Campbell Vertesi

Can a computer-generated orchestra ever keep par with the real thing?  Some people think so, including conductor Paul Henry Smith.  According to the Wall Street Journal, he is planning a performance of the Beethoven Symphonies next year, with an all-digital orchestra.

The computer program is designed by a former Vienna Philharmonic cellist.  It follows the movements of the conductor, who will be waving - get this - a Nintendo Wii controller.  For the uninitiated:the Wii is a game system that tracks your movements.  For instance, you play tennis by swinging the controller like a racket. In this case, Mr. Smith will conduct by waving the controller like a baton.  His digital ensemble is called the Fauxharmonic orchestra.

"Harrumph harrumph harrumph!"  I hear you cry, "computers can never replace the real thing.  I can always tell the difference!"  I once harrumphed as you do, my friend.  As I'm sure, did the chair of composition at Eastman, and the dean of electronic music at Berklee. When they were asked to pick the digital recording out of a set of 4 sound clips however, both of these musicians guessed wrong.  Your own blogger tried the same test, and also failed.  Go ahead, give it a try.  Listen to the 4 samples and take the quiz.  For me, this was the most compelling evidence that this technology deserves consideration.

 You may do better than me, and get it right on the first try - but not without some very careful listening.  If this is indicative of the progress of synthesized music, then maybe it is time to re-evaluate its place in the classical world.  I have always been a proponent of live performance, but it's difficult to explain why it should be so important, when even a well trained musician can't tell the difference aurally.  Depending on the musicians, a digital performance like this could even be much better than the live concert alternative.  The big questions here are: could you tell the difference?  Also, is a live human performer integral to classical music, and why?

Personally, I don't believe that a computer orchestra will ever replace a real live performance.  Even when the digital players (inevitably) surpass their human makers, when the digital Paganini can outplay the live one, I think that live performance will survive.  It is the particular shared experience of a performance that cannot be duplicated by a computer.  Perhaps it's a pheremone thing, or maybe the good brain vibes, or even some chakra communication going on.  But there is a certain thrill to a live performance that I cannot imagine being replicatedby a machine.

I don't expect this technology to go away, however.  The WSJ article mentions that this could be an excellent way to bring larger scale music to places that could not otherwise afford it.  I'm talking with a group that wants to put on a Bel Canto opera, but has very little funding for an orchestra of that size.  This sort of digital music would be perfect.  

Remember also the value of backtracks in our industry.  I've had to sing to some terrible synth music, myself.  Any improvement there would be wonderful.

But the best outcome I imagine is in the rehearsal hall.  If a computer program could generate such a realistic symphonic sound, and reliably follow a conductor in real-time, it could revolutionize the rehearsal process for opera.  Imagine singing and acting your rehearsal to a full orchestra, rather than the local church pianist.  Imagine an outreach program, able to work with the sounds of the entire opera, instead of the approximate tuning of the elementary school piano.  I see this as a positive technological direction, so long as we don't forget where the real magic comes from.

This post stemmed from a comment discussion on a previous post. I mean no offense to the original commenter; she just accidentally triggered a soapbox.

People have a tendency to think that just because music has been in their environment for years, their judgment on what is "good" music should hold some water. Many of them will even hold forth on what is "Great" music. They seem similarly disposed with art in other forms, but (perhaps this is perception bias here) the disease seems at its worst with music . It is forgotten that the arts are specialized areas of study, not unlike biology, engineering or mathematics.

There are, believe it or not, people who spend their lives working and studying in these fields. And their opinions are worth a lot more than that of the dilettante. Imagine me giving my opinion on what constitutes Great brain surgery. Would you prefer my advice, or that of a brain surgeon who has spent years in his practice? Would you give your casual opinion on what constitutes Great structural engineering? Unless you are actually an engineer - or at least a physicist - would you expect anyone to care?

Of course you wouldn't. Unfortunately, music lacks the major benefit that these fields enjoy: if you accepted a dilettante brain surgeon, you would die. If you drew the engineering sketches for a building as an unqualified person who "likes buildings a lot", the structure would collapse, providing visible evidence of your inadequacy for the task. You would very quickly learn to take the advice of a specialist, or at least to make a serious study of the field.

