Weekend Home

It's been a gloriously restful weekend this week - didn't step out of the house at all since booking out of camp on saturday. As much as going out with friends can be quite a lot of fun, nothing quite beats the ocassional weekend of pure indulgence lazing at home.

Another uneventful week in camp, except for one really silly outfield where we put on our camou just for like 6+ hours of silly engineer recce, which comprised mainly of walking around the jungle, estmating some measurements and creating sketches of the area based on our imagination. One of the most pointless courses I've been to for a long time. Most of the time was spent playing card games of one form or another - taught some of my camp mates how to play bridge and hearts(a totally under-rated game, which is a lot of fun and relatively easy to pick up), which was a refreshing change from tai di. Caught a bit of the card-game bug as a result, just spent past couple of hours learning how to play texas hold'em on yahoo games. Was a game that my crypto programming partner's housemates were playing when I went over to his place, and apparently it's a lot of fun. From what I gather from the game after playing it for a bit, it's more of a betting game rather than a card game per se. Still haven't really got the hang of the strategy required to play it.

Some time mid-week, a strange brainwave came over me to transcribe Debussy's Petite Suite for piano trio. However, after rushing about during one night's off and in the end obtaining a photocopied score from the esplanade library (per kindness of Ju Dee), I realized that I'd make my life a lot easier if it were transcribed for piano quintet instead. After all, piano duet to piano quintet makes quite a bit of sense since the string quartet can take the parts of one of the pianos. And so proceeded to work on it yesterday, with some success, and got 2/3 of En Bateau down. The writing in some parts is a bit spare but I think that's better than making the string players do double stops all the time, in the case of transcribing for a piano trio. It's the first time I've done something like this and it's really quite stimulating. Unlike composition, I don't have to come up with original ideas, but there are sufficiently difficult problems to ponder over in terms of instrumentation, balance and voicing. But oh man, writing things out is such a pain in the ass. Well hopefully I'll have enough determination to see this through.

The Joy of Cello

Came out from the Wang Jian concert feeling quite high. The dvorak concerto is such a triumphant and uplifting piece of music - and the melodies, oh you can keep singing and singing them repeatedly and never get tired of them. First time I had heard the concerto live, so was made acutely aware of the difficulties in writing a concerto for cello. Getting the balance between the cello and the orchestra is extremely difficult and Dvorak's solution consisted mainly of using only winds and light strings to accompany the cello when it's playing. Still, it resulted in alternating blaring tuttis and relatively small-sounded solos from the cello, which isn't a big problem on record, since the sound engineers solve Dvorak's problem by adjusting the balance, but in real life, it gets a bit disconcerting. Maybe it had to do with where I was seated, on the second circle, last row, since my friends sitting in the stalls had no complaints about the sound. Alas, I'm but a poor NSF, unable to afford better seats. Sigh.

As for Wang Jian's playing, honestly it's hard for me to say anything cos I was straining to hear what he was playing quite a bit of the time, especially when he went to the low strings and got swamped by the orchestra. As a result, my inner ear went on over-drive, filling in all the parts that I couldn't really hear. But when Wang Jian had the lovely solo lines with little or no orchestral accompaniment, he sung beautifully, as all great cellists do, with generous use of vibrato, melodic shaping and inflections. Found some of the virtuosic passages tossed off with a bit too much nonchalance, thus losing the detail in the writing. And a slight tad too fast in the last movement perhaps, as I lost track of more of the lovely detail which he skimmed past. But probably it would have been more effective if I could hear him better. Then again, I could just be affected by Jacqueline du Pre's playing, where she makes a big deal out of every nuance, which makes Wang Jian's playing sound glib at times. Oh but lovely lovely singing in the last solo bit of the concerto where he held on to that F sharp for the longest of time before sliding up to that big big B.

