Philosophical thoughts about the piano, rhythm, and C Major
Sharon's Weekly Head Dump
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Sometimes when I’m staring down the barrel of various impending performances, I find myself rhetorically thinking, “Why do I do this?” And because it’s me and I get philosophical and existential about everything, I actually start thinking non-rhetorically, “Yeah, why do I do this?”
As a high schooler I decided to just go for it and go to music school because I couldn’t see myself ever not playing music, but also for so many other reasons that have changed over time. I loved the adrenaline and endorphin rush of banging away at the piano with all the fury and passion that only a teenager has (multiple teachers later, very patiently, worked me down and taught me to care about things like “tone” and “not hurting people’s ears,” and then I left my early 20s and realized that my body no longer supports activities like pounding indiscriminately away at the piano for hours without any regard for my wrists). I loved that playing the piano, particularly playing the piano well, got me attention. I loved being high on the snobbish superiority of making capital-A Art. I loved that, at an age when Expressing Yourself is of utmost importance, music gave me an outlet to do just that.
My reasons for playing the piano—and maintaining priorities in my life to continue playing the piano, now that I am an adult [citation needed] and have responsibilities—are very different now. I don’t love getting attention the same way I used to, but I do love how playing music gives me a chance to be known without necessarily being seen (or is it the other way around? I’m still figuring that out). I love that the piano is a refuge from the chaos and cruelty and violence of the world and that in my little kingdom of the keyboard, I am able to have control—of sound, of time*—and that painstakingly shading the voicing of a chord or evening out a run gives me the satisfaction of temporarily bringing a moment of balance into the universe. I love that making music gives me a routine, stretches my abilities of focus and memory, and forces me to learn to have faith in myself.
As stressful as it is to have projects that increasingly have higher stakes and have the audacity to overlap in my schedule, I do appreciate how despite (or because of?) the panic, these things give me clarity and a reason to take care of myself.
*Yes, I realize this makes me sound like Lydia Tár.
The internet’s hottest new club has it all
Not to rub it in everyone’s faces when I know invites are thin on the ground right now, but I am now on Bluesky, which I have to keep reminding myself is pronounced “blue sky” and not “blooskee.” While I want so badly to root for Mastodon more, I have to admit that Bluesky is much better as a plug-and-play Twitter alternative.
If you’re already on there, my handle is still @doodlyroses and if you’re not already on there, sorry, I don’t have invites right now.
I’ve got rhythm
Last week I went to a concert by the ensemble Sō Percussion and was absolutely TRANSFIXED the entire time. I mean, how can you not, when there’s this much percussion equipment onstage:
I forget sometimes that the piano is arguably a percussion instrument first, pitched instrument second, and that there is so, so much to be mined from the power of rhythm alone. I got so much out of the entire program—both from an academic standpoint and also just from a “person who loves music” standpoint. And because, as mentioned above, I am a person who gets philosophical and existential about everything, I found myself also musing on how you even define music and “classical” music. (One thing I ruminated on: with all the polyrhythms and interlocking going on, some of the most effective and emotional moments were ones of relative simplicity—but to continue this thread, what is simplicity???—which reminded me of the false argument that Western classical music is superior because of its “objective complexity,” which is a meaningless metric that doesn’t exist. But I digress.)
One of the things I’ve been thinking about lately, and which I was paying a lot of attention to during the concert, is the concept of rhythm as an illusion, a function of human perception. I only recently realized that rigid metronomic practice doesn’t actually produce music that feels like it’s correctly “in rhythm”—teachers have reminded me in the past that sound over time, once it’s traveled through a room, is perceived differently in the audience’s ears than it is in the performers’, and my own nervousness or adrenaline adds a wholly separate dimension to understanding the perception of time.
One of the concert’s guest artists was Shodekeh Talifero, a breath artist and beatboxer whose sheer virtuosity was mindblowing. Possibly my favorite work on the whole program was his work “Vodalities: Paradigms of Consciousness for the Human Voice.” Here’s a video of him performing it with a percussion ensemble at the University of Michigan (which I have to say, does not do the work justice, and appears to use different percussion instruments than the version I saw):
The second half of the program was a song cycle, “Let the Soil Play Its Simple Part,” by Caroline Shaw, Pulitzer-winning composer and Twitter mutual. I think my favorite song was “Cast the Bells in Sand,” but a clear audience favorite was this slow-burn, stripped-down cover of ABBA’s “Lay All Your Love on Me,” which was absolutely mesmerizing.
C Major nonappreciation
I just had to share this lolworthy moment from VAN Magazine’s tongue-in-cheek semi-derogatory playlist of works in C Major:
Ludwig van Beethoven: Sonata No.21 in C Major, “Waldstein” (1804)
At last, some good music in C Major! For seven whole beats! In the opening strains of the “Waldstein,” Beethoven runs away from C major as fast as his averagely sized legs can carry him, to the distant land of E Major, where he hides for the majority of the movement.
HE’S NOT WRONG! The “Waldstein” is, imho, one of Beethoven’s best sonatas (but not nearly as good as Op. 109), but you cannot deny that for a thing purportedly in C Major, so many of the sonata’s best moments are…not in that key.
It reminds me (however tenuously) of one of my most favorite satirical classical music articles of all time from The Submediant (RIP):
“100 per cent of published Circle of Fifths diagrams give no sharps and flats as the key signature of both C major and A minor,” said Huron. “And since none of this music sounds very happy, we were able to rule out C major as the key signature.”
“Since none of this music sounds very happy” is one of the funniest pieces of classical music writing, I swear.
God, I miss The Submediant (link to web archive) every damn day. (I feel like nothing I ever write will ever beat “Pianist Solves Global Poverty With Impassioned Liszt Sonata Climax” or “Pianist Misses Notes in Recital, Says Pianist.” Also, “Pierre Boulez, Composer And Conductor I Met That One Time, Dies At 90” so perfectly encapsulates everyone’s social media posts when a notable figure passes.)
There is nothing harder than being a cat
Cleo is having a trying time—in fact, no other creature on earth has ever experienced such hardship and suffering.
Here’s her problem. Cleo loves—LOVES—pouncing after this wand toy:
However, she will only play if I am the one wielding and flicking the toy. If my husband is the one holding the wand, she refuses to engage. We suspect it’s because she prefers the wrist motion I use, or maybe because between the two of us, I’m the one who is most able to inhabit the psychology of an imaginary dumb bird on a string like a very specifically gifted puppeteer.
Because I’ve been doing more hardcore practice recently, I’ve had to cool it on any activities that further strain my wrists, which means no Bird Hunting, which means that Cleo is really going through it right now. Every evening she meows the very specific meow that has come to mean “Mother, will you play with me?” and I have to say no, like the heartless villain in a Victorian orphan story, and she looks very sad and makes the saddest little meows of plaintive suffering that just make everyone feel awful.
We have tried electronic toys, we have tried other games, and we have thrown alternative stringless birds at her. None of these are, in her estimation, viable alternatives; she must have Bird Hunting Time with Mother.
There is, truly, nothing harder than being a cat.
