The cabbage is a popular cultivar of a the species Brassica oleracea Linne of the Family Brassicaceae (or Cruciferae), and is used as a leafy green vegetable. It is a herbaceous, biennial, dicotyledonous flowering plant distinguished by a short stem upon which is crowded a mass of leaves, usually green but in some varieties red or purplish, which while immature form a characteristic compact, globular cluster.
On Good Friday Christians around the world focus on Psalm 22, which is where the cry "My God, My God, why hast thou forsaken me" comes from. Despite (or perhaps because of) this being one of the most powerful psalms there are very few musical settings of it which can convey the raw emotion behind it so I thought it would be worth sharing a few of those videos which do, in their own very different ways.
One of my favourite blog posts of all time is Kenneth Woods exhaustive summary of youtube videos of the hammer blow in Mahler 6 (here). While this post will be slightly less entertaining it is on a similar theme. I'm conducting Mahler 1 at the end of May and my horn section (and others) have been having a debate about whether and when they should stand in the last movement, and the position of the reinforcing trumpet and trombone. The opinion between players ranges from being excited about trying anything, wanting to do it but not thinking it works in the one beat Mahler asks for it to happen in, to not being convinced it works full stop. Similarly there is a wide range of opinions over the placement of the extra trumpet and trombone Mahler asks for. So what do you decide to do as a conductor based on these differing opinions?
Obviously the first thing is to look at the score. It's important to remember when conducting any of Mahler's music that he was one of the best conductors of his time, and constantly changed the markings in his score after performances in order to make them more practical for players and conductors. While you may look at scores for other composers and find there are balance issues and effects asked for that are nigh on unplayable, Mahler was incredibly practical and anything which made it into later revisions of his score will have been tried countless times. Not only that but when he has long footnotes for the conductor or indicates that something should explicitly not be done in the way which might seem natural, this will be emphasised because it goes against what players expect or would like to do.
This footnote translates as "From here on (and definitely not 4 bars earlier) to the end, it is recommended that the horns be strengthened to the extent that the all-overwhelming hymnlike chorale reaches the necessary fullness of sound. All the horn players stand, in order to obtain the greatest possible power of sonority. If necessary also one trumpet and one trombone may be added." We can see that Mahler leaves no room for doubt about what he wants, with the position of the extra trumpet and trombone also clear ("placed near the horns").
So the first point for any conductor and players must be to assume that Mahler knew what he was asking for and to try that. However, browsing youtube videos indicates that this isn't what always happens. Here's a quick look at some attempts. I've not included any where the horns don't do anything, and this even includes such legendary recordings as Bernstein with the Vienna Philharmonic! All the videos start just before the horns should stand up.
Spot on!
A bit messy but in the right place.
Not only early but all over the place.
Also early but great to see the woodwind with their instruments up in the air just afterwards.
Interesting one where the put their bells up instead.
I'll leave you to judge for yourself which of these work best but for me there is an extra burst of energy and excitement doing what Mahler has written in the score. For any conductor these are the sort of practical decisions can turn a performance into something special for both orchestra and audience as can be seen by the response (see 12 April post) to a recent performance by the Philharmonia. "When the last movement came, and all the Philharmonia horns rose to their feet at the climax, nothing could stop us! The performance got them standing on their feet and roaring their approval."
So in conclusion you'll have to turn up to St Mary's Episcopal Cathedral on Saturday 28th May to see what our horn section do, but in the meantime - don't mess with Mahler!
There's an excellent article in the New York Times today about performing new pieces of classical music. It captures succinctly the challenges players face in making sure they try and get new music performed, are completely dedicated to the value of performing it, and try and work out what pieces deserve another performance. This got me thinking because a lot of the conducting I've been doing recently has been pieces by Edinburgh University students.
I hope it wouldn't be a shock to any composers whose work I've conducted recently to say that I don't think any of it is up there with Bach and Beethoven, as much as I've enjoyed performing it. And to be honest I probably wouldn't consider giving another performance to many of the pieces either. However, I would keep going back to these same composers and performing more work by them and there are two reasons for that.
