Perhaps, just perhaps, boredom is the quintessential classical music question. If you stop to think of it: How can Beethoven be boring?
Perhaps, just perhaps, the point is that boring means you don't get it.
Get what?
Hmmm.
I am rereading short stories of Leonard Michaels, who claimed he knew nothing about music. But his stories, some of which are two sentences long, are fundamentally lyrical in a most contemporary yet totally classical way.
Saturday, February 16, 2013
Friday, February 15, 2013
What's the Hurry?
There is a vast chasm separating the overly predictable pop music that surrounds us and the seeming chaos of the serious contemporary music I have been hearing recently in concert settings.
I wonder which more closely resembles the typical listener's impression of classical-period music?
The more I play that repertoire the more rhythmically complex I find it and the greater my dismay that children are led to believe it epitomizes orderliness. Once you buy into that scheme it is hard to hear what is actually taking place, particularly in terms of the endlessly inventive variations on a four-beat bar.
The hurry seems to be inflicting that order on young learners without the slightest trace of wit or irony, much less variation. What's the rush?
I wonder which more closely resembles the typical listener's impression of classical-period music?
The more I play that repertoire the more rhythmically complex I find it and the greater my dismay that children are led to believe it epitomizes orderliness. Once you buy into that scheme it is hard to hear what is actually taking place, particularly in terms of the endlessly inventive variations on a four-beat bar.
The hurry seems to be inflicting that order on young learners without the slightest trace of wit or irony, much less variation. What's the rush?
Thursday, February 14, 2013
Tolerating, Even Cultivating Boredom
I will try to be more polite and call it tedium rather than boredom, though I always experience it as boredom. Unlike doing the dishes, which is tedious (repetitive, always more or less the same, unavoidable), making music, which is also repetitive and which I do every day, simply cannot be boring--by definition. Whose definition? Mine for sure.
But isn't Beethoven sometimes boring? One might think so in passages here and there if the words you use to describe his music do not include a sense of humor, a fascination with apparent contradictions. A four-note broken chord figure, which he often uses, over and over again under a quite square right-hand theme will often turn out to be repeated five times. Aha! a multiple not just of 4 but also of 5. Played in sets of 5 the figure becomes hilarious.
Or maybe, as in the Presto agitato movement of the Moonlight, one of my favorite examples of his profound sense of number play, he fills 7 beats with sixteenth notes in what look like sets of four against left-hand eighth notes. But wait! that would make 28 sixteenths, whereas he begins the passage with a rest, leaving 27 sixteenths--not a multiple of 4 but of 3. Played in 3s against the left hand produces agitation for sure.
When played in 4s it leads to boredom. That's why it gets played faster and faster by pianists who can tolerate the notion that only fingers need to move fast.
When played in 3s it definitely leads to agitation on the part of both listener and player with the result that it feels faster than most conventional readings. One notes, then, when the composer has distinctly differentiated figures in 4s from those organized otherwise.
So what does presto refer to if not speed? In this as in other sonata movements it refers to the character of the movement being established in its smallest note value, in this case, the sixteenth. These are not dictionary definitions, to be sure; they are common sense musical definitions.
But isn't Beethoven sometimes boring? One might think so in passages here and there if the words you use to describe his music do not include a sense of humor, a fascination with apparent contradictions. A four-note broken chord figure, which he often uses, over and over again under a quite square right-hand theme will often turn out to be repeated five times. Aha! a multiple not just of 4 but also of 5. Played in sets of 5 the figure becomes hilarious.
Or maybe, as in the Presto agitato movement of the Moonlight, one of my favorite examples of his profound sense of number play, he fills 7 beats with sixteenth notes in what look like sets of four against left-hand eighth notes. But wait! that would make 28 sixteenths, whereas he begins the passage with a rest, leaving 27 sixteenths--not a multiple of 4 but of 3. Played in 3s against the left hand produces agitation for sure.
When played in 4s it leads to boredom. That's why it gets played faster and faster by pianists who can tolerate the notion that only fingers need to move fast.
When played in 3s it definitely leads to agitation on the part of both listener and player with the result that it feels faster than most conventional readings. One notes, then, when the composer has distinctly differentiated figures in 4s from those organized otherwise.
So what does presto refer to if not speed? In this as in other sonata movements it refers to the character of the movement being established in its smallest note value, in this case, the sixteenth. These are not dictionary definitions, to be sure; they are common sense musical definitions.
Wednesday, February 13, 2013
Signs of Boredom
Classical music so easily becomes boring when the signs are either ignored or entirely misinterpreted. Take the bar-line, for example.
It is common knowledge that bar-lines indicate downbeats. But not in the hands of an uncommon composer, pick one: Haydn, Mozart, Beethoven, Schubert, Brahms....the list is too long for a single post.
The bar-line-downbeat is often counterindicated by a slur over the bar-line, indicating a weak beat where the downbeat was supposed to be.
Another, less readily understood counterindication is the sforzato on the strong beat. If the first beat were really a downbeat the sfz would be redundant. So what is it doing there?
Yesterday I was puzzling out for the millionth time the on-beat sforzati in the last movement of the Moonlight Sonata: these bars are so boring when all the beats in left and right hand line up and then are accented on top of that. But if the left hand is parsed in three's despite the obvious four-note grouping of the sixteenths then the sforzati become positively mesmerizing, which is what the sign indicates. They also become incredibly difficult.
Difficult is never boring.
It is common knowledge that bar-lines indicate downbeats. But not in the hands of an uncommon composer, pick one: Haydn, Mozart, Beethoven, Schubert, Brahms....the list is too long for a single post.
