To accomplish my recent cross-country move (NM to PA), I reduced my possessions by a great percentage and stuffed everything into the bed of my pickup truck. In so doing, I have had to think deeply about the objects that come into our lives and how best to deal with them.

The ]]>  

To accomplish my recent cross-country move (NM to PA), I reduced my possessions by a great percentage and stuffed everything into the bed of my pickup truck. In so doing, I have had to think deeply about the objects that come into our lives and how best to deal with them.

The subject of decluttering is especially relevant now that digital versions of traditionally physical objects become commonplace. Pictures, recordings, and texts are all becoming digitized, and we’re crazy if we think there’s no loss in that. Sure, there are enormous benefits from space savings and easy access, but we should be aware of the consequences of our choices.

Scan and Shred

Before my move, I’d been reading http://unclutterer.com and http://zenhabits.net. There’s something romantic about living with fewer physical possessions. Before my move, I had accumulated excess stuff, and I had to make fast choices about what needed to be trashed, donated, or sold.

On top of that, bills and other documents just became mountains of sensitive personal information that had to be treated like toxic waste. I wanted the information, but the paper itself needed to be trashed.

So my guiding principle was that the “information” was important while the vehicle was not. IE, a picture of a receipt is just as useful as the actual receipt unless it was for a really expensive item. I signed up for Carbonite online backup and scheduled backups to an external hard drive. There was very little danger that all the information I collected would suddenly vanish.

For the month before my move I used my scanner with OCR (Optical Character Recognition) and my girlfriend’s digital camera to take pictures of receipts, forms, photographs and other odds and ends. I then arranged them in folders on the hard drive with obvious names so that I could easily search for them. If the item was sensitive clutter, I shredded it. I also looked at e-book versions of books that I owned and donated or sold many of my physcial books.

I scanned, shredded and donated to my heart’s content. It was and is magical to be able to just click the Windows button on the keyboard, type a keyword in the search box, and have files pop up. For many items, there was no more digging around in boxes or file folders to find them. If I scan the receipt there’s no more fading of the text.

As I purged, I felt mental clutter vanish along with the physical. It was exhilarating.

The Wonders of the Lilly Library

During the move, I visited the Lilly Library at Indiana University in Bloomington, IN. There I was shown amazing artifacts that existed because someone decided that they were worth saving. George Washington’s hair. A Haydn piano sonata manuscript. Mexican Gregorian chant found in Guatemala.

It’s beautiful, isn’t it? The caption below it explains that it was only preserved because people thought it was a divine relic. Thanks to them and the Lilly, the text is available for performance and has been performed by early music musicians at IU.

The library is full of things like that. There are several manuscripts of famous books there that contain the handwritten edits of the authors. There are rare and interesting bindings that all reveal the love that somebody had for that particular book. There are multiple copies of the same text but housed in bizarre and wonderful ways (The Book of Common Prayer being a prime example). It became clear that the value of some books was not only housed within the information but also within the physical form of the book itself.

After I had left the library, I realized that there were a few things that I had regretted shredding, and I was grateful that I hadn’t shredded everything that I had digitized.

What is worth preserving?

There were a few things that I photographed or scanned and couldn’t bear to destroy. Letters from my grandparents and my journals were prime examples. I scanned one journal and got the “information”, but it wasn’t the same. The look and feel of the thing conveys much of its information, and at least for now, I’m not a good enough photographer to capture it adequately. So I kept it.

But on the other hand, we as human beings cannot continually collect without some sort of reckoning at some point. Either we:

1. Invest an increasing amounts of time and money to store and take care of things
2. Or sell them
3. Or give them away
4. Or throw them away
5. Or have them slowly rot away to be ruined
6. Or die and leave stuff to people who will have to make this choice for us

The person who started the Lilly library was very wealthy and could choose option one for his collection. But the rest of us? We have lives to lead, and many of us don’t know where we’ll be from one year to the next. To maintain an ever increasing library of worthy physical objects is simply untenable without major personal sacrifice.

