Symphony Chorus Thoughts
May 25, 2020
Dear Singers,
When stay-at-home advisories were issued a couple of months ago and our rehearsals were curtailed, I decided to stay in touch on a weekly basis, providing some contact in lieu of our Monday evening gatherings. If these communications have had value, as some of you have suggested, I’m very glad. For me, they have proved to be a worthwhile discipline, even in weeks when I have scratched my head trying to think of something of common interest to share.
As an awareness creeps over us that Covid 19 is not just some blip on the screen but a real game changer with ramifications still unfolding, I thought I would share this week a personal experience that may prove useful as we move forward through this uncertainty. Some of you may have already heard me relate this, but I do think it is relevant to our present circumstances.
When I finished course work for my doctorate at The University of Texas at Austin, I accepted a year-long sabbatical replacement position at Knox College in Galesburg, Illinois. Excited to finally be practicing the work I had spent so much time preparing for, I threw myself headlong into the job, directing two choirs and teaching twenty-seven voice students (for a salary of $13,000!). Following that exhilarating, high-energy year, I became director of choral activities at Wagner College on Staten Island, New York. Within a year, I found myself also directing the Riverside Choral Society in Manhattan and, a year later, added duties as chorus master for the Brooklyn Piccolo Opera. After four years in New York, where the Wagner Choir had grown to the point of a successful European tour, I accepted the position at Marshall University and moved to Huntington.
During this time, post-Austin, the dissertation loomed over me as a final school project, standing between me and what academics ominously refer to as the “terminal degree.” I had amassed mountains of research, sources, and lecture materials, but I was having too much fun working with students to set everything else aside and wrap up this elusive project. Every time I looked at those boxes of work, I found some excuse to put off the inevitable. Writing the document just felt like rolling a boulder uphill.
Finally in May, at the end of my first year teaching at Marshall, my graduate advisor phoned one day with an ultimatum that he would be retiring soon and I had better get on with it! After casting about for a few days, looking for a strategy, I decided to make a bargain with myself. This agreement was simple. Come Monday morning, two things would be true. First, from ten o’clock to noon each day, I would be sitting at my computer. Second, the computer would be turned on. That was it! That was my bargain. It was a good thing that summer pre-dated the internet!
The first Monday morning, I sat at the computer for two hours and did absolutely nothing. Not an auspicious beginning, but at least a start. The second morning came. I turned on the computer, sat down, and began as I had the day before, doing nothing. Finally, after about thirty minutes of inactivity, I started to feel a bit sheepish. I began to think that maybe, just maybe, I had an idea for a few sentences that would introduce my third chapter. By noon, had managed to rough out a couple of paragraphs. The next day, getting started was a bit easier and I wrote an entire page. By the end of that first week, I had written half a dozen pages and was beginning to see a plan unfold. The second week, I realized that two hours would not be enough and I actually wanted to add afternoon writing into the schedule. By summer’s end, I had completed two hundred pages of a volume that came in finished at just under three hundred pages.
I have told this story to students numerous times because, for me, it says that we don’t have to deal with all the boxes on the shelf at once. We just have to take, as the overused phrase goes, one step at a time.
As stores begin to re-open and some services are restored around us, the very real possibility still exists of a second wave, new complications, different protocols, and uncertainties of things as basic to us as worship or singing or concert-going. We will need to be patient and proceed step by step. Our perspectives will be different a month from now than they are today, as surely as they are different now than they were in mid-March. Meanwhile, I hope you will remain safe, healthy, smart, and strong, and that you will continue to find the means of support you need for yourselves and for each other. Have a good Memorial Day!
Fondly yours,
David
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May 18, 2020
Dear Singers,
I have been fortunate over the years to have “up close and personal” encounters with a number of great artists. As a singer at the Aspen Music Festival, I was able to sit in masterclasses given by the great soprano Arlene Auger. I was part of a two week institute where the artist in residence was the legendary baritone Gerhard Hüsch. In the summer of 1998, I had the good fortune to spend a week in residence at a music festival in Saintes, France, where the conductor Philippe Herreweghe and his Collegium Vocale from Ghent rehearsed and performed daily. These and other similar experiences have shaped my own work as a musician and enhanced my appreciation of the thing we call “artistry.”
