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A POWERFUL WOMAN
Editorial
There’s a Memorial Concert in Brattleboro this weekend, celebrating the life of Blanche Honegger Moyse. Born in Switzerland, resident since 1949 of Marlboro, VT, she died last year at age 101, a musician to the end. Tiny, intense, charismatic, she demanded excellence from her colleagues in music-making at the Marlboro Music School and Festival, of which she was a co-founder. A violinist herself, she was loved and respected by her singers, whom she loved because they were always close to the emotion of the music. She was known for her Bach interpretations: cellist Ron Eastes wrote:
"Her personal search for excellence made her go so deeply into the music, not just from a musical point of view, but emotionally and psychologically. . . She developed for herself complete notions of what the essence of a piece was, and was incredibly demanding in asking us to engage in the realization of the music.” “She invited us toward the vision.
Amen. I watched and heard her work several times at the Festival, and was always completely drawn in to the vitality of the music, and the absorption of all the performers. There was no such thing as a dull moment – and the music soared.
I’ve been preoccupied for some time with teaching ‘score reading’ – with learning to interpret the marks on the page that invite us to make music. Our very literal generation thinks that their first responsibility is to the page – to realize each and every marking. But the page has no sound – and music is only sound. Conductors like Blanche remind us that entering into the vision (what’s the aural equivalent – audition?) of the composer means entering into the world of sound. Of course each printed mark has meaning – but only when it is sounded in a way that fulfills the intention of the creator. One of the wonderful things about the performing arts is that there is no one ‘correct way’ to perform a piece. Those tiny details of length, of shading, of attack and release, can change from performance to performance – but they are only alive as part of a comprehensive view that encompasses the whole. There is no way of notating that amount of subtlety: can you write down a simple phrase like “How are you?” so that the reader gets the tone of voice you intended? It’s literally impossible – and so is a lot of music-making. (The computer, of course, is reliably opposite – but it’s not living sound.)
Conducting: what is it? A workshopper recently asked me about my own conducting technique – and I laughingly answered that I hadn’t any! That is, in the orchestral conductor’s discipline, where there is an accepted code for clarity of cues, visibility to all and so on. What I’m trying to get at is sound – the right sound that will release those notes on the page to make wonderful, communi-cative music. If I don’t have a sound image of the music in my head, all my gestures will be meaningless. Conversely I can have a wonderful idea of sound, but get in my own way in trying to elicit it by clumsy or inept motions. I do love to work with choruses, or coach instrumental performances of chamber music, where the vision is more important than the gesture allowing the individual performers to take that vision as their own. Moving along that continuum, one arrives at the point where very little gesture is necessary: the performers are making the music from within, and all the conductor has to do is gently guide the flowing stream.
One final word about gesture: it can be compared to a dance, to movements of the human body within the context of the song. One set of gestures does not fit all. The conductor must move through his or her own body, not someone else. A woman can’t use a man’s, or a student the teacher’s.
Conducting, then, is both inner and outer: the leader’s inner vision of the complex webs of sound that must be channeled through the body to give outer cues to the performers. In the best instance, the leader is so immersed that she ‘becomes the song’: there is no break between the inner and outer manifestation. Everyone within hearing is absorbed into this flow – and a true musical experience takes place.
Back to Blanche: there in the newspaper photo she’s wearing a short-sleeved simple dress, her aging arms outstretched, and her face totally absorbed in the music. The outward appearance (despite our show-biz culture) simply doesn’t matter. She’s making music, and everyone knows it.
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THE VIEW FROM HERE
Sometimes it takes a natural catastrophe to get us out of our comfortable ruts. I’ve had a wonderfully relaxing summer, with three months at home to enjoy my family and this lovely countryside. August was almost idyllic: beautiful days, and big family picnics at the dam, where there’s lots of room for children to play and adults to visit. It’s in a little hollow, where you feel enclosed by the hills, shielded from the restless world without.
But Hurricane Irene interrupted us, just a month ago. Two children and two grandchildren were visiting me – and we thought we were prepared. But the rains came down and down, the brook rose higher and higher water roaring down all the slopes. When it stopped, we’d had 10 inches of rain in just a few hours, and many of the roads in the town were – and are still – sadly damaged. We were literally closed off from the rest of the world for two days no electricity, water, etc. now, a month later, we’re almost closed off for three days while they try to repair the part of the road that winds between the mountain and the river.
It has colored all our lives. There was a massive outpouring of community spirit at first, with neighbors stopping by to see that we were all right. Then came the cleaning up: cellars and first-floors covered with heavy sludge, driveways broken or gone, home appliances drowned. We were fortunate here that our houses are on the hill, but any time we come down into the valley, what we see are vastly widened brooks edged by huge fallen trees and more stones than one could believe in one county. Our dam is completely filled with gravel, sand and sludge; the lawn is covered with 12” of mud, and the bridge – our new bridge this summer – is gone. It’ll be a while before the picnic area looks idyllic again.
Nature continues to send us rain after rain: the ground is so soggy one can hardly walk on it. But for all that, the leaves are beginning to turn orange. The morning glories by the back door are luxuriant in blue and white for the first time this summer. And the apple trees are laden. From my window I can see that autumn is here.
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FROM OUR READERS
Spirituals in St. Petersburg – from Andrea Goodman “The choir from Vladivostock (north of Japan!)sang I Want Two Wings at the Singing World Festival here. Except for the accent “two vings”, they were perfect. They even had it memorized! Eighty singers! . . . Your music is understood and accessible to singers literally around the world.” :
On The Anatomy of Melody – from Michael Weeks
Several months ago you conducted a seminar in Memphis, TN after which you signed my copy of The Anatomy of Melody.I have read this book many times and it has changed the way I look at music in so many ways.
