Chowan Pianofest 2009

Chowan Pianofest was this weekend and consisted of three concerts. The first was a lecture-recital about which I have commented at length on the Skinner Anthology Blog.

On Saturday night, we presented our first-ever Pianofest ensemble concert. Chowan piano majors joined our guest pianist, Ariel Dechosa, to perform duets I wrote specifically to show off some of the students' strengths and interests. I joined Ariel for Gottschalk's arrangement of the William Tell Overture, and my colleague Paula Pressnell and I played duets by Beethoven and Dvorak. Mrs. Pressnell also played Haydn's Sonata No. 52 in her characteristically well-planned, remarkably clear, and quick fashion.

Another interesting aspect of the program was the opening sequence of solo works. My student, Terrell Batten, performed the famous Bach Prelude in C Major from the Well-Tempered Clavier Book I, followed by Chopin's Prelude in C Minor. After those two works, another student, Josiah Antill, performed James M. Guthrie's Prelude in C Minor that explores aspects of the Bach and Chopin Preludes simultaneously.

I was very pleased with my students' work on this concert. Each one entered into the project earnestly and seriously. Mark Puckett showed fine technical and musical discipline in Grieg's Ase's Death and Debussy's Dr. Gradus ad Parnassum. Terrell conveyed a moving personal connection with the music he played, and Josiah played the last movement of Beethoven's "Moonlight" Sonata with good variety of sound while maintaining a steady sense of momentum.

On Sunday afternoon, Ariel Dechosa presented a concert including the third sonata of Brahms and the sixth of Prokofief. Ariel played the Brahms with beautiful focus and made a number of the transitions in the work sound profoundly right. His performance of the Prokofief was also eye-opening in terms of dexterity, energy, strength, and musicianship. I think there are several amazing facts regarding this work: it was concieved in the first place, concieved for piano, concieved for one person at a piano, and there are people who can play it well!

The juxtaposition of these three concerts that surveyed such a wide range of styles led to excellent discussion in Monday morning's theory class in which students had many thoughtful questions about aspects of piano playing from issues regarding memorization and fatigue to considering patterns like Alberti bass and extended techniques like playing the piano with one's fist or forearm.

One of the ongoing issues is the theme of battle in music. On Friday night, I played Kotzwara's once-popular Battle of Prague. While this piece, written in the late 1700s, seems to have very little in common with the musical vocabulary of Prokofief's Sixth, Ariel noticed many similarities in terms of the representative aspects of both works and the ways one has to maneuver about the keyboard. Dr. Guthrie and I have continued to wonder about the battle genre and about its progress since the Civil War. I've started to entertain the idea of writing a battle piece, but would rather not glorify battle in my work. Battle has become so devastating and impersonal that a work like Penderecki's Threnody for the Victims of Hiroshima might better reflect battle in our age than a more traditional battle narrative.

For archival purposes, a number of Chowan students also did a great job with recording this weekend's concerts, under the supervision of Dr. Guthrie. I'm sure all the pianist participants really appreciate that work.

Unexpected Discovery

Tonight, I was exploring recordings of "The Maiden and the Nightingale" by Granados. I'm studying the piece now, which is saturated with performance directions regarding fluctuations of rhythm. I wanted to hear how other pianists have interpreted these and other markings.

There are a lot of good recordings of the piece on-line, but the exciting surprise for me was the discovery of an exceptional pianist I had never come across before. His name was Harry Vooren and was a student of de Larrocha, according to the note on YouTube.

His recording demonstrates playing that is full of details without losing sweep, elegant without losing emotion.

The second post I wrote on this blog back in 2005 just happened to be about the piece "The Maiden and the Nightingale."

Playing/Living Joyfully

Yesterday while practicing, I started wondering about what makes for joyful playing.

Here are some factors that seem to be part of it at times:

a sense of leaping in many phrases

lively articulation

having a sense of moving forward across the barline

and particularly applying that sense of forward momentum through the more thorny sections of a work


This morning, it occured to me that joyful living might share those aspects:

leaping into whatever day or activity is ahead with energy

clearly articulating what it is you are trying to do

staying in motion and moving ahead, especially in rough times


This is another nice example of what Dr. Falby says - everything I know, I know from music.

