The Orchestra Unwound
By Louna Dekker-Vargas
Abstract
The symphonic orchestra continues to be one of the most successful models for artistic expression involving a large group of performers in Western culture. Audiences and musicians alike are drawn to its’ sheer mass of sound and intricacy of musical voices.
I have sought to use my position as a participating member of the Peabody Concert Orchestra at the Peabody Institute of Johns Hopkins as a means of both sharing and meditating on the process of group music-making as a dynamic social process, requiring high levels of specialized music skills but also more general social and perhaps even spiritual skills in order to lift the music off the stands, through instruments and into the hall. Interviews with the orchestra directors and field notes from rehearsals are used in this argument, as well citations of Eitan Wilf’s work, an anthropologist and jazz trumpeter, who wrote on his experience and study of the jazz world.
The audience settles into plush seats in the Friedberg Peabody Concert Hall and cracks open program booklets. Prokofiev’s Romeo and Juliet is first. A pigtailed girl leans into her mother’s lap pointing at the stage, where the orchestra is tuning, wheezing and coughing into existence, the oboe’s note piercing through, other instruments wrapping their sound around its sphere, violins bending and arching into their notes like taut sapling branches in the wind.
--“It’s started!” she says.
When the tuning is over, the conductor strides out, energetically leans on the podium bars for a bow then turns to the orchestra, a silence filling the hall. A hundred fifty spines stand erect under the maestro’s gaze. He seems to gather the silence into his arms and hands, holding it between his energetic shoulders audience seems to hold its breath too, waiting, suspended in that lovely silence before the storm. Four chords emerge one after the other, each more tense than the last, the dark sound bulging forward from the brass section.
The orchestra roars with blind fury.
Then drops suddenly into a silence
Fringed by the icy vein of strings.
The audience exhales, feeling as though it’s just been catapulted into the heart of a sea storm, then thrust into a cold starry sky.
How did this happen? In a truly successful performance, all that exists is that roar and lull of the music, yanking the audience into the present moment and holding everyone there. How this happens is somewhat of a mystery, weaved between the conductor and the
musicians. Let’s look at that moment again, with the eyes of the orchestra.
Enter the stage. The orchestra stretch out their limbs, musicians take their seats, exchanging little smiles, moving over to accommodate the more vital organs of the orchestra, principal players, making sure they have an unobstructed view of the podium
(where the conductor stands).
The concertmaster [1] stands and signals the oboe principal to play the tuning A440 pitch [2]. With this first direct rapport, the orchestra grows more aware of itself. Woodwinds, rows of spun silver, gold, rosewood and hardwood, lean in to tune. The
principal player of each section plays the first A, melting into the oboe’s sound, and the adjacent players follow suit, darkening, lightening, deepening, thickening or thinning out their tone to match the principal player. You settle into your chair, warmed by the core sound spun around you yet aware that throughout the concert you will have to adjust and listen closely to maintain that sense of unified sound. (Woodwinds are fickle instruments that naturally go out of tune on certain notes or when playing very loud or very softly.) The brass section is next to tune, and makes sure to play with muted, unaccented tones to focus on the core of the sound. Next the strings tune, the concertmaster playing the first A and the whole string section tuning accordingly. Once the orchestra has gotten that out of the way, the conductor strides out on stage.
A hundred fifty spines stand erect under the maestro’s gaze, one body of stillness. As he gathers the silence into his arms and hands, the whole orchestra takes a deep breath, like the tense inward retreat of a wave, gathering energy in its core, preparing for
the blast of sound that will roll out. A silent tempo pulses, your mouth and hands shape into a practiced posture to hold the flute, your legs and hips channeling a current of energy all the way up to your fingertips and lips, energy.
The horns and brass play four chords, each more tense than the last, the dark sound bulging forward, vibrating through your back. They have to make sure to save their air and energy for the loudest chord of all. Flute, clarinet bassoon, oboe, and string players around you slowly lift their instruments, up to their collarbones with fresh air, getting ready to play.
