F or oropharynx and nasopharynx cancers, it is sometimes possible to limit the dose received by the larynx according to the extent of the primary lesion. Thus, if the tumour constraints permit, the maximum dose to the larynx must be less than 63 to 66 Gy. To reduce the risk of laryngeal edema, it is recommended if possible to limit the mean non-involved larynx dose to 40 to 45 Gy [to prevent dysphonia or significant damage to vocal cords/folds].” — C. Debelleix and co-workers, Centre Hospitalier Dax-Côte d'Argent, France.
T he question in this post's title has arisen several times each year over the 5 years I've been writing this blog. A relatively small percentage of the approximately 52,000 persons per year who receive a diagnosis of some form of cancer of the head and neck (U.S. SEER statistics; AHRQ HCUPnet statistics for procedures HCPCS L30318, G0251, G0339, G0340; CPT-4 77373, 77401-77435, etc.; ICD-9 92.3x) and the thousands of patients (U.S.) who receive radiation to the neck as part of a treatment regimen for a head-and-neck cancer are singers—either avid amateurs or professionals. However, the rate of inquiry by (or on behalf of) singers for whom this situation does happen is evidently not by any means ‘rare’. There have been 6 such search-strings that I have noticed in the CMT traffic logs in the past 3 weeks alone.
S o this post is meant to provide you with links to recent medical literature that you can show to your otolaryngologist/oncologist and discuss. In that regard, the typical radiation oncologist tends not to be expert in medical management of musicians; conversely, specialists in medical problems of musicians tend not to have a great deal of experience with head-and-neck cancers for which radiation therapy is routinely used. This is compounded by the fact that the situation of singers undergoing radiation to the neck is just uncommon enough that there are not many clinical trials or specific studies conducted in that population. The published studies that have some relevancy to the question are not easy for your physician to locate online or in the library either—which is why I believe providing these links will be helpful.
A majority of the published work on this topic has to do with ‘quality-of-life’ (QoL) measurement in cancer patients treated with radiation to the neck, where one of the QoL measurements is ease of vocalization and the frequency and severity of pain or hoarseness or other forms of dysphonia or vocal abnormalities.
F or each patient, the specific cancer type and the extent of the cancer’s spread and other factors contribute to the decision-making as to whether ‘larynx-sparing’ reduced-dose, stereotactic, imagery-guided radiation therapy is a sensible approach or not. But in those cases where it is deemed to be a reasonable approach, there are specific guidelines for planning and conducting such radiotherapy.
O f course, there is no guarantee that returning to singing will be achievable, or that vocal quality or agility or range or endurance will be the same as they were prior to treatment. But to get the best chance for those outcomes, the info in the lit below should be part of your decision-making with your doctors.
I f you’re one of those who’ve been hitting the web and this blog looking for info on larynx-preserving radiotherapy and prognosis with regard to return to post-treatment singing, maybe the links below will be useful for you and your doc!
O ihr Zärtlichen, tretet zuweilen in den Atem, der euch nicht meint, laßt ihn an eueren Wangen sich teilen, hinter euch zittert er, wieder vereint.
O ihr Seligen, O ihr Heilen, die ihr der Anfang der Herzen scheint. Bogen der Pfeile und Ziele von Pfeilen, ewiger glänzt euer Lächeln verweint.
Fürchtet euch nicht zu leiden, die Schwere, gebt sie zurück an der Erde Gewicht; schwer sind die Berge, schwer sind die Meere.
Selbst die als Kinder ihr pflanztet, die Bäume, wurden zu schwer längst ; ihr trüget sie nicht. Aber die Lüfte ... aber die Räume ...
[O you Tender Ones, you will walk, persisting Through the cold breath that was not breathed for your sake, Your heedless cheeks oblivious to its trembling. Blowing as it does, the wind coalesces behind you after you've passed, without trace.
O Blessed Ones, healthy and whole though you be now, Who seem to be enveloped and self-sufficient, the epitome of life and the heart's beginning. Bows are there for each conceivable arrow and a target for all arrows: Logical correlates of the perpetual brilliance of your pulsatile smile.
