When Histrionics Undermine Music Criticism

The cottage industry that cranks out “another reason classical music is not reaching more young people” articles, has issued it’s latest hebdomadal missive. This time, it’s a New York Times article from Bernard Holland entitled, “When Histrionics Undermine Music and the Pianist.” Mr. Holland’s vituperative screed is aimed at young pianists who distract listeners from the music with excessive gestures. He even goes so far as to suggest that, “Responsible teachers ought to be beating these kinds of histrionics out of their students but are too often perpetrators themselves.”

I haven’t had the pleasure of watching Mr. Holland perform, but I presume that the music making is matched with a certain marmoreal visual delight at the statuesque nature of his torso. I can easily imagine myself saying to him afterward, “You’re playing was beautiful, but I was most appreciative of the way your torpid physique didn’t intrude on the music.”

After all, I feel like I have enough to do already. I have to learn music and practice all my registrations and sometimes follow a conductor and worry about whether or not my hair is combed. Presumably I’m allowed some physical motion to make the instrument work. Now, apparently, I need to put whether or not I’m doing too much physical motion onto my checklist. I have to find the Goldilocks standard because one sway to far to the right or left might drive a young person away.

And it must be true. We all know the masses of teens waiting to join the ranks of the professional musician class. I personally can’t tell you how often a 20-something has come up to me and said, “Well, I thought about being a professional pianist, but when I realized you have to sway around and do ‘elaborate arm waving and heaven-bound gazes,’ I realized it wasn’t the right career path for me. Really it was the heaven-bound gazes that did me in. I could have probably handled some swaying and arm waving.”

There is, of course, quite a bit of cultural bias in this attitude. We don’t find articles like this asking some Yoruba singer to settle down a little and not be so “histrionic.” He’s not asking Tito Puente to tone down all the arm waving that is extraneous to the music making. It’s only for music of an appropriate Apollonian seriousness — that is, Western Classical music. And here it is important to note that we are not talking about Western Classical music as it was actually practiced by musicians. We are talking about Western Classical music as it has been received by a small group of people.

Consider the following description:

“During this time he grew so animated and possessed, that he not only played, but looked like one inspired. His eyes were fixed, his under lip fell, and drops of effervescence distilled from his countenance.” That’s Burney describing that great bastion of Dionysion extravagance, C.P.E. Bach!

Somewhere, Abby Whiteside suggests an experiment. Next time you go to the orchestra, look to see who it is that is moving and swaying around the most. It’s the first chair players. As you move back down the line, you’ll see that the motion gets less and less. At some point you have to consider that when so many virtuosi have eccentric mannerisms, it may not be something that is simply vestigial. It might be intrinsic to the process of virtuosity itself.

I am being a little cheeky in this little essay. There are mannerism that can bother me. I especially hate “mannerisms” that create a bifurcation between the center of the body and the periphery of the playing mechanism. That is, I don’t like it when the periphery are asked to function separately from the center of the body because the center of the body is where we feel things. When I have to play and I’m not feeling things, the first thing I do is start swaying and moving my torso so that it will wake up and start feeling things. If that is choreographing, then you’re going to have to come watch me dance, and you can take me to task afterward for driving all the teenagers away from classical music.

In the meanwhile, check out the Chiara Quartet. They move around, and they seem to do ok.