Messe de Tournai

I am as impatient as anyone when the setting of the Mass goes on and on for no good reason.  I am impatient especially when the singing is desultory, e.g., when a motionless duple beat is imposed on  the counterpoint.

I am still laughing, yes, laughing, at the ending of the Gloria of last Sunday's singing of the Messe de Tournai, the first written setting of the Mass.  It was a festive occasion in the life of the parish of St. Ignatius of Antioch, but nothing prepared me for that Amen, that went on.... and on... and on... and refused to pronounce the ultimate "n" for the longest while.  Ordinarily I would have been annoyed.

I think it will turn into one of those liturgical moments that I will not forget. Thanks to James Kennerley for that superb singing.

A Young Listener Gets Tired

Yesterday I was privileged to have an 8th-grader among the audience for one of my in-house musics.  In anticipation of his coming I thought about what concert-going had been like for me as a young listener.  I recall being confused by the sheer amount of information coming at me: what was I supposed to do with it?  I recall also being bored with any and everything slow: undoubtedly a result of being half a block away from the source of the sound.

As part of my introduction to the event I told him I was preparing to throw millions of vibrations at him, one at a time, in the hope that he would catch them.  I encouraged him to sit in "the teacher's chair," close up, where he could also watch my hands.

I became aware of him paying incredible attention for a time, then getting tired.  Good for him, I thought:  a sign of real activity, not at all of boredom, not at all.

One of the pieces was a suite by W.F. Bach which involved tossing the hands around a lot in the most playful manner--difficult to do, fun to watch, and in total contrast to the movements in which the intense lyricism of single tones was almost unreal--incredible music that I had never heard anyone play or even mention.  Extreme.  Irresistible.  He was roused by that, happy to say.

Right hand / Left hand

When I stop to think how much torturous time is wasted getting small children to play with their two hands as though they were parts of a single limb it is not surprising that people grow up with the notion that Mozart always only played his two hands in perfect sync.

How dull.

Today in the supermarket I waved at a barefoot infant in a stroller, probably 6 to 7 months old.  I waved; he responded gleefully with a wave of his foot.  Good lesson in basic rhythm.

The more I free myself from the pedagogical environment the more I find happening inside of three-beat bars:  hemiolas in one hand against straight 3s in the other; patterns that seem to indicate regular three beat bars that sound ever so much better when played with an underlying contradictory articulation.

No wonder African rhythms are so much more interesting than what we learn in school.

Every Vibration: Are You Kidding?

I really do want you to hear every vibration - not consciously, the way they told you in MuzAp you are supposed to hear, but the way hearing actually works, within a total receptive sensory field.

It is the way I listen to voices.  The beauty of knowing the tune and the words is that I won't get distracted by them and I can sit still and take in the voice that sings them.  I am free to feel that voice in action, to let it move me in ways I could never predict and can certainly not name.

Yes, every vibration.

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.