Cora has a knack for coming up with questions that are really difficult to answer. She was practicing piano this evening and was having some difficulty maintaining an even tempo in the song she is working on. I played the piece for her so she could hear how she was playing it currently with the tempo. I've noticed that she doesn't really hear what she is playing because she gets so focused on getting the notes right. She can hear the problem if I imitate how she was playing it and then play the correct tempo and it seems to be helping her to be more steady with her counting.
I played the song and Cora jumped all over me for not having "spider hands" (her term for properly curved fingers). This was a legitimate complaint as I did not have spider hands when I played, but because of my arthritis I really will never have good spider hands again as I am unable to play notes with my pinkie fingers anymore if I maintain better finger position. I told her essentially that -- Mommy can't make spider hands because of her arthritis, so don't try to do the same as my hands, just listen to how it sounds. She went on with practice.
After Daphne went to bed, I was playing Sorry with Cora. Mid-game she asked a very convoluted question about "art." After I got her to give me context I realized she meant "arthritis." She wanted to know what it was. This is one of those questions that I probably should have anticipated long before she was 5 and spent a little time coming up with a good answer, unfortunately I didn't and I think I handled the whole thing a bit lamely. I told her arthritis is a disease. She said "like you are sick?" I told her it is like a sickness you have all the time that makes your bones hurt. She asked "will you still have arthritis even after you die?" Ok, didn't see that one coming at all. That question has so many layers to it I wasn't really sure what to say, so I ended up with something like "no, when you die your body is dead and doesn't really do anything anymore so it can't really be sick after you are dead." I'm not entirely sure that was even what she was asking, but she seemed relatively satisfied with the answer.
The whole conversation took me by surprise, both because I wasn't expecting the question, but also because it made me realize it never really occurred to me to bring this up at any point. I guess in retrospect she was really too little to notice when I was doing injections at home to manage the RA. I've always avoided taking her with me to rheumatologist appointments because they always take ages and involve lots of blood work and injections and wouldn't be at all fun for a child. But it is strange to me that really most of her life that she can probably remember (say 2 1/2 until the present) I've been off meds for pre-conception/pregnancy/breastfeeding reasons and the RA has been pretty unchecked and out of control, but Scott and I never bothered to mention this to her. I think that was a bad parenting move on my part. I think in general I don't bring up my RA a whole lot with most people. I don't particularly enjoy answering tons of questions about it, and I don't want anyone to feel sorry for me or try to keep me from doing things. A lot of that is just habit on my part from childhood I guess, but old habits die hard. I think really it may have been helpful for Cora if I had mentioned this before so she would have had better context for certain things. Maybe she just thinks Mommy is really incapable of simple tasks (opening certain jars, opening juice bottles, etc.) when Daddy isn't around. Or Mommy has some bizarre aversion to physical activity the day before it rains, though I'm sure she hasn't noticed enough of a pattern with that one, but then I worry now if she's just thought I don't want to take her to the playground because I'm lazy or something. I think I could have done a much better job of handling this whole thing now that I think about it. Now I need to figure out how to do a better job from here on out I guess.
Showing posts with label piano. Show all posts
Showing posts with label piano. Show all posts
Thursday, April 23, 2009
Thursday, February 26, 2009
Fancy Nancy
So in the spirit of the Fancy Nancy books, Cora and I got all dressed up last night and went to her piano teacher's concert at Krannert. The concert was the premiere of a new commissioned work by a DMA composition student here at UIUC to be played by Sam, Cora's teacher. I should say that we did not get to stay for the actual new work because the concert started at 7:30 and we left at the intermission at 9. The first half was plenty of concert for me and Cora and well worth the 4 dollars a piece admission.
