Interpreting

The serious artist is one who is up to the elbows in the stuff of God's world. (pg 68: Performer as Priest and Prophet).

I've mentioned this book on more than one occasion in this blog, and may well do again before I've finished reading it. In the chapter I've just read the authors talk about Schoenberg's unfinished opera, Moses and Aaron, in which the composer sees Moses as the creative artist, and Aaron as the interpreter - for good or bad. (In Aaron's case, quite often bad.)

It's an interesting approach to the story, and possibly not one with which everyone will agree. Composers need performers - unless, of course, like Stockhausen and some others, they cut out the performing 'middlemen' and do everything themselves. Some composers are performers - yours truly, for one - and can be counted on to interpret their own music according to the composer's wishes. Except that I find I play my own pieces differently every time I touch them. Does that make me a 'good' interpreter or not? I'm always hearing that such and such an artist was a consummate interpreter of Mozart, Bach or Brahms (as the case might be); but what does that actually mean? That they played the pieces so wonderfully that everybody thinks that's how they should be played?

For a time Wanda Landowska was considered to be the epitome in terms of interpreting Bach. Then along came Glenn Gould, and everybody thought he was the epitome in terms of interpreting Bach. And, of course, he's now been supplanted by someone else.

So were those earlier interpreters interpreting wrongly? Don't think so. To me a piece of music is like the script of a play. Yes, there are certain things you must do: play all the notes, aim to be consistent with the composer's intentions in terms of dynamics, make sure that you have a good idea of what style such a piece might be played in. But that's pretty much where it all ends. After that, you're the performer (rather than the 'interpreter') and you present to the listeners the piece of music. You're a conduit between the composer and the audience, but you're not a conduit that brings nothing of yourself to the piece. If you can keep yourself out of the way you'll be doing extraordinarily well, I think.

Intuition and Structure in Composing and more...

I bought a copy of a book called Performer as Priest and Prophet a few months ago, but hadn't got round to reading it. I first came across it at work, where my boss had a borrowed copy from the Hewitson Library. Something about it rang bells, and I bought a secondhand copy (it's out of print). However, with all the shifting around in the house due to the renovation of the kitchen, it kind of got shelved in more ways than one.

The book is by Judith Rock, a professional dancer (and former auxiliary NYPD police officer!), and Norman Mealy, a liturgist and musician (and occasional hymn-writer) - Mealy died before it was completed, but still had a great deal of input.

I only began reading the book this morning (in the bath - a great place to read: the mind seems more relaxed, and absorbs more, and is less distracted), so I can't really comment on it overall. But one thing struck me, and that was Rock's comments on intuition in the arts. (She wrote the Introduction.)

It made me consider how I write music. To an extent, I've tended to put down my way of composing. For the most part, I start at the beginning and finish at the end. Sometimes I do some chopping and changing on the way (particularly now that I work half between the piano and half between the Sibelius program), and at all times I'm looking for the right note or chord in relation to what goes before and after. But I seldom start out with a 'plan,' and sometimes the music just doesn't go - even though it seemed promising at the time - and gets abandoned before it reaches the end. Sometimes something that seemed promising is promising, but it takes a patch of time away from it to realise it. My piano piece, the one that wound up with the title, A Cowboy Learns the Tarantella, is a case in point. I woke up with the 'theme' running around in my head, went to the piano, jotted it down and then thought: that's pretty basic. But a few days later it came together, and 'basic' or not, it works. And Schoenberg Plays with his grandchildren - another piece that didn't in any way start out with that title (the titles tend to come later) - also started out with what seemed a great idea, but it just didn't want to work. It was only after I came back to it some time later than I saw the potential: same kind of material, but different approach.

I kind of find the music as I go along, rather than having it all worked out beforehand. Even with songs, it's as if a particular idea connects itself to the opening words, and we go along from there. It's very possible that a totally different idea could work - in fact, more than possible. What gets written on Tuesday may not have turned up on Thursday.

Structure suffers a bit in the process - I've discussed this several times in this blog - and there have been pieces, particularly pieces for larger forces than just a piano, or piano and voice, that have required some considerable sorting out. That's perfectly normal, of course, for any work, and I probably do it more with the piano pieces and such than I remember afterwards. It's just because they're smaller scale and more manageable in terms of tidying up structure.

What I'm saying is that I suspect far more composers work intuitively than we're led to believe by musicologists. The latter find all manner of connections in works afterwards; the composer doesn't think 'rationally' about these connections at the time; he or she tends to be so focused on getting the thing down on paper (preferably before it all blows away and he or she loses concentration) that he/she doesn't pick up a number of the connections.

But when you go back over your own work - particularly some time later, after you've forgotten the sweaty stage - you can often be surprised by what's turned up.

And talking of that, in one of the posts I just picked up regarding structure, I find that I was writing about a screenwriter called Blake Snyder. I'd forgotten his name altogether, but now realise I've just read a book by him called Save the Cat! Goes to the Movies: the screenwriter's guide to every story ever told. It's a sequel to Save the Cat! the last book on screenwriting you'll ever need. When I got Save the Cat! on interloan, I thought it was the first of the two books I was getting; it was the second. This second title goes through about fifty well-known movies and shows how each and every one of them follows a structure that's virtually identical.

