"When I met her [Nadia Boulanger, his teacher], I showed her my kilos of symphonies and sonatas. She started to read them and suddenly came out with a horrible sentence: "It's very well written." And stopped, with a big period, round like a soccer ball. After a long while, she said: "Here you are like Stravinsky, like Bartók, like Ravel, but you know what's wrong? I can't find Piazzolla in this." And she began to investigate my private life: what I did, what I did and did not play, if I was single, married, or living with someone, she was like an FBI agent! And I was very ashamed to tell her that I was a tango musician. Finally I said, "I play in a night club." I didn't want to say cabaret. And she answered, "Night club, mais oui, but that is a cabaret, isn't it?" "Yes", I answered, and thought, "I'll hit this woman in the head with a radio…." It wasn't easy to lie to her. She kept asking: "You say that you are not pianist. What instrument do you play, then?" And I didn't want to tell her that I was a bandoneón player, because I thought, "Then she will throw me from the fourth floor." Finally, I confessed and she asked me to play some bars of a tango of my own. She suddenly opened her eyes, took my hand and told me: "You idiot, that's Piazzolla!" And I took all the music I composed, ten years of my life, and sent it to hell in two seconds." (Excerpted from wikipedia entry here)
The reading caught my attention, as it seemed to highlight a central facet of creative expression; namely, that of finding your own voice.
In my experience, it's not uncommon for some teachers to extoll the virtues of studying the "masters" of a particular field, be it music, writing, or some other form of art. Learn how the experts perform their craft, they say, and you might become one yourself.
This was a popular view in 19th-century America, and continues to hold some weight today. Indeed, it is an attractive proposition for the cultivation of creative expression, but one I expect is more nuanced than that. As Piazzola's example suggests, we can learn a great deal by studying the work of the establishment; he managed, by his teacher's estimation, to mimic Stravinsky, Bartok, and Ravel in his music, ten years in the making. Yet in all the time he managed this feat while passing over the tango style for which is he now well known. Rather than embrace the music of the cabaret (his workplace), Piazolla sought to parrot the masters of classical music instead; it wasn't until he found his own voice that he became a "master" himself
Piazolla's example is instructive, because it illustrates how mindless parroting can lead us astray from art that is true to ourselves. Studying the work of experts has value, but it isn't everything. For Piazolla, it took a persistent teacher exclaiming, "You idiot, that's Piazolla!" to turn him away from mimicry, and start embracing his creativity. Finding his "voice" required getting over feelings of inferiority with regard to his more-original compositions. It likely wasn't easy, but once he stopped trying to be someone else , Piazolla became himself. And that, for what it's worth, seems to have made all the difference.
Happy Tuesday, friends :)
Brilliant article Jeff!
ReplyDelete