Some growth

Over the past two weeks I have been BUSY, which has been nice. Though, it did send the Stockhausen towards the back burner for the present moment. Before I did get swamped learning new music (Falstaff, Concordanza, etc) I did get that lesson on the Stockhausen which was very insightful As well gave me some indirect feedback on my preparation to this point. There is an update to my performance plan for this (though I will be open to venues ;) )

First the lesson.

When we undertake works like this I think it is very important to find people who are involved in the traditions that surround this music. Be it through their mentors, a life time of performance and conducting, and so on. I am fortunate enough to get to access to these people on a daily basis and have really taken advantage of it and plan to continue. One thing that came up in the lesson was in regards to this tradition that is being established right now around modern music and music of the 20^th century. It is not hard to imagine back to Viennese court days and with our modern understanding of the performance traditions of those times to imagine how things could have been in the performance world. Well, right now we are in our own period of traditions in regards to notation, and performance.

“NOTHING is as obvious as it may seem.”

It could be something as simple as a slash through a note, the use of IRR, time scale, etc. all of these markings have been around long enough to have had a tradition established for the most part. Or at least a general consensus among performers on how these gestures are executed. I can tell you that after this lesson and discussing what has become the consensus, and why has changed how I play things. It also makes me feel rather silly for not asking more questions before.

In regards to this development of tradition, or musical language I think it is so very important to have all avenues of communication open, and critical thinking turned on. Since the availability to information is so present now with the internet and its ability to disseminate this information to most everywhere there is no excuse to not be asking all the questions.

In the end I learned a lot more than I have written here, that will come later.

My plan is to perform the Stockhausen in May, on a program with works by Messiaen, Reynolds, and one other word TBD.