Sound Diaries Podcast: Talks about improvisation
Alternative text for Sound Diaries Podcast: Talks about improvisation
Transcription notes
Welcome to Sound Diaries the podcast.
My name is Jaani Länsiö. I´m a journalist, specialized in classical music and joining me are David Dolan ja Laure Ramon.
David is a classical pianist and a faculty member at Guildhall school of music in London and one of world’s leading experts on improvisation. He is also a visiting professor at Sibelius Academy here in Helsinki Finland.
Laure is a viola player and a second-year master student at Sibelius Academy. Originally from France, Laure has been living in Finland for the last five years.
David and Laure have been sharing their thoughts on improvising here on Sound Diaries webpages as a part of their journey to the core of improvising. We are about to learn more about their findings, their aspirations and hopes for the future in a world of making music on the spot. So welcome to the show David and Laure.
J: So, David, I’m going to start by asking – and this might sound stupid, but really is not that self-evident when you think about it – what are we talking about when we talk about improvisation?
D: Okay, so to give you a real answer we need about I guess ten days from early morning to late evening. Which makes it not only not stupid, but to tell you how important that question is. But we don’t have that time, I will try to concise.
Up on till about twenty years ago if you were looking into dictionaries and encyclopedias improvisation would be something like making up music on the spot as you perform it. Or compose in real time. Making up something. And I’m deliberately putting it not too serious tone because in let’s say, I guess some after World War II, sorry World War I this improvisation in classical music become almost like a typo. Either classical music, serious, problem, high art or improvising.
I’m not sure if I told you this story which is telling something in the last version of the Sound Diary. When I came first time to Juilliard to start years of project of classical improvisation, I could not find where I was signed to. I asked where is the pull where classical improvisation takes place, someone very very tall look at me to high down, and said:
“You know you are at Juilliard school, this is a serious place, we don’t do things like improvisation. Maybe you want to jazz. That’s in a basement.”
And he didn’t sound very appreciated to idea. That was a bit typical to a classical music world for about a century or maybe a bit less because it was still, I will come to in it in a minute, it was still practiced more or less up until World War I, a bit after, and then it became almost a tabu. It meant that if you improvise that you are bluffing. To put a very long story very short, as I said we don’t have ten days seminars. But that is changing. If one of the world leading institutions like Sibelius-Academy is now taking it so seriously that’s one sign.
But if you ask me what improvising is, improvising is engaging the creative state of mind when you perform for me.
The one aspect can be that you are indeed, and that’s the most spectacular, also the most attractive perhaps is to create something on the spot following certain structures or perform in a style or freer than that I don’t think to its completely 100 % free from any reference at all because we are humans we are referring to what we share conscious or not. But when you improvise a fugue on a theme someone from the audience is throwing at you and hope to survive it and be alive at the end of it. Yes, you create music that never existed before for some set of rules and styles of counterpoint harmonic reference etc. But you can play Beethoven sonata and not change a single note in a mechanical way in the way that follows tactical work and putting all the notes in a white place as fast as possible or to create something from deeper place. Many musicians don’t improvise in the simple version or the vision, they do that fantastically and they improvise from it. As far as I understand notion of improvising or in English term extemporizing is actually handful here I think because it means to bring out something in real time, within the flow of time. And indeed early Beethoven works have lot of place for improvisation. Later Beethoven, the later we go in Beethoven’s creative life less and less so and the last sonatas in the late opuses you won’t really improvise you would not change any notes but you can perform it in a more spontaneously with more element of risk taking of to decisions that a taken in a spot and impact on how you phrase the next passage or not.
Jaani: Laure you have just begun you journey of improvising. What did you think about improvisation before you started this project with David?
Laure: Well, I think my approach changed already a little bit in three last years or to be more fair even since I started my studies in Siba, because there you have quite many courses with teachers like Erja for example you can give a improvisation workshops and courses for classical musicians. Before all that I think to notion I have was “improvisation, oo, jazz musicians“. And it sounded super complicated, super cool, but very complicated for me. And very challenging and very frightful in some way because classical trained we are used to have the notes in front and not know how to get out of this realm. But then when I started with the courses, I discovered that first I didn’t have to be afraid, that there was nothing that was life threatening in improvisation. I think it’s of course where more floating music it was not a maybe not a very strict within the harmony. It was more playing around one key without a very strong rhythmical structure because as soon as you put in a rhythmical structure then you have harmonic rhythm as well which we are seeing with David a lot. So, I think I Iearned to be free and liking the improvisation as something more sound changing experience. That was my experience before the course.
Jaani: What did interested in improvisation Laure as a classical trained musician?
