Michael Giacchino: Veridical and Schematic Expectations, Fight!

S    ome of the most compelling film music of the past year (2004-5) appeared not on the big screen but on the small one. Michael Giacchino’s score for the TV show ‘Lost’—the tale of several dozen plane-crash survivors marooned on a vaguely supernatural, ‘Tempest’-like island—has unsettled millions of American viewers with an eerie array of orchestral sounds: fluttery four-note figures, shivery tones produced by bowing strings near the bridge, nasty glissandos on the trombone, and, at moments of maximum tension, a low plucked note on the harp. According to convention, harps are called upon to herald angels or other vessels of goodness. Giacchino makes the instrument gaunt and deathly, much as Mahler did in the last song of ‘Das Lied von der Erde.’ In general, Giacchino has done such a bang-up job of generating menace that the scriptwriters may have a hard time satisfying the expectations that he has created. Something mighty grim will have to crawl out of that lush jungle in order to justify those twangs of terror... Music can take control of the image; it can also suggest a world separate from the image, or expose the image as a lie... Giacchino’s music for “Lost,” in its own non-Marxist way, plays this same game of estrangement. Dispatching the ghosts of Schoenberg, Xenakis, and other twentieth-century sonic terrorists into an island paradise, it touches on the universal modern suspicion that surfaces are not what they seem, that the center does not hold, that it ain’t necessarily so. When the images themselves are terrifying, music can bring about an even trickier reversal, providing ironic reassurance or genuine compassion.”
  — Alex Ross, New Yorker, 27-JUN-2005.

T    he character of motion-picture music has been determined by everyday practice. It has been an adaptation to the immediate needs of the film industry, in part to whatever musical clichés and ideas about music happened to be current. As a result, a number of empirical standards, rules of thumb, were evolved that corresponded to what motion-picture people called ‘common sense’... a kind of pseudo-tradition harking back to the intellectual milieu of Tin Pan Alley, of medicine shows and covered wagons. These rules have now been made obsolete by the technical development of cinema, as well as of autonomous [ambient] music.”
  —  Theodor Adorno & Hanns Eisler, Composing for the Films.

E  arlier this week I went to see Star Trek. The Michael Giacchino sound-track was, for me, superb—a powerful, seamless accompaniment to the action on the screen; more than an ‘amenity’.

Y  es, the scenes are held together by ‘leitmotifs’—the role that film music serves in virtually all commercial, mass-market films is one of ad hoc leitmotivic ‘glue’. The sonic clues/cues for the viewer/listener are meant to be ‘easy’, lubricious. Only in exotic art-film will you find soundtrack compositions that majorly subvert or compete with the ideas and emotions unfolding on the screen.

A  nd yet. And yet there are a number of places in this new Giacchino score where the edginess presages what is about to develop, subverting the prevailing expectations of that moment. The constantly changing scenes and sheer overload of action in Star Trek make it a little difficult to notice this. But it was the feature that most captured my imagination as we were leaving the theater and driving home. I thought I’d share a little about how I think it works here, plus a few links at the bottom that you might find useful if your own curiosity leads you to want to explore how it works.


    [30-sec clip, Michael Giacchino, ‘Star Trek, That New Car Smell’, 0.9MB MP3]

M  ost of the score is bombastic, galactic, symphonic stuff. But there are segments that engage in cross-genre ‘chamber music’ idioms. Conducted orchestra and/or software-based virtual instruments, but still ‘chamber music’. And these cross-genre moments tend to be places where subversion of our expectations happens.

• Star Trek
  
• Nailin’ the Kelvin [leitmotif & reprise]
  
• Labor of Love
  
• Hella Bar-Talk
  
• Enterprising Young [Men]
  
• Nero Sighted
  
• Nice to Mind-Meld You
  
• Run and Shoot Offense
  
• Does It Still ‘McFly’?
  
• Nero Death Experience
  
• Nero Fiddles, Narada Burns
  
• Back from Black
  
• That New-Car Smell (clip above)
  
• To Boldly Go
  
• End Credits

B  eautifully done! The decision not to couple the new film’s soundtrack more closely with the original series’s music (Alexander Courage, Jerry Goldsmith, James Horner, Leonard Rosenman, Cliff Eidelman) is getting some complaints from a few reviewers. But, by contrast, the new materials Giacchino lays down should be good for the renewed Star Trek franchise. The ‘identity’ of this soundtrack is recognizable and durable. A friend with whom we saw the film on Tuesday had already seen the film the day it opened, and commented on liking the music. But then she is also a fan of ‘Lost’ and other Giacchino projects.


