Music and Emoticons

For quite some time we have been confused by a tendency to reduce pieces of music to simplistic frames of reference, in essence, to verbal emoticons.

For example, Beethoven's Eroica, by definition, "heroic" symphony, has become, under the batons of countless literal-minded conductors, a simple-minded, pretentious work.  Of necessity "heroic" whether you mean it or not, is as ridiculous as the line my kids love from Flanders and Swann: "Always be sincere, whether you mean it or not."

The first time I heard this work performed by a period orchestra I was stunned at its transparency.  The mere sounds of the natural horns, the period drums, strings tuned as they would have been back then, conveyed such a wealth of emotion as to defy all the literalism of hundreds of years of misguided program notes.

The audience was even laughing aloud in some of variations.  Unheard of.  Unless, of course, heard.

A Rare Person Who Cannot Listen to Music

I met this person last week and have thought about her a lot.  She simply cannot let music become a background thing as she has plenty else going on in her mind, so she chooses not to listen to music.

It struck me that I have a similar reaction to taking in artistic media that might overpower what is already active inside of me.  I don't need or want interference with the new routings that are taking place.

What a relief to be able to concentrate at last after so many years of feeling I had to keep up with everything.

A New Kind of Speed Addiction

You might not have noticed it, but one of the strongest effects of a steady diet of recorded music is similar to the effects of speed-reading: You get through a lot of material lickety-split, but miss a great deal in the process.

This is accomplished by simplifying the sound input that remains on the disc when you finally listen to it, and by the reduction implicit in transmission via an ear bud or headset.

To take in the fullness of sound with all its rich resonance requires the ability to enlarge sound moments so that they have more than one dimension.  I have seen countless amateur musicians try, and fail, to hold themselves to the standard of speed they covet from listening to music via recordings.  In the process of striving for that meaningless goal they shortchange themselves, for their innate responses are usually infinitely more interesting and more revealing about the music than the commercially homogenized product they so envy.

Check it out: Music Inside and Out

Another One: Bor-ed

Every time I hear the story I recognize the problem: it's just what I described in the Marshall McLuhan post.  Piano teachers laden with finger exercises get in the way of the child's innate musicality.  I just met another such adult, describing that circumstance in exactly those terms, indicating that in no way could he have said to the well-meaning teacher that he quit those many years ago because he was bored.  Then he asked me, "But don't you have to teach the children technique?"

"Not the way I teach," is my reply.  When every aspect of playing is directly related to the ear technique follows as the night the day because the child so wants to play a particular piece and to play it to her own standard, which is inevitably higher than the standard I would have deemed acceptable for her.  I have watched it happen.  It is not a miracle, but the result of a great deal of teacher / parent patience and belief that the only worthwhile goal is long-term.

It is a matter of the heart and soul, not of achievement.

The Moonlight Sonata: Good Taste Rides Again

There is a reason why two masterworks by Beethoven are so universally loved.  Each is, in its way, a perfect composition.  Fuer Elise is a distillation of every musical impulse within an encrytped love note to Therese (3 E's, 3 consonants) -- it sings, it dances, it tells a story.  The "Moonlight" Sonata is an unparalleled revelation of the piano sound: its reversal of customary white-key dominance displays as few other pieces do, the difference between black-key and white-key consonance.  (Beethoven's Op. 78 F# major Sonata treats the same subject.)

My young adult came in with the "Moonlight"  today.  What note is most prominent in your mind as you contemplate the piece?  He put his finger first on a G, then on a G#.  How do you spell the G in this key?  Has to be Fx, says he.  Right.  That is the point of the entire piece, witness the exposed Fx - G# measure toward the end of movement III.

We went on from there, touching on the difference between approaching complex figurations as technical problems and as fascinating interactions between touch and resonance.

We touched also on Beethoven's fascination with that most boring of figures, the Alberti figure, the subject of at least two years of his creative life (1801-2), a period put down by many musicians as not on a par with later years.  I beg to differ.  In these repeated figures lies the essence of active listening -- a repetition cannot be a repeat.

There is no composition more routinely murdered by professional pianists than the "Moonlight" Sonata.

Down with Faces! Up with Emoticons!

The CA vs NY conversation included observations about the sudden evolution of our brains from being socially attuned and interactive to being insulated from real face to face interaction with others by the intervention of meaningless words (like) and images (emoticons).

I notice it in the bland, expressionless faces of young parents with their infant children.

By the time an infant is 6 months old it is already too late to teach focused attention; babies learn sensory multi-tasking all too readily.  The concentrated attention that emanates from the mother's face is essential to all future learning.

Let's put all the screens in the closet for twenty years and see what happens.--all of them.

There Are No M104 Buses in California, Alas

In conversation with a former student, now temporarily a resident of LA, we were comparing life on the one coast with life on the other.  The difference is epitomized in my New Year's Day post about a bus-wide conversation on the M104.  Such a thing would never happen in California.

As he put it, New York City is all about "us" while LA is all about individuals in isolation from one another.  There you just get in your car and drive through neighborhoods; here we walk out of our front door and are already participating in a neighborhood that does not have a specific identity, other than an environment in which we are comfortable mingling with other people who may or may not resemble ourselves.

And always such a glorious surprise when it turns out that we share common interests or tastes or curiosities.