Coming into our own

So, let’s say we are starting a new piece. It is big and long and we want to “get our head around it.” One way to start, of course, might be to listen to a recording or watch it on Youtube. Oh, the internet! Beware the soul-wrenching juxtapositions our browsers may churn up, in which (for example) Sviatoslav Richter appears in the search results right below a synthesizer “tutorial” consisting of flashing neon lights hurtling across the screen—followed by a performance in a dim church basement by an overdressed six-year-old, flawless, that both takes our breath away and makes us want to quit piano on the spot.

The perils of Youtube might give us one set of reasons not to listen to recordings as we embark on this new piece. Here is another. I’m speaking now in the interest of our long-term goals, which surely go beyond learning this piece and aim more broadly towards developing our own skills of musical interpretation. Listening to our new piece before we have formed any opinions of our own about it, we fall prey to the thinking, conscious or not, that tells us “it’s supposed to sound like this.” And we internalize all the specifics that proliferate: “it’s supposed to be this tempo.” “It’s supposed to take this amount of time in exactly these places” or “to have this kind of character” or “this particular articulation,” all because so-and-so played it that way. No matter the greatness of the so-and-so, still this is too limiting!

Musicians make choices. We are making choices in our practicing and in our playing, consciously or not, all the time. We need to know the difference between what is an integral part of the music itself and what is a matter of individual interpretation; in addition (and even more importantly), we need to learn to make our own choices, to cultivate our own artistry. Neither of these goals is served by listening to any single recording. So, if we are intent on listening to a new piece before we start learning it, we would do well to listen to at least three different renditions. Then, we can sit down to contemplate the nuances that distinguish them, describing the differences for ourselves as specifically as we can. If all three sound the same, we must listen again! In noticing the differences, however subtle, we are well on our way to getting a sense of the range of possibilities that awaits us.

Another skillful use of recordings, before we start our new piece, would be to listen widely to other pieces by that composer, or from that period and genre. Everything BUT the piece we intend to learn! That way, we have all the benefits of familiarizing ourselves with the style, the types of energy, the gestures, the sound-world we will likely encounter—but without the stultifying, even paralyzing voice that says you must play this piece this way.

Is it our primary job to play this specific piece as beautifully as it can be played (which we might do most efficiently by emulating a great recording)? Or is it our primary job to learn and grow authentically as ourselves? This we might do most efficiently, in fact, by tossing efficiency to the wind, along with recordings, and focusing instead on our own direct experience with the piece. Can we do both of these jobs? There is no doubt that good modeling is incredibly important! Let’s take it wherever we find it, from recordings or teachers or friends & colleagues. But it cannot end there….

When I was a freshman in high school at the North Carolina School of the Arts in the 1980s, my beloved teacher Marian Hahn assigned me the Bach E major Prelude & Fugue from WTC I. I still have the book. It is a Peters edition, my name on the cover in the neat, obedient block letters of my childhood, unrecognizable (surely unimaginable) by those who know only my hideous adult scrawl. Pianists reading this will know that Bach did not write any indications for tempo, dynamics or articulation in most of his keyboard pieces; all these decisions are left to the player. Accordingly, Marian urged the 14-year-old me to make my own musical decisions for this piece. In my ancient Peters edition, there are markings penciled in to this gentle, pastoral prelude which cause me now to recoil in horror. They are written in Marian’s (lovely, looping) handwriting, but I know with utter certainty that she would never have chosen them—neither she, nor any other grown-up musician with a shred of taste or good sense! I certainly did not glean them from any commercial recording that has ever seen the light of day.

But I have never been able to bring myself to erase these offending fortissimos, because for all their cringe-worthiness, I recognize their importance. My teacher asked me what dynamics I wanted for this piece. I told her, and though she may have bitten her tongue, still she gamely picked up a pencil and wrote in what I said. I was the so-and-so who played it that way! It was a ridiculous way (I now know), but it was my way. My wise teacher not only suffered through hearing it, but actually encouraged me, wanting me to learn to a) make and b) believe in my own musical choices. At times when the decisions themselves may have been less than supportable, still my burgeoning sense of musical conviction was upheld. And this was a choice, a broader kind of musical choice, that my teacher made. I would have been capable at that time of producing a very skillful copy of someone else’s interpretation—but how thankful I am that instead, I was offered the space to experiment and, in time, to come into my own.

Also, to be clear, I am thankful that I play the E major Prelude and Fugue very differently now. I think you would be too.