jwilzewske: porter

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Thursday, November 10, 2011

Composing-while-Dancing: EROI Festival, Organ Improvisation, and Embodiment

I mprovising is difficult-] because our current educational system makes it so.”
— William Porter, keynote talk, EROI 2011.

B ecause learning it happens so very late [in the course of pedagogy and acquiring musical skills].”
— Eastman student, quoted by William Porter, EROI 2011.

T he EROI festival this year is centered on the topic of improvisation and opened this afternoon with a stimulating, expansive meditation-cum-keynote-speech by William Porter, entitled ‘Why Is Improvisation So Difficult?’

I t was followed by a breathtaking, virtuosic “triple-header” 8:00 p.m. recital on the Craighead-Saunders organ for a packed-in audience at Christ Church across the street from Eastman School of Music:

Böhm – Praeludium in C; Herr Jesu Christ dich zu uns wend (Chorale Cycle with 6 verses); Hans Davidsson
Hindemith – Organ Sonata No. 1; William Porter
Schumann – Etuden in kanonischer Form für Orgel oder Pedalklavier, Op. 56; David Higgs
Liszt – Präludium und Fuge über den Nahmen B-A-C-H; David Higgs

U p to the mid-18th Century, improvisation was a fundamental skill in which most if not all practicing musicians were adept. Since that time, however, fewer and fewer musicians have felt fluent at improvising extemporaneously.

P orter catalogued the concepts and situations that he believes lead many musicians today to find improvising difficult. He averred that because genres and idioms are today so tremendously diverse, it is difficult to teach improvisation as ‘compositional performance’ insofar as it is not humanly possible for one person to be fully fluent in what constitutes improvisation in more than a few genres/idioms. It was far easier when the prevailing idioms/use-cases/purposes of the music were few in number and the contexts for the improvisation (e.g., liturgical/sacred music) were more structured.

F oremost among the reasons why improvisation has become ‘hard,’ Porter says, is that counterpoint, voice-leading, and harmony are in recent decades taught in ‘classroom’ settings, primarily as paper-based exercises in writing, instead of as practical performance on a keyboard instrument (or any other instrument, including voice). Student musicians only rarely these days develop any ‘muscle memory’ for improvisation per se, so that the body—the fingers, the hands, the diaphragm, the whole body—knows how to execute improvisation as a sort of ‘compositional performance’. Porter exhorted the teachers in the audience to amend the curriculum to impart such kinesthetic knowledge to students, and to do it from their earliest days when they are kids, just beginners, much in the manner that would be done with dancers or other kinds of athletes.

S ome book links are gathered below, for your interest, in the spirit of Porter’s remarks about embodiment, kinesthetics, and corporality in improvisation. Especially noteworthy is Pamela Ruiter-Feenstra’s new two-volume treatise ‘Bach and the Art of Improvisation’ (link below).

W hat a fantastic EROI Festival this will be, crafting the future of organ improvisation and improvisation pedagogy!

W e must kill the twin demons of ‘originality’/‘novelty’ and ‘imitation’: these ultimately lead to paralysis and inhibit improvisation. Instead, we must teach the student how to be compelling, how to be convincing. It is better to be ‘interesting’ than to be original. The integrity of saying something with conviction, and of being spontaneously responsive to other musicians and to the audience—is what we really mean by ‘improvisation’. We must teach them to prepare—to prepare to take advantage of the unexpected when it happens.”
— William Porter, keynote talk, EROI 2011.

Saturday, June 13, 2009

BEMF Organ Mini-Festival: Baroque Lutheran Rhetoric Revealed

B egin with simple ingredients, such as a melody limited only to three notes, then four, then five, etc. Exploit a certain interval—for example, the major second or the tritone. Improvise a short motive—for example, B-A-C-H (B-flat, A, C, B-natural)—and transpose it, invert it, augment it, condense it, expand it. Improvise melodies within the compass of the octave. Imitate various instruments or voices and styles. Use all keys, modes, and meters. You can do this!”
— Jan Overduin, Improvisation for Organists, p. 7.

T he BEMF organ mini-festival included segments yesterday offered by Joan Lippincott on Bach’s ‘Art of the Fugue’, by Bálint Karosi and Chris Brown on ‘Rhetorical Forms in Lutheran Worship’ illustrated by works of Böhm, Buxtehude, and Bach, and by William Porter on comparing the fantasias, fugues, and sonatas of J.S. Bach and C.P.E. Bach.

J oan Lippincott is Professor Emerita of Organ at Westminster Choir College of Rider University, Princeton. She trained with Alexander McCurdy at Curtis Institute and for some years was principal organist at Princeton University. Her activities concertizing and recording currently occupy her full-time.

