This week I’ve been thinking a bit about the complication of ornamentation in classical music — all those trills, turns, mordents, appoggiatura, acciaccatura and grace notes – most of which can be inverted or doubled or have an accent beat – and on and on.  There are seemingly infinite varieties for ornamentation.

For fun, here’s a table from J.S. Bach’s father of some Baroque possibilities (the ornaments are indicated on top and their actual execution is below):

In my daily sight reading, I often omit the more complicated ornaments, achieving a kind of Cliff Notes experience of the piece.  Last week, however, now that I’m playing the new sonatas I’m learning more fluidly (like K330), I’ve begun to “get down” and tackle the specifics of these flourishes.  I’ve basically been saving them for last, like the proverbial as icing on the cake — which, ironically, is by far my favorite part.

From now on, however, I’m determined to slow down a bit and unravel these musical complexities right from the start.

All of these “extra notes” are really rather glorious.  It’s more than just a shame not to play them.  It’s a real crippling of the “truth” of the piece.

I’ve realize been skipping them in this drive to “get the piece down” faster, to have some comprehensible reproduction of it rendered as quickly as possible.

There is something truly GENEROUS about all these notes that just pour forth in classical music.

Those who know me socially, know I have been obsessed with how our closest local restaurant/tavern is the only place I have ever dined or had drinks in my entire life as a regular that has NEVER compted us anything (except for 1 dessert on my birthday for a part of 8).

When we moved into the cottage, without a working kitchen, Jude and Adrian and I (and even Belle, in fact) ate 2 meals a day there for 10 days.  I shudder to calculate how much we’ve spent there over the last nine months but between Jude and myself, it is in the many thousands of dollars.  Beyond this, the bartender — someone I cast in a short film — even unsolicitedly refilled out glasses recently but actually charged us for the second drink we technically never ordered!

This year, my Xmas miracle was running into my old friend Montgomery on Christmas Eve day while sitting outside Swingers with Belle and Adrian.  I’d cast him in a bunch of readings and in a play we did in Edinburgh.  I haven’t seen Montgomery for about two years since he moved to LA, however, so it was delightful to reconnect.  What’s really amazing, however, is that four hours later we ran into each other AGAIN at the video store where Montgomery was returning the DVD I wanted to rent:  IT’S A WONDERFUL LIFE.  (That really says it all!)

Montgomery has been tending bar at Mozza, one of Mario Batali’s restaurants and of course, since 12/24 I’ve now become a very well-treated regular.

The entire staff is fantastic — from the host and hostess to the servers — and I am, in fact, now working on an art installation with Matt who is a superb custom carpenter.

For Jude’s birthday on Friday, Mozza was, of course, our choice.  I knew the staff would be great, but the level of generosity was off the charts.  Starting with a round of drinks from Owen the  maitre d’ (who turned out to share Jude’s birthday), and several appetizers and sides, and dessert wines appeared courtesy of our friends.  It was a supremely wonderful night in every way.

Jude Making Her Birthday Wish

Pre-Mozza, whenever I would complain about how no matter how much we spent at the other restaurant we could never get a single glass of wine topped off, I realized that my complaint was essentially “I am only getting exactly what I am paying for” — something that sounds lame when phrased that way.  But something really was missing from that dining and drinking experience that was increasingly infuriating.  In a word, like a sonata without any ornamentation, there was a total lack of GENEROSITY.

With music and food and drink, we need that generosity or the experience is more or less like taking a vitamin pill or skipping the opera and reading the Wikipedia article instead.

I looked up generosity on my online dictionary and this was definition #2:

the generosity of the food portions: abundance, plentifulness, copiousness, lavishness, liberality, largeness.

I realize I was playing these pieces in the style of restaurant one — grace note omitted, just giving exactly the bare minimum that would appear on the bill.

I’ve noticed that Mozza seems to always offer an amuse-bouche to all its diners, which of course translates to “mouth pleaser.”  Well, I now think all these classical and baroque ornaments as “ear pleasers” — free-spirited, plentiful, and mostly importantly, because they are off the menu and one is never charged, truly generous.

Echoing the proverbial business-speak of  ”giving 110% percent,” that’s the philosophy I want to inspire my practicing, and quite frankly, everything else in my life as well.