Credo: My He(art) Is Not A Clock

Sense8 blog #2
There's a lovely moment in Season One of Netflix's "Sense8". It takes place in the Anahuacalli Museum south of Mexico City. The museum was the brain child of Diego Rivera, the amazing artist who also happened to be Frida Kahlo's husband.

In the episode, Lito - a closeted Mexican gay action-hero celebrity - is mourning the breakup with his boyfriend, Hernando.  During multiple flashbacks, we overhear the two men talking about love and art:
Hernando reminds Lito of a line from one of his movies: "My heart is not a clock." Lito remembers that his character was always late prompting Hernando to say how much he loved that line because it was both "an apology that is also an anthem."

Later, Hernando (speaking in front of a Diego mural) says to Lito, "Love is not something we wind up, something we set or control. Love is just like art. A force that comes into our lives without any rules, expectations or limitations, and every time I hear that line, I am reminded that love, like art, must always be free."

At the heart of art, there is no mechanism. Love and Art share this. To create an algorithm for love would be impossible - although many are currently trying. To create the same for art would totally screw it up. Deep down, we know that our hearts are not clocks. Often, love comes to us at the wrong time in our lives. My wife and I fell in love when we were in college, but we were not ready to marry. That happened seven years later after much angst and passion. Love finds people who aren't ready for it. People go looking for love and can't find it. Love is a mystery.

I find that Love, actually, just happens.

Talk to any musician or actor and they'll try to articulate this idea of "happening". Being "musical" is something that can't be taught, it just happens. Being "in the moment" is something that acting teachers try to work on with their students, oftentimes through various methods - which are just other forms of clocks and mechanisms really - in order to let things happen organically. Musicians recreate scores written in black dots on white pages, interpreting tempo markings and other notions (like "Allegro" or "Very slow" or "half-note = 76") which are also simply different ways of saying "time moves like this". Again, another clock.

But Music is not a clock. It is not something one winds up, or something that can be set to control its elemental pieces. Music is a force that enters into our lives without any rules, limitations, or expectations. Music, like love, must always be free.

Of our many anxieties, Musicians truly fear the notion of dragging or rushing. It is a deeply ingrained idea that music has a "tempo" and that that "tempo" must be decided upon and kept. This comes from the silly - and terribly amateurish idea - that music moves through its bars in equal time. So equal, one can set a clock to it. We call this clock a METRONOME. It was, perhaps, the worst thing ever invented where music's concerned.

You see, all music flows forward at various speeds. Listen to any great pianist and you will find that you can't find a metronomic marking that holds past a few bars or so, even though there's no "marking" from the composer that says "speed up a bit here" or "drag a bit here." Music is not metronomic. Humans are not metronomes. Our heart rates move up and down all the time. See a person you're angry with and what happens? See your cat getting ready to jump into your aunt-who-hates-cats lap and what happens? Voices are human things and so each one will vibrate differently, causing the shifts in vibrato and breath that should change how fast or slow one aria gets sung by various singers.

Debussy said it best: "You know what I think about metronome marks? They're right for a single bar, like 'roses with a morning life'. Only there are those who don't hear music and who take these marks as authority to hear it still less!"

Debussy got it, I think. But most musicians are simply scared of tempi. Why? They get yelled at for dragging, or rushing by conductors or their teachers. "Don't Rush!" is something we've all heard more than a few times in our life. Another example of why: during the weeks it takes to put on operas, singers rehearse with a pianist, and then in the last few days they sing with an orchestra. Inevitably they notice that things feel differently and chalk it up to "the tempi are different", or "this conductor changes tempi once he's in front of an orchestra". While this might be true, something else is causing the perception that time is moving differently when one changes from piano to orchestral accompaniment: Pianos are percussive instruments, and many times the rehearsal pianists - if they are young - rush the conductors. Orchestras seldom rush, and most of the instruments playing create sound in a non-percussive manner, changing the time it takes for their sounds to reach the ears of the singers. So parts of an aria or duet might feel too slow, other parts too fast.

We train young conductors and pianists to "keep a tempo". We talk to singers about time like it is fixed somehow. They work to find "their tempo" for this or that aria. Instead, I think singers and pianists should go listen to recordings of great singers and conductors. Quickly one discovers a more organic flow of time, a flexibility, that also appears to change phrase by phrase. The sense of time was more horizontal and less fixed before our current age of anxiety. We fear TIME in music so much that the solution seems to be to set a clock into it's heart in order to control it.

This clock sits at the centre of all mediocre music-making.

That's what happens when we fear something. We set out to control it. (Here's a link to my blog on fear: Fear In Opera)

We created metronomes long ago, but we continue to create invisible ones today. Too many put these clocks into the heart of their art.

My credo? I believe that My Art's Heart Is Not a Clock. I believe it is another kind of force more akin to Love, that lives without limitations and expectations.

Those who want to know what to expect before the Art is created, those who want to put limits on Art, or those who want Art and Artists to have adequately comfortable lives that are safe, shouldn't be leading our world, or our musical worlds. Many are, and that is the really frightening thing.

So toss out your art's clock. Allow love back in. Love that has no bounds, no rules, no walls. You'll find a release and a freedom that is truly exhilarating and, perhaps, transformative.

And spend some time checking out Frida and Diego. They were cool.