Fear not the pain and sorrow and stillness that will inevitably come, Consign all of that back to the heavy Earth who knows good and well what to do with it: Heavy are the mountains, heavy the seas.
Even as a child, you planted these trees: Already they are awfully heavy, beyond belief really. Despite this persists the pervasive space ... the ubiquitous breezes ...]” — Rainer Maria Rilke, Sonnets to Orpheus, VI.
P eter Lieberson died of sepsis, a complication of his lymphoma and treatment for lymphoma last Saturday, at age 64. Lieberson gratified our ears not only with composerly talent but with a humor and warm personality that do not require atmospheric ‘soft-focus’ photos like the one above to convey the inner gentleness.
P eter’s wife, Lorraine Hunt Lieberson, died of breast cancer at age 52, in 2006. She was a mezzo-soprano, known for her dramatic power and raw virtuosity as well as her artistry performing Baroque era and new compositions. Her career path to becoming a singer was unconventional. Formerly a professional violist, Lieberson changed her full-time focus to singing when she was around 30 (1985 and beyond). As violist she played in the Orchestra of Emmanuel Music in Boston under conductor Craig Smith and later sang in the chorus. For a time, she was also principal viola in Berkeley Symphony.
I n re-listening to recordings I have of Peter’s later compositions, Lorraine’s influence on Peter’s soul and heart becomes evident… how she provided him with insights and renewal. This is an undeniable element in Peter’s writing after 1997. Lorraine’s influence is diaphoric, trans-illuminating—an emblem of spirit-in-matter. Must be why he fell in love with her… good reason why anyone would fall in love with anyone.
[50-sec clip, Lorraine Hunt Lieberson & Peter Serkin, Peter Lieberson, ‘Rilke Songs’, ‘O, ihr Zärtlichen’, 1.6MB MP3]
L ieberson was expert at syllabic setting and pitch repetition: the vocal part centers on particular notes for considerable proportions of passages. These songs are predominantly recitative. They have suspended accompaniment and rubato manifestations of the singing part.
W hen I was growing up, my mother, whose first language was German, would often quote lines from Rilke. I have been drawn to his poetry ever since. Rilke evokes feelings, states of being that are at the edge of awareness, mysterious but close to the heart. One can’t always understand exactly what he means. I believe this is a deliberate elusiveness in order to provoke our intuition. The Rilke Songs were written for my wife, Lorraine Hunt Lieberson. I think of them as love songs even though the poems themselves are not overtly about love. They are about being childlike and open in ‘O ihr Zärtlichen’; in ‘Atmen, du unsichtbares Gedicht!,’ they are about the breath being a complete exchange between our own essence and the universe. They are about how the breath seems to go out into space like our wandering son; the mysterious way in which we might transform ourselves: ‘If drinking is bitter, turn yourself into wine’ (‘Stiller Freund’). To me these Rilkean insights are a gift of love..” — Peter Lieberson, program notes.
K atherine Kelton maintains that Peter Lieberson “learned about the complexity of the human voice and the multitude of intricacies of which it is capable” through Lorraine. “Much as Robert Schumann’s love for Clara Wieck inspired him to compose in a genre he had previously disregarded,” so too Lorraine propelled Peter in directions that were, up to then, unfamiliar.
M aybe this is so; maybe a ‘push’ theory is right.
B ut it is also possible (and, I think, more likely) that it was a matter of ‘pull’, of natural attraction. In fact, it is hardly plausible that the diverse nuances of the voice could have been novel for Peter in 1997. If anything, his many years leading Shambhala sessions led him to develop acute sensitivity to myriad manifestations of ego/self and selflessness. And there was Lorraine, an eager collaborator, able to animate a composition so as to lead to discoveries for both, on the part of both.
L orraine’s performances of Peter’s compositions evoke what Mircea Eliade once called ‘dialectique du sacre’ and ‘hierophanies’. Sacred portrayal is realized as an individual creative act—one that embodies both spiritual insight and sensual perception. The relationship ceases to be merely ‘of-the-world’. It achieves transcendence, a dimension of sacredness. That, I believe, is what we hear in these wonderful recordings. The feeling conveyed is one of consummate ‘hereness’, ‘thisness’—a kind of presence, of living entirely in the present.
