In Defense of Spence

At their "best," institutional practice rooms tend to be pretty sterile. A quick Google search of practice room images will prove this. To be fair, the large rooms with numerous instruments and a bit more color are probably recording studios, not practice rooms. And that one guy looking at the New York skyline is in the Juilliard dorm, not a practice room. The images of medium-lengthed hallways, which some photographer mistakenly thought would become fun by having students poke their heads out of the doors, show the immediate environment of practice rooms. (By the way, I've been that photographer.) And the small, neutral-colored rooms with no windows but maybe a mirror and a piano - those are practice rooms. Aesthetically speaking, spartan. For all their sound-proofing, not so musical.

Many college-aged musicians have tender spirits. Their artistic temperaments can make them very sensitive to their physical environments. Their hearts and psyches are open and that which seems merely drab to another can be downright oppressive to these young people who are feeling so much and are still learning a lot about managing their very being. What they're going through is a normal stage of development. It's something along the lines of negotiating being in the world but not of the world.

In addition to those issues related to the physical environment that can cloud the innocent eye, there are all sorts of things lurking in practice rooms waiting to catch us all off-guard and alone:

• doubts about our talent 

• self-esteem issues that we brought from home or from our first teachers

• the concern that performance practice is something everyone else knows but we can't quite figure out how to really know it for ourselves                                                                                
• the infinite longing for the ultimate answer to technical questions

• the great unknown of the future which often feels more like a tightrope walk off a cliff than a broad plain rising to majestic peaks  

I think all of the above are possible and likely happenings in most any practice room. On the campus where I work, we have practice rooms in an old nursing home which became a dorm which became practice rooms. An interesting story, I think, but in the highly landscaped, new-construction world of Florida, it's unusual. If you transplanted our building to a setting shaped by a culture that puts great stock in making use of existing structures, it wouldn't be unusual at all. And while I was initially picturing Scotland when I wrote that last sentence, downtown Richmond or Savannah would do just fine. For that matter, even in our local culture, the re-purposing of an old warehouse as a church would most likely be thought of as something awesome.

Nonetheless, it seems that interpretation is sometimes needed to help us appreciate the real beauty of the spaces in which we live and work, the goodness that is deeply woven into their fabrics. And so I share the following paragraphs which I wrote on Facebook this morning as several students discussed their return to campus for the new school year.

 
As rooms go, even the finest practice rooms rarely have a lot of nice things said about them. In general, I think practice rooms rank somewhere around hospital rooms on the great continuum of rooms.

My point is that the primary issue with any practice room is psychological, not physical, in that we shut ourselves up in them alone for hours at a time to do the disciplined work of really changing ourselves. It's hard to be excited about that day in and day out because it frequently involves coming face to face with the things in ourselves we'd rather not be aware of.

Our practice rooms have character and a history. In addition to the normal hard work mentioned above, they have housed prayer meetings, intense emotional support from peers, and creative moments when students have learned by being goofy. Caring faculty have sought out students in those rooms when a jury went badly or a question wasn't answered well or when a tragedy had turned a student's world upside down. Perfectly soundproof, no. But in Spence, you know that music is not made in a vacuum. Indeed, community is just beyond the door. One is not as alone in such a practice room. It is a real human environment like where a family lives. And yes, it was a nursing home. When you sit quietly before your instrument, you might just more deeply sense the relationship of your music making to the big picture. Your path is not just about the perfection of counting and control of sound. In your very room, questions of old age were asked such as: "Why am I still here on this earth?" And, we hope more often than not, daughter or little grandson appeared at the door to give an answer with their presence. Or a pastor fulfilled the ministry of showing up at the bedside of a demented one when no one else was there to see. And loved ones gathered as their resident moved on to another world. In that very hallway, they started to process their grief and sought the beginnings of a way forward.

I also can't imagine that as dorm rooms or practice rooms, marriage proposals haven't happened there. Plus, half the rooms have a lovely view of the lake. I become inspired when I see the various water birds drifting in for a landing - light, legato, Spirit-like.

Which brings me to what I think my real point must be. What has happened there makes it hallowed ground. When you go to a shrine, it might have some holes in it. It might be a little dingy. It might make you think of another time. It shows signs of the use of many pilgrims. And in its worn-ness, it has great potential for connecting you to others and to the Spirit that has woven beauty into daily life there. So I'm going to think of it as sacred ground, because it is.

P.S. It won't be there forever.

P.P.S. Blair, sorry for hijacking your nice post.  


Here's a picture of the way I plan to see it - a bit like a cathedral beside the lake.

June!

Lo and behold, it's June! Actually, nearly July. I've found one moment, late at night, to blog a bit  between our trip to Scotland and Ireland and the Lasker Festival.

A fantastic musical point of our journey overseas was worshiping at Christ Church in Dublin on Trinity Sunday. The key musical insight was that medieval high tech (a Gothic acoustic and a fine choir) is as good or better than any modern sound system. In fact, to hear the springing to life of such vibrant sounds while watching mere humans make them, was nothing less that miraculous - a true experience of "transcendence in the space," as the priest put it.

On returning home, I made a little music with an experienced musical friend. My friend threw me a curve ball. Really, I think the music threw my friend a curve ball.

While music can help us remember words, words can lead us astray while making music. In this case, starting into the wrong set of words led my friend into a similar, but not identical, musical phrase that was supposed to have occurred later in the music, requiring that I jump forward and make a cut in the performance.

I've often been pretty lucky with these sorts of things. Many times, my eyes have, by instinct or coincidence, jumped to the right spot on the score. Not this time. In fact, this time I took a gamble. I put my money on my singer friend catching the mistake and getting back on track with the right phrase. That's not what my friend did, so I needed to jump ahead, and my eyes couldn't find the right spot quickly enough for me not to sound lost.

The moral of the story? These things happen. Also, I would be wise to mark phrases that begin similarly with an easy-to-see, colorful bracket so I'll be prepared for such goings-on.

