jwilzewske: risk

Showing posts with label risk. Show all posts

Tuesday, November 11, 2008

Violence, An Unlikely Chamber Music Trope: ¿Quién es más macho?

I was very frightened till the guns started firing. Then you felt a bit better, for some unknown reason. It was the sitting there that was the worst part ... Naked is the way to describe it ... Just waiting for the end … waiting for it.”
— Michael Jackson, quoting rear-gunner Jack Marshall, in The Politics of Storytelling, p. 47.

T he definition of psychological violence as the sudden, uncontrollable disruption of affiliative bonds ... recognizes the importance of attachment relationships and their social, emotional, and cognitive manifestations. To deny the impact of trauma over human life is to deny that we matter to one another; it is a way of dissociating ourselves from human pain.”
— Felicity de Zulueta, From Pain to Violence, p. 185.

The previous CMT post triggered a prompt, unexpected flurry of messages about ‘violence’ as a theme in the chamber music canon. Some emailers suggested that Fauré’s ‘Piano Trio in D minor, Op. 120’ (“The last movement … the Allegro vivo!”) is emblematic of chamber music as encompassing the gamut of human emotion and expression, including uncontrollably violent feelings and expressions.

Others mentioned Edgard Varèse and André Jolivet—the ‘Density 21.5’ and ‘Cinq Incantations,’ respectively.

Another friend emailed to say, no, that Henri Dutilleux and Pierre Boulez wrote works that were more violent by far than those.

Yet another CMT reader opined that Olivier Messiaën was, if you really understood him, more profoundly and insidiously violent. (“Oh, you can play it so that the violent intentions are covered up. But if you really understand what he was up to, why then! There is no question! Hands down!”)

Maybe we need a ‘Hamilton-Browne’ taxonomy of violence in chamber music, a classification scheme to properly categorize and compare different species of this emotion when they arise.

Two-dimensional Taxonomy of Victimization

Single victimization (single incident, single perpetrator)
Multiple victimization (single incident, multiple perpetrators)
Repeated victimization (multiple incidents, single perpetrator)
Re-victimization (multiple incidents, multiple perpetrators)

W ell, entonces, ¿quién es lo último? Here is my own nomination for the most explicit examination of violence: a piece composed by Gordon Fitzell, performed by eighth blackbird (three MP3 clips below). Gordon is a 40 year-old Canadian born in Portage la Prairie, Manitoba, with a Bachelor of Music degree from Brandon University, a masters from the University of Alberta, and a doctorate in composition and theory from the University of British Columbia, with Keith Hamel and John Roeder. He has contributed works to a number of festivals and workshops including Darmstadt Internationale Ferienkurse für Neue Music, June in Buffalo, the Yale Summer School, the Arraymusic Young Composers Workshop, and held a residency several years ago at the Banff Centre for the Arts. He is currently a professor at the University of Manitoba in Winnipeg where he teaches composition, electroacoustic music, conducts the New Music Ensemble and directs XIE (eXperimental Improv Ensemble).

[50-sec clip, eighth blackbird, Gordon Fitzell, ‘Violence’, 1.2MB MP3]

I rest my case.

Seriously, do you have other ‘nominations’ you’d care to make, in this exotic category? What composers and which pieces? Under what circumstances would your ensemble undertake a thematic program, explicitly comprised of works that examine this ‘end of the spectrum’ of human emotions and deeds?

Do you think that the ‘intimacy’ of chamber music and currently-available chamber music programming such as it is today is too restrictive—that is to say, that the repertoire being performed today dwells more than it should on ‘pleasing’ sounds and ideas and emotions, and veers too far away from matters of political topicality and controversy? Do you feel that it is, marketingwise, suicidal to pursue these things? Yes, compose them, if you must; if you have them ‘in you’. Yes, record them, if you’re passionate about it and can convince a brave label to support it. But don’t even think of performing them live, not if you expect to ‘get away with it’?

Does edgier repertoire sell well and, if so, to what audience market segments in what venues and at what times of year? Is this sort of material only practical (i.e., ‘wise’, ‘safe’) for presenters to program as bonus ‘fringe’ material at festivals in the summertime—riskier even than mere ‘new music’? Is this sort of thing suitable for ACF and CMA and other organizations to commission more of?

