I feel very fortunate that I have difficulty with a great many things having to do with music, because the fact that I have to face my difficulties every day makes me a better teacher. The instrumental teachers who have really helped me have all been people who worked all the time to improve their own playing. Teachers who have tried to show me how "easy" it is to do something on their instrument, using spoken phrases like "play it smoothly" or "play it like you are in a grand cathedral" have never given me anything I couldn't give myself. As far as I'm concerned, phrases like that are meaningless when it comes to directing the thousands of neural transmitters and hundreds of muscles in the hands and arms to do what an accomplished player would call a simple maneuver. Students need to be told exactly how to accomplish a task, and they need to have the task broken down into steps that can be followed. The only way I learn, even from myself (I am my own teacher now), is by breaking down tasks and identifying and separating the difficulties.
Drawing the bow in a straight line, for example, is simple in concept, but it is probably one of the most difficult things for a string player to do, especially in circumstances that involve difficult left hand manipulations and odd harmonic situations. It is a perennial difficulty for me, something I always have to work on improving. Because I have this difficulty I can notice it in my students and help them improve their bow arms (which improves everything else). If I didn't have this, as well as a whole slew of other "challenges," I believe that the development of my students would suffer. If everything came easily to me, I don't think I would be much of a teacher. If I didn't have to work for what I have accomplished and for what I will accomplish, I don't think that I would ever feel satisfied as a musician.
Thursday, November 30, 2006
Tuesday, November 28, 2006
The Food of Love
I guess my two constant creative activities are cooking food and composing music, and all of a sudden, while I was making vegan Chili today, I realized that they are quite similar.
First of all, cooking often requires a recipe. A piece of music in progress has one too: the instrumentation, form, key, and tempo of the piece. Cooking requires ingredients that work harmoniously together. So does a piece of music. Sometimes we use unusual food combinations (like sweetness and spice together--raisins and curry come to mind), and sometimes we use unusual harmonic combinations: dissonant intervals interspersed with consonant ones. Once the form is established in cooking, we have given parameters that we know will work, and we have ones that we know won't work. It is, for example, impossible to saute onions in raspberry jam.
My wastebasket has seen many examples of musical parallels to that sort of thing. If you want to have raspberries and onions in the same dish, you figure out ways of cooking the onions properly and adding the raspberries so that they do not fall apart and destroy your frying pan. If you want to have unlike elements working together in a piece of music you have to figure out a way for both (or all) of the elements to be heard. Every situation is different, and each problem needs its own unique solution.
After a lot of practice cooking you just know what ingredients work together. You can invent recipes based on classic models that taste totally different from their prototypes. It is the same with writing music. You can add an ethnic identity to a dish you are cooking with a combination of spices. You can do the same with a piece of music by incorporating harmonic or rhythmic elements and/or instruments from a particular culture, or you can combine elements from different cultures.
And then there's the question of taste...
Now it's time to get back to work.
First of all, cooking often requires a recipe. A piece of music in progress has one too: the instrumentation, form, key, and tempo of the piece. Cooking requires ingredients that work harmoniously together. So does a piece of music. Sometimes we use unusual food combinations (like sweetness and spice together--raisins and curry come to mind), and sometimes we use unusual harmonic combinations: dissonant intervals interspersed with consonant ones. Once the form is established in cooking, we have given parameters that we know will work, and we have ones that we know won't work. It is, for example, impossible to saute onions in raspberry jam.
My wastebasket has seen many examples of musical parallels to that sort of thing. If you want to have raspberries and onions in the same dish, you figure out ways of cooking the onions properly and adding the raspberries so that they do not fall apart and destroy your frying pan. If you want to have unlike elements working together in a piece of music you have to figure out a way for both (or all) of the elements to be heard. Every situation is different, and each problem needs its own unique solution.
After a lot of practice cooking you just know what ingredients work together. You can invent recipes based on classic models that taste totally different from their prototypes. It is the same with writing music. You can add an ethnic identity to a dish you are cooking with a combination of spices. You can do the same with a piece of music by incorporating harmonic or rhythmic elements and/or instruments from a particular culture, or you can combine elements from different cultures.
And then there's the question of taste...
Now it's time to get back to work.
