Thomasina’s last waltz

Skin and bones: a frindley theory

The other day Elissa Milne posted a thought-provoking post about preferred baroque keyboard composers and the possible correlation with personality types.

The tricky matter of French baroque music emerged, including the fact that it often doesn’t seem to satisfy or even be really successful when played on the piano. Which prompted me to air a long-held theory as to why Bach, Handel et al work on piano but the French baroque composers don’t…

Some music succeeds in its bones (think JS Bach, think Beatles). The things that make us love these works and which draw us in are at a very fundamental level of melody, harmony, rhythm and pulse. And such music can “take” a lot of varied treatments. You can play pieces like this on different instruments, arrange them, use them as the basis for jazz improvisation, you name it.

Some music succeeds because of its surface, its skin (think French baroque, think ABBA). The value is in the style, the gesture, the ornaments, the colours, the very mode of performance. This kind of music is much less malleable and often resistant to being rearranged, or having its performance style modified. It works when you play it “authentically” with the original performance practices of its creation and on the instruments intended. The further you depart from that the less satisfying it is.

As they say, the exception proves the rule, and one exception at the French baroque end of things is a delicious piece by François Couperin, Les Baricades mistérieuses. (When I eventually get a piano, this will be its baptismal piece.) In the Couperin the beauty and the appeal of the music is to be found in its harmonic bones and its textures. Which is why it can work very nicely on the piano.

Postscripts…
I’ve just learned that Angela Hewitt’s (piano) performance of the Couperin was used in the soundtrack for the recent film The Tree of Life.

Be wary of the performances of Les Baricades that are to be found on YouTube. Unlike Scott Ross, many keyboardists seem to miss the sensuousness of this music and play it much too fast. (Or, in one or two cases, they take it way too slow.)

Want to play it yourself? The 1717 edition of the ordre or suite from which it comes can be found here, with Les Baricades beginning on page 6 (requires the reading of alto clef for the right hand), and a modernised edition here.

 

Classic 100 Twentieth Century: a personal response

The ABC’s Classic 100 Twentieth Century is over and it was every bit as frustrating as I expected it to be. Let me count the ways.

1. Frustration. Is “20th Century” a period or a state of mind?

Choosing a whole century as a category, especially one as stylistically diverse as the 20th, was always going to problematic. For some – including me – “20th century” means “modern” on some level, and by extension a lot of musical works written after 1900 are throwbacks or 20th-century only by a technicality. 

In the past, apart from the classic “general” polls, Classic 100 has polled for a genre, a composer or an instrument a clearly defined stylistic period. [Correction: there has never been a poll for a stylistic period.] Not this time. And if anything, it made the result less focused, less meaningful and, I suspect, less satisfying for nearly everybody. (See point 3)

2. Frustration. The unfair advantage of old age. 

Aka, the Gerontius effect. Acquiring favourite status inevitably takes time, especially in a deeply canonical art form such as classical music. For the repertoire that’s more than a hundred years old, age is immaterial. But when you’re comparing music that’s, say, 111 years old, with a piece that might have premiered last year, the newer piece is at a disadvantage.

The situation can be influenced by programming and promotion – I’m thinking of the clever way the Christopher Lawrence/Felix Hayman “Swoon” spot used to sneak in, with audience approval, all sorts of works that would normally have met with resistance on the grounds of youth and unfamiliarity. 

But mostly, the older a 20th-century work is, even if it approaches the “nasty modern music” end of the spectrum, the more fans it will have acquired. That’s one reason why the scattergraph for this poll shows a downward linear trend. That’s why the confronting (in character, not necessarily in style) Rite of Spring made it into the top ten, while other less-confronting but much newer works were ranked lower. Or perhaps The Rite of Spring is just better music… 

3. Frustration. (Or Amusement?) A polarised audience.

It was to be expected there would be parties throwing up their hands in disgust at the “dreadful noise” of Messiæn and others equally disgusted by the presence of backward-looking romantics such as Elgar. That’s the 20th century for you.

I could have treated it as a frustration, but the crux of the matter can be found in point 1 and this was really just the inevitable side effect. So I followed along via the social media and laughed.

4. Frustration. The vagaries of the Long Tail.

What didn’t make me laugh were some of the bizarre rankings at the bottom end of the list. (And towards the top too.) Given the very small polling sample (7,000 I believe, which must be barely 1 per cent of ABC Classic FM’s national reach) this is also not very surprising. I had to keep telling myself: “Small sample. Popularity contest. Small sample. Popularity contest.”

But despite the affirmations, I swore a bit when the Warsaw Concerto outranked Lieutenant Kijé; when ALW’s Requiem ranked higher than both Britten’s Serenade for tenor, horn and strings and Elgar’s Violin Concerto; when a folksong arrangement by Grainger came in three places ahead of Daphnis et Chloé (!!!!).

Of course, you see what’s happening here: I’m taking a poll that was unashamedly about “favourites” (and for which I myself was quite careful to choose my favourites) and I’m assessing the results against values of relative quality, importance and greatness. “Small sample. Popularity contest…”

5. Frustration. Insidious Albion.

This last frustration is purely a matter of personal taste. There are great works by English composers; I even shortlisted some. I just found it disheartening to see English music dominate the top 100. Especially so much English music of the pleasantly modal, folk-music inspired, stirringly hymn-like variety. But that’s just me. I have a serious bias towards the Russians and the French. And if there’s going to be folk inspiration I want wicked rhythms and wonky harmonies à la Bartók.

Postscript…

ABC Classic FM has shared the 100 runners up.

Oxford dons from the ’70s

So English pianist James Rhodes is in Australia with a recital scheduled for Sydney, and if no one invites me to be their date for the opening night of The Love of the Nightingale, I just may go.

He has the kind of life story and unconventional career path that publicists and journalists must love, at least for a debut visit. But so far I’ve been more interested in the often provocative things he has to say about concert presentation, some of which have already sent me to my soap box. And he’s at it again, with this interview for The Sydney Morning Herald.

As before, I ended up wholeheartedly agreeing with him and tearing my hair in frustration.

1. James Rhodes says he doesn’t want people reading the program notes while he’s playing. That makes perfect sense; I’d feel the same if I were performing. 

But I’d also add that if a performance is sufficiently compelling, well… you won’t even feel like reading the program, will you? (After all, one of the many valuable services a program book offers is distraction during a dull concert. And I say that in the same spirit as Mr Rhodes himself, when he writes that Beethoven “even had to play viola as a child in order to make money”.) 

2. Then he spoils it with a careless generalisation that simply panders to prejudice: 

“And [the program note’s] always written by some Oxford don from the ’70s about sonata form in Beethoven’s Vienna.* That’s f---ing boring. I’d rather talk about the fact that Bach was like a baroque Keith Richards and had 20 children and got arrested for drinking and f---ing.”†

Seriously James, I suspect that even in London, concert-goers aren’t seeing too many program notes from Oxford dons of the ’70s. And you’d be hard-pressed to find the donnish program note here in Australia. (Well, maybe from one presenter, but I’m not publishing directions.) 

As I’ve said before, some program notes – and they can be old or recent – are poorly written, stuffy and generally unhelpful. It happens, and if an artist is lumbered with notes like this by a presenter he or she has every right to complain. (Better still, the artist who cares about such things has every right to show an interest well beforehand. Just sayin’.) But what really bugs me is when artists or commentators suggest that the badly written and unhelpful note is the status quo. Because it’s simply not.

I get that James Rhodes would prefer his audiences not be reading. Ok, so don’t give us anything to read. A well-edited and comprehensive program listing is fine by me. (Since he’s being presented by the same venue, it’s likely that his program will contain about as much reading material as that one for Stephen Kovacevich.)

And I totally get that he would prefer to share his ideas with the audience by talking to us. (Although his written comments aren’t bad at all – thoughtful and sincere  – and I’m impressed that he’s one of the minority who’ve bucked the iTunes prejudice against providing digital booklets with albums. Go James!) 

But I wish he’d get off the bandwagon about program notes ‘always’ being boring. That’s just unhelpful. And unfair.

Because the good writing about music is out there. Notes that are illuminating; notes that communicate affection for the music; notes that reveal an appreciation for how the listener is going to be experiencing it in a live concert; notes that are elegantly and generously written; notes that reflect and support the artistic vision of the programmer/performer; notes that don’t take themselves too seriously but also don’t fall into the trap of cheesy joviality and cheap shots; notes that are conceived with imagination; notes that help the readers focus their ears on the music and perhaps notice things they wouldn’t have otherwise; notes that give insightful context for the music… I could go on. 

Footnotes…

* This kind of statement is just as bad as Rupert Murdoch’s recent throwaway line about American classrooms: “Most American classrooms haven’t changed much since the days of Grover Cleveland. You have a teacher, a piece of chalk, a blackboard – and a room full of kids.” (And why exactly is Murdoch suddenly interested in American education?) 

† It always pains me to temper a good story with the truth, but Bach wasn’t jailed for drinking and f---king, unless perhaps you use that last word in a loose, figurative sense. In 1717, while trying to arrange an early dismissal from his Weimar post so he could take up a more lucrative and satisfying one in Cöthen, Bach lost his temper with (probably) his noble employer. Thus “…on November 6, the quondam concertmaster and organist Bach was confined to the County Judge’s place of detention for too stubbornly forcing the issue of his dismissal and finally on December 2 was freed from his arrest with notice of his unfavourable discharge.” Actually, you could argue that this is a far more interesting reason to be arrested than mere drunkenness, and more revealing of Bach’s personality. At least I think so.

In which I rant against the local broadsheet’s refusal to print foreign characters

At the instigation of a certain Sébastien, I am posting here a Heckler complaint that I submitted to the Sydney Morning Herald a few years ago. It was rejected; it must have been – as I feared – unprintable.

This Heckler is unprintable. Not because it is offensive or in poor taste but because my rant is typographically inclined.

The observant will have noticed that the Sydney Morning Herald routinely drops foreign accents from any word or name that may require them. This is evidently a style policy on the part of the paper – exactly why it is so completely mystifies me. We’re talking about a modern newspaper with sophisticated page layout technology, a paper with an online presence (where on rare occasions the accents have appeared), a paper that can print in full colour and which can accommodate the application of annoying promotional sticky notes to the front. But give it an umlaut or a circumflex and it shudders and recoils and the offending accent is dropped forthwith.

I am not concerned about foreign words that have been anglicised. In Australian English a premiere is a premiere, even without the grave on the second “e”. A fete need not have a circumflex, so long as there is fairy floss and a sausage sizzle. But there are words that become ambiguous when the accent is removed, and – more important – there are many names that are simply misspelled and may well be mispronounced without their accents.

We live in an international world and foreign names are all around us, within the Australian community itself as well as further afield. What a discourtesy we do to others when we cannot take the trouble to accommodate a special character in their names. And how insular it makes us appear.

I follow the Sydney Morning Herald arts pages, which regularly mention performers from Finland, Germany, Norway, France and other countries with interesting characters in their alphabets. In the Herald Finnish conductor Osmo Vänskä loses both the umlauts from his surname, changing the pronunciation completely not to mention the name itself. (Is there a Vanska in the Finnish phone book? Perhaps.) Norwegian cellist Truls Mørk appears as “Mork” without the crossed “o” (historically a ligature of “o” and “e”), to the same effect. With the Herald as your guide you’d be forgiven for thinking that a certain Swedish trumpeter’s name was pronounced “harken” rather than “horken” – all because the style guide won’t permit the “aa” ligature in Håken Hardenberger.

