Newsgroups: bit.listserv.allmusic
Date:         Thu, 17 Dec 1992 08:10:32 EST
From:         Ken Koester <MAINT2@ERS.BITNET>
Subject: The Day the Music Died (VI): Defining Moments

Well, you've already read about several if you've followed this series; these
were moments that truly defined, shaped, turned, revolutionized, whatever,
music and my relationship to it.  Sometimes the significance of a defining
moment, while every bit as sharp, is not quite so broad; James Joyce used to
call such sharp, clear, little moments of insight *ephiphanies* (appropriate
for the season, right?) & collected them assiduously.  Here are a few retrieved
from yrs. truly's slow storage.

I saw a talented classical guitarist at IU give a recital once in the course of
which he played a Bach 3-part invention.  How could one hand sound like 3
voices?  I watched his hands hoping to get a clue, but his fingers moved in
complicated patterns I couldn't hope to unravel.  I think I realized then how
little most musicians get out of their instruments.

Years later I watched Mark O'Connor play double-stopped for 5 minutes or more:
an entire jam in 2 voices.  Same feeling, & it reminds me of a line from
Firesign Theatre:  "How do I make my voice
 do that?"  Multi-part
composition, playing, and listening fascinates me in ways I can't verbally
relate.


I didn't know Scott Reiss or Tina Chancey when I went to an Ear-Trade recital,
but I was interested in the recorder, and this was a recorder concert, so I
went.  What "Ear-Trade" was, was "Early-Traditional" music.  That is, a fusion
of early music with Appalachian & other folk music:  sometimes folk instruments
doing medieval tunes, sometimes medieval instruments doing folk tunes,
sometimes medleys of medieval and folk tunes, or even early blues, with the one
segue-ing into the other.  In a flash it came to me that early music could be
*living* music because it had a deep connection that had never been severed to
popular music, folk music, whatever, and because these performers were showing
that you didn't have to treat it as sancrosanct.  You could play with it, jam
a little, hook it together in ways you wouldn't normally have thought of.

A few years later my teacher showed me simple ways of ornamenting Renaissance
music & making divisions, mostly by filling up intervals in interesting ways.
The catch is, you can't write it down; if you do, that's like playing tennis
without the net.  More fun to do it on the fly, and never the same way twice.
It's all getting away from the tyranny of the notes, you see.  And only when
you treat the notes as a resource, rather than something holy, can you make
something *living* of the music, even if you wind up playing every pitch and
only the pitches that the composer noted down.  This might be an easier lesson
to learn if you learn to play jazz or rock first; I'm convinced, though, that
every musician deserving the name learns it at some point or another.


I'm listening to =The Magic Flute= for the first time.  The Queen of the Night
sings her famous aria.  The tessitura is in the stratosphere for most of her
solo.  A shiver goes down my spine & my hair begins to stand on end.  This is
*why* we have singers & operas.

I'm listening to a good brass ensemble play Gabrieli's double-choir late 1500s
church music.  I've played it myself on recorder, so I know I like it.  Fanfare
rings out in polyphonic fashion from 4 different lines.  This is triumphant
music that sweeps away all opposition to it, that carries the spirit unresis-
ting away:  this is music at the first moment it realized its power *as* music,
not in service to something else.  It is the music playing the music.

I'm in church playing for the public for the first time, duets with my teacher.
I know the first 2 pieces cold.  I lift the recorder to my lips, play the first
2 notes--I can't breathe.  I can breathe *in*, but not *out*.  The sound coming
out is very weak & there isn't enough room in my lungs to keep taking in all
the air I'm taking in.  An interesting problem flits across my mind for a
second:  what *am* I going to do with all that air?  In the midst of all my
panic, of course, because I know that if you blow too hard, your recorder just
goes sharp & with what I have to discharge, we're talking about 2 octaves
above normal here.  I still don't know what happened or how I recovered again.

I'm in my room at IU listening to what passes for rock on the radio.  Some new
group comes on.  Hey, what's this?  These Dire Straits guys sound like the old
Band.  Maybe there's hope for rock 'n' roll after all.
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