how to listen to music if you don’t know your Beethoven from your Bach, XV – what’s a rhapsody
“Rhapsody of Steel“ (1959)
________
so what’s a rhapsody
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Tag: Romanticism
June 1, 2023
a rhapsody is in the eye of its
April 26, 2023
how to listen to music if you don’t know your Beethoven from your Bach, XII – on rhapsodies
“Rhapsody“ (1958)
_____
if, in my last instalment, I compared iconic
funeral marches, let me do the same for
a couple of iconic rhapsodies, another
musical form that came and went, that’s
come and gone, but not forgotten
what’s a rhapsody
as far as I can make out, it’s much the
same as a fantasia, if you can remember
what a fantasia is, a free form composition,
but with a Romantic, which is to say a
heartfelt, twist, more pathos, less
technical wizardry
Gershwin wrote his Rhapsody in Blue
in 1924, you can hear New York, Times
Square, Broadway, from the first wail
of the languid horn
Rachmaninov’s Rhapsody on a Theme
of Paganini, written in 1934, ten years
later, gives you, however, Vienna, its
Romantic Period, the traditions of,
a century earlier, Beethoven, Schubert
Rachmaninov is personal, introspective,
tragic, Gershwin is extroverted, social,
fun
Rachmaninov looked back to his
European, Old World, traditions,
Gershwin augurs an entirely new
voice
listen, you can hear it
enjoy
R ! chard
February 16, 2023
how to listen to music if you don’t know your Beethoven from your Bach, Vll (cont.)
“The Music Lesson” (c.1769)
Jean-Honoré Fragonard
_______________
having spent too much time, perhaps,
giving context, from Classicism to
Romanticism, in my last communication,
brought on by the worlds that open up
to me when l Iisten to this kind of music,
rather than imparting specific information
about how to sharpen one’s aesthetic
sensitivity, about listening rather than
just hearing, this time I’ll get technical,
if you’ll allow, with the help of the same
two pieces, Mozart’s 16th piano sonata,
Chopin’s 3rd, how are they different,
how are they similar, how do they
compare
first, similarities, they are both sonatas,
pieces of music consisting of more than
one segment of music, traditionally, three
or four, Mozart here has three, Chopin
four
Chopin doesn’t diverge from the trinity
of imperatives that Mozart set up
during the Classical period, tempo,
tonality, and repetition, the pace of
the music remains constant within
the parameters established by the
directions at the top of the page,
an adagio doesn’t change its beat
throughout the movement for either,
nor would an andante, a presto, an
allegretto
this will change
neither does any element of the
music produce discords, tonality
remains mellifluous throughout
for both, lilting, harmonious ever,
even often, in either, enchanting
this will also change
and everywhere, a flight of musical
invention will eventually return to
its original source, and you find
that you’ve come back from a sonic
adventure to home base, where the
whole thing starts all over again,
repetition, a condition considered
essential, until relatively recently,
to the definition of music
this will also change
but how are they different
listen to the decoration, Mozart
applies trills to individual notes,
a flutter of adjacent tonalities
to set the central one off, like
glitter, the twitter of birds
punctuating, here and there,
the stillness of a forest
Chopin colours his entire
keyboard with arpeggios rather,
runs up and down the scales,
turning melodies into not only
delights, but stepping stones to
entirely other dimensions,
extrapolations from the original
tune, seemingly spontaneous
evolutions, the first burgeonings,
incidentally, of jazz, before returning,
notably, to his original air, much as
Mozart does, to his core statement,
fulfilling the Classical requirement
of repetition
here’s Mozart, trilling
here’s Chopin, arpeggiating
how to tell your Chopin from your
Mozart, how to sharpen your
aesthetic sensibility, listen, listen
R ! chard
February 11, 2023
how to listen to music if you don’t know your Beethoven from your Bach, Vll
“The Wanderer Above the Sea of Fog” (1818)
Caspar David Friedrich
_____________
by now, if you’ve been listening,
you’ll probably easily tell your
Chopin from your Mozart, even
without looking
if not, the one who isn’t Mozart
is Chopin, the one who isn’t
Chopin is Mozart, cause you’re
likely to recognize the one if not
the other
here’s Mozart’s Piano Sonata
no 16 in C major, K. 545, from
1788, which even Mozart
deemed “for beginners”, but
its very elementary qualities
suit, here, my purposes
here’s Chopin’s Piano Sonata
no 3 in B minor, Op. 58, 1844,
some sixty years later, the
epitome of the Romantic Era
Mozart is Classical, the foundation
