Pianists from past centuries, particularly those who were composers would use the printed notes as a guide or a jumping off point to improvise, as well as engage in “Breaking Hands”, meaning their hands would not rhythmically synchronize with one another. In contemporary musical forms such as Jazz and Pop, these practices are the norm and continue to help keep them current. It brought back a memory of when a great Jazz musician did this in a Classical piece right in front of me, and where schools could take this to help make Classical music current by reaching way back into the past…..
Joe over on Butts in Seats wrote a wonderful post on April 2nd called The Way it Used to Be:
We (meaning bloggers and various and sundry arts writers) often talk about how the arts attendance experience was a lot less like the staid and proper process of sitting in a dark room facing a stage. However, other than a few generalizations, we didn’t have much to offer in the way of concrete specifics.
Joe’s post was inspired by Terry Teachout’s April Commentary article that recalled the practice of Pianists and their once upon-a-time direct interaction with audiences, something that’s becoming more and more acceptable again…thankfully! What has struck me in recent years is the ever increasing rigidity and structural tightness that so many performers are taught to strive for, and with competitions requiring competitors to memorize, it means they are judged more on the picture they have painted, rather than the picture they are painting in the moment. Sorry Mr. Serkin, if you insist on using music then you shall be disqualified! If a musician is performing a work for the first time, should they be expected to perform it from memory? Does a bad memory make one a bad musician? No, but playing from memory might make someone a non musician who plays by wrote rather than by feel. We unfortunately reflect this rigidity onto our audiences by giving them very little room to do anything and insisting they should feel the same way we do about what we are doing! I would think it would be incredibly exciting if when a Pianist had a memory lapse in a passage, that instead of breaking down or jumping ahead, they “allowed” themselves to improvise a way back to where they were, or improvised because they wanted to! It would be like watching bungee jumping! Sacrilege I hear, well it’s a good thing then that Liszt isn’t around anymore because that’s what he would probably do!
Chucho Valdes
I will never forget the time when with the Buffalo Philharmonic I accompanied the great Cuban Jazz Pianist Chucho Valdes (above). There’s something magical about this man and before our rehearsal with the orchestra he did something extraordinary. He warmed up on a Debussy Arabesque, impressive I thought and also unexpected, but then he continued after the notes ran out to improvise upon it. The work was only the start of his journey. He has recorded an album with these kinds of improvisations. Is this not what the Pianists of yesteryear were doing at their performances?
Maybe it’s Jazz musicians who have taken over the mantle of Liszt and Classical tradition in some respects, by performing concerts with this same sense of adventure and discovery. 20th and 21st century Classical composers are more about the closed ended composition which makes me wonder why they are called more adventurous and revolutionary? I wonder if there are any music schools that encourage Classical music students to explore new interpretive possibilities with improvisation. If it was once the norm to improvise sometimes in Classical concerts, then why did it go away? If some people are staying away from performances because they feel that everything is pre-determined including the performance, the experience, and the atmosphere with their role limited to being a judge of what happened rather than being swept up with what’s happening, then why not bring this tradition back once in a while?
We think we are going to get the “young” engaged with expensive gimmicks and marketing tricks? I think an improvisatory approach in certain performances would be much more likely to attract, with the sense of spontaneity and anticipation it would create. Hey it’s not a gimmick if Liszt did it is it? I doubt anyone feels a rigidness in any shape or form when Wynton Marsalis steps up to the mike! There is now this fad with quartets and small classical groups going into clubs, so how about doing more of this kind of thing there? If it’s done in that setting then it might stop being a fad and become widely established! What I love about the club concept is that it is bringing music to the people, which is the opposite concept to the concert hall setting.
How many concertos don’t have a cadenza composed by the composer? Quite a few, and yet without improvisation skills most Classical performers will pre-compose one or use someone’s published cadenza. When I accompanied Mark O’Connor in his 1st Concerto for Fiddle, he told me that when we reached the cadenza, that I would need to take a seat and he would let me know when he was out of ideas, and signal for me to stand for us to continue! It was a completely different cadenza in both performances. How exciting would it be to attend a Concerto performance and to find out that the cadenza would be made up on the spot. This might sound revolutionary, but it’s probably been happening since the French Revolution, and before that probably, but almost never now.
I am totally inspired by the voice of Rufus Wainwright, an in-between the lines Pop artist. In his hauntingly beautiful (“breaking hands”) song In a Graveyard (click to get to a sample), the disjointed accompaniment, the spinning melody and the delayed resolutions take my breath away. It could have been written by Schubert and I hazard a guess that Die schöne Müllerin was not always performed with perfect rhythmic synchronization, which made the work new every time. This is something we desperately need for classical music right now.
In music school we might need to start “Breaking Hands” to open minds!
TAFTO 2008 has started! I am a contributor this year (Tuesday April 15) and I am honored to be a part of the esteemed group writing this year. The first three contributions are fascinating!