I'm All Ears

Errol Morris's New York Times Opinion piece about Sviatoslav Richter, "The Pianist and the Lobster," is a fantastic piece of writing about one of the most enigmatic of an enigmatic breed of great pianists. And it includes interviews with Richter's video biographer Bruno Monsaingeon and pianist (and illustrious member of the musical blogosphere) Jeremy Denk.

I knew about Richter's problems with pitch as he got older, but I was struck by the peculiar nature of the way Richter's sense of pitch changed. Then again, why should Richter, who functioned on the on outer expressive margins of musical possibilities, have an experience with physical changes in his hearing that wasn't singular?

ERROL MORRIS Hearing things a half tone up or down — was this also a problem related to depression?

BRUNO MONSAINGEON It was probably related to depression. But actually, he mentioned that a bit later in our conversations. One day in a hotel room in Paris, he went to the Clavinova [an electric practice piano] which he had in his room. We had great problems plugging the machine in. And finally he started playing the “Carmen” overture. And he said, “This is in A major, isn’t it?” And I said, “Yes, yes of course, Maestro.” But he was playing the left hand in B major. There was a separation in his mind between the left and the right hand. One was playing one key and another in another key. It must have been a real nightmare for him.

ERROL MORRIS How can you play a piece when you’re transposing only one hand into a different key?

BRUNO MONSAINGEON Well, that’s why he stopped. At that time, he had stopped playing in public. He was trying, towards the very end, the very, very last weeks of his life, he was trying to go back to the keyboard and was even planning to play some concerts. But, during those three years, there was not one note played (except on occasion on that Clavinova). Not one note. And he was desperate about it. It’s a very sad ending. This mighty artist and great, great mind, affected by all these problems.

Both my parents, at least two of my grandparents, and all three of my brothers were born with absolute pitch. Even within the term "absolute pitch" there is a continuum. My father has it to a lesser degree than my brother Marshall, who had a pair of ears that might have compared to Richter's, but Marshall didn't live long enough to experience physical changes in his hearing. To the rest of the family perfect pitch was just a given utilitarian thing. I grew up feeling like I was missing something. In most families the person with absolute pitch is the "other." In my family of origin I was "other." And if I sang something in the wrong key, my brothers would always let me know.

"You're in the wrong key!"

Pitches and harmonies are magical to me. They always were. But like most magical things they are also illusive. Sometimes a piece of music running through my head is in the right key, but I just don't have the wherewithal to name the key or the particular pitches. I sometimes recognize pitches by their color when they are played on a particular instrument, and my string-playing arm will usually find them when prompted by visual (i.e. reading music) stimulation. But my navigation through the world of pitches is like the visual experience of walking through a seasonally changing stretch of woods, following a well-worn path, and looking up, down, and all around to find wonderful happenings. Some people who walk through the woods see (and name) species of trees, species of flowers, species of birds, species of insects, species of mold, numbers of living trees, numbers of dead trees, geologic formations, erosion, and diseases of all sorts. Their visual experience is different from mine.

In his later seventies, my father, who will be eighty-nine in August, noticed that he started hearing pitches half a tone sharp. Since he is a string player, and has the musical habits of someone with relative pitch, he has managed to adjust. My friend Susan Teicher told me that her father, the pianist Louis Teicher also had that problem. And when I learned about Richter's half-tone-off hearing, I started to wonder if this kind of change in hearing might be a general physical phenomenon, but one only noticed by the small segment of the population who are musicians with absolute pitch.

Musicianship is so much more than pitch memory or pitch labeling. And there are zillions of sounds in the world that are not classified as music: language, animal sounds, nature sounds, motors, anything that vibrates, anything that bangs or rubs against objects. There are certainly people with absolute pitch who are not musical. They just use their sense of pitch in other ways.

We do know that size and shape of our ears change as we get older. This video from the BBC shows how the outsides of our ears change over time. I imagine that the insides of our ears change as well. And I imagine that changes in the inner parts of our ears affect the way we hear pitches. I asked an audiologist about this when it was happening to my father, and he could not give me any information.

After reading the article about Richter last night, I did a little google search and came upon this livejournal discussion, which links to a 2007 article published in Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences about aging and absolute pitch that confirms my suspicions.

