jwilzewske: hindemith

Showing posts with label hindemith. Show all posts

Friday, October 21, 2011

Tokyo Quartet: Meta-Messengers, Physics of Flow in (Musical) Porous Media

M usic has values which are above the ‘ordinary’ realm—unchangeable and not subject to mortal instabilities. They are not ‘human-made’ as such, but are domiciled in more esoteric realms of our musical nature. We must turn to the immaterial, spiritual aspects of music in order to find them... The veiled secrets of Art dwell in a region of visionary irrationality... the composer [and, for that matter, the performers-] can never enter this region but can only be elected as its messenger(s).”
— Paul Hindemith, A Composer’s World: Horizons and Limitations, pp. 2, 221.

J uxtaposing the ‘familiar’ with the ‘unfamiliar’ is tremendously helpful as a ‘programming pattern’, and this program performed by Tokyo Quartet in the Friends of Chamber Music series was a case in point. Juxtapositions like this reveal new facets of the familiar works and provide context for apprehending the facets of the unfamiliar ones. Juxtapositions produce dynamic contrasts that boost our minds’ “signal-to-noise” ratio, and we are able grasp ideas and feelings that we otherwise might totally miss.

Haydn – Quartet in G Major, Op. 77, No. 1
Hindemith – Quartet in C Major, Op. 22, No. 4 (formerly No. 3)
Schumann – Quartet in A Major, Op. 41, No. 3

I ’d never heard the Hindemith before. The whole program was a treat, but the Hindemith was especially cool. The Tokyos’ lyricism is a fine match for this Hinde-mythic cosmic, rapt vision. The slow Sehr Langsam and Ruhige Viertel movements have a persistent impulse keeping them going… an impulsion that is (‘stets fließend’!) almost feminine in its other-regarding flow.

T he fast passages of the Schnell Achtell, Massig schnelle Viertel, and Rondo movements are robust and motoric, as they should be. Seasoned and mature, without any compulsion to use any work as a technical warhorse. (The whole piece is extremely challenging; the viola and cello parts of Op. 22 present monumental, virtuosic demands, say, but the Tokyo Quartet’s playing never feels self-referential. It is about going to the ‘heart’ of the music... communicating its true message(s)... which is precisely as things should be!) Phenomenal to hear the deep, ‘heart-felt-but-deliberated’ results of musicians’ living for 40+ years with all of these pieces!

I listen... listen to Op. 22 and try to place it, understand it, fit it with other things I think I understand... Yet, it defies fitting. This can’t be ‘counterpoint’—Can it?—if the parts/voices are not dependably running ‘counter’. It is like Hindemith had invented a kind of parallelization/fluidization not unlike what happens in cloud computing these days—with multiple, parallel Hadoop 'map-reduce' jobs.

M utants of a theme ‘melt’ and percolate as subordinate voices, which in turn are witnessed by the other voices, moving in different pores or channels. The ‘stets fließend’ mutants accompany the theme itself, and we get a complex texture or ‘network’ of intertwining thematic lines.

T he network of relations among the various motives in this Hindemith quartet make me look at Fiore’s and Satyendra’s 2005 article (link below). The more direct the relations, the more intuitive they are, and the more of our attention they command. The more direct, intuitive ones then seem to “take precedence” over the more indirect or prosaic ones. Their flow seems to accelerate; each seems to streamline in its channel or crevice as they pass other slower-moving expressions that other members of the quartet are playing at that moment. In that regard, Dembske’s 1995 article mentions Rahn’s work exploring musical “hydraulics” and ‘paths of least resistance’… After the Tokyo Quartet performance, I guess I need to look at Rahn now, too…

A stretch with recurrent, penetrating C-sharps played by the viola (‘mit dämpfer’) in the Ruhige Viertel movement of Op. 22: acknowledging no relationship to the other ‘parts’/‘molecules’/‘reducers’ they have just passed or displaced in the flow… Fragments rejoining each other after each has percolated through different crevices and tubules and pores before converging again… And at passages with fermatas and subsequent resumptions of flow, the dynamics of the musical parts “feel like” moving-boundary integro-differential equations—equations characterizing the flow of a mixture of long-chain macromolecules, a suspension of ‘beads’ undergoing melting as it flows: phase-change equations (Stefan Problem) for flow through a 3-D (or even higher-dimensional) porous-media network. To me, it feels like there is even ‘porosity’ and inter-movement ‘trans-phase mass transport’ between the first and second movements, and between the fourth and fifth. Control-volumes of stets fließend musical ‘beads’ percolate between these movements. It is hard to imagine Hindemith writing such elegant complexity as this at the tender age of 26 years...

