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Empty Gestures
Editorial
I'm continually amazed at the number of trained musicians -- composers, performers, teachers -- who have never yet caught on to the fact that music is sound -- vibrations hitting the ear thus awakening echoes within I must have been of their number when I graduated from college, because my clearest memory of study with Robert Shaw and Julius Herford was that wave of illumination. The notes on the page are only a graph, and there are hundreds of ways to interpret them. They can't come alive until they find a sympathetic reader who can translate them into vibrations.
I recall listening to Shaw rehearsing the Juilliard Choir, beginning with a lengthy warm-up. I kept a timed record of each of these: how long was spent on each vowel, each rhythmic drill, each tuned interval.) It took months before I began to listen as intently as I could to the 'sound in the room': to hear the incredible shadings of vowel, ensemble and tuning contained within even a brief phrase. It took even longer for me to divorce myself from the page: to regard it as the beginning of a journey into sound rather than an end in itself.
He, of course, used many unorthodox gestures in his conducting. Some wag commented that there were only two: 'washing'(up and down) and 'ironing'(side to side)]. But their whole purpose was to evoke sound -- meaningful sound-- from the singers. He was tethered by bands of steel to the 'sound in the room' -- submerged in it, always comparing it to the ideal in his imagination, and finding words, images and gestures to bring it as close as possible to that ideal.
The same transformation occurred in my piano studies with Julius Herford. The page contains multitudes (in Whitman's phrase) to the reader well-versed in the tradition. It's not at all what it seems: it's a window into the past, into the thought processes of whoever first made those marks. The instrument surpasses its own limitations when this happens: it sings like a woodthrush, fanfares like a trumpet, or soothes like a lullaby. The musical imagination of the performer makes this possible, and that imagination is formed by a lifetime's immersion in living sound.
But 'empty gestures' are all around me. The warm-up of a middle-school choir by a teacher who goes through a list of exercises with the piano loudly playing, literally unable to hear the 'sounds' the young people are making. (She's not listening, thus they are not listening.) The well-trained conductor with picture-perfect gestures, none of which seem to affect way the choir sounds. The anthem by a non-singing composer, its awkward relationship of text to tune. (The page is the empty gesture: it was not founded on vocal sound.)
And how much of our own communication with each other consists of empty gestures? Do we really listen to each other, and then respond to what we hear (rather than what we think or wish we were hearing)? How well can you echo what you hear? Find the right response to it? This must be the way that human song began: listening to natural sounds around us: wind, water, birds, thunder, the crash of a falling tree. Notice how alert even a tiny baby is to the sounds around it. How does this alertness, this connection, become dulled? Surely it's by too much non-human sound, too much clamor that doesn't ask for or expect an answer. We stop listening, and lose our ability to respond ('response-ability').
Let us, as musicians, rededicate ourselves to meaningful sound. Can we tune our voices to one another? Can we move in true unison? Are we dancing the same dance? Evoking the same emotion? Meaning what we speak and sing? Sharing the experience as a family, a group, a village, a city, a nation? What a world we could create if we would leave behind the empty gestures.
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THE VIEW FROM HERE
You must imagine my window being in a moving train this time, for the views are very different.
Frame 1: Snowfall four or five inches, and then a full moon that night. We've had so little snow this winter that I'd forgotten how light the whole house gets when the reflected gleam shines in. It's almost as if there were searchlights outside, illuminating otherwise dark corners, even at midnight. And when the moon goes behind the bare trees, the blue shadows on white snow make an incredible tracery. It's similar to the reflection of trees in still water, except that these colors are magically transparent.
Frame 2: Bright colors! I'm in North Carolina and Virginia, where the blossoms are almost two weeks early this year. Tulips, Red Bud, flowering cherries and other fruit trees (those tall pears!): a riot of competing strong shades everywhere I turn. And the temperatures in the 80's: we could (and did) dine outside for both lunch and dinner. I had to acquire some suitable clothing -- there font>
Frame 3: Home again, and the whole palette one of waiting, of anticipation. The snow is gone, but there's no green showing yet. Just fat buds on the forsythia and the earliest daffodils (those blinding yellows!), and tiny pale shoots of lilies and hyacinths poking through the hard earth. It will take three weeks at least to catch up with the South, but I'm happy to be here to experience it. You can picture me out raking every day, trying to stay ahead of what the wind brings me from the forest!
–- Alice Parker
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FROM OUR READERS
John Thornburg wrote about a concert given by over-80 choristers experiencing a “Holy Spirit” moment. ‘Under rehearsed, they’d had no time to study either legato or dynamics, yet, in the service, they began to sing the most lovely legato, and simply found their way into that crescendo. . . The director, realizing that they were singing far beyond what he was conducting, simply put his hands down, smiled broadly, and let them sing. It was one of the best musical moments of recent years for me, because everyone in the room knew something was happening, and the conductor was wise and good enough to say “It’s bigger than me”. . .Music really is sacramental. . .’
