this movement suffers all kind of abuse by being included in compilations of adagios and being played just as fully and lushly as possible. not that there's not a place for that in this gorgeous four minutes, but i think most will agree that the most magical are the pianissimo first twenty bars (and the moment at which the climax you want at 1:27 - a lot more yearning in the orchestral version - gets cut off by another pianissimo).
i don't think this movement requires any imagery besides that which he gives you in the title. it's such a rich image - a nighttime garden, which begins to glow softly with fairy light. he holds off the full glow for so long that by the time 2:49 comes you practically want to cry when you see that your hopes are actually going to be realized.
of course, those who have heard the orchestral version will yearn for the power and dynamic of the full orchestra. but i think there is something endearingly chordal about this piano version.
"When I think of your good heart, you do not seem so ugly." "Oh, I should say so! I have a good heart, but I am a monster." "There are many men who are more monstrous than you." "If I were witty I would pay you a great compliment to thank you, but I am only a beast."
"Beauty, would you like to be my wife?" "No, Beast!"
"I die happy because I have the pleasure of seeing you once again." "No, my dear Beast, you shall not die. You shall live to become my husband." ... The Beast had disappeared, and she beheld at her feet a prince more handsom than Amor, who was thanking her for having lifted his spell.
this is the movement that taps into a story we all know. from ravel's description we can easily match up which parts of this conversation map to his quotes and characters. the lovely introductory melody represents the belle, and at 1:16 the low chromatic melody represents the beast (this is a contrabassoon in the orchestral version). clearly the first climax right after this around 2:00 is meant to be the first rejection.
i think in the original fairy tale the beast begins to die here of heartbreak (not like in disney with the angry mob and battering ram). i'm not sure i agree with the cartoon's interpretation, given the content association of the first climax (which is more or less the same, but less intense). i think that perhaps the second climax at 2:50 is meant to be when beauty realizes the beast is dying - and then realizes her affection for him.
the transformative moment after that is given to a violin solo with these really difficult harmonics, in the orchestral version. a cello enters afterwards with a much higher version of the beast theme - perhaps meant to be the beast after his transformation.
"She undressed and got into the bath. Immediately the toy mandarins and mandarinesses began to sing and to play instruments. Some had theorbos made from walnut shells; some had viols made from almond shells; for the instruments had to be of a size appropriate to their own."
this is probably my favorite animation of the set.
the movement is formally complete, more than the two vignettes we just heard. it has a twinkling exposition full of little sixteenth note licks, and a middle section with a more sinuous melody (in the orchestral version played by a clarinet and accompanied by gong strikes). the recap is fantastic and ends the movement with a flash of brilliance.
i think this movement benefits the most from orchestration. though the piano can attain some of that spark and cleanliness, nothing can substitute for the color and pizzazz added by the celeste, percussion, string pizz and lush chords, and wind solos. i love ravel's use of the upper range here, clearly used to effect the miniature instruments. many oriental-affecting classical pieces have the tendency to saturate with pentatonic scale. ravel does this here, but has some interesting twists: listen at 1:59. gorgeous
in english: Tom Thumb, a little character in english folklore who gets in all sorts of trouble because of his size, which is about that of a thumb. (cool trivia: wiki says that this little fairy tale was the very first to be printed in english.) in this movement, he has left a trail of bread crumbs behind him so as not to get lost...
"He believed he'd easily find his way because of the bread that he'd strewn all along his path; but he was very surprised to find not a single crumb: the birds had come and eaten everything."
the music in this movement is easily evocative of directionless meandering owing to its inconsistent meter (6/4, 5/4, 4/4, 3/4 all included), and of a sort of miniature scale world owing to its scant orchestration. the tempo in this version is a bit brisker than i would like, but it does give that steady flow that's the most important thing in this movement.
at 1:59 you can hear the bird calls. the rising high notes are one, and the "cuckoo" afterwards is another. presumably these are the ones who have eaten his bread crumbs.
my favorite moment is the very last chord... the key is nebulous (probably c minor given the key signature, but the harmonies take it in a sort of whole-tone direction), but all of a sudden we end on a c major chord.
the french is too long to put in the title and fairly useless for those who read this anyway.
i'm trying to make a comeback on this blog after viewing the stats feature and seeing that sometimes folks from random other places (switzerland? australia, apparently??) land here. sorry for the leave.
true to form, ravel put this piece in three different forms and it's hard to find a recording of the version i know best, the "suite" of five orchestral pieces. i think it's best known in its original piano duo form, a fairly easy little set which he composed for two children of close friends of his (his second family, of sorts, after his father's death). the piano duo version was composed in 1910, and the year after he orchestrated it. in 1912 he added two new movements to the orchestral version, and this is usually the version that orchestras play and record today. anyway, today i cover the suite in its original form, which is obviously not quite as colorful as the orchestral format but lovely in its simplicity.
i could put a more illustrious recording up, but part of me has always been enamored of fantasia enough to have a long-held dream of continuing its vision of pairing animation with classical music. i don't think i would usually want to promote a single set of images over another, but ravel was pretty obvious when he named these pieces and inserted blurbs before every one that he wanted kids to be able to access these pieces through stories. (actually, he fails to insert blurbs before the first and last pieces. but the first one is so short and the last one so colorful that the music serves fine in these cases.) so this little animation exercise won me over immediately, and the playing is beautiful and simple.
the pavane of the sleeping beauty is a scant 20 bars in a minor, clocking in at less than two minutes. in the orchestral version the lines are carried by soft solo winds, and tiptoing pizz in the strings. the meter and form don't really follow the "pavane" technically, but there are two adjectives which typically get paired when talking about pavanes: slow and stately, which both describe this movement nicely.
i was originally going to post this on my normal blog but then realized that it is far too boring and possibly technical for my friends to read without being completely deterred from ever reading my blog again. so this will now go on the blog which everyone who reads should know that by doing so they are getting into some serious and potentially technical discussions of music!
i have come to the realization that at the youth orchestra nobody even thinks about half of the things that i used to worry about and would still find at or near the top of my priority list were i actually in any sort of position of authority. i guess this is a reflection of my inexperience, because these are generally the same things that i found influenced my view of the orchestra as an organization when i myself was in it. the real world is far less organized in the ways that we're made to believe when we're young. of course one would expect some degree of this, but it seems to me that sometimes it is actually just ass-backwards, not just done for mere simplification's sake. i guess this is pretty patently obvious, but sometimes it's surprising the places one comes to this realization.
what forces me to realize this over and over is everything having to do with governing a string section, which is of course something i was worried about way back when as well. but now that i have been through this on so many angles (student, student leader, administrator, judge, conductor) i'm pretty sure that i have a degree of authority on the issue.
i have such a problem with verbosity, it's really starting to actually hinder my e-mail communication because i think people get intimidated by the amount of text i set down. so in a nutshell:
1. seating in bare order of how well the kids do on one audition is dumb. this teaches them and their parents all sorts of wrongheaded things about "chairs" and "levels" and "scores" that never apply in an actual orchestra rehearsal or concert, get people all riled up over nothing, and pigeonhole all the players who can't play anything together in the back of the section where it's hardest to play.
