What a difference a typo can make!

From Chapter XII of Arnold Schoenberg's Structural Foundations of Harmony:

"My school, including such men as Alban Berg, Anton Webern and others, does not aim at the establishment of a tonality, yet does not exclude it entirely."

Huh? Shouldn't it be atonality? If it isn't a typo, I don't understand what he is trying to say.

Summer Strings Concert this Week

If you happen to be in East Central Illinois this Thursday, and are looking for a nice (and free) way to spend an evening, come to our Summer Strings concert at the Kiwanis Band Shell in Charleston (just an hour due south of Champaign-Urbana)! We now have a conductor (which really does make things easier for everyone), and have a program of new arrangements for string orchestra and harp.

After the concert I'm planning to make the new arrangements available (for free) to anyone who wants to use them for their (non commercial) pleasure. Send me an e-mail message, and I'll send you the PDF files of scores and parts.

Schoenberg vs. Intuition

In a 1912 essay (revised in 1948) about Gustav Mahler, found in Style and Idea, a book of Schoenberg's selected writings, Schoenberg tries his hand at understanding intuition (something Mahler had in spades):

Man is petty. We do not believe enough in the whole thing, in the great thing, but demand irrefutable details. We depend too little upon that capacity which gives us an impression of the object as a totality containing within itself all details in their corresponding relationships. We believe that we understand what is natural; but the miracle is extremely natural, and the natural is extremely miraculous.

The more exactly we observe, the more enigmatic does the simplest matter become to us. We analyze because we are not satisfied with comprehending nature, effect and function of a totality as a totality and, when we are not able to put together again exactly what we have taken apart, we begin to do injustice to that capacity which gave us the whole together with its spirit, and we lose faith in our finest ability--the ability to receive a total impression.

Musical Intuition

I have always compensated for a lousy memory and poor math skills with a highly-developed sense of intuition. I do not believe intuition can be learned by studying, and I do not think it can be learned by practicing. It is either inborn, or it develops (out of necessity) in childhood. Trusting it (if you have it) takes a while. Intuition is not celebrated in academia, particularly in musical academia, where "hunches" are not as respected as tools of analysis. Intuition should be respected in academia, because teaching, particularly private teaching, requires mountains of intuition in order for a student to accomplish anything. When I write music, I do it intuitively. What is not intuitive is sensual, and what is not sensual is practical.

I had an oddly intuitive moment today. I was talking on the phone with my cellist-friend Danny Morganstern, and he mentioned that he was practicing the Grieg Sonata. It has been years since I listened to the Grieg Sonata (perhaps the last time was when I heard Danny perform it). I told him that I have been listening to a lot of Grieg, and that I had three CD's worth of Lyric Pieces (played by Aldo Ciccolini) on the ipod that I take on my daily walks. I spontaneously sang a melody from one of the Lyric Pieces. Not only was the melody exactly the same as one of the melodies in the Grieg Cello Sonata, it was the very melody that Danny had been practicing right before our phone call.

During an unspecified time, somewhere, deep in my unconscious, I must have made a connection with a particular Lyric Piece (I don't even know which Lyric Piece it is) and the Cello Sonata. Out of the three hours of Lyric Pieces, I instantly (and innocently) happened to pick out the one that mattered for that moment, even though I didn't know its name.

I call that intuition.

Microtonal Ramble

Lisa Hirsch's "help wanted" query for help with listening to microtonal music has been scratching the insides of my intervals for a few days. In a comment on her post, I suggested that she listen to Easely Blackwood's microtonal keyboard music, which, being played by the composer on a dedicated microtonal keyboard, gives a reliable and consistent picture of what is possible to do when you divide an octave into more than 12 parts.

I believe that a person doesn't need to "learn" to listen to microtonal music, but it is a good idea to understand that all microtonal music is not equal (though, of course, some is). It has been my experience that playing microtonal music on an instrument other than a keyboard instrument can be a hit or miss proposition. Much of the time you can get away with "almost" in microtonal music without anyone in the audience really knowing (unless someone with ears like Blackwood is in the audience, with a score).

