Classical Music In My Life: Confessions Of A Confused Violinist, Part I
The first section of my doctoral dissertation, combining personal commentary on my work alongside some research, submitted in 2014
A few years ago, I got brave and sent my doctoral dissertation to Jincy Willett; she kindly proofread it and sent along comments and suggestions as well.
I recently made a new website, www.batyamacadamsomer.com, which is in part serving as a portfolio of my work from the past bunch of years, including my tenure as a grad student at UCSD from 2007-2014.
Organizing old work is helping to clarify where I’d like to be heading: which is generally toward a direction of getting the ideas that float around my head out and into the world in some tangible form.
So much of what I’d like to be exploring with this Substack account was established in my dissertation, so it feels appropriate to publish on here.
As always, thanks for reading!
What I’d like to do with this text is discuss my time at UCSD. But rather than focus on specific projects, I’m more interested in talking about larger questions that I’ve been trying to sort out through my work. The overarching question I have is this: what are we, as classical musicians, actually doing?
Making music is an obvious answer. But being a classical musician means certain things: it means interpreting scores, and it means operating within a specific cultural system that produces the genre of classical music.
These two factors- a classical music cultural system and the interpretation of scores- are aspects of the practice that I have focused on during my time at UCSD. My interest in them has risen out of a personal need to sort out my relationship to the violin. In coming to UCSD, I wanted not only to become a better violinist and musician, but also to expand my own understanding of what being a classical musician means.
All of this emphasis on meaning stems from a dissatisfaction; there are times when I don’t like being a classical musician. Times where it doesn’t feel good. When I say that, I don’t mean to suggest that I expect everything in life to feel easy and great. But it’s also important to acknowledge frustration and determine whether or not situations can be improved.
Prior to coming to UCSD, I was unsure of my future as a professional musician. On a personal level I knew that if I wanted to pursue a living as a violinist, I needed to address certain problems that were mostly concerned with performance anxiety. I realized that this was something that could only be solved by myself; but I also felt that I would be unable to do this in a typical conservatory setting.
This reasoning came from an overall sense of pressure that I feel emanates out of conservatories. Pressure not just in a literal sense of having to perform under pressure, being pressured to learn difficult music, pressured to practice, etc. But pressure to be a certain way- to have a particular outlook on making music, with a particular kind of purpose.
This sounds vague- and it was vague to me at the time. I had completed my undergraduate degree, receiving a Bachelor of Arts from The Manhattan School of Music, and felt, in all senses, tied up into knots. There were times when I thought I just wasn’t cut out to be a classical musician. But I didn’t want to abandon the violin completely. I didn’t feel as if I had had a chance to give it a proper shot. And I wanted to see if the frustrations I had with classical music lifestyle/culture could somehow be turned around. Perhaps, I thought, if I can redefine what being a classical musician means to me, I can enjoy being one.
I first heard about UCSD through composer friends: “They do crazy things out there.” It sounded appealing to me. Many of my positive experiences in New York came out of experimental collaborations with friends. This was mostly because there was a sense of fun and freedom involved in the process, something that had been lost in working on standard repertoire. I think this is a large draw for new music in that it is an arena where classical musicians can feel less inhibited.
On the other hand, the culture surrounding contemporary music practice can be just as rigid and conforming as any conservatory setting. And certainly for me, any lack of enjoyment in playing common practice music came not from the music itself but rather from the approach I was taking. My interests have never laid in specialization. What attracted me to UCSD was the prospect of an environment where I would have the time to evaluate my approach to both the violin and to music in general.
Time. Time to wander, time to get a little off track. Time to really rehearse. As a musician I value time more than anything. “Time is a luxury”- an attitude that has been reiterated to me often in reference to being a professional musician. And indeed, as I have been transitioning into the freelance world during this final year of my DMA, I have been terrible about managing my time. Even though it goes against my better judgment, I take on work because I’m afraid to say no to anything. It’s a common enough problem, and I’ll learn as I go. But I do know that in order to grow as a musician, I have to give myself time to actually hear things: to hear a piece when I’m not practicing or rehearsing it, hear it in other music, be reminded of it in movies, books, for example.
I understand the impracticality in securing ample rehearsal time. But I wish rehearsal time were coveted more, to the degree that musicians felt supported in the decision to take more time for their projects, rather than pressured to learn music quickly for the sake of presenting more music more often.
