The freedom of limitations
All art thrives in the tension between freedom and limitation. Musical compositions—even jazz and Avant-Garde—are bracketed by two important non-negotiable things: time and structure. As performers, we work within the decisions made by the composers of the pieces we play. But if we don’t understand or respect the framework of the composition, we risk not being able to share the music in a cohesive way with listeners.
Consider the audience’s perspective: presented with nothing but the sounds we play, listeners have no roadmap of the piece save what we’re able to communicate through the music. This is why piano instructors all over the world tell students to analyze the score. Understand its structure and nuances. Comprehend the relationship between notes and sections and be scrupulous in attending to the details laid out by composers. Most of all? Maintain a solid sense of the pulse—even when improvising.
There are no words to describe how much I hated this when I was a young pianist. I wanted to play the music my way, which frequently made a hash of the timing of the pieces I played. I wanted to drench the musical lines in my emotions by lingering too long in poignant sections or playing fast passages too fast. I was, in short, like an unbridled horse, galloping all over the score and not communicating it well to others as a result.
Experience and a few bruisingly bad performances taught me self-restraint. I pulled back, approached the music I played with respect for the limitations laid out for me by the composer, and made a stunning discovery, namely that freedom consisted in accepting the limitations of the score as the medium of my creativity. When I could accept that great music exists not without limitations but in them, I found the doorway to a universe of musical possibility.
The concept of freedom through limitations runs counter to the prevailing popular belief that equates freedom with living without limits. Yet every artist in every discipline knows that artistic choices are about choosing limitations. Interpretive artists such as pianists are thrust into a musical universe of the composer’s choosing each time they play a piece of music. Into this prescribed world we bring our strengths and weaknesses as pianists and as people. We submit to the boundaries laid out by the composer, listen for what the music awakens in us, and there, in the cauldron of encounter between music and musician, we find freedom. Do we shape a phrase this way or that? What touch does this passage call for? How do we, as performers, enter into dialog with the score in such a way that the notes become an expression of our own experience, not just a replay of others’ interpretations?
Freedom within limitations starts with the humility to put ourselves aside long enough to practice in service of the music, not our own ego demands. For musicians such as myself who are attracted to pieces through our hearts first, we’re also required to suspend our emotional response to the music and spend time studying and learning what the composer is saying through the piece. We do the work. We practice the details carefully. We drill the technical sections. And one day, as if wandering past a field we’ve seen a thousand times, it suddenly comes to life. There, in a moment that’s all the more poignant for being fleeting, we and the composer are walking hand in hand through the notes, and the music shimmers to life in our shared vision.
Every one of us can find this freedom within the limits of the musical score, regardless of how proficient we are at the piano. Even the simplest minuet contains the stories of dance, of history, of form, and of the celebrations where minuets were once danced. Every one of us, through the portal of the notes, can learn that occasionally a piece can be perfect, and a life can be perfect, for just that moment.
These moments of freedom and transcendence within structure are what we all seek. To know the joy of living with the structure of what is. To live within the skin of the music with assuredness and joy. To stop looking for ways to trumpet our musical greatness or our individual feelings but to commune with the music, the composer, and the world around us, not force ourselves on it. There, in the transitory magic of a few notes, we find the heart of the music, and just for the moment, complete freedom.
Photo by Cordell Kingsley, courtesy of UpSplash