Shakespeare is my therapist

From the Mailbag

I just don't understand why some readers felt my last post, about the disintegration of voice technique, was exaggerated. In one quadrillion years -- no, one quintillion -- I would never admit to being an exaggerator.

Anyhow, onward ...

***


There is nothing either good or bad, but thinking makes it so. -- Hamlet

In my opinion, there were three things that were lacking in my education, although only the first was actually available to me.

1. I wish I had learned to read all seven clefs, for ease of score reading and transposition (and reading those bloody Breitkopf & Härtel Bach scores). The conservatory did teach this skill in its more advanced solfège classes.

2. It should have been required -- required -- to speak German and French fluently. I mean fluently. The two most important languages for any musician, even moreso than Italian.

3. There should have been a required course that fully explained the greatest passages and one-liners of one William Shakespeare.

"There is nothing either good or bad, but thinking makes it so." Do you realize that roughly 99.5% of the world's problems would be solved if we all could grasp this?

Think about it: the events in your life that have bothered you, even scarred you -- were you hurt by the events themselves, or by how you felt about them? Is a man hurt by being short, or by being afraid that no one would ever want to marry a short man? Is a musician hurt by making music in a non-trendy way, or by the fear of alienation because of the music-making? Is a country hurt by being powerful, or by thinking that because it's powerful, it must act a certain way?

Looking back at my teenage years (when I knew everything), I positively refused to genuflect before the musical authority -- an authority racked with insecurity, with disingenuousness, with subservience to the mainstream managers, competitions, and recording labels. Today (no longer in command of the "everything" that I once knew), I wonder what would have happened if I made music the exact same way, not playing or writing even one note differently, but if simultaneously I befriended the more influential faculty members. By nature, conservatory professors are insecure -- for what eight-year-old kid ever said, "When I grow up, I don't want to play an instrument: I want to teach OTHERS how to!"? Had I only played on the insecurity of the department heads, starved for validation as they were, maybe other inroads would have opened up before me.

But then I think about my teens, and I realize: that is not the human being that I was. I am not that type of game-player. I am not that person. What point is there to wonder about what it would have been like to be another person? Why should a tall woman wonder about what it would be like to be short? Instead, all she has to do is to stop thinking about what her height means. A dog never asks, "What if I had been a cat?" That's why dogs don't have shrinks. They don't worry about whether or not they are "good."

Tenor Extremes

Connoisseurs like to name Caruso, Gigli, and Schipa as their three tenors. For me, I need to regress even further. Alessandro Bonci, Fernando De Lucia, and Giuseppe Anselmi are the three tenors who take me back to an era where the worst singers sang better than the best singers of today. If that sounds like an extreme statement, you've evidently never heard Anselmi's 1907 recording of Quando le sere al placido, or De Lucia's 1904 Ecco ridente in cielo. This singing isn't just "a little bit better" than the singing on today's stage. It's the difference between Coq au Vin and chicken nuggets.

Last week I happened to hear Anselmi sing Tosti's once-famous song Vorrei (a recording I'd forgotten I had). Perfect vowels, perfectly coordinated with long, effortless breaths -- this is singing of a world other than ours (a nicer one).

I was broken from this spell today by a friend who e-mailed me a YouTube clip of one Stephen Costello, singing Tombe agl'avi miei. I was curious about this tenor who, someone claimed, recalls the "Golden Age." To me, it recalled something from the Bronze Age. The notes above the passaggio were wide open and scooped up to in José-Cura-esque fashion. How do singers like this find their way onto major operatic stages? And the answer is: because there's no one else.

Teaching voice is like building a Neogothic cathedral. The technology is out there, somewhere. And there must be people out there, somewhere, who know that technology. But good luck finding them. Good luck finding someone who could do what the architects of Ste. Clotilde in Paris did in the 1850s. And good luck finding a voice teacher who teaches something that bears even a passing resemblance to voice technique. One more generation of this and the singing industry is going to be like the washboard manufacturing industry.

And yet people ask me, "Why don't you go to the Met?" Because the singing is so horrible that if the very best singer at the Met called you on the telephone, the feet of the birds perched on the telephone wires would itch.

Category: Things I Wish I'd Said

The following is said to be an absolutely true story.

