How to learn an opera

I'm not entirely sure how many repetiteurs are out there waiting for me to explain to them how to learn a score. But just in case, here is my method. For me it works for anything up to Verdi; for Wagner, R Strauss and 20th-century works I use a slightly different approach which I'll explain another time.

Step 1. Obtain a recording. You'll get a lot more wear out of a good one than out of a budget one you'll want to upgrade in a couple of years so spend whatever you can afford to get the best one you can.

Step 2. Subconscious learning. Leave the music playing whenever possible for the week or two before you start learning; while you're cooking, reading, checking email, eating breakfast. You don't have to listen. Just hear it as often as possible.

Step 3. First crack. Play through the opera, singing all the voice parts as you go. Stop, slow down or repeat as often as you need to.

Step 4. Overview. Play through just the piano reduction without singing. Try not to stop too much.

Step 5. Familiarisation. You're now at the stage where you have enough scaffolding for information to adhere to. Read through the libretto, and a translation of it if you don't speak the language. (If you sort of speak it and reckon you can understand most of what's going on, read through a translation. You need to understand every word.)

Step 6. Listen through to your recording while following your score. This is a crucial stage and if you do this properly, really reading the music as it goes, and you've followed the previous steps, then by the time you get through this step you should be pretty much ready.

Step 7. Go through the piece one more time focusing now on singing the parts. Accompany yourself sketchily but don't be afraid to reduce to just harmony or even just a bass line, but make sure you sing all the text.

Step 8. Play through the whole thing again, trying to focus equally on singing and playing but prioritising playing if you can't always do both. (This step is a luxury. Usually by now rehearsals have started and I have to start learning the next piece.)

Not counting steps 1+2, this plan very roughly means that you should allow learning of time of 6 times the duration of the opera (this is allowing for step 3 to take twice as long as if you played straight through). Remember that memory takes time to set so you'll be more efficient if you spread this process over 2-3 weeks than if you try to cram it into the three days before rehearsals start. But turbo learning in an emergency is something one has to do sometimes and the plan still works.

How to wind an orchestra up in a first rehearsal

Actually there are quite a few ways. One really good one, though, is to stop every eleven bars to say something uninspiring about playing the staccatos shorter, starting the crescendos quieter, using softer sticks for the timpani, or any of the other dozens of things that good musicians will figure out for themselves once they've got a bit of an overview.

You do this mostly to cover up for having stopped because it fell apart due to your lack of clarity; not daring to draw attention to this by either apologising or attempting to blame the players, you try to act like you stopped for something else. Already made uncomfortable by this failure, you start to obsess that the players are watching you like hawks and noticing your ineptitude with the grim relish of a connoisseur sending back corked wine, which they are. Never all that secure about your conducting to begin with, this latest confirmation of your self-doubt makes you unable to do the simplest thing; you can't give a clear upbeat and even if you do you aren't sure the tempo you hear is the one you meant, or if the one you meant was even right anyway, and maybe the orchestra misread you because they have a different tempo in their heads, and maybe in fact they're right and you were imagining it wrong, and all this self-analysis when you should be concentrating on listening to the rehearsal makes you lose concentration and you realise you've had to stop again, but you were so busy thinking about what had gone wrong with the upbeat that you haven't been listening and can't think of anything to correct, and you look down at the score trying to find a commonplace mistake that you weren't sure if it was wrong but somebody probably did play it wrong somewhere and even if they didn't they might do next time, and on you go, making it worse and worse. And you can practically hear them asking each other, 'why is this guy conducting us', and well, hell, why wouldn't you hear it, everyone else can. As you pick a place to start two bars further forward than the previous time so it feels like you're making progress and count out the measures for the orchestra, you see out of the corner of your eye that the normally docile woodwind players are exchanging looks, and you try to tell yourself it's a private joke that has nothing to do with this rehearsal but you remember your own days playing in an orchestra and you know that isn't true.

Well, we've all been there, conductors and players alike, and knowing what it feels like from the other side I have more sympathy than it sounds like just now. But although the reasons outlined above account for most of the first-rehearsal stopping, and actually most conductors doing this know perfectly well that the most productive thing would be to crash through with only the most critical stops, they do still sometimes forget that and manage to convince themselves that talking to the orchestra is useful. Orchestral players know that it isn't. And it certainly isn't when the players haven't got any idea of the music yet. Why not?

It seems to me that we are wired up to learn music (and other things) in a way that resembles the appearance of a Google Maps image loading on a slow smartphone. Very blurry at first, then kind of pixellated with some patches of green visible, then suddenly the hit of satisfaction as the image rights itself and sharpens up. And you know also how while it's loading the phone is apt to freeze if you try to drag the map an inch or two to the side, but once it's got the area loaded into the memory you can drag, zoom in, zoom out, search for the closest place to buy charcoal or display all the bus stops served by night buses and the phone will keep up with your impatient fingers, gliding effortlessly through hyperinformatic space. (If you're reading this in a couple of years' time and can't believe people used to struggle through life with technology this deficient, imagine how I feel.)

