“The Role of Women in Music: Gender Stereotypes in Music Education”
“The Role of Women in Music: Gender Stereotypes in Music Education”
by Andreas Xenopoulos
The phenomenon of seeing more men than women in certain areas of music industry is not something new. We just have to think of how often we meet women conductors, composers, or just take a look of the percentage of male and female in a professional orchestra, or the number between men and women performers in percussion, strings, keyboard instruments and so forth. But how did this happen? How back in the past we have to look in order to find the roots of this tradition? Is it common to all fields in music?
The purpose of this paper is to examine some of these questions, which have to do with gender issues and differences in the psychology of music, musicians and audience. We will also explore some stereotypes, developed in the music education in the United States during the late nineteenth and twentieth centuries.
If we take a closer look to what people think about musicians and sometimes what musicians themselves think about music, we will come across some age-old myths and stereotypes about women and how capable they are for a professional career in music. Of course this is not happening in every field of music. For example there is nothing wrong with a woman being a professional singer or a piano teacher. But what about this woman decides to go up on the stage and give a piano recital in from of the audience? How likely is that she will be criticized harder than a male pianist? Havelock Ellis in his book Man and Woman, which first published in 1894, he wrote: “Music is at once the most emotional and the most severely abstract of the arts. There is no art to which women have been more widely attracted and there is no art in which they have shown themselves more helpless”[1].
Lets explore some debates about what happens in certain fields in music starting from composition and creativity in general. Eugene Gates provides a great research on the topic in his article Why Have There Been No Great Women Composers? Psychological Theories, Past and Present. Gates examines Havelock who claims that the unequal distribution of genius and creativity between the sexes was biologically based. “Genius is more common among men by virtue of the same general tendency by which idiocy is more common among men. The two facts are but two aspects of a larger zoological fact – the larger variational range of the male… This is an organic tendency which no higher education can eradicate”[2]. This biological theory goes back to Darwin’s idea that populations with greater variability among individuals were more likely to survive the evolution of time and that males exhibited a greater range of variability than females. Before Darwin’s theory though, variability was thought to be a disadvantage and was often attributed to women. In the post-Darwin era however, when it was thought to be a biological benefit, it became the exclusive property of the male[3]. Here I must mention that recent discussions and research about variability are giving less support to this theory[4]. Carl E. Seashore, during the 1940s conducted a research exploring possible factors that they may be obstacles for women to succeed in music composition. Some of them were musical precocity, education, motherhood and marriage. For a woman who is a wife and mother, uninterrupted blocks of time in order to contribute to music writing and making, are almost unrealistic expectations[5]. Seashore also came up with another theory about gender differences, which says that “Woman’s fundamental urge is to be beautiful, loved, and adored as a person, man’s urge is to provide and achieve in a career… These two distinctive male and female urges… make the eternal feminine and persistent masculine types”[6]. In his article, Gates continues with Grace Rubi-Rabson who also formulated a similar theory in 1974. Grace states that women are not strongly motivated to put forth the effort essential for sustained creativity. This lack of achievement motivation, she explains, is due to innate sex differences; consequently, “with or without liberation, men will remain actively penetrating, women receptive”[7]. Grace observed baby monkeys and noticed that the male monkeys ran, fought, and explored, while the females sat and watched. Although, many socials scientists now recognize the error in attempting to explain human behavior from animal studies, Grace believes that like people, animals are also socialized to conform to the needs of their own species’ life style. She also turns to the work of Abraham Maslow who supports the idea that the profound difference between male and female is the lack of will in women to high-level creation… “A male, he says, will neglect his health risk his life, and subordinate all else to his messianic mission”[8]. Rubin-Rabson also claims that many musical gifted women have always preferred to invest their time and talents in teaching and performance where there is a social contact and the rewards are tangible, rather than in the solitary intellectual endeavor that is composition, which too often yields little more than the satisfaction of creation[9].
Gates, in his article continues by presenting some later ideas and theories that have to do with the differences between women and men’s brain and the way it processes certain information. Anne Fausto-Sterling explains that the left cerebral hemisphere is the seat of verbal, mathematical, and analytical skills, and sequential information processing; and the right hemisphere specializes in spatial skills, musical abilities, and holistic, nonverbal, Gestalt processing[10]. Levy-Sperry now made a hypothesis that women’s brains have the capacity to process verbal information in both hemisphere, and this bilateral representation of verbal functioning interferes with the right hemisphere’s ability to perform spatial tasks. Men’s brains, on the other hand, are highly specialized – the left hemisphere confines its activities exclusively to verbal tasks, while the right one deals only with spatial problems[11]. In the article, Gates cites also Lauren Harris, who speculates that composition involves cognitive skills associated primarily with the right cerebral hemisphere and that, therefor, like visual-spatial skills, they are more strongly developed in males than in females. Although Harris admits that “there is no direct evidence of right hemisphere specialization for compositional skill”, he maintains that “there is evidence of right hemisphere specialization for certain elements of musical perception probably critical for composition”[12].
Carol Neuls-Bates in the introduction to her book Women in Music mentions also some important sociological factors, which have being obstacles to women to follow music and composition in particular. She says that although many gifted women would like to study music and theory, it wasn’t until the late nineteenth century when the great European conservatories began to admit women into advanced theory and composition classes. She also mentions that “women did not enjoy the freedom from household responsibilities and child-rearing nor the financial independence that would have enabled them to undertake sustained creative work. And even the chosen few who were more fortunately placed encountered an almost impenetrable will of discrimination and prejudice. Faced with such obstacles, the wonder is that women composed at all, But compose they did”[13].
By examining all these different points of view on the subject we conclude it is not of course that women cannot compose or spend time with music, but their priorities are different since they have to accomplish some other “missions” in life such as motherhood or spend time with the household. We also saw that for many generations they where excluded from the music education and finally that the way brain processes information between men and women is totally different, so more capable of doing different activities.
It is very interesting now to tale a look in another article by Julia Eklund Koza, who examines stereotypes and the role of women in music education in the United States during the twentieth century through the Music Supervisor’s Journal. Eklund reports evidence that we have more women involved in the vocal and choral performance area and also in music education than men[14]. She also states another paradox happening in the United States that “popular American women’s magazines of the mid-nineteenth century indicated that boys were far less likely to study music than girls were”[15]. Of course this is a general observation but it is very important because it sets a completely different idea of stereotypes about music in the U.S. But from 1914 to 1924 the scene in music education changes dramatically. The single-sex musical organizations abounded and vocal and instrumental instruction for boys and girls were advocated[16]. From this point she notices a huge effort to bring more males into musical involvement, which affects the role of females in music and creates again the same stereotypical ideas we had in the European world. Through the Music Supervisors’ Journal she reports statements like “Music will keep our young boys home, away from the streets and bad people… Music will educate boys towards good music and not the unaesthetic ragtime”! Like Professor Harold Hill of the Music Man fame, contributors promised that music would keep children, specifically boys, out of trouble, “Girls who are at home with their music and boys who sing in the parish choir don’t land in the hands of the police”[17]! Throughout the Journal we also see the presentation of an idealized musical world for male, with lots of career opportunities in every field and how all these are appropriate for young boys in order to succeed in their lives. Ideas and statements go on and the debate between men and women becomes sharper: T.P. Giddings, head of the music department in Minneapolis, Minnesota, who spoke of boys’ need to be given “a chance to show they are men and can do things in music uncontaminated by female help. They love to sing. They like it better than girls do, but they are fussy about what they sing and how it sounds”[18].
The more Eklund researches the Journals, the more extreme the idea that only men are capable of great musical careers appears. She report a very interesting story about the teacher, Fred G. Smith, of Fort Smith, Arkansas, who set out to change boys’ “contemptuous” attitude toward music by posting pictures of male musicians along the halls of the school, together with a bulletin that began with the question, “Are you one of those people who consider Music effeminate?” The message was clear and expressed clearly under four phrases:
1. All the great composers were men.
2. The great Symphony Orchestras of the world are composed of men players…
3. Many churches in the larger cities have their music supplied by choirs of men and boys under a male organist and director.
4. The men who are playing and singing on the Concert stage and in Grand Opera have to be and are men of splendid physique and considerable intellectual attainment. They are the Physical equals of the best football and baseball players. [19]
Looking a bit more through the Journals she also discovered that especially after reaching the World War I, women not only were reminded of their responsibilities as mothers, they also were informed of the duties of a good wife.
In the beginning of the 20th century women had already involved with musical performance and played a major role on the musical scene. But the stereotypes again come in the front, this time with a different appearance. Women are supposed to be the symbol of beauty and try to promote the idea of the weak gender. Following this idea, women they where preferred to play solo instruments like the keyboard, guitar or the harp. When women played other instruments, they made themselves vulnerable to sarcasm and ridicule[20]. As one critic noted in Musical America in 1906, “For the sake of the veneration in which all women should be held it is to be hoped that non of them will follow the suggestion of Lanier and take to playing the trombone, the French horn, or the gigantic Sousaphone for, as Byron once said: ‘seeing the woman you love at table is apt to dispel all romance.’ And seeing a woman get red in the face blowing into a brass instrument is just as likely to prove an unpleasant shock…”[21]. The piano was the first instrument to be seen on the concert stage with a woman soloist. Men, of course were believed to be stronger and more vigorous than women. According to one source, they were better able to “discipline their strength”, making their movements “more precise than those of women. Thus men make the best pianists”[22]. So what was considered to be the role of a woman performer? Maybe perform and try to imitate men? An early twentieth-century publicity poster for violinist Maud Powell announces: “The arm of a man; the heart of a woman; the head of an artist.[23]” Beth Abelson summarizes: “The successful woman performer was one who could play like a man – but not appear unfeminine”[24].
Finally, about the orchestral musicians, an article in an 1895 issue of Scientific American, states that a woman does not have the stamina to be an orchestral musician; “her physical incapacity to endure the strain of four or five hours a day rehearsal, followed by the prolonged tax of public performances, will bar her against possible competition with male performers”[25].
Following this short review of stereotypes and ideas about the role of women in music, which also take place less than a hundred years ago, we realize that there some more work to be done in order to reach a completely equal role between the two genders in music. But is this going to possible anyway? Can we just avoid the fact that men and women are different? The two genders defer bodily, psychologically, sociologically and so forth. We cannot just avoid the fact that the life role of women is to bring children to life, a task that needs extreme strength, patience and above all dedication and time. Many people tend to discuss these roles of men and women as a subject of discrimination but in order to support women they fall into exaggerations and they tend to forget that nobody is eligible for everything. There are many things that under women’s strengths by nature and certain professions that only men are eligible to do, for example because of their physical strength. Music is definitely not one of those professions. Men and women have different valuable qualities to bring into music, each soul has something to offer, masculine or feminine. Music refers to all people and each human being can find its role in it.
