Depends on who's telling the story

If you've ever been to a piano competition you might have noticed that if thirty pianists are required to play the same piece of music, they will often play that piece very differently. How does that happen? In this article I'm going to talk a bit about interpretation.

A couple of weeks ago I made a recording of a Scarlatti sonata--hurriedly, as usual, but except for the distractingly out of tune octave Gs in the treble of the piano, the result wasn't too bad, and I posted it last week on this blog. As I was preparing to post the recording I wanted to check to make sure I got the catalog number right so I checked with The Google and stumbled across a Youtube recording of a pianist named Nikolai Demidenko.

Mr. Demidenko apparently knows how to play the piano, having won some major competitions and toured the world, etc. although to be honest I hadn't heard of him. But it's a big world and I don't pay as much attention to the world of piano superstars as you might think.

What was interesting about listening to his interpretation is that it was quite a bit different than mine. I had made the recording before I listened to anybody else play the piece, so it was enlightening. Mr. Demidenko's approach was largely more graceful and smoother than mine. I remember thinking that I might have captured some Spanish passion with the rendition, although Scarlatti was actually Italian. John Kirkpatrick, whose book on Scarlatti I read years ago, thought that Scarlatti may have been somewhat bold and reckless; there were rumors that he had a gambling problem, that he was a risk taker, and adventurer--all these things might have contributed to the music as I played it. Except for one problem: I'm not so sure that we are so sure that we really know that much about Scarlatti's personality. And although Kirkpatrick believes that Scarlatti's music is somewhat biographical, which is a nice thought, it's hard to know just how far one can safely take something like that. And anyhow, when it comes to storytelling, what you hear, and how you hear it, depends greatly on who is doing the storytelling.

For example, there is a place about 32 seconds into my rendition (or :26 into Demidenko's) where, after a short pause, the second portion of the piece begins. For me, it is loud and boisterous. For Demidenko, it is soft and elegant. Who's right?

If you happen to follow along with the musical score which accompanies the Youtube video it appears that he is. That score is full of dynamics and articulation marks that largely agree with the pianist of the video. The trouble there is that Scarlatti didn't actually write those marks; this score has been heavily edited by someone who is giving us one way to interpret the music based, as far as I can tell, on nothing more than his or her own imagination. Which means that there are really three persons in this drama--myself, Mr. Demidenko, and whoever edited the music that appears with the video (by the way, my edition, edited by Kirkpatrick, has none of those marks in it).

There are times, however, when what Mr. Demidenko is playing is the opposite of what the music on the video shows, which either means that he wasn't using that edition (a third party, I presume, put the video together) or he didn't always agree with it.

At the end of the first section, for instance, both of us--Demidenko and myself--get gradually softer and end piano. The accompanying musical score prescribes a loud ending.

Perhaps the most interesting think about the Russian pianist's rendering is the pacing. In the second section of the piece (by the way, he doesn't take the repeats so he plays both halves of the piece only once) he slows down greatly (1:29-1:56), making the unusual harmonies introspective and brooding. For me, those crunches were exciting, and a chance to build the momentum until the final outburst of joy in F major. Now the score itself says nothing whatsoever about slowing down there. It isn't impossible that Scarlatti himself might have done something like that; partly because composers didn't write in tempo changes very often in the middle of pieces in those days, and partly because, given Scarlatti's mercurial personality (if that is true) he may have relished such a sudden shock to the system. Or not. There is no way to know.

At any rate, Mr. Demedenko does it well. And his storytelling is sure. I went on his website, and of course it is full of publicity blurbs from critics about how well he plays. There was one that said that he had "revealed the astonishing fecundity of Beethoven's imagination." Of course, it is possible that Beethoven (or Scarlatti) might never have imagined some of the things he says they did in his playing--that his interpretive imagination is making things up, in other words. But at least it is convincing. Would the composers appreciate that? Who knows? I'll err on the side of imagining that they would. Perhaps Scarlatti would not be displeased with my version either. Maybe on different days and in different moods he would have inclined to one or the other. I recently explained to a student how composers who lived recently enough to have made recordings of their own works sometimes confound our attempts to be true to their own written instructions by ignoring them themselves! Then there are others who insist on consistent fidelity to the marks on the score. What was Scarlatti like? He only wrote down the notes, and he had one catch-all sign for every ornament. Was he free in his performances?


