Downbeats and Jazz

All my railing about downbeats should not be taken for an anti-jazz stance - quite the contrary.

The best jazz groups do not play successive identical downbeats - if you pay careful attention you will hear that.  In fact, one of the attributes of a jazz combo is the separation of the strictly rhythmic character of the beat (the drums) from its tonal aspect (the bass).  This is a modern-day rearrangement of the Baroque continuo, in which a cello or bassoon played the bass "melody" doubled also on harpsichord, organ, or lute.

The trouble arises when one person tries to combine the two functions.  Just because it is intended to be played by a single player, piano repertoire does not simplify the connection between tone and time.  It's just that it's harder for one person to activate two impulses at the same time.  In the struggle the more obvious element always wins, i.e., the beat.

That is probably why jazz musicians who long to play Brahms and Debussy (and I have been privileged to work with quite a few who meet that description) have so much trouble "getting" it.

A fascinating thing to ponder.

I Don't Get It

Four words that are taboo for music students.  Four words that are essential to scientists and other serious questioners of .... everything.

Musicians are trained to pretend that we get it, that being able to play the right notes on time is all there is to it.  "Beg to report," as the Good Soldier Schweik would say, there's more to it than that.  What for example?

Why is one sound so much more tolerable than the next?
Why does the sound I hear not correspond to the sound I expect to hear?
Why does this piece disobey all the rules I was taught about meter and phrasing?

What Might It Mean? An Uncommon Glossary of Musical Terms and Concepts for the Stuck, Bored, and Curious is a book I wrote (and self-published as it doesn't fit into any market categories...) is available at my website.   It is uncommon in that, unlike many glossaries, its purpose is less to provide definitions than to encourage musical curiosity.

Ideal Music Appreciation

In an ideal (okay, make that my ideal) world music appreciation would consist more of getting listeners to feel comfortable listening for the sake of listening to music of whatever genre and then being able to talk about it, right then and there perhaps; after half an hour, perhaps; next day, perhaps; after a year, etc.

I can recall performances that literally left me speechless but which motivated years of followup work.  I can still vividly recall performances I heard 50 years ago as well as particular sounds I heard last week.

We have been so conditioned to believe in some fictional correct way of listening that we have little confidence that we do, indeed, hear.

I think this is what is behind the false vocabulary of so much music promotion and criticism.  It's time for listener empowerment.

Someone once had the great idea of publishing a journal of music criticism in which performers, composers, teachers would review performances they recalled from their past.  What a beautiful idea.  We might learn to risk making our own sense out of what we hear.

Thanks for Your Support

An update on my trip to Seoul this summer to present Tonal Refraction at the International Conference on Music Perception and Cognition:

Thanks to the many people who have responded to my request for funding, I am halfway there.  I feel as though I will be taking all of the responders with me.  Good company, for sure.

There is still a way to go.  Help get us there at www.tonalrefraction.com

The Trouble With Publicity

Only rarely does a concert review make me sorry I missed the event.  The other day in the New York Times was  just such a review of a pianist playing a Brahms concerto (one of my all-time favorites) with the NY Philharmonic.  It was the kind of review that made me wish I had been there.

So why had I not gone?

I am so afraid that what I will hear does not begin to touch my feeling about a piece I love so deeply that I prefer to stay home.  (Once I was dragged practically kicking and screaming to hear a performance of the Brahms Requiem by the Chicago Symphony under Georg Solti--another piece about which I had such strong feeling that I would have preferred not to test myself in that way:  It turned out to be an unforgettable experience.  But, oddly or not so oddly, the thing about it that was so remarkable was that Solti balanced the chorus with the orchestra as indicated in the score, for which he was soundly criticized by the press.)

So what kind of publicity would it have taken to get me to this particular concert?

The only answer is the kind that would have made most ticket-buyers stay home.  That would never do, I realize.  So the real nature of the artist, the real gift, has to remain a close-kept secret until some discerning reviewer has the courage to speak up and name the essence of the artistry.

Next time that pianist comes to town I will make it a point to go hear him. 

Another Downbeat?

Teaching children that rhythm is about reliable downbeats is heading them straight on a path to utter disillusionment if not terminal boredom.  I have reached that blessed state in life where I can call it as I hear it; two recognizably similar downbeats in a row will surely put me to sleep.

Let me out of here!

When I am playing and fall into that trap I know that I am not paying sufficient attention.  It is a wake-up call, every time.

So why do music teachers insist on imparting this regularity as if it is an immutable rule?

I refuse to believe that children are inherently so ill coordinated that they need to be treated as incapable of subtlety.  I encourage my students to feel offbeats, to respond flexibly to irregular groupings.  They have so much more fun, and so do I.

Does Music by a Lesser Composer Serve Any Purpose?

Just because a composer does not share the category of top billing with Beethoven or Mozart by no means guarantees that he or she has nothing to offer in the way of satisfying music.

Take Boccherini, for example.  Violinist Gregor Kitzis and I are exploring one of the six sonatas he wrote for violin and the newly invented piano -- though it says in the title that they may also be played on the harpsichord, that is just to guarantee sales, not because they could possibly sound good on a harpsichord.

These are gems of shared acoustics between two ringing instruments.  It just takes some experimentation to get to the essence of each movement, which is purely acoustical and not thematic in the way that we are all taught to approach things called sonatas.