jwilzewske: Schubert’s Polyphony and Non-accidental Accidentals: Peaceful Resistance & Portato

T o be hopeful in bad times is not just foolishly romantic. It is based on the fact that human history is a history, not only of cruelty, but also of compassion, sacrifice, courage, kindness. And if we do act—in however small a way—we don’t have to wait for some grand utopian future. The future is an infinite succession of ‘presents’, and to live now—as we think human beings should live, in defiance of all that is bad around us—is itself a marvelous victory.”

— Howard Zinn, The Optimism of Uncertainty, The Nation, 02-SEP-2004

Schubert Sonata No. 21, 4th movement, m.85-90

CMT: Look at this! The fourth movement of Schubert’s Sonata No. 21 in B-flat. This polyphonic pattern has the fixed position distributed to a double-note and the playing voice distributed to the other three fingers as a melodic figure. It transforms into a delicate and ethereal texture.

DSM: And look back in the first movement. Schubert’s Romanticism here is a harmonic proposition: the entire theme is played out over a dominant prolongation. And his Romanticism is also a motivic proposition: the portato notes (portato, notes against resistance, caressing notes) headed always for the dissonance/resolution. The portato is played by sounding the note for about half of the note's duration; the other half of the duration is to be treated as a rest. A portato is notated by placing a slur above the desired notes which themselves are written with "staccato" markings. The musical heaves and sighs (the crescendos and descrescendos) contribute to this . . .

CMT: The ongoing crescendo meets an “accident” of a portato. And, in place of B-flat major diatonic tones, we get the “accidental” E-natural in bar 11 and 37 (bars 136 and 162 on the repeat). Except that the “mistake” is really beautiful. It’s no kind of accident at all, in the normal sense. It’s a wayward deviation from the sunny path. Comical almost, in the way that an infant can be comical. It’s not a self-conscious E-natural against the F. The E-natural is just straying from the trail a little bit. It doesn’t threaten; it doesn’t demand attention. It’s just a sweet little E-natural on a leash.

DSM: Let’s rip an MP3 sample of it and edit the MP3 sample in MPtrimPRO. MPtrimPRO has a feature that lets you easily and accurately set the ‘begin’ and ‘end’ frame for creating your MP3 clip by using the position of the piece in WinAmp. You pause WinAmp where you want to set the ‘beginning’ of your clip, and then you go to MPtrimPRO (the ‘How much do you want to trim?’ form) and click on the ‘W’ in the ‘begin’ part of the form. Then you fast-forward in WinAmp to where you want to set the ‘end’ of your clip, and go to MPtrimPRO and click on the other ‘W’ in the ‘end’ part of the form. If you want to check to make sure that you set the frame the way you want it, just click on the play-arrow in the MPtrimPRO form and listen to the frame, delimited according to the settings you just created. If you need to adjust the settings you can do it from MPtrimPRO directly (using the time form controls) or from WinAmp. It’s possible to make nice MP3 illustrations for teaching or other purposes pretty easily in this way, taking advantage of the interoperability between MPtrimPRO and WinAmp. Here’s a clip of the bars we were just talking about:

CMT: We also see in this first Molto Moderato movement of D960 an example of how Schubert handles recapitulations. The recapitulation of the phrase you just cited occurs in bar 352.

DSM: And there are more chromatic “accidents,” too. The B-sharp in the left hand in bar 253. The dark, passing intrusion is like a musical interjection. Within a predominantly sunny B-flat major work, it’s a reference to a dissonant inflection from some other narrative, some other piece of music. This is late in Schubert’s life. The B-sharp accidental is a tiny commentary on how Life goes—dissonances, mess and all!

CMT: But bar 11 and bar 253 are “benign” compared to the “accident” in bar 464! The crescendo-decrescendo on the G that looks like a resolution of the F-sharp just dissolves. The resolution dissolves. It lets us know how tenuous and fleeting any security we may have can be! The F-sharp is no ordinary “accidental”. It is an emblem of the uncertainty of the human condition. Yes, it passes. But its effect is corrosive!

DSM: And, in the second movement—in the Andante Sostenuto—look at the B-sharp in bar 32:

and its restatement in bar 121:

CMT: The F-doublesharp in the left hand in bar 121 lends a bit of solace to it. The effect is like a kindly grandparent telling us that things will be alright! Doesn’t it seem that way to you?

