Making Music is About the Moment

One of the greatest gifts I received in my youth was a small portable record player.  It was lime green and off white, made of some type of lightweight molded plastic material.  It folded up like a clamshell and could be taken almost anywhere—most importantly, my bedroom.    We had a large encyclopedic collection of classical music on “LPs” that I listened to constantly.  I loved to close the door to my bedroom and lie on the hot pink shag carpet (yes, really), listening to The Moldau, or Beethoven’s 7^th Symphony, or the Tschaikowsky Piano Concerto—pieces that could have filled an SNL sketch set at a nineteenth century Top 40s radio station.   There, in my brightly-colored sanctuary, which in retrospect looked like a My Little Pony version of hell, I met the masters who would become my lifelong companions.                          

Today, music is even more portable.  Kids not only listen to music in their rooms, they blast it directly into their brains through dime-sized speakers.  Baseball caps, jackets and sweatshirts, and even bicycles are equipped with adaptors and specially engineered pockets to “wear” musical appliances, ensuring that no one has to break out of their own perpetual, customized soundtrack in order to perform routine tasks.  I find this alarming.  Perhaps it’s because I suspect we are breeding a generation of self-indulgent narcissists who cater to their own senses at the expense of tolerating others.  Perhaps it’s because I like to be alone with my thoughts, interacting with and evolving ideas in the background while I conduct other mundane tasks.  Or maybe it’s because for me, music comes in many forms as well as genres—and those Sony-flattened packets of sound just aren’t cutting it.

I listen to recorded music when I want to study it.  For example, when I am preparing for a competition I burn several versions of my program pieces to disk.  I will listen to these tracks over and over in my car until I have considered the contours of every phrase and compared the gestures of each of the artists.  I do not do this in order to emulate another performer, but rather to consider the choices he or she has made.  When I get to a certain point in my own preparation of a piece, I stop listening to others—needing to embrace my own interpretation until I can repeat it with conviction.  Because I use recorded music in this way, I have never been a stereo equipment nerd.  I am listening to what the artist does or what the composer says, not the physics of sound reproduction. 

Overall I am disappointed by the direction of today’s music industry and concerned for the future of musical performance in our culture.  There is greater and greater emphasis on engineering in music making and less and less value attached to musical talent and ability.  For example, with “auto-tune” becoming more and more mainstream (thank you, Cher), today’s “singers” no longer have to be able to sing.  We are beginning to judge our “musical artists” by the spectacle of their costumes, their personal risk-taking, and their pyrotechnics.

What dazzles me is the ability to bring technical mastery and brilliant musicality to a live stage performance.  I have been watching Yo-Yo Ma perform since we were students together in college; I have now seen him play almost every piece in the cello literature on stages across the world.  Yo-Yo is in a class by himself.  This fall we saw him recreate the Dvorak Cello Concerto with the Boston Symphony for what I could only imagine was his thousandth live performance of that piece; it was at least the ninth time I have seen him play it live in concert.  And although this was a forgiving home audience and a tired (though magnificent) warhorse of a piece, Yo-Yo brought the electricity of someone who had worked his entire life for that moment.  His performance was fresh and original; it stood alone against all his other performances of the same piece.

It is this ability to perform at that level for a live audience that should distinguish the superstars from other heavenly bodies.  I have no respect for singers who lip-synch or perform over a pre-recorded soundtrack; there should be no tolerance for “turnkey” music.  Music should be hand-made and man-made—not manufactured.  True artistry in music is the ability to conjure those spine-tingling performances again and again in venues across the world, each with a charge of excitement and a sense of importance that leaves the audience feeling as if they have witnessed THE performance of all time.  It takes years to master an instrument, to appreciate the styles of the literature, and to gain command over the pieces in the repertoire.  Our idols should be those talented few who can bring all of that in the moment—to that place on that day to those with a ticket.

In my experience, this is the hardest aspect of being a musician.  I so admire those who can perform regularly and from a broad selection of works.  When I take on a program today, it is usually for a competition on a date well in the future.  It takes me at least two years to learn a program; half of that preparation involves making the performances audience-worthy.  I practice being able to sit down at the piano at any time or day and night and start each of my pieces.  I train to be perpetually warmed up.  I make myself accustomed to playing when I am tired, or tipsy, or angry, or pre-occupied.  All of this is to be ready to lay it on the line on a specific date and time under the most controlled of circumstances. 

As consumers, we take it for granted that an artist is “on” for us at performance time.  It is a singular event to us because we have paid a lot of money for tickets, or dressed up and made a special evening around the concert.  To the artist, however, it is work.  How many of us can say that we are at our best every minute at work?  It is a thought worth considering the next time you sit through a live performance.  Was your last client presentation or interoffice memo worthy of a packed house and a standing ovation? Aren’t those who sustain such a high level of quality, those who drain themselves physically and mentally in the pursuit of beauty, those who commit personally to the honesty and integrity of every performance, worthy of hero status?

It is easy to become indiscriminate in the wash of music that surrounds us, but it is important to distinguish the music fakers from the music makers.  I am not talking about drawing a line between classical artists and pop stars; rather, I am talking about embracing performance across all genres as human achievement.   We need to value those who can create lasting beauty in the moment, even if it lasts only in our hearts and minds.

Tomorrow's blog:  Conservatively Speaking, Choose the Liberal Arts