On learning Schwartz’s String Quartet No 2
There is a moment which just might be my favorite moment in musical working: it is the moment when a set of pitches which you have become familiar with stop just being a sequence and become music.
With pieces we have heard for many years we never experience this transformation. We are already familiar with some musical journey from our listening. We make choices about how much to repeat what we have already experienced and how much to re-invent it, but we are always starting from an act of repetition.
But with a piece of music that has just come from a pen of a composer, we have the experience of sounding out the notes without any familiarity. We sound them, we correct them, we sound them, we correct them. And then the moment comes, a character forms within the notes. We start to feel that we are conversing with something that has a life of its own. This is where I feel fresh the human ability to take a sequence and with it create music. It is a kind of miracle, really.
Well, on Friday, March 21, as we worked with Elliott Schwartz at USM in Gorham, I had the experience of many breakthroughs as I have just described. First of all, I find some composers exert a commentary just by being there. There were a few things we had not been sure how to do in the score, and a number of them just seemed obvious once Elliott was sitting with us.
Then a few things were made clear through direct commentary from Elliott. [Editor’s note: watch some video clips of Elliott after the jump.]
But then another invaluable part of the learning process had an important chance to be activated. In the open rehearsal we played through the piece for the people attending the class. At that moment it is not just a piece of music but a message going from us the performers to the audience. There is a little higher tension, a little bit of nerves, and most importantly a fresh instinctive impression of how audience relates to what they are hearing.
All of these experiences boded well for the piece. Soon we will get to try to bring it successfully to the audience at Merrill.
video clips of composer Elliott Schwartz
On the Artistic Process and Inspiration 5:33
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On Blending Louise Nevelson and Aaron Copland 3:53
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You might be interested in Rockland’s Farnsworth Museum, the second-largest US collection of Louise Nevelson’s work.
On Chamber Music and the Borromeo String Quartet 6:38
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Aaron Ackley says:
I know the exact feeling Nick. Music is such a marvelous gift.
@-RON