I'd like to be stubborn like that

This blog apparently got lost in the pipeline. It was meant for two weeks ago, but I'll give it to you now.

This year, for Pentecost, I treated the folks at the early service to some 17th century Spanish music, courtesy of one Antonio de Cabezon. This Sunday [May 31] the folks at the 10:30 service will get to hear him, too, by way of a piece he actually did write.

The thing that fascinates me about the piece I have for you, however, is that it is actually a transcription (and apparently not a very exact transcription) that Cabezon made of the music of another composer, a fellow by the name of Josquin des Prez (1450-1521).

You really have to be a specialist in early music to find that last part exciting, I suppose, but I am going to totally geek out here and confess that I found it very, very exciting. I never thought I would actually get to play the music of Josquin for you pianonoisians for the simple reason that the man never wrote anything for the keyboard. In fact the only thing that actually survives in his own hand is some graffiti he left in the choir stall at. St. Mark's where he sang the choir as a boy. If there is anybody from the Central Illinois Children's Choir, or The Chorale, or our church choir reading this, don't get any ideas.

Anyhow, it turns out Mr. des Prez's music was studied by another early composer of eminence, Mr. Cabezon (1510-66). Now, Martin Luther admired Josquin so much that he called him the "master of the notes." Apparently Cabezon encountered his music on a trip to Italy and made a copy of it to study. How he made the copy is a good question; we know that Cabezon was, for most of his life, blind. We also know that he spent most of his life working as organist for the king and queen of Spain. That's about all we know, and the details of his daily life are lost, as, probably, is a lot of his music.

Some of it was preserved and published by his son; and while most of it is original, there is a piece of a mass by Josquin; the phrase "with the Holy Spirit" that I'm going to play for you now.

Many people are under the impression that great composers are very original and that they just get their ideas from within themselves. On the contrary, the greatest tend to be the ones who study the most, who learn from the composers around them and those who came before with a particular energy. Out of that fund of ideas and learning spring their greatest pieces. So what Cabezon was doing is not at all uncommon for a composer of his stature. Bach made quite a large number of a transcriptions for the organ of the music of other composers also. So did Mozart. So did Brahms. Etc, etc. etc.

Cabezon, whose surname means "stubborn" in Spanish, was learning from one of the great masters of the generation before him. And he went on to become the first important composer of Spanish keyboard music.

Tiento is from the Spanish verb for "to try" which is a very humble name for a type of music. Here, then is an "attempt" by Josquin, courtesy of Antonio de Cabezon:

Josquin, arr. Cabezon: Tiento on "with the Holy Spirit"

So which is it?

This week I'm finally officially cataloging Mendelssohn's second Organ Sonata, part of a project I had this spring to play three of them at my church (in nine separate movements--truly my congregation has had enough Mendelssohn to last a little). I couldn't let it go by without interpretive comment, however. It all has to do with that little phrase in Italian affixed to the head of the movement; that being the tempo marking. It reads: Allegro maestoso e vivace.

Now I love a good musical mystery as much as the next guy. And this certainly is one. We've all got allegro figured out: Italian for fast (actually Italian for happy, but musicians have decided one means the other). But Mendelssohn couldn't leave such a pedestrian description well enough alone and appended two additional prescriptive adjectives, and it is these last two adjective that get me.

Maestoso, meaning majestic, which ordinarily makes one think of proceeding more slowly. I remember observing to a student, "you've never seen a king run, have you?" It's undignified. It's something the peasants do, when they're being chased by the king's enforcers.

Vivace, meaning lively. Just the opposite. Speed that up a little, will, you? Give it some juice.

So what we seem to have here is fast, but a slower shade of fast, but with plenty of movement.

Oye veh.

This is a candidate to be one of my favorite tempo markings, along with Molto Moderato, which I think hails from the Schubert Bb piano sonata. "Very middle of the road" is how I interpret that one. Extremely not very extreme at all.

Anyhow, you can hear the results of my confusion here. I've tried to take what seemed a good tempo, though I think I might have taken it a bit faster if the composer hadn't hamstrung me with the maestoso in there, and also if I'd been playing the piece for more than a few days.

