An aged man is but a paltry thing
a tattered coat upon a stick, unless
soul clap its hands and sing, and louder sing
For every tatter in its mortal dress.
W.B. Yeats
As choral conductors we are fortunate because in the midst of a technological revolution that has radically transformed contemporary musical life, our channel of expression, the choir, remains the most versatile and most powerful of all musical entities. In fact, the unmatched expressive power of the choir is brought into even greater relief by recent technological developments.
The last few decades have seen an explosion of creativity in instrument design.
In addition to generating completely new instruments and modes of performance,
recent technologies have made it possible to closely approximate virtually any
instrument, including the human voice. These emerging technologies could eventually
cause us to redefine what a choir is. But has a beautiful, digitally produced
choral tone become, in our day, a reasonable substitute for a choir, just as
a fine digitally synthesized piano or organ has in many situations become a
reasonable substitute for an acoustic instrument? No, at least for the present,
no one will deny that electronic choirs of this sort always sound empty in comparison
to an accomplished group of singers.
The reason for this disparity is obvious: the choral instrument, unlike any
other digitized instrument such as the synthesized piano or flute, is itself
an intelligent, living thing. By randomizing certain aspects of a digitally
sampled sound it is possible to imitate the surface characteristics of choral
tone (a process refered to, ironically, as "humanization") but despite
this sleight of hand, it is uncanny how quickly the ear can discern that a vocal
sound is synthetic. Why is this the case? Because in a good choir, behind each
component of the sound there is a powerful, living, reactive human intelligence.
The more intelligent the choir is, and the more intimately and effectively the
minds of the singers are connected to their vocal musculature, the better the
choral instrument is, and the more it begins to take on the character of a living,
thinking organism.
A violinist is fiercely protective of a priceless stradivarius, but a choral
director has even more reason to be respectful toward her or his instrument:
each member of the choir comes equipped with the single most complicated structure
in the known universe: the human brain. Our brains contain about 20 billion
neurons, and each individual neuron is connected to between 1,000 and 100,000
other neurons. The number of pathways a current can travel through this complex
web is, as Carl Sagan has pointed out, ". . . far greater, for example,
than the total number of elementary particles (electrons and protons) in the
entire universe." Today's computers are just not smart enough to serve
as a substitute for such a complex and sophisticated device. All that today's
computers can offer is sophisticated mimicry of the voice. This situation probably
will change in our lifetime, with the development of computers that rival or
surpass the intelligence of the human brain. Nonetheless, even when someone
succeeds in recreating an authentic voice using a computer with quasi-human
intelligence, it would only further prove the point: It is the mercurial, mysterious
quality of intelligence and consciousness that distinguishes a human voice or
choir, and not just a particular tone quality.
A parallel might be drawn to the literary world, which uses the word "voice"
to designate the characteristic word-choice and syntax of an individual author.
An author's voice is recognized not just in a particular tone, but in a more
general sense, it is the distinctive imprint of the author's mind--his or her
idiosyncratic patterns of thought. The emptiness of today's digitized voices
shows that even in the physical, acoustic realm, what is essential about the
human voice is not merely patterns of sound, but the patterns of thought that
are conveyed in and through the sound. The mere sound of our voice without intelligence
is a lifeless, "paltry thing."
What, then, is conveyed in a human voice? Detailed acoustical analysis will
give only a superficial answer and lead eventually to a dead end. The sand of
all the sonic details will run through our fingers, and we will be left empty-handed,
with none of the essence. Thus, in the search for the essential character of
the human voice, technology nudges us away from the field of acoustics, and
toward larger questions regarding our identity as self-conscious human beings.
Perhaps the reason our voice and our mind are so inextricably intertwined lies in the fact that our very identity as a species is closely tied to our voice. Along with our large brain and our upright bipedal posture, our voice is one of the central attributes of Homo sapiens. There is strong evidence to suggest that our voice played a central role in our evolution.
