jwilzewske: marketing

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Monday, July 23, 2012

Music in the Vineyards: Rheingau Festival ‘Musiker in Weingütern’

D rei Musiker - eine Mission: Die Befreiung der Blockflöte vom schäbigen Ruf eines Kinderspielzeugs! [Three musicians, one mission: Liberation of the recorder from its seedy reputation as a children’s toy!]”
— Wildes Holz.

S ometimes an event is just so good you have to pinch yourself to check whether or not you are dreaming. That is surely the case for the ‘Musiker in Weingütern’ events, part of the Rheingau Festival near Frankfurt/Wiesbaden. The performance I attended yesterday at Weingut Baron von Knyphausen was full, approximately 2,000 people attending at 32 euro each = €64K ticket sales, plus concession sales.

S eating was at well-shaded picnic tables with benches seating 8 persons per bench, 16 persons per table. The picnic tables were arranged under a U-shaped configuration of large wind- and weather-proof tents, with the stage in the center of the U. On each side of the U, the tables were deployed with their long axis pointing toward the stage. The grass aisles between adjoining tables were wide enough to enable attendees to quietly and easily come and go without disturbing their neighbors. Each table was numbered, and each numbered seat was assigned and ticketed—so that attendees purchasing tickets were able to select the location and price-level of seating they preferred, in just the same way as they would for a concert in a concerthall—with the assurance and peace-of-mind that they will not be subjected to a jostling free-for-all, of the sort that is associated with ‘general admission’ to a sold-out performance.

T he geometry of the tables and benches arranged in this manner meant that every member of the audience had one shoulder toward the stage (or else straddled the bench or rode the bench side-saddle to face the stage) and had a fine view of the performers throughout.

T he performance began at 16:00 sharp and continued until 20:00. Children played in the grassy space in front of the stage. Despite vigorous play, not once was there noise or rough-housing; not once did a parent have to collar a child to stop any misbehavior. The adults consumed generous quantities of wine but not one became loutish or disruptive. In short, a wonderful afternoon was had by all!

E ach of 4 ensembles played for 35 minutes with 25 minutes interval for set-up and sound-checks for the next group, during which the attendees had ample time to go to the concession tables and buy food, wine, and water. Sound reinforcement was expertly done, with excellent miking and engineering from the mixing deck, and sufficient monitor speakers arrayed all around the tent area.

T he tents and awnings were of extremely heavy-weight vinyl-coated materials, so that even in a 5km/hr light breeze they made absolutely no flapping or extraneous noise.

T o make this sort of a 4-hour collaboration succeed, the following elements are essential:

Musical repertoire must be relatively robust (not ‘loud’ surely, but with tempi and phrasing that will be gesturally clear even under less-than-ideal acoustical conditions), so that the sound reinforcement will be adequate to enable the performers to be understood without listener annoyance, even if there is some wind.
Musicians must possess abundant poise and confidence to face unexpected contingencies gracefully and with humor.
Catering and front-of-house staff must be knowledgeable, skillful, and energetic in their roles. They must behave as though their employment depends on their performance. Presenters: Do not imagine attempting an event of this size and complexity with volunteer or trainee resources or staff who have a laid-back or entitlement attitude, or who cop a touchy ‘artistic temperament’ when they are in contact with the public.
Food and beverage concessions must offer a menu with a wide variety of choices ranging from small snacks to mains and desserts, deliver them rapidly to customers (from steam-tables and other logistically efficient equipment), and handle cashier operations swiftly.
Lavatory facilities should be dispersed throughout the periphery of the venue, so that access is quick and reasonably dignified for all attendees regardless of their seating location and queues do not form. Wineries are accustomed to catering large events with substantial ingress and egress of fluids and are expert in maintaining appealing aesthetics with these necessary functions. This is no time for cheap, smelly temporary johnny-on-the-spot sheds.

A n event like this has, I would say, approximately equal opportunities and risks for the winery and for the performers. The attendees and their word-of-mouth social network communications about their wine-music experience are a portal to viral opinions about both products—the wine and the music. Both products face intense competition and market-saturation. And, to be honest, both products tend to address market segments that are somewhat older—35 years and up. There should be more music-wine events like this! (There are a few, such as Music in theVineyards Festival in St. Helena, California, and Huntington Estate Festival in New South Wales.) But there is an unmet need here. There should be far more events like these! In summary, [chamber/small-ensemble] music-in-vineyards is a perfect blend, and Weingut Baron Knyphausen and the ensembles yesterday harmonized perfectly on this sunny Sunday in July, to the total pleasure and memorable benefit of all.

