Tag: Classical

Work is Work

Matthew EilarLeave a comment

One of the projects that I watch closely is El Sistema USA, a movement to implement a version of the Venezuelan music organization El Sistema to the United States. One of the main partners in this initiative is the New England Conservatory of Boston, and the Boston Globe had an article yesterday about the program. There was a suggestion in the article that gets to the heart of the difficulties about bringing this program to the United States:

Still, skeptics can be heard wondering if NEC’s ties to El Sistema are mostly cosmetic, a kind of brilliant publicity stunt that links the school to the hottest phenomenon in classical music. That charge is not warranted, yet if the school seeks the honor and credit of serving as the official bridge to El Sistema in this country, it should deepen its commitment. In addition to hosting El Sistema USA and its program to train the movement’s future leaders, NEC should itself lead by example. It should open its own El Sistema-inspired nucleo.

This could serve as a model of how the Venezuelan principles can be put into action in this country. It could have a permanent teaching staff and involvement from the Abreu fellows, but, just as importantly, it could engage a steady stream of NEC students. Currently one gets the impression, confirmed in conversation with individual Abreu fellows, that the fellowship program is rather detached from the school’s undergraduate student culture. The existence of such a nucleo would allow a much deeper integration of this work into the curriculum and the broader ethos of the conservatory itself.

This makes two really important points, one about the way that music education works in this country, and one about the way that the classical music establishment must change if it wants to sustain itself.

I think that the biggest danger in trying to bring El Sistema to the US is in focusing on the success that it’s had and not giving enough weight to the sacrifices that the children make to be a part of the program. Too often in news stories about El Sistema, I get the feeling that the writers feel that the children are blank slates, and that the strength of the organization is found only in the combination of early access and children that don’t have the resources to do anything else. If this were true, then of course this program could be adapted to the US: there are plenty of resources to set up young children with music instruction. I think this misses the point; the majority of instruction that any participant in El Sistema receives will be from other students. This is a fundamental departure from the way that music is usually taught in this country, both in public and private music instruction.

Private (non-school) music instruction in this country is usually funded by parents, and therefore does not have the equality of access that El Sistema takes as its mission. It is also overwhelmingly one-on-one. School instruction is more communal, particularly in band, however there are few opportunities for small group instruction for gifted students, nowhere to go for the most gifted students, and few teachers and well funded programs at any rate. Instruction in El Sistema consists of group lessons with opportunities for small group and individual instruction for gifted students. At the same time, every student takes responsibility for their part in the organization, and assists instruction of students at lower skill levels. El Sistema impresses upon its students that their participation is both a privilege and a responsibility. Adapting this organization to work in America will require that El Sistema USA will have to change the culture of music instruction to put a greater responsibility upon its students.

This is why simply providing instruments and instruction will not work, and Jeremy Eichler is right to suggest that simply providing training for administrators will not work either. El Sistema has grown from the vision of a singularly persistent director, however much of the work in growing the organization has been done by the students themselves. After all, the reason why El Sistema has moved to the foreground of arts discussion has been because of the success of Gustavo Dudamel, it’s most famous alumnus. El Sistema USA will only succeed if it can create an equality of access, room for students to grow, and a culture of responsibility in its students that can match Venezuela’s.

The second point that I wanted to make is about the relationship between music education and the future of classical music in this country. Classical music has been coasting on a prestige that is no longer present in this country. Lower, Middle and Upper class families no longer consider it a social status symbol to be familiar with and versed in classical music. That’s kind of OK with me: if something only succeeds because people have been told that it’s important, all it takes is someone to say no to destroy it. On the other hand, if music organizations want their music to continue in the future, they must take greater responsibility for education. Every orchestra should be familiar with the music instruction in their home city, and have programs to supplement it, whether it means offering instruction directly or supplementing the school-orchestra programs with advanced instruction or mentoring (by the way, if regional orchestras are looking for relevance, this might be helpful). Build the audience, and they’ll come.

Steve Reich – Nagoya Marimbas

Matthew Eilar4 Comments

I’ve been putting together a mix CD for a person that asked me to give them some classical music. Because I’m a music nerd, I’m putting together a listening guide as well with historical context, a little information on the composer, and some things to listen for. I don’t want it to be too technical, so I’m finding myself with extra insights that I’m going to channel here over the next few days.

Nagoya Marimbas was written in 1996, thirty years after Piano Phase (see my post on Piano Phase), but I see a direct connection between the two pieces.

