Summer Lessons

I like teaching piano lessons to college students in the summer. I'm more relaxed and so are they, plus, we have more time, so we don't feel rushed and can take on projects that we'd never have time for during the school year.

Yesterday, I spent most of the day with a student working on Bach and Haydn.

We started with an hour on Bach C-minor Prelude and Fugue from the Well Tempered Clavier, Book I. We noticed similarities in Bach's prelude style between this prelude and the C-major and D-minor preludes from the same volume: they are improvisatory in nature, elaborate on standard chord progressions, and have a one-handed passage preparing for the final cadence in which the rhythmic groupings change. We discussed performance practice for Bach, the instruments Bach wrote for, and idiomatic expression on these instruments. We analyzed the fugue a bit, noting the spiraling form of the subject beginning with a 4th, then a 5th, then a 6th. We discussed how memorizing imitative contrapuntal music is different from learning more homophonic music, and we tracked the keys as well as the alterations the intervals in the subject undergo in these different keys and as they appear in various sequences. I also emphasized that the name of the game is fingering if you want a solid learning experience with a fugue. In making decisions about fingering, we need to balance the helpfulness of not having too many different hand positions and the necessity of not over-extending the hand. Also, relying on scale and arpeggio fingers we already know will save a great deal of time and give us more security.

Then we moved on to the first movement of Haydn's Major Concerto in D Major which we discovered feels like a sonata form but only has one really clear theme. We highlighted passages in which the pianist needs to be very clear about the rhythm/meter for the sake of the conductor and the orchestra. We also explored how to interpret the absence of a dynamic marking such as at the first piano entrance in this work. This led to a little discussion of musical editions and what goes into creating them.

We also noticed several textures and figurations that are very typical of Beethoven, which appear to have there source in Haydn. In addition, we pinpointed one of Haydn's "life motives" as Michael White at Juilliard would say: rhythms that go "short short long" as in the "Surprise" Symphony and in this concerto.

Then, we took a break for lunch at our local German restaurant. I tried a chicken aubergine sandwich, which is pretty much like eating chicken parmigiana and eggplant parmigiana at the same time on a sandwich - a great accompaniment to analyzing cadenzas. So during our meal, we did harmonic and motivic analysis of the cadenza printed in the score we were using for the Haydn. The goal of our analysis was to prepare to write our own cadenza. (Haydn didn't write one for this concerto.) After lunch, we listened to the cadenzas Richter and Argerich play on Youtube and charted what happens in those cadenzas, as well.


Things we reviewed/discovered about cadenzas:

They are lengthy elaborations of cadences, usually ending on a trill on scale degree 2.

Cadenzas are usually based on material from the movement in which they are found, and first-movement cadenzas often seem to be more substantial than last-movement cadenzas, keeping with the tradition and mood of the first movement being the intellectual center of gravity for the entire work and the last movement being a rousing conclusion.

Some cadenzas, like the one in our score, further celebrate the most significant theme or themes of the movement.

Some cadenzas are motivically freer and are based on significant harmonic ideas from the movement. The one Richter plays picks up on the low-six scale degree going to scale degree five from an Italian 6th chord in the movement.

Some cadenzas, such as the one Argerich plays,develop more obscure ideas from the movement.

Another strategy is to build on what was heard immediately before the cadenza.

We can also vary our concluding trill so as to play on the expectations of the listeners - a familiar Beethoven trick.

Our composition assignment is to determine the overall chord progression, then flesh it out with motivic material from the movement and appropriate Viennese classical-style figurations. I loaned my student my copy of Czerny's School of Velocity to be used as a catalog of such figurations.

My student was interested in featuring the more obscure aspects of the concerto in this new cadenza. I think it's a good idea as it brings some balance by drawing our attention to the motives and ideas that have remained mostly in the shadows during the movement. But I suggested also having one or more really obvious references to the main theme that every listener would be able to hear in addition to the development of the more obscure details that the connoisseurs can enjoy.

I'm looking forward to seeing the results!

Sad

I'm feeling a little sad today.

Last night was my performance with clarinetist David Niethamer here at Chowan. David is a great clarinetist and a friend for several years. This performance was the last of two. I should have planned more! We've been aiming to do some concerts together for a couple of years now, and these two concerts were the culmination of that. I'm sad in part because that collaboration is over for now. We hope to work together again in the future.

I'm also sad that I didn't do the best I could in this final performance. Whether it sounded good or not is one issue, but I'm not thinking of that right now. What I'm unhappy about is that I could have done better, and I know how I could have done better.

Many times when I perform I am reminded of basic lessons that I never seem to learn and apply!

Here are some of them:

Have a clearly articulated plan for yourself and your performance.
This plan should include specific directions that you need to hear everytime you play a given work as these diections are precautionary measures that can head off big problems. For example, it is much better to start the third movement of Jim Guthrie's Clarinet Sonata too slow than too fast!

Don't allow yourself to be distracted by anything short of a medical emergency or a hazardous happening. While you want to relate to the audience, their presence and behavior should not distract you from the task at hand. And what is going on inside of the performer should also not be a distraction to the performer. Thoughts of who is listening, desires to impress, emotions or attempts to display emotion, etc. can all short circuit achievement in performance.

More and more I find that my goal ought to be to think and behave professionally, and to sound professional. That is the best I can do. If I do that well, I think music and the audience will be served. I also think that is how I can do my work "as unto the Lord." Offering my very best effort seems to be what that biblical injuction is all about for me.

As I walked Sophie (our dog) this morning, I thought about how beautiful the campus and the surrounding woods are. It was a foggy morning, and that drew me into being more sensitive than usual to the effects of color and light. That experience was rich in beauty. It made me emotional. But there was no emotion in the fog, in the trees, in the light.

As those of you who read this blog regularly know, I struggle with the place and meaning of emotion in the performance. Today it seems clear to me that me exhibiting emotion in performance is not necessarily the same thing as listeners having an emotional experience through my performance. They might experience my emotions, but I want them to experience their emotions.

Sometimes we approach performance is if it's a competition to see who can demonstrate the strongest emotions. Put that way, it seems very odd.

It may even be appropriate to keep some sort of objectivity in performance. Visibly empathizing with whatever emotion we think is in a work might compromise our independence and send that same compromised vibe into the audience. The musical object is beautiful and I ought handle it and present it with care.

I'm not advocating for emotionless or energyless performance. I'm noting that a performer's emotion may or may not be really well-suited to the work at hand. As Richard Becker put it so elequently when he spoke at Chowan last year, it is the music that we are expressing. Self-expression is a different activity.

I've been watching Sviatoslav Richter on Youtube lately. In the films I've seen, he almost always seems to be expressing the music, not himself. His motions, expressions, attitude, etc. seem to fit the form of the music and never fall short or push beyond what the music is saying.

I think I've often missed the charm, elegance, and beauty of the works I play by injecting too much of myself - particularly aspects of myself that are not really in sync with the work at hand. We want to be immediate, visceral, and stirring in our day and age, but that might not be the way every work works or is designed to work.