I just got home from the opera. (How great is it that I get to say that???) Tonight, in the black box theatre, they performed Debussy's Pelleas et Melisande. The piece is about Melisande, a young girl, who marries Golaud, an older widower who finds her in the forest one day. He takes her home to meet his family, and she falls in love with his half-brother, Pelleas. Pelleas also loves her. As they grow bolder and bolder with their feelings and meetings, Golaud starts to figure things out. The results are devastating.
My words are very poor paints for such a musical landscape. This score washes over you like water. The music itself is like falling in love, sweeping between ecstasy and despair, always remaining on edge, quivering with possibility, being enveloped in fuzzy warmth that's pierced by crystal clarity.
Debussy's music always has this effect on me. There's something about it that reaches a place deep in my soul. Judging from his successes, I think I'm not the only one.
If you have the chance, go see Pelleas et Melisande. Be sure to see it in French; Debussy weaves the colors of the French language into the fabric of the music. It is An Experience.
~Hope
PS A fun anecdote: Tonight's Pelleas, JW, is the same person who played the teenage lover in For a Look or a Touch. At one of the Debussy rehearsals, an observer who was fluent in French asked the director, "Who is that marvelous French boy you found to play Pelleas?" JW is American.
Thursday, January 29, 2009
Wednesday, January 28, 2009
Practice Robot Piece
My to-do list for both today and tomorrow includes the phrase "Practice Robot Piece."
How fun is that?
CL, my composer buddy, had to write a piece for a composition class. He asked me to be the singer in it. Today, I met the alto flutist and the violinist who are also playing it. It's a really interesting mix of sporadic and planned, mechanical and human. Great contrasts all throughout. Very avant garde.
Tomorrow, I get to sing it in his class. I hope I do okay with it. Three days isn't enough time to really learn a piece and be able to do it justice, but hopefully my best will be good enough.
I have a sneaking suspicion that I'll be dreaming it tonight...
~Hope
How fun is that?
CL, my composer buddy, had to write a piece for a composition class. He asked me to be the singer in it. Today, I met the alto flutist and the violinist who are also playing it. It's a really interesting mix of sporadic and planned, mechanical and human. Great contrasts all throughout. Very avant garde.
Tomorrow, I get to sing it in his class. I hope I do okay with it. Three days isn't enough time to really learn a piece and be able to do it justice, but hopefully my best will be good enough.
I have a sneaking suspicion that I'll be dreaming it tonight...
~Hope
Tuesday, January 27, 2009
Chanting
My music history class this semester is on Western Music from Middle Ages. What this really means is church music from the Middle Ages since little else from that time period has survived. So much was transmitted orally before the advent of the printing press. It was the monks and Charlemagne who are responsible for what we know of most music of the time.
Anyway, what that really means in concrete terms is that we spend a lot of time in class sight singing (sight reading with voice) chants from the liturgy of the time. Today was all about tropes, which are basically embellishments to standard chants.
One of the issues in early music notation is that they didn't change the note lengths or put in bar lines. So you'd have these long series of quarter notes, and you wouldn't necessarily know what to emphasize. In class today, we took one of these, broke into groups, and created our own editorial markings. You start by sight singing the notes -- all in quarters. As you sing, you can hear a tonal center emerge -- the note the music tends to drift back to as a "home base". When you start putting in bar lines, you begin to notice patterns, series of note intervals that are repeated. Then you have a choice: do you keep the patterns together, as an echo of each other, or do you break them up to create variety?
In the early Middle Ages, monks had to memorize these. Without words, all the repetition made that a daunting task. Notker was a monk who lived in the monastery at St. Gall. In about 880, he started adding text to the melody as a mneumonic device. He got the idea from another monk visiting the monastery, but Notker's manuscripts are the ones that survive today. It's because of him that we have a sense how the monks may have broken up the melodies, phrasing them and making them musical.
It's so neat to me to think about a time when we didn't have written music. What would you do to create a musical notation if you didn't have one? How would you denote pitch? Rhythm? Dynamics? You could add in other things that we don't typically notate today, like tone color or other items from technique.
In today's world, we still think about how to notate things, particularly in avant-garde music that pushes the boundaries of what we think of as "typical" sound. I wonder what people will think of our music 1200 years from now. Will they have a good idea based on the markings and recordings we're leaving behind?
~Hope
Anyway, what that really means in concrete terms is that we spend a lot of time in class sight singing (sight reading with voice) chants from the liturgy of the time. Today was all about tropes, which are basically embellishments to standard chants.
One of the issues in early music notation is that they didn't change the note lengths or put in bar lines. So you'd have these long series of quarter notes, and you wouldn't necessarily know what to emphasize. In class today, we took one of these, broke into groups, and created our own editorial markings. You start by sight singing the notes -- all in quarters. As you sing, you can hear a tonal center emerge -- the note the music tends to drift back to as a "home base". When you start putting in bar lines, you begin to notice patterns, series of note intervals that are repeated. Then you have a choice: do you keep the patterns together, as an echo of each other, or do you break them up to create variety?
In the early Middle Ages, monks had to memorize these. Without words, all the repetition made that a daunting task. Notker was a monk who lived in the monastery at St. Gall. In about 880, he started adding text to the melody as a mneumonic device. He got the idea from another monk visiting the monastery, but Notker's manuscripts are the ones that survive today. It's because of him that we have a sense how the monks may have broken up the melodies, phrasing them and making them musical.
It's so neat to me to think about a time when we didn't have written music. What would you do to create a musical notation if you didn't have one? How would you denote pitch? Rhythm? Dynamics? You could add in other things that we don't typically notate today, like tone color or other items from technique.
In today's world, we still think about how to notate things, particularly in avant-garde music that pushes the boundaries of what we think of as "typical" sound. I wonder what people will think of our music 1200 years from now. Will they have a good idea based on the markings and recordings we're leaving behind?
