Music in the Community: from Activity to Aspiration

(These remarks were given to a national meeting of Junior Leagues, many of whom have musical ensembles as part of the service they offer to their communities. I realize it's long, but I've been asked to post it.)

Communities like ours are full of music, and as much as the opposite may seem to be true, their music is hardly affected by an economic downturn. While decreasing government funds mean less financial support for the largest musical institutions, like symphony orchestras and opera companies, people in civic groups, churches and schools will continue to sing together and play their instruments. Band parents will sell a few more hot dogs and churches will hear familiar anthems a little more, but music will always go on.
What is it about music that creates this ubiquitous reality? Why is it that organizations that are geared toward the good of the community, like churches or Junior Leagues, will expend enormous effort and resources to provide music as part of the service they render?
Obviously, many conversations could be exhausted before we began to describe the attractiveness and necessity of the arts in our society. The truth is, we have music all around because we love music. It accompanies us on our journey, and the more important the journey, the more we need music. Think of the movies that reflect our modern life: people don’t fall in love, make love, or leave love behind without a sound track. Think of real life: in my life as a church musician, my job is to provide appropriate music for such things as the ancient religious practices of dedicating an infant to God, gathering people to prayer, or asking them to give their hard-earned money. Music accompanies all our important moments. And, because music is art, it is an inexhaustible source of both pleasure and challenge. Put succinctly, it is the best we can do.
My mentor, Robert Shaw, was fond of saying that the arts are the “flesh become word.” His reversal of the mystical biblical metaphor from the Gospel of John was intended to convey his belief that, among all our earthly activities, the ones that will survive us after we are gone are our efforts to create art.
We remember Leonardo and Michelangelo, but we have to read history to be reminded of Savanarola, the Florentine priest who was responsible for burning books, paintings, and other “pagan” extravagances in the town square. He sought to “save” society, but it was the artists who extended the influence of the Florentine Renaissance through the successive centuries.
Consequently, I don’t think it’s a stretch to say that what we accomplish in our community-based artistic endeavors matters. It is obvious that our accomplishments matter to us, for we commit enormous time and effort to them. But I think they matter to our communities as well, for they add beauty and good will to the environment in which we live and share. And they are our only endeavors that stand to have a lasting impact beyond our mortal years.
A common misconception among spectators is that what we do is just another activity, like the spinning class or the book club. I would like for us to focus our attention on our responsibility for making sure that our singing groups aren’t just activities, equal among other activities, but rather aspirational endeavors that are life-giving to society and rewarding to us as participants.
How can we move from activity to aspiration?
First, let’s consider technique. The earliest warning sign that a musical endeavor should be viewed as just a time-occupying activity is the absence of appropriate technique. How does a rehearsal begin? Is there an atmosphere of expectation, punctuality and professionalism that indicates that music-making is taken seriously? I can think of situations in which a musical director or teacher has jettisoned the idea of technical musical training because the members of their group were having too enjoyable a time performing at a low technical level. These directors are afraid that the fun will be lost if they work on vocal technique or music-reading skills. I would suggest that the fun will begin when these challenges are met, and that the rewards of successful singing and music-reading are far greater and more fun than the feeling of limping through the musical forest humming a happy tune.
Our singers need to regularly experience the things that will lead to vocal success. An excellent director will devise warm-up exercises that build strong habits with the muscle groups involved in singing, and that create attention to tone, pitch and uniformity of vowels. These can be fun in themselves if thoughtfully planned, and can increase the pleasure derived from the accomplishments of the impending rehearsal.
In my brief experience with the Choral Group of the Junior League of Birmingham, I have seen a model for this approach. Their desire for excellent vocal technique never changes, whether they are rehearsing for a classical program or a show-tune program. It is part of the reason they work hard. It is aspiration.
