jwilzewske: rhythm

Showing posts with label rhythm. Show all posts

Sunday, May 27, 2012

Chamber Music Repertoire for Didgeridoo?

T here are a few orchestral works that include didgeridoo (Sean O’Boyle and others), but for conservatory recital or chamber performances there are currently only about 3 dozen chamber music compositions that are readily available. Most of these are indexed at the Australian Music Centre (Duos, Quartets, Quintets, Sextets, Octets; Solo with vocal ensemble). You may also want to consider Peter Sculthorpe’s String Quartet No. 12 with didjeridu, and ‘Lorin’s Piece’ for didjeridu and voice; Neal Corwell’s ‘Aboriginal Voices’ trio for tuba, didgeridoo, and voices; Philip Glass’s ‘Voices’ for organ, didgeridoo, and narrator; and Dubravko Lapaine’s ‘Rescribi’ trio for piano, didgeridoo, and percussion.

[50-sec clip, Dubravko Lapaine, ‘Kosmopterix’, ‘Rescribi’, 1.6MB MP3]

and ‘Putnik’:

[50-sec clip, Dubravko Lapaine, ‘Kosmopterix’, ‘Putnik’, 1.6MB MP3]

T he aboriginal people have a great deal to teach the western world about wind playing in general and lip reeds in particular. The trombone may seem old when compared to western orchestral instruments, but it is only a five hundred year-old baby when compared to the possible forty thousand-year-old tradition of the didjeridu.”
— Stuart Dempster, 1979.

V irtuosic double- and triple-tonguing in the didgeridoo repertoire have parallels to ‘cursus’ in classical Latin oratory and medieval chant (see Eklund, link below), and you might consider that idea in preparing a program. Rhythm—the patterning of accents in speech or singing—establishes expectations; it entrains the listener and the speaker, phase-locking them to the pattern. Accents in Latin fall on at least one out of every three syllables. But in English and other languages the gaps are longer—you can often go for five or six syllables between accents. The didge literature tends to emphasize prosody and oratorical aspects—not only because of your vocalizations into the didge, but also because you have just the fundamental (and pedal), plus a few harmonics (‘toots’, ‘trumpets’) to work with. (Years ago, Juilliard professor Ivan Galamanian famously drew an analogy between instrumental (violin) playing and speech, in which he asserted that attacks are consonants and the sustained notes are vowels, and performers should treat them as such. The analogy is true enough for strings and other instruments, but it’s hardly even an ‘analogy’ in didgeridoo playing: given all of the tongue, jaw, and vocal tract technic involved in didge performance, the vowels-consonants assertion is a self-evident fact of how the didge sounds are produced.)

V ocal and instrumental rhythms are sometimes direct translations of a poetic meter. In other words they may be sung or played, interchangeably. Far more often than not, however, vocal and instrumental rhythms create what we might call ‘rhythmic counterpoint’ when heard with reference to the poetic meter—the interplay among two or more rhythmic threads or voices. By continually altering the durational relationships and varieties of accent in a succession of syllables, musicians can elicit the close attention of listeners.”
— Michael Tenzer, p. 43.

I n thinking about other instrumental repertoire that might be suitable as-is or transcribable for chamber didge recital, you might explore pieces whose articulation and accents entail sound-envelopes that are marcato ‘thrust-followed-by-decay’, an accent that resembles a plucked string instrument like a double-bass. With the didge, the decay is because the outflow of air from the cheeks that occurs while you are inhaling through the nose in circular breathing can’t be as forceful or sustained as the outflow of air when supported by the diaphragm. In general, highly rhythmic, marcato pieces in low register are likely to be feasible and stylistically coherent with didge performance practice, regardless whether they are for winds, strings, or percussion. There are pieces for tympani (for example, Daniel Jenkyn Jone’s ‘Sonata for Unaccompanied Kettledrums’) that could be performed as-is or transcribed for didgeridoo. And there are a number of chamber pieces for bass clarinet or low brass that are plausible. More links that you may find useful follow.

