Winging it

You sit in the audience and the din is deafening.

Picture an gymnast entering the mat. She demonstrates a series of finely-tuned, graceful elbow licks. The crowd goes slack-jawed, then wild. She throws up her arms in triumph; the judges rush orders for new signs reading "11."

Picture a track athlete coiling at the starting block. The gun goes off. He suddenly lifts up his teammates' feet and they madly wheelbarrow down the track. They put real wheelbarrows to shame; the competition halts and kneels in a show of deference and awe.

Picture a swimmer executing a perfect flip-turn. As she pushes off, she just keeps flipping. She flips like mad. This is flipping the likes of which you have never seen. She is the human dynamo; it is her. The other swimmers rush to land because suddenly the water is too hot to handle.

Picture a pianist sitting down at the instrument. You have been promised some famous Chopin Etude or another, and you would very much like to hear it. He begins to play some unfamiliar hogwash. You begin to suspect that is not a very good rendition of Chopin. He begins to bang with abandon and atonality. Just as the crowd rises for a standing ovation, you begin to realize he had no idea what he was doing,

Four equally ridiculous propositions, although perhaps more so the last one.

Freestyle improvisation is a faded subject among classically trained pianists: I have heard no advocates among the ones I know. This is for good reason. You will find few or no competitions for piano improvisation. Like elbow licking or rapid aquatic somersaulting, improvisation simply isn't a very useful skill for us classically-trained musicians.

Even the exuberant cadenzas that typically close piano concertos, formerly improvised-- are now written out. That particular spark of individuality has been lost. Indeed, when Kurt Vonnegut has Ed Finnerty (of Player Piano, a dystopian novel on the dominance of machines over people) assert his humanity by "savagely improvising" on a player piano, it is one of the most memorable moments of the book.

And we might not remember how Beethoven established his reputation as a pianist in Vienna; he wrecked Daniel Steibelt in an improvisation contest. Steibelt, a well-known virtuoso, finished his effort to enthusiastic ovation, but Beethoven came to the piano, made a mockery of Steibelt's theme-- and then to add insult to injury, went on to use it in his Eroica symphony. #Rekthovened

So despite the flurry of concerts and competitions that a pianists might undergo, the hailstorm body of evidence for "it isn't a good idea to waste your time improvising," I think that winging it still holds some merit. A peculiar thing happens, when you begin improvising.

You see, when you start, you truly have no idea what you're doing. You don't know which themes you'll develop. You don't know which tonalities you'll move into. When your fingers first touch the keys-- for that second-- you are lost in an unfamiliar city.

But this city is on closer inspection not at all unfamiliar. Over there, by the street corner, is Jack Sparrow, and flying between skyscrapers is Nausicaa, and Rachmaninoff nods sagely from a park bench,  The streets are cobbled together from the sum total of all you've ever heard, and down them you walk.

You don't really control your path, because Debussy stumbles into your path and nudges you this way. And Tony "Radiation" Fox prods you that way. And Shostakovitch shoves you and goodness, it is getting loud. And pretty soon you feel that, no, you're not playing this instrument.

You sit in the audience, and the din is deafening.