Facing the Music: Who are we when we cannot practise our art?

by Frances Wilson  September 11th, 2026

For many artists, being an artist is not merely a profession. It is an essential part of their identity. A musician does not necessarily stop thinking of themselves as a musician when they leave the concert platform; a painter remains a painter even away from the studio; a writer may continue to inhabit an imaginative world even when not actively writing. Artistic identity can become so deeply embedded in our sense of self that it is difficult to separate what we do from who we are.

But what happens when circumstances prevent us from doing it? What does it mean to be an artist when the circumstances that allow us to practise and share our art are suddenly taken away?

This question lies at the heart of my debut novel, Facing the Music, which follows two ambitious, gifted young musicians – pianist Theo Browne and violinist Jonathan Lane-Fox – poised on the cusp of professional success in the summer of 1914.

Facing the Music by F M Wilson

At the beginning of the novel, Theo’s sense of identity is absolute: he is a pianist. Years of study with his beloved teacher, Mr Hines, hours of disciplined practice, and his musical partnership with Jonathan have all been directed towards a professional career. Following a triumphant London debut in August 1914, that future appears assured.   

Autograph of the “Spring” Sonata

The First World War abruptly removes Theo and Jonathan from the world in which their artistic identities have been formed. Concert halls, rehearsals and lessons give way to military service and the brutal reality of the Western Front. Yet they do not cease to be musicians simply because they are no longer performing. Music persists through memory: in remembered works, in habits of discipline and listening acquired over years of study, and in the words of teachers whose influence has become part of their inner lives.

Although Facing the Music is set more than a century ago, my exploration of these ideas was influenced by a much more recent interruption to artistic life: the COVID-19 pandemic.

Covid sign

During the UK lockdowns, I spoke to several professional musicians about their experiences. Initially, some welcomed an unexpected break from performing and travelling, seeing it as an opportunity to practise, explore new repertoire, rest and reset. But as the months passed, the absence of concerts and live audiences became increasingly difficult to bear: spare time became an affliction rather than a source of gratification. Musicians spoke of feeling bereft and dislocated, and some began to wonder whether they would be able – or even want – to return to concert-giving when restrictions were finally lifted.  

Concerts had disappeared, venues were closed, and collaborative music-making in its familiar form had become impossible. For people whose lives are so closely bound up with their art, this was far more than the loss of work. It raised questions about identity and purpose.

Wigmore Hall in preparation for re-opening on 1 August (Photo by Matt Crossick/PA Wire)

Those conversations made me reflect on the distinction between being a musician and working as one. If there is no audience, no concert and no engagement in the diary, are you still a performer? If circumstances prevent you from pursuing the career you had imagined, does that diminish your identity as an artist?

These questions found their way indirectly into Facing the Music, particularly into Theo’s story. The First World War and Covid are, of course, profoundly different historical experiences, and the novel does not seek to draw an equivalence between them. What interested me was something more universal: the experience of sudden interruption, the disappearance of familiar routines and expectations, and the necessity of adapting when circumstances beyond one’s control make the expected future impossible.

For Theo, and to a lesser extent for Jonathan, music endures through memory, friendship, teaching, thought and, eventually, performance. But Theo’s understanding of what it means to be a musician changes. Artistic identity can no longer be measured simply by prestigious engagements, public performance or professional success.  

The question facing him is no longer, “Can I still play?” It has become something more fundamental: “What does being a musician mean to me now?”

François Couperin (Died on September 11, 1733) The Art of Touch

 by Georg Predota  September 11th, 2026

Over 300 years ago, in 1716, the great French harpsichordist François Couperin published his famous treatise L’Art de Toucher le Clavecin (The Art of Playing the Harpsichord). It is, by all accounts, the main Baroque text on playing the instrument, and its importance was acknowledged for decades both within and outside France.

François Couperin

Couperin died on 11 September 1733 at the age of sixty-four, and the early music expert Jordi Savall suggests that Couperin was the “poet musician par excellence” who believed in “the ability of Music to express itself in prose and poetry.”

To commemorate his passing, let’s have a look at his most famous book, which contains suggestions for fingering, touch, ornamentation, and various features of keyboard technique. It also contains eight preludes and an Allemande that demonstrate his ideas about keyboard playing. 

Teaching Good Taste

L’art de toucher le clavecin

Couperin’s reasons for writing his L’Art de toucher le Clavecin are detailed in the preface. “This instrument,” he writes, “has its own peculiarities, just as the violin has its own. If the harpsichord cannot swell its notes, if the rapid repetition of the same note does not particularly suit it, then it has other advantages: accuracy, clarity, brilliance, and its greater range.”

“Above all, one must develop a sensitive touch for the keys and always have a well-feathered instrument. However, I understand that there are people for whom this may be irrelevant, because they play equally badly on any instrument.”

