Thomas J. West Music

One of the most challenging things to do in teaching music is guiding students towards performing music expressively. Performing music is such an intricate and complex process, or is it?

Basic music expression is really quite natural and fundamental to humans. As the guitar teacher at my school is fond of telling his students, "Music is about communication." One of the best examples I have ever seen of this was done by the cast members of the Broadway show Stomp. At the beginning of the show, one performer on stage alone gets the audience to participate using the most basic rhythmic pattern in existence - two claps. Throughout the show, he non-verbally gets the crowd to react with those two claps in all manner of tempi, volume, and expression. So simple, yet so expressive.

When Technique Gets In The Way

There is much to be said for teaching students a simple pentatonic scale or a few solfege patterns and letting them just improvise. Breaking down the tyranny of the written page is an important part of developing expressiveness in music. Giving students opportunities to play something simple that allows them more freedom to embellish is a great way of breaking that creative ice.

The Nuts And Bolts Of Expression

Many students simply have no concept of the aspects of music performance that can be altered to produce expressive effects. The main variables that create expressive moments are:

• Rhythm, especially rhythmic feel, or "groove"
• Tonal patterns, especially melodic content with occasional leaps upward, creating their own intensity
• Texture
• Harmonic content (listen to any Gene Puerling arrangement where he reinvents a melody by creating harmonic surprisese underneath)
• Dynamic contrasts

Of all of these variables, the one that packs the most punch by far are dynamic contrasts. So much of today's pop music creates expressive contrast only with changes in texture. One of the best things about traditional classical music is its ability to use dynamic shaping to express emotion.

When Does Silence Begin?

Edward Lisk had a profound effect in my teaching career after taking his graduate course one summer. Not only did he open my eyes to the value of scale study, but he challenged my concept of what musical expression is - and at that point in my career as a musician, that was saying something!

When speaking about the release of a chord at the end of a beautiful, lyrical piece, Lisk speaks not of when the sound stops, but when the silence begins.

I highly recommend Lisk's book The Intangibles of Musical Performance for a thorough study of such an esoteric and aesthetic topic as musical expression, including some great approaches to teaching it to secondary students in a concert band program. The concepts in Lisk's book can easily be adapted to orchestral or choral ensemble classes as well as private study.

Searching For That Summit Experience

There is no question that a musical performance without accurate (or at least proficient) execution of the correct pitches and rhythms leaves little room left in the performers' minds for expressive qualities of the music. There is something to be said, however, for the performer who is "just a little bit dirty" in terms of execution but speaking volumes in terms of expression.

Over my music career, I have seen and heard several performances that can fall into both categories. Miles Davis was well-known for being one of the most expressive performers of all time, yet quite often played with obvious flaws in technique.

I once had the pleasure of listening to William Warfield, at the age of 76, sing the most stirring rendition of "Old Man River" I have ever heard at the Phi Mu Alpha Triennial Convention in Cincinatti. His performance was plagued with minor intonation problems and a heck of a lot of scooping into notes, but no one in the house could care less. His performance was raw emotion, and the thunderous standing ovation he garnered was proof of the massive amount of communication he was projecting.

I also once witnessed a fantastic junior drum and bugle corps just past the mid-season point in July put on an emotional and exciting performance that just couldn't be matched. I saw the same group again at the World Championships about four weeks later in August, and I had to admit I was a bit disappointed. The show was noticably cleaner in execution, with all of the rough edges rehearsed away. The resulting show, however, was antiseptic compared to the earlier performance. They had cleaned the expressive quality out of the show to a certain degree.

The Summit Experience is that magical moment when the performer or performers lose themselves in the performance. The performer, the audience, and the music all together share a magical moment when time stops and the experience is greater than the sum of its parts. It is that summit experience that keeps me coming back for more as a performer, and it is that magical, fleeting moment that is so hard to explain to anyone who has never had a chance to experience it. Getting to that moment usually takes a lot of work, but even an impromptu performance can find that magic occasionally.

How do you teach young people about that magical summit experience? How do you get them to put in the preparation necessary to reach that moment?

You certainly start by showing them that music is much, much more than notes on a page by leaving time in your music study to get past the technique and get to the expressive qualities of the music. That's where we all want to be anyway. That may mean that (gasp) you may have to select easier repertoire. I'd rather hear something simple performed at that magical summit level than hear something twice as complex played with the emotional range of a dryer sheet.

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