Mahler, Symphony No. 6, first movement

May 19th, 2010

Part of the problem in thinking about this piece will prove to be cutting through what I think of as the “mythology–” a tragic piece responding to tragedy, with hammer blows, and fate-motives–and getting to what makes it, in the end, a magnificently effective musical statement.

The truth is that none of the extramusical meaning means a thing if the piece isn’t well-crafted and well-executed.  Fortunately for us, Mahler was not only pouring his soul into the piece, but he was using his mind as a composer at the peak of his creative powers.

I must begin with some thoughts about scoring, because this orchestra is simply enormous.  I remember being a college student and seeing the Cincinnati Symphony fill its stage to near capacity for this piece, and it seemed as though not a single musician more could have been on the platform.  One of my music history teachers, John Trout, taught that Mahler’s orchestra was of that size not for the sake of power, but to allow a greater number of combinations of instruments, and to illustrate this, he used an example from the Kindertotenlieder, the work Mahler finished just before the Sixth.  Indeed, in that vocal texture, Mahler did score delicately, but he also didn’t score for an orchestra of the size found in the Sixth.  As much as Mahler’s scoring is at times delicate, always well-conceived and above all masterful, I think, in this movement at least, it is about power.  Sixteen brass have the effect at times of a slap in the face, particularly when the trumpet in F is near the top of its range. 

Most of the mood of this first movement is simply menacing, and it is cast in one of Mahler’s strictest sonata-allegro forms, with no slow introduction as in the opening movement of the First.  To my hearing, the secondary theme begins in the pick-ups to m. 77, with the key change to F major, a closely-related key to the home key, a-minor.  The exposition is repeated, with the development section clearly beginning in m. 128.  The recapitulation begins in m. 291, with the return of the main theme in A major and the secondary theme at m. 357 in D major–keeping the same relative harmonic distance of “adding a flat” but not the same key relationship.  A coda begins at m. 379, in precisely the place that it “ought” to begin in a sonata model.

Mahler has not, up to this time, been an especially strict follower of the classical forms, and I have to wonder what caused him to begin to be so now.  In reading program notes and musicological discussions of this piece, I have never read that, in addition to hiding autobiographical information and working through his not-inconsiderable angst in this piece, Mahler also adheres as close as can be expected to a formal model that had largely passed by the wayside (although Beethoven was always close to Mahler’s mind, and to the minds of his contemporaries).  This is Mahler’s first all-instrumental four-movement symphony (the First was originally in five movements), and as arch-Romantic as its expression seems, at the same time, its conception, at least in this first movement, is as meta-Classical as Brahms or Mendelssohn.

With the formal overview covered, then, here are some spots I find to be of interest.

The main theme, beginning in m. 6 has a highly characteristic octave jump that creates from the first moments of the piece a lurching, yet strangely deliberate quality.  This octave motive, though, is only part of Mahler’s material.  In m. 8, the violins have the first appearance of a developmentally supple fragment that will appear again and again through the movement, most interestingly in inversion as the head motive of the secondary theme. 

Dotted rhythms are crucial to this piece–they are propulsive, pulling the ear constantly forward, but with each iteration giving a sense of pause before the “late” second note.  Almost every measure of the main theme includes them, with the exception of those measures in which the melody dissolves into running 16ths (as in mm. 11-12). 

In a technique again typical of the Classical sonata-allegro, the transitional material begins with a modified version of the main theme in m. 25.  This time, the octave leap is down, not up.   A sequence in m. 31 over an insistent pedal A starts to open up the harmonic realm, until the main theme returns in m. 43 over a chromatic descent from A to E, the goal of this section.

In m. 53, the running 16th notes come apart into trill gestrues in the woodwinds and low strings.  The scoring is compelling, particularly the last statement of this idea in m. 56 by the contrabassoon in its low register with the basses.  Here is a deviation from the Classical model–at this point, the secondary theme should enter in the dominant, but Mahler instead returns to the tonic to give the first appearance of a motive that he has used before, but will take on paramount importance in this symphony–the major triad changing to a minor triad on the same root.  In this first instance, mm. 59 and 60, it appears in the trumpets and oboes (note the intriguing use of dynamics here), in the home key, A.  It is followed by a transitional passage that does lead to the second theme, in the key of F, which is reached by a deceptive resolution of the dominant in m. 77.

Before continuing on, I must consider this changing chord-quality motive.  A change from a major to a minor chord is rarely part of the “textbook” tonal vocabulary.  It would tend to suggest a passing tone, often from IV to iv to I (la-le-sol is the specific voicing I have in mind).  A more likely event might be a diatonic minor triad becoming a secondary dominant chord, as, for example, i to V/IV, but this is the retrograde of what Mahler is giving us.  Does this fall under the rubric of “coloristic chord succession” from the Kotska-Payne textbook, where those authors throw up their hands, as if to say, “Sometimes composers just write what sounds good!”  The other usage of this sort of succession that comes to mind is in the Italian madrigalists, particularly Gesualdo, in which this sort of motive becomes a means for expressing a text.  As a motive, then, it has the advantage of being unfamiliar enough to the listener that it doesn’t simply blend into the texture.

The secondary theme is derived from the first theme–its head motive is a reworking of the material found in m. 8.  This motivic tautness is a characteristic that I greatly admire in all of Mahler’s music–while his work may seem sprawling, there is an underlying unity that justifies its dimensions, and Mahler truly does not overstay his welcome.  I don’t consider myself to have a great attention span, particularly for the spoken word, but, truthfully, sometimes for musical utterance as well.  Mahler holds my attention, not through variety but through unity.

I find it interesting that at the beginning of the first ending (m. 121), Mahler returns to A minor in a retrograde fashion from the way he got there–moving from F down to E, and thence to A in the bass.  This would not be a completely tonal solution but for the fact that the F is not the root of the chord here.

