If you don't know the 1999 movie "Galaxy Quest", then this blog won't make a great deal of sense. I'll take the time to do a fast and furious lowdown on the movie so the the rest of the blog might hopefully resonate.
"Galaxy Quest" is one of those great cult films. A send-up of science fiction space movies - in particular the Star Trek universe and its fandom - it goes beyond simple parody and achieves an enormous humanity due to the smart script and the amazing cast: Alan Rickman, Tim Allen, Sigourney Weaver, Tony Shalhoub, to name just the few standouts (the best is Enrico Colantoni as Mathesar). It basically tells the story of a group of aliens (known as the Thermians) who view the telecasts of a sci-fi television series "Galaxy Quest" and think it's an actual documentary of true life. These aliens recreate the ship, make its technology totally work, venerate the crew, and yet the whole time they think it's all real, like actually real Earth history! The fact that these aliens are way more advanced than Earth makes it even funnier that they don't understand how the tv show was just a piece of entertainment, based on actors and screen writers.
The crux of the movie is the intersection of the two sets of characters: the aliens and the actors. The aliens completely misunderstand the reason for the technology (televised, episodic sci-fi entertainment), but make it work in order to save themselves from annihilation. In fact, it works so well because it is entirely based on the lines of dialogue, the set pieces, the spaceship models, and the gestures of the original actors in the series. The actors are at first flabbergasted that the aliens exist and amazed that the tech actually works and is real. They stumble into the narrative of the Thermians trying to survive a war against evil aliens and find their new purpose - motivating the Thermians to help them create a new future while the actors learn to set aside their petty jealousies of the past and work together.
So now we are all up to speed. What the heck does "Galaxy Quest" have to do with Schubert or Mozart?
It occurred to me today that many in classical music are like those "Galaxy Quest" aliens: experts recreating an entertainment they think is actually art, not realizing that the whole raison d'etre was to entertain people. Recreating it without understanding this basic fact (the tv show wasn't real, i.e. art is entertainment), causes a whole cascade of errors to rain down upon both those re-creationists (artists) and their audiences.The aliens are like many of today's opera experts, pedagogues, critics, and aficionados.
Let me explain further.
Often, young singers (and frankly other classical artists) meet up with mentors, coaches, and teachers who impress upon them the idea that they need to simply express the text and the score as it is on the page and as the composer intended. They are told: Don't put your ideas onto the page - particularly for geniuses like a Schubert or a Mozart - because that might deter from the composer's intent, or god-forbid, ruin an artistic masterpiece. "Who are we to...?" is a common defense from experts, and seems to be asked to make sure we venerate the frigid pages of classical scores.
This happens everywhere, and with such frequency it is difficult to combat.
When a coach tells a singer to always follow the Barenreiter edition's use of rests between parts of sentences in Mozart recitatives. When a masterclass artist tells a singer not to take time on this or that phrase because it's not marked in by Schubert. When a judge tells a singer not to ornament Mozart or take appoggiaturas in Mozart arias. When anyone steps in to restrain anyone trying to make an artistic choice because they either don't approve, or they don't see it on the page, or they might have their tastes offended, that's when I see a problem and think about those Thermians onboard their version of the Galaxy Quest spaceship.
The Thermians are focused on a past that doesn't really exist, but doing it with exquisite accuracy. They can use the technology themselves but need the Actors for their survival. (A good friend of mine after reading a draft of this blog pointed out that there are musicologists in this movie too: the diehard fans of the series whose knowledge of the technical details about the ship literally save the day.) Knowledge of the past is not enough, you need to have the the other pieces to get everything to work: you need the Actors. The entertainers who originally created the roles and made it all seem so real. Singers and musicians are those actors, (who can't live in the fake past because it is a set made out of wood, plastic and flashing lights.) They need the aliens as much as the aliens need the actors. Opera experts need the living artists. The living artists need the researchers (die-hard sci-fi fans) to help supply needed knowledge to understand the alien's current tech based on the past tech. One without the other creates a disconnect in the art itself. But - and here's the important part - they need to be equally valued and both need to realize the intersectionality that exists between entertainment, art, entertainers, artists, and especially the past and present. Making music is an act of re-creation, not an act of paint-by-numbers. The latter is a copy without any life present even though it might be the most accurate of recreations.
I have seen time and time again young singers be encouraged to be some sort of transparent vessel and just sing the notes and the text so as "not to get in the way of the composer." They stand and sing Schubert songs without telling stories, or engaging in those stories in any way that might be seen as "acting" (the big taboo in art song -- acting a song -- is the worst offense for many now teaching young singers.) And we wonder why recitals are no longer popular with the public. They are boring. There's no text, except maybe on a piece of paper in a small font that you can't read in the dimly lit mostly empty recital hall (projected titles in recitals PLEASE). The singers are dressed like they are in some sad recreation of a low-budget "Downton Abbey" episode (why are we still dressing like Edwardians yet yelling for classical music to de-colonize itself? How about starting by stopping this crazy period gown/tux dress codes for recitals?) Singers are being asked to envision a better future for classical music. I would encourage them to toss out their tuxedos and figure new modes of how to bring the incredible wealth of recital music to a contemporary audience.
Our expert "aliens" don't get that Schubert songs (or any songs, just using his as prime example) were not written to be put into recital-museums by gorgeously-gowned automatons who simply sing the notes as written, the text as typed out, and follow the markings that might be in the score. These were pieces of entertainment, not sculptures or paintings that never change once created by the artist. And as entertainment, they were meant to be shared in as many ways as possible by as many different levels of singers (amateur and professional) in absolutely different arenas (from literal arenas, to living rooms in Iowa, to the Australian outback, to student recitals.) It's time to recognize this and stop with the pretension.
And the same with opera - I'll use ornamenting a score as an example. Ornamentation? Yes, by all means. Study Pamina's aria and you'll understand it's Mozart ornamenting his own melody for a 17 year-old Pamina who probably didn't have it in her to do so on the stage, or know that she should take the appoggiaturas so he wrote them all in. Do some research into this and you'll quickly realize that singing Mozart without ornaments is a sad and old-fashioned mode of performance practice. In baroque opera it's totally accepted and expected. But ornaments (defined as any alteration to the score) in operas must happen in Gluck, Mozart, Rossini, Bellini, Donizetti, Verdi, Gounod, Bizet, Meyerbeer, von Weber, Beethoven (yes kids), and well into Puccini (fight me on that and you'll lose.)
It'd be funny if it weren't for the fact that classical music and opera audiences are dying. We need to embrace the notion that we live and work from past entertainments made by professional entertainers like Shakespeare and Mozart. But now the experts have replaced the past with their new version called art. They teach the Kunst as Heilige Kunst, revere it on pedestals, and sadly prevent it from living, breathing and - most importantly of all - evolving so that today's audiences can discover it and hopefully fall in love with it!
So the aliens get points for making the starship actually work. But when they missed that one piece of information - it wasn't real to begin with - they entered into a dramatic situation where their lives and culture faced annihilation by the evil alien. It took the actors coming back into their "world" to save the day, save the universe, and save the aliens. The actors had to drop their own pretensions and recognize that they too faced annihilation unless they embraced their new reality by taking the past and making it work for them again.
It's time for the entertainers among us to save the day.
"By Grabthar's Hammer, by the sons of Warvan, you shall be avenged!"
- Dr. Lazarus as played by Alexander Dane as played by Alan Rickman