~Hope
Monday, January 26, 2009
Smatterings
So many amazing things to write about from the past few days...I'll highlight just a few since I'm still RunningRunningRunning.
First up, the list of performances I attended over the past week:
First up, the list of performances I attended over the past week:
- Sunday afternoon: Tosca
- Tuesday evening: a voice faculty member's recital
- Friday evening: a jazz orchestra performance
- Saturday evening: the local Philharmonic orchestra's rendition of Mussorgsky's "Prelude to Khovanshchina", Nielsen's "Concerto for Flute and Orchestra", and Shostakovich's "Symphony No. 5 in D minor, Op. 47". This last one was written in response to the Soviet regime's oppression. Shostakovich had written an opera, Lady Macbeth of Mtensk. The regime was so unhappy that he hadn't made it a joyful celebration of Soviet culture and rule that Shostakovich had to write something to get back into the leaders' good graces. Otherwise, he faced being carted away and "disappearing". This piece has so much pathos in it, so much anguish, which he explained to the rulers as being about the struggle of life. The last movement is upbeat, but it is a forced joy. During the premiere, Shostakovich told people this was about "optimism and the joy of living." Yet after his death, his posthumously published memoir held a different comment: "The rejoicing is forced, created under threat. It's as if someone were beating you with a stick and saying, 'Your business is rejoicing, your business is rejoicing,' and you rise, shaky, and go marching off, muttering, 'Our business is rejoicing, our business is rejoicing.' What kind of apotheosis is that? You have to be a complete oaf not to hear that."
This week, I get to see the student opera production of Debussy's Pelleas et Melisande. I'm also performing a new piece written by CL, my composer friend, for one of his classes. It's an exploration of the man vs. machine idea, and he wrote it in response to a "conversation" of pieces -- pieces that were written by composers in response to each other. His is the latest in the chain. When I asked him whether he wanted the tone and rhythm to be warm and fluid (highlighting humanity) or more robotic (highlighting the blurring of human and machine), he wrote, "I'd say fluid and warm with a tad dash of a demented spontaneity and just let the text speak for itself, though, I am intrigued by this idea of a "robotic" soprano sound."
Amazing that I get to have conversations like this.
This afternoon, in my stage directing class, we spent about an hour pouring over blueprints of various stage productions as the professor explained to us how to read the various lines and symbols, what a designer expects and needs from a director in a staging meeting, and more about how the process of putting together a show unfolds. A director comes up with a concept based on the drama and text and music, and the stage and lighting designers help crystallize those concepts. So the director might say, "The character needs to be isolated here. She's feeling very alone. I see harsh vertical lines and stark colors." The stage designer might build some sort of platform to isolate the character. The lighting designer would know just what color lights to shine (or, more precisely, what color "gels" - plastic translucent colors - to put in the lights to get colored light). It's a dialogue. The stage designer draws up the blueprints, confirms with the director, and gives them to the technical director, who makes technical drawings -- how much lumber is required for a particular set piece, etc. Then, the shop builds it.
I have much to do tonight for tomorrow, so I'll postpone talking more about the conference. Suffice to say it was also incredible. I feel very lucky that I was able to attend!
~Hope
Thursday, January 22, 2009
Entrepreneurship in Music
So the other reason I'm on Cloud Twelve and a Half is that tonight was the kickoff for a conference on Entrepreneurship and Music. About fifty students and faculty/deans from various conservatories around the US are here to talk about how to incorporate entrepreneurship and entrepreneurial thinking into the conservatory curricula. In today's ever-shifting world, it is increasingly important that musicians have a conception of business. Not only do we need to create our own opportunities in many instances, but some of us will want careers that combine business and music. Many people in the arts administration world are former performers who ended up doing marketing, development, programming, PR, or management. Most then are forced to learn on the fly the requisite skills. Of course, learning on the fly isn't always the easiest way to go, particularly when your colleagues are those who have also learned on the fly. This often leads to inefficiencies or serious issues in nonprofit arts organizations. That means conservatories are starting to consider whether they need to teach some of these business skills while students are in school.
To me, and to many of my professors, the problem is beyond simple "how do I do fundraising?" questions. Yes, there are a fundamental set of skills that all artists ought to have. (How do I create a press kit and resume? How do I do my taxes? How do I get health insurance? How do I create a budget?) However, there's also a mindset shift that needs to happen. People who want to be full-time performers, not arts administrators, need to think about how to create opportunities for themselves to perform. They need to carve their own niche in the entertainment market. Jobs with orchestras and symphonies or opera companies are hard to come by and, for singers especially, rarely steady work. Teaching should not be the only other option. The other key need, I think, is empathy. Artists too often view business people as "those people who handle the dirty money." "Revenue" and "profit" are Horrible Words. Business people, on the other hand, too often view artists as flighty, chaotic, and irresponsible. Both of these viewpoints are stereotypes that need to change. Empathy must be engendered on both sides of the table for a workable partnership and therefore a healthy cultural community to exist.
Enough of my soapbox. Now you have a glimpse of the point of the conference. A business professor from Babson College, Heidi Neck, is here to facilitate workshops with us. This evening was a meet and greet. We had a brief introduction from the conference organizer, a short film, and then wandered around a museum that had been reserved for us. We munched on wonderful pasta and crudite, hand-carved turkey with cranberry sauce or beef with horseradish sauce, crabcakes with a remoulade sauce on the side, chicken wellington, shrimp cocktail, wine and other beverages, and, most importantly, chocolate desserts. A wonderful chocolate torte -- very dark, very smooth, very dense -- was on the buffet table. There was one piece left when I arrived at the dessert table, and I confess that I took it. Perhaps not polite, but oh so worth it.