Laure: Two things. First I wanted to challenge myself. And I thought outside it was really cool. I’m this kind of person that is interested in almost everything and I just said: ok, I would like to find out and try this and own this language to perform myself. An other very concrete answer is that I’m attending Church here and I’m playing there and there is no sheet music. You have chords. Since I was a child had to improvise in church a little bit but it’s very free so I was thinking “Hey, if I actually can get some knowledge like really a course about that, that would be super cool. Then I would find more alignment or at least I will have some tools about how to do things there.” So these were some elements of why. For me it’s not about creating anything new because why would I try to put myself some alignment to the great people who were before, it’s not about that. It’s not about trying to fill a gap, if there is a gap, but owning maybe in a new way what was done before. Rediscovering as David was mentioning, trying to reinterpret by understanding deeply what it was about, what the music is about, what Bach think about what the Haydn quartets are about then improvising round that is a exactly as you said a new life in to music rather than trying to create something new. Then of course we can create also other things but for me it will be never a to try to feel something that was there before, there is always a more, always an addition to, just about having a maybe exponential possibilities.
Jaani: So you mentioned some of the big names of classical music like Beethoven and Mozart. And we do know that when they performed their own music they didn’t perform it as we see on the score. But what do we know about how they performed their own concertos or sonatas? And probably they also improvised a little and probably what they had on the note stand was something very different than what was latter printed and published. So what do we know?
David: So as a performer you are a creator and not executor of notes, if I put it a bit bluntly. We know that was their approach that we would have enough improvisation and enough knowledge. For example Chopin when he taught his students his own pieces he would improvise entire passages, sometimes you know whole large sections of the pieces completely differently from what students have on the piano on the piece, a master sitting next to him. And for example the second nocturne in E-flat major opus nine number two. We are lucky because the students quickly after the lesson wrote down the improvisations. Sometimes Chopin crossed and to put some hints. I think this nocturne exists I think on 27 versions all of them are examples of what he did improvisations during the lessons, creating the whole nocturne anew. So we know there is no question that is something that was a part of the music making. Beethoven often would in his recitals one half devoted to written works which was a collection of movements of here and there and the other half improvising. The second half improvising was usually the full half. That was not something rare that happened occasionally. That was the normal expectations, the normal practice of performing music.
Jaani: Why do you think we stopped improvising as you said just after the first World War?
David: Well, that’s the one million dollar question, of course. Dana Gooley answers that quite beautifully to begin with. It begins in the second half of 19th century when the idea of the divine God-kissed genius that came with the work composition which was a supernatural phenomenon not to be touched by simple mortals. I’m charactering a little bit. You wouldn’t then doing that but we know that great performers continued to improvise up until more or less World War I. I guess the shock, the horror of world war among any other things killed the expectations and legitimacy of creating or taking risks and vulnerability. I see it as a part of a shock or the post-shock of the horror of war. Soon after the second world war industry of international competitions and recordings. Recordings that bring to the many, many, many households the idea that this is the Beethoven’s opus one or nine. Or this is mine because that’s what I happened to reserve as a birthday gift ten years ago and that’s how I know it and it sounds different that my studio or my and it’s won simply because it’s not one I used to hear. And there is only one right version which is what I know. I´ve been everyone in their own household of course. International competitions once have a lot to do that because of the standardization. It became a mass production. So there was what Daniel Leech-Wilkinson, who is one of the greatest researcher of a phenomenon of interpretation and how we lost this freedom of expression, because policing of musical improvisation.
There is the standard which is everything is zero wrong notes and the business of constentrating and avoiding the wrong notes alone is a very efficient killer of the risk taking. When music become a more and more popular phenomenon the knowledge that was required to apply for listening was yet in bit less obvious to have. And the same goes actually about many performers. It was at a time you didn’t have a performer on one and composer on other and you are either or as is the case today. You are musician or composer, you are copying, you are arranging, you are performing, you are stronger on this or stronger on that but you are only musician. Performers were always very well thought and they knew harmony and compined artistic elements and analysis even if it was not cool to analyse. Music was called this is less obvious nowadays.
Jaani: Laure are you intimidated by this? I mean you are stepping out of this territory that is pretty “new” in classical music. When you perform – let’s say Hindemith sonata – and decide to improvise a bit, then you are playing it wrong in a way.
Laure: I would not be intimidated by that at all. What intimidate me is maybe within in this process because we are learning so I’m not sure always of myself of have to use things, how to deal whit your own feelings and not knowing, so this is maybe creating a little bit the uncertainties. But once you decide to go on a concert you perform Hindemith sonata and you decide to use something new in the middle then you just have to go for it like completely. And I would not be afraid at all because do something different that people do not expect. But maybe you asking a wrong person because usually I don’t care what people think. It’s about bringing authenticity to what you do. And if I’m trying to create something there and bring something new or some ideas it also that artistic not just put in to picture not even touched in a museum what you do is a port of interpreter there. Then it is just that I’m operating it and if you liked it or not, it is your own business, not mine.
Jaani: Well that’s a great mindset you have as a musician. So last week you had your first teaching period on improvising here in Sibelius Academy. But as we know travelling from London to Helsinki is made impossible during these times, so I assume you have worked together via Zoom-conference or something similar. So what kind of challenges this time of Covid brings you both, especially regarding your classes on improvising?
