Stand Up Straight and Sing!

by Jessye Norman

  There is a thrill that comes with opening a score for the first time, and the entire learning process is immensely rewarding, but it also takes devotion and a great deal of work. I say this very often to young musicians who feel that they want to make singing their life’s profession: “You must be committed to this, and even if it brings you more joy, pleasure, and fulfillment than any other thing you might be able to do in your life, you still have to be willing to do the hard work.” The work is very detailed and demanding. Enjoyment of this process is key.

  I love the searching, the exploring, the whole process of becoming truly one with the work. This is as true for the preparation of operatic roles as for the singing of songs.

  Putting a recital program together can be an endless process: choosing the songs, the order, and, these days, a theme. But there is so much joy as well.

  For opera, one of my most memorable research expeditions occurred the first time I was to sing Schoenberg’s Erwartung. I had the privilege of visiting the University of Southern California’s Arnold Schoenberg Institute, which has archival responsibility for the composer’s music and personal papers, as well as dissertations from the world over about him and his music. Normally, only those working on their doctorates—musicologists and the like—would be invited to review the archives. But I was afforded the same access to Schoenberg’s work as that received by experts of his music. I felt very scholarly in being escorted into those rooms to view the original copies of this music and the correspondence between Schoenberg and Marie Pappenheim, the Viennese physician who wrote the libretto of Erwartung. The air in the room was cool, carefully climate-controlled to preserve the delicate documents, and I was provided a pair of gloves so that the oils from my fingers would not harm the documents while I handled them. It was splendid to sit and to take into my hands the correspondence that was sent between the composer and the writer of the libretto. Very often, documents of this kind would be available to view only through glass. But I held those papers in my hands—saw up close the notes and suggestions that Pappenheim wrote in the margins of her text and the responses of Schoenberg, who acknowledged her suggestions and followed them to the letter. I found this astounding, considering his stature at the time and the fact that Pappenheim was an unknown librettist. It was clear they had a very strong and mutual admiration, one that manifested itself in their complete trust in one another. Pappenheim even wrote what she thought the mood of the music should be at particular points and how much time there should be to transition between these moods. Schoenberg composed in a white heat—a matter of weeks, rather than months or years—and this was a testament to their amazing collaboration, as Pappenheim, too, created the text in a very short period. I felt very privileged to see all of this, and I was in awe at having not only a deep insight into their intentions for the work, but a physical contact with it that was unmatched by any other research I had done previously. I left that room feeling as though I had actually been in their presence, as the energy that seemed to run between them, practically jumping off the pages, was evident and powerful.

  I will say, though, that there is nothing quite like working with living composers: it is an amazing joy. I had the privilege of this kind of live collaboration early in my performance life while working on a recording of the oratorio A Child of Our Time, by the British composer Michael Tippett. It was the mid-1970s and Tippett’s composition was already thirty years old, but how marvelous it was to be able to talk with him about his creative process, the various ideas he’d poured into the piece. It was inspired by the 1938 assassination of the German diplomat Ernst vom Rath by Herschel Grynszpan, a German-born Polish Jew distressed that his family had been unceremoniously expelled from their homeland by the Nazis and left destitute at the border of Poland. The assassination was the impetus for Kristallnacht, the vicious outburst of violence against German Jews that flung wide the door to their economic and political persecution and signaled the beginning of the Holocaust. Michael Tippett, an unyielding, unapologetic pacifist, penned A Child of Our Time as a magnificent cry against the destruction war wreaks on our world: the cruelty and brutality of evil. I was able to question him about his use of Spirituals in the composition, which he employed much as Johann Sebastian Bach presented chorales within such works as the St. Matthew Passion.