2. on the other hand, there is merit to the idea of seating auditions, since they are premised upon the time-proven generalization that kids generally don't practice unless they are held accountable in some way, and an audition is definitely the easiest way of doing this - and there's no way to make them responsive to the results of an audition unless it is patently clear that their seat is related to how well they do on the audition. one can come up with a sort of seating chart whereby every chair in the orchestra is tied to the numeral "score" the student receives on their audition and the quality is distributed throughout the section in a way which still makes clear who did the best and worst. but this seems quite overprescriptive and micro-manage-y to me.
3. two alternatives:
a. a slightly scaled back version of this extreme dictation would be to simply publish the scores/evaluations - and then to seat them however one wishes in order to achieve an integrated section anyway. essentially the same thing without the headache of having to come up with a seating chart of score numbers.
b. to seat everyone in order of their scores anyway, and during the course of the rehearsal season, mix up the section on a rehearsal basis. less controversial. perhaps more confusing for divisi and such, but i would call this a minor concern.
4. as for seating auditions themselves, and concertmaster auditions for the violins, it makes absolutely no sense to publish the excerpts they will be asked to be play at the audition, in advance of the auditions themselves. i'm not sure who came up with this idea but it is the one currently in practice at this orchestra and it completely defeats the purpose of making the kids practice the music, by ensuring that they pretty much limit their practice to the two or three lines which are asked for. at most, certain pages or movements can be specified in advance, one easily understands why having to practice an entire program to perfection can both dilute the quality of practice and overwhelm a student.
5. concertmaster auditions might have a blind component, but it makes no sense for them to be visible and for seating auditions to be blind. they should include a committee of people (flexible). they should include a solo component. and the excerpts asked for should certainly not be forecast.
6. parents should suck it up and learn that seats - except the first two - don't matter at all.
For today, I have some piano pieces i was fortunate enough to hear live in paris this summer.
i love the way kempff accomplishes these. he takes slow tempi, but they are full of deliberation and conviction. i think everything brahms wanted to come through does so magnificently in his interpretations. there's just a hint of melancholy which keeps it from being virtuosic (the way it sounds when rubinstein, for example, plays them), but for me they don't sink into dirges or anything like that.
in order, the pieces are:
No. 1. Intermezzo in A minor. Allegro non assai, ma molto appassionato
No. 2. Intermezzo in A major. Andante teneramente
No. 3. Ballade in G minor. Allegro energico
No. 4. Intermezzo in F minor. Allegretto un poco agitato
No. 5. Romance in F major. Andante
No. 6. Intermezzo in E flat minor. Andante, largo e mesto
these were written in 1893 and composed for Clara Schumann. there's much to be said for performing them as a set, as the keys not only form a relationship based on the second (Am-AM-Gm-Fm-FM-Ebm), but the secondary key areas for all the middle sections of these pieces are also linked tonally in ways which i won't go into here (a reasonable link discussing these relationships).
i think kempff does a good job of bringing out some motifs that will catch your ear across all six pieces, another reason for performing/listening to these all in a group. the first is grandiose but runs the danger of getting thick. it treats its keys ambiguously in the best of brahmsian fashion, sounding in F Major for the first statement, and only in the developmental middle section does it begin to yearn for an A minor cadence - which it actually only reaches for the first time in the piece at around 1:00. and the piece actually concludes in A Major, the key of the second work.
here i think Brahms does some of his best voicing. as a result the important motifs are pretty much clear as day. my favorite moment in this respect is in the middle section which is in F minor, where you hear the descending motif in the right hand but also augmented in the top notes of the left hand, at the same time (around 1:39 and much more clearly again about 10 seconds later). the result is a lot of parallel sixths ringing out of the texture. the same thing emerges in the latter half of the development section which is more urgent and as a result compressed.
for now my personal favorite is the more lively ballade, no. 3. i enjoy the dovetailing of the left hand accompaniment with the melodic notes in the right. harmonically the most interesting thing is that while the introduction is decisively in g minor (with a second statement in e-flat major), it utilizes g major dominant chords (the V of iv) to gravitate the middle section towards B Major, which isn't really anything in G minor but found by chromatic motion. The same with the brief modulation to D-sharp minor, (enharmonically E-flat minor, but he spells it as the former).
the transition back to g minor involves a move to G Major first, and the same chromatic adjustment to a-flat major, C dominant 7 again, then V-i to minor.
the very last chords are an unusual cadence from VI-i (eb major to g minor, first inversion).
now we find ourselves in f minor, with an unsettled set of triplets that switches from hand to hand. for me the magic happens in the middle section, which is a placid section of held chords which move over a tolling low note in the left hand. when the recap comes it is outspoken rather than muted, and never quite regains its composure until the end of the piece in glistening f major, the key of the next piece.
for me the thing that strikes me immediately about this fifth piece is that even though the tune our ears will gravitate towards is placed in the middle - he knows that we'll notice it because it is the quickest-moving voice, with the nice eighth note pattern coming in later variations - the top voice is to the letter the same as the descending theme in the middle section of the a major intermezzo (no. 2). the middle section, in d major, is fluttering and ethereal. the moment when it plummets into d minor is pretty remarkable, at about 2:33. at the moment before the recap he writes an A-Bb trill which goes up, characteristically and ambiguously, to a C-D trill which suggests C Major, the dominant to F, without ever actually stating it (both the E and G are missing).
the beginning of the sixth piece is the most ambiguous of all, with a dislocated play on Eb-F-Gb which turns out to fit into a fully diminished A7 chord, giving pretty much no indication of where we are now. we settle uneasily into Eb minor about 20 seconds in, but series of thirds and the lack of any real cadence in the tonic key along with the murmuring in the left hand (including plenty of diminished chords) destabilize the tonality. we hit a little detour into D-flat Major/B-flat minor, which take us into the relative major of Gb for the middle section, where it stays for all of three bars before veering into the minor areas of Bb minor.
for me it seems as if the entire piece revolves around the note of Gb, but fitting it into as many different contexts as he can get to. brahms had a thing for the ambiguity of the III, and here i think he pivots around it quite characteristically.
there are some words that simply carry more heft when you see them in a tempo marking, and "giocoso" is definitely one of them. this is the only movement which is actually inclined towards virtuosic display.
milstein video for your viewing pleasure.
this is pretty standard rondo form, or sonata-rondo form if you prefer. A section those jolly double stops at the opening; this will be the refrain.
0:58 B section - crazy arpeggios, slurred, spiccato, followed by ascending octaves. this first time it hints the entire time at A major, though it never actually resolves into it. the refrain of the A section comes at 2:12.
2:27 transition begins to a C section which starts proper at about 2:48. this is more lyrical, though no less technical for it. this section starts to feel a bit developmental; the lyrical theme is taken into several key areas, revving up around 3:30 and dovetailing into the ascending octaves from the B section right at 3:43. this a bit of a recap; the B section is now in a different key and cadences in D.
an F-sharp minor statement of the A section brings us up to speed for a lead-up to a cadenza section which includes thrilling ascending chords and octave leaps.
