Klarinet Archive - Posting 000738.txt from 2000/12

From: Tony@-----.uk (Tony Pay)
Subj: Re: [kl] Performance [was, Peplowski continued]
Date: Wed, 13 Dec 2000 23:37:46 -0500

On Wed, 13 Dec 2000 13:52:47 -0500, mgustav@-----.com said:

> I'm not sure where to jump into this confusing thread. Apples and
> oranges, to paraphrase someone's comment here, is a good analogy for
> the relationship between jazz musicians and classically trained
> musicians. They are nearly incomparable because they are after
> different results and their activities require different states of
> mind.

I think that this is true in one way, though not in another.

Being an expert in a field means that the expert has a well-developed
set of mental models to which he or she relates whilst 'performing' in
that field. That's true of both tennis players and chess players, for
example. Nevertheless, the relationship of any expert to his or her set
of mental models is similar, even though the models, as in this example,
can be very, very different.

It's well-known that expert chess players see the board differently from
novices. They can remember a chess position that they've seen only for
a second or two. Interestingly, they do no better than novices on the
task of remembering a random setup of chess pieces. A chess *position*,
one that could plausibly occur in a game, is representable in terms of
an expert's mental models, and will suggest transformations of those
mental models to others that are more advantageous to the player, and
disadvantageous to the opponent. Brute force computation -- the
strategy followed by the computer program 'Deep Blue' -- is too time
consuming for the human brain.

Similarly for tennis. The ability to anticipate the opponent's next
shot -- to represent it within 'tennis space' in the player's brain --
is absolutely imperative in order to play the game at the speed that it
runs in top-level competition. There is not enough time even to send
the signals to the muscles from the brain if you wait to see what your
opponent actually does.

Although it takes a great deal of time to develop the set of mental
models required for any activity, the actual experience of performing
the activity 'shows up' in a similar way for all activities. The
experience is one of the action 'just happening', with the conscious
mind lagging behind, and observing.

The same is true in music. A jazz-playing composer friend of mine told
me (about twenty years ago) that it would perhaps take me ten years of
serious effort even to approach acceptable expertise in the jazz field.
Most jazz players start very early to develop their mental models --
harmonic, melodic, variant scale patterns, and so on -- so the timescale
is not unrealistic. But the set of mental models required for the
classically-trained musician is rather large, too, and there is a degree
of overlap, to do with sensitivity to ensemble, intonation, dramatic
context, and so on.

To discover the ability to improvise with very few constraints is not so
hard, though to produce anything worthwhile a lot of practice is
required. I've done some of that, and I've also found that, whatever
the results, it can be very liberating for a young student to just play
'anything' with others, striving to tell a story or create a scene with
musical sounds -- 'a walk in the park', say, with a rain shower, a lost
umbrella, and a caught taxi at the end.

To participate in the full-blown jazz ensemble is quite another thing,
of course, and I think it requires falling-in-love with the idea of
doing it right at the start. I never fell in love with it in that way,
so I never found out what would have been possible for me. Not so much,
I suspect.

> In New York, where there is a plethora of both types, the intersection
> of the two is unusual but present. And for the rare players who have
> been able to go both ways such as William Blount, principal clarinet
> with the Orchestra of St. Lukes and also played with Buddy Rich's
> band, will confront some prejudice from the classical community. If
> there is no dialogue or true interest between the two types of
> musicians, there must be little in common even though it needn't be
> that way.

I've never run across that lack of dialogue, I have to say. The best
classical musicians are always awestruck by the abilities of the best
jazz players -- and rightly so.

> This is not true though between classically trained composers and jazz
> musicians. Many of my colleagues, including myself, have friends in
> the jazz world. I am very interested in the results of improvisation
> and the differences between how time is interpreted between both types
> of musics as well as between the musics from around the world.

I can imagine.

> Secondly, the terms being used in this thread are misleading. As a
> composer and clarinetist I use the word 'creativity' only for the act
> of composing. I find nothing creative about performing a composed
> piece. Possibly the more applicable word here is 'imagination',
> finding musical images for what is not there. The score only has
> notes. The sounds must be added in some way and that way is not done
> by simply playing whatever is linearly on the page. In composing as
> in performing the word imagination equals technique and one must use
> their imagination to find or invent the right technique to accomplish
> the task at hand--a daring proposition.

What I'd want to say about that is that 'creativity' obviously has a
lesser or fuller expression, even in the way you want to use it. A
young child who makes up a tune is creative, Luciano Berio is creative.
But they're obviously not at the same level of expression, even though
they're both creative.

I think that there's a useful way to think about creativity that is a
bit different from your usage. I don't write music, but I have written
bits of it, and I have written poems and prose pieces, and so on. I
find the experience of engaging with the limited set of mental models I
have at my disposal in those activities not dissimilar to the experience
of engaging with the much more fully developed set of mental models that
are a part of my response to written music.

In both sorts of activity, a degree of trust of oneself, and of letting
go, is required. One somehow lets a wiser, unconscious part of oneself
take over, and instead of asking what one should do and then doing it,
one 'asks' (in a more metaphorical use of the word) what's required *at
the same moment as producing the answer*.

Mozart said he simply wrote down the tunes he heard in his head that
most pleased him, and that *he* had nothing to do with it. I'd like to
think that when everything is a-flowing, we -- jazz players and
'classical' players alike -- simply play what pleases us, and we have
nothing to do with it either. That we can't be Mozart doesn't mean that
we aren't being creative, in this sense.

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

... Is that lemon in your tea? No, s'lime.

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