UCSD has been an environment where I have felt, at times, comfortable seeking out this kind of timeline. Part of the art of interpretation occurs, I would say, by following one’s own specific path. My path includes the writing of pop music critic/sociologist Simon Frith. I first came across Frith’s writing while working as a teaching assistant for The Beatles class. Frith’s essay, “Rock and the Politics of Memory” struck me immediately. The article’s main point- that the perceived failure of the 1960s cultural revolution is tied up in conflicting notions of what rock and pop stood for in the first place- situates music/listeners as part of a larger social narrative. Frith describes ideological shifts within society as expressed through the musical timeline of the decade: youthful optimism of mid 60s pop (The Beatles), mod rock style and irony (Buffalo Springfield, the Who), the emergence of rockstar bohemians as a facet of rock claims to poeticism and emotional sincerity (Jim Morrison, Janis Joplin), and the self-consciously anti commercial sounds of psychedelia (The Grateful Dead). To be a rock/pop listener at the time meant defining yourself through the tensions of pop artificiality/rock authenticity.
For Frith, it was the rock-as-meaningful vs. pop-as-superficial ideology of the time that missed the mark: “I don’t doubt rock’s achievements but its claims” (Frith 62). One reason pop mattered in the first place, he argues, was its comfort in expressing clichés and being silly. The rock world’s attempt to differentiate itself from pop as serious music resulted in a denial that rock singers/musicians were still tied up in mass/consumer culture. In post punk 70s terms, this surfaced as an insincerity- the exact opposite of what rock culture supposedly stood for- thus making 60s rock out as hypocritical and self-aggrandizing. The problem with this, Frith asserts, is that it glosses over why rock mattered (and continues to matter) in the first place. By reassessing rock music of the late 1960s not as a “valid art form” (Frith quoting George Martin, 60) but more broadly- as an expression of and backdrop for what it meant to be alive at the time- the appeal of the music can be better understood. For instance, Frith maintains that it is the banality, rather than the eloquence, of the Doors that makes them a relevant 60s rock voice. Like pop, rock is “a music of transitory private pleasures” (Frith 68). Ultimately, Frith concludes that both rock and pop are important not for their ability to evoke specific meaning but rather as environments in which we can safely face the ambiguity of meaning in our world.
This essay resonates with me in that Frith approaches musical meaning not as something fixed but as an expression of cultural context. In these terms, listening to/interpreting music means being an active participant within cultural practices. Frith writes, “the politics of pop lie in what people do with it, how they use it to seize a moment, define a time, cull meaning around official knowledge ” (Frith 68).
What, then, are the politics of classical music? What do people do with it? Why does classical music matter?
These questions are always on my mind, and were there when I prepared for and presented my three doctoral recitals. The program of my first DMA recital consisted of György Kurtág’s Kafka Fragments, Book 1; Morton Feldman’s Voice, Violin, and Piano; The B Flat Major Violin Sonata, KV 454 by W.A. Mozart; reading by Nils Vigeland; and the premier of Clint McCallum’s were running through the woods. Tiffany Du Mouchelle had approached me about learning the Kurtág as she was going to be attending a workshop on the piece and wanted an opportunity to work on it beforehand. I had heard some Kurtág performed before but had never learned anything by him, so I readily agreed. I chose the Mozart because I had never seriously studied one of his violin sonatas and decided it was time. Nils Vigeland is a member of the composition faculty at Manhattan School of Music. He was one of my favorite professors at the school, so I was honored when he wrote a piece for the two of us to collaborate on. At this point, 2010, we had performed the work once before and were scheduled to play the work again in New York. I needed to work on it anyway and liked the idea of playing a piece by Nils at UCSD. Nils had studied with Feldman and was greatly influenced by him, so I thought it would be interesting to include a Feldman piece on the concert as well.
Rounding out the program: I was interested in working with a composer at UCSD. One day I overheard Clint McCallum talking about a violin piece he was writing for a friend. I asked him about it and he explained that the work was based on the sound of women’s screams in particular horror film scenes. The idea of the violin as/commenting on women’s voices intrigued me. I had recently watched Robert Altman’s film 3 Women, in which the characters’ identities swap, and began to consider each piece on the recital as a space to explore characters/voices/emotional states. The Kurtág and Feldman both feature voice, so it was interesting to look at ways in which the violin and voice, as well as the piano in the Feldman, shared a voice, became two/three voices, merged and then separated, commented on another voice, had dialogues, and so forth.
