The title is borrowed from one of Rachelle Garniez's new songs (written for Catherine Russell) and might well be applied to the great compositions for solo piano or any other type of music routinely assigned to music students before they can tell that there is a difference between a floor and a ceiling.
This really happened: A honking car horn clearly meant that someone was trying to attract my attention as I walked along Broadway on the West Side. When I went to see what he wanted the beckoning driver asked, "Which way is up?"
Thursday, January 17, 2013
Wednesday, January 16, 2013
What Difference Does Opera Make?
A report on the effect of playing Schubert's B-flat Sonata as opera rather than sonata:
- Virtuoso passages are transformed into bursts of fury; the temptation to exhibit mastery becomes the challenge to let emotion rule.
- Seemingly trivial figures flitting around following such passages become flickering flames released by the eruption.
- Unease drives.
- Tenderness is reflective, longed for, deeply simple.
- Ordinary triads become singular events.
Tuesday, January 15, 2013
Listening like Going to the Movies
Why can't we just go to concerts and let the music transport us as we are transported at the movies?
One of the greatest compliments I ever experienced was in the form of an argument between two young audience members after a performance in Savannah, GA with tenor Richard Dyer-Bennet of Schubert's Lovely Milleress (D-B's masterful English-language version). They were arguing about who was the true villain in the piece: the other man or the river. Such an argument would certainly never have taken place had they been distracted by having to read translations of the text. They took it in -- how could they not? Dyer-Bennet was a masterful storyteller.
I experienced an utterly magical transformation of time and attentiveness the first time I saw Jean Vigo's early talkie film L'Atalante, in a scene in which the hero, distraught because his young wife has run away, soaks his head in a bucket of water and conjures up visions of her loveliness. The scene seemed to last forever. I was in heaven. Going back to see it a second time it turned out to last only a few moments.
The opposite happened with the scene inside the boiler room of the The Battleship Potemkin, the great film by Sergei Eisenstein. Most of the time this scene is cut and its impact severely lessened. When I first saw it restored, uncut, at the Museum of Modern Art I was stunned at the power of this interminable depiction of a most vivid unescapable hell.
One of the greatest compliments I ever experienced was in the form of an argument between two young audience members after a performance in Savannah, GA with tenor Richard Dyer-Bennet of Schubert's Lovely Milleress (D-B's masterful English-language version). They were arguing about who was the true villain in the piece: the other man or the river. Such an argument would certainly never have taken place had they been distracted by having to read translations of the text. They took it in -- how could they not? Dyer-Bennet was a masterful storyteller.
I experienced an utterly magical transformation of time and attentiveness the first time I saw Jean Vigo's early talkie film L'Atalante, in a scene in which the hero, distraught because his young wife has run away, soaks his head in a bucket of water and conjures up visions of her loveliness. The scene seemed to last forever. I was in heaven. Going back to see it a second time it turned out to last only a few moments.
The opposite happened with the scene inside the boiler room of the The Battleship Potemkin, the great film by Sergei Eisenstein. Most of the time this scene is cut and its impact severely lessened. When I first saw it restored, uncut, at the Museum of Modern Art I was stunned at the power of this interminable depiction of a most vivid unescapable hell.
Monday, January 14, 2013
Schubert B-flat Sonata
On Sunday evening January 20 my current Schubert / Dvorak concentration will end with Schubert's B-flat Sonata, Op. post., along with some Laendler and, by Dvorak, the D minor Impromptu, and two Humoresques.
The performance takes place in a private location in New York City.
Email for more information: nancygarniez@tonalrefraction.com.
Does It Go Up or Down?
This is no laughing matter: Good composers go out of their way to obscure the difference between a real rise and a seeming rise. Some lines do actually "go" up, while others are more like vapors emanating upward from a given pitch.
In the same way that up and down may be ambiguous in terms of pitch motion, the matter of up and down beats can be just as confusing. The mere presence of a bar line on the page does not indicate a clear downbeat, despite what you learned when you were nine.
Again, good composers go out of their way to ration the down-beat quality.
The better the composer the greater the challenge and the more honesty it takes to recognize the problem and imagination to deal with it.
In the same way that up and down may be ambiguous in terms of pitch motion, the matter of up and down beats can be just as confusing. The mere presence of a bar line on the page does not indicate a clear downbeat, despite what you learned when you were nine.
Again, good composers go out of their way to ration the down-beat quality.
The better the composer the greater the challenge and the more honesty it takes to recognize the problem and imagination to deal with it.
Sunday, January 13, 2013
Variation in the Tones Themselves
In Renaissance vocal music the relatively small number of pitches is made to seem larger by virtue of the changing timbres of vowels: Properly sung, the listener will feel fundamental shifting depending on the combination of vowels sung by the several voices. When all come together on the same vowel at the same time the effect should be immediate and stunning.
It is rare that one hears a good rendering of this phenomenon, as so much music these days is tuned only harmonically, i.e., as if a vertical combination of notated pitch is the point. The same applies to string quartet playing, though, lacking text, that is more subtle. The "text" must be supplied by the individual instrumentalists allowing their several instruments to speak.
Why are classical musicians so afraid of being out of tune? Give a good listen to any good blues musician; we all have a lot to learn from them.
It is rare that one hears a good rendering of this phenomenon, as so much music these days is tuned only harmonically, i.e., as if a vertical combination of notated pitch is the point. The same applies to string quartet playing, though, lacking text, that is more subtle. The "text" must be supplied by the individual instrumentalists allowing their several instruments to speak.
Why are classical musicians so afraid of being out of tune? Give a good listen to any good blues musician; we all have a lot to learn from them.
Saturday, January 12, 2013
Dissolving Repetition
Repetition has to be one of the major problems in Classical music, perhaps most especially in Schubert. Many performers solve the problem by simply playing everything fast and faster.
There has to be more going on than is apparent at first hearing.
A great trick, shared by Schubert and Dvorak, is to undo the tyranny of the four-beat bar and of the four-bar phrase. On the surface much of their music conforms to the expected but on closer look it doesn't at all. Articulations are clear, ambiguities abound, resolutions rarely truly resolve--what had seemed to be balanced turns out to be the opposite.
This can never get dull because it is precarious every single time.
There has to be more going on than is apparent at first hearing.
A great trick, shared by Schubert and Dvorak, is to undo the tyranny of the four-beat bar and of the four-bar phrase. On the surface much of their music conforms to the expected but on closer look it doesn't at all. Articulations are clear, ambiguities abound, resolutions rarely truly resolve--what had seemed to be balanced turns out to be the opposite.
This can never get dull because it is precarious every single time.
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