Ask An Expert: Composer Craziness

From time to time here on the ItC blog, we'll be posting questions that we receive from readers about some aspect of the orchestra world or other, along with answers from either the two of us or from whomever we can find who is best equipped to provide an answer. If you'd like to submit a question, just click the Ask An Expert button on the top menu. Here's our first installment:

Q: In your experience, whats the strangest thing a modern composer has ever asked the musicians or conductor to do in a score?

Sarah's Answer: I've done my share of new music readings for young composers, which can be both enlightening and entertaining, and I've seen some interesting stuff. The one that sticks out in my mind was a lengthy composition for soprano and orchestra by a doctoral student from 5-6 years ago. The music was pretty complicated, but what got me was the vocal line - the soprano was singing in pre-Coptic Egyptian (which was strange enough), but the kicker was that it was written out in hieroglyphs in the score. To the composer's defense, a hieroglyphic translation and pronunciation key was provided, but that wasn't really practical for rehearsing - it ended up being something like, "Could we go back to that raven/sun/eye/jackal-headed god line??"

Sam's Answer: Back in college, I once played a piece by the eminent Argentine composer Mauricio Kagel. It was called "Finale," even though it was a one-movement piece, and the reason it had that title was because, midway through the performance, the score instructed the conductor to have a heart attack and die. Our conductor, who was only 30 and in remarkably athletic shape, had to put on quite a show to sell his death to the audience - I believe he actually pulled the conductor's stand over on top of himself as he fell. Following the collapse, the entire chamber orchestra was instructed to leap from our chairs, surround the conductor, and try to help him. Eventually, it was determined, silently, that he was dead, and the first violinist led us back to our chairs, where we played the Dies Irae (a Latin death hymn), and then carried our still-deceased conductor from the stage. The hardest part, of course, was accomplishing all this without laughing...

I've actually got an even more interesting answer to this question, but sadly, it's not the kind of thing you want to be writing about on a general audience blog. (Let's just say that it would garner us an easy NC-17 rating.) I'd be happy to spill it to anyone who wants to buy me a beer after a concert sometime...

Riposte

OK, Sam, I’ll rise to the bait, by way of answering a question that gets asked a great deal: what exactly do conductors do? Sam says “[Beethoven’s] 7th is a symphony in which conductors are usually inclined simply to stay out of the orchestra's way.” It seems to imply that a conductor’s job is simply to keep things together, and if the piece in question is like Beethoven’s 7th symphony, where each movement features a driving, mostly steady rhythm, we would seem superfluous.

Yes, there is something to be said about getting out of the way sometimes. There is a communal musical energy in an orchestra that is occasionally overpowering, particularly in repertoire that an orchestra knows well and has played together often. We can’t forget that the collective musical intelligence and experience of the 100 or so musicians in an orchestra will exceed what one person could possible learn or experience in a lifetime.

The limiting factor of the musical collective is the lack of focused viewpoint. Yes, I’m sure that the Minnesota Orchestra (and indeed, any professional orchestra) could get through Beethoven 7th without a conductor technically with little problem, and probably pretty musically as well. Some turns of phrase are a matter of general musical instinct (or long-standing performance practice), and those would happen quite naturally. But here is my challenge; any performance like this would be absolutely generic and lacking in larger perspective.

And I think, in the end, music is most compelling and powerful when it has a point of view regardless of whether you agree with it or not. And I mean that last bit; some of the most gripping performance I’ve heard are ones with which I’ve disagreed (which is not to say that I’m somehow “right” – it’s really all about one’s own frame of reference.) Osmo and I have widely diverging musical tastes, and sometimes during a rehearsal he will ask something of the orchestra that is dialectically opposed to what I would ask for. And that’s the whole point; I absolutely respect Osmo because he has a highly developed and carefully thought-out approach to what he does, which informs his every musical decision. Consistency and logic in approach leads to that focused perspective I was talking about. And that’s when we really hear someone say something through music, and really, isn’t that the whole point?

Detail work.

