December 27, 2023
What I’ve learned about trying too hard
I’ve applied to my writing an important discovery from one of my most intensive periods of cello practicing. From about age 16, I practiced 2-8 hours per day, depending on my schedule.
That ultra-focused stretch of practicing occurred when I was 25, studying for my master’s in cello performance at the Northwestern University School of Music. I’d been working on tone production—and was becoming so frustrated that I could hardly think.
I could tell I was stalled and, one day I was so disgusted with my lack of progress that when I arrived at the week’s cello lesson, I yanked the cello out of the case, flung my bow onto the strings and pulled.
The cello emitted a huge, bell-like note, but I was too agitated to notice.
“Did you hear that?” I asked my teacher. “How could it get any worse?”
Next: But was it worse?
November 2, 2022
What makes a masterwork, and how I discovered this
Part Three: Beethoven’s Violin Concerto
I majored in cello performance, inspired by so many classical composers. I’d been playing music and listening to it for more than three decades when I experienced a moment of revelation, listening to the Beethoven Violin Concerto.
In Martin Buber’s I and Thou, I’d recently read, “This is the eternal source of art: a man is faced by a form which desires to be made through him into a work. This form is no offspring of his soul, but is an appearance which steps up to it and demands of it the effective power.”
Intuitively, I felt that this was correct. Therefore, if this “appearance” has a form and shape of its own—somewhere out there in the ether—the composer, painter, or novelist has to sense that form and shape. Then, the closer the match between this invisible form and the creative artist’s rendering of it, the more compelling the final product is.
To me, this solved the question of why the Beethoven Violin Concerto is deep and perfect. Beethoven achieved a nearly exact match between what that piece is supposed to be and the piece he composed.
October 5, 2022
Why waiting for productivity works
Part Two: Experiments in cello teaching
When I encouraged my cello students to let their minds wander while they were playing, they began to experience playing in new and different ways. Alice, who had long struggled with keeping a steady beat, was playing for me at a lesson, and I noticed that her usual rhythmic irregularities were absent. When I asked her about this, she reported—with wonder and excitement—that the beat had spontaneously begun inside her; a huge, pulsating orb.
Musicians think of this as an advanced skill, and perhaps it is. But it’s surely more accessible to students than we think, because look at what Alice achieved.
Next: The right brain and writing