To begin with – a few disclaimers; I speak as a teacher who, try as he might, has not himself always adhered to all the advice that he will give in the following pages: it is better to be honest. Most of my rambled pondering on how we should behave, as humans and as horn players, has accrued over many years of thought. I am very much the last person to pontificate on human behaviour and will mention it not from a personal – advisory – point of view, but only suggest what I believe we should do.
There are several considerations that, looking back, I now realise are important enough to be examined. Some conventions – old-fashioned or not – I might find myself advising against. Like trying not to finish sentences with a preposition. Some people care – others don’t. Clichés have rather become the bane of my life and, as you will see, I am also as prone to exaggerations, euphemisms and verbal infelicities as anyone. Like many of us, I was advised what to do at school, and then proceeded to ignore a lot of it throughout my life. Avoiding all these weak forms of speech, spoken or written, is something I have been firmly advised to do. So I have tried rather desperately to clean up my act in the last couple of years.
I have to say that I have had very little success in improving my written or spoken English. But I will try, in this offering, to cover a little of what has rather been preoccupying me. For example, I have begun to realise that although many clichés are meaningless rubbish, some are, in fact, worse than others. Together with euphemisms, these latter ones are commonly put out over the radio by political apologists on all sides, leaving us no wiser at the end of the interview than at the beginning. Nevertheless, there might be a few that are actually worth taking on board – a cliché in itself, as one cannot always expect to be in a sailing boat or cross-channel steamer when we are seeing something clearly for the first time. At the same time, although some sayings may patently be copper-bottomed, first rate and above board, they are not always properly apposite to the point one might be trying to make at the time. What is clear, though, clichés are so easy to trot out that if they are to be apt, they need to be very carefully placed, in order to be truly pithy and to the point in the context.
What I am really saying is that clichés, aphorisms and truisms and ‘bromides’ can be flawed and, on occasion, be completely meaningless forms of expression. And in normal daily life, they can be disregarded as innocuous and harmless. While some are occasionally cutting, we have become as used to hearing and ignoring these forms of speech in our daily conversation anyway, as we do the common or garden pun. It could be that a smattering of the more apt, even witty ones might, for an amusing person, be a useful and memorable method of trying to get one’s point across. But he or she would need to be really funny, for, as my brother once said, two half-witticisms do not make one whole witticism.
On the other hand, take the scripts in TV ‘soaps’ and the like. The ‘cleverness’ as opposed to true wit and wisdom of the scripts, turned out by those acting, for example, the parts of barristers in courtroom dramas, has become endemic in order for the instant gratification to be felt by everyone watching the TV drama. In real life, high court judges used to translate their mots juste and words of wisdom into Latin first, in order to lend more cachet to them. In days gone by, solicitors, clergymen and doctors were among the only people appropriately qualified to countersign a passport application. I can’t help thinking that their decent, upright citizenship, as evidenced by their acquaintance with a semi-dead language, was partly seen as a qualification for this. A visiting dignitary to my school once delivered his whole address in Latin tags, and even I understood some of them. That was in the days when an O-level in Latin was still a requirement at Oxbridge. If I come across as overstating my case in one direction or either, I must admit that I am not very keen on the abuse of either the English and Latin languages. Per se.
If we turn to platitudes, I think that when the particularly hackneyed ones are less than useful; they can be simply conversational tools that are convenient to hide behind. They certainly save us from thinking very hard, and as a result, we may even be in danger of using them to get out of serious decision-making. This way, we can be seen to lose credibility even before we have acquired it.
It is surprising what one can achieve in conversation, when one says politely exactly what one thinks. And we can take the trouble to work out and discover something that one has in common with another person whom one does not know. This is all the more interesting with someone one does not know at all well, but actually believes them to be probably rather unlikeable. My friend Tony Tunstall was in the habit of having what he described as ‘Opposites Parties’, in which he placed, side by side, at the dinner table, pairs of guests that he knew could not stand the sight of each other. This was on occasion triggered by his positioning a plate of whelks and a small bottle of vinegar in front of them as a starter to both the meal and the conversation. He said that it nearly always worked, with many a telephone number being swapped as they left. After all, Hitler and Churchill had painting in common, even if one was a little more ‘architectural’ than the landscapist other one. But if they also been addicted to whelks, I suppose that they would have had to think of something else with which to start the conversation.
