Last weekend, I performed at Classical Revolution Cincinnati, a monthly show at the Northside Tavern. There was a very good-sized crowd, a nice mix of classical music fans and hipsters. The atmosphere was just right – the audience was listening attentively but not stifling themselves (there were some quiet conversations going on too).
Also on the program was Rick Robinson, former bassist with the Detroit Symphony, and director of that city’s chapter of Classical Revolution. I played in a string group with Rick and several others – we played some of his compositions (my favorite was “Pork and Beans“) and arrangements ranging from Beethoven’s 5th Symphony to a beautiful Duke Ellington piece about Martin Luther King.
Rick is bringing back a great classical music tradition with his work – arrangements like his were common back when these pieces were written, so people could play orchestral pieces in small groups at home or in coffeehouses. You can hear some of Rick’s original compositions and learn more about him on his website.
Rick spoke eloquently during our set about Classical Revolution’s mission of bringing music to the people. He also made a great point about how performances in casual settings like bars can complement the traditional concert experience, without replacing it.
This is crucial – the concert experience is wonderful, and will continue to be the main presentation of our art form to the public, but the music does just fine in other settings, and many new audience members can get to know it more easily with a beer in their hand.
I bet many classical music devotees worry that programs like Classical Revolution are a threat to the traditional concert experience, and that any departure from the ritual of the concert hall is somehow cheapening the music. All I can say is I wish they’d heard the evening’s final performance.
Six students from CCM took the stage next, with eye makeup that belonged on a KISS tribute band:
They then gave a beautiful performance of Schoenberg’s Pierrot Lunaire, a work which is perfect for a bar. The piece was first performed in 1912 with the singer/speaker in full commedia dell’arte costume and the players (including the composer) behind a screen.
The vocalist in Pierrot half sings, half speaks (a technique Schoenberg called “Sprechstimme”) and frankly sounds a little tipsy much of the time. The texts are pretty out there, too – my favorite stanza is “Black gigantic butterflies have blotted out the shining sun. Like a sorcerer’s sealed book, the horizon sleeps in silence.” Now if this isn’t drinking music, I don’t know what is.
Pierrot’s debut came shortly before that of Stravinsky’s ballet “The Rite of Spring” in 1913 – both works sparked great controversy. There was hissing from some in the audience at Pierrot’s premiere, and the riot which erupted at the premiere of “Rite” set the standard for music’s ability to provoke.
Nowadays, both pieces are standard repertoire, performed regularly in the hushed setting of the concert hall, where even a stray cough can be greeted with stares and shushing. For all those who worry about the need for absolute quiet during performances, you should know that the audience in the bar was incredibly focused on the Pierrot performance – the minimal amount of chatter was very quiet and didn’t seem to distract the players one bit.
Good performances like this one command attention and create the atmosphere they need to be heard, even in a bar – a good lesson for any performer accustomed to the mandatory silence of a concert hall.
Furthermore, the players’ face makeup added to the mood of the piece and made perfect sense – a small but significant enhancement, and a reminder that having a little bit of fun is ok, even when you’re playing music by this guy:
I think Pierrot benefited greatly from the bar performance – maybe orchestras could serve beer the next time they perform Rite of Spring, too! In any case, my Classical Revolution experience was further proof that great music holds its own just fine, even when competing with the sounds of dropped glasses and pool tables in the next room.
Stravinsky supposedly once said:”Lesser artists borrow, great artists steal.”
The recent decision to award Marvin Gaye’s family several million dollars over copyright violations by Robin Thicke and Pharrell Williams in their recent hit “Blurred Lines” has sparked a lot of discussion about the border between imitation and plagiarism in the music world, a “blurred line” if there ever was one. There are lots of examples in the classical world, which I’ll get to in a minute.
Pop music is full of ripoffs – the way the business works, it’s almost inevitable. There have been many lawsuits like this recent one – artists like Johnny Cash and the Beatles were accused of theft, and in my personal favorite, John Fogerty was sued for ripping off his own band, Creedence Clearwater Revival!
“When asked if he was present for the creation of ‘Blurred Lines,’ Thicke replied: ‘I was present. Obviously, I sang it. I had to be there…To be honest, that’s the only part where – I was high on vicodin and alcohol when I showed up at the studio…I wanted some credit for this big hit. But the reality is, is that Pharrell had the beat and he wrote almost every single part of the song.'”
So, in summary, Mr. Thicke went with a combination of “I didn’t do it, but I wanted credit for it because it made me a lot of money” and “I was high, so I actually couldn’t have done it” – an impressive pairing indeed. There are lots of blurred lines here – makes me think of this one:
But wait, it gets better – when an attorney for the Gaye family played a mash-up of the Gaye original, “Got To Give It Up,” and the Williams/Thicke opus, to show their similarities, Thicke protested:
“It’s so hard to listen to it…This is [like] Stanley Kubrick’s movie Clockwork Orange. Where he has to sit there and watch…Mozart would be rolling in his grave right now.”
