Saturday, June 12, 2010

found it

I'm very sorry about the sound.  I recommend turning down the volume.

I mentioned this video among the other conductor commercials, but I couldn't find it on YouTube.  Then, tonight, in the middle of a House re-run, there it was.  So I rewound the DVR, pointed my camera at the t.v., and shot.  Cheesey, but fast.  So, the sound is horrible.  Sorry.

Anyway, it's just one more in a long line of commercials depicting conductors with no understanding of what a conductor actually does, which reflect society's general view of conductors and conducting and therefore partly explains my need to have this blog to put the correct information out into the world.  My version of correct information, anyway.

Enjoy.  With the sound off.


p.s. they say it's like composing a symphony, but they show a conductor, not a composer.  ?!

Friday, June 11, 2010

practice

When a singer or instrumentalist practices, she goes into a room and plays scales and arpeggios and other exercises to warm up physically and work on technique.  Then she plays repertoire, applying the technique to the music and also examining musical, expressive content and using the technique to realize it.

What do conductors do when they practice?

Dr. Renshaw lays out a three step process of "read, analyze, interpret."  That works for any score, but the details of what each of those steps precisely means is flexible.

To read, I was taught "sing and play."  Sing one line (yes, even instrumental lines and, yes, out loud) and play any other.  Be able to do this in every possible combination.  This mandates repetition, which means you can't help  but learn it.  It also explicates relationships and lays bare the relationships, which means it gives you questions to ask.  "Why did he do that?  Why is that so hard to hear?"

And then you answer the questions, which is where analysis comes in.  "Ohhhh, it's hard to hear that interval because this line introduces the new key." And eventually interpretation follows.  "Ohhhh, that crazy chord is there because it's the word pain" and "ohhhh, the tenors and basses are in unison there because it's the theme and the women are in a really high tessitura..."

"Practice," for me, also involves research.  I look into the text, the poet, the language, its IPA, often I have to learn more about instruments since my instrumental background isn't strong, and finding out where in the conductor's life the composition was written.  For whom on what occasion?  What else did he write around the same time? And then I can judge whether this piece is representative of that work or exceptional.

And then there is practicing the actual physical act of conducting.  Once I'm pretty well familiar with the music, I can start actually waving my arms around, seeing what works, what the music would look like in my body.  But unrelated to any specific piece of music, I admit that I don't do exercises that keep my conducting "in shape."  I do Tai Chi, and I like to think that it's physically related enough that it applies itself to my conducting gesture when the time comes.  I don't have any evidence, except that I know learning in one field can be transferred automatically to others.

It's all about, as I have said before, spending time.

Wednesday, June 9, 2010

zen in the art of archery

I already wrote that I taught the undergraduate choral conducting class at UConn last spring by using the tools and resources which I had found most useful for myself as a student.  So, I required the undergrads to read Zen in the Art of Archery.

People often ask if it's like Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance.  It's not, really, except that both are philosophical and recount a learning journey in the first person.

Zen in the Art of Archery is a true story of a German man, Eugen Herrigel, who was working in Japan and decided, while he was there, to study archery.  So the value of the book is its insight by a Westerner into a very foreign Eastern philosophy.  Eugen does and thinks what we would think, and he described how his teacher taught him to see his (the teacher's) approach instead.  

The process, so far as I've picked it up, has taught me certain values.  Trust in my teachers is one.  When I am studying with a teacher, I tend to hand myself over to him or her and do what I am told.  I can't help but try to figure out why I've been told to do it, but I let myself just do it before I understand why, trusting that understanding will follow.  This is not what some of my teachers have expected of me, so it has not been universally successful, but I prefer it to constantly challenging them while we wait for our approaches to become clear to each other.  Rarely, there will be a teacher who just doesn't know what to do with me because I'm not making any demands or asking any questions.  Even then, it works out.  I just accept that I don't understand their approach yet, and allow them to explain it to me in whatever way seems best to them.  If my own approach is standing in the way of my understanding, it's my responsibility to be aware of that and fix it.  I'll probably let the teacher know that that's happening, but not to argue that mine is better or right, just to say "I'm having trouble with X because I've always thought Y, and I'm working through letting that go so I can get inside of X."

But then again, it makes me think every time I pick it up, makes me examine the work I do.  I think everyone should read it.  It's only eighty-one pages long.  But if you don't mind a spoiler, here's the main thing I get from it every time I read it:

Preparation.

Yes, I suggested Monday that preparation is a way to compensate for the skills towards which one lacks a natural inclination.  Preparation is a way to get good at anything, really.

Talent with practice is the best combination.  But if you've got to pick one or the other, practice without talent trumps talent without practice every day of the week.  Ten thousand hours, they say, equals expertise.  Spend ten thousand hours working on anything, and you will be an expert at it.  And maybe that only can be called expert because so few people will dedicate that much time to any single endeavor that those few will be the high water mark for expertise.  Because the more you work on something, the more you realize just how much there is to it, and how little you really know about it, right?

