T here is an urbane, worldly aspect to Chopin’s style that partly accounts for his immense popularity. It has also given him a bad name among amateurs who take their music earnestly. Chopin’s urbanity has two strongly contrasting facets: (1) a virtuoso ‘glitter’—above all, the use of fast, brilliant passage work in the upper reaches of the piano; and (2) a fashionable sentimentality, employed directly and openly, without humor—there is, in fact, irony and wit but no trace of humor in Chopin’s music; neither the diabolical humor of Liszt, nor the ambiguous poetic humor of Schumann.” — Charles Rosen, The Romantic Generation, p. 383.
P ianist Kevin Kenner’s performance last night was dramatic and graceful.
Chopin: Andante spianato, Op. 22
Chopin: Scherzo No. 1 in B minor, Op. 20
Chopin: Scherzo No. 2 in B-flat minor, Op. 31
Chopin: Scherzo No. 3 in C-sharp minor, Op. 39
Chopin: Scherzo No. 4 in E major, Op. 54
Schumann: Carnaval, Op. 9
Chopin: Variations in A major ‘Souvenir de Paganini’, B. 37 (encore)
K enner ardently addresses himself to the piano, much like we imagine Chopin might have done: his poetic disposition is not ‘contemplative’ so much as ‘speculative’ or ‘fanciful’; not ‘tender’ so much as ‘intimate’; not ‘impulsive’ so much as resolvedly ‘intent’ upon eliciting a specific response.
I n other words, not ‘sentimental’ but ‘romantic’.
H ow often do I tell my piano all that I should like to impart to you! ... How much more will my piano have to weep?” — Frederick Chopin, 1829, letter to lover (quoted in Niecks).
T hese pieces, I think, reveal the capabilities of the new Steinway instrument that Friends of Chamber Music has recently acquired, as much as they reveal the powers of the executant (Kenner). The program in fact offered an extended opportunity to reflect on romantic piano idioms, and on the nature of a performer’s rapport with genre and instrument.
J ust as Kallberg (link below) some years ago noted that there is an implied ‘contract’ between the performer and the listener, there (inevitably?) is an implied ‘contract’ between the performer/composer and the instrument: the performer agrees to use certain conventions, patterns, and gestures, and the instrument consents to render them under an agreed set of terms and conditions—generously accomodating some aspects of them; withholding others—in a way that is consistent with the genre and aesthetic intent of the performer.
B oth Kenner and the instrument admirably fulfilled their bargain* with each other last night. Bravo!
(*The ‘agreement’ is, of course, not just one agreement, nor is it executed in advance. In fact, it is a chain of ongoing, inter-related agreements and renewals and codasils, negotiated and renegotiated on a tens-of-milliseconds time-scale.)
[50-sec clip, Kevin Kenner, Frederick Chopin, ‘Scherzo No. 3 in C-sharp minor, Op. 39’, 1.6MB MP3]
I n Kenner’s passages of prodigious Chopinian speed, you can hear the piano ‘speak’. In the case of Chopin Scherzos, the piano doubtless speaks Polish, admonishing the performer of more dangerous ‘curves’ ahead.
C hopin’s sadism is usually more subtle than that of his contemporaries, and in most of his work actual pain is associated with emotional violence... the moment of greatest emotional tension is generally the one that stretches the hand most painfully, so that the muscular sensation becomes—even without the piano’s sound—a mimesis of passion.” — Charles Rosen, The Romantic Generation, p. 382.
G arborg’s novels are profound and gripping while his essays are clear and insightful. He was never inclined to steer clear of controversy. His work tackled the issues of the day, including the relevance of religion in modern times, the conflicts between national and European identity, and the ability of the common people to actually participate in political processes and decisions. Although he was to become known as an author, it was as a newspaperman that he got his start. In 1872 he established the newspaper Tvedestrandsposten, and in 1877 the Fedraheimen, where he served as managing editor until 1892. In the 1880s he was also a journalist for the Dagbladet in Oslo.”