S  o there are cross-genre features in some of Giacchino’s Star Trek pieces. Not to say that other video game and film composers don’t do this; they do. But the chamber-symphonic cross-genre elements in this soundtrack are, to me, more pre-meditated and ‘go for the jugular’ than normal.

C  ross-genre techniques exploit... a schism... between two kinds of expectations—what Hallam and others call ‘schematic’ and ‘veridical’ expectations. A genre-compliant piece of music contains few or no surprises. But cross-genre pieces violate our expectations, and, to the degree that intact expectations matter emotionally or aesthetically to us, such pieces usually generate interest with each listening or each performance.

W  e are fascinated by how they “push our buttons”, even though we often can’t quite put our “finger” on why or how they do that. Fascinated... in the way that continued to preoccupy me during our drive home from the theater. Is this a synthetic, heavily-signal-processed virtual instrument, or was it processed digitized human voice—or was it a meld of the two, part-doubling and dubbed, beginning predominantly with one and dissolving into predominantly the other? Is this a chamber passage whose floor will drop out from under us, into a symphonic chasm?

H  ow does this cognitive/emotional exploit work? ‘Schematic expectations’ are automatic—culturally received and ‘generic’; things in which we have maybe considerable investment, but maybe not. Schematic expectations are built-up passively over many years. We are often quite ready to reconsider our attachment to them; we may even resent that we have them, insofar as they do not feel like they are really our own.

B  y contrast, ‘veridical expectations’ are expectations about near-term future events in the story-arc or narrative we are listening to. They are truth-statements or beliefs that we have formed by our own direct experience; they are fully “ours”. We are reluctant to abandon them because much of our own effort has been put into processing the events, musical evidence, and story-arc that have led to the beliefs and expectations that we hold at this moment. We want not to let go of them because our making sense of the situation might have to start totally from scratch if we did.

S  o if veridical and schematic expectations that we have as we listen to or play a piece of music diverge—or if they diverge for awhile and then re-converge again—then we experience powerful drama and emotional tension.

H  uron says a bit about this, as does Bharucha. Have a look at the links below if you’re interested in this.


M  ichael Giacchino, born in 1967 in New Jersey; captivated as a kid by John Williams’s classic Star Wars scores; studied composition at Juilliard; worked for Disney and then Dreamworks; enlisted by Steven Spielberg to score music for the Playstation game ‘The Lost World’, followed by ‘Medal of Honor’ and its many sequels. Video games (VG) ‘Call of Duty’ and ‘Secret Weapons over Normandy’ for which he wrote game scores were massively popular. Giacchino also scored Spielberg’s network movie, ‘Semper Fi’, the series ‘Alias’ and the movie ‘Sin’. ‘The Incredibles’ (Pixar) was a big breakthrough, or, arguably, the television series, ‘Lost’. For your interest and ambient amazement, I’ve tabulated other of Giacchino’s hypernumerous accomplishments at the bottom of this post. Live long and prosper!

• Michael Giacchino website
  
• Giacchino page at Mounsey (U.K.)
  
• Varèse Sarabande
  
• Ross A. Sound and Vision. New Yorker, 27-JUN-2005.
  
• Amazon collection of Michael Giacchino Soundtracks
  
• Giacchino M. Star Trek. (Varese Sarabande, 2009.)
  
• Adorno T, Eisler H. Composing for the Films. Continuum, 2007.
  
• Bacciagalupo C, Plaza E, Donaldson J. Uncovering affinity of artists to multiple genres from social behaviour data. ISMIR, 2008. [1MB pdf]
  
• Barthes R. Image-Music-Text. Hill & Wang, 1978.
  
• Bharucha J. Tonality and expectation. In Musical Perceptions. Aiello R, Sloboda J, eds. Oxford Univ, 1994. Pp. 213-39.
  
• Bryant J, Vorderer P, eds. Psychology of Entertainment. Erlbaum, 2006.
  