5:18 is a remarkable section - completely new material, fresh and songlike, very much Bach-inspired. this only lasts a short while though, before a series of trills ramps it up again and brings it to the dominant chord needed to set up a short cadenza full of arpeggios.
6:31 the final statement of the main theme except now in a galloping 6/8. this adds a romping quality which is broken briefly by a section of virtuosic play on the latter half of that theme, only to return to the triplet rhythms and loud orchestral tutti descending arpeggios leading us to the wrong place a couple times (note the weird e-flat major chord at 7:15) allowing for just a bit more play on the original theme before a final declamatory statement of brilliance in the 6/8 rhythm, which sets off the coda at 7:28. from there on the movement seems to wind down before finally throwing the last surprise, three triumphant chords to finish.
sarasate famously refused to play this concerto because he did not want to stand idly by while the oboe played the "only tune" in the second movement. but what a tune! and it's not as if the violin doesn't get to play it.
heifetz/reiner.
soloist enters at 2:14 with a variation on the oboe's melody. it is a simple melody, and the violin part merely adds endless ornamentations onto it.
a shift at around 3:08 has us landing in the faraway key of g-flat major. this is the beginning of a development which is really more like a rhapsodic interlude; a passionate outburst at 3:50 brings out a whole new melody which is angst-filled and reaches new heights of melancholy which are explored in the rest of this middle section. this middle section is characterized by seemingly aimless meandering by the violin part alternating with returns of the passion demonstrated at 3:50. the violin part gets ever higher until the shimmering high d at 5:13. after reaching this apex, all holds still for just a moment, and then violin begins a set of downward octaves which is actually the recap: you can hear the oboe playing an abbreviated version of the exposition melody as the violin descends.
he winds up this melody to a more passionate climax this time: building it up beginning around 6:08, he uses the horn to nudge the violin up to ever-higher heights, until it ends on a high C and, after holding the harmony almost unbearably, has no choice but to wind down.
the coda is short and quiet, but listen to the diminished d chord that pops out of nowhere at 7:47 to intensify the final V7-I cadence.
ok for me blogging this piece is a monumental task because of the status it claims in my personal musical tastes. i am quite sorely tempted to merely post up several different recordings from youtube and compare them as a violinist, but as i will be learning it this summer from a conductor's perspective, i shall try to take a more musicological tack on it.
brahms wrote very few concerti: two piano, one violin, and one violin/cello. unfortunately he never got around to writing the cello concerto which we brahms aficionados will always long for. but this violin concerto, written in 1878, is definitely one of the greatest of the greatest.
it's very difficult and (despite lots of input from his friend joachim) not especially violinistic, and most folks attribute this to the fact that he was a pianist by nature and perhaps not as capable of writing idiomatic stuff as, say, wieniawski (who actually called this concerto "unplayable." his violin concerti are ridiculously difficult as well, but very much in the violin idiom). but the counterargument goes that he wasn't trying to produce a virtuoso showpiece (which IS what wieniawski specialized in), but rather a symphonic concerto, which is supported by the fact that originally he had wanted there to be a fourth movement (a scherzo as third movement). apparently his original two middle movements both "fell through," but he instead "substituted a feeble adagio," what we know of as his second movement. anyway, when you remember this "symphonic" characterization, think of his second piano concerto, which he completed three years later in 1881.
there is absolutely no doubt that there are at least ten fantastic recordings by the best violinists on youtube, so pick your favorite. this is milstein/jochum, 1975, totally stunning, not often heard.
the fact that this concerto was in so many ways an homage to beethoven is evidenced mainly in this first movement, with the long, long orchestral introduction which actually goes quite a ways into developmental material before circling back and allowing the violin to enter, at around 2:37.
the first subject, the rising third followed by the falling triad, is moved around until finally the violin is able to play it with the full songfulness it deserves, at 4:05. even then, the violin continues winding its way up and down arpeggios, sixths, thirds, around and over the actual melody in a very brahmsian way.
one program note writer says that there are two "markers" which provide some structural decipherability: one is the descending woodwind fourths at 6:10, which herald the entrance of the more feminine, lovely second subject. this is given in a major/minor, with the transformative modulation being quite subtle and under the radar - actually for a while the second subject sounds like it is still in d. the second subject includes a very typical brahms hemiola at 6:59, followed by a very mournful descent into a reflective lament which seems to bring the music to a standstill.
this is abruptly interrupted by the second "marker," the more aggressive, dramatic chords at 7:49. this brings the music back to its original turbulent opening (of the violin solo), and concludes the exposition, in the dominant key.
the development is all over the tonal map as usual. it opens with a bit of new material - dark, mournful chords, which soon evolve into flighty series of halfsteps, followed by aggressive trills and a very dramatic section in which wide intervals are split all over the fingerboard. an orchestral crescendo builds into a huge d major cadence at 1:32 of the second vid. this is the recap, though it doesn't act like one; actually you can hear the horns trumpeting the main theme behind all the strings' arpeggiating sixteenths. but it dovetails into material exactly from the exposition, 1:56 being analogous to 4:44 of the first vid, except now in d minor. he goes on to state the rest of the first theme as well as all of the second in the correct key, leading us up to the cadenza spot.
the coda after the cadenza is one of my favorite two minutes in all of music. it starts off dreamily, allowing the orchestra to just sneak back in hovering after the cadenza, but as the harmonic and dynamic intensity increase and the violin's arpeggios get up into the stratosphere there are some truly sublime moments, especially the one that finally brings it over the edge into a celebratory set of chords (that is incidentally probably the most difficult section in the entire movement outside the cadenza...)
this last movement is in sonata rondo form, in 6/8, in our home key of e-flat major.
this movement alternates between rolling and rollicking. it starts off lovely and graceful, but then has short outbursts of virtuosity with lots of sixteenth note runs for everyone.
development at 2:30 with the entrance of the viola. starts as the beginning, but very quickly modulates to several other keys, hinting for a while at g major, but bypassing it to continue around the circle of fifths in on of the explosions of sixteenths, ending finally at 3:35 in a dovetail into part of the exposition.
4:50 is the true recap, though, and the galloping part is the beginning of a coda which will bring the whole work to a grand close.
more will be added to this entry once i actually study this piece and get a clue as to this movement, but i couldn't leave the last movement hanging :) enjoy.
this minuet is in e-flat, has two trios, and is slightly more poised than the first minuet.
it sounds harmonically very much like the first minuet, but in the second section of the minuet there is a bit of a halted moment, where everything stops for just a moment before resuming as normal.
first trio comes at 1:18; it is in a mellower a-flat major and the melody is given by the viola. the second section plays in the dominant, and there is even a brief development in the middle, featuring sustained diminished chords.
the second trio, at 3:06, is a bit more jolly and fun, with a venture into the relative minor in the middle which is more energetic. the violin gives an arpeggiating tune with a cool bit of rhythmic augmentation in the middle.
the last repetition of the minuet includes even more mozartean moments of ornamentation, along with a little coda.
