In order to join the Musicology Research group on Linkedin you need to open a minimal profile on Linkedin.com (this takes only several minutes) and then press the following link and join the group: http://www.linkedin.com/groups?about=&gid=1958399&trk=anet_ug_grppro   

One of the main problems that troubles both students and scholars in the academy, is how to find scholarships and funding to their studies or research projects. This is not a simple problem since it seems that there are many possible scholarships and grants to apply to, however, time is limited and in these days the competition is great. Even if you have the best research proposal, without funding, you may find yourself in great difficulties when trying to devote yourself to your studies. Finding funding for your academic work can be a major project in itself and you must be patient and systematic during this process. In this post I will suggest a few tips that might help you find scholarships, grants and other types of funding in a systematic, fast and efficient way.

1. Prepare in advance

It takes time to find all the potential scholarships, grants and fellowships that might fund your studies. Preparing in advance will help you not miss the deadlines. If you miss a deadline, you will probably have to wait a whole year before being able to apply.

            Another reason why preparing in advance is important, is because you might be dependant on other people for completing your application form or getting them to write for you recommendation letters. People in the academy tend to be very busy or they simply might be on vacation when you need them. Approaching them in advance will help you avoid begging them to help you, putting them in an inconvenient situation where they are being rushed, or simply missing the possibility that they will cooperate merely because the cannot adjust themselves to your irresponsible time table. 

2. Find web pages that have lists of relevant scholarships

The first place to find scholarship is on the web pages of the university that you plan to attend. These days I am desperately looking for funding sources for a Post-Doctorate in the Hebrew University in Jerusalem. Here is the web page that contains a list of scholarships. The Hebrew University has a scholarship database where you can look for funding according to your degree and research field. Other Universities have similar sites and databases. I have collected here some scholarship links for Post-Doctorate students (you can find here also pages that list many scholarships and grants). 

3. Contact people who deal with scholarships on a regular basis

One of the best sources for finding grants and scholarships is to ask your (potential) supervisor or other professors that have taught you in the past, two questions: (1) What scholarships and grants do you know of (make sure you write down their answers!). (2) Where can I find people who might know about such funding sources?

            Each university usually has a body that is in charge of research and development (here is the website of The Authority of Research and Development in the Hebrew University and here is a link to Humanity scholarships there). Learn the website of the equivalent body in your university and do not forget to call people that work there and ask for more information about scholarships (and other people that might help).

            It would be wise to approach people who already went through this process (experienced students or scholars who are 1-5 years head of your stage in the academy).

            Another good thing to do is to use the internet in order to find the information. It is obvious that you could use search engines. If you have a blog, write a post that will tell the world what you plan to do and that you need funding. Use social sites such as Facebook and Twitter that can further spread your message. I can tell from personal experience that I have found a potential funding via Facebook.

4. Make a list of potential funding sources

It is important to by systematic in your search for funding. Open and excel file or google doc spreadsheet and make a list of all scholarships, grants, fellowships and other funding sources. Make a column that will say what is the deadline and other columns that will say if you have filled all the forms, attached all the documents that were requested, and approached that people that will send you recommendation letters.         

5. What is the deadline?

This is a very important question. Preparing in advance (see tip no. 1) is useful for noting the deadlines of scholarships in your diary. I recommend that you will use Google Calendar or any other machine that will give you a reminder when to start preparing the material for the scholarship. Such preparation takes its time and spreading the work is the most reasonable thing you would like to do in order to make life easier. 

6. Read about the body that grants the scholarship and understand their aims

Before filling the forms and approaching people for recommendation letters, it is highly recommended that you will spend time to learn the website of the body that grants the scholarship. Understanding their aims is important for adjusting your form and your CV. There is nothing wrong in doing so. Some grants want to know what kind of voluntary social work you have done during your life. You might not be interested in emphasizing this to other funding sources, yet it would be very wise to do so if you know that this is one of the goals of the people that decide if you will be granted the funding.

7. Make sure you filled in all the forms as requested

Take time to read the form before starting to fill it. After filling all the requested information, go through the form again and make sure that nothing is missing. Missing information is one of the main reasons why applications are turned down.

8. Make sure you added all the requested documents

For the same reason it is important to make sure that you have attached to your application all the documents that were requested. Such documents might include a list of grades from previous degrees that you did and your diplomas.

9. Write as clearly as possible

A scholarship candidate is often requested to write an introduction letter, a research proposal or an abstract of it. Make sure that you write as clearly as possible. Keep in mind that such documents might be read by various people. Some of them are from your field and some are not. The content of such documents should be directed to the type of audience that will read them. If you will write in a highly sophisticated manner, using terms that are known only to people from your field, while the readers of your application are people who know nothing about such academic words – you will loose your audience, and the scholarship. One the other hand, if your readers are from your field, make sure that you prove that you are part field by emphasizing the main problems and issues that might interest all of you.

10. Do not close the door before others do it for you

If you think that a scholarship might not be for you, do not automatically desert it. I recommend calling the people who are in change of the scholarship and make sure that you are really not eligible for approaching it. I can tell from my own experience that I found a potential scholarship after calling the organization that grants the scholarship and finding, to my surprise, that also I can send an application.

