The Secret Terms and Tone

The master teacher Karl Ulrich Schnabel, son of Arthur Schnabel, used to describe musical dynamics using the analogy of a stage play in which one character says to another, "I'm going to kill you!"  It matters a lot where the speaker is standing in relation to the addressee, whether within arm's reach knife in hand, or half a room away.

Playing for musicians in the intimate circumstance of my home reveals repeatedly to them and to me the extent to which that distance variable is removed in our approach both to listening and to playing.
Sitting almost on top of the piano they hear things they have never heard before, even in the most familiar music.

Those are the vibrations, friends.  The variability of those vibrations is my secret place in which I move as if swimming in the safest waters.  Playing is not so much a matter of rendering the music as of living inside of it.

Last night I played Grieg's Poetic Tone Pictures, Op. 3.  What is poetic is tone itself: Nothing sentimental, nothing "romantic" about it.  I apply exactly the same principles to the tone universe of Mozart with the result, as described by a musician in the audience, that the music seems to speak.

It does speak to me; all I do is let you in on the secret of my hearing.

Your Life Does Depend On It

Teaching Schumann's Scheherezade this morning to an adult amateur brought up in the British graded system of piano training -  beats, beats, beats - who is very aware of the danger of music becoming, in her word, ploddy:

I learn how to read from students like her.  Sustaining interest in this piece is a challenge because of its constant moving eighth notes.  Isolating the top and bottom voices revealed the underlying counterpoint inside of which those eighth notes make real sense instead of driving the work relentlessly forward -- remember that in this case forward is to quicker decapitation.

There is a beautiful right hand slur in which a half note E tied to an eighth note literally slides off onto other pitches.  These are not "real" pitches, but the result of an inability to sustain the high E, which is an altogether different proposition.

Not everything that looks like a rise does actually lead up; the same, naturally, applies to down.

More on Words: Their Affinity With Notes

I have been thinking a lot about Leonard Michaels' Nachman Stories.  Doing so has improved my Mozart playing by encouraging me to notice every single word, not taking any one of them for granted; and to consider always the story behind the story.  Who is this man?  What is he not revealing?  What aspect of myself is critical to the meaning of these words?

Last night I played Mozart's late sonata in F, K. 533 and K. 494.  Huge piece in every respect, it is monumental and intimate, dramatic and confiding, looking forward and contemplating the past; most dramatically, its magic hinges on the difference between rising and falling.  Does it go up or does it go down?  This is often the most difficult musical question to answer.  Nowhere more dramatically ambiguous than here.

The same applies to beats:  Is this an upbeat?  If so, to what?   What is this rest doing here?  Where does the phrase start?  Where is the resolution?

Very often what looks at first glance to be a repetition of material previously played turns out to be variation in the light of all those legitimate, usually unasked, questions.

Da Vinci's "Piano" - Viola Organista

This link has been circulating on Facebook. I heartily recommend listening to the whole thing as it takes some getting used to Viola Organista.  I personally wouldn't describe it, as some musicians have, as "wacky."  It has always seemed to me that the piano was invented to do precisely what this instrument does, which is to activate the strings so that they resonate like the strings of a violin or cello.

It is the sort of sound I strive to make.  The only thing wacky about it is that you have to listen to the whole sound, not get distracted by such upfront details as notes.

Leonardo rides again!

Radical Hearing: Arjomand / Mozart

The piano is a radical invention, always was, always will be.  Attempts to make it less than radical are doomed to fail.  Ask any child.

It is a matter of the conflicting resonance of white vs. black keys.

The piano is an instrument of collision, in a very vivid way.  Its acoustical nature is so complex that composers writing for it as a solo instrument tended also to write for it in combination with instruments of other families--strings, woodwinds, horn.  The specific genius of these compositions has reinforced my conviction that what I sensed as a child in the piano music of Mozart is truly the essence of the instrument.

I think primarily of Schumann: The Piano Quartet, the Fantasy Pieces, without which I would have only a limited understanding of the instrument I play.

Then there is Arjomand, a contemporary, illuminating the action of listening to this radical sound by being more than radical himself.  I will go back to hear him again and again because he makes me aware of what I am hearing and because he does so in entirely non-static terms, non-static in the most literal sense of constant motion.

Support the Blog

Every once in a while I join the chorus of independent artists and writers who depend on the Internet for connection in this great new world to remind you that free is not free.

Subscribe to the blog at http://www.tonalrefraction.com and show that you attach a value to the insights you read here.  Reward her daily input with a subscription that reflects the number of times you have been jolted into a renewed appreciation of your own musicality.

It's voluntary; it's easy; it's relatively painless.  What would you do without it?

Ramin Arjomand: Improvisation that Inspires

It was the third time I heard Ramin Arjomand perform one of his hour-plus uninterrupted improvisations on the piano.  I would go back and hear him again and again.  There is no way that I can categorize or describe his playing or the way his mind works, other than to say that it seems to me, in many respects, the exact opposite of what I do at the instrument.

We clearly belong to different generations and our work arises from different sound environments.  But I believe that we share a deep desire to connect our sound environment, whatever it be, to internal attentiveness of a purely musical kind.

I enjoy listening to improvisation and learn a great deal from regular exposure to some masterful improvisors.  The need to follow structure or form always struck me as completely irrelevant to the musical experience.  To be purely taken up in the body of the sound suffices.

He gives a lot to think about.