"My" Fugue

I remember when the two books of J.S. Bach's Well-Tempered Clavier made their way (by means of a visit my father must have made to a used music store) into my childhood household. They were intended for my piano-playing younger brother, but my older brother Marshall claimed "ownership" of the E minor Fugue in the second volume. He said that it was "his" because it had the longest subject (for that reason it was played at his memorial service).

I claimed the D minor Fugue of the second volume as "my" fugue because I loved the chromatic scale in the subject, and perhaps because it was in D minor, and though I do not have absolute pitch (like both my brothers), I do have a sense of key, and D minor has always been special for me.

When, as a non-pianist, I claimed this fugue, I had no hope of ever being able to play it fluently. Yesterday, after a good decade of dedicated adult piano practice, I was able to do it. So I am just marking the moment with this post.

The fugue begins two minutes in. The prelude is as remarkable as the fugue.

String Theory, the Mind of God, and Phrasing

While listening to a podcast conversation today between Michio Kaku and Alan Alda, I got an abstract glimpse of what string theory is, how string theory works, and how string theory relates to music. At any rate, I want to share the link here, just in case it is an interesting subject for anyone who reads this blog, and so I can be sure to know where it is in the universe of the internet when I want to listen again.

Here it is.

I started getting little awareness "pings" that relate to the way musical phrases are curved like physical space is curved, and how what I might have to rethink what I sometimes think of as "gravity" in phrases. And I can't stop thinking about Johann Sebastian Bach's curved beams.

Augustin Hadelich's Bach Sonatas and Partitas

I have known these pieces all of my life. I developed the way I wanted to hear them early on. I couldn't help seeking the sound and interpretations I grew up hearing (daily, and played by a great violinist in his early thirties, and then--also daily--a fifth lower on the viola). In the recordings I would later hear as an adult (seeking to replicate the best moments of my childhood experience), Milstein came the closest.

As an adult I always have the violin original (in the Szeryng edition) and the Polo transcription for viola on my stand. I alternate runs of the Sonatas and Partitas with runs of the Bach Cello Suites, and pepper them with runs of the Telemann Fantasies.

Before listening to Augustin Hadelich's 2021 recording I thought I knew these pieces rather well. But listening to this set, which he plays as a cycle: moving from the darkness of the G minor Sonata, through introspection, periods of questioning, periods of pathos, periods of complexity, and through the deep contours of the soul (the over-soul, if you will), with a trumphant arrival in C major (the third sonata, the fifth of the cycle), and a light set of celebratory dances in E major filled with humor, shows me just how perfunctory my understanding of this music has been.

Hadelich makes Bach's phrases feel absolute. He allows them to follow a logical kind of argument, which makes each movement a fully satisfying "chapter" that holds my attention from beginning to end. And then each subsequent "chapter" builds and reflects on the previous "goings on." He does this in a way that is not at all tiring to the listener, because, like a great film director working with great material, Hadelich is doing all the work. Listening allows me the space to observe and enjoy lines of music and counterpoint that I have never noticed before. It is like a walk in the woods with an expert guide who knows everything happening underground, above ground, and in the atmosphere.

My first introduction to Augustin Hadelich was during the preliminary round of the Indianapolis Violin Competition in 2006. He played the first two movements of the Bach A minor Sonata, and I was dazzled by his interpretation. But now, fifteen years later, his way of playing that piece is just as dazzling, but it is different. It is different beyond being more nuanced and sophisticated. He has moved into that musical territory of Bach playing "occupied" by Dinu Lipati.

(He also has a new violin--one of the great Strads--and a baroque bow, which allows for the kind of connection between notes that is so difficult to achieve with a modern bow.)

Now when I put bow to string to play Bach, my musical world of possibilities has been changed. Bach's music has always been music of the present and the future (with a nod to the past, which Bach experienced as his musical present). Hadelich's Bach steps forward and reveals new musical possibilities to me. No other violinist I have encountered, either in person or through recordings, has had his particular generousity of spirit, tremendous intelligence (musical and otherwise), and freedom to reach beyond playing traditions and bring Bach to a place where his music should be: current, modern, and, like nature (when it is allowed to) ever renewing.

Vocal Music Instrumentation Index: what a resource!

Anne Charrier and Ben Kazez, creators and designers of the Vocal Music Instrumentation Index have organized the vocal/choral music of J.S. and C.P.E Bach as an elegant virtual library experience

They began this index as a pandemic project, and intend to continue with other composers:

Thank you, Augustin!

I'm really loooking forward to hearing Augustin Hadelich's recording of the complete Bach Sonatas and Partitas which is coming out on CD next month. He put this video of the Largo from the Third Sonata (the C major) on YouTube today, and in four minutes and eleven seconds all the thoughts that have spent the day buzzing around my brain are now calm and organized. Thank you, Augustin. Thank you Johann Sebastian.

Superb readings of all of Bach's Well-Tempered Clavier in animated graphical videos

Stephen Malinowski has completed his thirty-five-year-long project of making animated graphical scores for exquisite for all ninety-six pieces in the WTC. You can enter the treasure trove to read about the project here, or you can go directly to the youtube playlists through the links in the next paragraph.

Malinowski uses recordings made by the pianist Kimiko Ishizaka for Book I, and uses recordings made by the harpsichordist Colin Booth for Book II.

