October 22, 1964 By recollection we have promised two additional letters: the first a discussion of the theory of rhythm, and music as a Time-art; and the second a study of the practical ways and means of good choral enunciation. At this point, however, we have but one rehearsal before we Join the orchestra for the Mozart Requiem, and I'd like to direct our attention to what must be the essence of music-making. The ability~ phrase (to unleash a triplethretaphor) is center, circumference and radii of the musical art. It is the art of phrasing which communicates, which makes sense and stirs emotions, which provides a "belonging 11 and a "direction" to the consecutive symbols of the score. It is phrasing that proves the artist. In the few moments that are left, let's begin an "Introduction to Phrasing". It is obvious to all of us that some singers and instrumentalists are exceptional in this regard . (Fischer-Dieskau, Mack Harrell, Pablo Casals, Fritz Kreisler are and were phenomenally convincing and communicative artists~) Out of consecutive notes they produce a musical sentence, and that sentence leads somewhere (somewhen?). This is the problem: to make things hang together -- and go forward. -Phrasing is also that part of music-making which very uniquely -- not quite capable of analysis, but incontestably -- involves the whole person. We are about to consider those elements of our musical craft which are capable of manipulation and whose ensemble results in "phrasing", but we will still be a long way from identifying the Sammyand what makes him phrase. (Ulysses, wasn't it? "I am a part of all that I have met;/ Yet all experience is an arch wherethro 1 / Gleams that untravell'd world, whose margin fades/ For ever and for ever when I move.") Our purposes are these: One, we want to "make sense". That is, we want to establish proper relationships. The things that belong together must be reproduced in proper proportion and function. The several notes of a melody are not isolated, unrelated phenomena. Their meaning lies in association. Letters into words, words into sentences; notes into motives, motives into phrases. We want to make sense. We want to discover and provide a belonging. Two, we want to move forward. If music truly exists in time -- from Now to Somewhen -- then its life and logic are concerned with becoming. The Now always must justify the Next and seminate the Soon, and successive horizons of Soons should ultimately reveal the Whole. Our study of music is a study of getting from Now to Then (future) along the path of inevitability and beauty. We want to provide a belonging and a becoming. Our rule of thumb is this: Since we are dealing with a function through time, then all of music's elements are also 11in function" and "becoming". All of them (almost) must be in constant change. (We'll identify that 11almost" in a moment.) The point is that music is animate, it is a growing or withering, a quickening or slowing, a to- or a froing, a being born or dying. The signal of life is change. Change is the "constant" of phrasing.
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the most convincing, -proper or artistic of temporal relationships. (This latter is a solace, but it is not permissible as an excuse, for our liberty in the expressive use of Condition II is dependent upon our discipline with respect to Condition I.) Relative durations and periodicities are prescribed in traditional music. In many instances -- by prescribing tempo -- 11actual 11 mechanical, measurable durations and periodicities are also-prescribed. In any event their relationships are given~ -And it is to be presumed that the composer could have written them otherwise had he so desired. Therefore, our initial task is clear: to be as precise as is possible and human. The problem arises in coordinating the rhythmic responses, reflexes and sensitivities. of over two hundred people. Our various physical and psychological temperments, at any given rehearsal, or moment thereof, would range from choleric to apathetic. What has to be achieved by drill and discipline and more drill is a sense of the metric division of time which is relatively unharrassed by sightreading insecurities, and relatively dependable in spite of temperamental bouyancy or depression. (One of the reasons I allowed Monday night's rhythmic drill to go on too(?) long was the necessity of provlng to everybody -- including Jerry and myself, whose tendencies are to push forward to defeat drag and perhaps win vitality -- what a wide wide river this is and we're all in it.) Anyone of you can construct at no expense . whatever the most convincing and animate of metronomic devices: a pendulum. At the end of a three- or four-foot piece of thread or string tie a small reasonably heavy object: a nut, bolt or fishin g sinker. By lengthening or shortening the string and thereby the arc of the pendulum you can simulate a wide variety of tempi. And by taking the bottom of the arc as the 11beat 11 or moment of pulse you can improvise all sorts of exercises of pulse-division. You can drill regularity. You can experiment with 11 cross-" rhythms: two against three or three against four. By lengthening or shortening the pendulum while in motion you can experience a ritardando or accelerando of pr oportion., The fin e thing about this pendulous do- it-yourself metronome is its natural and life-like swing. The watch-type.,spring-swing pyramid, electric buzzer or flash metronomes are not nearly so viable or persuasive. (Tos canini never used one of the mechanical gadgets, always carrying a pendulum device like a retractable tape measure, calibrated in metronomic sp eeds rather than inches.) The bas i c problem of rhythmic cohesion in large musical groups i s not one engendered by the disparity in sight-reading abilities, but one traceable to the basic inabilities of most people to divide an appreciable moment of time by two or by t hree. The blessed assurance is that, unlike some prospects of salvation, t his can be learned and, more importantly, self-tau ght. Five minut es a day for a fortnight should double most everyone's accuracy in this regard. Once t hat is done and delivered we may deserve -- and be able to utilize -- the solace (Condition II) that "a foolish consistency is the hob-goblin of li t tle minds." -Whi ch leads t o an additional observation concerning last Monday night's obvi ous rhythmic dislocations. It is that after the constant and general ru shing of the first 15 minutes of rehearsal -- particularly in extended sixteenth-no te patterns -- from then on, only isolated shorter motives were being rushed, fr e quently under reas onable mel odic urgency.