What was really neat was the diversity of people. I thought I was a minority in the world of business meets music, but I'm less of a minority than I had realized. Most of the people here have either started a center for entrepreneurship at their conservatories or have created a course. Some are deans, some are faculty. One man was a drum performance major at Berklee, got an MBA, worked as an agent for a pop star, worked in a bank on both the commercial and investment sides, and now is running a center for entrepreneurship at a conservatory. He helps students who want to create a record company or other musical endeavor write a business plan and apply for funding. He also performs.
The students who are at the conference are passionate and highly committed. Many remind me of the people I encountered in business school. One guy was in the Marine Corps band and talked about the leadership challenges he encountered there. Talk about finding ways to manage from the back of the room. Others want to start outreach groups when they graduate or find ways to improve their conservatories. One woman is heading off next year to get a dual master's degree - one in public policy and the other in philanthropy. Incredible.
What strikes me most is the warmth in the room. So often in business conferences, the atmosphere is cordial but formal. There is a palpable wall, as if people are always in "presentation" or "meet and greet/networking" mode. Here, these people are musicians first. In music, there is a warmth, a soul, a heart that is by necessity towards the surface. To be an excellent performer, you must make yourself vulnerable. You must be willing to express and show a nuanced range of emotions, and you must show your heart. That means that your feelings and your heart, things that are often considered taboo or "too touchy-feely" in business, must be readily accessible and visible. The net result is that people recognize each other's humanity very quickly and connect with each other on a very personal level. The secondary boost to this warmth is that these people are either students, who have not yet been taught to be reserved, or educators, who care about students and therefore connect with me as a teacher-to-student. Many are also alums of my school, and they see me as a part of that larger family.
Tomorrow will be filled with workshops and conversations. I'm really excited about it. What an amazing time to be in music. I feel so grateful to be here and so thrilled that the years I spent in business will actually enable me to make a difference in the performance world.
~Hope
To me, and to many of my professors, the problem is beyond simple "how do I do fundraising?" questions. Yes, there are a fundamental set of skills that all artists ought to have. (How do I create a press kit and resume? How do I do my taxes? How do I get health insurance? How do I create a budget?) However, there's also a mindset shift that needs to happen. People who want to be full-time performers, not arts administrators, need to think about how to create opportunities for themselves to perform. They need to carve their own niche in the entertainment market. Jobs with orchestras and symphonies or opera companies are hard to come by and, for singers especially, rarely steady work. Teaching should not be the only other option. The other key need, I think, is empathy. Artists too often view business people as "those people who handle the dirty money." "Revenue" and "profit" are Horrible Words. Business people, on the other hand, too often view artists as flighty, chaotic, and irresponsible. Both of these viewpoints are stereotypes that need to change. Empathy must be engendered on both sides of the table for a workable partnership and therefore a healthy cultural community to exist.
Enough of my soapbox. Now you have a glimpse of the point of the conference. A business professor from Babson College, Heidi Neck, is here to facilitate workshops with us. This evening was a meet and greet. We had a brief introduction from the conference organizer, a short film, and then wandered around a museum that had been reserved for us. We munched on wonderful pasta and crudite, hand-carved turkey with cranberry sauce or beef with horseradish sauce, crabcakes with a remoulade sauce on the side, chicken wellington, shrimp cocktail, wine and other beverages, and, most importantly, chocolate desserts. A wonderful chocolate torte -- very dark, very smooth, very dense -- was on the buffet table. There was one piece left when I arrived at the dessert table, and I confess that I took it. Perhaps not polite, but oh so worth it.
What was really neat was the diversity of people. I thought I was a minority in the world of business meets music, but I'm less of a minority than I had realized. Most of the people here have either started a center for entrepreneurship at their conservatories or have created a course. Some are deans, some are faculty. One man was a drum performance major at Berklee, got an MBA, worked as an agent for a pop star, worked in a bank on both the commercial and investment sides, and now is running a center for entrepreneurship at a conservatory. He helps students who want to create a record company or other musical endeavor write a business plan and apply for funding. He also performs.
The students who are at the conference are passionate and highly committed. Many remind me of the people I encountered in business school. One guy was in the Marine Corps band and talked about the leadership challenges he encountered there. Talk about finding ways to manage from the back of the room. Others want to start outreach groups when they graduate or find ways to improve their conservatories. One woman is heading off next year to get a dual master's degree - one in public policy and the other in philanthropy. Incredible.
What strikes me most is the warmth in the room. So often in business conferences, the atmosphere is cordial but formal. There is a palpable wall, as if people are always in "presentation" or "meet and greet/networking" mode. Here, these people are musicians first. In music, there is a warmth, a soul, a heart that is by necessity towards the surface. To be an excellent performer, you must make yourself vulnerable. You must be willing to express and show a nuanced range of emotions, and you must show your heart. That means that your feelings and your heart, things that are often considered taboo or "too touchy-feely" in business, must be readily accessible and visible. The net result is that people recognize each other's humanity very quickly and connect with each other on a very personal level. The secondary boost to this warmth is that these people are either students, who have not yet been taught to be reserved, or educators, who care about students and therefore connect with me as a teacher-to-student. Many are also alums of my school, and they see me as a part of that larger family.
Tomorrow will be filled with workshops and conversations. I'm really excited about it. What an amazing time to be in music. I feel so grateful to be here and so thrilled that the years I spent in business will actually enable me to make a difference in the performance world.
~Hope
Cloud 12 1/2
I'm on about Cloud Twelve and a Half. This has been one of the most incredible days I've ever had.
