Archive for November, 2009

Kevin Wale’s Senior Guitar Recital

Saturday, November 21st, 2009

I wish that every music student I have ever had could have been in the audience at Centennial Theatre at OPSU tonight. Kevin Wale, a senior music major in guitar performance, gave a recital that, at least for our school, raises the bar.

My college girlfriend and I gave our senior recitals about a week apart in 1998, and my parents made it down for both. My mother, who has no formal musical training, hit the nail on the head when she said, “M. had to do a recital, but you got to do a recital.” She was right–I enjoyed every minute of it (although I’m not sure that my audience can say the same thing).

Tonight’s performance, though, is a model that all musicians can aspire to in one way or another. Kevin “got to” give a recital, and from start to finish, it was amazing.

To my current students: this is what happens when you work as hard as you should be working. I’m talking about the technique, the confidence, the joy and passion with which Kevin played, the variety of styles he tackled and the facility of execution. Kevin told me later he was nervous, but it didn’t come off that way, and I wouldn’t have expected it to. As my colleague Matt Howell was fond of saying, “Luck is when preparation meets opportunity.” The battle is not to the swift or to the strong, but to the well-prepared and the well-trained.

Again, to my students–you can do this. It won’t be easy, and it won’t always be fun. In fact, it mostly will not be fun. But like any discipline, practice becomes a habit, and soon you feel uncomfortable without it. You need to make practice familiar, until your instrument becomes as much under your control as a part of your body (or singers, bring your body so fully under your control that you no longer have to consciously control it).

Tonight, I saw a rock guitarist play twenty minutes of classical guitar. It wasn’t Segovia–only Segovia was Segovia–but it was well-practiced, conscientiously prepared, and played in a stylistically aware fashion. To my students–some music will take you out of your comfort zone. Indeed, you may never be comfortable with some music. A rock guitarist playing classical is like a sex change! But Kevin pulled it off, again, with confidence and aplomb, and he is now a better, more complete musician for it. College is about pushing boundaries and expanding ourselves to new and different areas of endeavor. Whether it is within music or not, you need to try things you might not otherwise try, meet people you might not otherwise meet and dare to see what’s out there. You will either reaffirm your understanding of the world or be forced to revise it, and either way, you will be a better, fuller human being for it.

Kevin could not have done tonight’s recital alone. He had a slate of collaborators of all types, but what they had in common was that they could support his work with their own. To my students–choose your coworkers wisely, and treat them with respect. You may think you are more talented than they are, or think you are giving them more than they are giving you, but in the end, we are not in this alone. “No man is an island,” in any sense of the word. But, too, don’t tolerate collaborators who are unreliable or uncommitted any more than absolutely necessary. You can’t build whatever it is you are trying to build when the people you work with are holding you down.

Something that has always impressed me about Kevin, and which was in evidence tonight, is his ability to step back and think about things in context and ponder deeply. “The unexamined life is not worth living,” and the same is true about music. Not a single piece of music was out of place, and each piece fit into a 90-minute tour of the guitar with Kevin Wale as tour guide. I instruct recitalists in our department to choose music of merit, whether it be for its significance in the repertoire of the instrument, or its degree of difficulty or its ability to showcase the performer’s talent. Kevin very much took this to heart for this recital, and added on top a layer of thoughtfulness in programming that made the audience a part of the recital as well.

So, to address my students one more time–don’t just practice to learn music, but to dig deeply enough into the music to learn how to live. These are the real virtues of an education, whether musical or otherwise, and be grateful that you have been granted the time and the opporunity to pursue them. Congratulations again, Kevin.

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Bach, WTC I, Fugue in E minor

Friday, November 20th, 2009

This post is for a friend of mine, who is trying to perfect the art of wooing women using his music theory and analysis skills. In the manner of Cyrano de Bergerac, however, he needs a little assistance. But at least he doesn’t have a big nose.

My comments refer to the Kalmus edition of Bach’s The Well-Tempered Clavier, edited by Carl Czerny.  Not the best edition ever, but fairly readable, as they don’t try to cram too much onto a page like some older editions.  I trust it fairly implicitly.

This is the only two-voice fugue in either book of the WTC.  The structure is more reminiscent of a two-part invention than a fugue, but the line between these is somewhat blurry.  The subject has a strange chromatic feel to it following the rising arpeggio that forms the head motive.  It modulates–once the subject has been played, the music is not in the same key it was when the subject began–the subject always ends on v of the key in which it began.  The first entry of the subject takes the piece from E minor to B minor (note D natural, not D sharp on the downbeat of measure 3).  The answer begins immediately, as expected.  This is a real answer, with the exception of the last note–where the subject always ends with a descending whole-step, the answer always ends with a descending half-step, meaning that after the answer, we may remain in the same key.  The half-step allows the subject to end on V (of the answer) rather than some temporary i.  Measures 1-4 are the first exposition.  A final feature of note is the material beginning on beat 2 of m. 3 in the soprano voice, which represents recurring contrapuntal material and accompanies every subsequent entry of either subject or answer.

