new.challenges
- 01/10/2010
With the new year and each new concert we have new challenges, and those new challenges come from new things—such as music that isn’t too familiar to us. That turns each concert into a journey of learning, gathering insight on the stories behind the music, but there’s something that a lot of people like to emphasize in this group: fun. The music might be serious and of course we should take our playing seriously but we should never lose sight of the fun.
Today we had a rehearsal for our upcoming concert and as the various sections were rehearsed (where details worked and tidied and new focus points found), It was hard not to notice a few smiles as certain passages came together. Not just from Maestro, but from section players too.
There was a point in the rehearsal where Maestro pointed out to us that Dvorak was one of those people that was able to make happy music out of a minor key, telling us a story that transformed the way we looked at the music: it was of a maestro working with a different orchestra that, while they rehearsed Dvorak’s 8th Symphony, noticed that the brass came in with a very profound and dignified entrance to the Fourth Movement. didn’t quite have the right frame of mind. Politely, he pointed out to them that, “Dvorak never called us to war, he called us to dance.” :)
And that transformed how they played the symphony, and that holds true for us as we take on Dvorak’s 7th Symphony. Perhaps we focus so much on playing serious classical music that we forget this is also quite fun. It’s actually quite refreshing to have it pointed out—we hope you can see it too :)
There are two concerts coming up: one in Federal Way at the Centerstage Theatre Arts Conservatory and our regularly-scheduled concert, “The Giving Tree”, at Meany Hall at the University of Washington. Come to one of the concerts (or both!) and have some fun—we’re quite excited to share it with you!
In any case, from all of us here at the Seattle Philharmonic: a most happy new year to you and yours :)
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french.connections
- 11/08/2009
We’re a community orchestra, and we have as many different walks of life as we do interests. We’re lawyers, we’re engineers, we’re retired, we’re working long hours, in the end, we’re working to dive into music and learn all there is to learn—together—and to have fun doing it. We’re an orchestra that, like many others, has made music a part of our lives and we’re fascinated by how versatile it is and how well it fits in most any aspect of our it.
On a last-minute (last-second?) business trip, I found myself frantically writing the personnel manager saying I won’t be able to make it to the rehearsal because, well, business was calling. I was on my way to Paris, which just so very neatly ran in parallel to our upcoming concert of all-French music. It was perhaps a business trip but it seemed all too great of an opportunity to learn about the culture and perhaps try and see if any insight can work its way into the music and how we look at each phrase. Music really is a part of our lives, and I think it’s safe to say this orchestra is quite passionate about it too.
After riding taxis through city streets, listening to the noises and surrounding conversations, the music began to make sense. I could hear “Bolero” by Ravel in the occasional honking of horns in Paris, I could hear the more delicate moments of the Concerto on the walks to get lunch. The whole experience was bringing the music to life and by the time I was on the flight home, I couldn’t wait to get back into playing. Yes, no matter where we go or what we do, this orchestra has music in our bones :)
This past weekend, satisfying my addiction to French films, I attended the Midnight Madness screening of “Le Fabuleux Destin d’Amélie Poulain” at the Egyptian Theatre and was pleased to see a poster for next week’s concert. Yes, it’s definitely been a very French past few weeks and for the time being, the immersion in French culture continues.
I do invite you to join us on the 15th to immerse yourself in a little bit of it too :)
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The Impressionist who hated being called an Impressionist
- 11/03/2009[Debussy] is the beginning of the twentieth-century breakup of music. No longer was there a great structure assembled like a cathedral. No longer were there to be set rules by which this modulation or progression was allowed. Debussy did to tonal relationships what Monet and Cézanne did to traditional color relationships. Poof! and out they went. Art and music became insinuation rather than rhetoric or illustration, the haiku rather than the sonnet. One magical, spiced chord was enough to set the mood.
Schonberg p. 465 The Lives of the Great Composers
Claude Debussy was an admirer of William Turner’s painting, and noted once in a letter that he believed Turner was “the greatest creator of mysterious effects in the whole world of art.” And yet, what Turner did for oils, Debussy most certainly did for the musical clefs.
The man himself despised being called an “impressionist,” identifying instead with the “symbolist” aesthetic of writers like Edgar Allan Poe and artists like Edvard Munch; but it is unavoidable that the character of much of Debussy’s music takes on an air of the impressionistic. It is interesting, for instance, to compare Debussy’d Prélude “Voiles” [“Veils”] with Monet’s famous “Madame Monet and her Son.” Listen to the way that Debussy characterizes the wafting fabric, describing the object not directly or visually, but in terms of how one might feel as their hand grazed its surface, or the quality that it might take on as the wind blew through its sheets. Not dissimilar from the fabric of Madame Monet’s dress, which gives the impression of movement and life in this painting. Not a static object, but a breathing part of the environment. If Schubert was trying to create a musical picture of the trout swimming up stream in his D. 667 Quintet, Debussy would instead have given us the emotional essence of the moment.
Nor was the distinct character of Debussy’s work easy to achieve. As with many of the great composers whose works history has preserved, Claude Debussy composed music with radically different techniques than his predecessors had. Asked once what rules he used to create music, Debussy replied “mon plaisir,” [“whatever I please”] and despite the flippancy of the response, there is an important lesson in the anecdote: Debussy’s musical mind worked independently of the history if was born into, and as he altered (or altogether discarded) classical forms and tonal structures, he created a new path for music in the Twentieth Century.
While Debussy’s underpinning musical structure was revolutionary when he was creating it, what the modern listener can take away is the profound depth of his sound. Debussy’s orchestrations are full of subtle aromas, tantalizing harmonies and beautifully blended timbres, so that one is hard pressed to escape a performance of his music without a feeling of having been transported to another place. Luckily, there’s a 99% guarantee of having enjoyed the journey.
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