Elisa: Thank you for being here. I am overwhelmed at seeing you all here.
[People take their seat]
This project starts from a very personal need in a very personal space. The need was my need to share this music with my friends. Not only playing for them but also showing them my favorite bits… and then I became more and more interested in knowing how they perceived the music, what were their associations, their images, their favorite bits… so it wasn’t anymore about myself. I mean, it still was, but it shifted. So, in my room, we started listening to these musical pieces and then we would talk about them, and we would see where the conversation brought us, not even actually knowing how to talk about it. We used images, metaphors, abstract concepts. Every time it would be different.
This past year with School of Commons I’ve played the same three pieces to the same groups, so then I’ve collected many different takes on the same pieces. It was very interesting to see how everybody likes different parts, how everybody describes the same things with different words and images. This is the first time I have so many people, so I don’t know how the conversation will go… but it is also wonderful to see so many of you.
If we were at my house, I would have given you some beers, some wine, some snacks, you would be lying around the room, [laughs] the light would be warmer, we would be surrounded by sounds coming from the street, from the house. I wanted to bring here something from my room, which is a photo of my dog, Beethoven. [laughs] He was my most special listener and he passed away a month ago and he was seventeen years old, I’ll just put him here [Elisa puts the photo on the music stand]
Lili: seventeen years old!
Elisa: he was really strong, and he always looked like he was young. So what I did after Eleonora’s advice – she advised me to make a kind of conversation agreement. Since we don’t really have a language to do this conversations about music, this was supposed to be a list of desires on how this conversation should work for us as a group, and it ended up being a collection of suggestions from the people who did this in the past, to you. These are sentences that they gave me also having in mind that you would have listened to them. I will read this to you and if you want to add anything in the end, you are most welcome to. The drawing is by Pule [laughs].
– The purpose of our conversation is the conversation itself. There are no expectations, no expected outcomes, no right or wrong answers.
– We are free to ask whatever helps us feel more comfortable in this space. If you’d like to take a break, if you are cold, if you’d like to listen to something another time, if you feel uncomfortable for any reason you are free to say it.
– It is important that you feel free to say whatever comes to your mind.
– We embrace the silence that falls when we don’t know exactly how to describe something.
– To express ourselves about music, we can use any metaphor or comparison that comes to mind.
– Feel free to say a lot of words, to say few words, feel free to diverge from the main topics that might emerge in the group.
– Saying that the music reminded you of a cartoon or that you were fixating on the hands playing, are valid answers.
– Silence is a valid answer.
– Don’t be scared if you’re not sure what you’re asked of, you are participating in a quest for the unknown.
– And this is only a disclaimer: If you had classical musical education in the past, try not to use any technical language.
Do you have any questions? [Nobody does]
We are going to listen to Schubert’s Sonata in A Major, which does not say much. Try to listen in the most relaxed way, and try not to be scared by the fact that we “have” to talk about it. In the end, if you feel like it, we can just go and do other things. Try to take this as a relax moment.
If you feel that walking around could help you, lying down, changing the position of the chairs, please do it.
[Note: Amy and Pule already participated to a workshop with the same musical piece in the previous days]
[Elisa plays Schubert Sonata in A Major D 959, I Movement Allegro]
[Hands Clapping]
Elisa: do you feel like you want to start with some random feedback or should we go back to the beginning?
Lili: what do you mean by “go back to the beginning”?
Elisa: I mean we go back to the beginning and then we kind of parse it
Lili: Aah, that’s ok
Elisa: but if you have some general ideas about the listening and want to share them, we can start from that. Some possible questions could be, how did that made you feel? What happened to your attention? What image you had in mind? What feelings?
