The Chaos Within
This week, our concerts feature an unusual centerpiece, at least for American audiences: Ralph Vaughan Williams outsized, hourlong extravaganza known as "A Sea Symphony." The piece brings together a full orchestra, a pipe organ, a soprano soloist, a baritone soloist, a full 300-voice choir, and a secondary offstage chamber choir for an amazingly ambitious setting of texts from Walt Whitman's Leaves of Grass.
Amazingly for a work of such massive scale, it was Vaughan Williams's first attempt at writing a symphony, a fact which shows a bit in his, shall we say, optimistic use of dynamic markings. (Frequently, the full orchestra will be playing a heavily scored passage marked fff while the choir is singing a key line of text. If we actually played it as written, the choir would either need to be heavily amplified, or made up of roughly 3,000 voices.) It has the feel of one of those huge Mahler magnum opuses which sweep you up in a whirlwind of contrasting and conflicting sounds, and then deposit you, many minutes later, at the finish line, where you stand, slightly disoriented, wondering exactly what just happened and why no one warned you it was about to.
And if that's how it feels from the audience, just imagine how a piece like the Sea Symphony sounds and feels from within the orchestra! This is actually one of the biggest challenges of doing what we do for a living - making a large piece of music sound cohesive in the hall when, in truth, each of us playing it on stage can only hear a small percentage of the sounds being produced. Making matters worse for me this particular week is the fact that our revolving system of seating currently has me sitting dead last in the section, way the hell back on sixth stand. From where my stand partner Ben Ullery and I are sitting, we might as well be trying to play the piece via a video hookup from St. Cloud.
Back in 2004, when the orchestra was on our first European tour with Osmo, and I was writing a mini-blog documenting the trip for ArtsJournal.com, I described the challenge of moving from the front to the back of a string section this way...
To anyone who has never spent time playing in an orchestra, this probably sounds strange. After all, the first and last stands of violas are no more than 15 feet apart on the stage, and with the stands so tightly grouped, you might expect the sound to be generally the same throughout the section. It isn’t. In fact, the best way to describe the audible difference between what I heard on Friday night [when I was at the front of the section] and what I heard on Sunday [at the back] is to give you an exercise to do. If you have a really good stereo, put on a recording of a Beethoven symphony (or whatever) and listen to it for a few minutes, standing just off to the left of the left speaker. Done that? Good. Now, play the same recording again, but this time, make the following adjustments:
1) Stand behind the speakers.
2) Move the subwoofer behind you. (This is the bass section, directly over your shoulder.)
3) Get a friend to stand ten feet behind you and off to your right, and have this friend play some loud trumpet solos while the symphony is playing.
Now, since 2004, we've adjusted our seating arrangement slightly, and the piece I was writing about wasn't anywhere near as massive as the Vaughan Williams, so those three adjustments are no longer quite accurate. To approximate my situation this week, let's do this: stay standing behind the speakers, but move that subwoofer about 100 feet to your right, and face it away from you. Turn the treble more or less all the way down (no way are you going to be hearing the first violins with any degree of accuracy,) place a set of earmuffs on your head (earplugs are almost a necessity in a piece like this,) and have that trumpet-playing friend invite six co-conspirators to join him directly behind you (four feet is more like it than ten this week,) armed with trumpets, trombones, and tubas. That should do it.
Faced with a situation like this, a back-bench string player's best bet is to watch your principal like a hawk, and try to match bowstrokes whenever the audio isn't in your favor. But no dice: my principal is completely out of my field of view this week, and the violas are split into two, three, or even four parts much of the time, so I'm not necessarily playing what he's playing in any case. So that leaves Osmo as my last line of defense, and even he's not a sure bet: remember, he's got a lot to keep track of up there, and if he's focusing on keeping the choir on pulse, his motions will likely be of little help to me, and even if he's locked onto the orchestra, I can't presume that all of his cues or corrections are meant to apply to me, specifically.
So there's a fair amount of guesswork involved in a performance this huge, and I'm always somewhat amazed when we pull one off. Of course, given where I'm sitting, I'll probably have no idea whether we have pulled it off this weekend until someone in a more advantageous slot tells me so. So if you're coming to either Friday's or Saturday's show, I'd love to hear your impressions afterward in the comments. Does the thing hang together with the cohesion we hope for? Or do you occasionally get that uneasy feeling that not everyone on stage is exactly on the same page for a moment? Or does it not even matter with a work this involved and over-the-top, since the spectacle is half the attraction? Chime on in as you wish...
Amazingly for a work of such massive scale, it was Vaughan Williams's first attempt at writing a symphony, a fact which shows a bit in his, shall we say, optimistic use of dynamic markings. (Frequently, the full orchestra will be playing a heavily scored passage marked fff while the choir is singing a key line of text. If we actually played it as written, the choir would either need to be heavily amplified, or made up of roughly 3,000 voices.) It has the feel of one of those huge Mahler magnum opuses which sweep you up in a whirlwind of contrasting and conflicting sounds, and then deposit you, many minutes later, at the finish line, where you stand, slightly disoriented, wondering exactly what just happened and why no one warned you it was about to.
And if that's how it feels from the audience, just imagine how a piece like the Sea Symphony sounds and feels from within the orchestra! This is actually one of the biggest challenges of doing what we do for a living - making a large piece of music sound cohesive in the hall when, in truth, each of us playing it on stage can only hear a small percentage of the sounds being produced. Making matters worse for me this particular week is the fact that our revolving system of seating currently has me sitting dead last in the section, way the hell back on sixth stand. From where my stand partner Ben Ullery and I are sitting, we might as well be trying to play the piece via a video hookup from St. Cloud.
