Benblog

The Perfect Note

I know what the perfect note sounds like, digitally reproduced, refined, mastered, the settings simulating even the piano's room. Or stage. Or hall.

More refined ears than mine know the subtle differences.

But warts and all, there is richness till to the sounds of my imperfect church basement instrument.

The joy and pain, the neglect, has given her an inimitable voice, one an oscilloscope might not even recognize as a piano, let alone anything grand.

I struggle with the idea of going digital for that reason alone. Should an instrument designed to be tuned imperfectly really have perfect tuning?

Would Keith Jarrett, George Shearing, Christopher O'Riley, George Winston - would any of them sound the same?

Why Stuff is Hard

I'm still working my way through Moonlight Sonata, and by working through I mean lazy, undisciplined sittings, expecting, as if by some miracle, a virtuoso pianist to possess me.

I realize that the thing that makes the piece difficult are the technical aspects. The technique.

The music has so much going on so quickly, so actively, like the moonlight rippling across Lake Lucerne, but so quietly, exactly like moonbeams on the surface of a subtly moving lake.

            

The Old Lady

As much as I hate when the bass G sticks when it rains, or the pin block gives a little more of a twist to the angled pins, bringing  a little sharp to those strings, playing an old piano has an intimacy that digital just can't match.

I'm not sure I can do it.

With Gladys, I know the imperfections. I know the intimacy of response, when to transpose, when to stroke, when to percuss.

I can sometimes almost hear Gladys sing when we're playing a hymn she knows, like the muscle memory awakened in Alzheimer's patients.

Rockstar

Playing Beethoven again reminds me that the brilliance of classical composers transcends time. Ludwig must have been a rock star of sorts in his time. Playing his music is like tracing the paths of someone's mind in his or her poetry.

As much as it makes my brain hurt, learning to identify the lexicon of music is helping me understand the language as a language.

And the love behind the simple songs, Fur Elise. Moonlight Sonata. Beethoven wrote beautiful music that music lovers could actually play with limited skills.

And that the music that is worth writing down and passing on is music that no one else could have written, even though we may understand why it is beautiful after it is written.

The Things We Know

We were talking after the Peter Martin concert about how when you grow up among professional musicians, learning music is not a second language, but a first. Heard and understood, the phrases identified early on, replicated later, learned on whatever instrument is at hand. It's like being bi-lingual - the lexicon of music already in your bones.

The thing that was trained in my bones was being compassionate and curious. Seated at the right hand of the father.

A View from the Bridge

I now understand how Jerry Springer was made into a musical. It's not Verdi, not quite Cavalleria Rusticana, but opera verismo nevertheless, with ourselves the tragic heros, our tragic flaws understood by the viewer, as actors pursued by fate, the bloody outcome taking its course.

Seeing an American tragedy, which Miller originally wrote as a one act play, which he described as an opera, makes the emotions even more real. Having the characters as Sicilian immigrants may have been a brilliant bow to Mascagni or not, but it gave us just enough familiarity, just enough distance, to understand the players as ourselves, Miller as Socrates, we Euthyphro - understanding, when we apply our laws, or feel we understand what is righteous, that righteousness is a mercurial beast, ethics a quest, not a destiny.

And how fortunate we are that our own daily foibles, our own untruths, the lies we tell ourselves, do not lead to the complex blood vendetas, or lovers torn askew. Just slightly soiled laundry, most times, quickly put away.

Or the devastating knowledge that your girlfriend is actually sleeping with your mother, who is really your aunt. Softened by an all expense paid trip and your fifteen minutes of fame, sitting in the middle seat on the Springer show, the attention of our modern Greek chorus, the studio audience, focused for that moment on you.

Boogie woogie

It's pretty scary to me how underinformed we are about the war in Iraq. While casualities do make the news, the idea of what the firefights must be like is not, which would give Americans a better sense of how impossible a war of attrition is in the situation, especially as we lose more and more popular support by fighting that war of attrition.



It just dawned on me moments ago, trying to play a transcription of Winston's Variations on the Canon how brilliantly elegant music is, hearing some classic boogie woogie bass line underneath, underscoring the universality of sound.


Mechanically, I also realized the importance of feeling, rather than seeing the instrument. I used to practice as a kid with basketball dribbling eye pieces, that don't let you look at your hands. And now I know why, and why while my mechanics seem okay, and flexibility is coming back, and with a better understanding of the musical language, I still can't play as well as before. It's because I'm not sure of where the notes actually are on the piano, instinctively. I'm always looking, always hesitating even when I think I have the feel, and it makes the music sound mechanical, as if input is required before the next specific action is taken, rather than flowing from an intricate set of
commands, some of them set in motion before humans stood on this earth, or the earth itself was born.