Jelena: there is so much to share, but when you first started playing I was paying attention to my body reaction, I felt a vibration, the goosebump experience, like all the hairs… I just felt the resonance of the music and the outer kind of energy layer of my body, this shower and tingly feeling that I very much enjoyed. I was trying to listen and not to think, a little like when you are meditating, and the attention comes and goes and wanders. When does this extension of energy comes, it came in waves, when there was intensity but also in quiet moments. I think that more when the tones were higher, also in the really low ones. I was thinking, is it more when it’s melancholic? but then no it’s not. There were also moments like, you open a window and there’s the sunrise and you see the dew on the grass, this feeling of joy or the crisp of a moment, a sunbeam, this moments that kind of touch us and remind us of nature, of rhythm, of flow
Elisa: thank you
Engy: I also struggle with this thing of thinking; I was trying not to think. It is also a very personal thing of mine that I’ve always been fascinated by musicians. We’ve known each other for a long time but I’ve never seen you play before, so it’s like a completely different persona that comes out of nowhere [laughs]. When we read the conversation agreement there was this thing about focusing on your hands and I knew I was going to do this. Also I was focusing on your hands and then the notes and then trying to really see how you translate
Elisa: you can see then notes from there? You see them going down and…
Engy: Sometimes it was the hands, and sometimes the music for me was about the tempo, when the tempo picks up, is like someone doing this [snaps her fingers] and I’m back into it again
Elisa: it has different flows of energy
Lili: Yes it really does. Also maybe because the flows of energy were introduced quite early. It felt… In the beginning… I recognize myself, expecting very quickly to know what I was going to hear next, and when it didn’t and when it continued to change, and there is constant change… and then my attempting to recollect these shifts and failing at that… ended up being, making it easier for me to listen and let go of my expectations
Elisa: were you expecting to hear something come back?
Lili: It was something at the beginning, I remember truly just the beginning. And then also in the end because, like Engy was saying, I started looking at the notes. I saw those pyramids and I was anticipating [laughs] and then I couldn’t find it! I said maybe I just let go maybe. But in the middle, it did feel long but not in duration, more in transition and change [the group agrees].
Elisa: Schubert has a way of getting you lost, of intercepting roads and paths and then you don’t understand anymore where you are, even when you know where the notes are. Maybe we finish the round and then we start again from the beginning, so we listen to these things with more focus.
Eleonora: I also had this feeling of “There is a lot going on”, changing, images of lines and waves going over each other, because they still melts very well into each other, it’s changing but it is something that comes from before, the passage is smooth, most of the times – I could notice also the hard changes. So like, WOW there is a lot going on, it’s not like pop music at all! There’s no refrain at all
Kit: Careful! There’s a lot going on in pop music too! [laughs] I was just listening to Beyonce’s Renaissance on the way here, that was sort of my musical priming [laughs] I was very susceptible to the lower tones, I felt them in my body, also felt called back into the rhythm quite a lot, and one thing that really stood out for me was like --- I was extremely aware when you turned the page, immediately after that I had a super strong visual of like you know those like pianos where they would use a punch-type card roll thing to automate the piano playing? and I felt I was the roll of paper [group goes “woow”] and like you were pulling me, there was a lot going on visually. All for the page flip, it completely changed the vibe
Elisa: I am so happy I decided not to play it by heart, I guess people like when I turn the pages [group agrees] and I like I don’t have to worry about that, thank you Kit, it’s wow
Lili: the page turn is really astounding, because somehow it sets a duration or a time mark, and music defies logics of perceivable time I think, so it feels really shocking when a page is turned sooner or later that you expect it to be and then all of a sudden you are confronted with how time is perceived, and how time is actually passing in terms of how the composition is moving
Elisa: I can’t imagine it from your point of view, but I guess you never know when it is going to happen
Pule: I didn’t even notice the page turn this time [Pule already participated in another listening with the same piece, so he’s listening to it for the third time]. For me it’s nice because, it’s like I’m learning a person
Elisa: the piece?
Amy: and you playing the piece
Pule: I’m learning this relationship between you, myself and the piece. And also I like the idea that now… you know that when you listen to a piece of music at a certain time in your life and it becomes associated with that--- so now it’s nice because I have associated different things with it, like I should hear this piece a lot of more times so that I don’t stereotype this piece to be my own experience of it. Now I am feeling a lot of other things, of different things. Now I can know this thing like a complex person. Sometimes you block yourself because you listen to it once when there’s an acute emotion, and you say “oh I don’t want to listen to that, I don’t want to go back to that place”. Now, this one is like is my friend, let’s be friend again please
Kit: it’s a relationship and some relationships grow over time
Elisa: Does anybody else want to share some feedback?
Betül: before listening I was feeling my headache more, and then I forget about it completely and now that we are talking I feel that it’s back [group goes: “on no, play something!”] It was strange, there was a clear… Maybe because I tried to stop thinking, and took all my attention far from the pain
Elisa: I hope it happens again, Vivi?