Making a similar judgment call in music or art has no such visible effect. You may be poorer for it in some sense, but you'll probably never find out. One can therefore very easily get away with this sort of "judgment fraud" in a way causality would never permit with a more life-and-death or quantifiable subject.

However, I would never advocate that everyone abandon their own opinions, in favor of those offered by the experts; especially in a field of such breadth and subjectivity as music.  I am a great believer in the value of individual judgment; but let us be careful with our words. Next time you hold forth for your friends on your favorite music or work of art, test your sentence first in your head with a different noun. If it screams "I'm unqualified!" at the top of its lungs, then revise accordingly. Avoid value words like "great," "excellent," "bad," or "terrible". Probably you  mean to describe your personal enjoyment, rather than the value of the item to its field; choose your words accordingly.

"Bach's music is terrible!" ("Fermi's nuclear fission reactor is terrible!") is not a good sentence to use. Probably what you really meant was "I don't enjoy Bach's music at all." ("I don't enjoy Fermi's fission reactor at all"). You are perfectly entitled to your own level of enjoyment of any work of art (or any nuclear physics for that matter). But your opinion on its objective value is worth as much as it is in nuclear physics.

Shall we look at some more examples? "Ella Fitzgerald was a terrible singer" ("Einstein was a terrible physicist") could become "I hate Ella Fitzgerald's singing". "My son Johnny is a Great pianist" might be better said "I love my son Johnny's piano playing" - or in extreme cases: "I'm no professional, but I think my son Johnny is a Great pianist". Be very careful making large-scale value comments when you know that they contradict the judgment of an entire industry of professionals. You may be right, but you'd better come prepared for some serious debate!

It will inevitably be mentioned that the "experts" have been wrong on many, many things over the years - again, especially in a field with the breadth and subjectivity of music or art. Bizet's Carmen was trashed by reviewers. Van Gogh was never appreciated in his lifetime. But the later recognition of these artists' value was not a grassroots movement. Van Gogh did not gain a post-mortem reputation because a thousand dilettantes liked "Sunflowers." Rather, people - predominantly specialists in the field - used their independent judgment, and even though they contradicted their entire industry, they did come prepared for some serious debate.

So please, be careful when you make a value judgment in a field you have not studied. Try to be more careful with your words, and describe your enjoyment of a work of art instead of its intrinsic value; or at the very least qualify the sentence. Do it for the sake of my sanity.

ASIDE: Regular readers might remember a discussion awhile back, in which I was accused of making just such a casual opinion in the area of explosive devices. My response remains the same: I wouldn't argue the science, but I have every right to an opinion on the reaction by public officials. Similarly, a Met board member may not be qualified to judge Handel's composing, but they can certainly disagree with the choice of Giulio Cesare for the season, based on their personal enjoyment of the piece. They are a stakeholder in the outcome.

A good friend sent me an article (with video!) from the Washington Post:

Pearls Before Breakfast

An experiment, to see what would happen if one of the world's greatest classical musicians played in a crowded subway station.  Would anyone notice?  Would a crowd gather?  Would he make much money?

So they hired world-famous violinist Joshua Bell (bear in mind, this guy isn't" world-famous" like Josh Groban, disdained among real singers; Bell is the real deal) to play at a busy Metro station during rush hour.  The famous performer thought it sounded fun.  He set up against a wall, tossed some seed money into his open violin case, and put a bow to his 1713 Stradivarius.

So what happened?  The article keeps you in suspense, making you wade through florid prose on a number of tangents before finally revealing the reaction.   I'm only going to give one tangent:

The Post interviewed conductor Leonard Slatkin about the idea, and asked his bet on the outcome of the experiment.  Slatkin thought that "maybe 35 or 40" people out of 1000 would recognize the quality.  75 or 100 would stop to listen.  A crowd would definitely gather, he said.

What's your bet?  How many people would you expect to stop, out of 1000?  I figured on 20 to 25 people, to match the oft-quoted 2.5% of the US population who consider themselves classical music buffs.  