For an angler – and you may have been wondering how long it would take me to begin drawing an analogy with my favourite sport – and that includes Darts and Shove Ha’penny – it would be stupid in the extreme to arrive at the riverbank and immediately start chucking flies haphazardly at every inch of water. The thinking might be that one of them is eventually sure to land in the right spot where an unsuspecting and uneducated trout, that had probably missed its breakfast, might be lying. No, instead, one should spend a little time looking at the water, walking up and down a bit, testing the wind, thinking, scratching one’s head and calmly working out a suitable course of action. It must be said that on many an occasion this doesn’t seem to work either. But in terms of conversation, surely a lack of a result is only similar to scratching one’s head for too brief a moment, trying to think of what to say, and then coming up with something less than sensible.
It seems a shame, when we cannot easily answer a simple question at a relatively important moment, that we are sometimes stumped, and then lower our head and start mumbling. If we don’t look at someone, we cannot be at all persuasive. Take the viva voce at the end of an audition, when some young and not so young – and a sprinkling of older – people feel that they cannot come up with a sentient and comprehensible answer. For instance, it might be a question about their ‘interests outside music’, and they, being somewhat nervous, have difficulty dressing up their reply in an articulate fashion. Even if they have few interests outside music – which is fair enough – they might pretend more interest in something than is actually the case; and perhaps do a little homework on the subject before they leave the house. But even if they had none, it would be better to think for a couple of seconds, and reply, “I know I should give my hobbies more some thought” or “I’m afraid I don’t really have much time for anything else ate the moment”, or “I haven’t quite decided what means a lot to me, yet”. Those answers are infinitely preferable to, “So, what I’m thinking is, erm, like I’m sort of not sure – it all depends”. Or a variation of this. The answer is merely to practise all this.
Apart from the need to express ourselves convincingly in conversation, we are sometimes offered advice as to how to play well and not worry about making mistakes. Among the philosophical phrases and guidance, we get are, ‘Paralysis through Analysis’, ‘Don’t overthink things’, ‘You’re only as good as your last performance’, ‘Just go out and enjoy yourself’ and ‘Giving it 110%’ are good examples of occasionally less than useful and wise statements. Not only are some of these – and others – simply not true, but also, because they are over-used, they lose any value they might be thought to contain. The reassuring and sympathetic statement ‘We all make mistakes’ is all right in an emergency, and I have appreciated it myself throughout my career as a horn player trying to hold his job down, but even this ought not be used too often if it is to retain its effectiveness. Every schoolboy knows, or perhaps, ‘Every schoolboy knows’, that if one is ‘forewarned, and therefore forearmed’, one can and must avoid using some clichés ‘like the plague’. Did I really say all that? We don’t always find it easy to confine these banalities to the bin. I admire those that do. We should employ sensible words of wisdom.
If we are about to play a solo, just as crucial is to learn how to stand up and introduce a piece of music to the audience before we start. From the moment we walk on the platform, we are already performing, and speaking is going to be just as important a part of our ability to communicate as is our playing. We need to look straight at the audience and speak up. It’s the beginning of the process of selling ourselves to the audience. If we talk convincingly, the audience actually knows that it is going to be enjoyable. They can relax and know that we will play well. If they know it so, can we, and we will play well. It is not easy to do this, and it took me years to have the nerve to introduce a programme. I gradually became better at it, but in fact I could have learned the art much better if someone had told me from the start just how important a part of the performance it was.
With this in mind, I think that we have no excuse not to think hard about how we should react to any situation when it arises, whether it is an important consideration in real life, or something that crops up during conversation, or whether it is in our other ‘real life’ on the concert platform or in the practice room. In all parts of real life, those who ask a gentle question deserve a considered answer. In terms of a piece of music, this is what a talented composer asks us to do, in ways that are sometimes blatantly obvious and sometimes incredibly subtle. A composer makes statements and poses questions, which are then interpreted and answered as the music unfolds. We may only be a very small part of the musical plot, and yet we must still choose to join in. If we are focussing the whole time. It will not take long to work out how to play our part, and we gradually become better at it.
