Why Not to Hate Mozart

I know so many people who do hate Mozart - who feel, as someone once put it, "Mozarted to death."

This has to have happened because his music all adds up -- at least, most of it does -- to the right number of beats per bar, and is characterized by a lot of solid musical syntax that puts a lot of it within the playable range of children, amateurs, and professionals who can't be bothered with their own boredom, in other words, they can't take a hint.

Their boredom should be the clue that indicates the presence of something beyond the printed page.

Today I had a wonderful chat with a Mozart hater.  During his many years of music training and exposure no one ever told him that within Mozart's music are hidden, sometimes thinly, sometimes deeply disguised, references to a universe of musics: street music, Renaissance counterpoint, Baroque dances, even speech.  To make the puzzle even more intriguing, Mozart had a way of switching from one hidden reference to another with no pause, no preparation: catch it if you can.  (Errol Garner's allusion-rich jazz piano playing comes to mind.)  A player must be on the alert so as not to miss the crossovers and must take the chance that, though this will not be the usual packaged-in-the-factory variety of Mozart it just might prove compelling.

Worth a try, don't you think?

Program Composition by Free Association

There used to be a standard way of putting recital programs together: One started with the earlier music, almost always of the Classical period, working one's way forward in time and upward in difficulty, ending with some virtuosic number to get everyone excited enough to demand an encore.

I long realized that to me this is counter-intuitive.  Why not start with the music of one's own time and work backwards so as to enlighten the music of the past with the ear of the present, so to speak.  Nobody who every wrote music did it in a vacuum, or out of a textbook; so why listen that way?

Now I will be programming based on my own ear working its way from period to period, starting wherever it will and ending however it ends.

Engage the audience in the process.

Habit Hits Happening

Emphasizing technique* in piano study is closely related to the sort of  conditioning produced by constant re-listening to the same recorded performance of a piece of music.  After a repetition or two most people stop listening, unless they are listening for specific details or with an agenda that requires repeated hearing.

But for most people repetition is a turnoff of real attentiveness.

So what happens when you are in the same room with a live performance of, to pick one of my favorite over-heards, Fuer Elise?  I get a great kick out of playing such pieces imagining Beethoven is right there, making it up as he goes along.  Just how far apart are those first two notes: in terms of tonal weight? in terms of timing?

Wait 'til you hear it!

*Every time I think of piano technique I am reminded of what Busoni said about teaching it:  To paraphrase: Technical exercises should be assigned the way doctors prescribe toxic medicines.  

I Agree with YoYo Ma: Let's Drop "Classical" and Just Call It What It Is: Music

Music could be described as going where the ear takes you.  Listening to music being made up on the spot is particularly exciting if the improviser wants you to go along, to include you in the process of going where the ear takes you.

Too often printed music acts as an excuse to leave the ear out altogether, both that of the player and of the listener.  I am fascinated by the difference between reading for sound and reading for the MuzApp notion of what is happening.  I play with the score because that's what I do - also I do so many other things that playing from memory is out of the question, with some noteworthy exceptions.

The MuzApp notion is based on themes.  Nonsense, say I.  What the MuzApp people call a theme is one acoustical event compelling more acoustical events.  Maybe they line up to produce a sort of idea that is easy to remember, but that is not what they are, nor is it why they exist (I am talking about real composers, not writers of tunes...)

As you may know I am a knitter.  I no longer follow instructions but make things up as I go along.  I am struck by how musical an exercise it is: the need for variation comes out of the string itself as it becomes too one-dimensional and I need it to cast shadows.  I think of music constantly as I do it, music pure, not this piece or that.

Playing Without a Printed Program

The season takes off with a new experiment:   No printed programs.

I did my first such program last night with astonishing results.  I had planned the program, even announced it on-line; the composers' names were the subject of the evening.  But I decided not to distribute programs until after the playing.  The result was amazing.

It freed me to hear as I wanted the listeners to hear, as if every note were a challenge to pay attention, to become immersed in a never-to-be-repeated moment.  It was truly like an improvisation.  And my interpretation of a Clementi Sonata (F# minor - a great work) was entirely different from the last time I performed it several years ago.

When A Piece Is Not In a Key

Somewhere along the line music teachers decided that the only way to teach music to children was to teach them about keys, scales, all that formulaic stuff.

But that is just what it is: formulaic.  As such it is of limited usefulness.  One must always be on the lookout for pieces that do not conform to the formula.

Today it was a piece by Bartok that relies on the dichotomy between black and white keys.  After musing (!) about all kinds of motion within a total black-key sound he suddenly introduces the two "missing" white keys: C and F (below).  This sudden stark perfect fifth arrests all forward motion.  Along with it comes a new note value:  so far the longest value has been the equivalent of four eighths, all of a sudden it is five.

I asked the student what the difference is.  His answer: "immeasurable."  Spot on.  The musical distance between four and five is not simply one unit; rather it is leaving the universe of balance and symmetry for the opposite, which feels foreign, even intolerable.

Why Musical Compositions Have Titles

After an evening of listening to cabaret music-making, most of the songs led into with stream-of-consciousness-type comments on recent news stories or events in the life of the singer/songwriter, the question arose in my mind as I contemplated preparing the printed program for the in-house recital I will play tomorrow...  why have a printed program?

Without the distraction of a printed program, the roomful of people listens for what is coming in a way that is overwhelmingly persuasive.  Nobody knows what is about to happen, sometimes not even the bass player who has an uncanny ability to read the singer's mind, even when she changes it at the last minute, or changes key.... So when the moody intro turns out to yield a hilarious song everyone is caught off-guard and the laughter is immediate and deep.

Deep in both senses: the moody intro gives an edge to the laughter indicating that nothing is probably as simple as it seems.

Probably the jazziest song of the evening was about death, yup.  What was hilarious about it? Everything, especially the simple fact that we were all together facing it, sooner or later, or now.

The printed program should be a gateway to participatory listening.  Maybe I'll scrap it and see what happens.  Part of the problem with it is that it presupposes too much on the part of the listener, not in the Muz App sense of knowledge, but simply in terms of whether you are about to hear a song or a dance or some kind of intellectual exercise  perhaps somber perhaps rollicking.  But the music may actually belie its title.  Maybe it's not the serious piece you ordinarily expect of a "fugue."  I have to think some more about this problem.