Piano Phase was written to try and emulate with instruments a mechanical phenomenon: identical tape loops playing at different speeds and becoming out of sync. It accomplished this by having identical musical phrases played by two pianists at different speeds. It’s still phasing, but achieved by a different method. Once you become familiar with the way that phasing sounds and behaves, acoustical phenomena become apparent. These are the “events” you hear in Piano Phase–the way that the music behaves when the pianists sync up at a lag of the eighth note, or the sudden resolution when the pianists play note against note. There are also rhythmical patterns that emerge; depending on the content that’s being phased, individual tones become isolated and create their own identifiable rhythmic patterns that may not be contained in the phased material.

I think pieces like Music for 18 Musicians, Drumming, and Nagoya Marimbas representing Reich taking the experiment of phasing a step further. Works like Piano Phase and Violin Phase established the phenomena possible in phasing, which Reich isolated and manipulated in new works that left the phasing framework behind. If you listen closely to Nagoya Marimbas, events, moments occur that remind one of events in a phasing piece, however the means used to make the music is completely different in conception.

Another thing that I’ve been thinking about while writing about this piece of music is the prominent place that the marimba has taken in minimalist and contemporary classical music. I think this partly due to stylistic determinism (corresponding to linguistic determinism). Whereas earlier styles of instrumental music emphasized different values that lead to the strings, for example, occupying the primary place in an orchestra, the leaner, generally (in the early years) chamber-sized, rhythmically oriented minimalist music valued the marimba for its advantages: it’s tuned, has a moderate sustain, percussive, and can switch patterns more quickly than many instruments. It’s a reminder that the fortunes of instruments rise and fall with the times, and that instruments that aren’t considered particularly useful now may have unique qualities that may be valued in the music of the future.

The Value of Regional Orchestras

Matthew Eilar2 Comments

The Wall Street Journal drama critic Terry Teachout has been making waves in the classical music internets for a provocative column questioning (in light of the Pasadena Symphony’s recent troubles) whether “regional orchestras” have any value in today’s musical world:

[T]his leads me to ask a tough question that nobody in the music business ever asks, at least not out loud: What, if anything, justifies the existence of a regional symphony orchestra in the 21st century? Many people still believe that an orchestra is a self-evidently essential part of what makes a city civilized. But is this true?..

Most, after all, offer a predictable mix of ultrafamiliar classics and soufflé-light pops programs. If I lived in a city with such an orchestra, would I attend its concerts? A century ago I would have said yes, because live performances were the only way to hear music you didn’t make yourself. But downloading and the iPod have made it possible to hear great music whenever and wherever you want. Is there any point in going to hear a pretty good live performance of a chestnut like Beethoven’s Seventh Symphony, Elgar’s “Enigma” Variations” or the Schumann Piano Concerto, all of which figure prominently on Pasadena’s five subscription programs for the 2010-11 season? For a fast-growing number of Americans, the answer is no.

I speak as a devout believer in the power and permanence of Western classical music. But if I were the head of the Podunk Foundation and had to choose between funding the Podunk Philharmonic and a nonmusical group identical in quality to Palm Beach Dramaworks or the Nelson-Atkins Museum, I’d dump the orchestra in a heartbeat. The best regional theater companies and museums provide an aesthetic experience that cannot be duplicated by any other means. Not so third-tier orchestras. Their primary historic function has been rendered obsolete by technology, in much the same way that many of the historic functions of regional newspapers have been usurped by the web. You don’t have to buy a ticket to the Podunk Philharmonic to hear Beethoven’s Seventh any more than you have to buy the Podunk Times to figure out what movie to see on Saturday night.

Terry Teachout is a professional troll, but there have been many spirited defenses of America’s orchestras going around. Charles Noble, a violist with the Oregon symphony defends regional orchestras as a sort of musical farm league, allowing local players to get better and play classical music. Sound and Fury snarks that perhaps, if Teachout is satisfied with MP3s on iPods, he should forego art museums and theater in favor of coffee table books and DVDs. David Stabler, classical music critic for The Oregonian, writes that the communal experience of being in an auditorium and listening to a piece of music at the same time as hundreds of people is a rare experience in today’s world. I myself wondered if we should get rid of most of the NBA just because only a handful of teams could be champions.

Teachout’s argument makes me sad. I appreciate the local orchestras I’ve patronized throughout my life for both tangible and less tangible reasons. I find listening to music–just listening–very hard. A live orchestra provides a visual accompaniment to the music. It’s for this reason that I prefer YouTube videos of unfamiliar works to recordings where possible. If not, I use a score. I think it has to do with mirror neurons; by watching the musicians, I get to feel a little bit of what it feels like to directly manipulate the sound.

