Composed and Non-composed Music

I don't know if it stems from reading too much Plato, but I sometimes like to examine, or dig into, or perhaps speculate on, categories. I was looking at an advertisement for an upcoming concert here and it got me thinking about musical categories:

Star violinist David Mendoza teams up with five top musicians for a one-night-only concert at the Teatro Angela Peralta. Grammy‐nominated recording artist Michael Hoppé says Mendoza’s “wonderfully expressive violin playing” is, quite simply, “one of the most beautiful sounds one  can hear in San Miguel de Allende.”

Mendoza’s self‐penned music cannot be classified with a single term. Take gypsy jazz, Paganini‐level classical technique, a sighing and breathing bow, dancing fingers, and a rainbow palette of musical colors, and combine them. Mix in elements of “post‐rock” – the use of electronics to create ethereal timbres and textures, and the hypnotic repetition of musical motifs à la Brian Eno.

I'm not entirely sure this fits into one of my two categories: without actually attending the concert I can't be sure. For all I know the whole concert might be meticulously notated in every detail, making use of all sorts of subtle structural devices. Or it might be very loosely notated with just a few simple charts for mnemonic purposes. You might think "so what?" and "who cares?" but it does make a difference because it is an indicator of the aesthetic approach of the artists.

Here is how I conceive the difference between composed and non-composed music. Composed music, while it might be mired in the mediocre regurgitation of every cliché under the sun, is intended to be worked out in some way. In other words we resort to musical notation when we want to lay out a particular structure that has been worked out in advance. The reason for this is precisely to avoid falling into the reproduction of clichés and standardized arrangements and textures. Music notation enables us to put down on paper inspired and original ideas and not have them lost in the ether.

What I am calling "non-composed" music is music that is in much less need of precise notation. It is music that might have a lot of sources other than the mind of a particular musician. It might contain idioms and gestures from a host of traditional or established and popular styles: gypsy jazz, blues, gospel, "classical" (in the sense of stuff that sounds vaguely classical), post-rock, and so on. A particular piece will have a characteristic theme or themes, specific harmonic gestures and a style or styles drawn from various sources. It does not have a precisely notated structure because it is going to be partly improvised on the spot using textures and rhythms that are part of the musical vernacular.

A concert described in terms such as those above is likely a concert of non-composed music. While it might be excellent it is often, in my experience, a frequently-heard discourse of typical motifs, rhythms and harmonies. Another concert advertised this week was of a piano trio (which consists of violin, cello and piano, not of three pianos as you might think). The content of the program included pieces by Scriabin, Haydn and Schubert. Now you might think that all this music is going to be very familiar (maybe not the Scriabin) and yes, there is going to be a lot that is familiar about the kind of musical language. But this is composed music, music that has a structure and expression that was precisely created and notated by a specific composer for a specific aesthetic purpose.

I tend to prefer composed to non-composed music for these reasons. Not to say that there are not exceptions, some of them very powerful and compelling exceptions. Some non-composed music is absolutely terrific and it might be worth exploring why this is so. And some composed music is dreary, bland and boring. I think we already know why that is! Also, some composed music does not have a strict, predetermined structure, but still, I think, qualifies as composed music. I am thinking here of Stockhausen's Klavierstück XI and similar works.

I welcome your comments, of course.

For our envoi, what the heck, let's listen to that Stockhausen:

Friday Miscellanea

And in the category of musical "fake news" we have a short excerpt from the "Danse sacrale" which concludes Stravinsky's Rite of Spring used to accompany selections from Psy's viral video "Gangnam Style." The "fake" part comes from labeling this as a Gangnam Style version of the Rite, which would presumably be more interesting.

Upcoming in the same series, a Michael Jackson dance video using Verklärte Nacht as a soundtrack and Beyoncé dancing to Wagner, the love/death scene from Tristan.

* * *

On March 2nd, Jessica Duchen's classical music blog turned fifteen. She takes the occasion to talk about the Yehudi Menuhin School, one of the finest places for a high-level specialized musical education. I knew a very fine violist who graduated from there. We spent an interesting session doing classical musical improvisation.

