Originally posted here. Used, of course, with permission.
The question for the week (or lifetime) is:
What can we do to put extended, technically demanding passages in our comfort zones and make music in the process?
In other posts I've discussed the benefits of practicing slowly, to the point where one may play the entire passage or movement without any note errors. The same with practicing short segments of the passage, both forwards and backwards. And while doing all of this, other elements to practice are the practices of being aware of what your body is doing. By this I mean what your fingers are doing for every note, how your embouchure changes from register to register (or even from note to note, especially in large leaps), how your breathing mechanism moves or reacts, and what your musical mind is doing as you work through the phrase. This is a lot to think about while playing a piece of music. But let us first determine the difference between practicing and playing. Practice is often thought of as not fun; I try to view it as meditative, the process of trying to achieve some sort of musical enlightenment (the Zen of flute playing, so to say).
Because it is a lot to process, that is why the practice is to be done slowly. Slow. Very slow. Unbelievably slowly. We are learning to control our environment, from how little our fingers need to move to how much air we need to take in on one big or a few small breaths in rapid succession before the passage begins, to keeping our musical mind focussed on the music, the phrase, the goal notes in the harmonic function and their relationship to the bass line (when applicable). Think of this as setting up a base camp before making the final ascent towards the rhetoric of the music.
Once we start this process, there are even more things to consider, and different people have different ways of getting to the comfort zone base camp. After getting comfortable with where all the notes go in the passage, and we have figured out which of our fingers are behaving radically, that is, pointing at the ceiling when they don't have to, we can start developing some speed and identifying goal notes/rest stops/water stations/etc. A good thing to do is to slur the entire passage at various speeds (taking air when needed). This will tell you right away what note combinations and finger movements are uneven. It may seem illogical, to try to even out a passage when we ultimately want it to swing, but the notes inégales should happen on purpose and when you want them, not because of an uneven finger technique. This is all part of building our foundation, on which to build the musical structure. How many other ways may I describe this? Base camp, foundation, starting point, and . . .
OK, now that we've slogged through the meditative aspect of the music, we can start to engage the rhetoric. What exactly is rhetoric? In today's wacky political climate the word or term gets applied, erroneously, to all sorts of things. Historically speaking, it means two things, and two things only: the art of speaking well, and the art of speaking persuasively. For our music making, we want to speak well and persuasively. We have a story to tell, essentially. How the story is told is up to the individual story teller, presenter, musical orator, player, etc.
One could tell the same story over and over with many different interpretations. Regardless of your interpretation, you have to be clear, consistent, and convincing. This is where your magic bag of tools comes into play, your articulations, including slurs (yes, they are "allowed" in Baroque music), and the huge array of other punctuations, such as dots, strokes, slashes, and just plain, unmarked notes. Going back to the practice part, the slow practice, now that you can play all the notes without flinching or missing them, it is time to engage the various rhetorical tools from our bag of tricks ("If I only had my magic bag . . . "). You may still feel as if you are slogging but hopefully you will be slogging with a purpose and you won't be worrying about what your body needs to do; it will be doing it. I really do approach things this way, which occasionally drives my wife into her sewing room.
In the words of one of the Immortals of Music, "It don't mean a thing if it ain't got that swing."
03 April 2011
Time and Crime (or, "You can call me Al")
In other posts I have discussed the benefits of a prescribed practice routine. A process and not a goal. It builds a foundation on which your musical interpretations can stand. If one gets bogged down worrying about technical details, a musical-rhetorical presentation is not possible. Once you and your instrument become one with each other, you may begin a dialogue with the music and your listeners.
In another post I've given detailed instructions for practicing, the flute player's prescription, with an underlying message of "if you do this, it will come," that is, a relaxed physical technique. The other part of that message is that if you do exactly as prescribed, you will make progress.
And in yet another post, I pointed out that there has been one student who has done exactly what was prescribed and guess what? He has made excellent progress. In fact, in the past few months student Al Pha has taken it "to the next level," as people say.
I recently heard Al Pha play in a house concert. The loud cracking sound you all heard was me, breaking my arm patting myself on the back again. One small suggestion made a couple of months ago turned into a huge leap in playing technique.
