Klarinet Archive - Posting 000887.txt from 1999/01
From: Tony@-----.uk (Tony Pay)
Subj: Re: [kl] Subjective and Objective
Date: Mon, 18 Jan 1999 19:14:53 -0500
On Mon, 18 Jan 1999 11:14:13 -0500, klarinet@-----.net said:
> Tony wrote:
[snip]
> > You say, we as players should determine the character. But it does
> > seem difficult to do that without a physical challenge actually
> > present, either in the music or in the instrument.
>
> Tony, I really don't agree with this at all. It is, to me, the
> difference between the means (our efforts) and the effect (the results
> of our efforts). So players struggle, for whatever reasons, to play,
> and gauge their success at how much effort they have exerted, as it is
> a calorie burning work out. But the audience should never be aware of
> your effort, only the effects of the music.
I'm trying to think how to say this (and it's something real, believe
me), so that it doesn't look like what you are characterising here. I
agree with you, you don't want the audience to be aware of an effort, of
an unnecessary expenditure of energy, of a *waste*.
But there is something present in excellent performance, partly captured
for me by the word 'challenge', that we definitely miss if it isn't
there.
I also believe that if I do manage to say it well, you'll recognise it,
because we all, as human beings, do recognise it when it occurs. It's
one of the reasons why music, and all great art, is so powerful.
Try this. It might not work for you.
An excellent performer is one who produces excellent performances, and
one character of excellent performances is that they seem to be *alive*.
(Notice that this is different from saying that the *performer* seems to
be alive.) Something that is alive is not simply well organised in a
mechanical sense, however well that may be achieved. Movement itself is
not enough. Performances that run like clockwork often sound like
clockwork, and fail to communicate the essence of the music.
The character of being alive that we associate most clearly with musical
performance is that of being responsive. It is as though the various
aspects of the performance fit together in a way that we recognise as
being like a living system, in which individual components communicate
and interact with one another. In this way, the powerful intuitions we
have about organisms are brought to bear on our organisation of sound.
Aldous Huxley said that Art was a part of man's quest for grace. He
pointed out that animals have an natural grace, and that God might be
said to *be* grace. But humans have this consciousness that allows them
to lie, to lie to themselves, and to be self-conscious, which animals
cannot do. Therefore humans often lack grace, and what they do can be
ugly in a way that whatever an animal does never can.
It's no good, though, wanting to return to the animal state. *Our*
grace needs to include our consciousness -- we can't throw that away,
the fall has occurred -- but now, we need to include it, but just as a
*part* of what we do. We are between the animals and God. (Blake had a
lot to say about that.)
Gregory Bateson took Huxley's ideas further, and said that one way to
characterise what artists do is to say that they engage in partly
conscious, partly unconscious communication. You can see that that
fits. To engage in such communication requires skill; learnt skill (the
unconscious bit), as well as the control our conscious awareness may
exert to a greater or lesser extent.
So practice is required to attain the skill. And as we practise, and
what we learn becomes automatic, so our ability to access its details
consciously is diminished; but we achieve the economy that is possessed
by instinct -- in this case, though, it is an 'instinct' that we have
learnt, not something hard-wired from birth.
Now, what characterises instinct? Well, one animal instinct we
possess to some degree is our ability to to flee danger, to dodge
and change direction suddenly, to accommodate changes of terrain, just
like the animal we are. And in fact, we achieve that by very precise
software control over a very unstable system, that enables us to
maintain our balance in extremely variable circumstances simply by using
our two legs. No vehicle we have yet designed can remotely do this.
You talked about dance later in your post, and this fits in well to the
discussion.
The beauty of dance for us is very bound up with our appreciation of
what is involved for the dancers. We are struck not only by the ease
that they exhibit, but by the dangers they are courting. We admire
that they do not fall, even while doing things that are physically
very demanding. We admire the way the dance seems to be spontaneous as
well as predetermined, that if a slight deviation occurs the whole
process gets back on course. We admire the feat of memory required to
reproduce all those steps without error, and the continuous awareness
necessary on the part of the dancers to ensure synchronisation with the
music; all of this as well as admiring the abstract patterns they are
making with their bodies.
Both components are necessary in fact: beautiful abstract patterns
created by machines don't hold our attention for very long, because they
are preprogrammed; and if the dancers simply improvise, without relating
to each other, then that's boring too.
What holds us is *both* the challenge *and* the flawless execution.
It's what makes it alive, what makes it partly conscious and partly
unconscious, and what makes dance a metaphor for other things in our
lives.
Now, in music we are no less gripped by danger/success. The less able
Moscow Conservatoire trained violinist, though able to squirt out all
the note patterns of her more talented contemporaries, fails to grip us
because she is pre-programmed, and therefore not doing anything
dangerous. She is not 'daring' in any way. There are no questions in
her playing.
How do we know?
We know because we are talented at recognising such things. We know
when someone is being challenged by something, even if there is no hint
of strain in the actual performance. We know equally when someone is
going through the motions, when it's too easy, when nothing is at stake.
That's what I was trying to get over.
Tony
--
_________ Tony Pay
|ony:-) 79 Southmoor Rd Tony@-----.uk
| |ay Oxford OX2 6RE GMN family artist: www.gmn.com
tel/fax 01865 553339
Believing Truth is staring at the sun
Which but destroys the power that could perceive.
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