Here is a screenshot of some of the thumbnails:

Bach and Chaos Ramble

Yesterday afternoon I was listening to the radio while driving to hear my seven-year-old student play a Bach piece at a local beauty pageant. She was the reigning 2018 Little Miss of our town. She won her title last March, and she started playing the violin in September. This was her first public performance. Ever.

There was a person on the radio talking about how the laws of physics showed that there is no past or future, and that in some parts of the universe time could even go backwards. Interesting. This was all spoken over a performance of the Prelude of Bach's Second Cello Suite. I wondered if it was supposed to prove a point about Bach and time or about time and music, but I was disappointed to realize that the Bach just served as background.

Then this person started talking about chaos and order. He said that there are many kinds of chaos, but only one order. He said something about the laws of physics backing up that claim. His example was that if you clean your house it inevitably gets messy again.

He then went on to explain that conditions had to be just right for the big bang to happen as it did, and he mentioned something about the original smoothness of the Earth that I didn't understand. Then he used the word "design," so I then suspected that his argument might have had something to do with trying to put the geological record of the big bang into a religious creationist's worldview.

I tuned him out, and started thinking about the Bach cello suite (another movement from a different cello suite was playing in the background this time) and that the greatest gifts Bach gave to musicians are the many "right" ways his phrases can be played. His music is a gateway to infinite musical possibilities. When we play solo Bach, every experience (musical and non-musical) can inform the way it sounds or feels to play any phrase at any given moment. The counterpoint inside each of our heads while we are playing Bach's pitches and rhythms is always different.

For the Ancient Greeks the word "chaos" meant emptiness, which eventually got translated into the King James Bible as void. It was first used to mean disorder by the 16th-century English satirist Stephen Gosson, and then much later became used to name a branch of mathematics.

When we write music (or anything for that matter) I don't believe that order comes out of chaos in either sense of the word (I don't know enough about mathematics to weigh in on that meaning). There is no "void" because we are living and breathing people with senses, experiences, and ideas. And writing is effectively lining up ideas so that they make sense. I don't think of putting ideas together as creating order out of disorder, though I sometimes create disorder when I put ideas together.

My student played very well. The person doing the announcing introduced her piece as being by Jonathan Sebastian Bach, but very few people in the audience noticed.

Musical Economics Ramble

I was working with a seven-year-old student the other day, and while we were discussing the weight of the bow on the string, the subject of gravity came up. My student told me that they studied gravity in Kindergarten, and that in first grade they were now learning about economics. Maybe it's a fancy way of talking about money: dividing dollars into quarters, dimes, and nickels, which could be useful when introducing physical concepts of math. It is interesting and amusing to consider various scenarios of costs and benefits through the eyes of a first grader.

Anyway, I have been thinking about musical economics lately.

Most of the people reading this blog know that I stopped working with commercial publishers years ago, and since 2006 I have made everything that that I have written available by way of the IMSLP. It's free to download and free to perform. It simply isn't worth my while to work through a publisher and not be able to distribute the music I write for free. The IMSLP makes it possible for me to participate in the exchange of music without dealing with ideas of ownership or money. I am also very fortunate that being married to a now retired academic professional, and living in a place that has an extremely low cost of living, I don't have to sell music to pay the bills. If I were a different kind of person I could even say that I had a "patron." Anyway, the quality of what I write would remain the same regardless of whether I were to exchange it for money or offer it to musicians for free.

But everything you read tells you that nothing is really free.

If I perform the prelude from a Bach Cello Suite (and we violists practice them all the time and perform them occasionally) it is a reflection of thousands of hours of concentrated practice. The "cost" to me is the time I have spent building up enough technique to allow me to shepherd the groups of notes into formations that please me and please the people listening to me. If I play a Bach Prelude for a wedding and get paid money for doing so, that money hardly compensates for the time I have spent hard at work on the piece. It does, however, compensate for my travel and for the time I spend sitting quietly during a wedding ceremony.

The benefit for Bach is negligible. He has been dead for a long time, and his name and his work is well known. But there might be someone at that wedding who has never heard a Bach prelude before. There might be a child (or even an adult) who thinks that the viola is the most beautiful instrument she has ever heard, and will want to play it. There might be a person or two who is better able to connect to appropriate feelings for the event because of the safety of the music.

But being hard at work is really being hard at play for me. And all that work (play) makes me a better musician. I imagine Bach would have been happy to know that his music has proven useful after all these years.

And what are the economics relating to a person (or group) playing music that I write? The cost for the player is measured in hours of practice time and rehearsal time, and the benefit is having new music to play. The major benefit for me is having the music I write "live" in other places besides the inside of my head. I also know that most musicians are poorly paid for their work. It brings me no joy to think about musicians as customers. It does bring me joy to know that people who might not be able to afford music for their students to play (school orchestra budgets being limited) can find new music to perform without spending money they do not have.

The costs of creating a publishing company are the similar to the costs of setting up any small business. You need space for production (including large-format printing equipment and binding equipment) and supplies (high-quality paper and ink). You have to either understand accounting or hire an accountant, have a professional website, set yourself up to do e-commerce, and protect your intellectual property. You might need to hire a lawyer to help with those protections, if need be. You have to understand business, advertise, go to conferences, and be ever-present on Facebook (gasp) and Twitter. The expenditures you have to make will be reflected in the price of the music so that you actually make some money from owning the publishing company. And that price might be higher than it would be from a larger publisher.

