Want to play Tchaikovsky? Break some rules
mainFrom our diarist Anthea Kreston:
We were working on the opening of the Tchaikovsky violin concerto. She was one of a handful of older students of mine – already in a career, but taking auditions and playing concerts – she wants a little finishing help and advice. It was beautifully played, as always – clean, smart, well-prepared. But we have been, these last years, working on inhibition – honesty and truth – what are the notes asking of us – can we let go of everything and do those things it tells us to, no matter how intimate, inappropriate, even violent – no matter that the things it asks of us will never occur in our lives, things we would never dare to do and yet sometimes want to do.
As musicians, we struggle with the concepts of id, ego and super-ego. In a nutshell, I mean that we are in a system where we have thousands of detailed, external rules – things which must be followed microscopically – the super-ego of classical music – those societal restraints, deeply embedded and followed – we are petrified of even approaching a line over which would be something inappropriate (think for a moment how you feel about Kopatchinskaja). That is where this student is. The internalization of cultural rules. And she does it beautifully.
But in classical music – isn’t it the struggle between the id and the ego which drives us onward? Those illicit feelings – Brahms and Schumann both filling their music with Clara – her hand inside, around, throughout every single piece of music either of them published. Her edits, but also her heart and intellect. Her defining fifth – the Clara sigh – boldly put at the beginning of Schumann 3rd string quartet, everywhere – and also in broad daylight in Brahms. But also hidden, woven inside, twisted into unbridled passions and desperate pleas. Things they never dared to do. What happened between Johannes and Clara, when they took their one-and-only trip together, to the mountains in Switzerland right after Robert‘s death? She later burned her diaries and letters from that period – although the stacks and stacks of letters and diaries remain from the rest of her life. I hear this vacation at the end of the slow movement of Brahms 51/2 – this is there one and only moment of privacy – he is saying please please….please – and she is saying – the children, Robert, Syphilis……. with the complications of their lives swirling around them, obscuring their words, reigning in passions, does the ego overcomes the id? The door shuts.
The id – that rustic, guttural desire, the uncomplicated animalistic instincts – to kill, to procreate – impulse, action without a moment‘s thought of repercussion. That is what classical music is. The stabbing of a human in Janacek „Kreutzer Sonata“, the whispers and shuffling of feet in Berg‘s Lyric Suite – the name of his mistress written in code, found decades later in a desk drawer – a secret vocal part. Shostakovich and his dangerous dance with politics. But these, somewhat obvious things are not what I am talking about. It is the sentiments directly through the notes which we must open ourselves to – which we must discover and inhabit. We don’t want to have the ego smooth things out – we want pure, unadulterated id.
At night, after I put the girls to bed, I take a tour around the house, putting the markers back in the marker drawer, folding the blankets, straightening the shelves, housewifery business. On occasion, I come across something so sweet and tender – a whole line of small stuffed animals, each intricately wrapped in a scarf or tea-towel, sitting together along the back of a couch. I unwrap, put the scarves away, and the stuffies back in their bin. This is what we have to do to our music. Take each note out, and wrap it in a little blanket. Take care of each one.
I told my student that, although she sounds lovely, I am left feeling cold. Isn’t every note of the opening of Tchaikovsky a warm little stuffed animal? There is no rhythm, just a fluctuating pulse – it is a meandering, comfortable love song, weaving back and forth between desire and satisfaction. There are no rules – there is only you, and your relationship to your imagination, and your ability, through music, to do all the things in life that you won’t ever be able to do, that you can’t even allow yourself to desire. That is why we go to concerts – that is why we practice with such discipline. So that we can break all the rules, and run free. Take each note, and let it speak to you – let it say anything it needs to, wants to.
I asked her ‘didn’t you always want to have a boyfriend who would hold your hand when you walk down the street?’ She said yes. ‘Well, now you do, you have anything you want – it is our gift from Tchaikovsky, and your gift to your audience – it is what they deserve, and why they come to concerts – don’t worry about what you were taught, the boundaries or rules – that is all behind you.
‘Now you make your own rules.’
Is it about ‘breaking some rules’?
Isn’t the old school expression for that just: ‘making music’?
Imagination… can we teach it?
It depends on which terms we use. In art, and thus in classical music, ‘rules’ are the outcome of aesthetic and expressive norms and values, but without their content and motivation. To compare rules in music with rules in social life, is looking from the outside towards the results of people’s inner motivations and norms. Classical music is not merely desire run wild or offering performers to make their own rules (‘Now you make your own rules.’). The whole approach is putting the horse behind the cart.
