[postlink]http://newbestmotivator.blogspot.com/2009/07/long-lines.html[/postlink]
Like the person who forgets he is related to the waves in the sea or loses continuity with the movement of wind through grass, so does the performer lose his connection to the long line of the music when his attention rests solely on perfecting individual notes and harmonies. Like the person who, mindless that she has all of nature in her fingertips, blocks the expression of the life force, so does the musician interrupt the long line of passion when she limits her focus to the expression of personal emotion, local color, or harmonic events. Her narrow emphasis can produce a dull and numbing performance.
Beethoven's Moonlight Sonata is an example of a piece whose meaning changes altogether when a pianist emphasizes the triplets in the right hand at the expense the long melodic line in the bass, as so often occurs. The tempo slows down to match the interest in the individual somber notes in the right hand, and the character of the piece shifts from the light and forward-looking fantasy Beethoven intended, to a work rendered by tradition as one of deep nostalgia and regret.
Leon Fleischer, the renowned pianist and teacher, has said that playing a piece of music is an exercise in antigravity. The musician's role is to draw the listener's attention over the bar lines--which are but artificial divisions, having no relevance for the flow of the music--toward a realization of the piece as a whole. In order to make the connections between the larger sections of a piece, the player may find herself moving the tempo at a faster pace than if she were putting her attention on highlighting individual notes or vertical harmonies. This explains how it is that the metronome markings in the works of Beethoven and Schumann appear so fast, indeed too fast to many performers and scholars. These composers were passionate about launching a long line.
Life flows when we put our attention on the larger patterns of which we are a part, just as the music soars when a performer distinguishes the notes whose impulse carries the music's structure from those that are purely decorative. Life takes on shape and meaning when a person is able to transcend the barriers of personal survival and become a unique conduit for its vital energy. So too the long line of the music is revealed when the performer connects the structural notes for the ear, like a bird buoyed on an updraft.
Like the person who forgets he is related to the waves in the sea or loses continuity with the movement of wind through grass, so does the performer lose his connection to the long line of the music when his attention rests solely on perfecting individual notes and harmonies. Like the person who, mindless that she has all of nature in her fingertips, blocks the expression of the life force, so does the musician interrupt the long line of passion when she limits her focus to the expression of personal emotion, local color, or harmonic events. Her narrow emphasis can produce a dull and numbing performance.
Beethoven's Moonlight Sonata is an example of a piece whose meaning changes altogether when a pianist emphasizes the triplets in the right hand at the expense the long melodic line in the bass, as so often occurs. The tempo slows down to match the interest in the individual somber notes in the right hand, and the character of the piece shifts from the light and forward-looking fantasy Beethoven intended, to a work rendered by tradition as one of deep nostalgia and regret.
Leon Fleischer, the renowned pianist and teacher, has said that playing a piece of music is an exercise in antigravity. The musician's role is to draw the listener's attention over the bar lines--which are but artificial divisions, having no relevance for the flow of the music--toward a realization of the piece as a whole. In order to make the connections between the larger sections of a piece, the player may find herself moving the tempo at a faster pace than if she were putting her attention on highlighting individual notes or vertical harmonies. This explains how it is that the metronome markings in the works of Beethoven and Schumann appear so fast, indeed too fast to many performers and scholars. These composers were passionate about launching a long line.
Life flows when we put our attention on the larger patterns of which we are a part, just as the music soars when a performer distinguishes the notes whose impulse carries the music's structure from those that are purely decorative. Life takes on shape and meaning when a person is able to transcend the barriers of personal survival and become a unique conduit for its vital energy. So too the long line of the music is revealed when the performer connects the structural notes for the ear, like a bird buoyed on an updraft.