of the shape and sound of music
in the West, think of Oriental music,
Chinese, for instance, opera, as an
alternative inspirational direction
he sets, along with Haydn, incidentally,
the parameters of Western music, I
call it its grammar, tempo, tonality,
and repetition, its hallmarks, its sine
qua non, as we say in Latin, its trinity
of imperatives, its without which there
would be no Western music as we
know it
Romanticism, after two revolutions,
the French and the American, comes
along to turn all of that into literature,
prompted by the spirit of democracy,
the first expressions of it since Caesar,
Ancient Rome, where earlier,
everywhere, kings had ruled, and by
extension, even more autocratically,
the Church, for monarchs had
received, morally, and consequently
politically, from it, their mandates
from God
one man, one vote, even theoretically,
upended that entire metaphysical
construct, therefore Romanticism
everyone had a voice, everyone had
a story, the birth of the individual,
and of, by extension, human rights,
for better or for worse, see above
therefore Chopin
listen, Chopin is the new Jesus,
prophet, but for a new age
stay tuned
R ! chard
December 28, 2018
Études – Chopin /Debussy
“The Ballet Class“ (1871 – 1874)
Edgar Degas
________
ballet dancers will attach weights
to their ankles during exercises
to add lift to their legs when they
are on stage, such is the point of
études for a piano player, a
workout for the fingers before
public performance
Chopin, however, made them, by
themselves, works of great art,
followed by, among others,
Debussy
here’s Chopin, his Opus 25
here’s Debussy, his own “Études
pour piano, Livre 1“, or Book 1
how are they different
you tell me
listen
R ! chard
psst: this is an easy one, Chopin is
Romantic, Debussy, manifestly,
is not, Debussy is Impressionistic,
it is a new perspective, you can
hear it, it’s textural rather than
emotional, indeed, it’s even
abstract
but nearly a century has gone by,
and Impressionism is the new
aesthetic, the new preoccupation
which belongs to not only the
painters, let me point out, but to
all the arts, for better, once again,
or for worse
September 26, 2018
Piano Concerto no 1 in D minor, opus 15 – Brahms
“The Wanderer above the Sea of Fog“ (1818)
_____________
if Beethoven built the Church, along
with Goethe maybe, of Romanticism,
and be assured Romanticism is an
ideology, a moral outlook, a
motivational perspective, much like
the economy is nowadays,
supplanting any more humanistic
imperatives, Brahms put up one of its
Cathedrals, just listen, the First Piano
Concerto is a monument, as mighty
as the Cologne Cathedral musically,
right next to Bonn, incidentally,
Brahms‘ birthplace
with the disintegration of the
supremacy of the Catholic deity
at the onset of the Protestant
Reformation, Luther, Calvin,
Henry Vlll and all that, bolstered
by new discoveries in scientific
speculation, that the earth wasn’t
flat, for instance, that it revolved
around the sun rather than the
other way around, contradictory,
though convincing, voices began
to abound, excite question
in the 18th Century, the Age of
Reason, the Christian Deity fell,
never effectively to be put back
together again, see for Its final
sundering, Nietzsche
in France, after the Revolution,
the Church was officially removed
from political consideration,
countermanding its centuries of
morally heinous depredations,
the United States had already at
its own Revolution separated it
from State
Romanticism was an answer to
a world wherein there might not
be a God, a world with, however,
a spiritual dimension, to respond
to the clockwork universe
envisioned by the earlier epoch,
the Enlightenment, a world where
everything could be categorized,
analyzed, predicted
Romanticism called for the
inclusion of inspiration in the mix,
there are more things in heaven
and earth, Horatio, than are
dreamt of in your philosophy,
as Shakespeare would, for
instance, have it – “Hamlet”,
1.5.167-8
poets became prophets thereby,
if they could manage it, very
oracles, the world was blessed
with, at that very moment,
Beethoven, far outstripping the
likes of, later, for example, Billy
Graham, or other such, however
galvanizing, proselytizers,
whose messages would’ve been
too, to my mind, literal
for music cannot lie, obfuscate,
prevaricate, music cannot be
fake
and then there was Schubert,
and Chopin, Tolstoy, Dickens,
Elizabeth Barrett Browning,
Robert, her husband,
Tchaikovsky, Caspar David
Friedrich, the Johann Strausses,
Byron, Shelley, Keats, whose
artworks, all, are as profoundly
in our blood, our cultural system,
as, if not more so than, our
present information about the
details of our Christian myths,
despite a superfluity of them
even, throughout the long