There are hundreds of examples one could choose but take as an example the lines of gradually descending appoggiaturas in the first horn part of Romeo and Juliet by Tchaikovsky. When they occur in different parts of the overture, the phrased lines contain different notes of different dynamic intensity. At one point, they have accents on the first note of each pair. One has a choice. One can either make the pairs of notes dynamically even, as I have heard on some well-known recordings, which makes them musically worthless. Or one can tell the musical story by expressing the melodic lines as intensely driven emotional expressions of the love between two people. The very point of an appoggiatura is that the first, perhaps lightly stressed, note of the pair actually gives an implied fuller meaning to the second, often very slightly softer and understated, note. It thus turns understatement (British or otherwise universal) to good use. If the emotions implied in the music are not exaggerated, they are so often better expressed.
They make the listener listen better. Just like a soft speech often holds more meaning than a loud one. Under-expression and over-expression are in equally poor taste.
It seems to be true that musical clichés are quite widespread too, being thrown out casually by musicians when interpreting a phrase. The slowing down, together with a diminuendo and the fashionable agogic pause before the last note is starting to ‘get my goat’. As is the often tasteless, over-accented loud note, and the exaggerated, and unmarked ‘echo-effect’ within the music. Why, just because a short phrase is to be played twice, should we assume that repeating it pianissimo will automatically reveal hidden depths in the music not understood or even intended by the composer, when the piece was written? If he or she had wanted the effect, it would have been clearly implied. It too often simply sounds ‘clever’. I, to my shame, have, of course, done this myself many times. Another intended crowd-pleaser can be the scherzo that is played so fast – i.e., ‘excitingly’ – that all the fine details in the scoring are likely to be missed by both the players and the ears of the listeners. To quote Wyatt Earp (nearly accurately), ‘Fast is fine, but accuracy is everything. You need to take your time in a hurry’
If people are unable to get a point across, it is usually either because they don’t fully understand the point they are making or are not used to explaining themselves clearly. Just as we should not ignore the chance of an honest swapping of ideas over the dinner table, horn players who never take a risk with the music jeopardise their credibility as much as anyone else. I don’t mean that we should always be confrontational in our performance, but neither should we, within reason, play too safe in the concert. We should want to get our point across. In the concert, this is just as true for the player sitting ‘down the line’ as for the section principal player. On a scale of one to ten, such small, and thoughtfully sensitive touches of musicianship must be seen to be high and therefore infinitely desirable on the Hans Richter Scale. They will enhance the whole effect, without ever giving the impression that individual musicians are in any way trying to be ‘clever’. The musician is merely allowing him- or herself to be musical.
When we sight-read something on any instrument, we have to make instinctive decisions on the spot, such as to how to phrase, how loud to play and where to take a breath. While all the time trying to play the right notes in the right place. We only have one chance, especially if it is during an audition, where one has only a few minutes to make a positive impression and be noticed favourably. Putting our point across and committing ourselves like this when under some pressure seems a lot to ask, but we soon get used to doing it. We will make mistakes, but this is how we improve. In fact, we need to make the mistakes first to allow the improvement to start. We learn by intuitively guessing what sort of immediate result is expected of us, and then deciding consciously how to achieve this. It takes time and practice. For professionals, the audience is effectively our employer, after all. For an amateur, the listeners are still their raison d’être. And just as discerning. We must give them what they want, or they will not come back for more. Otherwise, we might not be asked to partake in this musical feast again.
When we have some confidence, we can deliver confident spoken words with our voice, and we can deliver lines of music through our instrument. The vocal – as in the spoken word – method can be flat and boring or attention- and ear-grabbing and persuasive. The horn’s voice can be dull and inexpressive too. But occasionally, an instrument has the ability to be even more persuasive than the human voice. How often do we hear the long-married couple associating a particular tune with their first meeting? The underlying message of a non-verbal phrase can permeate deeper into the subconscious of the listener. This can happen especially if we are properly enhancing the words of mystical poets like William Blake or Thomas Traherne. After learning the mental disciplines involved, we will have gained the potential to do this. One can explore these vocal and instrumental commonalities by playing on the horn a recitative from a Handel oratorio in a suitable quasi-vocal way, using the appropriate equivalent of speech rhythms and stresses with which to express it. Then progress to a soprano aria like “I Know that My Redeemer Liveth” from the Messiah. The ability to communicate and express oneself in music was epitomised by the soprano Isobel Baillie (born in 1895) who was still teaching at the RCM in 1961 while I was there. Throughout her career, she had the reputation for actually meaning every word that she sang. And there is no reason why a disciplined horn player cannot feel and express emotions in a similar way. After all, two hundred years ago, did not a critic once write of Giovanni Punto after an early performance of the new Beethoven Horn Sonata, ‘All that was missing were the words?’