One more thing I'll remember from this June: at the invitation of another friend, we went on this lovely tour of the Lake Mirror civic center here in Lakeland. It was well-researched, charmingly presented, and covered politics, wildlife, history, and a bit of music. Here's a beautiful scene across the lake that I captured on film as we neared the end of the tour.

From the Composer's Hermitage

Recent conversations with composing students and colleagues have refreshed my awareness of the composing process. I believe I've written similar things before on this blog, and that just goes to show how true to my experience these things are.

1. Composing is a discipline, just like practicing or performing. You don't really know and understand about it until you are regularly working at it. Also, the dynamics of the process can be forgotten rather quickly during a hiatus from daily composing work.

2. Thinking you're writing for posterity or comparing you work with the great music you already know while you're trying to write it is a fast track to writer's block.

3. Sometimes, you need to write a lot of a thing to get it out of your system and move on to some stuff you might think is better.

4. Instead of trying to compete with Beethoven's finished works in one's sketches (!) think of your work as student work or experimentation. Explore lots of ways of generating material to keep from getting locked up: set a text, improvise, choose an existing model for some aspect of your work . . .

5. What you really need is a very clear assignment. Sometimes, you get stuck because the assignment you have given yourself isn't detailed enough.

6. And there is that stage in composing during which you feel like you're just spinning your wheels. This might happen with every work you write. There are minutes, hours, days, etc., when it seems like you've wasted your time, that nothing of worth has come out. For someone who isn't regularly involved in the discipline, this can be very discouraging.

How should you deal with this wheel-spinning time?
A. Know it's normal.
B. Have composer friends who can let you know it's normal.
C. Be a trouvere. That's an old word for "composer" that comes from the same root as the modern French verb for "to find." The point is that composing is a search in sonic and spiritual realms which usually involves some wandering and some groping about.
D. Know that those tedious times might be more than just a hassle to endure. They appear to be necessary for actual productivity. As John Cage put it, "the way to get ideas is to do something boring. For instance, composing in such a way that the process of composing is boring induces ideas. They fly into one's head like birds." 

7. Think like even more of a genius than you are. Notice, for example that Beethoven edited his pretty rudimentary materials into greatness. You, too, should try editing. Also, particularly important for developing well-rounded complete works is  thinking like Mozart, Hindemith, or Britten: have a vision of the whole. Carry it with you away from your usual composing station. Develop the habit of recognizing and moving along the continuum between your big ideas and actual notes on the page.

8. Pay attention to the engineers of other structures. They are your company, too. For example, 2000 years ago, Vitruvius declared three facets of architectural expression - "commodity, firmness, and delight." These aspects are indispensables of the composer's construction work,too. You must take into account your work's use. You need to apply excellent craft. And your basic impulse is probably to create something with aesthetic appeal. In terms of use, knowing who you are writing for is a big part of the clear assignment. Beyond that, when the current use and cultural context have become things of the past, the quality of craftsmanship will still be apparent. And we all want to touch and move the audience.

9. There's a wonderful moment when you have passed through the basic discovery of materials, the tedium, and the conceiving of the overall structure. In that moment, you finally see the big picture and have filled in enough details to know how the rest of the work is to be composed. And you know how to do it! That's the climax. From there on in, it's smooth sailing. After you have a few pieces under your belt, you actually develop an appetite for the work that gets you to that vantage point. I think it's then that you realize you really are a composer.

10. Finally, a word on inspiration. Some of the greatest composers have prayed for it. I have, at times, too. That prayer is a challenge and involves a bit of trepidation. It requires trusting that God will provide something through the process and suggests that you would dare try to intermingle your conscious human efforts with some mysterious mission above your own. Doing the work of composing as a follow-up to that prayer is a blessing that can build your faith.

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.










    

Experience

Ugh. I'm preparing to say "goodbye" to my 41st year in a few days.

Actually, I'm okay with it. 39 upset me. 40 was a calmer version of 39. And I think 41 has been a summing up of the last 20 years for me.

In these final days of 41, three events seem to have closed out that epoch in my life meaningfully.

1. a solo recital on the SEU series consisting of works from my auditions for D.M.A. programs that I have played several times since, as well as compositions by myself and my friend James M. Gurthie from our Chowan days
2. a final day in the recording studio with my colleague Shudong Braahmes on our Massenet chanson project
3. accompanying a couple of anthems on the South McKeel school music program including "Sahaytah" by Ben Allaway which was a lovely experience of sharing in a work about peace and community with a choir of children before a very large audience

I think I'm sensing that, over these last 20 years  (plus the 21 before that) I've gathered a little experience. This state of having a little experience under my belt is not so much about learning concepts - I think I've known these concepts for a while - but more about being able to apply them more than before.

What are these concepts?

• Concentration is the name of the game in performance, recording, and maybe in living, too. In making music, one concentrates on the sounds and how they unfold. You have to discipline your thinking and develop the ability not to be distracted by internal chatter that's not relevant to the sounds themselves. At the same time, you need not to get confused by concentrating on concentrating!
• The honest emotion of the moment when we come face to face with the music is the appropriate emotion. In performance, we sometimes fool ourselves into acting like we're feeling all sorts of things in the mistaken notion that we will have a compelling performance that way. It's the music that moves the listener and perhaps the performer's earnestness, not our manufactured histrionics.
• When working with other musicians, truly knowing the tempo gives a lot of peace. In classical music, we often feel that what happens within the time-span of the musical work is what matters, but being with the tempo in advance together is an important staring point that can set up a better relationship with your collaborator and the music.
• Our perceptions in the moment of music-making are often inaccurate. Our high level of focus within very specific parameters and our expectations can confuse us about what we're actually hearing. Recording and playback prove this. I sometimes hear intonation problems and lack of rhythmic coordination during performance that are not even there on the recording! Performing and listening are very different experiences. Trusted listeners can provide useful feedback we wouldn't have otherwise.
• Stress usually doesn't help you perform better and it's mostly about stuff that doesn't matter anyway!
• The experience of beauty and of health, including healthy relationships, are not just important for our development and refreshment as artists. When you take a walk by the lake or a trip to the art gallery, or have a good conversation with a friend, it doesn't just speak to your artistry. It ministers to your soul.
• Things take time. This is true of getting a recording just right and evidently it's true of getting my bad moods to clear out!

