Trusting the ensemble Charles Hazlewood
I am a conductor and I’m here today to
talk to you about trust my job depends
upon it there has to be between me and
the orchestra an unshakable bond of
trust born out of mutual respect through
which we can spin a musical narrative
that we all believe in now in the old
days conducting music making was less
about trust and more frankly about
coercion up tune around about the second
world war conductors were invariably
dictators these tyrannical figures who
would rehearse not just the orchestra as
a whole but individuals within it within
an inch of their lives and I’m happy to
say now that the world’s moved on musics
moved on with it we now have a more
democratic view and way of making music
a two-way street as the conductor have
to come to the rehearsal with a
cast-iron sense of the outer
architecture of that music within which
there is then immense personal freedom
for the members of the orchestra to
shine for myself of course I have to
completely trust my body language that’s
all I have at the point-of-sale it’s
silent gesture
I can hardly bark out instructions while
we’re playing
ladies and gentlemen the Scottish
ensemble
so in order for this to work obviously I
have got to be in a position of trust I
have to trust the orchestra and even
more crucially I have to trust myself
think about it when you’re in a position
of not trusting what do you do you
overcompensate and in my game that means
you over gesticulate you end up like
some kind of rabid windmill and the
bigger your gesture gets the more
ill-defined blurry and frankly useless
it is to the orchestra you become a
figure of fun there’s no trust anymore
only ridicule and I remember at the
beginning of my career again and again
these dismal outings with orchestras I
would be going completely insane on the
podium trying to engender a small-scale
crescendo really just a little upsurge
in volume bugger me they wouldn’t give
it to me I spent a lot of time in those
early as weeping silently in dressing
rooms and how few tiles seemed the words
the words of advice to me from the great
british veteran conductor Sir Colin
Davis who said conducting Charles is
like holding a small bird in your hand
if you hold it too tightly you crush it
if you order too loosely it flies away I
have to say in those days I couldn’t
really even find the bird now a
fundamental and really viscerally
important experience for me in terms of
music has been my adventures in South
Africa the most dizzyingly musical
country on the planet in my view but a
country which through its musical
culture has taught me one fundamental
lesson that through music making can
come deep levels of fundamental
life-giving trust back in 2000 had the
opportunity to go to South Africa to
form a new opera company so I went out
there and I auditioned mainly in rural
Township locations right around the
country at about 2,000 singers and
pulled together a company of 40 of the
most jaw-droppingly amazing young
performers the majority of whom were
black but there were a handful of white
performers now it emerged early on in
the first rehearsal period that one of
those white performers had in his
previous incarnation been a member of
the south african police force and in
the last years of the old regime he
would routinely be detailed to go into
the township to aggress the community
you can imagine what this knowledge did
to the temperature in the room the
general atmosphere let’s be under no
illusions in South Africa the
relationship most devoid of trust is
that between a white policeman and the
community so how do we recover from that
ladies and gentlemen simply through
singing we sang we sang we sang and
amazingly new trust grew and indeed
friendship blossomed and that showed me
such a fundamental truth that music
making and other forms of creativity can
so often go to places where mere words
cannot so we got some shows off the
ground we started touring them
internationally one of them was Carmen
we then thought we’d make a movie of
Carmen which we recorded and shot inside
on location in the township outside cape
town called Khayelitsha the piece was
sung entirely in Plaza which is a
beautifully musical language if you
don’t know it it’s called Oh Carmen of
Kyle each are literally carmen of
Khayelitsha when I play with tiny clip
of it now for no other reason than to
give you proof positive that there is
nothing tiny about South African music
making
Hey
something which I find utterly
enchanting about South African music
making is that it’s so free you know
South Africans just make music really
freely and I think in no small way
that’s due to one fundamental fact they
don’t they’re not bound to a system of
notation they don’t read music they
trust their ears you can teach a bunch
of South Africans a tune in about five
seconds flat and then it’s if by magic
they will spontaneously improvise a load
of harmony around that tune because they
can now those of us that live in the
West if I can use that term I think have
a much more hidebound attitude or sense
of music that somehow it’s all about
skill and systems therefore it’s the
exclusive preserve of an elite talented
body and yet ladies and gentlemen every
single one of us on this planet probably
engages with music on a daily basis and
if I can broaden this out for a second
I’m willing to bet that every single one
of you sitting in this room would be
happy to speak with acuity with total
confidence about movies probably about
literature but how many of you would be
able to make a confident assertion about
a piece of classical music why is this
and what I want to say to you now is I
just urging you to kind of get over this
its supreme lack of self confidence to
take the plunge to believe that you can
