jwilzewske: mastery

Showing posts with label mastery. Show all posts

Saturday, March 1, 2008

Excellence in Being For the Good: James Ehnes, Neo-Fiction, and the Many Faces of Virtuosity

T his is the best sort of virtuosity that you will hear tonight—because of its nuances, its extraordinary sensitivity and elegance!”
— Cynthia Siebert, prefatory remarks, introducing James Ehnes’s and Andrew Armstrong’s performance in Kansas City.

I ncredible mix of action, special effects, and story!”
— DSM, after James Ehnes’s and Andrew Armstrong’s performance in Kansas City.

I f I read one more review that says that something or someone is ‘virtuosic’—that their playing was ‘virtuosic’—my head will explode. It’s the lamest, laziest excuse for a compliment that a reviewer can write. It tells us nothing, in 300 words or less. Instead, I wanna read about whether he/she plays like Keanu Reeves fights in the original ‘The Matrix’. I wanna know details about how the fight went, note by note. I’ve got all the attention span in the world; I’ve got all night. Tell me. I wanna know whether his/her playing can save the World, and I wanna know how this can really happen. I wanna know whether this is The One. Make me believe!”
— Anonymous.

J ust in case you were hoping to make it back, they’ve reconfigured the culture so there are hardly any phone booth [portals] left. We’re gonna need guns. Lots of guns. And an endless supply of logic, humor, tenderness, disobedience, defiance, and argumentative tenacity. The surviving members of the old crew are still on board, along with some new recruits, freshly located, unplugged, and debugged. Are you with us? You’ve already made your choice. Now you have to understand WHY you made it.”
— Jacket blurb, William Irwin book, The Matrix and Philosophy.

It’s astonishing how much we expect of the Arts—especially of music. How can it possibly deliver us out of the desert-like banality that comprises so much of modern life?

And yet it can and, surprisingly often, does. It awakens us, enables us to feel how alive we and others around us are, makes us feel deeply, truly human—immersed. Nobody ‘taught’ us this, in school or in out-reach programs. We haven’t succumbed to some seductive marketing scheme to make us consume this stuff. The music doesn’t exist to separate us from our money and divert us for an hour or two. The music we’re after may at times be sensual and escapist (that is, it can be part of The Matrix, for those who prefer the Blue Pill). Or the music can at times propel us into a novel and unexpected reality—one that may or may not be pleasurable but is, regardless, inherently meaningful (that is, it can be part of the Real World, for those of us exponents who take the Red Pill). In either case, we honestly and truly resonate with it and identify deeply with it. If you don’t want to call music that succeeds in doing this ‘virtuosic’, maybe the word you’re looking for is ‘engrossing’ or ‘profound’.

T he public doesn’t need educating [about classical music]. It doesn’t need sexy marketing, or publicists, or icons [to save classical music markets]. It wants music it can enjoy or at least respect. Composers ... should have a long, hard think about why there is a far larger appetite for the music of [list of names #1] than there is for [list of names #2].”
— Christopher Pugh, Gramophone, 2008 March; 85: 8.

The classical music repertoire that sells—both old and new; both live and recorded—is not all righteous, redemptive, heroic ‘Matrix-oid’ stuff of course. Sometimes what we want is serene and pacifistic, so long as it’s not namby-pamby or face-losing. We desperately want to believe in the possibility of peace, and we crave music that consoles us and dramatically restores our hope. No mean feat, that. So, if you don’t want to call music that succeeds in doing this ‘virtuosic’, maybe the word you want is ‘irenic’.

The Matrix, the Oracle’s Appartment, Psychokinesis, ‘This is not a spoon’

F or me the Regenlied [Song of the Rain, Brahms Sonata for Piano and Violin, Op. 78] is like a dear and true friend whom I would never forsake for anyone else. In its soft, contemplatively dreaming feeling and its wondrously consoling strength, it is one of a kind.”
— Eduard Hanslick, 19th-Century music critic.

The chamber music repertoire is rife with intimate narrative between parts. In that regard, we want desperately to be reminded that human beings can be beneficent and responsive. We want music that will remind us of friends and family who have loved us and helped us and who have worked for the public good. And, equally often, we want music that will remind us of our own good-heartedness and steadfastness—of our own radical devotedness to those we love. We want music that helps us plumb the depths of our aspirations to frenzied sacrifice for significant others: we would never forsake them, even if it costs us our lives. Most mothers feel such a love for their children—a ferocity that’s a natural correlate of childbearing and biology. Others of us have to get our other-centered ferocity in other ways. So, if you don’t want to call music that succeeds in helping us do this ‘virtuosic’, maybe the word you want is ‘altruistic’ or ‘rapt’ or just ‘berserk’ (in the Norse sense of that word).

O f course you are aware—that no one can help loving it more than anything in the world, and that one becomes addicted to it by just studying and understanding it, by listening to it as in a dream, and by becoming completely absorbed by it ... When I play the last page of the E-flat major Adagio, I always think to myself that [Brahms] can only be a thoroughly good-hearted man.”
— Elisabeth von Herzogenberg, 19th-Century singer, remarking on Brahms’s Op. 78.

Virtuous—commendable, ethically laudable, venerable, redemptive;
Proficient—elite level of technic and interpretation;
Incredible, illuminating, transcendant—giftedness defying mortality and the triviality of human existence; fluency beggaring belief; super-human, exceeding known limits; god-like omniscience and omnipotence;
Courageous—scoffing at danger; gambling and winning against terrific odds; dynamic and processual; continuously (re-)earned, not a static ‘attribute’ of character;
Strenuous—the virtue of sweat and ‘dirty hands’; self-sacrifice to others / to humankind or to the professional guild (see Godlovitch, pp. 74-78); extraordinary exertion on behalf of public goods;
Orthodoxastic—integrity; embodying what the field believes or idealizes; beneficience; advocacy and regulatory role in opposition to wickedness or maleficence and mediocrity.

Oh, that last bullet, in the bulleted list above! Consider the plight of the arts in the U.S., and of art music in particular. The recently announced $16M cut in this year’s funding for the National Endowment for the Arts (NEA) is outrageous. “It means we must redouble our efforts to raise the arts consciousness of those who are seeking elective office in the coming year… On VoteUsa candidates are compared on 35 important issues: foreign policy, environment, … I clicked on ‘Education’ and found 56 sub-topics; number 53 was ‘Art and Music,’ and 6 out of the original 7 major candidates had no statement at all on it, ” says Magaret Lioi, CEO of Chamber Music America, in her editorial in this month’s issue of Chamber Music magazine (March 2008; 25(2):7). Currently the candidates “have no platform on the arts… the word ‘art’ doesn’t even appear on their websites.”

But every thinking human takes pride in seeing humankind flourish, and in knowing that the cultural legacy that has been bestowed upon us has been successfully passed on to the next generation. So ‘virtuosity’ is partly about Dawkins’s self-conserving (‘selfish’) gene: H. sapiens appreciating that what we have been as a people will endure beyond our life on the planet as individuals. Therefore, playing and composing that (a) significantly advance the cause of the arts and (b) serve as emblems of what civilized governments’ policies should support—must surely be ‘virtuosic’ as well.

James Ehnes’s concert tonight ran the gamut from rapt, to altruistic, to irenic (in the Brahms Op. 78, Vivace ma non troppo and Adagio), to engrossing (in the LeClair Sonata in D Major, Opus 9, No. 3), to profound, to transcendent, to redemptive, to fantastical (in the Bartók Rhapsody No. 2), to berserk—beyond courageous. The playing was righteous throughout, with highly accessible, visceral, and addictive elements. Ehnes was uncanny in his technical proficiency, oracular in both ‘red pill’ (Bartók) and ‘blue pill’ (Richard Strauss Sonata in E-flat, Op. 18) phrasing: clearly capable of taking the guild of musicians and each of us as individuals yet farther. Pyrotechnical, yes; iconic, yes; prodigious, yes; and at times near-miraculous (Brahms Scherzo, Sonatensatz). Segulah (“well-choosing,” “sustaining learning,” “Samek-Gimel-Lamed,” “לּגּסּ”) ! Tenth Dan! Jinlong Golden Dragon!

Virtuosic? T’would be damning by faint praise.

But how would you know if I’m right about this? Check out Ehnes’s recordings. Attend one of his forthcoming concerts yourself. Check out the several links below—on the epistemology of ideals and on virtue ethics. You don’t have to be a card-carrying philosopher to find these things fascinating. You don’t have to be Morpheus to know virtue when you hear it.

C onfucian virtues have been predominantly a perception of what it is to be a human being and how one should behave to fulfill the meaning of Life... recorded in Analects (Lu Yu) ... operating in a continually evolving process with no permanence or limit ... even the unknown is [a type of] knowledge [concerning which one can have, or not have, virtuosic mastery]. To Confucians, learning and discovery are themselves essential virtues ... not static but requiring interaction with others.”
— Tsung-I Dow, in Tymieniecka, p. 3.

Sunday, January 13, 2008

Performance Values: Deranged Self-Help Aims at ‘Having It All’, Or Not

S himoff offers a breakthrough approach to being happy, one that doesn’t depend on achievements, goals, money, relationships, or anything else ‘out there.’ Most books on happiness tell you to find the things that make you happy and do more of them. Although there’s nothing wrong with that, it won’t bring you the kind of deep and lasting happiness most people long for—the kind you’ll never lose, no matter what happens in your life. Based on cutting-edge research and knowledge from the world’s leading experts in the fields of positive psychology and neurophysiology, plus interviews with 100 truly happy people, this life-changing book provides a powerful, proven 7-step program that will enable you to be happier right now—no matter where you start. Studies show that each of us has a ‘happiness set-point’—a fixed range of happiness we tend to return to throughout our life—that’s approximately 50 percent genetic and 50 percent learned. In the same way you’d crank up the thermostat to get comfortable on a chilly day, you can actually raise your happiness set-point! The holistic 7-step program at the heart of Happy for No Reason encompasses ‘Happiness Habits’ for all areas of life: personal power, mind, heart, body, soul, purpose, and relationships.”
— Publisher’s jacket-blurb.

T he performances rarely rise above an undergraduate, state-school level, and often sink below. The recordings sound one-dimensional, and the Kohon Quartet sounds as if they play on plywood instruments. However, if you’re researching repertoire, this is an important recording, and hopefully these beautiful pieces will be visited by greater artists in the near future! … True, one would not mistake the Kohon Quartet for The Emerson, but on these late-Sixties recordings they perform with enthusiasm and commitment.”
— Customer Reviewers commenting on Kohon Quartet CD, Early String Quartet in the U.S.A., on Amazon.com website.

M y playing is so much better, I think, since I read Shimoff’s book and began to understand the 7 points. And my happiness set-point is better, and I’m more satisfied with my playing. Do you agree that, in the past month or so, I’m playing more freely, transparently?”
— Anonymous, overheard in a conservatory lunchroom.

Well, no. You’re not playing so much better. And, while ‘Chicken Soup for the Acquisitive Cyborg Soul’ hasn’t yet been written, I can see by the overheard remark above that there’s clearly a market for it, even among classically-trained musicians. Do you admire Lang Lang then—his playing and all that he stands for? And is it wrong for me to admire the oh-so-human mid-Sixties recordings by the Kohon Quartet?

Unlike other animals, we have the capacity to deceive ourselves as well as others. And our mendacity is probably embedded in our evolutionary past and our genes and thereby in our unconscious. In other words, we may not be able to resist our tendencies, to deceive ourselves in this way, to try to comfort ourselves. I don’t blame people for buying the Shimoff book, and I won’t argue with people who seem to find it helpful.

T he insistence on persvering, on living life in this ‘new normal’, is highly reminiscent of that post-9/11 trope that begged Americans to go out, shop, fly, do anything so that the terrorists would not win... The Plan’s ‘You are the architect of your life’ [est-like] motto is never completely dismantled. These characters who so often dream of different lives actually do attain them quite frequently.”
— Ashley Sayeau, Americanitis: Self-Help and the American Dream in Six Feet Under, Akass & McCabe, p.104.

S ix Feet Under attempts to analyze the ironies in self-help, and, consequently, in American views of success, individualism, and power... Is my life living up to the American Dream? Is that a valid question, or a narcissistic one? And, if my main objective is to help myself, what am I doing with others? In asking these questions, the series performs the logic of self-help—both its silly and its seductive sides... So, what do we make of our times when all this [Shimoff-type] nonsense actually works [or helps me be happier or more successful]?”
— Ashley Sayeau, Americanitis: Self-Help and the American Dream in Six Feet Under, Akass & McCabe, p.97.

R ationalizing, selectively focusing, evading, overcompensating, and so on make repression possible. Neither the repressing nor the acquiring of the wishful belief essentially involves intentional action. Both are tropisms. While the self-deceiver’s activities are motivated in that they have a purpose—to relieve his anxiety (and hence the belief, since it reduces anxiety, is always welcome)—they are not done ‘from’ or ‘for’ a reason.”
— Annette Barnes, Seeing through Self-Deception, p. 32.

T he objection that steroids provide an unnatural assist to performance is inchoate. Many of the means and ends which athletes use and seek are unnatural. From Nautilus machines to Gatorade, their lives are filled with drugs and devices whose aim is to maximize performance.”
— Norman Fost (bioethicist), New York Times, 1983.