Next, let’s discuss repertoire. In my world of church music this is an explosive topic. Whole religious denominations have changed over the issue of the musical repertoire used in the services. It is no less explosive for music educators. Schools hire and fire choral directors based on their inclination toward pop-oriented Show Choir music, or classical music. People seem to have very strong emotional attachments to the music they hear. It could become another day-long conversation for us. But I don’t want to divert into that subjective discussion. I would guess that the singers whose directors are here today feel a need to sing in a variety of musical styles, just as I do in my position in the church.
Rather, I’d like for us to consider repertoire as it relates to our formative idea of moving from activity to aspiration. In other words, if the music we select can be performed easily, as a kind of activity, that is different from repertoire choices that cause us to aspire to sing them. Repertoire is the word that describes the place where the challenge lies for us. And, while style is an important factor, there is aspirational repertoire in every style of choral music.
When I am choosing music for a choir I direct, I am thinking of a balance between the need to accomplish excellence in performance in a finite period of rehearsal time, and the need for the piece to lead the choir to a new place in their journey toward musical excellence. For example, if the piece is a Renaissance motet, I am considering whether it might have opportunities to teach about “musica ficta”, or antiphonal singing, and I know my choir is going to improve in the areas of phrasing and linear singing. If it is Baroque or Classical, I am looking for opportunities to sing with orchestra, and learn about that particular articulation and acoustical challenge. If it is Romantic, we are learning about expression. The twentieth-century repertoire is presenting learning opportunities related to scale systems and unresolved dissonances. In folk-songs and ethnic music we are learning a sociological lesson, and in pop styles we are experiencing rhythmic varieties like syncopation, and harmonic challenges like crunchy jazz chords.
In other words, repertoire choices are far more important than just our judgment about their crowd-pleasing possibilities. Because music is art, each piece we choose should have levels of appropriateness, of which the most superficial is its immediate attractiveness. We have already discussed the aspiration for better vocal technique. Our repertoire choices are directly related to that aspiration, and should help us meet the challenge of training our groups to aspire to better, more meaningful and rewarding singing. Repertoire is the part of our challenge that most directly relates to the community’s need for beauty and art. We can help our community aspire to be a better place in which to live through our repertoire choices.
The third area of aspiration I would like to mention is the idea of musical collaboration. As I have become older and more experienced as a musical leader, I have grown less inclined to view my career as a kingdom. I can remember many professional conversations in which phrases are used such as “my singers,” “my choir,” “my concert.” For many music professionals, we have invested so much personal energy into our work that we start to view the organizations we direct as an extension of ourselves. There is no doubt that a musical ensemble begins to take on some of the characteristics of its leader, and to the degree that the director is psychologically and musically healthy, that is a good part of the process. But we must not isolate ourselves into little kingdoms that are artificially competitive with each other. We must not feel threatened by the success of our colleagues. And our communities will be stronger if we will occasionally combine our efforts, rather than only performing on our own.
Here in Birmingham there is a lot of excellent choral music going on. Several well-known and high-powered conductors direct as many good choirs. But I am happy to report that there is a great sense of mutual respect and support. Tonight I will be singing in the chorus for the Alabama Symphony’s performance of Orff’s Carmina Burana. The chorus will include the Birmingham Concert Chorale, of which I am a member, and the choruses from three area colleges. This collaboration is good for all the organizations, and especially good for the community.
Singers from the Junior League of Birmingham joined me for concerts in Birmingham and New York last year, and will be with me in Vienna this summer. Those concerts also included people from other choruses in Birmingham, including high school, college and adult singers. And we’re currently planning for Shanghai in 2010. Whether I am singing in the chorus or conducting, it is obvious to me that the collaboration of other professionals and hard-working singers makes me a better musician, and creates a great artistic atmosphere for Birmingham.
Musicians need each other, because it is difficult musically and financially for us to aspire. And our communities need for us to need each other. They are a more willing audience and funding source if they feel that we have put our egos aside, and are aspiring to great responsibility as well as great musical accomplishment.
