Two composers went for a walk.
This isn't a joke. It just sounds like the setup for a joke. Let me tell it to you first.
The composers names were Johannes Brahms and Gustave Mahler. Mahler was a strapping youth full of energy and the standard cocktail of arrogance and assurance that comes with not having had your abilities tested sufficiently in the real world. Brahms was near the end of his life. He had accomplished much but he was naturally skeptical about the direction music was taking now that he had had his own battles and won many of them. He had his ideas about music and had naturally disagreed with most of this contemporaries, most of whose music he didn't like, but now that the next generation was exploring innovations he had fresh reason to be unhappy about it. After all, in his day, music had been good. Everything had been better. Now he was old, and dying, and ready to complain about it.
They crossed a bridge, and Mahler pointed excitedly to the stream flowing by. He told the old master that it was the future of music, flowing past; time to catch it before it went by. He seemed to imply that it was headed for a glorious future on its way to an ocean of possibility.
Brahms acidly replied that nobody knew that it might simply flow into a bog.
Most of us of us take walks for exercise. Few of us, I imagine, think of anything as serious as the future of our professions, or of the direction of human society, at least in any deep way. It depends on whether we ponder issues like this in general, of course, in which case a walk is a great way to do it, but besides the creative activity of our inner lives, it helps to have a walking partner who can engage one in a stimulating conversation or two.
The walk of these two composers illustrates more than just the battle between the new and the old, or that everyone has something to worry about. It should be a reminder to us of how uncritically we often swallow music. That is, if we swallow it at all. Most of our species doesn't listen to much music that is called "classical" to start with. The term is mostly there, it seems, to be a wall to safely hide the contents behind, out of the way of the folks who aren't ready for the challenge.
But if you go to the museum, the concert hall, the gallery, switch on the radio or television, pop in a recording, you experience something of that vast stream of human thought that has been going on in musical form for centuries. A plethora of traditions, ideas, philosophies, many of which fought bitterly against each other as contemporaries, vying for supremacy, others that rebelled against the traditions of the previous generations, or struggled valiantly to uphold them in the face of changing tides of fashion, or tried to synthesize what they found valuable in each. National styles fought battles by proxy, or envious rulers imported foreign influences and allowed themselves to be conquered in music by foes whose adjacent borders they would defend to the last breath militarily. It is a long, constantly inviting, constantly evolving, ever surprising story.
And yet, if you go to an art museum and don't read the plaques on the wall, or to a concert hall, and don't notice the program notes, or learn something about the persons and societies behind the production of the music, you miss all that. You miss the argument, and from a distance, it can all look peaceful, which might be how you'd like it to be. But you won't really know.
In this short series, we've gone out for a few walks. We've sampled a bit of the late Medieval, the German Baroque on piano and organ, and even a bit from a 20th century impressionist. And all because we went for a walk. And noticed a few things along the way.
--------------------------
If you missed the first four installments in the "Walking tour", here they are:
Showing posts with label listen up. Show all posts
Showing posts with label listen up. Show all posts
Monday, May 23, 2016
Monday, April 4, 2016
going Medieval
We've been going for walks on Mondays of late, listening to pieces of music with the curious title "praeambulum." This is not the same as your standard-issue prelude, which of course, means it comes "before a lude." Incidentally, the German term for this is "vorspiel" and if you'd like a little diversion, Kurt Knecht has a very funny story about what happens when you get lost in translation.
The term "praeambulum" seems to mean to amble ahead of, an instruction which, while charming, is unlikely to have been taken literally, since while if you go back early enough, there was a time when organ keys were big enough to be played with the fist and, not having pedal boards for the feet, you could stand up to play the organ, still, even the portable ones were probably not played whilst walking.
Then again...
One of the functions of a "prelude" or a "praeambulum" seems to be, not to precede a king, but to presage a Divine Service*. Last summer, during my "Medieval period," I played some pieces from one of the earliest sources of keyboard music we have, the "Buxheimer Organ Book." This dates from about a century later than the Robertsbridge Codex, which I've already found a way to complain about in this space.
The Praeaumbulum I'm going to share with you today is one of three that will make their way to the pianonoise catalogue in a week or two. It sounds rather improvised, and it occurs to me that, especially after our rather rapid 20th century jaunt last week, we might enjoy the opportunity to slow down a bit and appreciate the perfect intervals.
Anonymous (from the Buxheimer Organ Book): Praeambulum super C
----
*of course, God and the King were on a first name basis.
The term "praeambulum" seems to mean to amble ahead of, an instruction which, while charming, is unlikely to have been taken literally, since while if you go back early enough, there was a time when organ keys were big enough to be played with the fist and, not having pedal boards for the feet, you could stand up to play the organ, still, even the portable ones were probably not played whilst walking.
Then again...
One of the functions of a "prelude" or a "praeambulum" seems to be, not to precede a king, but to presage a Divine Service*. Last summer, during my "Medieval period," I played some pieces from one of the earliest sources of keyboard music we have, the "Buxheimer Organ Book." This dates from about a century later than the Robertsbridge Codex, which I've already found a way to complain about in this space.
The Praeaumbulum I'm going to share with you today is one of three that will make their way to the pianonoise catalogue in a week or two. It sounds rather improvised, and it occurs to me that, especially after our rather rapid 20th century jaunt last week, we might enjoy the opportunity to slow down a bit and appreciate the perfect intervals.
Anonymous (from the Buxheimer Organ Book): Praeambulum super C
----
*of course, God and the King were on a first name basis.
Monday, March 28, 2016
Dancing the Walk
For a couple of weeks I've been obsessed with the term praeambulum, as it relates to walking, or coming before, or an emergency vehicle that isn't ready yet---
wait, that's a pre-ambulance.
You see how confusing these terms can get?
Terms that have been in use for several centuries can really lose their flavor as well. Once there was a logical connection to something; then, they lost that connection. Now nobody knows why it is called that.
The term praeambulum has been around for quite some time. In fact, when I mentioned that the term was in vogue during the 18th century in Germany, and played an example, I forgot about another praeambulum I also recorded last summer from the Buxheimer Organ Book, which dates from about a century after the earliest keyboard music known to exist.
But we'll get to that next week. Instead, this week, I want to leap forward to the early 20th century for another piece about walking. Well, not really walking so much as dancing.
Ever seen a cakewalk?
Debussy: Golliwog's Cakewalk
The custom was in vogue in the late 19th century in America, among its African-American population. Unfortunately it was also appropriated into minstrel shows and the like, another of those fads that was adored and yet associated with various racial stereotypes, hijacked and made grotesque. Knowing what I know now it is hard to approach this piece with the same innocence as when I was a kid.
I'd like to think that Debussy had only harmless fun in mind when he wrote "Golliwog's Cakewalk" as the last piece in his "Children's Corner Suite" (which he dedicated to his 3- year old child). There may be a bit of buffoonery in it, but it is not necessarily meant to mock a dance craze that James. P Johnson claimed was considered by "some Parisian critics to be the acme of poetic motion." Parisians loved ragtime and all things coming from African American traditions around the turn of the century, and they don't seem to have been burden by our horrible track record of treating its practitioners.Then again, the Golliwog dolls that were in fashion at the time and from which the piece gets its name suggest that they may not have been very enlightened after all. (then again, who really was around the turn of the century, anyhow?)*
When it came to outright mockery, though, the target our composer had in mind was a white European by the name of Richard Wagner. Wagner had come in for a great deal of criticism for his approach to music and his high priestly scorn for everyone and everything else, and the middle section, where the music slows down considerably in my rendering, contains quotes from the opening of Wagner's opera "Tristan and Isolde"--it is a very famous passage, actually. Debussy mocks it by holding its seriousness up against some fun-loving asides, rapido. Wagner would have been the last guy to take a joke like that.
Something to remember: if you find yourself annoyed by some composer or piece of classical music, and wish to make fun of it, it is quite likely that some other composer of classical music has already beaten you to it.
I hope you've been enjoying our walks, even if they are somewhat disturbing. The trouble is, we have been dealing with human beings, complex animals with multifarious attitudes which may call forth a chuckle or a frown. Or both. I suppose we could take a walk in a garden by ourselves to escape from it. The weather's getting warmer around here. Or perhaps, next week, we can try to take refuge in a church.
hmmm.
----
*or now, for that matter...
wait, that's a pre-ambulance.
You see how confusing these terms can get?
Terms that have been in use for several centuries can really lose their flavor as well. Once there was a logical connection to something; then, they lost that connection. Now nobody knows why it is called that.
The term praeambulum has been around for quite some time. In fact, when I mentioned that the term was in vogue during the 18th century in Germany, and played an example, I forgot about another praeambulum I also recorded last summer from the Buxheimer Organ Book, which dates from about a century after the earliest keyboard music known to exist.
But we'll get to that next week. Instead, this week, I want to leap forward to the early 20th century for another piece about walking. Well, not really walking so much as dancing.
Ever seen a cakewalk?
Debussy: Golliwog's Cakewalk
The custom was in vogue in the late 19th century in America, among its African-American population. Unfortunately it was also appropriated into minstrel shows and the like, another of those fads that was adored and yet associated with various racial stereotypes, hijacked and made grotesque. Knowing what I know now it is hard to approach this piece with the same innocence as when I was a kid.
I'd like to think that Debussy had only harmless fun in mind when he wrote "Golliwog's Cakewalk" as the last piece in his "Children's Corner Suite" (which he dedicated to his 3- year old child). There may be a bit of buffoonery in it, but it is not necessarily meant to mock a dance craze that James. P Johnson claimed was considered by "some Parisian critics to be the acme of poetic motion." Parisians loved ragtime and all things coming from African American traditions around the turn of the century, and they don't seem to have been burden by our horrible track record of treating its practitioners.Then again, the Golliwog dolls that were in fashion at the time and from which the piece gets its name suggest that they may not have been very enlightened after all. (then again, who really was around the turn of the century, anyhow?)*
When it came to outright mockery, though, the target our composer had in mind was a white European by the name of Richard Wagner. Wagner had come in for a great deal of criticism for his approach to music and his high priestly scorn for everyone and everything else, and the middle section, where the music slows down considerably in my rendering, contains quotes from the opening of Wagner's opera "Tristan and Isolde"--it is a very famous passage, actually. Debussy mocks it by holding its seriousness up against some fun-loving asides, rapido. Wagner would have been the last guy to take a joke like that.
Something to remember: if you find yourself annoyed by some composer or piece of classical music, and wish to make fun of it, it is quite likely that some other composer of classical music has already beaten you to it.
I hope you've been enjoying our walks, even if they are somewhat disturbing. The trouble is, we have been dealing with human beings, complex animals with multifarious attitudes which may call forth a chuckle or a frown. Or both. I suppose we could take a walk in a garden by ourselves to escape from it. The weather's getting warmer around here. Or perhaps, next week, we can try to take refuge in a church.
hmmm.
----
*or now, for that matter...
Monday, March 14, 2016
In which I give my congregation the Byrd
Listen to William Byrd's Pavane
One of the two most received compliments I get from my congregation, at least of the non-generic variety ("enjoyed the music this morning, Michael!"), is that people really appreciate having notes in the bulletin, in which I tell them something about the music I'm playing on the organ or piano that morning and why I chose it for that service. I think communication with the congregation is important, and while music itself is an effective means of communication in some very special ways, it is also a foreign language to many, and, in particular, people don't know the organ literature at all, so it is nice for them to learn something about it. I'm told, for instance, that it makes the music "more meaningful." That's a direct quote from a woman yesterday.
It reminds my of something Paul wrote, when he said he'd rather "speak five words of instruction than 10,000 in a tongue" which could apply to music, at least as far as many people are concerned. So it helps to be an intermediary. That's what the pastor does with the scriptures, after all. Why shouldn't the organist also have a homiletic function?
