Kristen and I have been to the opera twice recently, once in Vienna and once in New York. Both of these stagings, one by a small company and one by the Mighty Metropolitan, have been what we'll call 'updates' of venerable old classics. What I mean is that they left the music alone, but the sets and costumes, and therefore the place of the story, were quite removed from anything that would have been part of the original production.

This isn't anything new. Updated Shakespeare--Hamlet on a motorcycle, Macbeth as part of a street gang in 1950s New York, anything to relieve the tedium of presenting the same works exactly the same way every time--has become quite the fashion for opera and theater companies for as far back as I remember (which is only a couple of decades, by the way!). Sometimes the production is simply moved, lock, stock, and barrel (to borrow a phrase from the distant past) into a new century and a new place. In other productions, the whole idea of time and place seems completely obliterated and fantastical and experimental elements take over the set, and the people who inhabit them. Once, a few years ago, Kristen was watching a very 'avant-garde' staging of Parsifal in Germany. She fell asleep at some point and when she woke up there were electric sheep on the stage! I don't know Parsifal very well, but I feel pretty certain that Wagner did not include any parts for electric sheep. (besides, the tenors wouldn't like the competition)

People weigh in all over the spectrum on the wisdom of such a thing, naturally, and my guess would be that most of them don't like it. The average opera-goer being much more conservative than your average creative artist. Particularly if they are in attendance for an opera that is a celebrated standard, known and liked by the multitude, hallowed by time, and sanctified by tradition, which means it is seasoned by the personas of those who have sung its major roles before.

But the production heads do it anyway, because they were born to be creative talents rather than slavish robots, and because they feel they have something to say. This usually means things are going to seem new.

Now I mentioned two productions. The first was properly termed an update, with a bit of license. The opera was by Haydn, not a recognizable classic, and a little creaky of plot. Meaning, a girl sang about the pain of unrequited love, her lover returned, she was reunited with him and oh by the way her younger sister got a go at the other fella and all ended happily, two couples veering off into the operatic sunset.

If you think that seems a bit saccharine for the 21st century you might have enjoyed this production. Any time a savvy, reality-bound person might have pointed at his or her open mouth and made gagging noises, the production was there to agree. This was done without changing a note of the music or altering the libretto (as far as I could make out.) At the end, when the big sis tried to hook up her little sis with the one available male on stage to provide the expected happy happy Baroque opera ending, things seemed a trifle forced, and the staging made that clear. It also looked as though her guy, none too happy about things (I believe there was gunpoint involved), was probably going to dump her five minutes after the curtain fell. You just can't force a mindlessly happy ending on singers these days!

Meanwhile, the heroine had sung most of her arias in her pajamas, in the shockingly unBaroque bedroom which we would never see in a period production, while her little sister played with stuffed animals. Message: these girls are too young to be messing around with love. They are pretty naive, even for opera characters. They need to get out and see the world a bit, like their romantic ideals, two World War One flyboys who kept dropping in on ropes.

The second production is likely to get more criticism. It has been in full view of a New York audience for a month now, and it takes the idea of time and place much farther afield than simply setting it a couple of centuries hence. Ironically, Verdi had hoped to have "La Traviata" set in his own time and place, to make the situation in the opera seem not so remote, but the censors of his day wouldn't allow it. Back then, the fashion in opera staging was to put everything at a two century remove.

Poor art! It is criticized for having nothing to do with real life, and then, whenever it tries to show itself relevant, it is pushed back down in the box and the lid clamped on!

Verdi may have gotten his wish this month, though I doubt he could have imagined this production. It features a mostly bare stage, a large curvaceous bench around the edges, and an enormous clock, to remind us of the time the heroine has left to live, not because of unrequited love, but from a terminal illness. "This opera" writes the head of the production, "is about death." And so, a minor character who is barely noticeable in the original but is Violeta's doctor, becomes a personification of death, silent, but continually showing up in the midst of revelry to remind her that she is running out of time. He is on the stage alone when the house opens, and he participates in the pantomime during the overture. Both productions, by the way, featured choreographed visual presentations during the overture, a piece of music that was once simply for listening and preparation of the opera to come. Now it is usually part of a multi-media presentation, a concession to the idea that we will no longer tolerate having only some of our senses stimulated at once.

Those senses certainly were. Convinced that "all eyes must be on" the star, the heroine was presented in a red cocktail dress, surrounded by a chorus in black tuxedos--as if people who had seen previous productions were ever guilty of looking elsewhere! And the minimal set pieces--a few couches--continue the trend of a few bold, simple strokes. The fellow in charge of this new production is convinced that he is not 'tampering' with the opera, but allowing it to reveal itself, its message. And he is good with the rhetoric. Audiences, he says, can tell the difference between allowing the opera to shine and using it as a vehicle to show off one's own ideas, and the mark of their appreciation is a guarantor of an authentic approach.

I'll disagree with him a bit here, but I found myself liking the production. And the Haydn as well. The curiously "Romantic" philosophy behind these new stagings--claiming to only reveal while heavily interpreting the contents--has been with us for a while and it isn't going away.  It is a philosophy in which analysis speaks loudly. But at least it is interesting. And I think Verdi, and Haydn will live. Operas this old and composers this respected  have works which are separate in our consciousness from any individual staging. The public can easily say, "well, I like the Verdi, but I did/did not like this particular version of it." In other words, no zealous interpreter can doom the opera by making it mean something it was never meant to mean. Next time it will bounce back--or at least in another direction.

This won't prevent some members of the audience from complaining that they didn't like it. Lusty boos and loss of ticket sales accompanied one such Metropolitan update last year. It is one of the things that give drama to the life of an artist. And it reminds us all to stay in shape. The New York audiences have been pretty civil, but you never really know when you may have to escape out of a window!

