The record: a help or a hindrance to artistic creation?May 8th, 2009
For a long time, I devoured records. All of them, even the bad ones. They allowed me to discover the repertoire as well as fascinating performers. They were part of my musical education and partly trained my ear. They had an influence on my music personality, it’s certain. But which one? Did they helped me or, on the contrary, did they hinder me?
When I have started listening to a lot of records, I did not know at all or knew very little about the repertoire for piano. So I primarily listened to pianists. Thanks to them, I rapidly gained knowledge of the repertoire of my instrument and started to become interested in the rest. I have also acquired a critical ear on these interpretations, trying to understand why I disliked such-and-such record. They sometimes brought me new ideas and opened my musical world.
The downside is that all these interpretations have influenced my ear. While some were good catalysts, many others prevented me from developing my own sound imagination, putting in my head already-thought sounds. Instead of searching, I have long used the “all ready” solutions offered by the record. Here is the problem though: I have long believed that knowing by heart a record means knowing the work perfectly. Rather than trying to learn from the work and draw an interpretation, I used to try to reproduce with more or less success what I already heard without really understanding the ins and outs. Without realizing it, I was standardizing my play and loosing my imagination.
Of course, it is necessary to listen to records, if only for the benefits I have mentioned, but in my approach I lacked hindsight: I was like a painter contemplating a Velasquez and wanting to reproduce the same thing. Today, I have evolved enough to search for my own style and understand that even if Velasquez fascinates me, I must not copy Velasquez, but rather try to find what makes his strength.
05/11/09 - 12:14
Pierre-Arnaud, bonjour! Your site looks great! I love the part announcing your trends for 2010.
About records, I have been thinking a lot about this, writing about a big recording artist. Back in vinyl days you had to have a big label behind you in order to make records. Now that is changing. Do you ever find yourself as a pianist overwhelmed by all the CDs out there now? I wonder whether it makes pianists put too much emphasis on being different (as opposed to good…)
05/13/09 - 01:27
Hi, Mary!
Do you ever find yourself as a pianist overwhelmed by all the CDs out there now? Maybe I should, but I don’t. We’re all different. I don’t run after originality, because the way I think is unique, and it’s my only but biggest originality. Nobody can think like me or like you. I don’t want to be different, I just want to be myself, respect the composer’s text and play what I hear inside me and what seems natural to me, no matter if it’s different from the others or not. Anyway, it’s a really hard question to answer, maybe I should write a post about this
05/20/09 - 08:11
[...] The record: a help or a hindrance to artistic creation? [...]
01/14/10 - 05:13
PA: It’s like little ducks. We’re often “patterned” by the first thing we hear. I am forever patterned to Chopin’s waltzes by Guiomar Novaes.
(Not necessarily a bad thing.)
Mendelssohn: John Ogden
Liszt: Kun Woo Paik
Only with constant exposure to more and more and more and more different and more different performance do we shape our “own” opinions.
Thanks for your blog. It’s worthy of more entries.
Michael