Rebel With A Cause

Americans. We love the hero. Whether it's fighting for freedom or just "sticking it to the man", we tend to enjoy those who love the revolution. Is it wrong that there's nothing I find more titillating than a bad boy who has ideas about "the way of the world"? Perhaps if he wore a leather jacket and wrote songs about "the bureaucracy"- with a half lit cigarette hanging from his moistened lips? It's important to understand, whilst studying Beethoven, that he is just that, a "Robinson Crusoe" figure(as Czerny remembers him, p. 89) though in my head he looks more like a James Dean rendition of "the Fonz".

Beethoven's first serious teacher, Christian Gottlob Neefe had this to say about his student : "He would surely become a Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart were he to continue as he has begun" (p.82). But he didn't get to live the life like Mozart did he? No! While Mozart lived the equivalent of a spoiled suburbanite getting carted around in a minivan, Beethoven grew up troubled, without a mother and with a father who suffered from "moral deterioration" (p. 83). It was this life of angst and struggle that shaped him into the man we know and love, a fact that is crucial in the understanding of Beethoven's style and performance practice.

The biggest critique of Beethoven is his lack of polished delicacy. Though he was capable of imitation, his true style was that of a cathartic, naked passion that was far ahead of his time. The most important lesson that we can derive from this chapter, and our study of Beethoven in general is the importance of musical expression EVEN at the expense of technical facility.

Would you rather be able to play the most difficult piece in the world perfectly, note for note, or would you play the simplest children's piece with such expression that everyone in the audience was overcome with emotion, be it bliss or grief? If you honestly choose the first, in my humble opinion, music is not your calling.

If we sincerely call Beethoven one of the greatest musicians that ever lived, perhaps we can pay closer attention to the ideas that shaped him. Beethoven went as far as to say: "The increasing mechanism of pianoforte playing would in the end destroy all truth of expression in music" (p.98). His student Ries remembers: " When I left something out in a passage, a note or a skip, which in many cases he wished to have specially emphasized, or struck a wrong key, he seldom said anything; yet when I was at fault with regard to the expression, the crescendi or matter of that kind, or in the character of the piece, he would grow angry. Mistakes of the other kind, he said, were due to change; but these last resulted from want of knowledge, feeling or attention. He himself often made mistakes of the first kind, even when playing in public" (p. 90)

What if we encouraged our students to play much simpler pieces, with far more expression? What if we spent more time on Chopin preludes than on etudes, even at the college level? One could argue that at the college level, one should be able to play with both dexterity, AND musical expression, though I would reply that our expression suffers greatly as we try to progress in our technique so rapidly at the same time. Wouldn't it be interesting to devote much more time to conveying ourselves on stage, rather than just repeating all of the notes? What if we DIDN'T play the piece note for note, just as all of the masters before us did? What if we learned to improvise? These are questions that I am addressing in my own practice and composition. The study of expression within more elementary pieces is something I am exploring on my own, because as some of you may know, the last time I performed my Chopin Scherzo, it lacked both technical facility AND musical expression. :)