We risk thinking that every rising series of tones in music notation indicates rising tone motion. This is an oversimplification in need of some clarification.
The best image would be that of a turn: start on a given tone, go up one, back to the starting tone; go down one, back to the starting tone. Where have you gone? Nowhere, really. On no matter what instrument -- even the piano on which three different keys would be required to produce the indicated turn -- the quality of the motion is entirely altered if the intention is to produce the varied tones without going anywhere.
Another hard-to-read indication is what looks like a leap up, say from A to E. Is it really a leap, or could it be, in the manner of a yodel, a light touching of an overtone of the lower note. Again, the execution is totally altered by this concept of two completely different physical properties of the tones; I think of them as solid and vapor.
Otherwise music is a continual anchorless sequence of down-and-up-and-down-and-up: like auditory ping pong.
Wednesday, October 24, 2012
Tuesday, October 23, 2012
Dvorak Teaches Me to Understand Schubert
There are many parallels between the writing of Dvorak and Schubert, among them the striking use of articulation to achieve rhythmic variation.
When, in a 3/4 bar Dvorak used repeated eighth notes on every other beat, always on the same tone, it creates a fascination counter pulse, and adds orchestral depth to the sound. Today I found in Schubert's A minor Sonata, Op. 42 a similar repeated two-eighth-note pattern within a 3/4 meter, though not on every other beat. In the Schubert these notes are most often detached from the notes around them, yet at times he clearly indicates that that the 2nd eighth is an upbeat to the note that follows.
Repeated notes are always difficult on the piano: they generate more sound than we usually quite know how to handle. It changed the Schubert to play as if Dvorak had written it.
When, in a 3/4 bar Dvorak used repeated eighth notes on every other beat, always on the same tone, it creates a fascination counter pulse, and adds orchestral depth to the sound. Today I found in Schubert's A minor Sonata, Op. 42 a similar repeated two-eighth-note pattern within a 3/4 meter, though not on every other beat. In the Schubert these notes are most often detached from the notes around them, yet at times he clearly indicates that that the 2nd eighth is an upbeat to the note that follows.
Repeated notes are always difficult on the piano: they generate more sound than we usually quite know how to handle. It changed the Schubert to play as if Dvorak had written it.
Monday, October 22, 2012
Sonata allegro form: Schubert E-flat Sonata, Op. 122
Today I start a sample of four posts on the subject of a particular composition. I am offering a premium to subscribers who reach a certain amount on their subscription: the soon-to-be-reconstructed website www.tonalrefraction.com will give further details. Watch for the announcement of its opening which has been delayed due to unforeseeable technical difficulties beyond my control....The premium is that you get to pick a composition for piano or chamber music as the subject of four blog posts with the invitation to pose specific questions or enter into an email or on-line discussion on the subject. I will keep the tone as much as possible of general interest: i.e., instead of discussing particular measures or passages in the work I will treat items of general musical relevance, such as tempo, timing, recognizing allusions, meter, etc.
The key of a sonata is its subject matter. It is not possible to abstract ideas on the piano from the key in which they are written. This is, I realize, an item of considerable controversy. One of the myths underlying piano instruction is the interchangeability of tonalities, a myth disproved by simply listening to the difference in sonority between an E-flat and a D major triad. (I treat this subject in What Might It Mean? An Uncommon Glossary of Musical Terms and Concepts for the Stuck, Bored, and Curious:, to which I will be making frequent reference.)
The very opening sound of a sonata movement evokes either stability or its opposite. The malaise of a unison opening -- left and right hand playing in octaves with no accompanying harmony or complementary rhythm -- is palpable. Beginning a large composition this way feels like teetering on the edge of a one-dimensional world. Doubly upsetting is an opening in which, as in this instance, everything is in question: the root of the tonic triad is hidden in the broken chord and a reliable downbeat is nowhere to be found.
How you deal with that depends on your gut connection to the effect of those opening sounds. Once you have digested (or not digested, depending on your disposition) you may then launch a movement worthy of Schubert.
A sonata is like a game in which the composer engages you as partner, rather like tennis doubles in which Schubert is the one who serves.
The key of a sonata is its subject matter. It is not possible to abstract ideas on the piano from the key in which they are written. This is, I realize, an item of considerable controversy. One of the myths underlying piano instruction is the interchangeability of tonalities, a myth disproved by simply listening to the difference in sonority between an E-flat and a D major triad. (I treat this subject in What Might It Mean? An Uncommon Glossary of Musical Terms and Concepts for the Stuck, Bored, and Curious:, to which I will be making frequent reference.)