Vivi: Yes, I don’t know at the beginning I had this strong visual, I don’t know if it was because I focused on your legs and how they moved, that all of a sudden I pictured myself like driving a car, so fast, and listening to this and kind of flying --- but then it was so calm after, and then I was in a house looking through the window and looking at this car kind of flying but I don’t know if I was there or here, after it changed and you reminded me of my grandmother, I just felt how it would be to listen to this with her
Elisa: It’s wonderful, thank you
Pule: wow
Vivi: and one more thing that came to my mind was, listen to this thinking of us being here together, it’s so powerful, like we actually managed to be here and you play for us
Elisa: that’s why I’m overwhelmed! [laughs]
Pule: you know it goes into the music, every time you play something that happened here goes into it. So it makes me thing that if you do this many times you are going to improve this music
Elisa: Yes! I was telling you the other day that by doing these listening my playing changes, I understand it in another way and it’s pretty powerful. Lea do you have something that you want to add or..?
Lea: I can connect to the grandmother… I was really surprised when you started because I knew you would start but it was like “waa” [laughs] and then suddenly I thought of my grandma because I realized I have a piano playing connection, she was playing the piano, and then I was very sad because she died some years ago and I had this wave of… And then it faded and I could let go, the music was already very strongly present in my body, and sometimes it became too much. I had closed my eyes and when it became too much I opened my eyes and your bodily presence when you’re playing and seeing you all around, then it started to be like I could deal with it again. [laughs] It was a very good experience
Elisa: if you agree, we go back to the beginning and I play just one section, and if you want to try to put in images, feeling, descriptions, whatever this makes you feel… it will be easier because I’ll play only the first section [Elisa plays bars 1-16]
Elisa: what’s this like, for you?
Engy: I was so scared, when you switched so fast [many laughs]
Eleonora: BOOM
Elisa: I’m sorry maybe I should make it softer
Amy: no but it’s so dramatic
Engy: maybe not scared, but I was fascinated by how easily you move between these two spaces
Lili: I was talking last night about this comedian called Thomas Leroy, he’s a person from New York, and he has a video where he is walking through the streets of New York telling a story about a conversation he had with a woman about the grid system, like a city’s grid system… and he’s talking about how the grid system needs to be abolished, how like the city should be rearranged, in a way that is adaptable... The beginning of the piece I’m remembering now – I think I also have an association with Gershwin, as an American I think like “big city town”, like classical piano music often times I’d go directly to Broadway or something – I felt like, the establishment at the beginning was like “METROPOLIS” [laughs] the white dream of the city planner of the 18undreds, and then, all of a sudden, it’s like “but we are living in iiit” [many laughs]. The shift is like the establishment of the grid and then the twinkly from the top is like the footsteps of the inevitable errand movers, you know
Pule: it’s a very good exercise to hear this same piece again, it’s incredible like the same things are coming through in different ways
Kit: I had “TED talk in a language I don’t know” [many laughs] the first part was like “HELLO” and then was like “do you ever think about”… the sort of very grandiose Ted talk thing, it was very vocal, not understandable language but one that desires to be understood.
Elisa: you know if you listen to this [Elisa plays bars 7-10] And then this
Lili: [singing] how about this?
Elisa: and then it kind of grows [Elisa plays bars 11-16] and this very affirmative. I really like these images
Lili: where was the Victorian city?
Amy: it wasn’t actually quite this bit, it was a later bit. But it was as in a house and I was stepping out down some stairs with bustling carriages, and skirts. It’s interesting you already connected that to this!
Pule: it’s so incredible that the same things are coming through, it’s like this is stuck in there, in the music
Amy: this didn’t tickle my back this time. Last time it was like someone was tickling my back
Jelena: Yes I also had it less this time. And also I was thinking, while writing this music what was this person thinking. What’s behind to starting a piece with such intensity, out of nowhere and then continuing
Engy: It’s like when you are at the airport and the voice says “DEAR PASSENGERS” [many laughs] and then goes on saying “please at the gate”, and whatever comes next may not be very important… In Egypt we have a very famous wedding song of a Lebanese singer, my friend always says that this actually tries to scare the people at the wedding. [laughs] Can I play it to you? For translation, she’s asking the bride to make an appearance in white, you the flower of April. [Engy plays the song, the music is Mendelssohn wedding march] It’s scary and also quickly grabbing their attention.
