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Orchestral
Conducting
Presently, Mr. Guyer is taking on the challenge of restoring a once venerable institution, the Denver Chamber Orchestra & Chorus which had been in a six year hiatus. As Music Director and Executive Director, he and his team are preparing to launch a first season in the fall of 2002.
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| "There
is one germ that has infected our musical life and has weakened it to
an alarming degree. I am speaking of the inclination towards entertainment
- a trend similar to the demand for sensation but less violent and
therefore more ruinous in the long run. By entertainment we mean not only
the cheapest and most easily accessible satisfaction of a desire for sensual
pleasure; we include in this term our entire complex system of distributing
and receiving any kind of music up to superior compositions, if it is
used for the sole aim of gratifying the listeners with the amenities of
sound. Music as a science has been dead for centuries. Music as an agent
of moral elevation seems to have lost its position; the ethic power of
music is left unused. Music as part of religious devotion has become an
empty shell."
...Paul
Hindemith, A Composer's World: The Charles Eliot Norton Lectures
1949-1950
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Some observations about the differences between singers and players.
Orchestral musicians operate/play instruments, singers are their instruments.
Just as a diacritical (which means "to slice up") approach is critical to choral work; Shaw says you cannot satisfy all the demands of choral production from the outset, in other words you must separate proper pitch, rhythm, text, etc. and work with them separately first, the same is true for orchestral preparation. That type of approach with orchestras is very uncommon; particularly at the professional level, however, the results are outstanding. Rhythm is everything.
Efficiency is critical in orchestral work. Singing is right-brain activity, therefore it helps if vocal people "feel good" about what they're doing. Orchestral players tend to be less controlled by their feelings. Therefore, when working with orchestras one can avoid philosophizing, explaining the hidden meaning within the composition, giving empty praise for the obvious, using ethereal mental imagery ("try to play that more green"), or running late. The orchestral world tends to start and stop by the times published for the rehearsal, beginning immediately with a downbeat at 10:00am and ending precisely at 11:30 usually in the middle of a phrase.
The
Denver Chamber Orchestra & Chorale
May 2001
Purpose: The purpose of the Chorale is to provide listeners with an experience
of choral music that stimulates the mind, inspires the heart, and invites the
whole person to higher level of human understanding.
Since the dawn of man, collective song has been used to express the widest range of human emotion and spirit: joy, sadness, lust, passion, pain, exuberance, mystery and awe. We find ourselves in an increasingly technology driven culture spawning great strides of intellect. At the same time, the spirit is withering. The arts have fallen from the schools; professional orchestras and choruses are dwindling; and the church no longer elevates the sprit but rather succumbs to the cultural narcissism of immediacy.
Where then do we turn for a glimpse of the higher offerings of human creation? Is it to classical concerts where the aim is to promote the superiority of a particular performer or conductor at the expense of the purpose of the composition? Is it to presentations of music constructed with such complexity as to serve the intellect only? Is it to bombastic and trivial expressions of the most surface urges of our hormones? Or, is it to set aside a time and place to participate in expressions of human conditions that have met the test of time, content and exquisiteness.
The Chorale does not merely attempt to demonstrate its virtuosity of craft, although that is certainly necessary to ennoble the mind. The Chorale does not choose repertoire simply for its previously insignificant place in music history, for that does not reach today's heart. The chorale does not choose music that is banal and impotent for that does not invite the spirit. It does not attempt to find a 'market niche' for the sake of fiscal success. Rather, it takes up literature and technique that, when blended together, expresses the best of what was, what is, and what can be to all who both hear it and perform it. The Chorale attempts to open a spiritual door through which all may enter, at their own pace, to be closer to the essence of the universal spirit.
Anticipated performances may include works such as:
Beethoven Symphonies 3 & 7
Randall Thompson: Frostiana, Peaceable Kingdom, The Nativity According to St. Luke
J.S. Bach: Passions and B Minor Mass
Smaller Choral Works by Schubert, Haydn, and other classic period composers
Durufle: Requiem
Puccini: Messa di Gloria
Carl Orff: Carmina Burana
Concert Gilbert & Sullivan
Stravinsky: L'histoire du Soldat
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