Café Zimmermann

Sketches for a book…

A good leader can show his musical intentions without words.  A bad leader constantly needs to open his mouth to get his message across.  A terrible leader has absolutely nothing to say.

Not 100% true.  Obviously, in real life situations a well-placed comment can do wonders to bring an ensemble together.  But it’s pretty close.  Over the years I’ve noticed that all of the good conductors and concertmasters I have worked with have the talent to show their musical intentions through their body language. 

I hate the overuse of the word transparency these days, but I think it applies well in this case. A good conductor is transparent.  His tempo indications are clear, he is able to express the musical lines through his gestures, and he creates an atmosphere of ‘positive listening’ where he doesn’t get in the way if he doesn’t have to.  Bad conductors, on the other hand, constantly throw a monkey wrench into the rehearsal through their inability to offer more than a weak sense of the beat.  Bad leaders will break you off to tell you what you should be doing, but he can’t show you, and terrible leaders just stand their with their face pressed to the score while their arms flail around helplessly.

Once, soon after I came to Europe, I remember doing a recording session of a Beethoven’s Eroica Symphony with Jordi Savall at the helm.  Although he was an excellent musician on the gamba, Jordi proved to be one of the worst leaders I had ever experienced, which, for Beethoven’s Eroica proved to be a disaster.   During the rehearsals, the orchestra would race off into oblivion while Jordi, his baton in hand, literally just followed us.  When the piece was over he would stare blankly in silence into the score while all of the musicians showed off to each other their favorite parts from their concertoes.

But one time, in the middle of the recording of the marche funebre, Jordi suddenly turned into a fantastic conductor right before our eyes. Dissatisfied at how we were playing, he suddenly stopped the rehearsal. “No, this is all wrong,” Jordi said to us. “It has to sound like a lament on the viola da gamba, here like this.”  He started to sing the music, and while singing, his hands started to conduct himself. We as an orchestra were mesmerized at how this man, a musical non-entity just a few moments ago, had suddenly transformed himself into a world-class conductor.  “Is that clear?” he asked.  Everyone nodded.  “Good, then let’s continue.” And with that Jordi went back to back to arm waving.

What You Have Been Missing – Sei Nun Wieder Zufrieden, Bach BWV 21

The great thing I find about music is how, in my attempt to understand a work within its context, I keep on discovering new pieces of the puzzle.  That’s where I am right now as I write this.

 This past weekend I was fortunate enough to perform Bach’s Cantata Ich Hatte Viel Bekümmernis, BWV 21 with Akamus in Berlin.  Bach’s early cantatas are among my favorites, because, unlike the Leipzig cantatas (composed between 1723 and 1750), the writing found in Bach’s  Mühlhausen and Weimar cantatas reveal a composer who was still experimenting with his talent while struggling to find his own voice.  The musical handwriting just feels more raw and edgy, showing the direct influence the Bach’s ancestors in Thuringia, as well as stylistic elements of Dietrich Buxtehude, whom Bach visited in Lübeck in 1705. 

BWV 21 was probably written in Weimar in 1713 for the third Sunday after Trinity, although it first performed a year later after some revisions.  It’s a fairly generic work, one that could be performed for any occasion (Bach specifically wrote e per ogni tempo into the score) and was performed several times during his lifetime.  Confronting the issue of the soul doubting mankind’s salvation through Christ, the cantata reaches its height when, in the second half, Bach juxtaposes Georg Neumark’s 1641 chorale Wer nur den lieben Gott lässt walten against the 7^th verse of Psalm 116- Sei nun wieder zufrieden.  Rhetorically, these two elements fight it out in high style as Bach weaves the psalm into a three-part fugue (solo soprano, alto, and bass) that tenaciously winds itself through the Neumark’s chorale like a vine.   It really gets to the heart of the matter, and I dare anyone not to be moved by it:

TEXT: 

Sei nun wieder zufrieden, meine Seele; denn der Herr tut dir Gutes

Return unto thy rest, Oh my soul; for the Lord hath dealt bountifully with thee.