Thoughts About Musical Memory

I am impressed by people who can memorize music and then perform that music from memory. I have (thankfully) only had to do it a few times in my life. The first time was in a lesson with Julius Baker during my first year at Juilliard. I was playing a Casterede etude for him. He asked me if I could play it from memory, and I had practiced the piece so many times (for many years) that I was able to play it for him without looking at the music (It was a short etude, and I had just played it with the music in front of me.)

I must have been playing that etude by ear and by feel. I wouldn't say that I was playing it by memory. I don't know if I could have done it again. Luckily I didn't have to find out. When my mother studied with Julius Baker in the 1950s, she had to play everything from memory (which she could do: she had absolute pitch and an incredible memory). I'm grateful that Baker softened up a bit by the 1970s, but he was still impressed by people who could play from memory.

When playing scales and arpeggios on the flute without looking at music, I have to take time to think about what notes I might be playing. When playing scales and arpeggios on the viola or the violin, I have to think about what position I might happen to be in, what instrument I am playing, and what string I happen to be on before I could begin to tell you what scale or arpeggio I might be playing.

I do not memorize music well. I have tried. Again and again. I can rattle off songs I learned long ago, but my interpretation and understanding of them hasn't changed since my adolescent brain imprinted them in the "permanent" section of my memory banks. There are theme songs to television shows, songs from musicals and operettas I did in Junior High and High School, the first dozen or so lines of the poem, "Cut" by Sylvia Plath that I recited as part of an "avant garde" band piece we did in high school where everyone had to recite a different poem at the same time, songs I sang with my kids when they were little, much of the Mozart D major Flute Concerto, Syrinx, the Gluck melody from Orpheus, and the Baker set of daily warm-up excerpts. These are things I learned by rote.

I can make it through some of the first movement of the Bach E-major Partita on the violin without the music in front of me, but I always end up modulating to an impossible key before I realize that I have gotten myself off track. I can also make it through the first movement of the Bach G-major Cello Suite once in a while, and occasionally I surprise myself to find that I can play other movements in the Cello Suites without music. But I can't tell you which ones.

When I practice the E-major Partita (in A major on the viola) with music, I get new musical insights every time. And when I practice the G-major Cello Suite with music I learn something new every time. For me having the music in front of me allows me the freedom to group notes in new (for me) ways. Having the music in front of me helps me to really know where I have been, where I am, and where I am going. It gives me a foot hold. It helps me feel at ease playing in front of people. Playing with the music in front of me becomes more about the music than it does about my playing of the music.

More About Plato and Music

I don't really buy this claim that Plato's works were arranged to correspond with the 12 notes of a musical scale, but I do like the idea of "not revealing doctrines that would threaten the gods of Olympus." This is something worth reading, particularly for musicians who would, like me, have a bone to pick with Jay Kennedy's musical claims.

Here's some food for thought:

Positive concepts are lodged at the harmonious third, fourth, sixth, eight and ninth "notes", which were considered to be most harmonious with the 12th; while negative concepts are found at the more dissonant fifth, seventh, 10th and 11th.

Given a 12-note chromatic scale, which was more than likely NOT generally used for the music of Plato's time, the third degree of the scale would be a whole step from the root, the fourth degree, would be a minor third away from the root, the sixth degree would be a perfect fourth from the root, the eighth degree would be a perfect fifth, and so on. It doesn't make any musical sense to me.

If the degrees of the 12-note chromatic scale have particular qualities when they sound by themselves, then Plato would have to have had absolute pitch mixed with a kind of synesthesia. What respectable synesthete would divide notes simply between pleasant and dissonant. If that were true Plato would probably have written a lot more specifically about music. I believe that when he discussed modes he was commenting on the linear harmonic nature of a set of pitches going from "tonic" to "tonic" on instruments that did not have the ability to alter themselves chromatically (the lyre vs. the pedal harp, for example).

Determining Musical and Artistic Value

How do we know if the work we do as composers will have value for people of future generations? Who is really equipped to judge the value of a body of work, whether it be music or visual art? Who is equipped to judge the value of work that we do ourselves? Who is equipped to judge the value of work done by someone you love?