Yesterday, however, I fell down on the job. Actually, I've had a busy and involved schedule lately, and the piece I chose to play for the start of the service required very little practice, and while it seemed that it might fit the situation (Jesus' farewell discourse, deep into Lent) I wasn't sure how well it would fit.
Then I started to investigate.
A pavane is generally a slow, somber dance. But the term itself, though of uncertain origin, has, among its possible meanings, a resemblance to the Spanish term for "peacock."
Peacock, huh? Funny, we were talking this morning about the Holy Spirit being a parakeet. Wrong bird, but pretty close, and...
[uh, Michael? That's Paracleete, with an L. It means "comforter" or "helper." A parakeet is just a bird that says back to you what you've told it to say. Not the same thing.]
Right. So, now that I've gotten Mr. Byrd's bird to be of the proper species, what does it matter? Well, birds mean things. Actually, practically everything means something, if you know something about the Middle Ages and/or religious symbolism. I had a suspicion about that, so I looked it up. Do you know what a peacock is associated with?
Resurrection.
It is pretty interesting that this slow, solemn, sad sounding dance has an association that seems 180 degrees away. And, given that that relationship seems to be purely etymological and symbolic, it is a very subtle relationship. In other words, what you hear is sorrow, and the presence of death, but if you listen beneath the surface, and know the hidden meanings of things, you find something very different.
I like subtle, personally. After my discovery I even wondered if I should keep it to myself. That does seem out of touch with our chosen gospel writer for the season of Lent, however. Whereas Mark shows a Jesus who is very secretive about his purpose and doings, John's Jesus likes to spell everything out with long discourses about himself and his mission and what his disciples need to know and to do.
So I'm spelling it out. But if you listen to the piece again, you won't hear it. It still sounds like melancholy--Jesus saying farewell to his disciples, preparing for a difficult journey to a place where they cannot go. But, for those who know, all is not exactly what it seems to be. Only very silently and without announcing its presence does that nugget reveal itself--if you notice it.
We are less than two weeks from Easter now. But deep inside the belly of Lent. And, if you know your liturgy, the way forward is going to get very rough. There's Palm/passion Sunday, and Holy Week, and candles and darkness and crucifixion. It is the way of sorrow.
But...
listen again to William Byrd's Pavane
One of the two most received compliments I get from my congregation, at least of the non-generic variety ("enjoyed the music this morning, Michael!"), is that people really appreciate having notes in the bulletin, in which I tell them something about the music I'm playing on the organ or piano that morning and why I chose it for that service. I think communication with the congregation is important, and while music itself is an effective means of communication in some very special ways, it is also a foreign language to many, and, in particular, people don't know the organ literature at all, so it is nice for them to learn something about it. I'm told, for instance, that it makes the music "more meaningful." That's a direct quote from a woman yesterday.
It reminds my of something Paul wrote, when he said he'd rather "speak five words of instruction than 10,000 in a tongue" which could apply to music, at least as far as many people are concerned. So it helps to be an intermediary. That's what the pastor does with the scriptures, after all. Why shouldn't the organist also have a homiletic function?
Yesterday, however, I fell down on the job. Actually, I've had a busy and involved schedule lately, and the piece I chose to play for the start of the service required very little practice, and while it seemed that it might fit the situation (Jesus' farewell discourse, deep into Lent) I wasn't sure how well it would fit.
Then I started to investigate.
A pavane is generally a slow, somber dance. But the term itself, though of uncertain origin, has, among its possible meanings, a resemblance to the Spanish term for "peacock."
Peacock, huh? Funny, we were talking this morning about the Holy Spirit being a parakeet. Wrong bird, but pretty close, and...
[uh, Michael? That's Paracleete, with an L. It means "comforter" or "helper." A parakeet is just a bird that says back to you what you've told it to say. Not the same thing.]
Right. So, now that I've gotten Mr. Byrd's bird to be of the proper species, what does it matter? Well, birds mean things. Actually, practically everything means something, if you know something about the Middle Ages and/or religious symbolism. I had a suspicion about that, so I looked it up. Do you know what a peacock is associated with?
Resurrection.
It is pretty interesting that this slow, solemn, sad sounding dance has an association that seems 180 degrees away. And, given that that relationship seems to be purely etymological and symbolic, it is a very subtle relationship. In other words, what you hear is sorrow, and the presence of death, but if you listen beneath the surface, and know the hidden meanings of things, you find something very different.
I like subtle, personally. After my discovery I even wondered if I should keep it to myself. That does seem out of touch with our chosen gospel writer for the season of Lent, however. Whereas Mark shows a Jesus who is very secretive about his purpose and doings, John's Jesus likes to spell everything out with long discourses about himself and his mission and what his disciples need to know and to do.
So I'm spelling it out. But if you listen to the piece again, you won't hear it. It still sounds like melancholy--Jesus saying farewell to his disciples, preparing for a difficult journey to a place where they cannot go. But, for those who know, all is not exactly what it seems to be. Only very silently and without announcing its presence does that nugget reveal itself--if you notice it.
We are less than two weeks from Easter now. But deep inside the belly of Lent. And, if you know your liturgy, the way forward is going to get very rough. There's Palm/passion Sunday, and Holy Week, and candles and darkness and crucifixion. It is the way of sorrow.
But...
listen again to William Byrd's Pavane
Monday, March 7, 2016
Let's go for another walk
I owe this morning's post to Vidas Pinkevicius. Last week he had guest Peter Dirksen on his podcast to talk about the organ music of Sweelinck and Scheidemann. Oh, yes, I thought. Scheidemann. I've recorded something of his. A little praeambulum.
(if you were here last week you got a little meditation on etymology. A parambulation of sorts.)
What I forgot about was that I had forgotten about it. Even as I was discoursing last Monday about how 18th century German organists seemed to enjoy using the strange term praeambulum to describe their efforts, a term connected to one that describes the act of walking, this little Scheidemann piece was in the back of my head somewhere, and yet, it turns out that after recording it last June I had forgotten to share it with you. I could have even sworn I played it in church, but my records show that I didn't do that, either. What I did play was an offering by Franz Tunder, another piece in the same key, and a not too dissimilar style. Apparently I was saving the Scheidemann for later. Which is going to be today!
I don't want to give it too much of a buildup. It's only two minutes long, and it won't change your life (probably).
It is also very different in character from the Bach piece we heard last week. But given it's rather generic title, I suppose that is to be expected. The eternal question seem to be, if this is a "before" piece (pre) what is it supposed to go before? It doesn't always seem to be a worship service. Or anything else.
Maybe it is simply the beginning of the rest of your life!
Scheidemann: Praeambulum in F
(if you were here last week you got a little meditation on etymology. A parambulation of sorts.)
What I forgot about was that I had forgotten about it. Even as I was discoursing last Monday about how 18th century German organists seemed to enjoy using the strange term praeambulum to describe their efforts, a term connected to one that describes the act of walking, this little Scheidemann piece was in the back of my head somewhere, and yet, it turns out that after recording it last June I had forgotten to share it with you. I could have even sworn I played it in church, but my records show that I didn't do that, either. What I did play was an offering by Franz Tunder, another piece in the same key, and a not too dissimilar style. Apparently I was saving the Scheidemann for later. Which is going to be today!
I don't want to give it too much of a buildup. It's only two minutes long, and it won't change your life (probably).
It is also very different in character from the Bach piece we heard last week. But given it's rather generic title, I suppose that is to be expected. The eternal question seem to be, if this is a "before" piece (pre) what is it supposed to go before? It doesn't always seem to be a worship service. Or anything else.
Maybe it is simply the beginning of the rest of your life!
Scheidemann: Praeambulum in F
Monday, February 29, 2016
Let's go for a walk
Praeambulum. Preamble. Perambulate.
hmmm.
Odd how these words are connected. Or seem to be.
The first is a title of a piece of music. It's a fairly common title from the 18th century in Germany. Some keyboard composers liked to use it. Bach was one. I'm releasing one of his keyboard partitas tomorrow on Pianonoise and thought you might like to hear the first movement.
Walking. Preluding. Strange that there would be a connection. But it is a strange world, after all. And language picks up an awful lot of idiosyncracies.
I wonder....nah. Was Erik Satie picking up on this when he joked (probably in his "Memoirs of an Amnesiac" and if you don't know where Satie is coming from that title ought to give you a sense of it)---when he wrote somewhere that before he wrote a piece he had to prepare himself by walking all around the piece first?
Now a preamble is an introductory statement -- like the one affixed to the the opening of the American constitution. It makes sense that that would make a praeambulum the first movement. But the walking part, I don't get.
So I looked it up. Took a while. Dictionaries are so specialized on the internet now that half of them won't get you any definitions, just the declensions. Once I denclensed my fist I found that:
Preamble (pre-amble!) has the Medieval Latin meaning of "walking in front", i.e. ahead of someone else. Which is even more interesting when you discover that the word "suite," which refers to the group of pieces to which this Praeambulum belongs, also means (or meant) "a staff of attendants or followers: a retinue."
So you get your people together and we'll go for a walk. Out front.
Bach: Praeambulum from Partita in G
-----------
the rest of the parade is available in the pianonoise listening archive , right here in the "Bach" section.
hmmm.
Odd how these words are connected. Or seem to be.
The first is a title of a piece of music. It's a fairly common title from the 18th century in Germany. Some keyboard composers liked to use it. Bach was one. I'm releasing one of his keyboard partitas tomorrow on Pianonoise and thought you might like to hear the first movement.
Walking. Preluding. Strange that there would be a connection. But it is a strange world, after all. And language picks up an awful lot of idiosyncracies.
I wonder....nah. Was Erik Satie picking up on this when he joked (probably in his "Memoirs of an Amnesiac" and if you don't know where Satie is coming from that title ought to give you a sense of it)---when he wrote somewhere that before he wrote a piece he had to prepare himself by walking all around the piece first?
Now a preamble is an introductory statement -- like the one affixed to the the opening of the American constitution. It makes sense that that would make a praeambulum the first movement. But the walking part, I don't get.
So I looked it up. Took a while. Dictionaries are so specialized on the internet now that half of them won't get you any definitions, just the declensions. Once I denclensed my fist I found that:
Preamble (pre-amble!) has the Medieval Latin meaning of "walking in front", i.e. ahead of someone else. Which is even more interesting when you discover that the word "suite," which refers to the group of pieces to which this Praeambulum belongs, also means (or meant) "a staff of attendants or followers: a retinue."
So you get your people together and we'll go for a walk. Out front.
Bach: Praeambulum from Partita in G
-----------
the rest of the parade is available in the pianonoise listening archive , right here in the "Bach" section.
Monday, December 14, 2015
Music in Space
I'd like to do something special for you this Christmas. I'm going to take you up to the pipe room.
If you're not an organist yourself, you've probably never been up in one. Even if you are, you may not have spent a whole lot of time up there.
Careful on the ladder! This one's not bolted down.
By the way, don't tell our building manager we're doing this. He'll be worried about the liability issues. I'm not even sure whether our insurance covers virtual falls during virtual tours on the internet.
Great! We made it. Also that's what these pipes go to. The Great! ....nevermind.
We are surrounded by pipes. Careful! There are over a thousand of them, and some of them are pretty small; still, you can do quite a bit of damage to them if you fall on one. And to yourself, of course. No wonder we don't give tours regularly.
The reason we are up here is so we can get a little perspective. The piano is a pretty terrific instrument, but it doesn't take up three rooms like our organ does. And despite our organ's being on the large side of small, as pipe organs go, it has some 1200 pipes. Now, that takes up a lot of room. And when you are up here, you really get a feel for the size of the instrument. In fact, it is all around you. That console downstairs is only where the decisions are made. The sound comes from up here.
