Scarlatti's Fun-House Sonata; K.119

Step right up! L-a-d-i-e-s and G-e-n-t-l-e-m-e-n: we give you the fun-house sonata:

The unexpected can be delightful. Domenico Scarlatti (1685-1757), master of invention, had a particular knack for the unexpected.

In the famous keyboard sonata K. 119 in D major the unexpected takes the form of strangely encased passages in the minor mode. Music in minor haunts this sonata like a ride through the fun-house. No one would suspect a haunting based on the celebratory opening gestures, played here by Irena Koblar in a live performance:


We begin with confident music built on logical contrasts; widely spaced intervals against stationary chords on each downbeat. The chords disappear just as rising scalar figures are introduced [0:06]. The phrase seeks a cadence but requires a series of musical updrafts before it can settle.

A closing gesture [0:14] with repeated notes attracts our attention. It becomes narrative music; an amusement park barker calling though a megaphone. The section dissolves into a cadenza [0:23] that quickly modulates.

A-minor hits like Sleepy Hollow [0:31]. Syncopated melodic writing and the surprising twists of harmonic minor poke through as the ostinato rhythm moves us on rails through the fun house.

Gradually the texture takes on characteristics of the narrative music until we recognize our barker [0:58] and realize that we are safely back in major, celebrated with delightful hand-crossings that reference the very first measures of the piece, now in the dominant.

Koblar repeats the entire first half of the sonata [1:14-2:25]. The ghosts at [2:26] seem real. It is distilled, melancholy music that begins to obsess on trills like an incantation.

Gradual refocusing happens as ghosts fade and the sound takes on recognizable shapes related to the cadenza. The music stops on the dominant [3:00]. The final segment of the fun-house works as a mirror deflecting the earlier ride onto a different track that allows us to arrive back home.

Koblar repeats the entire second half of the sonata [3:47-5:08]. Like any good fun-house attraction the second time through we can figure out all the humbugs!

Little Star; Mussorgsky invokes music of the past

Mussorgsky had an uncanny ability to shape the simplest of materials into highly individualized musical constructions. One can observe this gift in almost every detail of his first surviving song, written at the age of 18 in 1857. Called "Gde ty, zvjozdochka," this song title is often translated "Little Star" in English.

The text is based on parts of a short poem by Nikolai Porfiryevich Grekov (1810-1866). Grekov was a misfit who eked out his living as a translator. Never highly respected, his poems nonetheless were set with some frequency by composers like Tchaikovsky and Anton Rubinstein.

Gde ty, zvjozdochka, (Where are you little star?)(akh,) gde ty, jasnaja? (Ah, Where are you pretty one?)
Il' zatmilasja (Or are you covered)
tuchej chjornoju, (by a dark cloud)
tuchej chjornoju, (dark cloud
tuchej groznoyu? (dark, and menacing?)

Gde ty, devitsa, (Where are you maiden?)
gde ty, krasnaja? (Where are you fairest?)
Il' pokinula (or have you abandoned)
druga milogo? (thy beloved)
Druga milogo, (thy beloved,
nenagljadnogo? (one and only?)

Tucha chjornaja (A black cloud)
skryla zvjozdochku, (covered the little star)
Zemlja khladnaja (Cold Earth)
vzjala devitsu. (covers my maiden)

I've arranged the lines differently than they appear in anthologies to show that they are comprised of 5-syllable groupings. We have lost the ability to think in poetic meters, but the ancient feel communicated by this formality is structural to the setting: the texture of the piano writing evokes the bard's harp.

Mussorgsky varies the emphasis of each 5-syllable set using melismas that allow the lines to float. The second line contains an extra exclamation common to the oral tradition and heard from time-to-time in the Milman Perry recordings.

The song opens with an unaccompanied piano line; a most unusual texture. One might expect a line like this to be doubled at the octave below, perhaps set against a simple drone. The spareness evokes broken loneliness.

The chords in the opening stanza explore the relationships between progressions by fifth and linear motions in thirds, particularly as the section approaches its cadence.

The middle stanza [1:09] brightens into the relative major with rustic drones and internal cadences on the mediant (the dominant of the larger tonal structure).

There is a wonderful collision as the last pitch of the central section rests on F-sharp [1:56], which becomes a dissonance as the music shifts back into G-sharp minor. Somehow our minds find a resolution that is unvoiced; a powerful symbol within the matrix of images in this song.

The final stanza [1:57] alters the pattern established in the first stanza. The powerful crystal-clear high G-sharp [2:23] sung and sustained clears away a space for the final phrase to quietly flow. The music shifts to the parallel major as the death of the maiden becomes clear to the listener [2:48], and as soon as the major tonality is understood it is taken away [3:00]. The highest note of the piece is the minor third, voiced in octaves on B-natural, just before the closing line.

This song intentionally invokes a music of the past to illuminate a grief that remains connected to nature. Its realizations come through images of stars and clouds and finally of Earth.

Watching Gluck's Iphigénie en Tauride Live in HD with Hector Berlioz

Christoph Willibald Ritter von Gluck (1714-1787) is a name associated with operatic reforms that many of us learned about in music history classes while safely tucked into large, airy lecture halls.

But for composer Hector Berlioz the music of Gluck represented a world of "infinite passion." Several times in his writings Berlioz describes performances of Iphigénie en Tauride in detailed and electrifying prose.

"Short of fainting," wrote Berlioz as a student back home to his sister, "I could not have been more moved than when I saw a performance of Gluck’s masterpiece Iphigénie en Tauride." This early euphoria was captured in a fictional transformation in a book he wrote years later.

His book "Evenings with the Orchestra" is centered on discussions and storytelling among members of an orchestra while dull modern operas are being performed. No one talked during masterpieces.