Thursday, May 17, 2012

MUS-501 final exam question: Late Schumann Lieder were hip-hop anthems. Evidence? Discuss.

I n 1989’s ‘Fight the Power’, Public Enemy’s Chuck D spits a working definition of rhyme’s reason: ‘As the rhythm’s designed to bounce / What counts ... is that the rhyme’s / Designed to fill your mind.’ He is speaking of ‘rhyme’ here both as the practice of patterning sounds and as a name for the verse as a whole. In both meanings, rap’s rhymes have filled our minds with many things, not all of them good. But it is more than a matter of content—be it women and cars or prisons with bars; it is also a question of poetic form.”
— Adam Bradley, p. 55.

T he prominence of dark themes in Schumann’s lieder in 1851 and later, featuring violent language and desultory circumstances and the characters’ defiant reactions to them, is strong evidence in favor of this thesis. Likewise, there is a radically different relationship between the music and the text compared to Schumann’s earlier lieder: in the late lieder there is a much stronger emphasis on syllabic stresses, on rhyme, and on systolic pulsatility of the voice strongly sync’ed to the instrumental beat. Schumann’s settings of Kullmann poems especially are, essentially, rap over music.

D ominated by the energy of insistent repetition—from perfect rhymes to assonance and consonance—delivering on the promise... apocopated rhymes, where a one-syllable word rhymes with the stressed portion of a multisyllabic word. He matches the first line’s monosyllabic internal rhymes ‘last’ and ‘blast’ with an apocopated rhyme ‘fastball’ on the next line. He does the same thing in reverse with another rhyme as well—using ‘hit’ to rhyme with ‘splitter’. This creates a structure that binds the two lines together... almost every word is doing some kind of rhyme work... using rhyme to fashion rhythm.”
— Adam Bradley, p. 62.

Und die mich trug im Mutterarm	And she who carried me in arms
Und die mich schwang in Kissen	And rock me in the nest
Die war ein schön, froh, braunes Weiß	She was beautiful, happy, *red*—hot—but
Wollte nichts vom Mannsvolk wissen	She never want to mess
Sie scherzte nur und lachte laut	‘Round... She only joke and laugh,
Und liess die Freier stehen.	Dissin’ those who hit on her.
„Möcht’ lieber sein des Windes Braut	“I’d rather be fucked by da wind
Als in die Ehe geh’n!”	Than have sex with any of you!”
Da kam der Wind, da nahm der Wind	And dat wind came, and dat wind chose,
Als Buhle sie gefangen,	And beat her and rape her too,
Von dem hat sie ein lustig Kind,	And that how she birthed me, packin’ heat.
Jung Volker, mich, empfangen.	Know dis: Jung Volker is my name.
—Eduard Mörike (1804-1875)	Op. 125, No. 4 (1851)

P ianist Graham Johnson maintains that Dichterliebe (Op. 48) contains what is arguably “the nearest thing in lieder to the modern phenomenon of ‘rap’ ” (liner notes to Vol 3, Hyperion CDA67676, pp. 101-2, specifically regarding ‘Ein Jüngling liebt ein Mädchen’, No. 11, a song about a young man’s rejection by the woman he loves). In my opinion, dubstep is the sound that Schumann was going for, instead of brostep. And a ducking ‘pump’ sound that you hear in techno and electro that comes from side-chaining. That and electro house drums. Kind of a ‘dark garage’ hip-hop dubstep with kicked-up bass. The late lieder would be great with custom Ableton controllers for that sound. Don’t get that on no Hyperion CD, though!

C ogan’s timbral reading of a piece is informed by the words sung in the performance. In his ‘Sounds of Song’, Cogan compares spectrographs of four recordings of Robert Schumann’s ‘Ich hab’ im Traum geweinet,’ a song he describes as ‘always obsessive, but uncertain, lost — quite literally traumatic.’ ”
— Smith Reed, Univ Pittsburgh, 2005.