DSM: Yes. But it depends on your fingering, I think. The Nineteenth Century fingering systems—Kullak’s The Aesthetics of Pianoforte Playing, Liszt’s Technical Exercises for Pianoforte, Pischna’s Technical Studies, Czerny’s, and Dohnanyi’s Essential Finger Exercises—are now supplemented by Tansescu’s treatise, which is recently translated. Dragos Tanasescu applies mathematical permutation formulas to technical patterns of keyboard performance, to devise polyrhythmic patterns to be practiced between voices in polyphonic exercises and new transposition alternatives. The permutations each have a somewhat different color.

CMT: While Tansescu’s intent was predominantly a pedagogical one, the effect of examining the many permutations is to (re-)discover the many nuances of views and attitudes that different fingerings can lend to a passage.

DSM: Charles Fisk explains how Schubert’s views and attitudes toward his own life may well have shaped his music in the years shortly before his death. Fisk’s book on Schubert is based on evidence from the composer’s original correspondence, his song texts and his written letters, and from his vocal and instrumental compositions. Noting extraordinary aspects of tonality, structure, and gestural content, Fisk argues that Schubert was trying to relieve his sense of exile. He was also, according to Fisk, trying to cope with his sense of mortality—his anticipation of an imminent death from syphilis. Fisk performs careful analyses of the structure and correspondences in the Schubert works that he explores. He identifies in them some detailed musical narratives that relate to the themes of mortality, alienation, hope, and desire. Schubert’s views of these likely informed his composing.

CMT: Besides that, it’s important to consider the political situation in Vienna late in Schubert’s life. Vienna was not a sweet sylvan place of gardens and waltzes at the end of the 18th century and the beginning of the 19th. The peacetime was filled with repression and censorship, and Vienna was a city where the safest thing was to stay inside. There was an aura of fear, as we see in Erikson’s book. Unlike his Beethoven, who moved in higher social circles and was relatively immune to political pressure, Schubert occupied a middle-class station in life and had to be careful. But music was maybe the safest of the arts, because, given its abstractness, it was impossible to prove that a composer was expressing subversive political ideas in a particular piece. Vienna essentially became a police-state during Schubert’s adulthood. Schubert’s posture as a musician is, in some ways, not unlike that of Howard Zinn as a historian . . . Schubert’s accidentals are intimations of moral intercession; acknowledgments of principled resistance . . .

DSM: Several Schubert biographies make some note of Schubert’s self-destructive behavior and his ambivalent sexuality, as well as his growing isolation and anxiety in his long final illness. These factors all contribute to D960, the Sonata No. 21 in B-flat that he wrote just a few months before his death in 1828. The subdued, yearning inwardness is other-worldly in spots. The opening theme is grand and resigned. But the rumbling trill in the left hand disrupts the serenity. You can feel Death hovering nearby. The slow movement, with its turbulent middle section, seems like a fare-thee-well gesture. Buchbinder’s varied touch and color are perfectly suited to this Sonata. His phrasing is clear but fluid, like that of a consummate storyteller. He makes the fingering complexities in this piece appear effortless.

CMT: Well, maybe not effortless—but more like the blazing ember of a young person dying of cancer. There is an energy that Buchbinder draws upon that animates this piece in a manner that suggests Schubert himself in his last months or weeks. Very convincing. It is as though Schubert knows what is coming, knows the bad end that will soon befall him, but finds the energy to defy it—to stave it off for awhile. Buchbinder’s interpretive liberties feel just right, and his expressiveness is deeply felt.

DSM: He takes some liberties, true, but they are never sentimental ones. His rendering of the first movement of D960 is flowing and has a certain puissance but at the same time manages to be serene, dreamlike, somehow above-the-world.

CMT: The second movement is slow but cohesive. ‘Collected’ if you are a horse person. The scherzo is lightning fast, but it remains light and crisp; it is virtuosic without drawing attention to its virtuosity. In Buchbinder’s hands, the finale is also nimble but never rushed. His performance was superb throughout, but the Schubert is what really brought the audience to its feet!

DSM: The challenges of Schubert’s music to interpreters are many, both technically and emotionally. Schubert once exclaimed, “Das Zeug soll der Teufel spielen!” (‘Such stuff the Devil should play!’) when converging on the finale of the Wanderer Fantasy. The D960 has something of that in it.

jwilzewske

Sunday, March 4, 2007

Schubert’s Polyphony and Non-accidental Accidentals: Peaceful Resistance & Portato

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