{"id":1209,"date":"2011-02-10T13:20:19","date_gmt":"2011-02-10T21:20:19","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/216.92.17.21\/?p=1209"},"modified":"2011-03-23T16:32:53","modified_gmt":"2011-03-23T23:32:53","slug":"connection-music","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/beitmalkhut.org\/?p=1209","title":{"rendered":"recent kaddishim: on connection and music"},"content":{"rendered":"

Something unexpected happened a few weekends ago. I asked Mira to record the text of the Mourner’s Kaddish for me, and she did, and then everything changed.<\/p>\n

We are nearing the end of the first three months. We have almost ten months to go on this daily musical exchange, according to the Julian calendar, because this is a leap year in the Hebrew calendar, which adds not just a leap day but a whole leap month. And after what felt like a lifetime of awful recordings to both of us, we’re both starting to enjoy the music.<\/p>\n

This is a story in two parts about how the performance and perception of music seems to be affected by the connection between musician and listener. It’s also a partial reply to her essay, “the problem with music: a preamble in expectation of a response<\/a>.”<\/p>\n

I had been listening since early January to a recording of the Aramaic text of the Mourner’s Kaddish that Reb Deb (our project rebbe) had made for our study purposes. I had asked her to do this, so that I could hear the rhythm and the poetry\u2014yes the music, even\u2014of the prayer itself. Among other things I hoped it would help me find the prayer in the music that Lev Kogan wrote in his “Kaddish” for solo horn.<\/p>\n

When I listened to Deb’s recording, I heard the voice of my friend. Her voice took me back two decades, the way a whiff of a remembered smell can hit you in the gut and bring back an image of someone you haven’t seen since childhood. One day I made a “Kaddish” recording with Deb’s voice looping in my headphones (kaddish_2011.01.20_aNatScharf<\/strong>), and it felt different. Deb’s voice was not actually heard in the recording, but Mira could hear the change:<\/p>\n

It’s as if you needed that bracketing to give the piece its context.
\nYou clearly like working with her
\nYou’re playing sweetly for her
\nMaybe the best one yet<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

I was having a hard time hearing the text of the Kaddish, though. I heard the voice of a friend. I heard the voice of my friend playing a role I always hoped and somehow knew she would someday play: rabbi, leading a prayer\u2014with dramatic pauses, lilting rhythms, and the shape of poetry that is in itself a piece of music. But my memories, pride, and love deafened me to the text itself, which is a weird thing to realize.<\/p>\n

Which brings me to the second part of my story: I asked Mira to record the Kaddish for me, also.<\/p>\n

No big deal, you think. Mira’s Jewish, she’s studied Semitic languages, she’s steeped in this culture, she heard her father say Kaddish a zillion times\u2014she can knock it off for me while she washes dishes.<\/p>\n

Well. Not so fast.<\/p>\n

Recall that at the beginning of the project, Mira and I agreed to certain terms. We had never met each other, and we still haven’t, and we had agreed that during the course of this project we would not meet<\/em>. Not face to face, and not directly by phone. Mira had said that I could leave a Kaddish on her answering machine: the voice of a horn, but not<\/em> the voice of a voice.<\/p>\n

And here I am, asking to hear her voice. Not kosher!<\/p>\n

She said no. Not just no, but hell no. That’s not how she put it\u2014she’s nicer than I am\u2014but it’s the message I received. And after that, she gave me all kinds of sensible reasons: she hasn’t spoken Aramaic in years. She says she does not say kaddish. Like me, she’s an atheist who doesn’t pray. She’s not a performer\u2014that’s my thing, not hers. She doesn’t have recording equipment. She doesn’t know the text.<\/p>\n

All perfectly reasonable points.<\/p>\n

But I pled my case. “It’s a kaddish in two-part harmony, and that was your title, not mine!” I continued, “Kaddishim are said together by a minyan, not alone in a one-way transmission of music.” Then I compiled a long list of mostly tongue-in-cheek reasons for her to relent, including the most alluring promise of all: that if she sent me<\/em> a kaddish recording, then for one day, she wouldn’t have to listen to me playing that damned Kogan piece.<\/p>\n

