"Let's get small. Let's get really small." (Steve Martin 1977)
24 years ago, Richard Carlson wrote "Don't Sweat the Small Stuff…and it's All Small Stuff.”
I agreed with much of what he wrote at the time, and I probably still do today.
But in the arts, music for example, it's often the seemingly small stuff where great beauty dwells. At the same time, that seemingly small stuff supports or enables the big stuff to become even bigger.
In the iconic slow movement of Mozart's Piano Concerto No. 21, the opening triplets that continue for most of the movement might seem simple, but in truth they elevate the famous melody even higher. And isn't it interesting that Mozart decided that the soloist's first entrance would be those same triplets before the piano played the famous melody.
Here's a moment in time when sweating the small stuff led to something both big and gloriously small.
John "Jack" Mack was the legendary Principal Oboe player with the Cleveland Orchestra. I attended a concert where the orchestra played Tchaikovsky's Symphony No. 4. It has a famous, and most sublime, oboe solo in the second movement. And of course, Mr. Mack played it with utmost delicacy and expressiveness.
But it was the smaller moments, elsewhere in the Symphony, when he played those very soft, "behind the scenes" supporting notes with such delicacy, and with such warmth and sensitivity, he elevated the more prominent moments in the movement to even greater heights.
Just as you sweat the small stuff when you practice, just as you fuss over dynamics, accents, tempos and articulations in your compositions, I too sweat the small stuff in my writing, editing, social media posts, and choice of words – and everywhere else where sweating the small stuff, as the Steve Allen song says: "…could be the Start of Something Big".
