Of course, musical performance entails much more than our theories of it allow.. Complex skills do involve more than we can say in words. As the great Martha Graham said, “if I could say it, I wouldn’t have to dance it.”
But that doesn’t mean we can’t make explicit some key elements of great performance. Even though our descriptions are necessarily incomplete, and fall short of what can only be fully gained through exposure and experience, we can learn a lot by reverse engineering, as it were, what masterful musical performers do.
Let’s start with a basic question: What distinguishes superior musical performance? What are the most striking differences between masterful and mediocre musical performance?
It seems to me that the most important differences can be sorted into three fundamental categories: differences, kinetics, and shape.
Great performers make more differences than lesser performers. If one could tally the number of differences made, you would find that master performers do so much more than lesser performers. These are differences of many kinds: dynamics, articulation, voicing, timbre, tempo-rubato, rhythmic flexibility, timing, etc.
Great performers also have a much more active sense of kinetics (movement or momentum). They know how to manage, or present, the energy curves of the music, by speeding up and slowing down in proportion to the inherent harmonic and other tensions and resolutions.
In addition, compared to less accomplished performers, great performers “shape” the music in ways more curvy than square, and congruent with the ebb and flow of tensions and resolutions in the music.
Proportion
To achieve this, they present the different elements in just the right proportions. In fact, the essence of musically satisfying performance is proportion. If the different elements are presented in the right proportions, the result is aesthetically convincing. If the proportions are inappropriate, the result is not satisfactory. What are those elements?
To play expressively, performers apply various proportions and gradations of
Differences
A law of information has it that information is news of difference. Blandness is absence of information. A blank sheet of paper contains no information. As soon as coherent differences are added– elements that contrast with each other and with the background - a message or a picture starts to emerge.
Likewise, noise that is too uniform is called white noise, because like a white sheet of paper, it carries no information. Introduce differences in the form of pitches, articulations, rhythms, loudness, and voila!, speech or music becomes discernible.
It’s the difference that makes the difference. Differences carry information. For example, it’s the difference between one’s and zero’s and their sequential arrangements that allow computers to be such effective processors of information.
In musical performance too, it is the differences that make the difference.
Due to the greater number of differences in superior musical performance compared to lesser performance, more information is communicated.
Such differences enhance definition. The musical elements are presented in sharper relief, more clearly etched out, delineated.
A key factor in how convincing a musical performance is, is the extent to which all channels of communication carry the same information or message. In a word: congruence. Is the phrasing congruent with the character of the music? Does the visual appearance of the performance match the character of what is heard?
If there is incongruence – if incompatible information is communicated, the audience is not convinced. They may not know exactly why, but will unconsciously pick up any mismatch in what is communicated, and will experience indifference or even unease.
It could very well be that the spell-binding, mesmerizing, entrancing, or riveting (note the words associated with the phenomenon of trance) quality of exceptional performances result from the “hypnotic” power of congruence.
When the totality of people’s attention is occupied with congruent information, i.e. information that carries the same or closely related meaning, they tend to go into trance. When people are “entranced” during a “spell-binding” concert performance, they exhibit the typical signs of trance: enhanced facial symmetry, defocused eyes, slower breathing, softer muscle tonus, and a narrowing of attention to the exclusion of other stimuli, etc. And as we’ve already noted, the words they use to describe their experience have strong associations with trance.
Related to congruence is the idea of closure. Closure means that musical utterances, on all levels from small to large – from phrases to whole compositions – are concluded in ways that are congruent with the character of what was played. Principally, it has to do with timing and gesture at points of conclusion. For example, abruptness following the last notes of a piece can disturb the character, preventing the natural dissipation of the atmosphere.
Proper closure could be described as providing sufficient psychological space for affective experience to run its natural course. Interrupting the natural flow of affective experience toward conclusion or dissipation has the undesirable effect of cancelling out, or neutralizing, much of what has been experienced until then. Masterful performers provide closure that is congruent with the character of the music played. It sets the seal on the musical message they communicated.
