This is an increasingly urgent question as I observe more and more amateurs falling for the trap that confuses sounding polished with being impassioned. As long as the going professional standard is to sound polished no matter what, amateurs will find it harder and harder to give their unconscious musical selves permission to show much less flourish.
The trend has been growing steadily more pronounced. It was already evident when I began coaching amateur chamber musicians in 1975. It has most definitely become more problematic.
The essential question in chamber music always has to be "Why does it take three (or however many) people to play this piece?" As long as three people are trying to sound as though they represent some fictional single point of view the question has no meaning, nor does the music.
In the case of solo playing it is a matter of the amateur having the courage to address the music inward rather than to what Emily Dickinson called "an admiring bog." Being let in on the innermost musical instincts of anyone is for me the highest possible privilege, no matter how skilled or unskilled the player.
Sunday, March 16, 2014
Saturday, March 15, 2014
If Sight-Reading, Why Not Ear-Reading?
The discussion rages on an Internet group how best to teach sight-reading. Most of the techniques touted as effective are all visual aids, only rarely does anyone mention the need to attach any of the alphabet or number devices to actual sounds.
Today I was describing to a colleague how difficult it was for me to learn to listen without looking at a score for as soon as I look at a score I know what I should hear, rather than having any awareness of what I am actually hearing -- there is a big difference. If I analyze in advance what the student should be playing I deprive the student of my attempt to understand what he or she does in fact hear, so I am stuck with a categorical right note/wrong note approach, rather than with the far more interesting "Ah! I hear how you understand this passage and can now show you what alternatives the composer has suggested."
It was not easy to learn to listen this way but the rewards have been great both for myself and for my students, both in piano and in chamber music.
I went to this trouble in order to demonstrate the validity of Viktor Zuckerkandl's insights into the innate logic of the musical mind and of the unfailing bodily sense of following that logic even into the realm of the conventional wrong note.*
Without that kind of listening I would never have noticed that some tonal works are conceived so as to distort the reliable tuning to the tonic triad or even to the instrument's innate resonance (like the violin's A or the cello's G). When I have heard that happen it has been stunning to identify the event and then be unable to discern it by visually studying the score - so overpoweringly inhibiting is the conceptual world represented by standard music notation.
*Sound and Symbol: Music and the External World, published by Bollingen Press, 1956
Today I was describing to a colleague how difficult it was for me to learn to listen without looking at a score for as soon as I look at a score I know what I should hear, rather than having any awareness of what I am actually hearing -- there is a big difference. If I analyze in advance what the student should be playing I deprive the student of my attempt to understand what he or she does in fact hear, so I am stuck with a categorical right note/wrong note approach, rather than with the far more interesting "Ah! I hear how you understand this passage and can now show you what alternatives the composer has suggested."
It was not easy to learn to listen this way but the rewards have been great both for myself and for my students, both in piano and in chamber music.
I went to this trouble in order to demonstrate the validity of Viktor Zuckerkandl's insights into the innate logic of the musical mind and of the unfailing bodily sense of following that logic even into the realm of the conventional wrong note.*
Without that kind of listening I would never have noticed that some tonal works are conceived so as to distort the reliable tuning to the tonic triad or even to the instrument's innate resonance (like the violin's A or the cello's G). When I have heard that happen it has been stunning to identify the event and then be unable to discern it by visually studying the score - so overpoweringly inhibiting is the conceptual world represented by standard music notation.
*Sound and Symbol: Music and the External World, published by Bollingen Press, 1956
Friday, March 14, 2014
The Body and the Ear
For many years I have been testing Viktor Zuckerkandl's insight that musical logic brings about certain subconscious responses that indicate a kind of innate common sense. Today, once again, I had ample and convincing proof that he was right.
It is a young woman, currently living without a piano, with no particular musical "talent," but whose ear is astute as it usually is in people for whom results do not come easily. I have invented an exercise in which the student plays the same note an octave apart with the two hands, pedal down. Then, at random, without changing the pedal, the student plays two other white key pitches, returns to the first pitch, and continues in this manner.
It was fascinating to observe the number of instances in which she gravitated to consonant intervals -- she has a pronounced preference for what she calls "right notes." I know this is no accident because I observe it in others, including myself. I used to be able to do this exercise myself but can no longer. It is as if an involuntary measurer takes over and I go to octaves and fifths whether I "want" to or not.
It is a young woman, currently living without a piano, with no particular musical "talent," but whose ear is astute as it usually is in people for whom results do not come easily. I have invented an exercise in which the student plays the same note an octave apart with the two hands, pedal down. Then, at random, without changing the pedal, the student plays two other white key pitches, returns to the first pitch, and continues in this manner.
It was fascinating to observe the number of instances in which she gravitated to consonant intervals -- she has a pronounced preference for what she calls "right notes." I know this is no accident because I observe it in others, including myself. I used to be able to do this exercise myself but can no longer. It is as if an involuntary measurer takes over and I go to octaves and fifths whether I "want" to or not.
Thursday, March 13, 2014
Does It Go Up or Does It Go Down?
This is one of the most obvious things in notated music: It's a piece of cake; you can see it right away. So what difference can it possibly make?
Well, the ear seems to care a great deal about the difference between rising and falling. So much so that for many years falling meant sadness and rising meant joy. Then comes a tune like Joy to the World, which goes in altogether the wrong direction. But that's Handel--announcing this great good news by turning acoustical logic upside down.
(Actually another example, far less meaningful, but still: London Bridge is Falling --- should be up! This was one of the examples from a wonderful children's book popular about 50 years ago called The Silly Book.)