The downside to Al's recent leap in physical technique is that he now finds himself in the cracks, so to say. He's a "'tweener," now too advanced to get any benefit from playing with a current local group of players, but not yet in the place to work with people who are driven to play professionally. Two comments here: 1. Al could benefit from working with the current group if he chose to work on leadership skills, and making musical analyses in real time (with some prep work in advance, of course), such as "the bass line moves in this direction at this rate, so the treble lines need to do X"); 2. Mr. Pha could get to the place where he could work professionally; Al just needs to decide whether or not he wants to do that. Number 2 comes with several steamer trunks of less-than-fun things, such as dealing with the gross insecurities of people who get threatened by anyone with a musical backbone, ensemble leaders who feel obliged to put everyone in their place, or my favorite, inferior players who feel a need to try to "lead" in their section, and point out any flaws (real or imagined) of the person sitting with them, regardless of their own ability.
It is one thing to go through this apprenticeship of dealing with the neuroses of other people when you are in your twenties and perhaps still in college, trying to figure out what you want to do. It is quite a another to deal with this when you are an established and well-respected professional in an unrelated field. Or even when you are an established professional in mid-career (my bacon continues to get burnt to a crisp when I sign on for a gig and I hear the conductor say something like, "I've always thought it would be fun to do this piece with a Baroque orchestra," and "I'm going to conduct this section in 8." Yeah. Right. I bought a scalpel on eBay and I think it will be fun to practice appendectomies on people. And, yeah, right, the ALLA BREVE mensuration symbol of course means that it must be conducted in eight. Eight what? Eight slaps upside the head because you are too lazy to do anything but indulge your ignorance? Eight times I dunk your head in the privy (and only pulling it out seven times) because of yet another uninformed decision?
There are, to be sure, some positive aspects that Al Pha can look forward to. For one, musical decisions are, in theory, not based on someone's technical limitations but on what the group feels the music has to say. And music can be made with minimal effort spent on playing together, working out cues, and playing in tune. In retrospect, the musical benefits reaped in the past twenty-five years far outweigh the Gauntlet of Psychos that had to be run in order to get to where I am. And, in the same way that mushrooms have a symbiotic relationship with trees, insecure knuckleheads have their own symbiotic relationship with good gigs and players. They will always be there but, as noted in David Arora's Mushrooms Demystified, these toxic fungi are "better kicked than picked."
Stay tuned for further Al Pha updates.
In another post I've given detailed instructions for practicing, the flute player's prescription, with an underlying message of "if you do this, it will come," that is, a relaxed physical technique. The other part of that message is that if you do exactly as prescribed, you will make progress.
And in yet another post, I pointed out that there has been one student who has done exactly what was prescribed and guess what? He has made excellent progress. In fact, in the past few months student Al Pha has taken it "to the next level," as people say.
I recently heard Al Pha play in a house concert. The loud cracking sound you all heard was me, breaking my arm patting myself on the back again. One small suggestion made a couple of months ago turned into a huge leap in playing technique.
The downside to Al's recent leap in physical technique is that he now finds himself in the cracks, so to say. He's a "'tweener," now too advanced to get any benefit from playing with a current local group of players, but not yet in the place to work with people who are driven to play professionally. Two comments here: 1. Al could benefit from working with the current group if he chose to work on leadership skills, and making musical analyses in real time (with some prep work in advance, of course), such as "the bass line moves in this direction at this rate, so the treble lines need to do X"); 2. Mr. Pha could get to the place where he could work professionally; Al just needs to decide whether or not he wants to do that. Number 2 comes with several steamer trunks of less-than-fun things, such as dealing with the gross insecurities of people who get threatened by anyone with a musical backbone, ensemble leaders who feel obliged to put everyone in their place, or my favorite, inferior players who feel a need to try to "lead" in their section, and point out any flaws (real or imagined) of the person sitting with them, regardless of their own ability.
