The late great humorist Milt Gross wrote an unforgettable version of the Ferry Tail from Keeng Midas in a splended collection called Nize Baby, available, I believe, in a Dover reprint. This priceless compendium of grim tales includes a scene in which the hungry King Midas is unable to eat his peas: every time he tries to chew them they turn to solid gold and break his teeth. So he has his vassal stand opposite him with the peas in a peashooter, wot he should swallow de pees witout chewing de pees. Or something to that effect - I can imitate the dialect but the spelling is difficult. Like music, these words are meant to be heard.
This peashooting is the perfect model of dutiful piano playing: we should play the music without its touching us.
Saturday, December 8, 2012
Friday, December 7, 2012
Whose Ear Do We Aim to Please?
First of all, the question is idiotic. We cannot possibly succeed in satisfying someone else's ear. Don't even try.
Yet this is the basis of all master-oriented pedagogy. We are led to believe that the previous generation of greats had it from the horse's mouth and that we, poor dears (especially us non-Europeans), couldn't possibly measure up, so hold your tongue and imitate, imitate, imitate. (Tom Lehrer had a great song about this false learning model vis a vis mathematics; his punchline was "plagiarize, plagiarize, plagiarize.")
I recently heard a student dutifully trying to imitate an authoritarian teacher. Not only was the playing unattractive, it bore no resemblance to the student's natural musicality, which is genuine and charming. The student complained of memory trouble. Small wonder.
Why does anyone buy into a system that demands such a putdown of the self? Is it because of a foreign accent?
Yet this is the basis of all master-oriented pedagogy. We are led to believe that the previous generation of greats had it from the horse's mouth and that we, poor dears (especially us non-Europeans), couldn't possibly measure up, so hold your tongue and imitate, imitate, imitate. (Tom Lehrer had a great song about this false learning model vis a vis mathematics; his punchline was "plagiarize, plagiarize, plagiarize.")
I recently heard a student dutifully trying to imitate an authoritarian teacher. Not only was the playing unattractive, it bore no resemblance to the student's natural musicality, which is genuine and charming. The student complained of memory trouble. Small wonder.
Why does anyone buy into a system that demands such a putdown of the self? Is it because of a foreign accent?
Thursday, December 6, 2012
Hearing First
Long ago I read Artur Schnabel's command: "Hear first; then play!" That I puzzled over this indicates the degree of complexity involved in the notion of hearing first. Hear what? How can you hear before there is sound? What do we hear first?
It is an especially interesting notion when piano playing is involved. We pianists, no matter where we are or addressing what instrument, hear first our own piano. Every other instrument is an affront. (Though I cannot prove this scientifically, I am convinced that this accounts for most of the stage fright that besets players of all ages. I know it used to upset me terribly to "have to" play my well-prepared lesson on my teacher's first-class Steinway, a piano infinitely superior to my own dinky rented upright.)
Getting used to a new level of pianistic glow and a much expanded range of touch response I am aware of how much anticipatory hearing goes on every time I sit down to play.
Memory plays a large role in advance hearing. Can we re-direct our advance hearing to avoid entrapment in the "previously heard," which is not at all the same as "hearing first"?
Tonal Refraction provides a means of doing just that, by connecting awareness of the multi-faceted life of tone in our deepest emotional memory to the present nano-moment in which present vitality finds a new connection between the physicality of playing and our inner ongoing life of sound.
www.tonalrefraction.net
.
It is an especially interesting notion when piano playing is involved. We pianists, no matter where we are or addressing what instrument, hear first our own piano. Every other instrument is an affront. (Though I cannot prove this scientifically, I am convinced that this accounts for most of the stage fright that besets players of all ages. I know it used to upset me terribly to "have to" play my well-prepared lesson on my teacher's first-class Steinway, a piano infinitely superior to my own dinky rented upright.)
Getting used to a new level of pianistic glow and a much expanded range of touch response I am aware of how much anticipatory hearing goes on every time I sit down to play.
Memory plays a large role in advance hearing. Can we re-direct our advance hearing to avoid entrapment in the "previously heard," which is not at all the same as "hearing first"?