The first episode lasts from m. 5 to m. 10, and consists of a descending-fifths sequence, with Bach’s very typical alternation of material between hands, until m. 10, when the sequence breaks down in order to tonicize the next key area, G major.  Between measures 10 and 11, there is almost a cadence–we are denied the stereotypical Baroque cadential 6-4 pattern, but harmonically, most of the pieces are there.  In particular, the last beat of measure 10 is very typical of the approach to a cadence, but the next passage begins on a first inversion chord (because the subject begins on the root of the chord and enters in the soprano). 

The second exposition lasts from m. 11 to m. 14 and presents subject and answer in G major, with both accompanied by the countersubject introduced in mm. 3-4.  This is an excellent example of Bachian use of invertible counterpoint, as the countersubject “works” either above or below the subject or answer.

Measures 15-19 constitute the second episode, again, a falling-fifths sequence until m. 19, which introduces the dominant of the next key area.  Measure 19 is also notable for the use of both hands in octaves, a practice not often seen in Bach.  Bach again uses inversion in this episode–note the alternating first-inversion and root position chords.

The third exposition is in measures 20-23.  This is the first time that the subject and answer have switch places, so that the subject appears in the bass and the answer appears in the soprano.  This exposition is in the key of a minor.  Because the subject always moves to v, the answer is in e minor, ending on V (B major).

The third episode lasts from measure 24 to measure 29.  The first four of these bars are measures 5-9 in inversion, another example of invertible counterpoint.  Like the first episode, they constitute a descending-fifths sequence.  The parallel construction would seem to suggest that C major be the next key area, but this is prevented by a minor change in m. 29.  Between the second and third sixteenth-note of the run in thirds here (inversion of the run in sixths from m. 10), Bach leaps up by a fourth instead of a third, then continues a step higher to tonicize D minor instead of C major.  Like its counterpart, m. 29 is almost a cadence.

D minor is not a closely-related key to E minor, and our arrival here requires explanation; D major or C major would be more harmonically typical.  I would suggest that, given the tight construction of this piece, Bach wished to continue in this manner.  If Bach had continued to C major, as the parallel construction would suggest, he would have found himself nearing the end of the fugue in a poor situation.  To continue the parallelism from C major, would require a move to D minor (following pattern of the second and third expositions in G major and A minor, respectively).  He finds himself moving further and further from home, when it is now necessary to head back toward the tonic.  Thus, C major was not an acceptable choice for the next exposition, as it leads away from rather than back to the home key.  D major, on the other hand, would require an answer in A major, similarly leading away from the home key.  However, since the subject modulates to its own v, a subject in D minor leads to an answer in A minor, the iv chord of the piece.  Thus, by stepping out of the key, Bach brings us back to the key.  This odd entrance of the subject (m. 30) is necessitated by the modulating properties of the subject itself, and the exposition leaves us in a very good position to end the piece.

The final episode, mm. 34-38, is an inverted version of mm. 15-19, complete with the hands in octaves (m. 38).

In m. 39, Bach uses the head motive and the characteristic “bariolage” section of the subject to suggest stretto.  Since neither the subject nor the medium of two-voice fugue are really well-suited to stretto, he reverts to the format of the two-part invention and merely reminds us of the subject.  The only true cadence in the piece occurs in the last measure.

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Mahler, Symphony No. 2, 5th movement

Sunday, November 1st, 2009

Well… two symphonies down, seven to go (unless I decide to add Das Lied von der Erde and the Tenth Symphony… still open for discussion).  Schedule for Symphony No. 3 will be as below:

  • First movement–November 1-15
  • Second movement–November 16-25
  • Third movement–November 25-December 5
  • Fourth movement–December 5-12
  • Fifth movement–Decmeber 12-19
  • Sixth movement–Decemeber 20-31

The Third is a larger piece still than the Second, and we’re coming up on some busy weeks, so we’ll see what actually happens.

To the question at hand, though:

It has been very difficult for me to examine the last movement of this piece objectively, because in listening to it, one is constantly overwhelmed by the grandeur and majesty of the piece.  I feel compelled to compare this movement to the last movement of Beethoven’s Ninth Symphony.

