classical music

August 17, 2014

Our Musical Future? “Live” Performances and the “Second Machine Age”

robot violinist-800

I love attending concerts, but musicians may think my upcoming words are heresy. I hope technology doesn’t reduce the need for live performers, but the technological future includes many possibilities — more than anyone can imagine. Prepare yourself.

We must start by revisiting the Hartford Wagner Festival, the enterprise of Charles M. Goldstein. He expected to begin a cycle of The Ring of the Nibelung in Connecticut this month. The details leading to its postponement until 2015 can be read on Norman Lebrecht’s Slipped Disc blog, A Ring Without Musicians, or the New York Times.

Mr. Goldstein knew a performance of Wagner’s four opera event would be too costly to stage with a conventional orchestra. According to the New York Times, his monumental effort to create a substitute began in 2005. He started to enter every note of music for the 15 hour epic into musical software, having purchased “access to the Vienna Symphonic Library, a collection of sampled sounds of orchestra instruments (played by real players).” The idea was to create a computerized version of the orchestra out of the orchestral bits. “Singers from the Metropolitan Opera were engaged for the major roles, along with young artists for smaller parts.” Mr. Goldstein collaborated with the musicians to establish tempos. The plan was “to set up 24 speakers to mimic the positions of instruments in (a genuine orchestra) pit.”

Publicity produced a backlash. Singers’ careers were threatened. The inflexibility and sterility of computerized music was attacked and words like “absurd” and “travesty” were written. The Hartford Wagner Festival’s website now lists a 2015 start date.

Is the battle over or is it only beginning? The truth is, the conflict began much earlier. The New York Times covered the story in 2003. Local 802 of the Musician’s Union picketed Broadway shows in response to the threat of fully electronic delivery of what was previously the instrumentalists’ in person artistry. Anthony Tommasini, the critic who described the conflict, thought their argument had some holes. Orchestral and choral amplification with electronic support, synthesized instruments, and body microphones of principal singers were already a staple of the stage, he argued. The Union won, but technology has advanced in the last 11 years.

The Vienna Symphonic Library (VSL) is a tool intended to allow the creation of a good, albeit recorded, orchestral performance for the purpose of the user. In the case of Mr. Goldstein’s planned public presentation, input from the singers expected to be on stage, as well as the “conductor,” would determine the interpretation of the composition. Thus, the VSL holds the possibility of something greater than getting actors to lip-sync. Nonetheless, critics believe it does not permit the nuance, spontaneity, and sound of a real orchestra. Moreover, some say, unexpected mishaps on stage during an opera (an early or late entrance by a singer, for example) would be difficult for the conductor to adjust to.

I consulted a couple of musicians familiar with the VSL and its use. How much time might it take to “assemble” a fully realized rendition of a major symphonic work like Debussy’s La Mer? As Mr. Goldstein’s example suggests, they thought the time involved would be far too long to compete with today’s marvelous live instrumentalists (even for a talented, computer savvy conductor familiar with the VSL and musical notation software). You can listen to Andrew Blaney’s version of the second movement of La Mer on the VSL website and judge the quality for yourself. A first-class orchestra typically accomplishes its own magic in a few rehearsals using traditional printed scores. Wouldn’t live musicians therefore be safe?

Not so fast. Once the notes and instruments are “in the machine,” another conductor could come along and tweak the performance to his or her satisfaction. Still, for now at least, a computer-experienced maestro would have to learn how to use the VSL. The time involved in preparing his interpretation would be large even after that.

Does the situation change when we look only at opera and its audience? Might some music lovers be willing to attend an opera of live singers and a digitized orchestra if the price were cheap enough? Perhaps some who live in the provinces would.

Imagine a generous donor purchasing loudspeakers, the computer, musical notation software, and the VSL (one time expenses) for a small community with a decent auditorium, thus enabling staged operas. There exists a plethora of talented young singers and competent conductors of high school, college ensembles, and community orchestras. We are not talking James Levine or Riccardo Muti here, of course.

A digital orchestra reduces costs after the original outlay by our hypothetical donor. Goldstein’s long effort to enter the notes into the software for his “Ring cycle,” once done, needn’t be done again. Of course, he would have to be willing to sell his work product for an affordable price or simply give it away. Alternatively, several small communities could band together to pay whatever price Mr. Goldstein would set, or hire someone to do the job of entering the notes for an agreed upon opera. From that point, it could be widely and cheaply shared among them, as digital music commonly is today.

The cost of such an arrangement would be far less than hiring an orchestra and paying a major conductor tens of thousands of dollars per performance. Still, the result would be both poorer and different, at least until robots and androids are far more developed than they are now; replacements, that is, for some or all of the musicians!

Did I say robots and androids? The latter are robots designed to resemble humans. I’ll get to androids in a moment. Nonetheless, we are already in the world of the “second machine age.” Erik Brynjolfsson and Andrew McAfee, two MIT professors, elaborate in their book, The Second Machine Age: Work, Progress, and Prosperity in a Time of Brilliant Technologies. Even Goldstein’s idea of a digital orchestra puts us well beyond the era of steam engines, a prime contributor to the first machine age.

Would an enterprise such as Mr. Goldstein’s have an effect on major opera houses? Much depends upon the audience’s perception of the product. If most opera lovers believe the human beings at the Lyric Opera or the Met are worth the ticket price, as I hope they do, their orchestras have no worries. If, however, a sizeable number of patrons don’t, downward pressure on prices would follow (or at least the portion of the admission fee attributable to the orchestra). Instrumentalists and their salaries may be more vulnerable to the technological changes because they are in the pit, unseen by much of the audience. The human contact between the listeners and the players is more easily realized by the singers and the chorus in an opera house, unlike a concert hall where the ensemble and the podium focus our attention. Nonetheless, I don’t expect the technology we have now puts a superb opera orchestra in danger.