• Huron D. Sweet Anticipation: Music and the Psychology of Expectation. MIT, 2006.
  
• Stevens C, Byron T. Universals in music processing. In Oxford Handbook of Music Psychology. Hallam S, Cross I, Thaut M, eds. Oxford Univ, 2009. Pp. 14-23.
  
• Zehnder S, Lipscomb S. The role of music in video games. In Playing Video Games: Motives, Responses, and Consequences. Vorderer P, Bryant J, eds. (Ch. 17) Erlbaum, 2006.

• Land of the Lost (2009)
  
• Partly Cloudy (2009)
  
• Up (2009)
  
• Fringe (19 episodes, 2008-2009)
  
• Lost (92 episodes, 2004-2009)
  
• Earth Days (2009)
  
• Glock (2009)
  
• Fracture (2008) (VG)
  
• Speed Racer (2008)
  
• Turning Point: Fall of Liberty (2008) (VG)
  
• Medal of Honor: Airborne (2007/I) (VG)
  
• Ratatouille (2007)
  
• Six Degrees (13 episodes, 2006-2007)
  
• Lifted (2006)
  
• Alias (105 episodes, 2001-2006)
  
• What About Brian (4 episodes, 2006)
  
• Mission: Impossible III (2006)
  
• Black (2006) (VG)
  
• Lost: Revelation (2006) (TV)
  
• Looking for Comedy in the Muslim World (2005)
  
• The Family Stone (2005)
  
• The Karateguard (2005)
  
• Destination Lost (2005) (TV)
  
• One Man Band (2005)
  
• Sky High (2005)
  
• The Muppets’ Wizard of Oz (2005) (TV)
  
• Vowellet: An Essay by Sarah Vowell (2005) (V)
  
• The Incredibles (2004) (VG)
  
• Call of Duty: Finest Hour (2004) (VG)
  
• The Incredibles (2004)
  
• Call of Duty: United Offensive (2004) (VG)
  
• Alias (2004) (VG)
  
• Secret Weapons Over Normandy (2003) (VG)
  
• Phenomenon II (2003) (TV)
  
• Call of Duty (2003) (VG)
  
• String of the Kite (2003)
  
• Medal of Honor: Frontline (2002) (VG)
  
• Redemption of the Ghost (2002)
  
• Medal of Honor: Allied Assault (2002) (VG)
  
• Semper Fi (2001) (TV)
  
• The Trouble with Lou (2001)
  
• Muppet Monster Adventure (2000) (VG)
  
• Los Gringos (1999)
  
• Warpath: Jurassic Park (1999) (VG)
  
• My Brother the Pig (1999)
  
• No Salida (1998)
  
• Legal Deceit (1997)
  
• The Lost World: Jurassic Park (1997) (VG)
  
• Donald Duck: Maui Mallard (1995) (VG)
  
• Gargoyles (1995) (VG)

• 2008 Grammy Award for Best Score Soundtrack Album for a Motion Picture, Television or Other Visual Media (Ratatouille)
  
• 2007 Film & TV Music Award for Best Score for a Short Film (Lifted)
  
• 2007 StreamingSoundtracks.com Award for Composer of the Year
  
• 2005 Emmy Award for Music Composition for a Series (Dramatic Underscore – Lost)
  
• 2004 IFMCA Award for Score of the Year (The Incredibles)
  
• 2004 IFMCA Award for Composer of the Year
  
• 2004 Game Developers Choice Awards for Excellence in Audio (Call of Duty)
  
• 2003 Game Developers Choice Awards for Excellence in Audio (Medal of Honor: Allied Assault)
  
• 2003 Interactive Achievement Awards for Original Music Composition (Medal of Honor: Frontline)
  
• 2001 Interactive Achievement Awards for Original Music Composition (Medal of Honor: Underground)

Chamber Music and Principled Dissent: Cross-Over Art Music of Hanns Eisler

S  omeone who knows *only* music understands not one thing about it. A composer with integrity knows that music is written by human beings for human beings and that music is a continuation of life, not something separated from it. A musician with integrity must be an activist in his or her society, and stand up and say loudly what is wrong in that society and try to fix it. It is not right to make pretty, docile music. I could well understand it when in 1933 Hitler put a price on my head and drove me out of Germany. He and his lying bandits were the evil of the period. In fact, I was proud to be driven out. There was honor in this! But today I feel heart-broken over being driven out of the U.S.—this beautiful country—in this ridiculous way, by these ridiculous people. [black-listed by McCarthy Committee]”
  —  Hanns Eisler, public statement before being expelled from the U.S. in 1948.