‘The id – that rustic, guttural desire, the uncomplicated animalistic instincts – to kill, to procreate – impulse, action without a moment‘s thought of repercussion. That is what classical music is.’ No. Classical music reflects the inner life of the human being, where very different elements form different balances all the time. Palestrina wrought another balance than Wagner, but in both emotion and intellect are strongly present. In a musical work, there are the centrifugal and the centripetal forces, or said differently: the expressive impulse and the ordering impulse, and both are emotional and aesthetic motivations: it is not the intellect or the ego that brings order to the material, but the expressive, emotional need for harmony. Freudian terminology does not help here, and it is in itself rather clumsy since in intellectual deliberations, there are always emotional elements present and in emotional reactions, there are always elements of order and intelligence. To treat the ordering impulse as a ‘rule’ is sterile, because the concept of ‘rule’ is merely the outward appearance of something much deeper and much more emotional and aesthetic. Hence the truly conventional musician’s mistake to think that classical music is made-up of rules. (‘Works of art make rules, not the other way around’, as Debussy said, who broke all existing rules and with each work created a harmonic balance of norms and values.) The misundertsanding that classical music is ‘stuffy’ and ‘bourgeois’ and ‘respectable’ in the sense of conventional social norms, is the result of not sensing music’s innate freedom, also in Bach’s Kunst der Fuge.
‘It is the sentiments directly through the notes which we must open ourselves to – which we must discover and inhabit. We don’t want to have the ego smooth things out – we want pure, unadulterated id.’ That is opening the door to amateurish pathos parading as ‘musical understanding’.
‘There are no rules – there is only you, and your relationship to your imagination, and your ability, through music, to do all the things in life that you won’t ever be able to do, that you can’t even allow yourself to desire. That is why we go to concerts – that is why we practice with such discipline. So that we can break all the rules, and run free.’ That has nothing to do with musical interpretation, and it sounds as if the score is only a vehicle for the performer to ‘express his/her emotions’. But interpretation is the internalization of the aesthetic and expressive impulse of the music as suggested by the score, whereby the performer’s subjectivity is filling the notational suggestions with his/her own imagination, not for this imagination to run wild, but to serve the music. Our diarist’s descriptions read like a fruit of the 19C romantic performers cult, which has created so much havoc in music life and is still around in the amateurish ‘interpretations’ of hysteric, attention-seeking females.
‘Now you make your own rules.’ No. The performer should internalize the nature of the work, its spirit, its expressive content, its aesthetic means, and then the balance between all the components will make itself clear. The ‘dialectic’ between discipline (the ego) and desire (the id) is inappropriate when dealing with classical music performance….. as long as ‘rules’ are seen as part of the art form, we get such misunderstandings.
John –
I love your passionate response and points – this is one of my favorite parts of Slipped Disk – where else in our lives would be be able to discuss these things, so openly and freely?
Thanks for your thoughts,
Anthea
Ms Kreston,
I feel the need to publicly apologize to you for my earler reaction to the article that forms the basis of this particular thread. First of all I apologize for my ill-considered choice of words; to describe something that was so obviously heartfelt as ‘crap’ is crude and insensitive and should have no place in this, or any, discussion forum. Also, not knowing who you were didn’t help. I have since done a bit of research, both visual and aural, and have discovered that you are a fine musician with great powers of expression and a deep love for your art. I’m sure you will be a respected member of the Artemis for many years. I understand you are the group’s second violinist, but I would urge you not to neglect the viola. One excerpt that I got off YouTube (where would we be without it?) had you producing a beautiful sound. Again, forgive me for jumping to all sorts of wrong conclusions.
Does this mean that my problems with your article have disappeared? Not entirely. While I recognize the emotions that jump off the page, as it were, I still have difficulty with the imagery. Others may not share my view, but to me your piece read as if it was written for Woman’s Weekly by Sigmund Freud; deep psychology, mixed with tales from the nursery. For me, this didn’t work, but as I said, others may have different ideas.
None of this, of course absolves me from having committed the sin of gratuitous rudeness to someone who does not deserve it. So again: SORRY!
yours,
Robert Groen
Robert!
No need to apologize- this is a place where we can say how we feel. In fact, there was one commenter (RW2013) who for months (when I first started to write) completely crushed me week after week. Crushed me into a small, smelly pulp. But now we are good friends. I am not a writer, I just jot down my thoughts every week while I am on the s-Bahn to rehearsal, or waiting for a flight. And yes, I do love to play viola too!!
Thanks for being so nice,
Anthea
Very generous of you, Anthea!
RW2013 even wrote a Haiku for her –
Pity ye,
who don’t get Artemis tickets for free,
and drink with Anthea
coffee.
Some rude3 people have all the luck! 🙂
But whose comments do you enjoy more, John’s or Sally’s?
Don’t you like mine??
I’m very impressed with John, his breadth of knowledge (broader than mine, I assure you!) his carefully considered opinions and his willingness to debate with all comers. He takes this site seriously, which not all of us seem to do. But I’m also fond of Sally, especially when she tells him to stop banging that damn keyboard and put out the garbage.
To R Groen:
I never ever take out the garbage, we have people here who take care of that, supervised by Sally who doesn’t trust personnel and sometimes changes her mind about things she had discarded, climbing into the container to fish them out again. She is not contractually permitted to criticize my work at the piano but pulls a face when passing-by with a handful of papers. (What can I say?) I know she secretly listens to Boulez recordings in the cellar and sometimes tries to convince other staff that it’s really much better and truly modern, but up till now without much success. I let her, since I don’t hear it, and as long as she avoids too crazy abberations – like climbing over the fence in a burka – and does her work well, I try to be tolerant to her feminine oppositions because I prefer to give the impression that I’m all in for feminism.
What worries me more over the last months is her sudden interest in Wild Olga, because it seems to stimulate her stubborn changes in my letter concepts.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FmWslEUpf9s
“It is the sentiments directly through the notes which we must open ourselves to.”
I don’t think the sentiments we aspire to, are DIRECTLY through the notes ever. That idea is traditionally called Kitsch or sentimental. Those are the ‘low hanging fruits’ only.
Nice to have sometimes though…
Particularly with Schostakowitsch or Tchaikovsky there is nothing ‘directly’. Directly through their notes one hits a facade, or the surface of a treasure chest… Misleading even sometimes.
I’m losing the will to live. I have never, in all my born days, read such a pretentious, pseudo-intellectual load of crap. No disrespect to Ms Kreston intended. Adultery. Syphilis, Clara Schumann’s sighs (In broad daylight, but sometimes hidden, woven inside). Rows of stuffed animals (no rhythm there!) in Tchaikovsky. Id v Ego (I think Id wins out in the end). A sonic stabbing (of a Human, no less) in Janacek.The shuffling of feet in Berg. Desire and Satisfaction (Tchaikovsky again, the old lecher). Notes wrapped in little blankets. Gawd, help us!
I did enjoy one line in Ms Kreston’s verbal incontinence, though. It reads as follows:
“In a nutshell, I mean that we are in a system where we have thousands of detailed,
external rules -things which must be followed microscopically- the super-ego of
classical music – those societal restraints, deeply embedded and followed – we are
petrified of even approaching a line over which would be something inappropriate
(think for a moment how you feel about Kopatchinskaja). ”
Inappropriate? Kopatchinskaja? You’re reading my thoughts. Spooky.
+100
Disagree 1000%. Loved this piece, the thoughts it contains, its description of a performer’s process, and the beautiful writing. Kreston is clearly a performer and teacher who inhabits the music she plays and teaches. The proof is in the performance, and this musician thinks that the student she describes working with is very fortunate to have such a thoughtful (and yes, imaginative) teacher.
And I also love me some Kopatchinskaja, without reservation.
+1
If you don’t live it on your skin, you cannot understand it….I’m just really thankful to Ms Kreston for her lessons, for her approach to the music and to her students! after them it’s always like waking up, remembering why I chose to become a violinist!
This is one of my favourite diary entries from Ms Kreston. Thank you!
I love the term “Clara sigh” (and knew immediately what you meant), as the Schumann A major quartet has played an important role in my life since a sad separation, and it will always be one of my favourite pieces by him. I am a big fan of the Auryn Quartet’s recording on Tacet, and I think it is one of the saddest pieces in A major, along with the last movement of Schubert’s piano sonata D 959 (which, if my memory serves me correctly, he had already used in an earlier sonata).
Looking forward very much to hearing the Artemis in Cologne soon!
Thanks and kind regards, Brian
An interesting blog.
I would say that the recording of the Tchaik conc by Alfredo Campoli/Ataulfo Argenta,LSO
substantiates many of Ms Kreston’s ideas.
I was thinking more of Ida Haendel.
A great choice!
Quite honestly,many of the old schoolers were more than up to the mark: Heifetz,Elman,Huberman,Francescatti,Oistrakh,Kogan..oh,I could go on and on… Just take a lucky dip!
I went for Ida Haendel not only because she is brilliant but because, as a woman, she was always more likely to wrap her notes in little blankets (sorry, Anthea, couln’t help myself!) than this bunch of macho lions of the fiddle. So here are two more ladies who have played the Tchaikovsky in the manner Anthea had in mind: the great Edith Peinemann and, lesser known mondially but you’ll have to take my word for it, my compatriot Emmy Verhey, now retired. But actually, I think the current crop of lady fiddlers is very impressive too. Hahn, Fischer, Jansen, Mutter, Benedetti,Steinbacher et al, I listen to them with great pleasure. Of the men you mentioned I especially like Heifetz, for his lithe, transparent, athletic sound, although I won’t argue with any of the othrs either. By the way: what happened to Milstein?
“By the way: what happened to Milstein?”
My inner smart-aleck wants to say “he got old and died.”
But it’s true his name doesn’t come up in violin conversations so much nowadays. He and Szeryng in particular seem to just get a quick “oh yes, one of the all-time greats — now what were we talking about?”
We all have different tastes in music and writing. I enjoy your musings Anthea but you can’t please everyone.
By the way, I hope you stay on in Germany for some time – it would be good for your daughters to have EU citizenship as well.
I’m just really thankful to Ms Kreston for her lessons, after them it’s like waking up, remembering why I chose to become a violinist! Its great!
One cannot wake-up often enough after a good teaching experience.
Anthea, the image of the stuffed animals wrapped lovingly in a scarf really spoke to me – the discipline of practice and mastering the ‘rules’ so you can get to the heart of each note and can play or sing it as you want it to be expressed.