Doing Doughnuts

This month I have four different concert programs in five weeks. Last week there were three piano concerts in Ohio, featuring two different programs. This was on the theory (proven correct) that a few persons might be at two of the concerts and the repetition might look lazy. Yesterday I returned to Pennsylvania for an organ recital about a half hour outside of Pittsburgh. It was a summer concert in connection with a farmer's market next store to the church which wanted to capitalize on the foot traffic. I planned my program accordingly, playing lighter fare (even the Bach item was on the virtouso side) including Ives's "Variations on 'America' for the 4th of July. In two weeks I'll be at St. Paul Cathedral in Pittsburgh in a program of what I promised yesterday to people I talked to afterward would be much "better behaved" than the one I had just played.

All of this, of course, does require a certain amount of planning. It is not, in my opinion, safe to begin learning a concert program the week before the concert! How does it work for me? Here are a few principles.

First, I try to start preparing as early as possible. Even touching a piece for a day or two and then having to leave it aside from general busyness can be quite profitable. It never seems like the piece is quite as unfamiliar when you come back to it even if it is weeks later. The brain stores the experience somewhere, it seems.

Second, planning programs that mainly consist of music which already has a performance history helps. There was one completely new item on yesterday's program, one that I played once a year ago, one that I've played several times in the past few years, and one that has had two fairly recent performances, that is. in the last couple of years. At St. Paul there will be one piece I just learned this semester, and several others that have only been played one time a few years ago, but I've made sure to compensate for this by preparing this concert the most, and starting the earliest. The piano concerts consisted of pieces I had pretty handily under my fingers (except for one last minute addition).

Third, I triaged the programs in terms of how much work each program was likely to need and which pieces would cause the most trouble. As I've written before, when you are working with a lot of music and on short deadlines, this skill is essential. I'm rarely wrong about how long it will take to get comfortable with a piece, and if I am, it is usually because I wasn't optimistic enough. Of course, if you practice something for four hours straight, one day can do wonders.

Then comes the juggling. pick up a program, practice for several days, well in advance, put it away so you can work on something else. As the program gets close it is time to cram--well, concentrate on polishing the concert in front of you. In between comes a doughnut hole of neglect, which, if it is large enough, may require periodically playing through the program even if no great progress is made in terms of practice.

This spring I began from the back, working on the St Paul program--most of it, anyway--so that it would have lots of time to mature. I then began work on the piano programs, leaving the other organ recital till later, when the piano programs were almost upon me. At that point I spent the week mainly practicing not for the concert I was about to give but for the next in the series. The strategy mainly worked. There was one piece on one of the piano concerts in which in one of the difficult passages I basically threw up all over the piano, but otherwise, the concerts all went well. The organ recital went well yesterday, too. As my hometown newspaper would have so imaginatively put it "A good time was had by all." (thousands of English teachers just howled).

Three down, one to go. 

And if I need something to do with my time in two weeks, I've got five programs to get ready for fall. 

Be very afraid....

Tonight is my subtly named "Scary Organ Concert." I plan to give my audience a scary experience. About time I turned the tables, isn't it?

I mean, preparing a recital is often a scary experience for the artist. There is a deadline, there is a lot of music to prepare, there are often scads of details to take care of that have nothing to do with the music...

I don't want to give anything away before the concert tonight, so I'll just obliquely suggest that there will be a few surprises.

Sometimes those details are what make the concert for some folks. I could, after all, just come out and play the organ, bow and leave, and that would already require preparation, but, usually, when I give a concert there are other dimensions. That's probably why we had a pretty full house for an organ concert last year and why I'm anticipating another one. It doesn't mean I compromise the music, though. Tonight's concert is all original organ music--no transcriptions, no theater organ--and some of it is Bach. It will be an occasional challenge to the ears, unless you happen to be a Bach lover or a classical music expert. On the other hand, there will be moments of near-Vaudeville, too, and I'll do plenty of talking. This time-honored mix of high and low art is something I learned from Shakespeare, so you know it's got quite a pedigree.

In any event, I've had a real adventure getting everything ready on time (or trying) so I'll keep this blog short and just let you know that over the next week I'll be telling you all about it as well as posting video and/or audio of the live event as soon as I can get things ready. You'll have to give me a few days, though, since it is also All Saint's Day Sunday (four services) and I have a Halloween party to play Saturday with my band, and a lengthy choir rehearsal Sunday for the following week's concert. I am planning to be a bit tired on Monday morning.

Happy Halloween!

New Year's Eve at the Virginia (part four)

I've been telling you about the piece I played at the concert this week. Let me interrupt the flow of my narrative for a bit to tell you about the concert itself.

The Chorale is a community choral organization that began over thirty years ago as a handful of persons cobbled together to sing Christmas carols in the town of Mahomet, north of here. Still under their founding director, Julie Beyler, they've since transmogrified into a group of about 70 rehearsing every Sunday night and giving three major concerts a year (with occasional additions). The first of these is always the first weekend in November; the second is on New Year's Eve at the Virginia Theater in downtown Champaign.

I should see "us" instead of them, because for nearly six years now I've been part of the group. I serve as the accompanist.

The New Year's Eve concert at the Virginia is an experience like no other. Read on, I'll show you!

To start with there is the dress rehearsal the evening before. It helps if you have done a few of these before because they require some patience. There is no tech rehearsal except at the dress so everything is being done at once. The Virginia is a pretty dry theater so the singers have trouble hearing each other and the piano, I have trouble hearing myself, and the monitors are very far away. The piano is generally overmiced at first so you have the impression that if you were to suddenly strike a loud chord you would blow up the stage! There is occasional feedback. Eventually they get the levels set and the feedback mostly goes away. We have to try to ignore all this and just get on with the business of rehearsing.

