Music in the Space Between Reflections on Living and Working on the Borders of Music
Michael Deason Barrow
‘Mind the gap!’ This is what you hear when you stand on a train or an underground platform
in London. This puts me in mind of a conversation I had many years ago (when I was
touring as a professional singer) with my piano accompanist. She asked me, ‘what was my
vision about what we were doing?’. I remember replying along the lines, ‘I am trying to
building bridges in the space between musical polarities (and their often mutually distrustful
camps), so that people can expand their musical practice and experience a greater sense of
wholeness.’ At its most obvious this means exploring the space between the seeming
polarities of visual vs. aural learning; Western Classical Music vs. World and Folk Musics;
the Classical canon vs. Early Music: on the one hand and Avant Garde contemporary
musics on the other; or between improvising vs. playing from fully notated compositions,
etc. On this basis I have ever since been offering workshops on ‘music in the space
between – renewing music as a community art’.
My accompanist’s reply somewhat shocked me. She said, “You’re not building bridges:
you’re drowning in the space between.” And indeed her words have continued to ring true
throughout my musical life, because, rather like the keys and notes of a piano, I have
frequently found myself falling in the gaps between them. (For instance, from a very young
age I had huge questions about tuning and intonation. I heard Indian singers and Javanese
Gamelan and I was drawn to the natural tuning of the horn in Britten’s glorious Serenade for
Tenor, Horn and Strings. I heard folk and jazz singers using loads of gliding tones between
the notes of a melody. And then there were the micro-tonal worlds of Ligeti and Xenakis and
the overtone singing of Stockhausen’s ‘Stimmung’. All of this, you could say, took me away
from my musical keynotes, namely, my musical homeland of Tallis, Handel, Schubert and
Vaughan Williams, etc. which I still love to this day, but have felt the overwhelming call to
expand my map of music beyond the borders of the beautiful worlds of tone they offer.)
When I was a student at the Royal College of Music, the director asked me at the end of my
graduate years what line of study I wanted to pursue in the post-graduate year they were
offering me. I quickly replied, ‘Mongolian Long Song’. This led to a response somewhat akin
to Monty Python’s ‘Don’t be silly! Try again!’ (To which I wanted to reply using Pythonesque
language, ‘Time for something completely different!’) Instead I asked if I could study
Macedonian Praise singing. This too got the same answer. I then proceeded to say I would
like to study the Irish Gaelic singing idiom called Sean Nós (which is the aural equivalent of
the Celtic knotwork found in the Book of Kells and would have meant living with itinerant
Irish Travelling communities as my teachers). It got the same response. So I asked if I could
research Medieval Troubadour songs in its heartland of Southern France. At last, with
Troubadour songs I had reached a musical idiom that the authorities had heard of, if not
actually heard, in those early days of what is now known as ‘Early Music’. So I was
grudgingly allowed to pursue this rather than going into the Opera School – which had been
the recommended option. To get into this theme of Music on the Borders I’d like to share with you two more anecdotes
of living musically in the space between, as Martin Buber famously called it. Business gurus frequently say, ‘if you can’t speak your U.S.P. (i.e. your unique selling
proposition) – namely what your unique vision is – in less than 2 minutes then you’re not
going to get anywhere. I was faced with this same question when Michael Kurtz asked me
to write about the vision behind the Tonalis Music impulse which I founded in 1991 and still
lead today. But here’s the problem. How do you speak of the WHOLE of music – rather than
its division into compartmentalised, specialised parts – in just 2 minutes? This feels rather
like one of those alternative theatre companies presenting a whole Wagner opera in 5
minutes. (A musical analogy here might be singing with the infinity of possibilities of an
undifferentiated pitch space vs. dividing it into the discrete categories we call tunings and
scales!)
I face the same problem when I write brochures for the music trainings and courses I offer.
In fact I find it impossible to find a right form of language that addresses the Classical
cognoscenti on the one hand, amateur and community musicians on the other, as well as
spiritual seekers (including the so-called New Age market). Put in another way, different
forms of musical, social and spiritual language speak to different groups. Typically a reader
of a brochure looks for language that gives them a sense of ‘I belong here’, or on the other
hand, ‘I don’t feel welcome here’. All this has meant that the best advice I have been given
is to write at least two different brochures for each course I run. (Good advice – in some
ways – but very costly and time consuming to do!) What all this shows is how easily music
divides into the ‘my music / your music’ syndrome.
As a final picture of falling in the space between, consider the following story. When I was a
student at one of the world’s leading music conservatoires studying singing, I was given
appalling vocal advice which, alas, led me not only to lose my voice altogether, but to
develop a vocal pathology. To compound the problem I was also given appalling medical
advice that led me to undergo 6 different forms of surgical intervention to try and right the
problems I had. They didn’t work! But here’s the thing! Not one vocal professor in the whole
college knew how to help me post the surgery. I desperately needed singing therapy and
guidance to help me with the burgeoning questions I had about vocal health, and, by
implication, the nature of vocal pathologies. But no one could help me until I finally met
Jürgen Schriefer and the School of Singing for Uncovering the Voice. (Blessings on this
great human being and teacher for helping me so much.) This situation still seems
extraordinary to me. Such was the degree of vocal specialisation needed to help nascent
professional singers, it became clear to me that singing teachers had never considered
studying the opposite, namely what happens when a voice breaks down? But break down
they do! Now you might think that this situation would not pertain today, but five years ago I was
leading a singing masterclass in a celebrated music conservatoire when lo-and-behold one
of the students who stepped forward clearly had a vocal pathology. Immediately I could hear
the problem and my heart immediately went out to her. But I wondered why she’d been put
into this public situation when it was clear that her voice could not function as she wished.
