John Rommereim's Blog

Technology and Humanity(s)

2011-11-16T21:40:00.000-08:00

A student walks into my office and begins her exam: "tap this rhythm while you count the meter, one, two three." She messes up in measure four; just can't keep the beat. "OK, try it again; notice that the third beat goes like this . . ." On to pitch: "use your tuning fork and find an E flat from A 440, then sing an E Flat Major scale." Again, some difficulty, another repetition, some improvement. (Finding E Flat Major from the pitch A can be difficult; give it a try). Each student who comes in for their exam has some special difficulty -- call it a disability. How do these encounters have anything to do with the humanities or with technology? In teaching basic musical skills, we are directly confronted with human capability. So much of our experience today is mediated through technology, but the technological aids do not remove the necessity of developing our individual abilities. I teach basic musical skills in addition to conducting choirs, teaching composition, and teaching electronic music. In all these endeavors, I'm struck by the fact that the spectacular development of technology necessitates not less, but more attention to our individual skills, our actual human embodiment. There are many technological aids for teaching musical skills, and I try to make use of as many as I can. For students who have trouble matching pitch, for instance, the "Magic Keyboard" app on the iPhone can show the students immediately what pitch they are singing, and can literally help them find their voice. --But the task of finding your voice remains, and it takes individual effort and attention. The technology doesn't take away the human need and desire for embodying music, for making music on our own. As I think about what it is that the study of music gives us, part of the answer seems to be this individual ownership, this personal involvement.

In the 20th century, a certain modernist trend in music presupposed that the human organism would develop in a way that paralleled the stunning progress in technology. We began to think that people would walk around humming 12-tone melodies because the human organism would somehow become more capable--just as the passenger jet replaced travel by ocean liner. It's a ludicrous thought when it is expressed so openly, but nonetheless it was an underlying assumption for many, many decades. The field of choral music, my field, definitively disproves this idea that human capability will develop in tandem with technology. Although a professional orchestra, with the technology, so to speak, of highly developed instruments, is capable of producing complex, rhythmically irregular, atonal music, choral singers, professionals or amateurs alike, relying solely on their bodies without technological assistance, have enormous difficulty in performing disjunct melodies that have a rapidly changing scale (or what some call a rapidly changing macroharmony). This inability is not due to any conservatism on the part of choral organizations, or a general lack of ambition (even if orchestral musicians may suspect that this is the case); it is surely part of an unchanging characteristic of our organism. Call it part of our humanity. So as a choral conductor, I am directly confronted with issues of humanity, of human limitations. The issue simply can't be avoided; sometimes it can be ameliorated, but it can never be sidestepped by technological development. We use technology in so many ways to enhance our art, but it is delusional to think that technology can transform human capability itself. This is one contribution among many offered by music-making (that is, not just passive listening, but the challenging endeavor of making music ourselves): it helps to develop individual agency; it helps to develop skills at a time when it is very likely that technological development, despite its great usefulness, can easily lead to an unfortunate decline in independent human capabilities.

Anything Can Happen

2011-11-14T14:11:00.000-08:00

Next April, the Grinnell Singers will be presenting the world premiere of Mohammed Fairouz's commissioned work, "Anything Can Happen." Mohammed Fairouz is composing this work for choir and solo viola to be premiered by the Grinnell Singers, in a consortium with four other ensembles across the country: the Marsh Chapel Choir and the Back Bay Chorale in Boston (Scott Jarrett, conductor), Cantori New York (Mark Shapiro, conductor), and the Mid-Columbia Mastersingers in Washington (Justin Raffa, conductor). In coordination with this commission, Mr. Fairouz will travel to Grinnell for five days to meet with student composers and other groups prior to the premiere. It also appears likely that Fairouz will appear with the Grinnell Singers at several of their concerts on their tour of the southwestern US in March.

Mohammed Fairouz is a truly phenomenal, prolific, twenty-five-year old composer. He has already been commissioned by some of the country's premiere ensembles and performers. There's a lot to say about this project and about this remarkable young man, but for the purposes of this posting, I'd like to focus on the text that Fairouz has chosen for the commission. It further heightens the experience to have the opportunity to ponder the poetry before we begin work on Mohammed's music. Fairouz happens to be a family friend of the Nobel Laureate, Seamus Heaney, and he has chosen to set a set of three Heaney poems, which I will paste in below. (There is some likelihood that Heaney will be in attendance at the premiere). The first poem, "In Iowa," was written when Heaney was in Iowa for a poetry reading in the early 1990's. The last poem, "Anything Can Happen" is an adapted translation of an Ode by Horace. Although the Horace original was written centuries ago, it is remarkable how the Heaney translation seems to be eerily applicable to the tragedy of the Twin Tower attacks. I wouldn't want to speak for the composer, but in our conversations, Mohammed has communicated that he intends for the last movement to constitute the main thrust of the work. Mohammed experienced the trauma of the September 11 attacks firsthand as a teenager living in lower Manhattan. and that world-altering event profoundly influences his artistic work. I should add that Mohammed may be interpolating additional texts in Arabic and Hebrew between these three poems--the work is still germinating, and the entire text is not yet completely determined.

