Couldn't get back on this right away--in the middle of final exams,
grading papers, etc.
I would never accuse Mark of doing this deliberately, because I don't
believe he would ever do so, but in the message below he carried what
I actually said to a "reductio ad absurdam," setting up a sort of
straw man, which I'm afraid others picked up on, assumed that was
what I meant, and have been piling on accordingly.
OK, what do I (and what do we) mean by "stylization"? That question
can't be answered accurately without specifying the basic style in
the first place, and assuming that the word means the same thing to
different people is asking for misunderstanding. Are we talking
about traditional classical, contemporary classical, jazz (in any of
a number of different flavors), middle of the road pop, country,
gospel (in different flavors), folk (traditional or contemporary),
easy rock, hard rock, heavy metal--fill in the rest of your own list.
Sinatra stylizes, Reba stylizes, Vince Gill stylizes, Ella stylizes,
but they all do it differently. Just promise to identify where
you're coming from, OK?
To answer Mark's last question first, I don't really have a
"philosophy" for solo music, but I sure do for ensemble music because
I've been arranging for different kinds of vocal ensembles (and their
accompaniments) for 'round about 57 years now, I'm made my mistakes,
I've (sometimes) learned from them enough not to make them any more,
and I like to think that I know what I'm doing. And to define the
style, call it mainstream pop with flavorings of jazz, country,
legit, and anything else that seems appropriate at the moment.
Although I can and have composed "serious" choral music, it isn't
really my thing. Making ensembles work is. For about 20 years I
wrote for the male voices in my quartet, The Four Saints, with
accompaniments that had to work for anything from piano trio to the
"Tonight Show" Band or the Cincinnati Symphony. For more years I
wrote for women's voices when I directed The Belles of Indiana and
their jazz-rock showband at I.U. in the '70s, and when I moved here I
learned to write effectively for mixed voices and soloists with a
12-piece showband in the '80s. I've also composed and arranged for
church choirs in the '90s, most recently in 2001.
If I DO have a philosophy for soloists, especially for students, it's
pretty simple: Don't just imitate the guy or gal on the CD you like
so much. Their stylization and ornamentation is what fits THEIR
voices. Find what works for you in YOUR voice! The market for
imitation Kenny Rogerses or Barbra Steisands is pretty much limited
to Holiday Inn lounges, where the hours are lousy and the pay isn't
that great. It's really amazing how many simply can't understand
what those words mean!
OK, so what kind of anal, unreasonable notation am I talking about
when it comes to ensemble stylization? How about really weird,
arcane things like anticipations, which it's my responsibility to
specify; delays or suspensions, likewise; fine tuning the melodic
rhythm to match the word stresses when they are different on repeated
phrases. Indicating the places to breathe--or NOT to breathe. In
other words--or at least in the way I look at it--doing the things
that a soloist would do (or not do) very naturally, but that an
ensemble would not, at least not together. That does not seem to me
especially unreasonable.
Examples: Notating anticipations to give a jazz-like feel--I could
cite an arrangement of "Mountain Greenery" that my quartet recorded
back in about '62. Notating delays and suspensions--an arrangement
for my 8-voice college "Studio Singers" of "It's A Lazy Afternoon" in
which I specified and notated the laziness, in overlapping
overtracks, very exactly, from the mid-'80s. Improving word
scansion--an arrangement of "Coming To America," which is very
repetitive, to both improve and increase the power of the text
setting, originally arranged for my college show group in the early
'80s, revised for singers in a community chorus in the mid-'90s, in
my thoughts right now as I add string parts to the arrangement for
soloists, chorus and concert band.
Now in many cases I've been the director as well, and I've had to
teach what I notated to my performers, and sometimes I've been right
and it sounds exactly as I meant it to, and sometimes they just
couldn't get the hang of it and I went with what they were more
comfortable with. And yes, those things got worked out in rehearsal,
but with student performers it never came down to telling them, "OK,
guys, you work it out." It was part of my job to teach them how to
realize styles. In my professional quartet, it was always a matter
of consensus, no matter what I specified.
Oh, and with my show groups, I often DID specify the attire, or at
least whether a given song or medley needed to be costumed, or I
would suggest ideas to my wardrobe staff and let them work on it. A
designer I'm not; a producer I am!
It would be just as stupid to over-specify things for a show group as
it would be to do it for a traditional legit group. So? I never
called for that. (Although we've done quite a few pieces recently in
our community string orchestra that I really, REALLY wish the
composer had specified dynamics before, and especially after,
crescendos and decrescendos. The information simply isn't there, or
appears to be contradictory, so we can't reproduce his intentions
without guessing.)
My biggest challenges: (1) Getting a choir of white Presbyterians to
swing! (They didn't do too badly, actually.) (2) Getting a
community band to play in reasonable jazz style. (Don't ask!!!)
John
At 8:47 PM -0700 5/6/07, Mark D Lew wrote:
On May 6, 2007, at 7:44 PM, John Howell wrote:
When it's a question of ensemble stylization, perhaps we do
disagree. If there's one principle I think most on this list agree
on, it's that unless an aleatoric approach is part of the concept,
the notation should be as exact and unambiguous as possible.
But you can't mean that literally. it's always possible to make
your score even more precise. You can give an exact metronome mark
for every change of tempo, including every ritard. You can litter
the score with dynamic markings, at the top and bottom of every
hairpin.
You can spell out every lyric phonetically in order to insist on the
desired regional accent. You could pursue this as far as you like,
even well into the realm of the absurd, specifying the required size
of the hall, attire of the performers, or whatnot.
I'm not arguing for sloppy ambiguity, but specificity in the score
yields diminishing returns and there comes a point where it is no
longer helpful. That point may not be the same for all of us, and
on that point I think you and I probably do differ, but I think that
difference is one of degree.
And I still don't understand why you would have one philosophy for
solo music and another for ensemble.
mdl
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John & Susie Howell
Virginia Tech Department of Music
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http://www.music.vt.edu/faculty/howell/howell.html
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