Musical Identity

There was a fascinating thread over on the Choralnet forums last month about the benefits or otherwise of wearing choir robes. It elicited a wide range of thoughtful and insightful responses – one of those discussions in which people had wildly contrasting views, all of which were perfectly reasonable and well-argued.

What emerged from the discussion was that the practice of wearing choir robes has very different meanings for different groups.

3/4 of Monkey Magic with a bag of trophiesLast Sunday saw a marathon BABS quartet prelims come to my erstwhile place of work, with 43 quartets competing in the national, senior and youth quartet contests. The biggest outcome of the day (though not the most surprising) was Monkey Magic winning the youth contest again to qualify to compete in the collegiate contest at International one more time before they get too old for it. After singing, they dashed off to Manchester to audition for Britain’s Got Talent, leaving their dads to receive the trophies on their behalf – which is quite endearing, and represents a lot that is going right in BABS right now. They did show their faces again in Birmingham right at the end of the day, though Alan had disappeared before I managed to get the photo!

The jury is out as to whether talent is in-born or whether it can be acquired. We do know, however, that it only shows up in people who have spent thousands of hours honing their craft. This obsessive, focused work often accounts for the teenage years – whether Picasso doing hundreds of small studies in figurative painting, or your stereotypical geek retreating from the difficulties of adolescent social life to write computer programs. But it can also come later: Van Gogh didn’t start painting until he was in his twenties, though once he started he went at it in a very intensive and focused way.

So, as Roy Castle used to sing, if you want to be the best, dedication’s what you need. This much is clear.

Out with the old......and in with the new

I bought a new piano recently. The one I grew up with (a hand-me-down from my great aunt) has done sterling service, but I have grown out of it. Since I’ve stopped working in a music college, where I had a lovely Yamaha upright in my office, I’ve been finding I miss being able to play a good instrument. It’s a long time since I’ve been playing at anything like a professional level, but pianism is still an important part of how I think.

Anyway, I had a mild revelation while talking to my mum about the quality of my old piano – the ways in which it’s okay, and the ways in which it’s limited.

LABBS Quartet champions, FinesseThe Ladies Association of British Barbershop Singers had their annual convention last weekend at Cheltenham Race Course, and the association looks like it’s in good health. The White Rosettes consolidated the new level they reached out for when they won two years ago, getting scores solidly into the 80s, and the next six places were all scoring into the 70s. Indeed, second-place average score of 79.9 would have produced a gold medal most years.

Something that I’ve explored in both my books is the idea of musical identity: how it is that you acquire the label (and the way of being) of cellist, or soprano, or barbershopper. I drew on the ideas of people like Anthony Giddens and Judith Butler to show how people acquire and maintain musical identities through a combination of patterns of behaviour and personal narratives. These internal autobiographies are developed through social interactions and draw on the cultural discourses that configure those identity types in wider culture.

Pretty much anybody involved in singing is likely to be proselytising about it at times. They’ll tell you how great it makes them feel physically and emotionally, and how it makes them feel more alive and true to themselves. It can all get a little mushy and self-congratulatory, especially at events that gather a lot of singers together. ‘Singing,’ Bob Chilcott announced to delegates at the Association of British Choral Directors convention one year, ‘can change the world!’

Yeah, so what we do is special and wonderful and powerful and important, but can we just get over ourselves? I sometimes think.

Every so often, though, you come across something that makes you think: this really is special and important and actually not mushy at all. An example would be this account by a lady called Jacqueline of her experience in joining the Reading Barberettes, quoted in Voicebox towards the end of last year:

One of the things that distinguishes skilled from less skilled choral groups is the relationship between breath control and musical structure. To be sure, there are lots of other things that distinguish them, but I find this one interesting for the way that it allows a fundamentally imaginative function – conception of musical shape – to be audible through a physical response.

All singers seem to breathe according to their understanding of musical shape. However, more skilled singers have developed the capacity to choose where this might be. They think about the music and, through a combination of intuitive response and conscious decision, place the breath points in places that group the words and/or notes into meaningful gestalts. That is, they work in phrases.

Less skilled singers seem to experience music in two-bar chunks, and will breathe after each pair of bars whatever is going on in the music and lyrics.