The prelude isn't all that difficult for me and I had that relearned and memorized quickly. It came back very easily. However, fugues are another story because they are very intricate. It's easy to get your fingers tangled, difficult to bring out the correct notes, and make it musical, to boot. In addition, in a fugue like this one, in certain places it's hard to remember which way the notes go in a certain voice when it doesn't have the melody. It weaves around this way and that... quite complex.
After 3 days, I could play it well with the music but I was very frustrated that I couldn't play it memorized all the way through. I berated myself a little bit... "What's the matter with you? Just play how it goes! You've worked on it 3 times already!"
Suddenly I laughed out loud. Really, I did. I thought to myself, "THREE TIMES, Jeanne?" I had literally practiced this piece for a total of what... and hour and a half over a three-day span. After thirty years away from it, I was mad at myself that it wasn't memorized already?
I thought of how I blogged about perfect streaks - how I often perceive not maintaining that streak as failure. I realized this is a similar problem. I had an unrealistic expectation - and I "failed."
Will I achieve memorization of this fugue? I am certain I will. However, it's going to take longer than 3 days to do it, and so what if it does? Why did I decide the amount of time I had spent on it amounted to failure??
It can be motivating to set a time or date for a goal, but we have to be realistic when we do. We wouldn't say, "I want to lose 10 pounds by Friday." We should look to the future with reasonable expectations, and if we don't quite make it and fall short, so what? Look at how far we've come. A small failure to achieve a specific goal doesn't make the entire journey a failure. So what if the journey will take a little longer than we thought! Look at the positive. Re-set and renew!
No comments:
Post a Comment