Ten Days to the Auction

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.

Ghosts of Piano Lessons Past

I recall vividly the sensation of playing in an auditorium in which I had performed as a student.  It was a warmly welcoming room with wood paneling and beautiful stained glass windows.  It featured a small balcony off to the side toward the front, in full view of the pianist--my teacher's favorite place to listen.

He was an exceptionally brilliant musical thinker and an inspired teacher, deeply respectful of the individuality of his students.  We were not expected to imitate his musical instincts or to take on his way of viewing things.

Yet....there was his ghost in the balcony, long after he died.

Or was it his ghost?  Perhaps more than anything he projected onto me it was my awareness of my own inexperience vis a vis his richly informed musicianship .

What would it take to avoid being the sort of teacher who inadvertently becomes a ghost?

I think I have figured it out:  Calling the student's attention to her own responses to the elements of music puts her in charge of those responses.  Once and for all they are hers to love, to live with, to develop.  All of that is out of my hands because completely grounded in the experience of the student.

Can a person be rescued from the ghosts of piano lessons past?  To tell the truth, I think most pianists are too frightened at the prospect to consider it a possibility.

Re Clementi: "It's So Intense!"

This the comment of an adult student reading a Clementi Sonatina in C, the famous Sonatina in C that every little kid had (and all too often still has) to learn to play in exactly the same manner.

She is reading from a facsimile of the first printing.  No phrase markings, no slurs.  All the wit and brilliance of the piece is exposed to the reader's unbiased ear.

And that's how the intensity came across to her: via her ear.  I asked what she had meant by remarking on the piece's intensity.  Her answer was that it would be so comfortable one moment and so uncomfortable the next.

The composer was at his fullest maturity when he wrote these works, which are treated as though he was the "mechanicus" Mozart pronounced him to be at their piano-playing competition.

Might Mozart have been jealous of Clementi?  Either it was aspects of his technique, or the fact that, unlike Wolfgang, Muzio was not under the thumb of a musician-father.  Who knows?

Last night, reading a biography of Brahms, I came across a quote from him about how much he admired Clementi's compositional skill.

Me, too!

"I Hate Beethoven But I Laughed Out Loud!"

This is a quote from a musician and teacher who came last night to hear the "Spring" sonata as played by Gregor Kitzis, violin, and myself, using the shared resonance of the instruments as the subject matter of the piece.  It was truly a blast.  She wasn't the only one who laughed aloud.  So did Gregor, and so did I.

Now this is one of those notoriously long and difficult works that are overplayed without questioning, so overawed are we poor souls in relation to the overblown notion of Beethoven's greatness.

Sound is endlessly fascinating.  Let a genius fool around with it whose mind is entirely occupied with vibrations and you will get something like this sonata that evokes humor and engagement at so many levels that words cannot do it justice.

Another audience member -- also a musician and teacher as well as a composer -- chose rather to miss a train than a movement ...

Learning to Swim in Sound

The hardest thing in learning to swim is trusting that the water will support the weight of your body.

The hardest thing in music is trusting that sound is a real medium that will support the working of your body and your brain, releasing a level of response that is beyond interpretation.

The trouble with playing from memory is that it supports the false security of the already heard, rather than encouraging the real security of working with actual sound experienced afresh every time, always changing, always challenging--most importantly, never boring.

I Hear Therefore I Change My Technique

Having once heard the dialogue between different instrumental resonance as a structural fact in the works of Schumann, Brahms, et al, I knew I would have to change my technique so that others would hear it as well.

The first time I did so was in the Schumann G minor Piano Quartet, the one in which the cello has to tune the C string down to B-flat during one movement so as to resonate together with the piano's black keys. Cellists do not enjoy this as they are used to hearing all of their strings resonate sympathetically with that lowest fullness.  Changing it to a B-flat means that they cede that resonance to the other sound, the piano, and specifically to the piano's black keys--the closest the piano gets to the fullness of the open strings of stringed instruments.

Then there is the strange passge in all flats.  String players cannot find the sound of all those flats, so foreign are flats to the resonance of their instruments.  I found that if I play that passage with complete finger legato, no breaks, and NO PEDAL, the resulting clarity of piano resonance draws unto itself all of the string sound, unifying and rebounding it back into the string cases, thus creating an aura of oneness that is unique in the repertoire.

A guest violist with whom we played that piece when I was still playing chamber music on a regular basis, said that he had performed that piece hundreds of times in his career but never until then experienced that passage as meaningful.

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.