Wednesday, November 22, 2006
Audio Musical Terms Dictionary
Wow. This Multimedia Music Dictionary from Virginia Tech is a pronouncing dictionary with audio clips of musical terms. It is a very useful tool, but it is also lots of fun to play with.
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Monday, November 20, 2006
The Way Leonard Rose Plays
Some very kind soul put this excerpt from an interview with Leonard Rose from The Way They Play on the Cello Heaven website. There's a lot of Dounis in Rose's approach to the cello. Actually, there's a lot of violin playing in his approach to the cello, which, translated into "cello," and articulated by an absolute master of the instrument, gives the lessons learned from Dounis a whole new meaning for me.
Wednesday, November 15, 2006
What's in a pseudonym?
I'm working on a set of songs with lyrics by Arthur J. Lamb (yes, "A Bird in a Gilded Cage" is one of them), and I have had to do some major sleuthing to find more old songs with Lamb lyrics. There are a few by Dorothy Lee, a composer who is new to me. Of course I thought it odd that a woman who was that proflic in the America of the 1920s would, by this time, be celebrated, collected, and written about by people seeking advanced degrees in musicology.
Then I found out that Dorothy Lee was a pseudonym (one of many) used by John Stepan Zamecnik (1872-1953), a student of Dvorak who lived in Cleveland until he moved to Los Angeles in 1924 to write music for silent films. He published more than 1500 pieces of music under 21 different pseudonyms for the Sam Fox publishing company, of which these 14 have been confirmed:
Lionel Baxter
R.L. (Robert) Creighton
Arturo de Castro
"Josh and Ted"
J. (Jane) Hathaway
Kathryn Hawthorne
Roberta Hudson
Ioane Kawelo
Dorothy Lee
J. Edgar Lowell
Jules Reynard
F. (Frederick) Van Norman
Hal Vinton
Grant Wellesley
Then I found out that Dorothy Lee was a pseudonym (one of many) used by John Stepan Zamecnik (1872-1953), a student of Dvorak who lived in Cleveland until he moved to Los Angeles in 1924 to write music for silent films. He published more than 1500 pieces of music under 21 different pseudonyms for the Sam Fox publishing company, of which these 14 have been confirmed:
Lionel Baxter
R.L. (Robert) Creighton
Arturo de Castro
"Josh and Ted"
J. (Jane) Hathaway
Kathryn Hawthorne
Roberta Hudson
Ioane Kawelo
Dorothy Lee
J. Edgar Lowell
Jules Reynard
F. (Frederick) Van Norman
Hal Vinton
Grant Wellesley
Tuesday, November 14, 2006
Public Domain Sheet Music
I have to share this fantastic sheet music site that wants to be for sheet music what Project Gutenberg is for literature. The Mutopia Project has (so far) 756 pieces of music in the public domain to download for free as PDF files. Much of it is keyboard music for both organ and piano: lots of Bach, Chopin, Schumann, Diabelli, Mozart, and all of it is free and quite useful. There is also quite a collection of guitar music.
In addition to having the PDF file in both letter- and A4-sized documents, each piece comes with a downloadable MIDI file.
While I'm at it, here are a few more free sheet music sites:
Project Gutenberg has its own sheet music "department," and the Choral Public Domain Library has a tremendous collection of sheet music. They have been collecting music since 1998, and have 8324 scores to date. The Werner Icking Music Archive has other useful (and eclectic) pieces of information and links to various articles of interest, like a repository of common engraving mistakes.
I find this all very exciting.
In addition to having the PDF file in both letter- and A4-sized documents, each piece comes with a downloadable MIDI file.
While I'm at it, here are a few more free sheet music sites:
Project Gutenberg has its own sheet music "department," and the Choral Public Domain Library has a tremendous collection of sheet music. They have been collecting music since 1998, and have 8324 scores to date. The Werner Icking Music Archive has other useful (and eclectic) pieces of information and links to various articles of interest, like a repository of common engraving mistakes.
I find this all very exciting.
Tags:
Paganini
Yesterday, while I was practicing my "Daily Dounis," I hit upon something that sounded like Paganini. Just for fun, after I was finished with my Dounis, I opened up my Paganini Caprices to look for the specific passage. I was totally surprised to find that I could actually navigate my way through many of the Caprices, and actually realized that they are a lot of fun to play (not that I was really playing them) because they are so well written for the violin.
