Rehearsing the Brahms Horn Trio yesterday I felt an overwhelming rush of joy. What a privilege to play repertoire that comes alive at every note. This comes from that most foreign of instruments, the natural horn, by virtue of whose acoustics you can never predict the tone quality of the next pitch, therefore, you cannot plan in advance your own next attack. The decisions about blend and balance all hang on the impression of the instant.
Shouldn't all music-making be like that?
Ever since my son first took up the French horn at age ten I realized that I knew nothing, absolutely nothing, about that dimension of sound. It belongs as if to a different geometry. Now the natural horn compounds that realization beyond what I could ever imagine. The extent of that compounding is fully realized in this huge masterwork--huge because so demanding at every step in all three instruments.
Tuesday, July 8, 2014
Monday, July 7, 2014
About Sonatas
Another of the conversation series of this summer was about sonatas. What are your associations with sonatas?
Pretty square. Haydn Sonatas drove me out of music school and caused me to destroy every note of his that I possessed. Clementi? Are you kidding? Those childish sonatinas I had to play as a child?
Do they really form part of the picture?
So I started the music part of the exchange with the famous Clementi C Major Sonatina. The reaction: "It's hard for me to hear it fresh," says a pianist and teacher. Then I showed them the book I used, a facsimile of the first edition, no slurs, no markings except those put there by the composer. Compare that to the usual done-to-death "instructions" added by some Italian piano teacher, which I showed them for purposes of comparison. They couldn't get over it. Too many instructions; the humor completely obscured.
What is the point of the form? Constant variation of even the smallest "nothing" repeated quarter note.
This is the essence of the sonata, not the repeat of a theme or section, but the variation that permeates everything, all the time.
Haydn: I let them choose a key from the table of contents: They chose A major. I first played the scale pointing out its quirks, i.e., the several collisions with black keys that give it its fascinating coloration. I played the first movement the way I play it, again, stressing constant variation. They wanted to hear it played the way it would have driven me out of music school. "Yikes!" was the response. Please go back to your way!
Did Mozart write any sonatinas? Great question. Having just purchased the early so-called "Wunderkind" Sonatas, K. 5 - 10, composed when he was seven. I sight-read one in their key of choice, B-flat. Interestingly, I couldn't do it, perhaps because my habitual way of reading relies on pedestrian meters or because of the many markings (though this is supposed to be an Urtext edition!) delineating vertical beats.
I had to stop midway and restart talking through the reasons I was having such a hard time doing it justice. And there we left it.
The purpose of the sonata is to be as engaged as possible in your own capacity to change even the smallest musical unit so that you never repeat yourself. Repeating yourself is downright anti-sonata.
Pretty square. Haydn Sonatas drove me out of music school and caused me to destroy every note of his that I possessed. Clementi? Are you kidding? Those childish sonatinas I had to play as a child?
Do they really form part of the picture?
So I started the music part of the exchange with the famous Clementi C Major Sonatina. The reaction: "It's hard for me to hear it fresh," says a pianist and teacher. Then I showed them the book I used, a facsimile of the first edition, no slurs, no markings except those put there by the composer. Compare that to the usual done-to-death "instructions" added by some Italian piano teacher, which I showed them for purposes of comparison. They couldn't get over it. Too many instructions; the humor completely obscured.
What is the point of the form? Constant variation of even the smallest "nothing" repeated quarter note.
This is the essence of the sonata, not the repeat of a theme or section, but the variation that permeates everything, all the time.
Haydn: I let them choose a key from the table of contents: They chose A major. I first played the scale pointing out its quirks, i.e., the several collisions with black keys that give it its fascinating coloration. I played the first movement the way I play it, again, stressing constant variation. They wanted to hear it played the way it would have driven me out of music school. "Yikes!" was the response. Please go back to your way!
