Peter Brook - Playing by Ear: Reflections on Music and Sound

Peter Brook

PLAYING

BY EAR

Reflections on Sound

and Music

NICK HERN BOOKS

London

www.nickhernbooks.co.uk

Listen!

Acknowledgements

For three out of the countless fine people to whom I am eternally grateful. Three are very close as I write:

Olivier Mantei, not only for his close friendship over so many years, but also for the special sensitivity he brings to every question, nourished by his life in music. But above all for his encouragement to write this book after I had spoken about music in a radio show he had asked me to do.

To Franck Krawczyk, as the inseparable partner in so many explorations.

And equally to Toshi Tsuchitori, who embodies listening with his eyes, his mind and his body until they emerge from the tips of his fingers. Whatever the styleancient, traditional, Eastern, Western, classical or jazzthey are reborn every moment he plays.

And once again, for reasons I have already expressed in previous booksNina.

The past is history, the future is mysterythe present is a gift, thats why its called the present.

Words I heard recited by a bus driver to his passengers at the end of a long day. Where he got it from I didnt ask and will never know, but it has stayed with me over at least fifty years.

Astrology today is a despised science, yet we have come to realise that at the moment of birth we carry within us what is now called a genetic structure, which conditions our tastes, our prejudices, our compassion, our hatreds, our intuition. All of these thread their way through our life as we head towards a destination which we cannot know but which the stars and our genes lead us tothat point where the many threads intertwine, making a pattern that only appears when the last page is turned.

Prologue

Do you like music? The question is as absurd as saying, Do you like food? There is food that is tasteless, indigestible, sits heavily on the organs, but there is the vast range of foods that can give relief, nourishment, often pleasure. As Orpheus discovered, every animal can respond to sounds. For us, the living question is Which sounds? What music? In this book we will try to explore together the infinite range of experiences that can sometimes touch us deeply, sometimes leave us cold.

PART ONE

The Birth of Form

The very first tremor in the eternal nothingness was a sound, a sound which can only be recognised once the human organism has evolved a capacity to respondin other words, once there is a listener. In the process of creation, with sound came the presence of timetime that measures everything for us humans from dawn to dusk, from here to eternity.

The very first sounds from which gradually music was born inevitably had a sequence, an unwinding thread, that eventually leads to the sense of long, long phrases. And here, whatever the context, but above all in the performing arts, we touch on the essential. The long phrase is composed of an infinite number of details, a music where the beauty lies in the heart of each fragment, because it fills and reaches out of one unique space. This leads us to the recognition that every human attempt to determine what fills the space is a poor, a very poor reflection of the detail that is placed and brought to life by a source way beyond the wishes, the inventiveness and the ambitions of the individual. For this reason I deplore any of us, young or old, being called creators. Creation has only one source far beyond our understanding. This is where the form is born from the formless. Our role, like that of a good gardener, is respectfully to recognise that only when the ground has been lovingly prepared, can the true form be ready to receive the nourishment with which it can grow, develop and open.

There have been countless tales of how the world began, countless attempts to cope with the mystery of creation.

In Africa, where every tribe has its own creation tale, there are those that speak of a fine rope coming from the sky, down which the first man slid to Earth. Or else of the Earth opening for a man to clamber out.

But a very special tale comes from a tiny obscure tribe. Here, it is emptiness that is evoked, a vast nothingness. Then out of a timeless nothing comes a vibration, a sound, and from this original sound comes every aspect of creation. This tale blends at once with the Wordthe source of all the forms humanity learnt to know.

In the rich heyday of the sixties, from New York to San Francisco, from the East to the West Coast, young America was vibrating with the need to throw away all known forms and ideas in the wild search for something new. As always when Pandoras Box is opened, a confusing mixture tumbles out. There was Andy Warhol, there was Julian Beck with the Living Theatre, there was Joe Chaikin with his Open Theater, and there was the cult of drugs, from LSD to marijuana, in which the miraculous universe, until then hidden in every detail, could now be felt and lived. I remember at six oclock one morning seeing in a coffee shop a man who had spent the whole night smoking pot. He had ordered a waffle, and as I came in he was deeply concentrated on filling each dent in the waffles surface with maple syrup, lovingly watching the passage of every drop. This is the most beautiful task I have ever given myself. Its worth living for.

And as I myself plunged into this vibrant world of painters, actors and musicians, I was told of a composer in New York whom I had to meet. I was taken to his apartment in the Village. He warmly led me to where his wife was sitting, holding a cello. He took up a violin and played a single note. She listened attentively and joined him with the same note from her cello. She sustained the sound after his sound had ended, and when she could sustain her own no longer there was no pause, he picked up the same note. And so it continued. There was no end. It became unendurable. I began to fidget, then to speak, asking for some word of explanation. Politely, they put down their instruments. Our aim, she said, is to make more and more people pick up this sound. Gradually, it can spread. It can cross the land, go from continent to continent, until one day it can link more and more human beings until we are all united. It can become the World Sound. Weve done a recording. Would you like to hear it? I got up and fled.

The aim of linking the world with a single sound was a natural part of the romantic enthusiasm of the time, but the essential quality of life was very easily forgotten. Life can never repeat itself. Every moment carries within it the possibility of new creation.

My First Teacher

Dont sway. Dont beat time with your body. Youre not a dancer. Just sit up straight, dont move, just listen.

She was a friend of my mothers, and, like her, from Russia. She had studied the piano in Moscow and, now living in London, gave lessons. I was just twelve and had already had some boring lessons from impatient ladies. Her real name was Vera Vinagradova, but we called her simply Mrs Biek. Right away she put a Mozart sonata in front of me: luckily it was called Sonata Facile. Try to read the notes. At once, the challenge. With the sound of the first note, a call for quality. As your fingers touch the note, listen to the sound your fingers have made and dont allow any tensions in the shoulders, the arms, the fingers. Youve done your job. Just let it flow. And be ready for the next note, press, let go, listen. And very, very soon she would add, When youve learnt the first movement, you must play it to someone else, to your mother, your brother. The only reason for you to learn music is not for yourself. Its to share it with others.