Spotlight on Ward Swingle
Identifieur interne : 001A54 ( Istex/Corpus ); précédent : 001A53; suivant : 001A55Spotlight on Ward Swingle
Auteurs : Ella Wilcox ; Ward SwingleSource :
- Music Educators Journal [ 0027-4321 ] ; 1989-11.
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- Teeft :
Abstract
In June, Ward Swingle granted MEJ an interview, upon which this article is based. Born in Mobile, Alabama, Swingle grew up surrounded by the sounds of jazz and big bands. He was educated at the Cincinnati Conservatory of Music and later studied piano with Walter Gieseking. His Parisian connections led him in the 1960s to found the Swingle Singers, a group of eight professional musicians who developed a unique performance style that blended elements of Baroque and Classical music with jazz and scat singing. When the group disbanded in 1973, Swingle formed a London-based organization, the New Swingle Singers. Although he no longer tours with the group, he currently works with them as music adviser and arranger. The group's repertoire has expanded to include avant-garde works and pieces composed especially for the ensemble. Since 1984, Swingle has made his home in New Jersey, where he has established a publishing company, Swingle Music. His innovative choral techniques have led him to travel extensively while working with such groups as the Stockholm and Netherlands Chamber Choirs, the Sydney Philharmonic Motet Choir, community choirs in Israel, and the BBC Northern Singers in Manchester, England.
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DOI: 10.2307/3400926
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ISTEX:FBFD5081833FF128319601939D609AF129241874Le document en format XML
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He will serve as conductor of the International Honors Chorus in a program with the National High School Honors Orchestra at the Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts on Sunday afternoon, April 1, 1990, at the MENC National Biennial In-Service Conference.</aff></contrib></contrib-group><pub-date pub-type="ppub"><month>11</month><year>1989</year></pub-date><volume>76</volume><issue>3</issue><fpage>47</fpage><lpage>51</lpage><abstract><p>In June, Ward Swingle granted MEJ an interview, upon which this article is based. Born in Mobile, Alabama, Swingle grew up surrounded by the sounds of jazz and big bands. He was educated at the Cincinnati Conservatory of Music and later studied piano with Walter Gieseking. His Parisian connections led him in the 1960s to found the Swingle Singers, a group of eight professional musicians who developed a unique performance style that blended elements of Baroque and Classical music with jazz and scat singing. When the group disbanded in 1973, Swingle formed a London-based organization, the New Swingle Singers. Although he no longer tours with the group, he currently works with them as music adviser and arranger. The group's repertoire has expanded to include avant-garde works and pieces composed especially for the ensemble.</p><p>Since 1984, Swingle has made his home in New Jersey, where he has established a publishing company, Swingle Music. His innovative choral techniques have led him to travel extensively while working with such groups as the Stockholm and Netherlands Chamber Choirs, the Sydney Philharmonic Motet Choir, community choirs in Israel, and the BBC Northern Singers in Manchester, England.</p></abstract><custom-meta-wrap><custom-meta xlink:type="simple"><meta-name>sagemeta-type</meta-name><meta-value>Journal Article</meta-value></custom-meta><custom-meta xlink:type="simple"><meta-name>search-text</meta-name><meta-value> Ward Swingle is an internationally noted conductor and arranger of choral music. He will serve as conductor of the International Honors Chorus in a program with the National High School Honors Orchestra at the Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts on Sunday afternoon, April 1, 1990, at the MENC National Biennial In-Service Conference. SPOTLIGHT ON Ward Swingle by Ella Wilcox In June, Ward Swingle granted MEJ an interview, upon which this article is based. Born in Mobile, Alabama, Swingle grew up surrounded by the sounds of jazz and big bands. He was educated at the Cincinnati Conservatory of Music and later studied piano with Walter Gieseking. His Parisian connections led him in the 1960s to found the Swingle Singers, a group of eight professional musicians who developed a unique performance style that blended elements of Baroque and Classical music with jazz and scat singing. When the group disbanded in 1973, Swingle formed a London-based organization, the New Swingle Singers. Although he no longer tours with the group, he currently works with them as music adviser and arranger. The group's repertoire has expanded to include avant-garde works and pieces composed especially for the ensemble. Since 1984, Swingle has made his home in New Jersey, where he has established a publishing company, Swingle Music. His innovative choral techniques have led him to travel extensively while working with such groups as the Stockholm and Netherlands Chamber Choirs, the Sydney Philharmonic Motet Choir, community choirs in Israel, and the BBC Northern Singers in Manchester, England. Lr. Swingle, you have been active in the music world for roughly forty-five years. What influenced you to spend your life making music? There were many influences, but the greatest was my father. Daddy was from Davenport, Iowa, and Mother, from upstate New York. Hard times during the Great Depression prevented my father from becoming