1. Learning is not possible if one is not willing to accept responsibility. In other words, try to not make excuses for bad playing. The piano is too heavy, the piano is too light, the audience was noisy… in the end, it is important to accept that you are responsible for the way you play and for how you learn your instrument. The first step towards being a better musician is understanding that it is your decisions that determine how you progress. While your teacher has a lot to say in the matter, it is your decision to study with that particular teacher and not another. You are in control. Accepting this puts improvement in your hands; avoiding this responsibility stops you from advancing.

2. Playing a piece badly does not make you a bad musician or incapable of learning. Making a mistake when you play is not the same as being a mistake. This point  is also important for teachers to understand since many teachers make the mistake of attempting to equate a student’s intelligence with that student’s ability to play a musical instrument. Making mistakes when you play means that there are things that you must fix. While the piece you are playing has mistakes, this does not make you any less of a musician or inferior as a person. It simply means that there is work that must be done in order to improve.

3. Practice is not effective without the right attitude. The most important element in practicing a musical instrument is maintaining an approach focused on improving. One of the most basic principles of maturing and becoming an adult is learning to control our emotions and reactions. While you often cannot control your playing, you can always control how you react. The right reaction to a problem is trying to understand its causes and learning how to fix it, the wrong reaction is wallowing in self-pity. Practice is all about making mistakes and then learning how to overcome them. Many students may also fail to pay attention to their problems, choosing to ignore them, and believing that the power of “positive thinking” will magically make their playing better. This should also be avoided. After all, if you see no room for improvement in your playing, then you will simply not improve.

Filed under: Music ]]> http://ahmedfernando.wordpress.com/2011/12/19/changes-in-attitude/feed/ 4 ahmedfernando http://ahmedfernando.wordpress.com/2011/07/09/josef-suk/ http://ahmedfernando.wordpress.com/2011/07/09/josef-suk/#comments Sun, 10 Jul 2011 06:09:56 +0000 ahmedfernando http://ahmedfernando.wordpress.com/?p=959 ]]> There are certain musical experiences that stay with you forever. I’ve written about a few of my own before (e.g. my first experience listening to Alicia de Larrocha.) When I first started writing this blog, I wanted it to be an outlet for sharing the things I find fascinating and incredible about music — listening to music, playing music, teaching music, living life as a musician. One of my first posts on this blog, “Brahms as it should be played”, was about a recording that I adore: the Brahms Piano Trios with Janos Starker, Julius Katchen, and Josef Suk.

In fact, to say that I adore this recording actually falls short of what I mean; listening to this CD has become something of a physical need. Every few weeks, I find myself needing to listen to it. Every time I listen to these incredible musicians play, I find something new that I love about their playing. Even though I’ve literally listened to this recording hundreds of times, just yesterday I fell in love with a peculiar change in bowing when Starker repeats the first part of the B major Trio; last week I fell in love with the way Josef Suk changes colors constantly in the development of the first movement of the C major Trio, making it seem as if there were a viola playing along with them; just this morning, there was a little glissando in the Scherzo for the second Trio that just blew my mind… The people around me know that I can go on for hours about the things I love in this recording.

A few hours ago I read that Josef Suk recently passed away. I was very sad to get these news. To me, he is the violinist. The way this amazing musician played the violin is for me the ideal; he played the violin as it was meant to be played: warm, emotional, extremely rich in color — like a singer, but so much more songful than any singer could ever hope to be. Josef Suk’s excellent recordings of Dvorak, Martinu, and especially this recording of the Brahms Trios, made me fall in love with chamber music and with a particular way of playing that is at the core of what I think music should be.

Rest in peace, Josef Suk. I never got to meet the man, or listen to him live. However, every few days I listen to his playing and find something new to love. I’m sure that will still be the case for a long time to come.

This is the third time I’ve linked this video since I started writing this blog. I’m sure it won’t be the last:

Last week, we had auditions and selection of new students at our conservatory. This year, I took charge of auditioning all the kids that signed up for piano lessons. I did this because, in the last couple of years, I’ve gradually shifted my focus away from the advanced college students and more towards teaching children.

After listening to about thirty kids from the ages of six to eleven, I was struck with the huge variety in personalities, talents, and different strengths and weaknesses. Some kids were extremely outgoing — and oh so loud! — while others were so shy it was impossible to get them to say anything. Some kids had perfect pitch and others could barely sing back a note, or recognize if a note was higher or lower than another. And I knew that, once we started with our lessons, I’d have a bunch who would breeze through the beginners books and pieces. Others would advance slowly, struggling with each step.

However, in the long run, none of that is important.

I’ve had about four dozen children take lessons with me since I started teaching. My wife is much more focused on teaching kids than me; she’s taught the violin to about twice that number. The other day, we were talking about how children progress when learning a musical instrument. They’re like trees. A teacher can prune, water, and nurture them, but each of them grows in a completely different way. Eventually, each one branches out into new interests and activities which may overtake their interest in the violin, piano, or whatever musical instrument they’re learning. It can be difficult to predict what path they’ll take. Whether, a few years down the line, their musical instrument will still play an important role in their life, or whether they’ll abandon it for something else.

Talent, or musical aptitude, is not a good indicator of long term success. That is, if we define talent as having good pitch, rhythm, musical memory, and physical aptitude. Some “talented” kids breeze through the first months of lessons, only to crash against a brick wall when their “talent” isn’t enough to take them farther. A musical background can also be defining, but it isn’t a good indicator of future success either. My wife and I have both taught children with parents that are professional musicians, only to have the kids abandon their musical instruments after a while.

In our experience, there is one factor that never fails when predicting whether a piano student will be successful in the long-term. By the way, this applies to all levels:

Long-term success at any musical instrument is directly related to discipline in practicing.