Strategies for becoming experienced in expressing ourselves should be taught to us as early as possible, but are not, I feel, always sufficiently stressed from the beginning. A really good teacher will always draw us out; with advice, of course, but also by making us come up with our own answers, however young we are. In the short or long run, it is we who, from the beginning, have to be helped to learn how to muster and master our current learning skills. And then proceed to act on what we have so far learned. In the lesson, we, as well as the teacher, will see whether they work. As students learn, they must use their accrued knowledge further to develop, and add to, a learned list of skills. These skills will then become instantly accessible habits. And they will be habits that then grow throughout our whole education and then throughout our life. I admit having been slow to appreciate some of these truths. You may notice I deliberately have not yet mentioned scales, long notes, accuracy, or how to slur. We have first got to make the decision to discover how to learn to do these things. Only then will the rest follow.
It seems to me that, to get our art over to the audience and to give ourselves some satisfaction, we horn players need to communicate just as successfully as do administrators, churchmen and women, lecturers and preferably honest politicians. To do this, we need clear rules to which to adhere (notice the correctly but slightly awkwardly placed preposition). The rules have however to be flexible and to depend on the mood and the circumstances.
Firstly, horn players need to be instilled with fundamental rules that they understand, and upon which they can base their future performance skill. These are principles in which they must have complete faith. Abiding by simple, straightforward principles means that when our skills have been learned, we can more easily please others, and please ourselves. I am trying hard to avoid technical requirements in this essay, but we must learn to understand the nature of intonation and play in tune. And not make too many mistakes. To err is human, however, and mistakes are inevitable – there would indeed be something very wrong with us if we didn’t split notes. How can we arrive if we do not first travel? And to help us get there, what we can learn to do while we are on our journey is ‘listen’ internally to every note that is coming out of the instrument. Listening (‘taking it in’) is way beyond mere hearing. Just like when we are ‘talking’ to other people in the orchestra and taking in all that is being ‘said’ by each player, not just all of us in the horn/woodwind/section. We are listening to what we and they are saying – at the time it is being said. And we need to adjust to what is being said, because what they say will then inform the further progress of the ‘conversation’. Being mindful of what we are doing, note by note, makes it much easier to remember and correct something next time we play it. This is because we remember precisely what we did to get it right on the previous occasion, and we tap into the memory. We are training the cerebellum to remember to give us the right messages when we need them. It is relatively easy to recognise whether another player is doing this and playing ‘vocally’ in this way. If we think about what we say in the same way, we may learn not to repeat the same silly and regretted thing to our friends next time we see them.
As new situations arise, the next stage is reached. Now we become more confident, we have gained a seriously solid foundation on which to build. It will have inevitably involved mastering as well as we could those individual skills that will begin to define our own playing as individuals. They will give it character by adding a more subtle nuance to our work. These small personal idiosyncrasies ought not to be exaggerated, of course, but if tasteful, they can be colourful and attractive. Like everything else, we test them, try them out, and see whether they work. If they don’t, we discard them as being not right for us. It’s called becoming experienced.
There is a faintly oxymoronic cliché that is difficult to resist here; you always make mistakes when you are gaining experience. The more mistakes we make, the more experienced we become. The more experienced we become, the fewer mistakes we make. Polishing our playing takes some work and, in a way, research, from listening and studying other players. Some styles are worth copying. Others will not suit us. And others that are very strange, and because of cultural differences need not concern us. Things said by seemingly authoritative personages are not necessarily true. I remember being told at college that Beethoven couldn’t write a good tune, but that Nielsen was the most important composer in the last two hundred years. I was so gullible at the time that it took me a long time fully to appreciate the German master’s work. I have to say; I do love Nielsen, though. We need not believe everything we hear others saying. Anne Boleyn did not have six fingers on one hand, and Fritz Wunderlich had not had his shoelaces tied together before he sadly fell to his death down a vertiginous flight of stairs.
