Musing on ‘The Industry’

If you read this blog, I’d call it a fair bet that you’re either a guitarist, or someone who digs the music, or both. In either event, if you’ve managed to find my little corner of the matrix, it’s fair to say you’re pretty well plugged in to the internet’s classical guitar scene – I expect in that case that you’re already familiar with Bret Williams’ podcast. In any event, on the off-chance you’re not, and because I’m going to be talking about stuff Bret covered recently in an interview with music management visionary Alvaro Mendizabal, here’s a link to the podcast homepage. I strongly suggest you check it out if you haven’t already.

http://www.bretwilliamsmusic.com/ClassicalGuitarInsider/

In the show, Alvaro and Bret talk a lot about the elephant that sits in the corner of most of our practice rooms – the economics of it all. Or rather, the significant lack of a market that’s large enough to support the size of our sector (that’s us, folks – unsexy a way to put it as it may be, as far as putting food on the table goes, we’re a niche group of producers within a niche sector of the entertainment industry). Alvaro has a lot of interesting ideas (as does Bret, actually) about how the guitar needs to work harder to really join the mainstream classical music tradition, and get out of the eclectic corner it has been painted into inadvertently by virtue of its greatest successes in the 20th Century. As the global population of our kind of musician has grown in the past two generations, the severely limiting nature of a career path that expects one to follow in Segovia’s footsteps or nothing has become a lot more obvious than it used to be. A lot of us would-be’s, I’ve often though, need to go from being classical guitarists who are musicians to being classical musicians who play the guitar. Without quite putting it like that, I was gratified to find that a leading mover and shaker in the business seems to think so too. And, what’s more, with the artists he works with and performers he supports, he’s doing a good bit to help make that happen! To the extent that repetition and dissemination have an effect in shaping the way people think about things, I thought it’d be worth my time to note the issues Alvaro and Bret talked about that resonated most with me.

Getting past exclusive soloism is a step in the evolutionary process for which the guitar is long overdue. And I don’t just mean we all need to add the Concierto de Aranjuez to our repertoire (though that would be a wonderful exercise in technical development, musicianship et al for most). If the guitar is indeed a versatile classical instrument that’s well-suited to a number of settings and configurations, and music from a number of periods, well – more of us need to play more of it, just like today’s ‘innovators’. Bret Williams does that, actually – he’s got an ensemble, whose membership and very composition just changed. Power to him; I hope his group gets that first record out soon.

There’s nothing wrong with the classical guitar repertoire, as Alvaro put it. The ‘old war-horses’ that most of us grow up longing to conquer will always have the power to move people. Recuerdos de la Alhambra will sound precisely as ethereal tomorrow as it did yesterday. Also, Sevilla or La Catedral will always prove a fair yardstick of one’s attainment of virtuosic ability. We don’t all need to write original music to be marketable – no other soloists do, after all. What would help, though, is not limiting the solo repertoire to what made sense, once upon a time, within a heavily Spanish- and Latin-influenced musical aesthetic. Fact – you don’t need to learn Asturias before you take on some Beethoven, and you’d still be just as much of a classical guitarist if you never played anything by Albeniz (and as we all know, he wrote for the piano, anyway). Some guitarists – John Williams being the highest-flying example that comes to mind – have looked to other places for dressed up, entirely concert-viable music. They didn’t do anything new by doing that, folks. They just opened up to more of the corpus of music that’s out there, everywhere. Perchance we could have some more of that Schubert fella?

Showmanship is another aspect of performance Alvaro and Bret talked about that I’ll confess I think about quite a bit, but am also a little defensive about, because I can’t quite come up with how a solo guitarist can be visually engaging for an audience. Recent research has shown the visual component to be a major factor in the overall success of a performance from the listener’s perspective, and of course a number of us know this to be true from personal experience (being on stage, as well as in the audience). Let’s face it – we’re not the most graceful spectacle in the world, nor the most engaging, through no fault of our form. There’s just not very much to see, and yet most of us are presented as the well-lit, mostly stationary, only thing on an empty stage when we play. I grant that the formality of classical music presentation demands this to an extent, and of course one mustn’t underestimate a cultured audience’s ability to feast to satiation even on such spartan fare. But for most people who like our music when they stumble upon it, but don’t seek us out (which is most people who listen to other classical music), performance requires more presentation.