The Choice

We have an amazing opportunity for new ways of organization and storage of “possessions” in digital forms. We also have so much inflow that it becomes important to deal with it in some responsible manner.

But I think we should make thoughtful choices about what we destroy or toss out even if we make digital versions. Those treasured objects at the Lilly are the result of many people making choices about what was worth keeping. The person who decided that Washington was a great man kept that lock of his hair and preserved it. That was a choice. Seeing a digital photo is not the same as seeing it preserved.

Dangers

To illustrate a great loss: Henri Duparc went through a major purge where he destroyed many of his compositions, which included an entire opera. We now have a body of seventeen art songs of his and a few other works. What did the musical world lose when he did that? We may think that our digital information is immortal, but if everything that we write nowadays is hidden behind a password protected vault, then does it exist if we suddenly pass away?

But even if there are digital versions of scores and books that are easily accessible, by keeping everything digital we remove the possibility that future generations will understand how we edited something. That Haydn score at the Lilly had alternative passages to what is presented as the accepted version. If he had just created it in Sibelius, tinkered until he was happy and then printed it, we would not see his creative process or have alternative options for performance. The same can be said of countless other manuscripts within the library.

Possibilities

One could argue that this is not as important. With recordings we have access to performance practice information in ways we can only dream of with music of Haydn and Mozart’s time. This is valuable and may counteract the loss of hand-written edits. Plus, our software is becoming more advanced, and many now offer “versioning” of files that preserve older edits so that we can review our overall process.

Furthermore, as we become more digitally savvy, we might create new outlets for creativity that simply leave the older paradigms behind. How about ebooks with animation or books laid out like video games? Or perhaps we’ll invent something completely new. We just don’t know where our shared creativity will take us.

So I can’t come up with any hard and fast rules, but I think it’s a discussion worth having with ourselves and each other. As much of our information becomes reduced to ones and zeros, we need to question our values when it comes to preservation.

What is worth keeping in a physical form?

Further Reading:

Often the comments are as valuable as the articles themselves.

• Digitize Everything by Mike Elgan
• From Lifehacker
  • The Step-by-Step Guide to Digitizing Your Life Adam Dachis
  • What Physical “Stuff” Can’t You Bring Yourself to Leave for Digital Counterparts? from Adam Pash
• Trend spotting: Tech-savvy minimalism by Erin at Unclutterer
• The Wastefulness of Deccluttering; or How to Make Less Count for More by Leo Babauta at Zen Habits
• Books Have Many Futures by Linton Weeks at NPR.
• And just in: Seth Godin will no longer publish traditional books.

Last Thursday, pianist Hetty Choe and I performed together at the Good Samaritan Village in Las Cruces, NM. We’d been working on these together for a few weeks, and we planned this about a month ago.  When she asked me if I wanted to perform some Strauss, ]]>

Hetty and I after the recital

Last Thursday, pianist Hetty Choe and I performed together at the Good Samaritan Village in Las Cruces, NM. We’d been working on these together for a few weeks, and we planned this about a month ago.  When she asked me if I wanted to perform some Strauss, I was thrilled. I love Strauss lieder. And since I’m moving very soon, I figured it would be a good last performance in Las Cruces for awhile.

I was right.  The music was wonderful to sing and to listen to (Hetty’s solo pieces were very exciting), and the audience in attendance was very kind to us. The folks at Good Sam have always been regular attendees to classical music events here in town, and we’re grateful for it.

Below are the videos of the Richard Strauss songs we performed. Because they were filmed on a regular video camera, the audio is a little “squashed” sounding at the louder moments. Also if your computer and internet connection can handle it, I suggest that you click the 360p in the lower right hand side of the controls and change it to 720p. The video won’t get much better, but the audio will.

By the way, many thanks to my sweetheart Rebekah who held the camera remarkably still during the performance.

And, yes,I got a little editing happy with the newest Windows Live Movie Maker.

Let me know what you think!

