Feedback

It always seemed to me that public performance was a kind of publication: Putting your ideas out there constitutes a kind of invitation to dialogue.

I would have liked nothing better than to be engaged as a partner in dialogue by a number of musicians.  But no such thing turns out to be the case.

Attempts to engage in dialogue were routinely rebuffed as if authority was all there was to it.  And who am I, a mere listener, to raise questions.

It is a huge relief to welcome the comments, questions, responses both positive and negative of listeners who are coming not for status but to have a good time.

Mind Heart Body

To connect them--what a task.  One problem is that each seems to follow its own timing.  The mind goes faster than the body, for sure, and the heart, well it is both fastest and slowest, isn't it?

Witnessing the struggle of a young man for whom no connection can be assumed, but must be worked on, repeated, thought through, I have learned to respect the signs of connectedness.  I am no longer satisfied to hear anyone merely get by with the illusion of connectedness.  The illusion is lifeless.  The struggle to connect teems with vitality whether or not mastery will ever be a part of it.

What Makes Mature Playing? Part II

The other young man of comparable age with whom I work is extremely sensitive, has a highly cultivated ear and a powerful sense of logic.  We have been working on sight-reading as an act not of facile pronunciation but in order to experience understanding of the piece.

He reads well enough now that he can hear right away when a piece is amusing.  So, on his choice, we have moved to Beethoven.  D major, Op.10, No. 3--one of the most difficult sonatas in Book I. (He likes D!)  This is a piece I had always shied away from because, though I could "play the notes," I had no grasp of articulation or metric subtlety.  What a different experience to hear the music without an assumption that facility is the point of playing / sight-reading.

Detail.  Content.  Substance. 

What Makes Mature Playing? Part I

For the past several months I have been working on a profoundly lyrical Bartok piece with a young man whose physical and mental coordination is severely challenged by blindness, autisim, and other development issues.

Today I found myself describing to him that what makes his playing of the piece grown up is the fact that he can exercise choices about how he plays each phrase.  In his case the choices are extremely specific: hand in this position, use those fingers, play louder than you are comfortable playing, let go of the sound before you want to--that sort of thing.

I stopped myself in mid-sentence as I was going to say that children do not have the option of making those choices.  I would have been mistaken: I have heard children do just that.

On the other hand, I have heard many mature musicians who seem not to notice that they have choices as they play.

A Great Sound Can Make Us Listen

For several days I have been reliving my profound emotion on hearing Horszowski play a recital at the Metropolitan Museum over 50 years ago.

It is curious that at the time I had no conscious idea of what was "good" playing.  Did he play well?  Don't ask me.  Was his Bach good?  His Beethoven?  Ask someone else.

All I knew for sure was that my life had changed.  Sound so compelling that I would not stop working on it until I figured it out.  How did he do it!

I can't tell, of course, whether or not my playing in any way resembles his: I refuse to judge by recordings for all kinds of reasons.  But I do know that people express to me reactions very similar to those I felt on listening to him so long ago.  

The Piano Police

The more I think about the NYTimes critic pronouncing on the last movement of the "Moonlight" sonata the happier I am that I can play that movement the way I think it really goes without fear of being derided in the media.

It is a multi-media whammy: First the midguided recordings, some by acknowledged masters of the piano (though not necessarily profound musical thinkers, therefore only human), then the printed word out there for all to read.

I prefer my small responsive audience, right there, live and in the moment, giving me the feedback the music deserves and that I regard as essential for continued growth.

Teachers and Students

I was enraged yesterday to read in print a list of names purporting to represent a progeny of teacher / student mastery.

Why enraged?  I am enraged by the assumption that because a musician has studied with another musician (presumably older) he or she has merely soaked up the master's wisdom and not thought things out for himself or herself.

This is a totally false assumption, although it does happen all too frequently.  One of the names listed was a truly great performer whose name has come up on this blog as being a one-of-a-kind original thinker and pianist.  I know that he did not teach his students to play as he played, otherwise they would be doing so and they clearly are not.

I had one -- count them -- one lesson with this master in which he not only affirmed the validity of my idiosyncratic path but also discouraged me, most wisely, from aspiring to get onto the beaten path.

I know also from a year spent with a master who is often named as a source (I, too, name him in my bio) that what he taught was what he was expected to teach and not what corresponded to his true art.
He told me as much.  He spelled it out.  He demonstrated.  If you really wanted to learn from him you had to listen to his playing and listen very carefully.

And there you have it. 

It's not the name or the succession.  It is compelling artistry and the ability to listen attentively. That is the only true succession of mastery.