The morning began rather innocuously. I had a lovely conversation with e, which is joyful in and of itself, of course. Then, I went to my Voice Repertoire class. There, we learned more about the nuances of French diction - when vowels are closed or open and why, when to elide/liase sounds between words, and what "vocalic harmonization" is (the principle that an ambiguous vowel follows its neighbors in pronunciation. If the nearby syllable is open, the vowel is more open. If it's closed, the vowel is more closed. Think of it as creating a harmonious sound. It's similar to why we like poems that rhyme. There's something comforting about similarity in language.)
At this point, I ran to a practice room to warm up before my voice lesson. While the lesson itself was cancelled, I did get to meet with my composer. And this is where things really started to become amazing. CL is a highly creative and very gentle soul. He's writing a piece to a poem by Lia Purpura, an American poet. As part of a larger composer-singer project around Ms. Purpura's poetry, I've been paired with CL to debut the piece that he writes. Today, he wanted to get a sense of my voice since he's going to tailor-make the piece for me. (How awesome is that?!) To that end, I sang some pieces that my voice teacher considers representative of my voice - "Pantomime" and "Clair de Lune" by Debussy, a snatch of Handel's "Rejoice Greatly", and Chausson's "Chanson d'Ophelia", which is quite low but shows the warmth and roundness of my lower voice well.
CL asked many wonderful questions about my range, about what's doable as a singer, and about different sounds that you can make with your voice. Violins and other instruments have "extended technique", which is where you make non-traditional sounds with the instrument -- sounds that aren't made by bowing but rather by tapping on the body, etc. CL wanted to know whether voice has something similar. We talked about quasi parlato - literally "almost spoken" - instructions in music and about the different ways that singers perform jazz vs. rock vs. pop vs. classical music. We talked about different ways to elongate syllables, focusing solely on consonants or repeating vowels. And we talked about colors - the way different vowels or even composer instructions can bring out different colors in the voice. Certain notes, too, have a different quality. For instance, F and F# two above middle C (F5 and F#5 for all you musicians) have a particularly strident quality for many sopranos.
What was even more interesting than the conversation, however, was the actual singing we did. After I'd sung the Debussy, Handel, and Chausson, CL asked me if I'd like to improvise. He placed the poem upon a music stand, and he sat down at the piano. He just played on the fly, and I sang on top whatever came to mind, reading and following the text. I was able to be so in the moment for most of it, just expressing and completely letting go.
CL began with a dark, muddled atonal accompaniment. Then, he tried it very staccato and frenetic. The next one, at my suggestion, was more lyrical. At this point, I started recording because this was just too cool not to be able to look back on. Plus, it should help me find different ideas for expressing the poem in the eventual piece CL composes. We explored tonal varieties (much harder since there are real rules for what sounds "right" and what doesn't and what should progress to what.) Finally, CL tried a polytonal variety. Polytonal music is evidently where you have consonant chords, each with a tonality, but any chord can go to any other chord. In regular tonal music, there's a defined progression: tonic (I) to predominant (ii or IV) to dominant (V) to tonic (I) again. In polytonal music, that progression goes out the window. It has the sense of randomness without the same dissonance that atonal music has. Very, very cool.
We finished after an hour, and CL seemed happy. He wanted to explore ideas of what the poem could be, and he said that he'd have fragments of our work floating around in his mind as he went to compose. He's planning to come to my lesson next week where he can talk to my voice teacher about what is pedagogically sound (healthy) and what is possible with colors and range. He's very sensitive to making sure that what he composes is healthy to sing, which makes me SO happy. There are composers who disregard the fact that singers can actually hurt their instruments by singing wrongly, something that is a career and personal liability. It's not like we can go buy another violin if we break a string. But CL is really, really great about thinking about what's comfortable to sing.
This alone would have been enough to more than make my day. But then, I got to attend an amazing conference on entrepreneurship in music. I'll write separately about that since this entry is getting a bit lengthy by now. If you've read this far, I congratulate you. You win the "Ability to Plow Through Wordy Writing" award. Felicitaciones.
~Hope
The morning began rather innocuously. I had a lovely conversation with e, which is joyful in and of itself, of course. Then, I went to my Voice Repertoire class. There, we learned more about the nuances of French diction - when vowels are closed or open and why, when to elide/liase sounds between words, and what "vocalic harmonization" is (the principle that an ambiguous vowel follows its neighbors in pronunciation. If the nearby syllable is open, the vowel is more open. If it's closed, the vowel is more closed. Think of it as creating a harmonious sound. It's similar to why we like poems that rhyme. There's something comforting about similarity in language.)
At this point, I ran to a practice room to warm up before my voice lesson. While the lesson itself was cancelled, I did get to meet with my composer. And this is where things really started to become amazing. CL is a highly creative and very gentle soul. He's writing a piece to a poem by Lia Purpura, an American poet. As part of a larger composer-singer project around Ms. Purpura's poetry, I've been paired with CL to debut the piece that he writes. Today, he wanted to get a sense of my voice since he's going to tailor-make the piece for me. (How awesome is that?!) To that end, I sang some pieces that my voice teacher considers representative of my voice - "Pantomime" and "Clair de Lune" by Debussy, a snatch of Handel's "Rejoice Greatly", and Chausson's "Chanson d'Ophelia", which is quite low but shows the warmth and roundness of my lower voice well.
CL asked many wonderful questions about my range, about what's doable as a singer, and about different sounds that you can make with your voice. Violins and other instruments have "extended technique", which is where you make non-traditional sounds with the instrument -- sounds that aren't made by bowing but rather by tapping on the body, etc. CL wanted to know whether voice has something similar. We talked about quasi parlato - literally "almost spoken" - instructions in music and about the different ways that singers perform jazz vs. rock vs. pop vs. classical music. We talked about different ways to elongate syllables, focusing solely on consonants or repeating vowels. And we talked about colors - the way different vowels or even composer instructions can bring out different colors in the voice. Certain notes, too, have a different quality. For instance, F and F# two above middle C (F5 and F#5 for all you musicians) have a particularly strident quality for many sopranos.