Der leidige Frieden	Peace make me nervous,
Hat lange gewährt—	It last too long—
Wir waren geschieden,	We ‘part for weeks,
Mein gutes Schwert!	My blade, its song!
Derweil ich gekostet	Down in the cellar
Im Keller den Wein—	I drink dat wine—
Hingst du verrostet	You hanging rusty
An der Wand allein.	By the wall, bidin’ your time.
Von Sorte zu Sorte	Each juice
Probiert’ ich den Wein—	I tasted when my turn to—
Indessen dorrte:	Meantime, dat blood:
Das Blut dir ein.	It’s dried on *you*.
Ist endlich entglommen	Battle when you right
Der heisse Streit,	Ain’t no crime—
Mein Schwert, und gekommen	Blade, here comes
Ist dein Zeit.	Your thirsty time.
Ich geb’ deiner Klingen,	Wipe some more,
Den blanken Schliff:	You bright, smooth steel:
Ich lasse dich singen	I let you rap
Den Todespfiff.	Your deadly spiel.
Im Pulvernebel	In gunpowder haze
Die Arbeit rauscht—	You slash, rip steep—
Wir haben, o Säbel,	You ’n’ me, Blade,
Die Freuden getauscht.	We put ’em all deep.
Im brausenden Moste,	In foamin’ wine,
Mein durstiges Erz	Blade thirsty and smart,
Betrinke dich, koste	Drink deep and taste
Von Herz zu Herz;	From heart to heart;
Derweil du gekostet	While you’ve been tastin’
Das rote Blut,	Your crimson blood,
Is mir eingerostet,	My throat—it’s parched,
Der Hals vor Glut.	Waitin’ for a flood.
—Nikolaus Lenau (1802-1850)	Op. 117, No. 2 (1851)

O bscure poems that portray dysfunctional or oppressive gender relations, cars and money or jewels, and weapons—a throw-away objectification of people and ‘live-for-the-moment’ violent materialism—are also characteristic of these late Schumann lieder, in a fashion that presages modern hip-hop themes and postures. Braggadocio and lyrics that proclaim the singer’s greatness—these appear in Op. 117, Op. 104, and others.

W hile rap may be new-school music, it is old-school poetry. Rather than resembling the dominant contemporary form of free verse—or even the freeform structure of its hip-hop cousin, spoken word, or slam poetry—rap bears a stronger affinity to some of poetry’s oldest forms, such as strong-stress meter of ‘Beowulf’. As in metrical verse, the lengths of rap’s lines are governed by established rhythms—in rap’s case, the rhythm of the beat itself.”
— Adam Bradley, p. xv.

Du nennst mich armes Mädchen	“Po’ ho’,” you call me;
Du irrst! Ich bin nicht arm!	You full o’ shit! I’m not po’!
Entress dich, Neugier halber,	Wake up, you pimp,
Einmal des Schlafes Arm und schau’	from yo’ drunk-ass sleep,
Mein niedres Hüttchen	An’ look at my mansion
Wenn sich die Sonne	Wit da paradise sunrise
Hold am Morgenhimmel hebet:	When da morning sun come to me:
Sein Dach ist reines Gold!	Dat roof is pure gold!
Komm’ Abends, wann die Sonne,	Or come in da evening when da sun,
Bereits zum Meere sinkt,	Sinking in da sea,
Und sieh’ mein einzig Fenster,	See only my window,
Wie’s von Topasen blinkt!	Sparklin’ wit da topaz jewelz!
Du nennst mich armes Mädchen	“Po’ ho’,” you call me;
Du irrst! Ich bin nicht arm!	You full o’ shit! I’m not po’!
—Elisabeth Kuhlmann (1808-1824)	Op. 104, No. 3 (1851)

E mblematic of all rap music is constructing an image of power through gestural cues, which may be in the words or the music or both. The cues include punched-up rhythms and phrases about money, expensive clothing, jewelry, killing and dying, and going places and doing things. Late Schumann lieder got those!

