Spiritus

Hands are a bit tired and a concert is coming
but I want to get these thoughts out tonight.

Spiritus -
our trio's name.
A good name for a trio
and a trio at a Pentecostal school in particular.

Why?

Our music and our faith are conversations.
We listen for each other
and for the Spirit.

That said,
I now consider music -
that so-called "universal language."

In all honesty,
music has some of the aspects of language
and lacks some of the others.

Within a given culture,
it communicates some things pretty well.
Adverbs,
for instance,
but it's not so good at nouns.

Really,
music is universal like language is universal.
We all have some.

But it's no Esperanto.

And as it turns out,
neither is Esperanto.

Last Saturday,
we played our program for the first time.
The evening's masterwork:
Mendelssohn C Minor. 

I was well-behaved.
Basically,
I whispered politely
so my very fine string colleagues could converse unimpeded.

Whispering in this context is pretty good.
It says you listen.
It says you embrace being part of a community.

Whispering is also tricky.
You have to always listen for the cello.
And it helps if your violinist is careful not to get too quiet.

You have to keep decrescendoing.
You have to find opportunities to decrease,
opportunities you would never notice in solo playing.

And you have to pedal carefully.

Better said,
you mostly have to not pedal.

When you do pedal,
you have to pedal creatively.
Add just a bit when you want a swell
but don't play louder with your hands.
Or hold the notes longer in your left hand
but play the right hand staccato
for a combination of clarity and sustaining.
(In that situation,
your left hand is the pedal.)
Or pedal short segments after beats
to tie things together without building up lots of sound
so your colleagues won't be drowned.

Next time around (Monday night)
I want to contribute a bit more.
Mendelssohn deserves it
and I would like it.

In that music "speaks" to us,
it is a language.

And we can always learn to speak it better.

I have a heart language.
I'm speaking it when I play my own compositions.
I don't have many questions about how they should be played.
And if I do,
it's probably that I haven't yet made up my mind
about how I want something to sound.

I've also explored that big language group "classical" for a long time.
A lot of its words and phrases feel almost as familiar as a mother tongue.

But it is,
as I just said,
a big language group.

In Brahmsese and Schumannian and Mendelssohnglish
the same sounds are employed in different ways
implying subtle differences of meaning.

As students
and professionals
we spend a lot of time learning vocabulary lists:
the right notes and effective technique.

Even if we master those,
we're not yet dealing with grammar.

Grammar involves functions and purposes:
What goes with what?
What's the trajectory of the line?
Is this a beginning or an ending,
a fulfillment of expectations or a surprise?
Is excitement building or is energy waning?
And to all of the above  - why and how?

Here's where music theory meets the road.
Analysis lets you know all of these things.
Once you have some good ideas about them,
your performances are likely to make sense.
You'll be speaking the language
and you'll be understood.

But there will still be tell-tale signs
that you're not a native speaker.

A funny accent always lets people know
you're not from around here.

Perhaps your accent adds a bit of charm,
but you'll still be pegged as an outsider.

Most likely,
for the sake of some sort of authenticity,
you'll want to learn to inflect the sounds
with a greater sensitivity to the richness of the language.

How do you do that?

You listen a lot.
You listen as you practice.
And you listen to your instincts
as you listen to what's coming from the instrument.

You'll discover that
you're doing the wrong things
or too much of the right things.

But with lots of time and attention,
you'll find lovely ways of shaping the music
that reveal its true grace and joy.

That's what I want.