Let me explain.
Music is the field
that requires the longest period of specialisation. To become a doctor, until
the age of 18 you attend a general education school and an academic secondary
school, alongside everyone else. You don’t study additional subjects. You may do
extra tutoring for a year or two, but that has turned into something of a
shadow industry.
In music, however, if
you haven’t started an instrument, typically the violin or piano, by the age of
six, there is little point in trying. You will have no chance of becoming a
musician.
And at six, this does
not mean having fun with an instrument in your hands. Not at all. There are two
or three hours of instrumental lessons with a teacher every week, and two or
three hours of theory and solfège in a group, plus daily individual practice.
With the violin, for several weeks you learn simply to hold the instrument
between your chin and chest, with your torso twisted, standing up. You remain
like that for as long as you can. It hurts. Then, gradually, you begin to use
your left hand, and afterwards your right hand with the bow. You produce
dreadful scraping sounds until you manage to produce actual notes, while the
fingers of your left hand are soft, they slip, and everything sounds out of
tune. A good teacher corrects you patiently and draws your attention to the
differences between pitches. Ordinary people do not perceive these differences
because they are extremely small, just a few cents, but if you do not correct
them, if it is not precisely that frequency and no other, adjusted purely by
ear without devices, the result is disastrous. A poor or careless teacher
allows you to produce approximate sounds and ruins you. Others shout at you and/or
strike you: bow across the legs, bow on the palm, pulling ears, slaps to the
back of the head, threats, pulling cheeks. And do you know what? The child
endures. And carries on. And works. They have only one concern: that they have
not worked hard enough, and that is why it is not good.
Did I mention the
panel examinations? Yes, exams like at university, twice a year. Some are
public. It didn’t happen to me, but in Bucharest, scores are sometimes settled
between teachers during exams. They take revenge on one another by marking down
the pupils.
From Year 4, orchestra
or choir is added. From Year 5, a second instrument. For that, there is only
one exam per year. From Year 7, we also studied music history. So there is an
entire set of subjects with grades and daily work which, by Year 5, must reach
around two hours a day, in addition to maths, Romanian, biology, and so on.
Typically, one also
attends a music college (specialist secondary school), where further subjects
are added. Then university, where, depending on the department, additional
preparation is required because the A-level equivalent curriculum does not
match the entrance requirements.
A six-year-old begins
with just a few minutes a day, but every day. A professional practises for
several hours a day. Violinists, cellists, and concert pianists performing at a
high level work between four and ten hours daily. Not to learn the notes, but
to solve the technical challenges of the piece and to find meaning. Singers
cannot sustain such hours, but they must also work on text, physical
conditioning, and can practise mentally. There are many occupational conditions
that can end a career at any moment.
And do you know what?
Even after completing university and a master’s degree, you are still not a
musician. Because you must understand what you are playing. If you do not know
how to write a fugue, you cannot perform one. If you do not understand figured
bass, musical forms, and analysis, you will not know when you have the theme or
when another instrument does, and you will simply play loudly like an ox
because your part says you are the soloist. If you do not read the history of a
work and stylistic studies, you will not understand why something should not be
played quickly just to impress, or why notes must be connected in a particular
way within a phrase, and many other things besides. If you believe yourself
clever, you will learn nothing from the conductor standing in front of you.
Training in music
never ends. Pablo Casals was still practising at the age of 90 because he felt
he was still making progress.
So, what is a
musician?
Someone who has gone
through that tapasya described above, beginning at the age of six, with pain,
with spinal deformation or other health problems caused by working with an
instrument; who has passed through all levels of specialised education; who
understands what they are playing; who possesses intellectual knowledge of
music and the general culture needed to place it within its historical context;
and who produces a musical result. And after resolving a work in terms of
intonation, rhythm, tempo, structure, style, and expression, they add something
that distinguishes their interpretation from another’s. But that “something”
comes only after all the other problems have been resolved, and those problems
are resolved through knowledge and sustained, specialised work absorbed over
decades.
Cleopatra David