T he situational exigencies of late Schumann lieder are accessible to anyone whose mind is open, and are not dependent on exterior markers for their manifestation. Instead, they are rooted in demonstrating values in interacting with others—values such as defiance, aggression, and action; support, mutuality, and reflection—‘power over’; ‘power with’. Don’t need no fancy or subtle analysis to identify features of hip-hop in late Schumann. Jus’ need to open our minds to the sonic and textual evidence that’s right there in front of us.

T wo hundred years ago popular music and art music were joined at the hip. Beethoven’s works and the birth of the Romantic Era coincided with the rise of the middle classes. Franz Schubert and Robert Schumann composed lieder that could be sung and played in the home by amateur musicians. At the same time that the middle classes expanded, they received a more formalized and substantial education and formulated an idea of art and music. The masses were able to sing and play music that did not require the same technical ability as music that one would ﬁnd in the concert hall, but was more suited for the salon. The music was ‘attainable’, and it featured poetic verses with melodies that were relatively easy to sing.”
— Gabe Kanengiser.

Saturday, December 24, 2011

Hans Zimmer & Co. save Holmes, entropically

I t’s the furiously melodic likes of Gladiator, The Lion King, Inception, Batman Begins, Dark Knight Rises, Pirates of the Caribbean, Kung Fu Panda, and Sherlock Holmes that’s elevated film music to a thing of rocking beauty, as Zimmer and his team have employed every oddball instrument and influence from Gustav Holst, Lebo M. and the sound of bat wings into percussively thematic adrenalin.”
— Daniel Schweiger, 2011.

I f you ask me, Zimmer’s score rescues Sherlock Holmes (and Guy Ritchie et al.) in the new ‘A Game of Shadows’ film.

Z immer and his composer-orchestrator colleagues at Remote Control Productions created a beautiful and varied score that augments the color and vista of the film, lending atmosphere, scope, and interest to what otherwise could seem predictable. Never gets in the way of what the script and imagery are doing, but never merely reinforces or sonically reiterates what’s been said or shown.

B ut more than this, I am really thrilled with the tempi and the rhythmic architecture of this score. I got the soundtrack and listened to it several times, measured the tempi bar-by-bar in each of the cues, and created a spreadsheet of the values (see jpeg above). I also put an EKG on myself and digitized my heartrate during each listening. Not only did my heartrate adapt to each of the tempo changes, but the heart rate variability (HRV, using the simple RMSSD metric) also synced with Zimmer’s music. Empirically, I suspect that that “N-of-1” experiment is indicative of why this music “works”—physiologic response “pulls” cognition, rather than the other way around.

S ee the book by Bacci and Melcher (link below) for more on phase-locking and rhythmic ‘entrainment’ of breathing, heartbeat, and other physiologic rhythms, syncing with music.

S ince I’d captured the tempo timeseries, I decided to do some other calculations on it, too. I used the open-source R system’s package ‘entropy’ (link below) to calculate the Miller-Madow, James-Stein, Tsallis, Chao-Shen, and Shannon/Jeffreys entropy values. The entropy of the timeseries of tempi for these 18 cues is H = 2.72... pretty high... indicating a substantial amount of variability/unpredictability/interestingness. If you do entropy calcs for “bad” or ineffective film scores (as I happened to do several times last summer), you get much lower values, H between about 1.10 and 1.90.

M ost film schools don't even mention music, much less compare examples of good and bad scoring.”
— Richard Bellis, 2006, p. 8.

T he cues’ titles (track-names) collect words and phrases from the screenplay that are cadential—perfect rhythmic-harmonic demarcations of the narrative arc and plotting. It’s clear that Zimmer applied an admirable amount of objectivity in the spotting session, to inject material that adds considerable depth to the character or the story without the material asserting itself as a vehicle for his own ego.