Today, after my Dounis, I think I might even pick one and start to work on it! It's really hard for me to believe that this is possible. I always thought that being able to play Paganini was one of those unreachable goals; kind of like being able to reach a high shelf without a stool.
Well, it is on to the challenges of the day for me.
Today, after my Dounis, I think I might even pick one and start to work on it! It's really hard for me to believe that this is possible. I always thought that being able to play Paganini was one of those unreachable goals; kind of like being able to reach a high shelf without a stool.
Well, it is on to the challenges of the day for me.
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Friday, November 10, 2006
Musical Encounters up and down the fingerboard
When my kids were little we used to watch a show on PBS called "Musical Encounters." I believe it came from a West Coast television station, but wherever it was from, the show was remarkable. One show featured Josef Gingold and the 16-year-old Corey Cerovsek playing Wieniawski. Corey answered questions from the audience of young children about the dangers of playing in a tree house (what if a bird poops on your violin) and the paint on his violin ("actually, it's varnish" was a buzzword in our household for a while). Another show featured a pigtailed and freckled 9-year-old Leila Josefowicz storming through Boehm's Perpetual Motion, and another show featured two violin-playing brothers who were remarkable. When the audience asked them how they knew where the notes are on the violin, one brother's response was "you have to practice."
I often think of that simple statement when I am shifting around on the violin (or the viola today--it is an orchestra week, so I'm spending some quality time with my viola). Eventually we, by some mysterious alchemy and by a lot of practice, learn where the notes are up and down the strings the way we know where notes are in our own voices. It takes a long time, but once your body physically knows where a pitch is, the connection between hand and ear becomes automatic. It doesn't need to be interpreted by the conscious brain.
I often think of that simple statement when I am shifting around on the violin (or the viola today--it is an orchestra week, so I'm spending some quality time with my viola). Eventually we, by some mysterious alchemy and by a lot of practice, learn where the notes are up and down the strings the way we know where notes are in our own voices. It takes a long time, but once your body physically knows where a pitch is, the connection between hand and ear becomes automatic. It doesn't need to be interpreted by the conscious brain.
Thursday, November 02, 2006
Four Greek Myths
Susan Nigro, the great American virtuoso of the contrabassoon, and Mark Lindeblad, her pianist-partner in musical adventures around and about the lower ledger lines of the bass clef, played my Four Greek Myths for contrabassoon and piano on a concert at Northwestern University in October. They sent me a recording that you can listen to here if you like.
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Monday, October 30, 2006
Grieg Lyric Pieces
I have spent the last few days listening to a recording of Aldo Ciccolini playing all the Grieg Lyric Pieces (the recording is on a Swiss label: Cascavelle VEL 3083), and I am totally enchanted. Most people know the famous ones like Grandmother's Minuet, Wedding Day at Troldhaugen, and Puck, but taking the time to listen to all ten volumes of these Lyric Pieces makes me realize once again what a phenomenal composer Edvard Grieg was, especially as a composer of music for the piano.
It is funny. I often hear the influence of previous composers when I listen to 19th century music. In Schumann, for example, I often hear the influence of Schubert and Mendelssohn, in Mendelssohn I often hear the influence of Mozart and Beethoven, but when I listen to Grieg, I don't hear anyone specific from his musical past. I hear what future composers might have heard in his music. I hear what might have influenced Debussy to a certain extent, and what might have influenced Gershwin to a great extent.
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Friday, October 27, 2006
Double Stops
Warning: This post will be very dull to non-string players. It might even be dull to some string players, but I hope that it might be useful to others.
After practicing Dounis Opus 12, which, to my astonishment is all double stops, I finally figured out something practical and truthful about playing double stops: the fingers are the easy part. My "it's the bow, stupid" realization came to me when I was tuning this morning. I realized that as string players we spend at least 90% of our time (if not more--unless, like me, you do an hour of Dounis) playing on one of four single strings. When we play single notes on single strings, we pay attention to the straightness of our bows, our bow changes, the contact of our bow to the string, the loudness and softness, and we can usually have a pretty good shot at sounding good on a series of given notes if all goes well and we are paying attention. At least it works for me.