So as we look at this poetry prior to encountering the music, perhaps we can consider together: What themes link these three movements? What are some of the responses that you have to this poetry? What kind of music do you think this poetry might engender? I am eager to hear your thoughts. For myself, I find the selections in "Anything Can Happen" to be powerful in surprising ways. I was in Iowa in 2001, and I remember the clear, blue, jet-free sky. The purity of the sky was beautiful and alarming. I gather from these poems something like that alarming sky -- the sense of being situated in nature, but distanced from it and unconsoled by it, disturbed all the more by the knowledge that all is not right with the world or with myself. I sense a multiplicity of layers, the feeling that many stories are left untold, that the speaker is sometimes taking on a prophetic voice, sometimes confessional -- all the while remaining a real person living in today's world. At one moment it draws on biblical themes, at another it refers to geological time, or to the ancient world -- and all of these images are brought back to the moment that is as immediate as the beating of a windshield wiper, or the condensation on the inside of a jetliner window. It's hard-hitting poetry; it does not shrink back from difficulty or tragedy, and it does not offer easy consolation.

I. In Iowa

In Iowa once, among the Mennonites

In a slathering blizzard, conveyed all afternoon

Through sleet-glit pelting hard against the windscreen

And a wiper's strong absolving slumps and flits,

I saw, abandoned in the open gap

Of a field where wilted corn stalks flagged the snow,

A mowing machine. Snow brimmed its iron seat,

Heaped each spoked wheel with a thick white brow,

And took the shine off oil in the black-toothed gears.

Verily I came forth from that wilderness

As one unbaptized who had known darkness

At the third hour and the veil in tatters.

In Iowa once. In the slush and rush and hiss

Not of parted but as of rising waters.

II.Höfn

The three-tongued glacier has begun to melt.

What will we do, they ask, when boulder-milt

Comes wallowing across the delta flats

And the miles-deep shag ice makes its move?

I saw it, ridged and rock-set, from above,

Undead grey-gristed earth-pelt, aeon-scruff,

And feared its coldness that still seemed enough

To iceblock the plane window dimmed with breath,

Deepfreeze the seep of adamantine tilth

And every warm, mouthwatering word of mouth.

III Anything Can Happen

Anything can happen. You know how Jupiter

Will mostly wait for clouds to gather head

Before he hurls the lightning? Well just now

He galloped his thunder cart and his horses

Across a clear blue sky.. It shook the earth

and the clogged underearth, the River Styx,

the winding streams, the Atlantic shore itself.

Anything can happen, the tallest towers

Be overturned, those in high places daunted,

Those overlooked regarded. Stropped-beak Fortune

Swoops, making the air gasp, tearing the crest off one,

Setting it down bleeding on the next.

Ground gives. The heaven's weight

Lifts up off Atlas like a kettle lid.

Capstones shift. Nothing resettles right.

Telluric ash and fire-spores boil away.

Here are a few web materials on Fairouz:

http://www.mohammedfairouz.com/

http://www.operatoday.com/content/2010/09/mohammed_fairou.php

Here's one that happens to be written by my daughter Helen Stuhr-Rommereim:

http://www.almasryalyoum.com/en/node/491681

(Helen is working in Cairo as a reporter for the English-language newspaper, Al-Masry Al-Youm)

About a minute into this one, there is a great interview about Mohammed's opera:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8bfUzSGgc1w

Virtual Spem

2011-05-14T09:15:00.000-07:00

News flash: we're going to create a Grinnell Alumni Virtual Choir performance of Tallis's 40-voice motet, Spem in alium. I'll be making a conductor's video, and we'll be using the one of the Grinnell Singers' performances as the master audio track. We will provide access to the scores, and develop instructions to enable singers to send in individual You Tube performances; eventually we will combine the videos to create the virtual choir. I hope to have the basic package put together soon.

On Gjeilo and Variation

2011-03-06T09:49:00.000-08:00

The opening to "The Spheres" by Ola Gjeilo, slowly reveals a simple series of rich minor chords. Splitting the ensemble into two choirs, Gleilo overlaps the entrance of each chord with the next, which blurs the harmonies. The gentle, unaccented entrances discourage the perception of a sense of pulse, of groundedness, and encourage the sense that the vocal sounds are floating in space as the title suggests. The effect is rather like that of a written-in "reverb" -- or you might imagine that the composer is playing the choir like a piano with the sustain pedal held down. Only at the very end of the piece do we hear the opening material presented with a clear pulse, sung by the entire ensemble together, with a full sound, as if this ethereal music has now been brought down to earth, into the human realm.

