BUENOS-AIRES - DAKAR

In the clouds

It’s been almost two years since my picaresque trip around the world in 80 concerts began.

Generally, the listener registers a wave of audible sound and lets his imagination flow, filling in the blanks as needed. Even if the musician misses a dominant or tonic note during a complex harmonic progression, the listener will interpret the sound to include the missing note. The same chord can assume a different coloration depending on the context in which it is heard. However, the feelings generated by the guitar are unique.

A guitar performance is no symphonic concert, which leaves little to the imagination. During a concert, everything is laid out for the listener, little suggested. The orchestra paints a fresco, using every technique imaginable. The listener is more passive than when listening to the guitar. He's like a sensor responding to a sound.

The guitar is also unlike experimental electro-acoustic music, which either produces a large number of auditory signals or strips the sound to a minimum. In either case it is more about intellect than feeling. It makes use of artifice to fool the listener, introducing notes that are off-key or out of phase (a form of heavy artillery I’d rather avoid). The anxious listener is a guinea pig.

It’s unlike bel canto as well. For here, if the tenor happens to miss a note in the middle of an otherwise brilliant performance, he is whistled at and booed for the remainder of the evening. A female opera singer with a glorious past, whose recordings have immortalized her voice when a young woman but mask what it has become, can be a great success at the Met in New York, even though her timbre is flat, her attack weak, and her trill uncertain. The results are often humorous. In Paris a soprano, confronted by a storm of boos, raised her arms and whistled loudly between her teeth. In the silence that followed she said, "Zé régrrrète d'êtrrre venue à Parrris! [I am sorry I came to Paris!]" "Us too!" "Us too!" "Us too!" chanted the parterre in unison, as off-key as the performance itself. Such passionate fans are too partial, too demanding. The musician, however, may be overwhelmed by the genius of a musical score (like Rossini’s quintet in the Cenerentola), something the public is unaware of. After all, it’s not a solo! Nonetheless, the opera-loving public is an enthusiastic audience. They appreciate those great arias, during which the soprano, her face contorted into a grimace of sound, laments the inevitable tragedy to follow in a final, agonizing D-flat (unless, as in Macbeth, her double is singing in the wings). The musician is satisfied with an opera in which the voice is treated as an instrument, whereas the bel canto public, as Boris Vian noted, awaits the moment when the singer, instead of bleeding, sings. In Mythologies Roland Barthes wrote, "Gérard Souzay [a famous French tenor] spits the word from his mouth as if it were a pit."

 Guitars, however, are different. The limited volume of sound they produce forces the public to approach the musician. People also sense the intimacy between musician and instrument. Its simplicity mystifies them—as if they could see the sounds it produces. A man and his guitar is already a poem. On stage this creates more tension than attentiveness.

The guitarist can learn a great deal by observing other musicians. However, it is only by playing as beautifully and convincingly as possible that he can draw the public in. Little by little he looks for ways that will enable the audience to participate in the performance. If he succeeds, they may even begin to get ahead of him, anticipate his next move. When this happens he relies more on the power of suggestion than the power of description. Guitar playing is the art of innuendo.

Similarly, certain forms of visual art appeal to the observer's imagination, rather than their sense of astonishment or shock. Ancient Egypt was more suggestive than Greece. "Greece," as Gauguin said, "was a disaster." He preferred Cambodian or Egyptian art. The slim contours of a Hittite vase are more voluptuous than the symmetrical lines of a Roman jug. Interestingly, the first representation of a guitar appears in a Hittite bas-relief from 1500 B.C., now in the Ankara Museum. Moreover, the most admired Greco-Roman works are often mutilated. They have become suggestive by necessity. In the more recent past, Picasso made the transition from figurative art to cubism—that is, from the "descriptive" to the "suggestive."

But let's get back to music. Bach’s œuvre, for example, contains as many descriptive as suggestive elements (the keyboard or choral music, say, compared with the sonatas for violin or suites for lute). A work like the Chaconne in D minor (BWV 1004) is a monument to the power of suggestion. The underlying principle, imported from Central America, is fairly simple: a series of recurring chords provides the foundation for the piece. As the music begins Bach introduces several chords (Aaaa, A-E, Eee, E-F, Ddddd…) but soon abandons them, assuming the listener has already absorbed them and will remember them during the piece. This enables him to construct an immense scaffolding, one that soars to unbelievable musical heights, and he sustains this evanescent structure for nearly a quarter of an hour. Underlying this is the initial series of chords, which remain in musical memory. Only at the end of the Chaconne, after Bach has allowed the listener to explore the structure he has created, does this sublime composer repeat the initial melody..

Naturally, suggestion is the guitarist’s strength. And yet, using such a simple instrument to create a living and varied recital is a challenge. The guitarist must play with contrasts and substitutions, build progressions, use silences as accent notes. But most of all, to captivate the public, the guitarist needs to begin the recital with a spectacular piece (in Asia Minor a deafening percussive sound was played before all theatrical performances). He must then satisfy their expectations, making sure his playing is clear and assured.

