If you could have any pianist's/musician's mind?

[m1469]

Who would it be?

There have been questions about if we could play like any pianist, and that has largely to do with chops.  But, if you could have, as a given, the best chops possible and just insert another pianist's or musician's artistic mind into yours, who would it be?

[scherzo123]

This is a hard and good question! Li Yundi, Horowitz, or Georges Cziffra. Any of them, I can't choose.

[perprocrastinate]

Cziffra

[j_menz]

I have enough trouble with my own, much less having to deal with someone elses.

[mikeowski]

Gould

[davidjosepha]

But, if you could have, as a given, the best chops possible and just insert another pianist's or musician's artistic mind into yours, who would it be?

Can I make a Lang Lang joke?

[m1469]

Can I make a Lang Lang joke?

Nope!  We must let Lang Lang be Lang Lang.

[rachmaninoff_forever]

Horowitz

[davidjosepha]

We must let Lang Lang be Lang Lang.

This sentence contains 50% Lang Lang when measuring concentration of words and 51.4% Lang Lang when measuring concentration of letters. The average sentence contains 0.00001% Lang Lang (±0.00001%)

[chopin2015]

Maurice Ravel

Musical Genius 

[m1469]

This sentence contains 50% Lang Lang when measuring concentration of words and 51.4% Lang Lang when measuring concentration of letters. The average sentence contains 0.00001% Lang Lang (±0.00001%)

While your statement is attractive, I have to say that I disagree.  In fact, it's 0% Lang Lang, as I am not him, and I am the author.    But, OK, it's the percentage of Lang Lang that is transferred through me when I perceive of Lang Lang and type his name with strange squiggles onto a computer screen ... hmmm ... how much is that, I wonder?  

[stoudemirestat]

Franz Liszt or Hector Berlioz.

[scherzo123]

Gould

DANG!!! Forgot about Gould!

[outin]

I think I'd rather keep mine. Although I might get quite a lot of talent/genius, I might also get quite a lot of angst and frustration...

[m1469]

Gould

Oh my goodness, his head is extremely famous inside of my head right now!  I'm not ready to trade mine in altogether, but I'll settle for a bit of melding for a time  .  I've just accidentally listened to his hour-long Goldbergs ... ah, *so good*  I started and just got completely swept into it, and I loved every minute of it.

[furtwaengler]

Would it be my mind inside of their mind -as in viewing their mind with the judgment faculties of my own mind...or would their mind really be my mind? And if their mind was my mind, whose mind would that mind want as mine? I guess it would start all over again. And could it possibly only be confined to the artistic mind, without the whole life and worldview shaping it with everything else? In that case every good thing, every repulsive thing, every victory and every defeat, that which is godly, that which is sin, pains, pleasures? From the comfort of my own judgment and knowledge of truth, I'd have to prefer my mind, for I like my mind...but no, I still need a renewed, a better, a cleaner mind; for my...my mind falls short. But where now did the music go?

I can relate to the desire. Look at my name: Furtwängler. Great German conductor he was, and you can see at many corners how I've upheld his art, wanting to storm with the extreme polar intensities eccentricities (looking for a word here) as have swept me away in his recordings - to a point of emulating the same types of flaws his art was prone to...isn't that interesting? Typical? A problem of the question [preferring somebody else's mistakes to my own]? (See my recordings Beethoven's op. 111 and the Liszt B minor Sonata and Dante if you can find them in the audition room - I'm noting this as a confession, but acknowledging at the same time that we are in a world that does not so much study the old world which has so gripped me...so I stand aside.).

Pianists? Richter, Sofronitsky, Petri, Schnabel, Arrau, so on so forth...with many other, manly conductors of the old age, on the brink of the recorded age. Do I want their mind? Have you ever put a group of recording together, sat back and listened dreaming, this is me...this is what I am doing?

Does this in some way reveal the condition of this world, or am I alone in my depravity? I've been given a mind, and so have you. And what gifts they are to each other and the world...

I am writing in the late night. The end.

Dave (not Furtwängler)

[furtwaengler]

BTW, different subject...Did this guy steal Dutilleux's mind or what?

[pianowolfi]

Lately I find myself rather wanting to sneak into great minds that are not musicians. I am a musician myself anyway, so I am more interested in finding something like a musical expression or equivalent for the content of minds like for instance Zoroaster, Jeshua ben Miriam, Aristotle, Pythagoras, Hermes, Wolfram von Eschenbach.

[sphince]

Liszt. Period.

[m1469]

Would it be my mind inside of their mind -as in viewing their mind with the judgment faculties of my own mind...or would their mind really be my mind?

Well, it would be their artistic mind, which I know is not truly possible to fully isolate on its own, but you would have their artistic judgement, let's say.  So, anything that ends up causing you, as their mind, to make the choices they would make.  

I've been given a mind, and so have you. And what gifts they are to each other and the world...

I am writing in the late night. The end.

Dave (not Furtwängler)

Well, now I'm writing a bit early in the morning.  Yes, we have both been given minds and they are in the world, one way or another, I guess!  Just for the record, I don't actually want a different mind, not really.  I have little desire, even, but I definitely enjoy exploring the way people think, not as my mind, but as contrast to or in sync with my own.

