|
The Gymnopedie Project
In the
spring of 2005, several of my piano students got a short
musical visit from an eccentric Frenchman named Erik
Satie. Mr. Satie passed on in 1925 after a life of
controversial artistic pursuits, some of which included
short piano pieces. Among his first such pieces was a
set of three he entitled "Gymnopedie". These odd little
pieces seemed like just the thing for a creative voyage,
because, as you'll hear in a moment, the pieces are very
tuneful, and easy to grasp. That is not to say they will
universally make a good impression on you--nor did they
on my students. However, I like a challenge.
I generally began the lesson by
introducing Mr. Satie, and giving a brief background on
him (depending on the student I might digress more or
less into elements of his biography that they might find
interesting. You can do this yourself on the
Satie page).
Then I would play the first of his
three Gymnopedie(s). You can listen to any or all of
them here. Note that in some respects they sound pretty
similar.
| After
the performance, I would ask for an initial
reaction. I caught a student or two trying to be
diplomatic--that wasn't necessary, I assured
them. You don't have to like everything just
because a teacher plays it in class! However,
liking or disliking something is not a good
place to stop, despite the importance our
society seems to attach to the almighty opinion.
Being able to explain why you liked it or why
you didn't; what you would have appreciated more
of, or less of...that, at least, gets us further
on our way to that ancient Delphic injunction:
Know Thyself. Which is about to come in
handy....
Now, I would state
melodramatically, we are going to write our own
Gymnopedie!
|
The act of musical creation seems so
remote to so many people, and yet, it seems to me, that
everyone ought to engage in it from time to time,
particularly while growing up and learning so many other
fine things. Not everybody is going to be able to write
like Mozart; but then, nobody writes like Shakespeare
either, and yet we assign essays, poems, and other
writing samples in class anyhow. There is something
about using a medium to express your own ideas that
makes it so much more alive than if you only ingest the
thoughts of others.
As it happens, Satie's piece is ripe
for imitation, since, as I pointed out to my students,
it mostly consists of a one note melody, with very
little rhythmic complication to worry about. In other
words, simple quarter notes will do. The unusual, but
rather monotonous, left hand accompaniment pattern is
something that I will take care of myself. Their task
was basically to write a tune. If you have never written
anything before (and some of my students hadn't) this is
a nice way to get some results without a lot of
preliminary.
Composers have used other composer's
pieces as models for their own pieces, particularly when
learning their craft, so this is a time-honored
procedure. What the students will be doing is creating
phrases of music--short musical ideas, really--of about
the same length as Satie, and joining them together. If
the student is a little older we try harder to
concentrate on the overall form of the piece, but, once
the initial fun of coming up with characteristic ideas
wears off, trying to develop them can get difficult.
Since Satie himself rejected standard models of
development, and since his harmonies are so
"nontraditional", we were able, in most cases, to nicely
sidestep this dilemma, which we will focus on another
time.
As I mentioned, the students had
various reactions to Satie's piece. Some described it as
"boring". I was ready for this. Satie, I said, may have
actually been trying to be monotonous on purpose! (you
can read Stephen Whittington's
interesting essay for thoughts on this) However, this
would not do for some. Part of the challenge was in
deciding when to insist on doing things Satie's
way--after all, this was supposed to resemble a
Gymnopedie--and when to let the student break out of the
boundaries and explore a little, or a lot!
Each lesson was different, as I sought
to encourage or coax each student through a tough spot,
or a "lack of inspiration" (the first problem--"I can't
thank of anything good!" "Well, here's what Satie came
up with for the next four measures (drumming one note
and holding it for a long time) "So I don't think you
have anything to worry about!") or just sat back and
watched the experimentation take hold until suddenly
came an idea that the student thought was wonderful, a
small musical representation of something inside
herself. Given Mr. Satie's quirks, and our own general
zaniness, there were plenty of times we amused
ourselves.
Which meant we were having fun.
The student's Gymnopedies are below:
| Meghan was sure she
wasn't going to be able to think of anything
good. It's a common difficulty. I explain that
composers don't always have really great ideas
to start with--sometimes what is interesting
about a piece of music is what you do with your
idea. So she chooses a very simple
five-finger pattern--up the scale and back down.
It just happens that it takes five notes to
reach the top, and our piece is going to be in
three beats per measure. That makes the top of
the hill on the second beat of the second
measure, which makes the emphasis of the top
note and the emphasis of the most important beat
quietly fight each other, which is what we often
call syncopation. So this is already going to
sound kind of cool. Then I offer her some
choices for what she can do with her
theme--repeat it, move up a note or two, or down
a note or two, and repeat it (this is called a
sequence), turn it upside down, play it
backwards, slow it down, speed it up, or come up
with something entirely new. She decides to turn
it upside down. So far the piece is doing a lot
of step-wise movement, with no jumps. She
decides to throw in a big one right where the
ear is starting to get tired of all those close
steps. It is a great idea. Then she repeats that
phrase down a step. We run out of time in the
lesson, but we've got a nice Gymnopedie already,
and they don't have to go on forever.
Here is Meghan's
Gymnopedie
|
| |
|
Elizabeth is a few
years older, and she is a little
twisted :-) Like several of my
students, she finds the piece pretty
enough for background music, but not
all that attention-grabbing.
Interesting, I tell her. Satie
intentionally wrote some music that he
didn't want people to actively listen
to--sort of the first elevator music.
And he may have been intentionally
trying to hypnotize people here, too.
Liz decides she likes the idea of
messing with people's ears, and she
writes an entire Gymnopedie based on a
snakey theme that is pretty similar to
Satie's but saves any soulful melodic
skips for the second phrase where I
can't help adding some interesting
harmonies. The entire section is
repeated, just like in the Satie--Liz
is older, and besides having a longer
attention span, is more able to work
with the larger form of the piece,
which, after all, is the most
difficult part to get right for
everybody who has ever written
anything (almost). It is relatively
easy to come up with an idea, somewhat
simple to play around with it once you
know how, and tough to organize it
effectively, especially on a large
scale. She enjoys writing the coda,
which seems never to end, or do what
you expect it to do.
Here
is Elizabeth's Gymnopedie
|
|
| Miranda not only found the
Satie boring, she decided to do something about
it. Her piece reminds me of a cross between a
Gymnopedie and and Mazurka (Polish dance; Chopin
wrote several). There is a little rhythmic
snap in her opening idea that makes it move. We
threw in a loud bass kick on the tail end of the
phrase and had a good laugh. Basically, her
piece is based on two melodic ideas, both of
which have that infectious dotted-rhythm. The
first ends with an authoritative leap.
Miranda wrote another piece during the same
lesson (both hands) that was also very electric.
Here is
Miranda's Gymnopedie
|
| |
| David was a young man
who didn't even like playing the piano a
year ago. After a year spent discussing
galaxies and military divisions and all
manner of things that music has much to
do with--it helps if you have a little
imagination--I unleashed a monster!
David decided to make his Gymnopedie
even stranger than Elizabeth's, and went
right for the chromatic. Then a flood of
ideas came forth; the next week, David
insisted on writing them all down
himself, despite never having composed
anything before. He got a surprising
amount of it written correctly, and
wrote quickly. Unfortunately, getting
all those ideas to peacefully cohabitate
in one piece proved a challenge beyond
our reach. So the present piece is kind
of short, and since I had to move out of
state, that ended our lessons. I really
hope David is still composing. This
should remind our educators that if we
keep looking for hidden talents in our
students, and ways to reach them, we may
unlock a real excitement, when
everything changes in a week--or a
lesson.
Here is David's Gymnopedie
|
|
|