Although Couperin presents his treatise as something new and unique, it belongs to a growing tradition of instrumental methods. As amateur music-making became an important part of fashionable French society, learning an instrument was considered essential to education and good taste.   

When Music Learns to Speak

As Couperin suggests in his preface, the most important aesthetic idea is the comparison between musical performance and rhetoric. Reading musical notation is not the same as performing music, as it does not tell us how the music should speak. As such, the author spends much time on phrasing, punctuation, articulation, and expression.

Couperin begins with the player’s physical position and hand position. He soon turns to matters of touch, stressing “la belle souplesse” (suppleness) and the soft, flexible hands required for harpsichord playing. The search for the most perfect touch was the holy grail of harpsichordists of his time.

Feathery touch aside, Couperin demonstrates how expressive possibilities can be created through means other than simple dynamic pressure. Essentially, the performer shapes music through a subtle hierarchy of gestures and the character of individual phrases.   

Grammar of Ornament

Couperin: The Art of Playing the Harpsichord

Couperin devotes considerable space to ornaments as part of the musical language. This includes the manner of fingering and execution, and his explanations demonstrate the close relationship between fingering and musical expression. The elegance of performance is inseparable from expression.

To demonstrate his didactic and theoretical ideas, Couperin included eight preludes and one Allemande. In his 1717 revision, Couperin explains why he composed the eight preludes himself. “I must not forget to explain, before finishing this little discourse, that the method entitled L’Art de toucher le clavecin, which I have just mentioned, contains, among other things, eight preludes suitable for all ages and for all kinds of hands.”

“The fingers with which they are to be played are marked there by numbers, and I have even composed these preludes expressly in all the keys of my pieces, both those of my first book and those with which this second is filled.”  

Beyond the Bar Line

François Couperin

The first prelude in C Major serves as an instruction, while No. 2 is particularly rich in ornamentation and expressive inflexion. No. 3 in G minor is darker and rhetorically charged, with No. 4 in F Major presenting a flowing and lyrical discourse. No. 5 in A Major is bright and expansive, while No. 8 becomes more concentrated.

These preludes belong to a tradition in which the music is written without conventional bar lines. As such, they accord the performer considerable freedom in determining the rhythmic flow. They are not to be taken as improvisations, but as music that is fundamentally free in form.

The inclusion of the Allemande allows Couperin to demonstrate how technique becomes musical expression. Every individual section of the treatise is now combined in a fundamental dance of the French keyboard suite. It contains everything Couperin has been discussing, and it also serves as a demonstration of the differences between French and Italian styles.

L’Art de Toucher is the most important Baroque text on playing the harpsichord, and Carl Philipp Emanuel Bach still acknowledged it in his treatise of 1753. At that time, 37 years had elapsed, and the musical world had undergone a radical change of taste and style.

Star Wars Rocks My World

Legendary composer John Williams made a surprise appearance at a Hollywood Bowl tribute show in his honor. Reports confirm the 94 year old maestro took the stage to conduct a single encore piece, taking the podium for "The Imperial March". It was a massive moment for Star Wars fans in attendance who got to see the master in action.

(Source: Hollywood Bowl)

May be an image of violin and harp

French Horn Identity Crisis

 September 7th, 2026

Credit: NPR Classical on Facebook

Music and Sleep

 

Looking Back With Yuja

An Every Two-Week Look-Back at Yuja's Early and Earlier Endeavors.

On 17 and 18 December 2014, Yuja performed Ravel's Piano Concerto in G major with the NHK Symphony Orchestra conducted by Charles Dutoit in Tokyo, Japan at the Suntory Hall. In "Looking Back With Yuja No. 196", first posted on 12 April 2023, we featured the 17 December performance of the concerto, and that post is repeated below.

Just A Musical Thought.

Simply the best pianist in the world today! …(IMHO)

Twenty-Two minutes for Ravel's piano concerto in G major.

Number One Hundred-Ninety-Six in a Yuja Wang Series.

This amazing piano concerto by Ravel is among those listed by Classicfm.com as the "Twenty Best Piano Concertos Of All Time." Ravel was traveling on a piano tour in the US in 1928 and was taken by the abundance of jazz he encountered during his visit. The jazz influence is abundant throughout his concerto. He remarked that "The most captivating part of jazz is its rich and diverting rhythm. ... Jazz is a very rich and vital source of inspiration for modern composers and I am astonished that so few Americans are influenced by it." Later, Ravel claimed the idea for the melody of the opening theme for his concerto came to him during a train ride from Oxford to London. He completed the work between 1929 and 1931, and it was premiered on 14 January 1932, in a well-received performance by the French pianist Marguerite Marie-Charlotte Long with the Orchestre Lamoureux, and Ravel conducting. We earlier covered another performance of the concerto by Yuja in June 2016 in Rome with No. 126 in this series, and this performance was a year and a half earlier in Tokyo.

