Yesterday afternoon I spent a few hours with two of my grandchildren, a boy going on five and an impossibly cute girl, who is two. We were at the First Station, a public space created where you once could take the train to Tel Aviv. We had a pretty good time and managed to keep busy. The boy got to drive a little electric car for 20 minutes, we heard some teen-age musicians play rock 'n roll, we ate some french fries, and I even bought them some ice cream. But he was not content. Instead of saying to himself, "Wow, I got to drive the electric car!" or "Hey, I got some good french fries!" he kept thinking about the things he hadn't gotten to do.
He appears to have inherited this negative trait from his mother, who inherited it from me, and I guess I got it from my mother, and her parents, back into the obscurity of the Pale of Settlement. I have a streak of negativity, which smacks of ingratitude.
Recently, after studying with a brilliant and demanding flute teacher for four years, during which I went from barely being able to get a sound of the flute, to a fairly decent level, I realized that I wasn't progressing with him anymore and decided to stop lessons for a while.
It's not easy for me to break things off. I develop a strong feeling of obligation toward people I'm associated with, and I feel slightly guilty for quitting on him.
My first impulse (negativity) is to list the reasons why the lessons weren't helping me as much as they used to. Instead, however, I'd like to express gratitude for what I learned from him.
First and foremost, he taught me to look for a focused sound, which means that he forced me to listen very carefully to myself. I did not come to the flute without musical experience. I am a pretty good saxophone player, but I wouldn't have had the same kind of patience to try improve my sound on the saxophone. Starting a new instrument meant that there was noticeable improvement from day to day. My practice on the flute was rewarded. Not surprisingly, my sound on the saxophone also improved, because I was working so hard on correct breath support, and I was listening better to myself.
Second, he taught me to aim at playing with ease. In his philosophy of musicanship (and he has a strong and well-worked out approach to music), musicians should never make themselves suffer. It's preferable to try produce a note and fail than to try too hard to produce the note and force it out. Playing with excessive physical effort makes you tired, it strains your body, and it distracts you from the music.
Third, he taught me two important criteria for musicality, one of which I knew, but tended to lose sight of. That criterion is movement and rest. Notes are either destinations or movement toward destinations. When you move toward a destination, you should know what it is, and your playing should sound as if it's going there. Then, when you get to the destination, you should enjoy being there, feel as if you've accomplished something, gotten somewhere, attained satisfaction (even when you quickly move on). The second criterion is connected to the first one. The listeners (obviously including the player) should understand what the music is doing, starting on the micro-level of the movement of individual notes in phrases.
That means, when you're learning a piece, you should understand where the notes in it are going and, once you've mastered it, convey that understanding.
Fourth, he forced me to develop a vibrato (which is still developing). I found his concentration on vibrato obsessive, but in the end I was convinced that vibrato is one of the most important ways a musician can play expressively, and I began to listen to the vibrato in other musicians: singers, cellists, and wind players.
Fifth, because he was so demanding, he made me demanding of myself, and I practice flute almost compulsively, every day, only for an hour or so (I'm aware that there's a macho school of musicianship that claims that, if you're not playing three hours a day, you're hardly playing at all). If I had practiced clarinet as regularly and effectively when I was an adolescent, I would have reached a level that I can only dream of at this stage in my life. Playing the flute has become a kind of anchor in my life, a form of meditation, an exercise in patience, attentiveness, and self-motivation - and a striving for musical expression.
Nevertheless, I started experiencing a degree of frustration during my lessons, a feeling that I wasn't taking possession of my own musicality, that it was time for me to strike out on my own. But this is only because my teacher empowered me.
So, as I try to keep improving, I want to use the strength that I was taught how to develop, and to be grateful for it.
He appears to have inherited this negative trait from his mother, who inherited it from me, and I guess I got it from my mother, and her parents, back into the obscurity of the Pale of Settlement. I have a streak of negativity, which smacks of ingratitude.
Recently, after studying with a brilliant and demanding flute teacher for four years, during which I went from barely being able to get a sound of the flute, to a fairly decent level, I realized that I wasn't progressing with him anymore and decided to stop lessons for a while.
It's not easy for me to break things off. I develop a strong feeling of obligation toward people I'm associated with, and I feel slightly guilty for quitting on him.
My first impulse (negativity) is to list the reasons why the lessons weren't helping me as much as they used to. Instead, however, I'd like to express gratitude for what I learned from him.
First and foremost, he taught me to look for a focused sound, which means that he forced me to listen very carefully to myself. I did not come to the flute without musical experience. I am a pretty good saxophone player, but I wouldn't have had the same kind of patience to try improve my sound on the saxophone. Starting a new instrument meant that there was noticeable improvement from day to day. My practice on the flute was rewarded. Not surprisingly, my sound on the saxophone also improved, because I was working so hard on correct breath support, and I was listening better to myself.
Second, he taught me to aim at playing with ease. In his philosophy of musicanship (and he has a strong and well-worked out approach to music), musicians should never make themselves suffer. It's preferable to try produce a note and fail than to try too hard to produce the note and force it out. Playing with excessive physical effort makes you tired, it strains your body, and it distracts you from the music.
Third, he taught me two important criteria for musicality, one of which I knew, but tended to lose sight of. That criterion is movement and rest. Notes are either destinations or movement toward destinations. When you move toward a destination, you should know what it is, and your playing should sound as if it's going there. Then, when you get to the destination, you should enjoy being there, feel as if you've accomplished something, gotten somewhere, attained satisfaction (even when you quickly move on). The second criterion is connected to the first one. The listeners (obviously including the player) should understand what the music is doing, starting on the micro-level of the movement of individual notes in phrases.
That means, when you're learning a piece, you should understand where the notes in it are going and, once you've mastered it, convey that understanding.
Fourth, he forced me to develop a vibrato (which is still developing). I found his concentration on vibrato obsessive, but in the end I was convinced that vibrato is one of the most important ways a musician can play expressively, and I began to listen to the vibrato in other musicians: singers, cellists, and wind players.
Fifth, because he was so demanding, he made me demanding of myself, and I practice flute almost compulsively, every day, only for an hour or so (I'm aware that there's a macho school of musicianship that claims that, if you're not playing three hours a day, you're hardly playing at all). If I had practiced clarinet as regularly and effectively when I was an adolescent, I would have reached a level that I can only dream of at this stage in my life. Playing the flute has become a kind of anchor in my life, a form of meditation, an exercise in patience, attentiveness, and self-motivation - and a striving for musical expression.
Nevertheless, I started experiencing a degree of frustration during my lessons, a feeling that I wasn't taking possession of my own musicality, that it was time for me to strike out on my own. But this is only because my teacher empowered me.
So, as I try to keep improving, I want to use the strength that I was taught how to develop, and to be grateful for it.
1 comment:
Always follow your inner voice.
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