“Little Johnny is classically trained” – translation is: “Little Johnny can read music.” Or this one, “My Aunt Thelma was a concert pianist” – translation is “My Aunt Thelma can play Chopin and gave a concert once which I wasn’t actually at.”
“Classically trained” and “Concert pianist” are two terms I hear quite a bit, and I wonder what they really mean. To me, the phrase “classically trained” should mean that you did a lengthy apprenticeship with a full time performer. And the phrase “concert pianist” should mean you made your sole living for several years giving concerts of classical music.
More important than being classically trained is if you can SOUND like you were classically trained. Not including vocals, it seems to me that classical training is about understanding the theory, execution, nuance and historical style of what you are playing.
For instance, if I have a piano student studying a piece by Bach; the first step is for us to uncover how Bach would have performed the piece in his time. We take great care to do research on tempos and embellishments. Thanks to the internet we can usually get some gratis audio samples so we can also hear how a top pro would approach the piece. Our first approach is replication, to be a historical jukebox and copy what has been.
Then we throw that all out the window and let imagination dictate all the different possibilities the student can create to alter the piece. That is the magic of personal expression and the “road less traveled” to finding your true personal voice of expression.
In my own studies this phrase was instilled in me: “You must learn the rules before you can break them.” I add to that, telling students: “You must learn the rules before you can break them. But once you have learned them, you have earned the artistic license to take any direction you like.” To me this is the perfect synthesis of dedicated research that honors music history and intention, while giving the full reigns of creativity to the performer.
“Classical music” is a diluted term. It actually refers to a fairly short segment of music history, with specifically Beethoven as it’s champion. Mozart was not of the Classical music era, nor was Bach, or Stravinsky, or Gershwin, or Buxtehude…. We have enough time in modern music history behind us that to play “Classical music” specifically from that era is actually limiting. There are many more styles that are just as appropriate for sophisticated expression of the human condition. (My favorite, as all my friends know, is Baroque music, specifically Bach.)
I hear an insincerity in the term “Classically trained”; a detachment from anything that is really relevant. The same feeling I get when I hear “Are you religious?”. Show us how “classically trained” you are by the level of your performance, and show us how “religious” you are by how you live your life. Move us with your notes and then we may want to know how you do it, inspire us with the living of your life and we may want to know how you got to be that way. The proof is in the pudding.
There is no real soul searching drive to creating music if you cannot make the listener dream louder, laugh, cry, question themselves, feel sure about themselves……SOMETHING beyond the pedestrian idleness like sitting in front of a t.v.
Learn all you can, express each note as if it were your last, research the style and let your creativity take you to places no one has been before. And when they ask you if you’re Classically trained, you can say: “I don’t know about that, but I play it damn good.”