“Chanticleer-ed’

It’s the only way I can describe it…’Chanticleer-ed.’ It happened to me earlier this month when I had the privilege of attending ‘A Chanticleer Christmas’ presented at St. Mary’s Abbey at the Benedictine monastery in Morristown, New Jersey.  As I told my wife Marcia when I returned home after the concert: “I was so moved by their performance, you could have scraped me off the floor when it was over.”

I’m a long-time fan of this amazing group of twelve virtuoso male singers who perform primarily without accompaniment, and have a number of their recordings.  I raved about them before in a blog I wrote in December 2014, and so it was a wonderful treat to get to listen to them live, particularly in the Abbey’s acoustics - so ideal for a cappella singing.

Their concert concluded with a short group of traditional Christmas carols chosen by them ‘on the spot’ from a longer list in the printed program.  During the applause that preceded this segment, I said to two friends sitting astride me: “If they do It Came Upon A Midnight Clear I’ll need a box of Kleenex.” (Maullese for “I’ll be moved to tears.”)  When, after several selections, they began to sing “It Came Upon…” I got poked in the ribs from both sides, and the tears began to flow, just as I had anticipated.

Why am I so moved by this carol and this arrangement in particular?  It partly has a lot to do with my childhood.  It was my grandfather Howard Jordan’s favorite carol.  I can still see and hear him and my grandmother singing it together as she played the piano in our home. That memory alone might be enough to commence the waterworks for this aging, sentimental musician.

 

Maestro Maull's house where carols were sung.

The carol was written in the mid-1800’s, the text by a Massachusetts Unitarian clergyman, Edmund Sears, and the melody by a student of Mendelssohn, Richard Storrs Willis. Chanticleer’s rendition, composed by their Grammy-winning former music director Joseph Jennings, is incredible.  Perfectly suited to the impeccable dynamic control, blend and intonation of the members of Chanticleer, Jennings’ treatment – a gentle amalgam of barbershop and vocal jazz influences - maintains the original core material, yet bathes this familiar, haunting melody with harmonies that are at once unexpected and beautiful.  Sears’ poetry is a reflection on peace in the midst of the chaos caused by human beings’ inherent difficulty in getting on with one another…peace always being a good place to mentally, if not in practice, visit.

If It Came Upon A Midnight Clear is an old favorite of yours, or completely new to you, why not give yourself a 4 ½-minute break from the craziness of the season, and listen to Chanticleer sing Joseph Jennings’ stunning arrangement.   You can follow the text if you like by scrolling down in the Wikipedia article.  Of the original five verses, Jennings’ arrangement makes use of verses 1, 3 and 5. 

I’m as Mad as Hell…

I’m not actually “mad as Hell” – although, who among us who saw the 1976 film Network can ever forget the incredible scene in which we are urged by fictional news anchor Howard Beale to go to our window and yell: “I’m as mad as Hell and I’m not going to take this anymore!”

Let’s just say that I’m annoyed and feel like I can’t take it anymore.  What is it that I’ve grown weary of?  It could be summed up by the liner notes for a book by Julian Johnson given me this past October by long term friend Clifford Rangnow:

“During the last few decades, most cultural critics have come to agree that the division between ‘high’ and ‘low’ art is an artificial one, that Beethoven’s Ninth and Blue Suede Shoes are equally valuable as cultural texts.  In Who Needs Classical Music? Julian Johnson challenges these assumptions.”

And ‘challenge these assumptions’ Mr. Johnson does indeed.  Composer Julian Johnson is a Cambridge University graduate who now lectures at Oxford whose writing is decidedly not for the faint of heart. His 130 pages on this subject are brief but dense. Many paragraphs require a second reading.

But before we go further, let me go on record (all puns intended) as saying that I still have my 45-rpm vinyl copy of Blue Suede Shoes.  I loved that Elvis song the first time I encountered it – still do. But does it ‘do’ for me what the 5-minute third movement of the Bach Brandenburg Concerto No. 4 does for me?  Well, ‘no,’ in a word.

