I recently put out a topic for discussion to an on-line group to which I subscribe: Have recordings taken the place of live performance in determining our musical standards? After more than a week no replies.
Either that means that I am completely out-of-sync with my times, or that one of the two concepts has no relevancy. Which?
Consider "live." This is admittedly difficult as it assumes presence, mutual presence in the case of actually being in the same room together with another person who is making music. But it doesn't need to be in an auditorium and the person making music does not need to be a professional. It might be your child or your mother; your neighbor or your friend.
As for "listening," that is really the hard part as we have all probably lost the ability to listen free of the boundaries already set by the pre-heard, i.e., the recorded version.
What would happen to our music if the standard were set by seriousness of intent rather than by perfection of the surface?
I have heard far too much perfect playing that leaves me cold and have learned to be deeply moved by the imperfect playing of striving, yearning children.
Saturday, June 8, 2013
Friday, June 7, 2013
Schumann's "Melody"
The first piece in The Album for the Young, it is a perfect piece. In very few notes it arouses the deepest sense of what constitutes melody and how the piano is admirably suited to sing. Any set of three notes rising or falling has the power to tear your heart out. How? By arousing the deepest sense of conflicting modality between each successive note. How does it happen? By listening, of course.
Thursday, June 6, 2013
Schumann and the Piano
I am fascinated by the sound of the piano as a new invention. People frequently ask whether I play the fortepiano. I do not, for the best reason in the world: I fell in love with the sound of the modern piano when I was 3 or 4 and have been fascinated with it ever since.
No, my interest in the newly invented piano is not a desire to be "authentic," but is focused on the impact of the new sound on the ear of those alive at the time to experience its novelty. What did they hear? Can I discern in their composition clues to what that might have been?
The composer who has been most helpful to me in that way is Schumann. He reveled in the sound, made it the central event in many of his compositions both for piano solo and in chamber music. And his notation effectively conveys that elemental fascination. For the most part he achieves this by disregarding syntactical conventions, notating instead the specific sounds he wants us to hear.
No, my interest in the newly invented piano is not a desire to be "authentic," but is focused on the impact of the new sound on the ear of those alive at the time to experience its novelty. What did they hear? Can I discern in their composition clues to what that might have been?
The composer who has been most helpful to me in that way is Schumann. He reveled in the sound, made it the central event in many of his compositions both for piano solo and in chamber music. And his notation effectively conveys that elemental fascination. For the most part he achieves this by disregarding syntactical conventions, notating instead the specific sounds he wants us to hear.
Wednesday, June 5, 2013
About Rests
Anyone who has ever played chamber music -- anyone except a pianist, of course -- will have had to deal with rests that make no sense whatsoever.
Take the 5 bar rests in so many Mozart string quartets, which are commonly notated with a set of symbols inside of a single bar with the number 5 on top. What is one to do, just sit there and count?
What's the fun of that? It makes me wonder what the parts would have looked like in his day. Whatever they looked or look like the problem remains that the player can only imagine imagining what "must" be going on during that time span and perhaps anticipating the sense of the coming re-entry.
I enjoyed this sport during the brief time when I attempted to figure out what music looked and felt like to an amateur by buying a tuned-in-the-factory cello and pretending I knew how to play it. It was great fun, especially during the rests. Noticing that my last note preceding the rest rarely if ever had anything to do with the end of a phrase, I was left to guess where the phrase actually ended, where the next began, and whether my next entrance had anything to do with phrase structure.
As often as not I would hear notes that seemed to prepare my entrance and I would simply come in because it felt right, not because I had counted properly. The music had made it almost impossible to count the rest objectively.
From this experience I developed a healthy respect for rests and for the deception for which they stand.
This led me to conceive of chamber music as high sport.
Take the 5 bar rests in so many Mozart string quartets, which are commonly notated with a set of symbols inside of a single bar with the number 5 on top. What is one to do, just sit there and count?
What's the fun of that? It makes me wonder what the parts would have looked like in his day. Whatever they looked or look like the problem remains that the player can only imagine imagining what "must" be going on during that time span and perhaps anticipating the sense of the coming re-entry.
I enjoyed this sport during the brief time when I attempted to figure out what music looked and felt like to an amateur by buying a tuned-in-the-factory cello and pretending I knew how to play it. It was great fun, especially during the rests. Noticing that my last note preceding the rest rarely if ever had anything to do with the end of a phrase, I was left to guess where the phrase actually ended, where the next began, and whether my next entrance had anything to do with phrase structure.
