For the boreal visitor to Melbourne, September is a magical time. Having just enjoyed our own spring and summer and as we brace ourselves for the fading light of autumn, we find ourselves once again at the beginning of the season of growth. Under the storm clouds of dire circumstances on the world stage, not to mention the nauseating state of affairs in my own country, the United States, a double dose of light and the promise of spring is especially welcome.
Taking in the many scenes of suffering and the causes of outrage, one could be forgiven for feeling gloomy. Instead, I feel optimistic. This is not the easy balm of nostalgia—the drug of choice for those of us with more years in our pasts than in our futures. My sense of optimism has been honed by nearly 50 years of teaching and the deep admiration I feel for young musicians whose hunger for the application of art to life sustains them. I respond to the tidal swell of their energy and artistry and to the joys of hard work they will discover along the way. And I celebrate.
My own practice, as a percussionist and conductor dedicated to new music and new forms of expression, cannot breathe in the anaerobic environment of pessimism. Indeed, I think of the creation of new music—whether through commissioning, improvisation, composition, or sound sculpture—as the embodiment of optimism. These acts presume an audience in the future that might be interested enough in us to listen to the music we made. Of course, art can also express negative emotions. It can display the fear that every sentient person must be experiencing currently as we contemplate war, climate disaster, and a culture that sometimes seems more interested in watching life pass by on Instagram than in real time. But certainly, the fundamental job of art cannot be to make us afraid—I get that every day when I read The New York Times. We need art to show us the way out.
So how does that work?
My approach to my own music-making requires three fundamentally healthy relationships:
- With the materials of my art
- With the natural world around me
- With the communities around me and the dialogue I cultivate with them.
To me, these are the principles of healthy artmaking, the source of my optimism, and the precepts along which I organized the events of my residency in September.
Exploring the materials of artmaking is a practice familiar to every professional musician: sharpening technical skills, refining interpretative approaches, honing the mental capacities of analysis and memory. Pieces like Brian Fernyhough’s Bone Alphabet or Iannis Xenakis’s Psappha are the results of a faithful exploration of the materials of music over the course of many decades.
But “material” is a small part of a big world. Concert-giving in a well-outfitted hall is a very recent phenomenon. And, my instrument, percussion, wasn’t even heard indoors until the relatively recent past. So, musicians need also to take nourishment from the natural world—that exuberant external soundscape of natural, mechanized, and human sounds. As emblematic of the sounds of the natural world, we offer Michael Pisaro’s evocative ricefall. Pisaro was inspired by John Hull’s book, “Touching the Rock: An Experience of Blindness.” Hull notes that to a blind person a sunny day is merely a warm day. But when it rains, the earth becomes visible. One can sense the distance from a car, the dimensions of a lake, or the texture of a lawn by listening to the fine differences among the sounds as rain drops strike those objects. Not with rainfall, but rather ricefall in this case, Pisaro brings us close to the purely acoustical world of the outdoors.
The third criterion speak for itself since without community a musician lacks not just an audience but also a home. While the presence of listeners seems axiomatic at every stage of music history, it has become indispensable now. Fostering dialogue, spoken or unspoken, within a community of listeners creates an environment of reciprocal wisdom and can serve as the basis of real interaction. We often feel the fundamental skill of a musician is expression. True—see the espressivo indications that dot any 19th century score. But we should re-learn that in fact the primary skill for a musician is listening. A piece like Pauline Oliveros’s Tuning Meditation, involving both performing musicians and audience members, is a tutorial in precisely the kind of receptive listening this historical moment demands. Sadly, it also underlines the kind of listening that is currently in short supply.
These three paradigmatic skills are intricately interwoven. Without a high degree of skill, a musician will have nothing to say. Without community, there will be no one to whom to say it. The natural world chastens and humbles us—a reliable anti-toxin to shallow virtuosity. Entering one domain we are quickly connected to others. In a virtuosic piece like Xenakis’s Psappha, a percussionist soon finds herself communing with Sappho, whose poems illuminate the intimacy and connection basic to any act of communal discourse. Embrace a piece like ricefall, seemingly a pure reflection of the natural world, and soon we discover a wealth of performance considerations—how best to drop the rice and on what objects. The aquifer of connection among the domains of music-making is deep and comforting.
Connections like these always lead to intense and sympathetic listening, a skill that once honed will lead us to tune a perfect third in just intonation or appreciate the finesse of a virtuoso. But it will also help us hear the laments of an ailing planet and tend to the wounds of members of our community whose voices are often lost in our increasingly cruel world. As I imagine returning to ANAM and teaming up again with young musicians who not only express themselves but, with equal acuity, listen to others, I cannot help but be optimistic. It is indeed springtime for listeners!
Words by Steven Schick.
Steven will be inresidency at ANAM from 15 - 20 September.
ANAM MASTERCLASS: STEVEN SCHICK
Monday 15 September 10.30am
Venue Rosina Auditorium, Abbotsford Convent
STEVEN SCHICK RESIDENCY 1: THOUGHT
Tuesday 16 September 7pm
Venue Rosina Auditorium, Abbotsford Convent
STEVEN SCHICK RESIDENCY 2: TOUCH
Thursday 18 September 3pm
Venue Rosina Auditorium, Abbotsford Convent
STEVEN SCHICK RESIDENCY 3: LIFE
Saturday 20 September 7pm
Venue Rosina Auditorium, Abbotsford Convent