jwilzewske: phrasing

Showing posts with label phrasing. Show all posts

Saturday, March 12, 2011

Akademie für Alte Musik Berlin: Baroque with Attitude(s), Baroque with Mixed Taste(s)

J osé Bowen writes of the ‘illusion that there is such a thing as a neutral performance style’... I believe it is an illusion principally of the listener; but even then perhaps ‘illusion’ is not the right idea... If Bowen typifies the view of a scholar making a ‘forensic’ examination after the event, rather than that of a performer who, for an ulterior artistic purposes, may need to have faith in some starting point without going too far into its credibility, he is nevertheless right to imply that performers do always display an attitude towards their music.”
— Jon Dunsby, in Rink, p. 227.

B uilding and shaping narrative is fundamental to effective interpretation, for musicians to bring a composition to life in performance (see esp. William Rothstein, in the book edited by John Rink, link below). In regard to constructing exciting and coherent narratives, Akademie für Alte Musik Berlin is second to none. Their performance last night was warmly received by Kansas Citians.

G.P. Telemann - Overture (Suite) in F minor, TWV55:f1
J.S. Bach - Brandenburg Concerto No. 5 in D major, BWV 1050
J.S. Bach - Violin Concerto in E major, BWV 1042
G. F. Handel - Concerto Grosso in F major, Op. 6, No. 2, HWV 32
G.P. Telemann - Concerto in E minor for Recorder & Flute, TWV52:e1.

T he Baroque slurred dotted-eighth-sixteenth ornament: this ‘punctuation’ conveys a certain tension, but it is not ‘tense’; it is instead athletic, like the taut muscles of a horse executing patterns in a dressage ring.

C onnecting the sixteenth note back to the dotted eighth with a slur has special and different meanings in Bach and Telemann and Handel. Telemann is more ‘French’ (see the excellent recent book by Steven Zohn, Baroque flutist and Assoc. Prof. Music History, Boyer College of Music & Dance, Temple Univ, link below, pp. 13ff). In the TWV 55:f1 Overture, there is an implied or interpolated ‘rest’ or suspension in the middle of the figure. By contrast, in the Akademie’s interpretations of Bach, the dotted-eighth-sixteenth slurs feel ‘pastoral’; these feel like distance is being traversed over soft earth or a hummocky pasture. In the minor keys, it feels solemn; it carries some gravitas. How wonderful to experience the diversity of German Baroque... the saturated colors and widely varying ‘feel’ and ‘sense’ that Akademie für Alte Musik Berlin impart to these pieces!

[30-sec clip, Akademie für Alte Musik Berlin, Telemann - Concerto in A minor for 2 recorders, TWV 55:a2, 1.1MB MP3]

T he musicians had already moved through several approaches to color and texture — a dark-hued French overture; a pair of light, graceful Menuets; a supple, rubato-laden Sarabande; and a pair of full-throttle fast movements — before arriving at the Plainte, a second slow movement. Suddenly, the string sound was hushed, velvety and nearly motionless. The ensemble addressed the Adagio of Bach’s Violin Concerto in E (BWV 1042) similarly, and the effect was no less surprising the second time... But for sheer inventive oddity, Handel’s Concerto Grosso in F (Op. 6, No. 2) proved the evening’s most memorable performance. Building on the gracefully modulating chord progression at the start of the work’s Andante Larghetto, the players produced a lush sound that painted Handel as an early avatar of English pastoralism.”
— Allan Kozinn, review, NY Times.

T he Akademie für Alte Musik Berlin (which loosely translates to the Berlin Academy of Early Music) features about 15 players trained in techniques employed in the 17th and 18th centuries, when the orchestra itself was still a relatively new idea. Friday’s concert confirmed that the uproar is warranted. The compelling program of music by German Baroque composers was one of the highlights of the concert season. What sets this ensemble apart from many others is the combination of technical expertise, extraordinary energy and sheer musicality... From the outset, the ensemble produced a soft but vibrant sound that was beautifully balanced. As it progressed through the nine-movement suite, the group demonstrated not only the ability to play well, but to infuse each movement with a sound and shape that was well conceived and effectively delivered. For example, the second movement contained two contrasting minuets. Not only was the instrumentation different — two recorders, lute and cello as opposed to strings — but differences in articulation also helped define each section...”
— Timothy McDonald, review, Kansas City Star.