The company that handles my published music is now offering services to self-publishing composers (i.e. composers who do not have a relationship with an established publisher and would like to sell their music). In exchange for a yearly fee, they will print and mail your music, and list it on their website. Unlike the non-self-published composers (like me) they allow the composer to retain ownership of the music (saving themselves the expense of filing for copyright).

The publisher takes a hefty percentage (45%) of the money that customers pay in retail sales (that's less than the 90% that they take from the composers they publish). The company also will sell self-publishing composers copies of their own music at a 70% discount. I suppose that the company thinks of would-be self-publishing composers as customers rather than as people who produce items of value. I suppose that adding this new "consumer class" of composer elevates me up a tier in the company's hierarchy, though I still can't imagine ever seeing this company actively promoting my work.

So I keep sending my new work to the IMSLP, where it can be accessed by people everywhere who are looking for music to play. It costs me nothing and it benefits anyone who is interested. And it leaves me time to write music. And blog posts.

Thoughts about Memory

When I was a child I had a good memory. I could play lots of things by memory on the violin and the recorder. I even have visual musical memories from that time. I can visualize the pages of the "A Tune A Day" book that I first learned from. I remember the wallpaper in the room of the blue house (soldiers on a blue background) on 4 Post Road that we rented in Lenox, Mass during the Tanglewood season. I remember being really happy that I finally had arms long enough to play the 1/2-size violin that someone was kind enough to bring along for the summer. I don't remember asking for it, but I must have. I had just turned seven.

Anyway, this post is supposed to be about memory and not memories, so I will leave the blue house, and jump ahead to when I started playing flute a couple of years after I had abandoned the violin. I do remember that the last childhood piece I played on the violin with the first movement of the Seitz 5th Pupil's Concerto.

I started playing flute casually in the seventh grade, and started taking it VERY seriously in eighth grade. I had to practice really diligently to make up for lost time in order to keep up with my peers. I was very competitive, so my goal was to play better than my peers.

I practiced constantly, and found that I could play just about everything I learned by memory. I liked practicing outside (it was good for building up the sound production), so it was also practical. I never actually memorized, because it wasn't necessary. With the flute all the notes are always in the same places on the instrument, so playing from memory was essentially playing by ear. I never thought about the names of the notes I was playing. I never paid attention to what keys I was playing while running through my daily hour of scales and arpeggios. The tune was always the same. My fingers obeyed my ear without any necessary intervention by my brain.

I did occasionally marvel at the fact that I could play all kinds of patterns of notes without thinking about anything except for my sound production. I could probably play my whole set of scales and the excerpts that Julius Baker had his students play as part of a daily routine right now. All the orchestral excerpts I practiced for all the auditions I took are still hard-wired, but I couldn't for the life of me tell you what key any one of them is in without having a flute in my hands.

In 1980 I participated in an international competition in Budapest where everything had to be memorized. I worked all summer on my repertoire, playing it from memory on the streets of Graz just about every day. I arrived in Budapest in September and discovered that there were people from all over the world who had unusual and enticing ways of playing that were very different from the "Baker" way of playing I had "cloned."

I met a Hungarian harpsichord player who was eager to share his (then revolutionary) ideas about playing Bach. It was so exciting and interesting to learn that some of the Bach Flute Sonatas were modeled on Italian ideas, and that some were modeled on German ideas. I started listening for the differences. I remember hearing a flutist from Italy named Massimo (he was really tall--so tall that he couldn't stay in the dormitory with the other flutists because he too tall for the beds that they had) play the C major Bach Sonata in a way that sounded so beautifully Italian. I discovered that the E-major Sonata I was planning to play was also Italianate, but I discovered it too late to "inform" my interpretation. I had memorized the piece, and couldn't incorporate what my heart wanted to do with it. I didn't make any mistakes, but I didn't make the kind of music I had wanted to make.

I didn't make it into the finals. The person who won the competition was not one of the musically-interesting flutists I had heard. Oh well.

I keep thinking that I could have been far freer with my interpretation if I had the music to play from. Using the written notes and articulation as a starting point rather than an ending point is something that I have always found liberating. I hated playing from memory in such a setting. Where other people feel musically free without music in front of them, I felt (and still feel) musically confined.

I might have performed "Syrinx" from memory a few times after that, but otherwise I don't think I have ever performed from memory again.

When I started playing the violin in my early 30s I realized that I could not play the instrument properly without thinking about the notes I was playing. I could play passages and even occasionally pages without looking at music, but I no longer had the skill to memorize. Having to remember not only the notes and rhythms, but also what position the left hand needed to be in, and what direction my bow was supposed to go was too much for me.

My recurring phrase for my memory was "mind like a sieve." But with such an attitude every musical experience can be unique. Every trip around the fish bowl is a new experience. I can play pieces that I have played every day for years (really) and experience them in new ways if I open my mind up to musical possibilities (phrasing, organization of phrases, colors, dynamics, inner rhythms). It is almost exactly the opposite of my musical experience as a flutist.

From time to time I still try to play pieces from memory. A few years ago I tried to memorize the Gavotte en Rondeau from the Bach E-major Partita (in A major on the viola). I figured the repetitive structure might be one I could work with. It was a very difficult proposition. I don't know if I succeeded, but I do know that I tried.

Last week I decided to try the later movements of the G Major Cello Suite, and I somehow succeeded at being able to play the Courante, the Minuets, and the Gigue from memory. I tried my hand at the D minor Suite this morning. I can play some of it by ear, but not by memory. I found the process of "stapling" down my interpretation and "imprinting" it into my brain is not something I want to do with this endlessly-fascinating piece that I want to still be "new" every time I play it.

