Ways of Thinking About Verdi's Nabucco

Not all lovers of classical music are opera lovers, and my wife and I are belong to the former category. However, we were in Prague, and we thought it was only appropriate to attend an opera there. The available opera happened to be Nabucco, so we went. The production was imaginative, the singers excellent, and the orchestra admirable. The opera house itself is a splendid building. We were surprised how much we enjoyed it. I was also struck by the many-layered perspectives from which it can be appreciated.

The program booklet that I purchased contained an informative essay about the opera by the dramaturge of opera house, Jitka Slavíková, much of which was devoted to the place of Nabucco in Verdi's career and oeuvre as well as to the place of Nabucco in the world of opera in the mid-nineteenth century. Sections of the booklet also dealt with the literary aspect of the libretto and its free treatment of biblical and historical sources. A musicologist and cultural historian could write a substantial monograph about the musical and theatrical aspects of Nabucco.

We were seated in a box with a charming young Czech couple and an equally charming, friendly Bulgarian high school girl, who aspires to be a professional flautist. In the box to our left was a formally dressed Asian couple who were reading about the opera on their tablets in Chinese or Japanese. I'm sure Western operas are performed in their part of the world, but hearing an opera in the city where Don Giovanni was premiered is somehow different. Operas are emblematic of Western high cultural aspirations. Every self-respecting city must have an opera house and an opera company, although the genre appeals only to a minority of the public. So that's a topic that wasn't covered in Slavíková's brief but learned essay.

The director of this production of Nabucco chose to costume the chorus in modern dress rather than in some sort of biblical or Babylonian costume. Rather, they were clearly modern Jews, costumed in dated dresses and suits, suggesting the Jews who were sent to the death camps. I imagine that Temistocle Solera, an ardent Italian patriot, in writing about the ancient Hebrews exiled to Babylonia was thinking about the plight of his countrymen, ruled by foreign powers and struggling to unify and gain sovereignty, and he couldn't have been thinking of Zionism. But the later, unforeseen historical context can't be ignored. Nor can the current historical context, when anti-Zionists deny the right of the State of Israel to exist at all, but ignored.

I thought about all the foregoing after being swept away by the beauty of the singing and the music of the orchestra.

The One Thing That Will Change Everything

 I used to read a charming old book called Lion by William Pène du Bois to my children. It tells about an angel who is designing a new animal, and the drawing looks wrong to him. He asks another angel to tell him one thing that's wrong with the picture. After he corrects that flaw, he asks another angel, and so on until he comes up with a picture of a lion. I love the message of that book. There were so many things wrong with the initial drawing that the designer might have decided to rip it up and start over, but once he started correcting each flaw in turn, he came up with something superb. You can't correct everything that's wrong all at once.

Musicianship is similar. So many factors are involved in playing an instrument, that you can't approach them all at once. You have to pick one problem and deal with it, hoping that one thing will lead to another. Saxophone players, to take a personal example, might address their breathing, their embouchure, and their fingering, but they have to figure out what's the most important problem or the one that's easiest to address first. YouTube is full of videos giving us useful advice.

Sometimes one imagines that the problem is with one's gear. Even if you have a decent instrument, you might not be producing the sound you want, so you experiment with mouthpieces and reeds, hoping that once you've acquired the ideal mouthpiece, you'll play like one of the musicians you admire. 

Recently I tried out three of the baritone saxophone mouthpieces I've bought over the years, because the one I was using was giving me problems. Surprisingly, one of the mouthpieces that I had given up on long ago turned out to be exactly what the doctor ordered, as it were. In a recent rehearsal of the big band I play in, I was happier with the way I was playing than I have been in a while. So maybe that mouthpiece is the one thing that will change everything - but I doubt it.

In my case the one thing that would improve my playing immeasurably would be to go back in time to my high school years and practice clarinet more intensively.

Failing that, I've been listening occasionally to talks on Youtube by Molly Gebrian, a professor of viola with a strong academic background in neuroscience. A recent series of hers fascinated me: The Power of Attentional Focus. Much of the research she refers to focuses on studies of performance in sports but is clearly applicable to musical performance. The lesson I drew from her talks was that, for a wind player, to improve your sound, for example, you won't get anywhere by concentrating exclusively on your embouchure and breathing. You have to focus on your goal, the kind of sound you want to produce. As you approach that goal, your muscles will find the way of doing it. Thinking about your lips and opening your throat can get in the way of using your lips right and opening your throat! 

Gebrian says that you have to focus on something outside yourself. I'm trying that, and it works. Her videos assume an audience of music educators and young musicians aspiring to become professionals. Although I don't fit into that category, I find them insightful and useful.

Hosting a Great Concert

Trio Noga played in our living room last night. All three of the musicians are superb professionals. Idit Shemer is an extraordinary flutist whose tone has exceptional intensity. She also plays baroque flute and is a consummate artist. The cellist, Orit Messer-Jacobi, is an equally distinguished musician, the first cellist of the Jerusalem Baroque Orchestra, where Idit also plays when there is a call for a flute. The pianist, Shira Shaked, made our aging Yamaha baby grand sound fantastic. The three women are clearly good friends and communicate with each other as they play.

