I mprovising is difficult-] because our current educational system makes it so.” — William Porter, keynote talk, EROI 2011.
B ecause learning it happens so very late [in the course of pedagogy and acquiring musical skills].” — Eastman student, quoted by William Porter, EROI 2011.
T he EROI festival this year is centered on the topic of improvisation and opened this afternoon with a stimulating, expansive meditation-cum-keynote-speech by William Porter, entitled ‘Why Is Improvisation So Difficult?’
I t was followed by a breathtaking, virtuosic “triple-header” 8:00 p.m. recital on the Craighead-Saunders organ for a packed-in audience at Christ Church across the street from Eastman School of Music:
Böhm – Praeludium in C; Herr Jesu Christ dich zu uns wend (Chorale Cycle with 6 verses); Hans Davidsson
Hindemith – Organ Sonata No. 1; William Porter
Schumann – Etuden in kanonischer Form für Orgel oder Pedalklavier, Op. 56; David Higgs
Liszt – Präludium und Fuge über den Nahmen B-A-C-H; David Higgs
U p to the mid-18th Century, improvisation was a fundamental skill in which most if not all practicing musicians were adept. Since that time, however, fewer and fewer musicians have felt fluent at improvising extemporaneously.
P orter catalogued the concepts and situations that he believes lead many musicians today to find improvising difficult. He averred that because genres and idioms are today so tremendously diverse, it is difficult to teach improvisation as ‘compositional performance’ insofar as it is not humanly possible for one person to be fully fluent in what constitutes improvisation in more than a few genres/idioms. It was far easier when the prevailing idioms/use-cases/purposes of the music were few in number and the contexts for the improvisation (e.g., liturgical/sacred music) were more structured.
F oremost among the reasons why improvisation has become ‘hard,’ Porter says, is that counterpoint, voice-leading, and harmony are in recent decades taught in ‘classroom’ settings, primarily as paper-based exercises in writing, instead of as practical performance on a keyboard instrument (or any other instrument, including voice). Student musicians only rarely these days develop any ‘muscle memory’ for improvisation per se, so that the body—the fingers, the hands, the diaphragm, the whole body—knows how to execute improvisation as a sort of ‘compositional performance’. Porter exhorted the teachers in the audience to amend the curriculum to impart such kinesthetic knowledge to students, and to do it from their earliest days when they are kids, just beginners, much in the manner that would be done with dancers or other kinds of athletes.
S ome book links are gathered below, for your interest, in the spirit of Porter’s remarks about embodiment, kinesthetics, and corporality in improvisation. Especially noteworthy is Pamela Ruiter-Feenstra’s new two-volume treatise ‘Bach and the Art of Improvisation’ (link below).
W hat a fantastic EROI Festival this will be, crafting the future of organ improvisation and improvisation pedagogy!
W e must kill the twin demons of ‘originality’/‘novelty’ and ‘imitation’: these ultimately lead to paralysis and inhibit improvisation. Instead, we must teach the student how to be compelling, how to be convincing. It is better to be ‘interesting’ than to be original. The integrity of saying something with conviction, and of being spontaneously responsive to other musicians and to the audience—is what we really mean by ‘improvisation’. We must teach them to prepare—to prepare to take advantage of the unexpected when it happens.” — William Porter, keynote talk, EROI 2011.
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.
O ne of the foremost composers of the French Baroque operatic tradition, Rameau is often cited for his struggle to steer lyric tragedy away from its strict Lullian form, inspired by spoken tragedy, and toward a more expressive musical style… In his compositions, Rameau tried to highlight music’s potential for dramatic meanings. But his listeners, who understood lyric tragedy to be a ‘poetic’ rather than ‘musical’ genre, were generally frustrated by these attempts. In fact, some described Rameau’s music as ‘monstrous’—using an image of deformity to represent the failure of reason and communication.” — Charles Dill, 1998, Professor of Musicology, Univ Wisconsin-Madison.
L isten to that, will you?” the person next to me could not help but say to me during the intermission. “Have you ever heard an ensemble so in-tune? or so ‘tight’, rhythmically? Each section is playing like they were one person!”
Y are right. I couldn’t disagree,” I said. “And to see them pivoting and rotating left and right, each by as much as 90 degrees, to see each other and physically gesture directly at each other! Their knee-flexing and expressive leaning and swaying... Their stretching of the dynamics, decibels quieter (with mutes on) and louder, beyond the usual interpretation of the as-written dynamics... How intriguing to see instrumentalists do this! It’s like they are opera singers, singing to each other.”
T he Australian Chamber Orchestra performance in Kansas City tonight was exceptionally good. And the exchange above occurred after the Haydn and Mozart before they got to the Suite from the opera ‘Dardanus’.
E nglish pianist Paul Lewis (who trained with Alfred Brendel, among others) joined the Orchestra for the Mozart Piano Concerto No. 12, K. 414... “A lush yet ‘crystalline’ tone... rhythmically ultra-synchronized with the ACO members... Amazing!”
Haydn: Symphony No. 44 ‘Trauer-Sinfonie’
Mozart: Piano Concerto No. 12 in A Major, K. 414
Rameau: Suite from ‘Dardanus’ (1739, 1744, 1760; RCT 35)
T he Rameau after the intermission was especially dramatic. Sans recorders and flutes but equipped with antiphonally-distributed horns, we were treated to six short movements with wonderfully rich acoustic colors and textures. Oboes cohabited with violas, the bassoon communed among felicitous cellos, and Lions laid down peaceably with Lambs. The textural and spatial novelty is not gimmicky—it’s innovative, aesthetically defensible in the context of Baroque sensibilities, and stimulates more drama and interest than the music might otherwise do. Very cool. And an excellent way to illuminate Rameau’s complex sense of the interplay between the narrative arc of the libretto and the associated arc of the instrumental music for the opera.
R ichard Tognetti became Artistic Director and Lead Violin in 1990, and under his leadership the ACO has embarked on ever more flexible ensemble configurations: small chamber group; small symphony orchestra; electro-acoustic chamber group; and so on. In ‘live’ performances, only the cellists are seated. The energetic interactions that this deployment encourages are nice—the visual gestures amongst the artists tend to be more demonstrative than when ensemble members are all seated. The standing ensemble members and the antiphonal positioning of some of the instruments add substantially to the excitement of the experience for audience members—these directorial/production decisions were especially appropriate for the dramatic Rameau. Oboes, far far stage-left, their backs to the shell, behind the violins; horn, center-rear; bassoon, far stage-right. These parts speak to each other across the distance, while the strings play with tight precision, as though they were one! Not just stretched dynamics, but dramatically accentuated spatial depth. Uncanny!
T hese decisions and variations also help tremendously realize and vividly accentuate Rameau’s physicality. These directorial/production decisions draw attention to the metaphorical ‘embodiment’ that Golan Gur and other Rameau scholars have written about. ‘Embodiment’ in the field of cognitive science refers to understanding the role of an agent's (character’s; performer’s) own body in its situated interactions with other agents in context—the role that the body has in the agent’s comprehending the situation and those interactions. For example, Dardanus “can’t stand to see” his future relationship with Iphise reduced to questions of pre-arranged nuptials and political alliances—his physical experience of standing, or failing to remain standing, or failing to endure the situation—is an example of cognitive ‘embodiment’, of physicality, which colors Dardanus’s cognition of the situation. His impulsive decision to go kill the monster could hardly arise from anything less than a powerful emotion, mediated by ‘embodied’ cognition.
A CO’s production values are fabulous throughout, but this Rameau really captured my imagination… Richard Tognetti is the Dardanus character! We are so not accustomed to instrumental players physically ‘acting’! These are not a Baroque ensemble performing a Suite ‘from’ Rameau’s opera; they are playing and moving physically on-stage as though they are the opera singers.
I n Greek mythology, Dardanus was a son of Zeus and Electra. The name ‘Dardanus’ in Greek (Δάρδανος) is forboding: it means ‘burnt to a shrivet’, from the verb δαρδάπτω (dardapto)—to grind down utterly, to burn up completely, to vaporize. In the Rameau opera, Dardanus is feuding with King Teucer. Teucer has promised to marry his daughter Iphise to King Anténor, done deal, so much for women’s rights. King Anténor is sucking in his attempts to defeat the monster that’s terrorizing Teucer’s kingdom. Dardanus and Iphise meet, through the probably-superfluous intervention of the magician Isménor, and fall hopelessly in love. An ‘army of one’ and now properly/amorously motivated, Dardanus then single-handedly defeats the terror-monster, saving Anténor’s life. Teucer and Dardanus make peace, and Dardanus finagles Teucer’s release of Iphise from her betrothal to Anténor. Anténor’s happy enough just to be alive, so Dardanus and Iphise marry and live happily ever after, so far as we or Rameau know. So, embodiment, yes; burnt shrivets, no—at least not in this opera or this Suite for chamber ensemble.
Ouverture (Lent)
Premier air (Grave)
Ritournelle
Premier menuet; Deuxième menuet en rondeau
Air de triomphe
Bruit de guerre pour Entr’acte
T he piece by Pavel Haas—Tognetti’s arrangement of String Quartet No. 2 for the larger ACO ensemble—pushed the dramatics up a notch. A dark, dissonant work, filled with punctate staccatos and percussive effects; very ‘cinematic’. Once again, the rhythmic crispness of the ensemble lent extra energy and excitement to the endeavor. The synchronicity of each section was astonishing—every player’s vibrato starting simultaneously, executing with identical width and periodicity, and ending simultaneously; every sautille, identical. To paraphrase Butch Cassidy & The Sundance Kid, who are those guys!??! ACO’s unprecedented dramatics and beautiful physicality brought the audience to its feet.
I f you haven’t previously encountered it, you may like to look at Charles Dill’s book on Rameau from about 10 years ago. Also, as relates to the inter-relationships between text and music, have a look at Peter Kivy’s new book. Several sources regarding ‘embodiment’ and theory of aesthetics and cognition are also included in the links below, for your interest.
The Australian Chamber Orchestra was founded in 1975 in Sydney. Their performances have been very popular at home (more than 10,000 Australian subscribers to their concert series) and heavily attended abroad, too. The ACO’s repertoire ranges from baroque and classical pieces to 20th-Century and new music. ACO has in recent years commissioned quite a few compositions. The financial sponsorship of the Australia Council for the Arts and the Australian Music Office have contributed significantly to ensuring ACO’s success and sustainability. Would that ACA and AMO examples were emulated by other countries, particularly during the current economic down-turn! (As Tognetti said to the audience, maybe in a more affluent time ACO will not have to conserve on expenses so much and once again tour with their percussionist. That way, Julian Thompson will not need to treat the body of his cello so severely/pugilistically, to create the knocks, bangs, paper-in-the-strings buzzes, and other percussive effects called-for in works like the Haas.)
P orter catalogued the concepts and situations that he believes lead many musicians today to find improvising difficult. He averred that because genres and idioms are today so tremendously diverse, it is difficult to teach improvisation as ‘compositional performance’ insofar as it is not humanly possible for one person to be fully fluent in what constitutes improvisation in more than a few genres/idioms. It was far easier when the prevailing idioms/use-cases/purposes of the music were few in number and the contexts for the improvisation (e.g., liturgical/sacred music) were more structured. 