Of the many outstanding performances I have been fortunate to enjoy, none stands out more vividly than a recital given by the great Dutch soprano Elly Ameling. I was lucky enough to hear her on three separate occasions. Each was very special, but one in particular comes to mind, when she offered Hugo Wolf’s “Verborgenheit” as an encore. Her singing, her immersion in the words, and the clarity and realization of the song were such that, at the end, the audience remained silent, unable to move, for what I think must have been twenty seconds or more! It was what we mean when we speak of being transported by music.
Recently, I came across a link to a series of talks given by Ms. Ameling, who is now eighty-seven years old. She speaks about art song and artistry, and shares examples of her own singing through recordings. It is a feast for any lover of song. I am so happy to be able to share this with you this week. Enjoy!
Elly Ameling talks about Art Song!
Sincerely,
David
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May 11, 2020
Dear Singers,
Many of you sang in our concert a couple of years ago where we featured Vaughan Williams’ “Five Mystical Songs.” These pieces are special to me, both because of Vaughan Williams’ beautiful music and also for the magnificent poetry of George Herbert that forms the basis for these settings.
Last year, I was asked to speak at a church service that focused on George Herbert. Several hymns and readings based on his poetry were woven into the service and I provided background on his life and work. Although my remarks were used to replace the homily for that Sunday, I thought you (especially those who sang in this concert) might find some of the information of more general interest. So, this week I am copying to you some of the remarks I shared in that service. Those who sang “Five Mystical Songs” will recognize a number of the texts. I hope you enjoy.
Sincerely yours,
David
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In the preface to George Herbert’s collection of poems, “The Temple,” his close friend Nicholas Ferrar describes Herbert as one who exchanged the advantages of noble birth and worldly prominence for the struggles of serving at “God’s Altar.” A pretty good description of “humility,” I’d say.
George Herbert was born in 1593. The seventh of ten children, he was just three when his father died. By the time he was eleven, he was writing essays in Latin and he excelled in the study of classics at Cambridge University. At age twenty-six, he was elected Public Orator at Cambridge, an important position that he accepted enthusiastically.
But his call to ministry was strong. Seven years later he was ordained as a deacon in the Church of England and, three years after that, as a parish priest. He never preached to more than a hundred people in his church and he died of tuberculosis a month shy of his fortieth birthday, married but childless, after less than three years of parish ministry. Were it not for his writings, he might well have been forgotten.
During Herbert’s final illness, his friend Nicholas Ferrar sent a fellow pastor, Edmund Duncon, to check on him. Herbert gave Duncon a volume of his writings with this note,
“Sir, I pray deliver this little book to my dear brother Ferrar, and tell him he shall find in it a picture of the many spiritual conflicts that have passed betwixt God and my soul, before I could subject mine to the will of Jesus my Master, in whose service I have now found perfect freedom; desire him to read it: and then, if he can think it may turn to the advantage of any dejected poor soul, let it be made public; if not, let him burn it; for I and it are less than the least of God’s mercies.”
This “little book” to which Herbert refers contained 167 poems. Ferrar published it later that year under the title “The Temple.” It went through four editions in three years, was steadily reprinted for a hundred years, and is still in print today. “The Temple” established Herbert as one of the greatest religious poets of all time, even though not one of these poems was published during his lifetime.
Today, Herbert’s poetry is found in nearly every anthology of English literature. Among the literary accolades accorded his work are the words of T.S. Eliot, who wrote, “The exquisite variations of form in . . . The Temple show a resourcefulness of invention which seems inexhaustible, and for which I know no parallel in English poetry.”
Herbert’s words are alive today in our worship. This morning’s procession and recession hymns are settings of Herbert texts, as are our choir anthem, collect, and other readings.
Why do we hold Herbert in such high regard nearly four hundred years after his death? Because with a rare clarity and, again, humility, his words get to the heart of the matter and draw us close to the Divine. Those of us who practice music or who appreciate the music of poetry celebrate George Herbert as an iconic figure in devotional writing.
Consider this passage from his poem “Easter,” in which he likens the figure of Christ to strings on an instrument:
The crosse taught all wood to resound his name,
Who bore the same.
His stretched sinews taught all strings, what key
Is best to celebrate this most high day.
Consort both heart and lute, and twist a song
Pleasant and long:
Or, since all musick is but three parts2 vied
And multiplied,
O let thy blessed Spirit bear a part,
And make up our defects with his sweet art.
