MoTab Isn't for Everyone...

Last Saturday, I had a very interesting experience which fed my ever-growing curiosity about the psychology of music: how people can have such different aesthetic preferences, how the same music effects people differently, what role music plays in our social psyche, etc. I was asked to speak at a New England young single adult conference for my church, hosted in New Hampshire, and I chose to conduct a workshop on the difference between "Sacred" music (i.e. the genre, marketing label) and "sacred" music (meaning any music that is meaningful or inspirational to the individual listener).

First of all, my workshop went head to head with Roger Porter's (a Harvard prof who was economic advisor to Ford, Reagan and Bush I). Hmmm. Yes, people did still come to my class (although I probably would have chosen Porter's over my own!). My attendees were college-aged, and in preparing for the presentation I wanted to work with the fact that most people of this age group these days are steeped in commercial musical genres that are not part of the church's emphasis on the traditional, classical arts.

I divided the workshop into two themes:
1. Encourage participants to find the "sacred" in the popular music that they listen to everyday, and not feel limited to finding spirituality in the "Sacred" music genre.
2. Conversely, encourage participants to value "Sacred" music more and gain a deeper appreciation for the church's classical art tradition.

The first part was fascinating: I played 30 second clips from 12 songs that you all recommended and asked each participant to jot down silently whether or not the clip represented "sacred" music to them. Then, after I'd revealed what the songs were, we had a terrific discussion about what people responded to and why.

Here's the playlist of the 12 songs:
1. Crucifixus -- Choir of St. John's College, Cambridge (medieval church music)
2. Sweet Little Jesus Boy -- Jesse Norman (traditional Negro spiritual solo)
3. Hey Mama - Kanye West (current hip hop song)
4. Piano Sonata no 7, 3rd mvt - Prokofiev (example of no words)
5. Come Thou Glorious Day of Promise -- Mormon Tabernacle Choir (traditional choral hymn)
6. Jesu Me Kanaka Waiwai -- Gladys Knight and Saints Unified Choir (Hawaiian hymn)
7. Every Time I Feel The Spirit - Little Richard (traditional spiritual with Baptist choir)
8. Umbrella- Rihanna (Pop)
9. Down to the River to Pray -- Allison Krauss (Bluegrass)
10. I Will Follow You Into the Dark -- Death Cab for Cutie (Alternative rock)
11. Cast Thy Burden On the Lord -- Mendelssohn's Elijah (traditional oratorio)
12. Blessed Assurance -- Gladys Knight (traditional spiritual with choir)


Some of the responses:
"No way #1 is sacred cause it's clearly just a movie soundtrack"
"MoTab is way too bland to be sacred" vs. "Only reverent music is sacred so none of the Gospel music is sacred"
"Kanye West's message about loving his mother makes his song the most sacred on the list"
"Death Cab for Cutie's song is the most authentic, real, therefore the most sacred"
"Anything that sounds like opera totally drives the spirit away"
"That Elijah song could be good if it had a little rhythm behind it." (I have to say that was one of my favorite comments)

We also talked about the idea of how Mormon culture contributes to our responses (i.e. sacred = quiet), and how our own family culture contributes. Then we switched gears and talked about the response each of the participants has to the hymns. The general consensus seemed to be that the kids don't enjoy singing them at church on Sundays ("boring, no energy") but that they are the first thing they turn to when they need personal comfort or inspiration ("I read through the poems or sing them to myself"). We talked a lot about the hymns as an important cultural record of our church's history, why it's important to preserve that musical aesthetic, and our role in making Sunday singing more enjoyable.

After such an experience, it's hard for me to deny that music I consider to be universally appealing... well, isn't. On the other hand, I'm grateful that the generation after me continues to find spiritual meaning in the music of their own time.

