Half Steps and Whole Steps

I wrote recently about practicing the section of the third movement of the Bach that runs from about 2:00-2:18 on this recording. It went well in my last lesson, and I should be working more on other things, but I thoroughly enjoy trying to improve this section. It reminds me of the daughter of friends of mine.

She is fourteen months old. I see her two or three times per month, and she’s growing and changing all the time. A few weeks ago, she could only walk with a parent holding her hand. The week after that, she could take a few steps on her own, but never ventured more than about six feet away from her parents. A week or two after that, she was walking securely and roaming around the whole room. And on top of that, she can point out numerous objects—the ceiling fan, coffee cup, cell phone, piano, and more—when asked, “Where is the…?” in two languages. She occasionally babbles what sounds like a string of half a dozen syllables or so at a time. When she does that, those of us around her try to figure out what we’ve just said that she might be imitating, or which words she recognizes that she might be trying to produce. The changes in her from one visit to the next are small, but unmistakable.

This section of the Bach reminds me of that incremental but unmistakable growth process. In a three-steps-forward-and-two-steps-back kind of way, it winds its way up, and up, and up. But it’s not repetitive. You can anticipate where it’s going, but with the accidentals in there, it’s not entirely predictable. The whole steps vs. half steps really feel like they matter. I feel like I have to play it with clean, precise intonation to get that effect—steady, inevitable growth, with a few surprises that keep things fun and interesting.

Then, in the first pseudo double stop part, maybe that’s adolescence and all hell breaking loose. :-)

I wish I had a better musical vocabulary for describing and for understanding what’s happening in all of this, but I don’t.

The most recent time I saw this little girl, she was falling down more than she did when she was just learning to walk. It was as though she had become so confident in her walking that she was pushing herself to go just a little bit faster than she could handle. Falling didn’t slow her down much, though. She just got back on her feet and kept going. “Good for her,” I thought. That’s how you make progress. I certainly need to be reminded of that in certain respects.