So, but this is what learning music is like. You can't find the shortest route from ATM to off-licence until you've got the whole picture loaded. It is most especially not like pictures used to download in early versions of Netscape c. 1992, a beautifully defined strip of sky, followed by a perfect treetop, eventually a few strands of hair at the top of the tallest person in the picture's head, and an eternity later, legs, feet, ground. (Probably what changed this is that the men writing the software for these browsers thought about the kind of pictures they most often wanted to look at on the internet and realised it was not in their interests to spend their then-precious bandwidth allowances on the detailed image of people's head-tops before you knew whether you liked what you were getting much lower down in the picture.) Music cannot be learned this way. You can only get to the detail by going through the overview; you just need to play something through a few times, eventually things start to click into place. Conductors who understand this and just let you play get results much faster.

It's getting late and I have another rehearsal to look forward to tomorrow morning so I have to stop writing pretty soon but just one further thought. I'm sure you know what I'm talking about whether or not you're a musician; we've all experienced that feeling of not really knowing enough about something to make any connections, the sense that reading another article on the same topic will just double your overall understanding of it from nothing to nothing, the questioning whether you will every really actually get the thing enough to really be comfortable with it like other people seem to be. But equally you will know what I mean that at some point things just click somehow and it all does make sense, and not only does the next thing someone tells you about the topic seem to make complete sense, but it connects with something else you remember hearing about it that at the time you thought wasn't going in at all because it didn't really seem to mean anything, and then someone asks you to explain it to them and all of a sudden you find that you are doing that and sounding rather well-informed.

Well but then the brain must be able to store an incredible amount of not-yet-connected pre-knowledge long before it's in a position to make sense of it. That feeling you get when you listen to a piece of music for the twelfth time and you can hear what phrase is going to come next before it does, even if someone turned the player off, it only comes after quite a few playings. After the first time - with hard music, anyway - you would not be able to complete any phrases like that, or remember any of how the music goes 15 minutes after listening to it. You feel just as if you'd never heard it at all. And yet something has just remained, because you are still one-twelfth of the way to the point where you will be hearing it, and after the second time - when you still may not be able to remember how any of it goes - you will be one-sixth. I find this incredible. I do not find it difficult to accept that my brain can store a lot of information that I have access to and can marshall in a conscious way. But that my brain can also be storing a whole load of information that I can't get at and can't in any way sense is there, but that will at some point with the right sensory inputs be movable into this active conscious domain - I find that amazing.

Composers: show some respect

When I write music I am fantastically careful about the preparation of parts. I try extremely hard to make sure that everything is prepared and presented so well as to make life as easy as possible for anyone who will be learning, playing or conducting my music. Why? Firstly on selfish grounds, because they probably won't have infinite preparation time and so any time they spend deciphering unclear notation takes away from learning to play my music better and will mean a less good performance. Secondly out of respect for the players, to whom I owe a great debt of gratitude that they have chosen my music ahead of the squillions of other pieces out there, and the least I can do to repay them is to give them something legible to play from. Thirdly out of pride that I was taught how to produce properly notated music and am able to do it and I don't want anyone to think I'm one of the people I'm about to moan about. Obviously despite all one's efforts the occasional mistake creeps in. All the more reason to try harder; without one's best efforts the number of mistakes will rise astronomically.

I get really impatient when I find myself learning music by other people who haven't taken the same care that I would expect of myself. This probably isn't the place to try to prepare a notation handbook and so I'm not going to attempt an exhaustive list of everything you ought to know if you're preparing music for performers, though such handbooks do exist and it would be nice if composers who prepare their own materials consulted one from time to time. But just so you know what I'm talking about here are a few examples.

1. Cautionary accidentals. Not providing these is the single biggest 'f*** you' to performers that composers are guilty of. If you have a G# before the barline and a G natural after the barline then the natural sign is NOT optional. If in doubt, put one. It's also not patronising to restate an accidental towards the end of the bar that we've forgotten since the beginning because it's so chromatic in between. Better too much information than too little.

2. 8va lines. Please remember: the number of objects the eye can instantly see and know the number without counting is five. Throw some matches on the floor and try it. After five you have to count. Reading music there isn't time to do this. Do not use more than five leger lines.

3. Consistent placing of staves on the page. In a given section or ensemble, if I am following the part of Bob the Builder and I turn the page, his part should continue at the same vertical point on the page. If that means having an empty stave for Tinky Winky, who has 5 bars' rest so doesn't sing anything on that system, that's fine. Constantly juggling the parts so that you have to keep moving the eye up and down is a complete nightmare. This isn't a hard and fast rule; you have to be intelligent about it. But if we are talking about an ensemble that lasts, say 50 bars, and involves 8 singers, hold the number of staves constant. If it's 200 bars and 2 of the singers only have 3 lines then you might not. This applies more to vocal scores, for full scores you probably wouldn't use empty staves.