Anyway, the Zen in the Art of Archery perspective seems to me to suggest that preparation results in learning not to do.  You learn to get out of the way and let "it" do through you.  You don't practice aiming so you get good at aiming, you practice shooting so that "it" shoots through you.

Dr. Buck told me that studies have shown that experts use different parts of their brains when they work than novices.  Maybe this is a scientific insight into the sensation of "it" doing through us.  We aren't doing anymore, because we're nothing thinking "now I have to cut off the T on the and of four, and then I have to breathe on beat two..."  Instead, we just live the music and the cutoffs and breaths just happen.

That is my experience of preparation.  And I remember it when I read Zen in the Art of Archery.  I remember to trust my teachers, the composers, the time I spend with the score.  Everything new I learn about how to prepare represents, to me, just one more way to spend time, to get to know it.  Just like getting to know a person, the way you get to know it depends on what's in it, what its characteristics are, what its requirements are.  The important thing is to spend the time.  And to trust that understanding will come.

Tuesday, June 8, 2010

the choir

I've mentioned before that I'm a Doctor Who fan.  I also have a DVR, which means I never watch commercials.  However, I usually skip through the commercials in 30-second chunks, allowing me to see moments of commercials here and there.

Well, while watching Doctor Who on DVR a short while back ("Fear Her"--a great episode!), I skipped through commercials only to land on a moment that said THE CHOIR.  "What's that?" I asked the t.v., and then did something I never do.  I rewound the DVR to see the commercial.  It was just a ten-second teaser with some line like "What's your dream?"  And I rolled my eyes and thought, "oh, great: another show about people getting told they can't sing."

Later in the episode, there was a "sneak preview" of The Choir, and it proved me absolutely wrong.  It seems that the real premise is a choral musician, Gareth Malone, who goes around to "unlikely" communities and starts choirs!  It shows him trying to recruit people, then being clever on the podium, then conducting performances.  Apparently the goal is to get to the World Choir Games in China, which he refers to as the choral Olympics.  I'm ambivalent about competing as performance, but I thought the rest of the premise seemed interesting enough to see how it works out.

So I intend to DVR it and check it out.  If there's anything there, I hope to write about it.

It starts in one month, July 7, on BBC America, which usually means that it has already started airing on BBC proper, and so this isn't exactly breaking news.  I'm behind my international colleagues and surely won't be the first the comment on it.  So be it.  In the meantime, here are some of the thoughts I'm having before we go into it.

Things I liked: On a personal note, I'm relieved to see Gareth is actually two years older than I am.  It's just a little disheartening to see guys like Dudamel who are even younger yet more successful.  Not that I'm ambitious, I just... you know... am susceptible to envy.  I also liked that he was encouraging everyone to sing, accepting anyone who wanted to be a part of it.  Also, he seems fearless in terms of engaging fully with his singers and the music, not self-conscious or overly concerned with appearing to be a good conductor over actually conducting well.

Things I'm worried about: I mentioned the competition thing.  There's also the question I have about the British training of conductors.  I've never been inside their system, so I can't comment on it with authority; but, I've had a little experience with a few conductors trained in England, particularly, which has been not good.  I'm a little worried about the Bristish perspective of what a conductor's job is, and afraid that it will frustrate me that he doesn't do what I think he should do.  But the clips they showed of him conducting looked okay, so we'll just have to wait and see.

Monday, June 7, 2010

Multiple Intelligence Monday 2: Visual-Spatial

Visual-spatial

Visual-spatial skills have been linked to sight-reading ability in orchestra musicians.  Before I read this particular research, I already knew that my husband is an amazing sight-reader and he can pack more in the back of the Forrester than I could ever imagine possible.  And after I read the research, I wondered if my really quite mediocre visual-spatial aptitude and really quite mediocre sight-reading skills are related.


We're thinking of buying an elliptical machine.  Would it fit in the back of the car?  I have no idea!


Clearly, the awareness of the page, and the ability to sort out what's on it, is an important ability for a conductor.  I'm not so good at these as my husband, and my training is primarily choral, so I have a dickens of a time working with instrumental scores.  Visually, the page is so big, there's so much on it, and it's spread out so far, that I just have to spend a lot of time before I'm able to wrap my ears around it.  


And this brings me to the point I will make with all the multiple intelligence posts, and which I will also be making tomorrow: knowing one's weaknesses allows a conductor to compensate for them.  And how do I compensate for my total lack of a knack for seeing the page?  


Preparation.


I spend so much time with my score that I don't really even have to look at it to know what's on it.  I know the music so well that the notes on the page are just reminders of the sound in my head rather than instanty instructions of what the sound should be--which is, I understand, how really good readers see music.  


Preparation.  More on it Thursday.

Thursday, June 3, 2010

conducting journal

I taught the undergraduate choral conducting class at UConn last spring and it was a hoot.  I assisted the basic and instrumental conducting classes under Dr. Renshaw, and I've taught conducting to high school students in a smaller way, so at least I wasn't going in absolutely cold.  Still, I took two semesters of vocal pedagogy before I taught anyone singing; I got a degree in music education before they let me into a classroom to teach music.  But conducting pedagogy is not a topic that is directly addressed very often.  So I fell back on the thing that most teachers eventually do: how I was taught.