Once pointed in the right direction, he needs to gently channel this stream of emotion. When the listener is finally "caught" by the musician, he will look for common reference points throughout the performance, hoping to relax with his contentment. It is up to the musician to make use of the range of his skills, varying his performance to help the listener construct a world of fantasy from the allusive tissue of sound and silence. By concealing the form, the guitarist exposes the content.

Deep thoughts

The inherent risk of the guitar, however, is its limited range. The playing needs to be forceful enough to make sure the audience hears all the notes. Playing the guitar is a bit like drawing a rough sketch that the listener completes. The more you leave out, the more they put in. Their contradictory reactions confirm the fact that each of us constructs our own small world out of the musician’s understatement.

Naturally it’s not that easy to get real aficionados to play the game. You have to win the public’s confidence. Not only through publicity and awareness but by developing a reputation, a "name"—all of which make it easier to win them over, to convince them before seducing them. Listeners who come to a recital by chance, during a free concert, for example, are much more difficult to win over. Staging is also important. Whether you’re athletic or paralyzed, elegant or frumpy, discreet or flamboyant, anything goes as long as you’re straightforward, honest, sincere. One of my honorable colleagues, a student of the great Segovia, thought he had to imitate the master’s gravity of presentation. He furrowed his brows, concentrated intensely—and visibly—and pontificated from his adjustable throne. With an august gesture he placed his guitar across his noble thighs. To give us some idea of the empyrean into which he would lead us, he remained motionless for a long moment, shoulders relaxed, legs apart, raising his head only to cast an ostentatiously severe glance at a latecomer. The public might have been willing to overlook all this solemnity had it not been for his gaping fly.

Creating a stage persona is counterproductive. Music and theater are not the same thing. The actor does not act, he exists. He can’t "pretend" to be the character on stage--something that is quite natural for a musician.

To keep an audience on the edge of their seats throughout the program you have to design the program with great care. You can play a set that is consistent or varied, which appeals to the mind or the heart.

Incidentally, the "recital" is a fairly recent phenomenon. It can be dated to June 9, 1840, when a small poster, pasted in front of London's Hanover Square Rooms, announced "This evening, Mr. Frantz Liszt shall perform a recital." Londoners must have wondered what Liszt was up to. Until then there had only been concerts, that is, a performance during which several virtuosi played in succession, providing an evening of musical fireworks. But that evening, Maestro Liszt decided that he was worth several virtuosi and, according to those in attendance that night, he was right. Other musicians, perhaps not as talented as their illustrious predecessor, followed Liszt’s initiative. They initiated a new form of entertainment: the lengthy, monotonous recital where boredom is the accompanist.

The musician has to work continuously to captivate a public that is always on the verge of losing interest at the first sign of weakness. In my case I’m less concerned with controlling what occurs on stage than with my instrument. Today I'm no longer intimidated by the Japanese concertplayers who once terrified me. Now, my scales are brisk, my arpeggios enchanting, my ornamentation clear. And the competitive aspect of music doesn’t interest me. Sure the contest winner is rapidly projected toward instant stardom. He may master his instrument, but not the public. The two arts are quite different. One looks inward, the other outward (the reason why juries are such contentious battlegrounds during a competition). Such competitions are bottlenecks in a musician’s career, however. They eliminate (during the "eliminations"!) a majority of the participants, participants whose vocation is to communicate with others through music. The monolithic nature of competition eliminates any opportunity to create a vital musical culture.

In any case musical competitions will soon become a thing of the past. At the central music school in Moscow, future stars are already being tested in musical interpretation, sight reading, and even the history of music by the time they’re seven. It’s only logical that we could achieve even better results along these lines through cloning and other forms of genetic manipulation. All it would take would be to set up a "music" department in our laboratories. Of course, it might be cheaper to set up a "biology" department in our music conservatories instead. Those who feel the need to compete would be better off taking up pétanque. At least the jury is objective...

Nor am I overly concerned by the fact that there are virtuosi younger than myself. Nothing prevents me from developing in depth what others may only have mastered superficially. In the society in which I live, great attention is given to precocity (genius can’t wait!) and has hardly given any thought to the ways in which it might accommodate a talent that grows over time. Time is the enemy. However, the young prodigy, concerned only with developing the formal aspects of music, and as soon as possible, may lose his inspiration and wither as an artist, whereas an older musician may continue to blossom. Edgar Faure, one of France's eldest senators, replied to an adversary who had unwisely referred to him as an old blockhead, "I’m younger than you, Dear Friend, for you shall die before me!"

And yet, for the time being, playing music does not come as naturally to me as walking or swimming. Producing melodies still requires an effort. But how I long to possess that instrument! Like my trip around the world, I need to discover my guitar. It will take two or three more years. What difference does it make. Oh! That reminds me. I still have to discover Africa. Better get a move on!