4. If you don't use computers and produce handwritten scores, that is fine on principle. But engraving music by hand is an art. It is highly skilled expert work for a professional and if you are a career composer then you probably haven't had time to learn it properly. Not by most of the evidence available, anyway. Give it to someone who knows what they're doing. If you must do it yourself, do not take shortcuts. Leger lines must be perfectly spaced. Accidentals in chords should be in the right order. Spacing of rhythms within the bar should be sensible (this is also a very frequent problem with computer-produced scores). Sharps, flats and naturals should look unmistakeably different from one another. Noteheads should be big enough to read. Stem lengths should be constant and the stems should be straight; so should beams joining eighth-notes and smaller. Text should be legible and the music should be given extra space to accommodate text rather than the text being squashed. If at all possible the text should be in just the original language but if you must give a singing translation please be consistent about which way round the languages appear.

This may all seem obvious but you would be amazed how consistently these rules are broken by very well-respected and well-known composers. The most infuriating thing as a repetiteur is that the orchestral score and parts are almost always produced by computer and are legible, but then the vocal score is done by hand - do repetiteurs and singers just not complain loudly enough? I find it mildly scandalous that we should have to sit there counting spidery leger lines while the better-unionised orchestral players get computer-prepared parts.

Computers are not the solution to everything, of course, and they bring their dangers too. You can always tell an amateur whose music is mostly brought to life by the playback algorithm of his notation software by notation that is technically correct and perfectly readable to a computer, but for a human brain much harder to read - see rules #1 and #2 above, for starters.

That said there are also aspects of how the mind processes information that are more computational than hand-written scores give them credit for. Most of the things I mention in point #4 cause difficulties not because it isn't obvious what's meant - of course we still know what four sixteenth-notes are when the beams joining them aren't quite straight. But the mind is much better than we realise at processing information subconsciously and when things are neatly, predictably and mathematically presented it can get on with this without having to take up too much conscious thinking power. When things are comprehensible but require the brain to engage a conscious analysis circuit, it makes it much harder.

I could go on and on but I think you get the idea. When I see the parts that we are mostly presented with for new music my usual first reaction is: is he not ashamed? Do his cheeks not burn with the disgrace of such unprofessional work? Does he not recoil in fear of what his colleagues will think of him for producing this? And then as I am forced to accept that the composer must in fact be sleeping perfectly well or he would do something about it, I think: well, sod you, then. If you cared that we play the right notes rather than just making it up you would produce decent parts, so perhaps you just don't. I feel insulted that somebody who probably walked of with tens of thousands of euros for this is happy to let me struggle along reading this spider scrawl.

And then in the end, because I'm a professional and a perfectionist and a soft touch, I sit there sweating it out and learn the music properly all the same and I resolve never to play anything by that composer again.

Lost in translation

Why do so many expats have two greeting messages, in their native and adopted languages, when you ring them and get their voicemail? Do they worry that people who don't know what 'please leave a message' is in German won't know what to do?

Too easy for children, too hard for adults

If you spend any time working in the music profession you are fairly sure to encounter a sage who will tell you, in the same kind of tones that people use to tell you the tea has more caffeine than coffee, that you may think Mozart is the easiest music, but really it's the hardest. The title of this post is what the great pianist Artur Schnabel said about Mozart's piano sonatas, and we all know what he means. Mozart's music is superficially pleasing to the unquestioning listener and, a little learning being a dangerous thing, one may dismiss it as facile and uninteresting before one has the emotional maturity to appreciate the depth of beauty and the understanding of the human spirit it contains. I went through this phase and lots of people do. Some never emerge, and they are probably the most legimitate targets of the waggish wisdom I describe above.

What makes Mozart harder than Brahms is that it is underspecified. The page of music contains few instructions aside from the notes. Unlike much romantic music - particularly opera (one page of La Bohème contains more slow down/speed up instructions than the whole of the Marriage of Figaro) - the score is not a recipe whose instructions you can simply follow, add water, stir, bingo. You have to figure out for yourself what is going to make the music come alive. So some adduce from that that this makes it easy to conduct Puccini, because you can make it sound like the piece the composer composed without making any decisions for yourself.

Well, to a point, perhaps. But it depends on the individual; most of us probably find it easiest to perform the music we best understand and feel the deepest connection to. For me, that is Bach, Mozart, Haydn, Britten, Shostakovich... others too, but not (or at least not yet) Puccini, Brahms, Wagner, Strauß. I plan on getting to them later in my career, but right now I'm quite sure that I know how a Mozart phrase is meant to sound (and am perpetually driven crazy by the fact that I believe hardly anyone else does - more on this in a later post). With Puccini I don't know just from looking at the page and seeing all those rits and accels what the phrase means; if I listen to a couple of recordings I might think, oh, right, of course, that's what he means - but if you need to get it from a recording that isn't really the best start for conducting it yourself. Sometimes people think it's just obvious that it goes a certain way and they think they've always known that but they've forgotten they learnt how it went from other people's interpretations. (There is nothing wrong with this, of course. The aural tradition is important. But I generally feel it's purer to get a feeling for the music from the printed page first - you can always go to the recording later. In an ideal world, this is; when learning music in a hurry, recording submersion is a strategy I often use. Again, more on this later.)