This movement features a set of theme and variations in b-flat major.
this is a bit hard to parse because there is no space in between the variations, so i will include lots of markers here.
theme is relaxed and pretty standard. two parts, both repeated. the first consists of a pretty standard eight bar, the first four bars half cadence and the final four cadence. already on the repeat, mozart starts varying, so it sounds a bit like a new variation, but the second part of the theme has yet to come. it takes us to harmonically new territory - c minor, f major, then cadence in b-flat, and then rounds it off neatly with a four bar "coda." again, the "repeat" of this second section is already quite different from the first time.
1:37 is the first variation, mostly for the violin. the viola receives the melody, while the violin plays a sort of descant. the repeat features some more difficult arpeggios for the violin, which are carried on in the second section.
3:06 is more boisterous, and gives a sort of conversation to the violin and viola, which alternately play parts of the melody and triplet arpeggios. the cello also gets to contribute his bit in the second half.
4:44 suddenly the jollity halts and we are given a much more solemn variation, in b-flat minor. wistful dotted rhythms and sustained notes are exchanged in equal part between all of the instruments.
6:16 back to the realm of the major, and the cello sustains long notes of the melody while the viola plays a sort of alberti bass and the violin has mad scales and perpetual motion all over the place. he does a bit of slicing and dicing, as the variation doesn't exactly adhere to the original theme, but that is because he is about to hit a coda. the other two instruments get their share of the perpetuo moto, but then all of a sudden we're back in the realm of the theme, which brings us to a relaxed close.
this minuet is cool because of the opening hemiola effected by the accompanying chords.
standard a-b-a minuet. we're now back in e-flat major, but the opening section gives us a taste of c minor (relative), and cadences in b-flat. second section, beginning at 1:00 and returning quickly to the opening material to round off in e-flat after a cool bit of extended playing on the main material.
2:40 trio, takes us very quickly in and out of b-flat major. the second section of the trio features some interesting "echoes" from the viola and cello, and an elided cadence at around 3:30 allows the viola to come up and take the violin's role out of nowhere.
this second movement is the slow movement in sonata form. it is written in a-flat major, the subdominant to e-flat. elegant, full of moonlight, and plenty of cadenza-like moments for everyone, it sounds just like a serenade to me.
it starts, like the first movement, with a simple arpeggio, but this time turned on its head, coming from the cello, from the bottom up. before long it settles into a comfortable flow, and a lot of the little figures from the violin sound to me like they could be unmeasured - simple ornamentation over the bed of the viola and cello.
at around 1:30 there is a modulation into the dominant, e-flat. the second theme is a series of modulating arpeggios and is basically an extended cadenza for the violin. the exposition ends in e-flat.
2:57 development, on the opening figure (the ascending arpeggio), then diminished chords over the pedal C in the cello. this development, too, is extremely short. recap at about 4:08. the recap is basically the same but for a few extra ornamentations in the cello part. mozart begins redeveloping almost immediately, ensuring that the rest of the recap falls into place in the key of a-flat. sometimes he takes the time to stop and smell the roses, adding an extra half bar or so here and there with moments of repose.
7:19 is a bit of a coda, spearheaded for the first time by the viola. there is a surprise fully diminished chord, and this gives the final chords a greater sense of satisfaction at the end of the movement.
i have been assigned to perform this piece in a short festival i am attending this summer, so i thought i would get a head start on learning it. the piece was written in mozart's all-famous summer of 1788 (the most well-known feat being that he composed all three of his final and most well-known symphonies during these weeks). it is a string trio for the problematic ensemble of violin, viola, and cello, and it was dedicated to a friend of his who lent him money (michael puchberg). he premiered it that september playing the viola part.
true to the form of a divertimento, it has six movements, but in all other respects is basically a string trio work. most program notes point out that it includes two minuets, a set of theme and variations, and another slow movement in sonata form, but is not generally seen as the "light" music that the name 'divertimento' otherwise suggests.
the ensemble is problematic because it lacks fullness generally. this is an impression i get almost always listening to this ensemble - with one more violin it is generally easy to take care of, which is why the quartet has become such a staple ensemble of chamber music. but mozart does a great job of covering for it in this work.
the first movement is a standard allegro in sonata form.
exposition from beginning up until about 2:30, where it repeats. the theme, beginning with a descending e-flat arpeggio, is cheery and sunny, but elegant at the same time. a modulation into b-flat along with a second theme comes at about 0:45, a bit more lyrical, but not exactly dolce - still plenty of texture in the other parts. i enjoy how he prolongs the real cadence until quite late, spinning out many arpeggios and extended solos for the three instruments until finally rounding it off.
development begins at 4:50. he starts with the same figure that opens the movement, but then moves it in astonishing directions, contrasting it with a rising figure in whatever instruments accompany it. 5:15 a bit more movement and strife, and this moment reminds me a bit of the corresponding section in the first movement of beethoven op 18 no. 1. the strife dies down quietly, and the development is actually extremely short, leading to a recap at 6:00.
redevelopment at 6:34. cadences in the correct key of e-flat, so that he can begin the second theme in its rightful place. the movement ends without coda.
5. CSC's most important goal in rehearsal with the orchestra was to always show the orchestra that you are listening to them. this is a good tie-in to point number 1. a conductor should never presume that he knows more about what is important than the orchestra musicians themselves do, and it's usually pretty obvious when a conductor expects something to happen and tries to prevent or encourage it without hearing whether it actually has happened. the first day of the class, one of the auditors was conducting beethoven 1 first movement, and when an important but sort of scrubby moment came for the seconds, she held out an arm to them and shook it vigorously, shouting, "MORE!" over the din. it was epitome high school teacher, and represents this point rather well. conductors should never do anything without making sure it is needed. the fact of the matter is that the orchestra, in most cases, can handle itself perfectly fine. a conductor has to make sure that what he does will not merely be ignored by the orchestra, so it is in everyone's best interests to minimize extraneous conducting. from an orchestra perspective, nothing is more annoying than a conductor telling you to do what you believe you were already doing.
6. soloists should be able to participate in a collaborative process. the conductor should never expect that the soloist behave like just another musician in the orchestra. having performed as a soloist before, i feel all of this is quite natural for me, but it was surprising the number of times that other conductors in the class, for example, simply lifted their batons and started without making sure the soloist was ready. there was often a sort of lack of interest in the soloist, leaving him to merely be expressive and awesome on his own. there were also a number of spectacular fails in terms of staying together with him, but i will chalk that up to it being difficult to hear a soloist behind you and an orchestra in front of you at the same time. but of the six participants i thought only one or perhaps two showed a particularly keen interest in taking care of the soloist. there was one person in particular who managed to completely arouse the ire of CSC by his manner of brusqueness towards soloist and orchestra, which, whether he meant it to or not, came off as arrogant and interfered with his listening to the soloist several times, resulting in a pretty spectacularly embarrassing rehearsal. like in point 5, it is not important just to listen but to give everyone the impression you are listening as well, by looking at them (which only one person did very often with the soloist) and engaging them visually. after all, you have nothing else to engage them with.
