| Welcome to
the Yellow Room! The yellow room is a room in my home with bright yellow walls. I sort of like them that way; they are cheerful. This is where my piano is located, and this is often where I myself am located. It is where I practice each day, preparing music for public consumption. This page is devoted to such preparations. You'll be able to hear what I'm presently working on, and I'll take you through the music in ways that may be novel and interesting, and hopefully will add to your musical experience. Although most of the recordings posted here are not, strictly speaking, from this piano and this room (I can't get my ears to sign off on the quality of my home equipment and the acoustics of the small room and the serviceable Yamaha in it) you will sometimes hear things from my church sanctuary, occasionally from this room, and from recordings made by professionals in the concert hall and the studio on a variety of instruments. |
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Georg Frideric Handel, Chaconne in G
posted Dec, 1, 2009 Of the handful of 'classical' pieces known and appreciated by large numbers of people, a number of them are big on the repetition. One of them, Ravel's "Bolero," was given the less-than-flattering designation by its own composer of not really being music! I don't think we know what Pachelbel thought of his own Canon, though he might be chagrined that it is the only thing of his that gets played on the radio. Obviously, though, repetition is a great way to start if you want to build up your musical ear. Listening for and recognizing when some tune or rhythm returns is the key to understanding all kinds of complex musical forms. And that is the catch. It is repetition against variety (as opposed to most pop music and its emphasis on straight repetition) that makes the language of a musical composition come alive. Handel's Chaconne might easily belong to this company. Despite the exotic name (pronounced : shockone) it is really just one long string of variants on the same series of chords. The progression last about 30 seconds, and then it is repeated. During the repetition, the performer was expected to add ornaments--his own spur of the moment ideas, to the harmonic outline the composer had provided. Handel himself did this when playing his own compositions. Then we proceed to the next variation on the same chord progression, and so on, for 21 variations (just over 10 minutes). On the present recording, I decided to let my fancy collaborate with that of the composer, so that, every time a section is repeated, you will hear my own variants on the section I just played. (These are the sections marked with a 'B' below) The challenge to your ears is probably the fact that there are an awful lot of notes-per-second in this piece, and that most of them are, in some way or other, just details. The chord progression itself is quite simple, and it is the variety of approaches to this progression (Handel basically showing us all the things he can do with just a tiny bit of musical material) that makes it interesting. In order to help your ears fasten on the outline, rather than the flashy details, I've recorded the simple progression itself. Listen to it a time or two and see if you can't pick it out in the variations that follow. Handel doesn't ever just give us the bare outline; he starts right off with an ornate, fanciful rendition. Baroque music can't do with these extras any more than Gothic cathedrals can do without all those decorative details everywhere. There's a straight plain wall there somewhere, but it's beneath a lot of eye-catching detail. Not that the gallons of notes aren't fascinating--and potentially confusing. The Baroque era in music (1600-1750) actually got its name because the succeeding generation complained about it being too full of those extra notes (Baroque means misshapen, or excessively ornamented). So if they are making your ears glaze over, you're not alone. Being able to let those notes fall away and hear the overall shape of each variation, however, means you can listen more 'slowly,' and not miss anything important. You'll also noticed the overall outline of the piece, which includes a section of minor key variations (the tempo changes are my own idea) before returning to major--one giant ABA governing a series of what could be a diffuse variations (but notice that the variations tend to accelerate--that is, each successive variation is a little more active than the last-- to give an overall sense of continuity and movement to each large section). Below is a timed outline of each section. I noticed on listening to this recently that I neglected to repeat a couple of sections (intentionally?)--mainly they fall into Handel's notes only sections (e.g., 1A) followed by those with my additions (1B): theme :00 / theme repeated :28 / variation 1--:56 / 1B 1:10 / 2A 1:23 / 2B 1:37 / 3A 1:50 / 3B 2:04 / 4A 2:17 / 4B 2:31 / 5A 2:46 / 5B 2:57 / 6A 3:08 / 6B 3:19 / 7A 3:31 / 7B 3:43 / 8A 3:55 / 8B 4:07 / minor section (slow)--9A 4:23 / 9B 4:45 / 10A 5:06 / 10B 5:29 / tempo change (fast) 11A 5:53 / 12A 6:20 / 12B 6:33 / 13B 6:47 / 14A 7:03 / 14B 7:18 / 15A 7:34 / 15B 7:47 / 16B 8:02 / return to major 17B 8:23 / 18A 8:40 / 18B 8:53 / 19B 9:06 / 20B 9:20 / 21A 9:34 / 21B 9:49 |
| Notes on a Very Polite Train-Wreck posted 10/5/09 |