"Bist du" by Bach?

The answer is no.

In 1725 Johann Sebastian Bach included "Bist du bei mir" in the "Buchlein" he assembled for his second wife, Anna Magdalena, a singer he married in 1721. It is one of the few surviving arias from Gottfried Heinrich Stölzel's opera Diomedes.

"Bist du bei mir" is often played at weddings, though I'm not so sure how appropriate it is as a wedding piece when you look at the text . . .

Bist du bei mir, geh ich mit Freuden
zum Sterben und zu meiner Ruh.
Ach, wie vergnügt wär so mein Ende,
es drückten deine schönen Hände
mir die getreuen Augen zu!

[If you are with me, then I will go with joy
unto [my] death and to my rest.
Ah, how pleasing were my end,
if your dear hands then
shut my faithful eyes!]

The original manuscript of Diomedes is lost, but a small collection of arias by Stözel remains. You can find the whole collection on this page of the IMSLP.

The story of Diomedes is complicated. It's hard to be sure who would have sung this aria to whom if you look at the way stories about Diomedes play out in Greek mythology. But we do know that Bach must have liked the aria.

Here's a lovely recording that puts it in a plausible operatic context:



There's a Christian hymn version of the song that has a much more wedding-appropriate text:

Abide with me
Then will I fear not
The journey to that far-off land
Where sorrows cease and all is peace. (2X)

What sweet content
To have thee near me
Where I may clasp thine hand so gentle
And gaze into thy faithful eyes. (2X)

Abide with me
Then will I fear not
The journey to that far-off land
Where sorrows cease and all is peace.

Bach Prelude Project

There's very little that is as rewarding for me as spending time with Bach. I tend to devote a lot of time in the summer months (for whatever reason) to making arrangements, and I'm spending this summer making string quartet arrangements of the preludes to the Bach Cello Suites. Several years ago I arranged the G major Prelude, BWV 1007, and a few days ago I finished an arrangement of the C major Prelude, BWV 1009. I just finished a first draft of the D major Prelude, BWV 1012, which is great fun to work on.

I'm putting them into the IMSLP as individual movements, but I'm planning to group them together as a set, which I will make available through my Thematic Catalog blog.

UPDATE: The project is finished! You can get all the links here.

Credo

I believe in Bach. I believe that Bach wrote his non-contrapuntal unaccompanied string music for musicians to play with imaginary accompanying voices (that do not need to be notated). I believe that every string player has a different set of accompanying voices to the violin partitas and cello suites, and I believe that those accompanying voices change as we grow as musicians. Perhaps those silent individual and personal accompaniments are what make each individual interpretation unique.

Of course the word "Credo," has religious associations. I think about Bach and the concept of God often. You could even say that when I play Bach or hear Bach played I feel connected to the concept of God. I could even go as far as saying that I feel the idea of God within the music of Bach. Sometimes it seems to be present in between the lines of counterpoint in the Well-Tempered Clavier, kind of like those phantom voices that lurk below and above the cello suites and the violin partitas (that I get to play on the viola).

Today is Rosh Hashanah, and I had the honor of blowing the Shofar during services this morning. In light of my Bach musings, the Gates of Repentance passage, "The Psalmist affirms: God stands revealed amid acclamation; the Lord, amid the sound of the Shofar," really resonated with me today.

Solo Bach

I practice solo Bach every day. Since I play viola, I can alternate between transcriptions of the Suites for solo cello and the Sonatas and Partitas for solo violin. Performing solo Bach for people (aside from demonstrations for students) is not something I had ever considered doing.

Yesterday morning I filled in at the last minute for a friend who was unable to play violin (solo) for an outdoor funeral. I decided to play viola because I have a viola that can handle the rigors of outdoor playing, and all the reqested music was set low in the violin register. Just before leaving the house I put my volume of Bach Cello Suites in my bag, thinking of my father, who put his volume of Bach Suites in his case when we were leaving his house to play a Mozart Duo movement for Marshall's memorial service, just in case it was necessary. (That pun was unintentional, but I'll let it stand.)

The Bach G-major Prelude was perfect music to play while people arrived and seated themselves in the tent for yesterday's service, so I played it. Suddenly the Prelude I knew so well seemed unfamiliar. I heard it differently. It had a purpose in this place and with these people. After the service I flipped to the Allemande from the C-major Suite, and used it as a postlude. I found myself playing it at a different tempo from my usual practice tempo, but somehow it felt right for the moment. I took the repeat in the first section, and the last person left the tent at the G-major cadence. It seemed right to stop. I did. G major to G major.

I find it very interesting how solo Bach can adapt to circumstances almost on its own. I look forward to the next opportunity to see what happens!

The Master Singers of Lexington Celebrates Adam Grossman's 20th Year as Music Director

Adam Grossman has been the conductor and music director of the Master Singers for 20 years, but I can proudly say that I have known Adam for nearly 40 years: we met in Junior High School. I have known violinist Frank Powdermaker, who played the violin solos on the program, for even longer than I have known Adam. When I was in fifth grade and he was in sixth grade, we were stand-partners in the All Newton Elementary School Orchestra.

Adam and Frank were my friends and musical mentors through Junior High School and High School. The last time I heard Frank play or Adam conduct was some time in the later 1970s.

