November / Month of the Sonata – 20
Richibi’s Weblog
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Tag: the First World War
January 17, 2023
how to listen to music if you don’t know your Beethoven from your Bach, cont.
The Stolen Kiss (1788)
Jean-Honoré Fragonard
_____________
if you listened to the couple of pieces I
recommended in my last commentary,
you would’ve indeed recognized, if
even only subconsciously, that the
first work wasn’t composed by the
composer of the other, that different
spirits infused either
a visual representation of the same
thing might be to juxtapose a
contemporary painting of the one
epoch with a corresponding painting
of the other
over a hundred years had passed
between Mozart and Prokofiev,
Mozart’s Piano Sonata no 18, K576
– his last piano sonata, incidentally,
he died a short two years later –
was written in 1789, the year of the
French Revolution, a still safe
distance from Vienna, where
Mozart could still cater to an,
however endangered, species
Jean-Honoré Fragonard, a contemporary
painter, 1732 – 1806, had been doing the
same thing, The Stolen Kiss, 1788, for
instance, a mere year earlier, see above
meanwhile, over a hundred years later,
inches only away from the First World
War, Matisse is doing in art what
Prokofiev is doing in music, taking the
temperature of his own time, Seated
Riffian (1911 –1912) – a Riffian, a Berber,
a North African tribesman – see below,
to corroborate Prokofiev’s equally
emblematic vision of their shared era
you can hear this in the music
mostly through the difference in the use
of volume, languorous softs, thunderous
louds, but also in the more expansive use
of pace, fast, slow, the rapidity of some
notes, the embrace, the extended caress,
of others, in the later composition
which, in a word, follows the development
of the piano from harpsichord to the
instrument we’re used to today
Mozart still had the harpsichord in his ear,
he was writing for the fortepiano, which
evolved, through the pianoforte, to the
piano we know of today, no flexibility of
pace, no flexibility of volume then, listen,
hear, you can hear it in the juxtaposition
we hear a lot more than we think we
hear
R ! chard
__________
Seated Riffian (1911 – 1912)
Henri Matisse
__________
August 3, 2012
Debussy’s “Études”
“Man with a Guitar“ (1914)
______
while we’re on the subject of études, listening to
the other great set of these by Debussy, nearly a
hundred years later, 1830s to 1915, would prove
instructive, I deemed
picture me deeming, August 3, 2012, my brow
just slightly pensively constricting
if the basis of music as defined by the Classical
period depended on beat, tonality, and the repetition
of the tune, usually of both musical statements, these
apparently essential components of course would be
the first places to bear the scrutiny of probing musical
minds, seeking to find, seeking to set more expansive,
more profound dimensions to the areas of their quest,
that’s what artists do
and this of course is exactly what happened starting
with Beethoven, by the time of Chopin music had
relaxed its stricter Classical rhythmic precision,
allowing great expansive gestures in the more
malleable tempi, tempos, producing the effect of
more compassion and soulful examination than
the earlier less indulgent, more disciplined code
the fact of having musical tapestries, sound patches,
take the place of melody, narrative, in the musical
presentation of Chopin also suggests a more
diversified, dare I say prismatic, telling, than the
linear account of for instance Mozart‘s solitary
tuneful wanderer
it also evokes incidentally the vagaries of the
inconstant heart rather than its unflinching
condemnation, a repudiation of atavistic
Christian ecclesiastical intolerance
by the time the old order was about to be extinguished,
in 1915, at the onset of the First World War, Debussy’s
“Études“, like Chopin 12 of them per set, had seen
social injustice – see Charles Dickens, see Émile Zola,
see Karl Marx – the improbable discoveries of science –
Darwin, Freud, Einstein – the car, the airplane,
photography were changing everything, the old
paradigms no longer applied, were irrelevant, even
harmful, in this new context, the First World War
would prove all that
in the language of music, tempo, melody, repetition
would be inevitably subverted
Debussy produces erratic tempi, foregoes melody for
harmonic exploration, combining incidentally the
musical patches of Chopin with the intellectually
driven investigations of Beethoven for a more
cerebral understanding of music, a music for the
head, with expert displays of pianistic skill, indeed
prestidigitation, for, along with the intellectual
rigour, spectacle
is this then still music
is Post-Impressionist painting still art
what would 1915 have said
above is Georges Braque‘s nearly contemporary, 1914,
man with a guitar, who’d a thunk it
Richard
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