Standards - Freedom of Interpretation

Recently I admitted to myself that I enjoy playing old standards most of all, though I enjoy listening to classical music just as much. I might as well enjoy myself when I'm practicing. 

Just now I was thinking about the catchy song of the late 1930s, "Comes Love," composed by Sam H. Stept (whom I've never heard of), with witty lyrics by Lew Brown and Charles Tobias (also unknown to me), featured in a long-forgotten Broadway musical called "Yokel Boy." I decided to share it with some friends and looked it up on Youtube. There I found a cover by Joni Mitchel. She sings it in the saddest way, as if love were a disaster. The great Artie Shaw recorded it, sung by Helen Forrest, in a serious but not tragic vein. But long ago I had heard it in a much cheerier mood sung by Ella Fitzgerald with Louis Armstrong, welcoming love. 

So what's the right way to play it? I'm aware that Glenn Gould made some controversial performances of well-known classical pieces, claiming the freedom of interpretation automatically awarded to popular songs like "Comes Love." But he was Glenn Gould. Not too many classical musicians would dare to alter canonical works with the freedom he arrogated to himself, but in the performance of standards, jazz musicians are expected to do whatever they want. They can change the tempo, reharmonize a tune, and take it so far away in their improvisation that listeners would be hard put to recognize it if they didn't hear it at the outset.

Some of the standards I've been playing are challenging, like the Jobim song, "Chega de Saudad."  If you didn't grow up on them it's hard to play bossa rhythms the way Brazilians sing them. If you listen to different recordings of that song, in Portuguese and in English, by various performers, you hear the freedom of interpretation I love so much and find so hard to emulate. 

If I play Bach or Telemann on the flute, I feel obliged to play as accurately as I can, and I carry that over, inappropriately, to the playing of standards. In fact, I doubt that musicians of the eighteenth century would have felt the need to be 100% accurate. The notation of the rhythms of bossa songs and jazz standards is merely a suggestion, because standard notation isn't designed to convey the subtleties of those rhythms. I imagine that it was equally inadequate to convey baroque rhythms. Certainly composers didn't bother to notate dynamics, articulation, and ornamentation.

Maybe I'll play baroque music better if I keep playing jazz standards.

Improving with the Guidance of a Good Teacher

 Seven months have gone by since I added anything to this music blog. Not that the world has been waiting with bated breath for my words. During those months, I've been practicing flute regularly with the instruction and encouragement of my teacher, Vladimir Silva, who, until his retirement played with the Jerusalem Symphony Orchestra. During his entire career, he's also been a teacher, and he knows how to do it. He's been helping me work on my sound, mainly, but also on other important aspects of music. The lessons consist of warmup exercises and playing duets together.

For a few months we played the duets that Mozart wrote based on the Magic Flute and after that we worked on the six Telemann sonatas for two flutes. Recently we've been playing the first of the Mozart duets, K 156, originally written for flute and violin. Playing Mozart is an extraordinary experience. The more I work on the piece, which is a bit beyond my ability, the more I find in it. He is terrifically inventive, with one idea flashing after another. I have the feeling that I'm inside Mozart's mind while I'm playing, marveling at how his mind could have conceived of this wonderful music.

Especially in the first movement of the first duet, there are a lot of very fast passages. Working on them intensely and slowly and trying to get them close to the right tempo is better than playing scale exercises. The challenge is to keep my hands relaxed and to play with a full tone even when I'm struggling with the technical difficulties. The faster I try to play, the stiffer my fingers get, which is just the opposite of what should happen,

This is a matter of paying attention to a lot of things at the same time. Several of the books that I've read about musicianship describe a kind of detached involvement. The performer should be totally present in the music, yet she should also stand back from her playing. I have occasionally felt this happening and hoped to recover the feeling, but it's not something you can try to do,

Before I started taking lessons with Vladimir, I tried working on my own for nearly a year. My plan was to find my own voice. But it didn't work. I wasn't able to guide myself, and I was frustrated and lost motivation. Now, knowing that I have to prepare for a lesson, I invest a lot of effort.

Taking lessons from a man who is not exactly young, but who is still younger than I am, is nothing like taking lessons from a teacher when you're a kid. Vladimir and I have become friends, but that doesn't stop him from interrupting me while I'm playing and pointing out what I'm doing wrong (and sometimes right). I'm finding that the more I improve, the more I enjoy playing, even the warmup exercises. I'm getting close to producing a sound that I like on the flute, and that's reinforcing.

Should I regret that I didn't begin playing flute until I was in my late sixties? Probably not. Two of my friends were excellent flute players when they were young and got bored with flute and went over to piano. Maybe if I'd played flute for as long as I played clarinet and sax, by now I would be bored with flute and taking sax lessons.