Musical Graffiti

Here's a potted portrait of a modern composer, compared with the moody creature who used to sit down with a quill pen and scratch inky marks on some parchment paper, balanced precariously on the top of a piano or harpsichord (the parchment not the composer). This new being uses a digital audio work station, patches and loops, samples and special effects, ready loaded into his mixing desk. Then, on stage, in front of a shouting, jumping audience, he starts with a bass line and synthesised drums. After that the remixes flow of prerecorded music. This is where the composition factor kicks in, for our composer can now be as creative as he can or wants, mixing in, mixing out. The audience love it and will groove along for hours. The place is jumping and our composer is having a great time, too. Oh, yep, and don't forget the syncronised light show, the laser beams and disco lights, the backdrop film that turns the whole set into a spaceship or a volcano, a journey through mountains or a trip to the bottom of the sea. That's a face of contemporary composition, a skilful scribbling with sound.

A Little History of Clapping

There are other ways of expressing appreciation in public than by slapping your hands together but I can't think of a better one. It is the obvious thing to do at the end of a performance or speech. Is it as simple as that? Is it worth a second thought? Humans must have the clapping instinct for babies do it spontaneously to express delight. Clapping, however, is not always a sign of appreciation. Slow hand claps express impatience and it is possible to clap ironically, too:  yeah, yeah, you think you are so great... Clapping is expressive: the louder and the longer, the more is the sign of approval.

Clapping at classical music concerts has become a sign of sophistication: clap in the wrong place or at the wrong time and you are surely an ignoramous. At the end of an unfamiliar piece when no-one is quite sure if it has finished, the ensuing second or two's silence contains slight universal embarrassment for no-one wants to make a fool of themselves by clapping out of place, yet everyone wants to show appreciation. It would be so much more embarrassing if no-one clapped at all. As leader of my orchestra, I sometimes walk in to take a bow before a concert starts. At my approach, a single preordained clapper starts clapping. Instinctively, the rest of the audience can't help it; they join in with the ritual.

Where does it come from? No-one knows. The ancient Romans had a set ritual of applause for public performances, expressing degrees of approval: snapping the finger and thumb, clapping with the flat or hollow palm, waving the flap of the toga. Wiki says, that a claque (French for 'clapping') was an organised body of professional applauders in French theatres and opera houses who were paid by the performers to create the illusion of an increased level of approval by the audience.

In Christianity, customs of the theatre were adopted by the churches and in the 4th and 5th centuries applause of the rhetoric of popular preachers had become an established custom. Applause in church eventually fell out of fashion, however, and partly through the influence of the quasi-religious atmosphere of the performances of Richard Wagner's operas at the Bayreuth Festspielhaus the reverential spirit that inspired this soon extended back to the theatre and the concert hall.

That reverence in the concert hall has a stifling effect and may be a reason why audiences for classical music are harder and harder to come by; may be a reason why the young, i.e., those lacking reverence, are unsupportive. My contention is, remove the sense of reverence for the performer and the relationship between audience and performer intensifies. They can each then play their respective roles with more freedom and enjoyment. Ergo, audience numbers increase.  Perhaps get the audience clapping over with at the beginning of an event and then forget it. Heckle and clap as an individual any time you feel like it, though. And show appreciation by coming again. Diminishing the sense of reverence won't diminish respect for a great performance. I don't hear clapping for my wise words. Is that because you have a sandwich in one hand?

About Music

I have been playing in a trio at one or two local homes for the elderly and disabled, learning a lot from this, particularly in gaining performance experience. To be able to play for an entirely uncritical audience removes a lot of the pressure that creates nerves and enables focusing on playing and communicating. Conversely, however, when you perform it is essential to feel that an audience is responding and in a classical environment this usually means that they sit quietly while you play, then applaud, at least politely, when you finish. For the trio neither of these necessarily applies and that can be disconcerting.

In these circumstances, you learn that even to evoke a small response from a person suffering from dementia can be an indication of the effect that music has. Quite literally it has the ability to take a fractured personality and make it whole again. Listeners with quite advanced stages of mental degeneration can become animated, self aware and can remember the music we are playing that they may have heard many years before. We've played sessions that we call 'Memory Music' to great effect.

 

This experience, amongst others, was why a couple of years ago I set off on a musical expedition to find out more about the way classical music is appreciated. This has changed over the years, particularly in recent times, coinciding with discoveries about how the brain responds to music. This project became a bit of an obsession and has resulted in a book, Ramblings About Music and the Mind, or, simply, About Music. It's an exploration of the borders between the art and science of music.

I'd like your help with the next stage: if you think you might be interested in the content, which ranges free and wide from music and Pythagoras in Ancient Greece to the contemporary music technologies of today, there is a synopsis at www.billanderton.uk. There is also a short questionnaire with the synopsis which will provide me with some valuable feedback. I'd be grateful if you can take a few minutes to have your say and email this to me.

Contemporary Music Project

The Contemporary Music Project (CMP) website was becoming a collection of items of general interest, news items and reviews, confused and mixed up with my personal stuff, teaching work, compositions and writings. As each of these areas has become quite substantial in its own right and to avoid confusion between the two, they are now separated. The CMP has become an independent magazine-style website www.contemporarymusicproject.org, and my personal work has been removed to a new domain, www.billanderton.uk.

The CMP is soon to be relaunched under its new brief, so if any of my friends and contacts in the music biz. would like to send me your news items, events and suggestions for features relevant to new music, I'd be happy to help with publicising them for you.  Watch this space for further developments.

On a personal level, the Ramblings About Music (and the Brain) project has been a preoccupation for some time and I now have a manuscript ready for publication, so if you are a commissioning editor and would like first dibs on this, let me know and I can send some samples to you. Basically, it is a collection of all the musical trivia that has interested my over the years, formed into a cohesive whole seeking out the spirit of music and set against the background of a long-distance walk along the Welsh-English border. There is a fuller description on my website.