They closed the Liberace museum.

I'll forgive you if you don't have any idea what that is. If you are young enough, it probably doesn't mean anything. If you are, shall we say, cultured, it probably doesn't bother you, either. In other words, the world of classical music isn't heaving a great sorrowful sigh this week.

But I have a few thoughts on the matter. It made me a little wistful to hear the news this morning on the radio.

When I was quite young, I was already playing the piano publically. Not being dragged around Europe or anything; my teacher was the elementary school music teacher, and she liked to show me off at assemblies and school programs and such. In the years since, I've often wondered why the other kids didn't beat me up for playing the piano, but they didn't. In fact, they really seemed to think it was cool. Some of them gave me knick-names like 'fingers.' And others said I was going to be the next Liberace.

Liberace who? I wondered. Why, he was the best pianist in the world, they told me. My parents even had a record of him, and they didn't have that many records of anybody, so he had obviously made an impact. He talked a lot between numbers, though. My father couldn't stand his voice, and wished he would just shut up and play the piano.

He had a classical music background, apparently, and could play scales and arpeggios, running up and down the piano with ease, and he did it just enough to let people know he could let the notes fly and to overwhelm their ears in small doses; then it was back to the tune, in octaves, nice and prominent. That was his MO (mode of operation). Not classical tunes, of course--well, he mixed in a few of them. But mainly popular tunes that everybody knew, and could whistle on the way home.

At some point the comparisons with this paragon of piano playing reached critical mass and convinced me that I would have to check out this phenom for myself, so, the next time he was in town, we went.

I didn't like him so much after that. The reason was that he didn't spend enough time playing the piano. I don't mean that I couldn't stand his voice either, it was that, when he talked, it was about how wealthy he was, and to show off all of his stuff. I was probably seven or eight at the time, but I wasn't much of a conspicuous consumption man even then. It just seemed really...tacky.

I had just been introduced to a showman. That's what Liberace did best, and that was why he drew such a crowd. It wasn't because he could play the piano so well. By the time I was in fourth grade, my teacher had made some crack about how I could probably play better then Liberace (which was probably still a bit of an overstatement considering my sloppy technique). But people weren't there to hear a great pianist. There were, and are, innumerable pianists who most people have never heard of who could have played the man under the table and then some. Liberace could relate to people. Average people. The ones who, frankly, don't want to hear something they haven't heard before or can't hum.

Liberace had decided that what he most wanted was to be famous; he wanted that more than he wanted to play great music--though perhaps he played it at home, on his own time. What he did in public was dazzle a little, and then offer the well-known favorites to please the ear. He did play the occasional classical tune, but he kept it short--"I have to know just how much my audiences will stand" he said. He knew that fame did not come by challenging the audience, so he 'skipped the boring parts.' I know what he meant. When I was young and just getting to know the classical literature, I had trouble with those in-between parts, between the really arresting climaxes, and catchy tunes. As my ears have matured along with my self, I have grown to appreciate these passages very much. Things are often in the process of becoming in classical music, and moving in and out of what they were and will be, and transforming into something else, like the great mystery of life. Popular music doesn't do that sort of thing. It just is.

Such an appreciation takes patience, and few have it. We would rather something please us right away than spend time trying to get to grips with it. I can't help thinking the world would be better off if we favored the second approach. It would help our own levels of education, but also aid understanding between us and our neighbor, and between cultures, if we spent more time listening and trying to understand. But large sums of money are not commanded by telling people what they ought to aspire to, but rewarding them for where they are now. Liberace got that message and wanted to be where the money was. And boy, did he succeed.

When he watered down great music, or spent half his concert showing off his fur coats and diamond-studded accoutrements, he was accused of 'selling out.' When he heard those charges, he said he 'cried all the way to the bank.' He was the king of kitsch, a merciless collector of jewel-encrusted pianos, and the embodiment of the American dream. Plus, he was the pianist everybody had heard of, which naturally made him the best. Even my shampoo bottle wants me to know it is number one in sales, hoping I'll assume it must be number one in quality. To think otherwise would be to imply criticism of the American public, and who wants to do that in an election year?

Liberace's fame grew into a museum which was with us long after he departed, probably from AIDS, a disease you couldn't discuss in the 80s, possibly contracted from a lifestyle that you couldn't talk about either, if you wanted to be beloved by legions of adoring fans, so, naturally, he didn't. He had to be what they wanted him to be. I wonder if, in the end, he thought it was a good bargain. It did bring with it an exalted status that few pianists enjoy in the public at large. And maybe, when it came to musical standards, he was like a lot of people. He knew about his musical vegetables, and he knew you were supposed to eat them, but he didn't really like them all that much anyway. Who knows?

His place in the world has since been taken by folks like Yanni and John Tesh (from a technical standpoint, Liberace could play both of them under then table), and now his museum is closing, 23 years after his death. It stands about two miles from the Vegas Strip, apparently too far for people to drive. Maybe he will soon disappear into the mists of time.

Well, most of us will, too. I just hope I'll have something to say before I go--more than merely tickling the ears of worshipful fans. But I'm jealous, too. On some level, he got to communicate with far more people than the rest of us Bach-playing-blokes will ever meet on any kind of musical level. Pandering, maybe. And maybe he inspired some of them, or made them feel better after a rough day at work, or gave them a nice memory of the time they got to see a lot of money in one place, owned by a guy who seemed just like them. Then they lined up to see all that fabulous stuff he had, the candelabras that gave him mystique, the diamond-studded costume and matching diamond-studded pianos. A piano is just a piano if you can't play it. But money--diamonds--that everybody seems to adore.