Laure: This is the second session, not the first session, but the first was also remotely. We hoped David would be able to be here , but…. I guess of course one obvious thing is that David is not able to play with us at the same time. So when showing somethings or examples of course you can always show, but really try help us in sense of like put a background on a really play with us and drive us by playing within the group it is not possible. That’s maybe a shame for the course. The other is that even that we didn’t have rigid lockdown within in Helsinki or Finland people are very serious to expect the instructions and rules and try to avoid meetings as much as possible and because we are working not individually but as groups, it has been a bit challenging a little bit to find times to meet the other person in the group. So we tried to meet as much as possible but maybe within a other context we could have met even much more to just rehearse. Maybe these two aspects were a bit difficult and harming the course.
David: We didn’t have to give up as much as I feared. Backburner starts as you play with the partners and provoke modulations while you play with another person and a fire begins which I hope takes place in April. What we could go quite far, and perhaps a direct answer to your question Jaani how we do that by ping-ponging, and I say ping-pong because the one law is that the ball can never be on the floor. “Well I have to think about it”… “No, you can’t, the ball is down. So it’s real time exchange, then when people in a group play together, we took it to higher and higher level, I mean more and more complete structure and more and more awareness and subtlety etc. And it worked beyond what I thought in begin what it could.
Jaani: You are now of course practicing improvisation and I see improvising alone or improvising in a study group is very different that improvising publicly. Is this aspect of teaching people to improvise publicly even possible or is it different to improvise or teach improvising when no one is there to hear you?
David: Improvising takes practice. I’ll been doing it since I’ve very very young and I keep practicing it every day. And on stage of course there’s adrenalin level is going up obviously and thankfully otherwise you probably would not go as adventurally taking that risk. In public you share with audience the process of taking risk and being vulnerable. What I always taught to my students when they are beginning to feel strong enough to take risks on stage is to share your audience the fact that they are walking in a very slippery ice and there are no safety belts down there into big hole. And they will either succeed or not. And we are sharing the audience the extra process of searching, creating and experimenting.
Jaani: Classical music is not known from its improvisation aspects. Do you feel that something is about to change with that when you are studying and when you tell people in SibA that we are studying how to improvise within classical music?
Laure: Well, I think it is. It of course depends the context and in different countries and different academies and all of these. Not all institutions are looking for the same things. But because I’m French and when I’m speaking with musicians there and people in different institutions there, and I do feel this is more the direction that everybody is more like going towards. Different maybe stages but at least the musicians I’m talking with are all very keen to this kind of things. They are all very interested. They don’t all want to do this course, but I do find the difference. And maybe I’m influenced by the way I’m studying in SiBa and as said very many time today Sibelius-Academy has really a very vide range a great courses that are maybe a bit different that you would find somewhere else or trying to step into other waters than this why I love so much this course because I have an opportunity to have that course that maybe I don’t have the all the places. But to the general scale I do think we are slowly changing. Of course, mind chancing is something that takes time and everybody has different pace, so we can’t rush things but it’s going more and more that direction. Also big trends nowadays is to cross-art and to do things with painters and actors and all these for me go together as soon as you put different elements and you try to find them then there is something that creating something new together improvising elements appears like quite naturally in this kind of contexts. It’s my own opinion, I might be completely wrong, I don’t know. David what you think, but this is what I sense.
David: I think that you put in very diplomatically and simply when you said that this is not just something that every institution in the world is rushing to do. That’s very diplomatically put. This is still rare bird in most institutions. But I agree with you Laure, it seems that it is changing. Your generation will be… “the big bang” will come from people like you. And SibA is certainly very much advanced, and also Guildhall, my department and others has been for decades the last two decades at the for front that included impact this have on outreach. When you truly take risks and communicated and the level of creativity and sensitivity your expression goes to another level, what is the respond, there is unsurprisingly, and it does have the effect that one would expect. But we are talking about almost century of classical improvisation being comma, very deep coma and it was politicly incorrect to speak of improvisation in context of classical music. It was no…vulgar. But slowly yes, very slowly and consistently we are coming back, I hope.
Laure: I think this program sounds really good and of course this is something that will be implemented and required practice for lifetime. So of course, at the point of the end of the year academy where we will be, but I’m sure that already as you mentioned we made progress and I think the main progress where there. So then it is just a matter of, you know, practicing more, getting some tips here and there. It just sounds like a wonderful journey just beginning so
Jaani: I think we have to wrap up this podcast. Thank you so much joining me and joining the podcast.
David: Thank you and thank you Laure
Laure: Thank you David
David: I enjoyed the journey we are having together
Laure: Yes, me too and I enjoy speaking without the mask, hiding the emotions and hiding smiles: I’m always smiling but you can not see it.
(Laughing)