Daniel Levitin and I have been meeting in various locations these past few weeks putting our Intersections show together. It’s called “Beethoven & Your Brain.” (See it in October in Kitchener-Waterloo or Koerner Hall in Toronto) It’s basically one of many possible ways to look carefully at this great composer’s music and how it works. What we’re finding is that when you look at the effect Beethoven’s music has on us from a biological/neurological/primal level, music becomes less of a “thing” and more of a “process.” And that really, you don’t need to be an expert to experience this music in a profound way.

One of our first exercises was that we sat across from each other at a table and wrote 10-minute blurbs on what we knew about. I wrote about “Beethoven” and Daniel wrote about “Brain.” It’s interesting to see where our ideas intersect. Here are the blurbs.

BEETHOVEN

What’s great about LvB?

I think it’s extraordinary the way LvB grabs the listener with his music. There’s a sense of profound emotion, human drama — even to the point of violence — in his music. Somehow when you listen to a work like the Fifth Symphony you immediately know that the emotional stakes are very high. He does this by creating a sense of momentum and turbulence in his music that can still shake up audiences hundreds of years later. There are so many kinds of music in life that one might call “polite:” music that soothes us and makes us comfortable and happy. But Beethoven’s music is not polite; it is full of fervent questioning and takes nothing for granted. He stretches form, structure, and even sound to the absolute limit. So if you know a lot about classical music you get the sense that he almost wants to destroy it. If you don’t know about classical music, you still get the sense of drama and urgency through its sheer physicality.

Take the beginning of the Fifth Symphony for instance. Though we all know how it goes, those first few notes retain their ability to shock. That’s because Beethoven writes an indeterminate hold – a fermata – on the fourth note of his famous statement. How long this note should be held is left to the conductor. There are many other such moments in the piece. But underlying it all is a tremendous pulse and groove that counteracts the instability. It is Beethoven’s ability to balance the predictable and the unstable in just the right way that makes him great.

When I conduct Beethoven’s music, more than any other composer’s, it is as if I can feel his spirit reaching out to me. Though we know that he had a difficult, irascible personality, he craves an intimate connection with his listeners through his music. He felt that his deafness prevented him from being him from being intimate with others. Yet for one hundred and fifty years he has made profound connections with countless listeners. It’s uncanny, like this poem by Keats.

This Living Hand

This living hand, now warm and capable
Of earnest grasping, would, if it were cold
And in the icy silence of the tomb,
So haunt thy days and chill thy dreaming nights
That thou wouldst wish thine own heart dry of blood
So in my veins red life might stream again,
And thou be conscience-calmed—see here it is—
I hold it towards you.

BRAIN

Expectation

Expectation is everything in music. The brain is a giant prediction device. Whether we realize it or not – whether we’re aware of it or not – it’s working hard to figure out what’s going to happen next. There’s an obvious evolutionary/adaptive advantage to this – if a lion is in the area, you need to be able to accurately predict which direction he’s headed. If a potential mate is looking at you a certain way, you have to know whether this means “come hither” or “get lost” (or “not now - my boyfriend is watching, but come back later”). In music, we hear a few notes and our brains are already trying to figure out what’s going to come next.
A “good” piece of music rewards those expectations by meeting them at least some of the time, but also violates them sometimes in interesting ways. Why? If the music meets all of your expectations, and does exactly what you think it will, it’s boring. We reject as too simple, like “Barney the dinosaur” music.” If it never meets your expectations, never conforms to your predictions, it’s frustrating because you have no frame of reference, no grounding; you’re disoriented. So the job of the composer is to hit that sweet spot, to meet your expectations some of the time, and violate your expectations in interesting ways the rest of the time. When the composer gets that balance just right, you end up liking the piece. And if the composer can complete a musical phrase in a way that sounds better to you than anything you could ever have ever imagined – well, then he’s got you and that’s a piece of music you can enjoy for the rest of your life.
Another aspect to expectation has to do with momentum. Skillful composers set up expectations and momentum, making you want to hear more.

©2010 Daniel J Levitin

So I’ve been obsessing about this recently: a cup of coffee has been DESCRIBED as a “cacophony of nuance.” This cup of coffee costs $12. A friend of mine actually tasted it and joked that it tasted like “a Bartók string quartet in his mouth.” Another mentioned a sign he saw for coffee recently that said “Taste the Aroma!”