So what do you do, unless you can actually play Chopin and Takemitsu one handed whilst standing on your head? In my humble o., you take a step back, and reassess what it is you’re selling. “Classical music, Yogi, you twit!” – one might well say. Yes, true. But what is classical music? It is something cooked to perfection, plated, and placed on a shelf for you to consume amidst your peers, much like a buffet at a ‘gourmet’ pizza joint? On CDs it is, maybe. In concert, it should not, and cannot sustainably be. I say classical music performance is about supplying a listener with an evocative experience, in which sound is the primary operant stimulus, but not the only one. It takes more than just good playing to move an audience. Setting and context count for more than most of us recognize. I actually want to take a leaf from the playbook of another industry that deals with fantastic things that take a long time to prepare, some time to present, and once consumed, are gone. I’m talking about food, of course. For example, there’s a new place in Shanghai called Ultraviolet, where the finest fare is presented in a manner that is appropriate to the qualities of the food, the quick n’ dirty expectations of our overly convenient and godless times notwithstanding.

I wouldn’t normally do this, but I think seeing the clip will get you up to speed on what I’m on about a lot better than my telling you about it, so here:

Now, I don’t know about gilded walls, antique furniture, flowers, and a glass of something nice with each ticket, but couldn’t we purveyors of spells for the heart and the soul do just a little more than diddly to take our listeners out of what amounts to cattle class, and put them in a setting where they’re better disposed to consume what we all agree is sublime? It’s a point that people involved with music make over and over again these days – more people would like classical music a whole lot more, if it were introduced to them properly. (Since I seem to be in a link-sharing mood today, I’ll also suggest you check out Benjamin Zander’s talk on the subject – search for it on youtube) With that said, wouldn’t it make sense for the industry (read: us) to take a few more of the steps of the interactive/consumptive process out of the consumers’ hands and, knowing a little about flash, bang, and romance, make a bit of an effort to set conditions that are favorable for more grace in their lives and more turkey on our tables? Could it be that the mass-production of concertized music has had its time in the sun, and must now be set aside as a sales model in favor of richer musical experiences for smaller groups of people, allowing more musicians to do more work better? As a side consideration, would doing so, in any way, effect a return to the performance philosophies of the likes of Tarrega and Segovia, for entirely modern, entirely hard-nosed, and yet artistically speaking, entirely valid reasons? Art is, of course, what we do – but it would be nice to get better at entertainment, and all the aspects of showmanship that the word entails – for that’s the only way enough of us will ever get to share our music with everyone else.

Baching mad

New Bach in the morning, other new Bach in the evening. A fair bit of old Bach at a lot of times betwixt. And, as it turns out, all of it in the same key! Bach, Bach, Bach, I think I’m beginning to see, hear, think, and even feel through a haze of the clever old gnome’s powdered wig. And it’s not like I’m not working on other material either (including a full program with barely 3 minutes of Bach in it). If there were a physiological term for the brain mush I’m experiencing just now, I think it’d be called D Major Contrapuntalitis.

So remember when I said I’d be looking to see if my schedule allowed time for me to add a Bach suite to my repertoire? Learn from my follies, lads and ladies. That stuff that the old men said about not coveting stuff, nor wanting too much – there’s a point to it. I got my practice routine in order, and chugging along predictably, and what did I do, instead of focusing on concert dates? Picked up new pieces, of course! I’m hear today to note, mostly for my own future benefit, the very good reason not to prepare a concert program while learning some duets while planning for a competition while learning a Bach suite while learning his Chaconne. It makes things gummy and somewhat stupefied up top, yo. Galling, much, when you can’t for the hairs on your chinny chin chin remember where your fingers go for pieces you must’ve practiced a few thousand times over the past year.

Note to self – what was true when I was 12 is still true today. Don’t go grasping at more repertoire than you can reasonably assimilate, especially while you’ve got a concert program on the boil. Learn less (comparatively), and play better. One mountain at a time.

Happy birthday, Francisco!

If the guitar had a patron saint or two, Francisco Tarrega would surely be one of them (Antonio Torres the other, perhaps?). More of us would remember him a lot better for a lot more than we do now, and that’s saying something, considering that a number of his compositions are widely posited in various classical guitar repertoire top 10 lists. But since it’s the great man’s 164th birth anniversary today, and I’m a little too far away from Barcelona to lay something nice on his grave, here’s writing a bit about him instead.

