Klarinet Archive - Posting 000568.txt from 2003/10

From: Tony@-----.uk (Tony Pay)
Subj: Re: [kl] Who speaks?
Date: Tue, 21 Oct 2003 13:30:52 -0400

On Wed, 15 Oct 2003 12:39:11 -0400, joseph.wakeling@-----.net said:

> Here's something worth bearing in mind: you are *always* expressing
> yourself, or at least some part of yourself, when you play. How can
> it be otherwise? Certain things are going on inside your head and
> those translate into the movements of fingers, tongue, mouth, lips,
> diaphragm that produce the sound that... etc. You don't have to "put"
> yourself anywhere because you're *already there*. And this leads
> naturally to a different question: "Are these parts of myself which
> are expressing themselves supporting the performance, or getting in
> the way of the performance?"
>
> Perhaps this is more obvious when one thinks about another performance
> art---acting. It's something which most actors are very well aware of
> that when you are performing on stage you are always expressing some
> part of yourself. And they are also aware of what is deadly to
> performance---trying, or pretending. Trying to "be" the person you're
> playing, or trying to "put" feelings into your playing, actually
> destroys your performance, because the part of yourself that you're
> then expressing is *someone trying to express something or pretend to
> be someone else*, and this comes across clearly, leaving you (as the
> writer Hanif Kureishi put it) "as obvious as a Catholic naked in a
> mosque".
>
> So again we come back to the question, "Are these parts of myself
> which are expressing themselves supporting the performance, or getting
> in the way of the performance?" And "putting" or "trying" or
> "expressing" can clearly get in the way, because then you are
> expressing these things, rather than the things which your role is
> demanding. (Clearly there are times when you will *want* to express
> "putting" or "trying" or "expressing", but that's different---then the
> demand *is* coming from the role.) So now we're faced with a very
> different task---rather than trying to "put" ourselves into the
> performance, we can accept that we're *always there* and follow a
> different direction: finding the parts of ourselves which express the
> role in the best possible way.

I couldn't put it better.

Another way of expressing it is: what's required of you is in the realm
of 'being' rather than in the realm of 'doing'.

(I'll leave you to judge where "How to sell slow movements" lies in all
of this:-)

Tony
--
_________ Tony Pay
|ony:-) 79 Southmoor Rd Tony@-----.uk
| |ay Oxford OX2 6RE http://classicalplus.gmn.com/artists
tel/fax 01865 553339

.... Sorry, that seat's taken.

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