Scientists studying the development of our species are searching for provable,
precise mechanisms that can explain our remarkable and rapid emergence as a
species. Intelligence in and of itself, for instance, cannot be accepted at
face value as a direct, universal adaptive benefit. It is true that evolution
has shown an overall trend toward greater intelligence, with brain size increasing
from fishes to reptiles to mammals. But, as the natural historian and evolutionary
biologist Stephen Jay Gould has said, in evolution human intelligence is "as
likely to do us in as help us along." Smarter animals do not necessarily
thrive more than their less brainy competitors. Researchers therefore must show
how specific aspects of our developing physiology offered specific adaptive
benefits in specific ecological contexts. There seems to be consensus around
the theory, for instance, that bipedal posture arose in pre-human apes as a
result of a change in the climate and ecology in Africa. Certain African primates
happened to be the right animal in the right place, at the right time. Bipedal
motion developed because it was physiologically more energy-efficient for these
primates than quadrapedal motion, at a time when the dense rainforest was breaking
up, causing them to leave the trees and travel greater distances over open land
to find food. It allowed pre-humans to use their hands to carry food, simple
tools and weapons, or their infants as they walked. The challenge facing scientists
is to find and prove similar evolutionary mechanisms for each feature of the
human organism. It will be impossible to fill in every detail of the story because
the physical evidence is insufficient, and because such an extremely complex
combination of ecological, behavioral, and physiological factors worked together
over the millennia to bring us to the evolutionary state we find ourselves in
today. It is clear, however, that one of the more important factors in this
process was that of the human voice.
As the first species of the genus homo evolved, some 2.5 million years
ago, an important aspect of its physiology was a repositioning of the larynx
which facilitated greater vocal flexibility. Humans can produce about fifty
sounds with their current vocal apparatus, versus a maximum of about twelve
sounds from the larynx of other primates (Leakey 245). Curiously, the lowered
larynx, though it makes vocal flexibility possible, also makes it much more
likely that we will choke on our food. This fact offers even stronger evidence
of the adaptive advantage of increased vocal flexibility: its benefits must
have been extremely powerful because they outweighed a deadly negative effect.
Another more tenuous piece of evidence of the evolutionary role of vocal ability
in pre-humans is found in the structure of the skull the pre-human species Homo
habilis, in which one of the portions of the brain associated with speech,
Broca's area, appears to be enlarged. Evidently, the shift in the position of
the larynx was accompanied by a corresponding development of the portions of
the brain associated with control of the larynx musculature. These two pieces
of physical evidence both contribute to the theory that language, or vocal ability,
was connected with the rise in intelligence as our species first emerged.
Vocal ability was an active part of the mechanism that drove our rapid evolution
early on, not a later added bonus. In the grade-school of human evolution, from
the beginning the voice was far from an extra-curricular concern. The first
humans were first and foremost an intelligent, vocally communicative,
two-legged, upright animal. One of the clearest marks of human uniqueness is
our voice--both individually and as a species. Just as the mark of humanity
in a digitized "voice" is a certain illusive intelligence, the mark
of the first emergence of a recognizable human animal, the first of the genus
Homo , is its voice--that is, vocal apparatus together with the necessary intelligence,
aural acuity, and motor control.
How did the emerging human species use their newly acquired vocal ability? When
the development of the human voice is discussed, there is a tendency to focus
on the more practical aspects of it: the voice as an effective means of communication--a
way to coordinate effective hunting parties, or a way to warn of approaching
danger, for instance. It is not inconceivable, however, that the new vocal ability
that the lowered larynx and the associated development of the brain made possible
was beneficial for other less immediately practical reasons. In other words,
there could have been an adaptive benefit to vocal ability more broadly defined,
and not just language ability per se. This adaptive benefit was most likely
linked to social and sexual interaction.