indeed Middle Ages, and right
up to, and including, the still
fervent then Renaissance, for
better or for worse still, for us
what Romanticism did, and
specifically through the work
of these seminal artists, was
give each of us a chance,
show us how to come
through trial and tribulation,
what a faith does, any faith
it said, here, this is my dilemma,
and this is how I deal with it
for me, Beethoven’s 32nd
Piano Sonata is, soundly, the
epitome of that, but listen to
Brahms put a stamp on it
with undaunted authority
we might be ultimately of no
consequence in an indifferent
universe, they say, but, hey,
this is what we can do, and
do gloriously, while we are
at it
Woody Allen picks up the
purpose in our own recent
20th Century, following in
the earnest footsteps of his
Existential mentor, the much
too dour, I think, Ingmar
Bergman
but that’s another story
entirely
meanwhile, listen
also watch, the conductor here,
a complete delight, is right out
of “Alice in Wonderland“, I
promise you’ll love it
R ! chard
August 28, 2018
First Symphony, “Winter Dreams”, opus 13 – Tchaikovsky
Pyotr Ilyich Tchaikovsky (1866)
______
for Elizabeth, who said she’d
“be all ears once it happens“,
this first of my Tchaikovskys
the example of Beethoven was
a hard act to follow, no one
nearby, which is to say, in the
vicinity of Vienna, which had
ruled the musical world for
more than half a century, from
Mozart to late Beethoven,
would be able to match his
eminence, not even the,
however mighty, Brahms
but in the East a star was born, in
1840, of extraordinary dimensions,
to tower above the High Romantic
period, which shone with, were it
not for its distance from the
European central galaxy,
comparable brightness
Beethoven had written for every
instrument, every combination
of instruments, every voice,
every combination of voices,
no other composer had, nor
has since, done that but the
incandescent Tchaikovsky,
who’d ever ‘a’ thunk it
symphonies, concertos, string
quartets, sonatas, variations,
ballets, operas, liturgical
pieces, there wasn’t anything
he didn’t touch, and transform
into magic
here‘s an early work, his Opus 13
only, in order to get chronological
perspective, and, as I pursue this
compelling trajectory, a sense of
his musical evolution, his First
Symphony, “Winter Dreams”*
listen for troikas flying across
the steppes, hear the bells tingle
from their fleeting carriages, be
swept away by the exhilarating
majesty
R ! chard
* Simon Bolivar Symphony Orchestra,
Joshua dos Santos, conductor
June 5, 2018
twice upon a dirge – Beethoven / Chopin
“Owl on a Grave” / “Eule am Grab“ (c.1836 – c.1837)
_______
following my nose rather than
my intellect in my exploration
of musical treasures, like a very
Aladdin uncovering at the click
of my password a cave full of
priceless wonders, I might find
stuff out of sequence, but gems
nevertheless, and I can’t just
whisk by without acknowledging
them, however peripheral to my
main task
it’s like heading towards the Eiffel
Tower in Paris, and not stopping
at the Arche de Triomphe
though I’d debated so soon
presenting these two pieces,
not because of their chronology
especially, though also that, but
mostly because of their dour
content, I’ll point out that the
move from Classicism to
Romanticism is the transition
from dance music, delightful
music, to drama, passion,
powerful emotions, dirges,
therefore, are not out of place,
however mournful
thus the two most famous
funeral marches, Beethoven’s,
Chopin’s, the third movement
in either of their home sonatas
the clincher for me was the
immaculate performance of
the Chopin here, a revelatory
moment, though the Beethoven,
significantly earlier, the tune,
1801, 1837, is nevertheless
unimpeachable, however still
underdeveloped – four variations
only in the first movement, for
instance, and all of them
elementary – the caterpillar had
not yet become the butterfly, the
apple blossom the apple
note that each movement in the
Chopin, apart from the last, has
two distinct tempi, executed
effortlessly and nearly
imperceptibly, a total of six, you
can’t see, you can’t hear, the
seams as you listen, which, with
its virtual therefore episodes,
conflicting and tortuous
emotions, constitute collectively
a drama, a narrative, music has
become literature
the last movement of the Chopin
moves beyond even tempo –
Beethoven’s also, incidentally,
nearly – creating therefore a
very challenge to it, both trying
to transcend tempi, an area to
closely watch
Beethoven’s Piano Sonata no 12
take your pick
both are supremely, mark,
instructive
R ! chard
February 20, 2017
“First Piano Concerto” – Pyotr Ilyich Tchaikovsky
“Concerto“ (1975)
_____
if there’s a piece that defines Classical music
for most people, encapsulates it, even for