A year ago, when we got our playback system, I got to do something I couldn't do before. I could listen to myself play from somewhere other than the organ bench. So I made my way up here to listen from inside the instrument. It's quite something. And--aren't you lucky--I spent half an hour dragging my recording equipment up into the pipe room so I could make some recordings from in here as well. I'm going to share one of them (there are some others we can get to later).
This is a nice little Canzona (90 seconds) by Franz Tunder (1614-67) who was organist at St. Mary's in Lubeck before Dietrich Buxtehude, whom Bach traveled so far to hear. First I'll play it for you the way you would hear it in the sanctuary.
[listen]
Now, as it happens, I was able to record the very same performance from a wholly different angle.
Notice the difference in sound. For one thing, it is dryer, there is no resonance, the pipes are close by, and you will distinctly be able to hear some of them coming from one or the other of your speakers--assuming you have two. I hope you are listening to this in stereo, because otherwise you will lose the effect.
In the opening section, it is just a single flute stop playing, so all of the notes will be coming out of one speaker. (the one on your left, I think. The other speaker is making blower noises because that's the side where the blower is located, in case you wondered what was making all that non-musical racket).
But in the next part of the piece, an even more curious thing happens. Although this is the part where I add several more stops and the piece becomes much louder, I've closed the shutters, which closes off the pipes in the front--the ones you can see from the sanctuary--from the ones back in the pipe room. That's at least 3/4 of the organ that the congregation never sees. The reason they are behind shutters is so you can make them louder or softer depending on whether or not you have opened or closed the shutters in front of them. However, we are now BEHIND the shutters, which makes things sound rather backwards.
You see, the foundation stops--the main stops of the organ, which are expected to have some volume--those are placed out in front, and are not able to be quieted by closing the shutters. But the rest of the pipes are affected by the shutters. Now, here, the stops that would normally be loudest are actually on the other side of the shutters. The ones that you will hear best are the ones in the back of the pipe room, nearest to us. It actually sounds like I am using a completely different registration to play the piece now, but that is only because we are listening to the organ from the opposite direction!
[listen]
Cool, huh?
By the way, this was recorded on a hot day in July, and if it sounds to you like one of the pipes was leaking some air, it sounded like that to me, too. I've think we've gotten that fixed by now. The tuner was just here a couple of weeks ago.
Sometimes it is nice to here things from a different angle and to realize how differently they can sound. If only humans could do that more often!
-------
for more perspectives, you can check out my recent podcast interview with host Vidas Pinkevicius on the "Secrets of Organ Playing" blog.
Also, coming tomorrow to the homepage of pianonoise.com: three hours of piano and organ music for the holidays. It will be up through Christmas.
If you're not an organist yourself, you've probably never been up in one. Even if you are, you may not have spent a whole lot of time up there.
By the way, don't tell our building manager we're doing this. He'll be worried about the liability issues. I'm not even sure whether our insurance covers virtual falls during virtual tours on the internet.
Great! We made it. Also that's what these pipes go to. The Great! ....nevermind.
We are surrounded by pipes. Careful! There are over a thousand of them, and some of them are pretty small; still, you can do quite a bit of damage to them if you fall on one. And to yourself, of course. No wonder we don't give tours regularly.
The reason we are up here is so we can get a little perspective. The piano is a pretty terrific instrument, but it doesn't take up three rooms like our organ does. And despite our organ's being on the large side of small, as pipe organs go, it has some 1200 pipes. Now, that takes up a lot of room. And when you are up here, you really get a feel for the size of the instrument. In fact, it is all around you. That console downstairs is only where the decisions are made. The sound comes from up here.
A year ago, when we got our playback system, I got to do something I couldn't do before. I could listen to myself play from somewhere other than the organ bench. So I made my way up here to listen from inside the instrument. It's quite something. And--aren't you lucky--I spent half an hour dragging my recording equipment up into the pipe room so I could make some recordings from in here as well. I'm going to share one of them (there are some others we can get to later).
This is a nice little Canzona (90 seconds) by Franz Tunder (1614-67) who was organist at St. Mary's in Lubeck before Dietrich Buxtehude, whom Bach traveled so far to hear. First I'll play it for you the way you would hear it in the sanctuary.
[listen]
Now, as it happens, I was able to record the very same performance from a wholly different angle.
Notice the difference in sound. For one thing, it is dryer, there is no resonance, the pipes are close by, and you will distinctly be able to hear some of them coming from one or the other of your speakers--assuming you have two. I hope you are listening to this in stereo, because otherwise you will lose the effect.In the opening section, it is just a single flute stop playing, so all of the notes will be coming out of one speaker. (the one on your left, I think. The other speaker is making blower noises because that's the side where the blower is located, in case you wondered what was making all that non-musical racket).
But in the next part of the piece, an even more curious thing happens. Although this is the part where I add several more stops and the piece becomes much louder, I've closed the shutters, which closes off the pipes in the front--the ones you can see from the sanctuary--from the ones back in the pipe room. That's at least 3/4 of the organ that the congregation never sees. The reason they are behind shutters is so you can make them louder or softer depending on whether or not you have opened or closed the shutters in front of them. However, we are now BEHIND the shutters, which makes things sound rather backwards.
You see, the foundation stops--the main stops of the organ, which are expected to have some volume--those are placed out in front, and are not able to be quieted by closing the shutters. But the rest of the pipes are affected by the shutters. Now, here, the stops that would normally be loudest are actually on the other side of the shutters. The ones that you will hear best are the ones in the back of the pipe room, nearest to us. It actually sounds like I am using a completely different registration to play the piece now, but that is only because we are listening to the organ from the opposite direction!
[listen]
Cool, huh?
By the way, this was recorded on a hot day in July, and if it sounds to you like one of the pipes was leaking some air, it sounded like that to me, too. I've think we've gotten that fixed by now. The tuner was just here a couple of weeks ago.
Sometimes it is nice to here things from a different angle and to realize how differently they can sound. If only humans could do that more often!
-------
for more perspectives, you can check out my recent podcast interview with host Vidas Pinkevicius on the "Secrets of Organ Playing" blog.
Also, coming tomorrow to the homepage of pianonoise.com: three hours of piano and organ music for the holidays. It will be up through Christmas.
Monday, November 30, 2015
potatos and anvils
Pardon me while I ignore the holiday season for one more week. It's Music Monday, when I assume for my audience anyone, musician or not, who wants to listen to some interesting music, and perhaps find out something about it.
In this installment, I finally get around to playing a rather famous piece by Handel which, for some reason, despite being in my 40s and having absorbed gobs of piano literature for a quarter of a century, hadn't been on my radar. Fortunately, it only took a couple of days to rectify the omission.
The piece in question bears the laconic title "Air" (with variations), but it has since, courtesy of the Department of Posthumous Publicity, earned a nickname, and now goes forth under the title "The Harmonious Blacksmith." Look all good nicknames, nobody is sure how it came by its name. The Wikipedia has some good stories, said to be bogus, with one more likely to be less bogus. One of these fragments concerns the oft-repeated B natural in one of the variations (starting at 2:02 in the recording below) which is said to be the smith hammering on the anvil. Well...sure...
An aside: I once gave a concert which included Beethoven's Eroica Variations, which includes several prominent Bbs that the composer insists on drumming on, and someone had forgotten to tune the piano. That #%*& note was one of the worst offenders. Then I had to follow that up with one of Prokoffiev's War Sonatas, the one in Bb, which also makes use of that same drunk-sounding note on a regular basis--and loudly. That was some 20 years ago and I still haven't completely recovered.
Where were we? Something more pleasant, like a nice set of variations by Handel.
There are people, of course, who believe that the entire purpose of music is to be pleasurable and/or relaxing. In which case, it is hard to beat one of these sets of Handel variations. The piece made me feel very satisfied and bourgeois. I couldn't help but think of 20th century American composer Charles Ives' comment about everybody breathing their own symphonies while they were in the fields, harvesting potatoes. Potato symphonies aside, though, this tradesman, blacksmith or no, seemed very in tune with the universe.
Since I was playing the piece on the piano (I don't have access to a harpsichord) I found myself focusing on and then enchanted with the beauty of the sound. I was also playing the piece more slowly, which seems to contrast with the standard approach of pianists when they know they are playing something written for the harpsichord, which is to play very fast and fleetly, bringing out any virtuosic properties, as if that is all that a harpsichord may do. As a result of ignoring this edict, mine may one of the slowest recordings you hear of this piece. It doesn't bother me any. I enjoy its leisurely approach.
Unfortunately, the recorded sound doesn't adequately capture the atmosphere of the live performance. This is because I was doing some experimentation with something that I never do--putting a microphone inside the piano. Nobody actually sits inside a piano during a piano recital, so I've resisted putting the microphone there. But I've been experimenting with the recorded sound at intervals, and last month I put the near mic almost inside the piano and got a pretty nice sound. The other mic sits at a comfortable distance and picks up the sound in the room; then I can balance them.
However, the gain (recording volume) in the near mic was up too high and I couldn't get a nice blance per the usual methods, so I tried adding a synthetic microphone, which is to say I duplicated the far mic in post production and panned it in the other direction, to allow a stereo sound from afar and also to allow it to be turned up in relation to the close up sound. The result is curious: it seems to have a third dimension, and reminds me of several professional recordings I've heard. On the other hand, it disorients my ears slightly, because I seem to be listening to the piece from several places at once. I suppose as an amateur recording engineer I could be experimenting with cubism.
A few days later I played the piece for an audience for a Thanksgiving celebration. Whether you celebrated this American holiday or not this past weekend, I hope you enjoy some of the fruits of it. I am grateful for being able to share it with you.
Handel: The Harmonious Blacksmith
In this installment, I finally get around to playing a rather famous piece by Handel which, for some reason, despite being in my 40s and having absorbed gobs of piano literature for a quarter of a century, hadn't been on my radar. Fortunately, it only took a couple of days to rectify the omission.
The piece in question bears the laconic title "Air" (with variations), but it has since, courtesy of the Department of Posthumous Publicity, earned a nickname, and now goes forth under the title "The Harmonious Blacksmith." Look all good nicknames, nobody is sure how it came by its name. The Wikipedia has some good stories, said to be bogus, with one more likely to be less bogus. One of these fragments concerns the oft-repeated B natural in one of the variations (starting at 2:02 in the recording below) which is said to be the smith hammering on the anvil. Well...sure...
An aside: I once gave a concert which included Beethoven's Eroica Variations, which includes several prominent Bbs that the composer insists on drumming on, and someone had forgotten to tune the piano. That #%*& note was one of the worst offenders. Then I had to follow that up with one of Prokoffiev's War Sonatas, the one in Bb, which also makes use of that same drunk-sounding note on a regular basis--and loudly. That was some 20 years ago and I still haven't completely recovered.
Where were we? Something more pleasant, like a nice set of variations by Handel.
There are people, of course, who believe that the entire purpose of music is to be pleasurable and/or relaxing. In which case, it is hard to beat one of these sets of Handel variations. The piece made me feel very satisfied and bourgeois. I couldn't help but think of 20th century American composer Charles Ives' comment about everybody breathing their own symphonies while they were in the fields, harvesting potatoes. Potato symphonies aside, though, this tradesman, blacksmith or no, seemed very in tune with the universe.
Since I was playing the piece on the piano (I don't have access to a harpsichord) I found myself focusing on and then enchanted with the beauty of the sound. I was also playing the piece more slowly, which seems to contrast with the standard approach of pianists when they know they are playing something written for the harpsichord, which is to play very fast and fleetly, bringing out any virtuosic properties, as if that is all that a harpsichord may do. As a result of ignoring this edict, mine may one of the slowest recordings you hear of this piece. It doesn't bother me any. I enjoy its leisurely approach.
