I remember reading some literary criticism by Ezra Pound a long time ago in which he says something like there are only a very few books you need to read: but you need to know them very well. The list included Homer, the Bible, Dante and Shakespeare. It is something like that in music. There are some pieces by some composers that you should really know and the rest is all peripheral. We often hear about how the modern world is full of an incredible, diverse variety of everything. Yes, there is some truth to that. But in music it is more like, there is a small amount of music that is really central and everything else is influenced by it. Knowing Bach really well is a lot better than a vague acquaintance with a host of Baroque composers like Telemann, Buxtehude, Froberger, Vivaldi, Rameau and so on. So here is my very provisional list of music you should know well:
Bach: Mass in B minor, Brandenberg Concertos, Well-Tempered Clavier, Goldberg Variations, suites for solo cello and violin
Beethoven: symphonies, concertos, string quartets and piano sonatas (yes, all of them)
Mozart: symphonies, piano concertos, string quartets and operas
Shostakovich: symphonies, string quartets, preludes and fugues for piano
Haydn: symphonies, string quartets
Chopin: piano music
Selected music by Josquin des Prez, Guillaume DuFay, Guillaume de Machaut, Palestrina and John Dowland
Some Gregorian chant and music by Leonin and Perotin
Songs by Schubert and Schumann
Symphonies by Berlioz, Brahms, Tchaikovsky, Mahler and Bruckner
Selected works by Berg, Bartok, Stravinsky and Debussy
The Beatles
That is, an idiosyncratic and incomplete list! But the omissions are important. You don't need, for example, to know anything about Beethoven's chamber music for winds (I made that mistake myself), or Haydn's operas, or Schumann's symphonies or Berlioz' music for guitar or French music between Berlioz and Debussy or those hundreds of lesser-known Baroque, Classical and Romantic composers that we are always "rediscovering". Everything they did Bach, Beethoven and Mahler did better. If you know Shakespeare, you really don't need to know all those lesser Elizabethan playwrights, do you? Well, maybe Christopher Marlowe...
I've enjoyed reading the Harry Potter series by J. K. Rowling. It really is one of the great fantasy epics. Yes, it is presented as a children's series, but honestly, it is hard to think of 800 and 900 page novels as traditional children's books. There is a sophisticated satire running throughout. In any case, I just spent a couple of evenings watching the film versions of the first two books and, while much is enjoyable, in many ways the films ruin the books. A lot of the blame falls to the music, provided by film composer John Williams (as opposed to the completely different person, English/Australian classical guitarist John Williams).
It was while watching the first film, Harry Potter and the Sorcerer's Stone that I realized that it was that horrible music that was really ruining the story. Sure, the computer-generated imagery and special effects were a contributor, as they always seem to be, but it was the music that was the main problem. The acting is, on the whole, excellent, with people like Alan Rickman giving a master's seminar on how to deliver a line. But that music... The ubiquitous, annoying main theme, the swirling violins, the tweedling winds, all combine to make the film just as phony and overdone as every other film he has written music for: Star Wars, Indiana Jones, Close Encounters... It is like a Walt Disney version of A Midsummer Night's Dream with every ambiguity and grittiness in the original turned into a kind of cartoon of itself.
Really good directors such as Stanley Kubrick and Peter Weir use music to stunning effect in their films. I doubt if anyone can hear The Blue Danube waltz without visualizing a spaceship docking and the ending of Master and Commander was inspired with the violin and cello knocking out a rustic dance while the camera rises high in the air to reveal the escaping frigate in the distance. But what do we get in Harry Potter at the end? The usual pompous, over-orchestrated bombastic phoniness of every other Hollywood blockbuster. Oh, please!