I have been moved to my depths by instrumental folk music and folk songs like Johnny Has Gone for a Soldier, popular during the American Revolution.  And I thought my head would explode with happiness the first time I listened to, under headphones, Good Day Sunshine from the Beatles 1966 album release Revolver. 

Saul Feinberg, my mentor, would ask his students: “Which do you think is more challenging – to invent a truly moving melody or to be able to invent incredibly moving ways to alter or change that melody?”   Truth is, composers such as Beethoven and Mozart could do both in almost unimaginable ways.

In order for a composer to trigger what Abraham Maslow called a ‘peak experience’ – a moment of ultimate transcendence for us – it may well take more than two minutes of music.  The very idea of facilitating this kind of emotional/psychological state in us, the listeners, using abstract musical sounds with no words is mindboggling just to contemplate.

I had the incredible privilege of listening to the Mozarteum Orchestra of Salzburg live for the first time in my life last night at the New Jersey Performing Arts Center.  It was an amazingly wonderful concert on many levels, but perhaps none more so than when the ensemble, under British conductor Matthew Halls, performed the final movement of Mozart’s Symphony No. 41. Using a simple four-note theme, which Mozart did notinvent but borrowed from Gregorian chant, he constructed one of them most powerful musical statements ever conceived by anyone!  Do you have almost 7 minutes?

Mickey Mouse & Mozart

…one of my longer rants.    

Professional symphony orchestras in the United States face an annual challenge that we refer to in jest, belying the utter seriousness of the situation, as…‘getting butts in seats.’  This challenge is not new and it pervades the thinking of conductors, administrators and board members of orchestras ranging from the New York Philharmonic to regional orchestras.

One solution to declining audiences, developed decades ago, was the advent of the ‘Pops Concert.’  This originally entailed programming an entire concert of so called ‘light classical’ repertoire, and in some cases offering a series of these concerts.  Featured were compositions such as waltzes by Johann Strauss, Jr.  or Offenbach’s Barcarolle and perhaps included numbers from Broadway shows or other tunes from the American Songbook.  Eventually, medleys of music from Hollywood film scores also made their way into these ‘Pops Concerts’.

Historically, if we study the programs of regular subscription concerts of US professional symphony orchestras in the late 1800’s and early 1900’s, ‘light classics’ were routinely interspersed in concerts that also included works like a Beethoven Symphony.   Apparently, audiences, musicians and conductors in the early part of the 20^th century had no difficulty whatsoever navigating between musical appetizers, sorbets, desserts and main courses.    Then – something happened.

In a recent article by Brian Wise in The New York Times entitled What’s Lost When Pops Orchestras Tap Pop Culture,  we find an interesting observation about exactlywhat happened.  “In 2004, Henry Fogel, then president of the League of American Orchestras, wrote an article for the League’s Symphony Magazine documenting the fading of once-popular works like Smetana’s tone poem The Moldau  and Chabrier’s flamenco-tinged España.  Comparing classical subscription programs of six major American orchestras from the early 1920s through 2001, he showed how light classics had nearly disappeared by 1960. ‘The development of pops as a separate thing actually hurt orchestras.’ Mr. Fogel said in a telephone interview.”

Orchestras began segregating repertoire, sorting what they deemed ‘serious music’ from ‘fluff’ which led to the development of  ‘Pops Concerts’ and ‘Pops Series’ and ultimately to the rise of separate professional musical entities in some cities: pops orchestras like the Cincinnati Pops, Philly Pops and New York Pops, featuring programs entirely dedicated to light repertoire.

One wonders whether composers of classical music ever made such mental distinctions themselves as they were writing. “Am I composing a light or serious composition?”  It is said that Beethoven was very fond of his Wellington’s Victory ­  – a composition hardly on the level of his symphonies or concertos, but one that he loved nonetheless.   Be that as it may, professional orchestras took the plunge into ‘Pops’ in search of larger audiences.