In addition to the sound, there is a visual feast going on as well--they are trying the lights. One moment the stage is all green, the next it is all blue, and then suddenly you can't see anything for a few bars. We've all gotten somehow adept at continuing to sing and play without being able to see anything. I think my favorite memories in this regard are from the year pianist Jacquieline Schwab was our guest. She has to be the nicest person I've ever shared a piano with, and in her polite New England way she kept jumping up from the piano bench with her arm in the air and addressing herself to the sound booth in the back of the hall saying, "um, excuse me,....ah, I can't see the keys!" I'll try to give you a vague idea of what all this looks like:

I didn't manage to take any with the lights out. The only reason for the existence of these is that I've developed a talent for being able to play with one hand while taking pictures with my cell phone! But I did get one with the spotlight on me. Like the others, it is a very tame-looking representation and in no way conveys the full sense of disorientation that accompanies this sensory burst:

Some of the other challenges include remembering not to look down when the Wurlitzer organ is at the top of the hydraulic lift, and not tripping on the stairs in total darkness while hurrying from the organ (which is in the pit) to the piano (which is on the stage). One also needs to have faith that there is indeed an audience during the two-and-a-half hour show as most of the time the theater is pitch black--only the stage is lit--and one is addressing total darkness.

I'll tell you about the performance next time.

Triage

When you are a working musician time is important. I estimate I play around 60 different pieces of music each week. I play for five choirs, for four weekend worship services, with two bands, and in the last two weeks I had two different concert programs to play. There is never enough time to practice everything, let alone practice it as thoroughly as you'd want to.

That's where being able to figure out just how and how much to work on each piece becomes not only a useful skill, a point of pride, but a necessity, a survival skill.

A few thoughts I've collected about how to do that effectively:

I usually gravitate right to the most difficult part of each piece and start to work on it first. My theory is that time--the total amount of time in days and hours between now and the time that I will be playing this in public--is the single most important ingredient for playing the piece well, because the longer I have to become familiar with a piece the more time I can practice not only consciously, but also my brain can work on it in my sleep or while I am doing the dishes, etc. I want to get the maximum distance between myself and the performance. This means that for me Monday is the single most important day for preparing for next week's church service. Most likely I've already been working on the offertory for this week, but if I haven't, I want to hit it hard on Monday so I can gradually work less hard the closer one gets to the deadline. And I want to know immediately if I can handle the hard part or if I need to find something else. I usually have a plan B on hand if I am choosing the repertoire myself, but often I do not get to make that call. In any case, I know the piece will begin to feel comfortable and easy once I have spent a certain number of days on it (I've gotten very good at being able to tell in advance how long it will take me to learn something) and I want to get to that stage as soon as I can, polishing and perfecting, but knowing that if I run out of time I will still manage to get by decently.

As my sight reading skills have improved over the years I can get away with very little or no practice on many of the pieces I play for groups each week. That's important, because there is no chance I would get anywhere splitting my time between over a dozen pieces a day, much less around 60. Some of those pieces are repetitive things, like the church doxology, which I have memorized and can play in my sleep, as well as most of the hymns in the hymnbook. I've learned what I can leave alone, both in terms of whole pieces, and parts of pieces. I also learn more quickly, and often, during rehearsals, I can actually be improving my accompaniment part while simultaneously helping the tenors.

How did I learn to learn fast? By having to do it. Swimming in the deep end is a learned skill. There is no time to worry about it, no time to complain or to stress out. You just concentrate. Hard.

Sizing up difficulties and priorities occurs both on a macro and a micro level. Within a single piece of music there are always notes that are very important and notes that aren't. If I can't figure out which note that double sharp belongs to in the middle of beat four while playing thick chords at a hundred miles an hour I can leave that note out, play the rest of the chord around it and keep going. When you are playing with others they don't have time for you to figure out what you are doing. Many notes double the singers, some double other notes in the accompaniment, most simply fill in harmonies. But some are necessary as rhythmic foundations for the other parts to bounce off of. Or they carry the melody. Or some other bit of interesting musical information without which the texture is incomplete, or at least a lot less interesting. It would take a series of blogs to explain how I tell, on the fly, what notes I can safely leave out if I am getting my fingers twisted or if I need to be helping the altos and can't get all of the accompaniment notes squeezed in at the same time. In sum, I listen. Listen. Listen.
Being able to improvise and compose helps enormously because if I can figure out what is going on I can paraphrase it in a pinch. Being able to read a full score helps too because when in rehearsal with a choir I almost never play the same notes--sometimes I am helping the full choir, or part of the choir, or playing the accompaniment as it is with the occasional important notes for the choir to latch on to, or I can't get the page turned fast enough so I am making playing both staves with one hand (happens occasionally--involves a lot of jumping around!). The result of constantly changing is you learn to do it as a matter of course. It causes one to be extremely flexible because you can't very well complain about not having done it that way before if you never do it the same way twice to begin with!

"Getting" Gottschalk

In order to play any composer's music well, you have to have some understanding about what makes them tick musically. Any clues you have to their artistic personality are of help. I say this, well aware that some people are under the impression that all the appropriate marks are on the page and all you need to do is to follow them. I have no problem with the marks on the page, but they are incomplete. This is often because a composer just assumed people would follow the standard practice of their time and place and thus constantly reminding people to do something they were going to do anyhow seemed unnecessary. But marks can also lead you down the wrong path. I remember preparing to play a Sonata by William Albright back in graduate school. There were so many instructions in English--almost every note had some kind of adjective under it in some spots--that I assumed he was going to be really detail-oriented and a perfectionist, and maybe even somewhat of a control freak. Then I met him and he coached me on how to play his piece. Basically, he told me to just go for it. This was the complete opposite of what I had been expecting.