When the choir rehearses, we develop a special relationship with poetry. First of all, the text is voiced out loud, an important aspect of poetry, since words are chosen not When the choir rehearses, we develop a special relationship with poetry. First of all, the text is voiced out loud, an important aspect of poetry, since words are chosen not just for their meanings, but also for their sounds.When the choir rehearses, we develop a special relationship with poetry. First of all, the text is voiced out loud, an important aspect of poetry, since words are chosen not just for their meanings, but also for their sounds. When the choir rehearses, we develop a special relationship with poetry. First of all, the text is voiced out loud, an important aspect of poetry, since words are chosen not just for their meanings, but also for their sounds. Second, when we rehearse, we repeat a text, often many times. This gives us the chance to savor poetry’s sounds, and also its deeper meanings.For George Herbert, the act of writing poetry was a way to nurture his own spiritual life.
Of the 167 poems contained in “The Temple,” 116 are written in meters that are not repeated! Each poem is its own creation, its own meditation. Herbert merges his roles as priest and poet. He blends "mine" and "thine" -- not as an unsolved puzzle, but as one of the great joys of spiritual life. My will and thy will, my words and thy words, my voice and thy voice become what have been described as intersecting beams.
Herbert reminds us that to honor God not only fulfills a command, but also opens a path to a full life. To sacrifice our wills to God’s is not loss, but gain. Here, he echoes St. Francis of Assisi, who wrote, “it is in giving that we receive; in pardoning that we are pardoned.” This famous prayer, by the way, is the source of today’s communion hymn.
Our choir anthem this morning is a setting of Herbert’s poem, “The Call.” It is not the familiar Vaughan Williams that we sang as a congregation just a few weeks ago, but another deeply meaningful setting by Alexander Brent Smith: “Come, my way, my truth, my life: such a way as gives us breath; such a truth as ends all strife; such a life as killeth death.”
This poem must have posed a challenge for Herbert, especially in finding the right structure for words that reflect back and forth onto each other. Maybe it is these very struggles or, to use Herbert’s own words, “spiritual conflicts,” that are our “take-away:” we are engaged in a shared, on-going, sometimes difficult working out of our relationships to God, but also a transforming discipline.
Our own spiritual conflicts may not produce timeless poetry, but they are no less central to the quality of our devotional life. George Herbert’s words offer us a beautiful template for one kneeling before God’s Altar.
To close, I’d like to share one of my favorite Herbert passages:
The Sunne arising in the East,
Though he give light, & th’ East perfume;
If they should offer to contest
With thy arising, they presume.
Can there be any day but this,
Though many sunnes to shine endeavour?
We count three hundred, but we misse:
There is but one, and that one ever.
D.C.
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May 4, 2020
Dear Singers,
“The Musician’s Dictionary,” a humorous volume I have enjoyed over the years, offers amusing definitions for familiar musical terms. A case in point is “chorus,” which it defines as a group assembled for the purpose of singing Handel’s Messiah! Meant humorously, this description nonetheless attests to the enormous popularity of Handel’s work! While Messiah may be conspicuous for its outsized reputation, the truth is that the oratorio as a genre owes much to Handel and deserves the attention of anyone interested in choral music. Here is a whirlwind tour of the genre!
Around 1600, a major transformation took place as renaissance polyphony gave way to baroque homophony, modality evolved toward tonality, and a bass line with figures began to tell what chords would function above it. All these developments were part of a seismic shift in the history of music. A group of writers and philosophers referred to as the “Florentine Camerata,” or Florence School, may have had an overly romanticized the power of ancient Greek drama. Still, their speculations on how 17th-century music might recreate this communicative impact opened the way for opera and oratorio.
By the middle of the 17th century, opera had become a powerful musical force and a popular entertainment. If the Protestant Reformation offered people a taste of worship in their own language, now folks could also be uplifted at the opera. How was the Catholic church to respond? During the counter-Reformation, plays that featured music, modeled on medieval mystery plays and other forms, rose to prominence. These were not deemed appropriate for the sanctuary but instead were performed in the oratory, the equivalent of today’s “fellowship hall.” Thus, the “oratorio” was born!