I'm finally back at work after two weeks in Pennsylvania, and this morning's rehearsal was the first time I'd touched my viola since leaving town in a rush on the 17th. This kind of layoff is a huge deal for musicians, who are used to practicing at least a little bit more or less every day, even when the orchestra isn't in session - in fact, I thought about it, and decided that I haven't taken that long a break from playing since I was 9 years old. I'd be lying if I said I was totally comfortable, but I was surprised by how much easier it was to transition back to playing than I expected. Some things were trickier than usual, especially complicated bow technique, which is usually my forte, but other aspects of the job that I was expecting to struggle with for a few days until I regained my form (notably vibrato, never my strong suit) fell right into place. Of course, those sitting around me might have had a different perspective, but I felt like I didn't do any musical damage to myself or my section, so I'm calling the comeback a qualified success.

On another note, we're playing Beethoven's 7th symphony this week, which is one of my favorite pieces, and also significant because we'll be recording it in January for the final installment of our much-ballyhooed Beethoven cycle. I love everything about this symphony - the bouncing lilt of the first movement, the dark harmonies of the allegretto, right through to one of the greatest and most energetic finales ever written - but I'm always shocked by how much work it takes to put it together. Playing it under Osmo presents a special challenge, because (as usual,) he is not content to simply play the piece the way everyone else plays it, counting on the orchestra's drive and experience to pull off an exciting performance.

To be honest, the 7th is a symphony in which conductors are usually inclined simply to stay out of the orchestra's way. (Sarah may disagree with that statement, of course, but it's about time we had a good argument on this blog, so I'm throwing it out there.) We've all played it dozens of times, we know how it goes, and even if all you did was wind us up and let us go, we'd likely be able to pull off a fairly passable rendition. With works like that, the very familiarity the orchestra has with the piece can make tinkering very, very dangerous, especially with a limited rehearsal schedule. Poke around too much in the machinery, and you might break something you don't have the time to fix.

Osmo is not in the least fazed by this particular problem, and one of the things that critics around the world have cited in praising our Beethoven recordings has been the attention to detail, the very audible sense that every twist and turn of these massive works has been meticulously planned out, so clearly, our music director knows what he's doing. But it does make for some exhausting rehearsal situations in which he makes us repeat a few seconds of music over and over, when we all think we know how to play it already, because he's detected a flaw that will stand in the way of creating the right flow for the music. Today's example of this can, in fact, be broken down to a single rhythmic figure:

Looks innocent enough, doesn't it? But that little reverse snap runs more or less continuously, in one instrument or another, throughout nearly the entire first movement. And while playing it once in a fast tempo is no big deal, playing this...

...presents a number of challenges for strings, winds, and brass alike. Without going into boring specifics, let's just say that the rhythm can easily get flabby and start sounding like some sort of lazy jig, rather than the crisp angular line that Beethoven wanted. Osmo despises flabby rhythm, and nothing will get him on our backs faster than playing this figure incorrectly.

But it gets worse. Sometimes, you might not be asked to play the whole figure, but just a chunk of it, like this: Now, this is even harder to do correctly, because you're being asked, at a very high rate of speed, to snap that 16th note at exactly the right moment, after having counted out precisely five 16th rests. As I mentioned, most conductors are relatively lenient about this, and allow the strings a small cheat which makes the partial figure easier to play together without anyone crashing in early or late. If you were to write out the cheat in the score, it would look basically like this:

Osmo hates this cheat. Hates. And while we know this full well, and honestly try to avoid doing it when he's on the podium, years of having done it make it a very difficult habit to break, and even after slaving over it for an hour this morning, we still haven't quite got it back in the perfect rhythmical swing he wants for it. I have no doubt we'll get there by concert day, but there's probably some more blood, sweat, and tears ahead before we do...

More cowbell

A quick story from this last week; during rehearsal on Tuesday morning for the Young People’s Concerts we spent a good amount of time rehearsing Zhou Tian’s new piece, “First Sight”. The piece was inspired by dancing he saw in a very traditional village in China this past summer, and there is a rather raucous and energetic bit towards the end as the dancing reaches a climax. It’s texturally complicated and required some rehearsing to make sure certain voices were emerging, which involved me asking for more strings here, less winds here, more brass here, less percussion there.