Presently, according to Wise, an even newer breed of ‘Pops Concerts’ has arrived.  These programs predominantly feature current popular performers and their songs, including hip-hop and rap artists.  Another big trend is that of having your local professional symphony orchestra replicate the entire sound track of a feature film – live – while that movie is being projected in your concert hall. Wise continues:  “The (NY) Philharmonic has drawn large audiences by showing films with live accompaniment; popular performances of…Disney’s ‘Fantasia: Live in Concert’ were added…” and also quotes Larry Tucker, the Nashville Symphony’s vice president for artistic administration: “Pops is a way to bring in money, but we also look at it as a way to bring in new audiences.”

Really?  Wise goes on to write that research from the League of American Orchestras shows that pops concerts are known to help financially subsidize classical series,but that the same research shows audiences seldom cross over from pops to classical concerts.  While it’s lots of fun to watch a movie as a live orchestra performs the score – harking back to ‘days of old’ when silent films were accompanied by a live organist in every movie theater – it’s expensive to pay a professional orchestra to replicate what has already been recorded by a professional orchestra in Hollywood.  And one wonders:  Do audience members who attend ‘movie score screening concerts’ also seldom ‘cross over’ to classical concerts?  I believe it is entirely likely that they do not.  

Cary Goldberg wrote in The New York Times on July 4, 1998:  “As music directors and administrators try various approaches to connect with new audiences – adding film screenings with live orchestral accompaniment, video game soundtracks, theatrical circus spectacles and 1990s rock acts – are they abandoning the large repertory that drew many listeners in the first place?”   Shouldn’t we perhaps also be asking: Did the players and conductors of our country’s finest symphony orchestras really give up their childhoods spending hours and hours everyday practicing the music of Mozart and enduring the rigors of music school in order to accompany feature films or rock artists replete with laser light shows?   Do we truthfully not think that movie theaters and rock musicians can actually do a better job of presenting themselves in their natural habitats than a symphony orchestra can in its concert hall?

But the most important question is this:  Is there really any special value to be derived – any earth-shattering, incomparable emotional-aesthetic experience to be had from giving 10-15 minutes one’s undivided attention to every note of a Brahms symphony movement?  If not…why should professional symphony orchestras continue to exist at all?  To be merely accompanists for a movie or a laser light show?

On the other hand, if there is some incredible personal reward to be gained from listening to classical music, then we have to find a much longer-term solution that needs to be initiated as soon as possible.  If, as a society, America started today to train all young children to be really perceptive listeners, enabling them to be moved to their very depths for instance by the abstract, wordless music of the Finale of Saint-SaënsThird Symphony …in 25 years, a rather large percentage of the US population might conceivably be banging down the doors of concert halls just to have the opportunity to sit in their seats and give their undivided aural attention as orchestras like The Philadelphia Orchestra or New York Philharmonic perform this incredibly stirring music live.

If we started this educational process tomorrow, it’s nevertheless likely that some professional orchestras may not still be here in 25 years.  And they certainly won’t be here if they’re banking on attempting to recreate what rock artists and movie theaters can do better – let alone if they become subsidiary food pantries, as some orchestras are currently doing in order to ‘connect with the community.’  And I’m not knocking social responsibility – simply noting that food banks such as AmpleHarverst.org and FeedingAmerica.org or your local community soup kitchen just might be able to do this better than a symphony orchestra which should, in any event, perhaps better spend its time teaching people of all ages how to listen to the material they were organized to perform in the first place.

Can it really be so simple?  That we just need to teach people how to listen? That we just need to teach people the listening skills that will enable them to deeply connect with classical music on an emotional level?  In 2017 The Discovery Orchestra will launch a PR campaign to stimulate a national conversation around the idea of Americans becoming better, more perceptive music listeners. It’s a concept that, who knows, might just find application to other aspects of life!

