Twelve-tone Rows, Of All Things!

Yesterday I butted into a conversation between two theory instructors, one of whom was complaining that his students could not identify the rows in a simple Schoenberg composition.

I resisted telling the following true story:

I used to do music in tandem with a 7th-grade math class at an inner-city school in New York.  I thought the kids would enjoy hearing a composition (Bagatelles for Harpsichord or Piano) which happens to use serial technique, written for me by my friend, the distinguished composer Ursula Mamlok.  I posed to the children the same question I posed to Ursula, the question which prompted the composition.  How would you write a meaningful prelude to the Suite in A minor by Henry Purcell?

One of the kids said right away, "Well, you certainly wouldn't start with A!"  Sure enough, A is the last tone of the row.

Models Are What We Learn, Not Substance

Ever since I was about five and someone gave me a toy plastic sailboat I have had a hunger for the real thing.  Why build a model of a sailboat that has none of the qualities of a real sailboat?  And why, of all the bad ideas, give it to a child?

It puzzled me throughout my formal education that so much emphasis was spent on mastering the models and so little attention paid to what the models represented.

Tonal Refraction is a model, but a model of the real thing, in that it represents what is heard, not the mechanics either of structure or the means of producing the sound.  It models an invisible sequence of events, sensible only to the listening ear, swimming in a sea of resonances impossible to predict or identify.

How many times in making a Tonal Refraction of a composition I think I know have I made the same mistake: i.e., predicted the length of a given tone, or its recurrence in a clearly sequential passage?

We are quickly lulled into the relative passivity of focusing on the active part of tones, the attack, while ignoring that other source of activity, the release.  Part of the art of composition is to use those seductions to arouse attention to the true events.

" 'Taint easy, McGee!"

Superfluous, Read Superficial, Rubato

Random tuning in to the radio can yield interesting discoveries.  Yesterday it was Horowitz playing a Liszt transcription of Schubert's famous Serenade, one of those unforgettable melodies that drift over what seems like an endlessly repetitive rhythmic accompaniment.

Horowitz did the usual thing, emphasizing quarter note divisions on every single beat of every single bar, though Schubert has distinctly indicated not triplets, but sextuples, which go three to the half note, NOT the quarter note.  To avoid sounding repetitive he indulged the melody with shameless rubato, completely unnecessary if the accompaniment figure is set up to produce inherent tension, i.e., interest.

Just now I heard a young pianist playing Chopin's Scherzo in E.  Same problem.  Only here, to avoid the monotony he played faster than fast, thus missing any chance of interest in internal rhythms, and had to play the slower passages slower than slow and more sentimentally than I can tolerate.

Curious the lengths to which musicians go to avoid answering the fundamental question: Why I am so bored playing this piece?

Let's Hear It for Not Practicing

I get in a certain amount of trouble for pointing out that sometimes players who don't practice turn out to be more insightful about music than people who think they know what they are doing because they can play all the right notes.

This morning was another instance of how this works:  A young man who loves the "Moonlight" Sonata, as do I, played through the first 2/3 of the first movement.  Was there any passage that particularly bothered him, or stood out as different from all the rest?  He noted the passage where the piece happens to modulate to the key of F# minor--I say "happens to" because I don't believe in the concept as taught in theory class.

Making the music coherent to him required that I attend to its inner workings, something I had never had to do because I have "no trouble" playing the notes.  But sometimes "no trouble" is trouble in disguise, or at least non-comprehension.  Just because I can get away without noticing what holds it together doesn't mean I "get" it.

I am struck by how often it is the students who lead me to real learning.

Going With the Flow

I am always surprised at how much music depends on sounds that cannot be written down, i.e., on resonance, which you might say is the subject of Tonal Refraction.

This element is often disregarded in training children, though it is arguably the dimension of sound that most intrigues them: just tap on a tiny bell or other reverberant object and see the infant's eyes light up.

This aspect of Chopin's music, properly brought to life, makes an indelible impression.  I will never forget hearing for the first time Rubinstein in Carnegie Hall stopping time with the opening sound of the D-flat Major Nocturne.  It stays with me as the model of how the piano works, and of how music written for the piano works.

Once having learned to ignore this element it is wondrously difficult to bring it to the fore.  To do this I recommend playing pianissimo with half-pedal, never changing the pedal through mistakes and all.  As you feel the vibrations accumulate they begin to make a kind of sense that analyzable harmonies simply cannot achieve.

Early Does Not Mean Simplistic

Last night I attended a concert by an early music group made up primarily of players of viols with some individual solo parts, violin and vocalists.

First, addressing pitch:  There are a limited number of pitches in this music.  Is that really true?  Not if the vocalism that clearly prompts them is taken into account, in which case one would be struck over and over again by the dynamic range possible when the direction of approach is taken into account.  The violinist understood this and played so that it came alive in pitch.  The accompanying viols were careful, did not pick up the ball much less return it.  Result: droning.

Second, concerning rhythm(s): The bowing technique of period instrument invites rapid response, more like flickering than changes of bow direction.  This puts some attacks on the early, some on the late side side of the beat.  Again, the violinist stood out while the others seemed to be hiding behind correctness.

I don't go to concerts to hear correctness.  I want the players' listening to raise my listening to a new level. 

Tonal Refraction and the Limitations of Standard Music Notation

I have been reworking a Tonal Refraction of Schumann's Waldszenen, the subject of Vol. II of my series on Tone Perception Visualized.

It is a cycle of nine puzzles, some more puzzling than others.  The one currently foremost in my imagination is called Einsame Blumen and is marked to be played Einfach.  (Isolated Blossoms ?  to be played simply?)

I observe certain rules in making a Tonal Refraction: The tones under a slur rise if the last note under the slur is higher than the first, fall if the last tone is lower, and do not assert direction if the two notes are the same.  What a revelation this is when playing the work!

As a child I was taught that musical phrases go somewhere.  Here only some of them do.  Are those the isolated blossoms to which the title refers?  If so, the phrases that do not move are only increasing that quality of isolation.  What about the left hand articulations:  staccato eighth notes function very differently from sustained half notes under those right hand groupings.  Maybe simply observing these articulations is, in fact, the"simply" Schumann had in mind.

All I can say is that it is bloody difficult to do it.