D  uring his lifetime, Eisler, who was one of Schoenberg’s favorite pupils, created a massive body of work. But these songs—written to inspire and enlighten a world gone mad with alienation and rampant greed—are his most immediate and successful musical contributions. The seventeen individual songs on this album classify as ‘agitprop’; they are political, anti-Nazi, pro-worker, pacifist—but their stirring sentiments and clear-eyed melodic and rhythmic appeal make them art songs as well.”
  —  Stephany von Buchau, review of Sylvia Anders, D. Justus Noll, and Stephen Roans quartet CD, ‘Eisler: Nothing Quite Like Money’, in High Notes.

Mendacity cannot go unopposed.

Hanns Eisler (1898 - 1962) knew this. Eisler’s time with Schoenberg coincided almost exactly with the transition from atonal to twelve-tone music, and some of Eisler’s early compositions might be mistaken for Anton von Webern’s or Alban Berg’s.

But by the mid-1930s, Eisler became fed-up with the hermeticism and inaccessibility and elitism that typified the music of the Schoenberg School. Social responsibility and relevance were the moral justification for serious music, in Eisler’s view.

So he broke with Schoenberg, and Eisler’s new music—choral music, chamber music, music theater—came to be a fusion of atonal, jazz, cabaret and pop. Most of his pieces have political back-stories. These pieces (‘anthems’, ‘battle songs’) were intended to influence the feelings of performers and listeners, and to change their attitudes. The pieces were not merely entertainment. They didn’t behave nicely, re-upping for more of the ‘same’.

In 1942 Eisler moved to Hollywood, at that time also home to many well-known refugee artists. He continued his collaborations with Bertolt Brecht, wrote the music for a number of films, and taught at USC. In 1947, one of Eisler’s accusers was Richard Nixon, who testified that ‘the case of Hanns Eisler is perhaps the most important ever to have come before the Committee.’ A dossier with song texts which Eisler had set to music was brought as evidence against him. When the leading witness was asked why he was reading out so much material, the reply of the official was: ‘My purpose is to show that Mr. Eisler is the Karl Marx of communism in the musical field, and he is well aware of it.’

Eisler was nominally the first one of what was to become a very large number of artists and intellectuals who were blacklisted in the U.S. on account of real or alleged political views. An international support group came to his defense—including Thomas Mann and Charlie Chaplin—but to no avail, and in 1948 Eisler was deported from the U.S.

His film-score credits include:

• Aktion J (1961)
  
• Les Arrivistes (1960) [The Opportunists]
  
• Geschwader Fledermaus (1958) [Bat Squadron]
  
• The Crucible (1957) [Les Sorcières de Salem]
  
• Katzengräben (1957) [Cat Ditch]
  
• Bel Ami (1955)
  
• Nuit et brouillard (1955) [Night and Fog]
  
• Schicksal am Lenkrad (1954) [Fate at the Steering Wheel]
  
• Frauenschicksale (1952) [Destinies of Women]
  
• Das Leben unseres Präsidenten (1951) [Life of Our President]
  
• Rat der Götter, Der (1950) [Council of the Gods]
  
• Unser täglich Brot (1949) [Our Daily Bread]
  
• Křížová trojka (1948) [Three Cross]
  
• So Well Remembered (1947)
  
• The Woman on the Beach (1947)
  
• The Life of Galileo (1947)
  
• A Scandal in Paris (1946)
  
• Deadline at Dawn (1946)
  
• The Spanish Main (1945)
  
• Jealousy (1945)
  
• None But the Lonely Heart (1944)
  
• Hangmen Also Die (1943) [Lest We Forget]
  
• The Forgotten Village (1941)
  
• A Child Went Forth (1941)
  
• Pete-Roleum and His Cousins (1939) [oil and political oligarchies in 1939!]
  