The problem that I find with the world of microtonal music is that it really only makes sense when it is played on an instrument built to allow the intervals to have points of reference. Two like wind instruments instructed to play microtones (whether they are exact or not) can cause a pretty "loud" difference tones, generating all kinds of interesting sounds not otherwise found in nature (one desirable product of microtonal writing), but it is difficult to duplicate exactly the same noise or the same microtonal difference tone pitch that a composer wants to be sounded every time you play a particular piece.

Microtonal double stops on a stringed instrument (or even single microtones themselves) do not resonate well on acoustic string instruments. It has everything to do with the way stringed instruments are built. I have found that the effect of playing microtones on an acoustic string instrument is the opposite of the wind effect: the product is a kind of overtoneless dullness, unless it happens to be two fiddles playing in the high register (but it is the non-microtonal intervals that generate the most sympathetic sound).

When string players playing tonal music play out of tune in the normal ranges of the instruments, we recognize out-of-tune pitches as being out of tune partially because of their un-resonant color. An out of tune pitch simply does not excite the harmonic series that stringed instrument (tuned in the standard manner) is built to excite. (I haven't tried intervals smaller than a half step on an electric violin, or on a violin with an amplifier. Once you add electronics, there are certainly other elements at play.)

Microtonal music systems have nothing to do with the constant adjustments that string players have to make when playing tonal music: we always have to adjust our thirds, our leading tones, and our perfect intervals, and then, when we play with other instruments with fixed tempered tuning (like the piano), we need to adjust to those instruments. Just intonation can be discussed mathematically, and people can claim to use systems of just and mean tone tuning, but it is the ear and the color of the intervals at play (and not mathematical adjustments by the players) that allow us to have some point of reference. You can mess with an electronic tuner in rehearsal, but in a performance you are on your own (unless the use of an electronic tuner is written into the piece)!

All wind instruments are built to a particular schema. Instruments without keys, like recorders, can have their holes voiced to favor a particular tuning. Boehm used one to make the modern flute, and I imagine he used one to make the Boehm system clarinet. Boehm's schema has been improved upon by several 21st-century flute makers, and new-flute players like Robert Dick have figured out foolproof fingerings to play pitches that lie in between Boehm's 19th-century sense of the half step. Loads of 20th- and 21st-century composers have written flute music using these "new" pitches and non-pitches (extended techniques involving percussive effects), and they have become staples of a modern flute player's paintbox.

Instruments from cultures that use different scale systems from the diatonic scale systems used in the west, are probably built to resonate optimally with their specific scale systems. Unfortunately I haven't had the opportunity to hear an un-amplified western string instrument play non-western music (It seems that everybody uses microphones to perform these days, and everyone must use a microphone to record).

It is important to remember that all non-western scale systems are not alike. I remember trying to wrap my head around a set of 10 Karnatic Etudes by Bozza (for the flute) that used Indian scales (the divisions of the octave were indicated in a set of scales in the beginning of the book). I could not, for the life of me, figure out how I was supposed to "hear" them. Gee, when I listen to this woman teaching a group of kids to sing a Carnatic minor scale, it just sounds like a minor scale to me, with a bit of vocal inflection and strikingly non-western sound production. This first lesson shows how difficult it is for the kids this woman is teaching to match her pitches--or even come close.

The Cambridge Companion to Schoenberg

The Cambridge Companion to Schoenberg
Edited by Jennifer Shaw and Joseph Auner
Cambridge University Press 2010
312 pages
(Available August 2010)

Articles by Walter Frisch, Michael Cherlin, Robert P. Morgan, Craig De Wilde, Elizabeth L. Keathley, Ethan Haimo, Julian Johnson, Richard Kurth, Joy H. Calico, Peter Tregear, Joseph Auner, Richard Kurth, Steven J. Cahn, Severine Neff, Jennifer Shaw, Walter B. Bailey, Sabine Feisst, and Richard Toop

Whether we like it or not, the musical 20th century was saturated with the influence of Arnold Schoenberg. His influence has, over the years, inspired some people to embrace the twentieth-century “musica reservata” that involved an organized and highly logical way of rethinking music for the 20th century. His music also caused many music lovers and practicing musicians to reject the idea of music that they could not understand. Some listeners (and some composers) abandoned new "art" music altogether, because the powers that seemed to control the world of new music made them believe tonality was no longer something to be considered a component of serious music. Whether we do or do not embrace his music, without Schoenberg our musical vocabulary, harmonic and otherwise, would be infinitely smaller, and our collective musical lives would be infinitely poorer.