So, while I was tuning today I realized that if I wanted to be able to hear both of my open strings for the entire length of a bow (at a slow tempo), I had to really pay attention to having contact on both strings at the same time for the whole bow stroke. I found it rather difficult to do, so I did it for a long enough time to feel like I could keep both strings equal. After my bow stroke was under control, I found it far easier to really tune my strings.
When we play fifths, whether they are open or stopped, we are dealing with exactly the same length of string for both notes, so the bow shouldn't have to do much compensating. But once in a while, if the bow isn't exactly straight, or if the contact with both strings is not exactly equal, or if the strings are out of tune, the exciting magical resonaces that happen when playing fifths seem to "fight" with one another for rank in the overtone series.
When we play thirds there is a two-inch (or more in the case of minor thirds) difference between the length of string from note on the lower string to the bridge, and from the note on the upper string to the bridge. Our bow are has to take those different tensions into account, not to mention all the other sympathetic resonances that come up when the third is in tune. It is like planning a quiet picnic for two and finding that the whole family has come along. Sixths are far easier than thirds because we only have an inch or so (less with minor sixths) difference in distance from the bridge. The overtones that pop up are rich and comforting because the interval is usually easy to get in tune, and the bow doesn't have to stress to keep either the pitches or the overtones under control.
An octave is only a little more difficult for the right hand than a sixth because if an octave is in tune, all you hear are the two notes of the octave. There is a three-inch difference of string length between each finger and the bridge, and it is easy to forget to listen for both notes all the time.
Dounis has several exercises using fourths. The fourth combines problems with the fifth (a fourth is just a fifth turned upside down, so all the sympathetic resonances of the fifth are there, vying for position) and the difference in string length of the third. They are also hard to hear and hard to find when you have to shift to one. They are also really annoying to listen to.
I have decided the the difference between Dounis and Sevcik is that Sevcik exercises can actually sound beautiful, and it can be downright relaxing to practice them. Dounis' Opus 12 exercises do not sound beautiful, and I always have to be on my toes when I practice them. In the past nine days I have noticed that when I practice music my sound is far more consistent, my double stops are better in tune, and I have a lot more bow control. And everything transfers remarkably well to the viola, particulary my new found strength in my third and fourth fingers.
I'll say one more thing, and then I'll stop: I have always thought that Sevcik wrote his books of exercises so that violinists could acquire the technique necessary to play Dvorak violin parts, and my silly reason for the reason the Beethoven "Kreutzer" Sonata is called the "Kreutzer" Sonata? Because in order to play it you have to have mastered all the Kreutzer etudes.
Enough.
After practicing Dounis Opus 12, which, to my astonishment is all double stops, I finally figured out something practical and truthful about playing double stops: the fingers are the easy part. My "it's the bow, stupid" realization came to me when I was tuning this morning. I realized that as string players we spend at least 90% of our time (if not more--unless, like me, you do an hour of Dounis) playing on one of four single strings. When we play single notes on single strings, we pay attention to the straightness of our bows, our bow changes, the contact of our bow to the string, the loudness and softness, and we can usually have a pretty good shot at sounding good on a series of given notes if all goes well and we are paying attention. At least it works for me.
So, while I was tuning today I realized that if I wanted to be able to hear both of my open strings for the entire length of a bow (at a slow tempo), I had to really pay attention to having contact on both strings at the same time for the whole bow stroke. I found it rather difficult to do, so I did it for a long enough time to feel like I could keep both strings equal. After my bow stroke was under control, I found it far easier to really tune my strings.
When we play fifths, whether they are open or stopped, we are dealing with exactly the same length of string for both notes, so the bow shouldn't have to do much compensating. But once in a while, if the bow isn't exactly straight, or if the contact with both strings is not exactly equal, or if the strings are out of tune, the exciting magical resonaces that happen when playing fifths seem to "fight" with one another for rank in the overtone series.
When we play thirds there is a two-inch (or more in the case of minor thirds) difference between the length of string from note on the lower string to the bridge, and from the note on the upper string to the bridge. Our bow are has to take those different tensions into account, not to mention all the other sympathetic resonances that come up when the third is in tune. It is like planning a quiet picnic for two and finding that the whole family has come along. Sixths are far easier than thirds because we only have an inch or so (less with minor sixths) difference in distance from the bridge. The overtones that pop up are rich and comforting because the interval is usually easy to get in tune, and the bow doesn't have to stress to keep either the pitches or the overtones under control.
