Thinking and Reading Music

 

Last Thursday evening, two students on two consecutive lessons, brought up the questions; what is music, what should one be thinking about when they are sightreading music, and what is the difference between playing a piece of music from memory and sightreading a piece of music? I found this interesting because, for me, these topics are all connected.

In the first lesson, the student, a very talented natural musician, asked me, “What should I be thinking about when I’m sightreading a piece of music?” I answered by saying that the answer would be different depended on the level of the musician’s sightreading, the difficulty of the piece, and whether the musician was reading it for the first time or after working on it for a while.

When one learns a language, they begin by learning the alphabet—the letters. At this level attention is focused on the letters. When the letters are learned, they are combined to form words. Now the attention is on the words. Words are then combined to form sentences and sentences express ideas, thoughts, feelings, and images. At this level, attention is now focused on the story—the message—the teaching—and is not at all focused the reading experience. The actual reading experience has gone from opaque to transparent.

It is the same with reading music. First one learns to identify the notes. A note, an abbreviation for notation, indicate a sound, its pitch, and its duration. At this level the attention is focused on the notes. Once the notes are learned, they are combined to form motives, phrases, and melodies. At this level, the attention is focused on the music and is not at all focused on the reading experience.

The purpose of reading music is to access music. For many forms of music, it is the most expedient, though not the only, way to access pieces of music, technical exercises, and musical studies. Reading music takes the burden off the need to memorize. But what does it mean to access music? Here too, there is no one answer, because what one can access from music notation is dependent on one’s musical knowledge, understanding, and experience.

It's like the fortune teller and her crystal ball. There is nothing in the ball at all, but what she “sees” in the ball is a projection of her own thoughts, feelings, intuitions, etc. Focusing on the ball allows her to bring out that which is already within her. The ball can reveal to her nothing that she does not already know.

The notation of a piece of music is much the same. It contains both explicit and implicit information, but this information can only be accessed to the degree of musical understanding of the person reading the music.

Think of an architectural “blueprint.” The blueprint is not a representation of the finished product, instead, it is a set of codified instructions regarding how to build the finished product. But this blueprint, in the hands of someone who cannot read it or understand, would be useless. Regarding music, a beginner might only see notes (indicating pitches) and duration (indicating how long the notes are to be held).

But a more advanced musician will “see” and “hear” so much more, like key, phrases, cadences, harmonic progressions, etc.

And what does a more advanced musician think about when they are reading a piece of music? Again, that will depend on the reason the musician is reading the music. In a performance, a musician is not really thinking about the music as much as she is hearing the music emerging from her in real time. She is like the conductor of an orchestra guiding the musicians through her vision of the piece. She is not thinking about the mechanics of the process, she is trusting the musicians to be able to manifest her vision; she is not thinking about what the chord is, or the type of cadence; she is guiding and hearing the music in real time—in the present.

It is much the same with a musician performing a piece of music. Her mind is the conductor, her body and her instrument are her orchestra, and she, as conductor, guides her orchestra through her vision of the piece. Whether she has the score in front of her or not, at this level it matters not, she could read or not read at her pleasure. The goal of reading is to bring the music that is outside, inside.

And finally, regarding the question, “What is music?” I think, in the final analysis, though my answer may not be satisfying to everyone, music is whatever you think it is…

©copyright Michael Kovitz, 2023