The overall form that Gjeilo creates is something like a reverse variation: the varied form appears first, and only at the end do we hear the theme clearly stated. I've been meditating on how basic and powerful the idea of variation is. To vary something is to change it, but change is only part of what happens in variation. If something is to be varied there must be some element, some attribute that is kept the same. In defining that unchanging attribute we contribute toward a deeper understanding of the theme. Each variation retains some essential attribute of the theme and in holding up those attributes, we are creating a sort of wordless analysis of the theme. When we hear the fughetta of the tenth Goldberg variation, or the inverted canon in variation fifteen, we hear musical structures that are rich and complex in their own right; only on reflection and with careful study do we realize that they project some essential kernel of the aria, the theme. If there were no connection whatsoever we couldn't really say that the theme was being varied. If the connection were to be too obvious, we would fault the composer for lack of invention. In the case of the Goldberg Variations, the invention is so rich, the connections so subtle, the musical structures so complex, that it as if the theme is an opened door that can lead almost anywhere.

This is such an obvious, obvious, basic concept, and it may be ridiculous to point it out, but I'm fixated on it: Variation is everywhere in nature. All of life on earth uses the same genetic code. It is not possible for one life form to leap to an entirely new one without a connecting link. It may be possible to produce music that is entirely, radically, completely new, devoid of any reference to any previous form of expression or known sound structure -- but it would probably not be perceived as human music. Mere change (something new with nothing retained of the old) is exceedingly rare. Variation -- keeping the wings, feathers, eyes, basic body structure, but changing the beak -- keeping the harmonic pattern but changing the surface texture and the tempo -- keeping the descending bass line, but transforming almost every other feature of the theme and building entirely new, bewilderingly complex structures over it -- variation is the very nub of life and of art.

Jonathan Dove "Ah, Sunflower"

2011-02-13T06:52:00.000-08:00

Here's the Blake Poem from Songs of Innocence and Experience that Jonathan Dove sets in the fifth movement of his choral cycle, The Passing of the Year:

Ah, Sun-flower! weary of time,

Who countest the steps of the Sun,

Seeking after that sweet golden clime

Where the traveller's journey is done:

Where the Youth pined away with desire,

And the pale virgin shrouded in snow

Arise from their graves, and aspire

where my Sun-flower wishes to go.

_______________________

I was curious about the poem, especially the reference to the "pale Virgin" and the "Youth" pining away with desire. With a little googling, I found the mythological story of Clytie, who was transformed into a sunflower after falling in love with the sun god, Apollo. Much of the imagery of Blake's poem refers to the Ovid story. Here's the story of Clytie from Ovid's Metamorphosis, translated by Lawrence Eusden:

Clytie was enamoured of Apollo, but unable to touch the heart of the deity, she pined away with grief, and was changed into a Helotrope, (or Sunflower,) which still turned its head towards the sun, in token of her love.

Now scornful Phoebus from fair Clytie flies,

Nor listens to the maiden's mournful sighs;

All day, all night, in trackless wilds alone

She pined, and taught the listening rocks her moan.

on the cold earth she lies, her bosom bare,

Loose her attire, dishevell'd is her hair.

Nine times the morn unbarr'd the gates of light,

As oft were spread the alternate shades of night;

So long no sustenance the mourner knew,

Unless she drank her tears or pearly dew.

She turn'd about, but rose not from the ground,

Turn'd to the sun still as he roll'd his round;

on his bright face hung her desiring eyes,

Till, fix'd to earth, she strove in vain to rise;

Her looks their paleness in a flower retain'd,

But here and there some purple streaks they gain'd.

Still the loved object the fond leaves pursue,

Still move their root the moving sun to view,

And in the Heliotrope the nymph is true.

Amusia and the composer

2011-01-07T09:35:00.001-08:00

I just finished reading Oliver Sacks' 2007 book, Musicophilia: Tales of Music and the Brain (New York: Knopf, 2007). It was one of those books that looked interesting when I bought it, but I forgot about it and left it on my shelf for three years unread. I'm glad I finally picked it up; there are so many ways in which this book can change our understanding of music's role in our lives. The subtitle is suggestive of the books' open-ended character; it is a loose collection of stories that reveal the connections between music and our functioning as human beings at all levels.

In one of these many stories, Sacks tells of a distinguished composer in his late sixties who developed a strange distortion in his hearing; he began to perceive the pitches in the upper octaves of the keyboard as being sharp by as much as a minor third (told in Chapter 10, "Pitch Imperfect: Cochlear Amusia"). He thought at first that his piano had been tuned wrong; when others checked the tuning, he was shocked to find that the problem was in his own perception of the pitch. The problem appeared to be caused by a distortion of the tiny inner hair cells that serve as auditory receptors. He had had some hearing loss in the higher frequencies, and the pitch range of his hearing loss roughly corresponded to the range of the distortion problem. I can't imagine how disturbing this would be to have your craft as a composer threatened in this way. He couldn't conduct his music because he was unsure if his perceptions of pitch were correct; he couldn't compose music that used the higher notes with any confidence. One overall theme that emerges in the book is a disturbing sense of the ways which our capabilities erode as we age. On the one hand, this story of the composer's hearing loss and distorted pitch perception reminds us of the fact that once our hearing is degraded, the physical structures are lost forever, and we can't regain them. Our hearing is a delicate thing, and we need to protect it. On the other hand, there is cause for hope in the flexibility of the mind, and in our ability to adapt and compensate for deficits we may have. The chapter has a remarkable happy ending, as we hear the composer relate how, through diligent, sustained effort, he was able to overcome this problem:

To my disbelief, . . . I started to notice, as I worked at the piano or synthesizer, that my amusia was ameliorating. Not consistently -- some days it was worse again, some days better -- some tonal areas better than others, then a different set of anomalies the next day, or even next moment! -- but generally improving. Sometimes I would check it first thing in the morning, and it was almost normal at first, but within a few seconds it would jump back to the aberrant norm. But then I would try to "correct" it with a effort of will and/or by playing the same note an octave or two lower to help bull it back in to accuracy, and I found I could do this more and more often. . . . This improvement seemed to start happening right after I was composing, producing, conducting, and trying to hear -- both in my inner and outer ears -- harmonically and texturally complex music with an extremely wide tonal range. Perhaps it was like doing extensive musico-neurological calisthenics, and I was gradually strengthening whatever mechanism of will exists in the old gray matter that can be focused on this problem. [1]

It seemed to be at least partly the composer's engagement with a rich sonic world, a world of "harmonically and texturally complex music with an extremely wide tonal range" that enabled him to compensate for his hearing loss, and to retune his ear. This story, and others like it, make me think more intentionally about how I am spending my time and expending my effort as a musician. What are my deficits and how can I overcome them? How we work, the sounds we seek out and surround ourselves with, our daily musical habits, all this certainly has an impact.

[1] Quoted in Sacks, p. 141.

Crows, Schubert, Midlife Crises

2010-12-30T09:14:00.000-08:00

When I was just beginning my daily walk to work a few weeks ago, with my hands tucked in the pockets of my black leather coat, I passed by the neighbor's house where there was a tree with about five crows making a terrible racket. They didn't pause even to take a breath; they were just squawking and squawking without letup. They were loud, but I hardly took note of them until I found that when I got to the other end of the block, this avian protest group had moved forward and was soon screeching over my head again as I passed by their new perch. This is weird, I thought, and scenes from Hitchcock's The Birds started playing through my mind, especially the image of whole flocks swooping down and pecking at people. As the same scenario played out again in the third block, and the fourth, I began to wonder, is it my black leather jacket? Are they following me because they think I'm a very large, distant relation who forgot how to fly? By the fifth block I started to quicken my steps and I must have looked ridiculous when I turned my head quickly, thinking that they were coming at me from behind. Their excited jabbering continued the whole way, and they followed me for eight blocks -- all the way to the fine arts building at the college, where I checked on them one last time over my shoulder before entering.

I've heard that crows are highly social and intelligent. I don't have anything against them. Being stalked made me a little jumpy, but I also felt pride in being selected by them for special treatment, and I felt that I had moved up in their estimation from the level of an ignorable life form. This encounter started me thinking about Schubert's Winterreise (Winter's Journey), which I had sung many years ago. Crows figure prominently into the story line of that song cycle. In one movement, the miserable fellow who is the protagonist is harassed by a crow who follows him out of the city and flies around his head. He asks the crow, "Crow, you strange creature, won't you ever leave me? --Do you plan to grab my carcass soon?" He sarcastically thanks the crow for his companionship, and for demonstrating to him an example of faithfulness that extends all the way to the grave.

After having the crows take notice of me, I resolved to relearn Winterreise, and in the last couple of weeks, over the winter break, I've been indulging my Schubert obsession by singing it for three or four hours every day. I have the twenty-four songs roughly memorized now, and I've set up a concert in a couple of months, on February 27. Memorizing a concert-length work like this can be a form of ultra-intense reading. When we read or listen to music, those of us lacking extraordinary mental abilities hold the sound or the lines of poetry in our thoughts for a few moments in order to comprehend it, then the memory soon begins to dissolve. One of the pleasures of knowing a larger work by heart is that you carry the poetry and the melodies with you everywhere, and you can select a playlist from your inner ipod at any moment. I am grateful to have this freedom to pursue a project like this, and I'm acutely aware what a privileged it is to be able to mix labor and leisure so thoroughly. As James Michener said,

The master in the art of living makes little distinction between his work and his play, . . . his mind and his body, his information and his recreation, his love and his religion. He hardly knows which is which. He simply pursues his vision of excellence at whatever he does, leaving others to decide whether he is working or playing. To him he's always doing both.

I suppose it's an obvious point, but a lot of folks don't really have the option to pursue being "masters in the art of living" as Michener suggests, and to devote hours to developing their inner ipod on a whim, so one ought to at least be thankful.

One thing I love about longer artworks like Winterreise is the feeling of taking the first steps of a long journey, like feeling the first gentle tug of the Amtrak car as you leave the Minneapolis station beginning the 24-hour trip to the mountains of Montana. When you hear the slow, deliberate exposition of one of the long fugues from the Well-Tempered Clavier, for instance, you get an intriguing intuition of the imposing structure that you are about to have laid out before you, and it tugs you forward -- same thing for the opening to the St. Matthew Passion, or when we read the beginning of this long tale:

Rage -- Goddess, sing the rage of Peleus' son Achilles, murderous, doomed, that cost the Achaeans countless losses, hurling down to the House of Death so many sturdy souls, great fighters' souls, but made their bodies carrion, feasts for the dogs and birds, and the will of Zeus was moving its end. Begin, Muse, when the two first broke and clashed, Agamemnon lord of men and brilliant Achilles. . . .

