Yesterday I had the rare privilege of teaching a young adult student how to approach the rhythm in that famous Clementi Sonatina in C, the one I refer to all the time, being the one everyone "knows."
Last movement, 3/8 with a repetitive left hand three note figure, over and over and over, starting each bar with the same tone. The right hand agrees, no?
Well, not if you know anything about how to read Vivace rhythms. These are not the same as Allegro rhythms, which tend to organize according to quarter notes. Vivaces are definitely trickier. I describe the difference as having more to do with series than with divisions.*
In bars 3 - 4 of this movement we have the perfect example of how this works. There are six eighth notes spread over these two bars: D F B C G G . Conventionally they are played with the accents as follows: D f b C g g, This way the line goes Up Down Up Down.
Played this way: D f B c G g The line goes in one direction, down, from D to B to G.
And it does so in a most amusing way: Each step is ornamented with an upward tease, i.e., a note that doesn't REALLY go up at all. And consider what happens then:
Not only do the strong notes (D B G) produce a wonderful G triad, but the added joke
is that those deceptive rises play another game:
D f (a third 3 ) B c (a second 2) G g (a unison 1)
It sounds so much better.
It is also much harder, given the temptation to allow the left hand to reduce everything to its most oring terms.....
*What Might It Mean? An Uncommon Glossary of Musical Terms and Concepts for the Stuck, Bored, and Curious, by Nancy Garniez, published by Tonal Refraction, NYC, 1999
Saturday, July 12, 2014
Friday, July 11, 2014
Funny or Not: Your Choice
Sight-reading at the piano is plenty difficult and many students struggle with it, as do many teachers. The teachers struggle with the difficulty of teaching it and are much relieved when a student shows any sign of fluency.
This is where the wonderful traps set by the likes of Muzio Clementi can exercise their true power.
"You got through that phrase very nicely. Now see, it repeats over here and again over there, so you don't have a thing to worry (i.e., think) about." And off we go mechanically repeating just because we can. (I know that temptation very well; I used to do it myself, thinking it would encourage reading. I have come to believe that it actually discourages reading!)
But, as Rachelle's famous song says, "Just because you can doesn't mean you should." Clementi's wondrously inventive imagination could present elements so clearly as to give the player many opportunities to introduce variation: one note louder than the next, these two bars played against the left hand beat, and so on.
It is the terrible over-edited music teachers' editions that have destroyed all traces of the humor, all invitation to play around with every note.
This is where the wonderful traps set by the likes of Muzio Clementi can exercise their true power.
"You got through that phrase very nicely. Now see, it repeats over here and again over there, so you don't have a thing to worry (i.e., think) about." And off we go mechanically repeating just because we can. (I know that temptation very well; I used to do it myself, thinking it would encourage reading. I have come to believe that it actually discourages reading!)
But, as Rachelle's famous song says, "Just because you can doesn't mean you should." Clementi's wondrously inventive imagination could present elements so clearly as to give the player many opportunities to introduce variation: one note louder than the next, these two bars played against the left hand beat, and so on.
It is the terrible over-edited music teachers' editions that have destroyed all traces of the humor, all invitation to play around with every note.
Thursday, July 10, 2014
The Sonata vs. Variations or Variations Within Sonatas?
Many years ago a very bright high school student came to his piano lesson and, smirking with delight, recounted that on a Music Appreciation test he was supposed to identify themes A and B of some symphony or other. He found this quite amusing since they were actually identical, the "second" merely a slight variant of the first. Of course, he couldn't have pointed that out without failing the test.
How many people go through life thinking that the point of listening to a sonata is to identify themes A and B and to recognize them when they return? The whole entire point of the form is to make repetition impossible by change of key and other subtleties that heighten every volatile aspect of every element of the sound at any given moment. The better the composer, the truer that is.
One is incapable of a simple repeat because the idea demands imagination and because it is not permissible to allow tedium to enter the experience wherever you are seated, whether in the audience or on the piano bench.
How many people go through life thinking that the point of listening to a sonata is to identify themes A and B and to recognize them when they return? The whole entire point of the form is to make repetition impossible by change of key and other subtleties that heighten every volatile aspect of every element of the sound at any given moment. The better the composer, the truer that is.