It is one thing to go through this apprenticeship of dealing with the neuroses of other people when you are in your twenties and perhaps still in college, trying to figure out what you want to do. It is quite a another to deal with this when you are an established and well-respected professional in an unrelated field. Or even when you are an established professional in mid-career (my bacon continues to get burnt to a crisp when I sign on for a gig and I hear the conductor say something like, "I've always thought it would be fun to do this piece with a Baroque orchestra," and "I'm going to conduct this section in 8." Yeah. Right. I bought a scalpel on eBay and I think it will be fun to practice appendectomies on people. And, yeah, right, the ALLA BREVE mensuration symbol of course means that it must be conducted in eight. Eight what? Eight slaps upside the head because you are too lazy to do anything but indulge your ignorance? Eight times I dunk your head in the privy (and only pulling it out seven times) because of yet another uninformed decision?
There are, to be sure, some positive aspects that Al Pha can look forward to. For one, musical decisions are, in theory, not based on someone's technical limitations but on what the group feels the music has to say. And music can be made with minimal effort spent on playing together, working out cues, and playing in tune. In retrospect, the musical benefits reaped in the past twenty-five years far outweigh the Gauntlet of Psychos that had to be run in order to get to where I am. And, in the same way that mushrooms have a symbiotic relationship with trees, insecure knuckleheads have their own symbiotic relationship with good gigs and players. They will always be there but, as noted in David Arora's Mushrooms Demystified, these toxic fungi are "better kicked than picked."
Stay tuned for further Al Pha updates.
17 March 2011
Baroque Flute Boot Camp XIII (or, "If it were easy, anyone could do it.")
Baroque Flute Boot Camp XIII
Yep. It's time again to start getting ready for the Thirteenth Annual Baroque Flute Boot Camp in Seattle, Washington. 24-30 July 2011.
Thirteen? Really? Seems like we just started doing this a week ago . . .
The crew for 2011:
Flutes: Kim Pineda, Janet See
Continuo: Gus Denhard, theorbo; Don Simons, harpsichord
On the website there are PDFs of the enrollment form, the housing application, and a typical schedule.
Repertoire list will be posted as the anxiety mounts, uh, I mean the workshop gets closer.
As of today, we have four confirmed participants.
Thirteen? Really? Seems like we just started doing this a week ago . . .
The crew for 2011:
Flutes: Kim Pineda, Janet See
Continuo: Gus Denhard, theorbo; Don Simons, harpsichord
On the website there are PDFs of the enrollment form, the housing application, and a typical schedule.
Repertoire list will be posted as the anxiety mounts, uh, I mean the workshop gets closer.
As of today, we have four confirmed participants.
03 March 2011
Rhetoric, Analysis, and Performance (The Original R.A.P.)
What would music be without rhetoric? Is rhetoric really necessary for understanding or performing music? If rhetoric is not part of my musical performance, research, or analysis, then on what is my complete musical experience based? To ask these questions in the context of music written between the years 1500-1850, and from the perspective of one who composed or performed the music, is to embrace the relationship between rhetoric and music that has been documented, for our purposes here, since the seventeenth century.
The study of historical performance practices attempts to view this relationship through the lens of the composer-performer, as a musico-ethnomusicological event. A mere cursory examination of primary sources that discuss the relationship between rhetoric and music, directly and indirectly, such as Johannes Lippius, Giulio Caccini, Joachim Burmeister, and Heinrich Christoph Koch, for example, and the translations and secondary sources that help us decipher and interpret them today, such as Patrick McCreless, H. Wiley Hitchcock, and Benito Rivera, and the modern writers who translate, collate, and summarize, such as Dietrich Bartel, Mark Evan Bonds, Nikolaus Harnoncourt, Justin London, Judy Tarling, and Leonard Ratner, to mention a few of many, demonstrate just how important the musical-rhetorical connection was and why it still is for the study and realization of historical performance practices. How could one not try to interpret and perform music without a rhetorical connection? Rhetoric is such a significant component of my study of historical performance practices that I cannot imagine working without it, and to condense such a large topic into such a small space requires an invocation of the musical-poetical elders from the seventeenth century.
Classical rhetoric was part of the Western educational agenda since the rise of humanism in the Renaissance, and, through a series of adaptations and conscriptions, held a significant relationship with music theory, composition, and analysis until the nineteenth century. But this connection is not enough, for music to be thoroughly rhetorical. The radical break from tradition, the Seconda Prattica, the meetings of the Florentine Camerata, and that timeless element of humanity, peer pressure, were needed to truly create the metamorphosis of music and rhetoric into a musical-rhetorical entity. This entity, from a compositional perspective, defined and divided different parts of music, text, and musical performance, providing more tools for composers and performers to work with.
