A wise man once told med something along the lines of: Teaching is a great way to learn.
It is often while teaching, and listening to the playing of my students, that I gain insights into what the factors are, that to me, make music interesting, from a listeners perspective. One of the absolutely most important things, is dynamics. So I would like to deeply appologise. i have been posting videos for the past 10 weeks, of neither-this-nor-that-mezzoforte playing. So I really tried, this week, to get around in the dynamics spectrum - which is especially important in this study, because it is, oh, so tempting, to just hammer away at maximum, once you get going
It seems, that Villa-Lobos couldn't quite agree with himself, when it comes to HOW the sudy is to be played. The notes, all-in-all, are the same in the 1928-manuscript, and the 1953-edition. There are differences, and I have made decisions based on playability and voiceleading, but the really interesting differences lie in the playing directions. One version states, that the first two bars are to move from a delicate piano to mezzoforte and back, the other one from mezzoforte to a potent forte and back. Another example is the last two bars, where one version states toujours a tempo i.e. absolutely no slowing down, whereas the other version states an Allargando, a quite significant slowing down. What the devil is a reflected performer to do, then? My conclusion is, that Villa-Lobos was a man , who liked to improvise and play around with his music. He would hear one interpretation in his mind when writing something down, like it, and include it in the score; as a suggestion. When revising, he might have heard a different take on the piece since writing it, or simply gotten another idea, that found its way to the paper.
The freedom to improvise when manifesting music, lifting it out of the page and into being, is one of my absolute favourite things in life. I find it difficult, when composers try to force my hands, by littering thir scores with minute descriptions of how to play the piece - to me, the notes themselves are more often than not quite capable of telling me themselves, where the piece needs to go. A few hints are nice to get, but otherwise, just let me play! That is why it pleases me to realise, that what Villa-Lobos wants, is for the performer to do SOMETHING, in terms of tempo and dynamics, rather than just spitting out notes in rapid uniform succession. And so, I tried to do, well, something.
Etude no 2 from Thomas Lyng Poulsen on Vimeo.
Direct link to video
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