The Grim Reaper

I've spent an extraordinary couple of weeks being surrounded by other peoples' grief: friends of friends, acquaintances of acquaintances, colleagues of people I know only by phone, all being taken off this earth far earlier than expected. Not to mention the sad double loss of UK politicians Robin Cook and Mo Mowlem. (The superficial mavericks are often the temperate voices). But when you're not directly affected it's easy to feel guilty, like a voyeur who cannot help but stare.

Of course the best thing for those unafflicted to do is actually the opposite. I can't express this any better than Steve Jobs can. Read his speech to Stanford graduates in June of this year. I'll certainly subscribe to his words any day. Hungry and foolish? Suits me fine :)

http://news-service.stanford.edu/news/2005/june15/jobs-061505.html

Zigeunerweisen Uncovered

If you know me well, you'll know how much I love Sarasate's Zigeunerweisen. Well, one of the pianists here in Holland, Gerard Boeters, has just given me a handwritten copy of the original Hungarian folk song upon which the yearning middle section is based, complete with lyrics. If there are any Hungarian readers out there who would like to volunteer a translation, I'd be very grateful. I can scan and email a .pdf file of the music. Any offers?

Gerard and I also perform Kabelevsky's Improvisation tonight, at what will certainly be the latest scheduled concert I've ever played... We're due onstage at half past midnight!

Singing, Silence

"Singing is still the basis of music - one of the two; the other is silence' - Alfred Brendel

What Prokofiev Really Thought

I want to explain how I understand Prokofiev's 1st Sonata, which I played in recital here in the Netherlands a few days ago.

I feel very strongly about this piece; I believe I understand the music of Prokofiev (and Shostakovich and Virtuoso rubbish) to a depth that I have not yet reached with Mozart, Brahms, and the great operatic works. (That's the privilege I have for being young and immature.)

I paraphrased both myself and a certain writer I've quoted previously when I spoke a few words before the performance:

If the silence from which music emerges is the connecting point for everything, then music is parallel in nature to the ultimate cycles of life, both human and natural. Just as a human life arcs from birth to death, a sound wave returns to its initial frequency, or water continues through the cycle of evaporation, rain and return to the ocean, so Prokofiev's 1st Sonata reflects the eternal pendulemic movement to and from balance, illustrated through a single cycle.

The core structure of every story is so; this is the essence of the conflicting forces that drive both nature and human life.

It is not easy to peer into the great nothingness and ask: "What is there?". But it is probably the greatest adventure of all.

This sonata is how Prokofiev asks that question.

--

So did Prokofiev really think about all this? Don't expect me to defend myself. You might be surprised to hear me say that the answer is a definite 'mo'.

I have it on good authority that a conversation between Prokofiev and David Oistrakh (for whom the piece was written) went very much like this:

Prokofiev: Oi, Dave. I've written a Sonata for you.
Oistrakh: Nice. Let's try it out.

[they read through it]

Prokofiev: What do you think?
Oistrakh: I think you may have written one of the greatest violin pieces ever.
Prokofiev: Really? Oh.

The music Prokofiev came out with was written intuitively. He was expressing things he felt very deeply in a way that he didn't for the 2nd (flute) Sonata. There's no way of knowing if he ever consciously rationalised the meaning of his work. After all, it's music - there's no need to! But it's not realistic to expect everyone to understand it or perform it intuitively, although I'm sure people do.

I think it *does* help therefore, to create a story, a set of images, a narrative, or even just a few pointers that illustrate important aspects of the music. It gives people something to hold on to. It prepares them, in the way that opera-goers often learn the story of an opera, and maybe a few main themes or motifs, before going to see it. This is another reason why it's good that 'interactivity' is becoming more important now, whether it's a digital TV info system, a website presentation, or just a few words spoken at the beginning of a concert. Because it allows people to see another angle on the music, so that whether or not they choose to embrace that angle, it has value, because by rejecting it you have strengthened whichever other ideas you believe in.

That's why I increasingly think it's OK to create silly storylines or settings for music, and to make no apology for it. Just because something is oversimplified or inauthentic doesn't mean it shouldn't be there. Because the fact that it *is* there is sometimes more important than whatever it's trying to say.

Things You Don't Know You Know

I had a wonderful week of lessons from Pierre Amoyal; mostly small points and musical ideas, but also some helpful theoretizing on the relationship between vibrato type and tonal colour changes.

But what he was interested in was my pizzicato! "What is Zat? It is Fantastique! Wat are you doing?" Turns out, I had unthinkingly altered the pizzicatos (in Prokofiev's 1st Sonata - vicious, nasty things!) to something between a normal pizzicato and a Bartok pizz, and slid the finger up onto where the bow normally plays, so the resin on the finger would create a 'sticky' beginning to the note. "You have changed my thinking of 40 years about pizzicato! You should open a pizzicato academy!"

I think it's fascinating that I hadn't been aware of what I was doing, and also that someone who has been pizzicatoing (if indeed that is a word) for the best part of half a century hadn't tried it before. It is proof that we never truly know the possibilities of our own selves. Because while we can learn by imitating and following instructions, we cannot do this with something we have not yet conceptualised. To close off the mind to the idea of believing in the possibility of something we cannot imagine is to completely destroy this same possibility. What kind of attitude does an astronaut have towards space?

This is why you need to trust a violin professor, but more importantly it's why you need to trust yourself. And that's a tricky thing to do.

That oft-repeated poetry of Donald Rumsfeld bears repeating:

As we know,
There are known knowns.
There are things we know we know.
We also know
There are known unknowns.
That is to say
We know there are some things
We do not know.
But there are also unknown unknowns,
The ones we don't know
We don't know.