Music To Save One's Soul

A beautiful article about the recently deceased author Timothy Berger quoted him as saying that if he wrote it was to save his own soul and that essentially that was nobody's business but his own.

He couldn't have put more succinctly what distinguishes the real thing from the over-glorified idols created by commercialization.  You do it for yourself; if is life, health, joy, even identity that is at stake.  Everything else is distraction.

Modeling Music

Theorists everywhere seem to be fascinated with the problem of modeling music.  This is not what I do, except insofar as music is a deeply personal, subjective experience and, as such, wondrously difficult to share except in the act of making it happen together with others - like singing hymns, or listening together as some extraordinary music is unfolding -  good jazz in an intimate club setting, for example.

By giving visual form to subjective aspects of listening, Tonal Refraction invites dialogue between two people looking at the same subjectively-generated visual object.  This, in turn, may lead to an otherwise unreachable level of communication about the deeply private act of hearing.  At any rate, dialogue or no, it opens the possibility that one is not alone with what one hears, the way one hears it.

The model too often becomes a substitute for paying real attention.  As I have pointed out before there is an element of disbelief in every moment of true listening:  Did I really hear that?  I have a whole theory of the repeat sign:  It exists so that you, the player, must be sure that the listener is always hearing something for the first time, therefore, the "repeat" sign actually means the opposite of "Repeat!"  It means:  "Whatever you do, do not play these notes the way you did the first time!"

Truly Difficult

Yesterday I heard two quite different versions of piano playing, polar opposites, one of the other.

First I heard a radically developmentally challenged, blind young man struggle to get a tune in one hand while playing off-beat chords in the other.  He so much wanted to do it:  he had tried many times in previous lessons without success.  Now he was clearly determined to get it right, so determined that he was willing to play wrong notes in order to master the off-beat impulse, which is difficult for anyone but supremely difficult for someone with his learning disabilities.

It was moving in the extreme to watch him try.  Once, twice, three times.  Then he got it.  Not only is the physical coordination demanding, but so is the amount of time required to pursue such an elusive goal.

I was deeply moved, as was he, and as was his sister, who was observing the lesson.

Later in the day I heard by chance a recording of a fine virtuoso pianist playing the Fountains of the Villa d'Este from Liszt's LesAnnees de Pelerinage.  Sorry, it left me cold.

The Leveling of Listening

One of my many unprovable theories about the history of music in our mechanized culture concerns the ear: what happens to it when it does not receive proper nurturing.  Like every other living thing it atrophies.

I believe the trouble started with the piano.  A new invention, a radical departure from every other extant keyboard instrument, it made puzzling sounds because of its acoustic-mechanics.  Key leverage directly affected resonance causing dissonances to sprout up in all the wrong places.

Unable to tolerate this chaos piano teachers devised ways to mask the effect.  First, let's equalize all the fingers so that we aim to hear uniformity in whatever notes we play with whatever finger.  That solves the problem of unpredictability while, at the same time, erasing all hope of touch-sensitive playing, i.e., real expressivity.

Second, let's encourage mindless repetitiveness in our students so that the parents know they are getting their money's worth in terms of piano lessons guaranteeing healthy life habits.  (Good luck with that one!)

Then we have the recording industry applying its rules of acceptable resonance, cleaning up all extraneous vibration.

And now we even have piano builders making instruments that do not have this extraordinary characteristic: the keys are weighted so that they all sound the same, no matter what.

Know what?  You can have it.

Tonal Refraction: A Process

As I complete the written text of the second book in the Tonal Refraction series I am struck by the dynamic nature of the method: It is more a process than a method.  It arouses awareness that will not sit still but must continue to grow and develop.  The irony is that I have committed to putting the work into book form.

The work in question now is Schumann's Waldszenen, Op. 82: A late work mystifying in the extreme even in the titles of some of the nine pieces of the cycle.  What could they possibly mean: Cursed Spot, Isolated Flowers, Prophet Bird--I have no way of relating to such imagery, especially not as Schumann presents it in pianistic terms.  All I know for sure is that I play the notes recognizing that they do not behave as I expect them to.

Early on in the development of Tonal Refraction I used color to decode this work, finding its central unifying tone and tracing its structural influence through eight of the nine pieces.  In one it is conspicuously missing, but that is the one piece whose imagery is clear: Hunting Song.

How, almost twenty years later I recognize that I have not taken seriously enough Schumann's implicit invitation to treat a structural tone as an essential mystery.  How does he achieve this?  Ah!  You will have to read the book to find out.  It will be out in the early fall.  I won't keep it a secret.

Meanwhile visit the website; learn about the process.  Get in touch.

Crossing the Barrier from Notation to Real Sound

A woman scientist -- my oldest surviving student (i.e., I have taught her for several decades) --  has been determined to find "the music part" in piano playing.  This morning she made a huge breakthrough in Chopin's Prelude in F# major, responding to the essentially consonant wash of black-key harmony rather than to the printed notes as unrelated, separately-attacked, therefore either right or wrong notes.

It was stunning because it was so fluid -- and this is not an easy texture to achieve.

It was stunning, also, in that it revealed the possibility which I have long suspected that one of Chopin's gifts was to create melodies out of the resonance of the left hand, as Beethoven does in the "Moonlight" Sonata.

Too many piano students are brought up on the formula of right hand melody / left hand accompaniment, even though that often does not apply, it merely palls for both player and listener.

Tones as Imagery

Drawing to a close my work on Schumann's Waldszenen, I recognized my reluctance to trust the extent to which I believe in tones as capable of transmitting imagery.  I knew it to be the case in this mysterious cycle, but was at a loss to penetrate the degree to which it is at the very heart of the  music.

Then I took a lesson from my own work on the emotional complexity of Mozart's G minor Piano Quartet, the book I published in 2013, and struggled to find colors to correspond to the elusive emotional message I discern in Schumann's piano work.

First conundrum: What color is mystery?  From there:  What color is the opposite of mystery - especially given a forest setting.  Once having selected these two I was on my way.  Lo and behold! as I worked out the color schemes of each of the nine pieces the colors of nature are the fundamental givens in all of them, with mystery at the center in most cases.  Altering those tones yields spottings of wildflowers amid the shadows.

Two days ago I thought it couldn't be done.  What gets in the way is schooled hearing.  Too many times we hear two tones of the three that make up a triad and we simply supply the missing tone -- the one the composer artfully left out.  It is a Mozartean device, leaving questions of major vs. minor to be negotiated one moment at a time.  It is highly dramatic.  It is also hard as can be to listen that way.

Today I am elated.