The Pierrot Files

A few months ago, I was hired to do my first performance of Schönberg’s Pierrot Lunaire.    I was thrilled; not only because it’s for the 100th anniversary of the premiere of the piece, but also because a few months earlier I had been making goals for myself and decided that before my death, a performance of Pierrot was mandatory.  (For anyone who cares or who hires, my other pre-death musical achievements will be: Strauss’ Four Last Songs, Berg’s Sieben Frühe Lieder – both with orchestra – Ellen Orford, and maybe just one Juliette before I’m too old and wizened to be remotely believable.)

Well, be careful what you wish for.  When Dave Pay at the Music on Main series in Vancouver hired me, I did a happy dance, then immediately ordered the music.  When it arrived, I dutifully set it on top of the piano and didn’t open it for weeks.  I was intimidated, terrified and absolutely positive that I’d never be able to pull it off.  It’s a huge undertaking and it has been performed so wonderfully by so many people that it feels a little silly to offer my humble, uneducated performance of this piece that has stretched the limits of music, performers and audiences around the world.

So, here I sit with books on the topic, a score that is already looking worn and is sure to look far more so by October, my trusty metronome, a few recordings and a film version that I’m hoping will help.  As I learn things, I will do my best to write them here (while the toddler naps?) in the hopes that they will clarify my own thoughts and maybe inspire a few readers to take the plunge and listen to this incredible piece.

 

A Diary of Love in Public

 

Check out my diary about the making of this new and exciting cabaret on the sonnets of E.B.B.  on Sparks & Wiry Cries.

Sparks & Wiry Cries Blog

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Moon Loves its Light

Last summer, Terence Dawson and I had the great privilege of premiering a wonderful song cycle entitled “Moon Loves its Light” by Vancouver composer, Lloyd Burritt and New Brunswick poet, Marilyn Lerch.  Lloyd approached us saying that he wanted to write something specifically for us and did we have any poetry in mind?  Terry immediately suggested Marilyn Lerch’s works and loaned me a few of her books.  I was so taken with her insights on nature and it was quickly decided that we would use Moon Loves its Light as our text.  Terry and I love these beautiful, imaginative words and from the moment I had Lloyd’s music in my hands, it was obvious that he loves them too.  It is so exciting when music and text come together so perfectly that I have to do very little in the way of vocal acrobatics to have the music make sense with the text. Terry and I have put these songs on our list of “Repeat Repertoire”, meaning, we use them all the time.  We want people to hear the beautiful music and rich poems and to applaud our incredible Canadian talent. You can read more about Lloyd on his website and hear a snippet of the songs here:

http://lloydburritt.com/featured-works/soprano/#moon_loves_its

And about Marilyn here:

http://www.wfnb.ca/membership/member-pages/member-pages-k-m/

http://national-random-acts-of-poetry.blogspot.ca/2007/08/marilyn-lerch.html

For some silly reason, I did not think to get a photo of Terry and myself with Lloyd and Marilyn.  I have a really good excuse:  I had terrible baby brain!  This concert happened only ten weeks after having my first baby.  It’s nothing short of a miracle that I could get myself in front of an audience let alone zip up the only dress from my arsenal of performance clothes that fit at the time!

Photos are by John Hallett

Miss E.B.B.

This month I am putting on my full-time memorizing cap as I get ready for rehearsals of Love In Public, a cabaret in two acts. The piece uses the 44 sonnets of Elizabeth Barrett-Browning’s Sonnets from the Portuguese and is written for piano and four voices.  The composer, David MacIntyre, wrote the music a number of years ago, and now it is finally being produced at the Milton and Fei Wong Experimental Theatre in April.  We’ve got Peter Jorgensen, for our great director and I much admire the other singers involved.  It’s going to be a wonderful experience to really dig deep into these marvelous sonnets.  It’s impossible for me to memorize them without unlocking some of the secrets on my own, so that is my greatest task these days.  Balancing this huge undertaking with a teething 11-month-old is proving to be challenging, to say the least!  But once in a while a line of poetry comes along that thrills.  Today’s is from Sonnet 23:

“Think, in mounting higher,

The angels would press on us, and aspire

To drop some golden orb of perfect song

Into our deep, dear silence.”