Reading this collection of essays covering the life and career of Arnold Schoenberg has amplified many of my conflicting thoughts and feelings about this very puzzling and conflicted man. This collective examination of Schoenberg is kind of like a series of eulogies outlining the events, relationships, actions, and conflicts in his life. Each chapter is the result of a lifetime of work and thought, and the Companion as a whole serves as both an introduction to the world of Schoenberg for people who know very little, and serious food for thought for people who know Schoenberg's music and the music of Schoenberg's followers very well.

Steven J. Cahn’s extensive chapter on Schoenberg’s Viennese-Jewish experience describes how Schoenberg was raised in a Jewish family with religious views that tended towards the concept of “ethical monotheism,” and practical views (to find employment in a highly anti-Semitic Austria) that demanded assimilation, and eventually conversion. Schoenberg converted to Christianity at the age of 24, and in 1933, when he and his family went into exile in Paris, he converted back to Judiasm. He then moved to New York, and then onto Los Angeles, where he remained for the rest of his life.

Schoenberg’s spiritual battle was a difficult one. In “Schoenberg, mondernism, and metaphysics,” Juilian Johnson discusses Schoenberg’s obsession with the metaphysical world, particularly the metaphysical world as presented to him in literature by Balzac (in the Swedenborgian-influenced novel Seraphita) and Maeterlinck. Johnson’s discussion of Schoenberg’s desire to embrace and explore the metaphysical realm through musical abstraction is fascinating to read (and it will probably make you want to read Seraphita, which might then send you off into a few years of chain-reading Balzac).

Walter Frisch takes on Schoenberg’s Lieder. He discusses all the Lieder in chronological order and in great detail, and explores Schoenberg’s iconoclastic relationship with traditional harmony. He discusses settings of the work of contemporary poets like Richard Dehmel, Karl von Levetzow, and Heinrich Hart, and gives special attention to Schoenberg’s songs set to texts by Stefan George, who inspired Schoenberg to obey an “inner compulsion” and make his way towards a new musical direction. Robert P. Morgan offers a highly detailed discussion of two of Schoenberg’s early songs, where he refutes the concept of reading multitonality into Schoenberg’s tonal works. This is a classic work of criticism involving the taking to task assertions made by Walter B. Bailey (who has a chapter in this book concerning Schoenberg’s Piano Concerto) and Christopher Lewis. It is the kind of discussion that music theorists love to read.

Schoenberg was tremendously gifted in the art of self promotion. He did his best to ingratiate himself with the most powerful composers in Europe, and Craig de Wilde’s chapter on the relationship between Schoenberg and Richard Strauss is most enlightening. Strauss did a great deal to help Schoenberg: he employed Schoenberg as a copyist, got him a scholarship, and got him a teaching job in Berlin. De Wilde’s discussion of their correspondence is fascinating and highly recommended reading (sorry, no spoilers here).

I really enjoyed reading Michael Cherlin’s chapter on Schoenberg’s chamber music for strings, which offers a very clear harmonic and motivic analysis of his 1897 String Quartet, and an even more extensive (and extremely useful) analysis of Verklärte Nacht. He only addresses the later string chamber music briefly, since those works have been written about extensively elsewhere.

Joseph Auner’s chapter explains Schoenberg’s row tables and the way that he used them. Auner’s straightforward discussion provides references to supplemental material, directing the interested reader where to go next. This is an indispensable resource. He also offers a small tour through some of the treasures at the Arnold Schoenberg Center, with a few choice illustrations like the row slide-rule he made to help him write the Serenade.

Richard Kurth’s chapter on Schoenberg’s opera Moses und Aron includes a section on the aesthetics of incomprehensibility, where he explores the very difficult to discuss philosophical problems connected with abstraction and the necessity of a text to mean something. Kurth addresses Theodor Adorno’s 1963 lecture on Moses und Aron, and describes the tension-filled relationship between Schoenberg and his “grand-student” (Adorno studied with Berg) as being similar to the tensions between the characters of Moses and Aron in the opera (again, there are no spoilers here).

