March 15, 2009

My artist husband and I have many dinnertime discussions about the relevance of art and music in today’s society.  These discussions quite often lead me to the same internal questions:  Why do I do what I do?  Why early music?  What am I trying to do with early music?  Is what I do relevant, and if so, how?

There are many books and articles out there addressing these issues.  I have read only a tiny selection of the literature, but since realizing that I’ve had this discussion three times this week, I think it is time to visit the library.

Before I do, however, I wanted to jot down a few honest thoughts—thoughts uninfluenced by what I read.  I know that Early Music magazine is planning (or maybe has even started) to do a series of interviews with the “pioneers” of the early music revival, with thoughtful questions and assessments of where early music is today.  I am very curious of the answers these pioneers will give. I have heard little snippets of information and conversations here and there, so I’m also slightly anxious about it.  After reading their interviews, will I feel that I am not be what they “want” someone like me—as an early musician in 2009, or as a second or third generation early musician—to be?  And how much should this really matter to me?  How does one balance respect for the past with the realities of today?  While these are perhaps loaded questions for an entirely separate essay, they do tie in to my recurring questions.

The question of becoming a musician was decided when I was young.  Coming from a musical family, I had the requisite piano lessons, and I enjoyed singing in choirs, even at age 3!  When I discovered the flute at age 12, I quickly decided that, in fact, I did want to do this as a profession.  There was no pressure from my family either way—on the contrary, only loving support for me to do whatever I chose to do.  Fast-forward a few years to Indiana University (Bloomington, IN, USA), where I had a double major in flute performance and French language and literature.  Three years into my degree, my friend recommended that I try following the same early flute lessons she was having there in the Early Music Institute.

What?  I’d never given much thought to what flute came before my beautiful silver flute.  I’d in fact just recently narrowed down my love of the flute to a very particular detail:  the sound of fluid metal.  The bright, metallic, yet moving sound of the air hitting the metal edge of the mouth hole and spinning down the silver tube really excited me.  For years I’d hit rewind-repeat-rewind-repeat, usually on a sound clip of no more than 5 seconds, listening to some particularly beautiful, breathy, metallic moment in recordings I had (and much to my roommate’s annoyance, I should add).

However, I decided to try out this early flute stuff anyway.  Why not?  I was willing to see what was out there.  Well, what a discovery.  Not only was there an early flute, there were early violins, early oboes, harpsichords, strange big guitar-like instruments called “theorbos”… I was intrigued.  And this wooden flute had some nice, if quieter sounds.  Really nuanced, in fact.  Within a few weeks of playing the early flute, I was invited to play a French cantata (Clérambault’s Orphée) on a singer’s recital.  I think from that moment on, I began converting to early music.

What caused this conversion is a bit difficult to pinpoint.  A huge part of it has to do with being fully accepted into the relatively small community of musicians in the Early Music Institute, which was within an insanely huge music department at Indiana University (the flute department regularly had 40 majors).  A third-year bachelor student, suddenly being invited to play on a master student’s recital?  Unheard of in the modern music department, standard practice in the EMI.  Opportunities to play in every single orchestra project?  Unthinkable in the modern music department, not even a question in the EMI.  What a welcome breath of fresh air for me!  I was offered chances to perform all the time on recitals and orchestral projects, which is something I was really having to compete for in the modern department.

Something else attracted me to early music.  While I don’t intend to say anything negative about the way of teaching in the modern department or any of my fantastic modern flute teachers, and while I readily admit that I was a young student with limited musical experience, I did notice a distinct change in the approach to studying the early flute.  One of my first assignments from my traverso teacher was to find the music and French text of an opera aria by Louis XIV’s court composer Lully, and to “play” the text and music on my flute.  We had just been discussing the concept of inégalité in music, and she assured me that I’d understand it fully after this assignment.  As I sat in the library with the score to Lully’s Armide in front of me, I realized that aside from finding out a few dates and foreign-language musical terms, I’d not really been asked to use all sides of my education before when approaching music.  What my traverso teacher, and indeed all of the professors in the EMI, asked me to do was to step outside of just practicing notes with my fingers and truly engage my entire being—intellectual as well as physical—when preparing a piece.

Obviously for a student of language and literature as well as music, this approach was exciting.  Why not combine everything?  It sounds naïve to me now, but at age 20, this was a revelation.  I found that in early music, I was using my language degree to decipher 17th century French texts, I was reading 18th century books in the library, I was asked to know about historical and societal events surrounding the music I was playing, I was studying 300-year-old scores, I was playing music by composers I’d never heard of—I was indeed intrigued.   The recital with Clérambault’s Orphée was a turning point for me, because it was the first concert where I combined everything on stage.

Coming back to my dinnertime questions with my husband, then, why do I do early music?  I guess the most honest answer is this: because I feel fully engaged, both with my abilities on the flute and with my intellect.   Further, I have simply fallen in love with the sounds of early instruments, particularly the nuanced and warm sounds of wooden flutes.

But what am I trying to do with early music?  I cannot say with any honesty that I am trying to prove anything.  I’m not a pioneer; I’m not out to prove that early instruments are as valid as modern ones.  This is already accepted in the music world.  I’m not trying to argue that Bach on 18th century instruments (or copies thereof) is better than Bach on modern instruments.  I do personally like it better that way because I happen to love the sounds of early instruments, and I like the fact that in my experience, early music encourages a lot of research and interest into historical and cultural events in Bach’s time.   Further, I’m not trying to recreate the 18th century, which is part of the reason that I don’t want to dress in 18th century clothing and wigs when I perform.  I am trying to use old music and instruments to create some interesting sounds, still “new” to some audiences in fact, and to (re-)create the same emotions that people had in the 18th century and that we still have now.

Is it even relevant to play early music in a modern world?  Well, when it comes right down to it, I think I am just trying to create beautiful sounds playing beautiful music.  As long as people are still looking for beauty, I think it is relevant, no matter which flute I play.  I’m very much attracted to the idea that a piece of music can be a completely different experience on a modern flute or an 18th century flute.  Whether or not I choose to perform it this way, I even like the physical and intellectual revelations I have when I play early-18th-century French music on a late-18th-century German flute.  I’m engaged, I’m learning, the instruments and music are teaching me.  Is this relevant?  Absolutely.  I’m learning and discovering, and I want to share my discoveries primarily through sounds.

As an artisan, I want to play in tune and have fluid articulation; as an artist, I want the sound of Bach on the early flute to move you to tears.  As a skilled laborer, I want to be asked to be play many concerts; as an intellectual, I want part of my time preparing for those concerts to be spent in the library.  As a historian, I’m curious about what was happening in the Haydn’s life in 1789 that caused him to write three trios for flute; as a modern explorer, I want to know how I can organize a DVD recording of that trio to post on YouTube.  Balancing on these tightropes is thrilling.

What do you think?  Please feel free to leave comments about your own experiences or your reactions to my thoughts.

Now, I’m off to the library to see what others say.