The very opening sound of a sonata movement evokes either stability or its opposite. The malaise of a unison opening -- left and right hand playing in octaves with no accompanying harmony or complementary rhythm -- is palpable. Beginning a large composition this way feels like teetering on the edge of a one-dimensional world. Doubly upsetting is an opening in which, as in this instance, everything is in question: the root of the tonic triad is hidden in the broken chord and a reliable downbeat is nowhere to be found.
How you deal with that depends on your gut connection to the effect of those opening sounds. Once you have digested (or not digested, depending on your disposition) you may then launch a movement worthy of Schubert.
A sonata is like a game in which the composer engages you as partner, rather like tennis doubles in which Schubert is the one who serves.
Sunday, October 21, 2012
Quarter Note Quagmire
Which came first: tone or timing?
It matters only when we try to separate the two, customarily for pedagogical purposes. "Count!" What a demeaning directive, if you stop to think about it. Surely the child can count but, as one of my astute nine-year-olds put it, "I can't count and play at the same time."
Two things come immediately to mind :
1. The teacher inferring that it is easy to count and play at the same time is unable to discern the movement that is actually impelling the student's auditory and physical coordination at the instrument. I was a student who could not play the piano and count at the same time. I would have given anything to master that skill. Teachers who insisted on counting as the solution only made things worse.
2. The artist striving to pierce the mysteries of Schumann, Schubert, Beethoven, Haydn, & Co. is hard put to overcome the habit of assuming that the quarter note (and its arithmetical subdivisions) conveys the unit of true rhythmic vitality. I am a mature artist whose astonishment grows every time I confront a composition that I had previously striven to master by counting it to death. At the moment it is Schubert Impromptus: The magic of playing multiple triplets as sextuples (i.e., in hemiola -- remember him?) is literally transformative.
It matters only when we try to separate the two, customarily for pedagogical purposes. "Count!" What a demeaning directive, if you stop to think about it. Surely the child can count but, as one of my astute nine-year-olds put it, "I can't count and play at the same time."
Two things come immediately to mind :
1. The teacher inferring that it is easy to count and play at the same time is unable to discern the movement that is actually impelling the student's auditory and physical coordination at the instrument. I was a student who could not play the piano and count at the same time. I would have given anything to master that skill. Teachers who insisted on counting as the solution only made things worse.
2. The artist striving to pierce the mysteries of Schumann, Schubert, Beethoven, Haydn, & Co. is hard put to overcome the habit of assuming that the quarter note (and its arithmetical subdivisions) conveys the unit of true rhythmic vitality. I am a mature artist whose astonishment grows every time I confront a composition that I had previously striven to master by counting it to death. At the moment it is Schubert Impromptus: The magic of playing multiple triplets as sextuples (i.e., in hemiola -- remember him?) is literally transformative.
Saturday, October 20, 2012
The Case of the Hidden Hemiola
"Everything's good in America!" If you know how to s(w)ing that, you know that a hemiola is "me -ri - ca." Though I cannot back this up scientifically I would venture to guess that every music in every culture since the beginning of time fooled around with triple meters (3 to the bar) dividing and multiplying each beat by 2.
The underlying point of the minuet, this rhythmic double entendre, explains why Baroque, classical, and even some modern composers wrote so many of them.
The hidden hemiolas are those places outside of dance movements in which, for example, a chord sustained for three-beats is bound by a slur to a "resolution" chord lasting one beat. I have learned to accent not the resolution chord, usually the first beat of the second measure, but the hidden strong hemiola beat: i.e., the third beat of the three-beat chord, weakening the chord change over the barline.
There are many such instances in the Schubert Impromptus and Moments Musicaux, not to mention the sonatas. Also in Beethoven, Mozart....
The underlying point of the minuet, this rhythmic double entendre, explains why Baroque, classical, and even some modern composers wrote so many of them.
The hidden hemiolas are those places outside of dance movements in which, for example, a chord sustained for three-beats is bound by a slur to a "resolution" chord lasting one beat. I have learned to accent not the resolution chord, usually the first beat of the second measure, but the hidden strong hemiola beat: i.e., the third beat of the three-beat chord, weakening the chord change over the barline.
There are many such instances in the Schubert Impromptus and Moments Musicaux, not to mention the sonatas. Also in Beethoven, Mozart....