Man is a political animal, according to Aristotle. Indeed, it may have been
primarily the complexity of social interaction and not technological developments
that first led to increased human intelligence as our species evolved. But it
is not only language itself, but also vocal skill more broadly defined that
could have had a positive adaptive value in hominid society. An individual with
strong musical ability could have gained power and influence and maintained
primacy through vocal performance. At first glance this idea may seem transparently
tendentious, coming as it does from a choral musician. But look at today's society
and the enormous power that great musical performers can wield. The ability
to mesmerize an audience with one's voice is now, and was conceivably two million
years ago, a powerful tool. Remember that there is a specific physiological
development that proves that vocal ability improved significantly early on as
homo sapiens evolved. Language in and of itself may not have been a powerful
enough factor to explain this development. In fact, singing ability has arguably
more power as a developmental mechanism because it is more likely to be closely
related to mating and therefore to the vital evolutionary factor of reproduction.
Darwin himself considered this possibility in The Descent of Man: "
. . .We may infer that [women] first acquired musical powers in order to attract
the other sex." It is likely that in hominid interactions, musical ability
would outweigh mere verbal adroitness, especially when language was just beginning
to emerge and as words were only just beginning to be distinguished from more
generalized vocalization. [musical intelligence as a "ratchet" mechanism]
Music is at a distinct disadvantage in the study of early human life: all that
researchers have to go on is what physical evidence happens to survive. What
remains are hard things: bones, teeth, stone tools, beads. If we are very lucky,
someone discovers some musical instruments, such as the 30,000-year-old flute
that was found in southwestern France (Leakey, 322). Otherwise, music is totally
lost. While there is no physical evidence of music-making among pre-humans,
the physiological evidence shows that almost from the very start, early homo
species had developed at least one outstanding musical instrument: the voice.
There can be no doubt that this instrument must have been put to use, but the
nature of prehistoric music will never be known. In the face of this great ignorance,
however, a few tantalizing clues remain. One such clue is offered by ice-age
cave drawings. It is astonishing to think that as early as 30,000 years ago,
people created imagery of such power and vitality. Richard Leaky describes his
encounter with cave art compellingly in his book Origins Reconsidered:
Here, seventeen thousand years ago, someone had transferred something from his or her hand onto this wall. The event must have been extraordinary in some way, one feels sure of that, so imbued with meaning does it seem. These prehistoric images speak to us more evocatively than any other element of the archeological record: colorful, vibrant paintings of horses, of bison, of a panoply of animals and humans that often seem alive and in motion. . . There is truly no easy way to explain what one sees or feels there, in the midst of visual bombardment by chaotic activity. The images have such an urgent presence and energy that the sound of their hoofs and the smell of their hide press through the silence of the cave.
Reading this passage, it occurred to me that there is musical significance to the fact that pre-historic artwork is located in caves. Granted, the cave location is an accident of history: art is found in caves because caves are the only places it could survive for so long. Nonetheless, what better acoustical environment for singing could there be? These sites seem to be not so much places for habitation as sacred spaces reserved for the enactment of special rituals. It seems plausible, therefore, if not inevitable, that whatever rituals were performed there must have been accompanied by singing.
A parallel to ice-age cave art and music comes to mind: the early Christians
first developed their chant tradition as they huddled in echoing catacombs.
Even after the Christians moved out of their caves and into the light of day,
throughout the church's history, the resonant acoustics of massive buildings
have continued to nurture and enhance the church's choral music. For many cultures,
the sound-ambience of a sacred place is reverberant. Pre-historic cave sites
are of a piece with cathedrals: both are places where humans have come to be
carried to a higher plain by the sights and the sounds that surround them; inspiring
physical and aural spaces created by human hands and human voices.
It was a scant two or three thousand years before the first extent cave drawings
were made that the Neanderthals became extinct 32,000 years ago. The Neanderthals
had brains that were somewhat larger than Homo sapiens. The most important
physiological difference between the species that remained (us) and the species
that disappeared (the Neanderthals) was not brain size, but rather the positioning
and structure of the larynx. We, the better singers and speakers lived through
the earth's most recent ice age, while the brainier, but less vocally able Neanderthals
did not. What's in a voice? Perhaps our very survival.