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Questions?

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Related posts

How to write a research proposal

How to choose a PhD, MA or DMA subject for a thesis

6 tips for finding a good PhD supervisor

If one goes through my private library one notices that most of the books that I bought in the last decade belong to two subjects: music and religion. My main academic expertise is focused on performance studies, and I feel that what interests me in the performance of music is very similar to what interests me in religion: the interpretation of texts. I think that the questions and problems that surround the interpretation of musical scores are very similar (although not identical) to those of religious texts. This is exactly why I called the course I give in Mazkeret Batya “Beit Midrash Muzika” (Beit Midrash usually means a place where people study religious texts or matters). In this course we study the issue of musical interpretation in classical music, while here and there I hint to equivalent matters in religion (most of the people who attend the course are interested in both subjects).

During the last two weeks I went through two shocking experiences, one in the realm of music and the other in the realm of religion. I must admit that the musical experience was somewhat less shocking than the religious one, yet both were very significant for me. In this post I wish to speak about the relation of fear in the constitution of a religious or musical interpretation. Fear is a very natural feeling which everyone experiences, yet I feel that one should be aware of it and ask if its existence should influence the way a person acts and performs.

Two ways of interpreting music 

During the last two weeks my family visited relatives in the Czech Republic. I decided to take The Glenn Gould Reader (which I have reviewed elsewhere). In this book Gould wrote an interesting essay about the great conductor Leopold Stokowsky. He contrasts Stokowsky with Toscanini, claming that the latter was a “literalist” and the former an “ecstatic”. Toscanini seemed to aim at playing the notes “as they are” and projecting them as “objectively” as possible to the listener. Stokowsky, on the other hand, argued that the notes are merely “black marks on paper”.

Stokowsky claimed that “We write black marks on white paper – the mere facts of frequency; but music is a communication much more subtle than mere facts. The best a composer can do when within him he hears a great melody is to put it on paper. We call it music, but that is not music; that is only paper. Some believe that one should merely mechanically reproduce the marks on the paper, but I do not believe in that. One must go much further than that. We must defend the composer against the mechanical conception of life which if becoming more and more strong today.”’ (p. 264) 

The criteria for aesthetic experience 

In another place in the book, Gould scorns those who value music merely by its biographical data (who was the composer, who was the performer, when was it performed) and not by its aesthetic affect. Someone once told me that he heard about a psychological experiment where people listened to music with, and sometimes without, knowing who the composers were. The experiment showed that people tend to give higher value to pieces that they think that were composed by famous composers.

Gould was a great advocate of refined editing techniques in recordings. His generation was, by large, against interference in what they saw as an almost religious process: the act of live performance. Gould argued that it is not important when the recording was done or even who was the performer. If the result is convincing when you listen to it, it should be valued higher than otherwise. In other words, one should evaluate to sounds without careing too much about how it was created and by whom.

People are not fully aware of how big is the difference between live performances of classical music and recordings by the same artist (see my review of Amir Ben Ayun which was so different from his recordings). When one plays music in concert, one cannot stop and correct or make another take. During studio recording there is much more freedom for editing and refining the musical result. Gould describes in his book a process of refined editing of a recording which involved hundreds of cuts in order to achieve the result he desired.

Leonard Bernstein describes The Glenn Gould Reader as “one long series of delightful and stimulating shocks”. Indeed, Gould, for me, is one of the important interpreters that ever existed. Yet the “religious” shock that I experienced when I returned to Israel was greater.

The debate on egalitarian prayer in Keshet Mazkeret Bataya

I live in a small town called Mazkeret Bataya which is located more or less between Tel-Aviv and Jerusalem. Our family is part of the Keshet (rainbow) community, which is focused around the education of children towards tolerance and co-existence between religious and secular Israelis. Anyone who knows Israel is immediately aware of the fact the people tend to categorize and differentiate the population according to their relation to religion, to where their grandparents were born (Europe, Arab states or America), financial background, etc. Keshet aims to overcome the alienation between religious and secular Jews by emphasizing their common values, while not ignoring the differences. Our slogan is “To live together”.

During the last few months, some members of the religious part of our community are trying to establish a praying group (Minyan) which is both Orthodox and egalitarian. While I was in Czech, a heated argument started between members of the community regarding a future planned “pilot” where women will read from the Tora. Most people would probably not understand what all the fuss is about, yet for Orthodox people, a women singing in the synagogue is quite uncommon. In Orthodox communities, women usually find themselves as mere observers and relatively very passive participants in the service.

However, paradoxically, the discussion was not really around the Jewish law and texts. Most of the arguments were simply against or for change in religion. When I spoke to someone that is strongly against the idea, he claimed that he would feel very uncomfortable that his father would refuse to pray with him in such a synagogue. Strong voices from the other side argued that the traditional way or praying is “chauvinistic” and not modern (or in other words: primitive).  

Although some were strongly for executing this pilot and others were very much against, all of the people (including myself) agreed that it must be conducted with relation to Halacha, which is the Jewish law as formed and developed from the time before Moses and up to the present.