Lucille Reilly wrote from Denver:I have been rehearsing a singing quintet, and have discovered an interesting discrepancy. When the other four read the text in rhythm, the lilt of the text is there. But when they sing, all of a sudden the notes on the page demand full length, and the singing becomes heavy. . . All the more reason conductors need to demonstrate sounds to their choirs, instead of expecting the page to do it all for them.’ [I call this singing the notes instead of the words. A.P.]
Ann Heider contributed a timeless quote from Thomas Morley, writing in 1597:". . .Though a Song be never so wel made, and never so aptly applyed to the Words, yet shall you hardly find Singers to express it as it ought to be; for most of our Church-men (so they can crie louder in the Quire than their Fellowes)care for no more; whereas, by the contrarie, they ought to study how to vowel and sing clean, expressing their Words with Devotion and Passion, whereby to draw the Hearer as it were in chaines of Gold by the Eares to the Consideration of holy Things.”
And Carl Daw wrote about a monastic community, temporarily deprived of their chapel, worshiping in a ‘bare-bones room with no stained glass, no ecclesiastical ornaments, no organ or other instrument. We spoke of longing to return to the Chapel — “Yet there has been something holy about this simple space, all this a cappella singing, and furthermore, Alice Parker would be proud.” Indeed you would!.’
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STUDY WITH ALICE PARKER
Do you daydream of babbling brooks, starlit nights and the quiet of a rural setting far removed from the stress and demands of your daily life? Something like Alice Parker describes in her column, The View from Here? A time to sit around a table with a respected mentor and reflect and create with likeminded colleagues? Such an opportunity is available through the Melodious Accord Fellowship programs. Well-known poet, composer and theologian John Thornburg described his experience in the program this way:
This Table
This table does not speak.
Its legs transmit no truth.
The top, with tea-stained cups
and pile of scores
with notes demanding to be free from print’s
captivity
says not a word.
Yet seated all around are music hounds
who cannot wait to get the scent;
to be released, to jump the fence
and join the hunt for sanity.
For this is music’s gift,
to show that what is deep is real.
And so, the table speaks
as those around its blue-draped edge
find glimpses of the Word
who pitched a tent on Earth.
Here are our programs for 2012— “Come to the Table.”
July 9-13, 2012 Hawley, MA
Melody Studies: Seeking a Grammar of Melody For theory-buffs, and fearless explorers of song: can we articulate the rules which govern lasting works? Come, sing, study, trade ideas and try!
October 15-19, 2012 Hawley, MA
Composers Workshop: Come share your work and discuss choral composition and arranging with Alice Parker and your colleagues. Discussions range over theory, style, technique, performance and publication.
and Save January 20-23, 2013
for Score Study in New York City
Go to Study with Alice on this website
for more details and application forms.
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Melodious Accord Happenings
January in New York started off with an enthusiastic group of singers participating in the Spirituals SING honoring Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. It was a great joy to be in the beautiful sanctuary at Park Avenue Christian Church again. We missed Pamela Warrick-Smith due to illness, but the good news is that she is now doing nicely at home.
The Score Study ranged from hymns in Alice Parker's Melodious Accord Hymnal to the Parker "Magnificat", We Sing, to the Brahms' German Requiem. It was an eye- and ear-opening experience to explore and sing the poetry of these varied works. We gained new appreciation for the Brahms, we were introduced to a new interpretation of the Magnificat and learned different approaches to wonderful old hymns.
In February we returned to New York City to record a collection of Alice Parker's compositions and arrange-ments of Christmas music with a goal of releasing the recording in time for the 2012 Christmas season. It will contain some long-time favorites likeIn the Bleak Midwinter, The Friendly Beasts, Il est né,and more, along with the new: While Shepherds Watched, Sweet Coming, The Little Cradle and others. Watch our website for an announcement of its availability.
March was busy with a gala celebration at the Mendelssohn Club of Philadelphia, a choral workshop with students at the Mohawk Trail Regional High School and a highly successful community SING and two-day workshop at St. Francis United Methodist Church in Cary, NC. The focus was on Parker works including a recently commissioned work, Speak Peace. Then off to Harrisonburg, VA and Eastern Mennonite University for a performance of That Sturdy Vine, a work for orchestra and chorus based on traditional Mennonite hymns as well as poems by Jean Janzen who was also in residence.
By the time this Newsletter reaches your hands, Alice will be in Houston, TX to conduct a performance of her folk opera, The Family Reunion, with students of the music department at Houston Baptist University.
All in all a busy and productive start to the year with more to come, so watch for a workshop, SING, or performance in your area or come to one of our Fellowship Programs at Alice's studio in Hawley, MA or in New York City
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