This will sound paradoxical, but I learn more about Beethoven from my young adult computer-animator student than from listening to more polished pianists. Today it was the Minuet from Op. 10 #3.
Let's be honest about minuets: we don't get them, even when we do. First of all, they involve overlays of rhythmic subtlety that we have no way of understanding because they rely on a cultural affinity for that dance that we will simply never have, the way there are certain jazz rhythms that I will never "get" no matter how hard I try or how loose I think I am.
Therefore we tend to dismiss these movements as "mere" minuets, though it is known that Haydn once said that if he had a good one he knew the symphony was good. Because this young student who doesn't practice has a most remarkable ear, I must pay attention to his falterings and to his wrong notes.
Turns out the movement is undoubtedly the most densely composed of all the movements of the sonata. I play it now with a completely different mindset. Its opening indication dolce makes a lot more sense to me now that that quality is integral to the composition and not something pasted on after holding one's nose (or turning it up, take your pick) at the minuet idea.
Saturday, October 26, 2013
Friday, October 25, 2013
Afraid of Mozart? I Don't Blame You
Probably you are one of the millions of poor souls upon whom Mozart's music was foisted in the name of "easy to play." No wonder nobody wants to go hear it.
Candid conversation with listeners at my Mozart evenings reveals the extent to which this masterful art, evident already in sonatas he wrote at 15, has been trivialized. If I survived with any serious (i.e., involuntarily deep) involvement in this music, it was because the vivid emotions aroused by specific sounds in his music so far eclipsed anything else I had ever encountered in piano sound that I persisted in figuring it out. How could anything be that troubling, yet at times so pure?
In our culture's insistence on reducing individuals and individual works of art to types and prototypes we risk losing any sense of the specific, of the particular, be it person, note, or word.
Poor us. Impoverished us.
Candid conversation with listeners at my Mozart evenings reveals the extent to which this masterful art, evident already in sonatas he wrote at 15, has been trivialized. If I survived with any serious (i.e., involuntarily deep) involvement in this music, it was because the vivid emotions aroused by specific sounds in his music so far eclipsed anything else I had ever encountered in piano sound that I persisted in figuring it out. How could anything be that troubling, yet at times so pure?
In our culture's insistence on reducing individuals and individual works of art to types and prototypes we risk losing any sense of the specific, of the particular, be it person, note, or word.
Poor us. Impoverished us.
Thursday, October 24, 2013
Words, Words
If there were a word to take the place of a sound we would have no music. Imagine it.
I watch it happen every time a parent, meaning well, most likely, interposes a word between the child's immediate taking in of a new sound and the possibility that the sensation might take on meaning of its own on the child's own terms.
So I have a rule when young children come to my improvisation session: No talking allowed. There is only sound and those tiny little shifts in facial expression that betoken lively response and playful exchange.
Years ago I taught a Saturday afternoon "Teenage Theory" class for kids who played everything from drums to piano and beyond. Coming from a broad mix of cultural backgrounds, they ranged from kids who had been taught never to open their mouths much less actually say anything, to the soon-to-be valedictorian of his Bronx Science High School class. Determined to get them to notice that music was equally accessible to all I focused each year on a different theme, ethnic music, or music with and without words, for example. I had to watch their faces carefully for those tiny little shifts--sometimes all that remained of a stunted communication possibility.
I watch it happen every time a parent, meaning well, most likely, interposes a word between the child's immediate taking in of a new sound and the possibility that the sensation might take on meaning of its own on the child's own terms.
So I have a rule when young children come to my improvisation session: No talking allowed. There is only sound and those tiny little shifts in facial expression that betoken lively response and playful exchange.
Years ago I taught a Saturday afternoon "Teenage Theory" class for kids who played everything from drums to piano and beyond. Coming from a broad mix of cultural backgrounds, they ranged from kids who had been taught never to open their mouths much less actually say anything, to the soon-to-be valedictorian of his Bronx Science High School class. Determined to get them to notice that music was equally accessible to all I focused each year on a different theme, ethnic music, or music with and without words, for example. I had to watch their faces carefully for those tiny little shifts--sometimes all that remained of a stunted communication possibility.
Wednesday, October 23, 2013
Listening from the Inside Out
My improvisation sessions with very young children are an intense undertaking. They convince me that the essence of listening is stillness itself.
It is nothing short of astonishing to hear the delicacy with which a young child introduces tone into an environment in which tone is not assumed, but rather the medium of most intimate communication. Surrounded by bells, drums, triangles and cymbals, the child nevertheless invariably begins with a musical gesture as intimate as the strange dog sniffing your hand.
Joining the child within that intensity releases a level of pleasure and play that is so deep within the definition of music that it can't be identified except, perhaps, with a child's squeal of delight.
One of my favorite students was a six-year-old boy who walked on the ceiling and made noise constantly. His piano playing was too quiet, too intense, for the music school director. I knew my students (and I) had no future in that place or in any other like-minded place.....another long story.
He is now a musician and a music teacher.
