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Unlocking Emotions With Thoughtful Analysis By RON REGEV
A young musician walks onstage. He or she has spent many an hour in practice rooms, working hard, mastering the technical difficulties of the concert program. Every note has been memorized, every passage worked and reworked. All that is left is for inspiration to take its course, and the composer's idea will be brought to life. Or will it?
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| Seymour Lipkin. (Photo by Peter Schaaf) |
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Seymour Lipkin is very skeptical. Mr. Lipkin, a renowned pianist and conductor who has been on Juilliard's piano and chamber music faculties since 1986, is a champion of knowledge and analysis as a means to understanding compositions."For someone with an extraordinarily brilliant intuition, the above scenario might work," says Mr. Lipkin. "However, it is a dangerous approach. Reliance on blind intuition is an invitation to arbitrary distortion of the work. Of course, intuition plays a vital role in understanding a work—but it must be an informed intuition."As the recipient of the 2004-05 William Schuman Scholars Chair, awarded annually by the L&M (Literature and Materials) Department, Mr. Lipkin will speak about this topic in a series of two lectures this month titled "Who Needs Formal Analysis Anyhow?"According to Mr. Lipkin, a performing musician must have a firm grasp of how the music is put together. A musician can no more perform without this knowledge, he insists, than an actor can perform without knowledge of the plot of the play."True analysis is not a matter of writing down the names of the chords. Rather, it is a description in words of what we feel," he says. "The relative lengths of phrases, the movement from one key to another—these are felt as emotional realities. Analysis attempts to clarify these feelings, so that we do not substitute false ones in their place. This is an enormous aid in reaching the true power and emotions of a given work; true analysis is designed to this end."
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The William Schuman Scholars Chair Lectures
Pianist Seymour Lipkin
Paul Hall
Wednesday, April 6 and 13, 11 a.m.
Open only to members of the Juilliard community.
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As for seeking individuality of interpretation, Mr. Lipkin feels that this will often lead to falsification of the composer's idea. "We are dealing with a handful of the greatest figures in human history, each with deep and powerful feelings. To try and impose our own 'originality' is to miss the great privilege of having the composer's feelings take us over, and of—for the moment—participating in his greatness. The fact that we are different people, each with a different emotional makeup, guarantees that, even as we try to identify with the composer, we will each do it in a different way. From this fact comes the individuality of the performance, not from trying to make it different."Each artist should use all available tools (analytical and intuitive) to try to reach the composer's meaning; each will, of course, need to do so in his or her own way. "To shortchange this process by listening to others' recordings is ill-advised, as it evades just that effort which will show the artist's individual point of view," says Mr. Lipkin. "My teacher, Rudolf Serkin, advised his students to avoid listening to recordings of pieces they were working on."Some people feel that analysis leads to dry performances. According to Mr. Lipkin, if analysis is understood in the right way, this should not be the case; in fact, it should be the opposite. "Analysis should aim to reveal the emotional ideas of the work, which might otherwise pass unnoticed or be distorted. Our job is to reveal the music, not to reinvent it. It is powerful enough as it is, and it can speak for itself."Ron Regev, a doctoral candidate in piano, is on the Evening Division faculty and serves as coordinator for the L&M Department.
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