Why, Though a Scholar, I am Not a Music Theorist

By calling myself a scholar I refer to my curiosity about connections of the music I play to more than my own experience, conditioned as it is by the era in which I live, the prejudices of my training, technical parameters, and so on.

I am interested in historical influences as implied or revealed in the music itself, rather than based on written records, which are often guesswork or simply woefully beside the point.

Similarly, the structural use of basic musical elements is paramount to my interest  I discern this on the basis of what I hear, not by virtue of analysis.  If my attention is not riveted at this level I simply do not play the piece; I prefer to mash potatoes.  But here I have to specify that by attention I mean not simply mental attentiveness but also that of the ear, the touch--in other words, by the physicality of the music.

It is that physicality that I seek to bring to life when I play.  It is not an argument; it is not subject to question on the spot: I simply want your attention to be held as mine is.

You are invited to go home and play the music for yourself to see whether or not you "agree" with my rendering of it on that particular occasion. 

Cartoon Chase Right Off the Cliff

Back to the Moonlight Sonata::  Here is another instance in which Beethoven leads us a merry buildup to a -- whoops!! --  nothing there to hold us up.  The sound becomes incredibly complex (remember you are supposed to have had the pedal down the WHOLE time) then suddenly it seems to thin out just before the weird arppeggios.  Chances are you  responded to the thinning out by speeding up.  That is like skidding on black ice or running off the cliff.

Before you return to what feels like solid ground you should have undergone a fundamental transformation.
If you were listening it would have happened and it would have built an incredible amount of genuine suspense.

A great piece.  Every time.

Close-up Listening Unleashes the Whimy and the Pain

Playing Mozart for a close-up audience is altogether different from assuming their ears to be a city block away or distanced from me by virtue of microphones and amplifiers.

One listener was surprised at his whimsy.  Another said she had no idea that Mozart could be humorous: she actually laughed aloud during the B-flat K 281 Sonata accompanied by chuckles from various corners of the room.  Do I intend for them to have that reaction?  Not really; I am just having as much fun as possible.  Their reactions are strictly up to them.

The Adagio in B minor K 540 had a similar effect but in the opposite direction.  In this work Mozart goes out of his way, requiring even hand-crossing, a technique he usually exploits for moments of virtuosity or exuberance, but here to make audible that a repeated tone may be the most important thing happening.  It is literally heart-wrenching that pitches added chromatically into the repeated vibration untune it, as it were. 

These people did not miss a thing.

I have long been pretty sure that Mozart made his reputation as a player by maintaining an improvisatory approach to every performance, that he could not repeat himself; and that this whimsy is composed into the works.  It reminded me of hearing Horszowski for the first time: having loved every sound he made, I went promptly the next morning to buy the music.  But try as I could I could not emulate his playing: I simply could not find it, though the printed notes were the same.

That is the story of my life.  And you?  Go to www.tonalrefraction.com.  Contact me if you feel that this is relevant to your musical self.

Nine or is it Eleven Possible G#s?

Most people honestly believe that there are only twelve tones per octave and that they are all interchangeable: G# could just as easily be A-flat.  (Every other Sunday the NYTimes crossword puzzle makes that assumption so it must be so.)

But, in fact, the privileged few who play instruments with options know how many version of G# they have to produce in order to play any music well.  Yesterday it was a trombonist who was talking to me about this.  I have heard the same from sensitive violinists.

What is a pianist to do?

Listen.  Strike the keys at different places so you can tell the difference between a G that resonates fully as a proper G should -- you get this result from striking the key at its tip -- and a G that, by virtue of releasing less resonance, might as well be deemed an Fx --the result of striking the key halfway toward the fallboard.

The options are much greater than the alphabet allows.  Otherwise why would Brahms spell out 18 different pitches in his Waltzes, and Schubert 24 (count them) in the B-flat Op. post. Sonata.

Honest Delivery Prompts Whole-hearted Listening

At a recent conference an expert in audience involvement provided four recitations of a William Carlos Williams poem, the first without preparation, the next three with different sorts of "program notes."

I found the first recitation spell-binding, as is the poem, until he got to the last word, which he garbled.  I felt like shouting and should have shouted: "What?"    The word, admittedly and purposefully unlikely, was "chickens."  Properly pronounced, or even just pronounced as audibly as the other words it would have elicited a range of responses from potential laughter to a sense of ordinariness pierced by a poet's ear.

Of the other three readings, in which that last word was clearly enunciated, two were exercises in irrelevancy; one consisting of biographical material, the other of a cliched history-in-a-nutshell of 20th-century American poetry.  The last reading was introduced by setting the scene of the poem as if from the literal viewpoint of a seriously ill patient of Dr. Williams contemplating the situation through a window.

It robbed not just the poem of its power; it robbed me of my power to listen, to observe.  It belittled me.  I don't think I am all that atypical a listener.

I had a minor argument with a colleague about the efficacy of the first vs. the fourth reading.  It leaves me thinking that all reactions (like all deliveries) are and should be both debatable and debated.

To Empathize, or Not to Empathize

At the CMA conference I heard a brilliant two-piano team strut their stuff.  Strut they did, and admirable strutting it was.  Stuff it was.  Stuff was all it could be given the circumstances:

Two pianos, perhaps initially a parlor genre, had, by the time of Liszt, become an inexpensive alternative to the orchestra.  Loud.  Lots of notes.

But do I play that instrument?  Would I want to play that instrument?  Would I kid myself into thinking that wanting to play like that was a good idea for me?

Apparently many people who study the piano do so because they aspire to that kind of brilliance.  It's a bit like getting delusional from looking at the ads in fashion magazines.

How Can Music Be So Complicated?

If only the world would stand still!

Something like that was on Goethe's Faust's mind when he was being dragged under by the devil himself.  But the world does not stand still.

The soundscape is constantly changing.  Do we change along with it?  Interesting question and not easily answered.

From my perspective, we all crave human connection. Tone is one of the primary ways in which we experience that connection.  In the absence of tone we are lost, disoriented.  Tone arouses us to memories of other tones we know or might think we know; recognition of sounds of nature or of another moment in our lives.

Many elements conspire to remove us from our spontaneous experience of tone, not the least potent of which is recorded sound.  Take care to become aware of the quality of what you hear coming at you all the time.  Is it real?  Does it have any attributes of "real"?   If not, why not?