Went out for drinks with Yvonne and Ju Dee after the concert. Talked mostly about music. An interesting discussion about whether the beauty is inherently in the music or a good performer is required to bring out the beauty in the music came up after I said something glibly about all musicians either being in tune or out of tune. What I had meant was that to a large extent, most amateur and some professional musicians can't really reach the levels of playing in a way that really inspires or moves people, since they are hampered greatly by either their lack of technique or musical imagination. So I've found most performances mostly just ok. Works that move me, move me regardless of who they are played by, a fact which again might be attributed to my inner ear hearing things I want to hear. Then there are the works which require good interpreters to pull them off, but otherwise are just, well, ok. Only in the rarest of moments will there be a meeting of minds of the composer and the performer at their best, and that's where the magic happens. So perhaps I'm being a bit too harsh on musicians here, with my implication that we, as performers, are moved by what we think we are playing rather than what we are actually playing, which is a point that becomes very clear when we listen to our own recordings. But since perfection can hardly be reached, what does it mean for us mere mortals? Are we trapped between self-delusion and perpetual dissatisfaction? Where is the balance? I choose self-delusion, if only to keep myself happy with music, by not having too high standards for my own playing - yes, I'm just plain lazy :).

Moved on to a depressing topic involving goals in life, where I unabashedly said I had none, which isn't far from the truth, as I've found time and again that my goals are often determined by others and my job is just to fulfill them. It's mind-boggling how people (my drinking company included) can cling on to some abstract goal and pursue them with such focus. My hat's off to them. Amazing stuff.

Finally, went amok throwing great music at Yvonne, who is the most musically-sensitive non-musician I've ever met, via Ju Dee's iPod. Strauss' Metamorphosen (which I'd demanded that Ju Dee listen to the week before) and Brahms' Clarinet Quintet (has there been anything more ravishingly beautiful than this? *rave rave*) - what a killer combination of some of the most inspired music ever written. It's always a great joy to share the music that means so much to me with people and watch their eyes light up as the beauty unfolds before their ears. I really must find an easier way to share all this music with my friends... file transfer rates are pathetic for some reason or another on my computer.

And yes, Winterreise, I must get down to listening to this sometime, lest I get branded as a heretic of some sort again.

And so I practice with the metronome

Albeit a week later.

Had a productive practice session today after coming back from camp. Set the metronome as instructed, gradually ramping up the speed as I progressed. Tic toc tic toc. And then amazing things happened. I could feel the security coming into my fingers, with a rhythmic precision that had eluded me for so long. It was especially enlightening when my natural pulse wavered from the cold precision of the metronome, showing where my instincts had failed me, and gradually, things just clicked - notes fell in place, rhythms became exact, and a sense of joy of playing overcame me. It's moments like these musicians live for I think, when we are in total control of the instrument, without the slightest expense of muscular effort. It's always been difficult for me separating internal emotional tension from the physical muscular tension that is so important in playing, so I especially treasure moments like today where things just happen, as if I'm an external listener to my own playing. Very motivated, I proceeded on, taking advantage of my form, and learning up the exposition of the Ravel trio.

Something amusing happened in camp over the past week. Basically a wave of obsession over tai ti (the card game where 2 is the biggest) engulfed my officers who are on course with me currently. Yes, they play it every night, and in my bunk too, which made it extremely annoying the first night, where they went on for the entire night, leaving us to sleep with the lights on. Indeed, I slept fitfully on the first night, and amusingly subconsciously learnt that if you don't get to throw any cards and someone manages to win, then you lose 39 points. In any case, I realized that if you can't beat 'em, join 'em, and so I joined in the gambling party, losing some money in the process, since I'm a noob at tai ti. Well, what's the most amusing thing is that the whole affair reminded me of what a good friend once said that once the officers are distracted by these playthings, we would be able to enjoy life, since bored officers tend to like to indulge in interesting activities where we become their playthings, like making us march round and round our company line. So the entire situation where a couple of us troopers were asked, and sometimes emotionally blackmailed, to play cards with the officers resembled prostitution, where we sold our bodies to the officers as their playthings all night in return for an unstable income, rendering them bedridden from the previous night's exertions, and so totally distracting them from enforcing any kind of discipline on the rest of us. Ah the great sacrifices we make.