REFERENCES & SUGGESTED BIBLIOGRAPHY
Anne Fausto-Sterling, Myths of Gender: Biological Myths about Women and Men. New York :Basic Books, 1985
Anthony E. Kemp, “Psychological Androgyny in Musicians”, Bulletin of the Council for Research in Music Education, No.85 (Late Fall, 1985), pp. 102-108
Archer and Lloyd, Sex and Gender, New York :Cambridge University Press, 1985
Beth Abelson Macleod, “Whence comes the lady timpanist!?” Gender and instrumental musicians in America, 1853-1990, Journal of Social History, Vol. 27, No.2 (Winter, 1993)
Carl E. Seashore, “Why No Great Women Composers?” in his In Search of Beauty in Music: A Scientific Approach to Musical Esthetics. New York: The Ronald Press, 1947
Carolynn A. Lindeman, “Teaching about Women Musicians: Elementary Classroom Strategies”, Music Educators Journal, Vol. 78, No.7, Special Focus: Women in Music (March, 1992), pp. 56-59
Christine Percheski, “Opting out? Cohort Differences in Professional Women’s Employment Rates from 1960 to 2005”, American Socioogical Review, Vol. 73, No.3 (June 2008), pp. 497-517
Cynthia Eagle Russett, Sexual Science: The Victorian Construction of Womanhood, Cambridge, MA, 1989
Eugene Gates, “Why Have There Been No Great Women Composers? Psychological Theories, past and Present”, Journal of Aesthetic Education, Vol. 28, No.2 (Summer, 1994), pp. 27-34
Fred G. Smith, “Music and Manliness”, MSJ 5, No.1 (September 1918)
Grace Rubin-Rabson, “Why Haven’t Women Become Great Composers?” High Fidelity/Musical America 23, February 1973
Havelock Ellis, Man and Woman: A Study of Secondary and Tertiary Sexual Characteristics, 8th ed. London: Heinemann, 1934
J. Terry Gates, “A Historical Comparison of Public Singing by American Men and Women”, Journal of Research in Music Education 37, no.1 (Spring 1989)
Julia Eklund Koza, “The ‘Missing Males’ and Other Gender Issues in Music Education: Evidence from the ‘Music Supervisors’ Journal’ 1914-1924”, Journal of Research in Music Education, Vol. 41, No.3 (Autumn, 1993)
Lauren Harris, “Sex Differences in Spatial Ability: Possible Environmental, Generic, and Neurological Factors,” in Asymmetrical Function of the Brain, ed. Marcel Kimbourne. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1978
Margie Crow and Wendy Stevens, “Are women musicians people?” – 1930 headline, Off Our Backs, Vol.5 No. 1 (January 1975), p.13
Moshe Tatar and Gina Emmanuel, “Teachers’ Perceptions of Their Students’ Gender Roles”, The Journal of Educational Research, Vol. 94, No.4 (March – April, 2001), pp. 215-224
Robert R. Faulkiner, “Career Concerns and Mobility Motivations of Orchestra Musicians”, The Sociological Quarterly, Vol. 14, No. 3 (Summer, 1973) pp. 334-349
Shaffer and Greenwood, Maud Powell, 148ff. (as cited by Abelson)
Terri M. Adams and Douglas B. Fuller, “The Words Have Changed But the Ideology Remains the Same: Misogynistic Lyrics in Rap Music”, Journal of Black Studies, Vol. 36, No.6 (June, 2006), pp. 938-957
T. L. Krebs, “Women as Musicians”, The Sewanee Review, Vol. 2, No.1 (November 1893), pp. 76-87
T. P. Giddings, “Boy’s Glee Clubs in Grade Schools,” Music Supervisors’ Journal 9, No. 2 (December 1922)
“For Use in Your Local Paper,” Music Supervisors’ Journal 5, No.2 (November 1918)
“The New Woman in Music”, Musical America 9 (April 28, 1906)
“Orchestral Women”, Scientific American 73 (November 23, 1895)
[1] Havelock Ellis, Man and Woman: A Study of Secondary and Tertiary Sexual Characteristics, 8th ed. London: Heinemann, 1934, p.353.
[2] Havelock, pp. 433-435.
[3] Anne Fausto-Sterling, Myths of Gender: Biological Myths about Women and Men. New York :Basic Books, 1985, p.17.
[4] Archer and Lloyd, Sex and Gender, New York :Cambridge University Press, 1985 pp.228-229; Fausto-Sterling, pp.14-24.
[5] Carl E. Seashore, “Why No Great Women Composers?” in his In Search of Beauty in Music: A Scientific Approach to Musical Esthetics. New York: The Ronald Press, 1947, p.366.
[6] Seashore, p.367.
[7] Grace Rubin-Rabson, “Why Haven’t Women Become Great Composers?” High Fidelity/Musical America 23, February 1973, p. 49.
[8] Rubin-Rabson, p. 49.
[9] Rubin-Rabson, pp. 49-50.
[10] Fausto-Sterling, Myths of Gender, p. 47
[11] Fausto-Sterling, Myths of Gender, pp. 49-50
[12] Lauren Harris, Sex Differences in Spatial Ability, p. 421.
[13] Eugene Gates, “Why Have There Been No Great Women Composers? Psychological Theories, past and Present”, Journal of Aesthetic Education, Vol. 28, No.2 (Summer, 1994), pp. 27-34
[14] J. Terry Gates, “A Historical Comparison of Public Singing by American Men and Women”, Journal of Research in Music Education 37, no.1 (Spring 1989), p. 37.
[15] Julia Eklund Koza, “The ‘Missing Males’ and Other Gender Issues in Music Education: Evidence from the ‘Music Supervisors’ Journal’ 1914-1924”, Journal of Research in Music Education, Vol. 41, No.3 (Autumn, 1993), p.213.
[16] Significantly, musical organizations composed of boys were more likely to perform at national or regional conventions than were girl’s organizations. Julia Eklund Koza, The Missing Males” p.229
[17] “For Use in Your Local Paper,” MSJ 5, No.2 (November 1918), p. 28.
[18] T.P. Giddings, “Boy’s Glee Clubs in Grade Schools,” MSJ 9, No. 2 (December 1922) p. 28.
[19] Fred G. Smith, “Music and Manliness”, MSJ 5, No.1 (September 1918), p. 12.
[20] Beth Abelson Macleod, “Whence comes the lady timpanist!?” Gender and instrumental musicians in America, 1853-1990, Journal of Social History, Vol. 27, No.2 (Winter, 1993), p. 292.
[21] “The New Woman in Music”, Musical America 9 (April 28, 1906), p. 8.
[22] Cynthia Eagle Russett, Sexual Science: The Victorian Construction of Womanhood, Cambridge, MA, 1989, p. 29-30.
[23] Shaffer and Greenwood, Maud Powell, 148ff. (as cited by Abelson)
[24] Beth Abelson Macleod, p. 294
[25] “Orchestral Women”, Scientific American 73 (November 23, 1895), p. 327.
“The continuation and realization of Scriabin’s philosophy and mystical ideas through the musical output of the Greek composer Jani Christou”
Russian composer, Alexander Scriabin, born in Moscow on January 6, 1872 and died on April 27, 1915. By the time of his death on Easter Day, Scriabin was among the most famous artists and philosophers of the time. Boris Pestarnak spoke of Scriabin as “not only a composer, but an occasion for perpetual congratulations, a personified festival and triumph of Russian culture”[1]. From very early in his life, Scriabin developed an obsession with the piano, the instrument itself and its mechanism. Very inventive, from his early childhood, he started constructed complete toy pianos and complex musical mechanisms; a skill, which led him later in his life to experiment and construct instruments such the “Tastiera per Luce” (Italian) or “keyboard of light”, which supported the realization and production of his musical output. During the years of his education at the Moscow conservatory, Scriabin suffered an important spiritual trauma, as a result of a serious injury of his right hand, preventing him from play the piano for a long time. That was a crucial point in his life since it led him to a religious crisis and doubt about his beliefs. This religious crisis was also probably caused by his first acquaintance with philosophy, which destroyed the youthful wholesomeness of his beliefs[2]. A deep research in philosophical and theological subjects made him interested in Nietzsche’s übermensch theory[3] and philosophy and finally after a long spiritual journey and writings of his personal ideas, he embraced theosophy, a cultish, mystical[4] movement founded in New York City in 1875 led by Madame Helena Blavatsky.
From a musical perspective, Scriabin was very interested in Wagner’s conception of a Gesamtkunstwerk (Universal Artwork). This musico-philosophical concept, was combining music with the other arts, trying to make an artwork more complete, fully understudied and effective. Wagner used the exact term 'Gesamtkunstwerk' in only two occasions, in his 1849 essays "Art and Revolution" and "The Artwork of the Future"[5], where he speaks of this ideal of unifying all works of art via the theatre[6].[7] From as early as 1900, Scriabin started being aware of this combination of arts, by including a choir in his Symphony No.1. Of course this practice is common if we think of other composers like Beethoven who also included a choir in his last symphony, but we also think of it as an early realization of the concept. Later in his life, the composer got aware of a broader idea of the Universal Artwork by putting together not only other forms of art, like theater, but also by including other elements such as senses and visual effects. A definite and more representative example of this concept was his 1913 masterpiece “Prometheus” – the poem of fire, where he included an invention of his, which would project different colors on a screen during the performance. Scriabin was also known to be synesthetic and associating colors with sounds. Nowadays it is doubted that the composer actually experienced this[8] because his color system, unlike most synesthetic experience, lines up with the circle of fifths[9] and looks more of an organized pattern, than an experience. The major contribution though, of Scriabin’s ideas of synesthesia, developed the system toward what would have been called a pioneering ‘multimedia performance’. But later in his life Scriabin went much further with this principal of combination of all arts and senses. It is unclear exactly when the idea of his last gigantic oratorio, The Magnus Opus Mysterium, took hold. Premonitions of it seem to have occurred as early as 1901, but a more definite shape of this project made itself felt in late 1903[10]. Indeed, influenced by the doctrines of Theosophy and Mysticism, Scriabin was designing a grand weeklong performance including music, scent, dance, and light in the foothills of the Himalayas that was to bring about the dissolution of the world in bliss. Sometime in 1913 Scriabin felt that humanity needed to be prepared for this cataclysmic event and undertook the draft of a “Prefatory Act”. He even went so far to purchase land in India to realize this dream[11]. At the time of his death, Scriabin left 72 pages of sketches for a prelude to the Mysterium entitled ‘Prefatory Act’. These sketches have been competed by Alexander Nemtin to form a three-hour-long work, a task that took him 28 years to complete and record.
Scriabin him self wrote about this work: "There will not be a single spectator. All will be participants. The work requires special people, special artists and a completely new culture. The cast of performers includes an orchestra, a large mixed choir, an instrument with visual effects, dancers, a procession, incense, and rhythmic textural articulation. The cathedral in which it will take place will not be of one single type of stone but will continually change with the atmosphere and motion of the Mysterium. This will be done with the aid of mists and lights, which will modify the architectural contours."
Of course by reading Scriabin’s notes, we realize that most of the indications are metaphorical and not able to be completed under real circumstances and can only be realized as elusions on a fantastic ideal world that Scriabin was referring to. One of the most brilliant elucidations of Scriabin’s work, Anatoly Lunacharsky eloquently describes his shock at discovering, at the very and of Scriabin’s notes, a frank realization of the limits of power of his thought; a steep descent from omnipotence. “We see a man who rounded this cape of pride, who realized that he is only able to create the ‘Prefatory Act’ in order to say to all people that life is wonderful, that creativity and even struggle, suffering and hatred are acts, which great souls will accept as colors of an infinitely diverse poem”[12].
