Why Should I Listen?

Okay, so you're the greatest living virtuoso.  We can agree with The New York Times and assorted authorities on the subject.  But can you make me listen to the music you play with my gut rather than with the distraction of your admittedly glowing technique?

In the old days when I was too young to understand such things such virtuosity would literally make me ill for the simple reason that I knew I would never achieve it, that it was physiologically impossible.   Now, in the new day, it is not the virtuosity that compels my response but the absence of driving impulse.

This applies as much to composition as to performance.  A young virtuoso composer whose work with sound is unusually compelling was somewhat offended when I asked if he wrote music for children.  (His work is characteristically associated with subtexts of the utmost seriousness, beautiful but literally dreadful.) It would do him good to realize the power of his sound imagination, a power he would be unable to miss if he would give it to children and allow them to give it back.

Do You Really Mean It?

Again and again this question arises in relation to music study, teaching, and performance at every level.

Does it matter whether you do or don't?

When I think of how much music has meant to me throughout my life, even during those periods when I tried to convince myself that it didn't really matter all that much, and of how much it means to my adult children, there is no question that music is to each of us life and health, joy and fulfillment.

It is asking a lot to expect young parents to subscribe to that potential in relation to any activity that does not come with a demonstrable market value.  I suspect it gets harder and harder for young adults to imagine that it matters.

I once told the parents of a new young student that music was not about achievement but about one's heart and soul.  It turned out to be a high standard for both the child and myself to live up to.

Pitch Continuity and Rests

Whether playing Haydn, Mozart, Beethoven, or Schubert on the piano apparent phrase endings indicated by slurs and by rests are often not really endings but rather deceptive suspensions of continuing resonance.  How often do these composers use exactly the same sonority on both sides of a rest or a phrasing indication?  Surely it is a matter of an interruption rather than an end and a fresh beginning.  This could only have occurred to them because of the relative ringing of the instrument when compared to the harpsichord or clavichord. 

Modern readers see a rest and they stop their ears.

Haydn Sonatas - a New Series Begins in February

This morning I was reminded of why I used to hate Haydn so much that I threw out every bit of his music that I owned at the time.  It was a matter of the beginning a sonata in D in which the composer leaves everything up to the imagination of the listener.  Nothing rhythmic is clearly spelled out for the first fifteen bars or so.   It is hilarious.

Not so when required beginning freshman repertoire at the conservatory where I was a student 50+ years ago and  "Pound out the down beats" was the order of the day.  One thing was clear: no one would voluntarily play that repertoire.

But that is not the repertoire.

Moderato, this time in Beethoven after all

Playing through Beethoven's Sonata for Piano and Horn, Op. 17 (with natural horn, of course)  my attention was drawn to the designation "moderato" for the first and last movements.  But I reported last week that Alfred Einstein found that Beethoven did not use the term.  A bit of research into the Beethovenhaus archives showed that he did, indeed, use the term!

Fascinating that it is in a piece for the highly vocal natural (i.e., valveless) horn.

Allowing the word to enable stretchings of the beat from time to time utterly transformed the sonata, not only making it easier to play, but making it deeper on every level and in every respect.

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Listeners' Wisdom

Performing in an intimate space allows room for listeners to come into dialogue with me, with each other, with the music  Several candid listener insights after the first Schubert performance have had great effect on the ensuing work.  So my thanks to listeners.

As an activity listening is too under-appreciated.

Last night I dreamed of listening so intensely personal and yet so shared that it sparked reactions like those of a stadium crowd reacting to a thrilling touchdown.  (I haven't watched a football game for decades but somehow the memory remains of that roar in response to a manoeuvre I did not in the slightest grasp.)