After establishing a connection between words, that is, oration, and the text of vocal music, and music itself, all the building blocks were seemingly in place. A certain level of literacy, words and music, an understanding of poetry and poetical forms, and general education were required not only of those composing and performing the music but of the recipient or audience. For the modern performer of early music, however and whenever it is defined, we cannot assume, especially in North America, that our audiences will understand the meaning of the words, even if they are in English. Thus our modern presentation will need a visual aid to better understand the sonic presentation.
Our task, as a student of historical performance practices, in which rhetoric is embedded, is to assist our rhetorical presentation with translations or an oral summary, complete with background information of the composer, the poem or poet, the historical setting, and, in some cases, a description of the instruments used for the event. A "hive of bees" for Elizabeth I produced a type of honey that is not known for being particularly palatable, or for enhancing other foods, and subsequently is best discussed elsewhere by someone else. Failure to provide the information necessary for the modern audience to fully understand the performance will produce an unsatisfactory result. The music may be well performed and thoroughly enjoyed, but if the communication is vague or esoteric, the reaction of the audience will be less than optimal; the performer needs to reach the soul of the audience. Here the ars dicendi needs to be the ars exoravi; the listener needs to be persuaded.
How did we get to the point of needing to inform the audience of so many things in order to enjoy a concert? Johannes Lippius may have had the best idea, of not creating or naming any rhetorical figures found in the writings of later theorists. He only modeled his musical treatise on his earlier rhetorical treatise, and connected for the first time the five-part Classical rhetoric model as a musical tool. Subsequent writers cumulatively bogged down the student, reader, composer, or musicologist with so many musical-rhetorical figures that by the mid-eighteenth century Johann Mattheson and Johann David Heinichen took advantage of this and began to discuss musical rhetoric in terms of expression and not persuasion. With an abundance of rhetorical figures, some based on Classical terminology, others, such as Christoph Bernhard, who created music-specific terminology, how could any composer expect anyone, outside of the performers, but the most educated non-musician to comprehend the music being heard?
After the change in musical rhetoric to one of expression in the eighteenth century, it gradually changed again to the construction of melody, and to develop form based on the relationship between melody and harmony, as discussed by Heinrich Christoph Koch (1749-1816). He clearly felt that composers as well as audiences needed to be reminded of the connection between grammatical sentences, as building blocks, and rhetoric. During a time when compositions were filled with sturm und drang and emfindsamkeit, Koch revives the connection between music and rhetoric by imposing a formal structure to pieces by his contemporaries that seem filled with irregularities. But it is the irregularities that have their parallel in grammatical sentences. This information provides the modern performer with another tool for our musico-ethnomusicological event. Instead of unraveling rhetorical figures and interpreting their respective meanings, we can see the sections of the piece as parts of the musical oration.
Or we can ignore them and just play the notes. Do we need rhetoric in music? Does an audience need knowledge of rhetoric to appreciate music? Do they even know how to read music or play an instrument or sing? Does it matter? Particular Baroque festivals performed on modern instruments by players with no training in historical performance practices seem to be thriving with no musical-rhetoric in sight or sound. When historical performance is incorporated into these festivals any rhetorical interpretations are lost in the modern concert hall, a rhetorical vacuum for eighteenth-century instruments. Music is enjoyed by audiences with no knowledge of rhetoric performed by musicians with no knowledge of rhetoric or at least a feeling that no musical-rhetorical connection from the sixteenth through nineteenth centuries need be engaged.
What constitutes rhetoric? Compiling a list of figures from the theorist-composers living and working at the time of the music I want to perform and then imposing these figures or concepts on specific sections of the music being used? With just a cursory glance at the translations of primary sources, or just a list or catalog of the primary sources, one sees that there are far too many different collections and compilations of musical-rhetorical figures from the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries to make any general distinctions, other than creating very broad categories for specific musical events, e.g., musical figures that go up, go down, represent a literal event, or that represent the irony of a particular event.
