More than music

[felia]

Dear friends,
My teacher talk to me recently about the meaning behind a piece. What do you guys think when a teacher ask you to think more than sound??How can you apply that in your piano practice??
More, touch someone's heart...to me...it seems very easy to before i think about it....But now, i find it is a different story...Why does a pianist need experience of life to interprete a song??
:-/
i dun understand.....could someone give some advise?

[bernhard]

Consider the meaning of the word “table”. It is a string of letters that refer to an object in the real world. “Table” is a label that stands for something else.

Meaning in music is of a different quality altogether. However people tend to consider meaning in music at the same level as meaning in language. Music then becomes a label for something else. But what? What is the something else that the Moonlight sonata stands for? Is it the reflex of the moon over a Swiss lake? Is it a funeral procession with bells tolling in the distance?

I am afraid that this is a completely mistaken and misguided approach, that comes from the understanding of the word “meaning”.

So let us consider a different sort of meaning. What is the meaning of a movie, a thriller? The movie does not stand for something else, in the way the word “table” stands for the object table. Yet, if you go to watch a thriller, and due to an emergency you have to leave the cinema 10 minutes before the end, you will probably not understand the movie at all. You can say that the whole meaning of the movie was in those last ten minutes. You will be asking your friends who want to the cinema with you but stayed until the end: “How did it all end? What was the final explanation?”.

Meaning in music is very much like that. Music is not a label for something else, but rather a complex process whose meaning unfolds itself and is made clear in the very last note. If you do not believe me, check it out. Play your favourite piece and leave the last bar out. Terrible is it not? Some composers actually do that. (e.g. Brahms Waltz Op. 39 no. 9 in D minor, where he finishes in A major and we have to complete the cadence in our minds). Just like those films that have open endings and you go home imagining all the ways it could have ended.

Now consider the way a movie is made. The director does not shoot the movie from beginning to end. He makes a script, the art department draws all scenes beforehand, the producers make up a timetable for the shooting. The individual scenes are then shot according to priorities of finance and pragmatism. For instance, an actor may be required to be thin in part of the movie and fat in another part (or grow a beard). Therefore all the scenes in which he is fat (or bearded) will have to be filmed together, irrespective of the order in which they appear in the film. After all these scenes have been filmed the film is then edited and put in its final form. And a good director will build up the scenes and place them in such a way as to cause the greatest impact where those last ten minutes are finally revealed.

I suggest that you treat a piece of music in the same way. Get to know it well before you even think about playing it (that’s the script). Examine how the harmony develops, what are the points of great tension and suspense, where you want to call the attention of the audience to some detail that will only make sense at the end, when all is revealed (this is the artwork). Now break down the piece into bits and practise them (this is the shooting). Now put it altogether (the editing). Is it good? Does it lead to the conclusion (the last bar) the way you think it should? If not, you may have to reshoot some scenes, or even reedit the movie.

Does this make sense? At the end of the day it is all a matter of accent (and that does not mean simply playing louder some notes – there are rhythmic accents. Melodic accents, harmonic accents and so on).

Think of yourself as a movie director, and think of your piece as a good script that you want to film and you will not be far off.

I hope this helps.

Best wishes,
Bernhard.

[bitus]

I was thinking about the same thing in the past weeks. Just now it occured to me that i should be playing with the simple innocence and honesty of a child, but with the depth of a wise old person (Bernhard  ).
Easy to be said, yet most of us went so far away from it... it's very hard to get back.
The Bitus