There is, finally, an element of interpretation owed to the sonata being played on a modern piano. Mr. Demidenko's rendering tends toward beauty of sound and a very legato touch--something that would have been unacheivable on a harpsichord, at least to the extent that the notes melt together. My version, particularly in the second section, is more rustic and vivacious, and louder. However, if you attacked the opening chords of this section on a harpsichord the way I did on a piano, you would break strings. Perhaps Mr. Demidenko's way is better historically? On the other hand, the sound of the harpsichord is hardly smooth and beautiful like that of a modern Steinway. Lovely in its own way, or course, but not so that the tones blend together.

There is room in this world for more than one interpretation. Arthur Schnabel said that great music is music that is better than it can ever possibly be played; one cannot exhaust its possibilities in any single playing. Some years ago I started to catalog the pieces I recorded for pianonoise--hence the number that comes at the end of the file name. I did this so that I could record the same piece again and be able to tell them apart (the higher the number, the more recent is the recording). I haven't gotten around to that much yet, but the internet has evolved to the point that you can hear the various approaches from different personalities with the click of a few buttons. People fight over these details, and it isn't that those things aren't worth fighting over (politely). But it is the differences that teach us something, that make us think, that remove us from our own little philosophical spot on the planet. So here are both of our (or rather, all three of our) efforts. Enjoy!

Scarlatti: Sonata in F, k. 518    as played by Michael Hammer

Scarlatti: Sonata in F, k, 518   link to Youtube video as played by Nikolai Demidenko

Getting the feel of it

How are you this fine Monday morning?

Me, I'm exhausted. I'm probably lying in bed right now aching, and in no hurry to get up. I'll catch up with you around noon, maybe.

The reason for that might have something to do with my weekend. Saturday night I had a concert with one organization. Sunday afternoon was a concert with another group. In between I had the usual four weekend church services, also a dress rehearsal on Friday night for group one, and then on Sunday, after three services and a concert, another (three hour) rehearsal for another thing group one is doing. Group two had their dress Thursday and is now finished for the season.

So I'm probably a little less chipper than my usual Monday morning self. I say probably because I wrote this entry on Thursday night and I'm having it posted automatically at 8 a.m. Monday while I'm likely still in bed, dead to the world, because I'm a musician and I work weekends, but not necessarily Monday mornings.

Now one of the terrific things about recordings is they can capture a moment and play it back for us much later. The recording I'm going to play for you, of a sonata by Domenico Scarlatti, was made about a week ago, and I gave it a very vigorous, energetic playing, which is likely the very opposite of what I am feeling right now.

Scarlatti: Sonata in F, k.518

John Kirkpatrick, a pianist and person who studied Scarlatti's music quite a bit, wrote a book about it (at least one), and is the reason for that "k" up there (he cataloged all 555 of Scarlatti's sonatas so we could all tell them apart)--John Kirkpatrick once wrote that he thought of Scarlatti's sonatas as "leaves in a diary;" as if the man was capturing impressions, moods, occasions at the court of the king and queen he served, recording the life all around him, and making music of it instead of words.

Perhaps. I say perhaps because there have always been musicians who get uncomfortable around these ideas, particularly because musical story telling and the sharing of feelings can only get a composer part of the way there. If you can't articulate and structure what you want to say, if you can't formulate it using musical formulas and rules and customs, combined with your own idiosyncrasies, if you can't use your intellect to tame and discipline your music, you won't get very far. A feeling, by itself, can't speak for itself. Articulation is the resonator.

