jwilzewske: tension

Showing posts with label tension. Show all posts

Sunday, October 2, 2011

Richard Goode’s Emergent Chopin

I have a hard time with music I can’t hear and construe tonally. I suppose it’s a habit of ear.”
— Richard Goode, interview with Cheryl North, 2002.

R ichard Goode performed in Rockport today…

Schumann: Kinderszenen, Op. 16
Schumann: Kreisleriana, Op. 16
Chopin: Nocturne in E-flat No. 2, Op. 55
Chopin: Scherzo No. 3 in c-sharp minor, Op. 39
Chopin: Waltz in A-flat No.3, Op. 64
Chopin: Waltz in C-sharp minor No. 2, Op. 64
Chopin: Waltz in F Major No. 3, Op. 34
Chopin: Ballade No. 3 in A-flat Major, Op. 47

T he performance reminds me that the delicacy of Chopin involves not only the delicacy of touch but also delicateness of the mind. The Scherzo Op. 39, especially, illustrates this. The C# minor tonality is latent, deferred for a long time, 24 bars or so, depending on how you interpret some of the bars. This was composed during one of the periods when Chopin’s tuberculosis was exacerbated—a time when we naturally imagine his uncertainty about his health and what would come next was also exacerbated.

T uberculosis was never confirmed, and the Chopin autopsy report has never been found. Both cystic fibrosis and alpha-1-antitrypsin deficiency are possible differential diagnoses that can explain his symptoms.”
— Ulf Kongsgaard, University Hospital, Oslo, 2011.

T he tension abates a bit when the original pattern is overcome by C# sonorities that are more persuasive both metrically/cadentially and tonally. The stable major harmonies that began the composition are transformed into contrapuntal chords, ones that evoke passing tones—naturals, flats, double-sharps—on the path toward a less-complex C#. The meaning of what’s gone before gradually emerges as the complexity recedes. The essayist’s/composer’s/performer’s ideas are not expounded so much as they’re ‘discovered’. (The Op. 39 Chopin descending D-flat major ‘sparkle’ figures in the upper register presage Ray Lynch’s celestial electronica by more than 100 years.)

I n other words, these ‘character pieces’ reveal the composer-as-discoverer or composer-as-kluger/tinkerer/experimenter, and stand in stark contrast to the usual notion of composer-as-omniscient-designer/architect.

G oode gazed out the windows at various moments during the Schumann, looking at the large waves crashing outside on the rocks. How could this scene not influence his next move? How could the liveliness of the waves not have an impact on the ‘Sehr lebhaft’! How could the excitement of the wheeling gulls not impart something extra to the ‘Sehr aufgeregt’!

O ne or two attendees asked whether the screen could be drawn, to darken the hall and “Could you please put a spotlight on Mr. Goode’s face?” David Deveau, MIT Senior Lecturer and founder and Artistic Director of Rockport Music, replied after the intermission that, no, no changes would be made: the lighting and the open view of the sea were precisely as Mr. Goode had requested. Goode finds the late afternoon light of the Atlantic stretching off to the northeast a fine and rewarding view to contemplate while performing these particular works.

I n summary, it was a performance that was intensely enjoyable, warmly recommended, with even more of the spontaneity and essayistic qualities for which Goode is so well known. Perfect for this complex, chilly, drizzly Sunday in October. The F-minor Chopin waltz and Bach’s Sarabande from the B-flat partita were Goode’s parting encore gifts to us all. We went away satisfied and grateful.

T he new Shalin Liu Performance Hall is very nice, by the way—acoustically as well as visually. The irregularities of the dry-laid stone walls on the main floor are enough to prevent any notable resonances or dead zones. And the multi-glazed windows and reception hall on the third floor provide excellent acoustic isolation. There was a 25-knot breeze blowing outside and 1-meter chop in Sandy Bay, none of which was audible inside the Shalin Liu hall. Delightful.

P .S.—Cystic fibrosis was only recognized as such in the 1930s [Andersen D. Cystic fibrosis. Am J Dis Child 1938;56:344-99] and alpha-1-antitrypsin deficiency was only discovered some 30 years after that. So the fact that Chopin’s death was attributed to “tuberculosis” is not surprising, given the minimal medical knowledge at the time.