From the first few lessons, an experienced teacher can tell which students will still be around by the time the year ends. Those that have a practice schedule, are organized while practicing, and are constant with their practice will always be the ones that succeed. Since you can’t really demand that kind of structure from a young child, you must demand it from the parent. That is why:

In young children, long-term success is directly related to parental involvement both in lessons and in practicing.

In our experience, these two points never fail to predict long-term success. Talking with other teachers we’ve found that most experienced teachers eventually arrive at this same conclusion. In fact, a quick Google search revealed this piano teacher who says the exact same thing in his blog and this research paper from the University of Helsinki which comes to the conclusion that musical aptitude is a very minor factor in selecting new students (with motivation, discipline, and parental involvement being the most important.)

Image in this post found here.

The times I’ve had to cram like this for a concert have been pretty uneven. It worked for me with Gershwin, since it ended up being more improvisatory and spontaneous because the interpretation wasn’t too grounded and overly drilled. On the other hand, it was a complete disaster when I had to do it with Brahms. In both cases, the notes left my head almost as fast as they went in, I wouldn’t be able to play a single note of either of those pieces right now, even with a gun to my head.

Getting a student to practice consistently is a familiar problem for most teachers, maybe because this cramming habit is ingrained in many children. When I get absolute beginners in my class I recommend that they practice in short sessions of 10 minutes, two sessions per day. Every day. There’s the key: every single day. Even a single daily 10-minute practice session each day is better than skipping a couple of days and then undergoing a two-hour practice marathon before the lesson. Getting this practicing habit across is a recurring problem when teaching children, and a big headache for most teachers.

A typical method, making the parents supervise the kid and sign a practice sheet of some sort, doesn’t always work. And it doesn’t work because of one simple fact that anyone teaching children knows:  parents lie. They’ll sign knowing full well that the child didn’t practice, or they’ll do it without actually checking to see if he did; they’ll bargain with the kid and then, for some reason that I’ll never understand, lie straight to your face: “he practiced so much this week!”

Practicing in short 10-minute sessions was something that I thought was exclusive to children and beginners, to hold their interest. Gradually I would get them to add a bit more practice time to each session. However, recently I’ve found that practicing in short little bursts like these gives really good results for a professional as well. It makes it easier to conserve that one thing that is so important: enthusiasm.

Lately I haven’t had a choice, it’s either practice in short 10-minute bursts or don’t practice at all. With recitals and concerts looming in the horizon, the second one is not really an option at all, unless I want to quit playing completely — by the way,  is there a term for giving up the piano? (In Spanish I’ve heard it referred to as “throwing out the harp.”) In any case, I’ve been forced to practice in a dozen little bursts each day. Either between students, or in the little while in which my 8-month baby is absorbed with some particular toy and doesn’t demand my presence.

After a few months of learning some repertoire by almost exclusively practicing in this way,  I’m pleasantly surprised with the results so far. An obvious advantage to practicing in this way is in the increased focus on solving problem spots and going straight to the point each time I sit down to play. It also probably has to do with the way the piece grows in the mind between practice sessions.  However, the main reason this has worked for me is probably more subtle; I think it has to do more with the way I end practicing each time. By practicing in short little bursts that are suddenly interrupted with a pressing matter (either a student or a baby needing his dad,) I’m forced to stop whatever I’m doing. If the practicing is going well, then I am enthusiastic and can’t wait to get started again; if the music isn’t cooperating with me that particular day then I’m forced to stop before I reach throw-the-piano-through-the-window levels of frustration.

I’m not sure it would work with everyone, and I’m still unsure about recommending it to my older students, but so far it’s been working for me. At least much better than the 4-5 hour non-stop practice marathons I’d stupidly do back in music school.

We deal with it constantly and for many musicians, including myself, it is a constant source of frustration that the notes we play are nowhere close to the music we feel and imagine. I suppose that for some composers this must have been torture. This isn’t frustrating only for performers; the hardest thing for me as a teacher is to give that enthusiasm to a student, that sense of awe about the works we play.

We should be grateful for our notes though, those sounds we coax out of our instruments are really all we have. They’re our connection to the universe and, while the sound that results may seem ridiculously small compared to that, music isn’t really in the sounds that we make by blowing, hammering, scratching and making stuff vibrate. It resides in our imaginations, in our intentions when we play and in our reactions when we listen. Let’s try then to perform our musical notes with joy but to always go beyond them, lest we find that our notes are as cold, muddy toads croaking along with nothing to say.

I think that this need is what is behind art, a need to fill up holes within ourselves. At some point the composer also felt that urge to fill his own void with sound. That’s the closest I can come to explain how it feels; there may be no practical reason to play that recital, but there is something within that needs attention, a hole that may be making everything else come out of balance. The best part of the whole experience comes afterward, once you are playing and someone in the audience finds that what you are playing also fills a similar hole of their own. That is probably the greatest thing I can get out of a recital, not having it be “beautiful” or “well-played” but having it be something that helps fill a hole in my soul and does the same for someone else.

One of my earliest musical memories is of me and my brother as toddlers dancing around while our father played a record of this concerto with Alicia de Larrocha. There were words that we would sing along to the second theme of the concerto about how “all the good little kittens were off to their beds,” (in Spanish: todos los gatitos ya nos vamos a dormir…) and when the trumpets played that little descending third that begins the theme before the coda, we would sing along: “Meaaaa-ow! Meaaaa-ow!” Now I get to practice this concerto while my baby watches from the playpen (not too long, I don’t want him getting too bored,) jumps around on his stationary jumper (louder, because that jumper is pretty noisy,) sleeps in his crib (sempre una corda e molto pianissimo,) or with him on my lap (one hand at a time and with him “playing along” with his fists — a lot of fun by the way.) I am truly blessed.