*Time to make pumpkin scones, coffee ... and then practice*

[patrickd]

Bach

[austinarg]

Scriabin. I'd like to know what the hell was going inside his mind when he composed his fifth to tenth sonatas.

[furtwaengler]

Now I'm writing in the afternoon, ha. Wolfi sparked a thought:

Lately I find myself rather wanting to sneak into great minds that are not musicians. I am a musician myself anyway, so I am more interested in finding something like a musical expression or equivalent for the content of minds like for instance Zoroaster, Jeshua ben Miriam, Aristotle, Pythagoras, Hermes, Wolfram von Eschenbach.

[If I had Socrates I could question you about everything on this list!]

Indeed, I think I've learned more about music and performance from an English teacher in Maryland who I've never met face to face, than from any musician I've studied. It's kind of like the sports world in one sense...I don't know how many of you can relate to what its like to be or be around college football fans in the southeastern United States? You have people who would practically give their lives for "their team." I've seen people rolling on the floor in agony after their team has lost...and then we find the actual players on the team they care so much for are able to brush off the impact of losing as if it was nothing, and walk right into the parties. If you can see the analogy, it is sometimes the NONmusician who cares more, thinks more, dreams more about the performances than the actual musician performing it. (This could be easily misunderstood? Not saying anything about the serious mind of the serious musician.).

Okay, now to Wolfi's list...A couple interesting items from disciples of Jesus relevant to the topic..really one such disciple, Paul, in fragments:

1 Corinthians 2:16b But we have the mind of Christ.
2 Corinthians 10:5b ...taking every thought captive to the obedience of Christ.

Having the mind, in context deals with the revealing of the mind, for..

...to us God revealed them through the Spirit; for the Spirit searches all things, even the depths of God. For who among men knows the thoughts of a man except the spirit of the man which is in him? Even so the thoughts of God no one knows except the Spirit of God. Now we have received, not the spirit of the world, but the Spirit who is from God, so that we may know the things freely given to us by God, which things we also speak, not in words taught by human wisdom, but in those taught by the Spirit, combining spiritual thoughts with spiritual words.

Elsewhere the mechanism of imparting such a mind:

...by revelation there was made known to me the mystery, as I wrote before in brief. By referring to this, when you read you can understand my insight into the mystery of Christ

And so, in as much as anybody has revealed their thoughts on a subject, we have their mind. Through the discourses of this site, we have a portion of "the mind of m1469" or "the mind of Pianowolfi." Studying Sofronitsky's live performance of Schumann's Symphonic Etudes, we can perceive a bit of his mind and process, and we add to our own mind the thoughts of their mind, and so on.

And so is it really a question of the mind, or of the technique? Would your mind do really better with Lang Lang's technique then his mind? Or could you separate Richter's mind from his technique?

[I consider the possibility that I've missed the entire point of this thread ]

[m1469]

[I consider the possibility that I've missed the entire point of this thread ]

Well, no.  I mean, it is possible to answer it simply, but, as always, it wasn't an entirely simple question on my part and the notion of technique was definitely tumbling around in there, too.  I think that our techniques are obviously very linked to our minds, but I've been exploring the notion of crystalizing a musical image which is first separate from thoughts of what is required on our part to humanly express it outwardly.  So in other words, crystalizing a musical image which is not tied to the sensation of playing an instrument or singing, or even to conducting.  I actually think that Gould did this to a very large extent, and then we express it through a medium of our choosing, if we have a choice.

It's also connected for me to a recent concept I've been chewing on of there being a difference or wondering what that difference is between a thought and an idea, and that in conjunction with this:

"Tones sound, and roar and storm about me until I have set them down in notes."
- Ludwig van Beethoven

Right now, I believe an idea is something more organized and actually in motion, and I find this relevant because I've been considering the fact that music is about ideas.

And, I also realized that by considering it in this way, thinking about having all the technique you could want, but choosing an artistic mind, can actually help for the person thinking about it to clarify how they may be thinking of their musical images.

Lately I find myself rather wanting to sneak into great minds that are not musicians. I am a musician myself anyway, so I am more interested in finding something like a musical expression or equivalent for the content of minds like for instance Zoroaster, Jeshua ben Miriam, Aristotle, Pythagoras, Hermes, Wolfram von Eschenbach.

Yes, I think these are different types of musicians .

[m1469]

BTW, different subject...Did this guy steal Dutilleux's mind or what?

Wow, OK.  Well, I've just finished listening to this entire piece. This stretched me a bit and at first was slightly overwhelming at times, but then I guess I adjusted.  I really ended up liking it though (and I like the pianist).  I've been obsessively listening to Chopin's Valse de l'adieu, Op. posth. 69, No. 1 in the past several days, and I've been soaking myself in Mozart in my own practice.  I like all of it, but it's tough for me to unite the worlds between these styles right now.  I know they are related, of course, even if by numerous degrees of separation!

Thank you for posting this!