The complete idiot's guide to classical music (12 page)

Percussion instruments include anything you bang, bong, rap, or slap. Some are hit; some are shaken (but not stirred); and some, called tuned percussion, can produce definite pitches. All are used to accentuate rhythms, create dramatic effects, or add an element of surprise to the orchestral proceedings.

It’s not difficult to understand why percussion instruments are basic to virtually every society. Any child seeking attention has invented one or more of them. In fact, the traditional first baby toy—the rattle—is a form of untuned percussion. The gourd, used in so many Latin American ensembles, is really just a fancy rattle, and specimens of an ancient rattle-like instrument called the sistrum (with rings that jangle on a metal frame when the thing is shaken) have been unearthed from archaeological digs in Mesopotamia.

Since there are literally thousands of instruments in common use in cultures around the world, we can’t begin to list them all here, but let’s name-drop a few that you may well encounter in the concert hall that are not generally considered orchestral instruments.

Not all guitars have long necks, flat bodies, and a cord leading to an amplifier. The classical six-string guitar is far more voluptuous in shape, mellow in sound, and striking in its capability to convey a remarkably wide range of tones. The national folk instrument of Spain, it was brought into the modern concert hall by the legendary Spanish virtuoso Andres Segovia. His mastery inspired dozens of composers to write solo pieces, chamber music, and concertos for the guitar. Today, thanks to such sterling performers as Christopher Parkening, Angel Romero, Sharon Isbin, and a host of others, it is one of the more popular solo instruments on the American classical scene.

One of the primary ancestors of the guitar, the lute was a favored instrument of the troubadours, and until 1700 or so, was widely used for song accompaniments and ensembles. Bach wrote several suites for the lute, its subtle tones enriched because each string was duplicated, the pairs (called courses) tuned either in unison or in octaves. Lutes come in many sizes, but they usually have five sets of double strings, plus a single string for the highest sound. (Some lutes have 11 courses, but they never became too popular since not too many players have 11 fingers.)

The mandolin is a plucked string instrument, usually with eight strings tuned in pairs (to the same four notes as the violin); the player uses a plectrum to give the sound more substance. Mozart used a mandolin to accompany the Serenade in
Don Giovanni
, and you’ll even find one tucked away in the huge forces specified by Mahler for his Seventh Symphony. Repertory for the mandolin goes back to the end of the 16th century. Parts for it appeared in concert music and opera in the late 17th century. Vivaldi wrote concertos for one and two mandolins. It is a popular “folk” instrument in the U.S., Latin America, and Japan.

“I love a piano,” said Irving Berlin, and with the possible exception of kids who were forced to practice when they would rather have been out playing ball, so do we all.

Its multi-octave keyboard permits a huge range of pitches; its solid construction gives it power enough to hold its own against a full symphony orchestra; and the pedals permit a further extension of its sound spectrum. The piano makes frequent cameo appearances in 20th century orchestral scores, but it’s far more familiar in solo, chamber, and concerto circumstances. Piano is the normal abbreviation for pianoforte. The first pianofortes were made by Bartolomeo Cristofori who began work on them in 1698. As it was able to play two or more notes at a time, both loud and soft, it was quickly appreciated by the likes of J.S. Bach, Beethoven, and Mozart who wrote extensively for it.

 
Bet You Didn’t Know
There’s a sourpuss in every crowd. Ambrose Bierce wrote that the piano is operated by “repressing the keys of the machine and the spirits of the audience at the same time.”

Before there were pianos, there were sundry other keyboard instruments with softer tones (because the keys activated hammers that plucked the strings instead of striking them). The harpsichord evokes images of baroque drawing rooms and stately minuets (which is why it was used by The Rolling Stones to add an antique quality to their song “Lady Jane”), but it has had a renaissance in our own century, with more and more composers finding that infusing antique sounds with modern harmonies makes an intriguing musical mix.

The saxophone, named for its Belgian inventor Antoine Joseph Sax, is actually a kind of brass-woodwind hybrid since it has a metal body but is played with a mouthpiece and reed resembling a clarinet. Like the strings, saxophones come in families, from the small, straight soprano to the curved alto and tenor, so familiar from jazz groups, and on down to the baritone, bass, and even contrabass saxophone. It was invented in 1840 and was soon taken up by French orchestral composers such as Bizet, Meyerbeer, and Massenet. Strauss, Ravel, Debussy, and Prokofiev have used the saxophone for its unique color.

