Topic for today: Music.

Played the Mozart concerto in its entirety, with cadenzas, for Wendy and Don Caldwell this evening. They had surprisingly little to say about it - I figured Don was going to pick over the whole thing with a fine-tooth comb. To the contrary, they were thrilled with the musicality of the phrasing, the emotion within it. Wendy even said that when she accompanies music students these days, it's rare to hear one who plays music, instead of a lot of notes quickly.

Wait, did I miss something? Isn't music school supposed to teach MUSIC?

Apparently, no. It seems that a number of music schools teach technique first and foremost, and if you're lucky, you get a teacher with an ear for music as well. Or maybe it's that music school destroys the 'feel' for music, sacrificing that on the altar of chops and fingers through endless repetitions of Taffanel and Gaubert. This endless drilling on notes and scales puzzles me no end. To a certain degree, this is very useful. However, if you want 'perfection', by all means, build your automatons and have a go at this Mozart concerto. I will never claim to play it perfectly - I don't kid myself. It's a difficult piece, and there will always be some improvement(s) to make on any performance.

But I, an imperfect mortal, can do what an automaton cannot: create the emotions that I feel the music should evoke in the listener. (As Boyk says, 'be transparent to the music'.) That's what's always fascinated me about music. There's so much scope in that collections of lines and symbols on the page, and the 'feel' often depends heavily on the performer's interpretation. Try listening to Rampal and Galway performing this concerto; typical music aficionados will hear a master and a grandstander. ;) Yet both of them are so amazing in their interpretations, their cadenzas, the way they interpret the same notes on a page - it's the same concerto, but it sounds and feels so different. This is the magic that is music. I'd almost forgotten about this aspect of it... I'm glad that tonight reminded me. :)


Ah, that also reminds me: Harlan, my fellow UG flute player in the orchestra, was pleased with how I played the concerto the other night when rehearsing with the chamber orchestra. He thought it sounded somewhat like Rampal. Coming from another flutist who's played this piece, that's high praise indeed. :)