Seaworld Christmas

My in-laws sent us to Seaworld for Christmas. I enjoyed the day and found it to be a surprisingly musical experience.

Not far into the park, I heard a recording of an all male chorus singing chant. Naturally, that intrigued me. When the third phrase arrived, I started hearing the instrumental accompaniment and recognized this "chant." It was "Winter Wonderland!" Those first two lines really do sound like chant when heard in this way.

Then we took a bridge, not to nowhere, but to Shamu Stadium. This long bridge was lots of fun. There was music playing and several choirs of fountains in the lake responded to some of the music. It was a lovely and energetic water ballet. I also heard a bit of Mannheim Steamroller's version of "Lo, How a Rose E'er Blooming" on that trip across the bridge. I've been playing the arrangement myself, and faster than the recorded performance (which I hadn't heard until yesterday). But my tempo was based on the metronome marking in the piano score.

Seeing the really big and smart animals in the Shamu show was very moving. This was more ballet, only with whales.

Shamu was presented as a member of the same family as all of us humans who share the planet, and this made some sense to me because Shamu seems a bit like some giant great-grandmother that many of us visit from time to time. And she lives in Florida.

Crossing the bridge again, we saw a skywriter writing "Jesus loves you" up above.

Later, we heard a good brass quintet called "The Penguins" play various Christmas carols. We enjoyed their playing, their rapport, and their festive costumes. The tubist also did an excellent and heart-wrenching imitation of a melting Frosty the Snowman.

In the evening, we saw Shamu's Christmas celebration. This was kind of the strangest worship service I've attended. I liked the inter-species aspect of this worship. But it was also really designed as a show.

One thing I found truly worshipful was singing Christmas songs along with the five thousand people who were watching the words on giant screens before the show. The calmness and innocence of song hovering over such a group was special. It did make me feel a bit like we were one big family.

Also worshipful was witnessing the cooperation and communication between people and these beautiful animals. That was poignant, too, because I bet there is much more we could say to each other, if only we knew how - more important things than "spin around," etc. But we saw some of the deeper things being said through the loving attitudes of the trainers with the animals.

The end of the show really was over the top: a very loud gospel choir, leaping flames, and jumping whales.

I had different feelings about the jumping of the whales depending on what music I was hearing when the jumping was going on. The upbeat gospel version was the most invigorating whale jumping.

On the way back across the bridge the last time we heard the end of "Sleigh Ride" as well as the Orlando Symphony playing some the sound track for Arctic Express from a distance.

Lowliness

The main thought I have this Christmas is that the Incarnation was the lowliest thing imaginable, and the most beautiful thing.

Merry Christmas to all.

Nutcracker

Yesterday we went to the Richmond Ballet Nutcracker performance, which is always great and great fun. The dancing, costumes, and sets are all beautiful, and there are dancers of all ages and all species (giant rats and a bear).

The Nutcracker provides a fine yearly reminder of the high quality of composer that Tchaikowsky was. Upon hearing his score this time, I was struck by the following.

Tchaikowsky seems like a much better-mannered composer than Wagner or Mahler (whose music I love). Tchaikowsky's music seems cooperative and cultured. Its themes never overstay their welcome, and it can charm us with its Mozartean balance. It's hard to beat that sort if charm. What's more, it is deeply moving without ever blurting out something inappropriate.

While Tchaikowsky's music is sometimes thought of as very emotional, I found it moving more often in a structural way. Its long lines move me like the elegantly engineered expanse of a great bridge.

The orchestra slipped up on me at one moment while I was focused on the dancing. The musical climax at that point, driven by the trombones, gave me the same sort of thrill that orchestral music gave me most of the time when I first started going to lots of live performances. It may be that so much thinking about music, particularly as I listen to it, keeps me from having those experiences as often now. But watching a staged production like a ballet or an opera can get my mind on something else, and the music can bypass my thinking. I recommend the experience for those musicians reading who find themselves in a similar place.

