If you want to refine your sense of color you have to have colors to fool around with. I have always loved color but when I was a kid red was used for the war effort, not for fooling around. Nobody told me that until many years later. I noticed that what was supposed to be red was brown passing for red. How could I have said, "Hey! This isn't red!"
Now we have a similar thing happening with touch on the piano. With less and less exposure to real, live, subtle piano sound kids think that all there is to it is touching the keys on the piano. Hopefully one day they will hear someone play who makes a real sound with fuzzy edges, not just metallically clean. I'm talking about the kind of sound that contemporary composers miss and are supplying by doubling the piano with vibraphone of all things.
Monday, December 8, 2014
Sunday, December 7, 2014
Important Questions, Perhaps Unanswerable
Should one pose unanswerable questions?
Silly question. Should you open yourself to experiences you cannot define? Must you always be taking photographs of things rather than simply be taking them in? What does it mean to possess an intangible?
I dreamed last night of an event that took place 11 years ago this month - an unforgettable concert that I shared with my daughter in Weill Recital Hall at Carnegie Hall, my all-time favorite room in which to perform. We were both in as close to heaven as one is allowed to get. I remember her commenting to the audience on what a special room it is, particularly the chandeliers. All of that was in my dream, as was her dress.
That dress was made for the occasion out of remnants of the most dreamlike shades of pink/coral/salmon/orange formed into petals by her favorite East Village dressmaker. A complete original. Nowhere is there a photo of it.
It has become its own unanswerable question.
Silly question. Should you open yourself to experiences you cannot define? Must you always be taking photographs of things rather than simply be taking them in? What does it mean to possess an intangible?
I dreamed last night of an event that took place 11 years ago this month - an unforgettable concert that I shared with my daughter in Weill Recital Hall at Carnegie Hall, my all-time favorite room in which to perform. We were both in as close to heaven as one is allowed to get. I remember her commenting to the audience on what a special room it is, particularly the chandeliers. All of that was in my dream, as was her dress.
That dress was made for the occasion out of remnants of the most dreamlike shades of pink/coral/salmon/orange formed into petals by her favorite East Village dressmaker. A complete original. Nowhere is there a photo of it.
It has become its own unanswerable question.
Saturday, December 6, 2014
What is Technique?
Far be it from me to answer that one. I think of Busoni's wonderful comment that technical exercises should be assigned the way doctors prescribe toxic medications. What is he talking about?
I think he's talking about hands, yours and mine. Hands command such a huge portion of our brains that it is almost unbelievable that they occupy so few cubic inches of our total body mass. Yet, so many sensory systems are focused right there, so much information is gathered and put to immediate use by our hands - they are truly extensions of our innermost selves.
Technique a la Czerny exercises tends to reduce the infinite variability of each finger and every hand to a set of prescribed motions and falsely idealized results - evenness, for example. Who wants evenness? I strive for the maximum variability in everything I do with my hands because they show the vitality of my ear.
Touching the sounds I hear in my imagination--you can't learn that from a book, any book.
I think he's talking about hands, yours and mine. Hands command such a huge portion of our brains that it is almost unbelievable that they occupy so few cubic inches of our total body mass. Yet, so many sensory systems are focused right there, so much information is gathered and put to immediate use by our hands - they are truly extensions of our innermost selves.
Technique a la Czerny exercises tends to reduce the infinite variability of each finger and every hand to a set of prescribed motions and falsely idealized results - evenness, for example. Who wants evenness? I strive for the maximum variability in everything I do with my hands because they show the vitality of my ear.
Touching the sounds I hear in my imagination--you can't learn that from a book, any book.
Friday, December 5, 2014
What I Have in Common with an Autistic Child
I seem to have a great deal in common with the autistic child I have been teaching for the past 16 years. It must be so otherwise I would never have been able to tolerate what is involved in finding ways to connect with him via the thing that is most precious to me, music.
For me the piano was edenic: No intrusions allowed. When intrusions began raising their ugly heads I learned quickly to reject them. The first intrusion, by the way, was printed music; the second, a totally square piano teacher; and it went on from there. I would not let anyone intrude upon the elements of the piano that were most dear to me, the sounds themselves.
I have to use the word in plural because I had strong attachments to some of the sounds more than to others. As I write this the answer to the dilemma becomes clearer. It is the utter security within that most private space which is hearing and the ferocity with which I guarded that space, preferring to give up any pretense of going along with anyone else's expectation of my development in terms of the piano, preferring to take up another instrument entirely.
This most private space is, as one eminent theorist said on first studying Tonal Refraction, "what gets trained out of us." It is all that autistic children have. It can be reached. It can be communicated.
"Music," according to Henry Purcell on one note, " for a while, can all our cares beguile."
For me the piano was edenic: No intrusions allowed. When intrusions began raising their ugly heads I learned quickly to reject them. The first intrusion, by the way, was printed music; the second, a totally square piano teacher; and it went on from there. I would not let anyone intrude upon the elements of the piano that were most dear to me, the sounds themselves.
I have to use the word in plural because I had strong attachments to some of the sounds more than to others. As I write this the answer to the dilemma becomes clearer. It is the utter security within that most private space which is hearing and the ferocity with which I guarded that space, preferring to give up any pretense of going along with anyone else's expectation of my development in terms of the piano, preferring to take up another instrument entirely.
This most private space is, as one eminent theorist said on first studying Tonal Refraction, "what gets trained out of us." It is all that autistic children have. It can be reached. It can be communicated.
"Music," according to Henry Purcell on one note, " for a while, can all our cares beguile."
