I Got Rhythm, You Got Rhythm

I enjoyed a fantastic conversation today with a music theorist, of all improbable occurrences.  Our conversation about Schumann was prompted by my inquiry as to whether he would enjoy being part of an informal evening of men's voices plus four horns (three of them natural horns !!!) doing a cycle of hunting songs, a late Schumann opus.

This set off an impassioned exchange as each of us became increasingly excited about the depth and astonishment of Schumann's music.

I have been involved in preparing Vol II of the Tonal Refraction series, on Schumann's Forest Scenes.  I found myself describing how Schumann switches from the rhythm of the story teller to the rhythm of the ogre hiding behind the trees, to the rhythm of the frightened listener, all without warning, without transition, simply discernible by fundamental non sequiturs.  You just have to be paying attention as you play and you have to be willing to admit that you don't have a clue what is going on.  It all looks so normal.

There is a rhythm to listening, but it isn't the kind of listening you learned in MuzAp, nor is it what MuzAk encourages.  It is listening to fairytales, which fascinated Schumann.  I have no doubt whatsoever that he incorporated into his music these various sorts of listening rhythms, not confining himself to the rhythms customarily relegated to music.

Far out.

Non-repetitive music

Last night I went to hear the most inspiring performer I follow:  some of you have already guessed, it is my daughter, Rachelle, performing together with bassist Dave Hofstra at Barbes in Park Slope, Brooklyn.

Twice after the performance I had exchanges with fans of hers with whom I had not previously spoken.  One had heard her only on CDs, never live, and was astounded at how different the experience was.  The other, who hears her live shows on a regular basis, as do I, commented that it is the most non-repetitive music he knows of.

To the first I remarked that when she first started making CDs she purposefully produced objects that could not be replicated in a live show.  These artifacts reflect as much the technology that produced them as the artistry that produces her songs.  You will never hear even an approximation of the recording when you hear her live.


To the second fan I pointed out that. because she never studied music--in fact, that she declined to learn to read it when I offered to show her how--her ear is free of any notion that might slow it down or freeze sound in any way.

It is a matter of the vitality of the ear.

I am inspired by her and continue to learn from her ear-pure musicianship which informs not only my own playing, but also my teaching.

Babies, Eyes, and Autism

Front page, NYTimes, Thursday Nov. 7, 2013:  Scientists have been studying babies' eyes from earliest infancy to detect signs of impending autism.

Not even on the back page of any paper: By engaging the eyes of a newborn and equating eye contact with any other kind of activity, like singing, the child learns a depth of empathy that scientists can't begin to figure out.

By the time the child is a year old it is already too distracted to initiate this kind of focus.  Want your child to be musical?  Give me a call the day he or she is born.  I'll show you how to do it.

Multi-tasking parent faces will not do.

Music Notation Simplifies ... What, Exactly?

Among my students is an extraordinarily sensitive world-renowned scientist.  She was trained according to the British system in Australia, where she grew up.  She came to me as an adult wanting, as she put it, to know "where the music part was."

She could recognize it when she heard it but felt entirely removed from it when playing, even though the repertoire she played would be considered quite accomplished -- Mendelssohn Songs Without Words, for example.

The music part is not so easy to define, but in her case it definitely had to do with the fact that the printed page had absolutely nothing to do with listening.  It was strictly a matter of a diagram a la Fred Astaire Dancing School: "put this foot here and that foot there" and you are somehow magically going to be dancing.

Well, it doesn't work that way.  To this day she has great difficulty imagining sounds as she reads.  The disconnect between her fingers and her ear is typical of people whose attention is never drawn to the primacy of the ear in reading / playing the piano.

There are so many people like her : in fact, I would count myself among them, until a discerning teacher required me to change my ways.  It took a year of extremely painful reco-ordination, painful in that I had to view as separate activities moving my fingers from aiming for right notes, in other words, I had to break down all the elements of reading so that I could put them back together in the proper order.  Imagine how difficult it was to play wrong notes on purpose after years of being led to believe that that was streng verboten (strictly prohibited).

I am going to start an Institute for Subjective Listening next year.  If you have trouble reading music or teaching anyone to read,  or if you have ever been bored while practicing or teaching, you will be a candidate.  Stay tuned.

What's in a Note?

It's a good question: Why does so much music instruction require learning music theory when so much great Classical (and other) composition is based on completely different uses of tone and tone systems?   I have never understood this.

What I do understand, because my teaching has for many years been based on this principle, is that when the ear is engaged a priori without the interference of theoretical concepts, students comprehend music viscerally--even the most demanding music.  They do not have to be told what the music is or what it might be about; they simply get it.

To cite an example: Having learned to identify chords and chord progressions I became quickly bored with slow tempos.  There was nothing to listen for, so how was I to wrap my mind around a single sound that lasted for more than a half-second?

To the engaged ear every sound on the piano becomes magical.  Every mixture of tones that we might call a chord becomes vibrant, alive, and suggests further movement or development.

This is why my students can play a Mozart Adagio at sight better than I could play one even after practicing.

It is simply wrong-headed to equate piano instruction with eye-based and concept-based notions.  At most this produces efficient reading.  But what is efficient about a Mozart Adagio?

Words and Meaning

Words are somehow more internally illuminated when we encounter them in translation.  Wald, in German, means woods or forest.  Does it matter?

The notion of Woodland Scenes is to me radically different from Forest Scenes.

I recall starting out for a walk on a cold winter afternoon, young, alone in a strange German town, following a trail into a forest of tall, primordial (it seemed to me) trees.  Dark, forbidding, completely strange in every way, it terrified me and I quickly ran for the comfort of the town, that is, of people.

This will always be for me the experience of entry (Eintritt) into the forest of Schumann's Waldszenen, never an expectation of idyllic serenity, rather the opposite.

Then there are the inevitable hunters, always somewhere in the foreground or background, their horns distinguishable already in inner voices in the Eintritt, suddenly upon us in the second piece: Jaeger auf der Lauer (Hunters on the Prowl).

With this pieces comes the first obvious mystery:  An octave D.  What key are we in?  What is the beat?  No clue.  Everything that follows is ambiguous in the extreme.  The point must be that contained within that first duration, that first unaccompanied tone, is the mystery of the forest.  Most likely you missed it, as did I for years, needing to know the answers before noticing the questions.

Mind and Body in Beethoven, Schumann, Mozart, and Everyone Else

So much time is wasted figuring out the simplest way to play piano repertoire: match the triplets to their quarters, for example.  What a colossal waste of time.  It becomes too easy.  Therefore, dull.

As soon as these simple multiples are examined in context, however, they more often than not come out totaling 21, 27, or 15--decidedly not duples.  In other words, if a triplet figure repeats seven times it produces 21 tones.  Why not play them in sevens, rather than in threes?

What happens is that the mind becomes engaged in a completely unpredictable manner, charging the enterprise with an energy that communicates to the listener as speed even though it may be metronomically slower than if played in predictable triplets.  The coordination of quarters against sevens entails split second timing, which is never lost on an audience.

As soon as mental agility steps into these otherwise self-evident, simple passages they become wondrously engaging.  Try it.