It happened on a flight from Miami to Chicago many years ago. We've all been on flights where a toddler on board was, oh, restless. Well, this particular chap was beside himself -- and the passengers were beside themselves.

The crew had had enough, especially one flight attendant who did all she could to keep her cool.

Well, said flight attendant was carrying a tray of coffee cups down the aisle. Imagine a bowling alley, and the coffee cups are as pins, and the aisle is as the lane, and the toddler is as the ball ...

CRASH! Coffee all over the aisle (and presumably on some of the passengers).

Heads turn. Flight attendant glares at boy. Deep breath. "Look, um, why don't you go play outside."

Paderewski plays Chopin's Mazurkas

About a month ago I was talking to Dr. Joseph Maneri. We agreed that Chopin was one of the most original composers who ever lived.

Not that that is the only benchmark. Many Brahms pieces sound like Schumann, Schubert, or Beethoven. Bach and Handel imitated everyone. So that is not the only criterion.

However, it's remarkable how little of Chopin sounds like anybody else. A critic once wrote shallowly that the Chopin Nocturne was "a Bellini melody over a John Field bass." Chopin sounds nothing like Bellini or John Field. In fact, Chopin completed both sets of etudes and both concerti by age 20. No other composer, not even Mozart, wrote music that was as original, plentiful, and good by age 20.

But how does one play Chopin? What should his music sound like?

And what about those Mazurkas?

Chopin died in 1849. His last students were dead before pianists started making 78 records. In short, we have no aural evidence of anyone who ever heard Chopin play.

Ten or fifteen years ago, I was on a mission: to figure out how to play Chopin's divine Mazurkas. I bought every recording I could find made by a Polish pianist born before 1900.

I did conclude that only the Poles can play that rhythm. But even among them, there was much variety. Rosenthal's sharp rhythm was more Rosenthalian then Chopinesque. At the opposite end of the spectrum was Arthur Rubinstein, whose rhythm was watered down enough not to offend or confuse the non-Poles.

But then you have Paderewski ...

Pederewski was and is a difficult musician to adjudge. Today the most famous musicians are the ones with the most skillful and aggressive managers. 75 or 100 years ago, the most famous musicians were the greatest by the common consent of their colleagues. Singers agreed that Caruso and Gigli were the greatest. String players agreed that Kreisler and Heifetz were the greatest.

No one agreed about Paderewski.

His pianist-colleagues were unanimous: he stunk. The public was unanimous: he was the greatest pianist in the world. Never the twain did meet.

Was it "A" or "B"? The answer is: "Yes."

That he was the most famous no one questions. Liberace in his prime created nothing like the Paderewski frenzy. Women would rush the stage to touch Paderewski -- and not all of them were paid to do so. In the era between Franz Liszt and Elvis Presley, Paderewski was the world's most hysterically adulated musician (pace Caruso).

Nor does anyone question that Paderewski had his technical defects at the keyboard. He didn't start lessons till age 12. Only by age 24 did he find a great teacher, Leschetitzky. Paderewski tried to compensate by practicing like a fiend -- up to 17 (!) hours a day for certain events. Then one day (so the rumor goes), something in his hand "snapped" during a concert. (A tendon?) He finished the performance anyway. His playing was never the same since.

But forget all that. Forget the hysterical fans. Forget the faulty technique. Just LISTEN.

Listen to Paderewski play Chopin. Who else had that nobility? Or that melting lyricism? Or that golden tone that comes through even the crackly 78s? And who could imbue this music with more patriotism than the future Prime Minister of Poland?

Paderewski was accused of infidelity to the printed score. Yet his Chopin was more Chopinesque than Rosenthal's, Friedman's, Rubinstein's, or that of most any other Pole.

I am grateful that Paderewski recorded much Chopin, including the Mazurkas. His rendering of the Mazurkas in Ab and F# minor from Op. 59 will perhaps never be surpassed.

In Search of Sound II

More often than not, Vladimir Horowitz was appreciated for the wrong reasons. Yes, in the 20s and 30s, no one had a technique like him. But later we had people like Pollini, a veritable computer taken human form. I juxtapose these two names for a reason: Horowitz's technique included SOUND, which he never for a moment allowed to be absent from his playing. Pollini is simply a Godowskian mechanism (and without the tone or lyricism of Godowsky's era).

