This episode features the first part of a two-part interview with Professor Mira T. Sundara Rajan. In this segment, she shares her perspective on the role of improvisation in Western classical music. Mira is a concert pianist, amongst other things. Improvisation plays an important role in her practice and performance of music in interesting ways. As it so happens, the approach she describes is similar to that of the great pianist Vladimir Sofronitsky, which I discuss in an Epilogue to our conversation.
For more information about Mira and her activities, see her website: https://professormira.com/
Artur Schnabel’s interpretation of Beethoven Op. 109
Geniuses: Vladimir Sofronitsky (Documentary 2007) English Subtitles
Vladimir Sofronitsky’s interpretation of Chopin’s Impromptu No. 3 in G-flat Major, Op. 51
The musical interlude towards the beginning features music by Bradley Vines and the following verbal content:
- A quote from Star Trek: Strange New Worlds, S1 E8 – The Elysian Kingdom, spoken by Babs Olusanmokun’s character, Dr. Joseph M’Benga
- A quote from Anil Seth from his lecture, Is Reality a Controlled Hallucination?
Apple podcast link for the episode: https://embed.podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/improvisation-in-western-classical-music-with-pianist/id1690446749?i=1000618983094
Unedited Otter.ai generated transcript:
Bradley Vines 0:00
Greetings, and welcome to the neuroscience of improvisation. With me your host Bradley vines. Today we have a phenomenal guest Mira Sundararajan, is an author, a concert pianist and a law professor. She is a Canadian by birth of South Indian origin. She is the great granddaughter of the national poet of India. See Subramania Bharti who created a renaissance in Tamil literature in the early 20th century, and was the leading figure in South India in the movement for Indian independence. As a concert pianist Mira has performed internationally with a repertoire featuring Scriabin, Brahms, Bach, Beethoven, Rachmaninoff, Hina, astera and other composers. This is part one of a two part conversation with Mira. In this segment we discuss how she integrates improvisation into her practice and performance of Western classical music. Enjoy
Babs Olusanmokun 1:16
consciousness without a body
Anil Seth 1:33
we perceive the world around us and our sounds within it with through and because of our living bodies.
Bradley Vines 1:42
Okay, welcome greetings, Mira. What a pleasure to have you on the show.
Mira Sundara Rajan 1:49
Thank you Brandy pleasures, all mine.
Bradley Vines 1:51
You are a classical pianist of the Western tradition. Yes. How is improvisation involved in your practice and performance?
Mira Sundara Rajan 2:02
Well, that’s a very interesting question, Brad. Because as you probably know, Western classical music as it is performed today doesn’t feature a lot of opportunities for improvisation. Now, that wasn’t always the case. In fact, important classical composers from the past were very good improvisers. For example, Beethoven was famous for the quality of his improvising. And I believe Bach was outstanding, as an improviser, as well. But over the centuries, that practice came to be discontinued, in the classical tradition. And so most classical musicians in the Western tradition, I think it’s fair to say myself included, we don’t really have any training in improvisation as part of our discipline. So from childhood, I’ve been familiar with the idea of getting a score, and reading that score, knowing certain things about the practice tradition surrounding that compositional period, learning the score and playing it. And nowhere in that process, at least in any obvious way, am I improvising. And I think nowadays, the big change that has happened through technology, which is just a gift to music, and to classical musicians, especially is that we can now have access to recordings from the past a lot more easily than was the case at any previous time in history, really. So now, when you want to learn a piece of music, you can go online and hear multiple versions of a piece. And that then helps you learn more quickly. But again, that’s not really improvisation, in the usual sense of the term, is it that’s more developing your listening skills, and developing different ideas of interpretation based on what you can find out there. So I guess my initial answer to your question would be that I haven’t had any kind of solid training and improvisation. But I do think that improvisation is extremely important to my practice as a classical musician. So that sounds a bit paradoxical. And I guess now I have to explain myself. I think the the issue really is that improvisation. Or maybe I can take a step backwards and actually say that when it comes to music, including classical music, the main characteristic of music, the true characteristic of music is that it’s unfolding in time as you experience it. And that thing, whatever it is, is music. So music is not a musical score. It’s not even a musical recording, but it’s the experience of listening to the musical recording. It’s the experience of being with the music. So, in my opinion, it’s only when music is unfolding in time in some way. that it actually exists as itself, it’s sometimes said that the highest form of expression in Western classical music is when you’ve learned the score very, very well. And you know that music really well. But when you perform it, you give the listener the impression that you’re improvising it. It has an impression of great spontaneity. So, in that sense, it’s a very strange and interesting thing. Improvisation or the impression of improvisation is the end process of this process of study is the end product of this process of study that I’ve described, where improvisation in an overt way doesn’t necessarily play a role. But that then I think, gets