• The 400 Million (1939)
  
• Vie est à nous, La (1936) [The People of France]
  
• Nieuwe gronden (1934) [New Earth]
  
• Dans les rues (1933) [Song of the Streets]

What a great lot of these have to do with progressive themes and social justice!

So Hanns Eisler is fascinating for his having both embraced and dismissed Schoenberg and serialism—switching abruptly to accessible ‘pop’ idioms. It is not so much that he tried to ‘bridge’ the gap between classical and popular music. And it is not the case that he resorted to composing for musical theater and films simply to make a buck. He refused to conform (even though he did later return to a sort of variety of serialism that he felt was emotionally accessible and non-elitist). His String Quartet Op. 75 (1938) in two movements (Variationen, Finale) is an illustration of his principled idiosyncrasy.

The Op. 8 (1925) has lots of internal symmetry between pairs of trichords—pitch-class/set-theory, Allen Forte-style: [0,2,5] [0,3,7] [0,2,5] [0,3,7] for the No. 2, and [0,1,4] [0,1,2] [0,1,4] [0,1,2] for the No. 6. The String Quartet has [0,3,6] [0,1,3] [0,1,6] [0,1,2]—far less symmetry than Eisler’s earlier pieces; almost a rejection, as it were, of the symmetries he had previously found beautiful and meaningful.


Or was it? In the Op. 8 No. 2 row, is the third trichord not a subversion of the series initated by the first trichord? Is it not a private rebellion against the politics of the serial method, rankling from inside the method—a minor third and a whole tone within a perfect-fourth interval [0,2,5]? Aren’t the Variationen of the Streichquartett de facto subversions-by-permutation? Or even the Op. 8 No. 2’s second and fourth trichords—both triads but a whole tone apart, an equal amount of permutation in their reversal of major-third/minor-third intervals?

Rather than revealing a change of heart on Eisler’s part, as David Blake interprets things, it seems to me that these features illustrate a consistent and durable attitude toward free will and the human quest for meaning. Principled dissent! Agitprop!

Blake does explore (p. 109ff) Eisler’s election not to use transpositions or explore some combinations—he says these remain ‘latent’ in the works.

Yes, but their latency or absence is itself conspicuous, like white-space in paintings or sculptures or like un-pursued back-stories in novels. And that, I think, is the source of considerable beauty in Eisler’s writing:

• he creates a humanistic architecture that demands freedom;
  
• he devises ironical serialist edifices that demean doctrinaire serialism and other isms; and
  
• he engineers musicocosmological worm-holes that enable us to escape political oppression and live to fight another day.

Eisler insists on an emotional integrity that, as he saw it, serialism threatened. He deviates deliberately from a literal ordering and prefers intuitive permutations of the tone-row. If we perform it or listen to it, we perceive this directly. You don’t need an advanced degree in music theory to figure it out. And we can only imagine that this was Eisler’s deep intention, a pre-compositional and editorial mantra: create inherent radical liberty, where expressive freedom takes precedence over the tyranny of the tone-row.

The obsessiveness of some serialists, versus the iconoclasm of Eisler? Oh, but Eisler did indulge in a sort of meta-obsession. He is not an anarchist. He has his own detailed methods and values. The Streichquartett series is built from motivic ideas and is an ‘organic’ expressive space, in a way that’s reflected in how the piece progresses. But these series are not casual, ‘throw-down’ explorations. They are [obsessively] calculated so as to be precisely suited to [suitable for] the subsequent contrapuntal variations. The architecture for variation is itself the result of variation. Eisler draws and re-draws the architectural plans; surveys the building site; digs the holes for the piers and foundation; and begins constructing his building from the ground up, so to say.

But wait! He has architected the thing with provisions that anticipate the demolition of the building 50 years later, with provisions that facilitate the deconstruction and reclamation of the land, and its re-use for subsequent construction, for subsequent societies.

Wait again! He has architected the thing with provisions anticipating the return to a verdant naturalism. The departure from strict serialism reflected Hanns’s belief that innate and spontaneous motives will eventual prevail; reflected his deep mistrust of any ‘system’. Poetic license is not merely ‘taken’; according to Hanns Eisler, it must be taken, to produce anything of aesthetic value.