Nils’ piece is for violin and piano and is written without a specific meter or tempo. The violin and the piano operate on their own time but exist within one sound world. Where individual phrases and fragments never line up in the same way, the instruments move through larger sections together. Kate Lukács performed with me on this piece as well as the Mozart and Feldman (where Stephanie Aston joined for the voice part). We would typically work on the Vigeland and Mozart in one rehearsal and I enjoyed thinking of the Mozart as if it were in the flexible realm of reading. Though in the Mozart our parts were very much aligned, I tried to imagine the motion of the music moving through spaces where time itself became plastic, bendable.
Besides the works themselves, it struck me that each performer involved was a woman. Tiffany and I started the concert out together with the Kurtág, which then moved into Clint’s piece, a solo. I began the second half with the Feldman, featuring Kate and Stephanie, and then closed the concert with Kate, doing Nils’ piece followed by the Mozart. The order of the concert was influenced somewhat by 3 Women- I particularly liked the idea of beginning and ending the concert with the duos, whereby the end Tiffany had morphed into Kate and the voice had morphed into the piano through the experience of the McCallum and Feldman. Through all of this, the violin acted as both a constant (remaining a violin) and as a shapeshifter, trying on the identity of a voice and a piano.
Around this time I had picked up Frank Kogan’s Real Punks Don’t Wear Black. The book is quoted in Simon Frith’s Performing Rites, and Frith mentions Kogan personally in the book as being a good friend and influential colleague. Real Punks features a variety of Kogan’s work: personal essays, album/artist reviews, and excerpts from various blogs he writes for. In an essay from 1995, Kogan compares the vocal styles of Courtney Love and Mariah Carey. He describes his admiration for Hole (the band of Courtney Love) and the deep emotional intensity of Love’s voice. Carey, he feels, is flippant with her voice. But though Carey is “totally irresponsible” with the emotions in her music he admires her style, writing, “...she’s splashing all over the pool and off the planet, leaping buildings and outracing bullets.” Love, on the other hand, is too careful. “When she sings, ‘Someday you will ache like I ache,’ yes, you really get it, there’s the ache...But, you know, everything else turns off, the juice and the splash of music disappear while she’s delivering the ache ” (Kogan xix).
I was preparing for this first DMA recital and presented Clint’s piece in Focus class (a masterclass setting). Anthony Burr was running the course at the time and commented that my rendering of the screaming was, as he heard it, constraining the sound. Where other composers might have written the piece more graphically (“play high and fast in repeating rhythms”), Clint notated the screams with detailed rhythmic and pitch patterns- a quarter tone here, the notes moving in this order here, a patterns of four and three alternating, etc. These details were getting lost in my attempt to create a blood curdling sound, to be terrified/terrifying. Anthony had me play some of the work again, where I tried to let go a little and allow the sound to reverberate and sing: to embrace Clint’s violinistic and virtuosic writing. The result was exciting- more energy, more sound. More music.
I can’t remember which occurred first— the Focus performance or reading the bit in Real Punks— but regardless, the two experiences are linked in that both address the relationship between earnestness and expressivity within interpretation. I have always leaned towards the “Love” paradigm: thinking in emotional modes of interpretation as in am I conveying the _____ quality of this phrase. The virtuoso aspect- the tactile display- I find more difficult to embrace. There are times when I have a very clear idea of what I want to sound like but I’m physically disengaged, or frustrated, or stressed in some way- the result of which is that whatever I’m going for doesn’t get realized.
I’ve been fortunate to have time to sort this out at UCSD. The Alexander Technique has been incredibly useful in connecting what I’m doing physically to what I’m trying to do musically. I’ve come to realize that virtuosity can be expressive- Kogan’s point about Mariah Carey- and this has given me a new vantage point in relating to the violin. But what’s also important here is the connecting line between two different musical worlds. Kogan’s writing and Anthony’s message in Focus situate were running through the woods alongside Courtney Love and Mariah Carey. I can listen to their voices and gain insight into my own practice- and simultaneously become more acquainted with their work, their history, the people they collaborate with, their influences, and so on. In this sense, the practice of classical music is no longer just about conservatory traditions- it’s also about listening and developing a musical sensibility from any source.