Applying technical skills to sensitive music learning, and reading between the lines

Just when I thought my wellspring of blog inspired ideas had endured a drought, I had a nagging thirst to explore how technical tools (playing scales, arpeggios, chords, octaves, etc) are woven into music study. Allied to this undertaking, was the idea of inferences and how we make certain decisions about phrasing, articulation, etc. based upon a firm bedding of knowledge wedded to intuition.

So having introduced this post cloaked in abstraction and a degree of eclectics, I'm coming down to earth, digging deeply into an exemplary composition that's packed with inferences, (reading between the line opportunities) while it has a touch/tone universe of color and expression worth sampling.

W.A. Mozart’s final movement, Allegro Assai of Sonata No. 12 in F, K. 332, is a gorgeous mosaic of Classical era expression. The composer runs the gamut from impassioned strings of 16ths careening down in the opener, to sudden coquettish interludes with varied detached notes, some of which are press-lifted, and not calling for crisp finger releases. To complicate matters, both hands playing together, are not always synched in with matched detachments. Even the Urtext edition may not give precise directions about execution of staccato, non-legato, potato, or tenuto, etc.

And that’s where inferences and good musical instincts kick in. (Performance practice is without doubt a vital ingredient in the mix)

In my examination of this final movement, I explore more than what exists between the lines. My focus is primarily how our technical repository feeds repertoire–how we must take our well honed skills and apply them to our pieces so they have relevance to our total musical journey.

Rather than write about aesthetic decisions and the intertwined skills we need to grow as musicians, I will reference the video below as the best living, breathing example of satisfying a personal quest for knowledge.

Instruction: (Technique, inferences, etc.)

Play Through:

Original Content: Applying technical skills to sensitive music learning, and reading between the lines