What was even more interesting than the conversation, however, was the actual singing we did. After I'd sung the Debussy, Handel, and Chausson, CL asked me if I'd like to improvise. He placed the poem upon a music stand, and he sat down at the piano. He just played on the fly, and I sang on top whatever came to mind, reading and following the text. I was able to be so in the moment for most of it, just expressing and completely letting go.
CL began with a dark, muddled atonal accompaniment. Then, he tried it very staccato and frenetic. The next one, at my suggestion, was more lyrical. At this point, I started recording because this was just too cool not to be able to look back on. Plus, it should help me find different ideas for expressing the poem in the eventual piece CL composes. We explored tonal varieties (much harder since there are real rules for what sounds "right" and what doesn't and what should progress to what.) Finally, CL tried a polytonal variety. Polytonal music is evidently where you have consonant chords, each with a tonality, but any chord can go to any other chord. In regular tonal music, there's a defined progression: tonic (I) to predominant (ii or IV) to dominant (V) to tonic (I) again. In polytonal music, that progression goes out the window. It has the sense of randomness without the same dissonance that atonal music has. Very, very cool.
We finished after an hour, and CL seemed happy. He wanted to explore ideas of what the poem could be, and he said that he'd have fragments of our work floating around in his mind as he went to compose. He's planning to come to my lesson next week where he can talk to my voice teacher about what is pedagogically sound (healthy) and what is possible with colors and range. He's very sensitive to making sure that what he composes is healthy to sing, which makes me SO happy. There are composers who disregard the fact that singers can actually hurt their instruments by singing wrongly, something that is a career and personal liability. It's not like we can go buy another violin if we break a string. But CL is really, really great about thinking about what's comfortable to sing.
This alone would have been enough to more than make my day. But then, I got to attend an amazing conference on entrepreneurship in music. I'll write separately about that since this entry is getting a bit lengthy by now. If you've read this far, I congratulate you. You win the "Ability to Plow Through Wordy Writing" award. Felicitaciones.
~Hope
Wednesday, January 21, 2009
French Loop-d-loops
One of my classes is Voice Repertoire, where we learn about art song in various languages. This week, we're diving into Gabriel Faure's works, accompanied by readings from a very insightful book by Pierre Bernac.
A particularly cool thing I'm learning is that French is the inverse of English. In English (and other Germanic languages), we tend to clip the vowels to get to the consonants. In French (and other Romance languages), the vowels are key. I knew this was true for Italian (So many people talk about the importance of a legato line and singing on the vowels in Italian), but I wasn't aware how true it was for French, too.
It's like singing Happy Birthday by just focusing on the vowels, as if the vowels are one long connected stream. The consonants for French must be crisp and clear, but they must also be very brief, little stones dropped into the ever-flowing river.
This creates a whole different color in French art song as opposed to English art song. It's also one of the reasons why I love singing in an original language as opposed to English -- but that's another topic.
Time to go back to my theory dictation (listening and writing the notes I hear.)
~Hope
A particularly cool thing I'm learning is that French is the inverse of English. In English (and other Germanic languages), we tend to clip the vowels to get to the consonants. In French (and other Romance languages), the vowels are key. I knew this was true for Italian (So many people talk about the importance of a legato line and singing on the vowels in Italian), but I wasn't aware how true it was for French, too.
It's like singing Happy Birthday by just focusing on the vowels, as if the vowels are one long connected stream. The consonants for French must be crisp and clear, but they must also be very brief, little stones dropped into the ever-flowing river.
This creates a whole different color in French art song as opposed to English art song. It's also one of the reasons why I love singing in an original language as opposed to English -- but that's another topic.
Time to go back to my theory dictation (listening and writing the notes I hear.)
~Hope
Tuesday, January 20, 2009
Beaded Moments
Today at 11:30, several fellow students and I crowded into a professor's office to watch the inauguration. He had kindly set up chairs and passed out oranges, perhaps recognizing that we might be skipping lunch in order to witness this historic event. In front of a rather large tv that was pulling its coverage out of the air, we crouched and cried, overwhelmed by the significance.
I think what expands the magnitude of this event is not just the gratitude for the shattering of a racial barrier; it's also the wonder at the collective breathing of a nation. So many people are joined together in hopefulness. While I don't think that one man can be The Solution or that our nation will be Quickly Fixed, I do marvel at the unity among the American public. It's an enormous sense of common purpose, enthusiasm, and connection that I don't think I've seen ever before in my lifetime. Truly incredible.
This is probably one of those moments that will remain stamped in my memory - where precisely I was, who was around me, what I was tasting and thinking and feeling when President Obama was sworn into office. I would guess that many others feel the same way, which is what makes me think of "Beaded Moments". Each of our experiences was different, yet we are linked, juxtaposed with each other, along this common cord and common chord of the 44th President's inauguration.
So where were you during the inauguration?
~Hope
I think what expands the magnitude of this event is not just the gratitude for the shattering of a racial barrier; it's also the wonder at the collective breathing of a nation. So many people are joined together in hopefulness. While I don't think that one man can be The Solution or that our nation will be Quickly Fixed, I do marvel at the unity among the American public. It's an enormous sense of common purpose, enthusiasm, and connection that I don't think I've seen ever before in my lifetime. Truly incredible.
This is probably one of those moments that will remain stamped in my memory - where precisely I was, who was around me, what I was tasting and thinking and feeling when President Obama was sworn into office. I would guess that many others feel the same way, which is what makes me think of "Beaded Moments". Each of our experiences was different, yet we are linked, juxtaposed with each other, along this common cord and common chord of the 44th President's inauguration.