Francisco Tarrega was born this day in 1852 in Villarreal, Spain. His father played flamenco, and was supportive of Francisco’s early endeavors in music. A true prodigy by today’s standards, he was playing in coffee houses by the age of 10. Yet, in spite of reasonable support at home, he felt artistically stifled. He ran away from home three times before the age of 18, each time in search of greater engagement with the world through his music. One of those times the juvenile Tarrega joined a band of gypsies, with whom he played flamenco until he was discovered and taken home, presumably against his will. Another of those times he fell in to a ditch, as a consequence of which he lost his eyesight for a number of years thereafter. A bit of a wild child, perhaps? And talk about having an itch to perform!

By age 20, he was a conservatory wunderkind, a seasoned performer, and perhaps the best thing to happen to Antonio Torres’ career in lutherie. Having been an astute student of both the guitar and ‘formal music’ (read: the piano) for much of his life, our hero now fed his burgeoning skills and unprecedentedly capable instrument (the newly evolved classical guitar, broadly as we know it today) on a steady diet of his own adaptations of major composers’ works, including some of the better-known compositions by Bach, Beethoven, Chopin, Vivaldi, and more. Many of his arrangements of these romantic era and even earlier works remain a guitarist’s first choice for musicality, when looking for arrangements of pieces by the afore-mentioned great composers.

By age 30, Tarrega had seen enough of life to start penning some great music of his own. He had also grown into the prodigious whiskers and mop (and baggy suit) you can see in a few sepia photographs on Google Images. Though he would doubtless have had a stellar career on his merits alone, we must be grateful for the fact that he knew the value of networking and seeking out patronage, because he wrote a lot of his most famous works with the support and patronage of Conxa Martinez, a wealthy widow who appreciated his compositions and his playing. It was her support that gave him a retreat where he could sit and write in Barcelona, and her support once again that took him to Granada – for a retreat that is now fateful for his having written Recuerdos de la Alhambra, perhaps his most famous and celebrated work.

Throughout adulthood, he performed widely, preferring smaller, intimate settings to traditional concert halls. Many have wondered about this, and speculated that his preference for small venues and audiences was a consequence of childhood traumas, or a preoccupation with his instrument’s volume…personally, I think it’s because he understood that the magic of the guitar requires an intimate setting to really work.

When middle age came on, the consummate performer and profound composer – and by this time, the undisputed grandfather of the classical guitar – mellowed gracefully. Beyond giving back through performance and composition, he also paid it forward by teaching many of the next generation of maestros.

Well, that’s his story, albeit very briefly. For sharing’s sake, and because the people-emotions-compositions-music-emotions-people chain, that links us who play today to the likes of him, is both impossibly impersonalized by intervening time and space on the one hand, and extremely personal on the other, I’ll tell you about the time his story first crossed mine: he came into my life, sans preamble, with Recuerdos de la Alhambra. I was 14 at the time, and had been playing for about 6 years. I had never heard tremolo on the guitar before, but followed the score my teacher gave me. Paradise is most truly appreciated by a child let loose within it, without being told where he is – and so it was for me with Recuerdos. I don’t suppose I’m anywhere near being alone in counting Francisco Tarrega amongst my greatest inspirations in music, and when I did first hear a recording of the piece some years later (John Williams’ masterful rendition), it was like discovering it for the first time all over again. It’s still one of my favorites.

Mil gracias, Mr Tarrega – and here’s to you on your birthday. The world continues to be blessed for your having passed through it.

Image source: http://gitaraplus.ru/wp-content/uploads/2012/07/Francisco_Tarrega_4.jpg

