The Art of Interpretation

explaining the music to your listeners

Or, how to learn to play with professional, musical phrasing and expression

I didn’t want this article to sound condescending and patronising, because I struggled for many years until I finally “got it”. I am a wind player who also plays the piano for enjoyment. Even after having been through music college, I felt I still couldn’t come up with a convincing interpretation on my own, and I had a lot of self-doubt. It was very frustrating, and I still felt I needed to consult with my teacher over every little thing. Why did I lack the courage of my conviction? Why was it that when I played a piece to my teacher and he ripped it to shreds, did I not understand why what I was doing was “incorrect?”

As the old saying goes, it is better to teach a man to fish than to give him a fish. At Music College, they just give you a fish. But that’s not because I had a bad teacher, in fact, my teacher was amazing and the best I could have found anywhere. The problem is, the ability to interpret a piece of music cannot be taught to someone else – it is only achieved through self-study. The problem is that most people don’t know how to teach themselves in the most effective way. I certainly didn’t, and I was banging my head against a brick wall for years.

How the Brain Works

Before we get into it…The human brain works in a very interesting way when it comes to learning stuff. I have spoken to many people from different professions who all said the same thing. For example, a friend who was a London cab driver, when doing ‘the knowledge’ – after months/years of studying maps of London, suddenly one day he woke up and just ‘saw’ the whole of London in his head – he suddenly ‘got it’. That’s exactly what happened to me when studying musical interpretation. It took me years, but that’s because it took me a long time to find out exactly what I needed to do, and this is what I’m going to share with you. The important thing is to keep plugging away and never give up, because you will go through a long period of time where nothing appears to be happening.

I had the same experience as the London cabby.

Before my breakthrough, nothing appeared to be happening for a long time – but then suddenly, one day, I got out of bed and started to play through a piece, and it felt totally different. All of my phrases had authority and conviction – I suddenly knew how I wanted everything to be played. I also remembered a lot of the things my teacher had told me over the years – about how to play a certain passage – and now I felt that he was ‘wrong’ about some things – and that now I was in a position to argue my case. When you ‘get it’, you will wonder why you never understood this before, as it all seems so simple.

As Leon Fleischer used to say, something along the lines of – ‘if you don’t know what you want, how can you get it?’ Or it might have been – ‘assuming you want something in the first place’?…

Music is basically just Singing and Dancing

There are paths I went down that, although they contributed somewhat, if I focused on them too much in isolation, they lead to a dead-end. There were many different approaches I took, but after the ‘revelation’ came to me, I realised that there were two paths that were happening simultaneously, and both needed to be in place. Jazz musicians call these learning approaches ‘inside’ and ‘outside’. ‘Inside’ means you are trying to phrase and reproduce the music yourself, using whatever knowledge you have. ‘Outside’ is learning by listening actively to players you admire. So, here’s what I did:

The 'Inside' Approaches (gaining knowledge and experience by doing it yourself):

1) NOTE GROUPING: First, I read the book “Note Grouping” by James Morgan Thurmond, followed by “Sound in Motion” by David McGill. I initially fell into the trap of thinking this was the ‘holy grail’ to musical interpretation – but trust me, it isn’t. However – leaning on upbeats where appropriate really makes the music ‘move‘, and does make your playing ‘moving’ in the emotional sense.

2) DANCING: I also read Abby Whiteside’s books (which I found for free on the internet) on Outlining and the ’emotional rhythm’ which was VERY important. Rhythm needs to be FELT in your whole body, not counted in your head. And this rhythm, along with practising ‘outlining’, helped me stop sounding like an amateur. It informs your whole interpretation and gives your playing forward momentum.

3) SINGING: ‘You wouldn’t sing it like that, so why play it like that?’ – said Maxim Vengerov in a masterclass. I read an internet article by a trumpet teacher on singing before playing. I think it was designed to correct embouchure problems. Anyway, just try singing (and perhaps miming playing or actually fingering on your instrument) each phrase (2 or 4 bars or whatever) 3 times then playing it 3 times – play with the interpretation each time, don’t just repeat it the same way – and at the same time it is also really important to FEEL the rhythm in your whole body as with Outlining. Remember, it’s the rhythm that informs the phrasing. Then join the phrases into longer and longer ones. Professionals play in much longer phrases than amateurs do. When playing, you must sing in your head and mentally direct the phrase. Also, listen to yourself while playing, which is a very important skill but is difficult to develop (self-recording really helps).

The 'Outside' Approach:

I started the Outside approaches first and didn’t really actively listen much as I describe below. That was a big mistake I made and slowed my progress down. So, don’t make the same mistake – work on everything from the start!

