Klarinet Archive - Posting 000215.txt from 2009/02

From: "Alexander Brash" <brash@-----.edu>
Subj: RE: [kl] Brahms quintet
Date: Tue, 10 Feb 2009 17:44:14 -0500

> Jonathan...there is no such thing as should in music...only infinite
> possibilities

I rather disagree with this sentiment...the fact that some "shoulds" must
exist does not limit possibility in any way. The existence of a basis
doesn't bound a space. I've pasted parts of an essay on just this topic
below, which you can read in full in my upcoming book. I've pasted the
actual LaTeX code since the pdf comes out with strange code characters, so
it may read a little weird - it's also still a work in progress:

chapter{Free Will and Interpretation}

Most people would tell you that free will is the ability to discern, to
reject outside influences and have the ability to decide and act - that
it's the ability to make a choice. Even the dictionary definitions boil
down to this. Translation? ``People can do stuff." No shit. As for whether
it actually exists in some sort of religious, cosmic sense, who cares?
Under any observable experiment, in thought or reality, people are going
to behave AS IF they have it. It's a relativity and context problem,
nothing more. You can believe whatever gives you the most comfort, I
choose (or do I?) to believe it does, because otherwise I can't imagine
that anything really matters. Whether that's ``true" free will, or it's
the way people act day to day that everyone calls free will, it makes no
difference.

The problem is, it's the wrong term to use. That thing up there, that
``People can do stuff," is only part of the concept, the less important
part. I call this instead ``free capability." In separating capability
from execution, we can see the wrinkle, the beauty and nuance that has
terrorized the inquisitive mind for millennia: free will is not the
ability to make a choice, it's KNOWING that just because we can do a
thing, it does not mean that we must. Free will is not the fact that we
chose one of several paths, it's in our ability to accept that none of
those paths is inevitable, and to know not WHY we chose the one we did,
but why we rejected the others. It's subtle, and you might not get it
right now, but when you do, your first instinct is going to be to jump off
a roof, so bleak will the abyss of reality suddenly seem.

It's human nature, for reasons I don't entirely understand, to fight this.
We like looking for inevitabilities. We like believing in absolutes. It
gives comfort, it gives stability. Everyone loves telling their friend
after a breakup ``oh if he loved you, then he DEFINITELY couldn't have
done X." People toss on the rainment of inevitability at the most
ridiculous times. Complex, emotional, human relationship gone wrong? ``Oh,
it wasn't meant to be." Did bad on a math test? ``Oh it's OK, because it's
only because I missed questions 1 through 50, which was only because of
this one thing I misunderstood. And it wasn't really fair anyway." (or
maybe you're just bad! no no, reject, my self worth is too important!)
We've taken all the beauty that free will represents, and turned it into a
pathetic coping mechanism. It's no different in music.

A sense of inevitability is how we communicate in performance, we've
explored this at length. It's that you show something so spectacular that
no one in the audience can imagine, in the moment, that it could possibly
go any other way. It's aural beauty, combined with all the comfort of
feeling that really, some definites are out there, and this artist in
front of me understands them. How can this be, and multiple
interpretations still be possible?

<SECTION REDACTED>

Next Example: circular breathing on wind instruments. Most established,
famous performers, musicians with very serious orchestral positions, would
tell you not to do it. On a totally unrelated note, these people
correspond exactly to the people who can't do it. The reasons I've
documented are as follows:

egin{enumerate}
item The music needs to breath
item Singers have to breath, so we should breath too
item It makes too much noise (is distracting)
item It's a distracting circus trick
item It causes brain damage
end{enumerate}

1) I don't even know what that means, it's probably one of those nonsense
metaphors that terrible teachers are so fond of using. I'm pretty sure
it's something like ``there exist ($exists$) places in a musical phrase
where there are pauses, times where there should be no sound." OK, I can
agree with that. I don't see what that has to do with circular breathing -
there's nothing that says just because you use this technique you always
have to be producing sound from your instrument. You are still perfectly
capable of stopping. Ergo, this argument is not actually an argument,
since it is making no statement against the original premise. It's simply
a statement of a boring, unrelated, and irrelevant fact. Learn how to
think before you try that crap with any intelligent person.

2) The fact that singers have to breath is a technical FACT of singing.
Since this technical fact limits the amount of time you can continuously
produce sound, I call it a LIMITING FACTOR of singing. Why would I want to
emulate the limitations of another instrument? Maybe I shouldn't use my
tongue either because violinists can't? In a similar vein, take an example
from the violin repertory, the slow movement of the Barber violin
concerto. It opens with a huge oboe solo, and most oboists have to take a
breath in the middle of it. However, when violinists play the same tune,
they crescendo through the long note exactly where the oboist would stop
(adding a rest that's not in the music, by the way), and continue on
without breaking the sound at all. Barber explicitly marked for you NOT to
break, so if you have to breath, congratulations, you just failed to play
the phrase correctly. The music didn't have to breath. You did, because
you are weak. It's not the same thing.

3) Yes, circular breathing badly makes a lot of noise. Circular breathing
perfectly, however, is actually less noisy than a regular breath. So this
argument is really an argument against ``circular breathing badly," and so
is meaningless to the question of whether or not to learn how to circular
breath in the first place. I could just as easily say ``you've only been
using the bow for a year, and you don't sound that good, so you should
stop and only play pizzicato."

