Improvisation

Dave Brubeck

On Fathers' Day, we went to Ravinia to see and hear Dave Brubeck and his four sons perform. I don't listen to much jazz, but this was clearly an extraordinary, inspiring concert. And Dave Brubeck is 90 years old! The Chicago Tribune review by Howard Reich has all the information. (Dave Brubeck riffs with his sons on Father's Day)

Like many superb artists, Brubeck draws on many different musical sources, including Darius Milhaud, with whom he studied, and Disney. As someone not conversant with jazz, I wondered how much of the music was improvised and how much was planned. His sons live all over the world, so there was little time for extensive planning, but every piece made perfect sense. So I asked my husband, who has more jazz experience than I. He explained that jazz musicians relay on patterns, but the best jazz musicians use them only as a structure, not the meat of the improvisation.

All this led me to thinking about improvisation in my own playing. I will never need to do any jazz improvisation, but many teachers strongly recommend including improv as part of one's practice. In particular, Jeffery Agrell, who blogs at Horn Insights, frequently writes about the importance of improvising. According to him, the benefits include avoiding routine and encouraging flexibility by having to think rather than play off the page, gaining a deeper understanding of music by creating music as opposed to only interpreting, and weakening one's reliance on the written page. I found these posts to be especially interesting and helpful: Spicing up the Routine, mainly about incorporating improv into warm-ups; 10 Step Program for getting off the Ink, about how memorization deepens the performer's connection to and understanding of a piece;  and  Start your Day with a Daily D.A., a strong argument for including improvisation in all musician's education. 

Improvisation is scary if you've never done it. Just recently the parents of a fine young trumpet player commented to us that their son would never play jazz because of the improv. He needs to know what's coming next, which of course doesn't happen when you're improvising, especially with other people.

A few years ago I decided to sign up for the beginner's Improv Program at Second City. This had nothing to do with music - I wasn't even playing horn at the time. It felt scary, but I thought it might improve my teaching and communicating. This program is five courses, which take a year to finish. Graduation is performing a show with your class on the mainstage at Second City. Taking the classes was scary, but it was also amazingly good fun. I never became anywhere near adept at it, but I had a blast. Most of the folks in my class, including me, reported being able to talk to people more easily. We also worked on thinking on our feet, responding positively to our partners, and getting past our fears. It also gave me a heart-felt appreciation for what the actors at Second City and other improvisational theaters do.

I had never tried improvisation in music, though. In thinking about  summer when I have more time to practice, I decided I wanted to set a few goals to stretch my playing. I decided it was time to try improv, so I purchased Agrell's book, Improv Games for One Player. The book is filled with suggestions that are easy to try, and you can make many of them part of your warm-up. I have created improvised long tone pieces on various intervals and made up tunes using the pentatonic scale. It is not so scary to try these in your practice room and they sound pretty good! It is a very different way of thinking about music than I have been doing for years. I expect it will enrich my playing; it's already fun.

"Sweltering" in Central Park

Though I would be delighted to find myself in NYC, I'm still here in Illinois. However, as a displaced Yankee from Connecticut, I subscribe to the New York Times. Today as I pulled out the Arts section, there was an eye-catching photo of a horn player perched on a boulder, playing out over Central Park Lake! The occasion was the performance of a new piece by Julian Day, Luke Jaaniste and Janet McKay titled "Swelter." You can find Anthony Tommasini's review in today's paper. The performance was part of Make Music New York and consisted of 30 brass players stationed around the lake with much of  the audience in boats on the lake! Tommasini describes the piece as sounding contemplative. It sounds like a very cool piece in a beautiful setting, in spite of the hot, humid weather. I wish I could have been there.

Playing 4th horn is not like playing 2nd banana

I love to play horn, and I'm happy to play any part anytime, but at heart I am a low horn player. A 4th horn player.

Every orchestral instrument section has its quirkiness. For horn players, one of the quirks is the division between low and high playing. As the horn evolved as an orchestral instrument, composers wrote for it in pairs. The standard section of 4 players, then, consists of two pairs -- 1st and 2nd play together as a pair and 3rd and 4th play together. First and 3rd are high parts, 2nd and 4th are low parts. Of course, the whole section plays together a lot of the time, too, and there are various permutations of the horn section. Mozart usually wrote for a section of two horns, Beethoven's Eroica uses three, and Strauss and Mahler often wrote for large sections of seven or eight horns.