The point is — it’s really hard to talk about coffee and/or music! And the “cacophony of nuance” pretty much sums that up. There is some music that is a cacophony of nuance I suppose. Would anyone like to try a cup of Unsuk Chin? It’s a Korean made coffee made in Germany and it’s a wonderful blend of Hungarian and French roasts. Hyper-complex with a hint of D Major here and there. It’s a CACOPHONY OF NUANCE!

Anyway it’s hard to talk about music and coffee, and it’s hard to know what you’re buying if you are a music or coffee customer. Recently I walked into Chicago’s famed Intelligentsia Coffee in search of new flavor. I had gone through a pound of Serra do Bonè: Brazil and it wasn’t working for me. But when I tried to describe what I didn’t like about it, I was at a loss for words, because I didn’t know the COFFEE LINGO. I was like, “it was kind of sour.” And the barista guy was all, “??” I should have read the label on my airtight coffee bag (it pushes the air out if you squeeze it, really quite cool). “Creamy and decadent, with a chocolate truffle focus. Dried raspberries add dimension to the otherwise soft acidity.” Very descriptive, no? But it’s Bad English again. The first sentence isn’t even a sentence. Also, I don’t know what dried raspberries taste like! Has anyone ever had one? Anyway, we know this kind of thing from wine lingo. I asked the barista guy for something a “little less fruity” and “more bitter.” He told me that Intlligentsia Coffee is “really trying to steer their customers away from that taste” but nonetheless recommended Black Cat Classic Espresso noting that it “wasn’t really an espresso.” “This syrupy sweet espresso blend has been the staple of our lineup since the very beginning. Supreme balance and a wonderful sweetness make this a classic.” It’s syrupy, sweet (so sweet they say it twice) and balanced (what is the syrupy sweetness balanced with?), and it’s great because we say it’s great! These descriptions don’t help. They’re vague and subjective, but perhaps they’re good marketing tools, I don’t know.

What I wonder about is what happens when a PATRON calls my wonderful orchestra’s PATRON SERVICES (1-888-745-4717 call now!) DEPARTMENT and asks about the music? What do they say? In that coffee shop I bet I felt like lots of our audience members! Orchestra marketing is way more friendly and stays away from the whole “Intelligentsia” angle in general. You’re not gonna hear “We’re really trying to steer our patrons away from Tchaikovsky and more towards R. Murray Schafer.” But maybe we should do that! It might be fun to try. When I look through our current brochure, I see only one description that really gets into “coffee description” territory. And that’s for a concert we’re doing with Dan Deacon.

“Dan Deacon’s music is simultaneously dance party, electronic odyssey, minimalist magnum opus, and childhood gone horribly right.”

I have no idea at all what that means, but I’ll have a cup of that.

I think I’m going to start getting into this! Composer descriptions that read like the ones on my coffee bags! We could do it for performers too! It might be really fun! I’m sure before long it will reach a crescendo, but the only casualty will be the English language! Let’s go!

Reader, I am about to leave for a tech rehearsal for our Music & Food concert tonight at the KW Symphony. We’ll be playing the music, and my favorite (or favourite, since I’m in Canada) local restaurant, Nick & Nat’s Uptown 21 will be doing the food! Btw. Nick and Nat, great theme music on your website. Anyway, I’ve never heard of anyone doing a concert like this, so I’m xcited!!!

There might be standing room for tonight; there are a few tickets available for Friday.  Get them at www.kwsymphony.ca.

What’s on the (musical) menu?

Raymond Scott: Dinner Music for a Pack of Hungry Cannibals
Per Nørgard: Pastorale from Babette’s Feast
Shostakovich: Tahiti Trot (Tea for Two)
Vaughan-Williams: “March Past of the Kitchen Utensils” from The Wasps
John Estacio: “The Harversters” from A Farmer’s Symphony

-intermission-

Cole Porter arr. E. Outwater: “The Tale of the Oyster”
Lee Hoiby: Bon Apetit
Strawberry Alarm Clock arr. Nicole Lizée: Incense and Peppermint

What food will be served:  Well that’s a surprise!

By the way — did you know that orchestras basically started as accompaniments to Grand Feasts.  For real! I read this in the scholarly tome The Birth of the Orchestra. You can read about it through the link on page 41!

Check out this feast for the archbishop of Milan in 1529 for instance …

1st course:

Food: Sea bream, boiled sturgeon in garlic sauce, pike entrails fried w/ oranges, cinnamon, and sugar.