One of the first works in the opera/oratorio realm was Emilio de Cavalieri’s “La Rappresentatione di Anima et di Corpo,” “The Representation of the Soul and Body,” performed for the first time in 1600. A half century later Carissimi’s Jephte, one of the treasures of early oratorio model, brought a greater more effective, use of the chorus. Oratorios were composed typically on Biblical themes and frequently identified soloists as dramatic characters.
Fast forward another half century and we reach the era of Handel, whose two dozen oratorios not only established the primacy of the oratorio, but also placed into the repertoire a body of work against which future oratorios would be measured, from Haydn’s Creation and Mendelssohn’s Elijah to twentieth-century works by Vaughan Williams, Elgar, Britten, and others. No composer before Handel and perhaps none since has made more extensive, fulfilling use of the chorus in the oratorio. In the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, oratorio societies grew into gatherings of hundreds of singers, often with names like Handel and Haydn Societies, and works from the oratorio and cantata traditions began to meld into works that defied clear categorization. Today, many people lump together terms like oratorio, cantata, and anthem indiscriminately, without any real understanding of their meanings or the genres they represent. Still, perhaps due to Handel, when we say “oratorio,” we expect a work of size and substance.
As choral musicians, we are privileged to have one of the largest, most varied repertoires in all of music. I share this quick tour with you in hopes that a framework in which to place the works we perform will help you get the most out of them.
Stay safe and healthy, and have a good week!
David Castleberry
April 27, 2020
Dear Singers,
When I was an undergraduate student at Furman University, I made a chance purchase at the campus bookstore sale that wound up being the subject of my doctoral dissertation. Two recordings of music by Samuel Barber grabbed my attention and forever broadened my awareness of American music.
Many music lovers are familiar with Barber’s famous “Adagio for Strings,” a work incorporated into movie soundtracks, played at important state occasions, and recorded by countless ensembles. In 1938, Barber adapted the slow movement of his string quartet and sent the legendary conductor Arturo Toscanini this work for string orchestra. The rest, as they say, is history.
During his lifetime, many of Barber’s works were premiered or championed by luminaries of the music world, such as Vladimir Horowitz, Leontyne Price, John Browning, and Arturo Toscanini. The recordings that introduced me to his music featured his “Reincarnations” for unaccompanied chorus, performed by the Gregg Smith Singers, and “Knoxville: Summer of 1915” for soprano and orchestra, performed by Eleanor Steber. I devoted a significant portion of my dissertation to “Reincarnations,” . so I could write at length about these wonderful pieces. Today, though, I’d like to focus on “Knoxville: Summer of 1915,” a work meaningful to me on multiple levels.
Barber’s sensitivity to text is evident throughout his vocal and choral works. In 1947, he received a commission that began with Serge Koussevitsky and that was picked up by the great soprano, Eleanor Steber (a native of Wheeling, WV). The resulting work, “Knoxville: Summer of 1915,” is a setting of a text by James Agee, first published in a journal and later used as the opening for Agee’s posthumously published autobiographical novel, “A Death in the Family.”
“Knoxville” evokes an era when people sit on their porches and listen to the sounds of horse-drawn buggies and streetcars. It is a reminiscence of family, of parents spreading quilts in the backyard, listening to the sounds of the night. The “voice” is that of a child, surrounded by loved ones, but hinting at the faint tug between mortality and lost innocence.
For Eleanor Steber, who first performed the work, and the many others who have followed after, embracing this lyrical masterpiece, the work captures something familiar in our shared experience. Barber’s music is seldom associated with an American identity, as is the music of, say, Aaron Copland. But, in this work, Barber captures vividly his own childhood, along with the childhoods of Agee and many of his American listeners.
This is music I hold dear. I hope you will enjoy it too. There are many fine recordings to choose from, but I still go with the original Eleanor Steber recording. When I first heard it, I listened to it over and over again until I practically had it memorized Now, I save it for special occasions when I can lie on the floor, turn out the lights, and take it in without disruption, travelling back to James Agee’s childhood, to Barber’s, and to my own.
The text is included in the link. If it is your first hearing, I recommend following the words as you listen. Enjoy! And have a good week.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5nrnW-F0DzE
Eleanor Steber: Knoxville Summer of 1915 by Samuel Barber - YouTube
Samuel Barber (1910-1981) Knoxville: Summer of 1915, Op.24 Eleanor Steber, soprano Dumbarton Oaks Orchestra Conducted by William Strickland Nov. 7, 1950 _ Kn...