The Mozart concertos that I have played before — 9, 11 and 12 — all had original cadenzas by the composer. Since this one doesn’t, I decided to try my hand at improvising the cadenza. I am not sufficiently skilled at improvising to go out on stage and invent something completely from scratch. Instead, I decided to set up a sort of framework that I could follow, working out beforehand certain chord progressions and themes that I’d like to play along the way, but leaving enough room for spontaneity. For example, in a certain spot I could know that I want to go from C major to E minor using a certain chord progression; whether I do it playing arpeggios from the development section, or scales in broken octaves, or a sequence made out of one of the themes is up to whatever I’m feeling at the moment.

My first attempt at a cadenza went something like this: Go down along the keyboard from the I6/4 chord until I reach the bottom G. After that, I would make some sort of sequence using the second theme while modulating to E minor and then come back to G major. Play something based on the “Meaow” theme and then hit the trill and give the orchestra their cue. Quick and simple with little parts of my favorite themes from the first movement. After a while, I noticed that the beginning of the development section would be a nice way to start the cadenza, maybe changing it to major instead of the original minor key, so I added that. Then, while practicing the development, I noticed that I could cross my left hand over while playing the descending E minor arpeggios and play the “Meaow” theme over and under it, so I added that too. Every time I practiced it I would add a little more, never noticing what my cadenza was turning into.

After a month of working on the concerto, I asked my wife to listen to the cadenza. I was really quite clever: I combined themes with one another, played them in unexpected harmonies, and quoted little snippets from the orchestral part of the concerto. I showed off my broken octaves and sixths and all sorts of cool harmonic tricks I’d picked up from different parts of the concerto (especially that amazing variant on a simple progression along the circle of fifths that is right after the second theme.) So, when I was done, what did she say?

- “I liked that last part.”

- “Which part?”

- “The one where you play a scale down and then you go up again and do a trill. You should get rid of the rest.”

She was right, of course; my cadenza was a convoluted Frankenstein’s monster. Self-editing has been pretty painful now. Each section I’ve had to cut since then feels like a jab at my own ego. I think I’ve got it down to something workable now — start with the little theme the woodwinds play three times before the piano’s entrance, doing a little variation each time; then some sort of variation on the opening passage of the concerto while going up to the dominant; play one of the themes (probably the second one) on the dominant in a more risoluto character to lead into the final trill. Every time I play it I have to resist the temptation to tack on more unnecesary stuff to it again.

I have trouble with self-editing. I tend to overplay when things should be simple and transparent; I use variation when things should just repeat. I do it when I write, not knowing when to stop a sentence. I did it when I tried my hand at composition (I was a composition student before switching to the piano.)

I had this problem in my short stint as a jazz pianist in my high-school’s junior jazz band (I didn’t make the cut for the big jazz band, I was a trumpet player at the time.) There was a piano solo for me in a Count Basie standard. Each time we played it I added something new to it and, by the time we showed up to the regional competitions, it was a convoluted mess of octaves and broken arpeggios (the only technical difficulties that I could reliably do without messing them up too badly.) Back then, one of the judges from the competition wrote on his advice slip: “The pianist is way too busy, this song should be laid-back.” Apparently I haven’t learned anything since then.

While this specific piece may not have the desired effect on all listeners, especially on those that dismiss Mompou’s music as lacking substance, I think every one of us, in particular those of us that are musicians, has had music touch their soul at some point. That is the attraction that Charmes has for me, each of the six pieces embodies a magical effect that music in general can have on a person; this approach towards composition gets to the heart of why we make and listen to music. The second piece in particular also affects me as a performer; to penetrate the soul is what we all should try to do each time we play for an audience.

Every musician I know has a story of one of those moments in which music penetrates the soul. Most of the time, that moment is one of the turning points which convinced them to devote their lives to music, or playing a particular instrument. It’s not just a piece of music that does it, I believe that this magical moment is deeply connected with a particular performance and that it cannot happen without the relationship between interpreter, composer and listener. When this connection between all three happens, it’s an amazing feeling, like butterflies in your stomach, like a tingling feeling all over, a moment of intense emotion that leaves a glow which is slow to fade away and that can be felt again by recalling the music that caused it. I can’t do justice to what it is, but everyone should have felt it at one time or another; it’s as is the sound of the performance stops being something external to which we listen and becomes a part of you, it takes over you for the time the music lasts.

This kind of connection is much more intense, and happens more often, in live performance. I was lucky enough to have an amazing piano teacher, Galina Eguiazarova. She had stopped performing by the time I studied with her but, in the middle of one lesson, she played the entirety of the second movement from the third piano sonata by Brahms for another student and me. If I had to choose one particular moment that exemplifies how music can touch the soul, that would definitely be it. It’s tougher to find those experiences on recording, but when it happens it is that much better because you can hit the rewind button and listen to it one more time. There are five recordings that are very close to my heart because at some moment of my life they had that effect on me; an emotion of great intensity, beyond merely enjoying a piece of music:

Krystian Zimmerman playing Chopin’s second piano concerto:

Leonard Bernstein conducting Mahler’s first symphony with the Vienna Philharmonic:

John Coltrane’s A Love Supreme (which is one of the first things I wrote about on this blog):

The first Brahms piano trio, with Julius Katchen, Joseph Suk and Janos Starker (another of the first entries on this blog):

Bach’s fourth English Suite by Murray Perahia. I couldn’t find a video of this on YouTube, but you can listen to a sample on Amazon, and definitely buy the album if you don’t have it.

Filed under: Music ]]> http://ahmedfernando.wordpress.com/2010/05/20/pour-penetrer-les-ames/feed/ 2 ahmedfernando http://ahmedfernando.wordpress.com/2010/05/16/play-like-a-man/ http://ahmedfernando.wordpress.com/2010/05/16/play-like-a-man/#comments Mon, 17 May 2010 06:29:21 +0000 ahmedfernando http://ahmedfernando.wordpress.com/?p=867 ]]> “Play like a man!” is an expression that was used very often by my teachers, usually in a very loud voice with a few expletives thrown in for good measure. My students hear it very often from me as well, usually before a concert. So, what does “playing like a man” mean? That depends on how you define manliness.