Again, Mahler’s development section is tightly conceived, even if it ranges widely from a harmonic standpoint.  Measure  149 sees the main theme in e minor, which moves quickly back to the home key in m. 156.  One of my favorite melodic moments in the piece happens at m. 163, when a very strident, almost Tchaikovskian melody appears in the violins and high woodwinds.  It is, of course, derived from the main theme.

Measure 180 has a typically Mahlerian descent in the bass to a new key–now D minor.  This means of modulating is typical of Mahler,  and I believe he may have borrowed it from Wagner; more research is needed on this point. 

Measure 201 begins a slow section that is a point of repose (almost relief) within this massive movement.  Although the Seventh Symphony has a more pastoral character, Mahler uses cowbells for the first time in this section, with an interesting notational solution instead of the standard roll notation that he might have borrowed from the snare drum.

With that, I must close–I’ve far exceeded the time I allotted myself this morning, and other duties beckon.  I refer myself to my notes in the score.

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Mahler, Symphony No. 5, fifth movement

May 1st, 2010

This movement has gone, over the last weeks, from being a piece that I’ve long admired to something of an analytic enigma.  Simply put, I am at odds to determine whether this “Rondo-Finale” is best considered as a rondo, a sonata-allegro or a fugue.

First, to the title, if that can be a clue for the analyst.  Does “Rondo-Finale” suggest “rondo-as-finale” or “rondo-then-finale?”  My hearing suggests that there is indeed a rondo here, and that it is followed by a lengthy coda, so that the second possibility seems stronger.  In this case, the coda could perhaps begin in m. 581, at a key change to A-flat major, far-removed from the home key of D major.  The melodic and motivic material is related to the rondo theme (mm. 24-55), but this late harmonic move away from the home key suggests a coda.

The music up to this point is highly suggestive of rondo technique, specifically of five-part rondo with its three statements of the rondo theme with interspersed refrains.  The second refrain (beginning in m. 167, the “C” of “ABACA”) is the longest, and is heavily reliant on developmental techniques, especially exploration of remote key areas and contrapuntal recombination of motivic material.

It is, however, the first refrain (beginning at m. 56, the “B” section) that is most striking.  It suggests a four-part fugal exposition, first with a running eighth-note subject, then with various countersubjects introduced over the eighty bars of this section before the return of the rondo theme.  The second refrain can then be cast as a continuation of the fugue.  At m. 273, the original fugue subject appears in counterpoint with one of the countersubjects.  This countersubject becomes the second subject of a double fugue that dominates much of the rest of the second refrain (development).  Contrapuntal technique abounds, with the inversion of the second subject appearing in the violins at m. 457.

The final entrance of the rondo theme appears in a highly modified form at m. 497, leading not back to the beginning, then, but toward the “finale” section of the movement.

There are also intimations here of sonata-allegro, or at least something along the lines of a hybrid sonata-rondo, as found in another wonderfully contrapuntal work, the finale of Robert Schumann’s Piano Quintet, Op. 44.  The first rondo and first refrain would correspond to a sonata exposition, the second rondo and second refrain to the development, and the last refrain and “finale” to the recapitulation and coda.

It is a fascinating feature of this movement that it not only is a highly compelling piece of music, but that it also embodies these three formal procedures .

A final issue with this symphony is its harmonic plan.  The home keys of the five movements are, in order, C-sharp minor, A minor, D major, F major and D major.  Mahler uses this narrative tonality in other places.  If Mahler had in mind a major-key finale to a minor-key symphony, in the manner of Beethoven’s Fifth and Ninth Symphonies, perhaps he felt that the technical challenges involved in C-sharp major might be too much for his orchestra, given the already stiff demands of the music.  At any rate, it is also simply possible that Mahler is moving away from the single-key concept of a symphony.  The five movements appear appear to be held together from a motivic standpoint, rather than from harmonic consistency, but in a traditional sense, they are no more related than a suite of pieces extracted from an opera or ballet.  It is a testament to Mahler’s compositional technique that the piece feels completely unified without sharing a common key center.

Now on to the Sixth–four large movements, so two weeks each.

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Mahler, Symphony No. 5, movement 4

April 11th, 2010

This Adagietto captures, to my hearing, a version of Mozart’s Romanza design, appearing, for example, in that composer’s Concerto, K. 466 (D-minor).  Here is Mahler at his most reflective, most concentrated, with each note seemingly imbued with meaning.

Again, I’m somewhat confused by Mahler’s labelling of this symphony in C-sharp minor, as only the first movement is in that key.  This movement is in F major.  The Romanza plan calls for a basically ternary structure, with the outer sections being closely related to each other in the home key and a faster middle section in a contrasting key.  In this case, the sections divide at measures 39 and 72, with the middle section in G-flat major, the lowered second scale-degree.

Mahler’s melodic material in the first section is centered around two ideas, a three eighth-note anacrusis followed by a retardation.  At times, the anacrusis motive is augmented to three quarter-notes, as in the first celli in m. 10.  This second appearance of the theme leads to A minor in m. 19, which then pulls back to F major.  From here, the music builds to a climax on the dominant in m. 30.  The next few measures are “after-the-ending” music for the first section.

The middle section of this Romanza begins with the tempo indication “Fliessender,” in F major.  The introduction of E-flat starts to suggest that F is now the dominant instead of the tonic, and a deceptive resolution in m. 46 establishes the next key of G-flat major.  Where the first theme was centered on the tonic pitch, this second thematic material tends to descend from the dominant in something of an inversion of the original motive.  The register of the melody rises throughout this section, until a written key change to E major in m. 60.  This would appear to be a transposition of convenience, as it lasts only three measures before D major appears in m. 63.  D major is never fully established as the tonic, but the entire nine measures in this key are given over to a long dominant chord.  Instead of D major, the music shifts down another step to give C, the first note of the piece, and the dominant of the home key. 

