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The Middle

Tuesday, February 5th, 2013

My last post described some things that I learned from another art form, woodcarving, through my father and his teacher, Spirit Williams.  Here’s another in the same vein, purely by chance, mind you.

I firmly believe that other art forms have a great deal to tell us about composing, which means that if I have a chance to chat up an artist during a plane ride, I’m going to take it. Last Spring, I met Kiersi Burkhart on a plane from somewhere to somewhere (I think it involved Denver, a city where I one day hope to see more than the airport and the hotel where the airline sends me when my flight is screwed up). She writes young adult novels, and also a blog. This post showed up the other day, about how to help the middle of a novel.   Her five suggestions have me thinking about the middle of pieces, so here are my thoughts about Kiersi’s thoughts and how they might relate to composing.

1. Raise the stakes. This “tip” gets thrown around a lot, and for a long time I wasn’t really sure how one could implement such broad-sided advice.

The easiest way I’ve found is to first work out what your characters’ goals are (both small and large), and then determine: what are the consequences of your characters not achieving those goals? Now make them even more dire. Life and death. Death and destruction. Whatever you can do to make the repercussions of your characters’ not achieving their goals worse, do it.

I think the best way to raise the stakes in a musical composition is to move beyond your starting material in some way.  I’m not suggesting that you string together theme after theme after theme (although it worked occasionally for Mozart), but if you’ve focused on one melodic idea up until this point, say, a third of the way in to the composition, it’s time for some contrast.  This new material should relate to earlier portions of the piece in some way–a similar harmonic framework, or a motivic relationship–but there is a need for variety as well.

Another way to raise the stakes might be to employ a change in texture–if things have been very homophonic up to now, it’s time for some counterpoint; if you’ve been writing lots of interwoven lines, it’s time to pare the texture down.  All kinds of great things can happen in the middle of pieces–the classical approach to creating a movement has a middle that is much more loosely-constructed than the beginning, and even in the middle of a Bach fugue, we can go long stretches without either a cadence or the fugal subject, just riffing on little ideas that have come up.  Speaking of riffing, think of the structure of a bebop jazz performance, with its tightly-constructed presentations of the head at the beginning and end and the loosely-constructed solos in the middle.

2. Lower the low points. The best part of middles is when it seems all hope is lost–that there is no possible way your character can achieve his purpose.

Remember in Star Wars: The Empire Strikes Back, when Han Solo gets trapped in carbonite? Even worse, he’s shipped off with a bounty hunter to see Jabba the Hut, and our heroes are too busy trying to save Luke to chase him down.

At this moment in the story, we (the audience) feel somewhat defeated, like there’s no possible way Han can be rescued from his terrible fate. And in Return of the Jedi, this situation only gets worse when Leia is enslaved by Jabba.

Find that low point in your story (make one, if it’s not there already) and then make it worse. While you’re beating your hero into the ground, beat harder. Did something go wrong in his heist plan? Find three other things to go wrong, too. And it’ll be really satisfying to your audience when your clever protagonist manages to worm her way out of this ridiculous bind.

I think what Kiersi is getting at here is dramatic tension–the middle is the place where we really aren’t sure how things are going to work out, and as such, it has the possibility of being the most exciting part of a piece of music.  Certainly, as a composer, I often view my pieces this way when they are in process: there comes a point when I know what the rest of the piece is going to look like, and I know that I will be able to finish it.  Composing the middle, though, can be frustrating for exactly that reason–I don’t know how I’m going to get out of the situation in which I’ve placed myself.  There’s a famous moment in the first movement of Beethoven’s Eroica where the texture devolves into these dissonant, repeated chords, as though Beethoven threw up his hands, smacked the piano keyboard, and wrote down the results.  Beethoven takes this almost-mistake and slowly winds his way out, with a diminuendo and resolutions of dissonant notes that leads back to the main theme–the beginning of the ending.  In my own Piano Sonata, about three-quarters of the way through, the relatively-complex rhythms and texture dissolve into a single line, notated in stemless noteheads, a moment of repose for performer and audience, and a summation of what has come so far in the piece, and preparation for some of the breathless material that lies ahead in the push to the climax.

3. Up the conflict. Are your characters friends, lovers, or comrades in arms? Are they getting along, smooching, snuggling and heisting in perfect harmony?

This is the primary way in which I find middles sag: the character relationships stale. Either they are at peace with one another for too long, or they’re at odds without any moments of relief.

Cause some conflict. Stir up some drama. But be wary of falling into common conflict traps: misunderstandings that would be easy to resolve, unlikely coincidences, or blowing up a small issue into a big one (this is my biggest complaint with romantic sub-plots).

Use inherent character flaws to guide your conflicts. Is one of your characters prideful? Have that pride lead her to hurt the other character in a way that seems irreparable.

Again, we have to turn to Beethoven, who can’t seem to write a middle section of a symphony movement without a fugato (and who was imitated by countless others).  As Kiersi mentions, though, it’s easy to fall into some common traps, and fugato is one of them (why does Brahms turn every movement of Ein Deutsches Requiem into a fugue?  I submit that it may have been youthful inexperience).  Unless your piece has been somewhat contrapuntal up to now, throwing a fugue in seems kind of desperate (Berlioz writes scathingly about this practice in his orchestration treatise).  But the beauty of fugue is that it does have that “cool” factor, and it’s critical to find something to do with your materials that propels the piece forward.  Look for the same kinds of rhythmic intensification that fugue can provide–change the position of motives within the bar, let them happen sooner, and closer together.  Foil the listener’s expectations about when things will happen: sooner (more drama), later (more tension).

4. Comic relief. I might be the only writer with this particular problem, but I have a hunch that I’m not. Why so serious? If things are getting intense in your middle–as it probably should–be cognizant of how your reader is feeling. In the middle of drama and conflict, give your reader the occasional break.

The break doesn’t always have to be comic. Let your characters have moments of tenderness or insight into one another. In a romance, let passion momentarily override conflict (leading to more conflict, of course). In a thriller, let your protagonist feel victory–short-lived victory. A good middle is a combination of low and high points, leading up to your dramatic finale.

This can be hard to remember, but great music can be funny, not just serious.  Whether it’s Bach’s quodlibet in the Goldberg Variations with its use of street songs (not funny to us, but probably hysterical to Bach), or the trio of the Scherzo in Persichetti’s Symphony for Band, where a little group of instruments, pulled along by a muted trombone, plays a little march that sounds like it would go with a Dr. Seuss story, there is humor in good music.  A composer is a human being, and being human means being both tragic and comic.  Some composers do this better than others: think of the burlesque version of the march from Shostakovich’s Seventh Symphony that shows up in Bartok’s Concerto for Orchestra.  I’m sure that Shostakovich laughed the first time he heard it, because his own music is filled with irony and parody as well.