Me, I'd take the piano, without all the jewelry.  But I can't help being a bit curious. I wonder what they are going to do with all of those diamonds? I mean, it's Vegas. Do you think anybody'll want them?

Dear valued listener-reader, 

It is with great excitement that we inform you that Pianonoise has joined the Hammergroup family of fine websites. Over the next 218 months, as we  phase in the changes, you will continue to enjoy the same great service that has made Pianonoise an industry standard in our own minds and that you have come to know and value. All of the features that make our website such a standout will continue their excellent ways, but in the coming months several wonderful new features will also become available. Eventually you will nearly burst with enthusiasm and glee every time you visit your favorite website, which is now newer and more improveder than ever before. Take a few moments to familiarize yourself with these great new features:

--An expanded home page (note: offer does not apply if you are reading this on a PDA device or anything smaller than a wide screen  
   television)
--Great new feature articles whenever I get around to posting them that will vastly expand your musical
   knowledge
--The total High definition 3-D musical experience (which can mean whatever you like it to mean!)
--More flattery
--Superior arguments in the commentary sections that you can use to alienate your friends, and befriend   
   aliens
--More vibrant colors that practically jump out of your computer*
   (*you have to turn the brightness level up on your monitor to access this feature)
--Sound files that will practically melt your ears, especially if you accidentally left the volume up too high      
   after listening to something that was down too low.
--Good vibrations
--More moreness

In a few months, you will be rewarded with Pianonoise points for every mp3 file you listen to. You can redeem these points for fabulous prizes, included imaginary vacations to places where the actual composers once sneezed and the chance to send me valuable email. We think you will be knocked out of your socks by all of the exciting stuff that is happening around here, and we hope you are sitting down for all this.

Sincerely yours,

Whatsisname, you know, that guy who runs Pianonoise.com, whoever he is.

Notes:

1On our about February 15^th, 2011, you will have to log on to Pianonoise using a user ID and password. The password must contain at least 15 characters, 7 of which must be lowercase letters, 2 upper case, 4 numbers, and 3 special characters, but not # ^ @ & ^ * or ! We realize this doesn’t add up to 15, but that is just too bad for you. Lower case letters may not be consecutive, and your password cannot have a special character in an odd-numbered position. The Hammergroup is a division of Sixteen-Thirty-thirds Associates Limited Commercial Ventures Entrepreneurial Enterprises Incorporated, which is huge, and we mean huge, so when you decide to create a password you should plan to spend at least three days trying to come up with one that hasn’t been taken already. We aren’t going to tell you what’s left or provide you with a password, so you’ll just have to stumble across one on your own. The passwords “f$#% you” and its numerical equivalent have been taken already by an irate customer who was way ahead of you. Note: it is forbidden to create a password that even vaguely resembles something like a word or phrase that you might be able to remember for at least five seconds, or that contains some reference to the User ID. If you forget your password, we will ask you a security question to which only you know that answer, such as where Canada is, and if you successfully answer we will inform you that your new password will be sent to you shortly, just before you are inexplicably knocked offline.

We have a phone number, but we won’t tell you what it is, because then you would use it, and we want the online experience to be your final court of appeal. Studies show that persons who use the phone become flaming mad, particularly after they’ve been on hold for thirty minutes and had their listening experience interrupted 15 times to hear an electronic voice tell them that their call is very important to us. If you would like to simulate the effects of being on the phone with us, just take one of the mp3 files on our site, the one you really can’t stand and turn it up by a factor of 55 until it is really really distorted. Then cut into it every 45 seconds to tell yourself that you are a valued customer.

Your password must contain no more than 8 special characters and 12 capital letters. After June 18^th, you will not be able to log one to Pianonoise.com without a password. 

If you forget your password, simply click on “I forgot my password” which will periodically appear in the vicinity of the log-in box, unless it is on page 9 because our server is in some kind of a mood. Your old password will be sent to you by email with the subject line “I am a moron who cannot keep track of my password.” You will then be able to log on and choose a new password, which cannot have any characters in common with the old password, and must be in Swahili, for security reasons. If you do not know Swahili you can download our Swahili app, which will teach you how to say ‘my cat has jaundice’ and other useful phrases. Certain side effects of the Pianonoise SuperProPlayer Deluxe Edition Swahili Maker 6.0.0.5 include not being able to think in English, and being under the delusion that the entire screen is blinking and that the words are running around in circles.

Valuable prizes may not be redeemed during a month in which the moon is full at least once, but no more than two, times. A period of several hours during which the entire moon is visible from some part of the planet consititues a full moon. No repeat full moons are permitted within the same 24 hour period; said moon will be considered for legal purposes part of the same full moon. A period of more than seven days is required before the same conditions may count toward the acknowledging of a second full moon. Offer is not valid if the second full moon appears orange. 

Your password may not contain any capital letters or special characters. If you are caught writing your password down somewhere that you will be able to find it later you will be shipped to a place that will not allow you to access Pianonoise, and that, trust us, is no place you want to be.

Offer of new posts is no guarantee that certain sections (or departments) of this website will be updated anytime within the present Millenium. Incidentally, Pianonoise just hit 88 web pages. Does that mean I'm going to die soon?

Finally, please note that your password cannot have any lower case letters. Grunts and sighs are not recommended, as they interfere with the Pianonoise listening experience.