David
April 20, 2020
Dear Singers,
During my last year in graduate school in Austin, Texas, I found myself not only directing a church choir and teaching conducting, but also leading a general music program for first through eighth graders.
At 8:30 each morning, first graders paraded into my makeshift “classroom,” which was actually the school cafeteria. This was followed the next hour by the second graders and so on, until the afternoon, when the seventh and eighth graders arrived. At noon, my carefully arranged chairs were shoved aside to make way for lunch trays. In reality, though, the disruption of my teaching was an all-day circumstance, with clattering pots and pans in the kitchen and instructions shouted between cafeteria staff providing regular counterpoint to our singing.
As I reflect on those days now, I am pretty sure I learned more that year than any of my students did! Mornings were usually fun. When I sang or played for students in the primary grades, I could see their reactions written across their faces and twitching all over their bodies. I have especially fond memories of one little boy whose unfailing reaction to anything musical was an enthusiastic response on “air guitar.” Then, there was a little girl on the front row who would become excited, draw her knees to her chest, and beam with more teeth than I thought a child could have.
But when the fourth and fifth grade classes arrived, this all came grinding to a halt. Stony silence met my best musical pyrotechnics and, no matter how high I jumped, I could not get a reaction from the students until they had cautiously cut their eyes at one another and been reassured by their peers that a response -- any response -- was “cool.” Ah, the budding of puberty!
Fast forward a year to my first college teaching job. There, I discovered within a few weeks in an Illinois rehearsal hall that, although my students appeared older and more confident, they had psyches not far advanced from those fifth graders I had left behind. They, too, sought approval from their peers and monitored their own reactions, hidden behind college-age sophistication. But most of them still lacked the self-assurance to expose their own unguarded feelings.
Don’t we all, at one time or another, still need permission to “let go” and be truly spontaneous; the selves we keep bottled up at work or even among friends? I’ve long considered the choral rehearsal the most spontaneous, interactive classroom in school. What those fifth graders taught me and what I have found with groups of all ages is that choral music offers us permission to really express ourselves in a delightfully uninhibited way.
One of the many things I enjoy about working with groups like Symphony Chorus is that, by this point in life, we have mostly figured out that if “our” self isn’t good enough for other people, then they are not worth our worry. To help singers achieve this confidence at any age depends on a safe environment where we are willing to take risks and admit our own vulnerability. For this reason, I try to send the message in rehearsals that the only mistakes that really matter, in the end, are those of not trying.
So many young students blossom in music classes that have not flourished anywhere else. I believe this is because music empowers us to be our best selves. Music enables us to join our voices with those of poets, of composers, and of peers, and helps us speak boldly in collective expression that is more eloquent and direct than any we can utter by ourselves. What a gift this is! It is a gift none of us is too old or mature to receive.
Sincerely,
David
April 13, 2020
Dear Singers,
Last week, I compared the process of putting music together for a concert to assembling a dinner party where we get to invite the guests. Some of the same principles apply. Are the pieces interesting? Will they “get along” with one another? Seated at the same table, does this arrangement make for an enjoyable evening?
Concerts are often constructed according to themes: American music; twentieth-century masterpieces; songs of night and stars; around the world in eighty minutes; and so on. These thematic journeys may span centuries and cultures, languages and poets, or focus on music with themes of love, seasons, life, and death. Whether the rehearsal period is a year, a semester, or a weekend festival, the pieces become our friends, often mimicking the same patterns we experience in human relationships: exciting first encounters; awkwardness while getting better acquainted; the eventual confidence and assurance that come with time-tested friendships -- all these describe the process that takes place with new music from the first encounter to its eventual performance.
As a portal to new music (and an engaging look at guests seated together at a large banquet table), I am endlessly fascinated by musical settings of the liturgical Mass. I am intrigued by the marriage of creativity and function, and by the very idea of a fixed text inspiring composers from across continents, cultures, and consciousness by myriad through many centuries. From the opening fragment of Greek (Kyrie eleison, Christe eleison, Kyrie eleison) to the lengthier Latin texts of the Gloria, Credo, Sanctus, Benedictus, and Agnus Dei, these words from the “ordinary” have been laid down like compass points to form and transform music amid societal change and evolving world views. How remarkable it is to have a text that pre-dates the scientific age, but that withstands our constant questioning of life and meaning across time! When we encounter a musical Mass setting, we open a time capsule, knowing that there will be a familiar voice there to welcome us.