Were the French baritone Jean-Baptiste Faure (no accent, rhymes with “four”) still alive and singing Fauré (with an acute accent, rhymes with “foray”) the Sydney Morning Herald would no doubt be in a pickle. Or is that ‘dans le pétrin’? – acute accent on the “e”, of course.

 

Ergonomic questions I have had

Why, when the desktop computer has been ubiquitous in most offices since the 1990s, do furniture manufacturers still build desks to specifications that were established in the 1950s?

The ‘standard desk’ is too high for all but the tallest of office workers to use a keyboard correctly while still keeping their feet on the terra firma. In the 1950s such desks were intended for handwriting, reading and impressing others; if you used a typewriter you’d have a special desk, or a return, that was about 66 cm high. There was a reason for that.

For that matter – knowing what we know about ergonomics and the diversity of shapes and sizes in modern society – why does any responsible company still build desks for which the height can’t be adjusted? (Yes, I know, because other companies keep buying them.)

Why do computer manufacturers still make keyboards with little legs at the back, when the best angle for a keyboard is either flat or a slight reverse tilt?

Actually, I know the answer to that one. Early commercial keyboards were designed to mimic the rake of a typewriter in order to ease the transition for typists and improve “acceptance” in the marketplace. Raising the back of the keyboard achieved that end, but at the same time has encouraged users to cock their wrists and – complicating things further – rest them on the desk surface. I wasn’t surprised to read a year or two ago that someone in the States was setting up a class-action lawsuit about this. (Only in America!)

Why would an organisation with a staff ratio of two women to every man invest in a chair model that only properly fits people with thigh bones the length of Lance Armstrong’s?

Just wondering, that is all.

Clapping, coughing, yawning…

So the local broadsheet published “the insiders’ guide to the arts” in Saturday’s Spectrum – “From scoring the best seat in the house to what you should wear to the opera, get your year in culture off on the right foot.”

It was an innocuous enough exercise – just space filler for the holidays. But it managed to make me twitchy all the same. Here’s why.

It was presented as a series of plausible questions, with responses from industry professionals.

Theatre: are programs worth the money? which performance in a run should I catch? where can I find innovative new work? do critics consider value for money in their reviews? is it worth buying tickets for previews? how should I enter a row to reach my seat?

Visual Arts: where can I spot the stars of tomorrow? how long should I look at a painting? should I read the caption/label before or after looking at the artwork?

Opera: which opera is the best introduction? what should I wear? should I read about the opera beforehand? should I read the surtitles?

Venues: where are the best seats in the house? (Fortunately Richard Evans didn’t reveal the truly best seats for orchestral concerts in the Sydney Opera House. Phew.)

Then…

Classical Music: “Why can’t I clap between movements?” [Yawn] “What should I do if someone near me is coughing (or I am coughing)?” [Double yawn]

You’ll notice I’ve italicised the four questions that relate to some aspect of etiquette or external behaviour. All the other questions are connected to one’s experience of the art form itself. And you’ll also notice that for every art form, except classical music, we have sensible questions that get down to the nub of things.

And for classical music all we get is two tired old questions about etiquette. Nothing about the experience or the art form.

I’m not sure who to blame here. The journalists? Perhaps. Or is it the classical music scene itself that’s at fault if these are the only questions that occur to people in relation to what we do? I fear this might be the case.

But how I would have loved to have seen Rory Jeffes, or whoever, answer these questions (freely ripped from our companion art forms):
Where can I find innovative new classical music?
Where can I spot the classical music stars of tomorrow?

Postscript…

Not to mention these ones:
Should I listen to the music or read about it before the concert?
Should I read the program notes before, during or after the performance?
Should I follow the printed text (or surtitles) during a vocal work?

Wright's mice come out to play

You see, I have this thing about mice. Just ask my big sister, who cajoled a Dutch cheesemonger into giving her his porcelain display mouse because I absolutely had to have a mouse from Holland. And when everyone changed their facebook profile pics to cartoon characters the other day, I was Miss Bianca.

So if there’s one aspect of Nutcracker about which I’m impossibly demanding, it’s the King of the Mice and his gang of rodents.

By far the most common problem is that the mice and their movements are far too cute and generally unthreatening.

C’mon choreographers: listen to the music Tchaikovsky gives the mice and their battle. All the little kiddies in the audience are meant to be terrified at this point. And in any case, this is the only point of real tension and conflict in the entire ballet; it seems such a pity to waste the opportunity.

Which is what happens in the crimson chocolate box of a production by Peter Wright, which the Australian Ballet is presenting at the moment. Oh, it’s gorgeous. And there’s so much to enjoy. It’s lovely, for example, to see the role of Clara become something both plausible and satisfying, and I like Wright’s interpretation of the Drosselmeyer character as a magician – the masterly professional wielding his control over the domestic celebrations and indeed the entire ballet.

But the mice…

The problem begins at the party, when Drosselmeyer-as-magician startles the guests and makes everyone laugh with an oversized mechanical mouse that zips around the stage. That is quite amusing. But later in the act, with the battle of the mice approaching, more of the same mechanical mice enter and zip around. You can hear the whizzing of the wheels. Worse, you can hear the tittering of the audience. So much for building suspense. Poor Tchaikovsky.

When the mice proper enter they’re quite adorable and they’re holding their hands up in front of their chests, curled like paws. So cute. So amusing. Not very scary.

I’ve said it before, but heck, I’ll say it again: Graeme Murphy gets this marvellously right. His mice really are rats. Bolshevik rats, actually, in heavy overcoats with thick menacing tails that they whip around to devastating effect. The masks are quite fearsome. The repertoire of gestures is enough to keep your heart in your mouth for the entire scene. In short, it’s the only Nutcracker which doesn’t undermine the dramatic effect of Tchaikovsky’s music at this point. And no one ever laughs.

Dear Commentator…

To: The blogosphere
From: Thomasina, who edits program books
Re: When you write about concert program notes

Don’t take the most arcane, technical descriptive phrase you can find, quote it out of context, and suggest this style represents the entire genre. I know, it’s amusing to make fun of this way of writing about music. (Shakespeare…announces his subject at once in the infinitive, anyone?) Just remember, it’s increasingly atypical. That’s why we can laugh at it.

While we’re on this point, if you’re going to make up the most arcane, technical descriptive phrase you can muster, admit to this. Don’t imply that you actually read it somewhere. (Although usually truth is more embarrassing than fiction.)

Be clear about your context and points of reference. Avoid extrapolating unfairly.

Which means, don’t tell your readers that all program notes suck and that they’re the source of classical music’s ills. This doesn’t help the cause, when many in this field are working their butts off for stylistic and technological change.

Some program notes, both new and old, can be poorly written, stuffy or unhelpful — you’re welcome to call us on it — but don’t suggest this is necessarily the status quo throughout the concert-presenting world today.

Better still, set yourself a challenge: for every weak or unhelpful example you give, find and cite an example that’s admirable, or which is heading in the right direction. Believe me, those examples are there to be found.

Along the same lines, before proposing your brilliant new idea, take a poke around the internet and check there aren’t concert presenters doing this already, perhaps for years. You’ll make a more positive contribution to the discussion by saying “The XSO’s scratch-and-sniff program notes are really great and I wish more people would try it” than by suggesting no one has ever thought of it before.

Postscript…

In case you’re thinking Thomasina is a tad humourless, she laughed her head off at this.

And thanks to David Carkeet, whose meme she nicked.

The pre-concert talk you have when you’re not offering pre-concert talks

Tonight, this event took place at the time and in the location where there used to be free pre-concert talks, open to all comers, including those who serendipitously encountered them. (These last being precisely the kind of people who are unlikely to consider signing up for a formal course of study but who are most likely to benefit from hearing even some of an imaginative talk addressing the program as a whole.)

I won’t criticise the replacement event – it’s just one part of a larger program of study offered by the concert presenter in collaboration with a local educational institution – but I fear this sends some of the wrong messages. It says “private and closed”, that an enriching pre-concert event “isn’t for you”, and – most troubling of all at this point in history – that classical music is all about formal study instead of enriching entertainment. That worries me a lot.

Send in the live-twitterers

Previously on Thomasina…
“This isn’t to say that someone who undertakes to live-tweet a performance might not have a role to play. But it is a role.”

Assuming it could be done with courtesy, why would you set out to tweet a performance in real time?

As a form of personal note-taking? – Pen and paper is actually much quicker and less disruptive to all, including the note-taker.

As a way of sharing an experience and discussing it with others? – Sure, but then why not at interval or afterwards, which is when we normally gather our ideas and share them with others.

As a form of citizen reportage? – Well… there just might be something in that.

The other day, @DarrynKing (real name, Darryn King; profession, entertainment journalist) live-tweeted the Sydney production of West Side Story (hashtag #wss). If you go look at these tweets – which is easier said than done since it was on 15 July and twitter is the most ephemeral of media – you don’t get the sense of them coming from an average Joe in the audience. At one point Darryn was talking of wearing all black and lurking in the wings, or even tweeting from the pit. (Sometimes these things boil down to where you can get decent reception.)

He was very well-prepared. And over the two-and-a-half hours the #wss feed included backstage insights, commentary on the performance, slang definitions, pop quizzes drawn from the lyrics, wry plot summaries, musical observations, witty expressions of enthusiasm, meta moments (“If Tony had Twitter he’d be like ‘Maria Maria Maria Maria Maria Maria Maria Maria Maria Maria’”) and even some good advice (“Don’t do it, Maria. Let this endless cycle of violence and great dance numbers come to an end”).

For someone to live-tweet a show and come up with something worth following, a few things are needed: access (not everyone gets to sit in on the general rehearsal, or find a corner in an orchestra pit, or watch the performers warm up before the show); some fairly thorough knowledge and preparation; and skill in rapidly formulating an entertaining commentary that will make sense to someone who isn’t there.

You could be describing the requirements of a traditional arts critic. Or a radio sports commentator.

And what does anyone get out of it? Right now it’s novel, so there’s a public relations benefit. When (if?) live-tweeting becomes commonplace – in the way that arts criticism or cricket on the radio is commonplace – then it will simply become another way of sharing a performance beyond the doors of the auditorium and giving a taste of the event in real time to those who can’t or won’t be there. Time will tell whether twitter is a good medium for this, and whether the effort will be worth it.

What does the live-twitterer get out of it? Potentially a great deal: knowledge, awareness, access, insight, and all the benefits that come from choosing to focus on a performance with the specific purpose of communicating its details and flavour to others.

But the exercise also represents a lot of work – it’s far more than a few idle tweets from a good night out. As I said, you could be describing the experience of a critic, or the broadcast presenter, or the operator of the camera for a webstream, or the surtitle operator. The live-twitterer will, by necessity, be deeply involved in what’s going on, but they won’t necessarily be sharing in the experience the creators intend for the audience.

They’re not free to simply put down their mobile device, forget about reporting, and weep or laugh or listen in awe. They’re playing a role.

Postscript…

Darryn has posted his own reactions to the experience, which I chose not to read before writing my own post.  This was interesting: “That’s the thing. The live tweet itself turned into performance, and arguably my performance, for much of it, was more important than the performance taking place onstage. Heck, I could have written much of what I did listening to the cast recording at home (somewhat more comfortably). But that wouldn’t have been nearly as fun, would it? If it worked, it was the idea, of the illusion, of shared experience that made it work.”