She clearly did not want to be on stage, and so after a short period of questioning her, the
audience realised that this was not the right moment for me to try to coach her in any way
because what she needed was lots of singing therapy (and a visit to a voice clinic). When I
asked her if there was any recognition of her problem in the conservatoire, the answer
came, ‘no’ and she promptly burst into tears! Living on the Borderlands of Music
Living on the border means taking the risk that all certainties might be replaced by new
ways of seeing / hearing the world. In a manner not wholly unlike the idea of religious
conversion it implies discovering that there’s a whole world out there that you hadn’t really
been aware of. In the old days living on the border meant keeping doors metaphorically shut. Here there
was no idea of giving and receiving. Significantly it’s often streams and rivers that form the
boundaries between different lands, and the streams are, of course, full of movement. Most
of my life I have lived in border country. I live on an island surrounded by water. I have lived
on the borders of Scotland, and today I live on the borders between England and Wales. In
other words it’s the border where the Anglo-Saxon world meets the Celtic otherworld. Constantly I am challenged to move across thresholds whilst still remaining firmly rooted in
the place where I physically and culturally belong. Yet even though this is a place of rooting,
it is never a static place. It reminds me of the title of a book on interfaith encounter that I
once read called, ‘Celebrating Difference – Staying Faithful’. It also reminds me of when the
Social Democrats formed as a new political party in England in the 1980s. They were a
party of the centre ground between the politics of left and right, but they were constantly
challenged to say what their ‘position’ was. Because they were seeking to hold the balance
between these opposites they were never able to state their position, as it was rather like
the famous sculpture of the dance of Shiva where you can see how centred balance is
achieved through a dance of movement.
Boundaries and containers – as any good psychologist and music therapist will tell you –
are very important. But frontiers as barriers designed to exclude the other leads to forms of
apartheid. The rule of St. Benedict, on the other hand, offers the opposite of this. Here
hospitality is constantly offered as an open door and open mind ready and willing to listen
and exchange. It is all rather like all those religious paintings where we see God seated in
glory inside and outside of time.
The Psalms of David sing, ‘Darkness and light are both alike to thee’. This is something the
contemporary English composer, Jonathan Harvey, would have appreciated. One of his
great longings was to create what he called ‘light-dark chords’ which unified the seeming
polarities of major and minor tonalities into one big chord. Every day we experience the
cross-over moments of dawn and twilight and every year we experience the changing
thresholds of light and dark in the seasons. “The Resurrection is a sign that, even in death,
the border is still, contrary to our expectations, open.” (Esther de Waal)
The growth of extremism and fundamentalism – political, religious and cultural – leads to
polarisation, and the ability to listen to one another seems to have diminished. When Mark
Tully gave a lecture after the fall of the Twin Towers in New York the subtitle of the talk was,
‘From Dogma to Dialogue’. In it he drew on his own experience of belonging to two worlds,
namely India and England and said, “Those who are dogmatic and certain that they are right
don’t feel vulnerable and have no desire to have conversations.”
Ryszard Kapuściński in his wonderful little book called ‘The Other’ speaks of three possible
responses to the challenges of encountering cultural difference. 1. Go to war
2. Fence yourself in behind the wall to isolate yourself from others, e.g. apartheid and
nationalism)
3. Start up a dialogue. (Dialogue, however, involves effort, patience and the will to
understand.)
Today have shallow globalisation and mass culture, but the dominant cultural attitude often
involves limiting oneself in one’s private egotistical ‘me’ within a tightly enclosed circle of
people who have the same training and belief system as oneself. But the aim of dialogue is
mutual understanding and learning leading to an expansion of our consciousness. Of
course we have multiculturalism in music, but even here the stranger/other still tends to be
treated as an object of research rather than a partner. The modern buzz words of diversity
and plurality are often applied to music today, but whilst there is indeed a poly-musical world
out there, there’s still relatively little dialogue. Mostly Classical, Folk, Jazz, World, Early and
Contemporary musicians stay in their own worlds.
The contemporary musician no longer finds him/herself living in a neat linear corridor of
historical tradition. Rather it is like living in a large mansion with innumerable rooms, not
connected by hallways, where each room is immediately accessible. Musicians can go into
any room he/she wants, regardless of distance. More distant cultures are as available as
those closer temporally to hand. But in the main, musicians from different musical cultures
and belief systems are given grants to go and play in one of these rooms with the door shut.
So in spite of living in the same mansion there is still little dialogue, and by dialogue I don’t
mean mere fusion or cross-over music. We have multi-cultural music, but we tend not to
have inter-cultural music In short, we need the musical equivalent of trade routes and the great Silk Road, not the
Great Wall of China, so that Classical musicians can learn from oral/world traditions,
improvisers and composers, and vice a versa, etc.
The idea of being at home, in one place, whilst being part of a wider horizon has been the
key to the development of Tonalis. In the rest of this article I will therefore try and outline
some of the deep musical questions I have encountered living in the borderlands of music.
Some of them I will go into in some detail, but others I would just like to name now – most of
which I am sure you are all aware of – because the length of this article precludes going into
them further. Suffice to say these questions have been as much a part of my musical
journey as the borderlands outlined in more detail below.
Acoustic vs. Electronic Music
Subjective Expression vs. Objective Impression in Music
The Use of Newly Designed Instruments vs. Conventional Instruments
Sound vs. Silence and the Rests between Notes and Phrases
Stage Performance Paradigms vs. Musical Offerings in the Community
Young Children’s innate musical improvisations vs. Music composed for Children
Music Therapy vs. Sound Therapy
A Question of Balance – The 4-Fold Human Being in Music
A central tenet of ‘Anthroposophical Music Therapy’ is connected to the idea that: we are
healthy and balanced when our 4 bodies (physical, etheric, astral and ego) interact with
each other in a rich exchange. On the other hand, when one part becomes too independent
or one-sided, it leads to imbalance (or discord to use a musical term). Thus a foundational
stone of ‘Anthroposophical Music Therapy’ is that all four bodies need right nourishment,
and all these four bodies can be addressed musically in unique ways.