Basically, listen to players you admire. However – and I believe this is the secret. Because I tried at first listening to my favourite string and wind players, and even singers. But what I found was, what they were doing was not 100% clear as it was when I started listening to pianists. Even as a wind player – or whatever instrument you play – this is the answer, in my opinion. This is because the piano sound decays as soon as each note is struck, so not only is it more obvious what it is they’re doing in regards to phrasing etc, but pianists also have to put a lot more effort into making their phrases ‘sing’ than string or wind players do. But still, I only listened to pianists who were very clear with their interpretations so I could hear exactly what they were doing. Let yourself fall into it, don’t try to force anything, just listen and feel it. It helps if you are also doing something mindless at the same time:

When you listen with headphones, you must focus – you can do some boring housework at the same time, or while walking / travelling somewhere – this kills 2 birds. A few hours a week of this will do it.

The pianists I chose to listen to, in this order (each one for a few months, then I moved on to the next):

1) Evgeny Kissin – not a subtle pianist, but this is exactly what you want. As soon as I started to listen to him though, what hit me was his total absorption in every note of the music – you can feel it. It was this experience that started to open things up for me.

2) Yuja Wang (who is also a Kissin fan)

3) Nikolai Lugansky (because I love Rachmaninov!)

When you finally "get it", you will notice these things:

  • You will have so much confidence in your ability to make your own creative decisions.
  • If you have a teacher, you will disagree when he or she tells you how you ‘should’ play something, and you will be able to argue with confidence.
  • You will develop your own taste and know how you like to do things, which will make you favour some players more than others – very strongly, and you will know exactly why. This is just a subjective opinion (when it comes to players of a high level).
  • You will know when some players (and yes this can include top professionals) have got something completely ‘wrong’ or play in poor taste.
  • You will be able to come up with a convincing interpretation all on your own – ideas will just flow to you instantly, it will no longer be a struggle.
  • You will enjoy playing more, and no longer fearing criticism or worrying about what others think of your playing. Because you’re doing it YOUR way.
  • You will stop getting despondent after criticisms from your teacher – as you will know there is not only one way to play something.
  • Your phrases will become much longer
  • You will find yourself naturally singing in your head and directing your playing from within, to give you total control of what comes out.
  • You will find a lot of other people’s playing completely boring!

Aspects that make up a convincing musical interpretation

1) The mood / character / style of the composer and period / why the piece was written.

2) The piece as a whole – it needs to be presented as a complete work of art – a journey, that makes complete sense. So – where is the climax? Plan the gradation of energy – the start, the build-up to the climax and the repose at the end. As Maxim Vengerov says, “don’t give away all your secrets too soon!” In other words, save the big energy/dynamics for the climax for greatest effect.

3) Then we consider the smaller units of phrasing and the individual musical gestures within.

– in all this, ‘charcterisation‘ is most important – what does the music mean to you? The first thing that comes to mind is ‘correct’, and you can write this in the score – for example mood / character words or imagery that you can conjure up when you come to that passage or section.

Performing

As the great Maxim Vengerov also says, performing music is much like being an actor. Up close, an actor’s make-up and gestures look way over the top, but from a distance it all looks completely normal. Therefore, to convey your interpretation effectively to the audience, everything you do needs to be over-the-top for it to come across. The worst feeling in the world is that you are boring people to death.

In my opinion, musical playing is a 50/50 split between Logic and Emotion – one without the other is a disaster. One is the ability to portray feelings and emotions through music (which in my opinion cannot be taught), and the other is the intellectual/intuitive knowledge you have of musical phrasing, which is gained through study as above.

At one time there was a process I used to go through, before I ‘got it’, which was to first outline the piece, then alternating singing / playing of each phrase. I no longer have to do that, although singing is often still good to do. Feeling the rhythm has become completely natural and has relaced Outlining. Now, as long as I have listened to the work enough times before studying it so that I know ‘how it goes’ – then when I sight-read it through I will pretty much have the interpretation worked out and it will just flow.

Final words...

Another thing that I did love to do, and still do now, is to play with recorded accompaniments. It helped me so much with my musicality, intonation, and also with getting very familiar with what the piece as a whole sounded and felt like. I tried many different accompaniment sites – some with subscriptions and others with individual paid-for downloads, but even though they purported to be played by “real pianists”, some of them sounded MIDI generated or the playing was very wooden and metronomic – this is not going to help you play musically at all. That’s why I developed this site, to provide real musicians with a professional accompaniment to play along to, and also as a way to expand your repertoire with arrangements of pieces written for other instruments.

I hope you find this article useful, and will feel like checking out my site.