Posts By: willcwhite

Vitalis and barbasol

On the subject of male dress for classical concerts

There are, essentially, four options.  From the most formal to the least:

(1) White Tie: a dress coat (i.e. tails); a well-starched white shirt (piqué); cummerbund, suspenders or (preferably) a white piqué vest; black patent leather shoes; and of course, a white piqué bow tie.

(2) Black Tie: black tuxedo, white tuxedo shirt (ruffled or non-), cummerbund or suspenders, black patent leather shoes, black bow tie.

(3) Suits: dark suit (black, grey or, in a real pinch, navy blue… my condolences to the owners of navy blue suits everywhere), white shirt, tie of choice (see below), black shoes.

(4) All Black: the most formal variation being a tuxedo with a black turtleneck underneath.

But definitions will get us only so far.  The question is on which occasions should each of these costumes be worn?  It is with regards to this question that I frequently encounter such pitiable ignorance — or even sheer lack of concern (!)

White Tie is worn by professional orchestras at regular subscription concerts.  It is also worn by guys intent on “tickling pink” their particular dame on a given Saturday night.  In either situation, the gleam from the gentlemen’s torsos casts an intoxicating, radiant shimmer on the proceedings.

Black Tie is worn by community and student orchestras for their regular concerts.  It is also worn by professional orchestras during the summer season, with one particular alteration: white dinner jackets rather than black.

Suits are to be worn at any concert taking place before the evening, or at any evening concert where a slightly less formal atmosphere is desired.  While suits are not nearly as formal as White Tie, they are not such a drop down from Black Tie to render them inappropriate for formal concerts.  They may also be worn by certain (often European) orchestras during their summer seasons.

All Black dress is reserved for two particular situations: new music concerts (where the dress code is interpreted as “dark” and “edgy”) and playing in pit orchestras (more often for musicals than opera).  All black should never be worn during a daytime concert of standard repertoire music; suits are the appropriate garb for such occasions.  The amount of difficulty I have encountered in trying to convince student musicians of this most self-evident of rules defies explanation.

Then comes the all-important question: what does the conductor wear?  I believe I can answer this with one simple word: concordance.  The conductor should simply wear whatever the gentleman of the orchestra are wearing.  This rule applies equally as well to lady conductors as to their gentleman counterparts.

even3Now that the basics have been established, one may consider certain variations and exceptions.  Many conductors use variations in their wardrobe to present an individualized podium presence.  The so-called “Nehru” jacket is a form of attire worn by a great many conductors to show how individual they are.  This can be appropriately worn with an orchestra wearing either White or Black Tie, but not suits.

There is then what I like to call the “Leonard Slatkin”:

white-tie-black-shirtThis is a dress frequently worn by Mr. Slatkin and historically associated with various mafioso types.  A sort of “inverted Black Tie”, this outfit defies easy categorization.  It has a solemn, yet bold overall appearance, and combines the class of a tuxedo with the “attitude” of all black.

I myself have worn this dress on occasion: mainly in pits and at Good Friday services.  

Kudos to Mr. Slatkin for picking up on my trend-setting idea.

The conductor may also opt for various bow tie replacements: simple studs that match one’s cuff links are a popular option, as are a number of alternate collar types that require no tie at all.

A few additional notes: White Tie offers no real chances for individual variation; the basic elements of costume itself offer all the magnificence that a normal imagination could ever desire.  Black Tie offers one chance to stand out: the cuff links.  A suit, on the other hand, has the singular advantage of allowing its wearer considerable room to express himself in the choice of tie.  One important consideration is that, if at all possible, the tie should match the specific character of the music.  I, for example, have worn purple to conduct Dvorak, a somber blue for the Elgar Cello Concerto, and pink for Beethoven’s 1st.

