Okay, Nervous Nellie's getting a little out of hand. I'm starting to feel anxious about my lessons instead of looking forward to them, and that's a recipe for disaster for me. If the anxiety gets too great, I'll quit. I don't want to quit because it's important to me to find a way to persevere with this. So what to do?
So, here's where the rubber meets the road, isn't it? What good are my theories when they don't produce a tangible result?
Today is my lesson day, so I have to talk to myself. I like the music, I'm having some incremental success, although going slower than I expected, or no--I expected nothing since I've made no progress in 50 years. I ought to be grateful for any progress in that case.
I've been working on those chords that involve some stretching and I find that I can do them just a little bit better. I think, though, that I need more time to recover between practices and so maybe I shouldn't do two practices a day, or maybe those practices should allow more time between one day and the next for recovery.
But I'm still afraid my teacher is displeased and that makes no sense at all since his job is to assess my progress and help me with what I'm doing, not to be pleased or displeased. If I were his coach and he were my writing student, and he were to tell me how anxious he was about writing in front of people, I would tell him to write to yourself first, please yourself first. I would ask: what do you want to say?
So that's a question I should ask myself: what do I want to say with music? Right now I'm drawing a blank. I don't know what I want to say. But I want to be able to express the music, to have it flow out of me, through me. Isn't that what all musicians want?
To hear the music was my original ambition. I just wanted to be able to hear it. Of course, these days you can hear any music you want on YouTube, even if it's not live. I wanted to feel it, too, though. Guitar is intimate that way--your body is in contact with the sound like few other instruments. Even the violin is only in contact with your hands and your chin. The cello is also an intimate instrument. I wonder if Yo Yo Ma sees it that way?
What do I want to say, though? For instance, what do I want to say with the piece by Bach? It's a fugue, which means it expresses the same musical idea in various ways in counterpoint.
I listened to a TED talk by Benjamin Zander, "The Transformative Power of Classical Music," that referred to "one buttock playing"--in other words, playing as if the music carries you forward with it, moving with the notes. So, can I learn to play that way? That is the way I want to play. Is it something that comes later, or can one do it that way all along? A fugue is a precision piece, isn't it? Well, maybe not entirely.
I need to pay attention to the other "subject" in the fugue that I am learning to play. The teacher suggested I be aware of it, but I haven't been up until now. I've been concentrating on my own part, trying (and failing) to play it perfectly. So what can I do instead? Can I find the flow in it? Can I discover what the piece is saying? Or what I want to say with it? What might that be?
Well, if I think of the idea of a fugue as being a subject being introduced, then reintroduced, then another subject being introduced and then reintroduced, then the first subject being introduced in a slightly different way, and on and on, I think immediately of a conversation. Here is the first idea, then the second, then back and forth until the conversation is finished and everyone can have tea.
It's a lot like a poem, a sonnet for instance, where the theme is repeated in various ways until the end, when there is often a surprise twist. Can the fugue I'm learning be all those things, or is it too simple?
No, if a poem cannot be too simple than a piece of music cannot be too simple. If a haiku can convey a complete and complex idea, then a one-page fugue can too.
I'm going to explore that idea today and try to see if it will help me with my anxiety.
So, here's where the rubber meets the road, isn't it? What good are my theories when they don't produce a tangible result?
Today is my lesson day, so I have to talk to myself. I like the music, I'm having some incremental success, although going slower than I expected, or no--I expected nothing since I've made no progress in 50 years. I ought to be grateful for any progress in that case.
I've been working on those chords that involve some stretching and I find that I can do them just a little bit better. I think, though, that I need more time to recover between practices and so maybe I shouldn't do two practices a day, or maybe those practices should allow more time between one day and the next for recovery.
But I'm still afraid my teacher is displeased and that makes no sense at all since his job is to assess my progress and help me with what I'm doing, not to be pleased or displeased. If I were his coach and he were my writing student, and he were to tell me how anxious he was about writing in front of people, I would tell him to write to yourself first, please yourself first. I would ask: what do you want to say?
So that's a question I should ask myself: what do I want to say with music? Right now I'm drawing a blank. I don't know what I want to say. But I want to be able to express the music, to have it flow out of me, through me. Isn't that what all musicians want?
To hear the music was my original ambition. I just wanted to be able to hear it. Of course, these days you can hear any music you want on YouTube, even if it's not live. I wanted to feel it, too, though. Guitar is intimate that way--your body is in contact with the sound like few other instruments. Even the violin is only in contact with your hands and your chin. The cello is also an intimate instrument. I wonder if Yo Yo Ma sees it that way?
What do I want to say, though? For instance, what do I want to say with the piece by Bach? It's a fugue, which means it expresses the same musical idea in various ways in counterpoint.
I listened to a TED talk by Benjamin Zander, "The Transformative Power of Classical Music," that referred to "one buttock playing"--in other words, playing as if the music carries you forward with it, moving with the notes. So, can I learn to play that way? That is the way I want to play. Is it something that comes later, or can one do it that way all along? A fugue is a precision piece, isn't it? Well, maybe not entirely.
I need to pay attention to the other "subject" in the fugue that I am learning to play. The teacher suggested I be aware of it, but I haven't been up until now. I've been concentrating on my own part, trying (and failing) to play it perfectly. So what can I do instead? Can I find the flow in it? Can I discover what the piece is saying? Or what I want to say with it? What might that be?
Well, if I think of the idea of a fugue as being a subject being introduced, then reintroduced, then another subject being introduced and then reintroduced, then the first subject being introduced in a slightly different way, and on and on, I think immediately of a conversation. Here is the first idea, then the second, then back and forth until the conversation is finished and everyone can have tea.
It's a lot like a poem, a sonnet for instance, where the theme is repeated in various ways until the end, when there is often a surprise twist. Can the fugue I'm learning be all those things, or is it too simple?
No, if a poem cannot be too simple than a piece of music cannot be too simple. If a haiku can convey a complete and complex idea, then a one-page fugue can too.
I'm going to explore that idea today and try to see if it will help me with my anxiety.
No comments:
Post a Comment