Kinetics
In addition to more differences, superior performance shows a keener sense of kinetics, of movement toward and away from musical high-points, like rubber bands that attach the performer to it, drawing him faster toward the goals, and slowing him down on the other side.
Beginners and lesser performers tend to play straight, square, rigid, stocky, mechanical. Uniformity and rigidity prevail, rather than variety and suppleness.
Masterful performers know that mechanical is soulless. Instead, they convey a sense of movement that is organic. They understand that if everything is equal – if all beats are divided exactly equally, if all rhythms are played absolutely straight, and if tempo remains metronomically static - then nothing is special.
And if nothing is special, then there is no anticipation of musical pay-offs, or climaxes, or high-points, no expectations that can be satisfied or denied, no organic curve of tension and resolution, nothing exciting in wait for the musical traveler.
As on a journey, in music there are destinations, high-points, resting places, diversions, detours, pit-stops. There are periods of urgency, requiring quicker forward motion, more momentum. These are alternated with periods of relaxation, where an ambling pace is more appropriate. Sometimes, the music rushes urgently toward a destination; at other times it relaxes to enjoy the scenery; and there are times when it comes to a complete standstill.
Since music is an event unfolding in time, it is always going somewhere, at least in the traditional Western tonal harmonic system. It is in essence a system of tensions and resolutions that creates a sense of movement – a journey, if you will – away from and eventually back to “home base”.
That sense of movement characterizes not only whole compositions or movements of a composition (note the word, “move-ments”; and note also that we speak of being “moved” by music), but also smaller parts like melodies and phrases and sub-phrases. There also, subtle quickening of momentum towards high-points with relaxation thereafter enhances the affective power of the music.
When conveyed by expert performers, movement is seldom mechanical, stocky or rigid (unless, of course, the music has deliberate mechanical character). Mechanical is cold and lifeless. Rather, musical movement is usually organic. It is fluid and supple. Music moves and breathes like an organism, in contrast to mechanically rattling on like a machine. Like expressive speech, it is nuanced, not stiffly measured. It’s like dancing as opposed to marching. Seducing, not commanding. It is smoothed, rounded and poised, not clipped and clocked; curvy, not square.
Another insight of masterful performers that contributes to their sense of kinetics is that notes can often be more meaningfully grouped, musically speaking, than is apparent from notational conventions. Musical groupings can transcend bar-lines and beats. For example, it often makes more musical sense to consider the last note/s of groups that are notated according to beats, as belonging to the next group of notes notated as if they were a separate unit. Playing it that way contributes to the sense of forward motion, or momentum, so fundamental to a satisfying musical journey.
The idea of up-beats and down-beats, notated on either sides of bar lines, but actually together forming indivisible units, comes from ancient Greek dance, where the arsis and thesis (up-beat and down-beat) are parts of one smooth movement, that of the leg going up in preparation of coming down for the next step. Lifting the leg is not a separate movement from putting the leg down – that would be disjointed movement. It is one flowing action. Arsis and thesis belong together, as if there is no bar-line separating them.
So a crucial element in the process of shaping a performance to “move” people, is to have a sense of organic movement, of kinetics. That sense is enhanced by looking beyond bar-lines and beat-groupings, to find a more musically satisfying way of regarding notes as belonging together as units. It’s a question of not being imprisoned by the bar-lines and enslaved by metronomic beats, both of which are results of notation convention rather than intrinsic musical sense.
Shape
Another way to express the nuanced characteristic of masterful musical performance, is to describe it as the “shaping” of the music. This “shaping” essentially has to do with proportion: how much of each expressive factor is employed relative to others.
In fact, it could be argued that the essence of musical “shaping” is proportion. The most fundamental criterion for decisions about relative loudness, tempo, timing, articulation, timbre, etc., of any element in a composition is its relation to other elements and to the whole. Getting the proportions right is the main musical challenge.
That’s why structural analysis is the starting point. It is the process of identifying musical elements, or units, their character, and their relationship to the rest of the system. Yes, it can be called a “system”, because in a musical masterpiece, everything is somehow interrelated.