  Bach’s chorales and Tippett’s Spirituals are used as interconnections within the compositions. With Bach, the chorales fall between Scripture verses; with Tippett, the Spirituals are interspersed throughout a libretto that concerns the senselessness of inhumanity. Tippett stated in one of our conversations that he had come across recordings of the Wings over Jordan Choir, one of the first choirs to make recordings of choral versions of Spirituals, and that he had taken this music to heart and to his manuscript paper. I was happy to hear of his acquaintance with this choir and the wonderful recordings they made. Our recording sessions would turn into completely joy-filled moments of music making and learning.

  Another opportunity to learn and work with a living, breathing composer came in the 1980s with Olivier Messiaen’s Poèmes pour Mi, a song cycle that Messiaen wrote in homage to his wife. I had the joy and honor of working with Messiaen at his apartment in Paris, where the woman for whom he had written this particular set of songs—his nickname for her was Mi—made tea for us. It was absolute madness—but wonderful madness! Was this really happening? It was tremendous to be invited to their home and to discover this music with the composer at my side. He could not have been more gracious and complimentary of my spoken French and pronunciation in singing. We spent hours together. Indeed, at one point Messiaen asked me if I wanted to stop. I answered quickly, “No,” and told him that I would stay and rehearse throughout the night if he wanted. And during our entire time together, his wife said not a word. She focused on making sure that her husband was comfortable, that he had the proper lighting to read his music as the day wore on, and that he was sitting properly at the piano. Her dedication to him, and his to her, was beautiful to see. To hear him talk about the poems and the music—and then to sing with him and for him, with the love of his life nearby—was something out of a rather fanciful storybook.

  Of course, it is a very special kind of collaboration, too, when you can work with a composer as the composition is being written. Performing a work of Mozart composed hundreds of years ago is surely a blessing every time, but it is what it is—and making changes or adaptations to it can result in a few raised eyebrows. But sitting side by side with someone writing something specifically for you is an inspiring collaborative process that many musicians crave. One can say to the composer, for example, “This passage is beautiful, but can you give me a few more bars of instrumental music prior to the part where we launch into singing about the thrills of the prime of life, perhaps?” And the composer can respond with, “Why, yes, I can extend that and I can also change this word or that phrase to make the passage more comfortable for you.” Such easy collaboration is a joy to the spirit. But we understand, too, that writers and composers can become very attached to what they create and resistant to making any changes at all. Such is a time for the most diplomatic and considerate of conversations in order to foster the best possible outcome. Tact, mutual respect: all good and useful tools.

  No such tools were necessary when I had the grand pleasure of working with Judith Weir on woman.life.song, an extended song cycle that I was able to commission at the invitation of the late Judith Arron, then the executive director of Carnegie Hall.

  We had the most wonderful of experiences.

  The song cycle traces a woman’s life from infancy to advanced age through the poetry of three writers for whom I have the greatest of admiration, respect, and love: Maya Angelou, Clarissa Pinkola Estés, and Toni Morrison. Creating the music for their narratives was left in Weir’s capable hands—a process that took about two years as we worked together to produce this wonderful piece. Part of what was deeply satisfying about the process was our ability to work to
gether to find solutions to create the best composition possible. For instance, I could say to Judith, “It is difficult to pronounce a word like that so high above the scale,” and we would put our minds together and derive a mutually satisfactory solution.

  It was extraordinary, too, to arrive in a hotel somewhere in the world and find a message from Toni, Maya, or Clarissa, which included their latest part of the text. It was like Christmas every week or so. I had thought long and hard about the kind of composition I wanted this to be, and a piece about the life of a woman, written by women, and with music composed by a woman seemed a Heaven-sent idea. And it was.

  The year prior to the commission, I had met Judith Weir when we were both presented with honorary degrees at the University of Aberdeen in Scotland. In speaking with her and shortly thereafter becoming acquainted with her music, I knew that I wished to work with her in some way. And when Carnegie provided the opportunity, it was easy to call upon these three great friends to compose texts for the different stages of womanhood. We were a happy group. The results of this collaboration uplift and inspire me every day.