Musical Diplomacy in North Korea

I guess it takes a visit of the New York Philharmonic to North Korea for classical music to make the front page. There's been no shortage of discussion about this week's visit: Alex Ross calls out several of the national music commentators who have weighed in on whether or not the Phil's visit is a good idea, or just a pandering to the North Korean PR machine. The discussion ranges from critiques on the light-weight program (Dvorak, Gershwin, Wagner's overture to Lohengrin) to a condemnation of the West's effort to civilize the barbarian regime with the elevating effects of classical music. Perhaps I'm naive about the art of diplomacy and the need for political statements through programming, but I do believe in symphonic music's ability to communicate our democratic values. Not in a preachy, proselytizing way, but in an open-hearted representation of what we find uplifting. Who knows, maybe there'll be some common ground there. Isn't that diplomacy in itself?

See my posting from Dec. 13, 2007 for additional thoughts. For photos of the audience and the performers and a liveblog description of the concert, visit Pete Matthew's blog.

Also: Update to my post on La Vie en Rose, the movie about Edith Piaf. Marion Cotillard won the Oscar for Best Actress. So I wasn't the only one moved by her performance!

Church Music for Today?

I'm going to be a bit sparse with my blogging for the next couple of months because I am now fully entrenched in my music class, The Future of Music, at the Harvard Extension School. But I couldn't resist writing about this fascinating article from this week's New Yorker magazine. Nico Muhly is a twenty-six year old composer who is primarily inspired by the Renaissance religious music and and by contemporary minimalism. His own compositions are receiving wide acclaim, as well as ample performance. He's got such powerhouses as Philip Glass and John Adams behind him, so watch out, he's here to stay.

Heaven Sounds Like Elgar

Last weekend for my birthday, E took me to the Boston Symphony Orchestra's performance of The Dream of Gerontius by Edward Elgar. Elgar, best known to me by his cello concerto and , composed the oratorio in 1900 to the poetic text of a Catholic cardinal. I was so clueless about the piece before going I thought it was titled something about Geronimo... Why a Brit would write about Geronimo was not something I even paused to think about, so you can see how much thought and research I put into the evening before the lights went down.

The piece requires an enormous orchestra, organ, full chorus and three soloists -- a huge ensemble as you can see from the picture taken at a 1964 rehearsal. E and I were very quickly entranced: the orchestration is lush and Wagnerian, and Ben Heppner was a revelation as a true Helden tenor. I especially enjoyed Gerald Finley as the baritone. By the end of the piece, I was convinced it was perhaps one of the most purely beautiful works I have ever heard. Truly what I imagine choirs of angels sound like. And a highlight was the incredible moment when Gerontius sees God - "for one moment" -- and in that moment all the instruments must "exert their fullest force". Wow.

Opera on Film

Well after a VERY long Christmas hiatus, I'm back with my exciting musical adventures. The past month or so has actually provided a number of experiences ripe for discussion. First and foremost, I saw three very different operas on film and the results made me excited and curious about the future of opera performance in the digital age.

Although Jenny was one of my mother's starring roles at the Met Opera, Los Angeles Opera's production of MAHAGONNY was actually the first time I've seen the opera on stage. (I was 8 at the time my mother sang it and a little too young for Jenny's seductions.) I know some of the music quite well, but I was unfamiliar with the story or any production concepts. I was prepared to really like this film, since Alex Ross included the production on his Top 10 list of performances in 2007, but I was actually underwhelmed. I think the filming of the stage production was not intimate enough for my taste: too much time was spent in the broad panning of the full stage and not enough time on the individual singers. With very little set behind them, I felt that the camera could have done a better job grounding the viewer in the scenes with intimate camera work. Instead, the singers looked like they were drowning in the plain backdrops and expansive space of the stage.

I thought Audra McDonald was marvelous and Anthony Dean Giffrey was a highlight as Jimmy, but as much as I've loved Patti LuPone in the past, she spoke her way through this role and seemed out of place with the rest of the excellent vocals.

The second opera I watched recently was the Metropolitan Opera's production of HANSEL AND GRETEL. I was a gingerbread girl myself in the Met's production many years ago and Hansel too was one of my mom's starring roles, so I have many fond memories of the candy house and the witch with the green tongue. Well, this production couldn't be farther from that fairy tale ideal. Although certainly not what I would have chosen as a representation of the Grimm story, I didn't mind the dark interpretation as much as I thought I would. And I thought it worked exceptionally well on film. E and I attended the New Year's Day screening in HD while we were in Utah for Christmas; I was surprised and delighted by the enthusiastic and sold out crowd in the middle of Murray, UT, and the whole experience was mind-opening and completely fabulous to someone like me who grew up loving opera but in a technological age. I can't wait for more of the Met's HD broadcasts.