In which I get on the sat-nav soapbox

Tonight I left the CBD in a cab. The destination was a prominent intersection on a major arterial road. A good driver will simply ask if I want to take the CityWest Link or George Street/Broadway to get out of the city. Late at night there’s not much to choose between them, but it’s manners to ask.

This guy, though, began looking for the intersection on his GPS sat-nav. This did not inspire confidence; I said I’d direct him. Even then, he managed to take a totally illogical wrong turning at one point. I can see why he wanted the sat-nav.

Last year I needed to go from the ABC in Ultimo to Circular Quay – one end of the CBD to the other. No local driver should need to look that up. You’d think.

So I got in, I gave my destination: Circular Quay. The driver began looking up his sat-nav. Under S. I got out.

This is becoming more and more common. Which suggests that testing for taxi drivers is nowhere near as stringent as it used to be. But it’s more alarming than that. Instead of that mental overview of the city and all its major routes, only occasionally needing passenger directions or to consult a map when the address is obscure, taxi driver “knowledge” – such as it is – is being reduced to a bunch of linear directions from one place to another, most of which they apparently have to look up anew each time.

What’s ironic, as I learned from this fascinating New Yorker article from 2006, is that the newfangled sat-nav operates on an incredibly ancient principle.

The writer, Nick Paumgarten, presents the idea that maps developed from being fairly primitive affairs in which “navigation” basically meant following an itinerary, to the sophisticated maps we now have, where navigation means assessing space and making decisions. Here’s the essential bit:

To offer some perspective, [Jim Akerman] retrieved, from a vault within the vault, one of the library’s oldest and most precious maps, a so-called Portolan chart of the Mediterranean, dating to 1456. It showed the sea’s entire coastline, with hundreds of ports labelled in the manner of stations on a railroad map, the names neatly lined up parallel to one another, in the order in which one would encounter them if one were sailing along the coast.

“The tension between these two modes of navigating goes back to these maps,” he said. “The itinerary represents space as one experiences it on the ground. A map like this has that element, but it starts to introduce the notion that you can conceive of it as a larger unit. It’s a God’s-eye view, which puts you in charge of navigating through space. This is the origin of the notion that you can pull yourself away from the world and see it from above.”

The irony is that centuries later, when we have perfected the God’s-eye map and become conversant with it, we have, in the thrall of technology, turned back to the ancient way: the itinerary and the strip map. OnStar and MapQuest zero in on the information that’s relevant to reaching your destination. “They close down your choices and give you a route,” Akerman said.

This, I think, is why I feel so uncomfortable driving with someone who’s relying on the dulcet instructions from their GPS (especially if I’m paying them!). They’ve entrusted their knowledge, their overview and their judgement to something else. Give me a map anyday.

Theatre-goers, a comparison

Theatre-goers are younger (slightly), they seem to be more hip and often better dressed, and – this is the important part – at interval they are 96.3 per cent more likely to be talking about the actual play.

Postscript…

This is really just a prelude to me waxing lyrical about how much I loved loved loved Long Day’s Journey into Night, an act which must be postponed since it’s seven minutes to pumpkin hour.

Live-tweeting and getting into the gig

My corner of the twittersphere has been abuzz this morning. The topics fleeting by: the lamentable editorial omission of any musical representatives from the weekend’s article on twitter in the arts, the state of arts journalism generally and its apparent promotional/PR focus, and tweeting during performances.

It would take me hours to compress my thoughts on tweeting during performances into 140 characters (or even 280) and I don’t have the time. So…

First, this isn’t about the arts using twitter outside the performance time/space or using it as part of the performance – that’s another story, and at times quite an entertaining one. (#operaplot anybody?)

It’s about the matter of audience members tweeting during theatrical and concert performances.

And I’ll be honest. I actually can’t do it. Not while the performance is going on.

I do tweet during interval as well as immediately before/after performances. At concerts I’m often doing that in a vaguely official capacity as @sso_notes. Very occasionally (mostly during long stage moves) I’ve tweeted between pieces.

Here’s my rationale: I only tweet at those points in the performance where it would be undistracting, and natural, to talk.

But it’s not really good manners that motivates me so much as pure selfishness. I simply don’t want to miss anything. And if what I’m doing is likely to mildly distract someone nearby, then it’s absolutely certain that I am, myself, being distracted to be the point that I will have missed a minute or two of the performance – a minute or two that can’t be reclaimed.

As everyone is finally beginning to realise, multitasking is a furphy. Even for girls. In a concert there’s usually so much to pay attention to and to hold in memory that I’m lucky if I can scribble an illegible word on my program in the darkness. Plays/operas/ballets are much the same. If someone tells me they can look at a screen, formulate and type a concise idea for public consumption and remain fully aware of what’s going on during those 50 to 120 seconds, I will happily tell them they’re deluded. Of course, if the performance is really boring…but let’s not go there. 

Actually, let’s do go there. Because my ideal performance in the concert hall or theatre is one that's so compelling and engrossing, so riveting, that it doesn’t even occur to me to tweet while it’s taking place. If my mind is wandering in the direction of epigrammatic things to tweet about the performance then that’s a very bad sign for the performance.

I’ve also tried tweeting during verbal presentations (e.g. during TEDxSydney and during my orchestra’s pre-concert talks). This is slightly easier. Perhaps all those years of taking notes during university lectures taught me something, and a well-constructed verbal presentation usually incorporates sufficient repetition, exploration and summary of ideas that there are opportunities to “take notes” in one way or another.

But I think there’s another difference: when I tweet from a talk I’m mostly tweeting content, an idea I’ve just heard, a pithy quote. It’s more like transcription. If I were to attempt to tweet during a musical/theatrical performance I’d be tweeting my own response/reactions/assessments. That’s a more distracting activity which, in some ways, takes you out of the receptive mode that a performance demands of you and into a critical one. Criticism is a marvellous thing, but if you’re not really receiving because you’re trying to write and publish a critique in the moment then…?

In any case, it’s been my experience that people have far more interesting things to say about a performance when it’s had even a short while to sink in. For example, for (too) many years my ballet subscription placed me immediately in front of a trio of ladies who insisted on verbalising their reactions during the performances. “Hasn’t she got lovely arms,” was a typical comment. Or, my favourite, “He’s very manly looking, isn’t he?” They drove me to distraction and were the targets of more than a few glares in the darkness. But if you happened to eavesdrop on them between acts it was a different story: the level of the observations immediately jumped.

Anyhow, I’m going to leave this post with the wise words of youth. Just recently my nephew went to hear Karnivool in concert, and he wrote about it afterwards. Nice pictures too. Here’s the telling line:

I feel like I probably spent too much time taking photos and not enough time getting into the gig (you live and learn I guess), but regardless I still enjoyed myself a hell of a lot.

Substitute “live-tweeting” for “taking photos” and I think you’ve got it. You won’t enjoy yourself less, but there’s a good possibility that you won’t be “getting into the gig” to the extent you would’ve liked.

…just like anyone else

A few days ago The Times pulled together “the cream of British talent” to suggest how they would transform the traditional audience for a new concert. Sorry, Freudian slip there: “how they would transform the traditional concert for a new audience.”

As the deliciously irreverent Proper Discord says, “The responses range from visionary to downright retarded.” Personally, I’m with the commenter who cringes at any headline containing “to the masses”. Bloody condescending indeed.

But what really jumped out at me was a comment from pianist James Rhodes. It’s not new thinking, I’ve read the same comment hundreds of times before, it’s practically become an unthinking cliché devoid of meaning, like “relevant”. But for some reason, the context of his remarks brought to the surface an idea that’s been niggling at the back of my brain for ages.

Anyway, here’s what he said:

“Musicians should be seen as just like anyone else.”

The first thing I wonder is if what James Rhodes is proposing does actually show us musicians as “just like anyone else.” Or does it in fact emphasise that musicians are not just like anyone else at all?

Which is not a problem in the slightest, because the second thing I wonder is whether audiences (regulars or newbies) really do want musicians to be seen as “just like anyone else” – on stage and in performance at least. Really. Is that what we want? I don’t think so.

When I go to the theatre or the opera or the ballet or a concert, I most emphatically do not want to see performers who are just like anyone else. I want to see and hear artists who represent the best in their field, I want to be wowed by tremendous performances, to be moved. I don’t want ordinary; I want extraordinary. And I don’t particularly want the performers breaking the fourth wall with a view to showing me how “ordinary” they really are or to tell me what it all means to them. That would spoil the magic. With good reason we never ask this of other artists in the performing arts (the dancers, the singers, the actors), but it’s continually being suggested of classical musicians that they should do this –  in performances.

[Just to be clear: I’m not talking about all the various things that performing artists can do, outside their performances, which might reveal their personalities, foibles, passions and so on, this is about what happens in concerts.]

But let’s get tangible. Here’s just one example (and it’s something that audiences complain about):

When a musician turns to their stand partner and looks glum instead of acknowledging enthusiastic applause, they’re showing themselves to be just like any one of us in the audience – it’s the equivalent of rolling your eyes to a colleague as you walk out of a long and frustrating meeting, which, needless to say, has never really taken off as paid entertainment.

In this and countless other ways, classical musicians already show themselves to be just like anyone else. Of all the performing artists, they’re actually way ahead in this game of demonstrating ordinariness on stage. We see them and we can tell if they’re reserved or outgoing, we can often tell if they’re in good spirits or not, we get to hear orchestral musicians warm up in our presence (and whether you love it or loathe it that’s a very personal and “exposed” thing to be doing), and it can be very easy to tell what musicians think of the performance that’s just taken place, whether it’s the exhausted, glum look or the excited stand-rapping for a soloist they admire. There’s a remarkable degree of candour present in classical concerts already.

Now I’m not entirely disagreeing with James Rhodes. Music deserves to be shared, absolutely. Concert audiences don’t want to be lectured to. Audiences much prefer for performers to have stagecraft, to use their body language to acknowledge the audience and to invite them into a musical world, even without necessarily saying a single word. It’s a post-concert thing, so strictly outside the scope, but I think it’s great that he goes to the foyer bar afterwards to chat with patrons: I’d just love to see more venues keep the foyer bar open afterwards, punkt.

[However, I do think it’s ok if the audience is down here and the performer is up there: it means I’ll be able to see and hear him. Small thing, that. And I am cross that he perpetuates the tired old line about bad program notes. Come on, people: there are well-written program notes that support the artist’s vision; if presenters publish unhelpful or irrelevant ones that’s not a reason to diss the form altogether.]

But the nub of it is that James Rhodes belongs to a growing group that likes to talk [from the stage] about what the music means to him. So let’s think about that. I’d say, if he does that well and in a way that’s illuminating, then this is actually another way in which he demonstrates that he is not like anyone else. Because relatively few people – including more than a share of performing musicians – have a gift for writing or speaking about music in a way that’s meaningful or revealing. It’s genuinely difficult to do. If a musician can do it well, then it becomes something extraordinary, and a part of the performance, of the stagecraft. (I won’t say “act”, but that would be another way of thinking about it.)

I would also say, that for most of us in the audience, if we enjoy the experience of a musician speaking from the stage it’s not because it’s enabled us to regard them as ordinary or “like us”, but because it’s been a well-crafted, enjoyable and illuminating element in the performance. It will have revealed not just something of the performer’s personality and approach but something of the music itself. Above all, it will have helped us do the thing we came for, which is to listen and to really hear. [Of my recent experiences the Diotima Quartet talking about Ligeti achieved this beautifully.] If talk from the stage leaves us thinking of the musician as just like anyone else then chances are it’s being done badly (after all, doesn’t everyone quail at the thought of public speaking?), and it almost certainly won’t have made for a better concert.