I f you are about to perform a ‘miniature’—or any piece, really—it’s good to first take a moment and re-tell yourself a story that, to you, the piece embodies. “Write it down and clip it onto the sheet music,” my piano teacher told me when I was 8. “If the composer didn’t say what story the music is telling, then you need to make up a story. Or else how are you going to know what you’re going to say, or how you’re going to say it?” Five decades later, I continue to think that that’s a great idea. If a story wasn’t supplied by the composer, then you need to make one up. Make one up, write it down, remind yourself of it each time, right before you begin playing the piece.
[50-sec clip, Tor Espe Aspaas & Per Kristian Skalstad, Johan Halvorsen, ‘Suite Mosaique, No. 4: Chant de Veslemøy’, 1.6MB MP3]
[50-sec clip, Tor Espe Aspaas & Per Kristian Skalstad, Johan Halvorsen, ‘Suite Mosaique, No. 4: Chant de Veslemøy’, 1.6MB MP3]
T or Aspaas and Per Skalstad are very good at telling stories. They must’ve had music teachers like Ruth Mapson of my own childhood.
V eslemøy—in morose, poignant, fateful F-sharp minor. Beethoven’s Hammerklavier Sonata is in F-sharp minor... Also, Rachmaninoff’s Piano Concerto No. 1... Scriabin’s Piano Concerto and his Piano Sonata No. 3, too. Wieniawski’s Violin Concerto No. 1 and Vieuxtemps’s Violin Concerto No. 2... Second movement of Mozart’s Piano Concerto No. 23... Reger’s and Tippett’s second string quartets; Shostakovich’s string quartet No. 7... Two of Chopin’s mazurkas, plus a nocturne... Last but not least, two preludes and fugues in J. S. Bach’s Well-Tempered Clavier are in F-sharp minor. F-sharp minor carries a lot of ‘attitude’.
F -sharp minor, although it leads to great distress, nevertheless is more languid and ‘love-sick’ than lethal. Moreover, it has something abandoned, singular, and misanthropic about it.” — Johann Mattheson, 1713.
B ut what about Veslemøy? What do we know about ‘Veslemøy’?
I n Norwegian, it nominally means “little girl” ... a compound of ‘vesle’ = “little” and ‘møy’ = “girl”. But it’s way more than that. This name was used by Norwegian author Arne Garborg for the main character in his epic poem ‘Haugtussa’ [The Mountain; literally ‘heap of rocks’] (1895). Almost certainly this popular Neo-Romantic Garborg poem was the inspiration for Halvorsen when he wrote this Suite in 1898. But the idiomatic compound ‘veslemøy’ was a commonplace way before Garborg even. It connotes ‘fairy’ or ‘sylph’—mysterious; charming and beautiful but creepy; other-worldly.
T he poem is propelled by Garborg’s rural culture and infused with its values and lore. A number of supernatural beings—like the Draug, the Hulderpeople, and other characters from Norse mythology inhabit the epic. A ‘haugtussa’ is originally a female subterrestrial (a woman troglodyte of the Hulder race). But here the main character, beautiful young above-ground Veslemøy, is revealed to be a Hulder and a haugtussa. The 219-page poem is dark and foreboding; it is not for no reason that its sequel, published in 1900, was ‘I Helheim’ (In Hell). More than a stereotypical, ever-cheerful Norsk outlook :Ѣ Garborg was rendering Dante-like divina commedia, a long oblique rant against the church and what he felt were deleterious social effects of church dogma and pious blind eyes turned away from real problems in the world—poverty, starvation, indignity, suffering.
V eslemøy (also called Gislaug) is the youngest of three sisters, and lives with her elderly mother near Jæren in rural Norway, south of Boknafjorden and northwest of Dalane in the county of Rogaland. The oldest sister has died, we are not sure how, maybe from tuberculosis, and her other sister has fled some time ago from the countryside to the big city—by implication, that sister has become a prostitute, wild and estranged from her family. So Veslemoy and her old mother are alone.
T hey are dirt-poor and live as tenants on a farm; like characters in a fantastical Haldor Laxness novel, they are harassed to their wits’ end by the local land-owner.
