9/11/11

Following the events of September 11, 2001, I found myself unable to stop thinking about the destruction of the Towers and the suffering that happened there. The idea of lives extinguished in the most horrifically painful way took over my consciousness. I played my first solo recital as an adjunct faculty member at the University of Richmond on September 23, 2001. At that point, I still couldn't stop thinking of planes striking great structures. Those images changed my way of hearing and interpreting my repertoire on that occasion, and I prefaced the concert by saying so. The program was Bach's E Flat Minor Prelude from the first book of the Well-Tempered Clavier, Debussy's prelude "The Sunken Cathedral", Liszt's Petrarch Sonnet 104, and the F Minor Sonata of Brahms. I added "A Mighty Fortress is Our God" as a closing meditation.

_________________________________________________________


When I first heard about the second plane, it seemed inevitable to me that we would respond to these events by going to war. As I experienced my shock and grief at what happened on that day, and as I reflected on its impact on my own understanding of my art, I thought that 9/11 would be the defining event for my generation of artists in the United States. Perhaps that has come to pass, but so much has happened since 9/11 that has moved us away from the grief and, in some ways, away from the possibility of healing, that I'm not sure if 9/11 itself has become the theme I expected it to be.

__________________________________________________________


While watching footage from that day this weekend, my sense of the immense grief of 9/11 was renewed, although I still can't get myself to accept (for more than a few moments at a time) that those events really happened . I accept them as facts of history, but the parts of my mind and heart that could try to feel the maginitude of their human significance seem inaccessible to me. This has generally been my experience of grief: at some point, my system simply stops trying to make sense of what has happened. Maybe that's what is meant by "acceptance." But when I closely observe my inner workings, I haven't accepted anything. I just don't seem to have the capacity to grieve non-stop indefinitely.

__________________________________________________________

I played Bach's F Minor Prelude from the second book of the Well-Tempered Clavier for offertory at church on this tenth anniversary of 9/11. As I prepared and as I played, I thought a bit about "Why Bach?" and as we drove to church, I noted that I was not the only one who turned to Bach on this day. As names were read at Ground Zero, Bach was played on the flute.

Why Bach? For me, it's not because of his context or some detail of his biography. While those things may affirm my faith and assure me that the human experience and the experience of art transcend any single time and place, what I discovered in the midst of the living and researching of playing the music is that somehow Bach's music is a gift from God. It ministers to us, and we intuitively turn to it at times like this. As such a gift, it seems to be able to convey the pain of the individual as well as the grief of the entire race while also sounding a note of hope.

As I played, I realized that my generation can find an authentic voice in interpreting our work, our music, and the great classics of our civilization in light of 9/11. No other generation can do this and noone can define what it is to do this but us. Perhaps this is a profound truth that each generation learns. As Fleisher puts it, the structure of the musical work is a vessel into which we pour our feeling.

As I grieve and seek to console others at the piano, I learn afresh how to phrase, how to wait, how to aspire, and how to end.

Chowan Pianofest 2010

This weekend was our third Pianofest here at Chowan and it fulfilled my hopes, as well as surprising me a bit.

The primary purposes of Pianofest, as I see them, are to refresh our enthusiasm here about pianistic work and to inspire us. Hopefully, the various events being open to the public also results in a general growth of interest in the art of piano-playing.

Our first concert involved my colleague, Paula Pressnell, playing the four impromptus of Schubert's Op. 90 in order. Between nos. 1 and 2, Mark Puckett played Chopin's preludes in e, b, D flat, and g. Between nos. 3 and 4, Josiah Antill played Liszt's B Minor Ballade. Mark, Josiah, and I experimented with designing powerpoint shows to enhance the audience experience of these pieces. Mark's show started with a few sentences about the context in which Chopin composed his pieces, followed by images inspired by the pianist von Bulow's poetic titles for those four preludes: Suffocation, Tolling Bells, Raindrop, and Impatience. Josiah's powerpoint presented the association of Liszt's piece with Byron's "The Prisoner of Chillon" and the subsequent slides led us through the phases of the poem as we listened to the piece.

We learned from this concert that Mrs. Pressnell is a particularly good Schubert player and that Schubert sounds especially good on the Grotrian. The first impromptu put us in just the right mood to experience the unique phenomena known as the classical piano recital.