It underlines how hard it is to communicate something as tricky as art, and reminds me as a composer how easily you can confuse your interpreters. If only he'd made a recording for posterity to ignore. That would have been easier.

Wait for it...

This week the lectionary scripture reading concerns two travelers on the road to Emmaus running across a stranger who travels with them, explains the scriptures to them for a while, and finally, when it is time to eat a meal, breaks bread with them, and suddenly in that moment they realize...

It's Jesus!

Of course, it's been Jesus all along and they didn't recognize him. This is often considered the important point of this story, and it is the focus of our pastor's sermon this week at Faith church as well. Casting about for musical corollaries I came up with this Bach Chorale Prelude, which I've decided not to play after all because I only found out about the sermon topic on Wednesday, and didn't think I could get what is probably the trickiest of the "Great 18" Chorales back under my fingers in time. Besides, it will be a rough weekend, schedule-wise, so I decided not to push it. But the next time we travel down the road to Emmaus, I've got an idea. Here's why....

Bach's prelude on the hymn tune "Lord Jesus Christ, Turn Toward Us" is unusual. In fact, it's the only setting of a hymn that I know of in which the hymn itself doesn't actually show up until two thirds of the way through the piece. That's kind of odd for a hymn setting, don't you think?

And yet, as much as it might seem to just show up out of the blue, there are some hints as to the hymn itself before it officially "shows up." Let me show you the transformation.

Here's the tune.

Now, the opening notes of it go like this.

Suppose you sped those notes up.

Then suppose you added notes in between each of those notes to make what is basically an arpeggiated chord sound like a little scale.

That just happens to be the opening of the piece. And it is imitated by a second voice just a second later. And you hear it again, and again, in various keys, major and minor, while we wait for the glorious moment, two minutes later, when the slowed down and louder version of it suddenly shows up in the pedals. But it was there all along.

There are other hints; harmonic patterns that fit in with the notes of the hymn, places where Bach could have stuck in the hymn itself but left it absent. No other setting that I know makes us wait so long for the official entrance of the hymn.

But it is a glorious moment when we recognize it at last. And, if you ask me, it's worth the wait.

Bach: Lord Jesus Christ, Turn Toward Us

Attention to Detail

I just finished, not five minutes ago, two pieces for this week's opening voluntary and offertory. I am not a fast composer, (a trait I seem to share with several of history's proficient improvisers, ironically--we come in two speeds: instant composition, and slow and laborious!) so this is a minor miracle. Seven pages in three days. I could have made both pieces up on the spot but there would be little left afterward to share with anyone. There should be recordings up on pianonoise.com in a few days.

You would think that under those conditions--having just been informed by the choir director on Monday that I would be playing both an opening voluntary and an offertory after all (most years on "choir Sunday" the choir fills all the musical slots available and I, in a sense, get a week off from solo selections, just as the pastor gets a week off from giving a sermon), you would think that there wouldn't be enough time to take care of all of the niceties of full-bore composition. Just do enough to get by. And you would be right: there aren't any dynamic marks or tempo indications in the scores I just printed out; since I am playing them myself, this is unnecessary. It had occurred to me that I might have to just sketch parts of the pieces and fill in the missing portions in the moment. My concentration will be entirely on the choir on Sunday so I'm not taking any chances as far as my own role is concerned; therefore I'd like to minimize anything that requires inspiration for this particular week, and yet, there are some things I could have safely left to the moment even under these circumstances. In other situations I could have just left the entire piece un-composed.

And yet somehow I managed to finish; and on Wednesday morning, no less. Now I will about a day to learn what I've written if I want to record them on time. But before the composer handed off to the performer I took care of a couple of details with a touch of a few buttons. Which is the point of all of this: not to brag about speed, but to discuss a few important details with any music publishers that might be listening.

Before I printed the offertory I observed that the piece had very slightly bled over onto a fifth page, which now consisted of only a few measures. I only have room for four pages on my music rack. Since I was using Finale, a popular music writing program, I went to the "page layout" menu and shrunk the staves down to 95%. This barely changed the size of the staves overall, and yet the entire piece now fits on four pages so I won't have to figure out when to put up the fifth page while I am playing. Since I printed all four pages single sided they will all be staring at me when I being to play. There will be no page turns. Walla.