B álint Karosi is presently Minister of Music and principal organist at First Lutheran in Boston. He was born 1979 in Budapest, Hungary, and began playing piano and clarinet at age 6 and at 16 he began to study the pipe organ. In the 1990s, he studied at the Ferenc Liszt Academy of Music with Gábor Lehotka. Subsequently, he was at the Conservatoire Superieure de Musique de Geneva with Lionel Rogg from 1999-2001, where he was awarded the ‘Prix de virtousité avec distinction’ in both organ and clarinet. He has two Masters degrees from Oberlin, studying with James David Christie. He was the winner of the 2008 J. S. Bach international organ competition in Leipzig, Germany. His honors also include an award for best modern improvisation at the organ competition in Brno, second prize at Prague’s Spring International Clarinet Competition, first prize and the audience prize at the Dublin International Organ Competition, first prize at the Arthur Positer Organ Competition in Syracuse and second prize at the St. Maurice International Organ Competition in Switzerland.

T he beautiful Kellner-tempered Richards, Fowkes ‘Opus 10’ (delivered to FLC in December 2000) is a joy to hear. The 70 mmH₂O (0.1 psia) wind-pressure has plenty of power and CFM flow-capacity to fill the tall, austere, brick-and-oak, barrel-ceilinged Lutheran sanctuary. The Posaune 16' and Sub-bass 16' ranks give impressive sounds that can be put to a variety of innovative, coloristic religious and secular purposes. The low end is also aided by Bourdon 16', Dulcian 16' and Krummhorn 8' on this instrument.

T he First Lutheran congregation in Boston was founded in 1839 as the German Lutheran Society and is the oldest Lutheran congregation in New England. The church, at Marlborough and Berkeley streets in historic Back Bay, was designed in 1957 by MIT Dean of Architecture, Pietro Belluschi. In 1995, Professor William Porter and church organist, Mark Meyer, initiated the process commissioning this new Kellner-tempered Richards, Fowkes instrument.

T he BEMF organ mini-festival afforded an excellent chance to consider Brad Lehman’s ideas about Bach’s temperament—especially in the Bach Contrapuncti in D minor and other works in flat keys.

A ll those major and minor keys sound objectively different from one another, having slightly different semitone and tone arrangements in their scales, and different harmonic balances of the triads and more complex chords. These differences render all the keys recognizably distinct, as to the tensions and resolutions in the way tonal music behaves. The triads and diatonic scales of F and C majors are the closest to regular 1/6-comma temperament. D major and E-flat major each have an average quality resembling equal temperament. The scale of E major is the closest to Pythagorean tuning. We have the complete flexibility of modulation as if it were equal temperament, but also a third dimension of depth: natural motion forward through the music, in a well-organized and dramatic manner. … Short of hearing this directly for oneself at a keyboard instrument, how may we describe the most noticeable musical effects of the temperament? Sharps are high and bright, with a strong and rather ‘hard’ (dur-) tone that creates ‘forward motion’ when they are used in dominant triads. Flats seem warm and vibrant, ‘soft’ (moll-) and gentle, with a shimmer to their chords and scales. The naturals, with the exception of B, have the same neutral and resonant character that they do in a complete 1/6 comma layout. The biggest difference here, as compared with other familiar ‘well-temperaments’ like Kellner’s, is the treatment of the flats. With the sharps placed so uncommonly high, the major and minor 3rds are especially euphonious when those same levers are played on the keyboard as flats. They serve very well as the tonic under natural notes, making major 3rds (for example, D-flat under F, or A-flat under C).”
— Brad Lehman, Univ Michigan.

T he performances also afforded a special opportunity to hear the rhythmic control and clarity that are possible with the excellent tracker mechanism design by Richards, Fowkes Organ Company. A tracker organ is one where the key action physically connects the keys and the windchests through a series of rods called ‘trackers’. When the organist presses a key, the corresponding tracker moves, and wind enters the pipe corresponding to the key pressed. (This is contrasted with a ‘mechanical stop’ action, where each stop control is physically connected to a rank of pipes. When the organist activates the stop control, the action allows wind to flow into the selected rank of pipes. This control is usually a stop-knob, which the organist activates by pulling towards himself/herself.) The tracker mechanism usually entails somewhat greater finger effort in playing but achieves a more direct keyboard ‘feel’ and a more responsive control of the pipes’ valves, a big plus for fast, virtuosic passages.

C P. E. labeled the final page of Bach’s manuscript with the message that Bach died while introducing B-A-C-H as a countersubject in the third part of the fugue. Ignoring for the moment that B-A-C-H is here a subject, not a countersubject, the whole story [that this Contrapunctus was composed by Bach on his deathbed, pen falling from his hand in the midst of measure 239] is apocryphal [false]. The piece was further labeled ‘Fuga a 3 Soggetti’ (Fugue with 3 Subjects) in the 1751 published edition, despite that fact that it was patently Bach’s intention that it be a quadruple (four-subject) fugue. But how can we be sure of that?”
— Jeffrey Hall, FlagMusic.com.