We recently heard the Chicago Symphony play Brahms's 4th Symphony. It is easy to see when you're at a concert that Brahms wrote for the two pairs of horn players. The horn parts move back and forth from the first two to the second two and back again, throughout the work. In fact, 3rd and 4th have more to play in that symphony than 1st and 2nd, though the 1st part has some lovely solos.  Another clear example of writing in pairs is the overture to William Tell, where the pairs alternate the "Lone Ranger" theme.

On the other hand, Mozart used a pair of horns like no other composer I have seen. In the 40th Symphony, 1st and 2nd are written in two different keys. He wrote before the invention of valves, so parts are in keys, which today horn players transpose. Oftentimes the horn parts are in the key of the piece, but Mozart expanded his options for pitches and harmonies by writing each part in a different key. The two parts in this symphony are quite independent. Sometimes the 2nd horn plays pretty high and sometimes the 1st horn has a phrase that seems like it belongs in a 2nd horn part. It is inventive, beautiful writing for the early horn.

The best part of playing in a horn section, though, is that every part can be interesting or even exciting. Though the 1st horn gets most of the solos in the standard orchestral literature, there are also many 3rd horn solos. Second and 4th horn also have solos. The most famous 4th horn solo is in the slow movement of Beethoven's 9th Symphony. It is a beautiful, lyrical solo encompassing a very large range:

In the ascending and descending scale in the third line, marked "Solo,"  the 4th horn is all alone -- the rest of the orchestra is not playing! The range, the technical passages, and the phrasing of the entire excerpt make this a challenge for the player. (It's also in Eb, so you must transpose it down a step, not a big deal for horn players.) However, when you play it in concert, by the time the symphony is over, with the soloists, chorus, and full orchestra finishing with the triumphant Ode to Joy, everyone has forgotten about the beautiful horn solo. Years ago, 1st horn players used to take this solo, but nowadays the 4th horn players usually get to keep it. Why did Beethoven write this solo for the 4th horn? No one really knows. Possible the 4th was the only horn player in the section with a valved horn, though the solo can be played on a natural horn.

Serious horn players must be able to play high and low parts, of course. It doesn't make sense to specialize in low or high to the exclusion of the other.  Sarah Willis, 4th horn of the Berlin Philharmonic, and David Griffin, 4th horn of the Chicago Symphony, have both recorded impressive solo albums. They are both amazing low horn players, but are equally at home in the high range.

Why do I like playing low horn? For me, one of the most fun parts of horn playing is playing the very low notes. I love the sound of them and the power those notes have. I love the way the low and high parts combine to make a beautiful ensemble, with each part contributing an important piece of the whole.

Cleanliness

Every Tuesday the New York Times includes the Science Times section. A recurring column is "Really?" in which a Claim is stated, the Facts examined and then we get the Bottom Line. This week the Claim was "Playing a wind instrument causes respiratory infection." Yikes! The facts state that wind and brass players apparently get more respiratory ailments than others. A recent study from Tufts tested a number of flutes, clarinets, saxophones and trumpets for bacteria and other nasty things. All the instruments had live bacteria and mold. Yuck!

The two examples in the article -- a trombonist and a saxophone player -- both had respiratory problems for long periods of time. These problems went away after the players began either disinfecting, in the case of the trombone, or washing the mouthpiece, in the saxophonist's case. The Bottom Line tells us we should routinely clean our instruments or run the risk of getting sick. It seems pretty obvious, but it's easy to let a lot of time pass before giving the horn a thorough cleaning. I took my horn to our wonderful brass repairman for a cleaning and adjustments. When i picked it up he suggested mildly that it would be good if I rinsed it out now and then. Oops.

For a hilarious story about cleaning a horn, read this blog post by Pip Eastop, a horn player with various groups in London, titled "How not to clean your horn ... "

The Value of Music Lessons

It's the end of the school year and I have been extraordinarily busy between all the end-of-the-year school stuff and a flurry of concerts to play. Hence, the lack of posts.

The Waukegan Symphony is giving the last of its season on May 22. We are playing Hindemith's Symphonic Metamorphosis, Shostakovich's 2nd Piano Concerto, Overture to Prometheus, and Mozart Symphony #40. This is my first time playing the Hindemith and I'm having a blast. The piano concerto is very interesting; my daughter (who is also playing) says that one of the movements is in Fantasia 2000. I love the Mozart, though I'm not playing on it.

In addition, I'm playing with another community orchestra, the North Suburban Symphony on May 15 in a program of opera and musicals featuring two singers. It's a fun program, too, with Carmen, Fledermaus, Barber of Seville, and a selection of popular musicals. Plus, my woodwind quintet is playing at a local event to raise money for charity by selling artwork by local artists. My son has a piece in the sale, a very cool looking mirror depicting some Nordic mythology.