I think that's what I know and am applying a little more frequently.

Recital Prep

The new year has brought with it new responsibilities, new experiences, and new interests. Today, I'm a week away from my annual solo recital on the Southeastern University series and am contemplating my preparation.

In recent days, I have enjoyed hearing works such as Schumann's Aufschwung take on a wonderful dimension when played in studio class in the large space of Bush Chapel. I often find that the true potential of a work isn't really revealed until it is heard in a concert space. I've also been very pleased by my students and their independent preparation of works learned over the Christmas break. Thank you, Dr. Kaplinsky, for trying that idea with your studio back in 1992.

Also on my mind these days is The King's Speech which I finally got around to seeing. I was moved by this story of determination and I thought about how little determination I put into things. I want to put determination into the arts and into peace in the here and now.

Last week, we had the pleasure of hearing the same young musician play both Tchaikowsky's Rococo Variations and Rachmaninoff's Second Concerto. Between the two works was Rachmaninoff's Symphonic Dances, a veritable concerto for orchestra that expresses Rachmaninoff's faith with numerous references to his earlier works. This technique of "life motifs" reminded me of the rich symbolic syntax of Shostakovich's symphonies.

A few days after that, we attended the memorial concert for Florida Southern College's Robert MacDonald, a gentleman who was a great force in the shaping of Lakeland's arts life. His students admirably played works by Schubert, Rachmaninoff, Prokofiev, and Gershwin to a packed house. Family members also performed with flare and poise as they celebrated and grieved. Testimonies indicated the life-changing compassion and selfless giving of the man.

And now, I turn to my own work.

Someone recently asked me if there was a theme for my upcoming recital. My answer was "things I can play . . .given the amount of practicing I am doing."While I haven't been doing as much solo playing as I used to, I am hoping that I can achieve ease and successful communication in performing through good quality thinking as I prepare.

Really, from back in the summer, I was aiming to make this program a return to more serious pianism for me. I have been pursuing practicing, when I've had time, with that in mind. Through that, I have been learning that piano-playing answers really come through practicing.

My plan in this last week is to approach the recital as a sharing of great texts. These works, pieces by Bach, Mozart, and Brahms, are wonderfully textured fabrics, and when shared with listeners, somehow, out of the forms, the flow, and the phrasing, a semblance of life springs. It is my role to know these great texts better and better, to ponder and convey the discoveries of their composers. The performance really is a recitation of patterns and possibilities as envisioned by these geniuses.

In addition to those great traditional works, I'll also be sharing a little essay of my own in musical landscape writing. My three Chowan Etudes were really more etudes for the composer than the performer, while the concluding work of the recital is definitely an etude for the performer. My friend, James M. Guthrie, has written a superb work combining a Brahmsian sensibility with octatonic pitch organization and the occasional ancient-sounding cadence. Of all the new pieces I've played, this one strikes me as exciting and unique enough to become part of the standard repertoire if  a few other pianists would start playing it.

As I think back over the repertoire I just mentioned, there might be a more satisfying theme in the idea of the vortex. From Bach through Guthrie, these pieces typify the swirling movement and organization of our world, external and internal. Maybe feeling that in the music can help us all to embrace such a dynamic in our lives. Myself in particular!

On Re-hearing Beethoven's Eroica and Something a Little Bird Told Me

This evening, I had the important privilege of hearing a live performance of Beethoven's Eroica Symphony. I've taught the piece many times but have not heard it in person for years.

As I listened to our Imperial Symphony Orchestra play, I was reaffirmed in my calling to classical music. I sensed once again the special place in the human experience held by art forms such as the orchestra, the ballet, the opera, gamelan, or gagaku . . . in which numerous performers collaborate and coordinate at a high level in an endeavor that invites the individual and the culture into deep philosophical consideration. To maintain such traditions must truly be to stand against the everyday undermining of civilization.

During Beethoven's sonic epic, I was stirred by countless thoughts:

how grand the conception and masterful the craft

how modern the sounds - engaging in every fluid moment, plus Rite and Spring is already there

how imaginative the orchestral color

and what a melding of patterning and human emotion

what creativity of form

what limitless depths suggested within such well-defined boundaries

not to mention the long journey from at least J.S. Bach through his sons to Haydn with some influence from Mozart, all of whose contributions were needed to make such things possible


On the same concert, my colleague and friend, Annabelle Gardiner, performed The Lark Ascending of Vaughan Williams. Her playing was characterized by seamless bowing, sure intonation, and beautiful inflection, all amounting to a statement of profound serenity. While the musical movement was very natural, the touch of Vaughan Williams somehow placed it within a greater parenthesis of stillness. And in that stillness, I felt an acknowledgment that our grasp on the moment is feeble, that the present is always slipping into memory, and that nature breathes with us.

More wonderful than all of this was the fact that, as I mentioned to another friend, the work is ideal for Annabelle in that its virtuosity is selfless and its ways are graceful, genuine, and without power-oriented rhetoric. It's a perfect work for this colleague who is always nurturing, genuine, and humble. Those spiritual qualities are why I think she can play beyond categories of presentation and confidence, replacing them with much-needed presence and empathy.

Thank you ISO, Beethoven, Vaughan Williams, and Annabelle Gardiner.

And to all, a good night.

