The Sound not the Notes

If the notes were all there was to it, everything would be so easy.

Yesterday I had a first-time appointment with an orthopedist to interpret the results of an MRI.  The imaging facility had released a report indicating a broken bone.  This is not good news for someone who goes to a lot of trouble to not have trouble in the bone department.

Both the younger and the older MD read the pictures, looked at the foot, indicated what it was that triggered the knee-jerk reaction of the technician who submitted the report and assured me, in fact demonstrated, that the problem was soft not hard tissue. 

The older doctor took some time to bemoan the mechanization of medicine.  As he put it, the "craft" is not sufficiently valued these days. 

It's the same with music, I told him.

Translating from the Greek

Yesterday the eminent Biblical scholar Dr. Phillip Towner preached a sermon using for his model his pedagogical strategy of assigning to students the task of translating from ancient Greek, not a passage from the New Testament, but some piece of historical writing with which they are totally unfamiliar.
According to him the students report that it took them days to accomplish the assignment, not like the familiar Bible stories which, as he put it, they can "do on the fly."

As I commented to him afterwards, it's the same with music.  We have heard the piece a thousand times therefore we know how it goes and there is no need to work at it.  I have the same problem as everyone else:  I am a good reader, I know how to play a Beethoven minuet when I see one.  But do I really know what it is about?  For example, how much irony enters into a Beethoven minuet? 

The performance I heard last week of the Septet leads me to believe that there is huge potential here, disguised by the illusion that one knows how it goes.

Accurate Ear Trumps Theoretical Concepts

A young computer animator who has been studying with me for 17 years has perhaps the most accurate ear of anyone I have ever taught.  That means that he feels, internalizes, every sound he hears and has reactions to each sound.

Today his constant error on a particular chord in the famous Minuet of Beethoven's D major Sonata, Op. 10, No. 3, exposed exactly how the clash of overtones in a specific first inversion triad totally confuses the ear, therefore, in his case, the fingers.

He simply cannot willy-nilly put his fingers on the "right" notes knowing in advance that they will sound terrible.  When I look at the offending combination I say to myself, "Oh!  It's a first-inversion major chord,"  play the notes correctly and move on.

As I pointed out to him, this was not always the case.  Such sounds completely threw me when I was a child, to such an extent as to produce nightmares.  This sensitivity was never brought up in all my music study until, in my early 20s, I resumed serious piano lessons having studied organ during college and on a Fulbright. 

The very first lesson I had with the great teacher, Hans Neumann, was on the subject of overtones, as he demonstrated how out of tune a first inversion major triad can be.

I am eternally grateful to him.  It explained and explains a great deal about how composition works, especially how the element of humor/irony enters into the work of a master who knows wherein the source of power lies.

Recognition

An unwritten fact of our culture gives priority to fame.  Fame equals recognition. 

Being unfamous (perhaps in some circles, infamous), I am aware of all that this implies.  Whenever I voice a strong opinion or raise an outrageous question, which I do from time to time, there hovers in the air a distinct "Who are you?"

Then there is another kind of recognition:  Total strangers recalling a particular piece I played on a particular occasion in a particular place many years ago. 

I would add another critical form of recognition: Respect for a child who earnestly seeks to produce a meaningful sound, drawing, or story.  All it needs to be meaningful is the intention. 

More About Beats

If you are one of the many people whose sense of pitch interferes with your ability to objectify the beat, you will understand how frustrating it is when theorists or other musicians claim that the beat exists a priori, apart from pitch awareness. 

How many times have I listened to contemporary jazz where there is no temptation to locate a beat, where the music is so fluid that beats seem irrelevant - not that rhythm is missing, quite the contrary.  It is simply not emphasized.

Two important examples of what I am talking about: 

• I used to study Toscanini recordings with one of those wonderful metronomes into which you tap and it registers the rate of pulsation.  Lo and behold! this master of the steady beat kept a steady fluctuation around 60, regardless of the tempo marking.  It went higher or lower, not always the quarter note as the rate of movement.  But there it was, crystal clear: the impression of a steady beat is just that, an impression.
• I have taught jazz musicians whose work was based on steady rhythmic structures.  I have been stunned, as have they, by their enslavement to such beats, which keeps them from responding to the natural fluctuations of tension and release in so much piano repertoire.   There is every reason to go with the flow in Chopin and Brahms, also in Mozart and Haydn, and why leave out Bach, Beethoven, and Handel? 

A regular beat may be called for to hold an ensemble together, but even then it is of limited usefulness.  Good musicians listen to one another, play with regularity to keep it lively.  When that clockwork sensation kicks in you know someone has been giving priority to counting rehearsal minutes rather than attending to the music.

Lining Up for Bagels

There is near my home a renowned bagel shop, in front of which a long line forms every Sunday morning.  On a recent cold, clammy morning I watched the line get longer and longer and couldn't help but wonder what it would take to get people to line up like that to hear live music?

Someone I know used to bake classic Viennese cookies for a snazzy East Side bakery.  Every cookie had to pass a rigid test of uniformity, determined by the weight of each egg. 

I once had my pancakes turned down by a nine-year-old visitor who wouldn't consider eating them because they weren't round.  My son still cringes at my haphazard kitchen habits: a bit of this, a dash of that....voila!

Does music have to sound like sterile recordings in order to be credible?   Do you have to know what you are listening to in order to let yourself go and experience it? 

As Easy as Possible, Please

When rehearsal time started to equal money rather than substance, or engagement, music went the way of industrialization and we are still reeling under the effect.

Why else should every element of notated music have been transformed into crutches on which to lean so as not to have to think or feel a thing?  (I'm talking about bar lines and synthesizers.) 

The art of music has to do with tension: tension between tones, which we call dissonance, and tension against the pull of the beat, which we call good vocalism or lyricism.

It takes real dedication to transcend the limitations thus imposed, and they do seem to be universal in this under-funded world that necessitates a fine musician taking far too many jobs in order to make ends meet.

I guess that's what dates me, more than my age:  I always thought you were supposed to do your job well, not do a lot of jobs half-heartedly.