December 2005 Archives

Happy holidays, everyone, and happy New Year. Hope you’ve all been having a good and restful time. One highlight of my holiday was a Christmas dinner we gave for 15 assorted family members, featuring a 20-pound roast beef, which was so big we couldn’t fit it in our refrigerator. Had to put it outside in the cold, but not on our deck, because animals might eat it, or on our porch, because birds might get it (turkey vultures or crows). So we put it in our car.

One feature of Christmas, of course—one unavoidable feature—is Christmas music, which I love, as long as I’m not forced to listen to it in too many stores. We had a lot of it at home, alternating between pop (my choice) and classical (my wife’s). That made me think about the differences between pop and classical Christmas music, which tell a lot, I suddenly realized, about the differences, on a larger scale, between all of pop and all of classical.

Classical Christmas music, at its best, is joyous and radiant. Reverent, too. It tends to be religious, and often tends to sound traditional. That’s what people like about it. (I’m counting classical versions of Christmas carols here, just so everyone’s clear about that.) And it also—with the grand exception of Christmas music sung by old-time opera singers—tends to be discreet and respectable. Nobody’s going to get larger than life. Nobody’s going to be funny. Nobody’s going to show any attitude.

What can spoil classical Christmas music? Two things (maybe more, but I haven’t thought of them). The carol arrangements can be awful—too fancy, too gaudy, too restrained, too inept. There’s a big gap between the great composers we’re used to and most of the people who do Christmas carol arrangments, and the gap is, all too often, all too easy to hear. And then classical singers can be overbearing. Christmas carols—and even some of the standard classical Christmas songs, like “Panis Angelicus” or “O Holy Night”—aren’t deep or complex music, and can easily be spoiled, or else made crazily ridiculous, when singers do too much with them.

What this means is that opera singers often have to turn down their wattage. Case in point: Eileen Farrell blazing through “Deck the Halls” at something near full gleaming power, overwhelming the poor little song, and just about leaving it comatose with shock. Hearing this is like needing some milk, and driving to the convenience store in a fire engine, with lights and sirens going crazy. Classical singers can also be sententious. Even Franco Corelli, one of my all-time favorites, practically murders “Panis Angelicus,” which just can’t take his slurping passion. But the worst, the very worst I heard, was (to my dismay) Marian Anderson, who sings “Away in a Manger” as if she was a marble statue of Queen Victoria overacting as she played a marble statue of Queen Victoria on TV. She’s unbearable.

Pop Christmas music is normally fun. A lot of it is secular. Well, “Jingle Bells,” in the traditional Christmas carol repertoire, is also secular, as is “Deck the Halls,” but both are secular about things that aren’t around much any more, sleighs and fa la las, which give them both an air of sacred music, since they bring us to a world as far from us, and as nostalgically imagined, as angels or the Christmas star. And pop Christmas songs are secular in the most everyday sense—“I Saw Mommy Kissing Santa Claus,” or “What Are You Doing New Year’s Eve?” That’s their strength; both in their tone and content they ground us in the life we actually live. (Just as the strength of classical Christmas music, at its best, is to take us off to what might be a better life.)

They also can be low-key, and funny. I don’t know how many times I’ve heard “The Chipmunk Song,” with Alvin messing up, over and over. But it always makes me laugh. And pop Christmas songs can be sad—“Blue Christmas,” or, most poignantly, “I’ll Be Home for Christmas,” which (as I learned from a feature in the Daily News, my favorite New York tabloid) was written during World War II, and speaks for guys who were off fighting in the military, and might never see Christmas at home again. (“I’ll be home for Christmas/If only in my dreams.”) A lot of people are sad during the holidays; sadness is also a very natural, and even (in a way) a very holy part of life. Bringing it into Christmas music helps make Christmas human and complete.

And what goes wrong with pop Christmas songs? They can trip over their attitude. Or, rather, their attitude stops meaning anything. How many times can you hear some hipster (or would-be hipster) take on “Jingle Bells,” with a subtext that says nothing more than “Hey, I’m a hipster singing ‘Jingle Bells.’” That gets old in about 20 seconds.

And can pop Christmas songs be reverent? That’s not a move that comes easily to them, but yes, they really can make it, or at least some singers can. Elvis can. His “Silent Night” is oddly touching; he brings it off lightly, but with a properly serious tone, which came easily to him, I think, first because he was the ultimate musical chameleon, and could imitate anything, and secondly because he sang gospel music reverently. Didn’t take much to transpose the tone into something appropriate for “Silent Night.”