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Joplin, Crush
Collision March (4:47) Scott Joplin made his debut in 1896 with this tuneful but not overwhelming example of the kind of thing that everybody was listening to in 1896. Ragtime had yet to be published by anybody, anywhere, Joplin had yet to write Maple Leaf Rag, and when he tried to get it published in 1897, shortly after writing it, it was turned down. Publishers couldn't imagine that the public was ready for it yet. Apparently what they were ready for was a nice, musical train wreck. The young, market-savvy Joplin decided to cash in on current events. A couple of trains had (possibly) collided recently, providing all the sensationalistic fodder he needed for his march. I think you'll be able to figure out where this happens without any help. The score is full of descriptive tags about the whistles blowing and marks the moment of the collision, but if I've managed to make enough of an unholy racket (and I trust that I did) you'll get the idea. What is interesting about the actual collision chord is that it is simply a nice V7 chord. True, it is in the grumbling low register of the piano, but the harmonic phenomenon itself has been around since Bach, and is used constantly by composers to provide the harmonic glue they need to re-establish home base, tonally. Build a chord on the fifth note of the scale, taking every other note until you've got four of them (notes 1, 3, 5, and 7) and you have one of the basic building blocks of musical tension (the first 'five' is in Roman numerals to avoid making everybody confused--thus V7). Was this Joplin's idea of a hair-raising harmonic crunch? Or did he imagine his public was too dainty to stomach an impolite noise on the piano--say a really nice cluster of low notes with no redeeming harmonic value? What ends up happening is that the chord leads very nicely into the final section, so that, syntactically, nothing untoward has happened to disturb the logical flow of the piece. What determinism! You'll note that the wreck actually occurs twice, because Joplin asks us to repeat that section, just as one does with everything in the march genre. If you are in the mood to listen for repetition, I've outlined the section start times below: Intro--Section A (:08), repeat (:32)--Section B (:55), repeat (1:18)--Section C (1:41), repeat (2:06) Section D (I hope you like this tune; you'll be hearing it a lot!) (2:30), repeat (2:52) trainwreck section (3:13), return of D (3:39) repeat of trainwreck section (4:00), repeat of D (4:25) In future installments we'll be listening for the formal plan in more complex pieces, and listening for repetition is the key to listening for form. |
Schumann, Robert "Arabesque" op. 18 (6:04) Robert Schumann is famously known as a man with a split personality because he employed two different pen names in reviews he wrote for a German musical journal: Florestan, the passionate, impulsive, enthusiastic one, and Eusebius, the dreamer, the reflective, passive personality. Schumann has also been categorized by history as a "Romantic" composer, But his Arabesque shows signs of being both Romantic, and its opposite, Classical. While Classical elements in art include symmetry, balance, order, and a certain amount of repose, Romanticism is much more open-ended. A piece constructed along classical lines will return to its beginning, reaffirm its opening theme, and finish where it started. Romanticism threatens to destroy that mental balance by flights into the unknown, streams of consciousness construction, fragmentary, unfinished thoughts, ambiguous shades of meaning.... Schumann begins his Arabesque in C with five little notes on which he will build the entire first section. You'll hear a lot of that opening gesture. First he repeats it, then the melody climbs higher. So much for the first phrase. Next we take everything up a note, to D minor , and do everything again--then we are back at C level (sorry), and this phrase just spills over into an ebullient little tune, which Schumann likes so much he decides to do it again. Twenty-three seconds in, Schumann decides to try those opening notes in a minor key, giving them a new pathos, and new possibilities, before he returns home, reaffirming the sunny C-major of the beginning. So much for the first section (57 seconds long)! What makes Schumann Schumann (usually) is in the episodes. Sometimes he is the musical equivalent of having a conversation with somebody who keeps saying "speaking of which..." or "that reminds me of the time..."--something he as just said musically becomes the impulse for the next section; it may sound very different, but there is a connection, even though the abrupt change of mood emphasizes the disruption instead--in other words, the Romantic element. I'm going to play the opening notes of the piece at the place where Schumann puts them in a minor key, and then I'll play the opening of this first episode. I think there is a connection, but it is not easy to notice while it is going by. Listening for these types of connections is perhaps one of the hardest things about music, but if your ears are able to do it, you'll hear all kinds of things that you'd miss otherwise. You'll get musical jokes, understand when the composer is telling you something profound--it will change your musical experience radically. So, here is today's radical transformation....