Ommision as a form of creation
This article sits prominently on my dektop... Initially the density of reference, and the technicalities of musical theory put me off, but eventually the stunning clarity of the piece shone through.
If we know it already - chuck it.
This piece of advice has helped me tremendously... And is largely responsible for my adventurous foray into mumbling laconic characters who volunteer a few words at best. The flipside is that you often go paper thin on solid backstory and character-meat, but it's a worthwhile trade off (imho). Often I've found that while writing initial drafts it's ok to gratuitously front load revelatory information since you're not really thinking about editing. In subsequent drafts you end up burying that discovered information and distributing it evenly all over the script. Anyway... it's also a taste thing, so before I sound all minimal-fanatical, I'll just post the article. Hope I don't get sued.
Hearing the Notes That Aren't Played
July 15, 2002
By DAVID MAMET
My piano lessons began 50 years ago, in September 1951. My teacher was an Austrian martinet - Isadore Buchalter. He told my family that he had hopes for me, that I was somewhat musical, but that I couldn't learn to read.
I realized, 40-plus years later, that I wasn't cursed with indolence, but that I couldn't see the notes. I was hopelessly myopic. I got my first eyeglasses when I was 8, but by then I had quit the piano.
Around 1963 my lessons continued when I had the great fortune to meet Louise Gould. She sat me down and had me playing triads, and triads with the octave, both hands, up and down the keyboard. She used this simple exercise to show me the cycle of fifths, and its additions, subtraction, alterations, inversions, which are the foundations of music theory. I realized that my toddler piano lessons had taught me to play without reading, to fake it, to play by ear.
I played four hands one afternoon with Randy Newman. I apologized for rushing. I said I was such a musical doofus that I almost felt as if I had to "count." He stopped and looked at me a bit in incomprehension and said, "Everyone counts." He also taught me to hear the passing tone, to listen for it, as it was driving the music.
Joel Silver produced several of my wife's records, and I got a priceless tip from him: "Leave out the third - we hear it anyway."
The passing tone and the excised third opened up a new world to me. I began to get (timorously) bold, to eschew the first inversion and the keys of F and C major.
The Stoics cautioned us to keep our philosophical precepts few and simple, as we might have to refer to them at a moment's notice. These tips became my philosophical principles, and they forced me to slow down and think.
I remember Bensinger's pool hall in Chicago, in the 60's, and the hustler-instructor who taught: If you can see more, don't shoot. Same idea.
People say the great genius of Nat Cole was his ability to accompany himself on the piano, that he understood that most delicate and intricate duet and its demand for spaciousness, for elegance. "We hear it anyway."
This is the genius of Bach, and the overwhelming demand of dramaturgy - this understanding, or its lack, divides those who can write from those who can really write: how much can one remove, and still have the composition be intelligible?
Chekhov removed the plot. Pinter, elaborating, removed the history, the narration; Beckett, the characterization. We hear it anyway.
It is in our nature to elaborate, estimate, predict - to run before the event. This is the meaning of consciousness; anything else is instinct. Bach allows us to run before, and his resolutions, as per Aristotle, are as inevitable (as they must be, given the strictures of Western compositional form) and surprising as his elaborate genius.
We are thus delighted and instructed, as per Freud, in a nonverbal way, as to the varieties of perception, possibility, completion - we are made better. Our consciousness, listening to Bach, has been rewarded, refreshed, chastised, soothed - in Bach and Sophocles both, the burden of consciousness has momentarily been laid down.
Both legitimate modern drama (Pirandello, Ionesco) and the trash of performance art build on the revelation that omission is a form of creation - that we hear the third anyway - that the audience will supply the plot.
But our experience of such can be, at best, a smug joy.
We listen to some concert pianist improvise waterfall arpeggios for an hour, or view puerile performances and, though we may leave the theater smiling, we are left poorer, for we celebrated not the divine but the ability of the uninspired to ape the divine. This is idolatry.
We rejoice both in the familiar and the surprising. Music, drama, circus, the creation of all the performing arts proceeds from researched or intuited understanding of the nature of human perception, thesis-antithesis-synthesis: I can fly from one trapeze to another. But can I do a triple somersault? Yes. No. Yes.
Much Modern art is either a slavish reiteration of the form (musical comedy) its slavish rejection (action painting). Yes, it is true that life would be better if we were all a little kinder, and it is true that paint spattered in the air will fall to the ground. Both are true, but who would have suspected that they were notable?
The commandments are the same: leave out the third, concentrate on the missing tone. Yes, we know that in the key of G a C chord would like to resolve to G. How does it get there? The ardor to address this question accounts for the genius of Beckett and also of Vernon Duke, Prokofiev, Kurt Weill.
