Less is more: Selected Writings on Choral Music

By Aurelio Porfiri

Table of Content
Introduction.
Intepretatio.
Less is More.
Music is Not only About Music.
On Accent
Silentium..
What a Conductor is Not
The Issue of Modernity in Choral Music.
The Aesthetic of Conducting: How the Beauty of a Gesture Affects Performance.
Missing the Sign: Gregorian Chant and Semiology.
System Theory and Choral Music.
For a Theology of A Cappella Music.
Recent Trends of A Cappella Music around the World.
Making Music in the Dragon's Land: An Italian Priest and Macau in the 1920s.
Music is Experience: The Life and Choral Music of Domenico Bartolucci
Bibliography.
 

• Language: English
• Publisher: Chorabooks
• Release date: Oct 1, 2018
• ISBN: 9789887896784

Book preview

Bibliography

Introduction

This book is a collection of papers and articles I wrote and previously published in The International Choral Bulletin , Rivista Internazionale di Musica Sacra , Choral Journal and several other blogs and websites. I am also including papers I presented years ago for a conference at Pepperdine University (Malibu, USA). My intention is organize them into a single, albeit unexhaustive, volume on choral music. Another of my books, Canticum Novum , is also a collection of some of my shorter writings in English.

In my experience, there are already many books about choral music in the English language, books that I have, in part, consulted and for which I have respect. Nevertheless, often these books have a functionalistic approach, meaning they focus primarily on how to do things, but very seldom discuss the reasons why. In most of the articles herein, I have attempted to reflect on this often overlooked, but nonetheless important, question of why. The rationale behind this approach is that if we focus too much on the way we are doing things, we risk losing sight of why we are undertaking them in the first place. This is not to say I understand everything about choral music, but I have tried to humble myself in a holy fear ( initium sapientiae timor Domini, the beginning of wisdom is the fear of the Lord), so to better listen to what the mystery of music reveals to me. Some of my articles are longer and others are shorter; some are more musicological and others are more about aesthetics.

Sometimes music is considered simply as a way to make money, to gain a certain position, or to assist with personal issues. Fair enough, but while these are certainly aspects of music, they are not everything we need to know about it. Indeed, these elements are not even very important, and are incidental at best. In my experiences, I have tried to understand something more about music, and choral music in particular, which is the field I know best. My hope is that you benefit from reading these articles as much as I benefited from writing them.

I hope these pages will help you cultivate a more cautious approach to music itself and to choirs, with an understanding that there is much more at stake than doing small scale concerts for the benefit of family and friends. Music is a way of knowledge and we should be all scholars, wise men and women, and music philosophers.

Intepretatio

What is interpretation? This question is best answered by reflecting on what interpretation is not. Interpretation is not the will of a conductor. Many times, I have seen serious and respectable conductors talking a lot about how to mark the score. Consequently, I saw scores that were full of signs of all kinds and colors. This is a betrayal of interpretation, although the majority of conductors reading this may be scandalized to hear that. However, amicus Platus sed magis amica veritas (you may be my friend, but the best friend is truth, or at least honesty).

Moreover, who is an interpreter? What is the idea beyond the word interpretation? The word come from the Latin interpretatio, made of inter (between) and pretem (knowledge). Interpretation is thus mediation, not appropriation. And, as I have already explained before, this mediation of knowledge cannot result from the cultural limitations of one single person, regardless of his or her years of studies. Interpretation grows in the interaction between the conductor and the other performers (and even the audience) in much the same way as a baby grows in the womb of a mother. How many times have you heard arrogant conductors telling the world that they have followed the intention of the composer? How do they know so well the intention of the composer, whom may have lived hundreds of years earlier or in a completely different cultural and geographical environment? When strange signs are put on a musical score, it should act as a stern reminder for conductors themselves, their parents who paid for them to study music, and the system of which they are a part that violations of a score’s nature are intolerable. I am not saying that you cannot mark the score, but only that to base everything on it is an act of musical imperialism. Today interpretation is the will of someone imposed on the passive receptivity of someone else. Indeed, what a conductor can and should do to respect interpretation is to listen, and listen on a deep level; deep listening will give time and a way for the baby to make its way along the windy path that leads to that big mystery we call sense.

Less is more

One of my aphorisms states that the best conductor is one that does not conduct. What is the meaning of this? Our idea of the conductor could be described as a sort of dictator that shapes the choir or the orchestra to fulfill his or her own individual will. We may think of some conductors who fulfill this kind of idea. What comprises this idea? One person—the interpreter—is paramount, with all others just being performers. This showing of power forces the choir and orchestra through a style of conducting that is imposing, all-controlling and which creates a titan on the podium. This idea of conductorship derives from the romantic idea of the artist, an idea that has done more damage to art than all the strange ideas of the so-called avant-garde movements.

A good conductor is not one that imposes his or her will, but one that is able to listen on a very subtle level. Good conductors are the ones that channel the creative energies of their performers, allowing, in a way, the performance to grow like a baby in a mother’s womb. The conductor has to allow this process and be a facilitator of it, accepting that the sound of the music must speak to him or her. A conductor is not a dictator but a facilitator. Only by understanding the meaning of this will performances result in real creative energies creating authentic enjoyment for those who love music and view it as a way of knowledge.

Music is not only about music

Music is not only about music. It may sound strange, yes, but this is a deep truth. You cannot understand music musically, but only by referring to other disciplines and elements that together advance understanding about what music is actually about. It is like talking about the human body. You cannot talk about the heart if you don’t take into account the myriad of other body organs it is associated with; and you cannot talk of those other organs if you don’t take into account the disciplines that influence their functioning, such as psychology, biology, chemistry, mathematics and many others. Knowledge is one and holistic, not particular. There is a saying that teaches us that an expert is one who knows more and more about less and less, until at last they know everything about nothing. In music especially, the term expert does not work well. Considering music by itself, as a separate discipline, is betraying its nature and its meaning. This is why the understanding of Western music in Asia is often very poor; they may play quickly on the piano, but their knowledge of the reason behind the music is largely missing. They do not have Western theology, philosophy or history, nor can they relate well with us on a deep emotional level because they are from a completely different culture.

Music is interconnected with other ways of knowledge and can explain and be explained by them.

On accent

When we speak, we are in a certain way singing. Although it may seem strange to some of you to think about speaking in this way, if you reflect upon speech carefully enough you will agree with me. Speaking is like singing. For speech to be so, it depends upon the main stress, the accent. Have you ever considered the origin of this word? It derives from the Latin " accentus , derived from ad-cantus , meaning similar to singing. Cicero (Orator 57) called the accent (inserted into the rhetoric process) a cantus obscurior , an obscure singing. So, wherever a piece of music is to be performed with a text, the central element to be considered is the cantus obscurior ", the pre-musical dimension that must emerge from the performance and not be betrayed by the performers.

There are three main kinds of accents in a word, the tonic accent being the most important. Tonic accent is prepared by the pre-tonic accent and followed by the post-tonic accent (but there are also secondary tonic accents). If the tonic accent represents the moment of high verbal tension, the other two kinds of accents play the role of preparing the tension and then giving a rest following its highest peak. But all the words (and the architecture of accents)