Lineage

In some recent posts with the 2.0 tag I've been trying to establish a conceptual framework for the deep process of the practice of music making, making connections to the teachings of Tibetan Buddhism. 

In this morning's post Pliable makes the connection of lineage in both the practice of music and the practice of Buddhism. Over and above my never having seen that particular commonality, there's much to think about is the post. On a hectic Independence Day just want to bookmark the post to come back to, probably multiple times.

Among the questions to consider is how Pliable's use of the word "mystical" in the following quote will play with skeptics. 

. . . the establishment of a mystical link from the performer forward to his audience and back to the composer . . .

Limitations and Style

Here are two quotes that reinforce one another. The first is one of Terry Teachout's regular almanac citations and this one is by Igor Stravinsky:

"My freedom will be so much the greater and more meaningful the more narrowly I limit my field of action and the more I surround myself with obstacles. Whatever diminishes constraint diminishes strength. The more constraints one imposes, the more one frees one's self of the chains that shackle the spirit."

Igor Stravinsky, Poetics of Music

The other is a quote from Rosanne Cash from that recent NYT article:

In an interview, the singer Rosanne Cash said the experiments showed that beautiful compositions and technically skilled performers could do only so much. Emotion in music depends on human shading and imperfections, “bending notes in a certain way,” Ms. Cash said, “holding a note a little longer.”

She said she learned from her father, Johnny Cash, “that your style is a function of your limitations, more so than a function of your skills.”

“You’ve heard plenty of great, great singers that leave you cold,” she said. “They can do gymnastics, amazing things. If you have limitations as a singer, maybe you’re forced to find nuance in a way you don’t have to if you have a four-octave range.”

A first approximation of the difference between a music educator and a music therapist might be to say that the educator is concerned with the student being able to play in whatever style the composer asks for, while the therapist helps the client find the style most suited to that particular client's personality and abilities.

Playing Softly

With both horn and flute I've lately been working on playing more softly than I ever have before. Very helpfully, James Boldin recently posted on that very subject as regards the horn. 

Something that's impressed me is how playing at the softest level possible requires such a different embouchure on both flute and horn, and how that change has deepened my proprioceptive sense of the embouchure. Somehow the delicacy needed reveals the underlying structure of the embouchure in a different light.

Medieval Improv

In this post over on On An Overgrown Path, Pliable discusses a CD of music recreating improvisational music from medieval Spain. He quotes the sleeve notes as follows:

>>Joglaresa perform most of the songs here with only one pitched instrument (vielle or oud) and add only voices or percussion. With this instrumentation, we not only get as close as possible to the descriptions of professional slave-girl performers, but also achieve the improvisational spontaneity so crucial to music of this period. Music performed with large ensembles of pitched instruments requires an 'arrangement' that Joglaresa feels contradicts all that we know about the improvisational spirit of medieval and traditional music.<<

This info goes well with the recent posts on improvisation. The timing of it also reminds me to go forward with a post on synchronicity. Seems like the blogosphere is a fertile ground for things "being in the air" at various places at the same time.

update - Jeffrey Agrell has commented on Pliable's post, talking more about improvisation.