Phrasing and Food (I Want to be Good at Both)

I cannot tell you how many times I've been talking to music-minded acquaintances about something I always called "feel", then looked over at the clock and realized it was so late, well-beyond time to go home. I could just go on and on about that certain something that just sets some artists apart. The other day, while at a piano lesson, I learned that this ineffable quality in music that I always referred to as "feel", actually exists. The technical term for "feel" is phrasing..

Phrasing is, very simply put, how YOU do it. Sure, anyone who reads notes and has some facility with an instrument can play a piece of music. The question is, can they make it sound like something? The musicians you love the best must have an instinctive way of putting an accent here, holding a pause for an extra split-second there. They must know how the dynamics of volume might affect the mood of the piece. Musicians who phrase well (or at least to your tastes), can practically break your heart with a piece of music because they can reach some part of you that is so otherwise hard to get to. Conversely, musicians who do not phrase well can cause you to leave the auditorium after the first movement, because it's so boring it almost hurts.

This concept of phrasing is a revelation to me. It answers a lot of questions. At one of the restaurants where I once worked, we always wondered how different cooks could slavishly follow the exact same recipe (we were even required to measure everything in exact proportions using a calibrated food scale for consistency) and still achieve different results? For example, I could never get my cheesecakes as beautiful as Josie's, but no one, not even Josie, could come close to my lemon custard, even though we worked from the same recipes.

One of my customers is a medical professional (and a formidable cook herself when she has the time) who has noticed the same thing: give two different cooks the same exact recipe and get two vastly different dishes. Her quasi-medical theory for the difference in cooking results is that the bacteria that is permanently on our skin--the benign stuff that cannot be washed off-- somehow telegraphs some magic into the food. I am somewhat compelled by her interesting theory, and would be fascinated if someone actually did a scientific investigation of her hypothesis, but I suspect that what it really comes down to is phrasing.

The concept of phrasing tells me that maybe when YOU stir the risotto a few more times with the unique weight of your hand, you make it just a little creamier than someone else. Maybe when you add the salt at a certain moment, pinching it between YOUR two fingers which are sized like no one elses, you release a little more flavor into the sauce. Certainly, careful culinary school grads may have paid attention to the science behind the secrets, but others are capable of this magic by instinct alone. Your unique phrasing in the kitchen is what matters.

And I think about how I hear two notes on a dotted quarter note...and it's not really wrong for me to play the extra note I hear in my imagination. The overall piece remains the same, but one version is uniquely mine.

I cannot begin to describe how much the concept of phrasing knocks me out in both music and cooking. It tells me that everyone really IS an original and can make something transcendently beautiful when given the right skills and freedoms.