Some Critical Advice

 Some of you know I hold a master’s degree in Trumpet Performance from New England Conservatory. While I have not played for years, lessons learned through musical studies still resonate today, almost forty years after leaving the Conservatory.

Most of the day-to-day stuff came from my trumpet teacher, Charles Schlueter. Charlie was Principal Trumpet of the Boston Symphony at the time and he often found ways to relate everyday activities and principles to music; the reverse also works.

My best piece of writing advice also came from my time at NEC, from Benjamin Zander, who was then music director of the Boston Philharmonic. Ben taught a class titled “Chamber Music Interpretation” that was pivotal in how I approached all performances forever after.

The first day of class, Ben congratulated us on having chosen to dedicate our lives to music. He said it was a noble calling (he was right) and mentioned several luminaries whose paths we were following, no matter how remotely. I took the class out of curiosity but by the end of our first session Ben had me hooked.

He spoke of something else that day that stayed with me: being a musician would not be without cost. Among those costs was a discipline we would have to self-impose, of never listening to music solely for entertainment. Not that we couldn’t or shouldn’t enjoy music, but that we must always listen on a deeper level.

What did he mean by that? We could no longer afford just to hear the notes. We needed to look for some understanding of why the composer and/or performer made the choices they made. It didn’t matter if we were on an elevator and subjected to a Muzak version of “Thriller.” We should look for something to take away from it, either good or bad.

Casual musicians and other music lovers have asked if this ruined listening to music for me. The truth is the exact opposite. Listening critically opened new vistas of enjoyment, as I came to better understand which choices were available and which were more, or less, successful. It made listening a delight, though I must admit that I now listen to little music while doing anything that requires concentration, as my mind is too strongly attracted to the music.

How does that affect my writing? It affects my reading. I did not begin writing seriously until I was in my forties. I hadn’t taken an English composition class since freshman year of college, and the experimental “linguistics” education I received in junior high school gave me virtually no knowledge of grammar. I had to catch up in a hurry.

My solution was to adapt Ben Zander’s principle of critical listening to reading. As with music, once I got the hang of it, critical reading enhanced my enjoyment of what I read. I no longer read even a newspaper article without thinking of why the writer made this or that choice, what might have worked better, or what I would have done differently.

To prove this constant analysis of what I read in no way diminishes my enjoyment, I am currently reading Carl Hiaasen’s Bad Monkey. The Beloved Spouse™ will sometimes comment how she can hear me laughing out loud at various times, but I am still looking at the bits between the lines and words. “I see what he did there.” “That could come in handy for me some time.” “I wonder why he made that choice.”

If you want to be a writer, or claim to be one already, this might be the one piece of advice I would most want you to take to heart. If it sounds like too much work, then maybe writing is not for you.