I have the benefit of not being a very good musician (musical intelligence will be addressed a couple of Mondays from now, followed shortly by Gordon and aptitude testing).  When you're mediocre at something but love it, you work very hard to learn and get better, you try everything you can to improve.  And that made me learn how to learn.  In planning my syllabus for the undergrad course, I picked the things that helped me the most, and assigned those tasks to my students

In my master's program, we were loosely required to write a conducting journal.  It was a suggestion, really, more than a requirement, but I'm a woman who follows instructions so I diligently kept a conducting journal.  I also happen to be a woman who loves to write about things I love, so it was easy and pleasant for me.

When I was writing a conducting journal, I wrote about scores I was preparing, other conducting students, conducting class, lessons, conductors I performed under, teachers, performances, recordings, and even non-musical life experiences that related to conducting.  Sort of like this blog now, though I also try to write about research and more big-picture sorts of things.

I assigned a conducting journal to my undergrads.  It was worth five percent of their grade, graded on "thoroughness." Basically, the more they wrote about, and the more accurate information it contained, the higher the grade.  Not a big deal, but it could make the difference between and B+ and an A-, you know?   Those who wrote really thorough journals made the most improvements in the actual conducting.  My whole point with the class was that conducting was about preparation, so the more preparation you did, the better you would conduct.  A journal was really just a place to track and organize your preparation.

I find that I conduct better when I keep a journal, just like my students.  I don't know how many other conductors use journaling as a tool for preparation.  I love it, but of course, it does speak to some of my strongest learning styles: verbal and intrapersonal (as my sister puts it, "strong opinions and a big vocabulary").  One of the many projects for this summer is the preparation of scores for the fall.  Among them is the Caesar Franck Mass in A, the source of the famous "Panis Anglicus."



Mmmhhh... Renee Fleming...

Anyway, I'm going to try posting at least some of the things that I'd ordinarily journal about in preparing a piece like that.  There are a few reasons.

First, it will give me a chance to demonstrate specific examples and further explicate ideas that are relatively esoteric.

Second, this is the first multi-movement work I've prepared for a real performance, in its entirety, from scratch.  Other pieces I've done as exercises in conducting lessons with no actual performing, performed only excerpts, or had already sung the piece and was therefore familiar with it to some degree.  So I'm rather excited to be applying all that theoretical training to practical use and quite keen to do it right.  I feel some responsibility to post true and accurate things on the blog, so perhaps having it out here will be even more incentive to do it well.

Third, posting online has the possibility of reaching other conductors who have performed the work and can let me know if they found the same things I did.  That would be nice.

Tuesday, June 1, 2010

goodbye again

I just saw the movie Goodbye Again.  In it, Ingrid Bergman says "the problem with being an interior designer is everyone thinks they know your business."

I can relate.

I dated a man a long, long time ago who suggested I avoid talking about music in social situations because I tended to preach, not quite perceiving that the others involved in the conversation were just making small talk.  Because music is a popular topic for small talk.

People just talk about music casually, discussing their own opinions and perceptions.  They judge the contestants on American Idol based on their ideals and experiences.  When I was teaching high school, I watched American Idol so I could help my students discuss it intelligently, to to help them identify the real sources of their judgments (more often they simply preferred what was familiar to what was high quality--which is perfectly natural, but one should acknowledge it) and also because if Randy could require good intonation, so could I.

My strategy for talking about music socially these days is less instructive.  I've learned that no one actually cares about why head voice is important for even pop singers, or how excellent diction can create expressive texture.  When a teenage relative asked if I had thoughts about his community theater production of Pajama Game, I said "of course I do; I'm a professional," then changed the subject.  When the periodontist's assistant asked what I do and learned that I was a conductor, she asked me about Dudamel.  I did not talk about how he belies the conductor archetype, but agreed wholeheartedly when she said he's cute.

It's weird to be a professional in something that most people do recreationally.  That's why I blog about it, of course--because I love what I do and want to make my experience available to anyone who wants to know about it.  And it's not so easy to drop these kinds of ideas on people at dinner parties.

I can't really complain.  My sister has a PhD in health sciences, specializing in sexuality.  She can NOT talk about her work at dinner parties, except among her colleagues.

Colleagues are what this post is really about.  Recently, I had lunch with two band friends.  One said, "we're getting a weird degree--I mean, it's basically a Doctorate in Arm Waving."  The other agreed, "yeah, I can't believe they pay me to do this!"  Yet, for all their recognition of our work as esoteric and surprising, their understanding of it makes for comfortable small talk.  I love hearing from a wide variety of readers who post comments and e-mail me and write on my Facebook wall, but it really especially thrills me to hear from other conductors.  Because I acknowledge that my perspective is not the only one, and I love learning more.  Because this is what the internet is for: sharing information, especially where there are no right or wrong answers, just discussions to be had.

Ingrid Bergman didn't discuss interior decorating with anyone in Goodbye Again except to say, "I'm glad you like it" when receiving a compliment at a dinner party.  Smart woman.  I would totally have read her blog if she'd had one.