Okay, visualize some music.  Got it?  Are you visualizing a piece of sheet music sitting on a stand?  If you are, you’re wrong; that’s paper.  Paper isn’t music.  Music at least consists of sound, right?   Come to think of it, what exactly is music?  Can we define it?  Music is an evasive thing.   When we try to pin it down with a definition, it squirms free, making our verbose attempt look silly and uninformed.  Webster’s dictionary defines music as follows:

Really?  The science or art of ordering tones…?  A composition having unity and continuity?  This definition defines something in which I would find very little interest, yet I have devoted my entire life to making music and am passionate about it.  I have a great deal of difficulty finding the music I am passionate about in the definition above.  I’m sure others would have the same problem.  There cannot be many composers who have ever viewed themselves as scientists who order tones, yet that is the way they are depicted here.  It is not often that we are able to see Webster’s words squirm with such apparent unease, but let us not be too judgmental; we would be hard pressed to do much better.  Yes, we might solve some of the obvious shortcomings of the definition above, but likely we would only find ourselves trapped in the confines of a much less luminous pit of conscious thought.  We may find, for example, that we have crafted a wonderful definition for the word “noise”, or worse, that our definition includes the words “pleasing and beautiful”.  Isn’t it ironic, having dedicated our lives to making music, that we experience such difficulty in trying to define exactly what music is?

The problem in attempting to define music is that it requires us to use words.  Music and words are both methods of expression and communication.  They are both a means of projecting our own abstract thoughts and feelings.  Trying to define music with words is like trying to define literature with a painting.  These two entities – musical and verbal expression – are hollow, cut from the same root.  They are not meant to be described or defined; they are the tools we use to make the descriptions and definitions.  “Where is this going,” you ask?  “Why do I care how music is defined? I just want to be a better trumpet player!”  It is true that you may not care how it is defined, but the more you understand about the nature of music, the more effective you will be in your musical expression, and that is something that should concern you a great deal.

A musician is a sculptor of sound.  Whether he is a composer or a performer, he is still a sculptor of sound.  The composer’s job is to create music; the performer’s job is to present it.  Odd isn’t it, that the two have become separated?  Obviously there are exceptions, but the vast majority of classical performers (and to a lesser extent jazz performers) do not compose.  It hasn’t always been this way.  In the baroque and classical period, composers performed their own work – often exclusively their own work.  If they performed music written by another, it was usually the work of their teacher or friend.  Over time, however, music has become much more specialized.  Composers sought new ground; they wrote music that was more complex and difficult than they had the ability to perform.  Other musicians, seeing a need, focused increasingly on the specialization of interpreting and performing music.  Of course there had always been performers, but now they began to proliferate.  The virtuoso was born.  In the 19th century, the greatest virtuosos were also composers.  They may have not been celebrated composers, but they were composers nonetheless.  Even our very own J.B. Arban, was, of course, an active composer, though by no means a great one. 

During the 20th century, we began to see a shift.  The great performers became an entirely separate group from the great composers.  The great composers did not perform; the great performers did not compose.  True, many composers performed as conductors, but conducting is a different skill entirely from playing an instrument, and the act of conducting, alas, makes no sound.  It is also a skill, as we all know, that can be faked to an incredible extent.  Did you ever notice that an orchestra never invites some audience member or generous patron to play trumpet with the group, but that they often run them up to the podium to conduct?  Don’t get me wrong. I have enormous respect for a great conductor.  It just so happens that their craft can be faked much more easily than playing an instrument, and faking the craft of conducting is what many great composers of the twentieth century did.  This is an entirely different endeavor than devoting a life to the art and craft of playing a musical instrument, interpreting the music of another.

Obviously there are exceptions to the rule, but the point remains that the vast majority of composers experience their own music from the audience, and performers increasingly dedicate themselves to the performance of compositions that are not their own.  This situation is not, in and of itself, good or bad, but it is something of which we must be keenly aware.  As performers we have been separated from the creative genesis of music, and we must take careful and calculated strides to get back to it in order to portray a piece effectively.  We must interpret a highly complex notational system – one that has been developed over hundreds of years – and use it as our guide back to the true music.  When a composer conceives a piece of music, he does not conceive it as notation, but as sound.  As performers, it is our job to take that notation and use it as our guide to the creative intent of the composer.  This is an important point.  The paper on your stand with all the black notes on it, that is not music, that is a map, or code, if you will.  Our job as performers is to decode those markings, treating them like breadcrumbs that have been scattered along the way.  We are seeking a composer’s musical intention, and those markings are our guide.  We must follow them scrupulously, lest we lose our way and betray the very music we are trying to express.  But there are important differences between being a musical interpreter/performer and being a highly trained breadcrumb automaton.

It may sound sacrilegious, but the notation system is not perfect.  I am reminded of playing Charles Ives’ Three Places In New England during my time in the San Francisco Symphony.  The acting Principal Horn, Bob Ward, asked about a quintuplet rhythm that he had in his part.  He was trying to figure out exactly how to fit his quintuplet in to the rhythmic chaos that Ives had concocted.  The conductor, Michael Tilson Thomas, paused briefly, and then replied with something like the following: “If you look at the score, you will see 2’s, 3’s, 4’s, and 5’s all stacked on top of each other. Clearly, Ives was just trying to get this passage to sound like total chaos,” and then I remember the next words clearly, “He had to write something!”  Indeed.  The composer had a vision, and then went about finding the best way he could think of to portray it.  Sometimes composers find incredibly good ways of indicating their desires; other times their markings come up short.  It is our job as performers to understand the difference between taking what is on the page literally and taking it figuratively.  If you focus on executing every marking as accurately as possible, you will find that your music will lack something.  It will have a mechanical kind of quality to it, and it will fail to capture an audience.  Sometimes we have to utilize our musical instincts and deviate from the indicated path, or follow the path loosely rather than explicitly.  How does one know how and when to do this?  Experience.  You need to listen to as much music as you can, and perform as often as you can.  See what types of decisions are made by musicians you admire: what markings are followed, which ones are ignored.  Over time, you will develop finely tuned instincts, and you will be able to know which breadcrumbs take you closer to the composer’s intent and which ones mislead you.  If you are successful in following the trail of breadcrumbs, the music will begin to speak, and something miraculous will happen: you will find yourself blazing a new trail, rather than following one that has been laid for you.  That is the magic in having the composer and the performer separated; you have two minds working towards a musical product, and the two together are capable of creating something far beyond what only one could have done alone.

The next time you sit down to practice, remember that the piece of paper you are looking at is not music; the music is something that is reached through that system of notation.  It is something that emanates from a composer’s dreams – dreams that are enhanced and given life by you, the performer.  It is sound painting, and it cannot be trapped into a definition by words, or even described by markings on a page.  Each note is a color in this painting; each one has its purpose; and somehow this potpourri of sound is transformed into musical art, and we into musical artists.  So grab your trumpet and depict a musical landscape with every note you play.

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