More on Improvisation

Last night I went to Barbes, the Brooklyn boite where my daughter, Rachelle, performs monthly.  Her improvisations get increasingly fascinating the more I get immersed in the the improvisatory quality that has to remain a vital element of music performance.

I notice that she has two different kinds of improvisatory impulse:  The verbal improv is most free when the musical elements are kept to a minimum, and the tonal elements when there are no words.  She has always improvised the intros to the songs, as she did again last night, but there was a magical moment in which such an intro launched without interruption into a new song.  Even the bass player didn't realize what was happening until it had already taken place.

I have learned a great deal by putting myself on a regular basis in the presence of someone who works with these forces in order to realize the potential disguised by standard music notation.

Assaulted by Sound

Just in the past three days I have felt assaulted by sound:

On a city bus when the elevator is in use to enable a wheelchair-bound person to board or leave the bus, the beeping alert is so loud, so high-pitched, and so insistent that it must exacerbate the already high tension generated by the population who have to wait for this operation to take place.  Isn't life for the disabled hard enough without this negative reinforcement?

At a funeral at a small country Roman Catholic church when the recorded and then miked music that was supposed to lead the congregation in song just turned everyone off.   (I won't even go into the sickening quality of the songs...that is another topic for another day.)

In a gym locker room when a locked-up cell phone wouldn't stop its idiotic blare.

Then came a message on the Music Theory Society's on-line chat from a theory instructor who, seeking to make his Freshman Music Theory class more "piano-centered," wants advice on whether or not to have the students purchase $100 keyboards.  Really? More assault by pseudo?

Charitable Purposes

Among the words that describe the function of Fractured Atlas are the words "charitable purposes" of the project they sponsor, whatever it be, in my case, Tonal Refraction.

Initially put off by the phrase I realize that it has taken on a new meaning in this age of money calling the shots: Any work undertaken for purposes other than making money can be described as charitable.  It has come up in conversation a few times recently.

I have stopped bristling at the words.  But I will not stop pointing out to you, dear reader, that you have a certain obligation to support this charitable enterprise, for that is what it is.  It is not hard to do; you may use a credit card and declare it as a tax-deduction.  www.tonalrefraction.com

You will attain the blissful state of responsible readership and perhaps even enjoy a sense of possession as you take part in this conversation as an insider.

Ideal Programming

Of course, there is no such thing.  Programming, like every other form of composition, is successful if it fulfills its creator's aim.

When Rubinstein played a recital it was almost always the second piece on the program that was the focus of his attention; in the case of all Chopin, the entire evening would be through-composed, revealing the pianist's deep personal connection to every piece.

I used to wonder why everyone didn't make programs like that.

I realize now that most people play in order to display virtuosity or to amuse, so that going to a recital is a bit like going to the circus.  I, too, enjoy the circus.

But I want my audience to have an experience of through-listening, an experience that is not available piecemeal or by drifting in and out of attention.

In the course of the past 16 months of steady solo performance I have arrived at my ideal program: I start and end pianissimo teasing the limits of audibility so that you will hear the one work in the middle that has been the focus of my attention for however long it took to "get it."

Improvisation Written Down

Last night I had the privilege of performing Nos 1-4 of Brahms's Op. 76, two Capriccios, two Intermezzi.  Among the listeners was a young composer/pianist whose performances consist of one-hour-plus improvisations.  He couldn't get over how the Brahms sounded like improvisation.

That was exactly my goal.

Achieving this has not been simple.  When, as an adult student, I was first assigned one of these, it was No. 4, all by itself, out of context.  It made no sense to me at all, so I tried my best to get it to conform to everything I had ever learned about chord progressions, phrase structure, resolutions, bass lines, rhythm--everything in the piece demanded attention and the only kind I knew how to bestow was what I had been taught.

Now, fifty years later, I realize that Brahms's purpose in writing this opus and entitling the pieces as he did must have been to remove them from every expectation of normalcy.  I treat them now, first of all, always in sequence, as they make sense only as a cycle, each piece emerging from the last, one tone at a time.  I was shocked to recognize the degree to which I had previously falsified his meticulously notated note values, principally holding bass notes longer than indicated, trying to fit the sounds to my needs rather than to his specifications.

The pieces responded well to this reading.  Apparently someone besides myself agreed.

Treacherous Passages Perhaps Actually Meaningful Passages

On the morning of the day I write this post (not the same day as its publication) appeared an obituary article in the NYTimes.   The deceased was a music critic and writer of program notes as well as a performing musician.

I was struck by the comment of a friend of his, a pianist, who pointed out that he would never read the aforesaid critic's program notes before a performance as the writer invariably directed the audience's attention to the treacherous passages.

I have been unable to get this out of my head.

What is a treacherous passage if not a gateway to a state of being unlike any normal state?

I was fortunate to study with a musician who taught as a given that there are passages that simply cannot be played stone cold sober.  There are, to be sure, several varieties of state outside of literal drunkenness, though that is not infrequently the one in particular evoked by the passage in question.  Sometimes it is ecstasy, sometimes a daring into the realm of  the unfathomable, musically as well as technically.

Why not leave such passages alone on the chance that, at one with the performer, the listener might be transported into the appropriate state?  Why build expectation of a train wreck?  All this accomplishes is to reinforce the inhibition that is stifling so much in what we call classical music.

Caprice

Working on beats and barlines in Beethoven has led me to consider dance rhythms, which are really nothing more than propositions about expectation:  We all know how a tango goes, so produce!

But do we really know how any dance goes?  Aren't all dances subject to flights of fancy, drunkenness, sadness--states of being that have the power to derail expected beats and downbeats?

Next in the process came Brahms and the Capriccios, Op. 76, Nos 1 and 2.  I have the feeling that at last I get it:  A capriccio is its own distribution of beats and downbeats, not subject to expectation of any sort--at least not a reliable one.  The Intermezzi, Op. 76 Nos. 3 and 4 are even more speculative in relation to not just rhythms, but in their development of particular tone colors from the pieces that precede them.  Playing these pieces this way gives them new life.