While I'm interested in innovation and feel it is my responsibility to provide my students some introduction to basic skills in a variety of styles, it was good to be reminded that the piano recital is its own unique art form and was perfected some years ago in Europe. The piano recital can be, and often is, an experience of reflection, bordering on the sacred. It creates a container or clears a space for contemplating great Western and human values: the work of the mind and the soul, the the experience of longing, and the search for peace. Again, Paula's playing, as well as the student's powerpoints and pianistic efforts, directed us to such beautiful and lofty ruminations. And I don't think I'm just describing my experience as the sense of calm and engagement was palpable in the hall throughout the concert.

Special thanks to Terrell Batten for the great work with the spotlight, in particular at the close of the concert when he noticed that there was no other light left for Mrs. Pressnell's final bow and quickly remedied the problem!

I played our second concert, which was a concert built around the sixth Beatitude of Jesus: Blessed are the pure in heart, for they will see God. I chose various works to express the idea of purity through musical means from a pure experience of the sound of the instrument in Jahn Adams's "China Gates" to the pure quality of the transcription of Bach's Chaconne (originally for violin) for piano, left hand alone, by Brahms. I also played Haydn's Sonata No. 48, which took me back to my childhood, and managed to play it without mishap. (It was the first piece I had a memory slip in on my first solo recital around 25 years ago!)

The main message I got from preparing and performing this recital was to strive for musical purity in my work. By that I mean to keep my feet planted on the earth and to focus a little more on musical fundamentals like knowing the mood that is to be created, establishing and maintaining a tempo, analyze and plan to highlight the relationships of tones melodically and harmonically (phrasing and balance). . . If I want to add in something more imaginative or creative, it's probably safest to think of it in just those terms - something added into the basic work of musicianship, not something to completely and instantaneously transform my approach.

Along these same lines, as I worked on the Chaconne and looked for a convincing way to pace and inflect the music, my faith, which I sometimes practice, was affirmed - the answer was in the score. For me, the slur and phrase markings were a major key to interpreting this work. The breakthrough came when I started to think of them more like bowings. The longer the marking, the more energy went into the line and the less energy went into the individual notes. The shorter the marking, the less energy went into the line, and more energy into the individual notes.

Thank you, Taylor Yandell, for the photos of my first performance of the Chaconne.

I concluded the evening with Gottschalk's Berceuse. This piece is based on a song he wrote in which a mother sings to her baby while the father is away. I assume the father is away fighting in the Civil War. I had been wondering how the low bass octaves figured into this scene, and I had been trying to keep them in the background. During the concert, I realized that they might be thought of as the distant rumbling of the cannons of war.

On Saturday, I held a masterclass that was attended by a diverse audience including music majors, music appreciation students, several students from a studio in the next town, and a few interested folks from the community. I like teaching before an audience like this as it gives people who are not musicians some insight into the discipline of music. The young students played well, and it's always inspiring to hear the results of the hard work that developing pianists are doing.

Fall Break Review, Part II

On Saturday, I played for a wedding at Connaritsa Baptist Church. This was a lovely autumn wedding with flowers in fall colors and bride's maids in red dresses. It was also a fun experience because of the historic nature of the church being the fourth oldest Baptist congregation in our region.



The instrument at Connaritsa is an older spinet, and as I played it, I was reminded of one of my basic beliefs about making music - a belief that I think is really important, but not always so easy to live with. And that is that making music is about cooperation, not competition or domination.

When confronted with a smaller and limited instrument, my gut reaction is to force it to bend to my will. The result of that approach is usually somewhat tortured. The instrument strains and groans, and little joy is expressed. More beauty comes when I relax and look for what the instrument can do well. This may mean sharing my vision with a decent, musical, mid-ranged dynamic and not striving for grand effects at either extreme of the dynamic scale. I think the result is better music and maybe better being human.

On Thursday night, Ms. Pressnell and I gave our first faculty two-piano recital on the two Baldwin concert grands in Daniel Recital Hall. While the older of the two instruments has some problems on its own, it makes a very good partner for the newer Baldwin.



The concert was great fun to play, and we were both relaxed and focused on good piano playing much of the time. We played a chaconne on Dido's Lament by Purcell. It happens to be Purcell's 350th birthday this year. I thought a bit about the recent earthquake victims in the South Pacific as I got ready to play this lament. Next was the first movement of Beethoven's Fifth Symphony then the second movement on Shostakovich's Second Piano Concerto. We concluded the first half with an arrangement of Hava Nagilah, which is about the happiest-sounding piece of music you're likely to find in a minor key.

The second half consisted of Saint-Seans Danse Macabre (which was the last thing we added to the program and turned out to be both our favorite and the crowd's favorite), three hymn arrangements by Nielson and Young - Come Thou Fount, When I Survey, and the Doxology tune - and several movements from Zwillich's Peanuts Gallery. We played a simple arrangement of Shenandoah for an encore.