P hysics and computational methods for modeling flows in porous media would, I believe, be highly relevant and productive, for better understanding this wonderful music—this graphic Hindemith Vision—quantitatively (please see links below). It remains only for some enterprising young, conservatory-based music theory student to do it! Some of the computational fluid dynamics (CFD) software packages that would be relevant to such a project are in the links below. Also several links for CFD papers that have been delivered at IRCAM conferences in recent years, for your interest. [It’s regrettable that the science and finite-element and Galerkin and other applied mathematics to do this were only developed after Hindemith’s lifetime, because I am confident that he would have enjoyed what they may reveal about the sonic imagery he created—this string quartet and other of his works.]

A ll in all, a tremendously exciting performance, vivid, thrilling!

Sunday, July 27, 2008

Chamber Music & Norman Dello Joio

I n the cool of the night time
The clocks pick off the points
And the mainsprings loosen.
They will need winding
One of these days.
Rabelais, in red boards—
Walt Whitman in green,
Hugo in ten-cent paper covers:
Here they stand on shelves
In the cool of the night time
And there is nothing
To be said against them...”
— Carl Sandburg, ‘Cornhuskers’, 1918 (one of the texts/epigrams for Dello Joio’s 1940 ‘Suite for Piano’, premiered at Carnegie Hall on 09-MAR-1941).

The lyricism of Norman Dello Joio, who died last week at age 95 on 24-JUL, is treasured by all who have performed or listened to his works.

In 1939, he received a scholarship to Juilliard, where he studied composition with Bernard Wagenaar. And in 1941 he began studying with Paul Hindemith, who encouraged him to follow his own lyrical inclinations, instead of pursuing atonal or 12-tone systems. By the late 40s, he was highly-regarded among American composers and prolific in a variety of genres, especially choral music. He served on the faculty at Sarah Lawrence College in the late 40s, and later at Mannes College of Music. He was professor and dean at Boston University until retiring in 1978, when he moved to Long Island. Throughout his career he was devoted to music education, and his ‘Comprehensive Musicianship’ pedagogical materials and advocacy helped to guide and calibrate subsequent generations of authors/composers of curricula, method books and etudes.

Here are some of his chamber music pieces.

Piano Trio, 1937
Suite for Piano (Sandburg’s Phrases), 1940
Sextet for Three Recorders & String Trio, 1944
Duo Concertato for Cello & Piano, 1945
Sonata No. 1 for Piano, 1947
Sonata No. 2 for Piano, 1948
Sonata No. 3 for Piano, 1948
Trio for Flute, Cello & Piano, 1948
Fantasia on a Gregorian Theme for Violin & Piano, 1949
Variations and Capriccio for Violin & Piano, 1949
Nocturne in E for Piano, 1950
Nocturne in F-sharp for Piano, 1950
Aria and Toccata for Two Pianos, 1955
Colloquies for Violin & Piano, 1964
Bagatelles for Harp, 1969
Capriccio on the Interval of a Second for piano, 1969
Three Essays for Clarinet & Piano, 1974
Lyric Fantasies for Viola and String Quintet, 1975
Sonata for Trumpet and Piano, 1980
Concert Variants for Piano, 1983

[Dello Joio, ‘Trio for Flute, Cello & Piano’, 1948]

Dello Joio, Concert Variants for Piano, 1983, mm. 6 - 11

Norman’s open harmonies and engaging writing style somehow fit well with the often-weighty subject matter of his compositions. It’s unfortunate that in recent years many of these pieces have not been more frequently performed and recorded. Although not warhorses for sheer technical virtuosic display, they present the performer with challenges of a different sort—conveying depth/complexity of emotion through phrasing and thoughtful gesture. These pieces have great expressive potential, and deserve to be included more often in the chamber music repertoire.