An octave is only a little more difficult for the right hand than a sixth because if an octave is in tune, all you hear are the two notes of the octave. There is a three-inch difference of string length between each finger and the bridge, and it is easy to forget to listen for both notes all the time.
Dounis has several exercises using fourths. The fourth combines problems with the fifth (a fourth is just a fifth turned upside down, so all the sympathetic resonances of the fifth are there, vying for position) and the difference in string length of the third. They are also hard to hear and hard to find when you have to shift to one. They are also really annoying to listen to.
I have decided the the difference between Dounis and Sevcik is that Sevcik exercises can actually sound beautiful, and it can be downright relaxing to practice them. Dounis' Opus 12 exercises do not sound beautiful, and I always have to be on my toes when I practice them. In the past nine days I have noticed that when I practice music my sound is far more consistent, my double stops are better in tune, and I have a lot more bow control. And everything transfers remarkably well to the viola, particulary my new found strength in my third and fourth fingers.
I'll say one more thing, and then I'll stop: I have always thought that Sevcik wrote his books of exercises so that violinists could acquire the technique necessary to play Dvorak violin parts, and my silly reason for the reason the Beethoven "Kreutzer" Sonata is called the "Kreutzer" Sonata? Because in order to play it you have to have mastered all the Kreutzer etudes.
Enough.
Tags:
Tuesday, October 24, 2006
Tooting my, er, horn
Actually, it's more like tooting my flute, violin, and viola at the same time, but I just put a virtual recording of a rather spooky piece I finished last week called Crepuscule, Interlude, and Dance on my new music jukebox page just in time for Halloween.
Yes, the recording is computer generated. Some day I want to make a recording of it by over dubbing all three instruments. I'm not quite sure which version would be more realistic.
Yes, the recording is computer generated. Some day I want to make a recording of it by over dubbing all three instruments. I'm not quite sure which version would be more realistic.
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Friday, October 20, 2006
Daily Dounis
Practicing Dounis Opus 12 is like yoga for the left hand, and like jumping jacks for the right. It is actually less mentally taxing than Sevcik, and it is just as rewarding to practice using my Moyse chart. I also found a PDF of Dounis' Violin Player's Daily Dozen on line. The Daily Dozen is from 1925, and the Artist's Technique of Violin Playing is from 1921. I have been doing a bit of both every day, and I notice a lot of improvement in my playing already, particulary in my legato playing.
I know that Leonard Rose and Channing Robbins used Dounis in their practicing and teaching, so I think that the Daily Dozen would be extremely valuable for cellists as well as violinists.
Once again, here is the link to the page with the Dounis PDF (I put this in twice because it deserves at least two looks from every person going to this post).
I know that Leonard Rose and Channing Robbins used Dounis in their practicing and teaching, so I think that the Daily Dozen would be extremely valuable for cellists as well as violinists.
Once again, here is the link to the page with the Dounis PDF (I put this in twice because it deserves at least two looks from every person going to this post).
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Wednesday, October 18, 2006
Move over Sevcik, Dounis is on my music stand!
I finished my chart-regulated "walk" through all of the Sevcik books yesterday, and I have decided to apply the same magic Marcel Moyse sequence of 480 numbers to the Artist's Technique of Violin Playing by D.C. Dounis. Yesterday I divided the whole book into 480 parts, writing in all the numbers (tedious, I know, but much easier than actually playing the exercises), and today I am going to begin. Yes, I'm procrastinating a bit. Let's see, I spent the last two hours working on (and actually finishing, I think) a piece for flute, violin, and viola. It is really a blast to work on because I can play all the parts. And now I'm writing a blog post.
I'll Just bite the bullet and save my walk for after Dounis. Wish me luck.
I'll Just bite the bullet and save my walk for after Dounis. Wish me luck.
Monday, October 16, 2006
Twelve Tones of Passion
I'm not sure how I came upon this blog entry, but it is something really worth sharing. Imagine a TV soap opera made from characters and actions of the circle of composers and artists who lived in Vienna around the turn of the century.
Now it's time to enjoy a description of a season of Twelve Tones of Passion
Now it's time to enjoy a description of a season of Twelve Tones of Passion
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