So where were you during the inauguration?
~Hope
Monday, January 19, 2009
Les Nubians
The music that's keeping me company much of the time now at home is by Les Nubians, a French sort-of-lounge-sound group. Great rhythms, light instruments, excellent mixing, and fantastic voices. You can find it here.
It gets really interesting when the CD I've imported into iTunes ends since the very next piece on the list is Gregorian chant.
I hope your musical surroundings are just as fun.
~Hope
It gets really interesting when the CD I've imported into iTunes ends since the very next piece on the list is Gregorian chant.
I hope your musical surroundings are just as fun.
~Hope
Sunday, January 18, 2009
Ode to the Wrapper Chorus
Today's performance of Tosca was lovely. The singers were all very gifted and, for the most part, sang and acted well. The sets were gorgeous - traditional and classic. The costumes were fitting. The lighting and staging and orchestra all complemented the production nicely. But I don't want to delve into any of these. Instead, I would like to highlight the performance of the most striking members of the ensemble: the Wrapper Chorus.
There were the artists who crinkled their candy wrappers loudly and quickly, piercing the air and then stopping after a brief flurry. These were the most easily forgotten, although they were noticeable during their moment of glory.
The seconda donna was the person in the row in front of me who opened several hard candies throughout the last act. As Tosca and Cavaradossi fell into each others' arms and exalted in their love and grief, this audience member really added to the experience with his masterful performance. What made it particularly special was the way he held onto the wrappers after the candies were in his mouth, crinkling them again and again, as if comfortingly assuring them that their moment in the sun was not yet done.
But as the piece de resistance, the grand prize has to go to the woman seated above me in the balcony. Throughout the entire second act, she gradually opened the saran-wrapped cookie she had bought during intermission. Her slow, painstaking unwrapping really gave a new and unusual undercurrent to all of Puccini's orchestration. When Cavaradossi cried out while being tortured, the saran wrap sang in sympathy. When Scarpia threatened to rape Tosca, the moments were punctuated by rustles. And when Tosca stabbed Scarpia, the swell in the orchestra was met by a swell in plastic. Truly masterful. This Wrapper Artist managed to evoke such emotion, adding such anger and tension to the already-tense scene. And she managed to find the acoustical sweet spot in the theatre, sitting in the precise location that would echo for the enjoyment of all of us in the orchestra seats beneath the balcony overhang. Truly delightful.
I can only hope that these talented individuals might decide to move up in the world, auditioning for a spot in the opera orchestra itself. They certainly have a hankering to perform.
---------------------------------------------------------------
In all seriousness, folks, a bit of opera etiquette. The whole notion of a "proper way to dress" for the opera doesn't really hold anymore in most United States theatres, including the Met. What does hold, however, is common public performance etiquette. What you would do in a movie theatre (minus the popcorn, candy, and drinks) is what you should do in an opera performance. If you're going to need cough drops or hard candy, unwrap what you need before the performance begins. If you really need to crinkle something in the middle, get it over with quickly. Unwrapping the darn thing slowly doesn't save the rest of us anything; we can still hear the rustles. We'd rather there be a quick, loud burst and then silence than a protracted, agonizing Death Of a Wrapper. The only memorable performances should be the ones on the stage.
~Hope
There were the artists who crinkled their candy wrappers loudly and quickly, piercing the air and then stopping after a brief flurry. These were the most easily forgotten, although they were noticeable during their moment of glory.
The seconda donna was the person in the row in front of me who opened several hard candies throughout the last act. As Tosca and Cavaradossi fell into each others' arms and exalted in their love and grief, this audience member really added to the experience with his masterful performance. What made it particularly special was the way he held onto the wrappers after the candies were in his mouth, crinkling them again and again, as if comfortingly assuring them that their moment in the sun was not yet done.
But as the piece de resistance, the grand prize has to go to the woman seated above me in the balcony. Throughout the entire second act, she gradually opened the saran-wrapped cookie she had bought during intermission. Her slow, painstaking unwrapping really gave a new and unusual undercurrent to all of Puccini's orchestration. When Cavaradossi cried out while being tortured, the saran wrap sang in sympathy. When Scarpia threatened to rape Tosca, the moments were punctuated by rustles. And when Tosca stabbed Scarpia, the swell in the orchestra was met by a swell in plastic. Truly masterful. This Wrapper Artist managed to evoke such emotion, adding such anger and tension to the already-tense scene. And she managed to find the acoustical sweet spot in the theatre, sitting in the precise location that would echo for the enjoyment of all of us in the orchestra seats beneath the balcony overhang. Truly delightful.
I can only hope that these talented individuals might decide to move up in the world, auditioning for a spot in the opera orchestra itself. They certainly have a hankering to perform.
---------------------------------------------------------------
In all seriousness, folks, a bit of opera etiquette. The whole notion of a "proper way to dress" for the opera doesn't really hold anymore in most United States theatres, including the Met. What does hold, however, is common public performance etiquette. What you would do in a movie theatre (minus the popcorn, candy, and drinks) is what you should do in an opera performance. If you're going to need cough drops or hard candy, unwrap what you need before the performance begins. If you really need to crinkle something in the middle, get it over with quickly. Unwrapping the darn thing slowly doesn't save the rest of us anything; we can still hear the rustles. We'd rather there be a quick, loud burst and then silence than a protracted, agonizing Death Of a Wrapper. The only memorable performances should be the ones on the stage.
~Hope
Friday, January 16, 2009
Tailor-made
One of the most exciting projects I have this semester is a composer-singer collaboration. Lia Purpura, an American poet, has been chosen as the artistic inspiration for a collection of works written by composition students here. I'm one of the singers involved in premiering the works.