If enough of you wish to offer comments on this, maybe I’ll gather them together into a proper ‘post’ on the subject. To those of you who emailed me, thank you very much for your comments!

DSM. Just War according to Dialogos. CMT blog, 09-NOV-2008.
eighth blackbird. strange imaginary animals. (Cedille, 2006.)
Browne K, Hanks H, Stratton P, Hamilton-Giachritsis C, eds. Early Prediction and Prevention of Child Abuse: A Handbook. Wiley, 2002.
Hamel J, ed. Gender Inclusive Treatment of Intimate Partner Abuse. Springer, 2005.
Hamilton C, Browne K. The repeat victimisation of children: Should the concept be revised? Aggression and Violent Behaviour 1997; 3:47-60.
Jackson M. The Politics of Storytelling: Violence, Transgression, and Intersubjectivity. Museum Tusculanum, 2002.
McCluskey U, Hooper C-A, eds. Psychodynamic Perspectives on Abuse: The Cost of Fear. Kingsley, 2000.
de Zulueta F. From Pain to Violence: The Traumatic Roots of Destructiveness. 2e. Wiley, 2007.

Friday, February 1, 2008

What’s Up with Stage Fright and Chamber Music?

W hat about nutraceuticals or dietary approaches for stage fright? Aren’t there any over-the-counter supplements that work? What about amino acids? What about melatonin? I’m in a managed-care plan and I never get to see the same doctor twice. And the docs won’t ever spend more than 6 minutes talking to me, at best. The clinic schedule is so busy, they just go jumping from exam room to exam room. And the doctors’ decisions are reviewed and second-guessed by all these bean-counter administrators and compliance people. There’s no way I can go in there and ask for a prescription for a beta blocker or one of the other meds for performance anxiety you’ve written about in these blogs. Bells and whistles and alarms would go off. For all I know, the managed care plan might even tell my employer about it. On top of which the doc probably wouldn’t write the prescription anyway. I don’t have high blood pressure or any other condition beta blockers are normally used for. Makes me mad. What options do I have?”
— Anonymous.

There was never any intention to provide a forum here in CMT for frequent discussion and critiquing of stage fright and modalities for managing performance anxiety. But, surprisingly, the posts about stage fright are among the most heavily “hit” and searched, of the 150-odd posts currently on CMT blog. And the numerous emails and comments clearly show a latent unmet need out there.

I’m not sure why this topic is ‘striking such a chord’ for CMT readers. Probably it has something to do with the fact that chamber music orchestration and small ensemble performance are so ‘open’—the individual musicians’ exposure and risk are in general greater than they are when performing in larger orchestral or choral groups; the performance venues for chamber music are specifically ones whose acoustics accentuates the intimacy and exposure; and there’s absolutely nowhere to hide, no ‘room’ for error. Every note, every nuance, every mistake will be heard. And chamber music audiences are highly attentive and critical. These features make for an ‘unforgiving’ environment—less forgiving, anyhow, than other live performance genres and venues and audiences. In fact, I suppose that this indigenous ‘high-stakes intimacy’ is part of chamber music’s thrill and appeal, for performers and composers and listeners alike.

While my own preference is to rely on deep-breathing and other non-pharmaceutical practices, there are many CMT readers who’ve sent me emails about their experiences with beta-blockers and other of the approaches that’ve been covered in the previous posts. And, recently there’ve been a number of inquiries about whether the amino acid, 5-hydroxytryptophan (5-HTP), is useful for managing or preventing stage fright. This post describes my own informal trial of 5-HTP over the past 6 months.

I originally tried 5-HTP, not because of performance anxiety but because I was having trouble staying asleep at night, due to situational stress at work. I didn’t want to use any strong prescription sleeping medications, but I’d heard that 5-HTP may help with sleeping. Then I came across the Turner and Schruers and Miller journal articles and decided to explore what 5-HTP’s effects might be on my music.