Peter Tregear’s chapter on satire and Zeitoper opens up a very strange corner of Schoenberg’s psyche: his sometimes vindictive sense of humor. Here we have a handful of contradictions (and not a glückliche one), particularly Schoenberg's attempt at the concurrent engagement and rejection of popular culture.

Schoenberg did not concern himself with the idea of a dichotomy between music that was tonal and music that was atonal. His primary interest was the “idea” itself. In Severine Neff’s chapter on Schoenberg’s Second Chamber Symphony (with the clever title “Cadence after thirty-three years”), she explores the idea of tonality in Schoenberg very thoroughly. Thematicism, like tonality, is also an important subject to consider with Schoenberg, and Ethan Haimo discusses Schoenberg’s progression towards a “radical anthematicism,” a feature of his later music that is even more disorienting than atonality. Removing all traces of tonal hierarchy means relatively little, after all, if a piece is organized with a formal hierarchy that involves the recognition of repeated material.

Elizabeth L. Keathley devotes her chapter to a fascinating (and truly appropriate) feminist interpretation of Erwartung, and Richard Kurth has a chapter on Pierrot lunaire. I never before thought about the possibility of Schoenberg making allusions to Robert Schumann’s Dichterliebe, but it is hard to think of a post-Dichterliebe song cycle (at least in German) that does not pay homage to it in some way, even if it is a deeply unconscious one.

Joy H. Calico’s chapter describes Schoenberg’s teaching career, which, to my surprise, was predominantly spent teaching private lessons, and in return for his instruction, through the years, he demanded extreme loyalty. He did have difficulties with academic institutions. In 1925, when he replaced Ferrucio Busoni at the Prussian Academy of the Arts in Berlin, Calico points out that “conservatives feared him as an iconoclast, while young modernists found him too traditional.” Still, students came from from all over Europe and America to study with Schoenberg in Berlin. Losing this position had nothing to do with perceptions of musicians in power: he lost it because, even though he had been baptized, the Nazis in power would not honor his contract because he was Jewish.

Despite all of his progressive leanings as a composer, he was a traditionalist as a teacher, teaching theory and analysis to his students. He had some radical ideas that I wish had come to pass, like a proposed “School for Soundmen” for the technical people in the movie business to learn what they need to know about the elements of music.

Sabine Feisst’s chapter discusses Schoenberg’s “exile” in America. Being a person extremely talented in self-promotion and public relations (not to mention the loyalty of his American students), he had no problem getting performances of his work by orchestras and chamber music ensembles in the America of the 1930s. His work had been embraced by Americans since the first decade of the 20th century, and Feisst suggests that the study of Schoenberg’s work fit right in with the science-inspired thinking of the post-WWII American university, where it is still considered part of the standard music curriculum. Richard Troop discusses Schoenberg’s post WWII reception in the European avant-garde, which declared him dead in 1957 (a mere six years after his actual death).

Jennifer Shaw, one of the editors of this volume, has taken on the daunting task of writing about the knotted web of Schoenberg’s collaborations, some of which seem to be clashes (many involving money) with his extraordinarily well-formed ego. I was particularly interested in her discussion of Schoenberg’s collaboration in an MGM film (which was never made). The project involved a musically-illustrated setting of the book of Genesis, which was to a collaboration between Schoenberg and several other important post WWII European-born (and mostly Jewish) composers who made their homes in Los Angeles.

Shaw, who has clearly been graced with the gift of collaboration, and Joseph Auner, her partner in this project, have done an extraordinary job putting together this Companion to Schoenberg. I feel fortunate to have gotten a review copy from its publisher to write about here, and know that I will be re-reading all of the essays often. The editors also provided an excellent introduction, and an extremely-useful chronology of Schoenberg's life and work. Individually the chapters are all works of great interest and importance, and collectively they present an extraordinarily clear picture of this extremely complicated, conflicted, and influential musical nerve-center-of-the-20th-century personified.

George Hunter Trio for Alto Recorder, Viola d'amore, and Viola

The score and parts for this totally charming two-movement piece from 1947 is now available to download for free in the Petrucci Library.

Good Reason

Perhaps publishers ought to begin selling ‘great books’ with the pages blank. This would remind us that when we reach for an interesting title, we’re not always after great thoughts, but rather, the great challenge of thinking and creating. If you find yourself caught in a cycle of checking out books and returning them a few days later in defeat, ask yourself whether you’re looking to read, or if you’re actually looking to create something new. I did today, and that’s why I’ve started this blog.