The concert started with a piece called Flowergazers, written by the DMA comp guy. It was 3 separate pieces, each based on a Japanese haiku from the 17th century. Maybe I should preface this by saying I am not a huge fan of postmodern or experimental classical music. This concert pretty much confirmed my distaste. I occasionally like Phillip Glass, I think Steve Reich has done some interesting stuff, but the bulk of what I've seen at the grad school level is kind of self-indulgent John Cage ripoff stuff. (Yes, I understand the irony of using a blog - perhaps the most self-indulgent invention of the last 50 years - to complain about the self-indulgence of a genre of music) At any rate, it seems to me that this type of music frequently degenerates into an atonal mess played by a fairly random collection of instruments, but most notable for the disproportionate number of percussion players who appear to be under instructions to strike whatever they can find with mallets. At some point it does not seem particularly interesting to me to strike the frame of a harp or the case of a piano with an object when the sound it produces is pretty much exactly the same sound as striking a wood block. That just seems gimmicky and pointless to me. So in the course of 25 minutes, 3 percussion players and a guy on marimba managed to hit pretty much everything on stage with something else.
I also really objected to this composer's use of his singers. The haiku cycle had a soprano who was mostly singing in the meat of her range at full voice. However, there were several phrases that were either set so low she could not actually sing them or were meant to be spoken word. It was impossible to tell which because they were way too low for her so it was barely audible. If you're going to compose something like that, then it seems like either you should have a very rangy singer in mind whom you write it for, or you should keep the vocal parts in the fach of the singer you are selecting. If you want a lyric soprano (and this girl was almost a Soubrette) don't write something that would be better suited to the range of a mezzo or a Wagnerian soprano.
He then proceeded to abuse two male singers in a later piece which was obnoxious on several levels. He used some 14th century motets by a French composer and had a bass and baritone sing them in isolation while he had a strange ensemble (again heavy on percussion) deliberately squeaking instruments and hitting "wrong" notes (he mentioned this in the program notes), thereby producing what he referred to as a "derrangement" of the motet that held true to what the original composer wanted. Personally my guess is Monsieur de Vitry would have been rather mortified by the end result, but whatever. The first motet was actually meant for a bass and baritone, or rather probably for a bass-baritone and a low tenor voice, but the baritone was rangy and lyric and handled it fine. The rest of the piece, however was clearly written for either a boy soprano or countertenor so he had these poor men sing for 20 minutes completely in falsetto. It was painful to listen to. They did the best they could with it and honestly the baritone had a pretty nice and pure falsetto, but their voices were clearly shot by the end. It was just wrong.
So, bizarre atonal percussive disasters aside, we were treated to some truly fantastic piano playing by Sam. He played some pieces that he wrote, including some 8 hands pieces that were very charming. He also played the hell out of Liszt's Dante Sonata. I hadn't seen Sam perform before so it was a treat, but also surprising because I wouldn't have anticipated his playing style. There are a lot of variations on how pianists LOOK while they play. There are the real technical types that are very very still except for their hands and arms. Very little head or body movement. It's a very sterile sort of performance quality and I think the music tends to follow suit emotionally. Then there are the Martha Argeriches of the world who look like they are trying to beat the piano into submission every time they play. I think Lang Lang falls into this camp as well. Then there are the dancers. Sam is a dancer. They seem to be almost in a musical trance and they move with the piece in kind of strange ways. Sometimes it can be really powerful to watch, other times distracting. Then there are the people who appear to play effortlessly, Horowitz jumps to mind. He just looks very relaxed and mellow when he plays, even during really violent sections of music.
I asked Cora what she liked and didn't like about the concert. Surprisingly (to me), she said she liked the haiku pieces best. I asked her what she thought about them and she said they sounded like "people running in grass. They are playing tag but never catch each other," which is almost a haiku in itself. Apparently this guy succeeded wildly with Cora and missed completely with me. It made me marvel at how very different the experience of any music can be even for two people sitting next to each other. She fell asleep during the Liszt.