Not all Eisler’s music is challenging or ‘in-your-face’ political. In fact, some of his piano parts have an almost Schubertian tenderness. Other of his pieces are ironical or over-the-top comical. Some are combinations of all of these things.

    [50-sec clip, Sylvia Anders, D. Justus Noll, Stephen Roane Quartet, There’s Nothing Quite Like Money, ‘Abortion Is Illegal’, 1.9MB MP3]

Sadly, Eisler’s communist leanings have caused his music to be long neglected in the West, although the Vogler Quartett and others have added his works to their repertoire. There is much to be admired in Eisler’s compositions, and I hope more ensembles choose to perform these works. In the current political season in the U.S., Eisler’s music feels like ‘relief’—like a much-needed antidote to the relentless neoconservative, theocratic onslaught that is upon us; like an inspiring call to ‘mindfulness’ in this terrible era of the proudly ignorant ‘low-information’ voter.

E  lias Canetti asked me how I got on with my father. When I pointed out that Hanns had been already dead for a dozen years, Canetti answered that he did in fact know this, but nevertheless wanted to learn from me how I got on with my father. ‘Very well,’ I replied. Canetti then assured me that the relationship with my father ‘would be still better in the future’ [than it has been thus far], a remark which seemed to me extremely odd, aggressive, and troubling... During my childhood, I saw my father rarely and at irregular intervals. My parents’ separation and divorce, which from my point of view occurred relatively early, was partly to blame for this, but above all it was due to events of the time. The meetings in Vienna are particularly clear in my memory—visits together to the Café Museum where my father met his friends, members of the Schoenberg circle... Because my mother was a singer and pianist I spent a significant part of my childhood amongst a circle of musicians, whose specialized language was familiar to me from an early age. My father was for a long time perceptible to me primarily through his ‘reflection’, through impressions I have of the people who were his friends... I often reflect on life in a musical family: the frequent chamber music [played by my parents friends, in public concerts and in the household of my childhood] signifies for me the ‘submerged’ world of childhood, the essence of childhood.”
  —  Georg Eisler, quoted in Blake’s biography of Hanns Eisler, p. 73.

• Eisler Collection at Feuchtwanger Library at USC
  
• Hanns Eisler Society website
  
• North American Hanns Eisler Forum
  
• Vogler Quartett
  
• Anders S, Noll J, Stephen Roane Quartet. Eisler: There's Nothing Quite Like Money. (Labor, 2005.)
  
• Blake D. Hanns Eisler. Routledge, 1995.
  
• Eisler Chamber Music. (Berlin Classics, 1996.)
  
• Eisler Dokumente. (Berlin Classics, 2005.)
  
• Gruber H. Roaring Eisler. (RCA, 1998.)
  
• Vogler Quartett. Eisler String Quartets. (Nimbus, 2004.)

Terry Eder: Lawyer, Romantic

T  he traditional configuration of the keyboard—its arrangement of black and white keys—has had a largely unrecognized influence on the history of harmony, because of most composers’ dependence on the piano for inspiration, an influence that may perhaps not be considered entirely benign... Playing a melody in C major feels very different under the hand from playing it in [all black keys— ] F-sharp major. We are physically in a different realm.”
  —  Charles Rosen, Piano Notes, p. 229.

D  ebussy’s music is different from any other. It was a leap into a new region of art. It is like the music of another planet.”
  —  Claudio Arrau, in Dubal, p. 14.

A  t the heart of Romanticism lies transformation, a magic act conferring promethean powers on the artist.”
  —  Benita Eisler, Chopin’s Funeral, p. 120.

Terry Eder delivered a wonderful, inspired-and-inspiring recital last night at Zankel Hall. The thoughtful program was comprised of innovative romantic works. Each one in its day precipitated innovations in piano technic.

• Chopin—Barcarolle in F-sharp, Op. 60
  
• Messiaen—Prelude: Chant d’extase dans un paysage triste
  
• Beethoven—Sonata No. 32 in c minor, Op. 111
  
• Bartók—Mikrokosmos 6, Nos. 148-153 (Six Dances in Bulgarian Rhythm); Sonatina; Three Folksongs from the Csík District
  
• Debussy—Estampes; l’Isle joyeuse

Eder went straight to the heart of Chopin’s world-view, and gave insight not only into the artist himself—the interiority of an exile—but solid commentary on his technique and interpretation as well. Eder renders the Barcarolle’s natural rhythm as one more of ‘breathing’ than of ‘water flowing’—a legal theory for which there is reliable precedent.

