Education in the Arts Postscript

I've been waiting for a commentator to rake me over the coals for saying in my post yesterday that "They want to bring pop, folk, jazz and world music into the curriculum. At first this seems a good idea, but over time, they start to edge out the classical music. They are easier to enjoy and the technical standards are not so demanding so if you don't have a very strong handle on exactly why you need to be teaching the classical traditions, then pretty soon you will just stop bothering." The bolded passage is the one that I felt sure would attract some criticism, after all, jazz, rock, pop and world musics all demand a level of technical precision and accomplishment that is as demanding as anything in classical music. Right? Right?

Ah, but in many ways they don't. But first let me point out ways that they do:

• All forms and genres of music contain examples of real virtuosity because musicians learn how to do tricky and complex things and they like to show them off
• In every kind of music, there are some players for whom fast passages come naturally
• In jazz, virtuosity is expressed, not only in technique, but in improvisational ingenuity

I'm sure I could quote all sorts of examples from Alvin Lee to Van Halen to gypsy fiddlers to flamenco guitarists, but no need. We have all heard instrumental virtuosity of this kind. Heck, even actors can fake it a bit (sorry, Blogger won't embed):

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=neBwCIuUVtE

But here is the difference: all of this virtuosity, all, is based on instrumental athleticism, finding how to do quick and clever things on the instrument. It is also something that each individual virtuoso develops based on their own individual skills. This is entirely different from the technical command necessary to play classical music really well. What is the difference? I think the main one is that non-classical instrumental virtuosity (and that practiced in classical music as well, up until the 17th century) is based on finger (or lip, or throat) virtuosity, but in classical music for quite a while now, it is all about precise control of dynamics, articulation, phrasing, timbre and a bunch of other subtleties that we don't have names for. And all this is directly related to the specific musical context, not to the performer's skill set.

Now you might protest that other kinds of virtuosity, for example that of Stevie Ray Vaughan, is all about intense expressivity and that is true. But it still emanates from and is based on the skill set of the performer, not the objective requirements of the composition because, in the blues, the individual voice of the performer is, to a large extent, the composition. But if you are playing a sonata by Beethoven, you have to accept and master a very complex set of skills that are entirely developed to allow the musical content and structure to be communicated clearly and beautifully. Completely different thing:

And then there is this, where, except for the trills, there is almost no conventional virtuosity--it is all in the expression:

Which Instruments are Hard to Play?

Sometimes you get asked how hard is such-and-such an instrument to play? How hard is it to play guitar? Or how hard is it to learn piano? Such questions are, without specifying a bit, impossible to answer. I don't play the piano, except I had a few lessons forty years ago. But I haven't practiced since. But I am perfectly capable of sitting down and sight-reading through the first prelude to the Well-Tempered Clavier by Bach. Fairly slowly and with a few slips, I'm sure. And the fugue would be impossible. Why is this? Well, I know how to read music and I know where the notes are on the piano. The rest is just taking your time. I don't play the violin either, but if you asked me to play the first couple of measures of the Alban Berg violin concerto, no problem! Here they are:

UPDATE: Oops, I tried a shortcut that didn't work. Here is the opening of the violin part. All open strings:

Berg famously opens with just the open strings of the violin. I guess I should take a lesson in how to hold the bow first. If you asked me to play the rest of the concerto, though, not in a million years!

You see, it is not instruments that are hard or easy to play, it is the music written for them. There are a very few instruments that have proven to be so useful and so expressive and so capable that composers have chosen them over and over again, to use for the most challenging and expressive music. There are a zillion great violin concertos because the violin is an astonishingly capable instrument. What this means is that if you want to be a violinist, capable of playing this virtuosic repertoire, you need to start quite young (seven at the very latest), you need to have loads of musical potential, you need a wonderful teacher, you need a wonderful violin and you need to work very, very hard for a decade or two. And at the end of that time you might be able to do a good job playing the Berg violin concerto or the Tchaikovsky, or the Beethoven.

Instruments like the violin, the piano, the cello, even the guitar, are very difficult to master, not because of any characteristics of the instruments themselves, but because of the kind of music that has been written for them. Mind you, to play any orchestral instrument up to the standards of a professional orchestra is also pretty tough--just not quite as demanding as being a soloist.

Things in the pop world work a bit differently. Not to say that instrumental virtuosity isn't also part of the scene, but it does not dominate in the way it does in the classical world. A great pop vocalist is probably as much a great vocalist as is an opera singer, but the technical demands are quite different. A great guitar virtuoso like Eric Clapton is probably playing on a level of mastery that is the equal of nearly any classical musician. But you can't say the same of the rhythm guitarist in a reggae band who is destined to play pretty much the same rhythms his whole career.

Some instruments you might think are nothing to play, like the blues harp. But in the hands of a true master, you start to see that if you want to do what he can do, it will take a lot of work. But just about anyone can get some kind of tune out of a blues harp! Some instruments are easy to pick up and fool around on. I learned how to play the African thumb piano (mbira) well enough to play my part in a contemporary piece--but the part was simple.

