“TV wizard Don Ohlmeyer, a far smarter man than I, once told me, “The answer to all your questions is: Money.””
Despite the moral dubiousness of the worldview expressed in that quote, it does have the virtue of edging dispiritingly close to the way things actually are, in all probability.
Well, in music, a field where we love to talk about feelings and moods and intangibles, an approximate analogy may hold true: The Answer to All Your Questions Is: Physics.
In rehearsing an orchestra, or teaching a conducting student, or a piano student, I often ask, Why? Why are you doing it like that? (I.e., why are you phrasing it in such a seemingly unnatural way? why are you making a “bump” in the line? why are you stressing a weak beat and glossing over the stronger beat? etc.) Usually, the “guilty party” replies, “I don’t know why… it’s just how I do it.”
But I know why, or at least I think I do. 99 times out of 100, it’s not because the person is somehow unmusical, or thoughtless, or unorganized, but because physics are getting in his way: he is running out of breath (winds), or fudging a troublesome string-crossing (strings), or placing the thumb on a black key in a scale passage (piano). The lack of thought is not about music, it’s about the body, about how to execute a musical passage with the imperfect anatomy given us by God and nature.
““You may not be interested in war, but war is interested in you.””
This is why I like to remind students, paraphrasing the horrid Trotsky, that “you may not be interested in technique, but technique is interested in you”. The moment we cross from simply contemplating music to the craft of playing it, we have no choice but to confront—and conform to, and align with, and master—the physical obstacles that inhibit us from playing music in that perfect, ideal way that we hear in our heads.