Few brass players have the courage to take their place on the platform and seize their audience’s attention. Very often the audience feels the player’s physical clumsiness (the “awkward schoolboy”) to be a handicap and cannot concentrate in depth and in comfort on the music.
This attitude of self-control on the platform is a knack which must be learnt. Singers have learned it thanks to their theatrical roles, others thanks to the richness of a repertoire which has accustomed them over the centuries to walking on to a platform with confidence. Above all avoid playing against the audience. Play openly with them and tell them a convincing musical story by playing — and playing with — the acoustics of the hall.
A “liberation movement” seems to be developing among the ensembles, begun by the PJBE twenty years ago and gathering momentum — and sometimes verging on tastelessness — with the great brass ensembles of our time: Canadian Brass, Guy Touvron, Concert Arban, Rekkenze, Budapest, etc. This “movement” includes a theatrical or theatricalised attitude, usually by means of humour, physical stunts, amusing musical allusions etc.
It is sometimes a little clumsy, sometimes grotesque, yet often elegant and refined.
I have the impression that brass players are going about things this way in order to overcome the tension of the concert platform and to feel the bonds which unite them with the audience and that the aim of this movement is to gain enough confidence and freedom for the musical utterance to acquire a declamatory dramatic intensity which is frank and convincing.
Sound and private life
To all those for whom the world in which we live is a subject of inexhaustible curiosity I cannot help but recommend a quite exceptional document published by the Parliamentary Assembly of the Council of Europe (Document no. 5458) in Strasbourg in 1985 with the title of “Sound and private life”³.
Merely reading the headings in the list of contents will make it clear that this is a document worthy of the greatest interest, one which challenges us musicians forcefully and justly on our cultural standing:
- Introduction (Presentation of the symposium on sound and private life held in Cork, Ireland, from 14th to 16th May 1985);
- Developments 2.1 Evolution of society and the family group. 2.2 Transformation of the acoustic landscape. 2.3 Evolution of communications phenomena. 2.4 Consequences
- Role of education
- Control of the acoustic environment
- Effect on health 5.1 Damage done 5.2 Prevention 5.3 Beneficial use of music
- Manipulation [an extraordinary debate!]
- Contemporary music
- Conclusion.
”...At a time when the future of young people is being debated at various levels, both national and international, the opportunity must be seized to sensitise governments to the problems of the harmonious integration of the individual into the acoustic environment of the year 2000.”
Food for thought!
¹ Donna McDonald: “The Odyssey of the Philip Jones Brass Ensemble” (Bulle, Switzerland, BIM, 1986). ISBN 2-88039-006-0, 160p., black and white illustrations, 18 colour photographs. In English.
² In the course of the last three years the PJBE has undergone an exceptional rejuvenation of unprecedented quality. These lads, promoted by Philip Jones, are taking the torch and going out to acquire their own identity. The PJBE has, accordingly, been renamed the London Brass Soloists (information and administration: Roger Harvey, 61 Crescent Road, New Barnet, EN4 9RD, Great Britain. ☎ 01 441 1345).
³ Report of the Cultural and Education Commission, available in French or English from: Conseil d’Europe, BP 431 R 6, F-67006 Strasbourg Cedex. ☎ 88-61 49 61. Tx 870943.