Avoid Monotony!

Recently I heard a brilliant lecture on the subject of Rhetoric as the basis for the education of everyone who received any kind of formal schooling until, well, probably until the Industrial Revolution.  The basic principle behind Rhetoric could be summed up in two words, delivered this morning by my extraordinary young adult student working on reading:  Avoid monotony!

Monotony seems to have become the very thing pedagogues relied upon to get material across, otherwise how to explain what has been made of the Clementi Sonatina in C, especially the Vivace movement!

Today we worked on that one:  Every sight-reading "error" made by my student signaled some truly exceptional compositional device that can only have been planted there to elicit a response just like his:

The two opening sixteenths are NOT slurred to the notes following.
The two repeated eighths are definitely a conundrum: which is the more important?
The boring left hand part is a call to action if ever there was one.
The dissonances in bar 3 likewise.

And so on it went.  Paid strict attention to, the movement becomes a source of hilarity in the power of details such as precise releases, and the mandate that what looks like a repeat has to be a variation.

Magic in a Single Tone

I am preparing next week's recitals which include a Rondo (V:2) by CPE Bach.  Why is his music seemingly incomprehensible to those of us who studied music theory and analysis? 

Perhaps because our attention was never drawn to the limits of those disciplines.  Just as certain novels were deemed too risque for American consumption (think Ulysses or novels by D.H. Lawrence).  Teachers of traditional theory would have been flummoxed at the thought of presenting as serious works in which silence figures as powerfully as sound, and in which completely unprepared juxtapositions of chromatic tones give the lie to organized modulation as the only viable compositional principle.

Poor lambs.  What they are missing.  What we have been missing.

It has taken John Cage to wake us up.  Better late than never.

Lutoslawski and the Spirit of Invention

I was drawn to Witold Lutoslawski as I prepared Program II for my Bach & Sons: Listening for the Future.  Sure enough there is an Invention for piano, two parts, in every way reminiscent of those by J.S.B., except for the constantly shifting meters, 11/8, 7/8, 5/8, 3/8, 8/8. 

But how is that different from J.S.B. who is constantly beginning figures on off-beats, and displacing what "should" be strong beats?

I added up all the 11x, 7s, 5s, etc. fully expecting them to yield a multiple of 8.  No such thing: 8 +  1.  How's that for wit!

Bach Inventions: A New Approach

Imagine your father is J.S. Bach, not the one whose chorale settings you had to study in harmony class -- without text all their wit is lost! -- but the one who loved to improvise, indeed, to intersperse improvisation with rigor so seamlessly that it takes years of bumbling through to figure out the difference...

OK  Back to the top: Imagine your father is that latter J.S. Bach and that he has written for you, his extremely talented 13-year-old son, some fool-around pieces.  Wouldn't you, knowing him as only you do, have a blast trying to amuse him with your take(s) on each distinctively witty undertaking?

Duo Listening / Duel Listening

It's fun to make up titles.  This one prompted the observation that, all too often, a duo is a duel whether of like or unlike instruments.

I have just been describing how a pair of young students learned to sight-read truly musically by reading together, first taking turns listening to one another, then as a duo actually sight-reading together.

They know something I never learned, namely that listening is the basis of it all from the very outset through to the deepest adult enjoyment.  Actually, that last sentence is not quite right:  They know something which I was never taught but had to learn the hard way...

I've Heard it Before!

My job as a performer is to make it impossible for you, the listener, to say that.  In fact, you can only have heard it before if it is a recording and, even then, if it is a really good recording there will always be some fresh element that commands your attention.

But we are trained to not need to listen--by we I mean musicians.  Once we can identify the snippet, as in
"Name that Tune!", we are done.  No need to listen with a question mark:  Is that all there is to this?  What more could be happening that is not apparent at this moment?  Or, on a deeper level, is this really a minuet or is the composer playing games with me?

In our era of reproduced everything the full zest and savor of every sound risks getting lost.  Come on: let's put it back.  Let's insist on getting it back.

Why Are We In Such a Hurry?

No wonder there is so little interest among young people in music of the past -- though I'm told the same is true for literature.   We are the victims of having it crammed down our throats too much too soon and no digestion allowed.

Now that I am a teacher I enjoy correcting some of the terrible effects of that cramming.  It is a luxury to savor music through the attentive ear of the student rather than have the student assume that their ear is incapable of real observation.

My, what we miss in the name of achievement!