Unfortunately, the recorded sound doesn't adequately capture the atmosphere of the live performance. This is because I was doing some experimentation with something that I never do--putting a microphone inside the piano. Nobody actually sits inside a piano during a piano recital, so I've resisted putting the microphone there. But I've been experimenting with the recorded sound at intervals, and last month I put the near mic almost inside the piano and got a pretty nice sound. The other mic sits at a comfortable distance and picks up the sound in the room; then I can balance them.
However, the gain (recording volume) in the near mic was up too high and I couldn't get a nice blance per the usual methods, so I tried adding a synthetic microphone, which is to say I duplicated the far mic in post production and panned it in the other direction, to allow a stereo sound from afar and also to allow it to be turned up in relation to the close up sound. The result is curious: it seems to have a third dimension, and reminds me of several professional recordings I've heard. On the other hand, it disorients my ears slightly, because I seem to be listening to the piece from several places at once. I suppose as an amateur recording engineer I could be experimenting with cubism.
A few days later I played the piece for an audience for a Thanksgiving celebration. Whether you celebrated this American holiday or not this past weekend, I hope you enjoy some of the fruits of it. I am grateful for being able to share it with you.
Handel: The Harmonious Blacksmith
Monday, November 16, 2015
The goblins are back
Around the fire, at the party after my organ concert a few weeks ago, she told me she really liked my comments about the muttering goblins and she'd been able to hear them.
Goblins?
As I've mentioned a few times this year, the absolute music folks aren't going to be happy that I brought ghosts and goblins into a perfectly good organ sonata, and probably cheapened the dignity of some highly regarded classical literature into the bargain. But here's my defense: it is useful as a guide to the listening experience. In fact, it obviously made a connection as evidenced by the woman's comments after the concert.
Alexander Guilmant probably was not thinking about goblins when he wrote his sonata movement. There is nothing programmatic about it--well, maybe we should back up a little. A dictionary definition of absolute music (was it from Harvard's?) called absolute music that which "has no program, or no program the composer wishes to advertise" because you never really know what was in the composer's head at the time.
Being a composer myself, I can tell you that while I do not often use imagery or narrative as part of the formative process of writing a piece, there are times when some sort of emotional impulse leads to a specific choice of melody or harmony--times when a feeling prompts me to play a particular chord on the piano. In that moment, I'm not thinking that I'll put an A major seven flat nine here--I'm not thinking in terms of the names of the chord or the procedure, I'm thinking, or feeling, something not in words, and basically that impulse leads to a chord because I am expressing that thing with the chord the same way our needs to communicate something inside us lead us to make particular word choices, or figures of speech, or speak in long or short sentences. We are translating something that is not words into something that is. The impulse leads to the clarification of that impulse, with music just as in words. Other composers have clearly found inspiration in words and ideas; some are best at setting texts and show little interest in music that operates without some kind of companion for inspiration.
What I'm suggesting is that I don't think simply in terms of compositional procedures--in fact, that is probably only a small (but necessary) part of my thinking. Of course, those impulses can't always be translated into words, or, if they are, the point is that they have to be translated, because English isn't their native language either.
I can't say that all composers everywhere have this type of thing built into their system, but as a creative human, I can say with safety that some people, some times, must be familiar with it.
It is not the analytical language of transition, retransition, exposition, 2nd theme, and so on. Although it is useful as an anatomical language for composers and theorists, it frankly bores me. And I suspect it bores the audience, so when I talk about what to listen for in a piece of music, while I usually key in on the piece's architecture, I seldom use it.
Instead, I'll try to attach something, emotional, experiential, active, or something to the parts of the music, making the necessary disclaimer that this is not a view necessarily endorsed by the composer, nor is it (as I suggested with the Brahmsian ghost story last week) the only way to negotiate the listening experience. It is one useful way among many, just as the piece's meaning, if it is a meritorious piece of music, is hardly exhausted by a single explanation.
So back to the goblins. I had hinted that the opening idea had a rather Halloween, goblinesque association. It was a Halloween concert, after all, and it made sense to connect the ideas. But after the first section ended (2:36), there was something very different waiting for the listeners. The something was a beautiful, hymnlike-melody in a major key. There is nothing odd about this--many composers have contrasting sections in the middle of their pieces. And there is nothing odd about what Guilmant did next, either.
Most composers like to connect their ideas somehow. It seems amateur to simply drop one idea and forget about it, the way people often discuss politics: "and another thing....and that reminds me...they all should just...." tossing disconnected ideas into the ring every thirty seconds without developing any of them. Instead, Guilmant will find a way to work his way back to that first theme, but before he does that, he finds an ingenious way to connect them as well.
Enter the goblins, or rather, let them forget to exit. What I told the audience was that if they listened carefully they could hear, between each phrase of the hymn, the goblins muttering to themselves and biding their time. In just a few seconds, this imaginative shorthand enabled the audience to notice something that very few would have heard otherwise. It is that very rapid pedal figure that flits by at the ends of phrases starting at 2:44.
In anatomical terms, this is a leftover from the first theme, in rapid notes, which contrasts with the slow moving second theme. In a minute or so, Guilmant will begin alternating the themes with more regularity and gradually giving the stage more and more to the first, preparing its return. This is, from a procedural standpoint, pretty basic.
But it's not very alive, then, is it?
Dare I connect an emotion, an image, even a slogan from a horror move (...they're baaaaack!) to describe the hair-raising way in which Guilmant accomplishes this basic architectural feature of a sonata movement? (complete with spectral page turn!)
Why not? It worked. And it took far less time to expound than this blog. It made a connection. Somebody heard something they wouldn't have heard otherwise. Something very interesting a composer did that went by in an instant, but made the piece much more than mundane.
That's what images and ideas do. They help us form our own maps, our own connections to music. They interpret form and structure, as well as local ideas, melodies and rhythms. They are the stuff of us, just as our music is. They are not to be confused with the music itself, and they are not more than the temporary interpretation of it.
But they help us to connect, to relate. And that's significant.
[listen]
Goblins?
As I've mentioned a few times this year, the absolute music folks aren't going to be happy that I brought ghosts and goblins into a perfectly good organ sonata, and probably cheapened the dignity of some highly regarded classical literature into the bargain. But here's my defense: it is useful as a guide to the listening experience. In fact, it obviously made a connection as evidenced by the woman's comments after the concert.
Alexander Guilmant probably was not thinking about goblins when he wrote his sonata movement. There is nothing programmatic about it--well, maybe we should back up a little. A dictionary definition of absolute music (was it from Harvard's?) called absolute music that which "has no program, or no program the composer wishes to advertise" because you never really know what was in the composer's head at the time.
Being a composer myself, I can tell you that while I do not often use imagery or narrative as part of the formative process of writing a piece, there are times when some sort of emotional impulse leads to a specific choice of melody or harmony--times when a feeling prompts me to play a particular chord on the piano. In that moment, I'm not thinking that I'll put an A major seven flat nine here--I'm not thinking in terms of the names of the chord or the procedure, I'm thinking, or feeling, something not in words, and basically that impulse leads to a chord because I am expressing that thing with the chord the same way our needs to communicate something inside us lead us to make particular word choices, or figures of speech, or speak in long or short sentences. We are translating something that is not words into something that is. The impulse leads to the clarification of that impulse, with music just as in words. Other composers have clearly found inspiration in words and ideas; some are best at setting texts and show little interest in music that operates without some kind of companion for inspiration.
What I'm suggesting is that I don't think simply in terms of compositional procedures--in fact, that is probably only a small (but necessary) part of my thinking. Of course, those impulses can't always be translated into words, or, if they are, the point is that they have to be translated, because English isn't their native language either.
I can't say that all composers everywhere have this type of thing built into their system, but as a creative human, I can say with safety that some people, some times, must be familiar with it.
It is not the analytical language of transition, retransition, exposition, 2nd theme, and so on. Although it is useful as an anatomical language for composers and theorists, it frankly bores me. And I suspect it bores the audience, so when I talk about what to listen for in a piece of music, while I usually key in on the piece's architecture, I seldom use it.
Instead, I'll try to attach something, emotional, experiential, active, or something to the parts of the music, making the necessary disclaimer that this is not a view necessarily endorsed by the composer, nor is it (as I suggested with the Brahmsian ghost story last week) the only way to negotiate the listening experience. It is one useful way among many, just as the piece's meaning, if it is a meritorious piece of music, is hardly exhausted by a single explanation.
So back to the goblins. I had hinted that the opening idea had a rather Halloween, goblinesque association. It was a Halloween concert, after all, and it made sense to connect the ideas. But after the first section ended (2:36), there was something very different waiting for the listeners. The something was a beautiful, hymnlike-melody in a major key. There is nothing odd about this--many composers have contrasting sections in the middle of their pieces. And there is nothing odd about what Guilmant did next, either.
Most composers like to connect their ideas somehow. It seems amateur to simply drop one idea and forget about it, the way people often discuss politics: "and another thing....and that reminds me...they all should just...." tossing disconnected ideas into the ring every thirty seconds without developing any of them. Instead, Guilmant will find a way to work his way back to that first theme, but before he does that, he finds an ingenious way to connect them as well.
Enter the goblins, or rather, let them forget to exit. What I told the audience was that if they listened carefully they could hear, between each phrase of the hymn, the goblins muttering to themselves and biding their time. In just a few seconds, this imaginative shorthand enabled the audience to notice something that very few would have heard otherwise. It is that very rapid pedal figure that flits by at the ends of phrases starting at 2:44.
In anatomical terms, this is a leftover from the first theme, in rapid notes, which contrasts with the slow moving second theme. In a minute or so, Guilmant will begin alternating the themes with more regularity and gradually giving the stage more and more to the first, preparing its return. This is, from a procedural standpoint, pretty basic.
But it's not very alive, then, is it?
Dare I connect an emotion, an image, even a slogan from a horror move (...they're baaaaack!) to describe the hair-raising way in which Guilmant accomplishes this basic architectural feature of a sonata movement? (complete with spectral page turn!)
Why not? It worked. And it took far less time to expound than this blog. It made a connection. Somebody heard something they wouldn't have heard otherwise. Something very interesting a composer did that went by in an instant, but made the piece much more than mundane.
That's what images and ideas do. They help us form our own maps, our own connections to music. They interpret form and structure, as well as local ideas, melodies and rhythms. They are the stuff of us, just as our music is. They are not to be confused with the music itself, and they are not more than the temporary interpretation of it.
But they help us to connect, to relate. And that's significant.
[listen]
Monday, November 2, 2015
A Brahmsian Ghost Story
One of the things that I learned before last week's mostly organ concert is that I can play the piano in very low light, including pieces with leaps and hand crossings. Hopefully the audience found out, if they didn't know it already, that they would like to hear more from that Brahms fellow.
The only piano piece on the program was a Brahms rhapsody, specifically the second one in g minor. I was practicing it a few years back and decided it might not be a bad selection for a Halloween concert. So with a little help from the resident Steinway and Mr. Brahms, I told them a ghost story.
Brahms's disciples would shriek that what he wrote was absolutely music and music alone, which meant it should be completely independent from any ideas or narrative. Making a ghost story out of it would certainly be sacrilege.
But as Schumann, who had to be considered in the anti-programmatic camp, complained, composers shouldn't provide programs for their pieces because the audience is robbed of the chance to determine one for themselves. This is hardly the same as saying there should be no such ideas inspired by the music, rather it is saying that the audience should be allowed the freedom to create it, rather than having the composer insist on one interpretation himself. This is an interesting proposition. Schumann's response to the person who asked what his etude meant, therefore, (which was to sit down and play it again) does not necessarily mean that the music meant only itself, but that he couldn't, or wouldn't, explain it in words. I would group his response with that of Aaron Copland, who said, if asked if the music meant anything, he would say yes, and if asked if he could explain what it was, he would say no. There is a deliberate vagueness there.