Well, at least Mozart has been avenged – I know I feel better.
Anyway, there’s a long history of imitation and borrowing in classical music, going back at least to the days of Palestrina and Josquin writing masses based on popular or sacred melodies of the time. Bach updated (and improved) pieces by Vivaldi, though of course he did it openly. Our whistleblower Stravinsky used Russian folk melodies in the Rite of Spring (and denied it).
Brahms’s famous Variations on a Theme of Haydn – the theme isn’t by Haydn. Did Brahms know? Maybe, maybe not. In any case, composers routinely would put the names of more famous colleagues on pieces to help them sell – the great violinist Fritz Kreisler was notorious for it.
Now this is a more impressive kind of deception – instead of simply ripping someone else off, you have to imitate them convincingly – not too easy! One of my favorite cellist-composers, Gaspar Cassadó, was really good at it – here’s his very impressive counterfeit “Schubert” piece (played by a very good cellist from Cassadó’s era I confess I’d never heard of, Feodor Luzanov):
To me, this is artful and respectful imitation, even if Cassadó blurred some lines of his own in putting Schubert’s name on it! Perhaps Mr. Thicke could learn a lesson from Cassadó – if you’re going to mislead people, do it skillfully! Also, consult your PR manager and/or lawyer before testifying in open court.
In any case, really good imitation is something to enjoy – I’ll leave you with my new favorite example. A few weeks ago, I was driving to a rehearsal and listening to the radio – an old Ella Fitzgerald record came on and I almost crashed the car – here’s why:
Of all the kinds of music I know, classical is the only genre that comes with instructions. Imagine for a moment the pre-concert lecture at this performance:
No other kind of music really needs to be explained when it’s performed. And often, when it is, you wish it hadn’t been.
http://youtu.be/bcyufyBZLXc&w=330
But in the classical music world, performances often come with extra reading. Program notes can give insight into a piece’s history and structure, or a summary of the story the piece may (or may not) tell.
There’s nothing wrong with this – well-written notes (like the excellent ones written by my ProMusica colleague Marc Moskovitz) can offer great insight into a performance.
But what about the newbies? What about someone who’s never been to a concert before and doesn’t really care about sonata-rondo form or what aleatoric means? I bet some of these folks feel that they have some homework to catch up on, and that’s not something we want.
Holly is about to perform a relatively new work, Jennifer Higdon’s 2010 Violin Concerto, and got a group of middle schoolers to write down (and draw) their impressions after hearing some of it. You can read (and see) them here.
This is my favorite:
Wow – that’s the kind of fully engaged listener any musician wants, right?
The best point Mulcahy makes is one I’ve experienced many times performing Bach and Boombox – kids are more open to new cultural experiences than adults. And she adds something I hadn’t thought of, writing:
“Somewhere between our childhood and our adulthood we gain a sense of adventure with the foods we try…But the tradeoff for adults seems to be our cultural intake. Many of us lose the desire to experience new art, to explore and appreciate new music or paintings that challenge us the same way we expect new culinary dishes to excite us…This is where kids have us beat. While their palate may not be geared for a roasted Brussel sprout dish enhanced with a pomegranate glaze, their ability to open their minds and imagination freely with art is something adults need to emulate.”
Exactly.
Just a quick aside to take this food/music comparison one step further – I think a lot of people feel this way about classical music:
http://youtu.be/2GwsRF0NT0E&w=330&start=01&end=04
All kidding aside, I do think that the idea that classical music comes with required reading and studying does make many people think of concert-going as a chore instead of fun.
There are many concertgoers who eagerly read or listen to someone else’s view of a piece. That’s great, of course, but shouldn’t we be encouraging listeners to share their own ideas too? I bet many adult concertgoers have just as vivid reactions to music as kids do, but they are much less likely to share them – we need to fix that.
Why don’t we ask adult concertgoers to write program notes as well as reading them? What about having an audience member give a pre-concert talk about the first time they heard one of the works on the program? There have even been concerts with “tweet seats” – you can read about one here.
Many groups, like ProMusica, have post-concert conversations – what about one devoted to getting the audience to write program notes for the pieces they just heard? Maybe there could be an incentive given to people who shared their views, like a chance to win free or discounted tickets to an upcoming concert.
Classical musicians and our fans LOVE what we do and think of this great music as life-changing, but we know that many audience members (and potential audience members don’t feel that way yet. In fact, I think our passion for what we do and insistence on its profundity scares some people away!
There’s a great opportunity here to make more people feel welcome and invested in what we do by simply asking their opinion of it – I think we should seek out every opportunity to do that.
This is not news, I know, but last Friday night, I played a concert which suggested how to fix that.