I think of my Rilke Songs as love songs even though they are not overtly about love. They are, for example, about being child-like and open, as in “O ihr Zärtlichen;” about the breath being a complete exchange of our own essence with the universe in “Atmen, du unsichtbares Gedicht;” about the mysterious ways in which we might transform ourselves in “Stiller Freund” . . . To me, these Rilkean insights are gifts of love.” — Peter Lieberson, program notes to ‘Rilke Songs’.
T he act of singing... when my voice is feeling free and soaring... it is a wonderful, healing experience.” — Lorraine Hunt, interview with Terry Gross, NPR, 1996.
T he spelling sgra bla (‘la of sound’) found in the ancient texts as a matter of fact is based on a very deep principle characteristic of the most authentic Bön tradition. Sound, albeit not visible, can be perceived through the sense of hearing and used as a means of communication, and is in fact linked to the cha (the individual’s positive force, the base of prosperity), wang tang (ascendancy-capacity), and all the other aspects of a person’s energy, aspects that are directly related with the protective deities and entities that every person has from birth. Moreover, sound is considered the foremost connection between the individual himself and his la.” — Namkhai Norbu Rinpoche, Drung De’u and Bön, translated by Adriano Clemente, Library of Tibetan Works and Archives, 1995, p. 61.
T o me, Peter Lieberson’s later compositions embody Shambhala texts that reveal and test our relationship to the “material world” and our sense perceptions. They teach the practice of enriching presence—the ability to instantly envision the inner wealth within oneself.
T o compose ‘Neruda Songs’, I responded to the words and to the emotional tone of the poem. I heard notes when I read the words. Generally I like the tactile feeling, the sensual feeling of being at the piano, so I compose there. I listen very, very carefully to the words, and the harmony is very intuitive. The great period of jazz, that’s how I learned harmony, Bill Evans and Miles Davis. That was my ear training. Orchestrations come easily to me, and I often hear which instrument should be playing. It’s constant responsiveness; it’s somewhere between improvising and strategizing.” — Peter Lieberson, interview with Pierre Ruhe, 10-JUN-2010.
T here is, to me, a cinematic quality to the songs—as though the composer were a cameraman.
C amera placement distinctly influences our perception of the world that’s portrayed and the characters in it. Shooting down at a seated character can diminish her presence and stature; it may make her seem submissive or even supplicative. Filming up at a character provides a sense of the figure’s power and command. By contrast, in Rilke Songs it is as if Peter Lieberson’s ‘camera’ is placed at eye-level, making the perspective like what we would see while sitting across from Lorraine having a conversation. The character isn’t ‘owned’ by the camera/cameraperson nor is she sensationalized by it.
C ombien qu'a nous soit cause le Soleil Que toute chose est tresclerement veue: Ce neantmoins pour trop arrester l'œil En sa splendeur lon pert soubdain la veue. Mon ame ainsi de son objiect pourueue De tous mes sens me rend abandonné, Comme si lors en moy tout estonné Semeles fust en presence rauie De son Amant de fouldre enuironné Qui luy ostast par ses esclaires la vie.
[Much as the Sun causes each thing To lie so clearly before our eyes: To linger too long in its splendor Is to be suddenly made blind. My soul and its object Now abandoned by all my senses, As if, within me, and to my great surprise Semele were ravished in my presence By her Lover [Zeus] who, with his thunderbolts, Snatched her life in a flash of light.]” — Maurice Scève, Délie, v.443.
T here is an interview that Lorraine did with NPR’s Terry Gross back in 1996, in which Lorraine confides her fascination with identity-bending, gender-bending roles—the journeys of self-discovery and transcendence that are made possible through these. Beyond angle, camera placement also affects the view that we have onto the action and the resultant meaning we can derive from a shot. On the surface, the Rilke Songs setting of several Rilke poems celebrate the then-undersung life and burgeoning talent of Lorraine Hunt Lieberson. That her belated decampment from viola to singing was what vaulted her to international fame was an oddity: here was the soul and and the propensities of a string player inhabiting an operatic singer’s body.
