is notation a 'visual crutch'?
Pretty much what I said! Such an interesting topic; curious to hear everybody's viewpoints! Eventually I'll throw in my own :)
Replies (18)
I think of notation as a starting point or reference point -- akin to what photographer Ansel Adams, 1902-1984, said about the photographic negative: The negative is the score; the print is the performance.
Or the notation could be, for the musician, what training wheels are to a new bike-rider. In any case, I like to set aside the training wheels or props or crutches as soon as I'm ready to do without them. Memorization is one of my strong suits. But I like to master the letter of the piece solidly in order to better convey the spirit of the thing -- or my interpretation of it; then I can put aside the score and play with abandon.
Before I began studying the Beethoven VC, I was able by ear to imitate some of Isaac Stern's work in the Fritz Kreisler cadenza to the first movement -- from hearing his vintage recording, 1961, with the NY Philharmonic. Later, when I was actually studying the work from the score, I realized that Stern had made a couple of minor cuts and alterations in the cadenza -- a fairly common practice.
Thank goodness for the sheet music; I like the cadenza better as printed -- no cuts. And in studying it further, I would find a couple of small notes here and there that my mind hadn't registered when I was hearing the recording without actually seeing the music. Very educational.
By learning, to the best of my ability, what the composer, to the best of my knowledge, actually left to us, I feel that I can achieve better mastery of a piece and put my own individual interpretive stamp on it.
Yeah, what Jim said! I memorize the song, and then pour my 'musicality' into it...
I've been coming around to the value of memorizing music. It's hard for me to do, but I sound better and more musical, and feel freer and more confident, when I memorize a piece, especially a solo.
But I also enjoy reading music. I *like* musical notation. I think it's a great achievement of mankind. I don't get anything out of viewing it as a "crutch" or something to be gotten rid of in favor of learning and playing by ear. I admire people who naturally play by ear, but I don't feel any need to put myself through that. Why not just celebrate diversity of learning styles?
I think I just exposed another hole in my musical lexicon!
I thought 'notation' was what you write on the music (making notes) but from the above I guess its the notes themselves?
I find the five music lines don't work real well without notes :) Without it we would have to learn from another player - and the music would evolve in infinite directions. But maybe I'm still missing the point...
Like a lot of things, it all depends. I know visual-learners who attach very strongly to the page and don't hear so well what they are doing. But I also know folks who struggle with memorizing and/or playing by ear who have to work so hard for those that they can't hear what they're doing either. Sue
I always like to use the analogy to reading written text. Is reading the written text of "War and Peace" a "crutch" if I don't have it all memorized? I hope not.
Part of the process of reading anything, be it a score, a novel, or even a recipe, is the vital role played by analysis and interpretation in the light of personal experience and knowledge. I'm (hopefully) going to get more out of reading "War and Peace" than a six-year-old will. A virtuoso like Mutter or Hahn will bring far more to the Paganini Caprices than I will (for sure!) In perhaps overly simplistic communications theory terms, reading is "input" while playing is "output". The "input" for your playing might come from a written score, or it might come from that marvelous "hard drive" known as your brain, but it's still just "input". Hopefully that "input" is accurate, or it'll just be "GIGO", as EDP programmers used to say. (Garbage IN, Garbage OUT)
I don't think that it's either-or. There are some players who, when performing from music, bring to the performance all the life, musicality, and even stage presence that one could ask for. And there are others who when playing from memory sound dull and lifeless. I have a video of Perlman playing the Elgar concerto from music. I don't think he would have sounded any better had he memorized it.
When and if I'm comfortable and secure enough, I do prefer to play soloistic things from memory. I feel more inside the music, and feel a little freer to communicate to the audience. It depends on the circumstances though, such as how secure I feel about the acconpaniment - whether from piano or orchestra. For example at my CD launch party yesterday I played at one point a simple piece which I still remembered by heart (the Gluck Melodie) with a pianist who is a good musician, but by her own admission, a terrible sight-reader. Well, she had so much trouble, and so threw me off, that I had to look at the music. Also if I were to play a concerto and conduct it, that would be too much to deal with without using the music.
It's interesting how values have changed over the years. There was an interesting article in Strings a while back on this subject. There, I learned that when Paganini played his own music by heart, it was considered a novelty, and they ascribed it to being one more of Paganini's "tricks". Once when Mendelssohn was about to perform one of his own chamber works, he discovered at the last moment that he left his own piano part at home. He actually knew it by heart, but asked somone to lend him any piano score to put up on the piano, just so that it would look like he was playing from music. He considered it unseemly to be seen playing by heart! In more recent times of course, it's considered that a performer is not completely prepared if he plays a standard concerto or other solo from music.
as one who reads music by counting on their fingers, i'd have to say it's simply a tool - a necessary tool - like a script for an actor.
It can be used as one, definitely -- but I think it's more the attitude that sometimes accompanies it, where one is directed to play other people's music note-perfect more than improvise or make things up themselves. Notation can help BOTH of those approaches -- you can find yourself yoked to what the great masters of the past achieved, but if you write your own stuff or improv, notation can help you write your own ideas down and share them as well.
Even playing by ear can be a crutch. I remember an interview with a bass virtuoso (electric bass) who said that before he learned to read music and learned theory that listening to and reproducing Rush solos note for note was an equally unmusical crutch. Anything can be a crutch if you let it.
