The Music Mystique

 I have been searching in vain for a music theory book which would be good for a couple of bright young instrumentalists who want to know more about the architecture of music but who don't yet need college-level theory and harmony. The next several blogs are what resulted. We had to write our own book, the kids and I. It is called

The Music Mystique

Basic Music Theory

Did you know that musical rhythm is based on your own heartbeat and breathing rate? Or that the scale, the basic building block of music, is actually based on the physics of sound? Did you know that every human being has these musical elements built in, and that this fact can be proven? That some people believe the Big Bang which started the universe was actually a dissonant chord? That everything in creation from the atom to Jupiter vibrates and thus has a sound?

The Nineteenth Century composer Robert Schumann called music a bridge to the unknown. Music theory shows the construction of that bridge. Because it encompasses history, anthropology, physics, mathematics and languages, knowing something about music theory reinforces all these other fields. Understanding basic theory, you can learn the rudiments of reading music in less than an hour, can play three chords and a melody...all it takes for some folks to be country music performers or rock stars!           

There are hundreds of music theory books in print, many of them college-level books which include music history and advanced analysis. There is a Music Theory for Dummies which, despite its unfortunate title, may tell you more than you really wanted to know about music theory. The theory books which accompany instrumental method series mostly refer to applied theory.

You probably already know a lot of music theory intuitively, since you have been listening to music all your life. My primary goal in teaching music theory is to provide a vocabulary and to demonstrate the elegance of  the traditional customs which lie behind the music you know and love. This little book is intended for the music student who has played an instrument for several years and is interested in learning more about the order behind the music he or she is playing.

There are several good on-line sources for basic theory information: Music Theory Pro, an application for iPhone and iPad, lets you test yourself in various areas of theory. An invaluable web site, updated daily, which tells you everything you wanted to know about music theory is found at http://www.teoria.com/index.php.

The neuroscientist Daniel J. Levin is among those who have used magnetic imaging to show the positive way music affects the brain. In his book This Is Your Brain On Music, Levin says “By better understanding what music is and where it comes from,, we may be able to better understand our motives, fears, desires, memories, and even communication in the broadest sense.” The neurologist and music lover Oliver Sacks’ book Musicophilia says that all people are hard-wired to love music and that the ability to sing or play an instrument creates positive physical changes which last a lifetime.

Music Guilt

Do my old piano students hide when they see me coming down the street? I am convinced that they do. Why else would I live in a community of 30,000 and hardly ever see one of the thousands who have sat at my piano and said “I played it better at home”?

When I made my excuses for not practicing enough, my piano teacher would say “I’m so sorry” and then give me an unforgettable lesson on some aspect of my assignment which did not involve much playing on my part.

At some point in my 50-year teaching career, I got the idea of the graceful exit. I had already made myself the student’s ally in situations where clearly it was time for the lessons to end.

“Pleasing your parents is a legitimate reason to take some lessons, but I can see you aren’t enjoying it very much.”

“Would you like me to get you out of this?”

“We can still be friends. You can come to see me without having to play piano.”

“You have accomplished quite a lot during this time, so you should feel good about that rather than feeling bad that we’re stopping here.”

On one occasion, I presented a teen-ager who was quitting lessons with a certificate of accomplishment, a prize ribbon and pin, a list of her repertoire, and suggestions for pieces she might enjoy playing on her own. I never heard from her or saw her or her parents again, though they live in my neighborhood.

Piano teachers become attached to their students, and occasionally the attachment goes both ways. I am still in touch with a few of my former students. But for the most part, once they quit lessons, they are gone. I have only discontinued lessons a few times without being asked to do so by parents or students, once because of persistent rudeness and the other times because of persistent absenteeism. So I think I am dealing with music guilt most of the time.

Of course they should have practiced more, and so should I. I hate to think what my poor mother went through to get me to practice. The final incentive was the threat to end the lessons if I didn’t practice, and that one always got me to the piano. I am not a very good example when it comes to practice, but if I total up all the hours I have spent at the piano, it certainly would surpass the 10,000 hours the experts now say it takes to really learn a skill. (Notice that I do not say “master” a skill.)

I left my teacher only when he moved to a rest home which had no piano. At my last lesson, he couldn’t even remember my name, but he remembered that we were fond of each other, and he remembered all the page turns in the Chopin Scherzo I was studying. He got up from his chair across the room and turned the pages for me.

It is possible that my students’ lessons were not all that important to them, that they were just one more activity, that they were like a sixth grade English class or something, where you would go on your way and never feel the need to stay in touch. But piano lessons are one-to-one, not one-to-thirty. Piano teachers and their students know a lot about each other. They might still have something to say to each other even after the lessons are over.

(The Seal of Approval, above, appears on all my students' assignment sheets.)