I had high expectations for the May 16th concert. The program had first performances of two pieces written by Adam Grossman, the Bach A minor Violin Concerto, the Bach Motet "Lobet den Herrn, alle Heiden," the famous Bach chorale "Jesus bleibet mine Freude" from Herz und Mund und Tat und Leben, BWV 147, and Bach's Cantata 196 Der Herr denote an us.

Adam Grossman's "Five Choral Songs" set to English texts from the 16th and 17th centuries (one by John Hilton, one by John Fletcher, and two by unknown poets), were written for choir and string quintet (or perhaps string orchestra when performed with a larger choir). They are beautiful and often whimsical pieces that illuminate their texts much the way English Renaissance composers would use what we call "word painting," but the musical treatment is fresh, new, and truly appealing. His Variations on a Theme by Boyce for string orchestra (performed by a string quintet) uses the brief and spare second movement of William Boyce's Third Symphony as a theme. Adam Grossman's program notes describe the piece much better than I can:

My role as a variationist is not to manhandle the tune and make it do my bidding, nor is it to place it in front of the mirror dressed in funny hats. Respecting the theme as a creature of its time and place, the challenge is then to set that aside and see what lies latent within the material, to pull a thread or remove a layer and see what else the theme might become, or in what other direction it might go, while remaining free of gimmickry and making something that is, in the truest sense, entertaining. A more technical concern is ow to work with a tonal theme in contemporary musical language in an honest and meaningful way. Traditional techniques, including canon, fugue and dance forms, all of which Boyce would recognize, help connect with the older music.

Saturday evening was the first time I had heard music written by Adam Grossman since high school counterpoint class with David Levenson. Adam was my musical hero then, and after hearing these two pieces he remains one of my musical heroes.

My first impression of Adam Grossman as a conductor came during a dress rehearsal of a junior high school production of The Marriage of Figaro (at Weeks Junior High we did an opera or operetta during the first semester and a musical during the spring semester). Adam played the part of Dr. Bartolo, and I was one of the flower girls. We had a full orchestra that was enhanced by Adam's high-school-age bassoon-playing brother Jonathan (bassoon is a must for Figaro), and conducted by our music teacher Frank DaDario. I don't know how it happened, but all of a sudden Mr. DaDario's baton was in Adam's hand during an interval when the actors/singers were not at work, and Adam conducted the overture. It was spectacular. It was one of the defining musical moments of my childhood. Up to that point Adam only presented himself as a terrific singer and a really good violinist, but it was clear to everyone that he was a natural conductor. Perhaps he knew it then too. He conducted his way through high school, and has been working with choruses and orchestras ever since.

I have worked with great choral conductors. Some choral conductors handle the demands of working with singers who may or may not be professional singers, but few choral conductors physically understand the needs of string players and singers in combination with organ. Adam Grossman does, and his ability to communicate everything instantly and intuitively made the Bach Motet performance exceptional. Credit should be given to organist Eric Mazonson, who has worked with Adam Grossman and the Master Singers for the past 18 years.

Bach's Cantata 196, an early wedding cantata, features an aria and a duet. The soprano aria is usually done with a solo soprano and more than one violin (the first violin section), but this performance had the soprano section singing the aria in unison, with the violin section obbligato played (beautifully) by Frank Powdermaker. The excellent tenor and bass sections sang the tenor and bass duet to balance the soprano section's singing of the aria.

Frank Powdermaker and I went from being fellow musicians at Newton South High School to being classmates at Juilliard, where he studied with Dorothy DeLay, and played like one of Dorothy DeLay's good students. The adult Frank Powdermaker's playing of the Bach A Minor Violin Concerto Saturday night was extraordinary. His concept of sound, his articulation, and his sense of phrasing reminded me of a cross between David Nadien and Nathan Milstein. Really. And I just saw in the program that he studied with Nadien in New York and worked with Milstein in Switzerland.

Many violinists who play their instruments well, but there are few 21st-century violinists who "walk the walk" with the musical values of the early 20th century. It was one of the most exciting and beautiful performances I have heard of the piece, and the best performance of it I have had the privilege of hearing in real time and in real acoustics. He was accompanied by violinists Adam Grossman and Beth Abbate, violist Dimitar Petrov, cellist Jane Sheena, bass Robb Aistrup, and Mazonson playing harpsichord.

The concert was held in a Unitarian church in Lexington, Massachusetts, located across the street from the famous Minuteman statue. The acoustics in the church were excellent, and the community was extremely comfortable and congenial (our high school principal--now retired--was in the audience).



I always thought that Lexington was far away from Boston, but I was surprised to see how easy it is for people to make their way from Boston to the center of Lexington by way of the commuter train. It doesn't take long at all to drive 13 miles from Newton (or any town with access to Route 128) to Lexington. It's also easy to get there from Cambridge (9.5 miles). My brother, who goes to several concerts a week around the Boston area, took us to the concert.

He enjoys the chance not to have to deal with the frustrations of traffic and parking he encounters when going to concerts in Boston and Cambridge. I found it a great pleasure to hear such excellent music making. I'm looking forward to the opportunity to hear The Master Singers of Lexington again.