Pianists should have this kind of problem every day. If the attack on Mozart's instrument was much cleaner and decayed much faster than our modern Steinway, is a detached articulation appropriate for any place in the piece that doesn't say otherwise? And just what did Schubert mean when he used a wedge instead of a dot. Or was he even sure himself?

The reason I bring this up is because I'm giving a concert on Sunday of the works of Louis Moreau Gottschalk and I've been dealing with this sort of thing all month. Now, let's be honest, Mr. Gottschalk's compositions aren't on the level with Mozart and Schubert, but they are quite original, and rather interesting. They are not quite as difficult to play as they sound, but they do give you quite a workout. And, although Gottschalk himself was rather anxious about making sure people played his works the way he thought of them, some understanding of what he was going for--some imagination--is required to bring them about.

For instance, Gottschalk is often striving for effect. What sort of effects? Well, try this one on for size. It is a spot from "Union: Paraphrase on National Airs." Now, the score looks like this:

And if somebody didn't understand that he was trying to imitate the sound of marching soldiers on the piano they might play it like this:

[listen]

When in fact, the passage, played correctly, goes something like this:

[listen]

How do I know this? The score has the instruction "pianissimo"--good, we know to play it soft. But how cleanly should I articulate the notes? There isn't anything to indicate that. No staccato, no legato, no slur, nothing.

In fact, the score does indicate "drums" but what kind? Snares? Extremely articulate. What about muffled bass type drums? just the opposite. Choose the wrong kind and you spoil the effect.

I've always thought that the effect was really one of a regiment of soldiers marching. The minute you think of that, you realize that you should not have a precise, clean sound, but an indefinite cluster. The notes should cease to sound like notes and become more of a noise. Get it right and the effect makes your hair stand up. Oddly, the way the notes look in the score puts us off the trail in this case. But then, how else could a 19th century composer notate such an effect?

Gottschalk's music is full of things of this nature. Those of the trumpet call, or the plucking of the banjo, or some kind of whistling sound up on the high end of the piano (Gottschalk's favorite register) are just a few. And he clearly loves the ticklish sound of rapid, delicate passagework. I mean, what else is the following passage doing sandwiched between variations on one of the tunes from his piece "Bamboula" where the action just stops dead for a few moments and we get this little pianistic figure that goes nowhere?

[listen]

He just repeats the gesture a few times, enchanted with the sound, and then afterward dives right back in where we left off! Compositionally it is of no use whatever--I'm sure Brahms would have chopped it right out. But it is pretty--if you want it to be. If you dispatch it like the structural waste of time it is, that is exactly what it will sound like. We have here a paradox--and an opportunity to stop and smell the pianistic roses.

One of the comments that Gottschalk often got was that the piano didn't sound like a piano when Gottschalk played it. Instead, it seemed to transcend its limitations as a percussive box with levers. It didn't just sing like the European Romantics--it gave rise to a variety of interesting effects. That has to be clear. Someone who is just there to play the notes and follow the instructions would never get all the "poesy" as he called it; the inspiration, the rhapsodic fantasy would be gone.

Still, Gottschalk did worry about his instructions being ignored. One of the pieces I'm playing on Sunday, the shortest and simplest, comes with a prologue from the author in which he warns about "substituting [one's] own thoughts for those of the composer." These, he warns, will "inevitably interfere with the general effect." He must insist, therefore, that the rhythms on the page be followed precisely.

And that is really the point. Not to substitute ideas in place of instructions given, but to understand what is behind them, and then to be able to really make the piece sound like intended, following the spirit, not just the letter, of the musical law.

In conclusion...

Some "Notes" for the concert

In preparing for this Sunday's concert (3 P.M. at Faith UMC in Champaign, Illinois, if you are interested) here are some more materials I've been finding in my "research:"

Louis Moreau Gottschalk was one interesting fellow. Perhaps I've mentioned that already. According to the likes of Chopin, Liszt, and Berlioz, he was quite a composer and pianist in his teens, well before he found employment as a concert pianist in the middle of the American Civil war. By this time he had also achieved success touring South America. North America was his third continent, and he was still in his early thirties. Nevertheless, touring here was not a simple matter. There was that small matter of a war. In addition:

 "Adrian, Michigan. Infamous concert! [I made only] Seventy-eight dollars! The people say that they prefer "a good Negro show." They are furious at the price of admission--one dollar. A singular American characteristic! They insult us as if we forced them to pay....One dollar admission! It is the universal theme."

And of course, things got pretty monotonous.

"Everything is foreseen, everything is marked out, in my peregrinations. Thanks to the experience of my agent, I know in advance, within a few dollars, the amount of the receipts in a town of a given number of inhabitants. I know, with my eyes shut, every one of the inextricable cross-threads that form the network of railroads with which New England is covered....In my black suit at eight o'clock I salute my audience....at a quarter to nine they encore the Murmures eoliens. At half past nine they call again for the Berceuse,...at ten I carry off my patriotic audience to the belligerent accents of the Union fantasia; and at half-past ten I throw myself, exhausted and depoetized, into the prosaic arms of the blessed Morpheus...."

Of course, he could be pretty dramatic about it:

"Solitude, for me, is repose--is the absence of the thousand distractions of this unquiet, giddy existence to which my career of nomad artist condemns me. In solitude, in reveries, and in contemplation I find fertile sources of inspiration....Only then am I myself....For myself, who, because of a sickly and nervous nature, always have a propensity to melancholy, the stirring and noisy existence that the career of nomad virtuous imposes on me is that to which I have the greatest antipathy."

