Food for the Soul

In the recent BBC Music Magazine (yes I get it) the cover CD contains performances of works premiered at the Proms. One of them is "Epic March" by John Ireland which was first heard at the 1942 Proms. It was the first year in the Royal Albert Hall after the Luftwaffe bombed Queens Hall.

It then struck me how a work could not only be composed during those years, but how anyone could have the fortitude to mount a music festival in the middle of a war which saw the destruction of so much of the city.

So when anyone comments that the arts as being elite and a luxury, I will point them in the direction of 1942 and tell them they have nothing to complain about. Britons in the Second Wold War saw music not as a luxury, but is a necessity. It is food for the soul and it is how a cultural will be judged.

And then I'll shut them down.

Music as Beer

In times of trouble arts organizations, like many businesses, try to move to safe ground. This often takes the form of standard repertoire; eschewing the adventurous, they move to programming just the classics. I think this is a mistake.

You may get a few people in the door with safe programming, but you keep them coming back with the interesting. I liken it to my recent exploration of the world of beer. Now I've always been pretty picky in the beer that I drink (Budweiser has not touched these lips in many a moon), but recently a friend introduced me to the wonders of a beer bar here in Sarasota called The Cock & Bull. Sitting on my bar stool I can travel the world of beer and whet my palette with a multitude of different tastes. With hundreds of different brews to choose from, I have experienced a new world and beer has changed from just a drink that I enjoy on a warm day, to one that I savor with great expectation.

Now I'm not equating Beethoven's Fifth with Budweiser, but I think there is a lesson to be drawn here. You have to nurture and develop a taste. Once you've lured them in the door (not an easy task I admit), I think you have to help them in their exploration of the obvious into the unknown. Everything will not be to their taste (I myself can't stand fruity beers) but part of the journey is sampling the incredible variety that is out there. Perhaps sticking with the usual is safe, a known quantity, but in the long-run is that what creates a long-lasting relationship?

The power of music

I'm often amazed at the power of music to affect our emotions. It can manipulate us or soothe us. It sometimes puts us in a place to meditate and reflect and sometimes causes us to be enraged and angered.

I was reminded this past weekend when I had three very different musical experiences. First I went to see the Eagles, who were a staple of my youth. Even at a distance of a few years, their playing had the ability to bring me back to the innocent (or not so innocent) days of my adolesence and recall those happy and not so happy time.

The next day I went to the memorial service for a friend. He was a conductor and it was an afternoon full of music. It was reflective and emotive but never maudlin. It was a celebration of the life that he had dedicated to music. And although there were words spoken, it was Ives, Schütz, Bach, and Brubeck (very moving, played by the man himself) that took us to another place.

The evening brought Gypsy and that powerhouse Patti LuPone. It was a towering performance and what she brought to that monster of a character Rose (can anyone make her sympathetic) was a strength and determination that Jule Styne's great score proved to hit us hard over the head.

It was a music packed 24 hours, but never was I tired or weary of hearing. In fact I wanted more.

I'm glad I'm not a critic

I used to think that I would make a good critic, but now I think I've come to the conclusion that not only wouldn't I have, but it would have ruined my life.

Once, when I was in college, I became so super critical that I found that I couldn't enjoy anything. I became severely depressed and that was the point that I decided that I was done with academia and ready for the real world (OK, I had also finished my degree). I left to make my way into the world and got my first apprentice program and began slow to enjoy making music again and listening to it. I learned a whole new way to appreciate it and I began to come out of my critically induced depression.

I swore never to go that way again and a few minor lapses aside, I've held to that. I've been much happier.

But now I've found a new level to my enjoyment, not only to opera and classical music, which after all I was trained to listen to critically and analytically, but to all kinds of music.

With the downloadable MP3 file, I'm like a kid in a candy shop. No longer held back by the constraints of shelf space (only by hard disk space, which is much cheaper and takes less room), I've been exploring all kinds of new worlds. A friend mentions and artist and I can go to iTunes or eMusic and download a song or two and learn what they are talking about.