On the twenty-second evening described in the book, Gluck's Iphigénie en Tauride was performed. Corsino figured prominently in Evenings with the Orchestra. He was the concertmaster of the orchestra and was himself a composer. This passage, from the famous translation by Jacques Barzun, articulates the overpowering emotional impact that Berlioz found in Gluck. He takes us into the scene as it unfolds in present tense. Present tense was the 19th century version of Live in HD:

"The entire orchestra is filled with a religious respect for this immortal work and seems afraid of not being able to rise to the occasion. I notice the deep, sustained attention of the musicians as they keep their eyes on the conductor, the precision of their attack, their keen sense of expressive accent, the delicacy of their accompaniment, their ability to produce a wide range of nuances."

"The chorus also is impeccable. The Scythians’ scene in the first act rouses the enthusiasm of the select public that fills the house. Orestes is inadequate and almost ridiculous; Pylades bleats like a lamb. Iphigenia alone is equal to her role. When she comes to her aria “Unhappy Iphigenia!” whose color of antiquity, solemnity of accent, and desolate dignity of expression in melody and accompaniment recall the sublimities of Homer and the simple grandeur of the heroic ages, while filling the heart with the unfathomable sadness inseparable from the memory of a glorious but vanished past, Corsino turns pale and stops playing. He puts both elbows on his knees and buries his face in his hands, as if overwrought by inexpressible emotion."

"I can see his breathing become more and more rapid and the blood rushing to his reddened temples. At the entrance of the women’s chorus on the words 'To her lament we join our plaintive cries,' at that instant when the prolonged outcry of the priestesses blends with the voice of the royal orphan and swells with a heart-rending tumult in the orchestra, two streams of tears force their way from his eyes and he sobs so vehemently that I am compelled to lead him out of the house."

"We go outside . . . I see him home. Seated in his modest room, lit up by the moon alone, we stay a long time motionless. Corsino raises his eyes for an instant to the bust of Gluck that stands on his piano. We gaze at it. . . . The moon disappears. He sighs painfully, flings himself on his bed, and I leave. We have not uttered a single word."

Iphigénie en Tauride will be transmitted to theaters worldwide as part of the Met Live in HD Series this Saturday. See it and swoon.

A Meditation on January by Tchaikovsky

The Russian magazine "Nouvellist" commissioned Tchaikovsky to write twelve short piano pieces inspired by the each of the twelve months. The corresponding music appeared in each publication in 1876. Collected in publication later the work became "The Seasons," Op. 37a.



It is a month of surprises and unexpected deflections in the Tchaikovsky setting, and even the innocent opening phrase leans obliquely into A major. Developmental continuation [0:27] is accelerated [0:35] using tasty half-diminished sevenths in a strange sequence from A-flat to C major and culminates [0:43] in a quickly articulated sequence of flat-ninth chords. We just barely make the return [0:50].

"It is now January," wrote English writer Nicholas Breton (1545-1626), "& Time beginnes to turne on the wheele of his Reuolution." His entry, from "The Twelve Moneths," becomes filled with thoughts of sleep and of food:

"The Hedgehogge," writes Breton, "rowles up himselfe like a football. [...] Downe beds and quilted cappes are now in the pride of their seruice."

"The Hare after a course makes his hearse in a pye: the shoulder of a hog is a shooing horne to good drink."

Tchaikovsky seems to think in the dualities of January in the sexy central section beginning at [1:13]. We hear C major and E minor juxtaposed in radically different figurations. We are missing the resolution of the augmented sixth chord that would provide logical connection between the two. Ideas are repeated in disbelief.

This music swirls like an echo of the first section's deflection and ends in the mists of Schumann. Restatement [2:09] sounds as cold as it did before, though this time we find the dominant of E minor [2:29] which becomes V/V for our return [2:53].

"To conclude," writes Breton, "I hold it a time of little comfort, the rich mans charge and the poore mans misery. Farewell."

Music for the Marriage of an Econometrician

Ronan O'Reilly is an econometrician in the Richard Powers novel "Plowing the Dark." He is developing a software system that can predict complex systems, like oil prices, into the distant future. What he cannot predict is that Maura, his lover will no longer wait for him as he codes in the isolation of other fully obsessive coders in Seattle. She will marry another man.

"Stephen is probably no you," she writes to him, "but then again, you're no you, either. At any rate, you're not here anymore are you?"

O'Reilly had "failed to predict the obvious." Lost in thought he makes four passes past his apartment before entering it again to find the one CD that was to be the recessional music played for their own wedding.

Cantata 197, the 6th movement. "A bass aria, for Nach der Trauung (after the wedding), rolling in innocence, sung by a bass whose perfect, amused intonation declared that he had never lived anywhere but here, his vocal chords squarely at home in the bungled, compromised, roundly resonant place nearest to hand."



The music that is quoted begins at [16:12].

O du angenehmes Paar, (O you sweet delightful pair)
Dir wird eitel Heil begegnen, (May all happiness caress you)
Gott wird dich aus Zion segnen (May God from Zion bless you)
Und dich leiten immerdar (and lead you evermore)

Figuration opens this aria in a state of complexity laid upon simple, slowing changing chords. It is music of sweet contradiction.

The opening line is set twice; addressed individually to the couple. The first line is echoed at [0:57] then connected breathlessly to the next three lines which are presented together, then echoed together [1:22] after a strange passing dissonance.

O you sweet, delightful pair.

"O'Reilly raised his ethereal stemware of now-imaginary ambrosia and toasted the pair in question, across a distance that no amount of technology would ever be able to close." (p.300-302).

