The Universality of Music and Musicians (or Lack Thereof)

Musicians are the same everywhere. There were four of us in Thomasz' cabin. A Canadian, a Pole, and two Argentinians. Four musicians hanging out after the gig with a bottle of J&B (and some O'Doul's pseudo-beer for me).

Hugo was asking Mario something in Spanish; he was searching for an English term.

“Homeless,” said Mario.

“Oh jes, 'homeless'. So. Hey, I have a joke for jou-all,” said Hugo. I had a feeling he just revealed the punchline, though.

“What do you call a musician without a girlfriend?”

“Homeless?” we replied. Ha-ha. Heh. We were all familiar with the joke.

Of course, this led to more musician jokes. Like, what's the definition of an optimist? A trombone player with a cell phone! Ha ha ha. Or, how do you get a guitar player to turn down? Put some music in front of him! He he he he...

We all knew the same jokes. I guess musical humour is as universal as music itself. Unfortunately.

Off the stand language isn't much of an issue. We manage to tell jokes and enjoy each others' company. But on the stand, under fire, it's another story. Communicating instructions to a multicultural orchestra is a nightmare for the musical director/conductor. Some of the boys have a grasp of English that could be described as rudimentary, at best.

When things don't go exactly as planned in a show you sometimes have to make adjustments on the fly. If a singer comes in at the wrong time, for example, you might have to jump immediately to another part of the music.

In written music, the different sections of the score are labeled with letters. 'A' would be the beginning of the first chorus, 'B' the first bridge, and so on down through the letters. A soli section, for example, might start at the letter 'I'.

But alphabetic letters don't sound the same in different languages. A letter that sounds like 'ay' might be the letter 'a' in one language, and 'e' in another. 'Ee' is often (usually) the letter 'i' in other languages.

Confusion results when the conductor calls out a letter to a band made up of Spanish, English, Polish and Scottish speakers. We all jump to different locations in the score causing immediate cacaphony and leaving nobody with any idea of where we are supposed to be in the music.

Actually, any instructions are likely to cause confusion, and result in a 'train wreck' (the universal musical term for a serious musical conflict) including the instructions given even before we start, such as, “Vamp the first four bars and then play once through letter 'a' and immediately jump to 'e'”. Directions of this or any kind are very likely to be misinterpreted.

“Vamp? Vat ees thees 'vamp'?”

This leaves our musical director, Simon, in a constant state of dread. I've noticed he's starting to develop a nervous tick affecting the right side of his mouth.

In the old days musical directions were given in one language – Italian. Musicians know the standard Italian terms for the top of the chart (da capo), the final ending (coda), and the various directives for tempo changes, volume and phrasing (accelerando, diminuendo, staccato, legato, meno moso, etc.).

But a lot of English has crept into musical direction, especially in North America. And this can be alien to musicians trained in other parts of the world where Italian is still the official language of written music. "medium bounce", "straight 1/8ths", "fonky mama", "swamp groove" etc. mean nothing to your average classically-trained Pole. (OK. I made up "fonky mama", I think...).

According to Simon, the spoken language problem is the one really big problem we have in the orchestra.

There are so many changes taking place in the orchestra these days that this problem may just be temporary. The two Argentinians are leaving, as is the Scot and one of the Poles. If they are replaced with players with a reasonable command of English, the problem will simply evaporate.

But in this orchestra you never know...