Ah, but the future — a different question altogether. Scientists speculate about something called “the singularity.” The singularity represents the point at which a fully conscious machine with greater than human intelligence is achieved. Coupled with the advanced android capabilities of that time, many of today’s jobs might vanish, perhaps even those of violinists and tuba players. The MIT professors cite evidence of the exponential growth of technology in recent years, predicting acceleration as we go forward. Self-driving cars already exist, as do computers that can beat the best Jeopardy or chess players. Ray Kurzweil, in The Singularity is Near, made a 2005 prediction placing the singularity somewhere around 2045. Kurzweil is a member of the National Inventors Hall of Fame, won MIT-Lemelson’s half-million dollar prize for innovation, and received the National Medal of Technology from President Clinton.

If one lets the imagination go wild, the possibility of android orchestras, conductors, or singers is conceivable, regardless of the year they turn up. I didn’t say preferable, particularly since the friendliness of such machines to humans is also an open question. Nor is it clear whether they would be interested in music, in the artistic history of the human race, or in presenting concerts of the works of humans in the formal way it has been done until now.

Assuming they are well disposed to Homo sapiens, however, it might become possible to pour all the recorded performances of the conductor, Wilhelm Furtwängler, into a capable machine and generate imagined interpretations of pieces for which we have no evidence of his work. A Furtwängler performance of Beethoven’s Missa Solemnis comes to mind. Does this violate Furtwängler’s memory? Were Mahler and Elgar violated, respectively, by completed performing versions of Mahler’s sketches for his Symphony #10 or Anthony Payne’s elaboration of Elgar’s unfinished Symphony #3? And could an android “inspire” human or robotic musicians in the hypnotic fashion of some of the greatest conductors? Would inspiration even be required? Live long enough and perhaps you’ll find out.

IBM is already working on a machine to do something similar for physicians minus the inspiration “to better diagnose what’s wrong with their patients. Instead of volumes and volumes of general knowledge, the supercomputer is being trained to sit on top of all of the world’s high-quality published medical information; match it against patients’ symptoms, medical histories, and test results; and formulate both a diagnosis and a treatment plan. … IBM estimates that it would take a human doctor 160 hours of reading each week just to keep up with relevant new literature,” according to The Second Machine Age authors.

Today we have opera supertitles and a giant in-concert video screen display of the Chicago Symphony in the Ravinia music shed, its summer home. We have digital music at our fingertips and in our earbuds. Robots guided by surgeons work on delicate human body parts. Some operas and orchestras simulcast their work around the world.

Once men thought Jules Verne’s 1865 novel, From the Earth to the Moon, was silliness.

The MIT authors remind us, never say never.

July 16, 2014

Turning His Back on Death: Lorin Maazel in Princeton

256px-Maazel_08

If you attend enough concerts you witness strange, unmusical happenings: people shout complaints at performers, soloists forget their parts, and lightening knocks out the lights in an outdoor music shed.

Death, too, finds a way into the hall, as it befell the piano soloist, Simon Barere, during a 1951 Philadelphia Orchestra concert in Carnegie Hall.

The recent death of 84-year-old conductor Lorin Maazel reminded me of such a concert in the early 1970s: the Cleveland Orchestra and the maestro on tour at the McCarter Theater in Princeton.

The program included Mozart’s 29th Symphony in A major and Mahler’s Seventh. My wife and I had balcony seats. The catastrophe arrived in the Mozart Andante.

Something happened to a man seated in the 8th row of the main floor. Soon the victim was in the center left aisle. A physician arrived. The seraphic background sounds of the orchestra created a surreal effect.

THUMP. More music. THUMP again, as the MD’s sledge-hammer fist, more appropriate to Mahler than Mozart, attempted to restart the patron’s stalled heart. The concert continued. The percussion beats in the audience defied the percussionless ensemble and Mozart’s angelic music.

Once the second movement ended, Maazel stopped and the orchestra waited and watched while the man’s disaster unfolded. He was eventually carried from the hall.

Did Maazel know what happened as he conducted? I doubt it. No one alerted the Cleveland Music Director, whose body remained unturned until (it appeared) he was told at the slow movement’s close. No longer a conductor, he too was a member of the audience until the concert resumed.

Maazel remained a veritable music machine for years, including two Beethoven marathons — the complete cycle of nine symphonies done in less than half a day — most recently in Tokyo in late 2010, according to the New York Times.

As the conductor’s obituary confirms, Lorin Maazel turned his back on death for only so long. The celebrated conductor, who debuted at age nine, died on July 13th. To Mozart’s music? I can think of worse ways to go.

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The 2006 photo of Lorin Maazel was originally uploaded by Barbara Haws and is sourced from Wikimedia Commons. The video is of Maazel conducting Mozart’s Symphony #41.

June 5, 2014

The Ascent of an Opera Mermaid: Valerie Vinzant

papagenaaa

It is one thing to be a talented and beautiful opera mermaid, but how do you get out of the pool of those in training and up to a career on stage? Valerie Vinzant had the courage to talk about this with me. Indeed, she sang on the water in Chicago Opera Theater’s 2013 performances of Ricky Ian Gordon’s Orpheus and Eurydice, set in a real swimming pool representing the River Styx.

As Eurydice, she was one of the only two musicians, the other being the clarinetist Todd Palmer, who commissioned the 70-minute piece and gave its 2001 premiere. The Orpheus myth is about love, loss, love’s recovery, and Eurydice’s final departure to the Underworld.

In contrast to the clarinet’s Orpheus, the soprano must sing and act the lovers’ story as well as narrate the tale, while moving from a boat to the water’s edge

Eurydice was the most in-depth character I’d ever experienced. I connected with the reality of the character instead of it being just a story; singing about Eurydice as the narrator and singing about myself as the character — commenting on who I was as a person. As the only singer through the entire opera I had to flesh out the story myself. Two other silent actors in the water represented the lovers, but I had to portray a lot of emotions, from happy to deeply devastated.

The Chicago Tribune’s John von Rhein said Vinzant stopped “the show with her haunting song, I am Part of Something Now,” a hymn to love in bloom.

Vinzant describes herself as both a coloratura and leggiero (light, lyrical) soprano whose training, especially with Carol Vaness at Indiana University’s graduate program, allowed her to find her true voice:

Regardless of the repertoire you must always sing with your voice: not squeeze your voice into a little role or push too much for a darker sound.

