Stepping Into the Same Stream

Flutist Mimi Stillman has an intriguing project: every day for a year, starting on August 22, she will video a performance of Syrinx by Debussy. This is in honor of the 150th anniversary of the birth of Claude Debussy. Here is her website where she has posted the performances. Here is an article about the project from the Philadelphia Inquirer website. Here is a link to the score on IMSLP. And, finally, here is the Wikipedia article on the piece. Now for some of those performances:

Debussy, to me, is a particularly fascinating composer and one of the first that I really fell in love with. His music always seems to have such charm, such grace, such color and originality. I have previously posted on his music here and here. Sadly, he never wrote for guitar, though there is a wonderful piece by Manuel de Falla for guitar written as an hommage to Debussy.

But back to Debussy. After listening to those performances of Syrinx do you say to yourself, "but they are all exactly the same!" Or do you notice differences? If you look at the score you will notice a tremendous number of performance indications apart from just the notes and rhythms. Musicians can be justifiably proud of having created a notation system that can really capture the evanescence of sound on paper, but in the interpretive details, it is still merely a sketch. For example, composers often give a precise metronome marking, but at the same time, they modify this with various words like ritardando and accelerando indicating, respectively, slowing down and speeding up. Beethoven is reported to have said that after the first four bars you are on your own. But Debussy gives no metronome mark for Syrinx! He just says: Très modéré: very moderately. And the score is littered with dozens of other indications that all serve to derail a metronomic performance. (There are reports that originally Debussy even left out barlines in the score.) For example, there are breath marks, indicating short pauses, fermatas, indicating holding the note for an indefinite length of time, tempo changes, indicating slightly faster movement, and the marvelously ambiguous word rubato meaning simply don't play in strict time. There are also a lot of dynamics in the score indicating louder or softer, but, as usual, in an indefinite way. So the upshot is that you can play this piece in a thousand different ways! Mimi Stillman is planning on recording a mere 365 different ways!

Musicians do this sort of thing all the time, of course, though they usually don't make a record of it. If you are learning a piece, you play it every day. Every time you play it, even if you are trying to play it exactly the same way, it will be slightly different. If, like Mimi Stillman, you play it in different locations, you will play it differently because of the resonance, or the humidity, or the temperature or simply your mood. As Heraclitus (c. 535 BC - c. 475 BC) famously said:

πάντα χωρεῖ καὶ οὐδὲν μένει" καὶ "δὶς ἐς τὸν αὐτὸν ποταμὸν οὐκ ἂν ἐμβαίης"

"Everything changes and nothing remains still ... and ... you cannot step twice into the same stream"

Debussy -- "Voiles"

The discussion about the division of the octave into major thirds in Coltrane's "Giant Steps" got me thinking about other instances of this technique. There are four possible ways of dividing the octave symmetrically: two tritones, three major thirds, four minor thirds and six whole tones. "And a partridge in a pear tree" Right season, wrong song!

The great benefit of dividing the octave in these ways is to avoid traditional harmony, which seems to have been Coltrane's intention. I'm still thinking about that. But let's have a look at how someone else approached this. I'm thinking of "Voiles" from the Preludes, Bk 1 of Claude Debussy. Here is the piece:

It is so handy to have the score right there. As we can see right from the opening, Debussy is using the whole-tone scale:

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Here is the opening idea; whole tones in thirds descending from #III to bVI, then via an octave displacement to bV:

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Whole tone scales always look a bit odd because our notation is not designed for them. How you spell a note is pretty much arbitrary: F# and Gb are just the same in a whole tone scale. Soon after this opening Debussy introduces two other ideas. The three ideas then co-exist, on different layers:

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The top layer is the opening idea in thirds, but moved to the beginning of the measure. The second idea is the Bb bass note pedal which was introduced in measure 5 and the third idea is the rising augmented chords, originally presented in octaves only in measure 7. The example above is how they look together. The only triads possible in a whole tone scale are augmented ones. Now, what about that Bb pedal? Well, it is a whole tone away from the 'tonic', C. In the contrasting middle section of the piece the pedal stays on Bb and the key signature moves to five flats (Bb minor?). Debussy 'cadences' in the last three measures by finally dropping the Bb pedal which has been present throughout the piece, and by reiterating the movement D/F# to C/E several times, ending on C/E. This is somewhat analogous to the traditional technique of zoning in on the dominant by using an augmented sixth chord with the notes a semi-tone above and below the dominant. Here he zones in on C by stressing the notes a whole tone below--the Bb--and above--the D.