The experience of “Shira Chadash”

While we were in Czech some of the people in our community suggested that we visit existing communities that conduct Orthodox-egalitarian prayers, and see how we feel about the whole idea, as well as speak to the members of such communities in order to learn from their experiences. A decision was made to visit the “Shira Chadash” community in Jerusalem that is one of the pioneers in the Orthodox world with this manner of religious “performance”.

We returned to Israel last Thursday and the next day we were on our way towards the holy city. A very kind and friendly family had hosted us, and it was a chance to learn about their way of life and how they see they whole subject, that stirred our community.

The experience of prayer in “Shira Chadash” was amazing. It seemed that it is a truly egalitarian prayer, and that women had finally found their equal place in Jewish religion, even in Orthodoxy. It seemed to me that one could not be unmoved from how beautifully everyone sang there and how women can finally be active in leading the service and chanting from the Tora.

Yet the shock that I am talking about did not occur while participating in the service, but while attending a meeting with a few members of the “Shira Chadash” community, shortly before the Shabbat ended.

Staying in the boundaries of Orthodoxy

In that meeting, a member of their “Halacha commity” explained to us how they made their decisions. He titled their approach as “Halachic pragmatism” and argued that it meant being egalitarian while taking the most traditional approach to the Jewish law. He pointed out the fact that the parts that women participated are considered either less important (such as the reading of psalms) or, arguably, less controversial (for example, chanting from the Tora). He explained that women do not lead the most important parts of the prayer: Shma Israel (the declaration of faith) and Amida (known as the “standing” or the “Sixteen prayer”).

The person that spoke before us explained that as men they feel completely equal with their wives and daughters in everyday life. They believe that the egalitarian revolution might even be, not a merely historical event, but, something that was directed by God. He scorned the fact the when religious leaders have to make religious verdicts concerning money, they find all the ways in order to go around and contradict the Halacha and Jewish tradition, yet when it come to the relation to women, it is paralyzed.

He explained to us that they are trying to find ways that there will be no contrast between how they feel towards women outside and inside the synagogue. Yet he stressed that they wish to do so within the boundaries of Orthodoxy. In order to do so they find complicated ways to approve certain egalitarian-religious acts. Now, I am no expert in religious law, yet I remember that he said that in some cases he feels sick (he used the Hebrew word “Kvas”) from the ways they find themselves explaining the law. Yet “there was no choice”, he seemed to suggest, if one wants to stay in the boundaries of Orthodoxy.

Is the way Orthodoxy interprets Jewish texts, historically traditional?

I must admit that I was completely shocked from how he spoke. It seemed to me horrible that one finds himself in a position of explaining the Jewish law yet feeling disgusted from the process that he himself undertakes, since it is in great conflict with his own contemporary way of living.

Anyone who examines the history and development of Jewish law sees that it has a history and it experienced great changes. These changes are affected, not only by the Divine presence, but also by great social and cultural changes in the lives of people.

Yet Jewish Orthodoxy seems to ignore these changes or pretend that they are not significant. Instead of finding ways of reconciling what people feel is right morally towards other people (and before God), and what they read and interpret in Holly writings, they prefer to make a “literal” interpretation of these texts, just as Toscanini did. They play the “notes” in the text “as they are”, without trying to interpret them and find what they mean for us today, as Stokowsky did. This creates, what seems to me, as an unbearable gap between how they feel and live today, and how they “perform” when they pray.

Orthodox, Reform and Conservative Judaism

In order to explain why I feel such a big problem with the Halachic interpretation described above, there is need to say a few words about the three biggest contemporary Jewish movements. Orthodoxy clams that the Tora was purely given by God. It is therefore natural that they claim that the Halacha (the oral law) is binding. Anyone who diverges from the written law is a sinner. Reform Judaism sees both the Tora and Jewish law as purely human made. No wonder that they do not find Halacha as binding. If humans change the law as they wish, so should contemporary Jews do, as individuals, if they wish to be faithful to their human consciousness. Conservatives (or Masorti) have a slightly more complicated argument. They accept modern scholarship that demonstrates the human aspect in the construction of religious texts, yet they refuse to claim that God has nothing to do with these texts. They do not see a contradiction in the claim that these texts are both Divine and humanly constructed. Conservative Jews keep the Halacha as communities, for example, in the synagogue, yet do not interfere in what people, as individuals, do at home.

The most important thing, I think, in Conservative Judaism is that their Rabbis tend to interpret Jewish law in a more flexible way and with less contradiction with the contemporary world than Orthodoxy. Since they interpret the sacred in an “ecstatic” manner, just like Stokowsky, than the do not need to pretend that they are ignoring their own subjective self, or that of their communities.  

Is fear a bad criteria for interpretation?

During the evening in “Shira Chadasha” I found that the motivation behind what they were doing there, as well as behind what many of the people (both people who are for and against a more egalitarian prayer) in my community are doing, with regards to this issue, is motivated quite substantially by fear. People talked about being afraid of being excommunicated by Orthodox Rabbis or that their parents and friends will refuse to visit their egalitarian synagogue. Some people said, half in humor and half seriously, that they fear from what other children will say in school and if they will be able to find good mates for marriages.