Can You Feel the Vibes?

When I was in high school it was common to hear someone say: “That person has good vibes.”  It was a compliment.  ‘That person’ was emitting positive energy that could almost be physically experienced.  Perhaps you have sensed this about certain individuals in your life.  Maybe you are one of those individuals.

Physicists have told us - in fact, Albert Einstein said:  “Everything in Life is Vibration.”  That’s everything!  If we could visually examine ‘solid’ objects around us - you know, objects like floorboards or rocks, as well as the more malleable ‘solid’ objects such as our skin – on an atomic level – we would be able to see that they are all vibrating!  We are vibrating, and this undoubtedly accounts for our intense attraction to music! 

Navajo mystic Joseph Rael said: “Inner listeners, or people who are continually listening to life as it unfolds, are true humans because they are picking up vibrational messages before the messages become crystallized energy or perceptual forms that can then be articulated by the brain.  Sensitivity, then, is paramount in developing the ability to be a good listener.” (Being & Vibration, Joseph Rael with Mary Elizabeth Marlow, Millichap Books, 1993.)

Could not have said it better myself.  Listening in the manner described by Joseph Rael is precisely the state we need to achieve when we encounter the music of Bach or Mozart or Beethoven or Chopin or Tchaikovsky or…

Joseph Rael also wrote: “Since people are made of sound, (emphasis mine) listening is important.  It is through listening that you become a true human, and a true human is a listener who is constantly attuned by working with everything that is happening.”

Perceptive listening, as opposed to merely hearing, is not just essential for experiencing all the emotionally rich detail that music contains.  Listening is essential for experiencing all that is life itself.

http://discoveryorchestra.org/

Art for Life’s Sake

On the evening of Monday, April 8, 2013 cellist Yo-Yo Ma delivered the Nancy Hanks Lecture on Arts and Public Policy at the Kennedy Center in Washington, D.C.  He called his presentation ‘Art for Life’s Sake.’  It is well worth the one-hour view on YouTube. Mr. Ma chose to end this address with a listening lesson for the audience.

I repeat. Mr. Ma chose to end this address with a listening lesson for the audience.

Why did he choose to do this?  He had, after all, most eloquently presented the case for the importance of art in our lives with wonderful musical demonstrations, impressive statistical results and inspiring words.  As he said in the summation of his main points:

“Societies are powered by three engines: politics, economics and culture. A vibrant society exists when all three engines are firing and intersecting, resulting in a populace that is energized, engaged and fulfilled. Our collective work in the arts is not just relevant, but essential to strengthening our culture and positively influencing society. Thus: ‘Art for Life's Sake.’  The arts are the way to foster the four critical skills necessary for our children to succeed in the 21st-century workforce: collaboration, flexibility, imagination, innovation.”

Yet, he chose to end the entire presentation by playing a Bach unaccompanied Sarabande – but before doing so Mr. Ma gave us a beautiful listening lesson which I encourage you to experience for yourself.  Why did he give us this listening lesson?

He did so because he understands that it is only by giving our undivided presence and attention to music that we, as listeners, truly become one with the music – noticing and being moved by the music’s detail as it unfolds.  It is only by listening, and not merely physically hearing, that we can receive the deepest benefits which music may impart.  And this is, of course, why the board, staff and members of The Discovery Orchestra are totally committed to fostering a national ‘listening conspiracy’ to encourage truly attentive listening among the members of our society.

On a personal note before beginning the lesson, Mr. Ma commented that he has played this Sarabande for his friends both on happy occasions such as weddings and on sad ones such as memorial services. One might say that he takes the enormous emotional-spiritual power of music with him wherever he goes…be it the concert hall or the hospital.  I can personally verify that this is true.  When my niece Rachel Simon, just out of college, was first treated in a Boston hospital for leukemia, Yo-Yo Ma appeared one day to play for one of his friends who, like Rachel, was very ill in the room across the hall.  Mr. Ma graciously included Rachel in this most intimate audience.  Many years later, after Rachel’s death, my wife Marcia and I saw Mr. Ma following a New Jersey performance. When Marcia identified herself as Rachel’s aunt he immediately embraced her, all three of us crying, unable to speak, so powerful was the memory of that occasion back in Boston.   ‘Art for life’s sake’ indeed!