Back in 2004, when the orchestra was on our first European tour with Osmo, and I was writing a mini-blog documenting the trip for ArtsJournal.com, I described the challenge of moving from the front to the back of a string section this way...
To anyone who has never spent time playing in an orchestra, this probably sounds strange. After all, the first and last stands of violas are no more than 15 feet apart on the stage, and with the stands so tightly grouped, you might expect the sound to be generally the same throughout the section. It isn’t. In fact, the best way to describe the audible difference between what I heard on Friday night [when I was at the front of the section] and what I heard on Sunday [at the back] is to give you an exercise to do. If you have a really good stereo, put on a recording of a Beethoven symphony (or whatever) and listen to it for a few minutes, standing just off to the left of the left speaker. Done that? Good. Now, play the same recording again, but this time, make the following adjustments:
1) Stand behind the speakers.
2) Move the subwoofer behind you. (This is the bass section, directly over your shoulder.)
3) Get a friend to stand ten feet behind you and off to your right, and have this friend play some loud trumpet solos while the symphony is playing.
Now, since 2004, we've adjusted our seating arrangement slightly, and the piece I was writing about wasn't anywhere near as massive as the Vaughan Williams, so those three adjustments are no longer quite accurate. To approximate my situation this week, let's do this: stay standing behind the speakers, but move that subwoofer about 100 feet to your right, and face it away from you. Turn the treble more or less all the way down (no way are you going to be hearing the first violins with any degree of accuracy,) place a set of earmuffs on your head (earplugs are almost a necessity in a piece like this,) and have that trumpet-playing friend invite six co-conspirators to join him directly behind you (four feet is more like it than ten this week,) armed with trumpets, trombones, and tubas. That should do it.
Faced with a situation like this, a back-bench string player's best bet is to watch your principal like a hawk, and try to match bowstrokes whenever the audio isn't in your favor. But no dice: my principal is completely out of my field of view this week, and the violas are split into two, three, or even four parts much of the time, so I'm not necessarily playing what he's playing in any case. So that leaves Osmo as my last line of defense, and even he's not a sure bet: remember, he's got a lot to keep track of up there, and if he's focusing on keeping the choir on pulse, his motions will likely be of little help to me, and even if he's locked onto the orchestra, I can't presume that all of his cues or corrections are meant to apply to me, specifically.
So there's a fair amount of guesswork involved in a performance this huge, and I'm always somewhat amazed when we pull one off. Of course, given where I'm sitting, I'll probably have no idea whether we have pulled it off this weekend until someone in a more advantageous slot tells me so. So if you're coming to either Friday's or Saturday's show, I'd love to hear your impressions afterward in the comments. Does the thing hang together with the cohesion we hope for? Or do you occasionally get that uneasy feeling that not everyone on stage is exactly on the same page for a moment? Or does it not even matter with a work this involved and over-the-top, since the spectacle is half the attraction? Chime on in as you wish...
posted by Sam at
6:51 PM
3 Comments:
I'm lucky enough to be singing in this performance, as well. While the choir has a much better vantage point to hear the whole orchestra, as a soprano on the far left stage side, I can only hear the altos when they have a solo line, and the tenors only when they have a loud solo line with the orchestra at a soft tremolo.
Plus, that orchestra sound we hear is a fraction of a second behind the beat, since it has to bounce off the wall and come back to us (with the exception of the horns, which are, well, a bit loud if you're in the front row immediately behind them).
We've found this piece significantly more difficult to prepare than even the War Requiem. But putting it all together has certainly been a rush. Singing this piece feels a bit like standing on the edge of a cliff, leaning into the wind. You know intellectually you should be fine, but the wind feels like it might begin to swirl and push you over, and you're constantly on the edge of falling into the abyss. Thrilling and terrifying all at the same time.
It's great fun to sing and perform with this orchestra, and this piece in particular is certainly a rush. Thanks for backing off a bit on those fffs to give us a chance!
I was at Saturday's concert, I was watching Osmo pretty closely and I didn't see a whole lot of "adjusting" in his conducting. I thought it sounded great - the choir was pretty overwhelming at times so it was hard to discern some sounds - you guys *looked* like you were playing furiously, but I couldn't hear it :) That being said, the transitions between full choir/orchestra to just orchestra were just astounding, then you could hear the crispness and typical osmonamics (my new word for Osmo dynamics). The only thing better than the MN Orchestra is the MN Orchestra with the Minnesota Chorale.
Great, great job. And apparently David Wright really thought so, too!! ;);)
I also notice a marked difference in sound when the orchestra is farther up the stage by itself.
How do you think it went, Sam? Also, how does the sound effect you guys on stage when you're farther up like that but alone?
Osmo isn't one of those conductors who adjusts things in a way that would be terribly detectable to the audience - a lot of the time, if we're not exactly with his beat, or having trouble keeping all sections of the orchestra together, he actually opens and closes his mouth rhythmically to show exactly where the beats should be falling. The audience can't see it, but it can help to tighten things up.
As for how I thought the performances went, Steve, I honestly have no opinion. Sitting where I was sitting in a piece that massive, I'm just in no position to judge anything but how I and the four or five people closest to me are doing. (We did pretty well, I think, for what it's worth.) Also, on Saturday night, I actually moved up a stand for the Vaughan Williams after another violist went home sick, so my sound world completely changed, mainly with the addition of a huge amount of oboe sound, since they were suddenly right next to my right ear...
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