In a moderate 6/8 or 12/8 meter (lilting; waltz-like triplets), the title ‘barcarolle’ (boating song) was used for many character pieces, by various Romantic composers. The ephemeral, liminal effects evoked in Op. 60 are informed by the hopes and dreams of the tubercular Chopin, who was within 3 years of his death at 39 and in the midst of ongoing difficulties with his lover, George Sand, at the time this piece was composed. One of Chopin’s last works, Barcarolle in Eder’s hands is laden with the passion that the piece demands. Eder’s light, dry pedal technique kept the gunwales well above the waterline.

The right-hand enjoys considerable independence from the left-hand, which Eder manages with ease. The pulse in the left-hand cannot be resisted by the right forever, though—the effect is evocative of small ‘eddies’ in the margins of a serene river. Particles caught up in an eddy may circulate for awhile but are eventually compelled to continue the course downstream, captured by current/hypermeter with a longer timescale than the activity in the eddy. With Eder as the boatman at the helm, this piece ‘pushes off’ not for a round-trip boatride in the present but instead a transformative one-way adventure into the future. River of no return, such is Life. Last night’s performance by Eder is the first time I have imagined that this is what Chopin may really have intended to say in this piece—in effect a much ‘darker’, ‘realist’ breed of Romanticism than Barcarolle is normally given credit for.

The Debussy l’Isle joyeuse, composed in 1903, was superb. One of its inspirations was Antoine Watteau’s (1684-1721) painting, L’embarquement pour Cythère. But Debussy eloped with his mistress, Emma Bardac, to Jersey in 1904, and he revised this piece after that visit—so it’s likely that this is more autobiographical essay than arms-length character piece. The piece’s close correspondence to D’un cahier d’esquisses has also been pointed out. The two pieces are sometimes performed as a single lyrical work, without a break (or even lifting the pedal) between them—much as Chopin’s Barcarolle is often played back-to-back with Berceuse.

Eder’s account of the Bartók was admirable for its coloristic depth, pensiveness—phlegmatic, festinating bagpipers and all. Her treatment of Messiaen yielded a fatalism that was fascinating for its existential qualities—despondency that still has energy to speak with friends and friends still gathered around with whom to speak; youthful ‘tristesse’ that gives way to a growing-up and taking measure of what one has learned; newly-attained worldliness that is not endangered or ‘damaged goods’. Eder’s topicality is genuine and persuasive.

Terry Eder made her Lincoln Center recital debut in April, 2006. She was a Recipient of Artists International’s Outstanding Alumni-Winners Award in Piano. She received her Bachelor of Music degree from Oberlin Conservatory and her Master of Music degree from Indiana University at Bloomington. She served one year residencies at the Franz Liszt Academy in Budapest (under the guidance of acclaimed pianist and conductor, Zoltán Kocsis, where she also learned to speak Hungarian) and at the Banff Centre in Alberta. Ms. Eder is a practicing lawyer with special interests in international human rights practice. She received her J.D. from Fordham Law School in 1999. (As a musician-lawyer, she follows in the footsteps of such other musicians as Telemann, Tartini, Marcello, Schumann, Tchaikovsky, and Stravinsky, each of whom studied law.)

Eder’s wonderful piano performance makes one yearn for lawyering so skillful and committed and storied as this. Eder lives with her architect-husband and their daughter in an 1861 brownstone in New York City.

• Eder-Kaufman T. Balancing personal and professional life. Fordham University School of Law, 21-MAR-2006.
  
• Dubal D. The Art of the Piano. 3e. Amadeus, 2005.
  
• Eigeldinger J-J, ed. Chopin: Pianist and Teacher as Seen by his Pupils. Cambridge Univ, 1989.
  
• Eisler B. Chopin's Funeral. Vintage, 2004.
  
• Rosen C. Piano Notes: The World of the Pianist. Free Press, 2004.
  
• Chopin Foundation of the U.S.
  
• Greenberg Traurig website