The Discovery Orchestra applauds Mr. Ma for choosing to elevate the act of listening at a national forum in our country’s capitol.  As he said: “Our collective work in the arts is not just relevant, but essential to…positively influencing society.”  Listening is the key that unlocks the life-affirming power of music.  We cannot all be performers like Yo-Yo Ma.  Most of us will not be musical performers at all…but we all can become perceptive music listeners, the result of a conscious decision on our part that will change our lives forever.

Two Visits in Four Days

On Steve Hoffman Music Forums there’s an interesting conversation going on around the topic: Is it OK to NOT like classical music?  For a look at the thread, click on this link. We might also ask: “Is it OK to not like sushi, broccoli, rice cakes, Robert DeNiro films…the list could go on ad infinitum.  I personally feel it’s OK to not like anything under the sun – you fill in the blank.  Who is better qualified - beside you – to be the arbiter of your tastes and preferences?  But I think we might be asking the wrong question.

To me a better question is: “Is it OK to NOT notice detail in the world around us?”  The answer here might be “Perhaps it’s really not OK to NOT notice detail in the world around us.”  If we’re talking about the difference between red and green traffic lights, failure to notice this particular detail might prove fatal – an event made easily possible by texting while driving!

Certainly, failure to notice detail in music will not lead to fatalities. It’s more like the difference between looking at our world through corrective lenses that help us see every beautiful aspect of that flower garden instead of a pleasant, blurry array of color.  Whether we like the flower garden or not is a decision we can make as we gaze on every subtle detail of the rose petals.  But lacking this precise view of things, any decision we make will be based on inadequate information. 

One of the thoughts expressed in this forum recounts the familiar generational argument. “The overall popularity and sales of classical music, especially of the stuff made before, say, the 50s, is diminishing, and that is no accident, as the generation that classical music is culturally relevant to is dying off.  And younger generations, starting with WWII baby-boomers, have other types of music they are interested in, such as jazz or blues.  By the way, many of the same arguments for jazz and blues are similar to the ones for classical, and I'm starting to see hints of it with rock vs. hip-hop music as well.  So, I'm wondering if it is a generational thing where the aging generation is trying to assert their cultural identity in a last gasp before it passes into history.”

As I have said in a previous blog, for me - the ‘when was it written’ aspect of a musical composition is completely irrelevant.  If we receive, with an open mind, each piece of music we encounter as a singular event to be taken or left on its own merits, it doesn’t really matter whether it was written yesterday or one thousand years ago.  If we like it – we like it – just like a piece of jewelry or pottery.  If a ring catches our eye’s fancy, it doesn’t matter if it was crafted last month or two hundred years ago.

I personally use one standard for deciding whether I like an individual musical work regardless whether it is rock, pop, classical, sacred, vulgar, old, new, etc.  If I listen to it, that is, give my undivided attention to it – enough times – to absorb and understand its rhythms, melodies, textures, harmonies, dynamics, timbres and form…if I still don’t like it then it’s OK! 

Maestro Maull with some of the campers
 and staff from Camp YDP, Paterson, New Jersey

Over the course of four days, I’ve paid two visits to Paterson, New Jersey – one visit to the young people at the Camp YDP after school program and the other to be with the students in the Paterson Music Project, modeled after the El Sistema program imported from Venezuela.  As we listened together to music – with an emphasis on noticing detail – we did not speak of when the music was written.  We barely spoke of who wrote the music.  But I can tell you that the YDP campers had no problem recognizing a repeating melody.  And more than a few of the young string players of the Paterson Music Project quickly noticed when I played the ‘wrong music’ on purpose – just to make sure they were really listening to and not just hearing the music.