The most basic “shape” in music is probably an arch, or a curve. Why? Presumably because we live in a “curvy” world. Think of the horizon, of the sun and moon, of the glide-path of any flying object, of the swing of a limb, of the uterus, of mommy’s breast, of the female form. We are a sexy species! Roundness, curves, arches are what turn us on and what sustain us. In music, as in life.
Think of the tension curves of metabolic processes like hunger and sexual arousal. The curvy nature of life is reflected in music – both the parabolic shapes we see, as mentioned, and also the tension and resolution “curves” of our basic biological drives.
Musical utterances, on all levels from motifs to whole compositions, can thus be thought of as a series of arches, with each arch representing an increase followed by a resolution of tension.
In the presentation of musical utterances, the laws of nature are followed, where opposites define each other and together form wholeness, like the concept of Yin-Yang in Chinese philosophy: Up-and-down, high-and-low, fast-and-slow, light-and-dark, heavy-and-light, etc. So in music, opposites tend to alternate and compliment one another in order to engender a sense of balance, of wholeness or completeness.
If the first phrase or a sub-phrase goes up in pitch, the following one tends to come down. If there are jumps in pitch, it tends to be followed by step-wise motion. A quickening in tempo is followed by a slowing down. Louder is followed by softer. Legato (connected) sounds are followed by staccato (disconnected) articulation. An increase in harmonic dissonance (tension) is followed by more consonance (resolution). Rhythmic complexity is followed by simplicity.
What goes up must come down. I like to say that what you take away, you must give back. If you speed up, you must balance it out by going slower; if you play louder, you must become softer again; and so on.
This can be accomplished through any of the musical elements, or any combination thereof: pitch, rhythm, tempo, volume, harmony, timbre, articulation. Often, this is a succession of opposites. Pitch rising, then lowering; louder followed by softer; faster balanced out by slower. What goes up, must come down. It’s about balance: an increase followed by a decrease.
While all notes are important, at least in master-pieces, not all should receive equal emphasis, or have equal weight. Some notes or harmonies (combinations of notes) are indeed more special than others. Not all destinations on a journey are equally significant; not all events in a drama are equally pivotal; not all elements of foreplay are equally titillating; not all parts of a building are equally impressive; and so on.
In musical events there is usually a whole spectrum of significance. There are the major pivotal points/moments, but often there are also lesser points of gravity, more or less regularly spaced. These are like telephone poles, or pillars, between which the other notes may flow less anchored.
Part of the performer’s task is to identify not only the major high-points, but the other more regular points of gravity, or anchors, or pillars, or telephone poles, between which the music is strung.
Motifs, phrases, themes, melodies, movements – these are names for musical utterances of various lengths, much like clauses, sentences, paragraphs and chapters in language. And like language, musical utterances have their own rhetorical devices and nuances. Notes can be emphasized, rhythms can be bent a little, silences can be lengthened or shortened somewhat (or entrances can be anticipated or delayed), etc. – all to heighten the musical message.
These factors are mutually supportive. For example, a rise in harmonic tension with an increase in loudness (crescendo) can be supported by a quickening in tempo, followed by a slowing down with the harmonic resolution – all in proportion of course, and within what Dorothy DeLay called, “the channel of style”. The scale of proportions depends mostly on the context and the overall style of the piece. For example, the scale of the differences admissible in Romantic music is generally much larger than that in Baroque music.
The striving for balance in musical performance can be thought of as having two dimensions, vertical and horizontal. The vertical dimension represents the expressive factors of loudness, timbre, articulation; the horizontal dimension represents movement, i.e. tempo and rhythm. The two categories, vertical and horizontal, should be in proportion. The scale of differences in one should be matched by those in the other.
The reader may have noticed the mix of metaphors. Musical richness translates uneasily and insufficiently into words, refusing to be reduced to single metaphors. Music can be variously thought of as:
These metaphors are discernible in our language:
we speak of musical “movement”, of “where the music is going” (journey)
of musical “drama”, of “voices” having a “dialogue”, of musical “questions” and “answers”, of the “character” of a theme or melody or a movement, of “tone poems” (narration)
of the “shape” of a phrase, of the “structure” of a piece, of making its “architecture” audible (architecture)
of “male” and “female” “voices” and cadences, and of “tensions” building toward “climaxes” (sex)
The richness of the musical message performers communicate is informed (inform-ation) by the richness of the metaphors they use to engage with the music.
These fundamental ideas, gleaned from reverse engineering masterful musical performance, are encapsulated in the following questions, devised to help performers focus on the crucial elements for presenting music in “moving” ways.
1. What’s the structure of the piece? [identifying musical ideas] (What are the main themes, phrases? Where are the cadences? Transitions? Sequences? Patterns? Modulations?)
2.What's the character (of a phrase, melody, section, movement, piece)?
3. Where is it going (where are the high-points and climaxes)?
4. How can opposites be highlighted and balanced?
5. How can notes be grouped musically (as opposed to notationally)?
6. How can momentum be used to support the other indicators of tensions and resolutions?
Many years ago, the violinist turned conductor, Alberto Bolet, taught me his four “C’s”:
Colour
Contour
Character
Contrast
Considering our investigation, we might add three more “C’s”:
Climax
Congruence
Closure
That gives us Seven “C’s” for representing the ideas offered here for masterful musical performance:
Contour, Character, Contrast, Colour, Climax, Congruence, Closure.
Proportion
In the final analysis, the art of musical performance lies in how the performer proportions the elements of music to achieve the desired measure of differences, kinetics and shape - or, if you like, the seven “C’s”. Proportion is the fundamental essence of satisfying musical performance. If the proportions are right, the music moves us. If not, we feel uneasy.
All of this is not to suggest that performers invariably go through such complicated conscious procedures with every composition they are preparing to perform. It's similar to the difference between having an impromptu conversation and preparing a complicated speech. Expert performers know the musical language, can speak it fluently, and sometimes, depending on the piece, they are simply having an impromptu musical conversation, intuitively following the musical rules of grammar and rhetoric. At other times they have to thoroughly plan for delivering a complicated musical "speech". And of course there is a whole spectrum in between. Their conscious cognitive engagement can vary considerably on that spectrum, depending on the challenges posed by a particular piece.
To summarize: In order to entrance audiences with masterful musical performance, we need to consider the differences we make, the sense of kinetics we provide, and the ways we shape the musical material.
To help us do that we can ask six fundamental questions about the music we are preparing to perform, and ponder the presence of seven key elements in how we perform it.
To conclude, there is good news, and there is bad news.
The good news is that we can learn much from masterful musical performance. There are indeed patterns and structure to what great performers do. This has been an attempt to verbalize some of it.
The bad news is that there is a lot that remains unsaid, and that can be acquired only through intense engagement with a particular composition over an extended period of time. For that there are no short-cuts. It is the musical, non-verbal discourse between you, your instrument and the composition. Only by living with a piece, by engaging it with your instrument over a long period of time, can you begin to discover the depths of its inner workings and its meaning to you.
Musical interpretation involves both objective and subjective processes. The objective processes involve the “science” of music: the theory, analyses, rules, practices, techniques and procedures of musicianship. The subjective processes are what transpire in your personal engagement with the music through your instrument. Both processes are essential.
In the final analysis, what you end up offering an audience, when all is said and done, is your personal experience of the music. The end product of all your objective and subjective preparation for performance is what the music means to you. You are in effect saying to the audience, “having studied this music objectively with all the tools available, and having lived with is through my instrument, this is what it means to me, and this is how much I value it.” Providing personal meaning and value is essential for truly engaging an audience.
For the immense privilege of having an audience, we performers have the responsibility to do all the objective and subjective work required to provide a compelling experience of intense personal meaning and value. That is no mean task. It requires intense study and engagement.
May the differences you make carry much musical information; may the kinetics you employ take listeners on an exciting musical journey; and may your musical shapes be truly elegant. In short, be musically articulate, mobile and sexy!
But that doesn’t mean we can’t make explicit some key elements of great performance. Even though our descriptions are necessarily incomplete, and fall short of what can only be fully gained through exposure and experience, we can learn a lot by reverse engineering, as it were, what masterful musical performers do.
Let’s start with a basic question: What distinguishes superior musical performance? What are the most striking differences between masterful and mediocre musical performance?
It seems to me that the most important differences can be sorted into three fundamental categories: differences, kinetics, and shape.
Great performers make more differences than lesser performers. If one could tally the number of differences made, you would find that master performers do so much more than lesser performers. These are differences of many kinds: dynamics, articulation, voicing, timbre, tempo-rubato, rhythmic flexibility, timing, etc.
Great performers also have a much more active sense of kinetics (movement or momentum). They know how to manage, or present, the energy curves of the music, by speeding up and slowing down in proportion to the inherent harmonic and other tensions and resolutions.
In addition, compared to less accomplished performers, great performers “shape” the music in ways more curvy than square, and congruent with the ebb and flow of tensions and resolutions in the music.
Proportion
To achieve this, they present the different elements in just the right proportions. In fact, the essence of musically satisfying performance is proportion. If the different elements are presented in the right proportions, the result is aesthetically convincing. If the proportions are inappropriate, the result is not satisfactory. What are those elements?
To play expressively, performers apply various proportions and gradations of
- loud and soft
- fast and slow
- foreground and background
- articulation
- timbre
- Punctuation
- expressive devices (like vibrato and portamenti)
Differences
A law of information has it that information is news of difference. Blandness is absence of information. A blank sheet of paper contains no information. As soon as coherent differences are added– elements that contrast with each other and with the background - a message or a picture starts to emerge.
Likewise, noise that is too uniform is called white noise, because like a white sheet of paper, it carries no information. Introduce differences in the form of pitches, articulations, rhythms, loudness, and voila!, speech or music becomes discernible.
It’s the difference that makes the difference. Differences carry information. For example, it’s the difference between one’s and zero’s and their sequential arrangements that allow computers to be such effective processors of information.
In musical performance too, it is the differences that make the difference.
Due to the greater number of differences in superior musical performance compared to lesser performance, more information is communicated.
Such differences enhance definition. The musical elements are presented in sharper relief, more clearly etched out, delineated.
A key factor in how convincing a musical performance is, is the extent to which all channels of communication carry the same information or message. In a word: congruence. Is the phrasing congruent with the character of the music? Does the visual appearance of the performance match the character of what is heard?
If there is incongruence – if incompatible information is communicated, the audience is not convinced. They may not know exactly why, but will unconsciously pick up any mismatch in what is communicated, and will experience indifference or even unease.
It could very well be that the spell-binding, mesmerizing, entrancing, or riveting (note the words associated with the phenomenon of trance) quality of exceptional performances result from the “hypnotic” power of congruence.
When the totality of people’s attention is occupied with congruent information, i.e. information that carries the same or closely related meaning, they tend to go into trance. When people are “entranced” during a “spell-binding” concert performance, they exhibit the typical signs of trance: enhanced facial symmetry, defocused eyes, slower breathing, softer muscle tonus, and a narrowing of attention to the exclusion of other stimuli, etc. And as we’ve already noted, the words they use to describe their experience have strong associations with trance.
Related to congruence is the idea of closure. Closure means that musical utterances, on all levels from small to large – from phrases to whole compositions – are concluded in ways that are congruent with the character of what was played. Principally, it has to do with timing and gesture at points of conclusion. For example, abruptness following the last notes of a piece can disturb the character, preventing the natural dissipation of the atmosphere.
Proper closure could be described as providing sufficient psychological space for affective experience to run its natural course. Interrupting the natural flow of affective experience toward conclusion or dissipation has the undesirable effect of cancelling out, or neutralizing, much of what has been experienced until then. Masterful performers provide closure that is congruent with the character of the music played. It sets the seal on the musical message they communicated.
Kinetics
In addition to more differences, superior performance shows a keener sense of kinetics, of movement toward and away from musical high-points, like rubber bands that attach the performer to it, drawing him faster toward the goals, and slowing him down on the other side.
Beginners and lesser performers tend to play straight, square, rigid, stocky, mechanical. Uniformity and rigidity prevail, rather than variety and suppleness.
Masterful performers know that mechanical is soulless. Instead, they convey a sense of movement that is organic. They understand that if everything is equal – if all beats are divided exactly equally, if all rhythms are played absolutely straight, and if tempo remains metronomically static - then nothing is special.
And if nothing is special, then there is no anticipation of musical pay-offs, or climaxes, or high-points, no expectations that can be satisfied or denied, no organic curve of tension and resolution, nothing exciting in wait for the musical traveler.
As on a journey, in music there are destinations, high-points, resting places, diversions, detours, pit-stops. There are periods of urgency, requiring quicker forward motion, more momentum. These are alternated with periods of relaxation, where an ambling pace is more appropriate. Sometimes, the music rushes urgently toward a destination; at other times it relaxes to enjoy the scenery; and there are times when it comes to a complete standstill.
Since music is an event unfolding in time, it is always going somewhere, at least in the traditional Western tonal harmonic system. It is in essence a system of tensions and resolutions that creates a sense of movement – a journey, if you will – away from and eventually back to “home base”.
That sense of movement characterizes not only whole compositions or movements of a composition (note the word, “move-ments”; and note also that we speak of being “moved” by music), but also smaller parts like melodies and phrases and sub-phrases. There also, subtle quickening of momentum towards high-points with relaxation thereafter enhances the affective power of the music.
When conveyed by expert performers, movement is seldom mechanical, stocky or rigid (unless, of course, the music has deliberate mechanical character). Mechanical is cold and lifeless. Rather, musical movement is usually organic. It is fluid and supple. Music moves and breathes like an organism, in contrast to mechanically rattling on like a machine. Like expressive speech, it is nuanced, not stiffly measured. It’s like dancing as opposed to marching. Seducing, not commanding. It is smoothed, rounded and poised, not clipped and clocked; curvy, not square.
Another insight of masterful performers that contributes to their sense of kinetics is that notes can often be more meaningfully grouped, musically speaking, than is apparent from notational conventions. Musical groupings can transcend bar-lines and beats. For example, it often makes more musical sense to consider the last note/s of groups that are notated according to beats, as belonging to the next group of notes notated as if they were a separate unit. Playing it that way contributes to the sense of forward motion, or momentum, so fundamental to a satisfying musical journey.
The idea of up-beats and down-beats, notated on either sides of bar lines, but actually together forming indivisible units, comes from ancient Greek dance, where the arsis and thesis (up-beat and down-beat) are parts of one smooth movement, that of the leg going up in preparation of coming down for the next step. Lifting the leg is not a separate movement from putting the leg down – that would be disjointed movement. It is one flowing action. Arsis and thesis belong together, as if there is no bar-line separating them.
So a crucial element in the process of shaping a performance to “move” people, is to have a sense of organic movement, of kinetics. That sense is enhanced by looking beyond bar-lines and beat-groupings, to find a more musically satisfying way of regarding notes as belonging together as units. It’s a question of not being imprisoned by the bar-lines and enslaved by metronomic beats, both of which are results of notation convention rather than intrinsic musical sense.
Shape
Another way to express the nuanced characteristic of masterful musical performance, is to describe it as the “shaping” of the music. This “shaping” essentially has to do with proportion: how much of each expressive factor is employed relative to others.
In fact, it could be argued that the essence of musical “shaping” is proportion. The most fundamental criterion for decisions about relative loudness, tempo, timing, articulation, timbre, etc., of any element in a composition is its relation to other elements and to the whole. Getting the proportions right is the main musical challenge.
That’s why structural analysis is the starting point. It is the process of identifying musical elements, or units, their character, and their relationship to the rest of the system. Yes, it can be called a “system”, because in a musical masterpiece, everything is somehow interrelated.
The most basic “shape” in music is probably an arch, or a curve. Why? Presumably because we live in a “curvy” world. Think of the horizon, of the sun and moon, of the glide-path of any flying object, of the swing of a limb, of the uterus, of mommy’s breast, of the female form. We are a sexy species! Roundness, curves, arches are what turn us on and what sustain us. In music, as in life.
Think of the tension curves of metabolic processes like hunger and sexual arousal. The curvy nature of life is reflected in music – both the parabolic shapes we see, as mentioned, and also the tension and resolution “curves” of our basic biological drives.
Musical utterances, on all levels from motifs to whole compositions, can thus be thought of as a series of arches, with each arch representing an increase followed by a resolution of tension.
In the presentation of musical utterances, the laws of nature are followed, where opposites define each other and together form wholeness, like the concept of Yin-Yang in Chinese philosophy: Up-and-down, high-and-low, fast-and-slow, light-and-dark, heavy-and-light, etc. So in music, opposites tend to alternate and compliment one another in order to engender a sense of balance, of wholeness or completeness.
If the first phrase or a sub-phrase goes up in pitch, the following one tends to come down. If there are jumps in pitch, it tends to be followed by step-wise motion. A quickening in tempo is followed by a slowing down. Louder is followed by softer. Legato (connected) sounds are followed by staccato (disconnected) articulation. An increase in harmonic dissonance (tension) is followed by more consonance (resolution). Rhythmic complexity is followed by simplicity.
What goes up must come down. I like to say that what you take away, you must give back. If you speed up, you must balance it out by going slower; if you play louder, you must become softer again; and so on.
This can be accomplished through any of the musical elements, or any combination thereof: pitch, rhythm, tempo, volume, harmony, timbre, articulation. Often, this is a succession of opposites. Pitch rising, then lowering; louder followed by softer; faster balanced out by slower. What goes up, must come down. It’s about balance: an increase followed by a decrease.
While all notes are important, at least in master-pieces, not all should receive equal emphasis, or have equal weight. Some notes or harmonies (combinations of notes) are indeed more special than others. Not all destinations on a journey are equally significant; not all events in a drama are equally pivotal; not all elements of foreplay are equally titillating; not all parts of a building are equally impressive; and so on.
In musical events there is usually a whole spectrum of significance. There are the major pivotal points/moments, but often there are also lesser points of gravity, more or less regularly spaced. These are like telephone poles, or pillars, between which the other notes may flow less anchored.
Part of the performer’s task is to identify not only the major high-points, but the other more regular points of gravity, or anchors, or pillars, or telephone poles, between which the music is strung.
Motifs, phrases, themes, melodies, movements – these are names for musical utterances of various lengths, much like clauses, sentences, paragraphs and chapters in language. And like language, musical utterances have their own rhetorical devices and nuances. Notes can be emphasized, rhythms can be bent a little, silences can be lengthened or shortened somewhat (or entrances can be anticipated or delayed), etc. – all to heighten the musical message.
These factors are mutually supportive. For example, a rise in harmonic tension with an increase in loudness (crescendo) can be supported by a quickening in tempo, followed by a slowing down with the harmonic resolution – all in proportion of course, and within what Dorothy DeLay called, “the channel of style”. The scale of proportions depends mostly on the context and the overall style of the piece. For example, the scale of the differences admissible in Romantic music is generally much larger than that in Baroque music.
The striving for balance in musical performance can be thought of as having two dimensions, vertical and horizontal. The vertical dimension represents the expressive factors of loudness, timbre, articulation; the horizontal dimension represents movement, i.e. tempo and rhythm. The two categories, vertical and horizontal, should be in proportion. The scale of differences in one should be matched by those in the other.
The reader may have noticed the mix of metaphors. Musical richness translates uneasily and insufficiently into words, refusing to be reduced to single metaphors. Music can be variously thought of as:
- a journey
- narration/communication (poetry, story, drama, dialogue)
- architecture
- art (painting, sculpture)
- nature
- sex
- any combination of such metaphors.