This is a common phenomenon in both classical and popular music, worth some looking into. The composer of the earliest printed music for guitar--the four-course Renaissance guitar--was a fellow named Alonso Mudarra who died on April Fool's Day, 1580. His main instrument was the vihuela, an instrument similar to the guitar, but with six courses or pairs of strings. Much of his music is typical of the day: songs and fantasias. But he wrote one piece "imitating the harp in the manner of Ludovico" that is a real stunner. It is a free kind of toccata in a style that didn't become common until much later, in the Baroque. There are also some remarkable cross-relations combined with rhythmic syncopations towards the end. Nothing else by Mudarra is half as interesting. Here is a rather ferocious performance, on vihuela, by Julian Bream:
Henry Purcell was an English composer who lived from 1659 to 1695 and actually wrote quite a lot of good music, much of it for voices. He wrote sacred music as well as quite a lot of very bawdy catches. Pete Townshend of The Who cites Purcell as an influence on his writing. Purcell is known most of all for one chamber opera, Dido and Aeneas and particularly for one section from that opera, "Dido's Lament". The aria is preceded by a short recitative. The aria itself uses a chromatic descending bass line, repeated eleven times--a passacaglia. The idea of a varied melodic line over a repeated bass pattern was used frequently in the Baroque, by Bach especially. It also was a device used many times by Shostakovich in the 20th century. Here is the recitative and aria "Dido's Lament":
Purcell isn't quite a "one-hit wonder" as his other music is also performed, but two other Baroque composers pretty much are. Who could forget the famous Adagio by Tomaso Albinoni, noted Venetian composer of over fifty operas? Well, actually, that famous piece was not written by Albinoni, but by a 20th century musicologist and Albinoni biographer, Remo Giazotto in the 1950s. It may however, have been based on a fragmentary manuscript by Albinoni. Whoever really composed it, it is certainly a hit, finding its way into countless film and television soundtracks:
Then there is the case of Johann Pachelbel who lived from 1653 to 1706. He taught Johann Sebastian Bach's older brother, Johann Christof Bach, who in turn taught the young Sebastian. Pachelbel wrote an enormous amount of music, most of it connected with his duties as court organist and chamber musician. His Canon and Gigue in D major was first published only in 1919 and didn't become a 'hit' until the 1970s. Now it is ubiquitous at weddings. The piece is a canon at the unison for three violins over a repeated bass line:
This repeating harmonic pattern, suggested by the bass line:
...has been used many, many times in both classical and popular contexts. Handel, Haydn, Mozart and others have used it and it is even found in places like the piano solo George Martin composed for the song "In My Life" on Rubber Soul. The solo, only fifteen seconds long, starts at the 1:30 mark:
In fact, the harmonic progression has become so over-used in pop music that one comedian created a rant on the piece:
Heh, heh, heh! Since nothing can beat that great rant, I'll save more one-hit wonders for another post.
I thought that my title was a quotation, but I can't seem to find it. In any case, it's appropriate. I'm going to talk about tempo--how fast music is played. One thing I noticed in my comparison of several different performances of a Bach gigue on violin was that many--most-- heck, all--of the performances seemed fast to me. Why was that? I think that a good tempo is one that allows the listener to absorb the musical texture: harmony, melody and rhythm. Bach's textures are often so rich that the listener can barely absorb them at the tempos we hear today.
How fast did Bach play and conduct his own music? We have no real evidence. Scholars have been arguing over this for a long time but unless someone invents a time machine, we are not likely to know. There are some general guidelines, but they give no specifics we can use for a particular piece. The metronome was invented by a fellow named Johann Maelzel in 1815 and was immediately latched onto by Beethoven and others to indicate exactly what tempo was desired. At the beginning of the score the exact number of beats per minute was indicated: ♪ = 60 for example. But the bloom was soon off the rose. Beethoven is reported to have said that the metronome marking is only good for the first four bars, after that you are on your own. Brahms said "I am of the opinion that metronome marks go for nothing. As far as I know, all composers have, as I, retracted their metronome marks in later years."
For Bach, who died in 1750, we have no metronome markings, of course. In the world of performance the temptation for virtuosos is always to just push the tempo a bit faster. It might just win the competition. But I doubt this does Bach or the audience any favors. I'm not the only one who thinks so. Here is a quote from composer Jan Swafford writing in Slate a few years ago:
We're seeing the Vivaldi-ization of Bach: gloom banished, minimal variety, implacably crisp, bouncy. And the slim 'n' speedy virus has infected good conductors. When the well-reviewed 1989 John Eliot Gardiner recording of Bach's "St. Matthew Passion" appeared, as a Gardiner fan I ran to get it. This time the great chorus of lamentation that begins the "Passion" was indeed an occasion of mourning: I'd blown 20 bucks. Gardiner takes the chorus of lamentation at near-gigue tempo. Jesus is crucified, his performance cries. Let's dance!