We know this story is going to keep us occupied for a long while; no mere sound bite here. In addition to this elemental journey-pleasure, when those steady, unhurried, repeated minor chords unfold, introducing the first song of Winterreise, we also have a sense that our hero is in some trouble -- trouble being a necessary, but not a sufficient condition for hero status. The hero of The Divine Comedy, by way of comparison, tells us at the outset that he has had some tough times, without giving us much in the way of details: "In the middle of our life's way / I found myself in a wood so dark / That I couldn't tell where the straight path lay." The arduous journey he undertakes is linked to those difficulties, which today we might refer to dismissively as a midlife crisis. The character is younger in Winterreise, than in The Inferno -- too young for a midlife crisis, but there seems to be something of a similar back story to Schubert/ Müller's song cycle, the first line of which is, "Fremd bin ich eingezogen, fremd zieh ich wieder aus" [As a stranger I came into the world, and as a stranger I'll leave it]. A proviso here regarding art and real life: I don't have a personal resonance with the idea that people in general enter and leave the world as strangers. What a bleak concept. It doesn't take a degree in developmental psych to know that being nurtured, being in relationship with others is vital from the very start; it's just a crucial part of being human. I'm fortunate to have been born into a family that was pretty good to me, so if I were to say, not acting out a character in a story, but as myself, "Fremd bin ich eingezogen," it would be whiney and ridiculously self-absorbed, not to mention false (and pretentious to say it in German). --But this guy doesn't feel good about his childhood, his career prospects, his love life; he's messed up; he feels like an alien. Stories about well-adjusted people are boring. This is going to be good.

Sviridov's "Sacred Love"

2010-12-20T10:42:00.000-08:00

Here's a video of the Grinnell Singers performing Georgy Sviridov's "Sacred Love," with Graciela Guzman, soprano soloist. The text of this piece is so simple and at the same time so profound, wedding together in a few words the essential kernel of human love and an image of the sacred that goes beyond any creed.

O Love, you,

you, O Love
are sacred.
From the beginning you are persecuted
Your blood is poured out.
O Love, you,

you, O Love
are sacred.

This song has particular meaning for me because it evokes memories of singing it under the direction of Vladimir Minin in 1988 in New York, at the festival celebrating the millennium of Christianity in Russia, organized by Vladimir Morosan and Peter Jermihov. The choir included American choral musicians as well as Russians, and the festival was charged with great intensity as we came together for the first time to rehearse and perform under the direction of one of Soviet Russia's most revered conductors. Coming at the heels of decades of repression of sacred music in the Soviet Union, that concert in 1988 was something extraordinary -- a powerful, cathartic moment when people who had been divided were brought together by music that was charged with great spiritual intensity.

After the soloist finished her opening passage, at the spot in the middle of "Sacred Love" where the choir takes over, when we prepared this piece in 1988, Minin asked us to open up our sound from a hum to "ah," moving carefully through all the intervening vowels (mm -- oo - oh - uh - ah), ending up with the brightest sound at the climax. We tried to recreate that effect in this 2010 performance.

Chesnokov translation

2010-11-11T07:57:00.000-08:00

Here's a press release regarding Musica Russica's publication of my translation of Pavel Chesnokov's The Choir and How to Direct It

Monteverdi madrigal

2010-09-01T12:51:00.000-07:00

Here's a video of the King's Singers doing "Si ch'io vorrei morire." Notice especially how they present the piece with their facial expressions.

King's Singers "Si ch'io vorrei"

The Role of the Conductor

2010-08-31T12:37:00.000-07:00

This interesting TED lecture makes some important points about the role of the conductor. Overall, Itay Talgam emphasizes the idea that the conductor does not create precision through absolute control; the togetherness of an ensemble is highly dependent on the communication that occurs within and among the ensemble.

Itay Talgam on conducting

Finnish pronunciation

2010-08-31T12:29:00.000-07:00

Here is a good 10-minute tutorial on how to pronounce Finnish:

Finnish Pronunciation

pictures from Choir tour

2010-03-25T10:24:00.001-07:00

I'm on tour with the Grinnell Singers. On Tuesday, we drove from the desertous inland town of Richland, through the Columbia Gorge to Portland. We stopped to hike at Multnomah falls along the Columbia river. Here are some pictures from our hike. Everyone was so photogenic in the shady light under the falls; even my iphone made some great pictures.

