Timbre, Style, and Musical Expression
photo credit: www.kentnagano.com
In this interview, Kent Nagano, then Artistic Director of the Orchestre symphonique de Montréal (OSM), shared his thoughts on the essential role of timbre in music, the power of imagination in interpreting scores, and the art of communicating musical ideas to the orchestra. Drawing from his extensive experience conducting works spanning various eras and styles, including the current concert feauturing works by Berlioz, Dusapin, and Beethoven, Maestro Nagano offers a captivating exploration of the complex relationship between sound, emotion, and the human experience. Speaking with the ACTOR Project’s Director and Co-Director, Stephen McAdams and Robert Hasegawa, respectively, Tonmeister Martha de Francisco, and ACTOR postdoc Julie Delisle, he emphasizes the importance of timbre in an increasingly digitized world and discusses the challenges and rewards of bringing a composer's vision to life through effective collaboration with the orchestra.
The role of timbre in music
Stephen McAdams [SM]. What, in your mind is the role of timbre of Klangfarbe in music?
Kent Nagano [KN.] Oh, it is an essential part of the foundation. In our times of social media and increasing reliance upon internet formats with their electronically produced sound, in my opinion Klangfarbe is becoming ever more important. When I first moved to Hamburg, one of the first questions I asked both myself and my colleagues was: what does Hamburg sound like? In assuming the responsibilities of music director for an institution bearing the name of a city and embodying an important musical culture, it is important to take the time to study the historical, anthropological, and philosophical aspects of the tradition, which Martha, you understand because you've spent so much time there. It has to do with identity. Klang, tone, and timbre, which are also related to colour, emotion, light, and texture, are in some ways a reflection of both our collective societal and individual memory. When we think back, for example, most of us, when we hear classical melodic themes or popular songs that retain a certain dearness to us, we often times associate them with an event that we happened to be doing at that time or date. For example, the oft-given question "where were you on 9/11?” still now 19 years later, for most will trigger memories of what they were doing, often complete with vivid recollections of the context of shadow, colour, and light. When the experiences of our past combine with present and future, it shapes our identity. The arts help express this identity and, in my opinion, especially musical arts. The shaping, colour, timbre, and texture are musical constructs representing dimensions beyond the obvious three dimensions—by which we all at times allow ourselves to be limited—and offer entry into other profound dimensions by which humanism defines itself.
SM. Timbre changes with dynamics, and so if the dynamics are off, the colours are going to be off.
KN. Klangfarben will be perceived differently according to various parameters, the proximity where instruments are located and in what acoustic they are performing. And in the case where several instruments are playing simultaneously, Klang is very sensitive to the balance of the ensemble.
SM. To get an emergent timbre.
KN. So, especially today, in the 21st century, where music is often shared in a digitized form, which by definition doesn't represent natural sound, music has the risk of being received as information. This can often be very pleasing, comforting, stimulating, and provocative; however digital information is obviously different from content that occurs naturally in the Nature surrounding us. Excluding electronic music, even experiencing acoustically produced music via a recording is limited from an acoustical, sound, tone, colour point of view, because it is a “representation” of that which has taken place in the past. As an entire two generations of youth have now grown up accessing music through a digitized medium, the role of timbre, Klang is increasingly important. Through these natural phenomenon, communication of those emotional, intellectual, spiritual, and physical realms we live and experience organically reflects Nature—of which we are a part. It allows access to the content of humanism, its concepts and values. Information, as vitally important as it is, is different from content. There are times when I listen to what's on my daughter’s playlist where her choices are both provocative and inspiring. But there are also moments when finding substantive value through the electronically produced effects is truly elusive. Especially when the quality of the human voice is so overly produced on the recording, it truly sounds inhuman. Eerie.
Robert Hasegawa [RH]. The voice is compressed and treated.
KN. Yes, manipulated.
Martha de Francisco [MdF]. Manipulated, ironed.
Timbre and style
SM. One of the issues that I saw today was the difference in a lot of the pieces you're playing, the Berlioz,150 the Beethoven and the Dusapin—all the issues of global timbre and balance. What are the different challenges for those different kinds of music, as you've got an earlier romantic piece, a classical piece, and then Dusapin, which is very contemporary.