Perhaps the climax of the entire score is the tune that amounts to a descending scale during the grand pas de deux. A descending scale is essentially an ending, and constructing a piece out of endings is one of Rachmaninoff's strategies as in the famous C Sharp Minor Prelude. Maybe he got it from Tchaikowsy. Also, I heard little bits of orchestration throughout the ballet that reminded me a bit of Wagner. I've never looked into any Wagner/Tchaikowsky link. And of course, the descending scale pattern is a prominent leitmotiv in the Ring, representing Wotan's staff and treaties.

Humility and Revelation

This week we saw performances of both the National Players and the North Carolina Symphony here at Chowan.

The Players presented Shakespeare's As You Like It, and as always, I left that performance with refreshed admiration for Shakespeare.

I was also really impressed by the way the actors seemingly selflessly pour themselves into their roles. For the most part, each one seems to seek just the right angle and right amount of energy for their characters. They don't seek to show off talent without regard to the demands of the character and drama at hand. This is really admirable as well, and could prove very instructive for musicians. We are often tempted to over-perform, to put too much or the wrong thing altogether into the musical vessel at hand.

Fleisher speaks of pouring one's musicality and so forth into the musical vessel. His playing also tastefully and compellingly snuggly fits the works he plays. Click here to see Fleisher playing Chopin Nocturne No. 8 on Youtube.

The NC Symphony played many Christmas carol arrangements on their concert. The real revelation was a work by Malcolm Arnold from the film The Holly and the Ivy. Arnold's imagination for orchestration was the star of the evening for me. One passage of particular beauty used oboe solo accompanied by the horns. Another novel passage was "Away in a Manger" played on xylophone accompanied by timpani and other percussion.

The NC Symphony has a great mission of being the symphony for all North Carolinians. They also have a roster of very engaging solosists who appear with them at various locations around the state. Two examples this season are Robert Levin and Marc-Andre Hamelin.

The Truth about Sonata Form

I was on-line this afternoon preparing for my Form and Analysis course. This definition of sonata was the first item that came up in a Google search for sonata and it includes some very important information for practitioners and consumers of classical music to know.

Sonata

What is Sonata?

Sonata is a sedative, also called a hypnotic. It affects chemicals in your brain that may become unbalanced and cause sleep problems (insomnia).

Sonata is used to treat insomnia . . . causes relaxation to help you fall asleep and stay asleep.

Important information about Sonata

Sonata may cause a severe allergic reaction. Stop taking Sonata and get emergency medical help if you have any of these signs of an allergic reaction: hives; difficulty breathing; swelling of your face, lips, tongue, or throat.

Sonata will make you fall asleep. Never take Sonata during your normal waking hours, unless you have at least 4 hours to dedicate to sleeping.

Some people using Sonata have engaged in activity such as driving, eating, or making phone calls and later having no memory of the activity. If this happens to you, stop taking Sonata and talk with your doctor about another treatment for your sleep disorder.

Sonata can cause side effects that may impair your thinking or reactions. You may still feel sleepy the morning after taking Sonata. Until you know how Sonata will affect you during waking hours, be careful if you drive, operate machinery, pilot an airplane, or do anything that requires you to be awake and alert. Do not drink alcohol while you are taking Sonata. It can increase some of the side effects of Sonata, including drowsiness. Sonata may be habit-forming . . . Sonata should never be shared with another person, especially someone who has a history of drug abuse or addiction.


Before taking Sonata, notify your doctor if you have:

liver disease;
sleep apnea
lung disease
a history of depression, mental illness, or suicidal thoughts; or
a history of drug or alcohol addiction.

If you have any of these conditions, you may need a dose adjustment or special tests to safely take Sonata.


The sedative effects of Sonata may be stronger in older adults. Accidental falls are common in elderly patients who take sedatives. Use caution to avoid falling or accidental injury while you are taking Sonata.

Overdose symptoms may include sleepiness, confusion, shallow breathing, feeling light-headed, fainting, or coma.

Sonata side effects

Stop Sonata and call your doctor at once if you have any of these serious side effects:
aggression, agitation, changes in behavior;

thoughts of hurting yourself; or

hallucinations (hearing or seeing things).

Less serious side effects may include:

day-time drowsiness, dizziness, "hangover" feeling;

problems with memory or concentration;

numbness or tingling;

anxiety, depression, nervous feeling;

problems with vision;

headache;

nausea, stomach pain, loss of appetite;

dry mouth;

back pain, joint or muscle pain; or

mild skin rash.