Tomorrow I will be productive. Will wake up reasonably early, do more psc essay and then go for Wang Jian's Dvorak. Quite enthusiastic about that - it is definitely one of my favorites. Has there ever been a more vivid depiction of heroism in music? The nobility, the tenderness, the richness of melody... love the duet between the cello and violin near the end of the last movement. I do hope Wang Jian lives up to my expectations!

How about practising with the metronome

Met Ju Dee again today to do the Piazzolla. Made some progress over the last time and we're feeling the piece much more together than the last time, except for a few trouble spots, especially at the end. Had some problems with fast passages and Ju Dee suggested that I practised with the metronome(!). Ok so I really haven't been the most well-schooled and disciplined pianist, so I baulked at the prospect of subjecting myself to the metronome, spending the rest of the day poking fun of her pro-metronomeness.

On retrospect, I guess my anti-metronome mentality stems from the fact that I never had access to one when I was in the US and so never practised using one. I guess it is rather useful in keeping a steady pulse and working out difficult passages, but nothing quite beats slow slow practice to get the muscles used to the positions and mental work to reinforce the muscular motions. The metronome can help, but there is the thing when the tool becomes a crutch, and that is a situation I would want to avoid. But being the nice acquiescent person I am, I will give this metronome practice a try, and hopefully solve my technical problems.

After practice, we headed downtown for a farewell round of drinks with Yili. Unfortunately, the place we'd chosen (this irish bar in chijmes) had this giant screen showing Liverpool vs Newcastle, so things grew pretty boring fast, especially for the non-soccer followers. Note to self, never, never meet in a place that has soccer unless you're with soccer followers, or else all conversation will be reduced to commenting on the match and half time analysis. Felt especially bad for Tiffany, this J1 girl who's in braddell heights symphony orchestra, and expected to be shown the world of decadence when hanging out with "older people". After all, she did say, "All people do after JC is work, shop and drink", or something to that effect. I guess she thought wrong as we were hardly inspiring in terms of decadance. Plus for the guys, what we do after JC is work (if you can call that work), shop (at the emart), and drink (half a bottle of water before strenuous activities), indeed.

Fortunately a few of us adjourned to Cafe Cartel after that for some good, wholesome sit down time, with bright lighting and low noise levels. The conversation thankfully got much better there. Got to meet Lim Chun in person - it's weird after knowing these people in name, you get to meet them in person, like when I first met Aik Keong. But it's always a great pleasure to meet people who're so passionate about music.

Actually, something that was kind of thought-provoking was when I said the teachers in the US didn't really bother too much about technique and the response from Ju Dee was that my experience was that way since I wasn't a serious musician so the teachers I got weren't so fussy about technique and just concentrated on the musical side of things. This really left me wondering how sloppy my technique really was. Honestly without objective assessment it's hard to tell, though I feel that by and large I do have some technical security, but sometimes my technique really lets me down, especially in terms of fingerwork. Is this the start of scales and five-finger exercises? I hope not :). More importantly, this whole issue throws open the big problem about relative standards in music. How do you live with knowing what you're playing is really bad, when there are so many better people out there who can play it so much better than you ever will? I overcame this by just ignoring it, and accepting that I will never be as good as other people, but just to play within my own means and enjoy what I play. My biggest fear is when I start thinking that what I'm playing is ok but in reality it's horrible, and then the whole deal of self-doubt starts creeping in and everything starts spiralling downwards, leading to the sad conclusion of never wanting to touch the piano ever again. Ah well, some self-delusional happiness is better than a reality of continual self-doubt.

Meanwhile, the struggle with the PSC essay continues. It's really a huge pain in the ass. It really isn't easy coming up with ways in which Singapore can learn from the US education system, when the system keeps converging on the US system with every iteration of policy review. SIGH.

And oh yeah, we need a new first violinist. Any takers?