I can understand their fears and I have sympathy to such considerations. However, I cannot ignore two things that make an interpretation motivated by fear, problematic.

One of the members of the community in Jerusalem told me that they ignore what Conservative Rabbis say only because they are Conservative and are regarded with contempt within the Orthodox circles. She admitted, quote openly, that if one would take off the name of the Rabbi from his religious interpretation, than they would agree with it with no problem.

This reminds me of what Gould mentioned in his book: people who do not listen to the content of music, but need to know who wrote it in order to value it. At that moment I felt great sympathy to Rabbi Jonathan Wittenberg who once said in an interview: "we accept truth from any source". I think that he meant that one should not judge what people say by first asking who said it.

After all, also Rambam was highly influenced by Muslim Sofi religious texts and Greek Philosophy. Does this mean that Conservative Judaism, at least in its manner of interpreting texts, is much closer to traditional Judaism than Orthodoxy? It seems to me that Orthodoxy’s “literal” interpretation is due to its fear from assimilation. Toscanini and the Neue Sachlichkeit were a reaction to what seemed as exaggerated liberalism in the Romantic interpretation of musical scores, and Orthodoxy is a reaction to similar liberal tendencies of Reform and Conservative ways of interpreting religious texts and laws. The Orthodox way of interpreting is understandable psychologically, yet far from being traditional. This is not the way Jews always interpreted its texts and laws. One needs to think merely about how Rashi interpreted “Eye for an eye and tooth for a tooth” to see that the Oral law sometimes contradicts what is written in the Tora. The Gaon from Vilna argued that Halacha is like a seal. It sometimes creates an image that is the opposite of what is written in the Tora (see the essay I wrote about Parashat Mishpatim in our community leaflet for further examples and references).     

The second thing that disturbs me with how fear affects their quasi egalitarian interpretation is that it marks other interpretations of Halacha as non legitimate. I mentioned that one of the people present in the meeting admitted that if one erases the name of a conservative Rabbi from his interpretation of the law, one could usually easily agree with it. If they themselves agree with much of the content of what Rabbis from the Conservative movement write, then why mark it as illegitimate, as they often do? There are more than two million conservative Jews in the world and hundreds of Conservative Rabbis. Are they all Trefa? I am aware that not all Orthodox members see things radically as I describe them here. There are (very) few of them who call for a dialogue with Conservative Rabbis. Some communities, including Shira Chadash, accept people who have converted via the Conservative movement if they observe Halacha. Why then, do we need all these titles? From what are we afraid of? 

Against artificial labels

I feel close to the way Conservative Judaism interprets the Jewish law. Yet since I pray three times a day, for example, I may be considered by some as Orthodox. There are those who would label me as Ortho-conservative. However, this seems to me as an absurd. I feel disgusted from all these labels. I find many positive things in all Jewish movements, and I disagree with parts of the practice and/or the philosophy of all of these groups. I do not think that one must choose either this or that label.

One of the best interpretations of Beethoven’s Fifth Symphony (see the video above), I feel, was done by Toscanini. When I did my B.A. in the Tel Aviv University I could not stop listening to his recording of the piece. His rhythm, his energy, his musical gestures seemed and still seem extremely convincing. Similarly, I love praying in Orthodox synagogues in spite of the fact that I am aware of the potential injustice that is done to women by positioning them in a place that promotes their passivity in the service.

I did not come from a religious background as most of the people present in the meeting that shocked me. This makes it easier for me to be free from the fears that they have, of being excommunicated by Orthodox Rabbis and their families. Nevertheless, I strongly feel that if women and men want an egalitarian prayer, it would be a great pity if they would avoid struggling for it because of fear.

The real revolution, however, will start when young Orthodox people will think about what motivates their religious way of interpreting texts. I hope that in the future Orthodoxy will find a better agenda than "literal" interpretations of text, as well as judging other interpretation according to whom wrote what, and not what was actually argued.

What are we fighting for? The big picture

Perhaps, fear is, after all, a legitimate feeling that may help the process of interpretation. It may balance too radical thoughts and help, what Gould would call, "editing" such thoughts and actions. Yet, fear, I believe, is a less desirable feeling if it prevents people do deal with the issue. Why do we want an Egalitarian prayer? How does an egalitarian prayer change the religious status of men (if someone needs to take care of the little children, who will do it? In traditional thinking the answer is clear since the man is the one who has the obligation to pray)? Is it Orthodox to make changes in Halacha (even if only personally consumed) without the consent of Rabbis?

When I first heard about the idea of making an Egalitarian prayer in Mazkeret-Batya, I was less interested and supportive than today. The reason that I think that it is very important that such a prayer will establish it self within the boundaries of Orthodoxy in Israel, is because I believe that the real important issue is the whole way in which Orthodoxy interprets the Jewish law. Daniel Sperber writes in his book The Path of Halach, that deals with the subject of Women’s reading from the Tora, that Orthodoxy is too strict and uncreative in the way that it deals with Jewish law. He suggests that in fear of making a mistake (and I would add, in fear of being like the liberal movements of Judaism) they only forbid and make “fences” around existing prohibitions. This strict way of constructing religious law creates unbearable situations in numerous other areas: the relation between the state if Israel and religion, the issue of conversion, the relation between the Jews of Israel and those of other countries, the antagonism and non-tolerance towards Reform and Conservative Judaism, etc. 

