are about striking a balance, aren't they? Except in this instance I don't think that adage is as wet as it normally sounds. The ear, you see, is very closely linked to balance (I was conducted by someone with an ear infection once - it was alarming in the concert as the swaying canopy above us kept making him lose his balance). And then music, too, is all about balance: of treble and bass, of call-and-response, exposition and recapitulation: even, too, of soul and body, as the athleticism of a virtuoso shows. Here's Plato with a highbrow incentive to go to the gym:

"And he who mingles music wiht gymnastic in the fairest proportions, and best attempers them to the soul, may be rightly called the true musician and harmonist in a far higher sense than the tuner of the strings."

Brain Gym indeed. I must go back to these exercises. I've got six hours of calls tomorrow with eight minutes to play, so time for a bit of extra-curricular revision.

Sheep and Schubert

As I mentioned in my last post, I've just got back from three days in Devon. I've been giving primary school workshops for The Two Moors Festival. It's rewarding work, because harps don't normally make it down to the west country, so the children get the chance to learn about something they'd never normally see (although I'm not sure Red Class forgave me for thoughtlessly ramming my harp into the head of the festival mascot, Schubert the cuddly sheep).

It's difficult for small schools in the countryside to get the sort of arts provision West London Richkids Primary enjoys: "enrichment" was the word the headteacher of the smallest school I visited used. Some, at ten years old, had never learnt to tap a one-beat-in-four rhythm; I remember, when I did similar workshops in a former mining community in the North East, only one in a group of forty could come up with the term "classical music".

That's not to say the schools are not trying. One, a vibrant place near Okehampton, was in the middle of a special "music week", where the kids were having a different workshop every day that week, and the walls of the hall were festooned with displays ranging from Indian instruments to jazz bands. The idea, the headmaster explained, was to increase the children's awareness of music substantially, although there was less room for it in the normal curriculum.

We've got to have good arts in our schools. If children are not brought up to enjoy them, be it music or drama or painting or whatever, what will become of us later? Where will the classical music audiences be, for example? In fact I think it's particularly important where classical music is concerned, because unlike art or films or creative writing, it does seem often to require more training to love.

And never mind us, what about the children themselves? I was listening to Lorin Maazel on Radio 3, talking about how classical music's appeal was, like all great art, enduring, and that children could love it as much as older people. I played a three and a half minute Romantic solo to a class of nine year olds, which I had been told included seven "problem" boys, and there was not a whisper out of them the whole time, nor during any of the other music I played, even though they'd never heard harp music before.

I'm an idealist - I think a love of the arts gives you a certain inner strength of soul, supports your belief in your own and others existence and makes you feel real and alive. I don't think it was only novelty value that held the children's attention in Devon. An hour and a half is a long time for a seven year old to concentrate if they're only interested in the harp's gold leaf.

Lobotomized Grin

I'm reading a history of jazz. Here's a pertinent comment it makes on what has happened to classical music.

"...many ruefully recall a vanished age when what we now call classical music was a vital, transfiguring, seductive, and galling art, often improvised, that spoke to people's lives and kept them on their toes. It was also popular. Then the institutions took over and retailored it into a malleable craft and fixed repertory, easily channeled from one orchestra to another, for the amusement of the upper middle class shopper out on a cultural excursion, the fat-cat subscriber whose seasonal boxes entertain clients and friends, and children who eat their spinach. True, an active contemporary music scene flourishes downtown and on campus, but who cares? Name five composers under forty. All right, three. The louts who rioted at the debut of Le Sacre du printemps now seem quaintly admirable in their concern. In the age of the Three Tenors, when superstar virtuosos record themes from Oscar-winning movies (a task previously left to studio hacks), the concert series subscriber may be identified by a lobotomized grin."

Gary Giddens, Visions of Jazz: The First Century (OUP, 1998)

It struck a chord with me as we're all still on a high here from the last Sound Collective gig: Matthew Taylor's Horn Concerto, Britten's Les Illuminations, Igor Stravinsky’s Apollon Musageté; and the Elgar Serenade for Strings. Wide-ranging, carefully-selected, deeply original programming, immaculately performed - and, hopefully refuting some of the arguments that you have to play Eine Kleine Nachtmusik by candelight to get bums on seats, a large audience who received the programme with the enthusiasm it deserved.

Similarly, I was driving back from Devon yesterday listening to Classic FM. I'm generally rather a fan of Classic FM, and during my two-night stay with the organisers of The Two Moors Festivalwe were discussing the secrets of its sucess, or, what characterises it most strongly. It has wide-ranging playlists, and interesting programmes such as David Mellor's 'If you liked that, you'll like this', to expand the horizons of those of us who haven't been lucky enough to enjoy expensive classical music lessons from the age of five. Anyway, I was listening to it on the way home and I thought, the thing about Classic FM is its cheerfulness, its consistently upbeat focus: their music is there to sooth you (Smooth Classics at 2/7/from all good record shops), or cheer you up after a hard day's work, or for you to marvel at the virtuosity of whatever performer is top of the charts.

There's absolutely nothing wrong with this - music is there to entertain, after all, and you can even programme some unfamiliar music. But to market classical music as something purely soothing and cheering gives you a picture of an art form two-dimensional, and thus limited. Where is Shostokovich's political anger, Messiaen's mysticism in the Quartet for the End of Time, the wild sensuality of les Illuminations? The perception that classical music can leave you destroyed and desolate as well as full of joy, that it is the more powerful an art form for it, and indeed the bleak sections give meaning and triumph to the joyful ones? It's like only ever reading Much Ado About Nothing and never Othello; you need to have read the tragedies to understand the comedies' hidden weight, and what flips of plot, character and verse turn "songs of woe/into hey, nonny, nonny."

I went to see Giselle at Covent Garden the other day, and if ballet isn't escapist entertainment, I don't know what is. But it was so moving because it was so sad, and the triumph of love and being pure in heart would have carried no weight if it were not for the contrasting malice, social tensions and infidelities evoked by the jealous Hilarion, who must dance to death.

As it was, I don't think I'll ever forget Jonathan Cope's final slow walk to the front of the stage. How I wish the run hadn't finished, so I could see it again!

If you buy one CD this week

Buy Duke Ellington's The Classical Album - his renditions of Nutcracker and Peer Gynt suites, plus the Ellington-Strayhorn Suite Thursday. Fantastic! You will never think of Tchaik and Grieg the same way again.