And the playing of the piano business, that's just simply
so that I can hear the complexity of the harmonic motion
in slow motion, so that I can, I can see
how things are working together simultaneously at a lot of levels.
And then finally, the last thing I do
is well I, I should have said this differently.
The first thing I do is I take a clean copy of the
score, because I'm likely to ruin the score with my first set of marks.
>> Hm.
>> That was a standard joke when I first began teaching.
I just went out with the kids, kids folders and I took out
their copy that they never marked in and I put in the one that
I'd already ruined and for about a month thereafter, the kids would raise
their hands in different places and say, Mr.Hoft, somebody wrote all over my music.
What's wrong with my music?
And I'd say, people who are writing all over the, it
took them a while to figure out it was me all along.
[LAUGH] But basically, I, I now anticipate making mistakes, so I
take a clean copy of the score before I ever do
it and I work off the copy as much as possible
and retain my score until I actually have the decisions made.
>> It's almost like in math, showing your work, you do
your work on one thing and then show your answer on another.
>> Yes.
That's exactly, that's a good way of putting it.
Until I actually hear them attempt to sing it I
don't know what I've missed, and I always miss something.
I've grown to expect the, actually I sort of look forward to the missing.
I think it would be boring if you were
dead accurate every time and sometimes they surprise me in
terms of what they can do and I let that
let that dictate where I can try and take them.
Some years ago we did a Richard Strauss piece that just had
an impossible phrase at the, at the tempo that was marked A.
It was ridiculously high.
The, it was dynamically extreme from both ends.
So it was ridiculously big to ridiculously small and controlled.
And, and the phrase was a page and a half long.
It was insane.
It's not physically possible.
So I had marked in all sorts of provisional breaths.
And even though that interrupted the flow of the text and
how he was trying to express what he was attempting to express.
The, the text loosely speaking talked about an unending search
for peace, and it, he used funny modulations and funny
resolutions to reflect the idea that mankind is permanently looking
for a peace that's elusive and difficult to find and,.
>> He wrote it?
>> He wrote it, yeah.
And he wrote right into it.
And so I put it in all these little provisional breaths, and then when we
first started doing it, I told my guys, take the breaths here, here and here.
And when we got there they said, that feels really weird.
And I said, well that's because there's not supposed to be a breath there.
And they said, well, why did you tell us to breath?
And I said because I didn't think you could do it.
And they said, well, don't you think you should have let us try?
[LAUGH].
>> I did!
And we ended up stagger breathing our way through
page after page after page of that silly thing.
And we still ran into problems because there were times depending on
how many of them had to breathe in order to carry the.
It got so totally individual that the certain voices had to breathe
at certain points in order to be available to sing certain notes
in certain places because they were the only ones who could manage
or control that kind of thing and it was a really interesting experience.
But I've grown to almost accept that as part of
the fascination, the creative process of the recreative process, you know?
I don't know for certain what they're going to bring to the equation.
And my preparation is essentially a framework.
I want to get it in my hand and get it in my voice, and get it
in my ear, and get it in my psyche, my mind and then see what happens.
And then we get right down to brass tacks.
>> Yeah, there's a great dichotomy between the process that you outline, in terms
of figuring out the context of the piece and how the piece is broken down.
And then forms how you work your score in terms of perhaps
highlighting and that informs how you
conduct because it's all connected and then
balancing that with this kind of living, breathing organism that it might
all change, or at least be adjusted as we get into our rehearsal.
>> Mm-hm.
Well, tempo is a critical thing, even in Renaissance music
where the top piece is more or less in a frame.