thinkfetti

We’re enjoying our first fire of the season in the fireplace of our new house in Albuquerque. My five-string banjo (don’t get any ideas) is a few feet to the right of the fireplace, so every time the wood pops, it sets off sympathetic vibrations in the banjo strings, giving us a “pop” with a ring in G major.

Two very successful concerts with the Albuquerque Philharmonic Orchestra this weekend. I guest conducted the program of Gershwin’s Piano Concerto and Tchaikovsky’s Symphony No. 4.

My dear friend Hao Huang was the soloist, and he played with his characteristic brilliance and superb musicality. The orchestra did an excellent job both performances, and I believe everyone involved deserves a relaxing Sunday evening after the successful weekend!

I was teaching a music appreciation course this morning, and we found ourselves talking about syncopation. Syncopation in music is a delightful, playful rhythmic effect where a note is emphasized by being played “off the beat.” It’s kind of a springboard effect: the diving board went down “on the beat” and now bounds up after the beat. The note that gets its pizzazz launching from the rebounding board is described as “syncopated.”

But just being “off the beat” doesn’t itself make a note syncopated; there has to be some emphasis on the note that is caused by its spring-like relationship to the beat. There are plenty of ways to play notes between beats so that they aren’t syncopated.

One interesting aspect of syncopation is that the effect requires a beat in order to exist, even though the syncopated note is necessarily not sounding together with the beat. No beat, no syncopation. Now the beat can be overt, as with an accompanying drumset, or it can be implied, something constructed real-time in the mind of the listener by imagining what beat could be present, given all the other notes. But if there is only rhythmic mush, with no beat either overt or implied, then there is no possibility for syncopation. There may be emphasis, accent, but it would not be the special kind of emphasis that draws its power from the surrounding structure by being playfully off.

And this brought me to consider adapting these concepts to management, specifically to a couple types of problematic management:

If there is a structure but no room for difference then syncopation will be absent. Having everything happening on the same beat removes the opportunity for the special enhancement of an idea that bounces up off the beat.

But equally stifling is management without a structuring beat, either an overt one with clear and consistent stated policies and procedures, or an implied structure that organizational members can construct and understand themselves by observing all the notes. Without any beat, there is no way to syncopate, to express the positive and playful energy that can be generated by being off the beat.

Last Monday I enjoyed leading my first rehearsal for a late-October program I’ll be conducting with the Albuquerque Philharmonic Orchestra. It’s an exceptionally well-organized group of talented and enthusiastic amateur players, and it was a treat for me to begin working with the full group.

In the spring of 2006, I conducted a subset of the group together with the Albuquerque Gay Men’s Chorus performing some Masonic music of Mozart, and I was delighted to be invited by David Felberg (the APO’s music director) and the APO board to guest conduct these performances.

The program will be Bernstein’s Candide overture, the double concerto in d minor for violin, piano, and strings by Mendelssohn (featuring Hao Huang and Rachel Huang as soloists), and Brahms’ second symphony.  More information about the concert will be available at the APO’s website.

Mat Callahan’s 2005 book The Trouble With Music focuses on the way the “music industry” affects the creation and reception of music. The book is not genre-specific, but covers many musics, from folk to hip-hop to classical. He quotes from an interview in The Independent with Martin Engstroem, who in 2003 was the chief “talent scout” for Deutsche Gramophone, one of the very few major labels when it comes to classical music:

“‘Our releases are primarily linked to the artist, the star. People go to a concert, fall in love with the artist and buy their record. Yes, it’s a big change, but it’s one we have to live with. Ten years ago, you went purely for quality.’ But not now? ‘Of course, you still go for that, because we’re still talking DG. But quality is no longer enough on its own. You have to listen to the market. We’ve recently signed a lot of charismatic young artists like Lang Lang and Hilary Hahn, because we feel that’s where the energy lies.’ He agreed this runs counter to the old assumption that age and wisdom make the best music. ‘But that is not what the public says. To keep our figures in the black, we have to listen to the market.’” - quoted in Callahan, pp. 177-8.

Darwinian fitness (in the context of survivability in a market) does not equal quality…