Tuesday, July 15, 2014
Support Non-Conformity Wherever You Find It
Like the honeybees editorialized in this mornings NYTimes, nonconformists in every field are in danger of extinction. Support a nonconformist today, any nonconformist. Buy a ticket. Go to a concert. Buy a book of poems.
Pay for your ticket on this ride: www.tonalrefraction.com/
Sound Like a Pro vs. Feel LIke an Artist
Sounding like a pro is all too easy, given the many recordings that sound more or less alike -- and increasingly I notice this to be the case. I test this thesis by listening at random to WQXR. Yesterday I heard by chance a recording of some generic symphonic work played generically by some generic orchestra. Having no idea it was QXR (it was being played in a waiting room) I had some trouble entering my experimental mode and found myself simply annoyed.
Later I ran into a dedicated amateur cellist who, in the space of a three-minute walk, unwittingly put his finger on the problem: Too much of the time amateurs are coached as if their goal should be to sound like professionals, i.e., to treat the music as an object that can be mastered, or at least played "correctly." These amateurs are not given credit for having responses of their own to every element of their playing: not just the notes and the rhythms, but their rapport with their specific instruments, and with one another.
Too many pros have to restrain themselves when it comes to such individual responses, their job being to sound like the generic recording of generic Beethoven. Amateurs are blessed in that they may give full rein to their individual responses thus feeling like the artists we all crave to be--perhaps I should alter that a bit to read: "the artists we all might realize we crave to be were it not for the increasing pressure to conform to norms imposed by commercialization." Writers call this the censorship of the marketplace.
Later I ran into a dedicated amateur cellist who, in the space of a three-minute walk, unwittingly put his finger on the problem: Too much of the time amateurs are coached as if their goal should be to sound like professionals, i.e., to treat the music as an object that can be mastered, or at least played "correctly." These amateurs are not given credit for having responses of their own to every element of their playing: not just the notes and the rhythms, but their rapport with their specific instruments, and with one another.
Too many pros have to restrain themselves when it comes to such individual responses, their job being to sound like the generic recording of generic Beethoven. Amateurs are blessed in that they may give full rein to their individual responses thus feeling like the artists we all crave to be--perhaps I should alter that a bit to read: "the artists we all might realize we crave to be were it not for the increasing pressure to conform to norms imposed by commercialization." Writers call this the censorship of the marketplace.
Monday, July 14, 2014
Reflections on Sound and Newness
This is probably the essence of the difficulty facing all music and all musicians of our time: we have heard it all before. The roses, as T.S. Eliot so beautifully put it, have the air of having been looked at.
We have become jaded by over-exposure. What now passes for music in no way resembles actual music, in the way that a canned green bean (but who is old enough to remember those affronts to nature?) bears little resemblance to the real thing.
I remember traveling with my young children in France. The first day they couldn't eat the tomatoes:
"They don't taste like tomatoes," was their objection. It is the similar problem when I invite people to hear the piano played close up in the chamber, as the music is supposed to be heard, not separated by a half-block of sound absorbing people and stuff.
It must all ideally be heard for the first time, no matter how familiar.
When are music teachers going to wise up to the necessity of incorporating that freshness into every child's instructions for daily playing?
We have become jaded by over-exposure. What now passes for music in no way resembles actual music, in the way that a canned green bean (but who is old enough to remember those affronts to nature?) bears little resemblance to the real thing.
I remember traveling with my young children in France. The first day they couldn't eat the tomatoes:
"They don't taste like tomatoes," was their objection. It is the similar problem when I invite people to hear the piano played close up in the chamber, as the music is supposed to be heard, not separated by a half-block of sound absorbing people and stuff.
It must all ideally be heard for the first time, no matter how familiar.
When are music teachers going to wise up to the necessity of incorporating that freshness into every child's instructions for daily playing?
Sunday, July 13, 2014
Variation Rhythm
The longer I am involved with music the more I believe its purpose - if it has to have one - is to arouse in everyone within listening distance awareness of the speed of vibration. Put another way, awareness that the very air is moving, breathing, alive.
Despite the pretense of commercialization that air can be packaged into tiny boxes and plugged via buds (crazy word!) into the ear, we must do everything in our power to subvert this attack on our own aliveness.
One good remedy is to sit in the front row whenever you can get to a free, unamplified performance: Try a local music school. Don't be fussy about the performance, but do be fussy about your ability to listen with empathy to whoever is playing. Put yourself in their shoes. Listen as though your life depends on it.
It does.
Despite the pretense of commercialization that air can be packaged into tiny boxes and plugged via buds (crazy word!) into the ear, we must do everything in our power to subvert this attack on our own aliveness.
One good remedy is to sit in the front row whenever you can get to a free, unamplified performance: Try a local music school. Don't be fussy about the performance, but do be fussy about your ability to listen with empathy to whoever is playing. Put yourself in their shoes. Listen as though your life depends on it.
It does.
Saturday, July 12, 2014
I Fall Out of the Barline Trap!
Yesterday I had the rare privilege of teaching a young adult student how to approach the rhythm in that famous Clementi Sonatina in C, the one I refer to all the time, being the one everyone "knows."
Last movement, 3/8 with a repetitive left hand three note figure, over and over and over, starting each bar with the same tone. The right hand agrees, no?
