Charitable Purposes

Now that all of education, including college level, is being rated in terms of monetary value, I feel compelled to connect this to another item in the news--the increasing use of heroin in our culture.

What is value?  What is worth living for? Where does the motivation come from to get up every day and pursue something of lasting value?

That must be where the arts come in. 

That must be where the people who do live in order to make money encounter the obligation to provide, not charity, but support for that other working population who devote themselves to the business of giving meaning, i.e., hope to the broken.

Support!  Support!  Support!

And if you can't, get someone you know who can to step up to the plate.

Buy a book from a small independent publisher; buy a ticket to a new off-Broadway play; go to a private recital (!); support this blog. www.tonalrefraction.com

Thanks.

To Simply LIsten, To Simply Hear

There is no such thing for a trained musician as "simply to listen."  We cannot do it.

Once we have learned the grammar of tone function we are like Adam and Eve driven from the garden, in this case, the garden of auditory delight.

How did I learn to simply listen?  I set myself the task when I first began to teach in the 1970s: I would listen to students without looking at the score.  This would require of me that I hear as they heard, not as I thought they ought to hear.  The difference is both huge and fascinating.

Among the more memorable lessons I took away from this experience was of how certain composers made it a central feature of their work to focus attention on the shifting of resonance from one instrument (say, the piano) to another (strings, or winds).  My first overwhelming experience of this was through listening to some Mannes Prep students learning a chamber work by Robert Schumann. I came to realize that the point of the piece was not so much to get the strings to play in tune with the piano as to have each different sound-source become a potential resonant partner with the other.

Later I realized that Schumann was merely spelling out what he had heard in the music of Beethoven, Mozart, and Haydn. 

The Fuss About F# Major

There is a current discussion raging on the Music Theory Society's on-line talk list-serve about music in the key of F# major.  Initially I thought it was a joke:  Surely everyone with a Ph.D. in Music Theory knows the Beethoven Sonata Op. 78!  To my surprise, and probably everyone else's, a long thread of posts continues to unravel.

Ravel furnishes an excellent starting point for me to make the case I try to make, namely that it is a matter not so much of tonality per se as of instrumental resonance.

Every time I try to point out the difference, however, the terminology is sent back to me skewed away from sound and into concepts specifcying tonal function.  Only one poster mentioned the irresistibly beautiful major third (F# - A#) of that key.

The more involved I become in instrumental sound the less I care about terminology, certainly not about the kind that assumes that theoretical function predominates over sound.

I simply don't believe it!  When I go to play the music I am even more convinced that these notions are not only irrelevant but also destructive of the urge to simply listen, to simply hear, to accept sound as the subject not the wallpaper.

Afraid of Being in the Same Room with Live Music?

Children are exposed to so little live music that by the time they reach adolescence they are sometimes terrified of it:  What is expected of them?  Some special behavior, perhaps?  Some "appreciation" such as is taught in schools whereby all music is reduced to thing-ness?

This morning I saw something positively lovely and loving:   The moment a beautiful live trumpet sounded together with voices and organ a father reached over and touched his small child, as if to embody the gentle warmth of this very special sound.

Lucky child!

What Do I Enjoy Listening To?

I would rather listen to a motivated student struggle with musical elements than go through the motions of listening to players whose contact with musical elements vanished in their pursuit of technique.

What are the elements?  Every aspect of music that is felt is elemental.

• Rhythm:  There are so many levels at which rhythm is manifest that it can never be entirely routine.
• Tone relatedness: There are so many ways to relate one tone to another that, again, this defies routinization
• Touch: How many fingers you have and how you position them on the keys or on the strings makes all the difference.
• Breath:  Applies to and enhances all of the above, over and beyond its direct application to singing and to winds.

Issues of style and form take second place to all of the above.

Vibrato to Mask Vibration

To continue from yesterday's post:

What happens is overuse of vibrato to mask any qualitative difference between one tone and another.  By making all pitches uniform there is no need to attend to the implications of sympathetic vibration.

Violinist Gregor Kitzis and I did a Beethoven Spring Sonata last week (and will do a second performance this evening) that revealed what happens when this kind of listening is unleashed:  It sounds like Webern Klangfarbenmelodie!  One hears a counterpoint of resonant tones traded back and forth between the instruments, playful, lustrous, crystal clear.  Nothing that can be read on the page, but that exists only because it is heard.  At no time did we discuss this.  But I immediately sent a CD to my composer friend, Ursula Mamlok, who is tremendously affected by specific sounds as was Anton Webern.

Bid on The Rugs

I invite you to bid on the rugs and throws on silent auction at www.tonalrefraction.com.  Proceeds from the auction, which will be finalized on June 9, will help defray expenses of my upcoming trip to Seoul, Korea to present practical implications of Tonal Refraction at the International Conference on Music Perception and Cognition. 

It would be a great way to show your support for my work and, at the same time, to come into possession of a unique (and practical!) piece of fiber art crafted entirely of recycled string passed down to me by a designer of knit patterns.

Miss Twiggy, wool and alpaca, 59" x 32" demonstrating by its irregular shape the extent to which it is truly a String Improvisation.

More pictures : Posts of May 7, 10, 13 and 15.