Interview on Lucid Culture

Just out: an interview about Tonal Refraction at  lucidculture.wordpress.com.

Formlessness. Really?

Listening to improvisation affords me the occasion to observe my ear at work / play.  Last night I went to hear a pianist who specializes in improvisatory performances of considerable duration.

Unlike other performances I had heard of this same artist, this one began with transparent pitch specificity.  I do not have perfect pitch, but I do respond to the different resonant colors of black vs. white keys and I relate what I hear to my singing voice, so I really do know where I am when pitch is delivered with such clarity.

Once heard, the memory of these sensations is simply there to be referred to, contrasted with, changed -- the process doesn't matter.  What matters is the hunger to return to something recalling that initial grounding.

In that observation various musical thinkers got it right - Schencker, Zuckerkandl, etc.  -- though in no way does it require or assume formal structure in order to work.  The ear simply wants it and that is quite enough.

I do agree with this performer that we have been over-structured in our awareness of what we hear so that it is harder and harder for us simply to open ourselves to the resonance of Mozart or Haydn or Beethoven composing for the new (i.e., no longer pure in the sense of vocal overtones) sound medium that is the piano.

1/3 of the way there!

Many thanks to everyone who has responded to my request for help to get me to the International Conference on Music Perception and Cognition at the University of Seoul, Korea this August to present my work on Tonal Refraction.

Please feel free to further this enterprise: www.tonalrefraction.com

Thank you.

In Praise of Boredom

If it were not for boredom we probably would not have the Early Music scene, which has so enlightened us on so many musical essentials.

The connection between the two may not seem obvious but it is implicit in the post of a few days ago on minuets coming back into style.  Back in the day -- well, not THAT far back, actually -- three beats to the bar on paper was what you were expected to play and hear.  The notion of variation within meters was virtually non-existent.  Then a number of people must have protested: Enough!  Surely Handel, Haydn, etc. could not have been that dull!

And so was born a renewed curiosity in the phenomenon of rhetoric, or the inability to produce a literal repeat of any musical element.

Musical Accuracy

Accuracy in music is relative.  People who define music as CDs would probably deem accurate any performance that sounded as much like a CD as possible.  For others, those who favor spontaneity, accuracy would be much harder to pin down.

And that is the point.  If music is defined as made with an infinitely variable acoustical mix to be perceived by the infinitely variable human brain, then accuracy is ephemeral, therefore even more to be treasured because, by definition, it cannot be repeated.

I can recall certain flavors experienced once that I will never again taste: the sauce on the quenelles de brochet in a particularly lovely neighborhood restaurant in the 1ere arrondissement, summer of 1959. 

Ludwig Wants Down Off That Pedestal

The thought occurred to me that the reason the three-Beethovens-in-a-row syndrome took hold in the first place is because of the placement of this man upon some mythic pedestal, not just heroic, but supreme, untouched--you get the picture.

The same people who put him up there are shocked at the thought that there is humor in his music, especially in his symphonies.  Beethoven, even at his most serious, was never completely removed from the spirit of irony that underlies so much musical humor.

I recently heard a performance of the Grosse Fuge string quartet.  It couldn't have been a good performance because it was sanctimonious in the extreme.  Sanctimonious and serious are very different things.

Virtuosity and Honest Musicianship

The two are not necessarily mutually exclusive.  All too often, however, I hear virtuosi whose skill seems to create in them the illusion that the elements of the music no longer really matter.

The result is faster and faster tempos; less and less traction within the vibrations themselves.

I have walked out of performances in which that is the primary non-happening as I find it demeaning to listen to it.

But there are viruosi whose skill exists for the purpose of engaging the listener in the fullest possible range of fascination with vibrations soft as well as loud, slow as well as fast.

The model for this will always be for me Artur Rubinstein.