One of the most portable instruments in the world, the harmonica can easily be tucked into a pocket or purse, so it’s a favorite among folk and itinerant musicians. It’s also known as a mouth organ, since the player blows air into, or sucks air out of it; the flow causing a series of metal reeds to vibrate. No clear-cut inventor has emerged for the harmonica, though Friedrich Buschmann took out a whole batch of patents in Berlin in the early 1820s. The Hohner company started manufacturing the instruments in 1857, and to this day, remains the largest and best-known maker of harmonicas in the world.

It used to be considered a casual instrument—or worse, a children’s toy—but the mouth organ has been rehabilitated in our own century. In the 1960s and beyond, Bob Dylan has created timeless folk and rock sounds with his harmonica. And the instrument has been elevated to concert status by such eminent virtuosos as Larry Adler, and such major composers as Morton Gould, Ralph Vaughan Williams, and many others who have written solo works for the instrument.

 
Bet You Didn’t Know
Early in his career, while he was playing a vaudeville theater in Chicago, Larry Adler was introduced to an older man, “with a kindly face and gentle manner,” who lectured the kid about writing home to his parents every day and attending a synagogue on weekends. “I don’t care how many shows you got to do,” he said sternly, “this Saturday you’re gonna go to shule.” Only later did Adler find out the source of this good advice was the infamous gangster Al Capone.

If you’ve ever been to church, you’ve heard the majestic sounds of the organ. A massive instrument with several keyboards and a whole series of foot pedals, it produces sound by forcing air into a large series of pipes. In the old days, some poor guy had to keep pumping air into the thing with bellows; now electricity does the job, the organ’s hundreds of tubes and pipes creating a whole world of sound, not to mention a range of pitches wider than that of the full orchestra. No wonder the organ has long reigned as “the King of Instruments.”

Theoretically, a synthesizer is capable of replacing the whole orchestra, since it can imitate almost any instrumental sound and produce tones with mathematical accuracy. Big deal. We can also see the
Mona Lisa
on a picture postcard, but it would hardly be a substitute for the real thing. Synthesized Bach, Mozart, and Beethoven have all had their 15 minutes of fame, but the future (one hopes) lies more in the route taken by a number of innovative composers, who use electronic effects selectively, fusing synthesized and natural sounds, juxtaposing technology and tradition in their never-ending search for intriguing new musical combinations.

 

• There are four families of orchestral instruments: strings, winds, brass, and percussion.
  
 

• Each instrument has its own color or timbre.
  
 

• There are many instruments that are not core to the orchestra, but add great diversity and expression to a performance.
  

Chapter 7
 
How Can I Tell the Singers Apart Without a Program?

 

• Who are the female singers?
  
 

• Who are the male singers?
  
 

• What do you get when you mix two or more singers?
  
 

• How to tell a chorus from just a group of singers
  

If the females are wearing helmets and battle dress, chances are they’re Valkyries (maidens appearing in Norse mythology). Or else they’re singing in an opera by Handel or one of those other early composers who wrote male parts so high that only women could sing them.

If the males are singing lustily and waving flagons around, chances are it’s a drinking song, and if you see two guys with swords, they’ll usually cross them in a couple of minutes. That’s one of the nice things about opera: Even if you can’t figure out exactly who’s saying what to whom, the costumes and sets are there to give you a clue.

On the other hand, if you’re in a concert hall and the singers are in formal attire and behaving in a dignified manner—even when hitting the high notes—you may want to consult the program to determine the performers’ backgrounds, role specialties, and of course, who’s who and what they might be singing about at any given moment.

Singers refer to their voice as their “instrument,” because even though the sound-producing mechanisms are tucked away inside their bodies, the voice is their sole means of making music. As Groucho Marx used to say, “It’s something you always have with you.” Babies make sounds the instant they’re born, but not too many folks (beyond the doting parents, possibly) would consider that music. Producing beautiful sounds means cultivating the instrument, and developing the artistic wherewithall to use it to its best advantage.

As noted, not all singers head for the opera. We’ve all sung in the shower, and many of us in school glee clubs or church choirs. A lot of baby boomers and post-boomers even had a fling at singing with a rock group, although their focus may have been more on looking the part or tearing vocal cords than on hitting the right notes. Even professional artists frequently are quite content to work their vocal magic in non-operatic forms: as members of a chorus, possibly, or oratorio soloists, or singers of art songs, jazz, and musical comedy.

 
Bet You Didn’t Know
Many of our most distinguished opera stars emerged from less exalted musical spheres. Rosa Ponselle, one of the first American-trained singers to take the Met by storm (she made her debut there in 1918), came out of vaudeville, sharing the stage with animal acts, jugglers, and dialect comedians. The tenor Jan Peerce sang pop tunes at Radio City before reaching the Met, Birgit Nilsson and Sherrill Milnes sang till the cows came home (and needed milking) on the farms where they grew up, and Marilyn Horne paid her early rent by covering doo-wah pop hits in a West Coast recording studio.