a musician. Although he was an electrician with a small contracting business, he played the trumpet. One of the great experiences of his life was seeing jazz cornetist Bix Beiderbecke perform. Beiderbecke, also from Davenport, was Daddy's musical idol. When we were children, my father would go to the piano and say to me, my brother Ira, and my sister Nina, “This is an A—remember it if you want to go to the movies on Saturday.” (The prospect of an afternoon at the theater was a great motivator!) He taught us to understand and remember sound; for example, he would ask the three of us to sing a C-major triad without a pitch source. Through this training, we developed what musicologists call absolute or “perfect” pitch. He had pedagogical ideas that worked, although he was not trained as a teacher. Our home was always filled with music. When I was six, Ira was seven, and Nina, nine, we started piano lessons with Annie Havens, a neighbor who was a fine teacher. We children also listened to the radio, which was in its infancy at the time. My father insisted that we listen to, play, and sing popular music as well as classical. I think it's unwise to try to prevent young people from listening to the music of their time. They will find ways to hear it on the sly if it's not done openly. We would often perform Gilbert and Sullivan numbers at home and record our performances. We sang for many community groups—the Eastern Star, the Masons—and became extremely eclectic. My father was demanding (sometimes I feared him and his great expectations of us) but he, more than any other person, gave us our music background. I would have liked to have been able to thank him for what he gave us—he died while I was at the conservatory. I understand that you spent part of your adolescence “on the road/9 My “big band” period during high school was something I might not do over if I had to do it all again. My brother, sister, and I were hired by Ted Fio Rito to perform in his band. I played saxophone, my brother played trumpet, and Nina sang—Ted got quite a bit for his investment. We listened to and imitated the sounds of the Andrews Sisters and the Mills Brothers. The Ted Fio Rito band played all over the United States, appeared in several movies, and performed at Roseland in New York and often at military bases. The band gave us a chance to travel— perhaps not the best thing to do before finishing high school. That period of our lives left some scars; we might have been wiser to have stayed home and completed our educations. We had had a strict upbringing, and the destabilizing influences of the performing musician's existence weren't easy for us. As it was, I took my high school equivalency examination while preparing for a gig in Cleveland. I hopped on a train to Buffalo to take the standardized test and was back on stage in Cleveland that evening. You must have passed the exam, because you went on to study classical piano at the college level. I left the Fio Rito band to go into the Air Force at age eighteen. The G.I. Bill gave me the chance at an education, and I went to the Cincinnati Conservatory of Music: Without the G.I. Bill, I would have been unable to afford an education of that quality. I finished my bachelor's; then, when my G.I. support ran out, I played in a now-defunct club in Kentucky (where gambling was legal at a time when it wasn't in Ohio!) and went on for my master's in piano. All my piano studies at the conservatory were with Kar-in Dayas, who had come to the United States in the late 1920s and was hired by the conservatory. Her mother was German and her father, a Finn, was a student of Ferruccio Busoni. She knew Walter Giese-king, the celebrated German pianist, and gave me a letter of introduction to him. I studied at Cincinnati from 1947 to 1951. When I started my studies at the conservatory, the bop era was just beginning. Charlie Parker's name was being whispered about; Sarah Vaughan was just coming into popularity. The big band era was dying. We saw the rise of John Coltrane, Miles Davis, and Dizzy Gillespie. It was also at the Cincinnati Conservatory that I met my future wife, Franoise De-morest, a violin student at the time, who was born in France of French and American parents. We started dating, and it was her mother who suggested that we both apply for scholarships to study abroad. We both were awarded them, and left together on the Liberte, a French vessel bound for Paris. We be- usic offers rewards that cannot be measured monetarily, something that is invisible on the “bottom line.” lieved that the simultaneous award was fate—we were destined for each other—and I proposed to Frangoise on the ship on the way over. We were married in Paris at the American Church (located on the Quai d'Orsay) between the first and second years of our study in France. What sort of music training did you receive in France? Thanks to Karin Dayas's letter of introduction, I was able to study piano with Walter Gieseking, an exceptionally kind and gentle man. Gieseking was teaching in Saarbrii-ken (now in West Ger iny)—a most useful location siifee it was inside the French border at the time and my scholarship required me to study in France. He was a splendid teacher, endowed with great patience for all his students, regardless of their musical gifts. As far as I know, he had no particular method. He taught group lessons, so each student could benefit from what was being taught to the others. One cold day, Gieseking came into a small school where we students were huddled around the single radiator trying to warm our hands. He shook