Bullet Point Book Summary - The Art of Musicianship by Phillip Farkas

Submitted by Felicia Lohidajat

My encounter with this book was a wonderful series of odd circumstances - my accidental entry into a percussion class for a Music Education major I never pursued, an awakening of my interest in drum set, a last undergraduate semester with great freedom, taking Drum Set Class after 7 semesters of pining for the instrument led by Dr. Chris Hanning – who recommended this book written by Phillip Farkas, principal horn in the Chicago Symphony Orchestra, as part of my preparation for my Piano Performance Major senior recital.

This book changed my approach to practice and refined my understanding of a wide variety of musical details in about 50 short pages, which in turn enhanced my communication in my teaching. These are some of my abridged notes and highlights from selected chapters of the book, some obvious points and some subtle points.  I’ll highly recommend picking it up and seeing the full contents for yourself – a copy resides in the West Chester University’s Presser Music Library. For our March 2020 MLMTA meeting, I will be focusing on an excluded section regarding performance for the 5 Minutes For A New Idea presentation.

1. Musicianship
   1. Best communicated with solid directions rather than vague metaphors
   2. Definition - good taste as applied to music
   3. Moderation in all things - except where expression demands more activity, intensity, exaggeration, where music demands extremes for effect
   4. Develop instinct for musical balance between monotony and violent excess.
   5. Ancestry has nothing to do with musical ability, for better or worse
   6. Desire to be with rhythm and in tune is natural to humans, musical or not
   7. Environment WILL affect the development of a musician. Therefore: consume quality music, invest in the experiences, study music with depth and care
   8. Good teaching:
      1. The consideration of the mechanical and physical requirements in playing an instrument or singing
      2. The musical aspects of the lesson: phrasing, tone, expressive dynamics, tempo, etc.
   9. Teaching the mechanical aspects enables a student to make any expression
   10. Teaching musical aspects enables good choice and discernment for choices made in expression in consideration of the material.
2. Phrasing
   1. To cause to understand.
   2. To interpret the nuances of phrasing should be intuitive after familiarity with the notes, but experiment with different emphasis points and nuances
   3. A musical phrase lives: and if it lives, it breathes
   4. Actively consider inhaling parts and exhaling parts; the build up and the relaxation
   5. Consider bar lines, downbeats
   6. Breathing is absolutely critical in musical performance across the board 
3. Dynamics
   1. Can be thought of in terms of power
   2. Mezzo Forte is the neutral point of not forced nor inhibited
   3. Remember: dynamics change timbre
   4. Consider size of stage/audience
   5. Too soft, too loud, or just right? Listen with honesty, and temper with good musicianship
4. Tempo
   1. Massively important to the big picture framework
   2. However, few longer works should be held to exactly the same speed throughout
   3. Internalized sense of metronome can be trained
   4. 2nd beat determines speed
   5. Architecture and visual arts are based in space, music is based in time, hence managing time correctly in performance affects the entire art
5. Rhythm
   1. Rhythm is a natural human attribute
   2. Accelerando/ritardando do not negate the existence of rhythm
   3. Subdivide, duh - that’s YOUR job, not a conductor’s or a metronome’s
   4. Faulty rhythm is a result of carelessness or thoughtlessness
6. Articulation
   1. “A distinct and clear utterance: a clear and exact rendering of every syllable and tone”
   2. “The act of forming spoken sounds: enunciation”
   3. “The act of putting speech sounds together into properly connected utterance”
   4. “Give utterance to ideas”
   5. “The act of uniting or forming a joint”
   6. Consider:
      1. The constant reference to articulation as being part of human speech
      2. The connecting, uniting, or joining together of various parts of speech to form a complete idea
      3. The act of pronouncing clearly and distinctly
   7. The attack on any word must be a consonant or vowel; consider this in music even without words
   8. Do not treat articulation as optional, ever.