Playing from Memory

A good article on the subject by Anthony Tommassini in today's NYTimes.  A must read.

Faceless Book and Your Child

Observing recently the lack of facial affect on the part of young parents with their infant children, a friend told of reading that psychologists have noted that small children are showing poor facial recognition these days. 

Take the face away.  Hide it behind a screen whose glare blasts out a detached "presence" for all to see. 

When taking your infant for a walk in the neighborhood keep your face disengaged from your surroundings by talking on your cell phone or listening to your iPod so that insulated isolation becomes familiar and will not disappoint the child when he or she is old enough to feel it.

A young family recently moved in across the hall from me.  The three little children are both very active and very noisy.  I commented to the mother how much I loved having them there.  "Really?"  She seemed incredulous.  Let's hear it for noise, including crying.

Who is to Judge?

In an unforgettable lesson a ten-year-old was working to refine a Haydn piece that she adored.  This was a kid who does not practice, it seems clear to me, because her mother would be listening with an all-too-well-practiced judgmental ear.  Responding to her progress I was about to tell her that it was much improved when I caught myself.  Rather than say so, I asked her how she felt about it. 

Replying that she could do better, she promptly set about doing so. 

Her expectations of herself had clearly surpassed mine.  An unforgettable example of how the child's motivation wins out over teacher's expectation.

"Icicle Bright"

Those very words were used to describe the singing of a choir that I heard recently.  I agree completely with that description.  Particularly apt is the image of chill associated with the timbre.  Such a sound has a chilling effect on the listener--how could it not?

By contrast I heard a live broadcast of the Trinity Church Wall St. performance of the Messiah, under the direction of Julian Wachner.  It came closer to sizzling than any reading of that masterwork that I have ever heard.

Fearless pacing supported by inventive rhythms, and by not insisting that every phrase, every motif, every piece resolve.  The lines of All We like Sheep did truly go astray, vanishing into silence.

One of the great fallacies children are taught who learn theory too soon is that phrases resolve.  Wrong.

The Voice, The Individual

A fascinating conversation today with a fine voice teacher reinforced my feeling about how different the world appears when one's instrument is unique than when it is viewed as a product of the Industrial Revolution.

Sometimes I think that the public shows uncommon good sense in flocking to vocalists at a time when too frequently instrumental playing sounds standardized.

The image of the piano as the product of the Industrial Revolution was certainly vivid to me as a young player.  It is a difficult image to shake, especially when so much training is devoted to denying the difference in the sound of each individual piano.

The Free is Not

The first time I quit a day job I felt it was a promotion and a raise in pay. That was decades before the intrusion of electronic media into most facets of our waking lives.

Now that the Internet has tricked us into thinking that we can hide in front of an anonymous screen, that no one will notice, that raise in pay becomes an issue.

I am no less committed to a point of  view not determined by anything (insofar as I am aware) but my own observations of life around me.

If you value it, support it!  Go to www.tonalrefraction.net to learn how.

Talent and the Family

As a child I played the piano at every available moment, starting before breakfast.  Bliss was a day home from school with a minor ailment that did not interfere with my music, habitually accompanied by a vacuum cleaner.  I was in my 30's before my mother commented favorably on my playing--a response I had craved, lo, those many years.

As for siblings, of which I am fourth out of five, I am convinced that my obsessive delight in playing distanced them from me in ways too complex to analyze, creating persistent barriers.

My determination not to pass this isolation down to the next generation involved installing outdoor weatherstripping for effective soundproofing on all my apartment doors.  My children needed to have the option to listen or not to listen.  When we enjoyed music together it was mostly improvising with found objects rather than what the media call music.

Two important results of this approach:

• Both my adult children are musicians, one a professional cabaret singer/songwriter, the other an avid amateur hornist who plays orchestral and chamber music as often as possible.  We enjoy one another's music without restraint. 

• I am embarking on a new system of teaching children along with their parents, in which communicated affect takes precedence over skill.  Ideally this training begins with very young children - pick an age; I started mine at day one.  How rigorous it becomes depends solely on the situation, but always in the company of other families, other children of mixed ages.