Ian Sidden

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A Corner for Gratitude

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There was a moment in Die Blume von Hawaii, where I always tried to pay meta attention to what was happening and feel gratitude for it. Laya and Lilo Taro were singing in subdued light, while the rest of the cast and chorus were frozen, having just sung a big ensemble.

I was singing as Kanako Hilo and was situated center at the front corner of a high platform. One step forward, and I’d fall several meters to the stage, but while frozen, my sight could linger on the audience without it being weird. The music and the lights all came together in a swirling magic, and the drop in front of me provided the private illusion of flying.

In this moment, I felt intense appreciation for the audience’s presence, and I saw how lucky I was to be onstage singing. I reminded myself that I was there through a mixture of effort and sacrifice and luck, and that I had wanted this and was getting it at that moment. I knew I shouldn’t let it silently pass by without that recognition.

There was a similar moment in Don Giovanni, where everyone other than Don Giovanni himself was silent and sitting down in a semi-circle. I loved this production and this scene in particular, so it always came naturally that I felt gratitude for it. Masetto was in a rough place, but Ian was happy and was acutely aware of that happiness.

The gratitude was, however, tied to the knowledge that it wouldn’t last forever. Writing this now, these productions of Blume and Don Giovanni are gone, and the likelihood that I’ll get to do them again is almost nil. More broadly, I’m aware that I won’t get to sing professionally forever. There will come a day, whether by choice or not, where this path will come to an end.

And even more broadly, all of this that is now will pass. And by maintaining some corner of the mind for being grateful now, perhaps we can know that we’ve had our fill when the time comes to let go.

You Know Nothung, Jon Snow

Please forgive the joke in the title ha ha ha…

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Some characters in A Song of Ice and Fire/Game of Thrones have some serious similarities to characters in Der Ring des Nibelungen. But first:

If you haven’t read the books comprising George R. R. Martin’s A Song of Ice and Fire and watched the show Game of Thrones, then you should stop right here, because I’m getting into spoilers right away. Some of them involve spoilers that are show only, which have – as of this writing – gone beyond the books’ plots. On Reddit, this would correspond to a SPOILERS EXTENDED post.

Ok?

I recommend the books whole-heartedly. I also recommend the show (the moments of greatness more than cancel out the moments of not-so-greatness), but the books are the real love of my heart when it comes to this story. Part of the joy is not knowing what the books are actually about through most of their telling, which spoilers ruin.

I also think you should watch or listen to Wagner’s Der Ring des Nibelungen since it’s an incredibly grand fantasy with moments that stand as pinnacles of musical drama 1. If you’ve noticed the recurring musical motifs that accompany Star Wars or Game of Thrones, you have Richard Wagner’s influence to thank.

That said, I don’t think spoilers ruin the Ring in the way they might for A Song of Ice and Fire, so you can read on.

[Read more…]

The Great Courses: Mozart

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Mozart Great Courses Cover Image

After I completed my Mozart listening month, I came across and listened to the Mozart Great Courses lectures via Audible, written by and narrated by Professor Robert Greenberg.

Audible writes this within its larger summary:

Beginning with an examination of the many myths that surround Mozart to this day, Professor Greenberg offers not only an understanding of his music, but also a realistic view of Mozart the boy and man, from his emergence as youthful prodigy to his posthumous deification.You’ll learn about his difficult and ultimately doomed relationship with his father, his troubled marriage, his relationships with luminaries like Haydn, Emperor Joseph II, and his operatic librettist, Lorenzo da Ponte, and the triumphs and disappointments that marked his career – including the astonishing and inexplicable creative recovery that enabled him to create his great Masonic opera, The Magic Flute, only months before his death.

That’s a good summary, though the lectures aren’t a simple narrative of his life.

Professor Greenberg has a few central arguments that form the backbone of the lectures. Primarily, he argues that Mozart was a normal human being who nevertheless was prodigiously gifted at all things musical. The myths that surround Mozart, rather than enhancing our understanding of him, only serve to obscure his actual genius, which – make no mistake – was so great that we might become uncomfortable with the simple fact of it. They also obscure some of the tragedies of his life, such as his early death.

Additionally, the influence of his father Leopold was more complicated and uglier than I had previously understood, and that relationship also serves as part of the central backbone to the lectures.

In total, the lectures aren’t especially long, and you could listen to them all within a day if you really wanted to. I spread them out amidst my various other listenings, and they were always immediately re-engaging when I returned to them. Professor Greenberg has a very entertaining style of speaking, but he does maintain a sense of authority and genuine love for the subject.

You can find the lectures here:

http://www.audible.com/pd/Arts-Entertainment/Great-Masters-Mozart-His-Life-and-Music-Audiobook/B00DCY41GU

Mozart Month: Day 31 with his Divertimento in D

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Today is the last day of this project. So let’s end it with something that is – theoretically at least – light. A divertimento should be diverting, no?

The Recording

Divertimento in D Major K. 136

Allegro

  • Steady 8th note pulse in bass.
  • Lots of imitative entrances.
  • Kind of frenetic actually.
  • Second violins get extended sixteenth note passage. Exhausting.
  • There’s some passing of activity between first and second violins. The other two voices keep churning away at that pulse.
  • Light hearted, yes, but not easy.

Andante

  • More equal activity in all voices.
  • Still energetic. Just slower. But there’s a lot happening.
  • Mozart did like his hovering sustained high tones.
  • Lots of parallel (two and three voices) activity, and as usual with Mozart it’s very attractive.
  • Beautiful piece.

Presto

  • Ah, the eighth note pulse is back.
  • Wow, the three-voiced parallel harmonies from the second movement are also here, but they’ve picked up the tempo. It’s a very thick melodic sound whenever it’s used.
  • Extended imitative section. A fugue-ish resemblance, but I don’t think it’s a full on fugue.
  • Short and sweet.

Takeaways

I thought about doing a “big” final listen, but life got in the way. And honestly, I’m glad I didn’t. I live in a world of “big” Mozart, and any of us who spend most of our time in the opera world will also mostly know Mozart by his great operas.

But what’s been so revealing about this project is how he could scale from big to small. I had some inkling of that, but it’s been hammered into me throughout this past month. This piece is an example. It’s written for string orchestra, but it can also be played as a quartet:

It works, right? So much of Mozart’s music is a celebration of what makes an individual instrument great. A single hovering pitch played by an instrument gives us some time to appreciate how lovely and different that particular pitch can sound. Or a group of similar instruments. And those instruments move together and each occupy a slot meant just for them. There’s rarely extraneous players in a Mozart piece regardless of orchestra size.

Which is also what makes playing Mozart so difficult. Our bare musicianship is exposed without anywhere to hide. That’s true for singers, and it’s true for instrumentalists. We must ask ourselves, are we good enough to perform this music? We might be good enough to sound the notes in the proper rhythm, but can we reveal the celebration of the instrument of music of life that is at the center of the composition? Can we work for years perfecting our craft in order to make something sound fun or even funny even though it’s outrageously demanding? Can we express sadness or beauty or love without overt sentimentality or without resorting to non-musical choices? That’s harder, and it requires a shift in how we judge ourselves and the world around us and the values with which we go about our lives.

Anyway, it’s been a pleasure taking the time to explore this music. Obviously, there’s a lot more music to listen to, so my journey needn’t necessarily stop here. And I believe my bias when I began this project was basically correct. Mozart is worth it.