In m. 72, the original music returns, giving the second “A” section of the Romanza form.  Mahler states this section in abridged form, with only one appearance of the first section theme and no modulation to A minor.  Measure 87 is roughly parallel to measure 23, but the approach to the dominant relies on V/V instead of the Neapolitan, and the climax of the movement in m. 95 employs the highest register of the violin.  I feel that the moment to which the movement has been building comes very late in the overall structure.  An obvious comparison is Samuel Barber’s Adagio (in its various incarnations), which seems to me to have a more proportional denouement.  This is not to say that Mahler’s music is ineffective in any way, but it is intriguing to see to very different approaches to much the same musical idea.

The fortissimo lasts until m. 100, whereupon a final suspension brings the music to the expected tonic chord, strangely, strangely voiced without the middle strings (although in a wondrously sonorous open voicing that would get a good mark from me on on orchestration assignment).

What then is the compositional lesson one can take from this movement?  I hope that I can learn from Mahler’s approach to tension and release, to slow unfolding, to harmonic variety within tonal coherence.

This leaves the rest of the month for the final movement.  I’ve given myself a little extra time, as my wife and I are anticipating the birth of our son–if my posts become less frequent, that may be the reason, but I’m going to try to keep to my schedule.

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Mahler, Symphony No. 5, third movement

March 31st, 2010

Here is another enormous movement–ironically, lying at the heart of this symphony, defying the traditional conception of the scherzo as a light-hearted respite.  Of course, there is nothing small, and very little that is light-hearted about Mahler’s music in general or this piece in particular.

Another puzzling aspect of this symphony is that only the first movement of this symphony conforms to the stated key of the piece–a riddle for a later post, perhaps.  The movement begins in D major with a horn call that introduces, as is Mahler’s way, some of the most important motivic material of the music that follows.  The first three measures emphasize beat two of the three-to-a-bar meter.  Clarinets and bassoons answer with continuing material that employs hemiola–a second important idea here.  At the beginning of the second phrase, in m. 16, the horn again takes the lead with a figure that emphasizes the second beat of the measure. 

The music moves to f-sharp minor in m. 40, with the first appearance of music that suggests a moto perpetuo approach.  These two ideas–the waltz-like material and the moto perpetuo alternate through the rest of the movement.  Imitation plays a role as well, with a motive introduced in the clarinets in mm. 43ff.  This imitative figure appears at times with entrances spaced by a single measure, but at other times with a displacement of two or three bars, as in m. 84, between trumpets and bassoons. 

The harmonic plan of this movement is highly complex, with key changes happening very frequently.  By measure 150, the music is in B-flat major, a highly remote key, with melodic material derived from the original motives and a more relaxed melodic idea centered around sol.  At m. 174, a direct modulation to D major is followed by a trio of trumpet, horn and trombone.  The material is the opening themes.  The moto perpetuo material returns, and leads quickly to F minor, and then to Ab major, keys as remote from D major as most composers would dare to go.

The relaxed sol-centered theme is combined with a motive derived from the opening notes in m. 252.  This leads to a fascinating moment in m. 270 in which harmonic motion pauses on D minor with an interesting orchestral effect–horns on F, entering at two beat intervals, creating timbral interest in an otherwise static moment.  This is followed by a low-voiced passage in the strings and woodwinds, interrupted by the solo horn, with the ultimate goal of D minor, which is reach in m. 308.

Slowly, the music returns to the tempo and textures of the opening, leading to the moto perpetuo material.  In m. 402, there is an intriguing ensemble of flutes, clarinets and trombone.   The full momentum of the music is reached by m. 448, with its key of G-flat major.  The formal function of this section remains developmental, and the harmonic basis shifts quickly.  Measure 486 shows the moto perpetuo material turned into thematic material that in its registral and motivic characteristics resembles the material that characterized the second movement (see second movement, mm. 9-11 in the violins, for example).  The resemblance is more in character than otherwise, but the two themes play similar roles, and are somewhat spasmodic in nature–throwing listener expectations into sharp relief against the composer’s actual choices. 

The music breaks off after this material to return again–for the third time– to the material of the opening in m. 490.  This repetition is precise, not simply implied like the earlier return. 

The moto perpetuo material brings the music now by m. 614 to a minor, in a section that had been in the more remote key of F-minor previously.  This allows the music to return to the original tonic pitch, D, by m. 763, employing the same tightly-wrought construction of the two previous movements.  A bass-drum solo begins the drive to the end of the movement, a coda of sorts, but more the final statement.  D, only just established as the tonic, becomes the third of a diminished-seventh chord that opens up the moto perpetuo, combined with rhythmic motives from the more thematic ideas of the opening of the movement.  The high point of this section is reached at m. 799, with the full orchestra presenting no fewer than five of the motivic ideas of the movement in a swirling, relentless assualt that leads to a final horn melody in m. 813, which strangely, abruptly, ends in D major, as though Mahler is in some hurry to get back to where he started.

Why the title “Scherzo” for this movement?  The translation “joke” is not altogether accurate, as there seem to be few moments of outright humor.  Perhaps a better idea would be “tall tale,” or “riddle,” both of which do a better job of describing the sprawling, playful-but-not-humourous nature of the piece.