I also think that a reliance on recordings for the “quality” or “right” performance is a crutch that hurts music in the long term. The mentality that if you’re not going to hear (or produce) a perfect performance, then the whole thing is worthless runs counter to individual participation with music. Why participate in a community softball league if nobody is going to the world series? It’s a ridiculous standard that is not applied to any other part of community life, but this gets confused by the quality and ubiquity of recordings.

By coincidence, the same day that I read that Teachout article, I came across this BBC report on the Kimbanguist Symphony Orchestra, the only orchestra in the Democratic Republic of Congo. It has been making music for over 25 years, amid neverending war and strife. There’s a video in the report, and one can tell immediately that it’s not the highest quality orchestra in the world–exactly the kind of ensemble that Teachout questions. You can tell from the video that every member of the orchestra is dedicated to the mission of the ensemble–the music director describes how in the orchestra’s firs years of operations, there were only five violins for twelve violinists.

Not every regional orchestra has the problems of the Kimbanguist SO, but the root problems are universal: maintaining funding in uncertain economies without government support, growing an audience, balancing artistic ambition with financial considerations. Some of those questions only apply to the orchestras, while others apply to classical music as a whole. None of them can be solved with an iPod.

Proper Discord on Renee Fleming's Rock Album

Matthew EilarLeave a comment

The unnamed author of the excellent classical music blog Proper Discord (added to blogroll) has a devastating critique of Renée Fleming’s new rock-covers album, Dark Hope up today. The punchlines:

In classical music, it’s the composer’s job to write the notes, the musician’s job to make a good sound, the engineer’s job to capture it and the producer’s job to let you know when everything is in the can.
In pop music, they all work together to create a sound. The notes themselves are simple, so the sound needs to be great. That hasn’t happened here, or, at least, it hasn’t been done well enough to make it work.
Covers like this are going to be compared to the originals, and the originals were all put together by people who knew how to make a band sound good.
It seems like everybody involved underestimated what it took to make a modern rock record, and it’s a shame, because the talent was there. It didn’t need to suck.

Classical Writers and Pop Music

Matthew Eilar1 Comment

There’s a big idea that I wanted to bring up, but didn’t in yesterday’s review of The ArchAndroid; the idea of complexity in pop music. I’m not one to believe in musical “progress” per se, but the artist that I respect and value most are those that experimented and tried to create a new sound of music for their time.

One of the things that I find fascinating, especially now that I am in college, is the way that classical academics and composers relate to pop music. I get quite a range of views among my professors: my choral director and history professor grew up listening to classical music, and thus has never had any personal exploration of pop music (I actually think that her’s is the last generation that can get away with that). My organ professor lectures me about not using the terms “pop” and “classical.” I always nod politely, responding in my head that if you don’t see “pop” as a derogatory term, there’s no stigma associated with using it. My academic adviser listens much like I do; applying the same kind of thinking and reflection to music regardless of the tradition. I don’t think it’s a coincidence that he is the youngest professor on the faculty.

Classical academics occasionally become “pop music tipsy;” they get exposed to an amazing piece of pop music, and become confused about how to respond to it. What they write, or how they talk about the music, is characterized by a few symptoms: they vastly overstate the importance of the artist under discussion; they don’t understand and disrespect the tradition that came before “their” artist; hyperbole about the death of other traditions; solemn predictions that this is the way pop music will be in the future. They’re almost always wrong.

The worst part is that they’re kind of right, too. These mushy declarations come from a profound cognitive dissonance. Many of these writers and composers have been trained and taught that pop music is empty and unsophisticated. When confronted with pop music that is sophisticated, is experimental, is vital, their reaction is to claim that pop music has changed. What they should understand is that they have changed.

What does this have to do with Janelle Monáe? When the “Bad Romance” video first hit, Alex Ross of The New Yorker wrote a little thing about the cell ringtone that opens the video. It’s a quotation from a Bach fugue that uses all 12 tones in the Western octave. He grew very excited about this and used it to speculate about the future of pop music, a more chromatic future.

I think the ArchAndroid makes a good case for that future. The album sounds strongly influenced by Stevie Wonder, and his music has always been more harmonically complex (probably as a function of jazz) than others in his style. I don’t think that chromaticism is a virtue in itself, but I’m certain that you’re more likely to find it in the music of Janelle Monáe than Lady GaGa.