Back to Pianos Talking

Add to the one-sided aspect of harmonic analysis imposed upon piano music, we have the all-fingers-are-equal approach to piano technique.  Get all the notes to sound even so that you won't have to notice touch differences between fingers and positions on the key.

Now pianos are being manufactured so that there is less and less inflection between black and white keys.  This is accomplished by manipulating the lead weights inside of the key to equalize the leverage on all keys.

It didn't used to be that way.  It was never meant to be that way.  After years of playing harpsichord, attuning my ear to temperaments other than equal-tempered--in other words, paying an altogether new kind of attention to the tiniest variables in intonation--returning to the piano revealed this aspect of expressiveness inherent in the instrument to a degree that had not previously been apparent to me.

At that time I paid a visit to David Stanhope, a technician who specialized in key leverage.  All the way out to his studio in the woods on Martha's Vineyard I talked about this phenomenon.  When we arrived at the studio he told me that he had worked on pianos for some of the top pianists in the world but I was the only one who initiated a conversation about key leverage.

Beethoven's Second Symphony vs. the Piano

I laughed out loud more than once listening to this hilarious work on the radio last night.  As its incredibly inventive orchestration bumped my ear from one orchestral section to another at times with startling percussion punctuation, I became aware of how much sound imagination is required to enjoy Beethoven's piano writing.

He refers constantly to sounds of his time and of his culture, as does every other composer of the time.  But do we learn to call a yodel by its true name?  or a rustic country instrument, the equivalent of the modern country twang that, to my surprise, has become so "in"?

Piano students are encouraged to stay within the recognizable borders of printed note values with their predictable accents, not to notice, as one nine-year-old did in my studio one day, that the music was "boring."  It was Beethoven, by the way.  How could this be? I wondered and went into it.  Sure enough, the child was right. Ludwig v. B. was quoting a boring style of music, associated with heavy boots and stamping accents, perhaps set in motion by "a touch too much" of inebriation.

The High Cost of Technology

Talk about climate change.  The planet is paying a price for our growing dependence on oil, as more and more people are acknowledging.  It doesn't require a lot of imagination to see how this dependence has insinuated itself into all of our lives.  It isn't like buying a car.

I live in a city in which owning a car is more of a nuisance than a necessity.  I did it for a while, then decided I wouldn't do it any more, not the least of my reasons being that I disapprove of America's dependence on the automobile. When my kids were young our weekend outings consisted of a subway ride to Grand Central then hopping on whatever train departed next to a destination less than 2 hours away in any direction.  We had some unforgettable adventures and became quite attached to some of those places.

But everything oil-generated and now everything tech is good for the economy and what is good for the economy, as we all know, is good for all of us.

But hang on a sec.  This technology works only if we allow its limitations to define our sensory experience.  (This is where I start to sound like Socrates, who feared that the printed word would take the place of thought.)

In fact technology relies on vision.  Vision is slower than hearing, by 200 times - it has been measured by James Hudspeth, you could look it up.  That means that relying on technology to train hearing is actually an oxymoron.  Nothing can train hearing except attentiveness to sound.

Can You Hear It Talk?

A lot of music written for the newly invented piano was inspired by the instrument's innate capacity for inflection: white keys sounded different from black in terms of not just pitch but the amount of resonance they released. Suddenly there were inflections that did not exist on harpsichords, inflections that came directly out of the instrument talking, rather than out of melodic conventions left over from the Baroque era, like the sighing descending half steps.

Most of us have learned this music in terms of analyzing its harmony.  So what has become of the melody?

Being in Tune

Yesterday I experienced two radically opposed versions of being in tune:  The first, by far the more moving, was five live voices singing a mass by the Spanish Renaissance composer Tomas Victoria.  Lustrous.  Glorious.

The second occurred much later in the day, this time a radio broadcast of a singer/songwriter/cellist recorded on multiple tracks playing various cello lines and singing.  Cooooldud.....  if you get the drift.

Ironic that the same singers who had produced the Victoria went on to improvise!!  in their several voices the singing of a Gregorian chant.  It was marvelously random, based on a kind of tuning that I use all the time with my students.  Learning not just to tolerate but to enjoy random sound is a mark of true musicianship, in my view.

All sound, however consonant, contains elements of random.  Paying attention to them can be frightening or liberating, depending.

Hear it Right the First Time!

When you first fumble your way through a Beethoven sonata movement, don't just play the notes to prove that you know how to do that.  You will end up imitating some thoughtless version of the piece that will in no way reflect your present state of mind or attentiveness.

Do yourself a favor: Assume that you understand articulations and that you have liberated yourself from the tyranny of beats and barlines to such an extent that you can discern real content right away, rather than having to hear it wrong first and then correct it.

Be on the lookout for subtlety before you work out technical problems:  let good articulation dictate your fingering, rather than work out a mechanical fingering which you will then have to change, if you can change it once it has become habitual.

Why do music teachers insist on assigning this great stuff so as to make it routine.  It isn't.

Intimacy Always Frightening, Even with Music

I should not be surprised that most people are frightened of the intimacy of listening.  Perhaps that is why it seems to be easier for people simply to take in what they are hearing in a cabaret environment: the room is dark, people have a drink in hand, there is no distraction, and the sound is close up.

But it puzzles me that people seem to be so frightened of their intimate connection to their own playing.  Why is that so threatening?  From what some individuals have reported to me I gather that some of it has to do with the terror of growing up.  If you acknowledge that your own playing is worth paying attention to you are acknowledging something basically respectable about yourself, something adult, something authoritative.

Too often music study is dedicated to the proposition that thou shalt never feel mastery.  Only the master is authoritative.  Your experience will never measure up.

How is that measurement taken?  In fame, perhaps; in commercial success?