Klarinet Archive - Posting 001502.txt from 1999/03

From: Tony@-----.uk (Tony Pay)
Subj: [kl] Deep understanding
Date: Wed, 31 Mar 1999 16:52:51 -0500

On Fri, 26 Mar 1999 11:04:08 -0600, rgarrett@-----.edu said:

> Deep understanding of any subject takes patience and constant
> attention to achieve. Deep understanding of how to express musically
> in front of others takes the same kind of patience and determination.

You use here the word 'deep' as though it were the end result of a
process of continued refinement of peforming skills.

But I would rather say that what is truly 'deep' is the understanding of
musical expression that comes *before* such refinement. And it's the
sort of 'deep' that human beings find natural, even if it's very
sophisticated in actual fact.

Most of us know what it is to read a bedtime story to a child. Even
children know this, as when they read to their younger brothers and
sisters.

When we read a bedtime story, we try to bring that story to life -- how
we speak the giant's words is different from how we speak the fairy's
words, and how we describe the journey through the haunted house is
different from how we describe the picnic on the river.

Whilst it isn't wise to push the analogy between this and playing music
too far, there is enough similarity to yield an important insight.

The metaphor I'd like to suggest is the metaphor that when we begin
playing music, particularly if it's simple music, *we already know the
story*; but that we don't really know the language in which we are
telling it.

Imagine that you have to tell a bedtime story in French, a language in
which you are merely a beginner.

You could concentrate on getting the verbs and the vocabulary right, and
making sure of the right gender of the nouns, leaving the
characterisation of the story to look after itself.

Or -- and of course I want to say that this is the better way of going
about it -- you could make sure of the characterisation first, and have
*what was important about the story* get across to the French kids.
(Naturally, you'd go on cleaning it up day by day as you got better at
speaking French.)

Now, I suggest that at a very fundamental level, children who play music
understand the sorts of story that there are to be told, if we don't
get in their way too much. There's this piece of music, and it's
pretty, or sad, or cross, or playful, or....whatever. And because the
audience *can't read it* (why else do we read bed-time stories?) we have
to tell it to them.

And that is the basic model of what performance is all about.

The rest is just refinement.

Tony
--

_________ Tony Pay
|ony:-) 79 Southmoor Rd Tony@-----.uk
| |ay Oxford OX2 6RE GMN family artist: www.gmn.com
tel/fax 01865 553339

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