Working With the Composer
For next Tuesday's program, nothing is that hard (I'm no virtuoso) and everything is quite short. Alex and I decided not go beyond Babbitt, since this representation of a half-century of composers is already stretched too thin, with many important pre-1956 composers omitted. Bonus: most of these pieces are mentioned in The Rest is Noise.
Arnold Schoenberg -- Op. 11 no. 3 (1909, unrecorded by the composer)
Béla Bartók -- "Allegro Barbaro" (1911, recorded 1929)
Jelly Roll Morton -- "New Orleans Blues" (c. 1910, recorded 1923)
Charles Ives -- "The Alcotts" from Piano Sonata No. 2 "Concord, Mass., 1840-1860" (1916-19, revised later, recorded 1943)
Igor Stravinsky -- "Hymne" from Serenade in A (1925, recorded 1925)
George Gershwin -- no. 1 of Three Preludes (1926, recorded 1927)
Anton Webern -- No. 1 of Variations op. 27 (1936, unrecorded by the composer)
Charlie Parker -- "Moose the Mooche" (recorded 1946)
Dmitri Shostakovich -- Prelude no. 4 from Twenty Four Preludes and Fugues Op. 87 (1950-51, recorded 1958)
Milton Babbitt -- "Semi-Simple Variations" (1956, unrecorded by the composer)
To prepare the program, I am mostly playing along with the composer, a way of practicing I am accustomed to from jazz.
Béla Bartók
Bartók was inarguably the most virtuosic pianist of this group. He only taught piano, never composition, and recorded one of the great versions of Beethoven's "Kreutzer" Sonata with Joseph Szigeti.
"Allegro Barbaro" is the first of many barbaro pieces Bartók would write. Colorful folkloric percussion is evoked by a simple but effective device: the main tune dances on all white notes while the harmony encompasses the black. This stratagem would be used again by Bartók, György Ligeti, and many others.
The composer's whirlwind performance is faster than the given tempo marking, with the hardest parts of the piece shrugged off with maximum velocity and elegance. Nobody else on my program gives me as much trouble to play along with, and I probably won't quite be able to manage his tempo on Tuesday.
Bartók's constantly plays subtle, Hungarian-accented rubatos not usually marked in the score. It's a kind of longeur on the melodic repeated notes and a fast flourish on the longer lines. Playing along with "Allegro Barbaro" showed me that there was even more tempo fluctuation than I had first thought. [Footnote one.]
I was amused to discover that the usually meticulous Bartók plays the "vamp 'till ready" bars casually, literally "vamping until ready." For example, the vamp is for eight bars at measure 50 in the score, but Bartók plays six, and at bar 144, six bars of vamp are notated but he plays seven. I guess I won't worry about counting the vamps that accurately myself.
Jelly Roll Morton/George Gershwin
Morton's solo piano recordings from 1923 sound better to me every year, and I learned Gershwin's Three Preludes a few years ago for a fabulous Mark Morris dance. I chose to pair "New Orleans Blues" and the first prelude since they use the same rhythm, the division of 8 (straight 4/4) into 3 + 3 + 2. Around 1910, that rhythm would have been found all over the world except in non-Iberian Europe. This is the "Spanish tinge" mentioned when early jazz is discussed, although maybe it should have really been called the "Cuban tinge," since 3 + 3 + 2 is half of the son clave.
When comparing their performances, there is no surprise upset: in the "3 + 3 + 2 feel" contest, Morton kicks Gershwin's ass.
I also just think that Morton's piece is the better piece of music anyway. The final stomp chorus (with Morton laying back on the beat just a hair) delivers a kind of joy found only in early jazz. There's probably nothing better for my piano playing than playing along with Jelly Roll Morton. Hats off to James Dapogny for making it relatively easy to do so: his huge book of Morton transcriptions is a real feat of accurate and passionate scholarship.
However, Gershwin's playing is stiff only in comparison to a jazz master like Morton, not in relation to the classical piano tradition as a whole. Many classical pianists have played the Three Preludes since the twenties, usually with no idea of what they are doing. Gershwin wasn't jazz, but he loved jazz, and even hung out with the Harlem stride masters like James P. Johnson and Willie "the Lion" Smith. His bright and engaging piano style is right on the beat, without any of the rubato applied by later players. [Footnote 2.]
Gershwin's recording of the first prelude is spattered with wrong notes. However, he does play the final fast scale in fourths perfectly, which is the hardest part for me. Gershwin also reinforces the first beat of bars 3-6 with a note not marked in the score (it's a D two octaves above the low Bb). Why not? It sounds good. I'll play it that way too.
Igor Stravinsky
Stravinsky might my favorite composer on this program, but unlike Bartók, I don't feel that his piano performances offer a key to his language. (I adore his Concerto for Two Pianos, and the least inspiring rendition I have heard is Stravinsky's own.) However, he wrote Serenade In A specifically to have something to record on two 78's (Alex points out that he used the same Brunswick studio that Duke Ellington would for his
first recordings a year later) and the result is vigorous and solid. Playing along with the first movement, "Hymne," gave me more insights than I expected.