Piazzolla Pains

Rehearsed the Piazzolla with Ju Dee today. I haven't actually worked closely with another person on a work for quite a while so admittedly that took a bit of getting used to. Worse still, I've played the work before so have strong preconceived ideas of how it should sound, and so does she, and that resulted in quite a few awkward moments of "you're too loud", "you're not listening", "I don't get what you're doing" etc.

But such is the nature of chamber music. It was rather enlightening to have certain things pointed out to me, although I might have more than a little defensive at first. Hopefully I wasn't too much of a bitch. Yes, must listen, listen and never stop listening to the other person, which is surprisingly difficult when you get carried away with what you're playing.

In any case, considering that it was the first time that we've played together, things went pretty smoothly, and we should be in good shape by the concert. And I'm quietly optimistic since both of us like the work so much.

Who's Your Daddy!

Yeah Piazzolla, who's your daddy!

Just worked for an hour and a half on the Le Grand Tango and it looks like I should be able to play it by mid-June if I get to practise intensely over the next month or so of weekends. Really like that piece and it should be exciting to play it in public again. Man can't believe it's been more than 4 years since I performed it with Vic in Cornell.

I just really hope now that dear SAF does not decide to put me somewhere in the jungle on the weekend of June 20th.

The entire quintet met for the first time today, and we worked on the 1st movement and played through the rest of the Brahms Piano Quintet. Not too bad for a first meeting, though some parts were quite messy, but yes, Brahms - he's never an easy one to put together. As for me, the 1st movement is more or less under my fingers, and I've sort of learnt the 4th though playing it to tempo is really a different story. Should start on the 3rd some time soon, which promises to be a real headache - long stretches of martellato octaves - yikes! The 2nd is almost sightreadable so that shouldn't be too bad.

The biggest problem is that our first violinist is leaving for further studies in a couple of weeks and finding a replacement will be tough since our current one is really good and hardly ever gets lost. Ah well, if we can't find one, we'll have to play quartets or trios in the interim period.

Went back to RJ for some fun fair they had to get alumni together before they move at the end of the year. Met up the usual bunch of people there, but did manage to bump into a couple of people who I hadn't seen in years. Admittedly, the youthful vibrance of the entire place was quite overwhelming, and I was surprised to see everything cleared up so quickly and willingly at the end of the event. I can only imagine how long the process would have taken for our NSFs... As with most reunion events, I left the place reeling from the extended display of extroversion, making a beeline home for some peace and quiet.

Found out from the RJ music department that the Noteworthy concert is at 5pm - which means it doesn't coincide with the Yo Yo Ma concert! Contemplating what work to play now, and it seems that it'll have to be the Piazzolla Le Grande Tango with Ju Dee. I still remember the hell week I went through learning that work back in freshman year when I discovered how difficult it was only a couple of weeks from the concert and got screamed at by my Prof. Well now I have over a month, but I only get to play once a week. So we'll see how it goes.

COA Essay Competition

So I was arrowed to write this silly COA essay competition on Thursday. As usual, I kicked up a minor fuss at being given this arrow so last minute, since the essay was to be due on the following Monday. In any case, I had to get the thing done real quick, since I had guard duty later that day, plus had some psychometric test on Friday, and to top it all, an entire afternoon of regimented recreation on Saturday - no way was I going to waste my Sunday doing an essay. So between lunch break and guard duty, I came up with this rather angsty piece. Oh by the way, the theme was "Defining Moments" and had something to do with inspirational moments in NS. Needless to say, I had nothing very inspirational to say, but I did spend much of the previous week doing nothing but what's euphemistically called as logistics work for some event. And so, that led to:


Defining Moments
The Human Behind Human Labour

Imagine having a meal in an expensive restaurant – the food excellent, the décor lavish, and the service impeccable. Now before we get carried away enjoying the food and the ambience, see beyond the veneer of your sensory experience and think of the amount of work that went into presenting that meal in front of you. More importantly, think of the people involved in creating that “expensive restaurant” experience for you. How do you feel now as you chew on that juicy steak?

