The Dilemma of Balance

The competition was very educational.  I got my clock cleaned; it was good for me.  I saw kids years younger than me playing at a level of pianism I hadn’t even thought about striving for.  It’s easy to dismiss the kids as geniuses and move on when you aren’t there competing with them.  At this point, I need to make some changes in my strategy and decide once for all what I intend to do for the rest of my career.

The issue that gives me the most pause as an aspiring pianist is how much music to learn.  It seems like the last thing that should be on my mind; but every time a major series of performances is over, such as the end of every summer, I feel a little overwhelmed at having to decide what I should learn in the coming fall.   At the moment there are several options before me.

        1.  Learn a lot of music this semester. The repertoire I have posted on the repertoire page as the “rep in progress” section is as follows: Beethoven Sonata Op. 101, Berio Erdeklavier, Chopin Etude Op. 10 no. 1 and Ballade no. 2, Prokofiev Piano Concerto no. 2, Ravel Gaspard de la Nuit, and Schumann Waldszenen. It’s a recital program plus a concerto.

        2.  Continue with the Chopin Ballade and pick up something older like the Waldstein Sonata and some other pieces I have already learned and try to perfect them.

        3.  Continue with the Chopin Ballade and pick two other pieces to learn from the list of repertoire in progress that I have posted.

The kids I competed against had been playing their pieces for years. I who only picked up that Chopin Ballade last semester didn’t stand a chance.  I have never had the kind of teachers who expect their students to practice the same three pieces for years, never allowing them to be satisfied and move on, and I have never been one to persevere on the same piece for years on end when I don’t have to.

This chart I have created to demonstrate the way I see things.  What we have is a triangle, to show that as your quality of playing increases, the size of repertoire decreases. Likewise, the one who plays a lot of music cannot increase the quality of his playing without hitting the border of the triangle, at which point if he would play better he must limit the amount of music he plays.  One look at my repertoire page will show that I have already acquired a very large repertoire and learn lots of music every semester, playing it at some level approximately where I put my dot.  The gold medalist at the competition in Colorado plays extremely well, but on talking with him I learned that he has a repertoire of only 50 minutes of music.  I assume his strategy is to increase his level of playing and then level out and learn new repertoire.  The other extreme from pianists like me is Arturo Benedetti Michelangeli, who only played a few hours of music his entire life, but played it all extremely well.  He is certainly one of the finest pianists ever to live because of his obsessive perfectionism. It also appears that for whatever reason, there are these superhuman pianists like Claudio Arrau who played on a level that I can only dream of attaining, but with a massive repertoire.  That is the section enclosed by the dashed line outside of the triangle.

Of course my diagram is not at all definitive, but it gives an idea of how I see the situation panning out.  I think I will proceed vertically and slightly to the left from now on. What I mean by this is not that I will never learn new pieces, but that I will focus entirely on increasing the quality of my playing and willingly slow down the pace at which I learn music to accomplish that.  I am getting older, but I hope that the technique that I still lack to play everything with ease is still acquirable to an extent. 

Repeat after me: "aahh mooo shaaah raahhh taaah kaaahhh. Foosa, semiminim, counterpoint." There. Problem solved.

If I had a nickel for every time someone asked me how to practice, I could start my own conservatory. How do I answer? "I really don't know." People think this is silly... It probably is. There really are certain guidelines for practice, which I always make sure to mention after my initial answer, but a universal practice theory is a surprisingly well-kept secret; or, perhaps, no one really knows how we learn as musicians and the great pianists are only so by chance.

The people who ask me that question obviously ask it because they believe it can be answered in words. Can it? One who has never heard the cello before can know that a cello is a musical instrument in the string family; that it has four strings tuned to C2, G2, D3, and A3; that it is the instrument closest in range and resonance to the human voice; one may even be able to express the importance of the exact shape of the f-holes and the difference between a snakewood bow and any other kind of bow... What is the difference between that person and the person who, knowing nothing about the cello, enters a concert hall and is captivated by the beautiful sound of Rostropovich playing the Haydn C major Cello Concerto? Which one knows the cello better? Those who understand music understand it by experience only.

When you have practiced well, you have experienced good practice. I feel that trying to put labels on it gives the wrong impression.

When I practice (I have no idea if this is a detrimental strategy or a useful one. You decide), it seems that the task of learning a piece of music is divided into two separate goals: notes and everything else. Learning the notes is the most analytical and in some cases is quite a challenge. It is easier, for example, to learn the notes to the first Mozart piano sonata than to learn the notes to Lemma-Icon-Epigram by Brian Ferneyhough. There are two strategies that I have tried, and both work. One is to learn one page at a time and perfect it before moving on. At the suggestion of a blog by one of Sviataslov Richter's friend, I did this with the middle movement of the Rachmaninoff 2nd piano concerto. It was a challenge to my patience to only learn two pages per day but certainly rewarding once I learnt the last page and could suddenly play an entire movement. The emphasis is on learning everything correctly at the outset to cut down on time spent undoing badly learnt passages later. Artur Rubinstein, on the other hand, recommended learning an entire work all at once and memorizing it as quickly as possible. Why? To get a grasp of the entire work right from the outset. This, I feel is a strategy to adopt later on once a pianist is more mature.

The main obstacle I see in making progress toward understanding something more of the way we should practice is that people need to practice differently at different stages of their musical growth; which means that the only people who have been dealing with this issue long enough to come to a good answer can only answer the question for themselves, at their level of advanced maturity. For the younger pianist, things are more or less uncharted.

A major difference between a mature musician and a novice is the finger technique.... How to play octaves, thirds, scales, arpeggios, awkward chords, use the arm, and everything else contained in Liszt's book of technical exercises. If you have all of that stuff down, the much of the rest is often a piece of cake. Even if it's not easy, it's fun.

Studies show that people who sightread daily learn and memorize music more easily than those who do not. So, the first steps toward a great practice experience is to work through technical exercises such as the Liszt exercises and sightread every day. The most productive sightreading practice I have ever had has been reading through the Well-Tempered Clavier on my own and through the concerto literature with another pianist.

Obviously learning the notes is just the beginning; the daunting and all-inclusive "everything else" yet remains. In the beginning, a young pianist is most aware if the notes. As time progresses, he begins to notice the difference between the so-called "musical" playing and its opposite. There is a slowly increasing awareness of what a "good sound" is and how to create it. Over the years, the "learn the notes" and the "everything else" combine into one single task. As the pianist matures, he automatically plays with a good sound and with more and more ease of expression.

I've been rambling awhile, I know. All this is to set up my theory of practice. Too many people think that if they just learn that one secret practice technique, the pianistic panacea, all their practice will be efficient and effective. Sure, certain techniques can be helpful for learning to play notes evenly or quietly or whatever (I only have one practice technique per se; I will talk about it in another post),but that's certainly not the case. The most important factor in accomplishing what you set out to do at the piano is total focus. Of course the young pianist will think he is focused when he isn't. Once he has experienced that total focus, he will realize with delight that he has been efficient and effective.

To tie this in with my somewhat-enigmatic post title, there is no magic spell that helps you practice. You find a routine that helps you focus; that is all that is important. Focusing well can shave hours and hours off of your necessary amount of practice time to get a piece performance-ready.

Focus is the key factor in understanding the piece you play. The ambiguous "everything else" is all of the phrasing, "structure", quality of sound, and dozens of other aspects of music I have yet to explore. This side of music, sadly starved by many people who can't seem to tap into their intuitive musical expression, is where the real art of pianism lies. You can only get to know someone by spending time with them. You can only get to know a piece of music by studying it, at and away from the piano, pondering on and puzzling over it, letting it astound and continually teach you, letting it speak to you, letting it grow with you. The goal of practice is to make the music become a part of you. When you understand this, practicing comes naturally.