4) The same argument can be made for left hand pizzicati, intentionally
breaking strings, moving, dancing, laughing, crying, and the very
existence of Lang Lang. Unless you are also against each and every one of
those items (except Lang Lang), you have no basis to arbitrarily choose to
apply this argument to circular breathing.

5) So does reading that argument.

The final example: the differences between FF, $>$, sfz, Fp, and -. FF is
a dynamic marking. Fp is an indication of rapid dynamic change. They are
not indications of length, attack, or pitch. Sfz and $>$ are
articulations. They are completely orthogonal to dynamic. - can be a few
things based on context, but the most common is legato (an articulation),
or egogic accent (a change of length). These are separate categories of
``thing" which have nothing to do with each other. Even professionals
commonly confuse them, and just give ``more" when they see any kind of
``more" marked. This is completely incorrect, and does not result in
legitimate performance. The only exception is when a musicians KNOWS, very
clearly, what all of these differences are, and is actively choosing not
to do them with a specific purpose in mind. By actively, I mean he can
defend it to me in words like his life depended on it - a vague emotional
sense does not qualify. Doing whatever you feel like simply ``because"
results in the kind of insipid performance of Brahms I talk about in my
first essay.

Real interpretation then, exists in two worlds. 1) In the details. The
distinctions above still leave open limitless possibilities for how you
actually execute a Fp, based on the context, based on what you feel, based
on whatever you like, there's no problem with that. 2) In an active,
spontaneous, but still completely informed choice to do something
completely different from what seems indicated, because you have a point
that you need to makeldots a point that you believe in with both your
heart and brain, a point that you state so strongly that even if another
intelligent person ``disagrees" with you, they can still respect and be
moved by your passion. In this world, I often think of Bernstein's
interpretations of Mahler and Shostakovich symphonies. He ignores a lot of
explicit markings in the score, but if you listen to archival recordings
of him discussing the approach, he has almost absurdly cogent reasons for
doing it. That's why these interpretations are still regarded as brilliant
today, don't be fooled into thinking he was just acting on some divine
musical instinct.

A lot of this can be faked, to some extent, with ``balls," with confidence
and strength, with an aggressiveness of technique that confuses the
difference between inevitability and virtuosity. Audiences do know the
difference. Do not underestimate them, a sense of free will is one of the
defining qualities of a human being, and even the most uncultured,
uneducated ear, will know when they've heard something that's good, great,
or sublime.

Think about it. Don't be content with ``checkboxes." Discover real choice,
and then make some.

On Tue, February 10, 2009 2:08 pm, Michael Wnight wrote:
> Jonathan...there is no such thing as should in music...only infinite
> possibilities and anyone who has worked with great composers will know
> that they are very pragmatic and open to variance.
>
> Michael Whight
>
> -----Original Message-----
> From: Jonathan Cohler <cohler@-----.org>
> Sent: 10 February 2009 16:45
> To: klarinet@-----.org
> Subject: Re: [kl] Brahms quintet
>
> At 9:21 AM +0000 2/10/09, Tony Pay wrote:
>>That Mühlfeld played a small section of the slow
>>movement on another clarinet amounts to nothing
>>more than a small puzzle. Such a decision by
>>one performer need have no bearing on what is
>>done today; even today's players differ in what
>>they can make different setups do.
>
> By the way, you didn't consider the possibility
> that Muhlfeld simply moved his barrel and
> mouthpiece together over to the B-flat clarinet
> that he (and obviously Brahms) preferred for the
> passage. Given the difficulties of moving a
> mouthpiece by itself, and the obvious problems of
> playing a setup that has been sitting unused for
> 20 minutes, this is the more likely scenario.
> [Another problem besides the reed sitting unused
> for 20 minutes is that the temperature of the air
> column in the tube will have reverted to whatever
> room temperature is by that point in time, which
> will make the pitch flatter as well.]
>
> But clearly, given that Muhlfeld preferred it on
> the B-flat (with Brahms' obvious approval), and
> given the fact that on modern day clarinets
> (Buffet, Yamaha, Selmer, Leblanc, Rossi,
> Wurlitzer, etc....) it sounds better, lies
> better, is smoother and works better in general,
> modern-day players SHOULD play it on B-flat when
> possible. Yes, SHOULD.
>
> For your edification, Tony, "should" is used "to
> indicate duty, propriety, or expediency".
> Clearly, (1) it is our "duty" as classical
> musicians to adhere as closely as humanly
> possible to the desires of the composer, (2)
> clearly it is appropriate to the circumstances to
> use the B-flat ("propriety"), (3) clearly it is
> suitable for the purpose and conducive to
> advantage or interest to use the B-flat
> ("expediency").
>
> One SHOULD use the B-flat clarinet when playing
> this passage today on a modern clarinet. Whether
> or not you do so is your choice, of course.
>
>>Jonathan Cohler wrote:
>>
>>> Tony presented no scientific data of any kind at any point in the
>>> discussion. In fact, all he did was to continually ridicule science.
>>
>>Not science, old sport. Just you.
>
> I stand corrected. You are right. I should have
> said, "all he did was to continually ridicule
> science and make ad hominem attacks."
>
> Best,
> --
> Jonathan Cohler
> Artistic & General Director
> International Woodwind Festival
> http://iwwf.org/
> cohler@-----.org
>
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