In 2012, the Marshall University Chamber Choir was privileged to sing a Sunday morning High Mass at the Cathedral of Notre Dame in Paris. As we rehearsed a Sanctus by Claudio Monteverdi (1567-1643), I remarked to the choir that, although the music was four hundred years old, the cathedral in which we were singing had been standing for four hundred years already when it was written. I thought our heads might explode! To scroll forward and think of the “new music” composed since Monteverdi, settings by Bach, Mozart, Stravinsky, and Vaughan Williams, to list a few, is to time travel across Western civilization. Talk about a rich banquet table!
At a time when the very foundations of society feel shaky from Covid-19 and the walls of Notre Dame Cathedral are still fragile from its tragic fire, isn’t it remarkable that music has the durability not only to let us reach into the past, but also to join our voices with those that reverberate across the ages? This is as mystical an experience as I can imagine!
Aren’t we fortunate that choral music aspires to some of humanity’s loftiest expressions and that we, when we sing together, connect not only with each other but also with shared travelers from across the ages. Maybe this is something worth shouting from a rooftop the next time a congressman wants to cut the arts or humanities in favor or something “useful.”
Happy Easter!
David
April 6, 2020
Dear Singers,
During this home confinement we’ve all been experiencing, I have spent more time than usual reading Facebook posts from friends. It has been interesting to see how people entertain themselves and each other with questionnaires, word games, trivia, and all manner of amusing exchanges. Sifting the wheat from the chaff, there are some pretty amusing posts out there. I saw one yesterday that read:
“I told my wife how grateful I was to be quarantined with someone whose company I enjoyed so much. She said, ‘Must be nice.’”
Barbara has assured me, by the way, that this is not how she feels. And, I hope you are finding connections with friends, whether at home or on social media, that bring you pleasure.
Dating back long before this current exile, I’ve occasionally entertained myself with what are often referred to as “desert island questions.” For example, “You are about to be stranded on a desert island and can take only five books with you. Which five will you take?” Or five pieces of music? Or ten movies? Etc. Recently, I posted the favorite movies desert island question on Facebook and I have received some pretty interesting answers, ranging from “Gone With The Wind” to “What About Bob?”
One of my favorite desert island games, and one that is played a little less frequently, involves the assembling of your dream dinner party. You can invite any guests you wish – let’s say ten of them – living or historical. Whom would you invite? Sir Isaac Newton? Michelangelo? Greta Garbo? Would they be good dinner guests? And, if so, how well will they interact with one another. What, after all, will Marie Curie and Babe Ruth find to talk about?
As with so many of these hypotheticals, I suspect your guest list says more about you than about your imaginary invitees. Our “top ten” play lists, movie lists, or guest lists, all offer clues as to what we enjoy, what we value, and where our hearts lie.
To switch for just a moment from the hypothetical to the actual, I’ve been thinking a lot lately about concert programming. When I select music for Symphony Chorus or the Marshall University Chamber Choir or my church choir, I suppose I’m doing something not that different from assembling a guest list. These are guests, after all, that I will spend a lot of time with! Come to think of it, I wonder how well Brahms and Orff would get along???
But, back to our desert island questions, the truth is that no matter what books or movies or guests we choose, most of us really don’t want to be on the desert island at all – and certainly not quarantined in our own homes! Whenever we are finally released from our current isolation maybe we’ll recognize, at least for a while, how fortunate we are to have friends, to be able to extend kindness to strangers, and to celebrate the love that is all around us. If our present circumstances teach us to value these things, and that most precious commodity – time – then our weeks or months of disruption will have offered us worthwhile instruction. A costly life lesson, maybe, but one we are strangely privileged to learn.
As I wrap up this communication, it is looking as though things are going to get a lot worse before they get better. I hope you and your loved ones stay well, stay safe, and take good care of yourselves. Be patient and know that even weeks or months are a small price to pay for your safety and well-being.
P.S. I’ll let you in on my dinner party guest list:
Joan of Arc
Rembrandt van Rijn
Benjamin Franklin
Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart
Honoré de Balzac
Abraham Lincoln
Clarence Darrow
Heddy Lamarr
Barbara Jordan
Dolly Parton
Party on!
