The Alan Sondheim Mail Archive

Playing Out of Tune (for Yael)


I play in tune as much as possible, sliding notes on fretless instruments;
if what I play sounds out of tune, then that's an error; if it's out of
tune and continues the modal interplay or seems to acquiesce in something
just beyond one's reach, that is tuneful and proper. In the meantime, the
melodic interplay yaws back and forth, from side to side, as if the issue
of in tune playing were absorbed in an alien architecture that one - I you
- attempts to negotiate. The problem only arises when error shines when
everything sees naive, broken, emptied - but even here, if error tends
towards something useful on the horizon it may yet be forgiven.

There is also the unworrying of in tune playing when the instrument
becomes a sonic vehicle, expressive, programmatic, without defining
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intervals or scales. This tends towards new territory; it also tends
towards an easy acceptance of whatever is played. I worry among these -
how to produce something wayward, untoward, but as if it possessed a kind
of background that one might call broken style.

Without this, there's always the fear of incompetence. What I hear
internally doesn't always occur externally; my mind makes up for it. This
lends an air of foolishness to the music, of course: someone is playing
beyond his means.

The rolling of fingers: My fingers roll into consonance; a sixteenth of an
inch can make a difference; I hear I'm off; quickly I roll up and down;
sooner or later things seem proper; etiquette appears and settles down;
I'm off the hook.

There's something charming in a child playing wildly out of tune, but
there's something horrifying in an adult following suit. I am to be
punished; the music does that itself.

The notes may be so near, so close, but so far as well; the map is incom-
plete. But then there's a kind of earnestess - look, he's trying, he may
be unsuccessful, but he'll pull through - his earnestness lends an air of
authenticity to his work - he's got something to say, and he'll say it, no
matter what the consequences.

And you've got to go along with that, listening to what might have been,
not what's there as plain as the nose on your face - grant him the grace
of his work, that he's giving you a gift, no matter how wounded or tawdry
- that the gift is a jewel with many facets, that grace might enrich your
life, that he rolls his fingers for you, not for himself. The melody may
be incorrect but stunning, the pathos, not in the miserable execution, but
in the transcendent meaning, in the immanence of meaning, that overrides
everything else, as if to say - this gift, the gift of this melody, is all
he has to give, he's giving it his all, he's giving it with his dying
breath, it has to be sufficient.

It has to be sufficient because, in spite of everything, it structures his
world, and you sense that, the power of this structuring, what it says
through what it might have said, music entangled with the grace of inten-
tion, the broken phenomenological horizon of truth.

     ____  ___    ____     __ __ ___    ____  __  ______
    / __ )/   |  / __ \   / //_//   |  / __ \/  |/  /   |
   / __  / /| | / / / /  / ,<  / /| | / /_/ / /|_/ / /| |
  / /_/ / ___ |/ /_/ /  / /| |/ ___ |/ _, _/ /  / / ___ |
/_____/_/  |_/_____/  /_/ |_/_/  |_/_/ |_/_/  /_/_/  |_|

    ____  __  ________   ____  ______   ________  ___   ________
   / __ \/ / / /_  __/  / __ \/ ____/  /_  __/ / / / | / / ____/
  / / / / / / / / /    / / / / /_       / / / / / /  |/ / __/
/ /_/ / /_/ / / /    / /_/ / __/      / / / /_/ / /|  / /___
\____/\____/ /_/     \____/_/        /_/  \____/_/ |_/_____/


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