How great is that?  Every day is a quest to find that “golden orb of perfect song.”  Thanks, E.B.B.

 

Learning Contemporary Art Song Step 5: Memorizing

Let’s face it, sometimes memorizing can be the hardest part of learning a piece of music.  In performance it seems that the only thing I ever find my stomach churning over is whether or not my memory will hold out.  I don’t worry about that scary high note, or who’s in the audience or whether I’ll have enough air to get through that long, long phrase or, or, or… Truly, the only thing that ever scares me anymore is remembering the text and coming in at the right time!  Here are a few ideas that have helped me with memorizing some pretty difficult music.

1.  Eat breakfast.  Seriously.  You need your brain to be working at full-force.  Breakfast helps.  So does coffee.

2.  Start with the text.  I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again: having a really strong understanding of the text is crucial to memorizing.  If it’s in a language that is not your own, translate word for word.  If it seems jumbled, then make sure you also write a translation that puts the words into an order that you understand.

2.  Find the connections between text and music.  See if you can figure out why the composer wrote rests, long phrases, high notes, tempo changes, tenuto markings (etc etc etc) where they did.  There is often a very logical reason behind everything.  It doesn’t really matter if your reasoning is the same as the composer’s, it just has to work for you.  Create bridges between ideas, so that the song from beginning to end has one long linear thought.

3.  See the story!  If you were a film director, how would you direct your song?  If there are characters in your song, which actors would you hire?  Where would you do the filming?  How would you light the scene?  In your imagination, there is no such thing as budget!  The more vivid your imagination is, the easier it will be for you to commit your song to memory.

3.  Practice your photographic memory.  When things are particularly tricky (for me, it’s always a challenge to remember entrances, especially when time signatures change) it is sometimes helpful to take a mental picture of the troublesome measures.  I only like to do this when I am feeling particularly anxious about remembering something.  Usually it works best to simply listen and to know what my aural clues are for entrances.  But when that doesn’t work, simply memorizing the way the music looks on the page is helpful.  Be careful with this because it can create a wall between you and the audience so use it sparingly.

4.  Most importantly, LISTEN.  Make sure you know exactly what to listen for in the piano.  There may be a particular rhythm, or maybe a chord in the left hand that can be your clue.

5.  Write out the text.  Write the original language and the translation.  Write it out as many times as it takes so that you don’t have to stop to think about what the next phrase is.

6.  Find mnemonic devices to help you remember which word is coming next.  If the first line starts with an “M” and the second line starts with a “P” and you find yourself mixing them up, just make a note that in the alphabet, “M” comes before “P”.  It sounds silly, but it works!

7.  Repeat, repeat, repeat.  Go for brisk walks, singing the song in your head  over and over until you can do the whole thing 5 times without mistakes.  Do this in the car, on the bus, while doing dishes, or if you’re like me, while rocking the baby to sleep!

These are just a few suggestions to help you memorize.  Of course, this isn’t just for contemporary song, it’s for everything.  These steps work for me and I’m well aware that they may not work for you.  The best thing to do is to learn your personal pattern that works for your memory.  My best piece of advice is to memorize frequently.  The brain is like a muscle that needs constant stretching and toning in order to be in shape.  The more you do it, the easier it gets!

Learning Contemporary Song Step 4: Speaking the Poetry

In my humble opinion, the poetry is the most important part of any song.  When I’m looking for new music, if the words don’t speak to my heart, I don’t sing it.  There are few things more satisfying than digging into the core  of a poem.  I love this step in the learning process.  Actually, understanding poetry is less of a step and more of a never-ending ascent.  No matter if the poetry is perfectly crafted in iambic pentameter by the Bard himself, or a “word salad” (that’s my husband’s saying, not mine) tossed together by an amateur poet, if the words speak to you, then that is the only necessity.