On Friday, I told the audience that I had a ghost story, but I didn't fill in any details (other than suggesting the Black Forest as a possible backdrop). This could have been a useful listening exercise.
Now in any piece of classical music, particularly one that is seven minutes long, the structure of the piece is very important. If you can't follow the musical argument for several minutes, you are likely at some point to get bored or confused. And yet it is unlikely that most members of my audience had such listening skills. Traditional analytical terms like exposition, transition, 2nd theme, development, recapitulation and all that only go so far anyway. I am conversant with them, but frankly, they make the musical process sound rather dull. I am also likely to zone out when program notes consist mainly of a musical blow-by-blow description of a piece, particularly when it is limited to musical procedures--the sort of thing 21st century composers often write about their own music ("it is based on a four-note motive which is then played backwards against a descending scale derived from the first three notes transposed up a third set against the remaining notes in the brass..." sheeesh.)
Using one's 'romantic' imagination can be a nice corrective (or rebellion) against that sort of thing, but it is also a way for the mind to attempt to find a coherent structure for the piece. The part where they are walking happily into the forest, the place where it grows dark, the part where they see a lonely house in the distance and make for it... as naïve as it might sound to an academic or a professional musician, making a "story" out of a piece of music takes the music out of passive sound absorption and into the realm of raw material out of which sense--and form--is derived. At least, that's the hope. And as story, there ought to be some narrative continuity, which is just what the audience needs to find. All the better if they find it themselves.
Framing the piece as a ghost story did something else, too. I had an interesting conversation with a pianist after the concert in which I pointed out that pianists of today tend to maintain consistent tempi and minimize dynamic contrast. We are still, it seems, in reaction against Romantic "excess." This is one case where the recent authenticity movement fails to be authentic at all. The irony is that we are so busy rescuing the Baroque and Classical periods against Romantic 'vandalism' that we fail utterly to realize that when we are playing Romantic music, that those very discards ARE authentic. Brahms's score is full of places where the music goes from piano to fortissimo in just a beat or two, and while the tempo fluctuations are not similarly marked, those pianists who survived into the early 20th century showed us that in the 19th tempo was much more fluid, and that the net effect was far more dramatic. Pianists of the time may have been more technically sloppy, but they played with far more emotional impact. Even if we find that embarrassing.
With any luck, telling my harrowing tale from the keyboard the other night made me approach the piece more like Brahms himself would have. Unfortunately, only one wax cylinder of his playing survives, and it is so distorted that it is hard to know how he played. But at the very least, I got to run an interesting experiment, which may have gone against the grain of many a modern pianistic approach, a good deal of which in the end is as much a reflection of fashion as authenticity.
And if that thought scares some of you, well, BOO!
Brahms: Rhapsody no. 2 in g minor, op. 79 n. 2
Monday, April 20, 2015
Notes on a Very Polite Train wreck
We're going to do some musical rubbernecking today.
A young fellow named Scott Joplin needed a way to generate some interest in his first publication. So he chose to title his piece after a recent bit of sensational news involving two trains and a lot of spectacular property damage. What he created from this real life destruction can be described as a musical train wreck.
harhar.
Actually, it is a pretty harmless little march, with a sonic representation of the train wreck itself in the last section. Now before we get there, there are three things to note about it.
First of all, you'll have to wait a few minutes for the collision itself, because, being a true march, it consists of a first strain, that repeated, a second section, that also repeated, and then we get to the trio. (This is the part of that in a different march--"Stars and Strips Forever"-- has been given the words "Be kind to your web footed friend," etc. The trio is often the most tuneful part of a march). That trio then has a "complicating incident" in which the low brass instruments go at it, complete with tense and dramatic harmonies, until we come out the other side and the trio melody sings again. That's the same part of the piece in which Joplin has his train wreck.
The second thing to know about it, before we get there, is that it's pretty wimpy.
If you were tasked with describing a collision in music, you'd probably be tempted to write some obnoxious loud cluster of notes in the bass that would assault the ears and really get the point across that something hellacious was happening. Not Joplin. He's too polite. His idea of musical chaos is a V7 chord. Like so:
[listen]
Not only is it not very disruptive (except, perhaps, for being in the bass, which gives it some rumble) but it even connects smoothly with what follows.
Ah, yes. What comes next. That's item number three. Now, if you listen to the aftermath of the train wreck, you'll note that the chipper little melody comes roaring right back. We all just had a really great time watching all those people die in that terrible locomotive disaster.
Egad!
Except that I did some more research and found out not to feel guilty about it. You shouldn't either. True, Joplin's piece is actually based on a real collision between two trains that happened in 1896. But it was a staged collision. That's right, people needed something fun to do, and the idea of slamming a lot of stuff together at high speed held a lot of mass appeal even then. In the days before monster truck rallies, or action movies (or Hadron colliders) this apparently was pretty entertaining.
We are assuming, of course, that the engineers managed to jump out before the collision and that nobody got hurt.
Oh, one more item. Because in a march everything gets repeated, you'll hear the collision part twice. This is before they had instant replay, or super-slo-mo, or reverse angles, or any of that, so Joplin's audience might have considered this to be a real privilege. It could even be an indication that Joplin was ahead of his time. But not really. He was just doing what the march form required.
Enjoy your collision.
Joplin: Crush Collision March
A young fellow named Scott Joplin needed a way to generate some interest in his first publication. So he chose to title his piece after a recent bit of sensational news involving two trains and a lot of spectacular property damage. What he created from this real life destruction can be described as a musical train wreck.
harhar.
Actually, it is a pretty harmless little march, with a sonic representation of the train wreck itself in the last section. Now before we get there, there are three things to note about it.
First of all, you'll have to wait a few minutes for the collision itself, because, being a true march, it consists of a first strain, that repeated, a second section, that also repeated, and then we get to the trio. (This is the part of that in a different march--"Stars and Strips Forever"-- has been given the words "Be kind to your web footed friend," etc. The trio is often the most tuneful part of a march). That trio then has a "complicating incident" in which the low brass instruments go at it, complete with tense and dramatic harmonies, until we come out the other side and the trio melody sings again. That's the same part of the piece in which Joplin has his train wreck.
The second thing to know about it, before we get there, is that it's pretty wimpy.
If you were tasked with describing a collision in music, you'd probably be tempted to write some obnoxious loud cluster of notes in the bass that would assault the ears and really get the point across that something hellacious was happening. Not Joplin. He's too polite. His idea of musical chaos is a V7 chord. Like so:
[listen]
Not only is it not very disruptive (except, perhaps, for being in the bass, which gives it some rumble) but it even connects smoothly with what follows.
Ah, yes. What comes next. That's item number three. Now, if you listen to the aftermath of the train wreck, you'll note that the chipper little melody comes roaring right back. We all just had a really great time watching all those people die in that terrible locomotive disaster.
Egad!
Except that I did some more research and found out not to feel guilty about it. You shouldn't either. True, Joplin's piece is actually based on a real collision between two trains that happened in 1896. But it was a staged collision. That's right, people needed something fun to do, and the idea of slamming a lot of stuff together at high speed held a lot of mass appeal even then. In the days before monster truck rallies, or action movies (or Hadron colliders) this apparently was pretty entertaining.
We are assuming, of course, that the engineers managed to jump out before the collision and that nobody got hurt.
Oh, one more item. Because in a march everything gets repeated, you'll hear the collision part twice. This is before they had instant replay, or super-slo-mo, or reverse angles, or any of that, so Joplin's audience might have considered this to be a real privilege. It could even be an indication that Joplin was ahead of his time. But not really. He was just doing what the march form required.
Enjoy your collision.
Joplin: Crush Collision March
Wednesday, April 15, 2015
"Scientists discover the nostalgia gene"
Schumann's "Kinderscenen" has its ups and downs, as does any piece of music. But They are particularly important here, and so I present one more way in which he establishes unity between the various pieces. This is the very first thing you hear in the opening piece:
[listen]
That phrase, a sudden yearning leap upward, followed by a slow descent, is almost identical to the opening phrase of the fourth piece in the series:
[listen]
Only the rhythm has been changed to protect the innocent (there's no dotted snap on the descent).
And, like Monday's example, there are lots of similar phrases throughout. By the time we get to "Frightening" the leap and its consequent descent have been shifted until rather late in the phrase:
[listen]
Or the leap up may be itself raised to new heights of grandeur, as in "dreaming":
[listen]
As if to apologize for the excess, Schumann turns, in the next piece, to a more Spartan, abbreviated form of the leap-descent idea:
[listen]
In this case the top of the leap is coincident with the first beat of the measure, which, hasn't happened before. (By the way, he repents of this in the following phrase)
All of these moments are connected. But what effect do they have on the listener?
It is often difficult to explain an emotional experience in words. Or a musical one. But I suspect it has something to do with a sense of wonder, mixed with pain, and sentiment. In other words, nostalgia. Or something in that neighborhood. If that family of emotions is too vague, let Schumann define it for us. After all, listen to the chord he puts under the first leap:
[listen]
And if that isn't enough, the final, out-of-time soliloquy should tell us what the composer himself feels about all this:
[listen]
[listen]
That phrase, a sudden yearning leap upward, followed by a slow descent, is almost identical to the opening phrase of the fourth piece in the series:
[listen]
Only the rhythm has been changed to protect the innocent (there's no dotted snap on the descent).
And, like Monday's example, there are lots of similar phrases throughout. By the time we get to "Frightening" the leap and its consequent descent have been shifted until rather late in the phrase:
[listen]
Or the leap up may be itself raised to new heights of grandeur, as in "dreaming":
[listen]
As if to apologize for the excess, Schumann turns, in the next piece, to a more Spartan, abbreviated form of the leap-descent idea:
[listen]
In this case the top of the leap is coincident with the first beat of the measure, which, hasn't happened before. (By the way, he repents of this in the following phrase)
All of these moments are connected. But what effect do they have on the listener?
It is often difficult to explain an emotional experience in words. Or a musical one. But I suspect it has something to do with a sense of wonder, mixed with pain, and sentiment. In other words, nostalgia. Or something in that neighborhood. If that family of emotions is too vague, let Schumann define it for us. After all, listen to the chord he puts under the first leap:
[listen]
And if that isn't enough, the final, out-of-time soliloquy should tell us what the composer himself feels about all this:
[listen]
Monday, April 13, 2015
You can say that again
One of the major problems we pointed to when it comes to music with a program is that it can sound like a lot of disconnected episodes. It might be good at establishing imaginative connections with the world outside the notes (depending on your imagination) but it lacks internal cohesion.
That isn't a problem for Robert Schumann. His "Kinderscenen" is a collection of 13 short pieces which, somehow, sound as if they really belong together.
Actually, that "somehow" is no mystery. Schumann has a mind that knows how to connect his ideas. Today I'll give you but one example. Take these four little notes:
[graphic]
This little musical idea shows up in at least 20 places. First we hear it near the beginning of the set, in the second half of the very first piece.
[listen]
It shows up again in the sixth piece, "important event" where it starts in the middle of the phrase, so it may be harder to hear. Schumann accents the four notes, however, and since I made this recording I've gotten less subtle about making sure those four notes can be heard:
[listen]
But we are far from finished. Near the end of the set, in the middle of a rhapsodic piece like "frightened" which changes moods and tempi like the weather, is this little comment (upside down!):
[listen]
It's those four notes again. And finally, in the second-to-last piece of the set, just as the child-hero of our musical story is falling asleep, we hear it again (It's in the right hand accompaniment, so don't be distracted by the melody in the left!):
[listen]
I said finally, but it is present in many other places as well. Beside the first four notes of the final piece, there are subtler versions of the motive in pieces like "knight of the hobby horse" and "suddenly too serious"--the first of these has additional notes interpolated, and the last is stuck in the middle of a long phrase so you aren't likely to notice it.
