Leonard Michaels on Sentences

To read Leonard Michaels' Nachman Stories is to experience language fused with life, but inner life of which one sees only minuscule outward evidence as most of us live from day to day.

He wrote an essay on sentences.  No wonder he was such a master story writer: his grasp of the essence of structure, even to the degree of "why bother?" is inspiring, no matter what your genre of writing, reading or, for that matter, playing the piano.

We are taught to play Mozart as if Mozart wrote according to the rules of musical sentence structure.  But to read Mozart is to experience in, say, every third "sentence" a radical departure from those norms.  I knew it as a child.  Oh, if only I could have said out loud: "But this doesn't make sense!"

Now, at last, I know what sense it makes.  It took a long time.

Sounds, Words, and Surfaces

Last night I went to hear a program of the sort that I may be said to have pioneered starting in the 1980's: programs in which recent compositions opened the ear to music of earlier periods.  Needless to say I am committed to the notion.

This evening began with poetry, ostensibly on the subject of now/then, day/night.  The words conveyed little to me except the poet's narcissism.  I could not wait for the reading to end.  (Quite a contrast to a reading I heard just a few days earlier by poets published by Pressed Wafer, an evening that left me knowing myself better than I had when I went in.)

Then came the new music.  Scratchings, pre-tuning sounds, knocks--I have nothing against any of them but coming after those particularly vapid words the silence they evoked seemed phony to me.

The period music that followed was in every way expert: clean, articulate, subtly voiced.  But I fell asleep, only to realize later that I had missed completely the one movement that I might have been interested in, a slow movement marked, along with the word designating slow, "spiritoso," which means with wit.

I would have loved to hear it.  Had it been witty surely it would have awakened me.

So I come away with an awareness of surface, not enough to keep me awake, however well-executed.  

Schumann's Extremes

If there are boundaries of musical propriety Schumann transcends them all in Waldszenen.  Fixed tempo evaporates into fantasy, not programmatic fantasy but tonal fantasy.  Every deviation is occasioned by a transformation dictated by the sound.  But the player must hear it in order to make it happen.

That is the hard part.  We tend to take comfort in regular beats and knowable harmonies.  What happens when we let go of these preconceptions is that fast is free to go faster, slow slower than we would have thought possible.

I was fortunate to study piano with Hans Neumann who used to characterize some music as impossible to play while sober.  Schumann's late work is of this category.

Over-credentialed

When I was a student in Germany, lo! these many years ago, I learned a term of formal address: Herr Doktor Ober Unter Nummer Nix.  I think of it often in these days -- who would have thought it would happen here -- when every other musician has a doctorate in something.  But in what exactly?

Sound being remarkably complex, let alone instrumental technique, an honest pianist is at least 60 before he or she has a clue as to what is happening.

The real trouble with so many doctorates is that people listen to the degree not to the music.  It is a way of shutting everybody up, of filtering out reactions.

More often than not the emperor is under-dressed, the Herr or Frau Doktor sporting a degree in 0000 cum laude.  (Cum laude, pronounced ff.)

Words Inside of Tone

It was from Bach cantatas that I learned that tones are inseparable from words.  Even where there are no literal words there are nameable affects underlying tone, without which tone becomes barren.  This connection is nowhere more apparent than in the four-part chorales taught, alas, without their texts in theory classes.  Without text these startlingly piercing illustrations of verbal/tonal synergy become mere exercises in ingenuity.  Whose bad idea was it to separate the two?

In composition for instrument without voice, as happened after the piano was invented--logical, since the piano could sing as well as do what previous keyboard instruments also did--words began to assume a different function.  Beginning, I believe, with Clementi words that we now think of as expression markings actually described how the tones behaved on the new instrument if only you would really listen to them and not treat them as just notes.

This link was carried to further extremes by Robert Schumann who, interestingly, might be said to have worked within the Clementi tradition, as he studied with Ferdinand Wieck (Clara's father) who had, in turn, studied with Clementi.  The titles that we are told are programmatic, like the titles of so many pieces in the Album for the Young, the Waldszenen, and many other cycles of Schumann, are not references to extra-musical events but are themselves part of the very sounds of the compositions interwoven with the tonal events.

This simple observation utterly transforms playing these works.  Try playing the Scheherezade in Album for the Young, as if your life depended on stringing out the story and each of its sequels so that the listener can't bring himself to order your head cut off.

Empathetic Listening

The more I think about it -- and I think about it a great deal -- the more I realize that the core of my work, whether playing, teaching, recording, writing, or doing research in various media, is empathy.

I try to listen to music the way I imagine the composer listened to it.  Of course I have to use my imagination, but I go to some trouble to school that imagination so that it is not fettered by fashions, notions, or any other -tions (pun intended, sorry).

If more performers listened with empathy we would play better.  If more parents listened with empathy their children would play better.  If more students listened with empathy they would continually surpass themselves instead of limiting themselves, and each other, by competitive standards.

So that is to be the focus of my upcoming teaching institute: Open to players of all instruments and singers.  Professional, amateur, young, old, teachers, students, parents, you name it.

Do stay tuned.

I Got Rhythm, You Got Rhythm

I enjoyed a fantastic conversation today with a music theorist, of all improbable occurrences.  Our conversation about Schumann was prompted by my inquiry as to whether he would enjoy being part of an informal evening of men's voices plus four horns (three of them natural horns !!!) doing a cycle of hunting songs, a late Schumann opus.

This set off an impassioned exchange as each of us became increasingly excited about the depth and astonishment of Schumann's music.

I have been involved in preparing Vol II of the Tonal Refraction series, on Schumann's Forest Scenes.  I found myself describing how Schumann switches from the rhythm of the story teller to the rhythm of the ogre hiding behind the trees, to the rhythm of the frightened listener, all without warning, without transition, simply discernible by fundamental non sequiturs.  You just have to be paying attention as you play and you have to be willing to admit that you don't have a clue what is going on.  It all looks so normal.

There is a rhythm to listening, but it isn't the kind of listening you learned in MuzAp, nor is it what MuzAk encourages.  It is listening to fairytales, which fascinated Schumann.  I have no doubt whatsoever that he incorporated into his music these various sorts of listening rhythms, not confining himself to the rhythms customarily relegated to music.

Far out.