The composer with whom I've been matched, CL, is fantastic. I met him today at a roundtable discussion with an artist who will be coaching the singers and conductors. (Ms. Purpura also came to visit in December and read her work and answered questions.)
CL warmly introduced himself after the discussion and said something like, "I know I write the piece, but I've always felt that the more important part is the singer's interpretation." This is incredible because I feel very much that there is an equal dialogue between composer and singer, between the composer's intent and the next layer the singer chooses to add. I want very much to collaborate with my composer on this project, and it looks like I'll be able to!
What's even more exciting is that he wants to come hear some of my voice lessons and to hear me sing. He was asking questions about where my voice sits, about what vowels it's comfortable to sing on in what registers. I think he's planning to really tailor the piece for my voice, which is INCREDIBLY exciting! It's so rare that you actually get to sit down with a living composer to question him about his intent in the piece, but to actually have something specifically written for you - wow.
CL is also so open. He asked me whether there were any poems that particularly spoke to me, and he's interested in hearing whether I have any suggestions for something for him to set. He's already picked a lovely one, but he's open to others as well.
This is by far the most exciting thing I've ever done in music. I'm so pleased about this!! What a lovely gift!!
~Hope
The composer with whom I've been matched, CL, is fantastic. I met him today at a roundtable discussion with an artist who will be coaching the singers and conductors. (Ms. Purpura also came to visit in December and read her work and answered questions.)
CL warmly introduced himself after the discussion and said something like, "I know I write the piece, but I've always felt that the more important part is the singer's interpretation." This is incredible because I feel very much that there is an equal dialogue between composer and singer, between the composer's intent and the next layer the singer chooses to add. I want very much to collaborate with my composer on this project, and it looks like I'll be able to!
What's even more exciting is that he wants to come hear some of my voice lessons and to hear me sing. He was asking questions about where my voice sits, about what vowels it's comfortable to sing on in what registers. I think he's planning to really tailor the piece for my voice, which is INCREDIBLY exciting! It's so rare that you actually get to sit down with a living composer to question him about his intent in the piece, but to actually have something specifically written for you - wow.
CL is also so open. He asked me whether there were any poems that particularly spoke to me, and he's interested in hearing whether I have any suggestions for something for him to set. He's already picked a lovely one, but he's open to others as well.
This is by far the most exciting thing I've ever done in music. I'm so pleased about this!! What a lovely gift!!
~Hope
Thursday, January 15, 2009
S'Wonderful
I had an interesting day today. While my voice lesson was cancelled due to the cold weather, my classes were not.
The first one was Voice Repertoire, taught by one of our excellent vocal coaches here. This class is basically meant to help singers and accompanists get acquainted with a wide variety of art song literature across French, Spanish, Italian, German, Russian, English, and perhaps a few other languages. (An art song is a piece that sets a poem or perhaps another snippet of literature. While you can have a "group" or "cycle" of art songs that have dramatic cohesion and are meant to be performed together - perhaps all from a particular poem "set" - the key is that they are not staged. They are not part of a larger dramatic work like an opera. At least, that's how I think about art song.)
In today's class, we visited Special Collections, the not-quite-hidden spot at the top of the library where the particularly valuable/rare works live. These works include everything from faculty scrapbooks, to scores on which performers or faculty have taken notes, to original manuscripts by Debussy and Kurt Weill, to an autographed Louisville Slugger baseball bat. (One of the past deans was a baseball fanatic, and he asked a particular player to come perform the part of a narrator at a premiere of a work.)
My favorite holding at the moment, though, is the guestbook which all famous visiting composers and performers sign. It's been kept since the 1920s, and one of the early inscriptions, handwritten, is by George Gershwin. "To the most wonderful music school in the world. Long may its flag wave." He even sketched a melody line beneath, but I didn't get to study it long enough to figure out what it is.
We also saw Kurt Weill's original manuscript for Der Dreigroschenoper (The Threepenny Opera). In it were his markings and those of Bertolt Brecht, the librettist, editing the score. Evidently, they revised it so much after the 1928 premiere that a full score was not published until the early 1970s. Perhaps the most famous piece from this opera is Mack the Knife, which has become very popular as a jazz tune. Ella Fitzgerald did a great version in Berlin. What's remarkable to me is that this is the second opera piece I can think of that has had a life in jazz. Summertime, from Gershwin's Porgy and Bess, is the other.
This afternoon, I had my first chorus rehearsal for The Marriage of Figaro. We are a small bunch, no more than five per section (SATB), but the singers are fantastic. There aren't many parts for the chorus to sing in this opera - another reason why its length is so taxing for the principle roles - but we have fun. Today, we spoke through the Italian text of each piece twice, in rhythm. Then, we just sight read it on the text. I'd learned the music over the winter break, but most of the others were seeing it for the first time today. Four part harmony immediately, with almost every note perfect. Unbelievable. I love being at this school.
Tonight, I'm plowing through music theory homework and then braving the cold to see a fellow voice student's recital. Should be fun!
~Hope
The first one was Voice Repertoire, taught by one of our excellent vocal coaches here. This class is basically meant to help singers and accompanists get acquainted with a wide variety of art song literature across French, Spanish, Italian, German, Russian, English, and perhaps a few other languages. (An art song is a piece that sets a poem or perhaps another snippet of literature. While you can have a "group" or "cycle" of art songs that have dramatic cohesion and are meant to be performed together - perhaps all from a particular poem "set" - the key is that they are not staged. They are not part of a larger dramatic work like an opera. At least, that's how I think about art song.)
In today's class, we visited Special Collections, the not-quite-hidden spot at the top of the library where the particularly valuable/rare works live. These works include everything from faculty scrapbooks, to scores on which performers or faculty have taken notes, to original manuscripts by Debussy and Kurt Weill, to an autographed Louisville Slugger baseball bat. (One of the past deans was a baseball fanatic, and he asked a particular player to come perform the part of a narrator at a premiere of a work.)
