The Word Stealing Advertising Menace

It turns out that Text-Enhance.com is a malware that attached itself to my computer, introducing to my eyes alone, apparently, ads at every algorithmic word, like sonata or play.  I had begun to suspect that all of language had been poisoned.  So beware.

Piano Playing and Therapy, continued

At the same time that I know I cannot imitate someone walking, it occurs to me that I did ultimately learn how to play the piano by imitating two great pianists' hands, drawn to careful observation in each case by their highly individual sound.

What made this imitating possible?

My guess is that in each instance I was completely engaged in the sound on a note-by-note level.  It was as if I entered the hand via the sound and that immersion worked on my hands from within myself, changing my hand position, increasing my hand extension, improving my fingering--all significant factors in playing.

One was Artur Rubinstein with whose hands I have nothing in common: his were large, mine are small.  The other was Miecyszlaw Horszowski, whose combination of finger with foot made an irresistible legato.

The sound existed as if free of interpretation.  I neither agreed nor disagreed with it.  I was completely caught up in it with no possible distraction.  In a way, the sound purified the exchange.

Something new and completely horseracing

Surprise!  Apparently, as of today and out of the blue, like a jet plane, or perhaps a Zeppelin not necessarily Led, or maybe even Superman, all commercially valuable words will be linked, by something called Text-Enhance, to advertisements.  I will make a great effort to restrict my vocabulary to 18th-century notions which have no commercial value that I know of.

Ooops!  Apparently my every reference to a S____ , the name of a commonly performed Classical structure,  provides Honda an adop.   Ooops for the op.

I would be curious to know if this affects the machine of everyone reading this blog, or if it is just something that attached itself to my machine.... lucky me.  

Music and Therapy

I have always been sure of two things:  Walking is harder than playing the piano.  If I ever figured out how to really play the piano I would have figured out how to live.

I want to walk as other people walk, without having to think about every aspect of placing one foot in front of the other and shifting body weight so as not to incur pain.  (Most people can't see that there is a problem, but a congenital spinal anomaly leaves nothing to be taken for granted.)

But I want to play the piano, not as others do, but so as to express what I hear and how much it matters to me.

Having reached that state -- I am still working on the walk problem -- and having by now taught several cycles of students some of whom already by the age of 18 play with completely transparent (i.e., clearly audible) mastery of "the music part," as one student put it, I can address the connection between the two.

If the physical therapist shows me what walking looks like I get completely confused.  My body neither looks nor feels like his; I cannot possibly imitate him.  I have literally no idea what he is doing.  Similarly, when a piano teacher would demonstrate a passage I was at a loss to know how to respond.

It is my intention that will ultimately make walking work, as it has been my intention to make by piano playing reflect the working of my ear that has revealed the essence not only of Schubert and Mozart, but of my students.  Having learned to pay attention at the level of intention, I have learned to discern the intention of my students.  The result is their increasing satisfaction with their own playing, and my increasing fascination with the complexity of the undertaking.

Avoiding The Music Box Effect in Schubert

One listener noted what she found to be the very troubling music box effect of some of the repeated passages in Schubert's E-flat Sonata, Op. 122.  She brought up a central problem in these sonatas.  Another listener confessed that he never played them because he could not make sense of the structure, largely because of the repetitive passages.

Despite pressure from academics, I never engage in formal analysis of the works I play.  I assume that the composer has taken care of the structure and that my job is to make it come to life--to inhabit its drama.

If, as I firmly believe, the subject matter of the sonata is the key itself, then the drama emerges as the degree of stability or instability of the key is altered by accidentals or by finding oneself,whether prepared or not, in a strange key.

For this reason I track carefully the order of entrance of the scale tones and of the accidentals.  The beginning of this sonata, as pointed out earlier, is the utter instability of its beginning.  The first long note, G, is also the first pronounced downbeat.  Before many measures pass we have the following accidentals: B-natural, E-natural, A-natural and G-flat (enharmonic F-sharp but without the leading tone implication).  Before the missing link appears, completing the 12-tone system, B-natural has to become C-flat and only then does D-flat make its appearance.  All of this is tremendously significant: G is, after all a sharp key; to involve it increasingly in flats is a measure of the work's fascination with instability.  This is further shown as the first movement progresses, culminating in the last accidental to be introduced, F-flat.

The music box effect, i.e., when a melody or a rhythm repeats again and again without variation, makes us keenly aware of the slightest change.  I liken it to the atmosphere in an Impressionist landscape.  To get interested in the effect one must first respond to the notion that sharps are fundamentally different from flats in that they point in opposite directions.  Then the challenge is to let oneself be at the mercy of sound pure and simple.

When thus immersed the player risks being thrown off-balance by shifts in the prevailing tonal condition.  Therein lies the drama.  It is calm until it is no longer calm, predictable until an accidental points in the wrong direction and all hell breaks loose.

Preparing to Perform to a Close-up Audience

My ideal listening situation has come to be the boite* in Brooklyn where my daughter performs once a month.  (A boite--French for "box"-- is a small square room behind a bar--a small performance space.)  I enjoy everything about it, most especially the sense of community among the listeners, and the evident fragility of performers so close to their listeners.

It dawns upon me that this has inspired my ongoing series of in-house recitals.  I am aware of how different it is to prepare for these events than to prepare formal recitals for, say, Weill Recital Hall at Carnegie Hall, where I have performed both solo and ensemble recitals countless times in the past 35 years.

The main difference is that the intimate circumstance engages my ear differently:  I seek out the more subtle elements of drama.  Projection is irrelevant.  Pianissimo becomes fortissimo.

My current repertoire is Schubert and Dvorak, two very intimate writers for the piano. 

* There should be a circumflex over the i but I can't figure out how to put one there.

Schubert Op. 122 continued

As a young piano student I was taught to recognize phrases: a series of measures that clearly began and led somewhere, at which point it was appropriate to breathe.  The phrases at that stage all seemed to have in common somewhat symmetrical trajectories. 

It is terribly difficult to free oneself of that deeply ingrained paradigm; nowhere does it matter more than in this sonata.  There are phrases, but they are often interrupted and they rarely reach satisfying endings, as if they were punctuated with question marks.

But the sonata begins with a virtual question, and the absence of a defined resolution concludes the work as the thematic material is interrupted, moved from the deepest register of the piano (where we are very rarely called upon to play a lyrical phrase) to the treble, and then to a whispered final chord.

The mystery, to me, is that this should happen in E-flat, usually a key of warmth and security on the piano, not the usual setting for angst.  The sonata becomes more meaningful with every passing performance.