That's how a friend describes what it is like to get together with fellow amateurs to enjoy a morning of music-making. They are fortunate to play an assortment of instruments that suggests repertoire new to most if not all of them--recorders, violins. This keeps them from that most unsatisfying business of bumbling through beaty Classical period cliches.
Having once heard the Classical period's gems turned into arithmetic exercises - and I did spell beaty correctly - it is very difficult to reverse the dynamic and get them to flow like an element in which anyone would voluntarily swim.
The challenge has represented a lifetime of work for me, personally. I always thought (ha! ha!) that once having figured that out everyone would be overwhelmed. Uh!uh! The opposite seems to be the case.
What? You don't want to sound like everyone else? What on earth is the matter with you! (yes, it is an intentional ! and not ?)
Thursday, October 2, 2014
Wednesday, October 1, 2014
Headline: Bar Lines Remove Critical Laughter
Last night I heard two outstanding flutists displaying considerable virtuosity in a duo recital, eventually bringing down the house and me with it, with a two-flute rendition of the Carmen Fantasy by Bizet, if you can believe it. (I love Bizet, a much under-rated composer, and I love Carmen, but I never expected to hear that piece played like that!
But the house should have started falling (from being brought down) with their first two numbers. If it didn't it was because they made sure that I knew where every bar line should fall. The composers in question, Thomas Morley and W.F. Bach, were not Classical period masters. On the contrary. Each flourished in an era when variation was constant and rhythmic vitality uncontrollably out of kilter with predictable symmetry.
Surely the players didn't need to reinforce their ensemble musicianship in this pedestrian way. Wouldn't they have more fun if they allowed asymmetry to peek in, as, for example, at every sequence of three notes of the same value even though the meter is 2/4? And if they had more fun, wouldn't everyone else have had more fun as well?
Why not bring down the house with the first number? And the second?
But the house should have started falling (from being brought down) with their first two numbers. If it didn't it was because they made sure that I knew where every bar line should fall. The composers in question, Thomas Morley and W.F. Bach, were not Classical period masters. On the contrary. Each flourished in an era when variation was constant and rhythmic vitality uncontrollably out of kilter with predictable symmetry.
Surely the players didn't need to reinforce their ensemble musicianship in this pedestrian way. Wouldn't they have more fun if they allowed asymmetry to peek in, as, for example, at every sequence of three notes of the same value even though the meter is 2/4? And if they had more fun, wouldn't everyone else have had more fun as well?
Why not bring down the house with the first number? And the second?
Tuesday, September 30, 2014
"You Have Taken Away My Laughter"
Last night I heard a truly amazing song cycle by Shulamit Ran, whose music I do not know, Moon Songs, sung by the truly amazing soprano Lucy Shelton, who had collaborated in its writing and who was performing with the Da Capo Chamber Players.
In the verse called "Prayer to Pierrot" the singer begs Pierrot (as in Lunaire) to bring back the laughter. Indeed, it is a prayer in which I join wholeheartedly. Where has the laughter gone?
There is hardly a trace of it in a New York concert hall in which new music is being performed and listened to. I found myself laughing aloud only once: at a sudden blues chord played by the violin/cello duo. How did that get in there?
And now, the morning after, I wonder who listens anymore in such a way as to permit the laugh reaction to blurt out or even to cross one's face. It has all become so sanctimonious; we are all so frightened. We will not learn to laugh until we forget that we are supposed to know something before we allow ourselves simply and vulnerably to listen.
Pages and pages of program notes only impede this process.
In the verse called "Prayer to Pierrot" the singer begs Pierrot (as in Lunaire) to bring back the laughter. Indeed, it is a prayer in which I join wholeheartedly. Where has the laughter gone?
There is hardly a trace of it in a New York concert hall in which new music is being performed and listened to. I found myself laughing aloud only once: at a sudden blues chord played by the violin/cello duo. How did that get in there?
And now, the morning after, I wonder who listens anymore in such a way as to permit the laugh reaction to blurt out or even to cross one's face. It has all become so sanctimonious; we are all so frightened. We will not learn to laugh until we forget that we are supposed to know something before we allow ourselves simply and vulnerably to listen.
Pages and pages of program notes only impede this process.
Monday, September 29, 2014
Performance Practice: The Economics Effect
After hearing my 2nd ever rousing rendition of the Messe de Tournai, a 13th century mass for three voices, I was talking with one of the singers about how much has changed in the way modern musicians regard those early styles of polyphony.
My theory as to why the practice has become so much more lively: The singers who are putting vitality into the art are not the top earners. Since they don't make a lot of money they need some compensation for their effort, and that must be their joy and satisfaction when, refusing to be bored, they find the life in the line.