My favorite holding at the moment, though, is the guestbook which all famous visiting composers and performers sign. It's been kept since the 1920s, and one of the early inscriptions, handwritten, is by George Gershwin. "To the most wonderful music school in the world. Long may its flag wave." He even sketched a melody line beneath, but I didn't get to study it long enough to figure out what it is.
We also saw Kurt Weill's original manuscript for Der Dreigroschenoper (The Threepenny Opera). In it were his markings and those of Bertolt Brecht, the librettist, editing the score. Evidently, they revised it so much after the 1928 premiere that a full score was not published until the early 1970s. Perhaps the most famous piece from this opera is Mack the Knife, which has become very popular as a jazz tune. Ella Fitzgerald did a great version in Berlin. What's remarkable to me is that this is the second opera piece I can think of that has had a life in jazz. Summertime, from Gershwin's Porgy and Bess, is the other.
This afternoon, I had my first chorus rehearsal for The Marriage of Figaro. We are a small bunch, no more than five per section (SATB), but the singers are fantastic. There aren't many parts for the chorus to sing in this opera - another reason why its length is so taxing for the principle roles - but we have fun. Today, we spoke through the Italian text of each piece twice, in rhythm. Then, we just sight read it on the text. I'd learned the music over the winter break, but most of the others were seeing it for the first time today. Four part harmony immediately, with almost every note perfect. Unbelievable. I love being at this school.
Tonight, I'm plowing through music theory homework and then braving the cold to see a fellow voice student's recital. Should be fun!
~Hope
The Abominable Snowwoman
The arctic winds have found their way here. Temperatures have been in the single digits (Fahrenheit) with a wind chill below zero. Tomorrow, we're supposed to hit negative degrees Fahrenheit. Frostbite is a real possibility. Not so spiffy given that I have a 15 minute walk to school each way. But it does provide ample opportunity for comic relief.
My voice teacher warned us that extremely cold weather is of particular concern for singers. Any skin that starts to become frostbitten will diminish flexibility. She advised us to cover every inch with fabric or Vaseline.
I have no Vaseline. It's too cold to walk the 20 minutes to the pharmacy to get some. What I do have is scarves. Lots of scarves. My normal number - two - has given way to the all time, ultimate scarving championship number: four. I am quadruple scarving it for the first time in my life.
So this is me on my walks to and from school this week.
No, I'm not kidding. And yes, the small bits of exposed skin are not very happy when I get indoors, which makes me realize that this ridiculous get-up actually does serve a purpose.
Are you laughing yet?
~Hope
My voice teacher warned us that extremely cold weather is of particular concern for singers. Any skin that starts to become frostbitten will diminish flexibility. She advised us to cover every inch with fabric or Vaseline.
I have no Vaseline. It's too cold to walk the 20 minutes to the pharmacy to get some. What I do have is scarves. Lots of scarves. My normal number - two - has given way to the all time, ultimate scarving championship number: four. I am quadruple scarving it for the first time in my life.
So this is me on my walks to and from school this week.
No, I'm not kidding. And yes, the small bits of exposed skin are not very happy when I get indoors, which makes me realize that this ridiculous get-up actually does serve a purpose.
Are you laughing yet?
~Hope
Tuesday, January 13, 2009
Pleasant Surprises
My second day of classes was filled with several pleasant surprises.
The biggest was that my medieval music history class looks like it will be engaging and interesting. This is not to say that I was expecting the opposite; rather, I was slightly concerned and curious about how it would unfold. Notation in the Middle Ages is very different. A class on music history could spend a good bit of time on the nuances of chant notation, which could get fairly tedious. Our textbook did not look promising. The master's level classes in music history can be large and filled with memorization of facts as decided by "the experts". And the professor's name wasn't one I'd heard before or seen on any of the "excellent teacher award" boards.
Turns out that the text is meant to be used as a basis for background. The notation part of the course will be cursory. We have an 11 person class, and it will be highly discussion based with room for conversation, questioning, and debate. And the professor? I hadn't heard of him because he's new this year. Young, passionate about the subject area, and with a quirky sense of humor, he seems like he'll be a fantastic teacher.
Hooray!
~Hope
The biggest was that my medieval music history class looks like it will be engaging and interesting. This is not to say that I was expecting the opposite; rather, I was slightly concerned and curious about how it would unfold. Notation in the Middle Ages is very different. A class on music history could spend a good bit of time on the nuances of chant notation, which could get fairly tedious. Our textbook did not look promising. The master's level classes in music history can be large and filled with memorization of facts as decided by "the experts". And the professor's name wasn't one I'd heard before or seen on any of the "excellent teacher award" boards.
Turns out that the text is meant to be used as a basis for background. The notation part of the course will be cursory. We have an 11 person class, and it will be highly discussion based with room for conversation, questioning, and debate. And the professor? I hadn't heard of him because he's new this year. Young, passionate about the subject area, and with a quirky sense of humor, he seems like he'll be a fantastic teacher.
Hooray!
~Hope
Monday, January 12, 2009
Off with a bang! (or maybe a whistle)
And the hectic time starts!
Today was the first day of classes in the new semester. I flew in from visiting e. last night, and I'm still adjusting to the time difference. The late night hours are working to my advantage, though; I'm awake enough to continue coordinating and working.
Much to do, much to catch up on. Already the train is moving at top speed, and I just jumped onto the caboose!
~Hope
Today was the first day of classes in the new semester. I flew in from visiting e. last night, and I'm still adjusting to the time difference. The late night hours are working to my advantage, though; I'm awake enough to continue coordinating and working.
Much to do, much to catch up on. Already the train is moving at top speed, and I just jumped onto the caboose!
~Hope
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