Perpetual (E)Motion

I took my eldest to a batting clinic recently.  He’s an aspiring Little Leaguer with a live arm and a fantastic sense of the game.  The coach was trying to get him to make this particular adjustment, which for some strange reason he was having trouble with, and I yelled “it’s just like practicing your violin!”  That got me some strange looks.

There’s been a lot of talk about the visual in music lately.  I suppose this was all triggered by The Dress but the subject has a longer history that is put into perspective by this well written article.  It amazes me that in this day and age when so much of the world functions on visual cues  there are people in this business who still want to deny that what we see on stage is probably as important as what we hear.  I’m not saying that is good.  I’m just saying that is reality.

The question isn’t “should we address the visual in Classical music?”  The question should be “what is legitimate and what is a gimmick?”  Like everything else in the business that tends to be a very subjective distinction.  I have had a run-in on a personal level with this question for the past two years.

There is a local Suzuki group in which there exists those who I have dubbed “The Swaying Violins.”  One of the violin teachers evidently is intent on getting his/her kids to feel the music, or remain loose, or something, by rocking back and forth when they play.  When the kids get together en masse to play (in that neo-bizarre Suzuki way that still freaks me out sometimes, I admit) it’s the dadgummest thing you’ve ever seen.  I’ve got a stomach made of iron but thirty seconds into their performance I’m diving for the dramamine.  From a visual point of view it’s extremely distracting.  From a physical point of view the Karateka in me thinks this method substitutes one bad habit for another.

How we move to music, however, is an extremely personal thing.  I rarely go to classical concerts simply because I move too much when I hear music.  I know I’m a distraction to my fellow concert attendees.  As a conductor I know I am very physical in my approach.  Those years of studying the martial arts impact everything I do, and occassionaly I’ll catch myself standing on one leg in crane position and wondering exactly what this is suppose to impart to the orchestra.  I have two colleagues, a violinist and a flautist, who have been dogged their entire careers by people who think they move too much.  Honestly, I love working with them – I can both hear and see where their phrases are going.  That makes my job pretty easy.

But all that is natural.  Word has reached me recently of a major conductor who has started to ask his/her orchestra to move in a particular way during passages.  Not for any musical reason, but simply as a visual stimulus. In effect, choreography.  Once, twice, a few times, sure I can go along with it.  However, this is starting to happen regularly and consistently.  At this point aren’t you creating an artistic fraud?  We are musicians, after all.  We are not dancers.  This is one of the main reasons why the Grammys have lost their lustre.  Dancers who can’t read music, play an instrument, and definitely do not write any of the songs they “perform” keep winning awards.  Those of us who are musicians start tuning the Grammys out.

Yet the simplest of motions can convey an entire world.  Guaranteed during every season someone in Edmonton will stop me and ask about “that one woman in the orchestra who smiles all the time.”  I know exactly who they are referring to.  Her smile lights up the stage and communicates her joy in music.  There’s no swaying involved.  I’ve never asked her to do it in a particular passage.  It’s natural, simple, and heartfelt.  And the audience notices.

There it is.  Perhaps all of us should smile more often. We are, after all, putting food on the table by playing music.  It beats working for a living.

5 thoughts on “Perpetual (E)Motion”

  1. Your comments got me thinking of a Japanese youth ensemble that I witnessed a few years ago at the Midwest Clinic in Chicago. They were, of course, extremely technically proficient and many in the audience were caught up in their synchronized movement to the music. It was to the point that all were moving together in exactly the same way at the same time. To me it just seemed contrived.

    As a conductor do I appreciate musicians–as you do–in ensembles who move “in the moment”? Of course, because I am fully aware that we are in communication. But to impose the movement upon the music in such a uniform way seems to be fakery of the highest order. Let’s just spend time making music and let people move as they may….

  2. Dress: Many years ago, I was chatting with members of one of London’s top early music consorts. Somehow this subject came up. They told me, “We actually get more post-concert comments about ‘what we wear’ than we get about ‘the music or how we play it.’ ” It really bugged them. And, this was London, at that time the center of the early music universe.

  3. Since 2003, I have been watching Neeme Järvi work with young conductors at his two-week summer course in my wife’s hometown Pärnu, Estonia. Neeme’s mantra is “Small. Simple. Clear.” He has the best stick technique and the best hands of anyone I know. At times Neeme doesn’t even use his hands; he’ll just ask for something with his eyebrows. Musicians love playing with him.

    A couple of days ago, I briefly looked at Dudamel’s concert for the pope, where he does the opening of Dvorak’s New World Symphony. Big downbeats, down to his knees. Don’t get me wrong, I love Dudamel. But this, I just couldn’t watch.

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