PANTIP.COM : K7316363 ฟังบทสนทนาของ Daniel Barenboim | Toni Morrison | James Wood | Bernard-Henri Levy

ความคิดเห็นที่ 4

The last sound is not the end of the music. If the first note is related to the silence that precedes it, then the last note must be related to the silence that follows it. This is why it is so disruptive when an enthusiastic audience applauds before the final sound has died away, because there is one last moment of expressivity, which is precisely the relationship between the end of the sound and the beginning of the silence that follows it. In this respect music is a mirror of life, because both start and end in nothing. Furthermore, when playing music it is possible to achieve a unique state of peace, partly due to the fact that one can control, through sound, the relationship between life and death, a power that obviously is not bestowed upon human beings in life. Since every note produced by a human being has a human quality, there is a feeling of death with the end of each one, and through that experience there is a transcendence of all the emotions that these notes can have in their short lives; in a way one is in direct contact with timelessness. When I finish playing one of the books of The Well-Tempered Clavier in one evening, I have the feeling that this is actually much longer than my real life, that I have been on a journey through history, one that begins and ends in silence.

One way of preparing silence is to create a tremendous amount of tension preceding it, so that the silence arrives only after the absolute height of intensity and volume has been reached. Another way of approaching silence entails a gradual diminution of sound, letting the music become so soft that the next possible step can only be silence. Silence, in other words, can be louder than the maximum and softer than the minimum. Total silence exists, of course, also within a composition. It is temporary death, followed by the ability to revive, to begin life anew. In this way music is more than a mirror of life; it is enriched by the metaphysical dimension of sound, which gives it the possibility to transcend physical, human limitations. In the world of sound, even death is not necessarily final.

It is obvious that if a sound has a beginning and a duration, it also has an end, whether dying or giving way to the next note. Notes that follow each other operate clearly within the inevitable passage of time. Expressiveness in music comes from linking the notes, what we call in Italian legato, which means nothing other than bound. This dictates that the notes cannot be allowed to develop their natural egos, becoming so dominant that they overshadow the preceding one. Each note must be aware of itself but also of its own boundaries; the same rules that apply to individuals in society apply to notes in music as well. When one plays five legato notes, each fights against the power of silence that wants to take its life, and therefore stands in relation to the notes that precede and follow it. Each note cannot be self-assertive, wanting to be louder than the notes preceding it; if it did, it would defy the nature of the phrase to which it belongs. A musician must possess the capacity to group notes. This very simple fact has taught me the relationship between an individual and a group. It is necessary for the human being to contribute to society in a very individual way; this makes the whole much larger than the sum of its parts. Individuality and collectivism need not be mutually exclusive; in fact, together they are capable of enhancing human existence.

The content of music can only be articulated through sound. As we have already seen, any verbalization is nothing but a description of our subjective—maybe even haphazard—reaction to the music. But the fact that the content of music cannot be articulated in words does not, of course, mean that it has no content; if that were the case, musical performances would be totally unnecessary and it would be unthinkable to be interested in composers such as Bach who lived several centuries ago. Nevertheless, we must never stop asking ourselves what exactly the content of music is, this intangible substance that is expressible only through sound. It cannot be defined as having merely a mathematical, a poetic, or a sensual content. It is all those things and much more. It has to do with the condition of being human, since the music is written and performed by human beings who express their innermost thoughts, feelings, impressions and observations. This is true of all music regardless of the period in which composers lived and the obvious stylistic differences between them. For example, three hundred years separate Bach and Boulez, yet both created worlds which we, as performers and listeners, render contemporary. The condition of being human can obviously be as large or as small as the human being chooses it to be, and one could say the same of composition itself.

The renowned conductor Sergiu Celibidache said that music does not become something, but that something may become music. He meant that the difference between sound—just pure sound or a collection of sounds—and music is that, when one makes music, all the elements have to be integrated into an organic whole. There are no independent elements in music— rhythm is not independent of melody, melody is obviously not independent of harmony and not even tempo is an independent phenomenon. We tend to think that because some composers give us metronome markings, all we have to do is to try to squeeze all the notes and their expression into a certain speed, forgetting that one does not actually hear tempo, one only hears the music at a given speed. If the tempo is too fast, the content is incomprehensible because of the performer’s inability to play all the notes clearly or the listener’s inability to grasp them; if the tempo is too slow it is equally incomprehensible, because neither the performer nor the listener is able to perceive all the relationships between the notes.

Richard Wagner wrote in his 1869 treatise On Conducting that “the right comprehension of the melos is the sole guide to the right tempo; these two things are inseparable: the one implies and qualifies the other. As a proof of my assertion that the majority of performances of instrumental music with us are faulty it is sufficient to point out that our conductors so frequently fail to find the true tempo because they are ignorant of singing.” Describing the difference between the character of the Adagio and the Allegro movements in Beethoven symphonies, he continues, “the slow emanations of pure tone on the one hand [in reference to the Adagio], and the most rapid figurated movement on the other [in the Allegro], are subject to ideal limits only, and in both directions the law of beauty is the sole measure of what is possible. The law of beauty establishes the point of contact at which the opposite extremes tend to meet and to unite.”

Interestingly, Wagner speaks not of melody but of the melos. The word “melos” makes its first appearance in the poetry of the Archilochos of Paros in the seventh century BC; there it refers to a choral song. Later Plato defined melos as the synthesis of word, tonality and rhythm, whereas Aristotle’s definition was closer to our own understanding of melody. In Politics he names three different varieties of mele: the ethical, the practical, and the ecstatic. Wagner teaches us that the melos is the sole criterion for choosing the right tempo, which means that the decision about the correct tempo is not dependent on an outside factor such as the metronome and, just as important, that it is the last decision a musician should take. Only after observation of all the elements inherent in the music’s content can he determine the speed with which these can be expressed. Therefore, a decision taken too early makes one a slave of the tempo, whereas a decision taken at the end of the learning process takes all factors into consideration. Like so many things in life, the rightness of a decision is inevitably linked to the moment in which it is made.

The understanding of the interdependence of different elements in music requires an understanding of the relationship between space and time, or, in other words, the relationship between subject matter and speed. Speed, or tempo, which may seem to be outside the music itself, is also not independent. The relationship between the texture and the volume of the sound on the one hand and the audible transparency of the music on the other determines the correct speed. In tonal music, to explain the system of music used in between 1600-1900 and in most of today’s popular music, it is necessary to understand that rhythm, melody and harmony may move at different speeds. It is possible to conceive of infinite variations of rhythm without any change of harmony, but it is inconceivable for the harmony to move without affecting a change both in the melody and the rhythm. This trinity of rhythm, melody and harmony highlights the necessity for an individual point of view, not unlike a film director positioning the camera so that it has a point that views the situation as he sees fit. Nietzsche said they “there are no truths, but only interpretations,” but music does not need interpretation. It needs observation of the written musical notation, control of its physical realization and a musician’s capacity to become one with the work of another.

จากคุณ : BlueWhiteRed - [ 13 ธ.ค. 51 11:54:23 ]

ความคิดเห็นที่ 6

Making music inevitably requires a point of view: not a willful, purely subjective point of view, but one based on total respect for the information received from the printed page, the understanding of the physical manifestations of sound and an understanding of the interdependence of all the elements in the music: harmony, melody, rhythm, volume and tempo. Total respect for the printed page means obeying what it says—playing piano, or soft where it says to and not capriciously changing it to forte. But how soft is piano? This simple question illustrates the importance of having a point of view regarding the quantity and the quality of the volume, in this case piano. Simply playing piano only because it says so on the printed page may be a sign of modesty, but it is also an instance of sinning by omission. The three permanent questions that a musician must ask himself are: why, how and for what purpose. The inability or unwillingness to ask these questions is symptomatic of a thoughtless faithfulness to the letter and an inevitable unfaithfulness to the spirit.

When Wagner begins the prelude of Tristan und Isolde, he starts the music out of nothing, on one note. If we listen carefully and intelligently, we can imagine that this note belongs to many tonalities, or musical keys. This creates a feeling of ambiguity and expectation that is absolutely essential in setting up the famous “Tristan chord” that arrives at the beginning of the second measure. If the previous measure had been fully written out and harmonically based, the dissonance of the Tristan chord would not have the same dramatic effect. But instead, Wagner first creates a situation of being in no-man’s-land, harmonically and melodically. This is followed by a chord whose dissonance does not completely resolve, but is left suspended in mid-air. A composer with less genius and a poorer understanding of the mystery of music would assume that he must resolve the tension he has created. It is precisely the sensation caused by an only partial resolution, though, that allows Wagner to create more and more ambiguity and more and more tension as this process continues; each unresolved chord is a new beginning.

In life outside music, ambiguity is not necessarily a positive attribute—it is often a sign of indecision and, in politics, a lack of firm direction—but in the world of sound, ambiguity becomes a virtue in that if offers many different possibilities from which to proceed. Sound has the ability to make a link between all elements, so that no element is exclusively negative or positive. In music, even suffering can be pleasurable. Musicians, after all, also experience a feeling of pleasure when playing the funeral march of the Eroica Symphony. Feeling is an expression of the struggle for balance, and it cannot be allowed independence from thought. As Spinoza shows us, joy and its variants lead to a greater functional perfection; sorrow and its related affects are unhealthy and should therefore be avoided. In music, though, joy and sorrow exist simultaneously and therefore allow us to feel a sense of harmony. Music is always contrapuntal, involving an interplay of independent voices, in the philosophical sense of the word. Even when it is linear, there are always opposing elements coexisting, occasionally even in conflict with each other. Music accepts comments from one voice to the other at all times and tolerates subversive accompaniments as a necessary antipode to leading voices. Conflict, denial and commitment coexist at all times in music.

Music is not separated from the world; it can help us forget and understand ourselves simultaneously. In a spoken dialogue between two human beings, one waits until the other has finished what he has to say before replying or commenting on it. In music, two voices are in conversation simultaneously, each one expressing itself to the fullest, while at the same time listening to the other. We see from this the possibility of learning not only about music but from music—a lifelong process. Children can be taught order and discipline through rhythm. Young adults who experience passion for the first time and lose all sense of discipline can see through music how the two must coexist—even the most passionate phrase has to have an underlying sense of order. What is, ultimately, perhaps the most difficult lesson for the human being—learning to live with discipline yet with passion, with freedom yet with order—is evident in any single phrase of music.

We have already examined the indivisible connection in music between speed and substance, which is no different from the permanent interdependence between content and time: how time influences content by allowing events to develop in a certain way and how content in turn influences our subjective sense of time. Pleasure will render the passing of time subjectively faster; suffering or sadness will make it slower. Tempo rubato, literally “stolen time,” is precisely the ability to give objective time a subjective quality. The slight modification required for tempo rubato gives both the musician and the listener the ability to ignore objective time, albeit for the duration of the tempo rubato. After all, it is the ear that determines audibility and transparency in music; it is the ear that must guide us in tempo rubato to have the moral strength to give back what was inadvertently stolen.

The art of rubato lies in making imperceptible modifications of the tempo while maintaining a connection to it, an inner pulse. These modifications should be an exaggeration, but not an alteration, of certain elements in the rhythm. Furthermore, care should be taken that rubato is used only for a limited time, so as not to lose touch with the objective time that keeps ticking all along. As “stolen time,” moreover, the tempo, morally speaking, demands to be returned at some point. The broadening of a certain passage or a certain group of notes must inevitably be followed by a passage or group of notes executed in a more flowing manner, so that the modification of tempo is only temporary, and the metronome running throughout the passage will be together with the music at the beginning and at the end, but not necessarily all the way through—much in the same way that a clock will show us the objective time regardless of our subjective perception. This may be the reason why Busoni said that music is simultaneously in time and outside time.

Modulation, the movement from one key to another, affects our perception of what we already know. In the Eroica Symphony, Beethoven introduces his main theme in the key of E flat, but in the recapitulation, when the theme reappears in the new key of F major, the new tonality gives the same music a different perspective. It is the same pattern seen from a different point of view. Modulation is also related to the concept of time: in order to achieve a different perspective in a foreign key, it is first necessary to spend a sufficient amount of time establishing the home key as such.

Because history, like music, moves in time, a single event can change not only how we approach the future but how we view the past. In music this occurs when a sudden vertical pressure is placed on the horizontal progression of the music, making it impossible for the music to continue as before. In the last movement of Beethoven’s Ninth Symphony, the music comes to a complete stop on a sustained, fortissimo chord at the text, “Und der Cherub steht vor Gott” (and the cherub stands before God). The music modulates from A major to F major on the last repetition of the words “vor Gott,” which are repeated independently of the rest of the sentence. What happens next could never have been predicted: when the music picks up again it is in a new key, a new tempo, a new meter and a new vein, leading the movement in an entirely different direction: just as, in a sense, the world was led in a different direction after November 1989, or September 11, 2001. Music teaches us that we have to accept the inevitability of an incident that changes the course of events irrevocably. Although one can have either an irrational sense of optimism or an irrational sense of pessimism following a great catastrophe, the ebb and flow of life, like the ebb and flow of music, are undeniable.

จากคุณ : BlueWhiteRed - [ 13 ธ.ค. 51 11:55:02 ]