Sunday, February 17, 2013

New Testament Words 4

This week, I studied two words about how to be or not to be, but not in the Hamlet sense. These words remind me of my father because he was especially sensitive to the issues they raise and particularly ethical in these areas. The first word is about the right type of justice, while the second is about the wrong kind of ambition.

One who is EPIEIKES knows that there are times when that which is legally justified might be morally wrong. One with this concept of justice recognizes that the formal law is too general to address all the nuances or real life situations and that true justice will, at times, go beyond the letter of the law to apply gentleness, kindness, forbearance, and reasonableness.

In the realm of music, we also need to view the score with love, not literalism.

For example, a passage such as the last few bars of Waldstein's first movement may need a bit of pedal to create, as it were, a sense of an acoustic in which those joyful chords can reverberate. The score does not indicate pedal, but the instruments and the rooms and the times were different when Beethoven wrote this music. But the joy still speaks to us and should not be squashed by a dry delivery that could never support the depth of feeling the conclusion of the movement suggests.

Or, in playing Chopin's G minor prelude, we do best by seeing the veritable shark attack behind the notes on the score: chops and waves, jagged gestures, sudden change, relentless tumult, blinding uncertainty and a sense of peril - dealing justly with such a vision cannot be reduced to mere obedience to signs on a page. It requires the consideration of the whole person.

ERITHEIA involves contentiousness, political maneuvering, and in general, "applying earthly and human standards" to everything, as Barclay puts it. I imagine there is no need for me to provide personal examples here since you have probably already thought of several from your own life in music or the church.

As my dad would contend, the Church is Christ's body, and as such, it should not move according to what seems expedient from a purely human view or, for that matter, according to what passes for wisdom in the workaday world. The church is the place where another way is breaking into the world, a way that knows nothing of personal ambition, but instead, is motivated by service.

And I think that such altruism ought also to characterize the way we musicians go about our work as bearers of messages that are beautiful and good for the human race.







Saturday, February 16, 2013

New Testament Words 3

KALOS

This is a word for all things that are good practically and morally as well as aesthetically. It connotes goodness that appears beautiful. According to Barclay, it is used in the Bible to describe the Temple, good fruit, fertile land, good seed sewn, fish caught, salt, wine, a generous measure, the Law, the name of Christ, and the word of God.

I think an important dimension is missing from our English versions of the Bible that simply call these things good. It seems that these things are also described as being a type of good that is wondrous and lovely.

In teaching and playing piano this week, I find myself focused on flow. Flow is good. It connects with life, movement, breath, and our listeners. A huge part of our performing involves maintaining an appropriate flow.

But along the path of that flow, we encounter things that are special. A harmonic event, for example, that catches our attention as something wondrous or a resolution that strikes us as lovely.

And so a program for performance springs from this word "kalos" - flow with specialness. In fact, when we focus on the flow, we engender a hearing of the music that brings those special moments to to the fore.

One of Chopin's Nocturnes sensitized me to these issues during a lesson this week. You can listen to Rubenstein playing it hear. The first section of this Nocturne is rather long and lacks contrast. So it needs a lot of flow (Chopin warned us by marking it "allegretto,") and the performer needs to be careful only to tak extra time at the most special moments, otherwise we lose a sense of movement, direction, phrase, and even of which things are special. Without attention to the piece's propulsion, a performance of it can easily devolve into a lovely but shapeless roll of musical wallpaper.

Working on the first movement of Beethoven's "Waldstein" Sonata also made me think a lot about flow. To play or hear the piece well is to have an exhilerating experince of momentum. Perhaps it's a lot like skiing. I don't know for sure, since I'm not a skier. But as you play the piece you have the sense of moving rapidly over a slick terrain, and sometimes, you even become airborn. And balance is keep on those sharp switchbacks. Listen for yourself: Solomon playing Waldstein I.

Saturday, February 02, 2013

New Testament Words 2

The last two weeks I tried to tackle Barclay's chapter on the word "agape." The chapter includes other Greek words for love and explains why those other words could not be appropriated by the New Testament writers for the love of God and the love to which we are called by God: the other words were more related to involuntary feelings, connoted too much of an emphasis on warmth and passions, and were too limited to bear the weight and express the breadth of the love the writers sought to convey.

This agape love involves choice and action, and is an engagement of the whole being. It is, as Barclay puts it, a stance of "unquenchable goodwill."

This grand concept has profound implications for all that we do as artists and teachers around the piano. Piano playing itself is an engagement of the whole person, and the arts often tend towards an altruistic attitude of ever-refreshed goodwill.

In last week's piano pedagogy class, we explored theories of how learning happens. We also reflected upon our own good and bad experiences with teachers. We explored the necessity of sensitivity on the part of the teacher and the very negative power of criticism, especially in the early years of study. One student noted that her entire sense of self as a musician as well as her feelings about music making in any given period of her life seemed to depend almost entirely on her teacher's attitude towards her and the teacher's way of modeling a life in music.

As I taught private piano lessons these two weeks with a heightened regarding for the whole persons I was encountering and hoping to help develop, many doors seemed to open for my students and me.

With one student, I sensed a lack of calm, a diminished ability to quiet himself before a task. Instead of focusing on positive action, he was pouring valuable energy into creating anxiety about whether or not he would achieve the task at hand without messing up. We sought ways in which he could teach himself internal cues and judgement processes with greater intentionality so as to keep his mind on track in practice and performance. A lack of internal calm, by the way, seems typical of most of us, especially when we get alone with the piano.

Another student confessed the revelation that we are never learning "just piano" but that each discipline studied in the college setting connects with everything else.

With a couple of other students who were perhaps a little under-prepared, I pursued their interests and also used the lesson time to practice with them, leading them through a working method they can use on their own. One of these played for me a bit of a hymn in his own style. Then we analyzed his harmonization and voicing together and learned from each other terminology and concepts. This paved the way for better question asking on his part and a growing relationship between us.

In retrospect,  there were no tedious times in these weeks' lessons. It all felt pretty authentic to me and I was most pleased with the sense that valuable work was being done in every meeting.

Reflecting back on these experiences and the sharing in pedagogy class, it seems that all of those good learning theories can somehow be summed up in agape.

Two postscripts:

1. An idea for Christian piano instructors: while educators looking to relate well to the whole person might seek insight from I.Q. and personality tests, what if we approached our students more through spirituality? For example, it seems that practicing quiet or disciplined silence ourselves can, over time, serve as a catalyst for addressing the things that trouble our students' spirits. Another possibility - instead of using something like of Myers-Briggs, or just going on instinct, what about a spiritual gifts inventory as a starting point for understanding each student's unique musicality?

2. Teaching a more eclectic repertoire (which could be an agape-ish expression) can lead to some interesting juxtapositions that bring about interesting imagery, characterizations, and so forth. One student played Zez Confrey's Kitten on the Keys and Chopin's G Minor Prelude in the same lesson this week. Click here for Lincoln Mayorga talking about and playing "Kitten on the Keys" and click here for Dr. Walden Hughes playing the Chopin prelude.

I've never put these two pieces together in the same thought before, but it turns out that there are some technical similarities due to their layout on the keyboard. But the more interesting thing is the radical difference in affect between the two pieces despite the few technical similarities. Next to "Kitten on the Keys," the Chopin sounds more like Poe's "The Black Cat."