Download MOZARTBAND – the musical background

MOZARTBAND – the musical background.
THE IDEA…
…hit me the first time I heard Mozart's 12th symphony, the 4th movement played by the
Prague Chamber Orchestra with Charles McKerras. I will never forget that moment:
midsummer in Italy, straw tent, a Walkman, about two dozen Mozart CDs around me. I found
the way his early symphonies were sometimes grooving in a rock'n'roll-like fashion
incredible.
I began to play some allegretto movements on my accordion. It worked surprisingly well. The
Helicon bass on my accordion made it easy for me, after I had developed a new fingering
technique, to make the steady eight-to-the bar bass lines swing. The musette in the treble
section perfectly covers the violin range and provides a broad, orchestra-like sound.
I only listened to Mozart and slowly began to understand his music. Now I was ready to
search for co-musicians. My ambitious goal was to play Mozart with respect for his musical
language and tunes but with all the liberties of form, arrangement, groove, and sound that the
original allows for or maybe even needs.
SETTING UP THE BAND
It was difficult to find the musicians for this kind of crossover project. Over the years, as the
Mozartband slowly grew from a duo to a quintet to the final ten-piece ensemble, we worked
together with over seventy instrumentalists and thirty male and female singers. The lineup has
been final for three years now, consisting of fabulous cats: classical musicians who can also
improvise in the desired style, rock musicians with a deep understanding of Mozart, all of
them wanderers between the styles, influenced by jazz, folk, and ethno music.
CROSSOVER OR MOZART?
Mozart himself adapted many different elements and blended them to form his style.
However, we have hardly seen a successful fusion of classical music and other styles yet.
With Uri Caine or Jacques Loussier, for instance, you always know exactly where classical
music stops and jazz takes over; there is always a line of fraction at the transition from
classical to jazz.
MUSICAL LANGUAGE AND WORLDS OF EMOTION
Any successful crossover project, as the Mozartband, too found out time and again, depends
on an accurate understanding of the musical languages in question, particularly of their
melodic and harmonic characteristics. The small overlap area then gives rise to something that
cannot be pigeonholed, something of its own kind.
I was always fascinated with musicians who created their own musical language, and with the
Alpinkatzen I succeeded in that for the first time. In the process, I noticed an interesting
phenomenon: if two musical styles are merged well enough to be perceivable at the same
time, the associations and moods inherent in the two styles are also perceivable
simultaneously. If these are widely disparate, the listener will be left with a confusing mixture
of seemingly contradictory emotions and images.
TO ANALYZE MOZART'S MUSICAL LANGUAGE…
…I tried to use the progression and pattern system of modern jazz. I had to turn it upside
down, though, because Mozart's roots are not the blues but Bach and Austrian folk music.
Excitement is created not by tensions but appoggiature, the progressions move along the
circle of fifths in the opposite direction, etc.
This jazz viewpoint, however, provides an open, easy approach to Mozart's universe, or at
least part of it, that provides a basis for improvisation as well.
IMPROVISATION AND NOTATION OF THE ORIGINAL
As a musician, I do not perceive the above mentioned emotional worlds of various musical
styles and their contrasts as sharply when I work on the fusion myself. What does become
obvious in a crossover of classical and modern musical styles is a certain amount of freedom
and creativity. The accurate notation of the original allows for maximum musicality in a
composition. Jazz and rock, however, leave more room for the creativity of the interpreting
musician, for improvisation. This is a totally different playing experience associated with the
right hemisphere of the brain (reading music is associated with the left).
If your subconscious has soaked up a melody and the associated chords to the point where the
ear and fingers are ready to leave them at any time and return at any time, you have
fascinating possibilities of controlled ecstasy. This is what jazz and any improvised music is
all about while it has practically disappeared from classical music.
After all, Mozart himself was a divinely gifted improviser, calling "fantasizing" his "favorite
occupation"!
To make room for the creativity of the musicians, Mozart's complex music must be
simplified. In many cases, it is Mozart's roots in folk music that point the way to musically
acceptable reduction.
INSTRUMENTATION, SOUND REINFORCEMENT,
THE MOZARTBAND SOUND
The greatest difference between modern musical styles and Mozart's compositions is the use
of a rhythm section with drums and bass guitar. We wanted to use some of these rhythmic
elements. So, we had to start by amplifying the quiet sounds of the classical instruments
including the strings, bassoon, and accordion. Our vision was to preserve the characteristic
natural sounds of these instruments while integrating the amplified sonic world of rock with
its distorted sounds. We spent a lot of time tweaking the sound design, built our own devices
or had them custom built for us, and found exotic components through the Internet.
Our string instruments (violin and viola) have an important rhythmical function within the
Mozartband, too. We use piezo pickups as well as guitar amps and speakers to amplify the
string instruments. This direct miking gives the bowed string a very percussive tone. With a
slight amount of overdrive, though, the violin can sound like an electric guitar. In fact,
nobody would believe that the solo on "Chi Mai" was played on a violin!
The bassoon was the greatest challenge because it is a very quiet instrument. Using a close-in
microphone, sidechain-triggered feedback eliminator, and custom designed volume
footswitches, the bassoon was finally loud enough, even for solos above a rock groove. The
great agility of the bassoon in all its registers is now perfectly audible and its sound evokes
associations with a baritone saxophone, even a cello or French horn.
The accordion, which I usually play in the three-voice musette registration, embeds the single
violin and viola in a floating ensemble sound. Within the Mozartband, the accordion is an
important mediator between classical and rock sounds.
I modified my Hammond organ such that it always sounds slightly distorted and dirty, a little
like a heavy-metal rhythm guitar.
For the drums, however, we needed to find light, airy sounds and rhythmic patterns that
would support rather than drown out the fast violin licks and subtle phrasing. Therefore, we
often use brushes or soft sticks, and we have two drummers because two drummers together
will swing more gently than one.
For original allegro grooves with no drums, we use a semi-acoustic bass instead of the
electric. A ribbon on the bridge damps the strings, so the bass blends well with the violin and
viola, making up for the lack of a cello. Where slow, sustained bass notes are needed, I play
them on the Helicon bass on the accordion, through a bass amp.
THE CREATIVE APPROACH OF THE MOZARTBAND
On the one hand, we play original Mozart from the scores, swap and modify parts, improvise
over the chords, and change the form. To create other songs, we use a single tune or motif,
compose additional material, add maybe a bass riff, drum groove, bassoon line, or the like
during a session. We do it rather like a rock production, but with more room for
improvisation.
Rehearsals, a band-type "democratic" process, are a rather anarchical forum for discussions of
musical taste. Interestingly, the background of the musicians ("serious" or "jazz") does not
matter any more. The many different musical standpoints and approaches have grown into a
common idea of how this band should interpret Mozart.
RECORDING "SOUL"
One important step in this process was the production of our first CD, "Soul". After almost
two years of hard work and interesting experiences, we are all highly satisfied with the result.
(We threw away the entire work of the first year.)
The question of how to produce the CD was completely undecided for a long time. We ended
up recording almost everything simultaneously. To ensure adequate separation between
tracks, we had to wire all ancillary rooms (at one point, there was music playing in nine
rooms at the same time). Our band is not exactly small and used the console's routing
capability and peripheral equipment to the limit, soundchecks took ages, and then everybody
had to focus simultaneously on Mozart's music some of which is quite difficult to play.
The Mozartband would never have mastered this challenge without the help of Nili who
always put the soup bowl on the table at the right moment. Read more about this aspect in the
second installment entitled "The Mozartband – diet and procreation".