Nico Muhly – The Past, The Future, and the Marathon Sprint.
Nico Muhly – The Past, The
Future, and the Marathon Sprint.
By Daniel Farrell
Nico Muhly was a breath of fresh air from a young and
marvelously talented composer. What I believe to be some of his most enlightening
commentary is his small discussion regarding John Adams and the usage and implementation
of electronics and how it impacts the technical aspects of opera and classical
music in general.
On a brief tangent during his presentation Muhly expressed
the fundamental difference between his own orchestration process and the
process by which composer John Adams used during his opera “Dr. Atomic”. I was familiar
with “Dr. Atomic” before this presentation however, Muhly’s insight into the orchestration
practice was not something I was aware of. He explained that Adams made use of
microphones on the singers, something that is common place in musical theatre
and is becoming more and more popular in modern opera. This allows a change in
the orchestration practices of opera. Generally, the practice of orchestrating
for opera is to give the singer room “sonically” so that their parts are clear
and easily understood. The implementation of electronic and amplification
alleviates this need to conscious orchestration practices to curtail this
problem. Instead it allows the composer to paint with whatever colors they want
to at any point, knowing full well that the singers will always be heard.
It was interesting how Muhly remained “old-fashioned” in
his regard to orchestration; wanting to remain completely acoustic. I enjoyed
that Muhly didn’t take this perspective on some biased hatred to electronics;
but rather that he enjoyed the challenge that “old school” acoustic orchestration
offered him. At the same time, I would love to see the music that Muhly could
produce if freed from the restraints of classical orchestration practices! This
in many ways reminded me of Julia Wolfe’s use of amplification at her premiere
of “Fire in My Mouth”; the use of electronic amplification impressed me because
it allowed for intense and “unorthodox” orchestration practices without losing
the clarity and emphasis of the text and voice work.
It was also interesting hearing from him about his work
in other musical fields including arranging and scoring. His explanation about
those types of practices being such a compressed musical activity – the comparison
to a sprint versus a marathon – was perfect. As a composer who frequently
bounces between those marathons - concert commissions – and those sprints –
marching band arranging and scoring – I completely agree. His explanation that
we train our composition muscles and those “sprint” exercises help hone those
muscles was also interesting. I personally noticed that in that certain things
I would do in scoring or marching would find themselves into my concert work
and vice versa and things that I did frequently in either of those would become
much more natural and would seamlessly become part of my compositional voice.
Nico Muhly was a great
presenter and a very interesting composer creating new and exciting music while
still exploring and empowering the ways and traditions of the past but in a
contemporary setting.
The discussion of whether or not to use microphones was interesting to me as well. It seems to be a growing trend to utilize more modern forms of music production to record and perform what has traditionally been an un-amplified art. Even in small, classical chamber music, many contemporary works get the pop treatment, such as Sarah Kirkland Snider's "Unremembered." Vocals are close mic'd and added to the mix, even a more liberal use of compression is common. It does have a huge effect on our approach to orchestration, which may even make some of the more traditional techniques obsolete in certain contexts.
ReplyDeleteI'm wondering if the lack of miking was something that was insisted by the Met? Also, the opera singers I've spoken with have generally been opposed to the idea of microphones since so much of their training is based on being heard over an orchestra. Unamplified singing, to me, is also one of the defining characteristics of opera and the spaces, orchestras, and singers are all built and trained for those norms. That's not to say that amplifying singers in any way tarnishes the art, but it does change it in a fundamental way and maintaining the constraint of purely acoustic writing clearly forced Muhly to innovate.
ReplyDeleteThough I enjoyed his traditional orchestral approach, I too would like to see what he could produce if he freed himself from the traditional perspective. The addition of electronic elements, whether for recording or performance, can certainly change our perception of what music is. Performance practice of traditional works is important, but it is also interesting to explore how modern things can advance and change those traditional works.
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