Well, not if you know anything about how to read Vivace rhythms. These are not the same as Allegro rhythms, which tend to organize according to quarter notes. Vivaces are definitely trickier. I describe the difference as having more to do with series than with divisions.*
In bars 3 - 4 of this movement we have the perfect example of how this works. There are six eighth notes spread over these two bars: D F B C G G . Conventionally they are played with the accents as follows: D f b C g g, This way the line goes Up Down Up Down.
Played this way: D f B c G g The line goes in one direction, down, from D to B to G.
And it does so in a most amusing way: Each step is ornamented with an upward tease, i.e., a note that doesn't REALLY go up at all. And consider what happens then:
Not only do the strong notes (D B G) produce a wonderful G triad, but the added joke
is that those deceptive rises play another game:
D f (a third 3 ) B c (a second 2) G g (a unison 1)
It sounds so much better.
It is also much harder, given the temptation to allow the left hand to reduce everything to its most oring terms.....
*What Might It Mean? An Uncommon Glossary of Musical Terms and Concepts for the Stuck, Bored, and Curious, by Nancy Garniez, published by Tonal Refraction, NYC, 1999
Last movement, 3/8 with a repetitive left hand three note figure, over and over and over, starting each bar with the same tone. The right hand agrees, no?
Well, not if you know anything about how to read Vivace rhythms. These are not the same as Allegro rhythms, which tend to organize according to quarter notes. Vivaces are definitely trickier. I describe the difference as having more to do with series than with divisions.*
In bars 3 - 4 of this movement we have the perfect example of how this works. There are six eighth notes spread over these two bars: D F B C G G . Conventionally they are played with the accents as follows: D f b C g g, This way the line goes Up Down Up Down.
Played this way: D f B c G g The line goes in one direction, down, from D to B to G.
And it does so in a most amusing way: Each step is ornamented with an upward tease, i.e., a note that doesn't REALLY go up at all. And consider what happens then:
Not only do the strong notes (D B G) produce a wonderful G triad, but the added joke
is that those deceptive rises play another game:
D f (a third 3 ) B c (a second 2) G g (a unison 1)
It sounds so much better.
It is also much harder, given the temptation to allow the left hand to reduce everything to its most oring terms.....
*What Might It Mean? An Uncommon Glossary of Musical Terms and Concepts for the Stuck, Bored, and Curious, by Nancy Garniez, published by Tonal Refraction, NYC, 1999
Friday, July 11, 2014
Funny or Not: Your Choice
Sight-reading at the piano is plenty difficult and many students struggle with it, as do many teachers. The teachers struggle with the difficulty of teaching it and are much relieved when a student shows any sign of fluency.
This is where the wonderful traps set by the likes of Muzio Clementi can exercise their true power.
"You got through that phrase very nicely. Now see, it repeats over here and again over there, so you don't have a thing to worry (i.e., think) about." And off we go mechanically repeating just because we can. (I know that temptation very well; I used to do it myself, thinking it would encourage reading. I have come to believe that it actually discourages reading!)
But, as Rachelle's famous song says, "Just because you can doesn't mean you should." Clementi's wondrously inventive imagination could present elements so clearly as to give the player many opportunities to introduce variation: one note louder than the next, these two bars played against the left hand beat, and so on.
It is the terrible over-edited music teachers' editions that have destroyed all traces of the humor, all invitation to play around with every note.
This is where the wonderful traps set by the likes of Muzio Clementi can exercise their true power.
"You got through that phrase very nicely. Now see, it repeats over here and again over there, so you don't have a thing to worry (i.e., think) about." And off we go mechanically repeating just because we can. (I know that temptation very well; I used to do it myself, thinking it would encourage reading. I have come to believe that it actually discourages reading!)
But, as Rachelle's famous song says, "Just because you can doesn't mean you should." Clementi's wondrously inventive imagination could present elements so clearly as to give the player many opportunities to introduce variation: one note louder than the next, these two bars played against the left hand beat, and so on.
It is the terrible over-edited music teachers' editions that have destroyed all traces of the humor, all invitation to play around with every note.
Thursday, July 10, 2014
The Sonata vs. Variations or Variations Within Sonatas?
Many years ago a very bright high school student came to his piano lesson and, smirking with delight, recounted that on a Music Appreciation test he was supposed to identify themes A and B of some symphony or other. He found this quite amusing since they were actually identical, the "second" merely a slight variant of the first. Of course, he couldn't have pointed that out without failing the test.
How many people go through life thinking that the point of listening to a sonata is to identify themes A and B and to recognize them when they return? The whole entire point of the form is to make repetition impossible by change of key and other subtleties that heighten every volatile aspect of every element of the sound at any given moment. The better the composer, the truer that is.
One is incapable of a simple repeat because the idea demands imagination and because it is not permissible to allow tedium to enter the experience wherever you are seated, whether in the audience or on the piano bench.
How many people go through life thinking that the point of listening to a sonata is to identify themes A and B and to recognize them when they return? The whole entire point of the form is to make repetition impossible by change of key and other subtleties that heighten every volatile aspect of every element of the sound at any given moment. The better the composer, the truer that is.
One is incapable of a simple repeat because the idea demands imagination and because it is not permissible to allow tedium to enter the experience wherever you are seated, whether in the audience or on the piano bench.
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