Did these 2^nd through 8^th grade students enjoy the music of Vivaldi and Bach?  They seemed to.  I never mentioned that it was classical music or that it was nearly three hundred years old!  It was just enjoyable music.  I wonder what the response would have been had I begun my presentation with these words: “Today we’re going to listen to some classical music.  It is ‘GREAT MUSIC’ and because it is considered to be ‘GREAT MUSIC’ – you should pay attention and you should like it!”  

Conductor Humor

After my last, long rant on texting at symphonic concerts – I think it’s time to lighten up. Conductors notoriously take themselves too seriously. I guess it goes with the territory. But orchestral players have never been shy about putting conductors in their place. After all, as the saying goes: “The stick makes no sound” – which is not really true because the silent gestures we make on the podium do, in fact, influence the sound for better…or worse. But the point players are making is: “It is WE, the players, who actually produce the sounds, not that person waving the baton.”

How do professional orchestra musicians express their conductor humor? Well, first, there are the things they write in the parts they are playing from. If a conductor has a “tick” or a banal gesture repeatedly physically expressed, players have been known to make tally marks (IIII) in the parts during rehearsals. The same goes for keeping track of the number of times a conductor says the same unnecessary, inane remark.

When orchestral parts are rental material, one often finds a compendium of remarks that have accumulated in the parts over the course of performances by various orchestras around the world. I remember when I was playing in the viola section of one of the professional orchestras (name withheld to protect the guilty) I worked for over my playing career, a rented set of parts was on the stands that had just previously been used by the Chicago Symphony Orchestra. The music was a technically challenging contemporary work. One very difficult passage for the violas had the following message in the margin: “Fake it – Seiji Ozawa,” who had presided over the Chicago performances. My stand partner added in pencil: “Play EVERY NOTE!” – with the attribution to our music director who had just said that in rehearsal.

Then there are the jokes themselves. Some are vicious. When I moved to New York City in 1975, it wasn’t long before I heard the ‘New York Freelance Musician Conductor Joke’ – “What are three dead conductors floating face down in the Hudson River? A start.” Then there is the light bulb joke that I’ve also heard attributed to sopranos. “How many conductors does it take to change a light bulb? Three. One to change the light bulb. One to pull the ladder out from under the one changing the light bulb, and one to criticize this entire performance.” Some are slightly off color. I will partially sanitize here. “What is the difference between a symphony orchestra and a bull? A bull has the horns in the front and the ass in the back.”

My all-time favorite conductor joke? This one speaks more than any other to the love-hate relationship players have with conductors as expressed in their desire to look at the conductor as little as possible. “Just before curtain time at the opera, the house manager peers out from the wings to see that there is no conductor on the podium. Quickly getting on the phone he says: ‘Are there any assistant conductors in the house?’ ‘Nope’ comes the reply. Desperate, the house manager shouts into the pit: ‘Anyone down there who could conduct Tosca tonight?’ One violist (another reason I love this joke) starts waving his bow yelling: ‘I know it from memory. I can do it!’ ‘Get on the podium’ barks the house manager. And so the violist conducts a brilliant performance of Puccini’s Tosca – from memory, as promised. The next night, the violist sits down in his chair in the pit, and his stand partner turns to him and says: ‘Where were you last night?’”

If this is not enough for you, feel free to visit this website: Things People Said – Eugene Ormandy Quotes. Here you will find a totally bizarre collection of things Maestro Ormandy said over the years of his long tenure in Philadelphia, as lovingly documented by the members of that esteemed orchestra.

Does it take a lot of chutzpah to stand in front of an assemblage of Juilliard, Curtis, Oberlin, etc. graduates – all highly trained, accomplished artists who each expect you to know EVERY line of the score as well as each of them knows their own single line? You bet it does. It also helps not to take yourself so seriously!