Thinking Classical Symphony; Memory in Prokofiev's first movement

"It seemed to me that if Haydn had lived to our day," wrote Prokofiev in his memoirs, "he would have retained his own style while absorbing something new at the same time."

Prokofiev had studied the music of Haydn intensively with Nikolai Tcherepnin (1873-1945) at the Saint Petersburg Conservatory. At this point in his career, Prokofiev was part of the anti-romantic modernist world. "At this moment," wrote William Austin in his lovely account of this work, "the idea of his classical symphony was a joke--a bit of esoteric irony. But to cap the irony, his joke became a popular classic of 20th-century music."

 

The symphony begins with a short rocket figure. This momentary loud gesture ushers a quiet theme in D major [0:07] in a contour that generally wants to fall. The metric structure is set in two 4-bar phrases. At [0:17] there is a collision by which the music is restated in C major. Not Haydn. This music is exactly parallel to the first theme--it is also set in two four-bar phrases. At [0:27] the music jumps back to D major for a lengthy and thematic transition. The D major tonality at [0:27] allows us to understand the passage in C major as being a prolonged lower neighbor. Compare the ideas of Prokofiev with the opening of Haydn's Symphony No. 56 in C major: The juxtaposition of loud and quiet ideas--one introductory and the other thematic is similar. Haydn uses a descending contour in his fanfare and a generally rising line afterward.

The recapitulation of the Prokofiev begins seamlessly out the development with the rocket figure at [2:58]--but this figure is in C major not D major.

The lyrical passage that follows [3:01] is parallel to the exposition but also stays in C major. The length matches the exposition; two four-bar phrases. And at [3:11] we are bumped up again to D major--but this is the music of transition. Prokofiev creates turbulence by omitting one pillar of the figure. This changes our expectations. It creates an accent on the transition.

It also makes us believe that the key of the recapitulation has been altered. The recapitulation "is reaping what was sown in that tiny excursion to C in the first few measures of the piece," writes the ever-perceptive Michael Steinberg.

Our memory of the opening passage leads us to believe that the recapitulation is exactly parallel to the exposition. The very mark of Haydneque construction is that a perception of significant structural change can be created simply by omission.

An Arrangement that Conjures the Past; Beethoven's Op. 104 in "An Equal Music"

In "An Equal Music," by Vikram Seth," Beethoven's arrangement of the Op. 1 No. 3 Piano Trio (which was published as his Op. 104), becomes an integral part of the storyline.

Soon after his memory of Julia is triggered by the C minor trio, Michael hears about the arrangement that Beethoven did in 1817 of the trio for string quintet. “But that’s crazy. That’s at the wrong end of his life.” In his obsessive pre-internet search for the score and parts he also finds a specific an actual recording of the quintet:

“There are two Beethoven string quintets on the LP: my C minor, so desperately sought, so astonishingly found; and one in E flat major, another complete surprise, though I recall the librarian mentioning in passing its opus number, 4. They were recorded (with an extra viola player) by the Suk quartet and issued in 1977 under the Czech label Supraphon. . . .Bravo. Bravo Suk. Bravo Supraphon. What would I have done if it had not been for you? In twenty minutes I will be back in my flat, but I won’t listen to it immediately. Late tonight, after the rehearsal, I’ll come home, light a candle, lie down on my duvet, and sink into the quintet.”

This LP was re-released on CD in 1999 by Supraphon Archive [SU 3447-2 111]. The specific reference to hearing the trio through Michael’s past its symbolism are developed when Michael hears the transformations made in the arrangement:

"The sound fills the room: so familiar, so well-loved, so disturbingly and enchantingly different. From the moment, a mere ten bars from the beginning, where it is not the piano that answers the violin but the violin itself that provides its own answer, to the last note of the last movement where the cello, instead of playing the third, supports with its lowest, most resonant, most open note the beautifully spare C major chord, I am in a world where I seem to know everything and nothing.

 

(Fine Arts Quartet with Gil Sharon playing the fourth movement of Op. 104)

"My hands travel the strings of the C minor trio while my ears sing to the quintet. Here Beethoven robs me of what is mine, giving it to the other violin; there he bequeaths me of what is mine, giving it to the other violin; there he bequeaths me the upper reaches of what Julia used to play. It is a magical transformation. I listen to it again from beginning to end. In the second movement it is the first violin—who else?—who sings what was the piano’s theme, and the variations take on a strange, mysterious distance, as being, in a sense, variations one degree removed, orchestral variants of variations, but with changes that go beyond what could be explained by orchestration alone."

The musical references harmonize the changes in Michael’s life in relation to Julia. Later, Michael’s quartet is joined by a guest violist to read through the quintet. Julia’s personality as represented by the piano part in the trio is transformed into string parts that now represent Michael’s present. This story now creates a context in which hear Op. 104 as a personality transformed. The first violin sings what was the piano’s theme in Op. 1 No. 3. From the standpoint of personality this allows Michael to visit Julia like only a musician can.

“We play the first movement without stopping, and do not get entangled once. It ends with Piers playing a tremendously zippy set of ascending and descending scales, followed by a huge resonant chord from all five of us, ebbing swiftly away I three softer chords.
We look at one another beaming.”

These passages give us opportunity to hear the trio through the characters, to make contact with how specific passages fit into the lives of its characters. We hear the affect of the music as it intertwines with the circumstances and the strangeness of living. We can hear the exact recording, we can observe and make contact with the exact notes and specific passages that take on or transmit the personality of those who played and loved it. It is also an emblem of a difficult time in his life that he is trying to interpret and transcend.

Thinking Academic Festival Overture

The Academic Festival Overture was written by Brahms in the summer of 1880 as a measure of appreciation for an honorary Doctor of Philosophy degree he received from Breslau University.

