A Happy Birthday update on Gareth Farr

To my surprise, it's about ten years since I last mentioned Gareth Farr, the NZ composer, on this blog. Very remiss. 
I happened to hear an interview (more like a friendly discussion) with him on the Concert programme today. Apparently he turned 50 recently - except that his birthday is on the 29th February, so he's strictly speaking only twelve and a half. He made the comment that in a couple of years (I think it was) he'll be thirteen. 'Gareth Farr the teenager!' he cried. 
Farr's relatively new Cello Concerto (from May 2017) was mentioned, and I was pleased - and surprised - to see a video of the piece's premiere performance online at the Publisher's website.  I'm listening to it as I write, and after its wonderful, slow, eerie opening - repeated three times - it moves into Farr's usual energetic approach, as well as more lyrical sections. And of course there's lots of percussion. 
Sébastien Hurtaud is the soloist. His facial expressions while playing remind of those of Stjepan Hauser, who's one half of 2Cellos. Hurtaud isn't quite so manic though...which is probably a good thing! 

Mozart's Sister

This wonderful French film, (Nannerl, la soeur de Mozart) presents a family making ends meet by travelling from one wealthy 18th century European establishment to another...including the Palace of Versailles. The family are the Mozarts, of course, and the two children, Nannerl and Wolfgang, are both prodigies in an age when such beings were supposedly commonplace. The only problem is that Nannerl is a girl, and while her talents are almost on a par with Mozart the child, her father doesn't take them into account. She's useful as a (very good) accompanist to Wolfgang when he's playing solo violin, and she can sing as well, but her compositions are disregarded by her father, and she always plays a literal second fiddle to the prodigious youth. 

The film is strongly feminist in the most gentle way: thought by the end you want to bang some of the men's heads together (and a few of the women's). 

René Féret is the director, and his daughter Marie plays Nannerl, while another daughter plays the youngest of the three princesses sent by the King into virtual exile in a French Abbey. Marie Féret is excellent in a wonderfully subdued way, constantly moving forward an inch in a society where she's 'just' a woman and then being hauled back out of the way to make room for the men. She brings an extraordinary quiet warmth to the role, and provides some heartbreaking moments. 

The other outstanding performance is from David Moreau who plays Wolfgang. We're never quite sure what his age is because his father insists of promoting him as being younger than he actually is, but he's roughly ten or eleven. Moreau has to play violin in several scenes, and does it superbly. He has a wonderful naivety about him, like a child unaware, almost, of his genius. 

The music throughout is wonderful, some of it genuine to the period, some composed by Marie-Jeanne Serero. Nannerl's compositions were apparently destroyed (in the film she throws her violin concerto in the fire), and consequently we have no idea of her composing ability. The hints found in letters between her and other members of her family, however, imply that she was certainly very capable. 

Over-marked

I do quite a bit of transcribing of music using the computer programme, Sibelius. Transcriptions from printed copies or manuscripts are usually made so they can be transposed into another key. Sibelius, overall, makes the job very easy. I wish I'd had the programme when I was young and was first writing music, but of course at that stage there were no computers, let alone programmes like Sibelius. I often dreamed then of having a typewriter which you could use to print music, but the idea remained a pipe dream.

Anyway, the job of transcribing is generally pretty straightforward, except when you come across a piece of music that is so heavily marked by the composer with instructions as to how to sing or play the piece that you wonder whether he was having a bit of a fit on the day he wrote it.

A case in point is the piece I'm doing at the moment, Nocturne, by Michael Head, from a series of four songs under the general title of The Rim of the Moon. I really enjoy Head's music: it's a delight to play and the vocal lines are usually top notch, lying well for the singers.

Nocturne is a bit different. It's more dramatic in style than most of Head's work (though he settles down into his usual mode late in the piece). Consequently he's marked it very heavily, even with some contradictory markings. In one place the pianist is supposed to increase in volume when there's not actually anything to play. In another the tempo is marked both a tempo (go back to the original tempo) as well as Poco piu mosso (go a little faster). It's not actually possible to do that, as I'm sure Mr Head knew. Perhaps an editor got hold of the music and overwhelmed it with markings according to some reasoning we're no longer party to.