Helen in Irkutsk

2009-12-20T04:11:00.000-08:00

Dec. 19, 2009 8:20 am

We’re on the 4:20 train, pulling out of the station in Karsnoyarsk, headed for Irkutsk. Yes, you read it right; it’s 8:20 am in Krasnoyarsk, but we entered a new time zone when we stepped on the train. All along the Trans Siberian, to avoid the confusion of seven different zones, the clocks are coordinated with the time in Moscow. This morning is the mildest day since I arrived, with a light snow, no real bite to the air. We’re hoping that this weather follows us east. We’re in second class, where the beds are configured like the train in Some Like it Hot: rows of bunks in two levels. A short, uniformed woman with Asian features checked our tickets and gestured for us to enter, welcoming us tersely with the number of our seats: “Twenty five.” “Twenty seven.” We whispered as we moved our things about, settling into our bunks in the dark cabin, amid occasional snores, other whispered conversations, muffled announcements over the PA in the station. As the train gains speed, the light grows, and the outskirts of Krasnoyarsk are dimly visible; gusts of snow smear the passing shapes of factories, power lines, telephone poles. For the first couple of hours, we see improbably large, strangely configured pieces of heavy machinery along the road, and an almost continuous thread of buildings. By noon we are in more open country, with great crowds of birch trees pressing in against the tracks. Further in the distance, their delicate upper branches are washed out to gray by the dusting of snow – faint brushstrokes semi-transparent against the pure white of the hillside.

2009-12-20T04:07:00.000-08:00

Here's a picture of celebratory New Years' ice house being built in Listvyanka, a town on the banks of Lake Baikal

Atlanta

2009-10-17T14:32:00.001-07:00

Here we are in Atlanta on a long layover before our flight to Manaus. (In the picture from the left, Angela, David Campbell, Karen Lowell). We fly through the night and arrive early in the morning. The sattelight picture of

Brazil looks like it's covered with red popcorn--thunderstorms across the entire continent spread evenly, not in a frontal system as in North America. It looks like the rainy season has begun.

-- Posted from my iPhone

Smolensky and Rachmaninov

2009-10-01T10:01:00.000-07:00

As we prepare to perform portions of the All-Night Vigil, I thought I’d offer some information on the work as a whole. Rehearsal time is so precious; I tend to avoid doing a lot of talking. There is a lot to say about this music, however, so this blog is a useful alternative. –These are meant to be rather informal comments just to give you some background.

Rachmaninov’s Vigil can be seen as the culmination of large-scale cultural project begun roughly in the last quarter of the 19^th century, and continuing until 1917, when it was abruptly and brutally shut off. The Moscow Synodal School was the primary focal point around which this campaign took place. Rachmaninov dedicated the Vigil to Stepan Smolensky, and it was Smolensky, more than anyone else, who spearheaded the exploration of Russia’s musical past, and the invigoration of Russia’s indigenous musical culture. Pavel Chesnokov, in a private letter, writes about Smolensky,

The [Moscow Synodal School] where I studied from age seven to eighteen, was headed by a prodigious musician, a profoundly educated man and the first expert in the field of ecclesiastical chant—Stepan Vasilievich Smolensky. Smolensky reformed the Synodal School to such an extent, placed scholarship at such a high level, provided for the Synodal Choir so well with its celebrated conductor Vasily Sergeevich Orlov, that the School began graduating the best choral conductors, and the superb performances of the choir compelled all composers to write works for the church, thereby giving birth to a ‘new direction’ in church music. (While he was director of the Synodal School and Choir, Smolensky was at the same time a professor at the Moscow State Conservatory, teaching the “history of ecclesiastical chant.” His pupils include: S. Rachmaninov, Yuri Sakhnovsky, Gliere, and others.)

Moreover, this very same Smolensky, besides his great work in the school and with the choir, also collected old manuscripts of church music. For this purpose, he was often sent by the synod on journeys to monasteries and abbeys, from which he gathered his main materials. He collected about two thousand manuscripts, and each manuscript is a thick book in wooden bindings covered with leather.[i]

Chesnokov refers to the great achievements of the Moscow Synodal Choir, which was indeed a spectacular ensemble. Elsewhere, Chesnokov makes it clear that the ideal choir that he describes in his book on choral conducting had its embodiment in the Synodal Choir under the direction of Orlov.

Knowing that you are unlikely to read an overly-long blog posting, I will draw your attention to four brief points: 1) Rachmaninov’s use of ancient Russian chant in his work should be seen as part of this larger project – indeed, many view the Vigil as the culmination of this broad campaign led by Smolensky. 2) Rachmaninov takes these spare, simple, austere chants, and, by bringing together harmonic vocabulary from European musical traditions, and adding elements of his own distinctive stylistic voice, he creates a new synthesis. 3) Rachmaninov and choral composers of his generation tended to treat the choir as an orchestra of voices. The Russian church has always forbidden the use of instruments in worship, so in the Russian choral tradition, the choir increasingly came to take on the techniques of orchestral writing: multiple octave doublings, the fullest possible deployment of the choir in terms of its range, etc. 4) The spectacular achievements of Russian choral music were brutally suppressed in 1917. The magnificent Synodal choir was dismantled; sacred music was severely repressed during the Stalinist era. The destruction of this tradition is one of the most devastating cultural losses ever to occur in the world of choral music.

[i] Quoted in Milos Velimirovic, “Some Letters of Pavel Chesnokov in the United States,” in Slavonic and Western Music: Essays for Gerald Abraham, ed., Malcolm Hamrick Brown (Ann Arbor: UMI Research Press, 1985), 264.