P eter leveraged Lorraine’s enthusiasm for transcendent experiences to honor her. In Rilke Songs, it is as though composer Peter were a filmmaker choosing to shoot in a long profile ‘take’. The placement of the voice-leading/camera here and the accompaniment there; the choice to let the ‘shot’ play out as it does; these reveal the nuanced components, not only of composition but of microphone placement and physicality that Lorraine so deftly crafted in the use of her vocal instrument. No other ‘camera’ position and mic position could have permitted such insight into her craft, nor into the craft of the composer who created this vehicle for shared expression.
E very 24-hour day is a tremendous gift to us. So we all should learn to live in a way that makes joy and happiness possible. The first miracle of mindfulness is our true presence—being here, present, totally alive. If you are really here, the other will also be here. Loving? It is recognizing the presence of the other with your love... Dear One, I am here for you... A human tendency is to see spirituality as a process of self-improvement—the impulse to develop and refine the ego when the ego is, by nature, essentially empty. The problem is that ego can convert anything to its own use, even spirituality.” — Thich Nhat Hanh.
N o atmospherics or sentimentality in this long ‘take’. Her delivery is straightforward and expository, articulated calmly and directly to the listener. Knowing as we do that these performances were sung—the compositions were composed—when Lorraine was already afflicted by breast cancer, the récits produce a kind of uncanniness; produce narrative convergences between Peter and Lorraine; they embody a tantric, elliptical concentration; they are an Unheimlichkeit, a Verklärung, eine Vorahnung.
T hese wonderful specimens of humankind will be deeply missed.
T he Jasper String Quartet gave an outstanding performance this past Tuesday at Oberlin College. JSQ is J. Freivogel (violin), Sae Niwa (violin), Sam Quintal (viola), and Rachel Henderson Freivogel (cello). They won the silver medal at the 2009 Fischoff Chamber Music Competition and have recently served as graduate quartet-in-residence at the Yale School of Music. They are just now beginning a residency at Oberlin this Fall.
T heir accounts of Schubert’s Quartettsatz in C minor (D. 703) [the first movement of a 12th string quartet that was uncompleted before Schubert’s death] and the Beethoven “Razoumovsky” quartet (Op. 59, No. 3) were both strong and received enthusiastic applause from those who attended in the nearly sold-out, packed hall.
T he work that especially captivated me, though, was Aaron Jay Kernis’s String Quartet No. 2, which I’d never heard before. This was composed by Kernis in 1996-1997 and won him the Pulitzer Prize in 1998 when he was only 38 years old.
[45-sec clip #1, Lark String Quartet, Aaron Jay Kernis, String Quartet No. 2, second movement (sarabande), 1998, 1.4MB MP3]
[50-sec clip #2, Lark String Quartet, Aaron Jay Kernis, String Quartet No. 2, second movement (sarabande), 1998, 1.6MB MP3]
T he 17-minute-long sarabande progresses at a slow tempo at first, intense but with a smooth surface, not unlike Samuel Barber’s Adagio for Strings (second movement of String Quartet, Op. 11, which Barber composed at age 26). Later on there are faster passages that are often dense and dissonant, wailing. The result is a predominantly complex texture, relieved by intermittent solo passages. At around the 12-minute mark in Tuesday’s JSQ performance of the Kernis sarabande, a fff unison passage tugged at our heartstrings and ultimately broke them. After this the viola and cello solo resumed a more modest, contained, controlled grieving.
L ike Barber’s Adagio, Kernis’s orchestration in this quartet has tense intertwined voice-leading in each part. Like Barber’s Adagio, after the violent bits, we are recovered by the low strings who bring us in for some sort of a [dramatic, wounded] landing.
A nd, like Barber’s Adagio, there is something ‘archaic’ about the rhetorical structure of Kernis’s sarabande—the relentless, rhapsodic, pneumatic phrasing rising to the climax, then fading into silence. This gradual build-up and slow release of tension—the classic “arch” form—we know this; we recognize what it is doing to us; we cannot resist the viceral, physiologic, primitive effects it has on us.