Was helfen uns die schweren Sorgen, /Was hilf uns unser Weh und Ach? / Was hilft es, dasß wir all Morgen / Beseufzen unser Ungemach? / Wir machen unser Kreuz und Leid / Nur größer durch die Trauigkeit

If thou but suffer God to guide thee / And hope in Him through all thy ways, /He’ll give thee strength, whate’er betide thee, / And bear thee through the evil days. / Who trust in God’s unchanging love /Builds on the rock that naught can move. 

Denk nicht in deiner Drangsalshitze / Daß du von Gott verlassen seyst /Und daß Gott der im Schoße sitze / Der sich mit stetem Glükke speist./ Die Folgezeit verändert viel /  Und setzet Jeglichem sein Ziel.

Nor think amid the fiery trial /That God hath cast thee off unheard, / That he whose hopes meet no denial / Must surely be of God preferred. / Time passes and much change doth bring/ And set a bound to everything.

(Translation, Psalm 116: King James Version; translation, hymn: Catherine Winkworth, 1855) 

Even if the text speaks of condolence, musically Bach’s interpretation doesn’t paint quite the rosy picture of salvation without hardship and suffering.  Instead, Bach seems to regard the problem more along the lines of Socrates, who, shortly before his death in Phaedo contemplates the aspect of pleasure and how it is directly related pain: “If Aesop had thought of them, he would have made a fable telling how they were at war and god wished to reconcile them.  And when he could not do that, he fastened their heads together, and for that reason, when one of them comes to anyone, the other follows after.”  Here too, there is something profoundly disturbing about how the line of Sei nun zufrieden is forced to struggle against the gravity of Neumark’s chorale melody. Alone, the fugue Bach composes is relatively innocuous, but set against the chorale, it turns into something resembling a dance macabre.  While playing it this weekend, I barely made it through the movement without breaking out in tears (don’t ask me why- I was just born this way).

I was going to leave it at just that. However, as I was searching online for a decent version of Sei nun wieder zufrieden (it’s very hard, as I explain below) I stumbled across a motet based on the same Psalm text by Johann Bach (1604-1673), who was the brother of Johann Sebastian’s grandfather.  Listening to it, you immediately notice that ‘the Bach element’ is there, almost as if one could say that the style Johann Sebastian composed in already existed before his birth:

Then, as I looked for a version of the Neumark hymn, I came across an excerpt from the German film Vaya con Dios.  The comedy, which is set in a fictional cloister in Brandenburg, is nothing fantastic, but in listening to the scene where this hymn appears I found that it was sung quite well.  I also came across a version, performed here on an old American Mason & Hamlin organ, that I really like:

And, as far as finding a decent recording of the cantata itself, I have to admit that I’m frustrated by most of the recordings I have heard.   The ‘standard’ Harnoncourt version although it is still the most historically correct recording I know of, feels terribly outdated. I personally have Ton Koopman’s version with the Amsterdam Baroque Orchestra.  On the whole, the gravity of expression and tempi is spot on, but unfortunately Barbara Schlick, who sings soprano, sounds well past her prime.  And, because Schlick appears in the version with Collegium Vocale Gent that’s the reason why I wouldn’t buy Philippe Herreweghe’s recording either- a pity because I really like how the Collegium Vocale sings.  I wouldn’t John Eliot Gardiner’s version, because the Monteverdi Choir rendition of Bach doesn’t convince me.  Closer to the mark is, surprisingly, the version featuring Masaki Suzuki’s ve Bach Collegium Japan (the soprano, Yukari Nonoshita, is excellent) but sei nun wieder zufrieden is far too fast for my taste.  

That leaves me pretty much empty handed in terms of ‘big names,’ but, surprisingly, I do like the version I posted here, which features the Kammer Sinfonie Bremen and the Bremer Domchor.  I don’t know who the conductor is (Tobias Gravenhorst is currently the choirs current director) but this recording seems to strike the best balance between tempo, expression, and authenticity.  I especially like the rough ‘edge’ the boy’s chorus gives to the chorale, as well as how Ruth Fiedler, soprano, keeps the melody relatively free of vibrato, or, ‘pure.’ 

But the best performances I know are the ones I have been able to play in myself.  To just be able to sit and know that you have just this one possibility to personally experience this music before it disappears into the air forever completely changes the way you hear things.  Fortunately, for those who missed us play, there is a repeat broadcast on Berlin’s classical radio station RBB on May 13^th (I’m assuming that the broadcast will stream live over the Internet as well):

http://www.kulturradio.de/programm/sendungen/120513/konzert_am_sonntagabend_2004.html

Drugged by Facebook

ZDF, Germany’s second public television station, posted an alarming headline on its website a few days ago.  “(Networking) is potentially more addictive than cigarettes +and alcohol,” it warned. “Facebook and Twitter can induce stress and endanger a person’s health.” Not that this new is anything new; I think we suspected that all along, but it does cast an eerie shadow over social networking sites, which have been taking the world by storm. 

The thing that worries me is this: We have come to rely so heavily on social networking in the past several years that Facebook, with its more than 800,000,000 members, is now ranked by Alexa as second most visited site on the world wide web (Twitter, with 300,000,000 users is ranked ninth).  Those who use Facebook regularly know how it has developed itself over the years.   No longer an odd online meeting point where people ‘poked’ each other and played Farmville (something that I never could understand) Mark Zuckerberg’s school project has turned itself into a full blown communication ‘tool’ that is used by businesses and political groups interested in conveying their message to the public.  Part of my own online feed includes updates from Barrack Obama, Join the Coffee Party Movement, and Telling Fox News it’s Full of Crap, all organizations that very dear to my heart, and on my smart phone there is a square blue button which when I press it, helps me seize the moment and spread the news across the world. 

However, according to the University of Chicago, that blue button seems to be having a devastating effect on our life in 3-D.  For some, only sleep and sex are more important. 

This is probably nothing new to you, but still, I have a theory that I’d like to share.  Often, when I am in a public area and see a person pull out their cell phone to answer a call or send a message, I notice how an invisible switch my brain gets set off, urging me to check up on my own status.  I usually ignore that urge within (because I know that nobody contacts me), but ironically, I see how within seconds everyone else neaby has suddenly pulled out their cell phones as well to check up on their status.  It’s almost as if this element of ‘sitting up and looking busy’ has mutated itself into a kind of fear where people, if they are unable to openly display just how important they are in life, feel hopelessly lost- hence the reason why he who gets phoned will immediately generate a trail of wannabees, and hence the reason why social networking has become so potent. 

But I find the trend terribly annoying.  Seriously, do people really have so many important things to say to each other, so much so that, during concerts, I have seen people- both in the audience and on stage- send text messages?  I really don’t think so.  Once I got really pissed off at a violinist who, while sitting next to me during a concert, kept on toggling his cell phone on and off with his toe.  When I warned him that we really didn’t like having people use their phones during concerts, he explained to me that his wife was in the late stage of her pregnancy and that he wanted to be reachable in case an emergency popped up.  Fair enough, I thought, except for the fact that his wife was in Hamburg and we were in Krakow, nearly 900 kilometers away.  

That case alone confirms to me that the study by the University of Chicago is on to something.  I suspect that there are many people out there who, if their iPhones and Blackberries were taken away from them, they would immediately go into withdrawal symptoms.   Ironically, the report on ZDF ended with an invitation to a discussion forum about the issue on both its Facebook and Google+ pages.   I think its safe to say that there is no turning back to the past anymore, and those of us who are damned to live with social networking’s grip need to understand that moderation is the key here.