The point I'm making is that for me, right now, Mozart most definitely is easier than Brahms. I've had older people (mostly people who didn't know quite as much about music as they thought they did) say exactly that to me - 'ah, you want to conduct Mozart because you think it is easy, you don't realise how hard it is' and I wish now that I'd resisted that more vigorously. I should have said: it's precisely because I appreciate what makes it hard that I can do it.

Rocking the boat vs being too passive

A common but to me unnatural situation in opera houses is what the Germans call 'Nachdirigate' - conductors taking over a piece midway through a run of performances after the busier or more expensive big-name conductor leaves to go and do something else. It's actually a very good thing for young conductors (or repetiteurs wanting to get into doing more conducting) because it increases the opportunities available to the less experienced of us who aren't yet getting offered our own productions, so I'm not complaining. But the trouble with it is that conductors in this situation do not generally get to rehearse with the orchestra and will have limited (if any) time to rehearse with the singers, so they can't really come in and do everything differently from the person they're taking over from. Some people would argue they shouldn't do anything differently - same tempos, same beat patterns, same fermatas. Most people would say there's some room to make it your own but few people, I think, would suggest you can be as free in this situation as you could with your own production.

Suppose you're the conductor taking a musical rehearsal (accompanied by piano) with singers who have done 6 performances of a piece and you're taking over for the last two. Well, first of all, you're lucky to be working in a house that affords you this luxury. But are you, really? What is the rehearsal for? The singers know what they're doing, they have done it enough to have got used to doing the piece a certain way, they have sung it into their voices at your colleague's tempos and while they should be professional enough to cope with small deviations, they will be unlikely to give performances as assured as usual if they are too focused on having to change everything. Remember that anything you change is going to be new for the orchestra as well and they may also be hard to coax into anything very different.

So how far are you going to try to pull the singers in a different direction? Do you give them a whole load of new ideas about how to sing the role, on the basis that they may need an injection of fresh thought to get back to the level of inspiration they felt before they got into a routine? Or do you take the view that if it ain't broke don't fix it?

There are arguments both ways but I think one thing is clear: you should only say something if you have something to say. I think if you have something new to offer and have a sound musical or dramatic reason for persuading a singer to change their interpretation, there's no reason not to throw it out. They will say if they find it too difficult to change at this stage (or don't agree). But it's a big mistake to start trying to change things for the sake of putting your own stamp on something. That's just as true with something you're conducting from the beginning as with a takeover situation: meddling for the sake of it is never a good idea. One sometimes sees that conductors feel they have to say something or people will feel they're being passive; if they don't specify, they seem to worry, they will seem not to care on way or the other.

The trouble is that there is some truth in this. Really strong musicians with a very clear sense of how the music should go probably won't agree with every aspect of someone else's interpretation. They probably will see things differently and will not feel comfortable doing it a way that doesn't fit their conception. Musicians who are not quite as brilliant - or perhaps not quite as experienced - may have figured out that the conductors who impress the most are the ones who come in and instantly know what they want to change, but they may not (yet) have figured out enough about the music they're conducting to know what needs changing. So they fiddle about so as to look more assured than they really are. It might even be a good career strategy; it would be easy to say that everyone sees straight through it but actually I'm not sure that's even always true. But of course it's not a very honest way to make music.

Listening to music

I only get anything out of music - hearing, playing, coaching or conducting - if I know it really well. This is sometimes a problem at concerts with a programme of new music, or just repertoire I don't know. I try hard to concentrate and of course I can enjoy it on a certain level, but if I can't engage with it from a perspective of familiarity, I find it very hard not to switch off some of the time. If I know the music well, on the other hand, I concentrate extremely closely.

I often envy people who are not like this, either because their powers of concentration are better or because they appreciate music in a more direct way that doesn't depend so much on having a sense of overview before being able to enjoy the detail. (Obviously this also depends on the type of music. I guess I'm principally talking about 'classical' concert music, of any period, though I often find with jazz it's a similar problem if I don't have any prior knowledge of the material/artists.) And I have often felt annoyed with myself and thought, what on earth is wrong with you, you have the unbelievable good luck to be in an auditorium listening to these great artists interpret great music for you and you are sitting there thinking about who you forgot to email and do we need to buy bread. But it's no good. If I want to get more out of it the only answer is to prepare beforehand by listening to recordings, and if possible looking at/playing through a score. Once I'm in there I find it really hard.

It raises the question: what does it even mean, 'to concentrate on music'? What in fact is concentration at all, and is it really meaningful to use the same word for what we try to do in a concert and what we try to do when we drive a car or sit an exam? If any psychologists or philosophers of language are out there I'd love to hear your thoughts on this.