I f at first we didn’t understand what the quartet’s first movement means, this devastating second movement leaves no doubt, and it provides context for the third movement. The whole construction provides sonic symbolic proof of the permanence that’s within us, as contrasted with the violence and transience of the outer reality.
I nstead of the long melody, our emotions get shortened to just four notes. Finally, the notes slow down, twice as slow. We can't emote any longer. Then we hear that final note for a split second, and then that chord is taken as the only possible resolution. We would have never dreamed that this is where acceptance lies. The whole piece has just been reduced to just those two chords. The simplicity of the logic makes you feel the universality of the journey: from the simple note, to the high emotional wailing, to release and to final acceptance, but never the place you thought it was going to lead you to.” — Rob Kapilow, remarks on Barber’s Adagio, NPR, 09-MAR-2010.
K ernis prepared this work as a personal, individual elegy in 1997, but he has subsequently commented on the significance that this quartet and his later arrangement of it for string orchestra have for him in the light of the events of 9/11. The vehemence of the quartet might seem over-the-top for personal mourning of one individual—well, maybe not if the loss were a child or a spouse or belovèd parent. But it is definitely not excessively vehement for collective, public mourning. In that respect, too, this Kernis quartet sarabande movement resembles Barber’s Adagio.
E legy’s peculiar characteristic is a tender and querulous idea... and so long as this is thoroughly sustained, admits of a variety of subjects; which by its manner of treating them it renders its own. It throws its melancholy stole over different objects, which, like dresses at a funeral procession, gives them all a kind of solemn and uniform appearance.” — William Shenstone, 1768.
T here’s a moment in the midst of the sarabande when everything changes. Photographers experience this routinely—if you miss the moment, if you blink or don’t see it coming, or if you fail to press the shutter release during the fraction of a second before the change hits, it is gone forever. It feels like our calculus of the future was incomplete or faulty. We who are grieving evidently hadn’t previously appreciated adequately how transient each of us is. We had thought that, if we could just be heroic enough, we might save the person who is now gone. We feel that we have failed. Further, we who are grieving previously imagined that we were the authors of our own lives, and only just now dimly recognize that our selves have in fact been the project of the other person and many others. This profound lack of control shocks us. The evidence is incompatible with our previous beliefs.
I t’s a strange relationship we have with objects that belonged to the dead—in the ‘knit’ of their atoms, their touch is left behind.” — Anne Michaels, Fugitive Pieces.
W e painfully discover that we have been inscribed by the person every bit as much as her/his left-behind objects. We find that we are like ornately carved netsuke, with through-and-through holes in us that have been burrowed and whittled by years of relationship, and we are shocked to find that only just now do we realize this. How could we have been so blind and stupid!
T he precursor to grief is always ‘connection’. We do not grieve that which we have merely appreciated or admired... Anticipatory grief is like being in a small sailboat in a storm at sea. The turbulence and unpredictability have to be dealt with, and they are not under your control... You will not be able to do everything you want to do to help your dying loved one. Give what you can, as creatively as you can, and then forgive yourself for not being able to do more. Your sense of helplessness does not mean you have failed.” — Donna Davenport, Singing Mother Home, pp. 114, 119, 131.
W e naïvely imagined that we were in charge of something that has clearly escaped our mastery’s grasp. And the true nature of elegy seems to have escaped us as well. Elegy is supposed to be a way to arrive at some sort of solace or closure at times of loss. That’s its aim, its overt purpose, and, as a result, elegiac texts are ‘complicit’ in the effects of the ‘pageant’ that they also analyze. By design, elegies are transcendence portals. We had thought that we would have a choice; we thought that we would enter a portal of elegy under our own power, when we decided the time was right, deliberately. Here, time is compressed, and we find that the portal opens up and swallows us. We may not fight it; we may go along with it. But the involuntariness of being transported emotionally like this shocks us.
T he very notion of time compressed requires something like elegiac machinery to decompress it.” — David Rigbee, Styles of Ruin, p. 150.
W hen we hear elegiac music (or elegiac poetry, or other art forms) that leads us to realize this, it is natural to say that it was ‘moving’ or ‘dramatic’ or ‘powerful’. Understatement, to say the least. Life-changing? Maybe. Frankly, words simply fail. Which I suspect may have something to do with why this quartet won Kernis a Pulitzer.