While I was making that change I was reminded of all the church music publishers who make life hard by not paying attention to issues involving page turning. How often do you see an anthem on which, one or two measures after a page turn, there is a repeat sign, wherein you have to turn the page back to the opposing repeat, which in some cases is only a measure or two before the end of its own page! So you or your page turner turn the page forward; two seconds later you have to go back two pages, and a second or so later you have to turn forward again. Ridiculous. And it is not hard to avoid these situations: you simply fit the music, which I can do myself simply with operations like the one I've described above.

It reminded me of all of those Youtube videos where you see the organists spend 45 seconds running to the other end of the church between hitting the record button and starting to play. I'll bet it's not hard to edit those portions out with some free software and a touch of a button. Before I had a blog I thought all of those typos were caused because you couldn't go back and edit what you'd written after you posted it. Not true, it turns out.

Which is handy, because when you are in a hurry you tend to make all sorts of mistakes you might not otherwise. I do it myself. And if I happen across an entry later with a spelling mistake or a typo I fix it. Not hard to do, either. Takes all of a few seconds.

A while ago I came to the realization that publishers of choral music purposely put piano interludes on the page turns because they think that choir members can't handle singing and turning pages at the same time, even though they've got two hands free while the pianist doesn't. Since the pianist is generally the most highly trained musician involved they get the joy of figuring out how to plan such a turn while they are playing with both hands and cannot very well leave out one of them while they are the one making a musical noise at the time of the page turn. There will be a forthcoming blog on this curious art!

But every once in a while, I will find a piece in which the page turns have been planned carefully, put in places where the measure before the turn is easy to play with one hand alone and not in the middle of the most complicated measure of the entire piece! And to those publishers I would like to say a great big thank you. Thank you for paying attention to those details and for making my life easier.

And for the rest of you, you know what is on my Christmas list this year. Peace on earth, of course, and something that is, I'm afraid, equally hard to come by. Paying attention.

You have my gratitude in advance.

Bach, the not quite god

There is never a shortage of worshipful persons gathered around significant figures of the past, unreservedly declaring everything they have done without blemish and a clear summit in the progress of the human race.  In the case of Bach writers have gone particularly overboard, which is hard to do, it seems to me, considering what an incredibly accomplished composer he was.

Nevertheless, if you are a composer, it is helpful to know that even Bach didn’t always arrive at perfection the first time out, and that he often changed his mind, reworking music he wrote, even correcting mistakes. This statement of mine is in direct contrast to that of Phillip Spitta, his first major biographer, who was constantly declaring Bach’s unerring, unswerving, sure mastery from the start: That and Spitta's rampant nationalism make me want to gag sometimes. 

Which, again, isn’t to gainsay any of Bach’s massive achievement. It’s just that, the man himself apparently valued hard work above all else, saying that “anyone who works as hard as I did would get the same result.”

Ok, that might be a bit of a miscalculation in the other direction, but it still underscores something I’ve been noticing for a long time. Persons who are particularly accomplished in some area tend to stress the hard work required to get there. Persons who are not accomplished in something tend to talk in terms of talent and “just having it” and other magic. There might be a lesson in that.

The reason I was reminded of Bach’s work ethic is that there is a short chorale prelude, which just happens to be based on the same hymn tune. It is the shortest of what are commonly called the “great 18” or “Leipzig Chorale Preludes,” but as it happens, it was once even shorter. In fact, the first half of the Leipzig version exists in a shorter version in Bach’s “Little Organ Book.”  It is a setting of a single verse of the hymn and it takes only about 45 seconds to play. Apparently, Bach later decided to add on to it, setting a second verse.  Bach decided to move the hymn melody from the soprano to the bass, and change the surrounding texture. Essentially, it was another standard method of setting a chorale tune, which Bach then tacked on to the first portion with a bit of connective material, and a new piece was born, and a quite effective one, too.