This is from the first entry in our son Ben Leddy's new blog.

Dancing Forwards and Backwards: Palindrome fun with Josef Haydn

Listen to the (brilliant) Minuet from his 47th Symphony, and follow the score above according to the following plan:

Play the minuet (or "menuet," as it is notated here) forwards and repeat it forwards. Then play it backwards (right to left), and repeat it backwards. Do the same with the trio, and then for the da capo play the minuet forwards once and backwards once.

Wouldn't this be great if it were choreographed with movements that actually went forwards and backwards? Minuets in 18th-century symphonies were not meant to actually be danced, but those cultural norms have faded. In the 21st century we can take liberties, even if they are only imaginary ones.

Golden Days of Collage

Our son (who is now embarking on the last of his golden days of college) made this before he played the cello, and before he could really write clearly. I imagine it was when he was about three, and I know it was before we had a computer in the house (hence the typewritten text). We used to sit around making collages and listening to music, and he made this one morning while we were listening to some "scary Halloween music" (the Kodaly Solo Cello Sonata) on the radio. He still plays the cello, he still makes collages, and he now has a blog.

What are we supposed to do? Feel?

Just look at the faces of the people on this committee while they listen to this New Orleans crawfisherman put the current situation in New Orleans and in the rest of the Gulf in very succinct musical terms. I imagine that many of the people who see this will have one or two kinds of of "programmed" reactions (either "gee, this guy's good--he has a nice voice, and is an engaging performer," or "he's just trying to get people to listen to him sing"). I hope that a larger number of people will shut off their armchair critical voices as well as their partisan parts (I don't know if this guy is a Democrat or a Republican, and I actually don't care), and listen to the song.

I see here the value of song itself, and the value of allowing real emotions to flow in a "safe" environment, in order to get a point across to people who need to hear it. I hope that the people on this commission will listen to the tape, and listen to the real concerns that this man is raising, and respond by taking action to implement the very reasonable suggestions he is making.

And Then There Was Light

This post has nothing to do with music. I searched in vain all over the internet for a possible answer to our (former) kitchen light problem. The kitchen light is still the same, but the problem has been solved. Hopefully this post will save a lot of frustration for people searching for answers to what should be a simple problem.

For more years that I would like to remember we would flip the switch to turn on the fluorescent light fixture in our kitchen and hope that it would light up on the first try. After another (undisclosed) number of years, success on the first try happened only once in a great while, but touching the fixture after flipping the switch would usually help the light to start (for me it meant flipping the switch, and then jumping onto a chair so that I could reach the fixture). Eventually we discovered that turning on the laundry room light first raised the odds a bit. Then it seemed that nothing worked anymore.

Michael had the bright idea of putting a night light in our downstairs bathroom (which also has a pesky fluorescent fixture), so that we wouldn't have to try to turn on the stubborn light every time we go in there. Surprisingly, the night light plugged into the mirror raised the odds of the lights around the mirror turning on. We thought that the other night light (they came in a package of two), if it were to be plugged into a socket in the kitchen, might work the same magic.

It didn't do anything. We tried two sockets in the laundry room (one didn't fit in the space, and the other did nothing), and then we tried a third socket. This one happens to be located on the reverse side of the kitchen wall that holds the light switch that is wired to our kitchen light. It is also located along the path from the fuse box to the kitchen switch.

We plugged the little fluorescent night light in the socket, and now the light goes on in the kitchen every single time.

Lots of Fun with Svend Asmussen and Ulrik Neumann

(This is here thanks to Michael)

Fancy Pants

Somehow, when I used to listen to recordings from the Prades Festival in the 1950s, I never imagined any of the musicians wearing pants like the ones Sascha Schneider is wearing here. The cellist is certainly Paul Tortilier, and the violist is a very young Karen Tuttle (she was at Prades in 1953, which dates the photo), but I am not sure of the identity of the second violinist. Any guesses?

