One of the challenges of this project has been committing to which pieces I’m going to work on now, which pieces I’m going to practice now. I keep wanting to play through, like this…
instead of getting down to work, like this.
It’s really tempting to play through one piece, and then play through the next and the next, without doing very much actual practicing. It’s like you’re at a party full of kind, fascinating people, and you have really fun interesting conversations but then when you refill your drink you run into other people, and those conversations are fun and interesting too. Every once in a while you glance over at a former conversational partner, and you grin at each other—you really did make a connection—and then you whirl into another conversation with still another interesting person. And all those conversations are enjoyable, and it’s hard to pick one to turn into a long intense introvert conversation where the rest of the room vanishes and it’s just the two of you, starting the work of really getting to know each other.
Okay, that might be a fantastical version of a party, the kind of idealized visions I had in the depths of pandemic isolation. Anyway, in this analogy maybe everyone else at the party is from the same family, or the same town, and you’re getting to know the culture and habits of the people. It’s a blast to find out who all is there and get a sense of what they’re about.
All of that is really different from going home and doing the relationship work.
This finger goes on this note, no, this finger (see, I knew I’d get back to talking about practicing music). My hand goes from this shape here to this shape here—no, THIS shape here to this shape here—do it again. This shape here to this shape here, no, to this shape HERE. Again. This shape here to this shape here—yes!—to THIS shape here. Again. This shape? Yes. Again. I can’t do it fast yet but I can do it slowly, and I can trust that doing it slowly today and a little faster tomorrow and a little faster after that will work, will get me to the tempo I want.
It’s easy to take myself out of hard-core practice mode, really being intimate with the piece, and back into flirting: reading through pieces slowly (or faster in a simplified way, like leaving out a lot of the notes) to get a sense of what they’ll be like. And I can feel guilty about that: as a pianist, I have a lifelong relationship with Not-Practicing-Enough Guilt. In the past year and a half since I fell for Agnes, I’ve done some really good focused practice that I’m proud of (no way I could perform the grand sonata if I hadn’t, I tell my N-P-E Guilt) but I’ve also done a lot of sight-reading through pieces that I’m not necessarily intending to perform now. Picking what to program is truly one of the biggest challenges: the sonata, yes, and as many etudes as I can muster, and the Mazurka because it will be a fun closer, and what else? So much else! Idyllen, Fantasiestücke, Impromptus, Charakterstücke, Album Leaves…I want to play them all someday, and it’s not always easy to commit to what I want to play in the next program (right now I’m leaning 2 characterstucke, a pair of Idyllen, etudes, impromptu, intermission, sonata, mazurka). I’ve sometimes felt a little guilty for reading more than practicing, for being broad and shallow rather than narrow and deep.
Agnes described herself, in the frontispiece of her translation of Egmont (into English! Be still my liberal arts heart!), as “a very dear little thing, with an ugly face, but who is notwithstanding as industrious as any living creature.” I gasped and laughed out loud when I found that page in the archive. I don’t think I can live up to that: I’m not as industrious as any living creature. I do have not-practicing-enough guilt. I hope I can do what I tell my students to do: use the fear of not being good enough to get you to the practice room, then leave it on the other side of the door while you do the work.
But I actually think this precious sabbatical time in the past few months has been well-spent, even when I’ve been sight-reading instead of practicing, and maybe even when I’ve been reading novels or taking walks or napping instead of practicing. One of the magical things about reading through the music, even without getting into the hard-core practice mode I do actually need, is that the pieces are showing up in my head. The human brain is amazing, and I’m walking around with Agnes earworms all the time. By reading through so many of Agnes’s pieces I really am learning her style. Imagine playing a Brahms intermezzo without ever having heard any Brahms…that’s what I’ve been doing with Agnes Tyrrell. Maybe flirting with all the other pieces in the room is exactly what I need to get to know any one of them really well.