Piano Class
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We're a little over half way through now. I've spent up til now on the Nocturne. Luckily, the class is small and we all usually get a chance to play each week. It's been challenging (yay!). The teacher is very knowledgeable (Eastman and Harvard) and has lots of valuable input to contribute. He is all about studying what the composer (Chopin in my case) wrote, and analyzing not only the explicit instructions (if any were given) but voice leading, harmonic progression, etc., in a word: theory. It's tough, but I consider it a gift to get this exposure.
I am naturally inclined to go with "how does this music make me feel" rather than theoretical analysis. Of course a large part of the reason for that is my lack of theoretical knowledge! None of the teachers I ever had could expound at length about the importance of certain chords in context, etc. At times in this class I've felt a tinge of getting lost in the details. And the urge to 'forget it all' and simply play what I feel tugs at me. But I know, somewhere within, the value of thinking about the information being given and trying to incorporate it. It's been a bit of a struggle at times. But it's good work.
I wish I knew more theory. I wish I knew it well enough to let go of it, to transcend it. Because in the end, theory can inform us, but it's not the ends. Making music is the ends.
At the very least, this class has made me think, and exposed me to another way of working on a piece. Not forgetting that analysis is only one facet of approaching a piece of music.
I mentioned last Tuesday that I wanted to give the Nocturne a bit of rest in class (I will play it again before the semester ends) so I expect to play the first Polonaise next Tuesday. That should be fun!
The industrial revolution cheapened everything.
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We're a little over half way through now. I've spent up til now on the Nocturne. Luckily, the class is small and we all usually get a chance to play each week. It's been challenging (yay!). The teacher is very knowledgeable (Eastman and Harvard) and has lots of valuable input to contribute. He is all about studying what the composer (Chopin in my case) wrote, and analyzing not only the explicit instructions (if any were given) but voice leading, harmonic progression, etc., in a word: theory. It's tough, but I consider it a gift to get this exposure.
I am naturally inclined to go with "how does this music make me feel" rather than theoretical analysis. Of course a large part of the reason for that is my lack of theoretical knowledge! None of the teachers I ever had could expound at length about the importance of certain chords in context, etc. At times in this class I've felt a tinge of getting lost in the details. And the urge to 'forget it all' and simply play what I feel tugs at me. But I know, somewhere within, the value of thinking about the information being given and trying to incorporate it. It's been a bit of a struggle at times. But it's good work.
I wish I knew more theory. I wish I knew it well enough to let go of it, to transcend it. Because in the end, theory can inform us, but it's not the ends. Making music is the ends.
At the very least, this class has made me think, and exposed me to another way of working on a piece. Not forgetting that analysis is only one facet of approaching a piece of music.
I mentioned last Tuesday that I wanted to give the Nocturne a bit of rest in class (I will play it again before the semester ends) so I expect to play the first Polonaise next Tuesday. That should be fun!
@Bernard I feel you re theory…. I enrolled in a music theory class during the summer and ended up dropping it because it was completely divorced from musical context (if you can believe that!). The instructor just jumped in with what felt to me like an approach that was just “memorize this just because” without contextualizing how those concepts would apply. It was very frustrating.
But since you’re doing this inthe context of a piece, I am sure it’s much more tightly relevant. I can imagine the tug to focus on something less technical/analytical, but at the same, you could probably do that quite nicely without the teacher’s guidance. This teacher is giving you something you can’t get on your own, and that alone is valuable, I would guess.
@AndyD that’s a lovely performance! Thank you for sharing it! I recognize the pianist’s name but I’m not especially familiar with his playing. But I love how unrushed it feels. Some performances of this piece feel more intense, whereas this one has a lot of breath and space to luxuriate inside.
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Do you think age allows greater expression of slow & quiet passages?
Yuja Wang is an exception but when you hear her playing Chopin aged 11, it's like she's now already musically in her 90's.Btw, my old piano teacher bless her, would, through her tears of joy, be shouting at Pressler "raise those wrists" and "none of that curled pinky"
... a classical old school concert pianist was she. -
Do you think age allows greater expression of slow & quiet passages?