It is all so subjective. The first scribblings of a child are extremely meaningful to young parents and young grandparents. Michael and I saved boxes and boxes of drawings, books, and paintings that our kids made. Our children drew a lot, and because of it their personalities made their way into their art. Our son had an unusual eye for emotion, detail, and perspective at a very young age, and our daughter had a unique intimate style, a nice spatial sense, and a real eye for color. Some of Rachel's and Ben's art hangs on our walls, and when we see it Michael and I are reminded of their childhoods. Nobody can convince me that their work isn't great art.

Choice pieces of my mother's art hangs on our walls too. Since I know the large body of her work, I can separate her pieces into categories of excellent, good, and not so good. Because I know the "back story," I can also appreciate the technique she acquired over the years. Seeing her art serves a personal purpose for me, but I'm pleased to find that friends who see her work find their own special attachments to individual pieces.

Many years ago, in the early days of the internet, my mother made a website with photos of her work. Nothing came of it, and when AOL changed something in its format, my mother's website melted into the ether. My mother mentioned that nobody seemed interested in putting much in the way of monetary value on her work because she was still alive. Death puts a finite cap onto someone's creative life, and by doing so changes the monetary value of his or her work. Consider the artists of the past who were unable to sell their works for a fraction of the price that those works can command today.

Who is qualified to place monetary value on my mother's work? I am far too subjective to make any kind of judgement, and because she is no longer a working artist who can calculate the cost of materials into a work's monetary value, neither is she. All I have to go on to determine what is excellent, good, and not so good is my instinct. My mother's memory is quite good, but she doesn't remember every piece of art she did from 1970 to 2004. She is also just as subjective as the next artist, and probably equally critical. Blindness put a finite cap on my mother's life as a visual artist, but it doesn't ease her burden of those of us who can see when we are put in a position to evaluate her work.

Yesterday, a few hours before Marshall's memorial service, I went to his apartment and had a look at the condition of his manuscripts. They were in meticulous order: each piece was placed within a large envelope, and those envelopes were stored in appropriately sized boxes. Marshall kept a catalog of his works as a "Monument" (his word for it), and followed the format that we see in scholarly collections of composers' works. He listed everything by opus number, whether it was published or not. I was not surprised at all that everything would be in perfect order because his exceptional abilities and talents were bundled together with an exceptional sense of self-importance.

[I was surprised to find that his library of books about music mirrored my own almost exactly.]

I have always experienced Marshall through his thick curtain of self-importance, so I am unable to subjectively determine either the quality or the importance of his work. Marshall believed his work was of great value. Now the "ball" is in the hands of people outside of the family, and I wish them great success and courage in separating the excellent from the good and from the not so good. Marshall's absolute sense of self-importance (absolute "pitch" if you will) will certainly make the job of archiving and preserving his music easier.

Perhaps it is a "gift" (along with my neuro-typical makeup) that I do not feel compelled to tout the merits of my own work (or "toot" my own horn, as it were). Perhaps my aversion to the practice of self-promotion comes from having a brother who "touted" his horn loudly and often.

I do believe that what I do is useful (because it serves a need), and I do believe it has some value (because I take pride in my work, and I actually enjoy playing it and listening to it). I am, however, not in a position to judge its quality or its ultimate value. Nor should I be.

Marshall Fine's Musical Assumptions

As I learned music, I gradually observed that my experiments with alternate key levels and hierarchies, as basis for my own handling of tonalities and even tone-rows, lent themselves better to triple periods than double. It appears that I may have discovered a basic new truth, which all these examples demonstrate: that just as double periodicity was necessary to accommodate music based on an ascendant tonic and dominant (or dominant-substitute), triple or greater periodicity is the new wineskin for the fresh wine, music of expanded tonality and rhythmic scope. The chances are excellent that a phrase of modern music, that on the surface appears to lead nowhere due to a "free-flowing" character, or otherwise lies uncertainly or ambiguously, will come clean when considered a multiple period.

-- from Marshall Fine's Phrasing Handbook

I am very impressed with my brother's Phrasing Handbook because of the concise way he contextualizes music from the Middle Ages through the 21st century. It is 77 pages long, carefully written, and makes a great deal of sense.

My brother did have the sharpest ears I ever encountered, even in a family full of people with absolute pitch (our mother, our maternal grandmother, our paternal grandfather, and three brothers), and near absolute pitch (our father). I did not inherit absolute pitch (and boy did I try to develop it). I really felt somewhat handicapped as a child because of my lack of absolute pitch. The very young Marshall, when asked, could play anything he happened to have heard on the piano: even something as complicated as the opening of Tristan. It was truly astounding.