The internet seems to have gotten friendlier lately. Of course, that is simply from my perspective, and it is mostly because in the last few months I've discovered a number of blogs and websites where people whose emotional maturity, intellectual sophistication, and respect for one another is of a higher order than the folks who posted to the comment boards in the other places. Still, as pleasant a revelation as this is, it does not erase the negative comments that I see in other places. Often, it seems, in places like Youtube or other places that deal in musical content, the discussions are at best uncivil, and more often than not, just nasty. In real life, we are told that people wouldn't behave like this; the anonymity of the internet allows for all kinds of rudeness. But the stereotypical musician, I am afraid, is considered a bit mean by the rest of society. That artistic type who goes around communing with his subconscious and can't be bothered behaving himself around the rest of humanity. And so I'm wondering if there is anything about being a musical person that causes a person to take leave of their manners on a regular basis. This might require a government study.

It's a pretty big question, all around. It hangs out in the company of some other big questions like "does religion make you a violent fanatic?" or "Does education make you unconscionably cruel?" Both of these ought to have answers in the area of 'of course not!' but if you've been around the block a few times you might begin to wonder.

Strident atheists will sometimes answer the 'religion' question with a decided yes. Of course, they like to say, in their delightfully (almost dogmatically?) simple-minded fashion, all religion ever does is poison people into doing cruel things. A number of people who have blown things up lately seem to have done so with religious promptings; somehow it is easy to ignore all the evidence of people doing noble and compassionate things in the name of what they, too, consider religious dictates (this human tendency to ignore evidence that runs contrary to your theory was once pointed out in a very entertaining essay by a fellow named Jay Gould, also an atheist).

As to the education question, a pastor once commented that Nazi Germany had the best education the world had to offer at the time, and yet it produced a society out of which came the Holocaust. I would challenge that perhaps what was passing for education in that regime was more propaganda. Obviously this was a society that did not encourage critical thinking. Still, it is obvious that a person might have all kinds of knowledge and it may not lead him or her to have any regard whatever for other human beings. A person may know an awful lot about a chosen field (or several fields) and yet have a worldview that says the world is a get-what-you-can-for-yourself proposition; too bad for the other players of the game.

These two items--religion, education--are supposed to make us better people. Not only to learn the hows and the whys of living on the planet, but to make things a little better for society as a whole. To learn to understand, and by understanding to be able to deal with the differences between people and ways of thinking. Or at least to memorize a few simple precepts about doing unto others or the importance of service and humility.

To those two items we now add a third: music. I could make this article very long cataloging all of the positive effects music is said to have on people. Calming the savage breast, expressing the inmost soul, or the inexpressible, or the ineffable, or the infinite, etc. etc. A stabilizing force for society, says one great sage. A giver of pleasure, says another. One of our founding fathers apologized for being forced to study the art of war by saying that the following generations would study other, more peaceable crafts, leading, eventually, to art and music.

And yet, here we are. And musicians often seem not to be the poster children of these efficacious effects, either. Not in the least. Somebody asked me recently how it is that instrumental musicians are often so nasty.

Well, I said, I've read that playing in an orchestra is near the bottom in terms of job satisfaction. I think sanitation workers are happier, on average. There they are, rows upon rows of violins chained together like highly trained galley slaves. The stress must be high. No mistakes are permitted. They get to play, but they don't get to decide what to play, or when to play it, or how to play it. The conductor decides that. Even though he doesn't make a sound (generally) he or she makes a vast number of decisions, from setting the tempo to spinning out each phrase, planning each attack, shaping each solo, cueing each accelerando or ritardando. There's a reason the conductor gets his or her name right there with the orchestra. Besides being a publicity hound. The way Andre Previn does Beethoven's Ninth is really the way Andre Previn does Beethoven's Ninth. It's his interpretation, including an unimaginable number of details that the average concertgoer never notices. The orchestra has something to do with it, too, of course, but they don't get to take the initiative; they have to put the notes where the maestro wants them to go. And that might be the reason for all the stress. Being attached to a conductor and 70 other musicians at the hip isn't easy.

But that only accounts for a few of the bile-producing musical set. And it shows that, as I often do, I'm taking the question far too seriously. Most of the folks with the axes to grind and the vile commentary to spew are probably not practicing musicians at all, they are frustrated musicians. They couldn't get the kind of jobs I've described. Perhaps they are working in record stores. Perhaps their lives are not making them happy. Maybe they wouldn't know how to be happy if happy hit them over the head. Or there is just something else in their lives making them angry. The point is, their acquaintance with music doesn't seem to be curing them of this.

I think we could all say the same thing about people who are very religious or very educated--or very rich. Somehow knowing you've got everything taken care of in this life and are guaranteed heaven in the next just doesn't do it for some people. And some people who don't have a thing are happy as clams. We've all witnessed this, and wondered why. And the same thing applies to music.

There might be a loophole, which is that people who aren't kind to their fellow men aren't really listening--to religion or music. "Men claim to be lovers of music" wrote Henry David Thoreau, "but they show no evidence in their lives or opinions that this is so. It would not leave them narrow-minded and bigoted." Maybe that depends on the music you are or aren't listening to. If music is a kind of communication, what is a particular piece communicating? Real understanding or just propaganda? "I should be sorry if I merely entertained them" said Handel after a performance of Messiah. "I wanted to make them better."

Ah, the idealism.

Of course, one more item--the most obvious, perhaps--should be mentioned when it comes to the internet. Some folks really are just disturbed. A religious blog I happened across yesterday had a lengthy disclaimer at the bottom which in included the phrase "we do not discriminate against the mentally ill." A few of the opinions about some verses from the Bible seemed to have been written by persons having some problems with reality (a few shades from 'here come the government helicopters!'). That did cause me to pause and remember that, even though as a relatively calm person generally, some comments on the internet can make me want to fire back, I have next to no idea who I'm firing at. If I can dispel some ignorance, great. But heated commentary seldom does this. And since I have no idea about the personality or abilities of the person who 'fired' at me/us, it would help to be careful about what you say in return.