Maybe the most reverent pop Christmas song I’ve ever heard is Aaron Neville’s version of “Ave Maria”; it’s pure, and gorgeous. The Beach Boys ought to be able to sing reverently, because they were masters of close harmony. But their version of “We Three Kings” (the only traditional song on their Christmas album) sounds smarmy. Phil Spector’s “Silent Night,” on his immortal Christmas album, serves mainly as an accompaniment to a spoken message from him, but it’s lovely; Spector, clearly, could have been reverent if he hadn’t wanted instead to put more pure verve and power into “Frosty the Snowman” than you’d ever think the song could handle. (Maybe that’s his own form of reverence.)

In the end, it’s a tossup. Like so many choices in life, it depends what you’re looking for. I do end up, though, with two regrets about classical Christmas music. It’s predictable; it covers, really, a pretty narrow range of emotion, no matter how touching the feelings in that range can be. (I’m excepting, of course, full-length masterworks like Messiah or L’enfance du Christ.) And there ought to be room in it for something other than radiance, reverence, and tradition. I miss humor, and everyday sadness. Very, very rarely these things sneak in. I remember a really sweet “White Christmas” from Carlo Bergonzi, which he sings first in English, and then in Italian. His English is (how can I put this?) wonderfully sincere, but when he switches to his own language, his voice brightens; it’s like a quiet sunburst.

But maybe the most touching Christmas track I heard this year was a Nancy Wilson version of “What Are You Doing New Year’s Eve?” which I found on an anthology with the scary name Yule B’ Swinging.  Wilson makes the song, in an unassuming but unmistakable way, the triumph of hope over experience. She thinks the guy just maybe might go out with her, but she doesn’t quite believe it. But still she’s hopeful. That’s more complex emotion than I got from any of the classical stuff, and it made me sad that classical music doesn’t seem to have any room for any Christmas song like this.

And apologies to everyone who looked for the fourth episode of my book, and didn't find it. Or, for that matter, who looked for new posts on this blog. I'll have one tomorrow, Thursday, December 23. And then I'll very likely take some time off for Christmas.

The episode was delayed for many reasons, among them overwork, illness, and a really bad computer problem. All of which sounds worse than it was! I'll resume the book on January 9, and blogwise, there's plenty to talk about. Not long ago I spent a day leading conversations with a group of presenters from one region of the US, who present classical concerts but are losing their audience. (Where have we heard that before?) And in January I'll be teaching my course on the future of classical music both at Juilliard and at Eastman; making a long presentation about how to develop a new audience, to the board of a major classical music institution; and giving a keynote speech in England, to the Association of British Orchestras. Plus more. It's a busy life. My best holiday wishes to everyone, and may your life be full of music.

Last night I heard a Haydn symphony performed, by a good orchestra, one that often has a special touch with music of the classical period. And the conductor was somebody well regarded, whom this orchestra especially likes. But this performance illustrated exactly what I meant, two posts ago, when I asked if orchestras are playing well enough.

Forget about fancy points, like making unmistakable — in the tone of your playing — when the development section begins (in a movement in sonata form). There’s something more basic than that. How about making loud and soft passages actually sound loud and soft?

Haydn’s music (Mozart’s, too, and Beethoven’s early stuff) thrives on these contrasts. They’re marked in the score, and in any case the loudness of any passage is usually clear from its orchestration. You’ll rarely see anything written for the entire orchestra that’s not supposed to be played loudly. So to some extent, the orchestration takes care of the contrast, but that’s not going to work so well with modern instruments, since they can play more loudly than the instruments in Haydn’s time. A full string section, especially, can make quite a noise, even without any kind of ferocious attack.

So why didn’t the loud and soft passages sound very different? I can think of four things that didn’t happen. First, the actual loudness (as measured, if anybody cared to do it, in crass, objective decibels) wasn’t very different. The soft passages were barely softer than the loud ones. Or, if you like, the loud ones were barely louder than the soft ones. The whole piece, in other words, was mostly played mf, without much genuinely loud or soft music ever happening. (This happens more often than most of us ever acknowledge. Truly soft playing, especially, is very rare.)

Second, loud and soft playing require different kinds of energy. Loud music isn’t only louder; typically it’s either open-hearted, or ferocious, or angry, or strident (I mean intentionally so), depending on the feeling of the music. And loud notes typically will be more sharply attacked. Soft music, on the other hand, has an energy more poised, more expectant, more rapt, more sitting on the edge of its seat — more energy, fascinatingly, than loud music often has. (When, that is, the loud music is truly loud and the soft music truly soft.) And soft notes typically have a softer attack.

Third, though this overlaps the loud point, you enact the loudness or softness in your playing. It’s not just that loud music is louder, attacked more sharply, and has a different energy; it feels different, it’s about something else. So you have to render that something else in your playing. The orchestra I heard almost never did that.

