Michael James Oberhauser
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What is Art, part 2

12/8/2012

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I got some great responses to this post, so I thought I'd summarize the answers I got before posting my own:

1.) What do you want art to do?

Your answers: Fill my mind, challenge, change us and make us more aware of ourselves, one another, and the world.

My answer was nearly identical to Molly's answer of "I want art to invite me to think or to feel. " She used invite, when I just said make. Strong word choice.

2.) What do you think art is to the common American/Australian (or whomever else)?

Your Answers:
Misunderstood, under appreciated, as entertainment, weird, not important, ornamental, decorative.

I agree with all of you on all those points. My specific answer was that the common American sees art as entertainment or decoration, but often also art events are things you attend so you can be seen. How many people attend the Met's opening night gala every year who care absolutely nothing about opera? They just want to wear their glamorous borrowed clothing and jewelry and be photographed looking cultured and just as cool as all of the other glamorous people there.

3.) What do you want art to be for the common American/Australian (or whomever else)?

Your answers: Exciting, invigorating, fun, cool, magic, something that makes the common American more empathetic. Molly said "I want art to be for the common American what it is for me." Another friend said that he didn't care about what art was to the common American.

That's an interesting batch of answers. I'm particularly drawn to a few points there: Invigorating, magic, empathetic.

Molly's point is interesting - it would be great if everyone thought art was as wonderful as we artists do, but I think we need some sort of a gradient amount of interest. This is going to sound a little selfish, but we need some people who are a sort of culture or taste expert. If everyone was equally excited by art, that might make all of the time and effort put in by dedicated artists seem just as meaningful as the casual artist. Not that the casual artist doesn't produce meaningful work: It's a tricky subject. Many of my friends and I have one, two, or three degrees in our field, and we've spent countless hours of practice and study fine-tuning what we do. Do you get what I mean?

The friend who doesn't care about what art is to the common American: that's a dangerous viewpoint. I think the common American should be able to enjoy art. I understand not wanting to "dumb down" art for the masses, and I wouldn't expect everybody to want to do that. However, we as artists all have an audience. If we're Richard Wagner, it's going to be a giant group of devoted followers who will seek out our art. If we're John Williams, our audience won't be there for us, but will generally enjoy our work. Heck, if we're Johannes Brahms, our audience will mostly be just Clara Schumann and a few other close friends. That doesn't make one piece of art more worthwhile than another - all are needed.

My answer: People should have easier access to free, cheap, or affordable art that will make them think and feel. Everyone has different levels at which they want to be challenged. Not everyone will want to listen to Shostakovich in the afternoon. Sometimes even I don't, and Robyn is as much as I want to be challenged that day. Either way, I should have access to the oppportunities that I want. The internet is helping greatly with that, but nothing beats a live performance, especially when it comes to my next point: I want the common American to be able to experience art as a community-builder. There's such a great feeling when you leave a good concert or other performance and other people feel the way you do. I wanted to dance and make friends with everybody after seeing Tune-Yards or Yeasayer in concert. I wanted to have deep, philosophical conversation after seeing Mahler 2 in concert. I wanted to sit down with everybody and make sure everyone felt welcome in our audience community after seeing Peter Grimes. This goes back to thinking and feeling: it's great stuff. It's a powerful drug. I think, for the right person, it has the power to change opinions.

4.) Why are you an artist?

Your answers basically boiled down to "I wouldn't know what else to do" and "that's the best way for me to express myself." Molly had an interesting point with it's fun, I enjoy the social aspect, and I like the attention. I hadn't thought of those last three, and I think they're perfectly valid.

My answer: I want to know myself, connect with my community, make people feel, and make people think. Even if I only ever manage to entertain, I'm happy with that. There's value in entertainment. I would hope to be able to do more than that and really make people think and feel more complex things, but any way I can help bring people together would be a success in my book.

Thank you, everybody, for your input. I love talking about this stuff, and you've all helped to make this topic way more interesting!
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Resolutions

1/1/2012

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The theme of my resolutions this year: No excuses.

