Music the art  of thinking with sounds."           Jules Combarieu ( 1859- 1916)

Music is not illusion, but revelation rather. its triumphant power resides in the fact that it reveals to us beauties we find nowhere else, and that the apprehension of them is not transitory, but a perpetual reconciliation with life.
Piotr Illych Tchaikovsky (1940-1993)

My Way...

Some thoughts about the way I approach the study of a musical piece   -  just a few hints ---

Music is the most honest, the most beautiful, the noblest, and the most complex of all arts. I dare to go even further and say that music transcends all other arts because through its universal language of sounds, music can appeal to the entire humankind Richard Wagner said : " The language of tones belongs equally to all mankind, and melody is the absolute language in which the musician speaks to every heart."As musicians we must serve the music by understanding that in every piece of music there is a thought, a feeling, a life, an entire world. Every composition is a time capsule. It contains an unique world in its unique state of immortality. Each time we step into it through playing we bring to life all its treasures, sometimes even being unaware of all of them.The score is our guide in this journey, given to us by the composer, and it is our noble duty, not only to follow the basic instructions, but to decipher its hidden message. If we limit ourselves to the two - dimensional reading of a score, our performance  will be  two-dimensional. the world of music is multidimensional, It is architecture in movement.

Like any language, music has its own alphabet, grammar, punctuation, syntax and many other rules. The study of music is graded too,but in music we have the chance to learn very many things, in the same time, from the very beginning . Like in life we have to learn how to write, read , add, subtract, multiply and so on...step by step...so we can  achieve a certain level of proficiency which will eventually lead us toward our profession....In the study of music we have the wonderful opportunity to add feelings, colors, emotions,to our work. From the very first steps on the keyboard children are emerged in their own imagination  through the titles of the  little pieces they play. Developing the imagination,the "creative hearing, through the power of sounds,leads to a better understanding of music and a beautiful performance.

As performers, we are the tools which can bring to life a composition, so to speak....The Piano is just an instrument, lifeless, until a human being touches its keys.....The Piano is " an object" with which we, pianists express something. I do not want to offend anybody but a silent piano  has nothing to say, except of course the historical instruments and the ones which belonged to great musicians.So, if we are those who "make music on the piano", we must develop a certain physical ability to move our hands on the keyboard. This in called technique and it should never be considered the goal of our practice. It is a way to be able to interpret the music and to overcome "technical difficulties. I insist in this paragraph and Deva
on the subject  of " technique" because it is very common for some young piano players to almost refute the practice of scales, arpeggios, chords, technical studies and so on.

From the pedagogical and structural stand point it is important to let our students understand that music is based on patters, and most of them are made of  chords ( solid or broken ) and passages of scales. Physically speaking, we have to prepare our hands and fingers to respond to the demands of the piece. The practice of scales, arpeggios, chords also helps us to master the keyboard and to play at ease anywhere without constantly looking around to find the right key. If we really want to  gain the most of a technique session lets put life into it : imagine rain drops on the roof, butterfly drawing beautiful arabesques in the sky, imagine waterfalls, bells etc.....Roam free in your imagination and nothing will be boring anymore. 
Hand in hand with the development of the agility or virtuosity goes the  " art of Touch"  ( le touche - as it is called in music).Many times, listening to great performers we say....He ( or she ) has a marvelous  "touche".
 and Deva

 The fingers are the extensions of our musical thinking ( I would even say our musical being). They must express what the music wants them to express : power, kindness, gentleness, fear, happiness, in a word :  anything and everything. We can only play in the way we perceive thePage3(Repertoire)(complete)(done) piece of music.I try to help my students ( based on their level ) to understand that the keyboard is a special place where we can dance, hop,slide, dive,fly and so on and our fingers should be able run,prick,melt ,dig,caress, get angry,paint, cry,whisper, shout ...Of course one cannot feed that much information, but the more you as a teacher and performer know the more you can put in you teaching and playing.
and Deva

Another important aspect in the study of music is the learning of notes and values.SomePage3(Repertoire)(complete)(done) teachers make their pupils learn by rote, bit by bit. I  am totally against teaching by ear and by rote  or by imitation. The children should develop the ability to " read " the music and to count. Not knowing the notes is like having someone else reading a book for your. Not knowing the values is like having a sentence without space between  word. Counting  while practicing helps us to stay focused on the score, keeps our eyes centered on the beats ( therefore the fingers will not go ahead by them selves ),lets us feel the rhythm of the piece, enforce to memorization process by  emphasizing in our inner hearing the melody and rhythmic lines.

It is not in my intension to write  new Pedagogical  treatise , there are so many wonderful writing about performance and pedagogy. I want to present the principles which  form the foundation of my approach to the study of music. All great pedagogues will tell that the study of an instrument, and most especially the piano is an extremely complex cognitive process. Simplified  : the eyes see the notes,send the message to the brain, the brain processes the internal auditive effect and send the " order" to the fingers : what key to strike,for how long, in which manner ( smoothly, accented, sharply etc ). All of this happens in a fraction of a fraction of a second for each and every note  and musical sign (legato, staccato, piano, forte, allegro, ...) in the score. Through practice the " new  choreography" is set in place and in time the piece can be performed at least correctly. Now....the magic should begin : ..

Since my very first years of piano playing I was taught to never limit my study to  solving all the technical problems and to play the piece, from memory,nicely, without wrong notes. The quest for the inner meaning of each piece is the path that all great pedagogues suggested to their pupils : "Look beyond the notes and you will be amazed by what you'll find " ( Alfred Cortot). Extraordinary technique, virtuosity should never be the goal, but the mean to achieve the physical ability to express the ideas, the feelings, the thoughts, the landscapes, and so on, which are  "hidden" in the composition. Many great pianists of the last century have been named " painters at the piano". They are able to extract the essence of music by controlling every sound. Of course, teacher should approach  this principle based on the age and the level of their students, but: the main goal is the same : to teach them how to play piano for their entire lives, weather as amateurs or professionals, the music is the same and we should not deprive anybody of its riches.

I have being taught to learn as much as possible about the work I am studying. Well, professional and/or more advanced students who also study Harmony and Analysis can also venture in this direction too. What I insist on is the era in which the composer lived,the manners, the style of the era, any relationship ( influence) with other arts ( poetry, literature, painting...) the life of the composer himself . Once you know, by example  that Fr.Liszt's " Vallee d'Obermann" has nothing to do with a landscape in Swizterland, but everything to do  with a novel " Obermann" written by the French novelist Senancour and it is based on the very  hard to answer question : Who am I?. Lets get lighter...lets take a Spanish dance, by example...I always suggest to my students to listen to some original Spanish folklore to hear the accents and most of all to get that special feeling of passion in the chords of the guitar...and so on with every piece I play .

 I try to find out as much as possible about every composition  before and during my study, and there is always something new  bursting out from the score. As a teacher I want to share with my pupils everything I know and I proportion the information to their age and level, but I never content myself with the correct playing of the outer "layer" of the score, because there is a story in every piece and we must tell it to the world.

I was fortunate to have had a very good start in my musical study, based on very sound pedagogical principles and on the desire of my dearest mentors ( My Grandmother and my Mother) to introduce me from  childhood to the  arts and literature. I strongly recommend to all my students to read a lot, not only novels but also poetry, to get to know the works of the great painters  from all eras, to spend time contemplating all that nature offers us for " free"....sunsets, leaves,birds, butterflies, clouds, stars, everything which surrounds us...people too....how they walk, little children, older people....be aware of everything in life, because music IS life expressed through sounds.


Thank you very much for reading some of my thoughts and please, continue to surf my page.

                                   Home                                     Previous                             Next