I'm tempted to start a "slow music" movement analogous to the "slow food" movement. Get your tasty, all-natural, slow-simmered Bach right here!
Of all the different Bach performances I compared, the one that really stood out was by a Hungarian violinist named Kristóf Baráti. Click on the link to go to a Wikipedia article on him. Here he is playing the Siciliano from the G minor solo violin sonata:
Nothing too fast about that tempo! Good grief, why would anyone want to rush through music like this? Here's one:
But the real sins are committed with the fast movements. Here is the Presto from the same sonata played by Barati:
Pretty fast, but he has such control that it succeeds. Here is Grumiaux playing the same movement. The Presto starts at 2:25:
The problem I have with both of these is that there are some subtle rhythmic shifts going on that tend to just whistle by without the listener grasping them. I would really like to hear them. Here is Rachel Podger, the presto starts at 3:04:
That is a very credible performance, but even with some nice gestures, it still seems fast to me. This is a very complex piece and I doubt anyone in the audience is going to doze off if we just slow it down a bit. Do you? Let me end by going back to Kristof Barati. His performance of the Chaconne from the D minor Partita is just the kind of tempo I'm talking about. Unfortunately, Blogger refuses to find the clip so I can't embed it. But here are the links: Barati, Chaconne, Part 1 Barati, Chaconne, Part 2
More and more, when I'm thinking about what is right or wrong with a piece of music, it is harmony that seems to be in question. The unrelenting dreariness of a lot of the music written between 1920 and 1960 is really a problem of harmony. The "emancipation of the dissonance" meant that the 'harmony' was always the same. Instead of the age-old principle of dissonance--resolution we just had dissonance--dissonance. How could that possibly work?
I choose this Bach chorale, not for its emotional content, but simply as an example of real harmony. The many chorales of Bach were collected soon after his death and published for the use of musicians, mostly composers. There have been several editions, but in one form or another, the collection has been in print since 1765. I would suspect that nearly every composer has a copy. Bach was a crucial figure in the move towards the system of tuning we use today: equal temperament. In order to make full use of the possibility of modulation, every key had to be usable. In the older tuning systems the key of C major was perfectly in tune, but a key like A flat major would be horribly out of tune. Equal temperament solves the problem. The period from Haydn to Beethoven made full use of this freedom of modulation. Here is another example of harmonic mastery:
The basic principle of harmony was the tension between dominant and tonic. Here Beethoven manages to be clearly in the key of A major while avoiding landing on it as much as possible. This gives the harmony a floating feeling as opposed to the solidity of Bach's harmony. The tonic/dominant tension was extended with secondary or applied dominants and the extremely useful devices of mixture (using harmonies borrowed from the minor in major keys and vice versa), the diminished seventh chord (which, due to its symmetry can go in any direction), the augmented sixth chords (which sound like a dominant, but actually prepare a different dominant) and the Neapolitan, which is a clever way of modulating to an unexpected key. The opening of "The Tempest" sonata by Beethoven shows his kind of harmonic thinking:
The harmonic 'system'--if we can call it that--of the Classical Period offered an incredible array of harmonic possibilities both flexible and powerful. The music of Haydn, Mozart and Beethoven is inconceivable in the absence of the harmonic system they used to such miraculous effect. Alas, after the death of Beethoven in 1827, it began to collapse as composers began to dilute the basic relationships to the point where the tensions gradually disappeared in a morass of chromaticism. Composers like Chopin, also a remarkable harmonist, began using remote harmonies just for their color without the preparation that Beethoven would have found necessary:
Throughout the 19th century, harmony becomes more and more of a problem and some started to think that it needed to be completely replaced by a different system. The main candidate was Schoenberg's 12-tone method that uses all the possible notes in a specific order, subjected to contrapuntal treatment. So the whole axis of consonance/dissonance disappears. Here is an example:
Though there is much to be said for this music--especially in terms of its suitability to the times--it has not been accepted by audiences except in small doses. One critic said that Schoenberg could empty any concert hall. I think the problem comes back to harmony. This music is all dissonance.
