There’s a startling little truth behind our daily lives: What we really and truly believe (as opposed to what we say or write) always manages to make itself known in one way or another.
- Classical Music 101: What Does A Conductor Do? - June 17, 2019
- Classical Music 101 | What Does Period Instrument Mean? - May 6, 2019
- CLASSICAL MUSIC 101 | What Does It Mean To Be In Tune? - April 23, 2019
From a musical point of view, it means that if a performer or group of performers does not care about a work with every fibre of their being, the audience is going to notice.
It’s uncanny, really, on many different levels.
I’ve spent years telling choristers how even just thinking the shape of a particular phrase will change the result everyone hears — and I always get one or two deeply skeptical looks in return.
Periodically I need to get my own reminder lesson. Like last month at the church, where I’d been presenting music for unstructured meditation at lunchtime on Thursdays, something I’ve discontinued for the winter.
The church is open in the daytime and besides welcoming tourists and passersby, it acts as a homeless drop-in for the area around the Eaton Centre and City Hall. So it’s next to impossible to get the total silence I would in my heart of hearts prefer for a meditation exercise involving chanting a Psalm and then playing deliberately bland music on either the piano or organ.
I ring a bell to signal that this exercise is about to begin.
This particular Thursday, the parish volunteers working inside the church decided to resume a conversation after the bell. It was loud enough for me to hear across the nave. I was furious, but kept singing — and, then, playing some minimalist, basically motionless music Howard Skempton had written for a photo documentary presented some years ago by the BBC.
The music is so neutral that I would have thought it immune to the cartoon steam coming from my ears.
After I finished, one of the people who had come to listen or meditate walked up to me and said, “Wow, that was so full of angst.”
I was mortified — because I had probably ruined this person’s experience in the church that afternoon, and because I had broken a rule that I’ve spent so much time trying to make other people observe.
I think that this sort of invisible link between the inner and outer being goes beyond art. It has to, because we are more transparent than we think.
The purpose for this particular meditation is to stretch this lesson a little bit to marketing music: Could it be that if an organization doesn’t actually know why it is doing something, or if it is doing it for the wrong reasons, this will immediately become apparent in its ads, press releases, tweets and Facebook posts?
How else can we explain that, no matter how hard some presenters try to sell a particular production or concert, they just can’t fill all the seats in the hall?
I’d love to hear your thoughts on this.
John Terauds
- Classical Music 101: What Does A Conductor Do? - June 17, 2019
- Classical Music 101 | What Does Period Instrument Mean? - May 6, 2019
- CLASSICAL MUSIC 101 | What Does It Mean To Be In Tune? - April 23, 2019
