Playing through Beethoven's Sonata for Piano and Horn, Op. 17 (with natural horn, of course) my attention was drawn to the designation "moderato" for the first and last movements. But I reported last week that Alfred Einstein found that Beethoven did not use the term. A bit of research into the Beethovenhaus archives showed that he did, indeed, use the term!
Fascinating that it is in a piece for the highly vocal natural (i.e., valveless) horn.
Allowing the word to enable stretchings of the beat from time to time utterly transformed the sonata, not only making it easier to play, but making it deeper on every level and in every respect.
Sunday, January 20, 2013
Saturday, January 19, 2013
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Listeners' Wisdom
Performing in an intimate space allows room for listeners to come into dialogue with me, with each other, with the music Several candid listener insights after the first Schubert performance have had great effect on the ensuing work. So my thanks to listeners.
As an activity listening is too under-appreciated.
Last night I dreamed of listening so intensely personal and yet so shared that it sparked reactions like those of a stadium crowd reacting to a thrilling touchdown. (I haven't watched a football game for decades but somehow the memory remains of that roar in response to a manoeuvre I did not in the slightest grasp.)
As an activity listening is too under-appreciated.
Last night I dreamed of listening so intensely personal and yet so shared that it sparked reactions like those of a stadium crowd reacting to a thrilling touchdown. (I haven't watched a football game for decades but somehow the memory remains of that roar in response to a manoeuvre I did not in the slightest grasp.)
Friday, January 18, 2013
Can You Tap This?
Sorry for the pun: It just slipped out.
Thinking about upbeats and downbeats, as I do a great deal of the time, brings to mind the many instances in which a composer combines rhythmically ambiguous material with fermatas (as does Schubert in the B-flat Sonata, so much on my mind of late). Having the same sonority on both sides of a bar line is one way to obscure the down-beat. Ending a phrase with rests and a fermata further obscures matters, especially if you take the fermata to mean that a period of time must elapse such that the listener has no idea whether the next sound is a down- or an up-beat (cf. my definition of fermata in What Might it Mean? An Uncommon Glossary of Musical Terms and Concepts for the Stuck, Bored, and Curious).
There are two schools of thought on the subject one maintaining that the downbeat as notated must be audible at all costs and in all cases, the other, finding this predictability to be conducive to physical and mental torpor, avoiding it like the plague.
Thinking about upbeats and downbeats, as I do a great deal of the time, brings to mind the many instances in which a composer combines rhythmically ambiguous material with fermatas (as does Schubert in the B-flat Sonata, so much on my mind of late). Having the same sonority on both sides of a bar line is one way to obscure the down-beat. Ending a phrase with rests and a fermata further obscures matters, especially if you take the fermata to mean that a period of time must elapse such that the listener has no idea whether the next sound is a down- or an up-beat (cf. my definition of fermata in What Might it Mean? An Uncommon Glossary of Musical Terms and Concepts for the Stuck, Bored, and Curious).
There are two schools of thought on the subject one maintaining that the downbeat as notated must be audible at all costs and in all cases, the other, finding this predictability to be conducive to physical and mental torpor, avoiding it like the plague.
Thursday, January 17, 2013
"Just Because You Can Doesn't Mean You Should"
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?"
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?"
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.
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