In this connection I found it interesting that,
“the word health comes from the old English ‘hal’, a root word signifying whole and
healing. Moreover, ‘heal’, in Northern Middle English, means ‘to make sound’, to
become healthy again. We [also] use the word ‘sound’ – as a synonym for health
and wholeness to signify basic vitality. To heal therefore means to become whole, in
harmony and in balance.” (Don Campbell)
“The notion that art has a role in re-balancing us emotionally promises to answer the
vexed question of why people differ so much in their aesthetic tastes? . . . . Our
tastes will depend on what spectrum of our emotional make-up lies in shadow and is
hence in need of stimulation and emphasis. Every work of art is imbued with a
particular psychological and moral atmosphere: a painting [or a piece of music] may
be either serene or restless, courageous or careful, modest or confident, masculine
or feminine, bourgeois or aristocratic, and our preferences for one kind over another
reflects our varied psychological gaps. . . . . and we dismiss as ugly one that forces
on us moods or motifs that we feel threatened or overwhelmed by. Art holds out the
promise of inner wholeness.” (de Botton)
In this connection it’s also important to consider the particular imbalances of each
historical period of music. A grasp of the psychology that lies behind our tastes won’t
necessarily change our sense of what we find beautiful, “but it can prevent us from
reacting to what we don’t like with simple disparagement.” (de Botton)
The Whole of Music vs. Western Music
“We have inherited a way of thinking about music that cannot do justice to the diversity of
practices and experiences which the small word ‘music’ signifies in today’s world.” (Nicholas
Cook)
This reminds me of Niezshe famous saying, “Your God is too small.”
As music is inherently multi-cultural, then surely music education ought to be multi-cultural
in its essence. In addition, idioms such as Folk and Jazz, etc. have a wonderful place within
the whole world of music. Of course I live in the western world (as I am sure do most of the
readers of this magazine), and therefore musical education I would suggest needs to start
from a knowledge of our own cultural homelands, but from here we need to reach out The Whole vs. the Part. The Universal vs. the Particular. Tempered vs. Pure Tuned
Heiner Ruland and Herman Pfrogner have written wonderful books on the archetypal
ground or deep structures of music beneath the surface differences of individual musical
idioms. Ruland, for instance, has researched how every culture makes its own unique
relationship to the one inherent structural factor behind all sound all humans relate to,
namely the Overtone/Harmonic series. This series of tones acts as a kind of universal
mantra, or chord of nature, which is both the lesson of the world to man and an objective
unalterable fact of nature. The Harmonic Series represents what we are when we are ‘whole’. Everything else is only
part of the truth, or, as acousticians will tell us, is only a 'partial’. All tuning systems that are
different to ours are not out of tune, but rather 'in tune, but different’ to what our cultural
conditioning has led us to believe is consonant or discordant. In other words it is literally in
another key. I won’t write further about the question of Tempered vs. Pure Tuning because this is written
about in the most wonderful way by Heiner Ruland (and a booklet on this subject, I have
written called, ‘The Inner Life of Tone’). What I would like to mention here, however, is that
there is a very special way of working compositionally in the space between the tempered
scale and the archetypal tuning of the harmonic series. This can be found when you work
with the 4th octave of the harmonic series, but in its tempered form. This creates a wonderful
bridge between the worlds of nature and nurture and has led me to explore this in a number
of choral compositions I have written, most notably in ‘To See a World in a Grain of Sand’,
which has the wonderfully apposite words by Blake, ‘Hold infinity in the palm of your hand
and eternity in an hour’
Specialist Musicality vs. Comprehensive Musicality
With modern cameras we can put them into spotlight or floodlight mode. The one gives a
sharp focus, the other illuminates its subject less brightly but detects wider patterns and
connections. What is the significance of this image you may be asking? “It is that there is a
danger today that every increase in focus simultaneously expands our field of blindness.”
(Eastham) The risk of getting stuck in a tighter focus is a loss of open-mindedness. All over
the world today we can witness fundamentalism in all walks of life, including music.
Fundamentalism is the attempt to reduce the manifoldness of human life to one dimension
whether religious, cultural or artistic. Tragically we are also witnessing a new form of closedmindedness today in tertiary education, namely, the epidemic fragmentation of knowledge
which leads to so much compartmentalised scholarship. Put in another way, we have
broken the pattern that connects. ‘Specialist Musicianship’ (i.e. compartmentalised scholarship) inevitably provides a limited
view of what music is and it often leads to a kind of musical, tribal possessiveness.
‘Comprehensive Musicianship’, on the other hand, calls for a more interdisciplinary
approach and a broader range of skills, genres and roles necessary to craft new responses
to the deeper set of freedoms that our age offers. The task of music training today is to provide education for all levels of musical activity (without any hierarchy as which of these is more important) - namely: ·Performing ·Teaching
·
Composing
·
Improvising
· Community Musicing · Soundscape Design and · Music Therapy, etc. I call this ‘cross
sector training’.
So where do you go today to find out about – or more importantly – experience the whole?
Who is responsible for teaching the whole of music? “Surely”, as composer Frank Denyer
says, "the time has come for a framework that can articulate mankind’s whole adventure with
sound from the earliest bone whistle to the Greeks to today.” The Classical Canon (i.e. Monteverdi to Debussy) vs. Early & Contemporary Musics
You may know of the three Fates, of Lachesis who sings of the things that were, of Clotho
who sings of the things that are and Atropos who sings of the life to be, and you may know of
the lutenist, Anthony Rooley – of the well-known Early Music group – ‘The Consort of
Musicke’, who said, “Every age sounds a different tone and operates in a different scale.”
These vignettes beg the question, ‘where are we ‘now’ in music’? The answer, concert
researchers give us is 1812. Why 1812? Because it is the mean/average year of
compositions offered at Classical concerts today. Thus, lovers of Classical music are basically
living nowhere near the present. They haven’t got into the 1900s, let alone the 21st Century.
