An exercise

You are driving in your car, and you pull up to a stoplight. Just before the light changes, another car pulls up next to you. You look over a look at that person as your sheltered, automobiled lives cross each other for an instant. It may be a man, maybe a woman - it doesn't really matter. Make it anyone you want for the purpose of this exercise. The light changes and you both zoom off on your individual ways. Maybe you'll see that person again, maybe you won't.

Now imagine being with that person in their car. Have a conversation with them. Who are they? What are their fears, hopes, dreams? Where are they going? What are they feeling? Do you like them? Does it matter? What do you see when you look over at your car from their perspective?

We live in a complex society. We all fly about in our own lives, driving like the devil, worrying about our schedule and our pocketbook, not thinking about the people like us in the car next to us, only three feet away. In the movie Crash, the Los Angeles lifestyle is given a brutally honest (and depressingly tragic) treatment where people are forced out of the comfort zone of their automobiles and into an uncomfortable relationship with the drivers next to them.

Our lives form a cross-connecting polyphony of different arcs and trajectories, different keys and rhythms, different modes of expression. And yet we really all share a very similar story, rooted in a common culture, with similar fears, goals, and the realization that - when all is said and done - this musical journey we call life will someday come to and end.

This is why Bach is important. There is no simplicity in Bach. His music is the music of complexity and interconnectivity. If we allow ourselves to get inside of Bach's music, he can show us the weaving fabrics of our lives' melodies. And we can begin to understand that the resulting harmony and texture of those melodies is the music of the cosmos, a glorious consonance and dissonance that exists for one reason only: in Bach's words: Soli Dei Gloria. "Only for the glory of God."

Songs

I just finished listening to the final mixes of the 13 songs that will be on "Musical Moonshine", and I had an interesting experience: I wanted to hear them again. There's much less musicial polish on these songs (all of them were recorded at home with one mic, no mic preamp, three guitars and a mandolin - no other instruments), but they sparkle to me. What's surprising is that these songs have been with me for a while, some of them for anywhere from 3 to 7 years. I have performed them dozens of times, and I haven't gotten tired of them.

There was a real sense of pride in these songs for me. I think they represent the best songwriting I've ever done. Some of them are experimental, while others are very straightforward, but they all work for me on some level.

I also have a better handle on the relationship between song and songwriter this time. I have always felt that songs were like children: you raise them up, and then let them go into the world, hopefully to touch other lives in a positive way. But this set, more than any other, feels like they are a part of me, maybe even a part I didn't know existed. I listen to One-Time Lover, a song about a rambling lothario and realize that - even tho I'm not a rambling lothario - there's a part of me in that cad. Or Washing Away, a stream of consciousness song that I realized yesterday is based in an experience I had four years ago. And the songs that are based on my relationship with Lynda are as simultaneously autobiographical and universal as I think any songs can be.

So it's almost time for me to send these children out to the world. But this batch is perhaps a little more mature and ready for the world than any I've done before, and they make me a very proud papa.

Follow-up to last post

As promised, I went and spoke to the PEO group. And although they were too kind to say anything or admit it, I fumbled all over myself. What happened is that I started in on the breathing aspect of this idea/theory/mess, and realized (as a woman in the back of the room began to fall asleep) that they were bored, and I had no idea what I was saying. So I shifted gears and skipped directly to the part where I used Mozart as a way of describing what beauty is/was in music.

And I am realizing now that the larger problem here is that there are many directions this conversation has gone with the various people who have been part of it with me. So before I get back up in front of the public again and start to spout this stuff off before it is fully formed, I better have some time to put it all together in my own head.

I walked myself into a teaching corner...

Last summer, I was asked by someone to teach a short class to a PEO Women's group luncheon. I said yes, she said she needed a title. I said 'how about "A Different Way to Listen to Music". There you go.

Problem is, I can't remember what the hell I was thinking about doing when I said that! The class is tomorrow, and I for the life of me can't figure out what I'm going to tell these women. Anyway, I'm re-reading correspondence I had with a colleague on breathing/phrasing/spirit (which is much too complicated to encapsulate here) to see if it was something related to all of this. I kind of think it was, so I'm going to run with it. First, I'll try out in blog form...

The basic gist of the concept arose from a workshop I gave at a choir directors' conference a few years ago, and it went sort of like this: The essence of musical life, and the essence of singing, is breathing. A musical phrase has the same arc to it that breathing does: a moment of preparation, where life does not exist, followed by a life-giving fill of breath. Once the apex of the breath is reached, a slow recede begins, where the breath leaves the body, slowly and inexorably returning the lungs to their original state.

The genesis of my desire to expound on this idea was a conversation with a friend about how this "breath" can be found in all music: first, it appears in the musical phrase: a string of notes that has a rise and fall, ebb and flow. (As choral singers, we find it most clearly in the way we are called to sing the lines in Renaissance music.) Write large, it also appears in the artistic, narrative arc found in all works: symphonies, novels, plays.

The results of these conversations were many and varied, but some of the tangents I was most interested in included the following: in this model, since life is represented by inhalation, and death represented by exhalation, that means that every musical phrase is a representation of life and death. Furthermore, since everything we say or utter or give to the universe is done on the exhale, our act of speaking and singing itself is representative of dying. When we breathe in, we take from the universe. When we give to the universe, we are partaking in the act of dying. This makes Christ's death on the cross all the more profound, as perhaps the ultimate example one can give in human form of artistic gift.