This relates to another topic I have a lot to say about, the process of learning music, how I approach it and what it really means to 'know' music. But that will have to wait for another time.

Why people get on our nerves

I meant to write a longer post now but instead I've been doing some blog maintenance, adding some other pages that I read and putting in a couple more networking gadgets to help my legion of avid followers keep track.

Just one quick thought - nothing particularly to do with music but a general social observation. Why is it that some people get on our nerves? I've been idly wondering about this in the context of one or two people I find a bit annoying and I'm pretty sure what it is is that when I talk to them I constantly feel like they demand a particular reaction from me. Either they tell jokes I don't think are that funny and I feel I have to laugh, or they tell me they like something they think I also like with such exaggerated enthusiasm that I feel I have to agree, or they try to engage me in heated conversation about a topic I don't really care about... It's so tiring, and boring, to have to manufacture reactions. People who don't require you to do that are so much more pleasant to talk to.

Related point inspired by another recent encounter: it takes an especially social comfortable person to feel comfortable talking to a socially ill-at-ease person. When people seem very withdrawn and don't want to make small talk the temptation many of us feel is to try to draw them out, engage them... and pretty quickly one is doing exactly what I've described above as annoying behaviour. Why can't we leave them alone? Perhaps because all but the most exceptionally graceful people are discomfited by the way socially awkward behaviour in others draws their attention to their own social dis-ease.

Why is a thermos flask like the DRS?

I used to get in a terrible stress in the morning if something distracted me at breakfast time and I had to rush out of the house without having had time to drink my tea in peace. Having to start my day without a cup of tea was always sure to put me in a bad mood, convinced that no good could come of the day.

This has all changed since I acquired a thermos flask. No more outpourings of grief; I simply decant from mug to flask in one smooth movement and sip contentedly in the U-Bahn.

The key difference this makes is not so much about the tea itself, of course. It is that is removes an obsessive mental block that made me believe I wasn’t able to start the day without my tea. I mean, I do still believe this – this is therapy, not cure – but I no longer have the rush-inflicted bad mood, nor the excuse that if anything goes wrong with the day, it was scarcely to be imagined it could have turned out much better in such inauspicious circumstances.

Mulling this over as I sat in my rehearsal, filled with the kind of ruminative insight that only sharp tannins and caffeine can inspire, it reminded me of something I’d been thinking about the video review systems that have come into cricket, tennis and other sports in recent years. It isn’t really that getting a couple more decisions right is that crucial to the outcome or fairness of the game. Think back to Frank Lampard’s goal that never was against Germany in the 2010 World Cup. I was furious at the time, but did England actually play better, deserve to win and only lose because of that moment? Hardly. Somehow it always feels like with one more decision going your way everything could have been different – it would have given the team new confidence, they could have turned things around... All possible. But most games are won by the better side.

No, what makes a bad decision hurt is that from the moment it happens, the players on the receiving end of it are cursed with the belief that it isn’t all their fault. Believing you’re being unfairly treated is much more demoralising than knowing you need to do better. If you’re playing badly and something goes against you then you start to question whether it’s even worth the effort to play better – why take wickets if they’re going to be disallowed anyway? And all the energy you should be focusing on improving your performance is wasted on resentment. This energy is what is freed up by decision review systems.

It’s a bit like how you can look for your keys in a drawer for ten minutes and not find them if you believe your housemate may have moved them, but if he tells you he hasn’t touched them and he just saw them in the drawer earlier you find them in ten seconds. Having a scapegoat for your misfortunes is the biggest impediment to performing at your peak.

German secrecy: information and entitlement

One of the most frequent cuases of frustration in Germany is the unavailability of basic and critical information. Street names are a closely guarded secret. They are occasionally indicated at quiet junctions between residential streets, provided neither street is wide enough for any vehicle wider than a bicycle. At roundabouts and crossroads they are strictly prohibited, presumably to avoid the risk that a confused driver would inconvenience other road users by slowing down to try to read one. This is always necessary in the rare cases where a sign does exist, because the writing on them is far too small to be read by anyone moving faster than a pedestrian with time on his hands. They are also cleverly angled away from the road so as to minimise the area from which the sign can be read.

Similar trials await anyone hoping to unlock the secrets of the U-Bahn (subway). The generous amounts of public money collected from our salaries will run to one sign per platform, which is not lit at night on outdoor platforms and is carefully positioned so that with the right training your driver can stop the train with the sign exactly at the join between carriages, avoiding any excessive risk that passengers will get close enough to the sign to use it up. This is an important German concept that is sometimes difficult for foreigners to grasp. A landlady of mine once tried to add a clause to our contract saying I would compensate her for using up her chairs. 'But I won't be doing anything to them,' I said, convinced I had misunderstood, 'just sitting on them from time to time.' 'That's how they get used up!' she retorted. It is a given that all objects get 'ausgebraucht' and I am sure it is the fear of this that makes the authorities so fearful of allowing their signs to be read too often.

