Why Did He Take the Note Away?

The question was posed yesterday, by my blind and severely developmentally-challenged 21-year-old student, referring to a mind-changing G that suddenly and only briefly appears in a D minor piece by Bartok.  Wanting the note to continue, he simply puts it in for the rest of the piece. 

It's what I used to do: If I wanted to hear a sound, I would hold it.  If I wanted to add a note (like a dominant to change a diminished triad into a more palatable dominant seventh) I put it in.  If I didn't like certain sonorities (like the often low left hand parts in Brahms) I simply left notes out.

Why not? 

I became totally immersed in answering his question - probably the most profound question he could have asked, and maybe the most profound he ever did ask in relation to anything.  Asking questions is not within his mental capacity.   I recognized and identified with its seriousness and spoke to it from my own depth about loss and longing and how this conveys to other people the essence of music. 

It was a lesson I will never forget.

Vitality of Inner Hearing

A friend is one of the top administration at The Lighthouse for the Blind music school here in NYC.  She told me once that when blind young men hit their early 20's they tend to become very discouraged, especially if there are other disabilities.

My blind, autistic, severely developmentally-challenged student for the past 16 years turned 21 this past week.  This morning I was told that he plays the piano every day, that he says over and over again, that going to piano on Saturday is very important.

Sure enough, he played his Bartok again today, beautifully, with mastery.  And HE knew it.  How many years did I play before I felt that I had truly played beautifully, with mastery? 

What makes the difference?  In my case hearing was assumed.  In his case, it was never assumed.  It was central to his training. 

Today this almost completely non-verbal young man asked a question that knocked my socks off.  In the beautiful, moody Bartok there is a note that appears once and only once in the left hand.  He loves that note and wants to keep it sounding.  When I told him he had to let go of it he asked, "Why?"

Great question.

Interpersonal, Thirty Maybe Forty Years Later

In reply to yesterday's post: Having written the post I was out buying bananas at the local fruit stand, when I ran into a woman whom I had met coming home from a concert a few weeks ago in the company of a mutual friend/neighbor.  It had seemed to me that she was particularly sensitive to matters of sound.  In fact, she had begun our conversation with a question so intelligently posed that I took a lot of time answering it:  "What do you think will happen to the piano?"

Well, there she was, buying bananas.

"You won't believe this," she said.  "I once heard you play the piano.  It was on a soundtruck in the middle of 106th St., I don't recall the occasion, but I do remember what you played and I never forgot your playing." 

I recall having done this and it must have been easily forty years ago.  This sort of thing happens to me every once in a while, that people recall as if etched in their memory, my playing something specific in a specific time and place. 

As I explained to my neighbor, who had overheard this conversation, it is because I could never have made it into a music school as a pianist.  What people hear is my passion for playing, not certainty that I can "do" it.   The huge difference is why I prefer to teach children, especially children with disability, and amateurs: people who share my passion and who don't need to be certain of achievement.

Is Music Interpersonal?

I have not the slightest doubt about this issue.  It is, of course.  I know that this is true, but I seem to have trouble conveying to others that this aspect of music is the critical one, the one that counts, the one that lasts.

Do I honestly believe that Mozart was talking to me when I was 12?  Of course I do.  I did then, which is the critical answer to that question; and I did become aware fairly soon that my music education was not in the least concerned with that aspect of music.  It was presented as if objective, external to the experience of it.

Every time a student of mine responds to something she hears it is a sign of interpersonal connection.  My students do not learn music theory precisely for that reason.  Theory often blocks the actual nature of the sound by presupposing something about its function or at least its identity. 

What if its only valid identity is the one you perceive as you encounter it for the first time?

Its not Commercial Recordings: Now it's the Selfies

In the old days you had to have special, rather clumsy equipment to record anything: reel-to-reel, cassette recorder, you name it: It required an investment of cash and a real (pardon the pun)  commitment to tape, time, etc.

Now it is so easy it is almost impossible to not do it.  Memory chips, built-in mikes.  Push a button, voila. 

So now students are encouraged to record themselves.  Good idea?  Depends.

If all you hear when you listen back are the mistakes, then God help you.  This is doom and damnation.  If, however, you listen for specific attributes of the music or the playing that are not in the category of errors, then perhaps God will help you.  The idea is not to use the recording process as a freeze-dry, but rather as a warming up.

I used to listen to live performance tapes of my chamber group:  hours I spent, trying to figure out what had caused mostly intonation problems or forced, unconvincing playing. This involved listening as much to the dynamic of the composition itself as to the playing, as if the two could be separated one from the other. 

Klezmer Ear

An active klezmer musician has been coming regularly to hear my Mixed Bag experiments, where I play recitals without printed programs to encourage just listening, rather than listening always inside boxes of expectation and prejudice.

I find myself wondering whether what she hears has any influence at all on her music-making.  Does anything carry over from my approach to, say, rhythm?  It could.  After all, these are basically ways of transmitting elan vital, more than adhering to conventions within any given style or tradition.

Internal Rhythm

There has to be such a thing.  People talk authoritatively about the connection of musical rhythm to the body:  I have long had problems with that one, since it is impossible to generalize about bodily anything.  As a child I was very aware of that: I simply could not do as other children seemed to do so effortlessly:  throw a ball, move in sync with others, coordinate my movements within a team sport.

I insist that there is a different source of bodily rhythm, faster, more reliable.  That is the rhythm of hearing itself.  I notice in my students of all ages that this rhythm seems to be the most lively to them; certainly inhabiting music at that level gives them maximum range of choices as to how to coordinate their bodies with the sounds to which they respond.

Why aren't more people interested in that level of activity?  Is it already obsolete?  Has the species already evolved to a place where that level of activity has been diminished?