More Moderato

Schubert's piano music has been the subject of many blog posts lately.  It is probably the most thought-provoking music I have ever contemplated. it haunts me.

Describing it today to a non-musician who heard my recent performance of the Op. 42 A minor sonata, I remarked that his work is profoundly conflicted between syntax and lyricism.  Long before I attached words to this conflict I recognized it in Rocks and Water: Cornwall 2004, the drawing by Joan Farber reproduced here.  It is to this conflict that Schubert's moderato testifies.

One audience member asked: "How do you know when a musical idea does not conform to strict syntactical rules?"-- of meter, for instance.  Good question.  Experience has taught me to respect boredom as a form of question mark.  Having accepted that the mere sequence of regular beats is not enough to make the music come to life I look for non sequitors, signs of drunkenness, places where a conspicuous repeated note over multiple measures overrides divisions into bars and beats.

To see more works by Joan Farber go to http://local-artists.org/user/4069.

Giving the Feeling vs. Getting it Right

When I play a Schubert sonata I am no longer concerned about whether or not I'm doing it right.

It has taken a long time to be confident of the content of these works as, judging from the going versions of them heard in concert and on recording, they are large, rather cumbersome and overly repetitive.

Then I recall that, preparing to tour and later record with Richard Dyer-Bennet his English language version of Die Scoene Muellerin (The Lovely Milleress), I worked not on the songs but on Schubert's larger forms.  Instinctually I knew that the short forms were condensations of the larger structures.   The reverse lesson is just now, over 30 years later, coming into focus.  What took so long, you might ask.

Without text and, when performing in English, subtext that the audience clearly feels, the pianist is left alone to discern boundaries between what can be written down and what must be intuited as the composer's intention.

When I play I want the listener to be persuaded of my total acceptance of lyricism at its most exposed and developed.

Rubinstein was over 80 before he played Schubert in public.  Surely it was not because he doubted his ability to play the notes.

When Dyer-Bennet first asked me to accompany him I was reluctant to get involved.  "Just give it one rehearsal before you decide," he advised.  I felt immediately the depth of unconscious comprehension opened by performance in my native language--depth clearly shared by the audience as was evident after a performance in Savannah, GA, when listeners, as empassioned as if they had been at the movies, debated about who was the real villain in this monodrama:  the river, perhaps?

Moderato

Performing Schubert's A minor Sonata (Op. 42) last evening I let my newly-charged definition of moderato guide my reading.  It revealed the extent to which barlines can be ruinous, unrelenting quarter-note beats a disaster.

In the first movement, marked Moderato, the four bar phrases are made up sometimes as follows: 4/4 followed by 5/4 + 3/4, then again 4/4.  Especially because Schubert does not do this consistently one's attention is galvanized by constant shifting between balance and imbalance, symmetry and asymmetry.

I would now say with conviction that, in this movement, Moderato means not a strict 4/4.

Dramatically this set up the variations movement designated Andante con moto, as a highly lyrical inwardly-directed 3/8 meter at times divided into 3/16 + 3/16 then, later, when it is in triplets, the triplets may be 3 + 2 + 2+ 2 but are rarely a straightforward multiple of 3's.  Con moto indicates movement outside of the arithmetical meter.

The Scherzo recalls us to the physical pull of the dance beat though, because based on the minuet rather than the waltz, it contains many hemiolas.

The Finale moves dramatically, like a storm wind.  After all the subtle shiftings of the three preceding movements it wants to fly. 

Music's Box

Why educate children to meet the standards set by an older generation when the standards they will have to meet are embodied in the needs of their own generation?

"Far From the Tree," Andrew Solomon's brilliant new book on identity, is really a book about community based on a dynamic of empathetic acceptance by both generations: parents and children.  The community of learners I have fostered since 1985 is based on attentive acceptance embodied in music--principally contemporary music, the music of our time, including improvisation.

Children educated in such an environment learn more than subject matter.  They learn curiosity about otherness; they learn to find themselves in a diversified culture.  This, their future, was for many people in my generation a negative experience, i.e., an experience of having to hide otherness, whether because of brilliance, or intellectual, physical, or perceptual challenge.

Music study has long been associated with conformity.  Let's get music out of its box.

Conformity at the Beginning

Conformity is an issue for some of us the moment we are born when it turns out that we do not meet our parent's expectations of the facts of our existence. 

As a young child, aware of the extent of my non-conformity, I was overjoyed to discover hints of a kindred spirit who had lived 200 years previously, Mozart.  It was literally a hands-on discovery, as some of the sounds in his music completely engulfed me as I played them.  These sounds were in no way independent of me,but were as if intrinsic to my being.  I knew that I was not alone.

This is not to presume kinship with Mozart, not at all, but to assert the power of specific sounds to evoke human recognition beyond the everyday.

I play music of the Classical period because its freshness never ceases to amaze me.  But I wonder sometimes what the neighbors make of it.  They have young children; do they assume that my involvement with music should be a model for everyone?  Do they think that because I play this repertoire I require of my students that they do the same?

In fact, for most children, arriving at fascination with the 18th century comes naturally as they ease into self-confidence at the instrument.  The music is truly great and will speak for itself if not forced upon the child.

Community is Viable, Classical or Otherwise

We all crave community, even the most outrageously individualistic among us.  My teaching is based on the assumption that we are all highly individual, our children even more so.  Their givens are for us adults, parents and teachers alike, to nurture and support.

Community is nowhere more evident than in a space in which people are listening together, whether it be Carnegie Hall or Barbes in Brooklyn.  In my teaching I foster an environment in which dissimilarity is assumed.  Parents, siblings, students, and the teacher all become better listeners when the particulars of each student take precedence over uniformity of expectation or result.  In this setting students--all students--surpass themselves.

In this setting I have learned to expand my own definitions of meaningful music-making.

Classical Musician:Is This a Viable Identity?

Not so long ago, having still not recovered from the trauma of hand surgery, I hesitated to have business cards printed on which I would be identified as "Pianist."   Now that I am back to playing, and with greater wonderment than ever, I realize that I am a pianist.  But what does that mean to anyone else?

I am interested in music composed for the piano when it was a new invention, i.e., principally music of the late 18th through 19th centuries, for the piano underwent multiple inventions as notes were added, improvements made in its mechanical design, and the tuning changed.  Of what relevance is that in this era of easy-come-flip-the-dial "music?"

Even though my students know what it feels like to listen as they play -- a now-eminent pianist once remarked on hearing a tape of one child that he "could hear her listening"  -- quite a compliment! -- and even though they listen to one another with the most focused attentiveness, they are ill-at-ease when it comes to listening to me play a recital. 

Surely the reasons for this are extremely complex and I cannot pretend to understand what is happening from their point of view, nor do I expect them to articulate as much.

Because I prefer to think of myself as a listener among listeners I am very much enjoying playing in my home on my piano for small groups of people whose conversation about the music is increasingly revelatory about the viability of my life focus.