When we hear a single tone without accompanying chord it is fairer to expect it to rise than to fall. We take the tone to be a fundamental, especially if it is centrally placed within the vocal range, G for example. This is why the opening G of Mozart's G Minor Piano Quartet is so deeply unsettling: It goes down to D rather than up, thus establishing D as a more secure tone. Did Mozart know this? How could he not? The theme is identical to that of the early G major, actually minor piano and violin sonata except that in that piece the D is a 5th above not a 4th below the G.
Just because we know where the proper sounds are located on our instruments doesn't mean we have processed them in terms of their resonance within tonal space.
Well, the ear seems to care a great deal about the difference between rising and falling. So much so that for many years falling meant sadness and rising meant joy. Then comes a tune like Joy to the World, which goes in altogether the wrong direction. But that's Handel--announcing this great good news by turning acoustical logic upside down.
(Actually another example, far less meaningful, but still: London Bridge is Falling --- should be up! This was one of the examples from a wonderful children's book popular about 50 years ago called The Silly Book.)
When we hear a single tone without accompanying chord it is fairer to expect it to rise than to fall. We take the tone to be a fundamental, especially if it is centrally placed within the vocal range, G for example. This is why the opening G of Mozart's G Minor Piano Quartet is so deeply unsettling: It goes down to D rather than up, thus establishing D as a more secure tone. Did Mozart know this? How could he not? The theme is identical to that of the early G major, actually minor piano and violin sonata except that in that piece the D is a 5th above not a 4th below the G.
Just because we know where the proper sounds are located on our instruments doesn't mean we have processed them in terms of their resonance within tonal space.
Wednesday, March 12, 2014
That Note Again
In 1999 I published What Might It Mean? An Uncommon Glossary of Musical Terms and Concepts for the Stuck, Bored, and Curious. Now, 15 years later I find myself using it over and over again to solve problems of the sort that make me feel stuck, bored (I admit it!), and most definitely curious. So I turn to the entry on Ratio Rhythm.
This is a concept I made up to describe what happens in Classical sonata allegro movements, in which the principal themes are defined by ratio rhythms of 4:1, usually with one theme being 4 eighths to the half note, the other 4 sixteenths to the quarter.
But in Op. 24 of Beethoven ("Spring" Sonata) we have a special case: On the face of it there are clearly 4 eighths in the piano Right Hand to establish the proper ratio with the violin's half note. But there are also the sixteenth notes that relate to NO quarter notes in the bar. The value still unaccounted for is that pesky whole note in the piano Left Hand. Aha!
There are two ratios moving simultaneously: 4:1 and 16:1 which is totally different from a bar with a staightforward 4/4 meter. It must infer a subcurrent of sixteenths within the half note, otherwise why would the whole measure be under one bow stroke?
Could it be that this subcurrent is what turns into the trills that come before the Recapitulation? But no one plays them that way. They are always played like technical exercises, unk-a-chunk-a with accented quarter-note beats.
This is a concept I made up to describe what happens in Classical sonata allegro movements, in which the principal themes are defined by ratio rhythms of 4:1, usually with one theme being 4 eighths to the half note, the other 4 sixteenths to the quarter.
But in Op. 24 of Beethoven ("Spring" Sonata) we have a special case: On the face of it there are clearly 4 eighths in the piano Right Hand to establish the proper ratio with the violin's half note. But there are also the sixteenth notes that relate to NO quarter notes in the bar. The value still unaccounted for is that pesky whole note in the piano Left Hand. Aha!
There are two ratios moving simultaneously: 4:1 and 16:1 which is totally different from a bar with a staightforward 4/4 meter. It must infer a subcurrent of sixteenths within the half note, otherwise why would the whole measure be under one bow stroke?
Could it be that this subcurrent is what turns into the trills that come before the Recapitulation? But no one plays them that way. They are always played like technical exercises, unk-a-chunk-a with accented quarter-note beats.
Tuesday, March 11, 2014
Paper Accepted for International Conference on Music Perception and Cognition
I got word today that my proposed presentation of my work of the past 50 years on the individual's awareness of subconscious responses to sound has been accepted by the International Conference on Music Perception and Cognition, to take place in Seoul, Korea in August.
I am, of course, honored at the prospect of presenting Tonal Refraction to such an esteemed gathering. In order to get there I must raise the air fare within this week, as they need to know by March 18 that I am coming.
I ask your help in making this important step materialize. You may give online or contact me for other options. All of my work has been undertaken independent of academic affiliation as it does not fit any existing categories. This makes every aspect of this recognition all the more meaningful.
Please help it take place! And thanks. www.tonalrefraction.com
I am, of course, honored at the prospect of presenting Tonal Refraction to such an esteemed gathering. In order to get there I must raise the air fare within this week, as they need to know by March 18 that I am coming.
I ask your help in making this important step materialize. You may give online or contact me for other options. All of my work has been undertaken independent of academic affiliation as it does not fit any existing categories. This makes every aspect of this recognition all the more meaningful.
Please help it take place! And thanks. www.tonalrefraction.com
Awakened by a Note
Not just any note: This is the all-too-familiar yet totally baffling first note on the violin of Beethoven's "Spring" Sonata, Op. 24, subject of Vol. III of Tone Perception Visualized. Why does it wake me up?
Is there a possibility that Beethoven is telling me something I hadn't thought of before? I had known that this sonata is about the difference between tones that are stable and tones that move, usually by sliding rather by articulated motion. But this is a kind of tone motion I had not yet figured out.
- It is too long
- It is difficult to tune
- It doesn't really go anywhere
- Yet it eventually becomes four closely connected As in unison with the piano
- Later to turn into trills, also in unison with the piano
Is there a possibility that Beethoven is telling me something I hadn't thought of before? I had known that this sonata is about the difference between tones that are stable and tones that move, usually by sliding rather by articulated motion. But this is a kind of tone motion I had not yet figured out.
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