The chance to wear formal attire, specifically tails, was perhaps the principal motivation behind my choice to become a conductor.  Were I to limit my musical activities to composing, dressing up would hardly an option.  Most composers look like total schlubs, including me when I am just sitting around the house writing music.  Case in point:

Mr. Berio, ready for his next Scorsese cameo

berio

Mr. Ligeti, in one of his two (2) outfits (although in his latter years, this may have been reduced to one (1))

13ligeti190

Kramer, the minimalist

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And of course, the great nineteenth century Russian composer, ZZ Top

repin-mussorgsky

And now, statues of the Vienna Philharmonic

This creeps me out:

 

Do you notice the bizarre motionlessness of the players?  I’ve never seen anything so surreal.  How did Herbie get all of those musicians to remain so perfectly still for this performance??  Frankly, in certain shots it appears to me that these gentlemen are not even playing.  Take a look particularly at the brass fanfare at 0:31 — is the fourth trumpeter playing?  Woodwinds at 3:15 – is the principal flute playing?

Now check out the shot of the violins at 3:37.  When have you ever seen a row of violins in straight formation like this?  Yesterday while I was watching Karajan’s similar video of Dvorak 8, I hypothesized that they must have re-shot several of these segments after the performance so they could get the right camera angles (and ensure that the lighting was perfect for the glowing halo surrounding the orchestra).

The sound is, of course, über-Karajan — very precise, very aggressive and yet with a pristine wash over the whole texture.  This particular clip doesn’t reveal as much the very dishonest engineering job that was done to the balances — that is to say, the sound here is not really reflective of the actual performance of the orchestra, it was largely engineered in the control room.

The overall effect is a little bit terrifying.  The military-like rigid formations, the doctored, in-your-face sound, the halos surrounding Karajan and the orchestra — what was Karajan’s goal here?  Dare I say the whole thing is just a bit Nazi-ish?  Why would such a superb musician want to present his music this way?  I think we can safely assume that Karajan supervised every detail of these videos…

Now let’s compare.  Same orchestra, same hall, same time (give or take 1 year), but different conductor:

 

UNbelievable!!  Look at how much the musicians move when given the chance!  You’ll have to wait a bit, but look at around 1:40.  The orchestra looks like a living, breathing organism, completely invested and physically experiencing the music.  The sound is so much more open and real.  We get the impression that Kleiber loves the music and lets the musicians express themselves.  Look at how cheeky the oboist can be with his coquettish little solo at 1:52.  It’s inspiring.

I feel with Karajan that he cared less about the quality of the musicians (who cares, we’ll change it in the editing room) than the fact that they are a bunch of Aryan men who can serve as a set piece to maximize his God-like persona.  With Kleiber, I get the sense that all he cares about is that this orchestra is a body of musicians who are part of a vitally living tradition of playing the greatest works of all time.

Also, notice how Karajan does not allow the beautiful Musikverein itself to be filmed, lest the magnificence of Valhalla outshine Odin himself.

And then of course, there’s Lenny:

 

Need we say any more?

mais, in tempo

From the score of Beethoven’s 9th Symphony, movement 4, we read the following instruction:

“Selon le caractère d’un Recitativ mais, in tempo”

My interest in this simple phrase is a perfect example of why I don’t exactly “fit in” to the classical music world.  That is to say, I just don’t think the people around me quite appreciate the linguistic deliciousness of the writing.  Look at it!  It’s basically in French, but with a Germanized (and capitalized, no less) Italian word, ending in an Italian phrase.  And what’s that comma doing there?  Shouldn’t it read “…Recitativ, mais in tempo?”  Is that some kind of a linguistic marker?  What’s going on here??

I suppose the fact that nobody blinks an eye when they see this marking is maybe just as interesting.  Musicians, and I want to say especially conductors, end up talking in this weird sort of lingua franca made up of terms from all the big musical languages.  I guess this just proves that the tendency has been around for close to 200 years.

Is this sort of thing not interesting?  Leonard Slatkin brought up this term in my conducting class the other day, but all he wanted to talk about was how to interpret these words musically!  I really wanted to get into this whole linguistic commentary, but somehow it seemed so totally inappropriate; thus was my enthusiasm stifled.