Bloch on Bach

From Essays on the Philosophy of Music, translated by Peter Palmer (Cambridge University Press):

. . . . He cherishes his theme, in which he as no other composer compressed what was to come, tension and the sharpest outline of tension. He goes on lovingly considering the theme from all angles and prospects until it blossoms forth and until, in the great modulations of the fugue, it has become an unlocked shrine, an internally unending melody (`internally' meaning within the context of the theme), a melismatic universe in respect of the developed individuality of his theme. For precisely this reason, Bach's layout is not purely diatonic, however clear its flagrant nature. Obviously the harmonic clement in itself becomes irrelevant with Bach insofar as it is manifested in a fortuitous, pleasantly meaningful simulultaneity of the parts. But it is surely not irrelevant to the extent that the pertinent motions and their framework, which is to say the counterpoint, are now also the paramount factor and, as such, emphasized. To the extent that it represents a complete horizontal transparence, it is certainly the essence of Bach more than it is of Beethoven and Wagner. And yet, even in Bach, there is in the layout an active desire. There is the pervasive flow of a succession of themes rich in associations, a twofold thematicism already inherently rich in tension which finds itself far less strongly dependent on the constant polyphony's non-decisive part-writing than on the transitional, turning and corner points, but above all the rhythmically stressed anchor-points in the harmony. And as we can see, this is not straightforwardly homophonic but a different, deliberately chosen harmony, one that underlines, that emphasizes by virtue of its mass. The one reflects upon the other, even though Bach remains the master of the single voice, multiplying the old homophony by two or by five, the intrinsic master in the spinning to of lines and in this procedure's seemingly unlyrical, supra-lyrical domain. The blending, harmonic-rhythmic element still has an influence: it prevents a revelling in the mechanics and the formal aspect of counterpoint even where Bach's wide gaps between parts play an important role in preventing a vertical blending, i.e. the being and changing of whole columns of notes or hosts of chords, no matter whether rhythmically diminished or caught up by and released from he dominant. But it is only the song, the theme, that seeks to become extensive and unending within th fugue melody which is, as it were, internally unending. It is by virtue of this above all that the element of diatonic counterpoint is reduced to a mere means, to something reflexive, permitted only because the lyrically flourishing melismata acquire a sharper profile from the juxtaposition. For it is in the contrapuntal or, rather, dailiness system of balances that they can best represent their protected, unbroken simultaneity, that lyricism of theirs which no longer has any individual relevance but simply means soul, developed soul. And that lyricism, in spite of all the dramatic community choruses, is the core of Bach's Church music. Where this balance is self-supporting, it is easy to recognize, within the framework of Bachian counterpoint, the hidden, connected, multi-layered lyricism of he Passions, built into the niches of three-dimensional counterpointing. It is akin to the uneven surface of the bas-relief, where we can feel the presence of air, the arrangement of figures in the landscape and, in fact, the whole actual landscape that is set in the rise and fall of the uneven background.

Rules

While I was slowly and carefully playing through the last of Bach's English Suites until a few minutes ago, I kept thinking about how many rules of counterpoint Bach breaks, and how often he breaks them. Then it occurred to me that Fux (1660-1741), the guy who wrote the rules of counterpoint as we know them, may have predated Bach by a generation, but he didn't write his Gradus Ad Parnassum until 1725, and by the time Bach could have even gotten his hands on a copy he could no longer see.

I have nothing against Fux. I cut several sets of teeth on Gradus Ad Parnassum. I just had a sudden realization about Bach today, and appreciate his deviations from what is to be expected even more than I did yesterday.

The WTC and Me: My First Journey Through Both Books

Sometime during my childhood my father bought a Henle Edition of both books of Bach's Well Tempered Clavier. I imagine he bought it in England because its price was indicated in pounds, and I believe it was used because there is handwriting in it that doesn't look like it belongs to anyone in our family.

My younger brother Richard studied piano all through his childhood, and these books were always on the piano. My older brother Marshall claimed one of the fugues as his "own" (the E minor in the second book), so I picked the D minor Fugue from the second book as "mine." I plunked it out as well as I could at the time: my eyes bouncing between the music and my fingers. Richard didn't do much in the way of piano playing after he graduated from high school, so his music went into the music room of my father's house, which is in the basement.

The basement flooded in 1979, and I believe that the water damage on the covers happened as a result of that flood:

A few years ago my father told me that I could have whatever music I wanted from the basement, so, in addition to tons of chamber music, I loaded a few boxes with a lot of my brother's piano music. After my slow journey through Richard's books of Haydn, Mozart, some Chopin, and some Beethoven, I decided it was time to go through the Well-Tempered Clavier from beginning to end. I started sometime in June, and I finished this evening. It was a profound experience, and before I turn around and start the whole thing again, I thought I'd mark the event with some observations.

My friend Danny Morganstern is reading Jan Swafford's new book about Beethoven (I'm waiting until I can get my hands on a library copy). Beethoven's teacher, according to Swafford, was from Leipzig. He taught Beethoven to play the piano using the WTC so that Beethoven would be able to play in every key. That is sound teaching. That's kind of what I thought I would get out of it too, but I learned through experience that one of Bach's points seems to be to leave the home key as many times as possible, and go off into adventurous places before returning to the home key in extremely clever and highly rewarding ways. Double sharps abound even in keys that don't have many sharps in their key signatures. Every one of the 48 Preludes and Fugues is unique.

I think that Bach wrote these preludes and fugues to offer possibilities in music that were not part of the normal musical practices of the day. Most non-keyboard instruments were severely restricted in their key possibilities, even after tempered tuning was invented. The majority of pieces for violin, with or without keyboard from the 17th and 18th centuries (and even in the 19th, but that's past Bach's time) are in keys that stay within three or four flats and sharps. Wind music from Bach's time is also quite restricted. Three flats is pushing it for clear intonation and fast fingering on the baroque flute, and music with three sharps is both difficult to finger and get in tune on the alto recorder. I do not play the baroque versions of other wind instruments, but I imagine that without keys (or with just minimal keys) they suffer the same difficulties as the flute and the recorder. In this work Bach got gave himself the chance to explore the strange new musical worlds (and there are moments that are pretty strange) that happen in between the keys that all the rest of the world lives in.