Yep. She hates the piece. Poor woman! Can you even imagine, having sworn off music for years, and now having to listen for a year and a day to a recording of a piece that you don’t even like? Every day?<\/em> For a year and a day<\/em>? A few days earlier, she had written:<\/p>\n

Someone<\/em> must like this piece of music. Music is there to express feeling\/emotions and transmit them as well\u2014and I can’t feel it.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

I don’t know if the promise that she wouldn’t have to hear it for one day was the argument that won the day, but I do know that my shy kaddish collaborator summoned her courage, figured out how to use Garage Band on her Mac, found the text in her son’s siddur<\/em>, and with great trepidation made me a recording of that ancient Hebrew\/Aramaic text. She sent it to me with a warning: “you’re not gonna like it!”<\/p>\n

How wrong she was. Mira’s voice was a revelation. So not what I’d been imagining.<\/p>\n

Think about it: you’re getting to know someone you’ve never met through a daily practice, a collaborative writing project, and email. You’ve seen a few pictures on Facebook and you are starting to get how her mind works, but you’ve never actually met. <\/em>And then you hear her voice, and it’s not like yours, which you suddenly realize is the voice you’ve given her in your imagination. No, it’s a few tones higher, lighter, prettier. She speaks much more slowly and melodically, over a wider pitch range.<\/p>\n

I also noticed that her Hebrew\/Aramaic has an astounding variety of fricatives that I don’t think I’ve heard in any American shuls. Which makes me curious. Christian sacred music uses a “church Latin,” where “Agnus dei,” for example, is sung with an \u00f1 sound for the gn, rather than the hard G, N sequence you’d hear in a Latin class. Is there a “temple Hebrew” whose sounds are distinct from the language spoken in Israel?<\/p>\n

Fricatives are those sounds of spit rattling somewhere in the mouth, like the throat-clearing sound of the German “ch” in “Bach.” Each fricative consonant is located differently and a sound distinct from the others: the \u05d7 \u1e25et (the sound you make when you almost swallow a fishbone) and the \u05d4 hei (the sound you make when you talk back to an angry cat), and the \u05e8 resh (like a uvular, gargling French “r” but without the frontal shape that an American English or French “r” contains), and all the other ones that I can’t think of right now.<\/p>\n

None of that has anything to do with my thesis, but I can’t resist geeking out about it. The fricatives I’ve learned for German, Norwegian, and French are here child’s play; Aramaic is Advanced Spit Management (which is a lot coming from a brass player)!<\/p>\n

Or maybe it is related to my thesis: as a musician, I take in a lot of information through my ears. I attend to details. Aural specificity is a big part of how I observe my world. Hearing someone is huge.<\/p>\n

Anyway, it was spectacular.<\/p>\n

Filled with mistakes of a beginner reciting kaddish. You need to be truthful here\u2014my kaddish sucks! And now I’ll have to work on it until I get it perfect. And I’ve been studying the text more, to get it right. My father is surely chuckling in the grave that my shikse Norwegian collaborator is forcing me into a practice of kaddish.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

If you say so, Mira! I was away from home without any instruments last week, so I had no choice but to record myself saying the text (Kaddish_2011.02.03_textYikes<\/strong>), and that’s<\/em> what a beginner sounds like!<\/p>\n

So now I listened to Mira’s<\/em> Kaddish looping in my earphones and worked on learning the text, and after a few days of that, I decided to try recording “Kaddish” with Mira’s Kaddish in my headphones, as I had done that time before with Deb’s Kaddish (kaddish_2011.01.23_duetForOne<\/strong>).<\/p>\n

This is where it all changed, again. Suddenly I went from playing to microphones and feeling alone in an empty room to playing for a person that I know just a smidgin better.<\/p>\n

I shouldn’t have been so surprised. I have known for decades that it feels different to play when I know somebody in the audience, or even if someone sitting next to me points out someone. The concert changes; I feel more personally engaged and the music is better. I know I’m not explaining it very well, but other musicians have told me they feel the same way.<\/p>\n

