"Music isn't math. It's physics." | Leon Fleisher on Brahms B-flat Concerto (ft. Rachel Kudo) 

Sounds like you'd benefit from learning, and then teaching your students the Klavarskribo alternative notation for piano, which is turning 90 years old soon (and is tragically unknown nowadays). I have a free video course on Skillshare about it, but since Skillshare will make all the classes paid-only from September 15th onwards, I'm working on porting it to RU-vid so that it can remain free. In any case: www.skillshare.com/classes/Klavarskribo-A-Revolutionary-Way-of-Reading-Music/1355508151

@@bennemann I visited the link. It's a kind of "TAB" for the piano (I play the guitar). So I wouldn't call it a "music" notation, rather a "piano" notation, with all the limits of a notation that is specific to a particular instrument.

@@andsalomoni @andsalomoni No, it's a full-fledged notation. It seems you have not watched the 2-min introductory video of the course, so here's an even shorter version where it is made clear why Klavar is a full notation, which just happens to have the same note layout as a piano, making it easier to learn for keyboard instrument players (as contrasted to the regular notation which doesn't follow the layout of any instrument at all and is equally hard to learn for all). Short video: thumbs.gfycat.com/SpeedyDeterminedArgali-mobile.mp4

@@bennemann I watched the video instead, and I've seen that it is a piano-based notation, and it requires about the double of space on paper to comprehend the same musical range, confronted with the traditional notation. The traditional notation is diatonic and uses the accidents, which is not a disadvantage if you consider how it was first conceived and how it is mainly used - scales made of seven notes. This new notation is chromatic in the sense that all chromatic notes are explicitly present on the score, which may be good for "advanced" music, but is not the first choice for "normal" music or for those who are starting to learn music.

​@@andsalomoni " it requires about the double of space on paper to comprehend the same musical range, confronted with the traditional notation." Not true at all. While the single "merged" staff of Klavar is indeed wider than a single-clef staff of the TN, the fact that it's merged means it doesn't need to display two different staves for two different clefs. The net result is that things even out, and I find that I use roughly the same number of bars and pages when transcribing long pieces from the TN to Klavar. "The traditional notation is diatonic and uses the accidents, which is not a disadvantage if you consider how it was first conceived and how it is mainly used - scales made of seven notes." This is valid criticism, but I don't see that much of an issue with it, given that most people learning music stay on the C major key for a long time, since it's the easiest to sight-read in the TN, and the C-scale in Klavar has no black notes/accidentals, so it's just like reading C major in the TN, only much easier because all the octaves look the same. You learn one octave in Klavar, you can play all of them. Despite "not being the first choice" on the chromatic/diatonic side of things, all of its many simplifications over the TN certainly offset this and make Klavar much easier to learn *overall*. It seems to me that prejudice with that which you're not familiar with (no offense meant; this is a natural reaction of all human beings when confronted with newness) is leading you towards trying to find faults with it (which it does have) instead of focusing on its myriad good points.

"Stability" is already used (the tonic is stable), "attraction" too (the sensible is attracted by the tonic), "symmetry" too (the diminished seventh chord is symmetrical by inversion). I wouldn't make much hype about terminology. Music is made of sounds, not of words.

@@andsalomoni Hi again. I'm aware of these terms and concepts. My point is that music might gain by using more precise terms, non-specific for music. Fever terms, less colorful. F ex: I think of a dominant chord as active 3rd and/or 7th, chromatically resolving by counter motion when in that order, the root resolving by the 5th. Tonic's counterpart #IV M share the same 'active' notes, resolving the opposite way. What I see, is that music theory turns into maths and number spaces. Triadic transformation goes to far in scientific reduction, if you ask me. But perhaps you don't :) Anyway, it was not my intention to start a discussion.

and... he's already taken his final bow... may he RIP!

@@Highinsight7 so either the master is playing to cue or I am out of sync …….

How much he gave to music and the young generation with his teaching. He was cruelly deprived of his own music for many years, but he accomplished much and will be remembered for his contribution. I remember he used to come to Juilliard every week for a master class which I attended in the 90s.

An inspirational lesson, showing how Fleisher sought to pass on what he had discovered from a lifetime of thinkig about music to the following generations, right up to the end of his life. His teaching focused on what might seem to be minute technical details, until one discovers that those techniques are the tools that give access to the flow and the lifeblood of music. Who would have thought that the way music is printed can become limiting to the player's framing of the music? But he's right. Here's another example, from a workshop at Carnegie Hall in 2010 in which Fleisher, Yo-Yo Ma and Pamela Frank work with string ensembles on the music of Brahms. What is the *direction* of an accent? We discover that it makes a big difference. ru-vid.com/video/%D0%B2%D0%B8%D0%B4%D0%B5%D0%BE-fG_-Eex1ZGM.html

@@dizzyology7514 It is comforting to know that all these notation problems are totally unexisting in oral musical traditions (e.g. african traditional musics and Indian classical music).

