There’s a story about a young conductor who was guest-conducting an orchestra and wanted to impress the grizzled veteran players…so he arranged for them to play off parts that had been secretly printed with wrong notes.
A few minutes into the rehearsal, he stopped the orchestra on a complex chord and said, “The third trumpet played an E-natural - that should be an E-flat.”
To which the third trumpet player replied, “Maestro, I don’t know what idiot printed this part, but you can rest assured I played an E-flat!”
That’s not quite what I’m saying. It’s more about style.
In competitions, especially - in the opening rounds, mistakes may get you eliminated. But by the time you get to the final round, you have more to lose from being risk-averse than aggressive. At that stage, you need to leave an impression on the judges and audience. You need to catch their eye, especially since some competitions feature audience-voted prizes. If you play it safe with your focus on avoiding errors, you run the risk of being overshadowed by more flamboyant and memorable rivals on the stage.
Of course, errors are still something to avoid. But at that point, you need to focus more on “what can I gain?” than “what can I lose?”
Speaking, as I was, of conductors, here is another music-related documentary we just watched. I focuses on a competition for female conductors in Paris in 2022. Also highly recommended.
So true. I play in a cover band, and have decades of experience. Every musician knows that when you make a mistake, you don’t wince or make a sad face. You act as if nothing out of the ordinary occurred.
All musicians make mistakes. The more talented and practiced, the fewer the mistakes. Some niches, as pointed out, do not gladly suffer frequent foul-ups. Studio musicians, for example, have to be “hit it and quit it” guys. Studio time is expensive.
And some niches accommodate passion at the expense of precision much more generously. “It’s only rock and roll,” Billy Gibbons has said. “Everybody fucks up.” And there’s some real virtuosos in rock. But there’s likewise sloppy-good and immensely popular musicians where mistakes are just not punished.
When I play classical music I’m thinking more rigidly about notes on the gradstaff. When I play keys in my band I’m more concerned with “how do I make the whole band sound good and highlight all our strengths?”
It requires a different approach. I would not recommend my stack of quarter excercise to a jazz or rock musician, it will just kill all the joy, creativity, and spontaneity of playing the piece live.
As a point of reference, I was just reading about the greatest Wimbledon Final ever played, between Federer and Nadal in 2008. I noticed that, between them, they made 79 unforced errors.
I’m a huge jazz fan and go to lots of live jazz performances including many of the greats. They are two different skills and it’s not a fair comparison.
Yes… and the two spectra- mechanical and bland to inspired and error-filled to mistake-free- don’t have anything to do with each other. The popular assertion that to play accurately or precisely means it will by definition lack feel is just not true… though plenty of amateurs use that folk wisdom to feel better about their faults.
There used to be a great deal of improvisation in classical, or historical European art music, or whatever you want to call it. This was especially evident in Baroque music. Why this died out, I don’t know.
Not my point, though. I’m not dismissing the importance of avoiding mistakes. But that avoidance does not, by itself, necessarily equate with inspired performance. That was the post I replied to, which suggested an error-free performance couldn’t possibly be bland. Sure it could.
(Flexing my ignorance here:) Not sure if it qualifies as “improvisation,” but when I play with a community orchestra or our quartet, the orchestra director or our AP music theory teacher 2d fiddle respectively periodically observe how few directions were written in the original scores by the composers. Many were added by later publishers/arrangers.
Of course, I got our 2d fiddle all het up when I commented that I was working up my part in one of the Water Music suites for clawhammer banjo! So I guess there are SOME limits!
My own years ago experience with classical voice is that you are born with your ultimate voice. Training will expand your range, purify your tone, burnish your flexibility, (and stay on pitch), but Wagner is only for a few.
I used to tell my beginning guitar students, “The first time that you make a mistake and keep playing without a break, that’s when you’ve become a musician”.
I also think the idea that classical musicians can’t improvise is a bit exaggerated. It may not be a skill that is emphasized by a lot of teachers these days, but I know folks who play in the Chicago Symphony Orchestra, and then do wild improvisational stuff on the side. They may be an exception to the rule – I don’t know – but I think the idea is a bit of a trope. There are certainly a lot of classical musicians who fit it, but I wouldn’t assume that if someone is a classical musician, they can’t play off the page.