the snow off his coat, sat down at the piano, and treated us to a Scarlatti piece. I recall my total delight at hearing him play … every note a pearl. He was best known for his work with the music of Debussy and Ravel, but he taught us The Well-Tempered Clavier and Beethoven with equal ardor. Gieseking was also an exceptional linguist: He spoke most of the European languages and amused himself while on tour by seeing how far he could get with the language of whatever country he was visiting, and he visited many. In spite of a strict, classical education, you went on to form the Swingle Singers, a group that blended styles of music born centuries apart. What provided the impetus to do this? My early training in Alabama and my conservatory education lea me to explore both worlds—jazz and classical music—without judging which was better. These two worlds came together in the sound production of the Swingle Singers, which evolved from the idea that the voice was an instrument, and it could do many things. My work was a fusion of jazz and classical ideas—an exploration of the possibilities of the human voice. Some of your critics say it's sacrilege to “mess with Bach.” Many people, including jazz performers, go to Bach when they want to experiment—he is a mountain, and people go to the mountain and scratch around a bit at the base without fear of disturbing it. I first heard Bach performed in the context of the so-called authentic style: Works were played in strict tempo and with very little pedal. Bach wrote long musical lines that are impossible to sing; even his own performers must have improvised on his originals. He often transcribed music from one instrument to another—for example, from the harpsichord to the oboe— placing less importance on the timbre or sound color of a given instrument than on the musical structure. Perhaps in part because he himself was innovative, Bach will survive any treatment anyone gives him. Other composers, particularly those who are less creative and less prolific, may be more fragile than Bach. Did you hope that by “making Bach swing/’ more people would be introduced to the joys of his musk, or was your intention primarily to experiment? Many teachers have used our records to teach about fugues or the structure of a classical work. We certainly experimented; but the French Swingle Singers were basically instrumentalists except for Christianne Legrand (the sister of Michel Legrand). All were extremely talented, were hardworking, and had a superb sense of rhythm. We were trying to realize a specific concept—making the human voice perform as a member of an instrumental ensemble. The English group, the New Swingle Singers, has a somewhat different fo- cus. All the singers for it were voice majors, hand-picked from conservatories, and the music reflects that. I find it fascinating to realize that the choral conductor must be quite a different creature in various circumstances. My French singers were much more emotional and would not hesitate to let me know if they were upset; a comment that a singer was flat might result in a few tears, but we'd hug afterwards and it would blow over. With the English, it is inappropriate to lose your cool or let emotions get the better of you. One must be tactful and diplomatic in ail circumstances, but have different expectations based on the various personalities and capacities of the singers. Americans are rather a blend of French forthrightness and English reticence. They will often express opinions, but not in a hostile manner. A conductor must learn to adapt to the various circumstances in which he or she must work. There's always a challenge! SPOTLIGHT ON WARD SWINGLE Speaking of adaptability, in writing about your work, one critic said, “Great music seems to possess a remarkable ability to adapt to all ages and styles of play, and to survive and gain in stature/9 This could also apply to musicians and, in particular, to music educators Is flexibility one of the secrets of your survival? What are some of your other “survival techniques?” Variety is a secret of longevity for both musicians and teachers. For long tours, we would prepare and rotate several programs to keep the performances fresh. The native quality of the material you choose keeps singers motivated. A steady income also helps: If the group is working well and has a lot of gigs, performers tend to be happy and busy. Desire to “stay with it” tends to flag if there isn't a lot to do. A good conductor will fill the time with rehearsals and sometimes schedule vacations for the entire group. Performers are human, too, and they should be praised when they do well. After working with Swingle Singers groups for twenty-six years, I can say that the conductor must convey the fact that he or she is proud of the singers and of their accomplishments. On one of your album jackets, there is the statement that jazz really began in the eighteenth century. Could you elaborate on that? Jazz musicians often go to Baroque music for inspiration when creating fusions of styles. I would say jazz and eighteenth-century music have these two things in common: First, the improvisation—Bach was a marvelous im-provisor, and so is any good jazz musician; second, the beat—Ba- roque music has a good, steady tempo, and so does most jazz. How do you get a group of people who are all professional singers-soloists in their own right—to function as a group and Mend their sound? I try to be very careful in auditions. I can now pretty much tell how a person is going to sing, although I never know how well people will get along