That said, it’s easier to plant comic relief in a dramatic work–the Papageno subplot in Mozart’s The Magic Flute, for example, and of course the dark humor of the graveyard scene in Hamlet that adds levity while staying on topic–the downstairs view of the goings on at Elsinor, perhaps.  Kiersi also suggests that intimate moments in the middle provide a break–it works in music, too, as in the piano-cello duet in the second movement of John Corigliano’s Symphony No. 1–intimate not only in texture but in meaning as well.

5. Escalate tension. A good climax is the tip of the highest peak of your story arc. Leading up to that peak are your second, third, and fourth-highest peaks.

I suggest doing this with “post-outlining”: now that you know all the plot points of your story (all the “ups” and “downs,”) organize them in order of severity. Your lowest lows and your highest highs should come near the end, leading up to your finale.

This is especially important when revealing important plot information. You don’t want to save all of your high-value cards and staggering reveals for the very end; drop some of your big bombs (but not your biggest bomb) during that sagging middle section, then escalate leading up to that super mondo finale–and hopefully leave your readers panting.

This suggestion may or may not apply to a given situation–sometimes the beginning of the end of a piece of music is a moment where tension is released–the recapitulation of a sonata-form movement, for example, or the beginning of the “Simple Gifts” variations in Copland’s Appalachian Spring.  The ending of a piece is inevitable once it begins, and layering coda upon coda (in the way Tchaikovsky does in his Fifth Symphony, for example) doesn’t move the beginning of the ending anywhere closer to being the middle.  In good music there is a crucial difference between music of the beginning, music of the middle, and music of the end.  Some great middle moments, though–the trombone chorale in the last movement of Mahler’s Resurrection Symphony comes to mind–are the last moment of calm, an eye in the hurricane.  The birdsong section of the slow movement of Dvorak’s New World Symphony is a change of character that builds into a critical statement of the motto theme of the symphony before the return of the main theme for the movement.  It would behoove all of us to study the Romanza movements that Mozart frequently uses in his later piano concerti–the quick middle Sturm und Drang sections like the one in K.466 are the uber-middle–the middle part of the middle movement of the three-movement structure.  The formal considerations of music are somewhat different than those of the novel, of course, because of the way that repetition is a critical component of good composition, but the dramatic concerns are similar.

Ralph Vaughan Williams is said to have said what every composer (and author) knows: something to the effect that starting a piece is easy, but getting to the end is hard.  This is the difference between being a tunesmith and being a composer:  a song is all theme, but a composer has to be able to take themes (or the equivalent) and connect them in meaningful ways, constructing the musical equivalent of a novel.

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Symphony on the Brain

Tuesday, January 31st, 2012

Every so often, I go through symphony envy…

I’m older than Beethoven was when he wrote his first symphony, but younger than Brahms by the time he finished his initial contribution to the genre, so maybe it’s just a part of the phase of life I’m in now–a desire to work on big, meaningful projects that really define who I am as a musician and a human being.

It might be that I’ve been running across symphony references–today is Phillip Glass’ birthday, and the American Composer’s Orchestra is giving the premiere of his Ninth Symphony in New York (I won’t be there… we have band rehearsal in Oklahoma).  Additionally, my facebook friend David Sartor, whose music I have been admiring of late, posted that he has begun working on a Symphony No. 1, despite not having a commission, because he feels like he needs to do that.  David is somewhat older and more established as a composer than I am, but I understand the desire to tackle this genre, whether the results are immediately wanted or not.  A respondent to David’s facebook post said that if he wrote his symphony for band instead of orchestra, he’d have plenty of opportunities for performance, which is probably true.  Last, I just finished reading Nicholas Tawa’s new book The Great American Symphony.  As I read about some pieces that I’ve loved for years and some that are unfamiliar to me, I came to realize what an American thing it actually is to write a symphony.

So, first, Phillip Glass.  I’ve come to the conclusion that the minimalist label might  be incorrect for Glass’s music–his textures are reminiscent of true minimalism, of course, but the structures of his music are not, even in pieces like Wichita Sutra Vortex.  Unlike Reich or Riley, they are meditative, but not entrancing.  A thought, and I will have to think more about it later.  Happy Birthday!  and congrats on your premiere tonight, Mr. Glass.

As a performer who has played orchestrally but whose main experience is in band, I wonder if my desire to write a symphony for orchestra, like David Sartor’s, is not a little bit misplaced, or in my case, even a form of betrayal.  I have spent my professional life promoting the idea that bands can, should and must play serious original music–like the symphonies for band by Hindemith, Persichetti and Gould–I even wrote my DMA document on a symphony for band (by Donald McGinnis), but I want my first symphony to be for orchestra.

When I wrote my biggest orchestra piece to date, Five Rhythmic Etudes, I had just turned thirty and initially started sketching a symphony–unlike many composers, I have only even made a halting attempt once!  The piece turned into something else, and I can see now that I wasn’t ready to write a symphony.  If a great college or military band came to me tomorrow with a commission for a symphony, I would probably accept it–all the while wishing the piece was for orchestra.  Am I being a traitor to the very movement that has allowed me to participate fully in serious music as a professional?  I’ve written some band music over the years–and some of my best pieces are for band–but I’m still not ready to completely admit that I am a “band composer.”  As many doors as that might open, it certainly seems to slam others shut.  Of course, writing a symphony could have precisely the same effect.

That said, I’m excited about my major project for the first part of the year, a suite for strings.  Alongside, I’m cohosting an SCI conference, so I’ll be professionally busy for quite a bit of the year, but 2013 is wide open–if any conductors or patrons are reading this, I’m want to write a symphony, and I won’t do it without a commission: I don’t write anything unless there is a firm promise of a performance.  Listen to my music and see what you think, and you know where to find me.

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Mahler, Symphony No. 9, first movement

Wednesday, November 17th, 2010

Of the nine Mahler symphonies, the Ninth is probably the one I come to with the least familiarity.  I’ve never seen it in concert, and I’ve never had reason before to really listen to it.  It is, I’m finding, a very different animal than what comes before, although in many ways, it is a culmination of some trends that really began with the Seventh symphony.

Like the Seventh, there is significantly less clarity of formal structure as motive becomes more and more important.  I’m reminded of Schoenberg’s assertion that motive is what composition really is about—creating a motive and then following its logical developments until a composition is worked out.  Only a few years after Mahler’s Ninth, we begin to encounter works like Schoenberg’s Pierrot, in which motive becomes the music, comprising melody, harmony and rhythm, or Erwartung, which takes a very different motivic approach, giving only exposition, never repetition over the course of a one-act opera.  Only fifteen years after Mahler’s death, Schoenberg devised dodecaphony, which was yet another effort to allow motive to determine all aspects of musical content.

There is, then, a tautness to Mahler’s Ninth that was missing from the Eighth.  The Eighth was motivically conceived, of course, but also had such a sprawling nature, such a blend of instruments, voices and text that it was probably impossible for Mahler to focus on the motivic aspects of the composition.  A text that expresses what the last scene of Faust tries to express cannot be contained in just a few motivic ideas, as Mahler correctly divined.  Both are great works, and thrilling in their way, but I remain skeptical as to whether the Eighth is really a Symphony in more than name.

If I might dwell, then, before entering into specifics, upon what actually makes a symphony.  Chuck Berry sang:

I got no kicks against modern jazz, /Unless they try to play it too darn fast, /And change the rhythm of the melody, /Until it sounds just like a symphony.

 Of course, Berry didn’t mean an actual symphony, but rather the technically driven, studied approach that jazz was coming to acquire in his era—the era of Miles Davis and other practitioners of “Cool Jazz”—in juxtaposition to the raw, often deliberately unschooled approach to rock’n’roll of his day.  But what does it mean to sound “just like a symphony?” 

When I first encountered Robert Schumann’s Overture, Scherzo and Finale, I found myself wondering why he didn’t just write a slow movement and have a “complete” symphony, since I was by that time aware that a symphony had four movements in a certain order.  But then composers such as Schumann, Sibelius and Barber also felt able to compose single-movement symphonies, and history turns out to be replete with examples of symphonies that lack a fourth movement or have “extra” movements.  In the end, what is the symphonic concept?  What makes a composition for orchestra (or for band, as the ever-insistent voice of Rodney Winther reminds me) into a symphony?   Some aspects I think are important:

  • Instrumental.  This is probably a basic requirement, and it doesn’t omit all non-symphonies, although it does omit, or threaten to omit, many pieces with the title “Symphony.”  Is Beethoven’s Ninth, with its choral finale a symphony by this definition?  There is great music in its first three movements, but these act as prelude, really, to the cantata that is the last movement.  I’m not certain that a piece with voices can truly be a symphony, but I know that they aren’t required.  In fact, they sometimes undermine the symphonic ideal, at least to my thinking.  The fact remains that as much as we are musical beings, we are also verbal beings, and the marriage of text to music is always an uneven match.  Text, if we understand the language, wears the pants, so to speak, and will almost always compete successfully for the attention of most listeners.  Even the most vapid lyrics seem to win this contest.  Thus, to me, the symphonic concept is inherently instrumental.
  • Relative equality of parts.  As a trombonist, I have rested through much more symphonic music than I have played, of course, but Brahms’ First would not be complete without the trombone chorale in the fourth movement.  In that sense, the trombones are equal in importance to the other instruments, and no part can be disposed with.  That chorale could have been played by horns or bassoons, but not without a change in color and thus in character.  The appearance of a color that has been held in reserve through the first three movements is a profound and noble moment, and as the saying goes, there are no small parts, only small actors.  However, in a concerto, one part is inherently more important than all the others, and in works titled Concerto for Orchestra, or similar names, it is again the virtuosity of the players that is on display rather than the composer’s ability to make a profound statement.  Bartok’s Concerto for Orchestra is not a symphony because, although I think there are messages about life in it, it is mostly about the ability of players to perform music written idiomatically for their instruments.
  • Plumbing the depths.  As Libby Larsen said, composition is about telling someone else through music what it is like to be alive.  Just as large-scale formats in other arts—mural, novel, film—put on display the understanding of the auteur of the human condition, the symphony tells us about human experience from the point of view of the composer, and, in the best moments, from the point of view of the musicians who perform the piece.  Is this present in the earliest pieces called “symphony?”  Perhaps, but it is difficult to know at 200 years’ remove.  Certainly in Mozart’s later symphonies and Haydn’s later symphonies, we get a glimpse of this, and of course it is Beethoven who forced composers to rethink the symphonic concept.  The Soviet Nicholas Miaskovsky composed over a thousand numbered symphonies—he was less writing about his life than writing for it, though, and one must wonder whether such pieces should be considered “symphonic” in their conception.  Again, it is not a difficult thing to write four movements in a symphonic pattern, particularly in a Common Practice style, but to pour one’s heart and soul and communicate to all who can play or listen on a meaningful level is a much greater challenge.  We mustn’t discount happiness and cheerfulness, though.  While there is pain and struggle and anguish in the world, a great symphony can also be filled with light—Sibelius’ Fifth, perhaps, or Dvorak’s Eighth, or much of Mendelssohn.  If one actually is happy, and filled with joy, it is probably one’s artistic duty to compose music that recognizes the value of this, an idea almost forgotten in our world of desires and causes and political statements.
  • Internal unity.  Simply writing four pieces on a related concept or program does not a symphony make.  No one would confuse Holst’s Suites for Military Band for symphonies despite their musical worthiness.  In the Symphonie Fantastique, Berlioz wisely fuses the five movements through internal self-reference—the idée fixe.   With no knowledge of the program, these five pieces would seem to hang together, as do the movements in Mahler’s symphonies, because in the best symphonic writing, the number of movements is, in the end, less crucial than the way those movements are connected.  Schumann recognized this and did not try to claim the Overture, Scherzo and Finale as a symphony.  The movements of a symphony must follow one another without apology and without explanation.  They must be inevitable.  They must be as different speakers making the same point, “good-cop, bad-cop,” as it were.  Composers use harmony, melody, motive, scoring—all the tools at their disposal—to achieve this.  The sonic world of Brahms’ Second Symphony cannot be confused with that of the Third, and Mahler’s world in the Seventh Symphony is a distinctly different one from the Ninth.
  • Commitment to purpose and purposeful excellence.  A true symphony is a serious, heartfelt gesture intended to be the best work of a mature composer, written without constraints of mediocre performers and looking to the future.  It is likely to be experimental in some regard, although the experimentation is less likely to be in the realm of compositional or instrumental technique than in the realm of expressive capacity.  Just as a good pianist will test and probe the potential of an unfamiliar instrument, a true symphonic composer attempts to determine just how her ideas about existence can best be communicated through sound.  A symphony is not a one-off, but rather the core of an artist’s musical expression.  Yes, at the age of 34, I have still not written a symphony, for many reasons, but I feel that I must first master certain aspects of compositional technique, some of which are approached through this study.  A symphony should lie at the core of my oeuvre in retrospect, and given my social milieu, the opportunities that have and may come my way and my personal style, I may not be a symphonist, or there may be in the end only one symphony in me—perhaps a better situation, as how can one write such a summative piece twice?!

And now, 1500 words into this post, I have not even made a single specific reference to the piece at hand—if this were an assignment in one of my classes, I would fail myself!  But the assignment I’ve given myself is to figure out how to grow as a composer:   I hope to one day be a symphonist, or at least write large-scale music, which I have determined are not necessarily the same thing.  I am learning what I need to learn from Mahler, and my listening and score-study project is yielding fruit, if in unexpected ways.  My score is filled with notes on Mahler’s work, and I refer myself to it for future reference, but why shouldn’t this summative work, written by a man at the peak of his personal powers of musical technique and expression, elicit from me a summative sort of response, albeit slightly early?  If you’re dying for specifics, check out the strange interlude of regular formal rhythm—four-bar phrases—that begin in m. 148 and precede and follow an otherwise nearly complete lack of regularity in this regard.  Also, Mahler’s layering approach to this movement reminds me of some of Sibelius’ music—I don’t know whether there was cross-fertilization there.

Onward!  Keep fighting mediocrity!

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Mahler, Symphony No. 6, movement 4

Wednesday, June 30th, 2010

I will be the first to admit that I have not done my homework to the extent I would ideally like to over the past two weeks.  Perhaps I should have allotted more time to the 822 measures of this movement, but truthfully other things have got in the way.  To allow myself an extension would simply impinge on the three remaining pieces, and since by the time I am ready to write the next blog entry, we will also be on the cusp of moving, it seems better to summarize my observations and move forward today.

With this movement, it seems very difficult to get past Mahler’s symbolism–the hammer blows, the major-minor motive and the rest.  Tony Duggan, in his excellent summary of recent recordings of this piece, deals with some of the many performance issues, such as the ordering of the movements (which differs from my edition, the Dover miniature score and from many recent recordings), and the precise number of hammer blows (Mahler’s final decision appears to have been two, while my score, a reprint of the 1906 Nachfolger edition, calls for three).  He also suggests that this piece is the most classically ordered of all of Mahler’s symphonies, and I find myself tending to agree with that statement.

In an interesting way, the two hammer blows that Mahler retained seem to delineate the exposition, development and recapitulation of a sonata-allegro form, with the third (missing) blow indicating the coda.

Mahler opens this movement with an interesting texture and harmony–a German augmented-sixth chord that resolves deceptively to the tonic in m. 9, the first appearance of the major-minor motive in this movement.  The motive is presented as it appeared in the first movement, in the brass, and accompanied by timpani and drums, but with the strings offering a countermelody that contains material of motivic importance for the rest of the movement.

In m. 16, a tuba solo introduces further new material, including an octave leap.  Throughout this symphony, the octave leap has been an important element, and part of the cohesiveness of the work as a whole is Mahler’s use of the octave (and sometimes larger intervals) to create a sense of drama and pathos.  Rodney Winther teaches that small intervals build tension, while large intervals build drama, and Mahler employs both, but the drama of this movement is the aspect that wins out, I think.

The tuba solo is accompanied by a descending chromatic bass, which is highly typical of Mahler.  In mm. 19 and 22, the clarinets and horns have an interesting effect that I typically associate more with later composers, such as Stravinsky.  The clarinets articulate the beginning of a phrase, but the horns sustain the final note, as though the echo has a different timbre than the initial attack.  In the end, it is this sort of synthesis and blending that makes for fantastic orchestral writing, and Mahler is transcending the German orchestrational style in this instance.  A comparison with the scoring techniques used by composers of a generation earlier–Brahms, Wagner, Bruckner–reveals a much more conservative approach, with much greater use of simple block and mixed scoring techniques.  Composers of the same generation and younger, however, start to show this sort of adventurous approach to orchestration–Richard Strauss and Schoenberg, for example.  Strauss would seem to be the first of these new orchestrators to achieve notoriety–before Mahler, perhaps?

I don’t often wish that I were a trumpet player, but m. 46 has an absolutely fantastic line that makes me a little bit envious.  This is followed by another typical descent to the cadence, as the music shifts to C-minor in m. 49 for a chorale setting, first in a very dark woodwind and horn timbre, then in a lighter timbre that uses the middle, relaxed registor of the horns.  Again, Mahler is being expository here, and this material reappears later in the movement in a drastically transformed body.

From this point, the tempo and scoring become faster and fuller, and by m. 114, the written tempo is Allegro energico, the tempo of the first movement.  The martial, mechanistic feel of that movement is carried forward here in a section that, if not quotation, is at least style-copy.

In m. 182, marked pesante, the low brass state a theme that begins with a decsending octave, here on A.  This theme reappears after both of the hammer blows, and as the dark coda, which would have followed the third hammer blow in Mahler’s sometime plan for this movment. 

Measure 228 sees the harmony move from D major to D minor, with both the descending octave idea and a texture that is reminiscent of the material in the first few measures of this movement.  This portion of the piece is developmental in nature, and as it builds to the first hammer blow (m. 336) the music becomes more an more rhythmically compelx, particularly around m. 290, where Mahler juxtaposes several divisions of the beat as the music leads to a cadence in G major in m. 296.

A trend that I have detected in Mahler’s work is a growing concern with counterpoint.  Almost nowhere in this movement does Mahler use a simple “melody with accompaniment” texture.  Whether imitation or inversion or augmentation, Mahler seems to have come to a more “crafty” approach to his art.  At the same time, Mahler’s counterpoint does not adhere strictly to the traditional “rules,” and dissonance is often freely introduced without preparation.   For an example of this tendency, see mm. 302ff, wherein a two-measure motive is passed around imitatively, often with strikingly dissonant results.

I find myself shorter on time than on ideas about this piece–again, I refer myself to my notes on it.  The last three canonical symphonies remain–I am undecided about the Tenth, Das Lied von der Erde or some of the other pieces I might work with.  The Seventh, Eighth and Ninth are enormous compositions with which I am somewhat less familiar with than the first six symphonies, and come December, I will have to see where my thinking about Mahler lies.  If I have learned what I need to from this master, I may move on (to what, I am not certain).