Music without rhetoric would be just notes on a printed page, or in an aural tradition, just notes with no direction or function. For historical performance, rhetoric is a necessary and essential part of presenting and understanding music. Pierre Baillot (1771-1842) was concerned about both the performer and the public being equally informed, and ten years after the death of Baillot, Hector Berlioz (1803-1869) felt it necessary to quote Baillot in Les soirées de l’orchestre, 1852. This seems, unfortunately, an indication that composers, performers, and audiences in the early- to mid-nineteenth century were not as concerned about musical rhetoric as I am today. Taking advice from Quintillian’s Institutio Oratoria Book XI, my musical-rhetorical presentations include not only the five-part Classical format, but lessons on how to present myself to the public, to reign in excessive body movements, be prepared to extemporize, and that self-examination and physical exercise are elements of equal importance as the inventio, dispositio, elocutio, memoria, and pronunciatio. If the audience does not notice all of these musical-rhetorical elements during the performance, but subsequently feels moved, so much the better.
The study of historical performance practices attempts to view this relationship through the lens of the composer-performer, as a musico-ethnomusicological event. A mere cursory examination of primary sources that discuss the relationship between rhetoric and music, directly and indirectly, such as Johannes Lippius, Giulio Caccini, Joachim Burmeister, and Heinrich Christoph Koch, for example, and the translations and secondary sources that help us decipher and interpret them today, such as Patrick McCreless, H. Wiley Hitchcock, and Benito Rivera, and the modern writers who translate, collate, and summarize, such as Dietrich Bartel, Mark Evan Bonds, Nikolaus Harnoncourt, Justin London, Judy Tarling, and Leonard Ratner, to mention a few of many, demonstrate just how important the musical-rhetorical connection was and why it still is for the study and realization of historical performance practices. How could one not try to interpret and perform music without a rhetorical connection? Rhetoric is such a significant component of my study of historical performance practices that I cannot imagine working without it, and to condense such a large topic into such a small space requires an invocation of the musical-poetical elders from the seventeenth century.
Classical rhetoric was part of the Western educational agenda since the rise of humanism in the Renaissance, and, through a series of adaptations and conscriptions, held a significant relationship with music theory, composition, and analysis until the nineteenth century. But this connection is not enough, for music to be thoroughly rhetorical. The radical break from tradition, the Seconda Prattica, the meetings of the Florentine Camerata, and that timeless element of humanity, peer pressure, were needed to truly create the metamorphosis of music and rhetoric into a musical-rhetorical entity. This entity, from a compositional perspective, defined and divided different parts of music, text, and musical performance, providing more tools for composers and performers to work with.
After establishing a connection between words, that is, oration, and the text of vocal music, and music itself, all the building blocks were seemingly in place. A certain level of literacy, words and music, an understanding of poetry and poetical forms, and general education were required not only of those composing and performing the music but of the recipient or audience. For the modern performer of early music, however and whenever it is defined, we cannot assume, especially in North America, that our audiences will understand the meaning of the words, even if they are in English. Thus our modern presentation will need a visual aid to better understand the sonic presentation.
Our task, as a student of historical performance practices, in which rhetoric is embedded, is to assist our rhetorical presentation with translations or an oral summary, complete with background information of the composer, the poem or poet, the historical setting, and, in some cases, a description of the instruments used for the event. A "hive of bees" for Elizabeth I produced a type of honey that is not known for being particularly palatable, or for enhancing other foods, and subsequently is best discussed elsewhere by someone else. Failure to provide the information necessary for the modern audience to fully understand the performance will produce an unsatisfactory result. The music may be well performed and thoroughly enjoyed, but if the communication is vague or esoteric, the reaction of the audience will be less than optimal; the performer needs to reach the soul of the audience. Here the ars dicendi needs to be the ars exoravi; the listener needs to be persuaded.