Once you start finding connections like these it is hard to stop. That's partly because there are so many of them. And, for the skeptics among us, the ones who raise their hands and ask "sure, but it's only four notes. Couldn't you almost stick it in there just by accident? Isn't it like making a big deal out of how many times a great novelist uses the word 'the?'"
Good point. But look at the motive again. It's not as simple as the musical version of good morning. You have to make some effort to use it. Also look at the number of strategic places in the music where Schumann gives it center stage. That's my test for intentional use of a motive.
As I said, Schumann had a gift for connectivity. And when you have that gift, there are times when it may indeed "happen by accident"--when you put it on the page first, and realize it afterwards. That is the role of inspiration, and the subconscious. But it doesn't happen to everybody, and it doesn't happen without some attempt to think that way in the first place. Just ask Frantisek Kotzwara.
That isn't a problem for Robert Schumann. His "Kinderscenen" is a collection of 13 short pieces which, somehow, sound as if they really belong together.
Actually, that "somehow" is no mystery. Schumann has a mind that knows how to connect his ideas. Today I'll give you but one example. Take these four little notes:
[graphic]
This little musical idea shows up in at least 20 places. First we hear it near the beginning of the set, in the second half of the very first piece.
[listen]
It shows up again in the sixth piece, "important event" where it starts in the middle of the phrase, so it may be harder to hear. Schumann accents the four notes, however, and since I made this recording I've gotten less subtle about making sure those four notes can be heard:
[listen]
But we are far from finished. Near the end of the set, in the middle of a rhapsodic piece like "frightened" which changes moods and tempi like the weather, is this little comment (upside down!):
[listen]
It's those four notes again. And finally, in the second-to-last piece of the set, just as the child-hero of our musical story is falling asleep, we hear it again (It's in the right hand accompaniment, so don't be distracted by the melody in the left!):
[listen]
I said finally, but it is present in many other places as well. Beside the first four notes of the final piece, there are subtler versions of the motive in pieces like "knight of the hobby horse" and "suddenly too serious"--the first of these has additional notes interpolated, and the last is stuck in the middle of a long phrase so you aren't likely to notice it.
Once you start finding connections like these it is hard to stop. That's partly because there are so many of them. And, for the skeptics among us, the ones who raise their hands and ask "sure, but it's only four notes. Couldn't you almost stick it in there just by accident? Isn't it like making a big deal out of how many times a great novelist uses the word 'the?'"
Good point. But look at the motive again. It's not as simple as the musical version of good morning. You have to make some effort to use it. Also look at the number of strategic places in the music where Schumann gives it center stage. That's my test for intentional use of a motive.
As I said, Schumann had a gift for connectivity. And when you have that gift, there are times when it may indeed "happen by accident"--when you put it on the page first, and realize it afterwards. That is the role of inspiration, and the subconscious. But it doesn't happen to everybody, and it doesn't happen without some attempt to think that way in the first place. Just ask Frantisek Kotzwara.
Monday, April 6, 2015
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
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
Wednesday, April 1, 2015
He's kidding, right?
Today is the First of April, commonly known as April Fool's Day. It is also Rachmaninoff's birthday.
That is a total coincidence.
If you know anything about Rachmaninoff at all, you also realize how ironic it is. Of all the composers who never smiled, he smiled the least. It is hard to imagine him joking about anything, even if he did once look down upon a young Leon Fleisher who had expressed interest in a concert career and dead pan in his thick accent, "music----baaaaadd business." He may have been in total earnest, but at least it's funny the way Fleisher tells it.
There is, however, another composer who practically no one ever accuses of being funny, one Johann Sebastian Bach. This, however, may be a mistake. Sure, he's not smiling in the portrait, but apparently family gatherings in the Bach family could be quite raucous. Besides, if you know anything about the history of April Fool's, or human nature, you know that pranks are not always of the completely harmless variety, nor are they quite malicion-free. And that just might describe what is happening here, in the piece I'm going to play for you.
Why? Well, for starters the musical material ain't all that grand. Bach takes for his theme a simple scale, and this windy exercise drives the joke. Several times in the piece the two-voices chase each other around the scale like a pair of squirrels who can't figure out what direction to run in. The rest of the material is a slowly descending chromatic scale which does not sound very light-hearted at all. Some commentators have suggested that here Bach was responding to critics who were complaining that his music was too serious and did not have enough charm and crowd appeal. Taking light and flimsy materials with which to build the kind of artifice that they would not have appreciated in the least may have been a kind of musical back-handed slap.
And after you listen to it, you just might come away thinking that Mr. Bach, the man you thought was so serious and dignified, really is pulling your leg, showing you what happens when you take an intentionally silly and empty theme and try to make it sound like a banquet of musical riches. The whole thing may function as a lugubrious cautionary tale--it is in a minor key, after all, and it isn't nearly as lighthearted as its neighbor, the second duet in the series, which is just as silly, and all smiles and sunshine. This one may not be so obviously humorous as its cousin. Call it a bit of dark humor, or bitter humor, but humor nevertheless. And the scales....
If that isn't enough to convince you, I've chosen a particularly hollow organ registration to drive the point home. It is missing its middle--a so-called "gapped" registration, in which the shiny mixture stops aren't sufficiently grounded with a full chorus of foundations. So if it also sounds a little odd aurally, that's why.
Enjoy Bach's little joke.
Bach: Duetto no. 1 in e minor
That is a total coincidence.
If you know anything about Rachmaninoff at all, you also realize how ironic it is. Of all the composers who never smiled, he smiled the least. It is hard to imagine him joking about anything, even if he did once look down upon a young Leon Fleisher who had expressed interest in a concert career and dead pan in his thick accent, "music----baaaaadd business." He may have been in total earnest, but at least it's funny the way Fleisher tells it.
There is, however, another composer who practically no one ever accuses of being funny, one Johann Sebastian Bach. This, however, may be a mistake. Sure, he's not smiling in the portrait, but apparently family gatherings in the Bach family could be quite raucous. Besides, if you know anything about the history of April Fool's, or human nature, you know that pranks are not always of the completely harmless variety, nor are they quite malicion-free. And that just might describe what is happening here, in the piece I'm going to play for you.
Why? Well, for starters the musical material ain't all that grand. Bach takes for his theme a simple scale, and this windy exercise drives the joke. Several times in the piece the two-voices chase each other around the scale like a pair of squirrels who can't figure out what direction to run in. The rest of the material is a slowly descending chromatic scale which does not sound very light-hearted at all. Some commentators have suggested that here Bach was responding to critics who were complaining that his music was too serious and did not have enough charm and crowd appeal. Taking light and flimsy materials with which to build the kind of artifice that they would not have appreciated in the least may have been a kind of musical back-handed slap.
And after you listen to it, you just might come away thinking that Mr. Bach, the man you thought was so serious and dignified, really is pulling your leg, showing you what happens when you take an intentionally silly and empty theme and try to make it sound like a banquet of musical riches. The whole thing may function as a lugubrious cautionary tale--it is in a minor key, after all, and it isn't nearly as lighthearted as its neighbor, the second duet in the series, which is just as silly, and all smiles and sunshine. This one may not be so obviously humorous as its cousin. Call it a bit of dark humor, or bitter humor, but humor nevertheless. And the scales....
If that isn't enough to convince you, I've chosen a particularly hollow organ registration to drive the point home. It is missing its middle--a so-called "gapped" registration, in which the shiny mixture stops aren't sufficiently grounded with a full chorus of foundations. So if it also sounds a little odd aurally, that's why.
Enjoy Bach's little joke.
Bach: Duetto no. 1 in e minor
Monday, March 16, 2015
The Tasty Science
Here's something like a Scud missile in the world of controversy:
I have definitive musical proof that Shostakovich loved to play tennis.
That statement amuses me because it contains some properties that should make it a big hit out in the wide world. It is quite sure of itself, which is important when you want to stir up a lot of notoriety, and it is so bizarre that it ought to provoke curiosity.
On the other hand, it involves someone whom most people have never heard of (Shostakovich) and a game most people regard as dull; therefore it is pretty irrelevant, popularly speaking. Hence as an attempt at publicity it is about as effective as a scud missile, where said missile is the butt of American jokes because they belonged to our enemy, and were, apparently, less effective at killing people than our own. My apologies to the people who actually died from these projectiles.
But if you'd still like to know how I came to my doctrinaire thesis (which I've already saved my colleagues the trouble of discrediting, having proceeded directly to step two and done it myself) read on.
On our church organ currently sits a volume of music by Sweelinck. Notice the title: "Samtliche werke fur Tasteninstrument" which I've incompetently translated as "collected works for tasty instruments!"
Of course it means no such thing. But through the strange quirks of the evolution of language, the terms for touch and taste seem almost reversed. Here the term for keyboard instrument, which is something you touch to make sound, ("tasten") seems to refer to one sense in Dutch, and another in English. If you have nothing better to laugh at, it can be at least mildly amusing.
Personally, I would hate to have to deal with the ramifications of such a conclusion. A nine foot Steinway might provide food for several months, but it would be a horribly expensive way to dine.
When one is looking for connections, this is a reminder that there are many pitfalls. But connections are the very food of thought and so we press on.
Etymology is one of many fields which fascinate me but for which I have little time and will never be an expert. But languages like English aren't alone in containing "words" which have both subtle and obvious connections to other words. Music does as well. In the most obvious cases, composers have deliberately inserted groups of notes that serve as code for something. One popular form of these is the composer's name. Which is how we get tennis into all this. Don't you just love it?
Sorry.
Not really.
One of those musical names belongs to Dmitri Shostakovich, who used the notes D-Eb-C-B to spell his name in some of his compositions.
Wondering how that works? It helps if you are German (which he wasn't) because that gives you a little more flexibility in the musical spelling department.
D is for Dmitri, obviously. But the note Eb is pronounced "ess" in German, hence the start of his surname. Then, C (for C; duh!) and finally B natural, which is actually "H" in German (Bb is "B") thus, D. "S" C H--D. Shotakovich.
So imagine my excitement when I heard Shostakovich's name being used by someone else. That someone else is Erik Satie. It is heard twice, as the first four and next four notes of the last member of his "Sports and Recreations." I give you "Tennis."
Listen
Now right away I was thinking "come on, now, that connection's not possible." Shostakovich would have been too young to be known in France, and how the heck would Satie even know Shostakovich, who didn't travel outside Russia, never mind that he liked to play tennis. It's not like they could have played doubles on weekends (not that I wouldn't pay money to see that).
So, a mere week later, late one night, when I had nothing less important to do, I finally spent a whopping 30 seconds with the Wikipedia to debunk my excitable theory. Basically I looked at his dates: Shostakovich was only eight years old when Satie wrote "Sports and Recreations." He become known to the musical world first through his First Symphony, which premiered in 1926, the year after Satie died. Prognosis: a complete accident. Also the Shostakovich estate can't retroactively sue the Satie estate. (If he ripped off Marvin Gaye that would be different.)
It's too bad, now that I have no sensational paper to publish. But apparently there is still such a thing as coincidence; it just doesn't sell that well. So....did Satie know something about the leisure habits of a famous Russian composer yet to become known? And...how on earth did he know that? Or did he?
You decide.
I have definitive musical proof that Shostakovich loved to play tennis.
That statement amuses me because it contains some properties that should make it a big hit out in the wide world. It is quite sure of itself, which is important when you want to stir up a lot of notoriety, and it is so bizarre that it ought to provoke curiosity.
On the other hand, it involves someone whom most people have never heard of (Shostakovich) and a game most people regard as dull; therefore it is pretty irrelevant, popularly speaking. Hence as an attempt at publicity it is about as effective as a scud missile, where said missile is the butt of American jokes because they belonged to our enemy, and were, apparently, less effective at killing people than our own. My apologies to the people who actually died from these projectiles.