T he score (Die Forelle; The Red Book; Moral Insanity) makes Robert Downey Jr’s Holmes more alert and angry when he is facing Jared Harris’ Moriarty. The score (He’s All ‘Me! Me! Me!’) makes Jude Law’s Dr. Watson all the more hapless as he gets unwillingly caught up in the plot.

T he producers and Guy [Ritchie, the director] and Jude [Law, co-star] and I got together and tried to have it feel like an extension of what we think brotherhood is—the bickering and miscommunications are part of something that aspires to something higher.”
— Robert Downey Jr., Scotland BigIssues Magazine 05-DEC-2011.

A Game of Shadows’ stands as a valentine to the public-school buccaneer. It provides Ritchie with a licence to run wild with Gypsies, trade punches with cossacks, or just generally arse about in expensive hotels. It gives us anarchy as panto and global espionage in the guise of a homoerotic stag weekend.”
— Xan Brooks, The Guardian.

I n other words, Zimmer’s score truly ‘services’ the film’s narrative, neither over-writing nor under-writing. Naturally, given the big-action subject matter in this film, there are lots of huge orchestral cues. But there are more than half of the cues that are intimate, chamber-like pieces.

M any think that what we do is ‘Art’. I disagree. Music is an art form. Film music is a craft with its roots in art. Art is a form of self-expression, and the last thing a director wants is some composer coming in and expressing him/herself all over the director’s film.”
— Richard Bellis, 2006, p. 69.

F olk idioms in the Romani melodies (doina repeated-note gesture of lament), pentatonicism, Phrygian scale with the second and third scale degrees raised when ascending, and fraigish harmonic minor, flying-staccato, alla zingarese poco a poco accelerandos “hallgató/lassú-közép gyors-friss" (e.g., Kesergö or or verbunkos or csárdás style in ‘It’s So Overt, It’s Covert’; ‘Romanian Wind’) to breakneck speeds, acrobatic violin with pitches bending and glissing, and the tone growling and crying ... great colla parte tempo-leading.

T he Hungarian hallgató of the ‘Did You Kill My Wife?’ brass band is superb.

G ee, this soundtrack is an admirable thing! The tremolos begin slowly, and the accelerandi melt into the flourishes so that they sound like one gesture—far bigger ones than you imagined when they began. The playing and conducting are excellent throughout. Precisely nailing the tempo variations, yet sounding totally organic while remaining faithful to meter. Very, very nice!

Sunday, November 27, 2011

Schools above the Ground: Music of the Spanische Hofreitschule Wien

A n impressive performance this morning by Lippizaner horses and their riders at the Spanische Hofreitschule Wien. Such grace and rhythmic artistry by all!

Favory Trompeta / Zimmermann
Pluto Favorita / Oberhauser
Pluto Medea / Burg
Conversano Bellamira / Zimmermann
Maestoso Beja I / Zeithofer
Favory Gidrane / Egger
Pluto Bellornata / Eder
Neapolitano Gaetana / Rothleitner
Conversano Undine I / Burg
Maestoso Basowizza / Zimmermann
Maestoso Calzedona / Eder
Pluto Riga / Rothleitner-Schreiner
Conversano Bonavoja / Zimmermann
Favory Dagmar II / Oberhauser
Maestoso Biondella / Burg
Favory Duba / Zimmermann
Favory Dagmar / Zimmermann
Siglavy Recolta / Rothleitner
Pluto Blanketta / Schreiner
Conversano Darinka / Zimmermann
Pluto Theodorosta / Oberhauser
Favory Wanda / Burg
Siglavy Dubovina II / Zimmermann

I nteresting to note that each rider generally trains and stays with each horse throughout the horse’s life after the horse comes to the SRS at age 4 to 6 years. Interesting, too, to note that the SRS riders are promoted from ‘Eleve/Elevin’ (apprentice/student) to ‘assistant rider’ level after not less than about 4 years.

P resenter Georgina Whittle gave animated and informative introductions to each of the 5 15-minute program segments, ending with the Schulequadrille.