Lastly, I finally got around to watching the Met's EUGENE ONEGIN, the HD version broadcast on PBS that I had TiVoed. I had missed it in the theaters but had heard rave reviews of Hvorostovsky as Onegin. Ramon Vargas was a bit disappointing as Lensky, but Renee Fleming certainly delivered. As with Hansel, I again thought the filming of the stage production was effective, even though, like Mahagonny, the set was minimal and it would have been easy for the characters to have been lost among the plain backdrops. The final scene was riveting.

My overall conclusions from these three experiences is that the Met has an advanced aptitude for filming staged opera for the movies. Both on screen and on TV, the two Met productions were much more effective than the LA Opera production. It is thrilling to me to think about the possibilities for this art form as it continues to be transferred to advanced viewing techniques: first of all, the possibilities for directors and settings of the opera seem limitless, a theory the Met has already explored by hiring Hollywood and Broadway directors. Could Tim Burton direct a feature film of Electra, produced by the Met? (Seeing his Sweeney Todd over break made me remember the Covent Garden production I saw of the opera where blood ran down the corrugated metal walls.) How about Joe Wright over a production of Tristan and Isolde? As if Atonement wasn't sad enough...

And then questions arise about the singers. Will some singers embrace the film format while others will shy away from it? To what degree will appearances dictate casting in the future? Will the voice no longer reign supreme if the singer is required to appear in the next theater down from Reese Witherspoon or Meryl Streep?

The Politics of Music

On Monday, December 10th, the New York Philharmonic announced that it will be traveling to North Korea to perform a concert there on February 26th. The concert, which will come at the end of the orchestra's China tour, will include pieces by Gershwin, Dvorak and both the US and North Korean national anthem.

What has startled me most about this recent announcement is the negative reaction it has received from some. For example, I heard Terry Teachout interviewed on CNN just before the announcement was official and he berated the orchestra for crossing boundaries of political hostilities. If the United States has diplomatic sanctions on North Korea, he argued, why should we freely offer them our musical pleasures?

This point of view seems to me to show an egregious misunderstanding of music's role in history as a political equalizer. Perhaps I'm under the influence of The Rest is Noise, but even during the totalitarian reigns of Hitler and Stalin when music was at its most highly politicized, music served as a no man's land where many composers were able to communicate with the outside through their universal language. Even some Jewish musicians were spared by Hitler because their musicality raised them above their ethnicity. Can't that same universality help us today, even if classical music isn't the soul of our culture as it perhaps used to be? I guess I should be heartened that an orchestra's touring schedule still has the power to elicit passionate responses from politicians, journalists and music fans alike.

Edith Piaf: The Voice of France

Biopics are no new thing in film. 2007 saw its fair share: Jane Austen, Beatrix Potter and Truman Capote have all had screen time recently. Musicians Ray Charles and Johnny Cash also received attention in recent years. But not one biography of an artist has gripped me like La Vie en Rose, the summer release based on the life of legendary French singer Edith Piaf which I saw for the first time the other night.

Aside from the tragic life that made for fast-paced and wrenching storytelling, Piaf's original music fantastically illustrates the atmosphere of France before and after World War II. Her gutteral tone--almost speaking on pitch-- is so closely associated with French folk singing that I, not having heard any particular Edith Piaf recordings before this movie, instinctively understood the cultural setting of the movie.

Also remarkable about this film is the performance of Marion Cotillard, who plays Edith Piaf. It's hard to believe Cotillard is the beautiful young woman who co-stars with Russell Crowe in A Good Year. And it's hard to believe that the same actress plays Piaf through all her adult years; she changes so dramatically in her appearance and demeanor as her character grows older and more sickly.

I have already searched iTunes for Piaf's best-loved songs. Her voice, while not always beautiful, spoke the language of a whole people.