I have a photo of Richard Goode in my office. I have known Richard for 25, no, 30 years. When my son was small, he asked ‘Dad, is that picture Beethoven?’ And I laughed and replied, ‘No, but almost. As good as if it were Beethoven. He plays almost as if he were Beethoven.’ ”
— David Deveau, pre-concert remarks.

Thursday, November 18, 2010

Meta-complexity in Brahms’s Clarinet Quintet

A nthony Burton’s program notes for the London Phil’s ‘Chamber Contrasts’ series at Wigmore Hall emphasize how impressed Brahms was with the potential of clarinet, as a result of his hearing clarinettist Richard Mühlfeld perform in 1891. But Brahms composed this Op. 115 clarinet quintet within a few years of his death from cancer, a period when many of his friends and family died (his sister Elise, his brother Fritz, Elizabeth von Herzogenberg, Hermione Spies, Theodor Broth, Clara Schumann, etc.). This makes me think that the recursive, ‘re-considering’ structures in this quintet maybe derive more from the emotional impact of those events on Brahms—than from any scheme Brahms may have had, to create in Op. 115 a virtuosic clarinet showpiece for the great Mühlfeld.

L arge-scale variation comes from relationships between variations (the theme included) and how these relationships are united into a pervasive algorithm that encapsulates the entire set—that is, an operating system governing the entire set. In other words, these are not a mere series of independent objects and methods (scripts) that are expected derivatives of a parent object or class. They are a ‘network-based object-oriented OS’.

W hat I mean is, Brahms’s variations feel to me ‘network-based’, not ‘hierarchical’. It seems (to me) that Brahms was exposing larger-scale connections, and transforming his idea into a multi-domain network rather than a hierarchical structure with conventional ‘parent’ exposition classes and ‘child’ instantiations. The arrangement of variations involves pairs of diatonic pitch-class cells derived from the theme. But the textural differences that follow are like remote procedure-calls that cross-link the tension-producing structures within the variations’ designs. This gives the piece an attractive sort of ‘meta-complexity’.

I n other people’s analyses (links below), variation sets in Brahms’s multi-movement instrumental compositions are usually only moderately complex. Variation sets in interior movements often do not have full ‘closure’. In the variations in this Clarinet Quintet in B minor, Brahms suggests or ‘projects’ closure by recapitulating first-movement phrases. But the promised closure doesn’t come until the very end. It is as though there is a latent, suspended complexity that is irreducible until the very end.

T his gets me to thinking about how Brahms does this, and how we might devise similar structures and mechanics in new music. The ‘Kolmogorov complexity’ (links below) of a software program or script, or a piece of text or a musical composition, is a measure of the computational resources needed to specify the object. Kolmogorov complexity is also known as descriptive complexity, Kolmogorov-Chaitin complexity, stochastic complexity, algorithmic entropy, or program-size complexity.

O ne of the appealing, intuitively plausible qualities of Kolmogorov complexity as a metric to characterize what I was hearing last night in the account of the Brahms clarinet quintet given by Robert Hill and his colleagues has to do with how the aggregate complexity goes, for large composite or ‘compound’ or ‘network’ or ‘cloud’ objects that are constituted from multiple smaller objects. For example, consider a compound object built up from objects X and Y. The Kolmogorov complexity of the two of them together K(X,Y) is:

K(X,Y) = K(X) + K(Y|X) + O(ln(K(X,Y)))

T his says that the shortest program that reproduces X and Y is no more than a logarithmic term larger than a program to reproduce X and a program to reproduce Y given X. This basically puts a quantitative ‘bound’ on the amount of mutual information there is between X and Y in terms of the Kolmogorov complexity.

T he amount of unresolved tension we feel in the inner movements in this Brahms quintet—and the intensity of the desire we feel for the eventual resolution of these tensions at the end—feels, to me, logarithmic. Maybe some future music theory PhD candidate will explore this notion properly and critically. For now, it’s happy enough for me to give you a few interesting links below and the glimmer of a potential reason why the complexities and proportions of this quintet seem so ‘right’ and so beautiful.

Wednesday, March 17, 2010

Artemis Quartett: Dissonance, Forensic Evidence, and Knowing

L et’s make nonfiction that is more thrilling than fiction. Let’s use the best of what fiction has to offer and make it more exciting because what happened was real.”
— Ellen Windemuth, founder, Off_the_Fence Productions, Amsterdam.

A rtemis Quartet’s performance in Kansas City last Friday night received a warm reception here.

