I hadn't played the clarinet for years but agreed to perform with two of my daughters. The youngest is a middle-school violinist. I reasoned that she could use the experience, that performing is motivational, that it would be fun to practice together and that if we worked hard we might have something to offer.
After the obligatory protests, Amy agreed to try to learn the violin part. Experienced Michelle was willing to accompany on the piano, and I found myself trying to transpose a clarinet part out of four-part choir music and accompaniment. The problem is that the clarinet's natural key is B flat but the violin and piano are in concert key. To further explain, when the piano plays an A the clarinet has to play a B to match the tone. The clarinet also has to add two sharps to the key signature as well as put the music in the treble clef if trying to read from the bass clef of the accompaniment.What this all means is that a clarinet player such as I, who is not confident, has to transcribe the original music for violins and piano and vocalists onto manuscript. It is a bit like taking something written in a foreign language and rewriting it into a new dialect.
Clarinets make their sound or noise because a thin reed on the mouthpiece vibrates when blown properly. The sound is amplified by the megaphone shape of the clarinet. To get a sound that doesn't resemble a duck call requires some training. The body parts from diaphragm to lips to jaw to tongue to cheeks need to be controlled. The most important part of blowing is the way the mouth is held, the embouchure, although clarinet players don't have it as bad as trumpet players, who vibrate their lips instead of a reed. This is an admission that trumpet players are probably better kissers than clarinet players.
We practiced. I don't know the ratio of practice time to performance time, but it might have reached a collective 100 to one. That is what is sometimes required. It wasn't just that we had to each learn our parts; we had to do it together. We had to agree when to play loudly and when to play softly. Sometimes Amy took the lead and played above the rest of us. Sometimes it was the piano's turn to lead. Difficult passages were repeated and repeated.
We had to agree when to take breaths. For Amy it meant bowing the violin the right way in the right places. For me it meant breathing correctly and tongueing certain notes while slurring others. The accompanist had to feel the phrases with us. What really happens is that the individuals in the ensemble need to allow themselves to become part of a group rather than acting like individual soloists. The trio becomes a single instrument that breathes and thinks and feels and interprets as individuals share. The group becomes more than the sum of its parts.
The skill developed as a musician is quite different from what is taught in math or science or English or in other basic classes. Although my math experience is not as great as my music experience, I can't remember trying to feel the emotion of the mathematical equation and trying to reconcile my feelings and interpretation with others in an ensemble so that we could perform algebraic functions together. I don't recall practicing the same problem over and over to get it the way I wanted it. It seems that the math problem was either wrong or right. The music passage is either wrong or getting better. It seldom becomes perfect or right.
As I got the old clarinet out and practiced, I remembered the bumper sticker that finally washed off my dad's car at about the same time he retired from the Utah Symphony: "Music Is the Staff of Life." I think he's right. And even if not exactly correct, music is at least a salt that adds savor to life.
There may even be more to this. Dad liked to remind people that his music students also seemed to be the school leaders. They were the kids who became both the informal and elected leaders of the school. Perhaps it is because they learned in band and orchestra the relationship between individual excellence and group excellence.
It may be for musicians to know from hours of practice what it takes to become good enough individually that self confidence will allow participation in a group that must become one instrument as an ensemble. Perhaps it is for the student musician to begin to understand the relationship of individual and group needs. It may be the musicians of the world who understand how three individual interpretations can become one in a trio.