Giving piano students Mozart Sonatas to learn as if they were Himalayas begging to be climbed is a sure sign that the teacher is a victim of stunted growth. Sorry for the oversimplification, but I was mystified when, as an adult, professional level student, I was assigned an incomprehensibly difficult Mozart Sonata (D major, K. 576). What was I to do with this enormously complex music?
The assumption behind such assignments is that if one can only play the notes the music will follow. This strikes me as backwards.
I have seen students who, drawn to Mozart solely by their ear, dig and dig into the notes defying technical levels or categories of preparedness.
The prevailing assumption seems to be that the ear does not, in fact, convey or grasp meaning.
Sunday, October 13, 2013
Saturday, October 12, 2013
Words Are Too Slow
Spoken words are, indeed, heard. But they are not music.
They have to go through multiple filterings before they have meaning. Music goes straight into motor and emotional responses, both at the same time and in equal intensity -- such is the anatomical nature of the auditory nerve as I understand it.
Concepts interfere with this immediacy. Words, being attached to concepts, interfere also.
Last week I enjoyed a one-on-one with an almost-three-year-old, new to my environment. I had started out by telling his parents we would not talk, but just engage in sound together, he and I. Well, that is almost impossible with such a young child without the presence of other children to form an experiential commonality. No sooner did I open my mouth than one parent followed suit with words, definitions, etc. Perhaps that person wanted to be part of the experience but could not join us on the floor under the piano.
I am scheduling Improvisations With and For Children for mostly three-year-olds and older (no upward limit, as all children enjoy this). I play the piano, not kid stuff but real music; they improvise on the assorted percussion instruments I have scattered in the room. There is no condescension on my part: I do it because it is truly satisfying music-making. Younger children are welcome to sit on their parent's lap and engage with smaller close-up sounds. E-mail for information.
They have to go through multiple filterings before they have meaning. Music goes straight into motor and emotional responses, both at the same time and in equal intensity -- such is the anatomical nature of the auditory nerve as I understand it.
Concepts interfere with this immediacy. Words, being attached to concepts, interfere also.
Last week I enjoyed a one-on-one with an almost-three-year-old, new to my environment. I had started out by telling his parents we would not talk, but just engage in sound together, he and I. Well, that is almost impossible with such a young child without the presence of other children to form an experiential commonality. No sooner did I open my mouth than one parent followed suit with words, definitions, etc. Perhaps that person wanted to be part of the experience but could not join us on the floor under the piano.
I am scheduling Improvisations With and For Children for mostly three-year-olds and older (no upward limit, as all children enjoy this). I play the piano, not kid stuff but real music; they improvise on the assorted percussion instruments I have scattered in the room. There is no condescension on my part: I do it because it is truly satisfying music-making. Younger children are welcome to sit on their parent's lap and engage with smaller close-up sounds. E-mail for information.
Friday, October 11, 2013
Listening for Meaning
Most of the discussions about meaning in music have to do with the theoretical life of tone outside of the perceiving sensibility. This yields such nonsensical words as "heroic," "pastoral," etc. while entirely ignoring the essence of the matter.
Listening itself imparts meaning. We are not trained to listen, however; therefore the realm of sound remains opaque, superficial, lacking in depth.
The depth is a function of immersion and there is no end to that. To experience that requires, however, that we get beneath the surface of the sound (see post of August 3, 2013) and taste from close-up the friction, the infinite variability of the sounds themselves and of our responses.
The trouble is multiplied by the fact that many performers, trained to be heard from a distance, have themselves lost the ability to hear close-up; distance has become the standard of the classical recording industry and now of musical training. No flaws please. No signs of fragility or vulnerability allowed.
All backpacks subject to search without warning.
Listening itself imparts meaning. We are not trained to listen, however; therefore the realm of sound remains opaque, superficial, lacking in depth.
The depth is a function of immersion and there is no end to that. To experience that requires, however, that we get beneath the surface of the sound (see post of August 3, 2013) and taste from close-up the friction, the infinite variability of the sounds themselves and of our responses.
The trouble is multiplied by the fact that many performers, trained to be heard from a distance, have themselves lost the ability to hear close-up; distance has become the standard of the classical recording industry and now of musical training. No flaws please. No signs of fragility or vulnerability allowed.
All backpacks subject to search without warning.
Thursday, October 10, 2013
Well Worth Listening To
We make assumptions all the time about what is worth listening to. Music with certain names attached to it--which names depends on what magazines you read--automatically qualifies. Perhaps its the name of a performer or composer; perhaps a school or a place--whatever it is, I can almost guarantee that listening through such a filter is not really listening.
"What's in a name?"
Take the names away and what do you have? It was a child who said out loud that something by Beethoven was boring, thereby causing me to notice two things: a consistent source of irony in some of his works; and that, cowed by the name of the great man. I would not be capable of such candor.