Turns out we’re pretty rare…

I was talking to a pianist the other day, who observed in passing that classical guitarists are a very rare breed. This was during one of those typical conversations guitarists seem to have repeatedly with non-guitarists, about how niche our art is, how uncommon we are, etc etc. Being one myself, and consequently aware of every single guitarist of reasonable proficiency in a 100 mile radius, I couldn’t agree personally with her remark – but seeing as the lady who said this has been a concert pianist and teacher for over 40 years, her relative unfamiliarity with my branch of the classical music tree got me thinking about what we do, and how we do it. As much as it’s very easy to contend that the greater classical tradition owes the guitar at least an awareness of its existence, the unsatisfactory truth about the economics of classical guitar music is that while there aren’t that many of us the world over, we as a tradition that isn’t unlike a guild have thought ourselves into a blinkered race for too few listeners, to the exclusion of many more, and to our own detriment. I ran into another instance of this not long after, when I took a friend who grew up in the diplomatic life and has spent much of her school years in Europe to her very first guitar concert. I took her along on an impulse, really – mostly to exemplify my kind of music, seeing as I didn’t have my own instrument handy at the time! I had run into her at a cafe prior to going to the recital, and when I told her about it, she thought I was going to a rock show…naturally, I had to fix that. 

All of this leads me to say that we, as a species of musical being, are doing something wrong here, folks. Or perhaps, not doing something important to an extent that is significant. When my experience of the classical guitar tradition comes with an awareness of strong guitar scenes in various parts of the world, and yet concert pianists haven’t met too many of us, and ambassadors’ children couldn’t tell us from mariachis, I think it’s safe to say that the initiative is sitting squarely in our collective lap. What would it take for us to play to people who don’t know our music exists? Different strategies? Formats of presentation? Deviation from the path that Segovia blazed – that of the soloist, arguably most famous for turn-of-the-century Spanish nationalistic music? If indeed the guitar as we know it today is a powerful and versatile classical instrument that has lately come of age, it’s time we actually played the hand we seem to think we’re holding, and made space for ourselves in the greater classical context. And while I will own grudgingly that guitar music is not for everyone, just as classical music in general is not for everyone, choosing not to listen should always be a decision borne of awareness, not some jumble of ignorance and incredulity. It’s tough going if people don’t like our music, sure. But it’s squarely on us if people don’t even know we’re out there, and it’s time we as a tradition and perhaps a subculture did something(s) to change that.

Yeah, yeah, money where my mouth is. I’ll try and do my part. I hope you’ll join me and step out of your conservatory, concert hall, or bedroom and do yours.

Wistfulness and sentimentalism

Do you ever wonder about what the future has in store for your guitar? After you, I mean – and this is assuming a) you play, and b) your guitar is of a quality that won’t turn to either sawdust or matches in your lifetime.

Many of the greatest violins of today lived through Napoleon, Victoria, Oscar Wilde, the industrial revolution, triple decker wooden ships, and world wars. They sat by patiently from time to time, when we humans were too busy killing each other to play and listen, then poured out their song into space when again we turned to them. Over and over again, they felt our agony and ecstasy, and sang about it, but couldn’t tell a soul after, though without doubt they grew with the experience. They must surely shake their solid wooden heads at all our recording technology that strives so hard to imitate their magic, only to pale in comparison every time they make a sound. 

But most guitars are young instruments, even if the idea behind them is ancient. Circa Archduke Franz Ferdinand at best, really, when you cut it down to instruments that are fully capable in the sense we look for today. And for the most part, it was much more recently than that if you’re talking about guitars are are well constructed and sound good. For all our 20th/21st Century engineering prowess, it took a long time for us to get all our ducks in a row (tone, volume, size, strength…) and build a good resonating chamber, and that doesn’t even take into account new materials like Nomex and carbon fiber and their ilk. The ancient idea took hundreds, if not thousands of years, to mature fully. And today we have beautiful young instruments that fulfill an ancient aspiration in sound, able at last to really bring out what Vivaldi wrote and Beethoven found so pleasing when he was young and could hear things, right when civilization has come (I won’t call it evolved or fallen – I don’t mean either) to the point where our crusades are stateless, Coca Cola has conquered the globe, Mozart plays tinnily on a mobile phone in rural India for a young man who doesn’t know he lived, and chivalry is quaint – or already politically incorrect! The saving grace, of course, is that people still – and, if human nature can be trusted to, will always – know the real thing when they see or hear it. It doesn’t matter that the day will come when TVs fold up like handkerchiefs and your knickers can be programmed to do naughty things to you when no one’s looking. These last applications of old school engineering – braced and glued and tensioned and resonant – will live on and play on. In a way that has a lot to do with us, and little to with them, I wonder, just as I do about their older bowed cousins, what they’ll have seen between our times and then.