They also communicated with the intimate audience that gathered in our living room, creating a warm and enthusiastic atmosphere. Their program was varied and creative, from a Beethoven trio in which the cello played a part originally written for the bassoon (Op. 37). They then played a lively piece, written for them, by Aharon Harlap, a contemporary Israeli composer. They followed it with a piece by Mel Bonis, a French composer who was neglected in her lifetime because she was a woman. They concluded the recital with a trio (in which the flute part was originally written for clarinet) by Nino Rota, who was mainly known for his film scores.

The creative variety of the program is a reflection of the unusual composition of the trio, as it is much more common to hear a piano trio consisting of piano, violin, and cello. Having a wind instrument take the upper part gives the trio a unique flavor: the percussion nature of the piano, with its hammers, the suave, bowed tone of the cello, topped with the clear notes of the flute offer a fascinating range of tones, making them almost a miniature orchestra. Of course it is challenging to blend the voices of such different instruments, and Trio Noga does so to an outstanding degree.

Only about thirty-five people could squeeze into our living room, while another ten or fifteen listeners sat in the adjoining room, where one can hear every note but not see the performers so well. Usually the audience consists mainly of friends of ours, but in this case Idit, Orit, and Shira invited friends of theirs. We were afraid too many people would come, but we fit everyone in. The concert was a great success both for the musicians and the audience. 

It gives my wife and me great satisfaction to host concerts like this. We don't make a penny, of course. In fact, between keeping the piano tuned and providing the refreshments, we are out of pocket, but it's money well spent. Especially in tense and conflicted times like the present, hearing such great music strengthens one's soul. For us it is a privilege and a blessing to open our home to the Noga Trio and musicians on their high level, and share their artistry with guests.

We're fortunate to have a roomy home and to own a decent piano (a wedding gift from my wife's parents), what better use could we make of our privilege than to share it with music lovers?

The YouTube Algorithm Knows What Interests Me

 Among the clips that the algorithm recommends to me is a series hosted by two Taiwanese-Australian violinists, Brett Yang and Eddie Chen called "Twoset Violin." They're a bit too goofy for my taste, but they're both knowledgeable musicians and frequently showcase musical prodigies. They appreciate but don't try to explain the almost supernatural abilities of extremely young musicians. 

Music isn't the only field in which young people display astonishing skill and intuitive understanding at an age when one wouldn't think they had had time to acquire it. Mathematics, chess, and Talmud come to mind, as do a number of questions. What's the difference between a bright child and a prodigy? Do the rest of us, the non-prodigies, ever catch up to the prodigies? Interestingly, Yang and Chen trace the development of the musical prodigies they have discovered and show clips of them at various ages, as they turn into mature musicians. Sometimes, I'm sure, they also drop music and go on to another field to excel in.

There must be plenty of psychological studies of the phenomenon, and I plan to check on it.

Along with Twoset Violin, the algorithm often shows me clips about improving one's saxophone playing and about practicing music in general. At my stage in life, I don't expect to improve very much as a musician. I mainly play saxophone and flute to maintain my decent but hardly impressive level, so I can continue enjoying myself as an active amateur.

One exercise I've been working on is deceptively simple in concept but, at least for me, has turned out to be challenging enough to be interesting. The idea is to pick a major scale and move up in it, playing the triad on each step of the scale, then moving down and doing the same thing. The tricky part is the way you group the notes. If you simply play triplets, you get something straightforward like this:

CEG| DFA| EGB| FAC| GBD etc. Then, backward: GEC| FDB| ECA| etc. 

But if you play the notes in groups of four you get:

CEGD| FAEG| BDFA|CGBD etc. Backward: GECF| DAEG| BDBG| CAFB etc.

This gets trickier when you go up and down scales with a lot of flats or sharps.

The idea is to hear the qualities of the chords, major, minor, and diminished on every step of a scale. Also, obviously, as another sax video reminded me, you have to maintain a satisfying sound as you play through this exercise.

I've been doing it for a while, patiently, and I'm gaining fluency at it. Am I maintaining my level or improving?

What Blind Virtuosos can Teach Us

 I strongly recommend the documentary available on Youtube, a two-part interview with the English jazz pianist, George Shearing. He comes across as both a musical genius and a kind, essentially modest person. An equally fascinating documentary was made about Art Tatum, a phenomenal blind pianist of even greater importance. Another great blind jazz musician was Roland Kirk - I haven't seen this documentary yet. There have also been blind classical composers and performers. I looked it up on the Web. However, I don't think any of them was as influential in their field as Shearing, Tatum, and Kirk.

 A number of great jazz musicians purportedly didn't know how to read music like the monster guitarist Wes Montgomery and the pianist and composer Erroll Garner. In Western classical music, I doubt if there were any sighted composers or performers who couldn't read music, whereas in Indian classical music, no one plays from written notes, as far as I know.