Schedule for the Seventh will be as follows:

  • July 1-12: Movement 1
  • July 13-24: Movement 2
  • July 25-August 5: Movement 3
  • August 6-17:  Movement 4
  • August 18-31:  Movement 5

Hope to have you with me!

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Mahler, Symphony No. 6, 2nd movement

Tuesday, June 1st, 2010

I keep thinking of non-Mahler topics I would like to tackle here, but things have been busy.  I have some time over the next few weeks, so perhaps they will pop up, but for now, here are some observations on the Scherzo from the Sixth Symphony.

The  first time I ever heard this piece, in April 1995, as performed by the Cincinnati Symphony, I heard the Scherzo as a sort of reimagining of the first movement.  I feel less and less that this is true, but the opening bars of each bear a striking similarity with their pedal A and melodic figures that rise toward the meat of the piece–a Schenkerian inital ascent, as it were.

What is really interesting about the first section of the Scherzo is that it seems to be related to a device that Mozart and Hadyn used from time to time in their menuetto movements–the spot that later composers used for the Scherzo.  In a few of their minuets, Mozart and Hadyn employ a strict canonic construction, and if Mahler’s use of canon isn’t strict, it is at least suggested–very clearly in places like mm. 7-9, in which motives are repeated directly, and in Mahler’s use of invertible counterpoint.  It is, really, the same old trick that Zarlino teaches–using invertible counterpoint, write two sections of music at the same time.  Again, Mahler isn’t strict, but his motivic choices allow him to layer and relayer his material.

Orchestrationally, there is a great deal of sort of “standard” writing, with mixed scoring that is effective, but not particularly colorful.  Lutoslawski, with his single movement symphonic plans, criticized the Romantic composers for making two large statements in their symphonies–typically the first and last movements.  He had Brahms in mind, but surely Mahler is no less guilty, if not more so.  In the Sixth, the last movement is by far the most significant, with the first movement probably next so, if not least for beign the most memorable.  Where, then, does that leave this piece, the middle child?

In constructing a piece of this length, is it possible to fully engage the audience for the complete duration of the symphony?  It is difficult to imagine the audience not becoming slightly fidgety at some point.   In Shakespeare, there is frequently a pause in the dramatic arc at the beginning of the last act–some ceremony, or comic relief.  In the same way, Mahler has moments of intense drama that are contrasted with moments of thoughtfulness and repose–even, moments that are simply “vamp” that have us waiting patiently for a scene change or to let us relax.  Is it lazy to think of Mahler in this way?  He was a man, not a god.

This movement spends a great deal of time on the subdominant of its various keys, for example, in m. 44ff.  There is also a fair amount of sequential motion, although generally up or down by second.  This aids in getting to more remote keys, as at m. 62, which sees a modulation to C-minor.

The concept of key is beginning to feel a little stretched in some places, as in the long “D-major” section beginning in m. 273, which never arrives at a tonic chord (although, characteristically for this movement, it lands on the subdominant in m. 299).  At the same time, there are more meter changes in this movement than in any of Mahler’s work so far.  While the outer sections are somewhat canonic in structure, the frequent meter changes disrupt this by throwing a simple-meter wrench into a compound-meter machine.

The major-minor motto of this piece makes its appearance at some of the crucial formal junctures, but most importantly in the coda, beginning at m. 419.  The harmony moves down by step, with AM-am, GM-gm, FM-fm in the trumpets and flutes.  The motto returns again in A, and is repeated several times against motivic material from this movement. 

Berlioz and Tchaikovsky brought such motives into their symphonic writing; in a way, Mahler’s concept of the symphony owes a great deal to Symphonie Fantastique.  Mahler has been self-referential before, but this is the first instance of a “motto” in any of his symphonies, and so there can be little wonder about the attachment of such importance to it by musicologists.  As a composer, though, I am more interested in the musical effect–what does the listener with no knowledge of Mahler’s biography or any explicit or implicit “program” to the symphony make of this device?  It is a unifying element, certainly, but its application seems slightly ham-handed at times.  The motive itself, as I mentioned in my previous post, is clear and direct, and distinctly unconventional–a relatively rare occurence in tonal music.  Could Mahler have dealt with it in a way that is not so obvious?

Another month with this symphony, then, so another month to ponder such questions.

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Mahler–Symphony No. 4, mvt. 3

Saturday, February 20th, 2010

Since I’m a trombone player by training, and this is the only Mahler symphony that doesn’t include my instrument, I have always felt that Mahler’s Fourth was the “little” Mahler symphony, the runt of the litter.  If any of the music disproves that, it would be this movement.  There is a lightness to this music that doesn’t require three trombones and a tuba, or an entire regiment of percussionists.

After the second movment’s digression to the key of C minor, this movement is firmly rooted in the key of the symphony.  The narrative tonal scheme from the Third Symphony has been abandoned, and the piece opens in an explicit G major, with some wonderful string writing.  My Instrumentation students would do well to study how the cello is often the preferred melodic instrument in lines that would be perfectly playable by the viola.  The lower instrument simply has greater resonance and by placing the melody on the higher-pitched strings, Mahler achieves greater expressive power.  I am frustrated by most orchestration texts that include several pages of paean to the violin and then give shorter shrift to the viola, but there is something to it, I’m afraid.

Mahler has structured this opening section in very clear phrases with very clear cadences, which is not always his habit.  In m. 37, after an imperfect authentic cadence on the home key, there is a long extension and transition to the next key.  Mahler signals that the section is nearly over in the same way that Bach often did, by introducing the subdominant.  In this instance, it sounds oddly fresh, even though every first-year music theory student knows that the subdominant (or IV chord) is not at all a rare bird.  It’s just that Mahler has done an effective job of holding it in reserve and now (m. 47), lands on it in a significant way.

The transitional passage that follows is masterful.  The pizzicato bass line from the first few measures gives continuity while the horns and oboe sound the notes that pivot us into the new key, e minor.  Mahler’s use of musical material is tightly controlled–even though he introduces new themes here, they are built over a structure that is related to the accompaniment of the G-major section.    One also can’t help but admire the way that, for Mahler, the orchestra itself is an instrument, rather than being a collection of instruments.  A great example is the dovetailing of the melody in m. 66 from oboe to the first violins.  Those three overlapping notes allow a smooth transition of timbre–more like a pianist coloring notes by managing flow of wrist and hand than an organist pulling stops.  Throughout this passage, the oboe and violins seem to be doing this trading off–the effect is like an impossible instrument.

