Really Reading Music

A brilliant student who did not learn to read music easily, though she read books voraciously, proved both to herself and to me that she not only read but really read music when she balked at playing a cadence because, she said, "It won't sound good."

I can think of no more convincing demonstration that reading music is a matter of dealing with expected sound rather than with the mechanics of producing a neutral noise which then awaits transformation into music.

She was right, by the way, in finding that the chords in question would not sound good.  A cadence in 3/4 time, they were a hemiola, i.e., two consecutive measures with strong chords every second, rather than every third beat.  This shift in accent radically changes the sound.

As a teenager obliged to accompany annual high school Messiah performances I was convinced that Handel did not know how to compose because, with the hemiolas improperly performed, many cadences felt hopelessly unresolved.

Music and the Vernacular

By chance I tuned in a live radio broadcast of a Carnegie Hall event the other evening.  Clearly a fine ensemble, the orchestra was playing music that raised the question "why?"    Trying to figure out the "who" on the assumption that the two would turn out to be intertwined, I listened on to the end. 

Sure enough.  It was the Simon Bolivar Orchestra of Venezuela, comprised of musicians now in their late 20's, all products of El Sistema, Venezuela's famous music program for public school children, conducted by their friend and fellow Sistema graduate, the extremely gifted Gustav Dudamel.  I stayed on for the second half of the program, fascinated.  The music, mostly by Mexican composers, was admirably chosen, especially as it featured a large (11!) percussion section, who got to strut their stuff big time.

I know that people are trying to organize a program for American children, modeled on El Sistema.  I attended an event over the weekend showcasing some local children and was delighted and moved by them and by their families.  Needless to say, I love what music does to all of us.

But I wonder whether the well-meaning souls who are working so hard to get this together here in the US of A will have the good sense to start the children with our music, with their music; to avoid the all--too-common insecurity of American music teachers who feel obliged to start, not just with Europe, but with Europe of the 18th century, as if that alone defined music.

Many, many contemporary American composers have produced wonderful material that addresses that very problem very effectively. 

First Movements

In the name of Music Appreciation or something equally vapid, most people learn that the first movement of a sonata is usually in Sonata Allegro form, consisting of theme A in the tonic key, theme B in the dominant, followed by a development section, and culminating in a recapitulation of theme A, still in the tonic, and theme B, now also in the tonic.  Pretty predictable, thus pretty uninteresting.

With the invention of the piano, however, whether a theme was in the key of C (no black keys) or G (one particularly unsettling black key) made a huge difference.  I found this out while studying a Mozart sonata when a theme in C major was so transformed when it appeared in G that I could hardly play it: the single black key so utterly altered the balance of tones as to make it entirely new.

I find this inherently dramatic, the opposite of predictable.

What if the purpose of the first movement is to present a cast of characters, including a masked villain lurking behind a pillar, waiting to pounce on the suspecting soprano?  What if the action is not in the elements that we would identify as obvious themes but in those at the bottom of the texture?

Forms and Expectations

Much of the meaning inherent in musical form comes from expectations aroused by reading the program.
What do you expect of a sonata?  a symphony?

How is that different from an opera?

There has to be an element of irony unearthed when our expectations are not satisfied by actual experience.  Perhaps that irony is what turned minuets into scherzi, and what makes Haydn's sonatas and symphonies such unending delights as he turns the most solid procedure on its head.

A beautiful case in point is the great Schubert B-flat Piano Sonata.  B-flat is one of the most solidly stable tonalities on the piano--indeed, until the invention of the piano keyboard sonatas were rarely in that key.  As I recall performances of the work they invariably indulge in that stability, fully pronounced in the opening chords.  That is like a story opening the words "Period.  The end" and proceeding to repeat them seemingly interminably. 

What are the hints that Schubert is interested in elements that will disturb rather than reinforce that stability?  First is that first accidental, E-natural, which I observe to be Schubert's favorite note.  Second is the mysterious tempo marking: molto moderato, which I take to indicate, as also in the G-major, Op. 79 sonata, with discretion, not pre-determined.. 

Operatic Imagination

If I carried operas around in my imagination and had no success in getting them produced I wonder what I might do with them?

Judging from my experience of creativity it will out.  If the world does not offer an outlet I will make one, like a watercourse continually bowing and swerving to account for natural obstacles on its way to the sea.

Perhaps as he got "older" -- remember he died at 31 -- Schubert took it upon himself to be and make his own opera all by himself.  Thus the late sonatas are perhaps not so much sonatas as some hybrid creature that we have not previously encountered.  Imagine!  A new species.

Magic or Arithmetic?

I happened to meet a mother accompanying her six-year-old to music class this morning. 

The mother's parting words to me were: "Whole note, half note, quarter note!"

I winced.  Starting with arithmetic dumbs down every aspect that distinguishes music from everything else.  It merely reinforces the child's ability to count and, by connecting it to a printed symbol, locks up rhythm once and for all in a tidy concrete container.

Why not start with a finger cymbal or a traingle?  A bell? 

Give a kid magic any day, every day.

Personal vs. Vocal

The NYTimes critic reviewing Anderszewski's Dec. 6 performance gave it high praise noting, among other qualities, that his Bach was "personal."

I think I know what she was referring to, but I would have preferred "vocal."   The difference is that personal connotes idiosyncratic, self-indulgent, while vocal in relation to Bach describes a rich understanding of Bach's music for all instruments.

Vocal art was arguably the most highly developed musical art of the Baroque era.  The essence of great vocal composition lies in astute knowledge of the human voice, its registers, timbres, and specific intonation.  Instrument building of that time was spurred by the desire to evoke human vocal qualities with strings, winds, organs.  Bach died in 1750; the piano was invented in 1727.  Its astonishing vocal characteristics might have inspired a new approach to keyboard composition had Bach had a piano at his disposal.

It was Haydn who picked up on the vocal qualities of the instrument, using them as source material for many of his piano sonatas and chamber music

It was masterful of Anderszewski to find the vocal qualities in every movement he played, making it sound as if Bach had composed for the modern piano.  Most modern pianists are tempted to neutralize the vocal colors of the instrument for Bach, turning his music into a neither-here-nor-there abstraction. 

Having studied a great deal of Bach on the organ for the critical early adult years when I had "given up" the piano, I have found it problematic to play his work on the piano.  That began to change last summer, when I performed the Two- and Three-part Inventions in a series called Classics of Childhood.  Anderszewski's brilliant work inspires further exploration on my part.