Half the notes in the vocal line and in the piano part are given stress marks. If you obeyed every one you'd never get to the end of the piece. And if there aren't stress marks there are accents, the sort that indicate you should give the note more weight than usual. There's a molto rit when the piece has barely started, and a poco rit only two bars after the a tempo. The singer, at one point, is expected to both return to a tempo and sing con moto simultaneously, which is rather like coming back to your normal walking pace while trying to go faster.

The first half or more of the piece is in a kind of recitativo style (that's indicated as well). So there is some excuse for giving the singer an indication of where to move forward and where to pull back. But most singers would do these things instinctively, and the excess of markings merely get in the way. IMHO.

It's like getting a play script from the director in which he's gone through and marked how you should stress each word, speak each phrase, where you should breathe, how loud you should be here and soft there. The lines of the original script would be buried beneath all of these markings.

Transcribing Mr Head's song would be fine except that as the transcriber I'm supposed to make sure I include all these extra details. I'm greatly tempted to leave them out, though of course that would mean not doing the job properly. It's very possible I'll miss one or two, even after a thorough proof-reading. But I'll grit my teeth and do my best.

Destroying art

This shows how thick I can be. It never occurred to me till just now that the 'c' in cello is pronounced differently to the 'c' in cellophane. No wonder my Turkish student who's learning English throws up his hands in despair at the way we change the sounds of both consonants and vowels. There are good historical reasons for why we pronounce some words one way and some another, but they're not much help to us living in the present.

The other day we had a typical example: he asked me if got was pronounced as good. In know-it-all fashion, I said having two 'o's in a word meant it was a long sound, so good was pronounced as goooood, and got as a simple got. (That's not actually how I said it, but that's the gist of it.) And then I realised we had just read the word flood. Where is the long ooooo sound there? Pooooooh. 

I only got onto all this good discussion just now because I was looking up references to cellos in my clippings. I actually wanted to find cello case as a phrase, but it wasn't there, though of course both words were there individually. And while I was skimming through the clippings I found one on the composer John Jeffreys. A friend of mine had lent me a book of songs by this composer early in the year, and I played through a number of them. They were handwritten (and photocopied) rather than engraved. Jeffreys himself had done the writing, and was an exceptionally neat scribe.

Most of the songs seemed to be for the tenor range - which is why my friend had the book of course, he being a tenor. Apparently the English tenor Ian Partridge is amongst those who have striven to bring Jeffreys' name back into focus again. Jeffreys, who died in 2010 at the age of 82, wrote in a style that was regarded as too traditional, and his music went out of favour. However, if the songs I played through are anything to go by, 'traditional' is hardly the word. There are plenty of interesting chords and the vocal lines requiring someone who knows what they're doing. One writer describes Jeffreys' style as 'overtly romantic and non-modernist, very much in the tradition of Delius, Warlock and Vaughan Williams.'  Well, they're all still going strong.

Anyway, this going out of favour so discouraged Jeffreys that he destroyed copies of a symphony, two violin concertos, a cello concerto (that was how I came across the clipping again), a string quartet, a piano sonata, and some 200 songs. That's some reaction against being not in favour.

Fortunately at some point he'd tape-recorded most of the songs, and, in a better mood at a later time, he was able to reconstruct these. Some of his orchestral music is still available, on a disc called Idylls and Elegies. You can hear a 90 second sample here. It's far too short a sample.

I can't imagine destroying your own music, except for stuff that you know in your heart of hearts isn't worthy of being kept. Destroying it because you don't think people appreciate it isn't wise. None of us know our own value as a composer or writer - we may have some sense, but it takes acknowledgement by a wider world to get perspective. Problematically, that perspective may wax and wain in our own lifetime, if it comes to fruition at all. Van Gogh is the well-known example of someone whose art was not at all appreciated while he lived, and a number of other writers and composers never saw their work printed or performed while they were alive. As an artist you may have to suffer that indignity too. All you can hope for is that your heritage will live once you're gone.

Michael Head & Robert Farrar Capon

Wikipedia is rapidly catching up on all sorts of information, including biographies of people.  Some of these biographies didn't exist up until relatively recently. Two such are those of the composer Michael Head (1900-1976), and the Episcopalian priest and chef, Robert Farrar Capon - Capon, born in 1925, died earlier this month. 

