One lesson I learned back in 2019 when I was experimenting with orchestral writing was that–one personal revelation that is–I love writing for percussion. From college-and-after-days I’d always admired the drummer and their skill of body-wise coordination rather than hand coordination; admired it likely because it was simply of equal competency to a pianist yet foreign. And that sounds really arrogant, but I think it’s just more naivety of the percussionists’ milieu. No offense, but you’re awesome.
Brian Ferneyhough’s Bone Alphabet (which is just, objectively, an awesome title for a percussion piece) is an imposing modern work for a percussionist. <– This is a wild understatement. I’d read (unsourced at the moment) that it takes several hundred hours to learn, and I don’t doubt it. The master class video below, with the composer, subjects the performer to a situation I nor anyone would ever want to be in. Though Ferneyhough is an absolutely gracious teacher, the composition is impenetrable for all but the most accomplished, and so I don’t envy the student presented with learning the work in his presence.
Although as imposing as Ferneyhough’s works are, I am humbled by how accurate the performers play them… yet this is true for all modern virtuosic works. After I created a Musescore score for the first page of Finnissy’s English Country-Tunes, I discovered that Finnissy was performing it exactly as written in the recordings (the various 30:22 et al. rhythms being performed exactly as written are intimidating intellectually, to say the least).
Similar-but-different is Frank Zappa’s Black Page for percussion. In the video below, a percussionist spends a week learning and documenting his practices. He begins by sight reading it, which is phenomenal in itself, then continues until the end of the week (go to 12:28 for his final, self-ashamed, unsatisfactory performance). The Zappa composition is not even close to the strenuous requirements of Bone Alphabet, but the performer’s diary provides insight into the process of any musician learning a virtuosic piece. Or, honestly, any piece.
Unrelated:
So I learned that my college piano teacher, George Mann, is still teaching and in Lithia Springs. I can’t express how he’s influenced me and my understanding of music, and just what he’d taught me in my short time as a very bad student. There’s not a day (an only slight exaggeration) that I think of music and not think of him and his guidance. In the next few weeks I have to find the time to go visit him.
Also unrelated, but MST3K is how I would close covid posts: There unfortunately is no normal anymore. Crow T. Robot has something to say to you all. He’s my spirit animal.