So let’s get off this cracked record of an idea that classical musicians will somehow enjoy more success in the modern world if they appear to be just like anyone else – in performances. They’re not like anyone else and I don’t think we want them to be. If they’re going to talk from the stage, something which requires its own artistry, the question has to be: Will this make for a better concert?

Offline insights

On Saturday afternoon one of Australia’s more prominent composers was booed at a concert. Not as a composer but as a representative of the world’s largest presenter of chamber music.

Why? Said presenter has stopped offering pre-concert talks. There were people in the audience who were pissed off by that and I think I sympathise.

Of course, I’ll say straight off that I can sympathise with the presenter too, because they tour their ensembles to cities around the country. Where I can hire one speaker to talk about a program three or four times, they’ve been hiring five or so different speakers to talk about the same program once each. The standard has been variable, they say.

[But you know, I’m not so sure that admitting the variable standard in public is good form. It’s tantamount to announcing from the stage that some of your speakers aren’t any good. I’m sorry, but if your speakers are good enough for you to have hired them, the least you can do is not implicitly defame them. And as the rationale for an unpopular decision it doesn’t hold much weight with those audiences who’ve been enjoying the excellent talks. Anyway, moving right along…]

I also sympathise with the fact that some venues can’t accommodate the audience numbers that a strong talks program deserves. A talk venue might be packed to standing room, but if the capacity is 80 or so people then the audience reach is curtailed right there.

And I’m hugely sympathetic to the desire to reach a wider audience in flexible ways by doing stuff online – enthusiastic, actually. This is excellent: it extends what you do to audiences with different expectations, different lifestyles, and different ways of seeking information.

But mostly I’m sympathising with the audience in this instance, and here’s why:

The loss of the pre-concert talks hasn’t really been compensated for. I don’t mean that many who would have attended the live talks can’t access the online alternative (although that’s true), or that the video format isn’t very conducive to being enjoyed as close to the concert as possible (i.e. while travelling), I’m referring to the fact that nothing’s been offered that fulfils the same all-important function.

A suite of videos (Online Concert Talks they’re called) is the designated replacement. The official claim is that they offer “a deeper dimension to the concert experience”, but in fact they don’t have much to do with the concert experience at all, being brief compartmentalised expositions of individual works. Such things can be useful, but if you enjoy pre-concert talks, you’ll know that’s not what you rock up half an hour early to hear.

A good talk is part of the evening’s, or afternoon’s, entertainment [heresy alert]. As well as aspiring to the same level of imagination and flair as the art form it introduces, it provides a transition from daily flurry into the kind of concentration that music demands, and an aural prelude that sets your mind on trains of thought that really can enhance your experience of the concert. Videos that you must watch ahead of time at your PC can’t do this; a downloadable audio format that you can listen to in your car might come closer.

A good talk isn’t a set of verbal program notes; it encourages you to use your ears, to make comparisons, to listen for relationships in places you weren’t expecting them, and to really pay attention to the music you’re about to hear.

And above all, a good pre-concert talk is about the concert, that is, it helps you get a handle on the program as a whole and appreciate the programmers’ vision. After all, anyone can swot up on the individual pieces and the lives of composers with the help of Professor Google, iTunes and the public library. (Furthermore, plenty of concert-goers do exactly that. And they purchase recordings in advance, as a Fish insider has told me.) But one of the reasons people go to concerts, apart from the immediacy of live performance, is because we want to enjoy the results of the artists’ and programmers’ curatorial efforts – because we hope that their selection of repertoire with its contrasts and balances, internal links, alignments and unexpected insights will be part of the pleasure. And only the concert presenter – via its published materials and its speakers – can explain and justify and illuminate that. That’s where the insights (as opposed to information) come from.

All of which is why the Online Concert Talks in their current format aren’t going to satisfy those talk-goers, even were they to be sent to them on DVD or screened in a room before the concert. I didn’t boo, but my heart went out to those who did.

I’d like to propose a toast…

All the hoo-ha about Men at Work’s “Down Under” and its reference to the “Kookaburra” round has reminded me of another flute riff.

Listen carefully at 2'01".

Whose publisher will be suing orchestrator Jonathan Tunick, and which symphony has been quoted?

A [long] postscript…

Although I didn’t follow the Kookaburra/Down Under case especially thoroughly or with anything approaching legal expertise, I read enough to find the result disturbing.

First, many musical people didn’t notice the similarity until it was pointed out to them – I know I didn’t. One of the reasons for this is that the melodic idea in question is fragmented and combined with other motifs, another is that it’s so fleeting. [Sorry Dr Ford, the reason school children don’t sing “Kookaburra” at the tempo of “Down Under” has nothing to do with their “age and ability” and everything to do with their good musical instincts – the round would be ridiculous and unsatisfying if sung that fast.]

Another, much more important, reason for the melodic similarity passing unnoticed is that the harmonic context is quite different. Not only is there a change from major to minor tonality [which is not the same as  transposing something to a new key in the same mode, even a mug like me without perfect pitch can hear that], but the chords in relation to the home key and the harmonic rhythm in relation to the melody are different in each case. We do hear and recognise themes in their harmonic contexts.

Of course, just because a quotation remains largely unnoticed at first, including (it seems) by its performers, doesn’t make it more or less right. I recognise that. My point is that the melodic similarity went unnoticed because the motif was so radically changed in the process of incorporating it into the song, apparently to the extent that the creator of the riff didn’t register at first what he’d done.  So at what point does copying stop and originality begin?

For example, the first six notes of opening theme  in Mahler’s Blumine follow the same contour (in the same key) as the big tune in the finale of Brahms’ First Symphony (about 8 minutes in). So is that theft? Was Mahler even aware of the similarity before they pointed it out on Spicks and Specks? (Possibly not, although some have proposed this as a reason for him removing the movement from his own first symphony before it was published.) Should Simrock have sued? At least one of my colleagues dismisses the similarity as an inconsequential coincidence, yet it’s much closer than the similarity between “Kookaburra” and the “Down Under” flute riff.

A better comparison, perhaps, is Stravinsky, who used the music hall tune “Elle avait un' jambe en bois” in Petrushka, mistakenly thinking it was a folk tune in the public domain. He ended up having to pay a royalty to Mr Emile Spencer every time Petrushka was performed. But that seems fair: Stravinsky uses the tune in full and in a recognisable way. You could say he appropriates it. I’m not sure you could say that of Men at Work and “Kookaburra”.

My completely inexpert response is that a tiny quotation (tiny in absolute terms, not the proportional terms the lawyers are using†) that is so thoroughly reworked and adapted into the fabric of a song becomes a fresh idea of its own. Any relationship to the original – to the extent that this is conscious or even recognised – is one of tribute, not theft. A quotation like this in no way diminishes or detracts from the original nor does it establish itself as a replacement for the original song (which might then have deprived the copyright owner of income). That’s why the decision seems to me both unfair and a blow to creativity.

† Part of the problem in the Kookaburra/Down Under case is that what would have been 4 per cent if quoted from a typical pop song (and maybe 0.05 per cent of a 19th-century symphony), turns out to be 25 per cent of a four-bar singing round. Suddenly four beats of music is a “substantial” as well as substantive portion.

A post postscript…

Did anyone else notice that iTunes is selling “Down Under” for AU$2.19 while all the other songs on the Men at Work albums are the regular AU$1.69? Curious.

Outsourcing and the common program note

Responding to my Mahler antidote post, Alex of the View from C Reserve offered to get me started on my postscript. As it turns out, not a postscript but a fresh post.

Alex asks why an Australian orchestra would outsource their program notes to an overseas writer

“…when Australia is practically bursting at the seams with unemployed musicologists (and other writers-about-music) who would jump at the chance to write their notes for them.”

In my own corner of the scene there are two main instances when I would publish the work of an overseas writer, “outsource” in other words:

The first is when the writer is an acknowledged expert in a particular composer or area of repertoire and I want to draw on that scholarship. To give a hypothetical example, Henry-Louis de la Grange on Mahler, and a real one, Peter Laki on Bartók. By doing this, I’m bringing to my readers an international level of expertise.

I’m doing the exact same thing, incidentally, when I commission writing from a local writer who is an internationally acknowledged expert, say, Larry Sitsky on Scriabin, or Richard Charteris on Gabrieli. [By the way, SYO, that’s the “genius of Gabrieli” you want on your postcard, not Gabrielli.] The writer’s location is immaterial, it’s the specialist expertise that counts. Going the other way, you could imagine an overseas presenter wanting to commission an Australian like Graeme Skinner to write on Sculthorpe, or Charteris on Gabrieli for that matter.

The second reason applies to certain obscure and rarely performed works, where it might be difficult to justify commissioning an original program note for what could be one publication. If there’s an existing note (in a CD booklet or from another presenter’s program) that’s in a suitable style, then sometimes it makes sense to seek a reprint from the writer, regardless of where they live. That’s fairly rare for me, though.

But there’s one scenario, by far the most common one, where I couldn’t even imagine looking overseas for an annotator. That’s the “standard” program or work requiring the treatment of a generalist. There are so many fine writers about music in Australia (and covering pretty much any style or approach you might be seeking) that there’s really no need to look further afield. Especially not if you’re a presenter that receives funding from Australian taxpayers and which therefore carries a responsibility to nurture the talent (performing, composing, administrative, etc.) that exists here.

But before you accuse me of being parochial, here are some other reasons why local writers are better (wherever your “local” might be):

• A local writer, especially if they attend the presenter’s concerts, will be more attuned to that audience and the presenter’s personality as a public organisation, and should be able to fine-tune their approach accordingly. (For example, I always aim make points of connection that are distinctive to the audience I know will be reading the notes and their likely experience of the concert in question.) It’s a good sign when you receive a note that would have to be edited before any other presenter could use it.
• A local writer is more likely to be familiar with your programming over the long haul, and with other concert activity in your city, and therefore able to make helpful links with repertoire or experiences your audience might have encountered before.
• If that local writer is also an employee (by which I mean an administrator or a performer, or a freelancer who is very closely involved with the organisation), then you acquire the benefits of a writer who’s truly connected with the programming and the artistic vision of their own organisation. They’ll have been involved at some level in bringing to fruition the concert they’re writing about, or at least witnessed the process, which gives the potential for communicating insights and adopting an approach that the reader will never get from a reference book.

That last point is why I’m glad Alex made the aside: “and other writers-about-music”. I’m not so sure that it’s always musicologists, unemployed or otherwise, who make the very best writers of concert program notes, but rather those who have experience with putting on concerts. It’s the Australian writers-about-music – who often do have a musicological education, for sure – who do us proud and whom Australian presenters should be cultivating.

A piano recital and some unnecessary minimalism

On Friday the 13th I had the good luck to hear a piano recital presented by City Recital Hall. Curiously, the only publicity I’d noticed for it was an e-newsletter I received, which sent me diving for my credit card. Advertising via the conventional outlets was either incredibly discreet or simply non-existent. But maybe the people at Angel Place know what they’re doing: when you’re presenting the kind of artist who impresses not through glamour and hype but through commanding pianism and profound musicality, perhaps the word will simply get around. In any case, although the upper gallery wasn’t opened, the rest of the hall was respectably full, and not just on the keyboard side.