But for all that, the only thing worse than having to play was not being able to play:

"O human inconsistency! The piano, which has been a torment for me all week, possesses for me today (on a Sunday, when Sabbath laws forbade most activities) an irresistible charm. It is the charm of forbidden fruit, for, although it is permitted (by going to the bar through the back door) to take an indefinite number of brandy, whiskey, or gin cocktails, to play on the piano, except under certain psalmodic restrictions, is positively prohibited.  The harp perhaps might be tolerated—for David played on the harp—but the piano, fie!" 

Gottschalk goes on to relate a colorful incident from years earlier:

"...One Sunday at Cape May I sat down to practice a polka--the Forest Glade--which I was then composing. Just as I began, a violent thunderstorm burst of the hotel, and at the first flash of lightning several ladies and a clergyman, seen in the storm an unmistakable sign of divine wrath, came rapping at my door, imploring me to stop my profane, though anything but tempestuous, music. I now remember the scandalized countenances of those worthy people too distinctly to venture again on any such experiment."

Colorful anecdotes like this are part of what make Gottschalk such a good read. Even in the middle of the panic before Gettysburg, with the town in an uproar over the oncoming Confederates, and Gottschalk himself worried about capture or getting his pianos destroyed, he has to stop and make fun of a volunteer band in the town square:

"A voluntary military band (the only one in Williamsport) draws up in battle array on the principal square; is it necessary for me to say that it is composed of Germans (all the musicians in the United States are Germans)? There are five of them.  A cornet a piston with a broken-down constitution (I speak of the instrument), a cavernous trombone, an ophicleide too low, a clarinet too high, a sour-looking fifer—all of an independent and irascible temper, but united for the moment by their hatred of keeping time and their vigorous desire to cast off its yoke.  I must confess that they succeeded to such an extent that I am doubtful whether they played in a major or minor key." 

Gottschalk notes that in every audience there is, in addition to the "pretty battalion" of boarding school girls who have come to sigh over his sentimental compositions, which they all know by heart and can play (sort of), there is "the local Beethoven," with "uncombed hair, bushy beard, the amenity of a boar at bay to a pack of hounds. I know this type; it is found everywhere...It is time that many unknown musicians should be convinced that...soap is not incompatible with genius, and it is now proved that the daily use of a comb does not exercise any injurious influence on the lobes of the brain."

He has, of course, to please his public, much of which is from small towns, which is not going to make him any friends with the established musical culture in the large cities. But even he is disappointed to note that "the ears of many people are so little exercised that they recognize only two or three songs they have known from birth....and...there must be only the melody, without harmony, without variations, absolutely naked, as a fifer would play it, for them to recognize it. They least artifice, the least ornament, they lose the thread, are confused, and the complaints begin that there is no melody."

It is a difficult crowd to please at times, but then, their musical experience is not profound. In some cases, Gottschalk's recital is the first time anyone in his audience has ever heard a piano recital before. And sometimes...."The other evening, before the concert, an honest farmer, pointing to my  piano, asked me what that 'big accordion' was. He had seen square pianos and upright pianos, but the tail bothered him. Eight or nine days ago , at Zanesville, a charming young girl and her honorable mamma spent the whole concert watching my feet. They did not know the use of the pedals and saw in my movements only a kind of queer trembling and odd, rudimentary dance steps that for two hours and a quarter afforded them an inexhaustible source of amusement."

Gottschalk is trying to be nice about it. He knows you can't make fun of your audience if you want their adoration, and their dollars. (Don't make fun of Zanesville. My grandmother use to live kind of nearby.) Besides, he is a pioneer. How much can you expect? And, within a few years, he writes "I am daily astonished at the rapidity with which the taste for music is developed and is developing in the United States. At the time of my first return from Europe I was constantly deploring the want of public interest for pieces purely sentimental; the public listened with indifference; in order to interest it, it became necessary to astound it; grand movements, tours de force, and noise alone had the privilege in piano music....from whatever cause American taste is becoming purer, and with what remarkable rapidity....We should all, however narrow may be our sphere of action, bear our part in the progressive movement of civilization, and I cannot help feeling a pride in having contributed within the modest limits of my powers in extending through our country the knowledge of music."

In the meantime, he has to put up with strange critiques like the one from the lady in Auburn who said 'What a deafening racket he makes with his piano.  There is no music in it.' I have often heard others speak of it, who said that I always played too softly and that I did not make enough noise.  O critics! You would be very annoying if you were not so amusing!"

Then there is the bad food in the hotels, the wake-up call which consists of banging a gong at six in the morning (he hates that!) the superstitious and sometimes vituperative behavior of the people he meets en route, not to mention the time his train is buried in snow for a couple of days, or when the priest at Sunday Mass can't stay in one key, or when he nearly gets arrested for not paying the hall deposit before his concert in a small town, or when he goes to take a nap in a rear car on the train and discovers he is surrounded by embalmed bodies!

We know all of this, of course, because Gottschalk wrote it all down, in twelve notebooks he kept with him as he travelled, which became "Notes of a Pianist," published by his sister after his death. Even his method of describing them is entertaining:

"I am fond of my notebooks...they never leave me. They are like an intimate companion for me, a mute confidant who has an immense advantage over all the railroad friends I ever have met, that of hearing me without my being obliged to strain my voice over the sharp summits of the highest note, as it listens to me and never interrupts me. It is discreet (of what friends could as much be said?) to the extent that, had you under your eyes the ten or twelve notebooks that I have filled from the Mississippi to the St. Lawrence, and from New York to the Mormon Desert, they would take great care to prevent you from discovering anything other than undecipherable hieroglyphics; every one of their pages looks like the side of an obelisk. The jolts of the road and the haste with which I write assist, it is true, marvelously in making them discreet."