7. this last point is simple. one should always try to carry the sound with their gesture. every beat and every motion in between every beat should be able to "carry" something, and if a beat is given too easily it cheapens the music. of course, sometimes music deserves ease and lightness. and there are conductors out there who simply are able to give music easily, without becoming too engaged about it, and actually this is generally what professional orchestras prefer (at least, compared to someone who tries to demonstrate everything and is generally seen as "too eager" to a jaded bunch of musicians). CSC drew us a lineage of conductors which included two main schools - those who were stately, clear, and a bit more reticent; and the lineage he himself is part of, which is effusive, expressive, and heart-on-sleeve. having been taught by bernstein and ozawa it's easy to see why this is the case. but even if one is part of the other school it's never the case that they want to make light of the music. ease is good, but too much ease is a bit cheapening. there was one person in particular at the class who never quite got this.
OK, that concludes the recap of the CSC masterclass. back to normal music blogs!
i may as well try to put some of the more technical bits of the class, even though they don't translate well without a video of some sort.
1. my notes say simply "center/roundness." what i get for not writing these entries sooner is having forgotten a lot of what happened, but CSC was always talking about the fact that we hold the music in front of us. it's quite important to always have a sort of groundedness. this is something i struggle with every time i'm on the podium. it's tempting, especially at beginning levels for people who feel like they have a lot to give, to try and demonstrate everything, which not only is very difficult but rather excessive. most orchestras do not require one to give most things, and to try to do so is very confusing to look at, not to mention it betrays your lack of confidence in the orchestra to count their rests.
feet in the same place, and a "round" arm shape which allows a "space" for the music. another easy habit is to let the elbows fall too close to the sides (or sometimes, raise them too much so it doesn't look natural).
2. a very simple tenet of elbow-wrist-finger/baton movement is that whenever one of these components (usually the elbow or wrist) moves, the other should not move. this is generally good, and protects against the danger of moving all two or three joints at once, which gives your gesture multiple (and contradicting) impetuses, and all of them get amplified by the baton. but anyone who has tried to actually be expressive with their hands knows that you can't only use one of these joints at the same time. so a better principle is that everything, from the wrist to the tip of the baton, should move in direct relation to how far it is from your elbow. the wrist itself bends slightly with the first movement of the elbow to give an impetus, but by the time you reach the bottom of the gesture everything from the elbow to the baton should be straight.
3. rebounds are things we give thoughtlessly. but whether we give one or not can make a world of difference in how clear our gesture is. we forget that they can be sources of information, but they will indicate things like: whether the note is long or short, whether it extends to the next beat (whether the next beat will be merely an information beat), what the character of the note is, how quick the cutoff is or how quickly the next note will come. most importantly, rebounds are sources of information for the note after. they are upbeats which happen to have a note on them. we have to constantly be aware that the rebound is not going to change the attack of the previous note. if you give only a rebound (upbeat) and no ictus on a downbeat, people will still play according to the character of that rebound.
4. he made sort of a big deal about using the structure of a piece to memorize it. i think this is a self-explanatory point, but perhaps there is something i'm missing. he gave us an excerpt of beethoven 9 third movement, and it was so long before we got around to talking about it that i don't remember much of what was said, but he wanted us to be able to understand the structure - how many bars of this before it changes to that, how to piece the whole excerpt together with a sense of its apex, development, etc. unfortunately i can't say much more on this point, but another important corollary is that it's important to be able to search a score in your mind, at least for the important parts.
according to CSC, there is a basic typology of beats:
Command
Information
Reaction
the analogous words in most any conducting textbook will be easy to find - i think commonly used are "active" and "passive" (analogous to the first two, with reaction falling in the "active" category). but this is a better typology because it articulates what the response from the musicians is supposed to be.
command is a beat that one expects something to happen right at the ictus of, or one given as something is in the process of happening. in every case, of course, if one wanted to count out loud in time to your pattern they should be able to do so. but this particular type of beat lets one know that you are supposed to say the word out loud, and in ideal cases how loudly and with what sort of articulation. it gives you the impression that the conductor is saying: here. here. here. there is an affirmation of sound.
information is just that, and nothing more. this happens, for example, when one musician, say a concerto player, has an extended solo section that none or very few of the instruments in the orchestra play during. the important thing about information beats is that they let the players know where in the music you are, but never incentivize the orchestra to actually play on any of said beats. the moment someone accidentally comes in (who was at all watching you), your beat has turned from information to a command beat. the information beat is interesting because we often forget when to use it. it is useful in places where the whole orchestra is playing but nothing is happening on a said beat (say if everyone had a half note in a slow tempo). the first beat would be a command beat, but the second beat of the half note would be merely information, because there is no action on it, even though everyone is playing. this is one of the easiest things to forget about using. its inclusion gives one's conducting a sensitive, various look, which avoids the stereotype that the conductor is merely a glorified metronome.
a reaction beat is tricky: it must show that you expect nothing to happen on the actual ictus of the beat, but that you DO expect something to happen directly afterwards (and the quickness with which it happens is manipulable in the gesture as well). usually this involves a slowing or complete stopping on the ictus so one can make the sudden action required to inspire a reaction. the easiest thing to do with this is to forget about the stopping. if one makes the quick motion on the beat, something will happen after, but the difficult part is preventing anything from happening on the beat, which is what the slow motion/stop is for.
carl st. clair (hereafter referred to as CSC) told us perhaps the third or fourth day into the workshop that the mission of conductors could be encapsulated in two words. he made us guess for a while. it turned out that the answer was "creating atmosphere."
this is true in many senses. while obviously some will debate that that is the sole or even the most important focus of conducting, perhaps the only other thing that one could say that was as important and not able to be really included in that very broad mission statement would refer to ensemble, coherence, and the fact that originally conductors were only required to keep large groups of musicians playing in sync. i don't think that one can really include this as a branch of "creating atmosphere."
nevertheless, it is an extraordinarily illuminating perspective. the discovery point, for studying conductors, would have to lie in what that statement isn't. in some ways it seems broad to the point of meaninglessness, but notice that is is not: keeping rhythm. leading players. inspiring music. or even: creating music.
and once we look at this particular verb and this particular noun, we can understand more of why a conductor exists.
the fact that it doesn't have to do only with leading, directing, or demonstrating is by now obvious. a conductor never wants to be seen as "the leader." s/he never wants to give off the impression that s/he is "in charge," bold, the guy/girl who is going to tell everyone how to do it. these are all positive descriptors, and strictly speaking, preferable to the opposite. but none of these are the point.
the same is true, perhaps, for verbs like "inspiring," "projecting," "portraying." these verbs have a quiet implication that the conductor is the music, and the musicians are the tools he uses to express what's inside. while that is partially true, there is in some sense a wall set up by verbs like these - the idea that inside the conductor is what must be expressed, and it's his job to sort of align all the musicians with his vision.
