Musical analysis: a musical strategyMay 1st, 2009
© Romain Guy
After a long debate with a student about musical analysis, I needed to write a few lines on the topic. Why is musical analysis so helpful for musicians? Why do we often deny its necessity? Musical analysis: a musical strategy, I said, because it allows me to draw up a plan for each piece, each concert.
Going on stage without a strategy is really dangerous. As well as a good technician, a pianist has to be a good strategist. Giving the final blow, taking the audience from the rear, we have to think about it, and analysis helps us to carry out this important work. Where is the climax, how this piece can be divided, we do not leave this to chance, our sound strategy depends on it. We have to do this using various scale levels: a movement, a work, a program and even sometimes a whole season or career. In piano playing, there is in fact a very little space for inspiration, I know this can be a deception for some of you, but understand that this little space plays a really important role at another level.
One very often hears of lack in cohesion. Musical analysis allows us to find out how a composer builds his work, and to understand the logic integrating the different movements in a whole called his work, to finally convey this logical system to the listener.
A composer thinks in terms of structures and musical forms (among others) to give a spine to his work. The interpreter has to understand it in order to build a coherent musical composition, and has to convey to the audience the cleverness of the structure.
And you, how does analysis help you?
01/14/10 - 05:16
Analysis is only as good or helpful as the expertise of the analyzer. In the ham-handed hands of a rank amateur such as myself, analysis is meaningless.
In the hands of an expert — especially one who is able to explicate his her “take” on a particular work — it’s magic. There’s a website devoted to master classes. I love it because the truly great pianists are able, it seems to me, to explain the complexity of any — ANY — work in plain language.