Teaching is like that too\u2014depending on who’s there and what their needs are, the same ideas are transmitted quite differently, and new ideas come into play.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Our virtual, asynchronous “minyan” has grown to several dozen, and I know that friends, colleagues, and family members of ours are visiting the Dropbox folder and listening to recordings frequently, but there is only one person who I know for certain<\/em> is listening to every single daily recording: Mira, whom I’ve never met, and hearing Mira’s voice had added a whole new dimension to my sense of who she is.<\/p>\n

It probably sounds insane, but now when I play “Kaddish” while listening to Mira recite Kaddish in my headphones, I feel more patient and focused, and less alone. The sound of my horn is richer. My breathing is easier. The pacing of the music feels expansive, unhurried. The pauses can stretch for several deep breaths as I listen to Mira intone the words. The long notes and phrases have direction, either momentum toward their endings or relaxation away from their beginnings.<\/p>\n

Again Mira heard the change in my music. I did not include her voice in the mixdown, only in my headphones while I played. But right away she heard the connection that I finally felt to my primary audience:<\/p>\n

it felt very intimate to me. (your playing) and I still feel it. can still see it.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

I made another the next night, the same way\u2014her voice in my ears, but not in the mixdown. Her comments again show a whole new level of connection to the music. As is usual for her, Mira’s description was visual:<\/p>\n

We are on the cliffs, Sicily again \u2014
\nyes, I said ‘we’!
\nso this is a first.
\nouch, we stumble together
\nbut I’m a stumbler. [well, it was your stumble, but I followed suit…]
\nyou take my hand
\nI lead you up the trail to the cafe
\nYou’re tiring out\u2014
\nMust be the time difference, for I gather you’ve just arrived<\/p>\n

[I loved this one!]<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

I did, too. Finally! I’ve loved this piece for twenty-five years, but for three months, I had been feeling like I didn’t know how to play it anymore, but with Deb and then Mira murmuring the prayer in my ears, I knew how to play it again. Since that day, I have made many recordings with Mira’s voice in my headphones, and quite a few of them have featured Mira’s voice in the mixdown as well (kaddish_2011.01.24_duetForMrsTz<\/strong>, kaddish_2011.01.25_improv<\/strong>, kaddish_2011.01.26_grendel<\/strong>, kaddish_2011.01.27_trioForGrendel<\/strong>, kaddish_2011.01.28_shabbes<\/strong>, kaddish_2011.01.29_havdalah<\/strong>, kaddish_2011.01.30_fishscales<\/strong>, kaddish_2011.01.31_cynthiaSchroederB<\/strong>, kaddish_2011.02.01_taniaForte<\/strong>, kaddish_2011.02.02_cancer.mp3<\/strong>).<\/p>\n

Mira’s listening notes have taken a dramatic turn, too. Although she swears she likes the mixes without her better than the ones with her, and I can’t seem to slide her fader down far enough for her comfort, in both cases, she has started hearing music that moves her. She’s starting to like the piece. She’s getting ideas for other ways of collaborating in the daily recordings\u2014as have I. She has started doodling while listening. She has stopped hearing my mistakes\u2014which are still very much in evidence\u2014and started liking what I’m doing.<\/p>\n

She’s hearing herself hyper-critically, just as I always hear myself hyper-critically, and perhaps that new empathy is part of the change, too; we now have a compassionate connection, where we each hear our own mistakes and don’t notice the other’s.<\/p>\n

She has stopped hating the piece!<\/p>\n

wow.<\/p>\n

soulful. I agree. yet with initial hesitation
\nI DO like it
\nand there’s this almost Middle Eastern moment\u2014to you a glitch, to me a lovely everything
\nslow
\n\u2026
\nwhat makes this so unbearably lovely?
\nwhat is it about musicians?<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Shortly after listening to this “Kaddish,” she wrote that she was finally able to finish something she’d been procrastinating, and she was expecting to sleep well, “rocked by that very sweet lullaby.”<\/p>\n