A change that originates from Orthodox members in Israel will lead to a change in the thought of Orthodox Rabbis. The fight for an egalitarian prayer is a start of a healthy change in the way devoted religious people in Israel deal with the challenges, advantages and problems that modernity nad post-modernity brings.       

If you have any thoughts on the subject please comment below.

Related posts

On fear: Schoenberg, Stravinsky and the Israeli music scene

Reading historical music documents in context: health or antisemitism?

Further reading

Daniel Sperber,  The Path of Halach

The problem

Do you have any ideas? 

Gould on Stokowsky

Gould on Schoenberg

Gould on  Rubinstein

Gould on Recordings and Media

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Further Reading

This is the second part of the interview with David Shemer. Click here in order to read the first part of the interview with David Shemer on the performance of early music.

Could you please tell us about some of the difficulties of forming the Jerusalem Baroque Orchestra?  

How much cyberspace do you have? The difficulties were prodigious, and I only wish I could say that they are all overcome by now. Twenty years ago, when I decided to start a baroque orchestra, it was not much more than an adventure - let’s try and see what happens. There was practically no infrastructure for a baroque orchestra: hardly any period instruments, very few trained baroque performers, and no money whatsoever to buy the former, to train the latter, to rent rehearsal spaces, to buy or rent orchestra material - let alone to pay anybody any kind of fee. There was a good will of a small group of people who were involved in the orchestra’s first steps, and that good will proved to be sufficient to pull through the incredibly difficult starting period, to solve at least some of the problems that seemed insurmountable. The development was slow, but promising. My hope was that if we’d manage to survive the initial stage and to prove our viability, the continuation would be easier: there will be plenty of people who would want to help. After all, a baroque orchestra is something that this country’s musical culture really needs, right? Well, lots of people seemed to agree, in principal, but there was preciously little practical help other than friendly “way-to-go!” pats on my shoulder. I think that this reflected an ambiguous attitude of the Israeli musical establishment to the very idea of historical performance and to musical authenticity. Things did change somewhat in more resent years, but for a long time - much longer than in most places in Europe - HIP [Historical Musical Performance, A.B.] was considered here as something for "freaks" only. Typically, many people, both individuals and representatives of the musical establishment, found it a lot more convenient "to sit on the fence" [not to take any stance, A.B.] and to observe our desperate efforts without committing themselves too much - perhaps, even musing, how long it would take us to give up… In the due course we joined the very crowded list of orchestras supported by the Ministry of Education and Culture, and to this day this is our main source of income, other than selling tickets to concerts. We wouldn’t survive without this subsidy, and yet, it doesn’t amount to much more than mere survival.

How would you define the current artistic and economic situation of the Jerusalem Baroque Orchestra (JBO)? 

When I think 20 years back, I feel both a very big pride and an equally big frustration. We started, as I already told you, practically from zero. And now it is an orchestra of a substantial public standing, with subscription series in Jerusalem and Tel-Aviv, with constantly growing audience, with successful appearances abroad and invitations for further tours (including the prestigious Bach Festival in Annsbach, Germany, in 2011). We have a very impressive list of guest conductors and soloists - starting with our Honorary conductor, Maestro Andrew Parrott, and including such world leading figures in the early music field as James Bowman, Peter Harvey, Emily van Evera, Walter Reiter, John Holloway, Maggie Faultless, Catherine Mackintosh, Roberto Gini, Michael Schneider, Alberto and Paolo Grazzi and many others. So many of them are happy to be invited back, in spite of the fact that the financial remuneration we can offer them is long way below their standard. But most importantly, I am proud that among our players are now some of this country’s finest musicians. Quite a few talented young string players have been attracted to the orchestra as the best option for them to get exposed to the period playing, and we are constantly training and preparing new "baroquenics" who eventually join the orchestra’s ranks.

Why, then, big frustration? Because to some extent it still is as a nearly impossible uphill struggle as it has been from the outset. All this growing and pretty sophisticated operation called JBO, with all these many wonderful programs (and I truly think that our programs really are wonderful), is managed by a tiny team of people working crazy hours for fees that barely cover our expenses, and without even a little office or telephone line to its name; I, personally, have to spend totally disproportional amounts of time on administration issues, rather than on being, actually, the orchestra’s musical director. The best of our players can only commit themselves to JBO’s projects when there are no conflicting offers from elsewhere. And as they really are great players, there often are conflicting offers, and JBO’s fees are not really competitive. Thus, nothing can be taken for granted, and every project often feels as if the orchestra has to be reinvented from scratch… We have a fantastic field record of training next generations of Baroque players who then find themselves in key positions of the early music scene in the world - most notably, Kati Debretzeni, one of the central HIP names in Europe, who did her first steps in period playing with JBO in the early 1990s… I certainly do not blame them: the early music field in Israel cannot offer them enough opportunity of professional development – or, indeed, of financially supporting themselves. By the way, most of these people stay in close touch with JBO, which they consider as kind of their Alma Mater, and come here to perform with us on every possible opportunity.