Thanks to Peter Chen and the Yuja Wang Archives for preserving this and other videos of her performances and interviews. All pics are from screenshots from the video of the 2014 concert in Tokyo.

Ravel ~ Piano Concerto in G major, Yuja with the NHK Symphony Orchestra conducted by Charles Dutoit, Tokyo, Japan, Suntory Hall, 17 December 2014

https://yujawang.nicerweb.com/.../Ravel%20Piano...

May be an image of clarinet, violin and piano. May be an image of violin and clarinet. May be an image of clarinet and piano. May be an image of piano. May be an image of piano

+24

An Italian: Tragedy Giuseppe Verdi and Margherita Barezzi

by Georg Predota  March 30th, 2013

Giuseppe Verdi

Giuseppe Verdi was a painfully private individual. Details about his romantic encounters are sketchy, and for the most part rely on his own and somewhat inconsistent recollections later in life. We do know, however, that Verdi went to live in the house of the grocer and wine merchant Antonio Barezzi in 1831. Barezzi was the president of the Philharmonic Society in Busseto, and many of its performances and rehearsals were held in a large room in his house. He was also the proud father of three daughters. The eldest, Margherita was only five months younger than Verdi and said to be pretty, gentle and fond of music. Encouraged by her father, Margherita took voice and piano lessons from the young maestro Verdi, and soon the romantic sparks started to fly. For over a year, the young lovers managed to keep their relationship a secret, but all that four-hand piano practice eventually aroused the suspicions of Margherita’s parents. Margherita was, after all, approaching marriageable age and the presence of a penniless musician might easily have compromised her reputation. Although Mummy and Daddy did not fundamentally object to the relationship, a solution had to be found nevertheless.

And so it came to pass that Daddy Barezzi financed Verdi’s first year of study in the far-away city of Milan. Promising to pay back the parental scholarship and to marry his “Ghita” once he had secured a job, Verdi sets off in July 1832. Besides providing an exciting musical and artistic environment, the big city also held attractions of a different nature. Verdi lodged with Professor Giuseppe Seletti and his absolutely stunning daughter Dorina. Seletti would complain bitterly to Barezzi about Verdi’s behavior. “You must understand that being a good musician does not make him an honest man. I found him rude, proud, and acting like a scoundrel in my house. I cannot tell you how much damage he has done to my family, because it is too indecent to write about.”

Margherita Barezzi

Once Verdi returned to Busetto in 1833, he took Dorina with him. It is hard to tell how Margherita reacted — Daddy Barezzi would have been suitably embarrassed — but the local clergy was outraged. When Verdi applied for the job as the town’s “maestro di musica,” a rival candidate was quickly nominated, leading to an extended and heated town quarrel, which included street brawls, arrests and prosecutions. The matter was finally settled in 1835 — by then Dorina had gracefully exited stage right — and Verdi received the official town contract on 20 April 1836. Having finally secured a proper job, Verdi wasted no time and married Margherita on 4 May 1836 in the Church of the Holy Trinity in Busseto. After a lavish lunch, the couple departed for a short honeymoon to Milan, and subsequently returned to settle in the Palazzo Tedaldi. Margherita was not merely a highly attractive woman she also was a decisive advocate of her husband’s career. By September 1836 Margherita was expecting, and Virginia Maria Luigia — the middle names chosen in reference to her two grandmothers — was born on 26 March 1837. Although happy in his family life, Verdi was determined to make his name in Milan. Margherita wrote, “Never, absolutely never, would he [Verdi] settle in Busetto. Having dedicated himself to theatre music, he would succeed in that and not in music for the church.”  

In 1838, Verdi publishes his first book of Sei Romanze (Six Romances), and his son Icilio Romano Carlo Antonio is born on 11 July. In August of that year, tragedy struck and little Virginia died of an unnamed childhood disease. Now more than ever, Verdi was determined to leave Busetto and he left for Milan with the manuscript score of Oberto in his back bag. Margherita and his young son soon followed. During rehearsals for Oberto, Icilio Romano unexpectedly fell ill and despite immediate medical intervention suddenly died on 22 October 1839. Verdi was devastated and soon lay ill himself for several weeks. Once he had recovered in May 1840, it was Margherita’s turn. According to medical opinion, she had contracted encephalitis and instead of getting better she was getting worse. Verdi sent for his father-in-law who barely managed to arrive hours before his daughter died aged 27. “From a dreadful disease, in the arms of her father, my beloved daughter, Margheretha, in the very flower of her youth. She was a faithful companion of the excellent young man, Giuseppe Verdi. I weep over this tragic loss.” And Giuseppe later recalled, “A third coffin goes out of my house. I was alone! Alone!”