Scriabin, throughout his life, had being always aware of the role an importance of the artist in society, the metaphysical powers of music and the concerts of drama and ecstasy. It was during a tour along the Volga with conductor Koussevitsky, when Scriabin overhead a politician being complimented, he responded vehemently: “Politicians and bureaucrats are not to be praised. Writers, composers, authors, and sculptors are the first ranking men in the universe, first to expound principles and doctrines, and solve world problems. Real progress rests on artists alone. They must not give place to others of lower aims…”[13] As for the idea of drama and ecstasy, and his ability to create and build a climax of both through his music and transfer this power to the audience, Alexander Pasternak[14], describes his impression after attending rehearsals of Scriabin’s “Poem of Ecstasy”: “At these first rehearsals of Ecstasy – just as when we had listened from the bushes to the birth of the third Symphony on the piano – everything seemed chaotic, as though a building were in pieces. But from the chaos of disparate elements each particle fell into its appointed place; to our joy and delight the building, its plan and its construction began to be felt as a whole… So deep are the impressions music can make on a 15-year old that, listening even now, to the Divine Poem or Ecstasy, no sooner has the first phrase sounded that I begin to tremble involuntarily, and imagine from those early years grip me again – the sound of masses of tumbling water, visions of the Creator in tumultuous joy roaring ‘I am Alpha and Omega, the beginning and end.’”[15]
Lets finally note down some general qualities that characterize Scriabin’s work before we proceed to the ‘continuator’ of his philosophy and ideas, Jani Christou: First, the extreme concentration of composition; the ‘product’ is extremely condensed and intensely charged. Second element is the sensuality of his music. Third comes the ‘progress’ in music; Scriabin’s music became continually more daring, original and free. Theorist Varvara Pavlovna Dernova, who is credited with having decoded Scriabin’s chordal and melodic construction, observed astonishingly that in Scriabin’s last works almost none of his harmonies are ever repeated[16]. Fourth, the music is ‘genuine’; absence of anything artificial, anything virtuosic for the sake of virtuosity. Fifth, the instrument that preoccupied Scriabin was the piano. Sixth, Scriabin’s music continually sought to transcend its own limitations. Seventh, there is a high ratio of masterpieces to works composed and finally eighth, the composer moves gradually from the Chopinian and Lisztian qualities of writing for the piano to adopt a completely similar orchestral quality of that to Liszt’s Symphonic Poems.
I am now going to attempt a comparison between Alexander Scriabin and the Greek composer Jani Christou who born a few years after Scriabin’s death in a completely different country, but under so many similar influences and similar unexpected life events, which led him to develop compared philosophical ideas and concepts to those of Scriabin.
Jani Christou born in Heliopolis, Egypt on January 8, 1926. Second son of Eleutherios Christou, an industrialist and chocolate manufacturer, and Lilika Tavernari, of Cypriot origin, Christou got his first education and influences from his mother, who was a well-know poetess and spiritualist. She was probably the reason of getting involved with mysticism and research on Theosophy and various religious subjects: indeed, according to his son Evis, during 1960s Christou practiced transcendental dialogue[17]. Lilika also supported Christou towards his choice of following the arts in contrast with his father who would insist that he should follow a practical path and study economics. Jani Christou got raised in the Greek cosmopolitan part of Alexandria that was the cradle of an ancient civilization, essentially preoccupied on a religious level with the phenomenon of life after death. That’s probably what influenced the spiritual world of the young composer up to a certain point and contributed to his future orientation towards the metaphysical and his attraction to the question of the afterlife. It was not by chance that Christou chose the infernal world of Mysterion, for the work that was to have the most direct relationship with death[18]. During the years 1938 to 1944 he attended the Victoria College of Alexandria and got private piano lessons with Gina Bachauer. He then moved to England and attended the King’s College in Cambridge and graduated with degrees in Philosophy (under Ludwig Wittgenstein) and economics. He also studied Harmony, Counterpoint and composition with Hans Ferdinand Redlich, a disciple of and writer on Alban Berg. In 1949 and 1950 he does further studies on music Analysis and Orchestration in Siena, Italy. In the same year Christou became interested and studied in depth psychology and the work of Carl Jung under the influence of his brother who was studying psychology during the same time in Zurich, Switzerland. On 1951 he returned back to Egypt where is established a studio and a study, which allowed him to concentrate in his readings and composition. Christou was completely devoted to music, spending more than ten to fourteen hours a day in composition. Five years later he married Theresia Horemi and later the same year of 1956 he lost his brother on a car accident, an incident, from which never recovered and led him to deep depression. The tragic death of his brother, with who was very close, marked him and his work until the end of his and his wife’s life on a second car accident happened only four years later on January 8, after returning from a birthday party that he had organized for his friends.
Throughout his life, Christou’s personality and temperament attracted many artists and spiritual people. Extremely active as a musician, composer and organizer he was responsible for promoting new music to his country. Through the new music festivals he organized he promoted new music and expanded Avant – Garde activities in Greece. Performances of his works have taken place in England, Germany, Cyprus and the United States. After returning to Egypt in 1951 and dedicating himself to reading and composing he possessed a vast library containing works about a great variety of subjects about eastern religions, philosophy, psychology, magic, social anthropology, history, music etc. For many years he kept a meticulous record of his thoughts and methods of working and especially of his dreams, thus accumulating a large number of sketches and notebooks[19].
During his early compositional period, Christou wrote many pieces for piano and piano duo (Fantasia for piano 1943, Sonata for two piano, Prelude and Fugue in D minor for two pianos, 1944) but later after his ‘official’ op.1 “Phoenix Music” in 1948, he starts composing extensively for the orchestra and follows the form of the Lisztian Symphonic Poem. The composer develops his style very rapidly and begins working on a non-conventional harmonic language and a combination of instrumentalists, vocalist, timbres and ensembles like in his first Symphony for mezzo-soprano and orchestra or the Latin Liturgy for mixed chorus, brass and percussion. He makes clear to his audience that he is searching for a non-traditional sound and a unique expression of Drama, progressive build of tension, which leads to an ecstatic stage of action towards the end of each performance. The structure of Opus 1 “Phoenix Music” corresponds to the schema: birth – growth – drama – end and new beginning, a spiritual pattern, which later became know as Lunar Pattern[20], that Christou adopted for the majority of his works. Drama represents a spiritual choice for Christou. Musicologist Anna Lucciano describes that the composer conceived the work as a compact whole, the beginning and end of which represent the beginning and end of a drama, a symbolic journey with which the listener is already familiar at the outset[21].
It will be very difficult to condense within a few pages all of Christou’s philosophical ideas and spiritual background of his works. Because of that I will move on to a comparison between the two composers, giving specific examples so it will be easier to understand some of their similarities. By comparing the compositional output, philosophical ideas and events throughout their lives, I was able to find fourteen similar elements, which support the idea of Christou being aware and influenced by the work and ideas of Alexander Scriabin:
1. First of all the figure of mother is a very strong for both composers. Christou got raised by his mother who was a very famous poetess, writer and spiritualist of the time. She was the one who influenced the composer for his further research on religions, philosophy and psychology and finally continued to become a Mist. She also supported his artistic development by convincing his father to let him get involved with the arts. Scriabin on the other hand, lost his mother just the year after his birth. Here we have a completely different influence but strong as the first one. Scriabin’s mother was a great musician and concert pianist of the time. The composer got exposed to a tremendous amount of music as his mother was practicing piano for many hours a day and also giving concerts while she was seven months pregnant and even five days before Scriabin’s birth. Sabaneev writes that Scriabin apparently did not remember his mother, “but a large portrait of her always hung over his desk”![22] – the desk where he fashioned his musical creations. It was not a portrait of his dear beloved Aunt Lyubov (who raised him) but the portrait of the woman whose loss and absence he must undoubtedly have powerfully felt. [23]
2. The second crucial characteristic in both composer’s lives is an event, which caused them a serious emotional and spiritual trauma. In the case of Scriabin that happened around his twenties with the serious injury of his right hand, which prevented him to play the piano for a long time and in the second case, the loss of Christou’s brother Evangelos around his thirties, which led him into a serious depression and moved his compositional style to find its unique character and finally to move into the late ‘daring’ and ‘extreme’ period. For Scriabin, that was the period when he first acquainted with philosophy and then Mysticism and for Christou that was the period when he became more interested in religious subjects such as the life after death and also became aware of the mystical and metaphysical powers of music.
3. Both composers followed the tradition of Franz Liszt in the form of orchestral composition and choose the symphonic poem in order to express their musical ideas. Of course Scriabin wrote extensively for the piano since he was a concert pianist as well, but moving to his last compositional period, the composer choose not to follow forms (both for orchestral works as well pianistic pieces) like the sonata-allegro form, but compose in a more rhetorical format with a continuous development and building of dramatic tension and action. Christou also follows this compositional pattern even from his Opus 1 Phoenix Music while the piece is more of a narration of a story, a symbolic journey, and less constructed under standard form barriers. As musicologist Anna Lucciano mentions “there already exists as early as Phoenix Music one further essential characteristic that occurs throughout Christou’s works: the exclusion of all development”.[24]
4. Furthermore, as I said before, both composers studied Philosophy, Theosophy, ancient religions and developed a theory on the metaphysics of music. Scriabin projects this idea throughout his music, especially with his last gigantic work Mysterium but also with his believes. For Scriabin, and for many other Russian composers, the artist’s role was sacred: in fact it was clearly Promethean, bearer of knowledge, carrier of light. And light, “particularly the Sun, is the single and most important image associated with Scriabin, his work and his thought”[25]. Similarly to this idea, Christou mentions the role of Moon in his music but mostly with the role of a repeated eternity; the pattern of genesis – drama – death and rebirth. He calls the artist to awake the metaphysical powers of music by performing what he was calling “meta-actions”. Meta-actions demand a complete abandonment of all previous European or western culture (and of all traditional types of notation in particular). This approach introduces the element of chance, the unpredictable, which exerts its influence on the multiplication of the patterns and every parameter of the work; it thus opens the way to a kind of music that makes use of extra-musical components[26]. At this point we should also mention that Scriabin didn’t manage to practice ways of realization of those metaphysical ideas that music could serve according to him. We should also consider the fact that the society and environment in Russia were completely different than those in Europe almost 50 years later and also the tools - including notation, visual effects, tapes, etc. - Scriabin had were very limited. I also compere the two composers as a possible continuation of one – another’s work and ideas. Jani Christou was also very aware of Scriabin’s work and philosophy since he was a great music historian.
5. Both composers had developed their own philosophies about music related with life and talk about the concept of after-life. We are able to explore those ideas they had in depth, since both Scriabin and Jani Christou, were keeping very detailed notebooks about their thoughts. The Russian composer mostly notes down his thought about philosophy, the meaning of life, the role of artist, the role of his own existence and the role of his compositional output and his contribution to the human society, while Christou notes down not only philosophical ideas, but also his compositional ideas, the way his music should be performed and also his dreams, which many times used in order to get inspired for a musical concept like in his Mysterion[27].