In another post I will take up what followed the atonal phase and the attempts by the minimalist and process composers to reinvent harmony.
I just read this article on Nigel Kennedy talking about Bach interpretation. You have to realize, when reading things that performers, conductors, composers or business people in music say in the press, that it is mostly special pleading designed to build audiences. In other words, the truth is not the real end of the exercise. But a little criticism is fun to read. Kennedy is accusing other performers of either being soulless technicians or fussy academics. I have no doubt that there are lots of examples of both as well as every other sin: facile virtuosity, maudlin sentimentality, Bach as a circus stunt and so on. Hey, you can do anything to Bach you want! He's dead, he can't sue. So let's listen to a little Bach on solo violin and see what we hear. Here is Nigel Kennedy playing the gigue from the D minor Partita:
(at least I think it's Nigel Kennedy, with YouTube you can never be sure...) Well that's ok, I guess. It's not lacking in passion. But the constant fooling with the tempo, the pushing and pulling of the dynamics and the slightly frenetic tempo tend to make you feel you are watching someone juggle violins rather than play Bach. Here is Itzak Perlman playing the same piece. Blogger refuses to embed the clip, so please follow this link. That has less of the pushing the tempo around, but that tempo is so fast there probably isn't room anyway. Whenever he lands on a longer note, there is a wobbly vibrato. This feels one-dimensional somehow. Here is Hilary Hahn playing the gigue on a German tv show. The performance starts around 54 seconds.
Ah, now that is rather nice. The first performance that has some elegance to it. The tempo is better and it actually has the feel of a dance. Dynamics are integrated into the musical ideas. Good performance, clean and musical. Here is a performance by a non-celebrity violinist:
Sure, there were some flaws: a glissando that probably should be omitted, a little memory lapse, some technical wobbles: but I find this perfectly listenable. He brought out some different aspects of the phrasing and it sounded to me like a sincere performance of the piece. Here is a performance by the late Austrian violinist Wolfgang Schneiderhan:
Quite nice, but a couple of things bother me. Like some others he tends to anticipate the beat and there is too much vibrato on the longer notes. Here is a very different version. Hopkinson Smith plays it on baroque lute with added bass notes. This is following Bach's own example, who made a lute version of the E major partita for lute with added bass notes:
Now that's a slow tempo! But you get used to it. Here is Jascha Heifetz playing in 1935. The gigue begins around 3:16:
Tempo is a bit brisk, but it has an airy grace to it and the feel of a dance. At this point I had a version by David Russell on guitar, but that was taken down from YouTube, so I've removed it. What I would really like to put up is Pepe Romero's beautiful version, but it doesn't seem to be available. Here is the Hungarian violinist Kristof Barati:
Wow! That is very, very nice. He is the same age as Hilary Hahn, 32. But this performance is even more poised. I think that when Bach is really played well there is something almost celestial about it. This is the first version that captures that. Now, finally, let's hear Menuhin, about whom Nigel Kennedy raves. Unfortunately I can't find him playing this gigue on YouTube. But here is the gigue to the E major partita, which is quite similar:
Well, the phrase ham-fisted comes to mind. The tempo doesn't feel steady and much of it is slightly out of tune. The articulations are a bit odd and he starts telegraphing the end about two measures too soon. Where did we get the idea that Menuhin was a great Bach interpreter?
My conclusion, and yours too, I hope, after this exercise is that Nigel Kennedy is a blowhard whose Bach, honestly, is about the worst short of that of his teacher, Yehudi Menuhin. If you really want great solo Bach on the violin, your best bets are Kristof Barati and Hilary Hahn. I was actually surprised by this even though I am pretty cynical about musical celebrities. I just didn't expect the results to be so blatant.
After some forty years as a musician, I am finally pretty sure about what counts as good music! When I think of some of the pieces I subjected poor, innocent audiences to over the years, I weep.
Don't get me wrong, Henze has written some great pieces, but this arrangement, by Leo Brouwer from El Cimmaron isn't one of them. Then there is this piece:
It is not bad, but compared to the equivalent piano music it is dull, dull, dull. Now here is a fine piece for guitar:
