In 1708 and 1710, after Saxon Elector Friedrich August I (August II, as King of Poland) converted to Catholicism, public Catholic churches were established in Dresden and Leipzig. Their organisation was set out in an undated, incomplete draft document by the king’s confessor, Fr. Maurizio Vota SJ, who advised that the principal establishment at the Dresden court would comprise six chaplains from the same order, and six choristers, or clercs. The final set of royal decrees, however, increased the music establishment to include an organist and four instrumentalists, and both churches came to be served by musicians and Jesuits from the province of Bohemia. This chapter reports on the migration of a succession of young Bohemians who musically served both royal Catholic churches. While many returned home when their voices broke, others remained to become important contributors to the musical life of Dresden during the Polish-Saxon Union era.

During the epochal 1895 Czechoslavonic Ethnographic Exhibition, the musicologist Otakar Hostinský described folksong as “one of the most significant and simultaneously most noble expressions of the people’s spiritual life.” In this chapter, the discourse is explored that gave rise to Hostinský’s statement by analyzing the relationship between Czech folk and art music– and the dialectical interdependence of those two terms– through the case studies of Bedřich Smetana’s operas Dvě vdovy (1874, rev. 1877) and Hubička (1876). These operas, and the reception of Smetana’s music more generally, were crucial components in the larger process of institutionalizing folk music as one of, if not the primary resource for musical nationalism in the toolbox of Czech composers. If we are to appreciate the fullness of Czech composers’ oeuvres in all their complexity, it behooves us to understand, and to dismantle wherever appropriate, the dominant narrative of their reliance on folksong.

You make music, and your hands, wrists, and fngers are exceedingly important to you. This is natural and inevitable, but also paradoxical: you must think about your hands, wrists, and fngers; and you also must stop thinking about your hands, wrists, and fngers. Fretting, worrying, and obsessing about your hands isn't good. But sensing, celebrating, and enjoying your hands is good! Concentrating on your hands at the risk of not being attentive to the music itself isn't good. But allowing the hands to respond to a musical stimulus is very, very good!

Let's see what we can do about it.

Newborn, baby, toddler, kindergartner: the child is forever making discoveries. Everything is new, everything is worthy of the child's attention, everything is fascinating and wonderful—unless it's incomprehensible and terrifying. A toddler notices her shadow for the frst time, and she panics: What is this horrible thing that's following me around? Is it trying to kill me? Discovery is an exciting energy like no other. Our job is to live in wonderment, with the excitement of discovery not hampered by habit, routine, inat-tention, cynicism, or any of those troublesome adult emotions that are foreign to the baby.

Here’s the exercise: watch the hands of babies and young children at play.

Tender little fngers, agile, intelligent, sometimes already structured: a baby with “pianist’s hands,” space between the fngers, curved fngers ready to approach the keyboard.

Let's imagine a school devoted exclusively to the exploration of textures. Tradition says that the school is in the foothills of the Himalayas. Students learn how to recognize specifc materials, how to tell fne sandpaper from rough sandpaper, how to gauge resistance in spring mechanisms, how to read Braille, and how to tell a 3B pencil from a 4B pencil simply by touching the pencil to paper. Over the years, students become alert and sensitive, and their textural skills end up infuencing their entire lives.

In truth, this is how every life unfolds: as an endless series of encounters with textures and gradations. Your kitchen is a textural school. Peeling a carrot is diferent from peeling a potato; their textures aren't exactly alike. Placing a knife against a tomato, you sense the tomato's texture and its degree of resistance, and you make quick psychomotor decisions as to the angle of the blade on the tomato and the force you’ll apply to slice it. Dinner is a series of textural assessments (Figure 8.1).

Walk barefoot through your house, and your feet will marvel at how many diferent textures the foors ofer you: rugs thick and thin, stones rough and smooth, planks and slats, tiles, each texture with its own personality and its own physicality. There's no confusing stone and rug; there's no confusing wool and wood. Your feet are lovers of texture, and so are your hands.

Our imaginary school of textures takes on students of all ages and all levels of talent and experience, ranging from a complete beginner to a complete master.