Valerie has made the rounds of many of the finest YAPs (Young Artist Programs) in the country, providing her with various training and performance opportunities, including the Domingo-Thornton at the Los Angeles Opera, Santa Fe Opera, Wolf Trap Opera Studio, Steans Institute at the Chicago Symphony’s Ravinia Festival, Chicago Opera Theater, and the Aspen Music Festival. Her repertoire ranges from the Baroque to the works of Esa-Pekka Salonen, under whose direction she was soloist with the LA Philharmonic in the composer’s Wing on Wing. She also recently portrayed Mabel in Gilbert and Sullivan’s The Pirates of Penzance.

Valerie Vinzant

From conductor James Conlon at the LA Opera she came to understand some of the things conductors want of singers in addition to vocal beauty and command of their character:

He expected you to know everyone else’s part and never to listen or you are going to fall behind the rest of the ensemble; also, the need for a line of visual and musical contact with a conductor. In actual performances in a full hall you have no time to adjust to the sound of your own voice. He said, “You aren’t going to hear yourself, just be with me.”

Ms. Vinzant now takes more vocal risks than she did when she was a student or in her many YAP residencies. And she speaks with an uncommon combination of self-confidence and humility. No diva is to be found here, but something precious:

I don’t think I’m God’s blessing to opera at all, but I do have a gift, for sure. I now take risks to express more. Part of the difference between being a young artist and having a career is the contrast between someone telling you what to do and knowing, for yourself, what you want to express: exploring more of my voice and the character’s viewpoint, rather than having to be “right” all the time. In a way I’m gentle with the characters, not slapping some preconceived label (like “ingenue”) on them. I pay attention to the character’s journey. I’ve gone from a student mentality to one of an artist.

Risks, of course, come in various forms and Vinzant is one of the fortunate musicians who doesn’t suffer from performance anxiety. Since leaving the YAPs behind in the past two years she has often filled-in at the last moment, as when she sang the role of Agilea in Handel’s Teseo with San Francisco’s Philharmonia Baroque:

They called the Chicago Opera Theater where I’d covered the role the year before and sang once on stage when the lead was ill. The Philharmonia Baroque phoned me two days before the performance and I had to fly to out in two hours. I had little anxiety, I got on the plane, the musicians were fantastic, everyone was at the top of their game, and I fit right in. I loved it! It’s either you do it or you don’t. I never felt pressure.

I don’t let doubts take me over. I’ve learned how to be “present” in the moment. I center myself before going on stage. I breathe and (meditatively) focus on my breath. I don’t have any preconceived notion of what the performance will do for my career, what the composer in the audience will think, or what the critics will think. Then I can fully become the character without judging myself and I sing better.

Valerie is not innocent of the difficulties of her profession at a moment in history when the New York City Opera and Opera Boston recently vanished. Obtaining an agent is among those challenges. One told her she has a wonderful voice, beauty, and presence, but he couldn’t represent her because his roster of sopranos is saturated with her specific voice type. The life of an aspiring opera soloist is like entering a funnel at the top end: few come out at the bottom able to make a musical career. Your odds of becoming a brain surgeon are easy, by comparison.

Undaunted, Valerie is having success, making a living, auditioning, networking, and letting word of her work do the rest. Her reputation in the Baroque repertoire is especially helpful. I mentioned to her the answer Ben Heppner, the now-retiring world-renowned tenor, gave to the question of how long after his training he took to become “Ben Heppner.” His response was reportedly “Ten years.” He and his wife regularly wondered whether he should continue or find another path to pay the bills and raise the children. I asked Ms. Vinzant where her fortitude comes from:

Music is such an essential part of who I am. I enjoy the music so much I get goose bumps rehearsing even in my own room. That is the fuel for me. I know if I get sick 10 people are waiting to jump in, but once I realized I had something unique to offer the competition noise dissipated.  I’m not worried about them taking my roles. If the day comes that I lose joy in performing or preparing a composition or the day music is just a career, then I hope I can let myself accept that… For me it is so deeply ingrained in who I am that it would be like a death if I lost it. If singing became a burden or painful I don’t think I could do it.

Opera is such a difficult career. So many people tell you and warn you that if you can do anything else you should. When I perform I try not to think that this is a big moment because I’m singing at a big opera house and this other gig isn’t because it is with a little symphony. You need to remove your ego. I sing at amazing places, as well as roles at companies that are not in the best of times. I am true to myself when I say that all these elements make a career.

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The photos of Valerie Vinzant come courtesy of Ms. Vinzant. The first of these is a backstage picture of her in costume for her role as Papagana in Mozart’s The Magic Flute. For more about her you may wish to visit her website: http://www.valerievinzantsoprano.com/

May 2, 2014

Fred Spector: From Combat to Friendship with Fritz Reiner

Fred SpectorWhat part does courage play in being an orchestral musician? In the life of 89-year-old Fred Spector, that part was not small. A Chicago Symphony Orchestra (CSO) violinist from 1956 to 2003, his early career progress was interrupted by World War II.  But the experience prepared him for his eventual contact with Fritz Reiner, orchestral martinet nonpareil, as well as one of the greatest conductors of all time.

Fred entered the Army Air Forces in 1943 as an 18-year-old navigator of a B-25 aircraft. Mortal combat, not playing the fiddle, was now his life. Once the war ended, Fred took up the violin again for the first time in three years. Living on Kyushu Island in Japan, he was asked by a priest to give a classical violin recital. With his commander’s encouragement and lots of practice, Fred gave the first post-war concert in that area along with an accompanist in 1946.

After returning to the USA, Spector’s aspiration to become a CSO member returned. Indeed, he had taken lessons with John Weicher, the Chicago Symphony’s concertmaster, before entering the Army Air Forces, as a stepping stone to his eventual goal. For the next decade Fred spent time with the Civic Orchestra (the CSO’s training orchestra) as its concertmaster, played recitals, worked on radio broadcasts, performed in night clubs, and conducted Broadway shows that were touring. His reputation spread until Fritz Reiner hired him in 1956 to join the CSO’s second violins.

fritz-reiner

Reiner was notorious for “testing” musicians he didn’t know. It wasn’t long before Fred’s turn came. Leon Brenner, then the assistant leader of the second violins, became ill. Fred was moved from well into the section to the spot that was almost within the conductor’s reach.