i'm going to go ahead and platitudinously state that what these verbs perhaps lose sight of is the fact that the conductor does not produce any sound himself. and for that revelation the second word is much more useful than the first, in my view. what else might one put in the "noun" blank? line, phrasing, information. but two at-first-tempting options - sound and music - should actually be conspicuously absent from the list (and all the subsets they imply). the conductor produces no sound. what on earth is he going to create? he can't create phrasing, the musicians do that. he can't create the conviction in the sound that impacts the audience so much. the musicians do that, too.
for every second, once the music begins to be produced by the musicians, the conductor has virtually no control over what is going to go out to the audience. there are two spaces: the space before the music is produced, and the space during and after. the conductor deals exclusively in the first. he creates the space in which the musicians place their music. by setting up a room in different configurations one can manipulate the comfort level, intensity, energy, and mood of what goes on inside it. but once those things start happening there is virtually nothing one can do (with regard to the room's layout). the conductor hopes that what is inside him will be conveyed by the atmosphere he sets up before the musicians start playing. but he can't lead the charge into what actually happens, because he never actually takes part in the "happening" stage. he creates the atmosphere via his own energy; then the musicians play as they will.
i think the reason i like this portrayal is because of its humility. many people want to stand in front of an orchestra because they feel they are qualified, entitled, or enjoy leading people. i'm not really any different. but it's great to have a mission statement that doesn't really emphasize the fact that we happen to be standing in front. in fact, we only stand in front so that people will be able to see us, and that's the only thing that enables us to create any atmosphere at all. if nobody were looking at us (or sensing us, or whatever), then they could also just look at someone else. or not anyone at all.
Anyone following this will have realized by this point that i'm having a lot of difficulty catching up, or even keeping up with my every day commitment in the meantime. i think there is something about having fallen behind in the first place that made me feel like it was no big deal to add the additional day, and since i've fallen behind i've gotten used to having to do at least 4 or 5 entries at a time to make me feel like i've made any progress. so obviously i fall even more behind because the bear of having to do 5 entries in a day is quite big. so i'm not sure how to continue because at my count right now i am a total of at least 33 days behind, over a month. i'm still going to try, but i feel like calling this a 365 blog at this point is sort of dishonest.
in that vein, the next group of posts will be a series in reflection or recapping the events and lessons of the 2011 ithaca international conducting masterclass, which was held last week. i was privileged enough to be invited as an auditor. the whole experience for me was not a turning point but a great opening door for me. here were, in a non-technical sense (subsequent posts will be devoted to technical/concrete lessons i learned or was taught), the major insights i derived from the class.
1. as the baby of the group at 23, i learned that i still have quite a while to learn how to make this work. of course, it will be hard if, at 30, i decide not to try anymore and then have to get a job in a field i haven't been engaged in for the last several years. but hopefully at that point i will be able to weasel my way into some sort of arts administration, where i can at least be engaged in work for a cause that matters to me, even if i'm not actually doing work that i love.
2. these types of conducting workshops are THE primary method/avenue of engagement, learning, and community building for conductors. In any given locale you aren't going to be able to get a bunch of conductors together the same way you can have a bunch of violins or singers or wind instruments; after all, they are not only very busy but also far in between. even if there happen to be a number of ensembles in one city all with different conductors, they are likely to be different enough and work in ways such that the conductors will not often need to get together and chat about their work.
3. technique building in conducting has always been fuzzy. in the case of the clinician, CSC, it seemed as though his technique building phase came mostly from sheer self discipline. he talked quite a lot about how he used to practice his patterns on a rotating weekly basis, 2 pattern on tuesdays, 3 on wednesdays, etc... and how he used to just lay in bed trying to see whether he could conduct some pattern, waiting for music to come along so he could "attach" his technique to do it. there isn't really a consistent school out there like suzuki which has established these things, much less can teach it. to a degree that's nice because conducting isn't as if you're playing an instrument - but there are still right and wrong things to do, and it's difficult to figure out just how much right is "right" and how much is actually helpful. figuring this out, though, seems to be an act of self-study, and few people are out there who have either the time or patience to sit down and tell you what you're doing wrong in such an exact sense.
OK, that did take me less than 15 minutes to write, maybe i should just turn this into a "music reflections" blog :P
and now we've finally reached day.
this movement is in C major, and essentially a rondo with the opening bombast as the refrain. note the riotous timpani, and affirmation of the key.
1:50 begins the B section. It is light and playful, reminiscent of the first nachtmusik (but wittier and more playful) as well as the fifth movement of the fifth symphony.
2:45 return of the A section, except in a sort of different meter, with the strings playing an eigth-note variation on the original. it is also spliced and diced with itself. the true return doesn't come until 3:57, with the return of the theme in the trumpets and the clarinet.
4:57: a sort of C section, in a bit broader tempo, marchlike, but not aggressive - in fact it almost immediately makes its way into a sort of boisterous country-sounding theme in the violins with lots of dotted rhythms (then incorporating snatches of the music from 2:45).
6:00 A section again, a half step up. this is c-sharp instead of c.
6:41 the theme almost immediately sinks back in to a C" section, with the slower rhythm, featuring a number of really fantastic violin and wind solos. it broadens to the strings, and slows to a sort of wistful dance that is rudely interrupted a few times by odd brass fanfares, e.g. 7:46 (after which it immediately turns around and goes back to the same old, as if ignoring it).
the second attempt succeeds, though, and the music is accelerated back to the tempo primo, quickly spiraling out of control in a sort of mad whirl which the trumpets call back into order. i have trouble making sense of this movement past this point; it seems to want to be everything at once. at 9:13 after a long ritardando, you get another trumpet call which seems to imply that the movement will soon be over, but not even close.
the beginning of the second video features a return of the B section, with ever more chromatic plays on the trills in the rustic theme. a unique section here features a bunch of fluttertongue as well as saltando bowing from the strings.
the next return of the A section at 1:28 seems to dead-end quickly, and we get another of the same whirling climaxes around minute 8. instead of being interrupted, it slows to a halt, and then segues into C music, almost opposite of the way it ended the last time.
this movement has posed the most trouble for musicologists, historians, and myself as well. writing this entry i can't help but just feel like i am merely pointing out the musics of different sections, only if one were to map them all this movement would have like 20 sections. however, the conclusion is brilliant and exciting, and exceptionally satisfying, one of mahler's best i think (especially the way bernstein does it ;) not everyone has that horn slide...)
the second nachtmusik, this one is in f major, and gives much more the impression of a romantic evening; with the addition of classical guitar and a mandolin and unique writing for the harp, the movement takes on a leisurely songful serenading mood full of atmosphere.
this was apparently schoenberg's favorite movement, the one he went to in his defense of the symphony.
note the trills by the mandolin, sustained notes that pop out from the texture.
about 5:20 the music takes a sudden drop, adding undercurrents of dissatisfaction and a lot more dissonance until suddenly, the graceful music of the nocturne bursts out again.
the second theme is given by a solo cello at about 6:26. it's more song than dance, lyrical instead of lilting. later on, it alternates with snatches of the more playful music, which is usually accompanied by the plucking of the mandolin. but gradually becoming more saturated with heavy emotion until it hits a stride.
there are a few moments of stillness; everyone sighs in relief and repose. but then the violins burst in with the emotionally-laden recap.
