A Review of Gurdjieff, de Hartmann, music for the piano, Volume III, by Charles Ketcham and Lawrence Rosenthal

It is interesting to compare this CD, done digitally, with the original analog recordings of Thomas de Hartmann circa 1950.  Technically, the recordings of Charles Ketcham and Lawrence Rosenthal are far better than the de Hartman which was done on amateur equipment. The instrument itself is better, the micing and mixing is better, and the recording equipment is all better than what was available to de Hartman. 

With regard to the playing there are also many differences—not necessarily better or worse, just different.  Ultimately, it may be up to the listener to decide if he or she prefers one over the other—personally I like them both, but if I had to choose, I would choose to listen to the de Hartmann.  

Charles Ketcham and Laurence Rosenthal are modern world-class pianists with wonderful touch, and tasteful use of dynamic change, nuance, and use all of the elements of musical language like acceleration, ritard, ritinuto, legado, staccato, etc. They bring a kind of clarity of line and structure to the music. And, listening to them, I feel their connection to the sacredness of this music.

So why do I still prefer the de Hartmann? There is just something, for me, in hearing the squeak in de Hartmann’s chair, the very occasional miss-played note, the slightly out of tune piano that brings me back to a moment that has passed, a moment, yes, to move on from, and a  moment to be both enshrined and built upon…

  There is a story attributed to the Sufi Mullah Nasruddin.

“A man knocks on the Mullah’s door introducing himself as a friend who has brought a chicken for the Mullah’s wife to cook into a soup. The Mullah invites him in, the wife cooks the soup, and the Mullah and the guest eat it.

“The next day there is another knock on the door. ‘ Who is it?” asks the Mullah. ‘I am the friend of the friend who brought the chicken—can I have some soup?’ The Mullah invites the man in and goes into the kitchen. There is a little soup left, but not enough, so the Mullah adds some water and serves the soup. The next day another man comes, ‘I am the friend of the friend who brought the chicken—can I have some soup?’

“Again the Mullah goes to the kitchen, adds more water, and serves it to the guest. This goes on for seven days, seven friends, seven watered down soups. Finally the last guest says, ‘This does not taste like chicken soup, it tastes like water!’

“The Mullah responds, ‘That is because it is the soup of the chicken, of the chicken, of the chicken, of the chicken, of the chicken, of the chicken, of the chicken, that your friend, of the friend, of the friend, of the friend, of the friend, of the friend, of the friend, brought to me!’”

                                                                                                 (c) copyright Michael Kovitz , 2016

The Alchemy of Transfiguration in Music

“A blueprint is a guide for making something — it's a design or pattern that can be followed.” —Vocabulary.com

After listening to John Fahey’s vintage album, The Transfiguration of Blind Joe Death, I began thinking about transfiguration. My first step was to look up the word.  Transfiguration is type of transformation.

Transformation has many nuances of meaning. It could be something as mundane as simple change or something as profound as metamorphosis, or something even more than that— like transfiguration.  Change implies making different and different does not, in and of itself, imply either better or worse, while metamorphosis implies a change to another level, a higher level of consciousness or structure, like when a caterpillar becomes a butterfly.

Transfiguration is something even beyond metamorphosis; like metamorphosis it is a change to another level of consciousness or structure, but additionally, that new level seems to imply aspects or qualities associated with divinity, perfection, ultimate reality, infinite beauty, infinite, bliss, and infinite consciousness—in other words, the highest strivings of creation. In music, transfiguration is when a musician raises his or her expression of the music to a level that inspires the mind and heart of the listener to contemplate the infinite and the eternal.

For there to be transfiguration, a kind of alchemy is required between the composer and his music, the musician who plays that music, and the occasion, or performance, of that music.

Andre Segovia was once asked by Studs Terkel about this alchemy and Segovia answered him by saying, “Lazarus was dead and in his grave and Jesus walked up to him and said, ‘Lazarus arise!’ and Lazarus arose and was alive. At that moment, Lazarus belonged as much to Jesus as he did to his own mother and father.”

The Scriptural context that Segovia was paraphrasing is found in Acts 20:7-12 “And when he thus had spoken, he cried with a loud voice, Lazarus, come forth. And he that was dead came forth, bound hand and foot with grave clothes: and his face was bound about with a napkin. Jesus said to them, ‘Loose him, and let him go.’”

