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.

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

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.