Friday, October 19, 2012
Plus one, minus one
Plus one, minus one is a category of rhythm I define in the glossary What Might It Mean? An Uncommon Glossary of Musical Terms and Concepts for the Stuck, Bored, and Curious. Published in 1999, I have repeatedly made use of its insights in preparing my current series of solo recitals celebrating my recovery from surgery in 2007 and my return to fully intense playing. In the book I suggest that some problematic pianistic devices might not be so tiresome, so repetitive, so, well, boring, if subjected to that principle.
It works like this: Say there is a four-note broken chord repeated over more than one bar. Rather than accentuate the beginning of each four-note figure, staggering the mental emphasis by either adding or subtracting one rhythmic unit from each successive repetition has the uncanny effect of livening 1) the fingers 2)the figure 3) the contrapuntal potential of the piece 4) the listener.
Thus instead of 1 2 3 4 / 1 2 3 4 / 1 2 3 4 / 1 2 3 4 one gets
1 2 3 / 4 1 2 / 3 4 1 / 2 3 4 /1 2 3 /4 or perhaps
1 2 3 4 1 / 2 3 4 1 2 / 3 4 1 2 3 / 4
I tried it today on Schubert. It works like a charm. The sound, previously predictable, became mysterious, almost magical, except for the fact that it is much more difficult -- i.e., more fun -- to play.
It works like this: Say there is a four-note broken chord repeated over more than one bar. Rather than accentuate the beginning of each four-note figure, staggering the mental emphasis by either adding or subtracting one rhythmic unit from each successive repetition has the uncanny effect of livening 1) the fingers 2)the figure 3) the contrapuntal potential of the piece 4) the listener.
Thus instead of 1 2 3 4 / 1 2 3 4 / 1 2 3 4 / 1 2 3 4 one gets
1 2 3 / 4 1 2 / 3 4 1 / 2 3 4 /1 2 3 /4 or perhaps
1 2 3 4 1 / 2 3 4 1 2 / 3 4 1 2 3 / 4
I tried it today on Schubert. It works like a charm. The sound, previously predictable, became mysterious, almost magical, except for the fact that it is much more difficult -- i.e., more fun -- to play.
Thursday, October 18, 2012
Allergic to Quarter Notes
Beethoven's inimitable parsing of duple meters into fives plus threes was the underpinning of the Orpheus Chamber Orchestra's dynamic reading of his Fifth last week in Carnegie Hall (See post of October 16). It raises the question: Why do conductors lean so heavily on simplistic quarter note beats/?
If they are afraid the ensemble will otherwise fall part, they might try some more exciting alternative: perhaps the most amazing feat of the Orpheus was their refusal to be quarter-noted to death after what must be, for all the players combined, hundreds of deadly dull oversimplifications of the work. Wouldn't it be to everyone's short and long term advantage to risk chaos in the interest of heightened energy? The Orpheus players were empowered to lift the spirit of the whole symphony very high in defiance of musical gravity, resulting in liberated tempi and enormous joy.
I first got interested in this conductor vs. the beat question in studying the Beethoven Violin Concerto. Listening to several recordings I found only one in which the real rhythmic grit of the piece was in evidence, and there only on the part of the soloist (Zino Francescatti!). Eugene Ormandy stuck to his quarter-note guns while Francescatti articulated highly precise eighth notes (as in, "Beat me, Daddy, eight to the bar!" from the jitterbug era). Perhaps the clash between their approaches made for an exciting result for some listeners.
If they are afraid the ensemble will otherwise fall part, they might try some more exciting alternative: perhaps the most amazing feat of the Orpheus was their refusal to be quarter-noted to death after what must be, for all the players combined, hundreds of deadly dull oversimplifications of the work. Wouldn't it be to everyone's short and long term advantage to risk chaos in the interest of heightened energy? The Orpheus players were empowered to lift the spirit of the whole symphony very high in defiance of musical gravity, resulting in liberated tempi and enormous joy.
I first got interested in this conductor vs. the beat question in studying the Beethoven Violin Concerto. Listening to several recordings I found only one in which the real rhythmic grit of the piece was in evidence, and there only on the part of the soloist (Zino Francescatti!). Eugene Ormandy stuck to his quarter-note guns while Francescatti articulated highly precise eighth notes (as in, "Beat me, Daddy, eight to the bar!" from the jitterbug era). Perhaps the clash between their approaches made for an exciting result for some listeners.
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