The development of musical notation was of huge importance in the history of Western classical music. It's hard to imagine how any of the composers from the sixteenth or seventeenth century on could have composed their works without setting pen to paper. Notation can be a trap, but not for great musicians. Some composers like Bach, Mozart, Beethoven, and Chopin, were also famous as improvisers. Bartok apparently worked on his piano pieces by ear until he was ready to write them down.

The musicality of a musician who plays without written notes is different from that of musicians who mainly play from written notes. I wonder whether musicians like myself, who are enslaved to written scores, could have been trained to be the first kind of musicians, who learn music by ear and play it by ear, if our teachers were interested in teaching us that skill (and possessed it). I suspect that it's not a matter of training but one of personality and talent. If I, for one, had been more independently musical as a child, I would have developed in the way I now wish I had developed. I can't blame it on my teachers.

Authentic Instruments?

I just heard a splendid live performance of Mozart's Serenade for Winds. All the musicians, including the two who were playing the basset horn parts, were playing modern symphonic instruments, not the instruments Mozart wrote for in the late eighteenth century. 

I'm not complaining. It sounded wonderful. However, if the argument for playing baroque music on baroque instruments is strong, why isn't a similar argument, equally strong, made for playing Mozart, Haydn, and Beethoven, among others, on the instruments of their times (which were not essentially different from the instruments of the mid-eighteenth century)?

A few years ago at a music festival in Warsaw I heard a symphony orchestra that used old-style instruments and arranged the musicians the way they used to be arranged in the nineteenth century, and I was impressed. Obviously if a symphony orchestra today is playing a program with music from the eighteenth through the twenty-first century, it has to use modern instruments (most of which haven't changed all that much since the Industrial Revolution), and, within limits, it can't keep rearranging the players. So we hear what the conductor has in mind and places on the stage.

Incidentally, the Mozart Serenade calls for two basset horns, which are similar in range to modern alto clarinets. Authentic basset horns aren't exactly common, so I assume the two musicians who were playing in the Serenade last night were playing alto clarinets. If a clarinettist wants to own a range of professional level instruments - a B flat and A clarinet, an alto clarinet, and a bass clarinet - he or she has to invest a considerable amount of money, which, in general, professional musicians don't have.

Jam and Jobim

Yesterday evening, Amos Shaked, an accomplished pianist who took up trombone and plays it in the big band where I play baritone saxophone - together we inhabit the lower realms of the songs we play - gave himself a sixtieth birthday party by inviting a bunch of musicians to a jam session at his house. 

Amos worked in hi tech for years,  but when the startup he was working for folded, he decided to take early retirement and started playing in a number of ensembles. I attended his party along with my close friend and fellow musician, Bob Trachtenberg, who after retiring from a career as a lawyer, has also given himself over almost completely to music. He and Amos drive (separately) all over the country to play with groups. I don't have the energy or enthusiasm to follow their example.

A lot of us got to play. It was enjoyable and congenial. I brought my alto saxophone, though I haven't been playing it very much recently, because it's much smaller and lighter than my cumbersome baritone sax. I considered bringing my flute, but I didn't think it would be audible. I didn't know there was going to be a sound system with mics. I also thought of bringing my tenor sax, which I've been playing more recently, but it's in a heavy fiberglass case now, and I didn't feel like transferring it to a gig bag and carrying it to Bob's house. That's another example of a certain kind of laziness that hits me now and then.

I took solos on a number of the pieces. I don't think my solos are any good. But I do free my mind and play without thinking very much about what I'm playing, so that I often surprise myself in my solos. Two other guys in the big band also played solos, and both of them, in my opinion, think too much about what they're playing, and their solos aren't interesting. Sonny Rollins, to whom I by no means compare myself, said that when you practice you should think about what you're doing, but when you perform, you should just play. When I practice I try to listen to myself attentively. I think that helps when I'm called upon (or call upon myself) to solo.

For a very long time I loved listening to jazz, but I didn't understand what the musicians were doing. I didn't know about the chords underlying the melodies, the changes, and I didn't understand the structure of a jazz performance. When I was in high school, I had an am radio in the headboard of my bed, and when my parents thought I was sleeping, I used to listen to a jazz program hosted by Mort Fega on WEVD (standing for Eugene V. Debs, the socialist politician). I vividly remember when he played The Girl from Ipanema, with Stan Getz, three times in a row, because it was such a new sound. (Bossa Nova means "the new thing.")

Although it's probably his most popular song, The Girl from Ipanema isn't all that characteristic of Jobim, who was a brilliant and sophisticated composer. For many months now I've been trying to memorize his Chega de Saudade. It's frustrating, and I've only gotten, tentatively, to 3/4 of the piece. But I'm convinced the exercise is useful.

Before leaving for Amos's party, I had a conversation with Ruth Mason, Bob's wife, about getting old. I said that for me the worst part is the closing of the horizon. She asked me whether I'd heard about research claiming that having a positive attitude toward aging increases one's longevity. Taking part in a jam session when I'm nearly 82 years old is, I guess, a positive thing to do. Maybe in a month or two I'll be able to perform Chega de Saudade and improvise on it!