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Volume I

14 Jul

What’s it like to play this stuff? I’ve come to think that a central challenge of performing counterpoint is that it’s too enjoyable…

I often think about something the wonderful violinist and quartet leader Peter Cropper used to remind his students to be wary of, which went something along the lines of: “feels great, sounds awful”. (Yes, that is the cleaned-up version).

There’s a serious and interesting point here, which concerns that mental balance all musicians have to strike between one’s own internal perspective, and the sense of ‘what you actually sound like’ to somebody listening. Being able to inhabit that second zone comfortably and regularly is a really important part of performing. The brutal truth is that it’s very easy to be swept along by physical sensations or ‘ideas’ which simply don’t sound very convincing once you get outside of your own experience.

This becomes about ten times more important when playing in an ensemble. And even when multitracking, “it’s not about you” remains accurate. (Although it is kind of about you…)

Anyway, for string players I think a lot of the detail here concerns resonance. Some of our notes feel great, largely because of the phenomenon of sympathetic resonance. String instruments are intrinsically a bit uneven: certain pitches have a natural ring that functions a bit like a strong tide, carrying your limbs along with it. At best, it doesn’t feel like you’re really ‘doing’ anything physical at all, you’re just borne along on this current of resonance. But lots of other notes don’t provide any of this positive feedback, and can put up a bit of a fight. It’s tempting to lean into this imbalance, making the good notes feel as good as they can be, while shying away from the bad ones.

Similarly, there’s a zone you can find with the bow which makes a string ring at its loudest and freest, and pleasingly, this actually takes some of the least physical effort! But this poses a challenge, because in practice there aren’t so many circumstances where this is what’s needed. Most of the time we’re not able to ‘let go’ like this, and work in a more complex zone which involves a bit of compromise and resistance.

I’m reminded of how players in youth or amateur orchestras are often frustrated to be told to ‘play quieter’ practically all the time. And if the goal is ‘just’ to enjoy playing, maybe this is indeed a pretty mean-spirited request, because louder definitely IS more satisfying, as a player. If you’re interested in communicating something a bit more complex and ‘meaningful’ to listeners, however, none of that insider’s perspective is relevant. It’s nothing but dirty laundry: your listener doesn’t care what bowstroke you prefer using, or which notes you like and which you don’t. They want to feel emotions, and be swept up in the sounds, shapes and tensions you create.

This is all directly relevant to one of the key ideas of counterpoint, which is that each part is independently melodic. That’s not to say that there’s no hierarchy of importance - there almost always is - but when playing a line, you are generally aiming to create a thread of sound that makes sense both on its own and with the other parts. The fact that the music’s constructed like this provides all sorts of opportunities to take pleasure in the first person experience: melodies are always fun to play, however simple. In fact, sometimes the simplest are the most enjoyable.

The ever-present thread of melodic satisfaction may help to explain why early genres of chamber music like the Fantasia were such a popular form of domestic entertainment (notably among the middle and upper classes in Elizabethan England), and also why the amateur consort scene is currently thriving, over four centuries later!. There are simpler parts, and there are more complicated parts, but none of them are ever truly passive, or ‘just accompaniment’. They are all very enjoyable to play in their own right. It helps, too, that most of the composers clearly knew how to lean into the viol family’s ‘good notes’ and keys.

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Given the aphorism I started with, you’ll probably have realised where this line of thought is heading. So I want to make clear, first, that I’m not intending to pour cold water on the idea of enjoying playing, either imaginatively or physically. It’s vital for all sorts of reasons, and enthusiasm necessarily sustains a lot of what we do. But when performing to (or recording for) an audience, I can’t stress enough how useful it is to have that cautionary phrase in the back of your mind. Sometimes things that feel great will also sound great. Often, however, they won’t at all - and that’s something we need to find ways around.

The central challenge I’m describing here doesn’t just concern physical sensations. Without wanting to be too dualistic about it, the first-person experience of playing can be broadly summarized as: ‘using your body in order to make the sounds that arise in your imagination’. Being able to do this effectively is basically what technique is. The reason Peter’s mantra applies here, too, is that ideas and gestures that seem meaningful, spontaneous and creative from the ‘inside’, first-person perspective are far from guaranteed to come across in the same way to a listener. You can’t do without that inspiration, for sure - but it’s simply not enough on its own. It seems to demand counterbalancing of some sort (although we can happily disagree on how!)

(This is something I’ve been especially deeply, sometimes crushingly, aware of while trying to record these Fantasias. It’s truly alarming how easily a gesture that felt characterful, pleasing and interesting at the time can collapse into total nonsense when listening back a few days later. Recording heightens this a bit, but I can report that it also holds in general performance situations: great ideas agreed in rehearsal can sometimes ‘go off’ pretty dramatically.)

A certain proportion of the difficulty is a matter of information overload. Lots of self-consciously ‘interesting musical ideas’ crammed into a few seconds certainly scratches an itch for the performer. Not being interesting enough is many musicians’ greatest fear, so it’s very easy to fall down this rabbit hole. I know I have, on plenty of occasions. If taken too far, such an instinct for intensity and local detail can actually be exhausting to a listener, who is attempting to string each moment into a coherent chain of experience.

What we performers are really aiming to do, I think, is to have our cake - ‘make coherent chains of ideas in sound’ - and also eat it - ‘be spontaneous and imaginative’. Having “feels great, sounds awful” in the back of your mind is one little thing that can help to guard against just scoffing the imaginative cake.

It seems perfectly natural to exist ‘in the moment’ as a musician, perhaps because playing an instrument gives you an awful lot to concentrate on! But it’s vital to account for the fact that a listener’s sense of time is subtly different, and is generally more amenable to experiences that unfold over longer spans.

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This issue came up a lot while I was making these recordings. The multitrack technique makes that gestural balance even more elusive, and I think that may have been because I found myself wanting to avoid being passive at all costs. The danger, then, is of overcompensation. How to play Fantasias with both fantasy and order? How do you choose when to sing, and when to dance? How do you combine short-term aural interest and long-term coherence? How can you follow through on your big ideas and strong intentions, yet still remaining firmly outside the realm of mannerism and affectation? Working with such a curious recording process (of which more here!) doesn’t replace these concerns - it heightens them. Incidentally, it’s made slightly worse by the fact that you can do any of it again, if it comes to it…

Reflecting on these pretty experimental performances some months later, it’s strange but enjoyable to weigh what felt good at the time against what makes more sense to me now (‘from outside’). Some things worked, others didn’t - and that’s ok! Diving into a totally experimental process always involves discovering as many new challenges as new opportunities.

Just as importantly, though, there’s always room to find out more about strategies, principles, and ideals which you thought you already ‘got’. Having been through this process, I’m more aware than ever that playing beautifully crafted counterpoint is so enjoyable, so physically and intellectually pleasing, that it can easily lure us into self-absorption. Sometimes that might be the point, and playing for fun is a worthwhile thing. I enjoyed recording these pieces a lot; but I’ve also never been more sure that the greatest rewards of music can’t be accessed by following what “feels good“ as a performer - we need to be much more ambitious than that.

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