Here are a few ideas to get you started and inspired on speaking the poetry so that it can move straight from your heart into the hearts of the listeners.

1.  Before you start learning pitches or rhythms or anything else, read the text away from the rest of the page.  Does it immediately make an impression on you?  Does it make you think?  Do you have to read it over several times in order to understand it?  Remember that your audience will need all the help you can give them to understand the text.  They will be hearing it rather than reading it which is often a much more difficult way for our society to grasp the meaning.

2.  Make sure you know who the poet is and find out where they are from.  Is the poet American, British?  Think about how you will say your “r’s” for instance if it is a song by Ben Britten (British) rather than by Samuel Barber (American).  Is it even in English?  What do you have to do with a poem that is in say, German or French for an English speaking audience to at least catch the drift?  Writing a good translation into your music goes without saying!

3.  Since we’re talking contemporary song here, is the poet still alive?  Wow!  What a great opportunity for you!  Find their website and send them an email.  Ask them questions and tell them about your performances.  Believe me, they will be THRILLED to hear that you’re studying their work.  I’ve even been fortunate enough to have poets fly across the continent to hear their poems performed in song.

4.  How is the poem laid out on the page?  Is it in neat little four-line phrases or is it written as a calligram  in which the words are arranged to create a picture.  Is there any possible way to depict that in your singing?  (p.s. if anyone has any ideas on this, I’d love to hear them, because I am constantly stymied by poems by Apollinaire!)

5.  Find the words that create pictures.  Pretty much every adjective you can think of can create a picture.  How are you going to paint those words to give the audience an immediate sense of the meaning?  German words like dunkel (dark) Himmel (Heaven) Licht (light) Wind (wind — obviously) are such fun words to play with.  What will you do with Licht to make it sound like light?  Do you linger on the “L” or do you gently touch the ch?  Is it a blazing, sudden light or a gentle evening sunset?  Try every way you can think of to say these picture-words and then decide which one fits best within the context of the poem.  Believe you me, this is by far the most FUN part of learning a song.  Let your imagination run wild and see where all those years of practicing technique will allow you to go.

6.  Work everything out with your pianist.  Discuss the poem, decide what you are both going to do to colour the text.  This will make you feel secure that you are both aiming for the same goal.  It is detail work, but it is incredibly satisfying.

7.  Once you have a good idea of what the poem means to you, allow yourself to run with it.  Let yourself go as far as you possibly can.  Spontaneity springs from freedom so don’t let yourself get locked into your ideas.  Amazing things can happen when you allow the right brain to take over.  It will make you feel like you’re flying!

These are just a few thoughts I have on speaking the poetry.  There are thousands of ways to make it come alive in song.  What about you?  What do you do to make the poetry shine?

Stay tuned for next week:  Memorizing: the dreaded task.

Effective Practice in Learning Contemporary Art Song. Step 3: Get those pitches right the first time!

Learning the pitches to contemporary art song can often be the most difficult, most time-consuming and most frustrating part of the process.  I have spent countless hours pounding out notes at the piano and banging my head against the keys.  Remember Don Music from Sesame Street? The guy who always said: “I’ll never get it, I’ll never get it!” and then he’d bang his forehead on the piano?  Yeah, I’ve actually done that.  But guess what?  The great thing is that with a little concentrated practice, I actually DO get it.  Every time.  Here are a few tips I’ve learned along the way that make learning those tricky pitches a little easier.

1)  Work in small sections.  It’s easy to get overwhelmed, so it’s best to tackle the job the way you would the mountain of papers on your desk.  (There will be no photos of my embarrassingly messy desk.)  Divide the task into measures, lines or pages and just work on a little bit every day.  Of course, you can only do this if you follow Step 1!  If you’re crunched for time, it is still helpful to divide the job into little bits.  It will make your task less daunting and you will feel less stress when you can confidently say: “I know this part!”

2)  Make sure your piano is in tune!  Need I say more?

