On saying No, or Yes.

I love classical music. There was an age period when I absorbed it largely from radio and records, wanting to know as many works and composers as my brain could take in. Nowadays I prefer live concerts, not only because they sound better, but even more so because it is wonderful to see the musicians creating the music you hear; to see how tiny an instrument a violin is and wonder about its great production of sound and feeling; to observe the gesturing of the performers underscoring and actually assisting in their expression; to learn that playing together is much more than keeping together in time. Making music in ensemble shares with dancing the experience of creating something together that is more than the parts. We have been talking primarily about chamber music, as you may have guessed. 

What does all this have to do with saying "No"? Well, I have long been intrigued by musicians gesturing "No" and "Yes". They do not say so, of course. Unless your name is Glenn Gould, as a musician you've got to keep your mouth shut while playing. But they do nod emphatically, as well as shake their heads at certain points. It took me a long time to generalise as to what these gestures do mean, but now I think it is like this: "No" means "let go of the beat", that ever moving time that a musician relies on to understand the piece and keep it organised. To let go and let your musical intuition shape the current series of notes, a cadenza. "Yes", on the other hand, a series of vertical oscillations of the head and neck means that you have arrived at the very note that matters, concluding a rallentando, an accelerando or a cadenza. "There, this is it" is what it says. Like with "No" I think it is not so much a signal to one's fellow-players, but rather an expression of the player's conversation with himself and with the piece he is playing.

Now let me bring in the biologist. I have wondered whether these two gestures embedded in music have been derived from their counterparts in verbal conversation. If so, one would expect a Greek pianist to stretch his neck upward or throw his head backwards where others shake, or some Asian Indian ones to sometimes wobble their heads sideways instead of nodding vertically. I haven't had an opportunity to check this, but I have my doubts. Rather, I surmise that with the musician's gestures we are nearer to the pre-lingual roots - evolutionary, psychological or both - of "Yes" and "No". Shaking the head may in its origins mean breaking for the moment the ties of attention between you and me, a cut-off, while nodding signifies taking a decision: "This" or "Here" or "Now".