Music has a special ability to act as a conduit for human intellect. There are other art forms and other media that also perform this function, but what is unique about music, especially vocal music, as the discussion of digitized voices suggested, is its ability to project the human spirit. The pioneering American psychologist William James acknowledged this fact when he wrote: "Not conceptual speech, but music, rather, is the element through which we are best spoken to by mystical truth." This special characteristic of music received particular attention among musicians and philosophers in the nineteenth century, during which music was raised on a pedestal as the most lofty form of human expression and the most inspired category of human experience. Arthur Schopenhauer, for instance, in Die Welt als Wille und Vorstellung wrote:
. . . The effect of music is far more powerful and penetrates far more deeply than that of the other arts; for they communicate only shadows, whereas it communicates the essence.
However, for choral directors who must function in a world in which social interaction
has become thoroughly secularized, this aesthetic orientation can be problematic.
The Americal Choral Directors Association has issued an official statement regarding
the performance of sacred choral music. It argues that because sacred choral
music is central to musical traditions, conductors in public schools are still
encouraged to perform it, despite our constitutional principle of the separation
of church and state:
Since choral music with a sacred text comprises such a substantial portion of the artistic repertoire representative of the choral medium and the history of music, it should have an important place in music education.
While this statement is courageous and potentially a valuable tool for beleaguered public school choral directors, it does not express the real reason sacred choral music is central to our art. It is true that, as the statement says, "almost all of the significant choral music composed prior to the seventeenth century was associated with a sacred text." Even if this were not true, however, conductors would still feel compelled to pursue a spiritual dimension in their work because of the character of the choral instrument itself.
The choir is by its very nature an instrument of spiritual expression. It is
self-evident that an unaccompanied choir is an inherently human medium; at the
same time, it has an ethereal aspect. One is aware that human beings are creating
the sound, but the sound itself often can have a transparent, unearthly quality.
As the most human mode of performance, the choir naturally creates music that
is deeply characteristic and representative of humanity. In a real sense, the
question we as conductors are therefore confronted with is, what is our definition
of, or our vision of humanity? How do we represent our species? What sort of
humanity is expressed by our choirs? There are many answers to these questions
of human identity, and choral music should reflect that diversity, but all attempts
to reduce the definition of humanity to the lowest, most comprehensible, politically
safe common denominator must be resisted. What is lost in that case is the spiritual
dimension and the element of mystery.
As Dostoevsky wrote, "Man needs the unfathomable and the infinite as much
as he does the small planet which he inhabits." We need to perform choral
music in a way that reflects our human identity in all its depth and richness.
We are the same species that drew and sang and danced in the cave at Lascaux
17,000 years ago, with the same essential abilities, needs, inclinations, and
spiritual thirst; the same species that built Notre Dame and the Taj Mahal.
The indominable, awesome spirit of our species is embodied most directly, most
immediately and powerfully in our singing.
Under Stalinism, Soviet choral conductors were forbidden to perform sacred music.
Choral directors were loath to abandon their tradition, however, so they continued
to perform sacred works, but substituted innocuous secular texts expressing
inane sentiments such as "Isn't it a beautiful day?" The connection
between a society's definition of humanity and its choral music is particularly
clear in this case. The point became even more obvious when communist ideologues
commandeered the name we all share as a species and created a new one: Homo
sovieticus.
This atheistic campaign was a particularly extreme example of an ill-conceived
attempt to remove or subvert the spiritual element that is vital to choral performance.
In subtler ways, American conductors are confronted by the same sort of pressure
to avoid problematic spiritual expression. It is indeed imperative that we enlarge
our perspective as we redefine our nation's identity to include a wider spectrum
of cultures. At the same time, our widening outlook must not forbear deep, intense,
and unapologetic exploration of the artistic expressions of individual cultures.