Juggling Balls

Get two or more soft juggling balls. They’re easy to buy on the Internet and elsewhere. Juggling balls have so many useful qualities that every musician and every music teacher should stock up on them. We won't be learning how to juggle, even though juggling does ofer many learning opportunities. Instead, we’ll use them to explore texture, shape, size, form, function, intrinsic qualities, specifcs and universals.

• 1. Every game in Object Wisdom starts with no rules. You’re given a toy without the instruction manual. The frst learning experience isn't to learn something but to agree not to know what you’re supposed to be doing or how you should be doing it. Handle the object as if it's an incomprehensible artifact from a faraway culture.

• 2. To an adult, household objects are normal, logical, ordinary. They’ve always been there. But for a baby, every object is new and perhaps incomprehensible. Sooner or later, a strange object becomes a lamp, but to begin with, it's a thing or an entity or a source of miracles, light and heat, shadows, sounds, stories.

• 3. The problem with knowing too soon is that knowledge prevents or eliminates discovery. A banal object discovered for the frst time can be very exciting—because discovery is a sudden fow of energy, a sudden perception, a sudden realization.

Meet your inner animal.

The inner animal isn't the same thing as your body. It's a sensorial and psychic being with agency, but with the tendency to sense frst, think second; and, through sensation alone, arrive at a quick discernment: safe environment, I like it; unsafe environment, I’m outta here. Silk, linen, cotton, polyester: I don't know their names, but I can tell one from the other right away. And the thing called polyester, I don't like touching it, not with my fngers, not with my belly, not with my face.

The inner animal knows certain things before you know them yourself. And the inner animal knows certain types of things that you will never know; or, at least, not that part of you that thrives on analysis and understanding, that part of you that tends to issue a judgment before seeking an experience.

The inner animal breathes. While breathing, it senses the elastic movement of its breath, the elastic movement of its ribs and lungs, the elastic infation and defation occupying its trunk and afecting its whole being. There are plenty of human beings out there who are breathing normally, walking here and there, working, shopping, watching TV. And although they’re breathing normally, they don't feel their elastic breaths going in and out of their elastic beings, and they don't feel their elastic ribs, and they don't think that their ribs deserve their attention. The inner animal is attentive and appreciative.

The inner animal wants to live, and it wants to live to the fullest; this is its urgency and its pleasure (Figure 14.1).

Every language contains a wealth of metaphorical expressions involving the hands—as well as the wrists, the fngers, and other body parts. Here's a short sample of expressions about the hands:

As these expressions attest, hands are deeply intertwined with the symbolic dimensions of existence, which are contained in the stories we tell ourselves. The idea of washing one's hands, for instance, is related to responsibility, guilt, remorse, and many other emotions. In some tellings of the biblical story (which may or may not be underpinned by historical events), Pontius Pilate washed his hands in front of the bloodthirsty crowd, indicating that he didn't consider himself responsible for the crucifxion of Christ: the matter now was in the hands of the crowd. Ever since, many millions of people have employed the expression many hundreds of millions of times. You don't need to know the original story or to believe in its historicity; the expression lives on, independently of Pontius Pilate, the crucifxion, and the Bible. Washing your hands is a banal act that isn't banal at all.

This is a strange book—I’m the frst to admit it. An octopus dancing a slow famenco under water; Old Joe, a piano so enfeebled as to be unplayable, and yet the author of the book tells you that you should love Old Joe, even venerate it; Richard Nixon arriving in Brazil and greeting the populace with the OK sign, oh what a scandal; sponges and kitchen towels, which you squeeze and caress in lieu of practicing scales and arpeggios; counting a hundred beans, one by one, slowly, carefully, in ecstasy. And all of this is supposed to help your hands, wrists, and fngers.

I’m teasing myself for having thought up the strange book and for ofering it to you, the unsuspecting reader. Truth be told, I stand by the book. I think I’m onto something. I’m convinced that the octopus will help your hands, wrists, and fngers (Figure C.1).