All of this explosion of philosophical whimsy flew madly between myself and two or three friends, and then it stopped. Stopped on my end, because I had no idea what to do with it. So what? What does it mean?

I'm still not sure I know, but I can say this much today (with a deadline looming): it's time for me to tie this back into musical phrasing, at the very least to try and find a way to teach a class on "How to Listen to Music Differently."

* * * * * * *

So here goes: If this idea is true on any level, it means that a musical phrase that taps into our spirit is one that is basic to our existence. But that does not make a musical phrase beautiful. What makes a phrase beautiful seems to be simply what a phrase does with our expectations of what that phrase does. Beauty in music, as described by countless philosophers and aestheticians, is the act of expectation arrested. When a musical line introduces a slight alteration that we do not expect, it changes what the next expectation is. When Mozart introduces a simple, short dissonance into an otherwise flawless line, we are surprised, titillated. The next time he does it, we now find ourselves listening for beauty in a new way. (If I can find it, I'll put a brilliant quote on this topic by Maynard Solomon here - he says it far better than I can.)

Of course, our expectations are different when we listen to Mozart, or Sinatra, or U2, or at least they should be. And the person who uses one set of expectations to look for beauty in a different piece of music will surely be disappointed. But the process, I think, is the same. We look for the grass, and when we see a flower, we call it beautiful. That's not to say the grass is not beautiful - indeed, if we were walking through a field of tulips and came upon a well-manicured lawn in the middle of it, we would be just as pleased. It's the surprise - the splash of a new color - that makes the beauty.

It's the contrast in the breath that makes the art.

So why blog?

As I have ruminated over my first two posts, I have thought, "so what?" Why would anyone care about my thoughts about music or my Mom, or anything else for that matter?

Here is my question: is there anything that I have learned about music that may help other musicians, or people trying to seek some truth in music? My thoughts on this dwell in two areas: the things that I've studied a lot or taught on a lot. For instance, the importance of Beethoven's symphonies or Bach's fugues on Western civilization. The second area is the stuff that I can't quantify, haven't expressed with words, don't know quite how to say:

Why does music affect us the way it does?

What are the keys for a musician to be able to tap into the emotional power of music?

These are the things I think this blog is here for. This is what I'm going to use this blog to try and answer. I'm not a scientist, I'm not a psychologist. If you want a perspective from either of those places, read Oliver Sachs, or anyone else who has a better idea of the physiology of sound waves reaching the ear, or the psychology of how they affect the brain.

I'm a musician. I'm a musician with a particular insight (not unique to me) from my own experience into the spiritual nature of music and the soul. This is my starting place; this is the approach I will take in trying to open up hearts on these topics. I hope they give you something to think about, and I hope they provide something of interest.

Happy New Year!

Letter to a Young Musician

I recently wrote this to a gifted young musician:

First, I want to thank you for playing the Bach with us, playing in the orchestra, playing the postlude, for everything you do for the music here at Grace First.

Second, I want to say again how thrilled I am watching and hearing you become such a consummate musician. It's truly a joy to be around you and hear the work you are doing.

Finally, I've been thinking about something you said after the concert. I complimented you on our playing, and your first response was "I missed a lot of notes." Your comment (and a friend asking me this morning "what did you enjoy most about the concert?") got me thinking about why we get involved in music in the first place. (This might get long-winded, and I apologize in advance... I do that sometimes. :-)

My answer to my friend was two-fold. First, I told him that we musicians have all had that experience when everything 'clicks.' It's in tune, it's together, the timing is right, the musicianship can soar,... and when all of that happens, the distractions melt away, and we find ourselves in a place that is almost as close as we can come to touching our true souls, our true selves. It's in these moments that I think God is clearest to us, as musicians, and is why music plays such a central role in worship. And once we've been there once, it's like an addiction. We strive over and over again to recreate that moment - we are constantly working to improve our technique so that we can come closer to finding that feeling, every single time.

The second part of my answer to my friend is that the 'addiction' can be just as dangerous as any other addiction - we become so addicted to finding the technical purity that we lose the most important part of the equation: the unbridled joy that we feel making music. (Let's be honest: making good music is fun.) I know a lot of musicians who are so wrapped up in the pursuit of perfection that they lose the joy along the way. And as a result, they never really attain the perfection, because half of the equation for perfection in music is in releasing all of your inhibitions and just allowing the joy to take over!

OK - so enough metaphysical hoi-polloi. Here's my point: you are a technically superior musician for your age, by anybodies standards. You will only get better on that front. But let go of the idea that every note has to be perfectly in it's place for perfection to occur. Close your eyes more when you play. Learn the music by heart. (Isn't that a great thought? Learn the music by heart.) Enjoy the sounds, live in the vibrations of strings and learn that music - like life - is full of notes that are in tune, and notes that are slightly out of tune. And when you embrace that and find joy in creating music that is in that place, you will no longer be a violinist or a musician...

...you will have become an artist.

I know you will become just that, and I'm thrilled to hear what you will do in the years to come.

Merry Christmas, my friend,
Stan