To sum it all up, as I said before - a baroque orchestra is something that this country’s musical culture really needs, right? I, actually, do strongly believe in it, and not only me; so do my colleagues at JBO. So, we go on…

Taruskin had argued that much of the early music performance practice was highly influenced by the performance practice of Stravinsky. Do you agree with this claim? Taruskin and others argue against the concept of ‘authenticity’ in performance of early music. What is your opinion concerning the issue of ’authenticity’?

I think that Taruskin’s claim is absolutely right, insofar as HIP and Stravinsky’s performance practice having common roots. But what Taruskin makes of it has nothing to do with what early music today stands for. Remarkably, if you read Taruskin carefully, you cannot but notice that he is aware of that, too! Taruskin is a towering figure in the field of musicology and musical criticism, and yet, he fails to avoid the same very trap that many much lesser critics and musicologists fall into. Time and again, one reads in reviews of an early music performance phrases like "performances on historical instruments often sound dry, detached and "correct", but in this concert there was nothing of it: N’s playing was vivid and highly emotional", etc. And one cannot help wondering - where did critics hear all these "dry and detached" performances? And if they did, how could they know that "dryness and detachment" stem from use of period instruments and performance practices? Of course, some historical performances are more interesting and exciting than the others. Surprise, surprise: so are "mainstream" performances! But did anyone ever say that X’s playing was emotionally charged, even though he/she played on a Steinway? Sure enough, HIP people usually aspire to know what they are doing - but why should that rule out their emotional involvement? Indeed, it doesn’t; Taruskin never tries to hide his admiration for performers like Bylsma, Leonhardt (hardly fringe figures of the early music movement!) and quite a few others. So, the question might be, isn’t this a case of putting theory before practice? Here is the theory: HIP is a load of "do" and "do not", it is all full of rules which must infringe on performers’ intuition, rendering their playing or singing dry and cerebral. And if so many actual performances do not, in fact, sound at all dry and cerebral - well, too bad. These must be exceptions - and thus Taruskin turns Leonhardt and Bylsma into such exceptions, and every time a music critic (in spite himself?) likes an HIP concert, he labels it "an exception". Mind you, a really good concert, just as a really good work of any art, IS an exception, but this has nothing to do with the above mentioned theory…

How, then, are HIP and Stravinsky connected? Stravinsky often expressed his views on musical performance in an extreme and provocative way, but they boil down to one basic thing: a performer is not alone in the process of music making. He or she is the part - albeit an important part - of a process that begins with the composer and ends with the listener. One of the prominent characteristics of late Romanticism (which, to a certain extent, is still with us today) is the cult of artistic freedom, which included also a practically unlimited freedom of the musical performer. Why otherwise would composers mark their scores so scrupulously? Monteverdi and Bach didn’t need to resort to such detailed markings: they had no reason to assume that their performers would try to do anything other than realize, in the best possible way, the composers’ intentions. And, as the performers lived, generally, just around the corner, these intentions were for them not really anything mysterious. Stravinsky’s attitude, shared in various ways by quite a few musicians of the early 20th century, is marked by his unwillingness to accept the mentioned above total freedom. For centuries, there was little or no difference between the composer and the performer. Both made music (often it was one and the same person), and their activity was interdependent, symbiotic. Stravinsky - the Neo-Classicist! - felt nostalgia for this symbiosis. So does HIP. However, HIP does not need to go Neo-Classic. Its subject-matter is the kind of music that has this symbiosis in it, and one of HIPs’ goals is discovering this symbiosis and bringing it back to life and to musical practice…

"Authenticity" seems to be another example of shooting first and then marking the goal. It is easy to say that playing music today exactly like it was played 300 or 400 years ago would barely be possible, and even if, in the unlikely eventuality, we succeeded it this endeavor, how would we know that we did? Ergo, Taruskin is right in his objection to authenticity in the performance of early music? Well, only if the claim of authenticity is based on "doing exactly as They did" - and nobody ever seriously made this claim! Authenticity, to quote Bruce Haynes’ wonderful recent book The End of Early Music, is "a statement of intent". Haynes argues that "what produces interesting results is the attempt to be historically accurate, that is, authentic".

Personally, I don’t use the word "authenticity" much - partly, because of its bad PR, to which Taruskin’s writings contributed quite a bit. But I certainly don’t object to it - particularly, if it is used in its "Haynesian" context of pursuing historical accuracy, to the best of our ability. I think, though, that HIP - Historically Informed (or better still - to quote Bruce Haynes again, Historically Inspired) Performance - better reflects what we do in early music.

Related posts

First part of the interview with David Shemer on the performance of early music.

