I love Mariachi music. As a boy of 4, when I
first learned how to work the old Philco radio in our living room, I knew
exactly what number to turn the dial to for the Mariachi station and I also knew
which knob to turn to make the music louder, which I liked to do. Among
Superman, The Lone Ranger, The House of Mystery and The Shadow, Mariachi music
was one of my favorites.
I especially loved the trumpet playing and
the sound of thirds or the intensity of that Mariachi three-part harmony. This
was my first contact with the reality that I loved music. This Mariachi trumpet
playing seemed to always be happy, always heroic and always powerful. Living now
in Oaxaca, Mexico, I hear this kind of music daily and I still enjoy it.
As I grew musically through 50+ years of
ensemble experience playing in symphony orchestras and subsequently conducting,
I heard that my beloved Mariachi sound was not always perfect. Rarely were the
trumpets and violins together, balanced or in tune. I still adored Mariachi
music.
Yesterday while returning to my home from the
Zocalo, Oaxaca’s city center, the taxi had Mariachi music playing on the radio.
It took me a few seconds to realize something was wrong; it was absolutely
perfect. The intonation was perfect, the balance was perfect, the attacks
between the trumpets and violins were perfect and even the vibrato, that typical
Mariachi slightly bottom heavy vibrato, was perfectly together. It made me a
little uncomfortable. Obviously, it was an electronic Mariachi band, a very
good electronically synthesized Mariachi band but it was not real.
Immediately, I was reminded of something I
read in the book, Music and Imagination,
by Aaron Copland, which was given to
me in 1952 by a family member. Mr. Copland discussed the somber opening theme
in the basses and cellos of the Shubert Unfinished Symphony. He mentioned that
he had never heard that passage played with perfect intonation and further that
the imperfect intonation, which we normally hear, sounds far more musical and
dramatic than if it was played with perfect intonation.
As a very young, inexperienced and idealistic
musician I was haunted by such a thought coming from such a great master
composer. How was it possible something would sound better ‘out of tune’ than
in tune?
It’s interesting how a listening experience
in a Oaxaca taxi in 2016 could remind me of something I read in 1952, But this
‘perfect in every way’ Mariachi band playing on the radio lacked the charm and
atmosphere of the real bands that played on the street.
We always strive for perfection in our
preparations for the performance of music and many of our greatest players and
ensembles come very close to this goal. Today it’s possible to electronically
create performances of absolute perfection, but we need to remember that it’s
our human individualism that makes music beautiful; we are not programmed
computers, how boring it would be if that were so.
As we work toward achieving perfection, music
requires our hearts, souls, imagination and our individualism to be a piece of
that perfection. Imagination is the essence of an individual.
Oaxaca, Mexico, August 11, 2016 It’s the e
