Holiday reading and Opera

With the possible exception of John Adams I have never been a particular fan of opera. There is no denying the emotional intensity, the skill of the composers and musicians and the sheer power of the singers. Opera is truly awesome but I'm afraid it is largely wasted on me and it occupies a place in my mind adjacent to Heavy Metal.

But there is hope for me yet. In the same way that an unfamiliar sport becomes more interesting when the rules are explained, my appreciation of opera has recently increased through greater understanding. During the half term break (how long ago it seems now) I read Bel Canto by Ann Patchett. The plot centres around a hostage 'situation' in an unnamed American republic. Among the captives is a renowned soprano.

For a number of years I kept up a subscription to The Wire largely because I enjoyed reading the reviews of obscure pieces of music I knew I was never going to hear. My pleasure came from imagining what the music would sound like and the descriptions made it spring to life in my head. Bel Canto contains some of the most evocative descriptions of music I can remember reading. Here's a short extract.

"There should have been an orchestra behind her but no one noticed its absence. No one would have said her voice sounded better with an orchestra, or that it was better when the room was immaculately clean and lit by candles. They did not notice the absence of flowers or champagne, in fact, they knew now that flowers and champagne were unnecessary embellishments. Had she really not been singing all along? The sound was no more beautiful when her voice was limber and warm. Their eyes clouded over with tears for so many reasons it would be impossible to list them all. They cried for the beauty of the music, certainly, but also for the failure of their plans. They were thinking of the last time they had heard her sing and longed for the women who had been beside them then. All of the love and the longing a body can contain was spun into not more than two and a half minutes of song, and when she came to the highest notes it seemed that all they had been given in their lives and all they had lost came together and made a weight that was almost impossible to bear. When she was finished, the people around her stood in stunned and shivering silence. Messner leaned into the wall as if struck. He had not been invited to the party. Unlike the others, he had never heard her sing before."

It's a very good book all round, winning the Orange Prize in 2002 (when my kids were much younger and time/space for reading harder to come by. If you like a good story, string characterisation and a musical thread or two then you could do far worse.

Hearing through the skin

I don't know if anyone else picked up on some research suggesting that the cries of newborn babies vary from nation to nation. Apparently French babies cry differently from German babies, perhaps because of the speech they heard while in the womb.

Well today I read of some Canadian research suggesting our skin plays a part in interpreting speech. I overdosed on skin watching 'Bruno' last weekend so I'll save you a picture. However, I'm contemplating attending opera in my birthday suit, the better understand the proceedings.

Learning to listen

Ah, the joys of self-employment! When there's no work I should be resting, basking in the warm glow of past success and spending my well-earned fees. Instead I'm mooching around, fretting that I'll never get any work again and seriously considering applying for unsuitable employment, positions I mean here, that would drive me insane. So when the offers finally come in I want to say yes to everything in case nothing else ever comes. I overload and get stressed by impossible and incompatible commitments and deadlines. But this is the kind of stress I love.

Just at the moment there is very little happening besides my regular woodwind teaching and occasional gigs. But suddenly I have had a variety of offers of work after Christmas, all of it exciting. Would I play clarinet and tenor sax in a production of The Threepenny Opera? Well of course. Am I interested in helping primary school children explore their concerns around death, pollution and the environment through sound? Yes, absolutely. Would I like to work with a performance poet on a project aiming to improve listening and communication skills in eight year olds, taking food as a theme? Count me in. And the icing on the cake: write some music for a video about heroes and villains. What fun!

Of course another thing about being a self-employed artist is that things rarely happen on the timescale that's been given at the outset and sometimes they never happen at all. Apart from 'Threepenny' these are all to be confirmed, but it's very exciting all the same and what fate can't take away is that I've been asked. And that's enormously flattering.

The projects involving schoolchildren will both require them to develop their listening skills and become sensitive and discerning with regard to sound. My years spent teaching woodwind have shown me that it is only when students learn to hear themselves that they become musicians whose playing might please others. This faculty arrives at different ages in different people. Like self-awareness generally it can be encouraged and facilitated but can't really be taught. This month's featured game, Copycat, is ideal for developing listening skills, especially in children, and has applications far beyond the teaching of music. Try it; it's free and without obligation. You will find that many other games in Adventures in Sound add value in a far wider context. We could all be better at listening - to ourselves and to others.