Ok Kathryn: is there an alternative?
Not sure alternative is the word! I thought all the responses were great and I actually don't think of it as an either-or, either. My thoughts and musings:
1) I think notation is an absolutely necessary part of practical musicality. I've never met anyone who could play a Beethoven symphony part completely by ear after one listening! Sightreading is an indispensible practical skill and I believe it can be very musical--"notational audiation" is the offical term I believe but basically being able to hear it in your head as you see it, which was one of the threads going this week that prompted this one. However, one thing I find I have to constantly watch out for in teaching is to keep notation musical and not let it become a "dot-to-dot" exercise. ALWAYS hear the notes you're reading, whether you can hear them before you play or whether you ahve to play them to know what they sound like--we have to train ourselves and our students to be hearing the notation until those little black dots on the page become the music itself!
2) I do wonder, though, if we can actually develop our notation skills at the expense of aural skills. I just think of so many cultures in times past and even today I think, when music was passed on almost completely by aural tradition--I wouldn't want to go back to that, because then music is lost if it's not heard for a generation or so! But in a setting like that, everybody can play by ear and it's natural because that's how they do it. Now, a lot of people would be lost trying to play something by ear let alone make up their own, because we can train up our notation skills so well we "don't need" to use that kind of hearing. Especially because most people seem to tend toward visual orientation, it's so easy to slide into notation dependence. I think that's partially what Suzuki is getting at--teach them to hear first, the notation will come with time, but teach them to use their ears in a large-scale, creative way right from the start, before that skill starts to become dormant.
"How" of course is always the question and I think most of us on here do it in one way or another for our students or ourselves. Thoughts?
Include writing and improv in the teaching courses. And then direct students to writing it down.
I was just talking to a friend who used to play in the community orchestra that I am currently in. She's not in it anymore. She confessed that she had a hard time reading the music and didn't feel like she could keep up with the repertoire. It was interesting, she said that she had learned to play by ear in the Suzuki system as a kid but the notation reading had never really "come." In the orchestra she was in the 2nd violins and also said that part was harder to learn by ear because it was more harmony than melody, but she didn't feel confident enough technically to play in the 1sts. I'm sorry she felt like she couldn't stick with it.
I mention this in part because it's so opposite from my own experience. I'm one of those visual-learning note-readers who finds it difficult to play by ear. So I can sympathize with her predicament, if I turn the tables. I love playing in the violin section of a traditional orchestra and I usually do well in that setting. But, if I found myself in a musical group where everyone had to learn by ear, I'd struggle and might even drop out.
I think the reason it might appear that "everyone" could learn by ear when there was no musical notation is that those who couldn't just dropped out and you were left with only those who could. The way our orchestra is now left with only those who can read music.
I think students ideally need to learn to recognize the value of both in order to be well-rounded, complete musicians.
I have read that "note readers" and those that improvise use different parts of the brain. I used to be in total awe of people who could play along with others just knowing the key and chord changes (but they weren't playing the melody). Great value in being able to do all of it, read, play along, and figure out the melody.
My former teacher explained how she read something new, how I should try to. She read the whole thing, all markings, could understand phrasing and emotion etc. I would read the notes, then try and pay attention to dynamics etc. Like a great actor that could look over a script, get it, perform it while reading.
Is notation a crutch? What?! When you read a great piece of literature is the book a crutch? No. Music notation is a logical way for the composer to convey their creation to the player. It is not a crutch. A huge amount of musical pedagogy involves teaching players to interpret the notation in the most musical way.
More about memorization: I remember coming across a book in my high school library -- I was around 15-16 -- in which Leonard Bernstein had written that Arturo Toscanini, in his 80s, would study the score of Beethoven's Eroica Symphony just as hard as ever -- before leading his 500th performance of the work. And he would get just as nervous before taking the podium as he always had.
Quite a few of us already know that Toscanini was famous for leading performances from memory -- although it's common knowledge these days that he had severe vision problems which would have made score-reading during a concert impractical.
Still, what he did in his studies is a bit like what I do with scores that I've committed to memory. When I take up a piece that I played in the past, I refer to the sheet music again at first -- if only to rethink some fingerings or bowings or phrasings. Once I've made my decisions, I can go back to playing from memory. But the way I play a familiar piece now typically differs from the way I played it in the past. The growth process doesn't end -- and shouldn't.
I think Karen is right in that both skills are necessary. I was taught reading music but have played almost exclusively improvising or by ear the last 15 years. I find, now that I am out of practise sight reading, that I become a much poorer player when I read music. It splits my focus. Technically difficult passages become harder. I can pick them out much easier if someone plays them to me. Could this be because I improved so much since my sight reading days and somehow I revert to my former less technically skilled self..?
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November 14, 2010 at 11:38 PM ·
Definitely Yes and No.
Yes, its a crutch, it makes us focus on the technique of the note rather than its role in the music. And yes, very guilty - though I find that notation is diminishing returns - a bit is helpful but a lot is more of a problem than none at all.
No, often notation sinks into the music itself and just as you don't actually read every 16th note in a run, you don't read the notation either since you've already adjusted to the fact that, say, you are in Eflat and yes that E that you kept missing really should be flat :)