-3stance -- of having six beats in three-four time organized two-plus-two-plus-two, rather than three-plus-three) our accentuation will alter. Instead of "strong-light-light, strong-light, strong-li.gl:lt-light 11 we will sing "strong-light, strong-light." Obviously this may have dynamic manifestations, but they will be manifestations of what is fundamentally a change in rhythmic stress. (For instance, we might achieve a very similar effect by singing "long-short, longshort, long-short. 11) If my understanding is correct there is a kind of basic psychological response to the inner-stresses of metre itself. These stresses are not nearly so concious as those of dynamics. Anyone can tell, for instance, whether such and such a piece (in most instances) is written in duple or triple metre. This recognition will not depend upon the performer•s stress of the first beat of each measure, but would be present if all beats were stressed equally -- by metric and melodic organization. It makes a good deal of difference in a five-eight sequence whether one recognizes the fives as three-plus-two, two-plus-three, or as in one celebrated case six-take-away-one. Therefore, metre analyzed and understood yields which is also one of the maneuverables of phrasing.
stress
Under TEXTconsider: 1.
Syllable
stress
Very frequently one will find himself stressing the normal syllabic properties of a word when it is thoroughly contradicted by melodic or metric considerations. Occasionally, as in Stravinsky, one will find himself improperly stressing text because it is demanded by melodic or metric considerations. As noted above, this sort of stress must issue either in duration or dynamics -- either in longer or louder. Still, it is primarily literary or verbal in genesis, and deserves to be considered under factors of Text which can be manipulated in the interests of phrasin'g:-2.
Punctuation This is the placing of commas, dashes or periods -for textual or poetic reasons -- within a melodic line. It is obviously one of the "variables" of phrasing and frequently quite personal. It will also manifest itself in momentary ritard and accelerando and in momentary dimenuendo and crescendo. Its genesis, however, is literary or poetic, and therefore Textual.
3.
Style of enunciation This also is extremely sensitive to change. I am speaking not primarily of differences between languages but of differences within languages. It makes a great deal of dif-
-4ference whether one uses the ecclesiastical Roman Latin of the Verdi Requiem or the scholastic Latin of Stravinsky's Oedipus Rex. The enunciative colloquialisms and mannerisms of the folk-song -- more pervasive hummed consonants, varying treatments of the sounds of 11R11 and final "NG" -- would be completely out of place in the choral music to Mendelssohn's Varieties of Midsummer Night's Dre~ -- and vice much versa. text make obligatory changes in actual sounds, durations, rhythms, and inflections. These alterations all become a part of phrasing. Consider finally
the aspects
of TONEwhich are capable of manipulations:
1. . Intonation
We are accustomed to regard intonation as a keyboard absolute, but anyone who has done even a bit of barbershoplifting knows about the raising of leading-tones and 1 Truth the flatting of sevenths. is, pitch is functional, and one can use this function expressively. There is in addition, the device of portamento ("the voice gliding gradually from one tone to the next through all the intermediate pitches") -- more successful musically downward then upward, though upward can end in a convincing dramatic scream •. And there is, of course, deliberate flatting or a trailing off into speech intona t ion for dramatic purposes. Pitch can be a phrasing device. 2.
Color The large chorus, by many musical standards, is a relatively mono-chromatic instrument. Still, it is capable of a considerably greater variety of tonal color than many choral-vocal institutions have utilized. Primarily, flexibility and variety depend upon a sensitivity to matters of literary, historical, national and personal style. There simply are ~r should be) different timbres to the chansons of Debussy and the waltzes of Brahms. Not all of this difference is occasioned by the difference in language, though it is a large part thereof. One spends the better part of one's vocal education acquiring a "line", "linking the top to the bottom", smoothing out "the break" -- all of it to acquire a decent, consistent and dependable sound. At the same time, it seems to me that the voices which have the finest techniques also have a wide range of color among their resources. Certainly the chorus is capable of "bright and .dark" "reedy and woofy'' "nasal and throaty". This is reasonable equipment of phrasing.
J.
Vibrato ation.
This is very much open to study and further investigAgain , singers spend a good deal of time acq uir ing
-5a satisfactoryor controlling an unsatisfactory-vibrato, and instrumentalists (among the vibrato instruments) do likewise. Yet, so far as the choral literature is concerned we all know how vastly periods and styles vary in the propriety and character of vibrato. The singers of 11popular" music have developed a wide variety of vocal "styles", many of which depend upon the containment and unleashing of vibrato at will. In the few experiments which we have attempted following our exposure to Pablo Casals and his principle of vibrato variability (according to Alexander Schneider) we have seen that a chorus can control vibrato to an appreciable extent, and use it as an expressive device without exerting undue vocal pressure upon individual voices. The technique, furthermore, of singing the first fraction of a pitch substantially without vibrato is one of the most valuable aids to intonation and leaves the balance of the duration of the note open to expression -- and phrasing -- via vibrato.
4.
Dynamics This is by all odds the most critical, important and pervasive of phrasing's inventory of techniques. It requires a chapter all to itself. It is the constant play of the intensification and relaxation of dynamic values which reveals the physiognimy of the phrase, which -- to refer back several pages -- is the principle agency and proof of the belonging and the becoming. Crescendo and dimenuendo under the keen control of amount and rate are the prime tools of phrasing.
There is one audition to which I always look forward whenever it comes time to hear veteran members. No matter what the repertoire, whatever portion of the year's materials is requested is always sung by this person with the care, affection and sensitivity which one hears occasionally from an exceptional soloist in a distinguished song. No willy-nilly pell-mell and scratch to hit the pitches. Rather, phrase after lovely meaningful phrase. Howpersonal music then becomes. What joy it gives to the performer, what satisfaction it brings to the listener. There is really
no point
in making music any other way. R
ANNOUNCEMENTS: Sunday
October
25
5:00 p.m.
Chamber Chorus
Monday
October
26
8:00 p.m.
All / COCC