Monday, May 7, 2012

Evgeny Sorkin & Gerard Willems: Beethoven Sonatas for Piano & Violin (& Cocktails)

A re we as performers always bound to execute Beethoven’s ornamentation as he consciously intended when we believe that there is a more convincing possibility? This is a subject to which a whole conference could be devoted, as it involves aesthetic, philosophical and even moral dilemmas. My own short answer is ‘Yes!’ There are certain works where it is obvious that a convincing manner of execution took decades to discover. It is reasonable to think that we are still today discovering it.”
— Daniel Herscovitch, Professor of Piano, Univ Sydney Conservatorium of Music.

T he faculty recital given last night by Sydney Conservatorium faculty members Evgeny Sorkin and Gerard Willems was exciting. The program featured the ‘Spring’ Sonata (Op. 24) and the ‘Kreutzer’ Sonata (Op. 47). The conservatory’s ‘Cocktail’ programs—starting at 19:30, with 65- to 80-min of performance and a snap 5-min intermission—are very popular. It is clearly a very effective marketing/programming concept… the recital hall was nearly completely filled up on this cool Fall Monday evening. Attendees seemed mainly to be 30s to 60s business people who work in Sydney’s central business district, who attend these concerts before taking the train home to the suburbs.

Abundant sturm und drang… lots of passion and gravity-defying force… yet tremendous intimacy, with both performers probing emotionally far beyond the notes. Such joy in this ‘Spring’! Really beautiful to see two artists enjoy performing together this much. Thrilling performance, plus 60 seconds of amusing historical/explanatory remarks from Gerard and Evgeny prior to beginning each piece. No ‘museum’, this!

Friday, March 30, 2012

Kinesthetics/Biomechanics of Instrument Design governs the music that comes out

S ome works begin their performance life in a shocking way but, with further performances, come to feel ‘more normal’. Not so with David Del Tredici’s ‘Syzygy’. It was composed in 1966, yet it retains all of its novelty and magic. It continues for me to be a source of wonder … and terror…”
— Michael Tilson Thomas, introductory remarks, Zankel Hall, 29-MAR-2012.

A fine program at Zankel Hall last night! Excellent New York premiére of Mason Bates’s 2011 ‘Mass Transmission’ for choir, organ, and electronica. A chamber orchestra comprised of members of San Francisco Symphony members gave a stirring account of Lou Harrison’s 1973 ‘Concerto for Organ and Percussion Orchestra’. And Del Tredici’s 1966 ‘Syzygy’ was just as disturbing as Michael Tilson Thomas promised (esp., the pyrotechnics by soprano Kiera Duffy and Nicole Cash, French horn).

B ut the highlight of the program for me was the 8-person ensemble who performed Harry Partch’s 1958 ‘Daphne of the Dunes’, using Partch’s original one-off, home-made instruments that had been shipped cross-country in two semi tractor-trailers for Carnegie Hall’s ‘American Mavericks’ programs. (Performed by Dean Drummond, harmonic cannon & spoils-of-war; Joe Bergen, harmonic cannon & chromelodeon; Charles Corey, kithara, surrogate-kithara, harmonic cannon; jeffery irving, surrogate-kithara & harmonic cannon; Jared Soldiviero, boo, spoils-of-war, kithara; Bill Ruyle, diamond marimba; Joe Fee, cloud chamber bowls; Greg Hesselink, tenor violin, gourd tree, missile-cone gongs, pre-recorded tape.)

T he spatial arrangements of the instruments’ parts give rise to a spectrum of motions that lie well under the human hand. The physical distances between the strike-positions that produce the notes; the non-monotonic relationship of the parts’ positioning to their pitches; the practical biomechanics of what it is feasible for human arms, and fingers, and feet to do; the sensitivity of the parts, namely, how much force is required to generate a particular sound intensity: all of these contribute to the sonic qualities and musical tendencies of each instrument. The geometries of each instrument are associated with patterns and playing motions and sounds that are natural or characteristic for the instrument and the music to which it contributes. This is true of all instruments, of course; but we tend to under-recognize the fact when we listen to or observe performers of ‘normal’ instruments. With Partch’s compositions, the kinesthetics and biomechanics of the user interface are in our face.

F or example, plucking vertical strings that descend down by your knees, where you have difficulty seeing the strings in the shadows—leaning forward, bending down, and plucking them while standing, perched on a tall, narrow, possibly-catastrophically-tippy bench—while the music is located on a frail, kludgy stand way up above your head—these features impart an inherent, peculiar urgency and anxiety to the playing, which on account of these reasons is very different from the sound of a harp played by a performer who is comfortably and safely seated. The emotional quality of the sound is dramatically different, despite the fact that the mechanism of sound production is substantially the same in the two instruments.

W hat an evening!—showcasing compositions that have their own internal reasons for being, mostly refusing to cater to any external audience! And, with the exception of the Mason Bates piece (commissioned by San Francisco Symphony, with support of Michele and Laurence Corash), innovating things with slim expectation of popularity or compensation within the composer’s lifetime. Price of vision.

Wednesday, March 28, 2012

Gotham Chamber Opera: “Lexapro… for anxiety, fictional and non-fictional!”

B ecause you're so close you have no choice but to feel a part of it... It’s really visceral!”
— Neal Goren.

A ttended the 10^th anniversary celebration performance of Gotham Chamber Opera last night, at Le Poisson Rouge. Founded in 2000 by Neal Goren, Gotham Chamber Opera is dedicated to producing rarely-performed chamber operas from the Baroque era to the present (including Piazzolla’s 1968 tango opera, Sutermeister’s 1935 ‘Die schwarze Spinne’, Britten’s 1947 ‘Albert Herring’, Haydn’s 1779 ‘L’isola disabitata’, and Handel’s 1733 ‘Arianna in Creta’). As last night’s performance demonstrated, GCO is also dedicated to new music combined with a hefty dose of comedy. Their concert included the première of a new work by Gabriel Kahane, ‘You left me, Sweet, two legacies’, a setting of the Emily Dickinson poem with that first line, performed by soprano Jennifer Check and pianist Neal Goren.

A lso on the program were Opera Company of Philadelphia composer-in-residence Lembit Beecher’s dark, poignant and beautiful ‘Heart Rhythms’ 2008 trio for bass clarinet (Amy Zoloto), violin (Nurit Pacht), and cello (Sophie Shao); Mozart’s ‘Quercia annosa su l’erte pendici’, aria No. 7 from ‘Il sogno di Scipione’, K. 126; Ravel’s ‘Chansons Madécasses’; George Lam’s and Benjamin Rogers’s ‘Variations’; Purcell’s ‘Sound the Trumpet’ 1694 aria/ode celebrating the birthday of King James II [Maeve Höglund, soprano; Gennard Lobardozzi, tenor; Keun-A Lee, harpsichord; Sophie Shao, cello]; Richard Strauss’s ‘Wie schön is doch die musik’ [Benjamin LeClair, bass] and ‘Marie Theres! Hav’ mir’s gelobt’ from ‘Die Rosenkavalier’ [with Eve Gigliotti, mezzo-soprano]; and ‘Les vents furieux’ from Rameau’s 1745 hit ‘La Princess de Navarre’. Gabriel Kahane and ensemble Miracles of Modern Science (MoMS) [Evan Younger, vocals/double-bass; Josh Hirshfeld, vocals/mandolin; Kieran Ledwidge, vocals/violin; Geoff McDonald, vocals/cello; Tyler Pines, vocals/drums] contributed comic and atmospheric pieces as well.

O ne of the works, George Lam’s and Benjamin Rogers’s ‘Variations On’, incorporated fragments of ambient/overheard conversations in public spaces combined with satirical quotes from recent pharmaceutical advertisement voiceovers. The latter were sometimes edited or transformed slightly (as, for example, with the one in the title of this blogpost, for Forest Laboratories’ Lexapro® escitalopram SSRI antidepressant), which makes the quoted material function as commentary on contemporary society—in a manner that is only incrementally more disturbing than the original ad.

T he audience in the sold-out LPR club loved the whole evening. Bravo! Happy GCO 10^th anniversary! Many happy returns!

Saturday, January 28, 2012

Kristen Plumley, Star Fleet Soprano

I think that the science fiction genre has inspired so many artists... painters, poets, and certainly musicians. It is such an imaginative form of expression that speculates on our destiny — where are we going in the future? Science fiction and the music we associate with it truly resonates with many, many people.”
— George Takei.

I was a HUGE science fiction fan growing up, so this concert is like a ‘dream-come-true’ for me. It’s the most fun I’ve ever had on-stage.”
— Kristen Plumley.

I t takes real guts and musicianship to pull off pieces like the ones we heard last night at Kansas City’s Kauffman Center! Let’s just say that it tests the mental and emotional stamina in a different way, compared to, say, opera. Maybe such pieces should become a part of the repertoire for performance requirements—Star Fleet costume and all!—in conservatories and schools of music. Can you deliver your solo starship-arresting vocalizations and maintain your composure? Kristen Plumley sure can! Hailing frequencies are open!

R enowned pops conductor Jack Everly led members of the Kansas City Symphony in a superb performance, made even more dramatic by voice-overs by George Takei. Tickets were sold-out weeks in advance—which speaks volumes, too, about the tremendous appeal these familiar tunes have for broad audience. Brilliant programming and marketing! Bravo!

Wednesday, January 18, 2012

Chamber Music for Dressage Freestyle (kür)

I want people to feel that it’s not just a kur but something like art. I hope people have a physical feeling as they hear the music—for me it is so special. I want them to be excited as they listen and watch. I think there’s a lot of emotion in it... My music before was mostly French, and this kur has some international music, but I’m also using some music by Polish composers... It’s difficult to put a name to this music, but it’s like a mix of classical with trance.”
— Michal Rapcewicz, FEI World Cup 2009.

T his November 2011 post about the Spanish Riding School in Vienna has in 6 weeks’ time received a surprisingly large number of pageviews and outclicks.

M ost of these new visitors to CMT (and searchers who land on CMT) are equestrians, dressage riders looking for suitable music with tempi in the 140 to 160 bpm range that will suit the biomechanics of their horse and that will offer a chance to dramatically differentiate themselves from the other competitors… these are horse people who are tired to death of riding trite ‘pop’ music for their dressage tests.

B ut some of the horsey CMT visitors landing on that November lippizaner blogpost have come from TCP/IP addresses that indicate they are from Conservatories and from chamber music ensembles’ websites. Are these visitors merely musicians who in their spare time are hobbyist dressage amateurs? Or are they instead seriously looking to program new repertoire for dressage and thereby expand the market for their chamber performances and recordings? Are any of them composers, I wonder?

A nyhow, the traffic does stimulate thought! Possibly some composers would be intrigued by the prospect of writing for dressage... consider it in the same way you would composing for ballet! It is far easier to get commissioned by serious dressage riders to do some ‘miniatures’ than it is to get hired to write a ballet score. [Typically, there is a very brief leader or intro (the rider must enter the arena within 20 sec of the start of the music) to establish the mood/atmosphere and tempo and rhythmic structure of the piece—enough to cue the horse and rider. The dressage rules stipulate that the maximum length is 5 minutes of music. In many jurisdictions, there is no minimum time limit; however, most kür music is a bit longer than 3 min. Depending on the choreography, saying what you want to say in 3’30’’ or 4’20’’, say, is far more crisp, focused and dramatic (and competition-winning) than pointlessly dilating the piece to the max 4’59’’.]

A nd possibly some chamber music ensembles would be interested in recording such works... providing CDs or MP3s for dressage tests.

P ossibly ACF or other sponsors of new music would set ‘dressage to music’/‘freestyle’/‘kür’ as a subject for a future competition and call-for-compositions. Possibly one of the national dressage organizations would commission some compositions for kür.

T hink Bach WTC Bk 1, Prelude and Fugue No. 2 in C minor, BWV 847 (prelude), with a dark-angel Sviatoslav Richter-esque tempo. Nothing too delicate! Nothing too subtle! The music will be amplified, typically in a large echoic arena or open space—so you need clear orchestration with not too much polyphony or rhythmic complexity. Think confident, ebullient, full of impulsion! Think music that is emblematic of divine almighty beauty, whatever you conceive that to be! Think intimate and individualistic sound that will showcase the equine dancer! Think ‘What music would a beautiful, balletic horse love to dance to?’

Saturday, December 24, 2011

Hans Zimmer & Co. save Holmes, entropically

I t’s the furiously melodic likes of Gladiator, The Lion King, Inception, Batman Begins, Dark Knight Rises, Pirates of the Caribbean, Kung Fu Panda, and Sherlock Holmes that’s elevated film music to a thing of rocking beauty, as Zimmer and his team have employed every oddball instrument and influence from Gustav Holst, Lebo M. and the sound of bat wings into percussively thematic adrenalin.”
— Daniel Schweiger, 2011.

I f you ask me, Zimmer’s score rescues Sherlock Holmes (and Guy Ritchie et al.) in the new ‘A Game of Shadows’ film.

Z immer and his composer-orchestrator colleagues at Remote Control Productions created a beautiful and varied score that augments the color and vista of the film, lending atmosphere, scope, and interest to what otherwise could seem predictable. Never gets in the way of what the script and imagery are doing, but never merely reinforces or sonically reiterates what’s been said or shown.

B ut more than this, I am really thrilled with the tempi and the rhythmic architecture of this score. I got the soundtrack and listened to it several times, measured the tempi bar-by-bar in each of the cues, and created a spreadsheet of the values (see jpeg above). I also put an EKG on myself and digitized my heartrate during each listening. Not only did my heartrate adapt to each of the tempo changes, but the heart rate variability (HRV, using the simple RMSSD metric) also synced with Zimmer’s music. Empirically, I suspect that that “N-of-1” experiment is indicative of why this music “works”—physiologic response “pulls” cognition, rather than the other way around.

S ee the book by Bacci and Melcher (link below) for more on phase-locking and rhythmic ‘entrainment’ of breathing, heartbeat, and other physiologic rhythms, syncing with music.

S ince I’d captured the tempo timeseries, I decided to do some other calculations on it, too. I used the open-source R system’s package ‘entropy’ (link below) to calculate the Miller-Madow, James-Stein, Tsallis, Chao-Shen, and Shannon/Jeffreys entropy values. The entropy of the timeseries of tempi for these 18 cues is H = 2.72... pretty high... indicating a substantial amount of variability/unpredictability/interestingness. If you do entropy calcs for “bad” or ineffective film scores (as I happened to do several times last summer), you get much lower values, H between about 1.10 and 1.90.

M ost film schools don't even mention music, much less compare examples of good and bad scoring.”
— Richard Bellis, 2006, p. 8.

T he cues’ titles (track-names) collect words and phrases from the screenplay that are cadential—perfect rhythmic-harmonic demarcations of the narrative arc and plotting. It’s clear that Zimmer applied an admirable amount of objectivity in the spotting session, to inject material that adds considerable depth to the character or the story without the material asserting itself as a vehicle for his own ego.

T he score (Die Forelle; The Red Book; Moral Insanity) makes Robert Downey Jr’s Holmes more alert and angry when he is facing Jared Harris’ Moriarty. The score (He’s All ‘Me! Me! Me!’) makes Jude Law’s Dr. Watson all the more hapless as he gets unwillingly caught up in the plot.

T he producers and Guy [Ritchie, the director] and Jude [Law, co-star] and I got together and tried to have it feel like an extension of what we think brotherhood is—the bickering and miscommunications are part of something that aspires to something higher.”
— Robert Downey Jr., Scotland BigIssues Magazine 05-DEC-2011.

A Game of Shadows’ stands as a valentine to the public-school buccaneer. It provides Ritchie with a licence to run wild with Gypsies, trade punches with cossacks, or just generally arse about in expensive hotels. It gives us anarchy as panto and global espionage in the guise of a homoerotic stag weekend.”
— Xan Brooks, The Guardian.

I n other words, Zimmer’s score truly ‘services’ the film’s narrative, neither over-writing nor under-writing. Naturally, given the big-action subject matter in this film, there are lots of huge orchestral cues. But there are more than half of the cues that are intimate, chamber-like pieces.

M any think that what we do is ‘Art’. I disagree. Music is an art form. Film music is a craft with its roots in art. Art is a form of self-expression, and the last thing a director wants is some composer coming in and expressing him/herself all over the director’s film.”
— Richard Bellis, 2006, p. 69.

F olk idioms in the Romani melodies (doina repeated-note gesture of lament), pentatonicism, Phrygian scale with the second and third scale degrees raised when ascending, and fraigish harmonic minor, flying-staccato, alla zingarese poco a poco accelerandos “hallgató/lassú-közép gyors-friss" (e.g., Kesergö or or verbunkos or csárdás style in ‘It’s So Overt, It’s Covert’; ‘Romanian Wind’) to breakneck speeds, acrobatic violin with pitches bending and glissing, and the tone growling and crying ... great colla parte tempo-leading.

T he Hungarian hallgató of the ‘Did You Kill My Wife?’ brass band is superb.

G ee, this soundtrack is an admirable thing! The tremolos begin slowly, and the accelerandi melt into the flourishes so that they sound like one gesture—far bigger ones than you imagined when they began. The playing and conducting are excellent throughout. Precisely nailing the tempo variations, yet sounding totally organic while remaining faithful to meter. Very, very nice!

Tuesday, December 6, 2011

Tallis Scholars’ sound, or why 176 KHz/192 KHz HD sampling for choral chamber music is important

I t is known that energy in the 5-20 KHz range can be perceived even when it is 50 dB or more below the main voice spectrum peak. Also, these upper frequencies are conventionally emphasized in the production of popular vocal music. Yet very few studies of the acoustic content of this range have been made. High fidelity recordings were made of singers sustaining vowels at varying levels of vocal effort. A general characterization of the two highest octaves 5-20 KHz was sought. The prevalence of high-frequency energy, the variation of harmonics signal-to-noise ratio as a function of frequency, and the covariation with overall SPL were all highly variable, but several landmark features were identified... [including] clusters of resonances in the regions 7-10 KHz and 13-16 KHz. Harmonic energy was observed to over 16 KHz in strong female voices.”
— Sten Ternström, KTH Stockholm, 2008.

T he Tallis Scholars’ performance in Kansas City tonight was gorgeous. The concert was performed in the Cathedral of the Immaculate Conception, which has a central altar and a wide chancel such that there are myriad acoustic reflections that arrive at one’s ears from multiple directions. Unlike many performance venues where reflected sound for people seated in most locations is predominantly from one or two general directions, Immaculate Conception has quite high reflective efficiency from many of its interior surfaces.

I f you are seated close to the ensemble—not more than, say, 10 meters away from the sound source—the sound projects exaggerated cues of ‘spatiality’, accentuating the atmospheric qualities that are there in the music and the text. This was especially true tonight during the pieces by Arvo Pärt, which have considerable dissonance and frisson amongst the parts, with long sustained notes during which the spatial effects from the direct and indirect sounds arriving at our ears can be fully appreciated.

T aking into account the speed of sound, we can convert energy defocusing in the time domain to “smear” in distance estimation by the ears. Energy spread over ±500 ms is the same as a distance smear of ±15 cm. 96 KS/s keeps almost all the energy within about ±50 ms, or ±1.5 cm. One of the observations people make about 96 KS/s material is that the spatial localisation of everything is very much better than 44.1 KS/s. 192 KS/s is better than this, although very dependent on amp and speaker performance to demonstrate it.”
— Mike Story, 1997.

T he spectrum of frequencies and harmonics returning to your ears in this marble-and-plaster, highly-reflective cathedral has a surprising, pleasing amount of power in the range 4 KHz and up. In an age when noise and unpleasant/irrational/blurred stimuli bombard us every day, the Tallis Scholars’ sound in this sort of brightly reverberant performance space restores our belief in clarity—restores our belief in the fidelity of human communication across large distances in space and time. It is as though high signal-to-noise ratio becomes an aesthetic and cultural emblem of Civilization itself.

W hat I mean is, the sound (with its high S/N and high-end harmonics) not only embodies the enduring and transcendent meaning of the sacred music that Tallis performs and the human spirituality that caused this music to be written so long ago, but it asserts the very possibility of transcendence and persistence—of meaning that lasts beyond one’s own lifetime. After the concert, I go to Gimell Records’ website and download a couple of their 24-bit 176 KHz-sampled Studio Master high-def recordings, to get more of this. What I hear is truly thrilling—as good as the live performance.

C onventional wisdom doubts that humans can hear frequencies much higher than 20 KHz—frequencies higher than that are only perceptible to dogs and other animals. That is foolish—misinformation propagated uncritically since 50 years ago. In recent years, the misconception persists as a reflection of the fact that otolaryngologists’ and audiologists’ primary focus has been on “basic,” “practical” functions such as a person’s ability to hear and accurately understand speech. By contrast, research concerned with aesthetic and musical functioning has received much less attention or funding. [Measurement equipment for studying acoustics of bats in the 20 to 100 KHz part of the spectrum has existed for quite awhile—bat and bird and other animal communication is the subject of scholarly articles in acoustics society journals—but not many researchers studying humans have utilized it. Part of the reason why the freqency spectrum above 4 KHz for vocalizations has been under-studied is that high-speed video strobolaryngoscopy has been unable to detect the very small-amplitude (~0.1mm) vibrations in the larynx. Not surprisingly, if you can’t detect something, then you tend not to study what you can’t detect.]

T here is a common, mistaken notion that frequency response above 10 KHz is only relevant to sibilant “S” or fricative “F” type consonants in speech or singing. Well, that is most definitely not true, as evidenced by tonight’s Tallis Scholars performance! Recent research by Brian Monson, Andrew Lotto, and colleagues at the University of Arizona in Tucson (link below) shows that the frequency spectrum above 8 KHz figures prominently in singers’ sustained-vowel sound imaging—and figures also in listeners’ perception of open vowel sounds. The Pärt works in tonight’s program—and the effects of reverberation in these, in Immaculate’s chancel—especially emphasize intervallic and spatial relationships and transformations, and remind me of a workshop led by John Roeder at the 2003 Mannes Institute. That workshop examined expressive transformational representations for music by Pärt and others, and addressed how transformational representations relate to musical form, and to how musical forms are experienced. Varied repetition as in Pärt amounts to retracing similar transformational pathways among different sets of musical objects, and plumbing the extent and meaning of their similarities. Canon and contrapuntal cyclical spaces are frequent vehicles for enacting or showing transformations, of course, and—to the degree that each of these enactments is individually convincing—uncovering these unexpected connections becomes our primary mode of understanding and enjoying the music.

T onight’s performance and these HD Gimell/Tallis recordings reveal why it’s desirable to have a sampling frequency that is at least 4 times the desired system bandwidth, a process that is known as oversampling. If your goal is to maintain a “flat” response with 6 dB or less roll-off at the upper limit of the band, then a sampling frequency that is more than four times the desired bandwidth is needed—hence, the 176.4 KHz or 192 KHz sampling rates on these Gimell HD Studio Master files.

A problem (for me, at least) with off-the-shelf HD audio equipment is that the sound reproduction chain (player, preamps, EQ, power amps, speakers) can sometimes have too much high-frequency power. It can sound too sibilant—even for vowel sounds—somewhere between 12 KHz and 20 KHz. The spectrum EQ sliders on your playback equipment may not have center frequencies that correspond to wherever that objectionable tweeter “break-up frequency” peak is—so the adjustments you make to cope with it end up impairing the quality of the sound around that peak, essentially leaving you with a sound that's far less than HD. But Bowers & Wilkins speakers are one example of a product that doesn’t have this issue. They’re clear above 8 KHz, and give smooth mid-range and ample bass. Put two 800 Diamonds in front of you, two 802s behind you, plus a couple of DB1s somewhere in the room to cover the bottom bass frequencies. HD music recordings—such as those produced by Tallis and Gimell—have frequencies that exceed 20 KHz and we need speakers (and other components in the reproduction chain) that can accurately render these. The response of the 800Ds is essentially flat between 25 Hz and 33 KHz. Their tweeter “break-up” frequency is way, way out of harm’s way—at about 70 KHz.

R eproducing high frequencies has everything to do with recreating the sensation of sharpness and immediacy—the experience of being near the sound-source, in or near the front row (see Beranek, p. 511). There is not just the issue of rapid attenuation of high-frequency portions of the spectrum as a function of distance, but also the matter of inter-aural time-difference cues.

W e found that robust pitch perception can be elicited by harmonic complex tones with fundamental frequencies below 2 KHz, even when all of the individual harmonics are above 6 KHz—well above the currently-accepted ‘existence region’ of pitch and above the currently-accepted limits of neural phase-locking. The results suggest that perception of musical pitch at high frequencies is not constrained by temporal phase-locking in the auditory nerve but may instead stem from higher-level constraints shaped by [immediately] prior exposure to harmonic sounds.”
— Andrew Oxenham, Christophe Micheyl, Michael Keebler, Adam Loper & Sébastien Santurette, Dept of Psychology, Univ Minnesota, 2011.

I n other words, our ability to perceive (a) spatial relationships—relative locations of different singers or depth and breadth of other sound-sources—and (b) overtones/harmonics generated by the blending of all of the lower frequencies in ensemble (Fourier spectra of mixed signals) ... depends primarily on the high-frequency (short-wavelength) components and on phase-angle relationships between the frequencies as they mingle with each other in the performance space (or the playback environment, for a recording). If the sound-sources are moving (as in an opera; or even for singers who are shifting or rotating slightly on-stage), then the high-frequency components contribute most to our ability to perceive that motion. It’s part of how our brain sorts out “signal” from “noise” in noisy environments.

A nd we get special pleasure from successfully doing this. Clarity that facilitates the listener’s own brain’s processing—which is what the HD 176 KHz/192 KHz-sampled media does for us (see Vorländer, pp. 222ff).

Jan Pieterszoon Sweelinck - Hodie Christus Natus Est
John Taverner - Magnificat (A5)
Robert White - Tota Pulchra Es
Arvo Pärt - Magnificat
Arvo Pärt - Nunc Dimittis
Hieronymous Praetorius - Magnificat IV
Robert White - Regina Caeli
Morales - Regina Caeli
Benjamin Britten: Hymn to the Virgin
Giovanni Pierluigi Da Palestrina - Magnificat for Double Choir
Giovanni Pierluigi Da Palestrina - Nunc Dimittis for Double Choir

I very much hope that Phillips and colleagues continue to add aggressively to their HD DVD-Audio recording downloads. There are many of us out here who crave the immersive psychoacoustic experience that only very high sample-rate HD can deliver. The Tallis Scholars’ recordings are [one of the types of—] music that powerfully motivates and intensely satisfies the “immersive HD” desire.

B efore you place an order, Gimell recommmends to try the Test Files they provide for free download, to insure compatibility with your system.

T allis and Gimell recommend using an audiophile-quality Network Music Player to listen to the HD download files. If you own a DVD-Audio player and your PC has a DVD burner, then you can create your own DVD-Audio discs by importing the HD download files into Cirlinca’s DVD-Audio Solo® or other similar software apps. The files are 15 to 18 times larger than the equivalent track with MP3 compression. The Gimell offerings also include multichannel Quadraphonic/Surround Sound formats. Cirlinca’s HD-Audio Solo Ultra® v4.1 software costs just USD$75 for a single-user license— HD-Audio Solo Ultra® is the product that I use. Cirlinca has relationships with record labels including Gimmel, Deutsche Grammophon, and Hyperion, plus orchestras and ensembles including Boston Symphony Orchestra, Philadelphia Orchestra, and many others.

M arketing-wise, when HD recordings such as these from Tallis/Gimell are coupled with correspondingly good playback chain equipment it opens up a promising (and to-date under-developed) market segment for serious music: tech-avid audiences and software developers and gamers whose primary passion is virtual reality (VR) and who have a strong but decidedly secondary interest in music. Many in this segment or niche market may not be musicians per se, and they may not be people who regularly attend ‘conventional’ live concerts. But they crave excellent VR and immersive “worlds” that can capture the heart and mind—as good music can do so effectively. And such people spend quite a lot of money each year on personal “world-building”. Their sort of passionate “sonic-experience-first-music-second” amateurism is, I suppose, not unlike serious HiFi audiophiles of the 1960s or late 50s.

I n summary, Tallis Scholars and Gimell are creating the right kinds of HD content to grow a VR audio market. Maybe more and different marketing, including social media, will be needed to really drive its growth. For now, I’m delighted to have experienced these wonderful recordings that prove once and for all that very high sampling-rates of 176.4 KHz and 192 KHz are actually necessary, to accurately reproduce the nuances that we hear up-close in live performance. The freshness and lightness and clarity of the sound invite the listener “inside” the world that the music conjures—the Studio Master HD files enable listeners to inhabit that world via interactive replay evoking “live” sensations and realism, most vividly when the listener/file-downloader can freely explore and re-explore again and again ad lib. We avid listeners want to rehearse our neurons—not only to re-experience the shivers up our spines, but (through practice) to train our bodies to optimally respond to the aural cues that are in these beautiful HD recordings, and in the next live performance we’re able to attend. Bravo!