those who aren’t especially interested in
Classical music, that piece would be, I think,
Tchaikovsky‘s “First Piano Concerto“
strictly speaking Tchaikovsky isn’t a Classical
composer, but a Romantic one, the Classical
period in music having been transformed
some years earlier into the Romantic period
by none other than Beethoven, 1770 – 1827,
perhaps the most transformative composer
of all time – Tchaikovsky‘s “First Piano Concerto“
was written in the winter of 1874 – 1875, pretty
well at the end of the Romantic Period, which
then ceded to the Impressionists, just to get
our periods right
what the Romantic Period added to the
Classical Era was emotion, sentiment – note
the use of tenuto, for instance, beats being
drawn out, languidly, longingly, for pathos –
what it maintained was the structure, the
trinity of Classical conditions, rhythm, tonality,
and repetition, which is why even the most
uninformed listener will usually be able to
sing along throughout the entire performance,
the blueprint is in our collective blood, in the
DNA of our culture
to remain present a piece must remain
relevant to the promoter, an interpreter must
have reason to play it, substance surely plays
a big part, but technical considerations play
perhaps an even greater role towards a great
work’s longevity, “Chopsticks“, for instance,
is good but it won’t fill a concert hall
unless, of course, it’s with Liberace
the “First Piano Concerto” of Tchaikovsky is
the Everest of compositions, emotionally
complex and technically forbidding, nearly
impossible, it would seem, were it not for
those few who’ve mastered its treacherous
challenges, conquered its nearly indomitable
spirit
Van Cliburn put it on the map for my
generation, with a ticker tape parade in
New York to confirm it
Martha Argerich later on kept the ball rolling
and now Behzod Abduraimov, a mere youth,
born in 1990 in Uzbekistan, Tashkent, delivers
by far the best performance I’ve seen since,
giving it new life for the new millenium
behold, be moved, be dazzled, be bewitched
Richard
February 28, 2016
Bassoon Sonata, opus 168 – Camille Saint-Saëns
______
for my sister
a competition program that pits
youngsters against each other,
but on a variety of instruments,
with some operatic voice, has
riveted us to our sets on Friday
evenings, seven o’clock local
time throughout Canada
out of the province of Quebec,
however, and therefore in
French
“Virtuose“ lives up to its name
with extraordinary performances
from mere children, and some
adolescents, you can catch all of
the past episodes, and performers,
on their website
last week a young man delighted
us with a movement from a bassoon
sonata, an unlikely instrument, of
Saint-Saëns, his opus 168
my sister expressed surprise,
un basson, she marvelled
quickly I sought out, of course, the
full composition, it’s otherwise for
me like reading one chapter only
out of a book
it’s a short piece, no longer the
grand statements of the earlier
Romantic Period, but a series of
pastiches, fleeting impressions,
impromptu ruminations rather
than extended dissertations,
something like what I’m doing
here with these texts
you’ll recognize also a similar
approach in other composers of
the period, Debussy especially,
but too Satie, Ravel, Poulenc to
name only a few, the speed of
the new century precluded
extended musical peregrinations,
you’ll remark on the dearth of
symphonies, concertos,
composed during this epoch
the composition is in G major, my
cleaning lady had come over, was
already busy in an adjoining room
at the time, I was nearing the
end of the first movement, the
allegro moderato, a wistful
evocation of spring, I thought,
an innocent, fragile blossom
unfurling its delicate petals
with unaffected grace and
unconscious poetry
the final note sounded, the
bassoonist removed his lips from
the tube, but the note kept on
playing, coming, as I soon
understood, not from the video I
was watching, but from the other
room, Jo had turned on the
vacuum cleaner
o my god/dess, I uttered, hurried
over to where she was, subdued
my enthusiasm in order not to
unduly rattle her, as I brimmed
with my scintillating insight
your vacuum cleaner vacuums in
G, I gushed when she turned to
acknowledge me, it continued the
last note, I explained, of the first
movement of my sonata, Saint-
Saëns’ – say that three times with
a lisp, I interjected – until you
turned your vacuum cleaner off,
which is also, I pointed out, a
wind instrument
her delight was modest compared
to mine, however ever nevertheless
congenial, and quickly she returned
to her duties
I went back tickled pink to my
monitor and the following
movement, the sprightly and equally
enchanting allegro scherzando
Richard
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