Into the pit lane again

*That* moment, when you look at your strings musingly, wondering if there’s enough copper showing through that you’ve got to change them, and find that two out of three basses look like the tires on an F1 car at the end of a race. And your B is fraying where it occasionally rubs up against the 19th fret. Sigh. And of course those moments only happen at night, too. Well, goodbye strings. Thanks for a good seven weeks. Hello string-changing party!

Is there a go-to obvious awesome artistic thing to do with used strings? If you’re reading this, and can think of something better than a braided string bracelet, would cha let me know?

Turn the lights out

Do you ever practice in the dark? You should give it a go sometime, if you haven’t yet. It focuses your ear on the sounds you’re making to an extent you wouldn’t expect. And, more importantly if you’re feeling self-indulgent, like I am, it lets you enjoy the music so much more.

It was too late tonight for me to really get anything else done, but I did want to play a little more. So I took the one piece I could never do without, turned out the lights, and worked on that legato. Recuerdos de la Alhambra in the dark. Slowly, at first, listening to everything that tremolo has to tell, then fast even though I had planned not to – because hey, how could I not?

Like anything intimately sublime – great food, lovely wine, a kiss – it lingers on in thought and consciousness long after it’s done. Tired, practiced out, and content as I am, I’m primed for more, my energies are refreshed, and I can’t wait to get up and practice tomorrow!

I should do this more often.

Did I really think I would manage to keep to the practice schedule I outlined here some weeks ago? Somewhere in my wildest dreams, perhaps. Life, of course, has been having its way with the schedule, and with me. But with a little pulling and pushing on the will power and discipline front, I seem to have arrived at a routine that is both sustainable and satisfactory. A few weeks in now, I find I am in fact able to stick to it to the point of maintaining a high level of concert-readiness, while actually being able to afford the time I want to be able to put in to duet work, marketing myself, and all the day-to-day non-musical things I get up to. Central to my current approach is an attempt to toe the line of ‘a little less practice is better practice, as long as it is focused practice’.

I still do spend a couple of hours on drills, but a) that’s two less than I used to, and b) given lots more concentration than before, without the news or podcasts or other stuff on in the background, it’s plenty. I find that there’s a point to channeling the old maestro whilst practicing my Segovia scales – going slow, and looking on ponderously as my left hand runs through its daily maze. It’s a fretboard education like no other, even for someone who knows his notes, and has been at them for years. Then every piece in the program gets 20 minutes of ‘clinic’ time. Repetitions – first time slow, if need be, then at tempo. Finally, I go through the good ol’ program 3 times – first real slow (half tempo, maybe), then a little less lugubriously, and finally at tempo, with expression, all the bells and whistles included. In case you’re curious, here’s what it looks like:

Romanza de Amor
Traumerei
Dedicatoria
Capricho Arabe
Lagrima
Preudio ‘Saudade’ from La Catedral
–Intermission–
Kamala’s Song (my arrangement of an Indian classical number, shared here some time ago)
Chopin’s Prelude #7 (Op. 20)
Prelude from BWV 1007
Chopin’s ‘Raindrop’ Prelude
Villa-Lobos’ Prelude #4
Tarrega’s arrangement of the Bach/Gounod Ave Maria
Encore: Recuerdos de la Alhambra

As you’d imagine, this leaves me time and energy to do other stuff – which is a good thing, considering I’ve got La Catedral’s third movement in ‘dry dock’, and spend about 45 minutes of playing time on it, and another 30-45 minutes on the flute+guitar duet pieces I’m working on.

What I’ve been wondering about lately, though, is whether I could be just a bit more acquisitive, like I want to be. Do I have time to start soaking up Bach’s 1st cello suite just now? I already play the prelude (in my program), and one of the minuets. Which would cut down on learning time ever so much…and it would be oh so sweet to be able to stage the whole shebang a few months down the road. Ah so, and in any event – blessed am I, that how much Bach I may help myself to is my conscientious dilemma tonight!

Reviewed

Very kind words from a very kind person, Mr Banerjee, Secretary of the Delhi Music Society. Talking to him just before my lecture-recital raised a few things about the guitar that I wouldn’t otherwise have considered, and also brought home to me the value of a presentation that is instructive as well as aesthetic. Hope I get to present in this format again soon!