V eslemøy has a precocious natural insight into people and situations. She is savant-like in her surprising confabulations, each story containing enough kernels of truth to have a devastating verisimilitude. Other kids (and adults, too) gather around her to hear her tell stories, or to pose riddles—a famous winter fireside pastime for us fun-loving Norwegians.
V eslemøy habitually makes up stories, stories upon stories. One night, her dead sister visits Veslemoy and tells her that she is endowed with the capacity for ‘second sight’, to be psychic, and to foretell what will happen. Veslemøy’s stories are not entirely her ‘own’, and Veslemøy’s compulsion to tell them is not necessarily hers to control. The sister’s revelation is a great burden to Veslemøy, but she has no choice but to accept it.
G arborg’s point seems to be that it is better to be a ‘seer’—better to be spiritually ‘awake’ in a Zen sort of way or the state of Bodhi awake-ness attained by the Indian spiritual teacher Gautama Buddha and his disciples—than to be stultified/mortified by the oppression of routine day-to-day life and the paternalistic rule of priests. From this point forward, visions haunt Veslemøy, and the netherworld spirits pursue her. She is narrowly avoids being abducted underground by the Hulders. She has also the ability to see what symbolic animal spirit each person around her has behind him or her.
V eslemøy experiences the problems of tweens in any age: crazy first love, almost gets engaged to the kid on the farm down the road. Instead, the foolish boy finagles marrying a rich girl, and the experience of being dumped unhinges Veslemøy. Veslemøy has to fight even harder with her inner demons, who abduct her into the mountains. There, she meets trolls—some who are decent souls and others of ill repute. She commiserates with them about their crappy fate as outcasts, and how they have been deprived of a life worth living. The Haugkall (mountain king) proposes to marry her, despite the outrageous difference in their ages. She tells him No, Hell No [Well, actually she collapses because she sees that he has the mouth of a rat.] and is brought home sick and delirious. At the end of the poem, the dead sister consoles her again, and admonishes her to buck up and to get ready descend into Hell, accompanied by a volve/voluspa/goddess/wizard/witch/wolfwoman who will teach her “through horror, the work which will become your honor”.
H er ser du Visdoms Volve staa. Ho vil deg gjeva djupt aa sjaa og store Røynslur herde. Ho bèr deg gjennom Helheims Gov; der skal du skimte Livsens Lov og gjennom Rædsle lære det Verk, som vert di Ære.
[Here before you Wisdom—Volve—stands. She gives you depth of seeing and lets you hear what big Røynslur hears. She compels you to go to Hell where you can’t help but glimpse the Law of All Life and from Horrors-more-than-Faith learn that work which must be(come) your Fate-Honor.] — Arne Garborg, ‘Haugtussa’, 1895.
S o Halvorsen didn’t need to write any story or provide program notes or annotations to his music; the notions above would’ve been familiar (from Garborg’s Haugtussa 1895 poem, or from Grieg’s Haugtussa lieder from the same year) to any Scandinavian who would’ve heard Halvorsen’s violin-piano duo in 1898 or the years shortly after.
B ut we need to write the story down and remember it, to make these few notes mean something. For us, Halvorsen’s chamber music—much of it, except, say, for the Passacaglia and Sarabande Duos for violin and viola—might seem sentimental or dated, hence, dismissible, if we don’t bother to find out about what motivated the composer to write it. We need to invest a little energy to find out why it mattered at the time—what the social context was, who the performers and early audiences for the works were, and what they cared about—in order to accurately value the works. In the case of Halvorsen, Aspaas and Skalstad do a wonderful job of reanimating these pieces, entering into them, and reminding us of the characters’ stories—and how being ‘awake’ and engaged matters in present-day society. Fear and absurd suffering as the ‘juice’ for creating meaning and redeeming humankind; theodicy; the eternal return; Neo/TheOne; an 1895 feminist ‘Matrix’, sort of.