What I mean is, maybe they can't hear the music. But we don't have to crank it up for them.

He was going too fast, I thought. I couldn't help thinking that Mozart would have shared my opinion. I am guessing that based on a letter to his father in which Mozart complained about the speed at which some fellow raced through his piece, and another in which he complained about that practice in general.

But what it might really have come down to wasn't that actual speed, per se, but that he was playing the piece in a way that made it sound fast. And I began to imagine reasons for that.

I was in the car at the time.  As I pulled into the parking lot, a Mozart sonata had come on the radio, as played by some fellow who had won some international competition or other. Recently, I think. And I wondered whether that had anything to do with his treatment of Mozart.

You see, Mozart doesn't give us enough notes per measure to show off with by comparison to much of the music that came after him. At the time, his was the high water mark for piano playing prowess, but, like most measures of faster, higher, stronger, it was soon superseded by people in the next century who came pouring more and more titillating passagework into their pieces; artistic merit be damned, some of the time. And it is all the better for those who think lots of rapid runs are what constitutes artistic merit in the first place. But as Arthur Schnabel pointed out, adults are afraid to play Mozart sonatas precisely because there aren't very many notes (to hide behind). This unfortunate malady of Mozart's is often 'corrected' by pianists who want to win competitions, or just generally stun persons with their command of a piano, by keeping the tempi crisp, and the runs even crisper. Haydn, I think, has also suffered from many a prestissimo. In a world where it is possible to travel at speeds undreamt of by our forefathers, a world in which we all have places to go, what's the harm in shaving a few minutes off a sonata in the process?

Maybe the way to answer that would be to examine the motives of the pianist. Is it really about the musical intentions of the composer, or is it primarily about using the piece as a vehicle to show off?

As I said, his treatment made the piece sound fast. When I've played the same piece in the past, it is not really that much slower. A metronome tick or two, perhaps. And that might be, for me, what makes all the difference. And it brings up the issue of tempo, which is something that people argue about constantly, which makes it a great thing to discuss.

Not that the discussion always yields great insights. Once on a discussion of somebody's recording of Schumann, posted on Youtube, an irritated comment poster said: "he plays the piece like he has a train to catch." I don't recall thinking the pianist's choice of tempo was really all that out of line, but then, as the internet has made very clear to all of us, I/we am/are just one individual in a sea of wildly different opinions, often buttressed by shouting, or at least all caps, and occasionally, something resembling a good argument. When it comes to postings on say, Youtube, of some of the greatest pianists of the last century, there is no pleasing some people. They simply sniff and say that some other pianist plays the piece a thousand times better. It is really astounding how much shorthand erudition is out there--humbling, really. I went to music school for years and I am still not so sure of some of my opinions sometimes.

But I know enough to disagree with some people's choice of tempo once in a while. Why?

1. The speed with which we play/sing a piece has a lot to do with the way we hear it. In this regard, professionals, or people who are highly developed musically, often take faster tempi than those who are not. This is because the perceived speed of the piece has a lot to do, not with how fast the notes are going by, but by the rate at which the musical argument proceeds; in the other words, the stuff that our ears perceive as important. Imagine you are on a very fast train, looking out the window, watching the telephone poles go by. If they are very far apart, they may not seem to be going by too quickly even if the train is travelling at 90 miles an hour. Shift your gaze to the gravel bed below, or to the railroad ties, and the picture is an absolute blur. Similarly, a person whose ears are trained on, say, the rate of harmonic change in a piece, may feel that the piece isn't really moving very fast, since an entire measure or two consists of the same harmony. It may also have a few dozen notes in it, but those are details like the railroad ties that are only noticeable as they contribute to the whole. Even if an entire phrase goes by in a second or two, and it is followed by another whose relationship to the first one is easily perceived by the listener, then that recognition of the larger pattern keeps the piece comprehensible at higher speeds. People who read well can do it out loud very quickly because they can understand what they are reading even faster. You can talk to your neighbor at high speed, and understand him or her just as quickly, but try listening to someone in another language and it quickly becomes apparent just how many varied sounds we are spitting out of our mouths every second. If you are listening for the meaning of the words, this isn't a problem. Lose the meaning, and the individual sound bits suddenly seem to have formed an army laying siege to your mind! Thus, part of our understanding of tempo is related to our understanding of the material. A sea of notes which turns out to be merely a scale can go by very fast without losing anything in intelligibility--for the player. There is no guarantee it will function this way for each member of the audience!

2. This is not to say that every gifted artist takes fast tempi. Some have been known to take extremely slow ones. The reasons may be philosophical, which is to say they are various. Sometimes an artist feels that more emotional intensity can be achieved that way; tension takes longer to build, and longer to dissipate. There are many who would tie the piece's perceived message or mood to the speed of various bodily activities, and these are sometimes rather slow. It is even possible for an artist to adopt a cantankerously slow tempo just as a reaction to irritatingly fast ones, or because it will stand out (again for competitive reasons). Glenn Gould, one of the last centurie's most eccentric pianistic personalities, tended to play his pieces either very fast or very slow. Either way, they were out of the ordinary.

3. There is tradition, or custom. I learned rather quickly during my stint as a vocal accompanist in graduate school that every aria from every opera has a customary speed which may have little or nothing to do with what it says on the page. Some adagios seemed very lively, and a few of the prestos were a bit andante; this might have been due to the idea that the composers, most of whom were/are not singers, didn't have the requisite sympathy for the voice to know the appropriate speed at which one could get through a phrase without passing out. Vocal traditions in particular rely on a lot of unwritten knowledge, particularly in the opera house when every high note has an understood fermata on it, entitling the tenor to hang on to the note long enough to impress us all with his lung capacity.