On a wholly unrelated note, it came out today that I am an unapologetic disliker of Federico Fellini’s 8 1/2 and you would think I had insulted somebody’s baby.  Just because half of my lunch mates were Italian, I don’t see what there is to get so excited about.  It’s not like I dissed Sergio Leone or something.  In fact, I’d gladly take a Spaghetti Western over that cerebral FF crap any day.  And I take offense to the immediate supposition that I somehow “don’t understand what it’s about”.  I understand perfectly well.  In fact, I would say I gave that movie every chance — I researched it, read about it, stayed awake during (most) of it.  What more do you want people?  It just doesn’t resonate with me.

Give me Pedro any day.

Madrigal a 5 voci

for Brass Quintet

This is a single-movement work in a genre that is sort of starting to define a large part of my output – let’s call it a “psychological tone poem”.  The idea is that there is a narrative program behind the music, but the music occasionally forays into areas beyond the possibilities of traditional narrative (as music is wont to do).  I suppose it’s sort of my spin on a Lynchian mode of story-telling, although I would argue that composers of art music have been doing this sort of thing for centuries.

I imagine this particular piece taking place in Northern Italy around 1600.  A noble family entertains themselves by singing a madrigal at the home.  The deranged son of this family becomes obsessed with the plot of this madrigal, in which a beautiful young princess is courted by a prince from far off but ends up dying at the hands of fate (or something… isn’t that basically what happens in all of these madrigals?)  One of the singing family members (the top soprano, no less) bears a strong resemblance to the beautiful princess in the madrigal story.  This is rather unfortunate for her, because the story of the madrigal becomes all to real in the mind of her demented young relative, who kills her in order to fulfill the story’s ending.  The natural harmonic playing of the horn is a major element of the piece, representing the deranged offspring and providing the opening horn calls as the murder is chased through the woods.

I wrote this piece on commission from a highly virtuosic chamber ensemble, the Gaudete Brass Quintet.  Unfortunately, the fact that this group does most of its concertizing in educational and church settings means that my piece hasn’t, uh, exactly fit into their programming schedule as of yet (which is probably for the best as far as their audiences are concerned).  Luckily, I had the chance to premiere and record the piece with a splendid group of students during the summer of ’10 at the Pierre Monteux School in Hancock, ME.  A special shout-out goes to the very able Mirella Gable, a horn student at Eastman for tackling this wicked and bizarre part!

Love on the Rocks

Revels 2009.  Emma and Trip sing a beautiful ballad while “Marooned” (<– get it??) on the Galapagos Islands. Emma thinks only of the cold Chicago winters and the life of the mind; Trip thinks only of Emma. The brilliant lyrics for this song were written by a man I truly admire and am privileged to count as a friend, the writer Ted Fishman.

This is my second try at writing a real Disney-esque ballad. The first is here.

Ted’s lyrics:

Emma: Alone in my room, where it’s cold,
I feel ideas burning.
Alone in my room, there’s sunshine,
from the minds of great thinkers.

I sit happy there, in the stale air
Where my only care is for theory.
And here I walk on a tortoise stalk,
On this isle so bleak and dreary.

I miss Hyde Park, I miss the snow,
I miss Hyde Park, Professor’s Row.

The Quad with it’s faux Gothic gates,
The Reg and the late night debates.
Take me home from this tropical bay
To my city gray.

Trip: Out here in the sun, where it’s warm
Cool off, you’re overheating.
Out here in the sun, we have a chance
To live as God’s creatures.

This is no dead rock – it’s chocablock,
All around, life is revolving,
And here we walk on our tortoise stalk,
Down an aisle where we’re evolving.

Embrace my heart, embrace my soul,
Embrace my heart, lose all control.

Our minds in wide open space,
The world is a fine nesting place.
Shake away your tropical blue,
I love you.

E: Embrace your heart?
T: Embrace my soul!
E: But how to start?
T: Oh you will know

Both: We’re like minds about our affection.
We’re each other’s natural selection.
Wherever we roam, we are home.