It's an inescapable fact that a human being—every human being—is made of irreconcilable urges, inconsistent emotions, incoherent opinions, unwarranted assumptions and suppositions, blind spots. And it's also an inescapable fact that a human being—every human being—has incredible inner resources and potentialities, including imagination, resilience, and adaptability. We’re all made of hope and fear, reason and unreason, goodness and not-so-goodness. We are complex and complicated. We try to cope with the complicated play of opposing forces raging inside us by separating the forces and handling them in isolation.

Your life is made of a constant manipulation of objects of all sorts. Brushing your teeth, you handle a toothbrush with skills acquired in your childhood through trial and error, imitation, and instruction from parents and siblings. Perhaps you take toothbrushing for granted, but it involves complex rotations of arm, wrist, and fngers; the use of the opposable thumb and the other fngers to hold the toothbrush with intelligence and sensitivity; and attention to the toothbrush itself, to the graspability of the handle and the frmness or softness of the bristles. It's a whole microcosm of psychomotor intelligence, not to mention its ritualistic dimensions and its power to evoke deeply held feelings about your teeth, your health, your looks, your family history, and much more besides.

Let's zoom in on the toothbrush as an object. We’ll imagine you’re using an average old-fashioned toothbrush. It may seem foolish, but compare your toothbrush to a pair of scissors, and you’ll be immediately struck by a simple but powerful fact: they’re completely diferent, in size, shape, construction, form, function, looks, and materials; they’re also completely diferent in their symbolic dimension and in their presence in your life. They tell diferent stories (Figures 9.1 and 9.2).

Object Wisdom brings these stories to the forefront of your awareness—the stories that the objects themselves seem to be telling you, although in practice you’re telling these stories to yourself and about yourself, prompted by the toothbrush, the scissors, the kitchen knife, the pencil, the fute, the cello, the piano.

How many handshakes have you given and received in your life? Thousands if you count specifc individuals, tens of thousands if you count all handshakes.

You’ve sensed hands both hot and cold, tight and loose, reassuring and aggressive, invested and indiferent. A certain handshake brings on a clear message: “This is a very masculine energy.” Another handshake triggers a diferent thought: “Feminine energy. Strange, I didn't expect it from this particular person.” Oftentimes the handshake suggests images, metaphors, stories: “Ouch, he's just like a used-car salesman in a B movie.” “Osteopath for rugby players, or something. I could get into it.” “She thinks I’m cookie dough. If this goes on for another minute, she’ll try to bake me.” “Friend.” “Enemy” (Figure 13.1).

Over the years you played for many types of conductors, or you watched them in action. Some have jagged movements with sharp corners, like a Cubist painting in motion. Others evoke military drills, strict disciplinarians, robots. Others still have the shakes: arms, hands, fngers, hair, shoulders, convulsions, a tornado, an earthquake. The convulsive conductor might produce great results from the orchestra, or not; the Cubist, maybe or maybe not; the drill sergeant, maybe or maybe not. The main thing is for us to note that there are many, many types of conducting styles.

Handshakes are a dialogue of energies. Conductors are fountains of propagating energy. Every person you meet gives of energy. Whether you’re alert to it or not, you too give and receive energy all day long. To play one note is to direct and propagate your energy.

In your mind's eye, picture an instrumentalist playing a solo. Let's say a pianist performing a prelude and fugue from Bach's “Well-Tempered Clavier.” Now abstract the instrument—in your imagination, make the instrument invisible. Watch the pianist's hands air-play every note, every chord, and every sequence. In the absence of the piano, we can really see that the pia-nist's fngers are dancing an elaborate and meaningful choreography.

In truth, we don't need to make the instrument invisible. The dance of the fngers is obvious to the attentive eyes. Our job is to develop a skillful dancerly sensitivity in everything that we do with our fngers.

Find a surface: table, countertop, armrest, the back of a guitar, the sides of a cello. You’ll be an amateur anatomist without a specialized vocabulary. And you’ll be an amateur clown and mime delighting in doing fun and funny things, some of which will be ridiculous before they become divine.

