"More democratic, less hierarchical and more ambiguous"

One of the music theorists participating in a discussion about harmonics remarked that our era is "more democratic, less hierarchical and more ambiguous" than previous times in European history. 

This raises a critical point to which I replied:  

"The idea is to be alive in one's time.  The  era in which we live calls for flexibility in every department, not least in our ability to listen.  All the more reason to make clear that our visual responses are different from our auditory responses and to keep the auditory choices open to the fullest possible extent.

Most of the comments on this thread are posted by advanced scholars: But the skills to which such scholarship applies are open to all beginners in the study of music, and especially music theory, and would seem to call for cultivation of auditory diversity. 

I cannot resist an anecdote: Seated next to a prominent avant-garde pianist, I was subjected to the whacking to bits of a Haydn minuet by a dutifully trained youngster.  Incredulous, I asked my colleague: 'Can you believe that people are still teaching children to play like that?'  Reply: 'It's my student.' "

P.S. The real problem is that notation did not change to reflect the gradual changed in temperament.  Therefore, what you see ain't necessarily what you will hear.  Composers were to different extents aware of this and experimented with notation as best they could, beginning with Clementi, going on to Schumann, and, of course, Bartok.

Ear Flexibility

If your formal study began, as did mine, with 18th-century-style triads as the standard of good piano sound, then you probably grew up, as I did, inflexibly committed to those sounds as the only "true" music.

My students, begun -- most decidedly not as I was -- on 20th-century sounds, are shocked when I tell them that I was an adult before I could tolerate the chromatic pieces in Bartok's Mikrokosmos.  Diminished triads were, to my ear, streng verboten, no matter who wrote them.  If it was Bach or Beethoven I merely added the missing tone to turn the offending diminished triad into a dominant seventh chord.  None of my teachers caught me at it, can you believe it!

The fact of the matter is that the equally tempered piano does not produce the right resonance for 18th-century triads.  But, ironically, if raised on music written for the modern instrument, the ear is adaptable and will be open to sounds that approximate various tunings.  My students enjoy all kinds of sounds without the distaste that plagued me for so long as a young player.

First rule:  Be alive in your time!

In Tune As a Function of LIstening

If the purpose of being in tune is to sound good with others, then the secret to being in tune must have to do with listening.

This, I fear, is the lost art.  Like the well-intentioned singers I mentioned in yesterday's post, too many musicians are schooled to read without listening.  I did it myself for many years before a great teacher caught me at it and made me stop that pernicious habit.

As soon as you listen to the sounds of your fellow players you are more likely to play in tune with them, particularly if you respect the differences between your instruments and decide to go with the flow, which is determined usually by the least flexible of the instruments.

I say "usually" because flexibility is also in the ear of the player.  There is a common belief that the piano is inflexible.  I couldn't disagree more wholeheartedly.  The overtones of the piano are so complex, and the control available via finger and pedal so subtle that I can play so as to block or not block resonance with almost any other instrument.  This is the art I practice and which I find never-endingly fascinating.

Off to Korea

At the time of this posting I will boarding a plane for Seoul, Korea where I am to present my work on Tonal Refraction.  I will be showing examples of a few individuals' progression through stages of visualization of tones, tone-relatedness, compositions.  Some of these individuals' musical lives were forever changed by the process which is condensed into three weekly sessions.  Others refused the intrusion of change into their lives and did not complete the process.

I have continued to explore the implications of committing my sense of the tones in a specific composition to this process, to wondrous effect.  It completely transforms my sense of what I am doing when I play the music.  How it works is not my concern.  That it works is what I know for sure. Why it works I can tell you:  It is because I refuse to ignore the negative emotions aroused by certain combinations of tones that I have to play.  This does not happen in just any composition.  But one thing that distinguishes the work of a master from just another skilled craftsman is their capacity to load specific sounds, the way a poet might load a specific word, in such a way as to arouse the question in the attentive player's mind: "Why do I have to play such a disagreeable sound?"

Professionals are trained not to notice such reactions and are certainly not given guidance on how to deal with them.  I once questioned such a sound to a prominent pianists whose eyebrows promptly went up in disbelief as if to say: You just play the notes, like everyone else. 

During the short week of my stay in Korea I will not be editing blog posts; the posts published this week will have been written prior to my departure and I will not be posting directly from the International Conference on Music Perception and Cognition.

What Exactly is "in Tune?"

A very interesting exchange is currently raging on the Music Theory Society's talk line about overtones and tunings.  I know what I know about overtones simply from experience with them.

• The piano:  I know that the piano overtones are extremely chaotic and that this chaos can be troubling in the extreme, or marvelous, depending....
• Unaccompanied voices:  Nothing is more thrilling to me than to be part of an a cappella ensemble; the instinctual tuning of perfect intervals is nothing short of mysterious. (By the way, I find amateurs to be more readily receptive to that level of tuning than most trained professionals.)
• Mean-tone: or whatever you could call the improvised method of tuning the harpsichord with which I experimented for many years before being blessed with the ability to concentrate all my musical strength on solo piano playing - my life's dream.  At the point where the solo piano work resumed I was no longer able to hear the other, relatively purer keyboard intervals, though the vocal tuning never wavered, interestingly enough.
• Just intonation:  the kind of very pure within-the-harmonic-series intonation with which some string quartets, notably the Del Sol Quartet, are now experimenting thanks to composers like Robert Johnston--the first time I heard one of these works I practically levitated to the ceiling, it was that thrilling.  This is what quartets are supposed to sound like!  This is what Mozart's quartets are supposed to sound like!

The joke is that I used to sing a cappella regularly with a group of mostly graduate students in Music Theory and or Composition who simply could not look at a printed score without hearing piano pitch.
They could do the warm-up exercise that will produce perfectly in-tune unisons and major thirds; they couldn't read and hear at the same time.

Curious.

Talk About Pitch Specificity!

Yesterday's rehearsal of the Brahms Horn Trio was a revelation in listening.  Violinist Gregor Kitzis spotted a note in the horn that was crying out for special treatment.  How did he notice it?

I can't presume to get inside of his brain, but I think it's because he was spending the entire rehearsal experimenting with violin techniques that would enable him to better match the horn's timbres on specific pitches, with amazing results.  But here was a problem that demanded special attention:  The horn, playing dotted half notes, one to a bar, moves down a half step.  It happens twice in the movement, each time with spectacular consequences if appropriately listened to and accounted for.

Seemed like nothing at all, until we did it.  We -- and the music -- will never be the same.

Is It Phenomenology?

Imagining that a work of art exists only in the eye of the beholder/listener/reader is an excellent clue to the way I approach performance.  If I can make your hearing come alive the performance is successful, indeed, the work is successful.

I long ago came to the conclusion that the purpose of all art is to make contact between human beings, alive or no longer bodily alive.

If I recognize in any single sound written however many centuries ago a sound that literally "turns me on" then I know I am not alone in the universe.  This was actually what happened to me as a young child when certain sounds in Mozart's piano music spoke to me as if he were there alongside me in the room.

I knew absolutely nothing about Mozart except that he had lived some 200 years earlier.  I had never heard a note of his either on the radio or on recordings -- such things hardly existed in private homes when I was a child.  The radio that did exist was never tuned to a station that played classical music, if there even was such a thing in Chicago in the 1940's.

I stand firmly by this statement about the purpose of the masterworks.  It figures centrally in the presentation I will be making in Korea exactly one week from today.  Wish me luck.