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SCI Region VI Conference, Kansas State University

March 28th, 2010

I got back yesterday from a quick trip up to lovely Manhattan, Kansas for part of the SCI Region VI Conference at Kansas State, where the KSU Concert Band performed my piece “Ode.” If you haven’t been to Manhattan, it is a lovely little town, and the drive from Guymon and back wasn’t so bad–about seven hours, but it is always fascinating to see the “High Plains” dissolve into the much lusher and more rolling plains of central and eastern Kansas. The last bit of the drive was along Interstate 70, and featured Kansas’ lovely Flint Hills. Kansas isn’t all “flat as a pancake!” Dining was good in Manhattan for the few meals that I was there, and the Kansas State community was abuzz with their basketball team’s success in the NCAA Tournament.
I didn’t get to attend all of the conference, but the concerts I was able to attend, along with a Friday night jam session and a paper session on Saturday morning, were excellent, and generally performed by strong student musicians, ensembles and faculty artists.
My piece, “Ode,” received its second performance by the KSU Concert Band under the baton of master’s candidate Anna Eaverson. Ms. Eaverson led the ensemble in a fantastic performance. “Ode” is a tricky piece with eight percussion parts and a rambunctious flute solo. The All-Faiths Chapel was a lovely venue, in somewhat stereotypical land-grant architecture, but pleasant nonetheless. I will be very curious to see how the recording turns out, because there were some balance problems in the performance (during the aforementioned flute solo) that I didn’t detect during the rehearsal. Yes, I also got to attend a rehearsal, somewhat serendipitously.
I arrived on campus at about 12:30, during the lunch break. I treated myself to a self-guided tour of McCain Hall, the home of the Kansas State music department. As I wandered, I heard my own music coming from down the hall, and sure enough, I was able to sit in on the tail end of the final rehearsal of my piece. Ms. Eaverson asked a couple of questions, but for the most part, the piece was already going very well. I was particularly pleased with the group’s excellent intonation, which meant that the twelve-note chord at the end of the piece didn’t sound quite as dissonant as it really is. Just a fantastic rendition, and congrats to all.
Other interesting pieces I got to hear were by conference host Craig Weston, Mark D’Ambrosio, Allen Brings and Trent Hanna, as well as Jerry Hui, Joseph Koykkar and William Clay.
The next scheduled performance of my music is the premiere of the incidental music to “If Only It’d Rain” on April 10 here in the Oklahoma Panhandle as part of the Dust Bowl Symposium.

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Mahler, Symphony No. 5, 2nd movement

March 21st, 2010

In my work on the Mahler’s Third Symphony, I found myself trying to decide if the two “parts” in that piece truly balanced each other.  Part of the problem there was that none of the five movements in the second “part” seemed to have much to do with each other.  Now, Mahler seems to have addressed my concern.  This movement, the second, when taken with the first movement, the funeral march, does give a sense of motivic and harmonic unity.

The music opens in a new key, a minor, with new motivic material that, as so often in Mahler, will prove to be bracketing material that offsets the various sections of the movement.  The most important thematic element of this movement appears in the pick-up to m. 9, a rising ninth.  This ninth appears throughout this volatile, stormy movement and provides a cohesiveness to an otherwise far-ranging utterance.  The rising ninth in this instance begins a thematic element that is also part of this bracketing material, a four-bar idea that fills in the ninth in a propulsive, expansive manner.  This theme often fills in for the bracketing material at lower-level formal boundaries.

The key of a minor dominates the music for the first few pages, and the four-bar idea and the rising ninth seem to be the main idea of the movement.  By m. 67, however, the music has begun to pull itself apart, and ends over a pedal C with a flourish of eighth-notes in the woodwinds that leads to a timpani roll on C, which proves to be the dominant pitch for the next key area.

Surprisingly, the new key brings back old material.  Rather than a simple return of material from earlier in this movement, the theme from the funeral march returns in the cellos in m. 78, with interjections of the rising ninth motive.  An accompanimental motive now begins to appear, three eighth-notes leading to the downbeat.  In this part of the music, too, is a typically Mahlerian approach to cadences, a chromatically ascending bassline, that reaffirms, for example, F-major in m. 109.

In measure 117, more first movement material returns, the half-note tied to triplet motive that is now given to the first violins and cellos.  The music continues to an interesting doubling of clarinets, bassoons and violas in m. 129, and with continued appearance of the accompaniment motive.  The music builds to a deceptive cadence in m. 141 that brings back the a-minor bracket material.  No sooner does this material appear than it is restated a step lower, leading toward an ultimate harmonic goal of e-flat minor, which is arrived at following a roll on the dominant, Bb.  Over this roll, beginning in m. 188, is a cello passage that is cadenza-like in character, leading to another chromatic ascent to the tonic in m. 214. 

At this moment, the funeral march theme is restated, a step lower than it first appeared in this movement.  Mahler appears to use the descending second as a harmonic motive in this movement, a statistically rare choice in common-practice music, but highly suggestive of the falling-fifth sequence that has been a hallmark of music since Bach’s time.

The developmental section that follows is motivically mixed, and the result is that Mahler is abel to create music that is highly cohesive, yet incredibly stormy in its swirling, unrelenting effect.  The music moves to C-flat major, then enharmonically to B-major.  At m. 266, the second theme of the first movement reappears in the woodwinds.  This recall of ideas and motives in combination with the material new to this movement justifies calling it and the previous movement together a “part,” at least to a much greater extent than in Mahler’s previous work.

In measure 288, there is a shift to A-flat major, the enharmonic parallel major to B-major’s relative minor.  The music is largely compound in feel, but Mahler chooses to use triplets rather than change the meter–Brahms would have written this section in 6/4. 

A recapitulation of sorts happens at m. 322, but not in the original key, rather in C-minor.  An absolutely delicious effect happens at mm. 340-1 with unison ascending rips in the horns and low strings over longer values in the trombones and middle woodwinds. 