trust your ears you can hear some of the
fundamental muscle tissue fiber DNA what
makes a great piece of music great I’ve
got a little experiment but I want to
try with you did you know that Ted is a
tune very simple tune based on three
notes te D now hang on a minute I know
you’re gonna say to me t doesn’t exist
in music well ladies and gentlemen
there’s a time-honored system which
composers have been using for hundreds
of years which proves actually that it
does if I sing you a musical scale
ABCD efg and I just carry on with the
next set of letters in the alphabet same
scale h i j k l m n o p q r s t there
you got TC it’s the same as f in music
so t is f so t ee d is the same as f ee
d now that piece of music that we played
the start of this session had enshrined
at its heart the theme which is Ted have
listened
you hear it or do I smell some doubt in
the room okay we’ll play for you again
now and we’re gonna highlight we’re
gonna poke out the te D okay if you
pardon the expression oh my goodness me
there it was loud and clear Shirley I
think we should make this even more
explicit they’ve done it’s nearly time
for tea what do you reckon you need to
sing for your tea I think we need to
sing for our tea we’re going to sing
those three wonderful notes te D would
never go for me yeah you sound a bit
more like cows really than than human
being so we try that one again and look
if you’re adventurous you got the art of
TD once more with them
there I am like a bloody windmill again
you see now we’re gonna put that in the
context of the music okay the music will
start and then and a signal from me you
will sing that
I think it wasn’t wasn’t a bad debut for
the Ted choir not a bad debut at all now
there’s a project that I’m initiating at
the moment that I’m very excited about I
wanted to share with you because it is
all about changing perceptions and
indeed building a new level of trust the
youngest of my children was born with
cerebral palsy which is you can imagine
if you don’t have an experience of it
yourself is quite a big thing to take on
board but the great gift that my
gorgeous daughter has given me aside
from her very existence is that it’s
opened my eyes to a whole stretch of the
community that was hidden to hidden the
community of disabled people and Pharma
start looking at the Paralympics in
thinking how incredible how technology
has been harnessed to prove beyond doubt
that disability is no barrier to the
highest levels of sporting achievement
of course is a grimmer side to that
truth which is that it’s actually taken
decades for the world at large to come
to a position of trust to really believe
that disability and sports can go
together in a convincing an interesting
fashion so I find myself asking where is
music in all of this you can’t tell me
that there aren’t millions of disabled
people in the UK alone with massive
musical potential so decided to create a
platform for that potential it’s going
to be Britain’s first ever national
disabled Orchestra it’s called
para Orchestra I want to show you a clip
now of the very first improvisation
session that we had was a really
extraordinary moment just me and for
astonishingly gifted disabled musicians
in a normally when you improvise an idea
at all the time around the world there’s
this initial period of kind of horror
like everyone’s to fright to throw their
hat into the ring an awful pregnant
silence and then suddenly as if by magic
bang they’re all in there it’s complete
bedlam you can’t hear anything no one’s
listening no one’s trusting no one’s
kind of responding to each other now in
this room with these four disabled
musicians within five minutes there was
a rapt listening a rapt response and
some really insanely beautiful music
my name is Nicolas McAfee I’m 22 and I’m
a left-handed pianist and I was born
without my left hand right hand I do
that one again when I’m making music I
feel like a pilot in the carpet flying
aeroplanes I become alive
I would rather be able to play an
instrument again than walk there’s so
much joy and things I could get from
playing an instrument and performing
yeah it’s um
removed some of the paralysis
I only wish that some of those musicians
were here with us today’s you could see
it firsthand how utterly extraordinary
they are peril or kissers the name of
that project if any of you thinks you
want to help me in any way to achieve
what is a fairly impossible implausible
dream still at this point please let me
know now a parting shot comes courtesy
of the great Joseph Haydn wonderful
Austrian composer of the second half of
the 18th century spent the bulk of his
life in the employ of Prince Nikolaos
Esterhazy along with his orchestra
now this prince loved his music he also
loved the country castle that he tended
to reside in most of the time which was
just on the austro-hungarian border
place called Esterhazy a long way from
the big city of Vienna
and one day early in 1772 the prince
decreed that the musicians families the
orchestral musicians families were no
longer welcome in the castle they were
not allowed to stay there anymore they
had to be returned to Vienna as I say an
unfeasibly long way away in those days
you can imagine the musicians were
disconsolate Hyden demonstrated with the
prince but to no avail so given the
prince loved his music I didn’t thought
he’d write a symphony to make the point
I’m going to play just a very tail end
of this symphony now and you’ll see the
orchestra in a kind of sullen revolt and
please let’s say the Prince did take the
tip from the orchestral performance the
musicians were reunited with their
families but I think it sums up my talk
rather well this that where there is
trust
there is music by extension life where
there is no trust the music quite simply
withers away
you