How Itay Talgam creates space through harmony
Happyplaces Stories (video)
Harmony
You see, there is a musical space. Musical space also exists in different layers. You have time, the passing of the time, and you have the acoustical space. And of course, the space created by the elements of the composition. This is mostly a composer’s work, but of course, as a conductor, you should bring it back to life. And so you recreate some imaginary space. This is the same as any performing musician does. A pianist with his piano, a violin player, they all create this musical space. But conducting is something more. You have many people playing at the same time, so there is also the psychological space in which people have to perform. And that’s my primary interest in life, which is about creating a space to enable maximum individual contribution but taking into consideration that the necessary condition is that the outcome is somehow like an orchestra playing together, harmonised. And I say harmonised, not synchronised or in an orderly manner, but harmonised. And harmonised is much more than just playing together.
Platform
Your question was how to do that. I would start with how not to do it. Not to do it by putting road signs, and do not enter signs, and one-way signs, limited speed signs, all of that. So that people lose their creative field of possibility and are directed there. That is certainly not the way to do that. In other words, not to dictate what to do. Another way not to do it is to leave an entirely open space because an open space becomes a void. You’re lost in outer space, and there is nothing to relate to. To interpret the question, what musicians do all the time anyhow is: ‘What kind of platform do you have to put out there for you and the other people involved, that enables enough structure, for people to get on it and to start changing that platform.’ Not just to ride the vehicle, but maybe radically changing it into something else while being able to communicate thanks to the qualities of this platform you put into musical space.
How do you create a platform like that? A platform to enable communication, to enable co-creation, etcetera. My thoughts about it concern, what I called in a kind of populistic way, the ‘dark matter’ of leadership. Of actually leading people because putting out a platform like that is a major act of leadership. What I mean by dark matter. You know, dark matter in physics is something that is probably as modern theory acclaims, where the most of the universe consists of. Only 20 percent is what we can see, but the other 80 percent you cannot observe directly. You can only see the outcome of the influence on the visible matter. In leadership, this dark matter, let’s call it the ‘positive’ and ‘negative’. The positive would be your knowledge. Too much of your knowledge will certainly make the coming of new knowledge into the world of people that are under your influence much more challenging. So instead of knowledge, I would put ignorance. Of course, it has to be, again, and interesting kind of ignorance. Because ignorance, being ignorant is like being in a void. You want to have the kind of ignorance that is still knowledgeable enough to create interesting questions. Ignorance is one.
The second element of what I call the dark matter of leadership, would be ‘gaps’. What do I mean with gaps? We have all kinds of routines. We have all sorts of definitions of what people are supposed to do, how they should act in certain situations, job descriptions, etc. etc. This is all solid materials. But in-between them, you have gaps. Just like in music. There is a quote by Artur Schnabel, a great pianist, of the giants of the 21st century, and he said: ‘The notes I can handle ad anybody else, but the gaps between the notes, that is where the high art resides.’ And of course, gaps are everything not taken for granted. Anything that doesn’t make sense. Anything that raises a question. Anything that says: ‘Well, we have different interpretations of situations and we have to work together.’ Mostly, leaders would like to avoid gaps. They simply would like to say: ‘Our department is so unified and we work together’, and anything that might seem to be disturbing that unity is taken as a problem. And so they try to push it away. And I say no. This is the potential to go forward and to create something new. Gaps.
The third, last element, what I have called ‘keynote listening’. We all know about keynote speaking, somebody who sets the agenda by stating ‘this is what we are going to do’, the platform. I say, what if you can create an agenda by just listening. Again, just listening doesn’t do it. It has to be keynote listening actually to enable other people to speak in a different way. And to listen to other people differently. These three elements put together, are the means to create the platform. Another metaphor would be… Look, we think about a gap in the most obvious way. A vast dale and I stand on the one side, and you stand on the other side, and we can not come together. So we have to build some temporary bridge or just a rope that we can use to look into this dale and see what is down there. To understand how to deal with the potential of this enormous gap. But it doesn’t mean that we’re going to ignore the gap. We’re obviously are going to do something about it. But to enable the first communication, you need to build some platform. Hm, maybe this isn’t the best way of describing this initial platform. I just want to say that is temporary, instead of saying: ‘This is my vision, this is where we’re going, and this is how we are going to do it.’ You know, leadership talk. It is just: ‘This is what we have to do now to find out where we’re going and how we will get there.’ It is not simple. It is not simple in music. As a leader, it is very tempting to say: ‘This is it.’ It also caters better to the wishes of most followers. You know, people that sit in orchestra’s, or organisations, where people just want people to tell them what to do. But it is not about that. It is about going through a process together to make our lives better. But people often want to have immediate solutions. It sounds like it is very beneficial towards people, but you are going to have a tough time to do it the other way.
Human
What would be effective communication as a conductor? We have this little baton which we know how to wave. A baton is very tempting because it is very easy to point at somebody. Or to ‘command’ with it. Even when you have 150 people on stage, and you point it to someone, they know, he knows of she knows. It is very effective. And very harmful. Very harmful because, because once you point it, you create those relations between a person. A player looks at you and then it becomes obeying or not obeying. So how to use the baton to open the space, to listen? First of all, it depends on how you regard people if you see them as instruments. If you look at them and think: ‘Ah, this is a timpani’, then you would make different gestures. But if you think: ‘behind that timpani is my collaborator, my partner, and I want to speak to him about this professional process we’re doing together’. And still, it is different if you say: ‘Behind the timpani stands Igor. He is somebody I know for 20 years, he is a great guy. He likes this, and he likes that… And he has kids, and he had troubles, he has not been well…’, so how do I communicate to Igor, not only that he should play on time, but bringing all those elements and all another that I’m not aware of, into his playing? So we can start a dialogue about that. That is if you look outside of music if you are in a café and you speak to the waiter in a certain way, as he is a robot that is supposed to bring you something just waiting for your command. Or do you see a human being? In any context, you could see those different ways of looking at the human collaborator. In conducting, it translates into body language more intensively. Conducting is a very nice visual metaphor for leadership because when you look at the conductor, you see everything. How open they are, what they show from their world. I’m a student of Bernstein, and the ‘whole person’ idea was the basis for his dialogue with the musicians. But I can accept that in certain communications, you have to be very focused. Sometimes you need a professional response. It is not like that you have to go into the world and hug everybody and make love to everyone to make things work. You can be more narrow, and you know that. And look for, of course, the openness for your creativity in whatever field you choose to perform. But having the range of possibilities, and the depth of it makes one’s communication much more not only self-aware but much more effective.