This place - one of sadly few specialist music schools in this country - has been subjected to some serious misrepresentation in the press, in particular ridiculous charges of that pernicious concept "elitism", which leaves you wondering how, if a young person has a talent and vocation, he or she would ever to be permitted to develop it with the necessary hard work. The vast majority of the children - around 90 per cent of them, according to the head teacher, Kate Clanchy - are on close-to-full scholarships, as talent does not correlate to a parent's economic situation, unless it correlates by landing upon those who can't afford to fork out for instruments and lessons. And it's a struggle to provide the scholarships, because the support from the government's Music and Dance Scheme does not increase at even half the same speed as the spiralling costs of running the place. These schools, including (but not limited to) YMS, Purcell, Chets and some of the cathedral schools, are the engine-room of musical life. Remove them and you cut off the nurture at the source, a future that many young musicians need in order to grow and flourish.

* * *

YouTube is littered these days with chunks of Jordan Peterson talks ripped bleeding from context, so it is nice to see a rather more organized interview with someone who is in the same intellectual league as Peterson. Here is a conversation with him and economist Tyler Cowan. He has some interesting comments on Soviet-era propagandistic art:

COWEN: What’s the main thing you learned over the years, living with those works, viewing the propaganda, thinking about it every day, every night?

PETERSON: Art wins.

COWEN: Art wins over propaganda. Why?

PETERSON: All the time, yeah. Nothing wins over art. Nothing is powerful enough to stand in the way of art. Whatever artistic merit the canvases have stays as a permanent part of them, and the propagandistic aspect disappears as the context — the political context — disappears. All that’s left, in some sense, is the pure art and the craftsmanship. At some point, some of the paintings I have are just very realistic renditions of working-class people. All the propaganda is disappearing, so it’s very interesting to have those artifacts around.

If you think about the power of the music of Shostakovich, taken out of the Soviet context, this rings rather true.

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Today is the 150th anniversary of the death of French Romantic composer Hector Berlioz and Slipped Disc has an item about a release of the complete works.

Hector Berlioz: The Complete Works contains a wealth of milestone recordings. Carefully selected from the Warner Classics and Erato catalogues with some additions from Decca and Deutsche Grammophon, they span more than 60 years, from 1956 to 2018. Among them are: the multi-award winning 2017 recording of Les Troyens conducted by John Nelson; the Symphonie fantastique and Lélio conducted by Jean Martinon; Janet Baker singing Les Nuits d’été conducted by Sir John Barbirolli, and L’Enfance du Christ conducted by John Eliot Gardiner.

* * *

Also at Slipped Disc is a brief clip of audience reaction at the end of a very special performance of Ligeti. Follow the link and be sure to read the comments, the most interesting part of the post.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?time_continue=71&v=wToD8QfHt_8

* * *

Over at The Guardian they have a retrospective on the Rite of Spring:

There is a story that Igor Stravinsky went to the New York jazz club Birdland one evening in 1951. Whispers went round that the great composer was in the house. When Charlie Parker came on with his quintet, he didn’t acknowledge Stravinsky in person, but seamlessly quoted The Firebird in his first number, the furiously fast Ko-Ko. Stravinsky was so delighted that he banged his glass on the table, spilling its contents on the people at the table behind. Parker’s musical quote could just as easily have been The Rite of Spring; two years earlier, in Paris, he’d quoted the opening bassoon melody in his solo on Salt Peanuts, acknowledging that he was in the city that gave birth to The Rite at its scandalous premiere in 1913.

* * *

 And that takes us full circle, I think? But let's not have the Rite as our envoi today. Instead, in honor of M. Berlioz, let's listen to his Harold en Italie, a viola concerto that is not a viola concerto:

Knowledge, Virtue and Michael Jackson

I started my day, as I have recently, by reading in Copleston's History of Philosophy. This morning I finished the section on Socrates who held the view that "knowledge and virtue are one, in the sense that the wise man, he who knows what is right, will also do what is right. In other words, no one does evil knowingly and of set purpose; no one chooses the evil as such" [op. cit. pp 108-109]. This ethical intellectualism was critiqued by Aristotle who stressed the importance of akrasia, or the tendency of people to act against their better judgement.