During one rehearsal of two or more hours, Reiner targeted the young Spector, then a man with flaming, bright red hair. According to Fred:

Every 10 or 15 minutes he would stop the orchestra and say, ‘Spector, you are playing wrong!’ He wouldn’t tell me what I was doing wrong. We’d start again and 10 or 15 minutes later: ‘You are playing wrong!’ This went on for the whole rehearsal. I asked Francis Akos (the leader of the seconds, who was sitting next to me) what I was doing wrong. He said, ‘I don’t know what you’re doing wrong.’ (After that day) I sat there in the same seat (while Brenner was ill) and Reiner said not a word to me.

When Leon came back, Reiner made one of his few jokes. While I was going back to my regular seat he said, ‘Spector, you played very well. Spector De la Rosa (referring to my red hair).’ He laughed and the whole orchestra laughed. (Thereafter) I got to know him and became very friendly with him because of photography. Photography was a hobby (we shared) and I was the unofficial photographer of the CSO… I took some very good pictures of Reiner that he loved.

I asked Fred if he ever questioned Reiner about what he was doing “wrong” once he and the conductor became friendly.

We were at a party that he threw and I was sitting at a table with him and David Greenbaum (longtime CSO cellist), and David’s wife and Reiner’s wife were there, too. Reiner’s wife had David do some imitations of Reiner and then (Reiner kidded) David: ‘So now that you did that, where are you going to work next year?’ And at that point I asked Reiner, ‘Remember, three or four years ago, you were telling me I played wrong all the time?’ He said, ‘Yes, yes.’ ‘What did I do that was wrong?’ He said, ‘Nothing. I just wanted to see if you would get nervous.’ I didn’t get nervous, I was great!

I then questioned Fred about how he managed to keep his composure, since Reiner was notorious for breaking the confidence of many seasoned and talented musicians.

It really wasn’t difficult for me. I guess, compared to combat, that was nothing.

Fred Spector, as he enters his 90th year, has seen it all, done it all, and then some.

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The 2010 photo of Fred Spector is courtesy of his son, J.B. Spector. It was sourced from Wikimedia Commons. The second photo is Fritz Reiner.

 

 

February 22, 2014

Lessons in Saying Goodbye: The Farewells of Carlo Maria Giulini

Giulini

Meaningful farewells are rarely easy. Some people hide their emotions, others are overwrought. Here are two examples from someone you will relate to: Carlo Maria Giulini (1914-2005), the famous Italian musician whose 100th birthday anniversary we are celebrating this year. His model of how to handle parting might nudge you to rethink your own.

The first farewell was both heart-rending and public, beginning with a rehearsal and then in performances by the Chicago Symphony Orchestra (CSO) in March, 1971 when Giulini was its Principal Guest conductor.

Fred Spector, a now retired CSO violinist, told the story in 2001:

We were doing the Verdi Requiem and we knew that his mother had just died (unexpectedly, while he was in Chicago). He walked out on stage (to rehearse with us), starts to conduct the Requiem and stops. He was crying and he said “They want me to come home. What good is that? My mother is dead. It is more important that I have this experience with you and the Verdi Requiem and think about my mother.” And now he’s got us all crying, the whole orchestra in tears. “That’s more important because then I can experience and think about my mother in this marvelous Requiem.”

That is kind of what this man was about and those were the greatest performances I’ve ever played of the Verdi Requiem, bar none…. We wanted to get that feeling that he wanted for his mother.

Giulini said goodbye in a different way when he accepted the Music Directorship of the Los Angeles Philharmonic, to begin in 1978. It would mark the end of his 23 year association with the Chicago Symphony, the orchestra with which he made his American debut in 1955. The announcement came about one year before his final CSO concerts.

The conductor handwrote a letter to the Orchestra itself shortly after the news became public, and he eventually would make the rounds of the various staffers at Orchestra Hall to say a personal farewell when he returned during the 1977/78 season, before taking on his Los Angeles duties. Here is a portion of his April 16, 1977 letter:

My Dear Friends,

Circumstances made it that during the week of your deserved rest I was regrettably unable to personally meet with you. In a sense, this may have been a blessing in disguise, since such a meeting would have produced in me so many emotions that I would have been overwhelmed. That is why I am writing this letter to each and every one of you.

How long has it been since we have been together and made music together? At times it seems it was so long ago and at others, as if it were yesterday. In all of these years, so much music and work was translated in a rare and precious manifestation of friendship and collaboration between us that transcends the level of dutiful professionalism and indeed represents the true spirit of our calling as musicians. In the course of our long association, a rare and precious relationship developed among us — much as the one that existed among my quartet companions of my younger days (when I was a violist). A relationship that springs from excellence, love and dedication to the noblest purpose of music — of which we are the custodians.

For the music and work we did together, for your trust and loyal support, for all the feelings of joy and fulfillment we shared, and for what we have been able to transmit to music lovers, I thank you most profoundly.

There is not much more for me to add — because I am sure that you will understand both what I feel and what I mean.

You will continue to occupy a special place in my heart as you always have,…

As for the future… it is in the Hands of God.

Until we meet again, I fraternally embrace each and every one of you and wish you all the very best and —

Godspeed.

Carlo Maria

Thomas Saler* wrote of the rehearsals that preceded the conductor’s last CSO performance on March 18, 1978:

“Chicago was the most beautiful moment in my musical life,” (Giulini) said. “It is in my blood, not just in my heart.” Ever the Italian poet, Giulini expressed that sentiment to his musician friends at the first rehearsal before those final concerts. “For me, Venice is more incredibly beautiful every time I return. And so, gentlemen, are you.”

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For more on Giulini see: A Man Who Refused to Judge.

*Thomas Saler, Serving Genius: Carlo Maria Giulini (Urbana and Chicago: University of Illinois Press, 2010), 86.

January 11, 2014

Can Morton Feldman’s Music be a Key to Meditation?

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We cannot escape the press of worldly events, expectations, and anxieties — the noise, the computers and the pressure to be the best. Indeed, to talk about the drivenness of the world only adds to the inescapable tension. Too many of us feel like a child’s old-style wind-up toy, impelled along a track we did not choose until finally we stop moving at day’s end, awaiting the next morning’s rat-race and another twist of the key to the clockwork motor. The world wins, stress wins, and we lose. And performers lose especially, by the anxiety that precedes and impedes their performance.

Enter Morton Feldman, composer, who has not been with us since 1987, when he died at age 61. A man who worked in the garment industry until he was 44. Feldman was no therapist, but his music just might add something to the much commended and researched antidote to the crazy-making nature of contemporary life: mindfulness meditation. I can offer no scientifically validated proof that his music makes a focus on “being centered in the moment” easier, but offer my anecdotal observations for your consideration.

For too many, mindfulness meditation is an elusive solution, despite its well-documented benefits to overall well-being. As meditation newbies we sit quietly and concentrate on our breathing, nothing more. We are told that it will be hard and that it should be done daily, usually shooting for 30 minutes at a time at the start. Eventually — so the research tells us — our brains will be retrained.

The object of such a practice is to permit us to live in the moment, alert to (but untroubled by) the single instant in which we are immersed. Its practitioners claim that it is a path to seeing the world as it is, accepting it without judgment. By doing that, they indicate, we stop ourselves from adding to the internally generated interpretations and pressures — and the self-consciousness — that can make life unbearable. We are advised that true mindfulness does not look back or forward. Nor is it freighted with worry, regret, or rage. They remind us that the past is gone and cannot be changed and the future is unknowable. The only thing we have with certainty is the present instant of time and our ability to really “live” in it.

Ah, but mindfulness meditation is difficult, more than you might think. The mind wanders from the breath. We are distracted by small noises and random thoughts: How much time has passed? What about today’s doctor appointment? What did my voice teacher or boss really mean when she talked to me yesterday? Anything and everything intrudes, including troubling dead-end ideas. We are instructed to expect this; and then, when we notice that our focus on the breath has been lost, to gently return our attention to that target. Our attention and focus will, with enough practice and dedication, get better — so the experts say. Until then keep practicing.

At this point, many people give up in frustration. Here is the opening through which Morton Feldman enters, this unlikeliest of composers: a man of 6′, approaching 300 pounds; a non-stop, cigarette-smoking talker with a strong New York accent. Alex Ross described his music this way in The New Yorker issue of June 19, 2006:

The often noted paradox is that this immense, verbose man wrote music that seldom rose above a whisper. In the noisiest century in history, Feldman chose to be glacially slow and snowily soft. Chords arrive one after another, in seemingly haphazard sequence, interspersed with silences… In its ritual stillness, this body of work abandons the syntax of Western music… Legend has it that after one group of players had crept their way as quietly as possible through a score of his, Feldman barked, “It’s too fuckin’ loud, and it’s too fuckin’ fast.”

Feldman requires us to listen to music without the expectation of conventional melody fit into a recognizable musical form and provides a kind of experience that creates that new way of listening.  Unlike most Western music, Feldman’s does not seem to be leading us anywhere. We do not come to anticipate the next note or chord, as we do in a popular song or symphony. We have entered an unfamiliar space with nothing ahead of us, nothing guiding us, no forward or backward. Lacking “landmarks” we can be certain only of where we are right now. We are simply “in the moment” with the delicate sound he most often provides us — and the decay of that sound, as can be heard in this example from For Bunita Marcus: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=t-Kl0eOo1VU

The importance of being neither judgmental nor critical, just experiencing what is present, is crucial. It is easier to listen to Feldman’s music with this type of “accepting” attitude than almost any piece of Beethoven, Brahms, or The Beatles. Their music “leads us” to judgment — too loud, too slow, too fast — once we have established even a bit of familiarity with it. For purposes of enhancing mindfulness, however, music like Feldman’s that provides us with no map is actually more beneficial. It does not “progress” and is harder to know than that which presents a formal structure that can be grasped and notes that can be anticipated, leading our thoughts to interfere with our attention and the mind to drift away from the sound.

Much of Feldman’s work can magnetize our focus so that the pull of external or irrelevant thoughts (including self-criticism) is vanquished, but only if we give up the conventional expectations built from years of listening to “tunes” and apply ourselves to the task he requires of our ears and our brains. With this new attitude, judgments about ourselves and about the music no longer gain an easy point of entry to the mind.

The compositions he offers us don’t seem to make headway except by extraordinarily subtle and quiet changes that are riveting. We are drawn in. To give a visual analogue, it is like looking at a kaleidoscopic image that is changing almost imperceptibly (much slower and without the formal structure of the example just below) with the slightest rotation of the tube, barely enough to be noticeable.

Teleidoscope_animation

As T. S. Elliot put it in Burnt Norton, Feldman finds “the still point” without which “there would be no dance.” But it is a dance in excruciatingly slow motion that can sound boring as described, but is absorbing when experienced and heard; where background silence is as important as foreground, ever-so-careful sound.

With or without Feldman’s music as an alternative to focus on the breath, mindfulness meditation (with sufficient practice) is able to reduce the “chatter” in the brain — all the extraneous and debilitating ideas and judgments inside our head. And to accept life’s inevitable discomforts without so much of the suffering that we seem to add by our anxious anticipation, over thinking, hand wringing, and the belief that things must change in order to create a state of satisfaction.

The regular practice of that discipline attempts to assist us in finding contentment in the terms that life allows, not by virtue of some dramatic achievement or the elimination of all that most of us might wish were different. And, by helping anyone who frets about his own performance to focus on what is being performed (the music or the play or the speech he is giving) rather than the self, the actual execution of that work may reach the state that athletes describe when they are “in the zone” (or in a “flow” state*), fully captured by what they are doing (and achieving the best of which they are capable) rather than observing themselves doing it, or painfully aware that others might be watching critically.

Does Morton Feldman’s music have therapeutic value in the mindfulness enterprise or in dealing with performance anxiety, beyond its shimmering, otherworldly beauty? There is a Ph.D. dissertation or two waiting to be written on the subject, I’m sure. And wouldn’t it be ironic if a man who once said “Where in life we do everything we can to avoid anxiety, in art we must pursue it,” wrote music that might help refocus our troubled souls.

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*For a further description of the “flow” state, see my response to the first comment below.