T he performer exhibits a range of behaviour coincident with the sounds made which influence what we hear and how we judge what we hear. The ‘personalist’ anticipates the individualistic in performance—the person-centred particularities of performance and manner. Much value is pegged to this quality, which is richer than uniqueness, individuality, or idiosyncrasy. An individualistic performance is not just unique, individual, or idiosyncratic; it displays the signature of a person... Those who have seen Glenn Gould play Bach are invariably drawn to his mannerism of conducting the active voice with his ‘spare’ hand. Watching this allows listeners to separate the voices much more effectively. The uncanny clarity in Gould’s voice treatment is further heightened by this quirk. Further, one becomes more intricately involved in Gould’s way of making this music. Whoever remained impervious [to this]? Every performance manifests the dimensions of musicality and musicianship in the form of (1) expression and (2) technical skill. The former displays affect, mood, personality, and, for the personalist, draws its power from some inner source on which it is modeled... Virtuosity [only] matters because of an obvious banality of life; namely, most things that most humans do competently most of the time are simple to do. Most people can do them. We are, for most things, functionally intersubstitutable. Virtuosity diplays the near miracle of a mere human being doing something savagely difficult perfectly—on call... True virtuosity is a temporary suspension of predictable human fallibility. Recognizing this, one draws once more upon the inner source without which the [temporary] victory over human limitation loses all substance.”
— Stan Godlovitch, p. 140.

Popular marketing success though Shimoff may be, that doesn’t mean I have to like the book or its philosophy. It doesn’t mean I have to become a member of this cult or believe in its tenets. The est-like, Shimoff-type quest is, despite its assertions to the contrary, a quest that seeks to acquire more and more authority, more and more power, more invincibility—more and more individual happiness for the adherent. The quest denies our imperfections and mortality, and betrays our humanity. The quest is sovereignty-obsessed. It’s deranged.

I n the broadest sense, integrity in musical performance entails acting in accordance with that core set of principles or commitments that makes performance interpreters who they are. But while integrity thus entails the notion of authenticity, there is more to it than that. As well as consistency, integrity involves wholeness. It locates itself not just in isolated, discrete instances of adherence to principle but in consistent exemplification of the latter over time. The subject of integrity is an entire life conceived has having a beginning, a middle, and an end. And the person of integrity is someone whose life is ‘of a piece’, whose self is ‘whole and integrated’ [or whose aging or disabled self is coping in an ethical, admirable way with the ravages of age and disability and with the imperilment of the former self who is thus ravaged].”
— Jane O’Dea, p. 98.

You, in the conservatory lunchroom—your music will be commodified and treated as the coinage of a power fetish, if you continue on your current path. Your stories of mastery and superiority may accumulate, your virtuosic performances may build and multiply, but you and your imagined ‘competitors’ are still mortal, still beatable. The game you are playing at is one where everyone loses. Everything that was directly lived and experienced ‘recedes into mere representation’, as Guy Debord once said. A person engaging in this quest foolishly ‘buys into a system of spectacles and domination.’ This is not Chamber Music Tomorrow. I surely hope it’s not. If you’re going to buy a happiness book, buy Lyubomirsky's book.

Here are a couple of spreadsheet questionnaires I created, from instruments that appear in Lyubomirsky. You can click on the screenshots to download them and try them out.

Spreadsheet version of Subjective Happiness Scale of Lyubomirsky

Spreadsheet version of Lyubomirsky Person-Activity Fit Diagnostic

I n front of the lens, I am at the same time: the one I think I am; the one I want others to think I am; the one the photographer thinks I am; the one the photographer makes use of, to exhibit the art.”
— Roland Barthes, Camera Lucida, p. 13.

T he aesthetic and artistic values realized in an incorrect performance of a work can nonetheless bear upon the appreciation of it, if the values themselves would be realizable in a correct performance—one that met whatever conditions of correctness the performance in question fails to meet... Even though a performance of Elgar’s cello concerto may depart from the score in certain minor respects, we can still refer qualities found in the performance to the performed work as long as we take these departures to be inessential to the qualities in question. What matters, then, is not whether a performance of it in which a given quality is realized is itself a ‘correct’ performance, but whether that quality could have been realized in a correct performance of it. Where we judge that it could have been, we refer the quality to the performed work, if one of two further conditions is satisfied:
(1) it is a positive quality that increases the value of the work [to someone, not necessarily everyone], or
(2) if it is a negative quality, we take it that any correct performance of the work would have that quality or would be likely to have that quality—that is, that the weakness lies in the set of constraints, not in a particular way of interpreting that set of constraints.”
— Dave Davies, Art as Performance, p.218.