scenes or impressions

When Robert Schumann was asked about the meaning of a particular piece he had written, he simply sat down and played it again. So the story goes. The music meant itself.

Like most slogans in a war, it is oversimplified, and admits very little variation. Or the truth.

After all, sometime either before or after the alleged incident, that same Mr. Schumann wrote several sets of pieces with titles suggesting that the music did point to something other than itself. Either the inspiration for, or the suggestion of, the music, was taken from life, and life, astonishingly, is not completely reducible to musical notes.

Take a poem. While reading it, several images, sensory perceptions, and narrative details may float through your mind, connections to other poems, which in turn conjure their own set of ideas and concepts. That doesn't mean that the words in the page make no matter, or that you should spend the entire poem daydreaming about that vacation you took to the beach in Florida whilst completely leaving the actual content of the poem itself behind in your reverie. The words themselves, the play of the sounds, the intriguing constructions, syllables, emphases, peculiar line breaks or word inversions, repetition of images, or consonants--all of that matters, just as the musical notes matter.  At the same time, they point to something else. That doesn't strike me as being unfathomable. But there was an ideological war on in 19th century Germany, so everyone had to take a side. Music-drama (as espoused by Wagner) or absolute music, with Schumann and later Brahms as hero. What a silly lot we are.

Next Friday I am including on my program Schumann's "Kinderscenen"--usually translated "Scenes from Childhood" though that isn't necessarily what the term means exactly (literally "child-scenes?"). Each of the pieces bears a title suggesting an image or activity one may have experienced in childhood "curious story," "important event," "knight of the hobby horse," "dreaming."

Our good Wikipedia says that the titles were actually put on the pieces after their composition, which is curious. It could tell us not to be too caught up in the imagery, since Schumann was apparently not thinking of the idea or image at the time of composition. On the other hand, if the pieces, when finished, suggested those ideas to the composer, then perhaps they ought to suggest those ideas to us as well. I should point out that it is just that "tyranny of ideas" that caused some people to protest against program music (Schumann included?).  Why can't I substitute my own ideas? Why do I have to imagine what the composer wants me to imagine?

But then why daydream at all? We've already experienced some of the worst of what happens when one reduces music to something else--cannon shots and trumpet calls, all impeccably labeled for those who couldn't figure it out on their own (see last week's installment). Is it better to be more subtle about it? One thinks of Debussy, who wished his printer to put the titles of the pieces after each prelude rather than at the top of the first page. Play the music, then I'll tell you what I was thinking.

Then there are the wide swaths of people who assure us that music is strongest and best at suggesting emotion. Thus, the impressions of, or emotions connected with something, rather than the thing itself. Not the story, but the way we should feel about the story. Think movie music. What is the function of the film score if not to direct you to feel a certain way about the events happening on screen, or at least to affirm them (after all, if you've been to a certain number of movies you know when to expect the heroic C major blast when the good guy finally breaks through and achieves victory).

Like Satie's pieces (a few weeks ago we discussed "Sports and Recreations") these pieces are short; little cameos with a lot to say. And they have an interesting compositional history.

Again from the almighty Wikipedia: evidently Mr. Schumann needed a couple of months to get these pieces written. This is frequently a surprise to people who think composers are somehow always operating in real time, and can't fathom how a piece 30 seconds long might take all day to write. It may also surprise persons who know Schumann's habit of sketching an entire symphony in just a few days.

What seems to have taken the longest was the ultimate order of the pieces, as well as their selection. It wasn't that Schumann had a problem with fecundity--he wrote some 30 pieces. But only 13 made the final cut. And listening to the set now, perfectly chiseled, and forming such a beautiful chain of continuity and variety, it is hard to notice any struggle at all, so well did he succeed.

Scenes from Childhood, op. 15
Of Strange Lands and People
Curious Story
Blind man's Bluff
Pleading Child
Happy Enough
Important Event
Dreams
By the Fireside
Knight of the Hobbyhorse
Almost too Serious
Frightening
Child Falling Asleep
The Author Speaks

The Beauty of Interpretation

This is part four of a four part series, all concerned with Robert Schumann's
"Of Strange Lands and People" from "Scenes from Childhood." The first three parts can be accessed here, here, and here.

It's astonishing what one can discover in one short, simple piece of music. For the last three Mondays, that piece has been the first movement of Robert Schumann's "Scenes from Childhood." If you're getting a little tired of it, I promise we'll move on to something else next week! In fact, last week's third installment in what has become now a four part series was supposed to be the last one. But something odd happened last week while I was posting the last one and I had to talk about it.

Things didn't quite work out the way I had planned.