One instrument that is used sparingly in this movement is the bass clarinet.  I’m intrigued by Mahler’s approach to this instrument in all of his music, but in a twenty-minute movement (by Bernstein’s baton), there are barely ten notes, all within the texture.  Mahler calls for the third clarinetist to “double” on bass, but many of the changes seem very quick for that.

The e-minor moment doesn’t last long–it is developmental in nature and doesn’t have the cleanly defined phrase structure of the G-major section, and in fact shortly (by measure 91) lands on a pedal D to prepare for the G-major material which follows.  The sense of contrast, though, in tempo, scoring, tonality and formal construction is crucial to building a movement of this size and scope. 

Measures 97-99 again show a transition in melodic responsbility that struck me first as an interesting heterophonic approach to changing orchestral color, but on closer inspection reveal that Mahler is using canonic technique, a relatively rare tool for him and for his era.

The next G-major section, beginning in m. 107, is, according to Mahler’s score, a variation.  It is developmental in nature, but also shares constructive elements with the first section in that it is composed of discrete phrases with clear cadences.  Mahler indicates a faster tempo, and so we move quickly through this section, which isn’t as developmental as it might be–perhaps because there is more of a tonal plan reminiscent of rondo form, where the tonic key returns several times rather than a rounded binary in which the tonic is always the goal of the music.  Strangely enough, the tonic is not the ultimate goal!

Orchestrationally, mm. 179-191 are fascinating.  A trio between oboe, English horn (another instrument used sparingly here in this movement) and horn moves between key centers, implying (but not comfirming) g-minor.  A fantastic color follows this trio as four flutes in their weakest register take on the melody for a moment before passing it on to the cellos, reinforcing the crucial intervals.

A conductor from years ago used to state that small intervals create tension, but large intervals create drama.  To that, I would add another function, suggested in Peter Schubert’s book on 16th-century counterpoint–a leap establishes a musical space which steps must then fill in.  In this instance (mm. 188-190), the flutes emphasize these space-defining leaps and the cellos fill them in without assistance.

The goal of this transition has been C-sharp-minor, and on arriving there, Mahler writes a passage that could have come directly from the music of Jean Sibelius–mm. 195 to 200–but immediately after, he is back to Mahler.   C-sharp-minor morphs to one of Mahler’s major-minor moments in mm. 214-221, this time on F-sharp.  This would seem to be yet another common-tone modulation, as the ambiguity of chord quality allows the pitch F-sharp to become the aural focus.  Mahler takes advantage of this by shifting F-sharps role from fa to ti, and making it the leading-tone of the home key, G major.

Here begins a truly fascinating passage from a compositional standpoint.  To be successful, any slow movement must build to some sort of climax that instead of quiet and mediative is full-bodied, energetic and provides the necessary contrast to make a complete statement.  For Mozart, the technique was often the Romanza structure, as in the D-minor Piano Concerto or the Grand Partita serenade.  For Beethoven and Brahms, the technique is often rhythmic diminution combined with fugato, as in the Eroica symphony or the Brahms’ Second Symphony. 

Mahler approaches this moment through the dance, by reference to folk and popular idioms.  A 3/4 version of the opening theme morphs into a landler in m. 237.  This landler becomes a polka in m. 263, barely before we have understood the first dance.  Very quickly, this polka comes off the rails with the instruction to bump the tempo up another notch in m. 278, where the dance seems to lose control completely. 

Measure 283 is a return to the opening material, and this section would seem to suggest a calm recapitulation that will cadence nicely in the home key, buy Mahler has two more surpises in store.

The first is an ending to this abbreviated G-major section (suggestive again of rondo form) that moves toward a tonic note of E, just as it did the first time.  The music should be wrapping up, but clearly Mahler is on his way out again.  Instead of e-minor, however, in m. 315 there is an explosion in E-major, the fullest, strongest texture of the symphony so far.  The brass are in full force, and take the lead.  G-major to E-major is a remote modulation, and the E-major section leads (with a note from the bass clarinet darkening the texture wonderfully in mm. 330-331) to C major, the subdominant.  

From here, it should be a quick move to a cadence on the home key.  The dominant, D, appears, but when the music moves to G major, in m. 340, we realize that D isn’t the dominant, but a temporary tonic.  G feels like a subdominant, then, which means that the movement can’t be over.  Over the last few bars, though, there is no move to a dominant-seventh on D and G-major has appeared for the last time in this movment.  Mahler ends the movement on a dominant chord, a half cadence.  A peek ahead to the last movement reveals that it, too, is in G-major and begins on the tonic chord.  The last two movements are, thus, inseparable.  The third movement is incomplete without the fourth, and the fourth movement has a twenty-minute introduction.

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Mahler–Symphony No. 3, 5th movement

Tuesday, January 5th, 2010

After the premiere of my Five Rhythmic Etudes for orchestra in 2007, a person whose opinion I trust came up to me and told me that the first movement was a tiny masterpiece.  I don’t know whether the rest of the world would agree, but it certainly felt good to hear it.  This movement feels much the same.  One reason I’ve chosen to study Mahler’s symphonies is because of their sprawling, rambling scope, similar to novels by Tolstoy.  This movement, though, is focused and concentrated in the manner of a tiny masterpiece.

Mahler’s text is from the venerable Des Knaben Wunderhorn, and as I mentioned in my previous post on the fourth movement, it seems to balance Nietzsche’s text.  The resources are somewhat different–children’s and women’s choruses and an orchestra without violins.  The music is wholly different in mood.  Where the fourth movement is solemn and seems to suggest a deliberate mode of expression, this fifth movement is joyful and exuberant.  The folk poetry of Wunderhorn recieves an simple, folk-like setting, as though we should know this song already.

A first for Mahler (at least in the symphonies) is the use of voices as a timbral resource rather than as pure textual exposition.  Throughout, the words “bimm, bamm,” to be performed “as the sound of a bell,” work in this fashion, but at other moments, the the voices perform similar roles, most strikingly in the highest women’s voices in mm. 96-99, where a melisma on the word “Stadt” contributes to the overall texture.

To break up the folk-like, sing-song approach to the text, Mahler frequently avoids strict hypermeter, with many three-bar phrases, and often constructing four-bar phrases in a 3+1 kind of structure (as in mm.13-16 and 96-99).  Another common hypermetrical structure here is groups of four bars plus two bars.  These asymmetries seem to break up the piece, giving it the same sophistication as other of Mahler’s movements.

