Music and Feeling

The most unfortunate disaster to befall the art of Western music is the loss of the understanding that, in order to change a pitch, there has to be continuity of feeling for linear musical expression. In other words, the integrity of feeling is paramount, not the idea of singing or playing a different note.

The loss of understanding the nature of linear progression from pitch to pitch is a direct result of singing or playing notes instead of perceiving the written symbol as a pitch, which being so many vibrations per second is by definition emotional. Worse then follows, for the "notey" approach leads directly to thinking that notes are high or low. Having lost emotional linear continuity, our culture thinks of notes as high or low. But it is only a convention that put pitches of greater numbers of vibrations per second at the geographical top of the staff. Conceivably it could have been the other way around, although a thousand years of musical history with firmly established patterns of habit in our conscious make it difficult to conceive.

Music is linear in time, not vertical in space. When we change pitches from one to the next, we do so by feeling the line, not by producing notes that are called high or low. Very simply put, we change pitches in music to avoid monotony (monotone). This is achieved in singing by speaking a vowel with proper emotional weight, never by singing a note, and in instrumental music by feeling the emotional weight of the required pitch at that point in time while activating the instrument. This emotional weight is defined for us by the relative weight of beats in a bar. We must emphasize this idea and proclaim it from the rooftop of every musical establishment in the world. Singers produce pitch from a spoken vowel, i.e. the pitch and all its tonal manifestations are a result, but not from an intellectualization of the concreteness of the printed note. Instruments produce pitch as a result of a process inherent in their mechanics, again not in a printed sign concreted by the player's intellect. Vowelization and mechanical process are guided by the beats in the bar.

Even when the line repeats the same pitch, the repetition cannot have the same weight from note to note; there must be emotional inflection according to the weight indicated by its place in the bar. Baroque bass lines of repeated pitches are the obvious example if this. Cellists and bassists who play these lines mechanically do not realize the enormous capacity of expressive support of the melody and other accompanying voices which should contribute to the power of the music to convey its deep feelings. To define music as simply singing or playing notes to be interpreted by the performer is incorrect. Besides, it doesn't take into account the expressive power of silence (rests).¹

Indeed rests, which are symbols of silence, are as linear as notes, which are symbols of sound simply because music exists in a time continuum. Such a thought may appear to be a gratuitous assertion, but the fact arises from any amount of thought on the matter.

A note is a written symbol, ink on a page, a visual representation of an aural phenomenon whose expressive power is greater than that very symbol. In his Memoirs, Berlioz spoke with admiration of the orchestra of Stuttgart and the sight-reading capability of its members. He said they not only read the notes but their nuances as well. Too many people today believe that music consists of playing any particular note on time (especially in matters of ensemble attacks and re-entry after a breath). In this school of performance, the note then becomes subject to quality control (especially as imposed by the teacher, the coach, or the conductor). The very definition of the word "control" indicates that the musical expression will be fettered and limited.

Another problem in the matter of notes on the staff is that in the nature of things the more vibrations per second (the higher on the staff), the greater the physical reaction to produce them. This is true, but the reaction is a result of the neural system triggering it. Currently too many teachers who think of notes as high and low teach students to make that physical reaction happen, but that directly contradicts not only relative emotional weight in common practice notation but also the objective physiology of the human body whose activities are triggered by feelings (neural activity). In simpler words, things happen, but the performer must let them happen, not make them happen.

The act of singing and playing an instrument is intensely and physically demanding, but the intense physical activity is activated and governed by the emotional awareness involved in the preparation of speaking or playing intensely. If the performer muscularly activates the intensity to produce the musical experience instead of feeling the pitch emotionally, he or she will end up yelling or bawling or overplaying the instrument. Pianists are especially vulnerable to this abuse, as heard in the number of recordings released where the piano sounds metallic and/or tinny, a direct result of banging. Additionally, far too many singers allow recordings of their out-of-tune singing into the market place. Unfortunately, the public relations efforts of the agents of these people seem to have bamboozled the critics and the public into not using their ears. Perhaps the performers themselves cannot hear anymore.

A concomitant factor in the loss of linear expression resides in the rhythmic obsession of our time. Rhythm imposed on music instead of underlying it distracts from the emotional awareness needed to change pitches linearly. This is most evident in the current use of the guitar, even the acoustic guitar, as a percussion instrument in more popular forms of musical entertainment and contemporary church music.

When rhythm is the dominant factor of musical performance, attention is given to it instead of emotional weight required by the line. This leads inevitably to more weight being given to the note that is higher on the staff. The added weight falsifies the emotional weight required by the beat or subdivision as indicated by the composer's notation (second beats are weaker than first beats even on pitches notated higher on the staff). The added weight also makes physical demands on the performer that make performance on the superstar level more a matter of brute strength than artistic effortlessness. This practice is very common today at all levels of achievement and leads to the necessity for teaching techniques that achieve this muscularity thereby making subtlety, buoyancy, and refinement in musical expression a stranger to our concert and opera halls.

However, this approach to notes has another unfortunate effect: it causes the resonance of vocal and wind instruments to shift through the different registers of the instrument. Now this means that the transition from register to register in the instrument becomes a matter of muscular control, which we know to be inimical to the emotional process of feeling the music to allow it to express itself.

As far back as the eighteenth century, Johann Mattheson, a composer as well as a theorist, spoke of the principle of easing sound with rising pitch and reinforcing it when descending to a lower register. An acoustic principle in organ building dictates that the voicer regulate the principal eight-foot stop to predominate over the four-foot principal stop. Thus the four foot stop functions as an overtone to the fundamental instead of leaving the instrument sounding top heavy. Organs voiced by builders insensitive to this acoustic principle prove the assertion. Orchestral conductors of an older, more expressive school will (when first and second violins are in octaves) allow the seconds to lead (which is not the same thing as dominate) with the same result as that of the organ, i.e. a sound that is not top-heavy. Those playing the upper octave feel more easily the correct intonation when they refer to the octave below. (The principle for lower pitches on the organ is for the eight-foot stop to predominate over the sixteen foot stop and for cellos to dominate the basses or violones. Does this mean that there is an emotional connotation to the grand staff radiating outward from middle C? The habit of so many twentieth- century composers of ending triumphantly on a C major chord might have something of the answer. Even though standard pitch has changed over the years, we are dealing with emotional phenomena that result in musical expression, not physical measurement.) An interesting example of this approach to musical expression is the unaccompanied octaves of the soprano and mezzo soprano soloists in the Agnus Dei of the Verdi Requiem. When the lower voice leads, the result is remarkably more musical than that achieved when the soprano leads.

The same result happens in double-stop playing on stringed instruments. If more weight is given the lower pitch on the staff, the result is a warmer and clearer texture and the upper pitch on the staff is much easier to tune, thus preventing the accusation of all that bowing and scraping (see the Bluffer's Guide to Music).

A related problem arising from pressurized performance is that muscular effort in musical delivery causes music to slow down because that approach to music-making leads to quality control and judgment. Unfortunately, it takes time to judge anything and tempos must slow to accommodate. When we compare Verdi's metronome markings with today's tempos, we realize that added pressure is not only deleterious musically; it is physically so demanding that the trend is to omit three or four bars at the very climax of the arias to give the singers an opportunity to get a second wind, as it were, for the last cadence. Such a practice invalidates not only Verdi but also the drama. The public says, "Bravo!", the conductors are complacent and critics say nothing.²

If it is possible for voices and instruments to use less weight on pitches that are higher on the staff than for stresses lower on the staff, it follows that, because of the added physical response to pitches higher on the staff (unwilled but emotionally triggered), composers can give their musically stronger statements to weaker parts of the text, thereby creating power. This is equally true in instrumental music with higher pitches on weak beats. This cannot be emphasized strongly enough. The powerful expression of music at the upper part of the staff comes from weakness rather than strength (cf. Mattheson). By definition, this will move the performer and listener far more than attempts to impress with brute force regardless of dynamic level. It also saves wear and tear on the performer. In any life situation, power from strength is repressive and abusive, whereas power from weakness tells of gentle and expressive communication and love.

One may examine any score of Mozart to discover how true this principle is. One colleague with a doctorate in music and another with a master's in early music each on separate occasions pooh-poohed the very notion of this principle. They both went away and started looking at scores from this point of view and came back with exclamations of surprise. The idea is easy to verify even at the simplest level by seeing how often the great composers put unstressed final syllables of words with feminine endings higher on the staff.

Also, in both vocal and instrumental music a particular convention needs to be examined by example. When a partial text is repeated with additional text, the inflection of the repetition is weaker than the addition. Say, "I like spaghetti." Then say, "I like spaghetti and meatballs." The emotional inflection "I like spaghetti" in the first statement is strong and in the second it is weak. That is how we speak. When this is done in music, the resulting expression becomes deeper and more moving. A simple example of this is Cherubino's statement, "Un desio, un desio ch'io non posso spie-gar" with the repeated "un desio" higher on the staff. When the repeated text is delivered with the relative weight that occurs with natural speech, the line has more forward motion and life and indeed comes across more musically and dramatically.

The musical pun of Handel's "and ye shall find rest, and ye shall find rest (rest) unto your souls" presents the process in the light of pitches lower on the staff before the expansion of the text.

In Purcell’s wonderful song, “I Attempt from Love’s Sickness”, the text “ thou canst not raise forces, thou canst not raise forces enough to rebel” voice teachers consistently ignore the convention by allowing their students to breathe before “enough”, missing a golden opportunity to teach expressive singing to beginners as the students acquire technique.

Another excellent example occurs in the Libera me of Fauré's Requiem. When the baritone (and later the chorus) sings "quando caeli movendi sunt, quando caeli movendi sunt et terra", the text "et terra" acquires more musical and substantial poetic significance when the repeated part of the text is sung with less emotional weight than it was the first time. This is true even though the repeated text is set higher on the staff .

An instrumental example of this principle is the main theme of the second movement of Mozart's Piano Concerto, K.537. When beat one of the second bar is restated at the beginning of the third bar, the repeti-tion must be weaker in order for the phrase to reach its deepest expressive fruition. Another instrumental example is the opening of the slow movement of the Beethoven Sonata for piano, op. 81a.

To repeat the opening motive lacks interest; to echo it falsifies its function, and to play it louder removes the listener's focus from the subsequent blooming of the melodic material that follows. Only the emotional device being described gives the continuation its proper place in the long line. Another instrumental example, slightly modified, is the Chopin Polonaise in A Flat.

At measures 86 and 87, the melodic configuration of the arpeggiated 6/4 chord on the first two beats of those bars works with greater depth of feeling because of this emotionally changed weight. Of equal importance is that this treatment allows the melody to express itself in a greater length of line. The principle does not apply when a cadence is involved.

Teachers and coaches, performers and conductors all need to reexamine this common musical device totally ignored by those who reduce notation to rhythm and pitch. To ignore it, classical musical expression

will continue to wither and pale in significance and performers and audiences will be deprived of more moving experiences.

There is an interesting scene in one of George MacDonald's stories. Deep in the mountain the travelers meet a miner of jewels. The miner derides gems found near the surface of the earth as pale and feeble but praises those mined in the bowels of the earth as having a bright and fiery liquid quality. The more deeply performers mine the depths of a composer's notational guide to the emotional expression of his ideas, the more the liquid fire of his music will be experienced.

While dealing with this metaphor, the reader is best advised to remember that what performers go through in their training and practice is a process. The jewels mined at the beginning of the process will be paler than those mined after years of study, reflection and process, but they are still jewels. Something worthwhile is gained at every stage of musical discovery. Time merely increases the depths that are plumbed, and more brilliance is the result.

The same result happens in double-stop playing on stringed instruments. If more weight is given the lower pitch on the staff, the result is a warmer and clearer texture and the upper pitch on the staff is much easier to tune, thus preventing the accusation of all that bowing and scraping (see the Bluffer's Guide to Music).

A related problem arising from pressurized performance is that muscular effort in musical delivery causes music to slow down because that approach to music-making leads to quality control and judgment. Unfortunately, it takes time to judge anything and tempos must slow to accommodate. When we compare Verdi's metronome markings with today's tempos, we realize that added pressure is not only deleterious musically; it is physically so demanding that the trend is to omit three or four bars at the very climax of the arias to give the singers an opportunity to get a second wind, as it were, for the last cadence. Such a practice invalidates not only Verdi but also the drama. The public says, "Bravo!", the conductors are complacent and critics say nothing.

If it is possible for voices and instruments to use less weight on pitches that are higher on the staff than for stresses lower on the staff, it follows that, because of the added physical response to pitches higher on the staff (unwilled but emotionally triggered), composers can give their musically stronger statements to weaker parts of the text, thereby creating power. This is equally true in instrumental music with higher pitches on weak beats. This cannot be emphasized strongly enough. The powerful expression of music at the upper part of the staff comes from weakness rather than strength (cf. Mattheson). By definition, this will move the performer and listener far more than attempts to impress with brute force regardless of dynamic level. It also saves wear and tear on the performer. In any life situation, power from strength is repressive and abusive, whereas power from weakness tells of gentle and expressive communication and love.

One may examine any score of Mozart to discover how true this principle is. One colleague with a doctorate in music and another with a master's in early music each on separate occasions pooh-poohed the very notion of this principle. They both went away and started looking at scores from this point of view and came back with exclamations of surprise. The idea is easy to verify even at the simplest level by seeing how often the great composers put unstressed final syllables of words with feminine endings higher on the staff.

Also, in both vocal and instrumental music a particular convention needs to be examined by example. When a partial text is repeated with additional text, the inflection of the repetition is weaker than the addition. Say, "I like spaghetti." Then say, "I like spaghetti and meatballs." The emotional inflection "I like spaghetti" in the first statement is strong and in the second it is weak. That is how we speak. When this is done in music, the resulting expression becomes deeper and more moving. A simple example of this is Cherubino's statement, "Un desio, un desio ch'io non posso spie-gar" with the repeated "un desio" higher on the staff. When the repeated text is delivered with the relative weight that occurs with natural speech, the line has more forward motion and life and indeed comes across more musically and dramatically.

The musical pun of Handel's "and ye shall find rest, and ye shall find rest (rest) unto your souls" presents the process in the light of pitches lower on the staff before the expansion of the text.

In Purcell’s wonderful song, “I Attempt from Love’s Sickness”, the text “ thou canst not raise forces, thou canst not raise forces enough to rebel” voice teachers consistently ignore the convention by allowing their students to breathe before “enough”, missing a golden opportunity to teach expressive singing to beginners as the students acquire technique.

Another excellent example occurs in the Libera me of Fauré's Requiem. When the baritone (and later the chorus) sings "quando caeli movendi sunt, quando caeli movendi sunt et terra", the text "et terra" acquires more musical and substantial poetic significance when the repeated part of the text is sung with less emotional weight than it was the first time. This is true even though the repeated text is set higher on the staff.

An instrumental example of this principle is the main theme of the second movement of Mozart's Piano Concerto, K.537.

When beat one of the second bar is restated at the beginning of the third bar, the repeti-tion must be weaker in order for the phrase to reach its deepest expressive fruition. Another instrumental example is the opening of the slow movement of the Beethoven Sonata for piano, op. 81a.