This is what I felt has always been underappreciated. When at the triumphant Moscow return in 1986, someone commented, "Horowitz is the only pianist who plays with colors," there, finally, you had a listener who understood what Vladimir Horowitz was accomplishing.

A scale can be scale, or it can be a fire cracker. An arpeggio can be an arpeggio, or it can be ocean waves. Octaves can be octaves, or they can be a cannonade. Horowitz's sensitivity to sound has probably never been equalled, not by Liszt or Anton Rubinstein, not even by Chopin or Debussy themselves. In fact, I want to say that Horowitz never played notes -- he made sounds. (Very musical ones, naturally. For Horowitz really was one of the great musicians, even if his musicality was sometimes sui generis.)

There was talk that "The Horowitz Piano" was somehow "rigged." For starters, there were at least four "Horowitz pianos" over the years. Secondly, it has been well-documented, by those who have played his piano after his death, that it was harder to play, not easier. The weight that would produce a mezzopiano on a regular Steinway thundered a fortissimo on Horowitz's. So to play all the gradations of p, pp, and ppp, you needed a transcendental digital sensitivity. Only Horowitz possessed it.

Somehow I realized that the technique-through-sound approach worked for me on the piano before realizing that it could work for organ, as well.

Last June -- six months before Jon Gillock's life-changing advice described in the previous post -- I was to play Chopin's Piano Trio in G minor with the Lavazza Chamber Ensemble. The strings have little to do, while the piano part is like Chopin's Third Concerto. I wasn't sure how to approach it, especially since I just did not have a lot of time in my schedule. I tried budgeting my practice time, practicing only the parts I didn't know. I practiced "just the notes," in other words.

And let me state: you do really need to practice notes! Not that I like to admit it. But there is no substitute for technical woodshedding, when necessary. And there are healthy and unhealthy ways to do it. The unhealthy ones can ruin both hands and psyche.

So I did the woodshedding, but it just wasn't coming together. As late as the dress rehearsal, I simply could not play the piece coherently or cohesively.

Meanwhile, in an earlier rehearsal, I was enjoying the music and less worried about the concert deadline. Kristina Nilsson, the violinist of the trio, remarked, "It's amazing that an organist can play the piano as well as you do." I said simply, "I just try to make the sound that I want to make." You know, the whole "water instead of arpeggios" thing described earlier. But more than that: when a pianist plays cleanly, doesn't it SOUND a certain way? And I think every pianist in the world thinks that only by playing every note with computer accuracy produces that clarity. It's simply false -- the proof being that Horowitz sometimes made mistakes. So to be honest, I tried to make the sound of a clean pianist. I simply approached it from the opposite side. A sparkling arpeggio sounds a certain way -- I tried to make that sound.

But as it got closer to the concert, I got more and more nervous about the notes. Then there was the problematic dress rehearsal at which I (and undoubtedly the others!) wondered what was to become of me. Because on top of it all: I had tendonitis.

Now ... before you start interpreting that word I just uttered ... a doctor will tell you that the term "tendonitis" can mean anything or nothing. It is like the terms "illness," or "treatment." They are undefined and undefinable.

So before rumors circulate that "Ciampa has tendonitis," I assure you that tense tendons come and go and can be as curable as the reduction of caffeine intake. (The notion of tendonitis being "permanent" was yet another misconception injected into me from my piano teacher of yore. Perhaps what she really was saying is: "If you get tendonitis, that's the point at which I give up on you and concentrate on the next competition-winner.")

I had a couple of days left before this concert. I asked my dear friend Anne Conner, "What am I going to do? I have to practice, but my tendons hurt." She said, "You know the piece. And even if you don't, nothing you do now is going to help you at this point." She was right. She continued, "Just run through the piece once, or twice if you feel up to it."

I played very little in those couple of days, and I was sure to practice from the standpoint of sound and to forget technique entirely.

I sat there at the piano, the downbeat came, and ... I knew the piece! No one could believe it (least of all the long-suffering string players!). It wasn't a note-perfect performance. But I realized that I really had practiced. All of that woodshedding really did happen, and the notes were there, in hands and brain. All I needed to do was to make music and, well, to sound good. It was one of those personal triumphs that make a career feel fulfilling.