How did we get to the point of needing to inform the audience of so many things in order to enjoy a concert? Johannes Lippius may have had the best idea, of not creating or naming any rhetorical figures found in the writings of later theorists. He only modeled his musical treatise on his earlier rhetorical treatise, and connected for the first time the five-part Classical rhetoric model as a musical tool. Subsequent writers cumulatively bogged down the student, reader, composer, or musicologist with so many musical-rhetorical figures that by the mid-eighteenth century Johann Mattheson and Johann David Heinichen took advantage of this and began to discuss musical rhetoric in terms of expression and not persuasion. With an abundance of rhetorical figures, some based on Classical terminology, others, such as Christoph Bernhard, who created music-specific terminology, how could any composer expect anyone, outside of the performers, but the most educated non-musician to comprehend the music being heard?
After the change in musical rhetoric to one of expression in the eighteenth century, it gradually changed again to the construction of melody, and to develop form based on the relationship between melody and harmony, as discussed by Heinrich Christoph Koch (1749-1816). He clearly felt that composers as well as audiences needed to be reminded of the connection between grammatical sentences, as building blocks, and rhetoric. During a time when compositions were filled with sturm und drang and emfindsamkeit, Koch revives the connection between music and rhetoric by imposing a formal structure to pieces by his contemporaries that seem filled with irregularities. But it is the irregularities that have their parallel in grammatical sentences. This information provides the modern performer with another tool for our musico-ethnomusicological event. Instead of unraveling rhetorical figures and interpreting their respective meanings, we can see the sections of the piece as parts of the musical oration.
Or we can ignore them and just play the notes. Do we need rhetoric in music? Does an audience need knowledge of rhetoric to appreciate music? Do they even know how to read music or play an instrument or sing? Does it matter? Particular Baroque festivals performed on modern instruments by players with no training in historical performance practices seem to be thriving with no musical-rhetoric in sight or sound. When historical performance is incorporated into these festivals any rhetorical interpretations are lost in the modern concert hall, a rhetorical vacuum for eighteenth-century instruments. Music is enjoyed by audiences with no knowledge of rhetoric performed by musicians with no knowledge of rhetoric or at least a feeling that no musical-rhetorical connection from the sixteenth through nineteenth centuries need be engaged.
What constitutes rhetoric? Compiling a list of figures from the theorist-composers living and working at the time of the music I want to perform and then imposing these figures or concepts on specific sections of the music being used? With just a cursory glance at the translations of primary sources, or just a list or catalog of the primary sources, one sees that there are far too many different collections and compilations of musical-rhetorical figures from the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries to make any general distinctions, other than creating very broad categories for specific musical events, e.g., musical figures that go up, go down, represent a literal event, or that represent the irony of a particular event.
Music without rhetoric would be just notes on a printed page, or in an aural tradition, just notes with no direction or function. For historical performance, rhetoric is a necessary and essential part of presenting and understanding music. Pierre Baillot (1771-1842) was concerned about both the performer and the public being equally informed, and ten years after the death of Baillot, Hector Berlioz (1803-1869) felt it necessary to quote Baillot in Les soirées de l’orchestre, 1852. This seems, unfortunately, an indication that composers, performers, and audiences in the early- to mid-nineteenth century were not as concerned about musical rhetoric as I am today. Taking advice from Quintillian’s Institutio Oratoria Book XI, my musical-rhetorical presentations include not only the five-part Classical format, but lessons on how to present myself to the public, to reign in excessive body movements, be prepared to extemporize, and that self-examination and physical exercise are elements of equal importance as the inventio, dispositio, elocutio, memoria, and pronunciatio. If the audience does not notice all of these musical-rhetorical elements during the performance, but subsequently feels moved, so much the better.
27 January 2011
Musicology Wasteland (it needed to be done)
Musicology Wasteland
(Sung to the tune of "Baba O'Reily")
Out here in the fields
I bought microfilm reels
I get my Bach into my living
I don't need to cite
To prove I'm right
I don't need to be examined
Don't cry
Don't raise your eye
It's only Musicology wasteland
Kerman, take my hand
Read a sammelband
Put out the draft
And don't look past my abstract
The AMS is here
The published ones are near
Let's get together
Before we get much older
Musicology wasteland
It's only Musicology wasteland
Musicology wasteland, oh yeah
Musicology wasteland
They're all wasted
kp
January 2011
02 April 2010
Project Runway (or, "you've hired me for how many gigs?"