One Giant Leap

2009-09-26T06:52:00.001-07:00

Here's the poster for our October 2 concert, "Mrs. Winter's One Giant Leap for Humankind."

The dedicatee had no idea of the true import of the occasion when John Dowland wrote his delightful lute piece in her honor, and named it “Mrs. Winter’s Jump.” At this special concert, after Mrs. Winter takes the initiative, one small step after another will follow: from the sweet melancholy of John Dowland’s lute songs, sung by John Rommereim, baritone, with Christopher Gainey, lute, to Shostakovich preludes arranged for guitar and piano, to Rachmaninov’s famous vocalise arranged for choir and ethereal ebowed electric guitar, to a spiritual arrangement featuring jazz saxophone virtuoso Damani Phillips, and arriving at Rachmaninov’s All-Night Vigil (selections), sung by the Grinnell Singers.

I'm not a real angel; I just play one in a choir

2009-09-23T07:47:00.000-07:00

Here are some pictures from last week's Grinnell Singers picnic.

"Pieces of music are wormholes that we can enter to escape our normal experience of time." (Robert Spano)

It did seem that after we took in that thought we were able to perform the glacial tempo on the "mironositsi zheni" [myhrr-bearing women] section of Movement nine more convincingly. Sometimes I think we do need be intentional about getting ourselves into an alternative (non-drug-induced) mental state. We can't always proceed successfully using just our normal day-to-day waking state.

Rachmaninov's vocalize -- performed by ebowed electric guitar (solo) and choir: thank you for being open to it. It will be fun to try out different versions of this piece: we have an accomplished whistler in the choir who might attempt it; sopranos take a look at it; other instruments are also possible. I need to prepare a complete transposed score, which will help me keep track of things. Chris Gainey will be coming back next Tuesday to play with us at the beginning of rehearsal at 4:30. Damani will also be coming again soon to play jazz saxophone with us.

2009-09-16T09:26:00.000-07:00

Here is the cover to the choral conducting treatise by Pavel Chesnokov that Musica Russica will be publishing later this fall

Grinnell Singers Rehearsal September 15

2009-09-16T07:02:00.000-07:00

I was very pleased that we were able to make such progress on the "Great Doxology " (Rachmaninov movement 12). That movement is in itself a major undertaking; it was so satisfying to hear the group starting to absorb some of its richness. There are many beautiful moments in that piece, but one favorite for me is measure 73. In the passage leading up to that moment, we are singing, "Let Thy mercy, O Lord, be upon us, as we have set our hope on Thee." While we had been predominantly in E Flat, on the word "Tia" (Thee), we arrive at that sublime G Major chord. That tertian relationship (from E Flat major, moving up a third to G Major) has such a mind-bending effect. (Granted, C minor is interposed in m. 70, but G Major and E Flat major are close enough together in time for the tertian effect to be present). Coming before God -- or that which is holy, or larger, more majestic than we are -- translate it in a way that might work for you if the religious phraseology is off-putting for you -- coming into this presence, we are transformed, thrown into a new key. Tallis's Spem in alium, you'll remember, has a similar moment at the climax of the work where the material in C major abruptly ends, and suddenly all forty voices enter with an A Major chord -- again, the tertian relationship, this time moving downward. The passage that follows in the Tallis intones "look upon our humility" (respice humilitatem nostram). In the Rachmaninov, the altos offer a supplication that is similarly humble, and filled with the desire to find the right path in life ("teach me your statutes"). I know that most in the choir are not religious; I hope nonetheless that we can still probe this work with some intensity, and that the emotional and spiritual journey that takes place within it can be absorbed by each individual.

Nice job also on Anders Paulsson's "Deep River." It will be fun to put this together with the jazz saxophone with Damani on Thursday.

Grinnell Singers rehearsal Sept. 13

2009-09-13T18:30:00.000-07:00

Here is the quotation that I alluded to at the beginning of the rehearsal:

Again, one may go wrong in many different ways (because as the Pythagoreans expressed it, evil is of the class of the infinite, good of the finite), but right only in one, and so the former is easy, the latter difficult. Aristotle, Ethics, Book II page 15/28 (project Gutenburg, [read on iphone])

It seemed as if we were confronted rather more with that pesky class of infinite evil than the elusive, finite good during today's rehearsal. I thought our run-through of movement 9 was reasonably successful (what an exquisite piece.) On the other hand, I know that for several of the passages in Rach. movement 12, the words were getting in our way; we had some difficulty with flatting; we had a lot of people missing etc. etc. I just want to make an observation that I suppose is obvious: we are attempting something that is difficult. There's no getting around the fact that the All-Night Vigil is a major undertaking; it just takes a lot of effort to absorb it -- especially the text which is so foreign to most of you. If we all stay on task, we can do this; within a few weeks all of this hard work will start to bear fruit and we will begin to make music for longer stretches of time.

Even though we had a tough rehearsal today, I still feel so privileged to have this opportunity to work with you, and I am thoroughly enjoying this musical adventure with you. You are very welcome to take your scores with you and work on them between rehearsals. If you have some idle moments, one easy, somewhat mechanical task that you can do is to pencil the translation into your score. If you all complete this tedious task, you surely will have a more complete, satisfying experience. Practicing the text is something that is also relatively easy to do on your own; you don't even need a piano or a practice room. I'm hoping you will begin doing this work so often that people will begin to take notice of the strange, bewitched students mumbling in a backwards-sounding language as they walk across campus.