Initially, I tried the 100 mg immediate-release tablets, but the dose was too low (for me)—or possibly the immediate-release formulation allows too much of the 5-HTP to be destroyed by the acid in the stomach, and therefore I wasn’t actually getting a full 100 milligrams-worth. The rapid dissolution immediate-release also gave me some bowel upset 6 or more hours after taking the tablet. But the 200 mg extended-release formulation works well and has no G.I. side-effects for me.

The 200 mg extended-release tablets also offer a relative advantage in terms of gradual, gentler onset of action. The 5-HTP is predominantly absorbed in the small intestine, so you want the tablet to pass through the stomach relatively quickly and move on beyond, into the duodenum and jejunum. Take the tablets on an empty stomach. I take one tablet 2h prior to performance with 60 mL (2 ounces) of fruit juice or water. Then I take a second tablet 1h prior to performance, again with a small amount of juice.

The most noticeable thing for me is that my inner dialogue with myself quiets down. The aspect of pre-performance jitters that manifests itself with unspoken chatter in my mind: the internal chatter just subsides in a nice Zen-like way. My ‘edge’ is not blunted at all, but I feel more serene. Subtle, useful effect.

Very busy weeks have led me to try 5-HTP on several consecutive days. Then, the next day when I don’t take any 5-HTP, I feel a little ‘low’. There’s a bit of a ‘crash’. I’m not lethargic, not mentally dulled or distracted, not sleepy, not overtly clinically depressed. Just mildly ‘down’. (My normal delight in small good things that happen each day, where’s that? My inclination to go visit with friends, where’s that gone?) I’m back to my normal, chipper self by Day-2 or Day-3.

The experience with the ‘crash’ following multi-day use of 5-HTP makes me want to tell you that, despite the fact that 5-HTP is “just an amino acid” or “just an OTC food supplement”, it nonetheless does have medication-like properties in these doses and should be taken with a level of care and caution that would ordinarily accompany our use of any medication. Dietary supplementation with serotonin precursors (5-HTP, tryptophan, etc.) in doses sufficiently high to be effective in changing mood or performance anxiety or your emotional response to stress———is bound to change the equilibrium of the biochemical pathways and endocrine feedback loops that control serotonin metabolism—in your brain and in other organ systems. Gee—you wouldn’t expect going on and off a clinically-effective dose of SSRI to have zero side-effects, so why would you or I expect that going on and off a clinically-effective dose of 5-HTP would have zero side-effects?

In summary, 5-HTP seems to have significant efficacy for panic attacks and stage fright anxiety, as reported in recent research journal articles. Since I have only mild jitters and don’t experience severe performance anxiety myself, I can’t say whether 5-HTP is likely to work for you, those of you who have severe symptoms. And I can’t say whether its effectiveness is ‘durable’—don’t know whether significant ‘tolerance’ to 5-HTP’s effects develops if you use it continuously or for long periods; don’t know whether dose-escalation is needed to sustain efficacy with chronic use.

What I can say from my own first-hand experience is that acute, occasional 5-HTP use does seem valuable and is worth a try. It’s readily available without any prescription and it’s relatively cheap. It has only mild, transient side-effects with acute, occasional use in doses up to 400 mg. And, in my experience, its [low-dose, extended-release formulation— ] effects don’t adversely affect vision, hearing, touch, blood pressure, breathing, muscle coordination, memory, or other aspects related to music performance.

There’s no reason why 5-HTP use couldn’t be combined with one of the other stage fright prevention/treatment modalities (a beta blocker; or a vasodilator like prazosin; or an anticholinergic like biperiden or trihexyphenidyl; or an anticonvulsant like levetiracetam; or deep-breathing or biofeedback training or meditation). The mechanisms-of-action for those modalities [probably] don’t involve serotonin pathways.

Tryptophan – Serotonin biochemical pathways

The effects of the different modalities might be additive when used together—enabling you to achieve the effect that’s adequate for you at lower doses of each than would be required to achieve the same effect with either med by itself. If you’re now using 40 mg of propranolol, you might, for example, be able to do as well with 20 mg of propranolol plus 200 mg of the 5-HTP. Or maybe even 10 mg of propranolol and only 100 mg or 50 mg of the 5-HTP.