2:22 is a hardcore throwback to one of the climaxes in mahler 5 adagietto, if you know that movement well.
almost immediately he steps back and begins a climb to a frenzied sort of buildup which is more active than any of the music we've heard in this movement so far. he seems to change his mind almost immediately, though, returning to the initial mood.
4:08 coda; we hit a glistening fmajor chord in the strings, and the high f seems to stutter for a moment, throwing in a bit of uncertainty to the wind utterances, in terms of key and tonality. with some hesitation, the music gradually revolves around the right center, and comes to a gentle halt.
this is a pretty self explanatory movement, but fascinating to listen to. it's in d minor, but shifts around spookily, dropping out into different keys, turning everywhere. one music critic described it as a "most morbid and sarcastic mockery of the Viennese waltz." the movement is full of things that go "bump" in the night, weird shrieks from the winds and shadowy flautando scales from the strings. there are a variety of effects such as what we've come to know as the bartok pizz (pizzing so hard that the string hits the wood),
3:17 begins a little more lilting but still somewhat grim middle trio section; this only lasts a couple minutes, but swoops and slides forward and backward with sudden intrusions of fast in a melody that keeps trying to be stately but can never manage it. note the prominent viola solos.
5:10 theme comes back.
5:48 sudden halt with a bang of the timpani; music gradually restarts again, but understated and spooky. it gradually adds layers until it builds up to another climax.
movement ends with a timpani and pluck out of nowhere.
this movement is in c minor but floats in between that and c major so often that it wouldn't be completely wrong to say it was in c major.
the first of two "nachtmusik"s, this is the spookier one; a bit darker, having the mood of a quiet march (he described it as a depiction of an evening patrol).
we begin with a horn call which rises majestically like the moon over winds giving swirling bird calls and more crawling figures which might depict some of the other things moving about in the night. eventually the horns get to state a full sentence of their theme, one of the best, i think, that mahler ever wrote. i really like how it switches back and forth on a dime, between minor and major. the tattoo that gets iterated underneath it is quiet but very marchlike, true to the image.
3:49 marks the second theme in a-flat major, a sudden departure into a fast waltz like melody and lyricism which occasionally throws in some of the heavily dotted figures from the march, but overall maintains the broadness and loveliness of some of his most pastoral work. at 5:35 he brings an extended, improvisatory sounding version of the opening horn call, and even throws the cowbells in here for good measure.
at 6:35, the opening horn melody comes back, and we repeat some of the exposition before departing into a development of sorts. with a pluck of the harp and strings and some swirling trills in the winds, the oboe introduces a wistfully dancelike c minoir figure which dominates this middle section; this gets woven in with lots of motifs from the opening, until it climaxes like the chattering of night creatures reaching its apex. it spills over and seems also to disappear into nothing.
with that, we return to the wistful figures of the beginning of the development, but now transformed into a duet for two celli. this is one of my favorite moments of the entire symphony.
two plucks of the harp bring us to a standstill and then we begin a climb back to the recapitulation, which blooms at 1:45.
3:33 is the equivalent of the waltzlike second theme. except here he turns it into a sort of carnival feeling atmosphere, throwing in xylophone and cowbell. around 5:15 this becomes meshed into the march.
the movement ends quietly, with a smattering of pizz and a g harmonic from celli and harp, leaving it ambiguous as to whether it concludes in major or minor.
this symphony was written from 1904-5, but didn't get premiered until 1908 in prague. in the meantime a lot of changes had happened in his life; he had resigned as conductor of vienna, his daughter had died, and he had learned of his own incurable heart condition. a lot of musicologists cite this as the basis of a lot of the darkening revisions he made to the symphony during those three years.
the whole symphony clocks in at somewhere between 80 and 90 minutes. it can't be said to be in one key, because it opens in e minor which becomes b minor in the first movement; goes to c minor in the second movement, d minor in the third, f major in the fourth, and c major in the last. this is a concept known as "progressive tonality" (where the piece doesn't bother to cycle back to a supposed "home" key but instead moves and ends in an altogether different one).
the symphony was well received but not tremendously popular, and has more puzzled critics afterwards than anything else. it's worth noting, though, that this was the symphony that won schoenberg over to mahler's support, and he wrote mahler after hearing the first performance, saying that it was a great treat to hear the symphony and he didn't know why he hadn't seen the value in mahler's music up until that point.
from some things mahler hinted at, we know basically that he thought of this whole symphony as a sort of night transforming into day. the first movement sets a foundation for the entire thing, hence all of his rapid switches between moods and interruptions of lines. the middle movements are three night songs, which depict night in a variety of ways (the second and fourth are called nocturnes; the third is a creepier rendition). and the last movement, in his own words, are "broad day."
the first movement begins in b minor, ending in e major. it's in sonata form, though so long that you might not even recognize it. because it's so long i am not going to give a blow by blow, but just point out some interesting things.
the introductory melody is played by an instrument we know as the baritone horn, but mahler wrote "tenorhorn" in his scores. the rhythm that the strings play muttering underneath it will come back several times; as ever, mahler is great at introducing disparate themes and then mashing them up later in quite ear-catching ways. one thing i think that comes out in particular in this symphony, especially this movement, is the use of augmented intervals, or intervals that are just one half or whole step larger than you would predict them to be. when ascending they produce the stretches that guide him into a different key, and when they are descending they make the bottom drop out of the music.
2:56 is when the music morphs into a sort of militaristic march/dance that dominates the movement. this is the allegro "risoluto." it is a bit amorphous, grotesque, then darkening.
6:00 is a slow second theme, almost honeyed but still taking some surprising whirls out into a space you don't expect. we are brought back to the march to close the exposition.
this second vid is basically the development. you hear the opening solo of the tenorhorn again, but then we almost immediately spin into a weird mishmash of all the themes up to this point.
notable in the development are several points where everything seems to just stand still. one such is at 3:10, where the stillness is interrupted by a faraway trumpet fanfare and some birdcall like gestures in the winds, which sort of recall the march from the beginning. the harp b major gliss transforms the world into an idyllic vision before a long journey back to the recap around 6:20. the basses rudely interrupt with the falling figure from the beginning, and brass gradually incorporate some of the martial themes from the exposition into a huge B major climax in which all the strings come in. it seems like it's going to be affirmative, but then suddenly falls into a crunching b minor. throughout this section we always get the sense that the music is trying to rise into the major, but keeps being pushed down or turned in the wrong direction.
finally we reach the big e major, and this is more or less where the rest of the movement will stay, with the exception of a brief idyll in g major (around 2:00), the equivalent to the slow theme in the first half.