4. I've often found that the speed with which I play a piece changes as I am learning it; on becoming reacquainted with it after some time away I may change the tempo as well. I am not sure always why I do it, only that it seems as if what the piece has to say to me comes through best at that speed. Certain passages stand out with more clarity in my mind. This change of tempi takes a flexibility that is not easy to achieve. One of the toughest things for some of the choirs I play for is to adjust to a new tempo. They get used to singing it one way and can't get out of that rut. Last fall some fellow caused a problem by conducting part of a piece much slower than our own conductor had prepared it; I suppose he thought he had some sort of a right just because he had composed the piece!

Tempo is dependent on meter and rhythm and these are but a series of relationships, not something fixed with absolute precision (unless you have metronome markings, and we'll have to argue about their accuracy another time). There are some composers, and performers who encourage changes in tempi, and others who do not, which is really no surprise. People are people, which means they hold opposite views on the matter.

Being of the school of cheerful adaptation, I would suggest that when someone takes a different tempo in music, or in life, rather than merely scowling at it, we see what can be learned from it. If the piece is familiar enough, there may still be something that can be discovered in that mysterious relationship of sounds that may not have been as obvious the last time you heard it, and the new tempo may have something to do with that little revelation.

Hit Parade
posted April 7, 2010

We were in a music store one day, my mother and I, and I noticed a record that had Beethoven's Fourth Symphony on it. Maybe I should get that, I suggested. My mother said something like "who's ever heard of Beethoven's Fourth? It's probably a loser." I was pretty young at the time (probably around 10 or 11) growing up in a small community where nobody I knew ever listened to classical music, including my parents. Like most people who don't listen to Beethoven, we'd heard of Beethoven's Fifth symphony, because it starts with that famous da-da-da-dummmmm!!!! But the opening of the Fourth wasn't so famous, and to my mother it sounded like an off-brand. A knock off. Something the record company was hoping you'd confuse for the real item.

It took a few years to learn that in the classical music community, among people who know about those sorts of things, there are no off-brand Beethoven Symphonies. Every one of the nine is considered a masterpiece, even if the Fourth has had to live in the shadow of its more famous cousin. It, too, has an arresting opening, though perhaps less assertive than the Fifth; in any case it did not make it into the general consciousness, which does not have room for more than a few famous snatches of history-making tunes.

There is quite a difference between the size of the repertoire as understood by a musician and what the general public has at least heard of. In some ways, it is probably a miracle that the guy on the street can whistle Beethoven at all, even though eight notes doesn't seem like much of an acquaintance with one of the most interesting voices in western culture. Maybe that's not so different than my half-remembered quadratic equation and a few postulates from geometry. We are required to learn a little bit of everything in school whether we choose to explore a subject deeply or not.

The other day at the bookstore I was hoping to buy a recording. As soon as I saw the size of the classical section I knew it wouldn't be easy to get what I wanted. The titles of many of them condensed even the narrow selection. "Mozart's greatest hits" one of them said. For those who just want the headlines and want to skip the article. A little bit here, and a little bit there, buffet style, catering to a short attention span, perhaps, or to someone who thinks it is unworthy of their ears to listen to something which is not a bestseller, a familiar piece which has added value because everyone else is buying it.

You might imagine this is a rather difficult attitude for a musician to swallow. First, because efficiency is so ruthless. If there is only room for a few voices and a few pieces at the top of the pyramid, and the rest has to struggle to be recognized, how likely is it that any of our voices, or those of our favorite composers, will even be heard? Art is about communication; it does not do well in isolation. And anyway, we aren't talking about leaving off some guy from a little town in Wisconsin who wrote a little piano ditty that has three chords in it and nothing vaguely original (don't worry; his stuff's on the internet now, he's got some audience). Even Beethoven can't get a hearing--from the non-specialists, that is. And sometimes, even from the professionals.

I used to complain about orchestras spending so much of their time every year playing Beethoven symphonies. Then I moved to a town where the orchestra played only Beethoven's Third every year. That one was a perennial favorite, apparently; they were afraid the others wouldn't sell tickets, I guess. Same with Mozart piano concerti. The guy wrote 27. Only one of them made the cut, usually--the same one, every year. People like what they knew, and they didn't seem to have room for wild, risky flights into the unknown like Mozart's other piano concerti. Yes, there's sarcasm informing that previous sentence.

Size is relative, in other words. How many tunes make it into the collective playlist? How large is that collective? Are arts organizations, fighting over a tiny audience, afraid to branch out into what the public doesn't recognize, and just how much do they recognize? Isn't that sort of non-risk-taking behavior in itself going to shrink the size of the repertoire?

What is strange about it all is that you can go online now and hear almost any musical noise in the known universe. No matter how risk-taking or unusual, or formerly obscure, somebody has put it online somewhere (if you can find it). Living composers have a chance to communicate with their public like never before, directly.  Works that were formerly unknown except to a very few experts are being recorded by the expanding number of highly trained practicing musicians.  The only thing that never expands is that sliver of widely known music that the general non-musical public will buy. Should we musicians care what the ones paying the least attention think? Does it matter?

It does matter, because the larger public has the hydraulic force of economics on their side. We live in a culture run largely by financial dictates. These, often, are a great enemy of quality. I say this while wearing tube socks I probably got at Walmart. Probably you did, too. Cheap is good; we don't need much in the way of quality.

The same thinking translated to art means that the journey will be short; anything functional, that makes a pretty sound, that was used in a movie, and makes it into the top ten of all-time classical utterances (it has to be short and repetitive) makes the list, the rest, as they say on TV, is 'out!'

