Horowitz on Dvorak

The Chronicle of Education has a terrific article on Dvorak and African-American music by Joseph Horowtiz, who knows this period in American musical history better than just about anybody. Horowitz writes of Dvorak's interest in black music and his encouragement of black composers--themes touched on in Alex Ross's The Rest is Noise. It's worth reading the article in its entirety--as well as Ross's book, of course. One point Horowitz makes cogently:

"Dvorak's prophecy that 'negro melodies' would foster an 'American school of music' came true, but in ways he could not have predicted. Dvorak had in mind symphonies and operas audibly infused with the black vernacular — but there is only one Porgy and Bess. Rather, the black tunes Dvorak adored fostered popular genres to which American classical music ceded leadership."

I don't want to oversimply, but let's face it: American music is black music. It's impossible to think of American music without spirituals, ragtime, jazz, rhythm and blues, and countless other African-American folk sources. And not just in popular music: spirtiuals and ragtime make their way into Ives, jazz was plundered by many composers, and contemporary composers are trying their best to work rock (derived from R&B after all) into their music, generally in the form of pulse or beat.

Horowitz's article puts all of this in the broader cultural context of the late 19th- and early 20th centuries, where American musical life was turbulent and fast-changing. It's not the staid Victorian world we imagine. But one thing that was true was the virulence of racism, and it is what forced Dvorak's prophecy to turn out as it did--bequeathing a strict divergence between "popular" and "serious" traditions that we are still reckoning with today.

(Via A&L Daily)

Where to Download Classical Music

Le Journal de Papageno has a useful list, with ratings, of the best classical download sites. Even if you can't understrand French, the rating system uses stars so it's easy to comprehend.

I'm in AM New York

The free daily AM New York has a piece today on annual anthologies, with prominent attention given to The Best American Science Writing 2007 and yours truly. You can find it on page 26 of the PDF edition of the paper.

Dress for the Met (Since They Don't Have a Dress Code)

Inspired by positive responses to an earlier post on this topic in which I lamented the lack of a dress code at the Met, I thought I would offer my tips on how to dress for a visit to the Metropolitan Opera. Most of these tips are addressed to men.

You don’t have to wear white tie, or black tie, or any tie at all, so long as you are neat and well dressed. I do think that if you are not going to do the business-suit look, you should wear at the very minimum a well tended sports jacket or blazer, pressed trousers, and a clean dress shirt. Having said all of that, I would definitely go for the tie. These days, with the tie-less look an office cliché, the right tie shows flair, not conformity.

If there is one thing to remember, it’s this: the Met is not a rodeo. So that means leather, jeans, sneakers, work boots, and so on, are out. And I mean it about the leather. Leather jackets are great if you want to look like an Eastern-European gangster. Leather pants, let’s face it, just don’t look good on anybody. So unless you are a recognizable rock star, leather should be left for your next “80s Night”-themed benefit.

Another thing to bear in mind: the 70s are dead, over, finished, done. So attend to your grooming. The bushy look just isn’t doing it any more. (This applies to the world outside the Met, too. Or it should.)

Try to keep in mind that it should be a special occasion. It is an excuse to get gussied up. So much of the world today has made accomodations to casual dress. Can’t there be some places, some occasions, for which some kind of formality is required?

Inertive Reactance

A few months ago, seeking to understand what was meant by such terms as "placing the voice," or "placing the voice in the mask," terms that are often used to describe singers' techniques, I came across an online discussion group in which a fierce debate on this very topic was raging.

One passionate poster, a singer and teacher, claimed that "placing the voice," in the mask, eyes, forehead, or any other so-called "resonating cavity," is a bunch of baloney. That intrigued me.

The January issue of Scientific American has an article on the human voice by Ingo Titze, physicist, singer, singing teacher, professor at the University of Iowa and director of the National Center for Voice and Speech. (Reading the article online requires payment. It's worth buying the magazine. Much of what it summarizes can be found throughout the excellent NCVS site.)

If I understand the article correctly, the human singing voice--whether operatic or otherwise--is produced when air from the lungs stimulates our inner sound source (in our case, the vocal cords, or vocal folds of the larynx); this sound goes through a resonator, the airway right above the larynx, and is emitted through the radiator of our mouth.

And that's it.

In other words, all we have to work with is the air from our lungs, our vocal tracts, and our mouths. No resonating cavities can create greater or lesser resonance. It may seem as though they do, but physically speaking, and physiologically speaking, they have nothing to do with the process. So this talk of "singing in the mask" or any other part of the face is, indeed, hooey.

How do we create resonance? It's a complex process that involves a kind of feedback exchange between the air flowing from our lungs and the vocal tract's various maneuverings. The term that gets used is "inertive reactance," which signifies a kind of push-pull action. Initially the vocal folds open and air from the lungs rushes through them; but then they snap back, creating a kind of vacuum right above the larynx--a vacuum that has the effect of shooting whatever air remains through the vocal tract.

On the NCVS site I learned some more interesting things. One is that lowering the larynx's position--as happens when you try to yawn, for instance--darkens the sound. (This may be the reason why speakers do a kind of yawn excercise before a speech, to keep their sound from edging up in brightness as it does when a person sounds nervous.) In this instance, science and vocal pedagogy are as one. Franco Corelli is no doubt the most famous exponent of the "lowered-larynx" style of singing, and here is the scientific explanation for the ravishing darkness of his sound. As for his peerless squillo, it has nothing to do with anything in his face: it's all in how he managed that mobile column of air going through his vocal tract.

So the next time you feel intimidated by an opera "expert" who tells you this or that singer is placing his or her voice "in the mask" or anywhere else, don't pay any attention!