How To Play The Piano: Beginning again in retirement

[junderover]

After teaching music to children for thirty one years, I set out in retirement to learn how to play the piano.

I don’t mean “from scratch.”  I’ve played the piano all my life.  But for me there has always been a disconnect between the notes I played (often imperfectly) and the musical ideas within that motivated me to learn the music in the beginning.  My memory for the notes was abysmal; my technique, stiff and unyielding.  Mere repetition, faster and louder, did nothing to address these issues.

I’ve studied with many teachers.  Some derided my mistakes and mis-interpretations.  Some just pushed on from piece to piece, never getting beyond the “learning of the notes.” 

But the impulse to play meaningfully through the years remained, unexplained and unexplored.  One teacher was particularly adept and insightful at helping me unlock the personal from the musical.  I absorbed what I could, and it helped me to address the musical ideas I so longed to express.

I studied the Alexander technique and it helped me to balance my physical self and to direct my energies more purposefully into the music. 

As I retired, I spent a year with a coach whose analytical insights into the physical mechanism of piano playing were invaluable in integrating all the best ideas of my previous teachers.

Ultimately, though, we are all teachers of ourselves.  As I thought through and experienced at the piano, all the wisdom of my teachers, and maybe because I’ve been a teacher for so many years, I was led to synthesize my own framework for approaching both the piano and the music that is working for me and that I would like to share with you.

I need a grand design to sustain my interest as I learn a composition.  For me a musical composition, like a novel, is a conversation between the author/composer and the reader/performer.  There is conversation between individual voices in the composition.  As performer, I try to  mirror the composer’s intentions in an act of empathy and simultaneously engage with my own interpretation of the composer’s ideas.  It’s a very special kind of conversation in which the audience also gets to participate empathetically..
A piece of music, performed, like a novel read, is an act of storytelling.  There are characters.  There is a dramatic narrative and a satisfying resolution.
Fine.  A grand idea.  But how to realize it with the piece of music that sits on the music stand?
Over the past five or so years, I’ve jotted down various ideas that I’ve found useful. 

First a read through to familiarize myself with the grand design, significant melodies, rhythmic ideas, the form and the harmonic geography.

The development of a choreography, the physical gestures and energy flow that best realizes the above.  This is my conversation with the composer and it’s a most enjoyable experience.

I’ve come to appreciate the value of very slow practice in the early stages of learning.  It gives me time to hear what’s going on in the music. 

Playing rapid passages inevitably causes the accumulation of small tensions that, if unaddressed, can add up to a frozen musculature.  At least that was my situation, so eager was I to “learn” the whole piece

I found it most helpful to break down a fingery passage into manageable groupings, say groups of sixteenth notes, and play each grouping, stopping sequentially on:  the first note of each grouping, the second note, etc. the passage.  As I do so, I can take the time to experience any tensions in the fingers/wrist/arm/shoulder- and release them before proceeding.

And what about tone?  What gesture will produce the desired tone?  During slow practice I find myself able to pay closer attention to the sensation of the fingers on the keys; do I want a pointed, leggiero feeling at the tip of the fingers or a softer, legato quality using the whole pad of the fingers?    Slow practice and careful listening, helps to connect gesture with tone.  It took a while to learn how to do this.


Ready – Set – Go:   not my idea originally, but I have found it to be most useful in developing phrasing.  The energy is exactly like winding up and throwing a baseball.  The first two elements, Ready-set, act to accumulate energy.  “Go” is the release.  Sometimes the release can be quite extended, or modulatory.  There’s great pleasure in experiencing this process that is both physical and expressive.

Then there’s the matter of harmonic geography.  Part of my conversation with the composer that takes place in the practice sessions involves developing an understanding of the tonal terrain as laid out by the composer, its tensions and releases, its forward motion and its moments of repose.   

