Vocalism on the Piano

"Sing!"  "Sing!" 

I recall being yelled at in that fashion and I recall my reaction: "Who, me?"  Sometimes, in a clearer state of mind, I might think: "What are you talking about?"

I do not recall it ever being made in any way clear.

So, what was singing back then, in the day?  I think it was Wagnerian blasting through long phrases to get to Vall-Hollywood.  I have done a lot of singing throughout my life and have come to the conclusion that real singing on the piano is akin to what I think is real vocalism: letting the ear sense its way through consecutive pitches so that they cohere as do syllables in a word. 

This works particularly well on the piano where there is vivid differentiation in touch and tone between black and white keys, such that they inflect adjacent tones, much like syllables.

You had better start paying attention to this differentiation because it is in increasing danger of being manufactured out of pianos, those without strings, for sure (like the one described in today's NY Times) and even those with strings.

Yow. 

Invitation to the Dance

On the bus the other day a new friend described to me watching a young wheelchair-bound woman dance.  It is what the young woman always wanted to do and there she was, doing it with every available part of her body and, more important, of her soul.

In a recent edition of The NYTimes was the description by a music critic of a class in Baroque dance which she took so as to better inform her ear about Baroque rhythms.  It struck me as bizarre.

What is real about any dance?

When I was 10 my sister took me to see a ballet performance in which mazurkas were danced.  Though in 3/4 time, they corresponded to nothing I had ever experienced in or about that meter.  They haunted me all my musical life.

I used to go to weekly meetings of the Country Dance and Song Society in which we danced English Country Dances always to live music.  It had to be live because it had to be lively, i.e., variable, as only live music can be.  It was an incredible lesson in The Dance.  I was remembering Phillip Merrill this morning, the master concertina player who taught that lesson.  (I understand that he had been Yo-Yo Ma's school dancing instructor.)

Mental Foot Tapping

I don't want you to tap your foot, actual or virtual, when I play.  Therefore, I vary the content of every beat with my imperceptible but nonetheless real ever-changing responses to the consonance or dissonance of every single tone.

This means I am listening to every single vibration of every single tone, which is exactly what I want you to do.

Live Listening Training

A suggestion for music theory teachers:  Assign to your students to compare listening to a particular composition in live performance heard close up, and on a recording--maybe two different recordings, one mono, one more modern.

Get them to verbalize the differences as specifically as possible, not in relation to technicalities, but in terms of their reactions: the degree of their unconscious involvement, their pleasure--little things like that.

Don't Expect Anyone to Pay Attention to YOU!

If I were to sum up the goals of a proper upbringing in this era it would be the title of today's post.
It used to be: Children should be seen and not heard.   Then, Don't speak unless you're spoken to.  But now that no one is talking to anyone--we are too busy facebooking one another--an infant must already have the message loud and clear:  Don't bother to even have a reaction because no one is paying attention to you. 

Maybe that is the reason my style of piano teaching is so out-of-line:  I insist that listening to the student, no matter how young or how inept, is the beginning of all progress.

Living of a Broken Heart

I go to the opera to have my heart broken, not by any contrivance of the plot or literal drama, but by the animal vulnerability of the human voice which, if properly embodied, will be unable to control every facet of every tone, leaving itself to break and taking my heart along with it.

It has happened several times: In La Traviata; in Alcina, in Otello, in Dido and Aeneas.  I treasure those moments among the greatest of my life.

It conspicuously did not happen last week at the Coronation of Poppea.  Beautiful voices, no doubt about it--one might say too beautiful.  Many varieties of high-pitched voices from high lyric soprano to counter-tenor, perfectly produced, top to bottom.  Except for the basso, the long low timbre, there was no individual vocal color, therefore no magic when they came together.  The performance was in every way delightful but it was not opera.  They might as well have been speaking their roles.

Listening Like a Piano Teacher

It suddenly came to me this morning while I was brushing my teeth that the reason people listen so rigidly may have something to do with the way they were listened to as young piano students, i.e., by a teacher who was, whether audibly or not, counting all the time.

No wonder it is so hard for people to believe that there is a difference between a single tone of long duration and four separately articulated instances of the same tone.

Perhaps it's because I know what it feels like to be haunted by someone else's ears that I go to such pains to convince my young students that I am really listening to them, and not to some fictionalized version of them.