It is nothing short of astonishing to hear the delicacy with which a young child introduces tone into an environment in which tone is not assumed, but rather the medium of most intimate communication. Surrounded by bells, drums, triangles and cymbals, the child nevertheless invariably begins with a musical gesture as intimate as the strange dog sniffing your hand.
Joining the child within that intensity releases a level of pleasure and play that is so deep within the definition of music that it can't be identified except, perhaps, with a child's squeal of delight.
One of my favorite students was a six-year-old boy who walked on the ceiling and made noise constantly. His piano playing was too quiet, too intense, for the music school director. I knew my students (and I) had no future in that place or in any other like-minded place.....another long story.
He is now a musician and a music teacher.
Tuesday, October 22, 2013
Moments! Moments!
Last night I had the pleasure of playing a program consisting primarily of music by Mozart: the early sonata in F, the Variations on Lison Dormait, the later sonata in B-flat, K. 330, and selections by Schumann. Among the audience was my daughter, who "hates Mozart." Naturally her presence constituted a significant challenge.
At the end I asked her how she liked it: "There were moments," she replied.
She couldn't have put her finger more precisely on the point: moments.
Her own distinctively original music often uses genres familiar to her audience, like the blues, or salsa. But there is an inevitable twist somewhere that distinguishes it from the run-of-the-mill. And it is that twist that stays with the listener, that haunts, and intrigues the fellow musician. It is not all that different from Mozart who also used genres familiar to his audience but with departures unique to him and not easily decipherable from the printed page.
The undisputed hit of the evening was Schumann's Op. 133, No. 5, his last composition for piano. Difficult beyond description, calling as it does at times for four separately voiced sounds at once, it brings out the full vertical and linear shimmer of the piano within a couple of pregnant minutes that might be said to successfully prolong a pianistic moment.
Who is it wrote Moments Musicaux? {Yes I realize that the composer got the French wrong....)
At the end I asked her how she liked it: "There were moments," she replied.
She couldn't have put her finger more precisely on the point: moments.
Her own distinctively original music often uses genres familiar to her audience, like the blues, or salsa. But there is an inevitable twist somewhere that distinguishes it from the run-of-the-mill. And it is that twist that stays with the listener, that haunts, and intrigues the fellow musician. It is not all that different from Mozart who also used genres familiar to his audience but with departures unique to him and not easily decipherable from the printed page.
The undisputed hit of the evening was Schumann's Op. 133, No. 5, his last composition for piano. Difficult beyond description, calling as it does at times for four separately voiced sounds at once, it brings out the full vertical and linear shimmer of the piano within a couple of pregnant minutes that might be said to successfully prolong a pianistic moment.
Who is it wrote Moments Musicaux? {Yes I realize that the composer got the French wrong....)
Monday, October 21, 2013
Canned is Canned
Just off the phone talking with a dear friend, an actress about my age, also from Chicago, and temperamentally very like myself. We were talking about the movies.
She always loved the movies until she moved to New York and experienced its abundance of live theatre. That was that.
In recent years the only movies I have enjoyed (besides the occasional documentary and a few exceptions like the recent Hugo and that magnificent French film about 17th-century music, Tous les matins du monde) are the old ones: Jean Vigo, Jean Renoir, Eisenstein, Chaplin, Buster Keaton--movies in which the vital fluid of discovery leaks out through the tin of the can, staining you indelibly.
It took awhile but eventually the technology accessible to movie-makers took over and now constitutes a large part of the art.
I found myself remarking that the technology of recording very quickly became the most audible aspect of recorded music. It has reached the point where students are encouraged and even expected to sound like recordings.
How soft an alarm will it take to wake us up?
She always loved the movies until she moved to New York and experienced its abundance of live theatre. That was that.
In recent years the only movies I have enjoyed (besides the occasional documentary and a few exceptions like the recent Hugo and that magnificent French film about 17th-century music, Tous les matins du monde) are the old ones: Jean Vigo, Jean Renoir, Eisenstein, Chaplin, Buster Keaton--movies in which the vital fluid of discovery leaks out through the tin of the can, staining you indelibly.
It took awhile but eventually the technology accessible to movie-makers took over and now constitutes a large part of the art.
I found myself remarking that the technology of recording very quickly became the most audible aspect of recorded music. It has reached the point where students are encouraged and even expected to sound like recordings.
How soft an alarm will it take to wake us up?
Sunday, October 20, 2013
Faster Than a Speeding Bullet
Try vibrations.
The look on a child's face when in the proximity of real vibrations is astonishing, every time.
The other day, as I improvised together with a four-year-old, I was intensely aware of his quiet connection with the sounds we made together. He was imparting a secret, all the more real because it was not prefabricated and because it certainly could never happen again in exactly the same way.
What a revelation as to the nature of musical intimacy: how it works and why it works.
The look on a child's face when in the proximity of real vibrations is astonishing, every time.
The other day, as I improvised together with a four-year-old, I was intensely aware of his quiet connection with the sounds we made together. He was imparting a secret, all the more real because it was not prefabricated and because it certainly could never happen again in exactly the same way.
What a revelation as to the nature of musical intimacy: how it works and why it works.
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)