Then I ran across this article in the Globe and Mail: Why we shouldn’t boycott Michael Jackson’s music by Mark Kingwell, professor of philosophy at the University of Toronto. He says:

The vivid revelations of sexual abuse by pop star Michael Jackson – unproven in court, but hauntingly recounted by survivors in a recent documentary and an Oprah Winfrey special – have raised once again that thorny question: Can you still enjoy the art or wisdom of someone who is alleged to have done evil?

He goes on to cite the numerous cases of great writers and artists who were, in their private lives, really terrible people: drunks, murderers, anti-Semites, and outright Nazis like Martin Heidegger. He comments as follows:

His 1933 Rector’s Speech at the University of Freiburg is an uncommonly clear defence of the authoritarian status of Adolf Hitler, and of the subservient role universities must assume under a Nazi regime. It is an indefensible, shameful performance: craven, arrogant, pretentious, and slick all at once. Heidegger worked to destroy his Jewish former mentor, Edmund Husserl, and maltreated his secret Jewish lover, Hannah Arendt.

What a world-class creep! And still I recommend that my students read Heidegger. Why? Because the man is the instrument, not the hand. I assign his work in almost every class I teach, because his insight is indisputable. I never play down the Nazi proclivities, or how they are joined to deeper thoughts about Earth and world, beauty and truth. He was a terrible man, but a great philosopher.

The reason, "Because the man is the instrument, not the hand," seems incoherent. That's the reason to read Heidegger? Kingwell concludes:

That is how it rolls here on planet Earth. Human beings are flawed, sometimes terrible creatures. And yet they can, under the right circumstances, commune with the sublime. I don’t know how that is possible, but it is. Don’t turn off the music, friends: Just turn on the awareness.

He does not know how it is possible to be both an awful human being but still "commune with the sublime."

The irony here is that Socrates himself was condemned to death by a jury of 500 good and true Athenian citizens on trumped up charges. He was really condemned because he was an influential teacher of two figures who later turned out to be nasty politicians. Because of an amnesty, the real charges could not be stated so he was convicted of corrupting the young, no examples given!

Taking a page from Socrates' method, a number of questions come to mind. It seems as if we are postulating two separate realms: one is private or practical, and the other is aesthetic or abstract. On the one hand, Michael Jackson and Martin Heidegger provide to us high quality aesthetic or philosophical material of great worth. On the other hand, in the more mundane sphere they acted in an allegedly evil manner. Kingwell argues, well, not argues exactly as I don't discern an actual argument, claims rather, that we should not connect these two spheres even though it is the same person acting in both realms. When Heidegger is offering "deeper thoughts about Earth and world, beauty and truth" we are to accept and admire his wisdom, but when he is arguing for the Nazi party and acting as an anti-Semite we are supposed to pretend that this is the action of a different person? That's a bit awkward, isn't it? We perform this kind of dance every day, of course. In our daily life we encounter people who are reported to have done bad things, but we ignore this unless it affects our business relationship. But in the areas of art and philosophy, are we as pragmatic? Don't we tend to think that an artist is a whole person, that their art is a reflection of their private lives? This is just a question I am posing, a genuine, not a rhetorical question. Because I might argue that an aesthetic object is NOT simply an expression of the personality or biography of the artist.

The arts and philosophy are, surprise surprise, complex. Perhaps a horrible person can write great poetry or music. It reminds me of a song by Michael Jackson:

So he was bad, but was he "bad?"

UPDATE: I've been reading some of the comments on the web and there seem to be three different views that are frequently expressed:

1. Michael Jackson, and artists generally, may be horrible people, but this has nothing to do with their art which we can enjoy without guilt.
2. Michael Jackson's music is pretty much crap anyway, and I quit listening to it years ago. Now I just have another reason not to.
3. Once you know that an artist or musician is a horrible person it cannot help but influence how you respond to the art.

The odd thing is that I find myself agreeing with all three views! For a lot of art, that by Caravaggio or Gesualdo for example, we seem to be able to ignore the private life of the artist. In other cases, the art itself seems irretrievably stained by the character of the artist. The case of Kevin Spacey comes to mind. Frankly I disliked his work (the characters he played?) from American Beauty on. Then there are cases where you were not hugely taken with the art and when the bad character of the artist was revealed that made you less willing to give the benefit of the doubt. I think that there might be a fourth possibility not stated too clearly yet.