with each other. The tour schedule of a performing group is often extremely strenuous: We may have to work with the sound crew for an hour before a performance. I also believe a group must work very hard to develop its technique. There is always the problem of missing a girlfriend or boyfriend back home. I make every attempt to leave singers alone outside of the concerts; we all have lives in addition to music. My people must be able to let themselves go—to relax and unwind so they can get back refreshed and on time for the next rehearsal. Your groups have received some impressive recognition; I believe you have won five “Grammy” awards. Yes, and this came as quite a surprise to us. We did not start out with the intention of becoming a commercial success; we simply enjoyed what we were doing immensely, and, apparently, so did many other people. How do you juggle your personal life with the demands of a career in which you must travel frequently? Fve always tried not to go on tour for more than a month at a time, both for my own sake and for the other musicians. I have a very patient wife, who has often played both mother and father to our three children: Kathryn, the oldest, has just received her master's in social work from Columbia University; Elizabeth teaches English in a Parisian bank, making use of her bilingual talents; and Rebecca, the youngest, just finished her first year at Oberlin as a voice major— so perhaps we will get at least one musician out of the lot! Frangoise also takes care of much of the work of running my publishing company. She and I play tennis regularly, and I try to encourage her to come with me whenever she can, since we both enjoy travel. I can only advise unmarried people to choose their mates carefully. Do you have a favorite twentieth-century composer? Whose work today do you find particularly inter- One of my favorites is Luciano Berio, an Italian who wrote Sinfo-nia for our eight solo voices and orchestra (the work was commissioned by the New York Philharmonic and performed with them). He later added a fifth movement, and the work has had more than two hundred performances to date. His instrumental music is most interesting, as is that of Pierre Bou-lez, who is brilliant. I am also intrigued by the music of George Crumb, John Cage, and Charles Ives, whose work will prevail after many other composers have been forgotten. Some of their works frighten people a bit: It has been more than eighty years since Arnold Schoenberg began creating dodecaphonic (twelve-tone) music, and even today such pieces must be judiciously placed on a program or the audience will begin to leak out of the performance hall! Per- JJLt behooves us all to stretch ourselves, to strive for the greatest degree of excellence we can attain in any field. haps this movement will not have the lasting impact others have had. Although I enjoy their music less than that of many other composers, I think the minimalists are important: Philip Glass, Steve Reich, and Terry Riley have made their mark. Have you written or edited any publications that music educators might find useful? I currently have about forty arrangements and compositions in my publishing catalog: some of the early Bach, Handel, and Mozart arrangements, a series of madrigals, a group of Christmas carol medleys, and about thirteen a cap-pella arrangements of folk songs and jazz standards. These are available from Swingle Music, RD 2, Box 13A, Thomas Road, Glen Gardner, NJ 08826. You have been working with MENC since you conducted at last year's Northwest Division Conference in February. What are some of the main tenets of your philosophy? The one thing I strive for in music making is excellence—stretching myself as far as I can go. Of course, “excellent” for me would be paltry compared to what Giese-king can do. Teachers must work with individuals, and, as in all aspects of life, they must see how much can be accomplished. I believe in old-fashioned elbow grease: discipline, practicing slowly at first, then faster—it's playing the Hanon exercises over and over that helps one play the piano with skill. This can be boring, but I don't believe in taking shortcuts. It behooves us all to stretch our- selves, to strive for the greatest degree of excellence we clan attain in any field. You have had a chance to work with music educators at some of your workshops and while adtjudkating choral events. What do you think of American musk education? Of all the countries I have visited, the United States is definitely in the forefront in terms of its music programs in schools. I know there are many in the profession who have self-doubts, and one hears complaints from time to time, but we have many superb music education programs in this country. The reason for this is the teacher: I have had occasions to follow school music educators on their rounds, and at the end of the day, I have been exhausted! How they are able to sustain such a level of energy is hard to fathom—music must have miraculous power. The pressures and challenges of the job of making students understand what music is are phenomenal. Such groups as MENC and the American Choral Directors Association, a group with which I have also worked, help the professional educator cope by providing information, standards of excellence, and a way to communicate. How can a music teacher in a small school in Wisconsin be aware of what's going on with a music teacher in a small school in Florida or Alaska? Only through networks such as those provided by these national organizations can people share their best ideas. What