The Handel Festival Orchestra and Thomas Elefant

It was a rare treat to hear this extraordinary group of professional and amateur musicians perform Handel's Concerto Grosso, Op. 6 No. 6, and Beethoven's Fourth Piano Concerto last night at St. Peter's Church in New York City.


The orchestra plays expertly under the demanding leadership of Mr. Elefant, founder of the organization.  The truly amazing aspect of his high standards, however, is the constant tapping of real energetic musicianship from everyone in the orchestra ranging from profound introspection to riotous glee, all under control while feeling free as flight.


The players are excellent: intonation is wonderful without being too simple minded.


The soloist for the Beethoven was a last-minute sub, Pedja Muzijevic, who gave the best performance of the work I have ever heard, perhaps in part because it was not a full-size symphony orchestra weighing it down; perhaps because of the setting, which had the audience close enough to be drawn into the music.  Muzijevic is a virtuoso start to finish, yet far more than that: the second movement was radiant.


And everyone showed such wonderful good spirit through the whole thing: conductor and soloist even collaborating in moving the piano!  How many times have I seen that? 


Bravo! And thank you.

More on Dimensions of Time

A chat this morning with an elementary school teacher revealed something quite unexpected: apparently children who regularly attend services in a church, mosque, or synagogue pay better attention in the classroom than those who do not -- and we are talking about a South Bronx public school classroom.

This reveals something about the nature of attention:  I think it thrives on variation.  If a stimulus bombards the brain always at the same unrelenting rate of speed it merely succeeds in turning the brain off.  I would not be in the least surprised but that it was this aspect of the media that most got to me when as a child I simply couldn't stand television.  Not that I was an ideal kid who moved easily from one rate of stimulation to another: I craved speed.  Never fast enough, seemed to be my mantra.

Now I recognize the danger inherent in that kind of superficial emphasis on rapidity.  Slow down.  I work on slowing kids down, using a metronome to tease them into being aware of how fast or slowly they actually can move without losing concentration.

It's a critical skill, not just in music.

Why Not to Video Everything

The lens is a stoplife invention. 

I was brought up in the household of an amateur photographer.  We were constantly being photographed and that was back in the day when that was a big deal, involving film and gadgets and lights and then tying up the bathtub for developing....

At the time I hated having to pose: best behavior was not my favorite mode and there was no other deemed appropriate for the purpose.

Just a couple of weeks ago while playing at a sort of public private party I was shocked at experiencing a rather surprising turn of mind and heart right in the middle of the music.  The moment has haunted me since, without exaggeration.  When, the other evening, I was handed a video of the event I was horrified. 

Had I known it was to be taped would I have allowed that moment to occur? 

Stop Counting

Counting is very much overrated as a tool for learning rhythm.  There are many more reliable and far more life-filled models for regularity, symmetry, sequence, variation--all the things that are more rightly associated with rhythm than numbers.  Let's leave the numbers for arithmetic.

Think instead of clapping patterns:  A good game of Simon Says involving imitation of simple clapping patterns is more fun and potentially far more engaging than any amount of getting from 1 to 4 on time.

Or of moving an object, like a bow or a baton, to conduct a song or express a mood.

My best trick was getting children to draw shapes with both hands at the same time moving in contrary motion on a large sheet of paper.  This is fun, and it is funny.

The hardest thing about beats is that they are too powerful in relation to tone quality.  A child who is sensitive to tone quality cannot objectify time without losing contact with that more important, more elusive, and more deeply personal aspect of hearing.

Like Playing the Guitar

That's how my student described the level she has finally achieved, after many, many years of seeking precisely this, the way she now plays the piano.  It is no longer like dealing with a machine that's out there.  It's much closer to home, much more in control in the best way.

How unusual that an accomplished adult will allow herself to cross that barrier and get to the heart of the matter, which is where she always wanted to be and was never given a clue how to get there.

I asked her what had enabled her to achieve this.  It was a combination of things, she said, among them, watching me play.

That is the best way to learn to play an instrument.  Observe closely someone whose playing you admire.  Without analyzing what she is doing simply go home and pretend that she is inhabiting your body and it is she, not you, playing your instrument.

That is how I learned to play the piano:  Two pianists I have to thank for that:  Artur Rubinstein and Mieczyslaw Horszowski.

Another Dimension of Time

I had thought there were only three:

• the faster-than-fast microseconds during which players (including young-enough children) relish vibrations as if one at a time
• the actual measured musical time which most of us are trained to conceive of as repeatedly counting to four, usually; three, from time to time
• the lifetime of the player / listener associating the tones heard at this moment with tones heard in the past

Now I sense that there is a fourth, harder to define because incorporeal, even more so than sound itself.  This is the time of cultural evolution that alters the definitions of everything by gradually shifting our access to primary sensations.  I had to learn to hear some of the attributes of tone that most fascinate me now because of the intrusion of this element.

I suspect that this element is historically connected to the confusion that arises when the visual symbol is mistaken for the aural reality.

How Can You Hear Afresh a Piece You Know Inside and Out?

The critical words are "inside" and "out".  If music is real only as measured by scientific instruments or as captured thus made inert by recording devices, then good luck.  But if the inner clock by which we live, breathe, and have our being is allowed to influence our mode of listening then it will be impossible to hear the "same" music twice the same way. 

Hearing is, after all, alive.  Let's keep it that way.  Best way I know?  Buy a bell, not a big one, just one of those little brass Indian bells.  Hang it somewhere where you will brush against it from time to time and let it take you by surprise.  We have a small collection of such bells which we used to hang as ornaments on the Christmas tree.  How the children loved unpacking them and hearing them ring!

Some of them eventually lost their clappers.  One of those muted bells sits on a shelf in my bathroom.  Every time I look at it I hear it.  That's music.