The Expressive Tool Kit
Diane L. Winder, D.M., Professor of Cello, Eastern Michigan University

As musician-teachers, performers, listeners; we live for “peak” musical experiences. Those in which we find heightened communication, technical freedom, emotional electricity and unified intent among the players. Indeed, we expect this level of artistry from professional soloists and ensembles. Considering our own students-band, orchestra, private studio-we probably often wonder how is this artistry best taught or learned? Can technically flawless but unemotional performers become truly expressive? At what age should we expect artistry from students?

A dictionary suggests an artistic person is one who produces art and thinks in terms of creating beauty and form. Artist implies one who practices this art in which conception and execution are governed by imagination and taste; an artist is a skillful, public entertainer. This skill, a learned power of doing a thing competently, assumes this aptitude (or feeling) can be developed.

Life as a public entertainer sounds fun, students agree. But the process-Produce, Think, Create, Practice, Execute-sounds like a lot of work! It is encouraging to realize students feel this skill, aptitude or feeling can be learned and developed. So, the beauty and form we’re after comes first from a conception generated by imagination and taste. Cool!

Before we examine how to teach artistry and expressivity, we need to motivate students to get them to buy into our plan. Ask your students, “What is the purpose of expression in music? Why play expressively?” You may receive answers such as:

To express myself

To understand the music

To touch the listener

To understand the composer’s ideas

To create a mood

To form phrases and shape the piece

To COMMUNICATE!

Another useful insight for students ­involves a circular Communication Road Map that runs: COMPOSER-NOTATION on paper-through the PERFOMER-to the LISTENER-and finally RESPONSE to performance (response to composer). Written music simply reduces the composer’s ideas to a form of map, a structure. The performer’s job is to interpret the map. In effect, a good performer is really a re-composer+performer. Music on the page flows from the composer’s imagination and personal emotions. These are translated through the performer’s mind, body and emotions, and sent out the instrument, shaped by the performer’s technique. A complex process!

To navigate the Road Map successfully students at any level usually only need a Musical Guide (that’s YOU!) and:

A) A Fearless Desire/Need/Commitment to Playing Expressively. (Remember this IS work!)

B) A Good Basic Instrumental Technique. For example, explore how to execute a variety of crescendos and diminuendos or experience the difference in sound and articulation on a string instrument between spiccato vs. detache for repeated eighth notes.

C) Imagination/Ideas. Start with a good recording of a composition the ensemble is preparing. Listen, then analyze and discuss what makes this performance expressive or examine a full score (or piano score) of the composition. Identify the formal and expressive architecture of the piece such as important cadences, dramatic dynamic shifts, and surprising rhythmic fluctuations.

D) An Expressive Tool Kit. Students experience, then store emotions gathered while reading novels, watching movies, listening to music, hearing about friends’ experiences, or watching daily social interactions, etc. As required, students easily recall the original situation and replay the moods/emotions. Students usually vividly remember how the emotion was portrayed. How the body moved, what the face expressed, the speed of the breath and the tone of voice. For example, an angry person often breathes and speaks quickly and uses a loud shrill tone of voice. Students might copy this mood exactly with loud dynamics, shrill tone and intense rhythm in a tense, climactic, musical passage. One often mirrors in music making the MOTIONS of an action or outward expression of emotional energy in music making.

This repository of emotions and reference to body movement, breathing and facial expression, forms the bulk of a performer’s Tool Kit. Actors, access and examine these stored emotions, decide which to apply to a passage and learn simply to turn the chosen emotions on and off. Similarly, the musician decides which notes, like words, to cluster together and what inflections to apply by choice of dynamics, speed, articulation, etc. In fact, while performing, a student has an opportunity to experiment and do or express what one might never even try in “real life”!

