Yearly Archives: 2019

Repeat performance

I’m now at the point in my career where I’m regularly conducting pieces for the second, and I gotta say, it’s pretty great.

Don’t get me wrong—I love adding pieces to my repertoire, and I’d say at least 50% of what I program is new to me. But I’m understanding the wisdom of my teacher David Effron, who used to say that conducting a piece for the first time was “pure hell,” and that the first time was really the 0th time.

[It turns out Mr. Effron said a lot of things that, 10 years down the line, I’m finding to be true, for example, that the reason he loved conducting concerts so much was that that was the only time when nobody could bother him with a question or complaint.]

It’s not that you work less the second time you conduct a piece—much to the contrary. It’s that the work that you starts at a much deeper level. You’re able to focus on the rich inner life of the piece without having to master the technical details of who enters where and what’s a divisi and what’s not.

Plus, you’re not struggling with the ‘aural ideation’ the second time through, that process of imagining the sound of the music by reading the dots on the page. After you’ve conducted a piece once, its sound is lodged in your head in a way that it can never be just from listening to recordings or playing it in an orchestra.

Although that’s not quite true. Because as I come back to these pieces, I find so many new details that I’m shocked I missed on the first pass. So the real, complete sound of the score isn’t really in my head, but some baseline version is, onto which I can build.

And it’s not just the details—it’s the big picture too. It’s like going to a new location for the first time; it always takes longer than you expect, and you’re looking for the street signs and navigating the traffic flow. But when it’s a road you’ve trod many times, you know innately where you’re going, so you can enjoy the trip and spot the little surprises along the way.

All this makes me eager to do more pieces for the second time, but also to do more for the first time, so I can get to the second time sooner.

Hard to conduct

I was in Georgia recently conducting one of the all-state groups, and as there were about 20 hours of non-stop rehearsal, I decided to leaven the proceedings with a little Ask a Maestro Live.

Why did you become a musician? Because I hate money. What’s your favorite instrument? None, but if I had it all to do over again, I would play the bass. Who’s your favorite composer? Beethoven & Ravel & Schnittke & Sondheim.

What’s the hardest piece you’ve ever conducted? Ah, now there’s an intriguing question. The answer, of course, is The Rite of Spring, and I say that not having even conducted the whole thing. But a VERY hard piece to conduct is one that I did recently, Lili Boulanger’s Du fond de l’abîme:

I don’t post much video of myself conducting these days, but I wanted to get this online because I am in awe of this piece and in deep sympathy with its composer, and more than that, because nobody knows it or how dope it is to conduct – and they should.

So what makes a piece hard to conduct? Many things, but here are some:

  • Lots of tempo and meter changes, especially fast mixed-meter passages
  • An unusual or unique ‘architecture’ that makes it hard to keep the long-term plan in view and pace it just right
  • Complex orchestration (especially a large orchestra used subtly)
  • Complicated harmonic nuances that have to be shaded just right and prepared with tempo nuances
  • Intense musical expressivity that covers a wide range of emotions

Du fond de l’abîme (“Out of the Depths”, aka the De Profundis, aka Psalm 130) has all of these (except mixed meters), and what’s more, the individual writing for the instruments is very challenging (hardest orchestral bass part I’ve ever seen), and the same can be said of the choral writing and of the solo writing for the mezzo soprano, who has to sing with a tone like liquid mercury, both hovering over the intangible textures of the orchestra (+chorus) and at once delivering the most earthy, heart-wrenching phrases imaginable.

An additional challenge is that a lot of the piece is slow, and the slow parts are entrancing in their affect, so if you don’t calibrate the tempi just right, they’ll turn from hypnotic to soporific. Plus, there are extremely drawn out accelerandi, like going from quarter = 63 to quarter = 80 over the course of 50 bars.

Anyway, I don’t pretend that my, or the orchestra’s, or the chorus’s performance was perfect – far from it (which just makes me want to do it again!) There are corners I wish I had turned more gracefully, pacing I wish I had controlled better, and lines I wish I had internalized more thoroughly.

But whatever, sometimes you do a special project and it’s not perfect, but it leaves you with an irrepressible feeling, and you’ve got to get it out into the world. The next time someone asks me what’s the hardest piece to conduct, I’ll probably still say The Rite of Spring, but if they ask me what’s the most rewarding piece to conduct, I will absolutely say Du fond de l’abîme, and when they ask me who my favorite composer is, Lili Boulanger will be on the list.

Here is everything I know about rehearsing

If you are preparing a 10 minute piece and you have…

…5 minutes:
• Do the beginning and the ending, and any tempo changes in the middle.

…10 minutes:
• Play the whole thing once through

…20 minutes:
• Play the whole thing twice through

…30 minutes:
• Play it once through
• Go over any trouble spots
• Play it through again

…60 minutes:
• Play it through
• Go back and work on: rhythm/pulse, intonation, dynamics, balance, phrasing/color, basically in that order (although see below). Once one problem is solved – say, a tuning issue – immediately focus your attention on the next level (balance/color/phrasing).
• Play it again (twice if possible)

Other tips:
• Conductors: don’t let any section sit around too long without playing
• Attack whatever problems you hear. Don’t be cute, or overly methodical, just fix what needs fixing.
• Some problems will fix themselves; it takes experience to intuit which those are.
• Don’t stop too much; some problems will not fix themselves until people have time to practice individually.
• Try to balance stopping for detail work with playing through longer passages.
• Conductors: when you’re playing through a long passage, dog-ear the corners of your score when you hear issues arise so you’ll be able to locate them as soon as you stop.
• Take notes right after rehearsal; a lot of niggling details can be fixed by giving a list to the orchestra (dynamic changes, note errors, etc.)
• When it comes to intonation, don’t be afraid to fix things that sound out of tune, even if you don’t know exactly how to tackle them. If you don’t know if something is sharp or flat, just admit it.
• Or take a guess. If you guess wrong, you’ll quickly figure out that the other option was right.
• When it comes to tuning chords, here’s a tried-and-true method: have the people who play the root play their note mf. Then add the 5th of the chord playing mp. Then add the third playing p. Once you’ve got the sonority ringing true, people can go back to their regular dynamics.
• A well-said image, analogy, or story can inspire a whole new level of playing, but these have to be used sparingly.
• Stay positive, but don’t accept unacceptable results.

Recollected Dances

op. 41 for string orchestra
Durata 5′

This piece was written for the Georgia All-State 9th/10th grade string orchestra (who performs it in the video below.) I used a bit of an old film score, Mulligan, as the starting point, and built the rest of the piece around it.