Living of a Broken Heart

I go to the opera to have my heart broken, not by any contrivance of the plot or literal drama, but by the animal vulnerability of the human voice which, if properly embodied, will be unable to control every facet of every tone, leaving itself to break and taking my heart along with it.

It has happened several times: In La Traviata; in Alcina, in Otello, in Dido and Aeneas.  I treasure those moments among the greatest of my life.

It conspicuously did not happen last week at the Coronation of Poppea.  Beautiful voices, no doubt about it--one might say too beautiful.  Many varieties of high-pitched voices from high lyric soprano to counter-tenor, perfectly produced, top to bottom.  Except for the basso, the long low timbre, there was no individual vocal color, therefore no magic when they came together.  The performance was in every way delightful but it was not opera.  They might as well have been speaking their roles.

Listening Like a Piano Teacher

It suddenly came to me this morning while I was brushing my teeth that the reason people listen so rigidly may have something to do with the way they were listened to as young piano students, i.e., by a teacher who was, whether audibly or not, counting all the time.

No wonder it is so hard for people to believe that there is a difference between a single tone of long duration and four separately articulated instances of the same tone.

Perhaps it's because I know what it feels like to be haunted by someone else's ears that I go to such pains to convince my young students that I am really listening to them, and not to some fictionalized version of them.

Repetitive Listening Syndrome

I have been having a tacit argument with the recording-addicted community.  It is as if I am challenging them to a showdown.

In all my playing, including my recordings, I strive to bring to life the dynamic nature of tone and rhythm rather than to present a reading or an interpretation of this or that piece of music.

I realize that there are people who can't take it, so conditioned are they to a repeatable level that they cannot go with a flow.

A Music School Based on Ear Activity

Imagine the day:  At least half of it would be spent listening to one another, learning to differentiate and verbalize sensations generated by a composition, by the player, by the listener. 

Imagine the quality of generosity in performance and in composition that would be thus engendered.

The Real Action is in the Ear

If the real action is in the ear then it is not possible for

• a teacher to be bored because there is so much variation possible within sound and rhythm
• a student to feel belittled because the teacher is listening with an open mind
• a composition to become tiresome because the natural variation of sound and rhythm combined with our inborn variability as living creatures brings every note to fresh realization every time

What more can anyone ask?

Touch and Tone Sensitivity

As I pointed out a few days ago it is wondrously difficult for a pianist to find the right combination of touch and tone to evoke the style of the mid to late-18th century usually identified by the mysterious words, empfindsamer Stil.

The muscle-building approach of modern conventional piano training leaves little room for cultivation of touch / tone.  I have heard even very young students who are taught to play always and only with all their might as if they are in Carnegie Hall.  Will it ever actually happen that they play in such a vast space?  The approach is more like training race horses than musicians.

Playing privately for small audiences on my own piano has dramatically increased the range of my touch, which I had thought was already pretty inclusive, particularly in the direction of soft.

Now They're Intent on Murdering Color! What Next?

In today's paper I see notice of an App called Interaction of Color, Josef Albers, no less--not the App, but the source of the remarkable series of silk screen prints meant to be savored, one at a time, to demonstrate his point about the dynamic nature of color.

So another murder by ear plug, so to speak.

The Albers is so vivid that, when I first looked at it, it had been handed to me upside down and the first print I saw, meant to be the last, caused me to burst into tears.

How likely is that on a mobile device?

I invite you to join me in the world of real vibrations.