Book Review Number 9: Practicing

“Practicing”
A Musician’s Return To Music
By Glenn Kurtz
Alfred A. Knopf
239 Pages

As I have noted and emphasized too much and too many times I love music...all about music, anything about music. I have never been able to get my arms or ears around classical music but the idea of it fascinates much in the same way Shakespeare...or the idea of Shakespeare fascinates but does not really...captivate. Soooo I saw this book and it said it was about a musician’s return to music and although I have half heartedly tried a couple of times...I have never been a musician. So the idea of losing it is sad and returning to it seemd an epiphany of sorts and I was hopeing to be inspired and motivated and... whatever.

This is an interesting book. It is a little hard to read but it is interesting. It all starts with...surprisingly enough...practicing. Out narrator is sitting ina room and looking out the window...practicing. he then takes us back to childhood with hippy parents in the early 70’s... and the guitar center...and being a prodigy and embracing classical music. Then on to the conservatory... then Vienna...then losing music... and then remarkably again findong it again.

Along the way he takes us through two long, long, detailed and yet somewhat glossed over histories. One is the development of a guitar as an instrument. He takes us a long way from the begining of stringed instruments...to the Lute and on... and on. I don’t know...I would like to be interested but I cannot egt there from here. He also takes us through a history of classical guitarists. This is slightly more interesting as he tells us all about these european guys who were classical musiciand but istead picked up and tamed that silly, whimsical, romantic... guitar. A lot of it moves up to and through Segovia who all rock and roll afficianados of the guitar admire and mock. It was interesting to learn more about him and his place in music and classical music.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Andrés_Segovia

He seems like he must have been a real prick. While he works us through that history he educates a little about classical music and Bach and Beethoven and a few others.

The most interesting part of the book for me was his time in the conservatory...practicing...sitting in a small windowless room with his instrument and working on the simplest things. Playing chords for hours. Changing the way his hands worked...changing his fingering in subtle but (according to him) dramatic ways. And playing...playing...always playing. Writers right and I guess musicians play but it just sounds so painful and so beautiful and so amazing. Playing all day...every day. Working on the subtlest nuances of each note. The stupidest of us (me) think that a note is just a note but he explains that it is not anything like that. Every note...every tone is evidently different in the hands of a talented musician. I guess i knew that but I never thought of it.

There is just so much to it. Sometimes too much. His passion for music is so heavy and such a weight. He is passionate and desperate and talented with all these expectations of himself and other people’s expectations of him. He really does not ever reach a realization about why he quits... but the weight ... it seems takes it’s toll and eventually he just cannot do it anymore. Although as a reader you look and see that it all seems so beautiful and magical that...well...how could you leave it. The book can get a little long in it’s history and it’s descriptions and frankly even in it’s passion. But it ends up being a religious story almost of falling from grace and returning for redemption. The redemption comes from realizing whether it is ptacticing guitar or anything else it all rests on what you bring to it.