Make Emotions Great Again
Julkaistu 06.09.2024 klo 12:54
Make Emotions Great Again
by
Reviving the Art of Musical Storytelling
Storytelling must be as old as human speech. Stories evoke emotions that stay with us long after the telling of the tale itself. They create common history and a sense of community, giving members of that community a sense of belonging to a shared narrative. In fact, society itself is a tapestry of stories. On an individual level, our identity is composed of the stories we tell ourselves about ourselves. We ARE the stories we tell.
Thus, a great storyteller is an invaluable asset to any community, acting as a repository of memories, major events, hard-earned lessons, myths, and the common values they engender. The good ones instinctively know how to tell a story, and the best storytellers combine their instincts with a deep understanding of the mechanics of building a narrative. “But what does this have to do with Classical Music,” you might ask. The answer is everything.
“This is Water”
In 2005, the great American novelist, essayist, and meta-modern philosopher, David Foster Wallace, gave the commencement speech at Kenyon College. In it, he began with a little parable.
There are these two young fish swimming along and they happen to meet an older fish swimming the other way, who nods at them and says “Morning, boys. How’s the water?” And the two young fish swim on for a bit, and then eventually one of them looks over at the other and goes “What the hell is water?”
… The point of the fish story is merely that the most obvious, important realities are often the ones that are hardest to see and talk about. Stated as an English sentence, of course, this is just a banal platitude, but the fact is that in the day-to-day trenches of adult existence, banal platitudes can have a life-or-death importance…
Though I am no DFW, I would like to humbly put forward my own banal platitude about Classical Music. Here it goes. Classical Music is storytelling with sounds instead of words. Hardly a revelation. So why bring it up? The reason is that we’ve more or less forgotten how to tell those stories inherent in the music, particularly of repertoire written before the Modernist Revolution of the 1920s.
Let’s try a little thought experiment. Imagine that you are at the theater. A local company is putting on a production of a play by Shakespeare or perhaps Minna Canth. The director of the show has announced that the production will perform the play “exactly as it is written.” Wonderful! But also, why wouldn’t they? The director’s reasoning is that the text contains everything necessary to understand the play and its meaning. Therefore, the actors have been instructed to not impose their own feelings onto the great work of genius, but rather only recite it accurately, without excessive inflections, thereby presenting a performance unadulterated by personal emotions. Of course, the script does indeed contain all the words, punctuation, and even the occasional stage direction as written by the playwright. Also, the text itself has been written with a profound understanding of grammar and syntax as well as a mastery of storytelling. Everything we need should be present. So, what could go wrong?
Well, we can all imagine what a nightmarishly dull performance it would be. Can we even call it a performance if there are no emotions, vocal inflections, the essential embodying of the actions and intentions of the characters, or the interactions on stage between characters and the events that they cause and experience? Clearly not. In fact, no one in their right mind would put on a performance in such a way, because we all know that a great play still requires the actors and the director to infuse the text with meaning and life. All involved would need to have mastered rhetoric, declamation, acting skills, etc. Only by interpreting the work can they then take us on an emotional journey with them. Only then does the play become relevant and immediate. Why should it be any different for a piece of classical music?
The fact remains that we in the Classical Music world have adopted a philosophy of performance that seeks perfection by repressing the imperfections that make us human. Performances still have energy and power, but these are too often mere surrogates for genuine emotions. It seems almost absurd to say it in plain language, but we classical musicians were trained to ignore our instincts, emotions, and individuality. It doesn’t help that the dominance of this ideology is so ubiquitous as to be hardly acknowledged. At the core of the Modernist argument was and is a wholesale rejection of the very idea that music could tell a story. As Igor Stravinsky wrote in 1924, “in general, I consider that music is only able to solve musical problems; and nothing else, neither the literary nor the picturesque, can be in music of any real interest.” When compared to the old Romantic ways of individual expression, sentimentality, and the delights of ambiguity, it is difficult for this author to understand beyond an intellectual level why we collectively jettisoned all of that in favor of the cerebral, objective perfectionism and the unassailable mathematical logic of the written text.
Speaking about his Octet, Stravinsky wrote “My Octuor is not an ‘emotive’ work, but a musical composition based on objective elements which are sufficient in themselves. […] These … elements, which are the object for the musical execution, can only have a meaning if the executant follows strictly the musical text.” He is clearly laying out the argument in favor of performers not imposing their own interpretations on his music. That’s all well and good as his piece was conceived in this manner. The problems emerged when this philosophy was applied ex post facto to music written with completely different aesthetic ideals and goals.
As the 20th Century progressed, this impersonal Modernist ideology gradually erased, not of our favorite pieces themselves, but rather the storytelling traditions that made those older pieces ‘speak’. The tools and techniques of musical storytelling were slowly forbidden in conservatories and in concert halls, eventually reaching the status of taboo. By the end of World War II, most of the master storytellers had died and the next generations forgot or willfully ignored this vast and profound ocean of sacred knowledge. For this writer, it is high time we reclaim our musical storytelling heritage. So where to begin?
The 19th Century New German School as the key to Storytelling in Music
“The most important things in music are not on the page.”
– Gustav Mahler
The New German School was ironically neither new, nor German. It was, however, a revolutionary synthesis of disparate styles and ideas from across 19th Century Europe that when combined became greater than the sum of their parts. I like to call it “The Romantic Musicians’ Playbook”, a treasure trove of techniques & strategies that reveal the essence of a work, and which allow performers to effectively convey those emotions, feelings, story-beats, and dramatic scenes to audiences.
Richard Wagner was the first to grasp the potential of combining pianistic freedoms, Italian Bel Canto style as applied to instrumental playing, and his own genius for theatrical and dramatic storytelling. He was like the Stanislavsky of musicians, creating an organic, naturalistic way of communicating that transcended the notes and connected with audiences on a deeper, more intuitive, and emotional level. According to him, it was Ludwig van Beethoven, patient zero of the Romantic movement, that broke with the classical traditions to develop a compositional and performing style that spoke directly to the hearts of his listeners. Contemporary ear-witnesses said that Beethoven’s playing was so volcanic and violent at times as to push the physical limits of his light Viennese fortepianos. Yet in the next moment, he could suddenly evoke the tenderest of caresses and the sweetness of a cherub. Detractors said it was vulgar and coarse, but the audiences felt otherwise. At his funeral, it was reported that between 10,000 and 30,000 people paid their respects. It’s a stunning fact considering that aside from the many private salon concerts for the aristocracy and the performances of his only opera Fidelio, he only played and conducted for the general public 3-4 times in his entire life. Clearly, the people understood him and he them.
Of the musicians of the next generation, it was the young Franz Liszt who came to embody the stylistic ideals of the Master. Liszt’s own cosmopolitan style developed from his Viennese education (with Carl Czerny no less, one of Beethoven’s greatest students), as well as having spent his formative years living, breathing, and playing in Parisian salons. His style was also a reflection of his radiant spirit, dynamic temperament, and mercurial personality as well as his titanic technique and explosive power (he was known to have three pianos ready for every recital as he would often destroy them as the evening progressed).
Thus, it comes as no surprise that when Richard Wagner first heard the world-famous Liszt perform, he was overwhelmed by the keyboard virtuoso’s incredible expressivity, power, and sensitivity. Liszt (only two years Wagner’s senior) was already a rock-star with a cult following. His concerts were THE cultural event of whichever town he visited, his arrival and departure often accompanied by the local military band. All manner of dignitaries would vie for his attention and his concerts often became raucous affairs. No doubt his power over audiences came from his magnetism, but his way capturing his audiences was with his mind-bending mastery of time (not only of tempo but the experience of time itself). He famously had a hyper-developed sense of tension & release, which caused many a lady to swoon during his performances. His mastery allowed him to play with a level of rhythmic freedom and elasticity of tempo (known as tempo rubato or ‘stolen time’) unknown to his peers, save for Fredric Chopin, a fellow Parisian salon heartthrob. Having heard the possibilities Liszt displayed at the keyboard, Wagner keenly adopted them for his own purposes. He later coined the term Tempomodifikationen or ‘Tempo modifications’.