T he incompleteness of ‘Die Kunst der Fuge’, BWV 1080, will probably always remain controversial. Bach probably started writing it sometime in the 1740s or maybe earlier. The first known surviving version, which contained 12 fugues and 2 canons, bears Bach’s copy date of 1745. Bach’s second version was published in 1751 after his death. That one contains 14 fugues and 4 canons. Göncz about 12 years ago investigated the combinatorics of the construction of Contrapunctus XIV (see link below), coming up with new ideas that, to me, are really persuasive.

T he sudden ending of Contrapunctus XIV in mid-sentence, in bar 239, was beautifully and dramatically rendered by Joan Lippincott, to the delight of the festival attendees. In summary, yesterday provided an emotionally moving and very illuminating session—one that I hope leads to follow-on organ mini-festival offerings in future years’ BEMF programs.

Denn gleich wei di Rosen stehen As fair roses are bounded
unter spitzen Dornen gar, By sharp thorns on every side,
also auch die Christen gehen So with perils sore surrounded
in viel Angsten und Gefahr... Christians in this world abide...
Ob mire schon die Augen brechen, Though my eyes should dim, and hearing
das Gehor auch gar verschwind't; Fail in silence quite away;
meine Zung nicht mehr kan sprechen, Though my tongue should cease from speaking,
bist du doch mein Licht, mein Wort. You are still my Light and Word.

— Old-School Lutheran rhetoric (‘Freu dich sehr, O meine Seele’)

J osephus – I come to you, venerable master, in order to be introduced to the rules and principles of music.
Aloysius – You want, then, to learn the art of composition?
Josephus – Yes.
Aloysius – But are you not aware that this study is like an immense ocean, not to be exhausted even in the lifetime of a Nestor?”
— Johann Joseph Fux, Gradus ad Parnassum, 1725.

Friday, June 12, 2009

William Porter on Musicological Truth, Speculation, and Web 2.0

Jean Raoux, Orpheus & Eurydice, ca. 1718, Getty Museum

S ome time ago, I was giving a harpsichord lesson and the student was playing this piece by Johann Casar Ferdinand Fischer—‘Uranie’. And in the Passacaglia an idea occurred to me: I noticed a similarity between the development in Fischer’s music and the plot in the legend of Orpheus and Eurydice. The Passacaglia begins in D minor… the accented tritone in measure #3 already indicates danger. Then the descent—descending and descending in D minor: Orpheus is descending into Hades to save [the snake-bitten] Eurydice. Then we have the relative major, F, the sweetest key in this historical temperament, and these trills: Orpheus is overjoyed to find Eurydice, and he begins his return, rescuing her. After the ascent, we have A minor. Orpheus looks at Eurydice, violating the stipulation that had been set in Hades—and the texture of the music thins out, and the furies begin tearing her from him, tearing her limb from limb, and she vanishes…

I said this to my harpsichord student—told my student that this Passacaglia seemed to me to have structural similarities to the plot of Orpheus & Eurydice… and nothing more about it than this. To my knowledge, nobody had ever before considered that Fischer might have been inspired by the Orpheus legend when he composed this piece.

Months after that harpsichord lesson, I Googled ‘Fischer, Passacaglia, Uranie, Orpheus’ to see whether anybody else had had this idea, and to my surprise there was an entry on Wikipedia that said ‘Some experts think that the final dance of the Uranie suite tells the story of Orpheus & Euridice’—but it did not have any footnotes to name who the experts were. Then, some months after that, I Googled it again, and the entry had changed, saying now that ‘William Porter, professor of music at Yale [sic], thinks that this Passacaglia was inspired by the story of Orpheus’. More recently, the entry has been changed yet again, to remove any reference to me.

The moral of this story is that today we can casually invent our own truth. Truth is regarded in a [casual, relative] way. What begins as honest, original speculation gets quickly repeated on the Web, usually stated as fact and usually without attribution.

I like it better when the tentativeness of [my original] conjecture is restored—it ‘might’ be this way; Fischer ‘might’ have been inspired by the Orpheus & Eurydice legend. Speculation and conjecture allow each person to consider an idea and its possibility themselves, and that is far more interesting and beautiful than a [cold, hard] fact.”
— William Porter, pre-performance remarks to audience at BEMF keyboard mini-festival, 11-JUN-2009.