Too much musical training has to do with reverence for names and not enough with paying attention to sound itself. It is almost as if we are trained to believe that sound, in and of itself, cannot convey meaning. Shouldn't it be the other way around?
Getting it to work the other way around is the way I teach: that's why I teach children who are open to this possibility. Having been trained to pay attention to sound their playing, however "flawed," is well worth listening to.
"What's in a name?"
Take the names away and what do you have? It was a child who said out loud that something by Beethoven was boring, thereby causing me to notice two things: a consistent source of irony in some of his works; and that, cowed by the name of the great man. I would not be capable of such candor.
Too much musical training has to do with reverence for names and not enough with paying attention to sound itself. It is almost as if we are trained to believe that sound, in and of itself, cannot convey meaning. Shouldn't it be the other way around?
Getting it to work the other way around is the way I teach: that's why I teach children who are open to this possibility. Having been trained to pay attention to sound their playing, however "flawed," is well worth listening to.
Wednesday, October 9, 2013
Order and Chaos
I just returned from a most exciting presentation at a major manufacturer of beautifully woven interior design fabrics featuring new weaves based on works by a jeweler, a potter, a sculptor in wood, and a knitter. The fluidity of their minds was extraordinary, in that they went beyond the boundaries by which their various arts are conventionally defined--that goes as well for the artisans as for the commercial weaving establishment.
Rarely have I heard someone speak so simply about the urge to combine order and chaos, an urge fully realized in the knitter. As she spoke I reached into my bag to retrieve one of my just-completed-on-the-way-here crocheted "bricks," a particularly chaotic one with multi-colored and multi-textured fringe. They flipped.
The architect seated next to me, an African-American woman, noted that people in the visual world are open to new ideas because, unlike music, it is more in the main commercial stream. I enjoyed the expression on her face as I showed her how my fiber art is entirely based on African principles of structure and design.
"Where did that come from?" she asked.
Ever since I first saw a piece of cloth woven in Africa, which would have been in Paris in the 1950's, I have been responsive to the fresh air wafting into conventional fiber thinking from that other new and at the same time old world.
You can see photos of the work at http://www.etsy.com/shop/StringImprovisations.
Rarely have I heard someone speak so simply about the urge to combine order and chaos, an urge fully realized in the knitter. As she spoke I reached into my bag to retrieve one of my just-completed-on-the-way-here crocheted "bricks," a particularly chaotic one with multi-colored and multi-textured fringe. They flipped.
The architect seated next to me, an African-American woman, noted that people in the visual world are open to new ideas because, unlike music, it is more in the main commercial stream. I enjoyed the expression on her face as I showed her how my fiber art is entirely based on African principles of structure and design.
"Where did that come from?" she asked.
Ever since I first saw a piece of cloth woven in Africa, which would have been in Paris in the 1950's, I have been responsive to the fresh air wafting into conventional fiber thinking from that other new and at the same time old world.
You can see photos of the work at http://www.etsy.com/shop/StringImprovisations.
Tuesday, October 8, 2013
Support the Blog!
The readership of this blog keeps rising, I am happy to point out. I post religiously out of a sense of devotion to the topic and because I know that my thoughts correspond to the innermost instincts of many "ordinary" folks -- that is borne out in my teaching of children and other real creatures.
It is one of the hazards of our time that such devotion does not pay the rent.
Visit my website, the buttons make it easy to subscribe. www.tonalrefraction.com
While you are there read about the new book.
It is one of the hazards of our time that such devotion does not pay the rent.
Visit my website, the buttons make it easy to subscribe. www.tonalrefraction.com
While you are there read about the new book.
The Piano Teaches Us How the Ear Works
I have long been convinced that the reason the piano occasioned such a burst of compositional genius was that it revealed as no other single instrument ever had (with the possible exception of the viola d'amore) how the ear works.
Having learned to interact with the natural horn, exploring Beethoven's Op. 17 sonata for natural horn and piano, I am more convinced of this than ever.
It is a matter of sensitivity to the coexistence of natural overtones with unnatural mixtures of unpredictable clashes and blends for, because of its mechanics, the acoustics of the piano was always about that coexistence--from day one, regardless of the temperament to which it is/was tuned.
A not-so-funny affirmation of this is that pianists, young and old, professional and not, often attempt to mask the unnatural aspects of its sound by always playing with soft pedal and with the lid down. I did it for years so I know what that is all about.
Having learned to interact with the natural horn, exploring Beethoven's Op. 17 sonata for natural horn and piano, I am more convinced of this than ever.
It is a matter of sensitivity to the coexistence of natural overtones with unnatural mixtures of unpredictable clashes and blends for, because of its mechanics, the acoustics of the piano was always about that coexistence--from day one, regardless of the temperament to which it is/was tuned.
A not-so-funny affirmation of this is that pianists, young and old, professional and not, often attempt to mask the unnatural aspects of its sound by always playing with soft pedal and with the lid down. I did it for years so I know what that is all about.
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