Thursday, August 7, 2008

I Need a Semicolon Here: Punctuation in Instrumental Chamber Music

H istory has left its residue in punctuation marks—and it is history, far more than meaning or grammatical function, that looks out at us, rigidified and trembling slightly, from every mark of punctuation.”
— Theodor Adorno, Punctuation Marks.

W hen punctuation was first employed, it was in the role of handmaid of prose; later, the handmaid was transformed by the pedants into a harsh-faced chaperone, pervertedly ingenious in contriving stiff regulations and starched rules of decorum; now, happily, she is content to act as an auxiliary to the writer and as a guide to the reader.”
— Eric Partridge, You Have a Point.

[50-sec clip, Maxence Larrieu, C.P.E. Bach, Sonata for Flute or Violin and Continuo in G minor (BWV 1020), Adagio, 1.8MB MP3]

I was recently listening to C.P.E. Bach’s (or maybe J.S. Bach’s) Sonata in G minor for flute and continuo (BWV 1020), performed by Philadelphia-based Mimi Stillman on flute and Jeremy Gill on piano. Mimi’s playing was flawless, a near-miraculous realization of the coherence and feeling of the piece. But, in the Adagio, I found myself wishing for Gill to phrase his part more like Raphael Puyana did in the Maxence Larrieu 1994 Philips recording of this piece—more hesitantly, abstractly, resignèdly. Gill’s interpretation was technically fine, but the affect—the emotion—seemed a bit ‘flat’ to me.

What I was wishing for in the continuo part was something more like the Maxence Larrieu-Raphael Puyana phrasing——something more like the dour, contemplative phrasing that Glenn Gould used, for J.S. Bach’s Sarabande in D minor from French Suites No. 1 (BWV 812)—something that would’ve lent more of a dialogue effect to the interaction between the flute and the harpsichord. Each of us, I suppose, is entitled to his/her odd attachments to particular styles and interpretations.

Basically, I was wishing Gill had been applying more ‘semicolons’. A colon says, ‘Pay attention. This next bit I want to emphasize.’ But a semicolon is like politely clearing your throat. The semicolon says, ‘There’s still some caveat or paradox that I need to explain to you. There is a reservation I have about what I just said—something more you should know about.’ The semicolon speaks to the other performer(s), as well as to the listeners. What I wish is that we musicians added some new punctuation marks to our annotations of music—especially the semicolon.

A phrase that ends on a higher note than it began, followed by a rest (pause)—just as your voice does if you ask a question in Western languages—must almost certainly construed as a musical query (by Western players and listeners). Similarly, a phrase with a lower-pitched ending note gives the phrase a finality or semantic ‘terminal’ quality, just as when a question is answered—and is almost certain to be construed as declarative.

T here is a limit to the information any language can convey without introducing such devices as quotation marks that differentiate between what logicians call ‘language’ and ‘metalanguage’.”
— E.H. Gombrich, Art & Illusion.

Q uotation stands at the intersection of Iconography and Intertextuality.”
— Michael Bal, Quoting Caravaggio.

Paragraphs, sentences with primary and subordinate clauses, and so on—all of these have near-equivalents in music. Once, 150 years ago, Robert Schumann had a dream of a “higher poetic punctuation in music, liberated from the tyranny of the measure.” Well, of course beyond bar lines, we have:

Rests
Ligatures
Cadences
Commas (above the staves, to indicate phrasing; breath marks)
Fermatas
Pedaling marks (for keyboard instruments)
etc.

But, except for some new-music compositions, fewer and fewer chamber music pieces have ‘adequate’ annotation as to phrasing.

Don’t get me wrong. I’m not wishing for obsessive instructions via more punctuation markings. It’s just that I think composers (and publishers’ copy-editors and typographers) have tended to under-value the artistic value of the commas and other markings. Jennifer Brody, Associate Professor of English, African American Studies, and Performance Art, at Northwestern University in Chicago captures perfectly the aesthetic/expressive sense that I have in mind.

D isagreeing with e.e.cummings’s poem ‘since feeling is first’ [‘life’s not a paragraph / and death i think is no parenthesis’], I argue that punctuation can be thought of as a matter of life and death as well as embodiment.”
— Jennifer deVere Brody, Punctuation, p. 2.