Tom Turner, our principal viola, always ready with his trademark deadpan commentary, says, “I dunno, guys, I really think it could use some more cowbell.” Which of course elicited some giggles - apart from the snappy pop culture reference, there was no cowbell in Tian's piece, and furthermore cowbell is usually not a big feature of orchestral music.

Or so I thought. Two days later, during a FutureClassics rehearsal, the orchestra began to read through a new composition – which, about a minute in, had an extended section featuring cowbell. I smiled, the viola section had a laugh. Live and learn…

You Only Think You Hate New Music

As I'm still out of town and away from the orchestra, I'm not able to blog extensively about the FutureClassics concert that the orchestra is playing tonight, which is a great shame, because it's one of my favorite things we do all year. Plenty has been written in the local press about our Composers' Institute (and as usual, one of the participating composers is blogging the week for the excellent NewMusicBox,) so I won't rehash the details of the program here, but suffice to say that there is a lot of great stuff being written out there right now, and tonight's show will be one of the few opportunities most of us get to hear a large amount of it played by a major orchestra.

There are a lot of reasons that orchestras don't play more new and avant garde music, the most basic having to do with the fact that orchestras are huge organizations with massive budgets that are absolutely dependent on packing as many people as possible into the hall every week. Throw in the fact that a large percentage of audiences have been seriously averse to unfamiliar music ever since a generation of composers back in the mid-20th century spent about 20-30 years writing music that was intentionally, aggressively hard to listen to, and you start to see why the disconnect occurred. But these days, the vast majority of composers write music that is fun, fascinating, and while often challenging, aimed squarely at engaging the listener, rather than making the listener feel stupid. And if the success of last year's first FutureClassics concert proved anything, it's that people who are adventurous in their music choices don't care a whole lot about genre labels - they just want to hear something good, being played by people who care as much as they do.

If you can't make it out to the concert tonight (and you should - student rush tickets are only $10, and everyone else gets in for $20,) you can listen to the whole show on MPR Classical - that's KSJN 99.5fm in the Cities - and also streaming from MPR's website live at 8pm Central. I can guarantee that it'll be nothing like what you normally hear played on classical radio.

Seeing is believing

Composer Zhou Tian is in town – the Orchestra had commissioned him to write a piece for the Young Peoples Concerts we’re doing this week – and we had a chance to sit and do coffee after a busy couple of days. Tian and I went to music school together (he went by “Zhou” or “Joe” then, and the name change has been a little confusing), and it was nice to catch up, gossip about mutual friends and talk about Portishead. (You didn’t think we just sat around all day thinking about Mahler, did you??)

We also talked shop, and one of the many topics that we alighted on was how we reacted to music in films. Not “film music” – John Williams, Howard Shore, et al. – but music used in films. Tian’s example was ”Being John Malkovich", which at one point features Bartok’s Music for Strings, Percussion and Celeste. He had heard the piece before, of course, but had no feeling of connection to it until he heard it in the film. As he explains it, it’s not that he remembers the movie now when he hears that Bartok, it’s more that it brings back the emotion and engagement he felt while hearing the music in context of the movie. It went from a piece that he didn’t particularly like to one he enjoys immensely.

My example was ”Amadeus”, which I’d seen in the theater as a kid. Before seeing the film, I had never encountered Mozart’s Requiem, and so “Amadeus” was my first exposure to this piece- it had a tremendous impact on me at the time, and my mom will tell you I would run around singing “Confutatis maledictis!” (I must have been a weird child…) I still feel a sense of connection to this piece, particularly because it still evokes the powerful emotions I felt when watching the film. Again, it’s not that I recall the film or any specific imagery – it’s all about the associative emotions.

Of course we all have music that we adore because of associations – the song playing on the radio when you had your first kiss, that piece you played in high school orchestra when the world seemed so full of promise – but Tian’s example struck me particularly. The context of that particular Bartok piece within that movie made him hear the music in a different way. And it makes a lot of sense that in an increasingly visual world, visual impact necessarily influences auditory impact (MTV proved that in the ‘80s – I mean, would Britney Spears be a star without music videos?).