The similarities are quite striking, beginning with the opening of each piece, in both cases a titanic explosion of sound, making full use of the instrumental forces available to the respective composers.  As is beginning to become clear, a trick Mahler uses is to bring back opening material verbatim after a fairly significant development.  This is in evidence here as well, as this material will return, albeit in a slightly different form, more on which later.

One of the salient features of the last movement of Beethoven’s Ninth is the catalog or audition section, in which moments from each of the preceding movements are incorporated between recitative-like material from the double basses.  Mahler does not exactly parallel this, but there is material that resembles much of what has come before.  Indeed, a chorale from the opening movement reappears in a meaningful way, and much of the material of the symphony thus far seems to be related to the “Aufersteh’n” melody that forms the spiritual and musical heart of this finale, much as Beethoven’s “Ode to Joy” melody is the core of his piece.  Almost immediately after the opening statement, at m. 31, a bass line appears in the cellos and basses that cannot help but recall the scherzo’s moto perpetuo.

As sprawling as this piece is, there is also a tightness to the writing that is integral to its holding together and ability to hold the listener’s attention.  Nearly every theme begins or ends with a rising fifth or a falling fourth, or incorporates this interval significantly.  The two chorale tunes–the “Aufersteh’n” melody and the tune introduced in the first movement–have head motives that are related by inversion.

Measure 62 sees the first entrance of these two chorales in this movement.  They are not in their final form, as though they await perfection, or, perhaps, they are in a state of pre-development.  Mahler hints at this material and dances around it before a full presentation of it (mm. 62-96 are parallel to the more solidified and then more triumphant presentation of the same material beginning with the trombone chorale in m. 143).

This is another Mahler trick–transforming material through orchestration.  I continue to marvel at the masterful approach to orchestration in this piece–the doubling, the clear string writing, the use of just the right parts of a massive orchestra.  It is even as though Mahler knew that certain principal players would be tired in certain places, and allocated parts accordingly to have fresh performers available (this happens frequently in the brass).

The above-mentioned chorale at mm. 143ff is probably the first passage that pricked my ears many years ago.  Trombones, tuba and contrabassoon, and later the rest of the brass, present both chorale tunes.  The first is in Db major, and the second moves from Db major to C major, the overall key of the movement (like Beethoven’s Fifth, although the key of the piece is C minor, the last movement is in the major mode).  Instead of being blended with other ideas, the chorale tunes are finally exposed, naked, without distractions, and we are forced to consider the basic material of the movement–or even of the symphony–in isolation.  If it is true, as Russel Mikkelson has commented, that composers are bad poker players, here is Mahler’s tell, and he shows us all the cards.

The following sections relate to Beethoven’s Ninth in that they are variations on the “Aufersteh’n” chorale.  Measure 220 begins a march-like section.  A difference from Beethoven, though, is there is no hint of parody, as in the Turkish march found most of the way through the last movement of the Ninth.  This music builds to m. 310. 

Again, a reference to martial music–instead of Beethoven’s Janissary orchestra, we have essentially an offstage banda.  Mahler, the opera conductor, seems to have borrowed this from Italian opera… anyone aware of any evidence for this?  And the percussion is essentially Janissary percussion.

Measure 380 sees another theme–only appears once in the piece, but is highly memorable, and then the opening material returns, but this time in 2/2 instead of 3/8 (with some parts in 2/4).  The music quiets itself to a return of what had been a short horn solo before–now a longer, more extensive passage that alternates offstage fanfares  with birdsong material.  The music is now centered on C#/Db.  Mahler frequently seems to make this harmonic move.

At m. 472, the “Aufersteh’n” chorale makes its fourth appearance, as the full chorus enters for the first time.  For the first time, the chorale is complete–the material on the text “Unsterblich Leben” is new to the listener.  Measure 493 is a parallel passage to earlier music–a total of three times these two passages have been paired.

What follows is a cantata, a meditation on death and resurrection.  It is, as I mentioned above, difficult to put into words.  “Bereite dich zu leben!”–Prepare yourself to live.  “Sterben werd’ ich, um to leben!”–I shall die so as to live!  The sentiment is matched in beauty by the music.  A favorite moment of mine is the entrance of the organ at m. 712 (I don’t think I’m alone in this).

In the end, the music is transcendant.  I was discussing Orff’s Carmina Burana with a student a few days ago.  There is wonderful music in that piece, and its popularity is deserved, but it pales in comparison to Mahler’s work.  In a hundred years, which will survive?  I think Mahler appeals to the human need to believe that there is more than this world, that there is something better than earthly struggles.

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