So, the musician brings the music to life by playing it and, in that moment that piece of music belongs as much to the musician as it does to the composer. That is what Segovia was saying. But what I wonder is if all the music I hear is truly alive? Can the singular act of translating a blueprint into sound be enough to bring a piece of music to life? After all, the notation of a piece of music is only a blueprint that enables the thoughtful musician to arrive at an expression of the music that is acceptable to the composer, the musician, and the audience.

On another occasion Segovia told a young woman that she was disrespecting the music. She gasped and then fell silent. Segovia said that he would try to explain and went on to say that both the good musician and the bad musician disrespect the music. He said that difference was in how they disrespect it.

My understanding of his statement was that when Segovia said “the music,” he meant the notation of the music—the blueprint. I think he was saying that the lesser musician does not extrapolate all of the information from the blueprint and makes mistakes with it and therefore, what comes out, does not respect the music and the composer’s wishes. A good musician, on the other hand, goes beyond the limitations of the literal blueprint, understands beyond the explicit information of the literal blueprint, and creates an expression of the music that disrespects the literal blueprint by transforming it into something more.

As a musician and as a listener I begin to lose interest if a musician is merely translating a musical blueprint, even if the expression is superficially different than other expressions I have heard. I get more interested if the expression of a piece of music reveals something new to me about the music, something that I was not formerly aware of—something about its harmonies, or melodies, or rhythms, or structure. I am interested, yes, but still wishing, still yearning, for something more—something that can take me to a higher level of consciousness, a higher experience that touches the highest expectations of what art is and can be and inspires the deepest of longings for a real fulfillment of myself and the meaning of my world.  

When music realizes its potential to take us into places that cannot be described in words, places where one sees a glimpse, or hears a whisper, or senses an awareness of that which is real, that which is infinite, and eternal, then that music is not merely inspired, it is transfigured and it is the nature of that which is transfigured to transfigure all and everything that it touches.

© copyright, 2016, Michael Kovitz

  

Improvisation in Music - What is it?

I’m a questioner, always have been, probably always will be, but I’m not really looking for answers. I’m also not just trying to be contrary, but there are times when answers do not have that so-called ring of truth for me—do not leave me satisfied.

And so, I sometimes end up stopping others in the course of their explanations to question one or another of the assumptions upon which their explanations are constructed.

A good example is the numerous assumptions about what constitutes improvisation in music. The general thinking is that most classical music is not improvised and that most jazz and blues is.

Fair enough, until we dig a little deeper. Yes, classical music is written down and classical players play what is written. Jazz, on the other hand, is often based upon a form—a harmonic or melodic progression, or a tune—upon which the player is free to, so to speak, change it up and find places within the forms to create their own mini-creations—like solos.

Again, all well and good, but only until we begin to ask some of  those inconvenient questions like—is a classical musician just some kind of machine, like a CD player, that reads the information on the disk—in this case the musical notation or the music played from memorization—and then, via the body, convey that information into sound?

Studies have shown that different areas of the brain are activated when musicians are asked to play a scale or a melody from memory and then asked to improvise on that scale or melody. Specifically, an area of the brain involved with the process of self-monitoring is deactivated during improvisation. But my own experience of playing memorized music and improvising shows me that the situation is not quite so simple—not quite so black and white.

 What I observe is that when I play a piece of music, whether I am improvising or playing from memory, the music never comes out the same way twice. When I’m playing well and I'm in control of the piece, it comes out differently depending on my mood, the acoustics of the room, the instrument I am playing, and also what music and musicians I have been listening to recently.

So the question is this, if I really know the music and am not thinking about how to play it, but what I want to hear, and in the here and now of the moment I am intentionally projecting my vision, am I not improvising?

 But perhaps the answer depends on one’s definition of improvisation. If you think improvisation is only that which creates new melodies, chords, and chord progressions—new notes and different rhythm—then what I am describing is not improvisation. Again, all well and good, but personally, I am not satisfied.

Why not? Because I begin to question what is this new stuff that the improviser is improvising? Where does it come from? How did it get there?  And is the improviser channeling something beyond himself—something from the Universal Mind, or God or the cosmos?

Most jazz musicians will tell you that what comes out in an improvisation is what is already inside of them—is stuff that they have in their minds and have already programed into their bodies—the so-called muscle memory. How it comes out, when it comes out, and why it comes out is sometimes a mystery, but there does always appear to be some cause and effect at work in the process. Elements that I described that impact my expression of classical music seem remarkably like the elements that influence the improvisation of a jazz or blues musician—elements like the musician's mood, the room, the energy of the room, etc.  