David
March 30, 2020
Dear Singers,
Here comes my third “absent Monday” note to my Symphony Chorus friends. Delete now or read on at your own risk.
How are you all faring in this new reality? Barbara, Ian, and I headed to our place in North Carolina, figuring we could hibernate as easily there as here and I could work remotely via Wi-fi hotspot. A big part of our motivation was to check in on my ninety-year-old mother, who lives in a retirement community in Greenville, SC, just forty-five minutes from our place.
Not everything goes as planned, does it? My Wi-fi was uncooperative, my Mom’s residential community did not allow visitors and, since we have no cable there, there was no live tv to watch. So, it was a very quiet week, with lots of introvert time, a few phone calls, and some old movies and shows on DVD.
I won’t sugar coat it. These are distressing times. With so many people ill, dying, and fearful, and with so many of us cut off from our familiar support systems, there is a pall of uncertainty hanging overhead. And, then, there’s the economy and threats to put money above our collective health. Things are badly out of balance.
But I also find myself thinking of how many times, at one point or another, I have wished that the noise outside would just stop for a bit so I could gather my thoughts and hit the reset button. A collective quarantine is certainly not how I would have chosen to have that happen! But maybe, just maybe, there are opportunities in our midst. How often can you remember things being this quiet? And when is the last time temptation was taken away to hurry to the store or keep a busy appointment schedule?
Yes, life feels a bit like The Twilight Zone right now (and I don’t mean the Twilight series!) I’m reminded, in fact, of a classic Rod Serling episode in which Burgess Meredith plays a near-sighted bank worker with a passion for reading. He spends every spare minute clutching a book, ignoring his work, getting fussed at by his boss and his wife. He just wants to be left alone so that he can read. One day, he steps into the bank vault at just the right moment to avoid a blast that wipes out everyone else on earth. When he emerges, he is shocked at first. But as he roams the city in search of others who might have survived, he comes upon the city library, stacked as high as the walls with books. He is in heaven . . . . until, in ironic fashion, he stumbles and shatters the glasses on which he is so dependent. This is the twilight zone of Rod Serling.
As strange as our current circumstances might be, I hope they don’t have to be apocalyptic. Unfamiliar territory can be, after all, exhilarating. Maybe it’s time to pull out that book you intended to read. Or work on a project you haven’t had time for. Or pull out that yoga video sitting under the tv and give it a try. Or send a message to a friend who has been out of touch. You are not alone! Every one of us is somewhere right now, trying to figure this out. No matter how bleak things may seem, there are many reasons to be hopeful. Take courage and see what you can do today. One day soon, at least soon in the big picture, we’ll be back at work and play and some kind of routine. Things may look different and unfamiliar. But the question will remain -- what did I do with the time? And what did I learn?
Maybe these questions are worth some reflection by all of us.
Be well!
David
March 23, 2020
Dear Singers,
Can you remember when music first made a difference to you? I do, vividly, though I did not dream at the early age of three I would one day get paid for making music.
Growing up an only child, I spent many hours entertaining myself. My Dad’s LPs were mostly things like Harry Belafonte and Nat King Cole. But the little boxes that I enjoyed digging through were the 45s. I know, some of you have no idea what I’m talking about. They were brightly colored little records, packaged four or five to a box, and you had to stack them up on the turntable if you wanted to hear a whole symphony. The best boxes were, in my estimation, those with cool paintings on the covers -- an hour glass against a dark sky to represent Schubert’s “Unfinished” Symphony; a young man with golden locks of hair as Grieg’s Peer Gynt; a photo of the Grand Canyon at sunset for Grofe’s Grand Canyon Suite.
Anyway, these sparked a three-year-old’s imagination and occupied my free time until one day the real game-changer came; when my family took me to see a new movie called Ben-Hur. Its grand scale, chariot race, and rich soundtrack by Miklos Rosza grabbed me so completely that for about four years I dressed in togas and conducted the recording with a baton I made from a bow and arrow set. I might still be doing that today, except that the Beatles came to America!