Which leads to the final point: loud and soft playing ought to look different. Oh, I can just imagine some of the howls I might get from saying this. We’re supposed to be above putting on a cheap show. We’re not supposed to act out for the audience what’s going on in the music. We’re supposed to care more for the music than for our performance. And so on, and so on, and so on. But people deeply invested, completely committed to playing music in any certain way are going to reflect that certain way in their bodies. Can’t be helped. Body language rules. It speaks more loudly, in many ways, than any conscious utterance (speech, music, conscious gestures). One look at somebody, and you can tell a lot about what they’re really feeling. The members of this orchestra looked no different when they were playing loudly than when they played softly.

This leads us to a chicken and an egg. They didn’t look any different because they weren’t playing or thinking any differently. But they also didn’t play or think differently because they weren’t moving differently. Now we get back to their musical education. Very likely they were taught not to move very much when they played. Certainly students are often taught this now. It’s considered dangerous for your technique, and it’s also thought to be undignified, low-rent, not the kind of thing a classical musician should do. Though I think it mostly tends to work the other way. Obviously you don’t want to move in ways that really do underline your playing, but plenty of jazz musicians move a lot, while playing cascades of notes that are blindly fast, blindingly precise, and alive both musically and emotionally. Bass players move a lot — they have to, to get around their instruments. Maybe that helps explain why the basses are often the most rhythmic section (along with the percussion) of any orchestra. Rhythm comes from the body.

So if I were working with an orchestra, and wanted to free their fortes and their pianos, their loud playing and their soft playing, I’d encourage them to move. “Show me you’re playing loudly. I won’t believe it till I see it.” That’s the kind of thing an acting teacher might do. And it works. It’s not a trick, and isn’t really aimed at the way the player looks to the audience. It’s a way of mobilizing the energy inside.

There was one moment in this performance were loud and soft really came alive. At the start of the final movement, the strings played a genuine, and fabulously energetic piano. Then they made a genuine crescendo, up to an exuberant and rhythmic forte. And I could see many of their bodies doing all of that, especially the principal cellist’s. (And maybe others. I can’t claim I looked at everybody in the orchestra.) There was also a beautiful, relaxed but vibrant piano in the repeat of the trio’s first section, in the third movement.

So here’s a terrific group, by normal standards, that at least on this occasion didn’t play well enough. If someone from the outside, someone who doesn’t listen much to classical music, had come to this concert, and said, “I was bored,” I wouldn’t say, “Oh, you don’t understand Haydn. You need some music education. You need to learn about sonata form.” I would say, “You’re right. They played the piece, but they really didn’t live it. The music never came alive.” Now, obviously, if you’re committed to getting something from the performance, and you know the forms that Haydn used, you can focus your attention, and hear what the symphony is doing.

But you shouldn’t have to work that hard. This music isn’t difficult. Most of what it’s doing should jump from the stage to the audience in completely unmistakable ways, and really making fortes and pianos come alive would do a huge amount to make that happen.

Somehow I’ve neglected to announce that the third installment of my book is now available. The first and second installments have gone to the great library in the sky, but extensive summaries are included with the latest episode. Though actually the old installments aren’t in any library. Better to say they’re in the shop, being extensively refurbished.

And as things have developed, the book isn’t the only thing worth reading on the book site. The comments from readers have been fabulous. They’re well worth reading, and they help me a lot.

This might be heresy. For one thing, orchestras really play well technically. We could even say that orchestras have never played better, both technically, or in their understanding of musical styles. The classical music world also tends to think that nothing’s wrong with the way we play the music. If people aren’t coming, that’s because they aren’t educated, or we haven’t marketed to them well enough, or we have to make our presentation a little friendlier. We rarely think we have to play the music more distinctively.

And finally — hard though this might be to believe — there’s nobody with any power to get orchestras play better than they do. Except conductors, but there are limits even there. Read on, and see what I mean.

What follows, by the way, doesn’t come only from me. A while ago I teamed up with the executive director of one of the country’s leading orchestras, who agrees with me on much of this. We made a presentation together to a group of musicians, administrators, and board members from several orchestras. The discussion was lively (there’s an understatement). But we ended up with unanimous agreement, as far as I could see.

Here are some of the questions we asked. Do orchestral musicians come out on stage, determined to give the best performance they possibly can? Do they look out at the audience, and say, “We’re going to give these people something they’ll never forget”? That’s what the best performers in other disciplines do. If you’re a performer—an actor, a standup comic, a pop musician, an athelete—you know you’re in the business of putting on a show. Do orchestra musicians think of that?

And by the way! Somebody’s sure to say I’m dumbing the music down, and saying that orchestras should entertain their audience. No way. Anyone who ever saw Miles Davis or Thelonious Monk live knows that it’s possible to put on a killer show without acknowledging the audience at all. You just play music so individual, so distinctive, that no one can ignore it, whether you overtly play to listeners or not. (And in any case, a lot of classical music was in fact written for entertainment, so why not play it that way?)

Next question. Orchestral musicians are playing music that we think is great art. Do they approach it that way? Do they say to themselves, “I’m going to play this Mahler symphony so vividly that nobody can ignore how profound it is”?