Today, as choral musicians, we often seem to be afraid of the spiritual intensity
that envigorates our art. I was reminded of this fact in a recent conversation
with my father, during which he told me about an occasion when he was singing
in the St. Olaf Choir under F. Melius Christiansen. They were performing Christiansen's
arrangement of the chorale "O Darkest Woe." In the middle of the performance,
Christiansen stopped gesturing and conducted only with his eyes. Tears began
to roll down his cheeks. My father said, "we couldn't help but sing perfectly
in tune. There was a sense of complete unity of spirit. That was the only time
I ever remember when the audience did not applaud after a performance of the
St. Olaf Choir. Everyone sensed that something extraordinary was happening.
No one wanted to trample on the moment."
I've had several experiences of this sort as a singer and choral director, as
I'm sure the readers of this article have also--times when everyone senses that
"something extraordinary is happening." It is these intense experiences
that motivate us and keep us dedicated to our art. But from my father's day
to my own, I can't help thinking that these experiences have become less frequent.
We pride ourselves on our professionalism and technical competence as conductors,
and shy away from the idea that the conductor's task is to serve as a conduit
for the choir's soul.
F. Melius's communion with his choir was not a freak occurrance, however, but
an example of a conductor doing his job to the utmost, and performing a vital,
natural function in human society. If we take a step back, we see that spiritual
experiences of this sort are wired into our personalities as members of our
species. The mystical experience my father shared with the choir and with F.
Melius Christiansen is reminiscent of descriptions, for example, of the trance
state induced during shamanic rituals. These experiences are natural to us;
we need them as much as we need food, shelter, sex, or exercise for the body
and mind.
Nowadays, however, such an event might be derided as an example of bizarre and
excessive emotionalism. We might listen to a digital recording of such a performance
and come to the conclusion that the performance was quite flawed technically.
We might think to ourselves, "what could we have heard in it?" and
thus devalue the experience. Our constant interaction with technology has caused
us to focus on technical perfection, to evaluate the surface characteristics
of sound, and to view subjective experiences with suspicion, no matter how intense
and authentic they may be. The triumph of science has caused us to distrust
alternative patterns of thought and emotion, and as a final blow removing whatever
tenuous mystical tendencies that might remain, violent fanatics have shown us
chilling, irrefutable evidence of the dangers of religious extremes.
Still, the sad truth is, broadly speaking, we share nourishing, natural mystical
experiences in today's society less than in my father's day, and our humanity
is impoverished as a result. Spiritual expression must be manifested in some
specific language, some specific culture and belief system, no matter how broad
or universal that expression may purport to be. When we remain in constant fear
of offending each other's diverging cultural heritages, it is difficult to find
a spiritual focus, or even a connecting point, and it is not possible to sing
with a unified spirit.
As Edward O. Wilson has written, religious belief is
"the most powerful force in the human mind and in all probability an ineradicable part of human nature. It is one of the universals of social behavior, taking recognizable form in every society from hunter-gatherer bands to socialist republics."
Since our emergence on earth, human societies have generated over 100,000 different
religions. Singing has been closely tied to spiritual expression for tens of
thousands of years, and it will continue to be in the future. It is a serious
error to think that the scientific achievements and transformations of the last
century have cleansed the human organism of the impulse toward mysticism. As
societies, we have changed radically and suddenly. As organisms, however, we
are virtually identical to the people who lived thousands of years ago. In fact,
all of our most significant problems worldwide, including overpopulation, can
be traced in some way to this central contradiction in modern life.
When one is confronted with the statistic that as many as 100,000 religious
belief systems have been generated in the history of our species, it places
one's own cultural milieu in a humbling perspective. It is the social equivalent
of the shock experienced in earlier centuries when people gradually absorbed
the fact that the earth is not the center of the universe. Nonetheless, this
perspective-shock also has a positive aspect: it helps us to enlarge our definition
of humanity and to identify not with our own narrow ethnic group, but with our
species as a whole.