There are two ways to look at it. Some think of manhood as the opposite of womanhood. This kind of thinking is more concerned about external characteristics, like being rugged, physically strong and keeping your emotions to yourself –pretty useless for a musician. To say the truth, I used to think that was what my teacher meant with “play like a man!” which resulted in some very loud and tasteless performances of Debussy, Chopin and Dvorak on my part.

I think that the best way to understand the concept of manhood is as the opposite of childhood. This means that manhood, and womanhood as well, is really about internal characteristics which are there regardless of how subtle, delicate or emotional you are. So, what are those characteristics?

Well, what is a child like?

Children are dependent on others, they need you to hold their hand and show them what to do. They need approval from adults and can’t make their own decisions, they need others to do things for them. So, “playing like a man” means being independent. It means working by yourself, making your own decisions and then acting on them without needing someone to hold your hand all the time. “Playing like a man” means that you don’t wait for your teacher, your conductor or your colleagues to do things for you.

Children have irrational fears, they are helpless and fragile. That means that to “play like a man” you need to be bold. It means having initiative, taking risks and jumping fearlessly into new situations. “Playing like a man” means that every time you make music you cast all doubt aside and jump straight into what you are doing. To “play like a man” you must face challenges instead of avoiding them, you conquer irrationality and fear with strength of character and the courage to look at things as they really are, without self-delusion.

Children are self-centered, a man is at the service of others. To “play like a man” means doing justice to the music you play, being at the service of the composer and his intentions. “Playing like a man” means getting rid of unnecessary showing-off, performances full of affectations and attitudes that are more about trying to look a certain way than about expressing a musical idea.

In conclusion, let’s not confuse “being a man” with having lots of facial hair and grunting. “Manhood” and “womanhood” are much more than a collection of superficial characteristics, they are a set of virtues (like courage, resiliency, independence, honesty and discipline.) I believe that “playing like a man” is  what we should always be trying to teach our students and not just something we yell at them when we want them to play louder.

—

In their site, “The Art of Manliness”, Brett and Kate McKay do a great job of explaining what manliness is about and much of this entry is inspired by their latest post. I highly recommend you follow that link and look around.

Charmes, by Federico Mompou is a work comprised of six short pieces that, as the title implies, are short little spells intended to conjure different effects: …to alleviate suffering …to inspire love … to penetrate the soul …to effect a cure …to evoke an image of the past …to inspire joy. This approach towards composition is a great example of what Mompou’s music is about. Traditional analysis brings nothing to the table, most of his works from after the 20′s are wisps of fog; scraps of melody, ostinato figures and refined harmonies which, while owing a lot to the music of Satie and his contemporaries, have an entirely different approach towards musical discourse.

Development and rigid construction are the furthest thing from Mompou’s mind –in fact, in an interview he admitted to adoring all music except for Haydn, Mozart and Beethoven, precisely because of those qualities. What Mompou fully appreciated, decades before John Cage talked about everything around us being music, is that every chord, every motif, every note has an intrinsic beauty and meaning that is completely independent of what a composer does with it. What results of this aesthetic is music with long ostinati, frequent repetition and in which harmony has no functional meaning, but is profoundly connected with timbre. Much like bells –which play a very important role in Mompou’s music and life– the notes in each chord and the harmonics they produce result in different qualities of tone, ranging from the tinny, metallic sound typical of minor seconds and tritones, to the full, resonant, harmonic-rich superimposed fifths and fourths.

Magic is the word that best describes Mompou’s music, a meaning to be taken literally in his 1920-21 work Charmes. But perhaps this concept isn’t so unique to Mompou. After all, the use of music for its magical properties is something that has been a part of every culture since we started walking upright. The first spell in this cycle, …pour endormir la souffrance (…to alleviate suffering) conjures up an effect that everyone has felt at some time. Music as a refuge, as a way of dulling our pain.

Contrary to what happens with the majority of serialist music, which is more interesting to analyze than it is to play or listen to, Mompou suffers from analysis. The first piece in Charmes is  just a short Debussyian fragment of a melody repeated exactly the same four times over an ostinato pattern in the left hand, with very slight coloring shifts in the harmony. While not to everyone’s liking, I find that repetition to be an essential part of Mompou’s language; here it softly nudges you over and over, subtly shifting from darkness to light. It’s like taking a beautiful gemstone in your hands and turning it, watching the light play on its surface.

Does this music do what Mompou intends it to do, that is, “alleviate suffering”? I think it does. But that’s entirely up to the listener. While one may just hear the same thing over and over, someone else will allow himself to be swept away.

Why?

We often lose sight of why we want to play. Are we even making music, or just going through the motions? We constantly have to work on maintaining our ability, the craft of playing an instrument. We are also stuck in the drudgery of having to think of the business side of things, looking for work and vehicles with which we can use our craft to create a living (that is, if we like things like having food in the fridge, and a roof above our heads.) We get bogged up thinking of perfection, and style, and whether a piece of music is suited to our particular capabilities, and how it will go over with an audience, and if it will sell.

But playing just because we want to? Whatever we want to play? That’s a different story and, for some reason, we stop doing that. We need to find those moments, and embrace them. More importantly, we need to create those moments. Once in a while, we need to put down the sheet music we are required to learn, find something we like and play it. Just for the joy of doing it. Because we can. It sounds so simple and yet, we forget how fulfilling it is to simply make music for no other reason than to make music.

The physical, emotional and artistic satisfaction that we get from making music is something that we should never forget to nurture. It’s so easy to lose our way and forget this part of our artistic soul. Just play something you love. Doesn’t it feel amazing? The way our bodies interact with our instrument and the noise it makes. For a brief moment, losing ourselves in that sweet nonsense that is musical discourse, wrapping ourselves in the vibrations we make. Connecting with other people without saying a thing, just sharing a moment of music with an audience, or with other musicians.