Lili: I think that that song also has a vibe of army
Amy: sounds like a national anthem
Elisa: we also have that wedding march but it’s less strong, it sound less like a military march
Engy: yes, and this is not festive at all [everybody laughs and talk together]
Elisa: it’s weird that you perceive it like s this very authoritarian thing, because for me this is all good to play because I get to put all my energy into it [Elisa plays bars 1-6]
Amy: I can see how much you enjoy it though
Elisa: it feels like a warm pillow to me
Pule: the thing is like, we were saying it last time, it’s different to be on this side and listen, and then imagine to be playing, to imagine what’s like being in your body, and then going [Pule mimics the act of playing, everybody laughs] it’s like jumpy
Lili: now that I look at your hands I notice the symmetry, and the bigness of the sound coming from the same thing happening in two places at once on the keyboard, and I recognize other moments in this piece where this happens. Then there are the footprints, the toe things…
Pule: those things are like someone playing hopscotch
Elisa: what’s hopscotch
[Pule demonstrates hopscotch, laughs]
Kit: if we wanted to do some fun experiment in music notation, we should see how this looks like in hopscotch notation, really long series on squares, and sometimes you have to go fast in the squares…
Pule: we had a game when we were kids where we used to go around in a circle and had to say different things in different parts of the circle, like we would say “chokibeki chokibeki” [Elisa mimics this at the piano], for hours!
Elisa: should I go on? [Elisa plays bars 7-27]
Engy: that was the pyramids for me, Lili you were also looking for pyramids no?
Lili: for me it was at the end
Elisa: it is kind of a pyramid
Eleonora: it’s a slide
Lili: very binary. I don’t like this part actually. It feels like two binary people participating in society.
Engy: can you play it again?
[Elisa plays bars 16-27]
Kit: it’s like socially well-adjusted people, this is what they mean when they say that phrase: “Well-behaved”
Elisa: only the first section or also the slide bit?
Lili: the end is a bit more deviant
Kit: the very end
Lili: they always meet in the middle. It’s like “we are going to go there… but no actually not”
Kit: it’s like the aesthetics of radical action without radical action
Betül: to me it feels like, I’m in the bed. And the alarm is going off, and me thinking “I’ve got to wake up” [group agrees], “I don’t want to wake up”, “Ok, ok I’m doing it”. I’m still sleeping but something is interrupting
Eleonora: I can relate to that. It was like a Sunday morning when my mum starts cooking very early. She’s in the kitchen making noise and I’m in bed think “aaaaarg”, it’s nice buut
Kit: both of those things are like a binary of some sort, there’s a push and pull
Elisa: yes but I feel that Betül and Ele are perceiving this interruption while Lili and Kit are getting something “well-adjusted”, there’s a difference, right?
Kit: I think it’s very similar because both cases are a dialectic where you have this continuum from wakeful and not wakeful and there is no resolution to it, there is no integration. The societal binary of correct or incorrect
Lili: there is no lucid dreaming in either of this
Kit: there is no integration between the dialectic
Pule: We are speaking dialectic now…man this just got deep [laughs]
Engy: I also think that this section was more tamed than what came before and what comes after
Elisa: should I play what comes after? [group says yes]
[Elisa plays bars 22-39]
Elisa: something different is happening, at least for me
Pule: I didn’t notice this before, there is a very jazzy moment [bar 39]
Betül: to me it felt like two opera singers who are taking the stage. Maybe because of all the conversion we had about the dress and so on, but now they are getting ready to make an appearance. But they are kind of like, I imagine they are preparing for… not for a fight, kind of quarrelling, for a duet where they hold a different position in the dialogue
Elisa: I feel too that there is someone speaking and someone answering
Betül: there’s a tension tough
Amy: a zig-zag. I like the difference between playing louder and softer [Elisa plays bars 28-36]
Lili: I just love when it goes down there
[Elisa plays bars 32-55]
Elisa: well, I shouldn’t have stopped there
Lili: no it’s so good. Something happens that you feel that there is no longer a system, it’s just like tumbling down keys. Now it’s just going on it’s own.
Elisa: here I always struggle with keeping the tempo, but now I just decided, I wont [group laughs] you are coming from a very rhythmic part, you Pule where making me think about it the other day because you said it was boring
Pule: no it was a later bit that it was boring
[Elisa plays bars 49-64]
Amy: I love this bit! I could sing along
Jelena: yes and also towards the end [group talks all together]
Lili: it looks like something from above and a circling thing, a mobile
Elisa: yes but, I’m curious. Because Pule the other day said that this bit to him was boring, and I think this is very interesting because this is like my favorite bit. So I just want to know, do you like it or not?
Lea: I like it, and also the tension with the part before!