But I have become side-tracked and must rush back to the main thrust of this essay. I have mentioned the importance of learning to perform and the importance from the beginning of what we might call stagecraft. Although we may have already experimented a little, we cannot make the best use of this second stage of learning until we have begun automatically to adhere sensibly to the simple and clear rules of the first. By this I mean the rules that stand the test of time are what we, as horn players, must always come back to. These are exemplified in the exercises of Schantl (1903, reprinted in 1941) and the Arban Cornet Method (1859) which are still as much sworn by, in modern brass playing circles, as swearing on a stack of Bibles once may have been.
We hear the top concerto players around the world using a mixture of the simple unaffected straight lines of music in the first and second movements (Schantl), that persuasively hold our complete attention, reminding us of Dennis Brain at his fluent best. Then, in the last movement, we are lifted almost out of our seats by his or another’s dazzling display of pyrotechnical brilliance (Arban). All this is the product of careful thought and methodical practice.
A genius called Mozart communicated all this in his Symphony No. 39. We listen, captivated, to the first three delightful movements, and then suddenly in the fourth movement we are treated out of the blue (merely a metaphorical figure of speech and allowable in this instance) to the most delightful and uplifting opening scale-like melody one could imagine, one in which – unless I am much musicologically mistaken – my father told me that Mozart neither bothers, nor needs, to include a second subject. It all provides a satisfying smile for all and sundry to keep on their faces for long after they have left the concert hall. He had learned the art of symphonic writing by composing the 38 symphonies before number 39. His first attempt was written with the help of Johann Christian Bach while lodging in a house in Chelsea.
Like scientists testing scientific theories, musicians must test musical theories. If one doesn’t work, the scientist tries another. Like them, we must have a clear concept of our conjecture in our headfirst; we can’t allow ourselves to just have a woolly hypothesis and then plan a vague strategy and then see whether it works. An illustration of this might be when faced with a new and demanding piece of music containing a lot of loud high notes, we simply rely on what we mistakenly describe as our intuition (it is in fact just a wrong instinct), and don’t take a breath and just press like mad, playing louder and louder, while frowning fiercely. Having been given few clues as to how to play the horn when I was young – for example, when I split a note, I was told simply to tongue harder, even though I had had no instruction on note production whatever – this is certainly how I often found myself behaving.
When we find this strategy to be both painful and unproductive, then is the time to sit down and come up with a theory. The most important thing to realise is that the proving of it will possibly take hours of patient and apparently unrewarding practice, going up many cul-de-sacs, until at last we see results. The best players I know are the ones who enjoy practising just as much as they enjoy performing. In other words, they love playing the horn. Whether it takes hours, weeks or years to see the results, the amount of time spent is actually irrelevant, if we are confident that we are doing the right thing. This is because we are serious horn players, and there are as many subtly different types of embouchure as there are players.
Although there may be many paths open to us, it is the goal itself that must remain in uppermost our minds. It can become embedded within the deep satisfyingly subconscious memory, so that eventually we don’t even have to remember that we have a goal. Remembering to take care when crossing the road is one of the first things we need to have embedded in our mind. Curiously, though, in horn playing, as opposed to while dodging the traffic, I have found that the quickest way to get there is to take the slowest path.
By definition, there can only be one priority; in the case of our work and practice, the priority is the process itself. It has to become our own a continuing process, based on clearly understandable data. We base our future skill on our present practice. The details are the considerations that spring from the priority. There are plenty of wonderful teachers that I know who understand the things that I have laid out.
Then, one day, perhaps we might pass on the ideas behind our own thoughts, in some form or other, to others. Dauprat wrote his ideas down nearly two hundred years ago. The great majority of them still prove themselves to be valid today. This was before the invention of the petrol engine, cellphones, Bluetooth, the F-alto, chicken nuggets and the dreaded Twenty20 game.
I have mentioned unproven ‘facts’ announced confidently by others. When they concern playing skills of one sort or another, these so often contain dubious advice, possibly right for others but not necessarily for us. They might appear in the form of euphemistic clichés like ‘Oh, just leave the horn in the case for a few days – your lip will soon recover’. This could, in fact, be true, but one’s own instincts should tell us what we should in fact do. We used to be told of the importance of ‘Guinness for Strength’. But it is doubtful that this strength will include the strength of our embouchure (I must emphasise that I have only been told about these 1930s-1950s advertisements).