Jennifer Brody’s nice new book recommends that punctuation need not be a handmaid or a chaperone but instead should be regarded as art in its own right. She does note that excessive punctuation can be a defect (stilted or overly affected or controlling). But liberal amounts of punctuation can be a valid element of performative style—extending the reader’s/performer’s power to interpret freely in broader ranges of expression [broader than an unannotated score may evoke]. Her treatment of ellipsis—which appears… to de-compose the page and speech [or musical utterances], and which leads to enigmatic or contra-dictory ends—is especially good. She uses Ralph Ellison’s ‘Invisible Man’ jazz idioms to reveal the blackness of Blackness and gender and racial dis/enfranchisement—encapsulated in phrasing marked by cadences and punctuation. Every bit of what Jennifer has to say about Ellison and jazz has direct correlates in discursive chamber music idioms.

A nd Death shall be no more;
Death, thou shalt die!”
— John Donne, Holy Sonnet No. 6, inept edition.

A nd death shall be no more, Death thou shalt die.”
— John Donne, Holy Sonnet No. 6, Gardner edition, quoted by Brody, p. 142, remarking on the effect of substituting a comma—how a semicolon is too theatrical in this context and, along with the line-break and exclamation point, ham-fistedly destroys Donne’s implied,subtle, aporetical meaning. Omitting the comma of address in the second phrase of the preferred Gardner version lends a hebephrenic inertia that’s consistent with Donne’s pervading fatalism and is also an elegant, coherent cadence.

Remember: National Punctuation Day is fast-approaching. More important than that, though, is the National Flute Association’s annual meeting, which this year is held in Kansas City at the Hyatt Regency Hotel. It begins today and runs through Sunday. There are several conference sessions and performances specifically devoted to the chamber music repertoire for flute. See you… there! (Full stop.)

I grew up with a lot of punctuation myself, so I can understand your nostalgia for parentheses,’ the dashing Sister Ka exclaimed to her dingbat friend across the periodic table.”
— Harryett Mullen, Sleeping with the Dictionary.

How wrong to think there are ‘exact’ semantic correspondences between music and text punctuation. This wacked example is from ‘The Editor’s Toolbox,’ by Leland B. Ryan, Buck Ryan, Michael O'Donnell, p. 142.

Wednesday, September 5, 2007

Mortensen: Artistic Expression and Absence of Tension

Lars Ulrik Mortensen, Fintan Damgaard photo

CMT: There is nearly as much beauty in watching Lars Ulrik Mortensen play as there is in hearing him play. The near total absence of tension in his hands and arms is impressive. Almost zero tension, even in extremely rapid and difficult passages.

DSM: He’s a phenomenally gifted artist, it’s true. I think also that careful videography and biomechanics analysis of his playing could be valuable for other performers and teachers. There’s a great deal to be gained by dissecting and understanding how he does what he does.

CMT: Beyond the ordinary pedagogical aspect, I believe too that videography and analysis of Mortensen’s technique might hold significant therapeutic value for harpsichordists who develop focal dystonia or other injuries. And not just harpsichordists—pianists as well!

W hat is the ideal in music? It is to create phrasing that arises organically from as many details as possible. The overall lines are the sum of the details; the detailed rhythm, intonation and rhythmic swing… The aim is to create the impression that the music materializes in the here and now—not because it says so in the notes, or because it is something that we are doing for our own pleasure. It is something we do to communicate, to involve the listener.”
— Lars Ulrik Mortensen, 2007

DSM: What do you think of the notion that if you can play keyboard instrument ‘A’ well, you can probably play keyboard instrument ‘B’ well? I tend to think this is refuted by the ‘A-B’ pair ‘piano-harpsichord’.

CMT: Yes, well, many harpsichordists may have hardly the musculature to depress the piano keys, or lack the stamina to do it through an entire program.

DSM: And pianists may inadvertently tend to man-handle harpsichord keys.

CMT: In other words, the ‘the muscle memory’ you’ve spent many years acquiring in pursuing mastery of your primary instrument can’t readily be unlearned. The neural and musculoskeletal pathways are ‘set’.

DSM: In similar fashion, you don’t see highly accomplished brass players switching between brass instruments. The embouchure for each is very different from the others, and switching to another one tends to cause injury or difficulties when returning to your primary instrument.

CMT: Is it the sheer hand strength required to play the piano that’s the issue? By contrast to piano, the harpsichord’s played with the fingers only—or mostly. The only role for anatomy that’s proximal to the proximal interphalangeal joint is to position the fingers over the keys. There’s very little force exerted from the hand, arm, shoulder, or back—nothing beyond what it takes to get the key down accurately.

DSM: The piano, on the other hand, takes considerable strength to play—a large proportion of the weight of the back, shoulder, arm, hand, and fingers is projected down into the keys. The forces are considerable.