At m. 356, the first theme of the movement reappears, now in e minor, lower than the first statement by a step again.  This entire section builds for pages to a titanic moment at measure 428, where the low brass and basses intone a theme that combines the triplet rhythm with the opening segment of the propulsive music of the bracket material.  The music from here on out is a process of building to the next climax–first, a D-major chorale at m. 464, then another chorale at measure 500 (marked “Highpoint” in the score!).

Mahler doesn’t just arrive at this last climax, though, he maintains it for several pages, until m. 539, which is a relieving moment.  For almost the first time in this movement, the full orchestra is in rhythmic unison, a refreshing contrast in a piece that has been highly contrapuntal until now.  

The music relaxes into a coda, which beginns in earnest at measure 557.  The propulsive theme that opened the movement dissolves into the rising ninth motive, which is passing around the orchestra, even to a tuba solo, and the music ends in the same place as it began, in a minor.

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The Contest Post

March 17th, 2010

Anyone who knows me very well knows that for years–probably since I was 9 or 10 and my piano teacher sent me to “Scale Olympics”– I’ve had reservations about musical competitions.  My attitudes have developed and simmered over the years, but I must admit that I remain somewhat wary, especially of the culture of large-ensemble contests that has, for better or worse, become the focus of secondary-level music education in this country.

In the last few weeks, I’ve watched the Music Department here at OPSU get ready to host Oklahoma Secondary School Activities Association (OSSAA) vocal contest, then traveled to Alva, Oklahoma to judge regional band and solo & ensemble contest at Northwestern Oklahoma State University (NWOSU) and then host our own band and solo & ensemble contest here.  Shortly thereafter, two of the adjunct instructors in our department who have full-time jobs as high school band directors took their bands to Texas’ UIL regional contest (and did well, so congratulations to Kevin and Sandy!).

So what, you may ask, is someone with an avowed skepticism of the contest culture doing hosting and judging them?  Simply put, I feel that, at this time, my participation helps to ensure that at least some students feel the benefits that I believe are available from contest and try to see that at least some of the excesses are avoided.  At this time, I think I can do good from the inside.

I waited a couple of weeks before writing this post, partly because I didn’t have time to sit down and write it, and partly becuase I wanted to reflect on my experiences with contest season (I’m not judging any other contests this year, so my part is finished).  I’m going to start with what, admittedly, is the less-natural stance for me:  what is good about music contests?

First, in my list of pros, I need to say that solo & ensemble contest is a great invention.  It gets students to discover the joys of small-group music-making, requires them to be independent musicians, gives them projects to be acheived (usually) on their own, makes them interact with adults who aren’t their teachers (such as accompanists or judges), helps them build leadership skills and in general makes them think about many of the things that their music teacher thinks about for them in a large-ensemble setting.  As a student, I looked forward to solo & ensemble contest every year, and as a teacher, I have frequently required my students to participate.  As a high school band director, I was able to assign all my students to an ensemble and provide them with time to rehearse, while I floated from group to group.  We had a recital just before the deadline for solo & ensemble contest that was their goal for the purposes of the class, and I then left to each group the decision of whether or not to participate in the contest.  This gave students many of the benefits without some of the drawbacks.

Solo & ensemble contest is an important counterpoint to the large-group contests because if it weren’t there, an entire set of skills might not get taught while teachers were busy preparing their bands, choirs and orchestras.  I am an unabashed fan and promoter of solo & ensemble contest, and if the rest of the contest establishment were to disappear I would argue to save this portion.

So what’s good about large-group contest?  I have always been wary of students getting everything they know about any subject from only one person–people are human, and they forget the things they learned in college or simply focus on one pet peeve to the exclusion of other things.  Preparing a program as well as it can be prepared by the students and teacher in question, and then having three experts make comments is a really great check on what the teacher is doing, and may remind a teacher of things he or she had not emphasized.

In a way, large-group contest is like an annual physical for a music program.  If all the components–teacher, administration, students–are in place, a group will probably do well.  If one of those is dysfunctional in some way, it will show in the contest ratings.

Large-group contest gives teachers and students a goal, and a way to gauge their progress.  It provides a life for the ensemble outside of the school, and just as athletic teams have home and away games, contest allows band, choir and orchestra students to test themselves.

In the states where I have been involved with contest, Ohio, Georgia and Oklahoma, as in many others, the music played at contest is to be chosen from a prescribed list, compiled by highly experienced experts in the field.  Having to prepare at least one program’s worth of music deemed to be worthy by experts is good for students in that it gives teachers a strong incentive to not pander to students and audiences by choosing only light, popular music and to explore more artful styles.

The sight-reading component of large-group contest is perhaps the strongest litmus test for whether a music teacher is really teaching music.  I don’t know what the point of having band, choir or orchestra in a school is if all students are able to do at the end is remember the great times they had and (hopefully) how good some of that music was.  As my undergraduate advisor, Gerald Doan, used to say, we don’t give students their music at graduation.  They only take with them the skills, physical and mental, that we’ve taught them.  Sight-reading components check to see if these skills are being taught in some way.

So, what are the drawbacks to contest, then?  For the most part, I will try to present what I feel these are in answer to each of the above points.

A major problem with solo & ensemble is that teachers frequently are unable to allot sufficient time to help their students prepare.  Of course, in well-off schools, or schools where music is taken seriously, this is less of a problem, because students have access to private instruction.  The result is that many students arrive at solo & ensemble contest unprepared or with little musical understanding beyond notes and rhythms.  In Ohio, where scales and rudiments are required at solo & ensemble contest, every year one could hear students in the warm-up room cramming their required scales at the last moment, which was certainly not the intent of that requirement.