6. Scriabin’s Mysterium and Christous’s Mysterion of course is another notable similarity. For the Russian composer that was the most innovative work ever composed throughout his life. It was definitely a forerunner of the multimedia performances of the twentieth century. According to Emmanuel Garcia’s great description ‘Scriabin envisioned Mysterion as a kind of immense liturgical rite, lasting seven days or perhaps longer and set against the backdrop of the Himalayas in India, during which the barrier between audience and performers would be dissolved to allow for a spiritual communion leading to an ecstatic dissolution and transfiguration of the world. All would perform and celebrate, All of the arts would be included – music, dance, theater, poetry, visual colors. All of the senses too would be engaged – even taste and smell. Scriabin planned for bells to be dangling from the clouds and perfumes to be wafted. The Mysterium was a festival that would, by employing all the arts, allow for a transcendence of them and usher humanity into a new and more satisfying plane of existence where even gender seemed to be abolished’[28]. Unfortunately Scriabin didn’t live in order to realize and perform this gigantic project; Christou on the other side, wrote his own Mysterion quite young in his career but only four years before his death. I believe that the composer was very aware of Scriabin’s theories and very influences by the concept of Mysterium. In his Credo for Music[29] Christou writes: “I am concerned with the transformation of acoustical energies into music; basically the meaning of music is a function of our possibility of experiencing such transformations; the points of interest in a composition are those at which these transformations take place, although the demarcation lines are never fixed”. Of course that relates with what we said before about the metaphysical powers of music, but that’s exactly the purpose of existence of these two pieces.
7. For Jani Christou, the concept of Mysterion was just the beginning of a series of pieces in the spirit of Scriabin’s last work and concept. Mysterion is a gigantic oratorio for a more than sixty-member orchestra, three mixed choirs, narrator, actors, and magnetic tapes ‘continuum’. By the term continuum, Christou metaphorically suggested ‘patterns’. By patterns he meant either something repetitive as a sound or a repetitive activity. Continua are forms executing a real, imminent and constantly repeated action, but this definition applies not only to music: there are also patterns in life, everyday patterns, such as breathing, eating, sleeping, etc. By realizing this concept, stage became to Christou to what we call “a stage of experiences” where the audience becomes one with the performers and takes part to the musical action as exactly Scriabin suggested. ‘This phenomenon is apparent above all in Christou’s Epicycle (1968) where it reaches a colossal scale through the unlimited repetitions of both the musical patterns and the patterns of life. In this work, the listener’s attention is attracted by the interplay between the continuum and the events that detach themselves from it. The most important feature is, therefore, the striking contrast (and constant dialogue) between this neutral, uniform, impassive continuum on the one hand and the varied events that project themselves with the full force of their personality against it on the other. Epicycle formed the overture to the third Hellenic Week of Contemporary Music; the work consisted of a tape which provided background music to a film by the painter Kosmas Xenakis, which served as the ‘stage set’. Anyone who wished could take part; the piece was thus presented as an open “happening” in which the composer’s personal initiatives and right to intervene with completely eliminated. In this respect the work represents Christou’s most extreme position, a sort of self-mortification of the composer’[30].
8. I will conclude with some more general similarities from the work and life of the two composers: It is known that Alexander Scriabin and Jani Christou had embraced Mysticism and this is something, which logically affected their work and philosophical background. It is also logical to assume that both tried to project the idea of mysticism through their musical output and try to realize or ‘practice’ it through music.
9. The Promethean figure is also another element clearly projected to both composer’s output; Scriabin’s Prometheus the poem of fire and Christou’s Prometheus Bound, both sides of the same coin, serve for the continuous serve of human towards truth and power. Scriabin many times compared himself with God and especially with this figure of Prometheus who gave fire to the human kind and enabled them with the power of knowledge and truth[31]. Christou, on the other side, in his philosophical notes - which always represented for the composer the indispensable psychological and spiritual preparation for the technical aspect of composition - writes: ‘A musical representation of the cosmological conflict. After all, Prometheus’s predicament is a result of the tremendous upheaval in the cosmic order. Zeus overthrows his father Kronos. The new Gods on Olympus are strange and hostile powers as yet. Prometheus transgresses against this new order. He steals the FIRE and this act of open revolt against the privilege of the Gods has to be paid for […] It is not a question of anti-religiousness, but, if you like, a conflict of “religious forces”, a conflict of forces struggling for psychic power through matter. There is also the knowledge of final victory, which means that the ecstatic element, the knowledge of “future happiness” is there, and it is this which gives Prometheus the power to resist calamity and to bear his present fate with Titan-like courage and endurance. But there is also a deep tragic and human element in this cries of pain. It is perhaps the Christ-like in the respect, that knows about final victory that this does not lessen the actual pain’[32].
10. Another similarity, which arises after the analysis of both Christou’s and Scriabin’s Prometheus, is the use of specific musical figures for treating specific words or an association of a motive or chord with a specific idea. Both Scriabin and Christou treated for example the figure of Prometheus in a very specific and consistent way. Scriabin with his ‘Promethean’ or ‘Mystical Chord’ and Christou with the melodic motive Db- Eb-Gb-Fb-Gb, every time his name would appear in the plot. Christou was known for this tactic since his composition Six Songs in poetry by T.S. Eliot, where he associates specific words such as ‘cry’, ‘deep’, ‘fell’, etc. with specific melodic figures.
To conclude this comparison, further from readings and musical analysis, when I listened performances and recording of the late works by Alexander Scriabin and the musical output of Jani Christou, I got the impression of a very clear transition and ‘progress’ from one composer to the other. All the philosophical ideas, psychological background and suggestions of the Russian composer, seem to appear and become real in part (since we have the element of impossibility in Scriabin’s vision), in the work and philosophy of the Greek composer Jani Christou. It is impossible to summarize their cosmological ideas and spiritual beliefs within a few pages and of course further reading and research is needed. Purpose of this comparison - which arises from a subjective impression to a researcher on the notebooks, related readings and music of the two composers - is to record some similarities of their vision and provide the reader with an awareness of a possible connection between them.
BIBLIOGRAPHY
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Bowers, F. Scriabin: a biography. 2nd ed., rev. Mineola, New York: Dover, 1996.
Bowers, F. The New Scriabin. St. Martin’s Press: New York, 1973.
Bowers, F. Scriabin: again and again, In: Aspen: The Magazine in a Box, Vol.1, No.2 (1967).
Christou, Jani, ‘A “Credo” for Music’, Epoches, vol.34, (February 1966).
De la Grange, H.-L. “Prometheus unbound”. Music and Musicians, 20(5):34-43 (1971-2).
Freud, S. “The question of a weltanschauung”. In New Introductory Lectures on Psycho-analysis. S.E., 22:158-182 (1933).
Galeyev, B. M. and I. L. Vanechkina. “Was Scriabin a Synesthete?”, Leonardo, Vol.34 Issue 4 (August 2001).
Garsia, E. Emanuel. Scriabin’s Mysterium and the Birth of Genius. Presentation at the Mid-Winter Meeting of the American Psychoanalytic Association. New York City: 19 January 2005.
“Gesamtkunstwerk”. From Wikipedia the free encyclopedia [accessed on December 2, 2011].
Guarino, Piero. “Compositeurs d’Egypte: Jani Christou”, Rhythme, vol.v, pp.3-6 (October 1955, Alexandria).
Harrison, John. Synaesthesia: The strangest Thing. 2001.
Leotsakos, George S., ‘Christou’, Diction of Contemporary Music, ed. John Witton. New York: E. P. Dutton and Co. 1974.
Leotsakos, George S., ‘Christou’, New Grove Dictionary of Music and Musicians (6th ed.), vol.4. Macmillan, London, 1980.
Lucciano, Anna. Jani Christou: The Works and Temperament of a Greek Composer. Trans. Catherine Dale. France: Harwood academic publishers, 2000.
Lucciano, Anna. “Iannis Christou, métaphysique et musique”, Revue d’esthétique, vol.20, pp.100-106, (Jean-Michel Place, Paris, 1991).
Lunacharsky, Anatoly. ‘On Scriabin’. Kultura Teatra, no.66, trans. By D. L. Weitzel, in the Journal of the Scriabin Society, 8(1): 39-43, 2003-4.
Matlaw, R. E. “Scriabin and Russian symbolism”. Comparative Literature, vol. 31 (1):1-23 (1979).
Morrison, Simon. “Scriabin and the Impossible”. Journal of the American Musicological Society, vol.51, No.2 (Summer, 1998).
Morrison, Simon. “The Libretto of the Preparatory Act”, trans. In Appendix to Russian Opera and the symbolist Movement by S. Morrison, University of California Press, reprinted in the Journal of the Scriabin Society, 8(1):80-103, (2003-4).
Nietzsche, Friedrich Wilhelm, The Birth of Tragedy and the Genealogy of Morals. Doubleday, Garden City, New York, 1956.
Papaioannou, Johann G. ‘Christou’, Sohlman’s Musiklexikon. Stockholm, 1980.
Papaioannou, Johann G. “The Music of Jani Christou”, Greek Heritage, (Spring 1964, Chicago).
Papaioannou, Yannis G. “Jani Christou and the Metaphysics of Music” (Greek text), Hellenic Contemporary Music Association, Athens, 1970); also included almost in full in Croniko 1970 (Ora, Athens, 1970).
Pasternak, B. “I remember: sketch for an autobiography”. New York: Pantheon Books. 1959.
Paternak, A. ‘Skryabin: summer 1903 and after’. The Musical Times, vol.113 (1972).
Perle, G. “Scriabin’s self-analyses”. Music Analysis, 3(2):101-122 (1984).
Pilichos, G. K. “Interview with Christou”, Ta Nea, Monday, May 20, 1963.
Sabaneev, L. “A. N. Scriabin: a memoir”. Russian Review, vol.25 (3):257-267 (1966).
Sabaneev, L. “Scriabin and the idea of a religious art”. The Musical Times, 72(1063): 789-792 (1931).
Samson, Jim. Music in Transition: A study of Tonal Expansion and Atonality. New York: W.W. Norton & Company, 1900-20.
Schloezen, B. de. Scriabin: artist and mystic, trans. N. Slonimsky, Introduction by M. Scriabine. Berkeley: University of California Press, 1970.
Slonimsky, Nicolas. “New Music in Greece”, Musical Quarterly, vol. LI, no.1, p.235 (January 1965, New York).
Wagner, Richard, tr. W. Ashton Ellis The Art-Work of the Future and Other Works. Lincoln and London, 1993.
Warrack, John, Gesamtkunstwerk in the Oxford Companion to Music online [entry dated September 2010].
[1] Pasternak, B. “I remember: sketch for an autobiography”. New York: Pantheon Books. 1959, p.44.
[2] Schloezen, B. de. Scriabin: artist and mystic, trans. N. Slonimsky, Introduction by M. Scriabine. Berkeley: University of California Press, 1970, p.117.