But if you'd still like to know how I came to my doctrinaire thesis (which I've already saved my colleagues the trouble of discrediting, having proceeded directly to step two and done it myself) read on.
On our church organ currently sits a volume of music by Sweelinck. Notice the title: "Samtliche werke fur Tasteninstrument" which I've incompetently translated as "collected works for tasty instruments!"
Of course it means no such thing. But through the strange quirks of the evolution of language, the terms for touch and taste seem almost reversed. Here the term for keyboard instrument, which is something you touch to make sound, ("tasten") seems to refer to one sense in Dutch, and another in English. If you have nothing better to laugh at, it can be at least mildly amusing.
Personally, I would hate to have to deal with the ramifications of such a conclusion. A nine foot Steinway might provide food for several months, but it would be a horribly expensive way to dine.
When one is looking for connections, this is a reminder that there are many pitfalls. But connections are the very food of thought and so we press on.
Etymology is one of many fields which fascinate me but for which I have little time and will never be an expert. But languages like English aren't alone in containing "words" which have both subtle and obvious connections to other words. Music does as well. In the most obvious cases, composers have deliberately inserted groups of notes that serve as code for something. One popular form of these is the composer's name. Which is how we get tennis into all this. Don't you just love it?
Sorry.
Not really.
One of those musical names belongs to Dmitri Shostakovich, who used the notes D-Eb-C-B to spell his name in some of his compositions.
Wondering how that works? It helps if you are German (which he wasn't) because that gives you a little more flexibility in the musical spelling department.
D is for Dmitri, obviously. But the note Eb is pronounced "ess" in German, hence the start of his surname. Then, C (for C; duh!) and finally B natural, which is actually "H" in German (Bb is "B") thus, D. "S" C H--D. Shotakovich.
So imagine my excitement when I heard Shostakovich's name being used by someone else. That someone else is Erik Satie. It is heard twice, as the first four and next four notes of the last member of his "Sports and Recreations." I give you "Tennis."
Listen
Now right away I was thinking "come on, now, that connection's not possible." Shostakovich would have been too young to be known in France, and how the heck would Satie even know Shostakovich, who didn't travel outside Russia, never mind that he liked to play tennis. It's not like they could have played doubles on weekends (not that I wouldn't pay money to see that).
So, a mere week later, late one night, when I had nothing less important to do, I finally spent a whopping 30 seconds with the Wikipedia to debunk my excitable theory. Basically I looked at his dates: Shostakovich was only eight years old when Satie wrote "Sports and Recreations." He become known to the musical world first through his First Symphony, which premiered in 1926, the year after Satie died. Prognosis: a complete accident. Also the Shostakovich estate can't retroactively sue the Satie estate. (If he ripped off Marvin Gaye that would be different.)
It's too bad, now that I have no sensational paper to publish. But apparently there is still such a thing as coincidence; it just doesn't sell that well. So....did Satie know something about the leisure habits of a famous Russian composer yet to become known? And...how on earth did he know that? Or did he?
You decide.
Monday, March 9, 2015
It's not what it sounds like
Does this sound like an octopus to you?
listen
If you said yes, you may want to see a doctor. Or you are already familiar with Erik Satie's "Sports et Divertissments" for piano. In which case, your answer still should have been "no."
Last week, we examined some of the pieces from this collection that Satie wrote for such activities as "fishing" and "yachting" which, if you were given the title beforehand, and maybe in a rare case even if you weren't, you might get the impression captured the events musically. But I warned you, assuming a one to one relationship between a story, picture, or event, and a musical composition, is probably oversimplifying, and oversimplifying is certainly not something that applies to Erik Satie.
As with many a musicological argument, I've gotten there in the middle, but it seems that there are some folks who admire Mr. Satie for his tone-painting in this work. In particular, for the way his music relates to the illustrations that accompany each of the pieces. But in a blog I read recently, the author points out that Mr. Satie never actually saw any of the drawings that accompanied his music, and that he wrote the music first anyhow. That pretty much only leaves his music as a generalized portrait of the activity in question, which, given that they are Satie's own titles, is a fairly safe bet.
That is, it is a safe bet that he could have written his pieces with particular reference to the events of the title. Whether he chose to actually do so takes us into the world of Erik Satie.
Satie liked to work on different levels, and frequently allowed those levels to collide, or, most often, to have no relation at all to one another. In his scores he will often keep up a running dialogue with the performer. There is nothing unusual about a steady stream of tempo and expressive directions in a musical score, such as telling the performer to slow down in one spot or to play tenderly in another. But how does one play "like a nightingale with a toothache" or "very lost"? Those are just two of the endlessly descriptive, very funny, and possibly useless instructions to the performer so common to his pieces. Sometimes Satie will weave these instructions into a narrative as he does in the Sonata Bureaucratic. The running gag about a dull-witted office worker has apparently nothing at all to do with the music, which is itself a parody of a Clementi sonatina often massacred by students.
In the second movement of his collection "Dried Embryos" (yik!) Satie refers to a musical quotation. There it is a group of animals having a funeral, and the quotation is actually the famous funeral march by Chopin, only Satie tells us in the score that it is a quotation from a "famous mazurka by Schubert" who, incidentally never wrote a Mazurka, famous or otherwise. Is Satie pulling our leg?
This is why there is really nothing unusual about the instructions at the start of the movement "Yachting" from Sports and Recreations, except that it is impossible (and that hardly qualifies). Satie has clearly marked the left hand in quarter notes followed by quarter rests. Nevertheless, in the written instructions directly above this line of music he instructs to play "in half notes, the octaves of the bass" and then, to drive the point home, the quarter notes, disconnected by the intervening rests, are to be played "legato." It would be enough to drive a literal-minded, traditionally trained classical pianist to despair. After all, are we not taught that the composer's intentions must be respected to the last pen stroke? And here is something deliberately contradictory, and impossible to execute. It is either one, or the other. Satie knows this, and he knows we know, and he knows we know he knows, and....there it is. One set of instructions completely at odds with what is plain to see on the page.
Satie is also well known for never using bar lines or giving meter or key signatures, even though it is usually apparent from the music what these ought to be. Another bit of annoyance for our good re-creationist, the ever-conscientious concert pianist.
This is largely because Satie himself stood outside the establishment. He didn't get along with the pianists at the conservatory, nor they him, and his music was championed not by the respected artists of the time, but by the underground. He had friends among reputable musicians (Debussy, for one) but they didn't really take him seriously. Satie's "Sports" is subtitled "20 short pieces for piano" but there are actually 21. The set begins with an "un-frivolous" preface, called an "unappetizing chorale" which Satie has written "for those who don't like me." It is, he says, "a serious and proper chorale....I have put into it all I know about boredom."
So back to the octopus. Satie has written a little story about him. It is not to be read aloud. Satie would be piqued at violations of his edict, though it often happens in performances today. A recording available online has a narrator reading all of the comments aloud in French, while the pianist has to adopt a slow tempo and pause between gestures so she can get them all in.
The story concerns an octopus who swallows a crab and it goes down the wrong pipe. More absurdities follow. The music might mimic the rapidity of the octopus, but the repetitive, motoric gestures that dominate nearly every piece in the set sound much less evocative of nature, or people, and more like machines. There seems to be a mechanical obsession among French composers of the early 20th century, and that appears to be a reflection of the pace, and priorities, of the society around them. Short, repetitive bursts follow each other in hurried profusion which remind more of the speed of the silent movie, the dominant entertainment of the era, and which provides a key for our next installment.
listen
If you said yes, you may want to see a doctor. Or you are already familiar with Erik Satie's "Sports et Divertissments" for piano. In which case, your answer still should have been "no."
Last week, we examined some of the pieces from this collection that Satie wrote for such activities as "fishing" and "yachting" which, if you were given the title beforehand, and maybe in a rare case even if you weren't, you might get the impression captured the events musically. But I warned you, assuming a one to one relationship between a story, picture, or event, and a musical composition, is probably oversimplifying, and oversimplifying is certainly not something that applies to Erik Satie.
As with many a musicological argument, I've gotten there in the middle, but it seems that there are some folks who admire Mr. Satie for his tone-painting in this work. In particular, for the way his music relates to the illustrations that accompany each of the pieces. But in a blog I read recently, the author points out that Mr. Satie never actually saw any of the drawings that accompanied his music, and that he wrote the music first anyhow. That pretty much only leaves his music as a generalized portrait of the activity in question, which, given that they are Satie's own titles, is a fairly safe bet.
That is, it is a safe bet that he could have written his pieces with particular reference to the events of the title. Whether he chose to actually do so takes us into the world of Erik Satie.
Satie liked to work on different levels, and frequently allowed those levels to collide, or, most often, to have no relation at all to one another. In his scores he will often keep up a running dialogue with the performer. There is nothing unusual about a steady stream of tempo and expressive directions in a musical score, such as telling the performer to slow down in one spot or to play tenderly in another. But how does one play "like a nightingale with a toothache" or "very lost"? Those are just two of the endlessly descriptive, very funny, and possibly useless instructions to the performer so common to his pieces. Sometimes Satie will weave these instructions into a narrative as he does in the Sonata Bureaucratic. The running gag about a dull-witted office worker has apparently nothing at all to do with the music, which is itself a parody of a Clementi sonatina often massacred by students.
In the second movement of his collection "Dried Embryos" (yik!) Satie refers to a musical quotation. There it is a group of animals having a funeral, and the quotation is actually the famous funeral march by Chopin, only Satie tells us in the score that it is a quotation from a "famous mazurka by Schubert" who, incidentally never wrote a Mazurka, famous or otherwise. Is Satie pulling our leg?
This is why there is really nothing unusual about the instructions at the start of the movement "Yachting" from Sports and Recreations, except that it is impossible (and that hardly qualifies). Satie has clearly marked the left hand in quarter notes followed by quarter rests. Nevertheless, in the written instructions directly above this line of music he instructs to play "in half notes, the octaves of the bass" and then, to drive the point home, the quarter notes, disconnected by the intervening rests, are to be played "legato." It would be enough to drive a literal-minded, traditionally trained classical pianist to despair. After all, are we not taught that the composer's intentions must be respected to the last pen stroke? And here is something deliberately contradictory, and impossible to execute. It is either one, or the other. Satie knows this, and he knows we know, and he knows we know he knows, and....there it is. One set of instructions completely at odds with what is plain to see on the page.
Satie is also well known for never using bar lines or giving meter or key signatures, even though it is usually apparent from the music what these ought to be. Another bit of annoyance for our good re-creationist, the ever-conscientious concert pianist.
This is largely because Satie himself stood outside the establishment. He didn't get along with the pianists at the conservatory, nor they him, and his music was championed not by the respected artists of the time, but by the underground. He had friends among reputable musicians (Debussy, for one) but they didn't really take him seriously. Satie's "Sports" is subtitled "20 short pieces for piano" but there are actually 21. The set begins with an "un-frivolous" preface, called an "unappetizing chorale" which Satie has written "for those who don't like me." It is, he says, "a serious and proper chorale....I have put into it all I know about boredom."
So back to the octopus. Satie has written a little story about him. It is not to be read aloud. Satie would be piqued at violations of his edict, though it often happens in performances today. A recording available online has a narrator reading all of the comments aloud in French, while the pianist has to adopt a slow tempo and pause between gestures so she can get them all in.
The story concerns an octopus who swallows a crab and it goes down the wrong pipe. More absurdities follow. The music might mimic the rapidity of the octopus, but the repetitive, motoric gestures that dominate nearly every piece in the set sound much less evocative of nature, or people, and more like machines. There seems to be a mechanical obsession among French composers of the early 20th century, and that appears to be a reflection of the pace, and priorities, of the society around them. Short, repetitive bursts follow each other in hurried profusion which remind more of the speed of the silent movie, the dominant entertainment of the era, and which provides a key for our next installment.