Piano Lessons - MANDUCARE PIGMENTUM

This semester, I re-read Ruth Slenczynska's excellent book Music at Your Fingertips. It's a very practical manual for pianists, and I was encouraged and intrigued to discover how many of its lessons had become a part of my own work during the years since I had last read it.

Slenczynska suggests that a pianist think not so much in terms of learning musical works as absorbing them. The idea is that simply remembering a collection of facts to be recalled more or less at leisure (which might be what the word "learning" connotes for many of us) does not provide the broad and incisive grasp required to do the work of a pianist. Indeed, a pianist is expected to remember an astronomical number of facts which must then be reproduced in sequence and in real time through physical means that, ideally, convey a high level of thought and some spiritual engagement. I like to think these information-rich, real-time, pressure-performance qualities make being a pianist a little like being a trauma surgeon - only for a surgeon, the stakes are a tad higher.

To truly be up to the pianistic task, one must absorb the work to be performed. The work itself must become part of us, and the absorption process necessary to bring that about takes time. The numerous steps and sustained effort required are quite different from what we might picture ourselves doing to prepare for a quiz, for example.

Because of all this, and as odd as it sounds, "eat paint" has become our unofficial studio motto this semester, mostly because I've talked about it a lot.

Imagine the following. For some inexplicable reason, you want to literally ingest a large Rembrandt canvas. You're desire is to truly absorb a physical work of art into your system. How would you proceed?

The wise course, short of seeking psychological help, would be to eat the paint in tiny portions over a long period of time. Otherwise, it will very quickly make you very sick.

This silly scenario sheds important light on the music-learning process.

First and foremost, it helps us envision the tiny amounts of musical material we ought to consider at any moment in the practice room. The temptation to go with the flow of the music and just play through things is very strong and is often not even recognized as a temptation. Being in the moment with the music is what we desire, but slowing down and maybe even stopping the musical flow to zero in on the details is what we need. To continue with these liquid images, performance is baptism in a rushing river while practice is discovering the life in a few drops of water as viewed through a microscope.

In addition to helping us understand the appropriate scale for our musical study work, "eating paint" also reminds us that if we try to absorb too much too fast the experience will become toxic. I am sure this happens most days in most practice rooms. And the symptoms are probably pretty much the same as if we were to eat too much actual paint: frustration, fatigue, fuzzy thinking, physical discomfort, and other phenomena.

Click here to view and consider eating paintings by Rembrandt.

Piano Lessons - Practicing and Teaching

This semester, I returned to being the primary piano teacher for piano majors at my university. It was a good time to return to this role, and a number of basics came into sharper focus for me as I articulated them for students over the course of the semester. Over the next couple of weeks, I hope to write a series of posts about these concepts.

I begin with the fact that teaching piano is, in large part, teaching people how to practice.

More than performing, or even teaching, practicing is the lifeblood and daily bread of musical life. If, on some level, you don't enjoy practicing, then music is probably not the life for you.

But before you or I give up, let's make sure we have really given it a chance. What often passes for practicing - haphazardly running through music in a practice room - is not practicing.

Practice time is really a (preferably) daily time for engaging mindfully and intentionally in practices. These activities become effective and meaningful when repeated regularly. Short of that, little practicing is actually occurring.

When I think of my own journey with practicing, teaching, and performing, I realize that a life with music can be a good path to self-integration and personal growth, if we are willing to make the journey.

At an early age, most of us are affirmed for our performances. We develop the dream of being performers and that dream fits well with our self-ness.

Over time, we realize that teaching is, at the very least, part of making a living as a musician. With a broader view of the history of music, we realize that teaching simply is part of being a musician. An examination of virtually any style of music will reveal a series of mentors who have handed down and developed their tradition.

It also turns out that teaching fulfills our social aspect in a way that performing never could.   

In maturing, we also realize that our daily work at the instrument can help us to achieve a healthy inner balance. We learn to appreciate rich comforts of routine and discovery as we fulfill our callings in the quieter pursuits of musical study.

Altogether, this journey can deepen our empathy for, and recognition of, the experiences of our fellow musicians, whether they be young students, collaborators, or sages we know. From the path of a life in music, we can also see that our identity is not just that of performer or teacher, recording artist or adjudicator. All of these things and many more are facets of a shared identity that crosses boundaries of time and style, the identity of musician.

Possible Steps toward Self-Acceptance and Everyone-Else-Acceptance

For musicians and others,
and especially me:


Take a deep breath.

Notice something.

Consider where you are.

Do so many times a day.


Why?

Most of the time, we're so busy inside and so fixated on our activities
that we need steps like these to become aware of the world around us
and to get some perspective on ourselves and others.

When we pause and reconnect,
I think we have a better chance of seeing ourselves and others more like God sees us.

 

Above, a powerful panel on St. Paul's Church in Manhattan

where I often worshiped with my good friend, Lloyd,

and attended Mass with my parents after the 1994 Thanksgiving Parade.

Stress

A dull headache,
a slight bit of breathlessness,
a barely discernible tightening of the chest,
plus a touch of tunnel vision -

That's my state after fifteen minutes spent writing an e-mail to all those who might know whether or not I need to rearrange my morning to show up at a court date for a young friend I look out for. (And I'm actually in pretty good shape!)

I will be surprised if I receive any useful information as a result of my e-mail. I probably won't even get a response.

Add to that the constant flux of the many performance and creative projects in which a college music professor is enlisted, and the ongoing efforts to help students learn whether or not they are all ready to, and I also need to list grades on MyFire.

Stress!

I actually deal with it pretty well, but it's not just my problem.

I recently watched an excellent documentary that explains a lot and warns of even more. I recommend multiple viewings since its message is counter-cultural and of dire significance.
http://www.pbs.org/programs/killer-stress/

It turns out that our bodies frequently continue to prepare for life and death crises even when the stimulus is really just an internal psychological concern. The heart reorients to supply blood for fight or flight, blood pressure goes up, etc., not because we're being chased by a predator but because we have to speak in public!

