Kevin McDermott
Fri, 04 Apr 2008 08:30:11 -0700
I couldn't agree more with Andrew's suggestion of visualization: years ago, I played in a turn of the 20th century plucked string ensemble (BMG) club, The Boston "Excelsior" Mandolin Orchestra. I started as the vocalist, but they needed a second banjoist. I'm decidedly left- handed when it comes to string instruments: the first I tried, in high school, was a tenor banjo: for that I just played it "backwards." But that was not going to work with a 5-string. While my fellow band member looked for a nice, affordable original instrument for me, I went to bed every night--just like Andrew--imagining playing "backwards" (i.e., the right way for the rest of the world: backwards for me!). By the time Clarke had found the instrument, I picked it up and started playing with never a backwards glance. But, if I'm not thinking, I'll still pick up the cittern the wrong way round!
This visualization method has also served me well in two other, non- musical, fields: learning to shoot a shotgun and learning golf, both from dead zero. Both involve full-body movement incorporating a host of individual details which need to be so ingrained that they eventually become one, dance-like, gesture: in this I think there's a parallel to the playing of a piece of music on an instrument. Yes, at the beginning, you have to think about all those little bits: and therefore it's really_impossible_to have them coalesce. But, once the bits are understood independently, one can join them together in the mind to imagine doing the whole thing seamlessly. For me (at least with shooting) it's made me into a quite good shot with a noticeably graceful swing. Golf: well, we'll see!
But the most important thing to remember, I think, is that music is not AT ALL the little dots on the page (or the letters, for that matter); those are at best a crude representation of what music is: the conveyance of emotion mediated by the ears and the brain to which they're attached. The Quiddity of music is the shape it produces on the brain and soul: and the more one is attuned to this invisible but powerful force, the better one can mold it to produce the desired effect. This is why, as Andrew says, he plays so much better off the page: he's actually_playing music,_not "the music." And that's why I agree so much with what he says about hearing the piece he's learning in his head when he's not actually playing it: he's imprinting the shape, the internal logic, of the piece on his mind and heart--and undoubtedly finding different ways to squeeze here and expand there to put the stamp of his own consciousness on it.
There's another point: all of us playing early music are not creative artists, really: we're re-creative artists. All the creative ones are dead: they wrote their music and we won't be seeing them again. In the early days of the early music movement--which I remember all too well-- the mantra was, well, that that's all there was--this was to be consciously non-emotional, consciously uninflected music. Well, those days are gone, thank goodness, and we now have several generations of players who have delved deeply enough in the cultures that produced those composers and their music to understand them as close to the way a contemporary would have as is perhaps possible. This allows them to bring their own personality--mediated by that understanding--to the piece at hand. No, we'll never know how close we get to what really would have been heard in 1435, or 1540, or 1690, or 1750 (although IMHO we've now gotten quite close in most cases)--but, whether that's true or not, nowadays most players of early music are, in fact, making music: not making "early music."
And that's a very good thing..... And that's also just one man's opinion. Thanks for listening. Kevin An unprofficient, yet true Loover of the Citharen To get on or off this list see list information at http://www.cs.dartmouth.edu/~wbc/lute-admin/index.html