 EDITORIAL
Changing one's hearing
Recently I was party to a discussion about how one's hearing can
change when exposed to indigenous music. I had never really thought
about this before, but on reflection realise that it is indeed so.
This set me thinking about how my hearing has changed radically
during my life as a musician and I would have to say that there were
two very important changes over the course of the years.
The first was during my first year at the Moscow Tchaikovsky
Conservatory. I was no stranger to contemporary music and regarding
Soviet contemporary music was well acquainted with the music of
Alfred Schnittke. I was not prepared, however, for the barrage of
new Soviet repertoire that I would be subjected to day in and day
out as my Professor, Gennady Rozhdestvensky, opened his season of
concerts. Each concert would introduce two of Haydn's late
symphonies as well as two new works by Soviet composers. As an
integral part of our training under Rozhdestvensky meant attending
every rehearsal without fail, as well as his concerts, I had, to put
it mildly, an earful of Soviet contemporary music. Moreover, when
one of the pianists of our conducting class presented her latest
piano concerto to Gennady Nikolaevich, he liked it so much that he
included it in the season. Now there was no avoiding all this new
Soviet repertoire in the classroom either! To be honest I was
shell-shocked and breathed a sigh of relief when the year was over
and we studied Shostakovich, Prokofiev, Stravinsky and Schnittke.
It was only the following summer when I attended a contemporary
music festival that I realised I had absolutely no issues with the
most difficult of contemporary music and indeed enjoyed listening to
even the most outlandish new works. This would not have been the
case had it not been for that first season of Gennady
Rozhdestvensky. As a result, from the very early years of Ensemble
XXI's existence, I conducted many a world premiere of contemporary
music.
The second time that my hearing changed was in a quite different
situation. I was in the Far East of Russia on Sakhalin when I was
invited to the annual spring festival of the indigenous Nivkh
people. I was thrilled to experience their music first hand, as I
have always had a great interest in traditional music and in ancient
cultures. My father had introduced me at an early age to the
extraordinary work of Sean O'Riada who dedicated his life to
collecting Irish traditional music before it was too late and my New
Zealand mother had gone to school alongside the indigenous Maori
people (unlike Australia where the aboriginals were terribly
discriminated against, Maori children were integrated into the New
Zealand school system). Moreover when I studied at the Liszt Academy
in Budapest it was mandatory for every student to study folk music.
This was fortuitous as the Professor of Folk Music was László
Vikár, who had studied with both Bartók and Kodály.
It was therefore with great excitement that I travelled to the north
of Sakhalin island to meet the Nivkh people. The experience was
overwhelming and the music sung by the Elders, inspirational. On
return to Yuzhno Sakhalinsk, I was taken to meet the Matriarch of
the Nivkhs, Ulita who was in her late 90's and was blind and
bedridden. It was extremely touching to experience the warmth with
which she greeted me and her willingness to allow me to record her
singing. I was not to know it then but when Ulita agreed to let me
record her singing, she sang a song that not even scholars dedicated
to the music of the Nivkhs, had ever heard before.
On the flight through 9 time zones back to Moscow, I listened to my
recording of Ulita and to another recording given to me by other
Nivkh singers. I was enchanted and moved by the music and knew then
that something had to be done to further record and preserve this
music for posterity.
Thus Polar Voices was born. The first work of Polar Voices was
carried out with field trips to the Nivkhs on Sakhalin. We also
decided to hold our Pacific Rim Music Festival in the Nivkh
territory and commissioned a composer to write a composition based
on Nivkh themes. The composition began with a Nivkh singer, Tyotya
Lida, one of the older generation, singing a Nivkh melody, which was
then taken up by the Ensemble XXI musicians. The Nivkh singer
remained in the midst of the musicians, her body swaying at the
highly contagious rhythms as emotion passed over her face as she
recognised the Nivkh songs running through the work. How, I
wondered, will the Nivkhs audience react? The excitement was
palpable as the piece continued and themes were recognised by the
Nivkhs. Not only themes, but also the rhythms and the original
instruments themselves that go back to Neolithic times. In place of
the ‘tyatya chxach’, a log, engraved with bear heads on either
side, which is beaten as their main percussion instrument, the
musicians of Ensemble XXI knocked on the wood of their instruments.
Certainly the hearing of Nivkhs was changed that night as they heard
their own traditional music played on string instruments and brought
into a new piece of 21st century music.
Back, however, to the change in my own hearing. Next, Polar Voices
carried out field trips to even more distant areas in the Russian
Arctic-to Kamchatka and Chukotka, which concentrated in particular
on the music of the Chukchi and Koryak indigenous peoples. Unlike
the Nivkh music I found their music extremely challenging, both
melodically and rhythmically. Fundamentally, I could not easily
identify either aspect of this music. Gradually though, over the
months of editing the field diaries and listening back to the
recordings and films made, I now have no idea what the problem was.
I am sure that these two changes in my hearing will not be the last
and that I will be challenged again!
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The Sakhalin Indigenous Nivkh People & Ensemble XXI perform
together...
