Comments on: An Observation About Analysis http://www.christopherguitar.net/blog/an-observation-about-analysis/ Sun, 14 Aug 2011 04:56:54 +0000 hourly 1 http://wordpress.org/?v=3.2.1 By: Dominic http://www.christopherguitar.net/blog/an-observation-about-analysis/#comment-335 Dominic Sun, 09 May 2010 21:58:45 +0000 http://www.christopherguitar.net/?p=610#comment-335 Interesting post. Re analysing without thinking. I think people new to playing, without thinking about it, often think of music as blobs on the page that have to be made into sounds. Of course, music is sounds first and foremost and the notation is merely a shorthand convenience (not even that, often, for a jazz musician). If you know a piece well then you leave the notation behind, even if you keep it there as a crutch! I was watching a video of Mitsuko Uchida talking about playing the Schoenberg Piano Concerto the other day. Your post immediately reminded me of this. She was asked how she managed to memorise it. She replied to the effect that she didn't "memorise" it, she just got to know it and, well, once she knew it she didn't need the music. And analysing it in the video comes second nature to her, in the way you describe. What I'm getting round to, I think, is that once you know a piece then you know its shape and can probably describe that shape (OK, so lots of prior musical training comes into play here) - and that is analysis. The Uchida link is http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PmWRttCo7lo&feature=related Interesting post. Re analysing without thinking. I think people new to playing, without thinking about it, often think of music as blobs on the page that have to be made into sounds. Of course, music is sounds first and foremost and the notation is merely a shorthand convenience (not even that, often, for a jazz musician). If you know a piece well then you leave the notation behind, even if you keep it there as a crutch!

I was watching a video of Mitsuko Uchida talking about playing the Schoenberg Piano Concerto the other day. Your post immediately reminded me of this. She was asked how she managed to memorise it. She replied to the effect that she didn’t “memorise” it, she just got to know it and, well, once she knew it she didn’t need the music. And analysing it in the video comes second nature to her, in the way you describe.

What I’m getting round to, I think, is that once you know a piece then you know its shape and can probably describe that shape (OK, so lots of prior musical training comes into play here) – and that is analysis.

The Uchida link is
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PmWRttCo7lo&feature=related

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