Schubert – Militärmarsch No. 1 in D major
Schantl – Schmiedeck Fanfare
Strauss (sohn) – Wiener Blut
Boccherini – Menuett
Schantl – Andrassy Fanfare
Walch – Pariser Einzugsmarsch
Ziehrer – Schönfeldsmarsch
Fucik – Regimentskinder
Bizet – Aus der Arlésienne Suite No. 2
Chopin – Polonaise No. 1 in A major
Haydn – Aus der Symphonie No. 101
Traditional – Österreichischer Grenadiermarsch
Strauss (vater) – Radetzky Marsch

T he horses’ executions of the patterns in the dressage ring were astonishingly precise in the synchronization to the music. The tempi of the chamber orchestras who performed on the recordings for these exhibitions are chosen to be compatible with the natural/comfortably-feasible velocities and cadences of the horses. Animals that have served in domesticated roles for centuries clearly love to have meaningful, artistically beautiful roles to play—honest jobs. Their expressions show genuine satisfaction—they clearly enjoy their own achievements. In other words, they do it not just for the sugar-lumps, and not just to be compliant with human ‘masters’. It was wonderful, just wonderful to watch this. Pirouettes! Piaffes! Levades! Caprioles! Bravo!

Tuesday, June 14, 2011

New Quantitative Ways to Look at Small-Scale Variability in Meter and Rhythm

A pianist friend of mine says that the 2-part Inventions are merely ‘steep hills’ but that the 3-part Sinfonias are ‘craggy mountains whose paths have lots of twists and turns’. Having lived with these pieces most of my life, I have to agree.”
— Lee Ridgway, harpsichordist, BEMF 2011 Fringe Recital.

H arpsichordist Lee Ridgway performed all 15 of J.S. Bach’s 2-part Inventions and all 15 of the 3-part Sinfonias yesterday, in one of the ‘fringe’ recitals at the Boston Early Music Festival. He performed them in the sequence in which they originally appeared in W.F. Bach’s clavier-büchlein. His masterful and sensitive treatment of each provoked a number of reveries for me, for which I am grateful.

A mong these was a reflection on how the moment-to-moment agogic metric accents might be analyzed with mathematical and statistical signal processing and spectrum-analytic methods similar to those that have been applied over the past 20 years in cardiology, to understand heart rate variability (HRV) and develop predictive models of cardiac disorders. The pulse quickens; the pulse also slows! Quantitative details of small-scale dispersion of meter—and the abnormal, motoric diminution of HRV that occurs in stress and in disease states—can tell us so much! Just to see what interesting things may turn up, I begin with one of the simplest ‘variability’ measures—the root-mean-square standard deviation, RMSSD:

I look in the music theory literature and recent doctoral dissertations, and so far I am unable to find anybody who has pursued this sort of thing. If I am wrong, please email me or add a comment below.

O vernight, I download some MP3s of others’ performances of the 2-part Inventions and begin to run some analyses using the MATLAB signal processing toolbox software—the same modules that I use for analyzing digital electrocardiograms. I pick off beat-by-beat interbeat intervals in the left-hand part and the right-hand part. I exclude marked ritardando/accelerando bars; also exclude fermatas.

T here is more or less constant variation in articulation and timing... successive notes are crafted with varying durations—this is especially true on harpsichord more than other keyboard instruments, but it would be true as well for winds, voice, any instrument. The plot above is a composite across 2-part variations—a quick exploratory ‘look’ only; not what we would do for a proper analysis.

D etached releases ranging from ‘sharp’ ones to ‘lingering’ ones… this all shows up in the RMSSD and other time-domain variability measures. It also shows up in frequency-domain power-spectrum and other FFT- and wavelet-transform-based measures.