Schnabel -- not a bad person to have as a teacher

@@ratitekeeper Eh, never heard of him

That’s interesting.

"Music is the poetry of waves" indeed! Here's a great video related to that: ru-vid.com/video/%D0%B2%D0%B8%D0%B4%D0%B5%D0%BE-d2lIhbL4vSQ.html

What does that mean when you say the increasing weight is the virtuoso?

@@cbalan777 First, I could no more play this than jump over the moon. So, my opinon in nothing. It's a brutally hard measure. Often pianists emphassze the first down beat. Then struggle to make the other arpeggiated notes heard. Usually they are lost. Fleisher recommends starting a little less, adding a weight to each until the second down beat. All the notes are heard and the result is more exciting.

And a musical idea is neither mathematics nor physics... it's music.

@@andsalomoni A musical idea can be expressed and measured using mathematical concepts. So even if a person didn't think of it from a mathematical point of view, it still follows mathematical rules.

@@rontomkins6727 You perceive an idea in your mind. Can you measure it? I don't think. You can measure the expression of the idea, in terms of physical sound, symbolic representation of the idea, etc. But the idea itself is not objectively attainable. When I listen to a music, it conveys an idea. I can perceive it, but it is not measureable.

@@andsalomoni Again: Musical ideas can be measured mathematically. We do it all the time.

@@rontomkins6727 You can only measure the physical manifestation of ideas, not the ideas themselves. Persons with perfect pitch can reproduce the acoustic manifestation of a melody, but it is possible that they don't understand the idea of that melody (that's why having perfect pitch can be a hindrance to musicality in some cases). They "measured" the melody, but not the idea. Going back to your first comment, the conception of music doesn't follow mathematical rules. It is mathematics that matches music sometimes. Not even intonation is reducible to mathematics (just listen to pure modal music, e.g. Indian classical music, full of intonation inflexions and portamentos).

Sort of. Math is the language used to quantify physics, just like it is used to describe other real world phenomina. Math is not the only language that describes physics, just drop this bowling ball on your foot to find out.

Modern physics, modern science in general, is applied mathematics. Take away the mathematics and the concept of measurement (obtaining numbers from phenomena), and modern science ceases to exist. The phenomena we experience will go on being experienced, but modern science will disappear.

I reckon a case could be made for "Physics First".....the numbers might have achieved independence, even superiority, but they are birthed in practicality. And this has nothing to do with getting into the soul of Brahms. ;-)

See the last sentences of Bernhard Riemann’s habilitation dissertation, “On the Hypotheses Which Lie at the Foundations of Geometry” -“The question of the validity of the postulates of geometry in the indefinitely small is involved in the question concerning the ultimate basis of relations of size in space. In connection with this question, which may well be assigned to the philosophy of space, the above remark is applicable, namely that while in a discrete manifold the principle of metric relations is implicit in the notion of this manifold, it must come from somewhere else in the case of a continuous manifold. Either then the actual things forming the groundwork of a space must constitute a discrete manifold, or else the basis of metric relations must be sought for outside that actuality, in colligating forces that operate upon it. A decision upon these questions can be found only by starting from the structure of phenomena that has been approved in experience hitherto, for which Newton laid the foundation, and by modifying this structure gradually under the compulsion of facts which it cannot explain. Such investigations as start out, like this present one, from general notions, can promote only the purpose that this task shall not be hindered by too restricted conceptions, and that progress in perceiving the connection of things shall not be obstructed by the prejudices of tradition. {This path leads out into the domain of another science, into the realm of physics, into which the nature of this present occasion forbids us to penetrate.}” Sound and hearing operate as a continuous manifold. Vision operates as a discrete manifold. Music operates through sound, though it can also be independent of sound. Features like meter, rhythm, cadence, time signature and tempo are subsumed by motion. They are not the cause of motion, but the footprints of it. I think Mr. Fleisher is right. Perhaps, in a certain sense, poetry, which as a discipline uses or can use all the number-enclosed features just named, supersedes mathematics in the physics of music. Investigating the lied, and Brahms settings of same, might shed some light on this. For example the third movement of this Concerto’s cello solo opening theme appears later as the Brahms setting of Immer Leiser wird mein schlummer, “ but shifted to a minor key. Comparing the poem’s prosody to the wordless but full-of-meaning cello solo, and the unique treatment of the piano in that concerto’s third movement, May be a fruitful exercise.

Math can be used to describe things. This doesn't mean that things are math. I can draw a map of a territory, but the map is not the territory.

Do we need to know your opinion on her attractiveness? How about Maestro Fleischer? What would you rate him out of 10?

@@businessbusiness9407 she' a 10

@@user-gg3nm4xm6r I don't need to know when you're typing with one hand thanks.

Settle down , fellas . She's married to Luca Fazioli of the piano manufacturing company , What more could she want ? What more could you offer ?