Beyond the wonderful use of treble voices, the orchestration is fantastic.  The absence of violins (Brahms did this before, of course) immediately shifts the emphasis to the winds, with wonderful effects.  The bassoons and contrabassoons are featured in a way that hasn’t happened earlier in the piece, and is quite refreshing–by this time, it is necessary to exploit the orchestral palette a little bit to help maintain interest.  Measures 65-83 are an essentially instrumental treatment (the voices are treated timbrally) of the material, and work in the kind of developmental way that vocal writing doesn’t always permit.  While the shape of the movement is relatively small, the scoring isn’t.

The placement of this movement within the symphony is important.  Does the five-movement second part balance the gigantic single-movement first part?  We seem to contrast unity with variety, relatively organic form with a more sectional group of forms–a minuet, a scherzo, a recitative and a chorus, followed by the sixth movement.  Mahler’s world is fully articulated, as rich and as full as the natural world, compunded by the depth and variety of the creative world.

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Mahler, Symphony No. 3, Movement 3

Sunday, December 20th, 2009

Getting behind means I keep this one short–three more movements to hit by the first of the year, so a few questions for further thought.

The posthorn solo is, of course, the prominent aspect of this movement, although there is enough music here for a symphony in its own right.  Some questions–what is the significance of the most prominent musical element in a texture being placed off-stage–in a position of drastically reduced promienence?  Is the posthorn solo, with interjections from the orchestra, meant in someway to balance the trombone solo in the first movement?

A big question about the overall structure of the piece–do the two parts of this symphony balance each other?  Do five smaller movements hold their own against the enormous first movement?

Can Mahler’s style be addressed using schemata in the same way that, say, the Viennese Classical style can be?  Possible schemata–the alternation between major and minor chord qualities, found here, for example, in mm.57-58 on the small scale, and on a larger scale in the entire first section, alternating between C major and C minor.  Mahler also has a very typical cadence–for example, mm. 338-339.  Can these types of cliches be as important as those found in Haydn and Mozart?

As always, fascinating orchestration:  mm. 358ff, 437ff, especially.  I have come to feel that a hallmark of the Austrian symphonic tradition–from Mozart on–is the interplay between strings and winds, and Mahler is no exception so far, especially in interior movements.  Motivic material is frequently given to these two groups alternately in Mozart, Beethoven, Brahms, and here in Mahler as well, although Mahler now begins to separate the woodwinds and brass (especially the horns, now in an expanded section).  I’ve commented on this before.

So–short but sweet tonight.  With luck, the rest of the symphony will follow in the next two weeks.

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From Beethoven to Mahler

Wednesday, July 1st, 2009

It’s the new fiscal year in many states, as I was reminded on NPR this morning.  It’s a big day for me in my intellectual life, too.  I have completed my survey of Beethoven’s piano sonatas, and have moved on to the nine Mahler Symphonies.  Hopefully, at least a few people will be taking this journey with me, one symphony every two months, from now until the end of 2010.  I’m writing these entries on my blog, www.martiandances.com/blog, but I’ve also fed the blog to Facebook, where it will appear as a “Note.”  Feel free to comment on either location, although since I’m in charge of the blog, and Facebook is in charge of Facebook…

I dropped my wife off at the airport today, which meant a two-hour drive home from Amarillo by myself.  As I pulled out of town, I dropped my reference recording of Mahler’s Symphony No. 1 (Bernstein with Amsterdam) into the CD player, and I got to thinking about some of the differences between Beethoven and Mahler.

Of course, there is more than half a century between Beethoven’s last sonata (Op. 111 from 1822) and Mahler’s first complete symphony (finished in 1888).  In that period are Schumann, Chopin, Mendelssohn (and his Bach revival), Smetana and the first round of nationalists, Liszt, most of Brahms and (the big one, at least in my received wisdom) Wagner.  I think it might be safe to say that for Mahler, the two most influential figures are Beethoven, the first composer for whom a symphony was always a major artistic statement, and Wagner.

Charles Rosen suggests that the Classical style was informed, at its root, by the dramatic and comic developments in operatic music.  It seems quite possible to me that for Mahler, who earned his daily bread conducting opera, not symphonic music, that we must look in many ways to the developments in opera by Weber (whose final opera Die Feen (or is it Der Drei Pintos?  help!) Mahler attemped to complete) and Wagner (whose operas Mahler helped to introduce in Vienna and which he guarded jealously from his assistant conductors throughout his career).

I’m particularly interested in how Mahler creates the scale of these works.  As a composer, I don’t feel confident about writing long movements, and I want to develop this ability.  Some observations based on my re-hearing of the “Titan:”

  • Mahler sometimes employs sectional forms, which allows (nay, demands) the repetition of vast swathes of music.  The second and third movements of the present piece are indicative of this.
  • Where Beethoven is more prone to repetition (and sequential writing) on the motivic level, Mahler seems more likely to repeat thematically.  Again, repeating long(er) passages is the result.  By comparison, my music repeats much less frequently than either of these two composers, although much more often than, say, Schoenberg in his Erwartung period.  The trick isn’t repetition–it is meaningful repetition.
  • In general, Mahler’s music is much more melody-driven than Beethoven’s (and mine).  This will be an excellent study for me, as it will give me a chance to see whether in the face of additional evidence I still truly believe that rhythm is of greater importance than melody or harmony.
  • It would be apples and oranges to compare the orchestration of Beethoven’s piano sonatas to Mahler’s symphonies.  That said, even over the noise from the “loud” pavement on US 287, I have begun to make notes of effects I want to look at more closely.  We are so fortunate to have recordings right at our fingertips… I heard a string passage this afternoon that I can’t wait to dig into, and the beginning of the fourth movement is a perfect illustration of when and why to use unmeasured tremolo in the strings.
  • Again… loud pavement makes for bad listening, but are Mahler’s harmonies in this piece a great deal simpler than Beethoven’s?  This is why I’m doing this project.  As many times as I’ve listened to this piece, I haven’t even begun to hear it.

I want to throw a question out there that was inspired by a liner note I once read about this piece:  Is Mahler, in writing this symphony, actually using collage (or even pastiche) techniques?  Many of the melodies (especially in the first movement) are derived from Mahler’s earlier works (particularly, Des Knabben Wunderhorn).  Other melodies are folk tunes, and still others bear resemblances to canonical works.  Is Mahler’s intent to somehow document a sonic realm of the imagination?  Is this a viable way to understand this piece?