One of the unique characteristics of our species is our trans-generational memory and cultural exchange. Not all of our species' attributes are unique as this one is: there are other species that are capable of using simple tools, for example. Other species also cooperate and coordinate their efforts to accomplish communal goals, such as capturing prey. Whales and birds are capable of creating beautiful and intricate sound designs. Individuals of other species have clever ways of communicating with each other. No other species, however, has the vast inter-generational exchange and storage of information that we do. Music plays a special role in this cross-generational communication.
As a harpsichordist, one of my greatest pleasures is that of having the palpable
sense that I am experiencing the music as a person would have experienced it
when the piece was written, say, four hundred years ago--not just the same sounds,
but also the same feeling of the fingers on the keys; the same experience of
tempo, of music as it flows in time; the same pleasure in marshalling acoustical
laws, governing the tension of strings, and bringing the twelve notes of the
scale into a balanced, rational temperament; the same physical struggle with
a difficult passage, and perhaps even a similar personal delight in making music.
There are probably some who would scoff at the conceit that I can believe I
am experiencing the music as someone would have four hundred years ago. The
context is different, my perspective is different, there are problems with notation,
etc., etc. Nonetheless, when I am playing, say, a work from the Fitzwilliam
Virginal Book, I am absolutely certain that I am catching an emotive, sensoral,
intuitive glimpse into the lives of the people who created that music--as clear
a glimpse as a person can have of another person, living or dead. If the harpsichord,
which has remained essentially unchanged as an instrument for hundreds of years,
can serve as such a reliable experiential connecting link to the past, then
the voice, which has remained essentially unchanged for tens of thousands of
years, can be an even more powerful inter-generational, intra-species human
connection.
How deeply can you peer into another person, even if he or she happens to be
in the same room with you? There are limits to what we can know of others, even
our most intimate partners whom we see every day. There are limits to what the
printed or spoken word can communicate. To a certain degree we are and will
remain opaque to one another. To think otherwise is to deny our essential individuality
and spirituality. The window to the past is inevitably fogged by my own preconceptions,
my own worldview, but the same is true of my view of the present. Music has
never been an articulate, translatable "language of feeling." Nonetheless,
the glimpses it affords into another's living intelligence is remarkably vital
and immediate. In an intuitive, nonverbal manner, inter-generational and cross-cultural
musical encounters tell us a great deal about what it means to be human. In
a way that no other medium can, music gives us a tangible sense of our unity
as a species, across boundaries of time and culture.
How wonderful that we have met with paradox. Now we have some hope of making progress.
Niels Bohr
What's in a voice? A voice is empty and meaningless if there is no intelligence behind it, or if there is no listener to hear and respond to it. The most essential property of the voice is its role as a connecting link conveying thought between at least two beings. When we take the broadest view, we see that the voice and all other forms of communication are dependent upon a much larger general connectedness. In all the forms and expressions of life, in art, and in nature itself, across species and within species, across human cultures and between individuals, across artistic genres and within genres, absolute uniqueness on anyone or anything's part is impossible. All life forms on earth, at a basic level, are constructed using the same genetic code. All vertebrates are descendent from a single variety of fish, the crossopterygians, that left the water and explored the land 350 million years ago. All human beings are descendant from the same primate ancestors. Our existence would not be possible without these deep affinities to other life forms and to each other; we owe our dazzlingly complex make-up to the wisdom that has accumulated in each successive life form, passed down over hundreds of millions of years.
By the same token, however, the new-age cliché, mitakuye oyasin,
"we are all related," is only half the truth. Just as absolute uniqueness
is impossible, absolute uniformity does not exist in nature . There is variation
in all things, and variation is what facilitates natural selection, enabling
life to develop and adapt. Absolute uniformity in life forms would make evolution,
and our very existence, impossible. Therefore, any point of view that focuses
exclusively on unity or exclusively on diversity should be modified and enlarged.
There is a certain salutary two-sidedness that makes the world both comprehensible
and mysterious, that makes human culture both coherent and diverse, that makes
both for universality and originality in artistic expression, and that makes
both for rich communion between persons and ultimate individual, impenetrable
solitude.