[Dello Joio, ‘Piano Sonata No. 3’, 1948]

Although sight-singing, keyboard harmony, theory, and so on, are part of development of musicianship, Dello Joio’s emphasis and major concern focused on those skills that are mainly cognitive—that is, music concepts and interpretive and analytical skills that are not predominantly developed through psychomotor (performance) drill. By nature he was opposed to performance-practice ‘tricks’, and he was impervious to the seductions of celebrity and technical virtuosity that have attained such popular cachet in recent years. Dello Joio’s traditional artistic values and teaching—and his compositions—are and will remain important guides for us going forward.

N orman Dello Joio is outstanding for an outgoing directness of expression and simplicity of manner ... which have an intentionally broad appeal. A strong melodic vein; a rhythmic vitality; a relatively restrained harmonic vocabulary; an infectious brio and freshness of invention—these are among the earmarks of his style. Inseparable from this style is Dello Joio’s conviction—resembling almost an ethical attitude—that his music should communicate with a broad, contemporary public——not merely with an alert avant garde, not with a few fellow composers, not with some hypothetical future public.”
— Edward Downes, The music of Norman Dello Joio. The Musical Quarterly 1962; 48:149-72.

Wakin D. Norman Dello Joio, prolific and popular composer, dead at 95. NY Times, 27-JUL-2008.
Norman Dello Joio page at BU
Norman Dello Joio page at Schirmer
Whang U-Y. Analysis of Dello Joio’s Chamber Music for Piano and Strings with Performance Suggestions (PhD Dissertation, Columbia Univ). UMI Ann Arbor, 1986.
Dello Joio N, Beglarian G, eds. Comprehensive Musicianship. Foundation for College Education in Music, Washington, D.C., 1965.
International Society for Music Education (ISME)
College Music Society
National Association for Music Education (U.S.)
VH1 SaveTheMusic program

Sunday, May 6, 2007

Sehr Lebhaft (Very Lively): Dimitri Murrath

DSM: Dimitri (“Dima”) Murrath gave a wonderful performance this afternoon at the Gardner, beautifully met by pianist Vincent Planès! Both are recently studying at the New England Conservatory.

CMT: Yes. And I was pleased to see the good Sunday afternoon turn-out of about 100 people—the ISGM Tapestry Room was nearly full to capacity. You know, at the moment there’s only one CD that’s available with Murrath’s playing on it. I really didn’t have any idea what we were likely to hear from him, prior to attending the event at the Gardner today. But of course his reputation did precede him! In 2006, Murrath won the Philip & Dorothy Green Award for Young Concert Artists, a British prize that funds musicians early in their careers (instrumentalists under 28 and singers under 32) to obtain performance experience throughout the U.K. Indirectly, that funding also helps the winners to stretch their other financial resources to do yet more, both at home and in other countries. Dimitri’s performance at the Gardner today is an example of that. The 2007 AYCA Award Winners are Alec Frank-Gemmill (horn), Diana Galvydyte (violin), Daniela Lehner (mezzo soprano), Katie Lockhart (clarinet), Amandine Savary (piano), and Dmitri Torchinsky (violin). About 100 artists have received the Award for Young Concert Artists since it began in 1961.

DSM: The 1939 Hindemith Sonata for viola and piano is a perfect showcase for Dimitri’s talent. The 1919 Sonata (Op. 11) was composed in 1918-1919 when Hindemith was just 24 years old, and there’s a certain coherence of the composer’s age and temperament with Dimitri’s, I think. Both the Op. 11 and Hindemith’s 1939 Sonata have a more romantic character than his other, more austere viola works, so Murrath’s viola has many opportunities here to show off its luster. The difficult last movement has Dimitri all over the fingerboard. As you know, this thing is a masterwork Hindemith meant to illustrate the his own superb skills as a violist, but Murrath truly makes the piece his own. Dimitri’s poise in the diverse, musical styles sounds entirely natural and authentic, belying some of the grueling finger work that this composition has.