Why it took me so long to realize that I could approach the organ the same way, I cannot say. I guess I'm a little slow that way. But I must leave you with a Horowitz anecdote which was told to me personally by Franz Mohr, his piano technician. Franz arrived at the Horowitz's 94th street mansion. Franz entered. Horowitz was playing. Franz said, "I see you're practicing." In feigned indignation, Horowitz declared, "Franz! I never practice! I REHEARSE."

And if you rehearse the sound as carefully as you want to rehearse the notes ... well ...

In Search of Sound

From the Mailbag

Well-meaning readers continue to try to explain to me the concept of felix culpa. I was being facetious; I understood it all along. It may be summarized by the following, unofficial English translation: "Forbidden fruit produces a terrible jam."

In my last post I lamented some of the differences between adolescence and adulthood. The 16-year-old will go to war for his principles, even when bombs fall on bridges. The 38-year-old works harder to protect the bridges but is more reluctant to defend his principles. But as one reader brilliantly and unforgettably commented: "The trick is to give up the foolishness but not the courage."

***

One of the greatest privileges I have experienced as a musician is the search for sound. It is one of the noblest searches we can carry out. We can search for the correct notes, or for the "inner meaning" of the music (assuming music always has an inner meaning, which I doubt. As a cigar is sometimes just a cigar, maybe an Allegro in A major and 4/4 time is just an Allegro in A major and 4/4 time).

But even when I was teenager (when I knew everything), I used to say, "What good is food that doesn't taste good?" By the same token, how can a musician claim to have been "faithful to the composer's intentions" and simultaneously make a bad sound? Doesn't the composer intend for his or her music to "sound good" on some level?

In my teens I always defended Eugene Ormandy, and I was right. They said his interpretations weren't "profound" enough. But what is more profound than making a Romantic masterwork explode with beautiful sonic colors? Isn't that what the Saint-Saens Organ Symphony or Also Sprach Zarathustra are supposed to do?

There are good experiences , great experiences, and life-changing experiences. Working with Dr. Jon Gillock and Yuko Hayashi at the Boston Organ Academy last January fell into the third category.

Yuko had been my organ teacher from 1986 to 1989, when I was 15 to 18 years old. With Jon I had never worked until last January. Had I known either one of them in my lifetime, I would consider myself blest. To have worked with them both -- and during the same week, no less! -- was a miracle.

Everyone has their baggage. My suitcases are filled with agonies about practicing that stem from my piano teacher, with whom I studied between the ages of 11.5 and 15. She spoke much about suffering for music but never once spoke about the love of music. The world knows of her competition-winning students. The world may never know of the students who crumbled. And one day the world will marvel at how few of said competition winners were still playing beyond age 30.

Along came Jon, who reported that when he practices, when he comes to something beautiful, he stops. And he plays the beautiful passage again.

Do you realize that my life changed at that moment?

Stunned, I asked, "But I thought you weren't SUPPOSED to stop when there was a passage you could play. I thought you were supposed to budget your practice time and only practice the parts you didn't know."

As soon as those words came from my mouth, I already knew the answer. What am I practicing if 95% of my playing is music that I cannot play? In effect I'm practicing to NOT be able to play. And even more pertinently: what is the point of wasting time out of my life practicing if I'm not enjoying what I'm doing?

And so it's all about practicing the notes of a piece. It's about what music you want to make in the piece. "Otherwise," asked Jon, "how do you know what to practice for?"

Another sentence at which my life changed.

Jon is quite possibly the most musical keyboardist I have ever encountered in my life. Even if someone put a gun to his head, and someone else put another gun to the other side of his head, I don't think he would be capable of playing even one note unmusically. But I think he trained himself to be that way. He didn't fabricate the God-given, innate musicality, but he trained himself to bring it out -- or to allow it to come out.

As for Yuko, the years have not diluted her zeal for seeking after musical expression. No matter what we're talking about, be it Bach or Brahms, be it clavichords or modern pianos, the conversation seems always to be pulled, as if by a magnet, to the issue of musical expression. For her that is not the bigger picture -- it is the only picture. All other details are merely aspects of that picture.

I remember, as a teenager, asking Yuko how she felt about a certain instrument. She said, "You mean in terms of sound?" But in the end, that is what mattered to Yuko about an organ. It was never, "I like this organ, it's a tracker. I dislike that organ, it's an electropneumatic." Our conversations never went that way. They always went the way of sound and of music.