As often as not I would hear notes that seemed to prepare my entrance and I would simply come in because it felt right, not because I had counted properly. The music had made it almost impossible to count the rest objectively.
From this experience I developed a healthy respect for rests and for the deception for which they stand.
This led me to conceive of chamber music as high sport.
Tuesday, June 4, 2013
Here We are in Three Again
This morning was one of those unforgettable teaching mornings. It started with my young adult who is coming to grips with the difference between notation and actual sound--one of music's more complex dilemmas. We were working on the Andante movement of Clementi's famous C major Sonatina, a movement in 3/4, full of repetitive Alberti figures and ultra-boring predictabilities.
Aha! Not so, she pointed out.
When listened to, the overtone interplay between the sustained melody tones and the fluctuating resonance of the Alberti figure infuses the music with a variability that defies description, much less notation.
Add to that the many ambiguous hemiolas that permeate the movement, both in right and left hand passages and not always in the same way in each hand and you have plenty to keep mind, body, and spirit occupied regardless of how "easy" the music sounds.
Aha! Not so, she pointed out.
When listened to, the overtone interplay between the sustained melody tones and the fluctuating resonance of the Alberti figure infuses the music with a variability that defies description, much less notation.
Add to that the many ambiguous hemiolas that permeate the movement, both in right and left hand passages and not always in the same way in each hand and you have plenty to keep mind, body, and spirit occupied regardless of how "easy" the music sounds.
Monday, June 3, 2013
Meaning Goes At Least Two Ways
This morning saw an unforgettable session with a young man who is blind and autistic. Knowing that his inner life is not something he can communicate, I always felt it my responsibility to give him access to complexity of emotion and intention by teaching him first to tolerate dissonance and then to internalize Bartok's extreme lyricism. (For Children, Volumes I and II.)
He is at the moment dealing with a piece that requires precise coordination of the two hands, something he finds extremely difficult as he plays mostly by ear and because he keeps his hands in rigid positions of immobility and tension.
But he responds to this piece. Today he had to master the notion that his left hand, not the tune, was the source of the sadness. He had to grasp the difference between an articulation that gasps and one that actually seems to sob. He did it. He came as close to crying as I can imagine, playing a descending inner voice with his left hand thumb on B, then A, then G. I will never forget it.
Playing like this sets my standard, not recordings of perfection.
He is at the moment dealing with a piece that requires precise coordination of the two hands, something he finds extremely difficult as he plays mostly by ear and because he keeps his hands in rigid positions of immobility and tension.
But he responds to this piece. Today he had to master the notion that his left hand, not the tune, was the source of the sadness. He had to grasp the difference between an articulation that gasps and one that actually seems to sob. He did it. He came as close to crying as I can imagine, playing a descending inner voice with his left hand thumb on B, then A, then G. I will never forget it.
Playing like this sets my standard, not recordings of perfection.
Sunday, June 2, 2013
I Hate Quarter Notes -- Except in Haydn Minuets
This post's title is lifted from one of my favorite songs by Leonard Bernstein: I Hate Music, The lyric goes on to say, "...but I love to sing."
I don't really hate quarter notes themselves. What I hate is the reduction of every rhythmic event to some multiple or division of the quarter note. The other day I ran across a copy of Clementi Sonatinas in which some brainwasher of a piano teacher had written, in red, "one-y-and-a-two-y-and-a" over some of the wittiest content of the piece. Poor lambs, both teacher and child.
Today a student came in with the minuet from a sonata in which Haydn plays the most wonderful games with quarter notes, sometimes using them as halves of half-notes ---- ah!!! but which half? We will never know for sure. But in the meantime it would be good to free our imaginations from restriction to quarter notes uber alles, even going so far as to entertain the notion that a rest might have at least as much "say" about what is happening as an actual sounding note.
I don't really hate quarter notes themselves. What I hate is the reduction of every rhythmic event to some multiple or division of the quarter note. The other day I ran across a copy of Clementi Sonatinas in which some brainwasher of a piano teacher had written, in red, "one-y-and-a-two-y-and-a" over some of the wittiest content of the piece. Poor lambs, both teacher and child.
Today a student came in with the minuet from a sonata in which Haydn plays the most wonderful games with quarter notes, sometimes using them as halves of half-notes ---- ah!!! but which half? We will never know for sure. But in the meantime it would be good to free our imaginations from restriction to quarter notes uber alles, even going so far as to entertain the notion that a rest might have at least as much "say" about what is happening as an actual sounding note.
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