Heart of a Soldier

Photo from Act II of Heart of a SoldierI attended Sunday’s performance of the new Christopher Theofanidis opera Heart of a Soldier in its premiere run at San Francisco Opera, and found it to be a very moving and powerful piece. The cast was excellent, especially the three leads: Thomas Hampson as Rick Rescorla, William Burden as Dan Hill, and Melody Moore as Susan Rescorla. The score was nicely lyrical and singable, not the nearly-all-recitative music that burdens a lot of contemporary opera. I recommend it to anyone interested in new operatic works, or who are interested in operatic responses to dramatic events like 9/11.

The opera is controversial for two obvious reasons – the subject matter and the issue of operatic quality. Nearly any opera premiere that’s interesting will be controversial for the latter reason. However, when you make an opera that ends with the 9/11 attack on the World Trade Center, you’re going to have more controversy than usual. I wanted to weigh in on both aspects with some initial thoughts.

I think some people misunderstand when they hear people involved with the production say that it’s not about 9/11. The 9/11 attack only happens in the last scene of the opera. The opera itself is a character study of Rick Rescorla viewed through his relationships with Dan Hill and Susan Rescorla. I found this to be a fascinating and deeply thought-provoking portrayal of someone who couldn’t be much more different from me. What was it that drew Rescorla and Hill to the military life? What kept them there or drove them away? What did they take from their military experience into civilian life? This culminates in 9/11, but as the title says, the focus is on what Rescorla believes is the heart of a soldier. It is not at all about what 9/11 meant to the USA and the world, though of course your perspective on that will affect your response to the opera.

Operas usually don’t live and die on their subject matter or their libretto (Donna Di Novelli is the librettist here). It’s the music that matters most. Naturally it’s hard to assimilate a new opera in one performance. My initial impression is that the music is very strong and nicely written for voices. My main criticism is that it seems a bit short of breath at times; there are arias and other moments that could be extended or repeated more. What Puccini did in terms of repetition to make his melodies memorable in operas like Madama Butterfly, without being too obvious about it, might be a helpful model to follow. Jeff Dunn makes much the same point in his San Francisco Classical Voice review.

Joshua Kosman’s review in the San Francisco Chronicle faulted the dramatic structure while generally praising the music and many of the individual elements in the opera. I disagree with his negative assessment. Character studies that lead to a climactic ending can pack a powerful emotional response even when there is minimal conflict between the characters on stage. I was indeed not convinced by Act I’s dramatic structure at intermission, but it made great sense when the opera was complete. This was a great example of Keith Jarrett’s dictum that “Until the whole appears, the parts should not be criticized.”

Other critics have accused the opera of “emotional manipulation” as if that were a bad thing. Music’s ability to manipulate emotions is what makes it such a prominent part of human existence. Scientists like David Huron and Daniel Levitin have helped explain why. Are you skeptical about the role that music plays in Rescorla’s professional life in this opera? It’s practically a dramatization of portions of Chapter 2 in Levitin’s The World in Six Songs. Good opera increases emotional communication even more with its combination of music and theater. The fact that I was profoundly moved at the end of the opera is a good thing. The ending was exceedingly well staged by director Francesca Zambello, falling neither into the trap of vague understatement that I thought plagued the Doctor Atomic premiere, nor the more obvious trap of vulgar overstatement.

Heart of a Soldier is not for everybody. I don’t know if the opera will survive in the repertoire or not. If you love opera and view it as a living, breathing, relevant art form in today’s world, and you’re in the San Francisco Bay area, please go see it and judge for yourself. There are three more performances on September 24, 27, and 30.

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A Chorister’s Preview of the SFS Centennial

The centennial season of the San Francisco Symphony has begun! Orchestra fans in the Bay Area are excited about the great programming throughout the season, the wonderful soloists coming our way, and the ability to hear the other 6 of the USA’s “Big 7” orchestras here in San Francisco in a single season.

What does the centennial season mean for the SFS Chorus? First, there are several of the most well-loved classics for chorus and orchestra in the repertoire, including the Verdi Requiem, Brahms’ German Requiem, and Beethoven’s Ninth Symphony. James Conlon will be conducting the Verdi, while MTT will conduct the Brahms and Beethoven.

Second, the chorus will premiere Mass Transmission for chorus, organ and electronics by Mason Bates during the American Mavericks concerts. Bates’s music has been performed frequently both at the San Francisco Symphony and the Cabrillo Festival, and I’ve been a big fan of the works I’ve heard to date. This will be the first time I’ve performed any of his music and I’m really looking forward to it. I’ve been in many premieres over the years, as a trumpeter and a singer, but there’s no doubt that this will be the highest-visibility premiere that I’ve ever performed in.