It reminded me of a performance I heard recently which was so tedious that I could hardly stay politely seated next to the friend who had invited me. The next day, as I wondered how those players could tolerate being so bored I realized it had to do with their being very well paid, indeed. Inevitably the prestige that goes with their conspicuous positions breeds confusion in the audience. How will they recognize boredom when they hear it, if they 1) have paid so much for their tickets and 2) the players are all reputed to be "top notch."
Go and hear young people. Patronize the less-than-famous. Take a chance on the unknown. Let yourself be, perhaps, surprised.
My theory as to why the practice has become so much more lively: The singers who are putting vitality into the art are not the top earners. Since they don't make a lot of money they need some compensation for their effort, and that must be their joy and satisfaction when, refusing to be bored, they find the life in the line.
It reminded me of a performance I heard recently which was so tedious that I could hardly stay politely seated next to the friend who had invited me. The next day, as I wondered how those players could tolerate being so bored I realized it had to do with their being very well paid, indeed. Inevitably the prestige that goes with their conspicuous positions breeds confusion in the audience. How will they recognize boredom when they hear it, if they 1) have paid so much for their tickets and 2) the players are all reputed to be "top notch."
Go and hear young people. Patronize the less-than-famous. Take a chance on the unknown. Let yourself be, perhaps, surprised.
Sunday, September 28, 2014
What is More Interesting: The Music or Listening to It?
Judging from the extent to which pieces of music are dissected, analyzed, theorized, literalized, you would think there was nothing intrinsically musical to get interested in.
The mark of a good composition is that it grabs your attention. Pardon me, I left something out: The mark of a good composition well played is that it grabs your attention. If it does not it is not being well played. Period.
It has to do with paying attention to the living, breathing sound. If the performer does not do that how are you supposed to do it for her? I hear too many performances that exude "deja vu all over again," as Yogi Berra so aptly put it. I much prefer listening to the genuine struggles of amateurs and children than to the sort of lifeless repetition that too often passes for professionalism.
The mark of a good composition is that it grabs your attention. Pardon me, I left something out: The mark of a good composition well played is that it grabs your attention. If it does not it is not being well played. Period.
It has to do with paying attention to the living, breathing sound. If the performer does not do that how are you supposed to do it for her? I hear too many performances that exude "deja vu all over again," as Yogi Berra so aptly put it. I much prefer listening to the genuine struggles of amateurs and children than to the sort of lifeless repetition that too often passes for professionalism.
Saturday, September 27, 2014
Too Many Right Notes!
I am all in favor of wrong notes! Today I saw a perfect example of how much more revealing a wrong note can be than all the right notes in the world.
The student, a young woman whose ear is incredibly sensitive; not a facile reader, she has the advantage of actually hearing before she puts her finger on a key what it will sound like. And she knows perfectly well that, if playing an E-flat with her left hand, she will not like what the right note, in this case, A, will sound like in the right hand. So she changes it to a more palatable sound, G.
Who could argue with this? Only a piano teacher fixated on the right notes. But the note she chose to play was clearly more correct in sound that the one indicated by Clementi.
It is a matter of spices, I told her. Clementi lived in an era when a certain kind of musical hot pepper we call dissonance was all the vogue. Put the hot pepper on the beat and everybody has more fun.
Many good things happen when music is approached this way.
The student, a young woman whose ear is incredibly sensitive; not a facile reader, she has the advantage of actually hearing before she puts her finger on a key what it will sound like. And she knows perfectly well that, if playing an E-flat with her left hand, she will not like what the right note, in this case, A, will sound like in the right hand. So she changes it to a more palatable sound, G.
Who could argue with this? Only a piano teacher fixated on the right notes. But the note she chose to play was clearly more correct in sound that the one indicated by Clementi.
It is a matter of spices, I told her. Clementi lived in an era when a certain kind of musical hot pepper we call dissonance was all the vogue. Put the hot pepper on the beat and everybody has more fun.
Many good things happen when music is approached this way.
Friday, September 26, 2014
When the Ear is Left Out
Leaving the ear out of elementary music instruction is like teaching art to a blindfolded student. You are not supposed to react to anything you hear. Just play it and don't notice anything about it for, if you did, it just might stop you in your tracks, make it impossible for you to count (as it did in my case), or just turn you off completely.
The student who came to me thirty years ago to get "the music part" of playing the piano is just now at a point where she can tolerate how much her own individual response is the music part. Her reaction to every sound, no matter how exposed, how spare, transforms the notation into a process at the compositional level, in which she is called upon to react one tone at a time. The resulting precision raises as many questions as it answers.
Thus I spend my life in music.
The student who came to me thirty years ago to get "the music part" of playing the piano is just now at a point where she can tolerate how much her own individual response is the music part. Her reaction to every sound, no matter how exposed, how spare, transforms the notation into a process at the compositional level, in which she is called upon to react one tone at a time. The resulting precision raises as many questions as it answers.
Thus I spend my life in music.
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