The bar-line-downbeat is often counterindicated by a slur over the bar-line, indicating a weak beat where the downbeat was supposed to be.
Another, less readily understood counterindication is the sforzato on the strong beat. If the first beat were really a downbeat the sfz would be redundant. So what is it doing there?
Yesterday I was puzzling out for the millionth time the on-beat sforzati in the last movement of the Moonlight Sonata: these bars are so boring when all the beats in left and right hand line up and then are accented on top of that. But if the left hand is parsed in three's despite the obvious four-note grouping of the sixteenths then the sforzati become positively mesmerizing, which is what the sign indicates. They also become incredibly difficult.
Difficult is never boring.
Tuesday, February 12, 2013
Improvisatory Sight-Reading
I get a particular kick out of teaching people to read music so that they enjoy the process every step of the way. This means showing them how to get into an entire piece without necessarily getting all the notes right. This requires an experimental attitude from both teacher and student. (That is usually the really hard part!)
Today's experiment involved finding the most common tone within the first four bars, then playing that note, in rhythm, whenever it occurred, with either hand. That was right away amusing.
Next, deviations from that tone, first by thirds (i.e., the triads in which it figures), next by step or half-step deviations from it. Voila, the piece.
Within 45 minutes the student, who is far from a facile reader, was enjoying the sense of the whole thing.
I asked what was the hardest part of the task: Tolerating wrong notes.
I was in my 20's when an astute teacher required me to play wrong notes on purpose during lessons--by far the hardest thing I had ever been asked to do, harder even than playing three voices of a four-part Bach organ fugue with hands and feet while singing the fourth voice, selected on the spot by the teacher.
Today's experiment involved finding the most common tone within the first four bars, then playing that note, in rhythm, whenever it occurred, with either hand. That was right away amusing.
Next, deviations from that tone, first by thirds (i.e., the triads in which it figures), next by step or half-step deviations from it. Voila, the piece.
Within 45 minutes the student, who is far from a facile reader, was enjoying the sense of the whole thing.
I asked what was the hardest part of the task: Tolerating wrong notes.
I was in my 20's when an astute teacher required me to play wrong notes on purpose during lessons--by far the hardest thing I had ever been asked to do, harder even than playing three voices of a four-part Bach organ fugue with hands and feet while singing the fourth voice, selected on the spot by the teacher.
Monday, February 11, 2013
Piano Public and Private
Strange assumptions get made about people and pianos. One concerns the piano as a by definition public instrument. This means that people who play the piano must keep a steady beat (whatever that is), and furnish reliable accompaniments to whatever other source of sound happens to be around, whether a bunch of people singing folk songs or virtuoso string players.
But this quality of the piano is developed at the expense of the private piano, the instrument that a child is alone with, either colossally bored by or wondrously enamored of.
In my experience as a teacher the private pianist easily morphs into the public pianist because the ear responses are awakened. When other musicians come into the picture adjustments are made because it is the natural thing to do. It is far from lopsided or authoritarian in either direction.
People have been known to express astonishment when I tell them that rhythm should not be the first element of music that pianists learn. But I firmly believe that the different registers of the instrument, and different resonant combinations throw off different internal rhythms that make it virtually impossible for sound-sensitive children to separate out the element of time and treat it objectively.
I compare the phenomenon to the heart monitor next to the hospital bed. The heart beat murmurs away with the seconds clearly marked off. Then a bell rings and the murmur becomes a tsunami of violent crests and troughs. Impossible that all that action takes place within the same time unit as the murmur.
But this quality of the piano is developed at the expense of the private piano, the instrument that a child is alone with, either colossally bored by or wondrously enamored of.
In my experience as a teacher the private pianist easily morphs into the public pianist because the ear responses are awakened. When other musicians come into the picture adjustments are made because it is the natural thing to do. It is far from lopsided or authoritarian in either direction.
People have been known to express astonishment when I tell them that rhythm should not be the first element of music that pianists learn. But I firmly believe that the different registers of the instrument, and different resonant combinations throw off different internal rhythms that make it virtually impossible for sound-sensitive children to separate out the element of time and treat it objectively.
I compare the phenomenon to the heart monitor next to the hospital bed. The heart beat murmurs away with the seconds clearly marked off. Then a bell rings and the murmur becomes a tsunami of violent crests and troughs. Impossible that all that action takes place within the same time unit as the murmur.
Sunday, February 10, 2013
Social Learning and Viktor Zuckerkandl
The definitive study that made my teaching life possible was the two-volume Sound and Symbol by Viktor Zuckerkandl, a Viennese emigre, fellow at the Institute for Advanced Studies at Princeton, one of the group of intellectuals who founded The New School for Social Research in New York City, of which Mannes is a division.
It is ironic that his findings place the study of music squarely within the concerns of the socially conscious rather than within the self-serving confines of an ever more narrowly defined world of professionalism, whether academic or commercial.
That irony was made palpable in a welcome conversation with the Director of the Music School at the Lighthouse for the Blind. We were comparing notes about how learning to deal with students with disabilities had radically transformed our own awareness of the elements of music in the most profound manner. What a delight to be able to talk about that freely and openly with a colleague.
It is ironic that his findings place the study of music squarely within the concerns of the socially conscious rather than within the self-serving confines of an ever more narrowly defined world of professionalism, whether academic or commercial.
That irony was made palpable in a welcome conversation with the Director of the Music School at the Lighthouse for the Blind. We were comparing notes about how learning to deal with students with disabilities had radically transformed our own awareness of the elements of music in the most profound manner. What a delight to be able to talk about that freely and openly with a colleague.
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