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Nov
18
The Three Most Important Things
Filed Under Mysterious Music |
“What are they?” I ask my students again and again.
“Rhythm, Notes, Sound!”, they chime back!
But a mantra is one thing; awareness is another.
I come back to the Loure, a dance movement and the second section of the third Bach Partita, for the first time in a couple of years. If only I practiced what I preach! For a full five minutes, I play about with the opening. It somehow doesn’t feel right. It sounds good and it resonates well, but for some reason it doesn’t lilt.
“I’ll just slow it down and subdivide everything for a moment or two”, I think.
And then, like a smack in the face, the purpose of the first note comes to me! By nature, it’s a quasi-semiquaver with pre-anacrusial tendencies… not the stolid, weighty quaver that I had been playing before, but a jump-start-point.
I try again. Instantly, there’s an energy between the first notes, that propels more energy into the next couple of notes, and then natural forward direction takes over and pushes things forward — finally, the piece takes on its own momentum, and I’m just some kind of vessel there to channel it.