Still, it's amazing to what degree human beings can apparently share feelings with one another, impressions, ideas. These are all apparently invisible, inarticulate, difficult to pin down, and yet to some extent we manage to convey these things, through force of will and intellect, even over great distances in time and space. The internet has me amazed at how I can communicate with people from the other side of the globe. Mr. Scarlatti's sonata was written by a man living in Spain, 300 years ago, in a castle I've never seen, in a world I'll never experience. And yet, here it is. You can experience it, too.

Of course, some of what your are hearing might be more me than Scarlatti. It's hard to know. We do know that Scarlatti would have played it on a harpsichord rather than a Steinway. And we know that when the king acquired a piano it was later converted to a harpsichord. I'll try not to take that personally. The harpsichord is a great instrument. And I flatter myself that if Scarlatti heard me play his sonata in this bold manner on this bold instrument, he might even warm to the piano a bit. The pianos of his time were timid customers.

So on this probably cold, dreary morning, when I'm sleeping in, here's some exciting, festival music from a time long ago and far away. What occasioned it we don't know. And if we did know we might be disappointed. The reality of the specific experience probably didn't really live up to the musical memory. But he sure makes it sound like someplace you'd want to be, doesn't he?

That was the Christmas when....

Merry Christmas morning to all of you!

I'm currently in a car on my way to the airport to visit relatives for a few days. The Christmas Eve Marathon at my church wrapped a little after midnight so I'm exhausted, running on about three or four hours of sleep. Probably. I'm guessing at my condition, actually, since I wrote this post a few days ago and had it posted automatically. At least robots are good for something.

And what did I get you this year? Why, it's a Scarlatti Sonata! K.513. Don't tell me you have that one already. If you do, you can trade it in for one of his other fine 554 sonatas. And sonata related accessories. Sounds like the perfect gifts for hard-core collectors with quite a bit of nearly everything.

But if you do trade it in for something else, you might miss the fortuity of this particular sonata for this particular occasion. Musicologist and Scarlatti specialist John Kirkpatrick thinks of these sonatas as "leaves from a diary" and suggests that the composer, who lived at the Spanish court, in the employ of the queen, and in the company of the royal family, may have left, embedded within the pieces, some of the moments of courtly life. The pomp, the celebrations, the festivities, the seasons of the year, and who knows what all else. It is, just as I mention in the last post, not a popular view with some musically inclined persons, and it is also really guesswork. Yet there is something in this particular sonata that has always made me want to associate it with Christmas, even though there is nothing in the score to suggest that this was what the composer intended.

The reason for it, I think, is that the piece begins in the manner of a pastorale, in a rocking, 12/8 rhythm, and the dotted gestures right at the beginning (play the first four notes a bit slower and you have the opening rhythm of "Silent Night" even if it is melodically upside down) suggest a whole slew of pieces that do overtly conjure up the rocking of the holy infant by his mother.

As the section progresses, things get more lively, and a celebration breaks out, which seems like the thing to do on Christmas morning. Perhaps that long first section is the transition from the mystery of Christmas Eve to the joy of Christmas morning. Then, as all Scarlatti sonatas do, the entire section repeats.

Structurally, Scarlatti's job is to get us away from the opening key and opening them into a new key and with new ideas, then repeat the whole process (literally, with a repeat sign), and then, in a second section, to take us back to where we started, in the originally key, but this time with both of the major musical ideas in that key. It is a musical round trip that makes up the stuff of most piano sonatas, and Mr. Scarlatti did it well over 500 times. But the odd thing here is that, while technically he holds to that overall frame, the tempo keeps increasing, and the music becomes every more boisterous. By the second section, all celebration breaks loose. In a scheme in which balance is the name of the game, this sonata sounds really asymmetrical.

In which case, it seems odd to repeat both portions of the sonata (the second of which is distinctly shorter than the first). Perhaps that was just a custom from which Scarlatti found it impossible to break away. Maybe it isn't so bad getting two chances to absorb all of the musical information. And to anticipate, the second time, how much fun is waiting for us when we get there.

Sonata in C, K.513 by Domenico Scarlatti