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Not a bowel movement in sight

July 19, 2007 at 11:40 PM

Greetings,
A very good player on this list recently wrote that Mahler five was hard or a struggle or something like that. Too lazy too check. I seem to be playing Mahler five a lot these days. Maybe it`s because it`s the rainy season and It`s some kind of metaphor for tears.
I wonder what the issue here really is? I have noticed that when I play this piece I ma emotionally drained and somewhat tired but I am not exhausted physically like some of the payers around me seem to be. What seems to me to be the root of the problem is true across the playing of the majority of violinists: an excess use of unnecessary movement. When I watch orchestral players in the Mahler I often see great sweeping movement of the body which typically includes downward lunges from the nefarious waist on chords etc. It is almost as though the players are following the maxim `if the composer wrote FF GENUFLECT.` Of course, touching the knee with the forehead completely unbalances the body but try telling people that. Try telling a violinist that they sound `exactly the same,` playing with minimal body movement as playing with a lot. No way Jose!
It seems people have so much invested in this waving about , perhaps subconsciously copied from their favorite modern violinist…) that they confuse it with their own expressiveness. Yes, that’s the word most frequently used `my expressiveness.` This narcissistic obsession can become so strong it may provoke a bizarre situations. For example, Laurie recently wrote of Perlman criticizing a violinist for moving around rather than paying attention to sound. The young man’s response, (I like it) was in my opinion, rude. Questioning the generously given advice of one of the 20c great is a no no for me. Maybe times have changed with the new generation of Viagra popping puppets. Who knows?
Another example springs to mind: the video of the Gingold master class with Joshua Bell followed by another talented guy. Bell moves around but he is rooted. Genius can get away with this. The next player is talented and he moves more, pulls more faces. It`s horrible. It contributes nothing and, I strongly suspect, serves to prevent the real and genuine musician coming out.
The cure is simple and annoying. Stick the scroll of your violin on your music stand and play smoothly using you arms and not much else (a wall may also help. Learn to play at a minimum. Most of the time the dancing musician is simply fake.

My teacher stops my little unnecessary moves almost during every lesson: a slight move of my head during string crossing, lifting of the violin slightly when an insecure shifting comes along, so on and so forth. And she would point out it's the problem of the sound related to the particular movement so it's very convincing. What I find most remarkable is that, although she moves her body a lot when she plays on stage, she is nevertheless scrutinizing her students’ body movement in such detail and care. A good teacher doesn’t have to lead by example.
When I watched Hahn the other night in Greensboro, there was zero drama in her movements; and, the quietest right hand and arm--it was awesome. The tiniest bow made her instrument sing loudly beautifully; and, the bending of the wrist at the tip was the most delicate motion---not some aerobic dancing of the wrist like mine.

Likewise her left wrist nearly never left perfectly straight alignment that I saw. And one thing other I noticed was that her balancing of the instrument seemed 'never' to change. Oistrakh's shifting around with his head comes to mind.

The movements that she did make came exclusively from the waist, and were likewise very subtle.

ooh! it was me who was talking about mahler 5 in an earlier blog!

i find a lot of similarities to you when playing it. i'm not really physically tired after i play it as i am emotionally drained. i'm actually playing it at a music festival right now, where rehearsals are from 9:30-12:30, and then i coach 2 string quartets (high school aged) from around 1pm-3pm, so i really don't want to practice at all after that. unfortunately there are so many spots to practice i have to isolate certain measures (or certain beats sometimes) to make any headway. but it's a great first learning of the piece for me!

I saw Midori play Shostakovich about 10 years ago, and she adopted an odd, kind of hunched over, posture. She doesn't always (or even usually) do that, as far as I know, but I've only seen her live that one time. I found it pretty distracting. I also found Mariad Nesbitt's dancing while fiddling hard to watch, there was just too much going on.

FWIW, for my own playing, I tend to agree with Buri. I try to stay as still as possible and have to be careful that an annoying rocking forward and backward motion doesn't creep in.