During the dawn of mankind, we existed as hunter-gatherer societies, living off our own personal labour for subsistence. How humanity has progressed since then – modern society is a complex web of producer-consumer and client-server relationships, involving staggering amounts of human labour to keep it running on a day-to-day basis. This is not something that is immediately obvious, since the humanity of the labour is hidden behind the impersonalised products, infrastructures and social structures that are so definitive of modern life.

Indeed, for most of my life, I have been a beneficiary, or client, so as to speak, of society. Having been successful within the education system, I enjoyed life from the highest end of the academic spectrum – there were always systems and services in place for my benefit and to maximise my potential. However, upon enlistment into National Service, I was placed into the lowest stratum of the military hierarchy. Admittedly, even at that stratum I am served by the organisation in terms of providing for my training, welfare and daily necessities, among other things. However, the change in my status from a client, receiving services from others, to someone providing service to others, could not have been more starkly put across, by being ordered around and, in general, being made to do the lowest-order work.

While it took a while to get used to this new life, it has been very revelatory seeing an organisation from this perspective. Amusingly, these ideas probably came to me while engaging in a furious bout of toilet cleaning or leaf picking. Firstly, it made me realise the levels of resentment generated at the commodification of human labour. There is a need to treat human labour, not merely as a factor of production, but to always remember the humanity behind that labour – there are real people with feelings and emotions that are being dealt with.

More importantly, through all my labours during my National Service life, I have become more conscious and appreciative of the amount of blood, sweat and tears that goes into the many simple things we have come to take for granted in everyday life. Our mere participation in modern society places us immediately at the receiving end of an unimaginable amount of invisible human labour.

So the next time you are having that meal back at that expensive restaurant, let your mind wander off for a bit. Hopefully you will feel as I have, overwhelmed and humbled at the same time, when you think of the human behind the human labour which went into that meal.

First Blog

Finally got down to setting up a blog of sorts after being mildly inspired by some friends. Wonder how much real content I'll be able to get down here, since after all, I only get out once a week.

The quote I have as a subtitle to the blog, ". . . le plaisir délicieux et toujours nouveau d'une occupation inutile", is from Henri de Régnier, which translates as " . . . the delicious and ever-changing pleasure of a useless occupation". While the veracity of such a statement is dubious, especially in the current context of my life :), it is ever so poignant as the superscription on Ravel's Valses Nobles et Sentimentales.

I think Ravel's Valses is one of the supreme examples of what I find to be the greatest trait in Ravel's music - to hide intense expression behind his carefully executed music. This tension, this irony between expressive outpouring and the restraint in compositional style creates the stylized reflection of emotions, filtered through musical lenses, rather than exposing the raw emotions themselves. In addition, the Valses have all the hallmarks of the late Ravel style - complex harmony coupled with greater transparency and economy of expression, and always, the unceasing melodic invention.

The Valses is Ravel's homage to the Viennese waltz and its "delicious and ever-changing pleasures". However, this is peering at the waltz through 20th century eyes, reducing the waltz to something of an anachronism. The glitter and excess of the waltz become mere decadence in the light of the events in the early 20th century, but there's always a feeling of nostalgia looking back at those carefree days. Within this overarching mood of the work, the individual waltzes are diverse in nature, from confident, to tentative, to brash, to dreamy, to quirky, but always tinged with this autumnal nostalgia.

For me, the jewel of the Valses is the dream-like Epilogue, where fragments from the previous seven waltzes are reintroduced in succession in a way that only Ravel could have done. The masterstroke comes when the fragment from the sixth waltz (Assez vif) gives way to the melancholic theme from the third waltz (Modere), which I feel is one of the most achingly beautiful moments of all music. I also really love the way the Epilogue ends with the harmonic vapour dissolving over the G pedal.

Mercifully, this is one of Ravel's less technically challenging pieces, hence I've had the privilege of learning it a few years back. Really love Ravel and wish I could play more of his music, but I think much of Mirroirs and Gaspard de la Nuit remains out of my reach. Sigh.