Successful piece, I think. It shows that you can structure a piece using a whole tone scale. The melody comes from whole tones (though in that middle section he uses the pentatonic scale as well), the harmonies come from the same scale and he creates a kind of 'modal' cadence at the end. But Debussy just did this once in a short piece and I think that we can conclude that the whole tone scale, by itself, is very limiting.

Now the octatonic, on the other hand... But that's a story for another day.

Music, Narrative and Metaphor

Now there's another dissertation-sized topic! But I say, why should grad students have all the fun? We ordinary folk can also mess around with fancy concepts.

I was just reading a great book on Western culture by Jacques Barzun, one of the most learned people alive. This book, From Dawn to Decadence: 1500 to the Present is an amazingly wise and well-organized history. His thoughts on music are so sound that you would think him to be a musician. On pages 494 to 497 he gives an excellent and concise account of the genesis of program music:

The symphonies of Beethoven, beginning with the Eroica, were found hard to follow by their first listeners. To assist understanding, musical minds that did grasp the form wrote comments for the bewildered, and since the music was dramatic in purpose and effect, the obvious way to help was to suggest a story, with persons and events--as in opera, with which people were familiar. The "plot" suggested for a symphony need not fit closely--a hint about certain passages would prime the imagination. [E.T.A. Hoffman] ... led the way in programmatizing the Beethoven symphonies. Then Schumann, Liszt, Berlioz, Wagner and a host of others filled their writings on music with these supposititious dramas... [Jacques Barzun, From Dawn to Decadence, p 495]

 What's wrong with that? Well, nothing really except that, as Barzun says earlier on the same page, "music cannot tell a story." No, it really can't. Music is not a 'language' and narrative is not possible. What music can do is express moods and sensations and how it does that is still rather magical, though there is a neurological lab at McGill University that is hard at work gathering evidence.

Let's talk about origins for a bit. One of the foundational stories in Western culture is the Iliad. Originally it was probably sung to the accompaniment of the four-string phorminx. Of course we don't have any of this music because it was improvised and not written down. A bit later there are some very ambiguous melodies such as this one:

He should have been singing that, and accompanying himself with the lyre. We pretty much have to imagine what a performance of Homer might have been like. But a modern equivalent might be something like this:

Only words can tell a story. But as in the song by that modern bard, Bob Dylan, music can heighten the effect. And the explanation of 'program' music, as Bazun points out, is the reverse of this. A few descriptive words can aid the listener's involvement with the score. Take this piece, for example:

Now, of course, La Mer has nothing really to do with the sea, any more than a painting of a roast beef sandwich has to do with lunch. Both are artistic representations. But the musical one is inherently abstract. Suppose that you didn't know the piece and had no knowledge of the title and description. Could you guess it was about the sea? Doubtful. In fact, different metaphors could be chosen that might be equally inspiring. But as Debussy chose the one of the sea, we have to privilege that one. Another example: many years ago I spent two summers in Banff, Alberta, Canada, studying guitar in the master-class of Oscar Ghiglia. He is an outstanding teacher and one reason is that he inspires musicality through metaphor. In both years the prelude to the first lute suite of J. S. Bach was played. In the first year, Oscar developed a wonderful metaphor for the student. It was like the plot to an Italian opera and when this dramatic dominant 7th in last inversion--a 4/2 chord--was arrived at he scowled ominously and declaimed "revenge!" It was absolutely perfect! The student will always feel the immense drama of that moment! But, of course, the Bach prelude has nothing inherently to do with revenge. The next year, teaching the very same piece, Oscar chose a completely different metaphor.

Descriptions in words of musical compositions, whether of landscapes, natural phenomena or a narrative, are merely metaphors and have no inherent connection with the piece. Their purpose, and it is a real one, is to inspire the listener or performer to awaken the real excitement of the piece, which is entirely musical: melodies, harmonies and rhythms.

Ok, quick, for those of you who don't know this piece, what piece of geography is it associated with?