“Heimliche Aufforderung”

Translation

“Nachtgang”

Translation

“Morgen”

Translation

“Sehnsucht”

Translation

“Allerseelen”

Translation

“Dies Bildnis” is Prince Tamino’s first aria of Mozart’s Die Zauberflöte. After saving Tamino from a giant serpent, the Three Ladies show Tamino a picture of Pamina – the daughter of the Queen of the Night. He is immediately smitten and sings:

On Monday, I’m recording two of my absolutely favorite arias. I’ll show both here, but I want to give some introduction on each. First up is Rinuccio’s aria “Avete torto” (or “Firenze è come un albero fiorito”) from Puccini’s Gianni Schicchi.

In Florence, ]]>

Photo by Marius Fiskum

On Monday, I’m recording two of my absolutely favorite arias. I’ll show both here, but I want to give some introduction on each. First up is Rinuccio’s aria “Avete torto” (or “Firenze è come un albero fiorito”) from Puccini’s Gianni Schicchi.

Love of City…and Everyone in it

In Florence, the Donati family has just been disinherited from Buoso Donati’s will, and they’re desperate to find some solution. Rinuccio is in love with Lauretta, and he suggests asking for help from her father Gianni Schicchi. The family, his aunt Zita in particular, responds negatively and makes disparaging remarks because Schicchi is one of the “new people”. Rinuccio bursts with the aria’s first line “Avete torto!” (”You’re wrong!”)^*.

After defending Gianni, Rinuccio goes into a love song about the Florence of 1299:

His exuberance is charming, and Puccini’s treatment of the text is enchanting.

Keeping it Local

The main tune is based on a stornello, which is a type traditional song from the Tuscan region. You can hear the similarities between the aria and this stornello:

This folk connection immediately grounds the aria and gives it a sense of energy and forward momentum. Combined with the names and images of the text, it establishes the love of Florence that becomes so central to the plot. But the folk-tune is only a base from which to build.

Use of Tone Painting and Motives

Puccini tone paints liberally in portions of the aria. During the stanza that begins with “L’Arno, prima” Puccini uses a chromatic rolling figure in the bass to suggest the Arno rolling through the busy city. The Desbussy-esque parallel motion and modal sounding chordal movement^** in the orchestra suggests the late Medieval tributaries singing in chorus with the river. The growing city is described musically through numerous changes of orchestration and horn calls.

He also uses themes and motives to connect the aria to the rest of the opera. Lauretta’s melody, from the intoxicating “O mio babbino caro”, makes its first appearance after Rinuccio imagines the slender towers climbing towards the stars. It’s a wonderful moment that says just as much about Rinuccio’s motivation as any of his words.

Gianni Schicchi himself has two main motives that appear frequently in the aria^***. One is the motive that is used to say his name:

This motive is used primarily in the opening portion describing the qualities of Gianni Schicchi. It is used both in the voice and in orchestra. But this gives way to a more important motive:

This motive is first heard on “Motteggiatore! Beffegiatore!”, which implies that it is the more fun and exciting of the motives. Sure enough, after Schicchi’s impersonation triumph, it’s the last motive we hear in the opera.

The Big Ending

The aria winds steadily towards the end where Rinuccio sings two high Bbs on the words “Gianni Schicchi”. I first heard of this aria from my undergraduate diction teacher Grayson Hirst who emphasized the challenge of keeping the “eee” sound pure that high in the voice. It takes some work, but it’s a terrific ending for the aria. The singer gets a moment on the high note all to himself before the orchestra swells with the “Gianni Schicchi Motive 2″.

Oddly though, regardless of the singer’s quality, the aria usually receives no applause. Puccini never gives it the chance. The orchestra continues to play until Schicchi’s and Lauretta’s entrance, and soon the aria is forgotten as the captivating character of Gianni Schicchi takes over.

Watch a performance of the aria yourself and see what you think. Rinuccio here is Massimo Giordano and the conductor is James Levine:

Notes:

*The translation is taken from Arias for Tenor compiled by Robert L. Larsen.