So what happened?

"In the three-quarters of an hour that Joshua Bell played, seven people stopped what they were doing to hang around and take in the performance, at least for a minute. Twenty-seven gave money, most of them on the run -- for a total of $32 and change. That leaves the 1,070 people who hurried by, oblivious, many only three feet away, few even turning to look.

No, Mr. Slatkin, there was never a crowd, not even for a second.

It was all videotaped by a hidden camera. You can play the recording once or 15 times, and it never gets any easier to watch."

A bit depressing.  The Post article tells us that it's OK, because according to Immanuel Kant, appreciation of art is largely dependent on having the right context.  I particularly enjoyed this little gem:

"What is beauty? Is it a measurable fact (Gottfried Leibniz), or merely an opinion (David Hume), or is it a little of each, colored by the immediate state of mind of the observer (Immanuel Kant)?We'll go with Kant, because he's obviously right..."

 Sure, you can just blow through a major philosophical debate like that.  We'll side with Kant,  because he's right.  (No wait, I want to side with Hume,  because he's good looking!)  Philosophical atrocity aside, this experiment does bring up some enormous questions.  If a great artist plays in a subway and no one listens, is it great art?   Assuming that some people even noticed the noisy box of catgut in the corner, why wouldn't they stop?  Do people make enough time in their lives for beauty?  Do people just not understand the concept of music for serious expression anymore?  Does the portable music revolution mean that people are totally tuned out from reality?  Would this experiment have played out the same way in any other country?

"If we can't take the time out of our lives to stay a moment and listen to one of the best musicians on Earth play some of the best music ever written; if the surge of modern life so overpowers us that we are deaf and blind to something like that -- then what else are we missing?"

I know I just gave away the surprise ending, but it's still worth reading the article for the videos,  and especially for Joshua Bell's impressions on the whole thing.  What was it like to play for an audience that tried to ignore you?   

Oh, and how many people actually recognized international virtuoso Joshua Bell? 

One. And she stayed until he stopped playing.

An interesting set of audio clips - Richard Tucker interviewed as a part of a radio series examining art in modern society.  The series covers twenty-two great artists, asking some big questions:

Frank Lloyd Wright, Aaron Copland, Leopold Stokowski, Robert Penn Warren, Allen Tate, Norman Cousins, Reinhold Niehbuhr, Margaret Mead, Agnes de Mille, and many other authorities express their individual views on the creative process in reference to their own work and to society. Each interview attempted to answer several critical questions relative to nontechnical values that challenge the attention of thoughtful individuals in an industrial society:

Do the human and cultural aspects of civilization receive the necessary encouragement to insure a balanced development?
Do the young potential artists in our midst have a favorable opportunity to express their talents?

 It's an interesting question.  What does the questioner mean by "balanced development"?  Balanced according to whom, or by what measure?  Development towards what?  

Hell, I may as well post the link to the whole archive of audio clips - in the music category, at least.  Everyone from harpist Deborah Henson-Conant to Yo-Yo Ma to Aaron Copeland talking (and performing) about all sorts of stuff.  Have fun!   

Lately I've begun playing with a new way to interact over the internet: Second Life.  I've been encouraged to explore this medium by one of my jobs... and I've found it interesting, for lack of a better word.

First of all, a brief primer: Second Life is a freeform virtual universe, where people interact over the internet.  It's a bit like a giant chatroom, with visuals.  When you sign up, you create an "avatar" (a character) to play as.  You can change your avatar's appearance as much as you like, at any time - be male, female, dragon, or flying spaghetti monster.  And then you go interact.

As I mentioned, SL is entirely freeform.  The parent company (Linden Labs) creates only the land where things happen.  Users create everything else.  From chairs and couches to buildings and fighter jets, everything is built by users.  Not that you have to be able to program in order to get by - people own stores as well, to sell the things they build.  This means that the world contains literally anything you can imagine.  Plenty of people have homes that float in the sky.  Flying (yes, like superman) is a major form of transportation.  People, are, have, and do the wildest things you can imagine.

