The Piano Makes the Theory Canon Obsolete

I mentioned something to this effect (specifically that the piano was from its very beginning a post-tonal instrument) to a senior member of the theory faculty at Indiana University, whom I met at a conference on the Musical Ear.  "Yes," she said, agreeing with me.  "It's out of tune."

The piano was always out of tune for two reasons:

• Sympathetic vibration: More pronounced in this instrument than in any other, this would have set off a bewildering array of contradictory overtones regardless of what temperament was used to tune the instrument
• Key leverage: The relatively short black key levers, usually struck at the tip, would have released a more resonant sound than white keys struck at mid-point.  This would have made some major triads, D major, A major, E major, clearly dissonant.

Thus notions of tonal harmony as practiced during the Baroque era would no longer apply, especially if the black keys were disposed so as to aggravate their dissonant potential -- by doubling them, or placing them in conspicuous registers.  Had the syntax of composition favored that radical acoustical shift it is highly likely that the instrument would have gone the way of many other inventions of the time, the arpeggione, for example.  So the trick was to disguise the innovation and trust that people would hear it.

Instead, visual analysis took over.  The hearing of generations of musicians has been conditioned to death by the reduction of just about everything to triadic functionality.  If our hearing is now flawed it is not so much the result of equal temperament as of this stifling pedagogy.

Once having learned Mozart as a composer of tonal harmony on the piano it is wondrously difficult to return to the piano's elemental acoustics as the source of his insights and the inspiration for his many sonatas for piano solo or for piano with accompaniment of the violin -- for that is what those duos are, not the other way around.

I base these observations on my initial shock at encountering Mozart's black keys as a child, on a later shock playing harpsichord for the very first time, and my ultimately clarifying shock when, in my 50's, I returned to intensive solo piano playing and could identify the phenomenon.

"She Hears The Way I See"

Joan Farber, exceptional artist, dear friend (drawings/watercolors: local-artists.org/user/4069), thus describes the connection between my ear and her eye.  Thinking about the way musicians hear in advance of sound I realized that she sees the movement of color and line and that is why her work seems so compatible with mine.

It is a way of not just taking in the aura of sound, the aura of what is seen, but of participation in it.

Perhaps you might say we are both committed to the as-yet-unseen, unheard. 

Tone Perception Visualized

I celebrate publication of Tone Perception Visualized: I  The Mozart G Minor Piano Quartet, the first in a projected series of Tonal Refraction publications.

Tonal Refraction is a method that permits an individual to visualize her perception of tone in a given composition on a given day: not attempting to be definitive, it gives permission to notice that one's experience of tone is infinitely variable, both acoustically and emotionally.

Color is a readily accessible means of depicting emotional association, but may also reveal acoustical resonance in interesting ways.  I might use blue for a particularly warm tone and find myself radiating out through greens toward yellow to explore its upper overtones, and through purples to red for lower resonance.

The grid allows for subjective responses to rise and fall.  Not every note that appears to rise actually conveys rising motion.  Just because a different finger on a higher key is needed to produce the notated pitch on the piano, for example, does not mean that the intention of the tone is to lead the ear upward.  Perhaps it is an ornamental tone, perhaps a kind of yodeled harmonic--the call is subject to subjective response which very much affects the way the music is played.

Tonal Refraction arose in my dreams upon my return to serious solo piano playing at the age of 57 after decades of being an organist and chamber musician.  To celebrate I programmed a recital that included Mozart's G Major Sonata which I was assigned at age 12.   It was as if the deeply troubling responses I had had as a child had remained frozen in my subconscious and now compelled visualization to give them substance.  Those responses informed my playing of the G Minor Piano Quartet, one of the most troubling works I encountered as an adult.

Tonal Refraction might therefore be said to be the work of a child.   It is why I take so seriously teaching children.

Reading Inside of the Sound: Schumann Once Again

The Album for the Young contains some of the most masterful insights into reading music -- properly reading music -- at the piano.  When reading is strictly a matter of eye / motor response much of this music makes no sense or quickly palls.