How does a performer find the most appropriate expression for a particular ­passage? The Musical Guide (teacher/conductor) provides students with the ­Theoretical Tools to define and understand the musical language of the: era, style, country, composer and genre. Together, student and guide consider historical aspects of the piece that are pertinent to this specific ­performance. Study the composer’s biography, general musical style of the period, aesthetics of the period and equipment of the period (were natural or valve trumpets in use?). Next, basic theory questions point out significant events in a composition. Identify scales, modes, keys, the type of piece (dance, folk song, etc.) and chord progressions as they intersect with the form-phrases, periods, etc. Types of cadences, points of strong ­dissonance and resolution, interesting ­harmonic rhythm and tempo fluctuations ­further define the form. Of course, primary and secondary melodic lines must be ­differentiated from harmonic lines.

Once this is done it is time to listen to the recording or live performance, again. On the score note the form, mark phrase breaks and arrival points in each phrase. Figure out, ­perhaps by playing, a hierarchy for the phrases. Decide where the points of arrival are throughout the work and determine which are the most significant. Agree on the ­location of the climax of the entire piece and reflect on how the parts fit together.

Likewise, discuss the relative importance of and type of cadences. Send students on the search for motives. Discuss how these are developed through repetition, sequences or ornamentation. Finally, note changes in harmonic rhythm (watch that bass line).

Next, challenge the students to suggest words to describe the general mood or ­emotion of a section/movement such as happy, triumphant, sad, etc. Then apply various aspects of that mood to phrases. For example, sadness might be expressed as ­anger, desperation, alienation, depression or heavy-heartedness. The range of triumph ­includes feeling joy, power, strength, ­calmness, victory, celebration, etc.

Students may generate more expressive ideas by imagining that the music tells a story or a joke. They might discuss the color, shape, beauty, architecture, movement, ­gesture and energy level of phrases. Music might describe a picture, a movie or drama or feel like part of a map, conversation or song.

Finally, the student is ready to actually play the section joyfully or powerfully, calmly or energetically. Here the performer activates the proper technique to do the emotion. The bow stroke or air becomes a paintbrush to create a wide array of colors and articulations. (Wouldn’t you rather have more colors in your crayon box?) Other variables of expressive playing include:

Amount of support under a tone

Width and speed of vibrato

Accents

Percussiveness of attack

Pitch (playing on the high vs. low side of a pitch)

Intonation in intervals (a bright M3 vs. a low m3)

Shifting or connectedness of tones

In addition, musical details such as rests and dramatic pauses, speed of crescendo
and diminuendo, rubato and stressed notes often rely on technical control for maximum effect. However, remember that technique is only at the service of emotion, tone and communication. Some players may first need to attain a level of comfort technically before they can learn to be expressive.

One final reminder, an artist uses the whole body while playing for maximum expressiveness. The instrument becomes an extension of the player not a machine to hide behind. A truly artistic rendition requires complete freedom mentally, physically and emotionally. A cellist, for example, who wants to produce a big sound with a triumphant feeling, does the following technically:

Turns emotions on

Balances on the chair (form a tripod with the feet)

Checks for free and flexible muscles (feet, legs, back, neck, arms, fingers)

Plays from the ground, from under the feet

Bows near the bridge

Increases bow weight

Pulls the bow, using the back of the right upper arm (as when playing Tug of War)

Uses the whole bow or nearest the frog (depending on length of notes)

Makes sharp articulations

Since a performance relies on the artistry of each individual performer, it becomes the Guide’s mission to locate the key to unlock each student’s own personal Expressive Tool Kit. As actors learn strategies for use of their whole body (including eyes, face, voice, articulation of words, tone of voice, etc.), so musicians learn the same kinds of tactics to communicate. Remember, alone, those dots on the page communicate little. It’s entirely up to the performer and what s/he does to interpret the dots (the same as with words in a story) in order to convey a message and/or emotion. In order for the listener to “get it”, the musical picture must first mean something to the performer, who then develops a point of view to express to the listener. The performer decides what the listener should notice. Indeed, the performer becomes part of the creative process.

The ultimate artistic performance results from nearly equal amounts of input from the head and heart, with a smattering of music intuition to bind the mix. The final performance sounds alive, as if it was ­being created on the spot for the very first time. At that moment the performance, the ­music, transcends all the preparation and practice and takes on a life of its own. The result is a peak musical experience.