That always raises the question of the visual impact of concert music, which, all things considered, is not tremendous. Yes, there are 90 or so people on stage at any given orchestra concert, which gives a sense of scope, and conductors and soloists are generally interesting to watch, but is that enough? Some orchestras have experimented, with modest success, with video screens mounted above the stage and cameras onstage to give closer views of musicians as they perform - it certainly does something to upgrade the visual impact. Is this something that should concern us in the orchestra industry? Or is it our responsibility to educate people in the much more reflective art of sitting and simply listening to music?

More Stuff You Can't See From The Audience

Sarah's description of our habit of yanking our instruments into the air to demonstrate that we haven't dropped them (yet) reminded me of just how unusual this particular orchestra is when it comes to workplace habits. Don't get me wrong - most orchestras have a few good stories or weird traditions, but here in Minneapolis, I would venture to say that we goof around at a higher level than any other ensemble on earth. Just off the top of my head, here are a few of our regular (mis)behaviors:

-- Whenever the orchestra has occasion to fly together on a plane, landings are celebrated with a lusty singing of a Russian folk song (complete with vaguely Russian-sounding nonsense lyrics) by our fourth horn player, followed immediately by an eardrum-shattering "HEY!" and a fist pump from the rest of the band. (No one's ever mistaken us for hijackers in these situations, but you know it's only a matter of time.)

-- Whenever we find ourselves rehearsing Beethoven's 9th, at least ten people are guaranteed to break into song when we reach the first vocal solo in the last movement. Typically, this occurs at an early rehearsal when the actual soloists are not yet present, but honestly, we'd do it regardless.

-- If we find ourselves playing a concert that requires individual lights on our music stands, we will go to extraordinary lengths to find an unused outlet at the end of one of the dozens of extension cords snaking around the stage. And then, we will plug inappropriate objects into it. (In one glorious week of children's concerts a few years back, my stand partner and I plugged in an air freshener, a hair dryer, and a toaster containing two Pop Tarts. We were ready with a blender and a deep fryer when we were finally busted by the personnel manager.)

The viola section, as Sarah mentioned, does seem to be at the center of the madness more often than not, and most of our best material stays on our little corner of the stage, lest we offend some of the more delicate orchestral sensibilities (and here I am referring almost exclusively to the violin section.) I'm really not at liberty to disclose most of our shenanigans, but suffice to say that until I got to Minneapolis, I was always, always always the class clown of whatever viola section I played in. Around here, I come in third or fourth...

The best medicine

Every orchestra has its particular proclivities; it’s part of what makes each ensemble a distinct entity, what makes one orchestra unlike any other. Critics have long bemoaned the homogenization of orchestra sound in this country – I suppose it has become more difficult to tell our top 10 bands apart in a blind hearing (although one can usually tell the difference between an American and European orchestra) – which is a HUGE topic for some other time. But what I’m talking about are the quirks that make any group of people unique, and the Minnesota Orchestra is one of the quirkiest (in the best sense!) groups I’ve ever worked with.

While I’m pretty sure Sam will have a more “insider” take on this one – the viola section in particular seems always a heartbeat away from dissolving into rehearsal-stopping laughter at an inside joke – I’m always delighted by the sense of humor that is almost the defining characteristic of this orchestra. Make no mistake; these folks are serious about what they do. The level of preparation and focus that they put into their work is nothing short of extraordinary, and watching that much concentration from that many people at any given time is truly inspiring. But they are always game for a laugh, to find the levity in any given situation, and it makes for some entertaining moments.

One of the odder (and to me, quite funny) traditions of this orchestra is what, in my mind, I call the “I didn’t do it.” When anything is dropped onstage during a rehearsal – a sheet of music, a violin bow, a tuba (no no, I’m kidding, although sometimes it does sound like a tuba’s been dropped) – everyone lifts up their instrument in the air, as if to say “I didn’t do it!” The genesis of this peculiar behavior (and this is the story the bass section told me the other day) is that about 15 years ago, one of the trumpets dropped a mute, causing a small ruckus, and our principal trumpet Manny Laureano held up his own mute to prove that it wasn’t him. And a tradition was born.

