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Re: Looking for old post

Author: Tony Pay ★2017
Date: 2006-11-28 21:03

Ken Shaw wrote:

>>In a very old number of The Clarinet (perhaps the first series), I remember an article about playing the Mozart Trio on a 5 key clarinet. The writer said that he had to work so hard to get the notes out that he had no attention left for "musicianship." Nevertheless, the audience loved his playing, probably because Mozart was such a genius in setting imporant notes on the instrument's strong notes, and unimportant ones on the instrument's weak ones, that everything came out right automatically.>>

I'd have another explanation of this, more in line with what you write later on. It's this: a great deal of what's important about playing goes on outside our awareness. That means that if we have to concentrate on something else, we may play better -- especially if what we'd usually be concentrating on is ourselves, and how good we are.

The following quotation from "Style, Grace and Primitive Art" by the English anthropologist Gregory Bateson is apposite:

"I am indebted to Dr Anthony Forge for a quotation from Isadora Duncan: 'If I could tell you what it meant, there would be no point in dancing it.'

"Her statement is ambiguous. In terms of the rather vulgar premises of our culture, we would translate the statement to mean: 'There would then be no point in dancing it, because I could tell it to you, quicker and with less ambiguity, in words.' This interpretation goes along with the silly idea that it would be a good thing to be conscious of everything of which we are unconscious.

"But there is another possible meaning of Isadora Duncan's remark: If the message were the sort of message that could be communicated in words, there would be no point in dancing it, BUT IT IS NOT THAT SORT OF MESSAGE. It is, in fact, precisely the sort of message which would be falsified if communicated in words, because the use of words (other than poetry) would imply that this is a fully conscious and voluntary message, and this would be simply untrue.

"I believe that what Isadora Duncan or any artist is trying to communicate is more like: 'This is a particular sort of partly unconscious message. Let us engage in this particular sort of partly unconscious communication.' Or perhaps: 'This is a message about the interface between conscious and unconscious.'

"The message of SKILL of any sort must always be of this kind. The sensations and qualities of skill can never be put in words, and yet the fact of skill is conscious.

"The artist's dilemma is of a peculiar sort. He must practise in order to perform the craft components of his job. But to practise has always a double effect. It makes him, on the one hand, more able to do whatever it is he is attempting; and, on the other hand, by the phenomenon of habit formation, it makes him less aware of how he does it.

"If his attempt is to communicate about the unconscious components of his performance, then it follows that he is on a sort of moving stairway (or escalator) about whose position he is trying to communicate but whose movement is itself a function of his efforts to communicate.

"Clearly, his task is impossible, but, as has been remarked, some people do it very prettily."

Tony

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