** For more comparison of the composers’ works, see Portrait of Debussy. 4: Debussy and Puccini by Mosco Carner

*** The terms “Gianni Schicchi motive” 1 and 2 are totally my invention for the convenience of writing this.

This weekend, PhoebeJoy Wong and I will be performing Franz Schubert’s gorgeous and moving Die schöne Müllerin at the Branigan Cultural Center in downtown Las Cruces.

The music begins at 2:00 PM, but PhoebeJoy will deliver a presentation on the cycle if you are inclined to learn more. The performance is free but ]]>

This weekend, PhoebeJoy Wong and I will be performing Franz Schubert’s gorgeous and moving Die schöne Müllerin at the Branigan Cultural Center in downtown Las Cruces.

The music begins at 2:00 PM, but PhoebeJoy will deliver a presentation on the cycle if you are inclined to learn more. The performance is free but we’ll be accepting donations if we earn it and you’re feeling generous.

RSVP to our Schubertiade Facebook event if you like, and we hope to see you there!

I’ve ]]>
I just wrapped up singing Nemorino in Doña Ana Lyric Opera’s production of L’Elisir d’amore. It was an amazing and fun experience, and I got to meet and work with some wonderful people. By all accounts (who have spoken to me), I did well at it. It was a real challenge though.

I’ve had roles in operas before. I was John Brooke in Mark Adamo’s Little Women, Betto in Gianni Schicchi, and Bardolfo in Falstaff. I’ve had major parts in musical theater and oratorio.

But singing a lead role like Nemorino in L’Elisir d’amore is hard. Like really really hard.

My teacher for the past few years was a Helden tenor. His main role in Europe was Siegfried in Wagner’s Siegfried and Götterdämmerung. Thus he’s had plenty of experience with very long and challenging performances.  He gave me enough training for me to know how to deal so much singing, but it was still shocking to feel it in the moment.

Just to be clear, Nemorino is in no way as tough as the real dramatic leads of Wagner’s operas. But for my first major role, he was tough enough. Why?

1. It’s long. In the first act, Nemorino is on stage and singing through almost every moment except for the first chorus number and Dulcamara’s entrance. This can be very tiring and can affect how you sing the second act.
2. It’s high. The highest written note is an A, but the tessitura is consistently high. Listen to the following duet between Nemorino and Dulcamara. It never goes higher than a G (though tenors often add an A at the end), but that G is sung repeatedly as an accented note on offbeats. At one point, the tenor rocks back and forth between F# and G. Also notice how the tempo changes at certain points to deliberately help the tenor.
   
3. There’s an orchestra. That may seem like a “Yea, duh” statement, but the difference between singing with piano accompaniment and an orchestra with percussion and brass is just monumental. Even in a lyric opera like L’Elisir d’amore, the orchestra can get very loud.
4. Opera is just plain complicated. Besides having to focus on vocal stamina, I had to pay attention to the development of Nemorino as a character. He goes through a big change in this opera, and if I had gotten too caught up in my throat, then I would have been bad at telling the story.There are also mechanical issues related to working on a stage. There’s an audience, and I had to consistently sing out to them even if it wasn’t natural. There’s also the orchestra pit, which can be very intimidating. In one scene, Nemorino is accosted by the town’s girls. On both nights that I sang, we got very close to the pit, and some of my attention had to be divided between singing, acting, and being safe (and keeping them safe).
5. You’re expected to be an artist. Even with all of the challenges, I was expected to go on stage and make artistic choices and have the confidence and capabilities to see them through. No one cares if I could survive singing “Una furtiva lagrima”. They want to hear music. They want to feel passion.

Now that I’ve done it, I feel like a much stronger and smarter singer. Experience is oftentimes the best teacher. I began to make automatic changes to my singing once I was confronted with the orchestra. Because of all the high singing, I feel much smarter about how I move through my passaggio.

However, I am glad that I sang this role now instead of several years ago. In no way would I have been prepared to sing a role like this, say, two or three years ago.

So thanks, Doña Ana Lyric Opera, for allowing me to sing this role. It was a blast.