This is the English translation of my Japanese article to appear in Nikkan San on January 23rd, 2022, as a part of my bi-weekly column, “The Way of the Pianist.”
Do you think you hear your own voice?
“Listen to your own sound!” My childhood piano teacher, Ito-sensei often told me during her lessons. (What does she mean?) I kept wondering. What does it mean to listen to the sound that you are generating?
“To listen is to expect to hear things” one of my piano teachers in high school told me. I felt like it was clue to Mrs. Ito’s koan.
When you are really into the music you are playing, or what you are saying, you can’t hear the sound you are expressing through. Inputs and outputs cannot happen at the same time. This is true for computers as well as neurology. To commit to listening is to be one with the sound, to resonate your body and soul immersed in it. And true self-expression is to let your own body and language be highjacked by your inner convictions and passions. The masterly of music may be to balance those two extreme states of being. That may be what Ito-sensei meant by “listen to your own sound!”
When I practice, I consciously divide these two states. My practice of playing a piece of music is about learning to execute the notation technically, and to explore it as a vehicle to my own interpretations and passions. I play the same passage over and over again to broaden the possibilities of different technical and conceptual approach to the same sets of notes. My practice of listening to a piece of music is to listen to the notation realized in the physical acoustics, as well as to listen to the inner convictions and passions the composer was expressing through the notes. I play things slowly, sometimes playing one chord at a time, giving each a few seconds to listen to its resonance.
But in real life, the sounds we generate are improvisational, in response to the needs and circumstances of our daily lives and relationships. I now realize how I am much more expressive and not a very good listener. I burst out in laughter, and my exclamations are theatrical, often embarrassing some of my more shy friends. I often speak way faster than my mouth can properly pronounce the words I mean to utter. However, I have grown to admire those who speak with steadiness, in slow and purposeful enunciation. They are the true grownups, expecting to hear the words they utter resonate into the future, I have come to think these days.
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Thank you for this interesting piece. Only a few days ago, I was watching and listening to a You Tube video of a beloved Japanese pianist performing a Rachmaninoff piece in Germany, I believe. The music hall was old, the acoustics not the best, and the orchestra appeared to be cold and not very responsive to the conductor or the pianist. Nevertheless, the pianist’s interpretation and performance was sensitive, deeply felt, and powerful. Comments were mostly positive but some were quite critical of the pianist’s playing. I sized those comments up and suggested in a comment that the problem was not with the pianist, the orchestra, or the hall but with how these critics were hearing and listening, but not attending as a way of listening. In other words, they were focusing on only one dimension–what they saw and heard in the physical realm but not in the spiritual realm. There is hearing of sound, listening to that sound, and then attending or leaning in to really comprehend the sound and where it comes from–and hopefully, what the sound may mean to us as listeners. I greatly appreciate your explanation of how you hear and how you listen to the sound of your playing and the music you make from the composer’s notes and ideas. Listening is an art in itself and thank you for teaching us to become better listeners, Dr. Pianist.
Thank you so much for your such deeply thoughtful resonance to my piece. I’ve said in the past how just as beauty is in the eye of the beholder, music is in the ears of the listeners. How a bird call, or an insect sound, can be a noise to some and music to others, for example. You and I seem to be on the same wavelength about this, and that is inspiring.