So it’s clear to many people that we have lost the key to the authentic present. This is deeply
concerning! When the music historian Charles Burney visited the composer Glück he was astonished to
see a full length portrait of Handel opposite the head of his bed. The reason he was
astonished was up until this time the music that was performed was always contemporary
music, namely music of its time. Now Glück is worshipping the music of the past and the idea
of a musical repertoire and concerts of ancient music was born. Glück’s response to Burney
was, “There, Sir, is a portrait of the inspired master of our art. When I open my eyes in the
morning I look upon him with reverential awe.” To paraphrase Burney, our reverence for old
authors [composers] began to prevent us from keeping pace with the present. As the 1812
overture above makes clear, this new tendency in the late 18th century has now become so
extreme that it weighs us down with old forms and backward perceptions that prevent us from
finding ways to live into the musical present and free music’s future so that we can attempt a
new art that transcends the old accepted frontiers. Rhythmos vs. Tonos and Harmonia Between
Heiner Ruland has written of this further Music in the Space Between phenomena in his
inspiring book ‘Die Neugeburt der Musik aus dem Wesen des Menschen’ to which I am
deeply indebted. In brief, Rhythmos (streaming) processes in music includes such elements
as gliding tones, opaque musical textures, sympathetic vibrations and the sounding of lots
of overtones and non-measured rhythms, etc. Tonos (form holding) processes in music
include such elements as discrete pitches, measured rhythms and metres, clear structures
in terms of scales replete with a strong tonic/home note, and clearly differentiated forms. All
this is manifested most clearly on the piano which embodies the discrete uniform pitch
space of the tempered scale and the triumph today of the Tonos realm.
But just how did the Western man’s soul become so well-fretted?, or, as the composer
Percy Grainger asked, “Why does music always have to hop? What’s wrong with gliding?”.
This gliding is something that both blues singers and rock musicians, such as Jimi Hendrix,
strongly felt the need to do through their bending the notes of the tempered scale. In this
connection, Grainger in his quest for what he called ‘free music’ said, “The object of the
modern composer is to bring music more and more into line with the irregularities and
complexities of nature and away from the straight lines and simplicities imposed by man.”
Clearly the Tonos realm of form and structure needs to be animated and enlivened by the
Rhythmos realm of life-energy and expression, just as the Rhythmos realm needs to be
shaped and stabilised by structure. In music what many people appreciate is the way
mystery complements precision. When Tonos and Rhythmos meet together in the space
between we arrive at what the Greeks called ‘HARMONIA’, which – unlike today’s meaning,
does not mean squeezing tones together into chords – but connotes a breathing balance or
dialogue between opposites.
Indeed, this very state of balance is manifested in the well-known symbol of the Caduceus –
which shows two snakes coiling themselves around a staff – that is used as the key symbol
for the healing professions. This balance is something that we are all searching for in our
lives. When the two sides come together (i.e. in Harmonia) the realm of the sacred emerges
as a third presence, just like when 2 French horn players playing the same note in unison
are sanctified by the presence of the interval of the 5th.
The Primordial Essence of Music vs. Culturally defined Languages of Music
When you listen to a great tam-tam sounding, you hear something that is universal. Here
music cannot be categorized into specific scales, rhythms or harmonies. Instead a tam-tam
offers us a sense of infinity. Alas, today there are not so many people who bear witness to the
ocean when life, as I said above, has been reduced to researching puddles. Trapped in our
cave of prejudices and lacking the reflective practice of truly investigating the roots of our
musical tastes, we are often unable to comprehend the ultimate realities of music.
Ancient vs. Modern
Many people today take refuge in the music of the past because they find it too difficult to
artistically encounter the deepest existential questions of our time in the realm of music. I was
one of these people. When I was at my music conservatoire I found it very difficult to engage
with Boulez and Babbit, et. al. At the same time I felt overly enclosed by the music of the
Classical canon. Fortunately, at this time the Early Music phenomena was rising up and this
allowed me an escape route through engaging with the newness that ancient hidden
languages of music from Gregorian Chant and Pérotin to Machaut offered me. And so I
disappeared into this world so much that I became a university lecturer in Early Music with my
area of specialism being the early Gregorian Chant notation from the monastery of St. Gall.
But all the questions of contemporary music and the Zeitgeist of our time continued to call me,
as it did many great contemporary composers whose music is also been inspired by the wellsprings of ancient and early music sources. So Webern was inspired by Lassus, Pärt by
Pérotin, Tavener by Russian and Greek Orthodox music, Maxwell-Davies by Dunstable,
Harvey by Tibetan overtoning and MacMillan by Gaelic psalm singing, etc. All you have to do
is listen to Sandström’s ‘Es ist ein Ros’ to hear Praetorius’ beautiful carol sounding anew in
the contemporary dress of the secundal chords we associate more with Ligeti. Listen to
Tavener’s ___ and you hear the Cruxifixus of Bach’s B Minor Mass in an utterly new way. So
too I experienced a coming together of sonic experiences emanating from the most ancient
traditions (from the iron age Scottish carnyx to overtone chanting) with contemporary
paradigms in music. And so the old became new.
The Bel-Canto Voice vs. the Whole Voice
It is becoming increasingly clear that we have inherited a way of thinking about singing that no
longer does justice to the diversity of vocal practices manifesting in the world today. Over the
last 30 years a multiplicity of extraordinary new vocal and choral styles have emerged in our
midst, including stunning Multicultural Voices (e.g. Bulgarian, Tibetan, Georgian and Indian,
etc.) plus many other alternative voicings (e.g. Medieval Singing, Jazz and Popular Styles)
and 20th Century Extended Voice Techniques.
Clearly, the full possibilities of the voice are not revealed in any one singing style. Indeed, our
overspecialised - some-times one-sided restricted voices - means most people only use a
small part of their vocal potential (beautiful as they may be). Consequently a key goal of mine
over the years has been to help reveal as much as possible the infinite possibilities of the
voice to students.
