once more with feeling

how do you talk about how to play and listen to music?

Gustavo Dudamel at rehearsal with the Los Angeles Philharmonic, May 2018 (Shaughn and John / NYT)

When Tár and Maestro came out in 2022 and 2023, I remember thinking, what’s the deal with conductors? And it was such huge news when Gustavo Dudamel joined the NY Philharmonic around the same time. The orchestra’s principal trumpet told the NY Times, “Everything comes alive with him. Everything is as natural as breathing.” — a pair of lines so simple and effective that I still think about them. I couldn’t understand how a specific conductor could become so famous. They’re not playing the instruments. How could someone waving a baton in the front have that big of an impact?

As a self-diagnosed non-creative person, I joined a wind ensemble last fall to challenge myself to explore more creative pursuits, but I knew I was lying to myself. This was the safest route I could have taken to do something artistic: instead of trying something new, I was playing the flute again, an instrument I had played for 8 years and loved enough to go to sleepaway band camp for multiple summers. And I wouldn’t have to embarrass myself trying to come up with something original on my own — I could just play the notes that were written on the staff. But I went into it still excited to practice and learn, still hopeful that it would help unlock a part of me that was more in touch with beauty and playfulness.

There’s a particular rehearsal I think back to a lot. Our conductor Sarah stopped us as we were playing a romantic theme in one of the pieces. It wasn’t a particularly difficult section. She told us:

“Everyone, I want you to close your eyes. No, really close them. I want you to think about someone you love. It doesn’t have to be romantic love — it can be a family member, a friend, a dog. I want you to think about them, and how much you care about them, for one minute.”

I closed my eyes and immediately became emotional thinking about my parents, my brother, my friends — I couldn’t believe how easy it was to not think about how much I loved them. I couldn’t believe I could so often go about my day forgetting how special it is to care for someone and to feel cared for.

We picked our instruments back up and sounded like a completely different band. I found that my eyes were watering.

I had seen how a conductor could help fix the balance within an ensemble (“we need to hear the horns here, so everyone else needs to be quieter”), or emphasize the articulation of certain notes (“this should be smooth like spreading peanut butter”). But that moment made me really see, for the first time, the difference between a performance that is technically correct and a performance in which the members are fully channeling their emotions. I wished I didn’t need the reminder to feel when I play.

Then I kept noticing other examples of artists talking about making music not in terms of technique, but in terms of feelings or evocative images. In Bad Bunny’s profile in The Cut, the producer MAG who worked on DeBÍ TiRAR MáS FOToS talks about the making of the song “LO QUE LE PASÓ A HAWAii”:

“I remember we brought in all these musicians and [Benito] told the guy that was playing the güiro, ‘I want you to play like you’re the last Puerto Rican standing on the island.’ And if you hear the very end of the song, he expressed that in his playing, because the last thing you hear is the güiro and it kind of dies down. If I listen to it now, it still makes my eyes watery.”

The article speaks beautifully to the care and intention that Bad Bunny put into the record, weaving commentary about Puerto Rico’s gentrification and political turmoil into his songs. But this vivid image knocked me over. I could picture it in my mind so clearly, and it conveys the emotion of the playing so precisely.

I was also struck by what Yo-Yo Ma recently wrote about the Prelude from Bach’s Cello Suite No. 1, the piece he’s most known for:

“I’ve spent decades trying to get this piece right. At some point, I found a way in: in the same way that a river begins far before we meet it, I imagine this music starting long before I play the first note; I just have to join it. Like the river, the music is always flowing, and like the river, it’s always changing. All I have to do is picture a river, feel its energy, get into its flow, and follow it.”

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I was touched by the humility in someone as talented as Yo-Yo Ma saying that he’s had to work so long to “get” a piece. Reading this and then listening to the live recording of him playing in the Smoky Mountains, among the chirping birds and the burbling stream, made me hear the fluidity and rubato in a new way.

All of this was very affirming to my approach towards music and art in general. When I like a song, I typically just recognize in my immediate reaction that I like it, but this doesn’t feel sufficient to me. Within the boundaries of my limited musical vocabulary, I come up with some reasons it’s good post hoc, but I don’t know if they’re “correct.”

I want to squeeze every last drop of meaning out of the art I consume. I want to learn every reference, understand why this guitar sounds so good to me, hear the demos that led to the final version. I will always read the reviews, listen to the interview podcasts, search for the artist profiles. My appreciation for DeBÍ TiRAR MáS FOToS would have been so incomplete without all of the context I was missing.

And yet — my approaching music or books or art as homework to be completed feels like it’s obviously missing the point.

In Bibliophobia, Sarah Chihaya writes about the books that have shaped her life. Despite her love of reading, she fears her “own intellectual failures” when starting a new book:

“I am learning how to really read closely and deeply, but without expectations, either of the books I encounter, or of myself. For years, opening a new book had felt more and more like a room I suspected to be full of punishing traps. I had been afraid even to step over the threshold of a book, because I didn’t trust my own instincts; I was sure I would be found wanting. I was afraid I wouldn’t pass the test.”

I still feel this way when I pick up an intimidating book. As I’m reading The Bluest Eye by Toni Morrison, I feel the urge to read SparkNotes so I’ll be able to pass the test. I know I’m not “getting” all of it, and I don’t like that feeling. If I read so much, shouldn’t I be able to get it by now? That’s why I felt so much relief reading George Saunders’ A Swim in a Pond in the Rain; here, a master was going to guide me through the Russian greats, so I didn’t need to be afraid of my own intellectual failures.

But I have to face the reality that there will always be things in art that I miss or don’t understand. I have to learn to trust my own instincts that it’s possible for me to enjoy art on its own terms. How do you find the right balance between listening to the experts and listening to your own interpretation?

I’ve since been down a rabbit hole of watching Dudamel’s conducting, and I think I get it now.

In this video, Dudamel leads the Simón Bolívar Symphony Orchestra, Venezuela’s youth orchestra, in playing “Mambo” from Leonard Bernstein’s West Side Story:

The young musicians are dancing in their chairs, the trumpet players are spinning their instruments, everyone in the audience is cheering and clapping. It is 3 minutes of pure, pure joy.

And then — from the excellent article titled “What Makes Superstar Conductor Gustavo Dudamel So Good?”:

So even though these musicians had played the Ninth [Symphony by Beethoven, Ode to Joy] countless times, and Dudamel was merely fine-tuning, he remembered what Abreu [his mentor] taught him: Each opportunity to make music is a chance to bring about a better world, and each encounter with beauty is something to be taken seriously. And so, again and again, he signaled the orchestra to stop. “We have to get out of the routine of the music,” he said, “and bring the feeling back. We have to believe in the text. Freude, Freude!” he sang — Joy, joy! “We have to end by embracing each other!”

It’s so easy to forget the point. Music is supposed to be fun! There’s so much joy in getting to create it with other people! I can’t believe we get to do that together.

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