S o Halvorsen’s violin-piano duos are nothing like Stravinsky, Elgar, Elliot Carter—any of the works that fill the 110 pages of ‘violin-piano’ repertoire in Hinson’s book. We have wonderful violin double-stopped consonance flavored by piano dissonance. We have haunting, brooding, poignant, elegant, serious recital behavior, not encore bon bons. We have exalting, transcendent phrasing if you are careful and listen for it. The pieces are short. If you blink, you’ll miss it.
B rahms tries to make the violin and piano co-equals; Schumann instead often pitches the violin as a virtuosic protagonist against the piano. But those are ‘big’ works. The small scope and small timescale of miniatures like Halvorsen’s don’t allow for that kind of dramatic development. Instead, we have these mystical, Neo-Romantic microfictions.
T he uneven weight between the bowed and hammered strings does not have time to sink-in or become problematical. The piano roams free in the middle and treble registers, just as a microfiction character would. Listeners’/readers’ minds are obliged to interpolate, to read between the lines. Microfiction will not support any expectation of explicit storytelling. It is all between the lines. It must be so. There are too few lines for it to be otherwise. So, with microfiction (i.e., miniatures like Halvorsen’s), we understand its ground-rules before we begin, and we relish the extra interpretive responsibility that the author/composer places on us.
Y ou might think that miniatures would be ideal for our time—an era of short attention-spans and a taste for sound-bites and web-surfing. But no. The small size actually requires patience and effort.
T he replication 8-8 | 8-8 in this 32-bar piece provides a natural suggestion of reconsideration. Not ‘repetition’ but something more like... like... like Faulkner’s ‘As I Lay Dying’ where different chapters are told from the point of view of different characters, whose personalities change as the story proceeds. Veslemøy above ground starts with a downbow, with the mute on (piano-violin duo, with the mute on!), and the Veslemøy underground, bowing inverted now begins with upbow. The violin before, and the violin after. Piano, trans-substantiated; shape-shifting piano. The repetition/reconsideration/return (with the upbow/downbow inversion effects and with properly calibrated subterranean piano pedaling) provides us a chance to get inside each character’s mind and discover each character’s uncertainties—about what is real and what is illusion; about who one is and who one was/will be. Fiction? Hardly!
W e find that each character is receptive to all types of detail. Poetics are found in merely taking a drink of water; magic is found in merely talking to the wolf. Don’t ignore the wolf or pretend like it’s not there. You’d better talk to it.
I f this stuff interests you, please have a look at Kristin Rygg’s nice chapter in Ulla-Britta Lagerroth and Erik Hedling’s book (link below). Clairvoyance, mystical duties, the obligation to give voice to songs not yet born, the symbolic meanings of upbow and downbow.
T or Aspaas was born in 1971 in Røros. Aspaas received his Diploma in Piano Performance in 1996, studying with Liv Glaser and Jens Harald Bratlie. Since 2007 he has served as professor of piano on the faculty of the Academy in Oslo. He is particularly active and sought after as a chamber musician; ensemble performance and accompaniment are also his specialties at the Academy. Besides his concertizing and teaching activities, Aspaas has served as artistic director for the chamber music festival Vinterfestspill in Bergstaden on Røros since 1999.
P er Skalstad was born in 1972. At age 12, he entered the Norwegian State Academy of Music (NSAM) in Oslo, pursuing both piano and violin. Skalstad got his Diploma of Violin Performance in 1995, studying with Stig Nilsson, Lars Anders Tomter and Camilla Wicks. In 2002, he completed his Diploma of Conducting, also at NSAM. In 1988 Skalstad joined the Norwegian Chamber Orchestra. With the NCO, Skalstad plays the viola when needed. Per founded the Oslo String Quartet in 1991, with Geir Inge Lotsberg (viola), Åre Sandbakken and Øystein Sonstad (cello). Skalstad was assistant concertmaster in the Norwegian Opera Orchestra from 1993 to 2005, and he has performed as a soloist with the Norwegian Radio Orchestra, the Bergen Philharmonic, the Norwegian Chamber Orchestra and the Risør Festival Strings. In the 2004 Halvorsen recording with Aspaas, Skalstad played on the Halvorsen`s 1705 Rogeri.