Scheduling of solo & ensemble contest is critical–to have it the same day as large-group contest is less than desireable, but in areas like Western Oklahoma this is the norm.  Here at OPSU, we are one of two logical places to host such a contest in our area, and on the instrumental side, neither contest is large enough on its own to justify paying for judges.  Together, the two contests are economically efficient, and so we had them both on the same day.  The result is that most schools, wanting to disrupt their school day as little as possible and save on transportation costs, bring their students to both contests on the same day at the same location.  The large-group contest inevitably overshadows solo & ensemble in the experience of many teachers and students.

If it is good for a program and a teacher to get comments from outside sources, are there other, less stressful, more reaslistic ways to get these?  In the 21st-century, there are.  It would be a simple thing to send high-quality audio and video to a judge, who can then watch or listen multiple times.  At many schools, it would even be possible to do this in real-time with immediate feedback through VOIP or videoconferencing.  It would be a simple thing for a judge to come to various schools for a residency of a few days (maybe even every other year) to not only hear the ensemble perform but also to work with the group in a rehearsal setting and bring the sight-reading music along.  This would be a far more robust educational experience than being herded onto a stage in a strange building, playing to a mostly empty hall and then being herded off.  If we’re going to solicit comments, it should be done in a meaningful way.

And then there is the rating:  the number (because everyone is most worried about the composite score, not its components) that will determine many a teacher’s self-esteem for the next year, until they have a chance to get a new number.  The number that may determine whether that teacher is asked to continue in his or her position for another year. 

If large-group contest is like a physical for a program, does it make sense to only look in the program’s left ear and take its rectal temperature?  And then average those two results?  The form of rating used in most states for large-group contests was once referred to as the “Olympic” rating, because the highest and lowest scores are dropped to determine the overall score for the concert program.  There is a major difference between most school music contests and the Olympics, though.  Namely, in the Olympics, judges are comparing athletes to one another to determine a ranking.  In school music contests, each performance is allegedly judged on its own merit, and first-place, second-place, etc. are not awarded (with the exception of some marching band contests, which are not my particular area of expertise).  Why are we rating musical groups using a system that has its origins in ranking athletes, with their much more objectively qualified performances?

If one were to compare professional orchestras, the merits of each could be argued endlessly–how does Chicago’s brass compare to Cleveland’s strings or Los Angeles’ innovative programming?  No two ensembles will ever be alike, and this is even more true in the secondary school world, where every teaching situation and every social situation is a little bit different.  To attempt to listen to a 35-piece middle school band playing John Edmondson and an 80-piece high school band playing Percy Grainger and make the same sorts of musical evaluations in both cases is nearly absurd.

Ratings as I know them in the states where I have taught and judged seem completely unreliable, and worse, not at all helpful to the educational experience.  I would argue for one of two ratings systems.  The first would to simply adopt the system used in Alaska in the mid-1990s:  ensembles could receive a rating of “1” or a rating of “comments only.”  This allowed truly excellent work to be recognized while emphasizing the underlying instructional aim of the experience.  A more preferable alternative would be to bring the “captioning” system widely used in marching band contest into the concert hall, and make scores more statistically reliable by making each component a mathematical part of the final rating.  In this way, teachers and administrators could better evaluate the success of a program by comparing results from year to year, and identify specific areas for improvement.  An administrator would be able to see, for example, whether problems in an underperforming band are instructional (e.g., students aren’t playing rhythms correctly, a possible teacher shortcoming) or systemic (e.g., tone quality is poor, possibly because sufficient budget hasn’t been allotted to maintain and replace instruments).

As a composer, I am generally appalled by the repertoire choices made for contest.  The contest format encourages teachers to choose safe, unimaginative, formulaic repertoire that generally lies at the lower end of their students’ technical and musical abilities.  This type of music does not inspire, does not educate beyond the realm of motor skills, and does not truly represent any recognizable historical or contemporary style beyond “contest music.”

In my experience  judging and managing, a look at the scores of the “marches” that teachers choose for concert band contest is a case in point.  Historically, most marches (of which Sousa, Alford and King are all outstanding examples) are written to a very specific form, and have certain rhythmic, metric and harmonic expectations.  It is possible to make the argument that a part of a student’s education in band should be to learn to deal with this style of composition.  The “marches” chosen for contest, though, are often marches in name and tempo only, simply being compositions in duple time and at a fast walking tempo.  The chosen meter is usually 2/4 or 4/4, despite most historical marches being written in “cut time” or 6/8.  Absent are the characteristic form, the expected key change to the subdominant (or any key change), and, more importantly, the rhythmic vitality combined with genuine melodic appeal that make pieces like Sousa’s “The Stars and Stripes Forever” an intergal part of our American heritage.  Not every band can play Sousa’s work, truthfully, but the chosen pieces are not even way-stations on the road to that level of performance.  They are all too often instead souless, styleless, pointless exercises in quarter-notes and eighth-notes, which then proceed to be played as such.

While the prescribed “list” of compositions for contest can help to ensure that a basic standard of musical quality is in place (or not), it also encourages composers to continue to write and publishers to publish the sort of formulaic drivel described above.  There is good music for young bands, but precious little of it seems to appear at contest.  It is in this arena that a switch to evaluation by clinician, as suggested above, might have a meaningful impact.  Students must learn to make music, not just to play the contest selections (or the selections for their concert at school, for that matter).  My experience over the last two decades is that students are more likely to remember playing good music as well as they are able than to remember playing bad music perfectly.  And some of the music is so bad that it will never sound good.

This post has gone far too long, but a few words about sight-reading.  After solo & ensemble, this is the next most important type of contest, because it caters also to what should be the underlying goal of music contest, and music education generally:  to create adults who are able to pursue music on their own terms after graduation, either professionally or on an amateur basis.  Students who can sight-read and play in small groups will be able to do this.  The fact that a sight-reading contest exists is a crucial accomplishment, and I haven’t quite determined how the experience could be improved–possibly by having a full panel of judges for sight-reading instead of one, as is usually the case.  Possibly by having the same judges hear sight-reading and concert performances.