The concert started with a piece called Flowergazers, written by the DMA comp guy. It was 3 separate pieces, each based on a Japanese haiku from the 17th century. Maybe I should preface this by saying I am not a huge fan of postmodern or experimental classical music. This concert pretty much confirmed my distaste. I occasionally like Phillip Glass, I think Steve Reich has done some interesting stuff, but the bulk of what I've seen at the grad school level is kind of self-indulgent John Cage ripoff stuff. (Yes, I understand the irony of using a blog - perhaps the most self-indulgent invention of the last 50 years - to complain about the self-indulgence of a genre of music) At any rate, it seems to me that this type of music frequently degenerates into an atonal mess played by a fairly random collection of instruments, but most notable for the disproportionate number of percussion players who appear to be under instructions to strike whatever they can find with mallets. At some point it does not seem particularly interesting to me to strike the frame of a harp or the case of a piano with an object when the sound it produces is pretty much exactly the same sound as striking a wood block. That just seems gimmicky and pointless to me. So in the course of 25 minutes, 3 percussion players and a guy on marimba managed to hit pretty much everything on stage with something else.
I also really objected to this composer's use of his singers. The haiku cycle had a soprano who was mostly singing in the meat of her range at full voice. However, there were several phrases that were either set so low she could not actually sing them or were meant to be spoken word. It was impossible to tell which because they were way too low for her so it was barely audible. If you're going to compose something like that, then it seems like either you should have a very rangy singer in mind whom you write it for, or you should keep the vocal parts in the fach of the singer you are selecting. If you want a lyric soprano (and this girl was almost a Soubrette) don't write something that would be better suited to the range of a mezzo or a Wagnerian soprano.
He then proceeded to abuse two male singers in a later piece which was obnoxious on several levels. He used some 14th century motets by a French composer and had a bass and baritone sing them in isolation while he had a strange ensemble (again heavy on percussion) deliberately squeaking instruments and hitting "wrong" notes (he mentioned this in the program notes), thereby producing what he referred to as a "derrangement" of the motet that held true to what the original composer wanted. Personally my guess is Monsieur de Vitry would have been rather mortified by the end result, but whatever. The first motet was actually meant for a bass and baritone, or rather probably for a bass-baritone and a low tenor voice, but the baritone was rangy and lyric and handled it fine. The rest of the piece, however was clearly written for either a boy soprano or countertenor so he had these poor men sing for 20 minutes completely in falsetto. It was painful to listen to. They did the best they could with it and honestly the baritone had a pretty nice and pure falsetto, but their voices were clearly shot by the end. It was just wrong.
So, bizarre atonal percussive disasters aside, we were treated to some truly fantastic piano playing by Sam. He played some pieces that he wrote, including some 8 hands pieces that were very charming. He also played the hell out of Liszt's Dante Sonata. I hadn't seen Sam perform before so it was a treat, but also surprising because I wouldn't have anticipated his playing style. There are a lot of variations on how pianists LOOK while they play. There are the real technical types that are very very still except for their hands and arms. Very little head or body movement. It's a very sterile sort of performance quality and I think the music tends to follow suit emotionally. Then there are the Martha Argeriches of the world who look like they are trying to beat the piano into submission every time they play. I think Lang Lang falls into this camp as well. Then there are the dancers. Sam is a dancer. They seem to be almost in a musical trance and they move with the piece in kind of strange ways. Sometimes it can be really powerful to watch, other times distracting. Then there are the people who appear to play effortlessly, Horowitz jumps to mind. He just looks very relaxed and mellow when he plays, even during really violent sections of music.
I asked Cora what she liked and didn't like about the concert. Surprisingly (to me), she said she liked the haiku pieces best. I asked her what she thought about them and she said they sounded like "people running in grass. They are playing tag but never catch each other," which is almost a haiku in itself. Apparently this guy succeeded wildly with Cora and missed completely with me. It made me marvel at how very different the experience of any music can be even for two people sitting next to each other. She fell asleep during the Liszt.
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