3) Play the piano part.  If you’re able, play through the piano part, listening to harmonic changes and looking for clues that will help you find your pitch.  You don’t have to play all the notes, just the basics; especially the bass line.  If your piano skills are lacking, consider hiring someone or get a friend to help you.

4)  Listen.  Once you’ve played through the piano part a few times, try singing your part with it.  Listen to how your part fits into the harmony.  Are you on the top or do you fit into the middle?  Is your pitch present in the piano or is it in dissonance?

4)  Circle like-pitches.  Keep yourself on track by finding pitches within a bar or phrase that are the same and join them with a line.  This will help your ears and eyes to work together.

5)  Repeat, repeat, repeat.  Nothing will make you feel more confident than repetition.  Assuming you’ve learned the pitches correctly, it’s your best friend.  Close the door and the windows so you don’t drive the people around you to insanity and just keep on repeating!

You’ll be surprised at how quickly you can learn your pitches, but just like anything, it takes practice.  The more you do, the easier it gets.  When you feel frustrated, step away for a while and do something rejuvenating and relaxing.  It’s amazing what a mere 30 minutes of concentrated practice can do!  Have faith, because soon you’ll soon be singing away on all the right notes!

Next week is the fun part: speaking the poetry!

Effective Practice in Learning Contemporary Art Song: Step 1

Practicing.  It can take hours, days, weeks, even months of time to learn a new piece that only seems to last moments in performance.  Some things are easy to learn and take very little time.  However, I often seem to find myself on the other end of the spectrum.  Since I find myself performing mostly contemporary art song and opera and since I don’t have perfect pitch, I spend a LOT of time sitting at the piano pounding pitches.  It is the most unglamorous part of the job and it takes a very long time.  But you know what?  I actually really like it.  There’s something really exciting about cracking open the pages of a new score and thinking about all the little mysteries inside that are yet to be solved.  This is especially thrilling when I’m preparing the piece for a premiere.  Imagine all the work that goes into a piece of music before I even get my hands on it:  a poet is inspired to write text.  She molds words into effective rhythms and sounds and makes perfect, succinct thoughts that can make our imaginations and senses reel.  The text in turn inspires a composer to set it to music; she winds pitches and rhythms around the words to make them come alive in an entirely new way.  Once the pages arrive in my inbox, they’ve been months, sometimes years even in the making.  Often the composer makes many changes even after I’ve learned the music!  It is my job to find my own personal way of shaping text and phrases into an effective performance.

Effective practice = effective performance.

Over the next few weeks and months, I will be posting easy steps on how to tackle that tricky 21st century song.  I hope it will be helpful.  If not, at least it’s good for me to think through my process so that I can be more efficient in my own practice.

Step Number One:

Start Early and Be Organized!

The longer you put it off, the harder and scarier it will be.  I always have the same heart-stopping nightmare whenever I put off learning a new piece.  No matter how it starts, it always ends up with someone pushing me out on stage in front of an enormous audience and me, kicking and scrambling because I don’t know how the music goes.  Most of the time I don’t even know what the piece is called.  It never fails that when I have this dream, I find myself the next morning settling in for a long,long day of practicing!   That first step just seems to get the ball rolling because the longer you have to get comfortable with a piece, the more fun it will be in performance.  And let’s face it, none of us are in this business for the money, we’re in it because we singing is fun and we love it and there’s nothing else in the world we would rather be doing.

But it will never be any fun at all if we put off the hard work and fail to get organized!  I find that a good way of organizing my time is to make up a practice calendar.  If I have a lot of different things on the go, it’s a good way to make sure that I’m giving everything enough time for learning, memorizing and settling.  Simply writing in the calendar exactly which pages need to be learned on each day gives me a good idea of how far I’ve come and what yet needs to be done.  There seems to be less panic this way and I don’t find myself a week before the show knowing the first half really well and the last half less than well.

And really, that’s it for Step Number One.  You just have to get started and get organized.  A journey of a thousand miles starts with a single step.  I know that sounds corny, but they ring very true!