Music: 3 trombones & 3 cornets

2nd course:

Food: Cream-filled French Pastries, artichokes, olives, fermented apples, oyster pies

Music :3 flutes, 3 bagpipes, 1 violone.

17th Course:

Food: Candied Orange & Lemon Rinds, Ices, Nougat w/ mounds of cinnamon, pine nuts, pistachios, melon seeds

Music: 6 singers, 6 viols, lira, 3 flutes, kit fiddle (sordina), trombone, lute, zittern, 2 keyboards.

Wow! It’s snowy in Canada right now! Which is good for me because I need to stay inside and work work work. The thing I love about cold weather is that it gives me a great excuse to stay in and read & study and look out at the snow falling. I couldn’t be happier doing this, and though I miss California, pondering music while the snow falls is a real bonus.

Today I’m between concerts — doing some serious studying in the next few days — preparing for our Music & Food concert next week and then in a few weeks a rather daunting program of Barber 1st Symphony, Adams Dr. Atomic Symphony, and the Unsuk Chin Piano Concerto w/ BBC Wales followed by a few days in London.

This week is a concert of music I totally love. I can get bored with the overture, concerto, symphony concert format and like to explore different ways of presenting music to the people. It’s Italian music this week, starting with Monteverdi in 1610 and going all the way through Nino Rota, with Verdi, Rossini, and Vivaldi on the way. The KWS is switching on a dime from Baroque, to Classical, to Grand Opera to lush film music, and I’m quite impressed with that. I don’t believe that an orchestra should have a SOUND. I think it should have many, depending on what we’re playing. That doesn’t mean that an orchestra might not become known for a certain sound, because every orchestra (and artist) does some things better than others, so that’s what they become known for.

What strikes me about Italian music conducting this concert with such a huge timeline is the exquisite coloration of melody. Like the florid violin and trumpet duets in Monteverdi, or the simultaneous melodic arco/pizz in the Vivaldi or the cello ensemble that opens the William Tell Overture, or the absolutely perfect and noble combination of solo cello/bassoon/bass clarinet in Verdi’s Ballet Music from Macbeth. And then within these colors, there are other colors as certain notes open up and shine, while others are dark and smoky, all done without calling too much attention to itself. Is there anything more beautiful than music like this?

Ok — now for some ANNOUNCEMENTS! We have a new season coming up at the Kitchener-Waterloo Symphony and we’ve just released all the info!

You can find out about it HERE!

We’ve got some amazing soloists like James Ehenes, Measha Breuggergosman, Alban Gerhardt, and Kirill Gerstein.

Our Intersections series features three people named Dan! Daniel Levitin, who will be creating a show with me called Beethoven & Your Brain, Daniel Handler who is narrating HK Gruber’s Frankenstein!! and curating the concert, and Dan Deacon, who is driving a bus full of Baltimore people up here to create an electronic/orchestra Cage/Ives/etc. influenced extravaganza! Read about it right HERE.

My only regret about next season is that we couldn’t get this guy:

I was asked to write a (really) short essay about Beethoven for our Beethoven Festival program book. Here it is:

Who is Beethoven? It’s a question that haunts me. When I perform Beethoven’s music, I feel close to a presence, a personality, a force of will so strong that it’s unnerving. I start to have strange dreams. Certain passages keep repeating in my head. My blood pressure goes up. You get the picture.

I first felt this presence at age 16 or so. I was watching the Emerson String Quartet play the second movement of his String Quartet Op. 132. It was in a massive church, on an unadorned altar. I had no idea what I was about to hear. The second movement begins with serene chant-like lines interweaving. It is music of deep devotion, serious prayer. Little by little, the music becomes more expressive, more personal and by the time the second subject is introduced, we’ve moved from deep devotion to pure joy. I didn’t know that the music was about something specific at the time, only that it felt shockingly intimate and personal. Later I learned that the movement was called the “Heiliger Dankgesang,” the Holy Song of Thanksgiving. In this music, Beethoven was sharing the joy of recovering from an illness that almost killed him.

Imagine all the conversations you’ve ever had in your life. How many of them were about something truly important, truly profound? How many times have you laid your soul bare to someone else? This is what Beethoven does in his music: often with power and violence, but just as often with mystery and tenderness.