So much for capitalism. It does not enlarge, it compacts. But it is only half of the American experience. The other half is Democracy. This freedom seems to work in reverse. It allows anyone who is passionate about what they are doing, and who doesn't care if their neighbor doesn't think it is worth the risk of encounter, to promote that which they love, that which they find to be of value, whether it will sell a bazillion records or not. So long as you aren't forced by economic considerations to create what will sell you have all the freedom the world has ever known to this point. Money, schmoney? Most people down through history never believed artists were worth supporting anyway.

But we're still here, and in greater numbers. The king no longer has his private orchestra; he must now share with the rest of us. And ever since, we must struggle for patronage. Is it really a surprise that only a few of the rich and dedicated make up most of the support? It has always been that way. Only, it doesn't need to be anymore. The arts have historically been for the appreciation of a few. But that could change. In some ways, it already has, and in some major ways.

It's no cheaper to produce Parsifal now than it ever was. But somewhere, somebody who will enter the pantheon of musical giants has a website, and you might be able to hear his or her works for free. Of course, if they are trying to make a living, maybe not! Artists don't get free housing or free utilities. And quality still takes dedication and a kind of work ethic of which most people are only dimly aware. You can't do that with one hand tied behind your back. Artists have been forced to try different economic models, though, and have proven just as ingenious about those sometimes as their music. They have to, if they want to find a public that will pay for their art, that will pay for anything, now that everything seems to be free. They have to, in order to find, and create, an informed public, that is willing to spend the time and energy walking down less well-worn paths; knowing and finding great art that doesn't have to say so on the CD jacket. A consumer confidant that something doesn't have to be a bestseller to be good. That what the artists have to say is worth a listen, even a little puzzlement. Even if you've never heard of it before. (Does that make it inferior?) And that it is worth taking the risk and the time to grow as people.

There are some of you out there right now...

Which isn't simply a dramatic, fictional gesture, as over the top as most Beethoven movies are. Some real life composers (Beethoven included) needed, as that Southwest Airlines commercial puts it, to 'get away' in order to do the intense thinking that results in a musical composition. And it isn't just the 'highbrows.' American song composer Stephen Foster composed in an upper attic studio when not being interrupted by a clueless wife. She, unfortunately, had no love for music, and thought she was doing a nice thing when she kept coming in with cookies and drinks. "Here you go, honey!" It would send him into a tirade. Let me just go on record as saying it helps enormously when those close to you have some concept of your working rhythms. Alas, those without active interior lives, such as Foster's wife, can be strangely oblivious (though I'll bet the women's liberation movement helped that a bit--if you train women to be domestic furniture what kind of discernment are you going to get?)

Edvard Grieg built a house, but it was apparently too confining for his artistic acts. Instead, he retreated to his 'composer's hut' for perspiration. Unfortunately it was drafty, which was not good for his health (he suffered from a lung ailment most of his life). Thankfully, science has made great technological strides in Composer's Huts in the years since. The only caveat is that you don't want to get yours a Walmart. It's cheap, but, the ones they are making in China right now have lead paneling. I think there is a division of Toyota that makes one too. You can insert your own punchline to that one.

This is not to suggest that all composers need solitude. Songwriter Richard Rodgers liked to compose in his New York apartment with the window open and didn't care who heard it. On the other hand, Irving Berlin liked to work at night, when he could get peace and quiet. I like Berlin's example because it counters the arguments of the morning people that anybody who gets anything good done in the world works in the morning. Mozart composed in the morning for about five hours every day before going out. Bach just sounds like a morning person. I don't know what time of day was his favorite, though from the size of his output you get the impression it was all day. I have a hunch that Beethoven liked to sleep in, but no research in that direction. Evidently, Leonard Bernstein composed in hotel lobbies and on airplanes whenever his hectic schedule permitted him to snatch a few moments whenever.  I can't imagine getting much quality work done that way--maybe he had already mapped out the piece and was filling in more of the mechanical details.

That is, I guess, where the nub of the argument lies. When you are actively engaged in creative decisions it can, on the testimony of musicians through the ages, be brutal, and it often requires a depth of concentration that few others seem to need to do their work, or are acquainted with. Bernstein described his ideas taking shape in a state that was pretty close to a trance, or a dream, some alternate state of consciousness. Which sounds a bit Romantic, and would probably be objected to by Aaron Copland, Bernstein's idol, who did not go around believing implicitly in the subconscious, but considered composing a craft, and a natural function, like eating or sleeping. A composer does it because he feels like doing it, he would say, not because he happens to be suddenly inspired.

Still, the way to trigger those ideas, whatever your mythological stance on how ideas come, seems to involve a lot of work. I'll borrow from the website of comic strip creator Stephen Pastis, who has a standard working method. It involves going to a coffee shop and sitting alone for hours. The first hour, he writes, is never good for anything. It takes that long to get to the point where his mind is focused enough to produce a good idea. Then it takes a few more hours to deliver on it. Then it takes the average reader about 8 seconds to read it!

An eyewitness reported that he saw Wagner pacing around upstairs for several minutes at a time before writing the next passage of the opera he was working on. Pacing around is a good way to keep the body from turning to mush while you are working things out in the all-important brain. I pretty much wore out the floorboards in the church I used to serve back in Maryland. Sorry, trustees!

All of this is, I suppose, an explanation for why I haven't blogged much recently. There is a mania for constant 'content providing' associated with this medium and sometimes I'm not anywhere close to that expectation. Regular 'customers' will already know that. For the newcomers, just have a look around. I'll probably be more verbose next month.

Here are a few things I'm going to have to put in my Curriculum Vitae when I get a chance. They probably all belong in the category 'flying by the seat of your pants,' which is a major life skill, no less for musicians then for everybody else.