Pule: If I think into what you like in this bit, I can like it. But the thing is, I’m always looking first for rhythm and so I found it boring
Kit: I wonder how much of this depends on legibility. I had no classical music in the background while growing up, for me this is like the archetypal of classical music, like a postcard version of it. It’s fine but it doesn’t do anything for me. Other parts, where you start playing with syncopation it’s like “yes we can get behind it”, or others where there is a lot of drama. I don’t’ have the vocabulary for it, this section has a specific frame, it asks that you really step into that milieu
Elisa: thank you, it’s interesting because for me this is not stereotypical at all
Vivi: this exercise of playing only some section is so interesting because I am perceiving such different things from the first time. It’s like listening to a part of a conversation. I think that the first time I missed this section. I had a feeling like going with a friend, doing something so adventurous, let’s go go go go, and this last part is getting there. Going with your best friend to the ocean and then feeling the water. This is it. It’s like the syllables of a conversation, a monosyllabic conversation, even one word. I had that feeling. Last night when I was in Frankfurt waiting for the connection there was a girl next to me talking on the phone and she was saying one word many times. Like “Ue, ue, ue ue ue ue” many many times. She was using few words with different meaning. Every Ue was totally different, it sounded like a song
Pule: My grandpa used to do that because he had a stroke, and he could only say one word which was “Yes”. Used to do everything with yes, and we could understand lots of things from that “yes”. I really like what you were saying about the fact that listening to little extract is a different experience. I always listen to music looking for what I can take out. Sometimes people would say that I use someone else’s music. But I think that the thing is that the craft is that you are de-contextualizing something
Elisa: there is a second part to this section
[Elisa plays bars 55-73]
Elisa: is this like a coherent continuation from before for you? Does it add something? Do you like it?
Eleonora: it does continue this feeling of having arrived, stretched, still a calm moment
Pule: I agree
Lea: to me it is a bit more interesting, some chords I did not expect
Elisa: I go on to the next part, which I think is very different, at least I think ☺ [group laughs]
[Elisa plays bars 74-91] [group murmurs while Elisa plays]
Lili: is like that meme! Its’ very very very very good. There’s this woman who sings, the format is always the same, like she’s singing “I wanna stay high, all the tihihihihihihihihihihihihi” and the transitioning to another song through the repetition, and then there is a variation through the transition
Kit: that’s pure meme energy
Elisa: yes I guess here we have variation and repetition. You feel the double notes hidden there
Engy: on average it is growing softer for me. Or maybe I still have not gotten over how aggressive it starts
Elisa: you’re still traumatized
Jelena: even if it has this tension I find it really playful. Also in the beginning. It’s like joy, new day lots of energy let’s do this, let’s do that, it’s a new day!
Eleonora: and then you meet a friend yayy!
Kit: I love that association. I was travelling with a friend of mine, she’s extremely high energy. Constantly doing. I really enjoy going with that energy. I like this part, it’s fun… you don’t really know where you are going. By this point I was already the piece of paper, I was like “HEEEY, take me along for this ride” [group laughs]
Elisa: I’ll now get to the end of this section and show you something from later, since we are running out of time
[Elisa plays bars 82-111]
Elisa: now there is a big pause [Elisa plays bars 112-115]
Pule: is that one of those pauses where it is undefined
Elisa: no, it’s more towards the end
Amy: Pule you are ruining it!
Pule: we are not going to get there! [laughs] ok sorry spoiler
Lili: [talking about what we just heard] this was all very warm, was almost like fire, flames overlapping but also this blue part of the fire that is always going, there is is sparks also, and then the fire completely extinguished. The metaphor broke down when it stopped, but I was really feeling the warmth
Elisa: it’s weird because I perceived this section as dramatic somehow, but I see that nobody else does! So I’m starting to feel the warmth too. About this section from another group I also got “glorious chaos”
Kit: I like it!
Eleonora: Fire is glorious chaos
Amy: true!
[we quickly go through the rest of the piece, since the time is running out]
[speaking about the Coda, Elisa plays bars 326-333]
Elisa: do you recognize this? [Elisa plays the beginning again]
Lili: it’s the grid systeeem!
[Elisa plays bars 331-347]
Engy: feels like somebody thinking about their life choices
Amy: wasn’t’ there a second indefinite pause?
Engy: spoiling it!
Lili: what is the sign for an indefinite pause?
[Elisa draws the corona sign]
Eleonora: it’s a boob! It’s so cuute
Lili: it’s a boob!
Amy: oh it’s so nice