S omehow, Kernis keeps this sarabande balanced—keeps the whole 3-movement work balanced. It is his lamentation; he, the composer, and his emotions are his own subject. It is devilishly difficult to build up a convincing account of grief and to sustain it authentically when you yourself are the subject. Over the centuries, there has been lots of bad elegiac poetry that fails because it couldn’t achieve or sustain balance. Yet Kernis delivered it, and the Jasper String Quartet delivered it as well in their beautiful performance.
T he piece is not merely beautiful to listen to or merely emotionally moving. On Tuesday night it became for me a miraculous elegy machine—one whose elegant mechanics are beautiful to hear and see and admire as they move. Through its transparent exterior, we see how this tugging at our heartstrings works. It struck me a bit like procedural [conscious] sedation, with digital video so we patients can see and hear most everything the doctor is doing while she/he operates on us. This ability even to experience the mechanics of what we are experiencing while we are experiencing it is radical, disorienting, uncanny, unsettling, very dramatic.
S ome structural/mechanical things that I noticed while listening... Widely-spaced blocks of short and long passages have the effect of distancing the mourner from the subject (death; the idea of death); they place the traumatic event far enough away to re-present and reevaluate it.
W hat is the truth of the ninety-year old woman waiting for me at the house, who is changed beyond recognition and yet who is still my mother? ... It has taken me years to learn that reality is far more than meets the human eye, or ear, or mind... The Greeks have a word for this realness of things... ’ousia’ [οὐσία].” — Madeleine L’Engle, 1984, p. 49.
O ut of sight, out of mind? Not really. The recollection-at-a-distance through these passages has instead the effect of maintaining the mind’s focus on the event, albeit at arms’ length. The phrases that hark back to earlier ones—the canon-type transferring of a phrase from one part to others—lend a backward-reaching intimacy to the experience of this Quartet. Since the thing recalled is always longing for yet another future recollection, the phrases that look backward look forward as well. Kernis throws an ‘arch’ forward, and the performers (and we) face our own future, with some species of hope, as we simultaneously reflect on the departed or the about-to-depart.
K ernis’s chain of phrases is like a chain of rhymes. Often the second or third one is slightly imperfect or impatient—humanly so, as if for reasons of human frailty. In some places, one of the four lines can’t wait and urgently adds what it must say, interjecting what it must—earlier than we might think it should, were it observing the civilities of normal quartet discourse. Or, say, in other cases one of the four lines is unexpectedly delayed. The imperfections are a poetical sign that things are far from ‘normal’; mourning in extremis. Shocking.
T he ‘chiasmus’, the marching along of melodically and rhythmically similar lines and similar bowing, go relentlessly toward some kind of apotheosis, which arrives in the third movement. The dramatic power of the second movement substantially derives from the emulation of controlled pausing and breathing, and stretches where grief causes the loss of control. The phrases are like lines in a poem, built up into stanzas. The mourner’s pain is compacted into the pneumatics of breathing, much as we feel in the elegies of Milton or Keats or Shelley.
T he ‘breathing’ of the quartet members’ bows involves drawing them and expending their length in multiple, pained, successive stresses. There are series of eighth-notes that suggest what would be ‘transitive’ participles if this quartet had lyrics: com-pell-ing, de-spair-ing. Other series’ accents suggest defiantly ‘intransitive’ participles: ach-ing, burst-ing. The latter—diffuse and not referring to anything done-to or done-by—evoke a persisting existential ‘melancholia’ more than an event-driven ‘melancholy’. Song without words!
A Romantic-period elegist would have been a ‘confident’ visionary—would have served up a confident, strong mourner. Here in Kernis’s No. 2 quartet we have anguish and insurmountable tentativeness as well as unabashed outrage at the loss. In fact, the multidimensional mixture of pastoral, confessional, romantic, and modern underscores the visceralness and urgency of the quartet. This in turn reinforces how authentic we perceive this quartet’s expressions to be.