Due to the changing consciousness of singing techniques these voices are bringing about,
major changes are going on now in our perception of what singing is as we witness a move
away from earlier more narrowly defined ideals of singing (which were based on a voice
aesthetic and a sound world designed for 18th and 19th century music) to new more openminded and holistic paradigms. This growing awareness of the expressive spectrum of vocal
possibilities (which I call ‘Expanding the Borders of the Voice’) increasingly asks that we
recognise that it is no longer possible to maintain a single definition or ideal of vocal
aesthetics. This can sometimes be challenging for some pupils. For instance, I have had pupils who felt very affronted by Inuit Throat singing. (Their limited
cultural definitions of singing and vocal aesthetics meant that they couldn’t allow that Inuit
voicings were singing.) Likewise, I had another pupil who studied for her major singing
diploma with me. The repertoire given in the examination list was basically from 1650 to 1910.
I found this very difficult and very limiting because I think if you are going for a singing diploma
then you should demonstrate at the very least vocal capacities in both Early and
Contemporary Music. Her examiner, in his report, unsurprisingly recommended that she work
more diligently with creating more vocal nuances and colours in her singing. So I suggested
that we should spend a time working with the flexibility of jazz voicings. This recommendation
was declined, however, on the basis that jazz idioms didn’t fit with her limited view of singing. Many classical singers fear that expanding the borders of their voices – as referred to above –
may hurt their voices. But I have found if attention is always given to vocal care and vocal
health, then working with a wider range of voice styles brings about not only more flexibility,
but a greater range of vocal colours and nuances which can enhance a student’s singing of
classical repertoire. Two examples of this would be singing Gregorian Chant from 9th century
neumes develops a much greater awareness of grouping and phrasing in music, whilst
singing in different tuning systems has helped make my sense of intonation even more acute.
The coming together of this new knowledge emanating from both world vocal traditions and
early music performance practices, along with modern scientific research, means we now
have the opportunity to learn from all these voices, which teach us different concepts,
aesthetics and beliefs regarding vocal beauty. The Path of Werbeck Singing vs. Classical Voicings
The pathway of the School of Uncovering the Voice has brought immeasurable gifts to my
life. Undoubtedly, in my estimation, it brings about the greatest awareness of the role of the
subtle body in singing. Werbeck’s work with the etheric tone is preeminent, as is her deeper
understanding of the unique being of each vowel and consonant as they apply to singing.
These are immense gifts for all singers. But singing music also calls for physical, visceral and
emotional vocal expression: from anger, lamentation and courage to expressions of
vulnerability, intimacy and love. Our voice therefore needs to be like a whole orchestra – not
just a single instrument with a monochromatic timbre. A singer has a brass instrument inside
them, as well as a violin, a flute, a cello and a percussion section. Gregorian Chant, sacred
Renaissance polyphony and the contemporary music of Webern and Pärt undoubtedly call for
the glowing light-filled resonance of the singer’s etheric body to be sounding out from the
music. But Schubert’s Der Doppelgänger, Britten’s Tyger and Frank Martin’s Sechs Monologe
aus Jedermann require something completely different. Just as importantly, the training of
singers calls for a massive investment in the schooling of musicianship, performance
practices, the balance of the physical body and an incredible amount of work on getting inside
the text. All these elements need to be worked on as much as working on the tone quality of a
voice. But seldom is this the case!
New Anthroposophical Impulses in Music vs. Classical / Folk / Jazz, etc. Approaches
I have benefitted hugely from the astonishing impulses of Werbeck-Svärdström, Pär Alhbom,
Heiner Ruland, Norbert Visser (Choroi), Manfred Bleffert and many others. What I noticed
however in going to their respective workshops – as well as to the Section Meetings for
musicians at the Goetheanum – during my journeyman stage of musicing, was that I’d meet
very different groups of people there. What I yearned for was a dialogue and mutual
fructification brought about through the meeting of these impulses. What would happen when
a choir uses new instruments, improvisation and different scales in new choral music? I didn’t
find this however. Instead, I felt a gap in the space between these individual impulses. I also
felt a gap between these impulses and what I would call the best practices of classically
trained music teachers. (For instance, I’d benefitted enormously from my work with the great
singer Peter Pears.) Another terrible gap I have experienced constantly is the one between music teachers in
Waldorf Schools who have been inspired by new Anthroposophical impulses in music vs. the
conventionally trained music teacher. To this day I still find it astonishing that musicians can
take on the role of music teaching in a Steiner school and yet make little or no effort to drink
from the inspiring waters of the new music impulses. In one case I know of, a conventionally
trained music teacher even made it a condition of their employment that they would not have
to meet or work with anything to do with the new Anthroposophical impulses in music
education.
So one of the key goals of the Tonalis impulse has been to become a crucible for a living
exchange between all these great impulses.
The Given Work vs. Improvisation. The Open Form and Music from the Inside Out
“Creation is the only place of human freedom;
it consists not in choosing between given possibilities,
but in producing a not given possibility.” (Georg Kühlewind)
Why do so many musicians let so much creativity evade them? One reason is that the
dominance of playing music from notation has led improvisation to be undervalued in the
holistic development of the musician. Mattes puts this very succinctly.
“By their very nature, improvisation and ornamentation
remove themselves from musicological research
that is traditionally based so much on written material, both theoretical and practical.”
Thus, in conventional worlds of music making, improvisation isn’t the first word that comes
to mind. In fact, it’s sometimes perceived as being irrelevant, as a way of faffing about, or as
something that only belongs to jazz musicians. Most musicians today – particularly classical musicians – excel at reading music. People
who go to concerts are astonished at how musicians can just sight read or sight sing music.
