Coordinate Your Two Hands at All Costs!

It comes up with alarming frequency, how the goal of so much early piano instruction is to get the kid's two hands to function in sync.  In the name of doing so music of all descriptions is rendered mechanical, boring, unbearable.

In a lesson this morning, as I try to cure a mature student of her allegiance to this ingrained objective, I recalled as a a child rebelling against this rattling-off style of playing; it seemed better to quit lessons than to kid anybody about this being a good idea.

Imagine my horror when I went to music school and heard it all around me. Fearing now that it was Haydn's fault I literally threw out every note of his that I owned.

Thank goodness I had the good sense some years later to fish those treasures back out of the trash.

Socrates was Probably Right After All

If alphabets have actually dulled the wits of human beings anywhere near as much as printed music has mangle-ironed the ears of musicians, one would have to concede that Socrates had a point.

How do I know this to be the case?  Because I fall into the trap, again and again.  I open a book of works I have never heard.  Upon first reading my reaction, again and again, is "Oh, I know how this goes: Piece of cake!"  In fact, I usually have not the foggiest idea how it goes.  Searching out that hidden gold nugget requires an effort I am usually too impatient to make.

So if I have the problem, what about you?

Going to the trouble of digging has revealed great treasures, some of which count among my most beloved music.

"That is Silly!"

Yesterday I played the Mozart German Dances K.506 I think it is, for a serious amateur musician: no introduction, no identification of any sort.  Reaction: "That is silly!"

Yes, indeed.  They are extremely silly but the preface to the Henle edition of Mozart pieces for the piano indicate notion but the utmost seriousness.  Deadpan editing, perhaps?  Hope so.  Whether most people would trust themselves to pronounce any music so obviously classical in style "silly" is an experiment I will conduct next week when I play these pieces in the next Mixed Bag performances.

If you're around NYC get in touch.  I'll tell you where and when.

New Mozart

1787 was one of Mozart's best years: Among other things, Figaro was enjoying huge success in Prague, where he went to spend some time visiting a house which I, too, have visited - a lovely manor on a gently sloping hill outside of the city. 

Today I found a set of German dances composed during his visit to Prague that year, music that no one plays, though 1787 was a year that saw many magnificent compositions, the G minor Piano Quartet among them.

These dances are hilarious parodies of everything gauche about German folk music viewed through the sophisticated eyes of the bourgeoisie and of the nobility.  Why have they not been used, as have other German dances, as pedagogical fodder?  They must be too hard.  Not in any obvious way, outside of the occasional leaping octaves; but mostly because bad voice leading is actually harder to play than good voice leading. 

Applying for a Job

So much emphasis is being put on technology these days, it is absolutely terrifying.  Yes, I mean it.  If the only reason to go to school is to assure one's employability upon graduation, heaven help us, especially if the only jobs presumed to be available are in the tech industries.

I find it ironic that the mental health needs of the culture are rising at the same time as this disturbing trend is ingraining itself into education at every level.  The message seems to be that the further removed the individual gets from individual perception the better it will be for everyone.

Who is kidding whom?

One of the most fortuitous things that ever happened to me was when I first went to apply for a job.  Newly arrived in New York and realizing that I had zero qualifications I read the NYTimes want ads starting at "A" for "Art Gallery."  The job consisted of typing letters, watering the plants, and doing whatever else needed to be done.  The boss, Otto Kallir, was (unbeknownst to me) one of the greatest art dealers of the 20th century and a lovely, lovely man.

I learned so much and made such good friends with such fine people, some living, like Hildegard Bachert, Kallir's secretary, now Co-Director of the Galerie St. Etienne having worked there for 74 years (and still at it, full-time) and some not living except in their art: Schiele, Klimt, Kollwitz, Grandma Moses.  The gallery's 75th anniversary is being celebrated this very day.

I was, it turned out, qualified in the most important way, which was and hopefully always will be, to make a personal connection.

Physicality: What is It?

There is a lot of talk these days about the brain: even the magazine of the Sunday NY Times of Jan. 11 shows stylized "neurons" spelling something like "your brain."  A lot of this is talk unattached to actual experience.  In fact, people experience their own mental activity differently.  It is a personal affair.

Yesterday I received an email linked to an article about Beethovian rhythms showing a marked resemblance to a heart experiencing arhythmia.  Why not?  As he did not hear what almost everyone else hears is it not possible, even probable, that he could pick up bodily signals of which most people are unaware, and that these would become primary sources of insight for him? 

Defining Adventure

An Op-Ed essay in the NYTimes of January 9 calls attention to the extraordinary achievement-in-progress of two climbers scaling the sheer wall of El Capitaine without any tools except ropes to keep them from falling.  The purpose?  According to the insightful writer, so that they can define for themselves what constitutes adventure.

He might be describing why I play the piano or why I teach the way I do.  Listening without recourse to how one is supposed to hear gives access to the sheer genius of Beethoven, a composer now associated with good compositional practice but whose level of irony is discernible only to those who have ears sufficiently unprejudiced to discern fragile voice leading or articulations that don't make conventional sense.

No prompts, no props, just direct connection with the element of sound.  As if that were not enough.