I could go on and explain the electronic signs on the trains that are supposed to get round the problem described above by displaying the name of the next stop for precisely four seconds after you pull out of the previous station before they revert to showing the terminus station, or the motorway junctions that studiously avoid all mention of direction for fear of confusing anyone without a compass and instead help you orientate yourself by offering two alternative directions based on towns at least 150km away which you have never heard of and are not going anywhere near. But I think you begin to get the idea.

The interesting thing about all of this is that nobody complains. Apart from a few expats who huddle together in dark corners to reminisce wistfully about well-signed public transit, the theme is entirely undiscussed. Why is this?

I think it has to do with the fundamentally different attitude towards customer service. My point of comparison is the UK, where it is more or less routine to treat everything a customer says as not only correct but kind of inspired. Walk into a stationer's shop and ask if they sell organic radicchio and the answer will probably be 'I'm afraid not, there's a greengrocer's three doors up, maybe try there?', said with a sort of awkward mea culpa smile. In Germany, on the other hand, you walk into a stationer's shop and ask for the wrong kind of ink cartridges and the assisant looks at you as if you've said something off-key about her mother. This kind of contempt is rarely expressed vocally; it's not worth using up the air. Any question that can be truthfully answered with a monosyllabic 'Nein' will be; elaborations concerning the likelihood of fresh stock next week, the presence of alternative vendors in the area or general regret at not having been able to help you solve your problem are not to be expected. It is important to note that no German would regard any of this as rude. I did once express my frustration at this unwillingness to go beyond the call of duty and volunteer information to a German friend; she looked at me with incomprehension and asked if I'd asked for more information than I'd got. Well, no, I replied lamely, they didn't seem to really want to help, I didn't want to bother them any further, so I thought I'd better just keep trying... Still less can German friends comprehend the train platform problem. 'Just ask someone!', they exclaim. Well, yes, of course one can do that, one does if one has to, but it's hard for people to understand the gulf of desirability for an Englishman in being able to find information without having to initiate contact with a stranger and having to bother someone to get it.

What it makes me realise, though, is that there is a certain sense of entitlement in British culture. I think this is a phenomenon in other parts of the Anglophone world as well. We largely believe that if there is information we need, it must be someone's job to provide it. Go near the Tate Britain in London and the signs to whatever exhibition is currently on begin two miles away. Once you get within 400 metres you'll see a row of 20 enormous flags advertising it so you know you've arrived, and on every side of the building there will be signs directing you to the entrance. Nobody thinks any of this is strange. Trying to find an exhibition at a similar establishment in Germany is a quite different experience. There will be a transparent board in the window, like the menu outside a restaurant, and inside that will be an A4 sheet advertising the exhibition. You won't see this unless you've already found it, of course, but if you ask anyone directions they'll cheerfully wave in the general direction and assure you that there's a sign outside, you can't miss it.

Despite the way all this sounds, I don't really mean this in the tradition of the diplomat sent to the colonies to observe the behaviour of the natives and send back reports of their primitive ways. No doubt Germans in the UK find the onslaught of unrequested information patronising and bothersome - and Germans observing the reticence of British expats when it comes to asking for information they need must find us hilarious. A sense of entitlement is actually not a very good thing at all and it's a cultural difference that runs much deeper than the daily frustrations of the subway system. Believing it's someone else's responsibility to solve your problems makes you a lot less likely to solve them. I just wish I didn't keep getting off the train at the wrong stop.

Rehearsing

What are we doing when we rehearse - be it in an orchestra, for a play, for a presentation?

Hard to answer just like that, because different kinds of rehearsals have different goals. A rehearsal wedding dinner is a different kind of rehearsal from the weekly meet-up of a village choral society.

We can divide rehearsals into two basic categories: the kind geared to making something better, and the kind geared to seeing if anything is going to go wrong. Because our primary understanding of the concept of 'rehearsing' is to do with working at something to make it better, we use more specific names to differentiate the second kind - dry run, trial-run, walk-through, run-through, crash test.

So let's leave aside this category of late-stage rehearsal (where we are simply trying to answer the question: can we get through it without a train wreck, and if not, why not?) and just consider the first kind.

I suggest that almost everything we do in these rehearsals is summarised by one basic principle: moving the unconscious to the conscious. We are simply trying to become aware of all the things we are doing without being aware of them, and getting rid of all except the ones we would choose to do.

This leaves out the early processes of learning a piece (to take the musical/theatre example which is my main concern). When you're learning, in fact, it's the opposite process: you're doing something consciously (reading music) and trying to make it subconscious so you can free your mind up for something else (communicating with the audience, acting a scene, conducting an orchestra).

But when it moves to the realm of the subconscious, and even before, it isn't just the product of what we've been practising. It's also all the ticks and habits we've accumulated over years of not paying attention to every detail of what we're doing. Most of the time when a director or conductor identifies something somebody is doing that is holding the performance back, it isn't something they meant to do, it's something they didn't know they were doing.

