Why I Don't Play at Barbes

Another splendid evening at Barbes last night.  I was seated next to an older couple who had never heard Rachelle, knew nothing about her.  Out of curiosity they came to this neighborhood bar.  Afterward the woman said to me that it took a while for her to get it, but once she caught on she realized that she was hearing a one-of-a-kind musician addressing an audience of everybody (including the horrified children who watch/ed, as she had, the Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer animated film that shows at this time of year) with a vast range of material, including death and grace.

The owner of the bar asked if I would like to play there sometime: a nice compliment, a touching invitation.  I explained that I really couldn't do it because the piano wouldn't do what I needed it to do.

But the real reason is that the music I play can't be even approximated on an instrument that does not resonate.

Reading at the Piano

Sight-reading at the piano must be one of the most complicated activities known to humankind.  Ask yourself which is faster, your visual response or your ear response.  Most people would say visual, simply because the ear response is so much harder to locate, to identify, to become aware of.

In fact, however, it has been measured:  the auditory response time is 200 times faster than any other sensory input in our brains.

But, since most of our training in all of education is based on cultivating rapid eye/hand or eye/brain responses, we have grown accustomed to mistaking that habitual speed for real speed.  It is, in fact, quite slow in comparison to sound and to sound response.

Today I had an experience of this with one of my prize students, with whom I have worked for a very long time trying to find what she calls "the music part."  I had her pick a brand new page (she picked the last page of In Winterszeit II in Schumann's Album for the Young), then find a measure whose sound she could anticipate with some certainty.  It turned out to be the last chord, and, in fact, not so simple in that it comprised a tied sound and a pedaled bass.

When she played the chord it did not match her anticipation.  This was fascinating.  As we backed up to approach the sound the complexity of Schumann's ear became increasingly evident and overwhelmingly stimulating,  While an experienced musician might see an extended C major passage with some deviations, there were detailed fluctuations of sympathetic vibration so rich that the sound she ended up with had a life of its own, dependent of any visual predictability.

This is what I call real reading at the piano.  There is nothing elementary about it except that children hear that way until they are discouraged, alas too soon and too often, from paying that kind of attention.

A Cappella Tuning

I crave good a cappella singing, not merely as a spectator sport but as an activity which I cherish.  I have recently had the pleasure of singing in a small group that comprises enough musical experience among its members to invite the music to soar.

The sensation is remarkable -- as vivid today (four days later) as at the moment itself.  It is specific sensation attached to particular tones in particular phrases: a tone that pushed itself in, impelling the motion forward; a raised eyebrow from a fellow singer at an exquisitely tuned major third.

All music should be vivid in precisely that way, whether instrumental or vocal.

Reading as Activity

With all the emphasis on speed reading, and now on the rapid skimming through enormous quantities of information available at the press of a button, we risk losing the pleasurable sense of reading as an activity to be enjoyed for its own sake, like a walk in the park.

Alberto Manguel's A History of Reading explores the activity in relation not only to words but also to pictures.  Tonal Refraction explores reading music as the multi-dimensioned activity it is for all musicians.

It is an action involving memory as well as comprehension in the here and now. 

A Big Four-Letter Word: Time

Time is one of the words that musicians use and misuse routinely allowing for little nuance in its application.  Actually it exists on so many levels simultaneously that it is almost impossible to isolate them.

One of the best examples of how it works was given by Hindemith in his wonderful book on the elements of music.  He likened the beat to a line drawn on a piece of wood to be cut by a saw: should the blade be aimed inside, outside, or dead-center of the line.  Everyone who has ever had a piece of wood cut on the wrong side of the line knows what a difference it can make.

The great accompanist Gerald Moore made an edition of Schubert songs which consists entirely of arrows pointing forward and backward of the "lines."

But there is another level, so fleeting as to almost escape recognition:  that nano-instant in which the first vibration hits the ear and occasions a response that will determine the length of the tone, its release, and the touch adjustments to the succeeding tone.

It is the level of time most vivid to me when I play and I am confident that this is what keeps listeners engaged.

Who Pays the Pipers?

An op-ed piece in the Sunday NYTimes (Dec. 1, 2013) is about the absence in our economic system for the independent voice in the humanities.  Sports are heavily subsidized by governmental agencies large and small.  Sports generate money, big-time.

What do the arts and humanities generate?

What have you gained from the selfless dedication of a writer, painter, musician, thinker?  Need it be that a monetary value be associated with everything?  Well, the rent has to be paid.

Come on.  Support the blogger at www.tonalrefraction.com.  You can do it!

In fact, there are now two ways to do it:
1) In defiance of all logic, much the way artists and other independents do it, by subscribing, on the Books and CDs page at the link above.
2) In accordance with prevailing tax logic, by making a tax-deductible gift to support Tonal Refraction, which you may do on-line on the Financial Support page at the link above.

Either way I invite you to get involved.  You cannot imagine how much this work means to me.

Perhaps you can imagine how much your support would mean to me.

Sometimes It's Best Not to Know the Score

Years ago in my a cappella singing class we were having a devil of a time tuning a four-part Brahms folk song.  I suddenly saw that in the passage in question each vocal line was actually in a different key: I don't recall anything beyond the key signature, two flats.  The possibilities are interesting:  B-flat, G minor, D minor, F major, C minor -- you get the picture.  When we stopped trying to tune the sounds vertically but allowed each line to tune itself according to its own internal logic, the music coalesced as if effortlessly.

Chords can be overrated when it comes to specific compositions.  The linear dimension potentially carries a lot of weight in determining the ensemble sound.

A reader recently contacted me about the difficulty she and her colleagues were having playing Mozart's G minor String Quintet.  I have been thinking about it ever since -- unfortunately they are in Stockholm and I cannot just hop on a plane and go hear them rehearse.  But I would put money on the above as a possible solution at best, a deeply insightful exploration at least.

The fashion these days is to tune vertical sound, definitely not to bring out counterpoint.