On the Moderato Trail

New finding today:  In CPE Bach!  I am deeply convinced that such modifiers as moderato, un poco (as in un poco allegro), assai, imply that the "real" tempo word (usually allegro) refers not as much to speed as to metric structure.

Think about it: If allegro means essentially a ratio rhythm of 4:1 with a quarter note beat, then

• assai might mean allegro as strictly defined
• moderato might mean not as strictly defined but with a lyrical bending
• un poco allegro might mean allegro but not at all times

I prefer the word "might" to "would" as all musical definitions must be tested in each specific case.

Hearing the Performance, Then Working on the Music

The two highest forms of praise:

• Leaving the performance aware that you did not pay enough for the ticket
• Making a bee-line for the source so that you can work on the music yourself

Someone told me that the day after hearing my in-house performance of the Chopin E-flat minor Polonaise and the Liszt Valse Oubliee, No. 1 she looked up the scores the next day and deepened her experience and her pleasure. 

I am grateful that she let me know.

Why rests?

Funny how rests are such a bother:  all they do is interrupt the flow of sound which we go to so much trouble to get going.

I remember listening to a couple of young players who simply refused to stop the flow by not observing a single rest and I know from personal experience how difficult it is to contend with silence.  So why have them?

If they are taken as having as much to do with sound as with silence they may be understood as implicit question marks:

• What is the direction of my anticipated re-taking of sound: up? down?
• If no change, i.e., if I am to re-enter on the same pitch I just left have I actually rested, or does the rest indicate an interrupted long note?
• Does the rest coincide with the end of a phrase, or not?
• Am I supposed to keep the beat during the rest, or to lose track of it?  How do I know?

The Ear as Gateway

What we learn about music when we study it is precisely that, i.e., about music rather than music pure and simple.  As a result listening becomes harder and harder to cultivate as we remain distracted by notions of form, style, technique---this or that irrelevant aspect of what might be being played whether or not it engages the ear.

Music has come to mean something codified, a commodity among commodities.  Our experience of it is rarely pure and simple except in certain circumstances.  These circumstances are outstanding in that they involve deeply personal experience within a group which then unites in gratitude for the experience and in astonishment at the extent to which it has been fully shared.

I think of Barbes, the boite in Brooklyn where Rachelle Garniez plays once a month: I wouldn't miss it, partly for the reasons described above.

Also, listening to the choir at St. Thomas Episcopal Church in NYC under the direction of the late Gerre Hancock, a sound so deeply human and so richly personal that it produced a palpable agreement among the congregation that we had all been mutually engaged and transformed.

What Is a Dance?

A listener raised that interesting question after a program consisting mostly of dances:  a Bach partita, polonaises by W.F. Bach and by Chopin, and waltzes by Chopin and Liszt.

As soon as one is no longer actually on one's feet, however, the dance becomes, as does all other music, a function of memory, fantasy, dream or, as in the case of the Liszt Valse Oubliee, something utterly intangible, unimaginable, ephemeral, fragile beyond telling.

These elements cannot be written down, they must be lived.  Or they may have been imparted in the artistry of, say, Artur Rubinstein, whose playing of that Liszt positively knocked me down when I first heard it in 1961 and has remained my instruction ever since.

Of course one must start somewhere.  At the beginning it makes sense to teach young learners that dance has to do with balance, with some kind of rhythmic regularity that keeps the dancers from falling over.

Dance: Where is it's Heart?

We think of dance as being of the body, but there must be more to it than that. What if dance is a synonym for body: is there anything simple about that? 

As children we learn that dances have to do with beats, regular beats so that the dancer does not fall flat on their face.  But what about adults remembering dancing, dancing while drunk, while in love, etc., etc.,?

The imagination takes over and we find ourselves, again, at the mercy of forces too diverse to name and too fleeting to contemplate.

"Beethoven Never Used 'Moderato' " - Really?

In Schubert: A Musical Portrait Alfred Einstein goes into considerable and admirable detail on the meaning of moderato in Schubert: it concerns, in his words, a "lyrical quality."  He points out that Beethoven never used the term.  (Haydn, on the contrary, used it very, very frequently; it could be that Haydn was Schubert's source for the sense of the word.)

Never, except for the Op. 17 Sonata for natural horn and piano, which I have been playing with great delight together with my son.  The sound of the horn is instructing me why Beethoven would use that term for two of the movements in this piece.  The sound is itself so lyrical, so not homogenized, that it requires special timing, special attentiveness.  To play the work as if that is not central to its concept is to do it a great disservice.  In fact, it renders the piece trivial, which is why so few people even know (about) it and those who do turn up their noses at it.