Once in a while, find your voice and make some music because you need it, because you want it. Get together with other people and make chamber music together, find a piece of music you really like and play the hell out of it in your living room, or just sit with your instrument and make some noise. Organize a concert, just for yourself and play music you really love. Write about music and don’t be afraid to share your passion with other musicians, even if it means sounding a bit ridiculous during rehearsals. Then, when you walk back into the business side of things, you know what it feels like to do what you do. To make music just because.

Filed under: Life, Music ]]> http://ahmedfernando.wordpress.com/2010/05/10/play/feed/ 4 ahmedfernando http://ahmedfernando.wordpress.com/2010/05/07/the-satie-problem/ http://ahmedfernando.wordpress.com/2010/05/07/the-satie-problem/#comments Fri, 07 May 2010 06:36:26 +0000 ahmedfernando http://ahmedfernando.wordpress.com/?p=856 ]]> The music of Erik Satie presents some very difficult problems of interpretation, especially when you consider that it wasn’t long ago that he was considered a minor composer, an eccentric that really didn’t know what he was doing. There are two reasons why Satie is so difficult to play right: the very disparate extremes of character in his compositions and the amount of trust that Satie places in the hands of his interpreters. In other words, he does all kinds of crazy things, constantly changes everything around and doesn’t give you a single clue to what’s going on.

His music can evoke both classical antiquity and a smoke-filled dingy café. It can seduce the listener at one moment and thumb its nose at him in the next. He writes delicate, refined, Schubert-like melodies that were intended for the cabaret, to be belted out by a booze-soaked, raspy-voiced singer while, for a solemn, grand-scale work like Les fils des étoiles, he fills the dissonant score with eccentric comments and a huge dedication, poking fun at the seriousness of the event.

The tempi and articulation are up in the air most of the time and the music is completely devoid of expression marks, time signatures, bar lines or tempo markings. In place of standardized musical terminology you are faced with wacky comments, such as like a nightingale with a toothache or it’s finally going to end! (that in a piece which is barely two minutes long.)

I find that the biggest problem with Satie, much like eighteenth-century French harpsichord music, is in the characterization. The pieces are increasingly fragmentary, and one has to learn to give each passage its proper character (even if it means pondering long and hard on what a “nightingale with a toothache” sounds like) without falling into the trap of bringing it all together by playing everything in the same tempo. Another problem here is that most pianists approach Satie’s music with preconceived notions about his music, failing to take into account the wildly differing changes of style from one piece to the next. The two most common approaches are “this music is too boring for an audience, let’s speed it up!” –Aldo Ciccolini is a good example of this done well– and “this music is so pretty, let’s make it minimalist” –Reinbert DeLeeuw does this in a good way, with his six-minute Gymnopedies.

The fact is that a good Satie interpretation is a very delicate thing, there’s much more to it than just picking a tempo and trying to make pretty noise. It’s all about the little nuances in the phrasing, timing and timbre. Things you pick up by knowing the composer’s life and work in-depth and, most of all, by really loving the music and being truly convinced that what you are playing is a great work of art. But be careful, there is still a trap there. By giving the music the importance it deserves, that very seriousness undermines the spirit of Satie’s music, be it in his funny moods or in his “furniture music” period. See the problem? That’s why to play Satie, what you really need is a sense of humor.

La Virgen de la Macarena is a very traditional pasodoble (a march-like dance in 2/4, usually in Phrygian mode –think of the theme from the second movement of the Concierto de Aranjuez if you’re having trouble picturing it.) La Virgen de la Macarena is the most popular pasodoble in Mexican bullfights, in many cases it’s the only one the band can play –which I think is the case with my local bullfighting ring because it’s all they played over and over. There are popular versions of this piece that heavily feature the trumpet, usually in some sort of virtuoso setting.

I grew up in this same house, and the bullfighting arena has been there since before the house was built. When I was a kid, I played trumpet; La Virgen de la Macarena holds a special spot in the repertoire for me because, along with an LP of Alicia de Larrocha playing Mozart’s 21st piano concerto and a few Scarlatti sonatas my dad used to play, it is one of my earliest musical memories. When I started playing the trumpet (I was about seven years old) instead of practicing what I was supposed to practice, much to the irritation of my teachers I’d spend hours learning by ear all the solos from the bullfighting band, and I’d go out into our backyard and play La Virgen de la Macarena along with them. When I was growing up I heard this recording of Rafael Mendez playing La Virgen de la Macarena:

Along with his famous double-tonguing and the circular breathing extravaganza in his version of Paganini’s Perpetuo Mobile, that recording, and the fact that he was Mexican, turned him into my favorite trumpeter –a funny thing about Mendez, he had the worst luck with his embouchure; his mouth was struck with a rifle butt when he was kidnapped by Pancho Villa, crushed when someone slammed a door into his trumpet and smashed with a baseball bat when he was in the stands watching a game! He was my idol throughout my childhood (until I turned teenager and discovered Maynard Ferguson’s ridiculously high notes and, later on, Wynton Marsalis.)

I’ve only been to a couple of bullfights in my life and I’m pretty ambiguous about the whole thing. I expected something barbarous and cruel but instead I was fascinated with the complexity of the bullfighting ritual. There is art and passion in the dance of bullfighting, there is much of flamenco dancing in the elegance of the poses of the torero (the correct term is torero, the word toreador has no place anywhere except in Bizet’s opera.) The observer’s point of view is what defines a bullfight. While one person sees a metaphor for the triumph of life over death, another sees a mob cheering while an animal is tortured and then slaughtered. Personally, the cruelty with which the bull was taunted and killed was pretty sickening. Even so, I can understand why people are passionate about bullfighting and, being an enthusiastic carnivore, I have no illusions about my place in the food chain. I don’t mind them killing bulls all day long, but I’d rather not watch. I’ll just listen.

