Eavesdropping

Today a listener from one of my recent house recitals described that it felt as though he was eavesdropping on a conversation between me and Haydn.  What a lovely compliment, not just to myself, but also to him--that he would permit himself that degree of intimate involvement.

The cues in Haydn are vocal.  Vocal cues do not require text to be vivid.  They require a physical involvement in direction and in intervalic coloration, as in a descending vs an ascending half-step, or a black-key to white-key vs a white-key to black-key half-step.

Having sung all my life these colorations come naturally.  Doesn't everyone hear them? 

The Master Teacher: A Flawed Notion

I have been privileged to study with two recognized artists at times of their fullest artistic and personal maturity.  (I studied with two artists in addition to these, but their artistry was not world-renowned, so my point does not apply to them.)

In the first instance I had organ lessons over the course of an academic year in which it was clear that we did not get along:  the master was blind and, besides having to communicate in a language I had not mastered, I would arrive at my lessons physically ill from unbearable tension.  Toward the end of the year he assigned me analysis of a Prelude and Fugue by Buxtehude, a work that was totally new to me. 

His response to my analysis was to ask where I had gotten it from.  I was crushed.  "It is my work."

 He then proceeded to tell me the truth about his teaching of the many foreign students who came to work with him.  They expect to be taught in accordance with accepted usage, so that is what he teaches them.  When he performed, he told me, he executed the ornaments "correctly" the first time through, but on the repeats he did as he felt the music demanded, which was often in direct contradiction of the learned treatises, and he demonstrated what that entailed.

In confiding this to me he gave me a great gift, much more significant than praise.

The second case involves a master whose work I admired beyond description despite the fact that I often disagreed with it.  I tried and tried to emulate it and could not.  I had one lesson with him in which he identified clearly and accurately the essence of my piano playing, by so doing giving me hope that one day I would figure it out.  It took a while but I did figure it out.  And I noticed that, as I did so, my playing was resembling his to an increasing degree. 

I cannot state on a resume that I studied with him as I enjoyed only that one encounter, pivotal though it was.  But I listened attentively to pianists who have studied with him and find in their work no trace of that teacher's particular voice. 

I am reminded continually of the earlier encounter.

Mental Foot-tapping

One of the hazards of public listening is the possibility that someone in a nearby seat will be beating time.

Most of us learn at some stage that rhythm is based on body movement, so it is natural to express it with bodily movement.  I say it all depends.

Some rhythm is decidedly not based on body movement: the rhythm of song, for example, is subject to flights of whimsy that would cause a moving body grievous injury.  And there is the rhythm of the mind at play, many times faster than either the quickest body or the most mercurial lyrical impulse.

Sometimes when I play I make a semi-conscious effort to keep my listeners from even thinking of tapping their foot of otherwise slowing themselves down.  I want every vibration to be heard and felt.

Impromptu: A Musical Moment Under Another Name Perhaps

It is striking how removed from actual, close-up, live listening our culture has become.  As I recall the exciting CD of Maria Pires's playing I marvel at how close-up it feels, how little like something reproduced or reproduceable.

Having been trained to recognize forms we seem reluctant to let go of them and just listen, though by now several generations of contemporary composers have tried hard to get us to do just that.  Now that we have heard Schubert's G-flat Impromptu  can we really listen to it?

Today I am struck by the oddness of the composer's articulations: they certainly do not match the versions of the piece that I have heard!  I wonder if I can engage listeners in the unlikely proposition that they have never heard the piece before?

On the Brink

A student asked me how I know when music is inebriated.  Good question.

A related question: How do I know that something called "March" is not really a march but a spoof?  (Schumann's "Soldier's March" from Album for the Young, e.g.)

Doesn't all good music teeter on some kind of edge?  No one needs balance more than I do; I strongly dislike the sensation of being on an angle or tilted.  This bodily craving for many years took musical form in my pursuit of reliable successions of downbeats and upbeats, and for resolutions both melodic and harmonic.  Needless to say it was not a time of meaningful growth.

As a performer I inhabit the infinitesimally small units of time between beats and vibrations during which I wonder just when and where the next sound will or won't occur--I say "won't" because rests form an important part of that way of moving music.

As a listener I detect in much playing the performer's need for resolution in the lengthening of cadential note values and in the failure to observe articulations that indicate resolutions promised but not delivered.

I no longer play from memory because I know how easily I slide into these taps* and I want the composer's intention to be more present than my own needs and tendencies.

*A fascinating Freudian slip: I meant to say "traps" but rhythmic taps are, in effect, traps, as I point out on a post that will appear soon.  Stay tuned.

Practicing May Be Overrated

Yesterday I had the rare pleasure of receiving an email from a student I taught maybe 40 years ago.  He confided that he has become a lutenist and that he practices.  I take that to mean that he did not practice the piano when I knew him. At that time I was not confident enough as a teacher of children to do as I now do: I tell children not to practice and, if they do, to tell someone else.  I do this for two reasons:

• First, I hate it when students begin our limited time together with the confession that they haven't practiced.  I can tell in an instant whether or not they have and besides that is not the critical factor in learning music.  
• Second, I never practiced as a child so why should I require or expect it of my students?  I played all day, but that is not the same as practicing--it is better.

Just like the CD

Late Beethoven is now a commodity to be bought by the set, put on for background to cooking or reading or puttering around in your too-busy-to-sit-still-and-wonder existence.

At any rate, you have heard it all before.  So what is the point?

Now that live performance resembles CD production more than it does real live experience it is so refreshing to hear a recorded performance that is charged with vitality--it really stands out.


What would happen if everyone in the audience demanded that kind of vitality from the player?  Trouble is, the opposite is more likely to be true: if the performance is not like "the" CD it is likely to be deemed inferior.  What we are missing....