Third, there are several rarely done works where this might be the “once in a lifetime” chance to sing it. This category includes Debussy’s Le martyre de Saint Sébastien and Schoenberg’s A Survivor from Warsaw – the latter serving as a curtain raiser for the Beethoven 9th. It also includes the MTT-curated semi-staged extravaganza Barbary Coast and Beyond, featuring music from the Gold Rush through the Symphony’s founding in 1911. I have no idea what we’ll be singing in that concert, but trust in these MTT programs is usually amply rewarded.

That covers the works that I’ll be singing in. As a tenor I can’t sing the Mahler 3rd that the women of the chorus will perform this weekend, and my schedule didn’t permit me to volunteer for Messiah or the holiday concerts.

So the SFS Centennial should provide a lot of great music for the chorus and the audience! I’ll be blogging more about the different programs as they happen. Our first rehearsal for the Verdi is this Monday.

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MusicXML 3.0 and Dolet 6 Plug-ins Released

Yesterday was the big day! Recordare released version 3.0 of the MusicXML format, providing 76 new features since MusicXML 2.0 was released four years ago. We simultaneously released version 6.0 of our Dolet plug-ins for Finale and Sibelius. Both plug-ins support the MusicXML 3.0 format, so musicians and music software developers can take advantage of these new features right away.

We’re still in the process of updating the web site so that everything is discussing MusicXML 3.0 information, but the new 3.0 version is downloadable from:

http://www.musicxml.org/dtds/musicxml30.zip

You can get the new Dolet 6 plug-ins at our online store:

http://shop.recordare.com/

If you want to see all the new features in this release, check out the version history at:

http://www.recordare.com/musicxml/specification/version-history

We also have an easily searchable and sortable alphabetical index of all the features in MusicXML 3.0, sortable by name, type, DTD module, and the version in which it was added to the MusicXML format:

http://www.recordare.com/musicxml/specification/alphabetical-index

There was another very important MusicXML event the week before version 3.0 was released. Sibelius 7 was announced, and one of its new features is built-in MusicXML export. Our initial trials of this support are very promising. There’s a nice level of support for MusicXML 2.0 formatting features, which is so important for transfer to the new generation of digital sheet music applications, especially those being built for iPads and other tablets.

Given the high quality of the MusicXML export built into Sibelius 7, and the high quality of MusicXML import and export built into Finale 2011, we have reduced the price of our Dolet plug-ins by 50% from the previous versions. A new license is US $99.95, and an upgrade from the previous Dolet 5 version is $69.95. This makes Dolet 6 for Sibelius less expensive than a Sibelius 7 upgrade. We expect Dolet 6 to appeal both to people who want the latest MusicXML 3.0 features, and those who want to stick with their current Sibelius 5 or Sibelius 6 software – yet still exchange files with people using Finale and other programs.

All these events – the release of MusicXML 3.0, the Dolet 6 plug-ins, and Sibelius 7 – really have brought some closure to Recordare’s work of the past 11 years. Back then the only way you could exchange files between music notation applications was through MIDI files, which lost nearly all notation-specific information. Prior standardization efforts such as SMDL and NIFF had failed for both technical and social reasons. In January 2000 we were still in the Internet boom days, and digital sheet music was just starting with pioneers like Marlin Eller at Sunhawk.

It was clear that having a standard format for music notation and digital sheet music that any application could read and write would be essential to fulfill the potential for Internet sheet music. We’ve finally arrived there! Every major notation software program can read and write MusicXML files. Every major music scanning program can save MusicXML files. Many of the new digital sheet music apps use MusicXML to move files back and forth from their own specialized formats. MusicXML still doesn’t have a lot of market share in sequencers – Cubase supports it, but not Logic, Digital Performer, or Sonar. But all of those programs are playback-oriented with notation as a secondary feature.

A standard notation format combined with mass-market tablet platforms like iOS and Android makes for a bright future for digital sheet music. FreeHand pioneered the digital sheet music device area long ago, but the opportunities are so much bigger when you can use mass-market hardware rather than something specific for musicians. It’s similar to the way we leveraged the huge computer industry investment in XML to create a standard MusicXML format.

For Recordare, MusicXML has always been a means to an end, not the end itself. The past two weeks have brought a remarkable maturation to the MusicXML software world. I expect that we can now start working more on innovative digital sheet music applications, rather than having to focus so much on software infrastructure. There are exciting times ahead!

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MusicXML 3.0 Release Candidate 1

After two more weeks of testing, we now have a MusicXML 3.0 release candidate available for download and testing at:

http://www.musicxml.org/dtds/3.0/musicxml-30-rc1.zip

The release candidate adds a few new features:

  • New sori and koron accidental values to better support Persian and Iranian music.
  • New triangle and diamond values for the enclosure attribute.
  • A new xml:space attribute for the text-formatting entity / attribute group.

The standard sounds.xml file has been updated, and there are some bug fixes to the to20.xsl file. The remaining changes are documentation improvements to the DTD and XSD comments.