Perhaps the space in between identifying all these things and adding something more is where good leaders (directors, conductors, sports coaches) become great. But you can't have the 1% inspiration without the 99% perspiration, which is where many talented but inexperienced young conductors have problems: if you can't fix the basic things it's no good having brilliant ideas. Hence the frustration experienced by many young talented leaders when they see older colleagues they regard as hacks getting a better result: 'I am way more musical than that guy', they fume, 'why doesn't the orchestra respond to me?' Unless you have such a brilliant orchestra to conduct that there are no problems to fix - which most young conductors at the start of their careers don't - you've got to allocate time to fixing problems, which takes away time from explaining your earth-shattering interpretative ideas. There's always a temptation to spend too much time on the exciting part.

Why this will never become a proper blog

It's not a great start, is it - from a first post on the 8th August to a second on the 11th September. It's not that I haven't had things in that time I wanted to blog about. I've thought almost every day of something I'd like to share with cyberspace (is 'sharing' still the right word if nobody reads it?) but finding the time to sit down and write about it... that's another thing entirely. I've actually started carrying a notebook around and making entries in it when things occur to me, a sort of journal of things that occur to me. The idea was supposed to be I would jot something down when I'm sitting on the underground and have some world-rocking realisation, then come home and transfer it on to the blog. Except it doesn't quite work, because while I have a 15-minute commute 4 times a day, which is just perfect for scribbling an idea down, that only works because it's dead time I can't use for anything else. Actually devoting time to blogging that I could use for other stuff - I'm not sure if that will ever happen. Which makes me, basically, not very well adapted for having a blog. So there probably isn't going to be much to see here. I still hope I might get it together to share some of the observations burning a hole in my notepad. But right now I'm going to bed.

Don Giovanni

Sex and loneliness...

Don Giovanni is addicted to seduction. He feeds off the adulation of women. It seems pretty clear that it's the women's reaction to him that he gets off on, not the women themselves, since we learn from Leporello (No. 4) that it really doesn't matter to him what they look like, who they are, very old, very young, anything will do. It's the thrill of seduction that he craves.

Though how thrilling can it be if he's done it so often? He must know by now that he's pretty good at it. Maybe then it's really the sex he's addicted to. You don't look at the mantelpiece when you're stoking the fire.

Well, there are elements of both, probably. But perhaps the real issue is fear of loneliness. With each woman, he is trying to escape from himself. He doesn't cope well with inactivity and he craves the adoration of women. Except that like every addict, he realises with each fix that he needs more and more and yet it's getting less and less satisfying. The older he gets, the more he realises that he thought this lifestyle was what he wanted but it doesn't make him happy.

He's probably been right on the point of acknowledging this just before the opera starts, because we learn from Elvira that he spent three days with her in Burgos. Were they just alternating sex and tapas the whole time? Why is she so heartbroken then? Just because she's a hysterical crazy? If she's that nuts, why spend three whole days with her? Three days is a long time in the company of someone you can't stand. More likely she's mad because she knew she had something real with him. He probably told her all about his misogyny and where it stems from. He sobbed on her shoulder while she soothed his aching soul and made him chicken soup. They had deep, gazing into each other's eyes, where have you been all my life sex, the kind of sex he hasn't had probably his entire life, and he probably believed he was turning his back on his libertine lifestyle forever. And then - something happened. He got scared. Maybe he saw some achingly beautiful model on the way to buy prawns for the paella and never came back. She spends most of the opera furious with him - usually assumed to be because she can't forgive him for abandoning her - then turns up at the end trying, compassionately, to save him - usually interpreted as a transformation. 'Anna and Zerlina are essentially the same all the way through', directors tell us, 'but Elvira is on a journey'. Perhaps. But maybe the fury and the compassion stem from the same source: she knows that he is his own worst enemy, she knows that really he loves her as she loves him, but some urge is impelling him to self-destruct instead of give in to it. The reason she's so damn pissed off is because she feels she is so maddeningly close - she's SEEN what he's like when he is 'good'. Unlike the rest of us. She knows there is more to him than the act he puts on for the thousands of women he seduces and - how lonely is this? - even the damn audience don't realise it - it just makes her want to cry for frustration. It's her against the entire world and she knows she's right and she is right, dammit, but the more she shouts and screams about it the more everyone just thinks she's a hysterical nut-job and tries not to make eye contact.

...and death

So you think he's basically in love with Elvira but in denial.

Yes, exactly. He can't admit it to himself and even if he could, the addiction to other women is too much of a habit to shake off.

So after her, he's screwed either way.

Irredeemably. Those three days in Burgos with her (see recit before No. 4) - he hasn't experienced anything like that for a long time, maybe ever. But he knows he can't keep it up - become conventional, recycle his plastics, collect garden gnomes, get life insurance. It isn't him. He desperately wants to go back to the life he was leading before and he tries everything to cheer himself up - like a gambler throwing good money after bad - each exploit bigger than the last. Had he ever killed anyone before the opera? Probably not. Had he seduced married women (recit after No. 5) - for sure, but on their wedding day, right under their husbands' noses? This is not the behaviour of someone wanting to carry on doing what they're doing for many happy years. This is someone almost with a death-wish.