What if the character of the artist and the nature and quality of the work may in fact have a necessary connection? It might be what you would expect, i.e. the artwork is flawed because the artist is flawed; or the relation might be contrary. There are interesting cases of actors who always played nasty villains who in real life were very fine and good people. In some art the nature of the medium might be one in which the personal character might not play much of a role. Bach's religious views probably affected his fugues for keyboard a whole lot less than they did his sacred cantatas. On the other hand, some media seem oriented towards revealing or expressing precisely the inner thoughts of the artist. In that case, a bad character has to have some influence on the art, wouldn't you think?

I guess what I see all of the current accounts getting wrong is that they are all trying to put forth a simple answer and I suspect there isn't one.

Complexity and the Primitive

I was passing by the central plaza the other day (I live in a medium-sized town in Mexico with a large foreign population) and noticed that there was a fiesta of the indigenous people going on:

Indigenous celebration in Mexico: click to enlarge

The costumes are quite elaborate and the dancing is accompanied by a great deal of frenetic drumming. This got me thinking about the aesthetic categories of "complexity" and "primitive." Wikipedia defines "complexity" as this:

Complexity characterises the behaviour of a system or model whose components interact in multiple ways and follow local rules, meaning there is no reasonable higher instruction to define the various possible interactions.

In music, an important strand in composition since the early 20th century was various realizations of complexity in musical structure. The complexities of rhythm in parts of Stravinsky's The Rite of Spring in 1913 were followed by added kinds of structural complexity in Webern, Bartók and in the post-war period even greater manifestations in the total serialism of Boulez. It reached a peak in the New Complexity of composers like Brian Ferneyhough in the 80s and 90s.

Back to the indigenous celebration. The aesthetic here is actually quite complex in that the visual effect of the costumes is extremely "busy" with an intricate variety of designs, shapes and colors. The drumming is similarly complex with a simple beat overlaid with layer upon layer of subdivision and syncopation. This is complexity, though you might want to say it is just a few people wearing a lot of feathers and beating on drums.

There are some interesting anomalies here that are worth looking at. One of the assumptions of modernism, exemplified in writings by Milton Babbitt, was that musical progress was inevitably tied to musical complexity. Ease of listening was simply not a consideration. Musical structure was to become more and more intricate and multi-layered. Simplicity was equated with lack of sophistication, even with the primitive. However, this trend was not without its critics. Eric Ulman (quoted in Taruskin, Oxford History of Western Music, vol. V, p. 476), who was a student of Brian Ferneyhough, one of the leading figures, wrote:

the "complex" score becomes an intimidation mechanism, staving off critical scrutiny by cultivating incomprehension, substituting colorful notational and verbal detail for musical detail, and depending on an inevitable inaccuracy of interpretation for either a genuinely improvisatory performative power or a final excuse for the failure of the material to present itself audibly.

The intricate and colorful detail is what we also find in a great deal of so-called "primitive" art. It is as if the creators cannot resist more and more layers of color, design, rhythms and so on.

We are not supposed to use the term "primitive" as it is Eurocentric and pejorative. Instead the preferred terms are ethnographic or "tribal" art. However, this does not reveal the contrasts that I am wanting to make. We equate complexity with progressive, or have at times, while at the same time equate the primitive with the simple, crude or rudimentary. The reality is quite different. Tribal art, as we can see in the costumes in the photo above, is anything but simple, crude and rudimentary. It is often complex, intricate and multilayered.

So what we might want to examine is the relationship between aesthetic quality and complexity. Modernism more or less equated them, but so does much tribal art. That should cause a bit of cognitive dissonance! What if aesthetic quality is really unrelated to complexity, or if complexity is only one possible aesthetic axis and not necessarily an important one. Can a great musical composition be NOT complex? Are there great pieces of music that are great partly because of their simplicity? Putting it that way almost provides us with the answer. Pieces that come immediately to mind are a host of pieces by Haydn, Mozart and Beethoven and even quite a number by Bach. The latter is often thought of as writing very complex music and it certainly can have those attributes. But the quality and the complexity are not closely correlated. For example, one of Bach's greatest preludes is the first one in the Well-Tempered Clavier, Bk I:

The prelude, for all its harmonic richness, has the simplest texture imaginable. Or take this example from Haydn. The "Quinten" quartet is so called because the first movement is entirely based on two falling fifths and nothing more:

Beethoven's most famous piano sonata begins with a movement of extreme simplicity:

Adding layers of complexity, fleshing out the orchestration with more instrumental color and layering in rhythmic subdivisions and syncopations would ruin each of these pieces. This is because the gratuitous use of complexity is actually often an aesthetically primitive strategy as it substitutes random detail for coherence, clarity and balance. The crucial element in the definition of complexity from Wikipedia is this:

a system or model whose components interact in multiple ways and follow local rules, meaning there is no reasonable higher instruction to define the various possible interactions

The problem clearly emerges because without the "higher instruction," which I would rephrase as overarching aesthetic principle, what we get is a confused and incoherent surface with too many conflicting currents to make aesthetic sense. Good pieces of music avoid this by having a "reasonable higher instruction," that is, a unifying element that brings everything into focus. The three pieces I quote above, and a host of others, demonstrate this characteristic.

Just some Sunday musings for your consideration... Correct me in the comments.

Friday Miscellanea

We haven't had a music joke for a while, have we?

That night, the drums again kept the man awake for the whole night

and in the morning he spoke with the chief. “Chief, please! I need some

sleep; couldn’t the drums cease for just one night for my health?”

The chief replied, “The drums must not stop.”

The man let the issue drop and tried to focus on the 

day at hand, but could not focus due to lack of sleep and the incessant 

pounding of the drums.

That night, the beating of the drums left the man sleepless yet again

in the morning he angrily approached the chief. “Chief, I’ve just about

had it. The drums must stop; it is impossible to get any rest with them!”

The chief replied, “The drums must not stop.”

“Why! Why can the drums not stop? What happens when the drums stop?!”

“Bass solo.”

The only good bass solo I can recall from my days in pop music was one where the bassist used the organist's Leslie cabinet as a slide substitute. He was all over the place...

* * *

Let's have some more musical humor:

Well that was semi-lame... There is better musical humor. Take for example the rich vein of viola jokes:

What's the difference between a violin and a viola?

1. The viola burns longer.
2. The viola holds more beer.
3. You can tune the violin.

Another one:

A conductor and a violist are standing in the middle of the road. which one do you run over first, and why?

The conductor. Business before pleasure.

There are roughly 1.5 gazillion viola jokes. 

* * *

With the exception of Jordan Peterson, most self-help books and articles are pretty much worthless. And that would include this one: 25 Things Musicians Need to do Today to Feel Better about Themselves. Depending on the circumstances, you might consider doing the opposite:

• Comparing yourself to others might be an excellent way of identifying a market niche you could fill
• If your rent is due, then that would be an excellent time to accept an engagement purely on the basis of money
• If you identify your core abilities correctly then you might want to make a project involving them central to your career
• Ok, regarding undervaluing your expertise, yes this is probably correct--you do need to have a realistic sense of your abilities
• Jumping a bit, sticking with what you know is probably a very good tactic to pursue much of the time. With the occasional experimentation, of course

* * *

On the other hand, from the same source, this is an amusing list of rude things people say to classical musicians. One of my favorites: ‘I love listening to classical when I’m studying or trying to fall asleep.’

* * *

Listening to music while you work I have always thought a bad idea. For one thing, due to my training, I can't NOT pay close attention. So it will always distract me from whatever I am trying to do. Here is a research study that agrees with me: Listening to Music Impairs Creativity.

Do you need to come up with a creative solution to a problem? If so, your inclination may be to close your office door, turn on some music, and hope it provides some inspiration. 

In fact, those melodious sounds may be inhibiting your imagination. 

Newly published research debunks the notion that listening to music can increase creativity. Its three studies suggest precisely the opposite, indicating that background music, with or without lyrics, "consistently disrupts creative performance in insight problems."

* * *

I'm really not sure what to think of this article about classical singers who are transgender: Does voice have a gender? For trans singers, old categories are breaking down.