But where our music education system is incredibly lop-sided is in the complementary skill
of inspiring musicians to create their own musical ideas. To paraphrase Brockmann, if we never wrote our own words, but only read the words of
others, we’d never learn about developing our ideas, sustaining the interest of the reader,
how to create links, or how to create an ending. In fact, we’d think it incredibly strange if we
were not encouraged to write our own words. The creative part of our musical musculature, however, remains, for the most part, underdeveloped. Now many readers might say that musicians actually spend loads of time on exploring and
creating an interpretation of a work that exists as a notated score. This is indeed an
astonishingly creative and rewarding way of being with music, but it doesn’t encourage the
creation of your own musical ideas. So what is inhibiting our creative musculature? Why don’t we just metaphorically dive into the
lake and go for it? A key reason for this is connected to all the side effects of all those years of regimented
training, and hours and hours of repetitive drills. Then again, it’s because classically trained
musicians see themselves as re-creators whose job it is to present someone else’s work
and to prevent that work from being damaged. Here’s the celebrated clarinettist Anthony
Pay on the subject,
“I start from the accuracy point of view, not from a musical point of view.”
Thus, “The dominant position in Western Music has been occupied by the ‘composition’:
one man’s thought developed into a blueprint for collective performance.” (Prévost) Just as significantly, classical musicians often object to improvisation on the grounds that: i) “it’s
for jazz musicians” and ii) that there’s no need for improvisation training in the world of
classical music since most players are not called upon to improvise in the 18th and 19th
century repertoire they typically play. So why learn to do it? But it’s only in the last two hundred years that improvisation has disappeared from Classical
Music (apart from specialised uses of improvisation such as organists use as part of the drama
of a church liturgy). A key reason for this is that composers during the 18th and 19th centuries
wanted to exert more control over what performers did and inhibit them moving away from
the ‘guided tour’ of the score. This means that even the musical forms, such as the ‘fantazia’
– which should all be about creativity – show the composer controlling the majority of the
elements of a performance while simultaneously creating the outer impression of
improvisatory freedom. But I would say, “Improvisation [shouldn’t be] just an occasional freedom,
but a whole approach to the creation and performance of music.” (Ansdell)
All this means is that one of the biggest gaps in music education today is the lack of
opportunity students have for exercising their intuitive and imaginative selves and practicing
creative imagination (e.g. through composing and improvising). I believe it is an absolute tragedy that so many musicians are content to let so much
creativity evade them. Modern trainings’ emphasis on perfecting technical skills and music
reading - i.e. music from the outside, rather than on the act of creation – has left us with
many players who feel ill-equipped to engage in spontaneous invention. Of course we must continue to develop fine singers and players who can play / sing all our
brilliant masterworks from notated scores. Of course we must continue to practice
instrumental skills and music reading, etc., which remain fundamental to achieving these
aims. But we also need to acknowledge that music is an aural and creative art and that
equal attention needs to be given to nurturing the inner creator within each student.
At the heart of this question is the belief that the development of creative musical
imagination through composition and improvisation should not be add-ons in Music
Training, but should be central to it. It’s time that all musicians discovered that creativity is
not an elite gift for the few, but a deep reservoir of resources requiring only a right method
and a supportive atmosphere for it to flourish. Kenny Werner puts this perfectly. He says,
“the STUDY of music should not rob us of the ability to PLAY music.”
All of the above wouldn’t be so much of a problem in the Classical Music world if Classical
Musicing represented a completely self-enclosed world constantly propagating only past
forms of music. (Some commentators call this the ‘museum culture’.) But Contemporary
Classical composers today are frequently asking classical musicians to improvise in their
works today. But the very musicians they are asking to use their own creative imagination
are often the musicians for whom improvisation praxis has been missing in their training!
Many of these musicians have difficulty with performing the type of emancipated
compositions that employ improvisation that many contemporary composers are creating
today. To play such compositions both orchestral players and singers must become
emancipated musicians.
Visual vs. Aural Learning
Left Brain vs. Right Brain vs. Harmonia of the Hemispheres
The great conductor, Bruno Walter, wrote about the key differences between what he called
intrinsic and extrinsic musicality, and how the great musicians were those who were able to
bring into an equal balance these two fundamental ways of working with music. From an
early age it was clear that my intrinsic musicality operated at a very high level, whereas I
had to work hard to bring my extrinsic musicality up to this level, as the following story will
make clear.
Each Summer, in the late 1970s, I went out to Ireland to do field research, until one evening
- during a session in a pub in Connemara, a group of musicians - who were actually farmers
by trade who were in town to sell their livestock - played a haunting tune on fiddles which
none of the local musicians knew. In spite of this, after just two renderings of the tune,
everyone was joining in, and within a very short time everybody was freely improvising on
the melody as well. Meanwhile, I, - as the so-called professional musician/musicologist/
music teacher - was trying to notate the highly ornamented melody and not getting very far.
After the piece ended the musicians saw this and a huge peal of laughter rang out in the
pub. Then in a new rite of passage, they all poured liberal amounts of Guinness over me in
friendly mockery of the ‘professor’ in their midst, as they used to call me. This was indeed
an awakening call, and I knew then for sure what I had always suspected, namely, that my
training had left many aspects of my musicianship relatively untutored (such as my aural
schooling – as this story makes clear). Today I would say I had only been learning music
with half of the brain – my left hemisphere - and as for my body, soul and spirit participating
in music learning, well ---! From then onwards I began my quest for music making that
would embrace what the contemporary Dutch composer Ton de Leeuw called a ‘Harmony
of the Hemi-spheres’. The Old / Left Brain Model of Music Training – The Outer Musician
This model concentrates more on music coming from the outside and students being
inheritors and conservers of a tradition that is predominantly learned through ‘formal’
methods of instruction. Here lots of time is spent on: · Mastering Instrumental/Vocal Technique · Learning to Sight Read · Learning the
Music Theory that stands behind Western Musical idioms · The exploration and
appreciation of Western Classical Music idioms (predominantly from 1600 – 1910) · A
limited – and somewhat abstract view – of aural training enclosed by boundaries of Western
music theory and ·Preparation for Stage/ Concert Performance paradigms.