Pavel Chesnokov's Advice to Young Conductors

2009-07-01T11:43:00.000-07:00

Here is an excerpt from Musica Russica's forthcoming translation of Pavel Chesnokov's The Choir and How to Direct It. This list of 29 suggestions for the young conductor appears at the very end of the book. Some of them are a matter of common sense, but I think others contain some valuable and important suggestions. Number eleven, for instance, is one many conductors ignore to their discredit: "Don’t become obsessed with just one composer; it will create monotony. Choose the best and most valuable works from every composer." The very last piece of advice, "Remember that the choral art is but one manifestation of human culture," received a bizarre rebuke from the Soviet editor of the second edition in 1952 (Chesnokov's book was published in 1940, with new editions in 1952 and 1961). The editor wrote in a footnote: “This characterization does not call forth an understanding of the choral art in the social-cultural life of our people. The choral art, tightly entwined with the labor and social life of the Soviet people, is one of the active means of communist education.” Isn't it remarkable that the editor couldn't leave Chesnokov's profound statement alone, but instead felt the need have the final word, and to blow this last gust of political hot air?

1. Technique assists inspiration, so the first task is to teach the choir to achieve technical mastery of a given composition.

2. Do not undertake work on a composition that you cannot fully apprehend yourself, either intellectually or emotionally.

3. If, when working on a piece, you notice that the choir does not take to it because it is below the choir's abilities, remove that composition from the rehearsal schedule. If a piece is too hard for the choir, abandon it for a time. Develop and perfect the group by working on easier pieces, and then at a later date, return to the difficult piece.

4. Remember that your job is to lead. A personal sense of responsibility will help you overcome many difficulties.

5. Do not go to the choir with a piece that you have not studied beforehand and analyzed thoroughly.

6. If the choir sings poorly, do not blame them; blame yourself.

7. When conducting a choir, you must always be at least to some degree in an inspired, enthusiastic state. The absence of enthusiasm weakens performance.

8. Do not depreciate the value of a composition by too-frequent rehearsal. If you notice a worsening in the quality of performance, and the appearance of mistakes, take the piece off the rehearsal schedule for a couple of months, then work on it a second time.

9. Do not add weak works, or works with low artistic value to the choir's repertoire.

10. Never be rude in working with the choir; it lowers you in their eyes, and it will cause only injury. Be enthusiastic, inventive, discerning; gain the confidence of the choir by engaging them in interesting tasks and by directing them toward the artistic performance of the pieces being studied.

11. Don’t become obsessed with just one composer; it will create monotony. Chose the best and most valuable works from every composer.

12. Working the choir to the point of exhaustion is ill-advised; if the choir is tired, they won’t work productively.

13. Before entering the stage, take two or three deep, slow breaths; it will have a beneficial effect on your nervous system.

14. As you enter the stage, do not survey the crowd, and do not attempt to quiet them. Once you have taken your position, assume a good posture, wait for a full quiet to come upon the hall, and for the choir to focus their attention; avoid, however, an overly long pause.

15. Thoroughly and in detail, instruct the choir regarding their entrance and exit, as well as their behavior in front of the audience. An outward order creates the impression of seriousness and discipline.

16. The first time you approach a new choir, don’t forget that the group has its own history, its own habits and traditions. Be careful not to disrupt the group precipitously: examine the group; create improvements, and gradually the flaws will be transformed into virtues.

17. Don’t be verbose with the choir; say only that which is necessary and that which has a practical purpose. Remember that verbosity is wearisome to the choir; be judicious both in gestures and in words.

18. Avoid making the choir repeat things without a purpose. When you repeat something, explain why you are doing it; otherwise the choir’s trust in you will gradually diminish.

19. Maintain strict demands on yourself, both as a conductor and as a person; this will guarantee a normal relationship with the choir.

20. Support an atmosphere of artistic camaraderie and unity of spirit in the choir.

21. Be an old comrade for the choral singer, in the best sense of the word; at the same time, be demanding in your work.

22. In studying a piece with the choir, show the singers the best musical ideas and details that it contains; by doing this, you will plant within them an artistic sensibility.

23. If you don’t succeed in eliciting a feeling of inspiration regarding the artistic value of the composition performed, your work with the choir will not achieve the desired goal.

24. A conductor who cannot succeed in calling forth a feeling of exalted surprise on the part of the listener is not an artist.

25. If you don’t yourself experience delight, and don’t find joy in your work, then you won’t give anything to the singers. You should consider work of that kind to be pointless.

26. Try to bring liveliness and interest to every dry technical task.

27. Study every singer as an individual; investigate his unique psychology and approach him in a way that is consistent with his personality.

28. Value and respect the choral singer if you want to be valued and respected by the choir; mutual respect and goodwill are a necessary underpinning for artistic work.

29. Remember that the choral art is but one manifestation of human culture.