[3] Übermensch is a concept in the philosophy of Friedrich Nietzsche. Nietzsche posited the Übermensch as a goal for humanity to set for itself in his 1883 book “Thus Spoke Zarathustra”. Zarathustra ties the Übermensch to the death of God. While this God was the ultimate expression of other-worldly values and the instincts that gave birth to those values, belief in that God nevertheless did give meaning to life for a time. 'God is dead' means that the idea of God can no longer provide values. With the sole source of values no longer capable of providing those values, there is a real chance of nihilism prevailing. Zarathustra presents the Übermensch as the creator of new values. In this way, it appears as a solution to the problem of the death of God and nihilism.
[4] The term ‘mysticism,’ comes from the Greek μυω, meaning “to conceal.” In the Hellenistic world, ‘mystical’ referred to “secret” religious rituals. In early Christianity the term came to refer to “hidden” allegorical interpretations of Scriptures and to hidden presences, such as that of Jesus at the Eucharist. Only later did the term begin to denote “mystical theology,” that included direct experience of the divine. Typically, mystics, theistic or not, see their mystical experience as part of a larger undertaking aimed at human transformation and not as the terminus of their efforts. Thus, in general, ‘mysticism’ would best be thought of as a constellation of distinctive practices, discourses, texts, institutions, traditions, and experiences aimed at human transformation, variously defined in different traditions. [Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy – November 2004]
[5] Wagner, Richard, tr. W. Ashton Ellis The Art-Work of the Future and Other Works. Lincoln and London, 1993, p.35, where the word is translated as 'great united work'; p.52 where it is translated as 'great unitarian Art-work'; and p.88 (twice) where it is translated as 'great united Art-work'.
[6] Warrack, John, Gesamtkunstwerk in the Oxford Companion to Music online [entry dated September 2010]
[7] “Gesamtkunstwerk”. From Wikipedia the free encyclopedia [accessed on December 2, 2011]
[8] Harrison, John. Synaesthesia: The strangest Thing. 2001, pp.31-32.
[9] B. M. Galeyev and I. L. Vanechkina. “Was Scriabin a Synesthete?”, Leonardo, Vol.34 Issue 4 (August 2001), pp.357-362.
[10] Garsia, E. Emanuel. Scriabin’s Mysterium and the Birth of Genius. Presentation at the Mid-Winter Meeting of the American Psychoanalytic Association. New York City: 19 January 2005.
[11] Garsia, E. (2007)
[12] Lunacharsky, Anatoly. ‘On Scriabin’. Kultura Teatra, no.66, trans. By D. L. Weitzel, in the Journal of the Scriabin Society, 8(1): 39-43, 2003-4.
[13] Bowers, F. Scriabin: a biography. 2nd ed., rev. Mineola, New York: Dover, 1996.
[14] Boris Pasternak’s older brother. Pasternak is the author of the one of the 20th century’s greatest novel, Doctor Zhivago.
[15] Paternak, A. ‘Skryabin: summer 1903 and after’. The Musical Times, vol.113 (1158): pp. 1169-1174 (1972).
[16] Bowers, F. The New Scriabin. St. Martin’s Press: New York, 1973, p. 133.
[17] Lucciano, Anna. Jani Christou: The Works and Temperament of a Greek Composer. Trans. Catherine Dale. France: Harwood academic publishers, 2000, p. xv
[18] Lucciano (2000) p.xv
[19] Lucciano (2000), p.xix
[20] The Lunar Experience:
‘For countless generations the renewal of vital processes has been experienced according to a common basic pattern of: generation - growth - destruction - cessation, repeated on and on. The pattern of renewal. In the depths of man's prehistory it was the moon's monthly performance that originally drew attention to this pattern. So lunar mythology suggests[…]’ Jani Christou. The Lunar Circle Concept http://janichristou.com/concepts/lunar-cycle/lunar-cycle.html [accessed on December 2,2011]
[21] Lucciano (2000), pp.4-5
[22] Sabaneev, L. “A. N. Scriabin: a memoir”. Russian Review, vol.25 (3):257-267 (1966), p.258.
[23] Garcia, E. (2007) p.12
[24] Lucciano, A. (2000), p.5.
[25] Matlaw, R. E. “Scriabin and Russian symbolism”. Comparative Literature, vol. 31 (1):1-23 (1979), p.11.
[26] Lucciano, A. (2000), p.100.
[27] Excerpt from the preface of Mysterion: ‘Within this “climate”, then, Mysterion unfolds with the logic – or, rather, the lack of logic – of a dream, of a dream dreamt today, tomorrow… Words are articulated, but their meaning cannot possibly be clear, The text is not meant to be “followed”. After all, it consists entirely of magical formulas in a remote language. And even if the words were contemporary, the distortions would still be the same. Here words do not describe anything, or perhaps they do, but we do not know what this is. They are, perhaps, exclamations, and as in exclamations it is the tone of voice, which counts most. This is a dream…’ [Jani Christou]
[28] Garcia, E. (2007), p.9.
[29] Christou, Jani, ‘A “Credo” for Music’, Epoches, vol.34, (February 1966), p.146.
[30] Lucciano, Anna (2000), p.110.
[31] Garcia, Emanuel (2007). p.5.
[32] Interview with Christou by G. K. Pilichos, Ta Nea, Monday, May 20, 1963.
“Sheila Jordan: the life, characteristics, and teaching approach of a jazz singer”
Improvisation is probably the most important element of jazz performance practice and also one of the three inexplicable criteria in the definition of jazz compared to other musical genres[1]. Jazz musicians spend a huge amount of time in order to be able to be consistent, creative, meaningful, and transfer their personal message through their improvisations. For singers though, improvisation seems to be rather a challenge since they have to find their own signature, style and sound by not using any valves, keys or strings in order to produce their sound. They have to rely to their body and inner-ear, employ extended voice techniques and enlarge their sound production pallet in order to imitate the way - unnatural for the human voice – instrumentalists improvise. Psychologist Jeff Pressing, who has a great history of studying improvisation and its psychological impacts to musicians and audience, mentions that for vocalists, improvisation is much harder than instrumentalists. The reason is that vocalists lack the benefit of “feedback redundancy”. Musicians who improvise use feedback procedures in order to decide what to play next. Instrumentalists get aural, visual, proprioceptive (body awareness), and touch feedback etc. On the other hand, vocalists have to rely only to aural and proprioceptive feedback. “For every first-rate scat singer in the world” he says, “there must be five hundred talented jazz saxophonists”.[2]
Jazz singers, as we said before, employ different techniques in order to produce sound while improvising, in order to feel freer, disconnect themselves from text and lyrics and be able to focus more on sound and imitation of an instrument. Singing away from text makes the procedure of improvisation much faster and consistent because singers don’t have to worry about lyrics. Instead of a meaningful text, they use nonsense vocables and syllables or even no words at all. This procedure is known as “scat singing”. While jazz singers scat, they create melodic lines, which can be either scales or arpegiating chords, either stock patterns or riffs. Depending on which syllables a singer chooses, they can affect his or her pitch, articulation, coloration and resonance. They can also reflect different instruments or even styles or eras in performance practice tradition[3]. For example while Ella Fitzgerald is scatting she mimics the big band tradition of the swing era in contrast with Sarah Vaughn, who imitates the accompaniment of bop-era combos[4]. Scatting usually incorporates musical structure: Ella Fitzgerald for example, in her recording of “How high the moon”, she first sings the first chorus on actual text and straight lyrics, she then moves to “specialty chorus” where she introduces the some scat elements and then finally moves to a complete scatting chorus[5].
If we like to look back when scat singing makes his appearance for the first time, things are getting a lot blurred. Lois Armstrong’s 1926 recording of “Heebie Jeebies” with his group Hot Five, many times cited to be the first example of scat singing in jazz music[6] but we have many earlier examples of this type of improvisation earlier than that[7][8]. Armstrong himself reports that it was while recording “Heebie Jeebies” in the studio that the score with the lyrics fall down of his stand, not knowing the lyrics to the song, he invented a gibberish melody to fill time, expecting the cut to be thrown out in the end, but that take of the song was the one released. The story is widely believed to be apocryphal, but the influence of the recording was nonetheless enormous to other musicians such as Cab Calloway or George Gershwin, and definitely served as the foundation for later development of this technique.
Some musicologists relate this tradition of scat singing to African musical traditions. Paul Berliner states that “human voice and instruments assume a kind of musical parity” and are “at times so close in timbre and so inextricably interwoven within the music’s fabric as to be nearly indistinguishable”[9]. Although West Africa music often associates drum rhythms to vocal melodies and specific syllables, it is therefore more likely that scat singing evolved and developed independently in the United States.
One of the most important jazz singers of the twentieth century who comes from a log history of instrumental-influenced singing is Sheila Jordan. A unique voice and figure who has worked with names as Charlie Parker, Thelonious Monk, Lennie Tristano and many others, now during her eighties still fulfills her audience with pleasure and meaningful performances and sharing with her students a deep knowledge of jazz performance practice and history. Born in Dawson, Detroit - Michigan on November 18, 1928 Sheila Jordan was raised in poverty in coal-mining country in Pennsylvania. She first heard Charlie Parkers’ saxophone playing on a jukebox record while still in high school and from now then, she always knew that she is going to sing jazz. During the 1940s as she says, she moved to Detroit and started chasing Charlie Parker with her mother, meeting him in the alley behind the clubs since she was underage in order to enter these venues. As Sheila mentions Charlie Parker wrote the song “Chasing the bird” for her. During this period she started playing the piano and singing in Detroit’s clubs working under a semi-professional status. Collaborating with blacks met disapproval from the white community and kept her back from her career for a log period. Only by late 70s her audience started to increase and understand her uncompromising style[10]. Jordan became a member of a vocal trio under the name “Skeeter, Mitch and Jean (Sheila)” who sand Charlie Parker’s solos in the style of the later “Lamber, Hendricks and Ross” group. During the early fifties, she moves to New York and maries Parker’s pianist, Duke Jordan and becomes a student of Lennie Tristano and Thelonious Monk. After a while she gave birth to Traci but her husband was addicted to heroin and soon abandoned the family. Sheila Jordan got a job as a legal secretary and struggled to keep music in her life. "You find a way because the music is very important," she says. "That's how I survived, knowing that once or twice a week I'd get a sitter for Traci, and I'd go sing in this club and then get up the next morning and go do my day gig." Jordan had now to face her own addictions to alcohol and cocaine. But she's the kind of person who attracts a community of supporters. Along with her day office job she also takes gigs in the Page Three Club in Greenwich Village with pianist Herbie Nichols[11] and numerous other clubs in New York. That’s the time that bassist George Russell discovers Sheila Jordan at Greenwich Village, a major turning point for her career. “He introduced himself to me and said ‘where do you come from to sing like that?’ Actually I grew up in the coal mining area near Johnstown, Pa – a little town called Scoopytown. And he said ‘Could you take me back there?’ Sheila took Russell to meet her grandmother at the place she got raised without electricity, without water under a complete poverty. They all went to a club at the same night. There some local people asked Jordan if she was going to sing and they both came on stage and started playing the song “You are my Sunshine”. After a while Jordan says that her grandmother walked up the stage and said Russell: “That’s not the way it goes!” so she pushed him off the bench, she sat down at the piano and played it. “Two weeks later George said to me” Jordan recalls “Boy! Your grandmother sounded like Thelonious Monk when she played”[12]. They both then recorded her first albums: “The Outer View” (September 19, 1962), which included a famous ten-minute version of the “You are my sunshine”, dedicated to the local people of Scoopytown and “Portrait of Sheila” (October 12, 1962), which later sold to Blue Note[13]. During the mid-sixties her work encompassed jazz liturgies, sung in churches and extensive club work.
