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October 29, 2009
John Adams - On Surviving a First Rehearsal
From John Adams' new blog:On surviving a first rehearsal
Herewith a composer’s survival kit for the first rehearsal of an orchestra piece:
* Try not to panic if you can’t recognize that noise coming from the stage as something you wrote. The players, even those who’ve seriously practiced their parts, are nonetheless holding on for dear life. From their vantage point inside the churning machine they very likely have no idea at all what you mean nor how what they are playing is supposed to fit into the grand plan. They have only their individual parts, which are strange and incomplete road maps full of rests, occasional notes and then more rests. Even the very best of them will miscount on a first encounter.
* At the first reading the wrong notes you are hearing are probably 90% due to musicians’ errors. This will rectify itself more or less by the time of the performance. (We are assuming you did a thorough, responsible and accurate job of proof reading. If you didn’t, go back to your composition teacher and demand a refund.) But some wrong notes, no matter how hard you worked to check everything, will pop up. Orchestra players are usually very generous and caring about getting wrong notes corrected. They’ll frequently take time out of their break to come up to you to check something. (On the night of the Disney Hall gala premiere, only a minute or two before the concert is to begin, I see Dale Hikawa, one of the first stand viola players, jump off the edge of the stage and come running up to me in the audience. “You know that B-double sharp? Dah-dah-dee-dee DAH? (She hums it.) That couldn’t be right, could it? Are you sure?” Indeed, she is right to ask. I say “B double-sharp doesn’t make any sense. It’s gotta be a mistake.” She smiles, relieved, and runs back up onto the stage in her black evening gown.)
* At least at the first rehearsal, try not to interrupt the conductor while he or she is making a first pass through the music. Conductors are a varied and unpredictable lot (and when I am conducting I am varied and unpredictable). Some are thrilled to be introducing a new work and can take enjoyment in the give-and-take of a chaotic and messy new experience. But they still need to take charge over what is always just a stone’s throw away from degenerating into a free-for-all. A first rehearsal of a new piece can be a thoroughly harrowing experience for even the most confident conductors. Under these circumstances a nervous, beseeching composer can be a decidedly unwelcome presence in the area around the podium. Stay cool and wait for them to come to you with questions.
* Keep notes of the major things that have to be addressed, but don’t try to lay all that desiderata on the assembled multitude during the first session. I no longer use a note pad, but rather carry a block of small Post-its which I can quickly stick right on the very spot of the score page where something has to be fixed. Librarians, invariably the kindest and most knowledgeable people in the music profession, are almost always willing and able to put changes in the parts in between rehearsals. If the orchestra has the luxury of an assistant conductor, employ him or her to communicate things to various members of the orchestra. But never make a substantial change in a part without making sure that the conductor knows about this and has it in his or her score.
* Remember that balances actually change from one concert hall to another. How many times have I scratched out a tuba part or deleted a percussion line only to realize later that the peculiarities of that particular hall are site specific and not carried over to the next one? Nonetheless, you have to make things right for the immediate setting. Disney Hall in Los Angeles, a delightful place to make and listen to music, is nonetheless a very tricky acoustical space. It can be like playing on the head of a tautly stretched timpani. The back wall of the stage propels the last row of instruments—usually drums, chimes and other heavy artillery—over the heads of the woodwinds and strings and over the head even of the conductor. A forte written for the bass drum can annihilate an entire section of 16 violins. The bass drum player doesn’t know how this sound is affecting the total acoustical image, and even the conductor may not be aware. In City Noir the tam tams (which I love, especially when played softly) are total danger zones, ready to erupt like Vesuvius and pour their hot sonic lava over half the stage.
* If you’re lucky enough to get numerous rehearsals, plan in advance what the most important issues to be addressed are, and meet with the conductor with a modest list of realizable goals just before the rehearsal. A really great orchestra has a fast learning curve, and a talented conductor know how to ride it. After a passage has been played a number of times, the musicians will begin to intuit how their parts fit into the whole. Sometimes only a second pass is needed for a passage to suddenly transform from inchoate sludge to sparkling clarity. Other things are never going to right themselves without slow and painstaking rehearsal. A gifted conductor will know what needs work and what will take care of itself automatically.
* Be flexible and take every opportunity to talk to the players. Sometimes you can make an on-the-spot change that will make an instrumentalist’s day. Other times, although you realize that what you’ve written is in fact awkward and unreasonable, the player will be affronted if you offer to simplify or revise a phrase or a passage. They assume that if something isn’t working it’s their fault. Composers are geniuses, right? For them it’s their burden to somehow make it work, and they do not realize that it’s the composer who needs to get it right.
With that said, I have to confess that I am exceptionally fortunate this time. Gustavo, for all the blaze of media spotlight and for all the burden of expectations heaped on him, rehearses the piece expertly and with good humor. The first reading, a full week before the premiere, is a jolt for everyone. He launches the piece at full throttle and doesn’t stop until the very last bar some thirty-five minutes later, taking no prisoners. Sometimes the tempi are even faster than the already perverse one’s I’ve stipulated. But there’s a method to his madness. No one will be deluded into thinking that the piece is any less fiendish than it is. Of course it’s a roller coaster of a ride, like hurtling down a steep hill knowing your brakes have failed. They say the man jumping off the skyscraper ledge sees his whole life pass before him in a flash. Well, it’s not unlike that. Everything you have labored over with infinite care, step by step, note by note, during the past nine months now goes careening by in a burst of only barely controlled chaos. It’s like a freight train threatening to jump its tracks, or like that absurd Hollywood movie from a few years back featuring a driverless semi that had a murderous mind of its own.
The first bash-through reading completed, it’s time to go back and pick up the road kill. (Twenty four years ago, at the first reading of Harmonielere, I still hadn’t completed the last ten bars, so when the orchestra reached that point, a massive fortissimo charging tutti, the sound suddenly and alarmingly stopped dead in its tracks, as if someone had suddenly pulled the plug out of a giant socket.) Everyone takes a deep breath and starts again, this time at half the tempo, first the strings, then the winds, then the brass—slowly, deliberately. A tedious slog, but necessary. Emanuel Ax taught me the value of doing everything VERY slowly. Zen “beginner’s mind.” The players are thankful not to be stressed. Their internal computers take in the data as they plod along. Amazing things begin to happen. The waters part. Continents slowly become discernible, rising out of the chaos, taking shape. Your music finally begins to resemble your imagined version.
Originally from Discussion Forum - NetNewMusic, ReBlogged by newmusicrebloggers on Oct 29, 2009 at 12:42 PM