That’s when I realized it: we’re starting to accomplish the healing that our collaborative project has been all about. I write:<\/p>\n

Connected and flowing. Between, within. That you might sleep well\u2026 Gratifying.<\/p>\n

That’s how this is supposed to feel, I think, this whole music-for-mourning thing. It’s supposed to make that connection, from my gut to your gut and the other way and back again. I think releasing the grief requires having the connection\u2014having the plumbing in place\u2014before the grief can flow\u2026<\/p>\n

Finally the music is slipping into place. Kaddish in two-part harmony\u2014you had it right from the start. Creating a ritual together and the baths and the oils and the writing and the music are all about making a healing connection. We’ve both been stopped up with grief and needed to get our blood flowing again.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

We might wonder whether my developing bond with Mira is taking over my music-critical self, but my wife Victoria commented after hearing me record the first of these, also without knowing at the time that I was listening to Mira in my headphones, “Wow\u2014that was soulful.” A few days later I got a note from my dad, who mentioned that the recordings had suddenly become noticeably better. He asked, “Did you do it live or did you do some electronic trickery to do it?” I explained how I multi-tracked an audio file she’d sent me with my own live recording, and in a few I had layered her voice tracks at brief delays for percussive, atmospheric effects. He replied, “It is effective and certainly your horn tone was way up there above the usual level.”<\/p>\n

Kogan’s “Kaddish” hasn’t changed. I haven’t become a better musician. Mira’s musical cognition hasn’t changed, either. And yet my performance and our perception of this one piece of music has changed, palpably.<\/p>\n

I think it’s about the connection between musician and listener.<\/p>\n

It’s not just about Mira; it’s about having an audience that I know somehow, with whom I have a connection. My primary, guaranteed daily audience in this project is Mira, but I’ve also made some of the daily recordings with a small live audience, or in response to requests from our readers. Mira and I have both noticed that those recordings sound better.<\/p>\n

One example is the Christmas Eve recording I made before a service started with some of the early-arriving congregants already seated, and in response to a request from Deb, who’d had to conduct two funerals that day (kaddish_2010.12.24_rebDeb’s2<\/strong>).<\/p>\n

Another is kaddish_2011.01.15_bishopsRanch<\/strong>; I had been taking advantage of an empty chapel’s wonderful acoustics when a young man entered and asked politely if he could sit and write. I agreed and offered to take a break from playing, but he said he’d enjoy listening, so I continued. As he sat and wrote, I recorded “Kaddish,” and I could feel him listening\u2014and it mattered to me that he was.<\/p>\n

I look forward to reading what our other listeners have noticed in the recordings and how they have been changing over time, particularly in the last several weeks’ recordings. This post is already a mile long, so I’m not going to go into detail on the other recordings since my last “recent kaddishim” post, but I’ll be happy to read your comments and answer any questions.<\/p>\n

And if you’d like to provide me with your own recording of the Kaddish, here’s a PDF with the\u00a0text of the Mourner’s Kaddish<\/a> in English, Hebrew\/Aramaic, and transliteration.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Something unexpected happened a few weekends ago. I asked Mira to record the text of the Mourner’s Kaddish for me, and she did, and then everything changed. We are nearing the end of the first three months. We have almost ten months to go on this daily musical exchange, according to the Julian calendar, because this is a leap year in the Hebrew calendar, which adds not just a leap day but a whole leap month. And after what felt like a lifetime of awful recordings to both of us, we’re both starting to enjoy the music.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_feature_clip_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false},"categories":[250],"tags":[197,9,214,229],"class_list":["post-1209","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-essays","tag-mourners-kaddish","tag-music","tag-musicians","tag-musicology"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/beitmalkhut.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1209","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/beitmalkhut.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/beitmalkhut.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/beitmalkhut.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/beitmalkhut.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=1209"}],"version-history":[{"count":5,"href":"https:\/\/beitmalkhut.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1209\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":2552,"href":"https:\/\/beitmalkhut.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1209\/revisions\/2552"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/beitmalkhut.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=1209"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/beitmalkhut.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=1209"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/beitmalkhut.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=1209"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}