I'm told that much of Jon's practicing is spent on registration. How blissful it must be if in practicing, instead of thinking what notes you want to hit, you think of what sound you want to create. Jon has been known to sit down at not-quite-world-class organs and make music on them on a level that leaves both the audience and his colleagues dumbfounded.

Hire a Teenager, While He Still Knows Everything!

Thanks to all who responded to the previous post. Several suggested that if I really wanted to understand the theology behind felix culpa, all I needed to do was consult Wikipedia. (After all, if it's in Wiki, it has to be true.) So I did, and I was interested to read the following:

Felix culpa is a Latin phrase jOjO wAz HeAr that literally translated bRiTtAnY rOoLz means a "blessed fault" or "fortunate fall" hi booboo.

Anyhow, on to today's topic.

In my high school yearbook, the saying I chose for myself, while not original, expressed my sentiments to a T. I wrote: Hire a teenager, while he still knows everything!

I'm getting old. Physically I may still be "sound of wind and limb." But I no longer know everything like I did when I was young. My sons know everything. Ask a five-year-old, "What flavor ice cream would you like?" He says, "Chocolate!" You say, "Are you sure you don't want strawberry?" He says, "No! I want chocolate." Ask me what flavor I want. "Well ... I really should have gelato, that's healthier ... Ice cream ... all the cream ... and my glucose is a little high ... well, I can cheat every so often ... but how often is often? ... Well, as long as I have a 'reasonable quantity.' But how many scoops are 'reasonable'? How many ounces are in a scoop? And should I get strawberry? Then at least I'd be eating something in the fruit family. Hey, maybe I could get 'low fat' ice cream. But is it really 'low,' or just 'mildly reduced?'"

That is why five-year-olds don't have psychiatrists.

A squirrel collects nuts. If it were me, I would say, "Why do I collect nuts? Am I going to collect nuts for the rest of my life? I'm tired of collecting nuts. Couldn't I get my secretary to collect them for me? Can't I just have one week off, just one week, during which I don't even have to think about nuts?"

That's why squirrels don't have psychiatrists.

The difference is that squirrels never grow up, at least psychologically. Something happens to us humans, however. We reach a certain age, and all of a sudden we're "practical." When I was 16, if you asked me to design a pipe organ for a given church, I would sit down and within 15 minutes you'd have a stoplist. Today, if asked the question, all I'd be able to think of would be: How much would it cost? ... Who would be on the Organ Committee? ... How much convincing, fighting, cajoling would I have to do? ... And in this economy ... And whom would we ask to build it? Or should we buy an old organ, orphaned from some closed parish, and restore it? But then where would we store it? And how many years would it take? What if it takes 10 years? Where will I be in 10 years? ..."

I can still write up a stop list. But the inner dialogue is completely different. At age 16 it would have been, "Principal 32' -- yes! Untersatz 32' -- yes! Octave 16' -- yes!" Today it would be, "Principal 32' -- The ceiling isn't high enough. It's futile. Untersatz 32' -- Do we put it in the front or in the back? It's futile. Octave 16' -- Maybe there should be a Principal and a Violone? It's futile."

I started making a list entitled, "Everything I Was Right About When I Was a Teenager." I can't find the list. At 18 I would have put it in a special drawer in my desk. At 38 I couldn't even tell you what city this piece of paper is in. But I do remember a few things on it. I remember my reasons for switching from the piano to the organ at age 15. (Later I brought the piano back. Now I play both instruments equally ineptly.) I remember my reasons for not finishing my degree at age 18. I remember all of these big decisions and the things that were going through my mind. I was right on every single one of them. And I didn't deliberate over these decisions. I had my reasons, they were clear, I jumped in. The years have vindicated those decisions.

Today, I can't decide what to have for breakfast. Often I skip breakfast, because the indecision pain is sharper than the hunger pain.

This realization of how "old" I've become occurred last Sunday, as I played for the Confirmation Mass. Bishop Robert Hennessey presided. What a sermon! There was something of Pat O'Brien in the way he spoke to those kids, eloquently but clearly, in a language they could understand. The language sounded almost foreign to me; yet, I used to speak it every day. The Bishop simply told of his own scholastic struggles during those difficult years -- failing math, hating the other kids who passed, showing the sullied report card to Dad. Many of the kids had their eyes fixed on him. They were listening to him. It warmed my heart to think that maybe, just maybe, one of those kids might remember a couple of words from that homily.