Recently, as I was reading about R. Schumann as I started to learn his Sonata in F#minor,op.11, I came across this definition of a phrase from William Rothstein.  Rothstein defines a phrase as a musical unit that contains a complete tonal motion ,moving from one tonal entity to another.  "Tonal motion is the most important factor--more important even than meter - --for determining phrase rhythm.” (Rothstein, William Nathan.  Phrase Rhythm in Tonal Music.  New York: Schirmer Books, 1989.)

This is a helpful definition for me, So I’ve slowly learned to do a harmonic analysis early on in my practice.    Harmonic motion counts.
 
The conversation continues as I explore just how the signature melodies,
motives and rhythms  are transformed in their travels through the composition.

I’ve entertained myself by playing along with the recorded masters. 
I’ve found it useful to experience the energy level at which the masters are performing by trying to play along with them.

The question I ask myself when I sit down to practice:
Am I going to practice or play(perform). Each requires a different mind set.

Before I sit down to practice I have found it useful to think through what I am going to do.  Do I want to play through to hear how the piece is coming together and where the weaknesses are?  Do I want to begin with specific parts and then integrate them into the whole composition?

What do I do when a section just won’t come into the fingers and memory?
For me it’s important to check to see if I understand the harmonic flow.  .  Is it:  Tonic-Dominant?  Dominant-Tonic?  Modulatory?  Pedal point?  The answers to these questions will guide my gesture and the flow of energy into and through the notes. 

Am I really hearing what I am playing?  I know the listener is hearing all of the music. .  I often don’t.  Then I need to work each hand, each voice separately, sometimes singing along.

And if I am actually hearing the individual voices, then what?
Which voice dominates?  Is there conversation between voices?  If so, then who is leading, who is responding?.  It’s more conversation, this time between the individual voices.

Needless to say, practice time is most engaging and retirement is flying by.

[j_menz]

Is there a point to this? 

[andreslr6]

Is there a point to this?  

... Spam??

And BTW, originally "sonata" meant nothing but "an instrumental piece of various movements" (if you summarize the dozens of attempts to define the term "sonata" given by theorists in the 1600's) , the "sonata form" as a term didn't even exist until the 1800's when the romantic theorist Marx invented it (that's 200 years of composers writing sonatas without knowing about the exposition, development and recap terms/parts..) and it was only after Marx and contemporaries that the "textbook" definition started to be used by everyone.

But we can thank "sonatas", and other forms and techniques of writing, for making instrumental music so important.

[j_menz]

... Spam??

No, I think not (at least yet). Just a pontless rant.

And BTW, originally "sonata" meant nothing but "an instrumental piece of various movements" .

It still pretty much does. Plus ca change.

the "sonata form"

I should point out (as I'm sure you know, but as to which the OP appears to be confused) that "sonata form" and "sonata", whilst historically related, are not, and have never been, synonymous.

[lostinidlewonder]

In Western cultural history both the novel in literature and sonata form in music developed and flourished as an expression of the developing and flourishing middle class.

Both tell a story of the individual’s journey through life.
Both are expressions of the unique cognitive and emotional personalities, the character,  of the main characters.
As dramatic context, both the novel and, in music, sonata form, present contrasting personalities/characters.
Both lay out dramatic narratives of each individual character’s interaction with the others and with life.
Both express the enlightenment promise of successful resolution  of the challenges of life through a  combination of moral character and enlightenment reason.

Retirement is certainly a chapter in ones life. I see in music all the time an allusion to real life. Music can be structured with a beginning middle and end movement, how it can express emotions we have felt through our life, the frustration and challenge it gives us trying to work together just like a relationship you might have with a loved one.

Music, the arts really has become very accessible to every day people now, the middle class and even lower classes. To get lessons is easier than ever before wih the Information Age we live in. The freedom to express ourselves is much greater than hundreds of years in the past. We are no longer just farmers living to feed ourselves, the industrial revolution changed a lot in that respect. But we always have had some connection to music throughout human existence, but nowadays certainly more of us are playing music and expressing our creativity by creating sound or even just listening.