A nd, naturally, the variability and rhythmic power-spectrum measures change throughout the course of each piece. The power spectrum has ‘shoulders’ on it, on both the left (slower, longer IBI) and right (faster, shorter IBI) side of the median interbeat interval or rhythmic frequency. In principle, we would watch and measure the time-evolution of the power-spectrum from the beginning of a piece to the end of a piece—look at these evolutions or trajectories for different performers whose interpretations and styles differ. Then we would be better able to account objectively and quantitatively for how they do what they do!

L inkages across the bar-line are frequent, often involving small melodic voice-leading in one part (hand). These were particularly prominent in Ridgway’s accounts of the C-major, F-major, G-major, and C-minor 2-part variations. Beautiful, truly.

T hrough thoughtful, passionate application of agogic variations in small-scale timing, we get an acute sense of tension between (1) propulsion from ordinary and extraordinary accents in the metric frame and (2) propulsion from motivic and other phrase units. It is a major source of musical drama and beauty—not just in Bach but, I think, in all music. It was simply Ridgway’s fantastic playing yesterday that makes me think of these mathematical ways of explaining and understanding how it works.

R idgway is a solo organ and harpsichord performer, has performed for more than 40 years throughout North America and Europe. A native of Oklahoma, he received his Bachelor of Arts from the University of Oklahoma and Master of Arts from New England Conservatory of Music. Presently the organist and choir director at St. Chrysostom[s Episcopal Church in Quincy, MA, he is also Dean of the Boston Chapter of the American Guild of Organists. The instrument on which he performed yesterday at Emmanuel Church is one made by Boston’s Allan Winkler, a 2-manual adaptation of a 1716 design by Carl Conrad Fleischer… gorgeous sound.

B eyond their pedagogical applications, the Inventions and Sinfonias offer us wonderful, individual pieces of music… The similarities or contrasts between pieces in the same key; the [affective] characteristics of different keys; the characteristics of individual themes; … how the voices engage in dialogue or games of chase...”
— Lee Ridgway, harpsichordist, BEMF 2011 Fringe Recital.

Sunday, March 29, 2009

Relational Semantics: Lutosławski’s Beauty of Indeterminacy, Surprise of Proportion

A fter 1961 Lutosławski worked largely independently of the fashions of the European avant-garde, refining and extending a compositional technique that produced, to use Bogusław Schäffer’s phrase, ‘stylistically the most independent works of modern European music’ ... Bohdan Pociej once described Lutosławski’s mature works in terms of four tendences: (1) the constant endeavour to achieve a ‘system’, to implement it, and to find one’s own personality [and social destiny] through it; (2) the harmonic, colouristic tendency—borne of a ‘Debussyan’ fascination with pure sound, grounded in a comprehensive [Cernerian] architecture of inter-related chords; (3) the poly-chronic tendency, reflected in a constant and intense inclination to organize ‘parallel plots’ and to split the composition into many interpenetrating levels and planes—to fill the musical space with multi-directional and multi-tiered motions; and (4) the dramatic tendency expressing itself in conflict, confrontation, struggle—in the various vicissitudes of form.”
— Steven Stucky, p. 107.

T he new recording of Lutosławski’s works for violin and piano, by Ariadne Daskalakis and Miri Yampolsky, has captured my imagination these past several days—and it may well capture yours as well.

Recitative e arioso (1951)
Partita (1984) [commissioned by Saint Paul Chamber Orchestra and premiered by Pinchas Zucherman and Marc Neikrug in January 1985 in Minnesota]
Subito (1992) [his final completed composition, before his death in 1994 at age 81; written for the International Violin Competition in Indianapolis]

T hese are pieces of tremendous clarity, alignment, and focus. They are, in fact, astonishing for a sort of post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD) sort of ‘urgent, combative hyperclarity’.