This is not a complete list of side effects and others may occur. Tell your doctor about any unusual or bothersome side effect.

For the original article, click here.

Great Beethoven

I've had two great Beethoven experiences in the last few weeks. I think the case for Beethoven's greatness is no enormous and rich that we sometimes don't even attempt to articulate it for ourselves. We just assume it. But it might be a very good thing to try be able to explain to people who are on the outside of the classical music world who might wonder what makes Beethoven so great.

In our form and analysis class, we've been considering how the whole is greater than the sum of the parts when it comes to multi-movement works. Over the course of the semeser, we've been building the skills to be able to really appreciate that truth. We listened to the first movement of the "Moonlight" Sonata and noted all the ways Beethoven gives us hope and then takes it away throughout the movement. The first phrase modulates from minor to relative major, only to slip right back into minor. We achieve relative major again, only to see it flattened into its parallel minor. The bass line reaches to its lowest point with a tritone - our most unstable interval. Then, the right hand spirals up and down in diminished chords that cause us to loose track of the meter and of where the descent will stop - ungrounded drifting. Finally, most of that happens again!

After that first movement, the second movement can sound surreal with its perky syncopations and carefree mood. Alone, it would be charming. After hearing the first movement, it can be incongruous, unsettling, or inappropriate. It leaves us with more questions than answers, and so we need the boiling and turbulent final movememnt. (I wonder if second movements following slow first movements tend to create more tension or inconguity as a rule.)

Most aspects of what I've described are so effective because Betehoven is playing with our expectations and our human nature. Thus, the music jumps into us, and we can't think of it as something outside and separate from ourselves.

Yesterday we spent some time with the Fifth Symphony. This work involves two of the big ideas of the Romantics: cyclic organization (the four-note motive comes back throughout the symphony) and evolution. This aspect of evolution, which permeates Mahler's works, is most obvious in Beethoven's orchestration. When transitioning between the two main themes in the exposition, Beethoven reiterates his motive in the horns. In the recap, it's a bassoon. He also adds an oboe cadenza in the middle of his first theme in the recap, and gives the second theme new color with woodwinds instead of strings.

Several weeks ago, we heard Awadagin Pratt perform Beethoven Fourth Concerto with the Virginia Symphony. I'm proud to have gone to school with Awadagin. His playing always strikes me as the playing of someone with real perspective. As he plays, you feel like he grasps whatever the music is about and has grasped it through living himself. The way he plays also causes the listener (at least this listener) to more thoroughly hear and register the work he's playing. I find myself still thinking of the way he played certain phrases weeks after the performance. And the way he played those phrases ultimately drove the nature of those phrases deeper into my mind. The rhythmically driven passages were compellingly played and the wandering passages were, once again, played with real knowing. The rubato he applied to the arching, yearning phrases of the second movement was also unforgettably meaningful and moving.

On the same concert, we heard the Eroica. On this hearing, I mostly found myself admiring the scope of Beethoven's vision - another part of his greatness.

Fall and Mannerism

It's a lovely fall day in Murfreesboro - muted but colorful foliage, a little drizzle, and cool. I think living in M'boro is about as close to living in a charming New England town as one can get in North Carolina. We have lovely nature as I just described, history, old homes, and lots of individualists.

Now about mannerism:

I had a funny thought teaching yesterday. I was explaining some basic aspects of Mannerist art such as in works of El Greco in painting or Gesualdo in music. These include distortion, exageration, and jarring juxtapositions, all for dramatic effect. It struck me as I said those things that I had pretty much just described a political ad!

Sad News

I was just sent this link regarding the death of Moshe Cotel.

Moshe Cotel was our orchestration teacher at Peabody. A fascinating pianist and a composer, Mr. Cotel made an important journey from the religion of classical musician to being a rabbi.

I didn't know him well, but I did admire him, and in the last year I have been intrigued by a series of concerts he has been presenting regarding "a Jewish life in classical piano." I had been thinking about inviting him to play for us here at Chowan some time in the next few years.

My one personal story related to Cotel is as follows and it is a poignant memory of the last time I saw him.

When I lived in New York, I took a lot of afternoon walks in Riverside Park. Most of those walks consisted of me wandering, contemplating, imagining, musing, praying, seeking to understand my life. On one of these walks, I saw a man in a blue pea coat that reminded me of Cotel, and as we got closer, it turned out to be him. He asked about my life since Peabody and was calm-spirited and kind. As we parted ways, I felt that his Riverside walk may have been the same sort of walk I was having.

Knowing he's no longer in it makes the world seem a little less complete.

Moments and Sound

Walking to school this morning I noticed the frost on the roof of the Columns for the first time. The sight took me back to the early days of the school when students and faculty lived and studied there. For a moment it was a picturesque bit of imagining.

Then I reminded myself of the hardships and uncertainties of 19th century life. I pictured faculty breaking some bad news to a student in a cold, candlelit room. I pictured the outburst that would have occurred in that horrible moment.

Our experience of life and the meaning of events often sink in or are expressed during specific moments. The expanse of day after day might leave little of note in our memories, but a single moment packed with significance can vibrate and consume us for years.

Sometimes music is designed that way. Composers like Schumann or Chopin or Prokofiev specialize in moments. Sometimes the structure or the integrated quality of their works might not seem to hold up under close scrutiny, but their very profound goal might very well be to convey moments that are full of character.

Another musical thought -

Some passages seem to be designed to focus us on sound - not its organization or where the music is going - only the beauty of the sounds we are hearing. And I'm not referring to passages in the music of Impressionists and more recent composers. A bit of Beethoven's Third Concerto started me thinking abot this. Today I noticed that the "Amen" of the Credo in Palestrina's Missa Pape Marcelli is also a moment of glorying in sound.

Greg Parker - voice recital

Last night, Dr. Parker (our departmental chairperson) gave a fine recital.

The thing I like most about Dr. Parker's singing is his musicality. He takes care with many musical details that quite a few other singers would simply ignore. In this way, his way of singing reminds me of Murray Perahia's piano playing. Perahia always expresses the music thoroughly, and to do so, he does a lot of things that are hard to do and that other pianists don't bother with. This extra care makes all the difference. We might say it really makes the performance into art.

The most memorable moments of the night for me were songs of Faure and Finzi that are such deep contemplations of love and loss. Those deep moments refreshed my sense of the value of classical music for humanity.

Finzi's set Let Us Garland's Bring continues to impress me in that the music works so well with the texts. I think it must be very hard to write music for Shakespeare's texts that doesn't sound superfluous.

I'm grateful for arriving at fall break with a greater sense of purpose and an understanding of what it means to teach here and how to go about it. I am really pleased with the quality of my colleagues in the music department. Each one offers very high quality work, and I believe that our students have a great opportunity to learn because of the team that has been assembled here.

Sad

I'm feeling a little sad today.

Last night was my performance with clarinetist David Niethamer here at Chowan. David is a great clarinetist and a friend for several years. This performance was the last of two. I should have planned more! We've been aiming to do some concerts together for a couple of years now, and these two concerts were the culmination of that. I'm sad in part because that collaboration is over for now. We hope to work together again in the future.

I'm also sad that I didn't do the best I could in this final performance. Whether it sounded good or not is one issue, but I'm not thinking of that right now. What I'm unhappy about is that I could have done better, and I know how I could have done better.

Many times when I perform I am reminded of basic lessons that I never seem to learn and apply!

Here are some of them:

Have a clearly articulated plan for yourself and your performance.
This plan should include specific directions that you need to hear everytime you play a given work as these diections are precautionary measures that can head off big problems. For example, it is much better to start the third movement of Jim Guthrie's Clarinet Sonata too slow than too fast!

Don't allow yourself to be distracted by anything short of a medical emergency or a hazardous happening. While you want to relate to the audience, their presence and behavior should not distract you from the task at hand. And what is going on inside of the performer should also not be a distraction to the performer. Thoughts of who is listening, desires to impress, emotions or attempts to display emotion, etc. can all short circuit achievement in performance.

More and more I find that my goal ought to be to think and behave professionally, and to sound professional. That is the best I can do. If I do that well, I think music and the audience will be served. I also think that is how I can do my work "as unto the Lord." Offering my very best effort seems to be what that biblical injuction is all about for me.

As I walked Sophie (our dog) this morning, I thought about how beautiful the campus and the surrounding woods are. It was a foggy morning, and that drew me into being more sensitive than usual to the effects of color and light. That experience was rich in beauty. It made me emotional. But there was no emotion in the fog, in the trees, in the light.

As those of you who read this blog regularly know, I struggle with the place and meaning of emotion in the performance. Today it seems clear to me that me exhibiting emotion in performance is not necessarily the same thing as listeners having an emotional experience through my performance. They might experience my emotions, but I want them to experience their emotions.

Sometimes we approach performance is if it's a competition to see who can demonstrate the strongest emotions. Put that way, it seems very odd.

It may even be appropriate to keep some sort of objectivity in performance. Visibly empathizing with whatever emotion we think is in a work might compromise our independence and send that same compromised vibe into the audience. The musical object is beautiful and I ought handle it and present it with care.

I'm not advocating for emotionless or energyless performance. I'm noting that a performer's emotion may or may not be really well-suited to the work at hand. As Richard Becker put it so elequently when he spoke at Chowan last year, it is the music that we are expressing. Self-expression is a different activity.

I've been watching Sviatoslav Richter on Youtube lately. In the films I've seen, he almost always seems to be expressing the music, not himself. His motions, expressions, attitude, etc. seem to fit the form of the music and never fall short or push beyond what the music is saying.

I think I've often missed the charm, elegance, and beauty of the works I play by injecting too much of myself - particularly aspects of myself that are not really in sync with the work at hand. We want to be immediate, visceral, and stirring in our day and age, but that might not be the way every work works or is designed to work.

Stay within Yourself

Over the last few weeks, I've been thinking a bit about advice my pre-college teacher, Dr. Gene Barban, often gave me when I was studying with him.

As a developing pianist (I'm still developing, or disintegrating!) I often let my emotions about the music, about playing, about being in front of people, etc., take over. That often underminded or even sabataged my efforts at performing. The good work I had put into preparing would get mangled by my attitude when it came time to perform. To keep me focused on the essentials of the task at hand, Dr. Barban would tell me to stay within myself.

The advice is still very good for me today. My desire to express, to impress, and so forth, can still rob my playing of security, clarity, and even it's fullest meaning.

I'm starting to see that this lesson from music can and should be applied to life more much broadly. At work, I should stay within myself. Bad emotions - anger, resentment . . . should not color my work or my relationships. Also, complaining rarely helps. Instead, I should choose to be capable and fulfill my various responsibilities and be grateful for work!

If I deal with many of these sorts of problems internally and keep them from spilling over into the rest of my life, I find I am freed, challenged, and blessed to find a new way to think and a better way to care. There is space to pursue and share interests on my own and in my relationships. I become more grounded and open to joy.

In addition to giving more personal fulfillment, staying within oneself can also save coworkers and family members from spending their time on my problems and allows them to focus on their calling and responsibilities instead. The whole world can run more smoothly when we stay within ourselves in this way.

Kyle Matthews Concert

Kyle Matthews performed at Chowan on Sunday night. I appreciated the theme of service that he emphasized in a more and more focused way as the concert went on. A song from his newest CD, "The Main Event," discusses the way that the most important happenings in the realm of God's Kingdom often seem unimportant and eclipsed by the passing acts of human pride, yet those quiet occurrences on the sidelines are often the real main events.

Kyle also mentioned that he had noticed that in the Gospels Jesus seems to have treated every person he met as an individual and never "processed people." Jesus met each one at their point of need. The point of need, both ours and others, is where we meet God.

This point about the way Jesus related to the people has important application for the way I do my job here at Chowan. As I see it, my basic job here is to educate pianists, and to do so, it makes sense to me to study works of Baroque, Classical, Romantic, and 20th/21st Century masters with my students. In addition to this core piano study, it is very good for students to be exposed to many different ways of making music. But our university's mission also suggests that students are getting some vocational training, so education and exposure are not enough. We need to think of the students' futures in music. This seems to call for a more personalized approach. Not every student is aspiring to be a classical pianist. Most have other goals, and those goals might be better suited to those students as well. Thus, I need to be open to the stylistic interests and experiments of my students and find ways to work with them on a case-by-case basis in those areas. For that matter, each student's psychological state, background, attitude towards education, etc., might call for very individualized approaches. Ultimately - and most exciting - we are making something new together as we create our own musical culture here at Chowan, in Murfreeboro, and in the surrounding area.

Back to Kyle, it was really fun having him in town. He was professional and flexible and was enthused to visit with children and students. His music admirably expresses his spiritual journey, and it invites those who hear to join in following the way of Jesus. In addition, he's a deep thinker about the relationship of music and faith.

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.

Spontaneity and a Task Completed

First, task completed:

Some of you know I've been writing a little cantata based on Chowan's quality enhancement plan. The plan was devised to address findings of SACS, which is the accrediting organization for our school. The cantata (or jingleata, as I'm calling it) is to be performed as part of a presentation explaining our plan. A jingleata, by the way, is a cantata made of jingles or a jingle-qualitied cantata. I made up the term, and perhaps the genre.

The scores are now in the hands of the performers and out mine! It was a fun project. It's always nice to have a composition assignment. But it's also really nice to be able to move on to something else.


Now about spontaneity:

On Sunday, after the sermon, Kathy pointed at her watch and gave me the signal to stretch the offertory meditation. It was only 11:45, and our service is scheduled to go to noon - and we're also on the radio until then. So I stretched.

I started by filling up at least a minute, maybe two, with introduction. Then I played a version of "There's a Sweet, Sweet Spirit in this Place" with lots of hesitations between phrases. I embellished that a bit, got a little blusey or soulful, then added a coda using a favorite effect of mine - sort of a random ring imitation on the piano.

Because of the extra time, I explored improvisational aspects that I wouldn't often use in church. I basically explored a variety of things I could do with the tune until it seemed like it gone on for long enough (musically speaking).

The surprising thing about all this is that I belive I had more positive comments about this offertory than any other thing I've played at the church in Ahoskie. I'm not sure if that's because of the different energy of more extended improvisation, because of what I improvised, or maybe it's because people really like the tune.

My friend, Charles Winstead, commented about the accumulation of layers as I improvised. I usually think of layers happening simultaneously, but in this case, they were happening one after the other, as in a theme and variations. I like that thought, because it explains something of the process of the cumulative impact of a theme and variations, and gives me food for thought as someone who makes up music sometimes!

Jacob and Rachmaninoff

Today's Old Testament reading dealt with Jacob's wrestling match with the angel. As a meditation on this passage, I played some of Rachmaninoff's B minor Prelude. After hearing the context of the scripture and the passage itself I could easily hear aspects of the story in the music:

at the beginning, Jacob already struggling in the womb,

at the end of the climactic section - the wounding of Jacob,

and on the final page, Jacob limping,


While this music and the story are full of struggle, I am also reminded of a theme that has surfaced several times during the commentary on the Olympics. I keep hearing that the best athletes actually relax as they get further into their tasks. Perhaps that is a good thing to bear in mind as performing musicians. While the music may picture a struggle, we need to be relaxed so as to be at our best to physically perform the music well. The desire to embody the emotions of the music sometimes leads to a very unrelaxed place.

HWGP

For prelude yesterday I played an arrangement of "Be Still and Know." It's a hard tune to know how to phrase. It keeps coming back to scale degree 5 and then it orbits around scale degrees 3 and 1, too. To add to the confusion about how best to inflect it, and with what mood to do so, is the fact that the text consists of words of spoken by God.

The solution, at least for yesterday, revealed itself in the course of the worship service. Right before the prelude was the chiming of the hour with a handbell playing G, which was scale degree 5. I started in the tempo of the bell and organized my phrasing around the repeated Gs in the tune.

The fact that the words of the song are the words of God made me wonder something I don't remember ever thinking about before:

How Would God Phrase?

To sum up my mulling over this probably odd-sounding question, people phrases are usually arches. That's about the best sort of basic shape we can manage. I think God's phrases would be more complete - circles or spheres.

An arch that returns to the same starting point might be as circular as we can get in a time-bound medium. Maybe the composer of this tune really struck on something profound.