Professionally, I'm a solo singer (i.e., me and a piano); because
direct contact with the audience by sight and body language is so
important in what I do, I always work by memory. The way I memorize?
Just keep doing the song over and over in rehearsal: by the end, it's
memorized. In strophic song, right at the end, I'll frequently just
speak the verses (usually in my mind) to make sure I've got them all
in the right order, and PARTICULARLY to make sure that at the end of
one verse (i.e., the end of the music) I know very well
indeed....which verse comes next! But, in this regard, words are what
make my profession different from that of an instrumentalist: they
provide a second skeleton of meaning on which to hang the thing being
memorized.
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
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