  Another such opportunity came with Ask Your Mama!, based on Langston Hughes’s 1961 collection Ask Your Mama: 12 Moods for Jazz. This multimedia production was a part of Honor! A Celebration of the African American Cultural Legacy, which it was indeed my honor to direct and curate for Carnegie Hall in 2009. It was such pure pleasure to work so closely with the composer Laura Karpman in creating this production. Laura was the first to fully realize the performance potential of the Hughes text, and orchestrate the entire set of poems. The artistic and executive director of Carnegie Hall, the wonderful Clive Gillinson, was born to lead this iconic performance space. His intelligence and energy go hand in hand with an abiding understanding and deep, deep love for music and for all that music makes possible in our world. Even when the production of Ask Your Mama! and the fifty-one other events of the festival threatened to send us straight to the poorhouse, Clive stood as our foremost cheerleader.

  Laura and I corresponded practically daily in this process. Langston Hughes, one of my mother’s most favorite writers, worked his magic on all of us, and the musical results are truly soul-satisfying.

  I find it particularly delicious when many art forms come together, as in the presentation of Ask Your Mama! and surely in opera productions—when the conducting, singing, choreography, and stage effects all work together to produce a living, breathing, magical series of moments onstage.

  Such was the case when the conductor Seiji Ozawa, determined to bring the best of the arts to the Japanese Alps, founded a music festival at Matsumoto, in 1993.

  This was my first opportunity to work with the marvelous Julie Taymor onstage, a treat in and of itself. The entire cast of Stravinsky’s Oedipus Rex, already enthused about working with Julie and Seiji in this new festival, became all the more excited upon seeing sketches and drawings of costumes and sets that made it clear that this presentation was going to be an artistic experience on an exceptional level.

  Preparing for the festival had its challenges: getting to Matsumoto was made easy by Japan’s intercity train service, but finding a place to stay over a period of several weeks was no easy feat. The only place that seemed able to fulfill my simple requirements happened to be a spa for men, located not too far away from the festival site. This, in itself, turned out to be quite the experience. The men were as startled to see me as I them. They were not used to having even Japanese women at their spa, and I was truly an exotic find for them as they strode the corridors in vintage dressing gowns and sandals. Some actually would dart back into their hotel rooms if they spotted me before I spotted them. The best approach was a quiet one: I let them be, and passed them without looking up or acknowledging their presence in any way. I had no way of knowing if my employing the standard greeting of Konnichiwa would cause some sort of uprising or bring a cordial response. I chose simply to “let it be.”

  Rehearsals were exceptional experiences. Inspiring. Julie was having her first outing with opera singers and it was something else to see the care and mutual respect that flowed from the orchestra pit up to the director, over to the performers, and back again. We were having a kind of artistic love-fest, getting to know one another while working on a Greek legend of the ages, set in Latin, in a twentieth-century orchestral rendering from Stravinsky. It seemed a very appropriate venue for this piece, in this country that is thousands of years old, yet one of the most modern in the world.

  I remember saying to Julie early in our rehearsals that I would probably be unable to sing with my hands covered in the large, sculpted “puppet hands” that were part of the innovative staging. My hands, after all, were half of my voice, I explained. Julie listened patiently, probably wondering what I was going on and on about so passionately. I learned to use her hand extensions easily and to enjoy doing so, thoroughly. And when all was said and done, it was Julie, too, who convinced me to lie down on a platform on the floor of the stage and to have that platform raised three stories into the air, up out of the sight of the spectators, to signify the death of Jocasta. I do believe she is the only person in the world who could have convinced me that this was a fine idea. I found that as long as I kept my eyes closed, I felt no discomfort or worry. They could not have been shut more tightly, I am sure!

  To this day, I find the film of this production of Oedipus Rex to be one of the few truly fine opera films available. The young musicians of the orchestra were honored to adhere to Seiji’s every musical suggestion and the collaboration amongst all of us was a wonder: rare and inspired beyond ourselves.