Johan Halvorsen Chamber Music
6 Stimmungsbilder for Violin and Piano (1890)
Suite in G Minor for Violin and Piano (1890)
Danses norvégiennes for Violin and Piano (1897)
Elegie for Violin and Piano (1897)
Passacaglia in G Minor on the Theme by Georg Friedrich Händel (from Harpsichord Suite in G minor, HWV 432) for Violin and Viola (1897)
Sarabande con Variazioni in G Minor on the Theme by Georg Friedrich Händel for Violin and Viola (1897)
Crépuscule for Violin and Piano (1898)
Suite Mosaïque for Violin and Piano (1898)
String Quartet in E, Op.10 (1901)
Little Dance Suite for Violin and Piano, Op.22 (1902)
Slåtter for Violin Solo (1903)
Miniatures, 5 Easy Pieces for 2 Violins and Piano, Op.29 (1910)
To serenader for Violin and Piano
Norske viser og danse for Violin and Piano
Concert Caprice on Norwegian Melodies for 2 Violins
J ust knowing the dream, just knowing the song, the tune will hold fast in your mem’ry— seductively beckoning the whole day long.” — Arne Garborg, ‘Haugtussa’, 1895.
M arais’s third book of ‘Pièces de Viole’ (the source of this afternoon’s work) came out in 1711 [when Marais was 55 years old], two years after he withdrew from his operatic career after the failure of his fourth opera, ‘Sémélé’. The suite in C minor from this book begins with a deeply tragic Prélude, which is followed by a vigorous Fantaisie with a brilliant and virtuosic variation or double.” — Robert Mealy, Program Notes, BEMF, 2009.
T he suites [of Marais] are more loosely organized than those by Couperin. The policy of mixing the ‘difficult’ with the ‘easy’ is discreetly expressed by Marais in his ‘Avertissement’ to Pieces de Viol (I): ‘And because simple melodies meet the tast of a lot of people, I have composed some pieces with this in mind, where chords scarcely enter. One will find others where I have used them more, and several which are entirely filled with them for those who love harmony...’ Marais differs markedly from Couperin in that he made little conscious effort to achieve anything resembling goûts réunis [conforming to prevailing/popular taste]. This is not surprising, since the music itself is so wedded to the [viol] and so bound to the tradition of virtuoso solo performance... Some of Marais’s expressive and quasi-improvisatory preludes, especially those from Book (2), seem indebted to the lute repertory in particular. The same ornaments, the same melodic turns and the same rhythms are found.” — James Anthony, French Baroque Music, p. 389.
T he Trio Hantaï performance at BEMF yesterday was especially intimate—exerting a wide range of forces on our emotions. The Jordan Hall (New England Conservatory) venue was a bit large for the trio. But, on the other hand, the acoustics of the large hall only served to accentuate the intimacy of the Trio’s playing. It felt as though they were playing in a private home, so great was the person-to-person, player-to-audience expressiveness of each of the three Hantaï brothers.
T he Marin Marais piece especially captured my imagination—the profound sadness of it. A number of us in the audience had damp eyes—signaling an affective resonance with what we were hearing. We thought of the trials that Marais had been experiencing 300 years ago—not about three Hantai ‘talking-heads’ discoursing about Marais, but instead projecting ourselves into Marais’s actual historical, political situation.We remained intensely ‘present’, not displaced to the margins of what was represented by the Hantaïs’ playing. The signs of this affective state—these tears—were real tears of mourning, just like the ones we cry for, say, Anna Karenina, or other fictive characters.
A n affect is never a purely psychological thing, nor a purely somatic one.” — Joyce McDougall, The Many Faces of Eros, p. 157.
I n other words, it was French Baroque stage recreated in Boston, complete with ceremonies where our passions were called into being—by the sacrifices exacted by a world that doesn’t exist anymore. Marais evoked our own [post-modern] subjectivity, from the distance of the 17th/early-18th Century. In short, I loved it.
