A recipe for success
A couple months ago—the January issue to be exact—I quoted an article from the newsletter of the parish in which I grew up:
Trapped on the paper, it is just a lot of lines and squiggles, circles and flags, black and white—an ancient language, undecipherable to the uninitiated. But to those who are “called” to it, music on the page is the door to a multi-colored, “sensational” world, both a challenge and a reward for heart, mind, and soul . . .
It seems improbable that a few dozen pages of black and white “directions” could convey the recipe for an opera, or a symphony—and yet they do. But it is only the recipe. It takes a parish choir to pick up the pages, to apply much valuable time and energy, to learn the skills in order to share this amazing transformation with each other, with a church family, and in the praise of the Creator who has gifted us with the miracle that is music.
I improvised on this theme, suggesting that the printed score is a recipe for a living work of art, that the music comes alive when a performer reads the recipe and sends it out into acoustics. I wrote:
We place heavy emphasis on Urtext editions of the pieces we play, those publications claiming to be accurate transmission of the composer’s intentions—the Ark of the Covenant or the Holy Grail. But does that mean we all have to play the pieces the same way? I think that Urtexts ensure that we start from the same recipe—that our extemporizing comes from the same source. But for heaven’s sake, don’t be afraid to add some garlic and salt and pepper to taste.
I drew parallels between cooking and making music—starting with a recipe and creating a masterpiece:
Ingredients in a recipe are the blueprint, the roadmap to be translated by the cook, through the utensils and heat sources, into the magic which is delicious food.
Notes on a score—those squiggles and symbols—are the recipe, the blueprint, the format to be translated by the musician, through the instrument, into the magic that is audible music.
The chef learns the basics, the techniques, the theories, and the chemistry. Once he knows those basics and can reliably prepare and present traditional dishes, he’s freer to experiment because he knows the rules.
The musician learns the techniques, the historical priorities, and the language of the art. Once he can reliably prepare and present the great masterworks, he’s more free to experiment, to innovate, and to challenge himself and his audience. How’s that for a lot of lines and squiggles?
I return to this now because after that column was published several of my friends were in touch to comment and one sent a little stack of quotations from well-known musicians that add to the mix:
Classical, Romantic, Modern, Neo-Romantic! These labels may be convenient for musicologists, but they have nothing to do with composing or performing . . . All music is the expression of feelings, and feelings do not change over the centuries . . . Purists would have us believe that music from the so-called Classical period should be performed with emotional restraint, while so-called Romantic music should be played with emotional freedom. Such advice has often resulted in exaggeration: overindulgent, uncontrolled performances of Romantic music, and dry, sterile, dull performance of Classical music.
The notation of a composer is a mere skeleton that the performer must endow with flesh and blood, so that the music comes to life and speaks to an audience. The belief that going back to an Urtext will ensure a convincing performance is an illusion. An audience does not respond to intellectual concepts, only to the communication of feelings.
That passage may sound like an excerpt from the January issue, but I give myself too much credit. That was Vladimir Horowitz (1903–1989). As a bright-eyed student of historically informed performance in the 1970s, I recall knowledgeable and eloquent student-lounge debates about Horowitz’s performances. My peers and I were pretty sure he was old-fashioned and we were the wave of the future. But I have to admit that his performances were better attended than mine. I guess he did a better job communicating feelings. Mr. Horowitz continued:
In order to become a truly re-creative performer, and not merely an instrumental wizard, one needs three ingredients in equal measure: a trained, disciplined mind, full of imagination; a free and giving heart; and a Gradus ad Parnassum command of instrumental skill. Few musicians ever reach artistic heights with these three ingredients evenly balanced. This is what I have been striving for all my life.
Vladimir Horowitz was celebrated for his performances of the great Russian Romantic piano repertory. I vividly remember a stereo simulcast in 1978 (FM radio and public television) of his performance of Rachmaninoff’s Third Piano Concerto with Zubin Mehta and the New York Philharmonic Orchestra. (I bought a new stereo just in time for it.) There was something magic about the way his huge Russian hands enveloped that intricate and expansive score. You can see that historic performance by the 75-year-old virtuoso on YouTube: www.youtube.com/watch?v=D5mxU_7BTRA&feature=related>. Amazing! I gave it the full 45 minutes this afternoon. Give it a look. I think you’ll join me in seeing the imagination and the free and giving heart piled on top of a lifetime’s work developing one of the most fluid keyboard techniques ever.
But he was also celebrated for his readings of sonatas by Antonio Scarlatti: unerring rhythmic drive, mystical coloring of the piano’s tone (how did he do that?), colorful and humorous phrasing. His fertile imagination enabled him to play dozens of those seemingly similar short pieces with infinite expression. Of course, it was technically perfect. That was a given. When Horowitz sat at the piano, one never wondered if he would “get through it.”
Painting a sunset
Arthur Friedheim was a student of Franz Liszt who later developed a successful concert career in the United States. In his book, Life and Liszt (Taplinger, 1961), Friedheim related Liszt’s comments on interpretation:
The virtuoso is not a mason who, chisel in hand, faithfully and conscientiously whittles stone after the design of an architect. He is not a passive tool reproducing feeling and thought and adding nothing of himself. He is not the more or less experienced reader of works which have no margins for his notes, which allow for no paragraphing between the lines . . . He is called upon to make emotion speak, and weep, and sing, and sigh—to bring it to life in his consciousness. He creates as the composer himself created, for he himself must live the passions he will call to light in all their brilliance . . .
Conscientiously whittles stone . . . That sounds ominous. Is that what we do when we produce a historically informed performance from an Urtext edition? Does it follow that the piece sounds the same the next time we play it?
Friedheim continued,
I recall one of my later lessons with him in the Villa d’Este, in Tivoli, not far from Rome. Late one afternoon I sat down at the piano to play Liszt’s Harmonies du Soir. Before I had time to begin he called me to the window. With a wide sweep of the arm he pointed out the slanting rays of the declining sun that were mellowing the landscape with the delicate glamour of approaching twilight. “Play that,” he said. “There are your evening harmonies.”
On January 6, 2010 concert pianist Byron Janis published an article titled “In Praise of Fidelity” in the Wall Street Journal. In it he contrasted comments about musical scores from conductor and music historian Gunther Schuller and Spanish cellist Pablo Casals: Schuller stated, “A conductor is the faithful guardian of the score—the score is a sacred document.” Casals opined, “The art of interpretation is not to play what is written. Our interpretation of what is written cannot, in fact, be written down.”
Mr. Janis relates a story by Julius Seligmann, president of the Glasgow Society of Musicians as he commented on a performance by Frederick Chopin. Mr. Seligmann
. . . attended a recital where the composer played his new Mazurka in B-flat, Opus 7, No. 1, as an encore. According to Seligmann, it met with such great success that Chopin decided to play it again, this time with such a radically different interpretation—tempos, colors and phrasing had all been changed—that it sounded like an entirely different piece. The audience was amazed when it finally realized he was playing the very same Mazurka, and it rewarded him with a prolonged, vociferous ovation.
So what’s this all about? I’ve spent the last 40 years in the thrall of the pipe organ. I’ve worked as a recitalist, a church musician, a tuner and technician, a designer, builder, restorer, relocator, writer, and elocutionist. And I’m not finished. I figure that with luck (and some attention to portion sizes) I could last another 25 years or more. I’m assuming that people will be listening to, commissioning, and caring for organs longer than I’ll be able to appreciate them. But is that a rash assumption?
The publishing schedule of The Diapason means that I submit this column six weeks before publication date. So as I write, the rush of preparing for Christmas is fresh in my mind. (In fact, this is a good moment because in January the mailbox fills with our clients’ payments for December tunings.) During December I ran in and out of about 30 churches and as I’ve noted in years past, there’s not much new. Virtually every organ console and choir room table sports copies of Carols for Choirs (especially the green and orange ones, volumes I and II). And when I look at the paper clips I can see that each choir is singing the same selections. Almost no one sings A Boy Was Born by Benjamin Britten (page 4).
Those books have defined 50 years of Christmas music in American churches—simple proof of the immense influence the English tradition has over our worship. Because of the lovely and brilliant arrangements in those volumes, at least two generations of American church musicians have grown up with David Willcocks, Reginald Jacques, and John Rutter. Each carol, each descant, each varied harmonization is more beautiful than the last. But isn’t there anything else?
Volume I (the green one) was copyrighted in 1961. I first handled it as a young teenager in about 1969, when my voice changed and I got to be in the senior choir, and haven’t passed a Christmas without it since.
As part of my work with the Organ Clearing House I am often invited to visit churches that are offering their pipe organs for sale. You walk into the chancel and find drums, microphone stands, electronic keyboards, saxophone stands, and wires all over the floor. Are they played by professional musicians with liturgical backgrounds? Most often not. They’re more likely to be local amateurs playing from scores that come each week by subscription. My first recommendation always is that they should keep the organ. How do you know that the next pastor won’t want to use the organ? I think the organ is more permanent than those alternative forms of musical worship.
And why have those churches made those changes? We’re told that modern worshippers no longer connect to traditional musical forms. Why is that? Is it because public schools don’t expose students to the fine arts any more and it’s catching up with us? Is it because people listen to popular music genres so much that they cannot appreciate anything else?
Or is it because organists are failing to present interesting, thoughtful, varied, and challenging music programs that keep people interested and that give them something to think about as well as tunes to whistle? Is it because using the same ten carol arrangements every Christmas fails to interest our congregations? Is it because the same ten carol arrangements are offered in every church in town, in the county, in the state, or in the country?
Do we as musicians spend so much effort on the accuracy and correctness of our performance that we fail to present the emotions of the music to our congregations? Do we think so highly of our skills and knowledge of what’s correct that we program music that’s unintelligible to our congregations?
Think of a pipe organ as a high-performance machine. You step on the gas and your wig flies off. The builder of that machine intended that you’d feel the thrill of G-force cornering and lighter-than-air acceleration. Climb in a car like that and putt-putt to the grocery store to pick up milk and toilet paper and you’ve missed the point of the machine.
Your American organbuilders put thrilling instruments under your fingers, instruments that can go from zero-to-sixty in three measures, instruments that can both roar and caress. We rely on you the player to take it to the edge, to push it to the limit—to tell us about the limitations of our instruments. If the congregation—the consumer—is enthralled we get to keep at it.
If you’re not using that instrument so the congregation is thrilled, then we won’t get to build any more organs.
And organbuilders, it’s up to you too. Let’s not settle for ordinary. Ordinary is for substitutes. Let’s reserve extra-ordinary (say it slowly!) for the pipe organ, that high-performance machine with the capacity to thrill the players and the hearers. If we put magic under their fingers, they’ll put magic into the air. I’ll still be writing 30 years from now—and forget about the portion control!