Last year, as we prepared to sing the Mozart Requiem, a friend of mine who is Jewish began to attend my church choir rehearsals on Wednesday night. An experienced singer, he wanted to enjoy the Mozart, so he became an adjunct member of the church choir for a while. And during that time he engaged us in an interesting and enlightening discussion of the interred Jews in the Terezin Concentration Camp who, without any sheet music, and with a piano that had no legs, learned the Verdi Requiem by rote and performed it for their Nazi captors as a means of staying alive. They didn’t subscribe to the ancient Christian fear-mongering of the Requiem text, and they didn’t necessarily know one another, but they combined their efforts because the presentation of art fed their souls and calmed their captors.
This is similar in my mind to the artistic accomplishment of the African-American Spiritual. Enslaved people singing because words alone couldn’t possibly express their most inner needs and feelings created an art-form that we can only begin to understand and render successfully.
These singers needed each other, and they needed to sing, and collaboration happened. Less dramatic reasons exist for all of us to collaborate. Last Saturday I was asked to plan and lead a service at the Sixteenth Street Baptist Church in Birmingham, the sight of the terrorist bomb that took the lives of four little girls as they attended church on September 15, 1963. The service was attended by members and clergy from twenty or so traditionally white and black religious groups, who gathered to express their desire to unify in worship and service to the poor. President Jimmy Carter was the speaker, and singers combined from four area choirs. Dancers came from Troy University, and an entire program was created around the idea of unity.
The congregation was inspired and challenged by the art and the words of the service. But those of us who collaborated to lead the service had a once-in-a-lifetime existential jolt. We wondered, “What took us so long?” when we found such kinship in singing with people who live a few miles and a whole universe away from us. Our collaboration will lead to future partnerships, and our musical enterprise will change our community for the better. Together, we will all aspire to be more musically and societally than we have been.
So let me end where I started. Music matters. And the effort we expend in our preparation to perform our music is an early indicator of the degree to which we realize how much it matters. Here is a story that describes what I mean. I had a friend named Judy who was an elementary music teacher in the town where I directed music at a church. At a young age Judy was diagnosed with cancer. She was told to prepare for difficult treatment with a low probability of success. So she went through the nausea, hair-loss and general “crumbiness” of chemotherapy while continuing to teach music to her students. Neither she nor her doctors expected her to complete the school year.
About six years later, after she had outlasted several doctors’ diagnoses, teaching music all the while, I heard that things had gotten worse, and that she really was in her last days. It was terribly sad news after she had beaten the odds for so long. And it was made worse by the fact that we were entering the Christmas season.
As a church musician, I was terribly busy with final preparations for our annual Christmas concert. It was an event that a large part of the community attended, and it featured a full orchestra and several choirs in a repertoire that alternated between classical pieces and Christmas carols.
At a certain moment in the program I would turn to lead the audience in singing “The First Nowell”, and when I did I noticed a lot of faces turned toward a spot in the balcony. They had a surprised look, as if something inappropriate was going on. So while I continued to conduct my eyes followed theirs, and I saw an unexpected sight in the balcony. There was my friend Judy, carrying her death sentence during Christmas, needing to spend every precious minute with loved ones and getting her affairs in order. And the thing that was attracting the attention of the other audience members was her singing. She was, to use a southern expression, rared-back, singing at the top of her lungs. She was singing her last “First Nowell”.
Judy needed music. In her singing, she was giving us her artistic last will and testament, and it included technique, a desire to hear her own voice singing her best and most, exercising her musical habits one last time. And it included the repertoire of a familiar, time-honored carol, accompanied by a symphony orchestra, sung to the best of her ability. And it included collaboration, taking precious moments from a life that, like most lives, was ending too soon, and spending it in a room filled with musicians and audience members, anonymously joining the song one last time. In Judy’s life it was too late for another time-consuming activity. But there was ample time for her to exhibit her musical and personal aspiration.
And so do we all need music. Our work as singers and directors is important because we are providing the life-giving soundtrack for the lives of people in our communities. We are making choices in our rehearsals and performances that can help to create peace in confusion, joy in despair, and steadiness in turbulence. And to the extent that we help performers and audiences to aspire, we can bring good to our world, both now and after we are gone.