If all goes well, this is the MusicXML 3.0 version that we will be releasing soon. If you find any showstopper issues, please let us know as soon as possible. The MusicXML mailing list (www.recordare.com/musicxml/mailing-list) is the main place for for these discussions, but please comment here or email feedback privately if you prefer.

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MusicXML 3.0 Beta 6

Testing revealed that Recordare needed another beta before releasing the final version of MusicXML 3.0. A new Beta 6 version is now available at:

http://www.musicxml.org/dtds/3.0/musicxml-30-beta-6.zip

Beta 6 has several bug fixes in the musicxml.xsd related to some of the new 3.0 features, including the play, system-dividers, hole, and key-accidental elements, along with the new unplayed and niente attributes. We have also renamed the sound IDs for the harmonium, nylon string guitar, ganza, and shekere instruments in the sounds.xml file.

Please let us know if there are things we should be adding or changing to better meet your needs. We already have one documentation fix in for the final release thanks to beta 6 feedback. The MusicXML mailing list (www.recordare.com/musicxml/mailing-list) is the main place for for these discussions, but please comment here or email feedback privately if you prefer.

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MusicXML 3.0 Beta 5

Recordare has released a new Beta 5 version of the MusicXML 3.0 format. You can download everything from the zip file at:

http://www.musicxml.org/dtds/3.0/musicxml-30-beta-5.zip

Beta 5 has many documentation improvements. We have specified and clarified several parts of the format in response to developer requests collected over the past few years.

This may be the last beta version before MusicXML 3.0 is released. Please let us know if there are things we should be adding or changing to better meet your needs. The MusicXML mailing list (www.recordare.com/musicxml/mailing-list) is the main place for for these discussions, but please comment here or email feedback privately if you prefer.

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MusicXML 3.0 Beta 4

Last week, Recordare released a new Beta 4 version of the MusicXML 3.0 format. You can download everything from the zip file at:

http://www.musicxml.org/dtds/3.0/musicxml-30-beta-4.zip

Beta 4 includes some bug fixes, as well as an updated sounds.xml file with 887 standard instrument sounds.

We are getting close to the final version of MusicXML 3.0, so please let us know if there are things we should be adding or changing to better meet your needs. The MusicXML mailing list (www.recordare.com/musicxml/mailing-list) is the main place for discussing MusicXML 3.0. But please comment here or email feedback privately if you prefer.

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Mahler 2 Reviews

It’s good to see how much people enjoyed the San Francisco Symphony performances of Mahler’s 2nd last weekend, especially with all the raves about the chorus as well as the orchestra. Several people at SF MusicTech came up to me after our Digital Sheet Music panel to say how much they enjoyed the concerts, including Ralph Peer, the Chair and CEO of peermusic.

Joshua Kosman at the San Francisco Chronicle wrote “There aren’t many musical sure bets these days as sure as a Mahler symphony from Michael Tilson Thomas and the San Francisco Symphony. But even by those high standards, Saturday’s performance of the Second Symphony in Davies Symphony Hall was a thriller… When the symphony turned vocal in the two last movements, the heroes of the evening were the members of Ragnar Bohlin’s Symphony Chorus, singing with glorious vitality and precision.”

Lisa Hirsch at San Francisco Classical Voice wrote “The real vocal star was Ragnar Bohlin’s magnificent Symphony Chorus, which sang with power, transparency, and a marvelous responsiveness to the text.” In her blog she added “I did not quite figure out how to say that I was on the verge of tears from the beginning of ‘Urlicht’ until the final release. How’d they do it???”

Janos Gereben at San Francisco Classical Voice offered some particularly kind words:

Ragnar Bohlin’s San Francisco Symphony Chorus provided a blessing for Davies Symphony Hall audiences last weekend in performances of Mahler’s Symphony No. 2, conducted brilliantly by Michael Tilson Thomas — and put a kind of whammy on itself by establishing the highest standard against which all future performances will be evaluated.

I can just hear murmurs from coming months and years: “This was fine, but do you remember the sound in the 2011 ‘Resurrection’? You should have been there.”

It’s impossible to put in words the thrill of 132 singers “speaking” with one voice, a voice coming from far and yet as if from deep inside the listener.

There’s certainly a lot to be said for coming back to Mahler 2 after only a year away. Nearly everyone in the orchestra and chorus had performed it with MTT last season, so those performances were a starting point for reaching for something even better. Last year’s Mahler 2 was my first concert set with the chorus and the experience was a bit overwhelming. This year I had a year’s worth of ensemble listening behind me and much better understanding of what MTT and Ragnar want in the chorus and in this piece. It sure felt from the stage like the chorus and orchestra’s performance was on a new level, but it’s great to hear so much from the audience side that agreed with that assessment.

Now onto the Spring Choral concert on Sunday the 22nd, followed by Beethoven’s Missa solemnis at the end of June!

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