[Dixielandjazz] Is Music Visual? - The other opinion.

[Stephen G Barbone]

While not OKOM, this article talks about the visual cues in music  
performances. Interestingly enough, the writer opines about how the  
visual activity of some performers, specifically pianists, might be  
turning off newcomers to classical music. That seems to be  
diametrically opposed to the visual antics of the current pop/rock  
stars and their resultant mesmerization of new and young audiences.
Any thoughts?
Cheers,
Steve Barbone

February 6, 2008 - NY TIMES - By BERNARD HOLAND
When Histrionics Undermine the Music and the Pianist

Wandering from one television channel to the next the other day, I  
came across young people playing the piano. One man, bearded and a  
little hefty, rippled through a Beethoven sonata, sharing with the  
camera complicit smiles, exultant grimaces, gazes to the right and  
left, and a gentle swaying from side to side.

The next, a young woman, sat down to Schumann, bending her back,  
lifting her head and gazing straight up. Maybe God was sitting in the  
rafters just above her, and she was using the opportunity to say  
hello. Both pianists were perfectly fluent. They kept time, played the  
right notes and sounded expressive when they were supposed to.

I had to turn away. I could listen, but I couldn’t watch. Two  
performers, four glazed eyes and four waving arms were too much for my  
stomach. And if someone with a lifelong love for the piano repertory  
has this kind of reaction, what about those coming to classical music  
from the outside? Think of the smart young people ready to believe,  
filled with curiosity and good thoughts, and imagine with what  
astonishment and amusement they must come away from such scenes.

It’s another reason classical music is not reaching more young people:  
not because of how it sounds, but because of how it looks. Even worse,  
lugubrious gymnastics like these advertise the feelings of performers,  
not of Beethoven or Schumann. Music is asked to stand in line and wait  
its turn.

Our two pianists might simply have been talking themselves into  
playing well and sharing the conversation with us. Maybe they didn’t  
trust their own ability to make music without a little theater to  
juice up the proceedings. Elaborate arm waving and heaven-bound gazes,  
at any rate, seem to have become part of the conservatory curriculum,  
like accurate scales and counterpoint.

Some, I am sure, watch the wrong people and engage in monkey see,  
monkey do. More often, I suspect, performers just want everyone to  
know how wonderful they are, right down to their virtuoso fingertips.  
There are bad examples out there. Liszt evidently jumped around when  
he was a young touring virtuoso, but he is said to have sat at the  
piano like a stone later in life. Glenn Gould, who acted out his  
musical eccentricities with remarkable finesse, looked like the music  
he was making.

Serious theater in the wrong hands turns unintentionally into physical  
comedy. I have always wanted to make athletically inclined students  
sit in a chair away from the piano, writhe to their heart’s content  
and then ask themselves what they just heard. Some music does bear  
watching, like the slow ballet of Steve Reich’s “Music for 18  
Musicians.” Most of it doesn’t. Vision, the dominant of our five  
senses, gets in the way.

Responsible teachers ought to be beating these kinds of histrionics  
out of their students but are too often perpetrators themselves. One  
answer might be for conservatories to hire time-and-motion experts,  
professionals who could point out that the flailing arm, the bulging  
eye and the balletic upper torso are extraneous work in a business  
best devoted to doing the most with the least.

Technique is not about muscle building but about optimal allocation of  
resources. More happens faster and more clearly with the minimum of  
gesture. Weight and relaxation, not force, make big sound. So much  
energy is squandered on these melodramas for the eye — and so much  
attention diverted — that it is a wonder our pianistic thespians can  
hear themselves at all.

If the teacher won’t do the job, what about tying offenders to a post  
and running films of Arthur Rubinstein at work? They should note the  
dignity, the rectitude, the stillness of the upper body and, above  
all, the quality of the music that results. My colleague Alex Ross  
once described a filmed Beethoven sonata performance as Wilhelm Kempff  
watching Wilhelm Kempff play the piano.

And a note to the larger ego: playing the discreet middleman does not  
sacrifice the spotlight. It is neither meekness nor submission nor  
self-effacement. At the end of the day, whom do we take more  
seriously, Rubinstein or Lang Lang?

The television program I happened to come across was produced by or  
for (probably both) a major American piano competition, and the young  
people I saw on it were part of that process. The program also offered  
commentary by an eminent conductor talking about the differences  
between Apollonian and Dionysian approaches to art. The Apollonian  
refers (and I paraphrase) to symmetry, invention and elegance; the  
Dionysian, to art more from the gut, more spontaneous.

More personal too. Dionysus had the stage when I was watching: two  
ambitious young people were taking part in a system that asks them to  
use Beethoven and Schumann as ways to sell themselves. Maybe our  
eminent conductor could have added another distinction to his two- 
sided debate: that Dionysian pianists care about Dionysian pianists,  
whereas Apollonian pianists care about music.