Telemann, Hogwood and the listener/composer/performer relationship

Further reading

Richard Taruskin: Text and Act

Igor Stravinsky: The Poetics of Music

Bruce Haynes: The End of Early Music

When one looks at articles published in music journals (especially during the 1950s), one has a feeling that the affect of music on the human spirit is due only to reasons that are connected to the score or to other factors of the composition. Until the late 1980s very few examine the possibility that listening to music has something to do with the interaction between the general experience of the listener at the moment of listening with other factors such as performance and the score. I have recently bought a CD of Hogwood performing Telemann (after interviewing David Shemer) and it reminded me a distant listening experience which I would like to share.

Byron’s wild musical life

More than ten years ago, when I did my BA in music in the Tel-Aviv University (read my about page) I had quite a wild life. Some of the fines memories of that period are connected to music. The reason that I want to share with you the following private memory is that it raises important general questions concerning how musical memory works (especially after years pass) and what are the roles of the listener, performer and composer in the creation of musical experience.

A personal memory

So here it goes. I had a fight with my parents, with whom I lived at that time, and I spoke about it with a friend of mine. She said that she is renting a flat with her friend and that they have a spare room. The flat was on Shenkin Street, which is one of the coolest places in Tel-Aviv. They offered that I will stay in the flat for as long as I wish without paying anything. Since I was a poor student, this was an offer I could not turn down.

What really happened there

If you are expecting that I will share with you a wild experience that I had with these girls, you are likely to be disappointed. Yet one experience did remain dear to me. I remember that I was sitting in the living room with one of the girls during a very hot day. There was no air condition in the flat and anyone who knows Israel in the summer can understand how hot and humid it can (especially in Tel-Aviv). Our solution was to listen to a CD of Telemann that she owned. The experience was amazing. I cannot remember what music we heard. I just remember that recorders were among the instruments and that the energy that this music had was striking.

It was the first time that I heard Telemann and the experience was nothing less than a revelation. Months later, I bought a CD of Telemann and I was disappointed. It was not the same music. When most people speak about ‘music’ in the context of classical music, they usually mean ‘composition’. I am not sure, but it could very much be that some of the compositions on the CD that I bought and the CD that I have heard first, were the same. It seems to me that the difference had something to do with the performance of Telemann’s compositions (and I am using the word ‘compositions’ and not ‘music’ on purpose).

The reason that I think that it was due to performance, is because that during the last month I bought a CD of Telemann performed by The Academy of Ancient Music, directed by Christopher Hogwood (recorded on the label L’Oseau-Lyre). I acquired the recording after I interviewed David Shemer on the performance of early music. This interview made me curios about some of the performers that he mentions.

Watch this video of the Fourth and final movement (Presto) from Georg Philipp Telemann’s concerto in E minor for recorder, traverso, strings and basso continuo, TWV 52:e1

(Jean-Marc Goujon, traverso; Luis Beduschi, recorder; Ensemble Matheus, conducted by Jean-Christophe Spinosi; Victoires de la Musique Classique; 8 February 2009)

Can’t stop listening

I am listening to this recording again and again and I have no words to describe the pleasure that it gives me. In a sense I have rediscovered Telemann. Or perhaps it is not Telemann that I have experienced again, but the performance of Hogwood. It cannot say for sure whether the recording I heard more than ten years ago was by Hogwood. I will probably never know the answer to this question. Yet, if it was by Hogwood, I would not be surprised. This CD (the one that I just bought) contains a concerto in E minor for Recorder and Flute. The sound seems to me so familiar.

The role of composers and performers

The performance of Hogwood is very energetic, clean and in a sense very modern. This brings me to the thought that what cached my attention might have been Telmann’s music, the sound of historical recorders, the performance practice of The Academy of Ancient Music under Hogwood or the combination of all this. This is why I think that the musical experience is a result of many factures (and not only the acts of composers or performers) that have various degrees of importance. It is never just the ‘genious’ composer or the ‘great’ performer. Yes, they are very important. Yet performance is also about the recording (including the many people who are involved in producing it in and out of the studio) and the moment of listening to the music. 

Share your musical experiences

Is the personal story that I mentioned above, a matter of a reducibale-irrelivant-personal experiences? I admit that research on music, trying to be objective, or at least deal with things that can be easliy measured, finds such stories unimportant. My view on this issue is different. The experiece of music should be examined, I think, not only in the context of musical analysis of the score, but also in that of performance and listening. Are your significant musical experiences connected to important personal memories? Feel free to share them with us by commenting below.

Related Posts

Interview with David Shemer on the performance of Early Music

Artur Schnabel and Schoenberg’s Performance Aesthetics and Practice

Pierrot lunaire, Sprechstimme in video performance

Durrell Bowman wrote to the American Musicological Society List the following:

"It looks like we’re heading for about 60 viable tenure-track positions this year. Based on what I know from previous years, about 65 candidates apply for a typical state-college-type job.  So, let’s assume that 65 is close to the average number of applicants, and let’s also assume that each person applies to 20% of the positions. That suggests 325 people applying for 60 jobs, and 265 people thus not getting positions this year.  Based on DDM and other information, our field must have produced around 130 new Ph.D.s per year for the past forty years, so, cumulatively, there could be more than 1500 Ph.D.s in our field (between, say, 35 and 75 years of age) who have never had tenure-track positions."