I ask people to use their ears on this blog, at least on Mondays (and sometimes Fridays) which is a dicey business. Some folks probably think they can't hear anything with their untrained ears, and, sure enough, as soon as they can't hear what I'm talking about it confirms them in their notions. Obviously all ears aren't created equal and it certainly takes practice to be able to hear well. That's point number one. Point B (as people like to continue) is that there are plenty of strengths and weaknesses in all of us: things we would be good at hearing and things we aren't. So if you can't follow the argument one week you can always stick around until either you get it, or I explain it better, or we go on to something you can pick up on with more ease, or just music you happen to like. Music is a mighty ocean, not a small pond.

And then there is the self-defeating example I posted last week. The point I was trying to make is that Mr. Schumann did something rather strange, even barbaric sounding, by omitting a particular note (the third of the chord) in one place. But when I listened to my own music example, I couldn't help thinking, well, that doesn't sound all that rude after all.

I have a busy schedule like all of you, and sometimes I record things weeks before I get them posted. And frequently, I make those recordings without taking the time I would like to to live with the music and interpret it in a way that convinces me, and hopefully you. Instead, I have to parse the musical contents on the fly. And apparently, what I decided to do in that spot, when I heard Schumann's "barbarism" was to soft pedal it. I made it as pretty as I could. I slowed down just a bit, and resolved the chord with as much finesse as I knew how. It worked rather well. Except it wasn't supposed to, not after I changed my mind about it!

This is the fascinating world of interpretation. A musician plays a passage the way it seems to him or her. And then the audience feels the passage the way the musician conceives it. Which might not be the way the composer felt it; for that matter, maybe the audience doesn't end up feeling it the same way, either. But the reason no two pianists play something exactly the same way has a lot to do with these myriads of tiny decisions that pianists make every moment about how every phrase contributes to the whole, and how it strikes them in the moment. Sure, the composer leaves plenty of instruction on the page, but they can't cover everything--not nearly.

So, in the moment, that rude chord (why did Schumann put it there?) became gentle just because I decided to be "musical" (which, I am afraid, is code for making everything sound pretty). I wonder if I betrayed the composer a little.

Leon Fleischer has a phrase, "support the composer," which means not to shortchange features in a composition: if anything, exaggerate them slightly (can you do that? Anyway, that unfortunate cataract of words is my own, not his). Don't cheat on the long notes, or the sudden dynamic changes--let everything have its full effect. Maybe I violated this rule.

Then there was the second musical example. I noticed afterward that I hadn't really put the fermata (that musical "full stop") in the right place. Schumann holds on to the pretty G major chord first, and only then pollutes it with an A that doesn't belong, on its way to a passing C that doesn't belong either. The effect might be one of poise and repose which is then slowly exploded, but just before it manages to get out of hand, order is restored in the next phrase. The question is, how messy is that moment?

That's an interesting question for me because I imagine a lot of pianists saw a lot of ugliness in many early 20th century compositions, and that glaring "modernism" (or were they just supporting the composers? :) might have helped audiences tag them as pieces they'd rather avoid from now on. And yet, some of those same ugly harmonies, when finessed by today's jazz pianists, don't sound that shocking at all. Obviously, interpretation has a lot to do with how one perceives a piece. And that gives the interpreter a lot of power.

Mr. Schumann also asked that the tempo be slowed down at that point so that whatever chaos has crept in can do it in slow motion, but, true to form, he never actually tells us when to resume the regular tempo. Is it because he assumes any idiot will know to get back into the regular tempo when the next phrase begins (standard practice, but most other composers put the "a tempo" in anyway at that point)? Or was he thinking something else. With Schumann, who knows?

(aside: Fleischer once dodged the issue when I asked him a question about some dynamic marks in a Schumann sonata by putting it to the whole class, rhetorically of course!)

Anyhow, by the time I get a chance to record the whole set later this spring I hope to spend enough time with it to come up with my own definitive (provisional) answers to some of these questions. Posting a bit of it untimely ripped helps in the process of figuring these things out. And now you know the kinds of things that keep some of us up nights.

Hey, whatever I can do to make you feel normal!

The power of the obvious

Famed pedagogue Nadia Boulanger would tell her composition students, "Never strain to avoid the obvious."

I've always felt the key word there is strain. Despite getting bombarded daily with all the advice to keep things simple and to "just be yourself" (which might not be the same thing) and not to use 50 cent words when a penny word will do just as well because otherwise you are necessarily being pretentious, it seems to me a composer who only deals in the blatantly obvious ought to be writing greeting cards or making chitchat about the weather at parties, not stringing musical cliches together. We won't remember them anyhow.

But there is something effective about telling us what we already know, grounding us, reminding us of something obvious and important, if it is done well.