Serenade is an attractive work, not least for its endless supply of pretty melody. In "Hymne," it is not always clear where the primary melody is: sometimes it seems like it might be in the thumb of either hand. Perhaps the most revealing discovery I made playing along with Stravinsky was how he always emphasizes the top line, even when that is somewhat counter-intuitive (see especially the middle section beginning at bar 30). Playing it this way does make it easy to comprehend this work structurally. Another interesting detail is the way Stravinsky consistently emphasizes and
retards a descending three-note motif starting in bar five (it's not marked
that way in the score). [Footnote 3.]
Steven Walsh's book on the masterwork Oedipus Rex shows how some of the shapes from the opera stem from this piano piece. In his performance of "Hymne," Stravinsky uses the same kind of declarative attack that characterizes any good performance of the first movement of Rex. Pianistically, this brashness is closer to Jelly Roll Morton than Bela Bartók. What a shame we will never hear Morton play Stravinsky's "Piano-Rag Music"; he would have been the ideal interpreter.
Dmitri Shostakovich
Both Sergei Prokofiev and Dmitri Shostakovich were fine pianists, and posterity is blessed with recordings of both of them in major concertos and short solo works. I wanted to include something from Shostakovich at the Paris Bar because I found his chapter in The Rest is Noise so moving.
Shostakovich plays the little E minor prelude from his 24 Preludes and Fugues just as it should be played, with a penetrating and stoic Russian sadness. His performance is about a third again slower than his metronome marking. I will play it at the slower tempo, although I have heard pianists be convincing at the tempo given in the score. Tatiana Nikolayeva, the inspiration for Op. 87 and for many the definitive interpreter of these works, plays it even slower than the composer.
Charles Ives
When Alex suggested doing something together, the first thing I thought of was, "Here is the perfect reason to do something I've been meaning to for a while now, which is to learn 'The Alcotts' from the CD."
The Concord Sonata is a huge obdurate piece that changes people's lives. Because of its reputation, I have tried listening to it off and on for years…usually with little effect and the conclusion that I preferred Ives' songs and certain orchestral pieces. Frankly, I just couldn't get past the seeming absurdity of making a vast 45-minute piano piece based on the most clichéd quote in history, the first phase of Beethoven's Fifth Symphony. (See Jeremy Denk on "Da-da-da-dum.")
Charles Ives recorded bits and pieces of the first two movements of the Concord Sonata and a complete take of "The Alcotts." Ives Plays Ives is a bit of a mess, really, and mostly only for Ives students, performers, and scholars. However, it does contain two miracles of interest to anybody, the scalding "They are There!" (see Kyle Gann) and "The Alcotts," which was the beginning of my change of heart regarding the Concord. It is one of the greatest things I have ever heard, absolutely pure, beautiful, and authentic. It's like listening to Thelonious Monk playing one of his ballads such as "Crepuscule With Nellie" or "Monk's Mood." (I have no higher praise.)
On the last TBP tour I took along the score to the Concord and brand-new recordings of it by two heavyweights, Pierre-Laurent Aimard and Marc-André Hamelin. This immersion has finally made me a convert of the sonata as a whole. Both Aimard and Hamelin offer wonderful readings with the highest technical polish imaginable; as usual, Hamelin in particular plays certain passages impossibly fast and smoothly without forsaking passion.
The only question I have about both of these wonderful discs is how neither Aimard or Hamelin seem to reference Ives' own recording of "The Alcotts.'" I do appreciate that the structure of the Concord is exceedingly complex, and a performance of the complete work has to fit this mostly tranquil movement in the middle of three other massive movements. (Aimard makes the bold choice of playing "The Alcotts" especially slowly and softly, finally unleashing a triple-forte just before the close of the movement, making this climax especially powerful and the cornerstone of the whole sonata.) Still, I'd be curious to see what Aimard or Hamelin would say about Ives Plays Ives and how it influenced them (or not). [Footnote 4.]
I am in the enviable position of being an amateur classical pianist working on this repertoire for fun. This whole post might enrage a professional who has devoted their whole life to finding the truth in the printed score, not a transient recording.
At the same time, if I were to stop everything and devote myself to the Concord Sonata until I mastered it, I certainly would consider time spent studying and playing along with the CD Ives Plays Ives just as valuable as any other kind of practice.
For Alex, I will play the same version of "The Alcotts" that Ives did on April 24th, 1943.
Charlie Parker
Ellington is treated as seriously as Gershwin in The Rest is Noise, which is rare in a general history of classical music. There are many other refreshingly accurate and unsnobbish pages on jazz and pop. A few choice quotes:
There is so reason to belabor the point that le jazz was condescending towards its African-American sources. [Jean] Cocteau and [Francis] Poulenc were enjoying a one-night stand with a dark-skinned form, and had no intention of striking up a conversation the following day.
(…)
Although his [Aaron Copland's] comprehension of jazz went not too much deeper than that of his Parisian contemporaries ("It began, I suppose, on some negro's dull tomtom in Africa," he wrote), he did send a strong rhythmic jolt into American concert music.