It was emotional intimacy that Beethoven missed when he went deaf, not just musical sound. “My misfortune is doubly painful to me because I am bound to be misunderstood,” he wrote in his Heiligenstadt Testament. “… for me there can be no relaxation with my fellow men, no refined conversations, no mutual exchange of ideas. I must live like one alone, like one who has been banished.” Beethoven was no longer able share these intimate moments, these secret whispers, with others.

When Beethoven’s secrets reveal themselves in his music, they are mysterious, uncanny. He brings us messages from his isolated world, messages that are urgent, but hard to completely understand; they both obfuscate and enlighten us. It’s like God’s answer to Job from the whirlwind: more questions. Like all instrumental music of its time, Beethoven’s music speaks, but there are no words to express what he is saying.

Those moments of wordless speech haunt me: the opening of the Fourth Piano Concerto; the lamenting violins at the end of the Eroica’s funeral march; even the Ode to Joy itself. These messages are profound, but what do they really mean? Beethoven leaves this open. He knows what they mean to him, but he wants a “refined conversation” with us, his “fellow men,” his listeners.

Who is Beethoven? What is this force, this presence in his music? He answers us through his music: “Who are you?”

When I was studying with Leonard Stein, who was Schoenberg’s student/assistant …

(by the way he had this old house up in the Hollywood Hills to which I would drive every week and he was pretty old and feisty and “had this neighbor, who was quite attractive I must say — I think she’s an actress or model or something her name is Linda … Evangelista I think? Have you heard of her? Anyway I want to show you this letter Boulez wrote me about Le marteau … “)

…. when he really didn’t dig a piece he would call it “rhapsodic.”  He said it with a sneer.  And I’m thinking about him this week because it’s all Chopin, Wagner, and Liszt at the KW Symphony.

I personally have no problem with rhapsodic music, because I don’t think structure is everything.  I do know a lot about structure, in fact that’s the way I was taught to understand music, but these days I’m thinking about how the music “gets you there.”  Structure is all well and good, but music happens in real time, and though the audience might perceive the structure of a piece in some way, they’re much more concerned with the moment to moment. The fun of performing a piece like Wagner’s Prelude and Liebestod or Liszt’s Les Préludes is getting there.  And by “there” of course I mean a musical CLIMAX.  We all know where this piece is going to end up, but the options one has as a performer to get there are infinite! Hmm, that last sentence reminds me of something else (SEX). That’s what’s fun about rhapsodic music — there are fewer structural roadblocks for the performer to do his or her thing.  The only problem with rhapsodic music is that without a clear musical form, the listener has to have at least some idea of what’s coming next — so Wagner and Liszt use lots of sequences and you have to deal with those.  But I don’t mind, I’ve always had a soft spot for them.

Last week I heard the Berlin Philharmonic play Schoenberg’s Chamber Symphony No. 1 in the big orchestra version, which is a piece I studied with Leonard and know really well.  There’s a piece that wears its structure on its sleeve, but it goes by so fast and is so complex (for instance, there are several superimposed structures happening in that piece) that I can’t imagine the audience is following this, though I’m sure they’re aware that the music has structure and is complex in that way.  Schoenberg was of course a Structure Queen as was Brahms ,which is why Sir Simon put them on the same program.  (You have to read Schoneberg’s essay Brahms the Progressive).  In both composers, there’s this tremendous tension between structure and Romantic Sentiment.  A kind of self-repression or self-negation going on I think. The structure seems to be the walls holding the wildness back.  This is what makes Brahms so difficult to perform well, I think.  But when it’s great, when all the structure and emotion are in line it’s beautiful and always a little sad because it’s about real life where rhapsodic music is about our inner fantasies.

And yes, Wagner and Liszt do have structure too, in their own way, but as compositions they are by no means obsessed with it.  It’s fun to be in rhapsody / fantasy world this week.  Orchestra concerts could use more music like this and less “structure concerts.”  Opera, you know where it’s at, you’ve got plenty of both!

Finally I’ve gotten this season’s SCHEDULE up on the site, so if you want to check out where I’m conducting this season it’s all there.  Come and say hi!

Right now I’m in Las Vegas doing Sgt. Pepper with Cheap Trick again.  I have to say that one of the more eclectic experiences of my life was leaving the run here to do a show with Frederica von Stade in Canada, then getting on a private jet the next day and flying back for Cheap Trick the following night.