I will create more. Since that in itself is a pretty awful resolution, here's how I'm going to quantify it:
-I will spend at least 10 minutes at least every other day writing music, searching for/writing text, or doing other work that pertains to advancing my career.
-I will not listen to music, check my email, get on Facebook, get on Twitter, or anything else like that unless I have already done this work. Eating dinner first is fine, and I can listen to music while I'm eating, but none of those websites will be on.
-If I need to, I will turn on my old desktop before I change out of my work clothes to entice me to work right away. (This is one time when it would be nice to have Finale on my laptop...)

I will take better care of myself. I still don't know exactly how I'm going to measure this one. Once I figure that out, I'll work on sticking to it.

I might have more resolutions on the way as I think of them. 2012 might be the year of rolling resolutions. Always, though: no excuses.
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Something I thought about today

6/13/2011

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I was thinking today about where my time goes, and how that's changed over the years...

Grade school: 
Getting better at everything: 50%
Having fun: 50%

High School:
Getting better at everything: 50%
Figuring out what I enjoy: 20%
Figuring out what I'm good at: 15%
Having fun: 15%

College:
Getting better at everything: 10% (liberal arts school)
Figuring out what I enjoy: 10%
Figuring out what I'm good at: 30%
Getting better at what I enjoy: 20%
Getting better at what I'm good at: 20%
Having fun: 10%

Grad School:
Getting better at what I enjoy: 10%
Getting better at what I'm good at: 70%
Working on places I need improvement: 10%
Having fun: 10%

The real world:
Making money: 50%
Trying to make money out of what I enjoy and what I'm good at: 40%
Having fun: 10%

My soul-searching, self-finding, and self-improvement pretty much stopped after I got out of school. Right now I feel like I'm mostly coasting on everything I've learned up to this point, and spending most of my time just trying to get by. I feel like I haven't grown nearly as fast these past two years as I did any year before. I need to find a way to fit some self-growth in my life.
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What is opera?

5/30/2011

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Two posts in one day? That's MADNESS!

Anyway, I recently ran across this blog post, and it brought up some questions in my mind:

Here's the post

That'll open in a new window, so keep it open to reference back and forth :)

Issue #1: "Operas are usually performed in an opera house or concert hall with a live orchestra." This is the norm, but what if it's not? What about accompaniment just by a piano, in, say, an art gallery or outdoor ampitheater?


Issue #2: Amplification. Again, what the blog post brings up is the norm, but what if I want my opera to be accompanied by electric guitar or electric violin, or by computer generated sounds? Also, what about musicals like The Fantasticks? That'd be just plain odd if it were amplified. (unless it were in a large space, but why would you do that show in a large space?)

Issue #3: "Operatic voices tend to focus sound from the throat." That seems to go contrary to most of what I've been taught about singing. My teachers have always told me to get my throat out of the way and get the sound more in my head. Vocal pedagogy friends, help me out here.

Issue #4: "In musical theatre, you could usually remove all the songs and still have the story make sense, as the dialogue would outline what is happening in the story." What about Into the Woods? Les Miserables? Phantom of the Opera? The Last Five Years? Spoken dialogue-led musicals are still the norm, but less and less so as time goes on.

Issue #5: "Opera can have dialogue, however 'in opera the dialogue is sung; in musicals the dialogue is spoken' (@frindley)." What about Singspielen? Die Zauberflöte? Carmen? There is plenty of spoken dialogue in plenty of operas.

I know these are just guidelines, but I think they need to be re-evaluated. I'd propose:
1.) Operas tend to not use amplification, while musicals tend to.
2.) The style of singing between the two artforms tend to be different - but there is a spectrum to this with a lot of grey area between.

Those two are almost intact from how Opera Australia presented them.  I would actually throw out their #3 entirely, about spoken vs. sung text. I would add my own point, though:

3.) The style of composition between the two artforms tends to be different. Again, there is a spectrum here, from, say, ABBA's Mamma Mia! to perhaps something like Schönberg's Erwartung. There's a lot of grey area in the middle of this one, too, where it becomes difficult to classify such pieces as A Little Night Music, Candide, and Die Fledermaus. 

Those are just a few of my thoughts... what are yours?

As I was finishing this post, I ran across my friend Steve Spotswood's article about the definition of theatre: http://www.stephenspotswood.com/?p=134
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