Michael Head was almost entirely a composer of songs, and I've been accompanying people singing Michael Head songs since I first began this role.  A large number of his songs have survived in the repertoires of singing teachers and their pupils, and as examination works, and so on.  Here's a 'not comprehensive' list of his songs. To my surprise there are far more than I've ever performed, and I'm interested to note that one I heard at the Senior Vocal Competitions the other day, and had never heard before, is actually one of his. When I heard it I said to the person I was sitting beside - that can't be a Michael Head song surely?  I thought this mostly because it was quite different in style and tone to many of those I know.  But there it is: Back to Hilo.

Head was unusual in that he used to present his songs not by accompanying another singer, but as both singer and accompanist simultaneously.  He must be one of the few composers ever to have done this (amongst art song composers, I mean).

I was first introduced to the books of Robert Farrar Capon when I began work at the Otago Church Bookstore. I'd never heard of him before, and was struck by his witty and delightful style, his seeming willingness to go beyond the pale in terms of what might be called orthodox theology (he never went beyond truth, though), and his attempts to surprise us into rethinking parables and stories and Gospel texts we'd heard too many times and had become over-familiar with. I've read most of his books more than once - that is, of the ones I've read once (there are a number I've never got hold of) - and they always bear re-reading. 

Sometimes he overdid the wit, and the surreal approach. Sometimes you have to take what he says with a grain of salt, because he can get a little carried away. Sometimes he was almost so clever that you lost the point of what he was saying, but undeniably he has an important place in teaching people about God's grace to humanity, God's love for humanity, and the importance of the cross. 

Jean Cras

I was driving home from an appointment this morning and on the car radio the presenter announced a Piano Concerto by Jean Cras.  Jean Cras?  I'd never heard of him.  The Concerto was accessible and accomplished and worth hearing again.

Cras was a French composer whose main career was in the Navy (in which capacity he also invented an electrical selector and a navigational plotter protractor, which was used until replaced by an electronic equivalent.).  He wrote a great deal of his work in his spare time, which makes him an amateur composer - indeed, from the biography on this site it seems he was mainly a self-taught composer, apart from a brief three-month stint with the older composer, Duparc, who admired his talent immensely.  However, it might also be considered that he was a man who managed to combine two careers, both of them effectively.

He wrote a substantial number of works, including an opera that was so successful it made him a household name for a period.   However, the bulk of his work is chamber music.  Until recently his music had almost entirely vanished from the repertoire.  There is now an increasing impetus to bring him back into focus again, and people are beginning to enjoy this music that has rarely been heard for more than half a century.

Strangely, neither of the biographical links above mention his Piano Concerto!

Evelyn Glennie performing...

A friend of mine (he's also a composer and arranger), Ryan Youens, alerted me to a You Tube video of Evelyn Glennie playing a piece called Libertango.  It's a wonderfully evocative piece, not sharp in the rhythmic sense in a way many tangos are, but warm and tender, with resonating bass notes rumbling along underneath.   And all done with four sticks.   I think piano playing is difficult sometimes, but creating this sort of music with four quite awkwardly-held sticks is a miracle.

And then, of course, there's the added complication in this performer's case, of being profoundly deaf. She lost her hearing at the age of 12....

John Psathas

Great documentary on John Psathas, the New Zealand composer, on the weekend. It was called Sound and Fury. I caught up with it last night on video.

Quite a bit of the music was familiar, because I seem to have acquired several CDs with Psathas music on them, but it was good to see the pieces being played as well as hearing them. The one in the German Festival was so energetic - typical of Psathas' style, but it was energetic enough for him to say it even got him going. And the Marimba concerto was just fantastic.

But apart from the music, his comments on the process of composing: the need for uninterrupted concentration and the way interruptions make you easily lose the thread; the way working as a composer makes you guilty because you're not involved with your family; the way a bit of your music will get inside your head and wake you in the middle of the night, and so on.

All very familiar, even for this much less able composer.

Interesting too that he was a pupil of Jack Body at university. I can't imagine a composer less like Psathas!

Bits about Boston

After starting life as something of a flop, Thornton Wilder's play, Our Town, won a Pulitzer Prize. How often does that happen, I wonder: something that's different (and it's certainly different to some of Wilder's other plays) fails to make the grade initially, yet ultimately outsmarts all its critics and indifferent audiences, and becomes a classic.

It's estimated that Our Town is playing somewhere in the world every night of the year, including Boston - the place where it was first a flop. (So if you're an actor looking for work in the Boston job search site, it's probably not a good idea to apply for a performance of this particular play. Just kidding!)

I've got the script of the play here at home, included in a book with a couple of other Wilder plays (The Matchmaker is one) but I've only ever seen the play performed once - back in the early sixties, when it was done here in Dunedin. (Obviously Dunedin is another place where it's not regarded highly enough to be performed regularly). It's a play, as I recall, that manages to be both universal and local, of its time and timeless.

Talking of scripts, I find it somewhat curious that what one director and his actors will do with a script can be entirely different to what another director and his cast will do with it. Yet broach such an idea to the musical world and they'll throw up their hands in horror. The composer's intentions must be honoured to the last staccato dot.

Yet a piece of music is really no different to a play script. Both are scripts, in fact, and orchestra A will actually play the thing differently to orchestra B, though the difference may not be entirely discernable to most people's ears. Interpreting the composer's intentions is a major work of art in itself, and while most decent musicians will do their best, they will produce something different to other musicians, and will even produce a different performance of the piece themselves from night to night.

Take myself as an example of both a composer and a musician 'interpreting' my own work. I never play any of my pieces the same way twice. In fact, I probably can't. So to be horrified that this musician or that isn't fulfilling the composer's intentions is, I think, on a par with insisting that an opera must be performed in the original language when sung before an audience who, for the most part, doesn't understand the language.

Yes, there's a certain beauty in the original sounds and the way they fit the music, but there's a certain dulling of the experience for people who don't understand what's being sung. I heard a radio broadcast of The Daughter of the Regiment on the weekend. Though the composer, Donizetti, was Italian, this piece was written in Paris, and has a French libretto.

The audience at the Met - that most snobbish of opera houses - listened politely to the rantings and ravings of the spoken dialogue with barely a titter. The cast (which included Kiri te Kanawa in a small non-singing role) did their utmost to give life to the French dialogue, but it was all wasted on the audience, who only laughed when there was some visual comedy. (Which was lost on us listeners!)

How much more successful would the piece have been if it had been sung and spoken in English, especially since French isn't the most attractive language to sing anyway. The photo to the left, (by Silver Jade Deutch) by the way, is from a production by the Boston Lyric Opera - and was performed in English. Good old Boston - you get some things right!

Catching up on some interesting links

When I'm too busy to post on my blog(s) I tend to accumulate links to various items of interest that I intend to get around to one day...such as today.

The first item is about the 'fluid' piano that a composer called Geoff Smith has invented. It allows the musician to micro-tune each individual key and thus hook into music that is tuned differently to Western music, such as Indian or Iranian. My first (biased) reaction was that it sounded pretty much like most out-of-tune pianos I've come across over the years (including my previous piano, which resolutely refused, in its later life, to allow the bass notes to stay in tune for more than a few days). I guess it takes a bit of getting used to, and certainly the pianist is going to have to rethink their whole approach to playing when they use one. Will it build an audience? The world is littered with instruments that never quite made it, so it will be interesting to see what happens.

The video is here, and an article (from the Guardian) here.

Improv Everywhere is the name of a company (?) that does surprising seemingly improvised and random things literally everywhere. The example below takes place in a supermarket, and is typical of the average modern American musical.



Third on the list today is a question and answer piece (again from the Guardian) in which various artists are asked a random list of 50 questions, and provide some wonderfully random answers about art, photography, acting and more. All the little things you wanted to know such as how does an orchestral triangle player earn his living?

And finally, from a blog called First Things, a list of the blogger's top 100 spiritually significant films. Don't just read the blog post - check out the comments, in which a bunch of film buffs come up with more (and sometimes better) spiritually significant movies.

I am a writer

I am a writer.
Let me write that one more time.
I am a writer.
My heart sings when I write.
I declare this is the truth.
The next step of the path is the scribbler's step.

From the 'dedication' page of Brainlash: maximise your recovery from mild brain injury, by Gail Denton.

These lines, which she heads with: Journal entry, April 26, 1993 (three years before the book was first published), apply equally to me, though maybe for the word writer I'd substitute the word, 'artist' which covers everything I do, the writing, the piano playing, the composing, the acting - the performing in general.

Thanks Gail, for these encouraging words!