The orchestra roars with blind fury.
This moment is still highly controlled, the worked up orchestra having to make
sure not to exert too much air or force into its sound, because it will warp past the edges
and crack or go out of tune. It’s almost like relaxing into the monumental sound. For
winds and brass in particular, a large sound is achieved not through forcing, but rather a
relaxed big air stream, resonating at the instruments’ and musicians’ full capacity, much
like singing. In this moment, you are hypersensitive to the sound around you and adjust
quickly to stay in tune.
Absolute stillness, except for the strings.
Hearts drop into bellies and stay there, breathless. Your fingers and those around you
continue to hold up instruments as though suspended in animation, unable to break the
stillness.
One day, as you packed up your instrument after rehearsal, you realized that this is partly a physics requirement: holding up the instrument as long as possible extends the resonance of the sound and affects its projection out into the hall. But also, you recall the
sensation that the music is moving through you, and even when not playing, the odd feeling that your body remains a mass of tissues that vibrate sympathetically sound waves, is present. Maybe, you muse, it is a matter of theatrical sensitivity that binds musicians into slowly bringing their instruments down and moving with the gravity that the music commands. Or maybe you just don’t want that moment to end.
The monstrous silence continues to fill the hall, fringed by an icy layer of strings, bows moving almost imperceptibly, string players at their highest peak of energy, having to sustain an eerie atmosphere immediately after a fortississimo (very loud sound),
exercising an icy control of their bow and energy.
We have just relived the first ten or so seconds of a performance at Peabody Conservatory of Prokofiev’s “Romeo and Juliet” by the Peabody Concert Orchestra (PCO) on Saturday November 2nd, 2013. As an undergraduate flutist at Peabody Conservatory I stand at a kind of crossroads between the spectators’ and musician’s experience of music. The sensorial, abstracted experience I have had as an audience member, has come up against the markedly different experience of music making as a member of the orchestra. The first experience is mostly focused on the emotional and spiritual implications of the music, and the second is concerned with the pragmatics of synthesizing that sonic landscape. As in all great art though, these two states of being are intimately intertwined, and as I’ve found, often overlapping. How exactly is music crafted and executed in a collective moment with a large group of people involved? And how is this process related to spirituality and abstract thought? These meditations have converged in my study of the orchestra and I hope will lend some insight to the group dynamics involved in highly spiritual activities, as well as provide readers with some more concrete understanding of the music world.
The Scaffolding of Musical Synthesis
Musicians have the task of creating something alive and expressive by fusing together non-living elements (eg. Instruments, sheet music) and living elements (e.g. their own living bodies and consciousness). Working in a large group setting such as the symphony orchestra, players have to use fine tuned craftsmanship, and sensitive maneuvers in order to play as a convincing unified whole that gives shape to music and lifts it off the stand and into the hall, making it come alive. The hidden layers of craftsmanship, internal rhythms, quick tuning adjustments, and hyperawareness involved in ensemble playing are all means of holding the organism together, but their execution remains unearthed in the depths of the orchestra experience, secret and mysterious to many.
In an interview with Teri Murai, principal conductor of both the Peabody Concert Orchestra and the Peabody Symphony Orchestra, we talked about the steps leading up to a performance. I asked him about t the specific skills he focuses on in rehearsals, such as subdividing the pulse before playing to come in on time, or singing a tricky phrase so that we can translate that natural phrasing to our instruments.
He identified a “framework” of established musical traditions, notation, and aesthetics as the most basic foundation of musicianship in the classical music scene. This framework is the cornerstone of a conservatory education. The ability to decode the technical, logical language employed by a composer, as well as their particular artistic sensibility, requires years of training. It is, in essence, a study of signs and symbols, from which musicians and conductors extract a whole world of meaning. Composers hold their musical world in their minds, condense them and encrypt them onto paper as best they can, and then musicians must pull those musical codes back out into an aural experience.
