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.

The Spirit of the Enterprise

I was privileged to hear a concert yesterday afternoon in which dedicated amateurs joined dedicated professionals in performances of two very demanding works: the Beethoven Septet and Wagner's Wesendonck Lieder, with accompaniment arranged for mixed octet.  The performances were of the category which I call better than perfect.

Everyone involved was giving their all, paying the best attention to the spirit of the music and to one another.  The more experienced players were not looking down anything resembling a nose, with the result that everyone was moved; no one wanted to leave.  A beautiful afternoon.

"Zimmer 718" the name of the group.  Don't ask - even they can't tell you why! 

When Is It Loud?

Many years ago I taught an unusually thoughtful child, about ten.

One day I asked her "When do you play loud?"   "When it's important."

"And when do you play soft?"


.............(thinking......)

"When it's important."

Listening, I Surmise, Sometimes, To My Delight, Incorrectly

There are now two instances in which I presume Beethoven to have intended a slur when, in fact, there is none.  The first I was aware of was in his First Symphony, in the Minuet movement.  The second I heard this morning, again in a Minuet, from Piano Sonata in D, Op. 10, No. 3.  Two left-hand chords, the first long, the second short, in a set-up that had "SLUR" written all over it.

Except that in each case there was none. 
'
The first case was vivid enough to cause me to check to score when I returned home from the concert.  It was, in fact, the most vivid single event of the whole evening which was singularly lacking in humor, except for this one detail.  It is true that I went to the all-Beethoven concert out of curiosity to see whether a conductor of my generation (in fact, a classmate from Oberlin) could actually get the NYPhilharmonic to observe Beethoven's articulations correctly after lifetimes of doing them by ear, i.e., a la 19th-century esthetics, i.e., wrong.  To my surprise they did very well, the proof being that this one absence-of-slur stood out.

The second instance involved my young computer animator student:  After going to some pains to get him to finger the chords so as to connect them so as to assure the proper balance between them, he played the progression perfectly as notated, unslurred, and burst out laughing. "That is the point of the whole piece!"  Deception.  Surprise.

In each case unforgettable delight.

I wouldn't have missed it for the world.  Neither would he.  Took some digging but yielded pure gold.