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Opus 111

Sunday, June 28th, 2009

Here it is… the last one. 

Two big, beefy substantial movements.  Lutoslawski justified writing one-movement symphonies by saying that Brahms’ and Beethovens’ symphonies tended toward two big-idea statements per piece, presumably the first and last movements, although it is often possible that Beethoven is trying for three or four (perhaps in the Eroica).  It would be impossible to accuse Beethoven of overreaching his grasp in this case.  The two movements are well-balanced–a muscular, decisive sonata-allegro paired with an expansive set of variations. 

First things first–the proportions of the first movement are not especially large or striking–in my (G.Schirmer) edition, the development section scarcely lasts a page.  Once again, Beethoven is not the composer of long, overwhelming development sections the way we were all taught.  A glance at the score suggests that the proportional model for sonata-allegro is largely intact.   Why do we teach undergraduates that Beethoven’s development sections are overgrown?  My experience with the piano sonatas suggests that they are not.  On the other hand, motivic development technique often appears in unexpected places–codas, transitional sections, and within themes–places that in Haydn or Mozart would be simple or sequential repetition in Beethoven are more fully ornamented.  An example is the second theme of this movement.

I have to admire Beethoven’s approach to the start of the Allegro con brio.  It is almost as though it takes three (or more) attempts to get the theme going, and the full theme doesn’t appear until after a fairly extended attempt.   There is wonderful invertible counterpoint in the transitional thematic area, and the ubiquitous fugato in the development.  Beethoven struggled in his counterpoint lessons with Albrechtsberger, but they seem to have paid off in the end, as his command of these devices is perfect.  I taught 16th-century counterpoint last semester, and we didn’t make it to invertible counterpoint.  I think that the next time around, I will take the option in our textbook (Peter Schubert’s Modal Counterpoint, Renaissance Style) to introduce it from the beginning, because of its power as a developmental tool in any style.

Stylistically, I’m a bit at odds with this movement–it doesn’t reek of Beethoven’s “late” style in the way that other pieces do.  Admittedly, I haven’t read up on current musicological ideas about this piece, but it seems as though it would fit fairly well with the Waldstein, and lacks the scope of Hammerklavier.  Note–this in no way detracts from my astonishment with this piece and my awe at its compositional greatness.

The theme and variations is masterful as well, despite some very interesting notational choices.  The tone called for by the first few notes is wonderfully dark and rich.  Finally, Beethoven has stopped writing full triads in the bass staff, an activity I am constantly telling my students to avoid.  The more open chord positions he chooses in the theme are dark but not muddy.  Has this composer finally come to terms with the more resonant instruments that were starting to become available to him?  What does it mean that, despite his deafness, he was able to figure this out?  More importantly, what does it tell the contemporary composer who must assimilate much greater and more frequent changes in technology that Beethoven could have imagined?

There is a wonderful sort of rhythmic accelerando amongst these variations.  The theme gives a basic compound-triple approach with homophonic chords.   Variation 1 now has an event on every division of the beat, and events are happening (roughly) two to three times as often.  Variation 2 is simply not in the correct meter.  6/16 implies two beats to the measure, and there are clearly three.  3/8 would make sense, if it weren’t for the marked metric modulation (eighth=dotted eighth) and/or the alternating 16th-32nd-note pattern that makes up the highest rhythmic level (highest in the Schenkerian sense of “most-complex”).  What appear as accompanying 16ths or eighths should be dotted notes… or the alternating 16th-32nd patterns should be under sextuplets… or the patterns should be dotted-32nd-64th!  What a mess!  I can only assume that in later editions to which I don’t have access, some wise editor has made a decision that clears this up.  On my reference recording, Ashkenazy plays the first and second options, at least to my ear.  The editors of my edition, Hans von Bulow and Sigmund Lebert chose to only comment on the situation rather than rectify it.

In variation 3 is another meter signature that would make my students cringe–12/32, again, not reflective of the triple-meter feel of the music.  What a mess, but the musical intent is clear enough.  The final four measures of this variation are wonderful.

In my own work, I need to accomplish what Beethoven does in the fourth and fifth variations–that is, build larger sections of single textures.  I feel like I accomplished this in several recent pieces, notably in South Africa.  It is, again, the old adage I’ve often told myself of letting the music breathe.  I have great admiration for my friend David Morneau and his cultivation of the miniature, especially in his project 60×365, but I feel that I need to cultivate a different approach.  Yes, brevity is the soul of wit, but our world is deprived of the long view, the long term and patience to understand them.  Film may be our best hope–I know so few people who really listen to music, but nearly all Americans shell out for multi-hour long movies.  All the same, music that is longer than three minutes and that doesn’t make its meaning purely through language is, I am discovering now more than ever, my big project for the time being.  As a composer, I need to be able to write a single movement that lasts 20 minutes while still saying something.  I don’t know where the commission, or even the performers will come from for this, because for the time being I’m not in the class of composers who get that type of work.  When I entered graduate school in 2004, I was writing movements of one-to-two minutes’ length on a regular basis, and a five-minute one-movement instrumental piece was a stretch.  I discovered the tactic of creating larger pieces by writing transitions–my Martian Dances is a fantastic example of this, and my Homo sapiens trombonensis has a fantastia-like form that is exciting, but lacks rigor and cohesiveness.  Nothing ever comes back.  I learned how to let a piece breathe and expand to its true length rather than simply become a rush of ideas.  Beethoven’s sonatas–indeed, the sonata principle–require that I build on this even more.  I need, simply, the right commission now, because a twenty-minute unaccompanied trombone piece just doesn’t seem like a good idea.  A string quartet, or a piano sonata.  My latest completed piece, my Piano Trio that I just shipped off to its commissioner, runs almost ten minutes in a single movement.  I’m getting there… I’m getting there.

I began my journey through Beethoven’s 32 piano sonatas in November 2006 as a way to start a project that looked beyong the end of my graduate work, and I feel that I have done myself a great service–so much so that July 2009 marks the beginning of a new project on the Mahler symphonies.  I kicked around some different possibilities–Bach, Chopin, a single large work like the St. Matthew Passion or a Mozart opera, but it seems that Mahler is calling to me the most, so it will be half of a Mahler symphony each month until the end of 2010 (yes, I may decide to include other Mahler such as the 10th symphony or Das Lied von der Erde, but I’ll think about that later).   Please feel free to join me on that trip.

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