Definitions

I'm feeling the most comfortable I've ever felt being a college music professor this semester. It seems like it can take quite a while to feel really settled in one's calling, particularly when there have been so many voices trying to define who and what one should be without reference to, or awareness/understanding of, that calling. I have sensed this most strongly in the area of performing. How much performing should I be doing? Where should I be doing it? How should I relate that performing to the rest of my work and life? What should I be performing? With whom should I be performing? . . . These are serious questions regarding how to conduct my professional life, how to spend my time, and what my identity is. After all, the performing part of my life existed before the college professor part and will probably be with me long after the college professor part. (I hope to have a long and productive academic career and a long and productive time of retirement afterwards during which I continue to make music!)


What is a performance?

Here's my current definition:

A performance is a committed effort that explores one’s capabilities, and in so doing, becomes a valuable human achievement.


There are all sorts of ways in which a rendering can be a committed effort. I like the idea that a committed effort involves a balance of the thinking, feeling, and acting parts of us. It seems like commitment falls apart when these are not in balance.

This definition is about exploring what one can do, not comparing it with what someone else can do. Perhaps competition makes us work harder at times, but the opposite can also be true. If we compare our efforts to the efforts of those around us, sometimes we'll think "what I'm doing is good enough" but we might be falling short of our actual potential by letting our context define what is good enough. We might also be diminishing the value of our human achievement.

Finally, these efforts are valuable as human events because they apply commitment to exploring our capabilities. These efforts can happen at many stages and levels from a child learning to clap a rhythm to the greatest actors performing Shakespeare on film for posterity. There is something pure in this pursuit that distinguishes the human race each time it happens.


Another definition - music theory:

Music theory is the activity of making valid statements about the experience of a piece of music.


Sometimes theory seems really abstract to students and other musicians, but it's not really. To some extent, any endeavor involving words will be a bit of an abstraction since words are abstracts. But music theory is about using words and other means to describe and discuss the experience of music.

I call it an activity, but the word "discipline" could replace that word since it is a discipline. But I have chosen "activity" since all sorts of people do it who aren't intentional about it being a discipline. Anyone who listens and processes what they are hearing is doing theory, not just the student in school or the professional musician.

There are at least two types of knowledge that need to inform our more specifically "theoretical" statements about music to bolster their validity: knowledge of history and knowledge of performance. Since the score only conveys what would not have been assumed (as Robert Levin says) we need to know the context to intelligently deal with the score. And hearing lots of music performed live helps us develop a sense of what details can be clearly heard in performance and which move more into the background.

Finally, Theory is about the experience of a piece of music. As Dr. Falby taught us, good theory is about what we hear, not about circling notes on a page. Theory deals with the organization of the sounds within a given work. That organization is what we are experiencing if we are experiencing that work.

Maps

I'm reading a good book by Gerald Danzer entitled Atlas of World History. A couple of points have stood out as being relevant to music.


The term "geography" is often used very generally today, but it traditionally fit into this scheme:

topography - mapping a small enough region that the local level details of the landscape like hills and streams can be shown

chorography - mapping a region or continent

geography - mapping in a global context


I extrapolate this idea of several meaningful levels to music study.


For example,

local-level analysis of harmonies, motives, and so forth (topography)

consideration of the form of the work at hand (chorography)

understanding of the work in the context of the composer's output or the style (geography)


Another scheme might go this way:

intra-opus style (the first two levels from above)

inter-opus style (the third level from above)

and finally, the place of the work's performance in broader culture which would include musicological and ethnomusicological topics


We musicians need a bit of all this in our lives.



A second point is what I think is an extremely well-stated definition regarding the concept of "classic" or "classical."

Danzer writes:

"A society develops a classic culture when it gathers together traditional ways of life and expresses their values in such a powerful way that it sets standards of achievement for future generations."


Here's a link to a fascinating program for preserving valuable elements of the cultures on our planet.

May in April

Amaryllis and lilies blooming - looks like May to me here on April 1.

Also, fighter jets are scrambling over Lakeland - part of the big Lakeland air show, but still unnerving at times.


Excellent theory students pulled several April Fools pranks on me today:

First, a happy-looking sign on the door said that our class was cancelled.

A single student was waiting just inside the door with a string attached to a dollar bill on the floor. The student said she was the only who showed up.

Then, the rest of the students came in through the back door. Coincidentally, there were no lights in the room due to a momentary power outage.

At the end of class, my attention was drawn to a snail that had been placed on the podium.


I particularly enjoyed the incongruity of all these things happening in conjunction with each other. Most of all, I appreciate the caring and imagination my students expressed in this playful way. I'm glad we can have fun together and learn, too. Thank you all!

Now, back to those interval class vectors!

Hearing

Several points regarding human hearing:

Rich Wilkerson Jr. spoke this week in an SEU chapel service. He mentioned that, according to scripture, hearing seems to be more important than seeing in the Kingdom of God. This is all bound up with relying on God's voice and living by faith. I plan to keep that in mind as I read scripture for myself.

Rev. Wilkerson went on to mention that we human beings don't see so well for our first six months of life, so much of our early knowledge and connection with our parents and surroundings comes through our hearing.

This morning, I happened to hear (and see) a bit of a music education presentation that compared our senses of sight and sound. The ratio of the wave lengths of violet to red light - the extremes of our visual range - is less than 2 to 1. We hear a much wider range of a least seven octaves with each octave being a 2 to 1 ratio. So in a way, we hear a lot better than we see.

Feelings

Here are some ideas that help me.
I was reminded of them as I worked with piano students this week.


Be the best you. Noone else has the opportunity to do that.


Feeling the music is an expression of your intuitive grasp of the music. Your subconscious understands the structures of the music that you think about in theory class. Don't let the thinking-about stop the feeling. Being conscious ought to help you feel with greater sensitivity.


What should you feel as you play? Sometimes it's the momentum of a phrase. Sometimes it's conviction about a rhythm. Feeling and movement are linked. Some passages require that your body learn them through drumming or dancing, and that's what you should be feeling when you play them.


relevant paraphrases:

St. Augustine - rhetoric involves conveying structures with appropriate feeling

Fleisher - everybody has feeling, the job is to pour that feeling into the shape of the vessel (piece of music) before you

Together

A little poem about the experience of teaching, testing, and thinking:




They look at numbers under staves



They listen for tones that are not sounded



They are quiet and sweet




All right-handed, they tilt their heads to the left as they think

Some don't:

two pianists

and a trumpeter who looks really strong




The back row is engaged,

but why are they back there?



I gave them all next week's test yesterday



Stupid me



We are all together in Mod 3