F irst, it is necessary to hold tenure at a prestigious university school of music or conservatory. Second, the person putting forward a musicological opinion should have published extensively in refereed academic journals and be widely regarded as an expert in the field to which the opinion pertains—publishing well-regarded books on the subject, even better. Third, the opiner should cite all previous work by others and present the opinion in a scholarly manner in an appropriate medium or at a worthy venue—certainly not in Wikipedia, which is the quintessential purveyor du jour of all that is unreliable. Fourth, he/she should present exhaustive evidence, detailing each argument that supports the idea and fairly entertaining all rejoinders that are conceivable, summarizing the strengths and limitations of each. Fifth, it is necessary to expressly identify the remarks as opinion only, and to indicate that it should be regarded as tentative, based as it is on conjecture and modest evidence—so that tender babes reading things on the Web will not be deceived or misled.

O r, instead, we can responsibly have fun. And accept that there are valid use-cases besides serious academic ones, and accept that some of those valid use-cases will be fictive and creative ones. Or trust that anyone interested enough to consider some wild, colorful conjecture will be vigorous enough to do their own thinking and fact-checking independently.

W illiam Porter, professor of harpsichord and organ at Eastman School of Music, gave a wonderful performance in yesterday’s BEMF ‘keyboard mini-festival’. He prefaced his performance of Johann Caspar Ferdinand Fischer’s ‘Musicalischer Parnassus—Uranie’ with the humorous story in the blockquote above, about his speculation about similarities between the plot of Orpheus and Uridice and the dramatic arc in Fischer’s Passacaglia in D minor.

I f you’ve read any of my posts here on CMT blog over the past three years, you know that I’m partial to a kind of truth that is like the kind preferred by Michel Foucault—an evolving, exploring kind of truth; one that we ‘inscribe’ and that ‘inscribes’ us. I respect expertise and evidence, but I don’t especially like regimes and power structures that restrict access to expertise and that legislate/adjudicate what evidence shall be admissible. I like knowing things, but I don’t especially like knowledge that needlessly suppresses imagination, play, creativity, art or fiction.

W e might surmise from his pre-performance remarks that William Porter prefers a pluralistic style of truth, and that he prefers this on aesthetic grounds. Is the position that Porter maintains closest to the one that Michael Lynch has written about? You don’t have to insist that there is one and only one true story of the world. And if you reject the unitary position, you don’t have to resign yourself to having no objective truth, every relativist’s view as good as any other's view. Lynch’s brand of pluralism holds that, although there can be more than one truth, there is nevertheless such a thing as objective falsity based on evidence.

T his, I think, is what Porter meant by his wry comments yesterday. There is no evidence to say that Fischer was not inspired by the legend of Orpheus and Eurydice—nothing that can objectively falsify that conjecture. Yet there is a good bit of musical and circumstantial evidence to support the possibility that the conjecture is true. Aesthetically, Porter’s conjecture makes sense, is coherent, is constructive. The conjecture leads us in interesting, beautiful, valuable directions with regard to understanding Fischer’s music and Baroque interpretation and performance practice.

P orter’s playing yesterday—of the Fischer ‘Uranie’, and of Bach’s Partita No. 4 BWV 828—was wonderful, and his Orpheus & Eurydice story beforehand was provocative, an added ‘bonus’. Together, they were a highlight of my day. Bravo!

P rior to his appointment at Eastman, Porter was a member of the faculty at Oberlin (1974-1986) and the New England Conservatory (1985-2002), and was director of music at Yale Divinity School. He has taught and performed at the North German Organ Academy, the Italian Academy of Music for the Organ, the Göteborg International Organ Academy, the Dollart Festival, the Lausanne Improvisation Festival, the Smarano Organ and Clavichord Academy, the Boston Early Music Festival, and the National Convention of the American Guild of Organists. He is co-founder of the Boston-based Baroque ensembles Affetti Musicali and Musica Poetica. From 1985 to 1997, Porter was director of music at the Church of St. John the Evangelist in Boston. From 1999 until 2002 he was Artist in Residence at First Lutheran Church in Boston, the venue for yesterday’s BEMF keyboard mini-festival. Besides his faculty position at Eastman, Porter teaches part-time at McGill University. And, whether he likes it or not, Porter does have an entry on Wikipedia. As of this moment, it seems not to contain any errors or wild conjectures.

I ncidentally, if you are attending BEMF, you may be interested to know that there is a copy of Clancy Martin's new book, Philosophy of Deception, on display in the exhibitors' area on the 6^th floor of the Boston Radisson Hotel. Not sure whether it contains any mention of Wikipedia...

Denn gleich wei di Rosen stehen	As fair roses are bounded
unter spitzen Dornen gar,	By sharp thorns on every side,
also auch die Christen gehen	So with perils sore surrounded
in viel Angsten und Gefahr...	Christians in this world abide...

Ob mire schon die Augen brechen,	Though my eyes should dim, and hearing
das Gehor auch gar verschwind't;	Fail in silence quite away;
meine Zung nicht mehr kan sprechen,	Though my tongue should cease from speaking,
bist du doch mein Licht, mein Wort.	You are still my Light and Word.