John Zorn, a celebrated jazz composer said a few words at a concert at the Museum of Contemporary Art in Chicago in 2013:
“The composition is just a platform for enabling their creativity. And you've got to put the right little squiggles on paper to make sure they're inspired” (Reich).
In the jazz setting, the artistic vision is more equally shared and carried by performers and composers, but the same dialogue is found in the classical world, albeit with less flexibility, since most played composers are already long gone, and their musical languages fixed in the canon of musical thought.
Teri Murai explained the extraction process as the following:
“So what we’re trying to do as we mentioned, in some rehearsals, we’re adapting someone’s perception of time, and energy and momentum within that time, and we’re just happy to use conventions of pitches and organized ways of interpreting those pitches, which for us is rhythm and melody and harmony to find a certain sense of expression, but again it’s a learned idiom.”
Translating the printed sheet music as well as the added dimension of the conductor’s visual interpretation, requires a working knowledge of musical notation, styles of playing (for example French style versus Russian style), instrumental technique, a highly developed musical “ear”, and a familiarity with the conductor’s idiosyncratic movements. Murai also spoke of the marked aesthetic differences between artists of different traditions. He spoke of famous orchestras in which teachers would traditionally bring their best student to be the newest member of a section, thus perpetuating their aesthetic tradition. This allowed players to play together easily and cohesively. A lot of what orchestras do then, is to try and recreate as faithfully as possible the voice of the composer, using their particular musical aesthetic.
The Musical Body
The musical framework that Maestro Murai refers to is developed and experienced at the individual level, in the minds and bodies of each orchestra member. Eitan Wilf’s discussion of the modern creative subject can help unravel this crucial link between the body and artistic expression. He proposes that “the materiality of semiotic forms is fully incorporated into the architecture of the self and is seen as a condition of possibility for its articulation.” (Wilf, abstract) Semiotics are defined as the signs and symbols of a culture that convey meaning. Assuming sheet music and the gestures of the conductor to be semiotic forms, it follows that they are understood and internalized by musicians before their articulation into live music.
The translation [3]* of printed music and visual cues from the conductor into music requires the medium of the musician, whose physical architecture necessarily affects its final articulation. Indeed, the musician is constantly inscribing the music occurring around her in a bodily experience. Ms. Helen Campo, a regular sub flutist for the NY Philharmonic describes hyperconsciousness of the sonic landscape around her not simply as a mental, intellectual endeavor but as a physical experience, of keeping one’s “head open” and connected to those around us. Counting rests and playing tricky shifts in rhythm require physically undergoing its pulse before actually playing it, for example, tapping a finger down for each measure, or twitching a muscle in time with the music, the nature of an inhale will impact the color and shape of the sound we create.
Wilf argues that there is a “process of becoming,” an “inchoate identity” for all subjects, rather than an “absolute fully formed interiority, and that this becoming hinges on the possibilities offered by their own bodies and materiality (Wilf).” This is another page of the age-old ideological argument of essence against nature and variability. If we take the musical performance to be a subject, we can extend his theory to state that it is constantly in a state of becoming, and that it is informed by the subjects’ materiality. Musicians create with what they have: their bodies (lovely, troublesome, living, breathing bodies) their capricious instruments, the group dynamic and their knowledge of musical conventions.
The musical body is not simply a means to an end; it is the site of creation, and is animated by the natural breath, movement and tendencies of the human body. When that human body is rooted in the aliveness of a present moment it becomes spiritual. Eckhart Tolle, celebrated spiritual philosopher and teacher, and author of the bestseller “The Power of Now” talks about art, saying that
“Great art is born when you become present, no past, no future, you are not even thinking about what you are going to do, just vigilant, right now only the present moment exists. All creation emerges out of this space of the present moment…” he speaks of the “strange transition from a deep understanding and knowledge of what you will create (using the example of writers), which is already present in a pre-verbal state, we experience a shape that finally transforms into the word you will write down.” (Tolle, YouTube).
The complicated process of internationalization and externalization of a musical idea is particularly exposed in the rough woodshedding rehearsals that the young Peabody Concert Symphony undergoes in the weeks leading up to the concert.
Let’s go back in time, to a rehearsal a few weeks before, where the work began that would culminate in this performance of Prokofiev’s “Romeo and Juliet” symphonic Suite for orchestra.
Crack! The conductor hits his baton against the podium and raises his hands, violin players in jeans and t-shirts soaring into a sweeping dolce melody. Further back of the orchestra, the violas and horns prepare to play a bright, rhythmic military passage in stark contrast to the violins.
They lurch forward and falter, failing to achieve this, and the conductor urges them to “not let the violins distract you”. The rhythm of the brass section has to cut forth with a very different character and energy from the violin music. He takes another tack. “Let’s sing it.” I would see this and take part in it often in the fall semester with PCO; when a melody in the piece didn’t have the right momentum, Mr. Murai would make everyone sing. Somewhat awkwardly, the musicians sang their parts. Often, the effect would be a kind of naturalization of the phrasing when the challenge of playing an instrument is taken away. Singing is the most natural instrument at our disposal because it is ‘of the body’ and is intricately tied to breathing. So, while this was a group rehearsal, we were all practicing an individual process of internalization, so that we would be better prepared to fuse together later on.
Another rehearsal strategy is to mentally count quick subdivisions of the pulse. This is a completely silent, internal practice, that most, if not all professional musicians use in order to play decisively. Mr. Murai encouraged the brass section to beat an energetic internal clock, while the violins played their languid melody, in order to tap into a more forward moving energy field, despite the wash of relaxed violin phrasing.
Later on as we chatted in his office about that rehearsal, he identified this training as essential to forming good ensemble players. The anticipation counting gave the horn players and violists the confidence to pit one musical soundscape against the other, convincingly. Had they played with weak rhythm and not enough contrast of character, the audience would translate it to be inauthentic, confusing and disturbing to the beautiful violin melody. When played convincingly, it is accepted by the audience’s ear as interesting musical contrast. Murai described it as theatricality:
“That’s the beauty and the strength of a theatrical background for a musician, because it frees you up to start thinking about a Mozart movement as not all one thing, it may be several different moods, several different characters several diff styles interspersed or juxtaposed" (Murai).
By this logic, the contrast of the two passages of music was not in fact a musical rupture, but a mutual coexistence that creates musical drama and expression. Creating this moment required absolute concentration in the moment, lest a wandering mind react instinctively to the dominant violin melody. Murai mentioned the absolute vigilance required of a musician: “So as a performer, you can’t be drawn in like an audience member, and reacting instinctively, you have to react intellectually, otherwise you’re going to make mistakes”. The performing orchestral musician, then, despite being swathed in the huge body of an orchestra, must maintain absolute independence internally, in order to have the strength to go against the current when the music calls for it. For the audience it appears to surge forth out of nowhere, but in fact it is the product of a meticulous inner clock ticking away in the violists’ and horn player’s minds, functioning independently from the violin section. Thus, within the social organism of the orchestra there exists a carefully calibrated unity and disunity. The successful navigation between discord and harmony within the physical and mental bodies of the orchestra is crucial to making music.
Sitting in countless rehearsals, I’ve seen all kinds of little strategies used by musicians to count their rests, a crucial tool for not letting the mind stray away from the pulse and one’s place. One flute player in PCO puts one finger down for every measure that passes. Others count out loud in rehearsals, and even quietly during concert. I myself have to sit very still, any movement can throw off my mental count. If I do move, it has to be in rhythm or I will likely be thrown off. To come in together woodwind and brass players will breathe together, in rhythm, and raise their instruments in rhythm. Breathing together not only ensures rhythmic unity, it also somehow helps us play in tune, interestingly, as if our bodies intuitively prepare to make the same sound.
I asked Mr. Teri Murai about the process involved in musicians taking the input of conductors and sheet music and turning it into living, breathing music and he responded:
“It’s the reason for memorizing. It’s one thing to have to memorize and another thing to know the piece so well that you just know it. It’s another thing to have to memorize and then to be thinking about what comes next, which distracts you from performing the piece. Some people have photographic memory and that’s great but then again they haven’t necessarily internalized the piece, they’re just playing from what they’re reading. The point for me in having something memorized is you internalize it so that you know it by heart. Also getting something memorized takes you away from the page so you’re not distracted about the visual organization of it and you can find other relationships, going counter to the bar line or over the bar line. Once you see something written out, you are subconsciously grouping it and that is only there to convey the mechanics of what the gesture might be: four beats here, we’re going to divide the time and the pitches this way”(Murai).
Once again, the importance of presence in the moment jumped out at me. All the internalization work we do as musicians and performers, endless hours of repetitive rehearsal and memorization is just to get us to a place were we can embrace the pregnant silence of the stage, the potential of a single second, and create something that soars beyond the body, the instrument, the limits of the intellect, dancing into unknown strange new territories and consciousnesses.
Moving from the Single Unit to the Whole
Terms such as the “rank and file” and “ringer” musician, referring to the inner stand anonymous orchestras imply a certain impersonality that is required for the job. An article in The Guardian recounts a familiar story of the plight of the bored orchestra musician. There is a definite beauty to the group sensation, as one musician, Williams, puts it “here is a high electrical charge, especially in live performance when the adrenaline flows. You become an instrument, you become one, the body of the orchestra. There is an alchemy at play when you are surrounded by a pool of talent and it all comes together, a miraculous, unconscious thing." (Price) The other side of the sword is the impersonality that such an endeavor requires. I distinctly remember an excellent violinist in high school being chastised in orchestra class for not blending with the section. He was simply to soloistic, and probably did not see the beauty of melting his sound into a swath of violin color. This blending requirement of the job turns off certain musicians because of its impersonality and passivity. There is a certain amount of meditative self-immersion into the greater whole required.
Seated at one of the linoleum tables at Peabody with a violist from PCO, I asked her, “What is it like playing in the string section.” She responded, “I’ve played in both string orchestras and symphonic orchestras. In a string orchestra you have more opportunity to be expressive in your playing.” I interrupted her here, unwisely perhaps, to ask “Because it’s smaller?” She said “Yeah it can be smaller. It is much more intimate, your part can matter more. In the full orchestra you have a lot more sound, with the brass and all that.” Later on she stressed “trying to tune with everyone around you, which is mainly the viola section...but I mean sometimes it is hard to even hear the other sections, with the hall or just because of how open your ears are…It’s hard to stay in the present moment too.”
The Symphonic Orchestra
The next level of musical synthesis in the symphony context, is where the group of individuals begin to interact and form one living, breathing organism. This is (ideally) a place of flexibility, interaction, and consensual decision-making. As a second flute player I had often encountered the challenge of blending my sound, articulation, and style to the principal flutist’s playing. Most music calls for one flute sound, but with more amplitude than that which a single player can muster. Murai claimed that the challenge as well as the beauty of the orchestra in contrast to smaller chamber groups is that “It’s still the same decision making process but you have to come to a broader consensus. There’s a massive sound, and there’s something about all these people devoting their energy to one thing.”
Brushing off the day’s work and endless loops of thought bouncing between my head and a notebook, I walked into yoga class. The room was quiet, full of late afternoon light and strangers. Soon our bodies breathed like waves, bending, sweeping, pulling and stretching.. All that mattered was this moment, my toes sinking a little into the soft mat, my back twisting with intense joy at its newfound freedom. Every time I breathed it was like sending wind and fire through my arms, my legs, to my head, and if I was lucky in the final corpse pose, everything cooled down, and I was able to float, out of my body and away from my pesky thoughts. What if this moment was in essence, like that of a performance? A good yoga class and a good performance or practice session have always been caught up as one in my mind. On my music stand at home, reads a hand scrawled note, STAY PRESENT. Both disciplines require mental and physical presence in the moment, connection to the breath (even string players and percussionists breathe to play) and both, if successful, allow you to use the body in order to experience something abstract. A fascinating layer to this is the group effect. Why go to a yoga class full of people I didn’t know, instead of practicing on my mat alone at home? Why do audiences go wild over a large-scale symphony program? The collective process of sharing a moment together can be very intense.
