May Day! May Day!: An Inquiry

Sometimes I feel like I am crashing, like I have no idea why I chose the profession I did, like I have no chance of succeeding at it, and like trying to play the horn at a high level is about the silliest thing I could ever attempt. I recorded Mozart's 3rd Horn Concerto this weekend to send to a few summer music festivals. I just listened to it.

This is usually when the crashing feeling sets in.

It's become necessary to attempt, in writing, to screw my head on straight once again, and approach this with a mature, reasonable, positive, productive, and cucumber (as in, "as cool as a") outlook. There were sooo many good things in this recording. My sound is much fuller, clearer, hornistic, and enjoyable than pre-embouchure change. My intonation is improving as well (related to the sound, they are one in the same, after all). I am starting to have a firm idea of what I want my Mozart to sound like- tempos, style, etc. My pianist did a pretty good job.

Moreover, it was probably 100 degrees in the room. The piano was junky. I changed my embouchure 2 months ago. My pianist has never accompanied a wind instrument before, nor played a Mozart orchestral reduction. The room wasn't exactly flattering sound-wise. But these are all excuses, and I'm sick of using them. In fact, I think my excuses have helped to hold me back in the last 6 years. I guess I'll have to add that to the To Do List: Stop using excuses.

So, all things considered, it was pretty good.

But whenever I hear a lemon note, an accidental wah-wah, a hiccup in a trill, whatever, I start to feel this impending dread, like maybe I'm not even really capable of being any sort of professional horn player.

*Insert self-slap-up-side-the-head here.*

I think we all go through these experiences of self-doubt. Musicians, med students, writers, dress-makers, gas-pumpers, everyone. What if we aren't any good at what we do? What if we shouldn't be doing it? What if everyone is laughing at us behind our back?

My answer to this has always been that it doesn't matter. Maybe I'm not any good. Maybe I shouldn't be doing it. People probably have laughed, are laughing, and will be laughing. But this is not why I'm trying to play music every day, for a living, for a life. As much as I hate to quote a movie with Nicholas Cage in it, I really love the quote from Adaptation, "We are not what loves us, we are what we love." And I really love playing the horn. I really love playing classical music. I really love all music. So I will continue to do it, lemon notes, laughing, excuses and all.

The crashing feeling has subsided substantially by this point.

A few months ago, a close family friend asked me some provoking questions about what it is I like so much about playing classical music. I liked his questions because they made me really think about it, question myself, and end up all the more sure of my answers.

First, he described a jazz performance he saw that he really enjoyed.

"And what I loved about it was that they were all playing -- I don't mean playing music, I mean playing, as one plays a game. They were playing with their instruments, not just playing their instruments, and they were playing like playmates -- bouncing stuff off each other as they went along, making musical jokes, being outrageous, challenging each other."

Next, he confronted me honestly and frankly.

"But it seems to me that the play ingredient isn't (can't be) present in classical orchestras, or probably even chamber music. And I was wondering how much fun could it possibly be, in comparison, to play classical music versus music where you could play and invent as you went along... I found myself thinking that it really couldn't be compare (as pure fun), no matter how good it sounded."

My personal reaction was surprisingly frantic. I wanted to shout, "nooooo! It IS as fun!"

First of all, I really love his description of the jazz performance. I love seeing that type of thing on stage. It really gets to the core of what musicians, or any artists I suppose, are trying to do- communicate. It's all about personal interaction- if it's not for that, it doesn't really work. It's true, in classical music, some of this personal communication is/has been lost. Put 80+ people on an elevated stage, put 'em in tuxes, put a guy with a big stick on a box in between them and the audience, dim the lights, require applause for this concertmaster-dude, whatever that is, honk a tuning note, require applause for the guy with the big stick, require silence, OK, now you can communicate and get something substantial.

It's a bit strange.

But I think it's really there. And something that big (a symphony orchestra performance of a work that's existed for decades to centuries) can't be exactly spontaneous.

The crashing has turned into more of a spinning now.

The other thing that comes to mind, is that classical music is really hard. I mean it's really not often very well done. But when it is well done, it is "outrageous, challenging, making musical jokes." I think Mozart and Haydn are hilarious. I mean, I have actually often laughed out loud when I hear their music. As I have with Berlioz, Stravinsky, Beethoven.

Part of it is understanding the context. The more I listen to classical music, learn about it, get to know it, the more I enjoy it. The more I hear. The more I take from it. The more I want more. It, and the kind of jazz my friend was describing, are the only genres of music I know that grow and grow for me. Don't get me wrong, I looooove pop music. Love it. Can't get enough. But I always want to find new artists, new songs, new albums. I can't listen to the same song 50 times and have each time be a new experience. You can't re-interpret a pop song many times and have it work (well, rarely, maybe Bob Dylan tunes).

I've often described classical music to my "laymen" (non-musician) friends in the following way: Classical Music is to Pop Music as a Novel is to a Magazine, a Masterpiece Play to a TV Show, a Gourmet Meal to a Big Mac, a Long-Term Relationship to a Fling. The latter is totally fun, great, entertaining, yummy, and fading. The former takes effort, focus, commitment, but ultimately is more intriguing, satisfying, and lasting.

I would say, when done really well, classical music "plays" a great deal. I'm reminded of the Principal Trumpeter of the Minnesota Orchestra telling me about performing The Messiah. The oboist changed the ornamentation every night- she would play a line with certain ornaments, and the trumpeter was supposed to copy exactly. Every night got more and more complicated. He just barely kept up, and was laughing and beaming more every time.

When a piece is really clicking, everything feels like play- passing off lines, fitting harmonies into melodies, making rhythms come alive. Beethoven dances. Brahms breathes. It's all there.

But it doesn't just play. Sometimes it weeps, screams, haunts. Sometimes it's quite ugly. Sometimes it's unpleasant to listen to. Sometimes it hurts. And I love that too. Because life isn't all play, and I don't wish it was.

So, I love classical music, and it's a love that has continued to grow since I decided I wanted to be a horn player when I was fourteen. I don't think it will ever cease to evolve. So I'll take it, self-doubt, personal imperfections, intonation problems and new embouchures included.

The crashing feeling has completely vanished, and I'm inspired once again.

I think I need to practice.