Conducting in Two

So it's Thursday, July 15th and David Gately is almost finished staging Pirates of Penzance. He started less than a week ago, and in between starting stagings and now, we've performed Die Fledermaus with the same set of singers! Brevard certainly doesn't waste anyone's time, and the singers are beginning to realize just how packed a day can be.

As the conductor, staging rehearsals are a time of patience, a time to focus on the full score, a time to wave your hands at people not paying any attention to you because they're trying to remember where the director wants them to go, or what the choreography is, or simply focusing on their lines or a prop. For whatever reason, the past few rehearsals have been on numbers in the show either written in 2/4 or 6/8 or a quick 4/4; i.e. all numbers where the conductor is going to conduct "In 2" (down, up, down, up, repeat...) It's a rather simple pattern, something that one normally doesn't focus on. In fact, I've taught it to my 8 year old son, and he's been doing a rather good job waving his hands during the rehearsals!

However, conducting in two -- day after day -- has been difficult for me. Not only is each "2" slightly faster or slower than the other, but the repeated injury occurring to my right shoulder has now resulted in the need for a massage. Remember, please, that I don't conduct all that often anymore -- I spend my time at McGill directing shows, not conducting them. It's like a marathon runner not running all year and then jumping into a race (this race being conducting from 10am to 10pm).

I'm really not complaining, but it has been an adjustment on my getting-older body, shoulder and arm. It's something I'm not all that proud of having to worry about, let alone complain about.

It'll all be over rather soon, however. We start running the show (and there are numbers in 3 and in 4!!) later today. This Sunday there is an aria concert which I'm playing on, then Monday morning I have my first orchestra reading.

We open (as in an open dress rehearsal that they sell tickets to) a week from Tonight!

down, up, down, up, down, up...

Empty Stage & a Ghost Light

The last two professional opera productions I've seen were VERY interesting. The first left me so exasperated over the terrible conducting and second rate Italian coming from seasoned professionals, that I was a bit undone to be honest.

Then a few days later, I saw Washington Opera's AMAZING production of "Falstaff". The show started with a mostly empty stage and a ghost light. I can't express how wonderful it was to see opera work the way it's supposed to! I was thoroughly entertained vocally, musically, and dramatically. Alan Opie was the Falstaff and he was simply perfect in the role. I've seen a number of Falstaffs, including Paul Plishka's debut in the role (with Freni, Horne and Susie Graham back at the Met in the early 90s), and Mr Opie was just what the doctor ordered. The Ford was simply the best I've heard live - a young baritone named Timothy Mix. Check him out. The Quickly and Meg Page were Nancy Maultsby and Betsy Bishop and both were fantastic - funny and full-voiced seasoned professionals wielding their craft easily and with aplomb. Down to Bardolph and Pistola (a great new bass, Grigory Soloviov), the cast sang a very difficult score in a completely engaging and light-hearted manner.

The concept was funny, and had a fresh take - at least to my mind - on the idea of actors who dress up to be characters who then later dress up to put on a practical joke in a forest. The set was cool and funny - including a tavern that transformed itself into the great oak. There were hysterical touches - from Bardolph eating old pizza from the floor to the male dancing fairies who practically stole the show. It all ended with Verdi's tour de force of a fugue and it was given a visual tour de force to match. Usually it's "park and bark" time, as the fugue that ends the show is tough to keep together. The director took no prisoners and marched the chorus and cast through an endless array of moves - including a pseudo-conga line. It really gave the musical components of the fugue a visual illustration unlike I'd seen before. And of course, this Falstaff worked because there was a wonderful conductor down in the pit with a wonderful orchestra. I stood up and yelled bravo.

Maybe I had to experience an off-the-mark opera to fully appreciate the exciting night had at Falstaff.

Conducting vs Directing

This past Friday I agreed to conduct the final production here at Brevard: Puccini's Suor Angelica & Gianni Schicchi.  I'm replacing a conductor who had to cancel at the last minute.  The students in the casts gave me a rather sweet ovation when David Gately announced it (no audible groans, thank the gods!) We open in less than a week and while I'm excited, it has posed a bit of an identity crisis the last few days.  

Brevard is a busy place, and we've just closed a great production of Hello Dolly on Saturday.  At the same time, we've been trying to get up a 2nd scenes program that is going to be performed THIS Wednesday at the Porter Center in Brevard, NC.  A paying public is coming and we're doing scenes from the following operas: Partenope, Don Giovanni, Cenerentola, Falstaff, Boheme, Little Women, Strawberry Fields, Don Giovanni, Cosi fan tutte, Dialogues of the Carmelites, Peter Grimes, The King and I, Turandot, A Midsummer Night's Dream, Walküre, and the Merry Widow.  IT IS A HUGE PROGRAM.  I'm directing (as in stage directing) the first half (Partenope thru Strawberry Fields) and playing some of the scenes in the second half.  So for the past few days I've been directing scenes, coaching scenes, and conducting musical rehearsals for the Puccini double-bill.

Some obvious thoughts on all of this: It keeps me busy.  I've lost some weight already (conducting is a great work out!) I've not had time to block any of the remaining scenes because my mind is already on the upcoming orchestra rehearsals for the Puccini so it's forced me to think on my feet.  I've rediscovered how great it is to conduct Puccini. I'm ticked off at the singers who aren't as excited as I am to be working on these masterpieces and I'm thrilled with the singers who are MORE excited than I am to be working on these masterpieces!