The X-Factor and American Idol

I have been watching a singing competition called X-Factor on television. This is not my kind of music (if indeed it is music at all), but I want to know what people are listening to, and the audience for this show has been estimated at some 12 million people.

The X-Factor supposedly was judge Simon Cowell’s nose-thumbing to the runaway success American Idol. The similarities between the two shows are more remarkable than the differences (Pepsi vs. Coke), and they do not compete against each other, since Idol does not resume until January, 2012. Thousands of youngish men and women, most of them delusional, audition from every part of the country. Each one whose face makes it to television says “This is my dream” and “I want this so much” and “I’ve been singing since I was three years old.” Often they cry and tell something sad about their life.

A few of these thousands are chosen and perform pop songs in front of four judges. Idol has an audience and a band; X-Factor does not, at least not yet, and it uses recorded accompaniments instead of live musicians, though there are grand pianos sitting around for atmosphere.

The top prize in X-Factor is five million dollars and a recording contract. One contestant, filmed on the grounds of a judge’s Malibu estate, said “If I win the five million dollars, I’m going to buy a house like this.” Beachfront Malibu property goes for sums in the forty millions, and this young man is not going to win because he doesn’t fit the image which appeals to the target audience.

Target audiences for recordings are age 14 to 24, for radio 15-30. The 40-year-old African-American with the stunning vocal ornaments may make it into the finals, but she will not win.

To win, here’s what you need: A commercially viable appearance and sound, the right combination of conformity and individuality. True, you should try to sing in tune, but more importantly, you should be cute and confident. People of color rarely win American Idol, nor do homosexuals (Adam should have won.) I have yet to see an Asian contestant, though I may have missed something; I can only stand so much.

Finalists do get some advertising work, and some Idol winners have gone on to have recording careers. I would like to think that the also-rans get royalties, but I’d be willing to bet that they signed away this right when they auditioned.

Idol/X Factor music is generally aimed at an audience older than the pre-teens who launched Spice Girls and Justin Bieber to fame. Some of the music, however, still fits the Wiki definition of Bubblegum, being “ pop music... produced in an assembly-line process, driven by producers, often using unknown singers...” “The songs typically have singalong choruses, seemingly childlike themes and a contrived innocence, occasionally combined with an undercurrent of sexual double entendre. Bubblegum songs are also defined as having a catchy melody, simple chords, simple harmonies, dancy (but not necessarily danceable) beats, repetitive riffs or “hooks”, use of solfege syllables and a vocally-multiplied refrain.”

I wish Coke and Pepsi would set up an education program for all these thousands of people who have been singing since they were three, or else contribute substantially to existing programs. I wish they would send lots of money to Gustavo Dudamel, the young conductor of the Los Angeles Philharmonic, who is launching a wonderful music education program similar to the one in which he studied in Venezuela. Gustavo has probably been singing since he was three, he’s cute, he’s smart, and by golly, he can even read music. He makes a base salary of a million and a quarter a year, recording contracts, I don’t know what all. Importantly, he will still be doing his job when nobody remembers American Idol or X-Factor.

Meanwhile, here is some advice for Idol/X-Factor contestants: If Simon mentions phrasing, try to find out what that means. Do not scream. Do not perform your original song, because it isn’t any good and nobody wants to hear it. “Make it your own” does not mean distorting the song beyond all recognition. Songs have composers. Please use the name of the composer rather than that of the performer when you say what you’re singing. If you have religious views, keep them to yourself. This is the Temple of Mammon, after all. Try to keep a vestige of dignity. Sing TO the judges, not AT them.

Natural Music

We believe music came from nature, that the rhythms and melodies we love had their origins in the sounds around and within us. But sometimes the natural world seems to join in rather than initiate our music-making.

Animals who live in a musical house will usually vote one way or the other. More than one cat has taken a liking to Mozart or has left the room when the atonal music began. Old dogs which are becoming hard of hearing sometimes like to sleep under a grand piano, where they can hear the sound, but not too loudly.

Once Charles and I were playing a Shostakovich cello sonata at a senior residence facility. The first movement was whimsical and playful, but the middle movement was as stark and cold as I imagine a Russian winter--or being old-- might sometimes be. As we played, the wind whistled around the edges of the building like a third musician. The audience clearly welcomed the return to cheerfulness in the last movement, and so did we.

Once while I was playing the organ at church, I became aware of a small sound which started up as soon as I began playing and stopped when I stopped. It took a while to realize that the sound was coming from a frog which had parked itself in the doorway near the organ. He sang along for quite a long time.

Today at the Coastside Community Orchestra concert, there seemed to be a strange piccolo part in Schubert's incidental music from Rosamunde. It was a kind of counterpoint, and, for goodness' sake, it was coming from outside the window. It was a songbird who apparently liked Schubert.

The Times Critic's Top Ten

Anthony Tommasini, music critic for the New York Times, published his picks for the top ten composers (excluding living composers) of all times.