What music do you remember? Something you learned from a sibling or a parent? Friends at school? I think such stories are fascinating. I was lucky that in Charleston, SC, where I grew up, my parents took me to hear Leontyne Price, Luciano Pavarotti, Itzak Pearlman, Arthur Rubinstein, and number other great artists that made indelible impressions on me. Then came choral music, where I first discovered poetry. Is there a better way to take in Robert Frost than through Randall Thompson’s Frostiana?
The point is that we make our acquaintance with music in many different ways. I marvel at the chance purchase of a Samuel Barber album my freshman year of college, and the odds that years later he would become the subject of my doctoral dissertation. Whether your encounters lead you to daily devotions with music or simply make you a more fully engaged audience member, musical experiences become entwined with who we are. And I do believe that the greater our efforts, the greater the reward.
This brings us back around to Carmina Burana. Many of you have sung this work before. If you have, please allow me to thank you for the leadership you’ve provided in rehearsal. It has been a big help. For those who are first-timers, let me say how impressed I am at how quickly you have picked it up. I do hope we do get to perform it sooner or later. Either way, you should feel a great deal of satisfaction at having gained a solid knowledge of one of the most popular choral/orchestral works in the literature. And, how many singers can say, after all, that they’ve sung in medieval German Latin? Next time you’re feeling stir-crazy from Covid-19 isolation, just crank up a Youtube performance, get out your scores, and let your neighbors hear how well you can ring out karaoke Carmina -- “Veni, veni, venias!” I’ll be listening.
David
March 15, 2020
Dear Singers,
Fans of art song know the delights of the “song cycle,” groups of songs ranging from as few as two to as many as thirty or more, joined together closely or loosely by some theme or other unifying element. A well-crafted cycle has a kind of coherence, whether via poetic themes, overall mood, or maybe even tonal relationships, that holds it together and gives it a reason for being. Robert Schumann’s extraordinary cycles “Frauenliebe und Leben” and “Dichterliebe” come to mind, as do Franz Schubert’s “Die Schöne Müllerin” and “Winterreise,” Mahler’s “Das Lied von der Erde,” or Vaughan Williams’ “Songs of Travel.”
But, sitting at my computer this morning contemplating our current “social distancing” (a term I am definitely not fond of), the music that came to mind as I thought about how we might bridge this chasm was the very earliest of all song cycles: Beethoven’s “An die Ferne Geliebte,” which translates – “To the Distant Beloved.”
I don’t know -- perhaps some of you will find this week a welcome respite from our increasingly intensive concert preparations of the past few weeks, now placed on indefinite hold. I suspect, though, that the coming days may bring you to the place I find myself already; longing for our time together. So, I thought it might be beneficial to at least some of you to stay connected during this fallow period, with thoughts of the moment on one musical topic or another; at least until we are able to resume regular rehearsals. It should go without saying that you are free to delete these as swiftly as they come in.
When I have opportunities to guest conduct, especially things like high school festivals or the like, busy one or two-day rehearsal periods usually culminate in some kind of concert presentation. The audiences are heavily populated with friends and family, so I can safely assume they will be receptive. And, because these folks have taken the trouble to come out for the event, they are already supporters of these types of activities. Still, with arts programs constantly having to justify themselves and the mantra of tax cuts too frequently placing music on the budgetary chopping block, I usually make it a practice to say a few words on behalf of music as an essential part of our educational and cultural lives.
In the first place, there is not a more interactive classroom in any school than the choral rehearsal. Rather than sitting passively or remaining anonymous among classmates, singers in a chorus must be “all in,” taking the risk (and, for adolescents, it can be a big one) of adding their voices to the collective energy of a larger group. Secondly, there is something very special about giving voice to the words we sing, whether in the youthful writings of students in a monastery, as in Carmina Burana, or in the exalted words from the prophet Isaiah in Handel’s Messiah. When we sing, we become the living embodiment of Handel, Mozart, Brahms, or Orff, or poets like Whitman, Dickinson, or Burns, bringing to life expressions of the human spirit that might otherwise remain silent as ink on a page. Finally, when we sing together, I ask choir members and audience to consider the truth that the choral ensemble is an expression of community at its best, where we accomplish things together that are greater than anything we can achieve by ourselves.
So, to you dear singers, who are for now “the distant beloved,” I share the hope that our time apart will be brief, that we will soon be able to join our voices together again, and that each of you will remain safe, well, and happy. I’ll be in touch!
Fondly,
David