For San Francisco’s Breanna Sinclairé, 29, the gender transition came earlier, and has been a central part of her development as a professional opera singer. In the process of going from male to female, she felt her naturally expansive voice grow steadily stronger in the upper register. Sinclairé began singing as a tenor, but soon shifted up to countertenor, a male singer who specializes in falsetto singing. After her transition, she established herself during studies at the San Francisco Conservatory of Music as a mezzo-soprano, and is now developing her top notes on the way up to life as a soprano.

On New Year’s Eve, Sinclairé, became the first trans singer to appear with the San Francisco Symphony when she sang an aria by Saint-Saëns on the stage of Davies Symphony Hall.

The article tries to present all this as new news, but gender and voice in classical opera have been interestingly complex for hundreds of years. Castrati ruled the virtuoso aria for a long time and "trouser roles" have been part of opera since the 18th century.

* * *

We have talked about the legal banning of old ivory here before, but the problem continues: Beg Your MP to Exempt Old Bows from Ivory Ban.

Musicians, music shops & auction houses are going to be severely affected by a new requirement to register bows of stringed instruments under the Ivory Act. The practicalities of doing so, along with the cost will make it very difficult – and in some cases impossible – to buy and sell antique bows.

We fully support the ethics behind this act – endangered species and ecosystems must be protected. But these legitimate goals cannot be achieved by clamping down on antique instruments & bows. Musicians now face prosecution if they buy or sell a bow that doesn’t conform to the expected registration. Many professional instrument bows will be left worthless and untradeable. This petition applauds the Ivory Act principles, but just asks for this one practicality to be changed for it to be workable.

Other bans that have caused problems have affected the use of Brazilian rosewood and ebony. Of course we want the brutal poaching of elephant tusks to stop, but the odd thing is that if we make ivory worthless through legislation then that actually takes away a reason to protect and foster elephant herds.

* * *

 As an envoi, let's listen to trans singer Breanna Sinclairé doing "Somewhere" from Leonard Bernstein's West Side Story.

I can't resist putting up another performance so we can compare them. This is a brief excerpt from a performance by Julia Bullock with Michael Tilson Thomas conducting the San Francisco Symphony:

Here is another performance by Nadine Sierra:

The Way We Listen Now

A friend of mine just sent me the schedule for the Ravinia Festival and this item caught my eye:

https://www.ravinia.org/ShowDetails/1559/reentko-dirks

He is categorized as "classical guitar" and seems to be an up and coming artist as I have never heard of him. He has the male model looks that seem to be de rigueur these days:

But it was the description that really got to me:

A versatile virtuoso of the guitar, Reentko Dirks blends such classics as the “Love Theme” from Cinema Paradiso and Ariel Ramírez’s “Alfonsina y el mar” with rock and funk from the likes of The Beatles, Jimi Hendrix, and Queen as well as flamenco and other traditional music.

I don't think there is a single item there that could be described as "classical." The Callisto Quartet are also booked, but it seems they are playing typical string quartet repertoire, Beethoven et al. For some reason I thought the Ravinia Festival was a classical music fest. Did it used to be such? Wikipedia says:

Ravinia Festival is the oldest outdoor music festival in North America and is lauded for presenting world-class music. The festival attracts about 600,000 listeners to some 120 to 150 events that span all genres from classical music to jazz to music theater over each three-month summer season. Over the years, the festival has hosted many famous artists. In addition to symphony concerts, often with guest soloists, the festival presents opera, jazz, blues, folk, rock, and popular music performances, plus ballet, drama, and educational programs which take place year-round.

So it seems that it has for a long time been a concatenation of different genres. Not that there is anything wrong with that. Reentko Dirks is not, however, playing a program that resembles in the slightest a classical guitar program. I would describe it as "lite melodic fusion funk." With chest hair.

Meeouwww!

Five Kinds of Vibrato

Wikipedia gives a pretty decent introduction to the musical technique of vibrato:

Vibrato (Italian, from past participle of "vibrare", to vibrate) is a musical effect consisting of a regular, pulsating change of pitch. It is used to add expression to vocal and instrumental music. Vibrato is typically characterised in terms of two factors: the amount of pitch variation ("extent of vibrato") and the speed with which the pitch is varied ("rate of vibrato").

In singing it can occur spontaneously through variations in the larynx. The vibrato of a string instrument and wind instrument is an imitation of that vocal function.