The fascinating question of Art: What is between A and B?
If we know it already - chuck it.
This piece of advice has helped me tremendously... And is largely responsible for my adventurous foray into mumbling laconic characters who volunteer a few words at best. The flipside is that you often go paper thin on solid backstory and character-meat, but it's a worthwhile trade off (imho). Often I've found that while writing initial drafts it's ok to gratuitously front load revelatory information since you're not really thinking about editing. In subsequent drafts you end up burying that discovered information and distributing it evenly all over the script. Anyway... it's also a taste thing, so before I sound all minimal-fanatical, I'll just post the article. Hope I don't get sued.
Hearing the Notes That Aren't Played
July 15, 2002
By DAVID MAMET
My piano lessons began 50 years ago, in September 1951. My teacher was an Austrian martinet - Isadore Buchalter. He told my family that he had hopes for me, that I was somewhat musical, but that I couldn't learn to read.
I realized, 40-plus years later, that I wasn't cursed with indolence, but that I couldn't see the notes. I was hopelessly myopic. I got my first eyeglasses when I was 8, but by then I had quit the piano.
Around 1963 my lessons continued when I had the great fortune to meet Louise Gould. She sat me down and had me playing triads, and triads with the octave, both hands, up and down the keyboard. She used this simple exercise to show me the cycle of fifths, and its additions, subtraction, alterations, inversions, which are the foundations of music theory. I realized that my toddler piano lessons had taught me to play without reading, to fake it, to play by ear.
I played four hands one afternoon with Randy Newman. I apologized for rushing. I said I was such a musical doofus that I almost felt as if I had to "count." He stopped and looked at me a bit in incomprehension and said, "Everyone counts." He also taught me to hear the passing tone, to listen for it, as it was driving the music.
Joel Silver produced several of my wife's records, and I got a priceless tip from him: "Leave out the third - we hear it anyway."
The passing tone and the excised third opened up a new world to me. I began to get (timorously) bold, to eschew the first inversion and the keys of F and C major.
The Stoics cautioned us to keep our philosophical precepts few and simple, as we might have to refer to them at a moment's notice. These tips became my philosophical principles, and they forced me to slow down and think.
I remember Bensinger's pool hall in Chicago, in the 60's, and the hustler-instructor who taught: If you can see more, don't shoot. Same idea.
People say the great genius of Nat Cole was his ability to accompany himself on the piano, that he understood that most delicate and intricate duet and its demand for spaciousness, for elegance. "We hear it anyway."
This is the genius of Bach, and the overwhelming demand of dramaturgy - this understanding, or its lack, divides those who can write from those who can really write: how much can one remove, and still have the composition be intelligible?
Chekhov removed the plot. Pinter, elaborating, removed the history, the narration; Beckett, the characterization. We hear it anyway.
It is in our nature to elaborate, estimate, predict - to run before the event. This is the meaning of consciousness; anything else is instinct. Bach allows us to run before, and his resolutions, as per Aristotle, are as inevitable (as they must be, given the strictures of Western compositional form) and surprising as his elaborate genius.
We are thus delighted and instructed, as per Freud, in a nonverbal way, as to the varieties of perception, possibility, completion - we are made better. Our consciousness, listening to Bach, has been rewarded, refreshed, chastised, soothed - in Bach and Sophocles both, the burden of consciousness has momentarily been laid down.
Both legitimate modern drama (Pirandello, Ionesco) and the trash of performance art build on the revelation that omission is a form of creation - that we hear the third anyway - that the audience will supply the plot.
But our experience of such can be, at best, a smug joy.
We listen to some concert pianist improvise waterfall arpeggios for an hour, or view puerile performances and, though we may leave the theater smiling, we are left poorer, for we celebrated not the divine but the ability of the uninspired to ape the divine. This is idolatry.
We rejoice both in the familiar and the surprising. Music, drama, circus, the creation of all the performing arts proceeds from researched or intuited understanding of the nature of human perception, thesis-antithesis-synthesis: I can fly from one trapeze to another. But can I do a triple somersault? Yes. No. Yes.
Much Modern art is either a slavish reiteration of the form (musical comedy) its slavish rejection (action painting). Yes, it is true that life would be better if we were all a little kinder, and it is true that paint spattered in the air will fall to the ground. Both are true, but who would have suspected that they were notable?
The commandments are the same: leave out the third, concentrate on the missing tone. Yes, we know that in the key of G a C chord would like to resolve to G. How does it get there? The ardor to address this question accounts for the genius of Beckett and also of Vernon Duke, Prokofiev, Kurt Weill.
The fascinating question of Art: What is between A and B?
posted by ramganeshk at 9:37 pm
1 Comments:
Very very large walrus. Hehehehe.
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