They’re Shining Because They’re New
A few days ago I tweeted the following assertion:
There are many glorious TED talks, but this may be the most glorious.
I don’t mind telling you: I wept at my desk when I watched this video.
I took little time to share the video on Twitter, and it was not much later when my friend Jen Wang replied:
Re: TED. I don’t agree with absolutely everything he says, but it’s glorious indeed. I’d love to see his pre-concert talks.
Now, when Jen talks about music, I know well enough to listen. There are two reasons for this. The first reason, the technical reason, is that Jen’s at Berkley right now getting a PhD as a composer. The second reason, the better reason, is that Jen and her husband Sean (also a composer) are among the most literate, articulate talkers-about-music I’ve ever met in my life. (And my dad is a university music professor, so I’ve met my fair share of people who talk about music.)
I remember vividly a day about five years ago when Jen and Sean gave me a crash course on a series of modern composers who I had never previously heard. It was a revelation. The way they introduced me, a musical moron, to overtone singing literally sent me skipping around the room with delight. Ever since that day I’ve never missed a chance to get them to talk music to me.
Needless to say, then, I was pretty keen to know on which points Jen disagreed with Mr. Zander. I sent her a little inquiry. She sent me a little response back. It made perfect sense. The end.
But of course not the end.
Tonight Jen wrote me an email. I’ve asked her permission to reproduce it here, because I’d like to share it with you.
It’s a little long, but I want to share the whole thing with you. I think it’s important. Ready? I’ll join you again at the end. Here we go:
Hey, Chris!
I’ve been thinking lately about the TED talk, and how insufficient Twitter was for expressing what I’d thought about it, and it’s been on my mind since then. I hope you don’t mind; I haven’t been able to get it out of my head, so I wrote it out, and thought I’d send it along to you.
I loved the TED talk until the moment he told the audience to hold in your mind the memory of somebody you love that you’ve lost, and you’ll know “everything that Chopin has to say”.
It’s a gorgeous piece, and he plays it beautifully, and he’s spot on with his analysis. But when I hear this piece, I don’t hear grief specific to the loss of a person I love, unless instructed to do so. What I do hear is how the piece is essentially a long descent, and the interplay between the elegance and simplicity of the overarching shape with the delays and detours that are driven by the harmony (as a result of repeatedly thwarting expectation and resolution) is what makes the piece both simple and agonizing—you know where you need to go, but you just can’t quite get there until the end.
And even that end is both satisfying and (to me) not. The long, slow fall of the melodic line has ended but no resolution is given in the harmony, and it’s essentially a tag, a prolonged farewell, that delivers the final chords of the resolution. There’s no moment, like there would be with Beethoven, where the melody resolves the same time the harmony does, where everything comes together in one cathartic, deeply satisfying moment (that would then be repeated ten times just for emphasis, like the musical equivalent of ending a sentence like this!!!!!!1111one). It’s like the difference between coming home through the front door and sneaking in the back window, a bit at a time. You both get there, but in a context where homecoming as an event is a significant one, they come off in very different ways.
There are beautiful, incredible examples from this time period, in Chopin and Brahms and many others’ work, of similar moments where the melody “arrives” and the harmony doesn’t until later, and how wrenching that can feel. And part of the Romantic sensibility is to deny the clear-cut resolutions of middle-period Beethoven, even as they construct structures that make those resolutions seem deeply necessary.
I also love the difference between this tortuous route taken by the harmony and the melody, while the rhythm remains so simple and so regular. There’s something about that juxtaposition that to me makes the piece seem deeply introverted and quiet, that serves as a way of concealing or muting that extremely tense interaction. The fact that the accompaniment is moving while the melody doesn’t also emphasizes how the notes of that melody hang suspended in the air, not only above the eventual E at the end of the descent, but above the gently moving surface of the accompaniment. Each note of the melody just hangs there, you know?