The Right Brain Model of Music Training – The Inner Musician
This model concentrates more on music coming from the inside and students discovering
music through creating with it, often via engaging with ‘informal’ methods of instruction and
practice. Here lots of time is spent on:
· Improvisation and Composition - so that the inner creator in each human being is involved
· Working with the Psychology and Emotional Intelligence of students · The Practice of
Inner Listening and Inner Musicality · The Practice of Playing Music by Ear · An
Exploration of Sacred and Spiritual Perspectives in Music · A Living and Deeper
Understanding of the Elements of Music as they occur throughout the world · An
Exploration of the Healing Properties of Sound and Music. A Proposal for a New Model of Music Training I would suggest affirms that for balanced
musicing to take place – where the ear can be turned inwards, as well as outwards – we
need to give equal amount of times to working with the processes that belong to both the
inner and outer musician as outlined above.
In addition, it is fundamental that students are given the chance to work with:
· Contemporary Music and the new thinking and new modes of perception that stand
behind it
·Oral Traditions e.g. World & Folk idioms ·Aural and Music Theory training from a global perspective
·The training of Soundscape Designers and Aural Ecologists
·The Musical Future of Children
· How to bring music ‘making’ into the heart of everyday life through training in Community
Musicing and performing in community contexts.
In particular, it’s obvious from the above that we don’t need the either/or polarity of visual vs.
aural learning (even though our musical education may have led us to a dominance in one
of these domains). Instead, in our modern age – with its awareness that every human being
has different learning styles – we need to employ multi-modal and multi-sensory learning
methods that balance visual, aural, kinaesthetic and creative learning in the pursuit of
balanced and holistic music education. The pièce de résistance of this multi-sensory
approach is to work with Heiner Ruland’s marvellous picture of the 12 senses in connection
with music teaching and learning.
Measured Time vs. Non-measured Time
Much of our thinking about rhythm and time today is centred on clock/measured time and
linear concepts of progress. But music history shows us wonderful examples of music in
non-measured time from Gregorian Chant, Hildegard of Bingen and Troubadour songs, to
Irish Sean Nós and Scottish Pibroch traditions and the Alap sections of Indian Ragas.
There’s also nature’s time, breath time (as in Zen shakuhachi playing) and other non-linear
forms of time embracing cyclical, psychological, primordial and eternal aspects of time.
Normally these different worlds of temporal awareness are represented as either / or
polarity, but in some contemporary music we can hear these different worlds of nonmeasured time meeting measured rhythms simultaneously (rather like they do in the visual
realm of Chagall’s paintings). It is like listening to two or more choruses asking different
questions of us simultaneously, in what amounts to an interplay between the temporal and
the eternal.
Just last week I composed a piece based upon a celebrated Irish folk tune which is often
sung as a hymn in four parts with the words ‘Be thou my vision’. As I was working on a new
arrangement of this melody I heard the non-measured keens of Irish Sean Nós folk tradition
wanting to sing with this hymn. So in the end the typically Western chorale-type harmony is
present, but it simultaneously shares its structure with the free eternal time of Celtic Sean
Nós – replete with Celtic knots in their aural form – lots of improvisation and even the
sustained drone of eternity sounding underneath it all.
Thus many of my compositions seek to bring about what the Finnish composer Rautavaara
calls, ‘A Glimpse of Eternity through the Window of Time’.
Western Sacred Music Praxis vs. Theologies of Music for Inter-faith Practice
Clearly the Divine Ground of All Being is not Western or Eastern, but hears the Whole World
and clearly there are many people today not bound by the walls of any one religious
tradition, who are seeking to explore how all the different cultures of the world are
instruments of the spirit of humanity. From this we can say that the Divine is universal, but
religions - like musical languages - are particular. Thus the theologian Paul Tillich asked,
‘How can the conditioned form of human cultures work with the unconditional nature of the
ultimate ground of all being?’.
If we look at the situation of religion in the world now we can see a direct analogy with the
challenges people involved with sacred music face. The more we realise our growing unity
as a human race, the more we encounter the challenges of religious and musical diversity,
namely how can we meet, understand and learn from the sacred music of other faiths?
Just as there are many religious and spiritual paths, so musical pathways to divine presence
are many, each of which is more apt for expressing different aspects of our relationship to
the divine ground of all being, Like a great cathedral rose window, inter-faith musicing
aspires towards a greater WHOLENESS, whereas, ‘fundamentalism is the attempt to
impose a single truth on a plural world’ (Johnathan Sachs).
For the first time in our history we have the chance to work with a broader range of sacred
music than any one cultural perspective permits. So I would suggest that a key question
sacred music animateurs need to ask themselves today is, ‘do we just work within our
culturally tuned paradigms of music and sacred practice, or do we our allow our new global
musical awareness to help us re-pitch and re-tune our music to more universal
understandings?’
Tonalis’ goal in its work with sacred music praxis is to train animateurs to serve the needs of
people from all faiths seeking to live an authentic spiritual life relevant to the modern world.
It takes as its starting point the words of Pietro Archiati ‘the human being today is a
synthesis of all the religious - [musical] - paths we have trodden in the course of our long
development’.
The Comparative Study of World Musics in Sacred Praxis can help people learn from
musicians of other cultures who have different musical beliefs in a manner analogous to the
way ‘WORLD BELIEVERS’ are emerging in contemporary spirituality.
Inter-faith musicing can thus help people experience THE DEEPER RICHNESS OF GOD’S
CREATIVE DIVERSITY via exploring how our relationship with religious ‘others’ represents
A ‘DIFFERENT KIND OF HARMONY’.
