I was just thinking ‘Repetition doesn’t make Real’.
Is a rehearsal a re-hearing? Or is it a re-petition?
A lot of time is spend repeating phrases, parts, pieces. The conductor sets a personal goal and the musicians try to satisfy his/her demand.
But this builds up to a co-dependence: The conductor needs the orchestra to express him/herself. And the musicians need a conductor to tell them what to do. Because they were trained to follow some-one who knows better from the moment they learned an instrument.
Instead of training how to listen to your own music, you are trained to listen to what the teacher is telling them. But in that way, music itself will never evolve further than the knowledge of the teacher/conductor. It would be better to train people listening to their own sound than to the explanation of the teacher. To teach them how to experiment until it sounds the way they want to.
Lately I’ve been studying narcissism and the co-dependent relationships that evolve from that, because I think a lot of the musical environment is vulnerable for that kind of relationships. This is the moment where Music really gets stuck.
All things considered… the most interesting finding last year, was that repetition didn’t make Music. Nowhere… This is where most time and effort is lost.
The conductor sometimes even starts repeating explanations of how to ‘read’ the conducting.
Then there is the conductor too involved in his own interpretation that there is no room for others to add their own story. Let alone search for the beauty they perceive themselves.
Then there is the exact conductor who thinks doing what is notated is the best way to play, forgetting that a score is just a 2D projection in the best way possible of a 3D world. It’s not perfect, it never will be. Imagination is needed to rebuild the musical vision of the composer.
Even when training your muscle memory, it get’s more refined every ‘take’. A repetition would mean to train the missed-take. right? That’s what is happening over here: people repeat phrases, parts, what the teacher does,
The english word ‘rehearsel’ means literally to listen again. But to listen for what?
The Dutch word ‘repetitie’ means literally to repeat. But to what cause?
The German word ‘probe’ means literally ‘to try’. But to try what?
The words describe what you do, not the common GOAL.
It’s poor thinking about what a rehearsal actually could be:
help finding people’s own Truthful expression.
When you repeat, you stay the same. There is no chance the music is going to change with you as you develop.
Only change is a constant. In that sense repetition isn’t a goal that could be met anyway.