I feel that tension, that subversion of expectation, that tortuous working-through of the interplay of these elements. And that’s what moves me: the suspense, the release. It’s not a happy piece; the narrative of the piece isn’t about delivering results and satisfying expectations. The melody is extraordinarily beautiful, more so because it’s so simple. It’s really just a gem of a piece.
But because of all this, when he says what he says about the Chopin, I felt kind of crushed. Because assigning the piece an external, concrete narrative was, to me, a way of cheapening the piece in this context, as if the notes themselves weren’t enough to make you catch your breath and listen, when for me they really, really are. I can totally see why a piece like this, especially one that is so gentle and yet inexorable in its progress, could tug at a person and deliver a cathartic moment about something in their lives. But I think those moments remind me most of the way that, when I sing an A into the body of my guitar, the A string will vibrate sympathetically. That inexorable progress excites your inner life in some way, makes you vibrate sympathetically somehow. Maybe the way the progress of time is similarly undeniable? Maybe the way what you expected is no longer what you wanted when you get it? Who knows? That may all be true, if it makes you think of a loved one that you miss. But was that “all that Chopin had to say”? I don’t think we have the ability to know that, and (frankly) I don’t think we need to know that in order to be deeply moved by the piece.
Does that make sense?
Wow, this got way, way longer than I thought it would. But I’d love to know what you’re thinking about it.
Jen
A quiet moment.
.
I hope you know very little about music.
I really kind of hope you don’t know much about music. At least, not in a formal sense. Because for those of you who already know a lot about music that text probably didn’t have the same effect on you as it had on me. But for those of you who don’t know so much, you might have had the same feeling I did. Namely, the feeling that someone just gave you a piece of the world as a present.
Those who can’t do, teach?
Earlier this morning, Scott Walters wrote:
Simply making art isn’t enough. It is the responsibility of the artist to speak about the work, to write about the work, to contribute insights to the development of the field.
When I read that line this morning, I nodded to myself and carried on with my day. But when Jen wrote me that email, I felt what it meant.
Every time Jen or Sean has talked to me about a piece of music, it opened up that music in a way I couldn’t do on my own. Even with stupid pop music, it still helps me listen. And not just listen, but hear. Hear things I simply did not hear without their help. And just like I felt with Mr. Zander’s talk, it feels glorious.
And also? It also makes me really, really hungry for more.
My response to Jen
Here’s what I wrote back to Jen:
I wonder about whether he actually thinks about the piece as conclusively as he talks about it. I have this feeling he might not. I have this feeling that it was a little white lie, to give someone who doesn’t understand music a chance to GET it with a capital G. I get the feeling that for him, the first thing he wants to do is make sure you believe, really and truly believe, that a piece of classical music can, like, change your life. And I get the feeling he’s willing to play a little bit of a trick on you to teach you that. But I bet he’d probably say it’s just a trick to get you to the next place. The place where you can hear a piece and take it with all its mystery intact, instead of taking it with all its mystery boiled down to one possible interpretation…..
I don’t know…obviously I don’t know what he thinks, I just get the feeling that he’d say something like that. Because to get to the point where I could hear all of the things you just helped me understand, and to do it like I got hit by a truck, would I think take longer than the time they get for a TED talk…. :-)
I think we both kinda came to the conclusion that this may have been what Mr. Zander was doing, but I’m not totally sure and anyway that’s not the point.
The point is that you? You have the power to teach. Please use it.
November 5th, 2009 at 10:12 am
I noticed that I stopped breathing when I read “But I think those moments remind me most of the way that, when I sing an A into the body of my guitar, the A string will vibrate sympathetically. That inexorable progress excites your inner life in some way, makes you vibrate sympathetically somehow.”
I did start vibrating sympathetically.
I loved reading this.
November 5th, 2009 at 12:47 pm
“I will never say anything that couldn’t stand as the last thing I ever say”
I needed to hear that this week. Thank you.