One is incapable of a simple repeat because the idea demands imagination and because it is not permissible to allow tedium to enter the experience wherever you are seated, whether in the audience or on the piano bench.
Wednesday, July 9, 2014
"Flatland"
Googling Flatland turned up this Wikipedia entry, of which I quote part of the opening sentence: "Flatland: A Romance of Many Dimensions is an
1884 satirical novella by the English schoolmaster Edwin Abbott Abbott.
Writing pseudonymously as 'A Square'."
This should be required reading for anyone concerned with... well, just about anything. It is about as thought-provoking as anything I have ever read, its imagery applicable to all kinds of disciplines, not just mathematics.
Take music theory, for example. According to music theory, there is such a thing as a pitch class, by virtue of which an A is in the same pitch class as all other As. But what if it isn't?
How could it not be? If some composer uses A in a way that robs it of all its ordinary characteristics it is, strictly speaking, no longer a member of a class but an event unto itself.
This should be required reading for anyone concerned with... well, just about anything. It is about as thought-provoking as anything I have ever read, its imagery applicable to all kinds of disciplines, not just mathematics.
Take music theory, for example. According to music theory, there is such a thing as a pitch class, by virtue of which an A is in the same pitch class as all other As. But what if it isn't?
How could it not be? If some composer uses A in a way that robs it of all its ordinary characteristics it is, strictly speaking, no longer a member of a class but an event unto itself.
- Recalling some specific instances of this: The G minor triad on the piano with which Debussy opens the Violin/Piano Sonata
- The opening unison G of the Mozart G minor Piano Quartet
- The famous B# on the cello C string in Mendelssohn's D minor Piano Trio - don't let anyone ever tell you that B# and C are the same.
Tuesday, July 8, 2014
Music With a New Sound
Rehearsing the Brahms Horn Trio yesterday I felt an overwhelming rush of joy. What a privilege to play repertoire that comes alive at every note. This comes from that most foreign of instruments, the natural horn, by virtue of whose acoustics you can never predict the tone quality of the next pitch, therefore, you cannot plan in advance your own next attack. The decisions about blend and balance all hang on the impression of the instant.
Shouldn't all music-making be like that?
Ever since my son first took up the French horn at age ten I realized that I knew nothing, absolutely nothing, about that dimension of sound. It belongs as if to a different geometry. Now the natural horn compounds that realization beyond what I could ever imagine. The extent of that compounding is fully realized in this huge masterwork--huge because so demanding at every step in all three instruments.
Shouldn't all music-making be like that?
Ever since my son first took up the French horn at age ten I realized that I knew nothing, absolutely nothing, about that dimension of sound. It belongs as if to a different geometry. Now the natural horn compounds that realization beyond what I could ever imagine. The extent of that compounding is fully realized in this huge masterwork--huge because so demanding at every step in all three instruments.
Monday, July 7, 2014
About Sonatas
Another of the conversation series of this summer was about sonatas. What are your associations with sonatas?
Pretty square. Haydn Sonatas drove me out of music school and caused me to destroy every note of his that I possessed. Clementi? Are you kidding? Those childish sonatinas I had to play as a child?
Do they really form part of the picture?
So I started the music part of the exchange with the famous Clementi C Major Sonatina. The reaction: "It's hard for me to hear it fresh," says a pianist and teacher. Then I showed them the book I used, a facsimile of the first edition, no slurs, no markings except those put there by the composer. Compare that to the usual done-to-death "instructions" added by some Italian piano teacher, which I showed them for purposes of comparison. They couldn't get over it. Too many instructions; the humor completely obscured.
What is the point of the form? Constant variation of even the smallest "nothing" repeated quarter note.
This is the essence of the sonata, not the repeat of a theme or section, but the variation that permeates everything, all the time.
Haydn: I let them choose a key from the table of contents: They chose A major. I first played the scale pointing out its quirks, i.e., the several collisions with black keys that give it its fascinating coloration. I played the first movement the way I play it, again, stressing constant variation. They wanted to hear it played the way it would have driven me out of music school. "Yikes!" was the response. Please go back to your way!