KN. Stylistically, they are very different. The OSM is quite fluent in the repertoire we might refer to as Baroque and Classical music. They are also now experienced with concepts of historically informed performance practice. This foundation serves as an anchor with regards to the fundamentals of our aesthetics. The music of Bach, Haydn, Mozart, and Beethoven, music of the Enlightenment, forms the historical beginning of what we consider the “idea" of the orchestra—a metaphor for society. Persons of different backgrounds, specialities, traditions, cultures voluntarily come together to create something only made possible through a cooperative effort. They offer the aesthetic foundation to the quest of finding the unifying aspects of different styles of different eras. This program is perhaps on one level rather universally accessible because the theme is Nature. Dusapin expresses images and thoughts of the sea, the waves of the ocean and the movements within a large body of water. But in Dusapin’s music, as with nearly all music, the suggested movement could also be reflecting the images of sound waves as the physical movement. Movement is an essential element of life and is therefore an inherent part of how we perceive the world around us. And that theme of Nature and movement is clearly related to the Royal Hunt and Storm. Interestingly, Berlioz brings the particular “pictures" of hunting and stormy weather through the filter of Italian antiquity. When thinking of Nature one can reference the pastoral aspects of Nature whilst simultaneously engaging with a very specific spectrum of time, colour, and space. Directness can be filtered away so that we as public are aware of sounds that are coming from the distance, or in this case the temporal distance of antiquity. And when confronted with a massive and a violent storm in the Berlioz work, it can be very much tied to the military or the conflict of war, the armed conflict between people. Fundamentally Les Troyens is a telling of an historical event. It's about refugees who are fleeing and trying to find safe harbor. And the storm is metaphorically tied to the battle and the escape. In contrast, the moment of the storm representation in Beethoven’s Pastoral Symphony can be seen as a different kind of a conflict beyond the drama of Nature. It might suggest a metaphor of the industrial revolution’s pollution and waste butting up against the beauty of the romantic nature, which it literally destroys. In order to fuel industry, the Vienna woods was harvested and burned perhaps provoking, at least partially, Beethoven to write the 6th Symphony. These different perspectives—an industrial revolution, an armed revolution, unbridled force of Nature—are different and yet on certain levels are the same. In rehearsal, it would not be necessary to share these dramaturgical constructs, because taken out of context its potential for misunderstanding can be distracting. It can also take focus away from the content of the work. When a restaurant server might share a long winded description of a meal's conception, if not done well it can be distracting to the depth of the culinary experience, for example. Through the rehearsal process, musicians are sensitive artists and will naturally sense the depth of dramaturgical content, and reflect this in their interpretive expression, provided one offers material of quality and depth of content. Hopefully you will find the program an interesting one, and that the gravity of its content will be communicated to the public. Speaking of timbre, there are distinct sets of timbre within and between these three works. They're strongly related to the composer's choice of orchestration, but also the timbre is at least partially structurally and culturally generated. Yet along with the differences you will surely also hear certain overlaps as the program is bonded together by poetic humanism and philosophical thinking. Historically we have perceived the world around us, socially, and universally, through Nature.
Imagining and communicating timbre from the score
Julie Delisle [JD]. I am interested in imagination. Could you maybe describe your process of imagining timbre from the music of the score, especially in the case of the Dusapin piece. How do you find out how the music is supposed to sound?
KN. That's a very interesting question. Imagination is not something which, at least for me, one can simply turn on and off like a switch. It is just always there. When I open a score, including a score that's never been played before, it's like opening a book. In reading it, the imagination immediately engages. If nothing happens up here, then …
SM. Then you’re in trouble.
KN. Yes. Perhaps it could be due to a lack of sensitivity or fantasy, or maybe one might be distracted or preoccupied. Or there are also times when it involves the quality of the score. As said when a musician is reading a score, they hear it and in the case of Pascal Dusapin—as he does not use any non-traditional elements, effects, techniques, or devices, nor are there any special effects of electronic instruments besides the organ (the organ is one of the oldest instruments that we have in music's history)—reading the score is a vivid experience. The challenge for the orchestra is that when hearing in one's imagination one hears an ideal, and when attempting to realise an ideal it can be challenging to negotiate with the limits of "reality." The reason why your question is so interesting is that I realise I've rarely had to work with a commissioned score that hasn't just triggered my imagination. In this sense, I feel very fortunate.
RH. If I might follow up on that, how do you get from the ideal in your mind to convey those images to the orchestra? Is that through language? Is it through gesture? How do you communicate those?
KN. Communication of abstract ideas is different from sharing data or information. The task is much more elusive and addressing the challenge can often involve multiple approaches. These might include sharing images, description of situations, emotions, sensations, as well as technical specifications. The precise and accurate production of the written score is only the beginning of musical expression. The content of music is a reflection of humanism and as such words can often fall very, very short. How do you describe how a particular pitch could or should sound? That same pitch will sound in various ways depending upon the context in which it in placed. Music is much more than just information (i.e., specific pitches or rhythms), and there are often times when the creative use of metaphor or even demonstrating through playing or singing can be more effective than using words.
