Musical Identity

As my musical charisma project has been developing, I have been making a collection of public figures who provide good case studies for some the processes my research has identified. Steve Jobs was pretty high on the list right from the start, and in the light of his premature passing last week, I’d like to share my notes with you. Most tributes have been about how he changed the way we listen to music; I’d like to suggest that by studying him we can also learn some useful lessons for how we make music.

Another session from August’s ABCD Convention that deserves individual comment is Jackie Roxborourgh’s session on community choirs. Jackie works in the world of natural voice practitioners, and so probably spends a lot time helping the people ABCD delegates were referring to as the ‘generation lost to singing’.

One of the (many) things I liked about her approach is that her focus is in helping people over the obstacles they have had with singing, whether that be childhood discouragement or exclusion in adulthood due to a lack of music literacy. So she sees it as a badge of success when people move on into other choirs – such a refreshing difference in attitude from the hoarding of members and jealousy if they ‘defect’ that you so often see.

Anyway, part of her discussion involved a compare/contrast exercise of the ‘traditional’ choir versus the ‘community’ choir.

Magenta at MozFest, July 2011Tomorrow, my choir will be five years old. I will do my best not to be too self-indulgent in this moment of celebration, but anyone who has ever started anything from scratch will understand that combination of astonishment and gratitude that arises from the discovery that other people are not just willing, but happy to join in your project and make it happen.

I shouldn’t be surprised of course. People like to sing; choirs are popping up all the time. But this was the first time it was my fault the choir existed. Scary.

If you read a certain subset of the self-help literature, you’ll be assured that charisma is something that can be yours by using certain techniques, and that your life will be transformed as a result. On the other hand, you’ll also find many people telling you that charisma is something in-born – you either have it or you don’t, and if you have to ask, you’re clearly in the latter category.

So, which position is right?

Well, neither, really. They’ve both got some elements of truth to them, which is why both points of view survive so healthily – they each capture something that plausibly describes the world as we experience it. But neither tells the whole story.

Friday night's panel: Brian Kay, Amy Bebbington, Neil Ferris, Jackie Roxborough, Helen Smith, Rachel Greaves, Pamela Cook and John Rutter
The last weekend in August has become the traditional weekend for the Association of British Choral Directors to hold their annual convention. This year’s was on my home patch in Birmingham, and was celebrating the organisation’s 25th anniversary.

The plenary sessions on Friday evening and Saturday morning accordingly took an overview of British choral life – the first looking at trends from the last 25 years (and into the future), the second considering the ‘state of the choral nation’. In fact, the two debates became quite interrelated, with themes from the Friday evening re-emerging within the ostensibly different subjects under review on the Saturday morning. As you might imagine, we had both utopic and dystopic visions of British choral life: depending on whom you ask, we are either in better or worse shape than we have been for years!

I spent Sunday with my friends in Bristol Fashion. I think this must have been my 5th visit in a bit over two years, and they always organise glorious weather. Even though it was drizzling when I arrived this time, once the singing started, the clouds parted. (I am sure this is nothing to either with the mild climate in the south-west of England or the fact that they always invite me in the months of May-September!)

A lot of our work this time focused less on skills per se than the psychology of confidence. There were certainly skills targeted for development (clear and positive articulation of word sounds for one), but what emerged as more central to the chorus’s quality of performance was their decision to use skills already acquired. One of the things about a group that has developed a long way in a short time is that it is very easy to default back to a lower level of performance because it is in fact not very long ago that that was the norm. They have the skills to perform with real beauty and believability to when they remember to deploy them, but they find it too easy to slip back into a more ordinary state of competence that not so long ago would have pleased them, but is no longer in the league they could be.

Last week I heard from a friend about an experience that was bothering her 17-year-old son. He’s currently studying for A levels, and planning to apply for a place on a BMus course. His career aspirations seem quite clearly thought-through (way more than mine were at that age!), with a desire to perform professionally backed up by Plans B and C of teaching music and/or doing something else to pay the bills while moonlighting on the semi-pro circuit.

The first thing to note is that Plan A will almost certainly involve either or both of Plans B and C en route. Very few people support themselves throughout their career entirely from performing. It’s not just when you’re in the early stages needing to supplement income either. You also see people shifting away from full-time performance later on, in order to see their kids before they grow up, or for the chance to spend a bit of time enjoying the house they’ve been paying the mortgage on.

Anyway, that’s the background; the problem is this:

Years ago I was watching one of the piano classes at the Colchester Festival, in which I had a piano student performing. One of the other entrants played the first of Debussy’s Arabesques. He was accurate, but ploddy, showing little of the sense of sweep and flow the music calls for. My first thought was: ‘What on earth is his teacher doing letting him loose on this?’ My second thought, following hard on the heels of this was: ‘I know exactly why his teacher wanted him to learn this.’

This experience highlighted the contradictory nature of two standard imperatives in the development of musical performers. On the one hand, people are encouraged to perform music that ‘suits’ them; on the other, people are encouraged to engage with a variety of styles and expressive worlds in order to develop breadth and flexibility of communication.