This is something to keep in mind when you need to decided whether to study musicology or anything else. It is hard, and in some places like Israel, it is almost impossible. I am very happy that I did my studies in Music. Yet, I admit that it is quite a shame that I am not really doing anything with it during most of the day.

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How to choose a PhD, MA or DMA subject for a thesis

How to become a freelance musicologist

Problem: should I study music in an academic institution?

During my short Post-doc in Berlin (January-February 2008) I visited the Stifung Archiv Der Akademie Der Künst. I saw there interesting things concerning Arnold Schoenberg (concert programs and record sleeves as well as some items from the Stuckenschmidt Nachlass). I bought there a book which was published by the institution titled Artur Schnabel: Musiker Musician, ed. Werner Grünzweig (Hofheim: Wolke Verlag, 2001). 

Only today, I open the book for the first time (it took me one year!). This book contains many interesting items such as writings on Schnabel, writings by Schnabel, letters, various lists and other items that only German musicology is able to collect in such a wonderful manner (and I am only half sarcastic when I say so). 

One of the most interesting items in this book is an article by Claudio Arrau (the pianist, 1903-1991) titled “Artur Schnabel: Servant of the Music”. The article is from 1952, first published in Musical America (p.31). 

The article is interesting in more than one respect. It seems that Arrau is suggesting, what may seem as a contradiction. On the one hand, he claims that “Schnabel completely rejected the nineteenth-century notion of music as a vehicle for self-expression, at the service of the virtuoso for his own self-gratification.” Arrau mentions that Schnabel was not satisfied with the Urtext edition of his time. He conducted research and “corrected” that version. 

Yet his recording and printed editions show that he used flexible tempo when playing. His editions mention tempo fluctuations that were not originally printed in the score. These tempo fluctuations were not seen as a contradiction to being faithful to the spirit of the composition. On the contrary, music was seen (as Arrau argues) as “a living organism with an inner fluctuation and flexibility above and below metronome markings”. 

This view of seeking to understand an objective musical object (or spirit, if you like) while expressing it with vitality of an “organism” was also the performance aesthetics of Arnold Schoenberg, a contemporary and friend of Schnabel.   

On the one hand, on 24 August 1909 he wrote a letter to Busoni criticizing the latter’s transcription of Schoenberg’s Op. 11 No. 2. Trying to understand why Busoni had decided to create his version of this piece, a matter that seemed to irritate Schoenberg, he enquired of Busoni: ‘I would like to ask you if you have perhaps taken too slow a tempo. That could make a great difference. Or too little rubato. I never stay in time! Never in tempo!’ (Ferruccio Busoni, Selected Letters, trans. and ed. Antony Beaumont (London, Boston: Faber and Faber, 1987), p. 395.) Here Schoenberg admitted that his approach to performance transcended his own score indications. 

On the other hand in 1912 Schoenberg cited Mahler saying: ‘I consider it my greatest service that I force the musicians to play [spielen] exactly what is in the notes’. (Schoenberg, Style and Idea, ‘Gustav Mahler‘, 464-5.) In the preface to the first edition (1914) of Pierrot lunaire, Op. 21 Schoenberg argued quite clearly that actions originating with the interpreter, which are not included in the score, have a negative effect. 

For Schoenberg and Schnabel, therefore, extensive tempo fluctuations that go beyond the score indications, was not contradictory to being a servant of the composer’s intentions. In 1912 Schoenberg claimed that playing the right notes results in the performer’s participation in ‘the spirit of the music’. (Schoenberg, Style and Idea, ‘Gustav Mahler’, 464-465.) A work of art which is a spiritual entity demands spontaneity in performance.

Pianist Arthur Schnabel Home Movie 1937

Artur Schnabel plays Beethoven Sonata #32 in C min Op. 111

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On fear: Schoenberg, Stravinsky and the Israeli music scene

Pierrot lunaire, Sprechstimme in video performance

How to choose a PhD, MA or DMA subject for a thesis

David Shemer is one of the most importrant figuers in the Israeli early music scene. He graduated in theory, conducting and harpsichord at the Jerusalem Academy of Music. He holds a DMA (Doctor of Musical Arts) from the State University of New York at Stony Brook . He plays the Harpsichord and conducts. He is the founder of the Jerusalem Baroque Orchestra. Shemer is a teacher at the Jerusalem Academy of Music.

I would like to thank David Shemer for agreeing to be interviewed for my blog. Note that you will find here only the first part of the interview (which is still in progress). So if you wish to ask David Shemer questions, you may add them as comments (in the form below), and they might be included in this interview. I have included here several videos that might help the reader understand and appreciate whom Shemer is speaking about.

Lute Virtuoso Paul Odette - 1984 SOUNDBOARD TV Series DVD

BAROKKANERNE & KATI DEBRETZENI play CORELLI

Rameau - Motet, In convertendo, William Christie, Les Arts Florissants

Here the interview continues: Interview with David Shemer - The Performance of Early Music - Part II

Related posts

Telemann, Hogwood and the listener/composer/performer relationship

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