Firstly, because most of the great pieces you hear in concerts were written by composers who were middle-aged at the least. Of course there are a few notable exceptions such as Mozart, Schubert and Mendelssohn but most composers don't write their best music until they're past thirty or even forty. But does that mean they shouldn't have their music played until they're that age. If that happened then they would never develop fully as composers. Music is not complete until it's been performed to an audience (however small).
Secondly, there is a habit in the classical music world to always want to hear the same pieces over and over again. It's easy enough to fill a concert hall if you're going to play Beethoven, Stravinsky or Mahler but not so easy if you're going to play Lutoslawski or Schoenberg. This is the result of a culture which has developed since the nineteenth-century where classical concerts are like a museum where for something to have value it has to be old and culturally significant. However, I would argue that there are lots of pieces written throughout history which are extremely enjoyable and worth hearing once, or even a couple of times, even if you don't want to listen to it on repeat. This applies to long dead composers whose music we haven't heard but is important in considering whether to play a new piece by a living composer - most things are worth hearing at least once.
The government has just announced the latest stage in the plans for HS2, the high speed rail line that will connect London and Birmingham. Yet there has been no further discussion of extending that line further north to Manchester, Leeds and Scotland. This is really a demonstration of the London-centricity of decision making and investment in the transport infrastructure of the UK. One of my favourite sitcoms is "Yes Minister", partly because despite being written almost thirty years ago many of the issues still seem just as topical today as they were then. There is a fantastic scene between Bernard Woolley and Jim Hacker in the episode "Doing the Honours" where they discuss the reasons for building motorways. (7:44 in the video below)
BWThis M40 is a very good road. JHSo is the M4. I wonder why we got two really good roads to Oxford, before we got any to Southampton, Dover or Lowestoft or any of the ports? BWNearly all our Permanent Secretaries went to Oxford, Minister. And most Oxford Colleges give very good dinners. JHAnd the Cabinet let them get away with it? BWCertainly not, they put their foot down. They said no motorway to take civil servants to dinners in Oxford, unless there was a motorway to take Cabinet Ministers hunting in the Shires. That's why when the M1 was built in the fifties it stopped in the middle of Leicestershire.
Sadly this mentality of investing based on the needs of those in government and their closest contacts still seems to have more sway than the greater good of the whole country. There are a raft of reasons for extending high speed rail further north, or even (*shock horror*) starting building it in the north and gradually extending it towards London. You can hardly argue that the South of England doesn't have good transport links already. A quick search on Google Maps shows that despite being only two thirds of the distance, it takes less time to drive from Birmingham to Paris than it does from Birmingham to Aberdeen or Inverness. And despite a £12 billion investment the journey from London to Birmingham is only going to be cut by half an hour. While I don't know the figures, the reason for this high cost for a short distance has been given as the costs of having to pay compensation for the areas disturbed as you build the rail line through built up areas. So surely the same investment north of Birmingham could generate greater value for money.
There is also an environmental issue here which seems to get ignored amidst the financial discussions. How many people currently fly from London to Birmingham. Now compare that to the number who fly from Scotland or the North-East of England. It has been shown that cutting the journey time from Scotland to London to around the three hour mark would make a dramatic difference in the number of people opting for rail travel over flying.
The ignorance of those who make decisions about anywhere outside the M25 was summed up by Transport Minister Philip Hammond who said that HS2 would help tackle the north-south divide. While those in London may consider Birmingham to be in the North, maybe they should look at a map before they comment on this in public and consider how that plays out to those of us who actually live in the ignored northern part of the country. If they really want to tackle the north-south divide then perhaps some investment in transport infrastructure in the North would be the way to do it, rather than yet another project to help London commuters.
One of the pieces I'm currently studying for a concert in February is the Agnus Dei from Frank Martin's Mass for Double Choir. Martin was a composer I had never come across until last year when I heard his oratorio "In Terra Pax" in a concert during the Kirchentag in Munich. He seems to be relatively unknown in Britain, despite being very popular on the continent. Perhaps his best known work is his Mass for Double Choir, a wonderful but very tricky piece. The Agnus Dei is the easiest movement to pull off and deserves to be considered alongside some of the most of the most powerful choral music written.
