If this is a sign of things to come, I, for one, am
all for it, but there are implications which we are in danger of overlooking.
Yesterday I attended a recital given by the Stradivari
Quartet. They performed two of Schumann’s
quartet’s and Janáček’s Intimate Letters.
I reviewed it for the Straits Times so
if you are at all interested in my thoughts on their playing and programme, you
can read it on their website. What my
review does not mention was the matter which struck me most forcibly about
their visual presentation.
The first violin, Wang Xiaoming, appeared to be
playing from a large number of photocopied sheets stuck together in a kind of
concertina fashion which needed considerable reorganisation between
movements. Nothing wrong in that at all;
he can add his bowings and articulation markings without spoiling his original
copy and this allows him the flexibility to change subtleties in performance according
to the venue. I could not really see
from where I was sitting (and it didn’t help that in the row in front was a
particularly badly-behaved young boy), but I think he only used the one music stand
– although I would not have been surprised had he used two.
The second violin, Sebastian Bohren, played from a
standard copy placed squarely on the music stand before him. He had prepared his page turns and between movements
took the opportunity to check that all the necessary corners were turned up so
they were within easy reach once the playing was underway.
The cellist, Maja Weber, had an iPad on her music
stand, and periodically stabbed at it and delivered a dramatic swipe to move
the page along. So dramatic and aggressive were some of her swipes, that I
wondered how she had trained herself not to push through several pages at once,
but it all seemed to work well. Between movements
she adjusted the placing of the iPad on the stand in that habit all musicians
have in performance: you know the kind of thing which has pianists needlessly
adjusting the stool between movements, singers clearing their throats between
songs in case there might be an un-realised blockage, and orchestral players
moving their music slightly to the left or right on the stand, all for no
reason other than to expend a bit of pent-up nervous energy.
The viola player, Lech Antonio Uszynski, played from a
tiny tablet – possibly an iPad Mini – which he never once touched during the
performance. Presumably he turned the
pages by means of a foot pedal. This
meant that he concentrated solely on the viola and when he was not playing or
when there were breaks between movements, he sat patiently while all the others
in their various ways re-adjusted their music.
The issue of turning pages is a major concern. Pianists who use music often have to contend
with page-turners who are never quite sure when to turn, and there is a sense
that concentration is divided between playing the music and ensuring the page-turner
is there and ready to turn at the right moment.
Solo instrumentalists who need to use music – especially in new works –
often have to spread it out across several stands to prevent the need for a
page-turn, and I have even seen violinists use a page-turner out of
necessity. For organists it is a particularly
serious issue. Organists generally use music
in performance both because it is the tradition, but more particularly because,
with both hands and both feet fully occupied not only in playing notes but in
managing stops, pistons, combination pedals, swell pedals, toe pistons and the
like, there is far more which needs to be committed to memory than just the
basic notes. On top of that, no two
organs are in any way the same, and unless the organist only ever plays on the
same organ, the music is necessary to keep the mind focussed when in an alien environment
when stops, pistons, even numbers of keyboards, touch and resultant sound is so
different from that to which they may have become accustomed.
That organists do not need to have the music is
evidenced from the growing numbers of concert organists who play from memory,
but these are still the exception and most of us still rely on the music being
there to keep us, musically, on the straight and narrow. For us, the problems
are many: Which side does the page-tuner stand – it varies from organ to organ
and even from piece to piece? Is the page-turner going to obstruct the sight of
and access to the stops, located right where the page-turner’s armpit is
usually poised (and several page turners either need to use under-arm deodorant
or need to find a less offensive one)? And
is the page turner’s leg to get in the way when there is a pedal or piston set
over to the extreme edge of the pedalboard?
Players have come up with a range of solutions. Dame Gillian Weir used to paste miniature copies
of the music on a large sheet of hardboard, which negated the need for a
page-turner but which hastened the need for a strong pair of magnifying
spectacles. Others have spent many
tiresome hours pasting hand-written staves and cutting out various bars from
pages to make the page-turns possible by the player, while others abandon the
whole idea of being in control of the organ, and simply play the notes while
finding some mug of a page-turner who is willing to do everything else. I once turned for a Korean lady organist who
expected me to pull out and push in the stops, operate the thumb and toe
pistons and control the central swell pedal.
(I cannot resist the story about Gillian Weir and the
Hoddinott Organ Concerto. At one points
this instructs the organist to hold a large cluster with both hands and feet,
and marks it with a crescendo. Not wishing to offend the composer at the
work’s première by disobeying his clear direction, she asked the page-turner to
stand behind her and operate the swell pedal by pushing up a broomstick between
her legs. This was in Llandaff Cathedral
where the audience does not see the organ console: I fear it would not have
been a wise move in full public view, it could so easily have been
misconstrued.)
So technology, if it can obviate some of these problems,
is to be heartily welcomed. I have heard
of, although not seen, organs where the music stand is in fact a large computer
screen. You can scan the music into the
computer and it will appear on the screen.
Moreover, the technology allows it to roll on over each page without any
human intervention. I have even seen
music stands with built in screens on which the music can be read. There is the technology which allows the
music to move along with the speed of the performance, and jump back where
necessary with repeats and da capos. So
the days of swiping iPad screens in performance are numbered, certainly. But are the days of music hard copies on
stands also numbered?
Not necessarily, for, as the Stradivari showed, there
are implications.
Forgetting, for a moment, the slightly distracting
image of four players with four different kinds of music laid out before them
(after all, this is a period if transition, so we cannot expect everything to
be perfect every time), Uszynski unwittingly revealed the problem. What to do between movements?
When musicians fiddle with their music, we know the performance
is not over – they are clearly preparing for the next bit. Ridiculously, in this concert, the programme notes
did not delineate the movements of the works, which meant the audience had no
idea what to expect. So it was that,
while Wang and Bohren made it clear that, when they were not playing, they were
preparing to move by the simple act of rearranging their copies, Weber and
Uszynski had no such means of communicating this to the audience. Weber did her little trick, but Uszynski
simply sat there patiently looking at the others. If all four were using the iPad Mini system,
what would we have made of the bits between movements?
As a diploma examiner, I often commented on the
failings of candidates to gauge the distance between movements; the common problem
with young players is they rush between movements without sufficient space to
allow the brain to change gear from one tonality or musical mood to another. Sometimes the gap between movements is
dictated purely by the ease with which the page is turned – and I note players
who get their page-turners to turn between movements often miss the essential
spacing of movements; for my part I always insisted on turning my own pages
between movements as it helped both me and the audience appreciate the change
of mood within a single work.
The implication of this new technology is that those
who object to applause between movements (and I am not one of them) will have
much more cause to be offended in the future.
When we see four members of string quartet sitting silently doing
nothing, we will inevitably want to fill that silence with applause, while
those players who have traditionally spaced movements by the speed with which
they re-adjust their copies, will find no need to break between movements at
all, and we will get a spate of merged musical tonalities and moods which will
in its own way disrupt the flow of the music.
So roll on the new technology, but roll on the
understanding that it does not always solve every problem without creating a
few of its own.
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