But I'm uncomfortable with the idea that there's a double standard in this regard for genius vs. the rest of us. I'd have a very hard time learning from a teacher who didn't lead by example.

So I would have liked to know what Midori was trying to say by hunching over her Shostakovich, or what Joshua Bell is really intending when he moves a lot but is rooted. I'd probably get more out of the performance that way. I think if there were more rational discussion of what kinds of movements can mean what, and why players do what they do, rather than just saying that geniuses can do what they want but not anybody else, more players would be thoughtful and intentional about the movements they make.

On the other hand, sometimes one really needs a bowel movement. My best teacher, late in my so-called career, tried to get me to move. And to take some artistic license, I forget her exact words. She said I was very "phlegmatic." I remember that word. I wasn't like that originally. If you're dancing instead of playing, sure, do something about it unless you want to be a dancer instead. I don't believe in some mysterious thing about moving that gets in the way of playing which only genius can overcome though. I don't believe in human levitation either though. At least not the whole body. I agree with the other stuff, like it's mostly fake, etc.
Speaking of faking, there's a violinist who ends most of her phrases with a facial expression like she's having a...you get the idea. It gets annoying, starts looking funny even if you're in that mood, and it makes her look really one dimensional musically speaking. I don't want to see that expression on somebody unless I'm causing it.
I will argue that leading by example can be dangerous. Not only it ignores the fact that individuals are different, it also overlooks the fact that students are often not qualified to discern what to copy and why. If someone has played for over 20 or 30 years and is successful in the field, he may have a habit here or there that works probably only for him. Any student try to copy whatever a successful teacher does is bound to be disappointed. It is also not up to the students to pass judgment on whether the teacher has a good and bad habit, as unless the student is nearly as advanced the teacher is, he is unlikely to understand the significance of these movements well enough to make a sound judgement.

The test should be listen to the sound one produces. If the movement adversely affects the sound, then it’s bad. If a movement enhances particular musical expression without adversely affecting the sound, then that’s good.

“Do what I say but not what I do” is often a lot more wise and realistic approach than leading by example.

Yixi, I'd agree that ignoring the fact that people are different can be dangerous, but I don't think that problem goes away by reducing the range of tools a teacher has to communicate. And saying one thing and doing another is a good way for authority figures to look like hypocrites. I'd argue that words can be even easier to misunderstand than actions.

Either way, I think there has to be a good fit between student and teacher and that just copying someone blindly isn't going to yield anything good.

Yixi, I'd agree that ignoring the fact that people are different can be dangerous, but I don't think that problem goes away by reducing the range of tools a teacher has to communicate. And saying one thing and doing another is a good way for authority figures to look like hypocrites. I'd argue that words can be even easier to misunderstand than actions.

Either way, I think there has to be a good fit between student and teacher and that just copying someone blindly isn't going to yield anything good.

Karen, you’ve raised a number of interesting issues. In terms of limiting the range of tools for communication, the fact that my teacher has effortlessly convinced me to not move shows that it’s unnecessary for her to play still in order to convey this message to me effectively. Granted, this may not work for other students. But if a student has to learn by parroting, then that raises a whole set of different issues for this student: shouldn’t he be able to look beyond the surface of what the teacher does? How much and when can he fully appreciate why his violin teacher does what she does?

My chief concern is the extent to which leading by example is meaningful. Clearly, to expect teachers to teach exactly what they do can lead to absurdity. Do we expect violinists like Bell and Midori to ask all their students to move exactly the way they do, regardless of physiological, musical and temperamental differences? If they don’t, are they limited in their teaching technique because of it, or are they being hypocritical?

Speaking of the latter, I’m a firm believer that we are not supposed to do what we preach. People don’t always take their own best advice and that happens to the best of us. When this happens, it doesn’t mean the advice is less worthy nor the person giving the advice can’t live up to it himself is a hypocrite. It means we are human, the world is complex place to be, and all rules are supposed to be broken. And of course, Karen, you know how far I’ll go to defend my teacher, grrrh! ;-)