The concert was with a group I’m proud to be a member of, the ProMusica Chamber Orchestra. Our guests were Igudesman and Joo, the sensational violin-piano comedy duo. They are both first-rate musicians and comedians.
Classical music’s biggest problem, in my opinion, is the fortress of formality we’ve walled ourselves off in – these two are taking a wrecking ball to it.
There’s so much to rave about with these two, but for me, their absolute disregard for traditional concert decorum is what’s best about the show. They began by stealing the orchestra’s applause after we played an overture. Then they started arguing about whether to play Mozart or James Bond – naturally, they put them together.
More mashups followed, including one of Rachmaninoff and Barry Manilow, and my favorite, a finale which combined Gloria Gaynor’s “I Will Survive” with Tchaikovsky’s 5th Symphony, “Autumn Leaves,” and “The Final Countdown,” by 80’s one-hit wonder Europe, (which inspired my new hairdo).
Classical musicians are always worried about being excessively showy – ask someone in the business about current piano star Lang Lang, for example, and you will likely be greeted with a pained look and lots of eye-rolling. “It’s about the music,” many will say, “not the performer.” There’s some truth to this, for sure, but our overly serious demeanor also can make for some pretty dull concerts.
On Friday, I was struck by how far out of our comfort zone the members of the orchestra were – we had to dance, sing, cry, make faces and headbang – and how easy it was to get us to do it. I felt like I’d been paroled (and been given a makeover).
There’s a long tradition of inside jokes in the classical music world, ranging from Haydn’s “Surprise” Symphony to Victor Borge and P.D.Q. Bach. These are very clever, and fun if you’re a classical aficionado, but probably don’t do much to bring in new audiences.
What makes Igudesman and Joo different, and in my mind, potentially much more valuable, is that you don’t need to be interested in classical music to like their act. Their comedy is current and mainstream, making fun of kung-fu movies and shows like American Idol.
Their act is also physical and full of slapstick – many times on Friday, Joo looked like he was channeling Harpo Marx.
This brings up another key strength of Igudesman and Joo – they’re also a throwback to the days when The Three Stooges could make fun of opera and everyone would laugh, not just music nerds. If we want to return classical music to that kind of cultural relevance, we’ll need to connect with people the way these guys do.
Now, I’m not suggesting that we need to make every performance a variety show – much of the concert experience is good for the music and the audience. However, Igudesman and Joo help us see how silly some of it is, much the way Jon Stewart skewers the news media, another group of people whose work is important, but would be both improved and more widely appreciated if they didn’t take themselves so seriously.
Back to that fortess of formality – we built it ourselves and we’ve gotten so used to it that many of us are afraid to go outside. Igudesman and Joo have knocked a big hole in the wall – grab a hammer and start swinging!
Procter and Gamble, maker of brands like Gillette and Tide, is the biggest corporate presence in Cincinnati, where I live, and they are a huge supporter of the arts here. Recently, I performed and spoke at two P&G offices on behalf of Artswave, the Greater Cincinnati region’s local arts agency, which is beginning its big annual fundraising campaign.
Many people view what P&G does and what I do as completely different – they make things people need, and I give them something that’s nice to have, but not essential.
A perfect example of this kind of thinking was in this morning’s New York Times, in a column by Frank Bruni. In an otherwise superb defense of liberal arts education, he called his own “transformative” encounter with Shakespeare as an undergraduate student “a luxury,” and that he “can’t think of any bluntly practical application for it.” Say what?
You can read Bruni’s column and my online comment here – my point is that even someone who was profoundly impacted by the power of words, and wound up a writer himself, allows the “art isn’t necessary” crowd to frame his argument, and that’s a shame. Even if art doesn’t lead you to your profession, as it did for Bruni, it adds to the whole person you become, and should not be viewed as optional.
This brings me back to P&G. I am sure that many who were at my Artswave presentation were not “transformed” by it, but I also talked to some for whom it clearly had an impact, and I at least got most people listening and thinking differently for a little while. That’s enough for me – I’m content to play the long game, as P&G does.
Incidentally, I also made an ad pitch that morning – with his 20 kids, Bach would make an excellent Pampers spokesman. Haven’t heard back about that one yet.
Companies like P&G support the arts in no small part because we help people become more creative and engaged, which makes them more valuable employees. And yes, it’s also good PR – those of us in the classical music world could learn a thing or two from them!
We can take another lesson from P&G, too – if you want to be successful at something, you need to be relentless in pursuing your mission, and constantly re-evaluating yourself to make sure you’re reaching your goals.
Well, my mission is to make people feel great music is essential. I am not naive enough to think that Bach cello suites will ever have the ubiquity of Crest toothpaste, but I firmly believe that caring for your soul is as important as caring for your teeth.
Procter and Gamble has been around for 175 years. Bach’s music has been around for 300 years plus – strong evidence that his music is a very durable good indeed.