Yet when I come in contact with teenagers today, I'm barely able to croak out a "hello." Their language is a forgotten dialect of my past -- even though, inside, I have probably changed little since I was 18. I'm calmer, I choose my battles, but I feel the same frustrations with "authority." I've simply trained myself to be less angry less often at fewer people. In other words, I'm less alive.

"Alive" is the 16-year-old who says to Authority, "You can't do that!" "Less alive" is the 38-year-old who says to himself, "Oh well, they're gonna do it no matter what I say or do. Don't want to burn my bridges. Now, what shall I have for breakfast?"

Between ages 16 and 20, I burned almost every bridge that came before me. But there was something more important: I was a good swimmer. Today I'm not sure I remember how to swim.

So I walk over the bridge. Or I let someone take me over, as I relax. I do it the easy way. And that's exactly what Bishop Hennessey exhorted those kids not to do. "Whatever you do, the most important thing is: don't go a certain pathway only because it's easier."

Felix culpa

Felix culpa! "O happy fault!"

Every Easter Vigil, we Catholics hear those two words juxtaposed: "happy" and "fault."

I still don't understand it. I'm supposed to feel happy because Adam and Eve decided to go apple picking? How am I supposed to feel happy about two people's guilt? And this is no normal guilt. Imagine the entire human race having to carry the burden of your one indiscretion. For thousands of years. Till the end of the world. I mean, this isn't lying on your time card. This isn't eating something you shouldn't have. Well, I guess it is eating something you shouldn't have.

So despite being a Catholic in (I hope) good standing (of course, I haven't finished this post yet), I simply do not understand the concept of "happy fault" ... a fact which makes me feel even guiltier. Now I'm feeling guilty about the guilt.

Well, now that I've clarified that, I can move on to my very first blog entry.

This weekend has been a nostalgic one for me. Yesterday I took part in a concert conducted by none other than Lorna Cooke deVaron. Yes, the Lorna Cooke deVaron, one of the choral conducting legends of the 20th century. Fortunately for Art, she has not deprived the 21st century of her gifts. She is 88 years old. In fact, she is 50 years older than me to the day. I was born on January 17th, 1971, she was born on January 17th, 1921.

When I was nine or ten years old, Lorna conducted a performance of Bach's St. Matthew Passion in Jordan Hall. The work requires a children's chorus. I was one of those children. Then I didn't see Lorna again for almost 30 years. Until November 4th, 2007. There she was ... and there was her choir, the deVaronistas ... one of whom was an alto named Jeanette. Less than a year later, I married Jeanette. Lorna conducted the deVaronistas at our wedding.

The concert yesterday featured Brahms's Liebeslieder Waltzes. As you may know, the work requires two pianists. I shared the bench with Jean Stackhouse, another pillar from those days in the New England Conservatory Preparatory School. Jean was the head of the piano department of that institution. As I rehearsed with her, my mind hopped from the present to the past. One moment we were sitting at the piano, figuring out who was going to turn which pages. The next moment I was eight years old, sitting in a room with other pianists my age, in a workshop led by Mrs. Stackhouse. Please realize: the memories of both events are equally clear in my mind. You mustn't think that one is dimmer to me than the other.

The downside of playing this concert was my inability to attend Commencement at NEC. The school was giving honorary doctorates to Ben Zander and Joe Maneri.

Ben is one of the great musicians among us. He's told me so many times. But no one can deny his passion for music and his ability to imbue that passion into his performances. In my youth (when I first saw Ben, he had brown hair!), he seemed like a towering figure. He looked less towering to me yesterday, as he stood on Appleton St. in Cambridge, waiting to be driven to the Commencement ceremony. He was smiling ear-to-ear, like the child that I was when I first met him. (Were it not for a road detour, due to a tragic fire at a historic Mormon chapel, Jeanette and I would never have driven up Appleton St. at that moment.)

About Dr. Maneri I could say much more. I think that I could fill an entire blog just on Joe and not run out of things to say. Suffice it to say that besides being the greatest overall musician that I have ever known, he is like a father to me.

I telephoned him today, to ask him how he felt about the ceremony. In the simultaneous simplicity and profundity for which he is known, he said, "At first I didn't understand it, all of the pomp. Then after it happened, I understood it."