Tag Archive for 'The Music'

Why I Am a Classical Musician

Published
by
dtclarinet
on January 18, 2008
in Behind the Scenes, Clarinet and Personal
. 1 Comment

I carve a tiny piece of wood off the base of the reed. The shaving isn’t much larger than one or two hairs of daily growth on a man’s face. Almost nothing. I put the reed back on the mouthpiece and fasten it with the ligature. I form an embouchure and play the scale I repeat hundreds of times a day to check reeds. The raspiness has gone from the reed’s vibrations. The difference is huge. Now it has a bell-like ring as it pings through the instrument. Ahh!

After 2 hours of working on reeds, I am tired. Add five hours of rehearsals today and that’s a full day. But I haven’t finished. I still need to review specific sections of this weekend’s music. And the reed I just fixed might not make it through five minutes of playing, with the time spent on it lost after that.

Why do I do this? I smile as I ask myself. “Because I love it” might be one answer. But that’s not quite it. It’s more like an itch I have to scratch. From age 12 on I had the “ring” of the clarinet’s tone in my head, an ideal to strive for. Such a goal is elusive; it shifts and hides moments after being within your grasp.

Reeds are part of the problem, but so is being human. I am not a machine. I have to eat and sleep. I get tired. I have good days and bad. Yet the goal is always there; to outdo myself. Like an athlete wishing to win the Olympics, I strive for perfection with an all too human body and life. I may not always achieve it. But the striving tenures me to strong and tenacious character.

Of course, playing the instrument alone is only part of this puzzle. I am a clarinetist because I love music. Why do I love classical music so much?

As I ponder this question, my ear wanders to a CD I have playing of Bach’s Goldberg Variations performed by Andras Schiff. It’s a new recording for me. I have at least four recordings of this piece by different performers. Each player creates something fresh with their interpretation. So while the music is very familiar to me, it sounds new in this pianist’s hands.

Bach’s variations are accessible, dancelike and intimate, humorous and poignant. One in particular, the 26th, breaks my heart each time I hear it. I hang on every note. Schiff’s version is surprisingly feminine and coquettish, but with amazing facility and control. The tone of the particular piano he plays is also exquisite.

This brilliant music, and the performance, seems to come from somewhere beyond human capabilities. Yet it reflects human emotions in a crystalline way. It says something to me which I cannot articulate. It tells me who I am and who I could be. It reminds me of my humanity and my frailty, my nobility and my baseness. It reaches across ages, like sculpture or painting, and shows me how history and art has formed me and the civilization I live in.

Classical music offers a place of sanity in a harsh world. It clears the haze of daily life and allows us a glimpse of the thoughts and feelings of great people and a connection to our higher selves. And of their vulnerabilities. Who wouldn’t want to be inside Einstein’s head, or Picasso’s or Martin Luther King’s, as they thought and felt their great deeds? Well, I do. My life’s commitment is to be the instrument which recreates the vision of great composers for others.

Unlike painting or literature, classical music is experienced directly in time. Though I enjoy recordings of great pianists and orchestras, I relish hearing one as it happens. A live performance reflects a unique snapshot in time, much like sports are reality in action. Just like the excitement of a supportive crowd in sports, the audience affects performers with their attention and enjoyment. In a live performance, the history of today day can cue a great performer to fresh new depths of expression and heights of emotion for those listeners.

Orchestral performances are an intersection of many parts. First you have the music itself and the history of its style, something like recreating Van Gogh’s Starry Night. Then you have the particular orchestra and conductor, the “repainters”, if you will. Each member of the orchestra brings their own ideals and experience to the table, which then has to amalgamate into one voice. Then there are the acoustics of the hall, and the audience’s interest. It comes together each time to form a unique experience. When it all gels and the energy builds towards perfection, a particular performance can become an epiphany for all concerned.

Back to my own life and career. I may fix numerous good reeds at home, but few withstand the test of playing in my hall. The acoustics are deplorable, sadly, for the orchestra and especially the audience. This is not a concert hall, but a movie theater. It is not meant for the sublte voice of great music. I need a dense, resonant tone to carry my musical intentions to the odd corners of the cavernous room and the ears of listeners. Dozens of hours of work are usually spent to find the right reed for the hall, one which responds in the weather of that day and the demands of that night’s music.

Recently, I have been experimenting with other aspects of tone production, especially mouthpieces. When I first got this job 18 years ago, I had a great combination of reed type and mouthpiece which fit perfectly with the hall. I thought it was all the practicing I had done before winning the audition. I was naive. When that mouthpiece warped, ruining it, I searched for a decade and never found one with such beauty of tone. In the process I became a better musician. But it wasn’t without its cost in tens of thousands of dollars and countless hours and stress. Somehow I wonder if it’s worth it. I warn students of the gravity of choosing a music career.