Here is a short example of Feldman’s music, the first 15 minutes of “For Bunita Marcus:” https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=t-Kl0eOo1VU

Here is a 20-minute talk by a monk and master meditator about the benefits of brain-retraining that can come with meditation: Matthieu Ricard: The habits of happiness

The top image is a photo of Morton Feldman taken at the Concertgebouw, Amsterdam on May 31, 1976 during the Holland Festival. It is the work of Rob Bogaerts. The second image is a Digital Teleidoscope Animation by nadjas. Both are sourced from Wikimedia Commons.

December 26, 2013

Laughter From an Unexpected Place: Adolf H. and His Search for a Concert Ticket

They say that “Comedy is tragedy plus time.” Here is a brief youtube clip of about four minutes to brighten your upcoming New Year’s Day. Whether you love Justin Bieber or Beethoven, Katie Perry or Prokofiev, this should give you a giggle: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=k4E9iP9zOpI

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There have been a number of Hitler parodies. This one comes from the excellent and very serious 2005 movie Downfall starring Bruno Ganz. The movie and the parody couldn’t be more different. Hitler parodies go as far back as Charlie Chaplin, Jack Benny, Zero Mostel, and the young Gene Wilder.

If you believe that there is such a thing as the devil, then you might be heartened by fun made of one composed of flesh and blood, as is done here. I just saw a comment by Bob Harper on another site that quoted Sir Thomas More. Harper applied More’s statement about how to harm the devil to the many Hitler parodies that have been made out of the same clip: “The devil is a proud spirit, and cannot endure to be mocked.”

This one, using the identical clip, is about Hitler getting his AP (Advanced Placement) test results for college: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QHQ-_t0WvaY

November 22, 2013

Naked City: A Music Story

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Sometimes the most interesting thing about a concert has nothing to do with the music. Witness what happened at the Kaufmann Concert Hall of New York’s 92nd Street Y on November 16th, 2013 when one strange man stole a bit of the show. A performance given in a metropolis sometimes called the “Naked City.”

The gentleman in question walked down the left aisle just before the Hagen Quartet came on stage to play an all-Beethoven program. As he entered his row close to the stage, he faced right and loudly addressed the assembled throng:

I really don’t want to be here. I guess it’s impolite to say, but I’m not interested in this.

The speaker seemed to be alone, so no one had taken him to the concert as a hostage. But, I will admit, he did look strange. The gentleman was short and bearded — nothing remarkable there. But he wore a baseball cap with a picture of Jesus facing forward and a sparkly or glitter-filled abstract pattern decorating the bill of the hat. A tan vest covered his aquamarine blue shirt. And, perhaps most interestingly, he had standard-sized headphones on the top of his head and covering his ears, all the while holding a CD player in his right hand. Would he even be listening to the live performance as it happened or to whatever recording he preferred?

Patrons seated close by were clearly concerned. One summoned an usher who must have remonstrated the fellow just as the Hagen Quartet entered the stage. Happily, the first half of the concert proceeded without incident and almost certainly without the knowledge of the performers that there might be a vocal eruption interrupting them before they were done.

One could only wonder if Patron X would return after intermission, when the big piece of the night, Beethoven’s Quartet #14 in c#, Opus 131 would be presented, one of the greatest of the great works.

Again, the unexpected happened just before the musicians returned, even if it was now slightly less surprising. The man loudly said, “Calm Down.” To others? To himself? I’d guess the latter.

And then, as before, the Hagen Quartet — two brothers and a sister all named Hagen, along with Rainer Schmidt — began a musical journey to the mountain top of artistic expression — presumably untroubled by the little guy back on earth who didn’t want to be there.

An evening, then, of the ridiculous and the sublime. A crisis averted. A man, probably not all that stable, who kept himself in just-enough check to let the show go on. Or perhaps it was the music that did the job. As William Congreve put it in 1697,

Musick has Charms to sooth a savage Breast,
To soften Rocks, or bend a knotted Oak.

Some of us go to concerts to experience the transcendent. Perhaps this man, too, was trying to transcend his own limitations. Maybe his first public statement was intended to identify his discomfort as well to remind himself that any ensuing misbehavior might be “impolite;” thus to set the stage for achieving an unaccustomed level of control and comportment in a situation that was difficult for him, something he must struggle with often. His second loud announcement could then be understood as a kind of personal guidance he’d learned to give himself in order to keep on track toward his goal of self-control. No way for me to know with certainty, or course.

As the narrator of the old New York-based, TV police drama “Naked City” used to say over the closing credits:

There are eight million stories in the Naked City. This has been one of them.

The performance of the Hagen Quartet, by the way, was enthralling. But what I’m wondering is, did we 900 in the audience — witnessing a man struggling to restrain himself and a quartet reaching for the sublime on stage — really observe not one but two of the hard-won, small miracles that sometimes happen in the “Naked City?”

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The above image is the title card of the 1958-1963 TV drama Naked City. It is sourced from Wikipedia.org.

October 12, 2013

Fritz Reiner: A Marriage of Talent and Terror

Fritz Reiner

People were afraid of Fritz Reiner. Talented people, self-assured people, decent people. He was notorious for finding a small crack in your confidence and opening it wide. But he was also known for something else.

Fritz Reiner was not just a sadist, but a genius. One of the greatest conductors ever and the man who took the Chicago Symphony, from 1953 to 1962, and fashioned a legend. According to Igor Stravinsky, Reiner “made the Chicago  Symphony into the most precise and flexible orchestra in the world.”

For those who want individuals to be neatly categorized as all good or all bad, Reiner is confounding: both a great artist and a questionable human. He brings to mind Toscanini’s comment about the composer Richard Strauss: “To Strauss the composer I take off my hat; to Strauss the man I put it back on again.”

Fritz Reiner was a conductor who had virtually no flaws, however flawed he was personally. His repertoire ranged from the light music of Johann Strauss, Jr. and Richard Rogers’ musical theater Carousel, to the gravity of Mahler’s Das Lied von der Erde. Equally at home in the German, Russian, and French repertoire, he played music from Bach to Bartok and much in between. But the road was hard for those musicians who joined him on his artistic quests: demanding if you were on his good side, career-threatening if you were not.