SL even has an economy of sorts - a currency with a free floating exchange with the US dollar.  There are people who earn a living in this virtual world.  Anshe Chung for instance, was the first Second Life millionaire - that's millionaire in US dollars.  I'm not kidding when I say that this is an entire universe.

So why am I posting about it on a music blog?  Because like the real world, second life also has a music industry.  

This is still hard for me to wrap my head around, so bear with me.  There are concerts given in SL all the time, often synchronized with real world events.  To my understanding, they work much the same way a real concert does - buy a ticket, sit down, and listen or watch.   The website touts virtual concerts by U2, Duran Duran, and Susanne Vega. 

Having no experience with this aspect of the virtual world, I can't offer you much insight into it.  But maybe you all can help me?  Is there a future for musicians in this sort of digital broadcast?  Is it worthwhile streaming any of your performances over the internet, in any format?  What would be the attraction of having an avatar stand on a virtual stage and perform to your instrument?

And inevitably: does performance art like opera have a future in this kind of virtual environment? 

Two days ago, I posted a question to my artistic readers: "Why are you an artist?"

As I mentioned: the world is a messy place. Hunger, war, disease, oppression... why would a globally-aware person choose to become an artist? I promised my own answer.

I think about this question a lot.  I'm one of those people who could have done almost anything as a career. Computers in any capacity being one example, but business and marketing have always fascinated me.  Not to mention med school: biology continues to be an interesting hobby field.

So why art?  And of all the arts, why that dinosaur without relevance to modern life: opera? 

 The sensation of a calling is hard to describe.  I remember the precise moment when I realized I had to sing for the rest of my life, in some capacity.  It made me understand people who feel "called" to the priesthood, or to public service. That calling is certainly why I started as a singer. But I could have stopped, or become an avocational singer instead.

Momentum alone is not enough to explain a lifetime of effort.  Fundamentally, I believe that what I do is important.  In the first place, I consider opera an art of growing relevance to modern life.  As a colleague of mine from the theatre world told me recently: "all the action is in opera now.  I went to the Fringe Festival, which used to be the most edgy stuff in theatre.  Now everything is traditional-format, using safe ideas... meanwhile, opera is broadcasting into theatres and on the internet.  Opera is making headlines by challenging religious and cultural boundaries."

So opera is a contemporary art form.  Moreover, I believe that opera at its very best can carry all of the emotional weight of symphonic music, the power and gripping communication of drama, and the specificity of the spoken word.  Truly great opera speaks to you on multiple levels, and has something specific to offer to the dialog of a culture.  Truly great opera however, is as rare as truly great art in any field: we are fortunate to get a handful of such creators in a century.

 I do not understand yet quite how this works; precisely how it is that great opera achieves relevance, or what one performer's place is in that picture.  For now, I think of the significance of my own career along the same lines as the significance of a skyscraper: it is not important in and of itself, but rather as a symbol.  It reminds us of the greatness of humankind.  It is a physical manifestation of the ability of a single human being - like a church that, ignoring the spirits and demons of religion, glorifies man instead.

I am trying to build a skyscraper of an artist.  I want to be able to say that I have reached the fullest capacity of my body and life, and in doing so, to remind people just what we are capable of.   I want to be a living example of the greatness humanity can reach, and opera is my medium.

It occurred to me the other day that the nature of performance art has changed drastically in the last century.  In 1887, if you saw a performance of Otello, it was a unique experience, never to be duplicated.  You wouldn't get to hear the same music again for years, unless you bought another ticket for the next night.  Even then, the performance would be slightly different.  On a larger scale: as an individual artist, your creations died with you.  Farinelli was an incredible singer, but only his contemporaries got to appreciate it.

Compare this with the other, documentary arts like writing, composition, painting or sculpture.  By their very nature, the creations of these arts are appreciated and studied long after the act of creation.  Da Vinci's creations have been appreciated by generations since his death - and some of his drawings (his flying machines for example) could only be appreciated as genius in this century.  Artists who were unknown in their own time became great masters post-mortem.  Such is the nature of these arts - and until recently, this was their exclusive province over performance artists.