She later this period met pianist Steve Kuhn and collaborated together in numerous recordings. “She's my big sister, the sister I never had,” Kuhn says, “We're very, very close and I'm glad she's in my life.” Kuhn was still in his 20s when he began performing with Jordan nearly 50 years ago. He's worked in ensembles ranging from duos to string quartets to full orchestras. But Jordan is just about the only singer he's played with — for a reason: “The main thing is the feeling, and that comes across no matter what she does,” says Kuhn. “In terms of instruments, maybe her instrument — her voice — is not as great as some. It doesn't really matter. She sings one note and you know it's Sheila. Unfortunately there are very, very, very few singers left now who are really unique. And she's one of the last ones[14].”
From the beginning of her career to the present, Sheila Jordan has collaborated with great artist from the jazz scene and recorded numerous records in a variety of styles from swing and bebop to free jazz etc. To mention some of them we can note Steve Swallow, Don Heckan, Lee Konitz, Roswell Rudd and Cameron Brown with which she gave several tours around the world.
Sheila has earned praise from many critics, particularly for her ability to improvise entire lyrics during live performances. Scott Yanow describes her as “one of the most consistently creative of all jazz singers[15]”. The ability of singing from bebop all way to free jazz, the unique musical trademarks, frequent unexpected sweeping changes of pitch, which still tend to confound an uninitiated audience, characterize her style of singing. Her main influences come from Charlie Parker’s style and sound. The singer herself admits that instrumentalists always influenced and inspired her and that’s what she suggests to her young vocal students too[16]. “Never copy from another singers […] always try to listen to instrumentalists and copy from them”. In 1974, Sheila Jordan became artist in residence at the City College until the end of 1975. During the present years she use to teach at the Aaron Copland School of Music of New York.
Below I present an interview with one of Sheila Jordan’s former students. Terry Vakirtzoglou got her Bachelor’s degree in vocal jazz from Ionian University in Greece in 2009 and now studies at the Aaron Copland School of Music in New York, first with Sheila Jordan and currently with JD Walker. She recalls her memories from working with Sheila Jordan while she was in Ionian University and how she got inspired by her in order to follow her carrier on jazz singing.
Andreas Xenopoulos: Studying Jazz and having the opportunity of working with Sheila Jordan is definitely something unique. Can you share with me your experience with her and why you think she is unique in what she does, how she teaches etc.
Terry Vakirtzoglou: Let’s start from what you mentioned before on improvisation and the lyrics creation. That of course isn’t something new. There were others who did that before Sheila. For example we can mention Lambert, Hendricks & Ross trio who used to take improvised tunes and put lyrics on them or many other jazz musicians did the same thing even before them. Sheila though improvises tune and lyrics at the same time; she doesn’t just transcribe the tune. Speaking for her teaching now… oh! I have to recall many year ago now! [Laughs]
A: I thing just the best thing for us is that she is still alive and active.
T: Okay, beyond the musical aspect…
A: You are going to say that she met and work with all these people right?
T: Oh yes. She is in her 80s now and she is just amazing. I recall some stories that she use to say: Once she was with Charles Mingus and she was telling us that they had a huge fight because she had some trouble with her child… or many stories about Charlie Parker that she was following him since she was fourteen. She always had the great problem of being “white” you know… that was the opposite problem of the era (a white trying to get involved with blacks). They wouldn’t let her enter the clubs on the one hand because she was too young and on the other hand because black people were always teasing her because she was white. I remember a story that once she shared with us; they had put her in prison once, which was something common to her since she was thirteen up to her eighteens, police would arrest her all the time for trying to enter the clubs. So someone asked her while in prison “what’s your business with the black people lady?” and she was pretending to be a creole, you know creoles are people with a more white skin than blacks… saying, “They are my bros man”. So I believe her stories and experience is the most important of all. [After a while] And you know she has such a clear mind! She remembers everything during her teaching and while working with students in comparison with other great jazz musician such as Mark Murphy. I remember once I worked with him, and he is really amazing and historic figure you know, with lots of recordings and huge experience, but he suffers of dementia and it’s always difficult to have him recall memories.
A: Another thing I want to ask you is if she has any unique way of teaching or if you can describe the way she runs a master class. Does she focus in any particular subject?
T: The truth about Sheila is that she doesn’t come from any institute and she doesn’t have an academic background but guess this is common when we talk about historic jazz figures. You don’t expect from her to transfer her knowledge based on any technical exercises or musicological theories like, you know “watch your vowels here” or “sing these notes there”; Her teaching is more experiential but I ensure you it works perfectly. Mostly by showing and demonstrating and less by talking. For example she is not gonna tell you “don’t use this note here because it doesn’t much the chord” but just “thins is not cool what you are doing here” or “it doesn’t sound jazz here” [Laughs].
A: Does she ever tells or requires students to scat when they improvise? You do scat when you improvise right?
T: Yes, yes I do.
A: When you had lessons with her, what kind of comments she does on scat singing?
T: Let’s first talk about the structure of her seminars – lessons. The first thing she does is to start teach the blues. Blues is a, lets say “easier” and standard form of song. When you teach groups with different levels of knowledge is always great to start with something that everybody is familiar with. There are people who know the blues deeply, the form and nature of this music and there are others who just know it by ear. [Pause] So she starts by putting students in a circle, she has the pianist playing a blues and then she starts singing herself and then the students. Demonstration is the main aspect of her teaching. She would always start improvising over the chords by saying a story; she was always saying, “You should always say a story, either by actual words, either by scatting”. By “story” she meant that the improvisation should have a meaning and a continuation and not just being a fragment or even saying something just for the purpose of doing it. “Go for the deeper meaning”.
A: So she wouldn’t insist on improvising with actual words like she does…
T: No, no, not at all. The clear things that she would always insist was that in order to be a jazz singer, you have to improvise. But to improvise that doesn’t mean you have to do scat or improvise with actual text. You can choose what ever you want or do both. [Pause] Let’s go back to the circle now. So that was the introduction to her lesson. She would start by improvising on text and then pass the microphone to every student who had to improvise by telling a story on text. Then we would do the same thing by moving on to scat phrasing with just syllables.
A: And did you have to do this story improvisation on English text?
T: Oh, yes of course. You just need to say about, you know, your life or how do you feel. If a student couldn’t do it at once, Sheila would ask her questions, still on improvisation and singing of course, in order to make her feel more relaxed. Always on the blues loop, which is a standard form and the student is easy to remember and keep track of where he or she is. I am not really sure how you can move forward from that, but it seemed to work with everybody. It’s a great start to get the spirit of this music and start feeling that something is going on you know… [Long pause] Oh yes… She was the one who inspired me completely to take this path of jazz singing. I would be something completely different if I hadn’t met her on my first year in college, when she came to Corfu with Cameron Brown (bassist).
A: What about after this circle that she did? What did she do next?
T: After that “circle of blues”, as we use to call that, she would start a conversation about the history of jazz; of course she know everything from inside… to tell you the truth, she would talk mostly about random storied, which came to her head without any plan. She would get inspired from a song that a student had chosen to sing and would say like “oh, this song is being written by this guy, that together we did this and that…” and then after this story-telling part would move on to more private coaching. Each student would choose a jazz standard to sing and Sheila would work with him or her in a more detailed way. [Long pause] She is really unique… It’s now about teaching or coaching. It’s all about the spirit. She has the ability to transfer that spirit of jazz, which you know after some point, several aspects of music creation are difficult to be perceived and be explained. […] As a singer she has a very unique voice. Another spectacular and very interesting thing about Sheila is her spirituality. She states to have a Native American heritage. I don’t know if this is true but she mentioned once that her grandmother was Indian and that sometimes listens to her voice etc. Oh! That’s a fun story to tell you… she has a recording, which on the cover has some cows out in the grass field; Sheila lives in a farm on the countryside of New York City, you know…
A: That’s the “Charlie Parker’s Place”! I read about that in one of her personal interviews. It is a farm on which she goes in order to get inspired and compose her new staff. I remember her talking about a spiritual connection that she has with nature!
T: Exactly! On this farm then, there was a neighbor who had a couple of cows. Sheila says that every time she was singing bebop, the cows would come to the fence and stare at her for the whole time until finishing with her singing [Laughs]; then she would ask them “why don’t you go away?”; Those were the “bebop cows” for Sheila and she named them like that because the cows responded back: “we don’t leave because we like bebop”! [Laughs again] Oh my God she is great!
Another cool story about nature was this one with the frog. Don’t think I am creasy Andreas, I am just telling you the stories I have heard from her!
A: These are the most amazing information you can give me! Continue.
T: So there was a frog on her window once, who was doing all these wired sounds and bothering her while she was trying to stay concentrated in her compositions and she told him “Can you please stop? You are irritating me!”. One day the frog responded back to her: “I never told you how you sound; why then you are telling me how should I sound?” [Laughs] Oh! Here is another cool one that I witnessed! She had a concert with a combo in Corfu once and while singing there was a bug flying around her; in the middle of her singings she says: “Hey bug, to you like the music we play?” and starts improvising talking to the bug; after a while the bug flies on the microphone stand, then Sheila: “Ah! So you are gonna stay with us right? You are probably a jazz bug!” […]
On the spirituality of music I remember her once saying that: “sometimes there is a great energy during the concert; it’s the way musicians interact with each other, it’s the way the music sounds; everything seams to be correct; and then you feel your soul coming out of your body and become an outsider and just enjoy listening and watching what is happening” (that’s what psychologists call ‘flow’) “I have felt that about four times in my life and I feel so lucky to experience that”.