Filed under: Life ]]> http://ahmedfernando.wordpress.com/2010/05/03/bullfighting-and-la-virgen-de-la-macarena/feed/ 1 ahmedfernando bullfighting-in-spain2 bullfighting-in-spain3 http://ahmedfernando.wordpress.com/2010/04/29/linitiation/ http://ahmedfernando.wordpress.com/2010/04/29/linitiation/#comments Thu, 29 Apr 2010 07:33:23 +0000 ahmedfernando http://ahmedfernando.wordpress.com/?p=846 ]]> One of my favorite twentieth century pieces is Morton Feldman’s Piano and String Quartet. Playing it is grueling, mainly because it lasts almost two hours and requires a constant attention to the duration of the rests and the number of repetitions for each measure (all the durations are written out.) One little lapse of concentration in those two hours and it’s very easy to get lost and never catch the rest of the ensemble again, since it all sounds so similar –it’s also exhausting for the page turners, my wife turned the pages for me during a performance a few years ago and her back ached for a week! Feldman’s music tends to have rhythms that seem free and floating, with slow evolution and asymmetric patterns, his later music also tends to be very long.

I find that the Prelude to the second act of Le fils des étoiles, by Erik Satie has some elements that are very Feldmanesque, not a small feat considering that it was composed 100 years before Piano and String Quartet, while the rest of Europe was still playing to Wagner’s beat. The first similarity is in the character of the music; when I play the music of both composers, I feel it has a very slow, quiet evolution, as some sort of solemn ritual (which is very much in the context of Satie’s prelude.) All kinds of interesting things are happening in the music and we have time to enjoy and assimilate each and every one. The other element in common, which is much more technical, is the way they both use repeating asymmetric patterns in their music.

There is a special expression in the way asymmetric patterns and structures that are not quite perfect work. The imbalance in the music immediately calls attention from the listener and, in the hands of the right composer, it becomes fascinating.

Just as the first prelude, L’initiation is written without bar-lines or time signature and has all sorts of quirky, baffling performance indications. The first few notes of this short piece are groundbreaking:

A lot is happening here, all of it for the first time in musical history. We have a small unit which is formed by two minor chords, superimposed. The top voice then jumps up in a tritone –since the middle ages, the tritone has had strong satanic and mystical symbolism and I wouldn’t be surprised if there is some sort of extra-musical significance to its use here by Satie (he did hang out with a Satanist sect for a while, after all.)  The remarkable thing about this tritone is that it does not resolve in any way, he just repeats the whole thing a minor third below and then he continues downward with the sequence at a major second. Then comes a beautiful, metallic chord moving in parallel harmony. Note his use of asymmetry, he could have built the chord using only perfect fourths but he adds an augmented fourth right in the middle of the chord. This gives the chord a kind of metallic quality, a distinctive dissonance that alters the way it rings.

Then comes the whole thing again, only transposed up by a major second. Here is another use of asymmetry; the beginning gives the impression that he will repeat the same sequence, but he departs from it in the third repetition, going down a fourth instead of a second and replacing the octave with a minor ninth. We end this section with another one of those planed quartal chords.

Satie was always credited by Ravel as being the mind behind the french impressionist movement. The role he played in the history of music was that of a great experimenter, every few works moving into new ground. Much of the best music by Ravel and Debussy –and most french composers that immediately followed– was directly inspired by Satie’s experiments. I believe that, besides the experimental nature of his music, there is great substance in what he wrote. The aesthetic of his writing is so far beyond romanticism or impressionism that it is no surprise that his music wasn’t fully appreciated until the second half of the twentieth century.

A huge demand for music and music educators exists in today’s economy and musicians can make a decent living. Indeed, the myth of the starving musician applies only to those that fail to maintain a suitable level of skill with their performance or teaching abilities and those that fail to engage in multiple aspects of musical life. As with any other career, an adequate preparation is essential. I feel that, in most institutions, the skills most critical to a successful musical career are grossly neglected, if not outright ignored.

Many teachers’ approach can be reduced to “learn this piece and eventually play it really well, then learn a harder piece and eventually play it really well…” repeated from the moment a student enters school until they graduate. They’ll sometimes even actively discourage students from getting too involved in other courses lest it take away valuable practice time –this is very common with pianists, since most don’t have the orchestral experience to balance out the many hours spent as a shut-in practicing. The result of this teaching approach is a student that can play a handful of works with no guarantee that the pianist understands the process involved or can communicate it to others, or ultimately find someone who will want to hear him play his handful of works. In the real world, this is close to useless.

When I work with students that I know are going to pursue careers in music, I take a very specific approach. In a way, I feel responsible for them; if a student is practicing and actively involved in what we do, it becomes my responsibility not only to help him learn a handful of pieces, but to give them the tools to prevent them from becoming “starving musicians”. Most of the time, this results in a greater emphasis on often neglected aspects of a pianist’s education (such as sight-reading and singing, harmonic analysis, improvisation and accompaniment) which sometimes takes away time from them being able to “learn a handful of pieces really well” by drilling them repeatedly.

I propose that, to build a career in music, musicians should strive to be as diverse in their knowledge as possible. They should be able to read music fluently, improvise, arrange and have at least a functional knowledge of conducting, composition and performance in more than one style; every musician should have at least elementary keyboard abilities and every pianist knowledge of singing as well. More important than “playing a handful of pieces very well”, should be the ability to learn any piece of music quickly and to perform it comfortably onstage. Every musician should be a competent teacher and be familiar with diverse pedagogical methods and the appropriate material for different age groups and types of students. They should be able to work with other people, as part of a team in smaller ensembles or under a director with bigger groups. A musician should be able to express himself in writing, speak to a group of people and be confident with the use of technology (at least with the internet, notation software and basic recording and sound reinforcement techniques.)