What’s particularly funny for me is how immediate a reaction it is – it’s not like everyone looks around wondering if anyone else is going to lift their instruments; they just do it. People will be turning a page of music in one hand, talking to their section, and instrument-lifting with the other hand. It’s gotten to the point where I kind of unconsciously do it myself – I’ll be on the podium and hear a pencil being dropped, and I’ll lift my baton over my head in an instinctive mirroring of what everyone is doing around me. And instinct is a funny thing; a couple of nights ago, sitting in the first tier during a concert, I heard a program book being dropped in a quiet moment of the Mozart symphony, and it took a lot of conscious thought to keep myself from raising up my own program book – “I didn’t do it!”

Hands Off Our Music Director!

I'm actually away from Minneapolis this week, helping my mother recover from a nasty fall at her home an hour outside of Philadelphia. Last night, she and I listened to the orchestra's live Friday night radio broadcast via Minnesota Public Radio's online stream, and while it was fun to get a chance to hear my own ensemble from a new perspective, I almost felt like I was having one of those dreams where you're supposed to be somewhere - in class, on stage, etc. - and some unknown force is preventing you from showing up.

Still, Philly seems like the place to be for Minnesota Orchestra folk this week: our very own Osmo Vänskä is this week's guest conductor at the podium of the Philadelphia Orchestra, and there are no fewer than three recently departed MN Orch string players (violist Kerri Ryan, and violinists Daniel Han and William Polk) in the ranks of that group. In addition to the orchestra concerts, the three ex-pat Minnesotans joined Osmo and assistant principal cellist Yumi Kendall for a late-night performance of the Mozart Clarinet Quintet on Friday.

I bring up Osmo's appearance in this venerable city only because the review of his concert appeared this morning in the Philadelphia Inquirer, and for at least the third time in the last few years by my count, critic Peter Dobrin just happened to mention that Osmo's contract in Minnesota is up at the end of the 2010-11 season, only one year before Charles Dutoit's contract as chief conductor in Philly will expire. This, of course, is basically a good thing from our perspective - it's great to know that your music director is respected and coveted by other top bands - but it does tend to give rise to some uneasiness among those who hope Osmo is settled in for a good long stay in Minneapolis.

Philadelphia apparently isn't the only orchestra with an eye on our boy, either. In a wide-ranging article slated to run in tomorrow's Star Tribune, Graydon Royce quotes the Washington Post's Tim Page as saying that he thinks the National Symphony, which will shortly be saying goodbye to music director (and former MN Orch Sommerfest director) Leonard Slatkin, would steal Osmo from us in a heartbeat if they could. (Don't worry - they can't.)

It's always fun keeping up with breathless speculation like this, but the reality tends to be that the rumors are all just that - rumors. Orchestras in the market for a new leader try very hard to conduct their searches in as close to absolute secrecy as possible, and critics are rarely privy to much in the way of inside information. So they're more or less reduced to guesswork, and to beating the drum for the conductors they enjoy hearing the most. Clearly, Osmo has some fans among the music scribes of the Eastern seaboard...

A whole new world

So, you'll have to forgive me, as I'm totally new to the blogosphere and don't yet have the years of experience and accumulated wisdom that Sam brings, but life is all about trying something new, right?

As Sam has eloquently introduced us and what we are doing here, I thought I'd dispense with the niceties and dive right in...

I’m experiencing an unusual abundance of new scores – and when I say new, I mean really new, fresh off the presses (or, in one case, in PDF format on my laptop). It’s a confluence of a couple of things: the premier of Stan Skrowaczewski’s Flute Fantasy; the Orchestra’s Composer Institute; a world premiere by a former Composer Institute participant on the Young People’s Concerts next week; a world premiere on the Orchestra’s Pops series featuring Tiempo Libre; and a world premiere of a 60-minute War Requiem in Seoul, South Korea in November. It’s a ton of music to learn, and just looking at it listed like that is enough to send me into a mild panic. Fortunately for me, Osmo is conducting the Composer Institute concert, but as I’m his cover conductor for the week, I at least need to have a basic grasp on all of the pieces – but the rest of those concerts are ones I’m conducting.