Did Mozart write any sonatinas? Great question. Having just purchased the early so-called "Wunderkind" Sonatas, K. 5 - 10, composed when he was seven. I sight-read one in their key of choice, B-flat. Interestingly, I couldn't do it, perhaps because my habitual way of reading relies on pedestrian meters or because of the many markings (though this is supposed to be an Urtext edition!) delineating vertical beats.
I had to stop midway and restart talking through the reasons I was having such a hard time doing it justice. And there we left it.
The purpose of the sonata is to be as engaged as possible in your own capacity to change even the smallest musical unit so that you never repeat yourself. Repeating yourself is downright anti-sonata.
Sunday, July 6, 2014
What ARE we Going to do About Barlines?
Looking back at all the trouble barlines cause I long ago decided not to teach my young students to count rhythm. Counting is a total waste of time, unless money is involved.
The real trouble is that mindless downbeat.
Here is where I differ from a prevailing view of rhythm as a function of bodily balance. Sure, that is one manifestation of rhythm, but certainly not the only one. The rhythms of speech so often run contrary to the beats of dance, just listen to any good jazz singer. And the rhythms of a mind at play are subject only to the limits of the imagination.
The other problem, besides the mindless downbeat, is the division of the bar into discrete, countable beats and, by implication, the division of those beats into subdivisions corresponding to some degree to the bar itself.
But what about quarter-note beats that do not behave as beats? What about sixteenth-note beats? Just because the printed meter is 4/4 does not mean that the beat is the quarter note! When you figure that out I guarantee that, though this may not be so easy to pull off, you will have much more fun in the process.
The real trouble is that mindless downbeat.
Here is where I differ from a prevailing view of rhythm as a function of bodily balance. Sure, that is one manifestation of rhythm, but certainly not the only one. The rhythms of speech so often run contrary to the beats of dance, just listen to any good jazz singer. And the rhythms of a mind at play are subject only to the limits of the imagination.
The other problem, besides the mindless downbeat, is the division of the bar into discrete, countable beats and, by implication, the division of those beats into subdivisions corresponding to some degree to the bar itself.
But what about quarter-note beats that do not behave as beats? What about sixteenth-note beats? Just because the printed meter is 4/4 does not mean that the beat is the quarter note! When you figure that out I guarantee that, though this may not be so easy to pull off, you will have much more fun in the process.
Saturday, July 5, 2014
Making the Effort
Because so much music has already been heard it doesn't require more listening to, right?
So one would think, judging from the right-note/wrong-note mentality so pervasive in the music pedagogy business. What is worth listening to is the child playing as well as the music being played.
I was recalling yesterday listening to one of the first LPs I ever owned, a recording of Arthur Grumiaux and Clara Haskell playing Mozart sonatas. As I listened the first time I was as if in heaven. The second time, some days later, was the opposite experience. I had already heard this! I had, essentially, memorized those wonderful sounds. Hearing them again somehow negated their power.
I could see the enemy in full view.
Think about it: Don't you recall specific sounds that you heard last year--maybe even five, ten, thirty years ago? Granted they have been distorted by many factors in the meantime, but don't they remain essentially as they were, precious because fleeting, once-in-a-lifetime events?
So one would think, judging from the right-note/wrong-note mentality so pervasive in the music pedagogy business. What is worth listening to is the child playing as well as the music being played.
I was recalling yesterday listening to one of the first LPs I ever owned, a recording of Arthur Grumiaux and Clara Haskell playing Mozart sonatas. As I listened the first time I was as if in heaven. The second time, some days later, was the opposite experience. I had already heard this! I had, essentially, memorized those wonderful sounds. Hearing them again somehow negated their power.
I could see the enemy in full view.
Think about it: Don't you recall specific sounds that you heard last year--maybe even five, ten, thirty years ago? Granted they have been distorted by many factors in the meantime, but don't they remain essentially as they were, precious because fleeting, once-in-a-lifetime events?
Friday, July 4, 2014
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.
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.
Thursday, July 3, 2014
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.
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.
Wednesday, July 2, 2014
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?
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?
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