CMT: Hindemith was without doubt one of the most significant German composers of his time, and yet his compositional techniques resist easy classification. His early works like Op. 11 are hard to pigeonhole. Is this in a late romantic idiom, or expressionist? It’s clearly not in the style of early Schoenberg, nor is it Hindemith’s contrapuntal, lean style of the later 1920s. Is it neoclassical? If so, it’s clearly not what we mean by ‘neoclassical’ in Igor Stravinsky’s works that are labeled with that term. In fact, we hear aspects of the contrapuntal language of Bach here. The 1939 Sonata that Dima and Vincent performed this afternoon was very contrapuntal, too, but the textures were even richer.

DSM: In the Sonata, Op. 11 No. 4, we hear a 24-year-old Hindemith just finding his voice. We hear his ambition; we hear his introspectiveness; we hear his experimentality. In the Sonata of 1939, we hear a more trenchant, mature Hindemith. This afternoon we had a virtuosic but introspective Murrath exploring, too, at a still early stage in his career. Remember it was Hindemith who, along with Lionel Tertis (1876-1975) and William Primrose (1904-1982), raised the status of the viola as a solo instrument to the position it now enjoys. Surely Dima will raise it yet further! And it was through the premiere of the Sonata for Viola and Piano, Op. 11, No. 4, that Hindemith began his career as a concert violist and a significant composer of music for the instrument. So here is now Dima Murrath, advancing the art, pushing the envelope for viola—at a similar moment in his career, very much like the phase that Hindemith was at in his own career. The first movement in the Sonata—‘Breit, mit Kraft’—was sweet, with poignant reversals. Bursts of objection gave way to acceptance. The second movement—‘Sehr lebhaft’—was delivered with an urgency and directness so convincing that one might wonder whether the piece was written in anticipation of Murrath’s arrival. Sehr lebhaft! The third movement—‘Phantasie’—featured wonderful spectral arpeggios by Murrath and spring-like water effects by Planès in the upper register of the piano. The Finale movement was gorgeous, belying the technical difficulties that it presents to the performers.

CMT: Besides the Hindemith, Murrath delivered an admirable interpretation of Dvoràk’s Sonatine in G Major for violin and piano, Op. 100, transcribed for viola. Dark, dense, very cinematic. And the Gardner is a very good, intimate venue for a duet performance like this. The informality of the setting is conducive to engaging museum-going patrons who might not otherwise attend a recital in a traditional concert hall. Someone sitting to your left remarked that the Tapestry Room feels like a home, fireplace and all. And the informality of the ISGM setting underscores the living, breathing vitality of chamber music idioms. The form is alive and vibrant and exciting! The hand-crafted bespokeness of it, the in-your-face relevance and accessibility of it! Very attractive!

DSM: Dimitri was born in Belgium in 1982. His handling of these pieces is utterly fearless. These pieces present huge problems for the performer, and yet he takes the work in stride. I like his dancing eyebrows and his open-mouthed expressions. His warm sound inflected with micro-tones—all of these things remind me of the courageous, open, in-your-face ethos of Belgium, the way we’ve encountered it in our travels there. There is a naturalness that’s entirely Dimitri’s own, of course. But his playing conveys an outgoingness, a cheerfulness that’s far broader, more universal—Belgian or otherwise. It’s that universality and youthful optimism that make his playing that much more attractive. Vincent, too, is a very animated player. These two are very well-matched!

CMT: The Alberto Ginastera, Carlos Guastavino, Xavier Monsalvatge, and Carlos Buchardo pieces were a valuable taste of relatively new Spanish and Argentinian music (transcribed for viola and piano by Robert Levin). Buchardo’s ‘Oye mi llanto’ (Hear My Cry) was very moving—lyrical, elegiac, brooding, dramatic. Well-suited to Murrath’s interpretive gift.

DSM: And Ginastera’s ‘Canción a la Luna Lunanca’ (Moonstruck / Song to the Cockeyed Moon) was a delightful contrast—humorous, bright, playful—proving that it’s possible to be ambitious without being serious or virtuosic every single moment!

T here are people who are uncanny, who are finished products at a very young age.”
— Itzhak Perlman.