November 5th, 2009 at 2:04 pm
OK, I’m afraid I am going to be a dissenting voice on this. Like Jenn, I have a doctorate, and like Jen, I can talk for hours about the form and structure of plays and productions and all the little details that make, say, “Angels in America” the most amazing play of the past 25 years. And that’s important when talking with artists, so that they understand what underlying principles are at work making a good or bad piece of art good or bad.
However, for most people, that language doesn’t mean a whole lot. I don’t know much about music myself, so I’m the audience you were hoping for, but I can tell you that my response to Jen’s description was bafflement. I have no idea what this means, for instance: “The fact that the accompaniment is moving while the melody doesn’t also emphasizes how the notes of that melody hang suspended in the air, not only above the eventual E at the end of the descent, but above the gently moving surface of the accompaniment.”
I’m not saying that what she wrote isn’t wonderful, but what I am saying is that it isn’t a substitute for what Zander said. It took Jen dozens of sentences to explain what Zander explained in one. And yes, that is to reduce the complexity of the piece of music, but it also makes it graspable. It gives me a way into the music, allows me to connect to it.
Perhaps more importantly, Jen’s description appeals to the left brain, Zanders’ to the right. And I’m not certain that helps in the experience of the work. It sort of requires me to sit back in my chair and keep some intellectual distance, rather than imagine my way inside the piece. She is focused on the form, Zander on the effect. And maybe, after the music has been experienced, Jen’s approach can be used to enhance the experience, to answer the question “how’d Chopin do that?” But I think it gets in the way of the initial experience.
I guess I am being a picker of nits. All I’m trying to say is that certain modes of description have their place, and that Zander’s place may be before the experience, and Jen’s after.
November 6th, 2009 at 9:51 am
Scott,
I agree that Zander’s approach is a shorter way in to a “guaranteed to move!” experience, but I think Jen’s critique that he has prescribed the experience I’m supposed to feel is pretty important.
I didn’t (mean to) say I think Jen’s observations are a replacement for Zander’s. I think they’re the fuller next step.
I strongly disagree that Jen’s comments don’t also make the piece more graspable. To use the most extreme example, I literally could not hear the overtone singing in the piece they played until I understood the formal context of where to place my attention. Yes, the air was vibrating in the same way before and after I’d been taught about overtones, but inside my brain those sounds went unnoticed and unheard until I knew “where to listen”.
Or take an example from Zander instead of Jen. His discussion of impulses is a purely formal one, but it makes an enormous difference in how I hear that music. And I propose it makes a bigger difference than just playing me the “many impulses” version next to the “one impulse” version. Without the context to understand, I’d get some kind of contrast between the two. I’d know something was different, and I might be able to fumble around with a fuzzy feeling of what it might be, but confusion doesn’t make that experience better, it makes it confused. Once he’s guided me to identify impulses, all that emotional fuzziness gets washed away. That quick education about impulses is just a single, smaller version of what Jen was trying to do by describing to me the other formal structures and intentions I could be hearing if I only knew how to listen. Hey, if her words didn’t work for you, cool, I’m just saying that both of these people are educating me about forms and context and how the artist made what they made (and why), and boy I completely disagree that they should only be talking about these things with other musicians because they completely transform how I hear that music.
I think Zander’s formal analysis of impulses would be a *fantastic* thing to teach a theater audience. Get a good actor and a good bit of Shakespeare and show them why they can understand the actor when his impulse matches a full thought, and why they can’t make any damn sense of it when the actor just mechanically stresses every other syllable in the iambic line.
I mean, a medium like theater needs this education more than anything else! What other art form gives me more freedom to direct my attention, and more vectors along which I might choose to direct it? Where should I look? What should I look for? Where should I listen? What should I listen for?
These things aren’t a left-brain burden, they’re the firm frame of the expert dancing partner. Anyone can dance with a great dancer! A great dancer gives them a frame and nudge at the right time. Well, I want all my artists to give me a frame and to give me a nudge. I may often be clumsy, but I want to dance and they can help me do it if they don’t leave me to flop around on my own.