While these freedoms were usually the domain of keyboard virtuosi like Liszt, it was Wagner that first understood the potential of applying these tools and techniques to orchestral performances. He saw the power of tempo as the most direct way of moving audiences. Most importantly, it gave musicians the freedom to adjust the speed of the music to accommodate the emotion that needed expression. Sometimes a lyrical theme would need more time and a slower tempo in order for the lyricism and tenderness to speak. Other times, the passion and euphoria would require that the musicians accelerate and overwhelm the audience with waves of sound. At other moments, the music would need time to release the tension or to evoke a dark and mysterious atmosphere. There could be glorious, monumental climaxes or heavy and serious moments that demand an almost complete stop in the musical flow.
All tempo modifications also depend on performers grasping what Wagner called the Melos. Musicologist, Christopher Fifield, defined Wagnerian melos as “a singing style which shaped melodic phrases with rubato, tonal variation, and shifting accent, and the right comprehension of the melos is the sole guide to the right tempo: these two things are inseparable: the one implies and qualifies the other.” Wagner got this idea from hearing the Orchestre de la Société des Concerts du Conservatoire in 1830s Paris. The orchestra was created by François Antoine Habeneck with the specific intention of discovering the inner secrets of Beethoven’s symphonies, which were then still considered difficult to comprehend. As the musicians came from opera orchestras as well as professors from the Conservatoire, they naturally played in a French Bel Canto style. Wagner’s revelation came when he heard the French musicians “sing” the melodies of Beethoven, which he later called the cantilena.
Above all was Wagner’s background in theater that tied all of his musical ideas together. As a child, his stepfather, the actor and playwright, Ludwig Geyer, immersed young Richard in the world of theater. The boy was so passionate about theater that his first ambition was to become a playwright. By age 13, he even wrote a drama in the style of Goethe and Shakespeare, which he wanted to set to music. Having no real musical skills, he asked his parents for music lessons.
Later in his career, it was his instinct for drama, declamation, and acting that influenced not just his music-dramas, but also his ideas about interpretation and performance. It was this theatrical heritage that equipped Wagner with the tools and techniques for storytelling. Paradoxically, by lacking a rigorous formal musical education, he was free from the conventional boundaries of musical performance.
Live Music as the Antidote to Dopamine Desert
In 2024, society has become dominated by technologies like smartphones which make the internet ubiquitous and unplugging a near impossibility. The illusion of connection via social media has finally revealed itself as a tool for tech giants to monopolize our attention and money by capturing us in a toxic dopamine feedback loop. Our technology has seduced and tricked us into giving the one thing we will never get back, time.
Then there is the quiet pandemic of loneliness; people forming fewer friendships, many unable to find partners or having trouble maintaining lasting relationships. Let’s not get started on the hellscape that is modern dating. With every swipe, with every reel or TikTok video, we wander collectively further and further into a dopamine desert. All the superficial possibilities and mini highs on offer are mere mirages, yet we willingly drink the sand. The obvious solution to this dopamine death-loop is to disconnect from our devices and connect to ourselves and to one another. But we all know how hard it is to actually go through with it.
That is where we, as artists and musicians, can offer some solace. It’s become clear over the last few years that live classical music concerts are one of the best antidotes to the toxic feedback loop of the dopamine desert. Classical concerts allow us to unplug from our tech in a way few other activities can. They let us sit with ourselves but with others in a safe space. We can close our eyes or stare off into space without looking like a psychopath. And when performances can draw you in emotionally and dramatically, we can finally feel connected to ourselves, others, and sometimes even to the universe or God or the Force.
Ultimately, we connect to one another through shared experiences and emotions. Our stories create that space within us in which we can empathize, sympathize, celebrate, mourn, or reflect. Our music should tell those kinds of stories. And the way to tell them is by reviving the old Romantic traditions and making them our own.
Eugene Tzigane
Chief Conductor and Artistic Director, Kuopio Symphony Orchestra