  OF COURSE, THOSE who work with singers must understand and respect that we are musicians who carry the musical instrument inside the body. I have found that far too often, stage directors for the opera envision what they wish the stage to resemble, with no understanding of or willingness to explore how their vision melds with reality or how it will affect the musicians with whom they are working. Such was the case during one production when a young colleague of mine was having a moment with our director, who was demanding that the singer run up a series of stairs while singing. Now, their discussion had nothing at all to do with my own role, but I was in busybody mode and things were reaching an unpleasant level, even though only slight changes were needed. With the hope of calming the waters, I took a moment during one of our rehearsal breaks to make a suggestion to the director in a cheery “Let’s talk about this” manner. I relayed that it was simple physics, and the physiological use of the breath made it possible to run down a flight of stairs and sing, but that running up the same flight of stairs while singing was not something that one could manage easily. A singer with empty lungs from having run up a flight of stairs against gravity would need a few seconds for physical recovery: only then could there be singing. I understood the dramatic intentions here, but there were real physical limitations to realizing these intentions.

  And yes, against his will, I made a friend of this director. And my young colleague performed fantastically.

  One must consider, too, the equally fascinating art of dance as it relates to the body as instrument. Some invaluable lessons were gleaned in working with dance great Rudolf Nureyev, whom I had long admired. We had come to know one another in the 1980s, and found ourselves together in Paris in the mid-’80s while I was performing Purcell’s Dido and Aeneas at the Opéra-Comique. He was present at practically every performance, giving me helpful hints and notes after each one. Once, he stated that a performer’s back “has something to say as well,” and that even if one’s back is toward the audience for a time during a performance, the stance of the dancer, the tension in the body, must make it clear that the performer is in full attention—never at rest, even if one is not actually singing or dancing at that very moment. This one statement from him has traveled with me to many productions. And this energy is visible in practically any film of Nureyev’s work. You can hardly take your eyes away from him, even when he is not movin
g at all and has his back to the camera. Wonderful.

  The lessons continued when I sang from the orchestral pit while he danced on the stage of the Metropolitan Opera House. It was during these performances that I learned to establish a tempo in complete collaboration with the dancer. Keeping that tempo, even in the highly romantic and soul-stirring music of Gustav Mahler’s The Songs of a Wayfarer, was essential. There is no room for improvisation or flights of fancy on the part of the music makers. A certain number of steps bring the dancer to a certain place both in the choreography and on the stage. He might wish to improvise one evening, but the support, the music, must remain the “magic carpet” on which all of this can take place.

  Nureyev was a fine musician in his own right. I was once present when he conducted the complex Prokofiev Romeo and Juliet orchestral score, and, by Jove, he knew what he was doing. Admittedly, he had danced Romeo many times, but one could see that conducting this score gave him immense pleasure. I have to say that I was thrilled to witness this. It was doubly thrilling that the illustrious Margot Fonteyn was onstage—not in her signature role at this point, but the circle of life was completing itself: the two of them were making art again, together.

  Of course, it is equally powerful when the art exposes not only your heart but the very things in your wide world that make it sing. The brilliant dancer and choreographer Bill T. Jones is truly one of a kind in this regard. In the days when performing artists were not at all reluctant or hesitant to use their public platforms for advancing their ideas on social and political issues, Bill T. would have been amongst like-minded peers. As it happened, he found himself often on the frontlines of such discussions and actions without a lot of company. I admire this fearlessness in him. His artistic achievements leave me rather amazed at the number of his “firsts,” and the altogether stunning work that has emerged from his mind and his body. Bill T. is unique, too, in that he is not one who places physical standards on the body type of a dancer. No one is too tall or too short, too wide or too thin to be taught to move gracefully. He believes with all his being that it is the soul that is on display in dance, and that the physical self is but a conduit. A vessel.