The second choir provide a rhythmically simple harmonic accompaniment while the first choir sing a melody reminiscent of improvised chant. What really makes this magical though is the use of harmony. At the start we hear an open fifth (like the opening of Beethoven 9) which leaves the tonality ambiguous. When the first choir enter it sounds like the music is simply in the minor but then on "mundi" this is suddenly thrown into being modal and adds an extra air of mystery. The harmonies owe a lot to the influence of jazz with their added notes but you can also hear Martin shifting the tonal centre all the time, increasing the tension. The other magical moment starts at 2:52 on the video with a B always somewhere at the bottom of the harmony while over the top dissonant jazzy chords build up the tension before the climax at 3:50. He then uses suspensions to release the tension, rather than allowing the atmosphere to dissipate instantaneously. Then finally the whole choir come together for "Dona nobis pacem" (Grant us thy peace) with the final chord not being perhaps the obvious choice but leaving a much more satisfying conclusion. A wonderfully atmospheric work and I hope you enjoy it and explore some more of Frank Martin's music.
One of the odd things as a conductor is that you can go for a long time without actually waving your arms in front of anyone and yet you still have lots of work to do, planning projects and preparing scores. In 2010 I'm only going to have conducted one concert, way back in January, yet I've spent a lot of time making plans for future projects and between February and May 2011 I currently have seven concerts planned. However, this year doesn't feel like it's been wasted time, as I've had a chance to do workshops and take rehearsals with groups of a higher standard than those I was working with before and perhaps most importantly doing some serious score preparation.
One of the things which this quiet time makes you do is really try to get further into the music before starting to work on it with a group. I used to be guilty of being so busy that I would do almost as little preparation as I needed to before the first rehearsal and then starting to learn it properly after that. However, it's nice to actually have time where you have no pressure of a performance to prepare for but can just learn music for your own pleasure. And it means that when you do have lots of concerts coming up you can really organise your time better for learning scores.
Learning scores from scratch is perhaps one of the hardest things a conductor has to do as you have to try and imagine a large and often complex instrumental or choral texture in your head. Getting to grips with a new piece is perhaps best compared to trying to find your way round a new town. You start by wandering about, playing the piece through and getting a feel for it, trying to use the map/score to help you. Then gradually you start to notice things that connect up, you work out where the important places are and the logic of how to get from place to place. Of course the most satisfying part of this process is when you finally get to work with musicians and put all that studying into practice and I'm looking forward to the New Year when that happens regularly again.
The last few weeks in politics have been dominated by the issue of tuition fees, with the coalition wanting to raise the limit on these while at the same time cutting funding and access schemes such as the EMA. The main alternative proposal seems to be a graduate tax. However, what is the real difference between the current proposal and a graduate tax? The coalition's argument for the fees is that it's fairer than before because you don't start paying back until you're earning over £21,000 a year. What's the substantial difference between this and a graduate tax which you don't pay below that threshold. Surely a graduate tax of 9% of earnings above £21,000 (the proposed rate at which repayment of fees would start) would mean graduates paying exactly the same as paying back fees. The real difference would be that they only have to pay them until they've paid back their fees plus whatever interest has been added, or until thirty years after they've graduated when the balance is written off. The reason that a graduate tax is more "progressive" (what a horrible word) that fees is that it doesn't place this cap on payment for education. Instead the argument is that you have a high earning job because of your education therefore while you are earning that salary you should be taxed on it. Even if the level of taxation was lower, the longer period of payment would make up for that and it wouldn't be seen as a large debt hanging over people's heads. The whole issue seems to be a branding one. In fact I'm opposed to both of these and think that education should be paid for from general taxation as it makes such a substantial contribution to society but as with much of politics these days there seems to be very little distinction between policies once you actually look at them.