The artist in question was Stephen Kovacevich – and I confess to being a fan. In recent years I’ve been known to put my hand up for interstate pre-concert talks on the grounds that he will be the soloist. Which points, among other things, to the fact that a Sydney appearance was long overdue. (I think his last visit here was for the concert in 2005 when Yannick Nézet-Séguin jumped for Maazel.)

He was playing Bach, Schumann and Beethoven, with the Diabelli Variations as the program culmination and highlight. From where I sat the recital got better and better as it went along, by the time I’d heard the tenderly shaped Schumann and the muscular conception of the Beethoven I was even more a fan than I was when it began. But in saying that I’m also admitting that I found the Bach strangely disappointing.

Who am I to fault a great musician and pianist like Stephen Kovacevich? Well perhaps I can’t when, as a colleague said, his Bach convinced on its own terms. It was intensely musical – true – but it didn’t quite convince me on Bach’s terms. A French ouverture in D major: this alone calls for a more dashing interpretation, one that calls to mind harpsichord flourishes and dancing articulations even as it exploits the singing potential of the piano. What we heard was more ruminative, almost too private in view of the rhetorical clues offered by key and musical gestures. 

But ultimately this is a quibble: I’d happily rock up to hear the program all over again.

And that would be?

Johann Sebastian Bach (1685–1750)
Partita IV in D, BWV828
Ouverture
Allemande
Courante
Aria
Sarabande
Menuet
Gigue

Robert Schumann (1810–1856)
Kinderszenen (Scenes from Childhood), Op.15
Von fremden Ländern und Menschen (Of Foreign Lands and People)

Kuriose Geschichte (A Curious Story)

Hasche-Mann (Blind Man’s Bluff)

Bittendes Kind (Pleading Child)

Glückes genug (Happy Enough)

Wichtige Begebenheit (An Important Event)

Träumerei (Dreaming)

Am Kamin (At the Fireside)

Ritter vom Steckenpferd (Knight of the Hobbyhorse)

Fast zu ernst (Almost too serious)

Fürchtenmachen (Frightening)

Kind im Einschlummern (Child Falling Asleep)

Der Dichter spricht (The Poet Speaks)

Ludwig van Beethoven (1770–1827)
33 Variations on a waltz by Anton Diabelli, Op.120
[And here you can imagine, if you will, 33 lines of tempo indications, which I’m not going to type out here.]

I’ve taken the trouble to list the program in detail because the presenter didn’t. The program sheet, such as it was, looked like this.

Now, believe it or not, I have no problem with a simple program sheet, listing the pieces, sans notes. But when that sheet contains minimalist publicity titles and nothing more about the music I get cross: that a major venue in a major city presenting a major artist should so neglect its audience is embarrassing as well one mammoth missed opportunity.

When there are no program notes it’s even more essential that the program listing contain all the necessary details. So much can be gleaned from these: the key gives advance orientation of mode (and in baroque music, character); composer dates help place the work historically; opus numbers suggest when in the composer’s career the work was written; a formal title will convey useful facts such as the kind of theme and the number of variations; translations are a courtesy; and, above all, movement headings aid navigation as the music progresses and, in the case of a piece like Kinderszenen, are absolutely essential to appreciating what the composer is doing and following the emotional journey.

Perhaps it was thought that the audience would be almost entirely piano connoisseurs, familiar with these three works from the standard repertoire and so not needing that kind of detail in their “order of service”. But I disagree. I’ve studied the Bach as a piano student, I’ve played the Schumann for pleasure and I’ve written (at length) about the Beethoven, and still I would have appreciated having a detailed program listing. No one’s memory is perfect, and in the Schumann I could put names to only three of the miniatures. Meanwhile, what about the poor soul who might not be familiar the music?!

In any case, piano recital audiences in Sydney are more inclined to buy program books than nearly any other kind of concert audience – clearly they seek more information, not less. So if there’s one kind of concert where it’s worth going to the trouble of publishing a “proper” program it’s the kind that took place on Friday night.

Again

So I wonder… will we be hearing little Prokofiev encores after each of our Mahler symphonies next year? 

What would you put after the Symphony of a Thousand, for example? Something short, you’d hope. Has anyone arranged a Vision Fugitive for orchestra and large choir?

Maintaining appearances

There’s an interesting syndrome going around right now: it seems to be a circulatory problem as it results in cold feet, which in turn leads to the late changing of concert promotional titles. So tonight I heard “The Girl with the Golden Flute”, according to the subs brochure and the program book, or “Tchaikovsky Serenade”, going by the posters and recent advertising (not to mention the tumultuous applause this work received).

Alternatively, it could have been called The Girl with the Purple Frock, the said frock being a simple but elegantly shaped number in a lovely shade of royal purple. More’s the pity then that its wearer felt the need to keep tugging at the top of the bodice as if she feared it would fall down. I’m sure Chanel said something about how you should be able to put on your clothes, look in the mirror and then forget all about them. Goes double for stage wear.

While I’m on a clothing theme, the orchestra was decked out in new outfits which threaten to be selectively rather than universally flattering. I’m unconvinced about the capri pants for the women (exposed ankles work only on long and slender limbs), and there’s no agreement on exactly where on the leg the hem of the overdress should hit: it seems a bit too short on the taller women, oddly long on the shorter women. The men’s overshirts haven’t changed much that I could see, but are possibly more tailored – a good thing.

This program had always included an element of uncertainty: the idea was that in each concert you’d hear either the Vine flute concerto or one by Serebrier, together with another concerto by Izarra. Somewhere along the way Izarra was dropped from the concerts altogether and so we got both Vine and Serebrier. Or so it seemed.

A flute-playing friend who knows the Vine told me at interval that we hadn’t heard the whole piece, only (I think this was it) the third movement preceded by a portion of the second. The reference to structure in the SMH review suggested that the whole concerto had been performed on the Saturday at least. So maybe there was growing concern about the program being too long because, as so often happens with commissions, the new work by Peteris Vasks had turned out to be 25 minutes instead of the expected 10. Not that I was complaining on that point, Vasks being a favourite of mine and the music being really effective. (Now his is a flute concerto I’d like to play.)

When, after interval, the soloist came on with just her golden flute in hand, I began to have doubts about the Serebrier, which apparently features the alto flute in its fourth movement tango. It’s even called “Flute Concerto with Tango”; I’m guessing what we heard was just the Flute Concerto. And as the program annotator pointed out to me later, this made a nonsense of at least some of what had been published about the piece.

Left unexplained, discrepancies between program book and performance always bother me. And that’s not just a personal aversion to “mistakes”. If someone is genuinely trying to use the program as a navigational guide then they are either going to be misled or left confused if what they read doesn’t match what they’re hearing. I don’t think it’s too much for performers to announce from the stage (especially when they’re good at it) where changes have been made, perhaps even why, but at least what.

There was a little encore for solo flute. Apparently it was from Sweden. The composer’s name (spoken over laughter) sounded a little like Alfvén, the music not so much. In its modal qualities it reminded me more of those recorder variations that Jakob van Eyck wrote to entertain people strolling in the Utrecht cemetery (a popular pastime in the 16th century), only a whole lot more showy. The applause only confirmed that we’ve lost none of the pleasure we instinctively feel in admiring a virtuoso performance. Faster, Higher, Louder – it works for music too.

But no surprises for guessing that everyone was going to love the Tchaikovsky Serenade for strings best of all. It’s gorgeous, adorable music – made to be loved. The performance itself had an uncommon vigour that was instantly appealing. You could see (literally) some of the things that make a standing chamber orchestra so very attractive to an audience: that moment in the Elegie when four first violins angled their bodies in towards each other for a perfect, muted unison giving a visual complement to the aural effect; or when individual musicians leant across the ensemble, sharing melodies with counterparts in other sections. This stuff isn’t just for show, but it’s part of what makes a performance one. And when that happens you don’t really mind what name they give it.

Encores

There are critics who’ve been known to scurry out of a concert hall before the encores, lest this – and the audience response – somehow influence their assessment. Or the rationale might be that only the formal, planned portion of the concert is worthy of review. Others stick around, but might choose to make no mention of the encores.

That’s wrong, I think. Like them or not, encores are a part of the performance and invariably they are a planned element in the concert, even if they’re not publicised as such.

More important: encores can be terribly revealing – in choice and interpretation.

Orchestral encores are a rare treat in Sydney, and usually they are a treat. But last week I heard a couple that were no treat at all, despite being well chosen. In both cases, if I’d been assigning “points”, the concert’s score would have been lowered considerably by the encores, much in the way that a perfect 10 on the beam is squandered when the gymnast fails to stick her landing at the end. Or perhaps a better analogy would be to imagine the gymnast sticking her landing but then sticking her tongue out at the judges.

Which is kind of what happened. It almost made me wonder whether there mightn’t be a fundamental antipathy to encores behind it all (and later I heard that this is more or less the case). To which all I can say is, if you dislike them that much, stick to your guns and don’t play them; if you are going to play them, honour the music and the audience.

I’ll have to admit right now to being in a minority. Whether through genuine pleasure or misguided politeness, there were close on 2,500 people heaping up the applause while I and a handful of others sat numb. But what for?

On the first night it was a Brahms Hungarian dance so distorted, so grotesque, you’d swear Dali had gotten at it. Through the centuries – CPE Bach, Chopin, Debussy – we’ve had clear instructions and beautiful models for how a stylish and musical rubato works. You play with tempo on the surface, sure, but without ever losing sight of the underlying pulse; the rhythmic logic is always apparent, the integrity of the music assured. But this performance began with the beat pulled around like taffy, to the point of smearing the pulse altogether. (The score calls for none of this, by the way – there is a pause in the first bar, and shortly after that a three-bar slowing followed by a return to the initial lively(!) tempo, but that’s pretty much the extent of the liberties Brahms expects.)

It’s concert music, I know, but you couldn’t even have imagined dancing to this. It sounded like simple showing off: a demonstration of how far a phenomenal technique and an ensemble of fine musicians will allow you to stretch and contract the beat. Alas, the result had nothing with the composer’s intentions to do. Give me a less impressive technique and the humility of true musicianship any day. And I wish the review had mentioned it, because observations such as this one about the beautiful performance of the opening work – “an overriding strategy to carefully realise the composer’s precisely notated intentions” – were completely contradicted by what went unreported at the end.

Later in the week the pain was short and swift. Perhaps a little too swift: I wasn’t sure I’d ever heard the Trépak from Nutcracker skated quite so quickly. But on arriving home I was reminded that Gergiev’s recording takes it nearly as fast, only he understands that you have to give men (a) time to make those magnificent Cossack jumps, and (b) some downbeats to propel them into the air. This is a Russian dance after all, and it needs some virility. Again, it was all the more disappointing given that the opening work (Rachmaninoff’s Isle of the Dead) had been given a performance that was not only impressively shaped but filled with obvious affection and respect.

Perhaps reviewers should pay more attention to encores and hold them to the same artistic standard as the main program, then presenters, performers (and audiences too) might be less inclined to regard them merely as essential crowd-pleasing fluff.  

Beethoven numbers and the mind of the people

I was responding to a comment from yesterday’s post and was reminded of the Omniscient Mussel’s exercise in Beethoven numbers. What had begun as an informal personality test (the speedy, musical alternative to the Myer-Briggs) became the source for a statistically invalid but entertaining assessment of the popularity of Beethoven symphonies. (This was in response to a post from Ben, the Classical Convert, who had been examining the view frequencies of Karajan’s Beethoven symphonies on YouTube.)

At question in yesterday’s discussion was the ascendency of Beethoven 9 and whether it would score the No.1 spot.