It probably also helped that they were originally in French!

In any case, Gottschalk's notebooks have provided much amusement, much companionship and camaraderie  and, of course, great material for a (lecture) concert--much more, in fact, than would fill many concerts.

Next week, Gottschalk turns war correspondent in Pennsylvania before the Battle of Gettysburg. 

Is Consistency Evil?

With just 10 days to go before my next recital (which is on Sunday, June 30th in Champaign, Illinois, if you are interested--more details here) I now have a new set of things to worry about, as I should. Today it's not about whether or not I can play the music (mostly) or have it memorized (mostly), it's about whether it will go well in front of an audience, and whether those little technical slips I make here and there can be banished and with enough confidence that when the chips are down they will stay banished. The way to take care of that is with practice, and more practice. Concentrated practice--and repetition.

Along this little journey I've shared a few bits from Mr. Gottschalk's life, some looks at how I practice, worries about how little time there is to prepare, and next week--I promise--more about why this project is so interesting, as we get closer to show time. For me, as much fun as this was and will be, a lot of time is spent in the arena of the distinctly not-so-fun. In fact, I'm starting to get a little tired of what I'm playing, having heard the music so many times just in the past few weeks. I'm starting to be able to sympathize with Mr. Gottschalk, actually, when he writes of the numbing repetitiveness of touring in his "Notes of a Pianist:"

"All notions of time and space are effaced from my mind...if you ask me what time it is, I will reply, 'It is time to close my trunk' or 'It is time to play The Banjo' or 'It is time to put on my black coat.' These three events are very nearly the whole of my daily existence. I console myself by thinking that I am not the only one of my species."

Of course, I'm not traveling thousand of miles by train every day--I'm not even on tour at the moment; I'm here in the comfort of my own back yard. I shouldn't complain. But I do envy him a little; he must have played "Banjo" so many times he could just walk out on stage and nail it (fantastic jumps, repeated notes, and all) with no practice (which he probably didn't get anyway while on tour, never mind spending 18 hours on a train in the freezing cold and then having to play all of a sudden). But then, he'd been playing it for at least a decade by then, and he had played it an awful lot of times.

Which brings me to tonight's grand question--(I love being able to pose the grand questions)--what is it about the nature of consistency that people love to hate so much?

There used to be a television commercial in which the announcer opined that "amateurs practice until they get it right; professionals practice until they can't get it wrong!" Over the last few days even the most intractable portions of the most difficult pieces on the program are starting to go pretty well--I'm getting it right, finally. The question is, can I keep at it until I can't get it wrong, no matter what I feel like at 3 in the afternoon on a Sunday (and having played three church services and with a two hour choir rehearsal to look forward to I probably won't be at my rested best)? How many times will it take, and what sort of mental conditioning will I have to do to make sure it comes off no matter what? After all, I can't assume that after an hour of practice, feeling rested and with no audience, anything I can get right will automatically transfer itself to the concert. I've been around the stage too long to fall for that.That road keeps going, and the hill gets steeper as you ascend.

But consistency is hard. In anything. And not very glamorous, which makes it all the harder to achieve. Anybody can roll out of bed and decide to train for a Marathon. In fact, the first day or two, the very excitement of possibly being able to achieve this great thing might keep you going through all the hurting muscles. And at the race itself, with all the people running alongside you, and the festive atmosphere, and the close proximity of achievement--these are all powerful motivators. But what about in between, when you are just sore, and you've been training for a couple of months already and the race is still several months away and it's a Tuesday morning and it's hot or its lightly raining, or the hill is kind of steep and nobody is watching you anyway and you really don't feel like it...that's when you are really running the Marathon. That's when you are really training your mind to be able to do it and do it well no matter what obstacles come your way. That's when you are conditioning your muscles to handle the distance and your mind to know what it is supposed to feel like every step of the (sometimes agonizing) way, and your will to overrule your desire for comfort and taking the easy route. And nobody really cares. And the results won't show themselves for months. And you have to do it anyway, because it won't happen any other way. Just makes you want to jump up right now and do it, right? Can I sell it or what?!

This difficulty might, in theory, bias people against it. I mean, most of us aren't really into all the sacrifice it takes to do something really well really often. We can conceive of maybe doing it once, or under the right circumstances. That's what got me thinking about all of those stories, television shows, movies--ones where the underdog beats the big bully. In Star Wars the big bully is the Empire, and Luke Skywalker blows up the Death Star because he closed his eyes and really focused for that one miracle shot that instantly destroyed everything the bad guys had been building for years. Actually, that line he delivers earlier in the movie about shooting womp rats back home shows he has been practicing a little, and adds a bit of realism to the achievement if you're paying attention, but still--it's in that one moment that everything pays off.

I was watching a sitcom recently where two guys were in a boxing match and the good guy was predictably getting destroyed by the much better trained bad guy and finally the good guy throws that lucky punch like you know he will when the bad guy is too busy gloating to block and it knocks him flat all in one blow. This isn't new, it goes back at least to David and Goliath, when David fells the Philistine with one shot of his sling because there is no way he would have survived hand to hand combat. Also he gets to avoid to taint of seeming too much like a professional.

I can see where they're coming from. Because "The Banjo" is starting to seem less interesting than is was, and I'm still working out the details, bit by bit, laborious minute by laborious minute. I have to remind myself what I loved about playing it in the first place, back when it was rough and raw and I could hear music in it even if no one else would have if I'd played it for them. But that's the cost of getting it right, and six months from now I can listen to it again after I haven't played it in a while and enjoy what I was able to to do with it--to make it mean something--even if I practically have to suck all the joy out of it in order to get it there. It's not for me now, anyway. It's for my audience.