Tonal Refraction provides a means of doing just that, by connecting awareness of the multi-faceted life of tone in our deepest emotional memory to the present nano-moment in which present vitality finds a new connection between the physicality of playing and our inner ongoing life of sound.
www.tonalrefraction.net
.
Wednesday, December 5, 2012
The Dynamic Art of Sight-reading
I have an experimental approach to teaching music to young learners. Out of respect for the complexity of the art as well as the complexity of each child I realize how senseless it is to dumb down any part of the student's orientation to sound, notation, or repertoire.
Part of my last phase of experiment involved a weekly duo lesson with two teenagers, one an accomplished reader, the other an accomplished non-reading improvisor. To my astonishment I realize that the non-reader could sight-read even quite complex scores when the two of them worked together. Clearly there was no trace of competition between them or this could never have happened.
It is hard for me to imagine myself as a teenager doing anything musical in the company of a peer without competition being the prevailing dynamic.
Part of my last phase of experiment involved a weekly duo lesson with two teenagers, one an accomplished reader, the other an accomplished non-reading improvisor. To my astonishment I realize that the non-reader could sight-read even quite complex scores when the two of them worked together. Clearly there was no trace of competition between them or this could never have happened.
It is hard for me to imagine myself as a teenager doing anything musical in the company of a peer without competition being the prevailing dynamic.
Tuesday, December 4, 2012
Free
What is free? With any luck the spirit remains free. The internet provides a wonderful outlet for freedom of expression. It is up to you, dear reader, to gauge for yourself the value of what you read on the web.
If I didn't believe strongly in free I wouldn't be doing this blog. In order to express the thoughts you read here some considerable distance is required from the commercially-determined conventional music/academic world.
Support it. Go to www.tonalrefraction.net to learn how.
Thanks!.
If I didn't believe strongly in free I wouldn't be doing this blog. In order to express the thoughts you read here some considerable distance is required from the commercially-determined conventional music/academic world.
Support it. Go to www.tonalrefraction.net to learn how.
Thanks!.
First Impressions
My newly rebuilt Mason & Hamlin AA grand has the most lustrous sound. Every time I play Dvorak I am reminded of how dangerous it is to form wrong first impressions of such works as his Waltzes or the Suite in A Major, works I first heard in orchestrated versions. No orchestration can capture the overtone glow that causes harmonies to merge rather than modulate. Before the rebuilding I could get away with playing these works on the piano while hearing the orchestral version in my head. Thank goodness that is no longer possible: the orchestration has been overpowered by the pianistic dimension that inspired these works in the first place.
Monday, December 3, 2012
Schubert in the Extreme
Opera is extreme above all other genres. I know this from a few memorable performances I have seen/heard/felt. In each case a magnificently complex production led up to a moment in the third act when the heroine (soprano) could not control her voice and made an uninhibited animal sound--fleeting but oh so powerful. It happened once at the Met in Traviata, once at the NYCity Opera in Handel's Alcina; in a recent Mannes College production of Don Giovanni it was baritone Ricardo Rivera who allowed it to happen.
Allowing it to happen is a function, first of all, of inspired composition: the composer knows the voice and writes into the part the difference between vulnerability and sheer confidence. Masterful vocal writing does not get better than in the hands of Verdi, Handel, and Mozart.
Today I realized that I have never seen a Schubert opera. I wonder why? Who is afraid of them? Is it an issue of style? (Mozart's Idomineo was not performed until recently, after the revival of interest in early music, when people realized that it was essentially a Baroque opera.)
Allowing it to happen is a function, first of all, of inspired composition: the composer knows the voice and writes into the part the difference between vulnerability and sheer confidence. Masterful vocal writing does not get better than in the hands of Verdi, Handel, and Mozart.
Today I realized that I have never seen a Schubert opera. I wonder why? Who is afraid of them? Is it an issue of style? (Mozart's Idomineo was not performed until recently, after the revival of interest in early music, when people realized that it was essentially a Baroque opera.)
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