In the 20th Century, we've started recording performances.  At first, it was only the best of the best that were recorded.  Still, great singers and actors from Caruso to Alastair Sim could join the ranks of documentary artists, having their creations experienced and appreciated long after the act of creation.  After Caruso's death, we have all enjoyed his art - something never possible before.  I have learned quite a bit about acting from the performances of Mr. Sim, who died before I was born.  

Now, in the digital age, and especially in the age of user-created content, we have entered another phase of documentary performance art.  Now, most performers have some document of their art, rather than just those who were appreciated during their lifetime.  I guarantee that just as in composition, painting and sculpture, some artists will only be discovered as great after their deaths.   Already, there are singers who were never appreciated fully during their careers, who are gaining new stature thanks to the documents of their art.

The name Joseph Shore is known by many young singers, thanks to his fantastic collection of mp3 recordings - documents of his art - available for free online.  Though he was hailed as a great singer by everyone who heard him, he cut his own career short to take up teaching.  Now, the documentary nature of opera performance (and the medium of transmission that is the internet) has spread the word of his fantastic singing, 20 years after the fact.  This would have been impossible even 50 years ago, but it is the new reality in our field.

For all you young singers out there - bear in mind that when you create a character, your decisions may be as final as Picasso's paint on canvas.  Your art may be heard, admired and criticized for generations to come - and possibly not until then.  So create accordingly, and feel fortunate.  You are one of the first generations to create documentary performance art! 

This means a new freedom - a new ability to create for the sake of creating, whether contemporary audiences understand or not.  For the first time, performance art has a chance to take the test of historical hindsight.  Perhaps some future generation will see great art where today's critics did not.

Came across these posters on Soho the Dog today. Enjoy!

For singers:

And for that guy who somehow always sits beside me at the symphony:

As much as I enjoy this discussion, I'm not a fan of using up topspace on the blog for it... nor necessarily for broadcasting every step of it by RSS. This post will serve as a response and as a placeholder for future discussion via comments.

Mr. Douglas insists that I misunderstand his original article, and that my response accordingly misses the point. I'm afraid I'm only a singer, and I still don't see the misunderstanding!

I do understand that Mr. Douglas is speaking about the artifacts of culture rather than the culture itself, but apart from the insertion of the word "artifact" repeatedly in my response, I don't believe that this alters the argument in any fundamental way.

As a clue, Mr. Douglas presents a quote - one in fact that I had considered using, because it was some of the most straightforward writing in the piece - to demonstrate that 'intent' has nothing to do with his argument. Key sentences from the quote:

"the singular principal hallmark of all artifacts of the realm of high culture is their perceived aspiration to transcendence...

"And that singular hallmark is what's singularly lacking in all the artifacts of the realm of popular culture, their singular principal hallmark being a perceived aspiration to the widely accessible here-and-now entertaining."

(emphasis mine)

It seems that our misunderstanding centers around the use of the words "aspiration" and "intent". Indeed, Mr. Douglas is careful to point out:

...in themselves (as distinct from the conscious intentions of their creators), their hallmark characteristic is their perceived quality of aspiring to transcendence.

(emphasis mine)

So, the work itself ASPIRES to transcendance, no matter what the creator intended? I'm afraid this concept eludes me. A work of art is inanimate in every sense but the metaphoric. It's only aspiration or intention is that of the artist, or that of the viewer imposed thereupon. But Mr. Douglas cannot be saying that the definition between high and popular cultural artifacts is that he (Douglas) wishes upon them an aspiration to transcend. This wold be nonsensical.

Clearly there is something in the subtleties of the words "aspiration" and "intention" that I'm not getting. I tried Merriam-Webster to see if it was something obvious, but the definitions are quite similar:

Intend: "to have in mind as a purpose or goal"
Aspire: "to seek to attain or accomplish a particular goal"

What am I missing here? Mr. Douglas has done plenty to try and help me better understand his meaning, but I'm dense enough not to get it. Anyone else care to help?