According to Gunther Schuller, who played principal horn under Reiner at the Metropolitan Opera:

He clearly had a sadistic streak in him, and truly enjoyed making musicians uncomfortable, making them squirm, humiliating them. He was the type (who)… inflicted his particular sadistic gratifications in a coolly clinical, perfectly controlled manner, a type we have seen many times in films caricaturing Prussian or Nazi officers and the like… With Reiner I clearly sensed that he was deriving a certain emotional and intellectual pleasure from torturing his victims… (He was a person who) would not only deliver his stinging sarcasm in utter calculated calm, but would also pursue his victim until the person broke, it being symptomatic of this type of verbal sadist that he can easily sense a weakling who is unable to stand up to the abuse; this type of sadist hunts down his prey until the kill has been accomplished.*

Fritz Reiner by John Jensen:

Fritz Reiner by John Jensen: http://www.Johnjensen.co.uk

Reiner’s twin capacity to inflict discomfort and create staggering musical moments combined in the surgical precision of his approach to his musicians. Through his movements and his words, the conductor was able to inflect the musical line or inflict personal pain as he chose.

Reiner took a minimalist approach to the use of his baton, in what came to be called a “vest pocket beat.” As Philip Farkas (principal horn for most of Reiner’s CSO tenure) recalled:

He conducted with everything he had, not only with his hands. I recall he’d be looking at the first violins, so we’d get only a profile. A big brass entrance would come in. He’d suddenly turn his head and, still directing his hands toward the violins, would look at us and puff out his cheeks right on the beat, which was a real demonstration of when the winds should come in. Then, if we’d had that attack he gave us with his cheeks, if he wanted a crescendo, his eyebrows would go slowly higher. While still working with the first violins, he might kick out in back of him and bring in the violas with his foot**

Clearly, Reiner knew his business and knew what he could achieve by talent and by intimidation, as Farkas illustrated in recalling Reiner’s first rehearsal with the CSO as its new Music Director:

We’d had a long number of years of lax discipline and too many guest conductors. The men were good, it was a good orchestra, but undisciplined and far from being a cohesive group. So Reiner took over and tore that orchestra apart. In a two-hour rehearsal he pulled us apart and put us together again — literally — and in the course of doing it actually fired one of the men. He said, “I don’t accept that kind of playing in my orchestra.” We thought, “Gee, you haven’t even got the orchestra yet, it’s only an hour or so.” But it was his orchestra, he had a contract to prove it. Anyhow, he took us apart and we needed it, we all knew that. And when he put it back together and we went straight through Ein Heldenleben (by Richard Strauss) the last hour of rehearsal, it was a revelation. There we had it, and we knew we had it, but we couldn’t do it until he came along. When he did it, it was great. But, as I say, he was rough. He spared no mercy on us at all. As he went out the door after the rehearsal, he was the only calm one. The rest of us were ringing wet. As he went out the door, one of our wags in the orchestra, (the violinist) Royal Johnson, said, “Well, not much of a conductor, but an awfully nice fellow!”***

Reiner’s reputation had preceded him. Indeed, one attributed feature of his almost demonic musicianship was the ability to give every player the feeling that he and he alone was being watched by the conductor at every moment. Perhaps it was that quality that accounts for the following CSO story, also involving Royal Johnson. Johnson was seated on stage — on the aisle that led to the stage door. At an early rehearsal in Reiner’s tenure, Johnson got up as Reiner moved past him to the podium and walked very quietly just behind the conductor, peering over his shoulder. What he observed was an apparent surgical scar that Reiner had on the back of his neck, something other musicians had already commented on. Johnson quickly returned to his seat before Reiner noticed anything unusual. The violinist turned to his stand-mate and said, “You know, that’s not his original head!”

For Gunther Schuller, Adolph (Bud) Herseth (the CSO’s legendary principal trumpet), and many others, the key to survival under these conditions, was to stand up to the conductor — to look Reiner in the eyes as he stared you down and to keep playing well, no matter how many times he might ask you to repeat a phrase in order to “test” you. Reiner claimed that he wanted musicians he could rely on, who he could depend upon “in the trenches.” If you passed his tests and didn’t break, he usually left you alone thereafter. But, it was a day before strong musicians’ committees and contracts that protected the players. The conductor did, indeed, have your professional life and livelihood in his hands.

Could he have achieved what he wanted without being ruthless? Theoretically, the answer is, of course. But, at a human level, our strengths are frequently also our weaknesses. His ability to lead and his unyielding dominance were probably inextricably intermingled.

The cost of Reiner’s achievement was doubtless a high one. But often, it must be admitted, that combination of talent and terror led to something special. Never more than on a CSO tour concert in 1958. Philip Farkas relates the story:

As time went along on this Boston concert, it was obvious that we had a “no-hitter” going. Tension was mounting — there hadn’t been the slightest flaw, no scratch. Intermission came, and we said, “Jeez, what’s going on? We’re playing even better than usual.” So at the end of the concert — nobody had scratched a note anywhere during the entire concert. We were all aware of this, and very excited about it. When we went off stage after the applause had stopped, Reiner was there shaking everybody’s hand, tears streaming down his face. “All my life I’ve waited for this moment: a perfect concert. The only one I’ve ever experienced.” And it was, so far as I know. I came out the door, and there was (Arthur) Fiedler (conductor of the Boston Pops): “You’re not men — you’re gods,” he said.****

Gods? You can find out for yourself. Sony has just issued every recording the CSO made with Reiner for RCA:
Fritz Reiner — Chicago Symphony Orchestra: The Complete RCA Recordings.

Reiner complete—

Special thanks to John Jensen for permission to use his Reiner caricature. Other excellent images can be found at: http://www.johnjensen.co.uk/

*Gunther Schuller, Gunther Schuller: A Life In Pursuit of Music and Beauty (Rochester, NY: University of Rochester Press, 2011), 378.

**Hillyer, Stephen C., ed. “The Podium” 2, no. 2, (Country Club Hills, IL: The Fritz Reiner Society, 1978), Reiner Symposium in Bloomington, IN, March 11, 1978, 12.