A t times, grieving for a loved one begins considerably before the end of life, premonition of the impact of high-velocity bullets. Each setback in the loved one’s health triggers an emotional reaction in us—one that feels like a shot from a gun, a cannon even: explosive anxiety; 2,800 foot-per-second ballistic sadness; projectile vulnerability. Each fleeting recovery reloads the chamber and cocks the trigger of the testamentary gun again. Kernis’s quartet does this repeatedly, this ‘anticipatory’ grieving.
W ith the impending loss of the loved one, a weird, horrific beauty unfolds—the unstoppable specifics of the events, the terribleness of the muzzle, the abjectness and universality of the ordeal and time. Stomachs in knots, we discover that we are owned by our relationship, by our caring. We comprehend as if for the first time the 'accidentalness' of who we each are—ourselves and the loved one. There is no conceivable relief from these realizations.
A ccording to modern convention in Western society, grieving is supposed to be orderly and not too long. ‘Acceptance’ is the goal; anything less is ‘incomplete’, a deficiency for which the griever is blameworthy. ‘Moving on’ and reinvesting emotional energy in new attachments are the evidence of healthy completion or closure of the grieving process.
T o many grievers, though, these social norms feel wrong, coercive, impossible to comply with. The norms threaten to deprive us of our right to grieve, at the very moment when we are losing (or have recently lost—) the loved one. The outrage in the ascending passages of the second movement of Kernis’s second quartet seems directed against this normative social violence against grievers...
D enial; bargaining; and what follows. Kübler-Ross was the first or one of the first to identify anger as a ‘stage’ in the process of preparing for death. I am reminded of this at the 12-minute mark in the Kernis quartet No. 2 sarabande. When we see a loved one hurting, it’s natural to feel waves of protective anger, protesting what is happening and the harm that is occurring. Guilt and regret are often mixed in—when the loved one’s condition keeps getting worse despite everything you are doing to prevent that, or when you have to override their objections and take away their car keys or place them in a nursing home.
J ane and I] went back to the poets of grief and outrage, as far back as ‘Gilgamesh’... Poetry gives the griever not release from grief but companionship in grief. Poetry embodies the complexity of feelings at their most intense and entangled and therefore offers (over centuries, or over no time at all) the company of tears.” — Donald Hall, The Best Day the Worst Day, 2006, p. 118.
T hey wept and affirmed their love for each other, witlessly, over and over again. When it snowed one morning Jane gazed at the darkness blurred with flakes. They pushed the I.V. pump which she called Igor slowly past the nurses' pods, as far as the outside door so that she could smell the snowy air.” — Donald Hall, ‘Her Long Illness’, Without, 1999.
U ltimately, near the end, when you are with the loved one for long periods of time and when there is little change of facial expression and almost no communication, we feel alienation, not only from the loved one and the relationship we have shared, but also from ourselves. We lose our bearings and part of our own identity. The face of the other is no longer functioning as a ‘mirror’ of ourselves. Kernis and JSQ elegantly lead us to this simple but important insight. You may be interested to read Chapter 6 of W. David Shaw’s book. The chapter is entitled ‘Does Good Grief Therapy Make Good Art? The Paradox of Strong and Weak Mourners’ (link below).
F or me, the basic source from which all my work flows is a belief in the inexhaustible number of things music can do—its ability to spring from the inexhaustibility of the thoughts and emotions of human beings.” — Aaron Jay Kernis, interview with Joshua Kosman, Strings Magazine, JUL-1999.
I t’s elegiac and mournful and pleading and screaming for so long, and then comes redemption. He builds you up and then creates a release that’s so moving, you don’t realize that the time has gone by. I recognized that from the audience reaction—you can feel that they’re not breathing [while you play], and that’s really good. People only realize afterward that it’s not a short piece—it’s 30 minutes long. But it has such incredible line, and the intensity doesn’t let up for a second. So you’re hanging on every note, waiting to see what happens. That element of suspense is a very unusual compositional technique.” — Aaron Jay Kernis, interview with Joshua Kosman, Strings Magazine, JUL-1999.
T he melodies themselves go from sound to sound, but the internals are empty abysses—because the notes are lacking in sonic energy. The inner space is itself empty.” — Giacinto Scelsi.