Brahms was never a University student himself, but was conversant with student drinking songs. Malcolm MacDonald observed that these songs were "venerable and popular enough to be counted a species of folk music [by Brahms], and treated with similar fondness."

The overture begins with a long introduction that moves from darkness into a sudden light. It opens in C minor with a tune that has the feel of a military drum cadence. It is immediately escalated through development [0:11] and is broken during its restatement [0:21] by two sequences using diminished chords.



A sudden break [0:36] takes us into F major for a chorale-like tune scored for violas that is quickly deflected [0:50] into D-flat major. The music hovers momentarily before committing to restatement.

The marching tune returns [1:01] but is interrupted again by a fanfare [1:08] The dotted rhythms and strongly articulated attitude of this passage will return later in the work, but this first appearance is derailed and the music enters a transitional phase [1:20].

The bright trumpet fanfare at [1:36] seems from a different world. It shines in C major. This passage reveals the large brass section that is a significant feature of this work, which is the largest orchestra for which Brahms ever wrote. This fanfare brings an element of continuity and steady escalation that is new to the musical process of this overture.

The Exposition follows on the most glorious moment in the exposition by unfolding a C major triad through its series of modulations. It begins with a motive derived from the marching tune of the introduction [2:13]. Like the original treatment of that passage, developmental motives are explored almost immediately.

A transition derived from ideas in the introduction begins at [2:50]. It includes a registral linking in octaves that creates a new space for the upcoming theme. This passage will become an important marker later in the movement.

The second theme group sounds in E major [3:12]. It disintegrates during its restatement and becomes a transition toward the final theme group.

The third theme group [4:01] completes the triadic modulation scheme by sounding in G Major. It is music in the habit of interrupting itself; its humor is enthusiastic displacement.

There is no clear demarcation between the exposition and the development [4:45]; it feels joined to the process of exposition. The development is about the music of fragments. A strongly syncopated vision of the third theme group [5:31] stands apart from the other misted references.

Ideas from the introduction return with greater frequency: the diminished sequence
Obsession with groupings of three, the fanfare from [1:08]. Stopped horns mark a transition in thinking. The introductory military drum cadence returns and provokes screaming high violin writing.

There is also no clear demarcation between the development and the recapitulation because the return to C major happens only with the music of the second theme group previously heard in E major.

The music is parallel and brings back the third theme group in C major scored triumphantly for brass.

The process is interrupted as the coda crashes upon us. The tune "Gaudeamus igitur" is sounded within in a huge swirling tutti. The work ends in triumph and high spirits.

Brahms and Gold Records

According to the Recording Industry Association of America (RIAA) a gold record is earned when a recording has sold one-half a million copies. The first gold record that was RIAA-certified was this 1958 gem from Perry Como:

 

Part of the credit for that golden record could have gone to Brahms because the tune was ripped cleanly from the Academic Festival Overture at [4:00]:


In 1993 a gold edition of the album "Fragile" by the band Yes was released. On it was this song called "Cans and Brahms" which is based on synthesized ideas from the third movement of the Brahms Symphony No. 4:

There was no Brahms on the Voyager Golden Record. Instead the classical music world was represented by three selections from Bach, two from Beethoven, an exerpt from The Rite of Spring, and a short work by Anthony Holborne. Oh, and the Queen of the Night Aria from Magic Flute:

 

This aria, "Der Hölle Rache kocht in meinem Herzen" (The vengeance of Hell boils in my heart), must have been included just in case aliens in distant galaxies thought we came in peace. But Brahms himself wrote a song, "Gold überwiegt die Liebe" (Gold Prevails over Love), in which musical tears are shed over the decision to chose gold over love:

Two levels of syncopation in Mozart's early G Minor Symphony

The opening of the first movement of Mozart's early G minor symphony K. 183 is arresting. Its vibrant syncopated beginning is used as a symbol of shock during the unexpected discovery of Salieri's suicide attempt in the movie Amadeus. The syncopation is expressed as a kind of tearing with the violins and violas pulling against the celli and basses. The suddenness of melodic motions is dizzying. This movement is all about intensities.

The movie is edited to correspond to sections within the sonata form expert that is played. The lengthy transition is greeted by a blinding overheard shot of an indoor ballroom lit with real candles in the chandeliers.

As the second theme group begins a massive double-door is swung open.

But in a symphony of intensities, even the musette which comprises the second theme group in B-flat major is connected to the opening gesture by the use of syncopation--in this case a syncopation that happens at the phrase level rather than syncopation within the measure:



In the photograph above, I marked the first four measures of the second theme group beginning in the fourth measure of the top system. Count those measures in hypermetric 8th note language with two articulations per measure (ONE-and-TWO-and-THREE-and-FOUR-and), and the phrase structure becomes apparent. It has the same properties that each individual measure has at a different scale of time.

One the second system the balancing phrase is cut short by one-half a measure, and the restatement of the second theme group begins on the second part of the measure--it is a metric-level syncopation (AND-one-AND-two-AND-three-AND-four) (AND-one-AND-two-AND-three-AND).

The metric syncopation resolves at [4:03] on a downbeat that in turn launches us into closing gestures.

I had the great opportunity to study and work with Lukas Foss. He used to say of Mozart that while anyone could put notes together that belonged together, that Mozart "was the kind of genius that could put ideas together that did not belong together and make them work."

What better example of this than the sense that ideas can connect by using syncopation to communicate urgency and intensity at different distances from the musical surface.

That Song that Reminds you of a Lost Lover; 19th-century Sampling

Technology has made it easy to sample music from the past; music filled with associations that can be made into a powerful background for lyrics of reflection and commentary. But long before electricity, Robert Schumann invented the concept of sampling.

