 The Clarinet BBoard
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Author: Ken Shaw ★2017
Date: 2005-08-11 20:05
Now life is the only art that we are required to practice without preparation, and without being allowed the preliminary trials, the failures and botches, that are essential for the training of a mere beginner. In life, we must begin to give a public performance before we have acquired even a novice's skill; and often our moments of seeming mastery are upset by new demands, for which we have acquired no preparatory facility. Life is a score that we play at sight, not merely before we have divined the intentions of the composer, but even before we have mastered our instruments; even worse, a large part of the score has been only roughly indicated, and we must improvise the music for our particular instrument, over long passages. On these terms, the whole operation seems one of endless difficulty and frustration; and indeed, were it not for the fact that some of the passages have been played so often by our predecessors that, when we come to them, we seem to recall some of the score and can anticipate the natural sequence of the notes, we might often give up in sheer despair.
The wonder is not that so much cacophony appears in our actual individual lives, but that there is any appearance of harmony and progression."
-Lewis Mumford (1895–1990) U.S. social philosopher, "The Conduct of Life"
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Author: Markael
Date: 2005-08-12 01:25
Improvisation.
But the ability to improvise too, should improve with practice.
In life's concert, that is called "experience."
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Author: ned
Date: 2005-08-12 04:34
''Life is a score that we play at sight, not merely before we have divined the intentions of the composer''
What if you don't believe in a composer? Life is chaos really, and we respond by instinct. It's no real drama though, we are all in the same boat are we not?
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Author: psychotic lil clarinet girl (don't as
Date: 2005-08-12 04:47
What if you don't believe in a composer?
hm. Well... I suppose music couldn't just appear out of nowhere... It was composed by a composer.
Life is not complete chaos. There is much order to it indeed. It is us who create the chaos.
OH... and that was the best explanation of life I have ever heard ^_^!
I too was refferring to the composer as God.
Just like a composition needs a composer, a creation needs a creator.
We are his composition.
Post Edited (2005-08-12 15:44)
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Author: ned
Date: 2005-08-12 06:43
Mary,
I was alluding to life not being the subject of a composer (aka God) Scores, of course, do have such necessary people.
With respect to chaos - this is most definitely the case, it is all around us - from way down at the particle level through to the level in which we all reside. One only has to consider the actions of politicians to know this (tongue firmly in cheek).
I'm not quite sure of the intent of Ken Shaw's original posting but I am responding as I interpret his possible meaning.
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Author: EEBaum
Date: 2005-08-12 06:49
As for music appearing out of nowhere, listen to some improv. Better yet, go outside and just listen. Granted, depending on your POV, you may consider that composed as well.
As for who creates the chaos, an old one (sorry, no musicians in it)...
A biologist, a geologist, a physicist, and a computer scientist are having a conversation about whose field is most important, i.e. oldest.
The biologist contends that Biology is the oldest field, as life has been around for some billions of years on earth, and without it none of us would be here.
The geologist scoffs at this, saying that his profession regards everything that has occurred since the earth cooled, billions of years longer before life appeared.
The physicist declares that these are merely child's play; his field began at the big bang, the beginning of the universe when order was created from chaos.
The computer scientist just smiles, and says "Where do you think the chaos came from?"
-Alex
www.mostlydifferent.com
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Author: Markael
Date: 2005-08-12 12:59
This thread has taken some unexpected turns.
John Kelly asked, “What if you don’t believe in a composer…?”
Somehow, in the metaphor we are using here, of life as so completely improvised, the idea of God as composer, or, perhaps, composer/conductor, just doesn’t seem adequate. Let’s go with it anyway.
This makes me think of the Music Man, in the scene where the young boy brings his French horn to “Professor” Hill, asking for instructions on how to hold the instrument. Hill, who barely knows which end to blow himself, quotes the great Giuseppe Creatore and sends the boy back to his seat with no information.
One agnostic view is that God, if God exists at all, is a clueless Harold Hill.
A rigid, religiously zealous view is that the composer/conductor dictates every note, and true believers can discern each note.
My own view is somewhere between. The very concept of faith is a combination of knowing and not knowing, certainty and uncertainty.
Further:
Perhaps this life is not a performance as much as a practice. Notice I did not use the word “rehearsal,” where the goal is to polish a particular repertoire.
No matter how much we rehearse for it, we can blow the big performance. Anything can go wrong, a bad reed, a brain freeze, a random squeak. And, whatever skills we develop depend on our bodies, which can fail us. Eventually they do fail us.
Perhaps the standard for that concert in the great beyond is not perfection as we define it; no missed notes and perfectly executed technique, with feeling. It is perfection in the sense of wholeness, completeness.
And—a good portion of our task in this great practice is simply to find our place in the big orchestra, and the rest of our task is character development. This, after all, is the very stuff of fairy tale and myth.
The ugly duckling was playing in the wrong section.
Life is not fair. Every protagonist in myth and fairy tale has something to overcome, either from without or within. Overcoming that difficulty is always the key to success, and the greatest shame always seems to transform into the greatest glory.
This life can’t be the concert. We’re not even ready for the audition.
Post Edited (2005-08-12 13:06)
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Author: Ken Shaw ★2017
Date: 2005-08-12 14:24
John -
I posted the quote because it was about music and made an interesting and I thought illuminating analogy with life.
I was both serious and frivolous about the title. Practicing scales gives you a foundation for playing (at least) tonal music. It also underlies jazz improvisation, where you can't do anything useful until and unless you understand the harmony and chord changes. Practicing prepares you to perform music, in a way that doesn't happen in life, at least to the same extent.
The serious point was that you **should** be glad you can practice. The frivolous one played on the fact that practice often seems like drudgery.
Of course, we practice how to live from the teaching and example of our parents and others, but it's rather haphazard compared with how we learn to play music. That's inevitable, since life is much more complicated than music.
Ken Shaw
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Author: Brenda
Date: 2005-08-12 14:39
And because we're creative beings we can prepare different interpretations of the standards, but not for an audition. We all know how to write an exam, giving the "right" answers in order to get a good grade even if we don't believe them. But improvisation in music and in life can be so refreshing - it's a good thing that the score isn't completely written out. It's just nice to have friends willing to hang in there when we completely make fools of ourselves.
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Author: Don Poulsen
Date: 2005-08-12 15:06
Although I enjoy the freedom of improvisation, my inate perfectionism makes me want to start back at where I came in, correcting the bad notes I played because I didn't understand chord patterns, removing the squeaks that made others cringe, playing the passages I previously dropped out on, and, perhaps most importantly, seeing how the piece would have come together had I improvised in a different direction. I want to get it right before my part is recorded but I've been told that the piece continues ad infinitum, so the ensemble can't go back to replay any sections. I just hope that when I step off the stage after my section of the performance, it will be to applause or that I at least will have the satisfaction of knowing that the overall performance was enhanced by my joining in.
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Author: rockymountainbo
Date: 2005-08-12 15:34
we must begin to give a public performance before we have acquired even a novice's skill
==and to think we all do it buck naked....many of us with bright lots shining on us and people poking us all around.
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Author: Bob A
Date: 2005-08-12 23:03
Hey Markael, you said in part:
" The very concept of faith is a combination of knowing and not knowing, certainty and uncertainty."
That's the best defination of how to get cleanly across the "bridge" that I have ever heard.
Bob A
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