My reaction was “please no!” For all that I recognise the importance and significance of this particular Beethoven symphony, it’s not one that I ever feel the urge to listen to and I would be unlikely to pay to hear it in a concert. (The Seventh, on the other hand, I find irresistible; it appeals to my sensibilities and ways of responding to music. My Beethoven number, incidentally, is 736521489, allowing for small shifts in the internal rankings.)

As you’ll glean from my comment on Miss Mussel’s post, I suspect that we have a self-fulfilling prophecy going on with the Ninth. Concert promoters would perhaps like the Ninth to be “the one”, and so we’ve all been complicit in building a mythology around it. But I suspect that many in regular concert audiences actually prefer other Beethoven symphonies more, and I’m quite certain that most musicians prefer other Beethoven symphonies more (not because they’re jaded but because the other symphonies give greater satisfaction).

That said, in ABC Classic FM’s original Classic 100 (any genre) Beethoven 9 was the top ranked of any of the symphonies, at No.3. The Pastoral came next at No.6, after that the Eroica and the Fifth, way down at No.40 and No.42; the highest ranked non-Beethoven symphony was Mahler 5 at No.43. (Apparently we don’t like symphonies all that much.)

If this were our guide, then the top ten in the Classic 100 Symphony should be Beethoven 9, 3, 6, 3, 5, Mahler 5, Saint-Saëns’ Symphony with Organ, Dvořák’s New World Symphony, Mahler 2, and Mahler 8 and at No.10 Beethoven 7, would be the runner up and making the chances of my favourite reaching No.1 very slim indeed.

But interesting things can happen. At No.1 in that original survey was Mozart’s Clarinet Concerto – a well-deserved accolade for a sublime piece of music. The adagio from this concerto was also the top ranked “favourite Mozart moment” (or rather, “Which moment of Mozart’s music can’t you live without?” as the question was put). So you’d reasonably expect the Mozart Clarinet Concerto to be at the top – or at least in the top five – of the Classic 100 Concerto. Not so. The leaders there were Beethoven’s Emperor, Rachmaninoff Second Piano Concerto, Beethoven’s Violin Concerto, Bruch’s Violin Concerto No.1 (he wrote others, you know) and Elgar’s Cello Concerto. The poor Mozart Clarinet Concerto had been relegated to No.6, which wasn’t all that surprising unless you knew of its earlier triumphs.

And this is what makes me think that Beethoven 9’s original success won’t necessarily carry over to the Classic 100 Symphony. What listeners choose when they’re asked to focus on a particular genre may be quite different from their generalised favourite “piece of music” or “musical moment”. Perhaps narrowing things down, and comparing apples with apples, encourages us to be more objective, slightly less concerned with what simply moves our spirit or gives us pleasure (what we like) and slightly more concerned with concepts of “greatness” and the intrinsic value or importance of a work. Clearly what turned up as simply our favourite piece of music didn’t do so well when we make it part of a comparison of concertos. And perhaps the iconic and mythological power of the “Ode to Joy” – which is what I suspect many people were really voting for in that first survey – similarly won’t stand the test as we pronounce upon our favourite symphonies.

At least, says Thomasina wickedly, I hope not!

(An astute twitterer from the Melbourne choir scene has come to the conclusion that Beethoven’s Ninth will not be the No.1 symphony, since the MSO Chorus has not been booked for the concert in which the top symphony will be performed live in its entirety. This seems like a pretty smart as well as appealing conclusion.)

Twitter – doing much better akshully

Today there’s joy on twitter for two hundred or so of us (how mighty is the long tail).

Apropos of yesterday’s post, I’m delighted to report that there have been sightings of @ABCClassic100 using the #classic100 hashtag. Furthermore, they’re mixing things up a bit, interspersing the playlist tweets with  a bit more editorial commentary. The way for this to happen has been opened up in part by their posting a running list of the symphonies as a distinct item on the website. The existence of The List means there’s no longer a need to rely on a “clean” twitter feed to supply the playlist and thus there’s more scope for conversation. (There’s a maverick list being maintained as well, which also includes the performer details for each symphony.)

There are still no “@ replies” to be spotted, but that may be partly because the followers themselves have begun to rely primarily on the hashtag to sustain the generally very entertaining conversation, the whole of which can be seen by means of an advanced twitter search. In particular, we have been joined by @FoodPanda, a remarkably knowledgeable as well as hungry creature.

A phone call today sent me over to look at the Classic 100 message board, which I’d visited only fleetingly yesterday. What a contrast. Compared to the flexibility and immediacy of twitter, the humble message board (as a medium in general) seems like a dinosaur: rigidly hierarchical and ossified, its gems largely buried.

It set me thinking about the nature of communication and how the mould into which you pour a conversation shapes its character. [As someone pointed out to me a while back, you almost never encounter any genuine nastiness on twitter because its concision and its “exposed” nature seems to be conducive to positive rather than negative expression.] For example, the people following the Classic 100 on twitter seem more likely to respond to what they’re actually hearing in the music, and to embark on lively exchanges – they’re having fun. The message board, by contrast, is home for those who want to speculate at length about which symphonies will make the top 10 and so on – they all seem a bit more earnest. It’s an interesting theme but not one I have time to explore – at least not until that spring holiday arrives, at which point it will all be over!

Meanwhile, my fingers are crossed for Beethoven 7.

Twitter - ur doing it wrong

It’s been an interesting exercise following the ABC Classic FM’s “The Classic 100 Symphony” on twitter this weekend.

On the one hand it’s very convenient: I have heaps to do that precludes listening to other things (background or otherwise), so I can follow the countdown silently.

On the other hand, it’s revealing just how easy it is to misjudge in this kind of exercise. Let me count the ways:

1. ABC Classic FM has invited us all to follow on twitter but is not following a single person back, despite the fact that, as far as I can see, all 210+ followers are legitimate souls – not a social network marketer or purveyor of porn to be seen. We’re real people, Aunty; many are your colleagues or important people you’d know by name. Marshall McGuire just joined in, for example. But in any case, twitter is about conversations and that means following those who follow you (providing there is a shared interest, which in this case there is).

2. There is a hashtag: #classic100. Very good. But has the ABC Classic FM twitter feed ever once tweeted what this hashtag is and invited its followers to use it? No. Not once. Ah, it’s there on the website, you say. But not all of us on twitter will necessarily visit the website, and so will belatedly, if at all, glean the hashtag from others.

3. This is just a pedantic thing, but Aunty’s scribe needs to improve in the spelling department. Even if that means just being the tiny bit more careful in copying the information from the source. Haydyn, Askenenazy, Neilsen, Rogers (for Rodgers)… no doubt there’ll be more, and people are noticing.

4. It’s been suggested to me – by way of explaining the spelling errors – that the person behind @ABCClassic100 is some kind of IT coordinator, rather than someone with any real classical music knowledge. That would also go some way to explaining the complete lack of conversation in the thread (i.e. not a single “@ reply” to any of the 50+ messages that have been fondly sent in @ABCClassic100’s direction. (And “fond”, as in foolishly optimistic or naive, is the word.)

In any case, that’s a mistake. ABC Classic FM wouldn’t be the first organisation to think that because twitter is about social networking or “the internet” they need to put an IT-ish kind of person on the task. But in fact, twitter is just the medium. The minute you invite people to follow your countdown on twitter then you’re communicating (and, you’d hope, inviting engagement). So you want people behind the tweets who know the subject and can talk about it.

The other thing this suggests is that ABC Classic FM has been misled into thinking of twitter as just another “broadcast” (one-to-many) medium, instead of the cocktail party that it really is. Note to self: don’t invite @ABCClassicFM to the next party: they’ll just stand in a corner and shout updates at us from time to time. (Although… they would be handy for passing out the sorbets at regular intervals.)

Anyhow, this thing has a whole week to go – the joy of long symphonies, with mega brownie points given for the decision to broadcast complete works.

So here’s hoping ABC Classic FM can get the twitter presence working beautifully: put knowledgeable people behind the tweets; follow the followers; respond to them; use the hashtag from time to time to keep it in circulation – it’ll be great. Worried that all this newfound conversation will clutter up the list of symphonies? Easy, make a separate filtered search [ "No." from:ABCClassic100 ].

Postscript: If you’ve arrived at this post directly, please do read the sequel, Twitter – doing much better akshully.

From memory…

Toscanini and Furtwängler were known for conducting from memory, but K always used a score. He was asked, “Maestro, why do you use the score when these conductors do not?” To which K replied: “Because I can read music.”
[This story is told about both Knappertsbusch and Klemperer.]

I was taught piano in a way that gave me tremendous sight-reading skills (thank you, Bransby). To paraphrase Ratty, there’s nothing – absolutely nothing – half so much worth doing as simply messing about at the piano, sight-reading one’s way through all kinds of music, suitable and otherwise.

There’s a downside to being a “reader”, though. You never come by a memory of a piece through slow dogged study and sheer repetition. And I hated memorising music; loathed it. It wasn’t until I was at uni and discovered Walter Gieseking’s little book, Piano Technique, that I learned a much more powerful strategy for memorisation that didn’t rely on physical repetition. But by then it was kind of late: I was already a flute major, and there’s no particular expectation that flutists perform from memory.

Here’s an excerpt from the AMEB’s syllabus for the Fellowship in Music Australia diploma:

“For pianists the entire program must be presented from memory with the exception of contemporary works. For string players the entire program must be presented from memory except sonatas and contemporary works. For other instrumentalists presentation from memory is encouraged but is not obligatory. For singers, presentation from memory is required except in Oratorio.”

That says it all. If you’re a pianist or a violinist etc. memorisation is pretty much de rigeur. If you play some other instrument it’s more or less up to you. [Given the AMEB’s exceptions, I always found it ironic that I memorised contemporary works most easily.] If you’re a singer memorisation is expected, except for the quaint matter of oratorio, since there the aim is to make what is essentially opera seem less theatrical.

The double-standard on the instrumental front has always intrigued me, and seemed a bit unfair. But it’s the way things are, at all levels of music-making. Such is the power of expectation that when a concert pianist or string player uses sheet music, other than for the newest or most obscure of repertoire, it attracts attention and comment.

One pianist I know makes a point of performing with sheet music always. It’s been a while since he explained his rationale to me, so I hope I’m not misrepresenting him, but Geoffrey Lancaster’s view is that memorisation is a kind of arrogance, an assumption on the part of the performer that he or she knows how the music will go. Playing from memory, seen in this light, diminishes the spontaneity of the performer’s interaction with the composer’s text.

Of course, that’s the view of a performer who thinks deeply about things. And, in any case, no one would ever call Geoffrey unprepared or say that the presence of sheet music got “in the way” of his musical communication. But these do tend to be the suspicions levelled at most performers who appear on stage with sheet music.

There’s the pianist who plays from his part for the Grieg Piano Concerto. Unprepared? He may well be, and the presence of the music could be a symptom of that. The violinist whose head is buried in a music stand. Is he failing to project across the footlights as a result? Does the concert fee, whatever that might be, justify the expectation of a memorised performance in the way we expect actors to have memorised their lines?