SM. And on what instrument?
KN. Fortunately, most musicians share an international vocabulary derived primarily from indications the composers include as content in their scores that accompany notes, rhythms, and tempi. They are usually descriptive in nature and are tied to the historic evolution of our European music tradition emerging out of Italy, Germany, France, as well as other cultures. When composers use words such as gentle, singingly, lively, markedly, held, fiery, etc. they expect their descriptions to trigger the imagination, which can bring us much closer to a certain depth of substance. Employing the interpreter's imagination is different from an interpreter executing a task because someone has instructed or ordered them to do so. The imagination allows an expression of one’s self. It also allows us entry into another world beyond the reality of daily life, beyond the normal and to sense the extraordinary.
RH. So, you're moving into more metaphorical language, there are more imagistic approaches.
KN. Most musicians I know communicate using images when we share ideas and most of them have been familiar with this art of communication through our professors since we were young students. As just mentioned, the communication regarding artistic content is quite different from the exchange of information. Whilst we might think of information as non-biased and empirical, we all can think of instances of when information can be manipulated. It can be taken out of context, be edited to strategically focus upon certain predetermined priorities, it can be given without explanation of the parameters from which the information came. Such exercises might be called fake news, marketing, propaganda, or advertising. Whilst technically one might argue the information is based upon an element of truth, sharing of selected information does not necessarily reflect the whole truth. The relevance of the masterworks of the musical arts endures as the masterworks deal with realms of humanism above time, fashion, and political trends.
SM. You also use gestures a lot. I was watching when you were trying to refine the Beethoven, you were singing but also gesturing and trying to get shaping. It's the thing that's going on as you're trying to bring out the orchestration and the textures and the interweaving of the different parts.
KN. Perhaps you can sense from my rehearsals that I tend not to talk a lot. A part of this is maybe a reflection of my innate shyness but perhaps it is also due to the fact that during my experience of playing in orchestras, where I personally found that the over-use of verbal communication can become distracting and weaken concentration. As music is an art form tending to be non-verbal in nature, we musicians organically communicate through body language, eye contact, breathing-based, and gesture reflecting content. These are the fundamentals of "being in ensemble." Engaging in chamber music for most whom I know is a completely natural humanistic activity and deeply fulfilling both artistically and socially. Historically speaking, one could easily argue that an orchestra is an extension of chamber music.
MdF. Talking about imagination, there was a very interesting moment when you're in the middle of the storm, and you have to see how loud the timpani was, whether it was too loud in the hall. So you pulled yourself away, and then you asked your assistant, was it too loud? Because you need the distance, of course to be able to.
KN. Yes, what we hear acoustically from any given position on stage does not fully reflect the acoustic result which the public will experience. This is why it would be important to either personally step into the hall from time to time to verify the public’s perception—or in the case that there is an assistant, to ask for regular feedback from the auditorium. I'm not sure if it was tied to your production, but I had someone here from the SAT who wanted to wear a headset so that he could hear what I was hearing and share it with the rest of the world. This seemed a strange request. Why would this be of interest since we, on stage, are adapting and balancing our playing to that which would be appropriate for when the resulting blend reaches the public auditorium—not for the specific position we have on stage. From close proximity, it very well may seem that certain sections might be over exposed or certain passages be over-articulated. Yet by the time the sound produced on stage mixes with the hall’s acoustics and arrives into the hall to the public, its perception will almost certainly be quite different.
Amazing timbral moments in the program
SM. One of the last questions. We have a blog on the ACTOR website, which is called Amazing Moments in Timbre, and I'm just wondering, in this concert, for you, what would be the amazing moment in timbre that happens in one of these three pieces based on what you've already done in the rehearsals?
KN. The question is interesting and indeed difficult to answer. In performance, we musicians in trying to serve the art form take risks and push technical limits in the interest of expression, and we will try to do so through these three pieces on the program tonight. In 90 minutes, the public will hear such a broad spectrum of musical expression, and hopefully during the course of the performance we will summon memories, access tradition, and allow a certain cultural resonance. We will be trying to achieve an ideal which doesn't really exist within the typical limits imposed upon us by the realities of daily life. Should we perform well, perhaps undefinable aspects, such as beauty, will arrive to the listener and if so, it will be, at least in part, through timbre and Klangfarben. And should those moments of profound emotion, spirituality, or intellectual stimulation arrive, they will almost certainly arrive at different times to various audience members depending upon their own perspectives and life experiences. This is why the question is difficult, as the answer will be different from individual to individual. In this sense, music is an art form of human communication freed from the limits of vocabulary.
SM. Which makes theorizing it much more difficult.
KN. It's true, yes.