Last week I spent the entire blog post discussing the first movement of Robert Schumann's Scenes from Childhood. I noted how he took this melody and harmonized the first upward leap in an unusual and effective way. Schumann's fifty cent musical word turned out to rescue what would otherwise have been a serviceable but rather dull opening phrase, and instead turned it into a psychological portrait.

That is only half the story, however. Schumann managed to avoid harmonizing the high G with a plain old G major chord, but he didn't do it for long. The curious thing is that this short musical idea, with the opening leap to high G, occurs three times. The first two times the composers gives out that surprising diminished chord, full of tension. But the third time, he resorts to the perfectly obvious G major chord.

It is an odd strategy. You might expect a composer to do something obvious at first, and then save the musical surprise for later. Or if he starts with something we didn't see coming, to serve up something even more interesting once our ears had adjusted to the first wave. (Schumann builds the climax of the famous Träumerei, later in this set, on a chord that few composers would have even thought of.) Instead, just as the accumulated energy of three musical entreaties demands something really special, Schumann "settles" for the most obvious thing at hand, a garden variety tonic major chord.

It works. Here's why: the diminished chord Schumann uses the first two times is full of tension, such that the major chord on the third iteration comes as a glorious release. The other reason is that, as Theory 101 as that chord is, Schumann didn't actually use it the way it comes out of the box, with another G on the bottom. Instead he used a B, which means two things.

For one thing, he's dropped the bass lower, which means there is more distance between the top note and the bottom note. It is like a swimming pool getting deeper. The surface of the water stays at the same level; the bottom drops. The effect of this is a musical illusion: it sounds as if Schumann's melody note has gone higher, which is what you'd expect. If you are going to say something three times, ordinarily, on the third time, your upward leap will expand, not stay where it was. Schumann leaves it right where it was and moves the bass down instead. He hasn't moved the characters, he's moved the scenery!

The other thing that results from choosing a B in the bass is that it keeps the piece moving forward. Theory students learn about notes called "tendency tones" which set up musical incompleteness that needs to be fulfilled by moving to another note. It is as if I had said "I am going to the." The sentence isn't over. You expect a noun like "hospital" or "bodega" or "avocado farm" to complete the thought.

Schumann completes the thought by finally changing the melody, and giving us an important structural, load-bearing C major chord, which turns the phrase homeward and makes this little piece work so well.

Schumann may have experienced all of this as a flash of insight, but he wasn't unaware. The difference between genius and the ordinary isn't that one feels while the other thinks, as popular as that notion is, but that genius processes all of that decision making much faster. Unpacking it can take hours!

Next Monday we'll probably spend one more week with this fascinating little piece, and then I'll give you more music and less analysis for a while. It's not easy to slog through, I agree. But it does give us an idea of why some music is worth remembering long after the demise of its composer.

Schumann, Scenes from Childhood: Of Strange Lands and People

The Sound of Nostalgia

Sometimes on Listening Mondays we listen to an entire piece and I only say a little about it. Other times, we hone in on just a few small details, rather than a broad concept, or try to trace one from the other. At times, it is the broad sweep of the piece, perhaps its overall scheme that interests us.

Today's installment is about a single chord.

Let's listen first to Robert Schumann's Scenes from Childhood, a collection of 13 short pieces. Today I'm going to play for you the first piece, sometimes translated as "of strange lands and people."

Listen

It's a lovely piece; kind of wispy, perhaps, maybe sentimental. I don't know how well it captures childhood--it may have a bit too much of the adult-trying-to-remember-what-it-was-like quality, or rather, that latterday romanticized view we have of those glory days when we were small after the fact. Well, this is music from the Romantic Period, after all!

But how you hear, and what you hear, depends quite a bit on a very hard to define but powerful thing: the psychological, or emotional impact it makes on you. And for me, one powerful ingredient in that is that second chord.

Schumann's melody is very expressive; particularly that upward leap between the first two notes.

Listen

But that isn't all of it. If Schumann had had all of the imagination of the average conservatory student in first year theory, he probably would have stuck a good old G major chord under that second melody note. It is, after all, a G, and the most obvious thing to do is to harmonize a G with a G chord.

Listen

But how wrong would that be! Gone is the tug at the heart, the happysad pull of a memory you can't get back but remember with fondness, and a bit of pain because you are now and forever outside of it. And he does this all with one diminished chord.

Listen

Diminished chords were rather popular during the 19th century. The tension they created, and the ambiguous nature of their component parts (you can make them go in several directions quite easily) made them almost the musical discovery of the time. Later on these ineffable harmonies were vulgarized and made to provide cheap melodrama whenever the heroine got tied to the train tracks in silent movies. Someone is always trying to overload the senses the easiest way possible.

But Schumann isn't trying to play with our pulse. Instead, with a simple musical brushstroke, he reminds us at once of a moment of pleasant reminiscence and of its attendant pain. You can't go back; but you can remember.