Hang on, though, the fight with the Commendatore isn't planned. He tries to avoid it. (No. 1)

Sure, that's true. But in that moment where he decides to fight after all ('Misera, attendi, se vuoi morir!') he still makes a conscious decision. He's a smart enough character to extricate himself without doing that if he wants. He's in such a mood of, ah, FUCK it I just don't care any more, he's in that state you get into when you're emotionally overworked where the effort of any decision, even a small one, just becomes too much, and you become passive. Like when the waiter comes with the dessert menu after you've been having an intense, soul-wrenching discussion about whether or not you ever really got over your ex and you just wish someone would come and tell you whether you want profiteroles or apple tart because after all that it's just too much. Taken to its extreme, you become passive about whether you can be bothered with the effort of carrying on living at all. That's what's happening to Giovanni right from the start of the opera.

Culminating in -

- right, the final scene, where he is offered one last chance to repent before being dragged off to hell.

So he consciously decides he'd rather die?

That's too strong. He doesn't view it as wanting to die. He just can't face the thought of repenting, changing his lifestyle, all that taking responsibility and making conscious decisions - like a morbidly overweight person who doesn't exactly want to die of heart disease but the effort of breaking the pattern is just too much. They know they have to if they want to live much longer but the fear of change is greater than the fear of death.



Don Ottavio: honourable nobleman or vain fop?

'Every production of Don Giovanni I've ever worked on starts with everyone agreeing that Don Ottavio shouldn't be a wet, weak character. But he always ends up being, just the same.' - a very talented director at the first rehearsal for a new production, in which precisely that happened.

The textbook view on Don Ottavio is that he really loves Donna Anna and means everything he promises her about avenging her father's death (see e.g. no. 2, no. 10, no. 13, no. 21) - he's just a bit too ineffective. Or, according to one variant of the view, he says he won't rest until Giovanni is dead, and in fact he's as good as his word, even if he doesn't deal the blow himself. He is, one director said to me, the only uncontroversially good character in the opera - in fact, he is the standard against which all others can be judged.

But does he really try that hard? I think there's a better explanation. We all know the stereotype of the lazy rich kid - a character a bit like the portrayal of Edward VIII in The King's Speech - laconic, a bit bored by life, faintly amused by parties and perhaps drugs, not much interested in hard work or sacrifice, enormously vain and self-involved, incapable of real love but needy and attention-seeking. They are good talkers and good at making people like them, harmless enough so long as one doesn't rely on them for anything. In good times they're good company, in a crisis they are everything but dependable. This is Don Ottavio. He flails about at the murder scene (no 2), giving absurd orders to get the dead body out of Anna's sight so as not to upset her and bring her some smelling salts, without ever actually doing anything. He spends as long as he possibly can trying to avoid the conclusion that Don Giovanni is responsible - it would be inconvenient. A fellow nobleman... Daddy used to go hunting with his brother... good sort of family... seems a bit far-fetched. Look at the recit after no 10 - Anna has just shrieked on for a good 7 minutes about how this man has murdered her father and he scratches his head and asks - 'is it possible that under the pretence of friendship he could be capable of such an act'? Why is he so doubtful? Simple - he doesn't want to believe it because as long as he avoids the uncomfortable conclusion, the longer he can put off doing anything about it. Only in the recit before Il mio tesoro (no. 21) is he finally ready to accept what has been clear to everyone else since way before the interval that 'there can be no more doubting it'. Must be pretty frustrating for Donna Anna being engaged to someone who has that little faith in what she says.

One can't help wondering, if one follows this line of thinking, if he's any more motivated about pursuing her than about pursuing Giovanni. Maybe Giovanni comes along in the opening scene at just the right moment after she's given up hope of his (Ottavio's) ever getting it together to try something on with her. Ottavio and Anna have presumably been engaged virtually from the cradle by some kind of long-standing tacit understanding, so he hasn't ever had to do anything to show he's keen on her. Giovanni, whatever his faults, can't be accused of not showing interest. Perhaps she's thinking, well, it's about time someone noticed how horny I've been getting.

But look at the recit before 'Non mi dir' (no 23) - and indeed Ottavio & Anna's duet in the finale after Giovanni's death - Ottavio is hopping mad with sexual frustration.

Yes, we can see that he is pretty desperate to get in the sack with her by the end of the opera. But all he ever does is whine about it - and in the end accept he's not getting his way. He wants his way effort-free or not at all. He can muster neither valour nor ardour. He just whines.


Well, that's enough thoughts for now. Do you agree? What about Zerlina and Masetto, who I haven't mentioned once? I may come back to them - and indeed to Leporello, there's a lot to say about him. But that's enough to be going on with.