Already in the interaction of the quarter notes and eighth notes in Melodie (piece #1) the essential sound is either utterly boring or completely compelling, depending on whether or not the ear is activated.  Trallerlied, of a similar texture, makes an even stronger case for the necessity of attentive listening by the insertion of some subtly discordant measures that I never liked until I learned to quiet myself down sufficiently to pay them heed on behalf of an adult student who is quite determined to get to, as she puts it, "the music part."

Determined to explore the actions and reactions involved in sight-reading I turned to Scheherezade in whose rolled chords and meandering eighth-notes Schumann stops time to spin out every sound.  According to the story it is a matter of life and death.

Fascination vs. boredom.

Technology and Time

In 1997 Dave Tecson (then of Edgeworx) a brilliant post-production specialist, transformed some Tonal Refractions into a computer animation which we presented together at Weill Recital Hall at Carnegie Hall, the animation accompanying my live piano playing.

At that time it seemed logical that Tonal Refraction should go the tech route, i.e., that it would lend itself to use via computer technology.  It would have been tempting, perhaps even lucrative, to have gone there but somehow I knew it would not have been true to the essence of the process.

Trying to figure out why, I recalled the process of preparing the animation, more than anything else, a matter of controlling time.  I spent hours with a metronome timing the rhythmic fluctuations of Toscanini's Beethoven recordings, coming to terms with the technological imperative of x frames per second no matter what.  (The principle works I played were both Beethoven: The 32 Variations, and the "Moonlight" Sonata, two of my favorite works.)

Many years later computer whiz Damon Horowitz pointed out that, in his view, the trouble with Tonal Refraction is that it takes too long.  His observation unlocked the mystery.

Tonal Refraction takes a forever in comparison with the mental speed to which computer people are accustomed.  But their speed ain't nuthin' compared to the speed of vibration.  And Tonal Refraction involves literally drawing vibrations as if one at a time which, while it seems physically slow, is actually tapping into that specifically Beethovian phenomenon where super-fast meets and matches super-slow.  Therein lies its real content, its real power.

Having been challenged to try Tonal Refraction, Damon's assessment of the process was entirely transformed.  Three sessions enabled him to play Chopin's "Winterwind" Etude--a work of enormous rhythmic and technical complexity--as he put it, "like a baby."  To read excerpts from Damon's introduction to my book see www.tonalrefraction.com, the Books and CDs page.

Natural Horn and the Modern Piano?

Celebrating publication of Vol. I of Tone Perception Visualized, October begins a new series of in-house programs: Mozart: The Radical Ear.

No instrument better epitomizes that ear than the natural horn.  Two years ago a replica of the horn of Mozart's day entered our family -- my son, Jacob, is an avid player.  Together we have been learning this new sound, mostly via Beethoven's Sonata, Op. 17.  The work is particularly uninspiring played on a modern horn, but completely amazing on the instrument for which it was intended.

The work arouses my curiosity as to why Mozart did not write it: he might have, as his language is no less precise than Beethoven's.  I feel that the tuning, whether A=440 and equal temperament, is not so much the point of the work's precision as the vivid sense of how the black keys of the piano pick up aspects of the horn's dramatic pitch specificity.  The issue of black key / white key resonance on the piano may be said to be at the very heart of my work on pitch specificity, especially aroused in my child ear by Mozart in the key of G Major.

We will preface Mozart piano works with demonstrations of tuning: On third Tuesdays it will be with the natural horn; on corresponding Thursdays, with vocal tuning, with the audience taking part.

I invite your inquiries. 

Tone Perception Visualized: Tonal Refraction I

It's here after many years of preparation, on the cutting edge of graphics and printing technology, the first book presenting Tonal Refraction as a method of deepening awareness of your own idiosyncratic  hearing of specific tones in specific context.

Mozart furnishes the context for this first volume in the projected series, as well he should, for it was his music that first aroused in me the baffling sensation of how special a note could feel in a particular piece of music.  The work on which this volume is based is his Piano Quartet in G minor, a work in danger of being trivialized because it is "not" difficult, as is the case for many of his most mature compositions.

An honest musician will confess to humility in the face of a work that transforms an ordinary note, G, into an almost unbearable demand.

Look at the website www.tonalrefraction.com for a taste of the book.  Order your copy and start on your own journey of self-awareness, guided by one of the most provocative works in the chamber repertoire.