It is probably difficult for any 11-year-old to believe that he or she should be any different from all other 11-year-olds. I recall wondering at that age whether I was supposed to sound like everyone else who played the piano. It was not a pleasant question and it was a highly isolating one to ponder--it could certainly not be expressed aloud.
But I have seen an 11-year-old student become fascinated with the vivid drama of sounds in a composition that I found too troubling to play myself. Her insistence on the piece despite my cautions demonstrated to me as few other instances have in the course of my teaching, that there is a deeper level of mastery than simply being able to play the notes. In fact, one of the more amazing things about her selection was that the notes were awkward, involving complex hand positions and subtle fingerings as well as challenging dissonances of both tone and time (rests with
fermatas are not comfortable--they are, indeed, not supposed to be).
I call this mastery; perhaps the better word would be self-possession. How old were you when you experienced that while playing your instrument?
This child was taught in the manner I described in my last post: to give primacy to her responses to sound, whether from a printed score or in music that she improvised.
Friday, November 2, 2012
Thursday, November 1, 2012
Learning and Mastery
I have begun a dialogue with a former student, now a Ph.D. in Neuroscience, about the impact of Tonal Refraction upon my teaching of young children. The conversation was prompted by a recent interview with a colleague of his who works on the fear response of animals, including humans. This pre-conscious response is a matter of survival: we feel and respond to fear before knowing its cause.
It struck me at the time that one could substitute musical tone for the fear-producing stimulus . It struck me, too, that I have in fact been experimenting with reaching children's response at exactly that level ever since working with Tonal Refraction, that is, since 1993. To explain the connection you need to know that Tonal Refraction is a method of visualizing the pre-conscious emotional responses to tone buried under the layers of theoretical abstraction and technical instruction that are the basis of conventional music training. It is, as one eminent theorist put it, "what gets trained out of us." The act of visualizing this has been of extreme (I do not exaggerate) importance in restoring confident musical function to many professional and amateur musicians who, in either physical or psychological pain, are removed from full satisfaction in their music making.
If it works after the damage is done, I wondered, wouldn't it be possible to avert the damage by teaching children to read and play directly into and out of the validity of that moment? Now that a full cycle of the approach has been realized with the graduation from high school of a student who advanced to a level of sight-reading far more sophisticated that where I was at twice her age, I am taking the work public.
The biggest difference between the fear response and the musical response is that tone triggers a whole range of emotional reactions, from glorious to horrifying. What makes mastery is owning the experience at whichever extreme or wherever in between. The ownership is reinforced by my hearing the effect in the child's playing. To be continued.
It struck me at the time that one could substitute musical tone for the fear-producing stimulus . It struck me, too, that I have in fact been experimenting with reaching children's response at exactly that level ever since working with Tonal Refraction, that is, since 1993. To explain the connection you need to know that Tonal Refraction is a method of visualizing the pre-conscious emotional responses to tone buried under the layers of theoretical abstraction and technical instruction that are the basis of conventional music training. It is, as one eminent theorist put it, "what gets trained out of us." The act of visualizing this has been of extreme (I do not exaggerate) importance in restoring confident musical function to many professional and amateur musicians who, in either physical or psychological pain, are removed from full satisfaction in their music making.
If it works after the damage is done, I wondered, wouldn't it be possible to avert the damage by teaching children to read and play directly into and out of the validity of that moment? Now that a full cycle of the approach has been realized with the graduation from high school of a student who advanced to a level of sight-reading far more sophisticated that where I was at twice her age, I am taking the work public.
The biggest difference between the fear response and the musical response is that tone triggers a whole range of emotional reactions, from glorious to horrifying. What makes mastery is owning the experience at whichever extreme or wherever in between. The ownership is reinforced by my hearing the effect in the child's playing. To be continued.
Wednesday, October 31, 2012
Composing a Program
Schubert / Dvorak: The relationship between the two is the focus of my current recital series. Next up is a program featuring the A minor Sonata, Op. 42. The main difficulty I face performing this work is that I know it too well, having studied it 50 years ago. In those days it was unthinkable to consider Schubert as anything but a Classical composer with Romantic tendencies. It did not occur to anyone to discuss his use of the sonata to explore instability rather than stability, or to see in his rhythms anything beyond their repetitive surface.
Having once learned to hear a work in terms of its stability it is difficult to turn the page, to discern the elements that tip it out of traditional harmonic and structural terms and allow it to make its own context.
I know, to begin with, that A minor is a particularly dramatic key for Schubert. The Arpeggione Sonata, one of my all-time favorite duo sonatas, is in A minor, as is the song Der Leiermann (The Hurgy-gurdy Man) from Winterreise. (Just how dramatic it is was made vivid to me when, having paid a lot of money for the privilege, I sat in a box seat to hear a renowned pianist perform the cycle with a singer of his choosing. Though I do not have perfect pitch I was alarmed when they came to that song to miss the jarring black-key G-sharp that makes it so eerie: He had transposed the piece, as if that were possible. In disgust and disillusionment I left the hall.)
The jarring elements that expose the fragility of tonality are especially apparent in Schubert's little-known Ecossaises cycles, upon which Dvorak expanded to make his Scottish Dances. I find myself moving through these simple works back into the sonata, enlivened and enlightened.
Having once learned to hear a work in terms of its stability it is difficult to turn the page, to discern the elements that tip it out of traditional harmonic and structural terms and allow it to make its own context.