T he ways that the organ emulates the human voice are familiar enough. But minimalist, textural compositions can lead us to re-examine what is the voice, what is the self? Exhibit “A”: Christoph Maria Moosman’s 2009 recording (link below) of pieces by Giacinto Scelsi, Arvo Pärt, and John Cage.
[50-sec clip, Christoph Maria Moosmann, Giacinto Scelsi, ‘In Nomine Lucis’, 1974, 1.6MB MP3]
T here are sudden variations in the dynamics and texture, giving a sense of suppleness and surprising vitality. The beat-frequencies of minor seconds leave impressions of quarter-tones. Frequently there appear string-like vibrato effects and pulsations within a single tone. These qualities mimic ‘vocal’ improvisations—things that piano and other instruments simply could not do. It isn’t plausible that Scelsi created these improvisations with certain ‘models’ in mind, even ‘ritual music’ of Tibetan Buddhism.
T he creation of music is an event full of differentiation and multiple transfers. The composer intuits something ungraspable, as yet not definable and gives it a sort of shape. The result, the musical score, isn’t music yet, is not audible yet. If a person is able to imagine the soundscape that is hidden in a sheet of music, to ‘hear’ in his/her mind the sound and rhythms as yet to be expressed by instruments, then that person is capable of a feat that hardly anyone can master. We are utterly dependent on mediators who transform the visible-but-not-audible sheet of music into an audible-but-not-visible music.” — Christa Maysenhölder.
W e might naturally assume that, if Scelsi was deliberate in his improvisations, he must have had some plan or sketch or idea of what he was aiming to create. Yet this ‘In Nomine Lucis’ and other pieces lead us to suspect otherwise: the music generates itself, its own form, its own trajectory. We know that it is the product of human creative activity, but it is, despite this, more like a natural object, a stream, a branch of a tree, moving but subjectless.
A fter Scelsi’s improvisations were recorded, he typically had collaborators help him realize and notate the final product: Scelsi believed that the processes of transcription and notation were not jobs for the ‘artist’ but should be instead given over to ‘craftsmen.’ He collaborated with various trusted friends and colleagues—Roman Blood, Sergio Caferro, Alvin Curran, Frances-Marie Uitti, Vieru Tosatti, others. Third-party transcription as a fundamental part of his method: Scelsi’s compositions feel even more ‘organic’ or more distanced from the composer on account of this.
F or me, this evokes the same sort of distancing or suspense that we feel when we hear laryngectomees using electrolarynx prostheses. The pitch and timbral variations that TruTone™ and Servox™ and other digital prosthetic devices are now capable of are considerable. But their nuances are still inevitably less than the natural voice would have. The prostheses embody restrictions, road-blocks, performance risk.
A nd these features lead us to discover in the boundaries-pushing, constraints-challenging, indomitable performance under duress: new dimensions of the person—of the ‘subject’, of embodiment, of ensoulment in the living body.
A t the end of the nineteen-fifties, Giacinto Scelsi, a self-taught Italian composer and erstwhile playboy Count who had dabbled in Eastern religions and Theosophy, had the extraordinary idea of writing an entire work—the ‘Four Pieces’ for chamber orchestra—that consisted of only single tones, one for each movement. Scelsi was not the first to hit on this concept: Elliott Carter had ventured it in his ‘Eight Études and a Fantasy’ in 1950. Nor is the scheme followed literally—the instruments often bend away from the parent note, shifting by microtones, semitones, or larger intervals. But by the end of the work a paradigm shift has taken place: the Tone is all-powerful once more. Music returns to its primitive origins: melody formed from noise.” — Alex Ross.
C hristoph Maria Moosmann was born in 1960 in Riedlingen, Germany. He studied Catholic Church Music at Freiburg Conservatory and subsequently studied for the Kapellmeister diploma in Basel and Zurich. From 1982 to 1988 he was organist at University Church in Freiburg and Artistic Dirctor of Musiktage at University of Freiburg. From 1988 to 1994 he served as organist of the City Church in Wil, Switzerland, and since 1995 he has been the principal organist of the Church Maria Frieden in Zurich-Dubendorf.