Yuja Wang is an exception but when you hear her playing Chopin aged 11, it's like she's now already musically in her 90's.Btw, my old piano teacher bless her, would, through her tears of joy, be shouting at Pressler "raise those wrists" and "none of that curled pinky"
... a classical old school concert pianist was she.@AndyD said in Piano Class:
Do you think age allows greater expression of slow & quiet passages?
I don't think it's age.... I think it's intention.
I think it takes intention and a vision to breath into the music like that, to let the space between the notes expand, to resist the urge to rein in the expansion....
It also takes patience and calm....
So yes, maybe I'll contradiction myself a bit, these things are perhaps easier to bring the fore with age and experience.
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Do you think age allows greater expression of slow & quiet passages?
Yuja Wang is an exception but when you hear her playing Chopin aged 11, it's like she's now already musically in her 90's.Btw, my old piano teacher bless her, would, through her tears of joy, be shouting at Pressler "raise those wrists" and "none of that curled pinky"
... a classical old school concert pianist was she. -
Link to video
Bernard is it this beautiful piece you've learnt?
@AndyD That is, indeed, the one. So beautiful, but Chopin was adamant that it never be published! I've wondered about that a lot. I wonder why? I believe it was his sister and publisher who decided to publish it after his death. There are two more opus posthumous Nocturnes which I'm also learning. All three are very beautiful, imo.
The industrial revolution cheapened everything.
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@Bernard I feel you re theory…. I enrolled in a music theory class during the summer and ended up dropping it because it was completely divorced from musical context (if you can believe that!). The instructor just jumped in with what felt to me like an approach that was just “memorize this just because” without contextualizing how those concepts would apply. It was very frustrating.
But since you’re doing this inthe context of a piece, I am sure it’s much more tightly relevant. I can imagine the tug to focus on something less technical/analytical, but at the same, you could probably do that quite nicely without the teacher’s guidance. This teacher is giving you something you can’t get on your own, and that alone is valuable, I would guess.
@AndyD that’s a lovely performance! Thank you for sharing it! I recognize the pianist’s name but I’m not especially familiar with his playing. But I love how unrushed it feels. Some performances of this piece feel more intense, whereas this one has a lot of breath and space to luxuriate inside.
@ShiroKuro Oh, that's too bad about the class. It goes that way some times.
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@AndyD That is, indeed, the one. So beautiful, but Chopin was adamant that it never be published! I've wondered about that a lot. I wonder why? I believe it was his sister and publisher who decided to publish it after his death. There are two more opus posthumous Nocturnes which I'm also learning. All three are very beautiful, imo.
@Bernard said in Piano Class:
Chopin was adamant that it never be published!
Oh wow, I didn't know that!!! It's sort of breathtaking to think that we might never have had this music!
@Bernard said in Piano Class:
that's too bad about the class. It goes that way some times.
Yes, it was definitely disappointing. I talked with a piano teacher about it, and she said there's a tendency for people who do music theory to just sort of assume the value of music theory as a thing in and of itself, and fail to do the all-important work of connecting it to the actual music...
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One of the sins of my old age?? Ok, many sins - but one I enjoy is putting on headphones connected to my iPhone and I play a piece that I'm working on with an artist I admire. For example, I learned the first contrapunctus from Bach's Art of Fugue - and played it with Glenn Gould and Charles Rosen. With the music in front of me, and listening/seeing what they're doing as I'm playing the keys, I find interpretive ideas that I missed when just listening to the music - or even things that are on the page that I may have missed or in some cases, the artist himself ignores - to a very positive result. Another piece I play - the Brahms Op 117 #2 was recorded by Brahms's favorite student - Carl Friedberg. Playing the piece with him - is playing it probably as close to what Brahms intended as is feasible - very helpful.
I didn't do this when I was studying with a teacher - but recordings did inform my playing. I remember working on Scarlatti sonata. As I played one of the ornaments a certain way, my teacher asked me why I did it that way. He said he had Juilliard student also playing the same work and she did the inverse of what I was playing. He noted that she'd researched performance practices at the library and found this to be the preferred way. I said, " I listened to Kenneth Gilbert's performance - as he had edited all of the Scarlatti sonatas - as well to Gustav Leonhardt and Vladamir Horowitz who all played it this way..." He smiled and said - "good enough for me."