us to questioning what we do when we’re learning music. And I think I’ve been very tongue in cheek saying that, well, improvisation isn’t part of my training isn’t really part of this tradition anymore. And all of that is true. But at the same time, there is an enormous role that improvisation has ended up playing in my work on music. In all the practicing that I do, improvisation is essential. In order to understand the way a composition works, you often have to go through various improvisational steps, it could be very simple things like building exercises around figurations in the music, it could be something like playing through harmonic patterns that appear in the music, I can give you two examples, with Beethoven sonata Opus 109. So in Beethoven’s late period, sonatas, they have at least one characteristic in common. And this also includes Opus One on one, which is kind of borderline late period, the beginning of the late period, which is that they’re very, very hard to start, it’s difficult to get started, it can be difficult to get started. So one way that I’ve worked on the opening of Opus 109, which is incredibly beautiful, is by playing through the harmonic progression in that first phrase, you know, it’s a phrase that is broken up into, it’s a broken pattern of running notes. In the right hand, in the left hand, a series of continuous notes that’s played in both hands, the right hand says something the left hand responds. So I can’t sing it in key, I don’t think it’s the key for me to sing in, but I’ll just sing. So
theta d theta.
That’s the initial melody in the right hand, so the right hand goes veto, and the left hand goes, da, da, da, da, etc, etc. The pitches aren’t quite right, but you see the rhythmic idea. So it’s difficult to get into this. And you can simply play that harmonic progression that opens the piece, which immediately gives you a sense of the mood, which is I think, what’s so interesting in Beethoven’s late period, sonatas, and sometimes understandably, quite elusive. The motions in Beethoven are always very developed. Very complex, in that sense, not easily accessible. You could say that about other composers to like Brahms. But in Beethoven, I think it’s the reflection of his genius as a composer, of course, but also his development as a person and very complex life experience. So the harmonic pattern, I guess, it sounds a little bit like Pokeballs, Canon
Hadid, Adi, Adi, Adi, Adi,
except it goes. So instead of resolving it goes to a diminished chord. And from then on, it’s just, we’re just in a number of adventures, incredible adventures, harmonic adventures, as well. But But there’s an example of just something very simple, I’ve had to talk about it at great length. But what I’m trying to explain is very simple, this idea that, how do you grasp the music so that when you eventually comes out of you in a performance setting, you know, whether you’re performing for an audience or for yourself or whatever, every time you place a performance. So when you perform it, it should sound and feel as if it is being created, or in other words, improvised. But in order to get to that there is a process. It’s not an improvisation that you start, just like that. There is a deep preparation behind that improvisation. So one of the things you can do is going through the harmonic progression because that harmonic progression has a very specific feeling about it. And amazing feeling. You know, I could literally sit for an hour and just play that progression through a few times in different ways with different dynamics with different rhythms. Working on rhythms is another thing. I’m thinking of scribbins. Second Sonata, the Sonata fantasy, which has a second movement built on triplets, they go very fast, did it? Did it it did, it did the triplet rhythm, but at some level, the technical mastery of that piece is really about understanding the flow of those triplets. And so there’s so many ways you can work on something like that on rhythms, breaking it up into segments, lengthening some notes, shortening others, repeating sections and playing them with different dynamics. All of these are techniques of improvisation. And again, the goal is to get to know the piece very well. It’s just like a relationship. You know, let’s say I wanted to get to know you really well, bread. Well, I might meet you for coffee a couple of times, we might go out for dinner, maybe see a movie together, sit and have wine and talk into the evenings for a few days, I would spend a lot of time getting to be with you and know you in different situations. And over time, I would come to know you really well, provided that I was attending to you, trying to get to know you better, the element of attention is essential. Attention and intention are both essential. So same thing with the piece of music, that idea that the composer has sat down there, it’s something that I want to know thoroughly, and I want to internalize it thoroughly, almost become the composer and thinking of Bohr has story, a very strange story about the fellow who rewrites Don Quixote word for word. So it’s almost like that I want to become the composer through this process of improvising my way into the piece. And I was going to say that it hasn’t always been the case, as I’m sure you’re aware that Western classical music didn’t focus on improvisation. On the contrary, in the earlier eras, there was a tradition of improvising and performance as well. So it’s no accident that these composers were great at improvisation. That was the tradition and they learned that skill. Or in other words, they practice that skill. So Beethoven, you know, he would improvise cadenzas to his concertos Mozart would definitely improvise cadenzas in his concertos, and so on. So there was a part that was through composed and a part that was