RememberingMelody Studies — from Meg Breymann
I have been using so much of what you taught, and my choir is so responsive and the congregation so appreciative. We had already become a joyful crew, but now we laugh all the time, and everyone is participating with valuable suggestions. You helped me take leadership of my choir! Little did I know that this would accomplish my goal of a participatory choir! And immediately!
Theories of Learning — from Mitzi Scott
For me there are just three kinds: 1. Learning to know: this is quick, passive and often practiced 2. Learning to do. This is a little harder, involving time and practice, failure and study, renewed efforts 3. Learning to be. Ah, this is the lovely realm. What I am is who I am – and I study to show myself approved, even if only by me. The origin of my behavior resides here, and manifests in the great wide every day. (abbreviated)
On improvisation — from Mark Bartley
I relished singing the melodies you presented, the parts we sang, and the improvised lines. The free singing is what we don’t really get anywhere else—it is a definite keeper. If anything demonstrates the weakness of the printed page, it is the organic music-making that comes from our in-the-moment manipulations of melody.
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SING AND STUDY WITH ALICE PARKER
January 16-19, 2012
Score Study in New York City
Three days of intensive Score Study in Manhattan. Alice shares her experience with many styles of music, and discusses the process from the composer’s intention to the written page, based on the Brahms Requiem and her own works. For conductors, church and school musicians, singers, organists and lovers of song.
Save these dates!
July 9-13, 2012
Melody Studies: Seeking a Grammar of Melody
For theory-buffs, and fearless explorers of song: can we meet together for five days and agree on the basic components of melody, and how they inter-relate? I have the conviction that there are rules which govern lasting works: can we articulate them? Come sing, study, trade ideas and try!
October 15-19,2012
Composers Workshop
Come share your work and discuss choral composition and arranging with Alice Parker and your colleagues. Discussions range over theory, style, technique, performance and publication.
For more information about these programs and Alice’s appearances,
contact Kay@aliceparker.com
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AUTUMN IN NEW YORK
Vernon Duke was so right when he wrote that old Jazz standard,and he didn’t even know about the Alice Parker Tribute held at Trinity Wall Street this autumn in New York that would make it an even more special time. What a success story, beginning with the Preview Concert where Julian and the performers presented part of Songs for Eve with comments by Julian and Alice which helped to put the composition in context. You may watch a video of this Preview Concert by going to: http://www.trinitywallstreet.org/calendar/2011/10/13/alice-parker-specia.... The Friday night gala performance at Trinity church included the vocal quartet Elizabeth Baber, Marguerite Krull, Steven Caldicott Wilson, and Dashon Burton and a string quartet made up of the first chair players of the NOVUS NY orchestra. A video of the full concert from October 14 will be available soon on the Trinity Wall Street site. The Tribute Weekend was capped off with a hymn SING at St. Paul’s Chapel using The Melodious Accord Hymnal Singing these beautiful settings of both new and traditional hymns in this oldest of public buildings in Manhattan with the shadow of the newly dedicated World Trade Center Memorial visible through the door was a particularly moving experience. Only in New York!
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SINGING ON PRESCRIPTION
Someone sent me (AP) an article from a British medical journal that begins: First it was exercise on prescription, then it was arts on prescription, soon it could be singing on prescription, as the clinical evidence builds up, and as more and more projects promote the benefits of singing to health and wellbeing, both for those in generally good health and those with physical and mental health problems, or who find themselves socially excluded or isolated. See www.medicalnewstoday.com/articles/176316.php
To order The Melodious Accord Hymnal, The Anatomy of Melody, and other choral works, CDs, and books, visit www.melodiousaccord.org
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A LETTER FROM ALICE PARKER
Dear Friends,
We do feel buffeted this year – by gusts from the weather and the economy, famine and the political scene, all the ills of modern life. But behind all those clouds live the arts, where we can reconnect ourselves with this beautiful planet where we live, and with each other.
And none do this better than choral music – song – where words and tones combine to touch our deepest emotions, break down the walls between us, and return us to the ‘here/now’ where peace resides. THIS is the reason why your continued support of the arts is so important. They are a counter-balance to the stresses of daily life, and more urgently needed than ever in times of storm.
Melodious Accord is founded upon this idea – that melody is the language of the heart, and that it brings us together into an ‘accord’ that is reached by no other means. We have consistently striven to unite the different factions within the field: professionals and amateurs, large groups and small, church choirs and folk groups, composers and listeners, new songs and old, jazz and chant.
We are a very small organization, on purpose. I want a personal connection with the people who sing my music, who invite me for workshops and commission new works. I have no intention of founding a ‘school’ or a ‘movement’ or a ‘big business’: all I want to do is to make human song come alive wherever I find it. It’s been a fascinating journey – and rarely more rewarding than when a group of Composer Fellows from 2010 put together a Tribute in my honor in New York City last weekend. There was a superb performance of Songs for Eveled by Julian Wachner at Trinity Church, as well as a noon-time interview, a gala dinner with family and friends, and a closing SING at St. Paul’s Chapel.
As the years pass, I have a deepening sense of participating in a long line of music-makers, stretching far back into human history, and farther ahead than any of us can imagine. As long as we are human, we will sing, and each of us contributes in our own way. For you, the loyal friends who have supported me for almost thirty years now, I have not only grateful thanks but real affection. We are all participants in this long chain of song which in a way defines our humanity. So please respond once again to this appeal, and enable us to go ahead with the many plans which our Board comes up with at each meeting – like a Carol recording for next year! We’ll thank you in every way that we can – but mostly by more singing.
With warm greetings,
Alice Parker
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