There are a few other points worth raising in this debate. I heard Paddy Ashdown debating with a student and saying why oppose these proposals if you didn't oppose the introduction of fees by Labour. That seems to me a complete political smokescreen that is being put up by the coalition, who are screaming "these plans are fairer than what you've got now." However, what it ignores is that many of the people objecting to the rise no objected to the introduction of fees in the first place. Finally, a friend of mine pointed out that this is all being done in the name of sorting out the country's finances, but in fact because the government is going to have to pay these fees up front it won't make a difference because it's years until we see them being paid back.
The wider point here is that a generation who got free education, or even grants, had easy access to jobs, the housing market, pensions, healthcare and many other things is suddenly realising that the country had paid for all of this and will have to pay it back in the future. Instead of taking responsibility for it and repaying it through higher taxes now, meaning that those who have higher salaries as a result will pay it back, they are forcing my generation to start having to pay for it. Yet at the same time there are less jobs, less opportunity to get onto the housing ladder, little chance of pensions, etc.
Any budding composers out there might be interested in an opportunity to have a piece played by my new orchestra.
The Orchestra
Edinburgh Charity Orchestra is a new group formed to perform large scale concerts in order to raise money for and awareness about the work of local charities. The orchestra is invitation only and draws on some of the best student and amateur players in Edinburgh, as well as looking to give experience to young professional soloists and composers.
Our first concert is currently being planned for Saturday 28th May 2011 in St Mary's Cathedral, Edinburgh, featuring Mahler's 1st Symphony and Rachmaninoff's Piano Concerto No.2, with soloist Andrew Johnston. We would also like to include a work by a local composer as the first piece on the programme.
Eligibility
- Composers must be aged 35 or under, or in full-time education, as of 31st January 2011. - Composers should either be Scottish or resident in Scotland. - The submitted work should be no more than 8 minutes long. - It may have received previous performances but should not have been published.
Orchestration
The maximum orchestration is the same as Mahler Symphony No.1 (below) while the minimum is 2.2.2.2-4.2.3.1-tmp-str.
The deadline for scores to be submitted is Monday 31st January 2011. The completed score should be sent in PDF format to edinburgh.charity.orchestragmail.com along with a recording if available. The email should also include the following information: Name, address, e-mail, phone number, date of birth, are you Scottish or resident in Scotland, details of current education status (if over 35), length of work and details of any previous performances.
The work to be performed will be selected by the conductor in consultation with members of the orchestra. Applicants will be notified of the result by the end of February at the latest. The composer of the selected piece will then be required to produce digital copies of parts by the end of March and the orchestra will be responsible for having these printed and bound.
For further information you can comment on this post and I'll get in touch with you.
During my time at university much of my independent musicological research has focused on classical music in Scotland. For my undergraduate dissertation I looked at the composer Cecil Coles who was tragically killed in World War One at the age of twenty-nine while for my Masters I explored the Edinburgh Musical Festivals of the early nineteenth-century. I suppose there are two reasons why I have found this area of research to be so interesting, firstly because there is a natural interest in the history and culture of your own country, and secondly because it's actually a relatively unresearched field and there is a lot of original work to be done. It's also quite a small field, so while if you're studying music in European countries you would specialise in a particular period, the history of classical music in Scotland is contained enough that it can be a speciality in itself.
Another thing which I've realised over the last few years is that as someone who is both a performer and a musicologist it's important to tie those together and give unknown older pieces an airing. It's very easy to say that they've had a chance to be heard and the fact they're unknown today is because they weren't good enough to gain a place in the canon but there are many reasons why pieces go unperformed. Now of course you're unlikely to find many undiscovered masterpieces which should be considered in the same league as the Bach passions or Beethoven symphonies, but that doesn't mean there isn't a lot of music out there worthy of performance. A lot of concert programmes are chosen from a relatively small range of repertoire when you consider the amount of music that has been written over the last few hundred years and even hearing or performing something once can be worthwhile.
So I know that I'm very poor at actually posting regularly when I decide to start a series of posts but I will hopefully do some posts about Scottish composers and particular events in Scottish classical music here over the next wee while. I really just wanted to offer this as a brief word of explanation as to why there will be some posts that otherwise could seem extremely random appearing here in the future.