1. Bach

2. Beethoven

3. Mozart

4. Schubert

5. Debussy

6. Stravinsky

7. Brahms

8. Verdi

9. Wagner

10. Bartok

But where is Haydn? Handel? Dvorak? I'm afraid the last three--maybe even the last four--wouldn't have made my list.

Some Constellation

“Classical” music, strictly speaking, is music written between 1750, the date of J.S. Bach’s death, and the end of the eighteenth century, when Beethoven walked through the front door of the palace and ushered in the Romantic period of music.

Bue “classical” has become a catch-all term for music which doesn’t easily fall into other categories. People have tried calling it art music, un-popular music, longhair. It’s a bit like the word “germ” for a doctor, who will want to know what kind of germ we are talking about. Or “baby grand” for any horizontal piano measuring five to nine feet from tail to keyboard, each piano having a particular descriptive name, none of them including the word “baby”.

The Classical or Rococo period. Mozart, Haydn, Clementi. Geniuses all, and treated as glorified domestic servants in livery under the fickle patronage of various noblemen. Yet music was their day job. They didn’t have to teach, doctor or sell insurance.

Instead, they invented the symphony (Haydn), produced deathless diamonds of melody which would support generations of musicians and transport their audiences (Mozart), write a music method book which would teach geniuses such as Chopin and Debussy (Clementi’s Gradus ad Parnassum or Steps to Parnassus).

My Keyboard Literature teacher, Sylvia Jenkins, said that the Classic view of God was that of a divine clock-maker, that God wound up the universe and let it run all on its own. Accordingly, people of the late 18^th Century loved music boxes and clockwork toys. Musicians including Mozart wrote pieces for wind-up players. This concept of God and music was different from that of Bach, who believed that all music came directly from heaven, or from that of Chopin, who believed that music was a purely human creation.

The musicians I call musicians mostly started their job training as children. By the time they were adults, they had logged thousands of hours of practice time, which meant they were probably not good at sports. They can count beats and rests, can play in more than one key, can transpose without electronic assistance. They understand Italian musical terms and know the difference between a da capo and a dal signo.

Most of them have to teach whether or not they are good at it, just to pay their bills. The orchestra players have to play in several orchestras. The singers spend their lives auditioning and looking for an accompanist. The lucky few get studio jobs, shows and casuals (parties, weddings) to keep body and soul together.

And yet being a “classical” musician is a rare privilege and a constant consolation. As my piano duet partner John says, “It is some constellation.”

Titans in Warsaw

An international Chopin piano competition is taking place in Warsaw, Poland, and performances are streaming live on the Internet. There is a nine-hour time difference, so much of the playing is in the middle of the night for me; still, I have seen almost all the archive tapes and many of the recitals.

The preliminary round had 346 players, winnowed to 80 in the first cut and then to 40 on the second day, where each musician presented a 20-minute program for a distinguished jury and a packed house (the audience doesn't even cough except between selections.) Pianists choose from four pianos, a Steinway, a Kawai, a Yamaha, or a Fazioli, the most expensive piano in the world, with a top model costing $400,000. Most choose the Steinway. The top prize for the contest is 30,000 Euros, but each of the ten finalists will get a substantial reward.

I would not like to be on the jury for this competition, though the jurors and I agreed on about half of the semi-finalists. Every candidate is technically flawless; the programs are performed from memory and one hardly ever hears a note error. One thing the jury is listening for is a certain Chopinesque style, especially in the Mazurkas and Polonaises. But the defining requirement is that the listener be moved by the performance.

The tools for executing a moving performance are limited: Beyond the notes, rhythms, tempi and dynamics the composer specifies, the player needs to define the importance of the various elements of the composition. When the composer indicates piano or soft in a place having several notes playing simultaneously, he is specifying an over-all volume. Not all the notes have the same value, nor do all the musical lines and phrases. These are details the artist must decide upon, and the memorable performances are like stories, with a beginning, a development and an ending, high points and interludes. The player who only plays the notes will be accused, as was one contestant, of "sounding like the recording", even though he did nothing particularly wrong.

This is some of the best Chopin playing I have heard anywhere, any time. Almost all the pianists have something to say with their music, but the players I have loved the most were the ones who made me feel I had never heard the pieces in quite the same way before. Nicodemus and I agree on most musical things, and he said it better than I could: In the most profound musical experience, a spiritual truth is revealed.

Of course, mastery of the instrument is a prerequisite.

Because all the finalists obviously could not be Russian, only six of the extraordinary Russian players advanced to the semifinals, cutting two of my favorites. There are three Americans, two players each from Italy, China, Poland and France, and one each from Bulgaria, Austria and Australia. The semifinalists include 13 men and seven women. None of the 15 Japanese players, four Koreans, three Israelis, the Canadian, Croatian, German, Swiss, Armenian or Spanish pianists made it to the list of twenty.