Couple of days ago, just discussed with my students the idea that analysis can be as much a creative act as composing and performing, and that creative acts in music are often a form of problem solving acts. Today I read with great fascination that transcribing ancient guqin scores (古琴普) can be a very high level of problem solving as well.

The article in 早报周刊 interviewed a Singapore guqin expert 纪志群, who described the process as involving tremendous interpretative work, drawing upon knowledge of Chinese ancient music history, archaelogy, historical editions, Chinese theories of tuning, Chinese literature, Chinese aesthetics, and, of course, historical forms of guqin notations and performance traditions.

I particularly like the metaphor he used to describe the relation between the transcriber and the notation. The latter is like the river bed, the former the living water that flows along: while the river bed more or less determines the course of the river, it can be altered by the flowing water. I suppose the same may be said of both a performance and an analytical interpretation--one literally sounded out, the other as sounded in the analyst's mind; if both are slavish 'reproductions' of the score/traditions, they would be 'without life' (无生气); yet ignoring traditions will result in undesirable groundlessness (无源之水， 无本之木). Transcribing guqin notation is no less a creative act!

Analyzing music with your fingers

Roy Howard's talk "French Music in the Footsteps of Chopin" (20 Oct) opened up a different window for me with regard to analysis. He presented a series of examples showing how various French composers such as Faure, Chabrier, and Debussy 'borrowed' (or were inspired by) piano-writing ideas from Chopin. What was fascinating was that many of these borrowings/allusions were not so much audible or perceivable on the score as they were obvious to the pianist when playing the pieces. It was as if (in Howat's words) Chopin's musical ideas were refracted through the prism of the creative minds of these later composers. Such an analytical approach would require someone like Roy Howat who has extensive familiarity with these repertoires as a performer: one might say, his fingers became his analytical eyes and ears for such analyses!

Philip Glass on world music

Love this statement from Glass in an interview with Peter Lavezzoli (2002):

"The fact is that an educated musician today would be foolish not to acquaint himself or herself with traditions from all over the world. They can hide from it if they want to, but the reality is that it's not just that we know it, but the audience know it. It becomes a kind of parachialism to be confined to a Eurocentric tradition." (Lavezzoli, 2006:146)

Wished I had this understanding when I was younger, but then it's never too late. And what an exciting journey it is now that I have started exploring some of these non-Western traditions.

Good teachers, bad teachers

Heard a BBC radio interview with Anthony Horowitz yesterday. On the influence of teachers on youngsters, he said something like "A bad teacher spoils your day, a good teacher makes your life." Teaching music theory/analysis should ideally make a musician.

Asking the "what ifs" and "what might-have-beens"

"Every artist's development carries with it a sense of paths not taken, of unfulfilled promise, of possibilities left untouched. No one can retrace these paths, and speculation is ultimately futile. But it can be done with more or less imagination, more or less tact." (Puffett, 1996: 37)

Just read Derrick Puffett's inspiring piece of rumination--if I may call it such--on "what Webern lost", as he puts it, in having studied with Schoenberg, and not say Pfitzner, Schmidt or Schoeck. Apart from indirectly offering a refreshing and fascinating account of aspects of Webern's biography, one interwoven with a fascinating glimpse into Webern's sketches and diary entries, Puffett imaginatively and beautifully illustrates a potentially fruitful way of analyzing music, especially a composer's juvenile works. He quotes E.T. Cone on the two usual games played: to measure early works against the later ones ("imperfect copies") and to find "intimations of a style yet to be formed". He then proposes a third: "finding intimations of a style not later realised".

This exercise (of the musical mind) is potentially exhilarating! Not only does it provide a different motivation for music analysis, it is also a more challenging and intriguing way to integrate analysis with historical/musicological studies.

"The worst crime"

In the latest issue of Eastman Notes (Winter 2009), Stephen Hough told the interviewer:

"The fun thing about playing is alerting a person to something special, to stimulating the brains of your audience. If there is anything predictable about your recital, from the pieces you play to the way you play them, I think that is the worst crime."

How true this is of music analysis! I recall how great analyses opened my eyes/ears to wonderful things in the music which I was previously unaware of, or they gave me a different pair of ears to listen to a familiar piece differently. Whichever the case, the experiences are often intellectually stimulating and, equally importantly, aesthetically enriching: I came away feeling mentally energized and wanting to go play or listen to the piece.

I should aim to teach music analysis with similar goals as Hough does in his piano performances.

NTU ADM's official opening

Today is the official opening of NTU's School of Art, Design and Media Building. In the newsflash e-mail, the Acting Chair of ADM Assoc Prof Suresh Sethi is quoted to have said:

"We believe that students at ADM are truly looking for ideas that come from their own lives, their own surroundings – ideas that they assimilate with a scientist’s brain, a poet’s heart and a painter’s vision."

If music were included, I think the additional phrase would be "a musician's voice", which I'd like to think should ideally integrate with the brain, the heart and a vision. Again, to relate to music analysis, to analyze music is to attempt to understand that voice.