[On Saturday May 13th at 4:00 PM, The Boston Cecilia will present Loaded Dice: Music Determined and Improvised, in the MIT Media Lab. The program will contrast the highly-structured music of Arvo Pärt, William Byrd, Orlande de Lassus, and Johannes Brahms with the improvisatory sonic meditations of Pauline Oliveros.
Music Director Michael Barrett sat down with Cecilia alto Grace Leung for a conversation about his creative journey for this thought-provoking program.]
GL: When did you come up with the idea for the Loaded Dice program? How has it evolved since then?
MB: The genesis for Loaded Dice was not a singular “Aha!” moment, but some of the seeds were planted from the very first moments when I knew that I had this wonderful opportunity to work with Boston Cecilia [as the new Music Director in the Spring of 2020].
I felt an opportunity and a responsibility to think about the breadth and depth of musical exploration that we could do together. Previously, I led a talented chamber choir whose mandate was almost exclusively Renaissance music. With Boston Cecilia, I wanted to be able to explore and think about what it had explored musically so far, and how we might evolve and go in new directions together.
So, I thought, what are the parameters that are taken for granted about the repertoire choices and the learning approaches? Such as, we are mostly looking at music that is composed and recorded on pieces of paper (or, nowadays, on tablets). There is a saying that goes something like “the score is not the music,” which reminds me that [a musical score] is just a symbolic language and that it is not sound at all. The music is the sound. There is a disconnect between this symbolic language versus the sound itself.
I want to use the exploration of music that is not notated, or does not even exist in a traditional on-paper fashion, to think about how we interact with one another as members of a community and as listeners.
I hoped that in doing so that there would be an opportunity for people to take a more active role in the music-making process itself and the creative process.
Do you mean having a choir that does not blindly follow the conductor, and an audience that does not passively listen?
A choral situation is tricky. As human beings, if we are in a group of - say 50 people - and have a leader, there is a certain implied expectation that, okay, we contribute X amount of ourselves, but it's not necessary that we are engaged with our complete creative selves.
But if we could explore different kinds of repertoire that are not set down, where individual performances can be wildly different from one another, and where the outcome very much relies on an individual choice from moment to moment, then I think there is an opportunity to shake things up a little bit and get people more involved.
I am trying to facilitate a musical experience that in a way is not my own. As you know, I am not making any noise, but it is the people who are actually singing and singing together.
In Loaded Dice, I also want to get to the question about “what music really is?” Most pointedly or dramatically, if we make extreme contrasts, we could look at predetermined music that is not only printed but generated by algorithmic thinking on the part of the composer.
The first composer I thought about was Arvo Pärt, whose work is very often tied to a certain set of instructions, and it can get more or less complicated. For example, in Pärt’s Magnificat, the melodies are based on the number of syllables in the word. The stressed syllable gets a long note, and then there is an alternation between a whole note and a dotted half note in the stressed syllable.
As a singer, I enjoy cracking the code of Arvo Pärt’s music because I can see the patterns on paper, and the music sounds great, too. Perhaps we are all pattern-seeking creatures and patterns have an effect on our brains.
Yes, and for performer and listener alike in complementary ways.
How does Brahms get into the mix?
Oh, because of the Canons. In the canon, a certain amount of the structure is foregrounded, so that you can hear as one voice enters, and as another voice enters…[creating] this deterministic outlay of musical material.
I see, so there is a repeated element.
But you have to engineer the unit such that it works with itself.
So, the pieces we are singing are characterized by discernible patterns. How will the Oliveros pieces contrast with that highly structured music?
Pärt is one extreme [i.e. predetermined and algorithmic music], and then we go in the total other direction, where nothing is taken for granted [i.e. with Oliveros’ improvisations]. Although I think there is an interesting parallelism between the short set of instructions that you can infer in a piece like Pärt’s, and then the short set of instructions that are explicitly given in a piece like Oliveros’.
When I first read Oliveros’ Sonic Meditation in the MIT Music Library, I was shocked and thought “What is this?!” And yet, her sonic approach was intriguing. I remember asking the librarian, “Have you ever seen something like this being performed?” and she answered, “Yes, and it can be rather convincing.”
I like to be as open and honest about my appreciation of the result of our improvisation, and it is a kind of combination of the sonic experience which I think has been really compelling, and then also just the knowledge that singers are injecting their own component to that sound and being actively engaged. I plan to open things up for the audience to participate in a couple of these meditations, and I hope that we can tweak our physical placement as well, so that we also can break down this fort wall [between performers and the audience]. I think we have a fun space to play with that idea.
Yes, the MIT Media Lab!
When we perform in a church, we don't have very much to choose from in terms of where the performers are and where the audience are, as there is a clear architectural divide between the altar area and the pews. In the Media Lab set up, we can break down that barrier for this show.
During improvisations, the choir somehow knows when to end the piece together, as if we are one organism. It is amazing.
Yes! We respond as individuals to such subtle social cues. And I think that, as we hear and respond, the musical result has a direct analogy to just how we interact as social beings.
When you first joined Boston Cecilia, you gave another interview in which you shared your hope and vision for Cecilia. I think the key word was “flexibility.” Is Loaded Dice part of your grand plan to train singers, and even the audience, to become more flexible and to open ourselves to whatever musical challenges or experiences that we might have?
Oh, I would say, yes! I feel interested in and also responsible for pushing the envelope in different sorts of directions. I hope that our chorus comes along for the ride, and it has felt that way to me; that there is a trust that has built up, and that people are willing to experiment a bit. I would not mind it if Cecilia came to be known as the chorus who can do all sorts of different things. I think we can all benefit from that and continue to explore.
I have done some internet research, and it turns out that Arvo Pärt is the world’s most-performed living composer*. His music resonates.
Yes, and that's an interesting thing about this concert. We have a known quantity in Arvo Pärt, and an unknown in Oliveros, and I hope that that gets a few people in the door to explore with us.
* https://estonianworld.com/culture/arvo-part-is-the-worlds-most-performed-living-composer/