Practicing Piano
The
thing that I’ve focused most on in life is practicing piano. And it used to be difficult for me to remain
focused. I was often distracted by
life’s quick pleasures. But, when I was
young, I practiced at least two hours a day usually to prepare to go to a
reputable university or college for studying music composition in order to be a
concert pianist of my own musical compositions.
When I lived at Florida State University for two years, I began to lose
interest in the discipline of piano playing.
My college professors had begun to continually criticize me during
lessons in an alienating, unfriendly, and strict manner that made me lose touch
with the musical “oneness” I had with the piano. Ever since leaving FSU’s school of music, I
could not handle the stress and despair that entailed practicing. And much like the pianist in the
autobiographical essay, “Every good boy does fine,” by Jeremy Denk—a renowned
pianist—I have experienced tedious, torturous, heart-wrenching exercises that I
mostly avoided and attempted to cover up (in lessons), which might have
something to do with the fact that I’m not a concert pianist. I’ve had many good teachers and many poor
ones. One of my piano teachers who I’d
admired had a particular disdain for me and my methods, and taught me in a
put-down, arrogant manner, I thought.
She one time made fun of me during master class, I thought, when she
said, “don’t you think it’s amazing how he stops in the middle of the passage
and plays the chord over again, class?” when I had difficulty finishing a
piece. Don’t get me wrong, though, I learned
a lot in my convoluted experience at FSU, mostly from Mrs. Mastrogiacomo, a
former piano professor with whom I had a class for ensemble, Piano Duo. We played Rachmaninov’s “Vocalise” for four
hands in front of a large audience.
During the performance I had rushed and she later complained to me about
this, which was a legitimate criticism.
But the one lesson I took from being at Florida State University in the
School of Music was how to keep a beat during a performance. The driving force behind a composition is a
steady beat, I’ve learned from her, and one absolutely must count in one’s head
otherwise the piece will be unintelligible.
The trick is to not make the notes fit into a beat (when performing
eighth notes or quarter notes), because that would just make it sound
mushy. The trick is to play as
“naturally” as you can, and also confidently.
The other teachers I had made it seem as if I had uncontrollable
problems with my playing, and I never felt included among their seemingly
“favorite” students. (I was kicked out
of the music program due to bad grades, which fortunately brought me back to
Iowa). I had entered the university with
a scholarship, and perhaps I could have practiced more, but I had lost interest
due to mental illness, and in many ways, I became a worse pianist when I left
than before I had arrived. Except there
are many phrases that stuck with me ever since, such as, “hear the beat when
you play,” “the piano keys are like levers,” “practice scales,” “learn Mozart,”
that became obsessive mantras whenever I sat down to play. Like Mr. Denk, I recently found a way to
quiet these hallucinatory voices.
Not
that piano “practice” is a process that I cannot enjoy; it’s easy to practice
by myself without any guidance. When
directed by a teacher, piano practice is a difficult concept to grasp for
anyone because I am not sure what it entails, which was a vague request my
teachers made of me. Since I had passed
my auditions with a scholarship, I felt like I had to envelop and maintain
everything my teacher said which may or may not have been what they
intended. What does a concert pianist do
for practice without a teacher? Somehow,
I felt less sure of music programs in general since I received little guidance
on how to feel at ease with the piano. I
am flabbergasted with the idea of a performance degree that schools of music
offer, because you spend so much time learning how to play a piece already
composed by someone long ago so that you can perform it “in the way that it’s
intended.” But, it doesn’t add anything
to the realm of music because that would make you the thousandth person who has
played that piece—maybe the fiftieth who has garnered enough reputation to make
a recording. Music “reiteration” seems
to me like it’s almost as passive an activity as watching TV, unless of course,
you are there to learn. One teacher put
it, “piano playing is orally passed down from pianist to pianist,” which is
true for some disciplines, though some are passed down through literature. I think only a few people, though, understand
the hours that is necessary to compose that piece that you are playing—say, for
example, Rachmaninoff’s Second Sonata.
A piece with that many notes is someone else’s creation, copyright, and
therefore, why waste your time learning it?
Maybe that’s why music performance is a dead-end job. There’s no creativity in re-interpretation
compared to, music composition, for instance.
Essentially, piano performance majors are hardly different than oral
story tellers. Don’t get me wrong,
however, every pianist needs to learn about the renowned concert pianists of
the past, because they have things they expressed that are relevant to us
today. The “serious” Artistic stuff is
composition because you are adding something new to the world and somehow
leaving a unique imprint for others to follow.
