Treacherous Passages Perhaps Actually Meaningful Passages

On the morning of the day I write this post (not the same day as its publication) appeared an obituary article in the NYTimes.   The deceased was a music critic and writer of program notes as well as a performing musician.

I was struck by the comment of a friend of his, a pianist, who pointed out that he would never read the aforesaid critic's program notes before a performance as the writer invariably directed the audience's attention to the treacherous passages.

I have been unable to get this out of my head.

What is a treacherous passage if not a gateway to a state of being unlike any normal state?

I was fortunate to study with a musician who taught as a given that there are passages that simply cannot be played stone cold sober.  There are, to be sure, several varieties of state outside of literal drunkenness, though that is not infrequently the one in particular evoked by the passage in question.  Sometimes it is ecstasy, sometimes a daring into the realm of  the unfathomable, musically as well as technically.

Why not leave such passages alone on the chance that, at one with the performer, the listener might be transported into the appropriate state?  Why build expectation of a train wreck?  All this accomplishes is to reinforce the inhibition that is stifling so much in what we call classical music.

Caprice

Working on beats and barlines in Beethoven has led me to consider dance rhythms, which are really nothing more than propositions about expectation:  We all know how a tango goes, so produce!

But do we really know how any dance goes?  Aren't all dances subject to flights of fancy, drunkenness, sadness--states of being that have the power to derail expected beats and downbeats?

Next in the process came Brahms and the Capriccios, Op. 76, Nos 1 and 2.  I have the feeling that at last I get it:  A capriccio is its own distribution of beats and downbeats, not subject to expectation of any sort--at least not a reliable one.  The Intermezzi, Op. 76 Nos. 3 and 4 are even more speculative in relation to not just rhythms, but in their development of particular tone colors from the pieces that precede them.  Playing these pieces this way gives them new life.

What Independent Thinking / Acting Looks Like

The non-profit sector exists so that institutionalized pursuits are not the only alternative one faces as an artist / thinker / teacher.  The things I study -- the meaning underlying musical terms and the elements of music notation, and the process whereby an individual derives real satisfaction from playing music at whatever level of competence -- have no place in an educational system in which competition calls the shots and determines who wins.

If competition is all there is to it, there is no reason to notice that the "Moonlight" Sonata by Beethoven is hopelessly boring as conventionally delivered.  Just play it like everyone else only slower (first movement) or faster (last movement) and you win.  If competition is all there is to it there is no reason to care that you find yourself stuck or bored, as happens more often than we are allowed to notice.

One of my brilliant young students did me a huge favor by pronouncing one day that a German Dance by Beethoven was, in her words, "boring."  Aha!  She's right!  I suddenly understood the whole phenomenon of classical composers mocking boring music so as to show that they can make you feel the difference when you play their works.  Can you tell when the music is boring for purposes of irony?  Or have you just bought into boredom as part of the act?

The above link will take you to a website where you can purchase What Might It Mean? An Uncommon Glossary of Musical Terms and Concepts for the Stuck, Bored, and Curious, which I wrote in 1999 and which I use myself as a guide when studying new/old works.

This Blog is a Political Statement

I know that the subject of the blog is music and that music, theoretically, is apolitical.  But think for a moment: Is that really the case?

Insofar as the country is now reeling under issues concerning the extent to which money controls the nation's electoral process, shouldn't we also be raising consciousness about the extent to which money controls the nation's taste --  but wait a minute, does a nation have taste?

That is precisely the point.  Individuals have taste.  What is taste?  The simple pronouncement: "I like it."  "I don't like it."

Sometimes we like things in spite of ourselves.  We start out not expecting to be moved and find ourselves vulnerable, in a new state of being, somehow altered by what we have just seen or heard.

No algorithms at work there!

And that is the source of these blog posts: Individual experience of what has come to be a standardized commodity, pre-digested for us by--by whom, exactly?  I used to think it was by the big-time producers of perfect renditions of classical music.  Now I think it is by the many individuals who no longer trust themselves to notice that they do or do not like what they are hearing.

Loss of Liberty

It is an increasingly hot political topic.  More and more people are feeling threatened by some entity they conceive of as "the" government.

The entity that deprives me of liberty to express myself is the commercialization of just about everything that reinforces a mindless conformity on too many of us. 

Every sign of life outside of those terms reinforces my faith in the power of the individual to say "I like it!" and really mean it.

Dreaming vs. Multitasking

It came up today in casual conversation about how different the lives of children are these days from when I was young, centuries ago.

I couldn't help but point out that, because I do not insist that my young students practice, they tend to work on the music in their dreams, so to speak.  The progress they make, though it would not get them into a music school, does get them to a rare level of rapport with Beethoven, Mozart, and Haydn.

Could it be that dreaming is the cure to constant busywork, pretend learning involved in what passes for education in too many circumstances these days?

I asked one of my high school seniors (the one who told me once that she didn't have time to practice) if she had friends who liked Beethoven as much as she did.  No, she replied.  Why not?  Because they had had it forced down their throats.

Core Curriculum Debate

Whenever the powers that be, be they local, state, or national, decide that standards must be set they are actually restricting learning by tying it down to pre-existing standards, rather than encouraging the kind of curiosity that produces real knowledge and discovery in a changing world.

I was stunned to read in the paper this morning that the libertarian wing of the Republican Party has glommed on to this issue as another instance in which we are being robbed of our civil liberties.

For me that is not the issue.  At stake is the very fundamental nature of education, which is more than facts but which consists just as much -- perhaps even more -- of intangibles imparted by one human being to others.

Perhaps it is a tone of voice, a choice of a story to read, a song to sing, none of it according to a plan.