In the tenth song of Dichterliebe we share the pain of a singer who is sick with memory. He hears a song that his lover used to sing--Schumann scores its tune as an introduction for piano alone.

The singer slowly raps over the progression, so that the melody of the vocal part lies on top of the song, meditating on it.

This lovely performance by Hélène Grimaud and Thomas Quasthoff is transposed from the bright G minor of the original into a darker E minor; making it sound even more like pop music:



The sampled song creates motion and emotion. In response [0:34] the music begins to climb and with a piercing Neapolitan chord [0:45] it modulates into A minor.

Hör' ich das Liedchen klingen, (I hear the little song sounding)
das einst die Liebste sang, (my love once sang,)

[0:57] Dark longing and deep forests are given voice through broken patterns; patterns on the edge of clarity that that recoil quickly into darkness. The texture does not change--it still whispers of his lover's rhythms.

so will mir die Brust zerspringen (and my heart wants to shatter)
von wildem Schmerzendrang. (from the wild rush of pain.)

[1:28] Unexpectedly, before the resolution back to E minor, the lover's song is heard in the highest register of the piano part--over the last two words of the text. This song will require purely musical responses.

Es treibt mich ein dunkles Sehnen (I am driven by dark longing)
hinauf zur Waldeshöh', (up to the forest heights)
dort lös't sich auf in Tränen (there is dissolved in tears)
mein übergroßes Weh'. (my supremely great pain)

[1:40] The lover's tune is now focused in a lower voice of the piano writing.
Grimaud accents it, understanding its significance. [1:48] The lover's tune now appears again in a lower register; it is being internalized.

The "supremely great pain" is finally unleashed in the cadenza.

Howard Gardner on Mozart's Figaro

"The Disciplined Mind," a book by Howard Gardner from 1999, pleads for consideration of what he considers to be the most essential purposes for education. He articulates three "realms" that he believes "should animate education:" truth, beauty, and morality.

His example from the realm of beauty is a trio from the first act of The Marriage of Figaro by Mozart. Gardner admits early in the text that his choices for “realms” are personal and somewhat arbitrary, but by drilling down on his realms in stages throughout the text he creates a model for how an educator might develop their own examples.

Gardner has chosen an opera familiar to music lovers, but one which also presents considerable challenges. The Marriage of Figaro is long, and is one of the most complicated plots in the Mozart canon. Characters assume you know who they are, their backstory, and the nature of their intentions throughout this opera.

"Works of art, wrote Gardner, "call for many forms of understanding, at different levels of sophistication." Gardner asks us to understand the "choice of words," the "narrative sequence," and the way in which this opera deals with themes that were controversial at the time. He also asks us to seek to understand the music, "how it was constructed, which effects it achieves, how and why particular examples are wrought."

His presentation is mostly descriptive, and he divides the scene into nine sections. Here are Gardner's nine sections mapped onto the scene in the famous film of the opera by Jean-Pierre Ponnelle:

I. Agenda Setting [0:00]
"Each protagonist reveals goals (to himself or herself and to the audience)."

II. Susanna'a Alarm [0:47]
Gardner segments this section on Susanna's high A-flat where she "captures the attention of the men." A division created by the music rather than the text would start the section at the shift into F minor at [0:32], where Susanna begins to feel anxiety. There could also be a division at [0:58] with the shift into F major as Basilio and the count support her and "try to revive her."

III Recovery [1:25]
This section would also seem to start earlier than Gardner indicates, perhaps with the cadence at [1:16]. He marked the sectional change based on Susanna's first words rather than where the music itself shifts.

IV. Calming Susanna [1:33]
"Another key change, this time back to a stable 'home base' of E-flat."

V. Back to the Page [1:53]
"singing in an apologetic tone, with oboe accompaniment, Basilio backpedals on the gossip that he has been spreading about Cherubino's involvement with the Countess."

VI Banish the Page [2:15]
"All three protagonists refer to the page as 'poverino'--poor lad--in brief duets as well as in antiphonal passages."

VII What did Cherubino do? [2:34]
Gardner includes the "set of rising scalar tones" in which Susanna and Basilio ask the count to explain. Perhaps it would make more sense musically to simply start this section with the count's recitative [2:42] that explains what Cherubino did.

VIII Revelation [3:16]
The Count uncovers Cherubino under the blanket of Susanna's bed. "The orchestra joins in a lengthy A," writes Gardner "one long enough to allow the audience to appreciate the shocking discovery and to laugh heartily."

IX Three Tables Turned [3:19-5:05]
"Susanna, the Count, and Basilio," writes Gardner, "sing simultaneously, revealing their innermost thoughts to themselves and the audience but not, presumably, to one another." In this filmed version of the opera the trio takes place as if only the count was singing, and as if Basilio and Susanna are only thinking their parts.

Gardner challenges his students with this trio. It is a passage that is a mosaic of tightly constructed musical wit.

By using this passage Gardner gives us an example of a disciplined mind at work. It is not only a mind capable of internal rigor and discipline, but also one shaped by the "shopping mall of the disciplines." It is a mind that synthesizes ideas and that values creativity.

Stravinsky to Audience: ----- "Go to Hell!"

They were strange times; tense. Any established order was shifting, unsteady, swaying. Things exploded on a Thursday evening: May 29, 1913 at the Théâtre des Champs-Élysées in Paris. There was an infamous riot during the premiere that evening of "Le sacre du printemps (The Rite of Spring)" by Stravinsky:



Stravinsky begins this clip by talking of the impresario Sergei Diaghilev (1872-1929) who commissioned the early ballets by a young Stravinsky who was still largely unknown at the time.

