Last month’s post #2 in the series ‘I’m Not an Artist, BUT…’, spelled out line and space as performance art in the sport of nordic skiing. Now it’s music’s turn.
I come from a tradition of choral singing these past 35 years.
Having watched the 2023 Academy-award-winning short-doc, ‘The Only Girl in the Orchestra‘, I appreciate Orin O’Brien’s musical experience. In 1966, she became the NY Philharmonic’s first female double bassist. Bernstein called her ‘a source of radiance’ in her dedication and passion for the orchestra.
O’Brien speaks for lower instruments everywhere when she says: “You’re a support for what else is going on. You’re the floor under everybody that would collapse if it wasn’t secure.”
I’m an alto voice with Espiritu Vocal Ensemble in West Vancouver, British Columbia. Alto voices may be flooring, but we are high-end parquet…luxurious mosaic/ceramic tiling. We bridge soprano and tenor/bass harmonies. We give dimension to the sound, adding rich depth and texture to fill the chord.
For me, Orin’s words strike an alto chord. She got joy from being part of an ensemble for 55 years, without seeking the spotlight. She added, “You do it for its own sake and … for the wonderful people you are playing with.”
How does this fit within the lines and spaces in singing you may ask?
LINE & SPACE IN CHORAL MUSIC
Lines of music and their spaces fill more than the score they are printed on. The staff with its high and low pitches has five horizontal lines and four spaces between them. So far, so (notably) good.
Credit: Clker-Free-Vector-Images
Line is also in the harmonic and melodic flow. Space is where the sound originates in resonators and oral cavities of the mouth, throat, sinuses… that access the breath from a relaxed posture from all four-parts of the SATB mixed-voice choir.
We memorize our lines. We work it til it flows. Line and space lift off.
Paul Klee‘s famous line is about ‘a dot that went for a walk.’ This is artistic line.
Musical dots are notes, and when they start walking, there’s musical line. The sound fills acoustic spaces.
In a recent concert, we performed 15 choral arrangements that threaded and layered lines of music to great spacial affect:
‘Don’t it always seem to go that you don’t know what you’ve got til it’s gone;
They paved paradise; put up a parking lot.’
(Joni Mitchell’s ‘Big Yellow Taxi’ the Podd brothers, Matt & Adam, arrangers)
‘Sure on this shining night of star-made shadows round, kindness must watch for me this side the ground… on this shining night, this shining night.’
(James Agee, poet Morten Lauridsen, arranger)
Music launches lines into space. Audiences capture and interpret each spaceship of song within the galaxies of mind and heart.
As Orin says, “Music calls forth your emotions.”
Line and space in music are the means.