Historically, performing concertos and recitals from memory is a fairly recent practice. And there’s no musically justifiable reason for it being compulsory. Let’s say you’ve played a piece into your muscle memory – that doesn’t necessarily mean you’ll know it more intimately or have greater insights into its interpretation. On the contrary, you may be more caught up in the mechanics of the performance. If you’ve memorised it a la Gieseking, you probably have a very sound analytical conception of the piece but you aren’t necessarily going to give a freer or more spontaneous rendition simply by virtue of this. And if you happen to be blessed with some form of eidetic [photographic] memory as some musicians are, well, you’re not really playing from memory at all, but reading the music from your mind’s eye instead of the music desk. The only difference is it looks better (aesthetics do play a part in all this, I’ll admit) and you don’t have to worry about page turns. 

All this comes to mind because recently Sydney audiences heard another violin concerto performed with sheet music (phenomenally, I should say) and so the subject has come up for what is perhaps the third time this season. As I’m sure I’ve established with my preamble, I’m not especially wedded to performance from memory and I’m more than ready to think positively of those with courage enough to fly in the face of convention.

As with some other concert conventions, performing from memory is often held up to be a greater virtue than it really is, perhaps to our loss. We’ve created a scene that favours the pianist or string player with an easy memory and discriminates (yes, discriminates) at the early stages against the musician without. To that end the performers of “Other Instruments” have a better deal.  Because, even though performing from memory does have aesthetic and practical virtues…

1. The benefits of memorisation as a study technique don’t transfer as a matter of course to performance from memory. [And a performer’s use of sheet music doesn’t mean that he or she doesn’t know the piece inside out.]

2. Performing from memory doesn’t really guarantee anything except that the musician has memorised the piece. [Oh, and that there’s a greater risk of error during performance.] It doesn’t assure a deeper musical insight or superior interpretation. It doesn’t necessarily go hand in hand with performing a piece many times.

To which end, I’ll leave you with another conductor story:

I heard Mark Wigglesworth conduct Brahms 4 in Cardiff years ago. In the post-concert discussion afterwards a man in the audience asked him how many times he’d conducted the symphony in order to be able to “do it from memory”. The response: this was the first time Wigglesworth had conducted it in a concert. Ever.

Open letter to the boy with a blogged dose

My heart goes out to you: you seem to have caught a nasty head cold and dad has dragged you off to an orchestral concert regardless.

I guess there’s some reason why you’re unwilling or unable to blow your nose, but must you really sniff your way through an entire performance?

Sub-editors

About March last year, someone who should know explained to me how the Sydney Morning Herald was assigning stories to sub-editors. With the exception of the sports pages, she said, there were no section specialists. In a system that sounded a bit like taking a ticket at the David Jones delicatessen counter, sub-editors would work on whichever story popped up next in the electronic queue. My source, I thought, would have been very well placed to function as an arts specialist, but it evidently hadn’t occurred to anyone at the paper that they might exploit her superior knowledge. 

Perhaps if they had, the SMH could have avoided the embarrassing review that came out last week in response to the SSO’s Romantic Perfection concert.

I have every sympathy for reviewers: for each concert they need to write something pithy and insightful and they have to do it fast. If typographical errors, or perhaps Freudian slips, turn up in the mix it’s really quite understandable. And in the case of a major daily broadsheet like the SMH, a reviewer should – I would have thought – be able to rely on the sub-editors and proofreaders.

Apparently this is not so. We got Hugo instead of Hugh, at one point Wood instead Wolff (or Wolf!), the wrong date for the performance, and, to add insult to injury, a particularly ungainly and meaningless headline that doesn't bear repeating. (Prima la musica theorised to me that this headline was devised by the same soul responsible for “A Domingo stole our ladies”. That seems entirely plausible.)

But the really puzzling stories are the ones where the sub-editor takes it into his or her head to change something that was correct in the reviewer’s original text, as when composer Georges Lentz turned up as “George Lenz” in the SMH last year. [Needless to say, it’s equally perplexing how these spelling errors are allowed to remain in the online versions.]

Or, about 10 years ago, when a sub-editor at the Melbourne Age decided, in a review of cellist Lyn Harrell, to switch all the reviewer’s masculine pronouns to feminine ones.

I can only echo Professor Diggory Kirk and mutter: What do they teach them in sub-editor school?

Concert reviews online

I haven’t written about this at length, but I know from my reading around the traps that I’m not alone in my long-held frustration. Why, oh why, won’t the Sydney Morning Herald post all of its classical music concert reviews online as well as publishing them in print?

It makes absolutely no sense. I could understand the reverse tactic – something online not appearing in the paper – but where’s the value in not running already printed reviews on the website? Totally bizarre. Worse: totally unhelpful.

The SMH is currently running a survey regarding its online entertainment offerings on smh.com.au.

So, if you’ve yet to make your voice heard – or even if you have – I urge you to complete this survey. You have to wade through the usual stuff, but it’s not too long, and at the end is a free-form opportunity to tell them which single change they could make that would make you visit the site more frequently.

So who would you rather work for?

Few things depress me more than seeing an artistic, creative organisation issue badly written, uninspiring job descriptions, poorly conceived and packed with weasel words.

Take this one, spotted recently around the traps. (Details omitted in the interests of prudence, even though I’ve no intention of applying.)

Taking the nouns and verbs, this role’s first responsibility – according to the description – is “to facilitate an approach through the management and coordination of input from the stakeholders”. Right.

After that there’s “managing the process, including the framework…” and so it continues. The core of the role – which happens to be concert programming, would you have guessed? – sneaks in as “allocation of repertoire for all activities”. That’s right, apparently they don’t want someone to create imaginative and exciting programs on a foundation of smart artist choices, just someone to “allocate” repertoire to activities. Sigh.

Oh, and the “purpose” of the position – I kid you not – is to report to the managing director role.

It’s especially depressing given that the role in question is an artistic one. Of course, people in this line of work will overlook the obfuscations – they know what these kinds of jobs really involve and may well rewrite the description in sensible English* on appointment.  All the same, descriptions such as these send a sorry message about the employer, suggesting that either someone doesn’t really understand the heart of the business or – more likely – that there are many more “stakeholders” to be satisfied by the weasel words than is exactly comfortable.

To be fair, I should add that the selection criteria in my unfortunate model are more sensibly expressed than the description of the role itself. There’s hope yet.

*Historical example, showing how it can be done using tangible verbs and nouns: “Program all concerts and recordings in consultation with the music director and managing director. Engage all outside conductors and soloists.…”

Applauding the ballet

Greg Sandow says we should trust the [classical music] audience and I agree.

The proof, right now, is in another audience group: classical ballet. In this art form there is a continuous tradition of acceptable applause within works. Audiences recognise with confidence when in the performance those moments are occurring. And those moments are flexible and optional, so the applause can genuinely reflect a level of enthusiasm as well as the prevailing mood. As a result, ballet-goers experience none of the angst about clapping that’s encountered nearly everywhere in classical concerts.

As Greg suggests in his commentary about concerts, knowing when to applaud is partly to do with the particular character of the work and partly to do with body language (choreography in the case of ballet). Take these together and you’re never left in any doubt as to whether it’s ok to applaud or not. Newcomers seem to work it out pretty easily. I don’t recall as a child being told when and when not to clap at the ballet.

So you’re at Sleeping Beauty and it’s the final act with Aurora’s Wedding, which is basically a glorified set of entertainments. Each little item is self-contained, the changes of style and the clear breaks in music signal that. More important, each divertissement ends with a little flourish and the dancers actually acknowledge the applause. It would be churlish not to clap in a work that’s so clearly designed for this response.

Or you’re at Swan Lake and Odile has just completed 32 fouette pirouettes. So it’s mid-number and the music’s powering on, but who can resist applauding such a tour de force, which entered the choreography quite gratuitously and has remained as a virtuoso gesture ever since.

But then maybe you’re watching the latter part of Act I of Nutcracker and the drama is progressing continuously. Tchaikovsky’s music signals that by eliminating the grand cadences and moving seamlessly from section to section. The choreography will signal this too: no one stops to take a bow. And no one feels the urge to clap. There are sections like this in the other ballets I’ve mentioned – sections where drama overrules mere diversion, sections where we’re drawn into the emotion of what’s happening rather than simply being entertained by party pieces or impressed by virtuosity.

And I can’t think of a single instance of a ballet performance where the audience has misjudged the moment. (I’ve referred to well-known ballets, but my observations have been no different for new or unfamiliar ballets.)

None of this really hit home to me until a couple of years ago when I went to see a double bill that was entirely set to concert works. I was hearing, in the ballet theatre, music that I’m accustomed to hearing in the concert hall. Furthermore, in one instance, I was hearing music where concert audiences are notorious for “getting it wrong”. (Can you guess what it was?)

And that’s where it got really interesting, because this ordinary ballet subscription audience didn’t get it wrong. They knew when it made sense to clap and they knew when to stay quiet. Even in Tchaikovsky’s Fifth Symphony! (The other music was Berlioz’s Symphonie fantastique.)

That was helped a great deal by some very musical choreography and its body language – it’s easy to recognise movement that’s cadential or applause-seeking versus movement that’s clearly about to head right on. But it’s also right there in the music. And the ballet audience (only some of whom would be concert-goers too) was accustomed to watching and listening for cues. Add to this the fact that at the ballet you’re allowed to applaud and you can enjoy unerring good judgement in an atmosphere of confidence. Even when the applause was more of a smattering it came across as discreet, not as the insecure, half-hearted, “shouldn’t we be clapping now?” sound that you hear in many orchestral concerts.

In concerts, where there’s no choreography, musicians’ – and especially conductors’ – body language becomes the cue, especially in relation to the old bug-bear of applause between movements. I’ve lost count of the number of times I've despaired as a conductor has visibly relaxed all sense of tension or “forward movement” after a slow movement, practically inviting the uncertain to hazard some applause. (This is invariably half-hearted and lame-sounding because the visible cue from the stage contradicts what the musical instincts suggest: that this is a quiet moment, a respite.)

So what do concerts need in order to be like the ballet? Just three things.

1.    A sense of permission.
The ballet has a couple of hundred years head start on us, but we need to cultivate a relaxed attitude to the whole business of responding to music (and any noise that may emerge from that). This, I think, is a very different matter from wanting to encourage a quiet listening environment with no distracting extraneous noise. It’s the difference between the woman who jingles her bracelets because she loved the finale and the woman who jingles her bracelets because she’s digging around in her handbag for a cough lolly to unwrap. Slowly.

2.    We need to learn to really listen and look for the cues.
I wonder sometimes whether some of those people who pride themselves on not clapping in the wrong place aren’t dependent on counting down the movements or checking their watch against the timings in the program rather than simply listening and watching and “getting it right” because the right moment is evident and inevitable. Indeed, I know of one concert-goer who seriously suggests that this is exactly what audiences should do: count movements and keep an eye on our watches. I could cry.

3.    Concert performers can and should “shape” audience behaviour.
Many are, in fact, excellent at this – there are plenty of examples of masterly body language. But others seem to rely on the audience adhering to convention, forgetting, for example, that the spaces between the movements are part of the performance too. These are like rests, which, as one of my music teachers once told me, need to be “played” as much as the notes. After the composer has done his or her job then it’s up to the performers to shape our response and to move us in all sorts of ways, whether that’s to applause or to silence.

Postscript. There is one instance where even a ballet audience will be caught on the wrong foot. But it’s a piece in which nearly everyone, everywhere, is caught out: Le Spectre de la rose, danced to the notorious Invitation to the Dance in Berlioz’s orchestration. I think we just have to blame Weber there, because even with a plot line and the choreography to help out, you’re guaranteed there’ll be applause before the end.