I can't compress everything into a 30 second video montage with inspirational rock music in the background. That works in the movies, not in life. I've got to be in the practice room every day working it out. So I am. Ten days from now it will matter.

In the meantime, I'm kind of enjoying this perverse fun. It's a skill. You have to really learn how to keep your sanity, and keep it fun. Sometimes its like trying to get meat out of lobster tail. But you know, I'm sort of a strange fellow, and it works for me.

So for now it's all about the training. I'll try to make sure at the concert you don't notice. I won't even complain about it. We'll just enjoy the music together. But I had a teacher once who told how a woman came up to him and complimented him on his playing and said, "you must have suffered a lot!" and he said "you have no idea!"

Right now I think I know what he means.

Next!

Only six things at a time, please!

With less than two weeks to go before my recital on June 30th, I ought to be a little worried. I only really started practicing for it two weeks ago, which will make this a new record for inahurrianism. (That's right, when you're in enough haste you can't be bothered to think of words that already exist; you just mak'em up as you go.)

And yet today I spent my entire practice working on one piece, one of two that isn't yet memorized, or, for that matter, practiced. It is one of the slow tunes (so is the other) and I have played it publicly before (two and a half years ago) so I saved it for the end. The remaining piece is shorter, simpler, and can be played with music if necessary because it is easy to turn the one page. After a while I could feel two things had happened: one, that I was able to play the piece well beginning to end, and another, that I was starting to hear passages of it in my mind and see my fingers working even when away from the piano. If my mind is starting to "photograph" the piece, then it has been a good day. My subconscious will match my conscious efforts, and in a few days I should have it all from memory. That makes it worth dropping the entire rest of the program for a day to make sure my mind could focus on it. If I had played the rest of the program as well it would have interfered with my efforts at assimilating this one, and, since the other pieces are in reasonable technical shape, I can afford a day or two. They do still need quite a bit of polish, though.

I don't have a recording of the piece yet. It is Gottschalk's Cradle Song, which he must have liked since he mentions it eight times in his "Notes of a Pianist." (which is more than any other piece that I've noticed) But I will leave you with a recording--premature though it is--of his "Pasquinade," another piece from the program. I recorded it last Wednesday while I was recording examples for a previous blog installment. I just left the microphone on and tried out a few pieces. It was instructive, not simply because I can then listen to whether or not my interpretive ideas of the piece are working (some aren't yet) but because microphones make me nervous and this is also a good way to reinforce execution under pressure--like testing a piece with an audience. The next day it always sounds so much freer and more fluid.

For what it's worth, here it is. See you Wednesday.

Gottschalk: Pasquinade

Here's the post from the aforementioned Wednesday

A fun game for the kids?

You know that game in the comics section of the paper where you are supposed to find six differences between the two panels? I feel like I've been playing that a lot lately.

Preparing for a concert can be a tricky business. Preparing for one on an accelerated schedule is even more fun and games. But Gottschalk is there to help--sort of. There is a lot of repetition in his works. You can play the same thing four times in a row and it sounds just like a pianist practicing something over and over to get that gesture just right but you are actually playing it straight through the way the audience will hear it in concert!

On the other hand, many of Gottschalk's "repetitions" aren't exactly the same. I submit for your inspection this passage, in which the first three measure are identical and the fourth isn't:

[listen]

Did you notice the difference? It comes down to one single note missing in the bass. It's such a small difference I didn't notice it the first time I listened to my recorded example, either, and I know where to "look." (the 2nd beat of the fourth measure)

Then there are details like this passage, which is played three times the first time it comes up, and only twice later in the piece. Twice also the third time it comes up toward the end of the piece. It's obligingly repetitive in its original guise, but isn't repeated the same number of times as everything around it, which means you have to pay attention to that slight difference too!

[listen]

No wonder I'm going a little batty. This is all from a piece of Gottschalk's called "The Banjo," and the passages in question are really more atmosphere than anything else. They suggest patterns of plucking on the banjo, and occur as buildups and interludes rather than the places where there is any real melody--it's just that two-thirds of the piece occurs this way, as rhythm and verve but no tune. An interesting concept, but tricky to memorize.

Gottschalk does like to put on a show, though. People always like to sit on the keyboard side at piano recitals, which I can understand, but you are really going to want to do that for this concert. The composer's choreography is vital. Here's a passage from a piece called "Bamboula:"

[listen]

Now just listening to it you might be under the impression that my right hand is playing the notes in the middle of the keyboard and the left hand stays down in the bass. No such luck. The left hand does play the bass note, then leaps up to join the right hand, not to cross over it, but to play the same notes that the right hand has just played. Everytime you hear a rapid dum-bump you are listening to my right and then my left in rapid-fire combination. I've got a wicked left, by the way. That piano doesn't stand a chance.

These kinds of acrobatic leaps are essential to Gottschalk's keyboard approach, and both the piano and I are really getting a workout. One final passage today for you to hear mainly because I'm relieved that I am finally able to play it with some decency. It occurs only once near the end of Bamboula, and there is, as usually, quite a bit of jumping around (the right hand pinkie in particular has to keep reaching up to snag that high C#):

[listen]

It isn't quite all there yet, but it's starting to come, with two and a half weeks to go until show time. What a relief!


onward!

Charming, for sure

One of the reasons for playing a concert devoted to the works of Louis Moreau Gottschalk is that he was such an interesting fellow. Born in New Orleans in 1829, he soon made his way to Europe where, as an adolescent, he wowed Fred Chopin and the boys (Liszt, Berlioz et. al) with his original and untamed American music, then went to South America where he organized concerts for hundreds of performers, sometimes employing as many as 40 pianos along the way. All of this happened even before he got around to touring the northern United States while there was a bit of a war on.