My first journey through the WTC was filled with all sorts of emotional highs and lows. While we were all waiting to see if Marshall would survive his accident, I was near the end of the first book. The B-minor Prelude and Fugue that ends Book One is one of the greatest pieces of music ever written (even by the standards of its WTC company). Playing it helped me a great deal. By the time I reached the E-minor Fugue in the second book, my brother was no longer alive. It was difficult for me to play it. It was difficult because it is difficult, it was difficult because it was Marshall's "property," and it was difficult because my experience with Marshall as my brother was now something that could only exist in memory. It will still always be "his fugue."

I'm hoping that my next journey through the WTC will offer fewer reasons to seek out Bach for solace.

If it's Thursday it Must be Bach

I had a great time playing the C-major Bach Suite on the viola for a group of fourth graders a few weeks ago. It was part of a "school demonstration" I did as a favor for a friend. I talked with the kids about the fact that when I play for them, they become part of the music. I told them (and I was telling the truth) that the way they listened and followed the music had a lot to do with how I would play the music. I told them that because it was Bach, the music has infinite possibilities and can be realized in many ways. I goofed around a bit, making much of the cadences and false endings (and they applauded at the proper inappropriate times, and then laughed at themselves). A good time was had by all.

On Monday five members of our Collegium played a set of Renaissance consort pieces for a music appreciation class at the local college. We interacted a bit with the students, but for the most part, aside from polite (and sometimes enthusiastic) applause, it was clear that they didn't really know what to make of a group of living people playing old music for them.

My community college class tomorrow is our first class about Bach. I have decided to play some of the C-major Suite for my class, because my class deserves the same exposure to live music as that fourth grade class and my friend's music appreciation class. I also decided to play for them because I think that these 20-something-year-olds need to know the difference between hearing a live performance and a recorded one. They have gotten much of their music from square and rectangular boxes (some which hold disc-shaped objects) rather than from living and breathing human beings. They have also been deprived of a whole range of vibrations that microphones can't pick up. They may change, but the music they hear does not. A recording can't change, but a person can. This "self-oriented" generation tends to notice its personal changes in relation to the stagnant music it consumes. And that's any kind of music. They rarely get the opportunity to understand that a musical interpretation can be something "of the moment," and that the changes that happen to us through listening to music and playing music are things to reflect upon and celebrate.

Not all performances are given in ways that involve the audience (you can read a post I wrote six years ago ((six years ago!)) about "playing at and playing to" here), but the people participating in a performance by listening are always vitally important. I hope to get this across to my students tomorrow.

I have been pondering the differences between tomorrow's Bach and a concert:

1. The class is at 8:00 a.m., so I will not have had time to practice.
2. My attention will be divided between the material for the rest of the class and the act of playing.
3. It will be a surprise to the students (except the ones who might be reading this post).
4. I would NEVER play solo Bach in a concert. The more I learn about music, the higher my regard for Bach. I feel that the goal of any performance is to try to meet the composer half way. The more I grow as a player and as a musician, the more the distance between me and Bach grows. This ever-growing half way is already a journey of a lifetime.

Here are a few Bach posts from the Musical Assumptions archives:

My Daily Bach
Why Playing (or Practicing) a Piece is Like Taking a Walk
I Guess it Shows
Back to Bach
and
Lost Branches of the Bach Family Tree

Why Playing (or Practicing) a Piece of Music is Like Taking a Walk

I have been thinking about thinking again. But today I was "thinking of some thinking" while practicing Bach. Like my student, I tend to think some of the time, most of the time, or, perhaps, my attention darts from one thing to another while I am practicing. Sometimes I find myself noticing things I have never noticed before as the notes of a familiar piece go by my eyes and get translated, through my arms and fingers (and all the little nerves and muscles that connect them to the rest of my anatomy) into something filled with detail. Sometimes I find myself at the end of a piece, and it is as if I had been transported in time from the beginning to the end, without the slightest memory of the journey.

Sometimes I get an idea for a blog post.

Playing a piece of music by yourself is sort of like taking a walk by yourself along a familiar path. The notes, rhythms, harmonies, dynamics, and indications of articulation put in by the composer are the details of the landscape that do not change (under normal circumstances) like the pavement, the beginning and end points, the trees, the houses, the hills, and the obstacles that can't be avoided. If a log runs across your path, you need to be careful, every time, to avoid stubbing your toe or tripping. When you know that the obstacle is coming up, you can prepare yourself ahead of time. Eventually you learn not to think about the obstacles, and simply avoid them out of habit.

But I digress. Let's both take a moment to contemplate obstacles you could find in walking paths and in music.

Now I'll get back on track.

There are variables that make it possible to say with complete confidence that you can never walk the same path exactly the same way. There are big things like temperature, light (which itself is always changing), wind, and weather, and there are our ways of reacting to them by what we are wearing. Footwear is usually pretty important. It is a different experience walking a mile in heels than it is in sneakers, but if we are used to walking in heels, we make adjustments (we must labor to be beautiful). It is far more difficult to play certain pieces on the French Horn than it is to play them on the piano, but we make adjustments (we must labor to play the French Horn beautifully). Sometimes, for expressive reasons, string players choose fingerings that are difficult to play easily, but we must labor to play stringed instruments beautifully.

