Vertical vs. Linear Hearing, Again

It is a rich topic, one that does not receive enough attention in our training - we are saving time, after all.


In the tension between the two modes of hearing one experiences the liveness of sound, if I may call it that.  It is as if sounds teeter on the brink of stability, longing to be stable but not quite "knowing how."  What pulls the tones higher or lower is sometimes acoustical, a function of the instrument's mechanics, sometimes the feeling of the singer or instrumentalist.


Sometimes it is the composer's skill that exposes this quality where we least expect it, on the piano, for example.  This morning I heard it happen in the Minuet of Beethoven's Op. 10, No. 2.  Combine Ds and C#s in just the right octaves and proportions and, voila! the sound moves.

Vertical and Linear Hearing

Most of us learn music theory in relation to vertical, i.e., harmonic hearing.  Tones are identified by their function within scales as borne out or expressed in chord progressions.  A lot is left unaccounted for by this method.


For one thing, it does not account for the tension inherent between tones that do not want to move beyond their position of stability in the scale:  5 notoriously not wanting to rise to 6, for example.  Nor does it account for the tremendous upheaval when a given scale degree in one tonality (say 1 in B minor) becomes a different scale degree in another tonality (say 3 in G major).  This is especially problematic in the absence of perfect fifths to stabilize the tonic, whether that tonic is expressed or merely implied.


This is Beethoven at his most subtle: the first natural horn tones of the Fourth Piano Concerto, Op. 58.  Incredibly difficult to play as the players are hearing one set of stabilizing tones coming from the orchestra though their entrance in no way conforms to that set of tones, but to one as yet unexpressed and foreign to their own overtone series. 


This is just one instance in which players and conductors must have been overjoyed at the invention of the modern horn:  the note was suddenly easy.  Of course, the meaning was lost.  But we are still involved in saving the time that was saved!

Introspection

Beethoven's Fourth Piano Concerto, which I heard from the row of the same number the other evening, furnishes a beautiful model for introspection in the slow movement.  Deceptively simple, demanding nothing short of the most refined lyrical ear and touch, it pulls the listener into the most personal level of piano playing after the vertiginous chromatic romp through many keys in all dynamics of the first movement, and before the riotous rhythmic play of the last movement which gave me the feeling that nobody wanted it to end--not the player, not the orchestra, not Beethoven himself.


Music students do not learn about introspection as a positive statement.  We are encouraged to project as if we play only in Carnegie Hall's main auditorium.  But the greatest players who do play there are capable of reaching us at an almost inaudible level of sound way up in the top balcony.  So what is the problem with introspection?


I think it makes too great a demand on teachers.  It concerns almost imperceptible movement within a small range of dynamic.  Teachers are busy, time is limited, they feel responsible for "results".  Introspection takes time and may yield a result that becomes conscious only tomorrow or five years from now.


What's the rush?

Learning Music of the Past from a Living Composer

Yesterday I invited Ursula Mamlok over to hear some of my new thinking about the piano.  I know she loves Brahms, a composer who has become increasingly important to me in terms of structuring sound, if I can coin a term.  His writing for the piano is overwhelmingly contrapuntal, dense in the extreme, and difficult to play, technically for sure, but intellectually as well.


I'm not sure she approved of what I was doing: it certainly shocked her.  Maybe that's what I wanted, I don't know.


Then I played Schumann's Arabeske, a piece both of us have hated for years.  Only this past year while studying the Waldszenen in depth did I discover its hidden depth.  Where did you learn to play it like that, she asked.  From Brahms and from you, was my reply.  The piece, usually played sweetly, is anything but sweet.  Its piercing emotion becomes clear in the two improvisatory sections, one in the middle, the other at the end. 


Next came Einsame Blume from the Waldszenen -- a title not unlike the titles Ursula uses for her pieces.  A tiny little piece, almost motionless - in that way, too, not unlike many of her pieces.  She could not recall ever having heard it. 


A haunting gem.  We do not learn to play such music except from living composers whose inward grasp of music leads us to explore our own depths.


Thank you, Ursula.

Ursula Mamlok Brings Out the Best in Us

A gathering of performers, composers, former students, listeners, and friends paid honor to Ursula Mamlok last night at an event which I am privileged to host when she visits New York from Berlin where she currently lives.


It would be hard to imagine a group of more pronounced individuals unified in admiration and affection for a woman whose music and whose message has been transformative for almost everyone who has had contact with her.


As we lingered in a small circle around her the conversation was deeply personal and very candid: about playing, about the "business," about internal and external forces that shape our lives and our music-making -- the things we all most care about.  It was the best kind of tribute to an extraordinary woman who has lived a remarkable life and whose music connects people to one another without the slightest trace of sentimentality.


Bravo, Ursula!  and thank you.

The Best Music Lesson Ever

This morning I ran into a former student out walking on Broadway with her slightly-over-two-year-old daughter.  They were up in this neighborhood to hear the cathedral bells at St. John the Divine.


It seems the little girl misses the quarter-hourly bells that ring in Croatia, where they spend their summers.  The only place such bells ring in New York is at the cathedral, so up they come, every Sunday morning, to hear the bells.


That child is on her way to having a real sound vocabulary.  Rather, that child already has a real sound vocabulary.

Stefan Wolpe Thirty Years Later

Last night I attended a concert consisting of works by Stefan Wolpe and two of his prominent students, Ursula Mamlok, and Ralph Shapey.  It was exciting to hear seasoned performances of these works which were probably never intended to become seasoned, judging from their essential temperament, which is avant-avant garde. 

A commentator, speaking of Wolpe during the pause, mentioned the speed of his mental process.  Now that is a subject I relate to big time, and one that concerns me every moment of my waking life.  But there are different manifestations of that speed, some include other humans and some excluding others.  I cannot help but notice that the moments of inclusion are many in Ursula Mamlok's work, and few, though present, in the works of the other two.

Praise must be given to the Momenta Quartet which performed Wolpe's string quartet with great elan.