Rests

The notes I handle no better than many pianists. But the pauses between the notes - ah, that is where the art resides! ~Artur Schnabel

It has baffled me. In music, rests should be the easiest to perform. You don't do anything. You just wait. You count beats. You have plenty of time to prepare for the next note. But so often my students don't even see the rests. They catch the notes (or at least guess at them) and sometimes count, but the rests are either invisible or are mistaken for ink blots on the page.

I queried a couple of the guilty on Thursday regarding this phenomenon. A high schooler blamed the problem on the fact that you do nothing in rests. The third grade version of the answer: "They're boring."

Apparently, we humans can't stand to let go. We don't like being out of control. We can play notes--loud and fast or soft and legato--but rests are "hands off." We do nothing.

Still, in that nothing is the power of the music. As we progress we learn to acknowledge the rests. We give them their proper time and even start to use them to our advantage. To use them--as though we could somehow control them. We flatter ourselves that we choose the moment the rest begins and dictate its end, but in reality we cannot do even that. If we hold out too long, the music grinds to a halt. If we rush on, we lose the emotion.

No, the music is in control. The rest itself tells us when it is done. And we can only listen... and wait, hands off.

And find the magic between the notes.

The Lifeboat Exercise

I find it interesting what reading the Bible in a different language can cause me to see. Not that there's something new there, or that I understand it better--I understand more in English, of course. But reading in Spanish makes me step back, I think, and look at a story I've always known differently.

Today I was reading Jonah. As the men were trying to save their ship and their own lives, it brought to mind the old classic "Lifeboat Exercise." You know, the one where you have to decide who gets thrown overboard and who gets to survive. Although it has been long decried by conservatives for promoting situation ethics, I don't believe I've ever heard it discussed in light of this story.

Here we have a boatload of sailors, all pagan in the traditional sense of the word (each cries to his own god), and complete with the well-known morality of seamen. Yet even when they know Jonah is the cause of their trouble, even when he himself tells them to throw him overboard, they resist. Fearing God, they tried with all their might to get to land. Finally, when no other options existed, they first prayed and begged God not to judge them. Not to judge them? Didn't He send the storm? Didn't He show Jonah that they should throw him overboard? Yet they knew the value the Lord placed on human life. And they feared Him enough to be afraid to obey. Wow!


For another interesting note on this (hideous) group activity, see this link.