In other words, it is my experience that when classical musicians play a piece of music that they have fully internalized and when jazz musicians improvise, there is not as much difference as is sometimes assumed. Of course, the deeper question for me still remains—how does either of them do it in the first place? Where is the line between musician and machine, or is the inconvenient truth that there is really no distinction all? Without the machine of the body and the impressions stored in the mind, neither the classical musician nor the jazz musician could play their music.

And so, I wonder, is the musician—is man—really a kind of sophisticated cyborg—not just in music, but on the whole vast field of life itself, running and being run by their impressions—their physical and mental programing?

My coffee cup sits near me next to my computer; I reach for the cup and take a sip. What just happened? Mind, monitoring my senses, becomes aware of the cup and desiring the experience of the coffee commands the body to do my mind’s will. The body is programed for the task of picking something up and moving it, in this case, to my lips to taste—to experience—the coffee.

But where am I in all of this? Who am I in all of this? And am I ever even here at all? One thing I know for sure, it is in the act of playing music that these questions are raised to a level beyond the theoretical and the abstract and in their contemplation I experience a unique joy and happiness—and can I ever ask for more?

                                                                                              

                                                     © copyright Michael Kovitz 2016

"What the world does not need is another guitar player."

I am helping one of my guitar students prepare for her college auditions.
I was struck by the wording of two of the requirements,
“two pieces, one of which is technical and the other melodic.”

The meaning is not unclear; they require one piece that demonstrates
the performer’s technical proficiency and another piece that demonstrates
feeling and expressiveness.

But if one looks a little more closely at these requirements, the distinctions between technical and musical
are not as obvious as they first seem and even seem to promote, perhaps at a subliminal level, a duality in music that is most unmusical.

Technique is, or always should be, the servant of the music.
Technique is the wings that allow musical vision to soar into the angelic realms
of the miraculous.

Though he was not speaking directly about music, I think this statement by

Meher Baba hits the nail right on the head:

“Mind and heart must work together.
Mind without heart is like a river bed without water—lifeless and dry.
Heart without mind is like a river without banks—the water having nowhere
to flow, becomes a swamp. Mind and heart working together is a beautifully flowing river,
lovely to behold.”

Paraphrased, the statement becomes:

Music without heart is like a river bed without water—lifeless and dry.
Music without mind is like a river without banks—the music having nowhere to flow,
becomes like a swamp. Music that has heart and mind working together is a beautifully
flowing river, lovely to hear.

Andres Segovia once said, “There are no technical problems—only musical problems.”

What this means to me is that a musician can only teach her hands to do what her mind conceives of—no more, no less. This is not to say that different bodies don’t have different capacities, but whatever the strengths and weaknesses of the body, somehow a good musician finds a way. Take for example the legendary jazz guitarist Django Reinhardt who made incredible guitar music with only two functional fingers on his left hand, or George Allen whose fingers were so thick that he was unable to fret a string without holding down another.

In other words, if the mind accepts a buzz or a wrong note, the body will create wrong notes and buzzes and this will establish a technique predisposed to wrong notes and buzzes. On the other hand, if a musician does not accept wrong notes and buzzes, she will create a physical technique that tends to keep them from creeping into her playing. As my old teacher Jack Cecchini used to tell me, “A good musician gets it right, even if he needs to play it with his nose.”

So, what was my student or I to make of this requirement? Did a ‘technical’ piece mean that it needed to be fast, or complicated, or really stretchy? And did a melodic piece mean a piece with a tune-like melody—like a song? Really, I could name many pieces that are slow and do not sound ‘difficult’ yet demand great control—a balance of head and heart—like Beethoven’s Moonlight Sonata or Leo Brower’s Un Dia De Noviembre. And also, are there not many pieces that sound really ‘difficult’ that are in fact relatively easy to learn and to play?

In conclusion, I think that the requirements and pedagogy of many music schools and many teachers are promoting and sending the wrong message. With regard to the very wording of my student’s requirements they seem to be fostering a separation of the head and the heart rather than a harmonious union of the two. Again to quote Meher Baba, “There should be a balance between the head and the heart, but should one err, it should be on the side of the heart.”

Or finally, as Andres Segovia once said, “What the world does not need is another guitar player; what the world does need are musicians and artists who also play the guitar.”