Let's end by listening to the first movement of that violin concerto by Alban Berg:

Paganini: A Virtuoso Career

Niccolo Paganini (1782 - 1840) was certainly not the first virtuoso in music history, not even the first virtuoso violinist. He himself was inspired by the Italian baroque violinist Pietro Locatelli (1695 - 1764). Here is some music by Locatelli. From the 3:17 mark there is a large cadenza for unaccompanied violin that was the kind of passage that interested Paganini:

Paganini was both patient and diligent in planning his career. He spent nearly twenty years at home in Italy, composing concertos for violin and orchestra and caprices for solo violin and perfecting his technique. He constructed a nearly-daemonic public image, with a cadaverous appearance--"black romanticism" it is called. He both mesmerized and dominated an audience to a degree never before seen. In 1828 he went north and began a grand tour of Europe beginning in Vienna where he was heard with great admiration by Schubert. In Weimar, Goethe was astonished as was Robert Schumann in Frankfurt. In Paris he won the acclaim of both Berlioz and a very young Liszt, who was to model his own career after Paganini's. After only six years, the storm was over and a now-wealthy Paganini, plagued by ill-health, retired. Here is an example, the Caprice no. 13, called "The Devil's Laugh":

And here is the most famous Caprice, no. 24:

The direct historical descendant of this kind of virtuosity is someone like Steve Vai, in his famous guitar battle  with Ralph Maccio in the film Crossroads:

Virtuosity and Musicality

We are inundated, as we always are, by young virtuoso classical musicians. The only difference today is that the young women are wearing micro-minis and the young men are showing off their abs--which makes them typical rising young stars in today's image-obsessed world. Just in case you were wondering, an Australian magazine has kindly assembled The Top Twelve Classical Music Pinups.

But I want to get off that topic, covered in my previous post, and talk about virtuosity and musicality. As an almost-virtuoso myself I have to beware of the dangers of criticizing players for being more virtuoso than I am! So I will try to keep that in check. In truth, I'm not jealous of Pepe Romero and Manuel Barrueco, both sublimely virtuoso players with whom I have studied. Well, just a tad! But they are very different kinds of players from one another and I am a different kind of player myself. Pepe is the kind of player that delights in technical challenges. He really can play anything and I have watched him trying out unfamiliar guitars and his technique just seems effortless. He has an extraordinary and warm tone and terrific velocity. Manuel is a precision player without peer. He has an edged, crystalline tone with clarity and exactitude. I had to laugh watching an interview with our latest guitar virtuoso, Milos, when he made the claim that he is the first to play Granados' Oriental on solo guitar. Manuel recorded it twenty-some years ago--better. I have technical limitations that probably come from starting late on the instrument (anything later than ten years old is a problem!) and from not finding a good teacher until I was into my twenties. But I have certain strengths as well. I have an intuitive grasp of the spectrum of tone-colors and dynamics and a gift for counterpoint.

Virtuosity is partly the physical command of the instrument: you can play fast scales and arpeggios and do it with good tone and in tune. It includes the ability to control dynamics both loud and soft. Musicality is knowing where and why to play loud and soft, what tempo is right, what notes to emphasize and what not. In other words, virtuosity is the ability, musicality the reason. Or in computer terms, virtuosity is like the hardware, musicality the software.

But there is another level that goes beyond both of these. To exemplify it, let me recall a concert I heard by American pianist Stephen Prutsman last season. He had a brilliant idea for a program that interleaved preludes and fugues from the Well-Tempered Clavier with other music from Rameau to Debussy and, in the second half, with non-classical music from jazz to gospel. I had a gas writing program notes for it. But I mention this concert because of one piece. The concert was mostly played with a certain wayward charm and some racing tempos. But when Mr. Prutsman got to La Llorona, a simple Mexican traditional piece about a woman who lost her children, something else appeared. More than anything else in the program, this piece came alive. It was very moving in that way only music can be. During this piece I seem to recall that physically the pianist became more still. In other pieces he moved around a lot. But we, all of us, became captured by the musical beauty of this piece. It is different every time you play, of course. A concert artist can always play with a certain level of virtuosity, though it can be more or less. The same goes for musicality: we have a professional level of ability. But sometimes we are visited by the Muse and the music comes alive in a different way. Perhaps for only one piece in the program, perhaps not at all. Let me hasten to say that this was far from being the most profound piece on the program. But it inspired the player that night and so moved the audience.

What troubles me about the music scene--and I'm not sure it is any different now than it has ever been--is that in an obsession with virtuosity (honestly, fast scales are the most boring of all musical ideas) and with image (I love beautiful women in sexy dresses just like everyone else, but it does tend to distract) we somehow forget that the real reason we listen to music is for the transcendence, for the ecstasy, Greek ἔκστασις (ekstasis) meaning to stand outside yourself.

The ending? Well, yes, Bach did not finish this, the last piece in The Art of Fugue.