would you tell a young musician or teacher who is now beginning a career? Is it worth the effort? Yes, it is. Once you make music, once you learn to feel and think and really comprehend what music is, this knowledge sweeps away all fears of the precarious life of the performing musician or nervousness about the tremendous challenges of teaching. The miracle of music is the main reason we have so many people involved with this art today. I've observed many people who could easily have done other things that were more lucrative or that involved a lesser commitment of time and energy. It must be that music offers rewards that cannot be measured monetarily, something that is invisible on the “bottom line/’ To someone beginning a music or music-teaching career, I would say, “Look very carefully at yourself and your capacities. Get a professional evaluation of your talent. Examine your motivation. Get the best possible training. Look coldly and rationally at the drawbacks of the field. To make the final decision, ask yourself how comfortable you feel as a musician and as a teacher.” Music, like any of the arts, ultimately defies description—and it's a good thing it does, or it wouldn't be music! On the international level, what does the future hold for those of us who believe in music's power? We are seeing a great deal of cultural exchange between former enemy nations—glasnost has had immediate and visible effects in the arts. We in the West can't appreciate how fantastic, say, an Estonian choral group can be until we hear them sing. Much more awaits us. Music can break down barriers, as we often found on tour. Let's hope the spirit of openness will continue, and with it that we will see an increased willingness to learn about other peoples and their ways of expressing themselves through one of the finest manifestations of our humanness. </meta-value></custom-meta></custom-meta-wrap></article-meta></front></article></istex:document></istex:metadataXml><mods version="3.6"><titleInfo lang="en"><title>Spotlight on Ward Swingle</title></titleInfo><titleInfo type="alternative" lang="en" contentType="CDATA"><title>Spotlight on Ward Swingle</title></titleInfo><name type="personal"><namePart type="given">Ella</namePart><namePart type="family">Wilcox</namePart><affiliation>Assistant editor of the MEJ.</affiliation></name><name type="personal"><namePart type="given">Ward</namePart><namePart type="family">Swingle</namePart><affiliation>Internationally noted conductor and arranger of choral music. He will serve as conductor of the International Honors Chorus in a program with the National High School Honors Orchestra at the Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts on Sunday afternoon, April 1, 1990, at the MENC National Biennial In-Service Conference.</affiliation></name><typeOfResource>text</typeOfResource><genre type="research-article" displayLabel="research-article"></genre><originInfo><publisher>SAGE Publications</publisher><place><placeTerm type="text">Sage CA: Los Angeles, CA</placeTerm></place><dateIssued encoding="w3cdtf">1989-11</dateIssued><copyrightDate encoding="w3cdtf">1989</copyrightDate></originInfo><language><languageTerm type="code" authority="iso639-2b">eng</languageTerm><languageTerm type="code" authority="rfc3066">en</languageTerm></language><physicalDescription><internetMediaType>text/html</internetMediaType></physicalDescription><abstract lang="en">In June, Ward Swingle granted MEJ an interview, upon which this article is based. Born in Mobile, Alabama, Swingle grew up surrounded by the sounds of jazz and big bands. He was educated at the Cincinnati Conservatory of Music and later studied piano with Walter Gieseking. His Parisian connections led him in the 1960s to found the Swingle Singers, a group of eight professional musicians who developed a unique performance style that blended elements of Baroque and Classical music with jazz and scat singing. When the group disbanded in 1973, Swingle formed a London-based organization, the New Swingle Singers. Although he no longer tours with the group, he currently works with them as music adviser and arranger. The group's repertoire has expanded to include avant-garde works and pieces composed especially for the ensemble. Since 1984, Swingle has made his home in New Jersey, where he has established a publishing company, Swingle Music. His innovative choral techniques have led him to travel extensively while working with such groups as the Stockholm and Netherlands Chamber Choirs, the Sydney Philharmonic Motet Choir, community choirs in Israel, and the BBC Northern Singers in Manchester, England.</abstract><relatedItem type="host"><titleInfo><title>Music Educators Journal</title></titleInfo><genre type="journal">journal</genre><identifier type="ISSN">0027-4321</identifier><identifier type="eISSN">1945-0087</identifier><identifier type="PublisherID">MEJ</identifier><identifier type="PublisherID-hwp">spmej</identifier><part><date>1989</date><detail type="volume"><caption>vol.</caption><number>76</number></detail><detail type="issue"><caption>no.</caption><number>3</number></detail><extent unit="pages"><start>47</start><end>51</end></extent></part></relatedItem><identifier type="istex">FBFD5081833FF128319601939D609AF129241874</identifier><identifier type="DOI">10.2307/3400926</identifier><identifier type="ArticleID">10.2307_3400926</identifier><recordInfo><recordContentSource>SAGE</recordContentSource></recordInfo></mods></metadata><serie></serie></istex></record>Pour manipuler ce document sous Unix (Dilib)
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