One very specific comment I recieved a day or so after the concert was about the way I played the very last note of Shenandoah - living proof of the saying "God is in the details."

Last Sunday, I played a concert of parlor music for the Perquimans County Restoration Association. You can read about that here.

And now I'm reflecting all the way back to our season-opening faculty gala. That was my first solo playing on the Grotrian - Brahms: Op. 116, Nos. 1,2 and 3. I like the idea of the entire year of concerts here at Chowan (or at least my part in them) being one large work, and I hope our faithful audience members will connect the Brahms of the Gala Concert with the First Sonata which I plan to play during Pianofest in February.

That night was also my first bit of chamber music with the new piano. Dr. Parker sang several of Vaughan Williams's Vagabond Songs. The piano's capabilities were especially moving in that situation as it makes many many gradations of mezzo piano and softer possible. Also, its tone never competes with the timbre of the voice. Finally, it's possible to make much of the text-painting sound literally like the words and ideas being illustrated on this instrument! It's clearly a superbly-suited instrument on which to play songs of such high calibre with a fine and sensitive artist like Dr. Parker.

Gala Recital

Chowan turned 160 years old yesterday. MacDowell Columns looked beautiful decked with yellow mums in the fall light.

Our faculty gala concert was part of the celebration. Playing in that concert provided many good reminders for me:

1. One needs to practice regularly to feel technically stable in performance.

2. One needs to keep performing on one's mind and must be very intentional to make sure the performing reflects one's beliefs about performing and one's best thinking.

3. Certain spaces and occasions call for specific repertoire. For instance, Turner Auditorium doesn't need very quiet music. Instead, a full-sonoritied romantic-styled work such as a Bach-Busoni transcription or a Brahms sonata would work very well there.


So far this semester it seems that I am blessed with some hard-working and very promising piano students. They've encouraged me and made me proud at every lesson. As I teach them, and as I think of my choir director friends, and I also reflect on my classroom teaching, I am struck by some contrasts. Choir directing and piano teaching are in large part about getting musicians to sound better - always moving them to a next level. Classroom teaching is not focused on music performance, so in this way, it's really a very different activity.

I find myself at a really different place personally teaching piano now than a few years ago at William and Mary. At that time I was looking to explore ideas with my students and to present some profound underpinning or proof for my interpretive suggestions. Today I'm mostly listening and responding. At the end of one line I think it needs a little more of the top voice, or I'd like a greater sense of resistance moving into a particular climax, and more often these days I simply say so. We'll see where this leads. It may be a passng thing. And I still do lots of exploring and explaining - I can't stop myself!

I also find myself wanting to tell students how to do certain things that I do, but I don't know how to verbalize those things. I'm working on it.

I've been thinking back to the early years of the Lasker Summer Music Festival and the types of exploration I was undertaking then in terms of seeking modes of performance that express Christian faith. In those early days when I was just starting to imagine and discover some things for myself, the thinking wasn't particularly limiting or dogmatic in any way, and maybe I should refresh my work by revisiting some of the approaches I considered at that time.

However, as my music and faith have become better integrated, maybe I am detecting concepts for myself that aren't so flexible or can't/shouldn't be ignored.

It may be that I need to set forth my basic ideas in writing so I can remind myself of them more systematically. I'd better leave that task for another day.

Rocks Crying Out

Yesterday I listened to my last day of music juries as a member of the University of Richmond faculty. One student who was in my theory class this semester played the first movement of Brahms E minor Cello Sonata. This student, Heather Stebbins, is very bright, and in addition to being a budding cellist, is also a gifted composer.

As I listened to her consistent tone, her variety of vibrato, her unfolding of the details of the score, and noted her grasp of the function of each line she played, I realized that her instrument was singing.

As I am quite accustomed to instrumental music, I often miss the miracle of a performer causing inanimate material stuff to sing. In this performance, wood and strings, metal and bow hair, lifted up their voices in a way that was mysterious, poignant, and longing. I thought of the strangeness of the musical saw - a pedestrian tool that emits an ethereal tone - and I realized that the same extraordinary dynamic exists whenever instruments sing.

Perhaps this is a good part of the creativity of the performer - breathing elegant speech into soul-less materials, much like God breathing life into soil and making humanity.

Maybe instrumental music is inherently worshipful as musicians and instrument makers ornament God's creative work through their endeavors. They cause wood and metal to cry out, just like the stones Jesus said would praise him if the people didn't sing.