Playing Schumann Again for the First Time

Bobby Mitchell

How can one learn to improvise convincingly within the context of the nineteenth-century piano repertoire? And why is it important to improvise on this repertoire in the twenty-first century? Taking the music of Robert Schumann (1810−56) as a departure point, Playing Schumann Again for the First Time proposes an answer to these questions through methods towards a pianistic practice that is driven by experimentation and strives to continually find more layers where improvisation can take place, both in sounding musical practice and in notation. These practice-based methods are contextualized by a discussion of the presence of improvisation in Western classical musical practice in the nineteenth century. They are then substantiated by an argument to use improvisation as a tool for rethinking the current performance practice of nineteenth-century music. Improvisation itself and the concepts driving this term will also be addressed: improvisation in musical performance will be described as a process guided by a feedback loop between mimesis and morphosis with which the practitioner engages using his or her individual cognitive and embodied approach to listening, forgetting, and conceptualizing; the results of which bear his or her own sonic signature. The knowledge gained in this project lies within the realm of what will be described as improvisation as practice, a category of improvisational behavior that circumvents the need to be presented as art and is rather intended for the development of one’s own music-making.

Old Soul exhibits Phase B piano playing. The shape and rhythm of the inner voices, as well as the jump to a tertiary-related major key early in the first phrase had all been thought out in advance., but the music took form in the moment of playing.

Old Soul exhibits two general weaknesses in my extempore playing. The first weakness could be described as the inability of my hands to directly realize what the inner ear desires. This can be heard at [1:00] as well as from [1:16–1:17]. Another weakness, the tendency to “noodle,” can be heard from [1:10–1:17]. This may be in fact what Schumann means when he uses the word klimpern. This passage conveys the feeling that there is no real conception as to how the music should unfold and the hands are going through practiced motions without guidance from any particular cognitive activity.

OLD SOUL exhibits Phase B activity

recording made on June 7th, 2016:

Klimpere nie!

Never jingle!

(from Schumann's Musikalische Haus- und Lebensregeln - translated by Henry Hugo Pierson as Advice to Young Musicians – published in Schumann's Neue Zeitschrift für Musik, Bd. XXXII, Nr. 36 on May 3rd, 1850)

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