Stravinsky's affection for Diaghilev is unconcealed [0:00-0:59]. He calls him "a kind of Oscar Wilde," which is a reference to his sexuality as well as his energy. He was "Oh...very elegant, very chic." Listen to the pop in the way Stravinsky pronounces the word "chic" [0:29]; it relays the charm and charisma of Diaghilev. Stravinsky chose to be buried near Diaghilev on the cemetery island of Venice: San Michele.

The young Robert Craft is featured on the next segment of this film [1:00-1:37]. He shares the insightful idea that the ballet form had been in a "barren period." Diaghilev saw that Stravinsky could revitalize the artform.

[1:37-2:04] Stravinsky talks Petrushka.

[2:05] The "historical scandal of Le sacre du printemps." Stravinsky describes the audience: "They shouted, [2:16] they whistled...from the beginning. [...] Then when the curtain opened on a group of knock-kneed and long-braided lolitas jumping up and down; 'Danses des Adolescentes;' the storm broke."

Stravinsky, sitting in a chair in the Théâtre des Champs-Élysées [2:44], recreated his impression of the evening: "It was full," he said sweeping his left arm, "of very noisy public. I [got] up, I said 'Go to Hell!' excuse me, monsieur, madame!"

The re-enactment: priceless.

“Trouble in Tahiti, indeed! -----Trouble in Tahiti, imagine!"

"Trouble in Tahiti!," sings Nancy Williams in this great clip from the 1973 production by Amberson Video, "Indeed!"

Williams plays the character Dinah in this one-act opera by Leonard Bernstein written shortly after his marriage to Felicia Monealegre. He must have found its construction to be endlessly entertaining at that time, and he wrote both the words and the music.

The plot is about emotional isolation in the suburbs. This is a couple that has everything they could ever need; but they have lost themselves, lost one another.

In scene VI, Dinah has just come from a matinee and is in the process of getting a makeover. The beauty shop in this production is symbolic of transformation, but the text speaks in excited stream-of-consciousness. The music veers away from A-flat major, always to return until the Hollywood grand ending. The energy is playful, and if politically incorrect, at least its over-the-top:

[0:00-0:26] Opening Recitative

What a movie!
What a terrible, awful movie!
It’s a crime what they put
on the screen!
I can hardly believe what I’ve seen!

Do they think we’re a lot of children?
It would bore any four year old!
What drivel! What nonsense!
What escapist Technicolor twaddle!

[0:27-0:59] An exotic world: gongs, flutter-tongue flutes and other strange colors:

“Trouble in Tahiti,” indeed!
“Trouble in Tahiti,” imagine!
There she is in her inch or two of sarong
Floating, floating, floating, all among the
floating flowers.

[1:00-1:13] In A-flat major: Hot-cha, Hot-cha rhythms and syncopated thinking:

Then she sees him, the handsome American.
(I must say he’s really a man,
Six feet tall, and each foot just incredible!)
Well, they’re madly in love,
But there’s trouble ahead;

[1:13-1:20] A parenthetical musical detour through bVI (F-flat major):
Bernstein asks that it be sung in "South Pacific Accent:"

There’s a legend:
“If a princess marry white man, and rain fall that day,
Then the white man shall be sacrifice without delay.”

[1:21-1:32] Back on track in A-flat Major:

Sure enough, on the night of their wedding day,
There’s a storm like nothing on earth;
Tidal waves and siroccos and hurricanes;
And to top it all off,
The volcano erupts

[1:32-1:42] Nasal singing of a riff that sounds vaguely Gamelan [Eb,G,Ab,Bb,Db]:

As the natives sing: Ah! Ah! Ah! Olé!

[1:43-1:49] A parenthetical musical detour through bVI (F-flat major):

They go crazy with the drumming and the chanting and ritual dance,
While the lovers sing a ballad of South Seas romance.

[1:50-2:02] Back on track in A-flat Major:

It’s so lovely, I wish I could think of it;
Da da dee da da…
It was called “Island Magic,”
I think it was.
Oh, a beautiful song!
I remember it now:

[2:03-2:16] Island magic: also in bVI (F-flat major]

“Island Magic, where the midnight breezes caress us,
And the stars above
seem to bless us,
That’s Island Magic, Island Magic.”

[2:15-2:23] A parenthetical musical detour through bVI (F-flat major):

Well, in any case, the hero is tied to a tree.
(Did I tell you he’s a flyer
who got lost at sea?)

[2:23-2:36] Back on track in A-flat Major:

Anyway, all the natives are crazy now,
Running wild with lances and knives;
Then they pile up the wood for the sacrifice,
And the witch doctor comes,
And he sets it on fire.

[2:36-2:45] Gamelan-like riff returns:

As the natives sing: Ah! Ah! Ah! Olé!

[2:45-2:54] Detour through bVI (F-flat major) with fifes and military drums:

But at this point, comes the good old U.S. Navy,
A-singin’ a song.
They come swarming down in parachutes a thousand strong!

[2:55-3:18] Finale: Sudden shift to A major...bright as sunlight and faster!

Everything now is cleared up and wonderful:
Everyone is happy as pie;
And they all do a great rumba version of “Island Magic” of course!
It’s a dazzling sight;
With the sleek brown native women dancing with the U.S. Navy boys,
And a hundred-piece symphony orchestra:

[3:19-3:35] Island magic:(F major]“with background singers

Island Magic! Where the palm trees whisper together,
And it’s always warm summer weather,
That’s Island Magic,

[3:35-3:44] Island Magic in B-flat minor

Island Magic! With the one I love very near;

[3:44-3:44] Island Magic in G-flat major

Island Magic, Whispering native words in my ear.

[3:44-3:44] Island Magic Cadence that prolongs an E-flat dominant 7th chord

Island Magic,
Only you, my darling, could weave it,
And I never ever will leave it,

[3:44-3:44] Island Magic: deceptive resolution to F major

And I simply cannot believe
It really is mine!