Since I haven't written a post in awhile, I thought I would re-post an article I read in the enjoyable blog Julia's Horn Page. Here it is:

More proof of music’s educational value

Posted on May 4, 2011 by Julia Rose| Leave a comment

I just read the following on Orchestra-L, and I was so happy to read it I decided to post it again here.  The readers’ comments following the article are also particularly insightful:
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Hearing the Music, Honing the Mind
Music produces profound and lasting changes in the brain. Schools should add classes, not cut them
By The Editors | October 26, 2010 |
Scientific American Magazine- November 2010 issue
Nearly 20 years ago a small study advanced the notion that listening to Mozart’s *Sonata for Two Pianos in D Major* could boost mental functioning. It was not long before trademarked “Mozart effect” products appealed to neurotic parents aiming to put toddlers on the fast track to the Ivy League. Georgia’s governor even proposed giving every newborn there a classical CD or cassette.
The evidence for Mozart therapy turned out to be flimsy, perhaps nonexistent, although the original study never claimed anything more than a temporary and limited effect. In recent years, however, neuroscientists have examined the benefits of a concerted effort to study and practice music, as opposed to playing a Mozart CD or a computer-based “brain fitness” game once in a while. Advanced monitoring techniques have enabled scientists to see what happens inside your head when you listen to your mother and actually practice the violin for an hour every afternoon. And they have found that music lessons can produce profound and lasting changes that enhance the general ability to learn. These results should disabuse public officials of the idea that music classes are a mere frill, ripe for discarding in the budget crises that constantly beset public schools.
Studies have shown that assiduous instrument training from an early age can help the brain to process sounds better, making it easier to stay focused when absorbing other subjects, from literature to tensor calculus. The musically adept are better able to concentrate on a biology lesson despite the racket in the classroom or, a few years later, to finish a call with a client when a colleague in the next cubicle starts screaming at an underling. They can attend to several things at once in the mental scratch pad called working memory, an essential skill in this era of multitasking.
Discerning subtleties in pitch and timing can also help children or adults in learning a new language. The current craze for high school Mandarin classes furnishes an ideal example. The difference between *m¯a* (a high, level tone) and *mà* (falling tone) represents the difference between “mother” and “scold.” Musicians, studies show, are better than nonmusicians at picking out easily when your *m¯a* is *mà*ing you to practice. These skills may also help the learning disabled improve speech comprehension.
Sadly, fewer schools are giving students an opportunity to learn an instrument. In *Nature Reviews Neuroscience* this summer, Nina Kraus of Northwestern University and Bha­rath Chandrasekaran of the University of Texas at Austin, who research how music affects the brain, point to a disturbing trend of a decline of music education as part of the standard curriculum. A report by the advocacy organization Music for All Foundation found that from 1999 to 2004 the number of students taking music programs in California public schools dropped by 50 percent.
Research of our brains on music leads to the conclusion that music education needs to be preserved—and revamped, as needed, when further insights demonstrate, say, how the concentration mustered to play the clarinet or the oboe can help a problem student focus better in math class. The main reason for playing an instrument, of course, will always be the sheer joy of blowing a horn or banging out chords. But we should also be working to incorporate into the curriculum our new knowledge of music’s beneficial effect on the developing brain. Sustained involvement with an instrument from an early age is an achievable goal even with tight budgets. Music is not just an “extra.”

Applause!

I'm always interested in seeing how different musicians react to applause. Some of them stand and just soak it up, while others radiate delight (think Yo-Yo Ma). Some bow deeply (especially Michiko Uchida) and others nod their heads. Practically everyone is generous in including colleagues in applause.

We take applauding at concerts for granted; however, one of the things I learned at Fearless Camp last summer is how difficult it is to accept applause.  One of our ongoing exercises at the camp was graciously accepting applause whenever it was offered. Jeff instructed us to stand up, look at the audience, smile, and bow. No fiddling with music, no leaving the stage before the audience finished applauding. It sounds simple and straightforward, but it is very difficult.

Most musicians are naturally very hard on themselves when it comes to critiquing their own playing, so smiling and bowing while thinking about all the mistakes you made feels like a sham. We think we don't deserve this acclaim. Jeff stressed that it's about the performer's connection to the audience. The people who came to hear you want to thank you for the performance and express their delight in the experience of hearing this concert. To respond with words or body language that shows you don't agree, is churlish and ungrateful.

