Next Level Cellist Musicality Issue

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ODE TO JOY Never hit the last D, always finish it humbly and respectfully. Some 27 years later, I still remember that moment, and he was so right! The only time I allow this to happen is when I’m told to do it by the composer. It’s very important that you have part of your mind on these tiny details. The little rules and bits of information accumulate over time, and hopefully combine with a good environment of friends and fellow musicians that you can use to stay connected to inspiration. The world we’re living in, with cell phones and computers, Facebook and other distractions, can get in the way of focusing on the purity of an individual phrase. In a way, music is a therapy to prevent yourself getting carried away by the world around you. While in high school in Istanbul I met a German cellist named Werner Thomas- Mifune for whom I played the Saint-Saens concerto. What was supposed to be a 30 minute lesson ended up being almost 2 hours long! He talked about the importance of the distances between the notes. He made distinctions between how you would play a half step versus a whole step. This lesson moved me so much that I couldn’t even fall asleep for about a week! That first phrase is a great example of how half steps and whole steps create this simple scale down that is filled with complex feeling and character. The minute you put this under a microscope and look at the notes you start to appreciate the differences between these intervals, you can begin to feel intimacy with the phrase. to singing, that ideal we’re always trying to emulate. The larger the interval, the more effort is required to sing it, and therefore the more attention and love we can put into playing it. It’s a crucial part of phrasing. If you truly understand the nuance that comes from these intervals, you can slow down your perception of the music and experience this wonderful close-up view. You start to appreciate what the composer had to say. You can’t live in this close-up world all the time, you have to go back to real time to get a larger picture, but it’s an essential part of learning and developing your musical vocabulary. There are tensions between notes, and if you can even halfway understand those distances, it will drastically affect your phrasing. Another of the incredibly powerful tools we have as musicians is the manipulation of time. Time, and the way you use it, expand or compress it, is essential to mastering classical music, especially when it’s very detailed and written out. However you control it and which sections you focus on create the style of music you are playing. Classical, Romantic, Modern, Baroque, all are affected by the way you take or give time. [Editor’s note: for a more detailed discussion of time, check out John Patitucci’s article Groove and Inspiration in Next Level Bassist.] My teacher at Curtis, Peter Wiley, really kept beyond execution, and that’s why it’s so important that you find inspiration in your life. Finally, I believe an invaluable tool for becoming a great musician is improvisation. It probably sounds scary if it’s unfamiliar, but ultimately, improvising and classical music are both just types of music. It doesn’t matter what genre you’re playing, in the end hopefully you’re trying to make music. It all comes down to the same core. If you can learn to do that, regardless of what your medium is (bow, pizzicato, cello, voice, whatever!), then you’re doing the best you can. As long as you can move the person that’s hearing you emotionally, then mission accomplished. The more easily and more readily you can get into that zone, the more successful you will become and the more success you can have. A WORD ABOUT SOUND AND EDUCATION One of my great advantages growing up was being around two phenomenal bass players, my father and brother. Why does it matter? I think it’s very important - the bass is by definition the foundation of music. It holds the whole harmony, and that is often a job we cellists have to perform as well. Even when you play the melody, if you’re not aware of where your feet are meant to be grounded, you will sound like you don’t know where you’re headed. I think it’s an essential part of musicianship, the sense of direction. It gives you a good compass when you are aware of the bass line. Consider why the line moves in the directions it moves, and why the color of one whole step is used instead of a half step. When you begin to contemplate why it was written a certain way, you start to care deeply about the music, become one with what the composer is trying to say. Whole steps and half steps are only a tiny part of the big picture of music - when you expand to look at other intervals, you can start to think about how the music relates Mi - Re - Do (whole steps) followed by a half step to Si and back to Do my focus on slowing the music down and finding the meaning. He really drilled me on left hand and right hand subtleties, like using a different quality of vibrato on each note, and playing different notes with different bow speeds to shape the phrase. There is a limitless potential on the cello for realizing phrases, and all the etudes and exercises in the world can’t come close to the complexity of playing one phrase of music with meaning. It goes I had a lot of wonderful teachers of harmony, theory, and counterpoint at Curtis. They all encouraged me to understand (or at least try to) what was going on harmonically in the music I was performing or hearing. A good entry point is Bach’s cello suites, because they are complex but still have only one or two lines going at once. I think it helps a great deal to be familiar 12 SPRING 2014 NEXT LEVEL CELLIST
with the sound of the double bass, and its warm depth. It’s a quality of sound I look for in every new instrument I try, just as important as a singing A string. You want that fulfillment all around you when you play the low notes of a string quartet or solo line, or in the cello section. We spend a good amount of time in first position, and it’s vital to have a complete and well informed bass sound concept. BEING A COMPLETE MUSICIAN Cellists have a unique set of roles to play in any genre. We can be the foundation of the music, then support the melody, then play melodies of our own, sometimes in a very short span of time. Not only that, but we sometimes move from string quartet to cello section to soloist in front of an orchestra almost as quickly. You have to be musically sensitive, because you won’t make any friends in your string quartet by playing like you’re performing the Dvorak Cello Concerto! You have to switch certain things, and be capable of taking a supporting role. In truth, you have to recognize that there are even moments in your concerto when your job is to accompany the violins or the flute with the melody. It all comes down to being familiar with the score in all settings. It’s a good thing to know what the second flute, for instance, is doing at all times. If you aren’t familiar with that, you lack the ability to know what the composer really meant for your own role. I spend time looking at free scores from IMSLP all the time. Recently, I was able to use the original manuscript in Beethoven’s hand for a recent performance of his 6 th Symphony. It’s all readable, although it takes a few pages to get used to the handwriting. You can see his thought process, mistakes, his scribblings! If you really want to do well, it’s a good idea to learn what’s going on. Week in and week out I study the scores of the repertoire to get a little bit closer to understanding. Having this knowledge of other instruments’ parts gives me wonderful guidance, it keeps me from being a fish out of water. A CHALLENGE I would like to encourage every musician out there to get a little more deeply in touch with his or her musicianship with this exercise. Imagine you are being asked by a radio station to program 45 minutes of your favorite classical music as a guest DJ. What would it be? What would it say about your tastes, your interest in different composers or ensembles? Once you are able to do this, try making a 45 minute definitive mix of your favorite music of any genre. I guarantee it’s challenging, because it was really quite hard for me to do it. I was asked by a Seattle radio station to do exactly this, and you can see my responses here. Listening is crucial, loving music even more so. Find what makes you inspired and capture that same feeling when you sit at the instrument. Anybody can make their musical ambitions reality, by working hard and keeping an open mind. SPRING 2014 NEXT LEVEL CELLIST 13
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Next Level Cellist Musicality Issue

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