Now whether that's really true is another matter. Whether the scriptwriters sat down and said: here's the structure, what story can we tell, is another matter altogether. I rather think Snyder has come along, like a musicologist, and made these films fit his theory. In the end the book isn't very inspiring. I'd still like to have a look at the first of the two books, though I suspect it's title is a little overblown. Yes, certain facets of storytelling turn up again and again, particularly in the movies - and there's a certain satisfaction in that. But quirkiness in movies, oddball approaches, the thing that is different, is also satisfying, and it would be horrible to think that we would have to endure endless movies all plotted along similar lines forever and ever Amen.

(Incidentally, I've just seen that Snyder died just last month of a pulmonary embolism- he was only 52.)

Well, I've strayed a fair way from my opening, but that's what happens when you don't have to go to work for a couple of days, and can relax while blogging!

And Then They Came For Me - up and running!

I’ve been too busy to write in here for the last week, because the play we’ve been working on is now finally on, and there’s been the usual lead-up of extra rehearsals.

Last Saturday we had a really muddly rehearsal: people not available, or not turning up for nearly an hour or having to go early. The only thing achieved was a bit of tidying up of scenes with the people who did actually make it. So it was worthwhile, but not as good as it could have been. We went home earlier than intended as it was freezing cold, and one of the windows in the school assembly hall where we’ve been rehearsing wouldn’t shut.

Sunday I treated the Friends of the Opera Company to four of my piano pieces, including the world premiere of one: Arnold Schoenberg plays with his grandchildren. (Had to check beforehand that he might actually have had any grandchildren; seems likely!) The pieces were intermingled with a bunch of songs presented by my old friend, Arnold Bachop; Erin Pickering, one of the stalwarts of Opera Alive when it was functioning, and now a superbly accomplished singer, with great diction and tremendous tone. She lives and teaches in Invercargill these days, which is kind of a pity. (For Dunedinites, that is.) There were two other singers, Nicola Steel and a young lady whose first name is Sarah, but whose surname has decided to go AWOL on me. It was an excellent concert, in fact, which even the high-powered wind outside couldn’t undermine. (The winds over the weekend were hectic.)

Monday we finally got into the theatre – the Globe, famous for all sorts of reasons, not the least of which is its dilapidated state, something I remember from when I first had contact with it in the 1960s! It was probably better in those days, but it’s always been a place where you know an amateur carpenter was seriously at work. The theatre itself has steps up beside the seats, but none of them seem regular, and they’re likely to send an unwitting customer flying. The place needs a good overhaul, but it’s probably not going to happen, even though there’s a good committee that’s turned it around from a dead duck to a thriving little theatre.

We’re not using any scenery, so the black drapes are all exposed to view: with their various little holes and tears.

Anyway, the drapes and other oddities were the least of our problems on Monday. We’ve been rehearsing with the video behind us since we first began using it, and this has been fine. However, when we got to the theatre we found that the video projector was set up at the front of the stage (people sitting in the front seats in the Globe have their feet on the stage) and that meant that no one could pass in front of the screen while anything was being played on it. We tried to show the picture from the reverse but the screen wasn’t suitable for this. In the end we did two run-throughs of the play (it’s only 70 minutes long); the first was a major struggle as we worked out how to play around the video instead of getting in its way, and the second, while better, was still unsatisfactory – although we could have coped.

We all went home despondent. And I had a horrible time about four in the morning when I woke up stressed and feeling quite ill with it.

However, the father of two of the girls in the show (he’s also the husband of the woman who directs the Narnia plays – the next one of which has a read-through this Sunday !) came to the rescue, and by the time we arrived on Tuesday, for our second lot of run-throughs, the screen had been replaced with a back-projection job, had been set further back (giving us more room –the stage at the Globe isn’t large at the best of times) and was functioning wonderfully. Oh, yes, that’s right – on the Monday we’d had no amplified sound either! No wonder stress came rushing in!

So our Tuesday night rehearsals were as good dress rehearsals should be: everything in place, and only minor things to sort out. I stopped trying to direct, and concentrated on just being in the play itself, and everyone else pulled out all the stops and got on with their parts and did extremely well.

Wednesday was our first performance, and it went like a dream. Everything flowed: the interleaving video was always in the right place, and the cast upped the ante considerably. Comments from the audience were all very positive. We’d got to the point where we didn’t have any sense of whether it was working or not – a not uncommon feature of theatre productions, I’ve found – and to hear that people were in tears at the end, and that it came across as a very emotional piece was music to our rather knocked-around souls. (It’s been a bit of a trial, this production!)

When we got to the end, where we each place a candle on the floor of the stage, in silence, while the music in the background is heartrending, you couldn’t hear a peep from the audience. Great stuff! The scene with the candles was something again that didn’t seem to have the stuff of great drama in it, yet it works. Thanks, Mr Still, we should never have doubted your play!

Two more performances this morning, for mostly school audiences, and four more over the next couple of days. I can’t say this has been my favourite play of all time, but I’m very glad to see that it’s proving its worth.

Incidentally, our producer (she who was the director before I got the job!) had contacted Eva Schloss, one of the two people who narrate throughout the play, on video. She emailed back to say she was pleased to hear about the play being produced in NZ. It’s the NZ premiere of the play, in fact.

The photo at the top is of Arnold Schoenberg, not Arnold Bachop, in case there's any confusion!