As usual, someone did something to inspire me to write. Actually, they annoyed me, indirectly, with their redolent-of-privilege attitude. How did this happen? One of my classmates is involved in an admirable task, the musicological equivalent of Julie and Julia. One of the posts was of particular interest to me so I made a comment. I checked the box that would send me an email when someone else commented on the thread. I got an email announcing that someone else commented on the initial blog post. In brief, the comment stated that while the person was interested in the project, could the bloggers please maintain a sense of humor and to please stay on topic, that is, only write about things which might interest this particular reader.
Really. A person with a cursory interest in music history presumes to tell two dedicated, enthusiastic musicology students, in the middle of a monumental task, what they should write about. Whoa. I had a ringing in my ears after reading this comment. The ringing came from the sound of two incredibly huge brass balls clanging right in front of my face. I was outraged. This was outrageous behavior. How could someone do this?
Oh, wait. People used to do this to me all the time. A perk, I suppose, of trying to build an ensemble with particular goals; a group with a 501(c)3 status, a concert series, educational outreach, various guest artists with impressive resumes and discographies, and an agenda.
I understand that people in the music business want to get as much work as possible, and there is a certain protocol to follow that is expected, often encouraged, and, when done respectfully, appreciated. Over the years many press packets have arrived in our mailbox, most of them from singers, and, with one exception, all of them were really fine professional players. That was the right way.
Then there is the "we've played some gigs together/we've known each other for a long time, perhaps we could do something together" approach, which is a very respectful way to do it, especially when it is prefaced or suffixed with "we'll let you know when we'll be in the area" (that is, travel expenses will be taken care of by someone else"). Another good way to do this is to make suggestions about future projects: "have you thought about doing alpha-beta-gamma-delta for a project," or "have you heard Lucas McCain play the Winchester kazoo? He's awesome."
And, finally, but by no means the last way I've been approached, there is the "you should hire me/my group to be on your series," or "you should hire me because I've got a lot of good projects in mind for your group," or "you should hire me for this project because I: know the piece; live in the same place as the project; am better than the other people you might hire," and, "you should hire Person X because I am sleeping with him/her." Yeah. Right. Give me the relevant numbers (on a big piece of paper, but on nothing more firm that 20 lb bond, so I can use it in the smallest room in my house).
I have never tried to insinuate myself into another person's project in my life. If I wanted a group or person to hire me, I sent them a recording of my playing, or I went and auditioned in person. And if I am not the music director or conductor, I have never tried to tell the person in that role what to do. [I do admire the way that one of my friends, when asked by the conductor of a particular group what he could do to help us out replied, "stop flailing;" that was a special circumstances and I would be OK with this same person saying that same thing to me.]
Before I go on I need to thank my friends who have hired me (or tried to hire me) for concerts, workshops, short-term residencies, etc., for no other reason except respect for my abilities, and that we work and play well together (plus I'm usually a nice guy). If I were still in the position of hiring people from around the country to come and play chamber music, they would be on the List. But the economy has forced me into the motto of one of my favorite brewpubs in Seattle, "think globally, drink locally." Not a bad thing but it also means that I don't get to show off my culinary skills for them.
So what causes this disrespectful behavior (the project insinuation)? Do I suck as a musician and people think that I will jump at the chance to play with superior musicians? Do I look as if I have money growing out my nose (that personal groomer was a brilliant idea . . . )? Do they really think that I was unaware of them and their respective skill sets and that they need to let me know of their existence? [N.B.: I'm pretty aware of most of the highly skilled players in the US that do what I do; in an earlier post I mention there are two minimum requirements for me: you have to be good and you have to be NICE].
Telling someone what they should do, what they ought to do, how to do it, or how to behave or spend the money of a particular organization is disrespectful. And as far as I'm concerned, it leads to the musical version of Project Runway: one day you are in, the next day you are out.
"I have to ask you to go upstairs and clean up your workspace."
PS--Since I wrote this the the presumptive comment has been edited by an unknown editor.
28 February 2010
It's Groundhog Day! (or, Peace is Every Step)
Observations from a bicycle commuter, who occasionally drives a car:
Your car is your Zen-do, not your weapon.
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