These metaphors are discernible in our language:
we speak of musical “movement”, of “where the music is going” (journey)
of musical “drama”, of “voices” having a “dialogue”, of musical “questions” and “answers”, of the “character” of a theme or melody or a movement, of “tone poems” (narration)
of the “shape” of a phrase, of the “structure” of a piece, of making its “architecture” audible (architecture)
of “male” and “female” “voices” and cadences, and of “tensions” building toward “climaxes” (sex)
The richness of the musical message performers communicate is informed (inform-ation) by the richness of the metaphors they use to engage with the music.
These fundamental ideas, gleaned from reverse engineering masterful musical performance, are encapsulated in the following questions, devised to help performers focus on the crucial elements for presenting music in “moving” ways.
1. What’s the structure of the piece? [identifying musical ideas] (What are the main themes, phrases? Where are the cadences? Transitions? Sequences? Patterns? Modulations?)
2.What's the character (of a phrase, melody, section, movement, piece)?
3. Where is it going (where are the high-points and climaxes)?
4. How can opposites be highlighted and balanced?
5. How can notes be grouped musically (as opposed to notationally)?
6. How can momentum be used to support the other indicators of tensions and resolutions?
Many years ago, the violinist turned conductor, Alberto Bolet, taught me his four “C’s”:
Colour
Contour
Character
Contrast
Considering our investigation, we might add three more “C’s”:
Climax
Congruence
Closure
That gives us Seven “C’s” for representing the ideas offered here for masterful musical performance:
Contour, Character, Contrast, Colour, Climax, Congruence, Closure.
Proportion
In the final analysis, the art of musical performance lies in how the performer proportions the elements of music to achieve the desired measure of differences, kinetics and shape - or, if you like, the seven “C’s”. Proportion is the fundamental essence of satisfying musical performance. If the proportions are right, the music moves us. If not, we feel uneasy.
All of this is not to suggest that performers invariably go through such complicated conscious procedures with every composition they are preparing to perform. It's similar to the difference between having an impromptu conversation and preparing a complicated speech. Expert performers know the musical language, can speak it fluently, and sometimes, depending on the piece, they are simply having an impromptu musical conversation, intuitively following the musical rules of grammar and rhetoric. At other times they have to thoroughly plan for delivering a complicated musical "speech". And of course there is a whole spectrum in between. Their conscious cognitive engagement can vary considerably on that spectrum, depending on the challenges posed by a particular piece.
To summarize: In order to entrance audiences with masterful musical performance, we need to consider the differences we make, the sense of kinetics we provide, and the ways we shape the musical material.
To help us do that we can ask six fundamental questions about the music we are preparing to perform, and ponder the presence of seven key elements in how we perform it.
To conclude, there is good news, and there is bad news.
The good news is that we can learn much from masterful musical performance. There are indeed patterns and structure to what great performers do. This has been an attempt to verbalize some of it.
The bad news is that there is a lot that remains unsaid, and that can be acquired only through intense engagement with a particular composition over an extended period of time. For that there are no short-cuts. It is the musical, non-verbal discourse between you, your instrument and the composition. Only by living with a piece, by engaging it with your instrument over a long period of time, can you begin to discover the depths of its inner workings and its meaning to you.
Musical interpretation involves both objective and subjective processes. The objective processes involve the “science” of music: the theory, analyses, rules, practices, techniques and procedures of musicianship. The subjective processes are what transpire in your personal engagement with the music through your instrument. Both processes are essential.
In the final analysis, what you end up offering an audience, when all is said and done, is your personal experience of the music. The end product of all your objective and subjective preparation for performance is what the music means to you. You are in effect saying to the audience, “having studied this music objectively with all the tools available, and having lived with is through my instrument, this is what it means to me, and this is how much I value it.” Providing personal meaning and value is essential for truly engaging an audience.
For the immense privilege of having an audience, we performers have the responsibility to do all the objective and subjective work required to provide a compelling experience of intense personal meaning and value. That is no mean task. It requires intense study and engagement.
May the differences you make carry much musical information; may the kinetics you employ take listeners on an exciting musical journey; and may your musical shapes be truly elegant. In short, be musically articulate, mobile and sexy!