Through this work musicians can come to the realisation that they don’t sing all the parts,
namely that the Human Symphony is a Chorus of Many Voices. Through Tonalis’ work with
its ‘Song of the Earth’ projects our goal is to enable all its singers to become World Believers
so that they can become New Instruments of Humanity.
Music in the Concert Hall – Indoor Music vs. Music in the Soundscape – Outdoor
Music
And one final theme for you to reflect on that is nearly entirely neglected in the musical
world at large, as well as music trainings. It’s clear that where music takes place, namely its
contexts, deeply influences musical forms, what instruments are used and the type of
musical listening we employ. Our human journey with sound has gone from music out in
nature (i.e. the soundscape) to music in the enclosed sacred spaces of temples and
cathedrals to music in the concert hall to the totally enclosed, private individual virtual space
of music via headphones (which is where most people have arrived today). Clearly this has
cut us off from the realm of nature and should absolutely be viewed as having a key role in
our present environmental and ecological crisis.
In the Middle Ages and in the Renaissance there was clear concept of outdoor and indoor
music and the outdoor and indoor instruments needed to sound in these very different
contexts (i.e. the bagpipe vs. the lute). This is something that is being wonderfully addressed
by the new instrument makers inspired by Anthroposophy, from the metal instruments of
Manfred Bleffert to the glorious stone instruments of Beat Weyeneth.
Coda – Living between Worlds
Following on from what I have just written above, and in conclusion, I want to acknowledge
how important it has been for me to work with ‘music in the space between’. One way I have
been enabled to do this is via using the new instruments created by great craftsmen and
artists inspired by Anthroposophy that have been made for working with the space between
musicians (e.g. Choroi’s bordun lyres and its lap xylophone and Bleffert’s metal
instruments). Other crucial ways of working with new improvisatory processes in the space
between have been Pär Ahlbom’s circle games and the choral improvisations I have created
for bringing about what I call ‘double listening’ and attuned ensemble awareness (e.g.
through always hearing the note you are singing as part of the chord that is sounding vs.
merely learning and holding your own part in choral singing). For more on this see my two
volumes on ‘Creating Choral Excellence’.
And so – to sum up. Standing on all the above musical thresholds for me has meant finding
myself in a place where two or more musical worlds meet, and inevitably this leads to two
questions, how do I hold this together?, and how can I make this a creative encounter? To
answer this I turn once more to Esther de Waal who gives a great response. She says, “Our
God is too big for either/or. Instead he [/she] asks us to say both/and.” The Tonalis impulse
has been my attempt to create these meeting places and to bring about the dance of
Harmonia (as Ruland calls it) referred to above.
What Tonalis does Now
Tonalis offers part-time, modular foundation training courses on a range of subjects, such
as
Sing with Your Whole Voice – Open up to a New World of Singing
Bring Music to Life – The Art of Song Interpretation
The Inner Life of Music – Journey into the Hidden Mysteries of Music and Discover the Heart
of Musical Meaning
The Musical Future of Children – Music Education in Waldorf Schools
The Story of Music – Past, Present and Future
Creating Choral Excellence – New Horizons for Choir Singers and Choir Leaders
Music as a Therapeutic Art – Social & Therapeutic Music Making
Renewing Music as a Community Art
Tonalis has 2 choirs
Illumina – a high level chamber choir
Choros – an intermediate level choir specialising in singing new choral arrangements of
Folk and World Music
Tonalis runs numerous weekend music workshops and 5 day courses during Easter and
Summer holidays.
It also offers In-service Days and an Advisory Service for Steiner Schools.
Please see the Tonalis website to see details of all of these – www.tonalismusic.co.uk
We self-publish under ‘Tonalis Edition’ a wide range of books I have written, from books on:
— Music Education — Music and Singing Therapy — The Elements of Music — Voicework
and — Choir Training; as well as books of — New Sacred Choral Music (Illumina and
Glossolalia) and — Songs for Children (The Song Tree) I have composed. Lastly there are
books of — Arrangements of English and Celtic Folk Music for the Cycle of the Year and —
Collections of Choral Music for Community Choirs. All the books are listed on the website.
Acknowledgements
I would like to acknowledge the enormous inspiration given to me in writing this article by the
following authors:
de Botton, Alain
– Art as Therapy, Phaidon Press, 2013
Campbell, Don
– The Mozart Effect, Avon Books, NY
Claxton, Guy
– Wise Up – The Challenge of Lifelong Learning, Bloomsbury
Publishing, 2000
Cook, Nicholas
– Music – A Very Short Introduction, O.U.P., 2000
Denyer, Frank
– Finding a Voice in an Age of Migration, in ‘Contemporary Music
Review’, Vol. 15, ‘Leaving the 20th Century’, Leigh Lands & Frank
Denyer (ed.s)
Eastham, Scott
– EyeOpeners: A Little Something to Think About, Horizon, 1999
Higgins, Kathleen M.– The Music between Us, Is Music a Universal Language?, The Univ. of
Chicago Press,
2012
Nettl, Bruno
– Heartland Excursions: Ethnomusicological Reflections on Schools
of Music, University of Illinois Press, 1995
Pfrogner, Herman – Lebendige Tonwelt – zum Phänomen Musik
Ruland, Heiner
– Expanding Tonal Awareness: Musical Exploration of the Evolution
of Consciousness Guided by the Monochord, Rudolf Steiner Press
– Musik als erlebte Menschenkunde: Musiktherapie in der Praxis, 2003
– Die Neugeburt der Musik aus dem Wesen des Menschen:
Künstlerische und therapeutische Aufgaben einer erneuerten
Musikkultur, 1987
Scruton, Roger
– The Aesthetics of Music, O.U.P., 1997
de Waal, Esther
– Living on the Border, Reflections on the Experience of Threshold,
Canterbury Press, 2011
Wingate, Andrew
– Celebrating Difference – Staying Faithful, How to live in a Multi-faith
World, Longman & Todd, 2005