I know, to begin with, that A minor is a particularly dramatic key for Schubert. The Arpeggione Sonata, one of my all-time favorite duo sonatas, is in A minor, as is the song Der Leiermann (The Hurgy-gurdy Man) from Winterreise. (Just how dramatic it is was made vivid to me when, having paid a lot of money for the privilege, I sat in a box seat to hear a renowned pianist perform the cycle with a singer of his choosing. Though I do not have perfect pitch I was alarmed when they came to that song to miss the jarring black-key G-sharp that makes it so eerie: He had transposed the piece, as if that were possible. In disgust and disillusionment I left the hall.)
The jarring elements that expose the fragility of tonality are especially apparent in Schubert's little-known Ecossaises cycles, upon which Dvorak expanded to make his Scottish Dances. I find myself moving through these simple works back into the sonata, enlivened and enlightened.
Tuesday, October 30, 2012
The Word Stealing Advertising Menace
It turns out that Text-Enhance.com is a malware that attached itself to my computer, introducing to my eyes alone, apparently, ads at every algorithmic word, like sonata or play. I had begun to suspect that all of language had been poisoned. So beware.
Piano Playing and Therapy, continued
At the same time that I know I cannot imitate someone walking, it occurs to me that I did ultimately learn how to play the piano by imitating two great pianists' hands, drawn to careful observation in each case by their highly individual sound.
What made this imitating possible?
My guess is that in each instance I was completely engaged in the sound on a note-by-note level. It was as if I entered the hand via the sound and that immersion worked on my hands from within myself, changing my hand position, increasing my hand extension, improving my fingering--all significant factors in playing.
One was Artur Rubinstein with whose hands I have nothing in common: his were large, mine are small. The other was Miecyszlaw Horszowski, whose combination of finger with foot made an irresistible legato.
The sound existed as if free of interpretation. I neither agreed nor disagreed with it. I was completely caught up in it with no possible distraction. In a way, the sound purified the exchange.
What made this imitating possible?
My guess is that in each instance I was completely engaged in the sound on a note-by-note level. It was as if I entered the hand via the sound and that immersion worked on my hands from within myself, changing my hand position, increasing my hand extension, improving my fingering--all significant factors in playing.
One was Artur Rubinstein with whose hands I have nothing in common: his were large, mine are small. The other was Miecyszlaw Horszowski, whose combination of finger with foot made an irresistible legato.
The sound existed as if free of interpretation. I neither agreed nor disagreed with it. I was completely caught up in it with no possible distraction. In a way, the sound purified the exchange.
Monday, October 29, 2012
Something new and completely horseracing
Surprise! Apparently, as of today and out of the blue, like a jet plane, or perhaps a Zeppelin not necessarily Led, or maybe even Superman, all commercially valuable words will be linked, by something called Text-Enhance, to advertisements. I will make a great effort to restrict my vocabulary to 18th-century notions which have no commercial value that I know of.
Ooops! Apparently my every reference to a S____ , the name of a commonly performed Classical structure, provides Honda an adop. Ooops for the op.
I would be curious to know if this affects the machine of everyone reading this blog, or if it is just something that attached itself to my machine.... lucky me.
Ooops! Apparently my every reference to a S____ , the name of a commonly performed Classical structure, provides Honda an adop. Ooops for the op.
I would be curious to know if this affects the machine of everyone reading this blog, or if it is just something that attached itself to my machine.... lucky me.
Music and Therapy
I have always been sure of two things: Walking is harder than playing the piano. If I ever figured out how to really play the piano I would have figured out how to live.
I want to walk as other people walk, without having to think about every aspect of placing one foot in front of the other and shifting body weight so as not to incur pain. (Most people can't see that there is a problem, but a congenital spinal anomaly leaves nothing to be taken for granted.)
But I want to play the piano, not as others do, but so as to express what I hear and how much it matters to me.
Having reached that state -- I am still working on the walk problem -- and having by now taught several cycles of students some of whom already by the age of 18 play with completely transparent (i.e., clearly audible) mastery of "the music part," as one student put it, I can address the connection between the two.
If the physical therapist shows me what walking looks like I get completely confused. My body neither looks nor feels like his; I cannot possibly imitate him. I have literally no idea what he is doing. Similarly, when a piano teacher would demonstrate a passage I was at a loss to know how to respond.
It is my intention that will ultimately make walking work, as it has been my intention to make by piano playing reflect the working of my ear that has revealed the essence not only of Schubert and Mozart, but of my students. Having learned to pay attention at the level of intention, I have learned to discern the intention of my students. The result is their increasing satisfaction with their own playing, and my increasing fascination with the complexity of the undertaking.
I want to walk as other people walk, without having to think about every aspect of placing one foot in front of the other and shifting body weight so as not to incur pain. (Most people can't see that there is a problem, but a congenital spinal anomaly leaves nothing to be taken for granted.)
But I want to play the piano, not as others do, but so as to express what I hear and how much it matters to me.
Having reached that state -- I am still working on the walk problem -- and having by now taught several cycles of students some of whom already by the age of 18 play with completely transparent (i.e., clearly audible) mastery of "the music part," as one student put it, I can address the connection between the two.
If the physical therapist shows me what walking looks like I get completely confused. My body neither looks nor feels like his; I cannot possibly imitate him. I have literally no idea what he is doing. Similarly, when a piano teacher would demonstrate a passage I was at a loss to know how to respond.
It is my intention that will ultimately make walking work, as it has been my intention to make by piano playing reflect the working of my ear that has revealed the essence not only of Schubert and Mozart, but of my students. Having learned to pay attention at the level of intention, I have learned to discern the intention of my students. The result is their increasing satisfaction with their own playing, and my increasing fascination with the complexity of the undertaking.
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)