A Study of Contradiction

Today I had an amazing conversation with Nancy, my piano teacher. We were talking about the balance of musicologist and performer, and how music itself is ultimately a series of contradictions.

Playing the piano is my life's joy and passion. My keyboard (whose name is Oscar, after O. Peterson) is my truest, oldest friend - and that's saying something, because I have really good friends, who mean the world to me. At my keyboard, however, select few other things exist. It's me, the notes, and peace/God/love/call it what you will.

I feel much the same way about singing, but my hands are more dependable than my voice, and so the piano has been my constant in moments when my voice is too weak or my asthma is too severe to make music that way.

That passion for music led me to study it. Yet one thing I've struggled with throughout my studies it is holding onto what brought me to music in the first place: I was a 17, and I knew nothing about Western Classical Music, other than the fact that I was crazily and passionately in love with it. Before I knew that augmented and diminished chords existed, before I knew of counterpoint or perfect pitch or Bach chorales or any of the other countless things my time as a music student has taught me...I already had music. Music is innately within me; innately within all of us.

And before I began music scholarship, I brought musicality to the piano. I brought an ability to play with passion, wild abandon; I had a performer's spirit. Yet somewhere, I misplaced that and traded it in for theoretical knowledge. I can analyze the pieces I play now - but at what cost? From sometime around October until present, the intention, the spirit, the magic I used to have behind and between the notes went away, and was replaced with fact, style; with good grammar, so to speak.

It's through the union, the marriage of my scholarly training and my innate performer that I create the greatest music. Great teaching, great research, and great performance are all born from the union of mind and heart, creativity and knowledge.

Music scholarship requires a concentrated, academic mind, but it also requires that you be a musician first, and forever. In becoming Rena the musicologist, I can't lose sight or understanding of Rena the pianist and vocalist.

And, indeed, combining the two will doubtlessly lead to better research, better playing/singing, and, eventually, more effective teaching.

Now I just have to do it, instead of writing about it. No challenge there, no sir, none at all... ;-)