Summer 2014

It has been three months since I've blogged. I'm happy to be getting back to it.

During those three months, my time has been filled with learning the ropes of coordinating aspects of our department from adjuncts to budgets to concerts to dates to educational materials to . . . okay, I'll stop there. Teaching and performing have continued, but time to reflect and express what has been coming out of those activities has been non-existent. I hope to catch up on those things during the summer months.

Summer has begun with several fun Florida wildlife encounters -
crossing paths with a rat snake while hiking with Brian Blume,
passing rather closely to a roadside alligator while driving with Wesly Hulin,
and noticing my first young little blue heron while walking with Kathy Hulin at Lake Hollingsworth.
(The photo above is an egret we saw in the same location back in January.)

Summer has also begun with some diverse music making this very morning at All Saints' Episcopal here in Lakeland -
improvising some pre-service meditative music following the ringing of the great bell,
a hymn arrangement with one of our young saxophonists,
a gospel anthem with our youth choir,
and some lovely music by Stefan Waligur sung by the children during communion.

Each of these works I was privileged to play functioned differently and drew me into a different mode of musicality and experience. The gospel piece, for example, took me to a place of joy with the rhythms and waves of its structure and its spiritually encouraging text.

The varied workings of pieces of music often get lost in the shuffle as we seek to instill a musicality that almost seems to have an existence independent of the details of specific works. (An interesting question to ask one's self, musicians, would be: What works have shaped my musicality?)

Phrase endings taper. Melodies are clearly projected. The flow goes over the bar-line. These are all good habits, but they are mere shadings, as I believe Stravinsky stated. To be experienced as significant human moments, works of music require engagement and expression at the level of their essence. Their specific structure and feeling need to prevail.

I find myself thinking of the first movement of Schubert's Sonata No. 16 in A Minor, Op. 42, D. 850 which I am currently exploring with a very good student of mine. This work by one of the very greatest writers of tunes is far from a simple expression of tunefulness. That generalized musicality I described a bit of above might be adequate for a series of well-behaved charming phrases. But this is not that. This is a churning, heaving structure. It is a drama unfolding through tones and silences. To play it well, to play it truly, I think one must sense something of the strangeness of Schubert's material, his obsessiveness with it, and the process he creates out of it.

We piano teachers sometimes wax poetic with images of the woods and bears and references to "The Telltale Heart," etc. This isn't because the music is particularly about these things but because that way of talking tunes us into the tone and process of works like these that require us to recognize and be in the drama as we share them.










    

First Performances

One's first performance in a new town can be a little stressful, especially if it's a new town in which you plan to live for a while! The main reason for the stress is that you know that many people will base their understanding of you, your musicianship, and your abilities on what they perceive on that occasion. In addition, you never know who will be at such a performance or what they know or believe about piano playing. Often, some real connoisseurs show up, so you want to be at your pianistic best. As an insightful friend suggested to me, it can feel a little more like an exhibition than a concert. You want to give the audience a good sense of the range of things you can do well. Further exacerbating the situation is the fact that your competitiveness can kick into overdrive which can result in a distorted reading of the music and get you off-message. And that brings me to my point.

For me, the mature approach to these issues is to stay focused on the message of the music. The message has enough weight to replace the smaller personal concerns and competitiveness. Perhaps some of the really meaningful energy of performing comes from the confrontation and struggle between the message and the self on-stage.

What do I mean by "message?" I'm referring to what the music might be able to say to me as a human being and what its value is to my spirit. A good way to start to articulate what such messages might be would be to say what pieces of music might be about without using technical musical language. Imagine you're an audience member who is not a musician. What might you get from a given work?

At my first performance in Lakeland last week, I played Chopin's C-sharp Minor Nocturne Op. 27 No. 1 and a transcription of Schubert's Arpeggione Sonata with flute.

From its very first measure, the Chopin is filled with a lot of uncertainty - and that might cause you to feel a little uncertain as you play it. As unsettling as that is, it might be okay and even appropriate. Preparing for last Monday's performance, I felt that the message of this nocturne is about the experiences of struggle and effort, the ups and downs of life, and the fact that the sympathetic God is with us through it all. I think it is a very affirming and honest work, moving between uncertainty and moments of hope, with great victories followed directly by defeats that seem beyond our control, ultimately concluded by a sunrise.

The Schubert is a lengthy work with many wonderful tunes but perhaps not the most compelling overall shape. As I tried to understand its drama and trajectory, I remembered that Schubert was a school teacher. For some reason, a lot of his music for instruments makes me think not of the dramatic moods of the poems he sets as songs but of more peaceful scenes at home. Picturing him in his classroom expands those feelings for me. I can hear both lovely and dreary moments of classroom life in the Arpeggione.

I imagine Schubert was a great story teller and probably told some stories that captivated the imaginations of his students - maybe stories about pirates. At any rate, they are lively stories, charming and colorful, but not actual events. I think that might express the tone of the piece, as well. There's a little more narrative mixed into this sonata than the title "sonata" would lead us to believe.

In the end, I think a big part of the spiritual message of most any work of chamber must be the enactment and celebration of cooperation.

That Tricky Beethoven

Tomorrow night we are performing Schubert G Major Mass and Beethoven Choral Fantasy - two beloved works - on the season-closing Masterworks Concert at Chowan.

The Fantasy has a couple of transitions at which the tempo, and sometimes meter, change very abruptly. One of the transitions is designed to confuse the ear of the listener - which means it can confuse the people playing it as well!

The following quotation from Ignaz von Seyfried, a friend of Beethoven, applies.

But when, especially in the Scherzos of his symphonies, sudden, unexpected changes of tempo threw all into confusion, he would laugh tremendously, assure the men he had looked for nothing else, that he had been waiting for it to happen, and would take almost childish pleasure in the thought that he had been successful in unhorsing such routined orchestral knights.