City mouse, country mouse in classical music culture: Part II - repertoire and programming

"Repertoire."

Painting by Ana Inigo Olea,
from Wikimedia Commons

Such an every-day word in so classical circles.  

"What's on your repertoire list?"

"What rep did they play at the concert last night?"

"What kind of rep do they do?"

As a musician that has gone from being a city mouse to being a country mouse, if I use that word  in the community where I now find myself I get a whole lot of blank stares.  It's not because it's a fancy word or because it's derived from the French language; it's not necessarily because the classical music world, where the word most frequently resides, is a very small, quiet one. I think it's because of one important truth that I've learned about most of the people here - 

Music is simply music for many people.  There is no comprehension of "classical" vs. "jazz" vs. "bluegrass."  It's all just music.

It's taken some getting used to on my part but it's a concept that's growing on me.  There is a lot of freedom that comes with throwing away so many of these labels.  If I am no longer just a classical musician but rather "a musician" there's nothing stopping me from playing and exploring other styles.  And if I am no longer a classical musician I can venture out and try new things without fear of being criticized for trying to be someone that I'm not because anything is possible.

Stripped of my "classical musician" label I have started to play around with my own "repertoire" choices.  Oh wait, let's translate that into country mouse language - I have started to play around with the pieces that I share with others.  My decisions are being shaped by the people I'm playing for here, many of whom didn't grow up around classical music. So far I think the result is that both the audience and I have enjoyed the experiences far more than we would have had I stuck to my city mouse mentality.  Here are some morsels that I've picked up from folks that don't necessarily differentiate between musical styles and how those morsels shape my programming decisions and presentations, mostly as a chamber musician and solo performer.

Generally speaking, country mice...

• don't go to a performance for the sole purpose of hearing "classical music" or any other genre for that matter.  They go to hear music, to be moved, to be entertained, to get their toe tapping - they go for a variety of reasons that are hard to really predict or direct.  As a result I'm getting more and more brave about trying different types of pieces myself and even different instruments.  Not only does it keep it interesting for myself and my audience, it also helps me to let go a bit of my perfectionism.  And since people always show their appreciation regardless of how I feel myself about how successful my attempts are, I'm starting to connect with the fact that people want to hear music, not "perfection," whatever that is.  A good side benefit if you ask me.

• like to hear music that they've heard before, especially when the music is tied to some significant, meaningful event.  I always try to play something that is likely to be familiar to someone in the audience.  Beethoven's "Für Elise," Scott Joplin rags, Bach's C Major Prelude from the first volume of the Well-Tempered Clavier (many people know it thanks to Guonod's arrangement of "Ave Maria") for starters.  Of course it's impossible to find a piece that's going to relate to every member of the audience but what I've found is that even if one piece on a program touches one audience member, their visceral reaction, often found in a sigh, a smile, and enthusiastic applause, is enough to pull in many others in the crowd.  It's difficult to deny music it's power to move.

• are open-minded, especially if there is some sort of explanation as to why I am playing the piece I am playing.  I remember being quite nervous about playing a pretty dark, heavy Shostakovich Prelude and Fugue for a retirees' coffee hour at our church but I really wanted to share it with them for reasons I won't bore you with.  Before I played, I spent a few minutes explaining why the piece meant so much to me - that it brought to mind a visit I made to St. Petersburg right after communism had fallen.  I told them of the bombed-out estate on the Gulf of Finland that I stayed in with the boys choir I was with and of the shock that I saw on the boys' faces as they took in this completely different, world - one that was literally a ghost of the past.  After the performance I don't think that everyone left humming the piece, but they did listen and seemed to do so with some level of positive expectation.

• have a difficult time understanding multi-movement works.  This has been one of the most surprising things to me for some reason.  I just assumed, being the city mouse that I was, that everyone understood that some pieces had multiple movements and that they knew how to keep track of them mid-stream.  But that's just not the case.  The majority of folks where I live do not understand that there is a reason for a large work to have multiple movements - that those movements belong together in some way and that together they make up one story.  And since many have not previously learned classical music etiquette rules they inevitably clap at the end of each movement.  I would even go so far as to say that seeing multiple movement works on a program can make an audience nervous.  I can't tell you how many times I've seen audience members repeatedly elbow their neighbor during a Bach suite and point at the program with a panicked expression, all because they don't know where they are in the piece.  Part of my solution to this issue is, perhaps, somewhat scandalous, at least in the classical music world.  I, , I actually leave movements out or perform just one movement of a particular work at a time.  Sometimes I have been known to play one movement, skip to another piece, and then return to another movement of the first piece later on.  Shocking, I know.  But not once has anyone come up to me and harassed me about it.  

• have a difficult time paying attention when a piece is long, regardless of how wonderful a piece it is.  That's a simple problem to solve - I don't play really long pieces, at least not for a typical audience and not without fair warning.  A few years ago I had the opportunity to perform all of Schubert's epic song-cycle, "Winterreise."  It is a piece that takes an hour to perform and we did it without any intermission.  Even though I was thrilled to death to be doing it I was very careful to tell people in advance not only about why I was so thrilled to be doing it but also about the length and challenge of the work so that they could decide whether or not they wanted to make such a commitment.  

• really like music that makes them smile and even laugh.  I'll never forget the first time I performed a piece that elicited laughter from the darkness in the hall.  It was Erik Satie's "Sports et divertissements," 20 short pieces that weave together droll text provided by Satie himself, fabulous paintings by Charles Martin, and of course Satie's own musical representation of it all in miniature form.  Although the score states that the pieces shouldn't be performed with the words narrated, I had my husband narrate and had the paintings projected onto a screen behind the piano.  I'm so glad we chose to do it this way.  We heard laughter throughout and that instantly created a connection and an atmosphere with the audience that I now regularly seek.  This is not to say that I'm headed in the direction of presenting comedy routines on stage but I can't deny that I like to hear people enjoying themselves.  It helps to make that dark hall a little bit brighter and through the sound of their laughter it gives me a glimpse of my partners-in-crime. One thing I have learned when presenting pieces like this is that it seems to help the audience if I let them know beforehand that they should feel free to chuckle, smile, and laugh during the performance.  Otherwise it can make for a bit of a stifled, awkward scene for everyone involved.

I think it's really important to keep in mind with all of these observations that I don't think any less of my audience here.  I don't feel that I'm more sophisticated and I don't think there's any reason they should know what I know about how classical music works.  We come from different backgrounds - that's it.  My aim when I perform in this wonderful community of ours is not to dumb down classical music or to bring classical music to the masses, to show them what they're missing, to educate them.  My goal is now to share music and myself with them whether it's classical music, jazz, bluegrass, whatever.  And so far the experiment has kept this country mouse a proud, content country mouse that's wandering into many more directions than I ever thought possible.  

Other posts in this series:
City mouse, country mouse in classical music: Part I

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