At that point, actually, Bach had what has become known as the Weimar version of the chorale, because that was where he was working at the time, and only later revised it, even fixing a couple of places where the counterpoint (gasp!) was faulty. (I kid you not: the great Bach actually wrote parallel fifths in the first--or rather the second--version!) It wasn’t until a third reworking of the original chorale that he arrived at the Leipzig version that most organists play.

I’ll leave you with a recording of the second of these multiple versions, the one from Weimar, since I’ve taken a vow to learn all of the early versions before embarking on the later ones to study what Bach changed. 

Bach: Come, Creator, Holy Spirit    Bwv 667a

This is far from the only example of Bach doing something like this, and it is a reminder to composers who have come up with an idea for a piece that seems too short or too ineffective, that it often takes a second look, maybe even months later, to realize the potential in that initial idea (not to mention an accomplished technique). Despite all the nonsense you read about great composers envisioning their music whole and perfect right from the beginning, or knowing exactly what they want and how to get it, because any amount of floundering in the dark, even for a moment, would somehow make them less great, don’t buy it. And don’t try composing that way yourself. It stunts your growth. It is the result that matters in the end anyway. If you are so worried that people are going to find out you had to work hard to get it, burn your sketches or something! (worked for Mozart)

As a teacher of mine, who clearly revered these musical immortals, once said, “they weren’t gods.”

But I think they did OK anyway. You?

The Case of the Missing Measures

This one is for composers.

I’m getting ready to post an early sonata by Haydn over at Pianonoise (click Listen). This is from the finale of the Sonata no. 6, or no. 13, depending on which catalog numbering system you are using.

Here’s the question: what is the difference between this phrase and this one?

I know, it’s me picking on a tiny detail again. Still, I find it fascinating, and if that makes me a geek, so be it. Frankly, I think it is also why we are listening to Haydn after a couple of hundred years.

You noticed it too, right?

The second phrase is shorter than the first by three measures. This gesture, which lasts two measures, fizzles out, and has to be started again (which is a dramatic way of saying he repeats it), is hurled headlong into the next gesture without pause. And this repetition isn't the only casualty. In the first example, this measure right at the end is repeated. In the second, it isn’t.

So what’s the difference?

Lots.  I don’t have a letter from Haydn, but I think this is what’s going on here: the first phrase is from the first section of the piece. In classical period music, balance is important. Balance can be most easily achieved by repetition, not to mention the notes are going by in a hurry and it helps to get our bearing by hearing small gestures twice before going on. But in the second instance, pulled from the piece a minute or so later, we’ve already heard the first section twice, plus a bit of middle-of-the-movement development. Now it’s time to head for home, and in this concluding section Haydn leaves out the repetition. We've already heard these gestures several times (if you include the standard repeat of the entire first section), so our ears don’t really need the reminder, and cutting the extra measures serves to streamline the plot, move the action forward a bit, and move the center of gravity to the next phrase, which begins with that lovely high G and continues splashing its way all over the keyboard to the end of the piece (sort of).

Classical balance, we've been told a hundred times in theory class, is important. But so is drama. And drama doesn't work very well if you have to repeat everything every time there is an opportunity. Drama works better if, after the plot and characters have been established and you are careening toward the final curtain, the action speeds up a little. Or a lot. Don’t tell us what we've already heard twice before. Just refer to it. And get on with it.

It’s curious how often master narratives we are told about the overall tendencies in musical production are belied by the music itself. Classical tendencies unfold one way; romantic, quite the opposite. And here, of course, in the field, in an actual piece of music, we have both. Which is not really that odd, and neither is shortening the return to the opening to sustain the drama. Importantly, what’s needed to qualify as repetition is there. We hear again what we need to identify it as the return to the opening, to bask in the familiar, and to recognize that signpost in the piece’s unfolding. A casual listener probably wouldn't even notice a difference; yet, somehow, our interest has been sustained by leaving out what was once essential material, and now is just getting in the way. A good composer can tell the difference.

Ninety-nine composers out of a hundred wouldn't bother with a detail like this. But then, with so much music having been written and continuing to be written, we can’t listen to everybody, can we?

Take note, composers.

Oh--I suppose you wouldn't mind hearing the whole piece now.

Haydn: Sonata 6 (or 13) in G (either way) fourth movement: Allegro Molto

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