Natalia Prischepenko, violin
Gregor Sigl, violin
Friedemann Weigle, viola
Eckart Runge, cello

T he all-Beethoven program consisted of Op. 95 (F minor) “Serioso”, Op. 127 No. 12 (E-flat major), and Op. 59 No. 3 “Razumovsky” (C major): supple interpretations throughout, without excesses of any kind, either radical or conservative. In this way, what the Artemis are doing sounds perpetually spontaneous, as though each member is reconsidering the ‘evidence’ that is expressed in her/his part—considering it anew each time they play.

I n fact, one of the qualities that impressed me especially was Artemis Quartett’s emphasis on the dramatic tensions between the parts—discourse between the instruments, yes, but as though the instruments (and the scores) have long-lasting disagreements, and express points of view that are founded on different evidence, profoundly different life-histories, irreconcilably different politics, and so on. Each player/part is not about to renounce what he/she ‘knows’.

[50-sec clip, Artemis Quartett, Beethoven, String Quartet in F minor, Op. 95 II, ‘Allegretto ma non troppo’, 1.6MB MP3]

T he exciting (and thought-provoking) result is a durable refractoriness to “nice” conclusions—a richness of trans-indivdual tension and dramatic complexity, even in works that are very familiar to us from repeated listening or performances.

T he encore, Astor Piazzolla’s ‘Suite del Ángel: Milonga del Ángel – Melancólico’, was another 6.7-min illustration of this.

T his Piazzolla suite is part of his series of “ángel” compositions from the 1950s and 1960s, usually performed with bandoneon or other instrumentation instead of this gorgeous arrangement for string quartet. Piazzolla had studied with Nadia Boulanger and famously alleged that his unusual counterpoint methods, for better or worse, could be blamed on her insidious pedagogy. In the “ángel” movement that the Artemis performed as an encore, we have lyrical elements that are passed among the quartet members, some of whose musical ‘testimony’ is corroborative of others’ testimony and some of whose testimony is discorroborative or contradictory. The scordatura-governed dissonance is earnest but not fierce; laconic, not agitated and verbose; and, as noted above, its rhetoric is serious, not whimsical or anecdotal.

T his peculiar Piazzolla suite is similar in narrative technique and orchestration methods to the 1949 ‘Sonata for Double Bass’ by Paul Hindemith. In that work, the bass player uses scordatura, tuning up a whole-step, which lends an unsettling, destabilizing effect to the sonata. In this Piazzolla movement, the cello’s C-string is tuned, I think, a whole-step down. In both works, the parts conjure a song in the form of a dialogue between the instruments. Hindemith: creator of ‘disharmonious counterpoint’ in which traditional combinatorial rules are subverted by a ‘decoupled system’ of tonality, or, maybe more accurately, a novel with an “unreliable narrator” point-of-view character. Piazzolla: creator of ‘testimonial dissonance’, with similar “unreliable” point-of-view characters.

T he same melody can be sung either alone or together with other players/characters, or entirely different melodies can be enunciated at the same time, or with variations that substantially alter the sense that the melody makes—the very embodiment of subjectivity and multiple, unstable points-of-view.

W hile we can recognize that the point of view of the “ángel” cello is constitutionally dour or sometimes irritable/unsympathetic, the subtlety and the disputes among the other parts’ responses prevent us from deciding that the cello-narrator, for all his vividness and probity, is more than just a figment of Piazzolla’s imagination. Our drive for certainty is flouted again and again, but we continue to listen, and there arrive more clues. We continue our listening with feelings of prolongèdly heightened suspense. Or ‘suspense-mingled-with-poignant-sense-of-loss-plus-optimism’.

T he result is that we get a riveting, realistic depiction of what may happen to human psyches when they are self-styled and unrelenting. They each know what they know; they each agree to disagree. Such complexity is emotionally engaging and believable, not confusing. In other words, read the quartet as you would read a good novel—as though it were real.

[50-sec clip, Artemis Quartett, Piazzolla, ‘Milonga del Ángel-Melancólico’, 1.6MB MP3]

T he Beethoven the Artemis offered was remarkably cogent and organic. The group dispatched the agitated, mercurial first movement of the Quartet in F minor (Op. 95) with a deft combination of rhapsodic vigor and cool control.”
— Anthony Tomassini, New York Times, 02-MAR-2010.

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.