She is like a book, you know; you learn so much just by seating down and listen to her. You know, she was alcoholic. Only after her fifty-six manage to stop drinking and she is not afraid to talk about that at all. I recall the first time she entered the class and start talking about her past alcoholism, I was in sock, a nineteen year old student hearing someone talk about that so openly… Jazz musician were connected with such habits but she would always say: “You finally don’t need any of those in order to get high and make music”. She made her first recording during her fifties and there are many reasons for that: the drinking problem, her white color, music that was in a very changing period during those times, she was working in an office and not as a musician and many other things. She would refuse to abandon her job in order to work as a singer. This is one of her characteristics as well. She is very committed to what she does. She has the jazz spirit 100%, refused to sing anything else than jazz, never saw music and singing as a profession you know. Sheila only once sung in a wedding band and she walked out during the gig, she would prefer to work five days a week in the office and then go to the jazz clubs at night and sing there; completely engage and in-love with this music, and to tell you the truth I believe that’s the reason that she teaches now; she wants to “pass the message”, as jazz people say, to keep tradition alive. Whatever you can take from here spirit, her appearance, the fact that she still sings and teaches despite her age, the uniqueness of her voice and character, everything is worthless for young musicians… It’s also very important to say that she made almost all of her recordings after her fifties and if you listen to them many times inside her songs you hear phrases like “when I was young…” or “I remember…” so the recordings are somehow her autobiography and a great source of information; and of course her many, many, many, numerous stories from her live, which include Charles Mingus, Charlie Parker, Lennie Tristano… the woman is amazing, she has worked with everybody! She has done everything. It is a miracle that she is still alive, accessible to young musicians and mostly with a clear sparkling mind… […] Sheila Jordan is a true artist, the alive spirit of jazz, her personality and character, she did what she did just for the sake of music; I remember her every time that we would have a seminar, saying “I am here, and exist because of music” …you know, far away of any attitude or selfishness, in love with this music at first site, since she entered accidentally a club, when she was thirteen, and heard Charlie Parker playing for the first time… She carries the message of life to me; the message to be dedicated, true to what you are doing; the message of being 83 years old and still teach and sing, of being 83 years old and need twenty minutes to walk from the airplane door to the airport, and still have the courage, beyond any obstacle to travel fifteen hours on an airplane to transfer this message of life…
Bibliography:
Allmusic.com: Sheila Jordan's Biography
A unique voice at 80 [NPR Radio Interview with Sheila Jordan] http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=103717612 [accessed on November 20, 2011].
Berliner, Paul, Thinking in Jazz: The Infinite Art of Improvisation, Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1994.
Friedwald, Will, Jazz Singing: America's Great Voices from Bessie Smith to Bebop and Beyond, New York: Charles Scribner's Sons, 1990.
Gridley, Mark, Robert Maxham and Robert Hoff. “Three Approaches to Defining Jazz.” The Musical Quarterly. 73 (1989): 513-31.
Latimer, Charles. "Bebop and Beyond: Sheila Jordan speaks" http://www.detroitmusichistory.com/Shelia.html [accessed on November 20, 2011]
Nicholson, Stuart, Ella Fitzgerald: A Biography of the First Lady of Jazz, Da Capo Press, 1993.
Sheila Jordan Clinic http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=R9MqSht4vOY&feature=BFa&list=PLB68BE4F16F54D87B&lf=mh_lolz [accessed on November 20, 2011]
Spellman, A B. Four Lives in the Bebop Business. Limelight, 1985.
Stewart, Milton L. "Stylistic Environment and the Scat Singing Styles of Ella Fitzgerald and Sarah Vaughan", Jazzforschung/Jazz Research 19: 61–76 (1987).
Wikipedia – The Free Encyclopedia: “Scat-singing”. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Scat_singing [accessed on November 22,2011].
Wikipedia – The Free Encyclopedia: “Sheila Jordan” http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sheila_Jordan [accessed on November 25, 2011].
[1] Gridley, Mark, Robert Maxham and Robert Hoff. “Three Approaches to Defining Jazz.”
The Musical Quarterly. Vol.73 (1989): pp. 513-31.
[2] Wikipedia – the free encyclopedia: “Scat-singing”. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Scat_singing [accessed on November 22, 2011].
[3] Berliner, Paul, Thinking in Jazz: The Infinite Art of Improvisation, Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1994. P.125.
[4] Stewart, Milton L. "Stylistic Environment and the Scat Singing Styles of Ella Fitzgerald and Sarah Vaughan", Jazzforschung/Jazz Research 19: 61–76 (1987). pp. 74
[5] Friedwald, Will, Jazz Singing: America's Great Voices from Bessie Smith to Bebop and Beyond, New York: Charles Scribner's Sons, 1990, pp. 145.
[6] Edwards, Brent Hayes, "Louis Armstrong and the Syntax of Scat", Critical Inquiry 28 (3) (2002), pp. 618–649.
[7] Nicholson, Stuart, Ella Fitzgerald: A Biography of the First Lady of Jazz, Da Capo Press, 1993. pp.89
[8] Friedwald, Will, Jazz Singing: America's Great Voices from Bessie Smith to Bebop and Beyond, New York: Charles Scribner's Sons, 1990, pp. 16
[9] Berliner, Paul, Thinking in Jazz: The Infinite Art of Improvisation, Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1994. pp. 68
[10] Wikipedia – The Free Encyclopedia: “Sheila Jordan” http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sheila_Jordan [accessed on November 25, 2011]
[11] Spellman, A B. Four Lives in the Bebop Business. Limelight, 1985. pp. 156
[12] A unique voice at 80 [NPR Radio Interview with Sheila Jordan] http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=103717612 [accessed on November 20, 2011]
[13] Latimer, Charles. "Bebop and Beyond: Sheila Jordan speaks" http://www.detroitmusichistory.com/Shelia.html [accessed on November 20, 2011]
[14] A unique voice at 80 [NPR Radio Interview with Sheila Jordan]
[15] Allmusic.com: Sheila Jordan's Biography
[16] Sheila Jordan Clinic http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=R9MqSht4vOY&feature=BFa&list=PLB68BE4F16F54D87B&lf=mh_lolz [accessed on November 20, 2011]
“The Use of Group Piano as a tool for decreasing stage fright symptoms”
MTNA Poster Proposal
Andreas Xenopoulos
Piano Performance
Bowling Green State University
SUBJECT:
“The Use of Group Piano as a tool for decreasing stage fright symptoms”
Almost every active musician and performer has face an audience very often. Stage fright and performance anxiety is something that we all have to deal with. Symptoms of stage fright and nervousness include hand shaking, sweating, headaches, stomach pains and even more serious distractions such as dizziness or loss of memory and eye visibility.
Are there any ways for musicians to deal with this reality? Do we have to change something in our educations system? Are there any medications that we should use in order to avoid some of those symptoms? Most people start to realize those problems after a certain age and as they get more and more professional in their field. After realizing the problem, numerous musicians start to make research about stage fright and spend time in techniques such as meditation, yoga or even medical products such as pills for some serious and really distracted citations.
We do believe though that starting looking for solutions after you see the symptoms and after the age of 25 or 30 years old, is too late and any kind of treatment is not going to be natural for the body or is going to have side effects in other mental and body activities. We researched a wide bibliography with suggestions about how to deal with performance anxiety and activities, which a musician should do from a very early stage of education. We did a comparison with the activities, which we teach as piano teachers in group piano and we realize that those activities and the way that students learn how to use piano in a group piano class is a great and useful tool to decrease stage fright.
In this brief research we will do a comparison of solutions that psychologists and pedagogist suggest on how to develop skills against stage nervousness and the ideal curriculum of a group piano class.
Andreas Xenopoulos
Piano Performance
Bowling Green State University
SUBJECT:
“The Use of Group Piano as a tool for decreasing stage fright symptoms”
Almost every active musician and performer has face an audience very often. Stage fright and performance anxiety is something that we all have to deal with. Symptoms of stage fright and nervousness include hand shaking, sweating, headaches, stomach pains and even more serious distractions such as dizziness or loss of memory and eye visibility.
Are there any ways for musicians to deal with this reality? Do we have to change something in our educations system? Are there any medications that we should use in order to avoid some of those symptoms? Most people start to realize those problems after a certain age and as they get more and more professional in their field. After realizing the problem, numerous musicians start to make research about stage fright and spend time in techniques such as meditation, yoga or even medical products such as pills for some serious and really distracted citations.
We do believe though that starting looking for solutions after you see the symptoms and after the age of 25 or 30 years old, is too late and any kind of treatment is not going to be natural for the body or is going to have side effects in other mental and body activities. We researched a wide bibliography with suggestions about how to deal with performance anxiety and activities, which a musician should do from a very early stage of education. We did a comparison with the activities, which we teach as piano teachers in group piano and we realize that those activities and the way that students learn how to use piano in a group piano class is a great and useful tool to decrease stage fright.
In this brief research we will do a comparison of solutions that psychologists and pedagogist suggest on how to develop skills against stage nervousness and the ideal curriculum of a group piano class.
“Perform or Fly”
Beta-blockers and Stage Fright
By Andreas Xenopoulos
03.30.2011
Have you ever been aware of what happens to your body when you walk out on stage in order to perform in front of a hundred people or more? Did you ever notice feeling any muscular tension, shaking, sweating or even loss of memory during a performance? If yes, you are alone in the world. Millions of amateur and professional musician suffer from what is known as stage fright. The first thing to do is be aware of the phenomenon of anxiety, what this can cause to your body and how all these reactions can be negative or creative and useful for your performance.
After having numerous discussions with professional musicians and university professors, I realized that most of them are not familiar with what exactly is happening physiologically on our body when we are about to face an audience and act or perform in front of it. Reactions seem to be comparatively the same almost in all performers and people who feel anxiety or fear in general. I asked numerous musicians what they do in order to prevent, or stop those symptoms while they are waiting backstage and preparing for their recitals. Answers were including stretching, breathing exercises, yoga, mental performance (with the score), talking with the audience outside the room, drinking alcohol, eating bananas or taking certain medicine, known as beta-blockers. I started being interested in those last medicines since many people are using them and I realized that only few knew what exactly they cause to our body and phycology. In this article I will provide some general important information about what stage fright is, how our mind and body reacts on stressful situations, and finally what beta-blockers are and what are the major effects we should be aware of.
Lets first examine what happens when we face an unfamiliar (or not so often) stressful environment such as recital performances, lectures, competitions, auditions etc. Our body performs a certain sequence of reactions known as fight or flight syndrome (also called fight or flight stimulation, fight or flight or freeze response, hyperarousal, or the acute stress response). Fight or flight syndrome first mentioned from Walter Bradford Cannon who noticed these reactions to animals. His theory states that animals react to threats with a general discharge of the sympathetic nervous system leading the animal to stay and fight or run away to be saved. This reaction was later recognized as the first stage of a general adaption syndrome that regulates stress responses among vertebrates and other organisms.
The stress response: In stressful situations the body switches on its autonomic nervous system in an attempt to maintain homeostasis. The body is prepared for its reaction to stress. In the brain the hypothalamus is connected to the Pituitary Gland. The hypothalamus stimulated by the sympathetic nervous system releases the hormone CRF (Corticotrophin-releasing factor). The CRF activates the Pituitary Gland to release the ACTH (Adrenocorticotropic Hormone). This hormone alerts the Adrenal Glands. The Adrenal glands are located on top of each kidney. The ACTH stimulates the adrenal cortex (part of the Adrenal Glands) to release cortisol. At the same time neurons at the hypothalamus signals the Medulla (part of the Adrenal Glands) to release epinephrine adrenaline and norepinephrine noradrenaline. These hormones then puss the body into hyper-alertness.
Here are some of the main symptoms generated by our nervous system:
Now if we take a closer look in all those we will realize some effects, which are useful for us as musicians such as the glucose liberation that is extremely effective for our muscular actions while performing or the loss of peripheral vision. Tunnel vision helps musicians not to get distracted or frustrated by any movements coming from backstage or the audience. The same thing happens with the auditory exclusion but this affects our musical auditory judgment as well while performing.