One of the reasons we know so much about it is that he was also a prolific writer of words. "Researching" for this concert gave me an excuse to re-read "Notes of a Pianist," a volume of his writings, some published during his lifetime, some jotted down in a notebook for future publication when his death intervened. His sister later compiled the contents into a book and sent it into the world with the help of a poor translation from the French original by her husband. (That's right, Gottschalk spoke French--and English--and Spanish.)

Even before Gottschalk gets to America, he is living a strange double life. When he is not "Whirl[ing] in that monotonous and agitated circle that is called concert life" he is wandering among the villages, "seriously resolved to go no father; or detained in a village where the piano was unknown, by the ties of an affection with which my fingers had nothing to do...I forgot the world, and lived only for two large black eyes, which veiled themselves with tears whenever I spoke of beginning my vagabond course again, living as the bird sings, as the flower opens, as the brook flows, forgetful of the past, careless of the future."

Ok, if you want to gag now, I'll understand. Here Gottschalk paints himself rather proudly as a Don Juan, although later he will partially apologize for it to his American audiences: "All of this is frightfully immoral, I know, but life in the savannas of the tropics, in the midst of a half-civilized and voluptuous race, cannot be that of a London cockney, a Parisian ilder, or an American Presbyterian."

For Gottschalk, as to the Romantic movement in general, a sense of wandering and aimless freedom was very important, as was the charm of the exotic, and Gottschalk vows from the first pages that he is a traveller who will immerse himself in each locale, deploring those who travel but never, in their hearts or habits, truly leave home behind.

And if you find his lofty Romanticism insufferable, he can at times be funny. As Mark Twain was later in the century to write that "rumors of [his] death [had] been greatly exaggerated," so Gottschalk has to deal with the inevitable premature obituary in the newspapers--papers, which, in their haste to get the news to you first, occasionally could be blown a trifle off course (imagine that!):

"I wish to speak of my death. This sad event took place at Santiago three months ago. I was carried off in three days by a frightful attack of back vomit; it is the newspaper Savana la Grande that tells it; but the Revue de Villa Clara, without doubt better informed, makes me succomb to an aneurism of the heart, which I much prefer, the aneurism being much more poetical than the vomit."

Gottschalk's actual death, in Rio in 1869, apparently was caused by malaria, peritonitis, an overdose of quinine, or a ruptured abscess of the abdomen, depending on who is telling the tale, but it began with a collapse on stage shortly after playing a piece of his called "Morte!" (she is dead) which is all Romantic enough; legend, which admits no lengthy delays, removed the last two weeks of Gottschalk's decline and has him dying on the stage itself.

These things bookend his Civil War experiences, which is the period for the concert, though some of the pieces I'll be playing were written earlier. I'll be reading several of his observations as we go along, particularly the dispatches shortly before the Battle of Gettysburg, when he became an unwitting war correspondent for a few days!

The pianist's sudden departure from the United States in 1865 is also the stuff of tales; enmeshed in a scandal involving two young seminary girls, he was censured in the local papers, and fearing his reputation was finished, boarded a steamship in the dead of night and left the United States forever. He may have been framed by a local operatic impresario who was an artistic rival, and a letter that surfaced in 1984 from Gottschalk maintains his innocence. Still, the Bohemian bachelor, who makes several references in "notes" to the pretty young girls who attended his concerts as "faces to make one play false notes," might have had more of a way with the ladies than was good for him.

At any rate, faces of all kinds are welcome at Faith UMC, 1719 S. Prospect, Champaign, Illinois, on Sunday, June 30th at 3 P.M. There will be plenty of piano music, and more of Gottschalk in his own words.

Have a listen to one of Gottschalk's popular parlor pieces (it's on the concert, and I recorded it from the same piano.)

Gottschalk: O My Charmer, Spare Me!

next up, part four!

An act of faith

I'm playing a piano recital of the music of Louis Moreau Gottschalk, a concert pianist who toured America during the Civil War. The concert is on June 30th at 3pm at Faith United Methodist Church in Champaign, Illinois.

Every time I start to prepare for a concert there is the time when I think: this is never going to happen. I am not going to learn this music in time. It feels like an act of faith to even prepare for it as if it is actually going to occur--successfully. And yet something (unreasoning fear?) makes me practice for an hour. Then another. And another. This process happens so often I refer to it as step one.

This time, however, I have set a new record for lateness in getting started. It's been a busy year, with a whole lot of unrelated musical activities, and, when I sat down on Monday, with less than four weeks to go before the concert date, I was in new territory. Normally I would have the entire program memorized by now; instead, I'm just getting started.

This was one of my worries--memorization. Besides just being able to play the notes. And everything else.

I have a theory that more successful people aren't any cooler than the rest, or that amateurs get worried and nervous while the professionals just go about their business. No, the difference is that the professional panics earlier. And with more intensity. That intensity compels him or her to practice. Hard. Then, as the date nears, the panic lessens as the results come in. A piece of music starts to actually sound like a piece of music. Until then, it is actually not a lot of fun preparing a program. And that's where I'm at right now. I want everything to feel comfortable and to sound good by last Tuesday. Which is totally unreasonable, and is probably the best thing I've got going for me right now. Make sense?

