Moving around is not required, although it’s very satisfying (for me and many others). But does the satisfaction arise from the impression we feel we’re making on the viewer of how hard we’re working, or how full of emotion we are? Or is it just satisfying to move your body to the music like a dancer? Or, again, do we just think it’s the way it should look to perform? Some clarinetists play with the bell of their instrument fixed between their knees most or all of the time. But it’s undeniably exciting when they are overcome and the clarinet leaps away from their body and starts swaying to the music. Or how about when a horn player lifts the bell off their knee to let the brassy tone ring out? Very dramatic and exciting, although you can actually make the same sound without the lift. Psychologically it’s a wild and crazy thing to do, though. Makes you play louder and wilder.

Well, there’s my thoughts on the matter, although you’ve now got me trying to remember an essay I read about 20 years ago in an aesthetics class about Apollonian vs. Dionysian art…

1. This is ghoulish http://www.jaschaheifetz.com/shopping/index.html

2. Rubinstein master class:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6iYkpM_Rtkg

I immediately thought of Uchida, whom I find endless engaging, but who is, it seems, quite demonstrative.

Regards!

interesting!

And the mystery of why the scent of pepperoni and sausage is still wafting through the IU Bookstore’s first floor is now solved.

Non-classical example: I started playing guitar in a blues band as a teenager, and at that age, I wanted to look as cool as possible on stage. For some reason I thought that meant being still, with no expression, imagining that it conveyed that what I was doing was completely effortless. The effect, though, was more “boring” than “effortless.” The bandleader said, “You sound good. Try looking like you enjoy it, if you want the audience to enjoy it too.”

So I began what I thought was pure theatricality: smiling, dancing a little. Soon I discovered that I was enjoying myself a lot more, it actually felt much more natural than standing still and looking imperiously bored, and it made my playing better and more inventive.

Maybe the example doesn’t apply because it is non-classical, but having also played some classical music, and many other genres, I suspect that it does. At the very least, a little movement (dancing) helps impart the sound of rhythmic authority.

Reminds me of a ‘Piano Festival’ that I had to suffer through recently at a local university. The faculty performers ranged from ghastly to flashy, but the attempts at Dionysian abandon were ubiquitous. When, over lunch, a student parent asked rather plaintively, “Is all of that moving around for show?” I really didn’t know what to say. 98% of it had been. Really, really embarrassing. We’re not talking Rubinstein, here. Think Frankenstein’s monster on meth. Think George Bush trying to roll off 3-syllable vocab…

How do you explain the difference between natural follow-through and “Are you looking at ME” gesticulation? Especially when executed by a displaced engineer?

Told the poor lady that if it made her notice the music, then it was Real McCoy (that even Apollo would approve– HAH!–consensus at last!) and that if it made her notice the pianist instead, then she probably had a weenie on her hands.

I don’t care what movements a performer makes (I often close my eyes or, lately, watch the pedaling). I would pour out a libation, however, to any god who can stop pianists from humming or moaning or groaning or breathing so loudly that their nose whistle is in a different key from the tonic or dominant of the piece. Can’t some god press the human “mute” button?