Music contests, then, to me, are a two-edged sword with great possible benefits, but the potential to harm the field of music education as well.  My advice to music teachers and adminstrators is to have an open and honest conversation about the goals of their music programs, and then decide whether or not music contests, especially large-group contests, really and truly further those goals.

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Seattle/Tacoma, SCI Region VIII Conference

March 16th, 2010

Becky and I were in the Pacific Northwest last weekend, a trip we’ve always wanted to take.  The official reason was that my Ophelia Songs was performed on Saturday morning at the University of Puget Sound, so details about the performance first.

Dawn Padula, mezzo-soprano, and Keith Ward, piano, gave an absolutely stunning rendition of my song cycle.  Truthfully, since the piece is a few years old, I hadn’t given it much thought lately, but these two performers gave it a reading that made me realize that my compositional decisions were the right ones–it reaffirmed my faith in the piece and in myself as a composer.  Dr. Padula’s luminous tone and flawless diction, combined with a wonderfully dramatic approach to the piece were stunning, and I can’t believe that such a reading of my piece was possible.  In the fourth movement, “Giving of Flowers,” I was on the edge of my seat.

The rest of the weekend, Becky and I experienced Tacoma and Seattle, with wonderful food, great sight-seeing and wonderful companionship.

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Mahler, Symphony No. 5, first movement

March 11th, 2010

What a piece!  Like the last movement of Mahler’s Second Symphony, I find it difficult to think analytically about music of such moving emotion.  There are some questions I would love to be able to ask the composer, though.  What sort of funeral march is this?  For such grandiose, powerful music, who could possibly have died?  And then, as a funeral march, is it really effective?  True, there are no moments of levity, and I detect no hint of satire anywhere in the movement, but how can the solemnity of death be reconciled with what is, in a strange way, celebratory music?  Such questions are, of course, primarily aesthetic in nature, and I can’t answer them without living in Mahler’s time, and perhaps in Mahler’s life.  Throughout my study of Mahler’s music, I have striven to examine the music for its compositional attributes, and taken the music at face value, but such music as this cannot help but raise serious extra-musical questions.  I’ve been reading David Huron’s book Sweet Anticipation, in which he gives a valuable sentiment.  To paraphrase:  “Even if we are one day able to understand music, it will never cease to be beautiful.”

How many times did I hear this opening trumpet solo through practice room walls as an undergraduate?  My trombone teacher, Tony Chipurn, used to joke about the first round of trumpet auditions for the Cincinnati Symphony:  “ta-ta-ta–taaa,” “Thank you!”  But this music is no joke, not for even a moment, and this trumpet solo announces the key, the mood, the meter and the basic rhythm of the composition, all with just a few notes.  Those first four notes are that important, and a fine performance gives them direction.  It must not only state the notes, but provide the impetus for the rest of the symphony. 

No sooner has the key been established than the rest of the brass and the strings come in with a contrasting harmony.  The trumpet has named the key as c-sharp minor, but the enormous chord in measure 13 is A major, opening the world of this music up.  The double-dotted rhythms in the trumpet are, again, crucial to the expression, and Mahler makes persistent use of dotted and double-dotted rhythms throughout this movement; it is these rhythms that give this funeral march its character, whether as the trumpet’s double-dotted solo rhythms, the strings’ later use of dotted-quarter plus eighth-note rhythms to present both primary and secondary melodic material or the underlying martial rhythm, seen for example in measures 14-16 in the strings and winds.

The dotted rhythm introduces the primary march theme at the anacrusis to m. 35.  This melody is introduced by violins and celli in unison–in a relatively weak register for the violins, but in a more lyrical register for the celli.  In m. 43, the theme is developed, with the second violins, and then the violas, joining the first violins.

At m. 61, the original trumpet solo returns, at the original pitch, but harmonized instead in the key of F-sharp minor, and harmonized instead of alone.  Instead of the parallel chord of D major, as would be expected from the opening passage, the goal of this passage is the tonic chord of the movement, C-sharp minor.  This allows a return of the first-theme material at measure 89, now harmonized by a countermelody based on the same dotted-rhythm material as nearly every other utterance in the symphony so far.

Mahler is nothing if not consistent.  After a modulatory passage that brings the music to Ab major, the dominant, a secondary theme enters at m. 121.   Based on the dotted-rhythm motive of the primary theme, this presentation in thirds is highly reminiscent of material from the third movement of the First Symphony, the contrasting theme of that funeral march.  How funeral-march-like is this piece after all?  Much of the resemblance and mood breaks down in this section, which leads into a developmental section, introduced by the trumpet solo material.

This development section, beginning in earnest at m. 155, is centered around a rhythmic motive that is a transformation of the dotted-note motive that formed the core of the melodic material up to this point.  This consists of a half-note tied to the first-note of a quarter-note triplet, followed by the other two notes of that triplet.   This cell is the basis of nearly every important melodic motive for the next hundred bars.

At measure 233, the trumpet solo returns, bringing back the material from the exposition.  Measure 278ff has a fascinating melodic treatment–beginning in solo trumpet and solo viola, and over the next few bars, adding instruments to become a near-tutti texture in bar 286, at which point, the texture thins to solo clarinet, oboe and flute.  As expected in a classic sonata-allegro, the second theme now returns in the tonic key (m. 295).  In teaching third-year Analysis, I emphasize the importance of understanding the modifications composers make to their transitions to reconcile the two competing key areas.  Here, Mahler significantly shortens the transition to allow the secondary theme to reappear in the tonic key rather than moving to the dominant.  The music is in D-flat major, an enharmonic spelling of the parallel major that allows the second theme to remain in its original mode.

