The Argument

That is to say, "argument" in the sense of "summary," "gist," "précis," "synopsis". OK, first of all, why "Whole Note Rest?" I spent more than a few hours searching for the perfect title for my blog, and discovered that...er, they've all been taken. I thought of a few titles that sounded variously: bossy ("Try Listening"); literary ("Brandy of the Damned" -- Shaw's definition of music in "Man and Superman"); self-aggrandizing ("Tharp on Music"); paradoxical ("The Listening Voice"); overly personal and in-jokey ("Or Better Still, Silence"); and excessively whimsical ("Wake Up and Smell the Music"). Alright, there are probably worse blog titles out there. But still...

I needed a title that would suggest the perspectives of both a performer and a listener, since I am emphatically both, and both points of view inform my outlook on music. "Whole Note Rest" came to me, like many of what seem (at least at the time) to be my best ideas, while I was running around the lake in the Parque 3 de Febrero near my home in the Palermo neighborhood in Buenos Aires.

At the simplest level, "Whole Note Rest" encapsulates a situation in which a singer does some of his most intense listening: during the introduction to a song or aria, or during the orchestral interludes and vocal interjections or arias of one's fellow artists in an opera or oratorio. Well, one hopes that we listen, rather than just waiting to sing! Many of my colleagues claim not to have much interest in music apart from their performing activities, but I was a music nut long before I became a singer, and I've managed to keep my love of listening alive during my career. So "Whole Note Rest" is that place for me that encompasses both doing and listening, or the alternation of the two.

A rest may also come in the form of a gran pausa, a silence that follows the music and is part of it, as it is part of the music that follows. So the title also suggests that place of silence, still part of the process of music, which gives punctuation and contrast to the notes and phrases sounded: it may fill us with awe or make us nervous, it may provoke annoying/amusing situations if someone in the audience starts to applaud in the "wrong place" or if a performer (usually a trombone or a tenor) doesn't cut off, or it may stand for the silence out of which all music emerges and to which all sound returns. Maybe that's a good starting place for thinking about music, even if putting it into words is still a slippery endeavor. (Steve Martin: "Talking about music is like dancing about architecture.")

Hey,"Dancing About Architecture" -- what a great title for a blog. Rats, already taken, several times! Anyway, welcome to my blog. For my British friends, a whole note rest is what you call a "semibreve rest," but I'm not going there! And for any fastidious types out there who prefer "whole rest" and find the phrase redundant with that extra word "note," I send you a big raspberry! Merry Christmas!