It is really rare to read a contemporary "take" on music history from the standpoint of someone who hears at such a high level. Too much scholarly writing approaches music history from the intellectual side rather than from the practical side.

I think that this handbook might really be helpful to people who want to understand something about the "why" of phrasing.

Lend Me Your Ears!

I suppose my first exposure to the fact that people have different inborn listening abilities came about when I realized that I didn't have perfect pitch. In most families the odd person with perfect pitch is considered the exception, but in my family I was the only person who, without a relative measuring pitch, couldn't tell a G# from a G, or pluck one or the other out of thin air. My father claims not to have perfect pitch, but I believe that his perceived lack of perfect pitch is only "relative." He is right most of the time. I have never known him to be wrong. My mother, all my brothers, and the two grandparents (one maternal and one paternal) I knew all had absolute perfect pitch. I tried for years to develop it, even going to the extreme of waking up before my alarm clock sounded its electric B-flat buzz to sing what I thought was a B flat, and see if I was right. Somehow that pitch remained in my brain, but only in its electronic voice. On an acoustic instrument or a voice a B flat could be any one of its chromatic neighbors to me. Developing dependable pitch memory would be equivalent to the task of trying to be taller than five feet one (and a quarter).

My vastly imperfect pitch has come in handy from time to time. I don't have any problem playing baroque music at A=415 (on any instrument), and transcriptions never bother me.

I assumed that anyone who wrote music had to have perfect pitch, and I assumed that anyone who wrote the complicated music that was new when I was young could hear all the pitches, separately and in combination. The people I spent time with, particularly the composers who were at Tanglewood during the 1970s, could hear everything. They were kind of superhuman, but I thought they were normal. There was some new music (in the 1970s and 1980s) I could grasp, like music by George Crumb and Olivier Messiaen, and most Ligeti, but it was really difficult for me to claim that I really could "hear" Sessions, Carter (music he wrote during the 1960s through 1980s), and Babbitt.

I have no ear for microtones either. None. As much as I like Ben Johnston's ideas, rhythms, textures, and sonorities, I just don't get the microtones. My imperfectly-pitched ears tell me that microtonal music is out of tune (while my objective mind tells me that the playing is correct).

Just because I can't hear microtones doesn't give microtonal music lesser worth in the grand scheme of things, and just because I don't have the vocabulary to evaluate the quality of one mid 20th-century serial piece against the quality of another, doesn't mean that there isn't quality to be evaluated. I don't understand the stock market, politics, or mathematics beyond arithmetic, and I know that those things have serious merit and enjoyment for those who do.

I would love to have perfect pitch for a day, or a week, or a month, so that I can have the serial music and microtonal listening experiences that many mid-to-late 20th century composers intended their audiences to have (I suppose I would have to have perfect polyrhythm as well in order to really understand Babbitt). Perhaps my beloved tonal and regular rhythmic world would be tossed on its ear, and perhaps I would never be able to enjoy its limits again.

Perhaps I'll just keep the ear I was born with.

Perfect Pitch

I took (and failed) the test that was part of the study described in this article about perfect pitch being genetic. The tones that were generated were computer tones that were devoid of any kind of "color." Simple pitch recognition, or the ability to register the number of oscillations per second that a given pitch goes through, is what that study measured. Like most musicians, I have relative pitch. I can also identify pitches when they are played on any of the instruments I have spent a lot of physical time with: violin, viola, flute, and recorder in particular, because I respond to those instruments by physical sensation, but that's not perfect pitch. Perfect pitch is absolute pitch. The kind of pitch that I have tried to develop. The kind of pitch that my brothers were born with. The above article suggests that the ability to perceive pitch "goes sharp" when we get older. I don't think that a change in mental ability is the cause. I know of three older people who have complained that they hear pitches half a step sharp (one is my father--who only has the problem when listening to recordings, one is my friend's father, Louis Teicher, and one is Svatislov Richter). I imagine that there must be something physiological about the hearing mechanism that causes pitches to be heard sharper that comes with age. Only someone with perfect pitch would notice, though. Any thoughts?