[listen] ...It turns out that these are mostly the same notes (one is missing, and the rhythm has been flattened out), but the new section sounds different because the swirling accompaniment has stopped and given way to chords. Like the opening section, which went from major to minor and back to major, this section goes through its opposite also--from minor, to major, then through a fascinating 'poetic' section, then it returns to the opening idea, which grows louder until the theme bursts out like a storm. and then SUDDENLY We are in the midst of a calm reverie (2:06). Schumann loved to improvise at the piano, and this section has that sense of dreamy wandering about it that sounds like the poetic Eusebius has taken over. It is also the most Romantic part of the whole piece so far. Severing all apparent logical connections with what came before, and what will come after, the composer has chosen inspiration over structural integrity; impulse over discipline. If you began listening at this point, you'd probably never guess that it belonged to the same piece. (unless, perhaps, you listened very carefully...) Now, as if apologizing for his Romantic transgression, Schumann puts on his classical hat again, and does what a classically balanced piece is supposed to do; after a flight away from home, it is time to return there. Schumann will repeat the entire opening section note for note (2:42-3:31). Which brings us to the second episode (3:33). It is also based on the opening notes of the piece, but the key (minor) and the sudden outburst might distract us from the unifying principle and instead draw us to the difference. I'll play them back to back again to make the resemblance more obvious. So far, we've had an opening section, a first episode, a repeat of the opening section, a second episode, and now it is time for a final repeat of the opening section. Is Schumann going to bow to this final law of classicism, or is his Romantic side going to go off on another semi-tangent? Well, Mr. Schumann, what is it going to be? Classicism. The opening returns for a final time (4:08). Schumann, after establishing a serene opening section, has, in the course of the piece gone away and returned home, twice. A nicely balanced rondo form (ABACA)--except for that little poetic 'outburst' in the middle. Now the piece ends with the same tranquil swirls of the opening for a classically balanced.... Wait a minute! Hold the cell phone. We've got one more, poetic, improvisatory, mood without any obvious melodic connection with the theme section left. (5:05) And the piece ends with it. Take that, Classicism. You aren't running Schumann's world. Although there is one final nod to the opening five notes (5:45)--the final leap between the last two of these notes is a bit larger this time. Schumann manages to rein in his Romantic impulsiveness in this piece like he rarely does elsewhere, which gives this piece a classical beauty unusual in his work. Still, he can't resist those two desultory passages ( 2:06, 5:05) to get in the way of the textbook formal design and disrupt the flow of the piece. And, like some of his classical forebears, he is practicing a very economical way of generating all of the piece's sections from a single group of notes at the beginning. But the way he achieves this unity is sometimes less obvious than the way he achieves variety. Those suddenly shifting moods and textures can obscure the fact that he is reformulating the same notes in unexpected ways. It brings to mind a fragment from one of Schumann's favorite poets (Schlegel). These lines were placed at the head of another piece Schumann wrote about the same time, giving expression to the Romantic idea of a hidden unity in all of the world's apparent diversity: "Through all the various tones in the earthly dream A single sustained note sounds for those who secretly listen." to listen to the entire piece again:
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About "Listen Up!" On the theory that people would get a lot more out of music if they knew what to
listen for, I've begun giving 'guided tours' of some of the things happening in
the music. If this seems a bit daunting, by all means listen to the music
without the explanations. A few times. But at some later time (I'll keep these
archived) read the commentary and listen to the sound files in blue. The
bad news is they usually break the music up into little chunks. The good news is
that you can hear exactly what I am talking about and hopefully over time you
can teach your ears how to sort out and interpret all the stuff that is going
on. Often there is a lot of it. Sometimes I think listening to a sonata is like
speed-reading a novel. So on occasion I'll take a short piece and take it apart
very carefully so that, when a longer and more complex piece comes along you'll
have a better chance of listening to the whole thing without your ears glazing
over.
If you have a player that keeps track of the time elapsed, that will be very
handy. Unlike program notes in a concert hall, I can refer to directly to a spot
in the music and you can listen to it immediately--no trying to remember, after
the lights go down, what the program guide said would happen twenty minutes into
the symphony! Just click on the blue stuff!
michael@pianonoise.com