Thursday, December 4, 2014
New (?) Music
A quite large section of The New York Times Arts pages is headed "New Music." I look at the photos of the album covers and think to myself that the heading should really be "old" not "new." Old as in same old.
Tune out seems to be the order of the day, in whatever genre. I am struck by the predictability of the listening experience in whatever genre. One reason to listen to impassioned a cappella singing is that the timbres of the voices change constantly. The same singers singing the same repertoire will strike you completely differently on different occasions.
Hopefully we will never get this sign of life trained out of us, whether on the singing or the listening end of it.
Tune out seems to be the order of the day, in whatever genre. I am struck by the predictability of the listening experience in whatever genre. One reason to listen to impassioned a cappella singing is that the timbres of the voices change constantly. The same singers singing the same repertoire will strike you completely differently on different occasions.
Hopefully we will never get this sign of life trained out of us, whether on the singing or the listening end of it.
Wednesday, December 3, 2014
Double-flats vs. Naturals
In yesterday's post I told the story of the "why?" question to a colleague who I knew would understand it. I think he truly did.
He quickly countered with a reference to another Bartok piece, this one from the Mikrokosmos, in which there is a fleeting A-double-flat, "G!" he pointed out. This brings up two fascinating issues:
l. My student is blind, therefore does not read. Could he get the difference between G and A-double-flat? Could I get him to hear the difference? Is there a difference?
2. When I was a child I was convinced that learning to read music efficiently was the clue to success as a musician, so I read voraciously. The things I did not readily understand I changed to make them accessible. Double-flats, for example. I transposed them all into naturals. There was no such thing as a double-flat, in my esteemed 12-year-old opinion, and nobody took the trouble to indicate that such a thing did not only exist, but might make a significant difference.
They are both played on the white key that customarily called G, so what, if anything, is the difference? The white key G struck at the point of maximum leverage, i.e., at the outward tip of the key, produces a full range of G overtones. Moving the finger in toward the fallboard reduces the number of audible G overtones until, at the innermost position of poorest leverage it is possible to hear it as something other than a G.
Suddenly there are no longer merely twelve notes per octave, seven white and five black keys; there are twenty-one white plus five black keys, since each white key takes on the potential of being either a double-flat or a double-sharp. (C might be construed either as D-double-flat or as B#.) I do count notes - Tonal Refraction has provided insight into the importance of the number of tones in a piece.
Despite the fact that some music theorists walk on the ceiling when I point this out, it is not uncommon for Brahms to use twenty-one.
One sonata I studied has twenty-four. Who wrote it? Schubert.
He quickly countered with a reference to another Bartok piece, this one from the Mikrokosmos, in which there is a fleeting A-double-flat, "G!" he pointed out. This brings up two fascinating issues:
l. My student is blind, therefore does not read. Could he get the difference between G and A-double-flat? Could I get him to hear the difference? Is there a difference?
2. When I was a child I was convinced that learning to read music efficiently was the clue to success as a musician, so I read voraciously. The things I did not readily understand I changed to make them accessible. Double-flats, for example. I transposed them all into naturals. There was no such thing as a double-flat, in my esteemed 12-year-old opinion, and nobody took the trouble to indicate that such a thing did not only exist, but might make a significant difference.
They are both played on the white key that customarily called G, so what, if anything, is the difference? The white key G struck at the point of maximum leverage, i.e., at the outward tip of the key, produces a full range of G overtones. Moving the finger in toward the fallboard reduces the number of audible G overtones until, at the innermost position of poorest leverage it is possible to hear it as something other than a G.
Suddenly there are no longer merely twelve notes per octave, seven white and five black keys; there are twenty-one white plus five black keys, since each white key takes on the potential of being either a double-flat or a double-sharp. (C might be construed either as D-double-flat or as B#.) I do count notes - Tonal Refraction has provided insight into the importance of the number of tones in a piece.
Despite the fact that some music theorists walk on the ceiling when I point this out, it is not uncommon for Brahms to use twenty-one.
One sonata I studied has twenty-four. Who wrote it? Schubert.
Tuesday, December 2, 2014
Why Did He Take the Note Away?
The question was posed yesterday, by my blind and severely developmentally-challenged 21-year-old student, referring to a mind-changing G that suddenly and only briefly appears in a D minor piece by Bartok. Wanting the note to continue, he simply puts it in for the rest of the piece.
It's what I used to do: If I wanted to hear a sound, I would hold it. If I wanted to add a note (like a dominant to change a diminished triad into a more palatable dominant seventh) I put it in. If I didn't like certain sonorities (like the often low left hand parts in Brahms) I simply left notes out.
Why not?
I became totally immersed in answering his question - probably the most profound question he could have asked, and maybe the most profound he ever did ask in relation to anything. Asking questions is not within his mental capacity. I recognized and identified with its seriousness and spoke to it from my own depth about loss and longing and how this conveys to other people the essence of music.
It was a lesson I will never forget.
It's what I used to do: If I wanted to hear a sound, I would hold it. If I wanted to add a note (like a dominant to change a diminished triad into a more palatable dominant seventh) I put it in. If I didn't like certain sonorities (like the often low left hand parts in Brahms) I simply left notes out.
Why not?
I became totally immersed in answering his question - probably the most profound question he could have asked, and maybe the most profound he ever did ask in relation to anything. Asking questions is not within his mental capacity. I recognized and identified with its seriousness and spoke to it from my own depth about loss and longing and how this conveys to other people the essence of music.
It was a lesson I will never forget.
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