one set of program notes i found for this movement describes the march at the end of this movement as curiously bittersweet. i think this comes from the destabilization of keys. marches are usually affirmative, stable, and this is not, even though the end is triumphant enough to at least imply how the symphony itself will end.
for preparation for conducting auditions, my teacher suggested that i be able to write down the title of this thing, in french. um... yea, i mean, i can sort of do it...
prelude to the afternoon of a faun is based on a poem by the same name by poet stephane mallarme, a symbolist artist and critic. it was written in 1894 and eventually became part of a ballet. the prelude itself is considered one of the cornerstones in the compositional/tonal development, a sort of set-up for 20th century tonality.
this and almost all other french compositions of the time were all works that would have likely not been composed were it not for paris itself. while vienna, salzburg, berlin etc all had thriving musical exchange, it's hard to find any place that music got as truly integrated into the artistic scene as paris. by this i mean how artists across disciplines constantly produced works that were directly inspired by their contemporaries. the sheer number of gatherings that ALWAYS involved artists from all corners made it inevitable. that's of course not to say that artists in other countries/cities didn't know each other or of each other; of course they did. no single body of work from one place reflects that bond as strongly as anything produced in paris during the 19th century.
this is the original poem, which was published in its final form in 1876. you can pop it into a translator to read. but the premise is just about the lazy afternoon of a faun (a mythical creature of the forest half goat half human). he is playing some pipes as he watches lustily but lazily at the passing forest nymphs and naiads. after he fails in his pursuit he drifts off to sleep and has lots of sketchy dreams.
though the poem has a sort of plot, the piece is very atmospheric - it basically is meant to evoke a mood, and not really to portray any events, though you might liken some of the elements in it to those found in the piece (such as the sinuous lazy opening flute line, which you might hear the faun playing at the beginning of the poem). it's possible that it is meant to represent only the first part of the poem - the lazy adulation of all the forest creatures - because debussy originally planned for there to be two other movements (they were never written). but all in all it is not so much a tone poem as a mood piece (or, appropriately, just a prelude).
this is the only recording i can find that is interesting on youtube...
stokowski apparently on his 90th birthday.
this piece is hard to dissect because it is so languid and so well blended. i'll give it a rough shot.
we begin with a slow flute solo, slithering up and down, accompanied by harp glisses and gentle swells of the strings. this is marked tres modere. it comes and goes in speed and intensity, but the flute line remains a constant presence. sometimes it finds its way to the sunlight. the writing here reminds me a lot of his first nocturne, nuages.
3:31 a new section, new instrumentations - whole tone scales given by solo clarinets and flutes, with a shadowy collection of skittering celli and pizz underneath. one can imagine lots of sinuous visions flitting by.
at 4:00 we have the beginnings of a swell that will spur the piece to a higher level of intensity; strings come out lushly, and the harmonies get a bit brighter, but still nebulous. at the last moment there is a retenu, and we return to tempo primo dreamily at 4:59.
5:27 is a shift into a different key area, a sort of d-flat major. the new motif given by the winds here reminds me a lot of the third movement of pines of rome. this new theme is quite a bit sunnier, and is accompanied by ongoing harp arpeggios and triplets which grind against the strings' duple rhythm melody. a minute later everything dies away and we have a rendition of that same melody but now played by one solo violin, with the triplet figures in gentle solo winds.
OK, instead of finishing this sort of play by play i'm just going to paste something i wrote for a class in which this was one of the listening assignments we had to respond to. that week was debussy/ravel, a bridge to twentieth century tonality. i think the nature of this piece is described a bit more aptly below. for me the prelude has no boundaries, internally. there are sudden moments of clarity which we can grab onto, but otherwise it is just like being in a drug induced haze or a dream. the reason this piece was such a big deal was because of its real lack of tonal center, and that's mostly what i've written about below.
These pieces display a nebulous, constantly shifting tonal center and a pushing of the traditional boundaries of functional harmony (or in many cases throwing it out the window). There aren't really chord progressions or modulations in the usual sense, instead, Debussy uses alternative scales (the whole-tone and pentatonic, often) and moves around keys as if they have been mapped out in a field according to both their parallel and relative keys, resulting in a lot of surprising key changes in enharmonic keys (different approaches which seem to converge on the same key, substitutions, etc) which make both his and Ravel's music really difficult to read on a string instrument, except perhaps the harp, which is built to move around keys in just such a way. In this sense both composers' music, while extremely difficult for harpists, seems to suit the instrument rather well.
There are a lot of tritones and other augmented intervals (from the whole-tone scale or some other alternative to the traditional diatonic scale) that lend themselves to the feeling of "enharmonicism," the feeling that the intervals occupy a function somewhere in between different keys, and may allow the music to change harmonic "centers" on a dime.
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The poems that Ravel and Debussy both selected to set to music have an ethereal, somewhat lazy, misty quality in the word choice and subject material that is well-evoked in the music of both these composers.
Allegro molto — Lento — Vivo — Allegro non troppo e maestoso — Tempo come I
see previous post for the first half of the movement vid.
this movement is extremely virtuosic and impassioned. as is implied in the title, it's kind of a mishmash of the previous themes, set in a new light, as well as a little bit of new material (the festival, etc) the first minute or so is alternation of a furious orchestral representation of the suite's opening motif, the sultan (who will kill scheherazade at any moment, it seems, but for his curiosity about the stories she tells), and a newly impassioned version of the scheherazade leitmotif, which is now even more ornate, faster, and flamboyant.
the carnival begins at the vivo, 7:47 in the video. the softly galloping theme is given first by the flute, then by the strings. then rimsky begins his typical process of repetition with augmentation. a second part of the theme comes in at 8:37, slightly broader (in rhythm only; the tempo remains the same). 9:09 brings the return of a third movement theme - a brief few moments of nostalgia. but without warning we are snapped back into the tempo and mood of the festival, with quick and piquant colors and rhythms. one of the program notes i read notes that the flavor of the polovtsian dances that rimsky had just been working on with borodin's score comes out particularly in this section of baghdad revelry. see for yourself.
this section goes on for a while, but i won't bore you by describing what rimsky does with the motif; it's all the same music, but he reinvents it by inserting shorter or longer sections of hiatus, playing with the rhythms (duple time, triple time, quadruple time) alternating it with that third movement melody, using different instrumentations, and usually adding some additional little lick in some instrument to accent it, usually from an entirely different section of the piece. we finally come to a more satisfying cadence, where we find ourselves all of a sudden right in the middle of the raging sea from the first movement (4:37).
from here is a depiction of one of sinbad's (many) shipwrecks. the swaying waves are augmented by even more chromatic swells from the winds, a rolling bass drum/timpani, and sustained chords from the brass. the shipwreck happens on a plummeting chromatic line starting in the violins, then, with a final fanfare from the brass, all is quiet.
6:27 is the beginning of the final section; the mood is stricken, the waves are still there, but calm now, and the reappearance of the chorale figure from the first movement reassures us that it was all just a story. scheherazade's voice comes in again to conclude the movement, which ends quietly - as most stories do.