Similarly, it’s possible that using 5-HTP with deep-breathing or biofeedback or yoga or meditation may enable you to achieve the same efficacy at lower doses of the 5-HTP and lower intensities of the biofeedback exercises than would be needed if you were using one or the other of them alone.

RESPeRATE breathing biofeedback training device

V ajrayoginī carries a hooked knife (kartari; triguk) known as the ‘Hook of Mercy,’ the weapon of non-thought that cuts the deceptions of self-cherishing. Non-thought (togme) is the most basic expression of Vajrayoginī, for her mind is completely free from subconscious chatter and from habitual patterns that give rise to obsessive thoughts. Non-thought is a purified form of ignorance, traditionally symbolized in Buddhism by a pig. In this sādhana, the dākinī is secretly known as Vajravārāhī, and her ignorance is transformed into freedom, the wisdom of limitless space.”
— Judith Simmer-Brown, p. 142.

StressEraser breathing biofeedback training device

Conversely, I think combining 5-HTP with an SSRI or with a benzodiazepine or with Risperdal or Buspar would be a distinctly bad or unsafe idea. Possible risk of ‘serotonin syndrome’ or other adverse effects.

You should not take 5-HTP if you have any of the following:

MAO inhibitor antidepressant use within the past 2 weeks;
tricyclic antidepressant use within the past 2 weeks;
SSRI antidepressant use within the past 2 weeks;
triptan antimigraine use within the past 2 weeks;
history of angina, myocardial ischemia, heart attack, cardiac arrhythmia;
pregnant;
breast-feeding;
carcinoid tumor .

The information on this page is not intended as medical advice and is not meant to be a substitute for individual medical judgment by a physician or other medical healthcare professional. The aim is to provide information and help in suggesting considerations for preventive care. The medications listed should be used only after a medical examination and under the supervision of a doctor. Always consult a licensed healthcare provider for individualized advice on your health decisions.

Click on the screenshot below to download the API (Acute Panic Inventory) questionnaire, to calculate the severity of your symptoms. You may like to keep a log of how your symptoms change over time, when you perform in different settings and when you try different approaches to manage your stage fright symptoms. The performance anxiety you experience may not properly be ‘panic attacks’ per se, but the API is probably the instrument that’s been most frequently used in longitudinal research on these sorts of symptoms. If you measure your experiences with the API and look for trends and correlations with what you’re doing to manage the symptoms, that will help you to assess what’s working and what’s not. Let me know how it goes, and I’ll continue to share things from time to time here on CMT.

Wednesday, December 5, 2007

Bronfman and Everest: Balakirev’s and Ravel’s Virtuosic Fantasies

In the U.S. the new season of DiscoveryChannel’s documentary, ‘Everest: Beyond the Limit’, is currently being broadcast as an ongoing series of television programs. Each episode shows climbers—young and old ones, highly-skilled ones and relative novices—risking their lives trying to reach the summit of Everest. Not surprisingly, the drama revolves around the steepest, riskiest, most hostile parts of the climb. We viewers feel a [morbid?] fascination with the ever-present possibility of catastrophe—a fascination equal to the admiration we feel for the climbers’ endurance and achievements and successes. The spectacle of the natural beauty that’s connected with the pursuit captivates us, too, as does the diversity of humankind when (self-) driven to these extremes——when (self-) driven to accept such suffering and risk, in pursuit of an extreme, world-class goal.

‘Summits’ of a different kind—musical comparables to Everest—are in store when pianist Yefim Bronfman performs on Friday evening in the Kansas City Friends of Chamber Music Master Pianists Series. The program includes Balakirev’s ‘Islamey’ and Ravel’s ‘Gaspard de la nuit’, among other works. The program requires a capacity to play these technically demanding works—prodigious athleticism—but never decoupled from the capacity to play with interpretive skill. In other words (and to paraphrase Stephen Pettitt, music critic of The Times in London), true virtuosity requires as much poetry as athleticism—or so Bronfman implies, in devising a program like this.

