Friday, March 7, 2014

Do You Hear What I Hear?

There is simply no way for me to get you to hear as I do.  None.

I know this from watching the YouTube video of my performance of a Haydn piano sonata.  Following the playing on the original tape, I commented that, for the first time, I noted while playing that the piece is occupied with C#.  When I listen to the tape I cannot detect that detail, probably because my ear is so conditioned to tonal listening that I can no longer allow my mental ear to pick up the peripheral sounds that would potentially skew a traditional interpretation.  While playing, however, this is exactly what I am primed to do!

Interesting, isn't it, that something can be so vivid in the act and become so subject to ordinary intake at a time of more disengaged listening!

So there is more than a semantic difference between hearing what I hear and hearing as I hear.  And this is the subject of my new teaching initiative, Music Inside and Out.