Thinking it Through

When I was starting out in my teaching career some people responded to my work by calling it creative.  I had no idea what they were talking about.  Creative? Me?  I don't compose; I don't write poetry -- according to my limited world view I was anything but creative.  All I was trying to do was to figure out how to do something right that I felt had been done wrong in my case.

I was trying to figure out how to teach music to children.  That, it turns out, was indeed a creative enterprise.  Now that I am headed for an International Conference on Music Perception and Cognition the extent of the creativity becomes clearer and clearer to me.  It is based on assuming nothing.  If you start out with no assumptions you are, most likely, creating something.

In all my work I have been inspired by the far-out research of Jean Piaget, the developmental psychologist who started out as a gym teacher in Switzerland; and by Viktor Zuckerkandl, the Viennese all-purpose intellect who figured out that listening was of central importance in music, even more important than learning technique.

Multiple Intelligences, OK. But All At The Same Time?

The answer is, simply, yes.  All at the same time.

Looking over the examples of Tonal Refraction visualization that I will present at the International Conference on Music Perception and Cognition in Seoul in a few weeks, the most stunning example of all was done 17 years ago by a 7 year-old who is still studying with me.  Every once in a while he comes up on this blog.

Today we had a chat about that example, about his remembering producing it but not recalling that he used a range of pinks and reds to show the five white keys of this decidedly modal melody, implying that he would do it differently were he to do it today.

So would I.  I never hear a piece of music the same way twice and that is what is wrong with recordings : they lead people to believe that hearing something the same way twice is what defines music.  On the contrary!

So back to multiple intelligences: Admitting the relevance of the graphic mind to the study of music has been central, I am convinced of it, to our continuing to work together, this young man and myself: he, now a computer graphics professional and I a concertizing pianist.

The Beethoven he is working on right now reminded me of Rembrandt's The Night Watch, a splendid painting in which the action takes place in the background.  This always fascinated me.  This is what happens in the Moonlight Sonata when the Alberti figure in the last movement becomes the subject.  He spotted it, by the way, last week when he noticed its use in "the wrong" hand.

Saving Time by Taking Time

What do we have if not time?  Musicians live and breathe time in many guises, constantly.  Thinking about my immersion in the Brahms Horn Trio with natural horn and violin I am stunned at the stop-time aspect of having to listen to and account for every single tone, not just of this theme or that.

Every time the horn changes pitch it is as if a different word were being inflected by the most insightful singer.  Having worked a lot with singers I know what that entails: nothing short of constant, open-minded attentiveness.

By taking the time to work at this level we give one another a gift of timelessness.

So what's the rush?

K1 P1

What does knitting reveal about music?

Just as composition has a great deal to do with mathematical proportions and with variations within and upon patterns, so does knitting.  At the moment I am working on a String Improvisation for which I decided to use a multiple of 4 stitches as the basic design unit.

After a very short time I realized why Beethoven prefers the plus one, minus one principle:  3 + 5 is so much more interesting!  Even numbers quickly cloy.  (Sounds like the text to one of those Elizabethan lute songs, or at least a Gilbert & Sullivan parody of same.)

So why do we still teach children rhythm in even numbers?  When you figure that one out please let me know.

Falling Apart

We did it: three times yesterday.  Three quite serious otherwise capable players fell apart beginning a
composition we had already played together at least once.  After train wrecks about eight bars in we had to start again, and again,and yet again, each time with considerable laughter.

Who is that thumbing his nose at us from heaven?  Brahms.  The piece? His Horn Trio (with natural horn, of course). 

Why did it fall apart?

We simply did as indicated in the score, rather the violinist, Gregor Kitzis did as indicated, observing the slurs and other meticulous articulations.  Doing so lifted the music right off the page and into the realm of pure delight.

Have I ever heard anyone play the piece like that?  Have you?

Building Responsive Audience

An article in the NYTimes on Tuesday, June 24 cited new guidelines of the Pediatrics Association recommending that people read to their children from birth.  Accompanying the article is a photo which tells it all.  The pediatrician holding the book with a joyful expression on her face, is looking at the nine-month-old.  Holding the infant is her 33-year-old mother looking, as is the infant, at the book, but with a relatively subdued smile on her face.

If would be better for those three individuals and for society in general if the child were looking at her mother's face rather than at the book.  The one sporting the most exuberant expression, the pediatrician, is a non-essential element in the facial exchange.  It is a matter of mother-child connection, of a powerful model for daily interaction.

This can be achieved by singing to infants from day one, as I have advocated many times on this blog.  Not just singing a song, but singing so as to activate every muscle in the face, to arouse every possible feeling that might accompany a raised eyebrow, a mouth opened to a round "O," a sly smile to evoke mischief.  

This has all been studied and documented by Daniel Stern (The Interpersonal World of the Infant) in his studies of the attunement of infants to their parents.  Great word: Attunement.

• Two things to note: The Broadway-musical-show-biz expression on the doctor's face would probably be what caught the editor's eye as a strong selling point to draw attention to the article.
• My letter to the Times making the point of this blogpost did not get printed.

Generic Just Won't Do

My favorite illustration of generic remains the memory of what happened on a Sunday afternoon thirty years ago.  During an afternoon open house.I answered the doorbell to behold two completely unidentifiable young women.  Clearly struck speechless by my inability to recognize them, I was restored to myself when one of them said, "It's okay!  We're generic!"

It was my daughter and a friend who, having just completed an entire day as demonstration subjects for a beauticians' convention, were coiffed and made up to look like everyone else.  Their persons had become completely invisible.

Last night I chanced to hear for the second time on the radio a startling recording of Schubert's Moment Musicaux, No. 1 played by a lyrical Portugese pianist.  I recall my reaction at the first hearing:  This is a sensitive, insightful player, though the reading in no way resembles my own.

I looked her up on the Internet where there are videos of her playing.  I detected what I identify as post-recording (the musical equivalent of post-modern?) piano technique, i.e., playing in which finger legato does not exist, where the action of the dampers is therefore so controlled that sympathetic vibration virtually disappears.  This alters every connection in the piece, from one note to the next, one phrase to the next.  It is finely shaped generic playing made to save time in the recording process: the very kind of result I seek to prove inadequate to the player, the composition, the listener.