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.