The presence of 3s in a 4/4 bar is not always indicated by the actual number 3. Sometimes its presence lurks in a dotted eighth, sometimes in a three-sixteenth "beat" following a sixteenth rest. Three of something plus five of something else is as much eight as two times four. But the feeling is totally different.
The feeling is what agitato refers to, not agitation in our frenetic literal sense of the word, but in the sense of a structured non-structure.
Wednesday, February 27, 2013
Tuesday, February 26, 2013
Isometric? Allometric?
Just because a piece is notated in 4/4 does not mean that its rhythmic sense is determined solely by duples. What is the term that would apply to the simultaneous presence of two meters within one notated meter?
Is it to simplify coordination that we learn to verticalize beats to be sure that the two hands are together at all times? Isn't it more exciting to take off from there and have one hand play freely while the other keeps the beat?
The idea is not so much to identify a concept as to find the necessity for this multi-layered movement within the body's desire to move the limbs independent of one another and to assert the autonomy of the imagination throughout it all.
A rhythmic concept risks stifling this level of animal vitality.
Is it to simplify coordination that we learn to verticalize beats to be sure that the two hands are together at all times? Isn't it more exciting to take off from there and have one hand play freely while the other keeps the beat?
The idea is not so much to identify a concept as to find the necessity for this multi-layered movement within the body's desire to move the limbs independent of one another and to assert the autonomy of the imagination throughout it all.
A rhythmic concept risks stifling this level of animal vitality.
Monday, February 25, 2013
Haydn: Greater than Great
What pleasure can be greater than playing for the first time a work by Haydn, the master of masters.
In the preface to the Wiener Urtext edition of the piano pieces Brahms is quoted as remarking that Haydn is not understood at his time (1896); that undoubtedly in the future someone will organize Haydn festivals for business purposes. How right he was and how true that is.
It is remarkable that in a program that features even quite complex contemporary works the composer whose work requires the most painstaking attention is invariably Haydn - I have this from a person who specializes in the likes of Elliot Carter.
In the preface to the Wiener Urtext edition of the piano pieces Brahms is quoted as remarking that Haydn is not understood at his time (1896); that undoubtedly in the future someone will organize Haydn festivals for business purposes. How right he was and how true that is.
It is remarkable that in a program that features even quite complex contemporary works the composer whose work requires the most painstaking attention is invariably Haydn - I have this from a person who specializes in the likes of Elliot Carter.
Sunday, February 24, 2013
Bored Again: A New Definition
One of my students, a scientist, knows that she is bored when she keeps looking at the clock.
In Classical style the equivalent of the clock is the inexorable four sixteenths to the quarter. Yesterday I revisited one of the puzzling Beethoven sonatas in which what have always felt like agonizingly boring passages alternate with passages of extreme power. Can't be. Doesn't make sense.
Sure enough, that sonata (the "Spring" sonata for piano with violin) was composed at the same time as the "Moonlight," 1801. Both share a fascination with the conflict between four-of-these equal one-of-those and odd numbers of repetitions or groupings: 15 sixteenths where one would expect 16 comparable to the Moonlight's 27 sixteenths where one expects 28.
There must be more to it than counting in multiples of 2.
In Classical style the equivalent of the clock is the inexorable four sixteenths to the quarter. Yesterday I revisited one of the puzzling Beethoven sonatas in which what have always felt like agonizingly boring passages alternate with passages of extreme power. Can't be. Doesn't make sense.
Sure enough, that sonata (the "Spring" sonata for piano with violin) was composed at the same time as the "Moonlight," 1801. Both share a fascination with the conflict between four-of-these equal one-of-those and odd numbers of repetitions or groupings: 15 sixteenths where one would expect 16 comparable to the Moonlight's 27 sixteenths where one expects 28.
There must be more to it than counting in multiples of 2.
Saturday, February 23, 2013
The Ear is a Mind at Work
It would take a historian of some discipline I cannot imagine to discern what happened to our respect for the ear as a mode of thought.
Yesterday a person new to me described perfectly, it seemed to me, the frustration of having been passionate about the piano as a young child yet unable to pass the tests for admission to a special arts high school. She told me a bit of what the tests consisted of: naming intervals, singing the separate tones of a chord, etc.
But before she told me about this past she described very much in the present her experience of listening for a specifically intense event in a Mozart violin concerto, an event she described with the clarity that only a truly alive and energized ear could muster without recourse to theory or other abstractions.
Hers is the kind of ear that musical children are born with and which is denied in most musical training by pasting over it notions about sound that oversimplify and do not apply to that other, fuller hearing.