[50-sec clip, Daskalakis & Yampolsky, Lutosławksi, ‘Recitative e arioso’, 1.6MB MP3]

[50-sec clip, Daskalakis & Yampolsky, Lutosławksi, ‘Partita’, 1.6MB MP3]

[50-sec clip, Daskalakis & Yampolsky, Lutosławksi, ‘Subito’, 1.6MB MP3]

L utosławski destabilizes the chromaticism in the violin part characteristic. Opposing this, the piano has vertically symmetrical chords and seems to offer respite and restore stability. Lutosławski’s early love of mathematics and the aesthetics of symmetrical are evident here—when the distances between adjacent tones in the chords are measured, one gets a numerical pattern of pitches that is invertible ... the same whether measured from the top to bottom or bottom to top.

T he developments and the transitions are beautiful, and their beauty and coherence leads us to imagine that there can be success and a happy conclusion, if only we can be sufficiently mindful and ‘good enough’. But the best and most diligent efforts can be for nought, and our grip on success can slip away. Passages that initially sound complete and self-contained turn out to be erodable or transitory ... stuff happens.

T he violin part struggles existentially. Life and its accumulated burdens take their toll, and the violin ends up (in ‘Subito’) chromatically down a half-step from where it started.

T he motoric chromaticism of the violin and the contrast provided by the piano are beautifully rendered in the Subito and the Partita.

H ear these three pieces together, one after the other on this disc. You will be impressed by Lutosławski’s skill in constructing relational algebraic expressions (Verhaltniss). Which part is the operator and which is the operand? Is the violin-piano matrix singular? Is the operation that they just played ‘commutative’?

T he size and prominence of a part are context-dependent and comparative qualities—you form an impression of them only in relation to other parts, or to the overall whole. Size and prominence are indeterminate—indefinite qualities that empower the performer/listener. They can increase or diminish without limit; there is interpretive latitude—so much latitude, in fact, that it may lead to PTSD-like anxiety, agoraphobia.

O ur judgment about the relation of parts arises both from the evidence that’s provided in a particular piece (or performance) and from custom. These make us used to specific proportions, such that wide deviations from them strike us as novel or exaggerated or contradictory. If we hear something that’s common or familiar, our expectations are already pre-conditioned and we tend to hear what we are expecting to hear. But if we hear something that’s unusual, or if a familiar pattern or relationship has a part that is relatively larger or smaller proportioned than what’s customary, then it awakens ideas about uncertainty and disparity.

A nd it’s not just the scope or extent or prominence of a part where we are awakened by relational contrasts. There can be semantic misrelations as well. Paradoxically little stimulation evokes impressions of despair, depression. Unexpectedly abundant stimulation evokes impressions of mania, agitation. The Recitative e arioso is dark, dark, dark. The year 1951 must have afforded Lutoslawski lots of dark moments to propel this piece—and Daskalakis plays as though she understands this from the inside-out. The bowing technic admits alternately of great energy [“This is how I was mistreated, and here is what I did to oppose them.”] and then of great vulnerability [“At last there was nothing more we could do, and we had to wait and see what the outcome would be.”]. The consonance of performance and writing is wonderful, an embodiment of good relations between the semantics of the composer and the gestures of the performers—Daskalakis and Yampolsky alike.

T he so-called ‘poly-agogics’ that Lutosławski uses are tastefully handled. Polyagogics are simultaneous accelerandos in one part and slight ritardandos in the other part. These microrhythms amount to a kind of polymeter—a transient complexity that confers extra tension on the piece. The Subito and the Partita have poly-agogic features, often associated with veiled or pensive, waiting, uncertain passages. I will need to get a copy of the score, to see how many of the poly-agogic rhythms are notated ones and how many of them are extemporized by Daskalakis and Yampolsky. Either way, their skill and faithfulness to what Lutosławski meant are to be commended—a fantastic Naxos CD.

A riadne is the new Dean of Strings for the Hochschule für Musik Cologne. She is also leader of the Berlin-based Ensemble Oriol and of the Manon Quartet.

Ariadne Daskalakis website
Daskalakis & Yampolsky. Lutoslawski: Complete Music for Violin and Piano. (Naxos, 2009.)
Witold Lutosławski page at Wikipedia
Witold Lutosławski page at Polish Music Center (USC)
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