improvised. And in that improvised part, the performer could show their virtuosity and their talent could showcase that. So that element has gradually slipped out. I mean, for various reasons, you know, now, if I were to play say Beethoven’s fourth Piano Concerto, I would almost certainly play Beethoven’s own cadenza that is written down, that is through composed, very likely based on his improvisations. I don’t know much about that. But I would suspect, you know, that he improvised various things and then arrived at cadenza, or cadenzas that he wrote down for particular concertos. So at this point in time, we’ve arrived at a place where improvisation isn’t necessarily part of the practice, at least not overtly. So I’ve talked about the history of improvisation, I’ve talked about how improvisation plays into the musical skill, and the art form, I can say one more thing about it, which is improvisation and interpretation, which I think is a very subtle point, and something that I’ve really only started to think about, as I’ve become much more experienced as a pianist, and as a western classical musician, which is, with the wealth of resources available through technology now, I constantly listen to different interpretations of pieces. And I find it endlessly interesting. I can’t tell you how many versions of Opus 109 I’ve listened to. And what I can tell you for a fact is no two versions are the same. And in fact, no measure of any two versions that I’ve ever heard is the same. You simply couldn’t substitute even a moment of one piece for another. You. Moreover, when you know the musician, you can identify that person so quickly, even in the way that they touch the instrument you can tell immediately pretty much that you know, there’s Oh yeah, there’s that pianists that I recognize maybe that I like maybe that I don’t like and there’s that thing that I really like or that I don’t like about their playing. So I think that there’s clearly some aspect of originality and musical interpretation that we need to account for. And I call that to myself, improvisation as well, you and I can have an argument about that if you would like to, but let me present my case. So what I feel is that it all goes back to the idea of the music unfolding in real time, and manifesting itself as something that’s composed on the spot, not only for the audience, but also for the performer. You know, there is that sort of duality, I think, in the performers experience, because here’s this music that I know very well, but I’m performing it here. And this occasion is unique. And I want the audience to discover it as if it’s something new. That’s being discovered. I also want to discover things that I may not have known. That is the excitement of performance, not the nervousness of thinking, Oh, Lord, I don’t want to make a mistake. You know, that is not the excitement of performance. That’s fear. And that impedes the excitement of performance, I think. But being in the performance situation, and having the opportunity to discover in a new context is very exciting. So as far as interpretation goes, then to go back to to that idea. I think that when the performer is engaged in a particular rendition of the piece, in a particular moment in time when they are performing, then being present in the moment is key to the quality of the performance. And that is absolutely, to me a form of improvisation. Because when you’re playing the piece, you’re not playing from some preconceived notion of what any particular moment should sound like. Actually, no, you know, you have a concept of the music that you’ve built through your study of it, you have developed a relationship with the music, but you let it unfold with perfect spontaneity. And at every moment, you have to be connected with your response, and your creativity faced with the music, and you also have to be sensitive to your opportunity to create something new. So it’s a very subtle idea, I think of what improvisation is, I feel very, I felt very clever when I first thought that I might be able to talk about this experience in terms of improvisation. And in fact, it made me feel quite good about myself as a musician, because I’ve always wanted to be better at improvising, and thought that in some ways, that really is the hallmark of, of your familiarity with the instrument and your fluency, with the musical language is your ability to improvise. But here was something that I actually was relatively good at, that I could do that I could now categorize under the umbrella of improvisation as well. So shall we argue,
Bradley Vines 18:10
I will take it even further thinking about what’s happening. When you’re going to perform in a venue or even at home. Even if it’s the same piano in the same room that you have practiced at 1000 times before. It’s a new day, you we are constantly changing. The different time of day, perhaps different lighting slightly, the piano is adjusting itself with the weather in terms of tuning. And that’s just even with the familiar instrument, let alone when you’re going to an unusual place, a new piano, a new room with different acoustics. And then that room can be filled with fewer or more people and they can absorb sound in different ways. So there are a million variables infinite and variables really that are changing from one context to the next. And one must adjust. And like you said, experience the music a new in that context. So that must by definition, involves spontaneity and the presence of mind to create something that is indeed improvisation. you’re improvising. you’re improvising with the current circumstance, to achieve an end or to realize ideas as they come forth. And yes, you’ve rehearsed these ideas or you’ve developed them along with the composer. But that is that is a framework in which the improvisation is its unfolding.