I could quibble with some of that, of course. Vibrato does not have to be and often isn't all that "regular." One frequently changes the pace of vibrato for musical effect. Vibrato is used more in some genres than others. My mother, for example, an old-time Canadian fiddler, never used vibrato and in fact, did not know how to do vibrato, or at least claimed not to. Classical violinists typically use vibrato in varying amounts depending on the era and style of the piece in question, less in Baroque music, more in Romantic music--but there are lots of ongoing controversies about it.

I want to talk about vibrato on the guitar as that is the instrument I am most familiar with. Correct me if I am wrong, bowed instrument players, but I believe that vibrato on the violin and similar instruments is produced by rolling back and forth on the ball of the finger stopping the note on the fingerboard? As there are no frets, this produces a fluctuation in the pitch, both above and below the "correct" pitch. What do gamba players do, I wonder, or do they just avoid vibrato?

In any case, rolling around on the ball of your fingertip does not do much on fretted instruments as the location of the fret fixes the pitch of the note. So what do guitarists do? It varies according to the type of guitar and genre. Here, for example, is an excellent discussion of how blues guitarists create vibrato:

You get the essence of it in the first minute from the great authority, B. B. King! I played electric blues guitar for several years when I was young, but for the life of me I can't actually recall how I did vibrato. Bending notes, sure, but vibrato? As B. B. hints at in the clip, his method only really produces a vibrato between the pitch and slightly above the pitch. It is a kind of heightened expression that, "shimmers." Another famous practitioner is Eric Clapton and he talks about it in an interview somewhere.

Bending notes is quite different on the classical guitar as opposed to the steel string one. You have to work a lot harder bending notes on nylon strings and it is never as effective. As the blues vibrato is basically a kind of note-bending, pushing the string to one side, it is not a good technique on classical guitar. So what do we do instead? On steel string guitars, you bend notes and do vibrato by increasing the string tension by pushing the string to one side. You are basically raising the pitch by increasing the tension. On classical guitar, you do it slightly differently. You also increase the tension but by pulling on the string laterally instead of pushing it to one side. Imagine you are stopping a note on, say, the fifth or seventh fret. If you move your arm away from your body while keeping the pressure on the string you will raise the tension and hence the pitch. If you move your arm toward your body you will be lowering the tension of the vibrating part of the string and therefore lowering the pitch. It is a kind of a see-saw: as you push or pull the string, the tension raises on one side and lowers on the other. This gives you a vibrato on both sides of the "correct" pitch, as with the violin.

The hitch is that this only works if you have sufficient string length on either side. Once you get down to the end of the fingerboard close to the tuners, it won't work because you have almost no string length on the non-vibrating part of the string. So what do you do there? Essentially a variant of what B. B. is showing in the clip: you let your thumb loose and pull the string to one side with a wiggling motion of the finger. It works well enough, but not as satisfactory as the vibrato higher on the fingerboard. For that kind, the closer you are to the middle of the string, the easier it is.

When I was a young student in Spain, studying with José Tomás, I remember hearing another student say that Tomás taught that there were five kinds of vibrato. We never got into that in any of my lessons and it never came up in the master class so I don't know what the "five kinds" actually were. I could speculate a bit...

In a lute treatise somewhere the author mentions an odd and very subtle kind of vibrato that is actually not a vibrato at all, but a kind of tremolo (a quickly repeated note). While holding a note with the index finger of the left hand, you could, very gently, tap several times on the vibrating string close to the end being stopped. If done lightly and carefully enough it will result in a kind of fluttering note. This is used for expressive effect in 17th century lute music.

Ok, that, with the two before, gives us three kinds of vibrato. What do you do if you have an open string and want to do vibrato? I suppose that an electric guitarist might use the whammy bar, push on the neck, or just fiddle with the string after the nut, but those are not going to work on a classical guitar. What you can do is shake the whole guitar. While not hugely effective, it will do something.

Last but not least, if all else fails, you just shake your head!

Q. E. D. Five kinds of vibrato.

The Prelude No. 1 by Villa-Lobos is particularly well suited to the use of vibrato because of the way the melody is distributed over the strings. Here is a performance by John Williams (sorry about the sound quality, but the vibrato is pretty evident):

Here is Andrés Segovia with a more variable vibrato: