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?

Can We Really Multitask And Listen?

An article in symphony THE MAGAZINE OF THE LEAGUE OF AMERICAN ORCHESTRAS definitely caught my attention.  The Quest for Generational Diversity by Harvey Felder is an informative article that begins: “To connect with younger audiences, orchestras must understand and embrace the values of Generations X and Y.”  There is much of interest presented here by Maestro Felder and well worth reading.  There are lots of really good ideas for reaching these two generations.

“For multitasking Generations X (born 1965-76) and Y (1977-98), there must be multiple layers, all designed to broaden the experience beyond what has been thought of as sufficient for a symphony concert.  Consider the baseball fan who brings a portable radio or television to a game…The fan now has access to a stream of information he or she will miss by merely observing the game without electronic enhancement. In the concert hall, some Generation X and Y audience members undoubtedly would find the concert experience more attractive if they were offered a stream of information about the event they are witnessing.”

At The Discovery Orchestra, we have certainly found that audience members of Generations X and Y as well as those born well before 1965 have benefited from our listening guides that are first used as an exploration tool and then visually followed during the performance.   Our staff has discussed streaming the guides electronically at concerts – and we may well experiment with that in the near future. Our audience members tell us the listening guides help - and why?  Our listening guides encourage audience members to notice more detail and stay focused in the music!   As I said in my previous blog The Invisibility of Music “…a movement of music by Beethoven or Bach is delivered to us in time…the intent of the composer is always to have a continuous, non-stop presentation of their musical ideas.”  These musical ‘events’ – be they a chord change or an ascending sequence – are meant to be noticed and emotionally experienced as they occur in real time, one after the other.   If I stop to read the contributor’s list – let alone send or receive a text message – I risk missing some of these events as well as their relationship to musical ideas that occurred earlier.

Maestro Felder goes on to say: “Conversation, of course, must be curtailed during a concert, since it competes with the sonic creation emanating from the stage. But written (emphasis mine) communication and silent video screens can co-exist with live music.”  Here, he appears to be concerned with not disturbing audience members who are just listening.  He continues: “Problems may arise when the interactive style of Generations X and Y interferes with the listening style of other audience members.  One easy solution is to designate a section of the concert hall ‘silent mobile device friendly’ allowing the virtual community to engage in the multitasking and interactivity that is second nature to them.” 

I must respectfully disagree.  Rather than ‘styles’ of listening, I believe we are all consciously capable of applying variable degrees of attentiveness while listening.  At the bottom of the dial, we notice almost nothing except that there is perhaps a musical sound in the background which we are hearing while we do or think other things.  At the upper end is that state of attentiveness in which we are so present with the music that we notice every detail in the sounds we are hearing as they occur.  It is not so much having electronic mobile devices that worries me, especially if they were receiving a streamed listening guide.  What concerns me is the “multitasking and interactivity that is second nature to them” – as in texting.

Written communication and silent video screens may be able to ‘co-exist’ with live music.  However, people creating written communications with other device-users on and off the concert site – even if seated in a protective area where their lights and flashes will not disturb others – will likely miss, while texting, that one incredible re-harmonization of the melody which Rachmaninoff had calculated to be ‘the point’ or moment of greatest emotional intensity in the movement – not to mention a myriad of other musical details along the way. 

Is going to a baseball game an equivalent experience to going to a concert and listening to a Beethoven sonata?  I’m absolutely certain that Maestro Felder would not assert that.  But to emphasize my point…at the game, we watch the pitcher, and then we take a bite of our hotdog, then have a sip of soda, then call a friend on our cell phone. We do all these things because we can and it doesn’t matter in all of that ambient noise!  Even if we miss an entire half inning of play while we visit the restroom, it still doesn’t matter. But if we miss that one chord change as it happens in its unique moment in time, Rachmaninoff might say we would not understand the entire movement.  We might feel bad if missed seeing the grand slam while we were in the restroom – but we would still know the score, understand the game and enjoy the day at the ballpark!  At the concert, we have only that one precious moment to perceive that chord in its context.

I don’t believe that one would ever suggest we have a special ‘silent mobile device friendly’ section of a Broadway theater in which people could blissfully text each other while missing crucial dialogue lines of an Arthur Miller play.  How would these ‘texters’ understand the plot?  Is a symphonic movement not similar to an act of a play except that the information is all being conveyed in wordless abstract sound?

  

Understand we must, but rather than completely “embrace the values of Generations X and Y” perhaps orchestras should challenge those values.  There are individuals in the field of neuroscience who hold that we actually cannot multitask, that multitasking is a myth.  They maintain that even if we are consciously doing many things, our brain is still doing them serially – one at a time.  I’m not a scientist, but I think the dramatic increase in automobile accidents in America has already proven that people should not text and drive cars.  I would also ask: “Are there other life experiences where an instant electronic communication is not appropriate and would perhaps ruin the experience? Would we want to be texting at the precise moment that ice cream enters our mouths and surrounds our taste buds in a sea of pleasurable sensations?  Would we want to be texting a friend at the moment of orgasm?”  Might the act of listening to the music of Mozart or Thelonius Monk be a similar situation - something that just has to be singularly experienced?  

Do orchestras need to help Generations X and Y enjoy the concert experience?  Absolutely!  We know that the percentage of our entire population that regularly listens to classical music and attends live concerts is pitifully small.  Perhaps there is a remedy. How about we just teach Generations X and Y how to listen perceptively to the invisible language of music? We can then let them decide whether they really want to be texting at concerts or just giving their undivided attention to the most important communication in the room – a very intimate emotional exchange from the composer’s soul directly to theirs with an assist from us, the performers.

How Shall We Study Music?

Last week I was given the privilege of speaking at a conference on the campus of Princeton University presented by the New Jersey Principals and Supervisors Association and the Foundation for Educational Administration.  The three-day event was underwritten by the Geraldine R. Dodge Foundation.

The conference theme, Using Arts-Infused Instruction to Enhance NJ’s Learning Standards, provided all of the artist-speakers with an opportunity to advocate for just how their art form can be used to advance the core curriculum standards of New Jersey’s Public Schools.

I am product of public education.  While it’s true that I received a very intense music education at St. Peter’s Choir School in Philadelphia, grades 4-7, the remainder of my secondary education was in a public school – Abraham Lincoln High School.  The musical studies and activities offered at Lincoln were typical for the 1960’s.

The emphasis was on teaching music performance.  There were two concert choirs, a chamber choir, two small chamber choral ensembles, two concert bands, a marching band, a jazz band, two orchestras…and an annual musical.  Sounds like a lot, doesn’t it?  But, for 5,000 total students, these ensembles involved a bit more than 500 students or 10% of the student body.

What was atypical at Lincoln, compared to any of Philadelphia’s other high schools at the time, was the presence of Saul Feinberg, my mentor. Using the two-year general music requirement, Saul taught aesthetic music listening skills (as opposed to music performance listening skills) to the remaining 90% of the student body.

How should we teach music?  Music instruction offered in schools should ideally mirror the three basic musical behaviors – creating (composing or improvising), performing and listening (from an aesthetic viewpoint.) 

In a perfect world, all students in school would receive instruction in composing/improvising, performing and listening.  Each year, from Kindergarten through Middle School, very specific standards could be set for each grade level. 

For example, by the end of 1^st grade, every child will: be able to improvise in song or on an Orff xylophone a simple ostinato (creation); be able to sing a simple melody transmitted in Kodaly hand signals (performance); be able to recognize a simple ternary form (listening). 

Such a curriculum would produce a musically literate society, capable of performing, reading and inventing music – and most importantly – emotionally connecting with and appreciating, as listeners, the greatest music our society has produced regardless of genre – classical, jazz, pop, world or era – ­from medieval to the present.

But we don’t live in an ideal world.  And in the very real world of schools, many music curriculums are entirely performance oriented or nearly so.

Music education means: little children with violins in hand; kids singing in choirs and playing in bands; and performing in annual Broadway shows.

And all of that is very important, and not to be taken for granted where it exists – given the cuts to arts programs that we have experienced in recent decades.

But, short of offering comprehensive music education (encompassing all three musical behaviors), might we consider offering aesthetic music listening to all students, performers and non-performers alike?  This is what I proposed to my audience of Principals and Supervisors in Princeton.

We have some follow-up planned.  Stay tuned.

The Annual Recital

A few weeks ago I attended the annual recital of my wife Marcia’s piano students, who range in age from six to eighteen.  Annual student piano recitals have been a part of my life for as long as I can remember. My mother Helen taught in our home in Philadelphia, just as Marcia now does here in Bedminster.  The weekly parade of children sometimes seems to me like the only real constant in my life!

There is also my recollection of my personal feelings about participating in these recitals throughout my own career as a piano student. A mixture of exhilaration, dread, pride, abject terror and sheer joy in performing attended these recitals from the time of being one of my mother’s students all the way through music school, when my formal piano lessons ended.

The annual recital of a class of piano students is, however, much more than my own memories of them as a participant.  Attending one of them as an audience member gives one a very different perspective.

These events give every young instrumentalist a goal to aim toward.  And in listening to Marcia’s students, it was obvious that they all really took some sort of quantum leap that evening.  That, in itself, is a very worthwhile moment to have in one’s life.

How do I know this?  I have eavesdropped on their lessons – to a degree – all year long leading up to the big evening!  I know how “Jennie” had previously been performing Edvard Grieg’s Elfin Tanz.  At the recital she was positively transformed!   An opportunity to reinvent oneself…wow!

It was also nice to see how well these young people had been trained – by Marcia – to calmly walk to the keyboard and bow from the waist, acknowledging the initial applause.  Ah ha!  The annual recital also includes lessons in poise.

But perhaps one of the greatest gifts of preparing oneself for a recital appearance is having the chance to deal with the unexpected.  I have heard Marcia say to her students in a lesson:  “You know that you will not be able to stop playing in this spot in the recital.  So – if you make that same mistake - what will you do?”  And in this manner she prepares her students to “think on their feet” or “think on their hands” as it were.  “How can I improvise myself out of this problem and go on?”  That is an invaluable skill to learn and applicable to many situations in life.

So the next time you think you are just providing your daughter or son with piano lessons…think again!  

Take Me Out to the Ball Game

My apologies for the 'sounds of silence' since my June 30^th entry.  My brain’s been seeking but not finding more answers to the decline in classical concert attendance.  In this state of writer’s block I visited Yankee Stadium on September 3.  Sitting with the other 50,000 fans, I was overwhelmed by the thought - obviously, people are still attending certain kinds of live events in large numbers, regardless of the economy!

I know.  It’s not the same.  Attending sports events entails a completely different set of behaviors.  We may not only talk with friends, but we are encouraged to boisterously cheer for the team.  We’re prodded to eat the expensive food during the game.  We may even become, if not overly so, intoxicated with alcoholic beverages!  Vendors yell and scream.  We’re permitted to wander the stadium at will. 

Loud, participatory behavior is also a normal element of rock concerts.  When held outdoors, the same freedom of movement is tolerated as attendees smoke tobacco and other substances.  Contrast that with an event where one is required to sit quietly without moving.  No wonder people don’t want to attend classical music concerts! 

Months of silence have convinced me I’m asking the wrong question.  The compelling issue is: Why does the clear majority of the population not want to quietly sit and listen to classical music – regardless of the setting – neither in the concert hall nor at home?

This leads me to recent comments made by Walter Isaacson, Steve Job’s biographer.  In an interview, Mr. Isaacson spoke of the profound change Edison wrought on all music by inventing the wax cylinder - a favorite theme of mine I call ‘The Edison Effect.’  Our relationship with music has never been the same since Edison's 1878 patent.  It was the beginning of music 'consumption', as some like to call it, as a private behavior…something one could do by oneself without the presence of either live performers or even other live 'audience' members.

Walter Isaacson went on to say that Steve Jobs’s development of the iPod, created a change in our relationship with music every bit as profound as Edison’s cylinder.  The ‘private-ness’ of our music experience was exponentially heightened by the arrival of the iPod.  People can tell me till the cows come home “There is nothing like a live classical concert!”  I think they’re right, but we need to come to grips with the reality that private music listening is now the primary mode of music listening for people in the industrialized world.  Does that, will that gigantic shift in human behavior significantly alter the consumption of classical music as well?

Steve Jobs literally “did his job.”  Daily, millions connect with their custom downloaded music libraries through earbuds.  Sidestepping the viability of live classical performance and the ultimate fate of professional symphony orchestras, let’s assume that more and more people - individuals who have total control over the content of their iPods - will make private music listening the rule.

What percentage will be listening to classical music?  10%?  5%?  3%?  And if someone is part of the 90% or more who are not listening regularly to classical music, I reassert something I’ve said before – it's likely they simply do not know from personal experience just how moved they might be by classical music listening.  So how do we get them to know that? – to experience that?

We frequently ask ourselves at the TDO office: What can The Discovery Orchestra do to encourage an uninitiated person to watch our YouTube Discovery Chats or Discovery Concert DVD’s?  How do we cajole people to visit our YouTube Channel?  How do we  get someone to ‘give us five’?  And if they do, will this visit do the job?  We hope a five-minute encounter might ignite a pleasure response mechanism that can only be achieved by listening with undivided attention. 

We want your suggestions!  All of them!

It's The Money Stupid! Or Is It?

Concert hall acoustics and the effects of continuously dissonant musical compositions definitely have their impact on concert attendance or the lack thereof.        

Another frequently discussed factor is the price of admission.  As we should know, whatever price is being charged for a classical concert ticket, it does not cover the cost of producing the concert.  We have been using the same financial model in the United States for over a century, imported from Europe, in which somewhere between 50% and 80% of concert cost is being subsidized by philanthropic contributions.  So if we meet in the middle at 65% being the contributed portion of concert cost, it means that a $50 average ticket price - prior to any senior, student or group discounts - should have realistically been $145 in order for the concert to break even.   And we need to quickly note that the break-even ticket price may vary up or down relative to the total annual budget, hall capacity and average attendance.

While an avid sports fan or rock concert attendee might happily pay $200 or more for an event ticket, I don’t think we even need ask how many regular classical music concert attendees would be willing to pay about $150 to listen to a live performance of a Beethoven symphony.   We have all been trained to expect the subsidized ticket price.  And even that may now be beyond the reach of some patrons on fixed retirement incomes or younger individuals stretched by current recessionary economic conditions.

This begs the question – should ticket prices be lowered?  A few professional orchestras are in fact doing this and obtaining improved attendance results.  In other instances a single, low very affordable ticket price for every seat has been instituted.  There are those who have recommended that tickets to all classical concerts simply be made available free of charge!  When one arrives at the door there might be a suggested but not required contribution, as is the practice at some art museums.  I have even encountered a 'pay as you exit' strategy.  If you like the concert, pay for your ticket as you leave.  If not – don’t!     

These are intriguing ideas, all to some degree based on the proposition that if so little income is to be recouped from classical music concert tickets in the first place, why not simply make classical music concerts a completely philanthropic gift from donors to the community?   My guess is that this strategy would have to be balanced against such ingrained beliefs as: “If something is free, it can’t really be worth anything.” and “You don’t get something for nothing.”

In this context, a quote from Penelope McPhee, who formerly oversaw the John S. & James L. Knight Foundation’s Magic of Music (http://bit.ly/jsdru5) initiative, lingers in my mind as a haunting prediction.  It still gives me chills to recall it, and it makes me question whether ticket prices have anything whatsoever to do with the decline in classical music concert attendance.

Addressing a group of marketing executives from professional symphony orchestras with budgets ranging from perhaps one million dollars to as much as forty million dollars annually, Ms. McPhee said something like - and I am paraphrasing here: “If nothing changes, in a few years you won’t even be able to give away your product, let alone sell tickets to it.”  A sobering thought to say the least, and one which causes this observer to look to yet other reasons why classical concert audiences are declining.      

The Elephant in the Room

My last entry focused on concert hall acoustics and their possible impact on attendance at symphony orchestra concerts. Today I want to address the ‘elephant in the room.’

A good friend who regularly listens to classical music and a trained amateur musician said: “I stopped going to the New York Philharmonic years ago.”  “Why?” I asked.  “Because I couldn’t stand the repertoire!” he replied. His ‘unsubscription’ occurred during the Pierre Boulez era as the Philharmonic’s music director.  While serving as assistant conductor of the New Jersey Symphony Orchestra I watched, incredulously, as more than a few people walked out of the hall to the opening strains of Stravinsky’s Le Sacre du Printemps.  It was 1979 - 66 years after the premiere of Le Sacre - and some people still found this score impossible to sit through.

As a former member of the Louisville Orchestra, an ensemble with a history of championing contemporary music and, sadly, currently under Chapter 11 bankruptcy protection, I became quite comfortable playing new compositions.  I do vividly recall the tepid applause that often followed the premieres of many of these pieces. However, I personally found the process of playing and recording new music exciting and stimulating.  I feel fortunate to have conducted recordings of the music of 21^st and 20^th century composers Frank Ezra Levy and his father Ernst with the Polish National Radio Symphony Orchestra, another ensemble with an abiding commitment to new music.

I would never advocate that orchestras abandon new music. Nor do I think they should stop programming dissonant, old repertoire such as Bartok’s Miraculous Mandarin.   I believe new art in all media must be encouraged and supported.  But think about this.  Popular composers and performers – ever since that moment when classical composers took the leap away from tonality – have never released continuously dissonant pop songs.  What sort of careers would Frank Sinatra or Beyoncé have had if they had recorded such material?

There are those who believe human beings are genetically programmed for tonality and, on some primal level, incapable of processing continuous dissonance.  If you wish to pursue this discussion, some of the latest thoughts from the scientific community on the subject may be found in Elena Mannes’s fascinating new book, The Power of Music (Walker & Company). 

One last anecdote.  I was in Carnegie Hall one evening eagerly awaiting a performance by the Vienna Philharmonic.  Seated next to me was a young couple in their late 20’s who announced to me that this was their very first symphony orchestra concert.  The program began with a work by Anton Webern.  After the muted applause, the young man next to me turned and whispered: “Is it always like this?  I think we’ll leave.”   I whispered back: “Since it’s your first concert, why not stay for Mahler’s Symphony No. 1 on the second half?  I think you’ll like it.”  They did and, despite the dissonant passages to be found in Mahler’s 1^st, were swept away by the incredible power of this music.

The ‘elephant in the room’ is not dissonance in music.  Dissonance has musically been with us for thousands of years!  In my opinion the ‘elephant in the room’ is the apparent inability of many people to tolerate continuous dissonance.  Even many seasoned concertgoers just can’t deal with it. Some individuals avoid symphony orchestra concerts when they have the slightest suspicion such a work may be played.  How many people like my friend have just stopped going?  If in more than a century audiences haven’t acclimated to continuously dissonant music, when do we expect the breakthrough moment will arrive?

Today, when many American professional symphony orchestras are fighting for their very survival and hoping to maintain - let alone increase - audiences, they must come to terms with ‘the elephant in the room.’  Performances of new tonal works will probably be welcome, and many orchestras have been programming such compositions.

Perhaps The Discovery Orchestra’s mission of ‘teaching the listening skills that help people emotionally connect with classical music’ will assist some individuals in understanding and identifying with a few of the highly dissonant masterpieces of the 20^th century.  We will persist. Visit us! http://bit.ly/bZ1Vsc   

Any other suggestions?

The More We Perceive...The More We Receive

 My mentor Saul Feinberg once said those words in my presence. I nodded in assent, to which he added, “Feel free to use that.”   I have and I do.  Saul’s distillation of what happens when we give our undivided attention to anything has many ramifications.  I suppose a case might be made that to remain in a constant state of attentiveness could result in sensory overload!  However, the selective use of this behavior can definitely result in a life very rich in pleasurable, meaningful and even important observations.

This adoption of a perceptive state of mind should by no means be limited to sound.  I recall that on a visit to Africa, our tracker, who’d been sitting on a special seat on the front bumper, abruptly relocated himself to a seat safely next to our driver.  He then turned his head toward us and whispered, “Large cat nearby.”  His perceptive eyes, ears and probably sense of smell had obviously detected something we had not!

Think about how important our visual perception of tiny eye movements, eyebrow twitches and lip quivers are as they are projected toward us by our spouses, parents, children, siblings and close friends.  If we do not perceive these subtle signals…

Hearing is, of course, that miraculous sense by which sound waves enter the ear canal, set tiny hairs, bones and liquid in motion and, after being transmitted electronically over nerve tissue, are then “translated” by our brain into things like words and music.  Gives one goosebumps just to think about it!

Listening, however, is paying attention to those sounds being heard by our physical apparatus – an apparatus which percussionist Evelyn Glennie has beautifully shown us extends way beyond our ears!  This state of auditory mindfulness probably has a thousand of degrees of acuity that can be dialed up and down by human beings at will – all the way from ‘barely noticing anything’ to ‘observing every detail.’

We are all capable of applying that full range of mindfulness to musical sounds physically produced in real time outside us.   And, like composers, we can also apply this mindful-state to the details of music “heard” only virtually in our heads.  It really makes no difference whether we are dealing with virtual-imagined music or actual physical sound waves.  The listening all takes place “between our ears” in the brain and simultaneously “amplified” or felt throughout our central nervous and endocrine systems.  

One thing is certain. The more musical detail we perceive…the richer, the more powerful will be the aesthetic experience we receive from listening!

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