The Necessary Heft

What I call "offbeat" Beethoven is the focus of my current piano series, exploring his fascination with beats in unusual, unexpected places.  How can he get away with it?

The answer has to be that in anticipating a beat which does not materialize we are doubly engaged in the musical moment.  We want, we need, our wish is not granted, therefore we delight, or we reject.   All of that is packed into every single upbeat instant .

This implies an awareness of real commitment to the beat as a physical event, i.e., the dance.  We have to be careful, in our dance-deprived era, to recognize our lack of knowledge in this area.  Can you tell a minuet from a mazurka from a landler from a furiant?  I doubt that I can, particularly because I have to rely on versions of these 3/4 meters that may or not accurately reflect the essence of the dance step.

I think it best when a movement is marked "Minuet" to ask to what degree it really conforms to whatever it is we know about minuets.  Don't be surprised if it does not conform.  The designation "Tempo di Menuetto" indicates a departure from the formal minuet though with some of its characteristics.  Perhaps we should play more of these before tackling the "real" thing, as if we knew what that was.

When I was ten my sister took me to see the ballet in Chicago.  To this day I recall my dismay when they danced a Mazurka, clearly in 3/4 time but with no discernible downbeats!

Intention is More Interesting than Perfection

One of my favorite students is someone who never practices--I suspect because the only piano in the house is prominently located in the living room and he is a really private individual.  But his playing is remarkably interesting because his ear is unfailingly responsive to every element of every sound he makes.

This entails making mistakes prompted, in large measure, by confusing or downright unwelcome overtones.

When I drew his attention to the array of bewildering vibrations to which Beethoven invites him to respond I was reminded of a bus ride in the London suburbs late in the 1950's before they had banned the burning of a low-grade coal and when there were periodic killer fogs.  One such fog having rolled in there was no way for the busdriver to see the road and a passenger had to walk alongside the edge of the pavement so as to guide him.

Overtones in the hands of great composers can be killer fogs.

Ten Cents a Dance

Dances, being practically nonexistent in contemporary culture, have become pedagogical traps.  Children are taught that a 3/4 time signature is a waltz.  That is all there is too it, according to that plan.

But minuets are in 3/4 time, as are mazurkas, and they ain't got nuttin' to do with waltzing, as there is no accentuated downbeat in either one.  Nor in a saraband, for that matter.

So what are we to do?  Maybe we should spend more time at the movies watching people dance who really know how to do it, whether in 3/4 or in some other meter.

There has to be room for bodily movement in between the beats, for exuberance, for drunkenness, for flirtation, for simple teasing.

Last night I played a selection of dances from various periods, old and new.  Not a dead beat in the bunch, and I mean within the dances themselves.  The composers: Clementi, Bach, Bartok, Gershwin, Tibor de Harsanyi, Debussy, Schubert.  No deadbeats there either!

This Business About the Piano in Your Child's Room

A student who completely agrees with me on this subject objected that, of course, most New York children do not have their own rooms and that, even if they did, there would probably not be room in them for a piano.  She suggested that while a child is playing the piano everyone else should go out for coffee.

Well....that beats sitting around listening, I suppose.  But the real issue is not simply privacy, but fluidity of access. 

I think it's important to remember that it's only since 1914 that pianos have been household furniture, associated with living rooms, certainly not with privacy.  It's important also to note that Chopin, famously a great pianist, did not play concerts in public, but for intimate audiences in intimate settings.

Most-read Post

Allow me to point out that more people have read the post of Feb. 11, 2014 than any other since I started this blog several years ago. 

I invite you to read it, perhaps a second time, and send me your comments.

Or do you simply agree with every word?  In which case, I would like to know that as well.

More About How Competition Dulls the Mind

Competition in music performance fosters a kind of listening that can best be described as having already been heard, otherwise on what basis could one judge one performer to be better than another?

An incident that revealed this dynamic was a piano performance workshop I led at Mannes Prep several years ago.  A bunch of kids aged 6 to about 9 took turns playing their recital pieces.  As the younger ones played most of the older ones were unable to conceal their utter lack of interest.  As I tried to get them to talk about their reactions, one of them pointed out that all she could hear was that when she had played the same piece "at that age" she had played it much better.

Later, when some of the older children played completely unfamiliar repertoire, these bored kids perked up their ears and their faces, truly enjoyed listening, and were glad to talk about the music.

Hmmm

A Music I Cannot Name

Once a month I trek out to Park Slope in Brooklyn to hear sounds that I cannot identify brought to being by the events of the day, the weather, the people in the room, songs that I have heard hundreds of times, or all of the above.  The performer/improvisor is Rachelle Garniez, my daughter, whose work inspires a deeper understanding of what it must have been like to be Mozart than anything I ever learned or read about him.  For that is the point, reading or learning about is like dancing around Emily Dickinson's ring:

We dance around in a ring and suppose
While the secret sits in the middle and knows.

I go back again and again because I know that I will be listening on the edge of two chairs, the one upon which I am actually sitting, and the inner one on which I wait to be delighted, surprised, moved, discovered in a state of disbelief -- "Did I really hear what I think I just heard?"  Except that here there is no repeat sign.  Nothing is or was ever written down.

When I went to teach her to read music, that wise 8-year-old shrugged her shoulders and walked away, already in the middle of that ring.