Did Mozart write any sonatinas? Great question. Having just purchased the early so-called "Wunderkind" Sonatas, K. 5 - 10, composed when he was seven. I sight-read one in their key of choice, B-flat. Interestingly, I couldn't do it, perhaps because my habitual way of reading relies on pedestrian meters or because of the many markings (though this is supposed to be an Urtext edition!) delineating vertical beats.
I had to stop midway and restart talking through the reasons I was having such a hard time doing it justice. And there we left it.
The purpose of the sonata is to be as engaged as possible in your own capacity to change even the smallest musical unit so that you never repeat yourself. Repeating yourself is downright anti-sonata.
Pretty square. Haydn Sonatas drove me out of music school and caused me to destroy every note of his that I possessed. Clementi? Are you kidding? Those childish sonatinas I had to play as a child?
Do they really form part of the picture?
So I started the music part of the exchange with the famous Clementi C Major Sonatina. The reaction: "It's hard for me to hear it fresh," says a pianist and teacher. Then I showed them the book I used, a facsimile of the first edition, no slurs, no markings except those put there by the composer. Compare that to the usual done-to-death "instructions" added by some Italian piano teacher, which I showed them for purposes of comparison. They couldn't get over it. Too many instructions; the humor completely obscured.
What is the point of the form? Constant variation of even the smallest "nothing" repeated quarter note.
This is the essence of the sonata, not the repeat of a theme or section, but the variation that permeates everything, all the time.
Haydn: I let them choose a key from the table of contents: They chose A major. I first played the scale pointing out its quirks, i.e., the several collisions with black keys that give it its fascinating coloration. I played the first movement the way I play it, again, stressing constant variation. They wanted to hear it played the way it would have driven me out of music school. "Yikes!" was the response. Please go back to your way!
Did Mozart write any sonatinas? Great question. Having just purchased the early so-called "Wunderkind" Sonatas, K. 5 - 10, composed when he was seven. I sight-read one in their key of choice, B-flat. Interestingly, I couldn't do it, perhaps because my habitual way of reading relies on pedestrian meters or because of the many markings (though this is supposed to be an Urtext edition!) delineating vertical beats.
I had to stop midway and restart talking through the reasons I was having such a hard time doing it justice. And there we left it.
The purpose of the sonata is to be as engaged as possible in your own capacity to change even the smallest musical unit so that you never repeat yourself. Repeating yourself is downright anti-sonata.
Sunday, July 6, 2014
What ARE we Going to do About Barlines?
Looking back at all the trouble barlines cause I long ago decided not to teach my young students to count rhythm. Counting is a total waste of time, unless money is involved.
The real trouble is that mindless downbeat.
Here is where I differ from a prevailing view of rhythm as a function of bodily balance. Sure, that is one manifestation of rhythm, but certainly not the only one. The rhythms of speech so often run contrary to the beats of dance, just listen to any good jazz singer. And the rhythms of a mind at play are subject only to the limits of the imagination.
The other problem, besides the mindless downbeat, is the division of the bar into discrete, countable beats and, by implication, the division of those beats into subdivisions corresponding to some degree to the bar itself.
But what about quarter-note beats that do not behave as beats? What about sixteenth-note beats? Just because the printed meter is 4/4 does not mean that the beat is the quarter note! When you figure that out I guarantee that, though this may not be so easy to pull off, you will have much more fun in the process.
The real trouble is that mindless downbeat.
Here is where I differ from a prevailing view of rhythm as a function of bodily balance. Sure, that is one manifestation of rhythm, but certainly not the only one. The rhythms of speech so often run contrary to the beats of dance, just listen to any good jazz singer. And the rhythms of a mind at play are subject only to the limits of the imagination.
The other problem, besides the mindless downbeat, is the division of the bar into discrete, countable beats and, by implication, the division of those beats into subdivisions corresponding to some degree to the bar itself.
But what about quarter-note beats that do not behave as beats? What about sixteenth-note beats? Just because the printed meter is 4/4 does not mean that the beat is the quarter note! When you figure that out I guarantee that, though this may not be so easy to pull off, you will have much more fun in the process.
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