All this thought and activity is before I play a note in a concert. In a live performance, a musician is naked. Even beyond practicing clarinet, I have worked a great deal behind the scenes to make it seem “effortless” on stage. I have studied various techniques for focus and presence in order to overcome fatigue and stress from so many hours of repetitive practicing. In truth, much of my daily life since age 12 has been working toward the present performance. The goal may be ideal, but a human plays for it. Personally, I play better when I know I am being heard and appreciated. A great conductor helps bring my focus together, and a great audience.

When the concert finally begins, the first note is a commitment to the rest of the piece and to my colleagues. Egos may clash on and off stage, but conflict usually disappears as the conductor raises his baton and we come together to go beyond ourselves. All my work may or may not pay off this time. Even the best athletes fall.

Is it worth it? All this for the love of great ideas!? I guess that tiny shaving of reed is worth a great deal to me.

Playing What Is

Published
by
dtclarinet
on October 23, 2006
in Mastery, Technique and The Music
. 0 Comments

A musician sits practicing alone in his room, as he has done most of his life. He is a beloved performer, respected and revered by many. He is concentrated and fearless in his focus. Time passes effortlessly here. Time stops.

The light in his room dims. He looks up from the piece he is playing, the solo part from the slow movement of Mozart’s Clarinet Concerto. Above his music stand, there hovers a soft violet glow. He hears a chorus murmuring.

(voices of listeners from all time):You play the music in our hearts. You play things we feel. You are deep and wise.

(performer): No, I play what I am told to play. I play what I know you will feel. But I do not feel what you do. I am not wise.

This saddens us. You are not what you seem. Tell us why.

I think and feel as you do, but I am empty. I fill myself with things which give the impression I am full. I show you yourself.

But how can you show us so much knowing so little?

I feel my pain with doubt. I question everything. I challenge reality. But the structure of the music gives me strength. It quells my doubt.

But you do not feel what we feel, if you doubt your pain and question everything.

I feel what you feel in my own way. When I lay my head on the breast of my mother and weep from joy and gratitude at the gift of life she gave me, I feel what you feel when I play the music. But I do not feel the music as you do.

What do you feel when you play?

I see patterns of structure, puzzles laid out by the composer, shapes and form, lines and colors. I see how I must fit into that puzzle. I have many choices, but only a few good ones. I struggle to play effortlessly. I am a machine, a thinking machine, adjusting constantly to fit into the puzzle and become nothing but the composers dream.

But what do you feel?

I do not feel. I calculate, I listen, I sense. But I am not there to feel. If I feel, then I am lost.

Then why do we feel what you do not?

You feel what I do not because I do not allow myself to feel it. I give up my feeling so you may have it.

(the voices recede. the violet light fades above his stand. he is alone. he continues his practice, shaping the perfect phrases of Mozart’s perfect music. he is content.)

Inspired by the poem-
The Man with the Blue Guitar
by Wallace Stevens

The Life of a Musician is…

Published
by
dtclarinet
on October 13, 2006
in Behind the Scenes, Off the Record and Personal
. 3 Comments

You can’t even fart on the job. You go deaf from playing for decades among instruments as loud as a jackhammer. You are naked. You fight to control little pieces of wood which last only a few days at their peak. Then you being again. If you have a bad day, everyone knows. You sit next to the same people all the time, sometimes for 20-30 years. You are all incredibly full of yourselves, otherwise you wouldn’t be where you are, yet most of you are also insecure from years of self-deprecating thinking, “It’s just not good enough!” “I failed to play perfectly, again!” “And again”.

You wake up in the morning after practicing 6 hours the day before, and it feels like you have to start all over from the bottom, pushing up the boulder inch by inch, striving for the top of the mountain whose height disappears beyond the clouds. it seems hopeless sometimes, spending all that time for what? to play 25 or 50 notes perfectly in tune and in rhythm, when thousands of others can already do the same. What the heck are you accomplishing by doing that????? Oh yes, you can be proud of your accomplishments, especially to people who ask you “Do you get paid to do that?” Yes, I have really been asked that, more than once.

Yet you know that somewhere up the mountain, beyond the clouds, is some effervescent reward, a glass of champagne without the liquid, a feeling of speaking a language of gods, or at least understanding it deeply. If you have any sense, you are in awe of those who make great music, or if you are truly a great musician, you are humbled by your gift. But the striving to reach that reward seems disproportionate to it. It’s so ephemeral.

There’s the glow of basking in audience appreciation, but that’s usually popped moments later by the memory of the imperfections of your performance. It’s never perfect. Yet we strive and agonize for decades toward it. Perhaps it’s ego, proving your greatness, your superiority. I’d rather be a doctor or a lawyer for that. It must be the music, when we remember to listen as we play, when we notice Schubert’s exquisite melodies for the first time after playing them for 20 years. Perhaps that makes it worth it. Perhaps not.

Coming close to the sublime musical language of gods is what we all strive for. EVen a small taste is enough to keep one coming back. When we remember this, the discomfort of daily life as a performer is worth it. Until then, it’s because, because, because we always have. Obsession has its sporadic rewards.