Tones are not discrete. Even the keys on the piano, which are discrete, though they have names, do not produce discrete sounds. Their total resonances are magical, mysterious. Because they defy identification we go in pursuit of them again and again. Many children who are told they cannot carry a tune are actually swimming in a sea of vibration so powerful that they cannot break it down into component parts--a skill necessary to carry a tune or identify tones within a chord, but not essential to the enjoyment of sound in its fullest manifestations.
Yesterday a person new to me described perfectly, it seemed to me, the frustration of having been passionate about the piano as a young child yet unable to pass the tests for admission to a special arts high school. She told me a bit of what the tests consisted of: naming intervals, singing the separate tones of a chord, etc.
But before she told me about this past she described very much in the present her experience of listening for a specifically intense event in a Mozart violin concerto, an event she described with the clarity that only a truly alive and energized ear could muster without recourse to theory or other abstractions.
Hers is the kind of ear that musical children are born with and which is denied in most musical training by pasting over it notions about sound that oversimplify and do not apply to that other, fuller hearing.
Tones are not discrete. Even the keys on the piano, which are discrete, though they have names, do not produce discrete sounds. Their total resonances are magical, mysterious. Because they defy identification we go in pursuit of them again and again. Many children who are told they cannot carry a tune are actually swimming in a sea of vibration so powerful that they cannot break it down into component parts--a skill necessary to carry a tune or identify tones within a chord, but not essential to the enjoyment of sound in its fullest manifestations.
Friday, February 22, 2013
Don't Orchestrate Piano Pieces!
Among the piano works popularized in orchestral versions are Bartok's Roumanian Dances. That is how I first heard them. It has taken me years to appreciate the destructive distortion visited upon these masterful gems.
First, the beat. In order to coordinate an orchestra someone has to give the beat. A look at the piano score indicates such subtlety in the articulation of beats that it is hard to imagine an orchestra or conductor sensitive enough to make them come alive as the composer has indicated.
Second, the sound. Drunk on the rich resonance of the piano the "dancer," me, turns into a veritable gypsy. Everything is motivated by the sonority, not by a genre or a title.
The difference is so vast that the listeners last night commented on it right off without my having said a word.
First, the beat. In order to coordinate an orchestra someone has to give the beat. A look at the piano score indicates such subtlety in the articulation of beats that it is hard to imagine an orchestra or conductor sensitive enough to make them come alive as the composer has indicated.
Second, the sound. Drunk on the rich resonance of the piano the "dancer," me, turns into a veritable gypsy. Everything is motivated by the sonority, not by a genre or a title.
The difference is so vast that the listeners last night commented on it right off without my having said a word.
Thursday, February 21, 2013
How do you know when you're bored?
For player and listener alike the answer is the same: When your mind wanders, or simply turns off.
What "mind?" This is the interesting part. We have all kinds of minds. The one addressed by Music Appreciation is not, to my taste, relevant to playing or listening to music. Identifying themes and subthemes is a distraction from other mental activities that define listening.
A good example comes readily to mind: Last night I was listening to the radio. Strictly by chance I heard announced a recording by the Belcea string quartet of Schubert's Death and the Maiden quartet. What were my first reactions? a) Recordings are not my preferred listening b) Another cliche reading of that over-done piece? c) Yes, but the Belcea is a very fine ensemble. So I listened.
It took less than a minute to realize that the Belcea was giving me no choice but to listen for every nuance of their superior playing: Not a trace of a cliche; every single note intoned purposefully, every event personal without a trace of sentimentality. The piece flew by, a new important definition of paying attention.
For all their virtuosity they played as if they had never heard or played that work before. No trace of boredom there.
What "mind?" This is the interesting part. We have all kinds of minds. The one addressed by Music Appreciation is not, to my taste, relevant to playing or listening to music. Identifying themes and subthemes is a distraction from other mental activities that define listening.
A good example comes readily to mind: Last night I was listening to the radio. Strictly by chance I heard announced a recording by the Belcea string quartet of Schubert's Death and the Maiden quartet. What were my first reactions? a) Recordings are not my preferred listening b) Another cliche reading of that over-done piece? c) Yes, but the Belcea is a very fine ensemble. So I listened.
It took less than a minute to realize that the Belcea was giving me no choice but to listen for every nuance of their superior playing: Not a trace of a cliche; every single note intoned purposefully, every event personal without a trace of sentimentality. The piece flew by, a new important definition of paying attention.
For all their virtuosity they played as if they had never heard or played that work before. No trace of boredom there.
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