Mira Sundara Rajan 19:59
It’s Yeah, those are great points. You know, I neglected to mention that whole element which pianists really confront, you know, unless you’re in the position of Vladimir Horowitz and can take your piano everywhere with you. But, you know, the usual situation for for most pianists is that they have to adjust to an instrument and as well as a whole environment, but even adjusting to the instrument is a huge is a huge thing and does require great flexibility of mind, which I think is probably a hallmark of people who are good musical improvisers. I mean, I will say as well, something that I’ve come to think, which is a bit of a consolation to me is that I enjoy jazz quite a lot and listen to a number of jazz pianists, including Bill Evans, who I’ve listened to seriously for many years. And I’ve listened to him speak about his musical practice and how he builds improvisation, I think, you know, that’s one of his amazing talents is the level of coherence that he’s able to achieve through something that is, quote, unquote, an improvisation. And of course, he is that he is an incredible improviser. But I also realize that a lot goes into his practice of improvisation and he has developed, perhaps a musical language that he’s very conversant in, through his practice of improvisation. So I think improvisation is something far more sophisticated than just the idea of being able to sit down and play something, it is that but also, you can build that to an unbelievable level of sophistication. You know, when you look at someone like Bill Evans, or miles, David Davis, you know, these are people just at the absolute top of the game when it comes to the ability to develop improvisation and for it to become meaningful is music.
Bradley Vines 21:59
And this point about switching instruments stuck with me because for horn players that’s quite challenging. And in particular, let’s say for a saxophone is changing mouthpieces is very difficult. I would say. Yes, the there’s the legend that Charlie Parker took any mouthpiece and it was beautiful, or any read and so on. But, you know, there’s also a story about Joe Henderson is saxophone was destroyed somehow. And he went and found another section of this same exact model, that was only a few serial numbers away, that was as close as possible so he could get the sound he was looking for. So there’s, there’s also that side of things. And that may be a legend or not, but it nicely represents how horn players feel connected with their setup. And so this idea of a pianist, you know, going to a new hall with a totally different instrument. They’re used to playing a Yamaha now they’re on a Bosendorfer. They’re used to playing a Steinway, and now they’re on something completely different fonts, usually, that doesn’t sound
Mira Sundara Rajan 23:22
so bad. But yeah, But your point is well taken. Yeah, by the way, I think the interesting question there to me also is, how did Charlie Parker feel about having to play all those different mouthpieces? You know, was it something that he liked? Or was it something that he did? Because he had to or both? And the fact that he could sound beautiful on anything is just a testament to his skill as an improviser? And as a musician, isn’t it? Yeah, yeah.
Bradley Vines 23:55
And actually, it touches on the neurobiology of learning, a fundamental precept of which is that we want to achieve context independence with our learning, which means the knowledge is available to us, regardless of what the situation is, what is priming us. And the more generalizable your knowledge is, the more deeply rooted it is the more accessible so if you can achieve your sound in different locations with different instruments, that just shows that you have connected with that at a deeper level basically made that memory indeed, more a part of you. So it’s a great practice and a great thing that pianos do to play on different pianos, and perhaps it’s a good idea for horn players to do it more often. Take a cue from the pianos.
Mira Sundara Rajan 25:02
Yeah, opportunities to learn aren’t always as welcome as they probably should be. And probably, many pianists, when faced with a situation where they have to play a piano that’s very different or maybe bad compared to what they’re used to might privately or publicly throw a tantrum on that account. And that would be completely understandable. But I think, you know, this is a great point that you’re making that I’m sort of mentally making a note of, for myself that one has to remember that it is in these situations that there’s an opportunity to learn and to become better at what we do better musicians, better artists, and any opportunity to do that should not be taken lightly.
Bradley Vines 25:47
And also it is, as you have been saying, a form of improvisation to play something you know, all the way through on a new instrument is improvising.
Epilogue not long after my conversation with Mira, she discovered something relevant to what we were discussing. She came across a documentary about Vladimir sofern insky, the great pianist. I will link to that documentary in the notes. It is called geniuses, Vladimir sofr Neitzke. And in this documentary, they discuss the power of his spontaneous playing and his creativity. I’m going to quote directly from the film, one Sofia Netsky asked the audience for permission to repeat the impromptu by Chopin, which didn’t satisfy him. The second version differed from the first one, he was an amazing maestro of improvisation, and then they offer a quote, attributed to Sophia Netsky. I always find something new in the works, I play, but my critics blame me for it. They don’t understand that I need to explain the performing to myself internally. I need to feel something new, not the same as it was before.
Transcribed by https://otter.ai
THE NEUROSCIENCE OF IMPROVISATION 