The musical education I received was always very traditional. I was lucky to have very good teachers but my instruction was always limited to playing the works I was assigned precisely and expressively. I was lucky in one sense, I had to support myself through school. That meant playing trumpet in several orchestras, salsa bands, mariachi ensembles and on the street; playing the piano in a dance studio, piano jazz in restaurants and religious music in church; directing various ensembles and teaching students of all ages; and taking every job I could get, regardless of the time I had to learn the music or the particular situation of each audience. When I look back, my teachers gave me the means to communicate through music and to overcome the mechanical difficulties of playing. However, the life as a musician that I have now, that comes as a result of every single one of those experiences.

The music is very immobile and detached, a complete departure from the prevailing aesthetic of Wagnerian romanticism –the irony of this work being used for a play for a sect that included Wagner in their daily prayers was certainly not lost on Satie. More than an homage, this piece is a rebuttal to Wagner’s musical aesthetic.

The score has no bar-lines or time signature, something that hadn’t been done since the renaissance. In this piece, for the first time in history, there is a systematic use of chords –in fourths, no less– moving in parallel motion, three years before Debussy’s famous use of parallel harmony (also known as planing) in his Prélude à l’après-midi d’un faune. Unlike Debussy which, in this period, was still using traditional harmonic functions and writing tonal music, the preludes to Le fils des étoiles are atonal and the parallel-moving tritone on top of the fourths already makes possible a proto-polytonality, due to the voices moving in completely different tonal planes. In only a few minutes of music, Satie uses harmonic techniques that were unheard of in the music of his time and predates an aesthetic that has much more in common with the music of Morton Feldman or Toru Takemitsu than with any of his contemporaries.

There are many problems with the interpretation of Satie. Many pianists fail by trying to make the music “exciting”, worried about boring their audience. Although it is also easy to lose oneself in a work that is so open to interpretation, often without time marks of any kind and with cryptic, sometimes humorous music directives such as “on the tip of the tongue.” Players often get distracted by the eccentricity of Satie’s personality and the often bizarre indications on his scores but, beyond the surface, there is amazing, revolutionary music in these still, immobile compositions.

In the history of literature, philosophy and art, we always find the interchange of two personality types. Alan Watts, in one of his audio recordings, describes them as prickles and goo. The prickly people are advocates of intellectual rigor,  precise statistics and clear logic; they dismiss gooey people as hopelessly vague and mystical. On the other hand, the vague and mystical sorts consider the prickly types as sterile and inhuman; as Alan Watts puts it, they say to the prickly people:  “you know the words, but you don’t know the music.”

In the world of music you encounter both all the time, in the people you meet and in the works you play. There’s the intellectual musician, always perfectly correct in his speech and manners, impeccably groomed; always looking for a note-perfect performance, the most correct edition of a work, the kind that exactly plans out his rubato and tries to execute it in exactly the same way every time. On the other hand you’ve got the dirty hippie sort, laid back, calls everyone “dude” and probably has not had a thorough shower in a while; this type of person is much more interested in how the music makes him feel regardless of what notes are played. There are prickly types of compositions and composers, in which it is all about structure and analysis, and there  are gooey works, which are a lot more free-form.

In the end, it’s almost impossible to find an absolute example of one or the other; at the extremes they become cartoons, parodies of reality. In real life most music and musicians aren’t prickles or goo but rather, gooey prickles and prickly goo. Most of our life’s work is a constant effort at balancing the two, order and chaos (or, as Alan Watts was famous for introducing eastern concepts to western audiences, yin and yang.)

When interpreting a musical work, that magic point at which it works best is near the middle. Go to the extreme of the prickly side and it’s impossible to listen to; it’s boring because it’s lifeless. This sort of interpretation can be achieved by plugging in a computer to a Yamaha Disklavier. Go to the gooey extreme and your playing becomes boring because there is nothing to stimulate the mind. Without structure, style and clarity you could get the same effect by sitting there and just playing random noise and making faces.

The problem with going to the middle is that you can end up in a sort of gray area with none of the qualities of either the prickles or the goo. Many musicians and composers end up there because of insecurity and fear of making decisions. The trick is not to be neither, but to strive to be both in everything we do.

Unstern! Sinistre, disastro is one of the last pieces by Franz Liszt. As most of his other work from this period, it is stark and bleak with dissonant harmonies and an exploration of the whole-tone scale and augmented chord. The title has words from three different languages and could be translated as “Dark Star! Sinister, disastrous.”

Unstern! is divided into three distinct sections. We begin with an introduction in bare octaves with special emphasis on a descending tritone (an interval that for centuries was highly symbolic and even forbidden as it was considered demonic and extremely dissonant), reminiscent of a recitativo or some sort of chant. We then start a loud passage in octaves that sounds almost like a trumpet section in the right hand with the left hand playing motives built on the whole-tone scale. These passages gradually rise in a chromatic sequence and lead into a whole tone scale in the bass which ends in a tremolo. On top of this tremolo, Liszt builds a rising phrase in accelerando with an augmented chord moving in chromatic steps until it resolves into an extremely dissonant chord in fff that ends this section. The last part of this piece is written as a chorale which never resolves but instead constantly leads into chromatic scales. In the end, it all fades out, unresolved, into a whole-tone scale in the lowest register of the piano.

There is a marked similarity between this piece and others of Liszt’s final period, such as Nuages Gris and La Lugubre Gondola. They could be considered (along with many others of this period) as small parts of a bigger work, all dealing with the same subject matter (death and despair) and using many of the same compositional techniques, almost as a sort of extremely dark last book of Années de pèlerinage –in this case the travels being into Liszt’s own tortured mind.

I find Unstern! darkly programmatic; when I play this piece I imagine it as a meditation on the end of the world. The first part is the apocalypse, trumpets and all; the second represents the prayers of a terrified humanity. The unrelenting dissonance in the harmony and the failure to ever resolve makes this piece very difficult to listen to, which is the composer’s intent. Most of Liszt’s late works are uncomfortable for everyone: the listener, the interpreter and, probably, Liszt himself.