Since everyone did a lot of performing that week, we all had many opportunities to get better. Our fellow Fearless campers also made sure that the applause was long and sustained, so you really got to practice being gracious when it was your turn!

I don't have a lot of opportunities to take bows in my life away from Fearless Camp, but when I do, I find it's easier now. I like feeling that connection with the audience. Now I guess I need to spread the idea to others. I was caught by surprise at a performance with a musician I didn't know well when she swept off the stage after only a few seconds of applause. The rest of us felt we had to follow her. It was a low-key performance and several people came up to talk with each of us, but after Fearless Camp, I felt like the performance wasn't as complete as it could have been. Perhaps she was not happy with the performance or maybe that's the way she was taught.

In thinking about why we often feel we don't deserve praise and admiration, I thought about one of my favorite quotes, from Nelson Mandela:

Our deepest fear is not that we are inadequate.
Our deepest fear is that we are powerful beyond measure.
It is our Light, not our darkness that frightens us.
We ask ourselves, "Who am I to be brilliant, talented and fabulous?"
Actually, who are you not to be?
You are a child of God.
Your playing small doesn't serve the world.
There's nothing enlightened about shrinking so that other people won't feel insecure around you.
We were born to make manifest the glory of God that is within us.
It's not just in some of us. It's in everyone
And as we let our own Light shine, we unconsciously give other people permission to do the same.
As we are liberated from our own fear, our presence automatically liberates others.

Schubertiade Chicago!

Schubert at the piano

The Schubertiade Chicago will be held this Saturday, January 29, at the historic Fine Arts Building, 410 South Michigan Avenue in Chicago. You can get more information and the schedule here. I'm very excited to be playing not only the 5 Duets for horns that I wrote about in an earlier post, but Auf dem Strom, the song for soprano, horn and piano.

Alexis Magarò, soprano, and Helen Raymaker, piano, and I will be performing Auf dem Strom at 8 pm in Curtis Hall.This will be the first time I have done this song with a soprano. It is different than performing it with a tenor. I believe the horn and tenor blend more, being in the same range, but the soprano and horn contrast each other well.

Earlier, at 4:45, Nancy Orbison and I will be playing the 5 Duets. Because they are also songs, the pieces being written for voices or horns, there are words. We thought it would be helpful to us in interpreting the duets and interesting for our audience to know something of what the songs were about. I wrote something about the songs previously on this blog, but the two final songs were puzzling to both Nancy and me. I had taken the lyrics and tossed them into Google translator, which translates quite literally. Some of the results were pretty strange. I don't know German, so I went to someone who does, Ben Hebebrand. Ben (who is my boss) was born in Germany and was able to interpret the expressions in the two hunting songs. Lützow's wilde Jagd was especially puzzling. It was obviously about a heroic figure, but also included mysterious references to "black fellows, black riders, black fallen." He did some research and found that both hunting songs were written about the Napoleonic wars, which were happening at the time Schubert wrote the songs. In response to Napoleon invasions, the countries that would eventually become Germany began to band together to fight back. The two songs have a strong nationalistic theme. This was so interesting that I did a little research myself. I found a reference to the poet Theodor Körner, who wrote the lyrics to both hunting songs and Morgenstern, in a biography of Schubert written by Elizabeth Norman McKay. Schubert met Körner one time only, in 1813 after an opera performance. They had a memorable conversation, but shortly after Körner joined the Lützow corps to fight France. He was killed a few months later.

Next I googled Lützow and found Adolf, baron von Lützow. He formed a calvary "free corps" of volunteers to fight behind French lines. Though he is described as largely ineffectual, he and his troops are clearly the bold heroes of Lützow's wilde Jagd. Lützow's corps was also known as "the Schwarze Schar (“Black Band”) after its uniform, which was a symbol of mourning for enslaved Germany." This explains the mysterious references in each verse to the "black fellows," "black riders," "black swimmers," and so on. It is a brash, heroic poem. Here is a sample:

What shines from the forest there in the sunshine?
Hear it roaring closer and closer.
it runs down in dark rows,
And shrill horns sound in it.
... And if you ask the black fellows:
Who is,
This is Lützow's wild, reckless hunting.

What draws up quickly thorugh the dark forest
And stripped from mountain to mountain?
It lies in night ambush
The Hurra rejoice, and fires the rifle,
...And if you ask the black hunters:
Who is,
This is Lützow's wild, reckless hunting.


I did not expect to learn so much history when I went in search of some Schubert to play!