Singularity

Andrew Solomon, author of the piece on prodigies about which I recently commented, studies children who are not like their parents by virtue of physical or psychological factors that challenge preconceived notions of normal family life.  In an interview with Terry Gross on NPR he reveals that his interest is far more than academic.

That is what makes it compelling.

I once articulated that everything I know about music is based on disability which makes clear that the biggest flaw in our educational approach to music is that we generalize about the workings of singular minds. In making no distinction between the difficulty of raising children with physical challenges and those with prodigious gifts Solomon puts his finger on the critical factor: singularity.

As I no longer teach within the music school environment I am free to focus on building a community in which singularity is assumed, respected, fostered, enjoyed.  The community includes a blind, autistic child (now young man) and children who are prodigiously talented, though not necessarily in what the world calls "piano."   Without exception children treated this way are drawn to singularly meaningful music, sometimes to Haydn, Mozart and Beethoven; more frequently to Bartok's profoundly lyrical folk song settings.

A Computer Animator Meets the Scale

This morning a young adult student in preparation for sight-reading Clementi's F-sharp Minor Prelude (in the splendid collection Preludes and Exercises) was ambling through the F-sharp minor scale.  This young man has not been force-fed scales of any kind, and has a most accurate and astonishingly sensitive ear.  As he played the upward moving scale he went beyond one octave, then began to respond to its inner tensions by altering tones.  He did this entirely without plan unaware that his meanderings indicated profound auditory involvement in the mysteries of that scale, made even more poignant by the black/key - white/key half steps.

He makes his living as a computer animator so is well aware of the power of formula and of its opposite. 

Innocence and Inhibition

It must seem puzzling that with artistic maturity comes increased interest in the way small children hear.  I relish exposure to the full range of musical response young children bring to the simplest musical events.  They have no preconceived idea of how things go, they simply go.  And I am happy to go with them. 

We are led to believe that only complex structures are interesting, but I don't believe it.  Too much musical complexity has led too many musicians to technical mastery at the expense of comprehension.  I have recently heard technically brilliant performances of obviously ironic contemporary compositions which the musicians clearly did not get at all.

What are we losing in this era of readily-engineered flawlessness? 

Do You Really Mean It?

Saying what we mean is not as easy as it sounds, as many things can interfere with the perfect realization of our intentions. The same is certainly true of playing music.

But how are we supposed to know what our intention is, since most of our training is based on conforming to someone else's notion of how a piece should sound?  Do we actually have intentions of our own?  How do we ever find them?

Following the inspired findings of Viktor Zuckerkandl, I base my teaching at all levels on listening to what students actually do, not listening for the deviations of what they do from what I would do, or from the printed page.  In every instance, without exception, whether beginner or advanced player, I find transparency in the errors that students make.  It is very much as Zuckerkandl found: the student will put the next note where she wants it to be, not necessarily where it "belongs."

Sometimes I have to extend my comprehension beyond the realm of theoretical concepts with which I am familiar.  But I have found that when I do so the student learns several important things:

• That all musical sound is interesting and potentially significant.
• That the tension between the unconsciously-played mistake and the deliberately-sought right note is essentially and richly dramatic
• Most important of all: That what she is doing makes sense--an affirmation of inherent musicality.

I Hear, Therefore I Am

In other words, because I hear as I hear I know that I am an individual.

Music lessons would be entirely transformed if their goal were to reinforce the integrity of the child's aural reality rather than to undermine it with the illusion that everyone should hear the same thing in the same way.

You might say that my whole life has been devoted to this proposition.  All of my insights into the works of the masters stem, not from others' playing, but from my own ear responding to what happens when I play what is indicated in the score.  At times this is baffling as the sound often defies both my expectations and theoretical analysis.

Sooner or later we bump into the piano. From the outset a source of remarkably variable resonances, composition for this instrument reflected the expansion of music into a new dimension, something akin to freeing the musical mind from alphabetic gravity.  (Imagine Haydn, Mozart, Beethoven, Schubert, Clementi, Chopin orbiting out there, 200 years before everyone else. " Hi, guys! What took you so long!") 

Function, Mystery, Timing, Tempo

A word about the connection between those four terms:

Knowing in advance about tonal or chordal function I am less susceptible to the mystery of particular voicings or registers.  I tend to be less interested in a predictable resolution than in a potential that is hinted but not spelled out.

This affects my sense of timing.  I am by nature impatient.  Let's get on with it, I seem to say to myself.

But what if the tempo indicates that a bit of reserve is called for?  Put it differently:  what if the tempo indicates that the music epitomizes reserve?

Going back over Schubert I am convinced that this is what he means by moderato.  I might define it thus: It moves to a reliable beat except when it doesn't.

The Theory Canon

At the Society for Music Theory conference last year there was a session on whether the theory canon is or is not a good idea.  I am on the side of its not being a good idea unless the ear of the student is already confidently aware of options.

Having learned too much too soon I had little tolerance for single pitch events as a young player: I supplied harmonies for every note, whether appropriate or not, and changed the harmonies furnished when I did not like them.

My students do not learn music theory; they learn instead to identify what they hear in terms of active overtone implications.  On the piano that is not an easy task.

And that is another gripe I have with the Music Theory Establishment:  Instead of allowing the piano to be the magical acoustical treasure-house it actually is, the instrument is used as a convenient pitch-by-numbers machine.  Can anyone take seriously ear training taught from the piano?