A t age 20, Marin Marais married Catherine d’Amicourt (on 21-SEP-1676), and they had 19 children together [?!]. He studied composition with Jean-Baptiste Lully and bass viol/da gamba with Monsieur de Sainte-Colombe. Subsequently, he wrote his five remarkable books of ‘Pièces de viole’ (1686-1725), a life’s work that covers the gamut of court preferences and personal emotions. But not a great amount of historical detail or correspondence or other evidence has been preserved, through which we might know very much about Marais’s life. The Milliot – de la Gorce biography from about 20 years ago is good so far as it goes, but it is frustrating in that it is unable to go as far as one might wish. For example, were these ‘Pièces en ut mineur’ (Prélude — Fantaisie — Allemande — Sarabande grave — Gigue — Rondeau) a personal statement or instead an oblique commentary on political developments in France in about 1711?
D uring the so-called ‘Age of Melancholy’, many writers invoked both traditional and new conceptualizations of the disease in order to account for various types of social turbulence, ranging from discontent and factionalism to civil war. Writing about melancholy became a way to explore both the causes and preventions of political disorder, on both specific and abstract levels. Thus, at one and the same moment, a writer could write about melancholy to discuss specific and ongoing political crises and to explore more generally the principles which generate political conflicts in the first place.” — Adam Kitzes, Politics of Melancholy.
T he other music by Leclair, Rameau, Couperin, and J. S. Bach was excellent, too; I don’t mean to diminish it by commenting only on the Marais. The wit, imagination, and virtuosity of the Hantaïs’ playing were superb throughout. Jérôme, still bowing to the audience’s applause, rises and sees that Pierre and Marc have already left the stage a few seconds earlier. He shrugs to the audience, gives a comical “Well, you two are at liberty to exit, then” gesture, dangling his viol out toward the gaping stage door through which they had passed. He smiles and good-naturedly exits himself. The Hantaï brothers are masters of absolutely every Baroque gesture that exists, and not only the musical gestures!
A) Buxtehude Prelude, Fugue, and Chaconne BuxWV 137 B) Bach Toccata and Fugue in D Minor BWV 565 C) Laurin Prelude and Fugue in F Minor 44.” — Jumbotron.
S am Beckett plays the organ at Kauffman Stadium. Nine innings a game; eighty (or so) games a year. ‘Charge’ and ‘Mexican Hat Dance’ and a little bit of Usher. When the pitching coach is talking the pitcher down, maybe Beckett will play ‘With a Little Help From My Friends’ with two-handed jazz chords. When the first baseman hulks into the box, maybe a crazy ‘Nuh-nuh-nuh-nuh-nuh-nuh-nuh-nuh...Batman!’ Everything is played live, including the grace notes after a crisp double play and the percussive tap-tap-taptaptaps that make you clap without thinking, along with the thousands of people around you.” — Alan Scherstuhl, The Pitch, 10-JUN-2004.
T here’s a rhythm to it some find boring, but I don’t need to fill every hole. There’s enough jock-jam music and advertising [in sports stadia—] already. I want to do something tasteful that gets people tapping their toes, enjoying it... It’s the fabric of the ballgame... it’s the froth on the cappuccino. It’s like ice cream and apple pie. Breyer’s vanilla ice cream, with homemade apple pie.” — Kansas City Royals’ keyboardist Sam Beckett, interview by Alan Scherstuhl, The Pitch, 10-JUN-2004.
I t’s cool to figure out what song Sam Beckett just played a bar or two of, in—What the heck?!?—some sort of obscure salsa beat... Some wry, permuted musical allusion—a tongue-in-cheek innuendo as to what just happened on the ballfield. And it’s great that, in an era where opera orchestras are being subbed by recordings and electronics, live keyboardists are still employed in professional sports stadiums in this country. Great, too, that artists like Sam Beckett have such fun, impromptu senses of humor. More than ‘miniatures’, these are micro, nano, pico, femto, atto pieces... 2 or 3 bars long at most. Six seconds, tops. Tiny, improvised ‘chamber music’ in a very, very big chamber...
