Thinking Along the Same Lines

Thanks to the Internet's ability to track just about anything I discovered the word "refraction" used on p. 38 of Tonality and Transformation, a music theory study by Steven Rings, whose academic credentials and affiliations are impressive.  Searching further I found that he and I share not just the use of that word in relation to music perception, but also several sources for our way of thinking.  In response to my email noting that, though I am not a theorist, our scholarly interests in music have much in common, he replied that, indeed, it seems to be the case.

Ever since receiving his reply -- in itself remarkable in that few academics bother to reply to emails from total strangers who are not credentialed in their field -- I have been imagining dialogue of a kind that had never occurred to me.  Could it be that I could discuss my work as a real theory of music but based on listening as THE critical activity, not the printed score?

And could it be the the act of listening, the infinitely variable act of listening to infinitely variable music could at last be respected as worthy of being taken seriously from day one of a human life?

Perhaps my fascination with listening to all sorts of students might at last be taken as a sign of real seriousness rather than regarded as the putdown implied in such terms as "piano teacher" or "teaching beginners."

Names, Like People, Come and Go

An article in a recent NYTimes brings up the issue of the effect of names passed down from one generation to the next, carrying with them reputation, fame, expectation, etc.

It is rather like branding.

What chance does an artist have of making an impact during a single lifetime in a field as ephemeral as music?  We are so dependent on the responses of our audience, live and on-line.

Help independent artistry survive.  Do your part. www.tonalrefraction.com

Front Page News: Visualization in the Olympics

Okay, it was the front page of the Sports section of the Sunday NYTimes of February 23, though there was a "heads-up" about the piece on the front page of the entire paper.

Apparently visualization is becoming increasingly important to athletes.  Why don't musicians follow suit and learn to use it?  The question is, naturally, what would a musician visualize?

The answer to that might best be illustrated by a real-life event that happened in my studio last week.  I was rehearsing the "Spring" Sonata of Beethoven with a violinist.  As a good deal of the mystery of musical line is contained in the implications of the slur markings, I spend a lot of energy in my Tonal Refraction process figuring out what difference it makes if the line behaves thus and so rather than so and thus.

So here was a measure-long line in the violin under a single slur which, for a violinist. indicates a single bow stroke.  Violinists famously maintain that Beethoven didn't know much about the violin and, on those grounds, freely change his indications to suit their own limitations.  Hearing an unwelcome break in the middle of the bar I called the violinist's attention to it.  Though he had not changed bowing, he had changed strings.  Turns out he could do it all on one string and in one bow stroke.  Huge difference!

Clearly I do not visualize the technical aspects of playing.  I visualize the intended result, which is what I think the notation indicates.

Clair de Lune

Occasionally I revisit the Suite Bergamasque by Claude Debussy, the source of many musical puzzles.  But it was just this past week that I felt I "got it."

The clue is in the two titles: Suite Bergamasque and Clair de Lune, references to the poem by Paul Verlaine which I know well because of my many years working with singers.  Faure's setting is perhaps his most beautiful work; Debussy's I like less well, but then there is this suite, a special sort of setting of the poem.

The poem is about the meeting of the real with the past, the forgotten, the dreamt but not lived, the promise of beauty in the works of art that have come down to us.

As one listener put it, it was on the verge of the audible: one of the harder things to achieve on the piano, and probably not possible in a large hall.  Debussy's many pp and ppp markings are not "expression" indications; they are essential to the work.

Why Not Modulate?

A few posts ago I noted that I do not believe in the concept of modulation which, briefly put, is transitioning from one stable tonal center to another, usually via what is called a secondary dominant.

The reason I don't go that route is because it leaves out the fundamental nature of accidentals.  (An accidental is a sharp or flat added into the sounds of the piece, not accounted for in the key signature.)
Some accidentals do lead to a change of key, but they do this by effectively untuning one of the home key's principal tones.

The major scale is comprised of two identical tetrachords, or sets of four tones, whose internal relationships are identical, one a fifth higher than the other.  C D E F is the lower tetrachord of the key of C: whole step, whole step, half step.  G A B D, the upper tetrachord, has the same internal spacing.

If I introduce a C# into the piece (as Mozart frequently does at the very beginning of a sonata) I undo that symmetry by untuning the G a fifth above C.  This is a much more interesting way of letting the accidental work on the sound; it is full of potential.

A Maxim for Reading Music

This just in: "The less ink, the more important."

That whole note, an empty round mark on the page, arguably the easiest note around, actually contains all the sounds of the bar. What is important:

• Long notes in whatever part of the texture they appear
• Low notes, if sustained
• Notes clearly indicated to receive special emphasis

Is Correctness a Long or Short-Term Goal?

I have initiated an on-line discussion on whether it is a good or a bad idea to encourage students to sound like everyone else / someone else.  The responses have been illuminating, as people tell of their experiences with students with special needs, and so on.

One responder rightly likens teaching piano to parenting.  But then he goes on to say that it is important to start with getting it right after which the student will grow into having his or her own voice.

Really?  Doesn't the beginner have a point of view from the beginning:  a point of view not verbalized but evident in the quality of their listening and their response?  It is up to the teacher to observe what that point of view consists of and to build on it, since it is the student's own.

As a well-behaved young student I dutifully made a show of doing what I was told, although since I knew I didn't "get" it, I never practiced.  How could music be so puzzling?  How could I feel so incompetent even while being praised? How could the teacher miss the signs of this disconnect?

If I have survived to become a serious pianist it is because I quit piano more than once as a youngster.

Perhaps we ought to look more closely at the potentially positive motives behind young students' quitting piano lessons.