[3:44-4:22] On its way somewhere else

Island Magic!
Island Ma…”

[4:23-End] Dinah suddenly regains focus and jumps back to the opening recitative:

What a terrible, awful movie!!!
How long have I been standing here chattering?
If I don’t get going this minute, there won’t be any dinner
When Sam comes home!

Intensities and meltdowns; Behind the scenes of the West Side Story Recording

The recording industry for orchestral music is a breeding ground for meltdowns, but was particularly so when recordings were done in live sessions without click-tracks. Orchestras are expensive and run by union regulations. Time is of the essence. Fifty people or more are listening, playing, observing--even when a film crew is not present.

This infamous film of the recording process for "West Side Story" from 1985 documents a fascinating series of obstacles.

It was intended to be Bernstein's signature recording of this work as a conductor. Under his supervision it would be authoritative. What happens when unfixable problems begin to surface? What happens as these problems seem to multiply and threaten to overwhelm the process? Bernstein drops the F bomb.

José Carreras was chosen to sing the part of Tony. Carreras is a gifted singer who has had a major career. But he was not used to the rhythmic language of this music. The English language is also extremely difficult to sing--even for a native speaker. Most people agree that the end product, while not perfect, has gorgeous moments.

Reactions to this video, as documented by informal responses on Youtube, run the entire gamut: pro-Bernstein, anti-Bernstein, pro-Carreras, anti-Carreras, and several combinations of two or more categories...

This clip is not a battle with a winner and a loser. It is a lesson in the dynamic of intensity, and how, even though it was not always delicate, things got done back then:



[0:00-1:41] A quiet and ordinary rehearsal with Carreras, a pianist, and Bernstein.
It is an ordinary day; details are being worked out. Bernstein is very complimentary to Carreras in the voiceover, recognizing that "Carreras is a fresh element; that I can tell you."

[1:42-2:25] The rehearsal is already running late and Bernstein is becoming increasingly impatient. He asks Carreras to take a breath at a very specific location in order to have wind to carry the rest of the phrase.

[2:26-3:28] "What happens!?"
Bernstein discovers that his markings were not transferred to the parts and vents anger toward his assistant.

[3:29-3:52] "Carreras, I'll never stop saying Carreras"
A pun that does not relieve tension for anyone else given the intensity of concentration.

[3:53-6:34] A run-through that derails. Carreras asks to work on three bars alone so that he can get his bearings. The rehearsal, already running late is stopped. Carreras reacts. Bernstein reacts. Bernstein lights a cigarette...imagine. "Such problems."

[6:35-6:52] "At that moment I was...not too happy" says Carreras.
[6:53-10:04] "One More Time"....."Great Take."

Art of Fugue in a Novel: An Equal Music by Vikram Seth

Vikram Seth's novel "An Equal Music" is a fabulous account of a violinist haunted by his past.

The Art of Fugue develops as a symbol in the book as his quartet undertakes a recording of the complete work. The idea materializes after the quartet plays Contrapunctus I as an encore. Michael, the second violinist of the quartet in "An Equal Music" described how it happened:



"I have made a small adjustment to the Tononi backstage. I now check it almost silently, and tell it not to let me down.

Normally Piers would announce the encore. Instead, he and the others look at me and nod almost imperceptibly. I begin to play. I take my first two notes on open strings, almost as if they were a transition from tuning into music.

As I play the first few slow notes I hear from different points of the dark hall the indrawn breath of startled recognition. After my four lonely bars, Piers joins me [0:16], then Billy [0:24] and then Helen [0:31].

We play almost without vibrato, keeping the bow on the string, taking open strings where they fall naturally, even if that means our phrases do not exactly replicate one another's. [...]

As I move to the tiny quaver, the minuscule quibble of a note that was the source of all my anxiety, [1:16] Helen, who has a rest here, turns her head slightly and looks at me. I can tell she is smiling. It is the F below middle C. I have had to tune my lowest string down a whole tone in order to be able to play it."

Michael refers to the second 8th of the third measure in the second violin part.

Milan Kundera on Bach's Art of Fugue

Milan Kundera drew the theme of the "Art of Fugue" in his own hand to support his meditation on the work in his "Improvisation in Homage to Stravinsky," from his "essay in nine parts" written in 1995 called "Testaments Betrayed." Not only the notes but the staff itself was drawn; with quick fast motions. Kundera has a musical hand.

Kundera imagined the history of music dividing into segments at the age when polyphony gave way to the classical style. He heard the Art of Fugue as a "symbolic apogee" that closed the first segment.

"I like very much," wrote Kundera, "Hermann Scherchen's orchestration and recorded interpretation; for example Contrapunctus IV, the fourth single fugue:"



"Immediately, at that slow tempo," wrote Kundera, "the whole of its unsuspected melodic beauty is revealed...what I hear is...elusive, unmemorizable, irreducible to a brief phrase, a melody (an entwining of melodies) that bewitches me by its ineffable serenity."

He views the emotion created as being meditative: in Bach we "contemplate a beauty of being that is outside our moods, our passions and pains, ourselves." He contrasts the romantic melodic ideal which makes us "plunge into ourselves, feel the self with a terrible intensity, and forget everything outside."

The speculative serenity that caused this work to seem "outside ourselves" led Wilhelm Rust, during the preparation for volume XXV of the Bach Gesellschaft, to conclude that it was a purely theoretical work. Even as late as 1896, Jadassohn suggested that the voices be conceived as imaginary; that the work was not meant for practical performance. Consistent with Kundera's inspiration, at the height of the romantic age it was not possible to imagine that this work could even sound.