A virtuoso is a musician who can play with panache a score of seemingly impossible technical difficulty... The north face of the Eiger has been conquered. The musician has, once again, triumphed over impossible adversity... A significant part of the musician’s craft has to do with the acquisition—through many hours, many years, of arduous, repetitive practice—of a very particular athleticism, one that enables the accurate playing of a large number of notes within a small amount of time while still making a pleasing sound. Virtuoso playing is a high-wire act, and the sensation it delivers to the audience similar. Surely he’s going to fall off at that speed, we think. When he gets to the other side intact we still think it a miracle. … Surely some dark magical force must be at work to enable such superhuman miracles of execution. … Indeed, is what seems like virtuoso playing necessarily that? Don’t misunderstand me. Even if its purpose is simply to thrill its audience, much as a particularly adroit footballer thrills with a piece of consummate skill, there’s nothing wrong with this showy variety of virtuosity. It’s fun to hear — and see — a violinist skate across a Paganini Caprice now and again. Yet it’s hardly a test of the most insightful musicianship. The player isn’t required to see between the notes, because between the notes there lies precisely nothing. There’s no insight into the human condition. No miracle of contrapuntal logic. Just a musician showing off his or her amazing skills. But maybe we should recognise more generously than we do the exercise of the inconspicuous brand of virtuosity... Virtuosity need not be a matter of playing lots of notes brilliantly at all. The truth is that all serious music worth the playing and singing, no matter how physically simple it might seem, requires a certain virtuosity of the mind. … Although the notes in Mozart might come relatively easily, the contextualising of them, the weighing of them, the nuancing of them, does not. Mozart demands such precision of touch, colour and phrase that an interpretation can fail on the slightest contextual faux pas. Moreover, it’s the performer who must find a personal context, since playing Mozart is no more a matter of choosing one correct way than is playing anything else. Control and freedom need to co-exist in perfect balance, so that the mysterious eloquence of the music is allowed to emerge, the player opening a window on to the soul of a miraculously gifted person. That is true virtuosity.”
— Stephen Pettitt.

In 1928, Ravel wrote, “ ‘Gaspard de la nuit’, piano pieces after Aloysius Bertrand, are three romantic poems of transcendental virtuosity.” Well, Mozart can be technically demanding, too—the two-part cadenza of the opening allegro of K 466, for example. But we usually think of the virtuosity required for Mozart as predominantly interpretive virtuosity. Similarly tough: revealing the emotion in Chopin without falling into cliché, or articulating the voices within Bach without being stilted and suppressing the emotion or creating a fugue-pastiche. Ravel’s ‘Gaspard de la nuit’ imposes demands that are simultaneously interpretive and technical/athletic——hideously, dauntingly so. Aloysius Bertrand’s prose-poems, ‘Gaspard de la nuit: Fantaisies à la manière de Rembrandt et de Callot’, were published posthumously in 1842 and re-issued in 1895, when Ravel’s friend Ricardo Viñes discovered them and introduced them to Ravel. Later Ravel returned to the poems and was captivated by their grotesque, hallucinatory imagery as an evocative subject for a piano composition.

And what about ‘Islamey’—composed in 1869 by Mily Balakirev, then 32 years old? The first theme is a folk dance from the Caucasus. The prevalent augmented seconds lend a south Asian ‘islamic’ aspect. The central section is lyrical and derives from an Armenian folk song. The slow, exotic middle section contrasts with the energetic outer parts. In the third section, Balakirev reprises the thematic material of the opening, culminating in a pyrotechnical coda. ‘Islamey’ is comprised of variations with increasingly, insanely, demonically complex elaborations. (Maybe we should note that Balakirev had a nervous breakdown in 1872, three years after composing this piece?) So our definition of ‘virtuosity’ gets worse: virtuosity is defiant and risky; it tempts fate; it scoffs at danger. It wouldn’t be virtuosic if catastrophe were impossible. You have to work without a safety net! (Balakirev punched out—became a railway clerk for awhile; worked as a school inspector until 1883; then returned to music as Director of the Imperial Chapel and conductor of the Imperial Musical Society, where he remained until retiring in 1895.)

I n music, no less than in athletics, audiences thrill at witnessing exceptional feats of physiological accomplishment, and they fête and reward those who
afford them such thrills.”
— Jane O’Dea, p. 40.

H e did not appeal to the emotions, except those of wonder—for his playing was statuesque, cold, beautiful, and so masterly that it was said of him, with reason, that he would play with the same care and finish if roused out of the deepest sleep in the middle of the night.”
— Sir Charles Halle, review of Thalberg, quoted in O’Dea, p.39.

In ‘Performance as an Extreme Occasion’, Edward Said writes that the contemporary concert is an extraordinary event, highly specialized and totally alienated from ordinary life. Before the mid-20th century performers were often also composers, and listeners were also often amateur musicians. Today the audience is marginalized. The specialized artist so ‘owns’ the work today! The recital has come to be an occasion for the display of extreme ability—on a level that’s totally alien to the listeners, most of whom are neither familiar with the scores nor play any instrument or sing. Their ‘regression of hearing’ (Adorno’s phrase) is manifested in “the listener’s poignant speechlessness as he/she faces an onslaught of such refinement, articulation and technique as almost to constitute a sado-masochistic experience.”

The audience has become more passive and concurrently we get this spectatorly cult of virtuosity. But why has social power recently captivated the imagination of popular culture—and academic anthropologists as well? Surely it’s not just a consequence of fewer practicing amateurs! Is it instead a society-wide reaction to our diminishing power as individuals? Is it a reaction to the decimation of social cohesiveness by the recent emergence of long-tailed, fragmented, web-based culture? Is it a backhanded way to oppose the ‘colonization’ of our selves—that is, an endorsement of and vicarious participation in demonstrations that individual victory over mass culture is still possible—more than gazing at an athlete/artist’s literal victory over physical difficulty?

Stanley Barrett asserts that the answer can be found in the effect of the past 100 years’ warfare throughout the world; the end of old colonialism and emergence of new forms of colonialism under the guise of multinational corporate globalization; the information and technology revolution, mass culture and cultural fragmentation. “The notion of a homogeneous, cohesive, geographically-bounded local culture consisting of people who share a putative common ancestry is obsolete,” he says. The diversity of distinctive cultures and identities “has become constricted, and ‘culture’ has become the new equivalent of ‘race’: difference-as-inferiority; new structures of exploitation and domination; new relations of power saturated with new possibility of inequality and disparities.”

I hope that hearing Bronfman perform on Friday may shed additional light on these issues. Me, I’ll be listening from a moderate elevation, at ‘Base Camp #3’!

T he question of the relationship of the individual person or subject to domination carries ‘resistance’ to the level of consciousness, subjectivity, intentionality, and identity.”
— Sherry Ortner, Anthropology and Social Theory: Culture, Power, and the Acting Subject.

Everest: Cairns (memorials to those who have died on the mountain)

[Mr. Bronfman was born in Tashkent, in the Soviet Union, on April 10, 1958. Bronfman immigrated to Israel with his family in 1973, and made his international debut two years later with Zubin Mehta and the Montreal Symphony. In Israel, he studied with pianist Arie Vardi, at the Samuel Rubin Academy of Music at Tel Aviv University. In the United States he studied at Juilliard and the Curtis Institute—with Rudolf Firkusny, Leon Fleisher, and Rudolf Serkin. He made his New York Philharmonic debut in May l978 and his New York recital debut in January 1982 at the 92nd Street Y. Bronfman became a U.S. citizen in 1989. In 2006, Bronfman partnered with Emanuel Ax in Mozart's ‘Concerto for Two Pianos’ conducted by Lorin Maazel. Early in 2007 he premiered Esa-Pekka Salonen’s Piano Concerto, written for him and commissioned by the New York Philharmonic. In addition to solo recital appearances, he recently served as the Pianist in Residence with the Berlin Philharmonic and completed recordings of all the Beethoven piano concerti and the Triple Concerto with violinist Gil Shaham and cellist Truls Mork with the Tönhalle Orchestra Zürich under David Zinman for the Arte Nova/BMG label. Bronfman is a “Perspectives” artist at Carnegie Hall during this 2007-08 season.]