They do a pretty good job teaching you how to make a highly technical racket on your chosen instrument in music school, but they don't tell you what to do when half of your instrument is missing. Recently some organs that I've been asked to play have fallen into that category. I mean that, in certain cases, the keys, when depressed, make no sound at all. In other cases, the pitch continues to sound well after it is time to practice discreet silence. This last category is called a cipher, and it can add so much to a concert in the way of unwanted drones, particularly if it happens to an obnoxiously loud tuba stop or something fun like that. One of those organs is in town and I'm playing it next week during a concert. The only way to get rid of these things sometimes is to turn off the entire organ and wait for the hubbub to die down (which can take several minutes). There is a downside to this strategy. (Note: by the time I got around to posting this the concert had gone off well--the organ was on its best behavior and I have no casualties to report)

One morning, practicing for the concert, I had a curious adventure with one of those infinite tones. Nobody else was in the theater at the time, so I attempted the fix myself, crawling into the pipe room and trying to locate the recalcitrant pipe. (Calling tech support probably wouldn't have helped, since they would just ask if you'd remembered to turn the thing on.)  I got the babbling pipes to shut up by simply putting my foot on the first rung of the stepladder I needed to get over to get to the catwalk in the near the relevant bank of pipes, find the offending pipe, and yank it out of its socket (rather subtle, don't you think?). I think it knew I meant business and promptly quieted down. I feel justified in saying that, as an organ technician (of the purely informal kind), I get results.

We are a society that loves to specialize, no less in music than in other fields. Someone recently registered surprise in my presence because a young lady is getting a Doctorate in accompanying, and she didn't know you could do that. I, on the other hand, have my degree in solo piano, which really means I was trained as a concert pianist rather than as an accompanist. Some of my gainful employment is now as an accompanist, for which I could reasonably have considered an alternate degree program. However, it is as a concert pianist that you are trained to memorize music--a requirement for all solo recitals. It turns out that this comes in handy sometimes, even when accompanying, which is something for which you are allowed to have the music in front of you.

Let us say that one of those silly octavos (choir music is printed in that format) has a page that isn't connected to the rest of the book (it's cheaper that way). In your haste to get the page turned, because the publishers always print the important piano interludes right on the page turn so as to leave no hands free for turning, the page falls into the space between the lid of the piano keys and the rest of the piano. At this point it is required of you to discover that you have that page memorized, particularly if it happens in the middle of the concert. As it happens, this recently happened to me during a dress rehearsal, but I went on anyway, because I have learned that you can never get enough practice trying to deal with challenging and unexpected situations.

That same evening, at another rehearsal, the technicians decided to test the lights during our rehearsal, which kept the stage alternating between shades of blue and red and pitch black throughout the run. This is also a time when you want to be able to play without looking at the notes, or being able to see the keyboard (if you are a fairly advanced pianist and still have trouble with this, a thorough acquaintance with stride piano literature should cure you). It is a requirement of church organists to be able to play "Silent Night" in the dark, for example.

Now to my most boring requisition. I am improving at being able to read open score, which means reading four or five staves at once instead of the two that the pianist usually prefers. I am improving in this area simply because I am asked to do it more often. I've often wanted to be able to play orchestral works from full score with ease, but my eyes don't take in the wealth of information fast enough. Well, some day, perhaps.

I am still making incremental progress toward playing with distractions. A couple of years ago, a fly spent the last piece on the children's Christmas Concert break dancing on the upper manual of the organ. His dying display began with the downbeat. (I have noticed that these days I can actually sense when a conductor is about to give the downbeat even when I am not looking or otherwise paying much attention. It is like a sixth sense. Perhaps, with enough time and practice, extra-sensory abilities will develop in other areas as well.) This year's fly was already dead when I got to the concert. It had positioned its corpse on top of the organ, as if rebuking me (staring at me with its thousand eyes)--'see, if you had had your concert a week earlier like usual I would have been able to keep you company. Instead, nobody sang at my funeral.' I feel sad for the poor disease-ridden thing.

Finally, I have recently learned how to play a new instrument. Now, generally one does not master an instrument in a few minutes, but I was really determined. At an annual Christmas show in town the band was rehearsing with the Children's Choir that I accompany. Apparently the sleigh bell player was missing. The guy playing the drums looked over and said, "you're on." After a 5 second consultation about my part (which was basically on every beat except for a spot in the middle) away we went. Now, I am a quick study, and am pleased to report that I have thoroughly learnt every aspect of sleigh bell playing and can begin giving lessons. For one thing, you have to bang away at the wooden knob at the top in order to get the four or five bells attached to the sides to jingle. This can get painful after a while, so during the short break in the song I switched hands which means I am capable of playing both right-handed sleigh bell and left-handed sleigh bell. I also experimented with the efficacy of using the palm of my hand, or my wrist, and discovered that if I angled the bell each time I played it I could amplify the sound somewhat. I am sure there is a fierce debate in the sleigh bell community over whether this constitutes authentic practice or merely showing off.

I can also tell you that the following night at the concert, the impresario produced two sleigh bells and asked me to play one of them, whereupon I immediately negotiated for the part of principle sleigh bell (after all, I clearly had more seniority than the other guy by now). I should be able to get elected union representative, based on my negotiating skills.

Life takes some pretty strange turns, but I had no idea I would get to fulfill every five-year old boy's fantasy--you know, the one where Ms. Smith is passing out instruments in music class and says 'Here Tommy. You get the one that makes the most noise, AND you get to play it with a full ensemble on a raised platform in front of an audience in a groovy theater for the big Christmas concert." So I am just saying to all of those small boys out there who where forced to play finger cymbals because Ms. Jones ran out of the really cool instruments to keep the faith. You'll get a turn, eventually.