Don Giovanni as fiction; a story by E.T.A. Hoffmann

On March 31, 1813, an anonymous story appeared from a writer on the verge of discovering a voice, hidden among his other talents, that would directly influence fiction about classical music for better than a hundred years.

"Don Juan: A Fabulous Incident which Befell a Travelling Enthusiast," is a short story shaped as a letter written in dream-language by an unidentified composer who has summoned the spirit of Donna Anna during a performance of Don Giovanni.

In 1813 E. T. A. Hoffmann was among the first to write beyond plot description about this opera; he attempted to grapple with its indeterminism. Hoffmann was not explaining the meaning of the opera, but instead letting fiction explore and develop one corner of a possible interpretation. He used variables from within the libretto to inspire a new fiction.

In Hoffmann’s story Donna Anna was raped by Don Giovanni before the opening scene.

“The fire of a superhuman sensuality, a fire from hell, surged through her being and she was powerless to resist. Only he . . . could arouse in her the erotic madness with which she embraced him.” This is the reason she will not let him escape in the opening scene. Hoffmann views her interaction with Don Ottavio as surface gesture concealing a broken reality underneath.

In a lovely and poetical book from 1975 called “E. T.. A. Hoffmann and Music,” R. Murray Schafer states gently that “numerous commentators have pointed out that Mozart’s opera does not possess the qualities Hoffmann read into it.” But Mozart’s opera does not exclude corollaries built off from its own inherent indeterminism. Fiction, an independent medium, creates its own potentials.

Like the opera that sounds throughout and inspires the attitude of the fiction, the story is organized in two parts. First, the narrator hears a live performance of Don Giovanni. We are given detailed musical c[l]ues as to his continuing progress in listening.

He is aware of a presence in his private Loge; it is Donna Anna, dressed exactly as she appeared onstage. Inexplicably, he even felt her presence behind him as she was singing onstage during the masked terzetto scene. During intermission he engages her in conversation, then hears the remainder of the opera caught in her web.

The second “Act” of the fiction proceeds without formal marker. It reveals the reaction of other, less sensitive, less informed members of the audience. Then the narrator reveals himself as writing the letter to Theodore in the empty darkened theater.

“A warm, electrifying breath glides over me.”

The story closes around a fantastic collection of alignments: as the clock strikes two, the narrator completes his letter. This is the time, "due della notte," mentioned by the Don in scene twelve as he enters the graveyard to await Leporello. And we discover in the final words that it is in an exact synchronicity with the time the actress who sang Donna Anna dies. "Due della notte" becomes the portal back out of the opera’s strange perfect unison.

Fellow blogger Douglas Robertson translated this story in 2008.

Don Giovanni as film; the overture from Losey 1979

Don Giovanni can be an intoxicant. It speaks of sexual freedom, of high-spirited escapades, dances, wine, and an escape into a moonlit cemetery. But it also speaks of reckoning. Murder, broken lives, obsession for revenge, and supernatural retribution fuel its dark side.

Is Don Giovanni himself a playful comedian who attempts but seldom attains? Is he a villain to be despised for self-absorbed, scheming lies? Has he committed rape? He is dragged to hell by the ghost the Commandant—not for his sexuality—but for murder, and he does not repent in the face of damnation.

So, which is it? The debate continues. Da Ponte and Mozart created the first indeterminate opera: dark, light or both simultaneously. Meaning depends upon cumulative effects; a mixture that has proven to be infinitely faceted.

This famous version of Don Giovanni made in 1979 by Joseph Losey (1909-1984) develops mixtures from the possibilities of film. In the overture, anticipation is developed as preparations are made, candles lit. We get our first look at the Don, played by Ruggero Raimondi, as he comes toward us, walking past without recognition. A crowd follows. The horizon darkens and the famous chromatic lines are harmonized with dizzying visual effects.

The allegro molto is set as an entrance to a masked ball near a glassblowing furnace. It is as if Don Giovanni is visiting hell on earth to gauge what the end of the opera will hold.

Randy Schoenberg and Hilary Hahn

Violinist Hillary Hahn has been an advocate for the Schoenberg violin concerto in an age that has seen far too few performances Schoenberg's post-Verklärte Nacht works. She makes Schoenberg's music seem fun.

This light-hearted but clever interview introduces us to Arnold Schoenberg's grandson, Randy, who asks her the questions that Arnold Schoenberg asked Louis Krasner (1903-1995), the violinist who premiered the work in Philadelphia on December 6, 1940:

First, one cannot help but notice the resemblance between Randy and Arnold. So cool.

In a detour during her second question, Hahn develops an important idea [0:53]: "sometimes you have to work on it...so the orchestra relaxes enough to not play too loud. [...] When an orchestra doesn't know a piece very well, sometimes they will play louder and stiffen up, and it sounds better when its more flexible, and lighter."

It is also true that one of the most characteristic aspects of the orchestration in this work is the almost complete lack of octave doublings. An unusual number of unisons, often of radically different colors, are piled-up and present real challenges to intonation. These sonorities take time to hear and manage.

In the third question [1:09], "hauptstimme," or "primary voice" is a term and symbol that Schoenberg frequently marked in his 12-tone scores to help clarify complex textures. He felt that it was no longer always possible to surmise where these primary lines were in a work not based on traditional tonality.

Randy inserts his own question into the mix [1:32] about whether the hauptstimme is always marked in the solo part. There are certainly many places where the violin soloist is not the hauptstimme, according to the score itself.

[3:14] "The whole thing holds together," says Hahn, "and the whole thing is enjoyable to play. Hopefully that carries over to the audience." With an advocate as charismatic as Hahn, this concerto has had the opportunity to speak to a new and wider audience.