There is a walking speed that is comfortable and habitual, but we can always walk more slowly (if necessary) or more quickly (if necessary). Walking slowly we might observe more of the things that change along our path like the particular state of the trees, the birds, the squirrels, human beings that we might see and might see us (perhaps they might see us walking slowly and observing details about the pavement, and they might think we're a bit nuts). Walking quickly, we might enjoy the physical challenge of moving fast, we might enjoy the way our heart rate goes up, or we might be trying to work off anger or express the joy we feel being part of nature. We also might be trying to get somewhere fast, and we might be in a panic. In that case we often miss the landscape.

Sometimes we count steps. Sometimes we play games. Sometimes we kick rocks.

When we practice familiar pieces (or scales and exercises), we free our mind to take in what it wants to. When it is a complicated or particularly well-written piece, like a piece of solo Bach, the landscape is rich, and we can see whatever patterns we want to see at a given moment. We can observe the way the rhythm relates to the harmony, we can pay attention to the consistency of the sound we are making, we can pay attention to a particular element of technique, and observe the way it applies to what we are playing. We can stop, go back, and play something again. We can listen for intonation. We can mess around with agogics, we can mess around with syntax, and, with Bach, we can mess around with dynamics and articulations. We can observe the vast number of possibilities available to us in our musical landscape, or we can pay close attention to the details of the "pavement."

Changes in weather are analogous to changes in our moods, the state of our health, the level of our blood sugar, the amount of sleep we get (or need), the amount of caffeine we had (or need), the amount of time we have (or need) to practice, the comfort of our clothes, the comfort of the room. There are thousands upon thousands of little things that contribute to the way we might play a piece of Bach at any given time.

This is why playing Bach never gets old. The path may be familiar, but there is so much to observe and experience that the path is never the same.

My Daily Bach

"Rarely does a day go by when I don't do some Bach. And when I do it it's never the way I did it the time before." Aaron Rosand

I would say that the person I have the most intimate daily contact with for the longest time has been Johann Sebastian Bach. He always adapts to whatever musical needs I might have at any given time in my life.

When I was a small child, before I played an instrument, I listened to my father practice Bach every day. When I was very little it was the Sonatas and Partitas for violin, and then when I was older (after the age of 6), it was the Cello Suites, and the Sonatas and Partitas played one fifth lower on the viola. My mother practiced Bach Flute Sonatas and transcriptions of non-contrapuntal movements from the Sonatas and Partitas and the Cello Suites, and when I began to play the flute I did the same. I also learned all the flute parts from the Bach Cantatas that my (then future and now former) teacher Julius Baker compiled after his years as the flutist of the Bach Aria Group, and from my mother's books of arias with instrumental obbligato by voice type.

That led me to learn the arias in the context of their cantatas. If it was for flute and by Bach, I knew it. My first Cantata was Number 78. It was, perhaps, the first recording I bought for myself: Karl Richter and the Munich Bach Choir Orchestra with the Magnificat on the other side.



I even bought the parts when I was in high school. My father told me that Cantata 78 was the first Bach Cantata he ever played. He played it at a Unitarian Church in Cleveland when he was there working for what was to become NASA (he was called to sub for a violinist had trouble getting up on Sunday mornings). The conductor was Robert Shaw. Cantata 78 still has its place for me in the pantheon of Bach Cantatas.

I always felt disappointed by the A minor Suite for Solo Flute. It never seemed to be as interesting as the solo string music, or the accompanied Flute Sonatas, but I still played it every day before I became a string player.

My daily Bach took me from age 13 through age 31 or so on the flute, recorder, and baroque flute, and as soon as I had enough technique to believe I could attempt the Sonatas and Partitas on the violin, it became my daily goal to navigate through them. When I found myself with a viola (I bought one for $100 at a neighbor's garage sale), the first pieces I tried to play were the Cello Suites (Watson Forbes' transcription). Once I got enough technique to play movements from the Sonatas and Partitas on the viola (the ones movements I heard my father play when I was growing up), they joined my daily Bach. Now I practice all the movements on the violin, and practice all the Cello Suites on the viola.

I have never been much of a keyboard player, but I still manage to find pleasure in playing the Preludes and Fugues from the Well-Tempered Klavier on the piano (albeit slowly). Bach's keyboard Partitas taught me the joy of completely exhausting all the contrapuntal possibilities presented by a small amount of material, and some movements from his English and French Suites, along with the two-part inventions taught me the limitlessness of writing with only two voices. When I got my viola d'amore, and instrument that I'm sure Bach played, I made a transcription of the Fifth Cello Suite for it. That's the way I learned my way around a new instrument: through Bach.

I learned to play the flute, the baroque flute, the piano, the violin, and the viola from Bach. I discovered the wonders of "baroque interpretation" through Bach, and I discovered the wonders of "romantic interpretation" through Bach. Bach has shared my deepest passions, my deepest sorrows, my flights of musical and intellectual fancy, and my frustrations. Teaching Bach is always the greatest way of communicating with a student, and discovering the ambiguities of Bach--phrases that can work in thousands upon thousands of ways--is a parallel to all of life. It is sturdy music that means as much to me today as it did when I was a very small child. It is music that I can throw my whole self into, and though much of my daily Bach is grooved into my psyche, I never have the same experience playing it. Never.