Good stress helps us rise to a challenge. Mismatched stress paralyzes, impairs, and chips away at longevity.

Who are the most badly stressed? Those who are on the lower levels of a hierarchy they care about - those who feel they have no voice and few channels for expressing power positively. No wonder the powerless become subversive or just disengage. The instinct for self-preservation demands it.

What reduces this type of stress? A sense of autonomy and connectivity as well as collegial styles from those at the top.

Stressed people age remarkably faster. Stressed people's bodies put on weight in a way that contributes specifically to heart disease. And a great many things happen internally that spell disaster in the long-run for the chronically stressed individual.

On this Sunday, I confess feeling a little resentment toward those who cause me stress, but I am reminded that, in general, "they know not what they do." I desire to know the difference between working something out and stressing out. And I want to limit the bad stress my students experience in the educational process with me. So often, students help my stress with good attitudes and kind words.

What contributes to our stressful lifestyles? Here's some of what I think.

1. The way we have allowed technology to take over our time, and our internal functioning, and our relationships! The society into which I was born was peopled by professional folk and others who set about life in a reposeful and balanced fashion and were not inundated by unfiltered information and messages. There was a time in the day when the mail arrived and the letters were written. A limited number of folks used your phone number, and it was usually of some importance when they did.

Today, the computer sits on my desk alluringly suggesting that someone may be responding to me or reaching  out at any moment. My hopefulness for connection through that machine stays nervously engaged even when I am supposedly concentrating. Those born into this world have known no other way, so their mild ADD seems normal to them.

In today's professional world, instant response is the name of the game. E-mail waltzed in and took over before we had a plan for it or knew we should resist it. And so we become impatient if our document isn't passed around and edited by everybody before brunch, and we think that's a normal pace. We add stress to ourselves (and animosity between ourselves) when it doesn't happen that way.

I bet some of the best professionals limit their computer time when possible so they might set their whole persons to activities that build legacies and civilization.

Many good tips about slaying the e-mail monster can be found here: http://www.artofmanliness.com/2013/07/17/email-tips/

2. In college work, the ever-expanding layers of "assessment" fill up time and take away energy from traditional endeavors of scholars and teachers. I know it's the wave of today, and maybe of the future, but it wasn't the wave of twenty years ago or of the preceding thousands of years. And it's the role of educators to mention such things. Feel free to provide your own rant at this point.

3. Our society's celebration of the super-human who multi-tasks and keeps adding tasks and never says "that's asking too much of one person" is another contributor to the problem. Just as we don't do much to celebrate peacemakers, we also don't take out time to remember those who contributed something important to our world by moving at a deliberate pace and being fair to everyone in their lives. We need to be aware of other ways of being, and we might just need to push back while we can still function pretty well.

I'm yet to offer any solutions. I'm mostly sounding an alarm in my little community.

But here's what I know and keep rediscovering. Practicing sabbath keeps a bit of the better, older way alive for us. It slows the pace and makes room for some quiet life. Not only is it a time to stop working, but it might also be a time to stop thinking about working.

What to do with that silence? Take time to observe nature. Listen to fine music. Let the shapes of these things speak to you. And while you're at it, stop talking to yourself. Develop a bit of discipline for relaxation so as to stop the obsessive twittering of your mind about the moment or what to do with the next one.

I'm going to do that right now.

If you don't have access to a lovely natural place today, here's a photo of my friend Rev. Ricky's property back in North Carolina for your own relaxed e-pond gazing. Click on the image for a larger, more gaze-friendly version.

Magic of the Romantics

The summer is over and the new academic year has begun. My ideas for a rich and relfective end-of-summer post slipped away during the beginning-of-the-school-year faculty seminar. But that's alright with me since the nostalgia of the transition has been replaced by fresh learning and new noticing.

 

The practice time of the summer prepared a space in life, and a pace of life, for ongoing piano practice. Many days, I am able to spend an hour or two at the piano in fairly concentrated work. I have, for the most part, accepted that this practice time supercedes some other priorities and am somewhat at peace about other things taking longer because I am putting some time in at the keyboard.

 

My new schedule at Southeastern involves more piano teaching than the previous three years. I have nine private piano students in addition to my theory and class piano teaching. These students keep me busy with thinking about a range of repertoire.

 

Standards from the Romantic era have been on my mind this week, each with its own brand of magic.

 

The imagination of Grieg's piano concerto can be easy to take for granted since the work is so familiar. Returning to the piece after many years, I am touched by the power of the first movement's classic conflict proclaimed by the rhetoric of the solo piano. My student and I also noticed the great variety of themes that move quickly and fluidly from one to the next throughout the first movement. 

 

Many of us pianists have a couple of stories in the back of our minds when we hear this piece. One is of Liszt sightreading the concerto and encouraging Grieg because he recognized Grieg's original voice and masterful craft. The other is Rachmaninoff's statement that this is the ideal concerto. Teaching the piece now gives me a deeper appreciation of those two great pianists' takes on its significance.

 

Yesterday morning, I had the fun of teaching Liszt's well-known Liebestraum. The famous melody is, as a theory student once said of the opening theme of Chopin's C Sharp Minor Nocturne Op. 27 No. 1, a "forming melody." It begins with repetitions of  the same note, then  moves a little stepwise, and finally takes on a much more melodic shape.

 

My favorite discovery from this lesson is that some of the magic of Liszt's "dream of love" is contained in a single marking, a decrescendo that makes all the difference. If one were to play measures  15 through 20 purely on instinct, the goal could very well be the downbeat of 19, which is the point at which the harmony points back to the home key following a striking detail of harmonization (a quick trip to E major from A flat major). Liszt's decrescendo lets us know not to make that turning-home harmony the goal but to have the sound recede at this point. Thus, when we put the decrescendo in the right measure, the transformation of the melody through a fresh harmonization quickly slips back into the haze of the dream consciousness.

 

Another student brought  Brahms's Opus 118. Earlier in the day, I had taught a bit of 18th-century counterpoint, a style in which the resolution of 4ths and 7ths, and so forth, is so important. Those expressive gestures move from the level of meaningful moments in Baroque music to constituting the very fabric from which the first movement of the Brahms is made. Every measure has an appogiatura or suspension or two or three. The result is music that of urgency that is constantly yearning.

 

The second movment of this Brahms set is a beautiful study in the sense of growth exhibited by phrases. To place this with satisfying expression requires a sense of elegant movement through majestic spaces: something like this. 

 

 

Shall We Gather at the River

As of late, some of the most rewarding teaching experiences have come from exploring hymns with students. One recent graduate wanted to analyze "Shall We Gather at the River" together. It is a great hymn about the journey. Its wavy tune rides atop snappy march rhythms. That combination plays out the coordinated mass movement towards the river. One cannot help but think of allegories of the Christian pilgrimage such as Hinds' Feet in High Places and Pilgrim's Progress. "All the Way My Savior Leads Me" and "We're Marching to Zion" (two other hymns in which Lowry had a hand) also express important things about the journey.

 

The word "beautiful" is a beautiful sounding word. Its repetition in the chorus can shift the focus of our hearing a bit from the meaning of the word to the beauty of its sounds. The more we sing the phrase "the beautiful, the beautiful river" the more we can hear in it the lovely sounds of the lapping waves.

 

 

The word "river" is repeatedly set to the interval of a third, usually descending. A quick survey of hymn tunes with prominent descending thirds directed my attention to the word "Jesus" in "There's Something about That Name," "Jesus Loves Me," and "What a Friend We Have in Jesus." All three have a bit of a comforting lullaby-like quality. Perhaps this lullaby touch is also a good fit for "Shall We Gather at the River" since Lowry describes the hymn growing out of a nap/vision on a warm summer afternoon.

 

The text is a version of the great river scene in Revelation 22 which we might say has its source in Genesis 2 and Ezekiel 47. I think it is likely that for many listeners the tune is accompanied by pleasant notions of "simpler times" - of grandparents' days - and some vague notions of Heaven. But the hymn is really about much more. It is about the culmination of time and the healing of the nations, something Lowry's original listeners would have longed for since the hymn comes from the very year of Lincoln's assassination. Framed by a question and an answer ("Shall we? . . . Yes, We'll ! . . ."), it seems to me that this is a hymn in which a congregation affirms its faith, a faith potentially shaken by the day's events and the shattering of its society.

 

 

Finally, the hymn isn't about crossing a river. I bet the crossing image is an aspect of the eronneous nebulous accretions the hymn has collected in our consciousness like barnacles on a boat. (I will leave that last simile in as evidence that I was drafting this post at 3:40 A.M..) All the way back to the river Styx, the river crossing motif seems to me to be more about death than life in the Western tradition. More recently, Stonewall Jackson's famous last words were "Let us cross over the river and rest under the shade of the trees." But there is one situation in which crossing the river has meant life: the liberated slave meeting a conductor at the river so as to cross over into freedom.

 

 

Lowry specifically stated his desire to treat the river of life with his setting, not a river of death. This Revelation 22 river is unlike the Styx of Charon or even the Ohio of Tice Davids. Unlike the rivers of the ages, it is not a barrier. No crossing is required. In this scene, the limitations and anxieties we've know in earthly life are no longer relevant. We finally gather in the presence we've been seeking.

 

 

This is my mother's mural of an idyllic river scene painted for the fellowship hall

of Piney Grove Baptist Church in Sampson County, NC.
And here's my own musical riverscape, a setting of "Shall We Gather at the River" performed with my good friend and tenor, Jeff Prillaman.

"There's Within My Heart a Melody"

Yesterday, a student and I spent some time trying to figure out how one might play Luther Bridgers's "He Keeps Me Singing" with some literary and theological sensitivity.

My student brought the hymn to me commenting on the deep themes of the text that seem strangely juxtaposed with its perky tune. Bridgers wrote the text and tune, so it wasn't a mismatch in his mind. Like a lot of hymns with music in this style, it seems to be written from a place of reflection and experience so that its themes can be expressed joyfully ultimately, even though the words and concepts do not all seem joyful to us on first hearing.

When we started to read the text together, I was struck by the seeming jumble of images and metaphors in its five brief verses. In an attempt to make some sense of this jumble, we made a chart for sorting these words. We found the following:

• music words - melody, discord, strings, chords, swept, stirred

• water words - ebb and flow, wrecked, waters deep, stirred, swept (even though these last two words appear in a mostly music-word verse, they are words that could also resonate with water movement)

• land-journey words - leads, path, rough, steep

• flight words - starry sky, wing, flight

• being-in-God's-presence words - whispers, wing, smiling face, feasting, resting, seeing, shouting, singing, reigning

Biographically speaking, Bridgers wrote this hymn after the loss of his wife and children in a fire and the personal crisis that followed. The flow of the verses make sense as an expression of his healing process that involved conquering questions and depression  through faith.

But Bridgers did not directly name the tragedy in his hymn. He kept the image very general: a wreck. And for several generations, the hymn has spoken more broadly than an expression of an individual's testimony. Its rich jumble of images still confonts and comforts us.

As my student and I looked at our chart, a meaningful progression through the verses started to emerge. We came to see the disparate metaphors as stages in a journey: the journey of Christian faith.


Being on the sea gives the sense that one's fate is very much out of one's own hands. The unknowns of the depths are frightening.These sea experiences are emblematic of the pre-faith phase of one's life. Although unrecognized at the time, the loving God is present.

Then comes a shipwreck: a harrowing and devastating running aground. But on the shore, we find Christ waiting with a feast, rest, and personal warmth.

With Christ, a pilgrimage begins. In this stage, we recognize his leadership and presence with us through the rigors of the journey.

In the final stage, the most freeing mode of journey is achieved: flight. In salvation future, we go beyond this world as masters in our own right.

It turns out the that the key to the entire text (at least in this interpretation) is the very last word of that cheery chorus: "go." The hymn is about going on the Christian journey. And I would assume that Bridgers the evangelist was very much about that himself.


A few more layers ------

The hymn seems to be a testimony to mystical, personal, religious experience. Jesus is whispering in the heart  . . . and later, he's on the path with the singer. It's a bit like the road to Emmaus.

Jesus' words in the first verse are like his words during the tempest scene in the Gospels.

"Shout and sing" - in various translations of the worship scenes in Revelation, there is a mixture of shouting and singing.

The metaphorical story of salvation signified by modes of travel as described above is told in the context of a reflection in the hymn, so there are times when it seems a little unlinear. Naming the more reflective portions of the text as such helps the narrative stand out.

Once we realized how the story starts on the water, we saw how wavy the tune is: full of waves and chops plus a couple of big swells in the chorus. Play the tune alone and the chromaticism might even seem to add a touch of sea sickness. 

To signal the transition/transformation to flight in the last verse, it might be a good time for a simple half-step modulation.

P.S. The photos are from our own recent travels.

Home Again and Practicing

I'm returning to regular practicing and blogging today after a two-week trip involving a festival, a recording, and a conference. I'm excited to get back to the piano for some quality work without pressing deadlines.

An "actually-practicing-is-helpful" testimony:
During the last two weeks, I had to play a very scalar piece a few times. I found that practicing scales in the key of the piece for evenness and precision during the morning hours helped me to somehow, sort of magically, be able to play them in their various configurations in the piece later in the day!

The five to eight hours of hymn singing, hymnologocial presentations, and fellowship with hymnologogists that I experienced each day during last week's annual conference of the Hymn Society in the United States and Canada, convinced me that work ought to flow out of worship and prayer. So I'm starting this morning's practice session by reading through a few hymns from my newly-acquired African American Heritage Hymnal.

An hour later -
I started learning the second movement of Schumann Fantasy today. Years ago, I asked a good friend who is great at giving solid and exciting performances how he learns his music. He said that he usually spent a month or so just getting familiar with a work, analyzing, determining fingering etc.. During that, month he didn't push himself to be memorizing. And at the end of that time, most everything was memorized already. Then he zeroed in on the tricky spots.

I think that approach will be good for this movement. I like to think of practicing a piece of music a little like getting to know a person. I'm feeling a little like this Schumann movement is a bit of a catankerous co-worker. We're going to have to be in a lot of meetings before I warm to it and start to recognize and appreciate its best qualities!

 

Blogging While Practicing

As I was waiting for alarm clock to sound this morning, a new motto coalesced in my mind:
active but not stressed.

Sorry it's not in Latin

Active but not stressed is a middle way between obsessing about relaxng and generating physical tension as a misguided means of  musical expression.

It's a little pardoxical - worrying about being relaxed enough is its own sort of stress, and tightening up physically beguiles us by making it seem like we're spontaneously going with the flow of the music!

"Active but not stressed" also seems like a good goal for one's life beyond practicing.

*******

Piano lessons from dance instructor -

Every dance requires the presence of an animal - the cow:
ie. Change Of Weight from one foot to the other

Very Dorothy Taubman-esque, eh?

Also, the lead provides the frame so the follower has freedom to do flowing, expressive, improvisatory things.

Isn't that the relation of the hands in most piano textures? And isn't that rubato?
"The left hand is the conductor; the right hand is the singer," etc.

*******

Reading through Donald Waxman Etudes. One is subtitled "Lambent Trajectories."

This suggests a theme or organizing principle for a performance: piano recital as vocabulary lesson

Joy, Cues, SInging

Joy

With another week and a half of practicing under my belt it has occurred to me that the sensations of mild displeasure or outright struggle that sometimes accompany practicing are really to be expected since the activity is really about altering one's mind through sustained effort. Recognizing that bigger picture helps  move toward joy which is something that occasionally takes a back seat in efforts at making music. Remembering that we are changing ourselves through the process and also seeking to engage joyfully with musical labor can really refresh and energize one's mindset about practicing. Remembering that practicing is a "get to" and not a "have to" experience helps, too. I think I'm rediscovering that practicing is not just something I do - it's something I like to do!

Cues

I did a bit of teaching this week which got me thinking of cues. One model for teaching piano is that of helping students develop internal cues for how to do the activity well. I consciously work that way with my students sometimes, but I seldom do my own practicing with real intention in that area. However, I should and could apply the approach at every stage in my learning. Thinking in terms of what cues one needs at each stage seems like a great way of dealing with the fluid nature of making music at the piano. What cues do I need in this phrase, on this day, at this piano, for this performance . . .?

This discipline of giving one's self good cues is reminiscent of the practice of centering prayer in which the contemplative acknowledges the various thoughts that distract, without allowing them to truly disturb the endeavor, and then gently directs the mind and soul back to the focus.

Teaching piano lessons in the otherwise pretty free-flowing midst of summer vacation makes me grateful for such settings and situations that give me cues that trigger clear and well-organized behaviors on my part. When I am in a room with a piano and a student, my system has a pretty good idea of what to do. When I am in front of a class of aural theory students, my experience and training take over. It is nice to be in such familiar terrain where there are less fundamental issues to decide.

Singing
I've always heard that one should sing one's piano music to determine phrasing and so forth. I noticed this week that singing can also help to envision an appropriate base line to which to return in terms of both dynamics and intensity. The limitations of the voice in those areas are strongly sensed, and because of that, I think issues of scale and expression can become clearer when using the voice than when facing a piano with two hands and no mediation. So often, the flavor of the music becomes distinct and touching when we know not so much when to "go for it" but when to back off. As Earl Carlyss often said in chamber coachings, "If you can't raise the bridge, lower the stream."

Discoveries

***Warning: Hidden in the midst of these seemingly random observations is some stuff that some might find a little provocative.***

Here are some of this week's piano practicing and listening discoveries:

Albeniz's music has a high incidence of measures full of double flats along with interlocking and crossing hands. This makes for some disorienting reading. Certain pages of "El Polo" are easy-to-see examples. You can listen to Alicia de Larrocha playing this here starting around 7:30.

Ravel's Daphnis et Chloe contains bits of Valses Nobles et Sentimentales (or vice versa). They were written around the same time.

The first movment of Schumann Fantasy and the E minor prelude of Bach from WTCI have something in common in terms of left hand figuration and maybe a bit of the right hand pacing. Plus, the Bach is a little fantasy-like in its unfolding: a mysterious opening giving way to a lively second section followed by a highly chromatic, unusual, brief two-voice fugue - kind of Schumannesque. The two pieces might suggest some interesting parallels as the openers of two halves of the recital I'm preparing.

I started reading through the first two movements of Rachmaninoff Cello Sonata and might learn them in large part that way - by reading through them over the summer.

There are more than sixteen exercises in Persichetti's mirror studies. There are four sets of sixteen. So, I'll aim for three or so a day so as to make it through the entire book once a month over the summer, not once a week as I mistakenly thought the last time I posted!

Putting in two to three hours practice time each day this week feels a little like healthy exposure to the sun. I suppose one can overdo it a bit with practice and the sun, though, resulting in a general withering as a person in both cases.

Several events this week led me to a little reflection on our culture's emphasis on instant gratification. These happenings included discussion at a centering prayer meeting, lunch with my friend and colleague Paul Corrigan (check out his work on teaching and learning) , and a lovely concert by the Florida Southern Children's and Girls' Choirs.

It seems to me that the experience, aesthetic, and discipline of classical music are all tuned into process over time. The music comes from a world in which things were achieved more slowly and in a fashion that fostered an awareness of process. We participants in contemporary American culture have the luxury of living with little engagement with the importance of process to human endeavor and the temptation to focus a bit too much on always feeling entertained. I love that many in my parents' generation give us a living connection to a time when "spare time" was spent doing chores necessary for orderly living or with putting one's mind to solving a problem.

Our popular musical aesthetics, shaped by radio, require brevity, and because of that, more or less instantaneous appeal. But it's hard to take much of a musical journey in three minutes. The radio has also dictated that styles need to be pretty consistent dynamically, which eliminates one aspect of expressive potential. The result in the concert or worship setting is a few big dynamic moves that exist to give the listener a rush or a little impression of a large-scale formal move in spite of the absence of significant large-scale form.

I wonder if the next evolutionary step for humanity will be a step back from the engagement with process and higher-level thinking that help to distinguish us as a species. How ironic that such as step might be brought about by our ingenuity and technological progress. And so it is that one might become a passionate advocate for classical music as part of a larger mission to preserve what we believe it is to be human.

To my friends who are keeping the human focus on process in any musical styles, I applaud you!

A final  discovery: while listening to a beautiful performance of Franck's Panis Angelicus sung by a quartet of four young men (members of the Florida Southern Childrens' Choir) the genius of Franck's canon in this piece dawned on me.

Comeback - Summer 2013

For the last six years, I have spent a good bit of time on the theory and composition side of my career. Starting today, I'm coming out of retirement as a pianist. (I'm only 41, so it's not time to hang up my hat just yet. And I actually do have a hat.)

This summer, barring some unforseen events, I plan to get back into gear as a pianist. Perhaps blogging about the process will contribute to my momentum.

The repertoire:

a new program for the coming year which I hope to perform numerous times -
Bach Prelude and Fugue in E minor, WTC Book I
Mozart C Major Sonata K. 330
Some Messiaen work (suggestions anyone?)
and Schumann Fantasy

The Back and Mozart are old pieces and the Schumann and I casually dated a few times in the mid-90s.

Plus, a Rachmaninoff program to be performed with my excellent string colleagues, Ron and Annabelle Gardiner: Cello Sonata, Elegiac Trio, and Vocalise.

The plan:
Learn one movement of the Schumann and one of the other pieces each month -
May - Bach
June - Mozart
July/August - Messiaen

Today I put in a little time with four of Persichetti's mirror studies. There are 16 in all. I'm aiming at an average of four a day so as to get through the cycle once a week over the summer.

I also practiced sightreading today. I haven't really practiced sightreading regularly since I was a child. Today's selections included "El Albaicin" of Albeniz. There's some tricky whole-tone stuff in there.

I also listened to Rachmaninoff's tone-poem The Rock this morning and read the liner notes then spent some quiet time admiring nature. I feel like a student again!

Day 1, pretty good.

Bach!

It's a beautiful, quiet morning at Southeastern - roses blooming, birds singing . . .  At 8:00 A.M. there were four students in the coffee shop, and me, each of us quietly studying. Well, I was drinking coffee. They were studying.

Yesterday afternoon was a new and fun experience for me. Kathy and I performed as part of the Central Florida Bach Festival. The Festival is about forty years old and maintains a great choral tradition presenting works of Bach and others. Yesterday's offerings were a Buxtehude mass and Bach's Cantatas 78 and 131. I also played harpsichord for a trio sonata with my SEU colleagues Ron and Annabelle Gardiner. 

The special take-aways from the event were as follows.

1. Bach needs movement. A physically loosened-up performance seems to be in the right spirit, as far as I'm concerned. It's a spirit of joy.

2. Bach is incredibly rich. I have an idea of Bach's music based on the pieces I play and teach. I'm afraid these amount to a generalization of Baroque style. But there is so much more personality and variety to the actual music.

3. Bach is delightful. I loved watching the audience during the cantatas - heads bobbing to the beat, smiles, and eyes closed in serene contemplation (not sleep)!