People often ask me what conductors do when they learn a piece of music – do I listen to a recording, do I hear it all in my head, do I practice waving my arms in front of a mirror? (I tried the arm-waving thing once, but I couldn’t keep a straight face at the absurdity of it all.) My standard answer is, if I want to learn, say, a 30-minute symphony, the bare minimum probably involves 8-10 hours or study. And at that point I have hardly delved into the piece, but I’m probably prepared to at least have a basic understanding of structure and harmony and phrasing, enough to get me through a rehearsal (and it’s unbelievably uncomfortable to rehearse a piece you don’t know too well). If it’s a totally new piece, as all those world premieres are, I’ll probably spend a big chunk of time at a piano plunking out the score – score reading is one of those really important conductor skills, although you occasionally hear about people who can (or just do) get by without it. It would be amazing to be able to hear everything on the page without a keyboard – generally I can hear a melody and some harmonic progressions – but new music tends to be complicated, and score reading becomes an absolutely necessary step. Unless, of course, the composer provides you with a MIDI file of the score, which tend to sound weird and artificial and nothing like what a live orchestra will do with the piece!

New pieces are stressful – particularly if composers are still tinkering with them (or, in the case of the Requiem, if they are still not finished) – but there is an undeniable attraction in bringing a new score to life. Part of my non-Minnesota activities involves the Penn Composers program at the Curtis Institute of Music (my alma mater) – graduate composers at the University of Pennsylvania are given several opportunities every season to have their works read and recorded by the Curtis Symphony Orchestra, and I’m the coordinator and conductor for the program. I like the collaborative aspect of working on a new piece; I like being a part of the “birthing” process; I like the thrill of something new. And, let’s face it, new music is what helps keep symphonic music vital and current and relevant, and that’s perhaps the most important part of all.

Downbeat.

tap... tap tap... this thing on?

Ah. Excellent. Always difficult to know just how to start these things, but let's go with this: welcome, one and all, to the first official Minnesota Orchestra blog! Over the coming weeks, months, and (hopefully) years, conductor Sarah Hatsuko Hicks and I will be using this space to take you behind the scenes here at Orchestra Hall, and introduce you not only to the music that we love, but to the truly fascinating cast of characters that populates the Minnesota Orchestra. As you can see from the menu above, we'll also be adding podcasts in due course (read: as soon as we finish reading Podcasting for Dummies and staring blankly at the opening screen of our editing software), fielding questions about music and the music business, and generally doing whatever we can to give you a fresh look at an art form that's frequently accused of being hidebound, elitist, and out of touch with anyone born after 1934.

(Feel free to insert your own bitter joke here regarding an orchestra thinking itself cutting edge for launching blogs and podcasts 5 or so years after everyone else in the Western hemisphere did the same thing. Trust me, we've heard them.)

As you've probably noticed, this blog and the rest of the Inside The Classics site are loosely tied to a new series of Minnesota Orchestra concerts launching this November with Sarah on the podium and me on the microphone. Each show will see us presenting one complete, uninterrupted piece of music after intermission. Before intermission, we'll do our best to take you into our backstage world, showing you what goes into an orchestral performance as well as into the composition of the featured work. That sounds awfully dry, but trust me, it won't be. Sarah and I both abhor the conceits of the stereotypical orchestra concert, and we'll be doing our best to knock as many of them down as we can.

Still, what I think orchestras (and the music business as a whole) need most at the moment is not more shameless self-promotion, but an honest embrace of the world that we tend to assume falls outside our target demographic, so I want to be clear that this blog was not created as a marketing device to lure you to our concerts. Even if you never set foot in Orchestra Hall - even if you don't live anywhere near Minneapolis and the last concert you went to was in a cramped bar packed full of shrieking college students and wailing guitars - we hope that we can provide something you'll find worth reading on a regular basis. Stuffy reputations aside, the world of a professional orchestra is a deeply fascinating one, filled with a bizarre combination of big talent, bigger egos, and incredible music. We intend to take you there, and if possible, leave you inside forever.