Perhaps by now we have heard enough of this and that kind of music to grasp that there can be no definitive way of interpreting any music. I have learned this from close friendship with Ursula Mamlok, a fine composer whose music is a joy to play and to hear. Working with her is a revelation at every stage of every project.
The music must live. If that is an issue for music composed by a living composer who may be there, present, in the room, at a rehearsal or a performance, then it is even more true for the composer who cannot be there for whatever reason of time or distance.
Making the music live is an endlessly demanding task for the performer. Just as in conversation one should not repeat oneself. Yow! This is truly difficult.
One of the terrible hazards of too much contemporary recording technique is the illusion of flawlessness, of perfection. Talk about freezing!
Friday, March 29, 2013
Thursday, March 28, 2013
What is the Subject Matter?
Response to tone is the subject matter. To paraphrase Emily Dickinson, the song is not in the robin it is in us.
Because a child responds to tone I listen. Out of that response grows curiosity about how others respond to tone. Out of that comes the ability to listen empathetically, and the desire to learn how the people we call composers have dealt with tone.
Learning to read that caring quality is not easy. But it can be done if the first step is recognition that the individual's response to tone is the necessary element.
Because a child responds to tone I listen. Out of that response grows curiosity about how others respond to tone. Out of that comes the ability to listen empathetically, and the desire to learn how the people we call composers have dealt with tone.
Learning to read that caring quality is not easy. But it can be done if the first step is recognition that the individual's response to tone is the necessary element.
Wednesday, March 27, 2013
Bach and Haydn:Variations
It is a trip to turn on the radio and listen at random to whatever there is, try to identify the performer. Last night I had quite a revelation: Organist Simon Preston was playing Bach's variations on O Gott, du frommer Gott, a piece I used to love. Listening last night I could see why: It could almost have been composed by Haydn, so lively is it and so impulsive. The spatiality of the organ suggests antiphonal variation in the organ registration between sections, but Preston goes far beyond that to include differences between vocal and virtuosic variations.
In a couple of weeks I will be performing Haydn's Capriccio in G, a piece I have never heard performed. It is ecstatic--in that way much like the Bach. Ecstasy is apparently hard to notate.
In a couple of weeks I will be performing Haydn's Capriccio in G, a piece I have never heard performed. It is ecstatic--in that way much like the Bach. Ecstasy is apparently hard to notate.
Tuesday, March 26, 2013
The Ghost of GG
Again, on the subject of random listening: I tuned in to the middle of a performance of a Bach keyboard concerto that was new to me. Sounded like Glen Gould, I thought. But the recording technique was too modern to be him, and I know that he recorded only two of the concerti, anad this was not one of them. The playing was so Gould-like that I had to listen just to satisfy my curiosity.
It wasn't Gould. So then why play as if one were? The only rationale is the master-oriented approach to instrumental performance. Questionable whether Gould is the master to choose in the case of Bach and the piano.
On one of his first concert tours Gould endeared himself to the audience in Finney Chapel at Oberlin by announcing that we did not want to hear the scheduled program nor did he want to play it. He sat down to play the Goldberg Variations. It was one of the first acts of seditious concert behavior. For that I am grateful to him.
It wasn't Gould. So then why play as if one were? The only rationale is the master-oriented approach to instrumental performance. Questionable whether Gould is the master to choose in the case of Bach and the piano.
On one of his first concert tours Gould endeared himself to the audience in Finney Chapel at Oberlin by announcing that we did not want to hear the scheduled program nor did he want to play it. He sat down to play the Goldberg Variations. It was one of the first acts of seditious concert behavior. For that I am grateful to him.
Monday, March 25, 2013
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.
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.
Sunday, March 24, 2013
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.
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.
Saturday, March 23, 2013
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!
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!
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