***Hillyer, “The Podium,” 12.

****Hillyer, “The Podium” 3, 1979, 22.

August 28, 2013

A Man Who Refused to Judge: Carlo Maria Giulini

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This is a story about a musician, but not about music. It is about you and me and especially all the loud voices in today’s world who not only claim to know what is right and what is wrong, but who is right and who is wrong. Most particularly, it is about a great man who had every right to judge someone else, but chose not to. I’m talking about the famous Italian conductor of symphony and opera, Carlo Maria Giulini.

Who was Giulini and what gave him that right? Born in 1914, Carlo Maria Giulini would become the Music Director of La Scala, Milan; Principal Guest Conductor of the Chicago Symphony (1969-1973) and the Music Director of the Vienna Symphony Orchestra (1973-1976). But it was much earlier in Rome that he played as an orchestral violist under the German conductor Wilhelm Furtwängler (1886-1954), as well as many other great conductors; and it was Furtwängler who Giulini refused to judge. Not as a musician, but as a man — a man in the middle — between the Nazi state that ruled his homeland and his conscience.

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Furtwängler remains a controversial figure to this day for choosing to stay in Germany during the Third Reich (1933-1945). His celebrity would have guaranteed him important positions throughout the world. But, while evidence indicates that he did assist some Jewish musicians in the Nazi bullseye, he also allowed himself to be used as a propaganda tool by the government. Never having joined the Nazi party, he was seen as vaguely disloyal by some within Germany, but just another morally compromised German by some outside of it.

Giulini had his own set of moral dilemmas. Although drafted into the Italian Army that was allied with Germany, he and his two brothers, Steno and Alberto, made a pact not to kill:

We would not serve as Mussolini’s (the Italian dictator’s) agent to take anyone’s life, even if it cost us our own. (As a second lieutenant) when my men were fired upon, I had to appear to respond, so I would draw my pistol and fire high above their heads. One of my brothers (Steno) was in Russia with the Italian ski troops. His situation was horrible, with cold and snow and the constant attacks of the Russians, but he never loaded his rifle.

Even this stance proved inadequate to the circumstances that Giulini faced. In Yugoslavia, the Italian Army was confronted with partisan attacks and began to engage in revenge missions against innocent civilians. Before long, after the Allied invasion of Italy, Italy formally switched sides in the war — but not Giulini’s unit, which was ordered to stand with the Nazis in defense of Rome against the advancing U.S. Fifth Army. Giulini defected.

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It was late 1943 and Giulini now found himself a wanted man, his postered name and face to be seen with the direction to “shoot on sight.” For the next nine months Giulini, two comrades, and a Jewish family hid in a tunnel below his uncle’s house in Rome. Newly married, his wife Marcella and Italian resistance fighters provided supplies. It was Marcella who gave him the library copies of orchestral scores that he studied by candlelight and that they hoped he might eventually conduct if he survived.

On June 5, 1944 the Allies succeeded in liberating Rome. Thomas Saler, the author of Serving Genius: Carlo Maria Giulini, whose book is the source of much of the wartime background presented here, describes the scene:

After word reached him that the city had been liberated, Giulini climbed out of his underground hideaway and stepped outside. It was the first time in nine months that he saw the light of day and breathed the fresh air. Overcome with emotion, he walked to a nearby tree and kissed it.

Giulini was owed a four-year-old debt by Rome’s Santa Cecilia Orchestra as a result of having won the right to conduct it in a contest before war intervened. Thus, on July 16, 1944 he led his first ever concert — the concert that celebrated the liberation of Rome.

On March 18, 1978 I had the chance to interview the now legendary maestro. This elegant and charming man, polite and dignified, responded deftly to musical questions at the outset of our time together. That is, until I asked him about his opinion of Furtwängler’s decision to stay in Germany and the latter’s wartime behavior. He was not prepared for my question. I was not prepared for his response.

Giulini’s demeanor changed. While he was not impolite, I’d touched a nerve. He began by putting me in my place: “You are very young.” I was 31, he was 63. Giulini continued:

It is very, very difficult to judge the position of a man. It is difficult for you in American to understand the problems we had in Europe. It is difficult to put yourself in a position, in a special moment (in history) that is impossible to imagine if you didn’t live in that time. The last thing I should do is express my position on this point. I had my personal political position, I took my position — very precise. I was not a fascist, and at the moment I had to make a strong decision, and also a dangerous decision, I took it. But I am not in a position to do any criticism of another person.

The conversation continued, but it was clear that the subject of Wilhelm Furtwängler was closed. In that instant, I had seen the man who some called “the steel angel,” both because of his ever-present respect for people, including the musicians he conducted, and his backbone. He was every bit of both.

Giulini conducted his final concert with the CSO that evening. He would now be off to Los Angeles to take up the last major post of his career, as Music Director of the Los Angeles Philharmonic. Unfortunately, his wife’s sudden and chronically debilitating illness a few years later ended Giulini’s American career in 1984. He returned to Europe, never again leaving his Milan home except for a few days at a time to guest conduct, so as not to be away from Marcella for extended periods. His formal career ended in 1998 and he died in 2005.

Giulini is said to have been a well-read man, but I don’t know if he knew the Stoic philosophers like Epictetus. It was the philosophy of Epictetus that U.S. Navy Vice Admiral James B. Stockdale credited with helping him survive while he was a prisoner in Hanoi during the Vietnam War. Over his seven-and-a-half years in enemy hands, Stockdale was tortured 15 times, in solitary confinement for over four years, and in leg irons for two. In other words, another man who, like Giulini, had every right to judge.

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In a 1995 lecture to the student body of the Marine Amphibious Warfare School, Stockdale quoted Epictetus:

Where do I look for the good and the evil? Within me, in that which is my own. But for that which is another’s never employ the words “good” or “evil,” or anything of the sort.

“Goods and evils can never be things others do to you, or for you,” Stockdale concluded.

Giulini would have understood.*

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*For an entirely different perspective on Furtwängler’s wartime conduct, see this brief video interview of Jascha Horenstein, the great conductorial associate of Furtwängler: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NnXn9wwQeXQ

My gratitude to my friends Tom Saler and John Kain, the latter for alerting me to the existence of the Stockdale lecture. The photo of Vice Admiral Stockdale came from the U.S. Defense Visual Information Official Site, as downloaded to Wikimedia Commons by Darz Mol.