Haydn Points to Bach

After many years of reluctance to play Bach on the piano the Two-Part Inventions are pulling me back with increasing force.  They epitomize all that has been wrong with the notion of playing Bach on the modern piano, as the emphasis in teaching the piano to young learners (to anyone, actually) has been technique--not at all the same as music.

As soon as the ear is actively engaged touch becomes an extension of the imagination, not the product of muscular coordination.  Muscular coordination is instructed by the inner ear directing line and impulse, singing through the finger tips almost literally. 

Bach's music, so often identified with order and procedure, is as lively as music gets.  A look at the B-flat Partita (No. 1 of Part I of the Clavieruebung) has me planning a move in that direction.

I thank Haydn for it--not that he was directly influenced by J.S. B., but because his piano writing yields insight into the difference between modern approaches to the instrument and those of the 18th century.

Let Go; Let Flow

As a child my sense of a regular beat was completely at the mercy of my awareness of the piano's incredibly rich sound.  Relating to both at the same time was literally impossible, for the beat demanded control while the sound longed for its opposite.

In mid-adolescence, having given up on this impossible task, I "stopped" serious piano study to take up the organ.  "The" problem disappeared, you might say.  But it turns out that the problem is not generic, but for me, as for many individuals, specific to the acoustics of the instruments.

Given my rhythmic unsteadiness, much of the emphasis in my childhood lessons had been on keeping a regular beat.  Later, when told that a passage was improvisatory I froze: After all those years drilling in the mathematical ratios of quarters and sixteenths how was I to stop counting and let the line simply move as if on its own?

It is a question of chickens and eggs, since the two are obviously so closely intertwined.  But not everyone can accept their close intertwining.  The more fragile of the two elements is surely tone for it is a quality separate from pitch, and cannot be written down.  Almost everything in our culture conspires against awareness of the specificity of tone quality now that we have succeeded in digitizing almost everything but not the piano. 

Kurtag's solution to rhythm notation in the early stages is to use a kind of shorthand: this symbol is more or less long, the other, short.  That symbol is a pause, the duration of which is up to you.  This way the child is free to feel rhythmic relationships within a context of tone logic and the flow is neither threatening nor confining.

License

Where do you get the license to interpret, say, Haydn?

Nowhere is it printed on the page that license is required , called for, or recommended.  The need for it comes from the ear.  That is why active, live listening matters so much.  It is not the ear of repeated hearing that gives the permission--as in, so-and-so played it this way on the CD so that must be how it goes--but in, gee! that was really interesting!

When the mind starts to wander and the music to be repetitive it is the sign that the ear is not engaged.

Time to get a license!

A Scientist and Music

One of my most determined students is a scientist--a world-class scientist, in fact, who came to study with me because she wanted to know where "the music part" is.  She could play well enough to pass a pretty high level in the British system of grading but she was aware that it did not match some quality of what she heard in my playing.

What exactly did she hear?  That, of course, neither of us will ever know.  But I have some insight into what the difference is between her preferred experience in the lab as opposed to at the piano. 

The essence of a successful experiment is that it can be repeated with the same results by anyone, anywhere.  In order to produce that successful experiment the responsible scientist must maintain both an open mind objectively observing deviations from the hypothesis, and detailed records of every step forward and back.

The essence of successful music-making is, in many ways, the reverse.  "The music part" consists of the never-ending search for infinite variability, both in the quality of the sound and in the sense of the sequence of sounds that we call the composition.  It has taken years to arrive at the place where she is sufficiently confident of her tolerance of this iffy state of being to actually enjoy not repeating herself--or allowing Haydn to repeat himself, which is much more difficult.

24 Frames per second: How's That for a Tempo?

Last night I directed my performance of Haydn's G major Sonata No. 40 with its Allegro innocente opening movement to a young computer animator sitting close by.  In effect I animated the whole thing in sound, of course.  Then I left him with the challenge of animating it.

Haydn / animation: A perfect match.

Music and the Child in Us

Too much seems to be at stake for many young people face to face with classical music: They seem to have the impression that listening involves some kind of preparation or effort, neither of which they have or want to have. 

Why can't they simply listen, even better, be still and listen. 

Being still may be part of the problem in a culture in which everything makes noise, from refrigerator motors to cars being unlocked. 

But a greater part of the problem is the notion embedded in the phenomenon of Music Appreciation, a major league scam if ever there was one. 

One bright high school student of several decades ago told me that he dutifully identified themes A, A (1), A (2) and B in a work played for the final exam in MuzApp though, in fact, they were all the same.

Better to contemplate the combolulous cauliflower.

Who Wns?

I am by nature fiercely competitive, partly out of the knowledge that I have no business competing in some of the several ways in which that trait manifests itself--in physical terms, for example.  Put me in an exercise class and I will break my neck rather than acknowledge that I cannot do as the others are doing. 

Hanging out around a music school--which my daughter once called "the wrong crowd"--is rather like that exercise class but with some considerable additional challenge, namely, music.  Pianists compete all the time, to play more notes, to play them faster, louder, more brilliantly, etc.   Early on I chose not to break my neck in that department.

But it has taken me many years to shed the pressures of competition.  That I have finally succeeded in doing so was clear was I could perform two magnificent cycles of music for children in the company of a real hot-shot pianist.  Neither of us would be caught dead or alive playing the preferred repertoire of the other but it is a recent development that I have even been able to discern the magic in these cycles which sound simple though crafted with the utmost insight and skill. Playing that music straight is truly difficult.

If I have finally outgrown my competitive inclination it is thanks to children, my own as well as those I teach.