In measure 316, the timpani enter with a reminder of the opening trumpet solo, moving to a secondary developmental section, placed interestingly late in the game, almost 4/5 of the way through the movement.  In this A-minor section, the dotted-note motive of the exposition and the triplet figure of the development are combined in a sequential passage that leads to a final climactic chord at m. 369.  At this point, the music now must descend from E-major, the dominant of this second development section, to G-sharp major, the dominant of the piece.  It reaches its goal not through functional phrasing, but through a typically Mahlerian chromatic descent, with a deceptive goal at m. 393, when coloristic chords seem to imply another move away from C-sharp, but land on F-sharp, explaining to the ear that this has all been coda material.  Mahler has placed developmental material in the coda, following in the footsteps of Beethoven. 

The coda itself is given a coda, featuring the return of the solo trumpet material from the opening.  Instead of the entire melody, we are merely reminded of it.  The movement ends with a flute flourish–a rare moment highlighting this instrument among the Mahler symphonies so far–followed by a menacing pizzicato in the low strings.

Where does this movement fall in relation to the opening movements of the four previous symphonies?  The First Symphony began with what seemed like the beginning of the world ex nihilo.  The Second has its own funeral march.  The Third Symphony’s enormous opening movement (“Part One”) dwarfs the rest of the piece, despite Mahler’s best efforts.  The Fourth Symphony opens with music that is tautly related to the rest of the piece.  But here, in the Fifth Symphony, is music that draws in the listener to the point that it simply doesn’t feel as long as its fifteen-minute duration.  This is, afterall, the goal of any composer– the suspension or at least the reordering of time.  A great composition, like a great movie, feels like an otherworldly experience while keeping the audience’s attention.  In this movement, Mahler has done this successfully.

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Mahler, Symphony No. 4, 4th movement

March 1st, 2010

First, some business.  Since Mahler’s Fifth has five movements, the two-weeks-per-movement plan of the last two months won’t work.  Since I, and many of my readers (I assume there are readers…) have Spring Break in March, the right move seems to be to spend 10 days on each of the first three movments, then fifteen days on the other two.  Three movements in March, two in April, with one day left (although I confess to not thinking about this project every day, so that isn’t entirely accurate).  Keep up with me!

To the music.  This movement is a lovely song setting.  In my reference recording, by Bernstein with Vienna, Bernstein took the indication that the voice be as child-like as possible to the extreme of assigning the part to a boy soprano.  There is an innocence gained through this, one that Bernstein used in his own Chichester Psalms to great effect.  The first time I heard this piece in performance, the Cincinnati Symphony used a grown woman rather than a child, and I don’t remember it as being any less effective.

Like the symphony, this movement begins in G major.  The form is basically strophic, and this means that there is a great deal of repetition both in the solo part and the accompaniment.  The introduction is very typical of the German lied in that it simply presents a melodic idea (in the clarinet) that is repeated as interlude and which also accompanies the solo part as a countermelody.  Like the third movement, Mahler’s harmonic language is centered around functional phrases rather than the long pedal points of some of his earlier work.  In this last Wunderhorn symphony, Mahler chooses to end with a movement that seems to suggest an earlier world.

Measure 36 and the following measures are the first appearance of material that three times will close the song sections.  Each time it ends on a different chord, but segues into material from the opening of the first movement–a somewhat unexpected tying together that brings the somewhat disparate expressions of the piece full circle.

In comparison to Mahler’s purely instrumental compositions, and especially, for example, the finale of the Second Symphony, this song setting is relatively simple, but therein lies its beauty and its charm.  Mahler’s previous use of children’s voices (again, not what is strictly called for here despite Mahler’s note about the soloist’s vocal quality) in the fifth movement of the Third Symphony is much more complex in texture and orchestration than this light, clear movement.

Only one aspect of the movement is really troubling to me, and that is Mahler’s decision to end it in a remote key–E major.  When the symphony so far has been very centered on the home key, G major, it seems very strange indeed that Mahler would end the piece elsewhere.  I have spent some time thinking of reasons for this decision, and the best I can come up with is that lowering the tonal center by a minor third has the effect of a relaxation, a release of tension in some way.  While so many popular songs in our era feature a modulation up to ramp up excitement, Mahler’s downward shift of key center may have the opposite effect.  It may also suggest that the piece, a setting of a poem depicting the heavenly life, is not really finished, just as the eternal life discussed has no end.

One strays from a purely compositional analysis here–into a realm of symbolism and implied extra-musical meaning that I have largely avoided here, but as the only vocal movement of the piece, it seems to cry out for this type of discussion.

What does one take, then, from this symphony, so unlike Mahler in so many ways?  Mahler’s compositonal technique is relatively unchanged from the previous two works–not for nothing are they grouped together.  Instead of the enormous orchestras with chorus, though, Mahler steps away, conforming to a standard symphonic plan in four movements for the first time since the First Symphony (and even that piece was not originally so).   Mahler is not the only composer to step back from gigantism–one thinks of Tchaikovsky following the bloated 1812 with the sublime Serenade in C, and of Liszt’s later works in comparison with the enormous symphonies of his middle years.  At any rate, Mahler’s orchestra is still very large by Mozart’s standards, and there are moments in the piece that are very reminiscent of the big moments in the other symphonies.  It is completely possible that my conceit of the Fourth as the “little one” is only the result of my own instrument being left out!  But there is none of the darkness here that one associates with the low brass in the earlier symphonies–the tuba of the First’s funeral march, or the trombone of the Third’s opening movement.  They simply aren’t necessary.

Onward, then, to the Fifth, a favorite of mine since I first encoutered it up close as an undergraduate!

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