Filed under: Music ]]> http://ahmedfernando.wordpress.com/2010/04/14/unstern-sinistre-disastro/feed/ 0 ahmedfernando apocalypse http://ahmedfernando.wordpress.com/2010/04/11/do-i-like-kids/ http://ahmedfernando.wordpress.com/2010/04/11/do-i-like-kids/#comments Sun, 11 Apr 2010 07:59:18 +0000 ahmedfernando http://ahmedfernando.wordpress.com/?p=820 ]]> It’s very difficult to find a good musician that likes to teach kids. Many only do it because they don’t have the technical skill, repertoire, and knowledge of musical theory required to teach more advanced students. With children, you can rarely blame problems on previous teachers, the responsibility is all on you. They are built to be like sponges, absorbing any information you tell them, good or bad –whether they put into practice what you teach them ultimately depends on your teaching skill. With kids, teachers are not only expected to know exactly how things are, they’re required to make them appealing and easy to understand.

One piece of advice you always receive about teaching children is “treat them like equals.” It’s true, if you avoid being patronizing and talking down to them, they’ll love you for it. The problem here is that it’s very easy to lose control of a class by going too far; children are always testing their limits. It is important to remember that because you treat a kid as an equal, that kid now has a responsibility to act as one (up to a point, of course; after all, they’re still the kids and you’re still the adult.) Any child disrupting a class  or a performance should be specifically called on it and dealt with quickly and not ignored. After all, you wouldn’t let an adult ruin a class or a concert for everyone else.

The biggest problem I have when teaching kids is finding the right balance between authority figure and entertainer. Go too far in one direction and most kids will just shut down and refuse to even show up for lessons, too far in the other and it’s impossible to keep them focused enough to learn anything at all. It’s up to each teacher to find the methods that suit them best and adapt them to each particular situation.

In my case, I tend to be quite strict with kids. Instead of patronizing them, I think it’s important to push them to give you their best effort. I try to have a clear set of rules or guidelines for classwork and to make sure that there is some sort of consequence for not following them.

My classes with children are quite short and very focused (I prefer having frequent very short lessons with children instead of once-a-week snooze-fests.) My aim is to avoid distraction from what we are doing and to keep them playing, singing, thinking, counting, clapping or doing something the whole time. As I pointed out in a previous post, the best way to build understanding is with variety in our learning activities. A twenty minute lesson in which there is non-stop musical activity and in which the student’s mind is focused on the task at hand is always better than a one hour lesson in which we are constantly stopping for any number of reasons, in which half the lesson is spent scolding the kid, on some needless tangent, or just sitting there looking at each other. Just as with practice, if you’re not mentally exhausted when you’re done teaching, you aren’t doing it right.

It’s important to learn to read the mood in the classroom and the reactions of your students, you don’t want them to get frustrated with a single activity or overwhelmed by too much material at once. An often overlooked skill that is very useful for any teacher is knowing how to lighten the mood, especially after a particularly difficult lesson. You don’t want unhappy kids leaving your classroom –if you’re so heartless that you don’t care, at least consider it because you want to keep parents happy and paying for your lessons! Thankfully, lightening the mood with kids is very easy because all children laugh at the same things.

With adults, humor varies wildly according to a myriad of factors, drunken college students will laugh at different things than senior citizens. What one group finds funny will offend the other one or leave them cold. Sometimes they’ll laugh just to be polite, other times they’ll refuse to laugh because they’re afraid to stand out. There are too many potential differences between adults: religious, social, sexual, political, etc.

Kids are a whole different story. Every child has the same sense of humor, every group of children will react in mostly the same way. They love anything that is silly or exaggerated; armpits, belly buttons, farts, banana peels, silly voices, bald heads… those are all things children will find funny. Find any kid in the world, look him right in the eye for a couple of seconds and say “Poop!”. He’ll laugh; even if he doesn’t understand what it means.

Do I like kids? I’ve always thought that is a strange question. You might as well ask if I like adults. Some kids I like, some I don’t. In other words, it depends on the kid. Children are never offended or patronizing; they’re innocent, naïve and can be wonderful to work with. On the other hand, they can also be abusive, out of control and bratty –these kinds of problems can always be traced back to something either you or the parents are doing wrong.  Kids are impatient and wont suffer a fool gladly and, if only for that, I love teaching them.

This episode of Liszt’s life inspired a piece called La Lugubre Gondola (the lugubrious [funeral] gondola) which went through various iterations. The version most popular today is called La Lugubre Gondola II, and was rewritten and published in 1885, and later arranged for strings. This version is written in a more tonal, accessible language than other music in Liszt’s late period; probably influenced by its publication (as I mentioned in my post about Nuages Gris, Liszt was not interested in publishing the bulk of what is now considered his most interesting output from this period.) After Liszt’s death, an earlier,  much darker and  starker version of La Lugubre Gondola was discovered and published in 1927. This is now referred to as La Lugubre Gondola I.

As in Nuages Gris, the augmented triad has a very important role in the harmony of the piece. Liszt’s love affair with the augmented triad is a crucial aspect of his compositional techniques and is central in his evolution towards a quasi-atonal harmony. Even though the piece is written in the key signature of F minor, there is no sense of traditional tonality; the whole funereal barcarolle unfolds as a series of augmented triads descending in a whole tone scale:

In the very last chord, Liszt omits the C in the augmented chord, leaving just a ghostly E-Ab interval. Alone, it’s enharmonically a minor sixth, but in this context it sounds completely disturbing. This kind of harmonic treatment is more typical of french impressionism and wholly alien to mainstream nineteenth century romanticism.

Left hand tremolos and open arpeggios as a way of representing water are a recurring element in the music of Franz Liszt. By mixing this kind of writing with the otherworldly harmonies in his late works, he evokes a ghastly image of a funeral procession on the water, all dark colors and despair at the decease of his lifelong friend and son-in-law and his own approaching death. This is an honest, unromanticized representation of death and sadness, which makes this music all the more compelling.