(…)
Jazz was intuitive, intimate, collaborative; it was serious in thought but playful in execution. Steve Reich remembers attending composition classed where students showed off Byzantine scores whose intellectual underpinnings could be discussed ad nauseam. Then he'd go to see Coltrane play with his quartet.
(…)
As technology grew more sophisticated, tracks became monstrously dense: Public Enemy's "Welcome to the Terrordome" is the Rite of Spring of black America. Hip-hop relies on the speaking voice, but as Janáček, Partch and Reich have demonstrated at different times, there is music in the speaking voice.
Charlie Parker makes several appearences in The Rest is Noise. For the Paris Bar, I am going to play the head and the saxophone improvisation from the first recording of "Moose The Mooche." It's nice to have one thing on the program I don't have to practice.
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(Click to enlarge.)
We need to represent the hardcore moderns for "An Evening of Spooky Modern Music" to be spooky enough. None of these composers recorded as pianists, so instead I looked at a little of the performance traditions attached to each. [Footnote 5.]
Arnold Schoenberg
Schoenberg didn't play the piano. His music shows it. The massive difficulties of the Concord Sonata all make some basic sense when reading it sitting at the instrument, whereas Schoenberg's music is crammed with ungainly "special effects" not found elsewhere in pre-Schoenberg repertoire. The hardest thing to pull off are Schoenberg's spidery, far-flung pianissimo figurations. (In Op. 11 no. 3 there is fortunately only passage like this, viel rascher on the first page.) Even super-virtuosos like Maurizio Pollini and Glenn Gould can only manage the flitting leaping dissonances at about mezzo-forte when they really should be much softer. I'd love to hear Marc-André Hamelin in this repertoire, since his technique is geared so well for "special effects."
Eduard Steuermann was the pianist closely associated with the Second Viennese School (Schoenberg, Anton Webern, and Alban Berg). The first time I heard his 1957 Columbia LP of the complete Schoenberg piano music I was stunned; Steuermann seemed to be speaking the truth about this music. It is far from a definitive recording, since Steuermann did not have a really big technique, never playing that fast and seeming only to encompass a medium-soft to medium-loud dynamic range. (This is not nearly enough for Schoenberg's ferocious expressionism.) Still, Steuermann's affect is wonderful, especially on the gentler pieces, and perhaps the cloudy and compressed recording quality is partly to blame for the limited dynamics. You can listen to him on the extraordinary Schoenberg website (that's also where the above scan of Schoenberg's handwritten Opus 11. No 3 comes from).
Apologies for a corny comparison, but this music was the punk rock of its day. In 1909, Op. 11 no. 3 was a middle finger in your face, and it remains pretty shocking. I think we'll open the program with it.
Anton Webern
Webern's Variations are short, fairly easy to read, and really fun to play. These factors contribute to its place as the only twelve-tone work for solo piano that regularly turns up in the international concert repertoire. (It certainly gets more plays than Schoenberg's twelve-tone piano music, the frenetic suite Op. 25 and the rather lovely Op. 33 A and B.) In addition, a professional concert pianist always considers how a piece will sound in a good hall. I heard Krystian Zimmerman play Op. 27 at Carnegie on a program with Bach and Chopin, and Webern's slow dissonances glistened in the resonant acoustic beautifully.
The Variations are dedicated to Steuermann but he never recorded them. Peter Serkin's recording is very passionate and highly recommended. It's too bad that Serkin's father Rudolf didn’t record any of the Second Viennese School, since he knew them personally and apparently even studied their works with them.
Milton Babbitt
The music of the Second Viennese School has its rhythmic roots in central European tradition (it's quite helpful to hear a kind of evaporated Strauss waltz in your head when playing the first of Webern's Variations) but a generation later Milton Babbitt brought the New World accent to twelve-tone music. You need only compare Babbitt to Pierre Boulez or another fully-serialised European composer (there are hundreds) for Babbitt's "jazzy" dialect to become obvious. [Footnote 6.]
Robert Taub is the preeminent pianist in the Babbitt repertoire. His performances were the highlight of the terrific Babbitt 90th birthday concert at Weill Hall last year. One thing that he is especially good with is Babbitt's serialised dynamics: in a Taub performance, you get to ride a magic carpet of unpredictability.
I admit I find the dynamics in Babbitt too much for me. To play them really well as marked, even in the short and slight "Semi-Simple Variations," would require effort I am unable to spend. I will just do the best I can. However, perhaps because of his care with dynamics, Taub chooses not to emphasize a steady beat, which is what I can try to do instead.
After hearing me practice "Semi-Simple Variations" a few times on tour, Dave suggested playing some drums along at the soundcheck in Odense, Denmark. It actually sounded really good!
I asked Jonin to tape it, and then threw it into Peak and added compression and harmonic rotation. The result sounds a bit like twelve-tone Aphex Twin (of course, Aphex's tones would be vastly superior).
Download semisimple_remix_babbitt_iverson_king.mp3
Reid danced along and then eyed the score. "You know," he said, "I could double the low notes." The Bad Plus Plays Babbitt? If so, thanks to Alex and curator David Brendel for the inspiration!