CMT: But the big difference is how you get the key down, don’t you think? How you get the piano key down determines the attack—the rate at which the hammer rises to strike the string. How you release the piano key is somewhat less critical. You don’t find people afflicted with pianists’ cramp complaining about their release. The problem is primarily with the attack.

DSM: Moreover, a pianist never really touches the string directly. The hammer mechanism is a step removed. With the harpsichord, it’s the opposite—it’s ‘pedal to the metal’ all the time. As the harpsichord key does down, your finger communicates directly with the string through the plectrum—you feel the plectrum stretch the string, you feel the string as it’s released.

CMT: And there’s a very long decay until you release the harpsichord key. With harpsichord, your release is critical—you have to maintain finger independence even more rigorously than with piano. What’s remarkable with Mortensen’s playing is not only the absence of tension in his hands but also the amazing finger independence that he has. Watch his fourth and fifth digits and you’ll see what I mean...

DSM: So with piano, the action is mainly downward, using your whole upper body—essentially ‘into’ the keyboard. And, with harpsichord, the action is mainly upward, more or less ‘out’ of the keyboard—using your finger from the tip to the proximal interphalangeal joint.

CMT: Learning how to play a keyboard instrument is a long process of training neural pathways. I wonder if there’s any difference between keyboard instruments—between piano and harpsichord, say—with regard to susceptibility to focal dystonia or other injuries.

DSM: To date, there’s really no research literature addressing that. The rarity of the cases makes the systematic study of possible statistical associations of that kind very difficult. There are, though, some recent papers in the journal MPPA that touch on it, albeit in an anecdotal way.

CMT: I wonder, too, whether—since the finger action is so different between harpsichord technique and piano technique—switching instruments might be helpful for a player who has developed a disability that is specific to one keyboard instrument. Are harpsichord and piano sufficiently different, do you think, so that the injured central and peripheral neuroanatomy involved with focal dystonia affecting the performance on one instrument would be distinct from the neuroanatomy pertinent to performance on the other instrument?

DSM: Again, there’s no published research literature concerning that possibility. Interestingly, the percentage of left-handed professional musicians isn’t significantly different from the percentage of ‘south-paws’ in the overall population, except for keyboard musicians. The percentage of ‘lefties’ among piano, organ and harpsichord players is very low—primarily because of the right-dominant literature. For a left-handed musician to play piano is comparable to writing with her/his right hand—awkward, uncomfortable. Consequently, lefties tend to play non-keyboard instruments professionally. So my hunch would be that the neuroanatomical pathways that are relevant to harpsichord playing and piano playing overlap a great deal. It would be surprising that switching instruments would offer respite from something like dystonia, unless there were a different laterality-dominance.

CMT: There is the example of Leon Fleisher and the left-handed piano literature. And Reinhard Goebel gave up being Konzertmeister of Musica Antiqua Köln in 1990 at the age 38 because of focal dystonia. He obtained a left-handed instrument, re-learned the violin left-handed, and resumed playing from the second violin desk (second-chair not because of diminished ability, but more probably to prevent collisions with the bows of the other violins). The literature was, obviously, the same as before. But the pathways were sufficiently different so that the switch was successful.

C ould anything be more absolute than Bach’s faith in God? Well, the means that Bach employs to express his unswerving faith in God are revealed more by way of hints. If the word ‘God’ makes sense in the case of Bach; providence or meaning may be better words. His trust in authority does not give rise to the need to shout out some truth or other, but rather to suggest it. There is a very wide framework for interpretation in Bach, but he is much more challenging, because he is less blunt. He appeals much more to my temperament than the broad statements of the Romantics.”

— Lars Ulrik Mortensen, 2007

DSM: Mortensen is the artistic director of Concerto Copenhagen. He studied with Karen Englund and Jesper Bøje Christensen at The Royal Danish Academy of Music in Copenhagen and with Trevor Pinnock in London. From 1988 to 1990 he was a member of London Baroque, and from 1990 to 1993 he was a member of Collegium Musicum 90. He has recorded for Archiv Produktion, Harmonia Mundi, Kontrapunkt and DaCapo. His recording of Bach’s Goldberg Variations won him a Diapason d’Or. He directed the European Union Baroque Orchestra in 2003. He was professor of harpsichord and performance practice at the Hochschule für Musik und Theater in Munich from 1996 to 1999. This year he received the Léonie Sonning Music Prize, Denmark’s premier music award.