A Minute with Miles

Have you ever wondered why pianists need page turners? They’re not, after all, the only ones who use both hands to play their instruments.

So where does the word "fiddle" come from?

In a lifetime of performing and teaching, I’ve never once witnessed an argument that had anything to do with where somebody was from, nor, for that matter, have I ever heard, among the musicians I’ve known, a single word of nationalist or racist invective.

I came across a collection of the letters of Arturo Toscanini recently, and in the introduction the editor writes, “A whole psychology textbook could be written about Toscanini and anger.” Well all I can say is that if there had been such a book, Toscanini should have read it.

Anybody who’s been around the music business for any length of time has met performers who are – how can I put this gently – legends in their own minds.

The image of the starving artist may be a romantic one, but it turns out that poverty has not always been a necessary condition for writing great music. Sometimes, in fact, great music has gone along with great wealth.

I always enjoy telling the story of how the piano got its name. Piano means “soft,” in Italian, and it seems a little strange that an instrument that can weigh almost a thousand pounds and compete in volume with a symphony orchestra should be called a “soft.” Well we have to start with the piano’s predecessor, the harpsichord, or gravicembalo, in Italian. The strings of a harpsichord are plucked, not struck, and no matter how hard, or how softly, you press the keys, the sound volume stays the same. But in about 1700 an Italian named Bartolomeo Cristofori invented a keyboard instrument with little hammers that strike the strings, and now by varying your touch on the keys you could vary the volume. Cristofori called his instrument the gravicembalo col’ piano e forte – the “harpsichord with soft and loud.” Eventually this lengthy name got shortened to pianoforte, and from there it was just a short step to “piano” all by itself.

If you’re looking for a group of people whose unlimited dedication is matched only by their extraordinary skills, I suggest you look no farther than public school music teachers.

The truth is, there’s no single right way to listen to music.

Like it or not, performers can’t help evaluating performance, especially in the cases of pieces we know or instruments we play.