I've had a great time exploring worlds that I never knew before and even if I'm not blown away by everything I hear, there is the opportunity to open new doors and see where it leads. Often somewhere very interesting.

Isn't music amazing?

Words

I've been spending a lot of time listening to music recently. Mostly vocal music of genres other than opera: blues, folk, rock, popular, and jazz. When I listen closely (which I find it hard not to do), I'm struck by most singers attention to words. They all concentrate not in producing a sound, but in conveying the meaning of a song through the text. And even though I sometimes can't take long doses of their vocal quality despite other compensating talents (I'm sorry, I just can't listen to too much Bob Dylan at one time, despite his genius), I'm almost always (in a good musician) moved by their approach to the text.


It's something that some opera singers forget. One who didn't was Giuseppe DiStefano, which is probably why, among the great tenors of the second part of the last century, he moved me the most. Despite his vocal defects (which increased dramatically in the later part of his short career), he always threw himself into what he was singing and always spent most of his capital trying to put across the text. Of course his career was essentially over before I was born, but the recordings, live and in the studio, all speak to a talent that was natural, unaffected, and joyously exploited. Exploited to the point were it was all gone in just about ten years, but when it was there, it was glorious.

Many people try to analyze his defects: his lack of cover through the passaggio, taking on roles far too heavy for his basic lyric instrument. The truth is that none of it really matters. To take away any of it would have changed the person. A man who obviously loved life, who had an innate natural musicality, and who was born with a glorious instrument, that in its prime could do just about anything.

I'm sure he had no regrets. RIP, Pippo.

Stunning

I'm suffering after a hard drive crash and no backup (yes, I know I should back up). Happily I don't think much was lost apart from my tax returns.

I went to see Ned Rorem's Our Town at the Juilliard School last weekend and experienced one of those things you hear about but you rarely think happen in real life. I was seated next to someone who was obviously a critic. Since I do PR for an opera company I know the signs: carrying a press kit with a pad and pen ready.

This gentleman (who I vaguely recognized but could not place), spent the first ten minutes of the performance sneezing loudly and then promptly fell fast asleep for the remainder of the first act. He woke up in time to applaud at the end of the act and after realizing that there was no intermission between Acts I and II, dozed off again. He slept through Act III and at the conclusion yelled "Bravo" and "Bravi" loudly. I looked at him in wonder. How could he know?

Amazing.

Gut Reaction

As I come down from a particularly hard, yet musically fulfilling opera season, I find that I need to hear music more than ever. I've spent a lot of time (for various reasons) with a wide variety of music from different genres.

As I immerse myself in the sounds, I'm surprised at the multiplicity of reactions. Listening yesterday to the Met broadcast of Satyagraha, I was struck by the sounds I was hearing and surprised that I was having an emotional reaction to that music. I can't say that I love it and it definitely requires a deeper acquaintance for me to fully understand, but it seems like something I will need to explore.

Years ago I realized that there was music that I might appreciate and admire (from an analytical and structural standpoint perhaps), but that didn't move me and that I would therefore never pine to hear (except for intellectual stimulation). Then there is music to which I have strong visceral reaction and be drawn to over and over again.

There is something about the second act ensemble in Puccini's La rondine that gives me chills. The music is not especially distinguished and certainly inferior to many of his other works (and those of others) and yet I react to it with a feeling in my gut that signifies a connection. I can't explain it, but it is feeling I love having.

I remember the first time I heard the third act ensemble of Verdi's Otello. I had a similar reaction. Yesterday I was reading and listening to Bill Charlap's Live at the Village Vanguard when I was struck by "Autumn in New York" and had to stop everything I was doing. I was listening to some tracks from Springsteen's Born to Run and had the same reaction. I couldn't concentrate on anything else and that feeling in my gut came back.

That feeling is so difficult to describe, but which I relish like a child waiting for Santa to come. That feeling is just one of the reasons that music is so important to my life.