The Exeter Sacred Harp Singing: a capella heavy metal!

Jennifer and I did something new yesterday. Or, to be more exact, we did something very old, which was new to us. We drove up into rural Pennsylvania to the Exeter Sacred Harp Singing and Dinner on the Grounds. It was so fun! We really appreciate Elizabeth and Ted Stokes and the Pennsylvania Sacred Harp singers for organizing the event.

Even though I'm originally from north Alabama, an area with a long history and an ongoing practice of Sacred harp singing, also known as a "fa-so-la" singing or "shape note" singing, and even though I had heard of it at least since college, I had never gotten around to checking it out. Last week I decided I wanted to go explore.

This all-day Sacred Harp singing in Pennsylvania was in a small white wooden church building, a Friends Meeting House built in the early 1900s. The old hardwood pews were built in a "hollow square" arrangement, so that the leader stands in the middle (near the stove that still heats the building in winter) with all the singers facing the middle. The trebles, altos, basses and tenors sit by section, on the four sides of the square. The tenor has the primary melody, but that melody is buried in a contrapuntal texture so that all the parts are more-or-less equally important melodies.

There were about 60 people there, which filled the building. Those very old a capella songs are sung with a strong beat, and everyone sings at the top of their lungs! Also, the desired sound is nasal, bright and reedy and very exciting.

Today I have been thinking about that sound, and about the visceral appeal of the music. The contrapuntal texture and intense, focused vocal projection make a wall of sound, and the practice seems to favor making the sound as loud as possible. The music has a strong beat, and many of the singers keep the beat with their arms as they sing. Leaders tend to lead the songs rather quickly, and they also take turns very quickly, so that the sound comes in bursts of just a couple of minutes, with very little pause between.

An intense wall of sound, as loud as possible, with a powerful beat--my response would be very much the same if you asked me why I enjoy certain heavy rock music. It makes me think - and this is purely conjecture - that there is something deeply pleasurable about both because that's how our mind-body works; that there is something about us that finds that kind of intensity pleasurable.

I have also been thinking about how this intense experience (and I'm sure it won't be my last Sacred Harp singing) will influence my composing. More thoughts about that later. ~ML

Orchestra Stops Mid-Performance, Composer Sues

If the story circulating in the press follows the general outline of events, it reflects astonishingly unprofessional orchestra management.

It's old news now, but somehow (something to do with finishing my DMA! Yippee!) I didn't hear about it at the time: noted composer Nathan Currier hired the Brooklyn Philharmonic to perform his massive new work of higher ecological consciousness, The Gaian Variations, in April 2004. Currier believed that all the performance details were settled. At the second intermission, the orchestra's CEO pulled him aside and explained that, contrary to their prior communications, the work was going to keep the orchestra on the job past the standard three-hour union call, requiring overtime pay that the organization simply didn't have. She insisted that he make cuts to the score on the spot. The biggest disaster, though, was that, instead of using his cuts, the orchestra resumed performing after intermission and then... just... stopped.

Currier, who paid the orchestra $70,000 for their performance, is suing them, but insists he will drop the suit if they'll give the work another performance.

Paying the orchestra out of pocket for a performance (rather than just a recording) is not unheard of when a composer has lots of money and wants a particular performance badly enough. As I understand it, the absolute top-shelf orchestras and organizations--NY Phil, the Met--will not take on that sort of arrangement, for fear it undercuts their credibility. That's not to say that the Brooklyn Phil are slouches; for 55 years they've been an important part of the NYC music scene, with very famous directors giving important premieres of major new works.

The NY Post article gives the impression that this was Nathan Currier's "big break." That's not exactly accurate. Currier has won major awards and gained substantial recognition, with a commission from the Berlin Philharmonic and performance by the Saint Paul Chamber Orchestra, an American Academy of Arts & Letters award, the Rome Prize, the Guggenheim Fellowship, and on and on.

But getting a performance of a huge composition is a very big deal, and very hard to get. It's not as if composers normally write more than a handful of super-long works in a lifetime. Most orchestra composers, even those who are getting performances, generally shoot for the 15-30 minute range, not 2-3 hours!

It seems unwise for Currier to be stating publicly that he will drop the charges if they will perform the work again. He's giving away his bargaining position.

What would you ask for? I'm not the litigious sort. Or, rather, I am learning that defending my rights is not the way to happiness.

But it seems he'll need more than just another performance if he hopes to undo the damage. Rightfully or otherwise, this unpleasantness will surely attach to him, even if he was clearly in the right, making other performing organizations reluctant to work with him.

If he is serious about a suit, I would think he should be asking for three or four rehearsals, then a performance, plus non-exclusive audio- and video-recording rights so that he can re-purpose this work and have a little more control over the way it is presented next time--plus an apology in the Times and other statements from the Brooklyn Philharmonic.

Of course, I haven't seen the contract. Who knows how he got himself into this.

In any case, tragically, it will probably be impossible for the orchestra to make this right even if they want to. The Brooklyn Phil is broke, and, for the foreseeable future, closed for business.

~m