Morlachen Monochord

This lovely hybrid-looking instrument popped up today on BibliOdyssey. Notice that it is played with a very short bow, has one string (and one tuning peg), a bridge, and f holes. It is probably part of the Gusle family, though I haven't been able to find a picture of a long-necked Gusle with f holes. It seems that the Morlachen people were Slavic-speaking people who lived around Croatia. According to this article only 22 people who filled out the Croatian census in 1991 considered themselves to be Morlachs.

Perhaps the musician in the picture might have sounded something like this.

Off-Topic Telephone Moment

Michael usually makes the telephone-related posts in our family, but, after seeing Toy Story 3, which has the Fisher-Price Chatter Telephone (a favorite toy of my youth), I just had to share a few chatter telephone moments.

Here is a 360 view of the phone from the official Toy Story 3 site:



Here is the phone in action:



and here is a very clever independent (and very short) film that exploits the darker nature of the phone (note that it predated the release of Toy Story 3 by more than two years):



For a nine minute reality experience, you can watch Maggie, a real time toddler, take her brand-new vintage phone out of the box and play with it.

I loved everything about the Toy Story 3 movie, actually, and recommend it highly for all adults.

Mostly Kreutzer, Much of the Time (the other Beethoven's Ninth)

Music forces me to forget myself and my true state; it transports me to some other state which is not mine. Under its influence I fancy I experience what I really do not feel, that I understand what I do not comprehend, that I am able to do what is completely beyond my power.

When writing this little morsel from "The Kreutzer Sonata," Leo Tolstoy, who was not a violinist, might not have realized how much he was describing what it feels like to practice this piece. Learning it well enough to make it from the state of "me" to the desirable state of "it" surpasses even the most enjoyable of earthly experiences.

The narrator's wife In Tolstoy's 1891 story must have been quite a pianist. The piano part of this piece is as difficult as the violin part, and they work together in the most intimate ways. If you haven't read this story, you can read it right now, on line.

It took me years to get around to reading the story, and it took me years of building up technique and musical experience to get up the courage to really work on Beethoven's Ninth Violin Sonata. I used to joke that in order to play the piece you have to be able to play all the Kreutzer Etudes. For a while there, I was wondering if Kretuzer might have written his etudes in order to develop the technique to play the piece, but it seems that the Kreutzer etudes predated the Sonata.
Beethoven might have used bits of Kreutzer's etudes in the piece (#13 sure sounds like this passage in the development of the first movement), but his dedication of the piece to Rudolphe Kreutzer was an afterthought. There's always the opening of that obscure little piece of Bach that could have been known to both Kreutzer and Beethoven.

Beethoven actually wrote his Ninth Violin Sonata for George Bridgetower, the English violinist (of West Indian and Polish parentage) who came to Vienna in 1803.

Unfortunately Bridgetower ended up insulting a woman Beethoven knew, so Beethoven took back the music, and he withdrew his dedication of the Sonata to his former friend. Beethoven then sent the music to Rudolphe Kreutzer in Paris, who deemed it impossible to play.

Yankee Doodle Dandy

Plumbing and Carpentry

We have been extremely lucky, over the years, to have just about all of our structural household work done by meticulous professionals: people who take real pride in their work. It is one of the perks of living in an area like ours, I suppose, because these people, who would otherwise cost a fortune to hire in a city, charge prices that people around here can afford. Michael's father made his living by being a meticulous tile man, and mine made his by being a musician, so neither of us would ever dare to delve into the do-it-yourself method of home repair. We have learned that it is best to leave it to the professionals.

It is always very inspiring for me to practice when I am in the presence of excellent craftsmen and craftswomen because they take the time to think problems through and get them right. What they do is intended to last a lifetime. Our fifty-year-old bathroom was built to last half a lifetime, and its renovated incarnation (renovated down to the studs) will probably last twice that long, when it is completed.

I'm working on an ambitious violin and piano recital for the fall: the Bach F-minor Sonata, the Brahms D minor Sonata, and the Beethoven Kreutzer Sonata, and this work on the bathroom reminds me that I have to work from the "studs" outward in order to play the music the way I want it to sound. That means thinking through and "notching" (with the metronome--from at least half tempo to tempo) every single passage daily (of course, alternating passages once in a while so that I can cover everything). That way I can put "plaster" on it that won't fall off, and can enjoy the experience (the "flush," if you will), when it is time to play this program in a concert.