More up to date might be the advice that wearing Nike trainers while you practise will help us, accurately, to ‘just do it’. In some cases, this is undoubtedly good advice even without the trainers. But I think some of what I have been talking about earlier might be preferable when faced with the first horn’s last – rather soft, unmuted and exposed – mf high c”’ (crotchet = 44) right at the end of Webern’s Passacaglia. It is therefore unwise to trust untested or unproven advice, however comfortable and expensive the trainers might be. We know that some recommendations are tempting to try out, as they allow us to blame the other person involved afterwards if they don’t work. To sum up, we cannot afford not to base our practice on possibly challenging rules, especially the ones that we know deep down are the most sensible. Challenging, but never boring. No horn practice need be boring.
It would be infinitely more preferable, as a shortcut, to read and learn by heart, Kipling’s ‘If’ and then do the practice, and play in tune.
Advice-givers ought to be qualified to give advice, with experience to back up their recommendations. Some of the best players in the world are indeed fine teachers, but they should not be given the post only because of their own playing prowess. Not without reason should they be called Professors. After all, these profess to know, and the best do know. I was inspired by the amazing demonstrations I have had from a few teachers in my own lessons. Their playing did indeed tell me that ‘if they can do it, so can I’. But sadly, with some, it would have helped if I had also been given a few clues as to how to do it.
This is the moment where I also admit to myself being completely unqualified as a teacher. My father, who followed the same profession as a music teacher as I, had no ‘letters behind his name’ whatsoever, either. He was considering, when he retired, writing an autobiography entitled Forty Years Without a Syllabus. What I learned quite early on, while making many mistakes along the way, was merely that I should benefit from trying to stay one lesson ahead of the student and testing my strategies out myself first, before inflicting their effectiveness – or not – on my students. My father told me that it was his method too.
A bad teaching environment could almost be equated with a bad commercial business. Take the situation in which someone has mismanaged funds, leading to investors losing their well-earned money. This situation is often described to the investor as a ‘cash-flow problem’ – something that needs ‘strategic collateralisation’. The original culprit’s bad judgements over investment decisions have been conveniently obfuscated within the various offices within the firm. That ‘paperwork’ may in turn have usually been mislaid by a further person. This person’s job should not have needed to exist anyway, had the fund manager been more usefully qualified and had done the job on behalf of the clients better. The middleman would have been better employed emptying skips or clearing plastic from the Mekong River.
Take an entirely fictional situation of a teaching establishment. Translated into horn playing terms, the college is the employer of the teacher. Because of the curriculum, the teacher, competent or incompetent, may or may not be allowed to teach as he or she wishes. If incompetent, the people who might lose their money are the students. Those who cover up the mess are the college authorities who award the player a possibly generous yet not always deserved mark in the final examination, in order to make the college success rates look good on the brochure. The students who started their life at college with high expectations and a student loan do not easily recover from this. They may well feel embittered and guilty, wondering why they did not do very well at college and are now not getting the work that they had hoped for. After all, they had lessons from up to three or four teachers altogether and attended multiple master classes from visiting teachers during their time at college. Of course, they can always become teachers themselves and unthinkingly continue the work of their own ‘mentors’.
I must immediately stress that this unhealthy scenario is not only the worst-case, but only to have been found within certain establishments in the far distant past. Colleges and further-educational establishments are becoming more enlightened every year and provide fine study courses for their students with the individual at their core. I am merely painting a depressing picture in order to make a point. Nevertheless, some may identify with a few parts of the story, if only anecdotally. The point about being in the healthiest learning environment, however, still needs to be made and be pondered upon by students and all involved with the process, so that the best and most imaginative education can be accessed. Imagination itself can be enabled by a teacher who uses experiential techniques of teaching.