First of all, Flicka was sublime and she sang a world premiere by our very own Nathaniel Stookey called Into the Bright Lights.  Flicka wrote the words herself and they are personal to the point of being confessional.  It is such a wonderful thing to sing on her farewell tour and I hope she keeps doing them.

Flicka is such a consummate musician, and standing next to her while she sang “Baïléro” and other gems like that was of course unforgettable.  It’s this incredible combination of beauty and humanity and truth that is unique to her.  I’m glad our paths crossed on stage, if only for a brief moment.

Then back to the Cheap Trick show — we did this at the Hollywood Bowl a few years ago, and it’s taken on a life of its own.  This time they’ve put the orchestra directly above the band and me dead center on stage.  Robin Zander gave me this cool jacket to wear, and it occurred to me right away that I’d better do something different.  I’ve seen enough rock-orchestra shows where the orchestra looks disengaged and the conductor is a big ol’ nerd compared to the band.  So I decided to be part of the band and do all of the rock stuff: dance around, look at the audience, smile, sing along, play cowbell, and so on.  I think this works very well!  And it’s fun!  The Vegas orchestra players are very aware they are being watched, and don’t have terribly difficult parts to play, so they want to get involved.  As we were rehearsing to coda to “I am the Walrus” there are these huge downbows in the orchestra parts and the concert master offered me the so-called “LA Flail,” in which the entire string section flails their head on every downbow!  Yes!  One of the reviewers said listening to “I am the Walrus” live made him want to “drop acid and pick up a cello.”  Now that’s a good review, and if you haven’t payed attention to the cello parts on this song, you should.

And finally …

Someone emailed me a little while ago and asked me what I was listening to these days. So here are two things I keep coming back to over and over …

First of all, anything by JORDI SAVALL.  He is an endless well of musical genius and basically I listen to him all the time and wish orchestras played that way.  For instance check this out:

And then on the other side of things I just can’t stop listening to The Bird and the Bee. The songs are so elegant and witty, the voice is so sexy.

Hi!  I’m writing from San Francisco — tomorrow is the dress for La Traviata.  Lots of fun with Anna Netrebko and company.  More on that soon.

Right now, I want to mention that the Kitchener-Waterloo Symphony is in the midst of a matching challenge.  Every new and increased donation will be doubled up to $129,000.

I don’t want this blog to become a fundraising site, but I think once a year or so won’t be too bad.  Our orchestra, and every orchestra, is worth supporting.  And I think the main reason is that we provide inspiration to people.  It’s a hard thing to quantify, but if you think back, the things that define the positive aspects of our lives are inspiring moments.  It could be a class, a conversation, a relationship, a novel, a meal … or a performance.  I’ll never forget the first time I heard an orchestra live, my first Beethoven, my first Mahler, my first Verdi opera (happening right now!).  Great music has changed the way I see the world, and the part I play in it.  I can’t imagine life without it.

We need to continue to transmit the messages of Mozart, Bach, Beethoven, and all the new artists who love the orchestra.  We need to keep kids close to sounds that are profoundly beautiful.  We need to unite our communities through music.

It’s not easy.  I think of the arts as a delicate flower in an indifferent environment. It can be knocked over easily by cynicism and indifference.  It has to be cared for and nurtured, not sporadically, but constantly.  If it stays alive and beautiful, people will walk across the desert to see it, it might even become a garden someday.

Won’t you add just a drop of water to the musical garden we are growing?  You don’t have to be Canadian!  Everything helps, everything counts.  You’ll be supporting truth, beauty, and inspiration.

You can donate HERE.

Thanks for considering this.

Well, here’s something we could do for Oktoberfest!

UPDATE: Esther Wheaton at OBOE COMICS, has put together a great blogroll of the event (she’s also responsible for the video below). There’s also a twitter thread if you’re interested (#openears). It’s nice to see the responses to the festival.

So the open ears festival is over, and at the last minute I was recruited to be one of the performers in Gordon Monahan’s “Speaker Swing.” It happened at the festival’s finale (in a way), Blue Dot, an all night warehouse things with the usual DJ stuff in industrial settings plus …

I did this for 25 minutes straight (I’m the guy to the left, in the red). It was tiring, but mostly on the hands and feet. You really can’t move once those things get going, or else you’ll fall right off. Especially when the strobe lights start going off. Maybe there will be some footage of that up soon …