We’re used to fnding parallels in the anatomy of the arms and legs: the upper arm is the thigh, the elbow is the knee, the forearm is the calf, the wrist is the ankle, the hand is the foot, the fnger is the toe. I suggest that you tweak the imagery when you practice your fnger dancing: the fnger becomes not the refection of a toe but of the whole leg and foot. You might think of the fnger's three phalanges as the thigh, the lower leg, and the foot. This empowers the fnger, giving it presence, strength, and agency.

Repetition is the foundation of life.

Breathing is a repetitive act that you perform thousands of times every day. Walking is repetitive, too, whether you walk down the block to the bakery or take ten thousand steps as a meditative exercise. You might not notice how many times you chew a mouthful of peanuts, but it's unlikely that you chew only once or twice before swallowing the 20 crunchy things. Kissing your lover is also repetitive. Depending on who you are, you might give and receive a hundred kisses before you feel the urge to check the messages on your smartphone. Checking messages also happens to be a repetitive action. Sports, martial arts, dance: repetitive. Peeling potatoes, carrots, beets: repetitive. Singing, speaking, chanting: repetitive.

Let me repeat it: repetition is the foundation of life.

And if repetition is foundational, so is repetitive practice for musicians. Repetition helps you learn, internalize, remember, and integrate your musical gestures and texts. Repetition helps you become attentive and discerning. Repetition brings you joy and pleasure. Repetition can also hurt you and disrupt your music making, perhaps even your career and livelihood.

Five concepts will help you practice repetitions for 10 minutes, 60 minutes, or three hours without hurting yourself. Each of these concepts requires intentionality and awareness.

A paradigm may be informally defned as a set of values, concepts, and priorities. The set of values determines your perspective in life and your practical behaviors; you do as you believe. Diferent musicians think and play diferently because they apply diferent values, concepts, and priorities to their music making. Glenn Gould and Artur Rubinstein lived according to diferent paradigms. We might not completely understand all the intricacies of their respective paradigms, but we know that they were diferent from the other. We can see and hear the diferences, and we can tell them apart from a single note or a single phrase of music played by each of them. In addition to their music making, their entire existences were lived according to their individual paradigms.

We might liken your paradigm to a master puppeteer, in command of your actions. Your aspirations and motivations, your habits and routines, your choices and decisions, your repertory, your career, your practicing and performing, your sounds, your rubato, your articulations and dynamics: all of it is determined by your paradigm. But you’re not the unwilling victim of the puppeteer, because you’re the puppeteer yourself. It's possible—and I’d say urgently necessary—for you to become alert to your paradigm, and for you to play with it, so to speak (Figure 1.1).

Simplifying greatly and perhaps dangerously, I’d like to contrast two foundational paradigms for musicians.

I put together a collection of informal videos inspired by the themes from Hands, Wrists, Fingers. These aren't instructional videos that explain the book's exercises, but performances in which I respond to ideas from the book. I didn't aim to be comprehensive. Instead, I selected a few concepts and recorded my confrontations with them—partly for my pleasure, and partly to invite you to play the game in turn. Many clips feature my own compositions and improvisations. Below I list all the compositions I used, including those by other composers. I didn't think it was necessary to title or credit my improvisations. “Scordatura” refers to unorthodox tunings for string instruments.

The video clips are posted on the book's dedicated online page, hosted by Anthem Press. Look for the Links menu here: https://anthempress.com/ hands-wrists-fngers-pb.

Chapter 2, “The Body is Culture”

1. Painted Hands (“Boy Joy,” for solo cello in scordatura, and “Parade,” for Native American fute)

Chapter 5, “Expressive Gesticulation”

2. Expressive Gesticulation

3. Speedy Gesticulation (“Puro Açúcar,” for voice and cello in scordatura)

4. From the Elbow

5. Coincidence (“Convocation,” for solo cello in scordatura)

Chapter 6, “Sounds Made and Sounds Heard”

6. Clapping

Chapter 7, “The Dance”

7. Walking Fingers

8. Dance of the Wrists (“Shadows,” for solo cello in scordatura)

9. Dance of the Fists (“Sunshine,” for voice and piano)