Concerto Competitions

As many of my readers possibly know, this is in many places the season of those dreaded and (sometimes) exhilarating experiences known as concerto competitions. For those who have already auditioned in one, the following information can be disregarded along with all the rest of this entire blog. But for those who have not, and for those hardy souls in general who are willing to brave the onslaught, I have a few suggestions.

First of all, it is very, very important that you realize one thing: the sound that you try to make in a solo performance and that which you try to make at a concerto audition are wholly different. You must -- especially if you are auditioning in a concert hall-- produce a LOT of sound. I was told a story a few weeks ago by a music teacher:
She said that she was judging a concerto competition, and one of the competitors particularly struck the judges as performing splendidly. He played with such depth of emotion and such polish and technique that they could tell at once that he was a very well-trained musician. She said, though, that despite the beauty and professionalism of his playing, they could not advance him to the next round because he was not playing out enough, not creating enough sonority. If you were to win the audition and play with the orchestra, you would be forced to make a lot more sound to compete with the vastness of the other players. An orchestra makes a lot of sound, and many concertos are essentially a competition between it and the soloist.

It is vital for the upper notes or melody to speak out prominently. Also, when there is a forte passage involving a beautiful theme, these must be lush and warm (though without producing a harsh tone) and fully present.

And remember: judges are fickle and unpredictable things. As my piano teacher said, "It is an incontrovertible fact, both at low-end competitions... and high-end... that your fate often rests in the hands of only two or three people."

This and that

As encouraged by the pleadings of Lita (well, not quite pleadings) to update my sadly-neglected blog, I shall propose to you several things today, by way of a post of otherwise informative or even educational merit.

Firstly: Check out a CD of the music of Ralph Vaughan Williams from the library. I might particularly subscribe to The Lark Ascending, a beautiful violin concerto of sorts; as well as Fantasia on a Theme of Thomas Tallis, a piece written for a vast collection of strings, but so crafted as to sound like a massive church organ. This last piece contains some of the most heartachingly beautiful music that I have ever heard. Also good are Flos Campi, which is a little weird but delightful nonetheless; Fantasia on Greensleeves; and The Wasps Overture.

Secondly: If the top of your dresser is in the slightest way as cluttered as mine, clean it up.

Thirdly: Go see The Chronicles of Narnia. Even if you have already seen it. (I might add here, in somewhat the same vein as the "Firstly", that Mr. Tumnus's lullaby is also very beautiful, though truncated.)

Fourthly and Lastly: Hope that I will have prepared the 3rd movement of Rachmaninoff's Second Piano Concerto well enough that I don't crash in the competition that's coming up in 8 days. Or in the competition that's coming up in 22 days. Or in the competition that's coming up in 37 days. And even that I may play well enough to be able to perform with an orchestra.

After a Hiatus of More Than Usual Length...

... here am I.

I apologize to my faithful readers for having gone so long without providing them with some stimulating reading material, but you see with this NaNoWriMo thing coming to a close, I haven't had much time for this poor little site. But now, I find that I have 2.556 seconds to spare, so I shall give you as much information as I can in the brief time allotted to me.

Now what shall I discuss today? Hmmm..... I think I shall discuss the practicing of staccato passages. When you have a staccato passage (or phrase or section or movement or piece), one of the best ways to practice it is to practice it as though it were a legato passage (or phrase or section or movement or piece). That is to say, finger it accordingly, and play as though you were "in beauty downed", as Mr. Thompson said, to execute the notes in a manner perfectly connected, rather than detached.
If you practice in this way some of the time, your fingers will be able to move more readily from one note to the next; for if you practice it staccato all the time, then the constant sharp movement of the fingers and hand will be of no help in getting you to the right keys.

In other news, NaNoWriMo ends in eight days, eight hours, forty-three minutes, and forty-one seconds.

Singing... on the piano????

Yes, that's right. Singing on the piano. If you consider, what is the piano but a klunky clumsy clattering percussion instrument? It's basic desire when you press a key is to go "wump", not "la": there's this hammer thing, see, and when so impelled by your finger (or whatever else hits the keys, but we won't go there), "wump", it goes flying up, "swish", into a string, which it hits, "whack", and which resonates, "bong". Wump-swish-whack-bong. That's what a piano does by nature.
It has been said the all musical instruments are just imitations of the perfection of the human voice. Singing on the piano is something we all "aspire" to, as a recent student/teacher joke said. But how on earth can we have a singing quality on the piano?

Answer: We cannot.

Counter-answer: But we can fake it.

"How?" you ask. That's a good question. For one thing, we can think of different characteristics of singing. Say the use of phrases. Singers have to take breaths obviously, or they would pass out (which, coincidentally, would also go "wump"); we, fortunately, can play as long a phrase as we like and not pass out, provided no one becomes so irritated with the monotony of it that in mercy they clobber us with a segment of pipe or other blunt instrument. But if we take the phrase markings which the composer has hopefully provided us with, we can be more convincing.
Even if the writer has not included obvious markings, such as slurs, we can look at the rise and fall of the melody and the length of the notes to see where a breath would naturally occur. (And by "breath" I don't mean a Florida vacation, a term which my piano teacher uses a lot; I mean just a short, well, breath.)
Also, we can bring out the melody voice over the accompaniment, making it stand out in greater relief above everything else. (Gently, don't hit us over the head with the voice, as my piano teacher would also say.)

Sadly, the piano is also one of the very few instruments on which we cannot create a rise and fall of dynamic within a single note. We just create a tone, it decays, and we're done. So if you see a crescendo marking within a note, don't panic; just feel the rise in volume inside. (How you do that is an entirely different question altogether.)

In other news, NaNoWriMo starts in six hours and thirty-six minutes. Feelings of panic are beginning to build.

The metronome: a musician's best friend

Ah, the little black box (or the little wooden box or the little plastic thingy or whatever, depending on what model you have) that forever goes "tick... tick... tick... tick... tick... tick... tick... tick... tick... tick... tick... tick... tick..."

AAAAAAAAAAAAHHHHHHH!!!!!! It's enough to drive one, if not up the wall, at least into a different room. But that annoying little pest is one of the best tools a musician has at his or her disposal. If you're working on a piece that moves along at a fast rate, you'll never get the rapid notes into your fingers unless one of two things is true.

1: you are like Franz Liszt, and can play anything perfectly the moment you set eyes on it (which is not extremely likely, though possible); or

2: you start off by "routining"-- that is to say, drilling little sections at slow tempi (by the way, that is the plural of "tempo") with the metronome until they are mastered, and very gradually heightening the speed of your metronome until you have reached the speed you desire.

Even if you have mostly learned a piece, a bit of good routining with the score in front of you will be very very beneficial, and you'll be glad that you did, after all, put up with the annoying "tick... tick... tick... tick... tick... tick... tick... tick... tick... tick..."

Proper "warrior energy" vs. crashing

warrior energy, n. 1. the inner fire-and-brimstone quality called upon in moments of great crisis, such as the beginning of an important battle, or at a climactic point in a piece of music. [see WARRIOR 1. and ENERGY 1.a.]

This term was introduced to me by my piano teacher on Tuesday as a thing both to be harnessed and a thing to watch out for. (Though its position in the dictionary is still under question at this time.)
Say, for example, you're performing in a concert, and get to the coda of Chopin's Ballade op. 23 in g minor (one of the most climactic and cataclysmic passages in piano literature). What do you do? Do you dive in head-foremost, and get so wrapped up in what you're doing that you can't hear yourself properly? Do you let the emotion of the moment and your "warrior energy" that wants to make you slaughter that section, sweep you away and undermine your concentration or accuracy? Or, do you keep that energy just enough under control so that you can maintain a calm interior while still performing the rigorous and brilliant?

Hopefully, the latter.

One must always be cautious in performance of getting so caught up in the emotion of your music that your powers of concentration and your ability to listen to what you're doing are diminished.
I forget the name of the person who said something to the effect of "If you're crying, the audience won't." This seems at first to be rather a strange thing. For if you're able to feel such great emotion in your playing, surely the audience will as well? But if you're so completely involved personally with what's going on, you will not be able to listen as well to what you're doing. Of course, I am not espousing performing with an empty heart. Emotion is a key component of any performance. But too much of it can be a bad thing.

Just the slightest amount of uncontrolled warrior energy, and your performance could go from great to no-so-great.

The execution of Slurs

I think for my first music-related post here I'll discuss probably the most important thing that I learned when I switched to my present piano teacher-- the execution of slurs:

(little square of black cloth on the judge's head)

"You shall be taken to the place from whence you came and thence to a place of lawful execution, and there you shall be hanged by the neck until you are dead..."

No, not that kind of execution.

To execute a slur, one must connect all of the notes contained in the slur and make them legato. In the true meaning of the word "legato", not only are the notes to be connected, but slightly overlapped. This may result in feuds between the said notes, as they generally become irritable and violent when their territory is encroached upon. Generally, if the slur contains several notes and is in an arpeggiated, or rise/fall sort of pattern, one will make a slight crescendo to the top and decrescendo back down to the bottom.
Perhaps the most important note in a slur is the last one: on the last note, one lifts the hand from the wrist, which shortens the note, and also makes the note quite a bit lesser in dynamic than the rest.

Two-note slurs are also very important: one drops the hand onto the first note and lifts it on the last, producing a sort of "DEE-da" effect.

In other news, the stupid cookies, courtesy of Cassie, are disappearing at an astonishingly rapid rate. There is expected to be a disastrous effect upon the economy when all are consumed.