Monday, February 23, 2015
The music around here is clearly going downhill
Next week I intend to start discussing music I'm going to play this spring at a house concert in Champaign. But I'll let you get a jump on it by playing for you this very very short piece by a very interesting fellow named Erik Satie. We've gotten quite a bit of snow this weekend, the powdery kind, and it would be perfect for sledding, if Champaign were not exceedingly flat. A popular t-shirt here reads "Champaign, on the foothills of mount level."
Here is Mr. Satie's musical version of the activity of sledding. If you've got someplace to go, perfect. I promise this will only take 30 seconds. And when you've recovered, we can talk about it a little next week.
Satie: Le Traineau
Here is Mr. Satie's musical version of the activity of sledding. If you've got someplace to go, perfect. I promise this will only take 30 seconds. And when you've recovered, we can talk about it a little next week.
Satie: Le Traineau
Monday, February 16, 2015
Blame the Equipment
If you've ever played tennis you may be familiar with the phenomenon in which a black hole mysteriously opens in the middle of your racquet just as you are about to deliver a killer shot and inexplicably causes you to miss.
I was, very technically, on the tennis team for a year in high school and experienced this an unaccountable number of times. Naturally I was so stunned each time a parallel dimension came crashing through into our reality that I looked at my racquet as if to say, "somehow, this is your fault." My friend, who liked to stretch the definition of the term friend, enjoyed merrily pointing this out every time, suggesting that it wasn't really the racquet's fault at all and that there was in fact something wrong with my game.
I am, therefore, aware of how you might react to my recent round of equipment blaming. It has to do with the organ.
Last fall, I noticed an odd thing. There were times when the articulation on some of the notes was not as crisp as I wanted. I have a stern ear, and it wants what it wants. This means that actually missing a note isn't the only thing that can go wrong with a passage. If one of the notes overstays its welcome by even a tiny bit, that passage can sound sloppy. Now given that we'd just had the action reworked and tightened, and that some of the keys were quite obviously sticking, there was a case to be made that some of the occasional inarticulate passages that mar my recordings from last September were not my fault. Since that time, the action has relaxed, and sticking notes are less of a problem, though they still crop up occasionally. But last week, I made recorded evidence that it isn't just the keyboard that can make mistakes. This one came from the organ itself.
What you are about to listen to are two passages from the same performance. Our organ has a playback system, and what this means is that I can hit a record button on the console and play a piece of music, whereon the system in the pipe room stores as MIDI data each key as it is depressed, released, when stops are added or removed, and so on. Then, when you press the PLAY button, it will replicated your performance exactly on the organ itself.
So when I say it is the same performance, I mean I played the piece one time, and recorded the results twice, each time by hitting the PLAY button and audio recording the results that I had already recorded on the organ console earlier. And when I got to exhibit A I heard a note that didn't exactly fire.
exhibit A
"That's odd," I though. "I don't remember muffing that note when I played it."
I hadn't. That much became clear when, being a suspicious lad, I hit the play button a second time and re-recorded the same performance from organ to microphone. The second time it sounded fine.
exhibit B
What would cause a variation like that? Remember, the organ is a large and complex instrument. It consists of large metal and wooden pipes, and lots of moving parts. Those parts can be affected by humidity and temperature. Sometimes something sticks, however temporary, and affects the execution.
My theory is that, the first time, the temperature in the sanctuary had something to do with it. Typically, when I record during the winter months, I bump up the temperature five degrees, then turn the thermostat back to its regular position. During the time it takes the sanctuary to fall five degrees, the heat will not come on, which would cause background hissing on the recordings and affect their quality, particularly when it comes to recordings of the piano (on the organ you can hear the blower going anyhow). Sometimes the change in temperature can cause the wood in the building to make rather loud settling noises, which I then have to edit out. But as the temperature settles back to what that space is "used to" there is less tension on the wood. And also less time to record before the heat begins to hiss and hum all over again. In the summer this is less of a concern. I only have to worry about the birds. And the air-conditioning.
And occasionally, the equipment doesn't quite behave itself. In which case, you try it again. Even if it's not your fault. That's life.
Now that's not so paranoid, is it?
I was, very technically, on the tennis team for a year in high school and experienced this an unaccountable number of times. Naturally I was so stunned each time a parallel dimension came crashing through into our reality that I looked at my racquet as if to say, "somehow, this is your fault." My friend, who liked to stretch the definition of the term friend, enjoyed merrily pointing this out every time, suggesting that it wasn't really the racquet's fault at all and that there was in fact something wrong with my game.
I am, therefore, aware of how you might react to my recent round of equipment blaming. It has to do with the organ.
Last fall, I noticed an odd thing. There were times when the articulation on some of the notes was not as crisp as I wanted. I have a stern ear, and it wants what it wants. This means that actually missing a note isn't the only thing that can go wrong with a passage. If one of the notes overstays its welcome by even a tiny bit, that passage can sound sloppy. Now given that we'd just had the action reworked and tightened, and that some of the keys were quite obviously sticking, there was a case to be made that some of the occasional inarticulate passages that mar my recordings from last September were not my fault. Since that time, the action has relaxed, and sticking notes are less of a problem, though they still crop up occasionally. But last week, I made recorded evidence that it isn't just the keyboard that can make mistakes. This one came from the organ itself.
What you are about to listen to are two passages from the same performance. Our organ has a playback system, and what this means is that I can hit a record button on the console and play a piece of music, whereon the system in the pipe room stores as MIDI data each key as it is depressed, released, when stops are added or removed, and so on. Then, when you press the PLAY button, it will replicated your performance exactly on the organ itself.
So when I say it is the same performance, I mean I played the piece one time, and recorded the results twice, each time by hitting the PLAY button and audio recording the results that I had already recorded on the organ console earlier. And when I got to exhibit A I heard a note that didn't exactly fire.
exhibit A
"That's odd," I though. "I don't remember muffing that note when I played it."
I hadn't. That much became clear when, being a suspicious lad, I hit the play button a second time and re-recorded the same performance from organ to microphone. The second time it sounded fine.
exhibit B
What would cause a variation like that? Remember, the organ is a large and complex instrument. It consists of large metal and wooden pipes, and lots of moving parts. Those parts can be affected by humidity and temperature. Sometimes something sticks, however temporary, and affects the execution.
My theory is that, the first time, the temperature in the sanctuary had something to do with it. Typically, when I record during the winter months, I bump up the temperature five degrees, then turn the thermostat back to its regular position. During the time it takes the sanctuary to fall five degrees, the heat will not come on, which would cause background hissing on the recordings and affect their quality, particularly when it comes to recordings of the piano (on the organ you can hear the blower going anyhow). Sometimes the change in temperature can cause the wood in the building to make rather loud settling noises, which I then have to edit out. But as the temperature settles back to what that space is "used to" there is less tension on the wood. And also less time to record before the heat begins to hiss and hum all over again. In the summer this is less of a concern. I only have to worry about the birds. And the air-conditioning.
And occasionally, the equipment doesn't quite behave itself. In which case, you try it again. Even if it's not your fault. That's life.
Now that's not so paranoid, is it?
Wednesday, January 14, 2015
Off balance
Today's selection is a little Minuet.
This isn't one of the most earth-shattering pieces in the piano literature, exactly. In fact, there are hundreds, nay thousands, of these little movements in the piano corpus. The name is taken from a dance that the rich folks at court liked to dance back in the 18th century. It was, you might say, quite a fad--not that the powers that were necessarily believed in fads. They liked to think of things being eternal, like their own power. In terms of geopolitical alliances and the organization of time and space, you might say they liked to think big. But when it came to the Minuet, they proceeded in baby steps.
That's actually where the word gets its punch. You'll note it is similar to the word "minute" as in small (and if you accidentally stressed the other syllable, as in unit of time, that's pretty small, too--or was until seconds and fractions thereof came along more recently). The minuet is a dance comprising small steps. Only peasants use large ones. Physical exertion is SOOO not cool.
The reason I'm sharing this one with you today, though, is not because it is typical of the times, but because it isn't. There is something odd about this one. Oh, sure, it's got a nice, aristocratic air about it, but something doesn't quite fit. Listen to this less-than-everything-is-going-well phrase.
[listen]
This isn't exactly the sort of phrase you would expect in a minuet; it is not something the nobles would want to hear. It is a downer. And, in fact, in terms of musical coherence, it doesn't need to be there at all, since the phrase before it leads perfectly into the phrase after it, making this strange moment seem harmonically unnecessary. I'm going to play the minuet portion (part one) of this piece for you without that little phrase; notice how you wouldn't miss it.
[listen]
But that isn't the way Joe Haydn wrote it. Right as we are about to make a triumphant return to the opening phrase, after the little outbound journey that is the common property of nearly every sonata movement, and the preparation for the return, he sticks in that little phrase you heard first. It not only delays the return by a few measures, it seems a little out of place. For one thing, it is the only place in the entire sonata (including movements one and three) where Haydn uses the minor mode.
Haydn: Sonata Hob. 9 in F: II. Minuet
Oddly, in terms of architecture, the additional phrase seems to restore the balance required by the long outer sections. But psychologically, it takes us where we don't expect to go, and whispers to us brooding things, but only for an instant before the party returns in full force and gaiety returns. Does it now seem forced? The gaiety, I mean.
Maybe I'm making too much of this. Maybe I'm trying to make Haydn sound like Shotakovich.
But I wonder. What made Haydn insert that strange little phrase, and is it going to keep me up at night?
This isn't one of the most earth-shattering pieces in the piano literature, exactly. In fact, there are hundreds, nay thousands, of these little movements in the piano corpus. The name is taken from a dance that the rich folks at court liked to dance back in the 18th century. It was, you might say, quite a fad--not that the powers that were necessarily believed in fads. They liked to think of things being eternal, like their own power. In terms of geopolitical alliances and the organization of time and space, you might say they liked to think big. But when it came to the Minuet, they proceeded in baby steps.
That's actually where the word gets its punch. You'll note it is similar to the word "minute" as in small (and if you accidentally stressed the other syllable, as in unit of time, that's pretty small, too--or was until seconds and fractions thereof came along more recently). The minuet is a dance comprising small steps. Only peasants use large ones. Physical exertion is SOOO not cool.
The reason I'm sharing this one with you today, though, is not because it is typical of the times, but because it isn't. There is something odd about this one. Oh, sure, it's got a nice, aristocratic air about it, but something doesn't quite fit. Listen to this less-than-everything-is-going-well phrase.
[listen]
This isn't exactly the sort of phrase you would expect in a minuet; it is not something the nobles would want to hear. It is a downer. And, in fact, in terms of musical coherence, it doesn't need to be there at all, since the phrase before it leads perfectly into the phrase after it, making this strange moment seem harmonically unnecessary. I'm going to play the minuet portion (part one) of this piece for you without that little phrase; notice how you wouldn't miss it.
[listen]
But that isn't the way Joe Haydn wrote it. Right as we are about to make a triumphant return to the opening phrase, after the little outbound journey that is the common property of nearly every sonata movement, and the preparation for the return, he sticks in that little phrase you heard first. It not only delays the return by a few measures, it seems a little out of place. For one thing, it is the only place in the entire sonata (including movements one and three) where Haydn uses the minor mode.
Haydn: Sonata Hob. 9 in F: II. Minuet
Oddly, in terms of architecture, the additional phrase seems to restore the balance required by the long outer sections. But psychologically, it takes us where we don't expect to go, and whispers to us brooding things, but only for an instant before the party returns in full force and gaiety returns. Does it now seem forced? The gaiety, I mean.
Maybe I'm making too much of this. Maybe I'm trying to make Haydn sound like Shotakovich.
But I wonder. What made Haydn insert that strange little phrase, and is it going to keep me up at night?
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