The reason for writing this rambling (but one hopes not quite sleep-inducing) article is to give every budding horn player hope. An experienced and wise teacher – and you must find one first, not forgetting that not all the best teachers actually play the horn – should first tell you that the horn is really difficult to play well, but it is perfectly capable of being played well if you follow certain simple rules. And it will prove infinitely rewarding. The rules are not always easy, but they should always be simply laid out and understood. They will especially be concerned with painstaking embouchure-building, and will include old-fashioned drills to do with long notes, scales, production, legato playing, breathing and ensemble playing. It will involve a lot of hugely enjoyable, repetitious, practice of all the above – and much more. And all done in a thoughtful, sensible and above all reflective and enjoyable way. The most crucial element in all this will be one’s instinct and one’s intuition. Access to both is both as natural and learnable as anything that we do.
But the question is; if the rules are simple and understandable, why not just follow them, and very quickly prove that they work? The answer is that it takes time to see results, and there are so many socially engineered distractions that seem to prevent us from having any ‘own time’ in which to really think. It is true that, for some, it will take much less time to see results than for others. Whether it takes ten years or ten thousand hours of practice, if you start when you are ten, by the age of twenty you may have the potential of being a fine player with a glittering future in front of you. And you will already have had ten years of fun getting to this stage.
If you are practising properly at the age of 10, or 20, 30, 40, 50, and even 60 or 70, the same rules apply. Each age has its challenges and situations will be different, but I know the above to be true, because I have seen the happy results. Even if your potential turns out to be rather less than you hoped it will not matter a jot, because making music – like watching flowing water (my second and last fishy comparison) – is the most calm and thought-provokingly productive thing anyone can do. Very many of the most respected politicians all over the world have been those who played or enjoyed music. Although one of them was a better Oxford organ scholar than he was a conductor.
Repeated study of skills and daily routines, achieved in a focussed way, can engender a good memory for music. A very few appear to be possessed of what is called a photographic memory, but this is a rare blessing. Like actors becoming better at learning lines as they become older, many horn players can remember all the notes and instructions within the music after first learning it thoroughly. Many soloists need to play a huge range of the repertoire by heart.
Talking of memory, one of my teachers, the delightful Ifor James, was a very serious and brilliant musician. But he had his lighter side – to say the least. I clearly remember ‘bumping’ him in the Hallé and saying to him, just before we embarked on Berlioz’s Carnival Romain, “I bet you could play this back-to-front and upside-down, couldn’t you?”. He said, “Let’s find out” and turned to the last page of the overture and then turned the music upside down. He then proceeded to show me that he could – perfectly. He also sometimes made Donald Duck noises in the loud bits.
Practise on your own, but learn quickly to perform alongside others, even if it is just playing duets, of which there are hundreds of high-class examples. This is the finest and most instructive way of conversing with others through the medium of music. Join a band of those of your own standard or players a little better than you. Ask people to listen and comment honestly on your playing. If you see their comments as fair, and informed, and wise, then come up with a plan and do something about it. If they praise your playing, allow yourself to be pleased, but determine to improve further.
A last cliché could be the one about practising not until you get it right, but until you cannot get it wrong. It’s the one I like best. It may seem like reaching the finishing line in a marathon, with the ‘ten-mile wall’ being a very necessary part of the process. An example will be the difficult passage played thirty times. After about ten times playing it, you will realise what the problem is. So, you work on that problem, playing the passage another twenty times. The next day, you work on it further until you begin to get it as you want. After the first 10 times, the next 20 will be more or less correct. The third day, your lip finally responds to your wishes and allows you to play it correctly ten times in a row. So, you play it another twenty times to make sure. On the fourth day you can play it right – every time. You are now a better player than you were three days before. In other words, it has only taken you three days to improve your skill, and other tangentially related skills, too. The particular result may well become one of the very aspects of your work that seriously defines you as an artist. You will experience deep satisfaction when the result is fully and permanently lodged in your deep memory – ready to be accessed at the drop of a hat. Sorry about that last expression. It slipped out.
Developing musical creativity leads to better academic success. All sensible schools realise that. In the same way, learning the art of conversation as a helpful, productive exchange of ideas is a process that obviously makes sense in one’s life. Both forms of activity mean that you learn something that you didn’t know before. Therefore, the time you spend practising to improve both of them makes equal sense. Don’t cut to the chase too soon, cliché-ly speaking, but instead cut out the dross from your life and have a clear, articulate concept of the future and your eventual place in it. Then work out your strategy. And have fun.