I'll share a couple of nuts and bolts things I did today. Here's a passage from the opening piece on the program which I am determined not to give away before concert time. This is a passage from somewhere in the middle so it doesn't count. It is also not going to be the most musical thing you've ever heard. In fact, it is the complete opposite of how I plan to play it on stage. That's because the thing I am worried about getting my ears around here is not the melody, or the bass--those are interesting enough that I'll imbibe them without thinking about them too hard. It's the tenor voice, the top of those chords that the left hand jumps to up from the bass every time. Where does that voice go? If I don't pay particular attention to it, try to make a musical line out of it, I'll never be able to remember how it actually goes and at the concert I'll mess it up. It's not very memorable, which means it needs special attention. As a general rule, you have to put in at least twice as much time on the "dull parts." So I'm playing this line quite loudly, to teach my ear how that part goes. The rest, melody and bass, is on automatic.

[listen]

Another harvest from the practice room is the old standby to play slowly. Painfully. It's not terribly interesting this way, but it is also not at all necessary to achieve anything close to performance tempo in the first few days, particularly if you can play it well and comfortable at a slower speed. In my experience, once that happens, the piece speeds ups rather quickly. Suddenly, within a day, the piece goes from competent but boring to a full fledged piece of music that I can do something with. Check back in a couple of days; you won't recognize this passage!

[listen]

In the meantime, Mr. Gottschalk has written a lot of interesting instructions in his scores, and I think I'm going to have a lot of fun trying to get into his brain. For one thing, he seems obsessed with "good rhythm." Instructions to keep the rhythm steady, not to slow down, to mark the rhythm well, dot the scores. Sometime  soon I'll count the number of similar instructions in the six pieces I'm playing. I suspect a large part of the reason for that is to combat the way amateurs played his music, slowing down partly out of affectation and partly because they just couldn't handle the hard parts at the same tempo they'd set for the rest of the piece! I can't imagine he didn't use a little rubato; I've heard a few pianists online playing these pieces with an absolutely unswerving sense of plowing through every beat of every passage at an identical speed and they sound like robots. No, a dance is not composed of absolutely equal beats. Besides, I've already noted one place in the scores that supports my theory about these markings being more to prevent abuse than out of a desire to communicate a musical idea: there is a place toward the beginning of a piece called "Pasquinade" where there is marking to not slow down. Now it never would have occurred to me to even think of slowing down there. If the composer feels compelled to warn others not to, then I think we have our winner!

Until next time, slow and steady! And with accents on all the "wrong" (unimportant) notes!

on to part three

Where's my agent, anyhow?

Today I flipped a switch and became a concert pianist again.

For those not familiar with my "lifestyle," over the weekend I ran a 10k, had a wedding and a funeral, played four church services, rehearsed "Missa Solemnis" with a choir, snuck in a little piano practice and another short rehearsal and a brief nap. Also played a set with a rock band I'm in (outdoors and just before the thunderstorm moved in!), and tonight I had to pretend I remember how to be a restaurant pianist for 90 minutes at a dinner to benefit cancer research. Good thing it's summer and the livin' is easy.

Since I've been learning so many organ works for church services this past year (I estimate that I play the equivalent of an organ recital about every six weeks) I've been neglecting the piano. And we have a perfectly good (actually perfectly wonderful) seven foot Steinway in our sanctuary that has been practically begging me to play it since Christmas. But no more. I have a plan to give it a workout this month.

On Sunday, June 30th at 3pm at Faith UMC here in Champaign Illinois (that's 1719 S Prospect) I'm going to give a recital of the works of Louis Moreau Gottschalk. The reason for the choice of program is simple. Gottschalk was a fascinating fellow who toured the United States giving concerts right in the middle of the Civil War. This July 1-3 is the 150th anniversary of the Battle of Gettysburg, which Gottschalk nearly got himself in the middle of (he was at a safe distance by the time the battle began). I'm going to play probably about a half dozen of his pieces and also read some of his own writings about his travails, including how close he got to the war. If you can't make it to the concert, you can follow it on the blog. I plan to make some recordings as well as share my thoughts as I prepare for it. For now, you can get an introduction to Mr. Gottschalk over on Pianonoise. I wrote it over 10 years ago, and its about time I added some more music to the page, don't you think?

Now four weeks is a freakishly short time to prepare a piano recital, particularly if you are not feeling too ambitious (what can I say; summertime blahs). But I think I can pull it off, mostly because I'll only be playing about 35 minutes of music and spending the rest of the time telling Gottschalk's story, and also because Gottschalk's music is not as hard as it sounds, though it is still difficult. Most of the pieces, however, will be ones I have played before in some capacity or other, though none for very long or for a major occasion: at least I will have them somewhat under my fingers. The major exception to that is a piece called "Bamboula" which I've never played before, and I decided I'd better start with that one. I'm already violating my rule about having everything memorized a month before the concert--in this case I've decided I'd better get comfortable with everything in the next two weeks so I can polish everything in the last two. That means I'm going to have to take on a piece every couple of days. And today, as I said, was "Bamboula" day. For nearly five hours today, in three sessions, I ran over most of the pieces I plan to play, with a special emphasis on this piece, and, by the end of the day (about 10:30), I had the piece nearly memorized, and at an occasionally halting performance speed. Not too shabby for the first day. I ought to practice like this more often. If only I could! I'll share some of the early results on Wednesday.

Sometimes Gottschalk's audience got a preview by purchasing his music in sheet music form and playing it themselves. Sometimes they'd never heard any of it--or even heard a piano recital before. In some cases they'd never even seen a piano. Gottschalk was often their first exposure to anything that even resembled his art.

If you've never been to a piano recital before, this is a good place to start. The music is very listener friendly, with plenty of repetition and pianistic flair because Gottschalk really knew how to put on a show. I came to realize that from the very first few bars of "Bamboula." You will too. Have some fun with me this month.

on to part two