Magic of the Romantics

The summer is over and the new academic year has begun. My ideas for a rich and relfective end-of-summer post slipped away during the beginning-of-the-school-year faculty seminar. But that's alright with me since the nostalgia of the transition has been replaced by fresh learning and new noticing.

 

The practice time of the summer prepared a space in life, and a pace of life, for ongoing piano practice. Many days, I am able to spend an hour or two at the piano in fairly concentrated work. I have, for the most part, accepted that this practice time supercedes some other priorities and am somewhat at peace about other things taking longer because I am putting some time in at the keyboard.

 

My new schedule at Southeastern involves more piano teaching than the previous three years. I have nine private piano students in addition to my theory and class piano teaching. These students keep me busy with thinking about a range of repertoire.

 

Standards from the Romantic era have been on my mind this week, each with its own brand of magic.

 

The imagination of Grieg's piano concerto can be easy to take for granted since the work is so familiar. Returning to the piece after many years, I am touched by the power of the first movement's classic conflict proclaimed by the rhetoric of the solo piano. My student and I also noticed the great variety of themes that move quickly and fluidly from one to the next throughout the first movement. 

 

Many of us pianists have a couple of stories in the back of our minds when we hear this piece. One is of Liszt sightreading the concerto and encouraging Grieg because he recognized Grieg's original voice and masterful craft. The other is Rachmaninoff's statement that this is the ideal concerto. Teaching the piece now gives me a deeper appreciation of those two great pianists' takes on its significance.

 

Yesterday morning, I had the fun of teaching Liszt's well-known Liebestraum. The famous melody is, as a theory student once said of the opening theme of Chopin's C Sharp Minor Nocturne Op. 27 No. 1, a "forming melody." It begins with repetitions of  the same note, then  moves a little stepwise, and finally takes on a much more melodic shape.

 

My favorite discovery from this lesson is that some of the magic of Liszt's "dream of love" is contained in a single marking, a decrescendo that makes all the difference. If one were to play measures  15 through 20 purely on instinct, the goal could very well be the downbeat of 19, which is the point at which the harmony points back to the home key following a striking detail of harmonization (a quick trip to E major from A flat major). Liszt's decrescendo lets us know not to make that turning-home harmony the goal but to have the sound recede at this point. Thus, when we put the decrescendo in the right measure, the transformation of the melody through a fresh harmonization quickly slips back into the haze of the dream consciousness.

 

Another student brought  Brahms's Opus 118. Earlier in the day, I had taught a bit of 18th-century counterpoint, a style in which the resolution of 4ths and 7ths, and so forth, is so important. Those expressive gestures move from the level of meaningful moments in Baroque music to constituting the very fabric from which the first movement of the Brahms is made. Every measure has an appogiatura or suspension or two or three. The result is music that of urgency that is constantly yearning.

 

The second movment of this Brahms set is a beautiful study in the sense of growth exhibited by phrases. To place this with satisfying expression requires a sense of elegant movement through majestic spaces: something like this. 

 

 

Shall We Gather at the River

As of late, some of the most rewarding teaching experiences have come from exploring hymns with students. One recent graduate wanted to analyze "Shall We Gather at the River" together. It is a great hymn about the journey. Its wavy tune rides atop snappy march rhythms. That combination plays out the coordinated mass movement towards the river. One cannot help but think of allegories of the Christian pilgrimage such as Hinds' Feet in High Places and Pilgrim's Progress. "All the Way My Savior Leads Me" and "We're Marching to Zion" (two other hymns in which Lowry had a hand) also express important things about the journey.

 

The word "beautiful" is a beautiful sounding word. Its repetition in the chorus can shift the focus of our hearing a bit from the meaning of the word to the beauty of its sounds. The more we sing the phrase "the beautiful, the beautiful river" the more we can hear in it the lovely sounds of the lapping waves.

 

 

The word "river" is repeatedly set to the interval of a third, usually descending. A quick survey of hymn tunes with prominent descending thirds directed my attention to the word "Jesus" in "There's Something about That Name," "Jesus Loves Me," and "What a Friend We Have in Jesus." All three have a bit of a comforting lullaby-like quality. Perhaps this lullaby touch is also a good fit for "Shall We Gather at the River" since Lowry describes the hymn growing out of a nap/vision on a warm summer afternoon.

 

The text is a version of the great river scene in Revelation 22 which we might say has its source in Genesis 2 and Ezekiel 47. I think it is likely that for many listeners the tune is accompanied by pleasant notions of "simpler times" - of grandparents' days - and some vague notions of Heaven. But the hymn is really about much more. It is about the culmination of time and the healing of the nations, something Lowry's original listeners would have longed for since the hymn comes from the very year of Lincoln's assassination. Framed by a question and an answer ("Shall we? . . . Yes, We'll ! . . ."), it seems to me that this is a hymn in which a congregation affirms its faith, a faith potentially shaken by the day's events and the shattering of its society.

 

 

Finally, the hymn isn't about crossing a river. I bet the crossing image is an aspect of the eronneous nebulous accretions the hymn has collected in our consciousness like barnacles on a boat. (I will leave that last simile in as evidence that I was drafting this post at 3:40 A.M..) All the way back to the river Styx, the river crossing motif seems to me to be more about death than life in the Western tradition. More recently, Stonewall Jackson's famous last words were "Let us cross over the river and rest under the shade of the trees." But there is one situation in which crossing the river has meant life: the liberated slave meeting a conductor at the river so as to cross over into freedom.

 

 

Lowry specifically stated his desire to treat the river of life with his setting, not a river of death. This Revelation 22 river is unlike the Styx of Charon or even the Ohio of Tice Davids. Unlike the rivers of the ages, it is not a barrier. No crossing is required. In this scene, the limitations and anxieties we've know in earthly life are no longer relevant. We finally gather in the presence we've been seeking.

 

 

This is my mother's mural of an idyllic river scene painted for the fellowship hall

of Piney Grove Baptist Church in Sampson County, NC.
And here's my own musical riverscape, a setting of "Shall We Gather at the River" performed with my good friend and tenor, Jeff Prillaman.