There are some naturally gifted performers who seem to have sprung forth as fully developed artists from childhood on, but most singers—as indeed most instrumentalists—have to spend years developing their technical prowess and musical understanding, studying many stylistic periods and researching performing practices of past eras. Singers then have the added problem of words: They are expected to learn long texts in at least three or four foreign languages, in addition to not fainting when they have to add Russian or Spanish to the linguistic pot. Some singers are quite happy to sacrifice correct pronunciation and clear enunciation for better vocal projection, but more and more modern artists, especially amongst the younger generation, are ready, willing, and able to convey both clarity and expressive power without giving up one for the other.

Just as many instruments come in several varieties, depending upon the range of pitches they produce, vocalists are grouped according to the basic nature of their voices. If you want to impress your musical friends, you can refer to a singer’s
tessitura
, meaning the scope of notes within which he or she is most comfortable. In women’s voices, as among men’s, there are three basic categories (with considerable overlapping among them), fitting the broad designations of high, medium, and low.

The highest voices belong to the sopranos, who—perhaps because of the strain inherent in pitching the sound so far above normal speaking range—tend to be among the more temperamental types. They also seem to get the most romantic roles and die the most colorful deaths.

There are several subdivisions of this voice type. The coloratura soprano is the daredevil of the crowd, with a light, limber quality and the ability to dazzle audiences with
trills
,
runs
,
ornaments
, and all sorts of other passages that theoretically should be physically impossible. The dramatic soprano produces a sound of high resonance and power, perfect for those Wagner and Strauss operas where the heroine has to be heard above the blaring of a huge orchestra. The lyric soprano is of a gentler, sweeter-toned nature, and therefore happier with the lighter, song-like arias found in many French and Italian operas.

 
Music Word
Tessitura
is the range of notes in which a particular voice is most comfortable. The singer can go higher or lower if necessary, of course, but is happiest staying within those pitch confines. The term is also sometimes used to indicate the general range encompassed by a vocal part.

 
Music Words
A
trill
is a musicalornament wherein the voice or instrument alternates rapidly between a written note and the note immediately above it. A
run
is the rapid traversal of many different notes. An
ornament
is any kind of embellishment of a melody by the addition of extra notes in and around it. As noted, a trill is just such an ornament.

“Mezzo” is Italian for half, so these singers are halfway between sopranos and altos, whom we’ll get to in a moment. Just don’t confuse them with the “Messy Soprano” in Victor Borge’s Mozart Opera routine, or the “Mezzanine Soprano” who has the leading role in P.D.Q. Bach’s hilarious opera spoof,
The Stoned Guest
, or they’ll never speak to you again. Mezzos don’t often get top billing, but when they do—in Bizet’s
Carmen,
for instance, or any of the many Rossini operas brought back to 20th century popularity by Marilyn Horne—you can expect dramatic and very exciting vocal fireworks. Some famous mezzos of the recent past include Conchita Supervia, Gladys Swarthout, Kirsten Thorberg, and Jennie Tourel.

The word “alto” comes from the same root as altitude, meaning “high,” making it a rather curious appellation for the lowest female voice. On the other hand, in the baroque era, many alto parts were sung by men, so the male alto really had to get up there. Meanwhile, female altos (or contraltos, which are like altos only more so) almost land the romantic roles, but their rich, deep sound makes them perfect casting for what are referred to as the character parts in movies. The famous singer Betty Allen says that opera contraltos usually portray witches or bitches, but you’ll also find them holding forth as nurses, mothers, confidantes, and other useful folks to have around the house. Some famous altos of the recent past are Marian Anderson, Louise Homer, Kathleen Ferrier, and Ernestine Schumann-Heink.

Men get to play some of the most glamorous roles in opera: they’re tsars and toreadors, saints and devils, leaders and lovers. In the early years of this century, Caruso and Chaliapin were among the most famous musicians in the world; today we have our Three Tenors (Jose Careras, Placido Domingo, and Luciano Pavarotti), whose round-the-world exploits are documented in Chapter 19. Tomorrow . . . who knows?

 
Bet You Didn’t Know
When
Carmen
was in rehearsals before the first performance, the toreador hated the aria Bizet had given him, and demanded a rewrite. Bizet, disgusted because his leading lady had already forced him to redo her entrance aria a dozen times, sat down and dashed off the immortal “Toreador Song,” grumbling “If they want rubbish, they shall get it.”