In the pressed corner of a NYC subway full of jostling elbows, I had the opportunity to talk more about this with Helen Campo, longtime principal substitute flutist at the NY Philharmonic. Being second flute chair requires the ability to melt one’s sound and style with that of the principal flutist. Having good intonation, she tells me, is not actually only about always anticipating what everyone is going to do, but about making snap second adjustments; here she referenced Malcom Gladwell’s book Blink, a book owned by so many quick thinking, fast-talking New Yorkers that it has become a common cultural reference. In it, Gladwell emphasizes the brain’s ability to make intelligent snap decisions, by processing a whole mass of stimulus information in very little time (Gladwell). This way of working requires a completely relaxed, highly receptive and open state of mind, a kind of yogic state.
Ms. Campo continues to describe the experience of playing in the orchestra as staying very open, of trying at all times to “keep your head open and connected to all those around you”, building a sort of web of connected consciousnesses. This is particularly necessary for tuning, because it allows her to identify “Oh that person is sharp, that person is flat, let’s adjust our note so that the chord stays in tune, etc.” Musicians undergo whole lifetimes of training so that the physical process of adjustment is automatic, for example memorizing how the flute tone will go sharp or flat by moving ones’ embouchure4 a certain way. This muscle memory of how to adjust is an unconscious snap action for all professional musicians. It is of the independent body realm. But the mental awareness of when to do so is the trickier maneuver and belongs to the more advanced realm of group music-making. Another prerequisite is knowing the physical tendencies of instruments. Above all, the flute section and more globally, the wind section, have to be one convincing whole. All these constant adjustments and limitations of instruments are resolved by the organism of the orchestra in order to create a homeostatic equilibrium of sound and color. Just as our kidneys filter out excesses or supplement deficiencies in salinity, musicians are constantly readjusting in order to maintain a healthy sonic texture from which the music can emerge in a pure and uncomplicated way.
That Moment
Three years ago, beneath the beams of a creaking church in July, it happened. We, a state youth orchestra, were playing the wild finale of Tchaikovsky’s Fourth Symphony. The music bucked and rolled through us and back and forth through the sections of the orchestra as we neared a huge climax. The moment came, the conductor’s baton flying into the downbeat, all the instruments fusing into one sweet resolution chord. I had the strangest sensation of leaving my body. The flute in my hands was as light as air, and the sound I was creating didn’t seem to come from me anymore, I could almost see us all playing, floating off somewhere in the rafters. We live for those moments, but they are only achieved through a very intensive balance of technical concentration and sensitivity.
“We have to be ministers of music. We can shape people’s lives. This does happen. But it can only happen if we are committed, from here (points to brain) and from here (points to heart).” Said our interim conductor, Edward Polochik one day in rehearsal, gripping the edge of the podium with big, expressive hands. The orchestra took a deep breath.
Endnotes
[1] The concertmaster is principal violinist, sitting in the first chair, nearest to the conductor and the audience.
[2] A440 is the concert pitch used in North America to tune orchestras and other musical ensembles. It refers to the frequency of the sound wave. Being ‘out of tune’ is when your tone does not match the frequency of those around you.
[3]Here I am also thinking of the scientific sense of translation, the translation of DNA into RNA being akinto the translation of the composer’s written work and the conductor’s artistic vision being absorbed by the body of the orchestra and its consequent translation of that semiotic material.
[4] Embouchure refers to the mouth and lip placement of a flutist.