And then there’s the classical music crisis. Our field is in danger. Do orchestral musicians think of that, when they go on stage to play? Do they think, “We might be going out of business, so I’m going to play so unforgettably that people will kill to hear us, so powerfully that nobody will want us to disappear”?

The answer to all these questions is pretty clearly no, or at least “not always,” and maybe even “not often.” It depends on the orchestra, of course. Cleveland, for instance, famously plays on the edge of its seats more often than other orchestras, and so, by reputation, does the Berlin Philharmonic. The musicians in the discussion started out by saying that they depended on conductors to get them to play well, and if a conductor wasn’t up to it, what were they supposed to do? Well, Cleveland supplies one answer. Play your best anyway. Play better than your best. Show the conductor up.

But we know that other orchestras (everyone in the business can supply some names) don’t do that. Some even seem happy to play badly, if they think the conductor isn’t worthy of them. And anyway, what kind of artistic or professional behavior is this, whether you intentionally play badly because you don’t like the conductor, or just allow yourself to, because the conductor isn’t good enough? Is that your responsibility to the audience, the music, and the art form? We have to do better than that. The musicians, I thought, did come around to this view, by the end of the evening. Certainly they unanimously endorsed what we were saying, when we made a formal report of what we’d discussed.

My co-discussion leader, the executive director, brought up another point. Why do musicians sit backstage talking or playing cards, until the last moment before they go out to play? What kind of  professionalism does that show? The musicians in the discussion started by saying that they couldn’t agree, that what they were doing before they played didn’t affect their playing. And I’m sure that’s true, in many cases. But not all! In reply, I talked about baseball. If I were managing a baseball team, I said, I’d want my relief pitchers working hard in the bullpen before they came into a game. I wouldn’t want to see anyone throw a few warmup pitches, and then start making jokes until he was needed. Sure, if you have a star like Mariano Rivera, who reliably delivers, then fine, whatever he wants to do is going to be all right. But for most people, I would absolutely not, as a manager, feel confident if my players didn’t look like they were focused.

And so the leaders of just about any collective enterprise would think, wouldn’t they? One point I brought up was about leadership. Who in an orchestra has the power to tell the musicians that they’re not playing well enough? Not the executive director. My partner in this discussion had gotten shot down by his musicians simply for bringing the question up. Not the chairman or president of the board. Can anyone imagine a board leader going out on stage after a rehearsal, or gathering the musicians in the green room after a concert, and saying, “Ladies and gentlemen, that simply wasn’t good enough”? It doesn’t happen.

So the job falls to the music director. But music directors absolutely don’t do this, to my knowledge, about concerts that they don’t conduct. Some people in the discussion even brought up names of music directors whom they thought were happy when their orchestras played badly for someone else. But the first question would be whether the music director even hears the performances that others conduct. And even if he or she does hear them, is anything said? Does James Levine go to the Met musicians after they’ve slogged through some opera under the direction of some hack, and say, “That wasn’t good enough. I know he wasn’t the best conductor, but you owe the audience, the music, the artform, and yourselves a much better performance than that. That was simply not acceptable. I won’t tolerate you playing that badly for anyone.”

How weird, considering the transcendent value we claim to put on what we do, that there’s no one who has the power to say such a thing, and actually does say it. Are we living up to our pretensions?

And one footnote about the kind of performance I’m talking about. This applies not just to orchestras, but to everyone who plays or sings classical music. Are performances vivid enough? Does every point inherent in the music actually come through? When the exposition in a sonata-form movement fades into the development, is it unmistakable to absolutely everyone that something major has occurred? When the recapitulation starts, and the main theme of the movement returns, is it played so vividly that nobody could miss it? When there’s a change in mood, is it so strong that everyone can feel it, as if the light in the hall suddenly changed?

This is what composers want. I’m a composer myself; that’s what I want. Certainly the great composers did. The historical record — their letters, reminiscences by people who knew them — is full of their statements to this effect. Webern sang and danced for a pianist he was coaching, demanding huge expressive freedom, changes in tempo and dynamics far greater than what he’d written in his scores. I’m using him as an example because his music seems so austere. So if he wanted this, what do we imagine Beethoven, Schumann, Berlioz, Verdi, or Wagner wanted? Or Debussy, who, last time I looked, wrote a three-movement evocation of the sea so vivid that it’s almost wet. Or Vivaldi, whose music (check out how he behaved when he led performances of his operas) was designed to wow an audience. Or Bach. Don’t you think he wanted the audience at the edge of its seat during the cadenza in the first movement of the Fifth Brandenburg? When he improvised on the organ, didn’t he want people to pay attention? What do we think this music is about, anyway? Someone commented on my book site that classical music is technical and scholarly. Did any of the great composers really think that? Or do we just play it that way?