Reading at the opera - a preliminary

I went to bed with a nasty crick in my neck, caused by alternately craning then nodding to follow surtitles suspended twice the full height of the set above the stage while still keeping an eye on the action (such as was visible behind the gesticulations of the conductor) from a central vantage point in stalls row E.

After half an hour or so of this I resorted, in the authentic manner, to the libretto in the program book, despite the 3.75 point font (I measured) and the semi-darkness. My mother always said it would ruin my eyes, but my childhood practice of secretly reading by the hall light when I was meant to be asleep in bed has clearly paid off.

After interval I moved back to an empty seat off on the side of row M. This was much better, but I don’t know how the rows forward of this could have been classified A reserve except for French speakers.

Moral: buy the cheap seat, no matter how generous the first-timer discount. But then, next year I won’t be eligible for the first-timer discount anyway.

Cadenzas: the object is simply to surprise

It’s been quite a few years since I’ve opened my copy of Quantz’s On Playing the Flute (Reilly translation), but there was a time when it was a veritable bible to me.

Yes, of course, Johann Joachim Quantz (1697–1773) can come across as a stuffy old man, documenting a tradition of performance that was well-established in 1752 and may even then have been erring in the direction of old-fashioned. All the same, he was one of the very few to take on not only the basic mechanics of an instrument – which most of the tutors seemed to do – but the fundamental principles of performance practice and musicianship. The extent to which Quantz’s observations and recommendations can be applied to even slightly later music is arguable, but in the case of concerto cadenzas much of what he says is echoed and, if anything, amplified by later writers. First, when to include them?

“The abuse of cadenzas is apparent…if in instrumental music they are introduced in pieces in which they are not at all suitable; for example in gay and quick pieces in two-four, three-four, three-eight, twelve-eight, and six-eight time. They are permissible only in pathetic and slow pieces, or in serious quick ones.”

Of course, the “gay and quick” movements, especially if they are in rondo form as was traditional for finales, tend to contain their own variant on the cadenza: the fermata or Eingang, sometimes referred to in English as a “lead-in”. But an Eingang is a mere flourish (leading the soloist into a statement of the rondo theme), not a full-fledged cadenza, which has a particular task to play:

“The object of the cadenza is simply [in my copy I at some point inserted a little ‘!’ above the word ‘simply’] to surprise the listener unexpectedly once more at the end of the piece, and to leave behind a special impression in his heart.”

After acknowledging the near impossibility of establishing rules for something that is by definition extemporaneous and informal, Quantz then attempts to set out some prescriptions. He’s that kind of guy. These include:

“Cadenzas are of either one or two parts. Those of one part [i.e. for a single instrument] are chiefly extempore… They must be short and fresh, and surprise the listeners, like a bon mot. Thus they must sound as if they have been improvised spontaneously at the moment of playing.* Hence you must not be too extravagant, but must proceed economically [Ger: “like a good innkeeper”], especially if you often have the same listeners before you.”

*In writing “as if” JJQ is already acknowledging that mid-18th-century cadenzas, although “chiefly extempore” might very well be prepared in advance.

Then there’s the part that, I must confess, always made me feel resentful:

“Vocal cadenzas or cadenzas for a wind instrument must be so constituted that they can be performed in one breath. A string player can make them as long as he likes, if he is rich enough in inventiveness. Reasonable brevity, however, if more advantageous than vexing length.”

Ok, so his concluding sentence tempers things, but I did always think it unfair that inventive string players be encouraged to ramble at will while us flute players et al were constrained by our breath capacity. After all, from a purely musical perspective, there’s no reason why a wind cadenza (if the player is rich enough in inventiveness!) cannot be longer than a single breath. And a string cadenza in which the player’s phrasing didn’t “breathe” would be pretty awful. (It rankles even more when you consider that an oboist’s breath, being rationed via a tiny reed, goes much further than a flutist’s.)

Still, Quantz’s overall point is a sound one and his translator (1966/85) amplifies it in a footnote: “Observance of this rule would be of inestimable benefit to many modern performances of 18th-century flute concertos.”

More important, the matter of keeping a cadenza short and pithy, epigrammatic and surprising, is one aspect of performance practice that evidently lasted well past the mid-18th-century, since Johann George Tromlitz’s Detailed and Thorough Tutor for Playing the Flute repeats the sentiment in 1791, the year of Mozart’s death:

“Just as one has more freedom to branch out here [in cadenzas rather than fermatas], more care is required. However, this freedom is abused these days; especially on stringed and keyboard instruments [the cadenza] is often made as long as the entire movement up to that point, and one gets so far away from the subject that when the ritornello returns one has to recollect whether or not it belongs to this movement; so ideas are heaped on ideas, or to be more accurate, notes upon notes, which do not manifest the slightest feeling of the main subject; just as long as the cadenza is very long-winded, people cry: bravissimo!”

By the sounds of it (and there’s plenty more!), the “abuses” that Quantz touched on had become worse. There is a palpable wistfulness when Tromlitz adds:

“I do not mean to say by all this that a beautiful cadenza suitable to the material cannot have its good effect; if it is proper to the whole, is of an appropriate length, and is fashioned in good taste and with understanding, then it is indeed a beautiful thing.”

Mozart needs big orchestras

(Not gargantuan orchestras, of course, just the same size that would be considered normal for early 19th-century repertoire for the orchestra and the venue in question.)

I really cannot understand the continued preference for reduced strings in performances of Mozart symphonies by modern orchestras in modern halls. I’m a huge admirer of the period instrument movement and of historically informed performance generally, but this practice is one of the less desirable side-effects. It does seem as if a little knowledge is a dangerous thing, or at least leads to a misguided vision of a fictional “lean, classical sound”.

Unfortunately, unless you have something like a perfect acoustic (can we move Severance Hall to Bennelong Point please?) reducing strings in 18th-century repertoire seldom really works. By which I mean it doesn’t achieve anything like the effect or intention the composer was driving at.

We know from Mozart’s letters that he liked big orchestras. Although there would certainly have been performances with smaller bands, in Vienna his symphonies and concertos were sometimes performed with 80 or more players (i.e. 60-something strings) and there’s a documented performance in Vienna in 1781 (Robin Stowell thinks it was of the “Paris” Symphony in D, K297) with 40 violins, 10 violas, 8 cellos, 10 double basses and doubled woodwinds (including 6 bassoons!). And it was in Paris that Mozart wrote home to report his excitement at the unusually large forces he had at his disposal.

Of course, 30 baroque violins is not the same animal as 30 modern violins – I know that. The higher tension, steel strings and modern bows make a world of difference; playing techniques have changed. So the fear of unwieldy heaviness is a natural one. But going to the opposite extreme isn’t necessarily a solution. Better to get a good string section of 50 or 60 playing with an articulate and vigorous sound than to reduce the numbers and remove the backbone of the music. [Chamber orchestras may want to raise an objection to this view, but such ensembles are accustomed to projecting the necessary sound with their smaller numbers and are not unknown to use electronic enhancement when the acoustic makes it necessary.]

Mozart should be more than pretty, and this is one instance where I wish we could return to the “bad old days” and hear more full-blooded Mozart being played by full-size orchestras.

Revelation

Last night, after The Dream of Gerontius, I had a revelation.

I loathe the Opera Bar with the best of them. Too many times, after leaving some amazing (or even not-so-amazing) sonic experience in the Concert Hall or Opera Theatre, I’ve been made to feel as if I’m running a gauntlet. It really can put a sour note on the end of an otherwise lovely evening. The problem is this: the Sydney Opera House sits on a peninsula; the Opera Bar dominates the narrow neck of the approach. There is simply no avoiding it.

But this is no revelation.

The revelation is this: I have realised that it is not the music of the Opera Bar that I object to. Not one bit. Even after nearly two hours of Elgar my feelings about the Opera Bar as I passed on Wednesday night were positively, well, positive (as opposed to my usual “When the revolution comes…” mutterings). So what was the difference? The bar was relatively empty and there was next to no one in the outdoor area. The music was playing unimpeded and could, for a change, be “heard” in the true sense.

In other words, it isn’t the Opera Bar music that’s so objectionable, it’s the roar of the crowd.

Squash more than a hundred people in a confined space, arm them with alcohol and play some music (any music) and what will happen? The noise level will increase as the revellers raise their voices over each other and over the music (which they’re not really listening to anyway). I think the word is “din”. There’s a Tarpeian Way not far off – Opera Bar patrons at their lustiest could easily fill the role of furious Roman crowd, baying for the blood of the next criminal to be tossed from the heights.

There is another post buried in this, but meanwhile: When the revolution comes, the Opera Bar may continue playing its music, but I insist that it be closed to patrons between 9.30 and 10.30 on concert nights.

***

Septimus, am I the first person to have thought of this?

The Dream of Gerontius is a “dream”, yes? So why does the old man not wake up and find that he has only been sleeping?

But Thomasina is being flippant. Stephen Banfield in The Musical Times has something more sensible to say on this theme. The relevant page is here; the complete article begins here.

From euphoria to the doldrums

Never has the Waltz of the Flowers sounded so mournful.

This afternoon in Sydney Richard Tognetti rounded off the ACO’s “Euphoric” program with the loveliest of the Nutcracker pieces, ostensibly in a major key, but in fact always a little tinged with sadness, even when the stage is filled with garlands and children. (Graeme Murphy sets it in an Imperial Russian ballroom, which gives it the nostalgic, glittering grandeur it deserves.)

Why mournful? Not merely the absence of a surely essential harp, but the symbolic linking to the death knell of the Australian National Academy of Music, recently sounded by the Federal Government. On stage augmenting the musicians of the ACO were a dozen ANAM students, whose prospects of continued study at the Academy next year have been dashed. The doomed Imperial grandeur of Tchaikovsky was matched to a doomed legacy of Keating’s Creative Nation.

The second part of this encore was even more touching. It was a number from Sibelius’s incidental music for the play Kuolema (Death). And before you anticipate (as I did) another waltz, Valse triste, it was in fact the much less frequently played Kurkikotaus, or “Scene with Cranes” – floating strings with a hint of clarinet. The musical gesture of playing Sibelius was all the more pointed for Finland’s own music education system being so, well, enviable. At all levels.

And there’s the rub. Tognetti was drawing attention – if, as he said, we hadn’t heard already – to the imminent demise of an elite institution, the musical equivalent of an institute of sport (I believe Australia has one of those). But if we care about music in Australia then we need to care about music education from the ground up. All those talented ANAM students start somewhere. 

I’m not in a position to comment on the Academy’s strengths and weaknesses, or even if it was in fact the most “efficient” way of “delivering” elite training for musicians. [Boy, do I hate weasel words, but never do I hate them more than when used in connection with creativity and the arts.] I’m not going to pronounce on whether ANAM itself deserves to continue or not, or whether the model it represents is the very best one.

What is obvious, though, is that advanced training is an important part of Australia’s musical life and essential within any comprehensive plan for music education. And shutting ANAM down at such short notice within the cycle of the academic year, and without a plausible alternative in place, is positively short-sighted. Richard Tognetti knows that and he’s using his art form in an imaginative way to communicate a forthright and impassioned message. Having some of the students join him was a stroke of genius. He protested that he wasn’t being “political” but of course he was, and rightly so. Orchestras like the ACO, and their audiences, count among the ultimate beneficiaries of programs such as the Academy’s.

Ironic lexicographical aside: the usage example for “euphoria” in the New Oxford American Dictionary is “the euphoria of success will fuel your desire to continue training”.

Link: Alex Millier of the WASO has been maintaining a list of media items relating to ANAM here.