Beta-blockers have some general characteristics, which react against those of the fight or flight syndrome. They mainly slow down resting heart rate (while sleeping) and exercise rate (while performing), lowers blood pressure, affect our energy metabolism and also affect our exercise duration (performance strength and duration of focus). Clinically, these drugs are used to treat a variety of conditions such as Hypertension, Angina, Cardiac Arrhythmias, Anxiety, Tremor or Migraine Headaches. A beta-blocker treatment usually lasts for about six months up to two years. For musicians, taking half of the pill once performing, affects only this particular activity and lasts up to six hours after the pill has introduced to the body. Of course beta-blockers and such medicine should never be used without first taking reference and advice by a doctor.
Lets now take a closer look into the four different categories of beta-blockers exist. In order to do that we should first explain five important terms:
Beta-blockers with I.S.A. are less potent agonists than drugs referred to as Beta-agonists and even than endogenous agonists. Clinically, beta-blockers with I.S.A. are useful for patients who require high doses of the drug.
Once a beta-blocker is introduced to our body, there are two major effects taking place at the same time. The first one is what we call pharmacokinetics. Pharmacokinetics is what the body does to the drug once it is introduced. Research has shown that musical performance decreases beta-blocker’s half-life, which means in simple words that the more time we perform or exercise in general, the faster the pill is going to disappeared from our body. The second effect is the Pharmacology, which is what the drug does to our body. Performance induces a positive chronotropic and inotropic effect on the heart (increase of heart rate), whereas beta-blockers exert a negative chronotropic an inotropic effect (slow down heart rate). Another very important element research has shown, is that professional musicians who perform in public very often and exercise in a regular basis have slower both resting and exercise heart rate, which mean that regular performers’ heart beat reaches a lower pick beating rate point during a performance that those of a musician who perform occasionally. This observation supports the fact that the best way to get familiar with stage fright is just to perform in public as much as possible. Then all of the fight or flight syndrome responses are getting less and stage performance becomes more and more a “familiar” situation. Of course stage fright has to do with other factors such as phycology, so other treatments or therapies may be employed for preventing the fight or flight stimulation.
Below you can see a list of some major effects beta-blockers do to our body in order to help us decries those symptoms:
Today, no fewer than 14 different beta-blockers have been approved for use in clinical medicine in the United States. Although these drugs have minor side effects and are mostly useful for musicians and for patience with nervousness and anxiety problems, clinicians should avoid using any beta-blocker in patients with asthma. Beta-blockers also are typically avoided in patients with diabetes mellitus, since they can mask the symptoms of hypoglycemia.
Being a musician and performer is one of the most exciting things. Being a professional of any kind requires high quality levels of performance, high standards, productivity and lots of stress. As musicians and true artists we should always use stage performances to express our ideas and believes for a higher quality of life. We should use this opportunity for communicating our philosophy for higher ethics, through a unique path of life we have discovered through music. Use stage fright in a creative way, use the power that audience gives you to express yourself and become a musical ambassador. We should all first think the reason of performing and what “stage” means for us. Experiment with all kinds of things you believe work for you in order to prevent stage fright and most of all BE WELL PREPARED, before trying any kind of drugs and medicine. I am not personally against any “helpers”, which may improve my playing, but I am totally against an emotionless “perfect” performance, which has nothing to do with music and has nothing to give the audience but an “one more good but boring recital”.
By Andreas Xenopoulos
03.30.2011
Have you ever been aware of what happens to your body when you walk out on stage in order to perform in front of a hundred people or more? Did you ever notice feeling any muscular tension, shaking, sweating or even loss of memory during a performance? If yes, you are alone in the world. Millions of amateur and professional musician suffer from what is known as stage fright. The first thing to do is be aware of the phenomenon of anxiety, what this can cause to your body and how all these reactions can be negative or creative and useful for your performance.
After having numerous discussions with professional musicians and university professors, I realized that most of them are not familiar with what exactly is happening physiologically on our body when we are about to face an audience and act or perform in front of it. Reactions seem to be comparatively the same almost in all performers and people who feel anxiety or fear in general. I asked numerous musicians what they do in order to prevent, or stop those symptoms while they are waiting backstage and preparing for their recitals. Answers were including stretching, breathing exercises, yoga, mental performance (with the score), talking with the audience outside the room, drinking alcohol, eating bananas or taking certain medicine, known as beta-blockers. I started being interested in those last medicines since many people are using them and I realized that only few knew what exactly they cause to our body and phycology. In this article I will provide some general important information about what stage fright is, how our mind and body reacts on stressful situations, and finally what beta-blockers are and what are the major effects we should be aware of.
Lets first examine what happens when we face an unfamiliar (or not so often) stressful environment such as recital performances, lectures, competitions, auditions etc. Our body performs a certain sequence of reactions known as fight or flight syndrome (also called fight or flight stimulation, fight or flight or freeze response, hyperarousal, or the acute stress response). Fight or flight syndrome first mentioned from Walter Bradford Cannon who noticed these reactions to animals. His theory states that animals react to threats with a general discharge of the sympathetic nervous system leading the animal to stay and fight or run away to be saved. This reaction was later recognized as the first stage of a general adaption syndrome that regulates stress responses among vertebrates and other organisms.
The stress response: In stressful situations the body switches on its autonomic nervous system in an attempt to maintain homeostasis. The body is prepared for its reaction to stress. In the brain the hypothalamus is connected to the Pituitary Gland. The hypothalamus stimulated by the sympathetic nervous system releases the hormone CRF (Corticotrophin-releasing factor). The CRF activates the Pituitary Gland to release the ACTH (Adrenocorticotropic Hormone). This hormone alerts the Adrenal Glands. The Adrenal glands are located on top of each kidney. The ACTH stimulates the adrenal cortex (part of the Adrenal Glands) to release cortisol. At the same time neurons at the hypothalamus signals the Medulla (part of the Adrenal Glands) to release epinephrine adrenaline and norepinephrine noradrenaline. These hormones then puss the body into hyper-alertness.
Here are some of the main symptoms generated by our nervous system:
- Acceleration of heart and lung action
- Paling or flushing, ore alternating between both
- General effect on the sphincters of the body
- Liberation of nutrients (particularly fat and glucose) for muscular action
- Dilation of blood vessels for muscles
- Relaxation of bladder
- Inhibition of erection
- Auditory exclusion (loss of hearing)
- Tunnel vision (loss of peripheral vision)
- Acceleration of instantaneous reflexes
- Shaking
Now if we take a closer look in all those we will realize some effects, which are useful for us as musicians such as the glucose liberation that is extremely effective for our muscular actions while performing or the loss of peripheral vision. Tunnel vision helps musicians not to get distracted or frustrated by any movements coming from backstage or the audience. The same thing happens with the auditory exclusion but this affects our musical auditory judgment as well while performing.
Beta-blockers have some general characteristics, which react against those of the fight or flight syndrome. They mainly slow down resting heart rate (while sleeping) and exercise rate (while performing), lowers blood pressure, affect our energy metabolism and also affect our exercise duration (performance strength and duration of focus). Clinically, these drugs are used to treat a variety of conditions such as Hypertension, Angina, Cardiac Arrhythmias, Anxiety, Tremor or Migraine Headaches. A beta-blocker treatment usually lasts for about six months up to two years. For musicians, taking half of the pill once performing, affects only this particular activity and lasts up to six hours after the pill has introduced to the body. Of course beta-blockers and such medicine should never be used without first taking reference and advice by a doctor.
Lets now take a closer look into the four different categories of beta-blockers exist. In order to do that we should first explain five important terms:
- Receptors: All body instruments, which receive Ingredients and chemicals come from medicine such as pills
- I.S.A. (Intrinsic Sympathomimetic Activity): Describes a beta-blocker’s property of exerting low-level agonism (stimulation) at the receptor while simultaneously blocking the ability of other body chemicals (e.g. epinephrine) to block the receptor
- Beta-1-receptor: Heart and Kidney
- Beta-2-receptor: Lung, Arterioles, Gastrointestinal (GI) track. Reception from Beta-2-receptors produces smooth muscle relaxation
- Cardioselective: Is the beta-blocker that exerts its effects preferentially on the beta-1-receptor subtype more than on the beta-2 subtype.
Beta-blockers with I.S.A. are less potent agonists than drugs referred to as Beta-agonists and even than endogenous agonists. Clinically, beta-blockers with I.S.A. are useful for patients who require high doses of the drug.
Once a beta-blocker is introduced to our body, there are two major effects taking place at the same time. The first one is what we call pharmacokinetics. Pharmacokinetics is what the body does to the drug once it is introduced. Research has shown that musical performance decreases beta-blocker’s half-life, which means in simple words that the more time we perform or exercise in general, the faster the pill is going to disappeared from our body. The second effect is the Pharmacology, which is what the drug does to our body. Performance induces a positive chronotropic and inotropic effect on the heart (increase of heart rate), whereas beta-blockers exert a negative chronotropic an inotropic effect (slow down heart rate). Another very important element research has shown, is that professional musicians who perform in public very often and exercise in a regular basis have slower both resting and exercise heart rate, which mean that regular performers’ heart beat reaches a lower pick beating rate point during a performance that those of a musician who perform occasionally. This observation supports the fact that the best way to get familiar with stage fright is just to perform in public as much as possible. Then all of the fight or flight syndrome responses are getting less and stage performance becomes more and more a “familiar” situation. Of course stage fright has to do with other factors such as phycology, so other treatments or therapies may be employed for preventing the fight or flight stimulation.
Below you can see a list of some major effects beta-blockers do to our body in order to help us decries those symptoms:
- Beta-blockers affect, many aspects of exercise and performance physiology
- They produce physiologic effects exactly opposite of those mediated via sympathetic stimulation
- In general beta-blockers decrease both resting and exercise (performance) heart rate
- Reduce skeletal muscle tremor
- Pistol shooting performance improved by 13.4% during a beta-blockade
- Beta-blockers do not appear to affect either auditory or visual reaction time
- No beneficial effects on strength, power, or muscular endurance
- May cause significant bradycardia at rest in highly fit individuals, particularly with agents that do not possess I.S.A. properties
Today, no fewer than 14 different beta-blockers have been approved for use in clinical medicine in the United States. Although these drugs have minor side effects and are mostly useful for musicians and for patience with nervousness and anxiety problems, clinicians should avoid using any beta-blocker in patients with asthma. Beta-blockers also are typically avoided in patients with diabetes mellitus, since they can mask the symptoms of hypoglycemia.
Being a musician and performer is one of the most exciting things. Being a professional of any kind requires high quality levels of performance, high standards, productivity and lots of stress. As musicians and true artists we should always use stage performances to express our ideas and believes for a higher quality of life. We should use this opportunity for communicating our philosophy for higher ethics, through a unique path of life we have discovered through music. Use stage fright in a creative way, use the power that audience gives you to express yourself and become a musical ambassador. We should all first think the reason of performing and what “stage” means for us. Experiment with all kinds of things you believe work for you in order to prevent stage fright and most of all BE WELL PREPARED, before trying any kind of drugs and medicine. I am not personally against any “helpers”, which may improve my playing, but I am totally against an emotionless “perfect” performance, which has nothing to do with music and has nothing to give the audience but an “one more good but boring recital”.
