A Night at the Ballet

I had the opportunity recently to watch two full-length story ballets, which is unusual for me since I don't follow ballet with the same regularity that I follow other classical art forms. The last time I attended a story ballet in person was probably about a decade ago, in San Francisco, where I thought the ballet company was, at that time, the finest performing arts organization in that city. (The opera was a little staid at that time and I heartily disagree with Tilson-Thomas's passionless Mahler.)

I much more prefer the storyless one-acts of Balanchine et al, but I had the opportunity to see these recent two through the eyes of my oldest daughter, who is five. We attended Coppelia at New York City Ballet (Esme pictured with her friend, above) which was Esme's first live ballet performance. I was actually surprised we made it through the whole performance, since the ballet started after my daughter's normal bedtime. I found myself surprisingly pleased by the ballet itself. The music of French composer Delibes added an element of interest for me during the first two acts, which are dominated by mimed/danced storytelling, and then the third act offered a full half hour of satisfying dancing in an elaborate wedding scene. Perhaps it was just that my daughter was enthralled by the whole experience, but I found it refreshing to watch such a traditional performance of a wholesome, delightful show when so much of performance today is about reimagined productions or edgy cynicism.

Following Coppelia, my family watched the San Francisco Ballet's new production of The Nutcracker on TV. I know it's January and like everyone else, we're sick of Christmas stuff, but it was on our TiVo on a Sunday afternoon and somehow it sounded intriguing. I have seen (and performing in) the New York City Ballet production of The Nutcracker countless times, and this production was unlike any of the candy-coated tinsel that is passed off as ballet on so many stages during the holiday season. Taking its inspiration from the 1915 San Francisco World's Fair, the production has a restrained art deco influence. The set for the second act -- marzipan columns dripping with sugared fruits in so many other productions -- consisted only of a simple backdrop echoing the design of the San Francisco Conservatory of Flowers. The second act performers represented countries instead of candies or foods: Spain, Arabia, Japan, France etc. instead of Candy Canes, Marzipan, Hot Chocolate and others.

San Francisco's exceptional dancers, including the inestimable Yuan Yuan Tan, brought the highest quality to the dancing. On a cold Sunday afternoon in January, my whole family enjoyed the warmth of The Nutcracker as if we were seeing it for the first time.

Quartet for the Beginning of an Era

Change. Hope. Yes We Can. While all of that was very exciting, what I was looking forward to most at this morning's inauguration was the quartet by John Williams based on the tune "Simple Gifts". Before full details of the quartet's performance were made public, there was speculation here that a performance for violin, cello, clarinet and piano could only mean one thing: Messiaen's Quartet for the End of Time. Considering that Messiaen wrote the piece in a concentration camp in 1941 for the musicians he had on hand, I would have found a performance of the Quartet - however transcendental the piece may be - a little creepy on this inaugural occasion. Instead, I was thrilled with the multicultural but still exceptional performance of an all-American tune representing the all-American sentiments of responsibility, sacrifice and integrity.

The Food of Love

The week before Christmas, I was excited to see the cover of The Economist magazine bear the headline, "Why We Love Music". The philosophy of music - why we respond to it, why it holds a prominent place in our culture, and how it affects our moods and behaviors - has always been of special interest to me, although more from a anthropological point of view than a neurological one. I suppose this is because my own musical interests span several different genres, and I wonder why so many different rhythms, tones and styles can all have meaning for me while "only" classical or "only" pop speak to others.

I was a little disappointed in the article's three hypotheses about why music is so eagerly consumed by our culture. While they might be scientifically proven, they seemed trite to me: 1. That music is a representation of our sexual personas and works to further our evolutionary reproductive drives; 2. That music binds groups of people together; and 3. That music satisfies an appetite in humans that is akin to "auditory pornography." It seems that most of the studies done by the scientists in the article are based on observations of primates and evolutionary biology, rather than looking at the particular relationship humans have with this "accidental language," as the article refers to it. A more insightful study of music, it seems to me, would choose to pick apart uniquely human responses to music: why, for instance, has music become more popular than ever in our cultures even though individual earphones have minimized the impact of social listening? Do we still feel unity with each other if we listen only in the virtual concerthalls of our iPods? If we're not listening in a group, what makes us feel like we're part of a group? Do we chalk up that feeling of unity merely to the marketing machine that accompanies most of today's music, or is there still something intrinsic in music -- even if experienced individually -- that links us to other humans?

The article states that "Anecdotal evidence linking music to sexual success is strong," a claim I do not doubt. But humans have drives beyond sex and a desire to belong that I believe also play into our cultural obsession with music. I would list among those alternative drives the desire to elevate ourselves to a more spiritual plane, a drive I doubt exists in primates (and one that was the seemingly-forgotten cultural force behind most of music up until the last few hundred years). Also, a drive to escape depression or to alter our mindset away from debilitating worries. A drive to express our creativity as humans, even if in a manufactured setting like karaoke or Guitar Hero.

Fortunately, this is an area of study that is still much of a mystery, so perhaps in the coming decades philosophers, anthopologists and perhaps even religious thinkers will join the evolutionary biologists in the study of why we love music. It should be a very exciting discussion.